Global Cooldown

Boethius

[top]Global Cooldown

The global cooldown is the time that must elapse between actions taken by the player. It was implemented to limit macroing and botting, but it also prevents low ping players from gaining an unfair advantage over high ping players by limiting the number of actions per minute that can be executed.

The base global cooldown for Druids in cat form and Rogues is 1.0 seconds. The base global cooldown for all other classes is 1.5 seconds.

[top]Lowering the Global Cooldown

As of 2.4, spell haste will lower the global cooldown when casting spells to a minimum of 1.0. The reduction amount is equal to the percentage of cast time reduced by spell haste, up to a maximum of 33% (requires 50% spell haste). The reduction scales smoothly, meaning your GCD can be any value between 1.0 and 1.5 depending on the amount of spell haste. 50% spell haste requires 788 spell haste rating at level 70; the value required at level 80 is higher (if you know it post it in the comments).

[top]Non-GCD Abilities

Not all abilities are tied to the global cooldown, however all these abilities have some sort of separate timer that prevents them from being spammed indefinitely. Some examples of abilities that do not incur the GCD when activated include:

Most clickable trinkets
Most pet abilities
On-next-swing abilities like Maul or Cleave
Warrior Stance Change, Shield Block, Taunt, Bloodrage, Spell Reflect
Paladin: Divine Favor
Hunter: Kill Command
Mage: Presence of Mind, Arcane Power
Warlock: Fel Domination, Demonic Sacrifice
Shaman, Druid: Nature's Swiftness

[top]Macroing Non-GCD Abilities

Non-GCD abilities may be macroed together in sequence and in combination with a GCD-invoking action. Some examples:

Nature's Swiftness + Heal

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Wave

Trinket + PoM + AP + Pyro

/use 13
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Pyroblast

[top]Changing Gear

Changing equipment (weapons, shields, etc) in combat triggers a GCD, and will interrupt any spell being cast when you attempt to switch. This was added to prevent mid-cast weapon switching, since the spell cast's calculations used the spellpower stat present at the end of casting rather than the start.

[top]Bloodlust/Heroism

Bloodlust and Heroism will not lower the global cooldown for abilities that do not benefit from spell haste. Abilities that make use of spell haste receive the benefit of Bloodlust lowering their global cooldown as noted above. This can be proven using the following UI hook and spamming an instant spell with no cooldown inside and outside of Bloodlust/Heroism:

/run hooksecurefunc("CooldownFrame_SetTimer", function(_, start, duration, enable) if start > 0 and enable > 0 then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(duration) end end)

Nite_Moogle · 11/20/08, 1:42 PM

The list of non-GCD abilities is not complete and this is intentional. If you post something that isn't on the list, you can expect that post to be deleted and possibly infractioned. I am not interested in keeping the list of every single non-GCD ability in the game in this post; that is not what it is for.

Len · 02/20/09, 6:21 AM

As of 3.0, most spell interrupt abilities are outside GCD; that might be good to mention in the list even if not all the specific abilities.

slithytove2 · 04/16/09, 1:49 AM

I would assume this is universal, however I'm not positive. On my NE Druid, my 299 haste rating gives me 9.12%. Therefore, the factor is approximately 32.785 haste per 1% and would require 1639 haste to get to 50%.

Exemplar · 07/28/09, 2:53 PM

Originally Posted by Aldoness

Interesting thread on GCD; however, the haste rating given is for level 70. At 80 it takes 32.79 haste to equal 1%, thus 1639.5 (rounded to 1640) haste to equal 50% at level 80.

To add to this, certain talents will increase spell haste, and certain buffs will to. At 80, these buffs (when talented) will include Air of Wrath Totem (5%), Retribution Aura (3%), and Moonkin Aura (3%). All haste is multiplicative, so if you have 10% haste and no talents to increase it, along with ever buff mentioned earlier, your haste would become 0.90 * 0.95 * 0.97 * 0.97 = 0.8044695 or 20% haste.

Moonkin Aura and Retribution Aura do not stack. They are duplicates of each other so that you have wider choice in raid composition without losing buffs.

• Arawethion · 07/28/09, 2:54 PM

Also, 3% haste doesn't multiply your cast time by 0.97; it multiplies it by 1/1.03.

kienluen · 08/05/09, 6:55 AM

Bloodlust and Heroism will not lower the global cooldown for abilities that do not benefit from spell haste. Abilities that make use of spell haste receive the benefit of Bloodlust lowering their global cooldown as noted above.

is there an exact formula how much bloodlust / heroism affects gcd?