Guild Wars 2

Can someone put into simply explain how combo fields work? I’ve checked the wiki and looked up videos on youtube but it’s not clicking

Some skills are Combo Fields, aka combo starters. I play a Thief, so skills that create fields are like Shadow Refuge, 4 on SB, and Smoke Wall. These fields usually have some adverse condition they apply to the enemy within them, like blind and poison (Shadow Refuge is an exception to this).

Then, there are certain skills that are combo finishers that activate certain combos when they are activated inside or when the skill passes through the combo field.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
sums it up pretty well.

Skills that say ‘combo field’ will lay down something in the environment – often a circle area, sometimes a line, etc. Other skills will say ‘combo finisher’ and give a type (leap, whirl, blast, etc.) If someone uses a combo finisher skill in or through a combo field skill, an extra effect will happen. You can combo off your own fields.

Sometimes an effect is added to the finisher attack, as when arrows go through a wall of fire and do burning when they hit. Other times there’ll be an area effect for allies/enemies around that spot, like when someone stomps in a ring of fire and gives nearby allies might. You can figure out what things will do with the table on the wiki.

A little icon or notification will come up when you do a combo, but it’s in amongst the damage numbers and everything else so it can be easily missed in some situations.

An excellent example of how to get familiar with using these is to take an elementalist with focus unlocked on all 4 attunements. Start with fire attunement. Lay down a flamewall and stand right on top of it. Quickly switch to earth attunement and use magnetic wave. If you have the utility arcane wave unlocked, use it as well. Time permitting, you can also switch to water attunement and target comet at your feet inside the flamewall. If you did all of those quickly enough, you should have several stacks of might on you from one Fire Field (flame wall) plus all of the Blast Finishers (magnetic wave, arcane wave, comet)

A good demonstration of a leap finisher is a dagger/pistol thief. Use black powder shot and heartseeker to gain stealth. You don’t have to combo off of your own fields. If an elementalist lays down flamewall (or another fire field such as lava font) and a thief uses cluster bomb (short bow skill) as a blast finisher inside that field, the combo will grant stacks of might just the same.

Common combos that are awesome:
fire field + blast finisher = stacks of might
fire field + leap finisher (heartseeker and similar) = fire aura on the person doing the leap
water field + blast finisher = area heal (on top of the healing skill that created the water field.)

You should learn what fields your profession can create and what finishers you have available so that you can maximize your contribution to any team you join.

as a general rule of thumb when it comes to finishers, physical projectile apply something (usually a condition) to its target (or targets if it is a pierce or bounce shot). leap finish apply something (usually a boon) to yourself. Blast is usually the same as leap but in aoe but slightly short duration to make balance it out. And last whirl shoots out projectiles in random directions that do stuff to whatever it hits of the appropriate target type (depending on field is either going for allies or enemies)

All excellent explanations above, This video may help show how instead of having 5 seconds of Chaos Armor up every 28 seconds you are able to keep it up for 1:30 due to combo fields and leap finishers.

If you’ve ever played Tales of the Abyss no explanation is needed. Fields of a particular element will deal more damage if recieving a certian element of damage in simple terms.