VISUAL CUES: what works and what doesn't
Terrorhuz.4695
Member ✭✭✭
Many things make gw2 combat system fairly unique and fast paced. One of them is the extensive use of both animations and visual effects to immediately convey what your opponent is doing, so that other players can react accordingly.
Some attacks follow this concept and have some clear visual cues about what's happening. Some other skills, however, don't really catch much the attention considering how impactful they are.
Can we get some work on that? There's no need to nerf or buff anything, sometimes even just being able to immediately know what's going on makes the game more balanced.
** EXAMPLES OF THINGS THAT WORK WELL
- example: pretty much everything a warrior does
- Maul
- all holosmith skills
- pretty much all thief skills
** EXAMPLES OF THINGS THAT DON'T WORK AS WELL
- Magic Bullet is a 2s hard stun with 0.5s casting time. This could really use some better telegraphing, maybe some bright flash when the mesmer starts casting this skill?
- All necromancer marks, and Spinal Shivers
- Infuse Light, like, for real. A couple of small dragon wings appearing for 0.25 seconds is NOT a visual effect.
- Deathstrike, hits like a truck, but the teleport feels very similar to Phase Trasversal... make a mistake once and you get whacked for 9k. Not good.
** EXAMPLES OF SKILLS THAT ARE ALMOST GOOD
- Vault has a very clear animation, but the animation itself is very similar to that of Bounding Dodger... but the first deals 5k damage and can be interrupted, the latter deals 1k and can't be interrupted! They look too similar for skills with such a different impact. For example adding some dust when the thief jumps for the vault can help differentiate between the two attacks.
Now, these are just examples. There are more skills that could use the same treatment (and some others that have a visual effect much more visible than their impact would imply), feel free to add me whatever I may be forgetting (or correct me if I'm wrong)
Comments
Fear mark has a unique and fairly easy to see animation
The was game initially designed to deliver all important combat information through visuals, but than the team gradually changed and new content follows the initial rules less and less.
Renegade has 2 important summons, the elite and the CC pulsing one... show of hands, who can tell if they are up or not just from the visual chaos of an average teamfight? The animations for said summons are so "loud" that they drown out everything, even each other.
Meanwhile really important skills like corrosive poison cloud have no animation whatsoever... wanna know if the enemy has projectile blocking up? Well shoot into them and see what happens.
I expect it to be even worse with the release of EoD.
Fear mark has some good 1300 range (1200 range + 120 AoE radius). From that distance I feel like a proper visual effect would be better than just a different hand wave
Is it just me or magnetic aura and fire aura look quite similar when the tempest is whacking you?
All the aura rework has taught me to do was look at the buff bar even more. And squint, because their icons are only SLIGHTLY more helpful. Whoever had the genius idea to make all auras represented with a blue icon deserves a loving and tolerant talking to.
Phase Traversal and Deathstrike are completely different. PT has the initial animation and hit at the port while Deathstrike has instant porting but a delay on the actual damage. If they quite literally just poofed on top of you with no tell, then Deathstrike is coming and that's your cue to dodge during the delay window. If they jumped, spun, or otherwise did an animation on port, it's PT. Also, moving in any direction that isn't directly on the Revenant will make Deathstrike miss.
Vault has the sound effect to differentiate it from Bound and will also not carry momentum if they do it close range. So if they keep going with no loud sound effect, it's Bound. If they stop midair and then plummet, it's Vault. If they did it from more than like 300 range then it's Vault.
Warrior does it right, mostly anyway. I sure a few of you remember pre-nerf Skull Grinder back when it was nearly instant cast, that was pretty kitten. But otherwise I think Warrior is the best example of good visual cues.
Mesmer, Thief and Revenant has some of the worst visual cues.
Necro has several skills that should have better cues though, but at the same time Necro is also the class with the most cast time in the game. Should probably be fixed anyway, it's better if it becomes weaker if the result is a better game
Nice thread, I planed to write something about this but never got time. I agree with you mostly.
But the following is BS..
However, a positive side of this is that at least you knew the fear mark is on CD once they used it.
And I think what you mentioned is the main reason that mesmer is a bad design: almost all the burt: shatters, jaunt are instant cast.
If you use your oglers and standard models you will see that fear mark is the only mark that has an animation where staff is thrust away from the necro with their right hand as opposed to the waving offhand gestures of the other marks.
There's a pretty big difference of waving an empty left hand and thrusting a right handed staff in a dramatic gesture. I'm not even a necro player I just watch my target.
So you dont check other opponents around you? The boons and condis the necro has? And the situations about other nodes in the minimap?
You can say this about any telegraph, THAT IS NOT A PROBLEM. Just because you miss something while paying attention to other things is not a bad thing, you aren't supposed to avoid all key skills all the time. If you pay close attention you can avoid fear mark if you don't then you might get hit, this is not a balance problem. If you are in a situation where getting hit by fear mark will get you killed you better pay attention or be smarter and don't get in that situation.
No, I cannot say this about any telegraph, for example, bulls charge.
I think mesmer is pretty much fine tbh
Only thing left are the shatters, which are instacast themselves but clones have fairly long travel times and that's a big telegraph right there. If you have the clones right on you it's going to be problematic, but when a mesmer spawns 2/3 clones on you shattering is pretty much a given, it doesn't come out of nowhere. That's just my opinion, though, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong
On behalf of Revenant, Deathstrike used to be slower so that Quickness was often required to land it reliably.
Thanks to Anet and peoples complain of Slow and Chill, now that isn't the case. You can barely tell there is an animation and it promotes easy desyncs because people are not forced to track targets during it's use. MUH SWORD MUH AXE NO VARIETY AT ALL, THERES NO IDENTITY. It was really pathetic of an excuse and those changes should have never occured.
I personally hate it with outmost passion and I really want the old slower Deathstrike speed back WITH conditions mind you so that my already insignificant variety of weapons can have some variety again, even if it's little.
Axe is funnily enough more useful than Sword but nobody will agree to it because even after complaining about it for not having an identity, people STILL don't use it outside being a "condition" weapon yet Axe still does if not has more power damage potentially to put around than sword because it's 4th skill factors are; Multi Target, useful conditions, entirely unblockable and you have possibly unblockable team wide CC to apply with lower cooldowns.
Infuse Light is the prime example of having good ideas and not designing them right.
Herald by itself is supposed to involve playing around upkeep. Who does that? No one, all you will ever see is people discouraging ever keeping those up at the benefit of literally anything around you, ending up with 100% energy at all time, which is stupid.
All facets are instant besides Facet of Light, which is understandable because it's a heal, however everything else has a cast time then the heal itself is instant after activation. Do you see the problem here? Turning Revenant pretty much into the least Revenant possible, by playing core you'd notice, regardless.
The Facet of Light activation should at least be of a noticeable 3/4 like Empowering Misery so that people can't just be like "UH OH I'M LOW PANIC SWAP TO HERALD FOR HEAL", there should be commitment to the act of having your heal up for the endure pain that it is but better basically.
Also there's a telling towards that heal itself with the Facet status, the counter play is there, the application and commitment isn't yet. Those changes are personally not of my issue because I've always played with Facets like they are meant to be and I think it's time Anet enforces that. I have more to speak about on that behalf but it's definitely true and serious that activation of the Facet should take longer for a healthier gameplay.
Willing to help with anything Revenant related.
One thing they could do for Infuse Light is put a delay on when you can activate it after popping the facet. So for example, you activate the facet and there's a 2 second window that IL isn't usable so instant panic double tapping isn't possible, which would also be much more signal to the opponent that IL is coming. Just a thought because I don't think putting an actual cast time on IL would be a good thing without significant increases to the base heal itself, and despite everyone saying all the AoE in the game feeds IL anyway, there isn't anything that can be done about that on IL side.
All of this stuff is far more clearly denoted for the actual player casting the animation compared to anybody else on the field (especially if we're talking about Revenant attacking anybody since everyone knows that optimal X/sword Rev play is literally just teleporting through walls onto targets that are probably busy fighting somebody else). You don't have to aim. You don't have to really time anything. And anybody who is attacked by a Revenant who manifests from behind a wall 1200 range away is going to just reaction dodge (if they even can because lolstuns/immob/other garbage) anyway because EVERY build in this game is designed to play "stream of spam" style after full engagement is initiated.
Considering how the OP's main point was that no tell in the game really serves its respective purpose as a proper tell, you're not really proving him wrong.
Not everything should be as wildly telegraphed as warrior's kit, this just turns the game into a reaction test that becomes progressively more defensive at higher tiers of play; For Honor had this exact issue with everything being mostly telegraphed and reactable, and so the meta was defensive with people staring at each other with no way of cracking a turtle. Now it's about reads and prediction, which lets offense land. If everything is easily telegraphed then we're just going to be stuck in defensive loops. There's a reason you typically have to lock people in CC chains to get meaningful damage baring serious mistakes; so much high damage stuff is so obvious to see coming that you have no choice but to quite literally stop someone's ability to avoid them through CC, and many classes have panic buttons for these scenarios anyway.
Things being done through wall ports is entirely irrelevant, as is in a +1 where you're already at a serious disadvantage by having to account for 2 people, and if it was so telegraphed that you could have someone port on top of you out of nowhere and still be easily telegraphed to dodge, then how much worse is it going to be in the open? Again, it will become nothing but a staring contest of defensive rotations.
These skills have proper tells, the OP is simply not able to adequately distinguish them in the fight, which isn't the fault of the skills, no hostility intended.
Only reason Thief has weak visual cues are because they Stealthed lel.
Okay but jokes aside, everything with a teleport is garbage for visual cues.
The only teleports in the game with a distinct visual delay coupled with a cast time is Inf Arrow, Necrotic Traversal and Phase Traversal.
Everything else is instant.
Are instant teleports with no visual cues a problem?
Yea, for newbies I guess.
Once yu have played enough or understood the build enough, yu know exactly when the enemy would want to gap close with a teleport etc.
That's why it's much easier to down a newbie with Core Mesmer burst than it is to down a veteran player.
Veteran players instinctively know that once they hear a faint "wub wub", they should dodge immediately or eat Phant Berserker + Mirror Blade + Mind Stab burst.
If I play a stupid build, I deserve to die.
If I beat people on a stupid build, I deserve to get away with it.
I don't need to have everything as slow as arching slice. I'd just like infuse light to have a proper tell.
I don't even want the attack itself to be slower, I just need a better visual effect to warn me "WATCH OUT SOMETHING MEANINGFUL IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN" (and we can all agree that priming infuse light IS meaningful). 0.25s cast time is fine, just place some sort of bright flash on the player's model instead of having me look at the boon bar where there are 10 other boons, 4 of which have about the same icon.
Cues and timing need to be clear and relevant in a game where nobody has to actually aim anything and attack range varies both wildly and arbitrarily from class to class. If you're going to undermine people's ability to respond at anything less than near-instant or instant speed, then you pigeon-hole everyone's creativity by forcing all builds to play like that. It homogenizes everything into a single, grey mush that just operates at the same speed with active skills that more or less mimic each other.
Infuse light is fine, the glow is bright and you can watch the buff bar when the heal utility is used you know he can use glint.
It's the same with the fear staff skill, and the mirage stun, all 0,5 seconds cast time is enaugh, increasing cast time makes slower and dump game more down, the animation is good visible even when mirage is stealthed.
Aiming things has no relevance here, and in just about every situation where key skills are executed, there are ways to distinguish them but it can be difficult in the midst of a fight where you're also trying to act and pressure or where tons of stuff is happening at once. Something like Infuse Light can have multiple things done to it, imo, but stuff like Bound vs Vault and PT vs Deathstrike aren't anywhere near problematic like instant cast and effect skills. The reason builds are so homogenized now is because it's too easy to dodge key skills or otherwise use any number of defensive skills to just shut down all pressure.
Baiting out dodges is one thing, but when almost every class has a get out of jail free card like Distortion or Elixir S, obviously not all of them are as ridiculous as those, it becomes a game of trapping people in place with zero opportunity to respond and that's absolutely not fun to be on the receiving end of. I personally prefer a much more nuclear meta than chaining CC to do damage or having to watch all my hard earned damage get reset because someone pressed the invuln button. It's one of the reasons why trap DH is so popular; it's easy, does tons of damage, can negate many defensive options, and can do its job from stealth so its mega telegraphed attacks have a chance to land. Trap DH is very flawed and I think people keep stubbornly bashing their heads against it instead of trying to exploit its weaknesses, but that's another topic.
big lol
as mirage I land 80% stuns, and 20% that I miss is not due to enemy specifically target dodging but rando dodging/blocking it, maybe 5% of the times I fire it you can react, but when you add it p5->blink or stealth then its a real problem
Same thing with IL, what are you gonna do? stop attacking rev? the moment you try to connect a big hit they use their INSTANT reverse damage button, and even if they convert nothing the skill still heals about 4k hp in total.
remove cast time from facet of light, give IL cast time off 0,25s and now there is actual counterplay.
Its never a problem to react to it, but the fact that by the time you react its already too late and it healed for 7k+ AND you cant attack.
Agree here.
Pistol 5 has the same animation as pistol 4. The only difference is the projectile(s): Which is clearly visible for the illusion, but very quick for the stun. Either reduce projectile speed or give a glow for the stun to differentiate the animations.
I want to add: This shows some unbiased argument, arguing against ones own main class, thanks @Leonidrex.5649.
Infuse Light is still a terrible design. A revenant can activate the facet and basically prevent enemies from bursting him, because he can turn it all into full healing instantly. Yes, he reduces his offensive potential due to the costs, but he can prevent major offensive against him, even while stunned. The cast time should have been on IL, not the facet. Just like on warrior.
I think mesmer pistil is one of the better telegraphed ranged weapons, yeah it might need some more of a difference between the skills but as skills they are different enough and the sound queues help me allot ( the issue i have with it is stealth into the skill since the telegraphs play after they hit but that is general issue with stealth for everything) .
Now if you want really kitten telegraphs go into ranger longbow or shortbow all of the skills look the same, there is a small deviation between them but it is too negligible the kitten cc looks like a basic attack, good thing is that your average ranger is predictable as kitten and does 4 2 or 3 4 2, too bad they can do it off screen.
As a someone that made ranger I can attest to the fact that usually nobody sees lb4 coming as it has super far reach, no real tell.
as for the 4->2 combo... there is nothing else lol, at best you can use barrage and auto-attacks while waiting for dodges.
Bruh just read what I say. I don't want longer cast time, I want proper proper vfx on strong skills. Cast time remains the same.
The basic attack is one of the strongest of the game, i'm not sure why though it is not a basic attack weapon, feels weird since it doesn't leave room for the rest of the weapons, for example axe is the basic attack weapon on ranger but is worse then LB.
LB4 has a pretty clear tell, but a rather short cast time and a very fast projectile, which is why players often don't react to it and it kinda has to be like this, as it isn't just an offensive cc but also key to survival on a weapon that relies on landing skills as only defense. LB 3 animation is less obvious and nearly instant, but again, it is mainly a defensive skill. LB 2 and 5 are very telegraphed, one being an 2 1/2 s long channel with an obnoxious pewpewpewpew sound effect, the other a 2 1/4 s long stationary cast wich produces an obvious aoe field on the ground.
Shortbow tho has indeed no distinct animations.
This is not true. Axe autoattack deals about the same dps as Long Range Shot at 900 range before taking the might stacking into consideration. When factoring in the additional dmg from the might it deals more dmg than LB auto at max. range (up to like 50% more at close range). And it hits 2 targets by default, unlike LB. MH axe lacks defense, which is why it typically isn't used in glassy builds, but much better than LB for tanky boon heavy builds (boonbeast/tanky core ranger).
I've been saying for a while now that bad animations are one of the key problems in GW2 PvP.
There are a ton of skills in the game that could be made more fair in PvP just by a VFX update, without actually nerfing any of the abilities stats.
Vault blue, bound is not. Also Vault reaches the apex of the jump faster than bound.
also Gale, Fire Signet, and Hunter's call could use a more significant telegraph.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
And yet the bread and butter of the axe is the basic attack while LB has comparable damage while having all other abilities being strong also.
3 skills look the about the same on one weapon, one is CCs that is followed by fyck your life skill. The same can be said about rifle on warrior, but this one does kitten all generally and no one cares that it has bad animations.
Different handwavy motions are not good telegraph on that high passed game, on slower passed it would work but we have reached the point of no return.
to be honest LB mainly deals damage from 2 and 1, so yes. It IS auto-attack weapon.
3 is stealth, 4 is CC used to set up 2 most of the times, and 5 is areadenial, and middle finger to zoo necros and mesmers, realistically you wont get more then 2 ticks onto people. It is a good skill but its not a bread and butter.
Meanwhile axe, arguably has all bad skills, 1 is amazing, 2 is legit kitten useless, and 3 is basic attack but aoe with some utility condis, hardly worth the loss of range and other utility.
If devs wanted axe to be usable, they should probably work on axe 2, as having a skill that is worse then basic attack is unacceptable IMO.
Axe is in a same bot as mesmer scepter, where weapon tried to be usefull for both power and condi and ended up being medicore/bad for both.
Axe on Ranger is pretty dope, since you play it with dagger offhand you have 1 extra dodge and automatically more defense than in lb, axe 1 gives nice might, axe 3 gives aoe chill and weakness. Lb is more for roamer oriented stuff, while axe dagger pretty solid sidenode weapons are