Guild Wars 2

The healing skills would be considerably more useful if they had some kind of visual effect that disinguished them from all the other skills.

For example, we in a dungon or fractals. I notice most of my team mates are in need of healing so I watch for a few seconds to see the best place to use Rain so that it hits the most amount of people for the longest time.
I use Rain, my team mates don’t notice and usually all of them run outside of the circle maybe thinking it’s a potential attack. If the rings of over time healing skills were green or blue or had something that distignuished them from potential attacks and other skills, I might actually be able to heal my team mates.

I probably do the same to other players also using healing skills as the general rule thats repeated to you in the game is ‘if you stand within the circle you’ll take damage’ so even nuetral friendly circles are subject to this suspicion. It’s just safer to never stand in a circle unless you put it there because only you know what it does.

Friendly circles are white, so they’re already differentiated.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Friendly circles are white, so they’re already differentiated.

Yes but most people ignore these friendly circles because they mostly give them useless weak combos they don’t really care about, if it were more obvious that the green circles would heal them everyone could easily stay inside. As it is now, elementalists healing spell are pretty unusable as its mostly a gamble if anyone will even notice them. Moving during combat is essential in this game, hence why ground based healing spells are really hard to aim and become annoying to use. Not worth the hassle since they also don’t heal that much anyway.

And/or, on the flip side, enemy spells should be (optionally) tinted red. Yes, I know, the thin thin thin red line already surrounds them, but when you’re unfamiliar with a class and know their spells are especially nasty (I’m looking at you necro), you auto-dodge out of anything that looks like that class’s spell. If bad spells had a slight red tint on the entire spell, not just the circle, people would stop dodging out of helpful wells and spells.

I do like the friendly circle color change idea, too. Something that would make it very obvious that you’re in a safe zone. You can’t really see the spell circles now because of camera angles and being focused on other stuff.

Get under my rain, it heals AND REMOVES CONDITIONS!!

I’d like that change. When you are in a challenging fight, the tendency is to dodge roll out of all circles. The only one I consistently recognize is the ranger aoe heal. Anything necro that is helpful, I don’t benefit from because I don’t take time to look for the red versus white thin line. If you hesitate and its enemy, you could die from the conditions.

I’ve noticed most people run/dodge away from the healing rain spell from my ele . I’ve resorted to using it mostly on myself so that folks aren’t wasting their dodge roll on avoiding it. Whereas when I’m playing my ranger, people will stand in the ranger aoe heal. There is obviously a difference in ease of recognition between these spells.

The green circle would be a good indicator that it is a heal. However, what about color blind people?

I’ve also noticed this. I lay down a rain and people run away, I sometimes want to yell at them “DON’T RUN FOOLS! IT’S PROBABLY SAVING YOUR LIFE!” but things are just too fast pace to mention it.

I’d almost just suggest removing the circle entirely rather than changing the color. You can’t run away from something you don’t see. I noticed that from some Engineer healing turrets. The area seems to pulse instead of persist and it does its job. Or like my Healing Banners. It just plain sits in the middle of a fight with no visual indication…granted it’s not a combo field and has a 600 range vs Rain’s 360….

To counter removing the circle, maybe make the rain visuals more pronounced (heavier rain so you can actually see it) with an option to see ally AoE fields. I’d probably keep the option on as I often use ally fields with my finishers…

The circle doesn’t necerssarily have to be green, but I think healing over time skills could definately use some kind of visual indicator to let the player know they will be healing in this area.

It’s already blue. Water Blast, Healing Rain, Geyser, Cleansing Wave, Cone of Cold and Water Trident are all blue.

I have never had any of the people I play with run out of my healing spells. They know what sort of skills the enemies will use and what they look like. I have had people run out because … well they were dying so they were running away from the source of potential death. Those were just poorly timed Healing Rains by me.

Removing the circles and adding heavier effects would be a terrible idea. This game is not in need of more enemy obscuring effects.

Khisanth.2948:

Removing the circles and adding heavier effects would be a terrible idea. This game is not in need of more enemy obscuring effects.

You speak as if the rain would be so heavy it’d be impossible to see through.

It’s rain. You can see through it. It’s not a monsoon.

And it’s not like the rain would be colored like enemy charging skills (which is orangish-yellow…actually a blue-green rain would make orange-yellow pop more, making enemy charge skills more noticeable. Contrasting colors and all).

Giving healing rain more visuals would ‘obscure’ what, exactly?

More obvious coloring of circles based on their effect/properties would help a lot.