Guild Wars 2

The devs said a while back that they want players to be able to focus on the enemies on screen rather than staring at their health bar. However, there are many skills and boons that do not have noticeable visual representation on character models.

The worst offender would have to be Stability. That extra half seconds you have to take to check if they have it on or not can be the difference between a successful attack and a failed one. Having some sort of circle at their feet with the pillar in the boons image would be enough to let us instantly confirm whether or not they have the boon on. Other boons could maybe just use a slight size increase like Retaliation so that people who play more zoomed out can see it clearer.

This next part will mostly come from the perspective of me being a Warrior primary so it’ll probably be a bit biased. First off, I actually really like that most of Warrior’s hard-hitting skills have very obvious animations. That being said, other classes tend to have much less obvious animations. In the middle of a team fight a slightly different hand motion is going to stand out a lot less than a Warrior leaping in the air or a Guardian doing a Spin-2-Win. If some the ranged classes had some more visible tells it would make things feel much more skill based.

One thing I admit to is that Warrior stances could use some more visual feedback. In particular, the particle effects of Berserker Stance are really subtle and can only bee seen if you’re zoomed in very close. This is another case where I think simply scaling it up would like condi users that they should be saving their spells because just like with Stability that extra half second or so makes a difference. Endure pain isn’t all that great of a skill but it could also do with some sort of visual indicator. Perhaps a sort of steel coating surrounding them like the Juggernaut effect.

I don’t have any technical knowledge nor do I know what the current focus is so I don’t know how feasible these suggestions are but I feel that they would go a long way in improving gameplay.