What is meant by "This guy spamming reds..."?

[Celthon.6284]

After an open world Boss fight I saw someone in map-chat ranting about someone "...spamming reds like no business...", or words to that affect.  Without knowing who they were directing it at (the class/profession of the person they were ranting at), can anyone enlighten me as to what that phrase 'spamming reds' refers to?  Thank you for your time and assistance.

[Danikat.8537]

They might have meant the boss.

Some people call AoE attacks 'red' because they're marked with red circles (usually saying "stay out the red!"), so they might have been complaining about how many AoE attacks the boss was using. (Or they could have been just pointing it out, but I assume it would be obvious to anyone there, so I'm imagining more of an exasperated tone.)

[Randulf.7614]

Which boss?

[Celthon.6284]

2 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Which boss?

Giant Black Smoke-looking thing in a swamp, -- sorry, I played for few weeks years ago, and started playing again few days ago...so I'm clueless/lost most of the time.

 

8 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

They might have meant the boss.

Some people call AoE attacks 'red' because they're marked with red circles (usually saying "stay out the red!"), so they might have been complaining about how many AoE attacks the boss was using. (Or they could have been just pointing it out, but I assume it would be obvious to anyone there, so I'm imagining more of an exasperated tone.)

I did not consider that...I just presumed they were ranting at another player...may well have been frustration at number of red circles, as there were HUGE numbers of them, often overlapping and basically saturating the area.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

16 minutes ago, Celthon.6284 said:

Giant Black Smoke-looking thing in a swamp, -- sorry, I played for few weeks years ago, and started playing again few days ago...so I'm clueless/lost most of the time.

 

I did not consider that...I just presumed they were ranting at another player...may well have been frustration at number of red circles, as there were HUGE numbers of them, often overlapping and basically saturating the area.

That's Shadow Behemoth (SB). And yeah, it sounds like the other player was just commenting on the large amount of AOEs SB churns out during the fight.

[Randulf.7614]

Yep. Many bosses have this issue - and it can be excsessive. Many players haven't learnt to move out of them even now though regardless of whether it's spammed or not.

 

[Eastwind.7209]

What about players whose skills put down red circles - like Ele AoE fire skills or skyscale fire strikes? When those are spammed around a boss it can be confusing to me whether the circles are from the boss or allies.

[Tinker.6924]

On 6/17/2024 at 9:56 AM, Eastwind.7209 said:

What about players whose skills put down red circles - like Ele AoE fire skills or skyscale fire strikes?

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of consistency with how friendly and not-friendly AOE's are displayed and gw2 has a unique mechanic that tends to add to the visual noise: combo fields.  In theory these give you a way of doing something extra depending on the field type and the finisher (oh someone else in the party used a skill that created a water field, if I use my blast finisher I can trigger a group heal) but in practice no one really pays attention to the fields or changes their rotation to take advantage of them because its not worth it. Yet their visual noise creating rings, rectangles and other things of various colors still happen.  Combo fields tend to last long enough that if you COULD take advantage of it, your regular rotation will.

There are a few things you can look at in the Options menu to reduce visual clutter.  

• General Options->Combat/Movement section: Disable Area-of-Effect Rings.  I think this turns off all AOE rings probably not what you want and I prefer to keep it unchecked.  Never been brave enough to try a boss fight with this checked to see what happens to pie slices and all that.
• General Options->Groups section: Hide Ally Visual Effects (probably what you are looking for) Personally I go with Hide All.  It still doesn't turn off all visuals from friendly players but it turns off a TON of them.
• Graphics Options->Postprocessing section.  Personally I have most of these check boxes unchecked: Bloom, Color Grading, Color Tint, Distortion, Light Rays, and Selection Outline.  If you play a prof that has a "special mode" (like necromancer's shroud) the default game options turn the whole screen a different color and that can make it VERY difficult to differentiate friendly and not-friendly AOE's.  Postprocessing is what controls that.
• Graphics Options->Advanced Settings section.  Lowering the various settings may eliminate some circles and stuff but it's very hard to predict what things will disappear and what won't.  Personally I would suggest keeping these at the highest settings your pc allows.

None of these reduce floating combat numbers and useless floating text (block! dodged! blah blah! don't care!) that popup and often obscure the fight, but the ARCDPS addon does make those game options available.  If you install arcdps go to the Extra's section and check the 2 suppress options to not show combat floating text and damage numbers.