Mysterious Present -> Princess Doll: Your experiences?

[Nemeon Lion]

Quickness has no distinction between caster or physical. Everyone gets a huge benefit from quickness, no questions asked.

Also, forget about elite up-time. It's a bad way to compare elites. People keep trying to compare gw2's elites to gw1. They aren't the same thing. Truth be told, a skill being elite in GW1 was a BAD thing because you only had 1 slot for an elite skill while most of the time elites were treated as just 1 more skill in your bar.

By giving elites actual strong effects (like the mass quickness) you also need to give them huge cooldowns, or else you'll be rewarding button mashing instead of actual skill usage.

[nkuvu]

And they are mostly just spam on recharge until they are dead.

Then you're using a bunch of skills that you don't need to -- for instance, the condition removal if you have no conditions. Throwing fear around may also get you into trouble, if the feared enemy runs off to tell his friends about the big scary necromancer.

Using the skills when you don't need to isn't bad per se, though you might be a sad necromancer when you do actually need to remove a condition (like confusion) and the skill is on cooldown.

As something of a side note, I think that you might feel like you're a better player if you weren't just mashing buttons. Of course if you're on your own, mash away to your heart's content. It just sounds like you think skill is going to be a significant factor when playing with others, and that sounds like it's not much fun.

Why is there seemingly so little in the game that teaches a player these game fundamentals?

That's the way they designed the game. In lots of areas.

How do I know if I'm close enough to use a skill? What do the numbers on these skills mean (referring to activation/recharge etc., not obvious things like listed damage)? How can I tell if I'm still in combat with something? Why am I slower when I'm fighting something? How far can I fall without taking damage or dying?

I could go on, but the point is that not everything in the game is explicit. Lots of things aren't even on the wiki yet. Some things I think are by design (ArenaNet doesn't intend to tell you the changes to the UI when you're in combat, you just end up figuring it out yourself or hear someone else mention the differences). Some things I think are simply oversights or things that I expect to be cleared up on the wiki... eventually (see: aforementioned traits).

I don't think I've seen an elite that recharges quick so far... the quickest one I know of (I think) is Renewed Focus on guardian which is 90 sec recharge.

Just a quick mention, Signet of Rage has a 60 second cooldown with thirty seconds of active time. It's pretty insane. But that's the fastest elite I could find on the wiki.

I do agree about comparing elites using the up times, though. And even the longest ones I could find were still on the order of four minutes, which isn't a particularly long recharge (I've had champion fights last long enough to use the asura golems twice even though they're on a three minute recharge).

[satomz]

Also quickness, it applies to your spells too. Just imagine how much quicker you could cast Meteor Shower on an ele when you have quickness on. I wanted to double check that last fact, but the wiki appears to be down right now. =(

You have it right, meteor shower does finish casting faster with quickness on.

[shawn]

It also makes pvp finishing moves faster too!

Mmm quickness.

[Alaris]

Why is there seemingly so little in the game that teaches a player these game fundamentals?

Imagine if every error you made was made obvious. You'd learn fast if you stuck with it, but it would be annoying as hell.

Imagine these big red message in the center of the screen:

FAIL: your foe is out of range for this skill
FAIL: you snared an immobile foe
FAIL: you used condition removal while not having conditions
FAIL: foe has blocked your attack, again
FAIL: the last three shots were reflected right back at your face, were you even paying attention?
FAIL: despite the big power-up skill slow animation, your foe hit you again with a big easily-avoided attack
FAIL: you used a blocking skill while not being attacked directly
FAIL: you used a skill while under heavy confusion
FAIL: ...

Well, you get the idea. A lot of those warnings are in the game, but the devs know to make them not too in-your-face because it would get annoying to players who prefer to mash buttons. But that you can play the game with only mashing buttons doesn't mean you are playing well, it means you are playing well enough.

Well enough to progress. Maybe well enough to finish dungeons if your team picks up your slack.

[BladeDVD]

If you're not inclined to figure this stuff out on your own, would you be really inclined to read the tool tip?

I wanted to respond to this a little more fully: It's more that I haven't had the time nor the need to figure some of this stuff out. Tool tips explaining what reflection/confusion/combos/quickness/etc do I see only as a bonus. Sure there are people who won't read them, but there are plenty of people who will. This will just help some people be better players faster.

@Blade: I read all your post but I'm not going to quote the bits I'm gonna talk about cause X_x you wrote a small novel. =D

I know, my apologies. :-) Thanks for the confusion build link.

The recharge of elite skills are always so so long... necro and mesmer are no exception. The elites are supposed to be used "at the right time" rather than just use them on recharge. I don't think I've seen an elite that recharges quick so far... the quickest one I know of (I think) is Renewed Focus on guardian which is 90 sec recharge. Basically the thief venom and the flesh golem are the only "quick" recharging ones, and they're still pretty up there.

I look at general usefulness of a skill. If I'm going to put it on my bar, I like to think it is going to be useful. Most of the PVE stuff I'm doing is just heart and skill point related now in terms of fighting. I'm more interested in regular, reliably applied damage and don't have much need for skills that will come in handy in a narrow set of circumstances. Obviously for a unique situation where a particular elite would be very useful I would change it out, but for every day use, 5 seconds of stealth or 10 seconds of quickness just doesn't seem worth the effort in most of the situations I find myself in.

Also quickness, it applies to your spells too. Just imagine how much quicker you could cast Meteor Shower on an ele when you have quickness on. I wanted to double check that last fact, but the wiki appears to be down right now. =(

Most of the skills I use are pretty fast casting already. Quickness would be great for long cast spells, or spammable attacks, no question there, but on marks and wells? I guess it would apply the well damage faster, and it would increase the attack speed of my clones. Still, only 10 seconds every 3 1/2 minutes?

Also, forget about elite up-time. It's a bad way to compare elites. People keep trying to compare gw2's elites to gw1. They aren't the same thing. Truth be told, a skill being elite in GW1 was a BAD thing because you only had 1 slot for an elite skill while most of the time elites were treated as just 1 more skill in your bar.

By giving elites actual strong effects (like the mass quickness) you also need to give them huge cooldowns, or else you'll be rewarding button mashing instead of actual skill usage.

The problem with this is that general PVE your fights only last about 15-30 seconds with fairly short breaks in between them. When you are already killing relatively quickly, killing faster for a very short period of time just seems kind of useless. I don't just go by CD, I'm looking at the longest term of effectiveness or usefulness. Like I said, maybe if I did dungeons or PVP more I would see more usefulness from these elites.

Then you're using a bunch of skills that you don't need to -- for instance, the condition removal if you have no conditions. Throwing fear around may also get you into trouble, if the feared enemy runs off to tell his friends about the big scary necromancer.

Using the skills when you don't need to isn't bad per se, though you might be a sad necromancer when you do actually need to remove a condition (like confusion) and the skill is on cooldown.

Well, skill 4 also does damage and combos with skill 3 according to the wiki. I know when I throw it down I see stuff die faster. Also, please keep in mind that while I haven't memorized exactly what the skills do, doesn't mean I don't learn when not to use them. I rarely find conditions give me very much trouble on my necro in general PVE, which is partly why I never really learned about confusion until recently. And I do know how fear works. I use it to provide myself with breathing room when killing mobs solo, and am careful about using it with others who are using melee skills.

As something of a side note, I think that you might feel like you're a better player if you weren't just mashing buttons. Of course if you're on your own, mash away to your heart's content. It just sounds like you think skill is going to be a significant factor when playing with others, and that sounds like it's not much fun.

It's fun to see things die. I'm feel I do ok with regular content or stuff I already know how it works. But I'm sure I could be killing faster or dying less if I knew the game mechanics better. I'll get there eventually I'm sure. Ultimately a lot of this was in response to someone saying that by now people who have been playing since release ought to know XYZ about the game. I just thought that kind of ignored the way very large parts of the game and the skills worked. (I probably could have just pointed out what's been said before about how with skills tied to weapons, it's hard to bring a really bad build for general PVE).

That's the way they designed the game. In lots of areas.

How do I know if I'm close enough to use a skill? What do the numbers on these skills mean (referring to activation/recharge etc., not obvious things like listed damage)? How can I tell if I'm still in combat with something? Why am I slower when I'm fighting something? How far can I fall without taking damage or dying?

I could go on, but the point is that not everything in the game is explicit. Lots of things aren't even on the wiki yet. Some things I think are by design (ArenaNet doesn't intend to tell you the changes to the UI when you're in combat, you just end up figuring it out yourself or hear someone else mention the differences). Some things I think are simply oversights or things that I expect to be cleared up on the wiki... eventually (see: aforementioned traits).

The difference between the things you mention and the things I mentioned though is that your examples are easy enough to understand by just playing any of the game types. As you get closer, the red line under the skill goes away or your aiming reticle goes from red to green, recharge/skill activation you can figure out from skills that do and don't take a long time to activate and recharge, you will always slow down when hit, there are a variety of heights to jump from and you quickly learn to eyeball how far you can fall w/o dying.

But reflect=mega damage on multishot projectile using enemies? Not obvious and really useful to know. Stacking just 10 stacks of confusion does enough damage to kill a full health lvl 80 necro in two skill uses? Not obvious and really useful to know. IAS in GW2 = quickness? Ibid.

I'm not sure how much more they could do with combos and traits in the game as they are more complicated, but the above and things like life steal (or siphon, as it is sometimes called)... I think there should be in game info on this, they are simple enough to explain.

I do agree about comparing elites using the up times, though. And even the longest ones I could find were still on the order of four minutes, which isn't a particularly long recharge (I've had champion fights last long enough to use the asura golems twice even though they're on a three minute recharge).

But how often do you fight a champion? I just prefer something being available or useful more often than not when picking skills for my bar for general fighting.

Edited to add:

Imagine if every error you made was made obvious. You'd learn fast if you stuck with it, but it would be annoying as hell.

My apologies, if I wasn't clear. When I said that, I was specifically referring to things like reflect and confusion. I didn't mean to imply general game mechanics common to most MMO RPGs needed more info. Though what you suggest could be done as long as they made it possible to toggle sets of warning messages meant to help teach game mechanics vs the regular game messages we're already seeing in the game.

[Alaris]

(...)

I agree that toggles would be best... let people who want the warnings put them up and learn faster, those who would rather ignore their noobness can do so too.

As for picking skills being generally useful in spam-on-recharge builds, you can do that, but not for weapon skills. With those skills locked, you are generally (not always) in situations where the optimal way to play it is to not spam skills, but rather keep certain skills for when you need them more. As a mesmer, I keep clones for when I need them (for shatters, or when under pressure), for example. But lots of other weapons have skills like that, the ranger bow skills that increase distance between you and foe, the engineer pistol or elixir gun skills that work at shorter ranges, shield skills in general, guardian staff skills, etc.

There's a lot of depth in the skill system, but general PvE doesn't "force" you to make proper use of that depth because it is fairly lenient on such mistakes. And I think that's a good thing. But when you play more difficult content, then these mistakes that used to mean a difference in efficiency can add up to making the difference between pass or fail (see my recent article on my own mesmer noobness on the frontpage). Likewise, the difference between playing my skills well as a guardian can make the difference between tanking long enough to kill a foe and his never-ending respawns, or wiping as a group under the increasing pressure. My level of professionalism (hahah) got us to just get the task done with some casualties on our side (me included), but I'm sure if I had timed my skills better we could have done that without casualties.

[Cyberman]

Imagine if every error you made was made obvious.
...
FAIL: your foe is out of range for this skill

It doesn't have to insult the player, nor make "every error your make obvious" - instead the system should help the player understand it.

For example, why are negative conditions at the same place as positive? It would be far easier to realize that something is draining me, if it were visually separated, not mixed into a bunch of other effects, some of them from me.

Some sort of tuturial would be great - unless I missed that? They could do it in GW1 with the heroes, why not do the same with other basic stuff?

[Nemeon Lion]

For example, why are negative conditions at the same place as positive? It would be far easier to realize that something is draining me, if it were visually separated, not mixed into a bunch of other effects, some of them from me.

But they are seperated.

Conditions and boons take different rows. It just happens that both rows are actually next to each other, which is a GOOD thing because it doesn't force the player to look everywhere for the information he needs.

[Cyberman]

But they are seperated.

?
I have to check that again. Last I remember, they were all in a big lump. Perhaps it was different rows, if so I hardly noticed.