Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys and Gals,

Fairly new to Guild Wars 2 just trying to get a grasp of all of this fantastic game’s mechanics and I’ve run into a dead end on my research into comboing skills. I’m a level 20-something Warrior trying to find fun combos that I can do independently without needing someone else to set up a field skill for me.

Its apparent that I’ll be setting myself up with “Combustive Shot” until I get Beserker but I’m a bit confused in how combos proc from the field.

First off, “Whiring Axe” is a 3.5 second DOT with what looks like hits 15 times. If its activated with a 5 second “Combustive Shot” a Whirl finisher procs. causing bolts to shot out doing 1s of 131 fire damage.

Is this a single proc. on skill activation? A proc. once per second while "Whirling Axe’ is going? Or a proc. for each impact?

And second, Call to Arms seems like a great idea to get some really good Buffs down for my team. To activate it do I just hit (5) while in the fire field? And can I activate more than one finisher on the same field?

Example Engage

Throw “Combustive Shot” on an enemy then switch to an Sword/horn loadout, toss an “Impale” to get a projectile proc., do a “Savage Leap” for a Leap proc. then blow my “Call to Arms” for that sweet buffness.

Not sure if its possible to get multiple finish procs. on one field activation but I literally salivate at the idea of throwing this on someone in pvp. Heck if i’ve got time I may throw in a “Pin Down” for another projectile proc. just after the “Combustive Shot” before I switch to Sword/Horn.

most skill combos are kind of useless in pve for balancing reasons

the ones u wanna know are blast finisher combos mainly

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

At level 20 you don’t have to worry about combos too much, but it’s nice you have noticed. In practice only some combos are actually useful and not very reliable to use (because with more people you have little control over the combo field). Here are some of the more common combinations:

Blast finisher inside a fire field will provide area might. Might will significantly improve your damage output, so it’s good to blast fire fields as often as you can. It is also possible to prepare 25 stacks of might before the fight even begins, so you can start with maximum power (this is called “might prestack”). Elementalists and Engineers are the best at doing this, but other classes can contribute a lot to prestacking as well.

Blast finisher inside a water field will provide area healing. Some classes will learn this combination naturally, because you can enhance your healing capabilities. You will usually summon a water field when you’re low on health so you can heal yourself. If you have a spare blast finisher, you can then use it inside the water field to get some extra healing. Prime example would be engineer’s healing turret and druid’s staff 5+3 combo.

Blast finisher inside a smoke field will provide area stealth. This is usually used outside of combat in dungeons and fractals to provide stealth to your group. Even though it is rarely needed, stealth makes skipping mobs much easier. Thieves obviously have the best access to smoke fields and stealth, but other classes can provide them too (engi, ranger,…). You can also perform a leap finisher to give yourself stealth (mostly used in PvP), but bear in mind your group will NOT receive any stealth, hence why you should prioritize blast finishers instead.

Projectile and whirl finishers inside various fields will make you inflict conditions upon enemies. Fire field does burning, ethereal does confusion, poison does… well… posion. Some classes and builds will naturally incorporate these combos into their rotation (e.g. 5+4 inside reaper shroud for chilling bolts), but these will only have noticable effect if you’re running a condi build. If you have 0 condition damage and expertise in your build, you don’t need to worry about these combos, because they won’t have any effect anyway.

Some other classes and builds will have more, extremely niche combos (like leap finisher inside fire field for condi warrior to get fire aura and detonate it for extra damage), but the above ones are the most common. Seems like you have figured out most of the stuff by yourself anyway, I have complete faith in you that you’ll be able to put combos to good use. As you progress through the game, you will learn everything naturally.

For warrior self-combos, typically you use longbow F1 > LB3, which blasts area might. The 3 heavy classes are pretty light on the combo fields by design, where professions like ele, scrapper and druid live or die by combo fields.

One thing I didn’t see mentioned above is leaping into a waterfield will heal you (as opposed to blasting a waterfield which heals you and everyone around you.) If you see a waterfield and have a mainhand sword equipped, it’s a good idea to hop into it to top yourself off.

Other than the blast combos mentioned above, check out that wiki link because there are some niche combos like condi removal, weakness, blind, etc., you’ll be glad you knew about. That’s mostly a PvP thing though.

Thanks for all of the advice guys. Definitely cleared some things up for me.