[Suggestion] - Visuals for passives

[Suggestion] - Visuals for passives

in Profession Balance

Posted by: GoogleBrandon.5073

GoogleBrandon.5073

Before anyone jumps on me, no I did not create the idea so as per quote:

Passive Skills
Vee Wee I think passive skills like Shared Anguish, Incendiary Powder, Reaper’s Protection, Mirror of Anguish, etc should have a tell! Maybe an icon near your boons similar to the icon that Sigil of Doom grants you! Maybe classes could have an aura to show that these strong passive skills are off cooldown! Incendiary Powder could make an Engineer’s hands glow all fiery! Reaper’s Protection could surround the Necromancer with black smoke! This will help you keep track of your cooldowns, as well as let the enemy know so he can maybe counter these things! Too much randomness is not fun my frands! Wahoo!

So yea, let’s elaborate on that…


Within a currently ongoing thread , there was some discussion on how to rework passives, in question Reaper’s Protection. Before starting to continue on that, there are countless of threads about this, so please, do not discuss how broken and OP you think it is, this is another discussion.

I did not want to highjack the whole thread, so I decided to make my point a different thread. Long story short, thinking back on a sadly forgotten topic, the idea for a visual tell for passives came to be again, and I simply related it back to what is most familiar to me.


Suggestion:
Give passives a floating orb or an aura to give the trait/sigil/rune a tell. For reference of how it “could” look like, here is one of my GW1 characters who just got a Monk Protection spell on him

Reason for this suggestion is because most people do not hate the defensive natures of skills that “counter” CC’s or helps them overcome it, it is the “randomness” in which it occurs. Of course, you could say that this invites clever play since you have to anticipate for counter CC’s or Rune Passives , but it is still a bit too RNG-y…. In longer fight, when you use these as protection, you cannot benefit from them either since I doubt many of you counted the seconds that flew by ever since one of the random procs procced.

Anyway, with tells, both a user and an enemy have more benefit to it – you as a user know on when to “rely” on it, or to dodge “lethal blows”, while an enemy should not feel cheated when missing an epic Air Burst on S/F right after casting Gale only to get knocked down/feared/see nothing happen, after all, if the visual tell was there, it was your own fault for spamming CC’s.


So yea discuss and keep it clean. This thread is purely meant to discuss whether giving a visual tell to passives is a good idea or not – and absolutely not meant to discuss whether the passives are too powerful at the moment.
Thanks for your consideration

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[Suggestion] - Visuals for passives

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Tao.5096

Tao.5096

Idea is pretty much bad.

Reasons are simple:

WvW

  • you can tell what people wear and either you run away from them before engaging in combat or you can go all out on them because you know there is nothing that would prevent you from it, i.e. their passives and skills are on cooldown so you’ll rush all out
  • you can tell if someone is on condi spec or power spec
  • you can tell the build: either zerk, bunker etc
  • you can tell when to time your specific skills in order to not trigger certain passives

PvP Arena

  • ability to tell opponent’s group member builds and focus them from the squishiest up to bunker
  • ability to tell what build someone has
  • ability to know what defensive abilities are on cooldown which bring enormous advantage

It gives too much free space for experienced players which they already have. Experienced players have knowledge and experience, but if they can tell such things as build and spec of opponent because they see it from afar, then it’s an issue for newcomers. It also can cripple people who are more of surprise attack mode, instead of direct confrontation.
Example

  • knowing that full zerk + burst setup ranger/thief is around already makes you alarmed and prepared i.e. you expect them to jump from any side.
    How is it now
  • mostly you see someone who run in some other way and you don’t expect him to run around a rock, fort or camp just to backstab you.

Leave it as it is

  • ability to adapt to opponent’s build is a proof of knowledge gained by the time spent on pvping other players and learning each class skill set and trait set
  • pvp is supposed to be a challenge
  • if such visual effect will be enabled, there is no point any longer in censoring names and disabling cross server communication in WvW/EotM

Summary
Things are good as they are now, working as intended.
Such indicator would be a tool which would turn into waiting until someone’s certain ability will hit cooldown. Fights would become dull even between experienced players.
Unknown vs Unknown is the best pvp experience.

…idea isn’t exactly that bad

  • such visual indicator could be rather used upon activation of passive abilities
  • such indicator could be used as visual for people who use Signets and gain passive abilities from them – there is no harm since you see clearly what kind of signets are active – Signet of Rage has little burnt effect when is on Passive
  • such indicator could be used for already casted Mantras – another no harm, since effect is visible when targeted
  • such indicator wouldn’t cause harm for every passive ability being shown on bar such as Signets passives or Opening Strike
  • I would give some kind of visual indicator to all WvW participants who are below level 80 and wander around only to catch PoIs, Vistas and Skill Points
Did I ever tell you, the definition, of Insanity?