BASICS OF GAME PLAY FOR GUILD WARS 2

Part 2

Combat mode

In addition to the explicit effects of skills, any character damaged by an opponent is placed in "combat mode", which reduces their forward movement speed, increases the cooldown on swapping weapon sets, and prevents the character from changing their equipped items or skills. Combat mode ends after a certain length of time without taking damage.

Certain conditions, such as poison, can sometimes continue to inflict damage and keep a character in combat mode for a significant time even after all opponents are defeated. On the other hand, a character that avoids damage (for example by dodging or using aegis) can sometimes stay out of "combat mode" even while under direct attack.

Players can easily tell if they are in combat by the appearance of their skill bar: while in combat, the skill bar is surrounded by yellow haze. Combat mode is normally triggered by attacking or being attacked by an enemy, being damaged in any way, or receiving hostile effects like conditions. While in combat, the character's health will not recover naturally; while out of combat, the character's health will regenerate rapidly. Some actions such as revival take longer while in combat than while out of combat, and some actions such as the use of waypoints are not permitted while in combat.

Avoiding enemy attacks

Every character has the ability to dodge incoming attacks at the expense of endurance.

The best time to initiate a dodge is when the enemy is executing a powerful attack. This is much easier to do in PvE because the monster types encountered in this mode generally have a clear indicator of when they are about to unleash a powerful attack: for instance, an exaggerated attack animation or the glaring of the enemy's eyes.

Auto-attack

There is no basic attack in Guild Wars 2, since all attacks require the player to activate a skill in the skill bar.

However, any skill slot can be put on auto-attack. It is thus possible to activate a skill as soon as it is recharged if no other skill is currently being cast. By default, skill slot 1 of each weapon set is set to auto-attack.