Guild Wars 2

I was idly browsing the web for any hints on how to make my PvP bomber engineer slightly more viable.

What I was not expecting to find was that engineers have a combo which provides a long duration “Invisible” buff to the engineer and nearby allies.

Apparently dropping the large explosive utility belt thing (which you get from the bomb kit), dropping a smoke bomb and then activating your shield skill 4 in the smoke area gives you two doses of “invisible”.

This happens because you land up activating two blast finishers inside a smoke field. Or at least, I assume that is what happens.

Which left me wondering. Do you know about the different elemental fields and how they work? Should some sort of tutorial be added to explain them in game or is there already sufficient explanation which I have missed?

Yes I have decent idea of how they all work. Here’s the wiki details about combos – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Yes I do believe there should be more info about combo fields in game. You do get some info as you level up but I believe it’s just a pop-up prompt along the lines of “There are combo fields!”

I think most are pretty self explainitory, especially Blast finishers in a given field. They’re fun to experiment with when you are new and I don’t think it’s something that needs to have your hand held for you. Plus there is always /wiki combo field

Combofields and Combofinishers are very useful and you should definitly try to learn all the combofields that you can use (know your combofinishers and what effect they have on combofields that you can put down or your allies put down)

As an Engineer you have a lot of possible Blast Finishers with exploding turrets too

here you have a full list
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

most important ones and mostly used are the blast finishers
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_finisher

they are frequently used in PvE and PvP actually
in PvE mostly Fire Fields for mightstacking and Lightning Fields for Swiftness

in PvP Lightning Fields for Swiftness at the start of the match and then mostly Waterfields for the AoE Healing and Smoke Fields for Stealth and Firefields for mightstacking

D/P Thief for example uses his Leap Finisher through his smoke field frequently to stealth himself
apart from that Leap Finishers are mostly used for Waterfield Self Healing and Chaos Field for Chaos Armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap_finisher

And yes i also agree that there should be a tutorial only for Blast Finishers pretty early in the game (maybe when you get access to your first Blast finisher skill)
it took me ages to find out about combofields and how they actually work when i started with GW2…

There are zero ingame tutorials about combos and finishers (another reason why the NPE was a failure). You just can’t play engineer or elementalist effectively without knowing how to blast fields.

After anet NPE’d leveling they added small popup at level 50ish that says something like “You can use combo finishers in combo fields”. That’s about it.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
Here is detailed explanation.

try doing this, but also blowing up all your turrets in the same field at once. Stealth for everyone, forever!

It would be nice if combo fields and finishers were more intuitive. Fire fields are pretty easy to spot, but you get into things like blasts and it gets trick, because not everything that seems explodey is a blast finisher.

To really use the combo system you need to spend some time memorizing which skills have your fields and finishes and the effects from the large variety of possible combinations.

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

Troll.

Also learning when to place fields when in a group. Which ones are more important and should be done first. If a field is placed but another type of field is placed pretty much on top of it, the first goes away, right? So in general would it be best to let the elementalist lay down all their fields and finishers to build up might before anyone else places a field for something else? Seems like learning when to place fields when in a group will eventually come with experience but what is the etiquette for fields when in a zerg?

Gibson.4036:

It would be nice if combo fields and finishers were more intuitive. Fire fields are pretty easy to spot, but you get into things like blasts and it gets trick, because not everything that seems explodey is a blast finisher.

To really use the combo system you need to spend some time memorizing which skills have your fields and finishes and the effects from the large variety of possible combinations.

The finisher and field type is listed on a skill’s description.

Valento.9852:

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

Troll.

Well not really. The light field would have had to be there before the fire field. The only reliable way to do this is to spam your light fields on cooldown and speaking of light fields. How many people actually use them to remove conditions?

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

lmao

Khisanth.2948:

Valento.9852:

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

Troll.

Well not really. The light field would have had to be there before the fire field. The only reliable way to do this is to spam your light fields on cooldown and speaking of light fields. How many people actually use them to remove conditions?

Wouldn’t the fire field replace the light field if placed second (after the light field)?

RoseofGilead.8907:

Khisanth.2948:

Valento.9852:

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

Troll.

Well not really. The light field would have had to be there before the fire field. The only reliable way to do this is to spam your light fields on cooldown and speaking of light fields. How many people actually use them to remove conditions?

Wouldn’t the fire field replace the light field if placed second (after the light field)?

“field that has been there the longest” is supposed to be the one you blast, though i frequently have trouble blasting fire when i drop fire bomb and then overcharge healing turret (water field) after the fire field appears.

I think we certainly need a tutorial in-game regarding combos and combo finishers.

I wasn’t aware of what they were until after a year and a half of playing. The tool-tip on skills confused me and as for the effects, I was either confused by their appearance or just tried to ignore them.

It would be great to see some tasks in low level areas that centered around the theme. Perhaps players could receive an experimental weapon to use in order to proc some of the buffs/debuffs to progress the task. The task guy or NPCs in the area could give some explanation about it all, too.

insanemaniac.2456:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Khisanth.2948:

Valento.9852:

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

Troll.

Well not really. The light field would have had to be there before the fire field. The only reliable way to do this is to spam your light fields on cooldown and speaking of light fields. How many people actually use them to remove conditions?

Wouldn’t the fire field replace the light field if placed second (after the light field)?

“field that has been there the longest” is supposed to be the one you blast, though i frequently have trouble blasting fire when i drop fire bomb and then overcharge healing turret (water field) after the fire field appears.

Yeah, your healing turret example is what I experience most often. The newest field is what gets blasted in a majority of cases (when I’m paying attention, anyway).

Well one day at teq, someone in map chat was yelling at the elementalists for putting down an “earth field,” (and I don’t think they were trolling, they seemed embarrassed after being called out). The map sure had fun with that

Considering I didn’t know how to use fields until my third character(ele), started doing dungeons… I think it would have been a good addition to the NPE (and be more in depth than- congrats, hey look combo finishers!).

RoseofGilead.8907:

Khisanth.2948:

Valento.9852:

oxtred.7658:

Don’t forget to put light fields in dungeons when an elementalist is about to blast. It gives area retaliation, wich means a dps gain from the party, and you can stack a lot of it!

Troll.

Well not really. The light field would have had to be there before the fire field. The only reliable way to do this is to spam your light fields on cooldown and speaking of light fields. How many people actually use them to remove conditions?

Wouldn’t the fire field replace the light field if placed second (after the light field)?

What I meant was that if you are going to troll like that you have to spam the light fields. If an elementalist puts down a fire field and then you put down a light field you have failed at the trolling part because blasting will still give might. Fields don’t replace each other. Combos are proc from the oldest field.

Smoke fields are also better for trolling …

Khisanth.2948:

The finisher and field type is listed on a skill’s description.

Of course it is.

But most people don’t have time to mouseover skill descriptions in combat.

Which requires learning which of your skills have fields and finishers.

As a person who plays ele as main since i started the game, it took me 2 years to blast proprietly. I switched to S/F year and a half ago and had a realisation how awesome this weapon combo works
But took me quite some time to learn aoe different classes drop (and what weapon drops what) and what field gives what when blasted.

If you are going to blast you have to, well,learn all other classes.

I have over 2500 hours and still have no clue about these things other than sometimes I get lucky and use a finisher without even knowing how I did it. Great job on teaching players how to play ANet! But hey I can dodge for loot and use a sword.

On a more serious note, I honestly don’t know how you’d figure this out without a guild and some helpful people. Can I even make my own field and use a finisher at the same time? If not, how do I ask other players to help me learn? I can see it now.. the jeers and the “L2P noooob” comments will abound. And sorry, reading about this on wiki actually makes my head hurt and teaches me nothing about actually using the things.

I remember they added combos to dailies once, but it was a complete disaster. Partly because it was hard to actaully get the daily to recognise the effect, but also because people were struggling to understand how they worked. Map chat desecnded into chaos as people derided others for lack of knowledge.

There has been virtually no attempt to coach players on combos or finishers or anything like that ever since.

Randulf.7614:

I remember they added combos to dailies once, but it was a complete disaster. Partly because it was hard to actaully get the daily to recognise the effect, but also because people were struggling to understand how they worked. Map chat desecnded into chaos as people derided others for lack of knowledge.

There has been virtually no attempt to coach players on combos or finishers or anything like that ever since.

That was a terrible daily. The combo had to deal damage in order to count which means there were many combos that didn’t count.

If that daily was still around I would probably have made a spreadsheet of all the different skill combinations for each class that would count by now. If you want to teach people combos that is definitely not the way to do it.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

On a more serious note, I honestly don’t know how you’d figure this out without a guild and some helpful people. Can I even make my own field and use a finisher at the same time?

Actually it was one of the reasons I was initially so impressed with the game.
These combo interactions ALWAYS featured very heavily in the promo vids during the hype phase back in the day.

But quite frankly I pretty much ignore them now because, why bother?

And yes, you can apply your own fields. Just check the frikken weapon and utility skill descriptions.
Sometimes when I feel like it, I get a torch for my LB-Ranger, helloo flame-maschinebow.

There should be a heart event in every starter area that requires familiarizing oneself with combos. The issue is that not every profession has equal access to elemental fields and/or finishers, and what is available is dependent on weapon sets and/or skill slots, so it would have to either be one of those “pick up this standardized weapons and do the thing” or it would become hopelessly complex. But it should definitely exist in some form beyond an easily ignored pop-up.

Not explaining things properly (or at all) seems to be a common theme in GW2, and the lack of any real introduction to fields/finishers is part of it. Even now I still come across people who bought duplicate ascended trinkets because the word ‘unique’ is expected to convey that you can’t wear more than one of the item.

And yet they’ve added an arrow pointing to our heal skills as if that of all things is what people can’t figure out on their own. I wonder how many people have died just wondering if they’ve unlocked a new heal or something and oh gods how do I make it go away?

I have no idea what they are. Seriously. I came back to the game a couple months ago and never bothered with them. Completely forgot they existed until I started examining the skills recently as I’ve gotten more into pvp but haven’t gotten around to really studying it.

The game really should have some tutorials for them.

If you want to useful pull out the enemy commander

I’ve played for ages and still have no idea what or how to do combo fields other than thief shortbow poison followed up by cluster bomb = weakness.

That or the engi F1 spray thing with rocket boots gives a.. Minute heal. “Wow”.

I really think if there were tutorials in game explaining combo fields new and veteran players alike would appreciate it.

So far I hover over a skill and it says “combo field: Blast”. That’s it. No other info so I just disregard it.

SMOKE: (enigineer/thief)
smoke+ blast = invis
smoke+ projectile = blind?? (not sure)

WATER: (engineer, elementalist,ranger)
water + blast = aoe heal
water + projectile = healing bolt

FIRE (warrior, guardian, elementalist, ranger, engineer)
fire + blast = might
fire+ prjectile = burning projectile
fire+ leap = fire aura

LIGHTNING (Elementalist, ?)
lightning + blast = swiftness

DARK (Necro, Thief)
dark fields + blast = weakness

LIGHT (Necro, Guardian)
light fields + blast = retaliation
light+ projectile = condi cleansing
light+ leap = retaliation

CHAOS (Mesmer)
chaos+ blast = AoE chaos armor
chaos+ leap = chaos armor (tend to be usefull on condi warriors)
chaos + projectile = confusion

Which are the main ones I know…

I really hate the light one though with blast, as it is used often Guard Staff #3 in combination with static fields (ligthning)… and you want the statics to be blasted for swiftness.

Oh and I know about whirls but I tend to ignore them….

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Which are the main ones I know…

there are also poison and ice fields.

you can be annoyed by poison fields when near nade engis and sb thieves and anyone who runs sigil of blight for some weird reason. blasting and leaping gives (aoe) weakness, projectiles poison enemies.

you can be annoyed by ice fields around staff eles that feel the need to put an unblockable chill on something (which occasionally happens in high level fractals and wvw). blasting and leaping gives (aoe) frost armor (10% damage reduction, chill enemy on being hit), projectiles… idk actually, prolly chill enemies. literally 0 people in the entire history of the game have ever projectile finished through an ice field so it doesnt matter.

when the trait overhaul hits, engis will prolly “gain” an ice field to annoy you since mortar has one but no one uses mortar ever atm, but theyll lose the poison fields.

Combo fields, finishers and their various effects are never truly explained within the game itself. I and many others got their knowledge of blasts either from other people or the wiki.

This all comes back to the flaws with the NPE and how it simplifies the already simple without explaining or introducing the more mechanically complex but necessary aspects of the game like blasting fields and so on(I made a post about it at the time, you can, should you so desire, read it here)

Fields are one of the most important parts of the game. The fact that so many people in this thread don’t even know what they are explains a lot of the pugs i’ve been in.

The entire meta is based around stacking might and fury via fields.

Anet clearly needs to add a tutorial for this ingame.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Fields are one of the most important parts of the game. The fact that so many people in this thread don’t even know what they are explains a lot of the pugs i’ve been in.

The entire meta is based around stacking might and fury via fields.

Anet clearly needs to add a tutorial for this ingame.

mm, even something as simple as a scripted scenario with a wall of fire and shooting bandits in the face through the wall to trigger flaming arrows would be a good stepping stone for the question of “well, what else can I do with this mechanic?”

Yeah, I’ve never understood why Anet didn’t put in a combo field/finisher tutorial. I mean, they put in one for dodging, a fairly obvious mechanic, with the NPE but didn’t do any introduction for combos.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

SMOKE: (enigineer/thief)
smoke+ blast = invis
smoke+ projectile = blind?? (not sure)

WATER: (engineer, elementalist,ranger)
water + blast = aoe heal
water + projectile = healing bolt

FIRE (warrior, guardian, elementalist, ranger, engineer)
fire + blast = might
fire+ prjectile = burning projectile
fire+ leap = fire aura

LIGHTNING (Elementalist, ?)
lightning + blast = swiftness

DARK (Necro, Thief)
dark fields + blast = weakness

LIGHT (Necro, Guardian)
light fields + blast = retaliation
light+ projectile = condi cleansing
light+ leap = retaliation

CHAOS (Mesmer)
chaos+ blast = AoE chaos armor
chaos+ leap = chaos armor (tend to be usefull on condi warriors)
chaos + projectile = confusion

Which are the main ones I know…

I really hate the light one though with blast, as it is used often Guard Staff #3 in combination with static fields (ligthning)… and you want the statics to be blasted for swiftness.

Oh and I know about whirls but I tend to ignore them….

Just use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo#Combo_effects …
Dark fields do not give weakness. It is either blind(blast, projectile) or life steal(leap, whirl). Useful for a bit of quick healing on a thief, in PvE and maybe some situations in WvW. Weakness would probably be a bit more useful although that depends on what content you do more often.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Yeah, I’ve never understood why Anet didn’t put in a combo field/finisher tutorial. I mean, they put in one for dodging, a fairly obvious mechanic, with the NPE but didn’t do any introduction for combos.

Well failing to dodge can kill you but failing to use combo fields mostly makes things less efficient. Fully covering the subject of combo fields would also need to be much longer. Randomly spamming them isn’t all that meaningful and people are already doing that already. Most of the time everything besides fire+blast and water+blast gets ignored anyway.

Khisanth.2948:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Yeah, I’ve never understood why Anet didn’t put in a combo field/finisher tutorial. I mean, they put in one for dodging, a fairly obvious mechanic, with the NPE but didn’t do any introduction for combos.

Well failing to dodge can kill you but failing to use combo fields mostly makes things less efficient. Fully covering the subject of combo fields would also need to be much longer. Randomly spamming them isn’t all that meaningful and people are already doing that already. Most of the time everything besides fire+blast and water+blast gets ignored anyway.

True about dodging being more important to stay alive. But I’m not even talking about having a full breakdown of how many fields and combos their are. Just a basic demo involving a heart quest or something (before the tiny blurb you see for hitting level 52) would at least be enough for players to see what they are.

Khisanth.2948:

That was a terrible daily. The combo had to deal damage in order to count which means there were many combos that didn’t count.

I finished that daily, it was a pain, I had to get help from a guild mate so each one could do it.
The thing is, it didn’t required to “just” cause damage, you had to KILL a mob with a combo, so time a killing blow with a combo was really hard.

Someone asked about combo in the players helping players forum, check it for some good info: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Combo-fields-and-combo-finishers

Belzebu.3912:

Khisanth.2948:

That was a terrible daily. The combo had to deal damage in order to count which means there were many combos that didn’t count.

I finished that daily, it was a pain, I had to get help from a guild mate so each one could do it.
The thing is, it didn’t required to “just” cause damage, you had to KILL a mob with a combo, so time a killing blow with a combo was really hard.

Someone asked about combo in the players helping players forum, check it for some good info: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Combo-fields-and-combo-finishers

I remembered the damage requirement but wasn’t 100% sure about the kill part. I also remember thinking “If I bring my thief and drag an elementalist around with me this should be easy.”

I think the heart/tutorial will run into the same problem as the daily. I suspect the game is not able distinguish “you applied poison with a skill” versus “you applied poison with a combo”.

Khisanth.2948:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

SMOKE: (enigineer/thief)
smoke+ blast = invis
smoke+ projectile = blind?? (not sure)

WATER: (engineer, elementalist,ranger)
water + blast = aoe heal
water + projectile = healing bolt

FIRE (warrior, guardian, elementalist, ranger, engineer)
fire + blast = might
fire+ prjectile = burning projectile
fire+ leap = fire aura

LIGHTNING (Elementalist, ?)
lightning + blast = swiftness

DARK (Necro, Thief)
dark fields + blast = weakness

LIGHT (Necro, Guardian)
light fields + blast = retaliation
light+ projectile = condi cleansing
light+ leap = retaliation

CHAOS (Mesmer)
chaos+ blast = AoE chaos armor
chaos+ leap = chaos armor (tend to be usefull on condi warriors)
chaos + projectile = confusion

Which are the main ones I know…

I really hate the light one though with blast, as it is used often Guard Staff #3 in combination with static fields (ligthning)… and you want the statics to be blasted for swiftness.

Oh and I know about whirls but I tend to ignore them….

Just use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo#Combo_effects …
Dark fields do not give weakness. It is either blind(blast, projectile) or life steal(leap, whirl). Useful for a bit of quick healing on a thief, in PvE and maybe some situations in WvW. Weakness would probably be a bit more useful although that depends on what content you do more often.

projectile dark is lifesteal not blind :P, and leap is blind not lifesteal as you said good for some healing on thief, uses SR+pistol stealth skill a lot for quite a bit of healing on my p/p thief, is amazing healing from that

GummiBear.2756:

projectile dark is lifesteal not blind :P, and leap is blind not lifesteal as you said good for some healing on thief, uses SR+pistol stealth skill a lot for quite a bit of healing on my p/p thief, is amazing healing from that

ugh … was thinking of the smoke fields. Mostly from the stuff about changes to defiance and how blinds will affect the defiance bar. Lightning Field + Heartseeker spam is also nice.

Khisanth.2948:

GummiBear.2756:

projectile dark is lifesteal not blind :P, and leap is blind not lifesteal as you said good for some healing on thief, uses SR+pistol stealth skill a lot for quite a bit of healing on my p/p thief, is amazing healing from that

ugh … was thinking of the smoke fields. Mostly from the stuff about changes to defiance and how blinds will affect the defiance bar. Lightning Field + Heartseeker spam is also nice.

well is a lot of nice cross-class comboes, sadly a lot of ppl dont realise most of them.
And yeah black powder gonna be awesome against defiance bar, pulsing blind+smoke field

Faereilos.5106:

There are zero ingame tutorials about combos and finishers (another reason why the NPE was a failure). You just can’t play engineer or elementalist effectively without knowing how to blast fields.

I still to this day cannot believe they left out so much information on field combos in the NPE. Just … Wow. It really makes you wonder.

‘Do you understand elemental fields?’

Nope.

But this is going to help me a LOT, I think

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

SMOKE: (enigineer/thief)
smoke+ blast = invis
smoke+ projectile = blind?? (not sure)

WATER: (engineer, elementalist,ranger)
water + blast = aoe heal
water + projectile = healing bolt

FIRE (warrior, guardian, elementalist, ranger, engineer)
fire + blast = might
fire+ prjectile = burning projectile
fire+ leap = fire aura

LIGHTNING (Elementalist, ?)
lightning + blast = swiftness

DARK (Necro, Thief)
dark fields + blast = weakness

LIGHT (Necro, Guardian)
light fields + blast = retaliation
light+ projectile = condi cleansing
light+ leap = retaliation

CHAOS (Mesmer)
chaos+ blast = AoE chaos armor
chaos+ leap = chaos armor (tend to be usefull on condi warriors)
chaos + projectile = confusion

Which are the main ones I know…

I really hate the light one though with blast, as it is used often Guard Staff #3 in combination with static fields (ligthning)… and you want the statics to be blasted for swiftness.

Oh and I know about whirls but I tend to ignore them….

Please add whirls And please please add this to the /wiki
And please please PLEASE get a job with Anet redesigning the NPE

Finishers combo on the first field down. There are some exceptions however. For example staff guard symbol overrides all fields for maximum trolling.

spoj.9672:

Finishers combo on the first field down. There are some exceptions however. For example staff guard symbol overrides all fields for maximum trolling.

Man I hate those… puts down fire field…. blasts 5 times…. gets 30s of retaliation…

My wish. They had NPCs of each profession who are able to put down their particular fields that can be interacted with. When you talk to them, they put down the fields, perhaps calling them out, and you use your skills on top of them to see what happens. Perhaps there can be fast respawning, yellow mobs wandering around to be affected by the offensive skills, or practice dummies if trolling is a problem.

Surely that wouldn’t be so hard to put in the game and a good way to learn combos and their effects.