Guild Wars 2

Some ability tooltips are unnecessarily vague, inconsistent, or don’t even mention existing mechanics.

Guardian:
1. Mighty Blow: (Hammer #2) “Damage nearby foes with a mighty ground slam.”

- It doesn’t say anywhere in the description that you also leap forward when using this ability. Leap of Faith (GS #3) mentions that you actually move toward your target when it’s used so why cant Mighty Blow? They’re almost the exact same skill with different range.
- It should say something like “Leap at your foe a short distance. When you land, damage nearby foes with a mighty ground slam.”

2. Smite: (Scepter #2) “Strike foes in the target area repeatedly.”

- This description is incredibly deceiving. Each “fist” that flashes in the area of effect has a hit-box, this means that if it doesn’t connect with an enemy they wont take damage. So not only do you have to be in the area of effect but you also have to be in a certain position within that area of effect to take damage. Also, Smite is only capable of dealing damage to one target at a time (which is why it’s not a real AoE) and you’re not told how long the effect lasts.

3. Bow of Truth (Utility – Spirit Weapon) “Summon an arcane bow to cure conditions on you and your allies.”

- The description doesn’t mention that this spirit weapon deals absolutely no damage. It’s a bow so you would probably assume it shoots arrows while casting a spell every few seconds that cures conditions on your allies. Instead I think it’s supposed to “attack” your allies and the arrow removes a condition from that ally.
- It should say something like "Summon an arcane bow that deals no damage and instead removes a condition on an ally every 5.5 seconds with its arrows. The bow can be commanded to rain down healing arrows at target location for 10 seconds but this destroys the bow.

4. Hammer of Wisdom (Utility – Spirit Weapon) “Summon an arcane hammer to defend you.”

- This description is even more vague than the one for Bow of Truth. What does “defend you” even mean? Does it only attack people that attack you? Does it reduce damage taken? What does it do?! In no way does it mention that the Hammer of Wisdom not only deals damage but also has an attack chain that knocks its target back on the 3rd attack. The attack chain also has a cooldown of about 6 seconds.
- It should say something like “Summon an arcane hammer that attacks enemies and knocks them back on its third attack once every six seconds. The hammer can be commanded to knock down your target but this destroys the hammer.”

5. Shield of the Avenger (Utility – Spirit Weapon) “Summon an arcane shield to defend you.”

- This is the worst description for a Spirit Weapon by far. Without using the ability you would have literally no clue as to what a spectral shield is supposed to do. Even after using the ability people are confused about what exactly it does. Shield of the Avenger follows the Guardian around and periodically generates a barrier that absorbs projectiles, similar to Shield of Absorption (but without the knock back/detonation).
- It should say something like “Summon an arcane shield that follows you and generates a protective barrier every X seconds for X seconds, absorbing projectiles. The shield can be commanded to fly out and cause Weakness on up to X enemies but this destroys the shield.”

Elementalist:

1. Glyph of Elementals (Elite – Glyph) “Summon an elemental based on your attunement.
Fire Elemental: Deals damage.
Ice Elemental: Deals damage and heals.
Air Elemental: Deals damage and stuns.
Earth Elemental: Deals damage and is hard to kill.”

- What exactly do the elementals do? It’s not mentioned that the Fire Ele grants AoE Might, the Ice Ele casts Frozen Ground and its heal is actually Cleansing Wave (PBAoE and removes a condition), the Air Ele has ranged attacks and grants AoE Swiftness, and the Earth Ele grants AoE Protection (in addition to its extra armor). I’m pretty sure the Ice Ele also has a frontal AoE knock-back, similar to the Ice Ele mobs players fight. This is also a problem with the Glyph of Lesser Elementals.

2. Glyph of Storms (Utility – Glyph) “Create a storm based on your attunement.
Fire: Firestorm
Water: Ice Storm
Air: Lightning Storm
Earth: Sandstorm”

- This one doesn’t even bother to give you a vague idea as to what the differences are between each storm or their duration. Firestorm is very basic and hits everything (up to 5 targets) on each tick within its area of effect. Sandstorm hits everything (up to 5 targets) on each tick within its area of effect but also causes Bleeding each second for 2 seconds and Blind every 3 seconds for 3 seconds. Lightning Storm and Ice Storm create many smaller AoE’s within their area of effect so you’d have to physically get hit by a lightning bolt/ice shard or its splash effect to take damage. Also, each of Ice Storms little ice shards Chill targets they hit.

I too am seriously disappointed with the inconsistent and vague tooltips in this game.

My biggest pet peeve in this game is the inconsistent and loosely used term “projectile.” Specifically in defensive abilities – im not talking about a projectile combo finisher.

To give a simple example:

Wall of reflection (guardian ability) reflects projectiles
Swirling winds (elementalist ability) destroys projectiles

It is extremely common that these two abilities mismatch in what they can stop. On old Tom for example (Harpy FOTM boss mid-way), swirling winds works on the poison bolts but wall of reflection doesn’t. (Even if this weren’t true, there are endless, similar scenarios where two abilities that affect “projectiles” act inconsistently.

How are players supposed to deduce that? Why do two abilities that affect projectiles not always affect the same attacks?

It really bothers me. I get around it by testing things extensively on training dummies.. But the amount of time I’ve spent doing so is astronomical.

Shlamorel.8714:

I too am seriously disappointed with the inconsistent and vague tooltips in this game.

My biggest pet peeve in this game is the inconsistent and loosely used term “projectile.” Specifically in defensive abilities – im not talking about a projectile combo finisher.

To give a simple example:

Wall of reflection (guardian ability) reflects projectiles
Swirling winds (elementalist ability) destroys projectiles

It is extremely common that these two abilities mismatch in what they can stop. On old Tom for example (Harpy FOTM boss mid-way), swirling winds works on the poison bolts but wall of reflection doesn’t. (Even if this weren’t true, there are endless, similar scenarios where two abilities that affect “projectiles” act inconsistently.

How are players supposed to deduce that? Why do two abilities that affect projectiles not always affect the same attacks?

It really bothers me. I get around it by testing things extensively on training dummies.. But the amount of time I’ve spent doing so is astronomical.

I understand your frustration completely.

Whirling Wrath: (Guardian GS #2) “Spin in place and swing your greatsword while hurling powerful projectiles.”

Although the bolts of energy it fires out are called “projectiles” I’ve used it against abilities like Magnetic Aura and Wall of Reflection but not once have they actually been reflected back at me.

Totally agree, the amount of times I’ve gone on GW2 wiki and typed in somrething like sandstorm to get specific information on it….

Also the speed signets that professions have say 25% movement in the tool tip but 10% movement in you buff section.

+1 for this.

I also wish there wasn’t so much ambiguity in the damage section of skill tooltips. For example:

Bleeding(3s): 43 Damage

Does that mean 3 stacks of bleeding? 3 seconds of bleeding? 3 stacks for 3 seconds? 43 damage total? 43 damage per second? 43 damage per stack per second?

This tooltip is practically useless for someone trying to learn the most effective way to use (and compare) a profession’s skills. There are many other tooltips at least as bad.

The most annoying thing is that the Shield of the Avenger stops following you when it enters combat, and just stands at the same place spamming the shield until you gets out of combat or the time is out.

The whole set of necromancer vampiric traits suffers from this. None of them list any solid numbers on damage and health transferred.

Agreed – the traits especially need specifics added to them. There are so many traits currently that say vague things like:
“lasts longer” → how much longer?
“increases damage” → by how much?
“burns foes” → how long a burn?
“effects are improved” → improved how and by what degree?
“…heals you” → how large a heal? any internal cool down?
etc.
I’m sure most players go to the wiki to find out the specifics, but we shouldn’t be forced to do that. The details should be in the game.

I’m all about putting time into the math of our builds… such as testing builds on training dummies in heart of the mists… etc. etc…

The problem is without accurate/useful tooltips, it becomes NOT a matter of spending time bettering yourself; It becomes some vague/ambiguous guessing game.

Just another thing to add to the list: some things affect your tooltip information while other things do not (e.g., between runes, gear, and traits, i know that for one of these, if you get +% condition/boon duration, it wont actually reflect in your tooltips)

Anet said recently the next few big patches will be focused on current content and enriching what already exists rather than new content. I really hope they mean addressing this type of thing.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We will forward this to the team so improvements can be made. In the meantime, please keep adding tooltips that you think require clarification.

Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks a lot mr. moderator Knowing this was noticed and forwarded is very much appreciated.

A suggestion to other folks: let’s try to contribute some of these vague tooltips in a concise manner so that the devs can find them among our posts easily. (e.g., using the actual ability name and any error(s) in the tooltip).

Yes, please this!

Healing Signet: “Passive: Grants regeneration.” Okay…how much? It seems like the community has to fill in a lot of the gaps for regeneration based skills.

I think the movement skills could use some more information too. Again for Warrior, abilities like Bull’s Charge, Rush (Greatsword), Shield Bash, etc. would be great if they said “Move 200 yards forward and do XYZ”.

The biggest culprit in my opinion are traits. These are so incredibly vague that it’s painful trying to make a build. I could list basically a ton of Warrior traits that don’t include numbers.

Death From Above, how much damage? Likewise Powerful Banners. Adrenal Health, again numbers calculated by the community. Vigorous Return, Inspiring Banners, Empowered, Vigorous Shouts, etc.

Some could also use clarification, like Empower Allies “Increases power of nearby allies by 70 points.” when it should clarify that you are included in this.

Runes and sigils are also sometimes bad for tooltip detail. Sigil of Blood, hoooow much life steal? And so on.

Sure a lot of these numbers have been discovered, but it’d be nice to just have that information readily available. GW 1 did a great job of tooltip detail right out of the gate, without any hidden features to skills, and I’d love to see that replicated in GW 2.

I noticed another issue; Warrior banners seem to use the old stat terminology for some stats.

1. Banner of Strength (Utility – Banner) _"Place a banner that improves power and malice for you and nearby allies."
Malice = Condition Damage

2. Banner of Discipline (Utility – Banner) “Place a banner that improves precision and prowess for you and nearby allies.”
Prowess = Critical Damage

3. Banner of Tactics (Utility – Banner) “Place a banner that increases compassion and concentration for you and nearby allies.”
Compassion = Healing Power
Concentration = Boon Duration

On a related note, when you try to dodge without enough Endurance you get a message that says “Not enough Energy” (Energy being the old term) rather than “Not enough Endurance”.

Virtually every tooltip in the game suffers from this. It would be faster to list tooltips that actually tell you EVERYTHING as it would be a shorter list.

Mesmer:

1. Phantasmal Haste (Trait – Illusions) “Phantasms recharge 20% faster.”
- The description implies all of the player’s abilities that create Phantasms would recharge 20% faster but really all of the Phantasms’ skills recharge 20% faster.

2. Phantasmal Swordsman (Off-hand Sword #5) “Create an illusion that attacks your foe.”
- It doesn’t mention that the Phantasm is able to leap into and out of combat, at first I thought all it did was auto-attack.

All of them.

Adding to Mesmer:
1. Duelist Discipline: Increase the range and damage of your “pitol” skills (including phantasm) Recharge 20% faster First issue. It DECREASES the damage of the phantasmal duelist significantly. On the mesmer bugs thread there are screen shots showing proof it also makes it a 100% combo finisher. This bug needs fixed extremely fast as it really hurts mesmers use as a pistol but also makes the duelist “OP” as some would put by making it a 100% projectile finisher. If they increased the damage by using duelist discipline and kept it as a 20% physical projectile finisher I think most pistol mesmers would be happy.

2. Signet of illusions: Passively grants more health to illusions. It does but it takes about 10 seconds from the time the illusion is summoned for them to actually get the extra health.

3. Illusionary Leap: Creat a clone that leaps to your foe and cripples them. If it is on any sort of slant be it up or down and the mesmer is running the clone will just stay put sometimes for 5 seconds before moving.

jportell.2197:

Adding to Mesmer:
1. Duelist Discipline: Increase the range and damage of your “pitol” skills (including phantasm) Recharge 20% faster First issue. It DECREASES the damage of the phantasmal duelist significantly. On the mesmer bugs thread there are screen shots showing proof it also makes it a 100% combo finisher. This bug needs fixed extremely fast as it really hurts mesmers use as a pistol but also makes the duelist “OP” as some would put by making it a 100% projectile finisher. If they increased the damage by using duelist discipline and kept it as a 20% physical projectile finisher I think most pistol mesmers would be happy.

2. Signet of illusions: Passively grants more health to illusions. It does but it takes about 10 seconds from the time the illusion is summoned for them to actually get the extra health.

3. Illusionary Leap: Creat a clone that leaps to your foe and cripples them. If it is on any sort of slant be it up or down and the mesmer is running the clone will just stay put sometimes for 5 seconds before moving.

These seem more like bugs than vague tooltips.

I completely agree with the OP on this. The tooltips on a good number of abilities do not give enough detail and some are misleading. A few times i have had to /wiki <insert skillname> just to find out what exactly it all does.

I’m currently irritated by condition removal skill tooltips and how most of them don’t give you accurate information, usually because they give you downright wrong information (like removes “all” conditions when it doesn’t). I’d be happy with condition removal being an effect listed like damage – in a list with a symbol and with a number next to it. I’d also like the number (or word “all”) to be correct.

Also since phantasms were mentioned, my main character is a mesmer and I still haven’t figured out what the rogue does (downed phantasm skill).