The surge thread

I found macroing surges makes it much less of a chore

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Belial

If a weaponskill is good enough to continuously use throughout a fight, why is the activation manual?

---

The WS probably has an immediate and significant impact on the battle either in the form of a large damage spike or a status effect of some kind. This means timing matters. Most buffs, including the Surges, are not like this.

I haven't read every post in the thread so sorry if something similar has already been said, but having to spam the buff does have more unnecessary downsides than just having to "pay attention". For example, if the effect fading coincides with doom spike in a combo and all its related buffs, you either reset your surge III to zero, or miss your doom spike, not to mention more animations to spam between WS windows on Ifrit etc.

I think a better execution of these abilities would be a combo of XIVs beserk, and XIs Avatar's Favor in that, using the ability turns the related surge on or off, at the potency of its first stack, it then increases in power twice with 30 second gaps each time, and remains on at that max value until cancelled by use or dread spike.

I believe the current requirement for spamming it is to have to use 500tp every min to make it balanced. This could be offset by simply adding a fixed "store tp -" to the stances, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to calculate the average amount of tp gained from *basic attacks* in 1 minute. I don't think when calculating the store tp -% to offset that 500tp/min, it would be wrong to include tp gained by store tp or invigorate, as they are supposed to be additional buffs in their own right.

On a less reasonable note: Seigan plz.

Edit: Gramm0r

Surges are amazing, I sometimes have problems keeping em up as well, maybe if they lasted 10 seconds longer D:

What surges would you guys like to see next?

Haste Surge!
Mana Surge!

I just wish there was max TP+ gear because 3000 is just... from level one.

That would be kinda cool

I must say I too dislike the length of our surges. It does feel like a hassle having to stack them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vaymathias

I really don't like the one minute timer as well. No matter what I do I always seem to forget about it. It certainly doesn't help that half the time that I play the timers are all screwed up. I'm really hoping they change it. "Whack-a-buff" has NEVER been fun for me, which is why I quit Guilld Wars within a week of playing it.

With all the focus on positioning, watching your health, the targets that you are fighting, watching everyone elses health to make sure the mages are not taking damage, watching for enemy aoe, having to keep track of something that does very little positive AND also comes with a negative is F***ing irritating.

---

Whack-a-buff, that's a good one!

I would also agree that as is the buff is very worthwhile, but at the same time irritating and uninteresting to maintain. You could get the same effect on your TP pool more or less by doing something like:

Making the skill a toggle (with a 500TP cost to toggle it on).
While the skill is on, it drains 500tp at a set interval (pick whatever works between 30 seconds and a minute). Each time it drains 500tp, it goes up a level of surge, to a max of III (it just consumes TP after that point).
The skill turns off when you lack the TP to maintain it.
The skill recast time remains the same.

Right now, I do my best to keep it up. But the ability has a tendency to fall off at the worst times while I'm focusing on something else, like helping get a mob off one of our mages, lining up a combo etc. I'd hate to see how much coordinating Regimens/Skillchains will add to this.

Letting the skill automate along the lines I added there will let me focus on fighting and helping my party, while still carrying the relevant TP and time-to-build-up costs for making use of Surge. I'd still need to make the important gameplay choices such as when it needs to be turned on and off, if I maintain it out of a fight with Invigorate etc.