Guild Wars 2

Everybody hates guardians for their light fields but everybody bugs guardians if they don’t use WoR, which is…

Anyway, another thing I have noticed in this discussion is that next to everyone seems to be preoccupied with blast finishers.
Granted they are the finishers with generally the most prominent/called for effects, but we actually do have projectile finishers and whirl finishers as well to consider. And in both cases the hated light field are actually those with one of the better effects.
I can understand that blast finishers with the prominence of their effects take the focus for many people, but still, you have to consider the whole picture.

I am by no means an expert on the field (pun not intended), but I honestly prefer the current system to one that would prioritize self laid fields. But may I’m biased because I like playing my guardian.
If you implemented a choice system with options like self laid, group laid, field type, oldest field etc. and use the current as default, I would have to agree that this would be nice from a player’s point of view.
But how much will this eat up in respect to ressources? And I’m not talking about the programming time for the implementation but also for the additional information that has to be processed once implemented? That is quite a bit of additional information that has to be communicated between server and client for example.
I’m honestly not sure the additional load is viable in comparison to simply working with what we have now.

Pretty sure anet scraped this idea under the rug. Disappointed

The current symbiosis between, on the one hand, combo’s and finishers and on the other hand weapon skills and utilities needs to be cut loose. Because most noise (aka random spam) is coming from skills and utilities while having the combo fields and finishers as a side-effect.

There’s only one proper way to fix this and that is to allow us to disable combo fields. I suggested this before in this thread but unfortunately it did not get much attention. It’s such an easy solution and allows us to fully control what we are doing. No complicated prioritizing system, no difficult personal preference system, just simply let us disable combo fields.

Yeah, it’d be really helpful if combo fields and finishers were utility/healing/elite only. Meaning they don’t happen constantly.

Even better, this’d allow for substantial buffs to the effects, as some skills would have the sole effect of producing a finisher, but say, on very low CD or instant or with movement or whatever.

Basically, say, a Mesmer’s Blink could become a leap finisher if it ends in a combo field.
But on the other hand, maybe an Elementalist has a skill which cannot even be used without being in a combo field, which is a blast finisher, and does nothing else, but on a very short CD.

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

I have to disagree with this:

1. Any player that doesn’t know enough about what fields they want to proc doesn’t care about having their choice anyways. There is no need to solve this for every player, only the ones that care enough to educate themselves.
2. Since you will have to create a whole new mechanic to deal with prioritizing this, you can make it a real time choice though stances or what have you; voila, no need to have complex rules to address dynamic playing conditions.

I don’t disagree with your third point … it’s alot of work in create and introduce a new mechanic just to allow players to blast preferred fields. Anything worth doing is alot of work.

Obtena.7952:

1. Any player that doesn’t know enough about what fields they want to proc doesn’t care about having their choice anyways. There is no need to solve this for every player, only the ones that care enough to educate themselves.

That might be true for players who level up. But once something like a personalized list is introduced I will guarantee that in dungeons, PvP or even WvW it will become the standard. People will get frustrated and bad players will get kicked for not utilizing the correct personalized combo list. So whatever the solution is, it has to be transparent and easy to use.

I agree that players interested in demanding high damage performance in teams are likely going to have analyzed this to death. That’s just expected. I can already anticipate Fire being preferred blast.

I don’t think it’s any consequence to segregating and discrimination against players … I think it’s true that any player that doesn’t care about their field blasting preferences doesn’t care about high damage performance either, so those teams don’t want them anyways.