Guild Wars 2

When I hover over certain weapon skills, a stack of two or three panels appears instead of just one. (Screenshot attached.)

What does that mean in practice?

It is indeed a chain attack. In this case the number 1 skill wich alternates through three different attacks.

Sometimes it is a finisher, doing a final attack and letting the skill go into a cooldown.-

A good example is the guardian gs skill 5: Binding blade.

When you use the skill it throws chains to foes around you damaging them over time during 10 seconds. In those 10 seconds the skill is replaced by the skill pull. It ends the 10 seconds damage prematurely but pulls foes around you to you.

The pull effect is a nice effect to get multiple ranged foes into melee range, but you always have to ask yourself if you can handle so many enemy’s around you cause it can overwhelm you. Besides that when e.g. fighting most champions, they can’t be pulled (constant stability) and your just ending you damage early and wasting your skill.

bottom line, in your case its just a spammable chain, but in many other cases its good to know what each step in the chain does.

The bottom skill is the first in the chain. Some of these chains are auto-activate, other are sequence skills.

Examples:

Your example: Slash —> Kick —> Pounce —> Slash —> etc
Automatically goes through the attacks and repeats itself. Hence a chain skill

Another example: Mimic —> Echo
If Mimic connects, then Echo will be available. Hence a sequence skill

In that case it basically means it’s an auto-attack that just keeps going, but instead of doing the same attack over and over it will cycle through all 3. If you stop attacking for a short time it will reset to the first attack though.

Ok, great. That explains it. Thanks, all