Suggestion: Showing cooldowns of skills not currently available

Rotations in this game make an insane difference in terms of performance and one of the "problems" in following a rotation is remembering the cooldowns of important skills. In other MMORPGs this isn't an issue because most of your skills are always visible on screen, you can always tell which skill is off cooldown and ready to use. In this game, once you swap weapons or use a transform skill, or a skill that provides a new skillbar, you lose access to the cooldown information of skills. Making every single cooldown visible would cause screen clutter, for example, imagine if Firebrand has visible cooldowns of all their tome skills and weapon skills at the same time.

What if we could have slots, like the special action key skill, where we could slot important skills to show us their cooldowns? This would make performing rotations much easier as you'd know if the most important skill of your other weapon set is currently available. I can understand those that remember their rotations perfectly won't like this, but this is for everyone else instead, and it's something that is available in a lot of other MMORPGs but not this one.

Thoughts?

How about you can select what skill you want to track and have your weapon swap icon turn Green when it's off cool down?

options -> user interface -> show skill recharge

@"Rasimir.6239" said:options -> user interface -> show skill recharge

Did you read the OP? I'm talking about showing the cooldown of skills not currently available on your user interface, Guardian Tomes, Elementalist Weapons, your second weapon set, Engineer kits and so on. Unless I'm missing something, enabling skill recharge won't show the recharge of skills that are not on your skillbar.

edit: there I edited the title so those reading only the title then feel the need to respond can have something more to think about

GOD, this would be a lifesaver. It would make me want to actually perform my rotation instead of being a lazy bih about it. It's just so headache inducing trying to remember timing from weapon swaps and then if you miss timing you basically have to start over from the top.

With other MMOs I can literally look down, watch the timer tick down, rotate smoothly, start the loop again and again. With gw2 its just so, it's not smooth it's jarring, weird, and disruptive.

You're talking about just your 5 weapon swap skills? If they decreased the size of all icons a bit, there'd be room below for a row of five icons, the size of the ones on the buff bar.

Alternatively, there's room on the left, alongside the "swap weapon set" icon. That one could be moved up a little and a second one could be added below to show a single cooldown (of your choice, as part of the character). (It would end up looking similarly to the mount+novelty icons on the right side.)

Personally, I don't think it would help as many people as the OP does. It would primarily benefit folks like @Lilyanna.9361 who know the rotation(s) already, and just need a reminder. I don't think it would help anyone who doesn't already realize the importance of rotations to start using them.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:You're talking about just your 5 weapon swap skills? If they decreased the size of all icons a bit, there'd be room below for a row of five icons, the size of the ones on the buff bar.

Alternatively, there's room on the left, alongside the "swap weapon set" icon. That one could be moved up a little and a second one could be added below to show a single cooldown (of your choice, as part of the character). (It would end up looking similarly to the mount+novelty icons on the right side.)

Personally, I don't think it would help as many people as the OP does. It would primarily benefit folks like @Lilyanna.9361 who know the rotation(s) already, and just need a reminder. I don't think it would help anyone who doesn't already realize the importance of rotations to start using them.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:You're talking about just your 5 weapon swap skills? If they decreased the size of all icons a bit, there'd be room below for a row of five icons, the size of the ones on the buff bar.

Alternatively, there's room on the left, alongside the "swap weapon set" icon. That one could be moved up a little and a second one could be added below to show a single cooldown (of your choice, as part of the character). (It would end up looking similarly to the mount+novelty icons on the right side.)

Personally, I don't think it would help as many people as the OP does. It would primarily benefit folks like @Lilyanna.9361 who know the rotation(s) already, and just need a reminder. I don't think it would help anyone who doesn't already realize the importance of rotations to start using them.

Perhaps the incentive of seeing your cooldowns could make an individual player want to actually see if they can even create a mini rotation. Perhaps not the most optimal. But even a curious mind trying to link skills together in a smooth sequence would be WAY better off than the person literally button mashing. It also would help with memorization and create a rhythm perhaps?

I personally always had a hard time learning long strings of rotations, so breaking them down into smaller chunks always helps me learn. Encouraging casual players with this method along with visual cd indicators couple probably awaken a want to do the same?

I'm just speculating at this point since every person's learning strategy can/will be different.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Personally, I don't think it would help as many people as the OP does. It would primarily benefit folks like @"Lilyanna.9361" who know the rotation(s) already, and just need a reminder. I don't think it would help anyone who doesn't already realize the importance of rotations to start using them.

Yes it would benefit only players that already know the importance of a rotation. But maybe once players can see those "hidden" cooldowns they'll be more willing to practice said rotations, knowing a rotation and executing it are completely different. And besides it's something that exists in most mmorpgs out there, showing all your cooldowns in some way. I know when GW2 was released Arenanet wanted a more minimal UI, but after so many years it does need a face lift.

Showing cooldowns of ALL skills and not only those on the skillbar is one thing, but showing things like potions, food and utility consumables, and even a better mount interface, in the UI are also things they should consider. The game evolved and this simplistic interface isn't cutting it anymore. I mean they added that nearly worthless novelty and chair button but they can't add other QOL features to the UI that will actually help players?

Food, and I assume Utility, consumables already show when they are about to expire (in addition to the countdown timer on them).

Depending on how the do the UI change, this would be incredibly useful. Maybe split the skill bar into a top and bottom, with main on top, second set on bottom - showing timers.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Personally, I don't think it would help as many people as the OP does. It would primarily benefit folks like @"Lilyanna.9361" who know the rotation(s) already, and just need a reminder. I don't think it would help anyone who doesn't already realize the importance of rotations to start using them.

I've been in favor of a UI update since before the game launched.My point is that a UI update isn't going to get more people to consider rotations. It would only help those of us who have trouble counting in our head and already practice rotations.

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Rotations in this game make an insane difference in terms of performance and one of the "problems" in following a rotation is remembering the cooldowns of important skills. In other MMORPGs this isn't an issue because most of your skills are always visible on screen, you can always tell which skill is off cooldown and ready to use. In this game, once you swap weapons or use a transform skill, or a skill that provides a new skillbar, you lose access to the cooldown information of skills. Making every single cooldown visible would cause screen clutter, for example, imagine if Firebrand has visible cooldowns of all their tome skills and weapon skills at the same time.

What if we could have slots, like the special action key skill, where we could slot important skills to show us their cooldowns? This would make performing rotations much easier as you'd know if the most important skill of your other weapon set is currently available. I can understand those that remember their rotations perfectly won't like this, but this is for everyone else instead, and it's something that is available in a lot of other MMORPGs but not this one.

Thoughts?Personally, i'd go the other direction, by eliminating the need of constant weaponswapping for better dps optimization. It may be a clever idea, but it's still nothing more than abusing the kitten out of a mechanic that was originally meant for something completely different. Your idea of showing inactive weapon set cooldowns, while not bad, is basically just a workaround for a problem, instead of addressing the problem directly.

The easiest way to do that would be to simply place all skills of the weapon you just switched to on cooldown. This would leave the weapon switch for what it was originally intended for (adjusting to a change in battle environment - say, switching from melee to range), but would basically kill any reason to switch weapons purely for dps optimization.I'm not sure what to do with ele attunements or engi kits though. Core Eles, and maybe even Tempests could probably use the same change for switching attunements, but for Weavers and Engi kits some bigger changes would be needed.

@Astralporing.1957 said:The easiest way to do that would be to simply place all skills of the weapon you just switched to on cooldown.

So if you press the button by accident you are punished? That could only work if they make weapon swapping usable only out of combat. But it would still ruin the combat system, as not all weapons are equal. What if you are a Guardian on your greatsword and want to switch to sword/focus to use Shield of Wrath to block an attack. Weapons aren't only used for dps rotations and to switch between ranged/melee but also for much needed utility. If they add a cooldown to all skills when you weapon swap it would kill the combat system.

100% behind this.

Always bothered me that I could not see my swapped out skills on CD.

Just a thought, but what about sound indicators rather than visual. Not sure how exactly this would play out in its entirety, but it may help with visual clutter.

I imagine it would be like having little alarms to let you know when things are ready when not shown on screen.