Guild Wars 2

Alright pubs and scrubs, the topic this time is:
Skill cues and you; why skill activation bars should be implemented

First we begin with what I feel is an often overlooked reason that warriors are a weak class overall. Conditions, right? Not this time, dirtbag. Warriors are the only class where each skill has an easily recognizable animation. If you add the fact that warriors only have direct approaches with their skills then you have the only class where you know exactly what they’re doing at all times. Commonly people say that 100b wasn’t a very strong build because it was easily dodgeable, in my opinion, this is why. Of course, people could still land combos because they would have to have some degree of tact when it came to baiting dodges and stun breaks.

Let’s move on to another example of easily identified skill cues: the hammer guardian. If you were put against a guardian you’d know exactly when to use your dodges to avoid being kicked around or immobilized. I know that when I was first playing the game I had a good feeling when I fought hammer guardians because it felt like I was actually playing the game. It sounds strange, I know, but it was the first time I felt like I understood what was going on and my success was directly related to acting on that information correctly. It felt good, man.

Dodging is 100% damage prevention. It’s a cool mechanic and I like the feeling I get when I used it well, but using it well is directly related to how well a player can tell what’s going on. It’s actually amazing how much ease of interpretation impacts the strength of certain weapon and classes as a whole when they have key skills which need to be dodged. I might not be a top tier player, but it’s certainly difficult to argue against the fact that most animations are both flashy/distracting and not particularly informative (which isn’t even including stealth). Have you ever had an ele blind you by riding lightning into your face while an Asura guardian golfed your sorry self off of a building? Feels bad, man.

Ok, hopefully some of you are still on board with what I’m saying, but what’s next? Well, we need to make combat easier to read, but how? Perhaps we could redesign all the skill animations? Even if we could/would it wouldn’t solve the Asura problem. For those of you who played gw1 you remember the progress bar that would appear under the portrait of a selected enemy while they were using a skill, that’s exactly what I had in mind for gw2.

I’m sure someone will post a list of skills which are easily identified. Just remember that you can’t ignore the fact that you also have skill animations which can obscure what your opponent is doing.

i already said “yes please” after reading 1st 2 lines of your post.

I support this OR a standard race normalization option (i.e. turn all opponents into humans, similar to color normalization options).

Take a class with animation tells, roll the smallest Asuran you can, profit

Kavia.8249:

Take a class with animation tells, roll the smallest Asuran you can, profit

Just one of their many terrible ideas…

It’d be cool to have fixed, no doubt, but I’d rather see so many other things first, like real custom arenas (custom maps). Maybe setup private servers and have a small one-time/monthly fee to stay in the same one after 30~mins, or create one. That and player test servers to work out bugs/balancing kinks since Anet seems to be dropping the ball when it comes to those things pretty hard.

One small addition:

If this is implemented then someone needs to decide which skills should be dodgeable based entirely on reaction time. let’s assume that your standard player can react to a skill activation bar in .4 seconds.

Should you be able to react to all stuns?
Should you be able to react to only a certain number of stuns per class?
Should you be not be able to react to any stuns?
Should cast time be proportional to stun duration?

Stuns includes all redundant effects.
React essentially means “should any of these skills have a cast time greater than .4-.5 seconds?”

AllieMurdock.1785:

“People in the low tiers will always have trouble with something.”

Sure, but we still need to consider how the new player experience is going to be. Particularly when it comes to Thieves.

Thought I’d put this quote here not only because I’m a huge self-necro, but I think that the idea of this thread is directly related to the new player experience.

I want skill bars because many skill ques are small animations that can be hard to read.

I liked my GW1 ranger, no pet, 100% interupts. You could interupt peoples normal attacks if you were fast enough. Instant cast skills that would not stun or daze, just interupt.

Cast bars could be helpfull. But as you said, how much should be skill and how much should be looking at a bar filling up to decide if you should interupt or not.

Also look at the effects on different classes. Ele for example, if the bar is taking a long time to fill its a big fella (churning, meteror shower, dragons tooth etc. just examples you should probably know what these are buy the animation)

In other words, what is needed are the features GW1 has + dodge rolling.
Btw, the GW1 ranger has had such a wide array of extremely diverse and viable builds (from touchers to pure turrets) over the years that it is rather disappointing to see how they’ve been reduced to a cheesy pet master/trapper in GW2…………

This is something I have been strongly advocating for awhile. I always found fighting a warrior enjoyable. More glassy S/D eles would be in this category as well. Hammer guardians are also pretty good if it weren’t for sigil of energy breaking the need to manage defensive resources well.

Builds with better skill cues encourage a higher level of interaction between players. Combat between specs like this just feel clean. However this is something I feel is lacking quite a bit for many other specs. Take necro marks for example. Huge aoe, unblockable attack without a real cue, plus they persist. Cast one of those and it is almost guaranteed to hit. That just turns the fight into two players playing at their own pace with minimal interaction. There is no real sense of ‘what can I do better’.

Personally I find part of this problem being a product of how much active defense can be stacked. A warrior can’t kill a guardian because their attacks can easily be interacted with. So to deal with a guardian you need something with highly reliable damage that is difficult to interact with. You see a similar thing with condition specs, the short spammable 3-4s condis aren’t effectively interacted with by condi removal and become the biggest players in a fight. So the issue becomes quite far reaching.

I agree.

The number of strong skills with decently visible / audible cues is not balanced throughout the professions.

“One small addition:

If this is implemented then someone needs to decide which skills should be dodgeable based entirely on reaction time. let’s assume that your standard player can react to a skill activation bar in .4 seconds.

Should you be able to react to all stuns?
Should you be able to react to only a certain number of stuns per class?
Should you be not be able to react to any stuns?
Should cast time be proportional to stun duration?

Stuns includes all redundant effects.
React essentially means “should any of these skills have a cast time greater than .4-.5 seconds?”

- In my own opinion all attacks should allow to be dodged. Same with blocks, one bad addition to the game is some attacks being unblocable.

But for that to work is necessary that animations be clear and today that doesn’t happen.

silentnight warrior.2714:

- In my own opinion all attacks should allow to be dodged. Same with blocks, one bad addition to the game is some attacks being unblocable.

You don’t need to have every attack be so slow that it can be dodged. What you need is to have a balance between the power of the skill with how easy it is to identify and respond to it.

If something stuns for .5[s] then it probably doesn’t need to have a slow animation.
If something stuns for 3[s] then it probably should have a slow animation, or at least be slow enough that it becomes necessary to chain it with another stun from an ally.

One example I would like to bring up that highlights a bit of the interaction between abundance active defense and reaction time to an attack is how fighting a shatter mesmer plays out.

The combo of mirror image + mindwrack is outside reactable range, though it does have some criteria before it can be used. That being how close you are. So the situation becomes once a mesmer matches that criteria the opponent spams defensive cooldowns until they hopefully negate the burst. The opponent uses cooldowns before they see the attack, which is necessary due to the cue on the mesmer’s burst. But then because of a large abundance of active defense they aren’t really punished for not catching the burst either. Many classes can waste cooldowns without the burst actually being used and still have some left over for when the opportunity comes around again. Becomes too much of in X situation always execute Y. So both aspects of this interaction I would say are less than ideal at promoting an interesting interaction and that if the cue was increased the burst would become obsolete.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Should you be able to react to all stuns?
Should you be able to react to only a certain number of stuns per class?
Should you be not be able to react to any stuns?
Should cast time be proportional to stun duration?

For myself I think it should be this:
Stuns that are mainly used for interrupt purposes shouldn’t really be something that can be reacted too.

Stuns that are longer and used to get a burst through should allow reaction.

The distinction between the two would also depend on how much damage a class can be expected to deal within that window. So the distinction between a thief’s interrupt and a guardian’s would be different.

I don’t think standardizing stuns at 0.4s is best. Part of this is an assumption of adding in a casting bar, which I think is more like giving someone a cast rather than preventing the injury in the first place, just less ideal. With animations there is a bit longer delay before an attack becomes distinct from others and that depends on the quality of the animation. Then there is an opportunity cost based on cast time which is a way of distinguishing skills, which applies once you have entered a cast time that can be reacted to. So I could see it ranging for 1/2 second to even 1.5s cast time along with other effects to reflect this for the skills to be distinct from one another.

Player’s skill to interrupt is almost irrelevant when just about everyone in pvp use smallest asura model.

Fourth.1567:

Stuns that are longer and used to get a burst through should allow reaction.

The distinction between the two would also depend on how much damage a class can be expected to deal within that window. So the distinction between a thief’s interrupt and a guardian’s would be different.

I don’t think standardizing stuns at 0.4s is best.

The idea wasn’t for stuns to be standardized at .4[s], that number was my guesstimate for a minimum cast time to allow for reaction by the target.

Re: classes having different stun lengths based on class
Every class can have big burst damage potential, except necro I think. So the idea that stun lengths should be dictated by class is flawed, especially if you consider that teamwork thing.

However, I do like what you said about allowing for reaction on stuns long enough to kill someone with burst.