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Combos should be buffed


dS T nE.6823

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Nobody blasts fire fields anymore because heralds guards etc. It's been long since I've seen ppl coordinate blasts in water fields. Simply put, combos used to matter back in the vanilla days when one had to build up for a burst carefully, now everything is so bursty combos don't really change anything in the meta. maybe except for scrappers with lightning fields. The point is, combos are too mediocre, but they should have a game-changing effect in my opinion. Be aware this is totally from the view of a filthy casual ele main lol.

  1. Fire: I coordinate 3 of my blasts on weaver to get 9, one-digit stacks of might while preparing mantra of pain gives 12 on mirage. It should give at least like 5 stacks of might to be rewarding, and I keep wondering wow I'm taking the effort to BLAST this SCORCHING thing and it does nothing to enemies? Like Sigil of Fire, make a small dmg flame blast at the origin point.Currently leap in fire gives fire aura which synergizes well with fire weaver, but basically it's nothing for any other builds. maybe apply burning like projectiles at the end of the leap.I'm very biased against pewpewers so I'll leave projectiles to ur imaginations lol.barely seen whirl finishers lol(who takes tornados? o.o)
  2. Water: blasts are generally great burst heal for solo roaming(holo, weaver). maybe add small regen or vigor. leaps also provide great heals, I'm not sure what to add.
  3. Lightning: who needs area swiftness nowadays...... asides from scrappers I think this fields is useless atm. blasts should give like quickness + ele dagger 2 effect. leaps daze the target, but wouldn't stuns fit the electric concept better? maybe these suggestions would be too overtuned for scrappers..
  4. Ice: blasts should totally have sigil of hydromancy effect. not many classes have ice fields so im not sure actually..
  5. Dark, Light, Poison, Ethereal etc, I leave these up to u.

tl;dr: ele main qqing on forums

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@MachineManXX.9746 said:That would just add more power creep to the game.

I think everyone can agree on the fact that the power creep in other areas have to be seriously toned down in all manners(and if it doesn't get addressed, simply put, gw2 won't really have a future) so that mechanics like combos which define the start of this game actually do something

why did this get moved to ele forums anyways. It's not that I'm asking for ele buffs... I'm asking for a fundamental change in the meta gameplay to not just spam boon corrupt and spikes, and have competitive and FUN+immersive phenomenons overall.

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@dS T nE.6823 said:

@MachineManXX.9746 said:That would just add more power creep to the game.

I think everyone can agree on the fact that the power creep in other areas have to be seriously toned down in all manners(and if it doesn't get addressed, simply put, gw2 won't really have a future) so that mechanics like combos which define the start of this game actually do something

why did this get moved to ele forums anyways. It's not that I'm asking for ele buffs... I'm asking for a fundamental change in the meta gameplay to not just spam boon corrupt and spikes, and have competitive and FUN+immersive phenomenons overall.

:lol: That's because this is the trash bin of the forums. I really can't see why your thread got moved here except for your last sentence.

You are right though. Fire fields are the best example, but the same goes for many other fields as well. Cleansing one condition in light fields? A blind on darkness? 1 poison stack from poison fields? They should all get upgradet to powercrept values or (even better) the rest should be toned down.

Water fields are the only ones being still relevant, and mainly due to holo having a gazillion finishers and weaver's short CD water field.

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Personally I do hate that combo fields are essentially irrelevant. The only place that I ever use them is on my engineer, where after blowing myself up on holo I use water field -> sword 3 -> shield 4 twice -> acid bomb. Otherwise, every class can do things innately that are far more powerful than what combo fields can accomplish.

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I won't mind combo fields, they are highly useful in WvW.

Full blob stealth from blasting Scrapper's Elite.I sometimes get to blast my own Water fields as a Weaver when I don't get enough heals, or when Retal. is ticking and there is no way out of it.Tempest makes use of Fire/Frost auraThieves blast their fields for the playstyle everyone hates of hit hard and run... And so on.

It's just that Fire field, which makes up most of Ele's kit, is not that powerful as others when out of instanced PvE... even doubt it in that scenario. However, I am more of stacking duration or new effects rather than adding in intensity because a bunker shouldn't gain access to as much strength; an equivalent of 750 increased power or else. Fire field is just an example of lacking fields.

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I wonder why there isn't a trait to improve combo fields. I mean that was how ele has originally been designed, and still is. That's the whole point of having fields + finisher in every weapon set. Persisting flames could be improved, maybe remove the useless lava font part.

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While this is a thread about combos in general when it was moved already here I hijack it for a moment. I feel ele is one of the classes where combos still matter, it is simply not that power creeped, so that you still have to use them. Sometimes I am envious of other classes as it simply does feel weak to have to rely on them. Nerving those classes might help, nevertheless I think all could benefit from stronger combos.For ele, what if the grand master traits boost combos? We have the option to get fury by blasting fire fields. But what if the other two traits would also boost combos, in this example blast finisher. For blinding ashes, the by far the weakest one, I have in mind: first part stays the same, blind on burning. Second new part, blast finisher (in fire fields) cause aoe burn.For Pyromancer's Puissance: blast finisher have an increased range and deal damage. Other idea would be knock back, that would need a long CD so.This would flow nice with the theme of the fire trait line and give some nice aoe. Other lines could boost different finisher.

In general as long as I have plaid gw2 I found that the finisher are quite different in value. Some are good and other go more or less unnoticed. So to bring an idea what if effects from finishers were stronger? For example a projectile finisher with poison would inflict a stronger poison compared to your normal skills. This would boost them. Other than that I found projectile finisher especially lacking. As they have only a chance of 20% they are more or less useless. You can't predict them as you have no control. On many other traits and skills randomness was removed but not here, why? To create a fair environment especially for pvp, random effects have no place.

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I'm just too burnt out waiting on anet to make some meaningful changes in the meta...The first glimpse at gw2 was a montage of d/d ele on youtube and I was like wow this is so flashy and kewl.The very existence of dodges and combos were what got me into gw2 but sadly inherent power creep in profession specs have become too much... I really hope anet sees through what made their game very enjoyable distinguished from the other so many mmos ive tried...

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It's less and less true, but since 2012 elem depends/ed on combo for buff (mights/fury, auras, healing) .... or to support roles.When it was godlike until Hot they give too much powercreep and accessibility to other classes ( 25might fury with 2 skills, blocks, kites, sustain...) while with elem you still need to chain skills with few regards of your enemy pattern, to earn 12 mights and some aura...Even holo; the broken combo Turret+PF is not even needed as you fart mights/fury/quickness/prot and sustain only by attacking and react to your foe, or scrapper healing.

I'm so proud and feel talented when I chain skills and earn mights and, with arcane, some prot, fury, and kill players; but then I play Rev or Chaos mirage, Holo, FB, even deadeye ....I feel a bit duped. Yes combo could be buffed; we could earn 5 mights and not 3, more heals, longer auras ...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Combos deserve a buff and an overall re-work to a lot of their sub-par effects, HOWEVER, only if we saw a simultaneous culling of passive boon generation, aura spam and combo field availability. Nearly every AoE in the game is a combo field, and deciphering what is actually happening on the field of battle at any given time has already been a huge mess for a long time. Greatly limit to the total amount of combo fields, and only then can you go ahead and start buffing their effects. All that said, perhaps the only combo field interactions which SHOULDN'T receive any changes would be the fire field and water field blasts respectively.

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@"Swagg.9236" said:Combos deserve a buff and an overall re-work to a lot of their sub-par effects, HOWEVER, only if we saw a simultaneous culling of passive boon generation, aura spam and combo field availability. Nearly every AoE in the game is a combo field, and deciphering what is actually happening on the field of battle at any given time has already been a huge mess for a long time. Greatly limit to the total amount of combo fields, and only then can you go ahead and start buffing their effects. All that said, perhaps the only combo field interactions which SHOULDN'T receive any changes would be the fire field and water field blasts respectively.

This is only half the problem, though. There are multiple issues that all contribute to a compounding problem due to fields being inherently additive in how they work.

The system only really works correctly when the game is has a low power cap, and is partly caused by the limited number of skills a character can have loaded at any given time. In a high power cap situation (like present), certain effects are stronger then others due to directly availability in skills. Shifting more of the power balance to fields would subsequently demand each Class/Espec have greater availability to more field types, in order to stay competitive; which in turn means more skills are needed, but can't be supported easily with the limited skill slots. Making the Combos stronger multiples the size of the gap, due to the limited availability in each class.... which is what happened originally in the Post-launch Berserker meta.

Eles were king because they had exceptional might access, Thieves were untouchable (more so then Mesmers) because of easy access to Smoke and Leap providing endless stealth and blind, and every other effect was marginalized because incoming damage should be avoided (made easier by blinds working on champs), and while only vulnerability aided outgoing damage, it was never mechanically critical to survival.

Combos only really saw major use in WvW and some parts of sPvP, mostly because players there took time to coordinate, and the lacked emphasis on personal DPS freed up many builds to use a wider range of weapons. Engineer was a juggernaut after they added the Tool Belt, since it added a whole ecosystem of fields and blast finishers for them to play off of. Eles and Hammer Guards were the backbone of zerg comps, easily stacking boons and quickly doing water/blast heals mid fight.

But with any amount of power creep in the overall game, it creates a catch 22 on multiple fronts. If fields are stronger, or more power shifted to them, all classes need better access to multiple types just to have access to important ones. But the only way to normalize power between the combo types, you need to normalize power between all the conditions and boons.... which isn't possible given some are purely mechanical, and those have chronically inconsistent value across the game types (unless you fix the game types, which itself is beyond possible at this point). Theres also the collateral effect of new players having to learn these, but nothing in-game is capable of properly teaching it. Tutorials don't work because the concept of Boon functions and non-damaging conditions are too abstract without a visible damage component. Water field heals are also obfuscated by the fact they're almost exclusively attached to healing skills. This is less of a problem when these are attached to skills, because they directly benefit without having to do anything else. Even when they fail to understand the concept of various boons, its merely a loss of optimization since they'll still randomly benefit by circumstance.

But when power is low capped, the additive nature and opportunity for interplay scales directly with the game mode. That still leaves the problem of a massive meta dichotomy between modes, but Especs can fill in those gaps by leaning into them. Which is why its unfortunate that Especs are being used to internalize power gains, because its a more conventional approach to design and balance.

GW2 killed its own opportunity to correct this situation "twice" before HOT, and was unrecoverable from that point forward. And given the amount of accelerating drift toward conventional WoW class design and balance, I have zero hope for GW3 being a better foundation for the kind of interplay GW2 was originally targeting.

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Well, they should standardize combos and then add support effects via traits. There is already the basis for that on elementalist, I don't why it couldn't be implemented large scale.Combo finisher:

  • Projectile/whirl: add combo field specialty to the projectile (fire: burn, ice: chill, static: vuln, light: cleanse, dark: torment, poison: poison, smoke: blind, water: heal)
  • Blast: splash combo field specialty (fire: burn, ice: chill, static: vuln, light: cleanse, dark: torment, poison: poison, smoke: blind, water: heal)
  • Leap: clad the user into combo field element (fire: fire aura, Ice: chilling aura, static: static aura, light: light aura, dark: dark aura, poison: wilting aura, smoke: stealth, water: barrier)

Traits:

  • Elementalist: Persisting flame change to "fire field last longer. Your condition damage are increased". Burning rage change to "Gaining fire aura inflict burn around you. Blasting a combo field grant fury to up to 5 allies." Cleansing water: add "cleanse a condition when attuning to water". Cleansing wave changed to "Blasting a combo field heal up to 5 allies in the radius. Create a combo blast when attuning to water".
  • Warrior: already got Powerful synergy
  • Ranger: Allies aid: add "Grant regeneration to up to 5 allies when you successfully perform a leap finisher in a combo field"
  • Necromancer: Whatever...
  • Guardian: Empowering might change to "Leaping or blasting into a combo field grant 3 might stacks to nearby allies"
  • Thief: Assassin's reward change to "blasting a combo field grant steath to nearby allies. Gain health whenever you leap into a combo field"
  • Engineer: already have traits rewarding using blast finishers.
  • Mesmer: like the necromancer it's not a "combo profession"
  • Revenant: word of censure: add "blasting into a combo field" to the list of effects spawning healing orbs.
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@starlinvf.1358 said:

@"Swagg.9236" said:Combos deserve a buff and an overall re-work to a lot of their sub-par effects, HOWEVER, only if we saw a simultaneous culling of passive boon generation, aura spam and combo field availability. Nearly every AoE in the game is a combo field, and deciphering what is actually happening on the field of battle at any given time has already been a huge mess for a long time. Greatly limit to the total amount of combo fields, and only then can you go ahead and start buffing their effects. All that said, perhaps the only combo field interactions which SHOULDN'T receive any changes would be the fire field and water field blasts respectively.

This is only half the problem, though. There are multiple issues that all contribute to a compounding problem due to fields being inherently additive in how they work.

The system only really works correctly when the game is has a low power cap, and is partly caused by the limited number of skills a character can have loaded at any given time. In a high power cap situation (like present), certain effects are stronger then others due to directly availability in skills. Shifting more of the power balance to fields would subsequently demand each Class/Espec have greater availability to more field types, in order to stay competitive; which in turn means more skills are needed, but can't be supported easily with the limited skill slots. Making the Combos stronger multiples the size of the gap, due to the limited availability in each class.... which is what happened originally in the Post-launch Berserker meta.

Eles were king because they had exceptional might access, Thieves were untouchable (more so then Mesmers) because of easy access to Smoke and Leap providing endless stealth and blind, and every other effect was marginalized because incoming damage should be avoided (made easier by blinds working on champs), and while only vulnerability aided outgoing damage, it was never mechanically critical to survival.

Combos only really saw major use in WvW and some parts of sPvP, mostly because players there took time to coordinate, and the lacked emphasis on personal DPS freed up many builds to use a wider range of weapons. Engineer was a juggernaut after they added the Tool Belt, since it added a whole ecosystem of fields and blast finishers for them to play off of. Eles and Hammer Guards were the backbone of zerg comps, easily stacking boons and quickly doing water/blast heals mid fight.

But with any amount of power creep in the overall game, it creates a catch 22 on multiple fronts. If fields are stronger, or more power shifted to them, all classes need better access to multiple types just to have access to important ones. But the only way to normalize power between the combo types, you need to normalize power between all the conditions and boons.... which isn't possible given some are purely mechanical, and those have chronically inconsistent value across the game types (unless you fix the game types, which itself is beyond possible at this point). Theres also the collateral effect of new players having to learn these, but nothing in-game is capable of properly teaching it. Tutorials don't work because the concept of Boon functions and non-damaging conditions are too abstract without a visible damage component. Water field heals are also obfuscated by the fact they're almost exclusively attached to healing skills. This is less of a problem when these are attached to skills, because they directly benefit without having to do anything else. Even when they fail to understand the concept of various boons, its merely a loss of optimization since they'll still randomly benefit by circumstance.

But when power is low capped, the additive nature and opportunity for interplay scales directly with the game mode. That still leaves the problem of a massive meta dichotomy between modes, but Especs can fill in those gaps by leaning into them. Which is why its unfortunate that Especs are being used to internalize power gains, because its a more conventional approach to design and balance.

GW2 killed its own opportunity to correct this situation "twice" before HOT, and was unrecoverable from that point forward. And given the amount of accelerating drift toward conventional WoW class design and balance, I have zero hope for GW3 being a better foundation for the kind of interplay GW2 was originally targeting.

That's an astoundingly well-put way of breaking down the inherent issues with combo fields. Yes, whatever "solutions" I come up with myself (which often simultaneously spill into the territory of fixing condi/boon spam and auras), no solution was all that satisfying. I personally think that the closest we can get to making combo fields powerful yet still balanced around team-play would be by changing a number of baseline powerful combos and then limiting fields and finishers to certain weapon sets in order to fix certain playstyles and support options to certain classes. That said, even such an initiative wouldn't completely address all of GW2's shortcomings with regards to the boon/condi system along with potentially any other passives that might trigger off of combo interaction (which is probably why every time I ended up addressing combo fields, it almost always included ideas about condi and boon reworks). Yeah, it's just a huge, heaping junk pile which nobody at anet would ever address.

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