Guild Wars 2

I get that you didn’t want us having too much clutter when we’re busy dealing with Elementalists, but is there a way to add more traits to status screen to see them or something?
Like to know when Panic strike is about to get off recharge, or the ICD on Arcane block and so forth?
I think as it is now, for optimal play (that I doubt anyone will bother to do because it’s too much work) I’d assume you’d have 3 stop watches or something to know when your trait is back up…

There is no profession with more obvious animations than an ele, you don’t need more help..you need to step up your game, at this point you really should make an ele and play it for an extensive period of time.

If I face a thief..I know the CD on venoms, steal and how many times you can use disabling shot in a row….because I made a thief and played with it

If I face a mesmer…I know the CD on mind wrack, duellist, chaos armor, decoy and mirror image…because I made a mesmer and played with it

If I face a necro…I know the CD of fear on staff, how plague signet works and its CD…because I made a necro and played with it

If you still ignore the conditions for the arcane trait to trigger , the CD of the utilities..you need to make an ele and play with it..because you obviously lack knowledge on eles..big times, reading wiki not enough

Pick one Arh.
You are
A: Trolling
B: Cannot read
C: in need of help.
This isn’t an Ele thread.
It’s about trait ICD’s and them being missing from the UI for you to even see your own ICD’s. Hence “needing stop watches”.

How long do you plan to throw yourself in front of a bus at the very mention of ele regardless of the context?
“I’d assume you’d have 3 stop watches or something to know when your trait is back up…”

Learn 2 read.

ensoriki.5789:

Pick one Arh.
You are
A: Trolling
B: Cannot read
C: in need of help.
This isn’t an Ele thread.
It’s about trait ICD’s and them being missing from the UI for you to even see your own ICD’s. Hence “needing stop watches”.

How long do you plan to throw yourself in front of a bus at the very mention of ele regardless of the context?
“I’d assume you’d have 3 stop watches or something to know when your trait is back up…”

Learn 2 read.

or the ICD on Arcane block and so forth?

I…can read properly, you’ve asked for the ICD on enemy traits ( along with yours ) to be displayed in big glowing letters on the UI bar, the reason you’ve made this thread is because your spamming rampage must have been stopped by the arcane block trait of an ele few mins ago…and you quickly run to the forum asking for Anet to implement something to tell you exactly when the trait is up…amusing..truly amusing

Or I play Ele as well and was using it as an example of skills that have ICD’s?
Again you cannot read properly because your clear bias has you assuming the worst.
If you think im losing sleep because of enemy eles Arcane block your full of it, it’s 3 measly attacks. That isn’t even a full dagger auto.

Why do you bother responding to arehundel? He has never done a single constructive post and nobody ever takes him seriously, don’t let him derail your thread.

ont; Knowing when the shatter recharge trait would proc could open so many possible strong plays. Right now it’s always ‘’oh, shatter recharge! What a waste!’’ or ‘’Oh, shatter recharge, kitten yeah!’’ with no real strategy in it.

Oni.5429:

Why do you bother responding to arehundel? He has never done a single constructive post and nobody ever takes him seriously, don’t let him derail your thread.

ont; Knowing when the shatter recharge trait would proc could open so many possible strong plays. Right now it’s always ‘’oh, shatter recharge! What a waste!’’ or ‘’Oh, shatter recharge, kitten yeah!’’ with no real strategy in it.

What make you think I’d be interested in somebody who write such pointless remarks?, I don’t think anything coming from you can be worth reading…so you’ll excuse me if I keep laughing behind your back everytime you speak, your childish remarks are still quite funny in the end, you can be happy about it^^

To the OP, the reason why you’d want to know the ICD on your own trait is clear..the reason why you want to know the opponent ICD is clear to me also, you can keep calling it bias if you like

I will since I never said I wanted to see an enemies?
If that was important wouldn’t it make more sense to request their skills themself?
Anyways no point in repeating myself to someone who wants to tell me what * I* am saying lol wot, arrogance.

Oni thats what I’m saying. Our traits in certain parts are similar to skills in that regard. Sure for always active effects it doesn’t matter since there is no ICD. However otherwise situations where you may want to either retract or push forward since you know they’re up or down don’t come into play as consciously since sure you know when they’re down right after they pop but otherwise it’s unclear unless you’re using a stop watch every time one pops. Popping Panic strike on a guy at 10% makes no sense if you know its up and can instead have someone else pop the last health while you switch to immolize lock the necro.

yeah, it’s a nice idea, I just don’t know how they’d do it cleanly

Brigg.6189:

yeah, it’s a nice idea, I just don’t know how they’d do it cleanly

I would think they could just add it to the buffs/debuffs section. Or maybe on the other side so it’s not cluttered together.

Oni.5429:

Knowing when the shatter recharge trait would proc could open so many possible strong plays. Right now it’s always ‘’oh, shatter recharge! What a waste!’’ or ‘’Oh, shatter recharge, kitten yeah!’’ with no real strategy in it.

Exactly this.

This addition would be amazing for everyone who uses traits or rune/sigil effects with ICDs.

Maybe give each ICD trait the roman numeral icon, and put a different color hue on the backgrounds to differentiate between traitlines.

Not sure where would be a good place to fit them though…

this game supplies its players with the least amount of information in any game. No enemy health, no proper tools to determine DPS, traits and skills with vague descriptions. they have dictator control over their info and won’t be sharing it. don’t expect ICD info…ever.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

Ummm…you do know that you can just go to curse and download their cd trackers for Wow and copy it right? Someone who, in their spare time, made very effective cd trackers.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon.
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

I don’t think knowing the internal cool down of an enemy player’s move is important. But having your own displayed somewhere in a UI element that you can toggle is essential. There is just so much guess work in so many things in PvP in this game. What is my MMR? What is my dps? What are my internal cool down? What is the healing that this trait provides? What is the health of the enemy I’m about to attack?

Pyrial.2917:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

Ummm…you do know that you can just go to curse and download their cd trackers for Wow and copy it right? Someone who, in their spare time, made very effective cd trackers.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

good point

or if anything, just make them be something that can be turned on and off, just like the timers on skill cooldowns.

There’s already far too much UI obscuring my screen. How about making it so I can shift the location of the, already massive, UI we have first?

SteepledHat.1345:

There’s already far too much UI obscuring my screen. How about making it so I can shift the location of the, already massive, UI we have first?

This may be the most minimalistic UI I have ever seen in an MMO. What are you talking about?

SteepledHat.1345:

There’s already far too much UI obscuring my screen. How about making it so I can shift the location of the, already massive, UI we have first?

The UI doesn’t obscure the screen, we just have 1/2 the zoom out of anyone else.

I think the pressing CDs would be the traits. That would give maybe 5 timers you would have. They are very important. Worse thing to happen to me is to pop frenzy pref nerf to finish a target and then My auto quickness procs at the same time from grandmaster trait on 90 sec CD.

Evan Lesh.3295:

How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?

This is not completely related to the UI but, I think you guys should be more careful with cooldowns on traits, sigils and runes. There’s currently too many of them, imo. I can understand it makes things easier to balance, but I think they should be more intuitive. For example, I like the newly update traits that add 5s of vigor per critical with a cooldown of 5, because you know that when vigor ends, you’ll probably get another one the next time you make a critical hit. Those don’t need UI support.

But for stuff like generating shocking aura when disabled each 90s, I would love to see an UI for that. Especially one that would show the skill’s icon recharging much like it would in the skill bar. And preferebly, outside of condition/ boon section, which is already crowded with a lot of stuff, imo (and is too small already). I personaly don’t like to see trait effects in that section. You guys have decided to not implement a hex system exactly to not make players read each single icon, but then there’s signet icons, trait icons, etc.

felivear.1536:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon.
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

I don’t think knowing the internal cool down of an enemy player’s move is important. But having your own displayed somewhere in a UI element that you can toggle is essential. There is just so much guess work in so many things in PvP in this game. What is my MMR? What is my dps? What are my internal cool down? What is the healing that this trait provides? What is the health of the enemy I’m about to attack?

Quoting because it’s basically exactly how I feel.
Some more info on our selves would be so greatly appreciated.

Ty for the post Evan.
To that end I honestly cannot think of a single game that tells you enemy cooldowns, so I don’t know what reason there is to include enemy cooldowns. Not really a matter of skill but trumps. Kind of trivializes or marginalizes if that is the word encounters when you already know the Warrior still has X amount of time down on their stunbreak/heal/Elite whatever.

Also agree that going forward you should avoid more ICD’s though.

Well if space is the issue, you could always add: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Interface.jpg + resizing and moving options!

If the cooldowns are grouped under their type, e.g ‘sigil cd’ or ‘trait cd’, the player can enable certain types to show up in the (loot) list.

I think enemy CDs would be a bit overkill but would love to see something for traits like Kit Refinement for the engi, that would at least make it less RNG.

Personally, I think one of the biggest issues with ICD is the lack of knowledge about it… Most of the sigil ICD had to be determined via extensive player testing. When I first started playing GW2, I thought Sigil of Earth and Sigil of Strength had no cooldown.

Many of these sigils (Frailty, Strength, ETC) Still have no notification on them that there is a cooldown at all. A simple fix to these would likely greatly help new players.

EDIT : In a nutshell, a quick scan through traits, sigils, and runes to make sure all cooldowns involved were listed /somewhere/ in game would be great.

Seeing your own icds is a good idea. Course, there is no reason show short icds though just long ones.

Some easy options I’d use for certain traits and sigils:

Dodge traits: Blue bar over endurance that fills up and glows when dodge traits will function (kinda annoying for elementalists that have 4 cooldowns, though)
Weapon swap sigil: Blue bar over weapon skills, same idea.

Blue is an underused colour in our UI and would stand out well for these things.

First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)

Stop!

You guys have done a terrific job with the UI, keeping skill and player information centralized at the bottom center.

To continue this, ICD timers would have to fit near the skill CDs too.

My thought is, like you mentioned, little icons (no text) representing the activated ICDs. They would be the same size as the condition/boon icons, and have a spiral cooldown. These icons should be positioned fixed right of the boons/conditions, just above the elite skill, and should grow left and down. Hovering over the icon would show the text of what the ICD is.

^ I think something like that is the best idea. I’d start only with trait granted ICDs also, no items.

Lok.3102:

First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)

Stop!

You guys have done a terrific job with the UI, keeping skill and player information centralized at the bottom center.

To continue this, ICD timers would have to fit near the skill CDs too.

My thought is, like you mentioned, little icons (no text) representing the activated ICDs. They would be the same size as the condition/boon icons, and have a spiral cooldown. These icons should be positioned fixed right of the boons/conditions, just above the elite skill, and should grow left and down. Hovering over the icon would show the text of what the ICD is.

Someone employ this man to design UI’s.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Lok.3102:

First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)

Stop!

You guys have done a terrific job with the UI, keeping skill and player information centralized at the bottom center.

To continue this, ICD timers would have to fit near the skill CDs too.

My thought is, like you mentioned, little icons (no text) representing the activated ICDs. They would be the same size as the condition/boon icons, and have a spiral cooldown. These icons should be positioned fixed right of the boons/conditions, just above the elite skill, and should grow left and down. Hovering over the icon would show the text of what the ICD is.

Someone employ this man to design UI’s.

Yup, I like what you did with the sigil of intellect. When the sigil is active it appears with the boons, however with multiple ICDs the right hand side would make sense.

For other abilities not triggered by weapon swap, perhaps employing a greyed out timer over these icons similar to CDs would allow us to monitor them when not active.

This would make 90 second CD traits MUCH more functional too IMO

I like the minimalist UI, but some of the longer internal cooldowns of traits, perhaps anything >10 seconds, could be displayed just like other class specific buffs like Guardian Virtues or Signets (show up as a buff when its available, maybe a grey icon while recharging with a spiral cooldown effect).

It may be better if it was not visible on your enemies though – could be too much of a tell “oh that mesmer has Mirror of Anguish up”

I agree it should be done mainly with traits and maybe sigils with long ICDs >10 seconds (Sigil of Rage – are there any others?)

Evan Lesh.3295:

How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

I honestly think only the longer cd traits are needed, perhaps Portal too but that can just be a skill thing aswell(+the ingame countdown on match works fine i guess). And i think this could also be a big benefit for PvE/WvWvW people aswell.

What i’d rather see is being able to disable some things like: Interact on right click, the self casting if you hover your mouse over the target ui when using ground targeted skills(seriously i hate this so much)
Hide the “living story” thingy, hide achievement tracker
Make Conditions on myself bigger(!)

GW1 had a very customisable UI.

Some of my favorite things about the GW1 were parts of the UI. I could crtl click anything and link it in chat (e.g. crtl click health: “My health is 10 / 55”). I also like the little pictures comming up on the side that showed me a pic of what hit me.

Internal cd would be cool if it could be displayed in some way. Not on enemies of course, don’t want to miss out on your auto abilities procing because an enemy knows they are availible.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

Keeping some sort of marker for personal ICDs is certainly a plus, perhaps even necessary to help new players adjust easier. However, keeping tabs on enemy CDs is something that excellent players learn to do, and there is no need to make these more visible.

I still think that the boon/ condition section is too small, and the icons too small, to have it all cluttered with countless icons. If it suddenly started to gain new icons with a roman numeral representing their respective traits, it would simply clutter everything, and I would probably start ignoring it.

I wouldn’t mind for something more ambitious, like a redesign of that portion of the UI. Like adding all trait’s cooldowns (with a spiral timer) on the right side, using the same icons from their respective skills (example: shocking aura’s anti-disable trait would use shocking aura’s skill icon), and have them show at the same size as the profession mechanic’s icons, only decreasing in size if there were many of them. Then, in an extra row, that would stretch from the profession’s mechanic skills to that trait’s cooldown icons, there would be shown all the little icons for boons/ conditions/ other effects.

Something like:

[Row with small icons for boons, conditions and other passive effects]
[Profession mechanics][Upperside of Health + Dodge Bar][Trait’s cooldowns]
[Weapon skills here] [Lower Side of Health Bar][Utility skills here]

Or re-ordered in any other way. Second example:

[Profession mechanics][Upperside of Health + Dodge Bar][Trait’s cooldowns]
[Weapon skills here] [Lower Side of Health Bar][Utility skills here]
[Row with small icons for boons, conditions and other passive effects]

This 3-row format would keep information at the middle of the screen, and the extra boon/ condition row wouldn’t take much space because it would be based on small icons.

But what about that little section above utility’s skills with an arrow, where we click to switch utilities? That little graphical button could be at the button or at the side (somehow) of the icons, instead of above them.

Have moves highlighted for “in range” rather than the red bar.

Have individual sliders for each seperate UI for size rather than an overall UI customizer.

Show cast bars option.

I think for me that would pretty much cover it all.

How about small icons, like Conditions and Boons above the skill bar (meaning the left side skillbar), that become visable like the un-numbered cooldown’s on your skillbar?

This would take up no space, wont clutter anything,and just a matter of time for us to recognize the new icons and fit them to what trait they go too.

Just an idea

showing more cds will just make the game like wow and the cast bars
you should remove completelly the traits with icd, sigils dosent matter.

more importan than that, i will love to see the targets dodge bar, knowing how many dodges they have available will help.

Knowing the opponent’s dodge bar would be a very significant change. Not sure if a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that my playstyle would change and react more often based on that visible bar.

And yeah, I wouldn’t mind for 90s cooldown traits to be reworked to trigger on player’s activation (after using a specific skill) instead of being triggered by the opponent. Even if they kept the cooldown, I’d much rather control my shocking aura with a signet or glyph than on the first, and many times weakest, first hit. It would be more intuitive this way. Ooh, a four-aura glyph would be interesting.

I’d say that boon/ condition triggers and even trait’s passive effects should still be kept with small icons, on the section with boons; but traits that grant reactive copies of weapon’s/ utility’s skills should be shown with their respective’s skill icon and their spiral cooldown. The issue with that, however, is that they could confuse new players into thinking they were clickable skills, when in truth, they would mostly be reactive skills or condition/ boon triggers.

More UI options and customization will push the game into a direction where people don’t actually watch and play the game but the UI. GW2 has a very basic, slim and uncluttered UI, that’s what I like about it. I did a lot of LUA scripting on the WoW UI and customized it to death, it wasn’t really much about playing the game in the end. GW2 doesn’t need that, not even from an eSports perspective. You don’t have to be aware of every single (I)CD, just deal with the fact that they exist and use your brain. If they finally fix the combat log and redesign the way boons/conditions are shown so they don’t constantly move around, that’s perfectly sufficient. Don’t waste time on such an unnecessary niche feature.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

I suppose the possibility of allowing players to toggle on, or off whats on the display would be out of the question?

This would be a nice feature, but I think other things are at a higher level of priority at this point in time.

I like the idea of ICD being indicated by charge bars near their source in the UI. Dodgerolls being a bar near the endurance meter, OnSwap and on crit a bar each near weapon swap, but then you have to figure out what to do with runes. Perhaps ICD’s on runes could be a small charge bar under the main skill bar.

Anyway, I think “improvements to the UI system” (like making it customizable in the fashion of GW1) should all be thrown in a bucket now to be addressed later. It would be great to see all your ICD’s, but this is the least of the problems PvP has at the moment.

With regard to seeing enemy ICDs… No. You shouldn’t have that information.

I’m hoping to have a flexible UI in the future. Think of how Tera’s UI is malleable and changeable to at least some degree with transparency, placement on the screen, size, number displays, and so forth.

Personally, I’d love to be able to see all my weapon (or in my case, elements) skills. Even if I’m not in that particular skill set at the time because I’m able to keep a better track of cooldowns and simply see all of my spells so I can keep a lid on what abilities I have at my disposal. Also, we need to have better customization with boons/debuffs. For me, the size and placement of boons make it hard to really understand what is going on in a fight. I can’t keep track of what I currently am affected by, as well as what my enemy has. I’m not a big fan of the scrolling combat text in Guild Wars 2 between the way they scroll, amount of time shown before fading, and the style of writing used.

If we do not have the support or approval of addons that help give us these quality-of-life UI adjustments, then I feel that ArenaNet has the responsibility to supply us with the means to do so to a point. I should feel at home with my UI and not restricted or held back with its limitations.

A very nice idea. Altough i would much rather see more pvp/wvw balance/bug issues solved.

But i would like to manualy choose which of my ICS i want to watch. Something like
a checkbox when choosing a trait.
Dont bother with sigilis, they are too short.

No, don’t need such feature. One of the GW2 key principles is to play the game, not play the UI.

It’s not interesting to watch hundred CD bars and indicators and not to see the world around you (hello Rift with King Boss Mods and other addons)

Eley.1907:

No, don’t need such feature. One of the GW2 key principles is to play the game, not play the UI.

+1
Nor let UI play the game for you.

Eley.1907:

No, don’t need such feature. One of the GW2 key principles is to play the game, not play the UI.

It’s not interesting to watch hundred CD bars and indicators and not to see the world around you (hello Rift with King Boss Mods and other addons)

or how about you let the players decide with a toggle on/off?

if you want to see it you can, if you dont, turn it off. You can play without any UI right now if you want, seen vids of people doing it in WvW, doesn’t mean everyone should be forced one way or the other by a devs decision.

Jambas.6204:

Eley.1907:

No, don’t need such feature. One of the GW2 key principles is to play the game, not play the UI.

+1
Nor let UI play the game for you.

There is a big difference between having quality-of-life control over your UI and having features such as (those who are familiar with WoW) Deadly Boss Mods. We should have the ability to display important information that is very helpful in combat as long as it doesn’t make the player disconnected with the world and make it a necessity to have to play effectively. Flexibility is good.