Rain of Swords obstructing overview of character.

[Tyncale.1629]

I am usually not too bothered by the visual clutter caused by characters Skills, in fact I like quit a few of them.  However I noticed when doing Events in Verdant Brink yesterday that the Rain of Swords animation often obscured my field of view, when looking for clumps of enemies or just facing the enemy NPC's for melee.  The 3rd person  top/down view that I prefer to play with usually has the camera right above the Rain of Swords animation so I had to "duck" under it every time someone popped it.  It is also has a rather longish duration. You would have to lower your camera angle by a fair amount if you wanted to avoid it. Or play 1st person (who does that?). 

 

Now this was with an event where clumps of Enemies constantly pop up at several places(the one with the laser guns on a ridge while 2 NPC's are rigging an obstruction with explosives) so that made it even more of a hassle.  But mostly the fact that at very regular intervals you simply get obstructed from the view on your character. 

 

I like the animation itself, it's quit impressive and beautiful. Making it smaller would make it less obstructive, making it shorter duration would be better, though you would get a disconnect between the duration of the visual and the duration of the Skill effect.   I was wondering if more people found their view somewhat obstructed by this animation?

Edited August 19, 2021 by Tyncale.1629

[DemonSeed.3528]

Yeah even in wvw with a few virtuoso's in the same place it can get really bad lol. I've mentioned it a few times and I know I'm not alone on this at least. It's just the circle at the top of the animation that becomes obstructive, it reminds me of that one harvesting tool but bigger.

[voltaicbore.8012]

I agree (both on not usually being bothered by effects, but that Rain of Swords is obstructive).

 

I wouldn't mind seeing it as I personally cast it, but this kind of animation is exactly why ANet needs to figure out how to allow us to turn off others' effects. It's a pretty basic feature of most other games worth discussing, and I consider it a much higher priority than dx11. Then again, I know nothing about that sort of thing, and perhaps the dx11 upgrade is tied to being able to selectively turn down effects. Either way, I think it's something that really needs to be done for the game.