Since we’re continuing to see “nerfs” to the visual effects of skills, I just wanted to raise a couple of points.
Presumably, these nerfs are occurring for the sake of clarity in group play – not only for PvP, but for group events in PvE and zerg fights in WvW. I’ll grant that some skills are legitimately in need of having their particles toned down (or, preferably, that we could have an effects slider implemented). However, the visual clutter that occurs during group is not only caused by the particles themselves, but also because of the rate that these skills can be used by players during fights.
Opportunity cost is a problem in GW2. Most skills have low cast times (even large AoE effects) and many weapon skills are on rather low cooldowns. Combat often devolves into a mess of skill spam and particles because very few skills actually discourage this type of rapid skill use. It’s fine to have some flashy particle effects in competitive or large-group play, but the scale of the particles should relate to the costs and benefits of using the skill, and not enough skills currently have appropriate costs to prevent the spamming of these particle effects. That’s not to say that all skills should have long cast times and cooldowns, but if a skill has a low cast time and/or cooldown, its power and particle effects should reflect that.
An example of a skill done right would be the Elementalist’s Meteor Shower. You’ve got flashy particle effects in a large area, but these are offset by a long cast time which can leave you exposed if you pick the wrong moment to channel it. Meteor Shower is a high-reward skill that requires some thoughtful use. You don’t need to be a genius to use it properly, but the penalties for spamming it on cooldown can become evident very quickly in a dangerous situation like a PvE raid, a PvP teamfight, or a WvW zerg fight.
An example of a skill done wrong would be the Engineer’s Grenade Kit. Here you’ve got a kit with many rapidly-casting, low-cooldown, low-risk abilities. These abilities have distracting particle effects and encourage skill spam from long range, leading to unnecessary confusion in team fights.
Here are a few other examples of flashy particles on skills with low opportunity costs (low cast time/cooldown, etc.) and/or skills that are disproportionately telegraphed for the impact they have on a fight (e.g. flashy particles for a weak/moderate effect):
Blaze Breaker (Berserker/Torch)
Ice Spike (Elementalist/Staff)
Thunderclap (Scrapper/Hammer)
Searing Fissure (Revenant/Mace)
Traps are another example of this for Dragonhunter, but specifically because of the recent change extending the maximum Trap duration to 5 minutes. This allows the DH to reliably double-set their very flashy Traps if they arrive at a location before a fight begins, and while most traps have the appropriate threat level and opportunity cost to justify these effects, having duplicate Traps filling up the screen can get messy quickly, and there’s very little opportunity cost for pre-setting Traps out of combat (so long as they recharge in time for the fight).
To sum up, visual noise would be less of a problem in the GW2 if there was a more consistent opportunity cost for using skills with flashier particle effects, and if certain skills with low power and/or opportunity costs in particular had their particle effects reduced to reflect this. While certain particle effects may just be too overwhelming in their current state, the skill spam that profession design has enabled is a significant part of the visual noise problem as well. Addressing skill spam is going to be essential for the health of GW2 as an E-Sport (if that’s still where things are going), both for the sake of clarity and for maintaining an engaging competitive balance between professions. I believe that adjusting the skills themselves should be given as much priority as reducing the visual effects, and that we should also at least have a slider option to compensate in the meantime.