Guild Wars 2

As a ele, who cast a lot of fields and try combo heal\might\swiftness i can say …
Great idea, everyone hates gvard’s troll fields

scerevisiae.1972:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.

This. Able to blast up to 3 fields (of different types) at once, but with a diminishing returns system:

if #fields > 1, each field effect duration is decreased by 20%, cumulative, so:

• most recent field – 80% usual duration
• 2nd most recent – 64%
• 3rd – 51%

and/or…

Fields can interact, to form new fields, eg:

• fire + water field = steam field (cures conditions and grants regen)
• ethereal + dark field = void field (convert boons -> conditions)
• ethereal + light field = celestial field (convert conditions -> boons)
  etc

Obviously wouldn’t need to be exhaustive.

This would be wonderful.

I don’t like the idea of self priority. I’d rather see a different order of priority however, with fire fields much lower down, and water at the top.

The most powerful field combos tend to come about from using other class fields IMO, especially those with high access to blasts/leaps but limited diversity of fields.

Interesting to note that everyone gets annoyed by light fields.
Do they need buffed?

fadeaway.2807:

Interesting to note that everyone gets annoyed by light fields.
Do they need buffed?

Dear kitten no… aoe retal is too strong as it is in WvW…

fadeaway.2807:

Interesting to note that everyone gets annoyed by light fields.
Do they need buffed?

nah, the problem is another one:
Light fields are strong. Very strong. No1 denies that.
But look at this:

Dark field – 5(6) sources
Ethereal Field – 6(8) sources
Fire Field – 15 sources
Ice field – 2(5) sources
Light Field – 17(20) sources
Lightning Field – 3 sources
Poison Field – 6(11) sources
Smoke Field – 5(7) sources
Water Field – 4(10) sources
numbers in brackets also account for unreliable fields like the ones from downed or pet skills.

Now, keep in mind that the fire fields will mostly be cast on your opponents, while the light fields belong to support skills cast on the own zerg and you will get the picture.
There is simply an abundance of light fields on the battlefield and you can’t walk half an inch without having someone drop a light field on your feet. Taking away the combo field from half of those skills would only do more good than harm.

But let’s keep it at that because we are straying way too far away from the topic at hand.

A priority system would be best I think. All players should abide by the same rules. In addition, you can have different finishers run on different priority lists, but that might get too complicated.

There’s also the option of triggering multiple fields at once, but this would need some limit like only up to three fields can be triggered by projectile finisher, and etc.

naphack.9346:

The Problem with this is group stacking, especially in world vs world.
There was a time, when there were turtle zergs, stacking at one point and shooting down anything in front of them with concentrated ranged damage.
Granted, back then, arrow carts did a whole lot less damage, but the main thing is, it would not have mattered at all.
What they did back then was exploiting an oversight by the devs, where the heal on shout trait of warriors(and many other shout skills, but the most broken thing was in fact the heal trait) did not have a target limit, so 50 men standing at one and the same spot, while spamming “FOR GREAT- ON MY- SHAKE IT OFF!!” would be constantly healed by far more than any ballista or treb could deal damage.
With this change, we’d essentially get that meta back. 50 guys stacking atop 5 water fields, 5 light fields, 10 fire fields and a couple ice and eternal fields for good measure, so every blast heals for 5k, grants frost and chaos armor, retal, 25 might stacks, while every projectile heals for 5 conditions, inflicts 10 seconds of burning, 5 stacks of confusion and a very long chill.
It wouldn’t be good for dungeons either. You’d see even more stacking, this time packing as many combo fields as possible and as many finishers as possible.

That’s true. I guess one way to get around it would be to only allow one combo to happen per field type, per finisher. By that I mean, say you have ten fire fields, a blast finisher wouldn’t give everyone an instant 25 stacks of might but just the usual 3 stacks.

Another way to do it would be to limit the potency of fields that are underneath the “top” one, but still allow them to go off. For example, if a water field is underneath a light field, have the combo heal be less potent than it would be if it was on top. Although this is still suboptimal, since it doesn’t allow people to be fully in control of their finishers.

ozma.3498:

That’s true. I guess one way to get around it would be to only allow one combo to happen per field type, per finisher. By that I mean, say you have ten fire fields, a blast finisher wouldn’t give everyone an instant 25 stacks of might but just the usual 3 stacks.

Another way to do it would be to limit the potency of fields that are underneath the “top” one, but still allow them to go off. For example, if a water field is underneath a light field, have the combo heal be less potent than it would be if it was on top. Although this is still suboptimal, since it doesn’t allow people to be fully in control of their finishers.

If I’m reading this correctly you’re saying players should be allowed to use combo finishers on multiple fields as long as the combo fields are different. This might be a little bit too overwhelming in big groups such as WvW zergs. But it does solve the problem though and it is pretty easy to implement.

But making the combo fields underneath less powerful won’t solve the problem where unwanted fields get the full benefit while the fields that are on the bottom only get the partial effect. You’ll still have those fire field blasting Elementalists getting mad at the hammer Guardians so to say.

JonPeters.5630:

Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.

I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.

i.e.

List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.

I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.

Other ideas floating out there

• Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
• Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
• Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.

Jon

Why not implement all the ideas and allow the player to pick one of the ideas? That way the advanced players can set up their fields to whatever they want, and new players can keep the current system.

Example:

Player A has the following priorities: Fire > Water > Smoke > Poison > Darkness > Lightning > Light

Player B has the following priorities: Water > Light > Fire > Poison > Smoke> Lightning > Darkness

Player C has the standard setup (Time based i think?)
Player A plays an hammer guardian and drops a light field, while Player B drops a fire field as an elementalist. The fire field dropped before the light field and takes priority.

Player A blasts in both fields, and triggers the Fire Field thanks to their priority setup.
Player B blasts in both fields, and triggers the Light Field thanks to their priority setup.
Player C blasts in both fields, and triggers the Fire Field thanks to the normal priority system.

If you can implement a combo field priority list then new builds will be able to open up, and some classes will be more welcomed to dungeons such as necros. The reason why necros are currently looked down upon are because of their bad fields for PvE and no cleave. Implementing a priority system will partially fix that issue.

Another pro of the self priority system is that people in organized groups, such as WvW will be able to coordinate their fields with ease, allowing them to move smoothly through certain chokepoints and assign blasters with diffrent field priorities. This could potentially break up a new style of combo play and throw in a whole new aspect to organized WvW.

I would probably like to see priority something along the lines of:

1) Preferred Field if available – set by the player for each skill
2) Own field
3) Last laid field

So if you want to really get into it, you can configure on a per skill basis which field is prefferred. If that field is not available, OR the preffered field is not set, it would use your own field if you have one down. Than it would prioritize the last laid field.

I think this would be good for all, it would be good for people who want to really customize, it would be good for people who want to use their own fields, and it would make it predictable for those that don’t care to put much effort into it.

JonPeters.5630:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip.

All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.

Jon

I can also see the skill cap in each. Actually coordinating your combofields in a teamfight can help immensely and it is punishing by spamming them as said by OP in which someone else messes up his combo.

Here is my idea. It isn’t something as simple as prioritizing. It is the meta. I’m sorry to say this again kitten many have brought up, there are a lot of mechanics in Gw2 that are very very spammy. Just the way it is. Ignoring the many, combofields is one that is spammy. There are so many combofields being cast during battles it is ridiculous. This also adds to the problem of watching PvP. People say that the screen gets cluttered, rainbows everywhere, headaches, etc. I think reducing the spammability of combofields could greatly alleviate OPs problem.

The problem isn’t prioritizing. The problem is how much they’re able to be employed on the field.

Deified.7520:

JonPeters.5630:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip.

All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.

Jon

I can also see the skill cap in each. Actually coordinating your combofields in a teamfight can help immensely and it is punishing by spamming them as said by OP in which someone else messes up his combo.

Here is my idea. It isn’t something as simple as prioritizing. It is the meta. I’m sorry to say this again kitten many have brought up, there are a lot of mechanics in Gw2 that are very very spammy. Just the way it is. Ignoring the many, combofields is one that is spammy. There are so many combofields being cast during battles it is ridiculous. This also adds to the problem of watching PvP. People say that the screen gets cluttered, rainbows everywhere, headaches, etc. I think reducing the spammability of combofields could greatly alleviate OPs problem.

The problem isn’t prioritizing. The problem is how much they’re able to be employed on the field.

But what exactly is your solution to the problem then? Combo fields are closely tight to skills that also do damage and have other side effects such as blinds, protection, etc. In some cases they are even part of auto-attacks. Players spam them because they are also beneficial in other ways than just being a combo field. For example, although the guardian’s hammer auto-attack Symbol of Protection is a light field which is not very useful in PvE, but the protection aura allows everyone inside the field to take 33% less damage.

I believe the spammy mess is caused when multiple combo fields are stacked on top of each other and you don’t know exactly which field you are going to finish. Especially in the current situation where it’s hard to see which combo field is on top. I think that by letting players customize the priority of blasts this could alleviate the problem and also make it look less chaotic.

Noah.4756:

Deified.7520:

JonPeters.5630:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip.

All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.

Jon

I can also see the skill cap in each. Actually coordinating your combofields in a teamfight can help immensely and it is punishing by spamming them as said by OP in which someone else messes up his combo.

Here is my idea. It isn’t something as simple as prioritizing. It is the meta. I’m sorry to say this again kitten many have brought up, there are a lot of mechanics in Gw2 that are very very spammy. Just the way it is. Ignoring the many, combofields is one that is spammy. There are so many combofields being cast during battles it is ridiculous. This also adds to the problem of watching PvP. People say that the screen gets cluttered, rainbows everywhere, headaches, etc. I think reducing the spammability of combofields could greatly alleviate OPs problem.

The problem isn’t prioritizing. The problem is how much they’re able to be employed on the field.

But what exactly is your solution to the problem then? Combo fields are closely tight to skills that also do damage and have other side effects such as blinds, protection, etc. In some cases they are even part of auto-attacks. Players spam them because they are also beneficial in other ways than just being a combo field. For example, although the guardian’s hammer auto-attack Symbol of Protection is a light field which is not very useful in PvE, but the protection aura allows everyone inside the field to take 33% less damage.

I believe the spammy mess is caused when multiple combo fields are stacked on top of each other and you don’t know exactly which field you are going to finish. Especially in the current situation where it’s hard to see which combo field is on top. I think that by letting players customize the priority of blasts this could alleviate the problem and also make it look less chaotic.

Perhaps, but how would you prioritize it. If each player has their own priority then the whole mess on the screen wont be fixed.

Fixing the spammy meta wont be an easy task because a lot of things factor into it. It is mostly about skill punishment. Things like lack of a resource, passives, AoEs, availability of boons, availability of conditions, availability of defensive skills/support skills, lack of cast times, lack of long cooldowns, etc.

Since Anet would most likely want to stay away of adding a resource to classes that load is going to be put on the other parts of the game. One way you can do this is by increasing the cast times of skills and increases the cooldown of a skill when it is interrupted. I will not likely be able to come up with a significant solution right here and now on my own because this problem is very complex problem to have for a game. Every game usually has it in some way or another. My main point is that allow players to prioritize what blast finishers affect what combo fields really won’t solve any problems in the long run and will only cause players to further ignore one another during battles.

Anyone correct me if I’m wrong, but I did some testing with blast finishers about six months ago. Back then I could determine the following priotity for all overlapping combo fields and finishers:

1. The nearest field has priority.
Keep in mind, this is always determined by the center of both field and finisher. That means, if two fields overlap and a blastfinisher lands in between them then the combo is determind by the center of the field which is closest to the center of the finisher.

2. The first field has priority, if they have the same center, like when placing fields on yourself without groundtargeting (at zero range).
For example: a necro uses Well of Darkness, Well of Blood and Corrosive Poison Cloud (in that order). Any blast finisher in this area will trigger blindness because dark has priority over light and poison.

Anyway, that was my observation back then. I hardly think that this mechanic changed since, so according to that you can’t simply overwrite someone else’s combo field, but just make it harder for them to hit their finisher closer to the “right” center.

JonPeters.5630:

Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.

I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.

i.e.

List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.

I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.

Other ideas floating out there

• Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
• Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
• Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.

Jon

Personalized list is the way to go, just put a usefull default setting on the system, this way you got a kind of fixed priority for all the players who don’t know what to do with the personalized list and a really usefull option for all the advanced players and guilds in WvW and tpvp.
—> Pro:
+ Advanced players got the option to optimize their team’s and guild’s
+ You got some kind of soft fixed priority for all the players who don’t know what to do
+ It’s your choice
+ You can decide with you own skill, which fields are available in every moment of the fight, for example (WvW): If your whole frontline got waterfields on their top priority and an ele/engi throws in a waterfield you will trigger the heal. If you got firefields on second place and you wanne stack might infight your ele/engis just shouldn’t throw a waterfield but a firefield -> just that easy.
+ If you run around in WvW and some random guys start to throw their lightfields in a regroup you don’t care anymore.

—> Con
- it’s a forgiving system, for example: If I perform a regroup with my guild and someone of my guys is slacking around throwing a lightfield in a waterfield I don’t have to care about it.

+/- You got the option to stack more than one buff at a time, for example: If you got 10 guys who can trigger a blastfinisher, 5 of them can prioritize fire > light and 5 of them can prioritize fire < light, this way you can stack might and retaliation at the same time – just throw 2 fileds on the same spot.

Actually I’m a little shocked that you think your playerbase is full of scrubs, who don’t know how to play – but if I think a little longer about this, maybe you are right…

drazzar.3042:

Actually I’m a little shocked that you think your playerbase is full of scrubs, who don’t know how to play – but if I think a little longer about this, maybe you are right…

It’s common knowledge that most players in any kind of game are casual players. Usually the loud ones on the forums are a small minority. I remember it took me quite some time to use combo’s effectively. Most players probably don’t have a clue what they are doing with their combo fields and finishers.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.

I was sort of leaning in this direction myself. Allow the game to see which fields are stacked, and then determine if all of them should be triggered, perhaps via a case/switch clause. Obviously if one cleanses conditions and you have none, that doesn’t need to trigger for example. However perhaps another grants might and another blindness, both of which should trigger as they are offensive boosts.

I’d love to see combo field ‘walls’ see more play, with possibly an increased duration to their uptime, as well as more self-benefits for shooting through them.

Anything that emphasises team-fight positioning gets a tick in my book aanyway

Phaeton.9582:

Anything that emphasises team-fight positioning gets a tick in my book aanyway

So, the current system then. It rewards positioning and careful field placement, since field spamming will overwrite the intended buffs. Want multiple buffs? Time your fields or move out of the first before casting the second one. Timing/positioning is there at the moment, precisely because of fields overwriting each other. Coordination is rewarded at the moment.

Allowing field-stack blasting or even pre-selecting the favoured field will destroy this and mainly strengthen the mindless stacking. Field blasting strategy would come down to “drop all fields, blast all”…

cafard.8953:

Phaeton.9582:

Anything that emphasises team-fight positioning gets a tick in my book aanyway

So, the current system then. It rewards positioning and careful field placement, since field spamming will overwrite the intended buffs. Want multiple buffs? Time your fields or move out of the first before casting the second one. Timing/positioning is there at the moment, precisely because of fields overwriting each other. Coordination is rewarded at the moment.

Allowing field-stack blasting or even pre-selecting the favoured field will destroy this and mainly strengthen the mindless stacking. Field blasting strategy would come down to “drop all fields, blast all”…

Yup that’s the main drawback to most of the suggestions here.

It’d be nice to see under utilised combos see more action however, especially projectile finishers

cafard.8953:

Phaeton.9582:

Anything that emphasises team-fight positioning gets a tick in my book aanyway

So, the current system then. It rewards positioning and careful field placement, since field spamming will overwrite the intended buffs. Want multiple buffs? Time your fields or move out of the first before casting the second one. Timing/positioning is there at the moment, precisely because of fields overwriting each other. Coordination is rewarded at the moment.

Allowing field-stack blasting or even pre-selecting the favoured field will destroy this and mainly strengthen the mindless stacking. Field blasting strategy would come down to “drop all fields, blast all”…

Players do not only drop down fields to get combo’s though. They also drop fields so they gain protection or blind enemies. So there are two different aspects to combo fields which can cause a conflict. It is not always clear which has more priority. I think the current system is too complex to maintain proper coordination.

Another negative thing about the current system which blocks coordination is that it is not always clear which field is on top. I had moments where I think I was blasting a fire field but instead I was getting something else. I believe the developers could make this information more transparent to players. For example, they could make the top field more shiny or have the name of the combo field floating on your screen.

I agree, Cafard.
Whatever the solution is, it should reward careful placement and timing and discourage brainless button mashing.

I think we should distinguish ‘General overlap’ from ‘Right on top of eachother’ as different Combo Field behaviors. Combo Fields being ‘Right on top of eachother’ seems like it springs from the sort of static gameplay you’d want to discourage in a game all about movement. Combo Fields experiencing ‘General overlap’ happens alot during the course of healthy active gameplay, because the radii of many combo fields is more massive than the size of the playingfeild that’s relevant. The system that’s in place now is indeed more skillbased and coordination based, but it treats both these things the same, when really the second is more innocent and unable to reasonably helped.

So, What about the closer your finisher is to the center of an AOE in an overlapped area, the higher priority it takes?

Pros

• Allows you to choose which Combo Field you want to finish if they’re overlapping, so long as they don’t share a common center.
• Allows you to finish a smaller shorter combo field that’s been put on top of and inside of a larger longer combo field, which in the current system is unable to be finished at all.
• Rewards Aiming Skill and Battlefield Awareness in a player with finer control of how you finish combos.
• Promotes active play.
• Making sure the center of AOEs are reasonably distant from eachother to help your allies have controlled finishing could become a part of good gameplay and being a good player. Not only does this up the skill ceiling on Combo Field placement, but it’s a combat readability win in PvE where stacking AOEs on top of a boss without even the slightest separation results in alot of visual confusion.
• Pretty Intuitive.

Cons

• Provides no solution, in and of itself, to what happens when you stack fields ‘Right on top of eachother’ so that their centers are on the exact same pixel. And whatever happens must be somewhat negative to be in line with the second paragraph. Maybe the finisher randomly selects one?
• A bit of a nerf to Blast Finishers. If there are alot of combo fields around, it ultimately means you’re unable to finish at the ‘edge’ of a Combo Field and extend the range of your buff to players who are farther away. To be honest, though, Blast finishers are so far and away superior to all other finishers, they could kind of stand to get knocked down a peg.
• Might need UI elements for the center of an AOE. Admittedly, most skills seem to have some sort of visual near the center that could serve as a good guide, so it might the kind of thing you’d have to playtest.

TLDR; See Pretty Picture

/edit:
Whoops, sorry. Missed your comment, Flow.
I’m not sure if that was the case months ago, but as of right now and on the Wiki it’s time-based. The first field put down in an overlapping area gets priority regardless of distance.

Another solution I think would work in conjunction with many other ideas here is to allow us to disable combo fields by Delete-clicking on skills. Similarly to disabling auto-attack on skills by Ctrl-clicking I think this solution could solve a lot of issues.

Pros:

• It’s easy to implement in the current system
• Allows us to use skills without overwriting other useful combo fields
• Players can choose when to use combo fields and when not to use them, allowing them to coordinate with the party on tactics
• Simple solution which is not too hard to understand for casual players
• Works with other ideas to fix combo fields

Cons:

• Hard to implement for traits that give combo fields
• Other players won’t know for sure which fields on the ground are disabled and which work.

1st Self-Priority because this offers the most control over your own skills, getting the control over your own skills taken away by mere accident is not good.

If there is no field created by the player:

2nd Time-Priority the 1st combo is the 1st to trigger the latest the last to trigger.

Both serve to reduce the randomness in the game and reward actual planning and situational awareness.

On a side note nothing is more annoying than getting your game messed up the people who are supposed to be on your side, getting your waterfieds clustered up with light fields by the friendly neighbourhood guardians can kill.

As a persisting flames based ele, I have constant frustrations running with guardians (and I regularly play with 2). However, if it is just based on your own fields first – what about the guardians who actually want to blast something that isn’t a light field?

Allowing players to prioritize which types of field to combo with first seems the most awesome idea. (with some presets like offensive/defensive/utility)

A possible issue with this is if there are multiple fields of the same type down. As a Persisting Flames ele, my fire fields also grant fury, so I’d want mine prioritised over other fire fields,

As a necro I don’t think this should be worked on until the combo fields are in general more balanced. Blast finishers are op compared to the others, and fire and water are outright better than everything else. At the same time eles and engis can give large amounts of might and healing with these because they have many blast finishers, while I’m stuck with dark, poison, light, and ethereal fields. Along with the grand total of 3 blast finishers I have. Until these are buffed ^ and the amount and type of finishers are balanced between classes this should be secondary.

Noah.4756:

Another solution I think would work in conjunction with many other ideas here is to allow us to disable combo fields by Delete-clicking on skills. Similarly to disabling auto-attack on skills by Ctrl-clicking I think this solution could solve a lot of issues.

Pros:

• It’s easy to implement in the current system
• Allows us to use skills without overwriting other useful combo fields
• Players can choose when to use combo fields and when not to use them, allowing them to coordinate with the party on tactics
• Simple solution which is not too hard to understand for casual players
• Works with other ideas to fix combo fields

Cons:

• Hard to implement for traits that give combo fields
• Other players won’t know for sure which fields on the ground are disabled and which work.

This is a good solution, but some suggestions for the cons, can’t we use a similar technique for traits since the tooltips are visible. The second one can be solved by showing a little visual (like the name of the type of field) of active combo fields, I suggest that this is optional.

Tim.6450:

This is a good solution, but some suggestions for the cons, can’t we use a similar technique for traits since the tooltips are visible. The second one can be solved by showing a little visual (like the name of the type of field) of active combo fields, I suggest that this is optional.

Yes, I agree with both points. I am not sure how hard it is for developers to let us interact with traits though. Because it is not something that has been done before. Therefore it might be the hardest part to disabling combo fields on click.

Furthermore, I think every idea in this topic would benefit from better visuals of combo fields. In my opinion the player should receive information regarding fields prior to finishing a field, not after. For example, what I would like to see is the name of the combo field I can hit floating on my screen. This would allow party members to actively react to combo fields instead of trying to figure out what mess is on the ground. At the moment you only see the combo floating after successfully finishing a field.

as an engi, i would love to have self priority on blasts. i dont lay down fields for blasting except under 2 conditions:
1. i want to blast that field type specifically
2. someone else called for that field type

under both conditions self priority is preferable. i also do like to lay down poison fields that get in the way of others (not to troll them, mostly to make sure enemies have 1 min of poison ticking on them at all times).

however, for other combo types:

1. leaps. i generally dont want something specific from the field because my only leap is also huge burst and used for damage and not utility. extra is bonus. i guess i would prefer water but i dont have enough leaps to make use of this combo type.

2. projectiles. my projectile finishing is unreliable at best for supporting allies (light, water, ??). for extra damage, i generally wouldnt want self priority because my trademark fields are poison, fire, and water (i consider smoke and light situational at best and dont generally run them). while extra burning and poison are nice, in the end theyre just duration stacking condis from a power build that already has enough of each condi. confusion procs from eth fields (lot of untapped potential damage), smoke field blinds (blind on autoattack? yes thanks), or dark field lifesteals are preferable.

hope this adds some weight to self priority blasts!

How about combo fields combine to form completely different effects – i.e., putting a water field on top of a fire field creates a steam field, etc.

Pros: New combinations and diversity.
Cons: Unforeseen balance issues, new programming.

Or, new fields are pushed to the edge of any field they are placed on top of (so that fields can’t actually overlap).

Pros: Fields don’t interfere with each other. Total AoE increased. Can’t exploit stacking multiple AoE fields on top of each other, requiring more intelligent gameplay and planning.

Cons: Intensity of stacking AoE fields on top of each other decreased. Potentially some weird bugs could result from this (as AoE fields are pushed into strange places, like walls, off cliffs, etc.)

Allow attacks to gain multiple effects from all fields they are part of.

Pros: Easy to implement.
Cons: OP (?)

It’s a pretty complicated issue since there are some people who prefer to blast/leap … in other people’s fields.
For instance, imagine a hammer guardian spamming #1, and allies using fire or water fields … as this dude, I would prefer to blast fire or water field rather than to have kittenty AOE retaliation :P

For those players who are advocating self priority, don’t forget it won’t solve issues with prioritizing between combo fields put down by two other people. Let’s say you have a ‘Fire Field Blasting Elementalist’ and a ‘Hammer Guardian’ in your party. The hammer will spam symbol of protection, overwriting the elementalist’s fire field. If you’re the third member in the party you still won’t be able to blast the fire field with this implementation.

That is why I think disabling combo fields by ‘delete-clicking’ on the skills would be a better solution (or perhaps a combination of both ideas).

A list that you can set your own priorities would be the most beautiful thing in the world.

I can understand what devs are saying. One of the funnest things on thief is to take a fire combo field from another class, drop refuge on it (dark field) and then blast the underlying fire field for mights, while everyone is stealthed. A nice and safe buffstation before moving out in not so friendly sorroundings.

I like most recent fields having priority for a few reasons:

Promotes intelligent team play: It rewards coordination and strategy by providing boons and bonuses to players and groups who deliberately utilize them. This sort of play style should be encouraged.

Higher skill cap: Going hand in hand with the previous point, it allows skilled players to actually find advantage from that without harming people who aren’t at the higher ends of the skill spectrum.

Sure there’s some negatives. Unskilled or uncoordinated players can end up interfering with the play of groups trying to put together that coordination. The light fields in WvW overwriting might stacking fire fields is a great example of that. But that’s something that already exists in other ways with the rally mechanic (high end roamers hate having randoms following them as they allow their enemies to rally).

The only real suggestion I would possibly have for change is a party priority. This still allows the coordination and strategy rewards of working as a party, but minimizes the impact of field sabotage from unskilled allies.

Syeria.4812:

I like most recent fields having priority for a few reasons:

<snip>

Sure there’s some negatives. Unskilled or uncoordinated players can end up interfering with the play of groups trying to put together that coordination. The light fields in WvW overwriting might stacking fire fields is a great example of that. But that’s something that already exists in other ways with the rally mechanic (high end roamers hate having randoms following them as they allow their enemies to rally).

The problem I see is that planning combo fields is not fully utilized because the aspects surrounding combo fields are two-fold. Combo fields also serve their purpose as normal skills (damage, boon, condition) and therefore solely planning for combo fields is a conflicting task. Although blasting only the most recent field would solve some problems with buffing, it would still create problems during battles where random combo fields will appear right after you dropped your own.

I d think that all fields could be triggered at same time.

but… If not possible…

Self priority sounds better.
Actually i run a blast build with my warrior, is troubling when some one put other field over mine and i get a unexpected effect.

My opinion is:

1 – All fields can be triggered at same time.
if not…
2 – Self priority.

I do find that the current way of the first laid is the blasted one offers the best advantage to strategy and placement.
As a ranger, when I see a lot of fields around a repack, I’ll put my water field somewhat beside the pack, and announce, “water field left” – and some of the group would go on the side to explode in it – we are still somewhat packed, but we also get the advantage of various fields depending on the side of the lead we choose to be on…
When stacking on a door, for example, guardians take AA of their hammer (since light is on third AA chain – so strike/bash/wait).

The coordination needed to get the most of fields appeal to me… Just throwing everything without caring simply because some people just spam their competencies without paying attention to fields, and saying “it’s all right, i setted my priorities at water/fire/etc.” is not, from my point of view, strategic playing.

If one can’t see current fields, try playing with graphic options – I know on highest settings, they are harder to see for me, while changing a few settings make them easier to see without diminishing quality much.

As a person who mains on guard (although I have all classes, including the illustrious ele and engineer), I don’t think that prioritizing my fields is the answer. Light fields are only useful with whirls for the condi cleanse, but blasting or leaping through them is near useless if I have another field option.

I like the list idea personally. That way the advanced players can chose what they want, and if you don’t customize the order, you will just end up doing what you’ve always done in terms of priority. (Which by the way, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it time based already? FIFO? In other words bottom field priority?)

Also on the side note of finishers and combos, can guard please get the detonate ability on staff 2 as a blast finisher? It would match our trident skill two which is nearly identical. We really only get hammer and focus five as blast finishers, and if you don’t carry either you kind of get screwed since we have no utility blasts. (Or you could make a utility be a blast like smite condition).

Why don’t they just allow up to 3 combo fields to stack? If your combo finisher passes through up to 3 combo fields, your finisher procs each field.

Or they can kick it up a notch and design different elite combo finishers that have their own unique characteristics. i.e. Blast Finisher for Fire + Lightning + ethereal = new finisher.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Why don’t they just allow up to 3 combo fields to stack? If your combo finisher passes through up to 3 combo fields, your finisher procs each field.

Or they can kick it up a notch and design different elite combo finishers that have their own unique characteristics. i.e. Blast Finisher for Fire + Lightning + ethereal = new finisher.

The problem here is the unpredictability of what you are going to proc in situations like wvw. If we allowed the effect to proc on each field separately then fields would be very overpowered, and fields would be thrown down everywhere. If we switch to your suggestion of a new finisher then we are still left with the problem of your result not always being what you want/expect.

Jocksy.3415:

When stacking on a door, for example, guardians take AA of their hammer (since light is on third AA chain – so strike/bash/wait).

Unfortunately they fixed this some time ago and it is no longer possible to break the AA chain that easily.

Jocksy.3415:

The coordination needed to get the most of fields appeal to me… Just throwing everything without caring simply because some people just spam their competencies without paying attention to fields, and saying “it’s all right, i setted my priorities at water/fire/etc.” is not, from my point of view, strategic playing.

I agree that coordination and strategic playing should be important aspects of gameplay. However, looking at the way how combo fields currently function I see a conflict between skills that are used as combo fields and skills that are used as utilities (protection, blinds, etc) and damage. Most of the time it is simply not possible to coordinate combo’s because they behave ambiguously.

Jocksy.3415:

If one can’t see current fields, try playing with graphic options – I know on highest settings, they are harder to see for me, while changing a few settings make them easier to see without diminishing quality much.

I play on low settings and even then it is pretty hard to spot the combo field. I agree that at the start of the battle you can tell which combo field has been put down first, so you know what to blast. But as the battle progresses combo fields start to overlay each other and they become inseparable.

Noah.4756:

Jocksy.3415:

When stacking on a door, for example, guardians take AA of their hammer (since light is on third AA chain – so strike/bash/wait).

Unfortunately they fixed this some time ago and it is no longer possible to break the AA chain that easily.

Jocksy.3415:

The coordination needed to get the most of fields appeal to me… Just throwing everything without caring simply because some people just spam their competencies without paying attention to fields, and saying “it’s all right, i setted my priorities at water/fire/etc.” is not, from my point of view, strategic playing.

I agree that coordination and strategic playing should be important aspects of gameplay. However, looking at the way how combo fields currently function I see a conflict between skills that are used as combo fields and skills that are used as utilities (protection, blinds, etc) and damage. Most of the time it is simply not possible to coordinate combo’s because they behave ambiguously.

Jocksy.3415:

If one can’t see current fields, try playing with graphic options – I know on highest settings, they are harder to see for me, while changing a few settings make them easier to see without diminishing quality much.

I play on low settings and even then it is pretty hard to spot the combo field. I agree that at the start of the battle you can tell which combo field has been put down first, so you know what to blast. But as the battle progresses combo fields start to overlay each other and they become inseparable.

I speak about organised VS mindless…
Organised : static field, ice field at impact point; move on the side, fire field, move farther, water, and so on…
If people in the bus spams their fields – wanted or not (because linked to another attack/utility)… I call that mindless zerging. I am not gonna throw my fire trap on a spot where there are a few ennemies, if it is likely that we’ll repack there to heal… But I’m going to try and place it at burst points because it is likely that some people in my bus will explode there and give might. After the fire, I throw the frost, to slow down ennemies… while my groups can stack might there… Or I place frost fisrt cause lead asked it, and there you go… See – strategy. Careful placement of where combos are used. If using a combo to “save your life” and you are at the point where your zerg is going – that is poor placement. Noone should be “in front of the lead”. Protection utilities that have a field are usually casters, who are usually out of the mellee… so they shouldn be first line…
+ most field do not last that long…
If I used an utility to save my myself, on front line, then it’s usually the last field laid down – noone should explode in it, but everyone would explode in previous ones…
Since fights are moving, it is really, really rare to have previous passage fields still up…

Current way rewards strategy and organisation over mindless spamming….

I do not see the problem you mention about hammer AA.. Any AA taken off allows to stop hitting to pass over an attack the player do not want… not played much gardian with hammer because that field annoyed me, but had no problem not using skill 3 the last time I tried – sometimes in december – hit, hit wait… here, blast, hit, hit, switch… Too hard to not spam #1 button? No tagging during that time? Oh… Change weapons sets…

About low settings, yeah, that sucks… don’t see much, but then, again, coordination can help… (hear where fields are laid down)

I would say that the priority should be:

1. Own fields, latest first
2. Party fields, latest first
3. Other fields, latest first

But, I would also nerf a lot of things slightly, then buff combo effects by 50%-100% to compensate (depending on effect, some are stronger than others right now), unless triggered by yourself!

Why that?
Because combo fields should be about teamwork and coordination. Hence your own fields will actually prioritize over the team fields you want to trigger. You can reliably get effect X off your own combo field, but it’ll be significantly weaker than effect Y which you can get if you don’t drop your own field.

This happens so much in pugs it is mind numbing…
I stopped bothering with doing Ele combos in pug runs because of it.

What about setting in game options “self-priority”, which will gives you priority to finish your last combo field. And when you uncheck this setting, you just finish last combo field placed on ground. So you could check/uncheck it depending on your build and gameplay. Also idea to overwritte enemy combo fields is very interesting.

Here’s a thought.

Players can finish each unique overlapping combo-field. If aoe effects, 5 target limit. Priority of effect goes to (player), party members, then allied players (or just 5 targets if enemies. Targeted enemy in range over random others).

Effects aren’t overwritten, they’re just added to. Players can’t insta-stack 25 might on overlapping fire fields, but if a zerg was going to stack 25 might with 50 blast finishers, they still can. It helps in dungeons since you’ll only ever have 5 max party members anyway, so you can stack effects. In PvP you may be able to stack finisher effects, but all those fields would have to be stacked themselves, which makes your fields very concentrated and more easily avoidable (as opposed to spreading the love).

Once we started seeing this in play (or the devs in testing), the individual finishing effects for fields would have to be looked at. I feel that a) some finishers are a bit lackluster, even within a single field type, and b) some fields aren’t utilized enough (like lightning fields, or non-necro dark fields).

This idea circumvents needing potentially excessive lists of priorities and fine-tuning, especially for people it would be “wasted on” (those who don’t care/know to actively use combos). It allows for certain finishers to become very loaded, rewarding players to put themselves in a position to finish multiple fields.

However, it can also load finishers for some crazy effects in places like PvP, which could cause some problems. However, a risk in that is if players can afford to leave the area, you’ve lost effectiveness in you skills, or perhaps they could stack their own fields to match your output. Effects from finishers would probably have to be reworked, which would add some additional time and effort before such a change could be implemented. Even availability of combo fields and finishers might have to be looked at, which would also increase development time.

Let’s hope this goes through with the upcoming Feature Build

Idea
Party Prioritization first and then universal Prioritization like boons.

Pros
1. It allows you to work with a party of up to five on what field you want to use, as well gives the player the option of using only their own by flying solo.
2. It would be the easy to implement as you already have a basic template to follow on how to separate party from universal fields.
3. It would allow people to build around the fields of their party in all aspects of the game rather then just in sPvP.

Cons
1. Hammer Guardians would be stuck using light fields 90% of the time.
2. Guardians with their light field spam may get neglected from parties in WvW.
3. It would make a player have to choose to go solo if they want to take affect of your own field only.
4. Only really looks at blasting fields less then leaps and projectiles.

Other Options
1. Player choice: I think thins would be the worst to use for it would not leave everyone using the same method and would be reliant on a lot more server communication between players client and the servers thus enducing more lag then it is worth.
2. Alternating Fields: It has potential, but when you can have 5 light fields spammed in seconds it still doesn’t really fix the problem at the root cause of the desire for this.
3. Multiple Fields: I think this would be the worst idea because then they game would become about how many fields you can stack on top of eachother. As well I think this would cause more lag then it is worth.
4. Self Priority: This is probably the only other choice apart from Party Priority I would choose.
5: Field Priority: I think this is a bad idea as it doesn’t leave it to player choice what field they want to use but what field the game says to use that is placed.

Current
1. I think the current system is good apart from the minor flaw that it does not take your party fields before universal fields.