Guild Wars 2

First of all, apologies if someone else has posted this as a suggestion. To be honest, I’d be surprised if nobody had, but a quick search for “spell effects” didn’t yield any dedicated posts about it (maybe I missed one).

For me, one of the most frustrating aspects of GW2 is the fact that the spell-effects make it very difficult to see key abilities that you’re expected to dodge, particularly in dungeons and fractals.

Some boss abilities are so deadly that they will one-shot you – especially in higher level fractals. To play effectively, you really need to be able to dodge these abilities, and to be able to dodge them, you need to be able to see them.

That is, after all, the whole purpose of the “active” combat system. Rather than relying on passive defensive stats like in WoW for example where you will automatically dodge/parry/block a certain percentage of attacks, you can take responsibility for staying alive. It’s a great idea, but executed quite poorly.

On some bosses, it’s just fine. For example, the final boss in the grawls fractal is very large and is also elevated above the ground, so you can clearly see when he shooting an Agony-arrow at you. If you are a skilled player with good reflexes, you can dodge the arrows every single time.

On the other hand, a boss like General Volkov in Sorrow’s Embrace is small (when you play Charr or Norn, at least) and he hits pretty hard. His melee swings are practically impossible to see amidst all the spell effects of a typical group, which makes most melee simply switch to a ranged weapon to make life easier on themselves.

I’m up for a challenge, but this kind of thing isn’t “true” difficulty – it’s simply not being able to see anything and being punished for it.

Please add some spell effects options so we can tweak the settings until you can actually see mobs, or better yet, polish up the mob animations and spell effects so we can actually react to attacks, as the game originally intended.