Guild Wars 2

I’ve been perplexed by this a lot, and this is the best place to ask this:

Seriously, am I the only person that spends a majority of their time watching how many summons I have and what CD’s are almost gone when playing a mesmer?

I love my Sword/Sword-Staff shatter mesmer so much, but I realized that even though I play her very well and top the boards in sPvP games, I spend a majority of the game watching my cooldown bar rather than watching what is actually happening. Sure, I can mash keys of the skills I want to use in the hopes that it’s active, but more often than not, they aren’t because I’m using my rotation so quickly to shatter and rebuild clones.

I also can’t see how many illusions I have up just purely by watching the chaos on my screen when there are so many other players around me because they get mixed in, so thus, I resort to watching the CD timers/llusion bubbles more than I do the gameplay, which totally distracts me from how awesome the game actually looks. I feel like this might happen with the thief class too, with initiative, amirite?

That’s not to say I’m never watching, and I’m always dodging to make clones, etc, but I just feel like I spend too much time watching the CDs… Something like a WoW Add-on where I could render the illusion ticker or my CDs in the center of my screen would make me enjoy playing so much more. It sucks having to look far down on the left side of the screen to get the information I need. Does ANet have any plans to unlock the skill HUD or whatnot?

Am I alone with this gripe? Please, tell me if I’m playing incorrectly somehow, and what you guys do, because I want this to be my favorite class and love it, but my necro takes the cake sometimes just because I can watch more action going on…

Discuss!

I will glance down on occasion to check on a specific CD. Typically it is iDuelist and occasionally I’ll check other key skills such as distortion. However, that only takes a fraction of my time and could be compared to checking my speedometer in my car. My keys are all bound near where my left hand sits on my keyboard and on my mouse so all key positioning is memorized. That said, I wouldn’t mind having the readiness of those spells be positioned within my normal field of view. This was something you could do with addons back in the WoW days…

Phase 1: engage target, spawn phantasms, gain position, watch targets counter strategy.

Phase 2: utilize stealth, distance, and avoidance abilities waiting for offensive cooldowns.

Phase 3: repeat 1 and 2.

I dont really have this problem, i think :0.

I will ocassionally shoot a vey quick glance at long cooldown things to see which are up, but with short ones i kind of “know” when theyre up without looking. Like phase retreat, blurred frenzy, illusionqry leap… Sometimes even blink and decoy :P

I hate being chilled, it really messes plannig and my internal clock up >_<.

In really intense duels i tend to tunnel vission on CDs though…

Just the other day i was using mind crush vs a shatter mesmer, he was 80% health and i was sitting on 2k… I desperatly kited and chained dazes, keeping me on the edge of my seat… After 20ish seconds i was out of, well, everything. signet of domination was on a 3S CD, so i mashed the button in the hopes to get a last stun of and pull in a win. After 3 long seconds i finally use the signet….
… On a downed mesmer. Then i get shot in the face by a warlock.

Turned out he was downed like 4 seconds before i used the signet :P.

Appreciate the responses. I guess maybe I am the only one that has this issue. I play at Retina resolution, so all my bar is really tiny. Think that has anything to do with it? I would hate to sacrifice prettiness just to make my bar larger…

I have my rotation down, and my keys bound properly, so that not an issue. I just inevitably blow my burst, burning through my clones, and spend time looking at the CD timer for blurred frenzy/leap to be ready, and how many Illusions are up and set to be shattered/have been killed. 1v1 I guess it’s fine because I can see how many clones are up, but you put me in the middle of capping a point with all that mayhem and I quickly find myself looking to the bottom of the screen to check- clones can die at any second, ya know?

Maybe I’m just crazy.