Shout cooldowns are way too punishing for a Dragonborn build

Okay so I'm on my 5th playthrough trying to actually commit to being a Shout-focused character instead of just spamming Unrelenting Force once and forgetting about it. And I'm losing my mind over the cooldown timers.

Like, Unrelenting Force has like a 15 second cooldown? That's forever in a fight. By the time I can use it again the enemy is already closing distance and I'm back to swinging a sword like every other warrior. Meanwhile a mage just throws fireballs nonstop with zero penalty, and a stealth archer doesn't have to deal with cooldowns at all because they're already invisible.

I get that Shouts are supposed to be powerful and rare, but the game treats them like you're a regular person with a special ability instead of the Dragonborn. You literally have dragon blood. Why can't I use my core mechanic more than once every 15-20 seconds?

Has anyone else felt this way or am I just bad at building around Shouts? I'm trying to make it work but it feels like the game is actively discouraging me from playing the way the story says I should play.

Yeah, this is a real design problem that Bethesda never really solved. Shouts are supposed to be your thing as the Dragonborn but they're balanced like ultimate abilities you use once per fight, not your actual playstyle.

The cooldown scaling is brutal too - like, Unrelenting Force at 15 seconds is basically useless for crowd control when you need it most, but something like Dragonrend has a 60+ second cooldown and you're fighting one dragon. By the time you can use it again the fight's almost over anyway. Meanwhile yeah, a destruction mage is just spamming Fireball with zero downtime because spell cost is the only gate and you can just chug potions.

If you're on PC there are mods that let you tweak shout cooldowns - Ordinator has a whole perk tree rework that gives you ways to reduce them if you commit to the build, and there's stuff like Ars Metallica or other overhauls that let you customize it. But if you're on console you're kind of stuck just accepting that shouts aren't meant to be your primary damage tool, which sucks because that's the fantasy.

Honestly the build works better if you treat shouts as utility / cc between weapon swings rather than the main damage source. Unrelenting Force to knock enemies down, then go to town with a good weapon. But I get that it feels backwards given what the story promises you.