Guild Wars 2

Besides the fact that passive immunity to CC is pretty BS; who thought it was a good idea for this trait NOT to have an icon? There’s no way to tell when a Ranger has Shared Anguish up or not.

That is why you use a low risk CC on them to figure out if they have it.

Lets say you’re a warrior, since that’s the class that relies most on CC. What do you do? If you have a mace and want to set up a skullcrack, use pommel bash first to see if the ranger will be immune or if he’ll stealth. If you have a hammer? Well Staggering Blow can probably work for this. Shield Bash is pretty good too, if you have a shield.

Honestly it’s pretty standard practice to bait stunbreaks or anything that can ruin a CC chain before you actually use the CC. A lot of people panic and instantly react when they’re fighting a warrior, so they’ll use a stunbreak on a meaningless ability rather than the important ones. It’s best to assume initially that a player will counter your first skullcrack/backbreaker/earthshaker, even if you don’t know his build.

Not every class has access to low risk, easy to land CC. Even if every class did, that wouldn’t make it okay. Imagine if stability had no icon or any visual queue to go with it.

Zeon.8239:

Not every class has access to low risk, easy to land CC. Even if every class did, that wouldn’t make it okay. Imagine if stability had no icon or any visual queue to go with it.

The examples are not equivalent.

Stability persists for the entire duration, and with a few exceptions must be actively used. Stability is a boon which may be corrupted or removed.

Shared Anguish is an effect with an internal cooldown, that redirects only one CC. It can not be removed.

But besides that, what class which relies on CC as an integral part of their gameplay mechanics does not have a low cost CC? I mean, the only builds I can think of other than warriors than even use CC to any similar degree are necros and possibly engineers. Even those two are stretching it.

Thief Basilisk, unless they’re using offhand pistol which gives them access to headshot.

And Elementalist. With offhand dagger they have two CCs, both on 40 second cooldowns , and both important for setting up burst. With offhand focus, they have one CC on a 50 second cooldown that’s necessary to set up their burst.

Like I said, even if those weren’t valid cases (and they are), it still isn’t healthy. CC does play an important role in this game.

On the same note, Automated Response should have an icon as well; optimally one that stays on at all times (even when it’s not active). This allows players to better plan their counters to passive play.

I think there can be some excitement to not knowing what your opponent has; for example, those few seconds at the start of a fight when you don’t know what your opponent’s second weapon set is.

But in general it would be nice to see more clarity on hidden cooldowns. Note that the ranger also has no way to know if his trait is back up, either. In some cases, it probably hurts the ranger player to not know if he has an immunity up than it hurts his opponent. I think everyone would win in this case with an icon.

Seems reasonable to request an icon. It just adds a higher skill ceiling for those who know to look for it.