Guild Wars 2

Hi, for the past few days I’ve been struggling how picking between necromancer or elementalist, I like them both, maybe necromancer a little more.

I also can’t seem to pick the right race and stick with it, atm i have a level 10 elementalist norn male.

I like some of their armors norn in general, don’t like how long hair clips through, I also love human armor as well and even sylvari.

I also like asura but I already have two atm, an asura eng level 36 my main so far and level 10 rev asura.

I main problem is looks, so I’m having hard time choosing a race more then necro or ele.

I also have heritage coat from hom and I have bloody prince staff, so that a factor as well, i use the heritage since most low level armors look ugly.

Can you help me by giving me advice, and what to go necro or ele, i don’t care for pvp or wvw, I mainly pve, still don’t have any 80 year, my highest characters are 50-70 and the 70 i mostly got from crafting and tomes which i regret for few reasons.

Anyways, could you upload some SS of your necro or ele, of Norn, Human, Sylvari and maybe asura again already have two and even know they are my favorite race, want to do something different.

Mainly just looking for good armor sets, dyes ETC.

If I had to pick one, not saying I will go this, I would like to see Sylvari screen shots of what I said above, female please, maybe male even know I hate their voices.

Well I’m going to bed, its 2:53 am after making this thread.

Good night all and hope to see some replies here when I wake up in the next 8+ hours.

Go to each proffesion subforum and check those "Show your "class"" threads. You can see a lot of people’s characters there. Could give you an idea.

go for hunan female t3 meta

Not the replies I was expecting to see after I woke up, but still good. Just wish I could get replies of helping me decide and giving me advice, in stead of the usually go check this or that forum.

But, thanks for the replies anyways.

Charr Ele with T1 Top, Embroidered Pants, whatever gloves and shoes you want and Seer hat. No shoulders.

Magic Faze.9613:

Not the replies I was expecting to see after I woke up, but still good. Just wish I could get replies of helping me decide and giving me advice, in stead of the usually go check this or that forum.

But, thanks for the replies anyways.

Isn’t what one like in looks really individual though? I mean, I think the Necromsmcer and sylvari really go good together, but maybe someone else can’t stand sylvari.

But since you asked, sylvari for necromancer. All sorts of good skin colors, faces and hair that can get you a look that’s really interesting.

Both! Make both.

As for race.. For ele, I’d saw Asura, Human, or Norn. For Necro, Human, Sylvari, of Norn. Probably in those orders of preference. Females, of course.

(I personally have 3 eles, 1 human, 1 norn, 1 charr. And 2 necros, 1 human, 1 sylvari. I have an asuran necro planned, but not yet made)

I don’t have screenies at the moment, I never did get around to ‘finishing’ my looks (got caught up in simply enjoying the game play).

In my opinion, you can never go wrong with Human I think they have great armor skins for both female and male. I only have female characters though because I am a female player and would feel weird playing a male character lol. But here are a couple pictures of them.
In regards to class, elementalists are a lot of fun. I love how there are many different combo of skills you can use since there are 4 different attunements. I am a bit biased since I main an ele, but I do have a necro and I have fun with it as well. It’s really your choice!

I’ve also attached a screenie of the only Sylvari I have. If you have any questions about what armor skin I’m wearing, feel free to mail me in game! I hope my post helped.

Thanks for all the replies, still looking for more opinions/advice/ss.

Gw2Style is an excellent site for “look” ideas.

Also, the wiki has pages showing every single armor set in the game for each different race/armor class here (bottom of that page has links for all races/classes).

Already know about those sites, i mainly looking for looks and dye combos ETC. and still need opinions on ele or nerco.

Both? I have 9 lvl 80s. About to do 10th.

Humans and asura are always best IMO unless its heavy armor then norn.

Sylvari can be good if you have a specific theme in mind before hand. Like all white or all black or all purple or whatever.

Also you haven’t mentioned if you plan to play their spec tempest or reaper or vanilla as they are different…

An ele I think is great for a human or sylvari lore and asthetics wise, gameplay wise, ele is one of the best classes for support with their abundance of combo fields and blasts. You can make your ele very colorful and incorporate all the elements into your design as we’l I think.

Necromancer….well depends on your style. My necromancer is a fanatical devotee of Grenth, so I am human with a Grenth hood and using all shadow weapons, except for dark harvest, because I love that greatsword. You could also do a sort of Raven inspired norn, those look amazing when done right, a mad scientist asura, sylvari….I have seen some good ones but it’s hard to give them s theme other than dark. Gameplay wise, necros can take a lot of punishment, but are very very selfish, lacking blasts and combo fields people want. They also lack in the boon department. Except for might. They are masters of conditions though, able to literally eat and having the most transfers in the game I think.

I have an 80 Asura necro (my main) and an 80 Asura ele. I love them both!

In my opinion, Asura adapt themselves extremely well to the cloth professions. For one, they sound more intelligent (don’t go for a Norn, seriously, just don’t.. horrible VA). Sylvari are good too..

PS I would only go necro if you plan to go reaper, vanilla necro is boring in PvE IMO (I even deleted my 80 necro before HoT)

OTOH tempest is meh is PvE.

Sooo vanilla ele = good
reaper = good

I do plan on going nerco reaper.

My elementalist on different attires for each of her roles ….(yeah I know I’ll move to celestial <.< …can’t handle no room in bags no more)

Well, since you asked for more input:
I’ve got a sylvari ele I don’t play much anymore (mostly because dragonhunter is way more interesting to me at the moment). I’ve never played necro past level 20, but that’s mostly because I wasn’t sure if I liked the concept. They look like a really fun class, easier to learn but (I get the impression) shifting into a larger role lately. I know they’ve been killing me on PvP. Next character, as soon as I get another slot!

Sylvari and Asura are my favorite races in the game — they have very distinct, interesting cultures, and lots of unique character creation options. I never get tired of creating them. Keep in mind that you’ll be stuck matching whatever skin colors you choose when you dye armor, however.
I just went and grabbed screenshots of what my characters look like atm. The first two are light armor and actual possibilities, the rest are heavy but might give you some ideas for color combinations. (The gloving gloves are a prize for achievements and the first asura’s pants require choosing the order of whispers story, otherwise everything is pretty easy to get)

Vanilla necro is boring? I have all classes at 80 except thief and eng (just don’t like to play that). with one sylvari and one other race for each. I love playing the sylvri the most, and the one I play the most overall is my sylvari vanilla necro (DS). Followed by the sylvari ele. I don’t have yet a reaper as I had to take a break from the game and only started playing again now and then for about two weeks now, I am sure I will love the reaper but until then please don’t diss the vanilla necro. Not everybody has the same opinion and not all vanilla necros are the same – I am talking PVE vanilla necro as you were saying. Anyway, here’s two sylvari, necro and ele, in slightly different skins, so you can see how much you can do with sylvari.

I wanted to make a male asura necromancer because I love its reaper shouts (Your soul is mine!) However, I committed to a light armor male asura when I started back in August of 2012 so if I do make a necro it’ll be a human male since I have no light armor characters except for the Asura ele. I still stand by my decision, Asura male has awesome shouts across the board.

As you can see from my signature, I have a level 80 of each profession, but I consider my Necromancer and my Ele to be my mains, as they really have been since GW1.

In terms of race, you really can’t go wrong with Human. They’re a little generic, sure, but they generally look the best even with that against them. I have 5 and I really like how each of them looks, even though they all have wildly different weapons and armor. Sylvari also look quite good as they’re basically just humans when it comes to armor styles and clipping issues. I really like the Asura for their personalities and Personal Story, but I’ll admit that I don’t particularly like how armor tends to look on them. All that said, you might want to consider going with Norn if you pick Necromancer, particularly if you’re interested in WvW. Become the Snow Leopard is a fantastic Elite skill and is one of the few times that a racial skill is worth using: between the long-range dashes and 50% Stealth uptime, Become the Snow Leopard is one of the best ways for a Necro roaming deep behind enemy lines to get out of dodge if things get hairy.

As for profession, I would recommend making both. This game is pretty alt-friendly for most content (Raids and Fractals of the Mists being the two notable exceptions) and most people find they enjoy it more when they can switch between characters. At the very least, play them each up through level 30-40 before deciding which to play to 80.

That said, if you really only want to pick one, well, I can’t make that decision for you. I can, however, explain what I like and dislike about each profession, and maybe you’ll be able to puzzle out from that which suits you better.

The Elementalist is the ultimate word in flexibility. No profession, with the possible exception of the Engineer, has access to as many tools and tricks as an Elementalist at any given time. Every profession can fill any role, but every Elementalist build will have some amount of everything in its quiver every time it enters combat. Playing an Ele well involves making optimal use of your cooldowns, of throwing out damage, defenses, heals, crowd-control, and mobility effects left, right, and center at all points in a fight. Eles are frenetic and they have the ability to scramble through just about any encounter, no matter how tough or unexpected the foe mechanics might be. The Ele has also been consistently top-tier in every game mode for the majority of the game’s lifespan, which means you never really have to worry about whether you’ll be useful or not. If you always want to have an answer for every question, you really couldn’t do worse than the Elementalist.

That said, there are a few downsides. Historically, the Elementalist has not had very good build diversity. Because we’re so incredibly squishy, it becomes difficult to play without building for some damage mitigation and spending large portions of any given fight healing. Squeezing the most power out of the profession also involves a lot of button-pressing, more so than anyone else (again, except possibly for the Engineer). Even simple fights can force you to dance around like a madman. It’s possible to do decently going full Berserker and spamming Fire 1 and 2 at 1200 range, but most content will require much more twitch skill from you to do as well as possible. Eles also lack a weapon swap button, which is fine thanks to having double the total number of weapon skills, but it also means you have to lock yourself into a specific range category before the fight starts. No starting out with Daggers to deal with a small-scale fight only to swap to Staff when the boss suddenly reveals himself, not unless you can get out-of-combat first. Elementalists are also the single most-difficult profession to level up, as they require a lot of stats to thrive and have huge portions of their power tied up in Trait synergies; this isn’t that big a deal as you’ll level up pretty quickly, but be prepared to eat dirt a lot as you learn the ropes and unlock more and more traits

Now, on to the Necromancer. As I mentioned above, I play every profession and absolutely no one feels as brutal, as nasty, or as implacable as the Necromancer. A well-played Necromancer can be extremely difficult to bring down even in full damage armor. A Necromancer can get right up into her enemy’s faces and tear them apart like an angry honey badger in Power builds, or she can hang back and turn her opponents into apocalyptic Condition-damage bombs with a single well-timed Epidemic. The Necromancer’s Elite Specialization, Reaper, is particularly good at taking this “unstoppable bruiser” playstyle to the next level, but the base Necro can be very strong as well. Oh, and while the Ele has the toughest time leveling up, the Necromancer has by farthe easiest of any profession. Between a Minion skill or two and Death Shroud, waltzing through even the toughest fights in open-world PvE is braindead easy as a Necromancer.

The Necro is not perfect, however. Death Shroud is a great survivability mechanic and we have a lot of Weakness and Blind application to augment it, but since we lack Block/Evasion/Invulnerability effects and have no Vigor and very little mobility, avoiding boss attacks that deal instant-kill amounts of damage can be very difficult if your dodging isn’t on point. The relative lack of Stability can also lead to situations where you’ll feel like a pinball being batted around; the Reaper solves this problem with its Infuse Terror skill (Reaper Shroud #3), but you might find yourself struggling in high-CC situations before you manage to unlock it. Necros also tend to be very selfish, not handing out as much support as most other professions. This is great when flying solo but can make it harder to feel like you’re contributing as much in a group (even though we do still have some neat support options).

So to sum up: Humans and Sylvari probably have the best look (IMO), the Norn has the best Elite skills for a Necromancer, the Ele is about freedom and movement, and the Necromancer is about being a nasty monster. Do with that what you will.

I’d say Asura for Necro, as you already have two Asuras in the Medium and Heavy armor ranges.

Asura have some of the better, if not best animations, and most of their audibles (i.e. spoken lines when using skills) are also some of the best, especially when it comes to minion skills.

Plus the idea of a pint size agent of death is just plain funny.

I re-rolled my Ele from male Sylvari to male Human for the simple fact that I couldn’t stand the male Sylvari’s faux British whine every time I changed Attunements. I main that Ele, so I could be biased, but as it stands right now the Ele is pretty balanced in most areas of the game, has both tanky and glass-cannon builds across a couple different weapon sets, and is quite mobile, although not as fast as the Medium armor professions (and Warrior). The Ele also has great condi clear, which is a must IMHO in the end game areas.

But the gameplay of rapid switching on the Ele is similar to the Engy in several respects, I would say that unless that’s the ONLY style of gameplay you like to instead branch out. A Necromancer from a gameplay perspective would be quite different.

Now, as for end game builds, all three of the mentioned profs (Engy, Necro and Rev) all can really dish out the pain in Condition builds, and are slightly less optimal when focusing on pure Power. However, straight damage builds of all three do exist, and Herlads and Reapers can do very well in high end PvE with Power builds, although I believe that Condi Engineers are still the meta for that class.

Kaleban.9834:

Now, as for end game builds, all three of the mentioned profs (Engy, Necro and Rev) all can really dish out the pain in Condition builds, and are slightly less optimal when focusing on pure Power.

For the Necro, at least, I’ve generally found our Power builds tend to edge out Condi, at least in PvE. Opinion seems to be split on this issue, which leads me to believe that both Condi and Power Necro/Reaper builds are roughly equivalent, with the difference being personal playstyle.

ASURA Ele/Necro – They just seem to be perfect for it…….Char and Norn seem suitable for swinging around heavy weapons and clobbering stuff….Humans are meh…

Thanks all for the replies, i just make both, as for races don’t know yet. I like the ideal of norn racial skill leaped, but i can’t stand how the males walk etc, females are okay but still.

Do you want to play Fashion Wars 2?

Yes: Human
Sorta: Norn/ Sylvari
No: Charr and Asura…the stretching and shrinking really doesn’t to most sets justice.