Earth field

Why do we seem to have a field for all the element types and magic types but there no earth field type all though there are many earth skills?

Here the ideal any mud earth dust pAoE should have an earth field effect.

Blasting it would give out a low duration protection, leaping would be a 3 target root or earth aura, Whirl and Projectile would be a bleed.

Nothing to op and fills a missing gap of field types with some effects to help ppl work as a team.

Added note: over all fields are not keeping up with support classes as fields are a older part of the game that has not been getting updated to keep up with the current support classes that have added in a trinity system like system. These combos realty need buffs and reworks of use.

Short story. Combo’s are difficult to balance. So immersion is very difficult. For balance, arenanet tries to keep a specific class to be OP (I personally thing they do a great job, but some disagree, and others want to go back to the disbalance called gw1). Cooperative gameplay is encouraged. So combo’s are there within the balance. It is a compromise and hard to suit all classes,

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:Short story. Combo’s are difficult to balance. So immersion is very difficult. For balance, arenanet tries to keep a specific class to be OP (I personally thing they do a great job, but some disagree, and others want to go back to the disbalance called gw1). Cooperative gameplay is encouraged. So combo’s are there within the balance. It is a compromise and hard to suit all classes,

Every thing is hard to balance but the "problem" classes lack combos in them self often and its the lack of these combos should be a point of balancing. Right now GW2 happens to be a game whom also has combos and not a game who has combos for game play. In a way right now combos are not part of the game at all more of an hold over from a past time when the game was very different.

Any thoughts on adding in an earth field type though if its not to op to have in effect perma protection from a single class passively now how would blasting protection be op, how would classes getting spam root that hits 5 targets be any more op then a short duration root from a leap hit and or having an earth aura when you have so much counter projectile, how would bleed on whirl and projectile be any more op then having poison and confusion and burning on the same combos just different fields?

There a lot of effects that cover what the earth field would do and then some with out needing any real skill to time out. You can say that for all combos they are harder to do then pushing one button that has the same effects but much stronger.

@Jski.6180 said:

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:Short story. Combo’s are difficult to balance. So immersion is very difficult. For balance, arenanet tries to keep a specific class to be OP (I personally thing they do a great job, but some disagree, and others want to go back to the disbalance called gw1). Cooperative gameplay is encouraged. So combo’s are there within the balance. It is a compromise and hard to suit all classes,

Why is there a lack of combo’s and why is it a problem? Skills for skills sake should be prohibited. Same Goes for combo’s, besides ocd, why would it benefit the different game modes and the balance?

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

@Jski.6180 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:Short story. Combo’s are difficult to balance. So immersion is very difficult. For balance, arenanet tries to keep a specific class to be OP (I personally thing they do a great job, but some disagree, and others want to go back to the disbalance called gw1). Cooperative gameplay is encouraged. So combo’s are there within the balance. It is a compromise and hard to suit all classes,

They lack combos because that how there classes are made like necro even gurd to a point (mostly FB) these classe have one hit effects and less of effects over time so all of there dmg and support are with in one burst. Field / combo classes tend to have over time effects in pAoE and in being so less effect all at once BUT part of that balancing well older balancing was the fact other could use that field to add to there own effects. So yes its good to have classes who do not have such combos and classes who do but the combos are not keeping up with the burst effect skills.

Gw2 over all balancing is in question. You make fields and combos viable on part of near part with skill that existed in the game now (as your using 2 skills to make the effect of 1) or take the effect out of the game and cut out the complexity of having an out dated effect that dose not fit with in the curing balancing as it becomes an excuse for bad balancing decision making.

In my view combos need to be buffed and more means of field types need to be added to make other classes on part with existing effects. Its the reason why i play the class i do (ele staff) and playing gw2 over all (its the reason why i played ff11 an older mmorpg because of its combo system all though it was also out dated over time because of skill that where added in that equaled the effect of the combos and there was no update to the combos them self) so i understand where this is going and i do not want to see anet make the same error as other mmorpgs with combos skills.

So take them out or buff them keeping them as is will only cause harm to the game.

blast for knock back

@Jski.6180 said:

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:Short story. Combo’s are difficult to balance. So immersion is very difficult. For balance, arenanet tries to keep a specific class to be OP (I personally thing they do a great job, but some disagree, and others want to go back to the disbalance called gw1). Cooperative gameplay is encouraged. So combo’s are there within the balance. It is a compromise and hard to suit all classes,

I find that reasoning to be deeply flawed in that field combos don't operate on agency in the current meta, and essentially hasn't since Path of Fire moved the entire support Comp into the Class skills. I would even argue that Fields that agency was massively reduced with Heart of Thorns, for a hand full of very obvious reasons if venture into PvP and WvW. The problem in PvE is that its too hard coordinate a field combo, and only in very specific circumstances can it be capitalized on. And even if you did do it, it a single trigger is not strong enough to matter. For PvP, fields are mostly immobile, and skill cool downs are far too precious to waste on trying to trigger a specific combo on either offense or defense.... again, they just aren't powerful enough on a single trigger to leverage properly. In WvW things change substantially.... despite being static, you have access to enough players to not only trigger multiple blast finishers, and enough controls to hold enemies in place for one that result in conditions.

But even with all of that..... Combos fields have a very critical design flaw..... and thats in the order of effects. For the majority of the game, finishers only trigger on ONE of the fields, if multiple fields are stacked on the location. This very simple fact had a huge impact on group play for as long as I've been playing; and that unless you knew the exact order a field went down, you wouldn't be able to tell when a desired field would be available to use a finisher on. This was especially true in Dungeon runs, where Fire fields were the only reliable way to get 25 might stacks. It got so bad at one point, that a lot of groups were kicking people out if they so much as dropped another field during a run.

The concept of Fields/Finishers are actually really good.... But runs into a lot of conflict with the rest of the combat system. Because everything is too mobile, the field life spans are really short, skills usually have cast times that making timing difficult, you can't control the field type finishers trigger on if there are 2 or people operating on the same spot, and the skills themselves promote wanting to spam and stack over a small area to dealing significant damage or maintain control. This relegated combos mainly to incidental triggering when large numbers of players are present, or internal combos for certain classes (and I'd argue the only ones that mattered were Might and Hard CCs).

As the game designed pushed harder for more mobility with HoT's Open world, map metas and Raid content, field combos became increasingly difficult to use and control. Thats why they off-loaded all the support functions into Traits and skills with the introduction of Especs, and the majority of Core was never retuned to match the new paradigm. Thats why new field types don't make sense, nor help the current game's design, because its design very likely originated in early alpha, when combat was much closer to GW1 and didn't revolve so heavily around player mobility.

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@Jski.6180 said:

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:Short story. Combo’s are difficult to balance. So immersion is very difficult. For balance, arenanet tries to keep a specific class to be OP (I personally thing they do a great job, but some disagree, and others want to go back to the disbalance called gw1). Cooperative gameplay is encouraged. So combo’s are there within the balance. It is a compromise and hard to suit all classes,

Hot was about pve and nothing but and it failed hard. Anet moving away from combos and fields will doom the game unless they simply remove these fields and combo from the game.Combos and fields where the only true support in the base game they where the most significant effect and tool for group play.

Hmm, I recall, for example, avoiding gs on guard in favor of sword because there was no danger of overwriting a fire field. Then a light field gets added to sword. Combos were a really fun idea; execution not so much.

If you want to get nitpicky, the smoke field is the earth field. All the "smoke" is just a collection of dust and particulates floating in the air, much like what an earth field would be.

@Hashberry.4510 said:Hmm, I recall, for example, avoiding gs on guard in favor of sword because there was no danger of overwriting a fire field. Then a light field gets added to sword. Combos were a really fun idea; execution not so much.

More like effects that you used to want combo fields for became irrelevant with power creep on the skills themselves., and most of the new fields applying combo effects as part of the skill itself.

For example, look at Reaper. Nightfall is a good dark field, but what do leaps and blasts accomplish? Blindness, which the skill already does. Then you have Death's Charge as the only Leap finisher and it applies, you guessed it, Blind.

More relevant is perhaps fire fields. Blasting fire fields used to be the primary method of generating group might, but nowadays, they never get used for that purpose because of the sheer might sharing capabilities built into skills and traits instead.

I would love to see the game shifting to once again put using combo fields well be a potent way to separate good players from great (or at least coordinated).

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:If you want to get nitpicky, the smoke field is the earth field. All the "smoke" is just a collection of dust and particulates floating in the air, much like what an earth field would be.

Bahhh! I say that just no fun if that the way it will work out. Smoke is from fire not sand and mud.

There a lack of a bleed combo and root combo (earth aura if you must have that) i think a earth field in it self and not just taging on smoke fields to classes with earth spells/ skills.

Added note i would not mind seeing more combo ending types too not comply sure what they would look like though maybe cutting as we have a blunt (blast) and piercing (projectile) maybe whirl is the slashing but that seems odd.

Traditionally Poison and arguably also Smoke field is considered "Earth", Just as Water/Ice both would be considered water based. Depending on game/setting etc Earth would just translate to "blunt" so normal weapons etc, thus they're often associated with other earthly things, usually: Poison, Acid, Stone, Sand etc. In this case the Poison field fits to Poison/Acid theme, and Smoke field fits the Sand one.

Considering how little support ANet given the combo fields over the years, adding more fields would just become a mess. I rather hope they go back and balance the entire class system so the existing Combo system becomes more relevant/useful, at least back to how it was at release. Cool system, love it, sad it's basically dead in the water atm.

Good post #starlinvf.1358