[PvX] My blasts prioritize my combo fields
I agree on this. When I drop my fire field as warrior and blast, I want the Might, I don’t want the random condition cleansing from a guardian’s Light field when there even aren’t any conditions.
Combo fields put down by yourself should always be prioritized, yes!
Not even your own – I would like to see a personalised ‘combo’ menu where we can rearrange the priority order of fields on an individual character basis.
This would do things like create “water field blaster” groups, “might field blaster” groups and so on in WvW.
But yes, combo fields need work.
+1 to all 3. also 15 characters.
I agree on this. When I drop my fire field as warrior and blast, I want the Might, I don’t want the random condition cleansing from a guardian’s Light field when there even aren’t any conditions.
Combo fields put down by yourself should always be prioritized, yes!
Blasting a light field doesn’t cleanse condis.
I agree on this. When I drop my fire field as warrior and blast, I want the Might, I don’t want the random condition cleansing from a guardian’s Light field when there even aren’t any conditions.
Combo fields put down by yourself should always be prioritized, yes!
Blasting a light field doesn’t cleanse condis.
Yeah, it’s far worse. It gives retaliation. Shivers
I wanted to make a similar post but here it is already. Good to see like-minded people. I hope the developers pick this idea up.
Personal combo field should prioritize over other combo fields. This would make combo fields a lot less frustrating and cluttering. Shouldn’t be too hard to implement I think?
Not even your own – I would like to see a personalised ‘combo’ menu where we can rearrange the priority order of fields on an individual character basis.
This would do things like create “water field blaster” groups, “might field blaster” groups and so on in WvW.But yes, combo fields need work.
+1
When using a hammer as a guardian, in PvE at least, my autoattack light combo field is actually the last I would want to blast :P
+1 to this
/15char
Will update once Path of Fire releases.
Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.
I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.
i.e.
List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.
I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.
Other ideas floating out there
- Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
- Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
- Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.
Jon
Self Priority is very important because entire builds can and are usually made around their own combo fields. Water Staff Elementalists, for example.
Time Based should be a second factor too, so that organized teams can coordenate their combo fields well. Meanwhile, as long as a Self Priority system exists, pugs shouldn’t screw you this way.
Another good thing about Self Priority, is that you have control over it. You can choose to delay your own combo fields if you wish to take advantage of your party’s fields.
They’re also both easy to understand, I think.
EDIT
Also, party’s combo fields should have higher priority than other allied combo fields.
Self Priority is very important because entire builds can and are usually made around own combo fields. Water Staff Elementalists, for example.
Time Based should be a second factor too, so that organized teams can coordenate their combo fields well. Meanwhile, as long as a Self Priority system, pugs shouldn’t screw you this way.
Another good thing about Self Priority, is that you have control over it. You can choose to delay your own combo fields if you wish to take advantage of your party’s fields.
All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.
Jon
Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.
As I pointed before, Guardian Hammer has an amazing 5s CD blast finisher that looks amazing until you realize you’re blasting your own autoattack light fields almost all the time (specially if you trait for symbols lasting longer, which is almost mandatory for the build) for retaliation, which is the most useless boon you can get in PvE.
Comboing with your own fields as a priority would just destroy the oportunity to blast fields that are long lasting enough to outlive your own symbol of protection.
I would vote for a pre-selected priority, with “own” being part of the list (which would probably make all the thing even harder to program :P).
If your build relies on setting up fields to deal more damage in PvE, but you don’t exactly care about the combo finish effects within them, it might be a drawback.
Like for example, a guardian will cast their symbols in PvE to keep their DPS in check, but they’ll still wish to activate blast finishers within fire fields over light fields, because at the current state of PvE, might is more significant than retaliation by a lot.
Of course, in this example, and I assume in many others, the player can built around it. For example, the symbol guardian can always put a fire field above their symbol with their utility skills. It’s also something that can becomes less of an issue with balancing or design changes for PvE, should retaliation-stacking become a viable strategy someday.
EDIT
Besides, there can always exist traits that make your combo finishers get affected by all stacked combo fields at once.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
Preset Method
Similar to a personalized list in that there is a prioritization of fields to activate but there are also presets.
Eg : Offensive; fire fields are prioritised. Defensive; water fields are prioritised. Cleanser, light fields are prioritised. Crowd control, smoke/frost are prioritised. Custom, completely personalised.
Pro: You get to decide, players who are not advanced enough to understand full customisation can easily see the offensive/defensive splits.
Con: Probably hard to implement?
Unsure: Should we prevent switching it in the middle of combat?
Infusion method
Weapons have an infusion slot which allows you to prioritise a single field type.
Pro: Simple to use, you only get to pick one priority. You can swap in combat via regular weapon swapping – eg 1 weapon has fire blasting, another has water blasting. Makes gear more customisable.
Con: Yet another infusion slot.
Unsure: How would we handle dual wielders?
(edited by fadeaway.2807)
I see no drawback at setting self-priority.
If you want to finish into your field, you drop it down.
If you want to finish into an ally’s field, you don’t drop your field down.
Easiest and most straightforward solutions, yet the most effective.
I don’t know, sorrow. Hammer guardians suffer a lot from this. Blasting light fields is almost useless, yet that’s all they ever get to do. I’d rather ignore my own symbol field and blast my buddy’s fire field.
Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.
NO FIELD WARS 2 PLEASE, some classes do not have access to as many fields as others and it puts them at a disadvantage.
Question to community!!!!
Are you limiting this to blast finishers or all finishers
Which finishers to leap prioritize
Whirl
Projectile
To play devil’s advocate, this is a slippery slope you would likely need to do for ALL finishers AND that would make the system very complex.
When I think about this, I think that a choose your own system would be far to complicated and that a player / time system is the most appropriate if it can be done right.
I remember a time in WvW when re-prioritizing that party members were prioritized over nearest player for boon sharing, I think my game slowed down a bit there….
Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.
This sounds great although I think it’s wishful thinking. Having multiple combo fields activated at the same time is too strong. There are 9 different fields with 4 different blast finishers (some overlapping of course). For example, think of the implications in PvP where capturing points is the main objective. Everyone would just cast all their combo fields on the points and things would become overwhelming.
I think we need to stay close to the current situation, where one combo field is activated at the time. The problem is there are useful skills (such as Symbol of Protection and Black Powder) which create not so useful combo fields. This is where we need to find a solution.
(edited by Noah.4756)
Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.
I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.
i.e.
List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.
Other ideas floating out there
- Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
- Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
- Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.
Jon
No
I do not see how you will ever be put in a situation where your personalized priority list will ever be a negative. There will be a consistent internal logic that you, the person who set the priority list, will understand fully and thus can adapt to it. This is even moreso in the case of “fields you create take priority”, you simply do not create a field untill you are ready to combo in it.
This is even moreso in the case of “fields you create take priority”, you simply do not create a field untill you are ready to combo in it.
This would be true if the sole purpose of the combo field is to use it for the combo finisher. But many of the combo fields are skills that do damage and are placed regardless of the combo field effect. For example, guardian’s hammer auto-attack automatically places a Symbol of Protection every 3 seconds which overwrites the Elementalist’s fire fields to blast might.
As a frequent player myself I would prefer the ‘List Method’. Perhaps it could be added to the General Options tab under Combat/Movement. The biggest disadvantage I see with this is that there are so many different combo’s (9 combo fields and 4 combo finishers). It will become a very complicated list which could cause confusion among players.
I don’t know, sorrow. Hammer guardians suffer a lot from this. Blasting light fields is almost useless, yet that’s all they ever get to do. I’d rather ignore my own symbol field and blast my buddy’s fire field.
Often I prefer to run a class that relies/promotes combo fields and blasts. If I go in a party and there is a hammer guardian or a guardian in general, most of the time I swap to a different class/playstyle altogether because dealing with fields is too much of a hassle. Perma light field is hurting not only the guardian but everyone running with him. I suggest changing guardian hammer auto-attack to a symbol that is NOT a combo field. This would be a major change and deserves a thread of it’s own.
Because it will be a huge turn off for the 99% of the playerbase who just want to have fun and aren’t going to fiddle with something like that.
Although I think an option for “prioritize self” vs. “normal (current)” combo finishers, with the default set to the current method, would probably be OK.
No
I do not see how you will ever be put in a situation where your personalized priority list will ever be a negative. There will be a consistent internal logic that you, the person who set the priority list, will understand fully and thus can adapt to it. This is even moreso in the case of “fields you create take priority”, you simply do not create a field untill you are ready to combo in it.
You completely ignored any other post being made. There are several examples why this could be bad. A very good one was hammer guardian. The auto attack chain gives a light field. Do you want the guardian to be allways blasting his light field for some retaliation you will most likely not need for PvE?
There should be more predictable rules to what field will be blasted but this is not the way to do it…
Maybe they could implement a possibility to get off blast finishers of certain fields, just like some projectile finishers have a certain % to trigger. For example the guardian hammer auto attack has a 20% to trigger, while a lava font has 40%, water fields (respecting the duration of the field) will have something around 80-100%?
In general I would give the higher cooldown / low duration fields a higher % to trigger.
This won’t make anyone happy neither and has just as many flaws as the suggested idea, so I would be careful with those values for every field.
I don’t know. While i’m as annoyed as anyone when i get retaliation when the zerg is trying to stack swiftness, or aoe heals when we’re packing up might before a fight, i think this is one of the few mechanics that provides a downside to the “stack & dump aoe” technique.
I feel like the wrong field blasting is serving some purpose. In a small group situation like a dungeon, it’s lack of coordination, your own fault. In a large group situation, it’s probably the only price you have to pay for getting all other advantages.
Save the Bell Choir activity!
Caution with this one, I usually run into two situations:
- Water Fields example: When I WvW, most people will want to blast my water fields so they can get self-healed. This triggers the following situation: If I didn’t drop any field (e.g. I’m a warrior) and blast on top of this water+dark fields that were dropped in the same place, which should apply?
- Fire Fields example: When I’m doing dungeons or even in WvW there may be cases where the zerg I’m with will ask for fire fields to stack up might for the next choking point (i.e. where zergs crash into each other). This triggers the same situation above: If I dropped my fire fields and someone else dropped a water field, which one would take priority for OTHER people? Last one dropped?
There are several examples why this could be bad. A very good one was hammer guardian. The auto attack chain gives a light field. Do you want the guardian to be allways blasting his light field for some retaliation you will most likely not need for PvE?
This is why a change to fields and finishers should come along with a re-balance of the respective effects, especially for PvE.
It doesn’t happen that often, but not prioritizing self-laid combo fields is very bad for dagger/pistol thieves who are designed to gain stealth primarily by heartseeker leap finishers through their black powder smoke fields.
While it’s a little sad that guardians would not always get a little might from random fire fields (there’s no reason to have symbols down while stacking might), that’s far less significant than a thief randomly not having access to stealth in combat, which is crippling.
And, of course, in the current state of the game guardians (and other classes) aren’t always getting might from fire fields already, so prioritizing self-laid fields isn’t creating a new problem it’s merely reshaping it while making life much better for classes designed to self-combo.
Note this discussion applies to all finishers, not just blast.
Edit: Finisher’s combo’ing with every field in it’s area of effect would solve everything, but sounds like it would create a ridiculous combo field stacking meta.
(edited by Aeden.5896)
Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.
I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.
i.e.
List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.
Other ideas floating out there
- Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
- Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
- Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.
Jon
Self Priority is first because it gives you a guarantee that the self-combo you had planned with your build activates. Preparing the right build for the right situation is a big part of the game and should be treated as a most important aspect.
Follow the plan and only improvise when things get rough
Improvise meaning using your ally’s Field instead. If things got rough, I would consider it skilled play to move to that small corner where my Field and my ally’s Field do not overlap just to use their Field. If my Field completely covers my ally’s, then I would consider it skilled play to know not to put down my Field when there is a better one down there. Besides, if i put down a Field, I have the intention of using it, so even if I do not get to use my ally’s Field, I get the expected result i planned beforehand.
Time Based Priority comes out second because with a “least recent” method, you can be sure of what you are comboing with as well, which I believe is what we currently have as system. I would say a “most recent” method is worse than a “least recent”. Players overwriting say a Water Field with a Light Field is frowned upon by many. You can already hear Commanders expressing their frustration on Teamspeak such as “which of you idiots dropped a Light Field?”.
Fixed Priority comes out last even though it gives you a “best” effect out of the lot, so really you always come out with something good. However you may come out with an effect that you did not expect.
Even if you want to compare Water and Fire in priority, there is no saying which one should really take priority. Water technically should, as survival is more important, but if you Blasted healing 5 times while at full hp, compared to 15 stack of might which could make your enemies drop dead within seconds it is like comparing apples to oranges. Therefore, to decide on what takes priority over what is a decision that is sure to not please a good portion of players. Unless you can make an AI that detects my low HP when I Blast a Water on top of a Fire field to know whether to give me Healing or Might, this is dead last.
tl:dr
Self Priority = Everybody wins.
Time-based Priority “least recent” = I only win if I dropped my Field first. My allies should move out of my Field and drop their own elsewhere if they want their own Fields.
Time-based Priority “most recent” = I only win if I dropped my Field last. I am certain to anger my allies by overwriting their prepared Fields.
Fixed Priority = I only win if you decide to make an AI that can detect what kind of Field I should combo with when there are more than one available.
Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.
This. Able to blast up to 3 fields (of different types) at once, but with a diminishing returns system:
if #fields > 1, each field effect duration is decreased by 20%, cumulative, so:
- most recent field – 80% usual duration
- 2nd most recent – 64%
- 3rd – 51%
and/or…
Fields can interact, to form new fields, eg:
- fire + water field = steam field (cures conditions and grants regen)
- ethereal + dark field = void field (convert boons -> conditions)
- ethereal + light field = celestial field (convert conditions -> boons)
etc
Obviously wouldn’t need to be exhaustive.
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
Caution with this one, I usually run into two situations:
- Water Fields example: When I WvW, most people will want to blast my water fields so they can get self-healed. This triggers the following situation: If I didn’t drop any field (e.g. I’m a warrior) and blast on top of this water+dark fields that were dropped in the same place, which should apply?
- Fire Fields example: When I’m doing dungeons or even in WvW there may be cases where the zerg I’m with will ask for fire fields to stack up might for the next choking point (i.e. where zergs crash into each other). This triggers the same situation above: If I dropped my fire fields and someone else dropped a water field, which one would take priority for OTHER people? Last one dropped?
If you place a Water field and after that a Dark field, the water blast will apply, it is always the first field placed in the area that has the priority.
Fire – Water – Ethernal – Light
Will mean if you use chain blast where the fire field drop so some ppl blast the water and so on, you get:
Might – Healing – Chaos Armor – Retal
Someone say game crash must be related to OOM
when you read the log it’s not related to that whatsoever…
Prioritize own will only solve the issue for you. There’s still the situation where 1 player can put down a beneficial area and another a not so beneficial area and the rest of the 3 party members will still be unsure what they will blast (on top of that player #2 in this example is guaranteed to never blast the beneficial one). List is by far the superior option I’ve seen suggested here. Instead of one player messing for potentially 4 players (prio own) 1 player will only ever mess up for 1 player, itself. Granted, both options are still improvements and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to work in tandem. So for example I can have fire as #1 but also always blast my own first, so for normal use I’d blast might but for clutches I could throw down water and blast-heal.
Just go for the list method. But keep the current system of first field down is triggered for people who dont want to bother fiddling with it.
You guys are missing part of the problem.
“if priority becomes self”: Dropping fields above enemy fields is a kind of counterplay.
In fact, before teh nerf, the ONLY WAY to counter D/P Thiefs was to spam fields above their smoke fields to break their combos.
With the Self system, it won’t work.
“Least recent method” can also have issues based on that. Many WvW stacking strategys work based on field spam.
Any class with field spam can just cast a randon field below the zerg and watch the whole strategy go nuts because the least recent field is a Choking gass Poison field.
Plus, it doesn’t stop some Guardian of using light field before the water field.
IMO the current “Most Recent” method is still the best.
And lol to the multiple fields idea. Please bear WvW and the 80 players stacks in mind before suggesting that again.
You guys are missing part of the problem.
“if priority becomes self”: Dropping fields above enemy fields is a kind of counterplay.
In fact, before teh nerf, the ONLY WAY to counter D/P Thiefs was to spam fields above their smoke fields to break their combos.
With the Self system, it won’t work.“Least recent method” can also have issues based on that. Many WvW stacking strategys work based on field spam.
Any class with field spam can just cast a randon field below the zerg and watch the whole strategy go nuts because the least recent field is a Choking gass Poison field.
Plus, it doesn’t stop some Guardian of using light field before the water field.IMO the current “Most Recent” method is still the best.
And lol to the multiple fields idea. Please bear WvW and the 80 players stacks in mind before suggesting that again.
I don’t think you can use enemy combo fields.
Also your “counter” to D/P is bad. Even if they could use your combo field, what takes priority is the first field dropped, which would be their blind field and not yourse.
Just make fire fields have the HIGHEST priority
Would definitely help hammer guards, since swing #3 ruins the purpose of using it for blasting.
Just make fire fields have the HIGHEST priority
Would definitely help hammer guards, since swing #3 ruins the purpose of using it for blasting.
That only solves part of the problem though. There are other examples which don’t involve fire fields which still require attention. For example, Symbol of Swiftness going over Static Field where players want swiftness but will receive retaliation instead.
I understand the Listing Method will be the most complicated solution but it does have potential. Imagine having a new tutorial which teaches you how to use combo’s. Let’s say you receive a temporary weapon with 4 blast finishers and you need to finish a few tests. For example, follow the NPC to the hospital and use a whirl finisher on the NPC’s light field to cure the ill people. Upon completing the full tutorial you unlock a tab on your hero panel (next to utilities and traits) which gives an overview, in the form of a table, with the different combo fields and their effects when a finisher is used. This table can be customized to prioritize certain combo effects over others.
For a prioritized list:
Just have everyone play Dragon Age: Origins and set up full, working, Tactics tables for everyone in the party. After that, making a combo finisher list(s) should be pretty easy.
Joking aside, I would prefer self-priority, or a priority list. If its a priority list, I’d like to be able to set up, per skill, which finisher has priority with a given field.
I.E: Maybe I’d like Dagger Storm to Whirl finish Dark>Smoke>Fire>etc.
But then I’d like Death Blossom to Whirl finish Smoke>Lightning>Ethereal>etc.
Anyone ever asked for a necro to lay down a field to blast?
Or has anyone ever asked a necro to blast a field, ever?
just wondering and trowing it out there since there isn’t a mention of any necro fields in any topic about it in the history of gw2..^^
And i even would suggest that it’s mostly necro’s covering fields with theirs.
~subtle hint~
E.A.D.
Does anyone have any other suggestions in the format Jon hinted at?
Let’s look at fixed lists.
The most useful setup for WvW will probably be:
Blast:
Fire>Water>Ice>Lightning>Light>Etereal>Poison>Smoke>Dark
Leap:
Water>Smoke>Lightning>Ethereal>Ice>Fire>Light>Dark>Poison
Projectile:
Ethereal>Light>Fire>Ice>Dark>Water>Poison>Lightning>Smoke
Whirl:
Ethereal>Dark>Light>Fire>Ice>Water>Poison>Lightning>Smoke
Now, let’s simply assume, this is the order, which was set and the whole zerg is running this order.
Enemy contact, zerg fight rolling back and forth, LBow warrior throws a f1 for massive damage, enemy zerg runs out, commander wants to regroup.
Keep in mind that fire field on the ground. With the current system, they could simply ignore it, throw their own water field on top of it and begin to heal, because the water field would then take priority.
However, the problem is not solved by switching up the order, a ranger desperately needing his self heal(which is tied to a water field) might screw up your retal stacking or might stacking,
Speaking of retal stacking, if the commander actually WANTS to stack retal, things will get complicated with fixed lists. Having a fixed order would really mess up many situations, where long lasting fields are still on the ground from any situation, where their use might have been justified or not. Fact is, they are there and dropping your own fields on top of them won’t do any good. So zergs would have to not only avoid enemy fields, but their own ones aswell.
First field takes priority is a desaster, too.
The longest lasting combo fields are CPC, Hallowed Ground(10 seconds, traited 12 seconds), WoR(10, traited 12), Healing Spring(10 seconds), Well of Blood(10 seconds).
In a zerg fight, that is an eternity. How can you know, your commander won’t want to stack might, where you just used your healing spring to not die from the accumulated burning on you? As soon, as someone throws a stupid field, which happens to have a higher priority, the entire zerg will have to move out of this field.
In the current system, if someone throws a light field over your water field(for example a necro, using well of blood), there will be another water field at hand to clear the situation. Just overwrite it with something useful again and you are good to go.
With oldest field first, you might have to either wait 10 entire seconds or move out of the area entirely in order to get those blast heals. This means, communicationg the fact, you move out of the area because of a bad combo field to your entire zerg and hoping they follow through. And hoping, you got the time to group a second time and get blasting this time around.
My suggestion: First improve the current mechanic.
Own fields>party fields>rest.
Then pick the most recent.
If this is not enough, allow the player to group the fields in 2(read: TWO) categories: Wanted finishers and unwanted finishers. The game will try to trigger the ones in the “wanted” category before triggering the ones in the “unwanted” category.
If there are multiple fields of the same category, again, most recent field gets priority.
The mob has spoken and the turrets shall be burnt at the stake.
The biggest problem with comboing in this game is the overall level of ignorance in the community about it. Probably only 10% of people understand what’s going on when “Poison” or “Area Healing” pop up on their screen. And even among these people the spamming of useless fields is wanton. If I received a copper for every chaos armor or retaliation I have applied I would make Evon Gnashblade look like a Pauper.
As such, before we go all out and complicate the system even further, we need to do a better job educating the community on how comboing works, and what each combo field does. People need to be force fed through hearts or some tutorial (and not just a hint message) how each combo field and finisher works together. The fact that Guardians who play multiple hours every day don’t know what a light field is a massive indictment on the education system in this game and needs to be improved asap.
Professional Bag Farmer and Under Bridge Resider
Fields can interact, to form new fields, eg:
- fire + water field = steam field (cures conditions and grants regen)
- ethereal + dark field = void field (convert boons -> conditions)
- ethereal + light field = celestial field (convert conditions -> boons)
etc
I do like the basic idea of this, that by putting down several fields in one location, the effect when blasting/leaping/whatever on them would somehow bring enhanced effects, so +1.
I agree, this is very annoying for my Elementalist’s Persisting Flames build. A single guardian using symbol of wrath, thief using Black Powder or even a necro using wells can completely render my build useless.
I would recommend simply having ALL possible combos go off when somebody uses a finisher. For example, you have a fire field and a light field on top of each other and somebody does a whirl finisher. As a result, you get both burning bolts and cleansing bolts.
There are so many drawbacks to the whole overlapping fields thing. I don’t feel that allowing all combos to go off would be too overpowered, and it would promote things like stacking might in the middle of a boss fight with a fire field, without the Guardian’s hammer auto attack light field getting in the way (for example).
I like the idea of having all fields getting blasted at the same time, but it might possibly be too powerful (especially so in WvW with stacking).
How about adding a skill chain to the first blast finisher used in a time period, letting you choose the field you want to take advantage of on the fly? Here’s what I was thinking:
You activate (any) blast finisher skill. Instead of instantly detonating the combo field as it does now the skill temporarily changes your weapon skill bar, allowing you to choose from the list of available combo fields that you want to finish from (fields currently active at your location). Once you’ve made a selection the blast completes. For the next 5 seconds, your character gains a buff/status effect. Any blasts that you set off within that period will attempt to do so using the field you originally selected without further ado. Effects could be called basic stuff like: Power Hungry (for fire blasts), empathy (for water blasts), shirk (for smoke fields) etc.
Ideally this would be an interface option that you could turn on and off – “Advanced blasting” or something so that people aren’t forced to use it if they don’t like it.
Pros: Allows players to choose the fields they want on the fly. No more blasting the wrong field by mistake, unless you hit the wrong button.
Pros: Players now have a better understanding of what they’re finishing is doing, as tooltip information can be provided on the skillchain menu
Con: Slightly complicates the blasting combo, which might make it a bit harder to get out a full blasting combo on some classes (engie in particular comes to mind, though if BOB was used as the first blast this would probably work pretty well).
Con: Changes to interface could cause some confusion.
Con: If more than 5 fields were placed at once, you would need to manage this somehow – perhaps by hiding the less useful field options when more than 5 are present.
Con: Might be a bit harder to pull off in clutch situations.
There might be other downsides I’m not thinking of at the moment, thoughts?
/snip
Con: If more than 5 fields were placed at once, you would need to manage this somehow – perhaps by hiding the less useful field options when more than 5 are present.
There might be other downsides I’m not thinking of at the moment, thoughts?
Who decides which field(s) is less useful, though?
The blast combo finishing effects are: AoE: Blind, Chaos Armor, Frost Armor, Might, Weakness, Stealth, Retaliation, Healing, and Swiftness. Each of those has a place in various situations.
Secondly, how will you decide where they go on the bar? Will they have fixed positions, or will it be whatever is active goes on the bar wherever? What decides the order? Will Might always be ahead of say, Swiftness? How would you make this easily and quickly readable/understandable? How long can the person hold the blast finisher ‘charge’ before it expires?
Thirdly, what if you don’t really care what the blast finisher is; you used that skill for a purpose other than blast finishing? Earthquake’s knockdown for example. Does the player then have to take extra time to finish the combo before moving into another skill, thus effectively reducing the number of actions they could take vs the disabled target(s)? What about classes/builds like Short Bow Thieves that have a spammable blast finisher?
For your first point, I can only think to the different cases where you need to detonate fields.
I can’t think of any instances where I’ve ever needed to detonate blasts for swiftness, stealth, chaos armor, or weakness when I’m in a situation where I have 5+ combo fields on top of me, so I would suggest that dark, ethereal, poison and lightning fields probably ought to have a lower priority than the others. The 5+ fields overlapping condition seems the important thing here.
As for your second point, this could be handled a few different ways – the buttons themselves could simply represent the current fields in the order they’ve been put down, or they could be shuffled in a certain priority order.
As for your third point, I believe being able to disable the option would be sufficient for those classes not wishing to use the blast finishing attributes of their skills. As an alternate option, perhaps if you hold down the activation button (rather than press and release) the finisher menu could be bypassed? Or you could do it the other way – if you “hold” the finisher skill for a moment, you are presented with the finisher choice menu, otherwise the skill activates instantly.
It would be great for players to have a little more control in this area however it is done – what are some other ways this might be done, I wonder…
(edited by icewyrm.5038)
I would recommend simply having ALL possible combos go off when somebody uses a finisher. For example, you have a fire field and a light field on top of each other and somebody does a whirl finisher. As a result, you get both burning bolts and cleansing bolts.
There are so many drawbacks to the whole overlapping fields thing. I don’t feel that allowing all combos to go off would be too overpowered, and it would promote things like stacking might in the middle of a boss fight with a fire field, without the Guardian’s hammer auto attack light field getting in the way (for example).
The Problem with this is group stacking, especially in world vs world.
There was a time, when there were turtle zergs, stacking at one point and shooting down anything in front of them with concentrated ranged damage.
Granted, back then, arrow carts did a whole lot less damage, but the main thing is, it would not have mattered at all.
What they did back then was exploiting an oversight by the devs, where the heal on shout trait of warriors(and many other shout skills, but the most broken thing was in fact the heal trait) did not have a target limit, so 50 men standing at one and the same spot, while spamming “FOR GREAT- ON MY- SHAKE IT OFF!!” would be constantly healed by far more than any ballista or treb could deal damage.
With this change, we’d essentially get that meta back. 50 guys stacking atop 5 water fields, 5 light fields, 10 fire fields and a couple ice and eternal fields for good measure, so every blast heals for 5k, grants frost and chaos armor, retal, 25 might stacks, while every projectile heals for 5 conditions, inflicts 10 seconds of burning, 5 stacks of confusion and a very long chill.
It wouldn’t be good for dungeons either. You’d see even more stacking, this time packing as many combo fields as possible and as many finishers as possible.
The mob has spoken and the turrets shall be burnt at the stake.