Guild Wars 2

So I’m up to a level 50-ish necromancer Sylvari. I’ve been finishing up the last of my skills and I’ve noticed that I really dislike, to put it nicely, the sylvari specific skills. The seeds which do damage seem weak and useless when im in battle. They seem slow and do small damage. Anyone else disagree or know how to use them effectively at a high level.

I looove “Take Root” as an elite ability but don’t have much that’s positive to say about the others.

The seed turret is pretty sad. It’s like the engineer turrets (which aren’t stunning) but watered down more

I don’t know what class you are playing but it works great for my ranger. the Healing, Utility and Elite skills. when am going for a support build. use Grasping Vines plus take root i will be picking of the mob one by one. seed turret works well with healing seed and i can also work well with summon druid or summon fern mastiff. the only thing about the mastiff is they don’t have group heals. if they did that will be a win win.

all i have from 6-10 are signets

As a fellow Necro Sylvari, there’s no way you should be using Take Root over Plague form. Haven’t really experimented with the summons however

Take Root is nice, 5 turrets that cause bleeding and a bit of damage but also take aggro? That’s not bad in my opinion.

So far I’ve been rather disappointed with the Sylvari Slot Skills, although I don’t have all of them.

Has anybody had any experience with the Fern Mastiff?

The Fern mastiff runs in and attacks. It’s hp is decent so it actually stay alive for a fight or 2 till it poofs.

I have survived many time because of take root I love it. Not to mention boss sure love attacking the turrets which keeps them off me or other part members.

The healing seed turret is decent but can die really easily in a aoe fight, and like seed turrets mobs are drawn to kill them.

I haven’t tried the racial elite skills yet, saving up for the Tome of Courage.
I’ve been using the Healing Seed quite a lot tsince it’s the only AoE heal I have to help others a bit as well as myself, even if it’s sometimes quickly destroyed because the mobs are almost immediately drawn to kill it.
Also’d been using the Seed Turret for some time, especially because it draws mobs to attack it which sometimes saved my life. It’s useful at least for that since it does minimal damage.

I really like Take Root if I know I’m going to be fighting in a single area for a while. The invincibility is nice to eat up some burst, and the turrets do a surprising amount of damage. I wish it was more consistent, though. Sometimes I get 5 plants, and other times I get only 2.

As a Necromancer, though, I use Flesh Golem a lot more since it stays out and I can travel with it.

I have issue with the flesh golem deciding to just go attack things without my consent. But I think this is an issue with necro minions.

I liked the Seed Turret if I knew I was going to be in one place for a while, but it was honestly just a distraction most of the time.

I’ve wanted to try out Take Root for a while but I prefer to be more mobile than the skill allows.

Take root is quite effective in low to mid level areas, but once you get to level 80 zones, it stops being quite as effective, as the turrets get killed relatively quickly. Grasping roots is a fairly good immobilize skill; I would take it over say Boolas for the warrior, but it only immobilizes a single target, so all in all it isn’t all that great. I haven’t tried healing seed much, same with fern hound. The oakheart one suffers from being a paperweight, and ends up dying really quickly, however it is a good support skill, as it immobilizes enemies, heals allies, and deals damage, better when there are more people around, as the enemies have more targets, and they won’t kill it right away. Seed turret is pretty bad.

Just dont take the druid summon,dont worth the 30 points not even on a elementalist with crappy elites even the fern hound is better.

I have tried using all the Sylvari skills… They suck… That’s why this time I oly put points into every ability other than the Druid Spirit as I didn’t get to test it during BWE on my Mesmer. Simply put, they’re too weak or they do too little damage, there is basically no point in them even being there >_> I’m a Mesmer so I only use 2 Elites anyways, Time Warp and Moa Morph… But Charr get something awesome called the Charzooka! It’s awesome, really is. I have seen human mesmers use thier hounds numerous times over Mesmer abilities, frankly, I feel jipped as a Sylvari… Other than glowing at night which is really preedy

Aaronrdmkr.4013:

So I’m up to a level 50-ish necromancer Sylvari. I’ve been finishing up the last of my skills and I’ve noticed that I really dislike, to put it nicely, the sylvari specific skills. The seeds which do damage seem weak and useless when im in battle. They seem slow and do small damage. Anyone else disagree or know how to use them effectively at a high level.

I am a lvl 80 cond. necro. I use seed turrets in both PVE (large mobs or bosses they are grumpy) and in WvWvW. In wvw i use it in defenses mainly to put on pressure when getting pushed or in sieges as the turrets arc quite nice. I also use it to smash attacks and rout the enemy; I death shroud into the zerg; drop seed turrets, drop wells and marks then use my scepter on the way out to cripple and evade as best i can. This allows my team to get in the ranks and rout or push as many players fall back under the DOTs.

The thing with racial skills, from what I understand, are to add flavor and be useful in other situations that your normal skills might fall a little short in. They’re not meant to completely replace what skills you normally have.

So if they’re weaker, that falls in line with the design philosophy that ANet seems to have for them.

Another Sylvari mesmer here, and the only ones I’ve used with any success are Take Root and Grasping Vines. TR’s got quite a short cooldown time for an elite, and it always seems to grow five turrets (even if some of them spawn in the same location), which guarantees a good output. It’s great for mob management, which is something I tend to have trouble with elsewise. GV usually gets taken down in two hits, but that’s a two or three second immobilization at the least with a quick cast and a long range. It’s a good diversion, sneaks in a little damage, and draws away attacks that could have been aimed at you.

Healing Seed is terrible if you’re soloing, as it will immediately draw the mob’s attention, they kill it in a couple hits, and they’re back to smacking you before you recover any significant health. That being said, as with the engineer’s similar turret, it excels in group battles, in which the number of targets allow it a longer lifespan and it can provide a benefit for more people. This may sound all very obvious, but I want to emphasize how big of a difference the solo/group thing makes. Useless in one scenario, probably the best 6 skill you’ll have in the other.

Seed Turret is just weak and overall a bad idea in 99% of the cases I’ve seen. Take Root gets the pardon because it gives you five of the things. Much like zerglings: not a threat one at a time, but effective in groups. I’ve not gone after the other elites yet, but I can already say that the Druid Spirit skill looks like a waste of time and skill points. Big dumb punching bag that occasionally does a bit of damage and grants a bit of healing/support. I’d rather go with a summon that takes a more aggressive role, thanks. Fern Mastiff looks like it could be a decent one, though, so I’ll be giving that a shot soon as I get enough skill points.

I’ve actually had great success with the Druid Summon, it punches pretty hard, draws aggro, and soaks up conditions. It’s, however, in the way of my camera a lot

Grasping Vines used to be an AOE skill during early Beta instead of single target, which made it much more useful. I miss that. Frankly, as a single target it’s pointless against groups, and against bosses it’s either too weak, or they are immune against it anyway. But eh, I guess it’s better than no immobilizer at all.

Take Root has saved my hide a few times because of the invulnerability (pop it while having Healing Spring going, lovely) and because turrets seem to take threat priority a lot. I can’t judge its damage output though, I only ever popped it during massive chaotic zergs.

I haven’t tried the Fern Mastiff yet. I’m a Ranger, I already have too many dogs =D

as a Sylvari Ranger i find most of the skills lackluster. Seed isn’t nearly as good as Ranger’s Healing Spring. Mostly, i went Sylvari for the non-elite root. Thinking I should have gone human though instead for more support.

A lot of people seem to underestimate Take Root’s ability to deal damage. While the individual seedlings aren’t very strong, each one of them puts on one stack of bleed. When they’re focused on a single target, these add up quickly to a lot of damage. I generally drop them vs those big bosses, especially those with a lot of natural regen.

Take Root’s invulnerability is great as well. Used correctly, you can dodge a lot of damage as well as bridge the time to your next heal. It’s also really good in dungeons against enemies with big windup attacks. If you can’t get out of the area for whatever reason, casting Take Root nullifies all effects of the attack.

I keep hearing about Summon Druid Spirit healing and being support, but …
Has ANYONE actually gotten this thing to draw conditions or grant Regeneration?

Each time I’ve used it, it never has done either. Is it bugged, or am I missing something?

My druid has done 3 things:

A) Stood there
B) Despawned by the time it reached a mob (stood there for awhile as I fought face to face)
C) Stood there did nothing and died

So I am not sure if it does anything.

Mine has only done the attack, where he slams his fast into the ground sending out chains that immobilize and damages every enemy in the area. That, and follow me around when there isn’t something to attack.

I recently bought Summon Druid Spirit and currently it’s not worth it even if it’s a 30 SP Elite Skill. The damage is minimal, the only attack skill it has which immobilizes multiple enemies happens once every 5 seconds, has weak defenses, doesn’t “apply regeneration”, and hasn’t been shown to “draw conditions”. At this point, non-race specific skills outmatch even the race specific 30 SP skills.. which are supposed to be worth the 30 SP taken to invest in.

Razgriz.7319:

A lot of people seem to underestimate Take Root’s ability to deal damage. While the individual seedlings aren’t very strong, each one of them puts on one stack of bleed. When they’re focused on a single target, these add up quickly to a lot of damage. I generally drop them vs those big bosses, especially those with a lot of natural regen.

Take Root’s invulnerability is great as well. Used correctly, you can dodge a lot of damage as well as bridge the time to your next heal. It’s also really good in dungeons against enemies with big windup attacks. If you can’t get out of the area for whatever reason, casting Take Root nullifies all effects of the attack.

Take Root has the same problem Engineer turrets have:

They don’t scale with gear.
They have low health.
You can’t control what they target.

Do turrets count as summons? I wonder if they count towards the Necro minion bonuses >_>

MotionBlue.9687:

Take Root has the same problem Engineer turrets have:

They don’t scale with gear.
They have low health.
You can’t control what they target.

They don’t do a lot of direct damage, but the bleed stacks up quite nicely. And if there is only one thing in the room (as in a boss), you don’t need to worry about targeting.

Except that bleeding only stacks up to 25 on PvE. Bleeding in general kind of sucks in PvE boss battles because everyone is just overriding stacks.

Reevac.1748:

The Fern mastiff runs in and attacks. It’s hp is decent so it actually stay alive for a fight or 2 till it poofs.

I have survived many time because of take root I love it. Not to mention boss sure love attacking the turrets which keeps them off me or other part members.

The healing seed turret is decent but can die really easily in a aoe fight, and like seed turrets mobs are drawn to kill them.

Fern mastiff is great. That lil guy has saved my butt many times, especially when I’ve been downed. As a mesmer, having that guy out, plus three illusions, is just awesome. I’d have to say that I am not fond of the turret utility, but Take Root is great too. Havn;t tried the others yet.

Druid Summon is pretty bad for 30 points. The only one I like is Take Root. Most of the time I just use my Guardian’s elites.

I’ve found that the few Sylvari skills I have are useful in different situations. (I’m a Lvl 20 Mesmer, as of writing)

In a group DE with a boss fight (the faulty mech in Brisban Wildlands comes to mind), I’ll swap out my usual Ether Feast for Healing Seed to help out the group.

Honestly, it’s hard to choose my 6-9 skills sometimes, which is the beauty of this game. In a boss situation like this, there’s certainly value in Engrasping Vines to keep him rooted and Feedback to reflect his projectiles. In other DEs, like defending a camp from waves of Risen or Nightmare Court, I see the value in Seed Turret instead of Vines simply because there’s so much going on that ensnaring one rather meaningless mob is counterproductive versus automatically targeting any nearby mobs with the turret.

The game completely changes when I’m running solo. Engrasping Vines is usually in my go-to for opening a solo attack, granting a few precious seconds to quickly pop Mirror Images and Staff skill 2 for 3 Illusions to Mind Wrack (alternatively, I’ll use the few seconds of rooting to pop a Chaos Storm perimeter and Illusionary Warlock for max condition damage).

I could go on, but I’d be deviating from your question, OP. Basically, I find the Sylvari-specific skills generally more useful in group situations (except for Vines, which is great everywhere). My view on the matter is limited, however – as I said, I’m only Lvl 20.

I have tried the seed turret and healing turret and not found them terribly useful as of yet, but I’m definitely liking the fern mastiff. It helps me out of sticky situations, is more durable than my illusions and does reasonable damage.

I am currently a 65 Engineer and have unlocked all of the Sylvari racial skills. I have to agree that the seed turret is pretty much useless, at least for the engineer. My Rifle Turret does more damage and lasts until it is blown up. The Healing seed is a little meh. While the initial heal is greater then my healing turret, again like the rifle turret it does not fade until blown up. The healing turret also allows you to AoE heal if the turret is not up, while the healing seed just heals yourself. Grasping vines is situational and I hardly use it.

Taking Root is by far the best racial skill available for the Sylvari. It doesn’t matter if you are surrounded by mobs or focusing down a boss, those turrets will distract and deal out some decent damage to your foes, plus it has a lower cool down then all of the other elite skills (at least for the engineer). The supply crate is the other elite skill I mostly use, and that is nice for controlling mobs and some heals. The druid and fern mastiff have their uses and are very situational. The druid is useless in a pinch since it takes time to summon it and unlike taking root, you are not invulnerable, which can make it hard to cast if being mobbed.

Overall the basic skills are kind of useless for me to use as an engineer, but the elite skills are quite nice and go along with my build quite nicely.