Guild Wars 2

Hello! My name is Jonah. I’m a Necromancer and I am completely lost. I’m a fast learner, but so far this game has baffled me in terms of what to do as a beginner. So basically, I would like to know the following if possible.

1. How are Necromancers PvP wise?
2. Are there any player PvE (for now) friendly guilds?
3. How is this game on spending money? Will I need to spend tons to be successful? If so, explain how. If not, explain what I CAN do.
4. What class if not Necromancer is best solo-wise?
5. Does the Death Shroud skill increase in duration as I level? Whether it be by skill or gear, please elaborate.
6. What vital information do you believe a newbie like me should know? I appreciate and thank anyone in advance.

I don’t play necros, so can’t answer those questions, but

2) Check out the guild recruitment forums, or post in LFG mentioning whether you’re on EU or NA servers. There are plenty of PvE guilds looking for new members.
3) You don’t need to spend real life money at all. You use money to buy gems, which buy new skins and convenience tools – however, you can also use gold from the game to buy gems.
4) Ranger is also very good in solo open world, but suffers everywhere else.
6) Look through https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players/first – this has a bunch of tips that are useful, though the trait information is out of date.

Hey and welcome to GW2!

1. Necros are pretty darn solid in both sPvP and WvW I believe. I can’t tell you a lot as I don’t play mine that much and you’ll probably get better feedback on the necromancer class forum, but in my experience at least fighting them in sPvP it’s extremely annoying to be against.

2. There are a lot of guilds for that, you could either look at the Guild Recruitment forums or simply ask around in map chat while in game (Lion’s Arch or Divinity’s Reach are usually good places to ask, as there’s a lot of people idling/crafting/banking/etc there at all times).

3. You don’t need a lot of money to be successful, no. Exotic gear is second best-in-slot at level 80 and can be bought on the trading post for a few gold or for various dungeon tokens or even karma depending on the stats you want on it. The next level (Ascended gear) IS expensive to get but it’s not really mandatory to have as it’s a pretty minor boost, and it can be something you work on bit by bit IF you decide you want to invest in it. Otherwise running exotics will be perfectly fine.

The biggest expenses in this game are pretty much cosmetic IMO – buying yourself nice skins, going for a legendary, etc. Also a note that if you’re interested in sPvP your gear level will have no influence on your stats there.

4. Every class can be good solo-wise, with each their strengths and problems. What exactly are you looking for in a solo class?

5. Death Shroud uses up life force, which is calculated from your health pool; so it’s indirectly affected by your vitality stat. I believe it can also be increased by investing in the Soul Reaping trait line.

6. There’s a thread stickied in this section that gives out some tips to newbies. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any crucial advice, other than to not rush to level cap but enjoy the leveling. Possibly also a tip to gather everything you see to sell or use for yourself while crafting, as that will earn/save you quite some gold.

If you have any questions while ingame feel free to /w me there and I can do my best to help.

JonahLee.9264:

Hello! My name is Jonah. I’m a Necromancer and I am completely lost. I’m a fast learner, but so far this game has baffled me in terms of what to do as a beginner. So basically, I would like to know the following if possible.

1. How are Necromancers PvP wise?
2. Are there any player PvE (for now) friendly guilds?
3. How is this game on spending money? Will I need to spend tons to be successful? If so, explain how. If not, explain what I CAN do.
4. What class if not Necromancer is best solo-wise?
5. Does the Death Shroud skill increase in duration as I level? Whether it be by skill or gear, please elaborate.
6. What vital information do you believe a newbie like me should know? I appreciate and thank anyone in advance.

Welcome to gw2 While I don’t main necro I can help you out until the pro necros show up.

1) While you are cloth, you’re one of the hardest classes to take down because of death shroud, which acts like a second health pool and (for some reason) takes less damage while in that state. There are effective pvp builds that are centered around lots of conditions, power (using wells wells and death shroud), or letting your pets do the damage for ya. I would suggest you go on youtube and search for keywords like ‘gw2 necromancer roaming’ to see how other players are using the class. Here’s the first video I got with that search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzyVTFM7uSc

3) The way gw2 works is that you can purchase gems by using real life money or by converting in game gold into gems. You can then use the gems to buy stuff from the shop, like boosters, cool pvp stomp finishers, new haircuts, skins for gear, etc. It’s mostly for making the game a tad less tedious, like gathering tools that don’t wear out and additional character slots for example. Other stuff from the shop are cosmetic only. The only real pay to win aspect is that you could purchase a lot of gems with real money and convert it into gold, but I wouldn’t suggest in doing that as you can easily farm gold when you’re higher level. It really comes down to if you want to spend time farming in game or if you want to farm money in real life for your upgrades. That being said, I would prioritize gem purchases like so: character slots, then bank slots, then bag slots. Get at least 8 character slots so you can play around with every class without having to delete any.

4) Necromancer has it pretty easy.

5) I believe there are traits that extend death shroud duration. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Death_Shroud

Death shroud is a skill you should use briefly for the situation required. Staying in death shroud for a long time just spamming life blast is generally a waste, unless you’re traited for it. Examples to pop death shroud briefly is when you’re about to take big damage and can’t dodge, when you want to close a gap, or when you want to fear.

6) You can organise and clean your bags by using the icon on the top right of your bag window. Crafting mats can be cleaned out of your bags and directly transferred into your bank.

The intended way for you to quest in open world pve is to just explore. Go to all the points of interest and vistas. If you see an event then join it. After the event finishes (success or fail), stick around to see if another event chains from it. Example, you could have an event to prevent harpies from stealing supplies. If you fail the event, a new event will give you the task in getting those supplies back. If a heart icon is almost full after doing some events, go ahead and do stuff to fill it. Completing every heart like I did during launch could wear you down quickly.

Say hi in map chat. Players are generally really friendly and due to the mega servers you’ll rarely be alone in any zone. Map chat is also a good way to get questions answered.

You can temporarily make your character max level with most traits, gear, skills and weapons unlocked by clicking on the crossed swords on the top left of the screen. It’s a good way to see what skills do before spending skill points on them. In spvp, everyone is on equal terms progression and gear wise so it’s all about team coordination, skill and execution. When you leave spvp, your character will revert to it’s old self.

If you’re getting bored, try something new like wvw (the tower icon) where servers battle each other for server benefits, spvp where you can have small team matches, or try a new class. I like to do jumping puzzles.

I’m sure there are more points that players will bring up with you to answer this question. Best of luck!

edit: typo

3) There really isn’t anything at the Gem Store you need to buy to be successful. All armors are nothing but appearance. There are items that provide some additional convenience such as additional account bank slots, more bag slots for a character inventory (each bag slot can hold a bag that has 4 to 20 slots. There are gathering tools that don’t wear out which is purely a convenience. Then you have the usual extra character slots you can buy, XP boosters, mini non-combat pets and grab bag items (well keys to open grab bag chests that you can have dropped on you during play).

I’ve never bought a bag slot for any of my characters as there are ways to empty your inventory without needing to return to a major city. You start with 4 bag slots and a 20 slot backpack. I have 4, 15 slot bags in my slots so my characters can carry 80 items at a time, note that some items can stack up to 250 in a single slot. It took me a while to expand from the initial 30 account wide band slots but it depends on how much of a hoarder you are.

1. PVP wise it really depends on what you are doing, if it is WvW then I find this is where the Necro as a class shines the most. I dont do sPvP or tPvP simple because ive played that game mode in other games to death and I wanted something different, so I spend most my time in WvW.

But from what I hear and see Necro’s are good but not great in xPvP and I tend to find that the higher up people get in the rankings the more the classes shortcomings start coming to light. But early doors you won’t have a problem just higher up it will be alot more challenging than it would be if you played certain other classes not to be mentioned as to not derail the thread.

2. I couldnt really say to be honest im sure there are PVE friendly guilds out there but if you do plan doing PVE with the Necro it is our worst mode of play. So if you can’t find a guild who is happy to do dungeon runs with you then you need to have thick skin for those who will kick you out of dungeons after seeing you are a Necro. It does happen so just be prepared for it.

3. You do not need to spend a ton of money to be successful but you will need some to get what you need. You can get exotic weapons and armour depending on your stats in Orr at the various temples for karma points which you tend to find is in no short supply.

If you don’t mind doing the karma train in EOTM you can gain tons of Karma and lots of Badges and inside normal WvW it has vendors that sell various exotic weapons and armour also for some badges and some cash.

WvW vendors are the best place to go if you’re looking for berserker gear as people tend to waste tons buying the weapons and armour on the trade broker. You can get exotic soldiers, knights, carrion, clerics, berserker and rabid weapons and armour at the merchants inside WvW.

The only time it starts getting expensive is if you are looking for ascended weapons and armour. And if you’re really a glutton for punishment you can go through the joy in obtaining a legendary weapon. But that is really expensive and about as much fun as being poked in the eye with a sharp stick.

Ascended trinkets can be slowly obtained by doing dailies and monthlies to obtain laurels. Or you can do fractal runs which would be the quicker way of obtaining them. Good part is that ascended items are now account bound so if you get a set that more than one character can use then they are easily transferred between characters.

What I find the most expensive items are now runes and sigils, you tend to find that these are skyrocketing in price. I dont know if its because numbers are dwindling or people are getting more greedy but the prices for the most common ones have gone up considerably higher than when I first bought mine.

4. Solo-wise for me my Warrior was by far the easiest class to level up and the one I use in WvW if im looking for a more relaxing evening of it. At the moment I feel they are the class that alot of the others strive to get near to in terms of completeness so if you want to run solo then run a warrior as there is not alot you can’t do with them.

5. The Death Shroud skill makes use of life force and life force scales with vitality so therefore the more vitality you have the longer you will be in DS. You also get more life force by putting points in the Soul Reaping tree along with various other DS benefits. Soul Reaping tree has a master trait that allows you to reduce the cooldown on DS (Near to Death) and also a adept trait that reduces the amount of life force drained by 50% (Vital Persistence) just remember that taking damage will increase the drain of lifeforce.

6. Minions are bugged therefore I wouldnt waste my time building around them just now until some sort of a fix is implemented. You will just waste alot of time trying to get them off spectator mode. Go into heart of the mists (xPvP lobby style area) you can try out various builds on the golems there and see what you prefer as the gameplay differs between condition and power, plus sigils etc are free in there to try out. Also learn to master DS it is your one and only life saver so get used to using it.