Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always tell what skill was being executed by your opponent via a neat casting animation. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell when your passive traits which had a cooldown were active because of a nice aura animation? I believe its very important for all skills to stand out from each other with a unique animation in mind. Counterplay is vital for the longevity of GW2, I believe it is important for vivid animations to be apart of all skills/traits with CDs.
For the sake of skillful play I suggest skills which provide great return have a cast timer no less than 3/4ths of a second. A player should always have the option to react and counter an opponent’s attack(if it will greatly affect a fight).
While I believe its perfectly fine for some skills to stay instant, abilities which can really turn a fight around quickly should probably be modified to have a some sort of cast time which at least rewards people with extremely quick reaction time the chance to dodge.
Less random dodging. Altough giving Steal a cast time and animation for example, will break the functionality. If its not aldeady blocked, blinded, invulnd, evaded; it will also ruin your gap closer and burst. Which is what makes a thief usefull in fights.
IMO updraft is one of these skills that is actually not hard to predict. They rtl – updraft a lot. And if its not on cooldown, you can expect it anytime when the elementalist is getting very close.
PBShot is getting an animation right?
Meditation guardians could use a bit of cast time / animation. Its completely random. I’m not sure it they still get healed if you manage to random dodge it?
Bigger skills need bigger tells. As for steal, they could nerf the traits for steal. In that case they will have to buff something passive. Which is probably not what we want.
If everything as cast time to allow for clear tells, you’d end up massively altering the pace of combat and break a lot if the functionality of skills.
In the case of updraft:
Updraft has a secondary functionality as a dodge. Delay is horrible to have on a dodge.
you want to punish necros more by taking one of the things they need in order to barely have any way to fight back by making the skill more bad ? play a necro first before asking for such things because if you knew just how weak the class is as it currently is you would see asking for such a nerf would kill the class so that no one would be playing the class and for some people that would be enough to stop playing the game all together !
I honestly disagree with this. GW2 is different from MMOs in the sense that you have much greater access to pre-emptive, active defenses. Because of this, it becomes more of a game about learning class mechanics and how different combos tend to synergize as well as being able to plan accordingly to mitigate or avoid them.
Take for example the ele’s Churning Earth. It deals massive damage in an aoe, but it also suffers from a long cast time that makes it incredibly easy to avoid. Because of this, enemy players have a massive 3 seconds to pop an instant active defense, such as a blind, block, or dodge, to render the entire skill useless. If we have more skills like this, it will just be a battle of who can go longer without screwing up, which will draw fights out much longer than they need to be.
I like what the guy a couple of posts above said about how it’s more skillful to play proactively as opposed to reactively. Learn the classes, learn the skills, and learn the combos, and you should be able to win just about any evenly-matched fight.
So…basically turn some instant cast skills that are meant to be openers into useless psuedo-openers that can’t be used during other long casting skills that otherwise wouldn’t hit? Classes need a mix of cast times, including instant, because otherwise it’s just chaining one skill after the other and hoping it works out. With instant cast skills, you reward people who know other class mechanics and those who jump at opportunities. I mean, if a thief is running up to you and about to start the fight, you can be pretty sure they’re gonna steal/shadowstep to you in order to guarantee their burst or opening strike hits.
Instants can be predicted and good players do it consistently. Between two great players who know the ins and outs of all classes involved, fighting becomes more mind games than anything. Can you trick a person into wasting their opener or make them think you’re defenseless when you’re not. Saying you can’t predict instant cast things is more like saying you’re not gonna try to predict them. Obviously sometimes you’ll be wrong, but the more you practice the better you’ll get at predicting things simply by knowing where you are in a fight.
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
Prediction works because player actions are not random. There is always a reason why any player uses any given move. If you understand why a player does a certain move, you can understand when he will want to do that move.
I play from Australia so me having less than 250ms ping is considered amazing. There are plenty of attacks that should be slow enough to react to that simply aren’t at my latency, but I don’t need the game to tell me what my opponent is about to do. If they don’t match my mindgames, they will tell me what they’re about to do.
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
They can (sometimes) if you know your opponent and his class. You’re confusing prediction and reaction.
The OP’s suggestion would change combat into a boring snoozefest instead of the action-oriented feel it has now. Some things should have notable animations/cast-times, but not everything.
End of the Dream by Evanescence
unofficial theme song of the Nightmare Court
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always tell what skill was being executed by your opponent via a neat casting animation. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell when your passive traits which had a cooldown were active because of a nice aura animation? I believe its very important for all skills to stand out from each other with a unique animation in mind. Counterplay is vital for the longevity of GW2, I believe it is important for vivid animations to be apart of all skills/traits with CDs.
For the sake of skillful play I suggest skills which provide great return have a cast timer no less than 3/4ths of a second. A player should always have the option to react and counter an opponent’s attack(if it will greatly affect a fight). While I believe its perfectly fine for some skills to stay instant, abilities which can really turn a fight around quickly should be modified to have a slower cast time (3/4th seconds).
Here are just some examples of skills which I believe need a slightly longer cast times added in order to provide counter play:
The skills listed are either instant or have ~1/2 second cast timer. IMO these skills among others need a cast timer slightly longer than 1/2 a second.
From the list the only ones I think need a higher or more visible cast are corrupt boon and point blank shot (this one is getting a change next patch). But if you make corrupt boon harder to land it should have reduced cd.
Some insta-cast skills that are not on the list but I think should get cast time are: phase retreat and all shatter skills.
I disagree about Judge’s Intervention. While the skill itself doesn’t have a tell, you can generally expect it to be used as an opener and in combination with another skill. If you see them start an attack that is clearly out of range, then you can expect them to be in your face in a second. If you have it a tell on top of a tell it would be almost as bad as Bull’s Charge in terms of reliability.
Minor changes like those to Pin Down keep the skill usable but make it possible for you to tell when it’s coming. That being said some spells could use more unique animations, but even that has been improved. In fact, tells have been probably the one area of the game where ANet has been really solid.
What does need more expanding are visual effects for things like stability and some passives like OP said. If I have to glance up to make sure my CC will work and the target is swimming in boons then it could take up to a second, which is enough to get hit by a skill you would have otherwise avoided. Some of the Warrior stance auras could also do with being bigger but that’s about it.
Just an angry old man…
Old Man Burr (War), Bad Hat Ben (Engi), Manly Manny Manson (Guard)
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
I agree with OP Steal need a cast time, its too obvious to predict a insta cast skill to evade such. i bet top tier thieves knew that as well. rofl
[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.
The one worry I’d have is that the game is actually already very overbearing with information and speed of combat it dumps on newcomers, assuming the newcomer hails from the very large pool of casual WoW players or other casual players.
There’d need to be some way to give them time to actually identify what is being casted when the castbar constantly runs through in 0,25s~0,5s per ability.
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I believe they went down this route and didn’t add cast timers and longer animations in the attempt to create a skill gap compressor.
I feel like it was more of an aesthetic choice. They made the combat more action-like than GW1 and wanted players to be focused on all the crazy animations that most games lack. You could argue that it’s more skillful to react to tell than to a cast bar that spells out what’s coming. With the current system you have to understand every class if you want to fight it properly. Mesmers are so much less threatening now that I play one, because I can more easily recognize the gestures. Of course, the outlier is that while you can normalize models in TPvP, you can’t anywhere else so asura still have an advantage (sometimes even Charr, just because some animations just look different) in WvW or hotjoin.
While I miss the cast bar sometimes as someone who liked to play lockdown in GW1 because seeing the bar get suddenly stopped in its tracks was satisfying, it also made it easier. If you want to interrupt in GW2 you got to be much faster on the draw. Unfortunately though most interrupt/lockdown/control based builds don’t have cool rewards like draining energy, higher CD (Power Block isn’t that popular), and the like are much less common. GW1 had a crazy amount of stuff like that and they have tried to bring it back but it’s just not there yet.
Just an angry old man…
Old Man Burr (War), Bad Hat Ben (Engi), Manly Manny Manson (Guard)
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
“A prediction (Latin præ-, “before,” and dicere, “to say”) or forecast is a statement about the way things will happen in the future, often but not always based on experience or knowledge."
-Wiki,
Instant casts can be predicted, if you know what skills a class has off CD, when the opportune times for those skills to be used are, and how to avoid them should you find yourself in a position where they would be effective against you.
Example: Steal can be blocked/delayed for three seconds or Aegis’d.
Not everything needs a telegraph. Knowing what your opponent will do before he does it does not require a reaction.
Resident Disgruntled, Coffee-drinking Charr.
Zarin Mistcloak(THF) Valkyrie Mistblade(WAR) Kossori Mistwalker(REV) Durendal Mistward(GRD)
I used to think (build op, pls nerf) like you, but then I took a nerf to the knee.
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
Prediction works because player actions are not random. There is always a reason why any player uses any given move. If you understand why a player does a certain move, you can understand when he will want to do that move.
I play from Australia so me having less than 250ms ping is considered amazing. There are plenty of attacks that should be slow enough to react to that simply aren’t at my latency, but I don’t need the game to tell me what my opponent is about to do. If they don’t match my mindgames, they will tell me what they’re about to do.
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
^^This. If everyone had a < 50ms ping, the OP’s suggestion might have some merit. However, since that’s not true, the OP’s suggestion gives more of an unfair advantage to those players with low pings than they already have. Those players would be able to see and react to the extended animation, while those with longer pings would not.
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
Prediction works because player actions are not random. There is always a reason why any player uses any given move. If you understand why a player does a certain move, you can understand when he will want to do that move.
I play from Australia so me having less than 250ms ping is considered amazing. There are plenty of attacks that should be slow enough to react to that simply aren’t at my latency, but I don’t need the game to tell me what my opponent is about to do. If they don’t match my mindgames, they will tell me what they’re about to do.
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
^^This. If everyone had a < 50ms ping, the OP’s suggestion might have some merit. However, since that’s not true, the OP’s suggestion gives more of an unfair advantage to those players with low pings than they already have. Those players would be able to see and react to the extended animation, while those with longer pings would not.
agree.
IMO, the greatest strength of this game is the fluid/active combat. this is why i play it over every other MMO (many of whom offer more in other respects). i’m okay with truly “game-changing” skills having a telegraph and/or slight casting time increase, but you have to be REALLY CAREFUL not to go overboard.
Chaos Organ (Ele), Pistol Opera (Thief), Modular Man (Eng)
MARA (EU) Gunnar’s Hold
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
Prediction works because player actions are not random. There is always a reason why any player uses any given move. If you understand why a player does a certain move, you can understand when he will want to do that move.
I play from Australia so me having less than 250ms ping is considered amazing. There are plenty of attacks that should be slow enough to react to that simply aren’t at my latency, but I don’t need the game to tell me what my opponent is about to do. If they don’t match my mindgames, they will tell me what they’re about to do.
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
^^This. If everyone had a < 50ms ping, the OP’s suggestion might have some merit. However, since that’s not true, the OP’s suggestion gives more of an unfair advantage to those players with low pings than they already have. Those players would be able to see and react to the extended animation, while those with longer pings would not.
I’m playing a trickery Thief myself – and to be honest – I will abuse the insta cast on anyone (including those who claim to predict it). I can freely use it while I’m using withdraw, or inf strike immob.
I can also choose not to use it, and just walk up to you and /dance. To make you random dodge the “possible steal” all day long.
I don’t think these openers should change without reason. All I’m saying is that some skills can not be predicted if your opponent chooses to play smart. Which gives you a disadvantage.
I do agree on the thread title a bit, because some insta cast skills instantly relate to skill-less play. For example: hitting your spikes by putting up a blindfold and using “spike + meditation”. Or “spike + Infiltrator’s signet”. You have to agree that some of the most powerfull insta-cast skills come with absolutely no downside.
EDIT: I think it’s generally not a good idea to balance cast times on some players ping.
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
I agree with OP Steal need a cast time, its too obvious to predict a insta cast skill to evade such. i bet top tier thieves knew that as well. rofl
I will quote my self until they will feel bad.
I mean, i use stealth i stalk them at their back (cos only amateur thief will steal in front of his prey) i wait till stealth depleted and timed my steal and they can evade such insta cast skill? Huehuehue.
where is the element of surprise?
[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.
I mean, i use stealth i stalk them at their back (cos only amateur thief will steal in front of his prey) i wait till stealth depleted and timed my steal and they can evade such insta cast skill? Huehuehue.
where is the element of surprise?
In other words, you’ll do the ‘obvious best move’, get out-predicted and whiff both stealth and steal because it was obvious. That would only work against someone that isn’t aware of that play. I think most people can count to 3 seconds.
The whole point of prediction is that I don’t need to be able to see what you are doing right now because I already worked out what you will most likely do a moment ago.
If you’ve ever played a fighting game at a reasonably competitive level you would’ve already experienced prediction based gameplay. The majority of moves in fighting games are just too fast to react to. You always have to be thinking 2 steps ahead to have a chance of winning such a game. With telegraphed attacks, on the other hand, you don’t have to think about what your opponent might do or even what he is doing. You can just look at the screen and the game will tell you what he’s doing, and if the game has told you what your opponent is doing, it’s also told you how to respond.
I mean, i use stealth i stalk them at their back (cos only amateur thief will steal in front of his prey) i wait till stealth depleted and timed my steal and they can evade such insta cast skill? Huehuehue.
where is the element of surprise?
In other words, you’ll do the ‘obvious best move’, get out-predicted and whiff both stealth and steal because it was obvious.
Yeah, thought that also. lets just say enemy prey using some 360 3d monitor. who knows.
That would only work against someone that isn’t aware of that play. I think most people can count to 3 seconds.
Any tips and links about using LoS before going stealth, cos i wanna make sure my prey in team fights is definitely not aware on me though (cos ima thief) high risk high reward?
Thanks in advance.
[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.
A good player will not use their instant skills in a way that will easily be predicted. It may be true thats 3/4ths of a second may be a little too much of a cast time for some of the spells I listed. Although I probably could of put more time into concidering which skills need longer cast times, this was not the real point I was trying to get across. The point I want people to think about is that skills which are instant or have too fast of a cast time to react to and are truely game changing should be looked into should receive a slightly longer cast time and have a vivid casting animation. There are not many skills which need this tune up IMO, adding 1/4th of a second to a a couple current abilities cast time won’t slow combat down to dull levels… I also don’t think that we should call it good on balance after changes like this went through.
Instant casts without animations can’t be predicted. Free dodge baits with WASD
OP has a point
Prediction works because player actions are not random. There is always a reason why any player uses any given move. If you understand why a player does a certain move, you can understand when he will want to do that move.
I play from Australia so me having less than 250ms ping is considered amazing. There are plenty of attacks that should be slow enough to react to that simply aren’t at my latency, but I don’t need the game to tell me what my opponent is about to do. If they don’t match my mindgames, they will tell me what they’re about to do.
I’ve had times when I’ve dodged steal from the same thief 3 times in a row. That isn’t random dodging; I knew he wanted to use steal on me when I pressed dodge. He wasn’t playing on the same level I was and so, to me, his instant cast steal was as easy to see coming as a pve mob’s attack.
^^ While I don’t have the australia thing, I just have slow reflexes but I’ve always been able to play well in PVP thanks to learning what to expect. Making everything only about reactions simply puts everything into the laps of those who play that way, I’m simply unable to keep up in that element so the things that they can’t react to but I can anticipate are areas where I can find some advantages.
A good player will not use their instant skills in a way that will easily be predicted.
Correct, but a good opponent will still be able to recognise when and why that instant skill is being used and predict it anyway. In the end, it depends on which player is able to out mind-game the other. Telegraphed skills don’t leave any room for mind-games. If every game changing skill was telegraphed the only reason anyone would get hit by them is because they ran out of dodges, and you can be sure it would be fairly simple to memorise ahead of time which skills you should save your dodges for.
A good player will not use their instant skills in a way that will easily be predicted.
Correct, but a good opponent will still be able to recognise when and why that instant skill is being used and predict it anyway. In the end, it depends on which player is able to out mind-game the other. Telegraphed skills don’t leave any room for mind-games. If every game changing skill was telegraphed the only reason anyone would get hit by them is because they ran out of dodges, and you can be sure it would be fairly simple to memorise ahead of time which skills you should save your dodges for.
I can understand where you are coming from. I think at least some devistating game breaking abilities should receive this change. There aren’t that many that need additional cast time added IMO. A lot of abilities should receive a vivid animation that don’t really have one though, especially traits with CD.
I also don’t think most players are capable of dodging a 3/4 second cast time on purpose. At least not all of the time. If they all could we wouldn’t see so many of these complaints we see made on the forums.
Signet of Domination used to have a 1 second cooldown, I think. Anet probably reduced it so Mesmers could utilise it in interrupt builds. It was a well needed buff to encourage interrupt style play.
The counter-play to Signet of Domination (and Power Lock) is Mesmer skillbar awareness, covering your important casts via stability, aegis or simply LOS and baiting the Mesmer’s interrupts.
Adding animations and stuff like that would take a lot of work and yet would still not help fix the problem.
What I think should be done is for players to receive a buff displaying the current skill that they are casting.
In addition boons/buffs on a target should have a number above them telling the opponent player how many seconds a buff has left on the target. At least for those that are 9 sec in duration or lower (would get too clustered otherwise)
I HATE having to hover my mouse over a tiiiiiny buff like mistform JUST so I can see how many seconds left it has to i can time my attack perfectly. Would rather I could simply glance at my opponents buffs in my ui and have full situation awareness to a degree.
In addition some clutter could be removed. I hate how food buffs and other such buffs can cluster with the boons making it hard to see them.
If my gap closers/openers got cast times and could be interrupted I’d just straight up leave. There are already way too many long-lasting twitch-speed-activation defenses which mitigate a lot of aggressive play styles.
Being able to play aggressively and predict to utilize instant effects is what makes the game’s combat good. Everything on a tell just stagnates play and puts everyone running bunker sustain specs.
