WvW: Please only show the Boons and Conditions under the Enemy Player(s).

**Note: This post speaks in a World vs. World ContextThis post will cover the following:

• Introduction
• Definition of give-aways
• The problem with give-aways
• The importance of showing only conditions and boons
• How the Mesmer (Mirage) negatively affected by give-aways
• How the Thief (Dead Eye) is severely benefitting from give-aways
• How the Mirage can be the perfect Counter to Dead Eyes
• How the Dead Eye can be the Perfect Counter to the Mirage
• How any general class can benefit from no give-aways/Conclusion**

Introduction

In WvW you cannot see the names of the enemy, but you can see their guild tag. This is fine. However, what you can see are the signets, profession-based trait stacks. Profession-unique passive defenses, guild objective bonuses, food bonuses, utility bonuses, and any other thing that is a give-away.

Definition of Give-Away

What is my definition of a give-away? "A give-away" is piece of extra-profession (non-condi, non-boon) bonus information that is shown underneath the enemy player's name while they are targeted (clicked on) by any other player. Basically any icon or indicator that is not a condition or boon, is a give-away. For example, signets, food, utility, minor/major borderland bloodlust, is a give away.

These give-aways should only be seen by the allies and the player themselves, not the enemy.

The Importance of showing only Boons and Conditions

In a battle, when you fight an enemy you are given a lot of information. That information, as of now, is important for you to read in order to determine what skill or what move to do next. Currently, you can view any passive defenses or buffs the opponent will have. This will allow you to preserve an elite skill and use it for later after that passive bonus is gone. There is a flaw with that information being given away: Predictability

The reason why some builds are skewed to favorable meta ones is that they usually are one of these kinds of builds built to the extreme: tank/bunker, burst, condi, power, AOE, perma-stealth, perma-agility, etc. These extreme builds are desire-able as they are the ones that can get you quickly out of a losing fight (perma-quickness), or end a fight before it begins (high burst damage), or force the opponent to waste a burst then counter to kill them (tank/condi/condi cleanse).

This all leads to predictability, leading to certain traits and gear being favored over others, and all players are now expected to master knowing how to use these builds, forced to abandon styles they like for practical ones that are either hard or easy to master.

What has never before been discussed is how devastatingly beneficial it is for those give-aways to be seen by the opponent. The best way to explain this is to give an example between the Mirage and the Dead Eye.

How the Mesmer (Mirage) is negatively affected by Give-Aways

The Mesmer's design is to use illusion and deception to confuse the opponent, relying on cunning and trickery to win the fight, or survive it. However, this class design is completely countered by the fact that the give-aways will have the mesmer easily identifiable. On top of that, any signets or passive bonuses currently utilized will be shown for an easy counter, or adjustment to plans. The entire concept is compromised because the enemy can see what is under the player's name.

If the Mirage is using the temporary stack bonuses from making clones and illusions, then the opponent can see that under the name, and find out that the real mesmer is the one with the stack of 5 illusionary defense. That is not all, the mesmer was already given away because of the minor/major borderland blood lust icon shown already, or the food item consumed, whatever the case. So it didn't matter. The opponents can ignore all the clone generation and target breaks and just tab to see which one has a non-boon or non-condi icon and bypass the strategy of deception.

Target breaking and cloaking is the only thing the mirage can do to deceive the opponent, but when they are out of cloak, their effectiveness to deceive is shot down by the give aways. The goal here is not be invulnerable or unidentifiable for ever, but to extend the fight as long as possible hoping for opening attacks.

The enemy is trying to kill the real mesmer, but its too easy to do that due to the give aways.

How the Dead Eye is severely benefitting from give-aways.

The Dead Eye is known to use a popular build where it can nearly perma stealth and then open up a shot to drop amazing DPS nearly one shotting players. Many have argued it is extremely impossible to counter it. They have some points. The Dead Eye can hide their build information because they are cloaked. Furthermore, because of the give aways on their target, they can see any passive bonuses activated, allowing the Dead Eye to time his shot just right.

Meanwhile the targeted player has no idea where the dead eye is, and relies on an audible queue to properly block or evade using a skill.

This is very advantageous to the Dead Eye. However, let us imagine a scenario where players cannot see each other's give-aways and only see the boons and conditions.

How the Mirage can be the perfect counter to Dead Eyes with the removal of give-aways.

Assume that you can only see boons and conditions on your opponent, and nothing else.

A mirage is roaming around, using an axe/pistol + sceptor/torch build with a non signet heal. They have illusionary ambush, and mirror (clone), as well as blink, with jaunt. The mirage notices the lock on animation from a dead eye, and quickly looks around anticipating the shot. Waiting to time an evade, or a utility skill like illusionary ambush, the mirage hears the audio queue of a shot coming in, and while looking around the area they happen to ambush randomly around the dead eye (this actually happens when I do it from spamming illusionary ambush), and then use mirror + pistol 5 then axe 3 to counter the dead eye, but the dead eye can cleanse the condi, and go back into cloak.

Now, here is the game: The mirage has 2 other clones. The Dead Eye is cloaked. With illusionary ambush + mirror the Dead Eye is sure to have it's targeting broken and had to evade and cloak for safety. The DE has a 33% chance of success shooting a clone, a clone, or the real Mirage. The Mirage does not move, and does not have any boons or conditions on it. There are no give aways. The Dead Eye has to take a chance. The Mirage is going to use blink+jaunt then F3 to interrupt the shot and then use axe three agaain to lay some confusion.

The Dead Eye open fires on a clone, and immediately the Mirage blinks, near the Dead Eye, uses F3 to daze and interrupt and axe three to drop confusion. The Dead Eye uses his skills but goes down because of the confusion burst, they are revealed out of cloak and the mirage cleans up the mess.

Now, if the situation was as it is now, with give-aways, the dead eye would kill the mirage because of any signets on, or other icons showing the real player. But, without give-aways, and only boons and conditions showing/disappearing it is not as easy to kill a Mirage.

How the Dead Eye can be the Perfect Counter to the Mirage

Now let's use the exact same scenario and flip it around. The Dead Eye does not know which copy is the real Mirage, and the DE is still cloaked, they have a 33% (or 25% if the passive illusion signet makes another clone) for a chance of killing. The dead eye can fake a reveal to make the Mirage pull closer to the Dead Eye, conserving his shot. With the reveal, clones move instantly towards the dead eye. However, they noticed that one "clone" was a little late to react, even though they were nearly the same around 900 distance from the dead eye. DE immediately dodge rolls into cloak again, backs away to the max range. The Mirage doesn't know where the DE is, and could not target the DE to make use of a target break skill, but the DE knows who the Mirage really is.

The DE gets rid of the clones on purpose, one by one going back into cloak, using normal shots, this will reduce any shatter effectiveness even if the Mirage ambushes or tries breaks target. After some repetition The Mirage gets downed because the cooldowns to ambush and evade are all gone, and the DE wins in the end.

The fight goes either way, both players are using any visual cue to their advantage, not knowing what build the other is using, but now they know what build it is because of the obvious hints from the DE noticing the target breaks and ambush, and the Mirage noticing the near perma cloak and high dps, (glass cannon build).

How any general or elite class can benefit from no-give aways.

The fact that you do not see the passive bonuses under the name changes everything. It doesn't matter what class you're playing. You can be protected by using surprise, or attack using deception. You will no longer have to worry about being too easily countered, the opponent doesn't know what have until you literally use it, not as soon as they target you and see your signets, or food utility, or your stacks. Your passive skills are completely hidden and will actually protect you from players who rush to burst, or bursting players can probably kill you because they were patient enough to fake a burst, and then use a real one after it. It can go either way.

Now, audio and visual cues, NOT give-aways under the name, will be the information that players can draw from in order to expect when to evade/attack, when to use an AOE. They will no longer see and passive bonuses, be it a signet or trait stack, etc.

Please let me know what you think. I know that some players use these give-aways as part of the plan to fight. Some of you may use them to wait for an attack or wait to attack, some of you, like me, being a mesmer main while playing a warrior as a secondary, can easily kill mesmers because their signets or bonuses allow me to just ignore the clones.

However I do believe that by only showing Boons and Conditions under the name, and nothing else, the WvW environment will be more enjoyable and less predictable. Builds will vary more because you will not know what you will face against and will have to use past information to adjust and adjust. The enemy, as stated over and over again, will know little about you as you do about them likewise. I keep stressing and repeating this over and over again because I have been able to kill opponents and die to opponents just by reading the non-boon/condition Icon information under the name.

I also know that some of you wish (I am just assuming actually) that your profession-bonuses were not shown like your stances, your legendary selections, your signets, whether you are using fire, air, earth etc, are not shown so you can be more effective with surprises.

Anyways, thank you for reading this post. Please comment if you agree or not, just curious. I use the Mirage and Dead Eye to explain a scenario where the fight could go either way, when both parties have 0 information of passive bonuses.

I disagree with your position on when boons and conditions should be seen by enemy players.

I'm all for removing icon clutter from underneath nameplates, but your concept of "give-aways" doesn't make a ton of sense to me. You want to hide certain information from enemy players (signets, class specific buffs) while still allowing other information (boons and conditions). By your own logic this would create an imbalance for builds relying on, say, boons over signets as they are giving away more information than a build that relies on signets over boons.

As someone who occasionally thieves, I can tell you the biggest give-aways of the real mesmer are never from checking buffs under a nameplate - it's almost always human movement or a something like a deadeye mark that gives the real mesmer away.

I do wish there was a way to tone down the icon clutter though... maybe a setting in the options that allows certain buffs (food, class passives, etc) to be selectively turned off so that the player can focus on the icons most relevant to the fight.

So much text for something that could be said in one sentence: enemy doesnt need to have information about non combat buffs (exp/celebration/blacklion boosters, guild hall buffs, aviator box, bobblehead and similar bundles, tonic timers etc.). At least it should be an option since people have different preferences.

I see no reason why signets, food etc. shouldn't be visible for enemy.

I agree that for example in the past removing the world completion star from being shown on enemy nameplates because it helped to easily identify the mesmer player is kind of meaningless when food buffs, signets, bloodlust etc make identification trivial anyway.

Food etc should be shown because it is important information for an opponent, so I think a better solution is this information should be copied onto clone status bars. So food, bloodlust, signets, compounding power/illusionary defence/fencer's finesse, etc - all this information should be identical on clone bars as the mesmer.

Things that stays individual are of course boons, condis and other combat effects like stun/daze or allies sharing effects.