This is just some simple advice in response to many other threads.  It took me until about level 50 to really see how important combos can be, especially after some not so pleasant explorable mode dungeon experiences, but I've come to realize how well coordinated combos can be game changers.  I suspect that in the not so distant future, players will primarily base their weapon choices in groups on what types of fields they lay down or what types of finishers they provide more than on the value of the individual skills themselves.

The following is a small list of some combos that I've found to be extremely useful in group situations.  For a full list of available combos and their effects, visit the wiki page.   

Need to heal more effectively?  Use combos! 

Sure, everyone has their own personal heal and is largely responsible for his or her own well being, but there is plenty you can do to support each other in the healing department.  Most effective of all is good use of combos through water fields.  If your group is in rough shape, gather, call out for a water field, then have mutiple people use a blast finisher inside it.  It's guaranteed to get your whole group back up to full! 

Even if your group is in alright shape, water fields in combination with leaps, projectiles and whirls can be a good way to keep players regenerated and topped off.  If you're dropping the the water field, be sure to place it in the path of ranged DPS like rangers so you land the most projectile combos (this applies to most fields.)  In fact, it's often smarter to place a field in between players and enemies than on top of enemies themselves!  It's a decision you'll have to make on the fly. 

Need more effective CC?  Use combos!

Many individual CC skills do not last very long in GW2.  Effects like chill, however, stack in duration.  A well comboed ice field with projectiles can keep hard hitting melee mobs slowed for upwards of 20 seconds! 

Blind rotations are insanely effective against most physical mobs.  But some groups may be limited in the number of blinds they individually have available to them, or you may be faced with a pull of multiple deadly melee mobs while armed with only several single target blinds.  What is a group of adventurers to do?  Enter combos!  Blast finishers through a dark field produces a very effective aoe blind.  Every single Necromancer staff skill creates a dark field. Properly coordinated blasts with each necro mark can permanently blind every enemy in the area!

In over your head?  Use combos!

Perhaps my favorite combo invovles the use of a smoke field and a blast finisher.  This gives all allies in the area aoe stealth!  This can help you escape some sticky situations.  Used in conjunction with a water field and blasts to get your party back to full health, this can be a real game changer. 

Feeling weak?  Need to hit harder?  Use combos!

This is perhaps the most basic combo set of all, but I don't see a lot of groups consciously utilizing it yet, so it bears mentioning.  On each pull, your goal should be to try to weaken the enemy as much as possible and strengthen your group as much as possible. 

A well placed lightning field (only available with a staff elementalist) and a bunch of projectiles, combined with individual abilities that apply vulnerability can make your enemy take up to 25% more damage.  Anyone who has number crunched in MMOs before knows just how significant this can be.  On super bosses, you'll want to reapply vulnerability as much as possible. 

To coincide with weakening your enemy's defenses, you should boost your allies' offense.  A good fire field with several blast finishers can give your entire group a huge power and condition damage boost.  At level 50, a well comboed might stack (around 20 stacks) gives my entire group a whopping extra 500 power and condition damage!

I notice this combo happens fairly frequently naturally, but only occasionally, and in much smaller amounts.  Coordinating both of these combos before and during each pull can significantly boost your party's power.  The same applies to pvp.

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There you go, these are just a few very useful combos that me and my friends have messed around with so far.  There are many many more good ones that will require a lot of practice and teamwork and can be equally useful.  Until a full combo guide gets released, have fun experimenting! 

To everyone else, feel free to post your favorite/most useful combos so far. 

Editted formatting.  I wrote this during my last hour during work in between taking care of customers :p

Lots of great info in here!

Thanks!!!

BINGO!!!!

tHIS IS WHAT I'M SAYING.

When i drop back to do support  I am dropping combo ready fields, i am looking where i can add to the damage or add to the healing. 

This is why i love this game. You have to play a different game.  For the first time in 12 years.  I love how confused some people are .  It's proof taht the mmo market has brainwashed so many.  So many people on the forums sound like zombies

"This game has this problem" (is what they think they are playing) 

"But it doesn' do this like wow" (is what they are really saying) 

Smoke bombs rock. 

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

the first time you combo in the game, a hint dialog appears explaining the combo system. It doesn't tell you what all the combos are, just how they work.

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

 Personally I like to learn as a community and NOT have the devs hand feed me everything about the game.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

 Personally I like to learn as a community and NOT have the devs hand feed me everything about the game.

^.. its not hard to start seeing combos as it pops up and says COMBO.. and i agree not everything needs to be force fed to the players

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

 Personally I like to learn as a community and NOT have the devs hand feed me everything about the game.

I tend to agree with this, within reason.  I think the game should guide you in the right direction but not hold your hand.  Thus far, I've thoroughly enjoyed the discovery involved in GW2.  So far, every one of my group experiences have been extremely positive from a social and communication perspective, and I believe this is precisely because we must communicate to figure out how to succeed.  A little bit of trial by fire can be a very fun thing.  

More and more players are starting to learn about the /wiki function in game as well.  The info is there for players.  

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

 Personally I like to learn as a community and NOT have the devs hand feed me everything about the game.

I wasn't asking to be hand-fed.  As mentioned above, a hint popup describes how a combo works, but only after you perform one.  I could have ran around clueless for 80 levels if I hadn't read this.  All it takes is a brief explanation of the game mechnic, not a detailed totrial with decriptions of the effects and an instructional video.

The quoted posted is almost sounding like an elitist.  People who know how to do something you don't feel superior because of their knowledge or accomplishments.  The rest of us just have to watch and wonder how to do content.  I'm tired of that in MMOs.  Share information that helps others enjoy the game.  

Originally posted by Homitu

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

 Personally I like to learn as a community and NOT have the devs hand feed me everything about the game.

I tend to agree with this, within reason.  I think the game should guide you in the right direction but not hold your hand.  Thus far, I've thoroughly enjoyed the discovery involved in GW2.  So far, every one of my group experiences have been extremely positive from a social and communication perspective, and I believe this is precisely because we must communicate to figure out how to succeed.  A little bit of trial by fire can be a very fun thing.  

More and more players are starting to learn about the /wiki function in game as well.  The info is there for players.  

 So far everything in game has been positive. No one reacting poorly to help with mobs or events. The players seem to be helping and having a good time. This has been a great start to the game from that perspective.

Originally posted by syntax42

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by syntax42

Critical game mechanics like this should be brought up in-game, in the form of a hint or tutorial.  Game developers should know by now that only a small percentage of their players read forums, the manual, or the wiki.  Showing us the basic game mechanics and important mechanics used in the most challenging content should happen in the game.

 

Thanks for posting this.  I will definitely bump this and hope more people read it.

 Personally I like to learn as a community and NOT have the devs hand feed me everything about the game.

I wasn't asking to be hand-fed.  As mentioned above, a hint popup describes how a combo works, but only after you perform one.  I could have ran around clueless for 80 levels if I hadn't read this.  All it takes is a brief explanation of the game mechnic, not a detailed totrial with decriptions of the effects and an instructional video.

 

The quoted posted is almost sounding like an elitist.  People who know how to do something you don't feel superior because of their knowledge or accomplishments.  The rest of us just have to watch and wonder how to do content.  I'm tired of that in MMOs.  Share information that helps others enjoy the game.  

 People are sharing the information. As for sounding elitist get over it, I did not know much about combos, hence the reason I thanked the OP for his information so I obviously was not an elitist since I was just educated by the OP. He shared the info so now you know too.  Calm down I was not insulting you so stop the butthurt act.

Maybe you need to learn what I meant. I said I like the community to discover things not the game tell me everything. That means I prefer sharing among the community and not hiding the information I have. Please learn to read and stop acting like a victim when someone posts.

FUNFACT: Mesmer staff can effectively use Chaos Armour twice.

Using phase retreat in chaos storm grants Chaos Armour.

Originally posted by adam_nox
despite these useful examples, I still don't generally understand combos.  been meaning to read up on them, butmeh.

Same with me.  I'll just learn as i get to max lvl. haha.

Originally posted by observer

Originally posted by adam_nox
despite these useful examples, I still don't generally understand combos.  been meaning to read up on them, butmeh.

Same with me.  I'll just learn as i get to max lvl. haha.

 After reading the OP and then rereading the WIKi i think I understand them a lot better. There are combo starters, lets say the Engineer uses his healing mist ability on his healing turret and there arew finishers, say a warrior using cyclone axe.

That would result in the warriors axes throwing out healing projectiles to allies.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by observer

Originally posted by adam_nox
despite these useful examples, I still don't generally understand combos.  been meaning to read up on them, butmeh.

Same with me.  I'll just learn as i get to max lvl. haha.

 After reading the OP and then rereading the WIKi i think I understand them a lot better. There are combo starters, lets say the Engineer uses his healing mist ability on his healing turret and there arew finishers, say a warrior using cyclone axe.

 

That would result in the warriors axes throwing out healing projectiles to allies.

But they need to be cast at the same time?

Originally posted by adam_nox
despite these useful examples, I still don't generally understand combos.  been meaning to read up on them, butmeh.

All the necessary info is right on the wiki page, which I also linked in the OP.  The chart is very concise and informative.  

The basics are the following:  

To perform a combo, you must first drop a field effect (an aoe ground effect) and then use a finisher (leaps, whirls, projectiles and blasts) through that field.  There are 9 field effects and 4 finisher types, resulting in the 36 possible combos seen on the chart.  The specific spells do not matter.  For example, all projectiles fired through a water field cause regeneration on nearby allies.

You've probably noticed combos naturally going off all the time.   That's because roughly half of the skills in the game are either fields or finishers.  So there's usually some field down, and there are always finishers getting tossed around.  This naturally makes it a little more effective to fight in groups than solo, but usually results in a chaotic, rather passive combo experience.  

If I have a criticism to match one of the posters in this thread, it's that the majority of the PvE experience--the dynamic events--cultivates this chaotic, passive combo experience.  So when players finally get together in more structured groups, they continue with this habit and rarely perform intentionally coordinated combos.  

I think the future success of the GW2 dungeon experience hinges largely on how fluidly players are able to adopt organized combos, and how well the encounters (from bosses to trash pulls) interact with these combos in GW2's fast paced combat system.  Players need to feel like they have control over the outcome of the fight, and well executed team play needs to feel rewarding.  But that's getting into a whole other thread topic that I intend to write in the near future :p