"The cooldown indicator on hotbars no longer causes all ability icons to appear grayed out (unusable). Now, when an ability is on cooldown, it will not be grayed out if its activation conditions (like resource costs or range) are met."
Let's break up their patch note statement, addressing each sentence on its own:
"The cooldown indicator on hotbars no longer causes all ability icons to appear grayed out (unusable)."
Ok, I'm not even sure what they are saying here. I play a Sith Assassin tank, if I used any ability that had a CD, that ability did NOT cause any other abilities to be greyed out at all. It sounds like they "fixed" a problem that never existed in the 1st place. I never witnessed this problem all my time leveling to 40 before the patch went live.
Now onto their second patch note statement:
"Now, when an ability is on cooldown, it will not be grayed out if its activation conditions (like resource costs or range) are met."
What the above statement fails to take into account is that the cooldown itself is an activation condition. There are 3 activation conditions: the resource, the range, and the remaining cooldown on that ability itself. An ability that is still on CD *should* still be greyed out, because it means that it is unusable. This was a huge oversight.
I noticed this huge detriment immediately as soon as I logged in after the patch and started tanking.
What this change does is 100% destroys the fluidity of chaining your attacks one after another with as close to zero delay as possible. It completely negates any benefit conferred from a players reaction time, because that reaction time no longer has a visual cue (trigger) with which to act upon. This was the benefit of greyed out abilities that are unusable (due to CD) even if their "resource costs and range were met".
This change is resulting in players mis-clicking on abilities numerous times because they think they are off CD when they are not (and in this game, reaction time is everything, even 1/20 of 1 second is significant). This destroys all continuity and seamlessness of executing attacks and defenses. This is something that absolutely needs to be reverted back to the way it was, it hobbles the execution of tanking actions, as well as the dps abilities of classes like a sniper which my GF plays.