Guild Wars 2

(Please excuse any grammar mistakes or weird expressions, English is not my first language.)

GW2 is not my first MMO. I think I started with FFXI and, despite its difficulty, I endured through three expansions. I also played SW: Galaxies, and I was pretty addicted to WoW back in the days of vanilla. I enjoyed the Burning Crusade like my first Christmas, WotLK was OK and I was part of one of the top guilds in EU, playing hardcore 6 days a week. But I couldn’t bear with Cata and the casual grinding model it had became, so I quit pretty early into the fourth expansion.

I never played the original GW, since I’ve only had Macs for a long time, but I read a great deal about it and I liked the original concept, the lack of holy trinity and grinding and the flow of gameplay.

It had been a year since I last played a MMO, but when the Mac client for GW2 came out I immediately bought it. I was considering installing Windows in my Mac so you have an idea of how badly I wanted to play this game.

I like it. The game is beautiful and enticing. I think the implementation of a lot of concepts is brilliant. I still haven’t tried PvP but it looks like fun.

I’m now halfway through the game and I feel like I could enjoy it much more. I think I make the wrong choice regarding to professions. I chose a Necro partly because in WoW I was a Paladin and I wanted to try a different model this time. Also, I was attracted to the role and the concept that ANet has tried to infuse into the profession (war by attrition). I know there is a great deal of whining about Necros, and I hate to be part of the /rant but I can’t help but feeling that Necros are underpowered and it’s ruining my experience.

I’m also disappointed at the lack of challenge the game is entailing for me. I feel the curve is wrong. Very hard at the beginning, with a lot of new concepts coming through, and then it stabilizes so all content has the same level of difficulty. Yesterday I participated in the Shatterer event and it went down in 5 minutes without any complication. Is this normal? Probably endgame content will be harder and more challenging, but so far I haven’t even sweated once in 40 levels. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a xxH4rdC0re Pr0!xx, but I like a competitive situation or two once in a while.

I’m seriously considering starting over with a new character (maybe a warrior?) but this is something I hate doing because I feel like I’ve failed and I’m not a good enough player. I want to believe that things will get better, that ANet will “fix” the Necros or that endgame content will make the role more interesting. I’m also turned off by the lack of theorycrafting. I liked crunching the numbers and honing my rotation, but in GW2 as far as I know it is always the same old story and I cant even customize my UI.

So, after all this whining… what am I doing wrong? Will everything improve as long as I keep leveling? Should I start a new character and try to see the game from a different angle? Am I taking the wrong approach with my Necro (condi build; Scepter/dagger)?

Thanks for your advice.

TL;DR: I took a Necro up to 40 and I’m bored. I want to give the game another chance.

Fulgrim.4507:

I’m also disappointed at the lack of challenge the game is entailing for me. I feel the curve is wrong. Very hard at the beginning, with a lot of new concepts coming through, and then it stabilizes so all content has the same level of difficulty. Yesterday I participated in the Shatterer event and it went down in 5 minutes without any complication. Is this normal?

Yep the dragon events are essentially a cakewalk just there to get a chest.

So, basically, you’re looking for an end-game challenge.

If the finish your Personal Story, the game rewards you with WvW blueprints (among other things). Seems like ANet is hinting that WvW is their idea of an end-game challenge, which is pretty darn reasonable.

Let’s face it. How can any mob AI ever compare to the thrill of fighting with other players?

It really can’t. Maybe the first few runs, you’ll be in awe while learning the epic boss, but it always becomes routine once you know what you’re doing.

Where as in WvW, you’re always encountering different players and different numbers of enemies, and have different allies/number of allies around. It’s almost always fresh to some degree.

—

Hopefully, when they fix culling and break the zerg-meta, WvW will be as fun as I describe it.

Currently, it’s just a zerg-fest. It’s still fun to fight in skirmishes, but the majority of the time, you’re gonna have waves of people just crashing onto the objectives without much forethought.

DreamOfACure.4382:

So, basically, you’re looking for an end-game challenge.

If the finish your Personal Story, the game rewards you with WvW blueprints (among other things). Seems like ANet is hinting that WvW is their idea of an end-game challenge, which is pretty darn reasonable.

Yeah but then they don’t support it properly.

morrolan.9608:

Yeah but then they don’t support it properly.

There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t supported well.
i.e.: Legendary items are never introduced through the story/lore in-game.

It’s obvious ANet wasn’t finished development (and we’ll never know if it’s just because they slacked off or NCSoft was too pushy), but that doesn’t mean we can’t be sensible and roll in the direction that feels most fun until they give the game the proper polish-features it needs.

Thanks for the answers guys. I think I’ll try a Warrior this afternoon and try to get him to 20. Then I’ll decide if I’d rather get my back to my Necro.

Go play warrior, easiest class in the game.

Every profession plays completely differently. If one isn’t doing it for you, try another. Even the other two light armor one, Mesmer and Elementalist, will give you a completely different playing experience.

I think you’ll like the dungeons, they’re challenging enough if you don’t know how to do them and it’s incredibly enjoyable (in my opinion) if you don’t run with a group that wants to clear it fast just for the tokens (the majority nowadays).

WvW is also challenging on it’s own, it’s a battlefield that you can expect anything… similar to the World PvP from WoW (when it had it) but the difference is that people there are exactly for it.

As for your profession, I’d suggest trying a melee. I leveled a Guardian first and it was really awesome, although people say it’s one of easiest, I don’t know but I was having a hard time going through the areas, but I think it was because I was trying to solo group content or just pulling way too much.
The way they made the combat makes melee much more fun in my opinion, and although I leveled an Elementalist just for WvW, melee is still the most fun you can get in PvE.

@OP

It sounds like you picked the wrong profession for your play style, and you’re about to do it again with the warrior.

Each profession plays quite differently in my experience. So far I’ve got a ranger, guardian, and thief to 80 with 100% map complete and dabbling in other areas of the game. The other professions I’ve played a bit.

Some professions focus heavily on positioning (Ranger and thief) others are more focused on skill timing (guardian) while others are very focused on good rotations and/or correct utility for the situation (elementalist or engineer).

From what you describe I suspect you would enjoy Elementalist, Engineer, or Mesmer the most.

I wouldn’t worry so much about starting over. Every other MMO I’ve played I was more like you. I had my main and I couldn’t stand alts because I felt like I was throwing away all that work on my main. In GW2 getting a character ‘capped out’ in levels and gear isn’t such a hardship so having multiple fully geared characters is reasonable. There’s also notable benefits to having multiple 80s (e.g. more Orichalcum farming per day).

tl;dr The game does play quite differently with each profession. If Necro doesn’t do it for you try something else. I strongly suggest Elementalist, Engineer, and Mesmer (in that order) based on what you said.

I’m sorry to say but you are contradicting yourself. 1st you say you feel underpowered as a Necro (yet you havn’t tried any other class so how would know they are weaker than others?) then you say there is no challenge and everything seems easy but you hope theres more challeneg end game. Sorry but I’m confused, is it too easy or too hard, make up your mind.