Guild Wars 2

Seen this mentioned a few times two years ago with generally split opinions. But almost three years down the line and an expansion on the horizon, I feel like it’s a small thing that’s still missing from the game. Anyone else think we should see enemy cast bars?

I understand they originally wanted for us to learn the “tells” of skills, especially for boss encounters and that’s fine. To be honest though, I am mainly suggesting this for enemy players (PvP/WvW) where cast times are shorter and the information matters more. But if it can see benefit in open world as well, especially for teaching new players then that’s even better. At the moment casting animations are clouded by particle effects in large fights and character model sizes. We’re already looking up at the top of the screen for what boons, effects or buffs the enemy has, why can’t a cast bar be up there too?

I do think that we need to look at what our characters are doing and not just play by staring at the top of the screen, but positioning is already enough of a reason to do that. The way I see it, we look at different parts of the screen to get distinct pieces of information.

• Character position (centre of screen): To line up skills and make sure we’re not standing in line of our enemy’s. Line of sight and try to get out of their onscreen zone of vision. And at the moment, skill tells.
• Top of screen: For enemy health, boons, effects and buffs.
• Bottom of screen: For our cooldowns, health, energy and debuffs.
• Other: Minimap, team mates, for obvious reasons.

Information from the top and bottom of the screen requires reaction by button press, e.g. cleanse your debuffs, strip their boons, heal or damage spike at the right time. I would say that all information from the centre of the screen should require reaction by positioning. However, knowing that a skill is about to be cast requires reaction by dodge, pressing that V key. Isn’t that a reaction by button press? Yes, you can also avoid a skill by positioning, however that’s usually after the skill has already been cast, e.g. moving out of AoE. Yes, if it’s a pre-emptive skillshot evasion then it’s positioning information but adding a cast bar doesn’t take away from that, the animation tells are still there. Adding a cast bar just allows us to be more suitably informed to react by relevant information, rather than distracting that information with noise such as particle effects/character size.

No

I would certainly appreciate cast bars on enemies.

ArenaNet is diligently working to hone an ideal balance between core class specializations before HoT is released, because of the advent of the ability to implement new specializations. The addition of a feature like enemy skill cast bars, would have a massive impact on balance. The actual effects of such a thing can not be accurately predicted, so ArenaNet would have to rely on player feedback to gauge that impact. This would greatly increase the amount of work needed to achieve an ideal balance between core class specializations, thus potentially causing a long delay to the highly anticipated release of HoT.

I would agree that a lack of resources on the part of ArenaNet would warrant not spending any time on this feature for the release of HoT, if they think it doesn’t deserve priority attention. But does that mean to say it’s a feature not worth considering at all for the future?

I Forgot.1684:

The addition of a feature like enemy skill cast bars, would have a massive impact on balance.

But I would disagree that this feature would have any detrimental impact on balance, care to elaborate?

Being able to see a channeling bar would allow you and your group to coordinate interrupts to completely turn off an enemy. Even a break-bar wouldn’t help to combat this issue because if everyone knew exactly when to CC spike an enemy, there would be no risk of failing to do so. Unless you want to turn all of the enemies into useless meatsacks that you break open for XP and loot, this is a bad idea.

Xytl.8659:

Being able to see a channeling bar would allow you and your group to coordinate interrupts to completely turn off an enemy. Even a break-bar wouldn’t help to combat this issue because if everyone knew exactly when to CC spike an enemy, there would be no risk of failing to do so. Unless you want to turn all of the enemies into useless meatsacks that you break open for XP and loot, this is a bad idea.

Sorry, as I mentioned in the OP, this thread is mainly about enemy players (PvP/WvW). Besides, in PvE you can coordinate this anyway if everyone knows the tells since mobs are a lot slower paced, unless I misunderstood what you meant?