Guild Wars 2

There doesn’t seem to be much talk regarding this little teamwork-promoting mechanic, and I thought it was due time for some discussion on the subject.

If you don’t know by now, Combos work by combining a skill with a “Field” effect (e.g. Combustive Shot from Warrior is a Fire Field) with a “Finisher” effect (e.g. Arcane Wave from Elementalist is a Blast Finisher). This adds some very nice flavour to the game as you’re encouraged to time your skills right with your party to get additional bonuses on top of what you’d normally get from your skills.

A list of all possible combos in the game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo_finisher

Now looking at this chart, I’d like to take note of a few combos I feel are grossly underpowered and are completely not worth spending the time to organize the teamwork required to pull it off. If the effects were improved, maybe people would actually actively try to pull off combos rather than just let it happen randomly when they’re using their normal skill rotation.

Blast Finishers:
The Blast Finisher combo effects are, as a whole, well thought out and very rewarding to pull off. I’d say the only flaw with these are the effects that cause some form of “Armour”, which are Light(Retaliation), Ethereal(Chaos Armour), and Ice(Frost Armour). These last way too short of a time to be of much use in a PvE fight due to their nature of being “on being hit” effects. Mobs and bosses generally have slow attack speeds, meaning it’s very likely that these effects will just fade away before activating even once. This isn’t even taking into account Retaliation being not a very good boon in PvE due to the lack of multi-hit moves on mobs.

A duration buff up to ~5s would make these much more effective at what they’re meant to do.

Leap Finishers:
These suffer exactly the same flaw as Blast Finishers in that the “Armour” effects last too short of a time to be useful. A buff up to ~7s would make leaping through a field and entering melee range more appealing.

Projectile Finishers:
Let’s be honest here, projectile finishers are the finishers most likely people would just let happen “accidentally”, so it’s sort of excusable for their effects to be sub-par compared to, say, blast finishers. However, the Smoke combo in particular strikes me as plain useless, due to the nature of the blind condition being completely(!) removed the moment the mob attacks. Remember that all smoke fields inherently cause a constantly refreshed blind on every mob in it(which really is the only practical application of blind) and cause enemy projectiles to miss, so extending the duration of blind is a very redundant effect.

Whirl Finishers:
This is the biggest beef I have with the combo system. Whirl Finishers tend to be just as rare as Blast Finishers, yet their effects are on par, if not much worse, than Projectile combos. First of all, every effect created from these send off bolts in /random/ directions that may or may not hit the target. On hit, they deliver the exact same effect as Projectiles would, which does not match up at all to the rarity and cooldown that comes attached with Whirl Finishers. I don’t really know how to fix this, but it definitely requires a rework.

TL;DR

Blast finishers are mostly good, “Armour” effects generated from combos need to last longer, projectile finishers have understandably(excusably) weak effects, whirl finishers don’t nearly have the frequency to excuse their weak effects like projectiles do, on top of being a random chance of hitting the mobs.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Tactics tree gives traits that boost longbow damage and range, where is logic to boost its minor trait for melee?

Tactics tree also gives Vitality, which is a defensive trait, which is much more important when you’re meleeing the faces of mobs as compared to being at ranged. (Although honestly you’re going to be dropping into melee range to get the most out of the longbow anyway)

In regards to the actual topic, while I agree the minor traits are kind of bad, these changes are way too strong. Especially Juggernaut, with all the regeneration ticks you’d be putting out you’d always be at +25% damage which is ridiculous.
I’d say leave the 5 point trait as it is right now, +400 toughness while reviving, then replace the 15 and 25 with Vanguard (nerfed to 3s of regen, you dodge roll pretty often and then it wouldn’t make traited banner regen useless for you) and Unstoppable Force (nerfed to 20%, 50% is way too much of an increase)

I can’t help but feel most of you don’t know what you are talking about. Agony does percentage based damage, the only way to reduce it would be with Agony Resistance (which makes a gigantic difference) or dodging each boss’ agony attack. For example, Raving Asura’s agony attack would be those electric balls he throws at you, Bloomhunger’s is his poison grenade things, Mossman’s are his thrown axes, etc etc

Regardless, toughness/vitality will do absolutely nothing for you when it comes to agony.

Olba.5376:

I’ll be honest: before talking about fixing Discipline, you should talk about how to make the rarely-used Burst Skills, mainly Arcing Slice, more attractive in comparison to stuff like Skull Crack, Flurry, Kill Shot and Eviscerate.

Really even those “attractive” options are debatable because of the +12% damage trait with full adrenaline.

The whole adrenaline system needs a lookover imo. It’s a lot flatter and flavour-less compared to all of the other class mechanics.

I have been having almost this exact same problem recently, except made worse by the fact that I can only play on weekends (peak hours). I haven’t been able to play with my guild in like, more than a month because the servers are constantly full.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Warriors have no Adrenaline issues? Long Bow says hi, the would’ve been effective build that is.

Warriors leak Adrenaline out their pores if you’re doing it right. If you intended to use the Longbow’s burst skill very often maybe you should have supplemented your Adrenaline gain with one of the many many many weapons/traits/utilities for it.

As a level 80 warrior I have always felt that warriors are ridiculously streamlined and straightforward when it comes to skills. Really, it seems like a core design issue (although I think that was the point of warriors) because the fact that warriors can’t ever throw curveballs makes it inherently inferior to other classes.

Being able to use an extra weaponset won’t really fix how straightforward our skills are, example: The sword deals exclusively bleeds + attached damage. That’s it. The skills on the sword set that don’t do bleeds are gap closers/maintainers. They should really combine Savage Leap and Hamstring then give us another type of condition + damage hybrid skill in slot 3. All of our “blocks” are extremely awful as well (MH mace, OH sword, spear). Not only are they extremely boring and tend to be the equivalent of “deal damage on block”, but releasing the block early has VERY little tactical advantage as all of them ONLY provide 1/6th a bar of adrenaline if you do. What, warriors aren’t allowed to strike a vital point on a well-timed hit to daze/confuse/weaken/(any other kind of condition that’s not 100% damage)?

TL;DR I think it’s an inherent design flaw that warriors are doing pretty badly right now outside of the Greatsword (which really is only good in PvE). Even healing shouts warrior is outclassed in heals by other professions.