Guild Wars 2

Clone death is basically a defensive build…It discourages people from attacking.

I think that whether or not someone likes it depends on where they fall on the offense vs. defense question.

The devs unquestionably prefer offense. Just look at the removal of soldiers runes and all of the other defensive and/or healing runes from pvp.

I personally like defensive builds and miss clone death.

But even more than that, I miss GW1. In GW1, you could create many builds with different aims and clone death (if it existed) would not have caused a dev to bat an eyelash. GW2 is so much more contrained, however, and doesn’t have anything approaching the variety…

The main thing I would say is to choose a defensive armor set. Something like dire if condition damage or soldiers if power damage. That should give you the time you need to react to things.

Straegen.2938:

Mesmers do it, thieves do it, even Ranger pets do it…

I can’t be the only one who read this and thought:

Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it

Not the original, but most hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pvMCu_YeYU

CaptainVanguard.4925:

A long time ago, there was an MMO that advertised itself out there to be “the” casual player mmo. This mmo promised it would create content that would be designed for relaxing and open social gameplay, the ability to play with friends without having to, the ability to do dungeon runs that werent frustrating or tedious, a massive world vs world vs world pvp mode that encouraged thousands to play. Huge map wide raids were also a big deal in these casual event systems designed to help casual gamers play with other casual gamers.

It also introduced a level based pvp system entirley seperate from its main game with an entirely class-balance based focus on that pvp system.

That game also had a decent roleplaying community on at least 2 major servers prior to the introduction of mega-servers and a number of other new additions to the game.

It also promised that absoleutley no content in the game would be a tedious chore.

It lied.

GW2, What ever you promised to be, you need to keep it, screw this “1%” minority that are into e-sports, and raiding 24/7 this isnt WoW just abbandon that entirley and focus on the people that “do” care about the game, and “do” care about it surviving longer than 3 months.

GW2 was the first MMO SINCE World of Warcraft I could activly play for more than just a month, I felt a certain satisfaction in exploring the world, doing random questsa t my own pace and leisure, having the options to see Tyria at my own adventuring pace.

Now, I feel like the game wants me to rush into content, get my ascended mats, aquire legendaries, 5000 acheivement points minimum and alot more content thats just locked behind farming for content so that an kitten group of stowaways from other MMO’s can have their moment to shine.

Can we please, PLEASE go back to what MADE GW2 special in the first place.

Going forward, GW2 needs to abbandon this “challenging group content” kitten and “e-sport pvp ladder” system and just focus on what MADE GW2 special.

Its a game, people can play at their own leisure for fun, with nothing overly complicated about that at all.

Season 2 did this ALOT better than HoT did.

Going into Season 3 and future expansions, I would seriously hope A-net goes BACK to what made the games CORE gameplay special.

I want a game that isnt just another WoW clone, dont become another wow clone, A-net.

+1 OP. I could not have said it better myself.

Just play some MM tank build with Soldier amulet.

Then they can focus you all they want but you are “going down slow”:

(Song included not for drugs reference but for quote: “I’m going down I know, but I’m going down slow”.)

gin.7158:

you’ve got to be kidding me ha3… If they buff MM necro even more, I will faceroll solo queue at PVP.

This is the problem I run into. MM necro (especially geared with soldier) is all but unbeatable in 1-vs-1 even if paired against their moa nemesis mesmer or engie.

I main necro and love necro and have been forced to the dark side of mm necro since I basically only have 25 minutes of free time day—-at most, sometimes less.

Anyway, I hope the devs up base necro more than mm necro.

I am in my 40s with three kids. Today I logged in for 3 minutes to collect my jumping puzzle rewards. I got up at 6 am and worked until 9 pm either at home or at work.

When I logged in at 9 pm I checked my jump puzzle rewards. Then I logged out.

Lol at playing for 3-4 hours a day being casual.

I don’t even remember a time when I could spend 3-4 hours a day on games.

This is actually my reaction as well. I love the theme of reaper, but feel that with the chill nerfs its raison d’etre was kind of aborted before it could even be born.

If it is not a chill, machine, what is it? Melee? Well, the RS is nice, but Dagger/Warhorn really covers all my melee needs. And if I am just going dagger/warhorn, I think there are better trait setups in the other tracks than the reaper one.

Whatever…

Eles are one of the most played classes in all game modes. Don’t you want some nerfing, so that you feel more elite and less people play an elementalist?

This whole thread has “the sky is falling” overtones…

Solo queue is the only real solution.

SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT – SOLO Q OR RIOT

Laraley.7695:

If they actually succeed at making the raids difficult so it requires actually using your brain and skill, then the skins should be only exclusive to that said raid. They already stayed on the casual level with not adding gear progression and higher level cap. You seriously cannot be asking them to hand out rewards meant to be for raids to everyone.

What raids require brains? The more complicated raids of ANY game just require memorization.

All of them—no matter how complicated—require trivial amounts of cognitive processing…

Does “avoid red spot on ground” require significant brains, or only okay-ish reflex speed?

This is NOT aimed at you, but most hardcore raiders seem to be drama queens who have an inflated sense of self-brain-power but would doubtless flunk a hardcore math (or other subject area!) skills test that actually measured brains.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Laraley.7695:

This is exactly why the game is so casual and has one of the worst pve content I’ve ever seen.

Yes, GW2 is (well…was) fairly casual, indeed. It was the one MMO for people like me. There are 20 MMOs out there that cater to elitists and people who want to brag with exclusive gear. Seriously, why is this sort of people even playing this game and then trying to shape it into something it was at least at launch not meant to be? I don’t get that.

PS: None of the things you listed is all that important, at least not in my opinion. Locking non-raiders out from an entire -class- of items (legendary armor) is a different beast, won’t you agree? I wouldn’t even have cared all -that- much about raiders getting their exclusive armor skin, but why can’t the rest of us work on legendary armor as well, our way?

I agree! A Volcano releases an eruption that speeds Kimyrielle on her/his way, but boils her/his enemies in hot lava. Metaphorical hot lava, of course. I haven’t found a way to get volcanic lava to correspond to posts yet. If anyone does find out a way, and tells me, I will give them a cookie. And a good cookie, not a lame one with raisins…

Yes, many people play GW2 to get away from raids. This is mainly because of GW1 but also because of some GW2 design choices.

Locking things behind raids would be stupid. I’m not saying the devs won’t do it, but it would be stupid…

I played a couple of spvp games with my wife today where we duo queued up and both played minion master necros.

If we were both on the central main point, you could definitely see enemies approaching, see the army there, and then decide screw that I am not going to that point.

I think a team full of mesmers and mm necros maybe wouldnt phase the pros but it would bring the average pug team to tears.

I am somewhat disappointed that I have so much more success with an mm build than others. The celestial signet is okay. Wells are fine but I always played wells so they are getting a little boring.

I tried playing some stupid spectral build a few times with all spectral skills except for the heal. It was not that great I think.

I would love it if I could get some epidemic/mass cond sort of build going, but every time I try it I seem to not do that great.

I have used the hybrid build

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-344-c;0o20G0143JkJ0;9;4679;0036148258;4IFl3J;1oHAhoHAh0m

It is not as good as minion master, but it can really f*** over elementalists at least…

I don’t really buy into the whole Chinese conspiracy theory thing, but yes the summons look lame.

As other people have said, they look like palsied puppy dogs with Tourette syndrome.

I would welcome any effort actually to make them look cool.

As others have said in another thread, if life force is our second health bar, then it should regenerate outside of combat to maximum.

Basically, it should act just like health, where if you exit combat, it rapidly goes back to maximum.

Also, necromancers, as masters of death, should be given a feign death ability a la EQ monks. This would immediately shed all pve aggro, make pvp players have to de-target you, and put you outside of combat.

Since everyone wants necros not to be selfish, and to have team utility, feign death should also provide some buff to party members. You are welcome to decide what it is. Maybe fury because their faithful necromancer has been slain (they don’t know you are only kidding) and they want to avenge you?

nekretaal.6485:

Make it bustier.

I posted this in another thread, but it seems appropriate here.

http://lonewolf64.deviantart.com/art/Necromancer-Summon-Abomination-56629454

Is that busty enough for you?

Or just have people either form full teams or solo queue. That seems simple.

Shylock.4653:

Fortus.6175:

Im really tired of being put in 5 premades vs 5 pug, it just isnt fun.

I hardly ever see that. Most of the times I see things like 3+1+1 vs 4+1 or 2+1+1+1 vs. 3+1+1. Most of the premades are not full 5 man groups. So what is your solution for that? Have queues for 5, 4, 3, 2 and solo? That would result in 1 h queue times. I think the current system is quite good and results in acceptable queue times. Waiting just isn’t fun.

My solution would be to have a solo queue and a team queue. All people who are teaming (5,3,2) get put in the team queue.

So my 80s are Necro (main), Mesmer (runner up), Engineer (next runner up), Warrior (don’t really play), and Ranger (don’t really play.) So yes, Elementalist is not on that list.

Recently (although not tonight—I did a spectral build tonight for variety!) I have been playing MM necro a lot. It really kicks kitten against almost everyone. My build sacrifices stability with foot-in-the grave for more damage with death perception. I think it is a fair trade off most of the time, because in all honesty the build is tanky enough to survive a round of burst attack from well…anyone, really. It obviously suffers more though if there are more people against it.

But recently I fought an elementalist, and had a great time. They had this crazy build that kept lauching me and knocking me back. Tornado was in there but there was definitely more. We were kind of stalemated and the battle didn’t end until they got reinforcements from other players and killed me.

But I was having an absolute blast on my necro. It was really fun (not being sarcastic at all by the way—I had a big grin on my face while playing) feeling like a little infinite health piece of popcorn that kept getting popped up again and again by various bits of crowd control. It kind of made it more interesting than the normal necro play of watching your auto-attack down the other person while you are invincable.

I had a blast playing against it. But what might be even more fun is playing with it.

So I offer you elementalist experts (and I am definitely not one!) a challenge: Can you design an spvp elementalist build for me that has the most lauches, knockbacks, and knockdowns? And maybe take into account that I am a newbie and let me know how to play said build.

It doesn’t have to be meta, but it shouldn’t completely suck. I would hope it would get at least, say, a 2.5 rating out of 5.

Thanks!

PowerBottom.5796:

Mesmer: Very mobile and high DPS, CC and Burst, but very squishy an reliant on defensive CD’s like stealth and teleports. IMHO very interesting and fun to play since the new powerblock. Not very good at 1v1’s and as said, very squishy, other than that an absolute monster. You’ll most likely roam to set up good portals and try and outnumber and quickly spike sth. down and/or give DPS and CC in teamfights while trying to stay alive, so good positioning is very important.

Mesmer squishy? Strange, that is not the game I have been playing. PU+mass invis, torch, decoy, veil I suppose. Sword 2. Distortion. Maybe in some alternate world they are squishy, but not in the current incarnation of GW2.

And not very good at 1 vs 1? Is there any profession that is currently better at 1 vs 1 than a mesmer?

Ross Biddle.2367:

nearlight.3064:

Mesmer is really good right now with several viable builds. Take domination, dueling, and a greatsword and you’re all set, the last trait line is just for either some extra support/sustain/survivability. The condi shatter builds are also pretty decent with carrion too. Don’t play the faceroll mantra builds though, it’ll keep you from getting better since the stunlock mantra won’t teach you how to shatter at the right time and it’ll probably get nerfed anyway. Playing mantras would just make it harder for you to learn how to be a good mesmer.

“A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win.”

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

Play to win. Use everything at your disposal. Be a truly good gamer.

This goes for every class, in every game, for all time.

Is it okay to throw someone who is just sitting there blocking?

Lynnie.7213:

A Volcano.2510:

So mysterious…

Necro tips and secrets right here, bro —-> https://www.youtube.com/donee

Thanks!

Lots of aoe and crowd control will mess them up. That said, if they are death/blood/soul with soldiers amulet, just realize that they are incredibly tanky.

You might be better off just going to a different point, and waiting until your team can try to aoe them.

I have been using:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-3_-33;0kH-D0z3gI-K0;9;489A;0036257147;4PBZ520;0TsW6TsW66U

which is much more tanky than the metabattle listed mm build. You can switch death perception for foot in the grave, but honestly the build is tanky enough to get messed up a bit with crowd control and not die, and death perception is really sweet.

What are the traits and armor that make it hard to kill?

• Necro has high natural health and on top of that we have soldiers amulet plus melandru runes.
• Death makes it hard to kill because of increased armor and minions taking conditions.
• Blood makes it hard to kill because of vampiric abilities and unholy martyr. Unholy martyr is this life force battery where when you apply conditions to minions around the necromancer, you just let him stay in death shroud longer.
• Soul makes it hard to kill because it helps life force management.

If I were to choose another profession to fight the above build and win, it would probably be some crowd-control-heavy mesmer sort of build. Also probably a ranger spamming longbow at max range would work.

Void.4239:

Here’s a fun build I’ve been messing around with the past few days. Pretty much “Perma” chill / vulnerability spam.
Fast passed game play will be needed .
It’s a surprisingly survivable build that messes up the other teams skill-rotations and has a nice damage output depending on what amulet you going with.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAoYGjc0QxN2bDu24AXogXdA0CxNIf/AaaEHfBA-TZxFABfXGIhzAwK7PAwDAAhDBAA

Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I’ve been doing.
Just keep in mind that its really totally different from minion builds.

Interesting. I definitely haven’t played anything like it. You don’t have an elite selected. Plague, I assume? I will give it a try!

There are ups and downs to any profession. You enjoy the good with the bad.

I would say…don’t feel guilty and just enjoy being overpowered

So mysterious…

Plague is fine as is.

If you want to buff something with necro, buff axe.

I dunno. I went through about a week and only lost twice. I think this MM build is causing my rating to go higher and probably giving me harder opponents because I almost never lose. I wonder what will happen when I go back to my more normal builds? Instant slaughter (that is, I will die because I am no longer playing this ridiculous build.)

Still, I had fun today. In Foefire, I immediately claimed waterfall, then went against their guild lord. One guy was wailing against me the whole time, but I just ignored him and killed the soldiers, etc. By the time I got to the guild lord, 2 guys were wailing against me. They finally killed me, but I killed the guild lord while downed. Lol. This was the first down, and it was all solo, just me.

I almost felt like I was trolling them.

Also, foefire points needs a serious revision. I had lowest point total for my team, but because of my work the team won. What gives?

Edit: Another favorite tactic is going to the enemies capture point and just camping it solo. Sometimes, you will get 4 guys going against you. As long as you can take it for a bit, it is really entertaining. So remind me again why tank builds aren’t in vogue any more? I only play PUG by the way.

Edit 2: I had been playing a celestial signet build before this. It was good. The only opponent I didn’t like with it was mesmers, because all of the kill endless phantoms and figure out who the real guy is with all of the stealth gets old. But I don’t think the celestial signet build can hold a candle in spvp with pugs (no idea what happens with organized groups—you guys have friends? Wow!) to a tanky death/blood/soul MM build.

Edit 3: I almost forgot the funniest thing. Also today, in a different match, I was soloing a point against a mesmer and an engineer. The engineer had deployed his turrets, and they were all clicking along. I was in death shroud, and was Moa’d by the mesmer. But as ineffectual little moa, I just kept pecking away at the engineer, and actually downed him. I don’t know whether this was incompetence on their part or brilliance on mine. If it was brilliance on mine, I have to admit that I was really just autoattacking the engineer as a moa, so it was probably subtle brilliance.

Edit 4: It was a good week. I probably can’t expect anything better any more, but I had a lot of fun.

Yeah, I think this is a good reason to go celestial for a condi build. You want to do conditions, sure, but you also want to make sure you have enough power/precision/ferocity to get the elementalist below the threshold.

I would recommend celestial for anyone who wants a condition build that is effective against elementalists.

Yes, I realize that this means your condition build is really a hybrid build. So, who cares?

I would just like a axe buffed but let axe keep its range. We don’t want to turn into a melee weapon. We already have dagger and very soon greatsword. Just keep axe with the range it has but make it not suck.

Ascended armor is awkward enough to make that there is a good argument for Celestial. Whatever the situation, Celestial won’t be too far from what you need.

I think dodging should be more like Wildstar. You move quickly out of the way, but there is no invulnerability. That actually rewards skill.

I don’t know… It has been 3 days now since I started a death/blood/soul MM necro build and I have only lost 1 game. And the game that I lost, I think I performed pretty well in and it was just the team. Is the game telling me I have to play this?

So help me everyone! I really don’t want to play a MM build forever!

Post your best non-MM builds if you are merciful.

If not, I guess post your best MM builds and I will keep refining things.

Sigh… I would like the minions more if I could control how they looked. Maybe let us design them?

I think it is always correct to just “play the game” and I think farmers need to back off and let people play the game.

Azure.8670:

As for the topic, I’m fairly positive minion master reaper will be the tankiest and most difficult spec for most professions to deal with

Really? Death/Blood/Soul MM is pretty tanky.

I am trying to figure out how an MM reaper could be more tanky. I assume you are giving up blood? So you would be Death/Soul/Reaper. But I am not really convinced that Reaper is more tanky than Blood is.

Zenith.7301:

Rudy.6184:

Zenith.7301:

Mesmer, warrior, and thief are highly effective against ele because all these three classes have strong spike and CC options to keep the ele under pressure. Eles perform best against ranger/necro/guardian because those classes have inferior spike/pressure options.

It is funny to read someone who doesn’t play ele writing such things. Thieves perform well against eles? Wut? They die to aoe and condies before doing something. Warrior sometimes is a problem, but mainly rampage, mesmer is even match i would say (if not pu). But… Performing best against necros – lol eles have hardest time agiainst those, SoS and corrupt boon is pain for ele. Against guardian and ranger i would agree.

As for how to deal with ele – time well your interrupts – it will collapse the attunement rotation and lower pressure from him. Best interrupt his burning speed at beggining (before evade animation). After every interrupt cast damaging skill. Boonstrip as much as you can, especially before burst, make burst after earth (if he use stone heart) or strip protection.

S/D thief is a solid ele counter, you must be playing terrible thieves. D/P thief is a pretty even match up.

Necro is cake on an ele, I’ve mained ele/mesmer/ranger since before release early beta, I don’t need your lecturing. Ele has such spammable and short cd condi cleanse, a single corrupt boon isn’t really going to ruin you and neither is signet of spite.

Necromancers have horrendous sustain and very long cast times on their heals( read: easy to interrupt), heals which have fairly long cd’s and heal for relatively little of the necromancer’s health pool. They have garbage for spike and unless you’re facetanking wells you should be able to wear them down if you play aggressively.

As a necro main I have easiest time against elementalists of all other professions. No joke. I would rather fight an elementalist than anything else.

Signets of suffering build tends to really mess them up. I am not saying it is going to be a 100% win for the necro, but as I said in duelling with a SoS build I have best luck against elementalists.

I recently switched to a MM build to try for a bit, and haven’t really fought enough elementalists on it to be able to judge how it compares.

I think this would be fine as long as the reintroduced solo queue.

I miss solo queue….. sniff

Underwater gameplay has sucked in every single game that I have ever played ever..and I have played a lot of games.

Vydahr.4285:

I’ve been playing a MM bunker for a while, but decided to play around with an alternate build and this is what i came up with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAoYWjk0QLNWTD+0A7NOsGKZAEyl8MBigMguCxwkC-TZRBwAbOEAlLDs4EAYd/BAPBAA

The first match I played after switching to this build, I got 195 points (10 behind the guy in first) and was able to move point to point (I know, I know, bunker necro shouldn’t move around) but I really like this build because it has pretty significant power with all that tankiness, particularly if you live long enough for the Sigil of Bloodlust to have full effect.

Sum up: Power-Tank with emphasis on well burst and shroud

Hi Vydahr,

I’m going to give this one a try! Fingers crossed…

I used to play minion-less bunkers before the big patch™. The big patch seemed to f*** over minion less bunkers I think. I tried a bunch but failed.

Tonight, I finally went to the dark side and tried the following minion build:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-343Z;1kH-D0z3gI-K0;9;489A;0036237146;4PBZ520;0TsW6TsW66T

The results were spectacular, to say the least. For the first two games, I just went to an off point and held it FOR THE ENTIRE GAME WITHOUT DYING ONCE. I defaulted to staff and spammed the marks at my feet in case a thief showed up. When anyone showed up, I switched to dagger and attacked. Activate DS whenever LF is full.

For the final game, I was in whichever map has guild lords (Foefire?). My strategy was to go and get the off point next to the guild lord and then attack the guild lord. For the entire game, I only died once. I almost felt like I was trolling the enemy team. I mean, for 15 minutes I had 2-3 people going just against me and I only died once. I felt bad for them.

I won all three games. Then I logged out. It seemed like I would be pressing my luck to want to play any more tonight.

TLDR: I think that the non-minion bunker is not as effective post big-patch, but the minion bunker seems very strong.

My condi-necro has celestial armor so is maybe more of a hybrid necro, but I find superior rune of the mad king to be very nice. The +bleeding helps with scepter autoattack 1 and 2, the power is very welcome since it is a hybrid build.

Also, I just <3 the birds. The birds rule.

I actually am pretty happy with the scepter auto attack.

If I could change anything, I would add chill to the number 2 scepter grasping dead. This has good synergy with crippled also on #2, and would also work well with a condi-reaper.

I think we need this armor too:

http://lonewolf64.deviantart.com/art/Necromancer-Summon-Abomination-56629454

I think that instead of trying to create meaningful rewards for 80 levels, they should just accept defeat and go back to a 20 level system like GW1. They probably can create meaningful new things each level for the 20 levels.

Look at the other chill nerf…necro related.

This nerf has nothing to do with the current game and everything to do with reaper when it is released.

Thank you for the detailed analysis Tulki.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

It seems like the majority of players think PU is too strong. Which would you guys prefer as the solution to this, assuming the devs have infinite time to fix this?

1. Nerf PU to be less duration.
2. Nerf Stealth itself to stack fewer times.
3. Nerf Stealth itself to change reveal conditions (On miss for example)
4. Nothing, PU is fine. (explain why)

I would change (3), as that seems to be getting more to the root of the problem.

If you had it so using ANY ability while in stealth got you out of stealth, stealth would be much less problematic. No charging mantras in stealth, no misc buffing, no summoning clones, etc.

This would also hit thief somewhat hard which is fine.