Guild Wars 2

I just picked up the game again a few days ago. Mon has so clearly put the heart of what’s keeping me from being able to stick with it that it’s really striking. The production values are so high and so many choices on changing basic fundamentals of how MMOs work that I really want to love Guild Wars 2, but these balance issues are always eating at the back of my mind when I try to play. The proffesion I’ve been most interested in playing since pre-launch has sat at or next to the bottom of the list in terms of usefulness since GW2 came out. It drives me absolutely crazy that so little has been to change this. In addition to said list not shifting much if at all, again, since release. At least that’s how it seems to me. Admittedly I don’t follow the game very closely when I’m not actively playing it.

I can’t see this thread and not add my two cents even if it’s another just piece of hay on the bale of community opinion. I wanted to voice my discontent with the way balancing has been handled thus far anyway. It’s a real shame something so simple is keeping GW2 from really shining.

I have to agree with most of the things being said in this thread. The minion AI is functional, but very frustrating and sometimes unpredictable. And the jagged horror is pretty awful even if it has something to attack it can only get 2-3 hits of bleed in before it’s health draining makes it die. While I’m at it +10 toughness for every minion is pretty mediocre as well, because if you forego having anything but minions you could get a max of about +70 with a jagged horror. Which is better than nothing, but whenever I take death magic traits I feel pigeon holed into using minions.

I would like to say that I really like where bone minions are though. Really fun too detonate, some of the biggest burst damage a necromancer can do, and can even set off combo fields. One of my favorite utilities right now, well that is when they decide to stand next to what I’m attacking. Flesh golem as well actually… of course with that same asterisk of when it works as intended, because charging and it’s AI can be pretty wonky.

This is something that’s been bugging me for awhile. The weapon skill tooltips are really great and it’s really simple to gleam information at a glance from them, but some of the trait tooltips leave a bit to be desired.

I’ll start off by saying a majority of the tooltips for traits are fine and give all the information they need. But some are so vague as to just say “gives/grants condition/boon when X happens” which doesn’t really give someone a whole lot to go one. How long does it last? How often can it occur? Or many proffesion’s have “Increases weapon Y’s damage” by how much?

Not too mention some tooltips fail too mention that they do not stack with other increases to the same attribute. The Necromancer’s quickening thirst for instance says something along the lines of “Gain 10% movement speed for wielding a dagger in your main hand, and 5% for wielding one in your off hand” but dual wielding daggers does not stack the effect to 15%, only 10%, nor does the effect stack with the Signent of the Locust, which increases move speed by 10%.

TL;DR Bottom of the line some of the trait tooltips are really inconsistent with the rest. But going beyond that some are very misleading. I know personally I’d love to see traits get the same love weapon skills did, but that’s a best case scenario.

So it’s kind of a nit pick I know since I can find more concise information on the wiki and etc. But I thought I’d make the suggestion anyway since it has been bugging me while playing around with builds in game.

As I’ve been playing through the game I’ve basically come to conclusion that the three races I’d like to see playable are Tengu, Skritt, and Hylek in no particular order. They all have tons of personality and interesting quirks. and it certainly seems like there’s room for Skritt to come into their own. If anyone has been to Skrittersberg in the Asura zone they basically have a ghetto major city. And often times I’ll hear random Skritt NPC dialogue that makes me think they’re much smarter than they appear at first glance. Heck they steal some golem parts and put together a functional golem in one event without any instructions. You know maybe Zhaitan’s minions start wrecking the place around the Skritt homeland I could see them banding together, and if the Skritt in Skrittersberg are anything to go off of the more Skritt come together the more knowledgeable they get as a whole.

So yeah I’d love to see Skritt be playable. Don’t ask why I want Hylek though there’s just something oddly satisfying about being a frogman I can’t explain.

I was thinking of posting something of this nature so I’m just gonna snowball off some of the stuff you’ve said. I don’t have a huge issue with the weapons although I don’t like the way conditions are handled the cap too be specific. I’d rather see no cap and give players/enemies better tools for getting rid of conditions.

Firstly the minions I understand what they were going for they only do token damage and have some form of utility with there actives, but there’s a couple problems in practice. The first being it seems like the minion with the most useful utility the devourer just doesn’t have the survivability to stay alive in PvE or sPVP. And I’ve had similar problems with the Wurm. Now the shade can survive, but it’s active is awful for one very specific reason. When you use it the shade has a cast time, and then all you get is a single target blind. So not only do you only get one miss out of it, but it doesn’t come out fast enough for you to actually stop an attack you might see coming. It seems like you’d either have to give the shade an AoE blind or instant blind for it to even be considered useful. I do like the flesh golem though I think it’s in a pretty good place. Oh and also the AI problems mentioned by OP. Those are pretty frustating.

With trait builds it doesn’t seem like necromancers really have a weapon other than main hand dagger to take advantage of power with. And it tends to make it feel like you can either go for an all out condition build or a kind of utility death shroud build to be effective in sPVP. But I guess my problem is there isn’t really any burst damage options for a necromancer. I will say though I wish more proffesions had ways to remove/corrupt boons though, since many people seem to be boon stacking in sPVP.

It might just be because so many people are going glass cannon, and the necromancer excels at battles of attrition, but it feels like they have some holes in what play styles they can actually do. That is too say they can do a couple things well and I wouldn’t say they’re completely underpowered, but they seem to not be able to fill in nearly as many roles as other proffesions.

That’s just my two cents I’m a little hesitant to talk about balance this early in the game’s life, but it does seem it leaves something to be desired. Too me in any case.