Change Necro "Well Of..." Colours

As most of you know Necro's can create various "Wells" out of corpses. These currently consist of wells that help your party ('Well Of Power', 'Well Of Blood') and wells that hurt the enemy ('Well Of Profane', 'Well Of Suffering'). However, all these wells are coloured the same green colour and are only differentiated by a slightly different animation in their centre. Even worse this is the same for both wells cast by your own party and wells cast by enemies - they are all the same green colour. This makes it very difficult to quickly tell in the heat of battle whether you are standing in a well that helps you, heals you or does nothing to you. This is compounded by the fact that wells can overlap and you can have multiple conditions on yourself and party members.

So, what I suggest is this:

From your current point of view ALL wells that help you ('Power','Blood' cast by your party) will appear the current green colour and all wells that will hurt you ('Suffering', 'Profane' cast by enemy team) are coloured red. Likewise all wells that will do nothing for you directly (such as 'Well of Suffering' cast by a member of your party) will appear a neutral yellow to you. In other words, how you see a well's colour is relative to the effects it will have on you.

For example, if an enemy Necro casts 'Well Of Suffering' then his team will see it as a yellow colour but your party will see it as red. Likewise, if a party member on your team casts 'Well Of Power' then you will see it as a green colour and the enemy team will see it as a yellow colour. If the two wells overlap then (like a Ven diagram) they will appear orange were they intersect. This way you will have a very quick visual reference to what a well is doing for you and know whether to stand in it or get the hell out!

I don't think it's possible to have the same world object coloured differently for different teams, so I'd be happy with hurtin' wells being red. If its possible though, then sure. Maybe more deathly colours though, sickly yellow and dull red like coagulated blood.

Even just having different looks for different wells would be helpful. I think the notion of colorouing based on pos/neut/neg affects is open to too much interpretation. What's negative to me might not be negative to my teammate, dependin on builds.

/agree.

Wells should have different colors based on their function.

I hear what you are saying but currently it's pretty clear-cut: "Well Of Suffering" and "Well Of Profane" are always going to be negative to all party members if cast by an enemy (unless for some reason you actually wish to loose health or be stripped of your enchantments - but even in that unlikely situation the colour would still help let you know what to expect, which is the point).

I guess a simpler system were each well is a different colour would help solve that but you would then still have the problem of not knowing whether a well was cast by your party or the enemies' party. Even if you just saw all wells cast by enemy as red and all cast by your team as green it would be a big improvement.

/not signed.

Change the colors, and necro's won't bring any 'hex' wells anymore because people will just avoid the red area.

If it is possible to color harmful wells as red and helpful wells are green it would be useful. However that leave a gap for neutral wells. What color would your team's suffering or their Blood well be?

Possible another scheme is dual color wells. The well is the color of the team that cast it. If it is an offensive well it sparkles red, if it is defensive it sparkles green.

As for colored wells making suffering and profane useless, this simply isn't true. People still end up in the wells for various reasons (they are on key points or the monk your warrior wants to attack is standing in it.)

What is a GOOD thing in PVP. Crowd control will quite often win you a fierce toe to toe battle. It actually is a tactic of the more skilled PVPers to try and control the battlefield. Including the terrain.

Having said that... i like the idea of differently colored wells.

here's a compromise - green and bluish green. It's not immediately obvious unless you look carefully.
I'd prefer that over a map dotted with red and green wells which would make it look like Christmas (and/or give me a headache).

What would be nice is the color interactions of crossing wells.

Would be funny is wells contaminated each other... well of suffering and well of blood, if overlapping, result in the difference of the two regarding pips... and it covers the ranges of both wells in total.

Various overlapping wells could have interesting side effects, if the devs felt creative some day.

L S D ...

Why not have the team colour on the well?

And i want wells visible on the map, i hate it when i use a well and cant find where it is

Same situations with wards.

The fun isyou need to be coordinated to know which wells are yours and which don't... You need to step in to find out.

I like the current system.

How can I know before I get into a necro "well circle" (eg well of blood or well of profane) wether it is an ally well or an enemy/foe well?

Why are both the friends/ally well & the enemy/foe wells the same color green? Why not green circle for friend/ally & red circle for enemy/foe?

I have gone into a well green circle thinking it was a friend/ally one only to see my health bar turn pink because it was an enemy well circle.

We need to ask Guild Wars programmers to please change the enemy well circle to red.

I don't really like this idea. To me, quickly figuring out which wells are which is just one more part of PvP strategy. Even though they're all currently the same color, it should raise a pretty big red flag with anyone to get out of the well when their health bar turns pink and starts degenning! I'd rather the wells stay how they are personally.

I too agree.

And as to the complaint that it's part of the stratagy to not let an opposing PvP team know -- I understand, however, it seems to cause more problems than it solves, IMHO.

Let's change 'em!!

/signed

Most of this is copied and pasted, but I thought it related to the topic.

Im in high favor of a better interface for processing information quickly to improve your teams reactions in battle.
One of these types of improvements would be to include energy bars of teammembers.
But mostly, Im a little tired of guessing the AoE of skills.
Though there are studies that have been done, and perhaps with practice and experimentation with AoE skills, you could learn with some apptitude what the AoE effects are of some skills.
But instead of requiring the lay person to practice,practice,practice it would be nice if there was an easier, consistantly reliable way to understand the AoE of the skills you use.

My suggestion is this:

-In the form of a translucent circle for every attack AoE skill that you use there is an effect on your mini map. You can only see the AoE for the skills you use.
For attack or offensive spells/skills the effect would be red.
-In the case of spirits, the effects on the mini map will be showed to everyone.
For spirits the effect would be white.
-In the case of AoE heals it would show for your whole team.
For healing the effects would be blue.
(heal area only shows for only your team even though it can heal the other team)
-Traps layed by your team would show up as x with a circle around it visable by all of your teammates.
The x would be the trigger and the circle would be the AoE if it goes off.
-In the case of wards it would show to your team a yellow circle.

I thought about having wells in the mini map observational too, but then on second thought; due to thier offencive and defencive capablities, it seems better that they stay off the map.
In a way it seems very intentional by Anet that the wells are only noticable by closer obsevation. But if there is anyway bring wells into a balance between being easier to identify while not spelling out whats happening, that would be nice.
For my suggestion in this, I only ask that the skill symbols look more distigusable from each other. If I can look into my statues bar without hovering my mouse over the status to see that Im in standing in a particular Well - that, I think, would be suficant.

/not signed. I think the necro wells are so small that they are nearly useless as it is. . . if someone happens to wander into a negative well it's a miracle right now. I think the pink bar should be warning enough.

BTW, I think the wells should be about twice as big as they are, if not bigger, obviously.

same for ward of foes and melee as well

Id have to find which teamate would find positive standing in suffering and prfane unless they are mad...

/signed

While I agree that different colors for the wells would be a nice and helpful visual reference, (I do have a necro) I make note that someone mentioned it would let your enemy know to avoid the well (in effect making it a useless spell). Also one could argue that this would also open the door for arguments for differentiating between other AOE spells. One situation that comes to mind is this; Fire Storm or Meteor Shower is cast at a cluster of characters that are fighting, if both teams have Ele's on them then how does one know that they need to get out of the AOE spell...ummm they start taking damage!

The bottom line is that there can be endless arguments for reasons to differentiate between enemy spells and friendly spells, all of which can ultimately render a caster completely ineffective.

you do not need to change the colors of the wells. having them all the same color is what takes the player skill to figure out which ones are hurting or helping you. if you can't even look at the enchant bar to figure that out then you deserve to be killed or stripped by the wells.

its all about skill and knowing when to get out of a well and when to stay in it.

As an update to this, Izzy said that the red lights appearing around Wells and Wards are probably for team colors, so expect something soon.

I do not much feel that the entire having to figure one out specifically matters, most people race to cast wells up, who always knows which exact corpse they may have gotten, etc., a variance in color based on your own, which would be red or blue, would be nice to see, while green for missions, and yellow for monsters, would be useful, especially because good pvpers should understand which are theirs, while randomized ones may have no real clue what their necromancer has, and even then you may not know whether or not your necromancer even got it off where you think.

This works with wards as well, I merely do not see the purpose of not changing the color to make it more notable at face value, there are still plenty of people out there who do not realize which team they are on most of the time, or who will run straight into profanes regardless.

Plus, this does not say necessarily if it is harmful to you, only that it is your teams, it may be harmful, it may be helping them, it may be helpful to you, it may do nothing. We are still at practically the same crossroads.

As well, might I suggest no fading during the effect, missed it from angles that one was even active until I saw the icon then a glowing circle came up, it is really annoying that it dissapears, because until it is rather vibrant most other effects take precedent for your eyes.

At your status bar it indicates whether or not it is a well from your team or not depending on what color the rim is.

/notsigned

They seem about right for PvE. They're useful when enemies are bunched or your allies are smart enough to bunch around them, they're not useful when they're not. Just like any other AoE spell.

/signed

More information passed to the players is always good.

/notsignet

makes it WAY too easy to avoid them and decreases teamwork&teamspeak.
Hell ,wells are PASSIV, just step out.

BUT:

I think there is a need to make the icons for different wells more different.

I know all the necro spells very well and even i need a short time (sometimes even a rollover) to notice the real small differences in the well-Icons (left/right/bright) on my skillbar. This is something concerning the interface, not the skill gfx itself imho.

Add significant identification to the skill icons, but not to the wells area-color.

/not signed

This will ruin the use of Wells for the necro by making them visible to the enemy and easily avoidable.

If you're having problems standing in a Well of Suffering, simply move to an un-welled spot on the battlefield.

the wells are fine as they are (maybe make the icons more different). its hard enough to get good players into them as opposite to not so good players (like me ) who often continue standing inside for some time before noticing, but when you notice its just a few steps back and you are free. Only one the wells really work against is warriors and then you have to stay still and be a target

Actually when Izzy was in LA ID 2 right after the halloween update, I think he mentioned something about how the new funky graphics on wells were something that they were working on concerning this matter. So it seems they are looking into this.