Guild Wars 2

Super old thread, but i thought it was interesting that an Anet developer once commented on this! This is still something that should be implemented in my mind, or at the very least discussed!

We need to implement this so hard, so we can track passive traits as Endure Pain or Elixir S

Evan Lesh.3295:

Mods are much more flexible because people can pick and choose exactly what version they prefer. Since we don’t have that luxury, we need a catch-all solution. Or customizable UI.

Customizable UI? Where have I seen that before…Oh right!

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_interface

:P

On the main topic though…all cooldowns, so the people who can use them can, and the people who don’t feel the need, won’t. More information is better, it may sound like it would be an overload, but all this stuff is already there, just hidden in the background, and could be utilized by many players.

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:
1.How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
2.How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
3.Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
4.Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
5.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.

After two years, I can’t believe anyone hasn’t answered this yet…

1. To be as effective as possible, you must remember as many cooldowns as you can and inherently incorporate that into decision making and play. Things such as runes and sigils are pretty difficult to master, and I’d argue only a top level player could remember their CDs.

2. “Too many cooldowns” doesn’t really have much of an effect as you would think, and as a feature of the UI I would assume it would be available as an option. GW2 is already a game that has fewer skills than most other MMOs. It’s actually quite easy to learn your own class, but the main issue is the difficulty in remembering and incorporating that into your play. In other words, the lack of available information about cooldowns damages a lower-level players capabilities to learn about them, which is an even bigger disaster than information overload.

3. This is probably the most important of them all. To me, knowing what you’re opponent is going to do is tantamount to success. It can’t be understated how important this is. Enemies displaying their ICDs would be a BIG step to helping newer players become intermediate players.

4. I don’t think PvE would benefit in enemies having ICDs as much and that would hurt the fun of it. Personal ICDs would go a great way to helping players in PvE as much as PvP know more about their own class.

5. Dunno m8

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.

What pops in my mind is that icd are bad.
When a skill is too strong without icd change it. All these icd rampants everywhere just make the game randomadness.

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.

The ones that come to mind are the cooldowns we can’t see such as traits and runes.

Traits
Engineers rng condi cleansing trait.
Ele burn proc trait
Guard’s Zealot’s Flame trait (however obvious, players like to know when it’s expected to be up)

Runes
All traits with elite effects: Lyssa runes, Mad Kings, Kraits, etc
Vamp rune’s mist form (so we know they’re using vamp runes
Fire runes’s Fire Shield
Basically any rune or trait that has a cd over 30s

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.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

Dahkeus.8243:

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.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

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.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Yea, but if you do that, then you potentially have a lot of passive traits/procs that will show up which could cause a lot of clutter.

For example, let’s say you run a standard elixir variant soldier engi. You’ll have these ICDs to track:

- Evasive Powder Keg (10s)
– Aim-Assisted Rocket (10s)
– Hidden Flask (40s)
– Protection Injection (5s)
– Transmute (15s)
– Self-Regulating Defenses (60s)
– Stimulant Supplier (10s)
– Reactive Lenses (40s)
– Lock On (20s)
– Kinetic Charge (20s)

And that’s just from traits. Add runes/sigils and you have:

- Sigil of Intelligence (9s)
– Sigil of Energy (9s)
– Strength Runes might when struck (5s)

That’s a lot of crap to have on your UI when you may only really care about just Kinetic Charge or Self-Regulating Defenses…

Dahkeus.8243:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

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.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Yea, but if you do that, then you potentially have a lot of passive traits/procs that will show up which could cause a lot of clutter.

For example, let’s say you run a standard elixir variant soldier engi. You’ll have these ICDs to track:

- Evasive Powder Keg (10s)
– Aim-Assisted Rocket (10s)
– Hidden Flask (40s)
– Protection Injection (5s)
– Transmute (15s)
– Self-Regulating Defenses (60s)
– Stimulant Supplier (10s)
– Reactive Lenses (40s)
– Lock On (20s)
– Kinetic Charge (20s)

And that’s just from traits. Add runes/sigils and you have:

- Sigil of Intelligence (9s)
– Sigil of Energy (9s)
– Strength Runes might when struck (5s)

That’s a lot of crap to have on your UI when you may only really care about just Kinetic Charge or Self-Regulating Defenses…

I was not talking about all traits, someone suggested before something like lets say traits with 30s cd, or stuff like this… Imo everybody know which traits are game-changing and which no, so this traits are the ones that need to be tracked, for example Plague Sending proc, Endure Pain, Mist Form, etc, so unless you run with full passive proc traits, you are not going to have more than 2/3 extra icons

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

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.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Yea, but if you do that, then you potentially have a lot of passive traits/procs that will show up which could cause a lot of clutter.

For example, let’s say you run a standard elixir variant soldier engi. You’ll have these ICDs to track:

- Evasive Powder Keg (10s)
– Aim-Assisted Rocket (10s)
– Hidden Flask (40s)
– Protection Injection (5s)
– Transmute (15s)
– Self-Regulating Defenses (60s)
– Stimulant Supplier (10s)
– Reactive Lenses (40s)
– Lock On (20s)
– Kinetic Charge (20s)

And that’s just from traits. Add runes/sigils and you have:

- Sigil of Intelligence (9s)
– Sigil of Energy (9s)
– Strength Runes might when struck (5s)

That’s a lot of crap to have on your UI when you may only really care about just Kinetic Charge or Self-Regulating Defenses…

I was not talking about all traits, someone suggested before something like lets say traits with 30s cd, or stuff liek this… Imo everybody know which traits are game-changing and which no, so this traits are the ones that need to be tracked, for example Plague Sending proc, Armor of Earth, etc, so unless you run with full passive proc traits, you are not going to have more than 2/3 extra icons

But where do you draw the line? As someone mentioned above, the guard’s Radiant Fire is a really important one, but its only on a 10 s CD. That’s one reason the option to select which ones you want is really appealing.

Would love personal ICDs of traits, runes and sigils.

Don’t care about enemies’ ICDs – I think it’s better to keep those hidden just like their skill cooldowns which encourages thoughtful play (ie being hit by nightmare rune fear, knowing 1 minute till the next time).

Salamander.2504:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

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.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Yea, but if you do that, then you potentially have a lot of passive traits/procs that will show up which could cause a lot of clutter.

For example, let’s say you run a standard elixir variant soldier engi. You’ll have these ICDs to track:

- Evasive Powder Keg (10s)
– Aim-Assisted Rocket (10s)
– Hidden Flask (40s)
– Protection Injection (5s)
– Transmute (15s)
– Self-Regulating Defenses (60s)
– Stimulant Supplier (10s)
– Reactive Lenses (40s)
– Lock On (20s)
– Kinetic Charge (20s)

And that’s just from traits. Add runes/sigils and you have:

- Sigil of Intelligence (9s)
– Sigil of Energy (9s)
– Strength Runes might when struck (5s)

That’s a lot of crap to have on your UI when you may only really care about just Kinetic Charge or Self-Regulating Defenses…

I was not talking about all traits, someone suggested before something like lets say traits with 30s cd, or stuff liek this… Imo everybody know which traits are game-changing and which no, so this traits are the ones that need to be tracked, for example Plague Sending proc, Armor of Earth, etc, so unless you run with full passive proc traits, you are not going to have more than 2/3 extra icons

But where do you draw the line? As someone mentioned above, the guard’s Radiant Fire is a really important one, but its only on a 10 s CD. That’s one reason the option to select which ones you want is really appealing.

Exactly. If you, for example, choose a 30 sec threshold, then the engineer will see the cooldown for Hidden Flask, which is pretty inconsequential, but they won’t be able to see Kinetic Charge.

If you set it to 20 seconds, then you can see Kinetic Charge, but what if the engineer wants to run Thermobaric Detonation for tracking their blast finisher? That requires them to watch the 10 second ICD of Evasive Powder Keg.

And that’s only the engineer…you can find countless examples of stuff like this if you look at other professions.

Dahkeus.8243:

Exactly. If you, for example, choose a 30 sec threshold, then the engineer will see the cooldown for Hidden Flask, which is pretty inconsequential, but they won’t be able to see Kinetic Charge.

If you set it to 20 seconds, then you can see Kinetic Charge, but what if the engineer wants to run Thermobaric Detonation for tracking their blast finisher? That requires them to watch the 10 second ICD of Evasive Powder Keg.

And that’s only the engineer…you can find countless examples of stuff like this if you look at other professions.

Thats why i was not totally agreeing to the only rule of “longer than 30s cd”, but theres some traits (like TD), that you can personally track cause 10s mental countdown are affordable imo. Also , unless you spam a Toolbelt skill right after a dodge, you can easily track it (I get the example, but this trait actually ahs a good UI track).

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Exactly. If you, for example, choose a 30 sec threshold, then the engineer will see the cooldown for Hidden Flask, which is pretty inconsequential, but they won’t be able to see Kinetic Charge.

If you set it to 20 seconds, then you can see Kinetic Charge, but what if the engineer wants to run Thermobaric Detonation for tracking their blast finisher? That requires them to watch the 10 second ICD of Evasive Powder Keg.

And that’s only the engineer…you can find countless examples of stuff like this if you look at other professions.

Thats why i was not totally agreeing to the only rule of “longer than 30s cd”, but theres some traits (like TD), that you can personally track cause 10s mental countdown are affordable imo. Also , unless you spam a Toolbelt skill right after a dodge, you can easily track it (I get the example, but this trait actually ahs a good UI track).

I think you are a bit too assumptive that everyone sees what ICDs are manageable and which ones are important as much as you do…

Dahkeus.8243:

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Exactly. If you, for example, choose a 30 sec threshold, then the engineer will see the cooldown for Hidden Flask, which is pretty inconsequential, but they won’t be able to see Kinetic Charge.

If you set it to 20 seconds, then you can see Kinetic Charge, but what if the engineer wants to run Thermobaric Detonation for tracking their blast finisher? That requires them to watch the 10 second ICD of Evasive Powder Keg.

And that’s only the engineer…you can find countless examples of stuff like this if you look at other professions.

Thats why i was not totally agreeing to the only rule of “longer than 30s cd”, but theres some traits (like TD), that you can personally track cause 10s mental countdown are affordable imo. Also , unless you spam a Toolbelt skill right after a dodge, you can easily track it (I get the example, but this trait actually ahs a good UI track).

I think you are a bit too assumptive that everyone sees what ICDs are manageable and which ones are important as much as you do…

I have said that “in my opinion” the 10s traits are affordable, and i’ve not stated anything about which traits are more important, but of course the best way to solve this is to work on this UI and track some traits, and then just do some feedback about it, so finally we can take an unanime decision

I would like to see vamp rune mist cooldown and some thief trait cooldowns. Also memser traits since iam switching from garbage to power.

I bumped the thread but i did not yet state my opinion.

I would love to see all icds over a certain cooldown’ for example 10 seconds. I am not exactly certain how these would best be presented but off the top of my head, i think of a kind of list of icons (for exanple the icon or the rune or trait) to the left of the screen with a cooldown timer on it. The Icons are grouped in sets: one group with trait cooldowns, one with Rune cooldowns and one with skills (portal background cooldown, the time left on a two part skill lke Flanking strike).

Each of the groups would have a small arrow button adjacent to it that allows the player to minimize each group individually- there are prpbably some players in PVE and such who wouldn’t need the cooldowns.

This way we can keep track of out abilities which raises the skillcap in the game. At the same time, it removes some of the clutter from the condition bar since skills such as portal or shadow return would appear in their own location to the left- which is more logical anyway!

In terms of enemies cooldowns, i don’t see why. I can’t think of a single other game that does it anyhow. However, a small QoL change would in my opinion be to move the skill effects from the enemy’s condition bar in the UI to the left of their character portrait ( when you have them targeted).

Lastly, something i would like to ask the forum users as well as the developers: what do you think about showing enemy cast/channel bars?

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?
Naturally you should know every ICD you have to play most effectively, although some ICDs are less important to pay attention to such as trait ICDs, Sigils and Runes. This is because these procs are usually either a.) too much of a burden to keep track of while you’re executing your strategy to win (No visual indication of when they’ll be up again) AND/OR b.) Not worth trying to time with other abilities if said ability also includes RNG proc after its off ICD

How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Some players prefer having a short list of abilities they can frequently use to their advantage while other players prefer a multitude of abilities at their disposal, it really comes down to personal preference on how many is too many or too little.

Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
This depends on the skill being executed, you should determine how quickly the skill can be executed(cast time), how effective the skill being cast is vs you and how available the skill is. Some skills can be avoided via reacting accordingly to a skills animation, knowing a skills ICD which can be avoided via reacting accordingly is not as important as knowing an instant cast skills ICD. Skills like “steal” must be anticipated at almost “random” since the cast time is instant and available immediately off cooldown, there is no other indications such as a weapon swap which might inform you of when a skill like this can be used. This is where knowing an ICD becomes much more important, some sort of indication of when skills like this were available would be nice

Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
This depends on how hardcore PvE gets, I would love to see encounters which took a solid understanding of X enemy’s combat mechanics in order to succeed

Where could this UI live?
*A few ideas on how to portray when a spell is off ICD:

unique auras surrounding,*
-targets feet( http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n375/N1gel/dugg.jpg)

-Surrounding targets body (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140824173131/lookout/images/5/51/288772-super_saiyan_2_veigto.jpg)

*I also think a very easy to see stance could work as well, perhaps shown once in combat.

What about adding an enhanced animation to a skill if it would also proc a trait? You could show that a trait is off cd with the swing of a weapon signaling that x trait is going to proc woth that next weapon swing.*

Evan Lesh.3295:

Mods are much more flexible because people can pick and choose exactly what version they prefer. Since we don’t have that luxury, we need a catch-all solution. Or customizable UI.

GW1 had a pretty much fully customizable UI. Not sure why GW2 has one that’s pretty much completely uncustomizable.

Grimreaper.5370:

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?
Naturally you should know every ICD you have to play most effectively, although some ICDs are less important to pay attention to such as trait ICDs, Sigils and Runes. This is because these procs are usually either a.) too much of a burden to keep track of while you’re executing your strategy to win (No visual indication of when they’ll be up again) AND/OR b.) Not worth trying to time with other abilities if the ability also includes random proc after its off ICD

How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Some players prefer having a short list of abilities they can frequently use to their advantage while other players prefer a multitude of abilities at their disposal, it really comes down to personal preference on how many is too many or too little.

Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
This depends on the skill being executed, you should determine how quickly the skill can be executed(cast time), how effective the skill being cast is vs you and how available the skill is. Some skills can be avoided via reacting accordingly to a skills animation, knowing a skills ICD which can be avoided via reacting accordingly is not as important as knowing an instant cast skills ICD. Skills like “steal” must be anticipated at almost “random” since the cast time is instant and available immediately off cooldown, there is no other indications such as a weapon swap which might inform you of when a skill like this can be used. This is where knowing an ICD becomes much more important, some sort of indication of when skills like this were available would be nice

Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
This depends on how hardcore PvE gets, I would love to see encounters which took a solid understanding of X enemy’s combat mechanics in order to succeed

Where could this UI live?
*A few ideas on how to portray when a spell is off ICD:

unique auras surrounding,*
-targets feet( http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n375/N1gel/dugg.jpg)

-Surrounding targets body (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140824173131/lookout/images/5/51/288772-super_saiyan_2_veigto.jpg)

I don’t like the auras, the screen will get VERY cluttered with those. In my opinion, one’s own icds should be shown in the UI in some kind of list configuration. Seeing enemy cooldowns is something i don’t see the need for. The only thing could be to show wether the opponent has his elite skill up i guess- that could work pretty well and be quite easy to implement (i think).

Lord Kuru.3685:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Mods are much more flexible because people can pick and choose exactly what version they prefer. Since we don’t have that luxury, we need a catch-all solution. Or customizable UI.

GW1 had a pretty much fully customizable UI. Not sure why GW2 has one that’s pretty much completely uncustomizable.

It might just be because they don’t want certain people to have an advantage in PvP because of some Mod. It is not a problem for me, as long as they work on implementing some options, such as the ICD thing (which there is clearly interest in by devs and players!).

It would be pretty awesome to have in time for Heart of Thorns as well as it would make the game look much more professional and “serious” which would attract more players from other games into PvP.

Keep in mind i am not trying to bash Anet for being slow here or anything, i think the recent changes have made PvP much more easily accessible for new players! Changes like the one we are discussing right now instead focus on keeping people interested in PvP and cater to dedicated high skill players who want to optimizing their play.

PS. I don’t know anything about marketing but i feel like Anet should use the WTS to market Heart of Thorns PvP. It would be much more attractive to a PvPer from the outside if they see that Guild Wars 2 has competitive sponsored LAN tournaments. However, they might already be doing this, i don’t know, just a thought!

Edit: the first part of this post is a reply, the second part is just some idea brainstorming.