Guild Wars 2

What does everyone think about indicators to visually appear on the hotbar, for fields and finishers? I would think it would help people, for both new people and veterans.

And no, it’s not dumbing down the game. There’s just too many skills to memorize when playing different alts. Just look at all the combos: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo_field

Let’s take Guardian for example. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_guardian_combo_skills

Field: Symbol of Wrath could have some kind of glowing effect around it’s border to indicate it’s a field.

Finisher: Leap of Faith could have a red flashy border indicating it’s ready to use, or any other kind of finisher.

There could be various visual indicators for the following. Perhaps, a “smoky cloud” icon around the Smoke field, or a “fiery flame” around the Fire fields.

Fields: Dark, Ethereal, Fire, Ice, Light, Lightning, Poison, Smoke, Water
Blast, Leap, Projectile, and Whirl

There’s some problems with this of course, such as fields & finishers that are chained attacks, because they are usually on automatic attacks on #1 on the hotbar, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

I think they’re flashy enough, being gigantic circles with effects similar to their field type.

Smoke Fields already have Smoke on them. Water fields have drips of water all over. Poison fields have, well, green poison. Lightning fields are charged with lightning, either big amounts of little bits all over the place. Light fields are lit up with blue or white light. Dark fields are very rare, but typically full of darkness, can be confused with Smoke fields on lower settings.

If you have a hard time distinguishing fields, try cranking up your settings.

Esplen.3940:

I think they’re flashy enough, being gigantic circles with effects similar to their field type.

Smoke Fields already have Smoke on them. Water fields have drips of water all over. Poison fields have, well, green poison. Lightning fields are charged with lightning, either big amounts of little bits all over the place. Light fields are lit up with blue or white light. Dark fields are very rare, but typically full of darkness, can be confused with Smoke fields on lower settings.

If you have a hard time distinguishing fields, try cranking up your settings.

I’m not talking about fields in the environment. I’m talking about the icons on the hotbar. It’s also hard to distinguish all the fields when you’re running with 20+ people in zergs. Look at #1 on the hotbar, if autoattack is enabled, there’s a border indicator around the skill.

I actually really like this idea, something like a glow or indicator on the toolbar to let you know. Switching between alts and playing the elementalist, it gets confusing sometimes on which skills are my combo/finishers

Once you know that combo fields exist it’s usually fairly obvious which skills create them. And before you know they exist the border wouldn’t mean anything.

It could maybe be useful to have something more noticeable than the mouse-over text to let you know which skills are finishers (and what type) but honestly I’d rather keep the number of flashy effects on screen to a minimum.

Its a good idea but that is a lot to cram into the hotbar.

A simple (f11 options>game settings on/off toggle) small text box somewhere would be ideal for me.