Combat much slower?

In this release I noticed that, in full deck mode, every time I used a skill there was a global cooldown put on all my skills. The combat immediately felt much slower than what I remember from Release 8, to the point where it felt way too slow, clunky, and just not nearly as much fun.

I'm not sure if there was always that same global cooldown in Release 8 but the visual is just messing with my mind, or if there was a deliberate decision to add that cooldown and slow things down.

For whatever reason, combat went from really fun/exciting in R8 to very boring and offputting in R9.

 

Actually, there was a global cooldown in R8 too, it just wasn't graphically indicated, which was frustrating to say the least, as you never knew when you could click your next card and using them too early made you loss precious seconds. What I can't say for sure is if the cooldown is in fact slower than in R8 or it's just the same but with the visuals added, but there was one for sure.
Discarding cards, however, didn't trigger the cooldown, as it does now. That does indeed slow combat a lot.

 

The GCD is annoying. It makes sense in a fixed environment when you know where everything is, but in a random hand that you need to keep paying attention to what's going on it's a bit much.