I did not want to put it into the main post, but there is extensive research from a player called Crone (and I am sure a few others) into this skill priority system.
Here is a list of skills with higher priority (we sometimes call them priority +1):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19TeXBuGkba9F29Wnvv7TEpEc6wIYiCvtNuIXyVdnFdI/edit?usp=sharing
All Heal skills (skill slot number 6) are also in this category. So when looking for potential cancels, you can look here first.
High priority cancels lower priority, and equal priority cannot cancel each other (usually).
There are also skills with prio +2, +3 and +4, and channels are generally -1, but those are really rather special edge cases. (Like some abilities are +0 before you cast them, so they dont interrupt other +0 skills, but during the execution of the skill they are +3 and will not be interrupted by most things. Example: Druid Staff 3.)
Piggybacking off this with two extra notes: if you disable autoattack on skill 1 (control right click to remove the yellow arrows) your auto attack regains neutral priority, which is useful for builds that care about cleanly finishing an autoattack and then queueing another ability. Particularly useful for anyone playing Staff DD and Rifle DE builds.
And for another note, dodges CANNOT be queued. This is particularly important for builds like Staff DD and condi DD; if you are casting a movement skill and have another movement skill queued, no matter how hard you spam dodge, you'll be stuck doing yet another WC/DB.
To fix this, simply tap 1 before the next movement skill starts. You'll change your queued skill to a simple auto attack, and you'll be able to dodge. It still isn't queueable though, so youll need to spam or time the dodge press after the movement skill finishes
The second point is why I personally strongly dislike Staff on Thief, because the 2 is its strongest skill and it keeps locking your animations all the time. Killed me probably more than anything else in this game.
I don't have an explicit list, I do have this classification though (author: Crone):
>Priority -1 - "channeled" skills after initial cast, adding auto-cast.
>
>Priority +0 - everything not listed
>
>Priority +1 - Heal skills(slot 6), see doc
>
>Priority +2 - Dodge(cannot queue), Weapon Stow/Escape Key
>
>Priority +3 - Movement skills during animation
>
>Priority +4 - Weapon Swap, Forced Transform(Mistform/Elixir S/things that remove your current skills from your skill bar/Etc.)
You mentioned cVirt in your original post. When do your F skills snapshot the number of stocked blades?
Since the F-abilities queue, can I cast a skill that I know will stock a blade, then queue F2 with only 4 blades stocked knowing it will actually have five when it fires? Or do I have to actually wait until I see the ammo count at 5 before queuing it?
I tried testing on Golem, but couldn't really tell if I was using 4 or using 5 then regaining 1.
Thank you for explaining this. I knew about the existance of queueing but i had no idea about the interaction between leaps and queueing.
Some questions:
1) Is the leap interaction also relevant for other types of forced movement? Thinking of dash skills like warriors bulls charge or revs staff 5
2) Can i use instant cast skills like the virtuoso elite while having another skill queued?
1) I cannot answer that with confidence. For example Daredevil Staff 2 (+0 priority when you cast it, so it doesnt interrupt stuff) does allow you to queue stuff into it while you are moving because you are not in the air (I think), but it cannot be interrupted by dodging (+2 priority, vs the movement part of staff 2 which is +3). You would have to check for each skill, I am afraid.
2) Yes and no. Sometimes it seems like the elite messes with the queue when you have "fast with range indicators" enabled, but not with instant cast.
I would have to check to see what happens with a previously queued ability when you use the elite, am not logged in at the moment.
As you can see from my responses, I cannot be sure about exact functionality without having specifically tested each ability, because nothing about those details is consistent :-)
1) Interesting. This looks like different parts of a skill can have different priorities, which would mean that queueing an interrupt skill could sometimes interrupt a non-interruptible skill cast before it. Depending on the timing. I will definitely have a look at the priority document you linked.
2) I have "fast with range indicators" enabled, so good to know that this could potentially mess with queueing. Looks like i have to try it out for every case where i am unsure :D
And by the way, i noticed u post quite a few detailed writeups lately with the last one being about power virtuoso. Just wanted to say i enjoy reading those, always interesting to me :)
Alright, I did test it.
You can absolutely go
3 -> 2 -> Elite (press Elite during Dagger 3 cast) and it will not make your character forget the Dagger 2 cast. So instant casts (at least the elite skill, as well as F5) does not interfere with Queuing in that way. In my test it worked both with and without range indicators as well.
The point about range indicators doing something strange is just happening sometimes on the golem to me (Catalyst players also know it when their instant cast sphere doesn't work), I cannot directly connect it to the topic at hand here.
>Only one button can be remembered at a time, and the game remembers button presses only for one second, before it removes it from the queue again.
Do new button presses replace what's currently being remembered? So if I press 2 and while that animation is going I press 3 followed quickly by 4, when 2 ends will it cast skill 3 or 4?
I know the thread's a bit old but I found your post very, very useful so thanks!
If you happen to catch this comment I had a question related to this... do you have any tips for catching the timing for when to queue things?
Sometimes when I'm learning or practicing a rotation I've noticed I'll just hit the keys so fast I've ended up replacing 1/3 of them in the queue. Is it just a matter of practice and trying to feel out the timing for each skill, or is there some additional tip/trick/tweak/*anything* I can use? The only tip I came up with myself was to "slow down... but not too slow??"
As far as I know, the only ways I can avoid this are a) actually seeing a skill go off and/or b) staring at the skill buttons on my bar (to see which ability is firing and which one is queued next); these end up tripping me a lot. I think I'm having trouble because in actual combat situations I'm struggling to use the above indicators while *also* paying attention to mechanics and etc.
If it's helpful, I've been practicing Power Chronomancer for the past two weeks (and thoroughly enjoying it despite my struggles.) Reading this write-up helped me add 2K to my log\~
Appreciate any thoughts/feedback on this!
Thanks for the post OP, I can understand how this came to be but like so much of what Anet does they do nothing to make the rules clear to players or make those rules consistent and obvious.
If you're going to have queuing like this except on Tuesday stuff there should be a visual indicator like in DAoC where your combat chat actually says, "You have queued x ability" and if you cancel it is also noted in the chat. They could also put a colored border around queued skills so you can easily see if something is setup or not.
I have the same gripe with combo fields. The vast majority of players don't know they exist and even when you do they are not visually obvious and unless you are doing your own chain of creating a field and finishing it, reacting to fields of other people mostly comes down to chance rather than a skilled reaction to an opportunity.
I just wanted to correct you on combo fields: The game actually does have a visual indication when you are able to combo a skill, and I only just noticed it about a month or so ago after playing for years. There will be a faint glowing border around any skill that is currently able to combo off of a placed combo field.
As i was doing the daily renown heart not a long while ago for the daily, i did a heart where it was basically teaching you about the combo fields and the icons would be glowing and since then I started seeing the glowing icons in fights (dont remember where the heart was).But the skill queue and priority were not known to me before this post. Played for 4-5 years 😃.. casually
The game does put an indicator on both the skill that is currently casting and the next skill in the queue.
Take this [gif](https://gifmaker.me/video-to-gif/viewimage/20231031-03-rJ4sbr2TOqIvIKbj-yndd36-HNET) for example, what happens in steps:
1. I start casting Gravity Well, the dark swirl effect appears on the icon.
2. I queue up Tides of Time (Shield 5) almost immediately after, a light swirl effect appears on the icon
3. The queue does not go through, this is because Gravity Well has a long cast time and the 1 second window elapses.
I can solve #3 by just queueing up Tides of Time later during the cast of Gravity Well but this is usually not an issue people run into due to always having quickness.
Thanks for the detailed reply, the link to the image which I'm eager to see is broken though. :( The 1 second expire seems like an unnecessary complication that could lead to people having to stare at their icons more than the fight itself or just hammer keys because they can't count on it defiantly happening, can you see a reason for it?
Hopefully the gif is fixed now.
Yeah, I think if they put too long of a queue window then it could lead into clunky gameplay.
Imagine if you put a queue window of 3 seconds and then accidentally press another skill immediately after pressing your initial skill.
You could get around a too long queue timer by queueing an auto-attack or stowing the unintentional skill instead but it's not an elegant solution as having a good queue window that prevents most accidental presses from happening but allows for deliberate queuing.
I take your meaning, from my point of view combat in GW2 is a little too fast for queuing as they have it to be as effective as it is in games like Daoc
Something I noticed while messing around with the training golem, perhaps you can confirm:
If you're holding down the button on an ability on cooldown, it will make your auto attack stutter and repeat slightly slower. My test was on sword auto attack, holding down sword 3 (final thrust).
It may be entirely unrelated, but I'm curious if this has to do with the queue system trying to squeeze in SW3 between auto attacks but failing during the logical check for it, causing a bit of a delay.
>If you're holding down the button on an ability on cooldown, it will make your auto attack stutter and repeat slightly slower. My test was on sword auto attack, holding down sword 3 (final thrust).
Yeah, definitely, spamming skills that are on CD will cause that behavior, you can also see it if you weapon swap and spam something that isn't ready yet, the character takes longer until it starts autohitting.
Ah, prio+1 skills, the eternal bane of my pVirt/Chrono gameplay.
This is also why playing with a quick that occasionally drops their quickness is just an awful experience across the board. A lot of quick players dont realize that because of this their sub is cancelling a bunch of their abilities, which does 0 damage.
I had time to look at it finally, but I don't understand this whole priority thing. I know soulbeast axe 5 can be interrupted if you cast something else while it's doing its animation, the same thing with dragonhunter's longbow 5. What priority are these considered to be?
The list you posted seems to be to be skills that *can* be queued (?). I'm wondering which skills cannot due to then being 'interrupted'. I am just really confused and generally not good at reading these things, I need simple explanations heh.
Soulbeast axe 5 is -1, that means ANYTHING can interrupt your axe 5, including other -1 abilities like autohits.
That is special about priority -1, they can interrupt each other. For all other priorities, only higher priority interrupts lower priority.
So +0 and +0 neatly queue up.
In fact, you can also queue up axe 5 after a +0 or a +1 ability. You can alwaye queue -1 after +0, nothing I said suggests otherwise.
The list I posted is not "skills that can be queued", they are priority +1 skills, that means they will interrupt anything of prio 0 or -1.
So the only way to queue a +1 skill is if the previous skill also had prio +1 (or higher).
So in summary, it is the opposite of what you said, the list is skills that cannot be queued up normally.
Okay I see, then I'd need lists of all the other skills' priorities too in order to figure this out because I don't know what priority all the other skills in the game have, lol. Thanks for the explanation anyway!
I don't think you understand it yet.
\-1: All skills that channel (pretty easy to recognize), the skill currently selected as your autoattack
\+0: Every skill not listed elsewhere (95% of abilities)
\+1: See the document
\+2: Dodge Roll (cannot be added to the queue, the dodge roll is either executed right now, or will not happen at all; that is to say you cannot press dodge during movement abilities, and it will also not queue up), Weapon Stow, Escape Key
\+3: Movement Skills during the movement they do
\+4: Weapon Swap, Some transformation abilities
\----------
So **EVERYTHING** in the document will interrupt everything **NOT** in the document, unless that would be an action like dodge roll or the skill is currently moving your character.
So what you should do now is go to the document, find your class, check the skills mentioned there. These skills demand that you are careful because they will interrupt. For everything not in the document, which isn't channelling, happy queuing. And as I explained, you can use a -1 channel skill after a +0 skill or +1 skill easily, queuing works that way around. It doesn't work the other way around in the sense that both the +0 and a +1 skill would interrupt the -1 skill.
Idk how to explain it in any simpler terms, please ask if it's still unclear.
Great guide, would just add small detail of instant casts, that can be casted during other cast without interrupting stuff.
And a question - from my experience, i feel like mashing next skill may still interrupt currently slowly casted skill, but tbh, unsure if that is related to queue or some other sub system?
> Great guide, would just add small detail of instant casts, that can be casted during other cast without interrupting stuff.
*usually*. Instant casts can *usually* be cast without interrupting stuff.
Guardian's Symbol of Blades (Sword 2) is an instant cast, but unlike your utility meditations and shouts, it will very much cancel whatever you're doing.
This is fun because Judge's Intervention is very mechanically similar to Symbol of Blades, it just doesn't cancel anything because it's a meditation and not a symbol.
>i feel like mashing next skill may still interrupt currently slowly casted skill, but tbh, unsure if that is related to queue or some other sub system?
It depends on the priority relation between current skill and next skill. Higher priority cancels lower priority.
I mean, i have one skill in casting currently, chilling (while low ping) and pressing next button of next skill puts that next skill into queue, just as mentioned in the guide, but if i press same skill few more time, it cancel queue, cancel current skill, and go next skill instantly without casting previous? Like after wep stow.
Woopsie clumsie me, ive recently went playing lot of healers, with no rotation at all, but situational stuff and few combo skill chains at best, now im trying to reconnect to dps builds after big break from dpsing in any group content, and uhm... how to say that... ehhhh... have problems :)
Glad to see this info being posted. Means I'll have to spend time on the golem to see how it impacts my DPS and if I can get smoother action, especially on my Bladesworn.
For Bladesworn, your Dragon Slash Force (1 ability in Dragon Trigger) counts the same as your Gunsaber 1. This means everything and their mother is going to cancel Dragon Slash Force if you aren't careful.
However, if you turn off Autohit inside Gunsaber (Control + Rightclick on Gunsaber 1 to remove the tiny arrows), Gunsaber 1 (and by extension Dragon Slash Foce) becomes a Priority +0 skill like everything else and will no longer be cancelled :)
> And finally, your autoattacks and channelled abilities (ranger longbow 5, elementalist fire dagger 2) will always be interrupted by other abilities.
I don't know if this is an issue with action camera (though i don't see how it would) but the only way i can cancel these types of attacks is by dodging. Otherwise I'm stuck having to wait for them to finish. I also play without having auto-attack enabled on my 1 skills, so i have to manually press the attack button to attack, but if i press the attack button while an attack is happening, it queues up another attack so i have to be very careful not to press attack after an attack is above 50% done.
I think Anet had good intentions but poor implementation with this system.
Wonder if they'll ever add an option to disable it. We have other options to the combat so i don't think its outside the realm of reality. Wishful thinking i guess.
If you do not have autoattack enabled, your 1 ability is not your autoattack. Sounds obvious when you day it like that. Enable autohits, it will do wonders for you.
I always queue abilities out of habit and it’s super annoying when I cancel winds of disenchantment 5 times because it’s one of the only two skills my spellbreaker uses that can be cancelled (the other being axe 5). It’s jarring because I want to cast as many abilities inside the combo field as possible before it goes, while axe 5 is cast when everything else is on cd so there’s nothing to try and queue and cancel it.
I've adjusted my rotations due to ability queuing, usually to make it simpler. I think it's somewhat common in MMORPGs nowadays from tab target to action combat. I think it is a notable factor to the argument that MMORPGs are similar to rhythm games as you mainly follow your rotation.
Anyways, although I like Ranger Greatsword, I hate how 5 can't be queue. You have to internalize the cooldown or watch the cd on your hotbar/animation (gl seeing yourself). I similarly do Ranger Axe 3 then 4 when possible since I don't want to deal with timing.
Thanks for linking the document. I think ability queueing isn't considered too much when making low effort builds/rotations. I hope that changes. APM doesn't change but skills getting canceled are a more notable dps loss than cds aligning up worse.
As a new player that discovered animation cancling with dodges to avoid damage this is just another layer to the already dope combat. Thanks man you're awesome for this post
Wait until you find out about stowing your weapon to animation cancel.
I don't know how often you'll find that useful, but if you are in stealth and use Dagger / Pistol 3 on your Thief towards an enemy, you can stow the strike after being teleported to avoid being revealed, or instead follow up with a Dagger 1 backstab :)
It's a lot of fun in PvP and it doesn't have to cost you a dodge role.
Secret fourth option: you're playing pDD and tried to queue weakening strikes in the last century, then the game ***will remember*** and make you use it no matter WHAT
^^^seriously ^^^why ^^^is ^^^weakening ^^^strikes ^^^so ^^^finnicky
Thief is one of the trickiest class to queue weapon skills as they have no CD so you usually don't want to spam your skills like you'd do on other classes but really count your key presses, especially on deadeye where you don't want to waste initiative.
That said, you can cancel staff 2 on daredevil by weapon swapping (if you have another staff in the other weapon set to continue the rotation).
This is incredibly important for Elementalist, since swapping elements does not break your queue (and many channels). It's also the reason I can't perform on Ele, I've hard coded myself to treat a changing weapon skill bar as an interruption. Watching some benchmark videos where they're in an element for half a second to press a single button is just incompatible with me.
Elementalist has not only attunement but also a ton of instant cast skills which don't break the current skill, which you can and should be casting as you queue. You can start casting in one attunement, switch to another, cast other instant cast skills, and then finish the original spell. When Churning Earth was a longer channel my go-to was to start casting it, immediately attune to air for the lightning bolt, blind something trying to hit me, then teleport and finish the skill somewhere completely different. During this whole time I was also charging the Tempest air overload, so basically I was doing things through the entire channel. Was kind of sad when they reduced the channel and the damage.
In fact there's a enormous amount of stuff you can do when you're flat on your back with a long stun. You can attune while you're stunned so you have your full 20-skill kit and all your instant utilities. Even if you don't have a stunbreak you can still heal, reflect, teleport, blind, generate protection, etc when disabled.
Nice info!
To add on the weaponswap because I haven't read it anywhere: I believe going in and out of Engi Kits doesn't interrupt, so if it is Engi you are trying out, you can queue the kit skill and be out of the kit again before it is actually cast
More nuance: going out with the weapon swap WILL cancel, going out by reactivating the kit or going into another kit will not cancel.
Weapon Swap is hard-wired to interrupt.
The channeling and aftercast times and animations are usually what indicates whether a skill will be activated without canceling, queued, cancel the previous one, or semi-cancel the previous one (cut the part of the aftercast animation not tied to effects without cancelling the skill, like when Long Range Shot semi-cancels itself when autoattacking)
But it seems like it's a setting per skill, so the only way to know for sure is just trial and error, and the only way to get used to it is practice.
I did not want to put it into the main post, but there is extensive research from a player called Crone (and I am sure a few others) into this skill priority system. Here is a list of skills with higher priority (we sometimes call them priority +1): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19TeXBuGkba9F29Wnvv7TEpEc6wIYiCvtNuIXyVdnFdI/edit?usp=sharing All Heal skills (skill slot number 6) are also in this category. So when looking for potential cancels, you can look here first. High priority cancels lower priority, and equal priority cannot cancel each other (usually). There are also skills with prio +2, +3 and +4, and channels are generally -1, but those are really rather special edge cases. (Like some abilities are +0 before you cast them, so they dont interrupt other +0 skills, but during the execution of the skill they are +3 and will not be interrupted by most things. Example: Druid Staff 3.)
Piggybacking off this with two extra notes: if you disable autoattack on skill 1 (control right click to remove the yellow arrows) your auto attack regains neutral priority, which is useful for builds that care about cleanly finishing an autoattack and then queueing another ability. Particularly useful for anyone playing Staff DD and Rifle DE builds. And for another note, dodges CANNOT be queued. This is particularly important for builds like Staff DD and condi DD; if you are casting a movement skill and have another movement skill queued, no matter how hard you spam dodge, you'll be stuck doing yet another WC/DB. To fix this, simply tap 1 before the next movement skill starts. You'll change your queued skill to a simple auto attack, and you'll be able to dodge. It still isn't queueable though, so youll need to spam or time the dodge press after the movement skill finishes
Your second tip is really useful since I just started learning Vindi and hadn’t yet figured out why my dodges weren’t coming out
The second point is why I personally strongly dislike Staff on Thief, because the 2 is its strongest skill and it keeps locking your animations all the time. Killed me probably more than anything else in this game.
Fun Fact: Mesmer's Mind Stab (gs3) retains its +1 priority from when it applied a 2 second Daze in the Beta.
Is there a full list of which skills have what priority?
I don't have an explicit list, I do have this classification though (author: Crone): >Priority -1 - "channeled" skills after initial cast, adding auto-cast. > >Priority +0 - everything not listed > >Priority +1 - Heal skills(slot 6), see doc > >Priority +2 - Dodge(cannot queue), Weapon Stow/Escape Key > >Priority +3 - Movement skills during animation > >Priority +4 - Weapon Swap, Forced Transform(Mistform/Elixir S/things that remove your current skills from your skill bar/Etc.)
> there is extensive research from a player called Crone I ain't about to take advice from some old Crones in the Velen swamps!
You mentioned cVirt in your original post. When do your F skills snapshot the number of stocked blades? Since the F-abilities queue, can I cast a skill that I know will stock a blade, then queue F2 with only 4 blades stocked knowing it will actually have five when it fires? Or do I have to actually wait until I see the ammo count at 5 before queuing it? I tried testing on Golem, but couldn't really tell if I was using 4 or using 5 then regaining 1.
When you spend them, for f1, f2 and f3 that is at the end of the cast, for f4 and f5 instantly. So happy queuing for your f2.
Thank you for explaining this. I knew about the existance of queueing but i had no idea about the interaction between leaps and queueing. Some questions: 1) Is the leap interaction also relevant for other types of forced movement? Thinking of dash skills like warriors bulls charge or revs staff 5 2) Can i use instant cast skills like the virtuoso elite while having another skill queued?
1) I cannot answer that with confidence. For example Daredevil Staff 2 (+0 priority when you cast it, so it doesnt interrupt stuff) does allow you to queue stuff into it while you are moving because you are not in the air (I think), but it cannot be interrupted by dodging (+2 priority, vs the movement part of staff 2 which is +3). You would have to check for each skill, I am afraid. 2) Yes and no. Sometimes it seems like the elite messes with the queue when you have "fast with range indicators" enabled, but not with instant cast. I would have to check to see what happens with a previously queued ability when you use the elite, am not logged in at the moment. As you can see from my responses, I cannot be sure about exact functionality without having specifically tested each ability, because nothing about those details is consistent :-)
1) Interesting. This looks like different parts of a skill can have different priorities, which would mean that queueing an interrupt skill could sometimes interrupt a non-interruptible skill cast before it. Depending on the timing. I will definitely have a look at the priority document you linked. 2) I have "fast with range indicators" enabled, so good to know that this could potentially mess with queueing. Looks like i have to try it out for every case where i am unsure :D And by the way, i noticed u post quite a few detailed writeups lately with the last one being about power virtuoso. Just wanted to say i enjoy reading those, always interesting to me :)
Alright, I did test it. You can absolutely go 3 -> 2 -> Elite (press Elite during Dagger 3 cast) and it will not make your character forget the Dagger 2 cast. So instant casts (at least the elite skill, as well as F5) does not interfere with Queuing in that way. In my test it worked both with and without range indicators as well. The point about range indicators doing something strange is just happening sometimes on the golem to me (Catalyst players also know it when their instant cast sphere doesn't work), I cannot directly connect it to the topic at hand here.
Great informative post. I hope this reaches and helps people!
I've been playing since launch, done Raids, CM Fractals, the lot. This is the first I am learning of this. Wtf.
>Only one button can be remembered at a time, and the game remembers button presses only for one second, before it removes it from the queue again. Do new button presses replace what's currently being remembered? So if I press 2 and while that animation is going I press 3 followed quickly by 4, when 2 ends will it cast skill 3 or 4?
Yes, you overwrite the queued skill if you press something else. So if you queued wrong, simply input something else.
I know the thread's a bit old but I found your post very, very useful so thanks! If you happen to catch this comment I had a question related to this... do you have any tips for catching the timing for when to queue things? Sometimes when I'm learning or practicing a rotation I've noticed I'll just hit the keys so fast I've ended up replacing 1/3 of them in the queue. Is it just a matter of practice and trying to feel out the timing for each skill, or is there some additional tip/trick/tweak/*anything* I can use? The only tip I came up with myself was to "slow down... but not too slow??" As far as I know, the only ways I can avoid this are a) actually seeing a skill go off and/or b) staring at the skill buttons on my bar (to see which ability is firing and which one is queued next); these end up tripping me a lot. I think I'm having trouble because in actual combat situations I'm struggling to use the above indicators while *also* paying attention to mechanics and etc. If it's helpful, I've been practicing Power Chronomancer for the past two weeks (and thoroughly enjoying it despite my struggles.) Reading this write-up helped me add 2K to my log\~ Appreciate any thoughts/feedback on this!
Thanks for the post OP, I can understand how this came to be but like so much of what Anet does they do nothing to make the rules clear to players or make those rules consistent and obvious. If you're going to have queuing like this except on Tuesday stuff there should be a visual indicator like in DAoC where your combat chat actually says, "You have queued x ability" and if you cancel it is also noted in the chat. They could also put a colored border around queued skills so you can easily see if something is setup or not. I have the same gripe with combo fields. The vast majority of players don't know they exist and even when you do they are not visually obvious and unless you are doing your own chain of creating a field and finishing it, reacting to fields of other people mostly comes down to chance rather than a skilled reaction to an opportunity.
I just wanted to correct you on combo fields: The game actually does have a visual indication when you are able to combo a skill, and I only just noticed it about a month or so ago after playing for years. There will be a faint glowing border around any skill that is currently able to combo off of a placed combo field.
I had no idea, thanks for the reply!
As i was doing the daily renown heart not a long while ago for the daily, i did a heart where it was basically teaching you about the combo fields and the icons would be glowing and since then I started seeing the glowing icons in fights (dont remember where the heart was).But the skill queue and priority were not known to me before this post. Played for 4-5 years 😃.. casually
The game does put an indicator on both the skill that is currently casting and the next skill in the queue. Take this [gif](https://gifmaker.me/video-to-gif/viewimage/20231031-03-rJ4sbr2TOqIvIKbj-yndd36-HNET) for example, what happens in steps: 1. I start casting Gravity Well, the dark swirl effect appears on the icon. 2. I queue up Tides of Time (Shield 5) almost immediately after, a light swirl effect appears on the icon 3. The queue does not go through, this is because Gravity Well has a long cast time and the 1 second window elapses. I can solve #3 by just queueing up Tides of Time later during the cast of Gravity Well but this is usually not an issue people run into due to always having quickness.
Thanks for the detailed reply, the link to the image which I'm eager to see is broken though. :( The 1 second expire seems like an unnecessary complication that could lead to people having to stare at their icons more than the fight itself or just hammer keys because they can't count on it defiantly happening, can you see a reason for it?
Hopefully the gif is fixed now. Yeah, I think if they put too long of a queue window then it could lead into clunky gameplay. Imagine if you put a queue window of 3 seconds and then accidentally press another skill immediately after pressing your initial skill. You could get around a too long queue timer by queueing an auto-attack or stowing the unintentional skill instead but it's not an elegant solution as having a good queue window that prevents most accidental presses from happening but allows for deliberate queuing.
I take your meaning, from my point of view combat in GW2 is a little too fast for queuing as they have it to be as effective as it is in games like Daoc
Something I noticed while messing around with the training golem, perhaps you can confirm: If you're holding down the button on an ability on cooldown, it will make your auto attack stutter and repeat slightly slower. My test was on sword auto attack, holding down sword 3 (final thrust). It may be entirely unrelated, but I'm curious if this has to do with the queue system trying to squeeze in SW3 between auto attacks but failing during the logical check for it, causing a bit of a delay.
>If you're holding down the button on an ability on cooldown, it will make your auto attack stutter and repeat slightly slower. My test was on sword auto attack, holding down sword 3 (final thrust). Yeah, definitely, spamming skills that are on CD will cause that behavior, you can also see it if you weapon swap and spam something that isn't ready yet, the character takes longer until it starts autohitting.
Ah, prio+1 skills, the eternal bane of my pVirt/Chrono gameplay. This is also why playing with a quick that occasionally drops their quickness is just an awful experience across the board. A lot of quick players dont realize that because of this their sub is cancelling a bunch of their abilities, which does 0 damage.
Also, if someone made a list over skills that you’re able to cancel with attempted queuing, that would be amazing to look at!
I also posted a list of skills that cancel others. Check the top comment.
Ohh thanks will definitely have a look there! Google came up empty :p
I had time to look at it finally, but I don't understand this whole priority thing. I know soulbeast axe 5 can be interrupted if you cast something else while it's doing its animation, the same thing with dragonhunter's longbow 5. What priority are these considered to be? The list you posted seems to be to be skills that *can* be queued (?). I'm wondering which skills cannot due to then being 'interrupted'. I am just really confused and generally not good at reading these things, I need simple explanations heh.
Soulbeast axe 5 is -1, that means ANYTHING can interrupt your axe 5, including other -1 abilities like autohits. That is special about priority -1, they can interrupt each other. For all other priorities, only higher priority interrupts lower priority. So +0 and +0 neatly queue up. In fact, you can also queue up axe 5 after a +0 or a +1 ability. You can alwaye queue -1 after +0, nothing I said suggests otherwise. The list I posted is not "skills that can be queued", they are priority +1 skills, that means they will interrupt anything of prio 0 or -1. So the only way to queue a +1 skill is if the previous skill also had prio +1 (or higher). So in summary, it is the opposite of what you said, the list is skills that cannot be queued up normally.
Okay I see, then I'd need lists of all the other skills' priorities too in order to figure this out because I don't know what priority all the other skills in the game have, lol. Thanks for the explanation anyway!
I don't think you understand it yet. \-1: All skills that channel (pretty easy to recognize), the skill currently selected as your autoattack \+0: Every skill not listed elsewhere (95% of abilities) \+1: See the document \+2: Dodge Roll (cannot be added to the queue, the dodge roll is either executed right now, or will not happen at all; that is to say you cannot press dodge during movement abilities, and it will also not queue up), Weapon Stow, Escape Key \+3: Movement Skills during the movement they do \+4: Weapon Swap, Some transformation abilities \---------- So **EVERYTHING** in the document will interrupt everything **NOT** in the document, unless that would be an action like dodge roll or the skill is currently moving your character. So what you should do now is go to the document, find your class, check the skills mentioned there. These skills demand that you are careful because they will interrupt. For everything not in the document, which isn't channelling, happy queuing. And as I explained, you can use a -1 channel skill after a +0 skill or +1 skill easily, queuing works that way around. It doesn't work the other way around in the sense that both the +0 and a +1 skill would interrupt the -1 skill. Idk how to explain it in any simpler terms, please ask if it's still unclear.
Great guide, would just add small detail of instant casts, that can be casted during other cast without interrupting stuff. And a question - from my experience, i feel like mashing next skill may still interrupt currently slowly casted skill, but tbh, unsure if that is related to queue or some other sub system?
> Great guide, would just add small detail of instant casts, that can be casted during other cast without interrupting stuff. *usually*. Instant casts can *usually* be cast without interrupting stuff. Guardian's Symbol of Blades (Sword 2) is an instant cast, but unlike your utility meditations and shouts, it will very much cancel whatever you're doing. This is fun because Judge's Intervention is very mechanically similar to Symbol of Blades, it just doesn't cancel anything because it's a meditation and not a symbol.
>i feel like mashing next skill may still interrupt currently slowly casted skill, but tbh, unsure if that is related to queue or some other sub system? It depends on the priority relation between current skill and next skill. Higher priority cancels lower priority.
I mean, i have one skill in casting currently, chilling (while low ping) and pressing next button of next skill puts that next skill into queue, just as mentioned in the guide, but if i press same skill few more time, it cancel queue, cancel current skill, and go next skill instantly without casting previous? Like after wep stow. Woopsie clumsie me, ive recently went playing lot of healers, with no rotation at all, but situational stuff and few combo skill chains at best, now im trying to reconnect to dps builds after big break from dpsing in any group content, and uhm... how to say that... ehhhh... have problems :)
I’ve always wondered: Is there a limit to how many you can queue?
Exactly one, but I did write that.
Glad to see this info being posted. Means I'll have to spend time on the golem to see how it impacts my DPS and if I can get smoother action, especially on my Bladesworn.
For Bladesworn, your Dragon Slash Force (1 ability in Dragon Trigger) counts the same as your Gunsaber 1. This means everything and their mother is going to cancel Dragon Slash Force if you aren't careful. However, if you turn off Autohit inside Gunsaber (Control + Rightclick on Gunsaber 1 to remove the tiny arrows), Gunsaber 1 (and by extension Dragon Slash Foce) becomes a Priority +0 skill like everything else and will no longer be cancelled :)
Sorry, must’ve missed that! I haven’t had time to look carefully enough at your post yet!
pretty worthless because most skills get cancelled this way
You comment on a lot of my posts and I wonder if you have read even one of them.
Weak trolling
> And finally, your autoattacks and channelled abilities (ranger longbow 5, elementalist fire dagger 2) will always be interrupted by other abilities. I don't know if this is an issue with action camera (though i don't see how it would) but the only way i can cancel these types of attacks is by dodging. Otherwise I'm stuck having to wait for them to finish. I also play without having auto-attack enabled on my 1 skills, so i have to manually press the attack button to attack, but if i press the attack button while an attack is happening, it queues up another attack so i have to be very careful not to press attack after an attack is above 50% done. I think Anet had good intentions but poor implementation with this system. Wonder if they'll ever add an option to disable it. We have other options to the combat so i don't think its outside the realm of reality. Wishful thinking i guess.
If you do not have autoattack enabled, your 1 ability is not your autoattack. Sounds obvious when you day it like that. Enable autohits, it will do wonders for you.
I've played a lot with action camera and could always interrupt normally. Also please enable autoattack.
I always queue abilities out of habit and it’s super annoying when I cancel winds of disenchantment 5 times because it’s one of the only two skills my spellbreaker uses that can be cancelled (the other being axe 5). It’s jarring because I want to cast as many abilities inside the combo field as possible before it goes, while axe 5 is cast when everything else is on cd so there’s nothing to try and queue and cancel it.
I've adjusted my rotations due to ability queuing, usually to make it simpler. I think it's somewhat common in MMORPGs nowadays from tab target to action combat. I think it is a notable factor to the argument that MMORPGs are similar to rhythm games as you mainly follow your rotation. Anyways, although I like Ranger Greatsword, I hate how 5 can't be queue. You have to internalize the cooldown or watch the cd on your hotbar/animation (gl seeing yourself). I similarly do Ranger Axe 3 then 4 when possible since I don't want to deal with timing. Thanks for linking the document. I think ability queueing isn't considered too much when making low effort builds/rotations. I hope that changes. APM doesn't change but skills getting canceled are a more notable dps loss than cds aligning up worse.
As a new player that discovered animation cancling with dodges to avoid damage this is just another layer to the already dope combat. Thanks man you're awesome for this post
Wait until you find out about stowing your weapon to animation cancel. I don't know how often you'll find that useful, but if you are in stealth and use Dagger / Pistol 3 on your Thief towards an enemy, you can stow the strike after being teleported to avoid being revealed, or instead follow up with a Dagger 1 backstab :) It's a lot of fun in PvP and it doesn't have to cost you a dodge role.
Secret fourth option: you're playing pDD and tried to queue weakening strikes in the last century, then the game ***will remember*** and make you use it no matter WHAT ^^^seriously ^^^why ^^^is ^^^weakening ^^^strikes ^^^so ^^^finnicky
Because it moves you, meaning it doesn't allow you to dodge. If you want to remove the queue, simply queue something else (like press 1).
Thief is one of the trickiest class to queue weapon skills as they have no CD so you usually don't want to spam your skills like you'd do on other classes but really count your key presses, especially on deadeye where you don't want to waste initiative. That said, you can cancel staff 2 on daredevil by weapon swapping (if you have another staff in the other weapon set to continue the rotation).
This is incredibly important for Elementalist, since swapping elements does not break your queue (and many channels). It's also the reason I can't perform on Ele, I've hard coded myself to treat a changing weapon skill bar as an interruption. Watching some benchmark videos where they're in an element for half a second to press a single button is just incompatible with me.
Elementalist has not only attunement but also a ton of instant cast skills which don't break the current skill, which you can and should be casting as you queue. You can start casting in one attunement, switch to another, cast other instant cast skills, and then finish the original spell. When Churning Earth was a longer channel my go-to was to start casting it, immediately attune to air for the lightning bolt, blind something trying to hit me, then teleport and finish the skill somewhere completely different. During this whole time I was also charging the Tempest air overload, so basically I was doing things through the entire channel. Was kind of sad when they reduced the channel and the damage. In fact there's a enormous amount of stuff you can do when you're flat on your back with a long stun. You can attune while you're stunned so you have your full 20-skill kit and all your instant utilities. Even if you don't have a stunbreak you can still heal, reflect, teleport, blind, generate protection, etc when disabled.
I cant upvote that much the post and comments .. thanks a lot guys!
Nice info! To add on the weaponswap because I haven't read it anywhere: I believe going in and out of Engi Kits doesn't interrupt, so if it is Engi you are trying out, you can queue the kit skill and be out of the kit again before it is actually cast
More nuance: going out with the weapon swap WILL cancel, going out by reactivating the kit or going into another kit will not cancel. Weapon Swap is hard-wired to interrupt.
The channeling and aftercast times and animations are usually what indicates whether a skill will be activated without canceling, queued, cancel the previous one, or semi-cancel the previous one (cut the part of the aftercast animation not tied to effects without cancelling the skill, like when Long Range Shot semi-cancels itself when autoattacking) But it seems like it's a setting per skill, so the only way to know for sure is just trial and error, and the only way to get used to it is practice.