Guild Wars 2

Question for those players who can help me with combo skills. I have a Ranger, and group with my guildies who are close friends. We have been playing together for 7 years or so mostly in GW1. Dungeon runs, etc…
Our group consists of Mesmer, Necro, Guardian and a new Ele friend Occasionally our friend who has a Warrior comes along.
We love dungeon crawls but haven’t quite gotten down the combo skills. I’d love some advice on how to communicate better and how we can utilizie these more effectively as a group. We’re getting hosed in dungeons, and I know we aren’t at our potential. For example, we ran Caudecus Manor and turned into a very long and tedious evening.
My main concern, and yes it’s a nubsauce question, is how to tell without voice communication what fields are being played so I can enhance with say a finisher or blast? Is it possible to tell on UI what I need to play next? Or is it mostly voice communication?
I do have a TS server we use. I’d love some input on those players with usual static groups on how you began to use these combo skills effectively in your groups.
Would appreciate any help or tips. I just feel there’s something I’m not quite getting.
“Remember be kind to Trolls for thou art crunchy when roasted and taste good with ketchup.”
Thanks folks

None of the combos are essential to group play, just helpful. I would say that the most efficient (that is, during combat) way is to have each of you learn what the fields look like when the others put them down. For example, if there’s a beige ring (common to most of the fields) and fire/lava in the middle of it, you can assume it’s a fire field. Light blue? Either light or ice, figure out whether it’s a guardian symbol or elementalist Icy Ground. It might seem like a lot to do, but with a little practice it becomes very easy to identify which type of field has gone down.

Also, make sure your group isn’t dodging out of white AOE rings (aka allied attacks or even heals).

More important than combos is dodging (at all), dodging at appropriate times (save for hard-hitting attacks), using CC skills to save teammates from certain attacks (graveling scavengers particularly), and otherwise not getting hit most of the time (spacing, blind, blocks, preemptive CCs, other evade skills).

Random tip – Guardians and Thieves have very controllable and very fast Blast combo finishers, on Hammer and Shortbow respectively. Blast combo finishers are really impressive AoE buffs, debuffs, heals, and so on. For example, a Blast finisher on a Fire field will yield 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds, and it works with boon duration. On my Hammer guardian (when I run that spec) I am traited for boon duration and can single handedly get a party to 25 stacks of might if there’s an Elementalist in the party. Thieves are similar. Also works great in a Water field – about 1500 healing AOE when you Blast that. There’s a table on the wiki that shows what everything does.

Neat as it is, it’s not essential, as Ganzicus says.

Thanks guys, I’ve been reading the table on the wiki re: combo fields and such. It also looks like the necro can do some neat combo fields/life steal skills.
Been practicing alot solo w/my lvl 80 mesmer in WvW. Having a ball with her solo combos.
It just seems there’s more to knowing ahead of time what finisher you can decide to use once you see a field in front of you; ie…ethereal, light, etc…and if it’s a constant.
Also in dungeons, if there’s a way to discuss strategies ahead of time what combos might be advantageous for boss/mobs.
I don’t see alot of posts about this subject on the forums I read, so it might be useful to know what professions have useful combos together in tough situations.

most groups care only about fire field and blast finisher combos, for might stacks. to the point that they get angry if you cover said fire fields with other fields.

as a mesmer i spend a lot time in my ethereal fields which are very defensive because of chaos armor leap/blast combos.

if you have warrior in party you can always grab his banner for free blast finisher (5).

1. field in game imo is warriors longbows fire field. because of its kitten area of effect ,10 second duration and 10s cooldown (assuming you can fill full adrenaline in 10s).

As a ranger, you can set-up combo fields by yourself …
Place a trap (fire or venom), when it triggers, fire through the field or use melee. This works with your healing spring for regeneration as well.

With other players, the easiest is with an ele. If the ele is in fire attunement, position yourself behind the ele as the ele lays down a fire field, then, start shooting through the field.

Remember, combo fields operate on a chance to trigger, so they are not always a 100% sure thing.

bri.2359:

Remember, combo fields operate on a chance to trigger, so they are not always a 100% sure thing.

Where does that information come from?

I know for sure that some skills do not always trigger combos, in which case this is written in the skill tooltip (staff 1 of the necro has 20% chance, if I recall correctly). But when it is only mentioned “Combo finisher”, I trust there is 100% chance for the combo to trigger.

^ its 100%, except some projectiles which are 20%.

if something you wanted didn’t trigger, then you either missed field, missed timing, or hit different field that you expected.

Saulius.8430:

most groups care only about fire field and blast finisher combos, for might stacks. to the point that they get angry if you cover said fire fields with other fields.

as a mesmer i spend a lot time in my ethereal fields which are very defensive because of chaos armor leap/blast combos.

if you have warrior in party you can always grab his banner for free blast finisher (5).

1. field in game imo is warriors longbows fire field. because of its kitten area of effect ,10 second duration and 10s cooldown (assuming you can fill full adrenaline in 10s).

Saulius.8430:

most groups care only about fire field and blast finisher combos, for might stacks. to the point that they get angry if you cover said fire fields with other fields.

as a mesmer i spend a lot time in my ethereal fields which are very defensive because of chaos armor leap/blast combos.

if you have warrior in party you can always grab his banner for free blast finisher (5).

1. field in game imo is warriors longbows fire field. because of its kitten area of effect ,10 second duration and 10s cooldown (assuming you can fill full adrenaline in 10s).

LOL yea I had someone get mad at me for a confusion combo once while I was playing my mesmer. Great tip on the banner finisher…I never knew that.
I guess I’ll have to play all the professions to really understand this. It sounds like you just see a white ring and see what your finisher does since you can’t really count on it 100%.
I do remember using my healing spring and barrage = got some great healing arrows

Our guild is having the same issue, right down to a long evening in CM (though not as long as the 4.5 hours in AC), I guess we’ll just have to set aside some time to demo our powers to each other so we can try to learn the visuals. I’ll also have to beat them into sticking with one or at most two characters instead of a flotilla of alts to try to learn this with. . .

Note that sometimes text is wrong, for example some projectiles say “removing condition” each time they fire through a field when they are actually only doing it 20% of the time. Elixer gun #1, for example.

Honestly, the best thing for your group to do to practice combo fields is to go to the Heart of the Mists training area (Lil fist symbol on the map) and practice with eachother. Remember that it isn’t just the combo fields you have to be aware of, in general any class that uses a staff can generate a combo field, and many fields also give you positive effects just for standing within them..

Take the Mesmer for example; If he’s using staff, watch out for his Chaos Storm and make sure he drops it on both allies and enemies.

That’s just one example. I know Warriors, Necros, Guardians, AND Elementalists all have fields that help you just for standing inside of em.

-Blast Finishers give buffs to the group in an AoE radius.
-Leap Finishers tend to give auras. Make sure to leap from within the field for 100% success chance. Smoke Fields give Stealth, and Light Fields give Retaliation when you leap through them
-Projectile Finishers tend to add conditions to your projectile attacks. Light fields (Such as Mesmer’s Focus 4) remove conditions, so try to keep allies within the projectile trajectory.
-Whirl Finishers tend to have the same effect as Projectile finishers, spinning around shooting bolts of whatever effect-field they are on top of.

As a general rule of thumb, if there is a ring with some kind of energy-effect inside of it, than you can combo from it. If everyone learns their own finishers, and trains their eye to recognize fields, you’ll start comboing with each other automatically.