Should Combo Finishers get buffed?

With everything going down across the board now might be a good time to give these tools a once over as they promote smarter teamplay.

They should last longer, definitely.

certain ones sure. when have you ever comboed a light/dark field and thought how useful that was

Yeah, and also allow enemy fields of opposing elements prevent combo fields.

If they drop it over the existing one.

Like fire vs ice ect.

I think whirl finishers are the ones that need the greatest amount of work. Frankly I'd like to see their functionality reworked from the ground up to become more practical. Although some other ones could use some buffs, balancing some can be tricky due to their spammability for certain builds/specs. I would at the very least like to see more combo finisher-encouraging traits that are properly impactful and worth taking. Would be cool to help carve new group-oriented roles for builds like a Thief being able to spam Cluster Bomb into coordinated fields. One good example is being able to aurashare on Ele when leaping through combo field, and then proccing other on-aura traits.

it was nice when they were a large component to successful game play. too bad the game went all spammy and dumbed down.

Nerf them and down state autos plz

I feel like combo finishers are outdated, and have not been upscaled to the state of balance today

As a core dd ele i still heavily rely on combos for support/damage/sustain

Not all, certain ones are pretty useful already (like waterfield or smokefield blasts/leaps).Others could see some buffs.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:As a core dd ele i still heavily rely on combos for support/damage/sustain

Same as an engi. I run med kit so a lot of my heals come from blasting and leaping through water fields.

Occasionally I'll run condi holo with bombs and try and line up a Fire bomb + Incindiary Ammo + Photon Blitz burst.Gameplay like that feels very satisfying to pull off, and is fair to play against due to the amount of setup required.

Smokefields dont need a buff.

Id like waterfield blasts to be scaled with the healingpower of the one who placed it down, not the one who blasted it.

Rework these:Whirl finishers: They are pretty bad except on smoke fields.Etereal fields: Chaos aura is fine, rest are bad.Lightning fields: Strong on leaps, weak otherwise.

Smoke fields and arguably light fields are a bit too strong. They need nerfs if anything.

Yes, I think smoke field in particular should get buffed.

@Tycura.1982 said:With everything going down across the board now might be a good time to give these tools a once over as they promote smarter teamplay.Or this would make classes with the most access to combo fields AND blasts AND leaps even stronger than before. Namely ... ele and engi. And additional headache for them to balance.Why would they need any buffs at all even?

Even more stealth for thief? :D No thanks.

@scarydogie.3024 said:certain ones sure. when have you ever comboed a light/dark field and thought how useful that was

Thief's daggerstorm is amazing in both.

If anything Smokefield needs to be nerfed.

Make repeated casts in it refresh the 2 seconds instead of stacking Stealth.

That'll show those little stealth spamming thieves.

I don't think they "need" to be buffed.

Before every professions gained the ability to fart boons they were a "stapple", yet the mechanism was flawed in the sense that some fields end up having more interesting combo effects than other. It's unfortunate but it's a fact that the combo mechanism becoming "flavor" was a boon for the game, because it used to be a reason for discrimination.

In my opinion, what combo need is not a buff to what they do, it's traits that make the character deal a static effects whatever the field used in the combo. For example:

• Reaper could have a trait (minor or major) that apply an additional instance of half a second of chill on successfull combo (whirl projectile).
• Scourge could have a trait (minor or major) that apply an additional instance of 2-3 seconds torment on successfull combo (whirl/projectile).
• Chronomancer could have a trait (minor or major) that apply an additional instance of 1-2 second of slow on successfull combo (whirl/projectile and aoe slow on blast).
• Berserker could have a trait (minor or major) that apply an additional instance of 1-2 second of burn on successfull combo (whirl/projectile and aoe burn on blast).
• ... etc.

Another thing that I find necessary is a standardization of the combo effects. We still got a few combo fields that have "original" effects like poison fields or smoke fields. Ideally:

• Blast should create an aoe effect. (which is generally the case)
• Projectile and whirl should apply a single target effect (which is the case as well)
• Leap should give an aura (which is not the case. Water, poison, smoke and lightning should give their own aura, lightning is easy since it already exist and stealth could probably be transformed into an aura. However, water and poison need their own.)

The goal should be more rigor into what the combo do and an adaptation of the professions' e-specs to the act of doing a combo instead of a flat "buff" to the effects which most likely won't change much to the fact that fire fields are the best combo fields.

NB.: All in all more rigor in this game can't hurt.

@Falan.1839 said:Even more stealth for thief? :D No thanks.

That's literally the only combo that is powerful enough. All the rest could be rebalanced.For example. 20% chance for 1-2 seconds of burning when firing through your allies flamewall is kind of irrelevant.

I'll repeat what I said on another thread about combos:

Make combo fields stronger, but make them disappear/not able to get combo'd in after a proc so they don't overwrite each other at a rate of 50 fields per second.

I love combo'sBut they only increase the gap between good players and the bad ones, whereas currently Anet should reduce this gap.Moreover smoked combo are already too powerful in mcm.And to finish, it's still going to buff the same class as elem, guardian, ... and left out the necromancer who has the worst combo and gives no buff.

@Blocki.4931

Make combo fields stronger, but make them disappear/not able to get combo'd in after a proc so they don't overwrite each other at a rate of 50 fields per second.it's wonderful idea!!!!!!!!!!

They are about to turn balance upside down. This would just make it much much more complicated. Also some classes get allot of combo fields while others dont, but trying to balance that would be like trying to balance water combat and would have about as much impact imo.

I really like the idea of combos, but feel like they are more of a pve group mechanic. Buffing combo fields/finishers wont suddenly make everyone cooperate and play as a team, and some fields are already quite powerful and dont really need a buff.

Yes i've always thought combo finishers were the coolest part of this game that they forgot about. I find it funny that most of the game defining mechanics that separate GW2 from other mmo's Anet spends the least time refining like under water combat and combo fields.

Make me wonder if between core and now did anet abandon there original goals they had in the game in favor of something else.