Guild Wars 2

I play a mesmer mainly, but as it is I don’t encounter a lot of these… So I’m not exactly sure even WHAT a combo spell is or how it functions. Are there some combo spells that the mesmer can use? What are the advantages of combo spells? HOW do you pull them off? How can you tell if they worked? I’ve gotten to level 53 without learning this stuff, sadly, and it’s totally time I learned.

So combos work in two parts.

First, combo fields. All of your abilities will say whether they give a combo field and, if so, what type. You can tell a combo field is up because there will be a white line around the field (often a circle or long rectangle.)

Secondly, you have combo finishers which are also typed (combo finisher: blast, combo finisher: whorl, etc.)

Using a combo finisher through a combo field will apply some benefit. So whenever you see a white bordered area use your combo finishers. Similarly, try to throw down combo fields where they will hit a bunch of players.

For example, look at the Mesmer Staff. Chaos Storm ⁵ creates Combo Field: Ethereal. Phase Retreat ² is a Combo Finisher: Leap.

You can plop down a Chaos Storm, go inside the area, and then use Phase Retreat. Because you used a combo finisher through a combo field you get the combo effect – in this case you are given free Chaos Armor.

This has been very helpful! I had wikied combos but I didn’t really understand how they still worked. Thank you for breaking in down simply and using examples.

Ohh. So you don’t need to match combo fields with a certain combo finisher! Any field can be used in conjunction with a finisher? Are the effects random in that case? Such as, the Mesmer Focus has a straight line field that grants speed and slows enemies. Do I want to stand on that field or stand behind it and make sure that my finisher passes through?

Here are the tables I made with all the combo fields and finishers

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/61786-combo-fields-and-finishers-tables/

A quick example of how useful this is:

A Thief with a short bow can shoot a Cluster Bomb which does does fairly high AOE damage.

He can also shoot Choking Gas, which is a poison cloud; it does no direct damage but applies poison damage-over-time to enemies within the area of effect.

Both are good on their own. However, if you shoot Choking Gas around your targets, and then shoot a Cluster Bomb into the Choking Gas, it applies Area Weakness, causing targets who get affected by it to regenerate endurance slowly, and turns all their non-critical hits into glancing blows.

And anyone else firing normal attacks into or through the Choking Gas will get a poison benefit applied to their attack. You can even quickly swap to daggers and do a whirl finisher to throw poison darts all around. It’s very diverse!

Thief seems to get a nice supply of these, just from their steal skill. One of my favorites is the green area steal (forget its name) which you can leap for chaos armor. Also, a lot of elementalists drop fire AoEs on a target, to which a quick Heartseeker will give you fire armor.

Not sure what the whirl with Leaping Death Blossom does, yet. xD

Important to note that your attack simply needs to originate in, terminate in, or pass through the combo field.

You can also combo your own fields.

Here are what all the field types and finisher types do.

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkMECGVxagY

Will show you every possible combo in the game. There are a couple other video guides out there too, but this was the first one I came across.

So, let me see if I understand this correctly…
I play a thief. So if I user Choking Gas with my bow and then switch to dagger and do a Death Blossom, as long as the DB passes through the Choking Gas at some point, it will cause a combo. Is that right?
So by that rationale… it makes sense for me to shoot the Choking Gas fairly close to myself so that I DB through it, right?

If that your goal for the Combo? Then yes.

Also… is it possible to use the same combo field for multiple finishers? Or does using a finisher remove the field?

So, for example, Choking Gas creates a poison field.
I use DeathBlossom which gives me a Whirl finisher that shoots poison darts.
Then I use HeartSeeker which is a Leap Finisher within the same field. Will that work?
Or would the Choking Gas be gone at that point?

If you can pull off multiple Combo effects within the normal duration of a Field, then they’ll all happen. Some of the Field last longer than others.

Considering that I hate D/D as a Thief, I honestly have no idea about how long the Death Blossom animation takes to complete. In theory, there will probably be enough time for you to activate both of combos that you’re describing.

Interesting. I will have to try this. Thanks for the info.