Guild Wars 2

- just a warning; this is part rant-
two things that are unbelievably annoying (atleast to me) in dungeons and id like people to ‘STAHP’ (yes… im aware of how lame that sounded)

- unwanted control effects (primarily PBS/mesmergs5… slightly less; updraft, into the void and overcharged shot); ‘oh that warr is HBing… but my longbow isnt at max range; i know; ill PBS the enemy hurrdurr’, if you’re knocking an enemy into a wall; or grouping it with another one (herding mobs into a group) then fine; thats good, dont randomly spam them (into the void is particularily dangerous in newbie hands… ive seen close packed mobs seperated because a mesmer decided they wanted to play with their pretty curtain)

- pointless combo fields (mesmer… mesmer all over), almost every time im on my ele and party with a mesmer (i often open with ring of fire>earth attunement>evasive arcana dodge>earthquake>churning earth>arcane blast for 12 stacks of aoe might and repeat this whenever fire+earth comes up -omiting anything that is on cooldown) they end up plunking down glamours (ethereal fields) where they simply serve no purpose (feedback on enemies w/o projectiles or null field when no enemies inflict conditions or allies arent afflicted with any) which then eats up combo finishers (chaos armour is a horrible combo effect in most situations; im fairly sure it doesnt even trigger zephyrs boon), dont get me wrong… when a time warp/well of darkness/symbol steals my finishers i dont get (too) annoyed, because they’re actually of benefit

(just for comparison:
3 seconds of chaos armour; random boon WHEN HIT, random condition to foe WHEN HIT
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_Armor and the durations of them arent very long anyway
20 seconds of (3*) might (32 with the 60% boon duration i run on my ele)
1300+ heal from water fields
5 second weakness (damage reduction for everyone)
frost armour (damage reduction for everyone – and ;if triggered by an ele with zephyrs boon; area fury/might)
and chaos armour doesnt stack… it just refreshes the duration)

anyone else get horribly annoyed at these? everytime i see someone do one of them it takes an extroadinary amount of willpower on my end to prevent myself from screaming obsceneties at them and rage quitting (and im normally a very polite gamer)

I play ele.
I weep tears when basically anyone throws down combo fields over mine when im stacking might for the whole party.

also knockbacks are basically the worst CC in game. They’re at absolute best, just as effective as the other CC’s, but they’re also at worst, detrimental to the team rather than helpful. There’s never a “wrong” time to knock down or stun a monster. But there’s plenty of wrong times to knock one back.

Zenyatoo.4059:

They’re at absolute best, just as effective as the other CC’s

i disagree; knocking a foe against a wall or into another group of enemies are better than a stun imo

i love partying with good GS+x/focus mesmers because they can group stuff up brilliantly; its a shame most of them arent; and dont

Zenyatoo.4059:

I play ele.
I weep tears when basically anyone throws down combo fields over mine when im stacking might for the whole party.

also knockbacks are basically the worst CC in game. They’re at absolute best, just as effective as the other CC’s, but they’re also at worst, detrimental to the team rather than helpful. There’s never a “wrong” time to knock down or stun a monster. But there’s plenty of wrong times to knock one back.

ele here, and i agree. The problem is the effects of most combos are insignificant or go unnoticed, so there is little motivation to be mindful of what fields are down. Especially if you play a war or thief, which rely on combos a lot less.

i’m willing to bet this will change as people get more experienced…currently i feel like the only one in pugs that dives into healing fields with blasts when the party is low health.

As for knockbacks…i save them for the cliffs in WvW

Knockbacks are incredibly annoying. A lot of my dungeon mates run ranger, and they knock the guys EVERYWHERE. I get very annoyed. One of my friends just finished leveling his mesmer. He kitten loves the pushback. Seriously. You were in 0 danger from those mobs. No one was in danger from those mobs. You did not need to move them elsewhere.
When I’m using hammer on my guardian, I always try to throw down the containment circle before i use my knockback, sometimes the containment circle doesn’t work because you have to stay rooted. /sigh. That’s when I start apologizing all over the place.

I don’t play ele too much, but I have felt the combo field pain. I usually try to at least get some area might from the fire circle and dragons tooth or phoenix. It’s pretty annoying when someone throws something unnecessary in my way. Most of the time, I don’t notice ele’s fields in time to capitalize on them with leap skills.

Heylo.4938:

I don’t play ele too much, but I have felt the combo field pain. I usually try to at least get some area might from the fire circle and dragons tooth or phoenix. It’s pretty annoying when someone throws something unnecessary in my way. Most of the time, I don’t notice ele’s fields in time to capitalize on them with leap skills.

if this game allowed you to make macros (like in WoW), i would bind text with certain abilities.

So, when i drop a fire field, my character would say “/s Fire field down!” That would probably alleviate some of the issues with coordination.

Combo fields and finishers are a subject that is very complex. It goes beyond just “Stop overlapping my might stack fields!” and what not. For example, as an owner of a mesmer, I do like Chaos Armor…although the combo does not apply protection when gained, it can proc protection which is nice.

The problem is, IMO, the coordination of combo fields requires for the gain it provides. I don’t think it should be balanced around teams that use mumble/teamspeak/etc but currently that’s the only way to get ‘decent’ use of combo fields unless you simply exploit your own fields to their fullest. A team can only viably take advantage of the field that happens to prop up with an often short window. Then there’s the fact overlapping fields cancel each other out in a way.

I think what I’m trying to say is, fields are spammed and combos are spammed and that’s the best way to use them whether they are a teammate’s fields or your own fields. And I think that’s fine. Would I rather have the 3 stacks of might of your elementalist or the chaos armor of the mesmer? Doesn’t really matter in the grande scheme of things. Your fire fields are spammable and might stacks are common. Who cares? We might all be better for it having the retaliation over the frost armor.

But if I were in charge, I’d make it a bit more skill based:
-Improve the duration of all combo fields.
-Improve the effects of all combo finishers greatly.
-Give a UI to allow you to see and target specific fields in the area that you can swap in the heat of combat (but will aim at the first place field otherwise).
-Put a cooldown on each placed field so you can only combo off it once.

Although thinking about it, that would probably overpower combo spam…

Fire fields might be the best field for dungeon running for the pure Might, but as a Utility Engineer (double Super Elixir that I wish was Water field) and Hammer Guardian (constant big Symbol of Protections), I’m constantly producing so many Light fields that any other field has little chance of surviving if it’s under my feet. Don’t get me wrong if you’re thinking I’m just throwing out the Light fields because I don’t care, I despise covering up much both valuable Fire, Water, and Dark combo fields with the Light field because Retaliation is very poor in PvE. If Light fields instead granted Protection with the Blast finisher I would be more appreciative but as they are now, the only Light field I can appreciate is the Wall of Reflection because people rarely use it for anything but cleansing conditions because of it being a vertical field.

Knockback is useful when teammates are trying to rez and you want to keep the mob off them or on grawl when they are trying to reach the cliff to throw humans over the edge for a sacrifice on the shaman map for fractals. Using immobilize in that instance makes the grawl run instead of walk. In general, knockbacks with a group is bad. everyone is lining up the targets and your knocking all over the map!

As a thief main, I haaaaaaaaate when my target gets knocked away from me. I’ve actually gotten this more from shield guardians than greatsword mesmers though. Perhaps because the mesmers I tend to run with regularly know when and when not to use it. New guardians though, seasoned players or not, just love to smash shield 5 at the first sign of a close enemy on someone. You do not need to knock them away when I am spam-stunning them to death, please :| Promise you, I’m fine. Has led to a handful of deaths.

Rangers are the worst on the knockbacks. Bow rangers are so incredibly boring to play, most people just cycle through their skills as they come available, regardless of the skill’s actual use, and the bow knockback is ridiculous. I wont lie, after the second time it happens in the middle of a combo, I rage.

4 Warrior/1 Mesmer groups dont care about combo fields.

I just want to point out to people that seem to have a slight misunderstanding on how the combo field stacking works is that the first (lowest level) field that gets dropped will be the one that get’s paired up with a finisher and not the ones on top of it. That being said, theres alot of encounters where combo fields get neglected and taken for granted. Thieves can give parties up to 20+ seconds of stealth. Light field + whirl finisher (gs warriors should be using ww) removes conditions very effectively (Subject alpha). Eles can give 15 stacks of might easily to a party singlehandedly.

GoZero.9708:

Fire fields might be the best field for dungeon running for the pure Might, but as a Utility Engineer (double Super Elixir that I wish was Water field) and Hammer Guardian (constant big Symbol of Protections), I’m constantly producing so many Light fields that any other field has little chance of surviving if it’s under my feet. Don’t get me wrong if you’re thinking I’m just throwing out the Light fields because I don’t care, I despise covering up much both valuable Fire, Water, and Dark combo fields with the Light field because Retaliation is very poor in PvE. If Light fields instead granted Protection with the Blast finisher I would be more appreciative but as they are now, the only Light field I can appreciate is the Wall of Reflection because people rarely use it for anything but cleansing conditions because of it being a vertical field.

super elixer i rarely see to comment enough on (though it heals… so its beneficial as long as the engi doesnt use it when no needs healing)

symbols are barely an issue though; even when traited they barely (fully) overlap a ‘useful’ field (the only one i can think of that they might overlap is geyser) and provide benefits to everyone (though yeh; retaliation sucks most of the time in PvE, wouldnt mind seeing a PvE/PvP split so it gave protection)

-dark field is my third most hated field in dungeons (after ethereal and smoke); just for well of darkness… why would anyone want to blind something that is already blind?

Linguistically Inept.6583:

GoZero.9708:

Fire fields might be the best field for dungeon running for the pure Might, but as a Utility Engineer (double Super Elixir that I wish was Water field) and Hammer Guardian (constant big Symbol of Protections), I’m constantly producing so many Light fields that any other field has little chance of surviving if it’s under my feet. Don’t get me wrong if you’re thinking I’m just throwing out the Light fields because I don’t care, I despise covering up much both valuable Fire, Water, and Dark combo fields with the Light field because Retaliation is very poor in PvE. If Light fields instead granted Protection with the Blast finisher I would be more appreciative but as they are now, the only Light field I can appreciate is the Wall of Reflection because people rarely use it for anything but cleansing conditions because of it being a vertical field.

super elixer i rarely see to comment enough on (though it heals… so its beneficial as long as the engi doesnt use it when no needs healing)

symbols are barely an issue though; even when traited they barely (fully) overlap a ‘useful’ field (the only one i can think of that they might overlap is geyser) and provide benefits to everyone (though yeh; retaliation sucks most of the time in PvE, wouldnt mind seeing a PvE/PvP split so it gave protection)

-dark field is my third most hated field in dungeons (after ethereal and smoke); just for well of darkness… why would anyone want to blind something that is already blind?

because blind ends when they attack, and if you’re constantly re-applying it, then regardless of how fast they attack it wont ever hit?

Still, blind isnt very effective on bosses, which is really one of the only places blind spam would even be super duper useful (go mouse over unshakeable sometime – Blind is 10% effective)

While you might not like that ethereal field, I’ll bet the ranger and thief appreciate the added confusion.

The problem isn’t that the fields in question are useless, the problem is that your group coordinates them poorly. Somebody has to step up and say “wait for my fire field to disappear before you lay down the ethereal field and do your whirl combos.” You don’t need real-time voice chat for this, you need to understand what you are each doing.

As a guardian I lay down a lot of healing symbols at my feet; my party knows that you shoot arrows near me to remove conditions and you stand near me to heal (and take cleave damage to the face sometimes). This is not because I call it out each time, I tell my groups up front what fields and finishers I have and work out how to synergize with my teammates.

Also, when your goal is to not cause defiant stacks to appear so that you can CC an important skill then, yes, there is a bad time to stun or knockdown.

All in all, this reads like a lot of QQ over “people don’t instinctively play the way I want them to and I’m too lazy to educate them.” I understand that you are hundred bladsing and can’t chase the target, but that is because I have a warrior and have used hundred blades and recognize the animation. Not everyone is aware of this.

Zenyatoo.4059:

-snip

very few mobs attack faster than the 1 second that blind takes to be reapplied

Fildydarie.1496:

-snip-

confusion? you mean that horrible pve condition? you mean theyd appreciate it more than burn and might? more than supporting their allies with condition removal? more than supporting their allies with regen?
- more than that the only way they would be able to trigger confusion is if they’re in range, meaning theyd be hoping that melee’ers (rangers and thieves not going melee is a major annoyance of mine too; especially when a mob targets them and they kite it around everywhere) get hit. its a terrible terrible pve condition. any other field has better projectile finishers

as i pointed out’ most mesmers spam feedback/null field when it does nothing at all; and thats my major annoyance; its not a case of me co-ordinating badly; its a case of them not playing well (most dont even have the glamour confusion trait). the most common scenario is; i use burning speed>a mesmer throws down feedback>i use ring of fire just a millesecond too late

sure its a case of other people not playing how id want them to; but its also a case of them playing badly.
’I’m too lazy to educate them’ – you are incorrect; ive asked people not to spam things unnecessarily before and most of the time ive either been ignored or told i need to ‘l2p’ (laughable), now i cba anymore because its exasperating

-and depressing because i find myself becoming more and more elitist everyday (not that i am elitist; im fine with ‘newbies’ as long as they declare that they havent done the path before and listen, im fine with adventurers; but get annoyed at ones that dont melee at all -ive played with rangers in CoE who stick with a bow at the golems before the rangers when they’re grouped up and im fine with less than optimal runs)