Guild Wars 2

Decent utility but could use an addition.

In my early WvW days I tried this out. The problem I saw time and time again was that the targeted player/s were unaware of why they suddenly rallied. The “buff”/timer is little more than a tiny box on their screen, and in the frantic chaos of a battle such things easily go unseen. Temporarily revived players would assume they rallied, and continue to run around at the front lines or in danger unaware of their state. Fifteen seconds would allow a retreat, heal, and return to battle leading to an incap at the worst possible time.

My suggestion is upon the target having Illusion of Life cast on them, the buff Icon appear in the middle of their screen in large format, to then minimise down to their buff bar. Alternatively one of those yellow messages comes up on the screen telling them they’ve Illusion of Life has taken effect. In both cases this could also include the 15 second countdown clock. It’d let them know what’s happening, and add to the stress and urgency of what needs to be accomplished before IoL runs out.

Either way, attention needs to be brought to the player about what’s happening to make this skill effective.

Rather then having a message in the middle of the screen I’d rather they had a confirmation box saying " ‘mesmer-name’ has used illusion of life. Do you wish to temp rez for 15 seconds?" Then they click ‘Yes’ and revive for the duration. That way they know whats happened, they know it’s only for 15 secs (unless they kill someone) and wont be confused when they die when the timer runs out.

I stoped using ilusan of life because it would make my guild mates mad and the issue with the res is its like the skill “by Urals hammer” wich killed you after about 80 seconds. i stoped running that skill because of the cool down 130 seconds and the fact that you half to kill a foe to be off the skill. its not a good skill to use. only good as a last minit throw down but I would rather use time warp wich can make my cast for downed a lot faster and i can res my self 2 times as fast getting me up faster. i would rather see this

Illusan of life : put down a field of illusan that rally’s allies if downed leaving an illusan of their clone in a downed situation
casting time 1.5s range 900 cool down 100
but it may be to overpowerd of a skill.

There’s possibly a lot of good watermarks and whole-screen effects that could be shown for different events to make combat easier to understand. WoW made very good moves in regards to this a few years ago with a lot of traits that cause an effect to trigger on next skill use (like making the skill vibrantly glow or putting a bright animated image as two semi-circles around the middle of the screen).
UI thing that alert the player clearly that an effect is in progress and has limit use or duration.