Guild Wars 2

I started a new character to try out the new system. I already have several level 80s, but I felt like making another ranger.

Over the course of several days I finally got to 30. That’s even knowing what I’m doing, so I imagine it would take new players a lot longer. I haven’t even gotten to the point where I have to go do events in various places, or complete maps, or (worst of all), go force myself into PvP-oriented areas I don’t have any interest in. I already fight tooth-and-nail every change in every game that tries to force players into PvP areas. I definitely don’t want to hear about more of it being added. And I look forward to none of that.

Overall I just feel like 30 is WAY too late. 1-29 felt so boring, and the “payoff” at 30 was almost nothing. At least under the old system I had some say in the direction of my character. Even if all I got from leveling is the chance to add +10 power and precision, at least I got to make that decision. Now, you gain a level and nothing happens. I really don’t like games like that. Having played a lot of tabletop games in the last couple years, one of the things I really hate is dead levels. And now the game is almost entirely dead levels.

With skills costing 3-6 points each, and already having your small selection of weapons unlocked, you can easily go several levels in a row, over the course of a few hours, and feel like your character hasn’t changed at all and you haven’t made any progress or really done anything. I quit playing MMOs like that a long time ago, and I’m not interested in seeing GW2 become that. Every level should feel like it matters. And you should be able to have a lot of influence over what your character can do from start to finish.

You can buy frames from the Wintersday vendors for socks or sweaters and such.

Halo.8976:

Dorian Dawes.8769:

I like to think of the Necromancer as fairly useful. I’ll say that you don’t “need” any class in a dungeon…

Dredge fractal – need a thief.
Swamp fractal – a mesmer would be nice.
Volcanic fractal – healing guardian, or two.

Though, f fractals. I like CoF so much more.

Man, I’ve done all of those without any of those classes.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Dispari.3980

You are right.

You can’t judge a class over the forum.

But I would like to precise that necro whining on the forum are about the BUGS, and not the power of the class.

Not true. While there are complaints about minion AI and other issues, there’s a lot of complaining that 1) axe sucks, 2) they do nothing particularly special, partially because 3) fear got nerfed against champions, 4) the traits are largely useless, nonsensical, or counterproductive, 5) other classes are better at pretty much everything. I could go on. My main is a necromancer though, and was my first 80. I play a build that the forum says is “bad,” but I’ve never had problems with it, and I’ve actually enjoyed nothing but buffs every patch!

I find that when I just play whatever I want instead of trying to research what class and build combination does the most DPS, I have a lot more fun. I feel bad for people who state as-fact that there’s only one viable build, or flock to the forums to threaten to quit every patch. They seem to experience a lot of disappointment.

Can I be devil’s advocate and say that rock is a pretty decent steal?

Karma food and karma boosters are good for stacking before you open a couple dozen karma jugs.

Terrahero.9358:

Id strongly urge new players to avoid this profession.

It is argueably the most bugged profession. Underperforms relative to other professions in just about every aspect. And has to deal with unintuitive mechanics. Any role you wish to fullfill can be done better by most other professions.

And the devs have gone on record that this is intented.

I’d strongly urge new players to experience the game themselves rather than just listening to what someone else said.

Necromancer forum claims to be the most bugged profession and underperforms relative to other professions in just about every aspect too. Also there’s a thief thread about how they’re the lowest performer overall now, and several about how they have almost no usable builds. The warrior forum is hosting a thread trying to explain why warriors aren’t seen as viable, and several suggestion threads on how to improve their skills.

Every class complains about any nerf as if it’s the end of the world, and every class thinks they’re the worst off. Next major patch, rangers will get -3% damage on a skill nobody uses anyway, and the forum will fill up with threads about how people are quitting the game and how there’s no reason to ever play ranger, and a thread called “Do not roll a ranger” will pop up where someone will say what you just said.

Ultimately it’s all subjective. Amusingly enough I have an 80 necromancer, thief, and warrior. And a 70 engineer. And I like all of them.

This is actually only like one utility skill and three trait choices away from my build.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Warriors would be more useful and everyone in these forums knows that.

I have both at 80 (and a thief) and I prefer the necro for dungeons. It’s subjective.

Actually I was disappointed with the dungeon. From the hype I expected it to go to different cities and be different events. Instead, we just repeated the same events over and over. I did it for all five days at the different locations and made two toys. But found it pretty dull after day three. I didn’t even expect the events to be complex, it was just boring painting the 40 dolls time and time again.

Minor complaint though. The boss was at least different each time, and I think the reward system was intelligently designed. I also find the items and bonuses a lot easier to access than they were for Halloween.

No class is “needed” in dungeons. I’ve taken my necro with my guild through every dungeon (except Arah since it’s never open) on almost all the paths. If you like the character, stick with it.

My favorite headgear is wraith mask! I transmuted it all the way to a level 80 exotic.

florence.1674:

I hope I don’t end up just ranting…

When the game launched, the TP had a search filter for legendaries. I have long always accepted that legendaries can probably be sold and traded on the TP, which I am perfectly happy with.

Why? That is because we were also sold on the idea that there is no special tier of stats for the legendary. We all assumed exotics and legendaries had the same stat tier. All you got out of a legendary is a skin to parade yourself with.

That’s now changed. Ascended gear guaranteed that. Legendaries are now always going to be the BiS weapon. The legendary chase is just going to get rougher now.

Legendaries will just have ascended stats. You can just get an ascended weapon. Legendaries will still have no advantage, other than not having to upgrade. But for the huge amount of effort required to get a legendary, it’s not really a shortcut or a time-saver.

I use the Modniir staff. It’s covered in spikes and has a pinkish purple flame coming off it.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

To be fair, I’d say investing in Healing power is pretty much useless past a certain point. It doesn’t scale fast, you’ll barely notice the difference

Even if true, that point is probably somewhere past a measly 160-200, which would be the max you could get out of ascended items like these. And still causes the problem of forcing me to take other stats I don’t use. The only other option is dropping healing entirely, which drops a good 500 points off the heal I spam.

So on one of my characters, I have +445 healing in my accessories alone. These are only green accessories, as I’ve been lazy about upgrading them. It could be a lot higher than that. This is the character I was looking at taking to ascended level, but after looking at the options available here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ascended_equipment

I realized that healing power just isn’t an option. The best you can get for ring is Seal of the Khan Ur which only gives 32 healing, and forces me to take precision and condition damage (neither of which are in my build), or the one that gives +39 to all stats. For back items there aren’t ANY options with healing.

So why aren’t there any cleric equivalent back items? I’m sure a lot of people are using that option. It just makes me not want to work on this character if upgrading to ascended requires me to lose several hundred healing and invest in stats I don’t really use.

Duration depends on what conditions you’re doing.

For some conditions, the duration doesn’t really matter. Poison and blind mostly don’t benefit a whole lot from bonus duration. Blind because it’s going to wear off as soon as it works, and poison because with necromancer it’s easy to get it going for a long time, and once you get a long duration on a foe they’re going to die or remove it anyway.

But condition duration helps a lot for non-damage conditions like weakness, vulnerability, and fear. And it works with bleeding.

So it just depends on what you want. Condition damage doesn’t work on things like weakness, so if you want to use a lot of weakness I’d look at duration.

That’s pretty much what I’m doing right now. I’m going for HGH and some might runes, going to see how much damage I can do with large amounts of might.

Presumably weapon stats on kits will help this. Hopefully we get that sooner than later.

CriSPeH.8512:

You should all save some rage for next month, or whenever they apply weapon stats to Kits, because I guarantee you Kits will get “toned” down again.

What do I get if you’re wrong? Since it’s a guarantee!

Kimbald.2697:

you don’t nerf for the future, and not a single message of A’net themselves suggests they did.
That’s your interpretation of it, their own message clearly states sigils as the main reason.

And there’s a lot they intend to do and fix for engineers.
They don’t nerf or buff according to possible changes.

First implement weapon stats, and than we’ll see how Op engineers will suddenly become.
They can nerf if it proves too strong in comparison with other professions.

Introducing weapon stats is long overdue and I would welcome it.
The other engineer kits desperately need it, and more.
But that has nothing to do with the current balancing they did.
Not according to Anet devs themselves, only according to you I’m afraid.

Reducing the strength of grenade has to do with balancing it with other kits. Adding weapon stats has to do with balancing engineer with other classes. They aren’t going to fix everything in one patch. They even indicated themselves that they prefer incremental balance changes, so fixing things may take a while.

I said originally that the changes in this patch are to rebalance the kits amongst themselves. You responded by saying that engineer is still underpowered versus other classes. Those things have nothing to do with eachother. So, like I said, -30% is to balance kits amongst themselves. Weapon stats is for later and will help balance engineer amongst other classes. These are two completely different situations.

Kimbald.2697:

I’m sorry but now you are the one missing the bigger picture.
There are 7 other test tables with glasses here as well, most of those glasses are more filled than ours.

So no: it does not make sense to remove some of that one fuller glass of ours… it makes perfect sense to fill up all our other glasses first, till we are on the same level as the other tables.

You forget we’re getting weapon stats in the future. What you’re saying would just lead to nerfs later instead of now.

Kimbald.2697:

Dispari.3980:

Balancing in an MMO is like eyeballing pouring water in several differently shaped glasses and trying to make it even. If it turns out one has too much it’s a lot easier to take some out than to put more water in every glass. Especially since eventually it’ll overflow and get water all over the carpet, and I just cleaned that carpet.

None of the engineer glasses were filled over 2/3… the only one nearly full was the one with the grenade kit.

The carpet was safe, they needed to add water to our glasses after all.
Some glasses were leaking as well by the way, maybe they should fix those before testing too.

One thing at a time, man. If grenade is the only one that’s above the others, it makes sense to bring it down. Then deal with other things systematically.

CriSPeH.8512:

^You are better than me at basketball and that makes me sick.
Instead of getting better at basketball I want you to be weaker at basketball so I can feel better about myself!!!

I think there was a Goosebumps books about this I remember reading forever ago.

If this is your first MMO I’d like to inform you that nerfs are a common and often necessary part of the game. They aren’t done out of spite (that would be silly) but because one power out of many is too powerful. The options are: change 1 skill by making it weaker, or change X skills by making them stronger. Note that the second option leads to power creep, which means ALL engineer kits are now a lot more powerful. So now you have to buff something on another class because holy cow all engineer kits have 30% more damage now, and on and on. If you only ever go up (buffing), it’s a ton more work for the power balancing team as well.

We aren’t comparing basketball skill. There isn’t supposed to be a “winner” and there aren’t limited positions to fill. All the kits are supposed to be around the same ability and usefulness, so it makes sense to make changes so all of them are closer in power. Your basketball analogy would actually just promote having 95% of all skills be useless.

Balancing in an MMO is like eyeballing pouring water in several differently shaped glasses and trying to make it even. If it turns out one has too much it’s a lot easier to take some out than to put more water in every glass. Especially since eventually it’ll overflow and get water all over the carpet, and I just cleaned that carpet.

Bichpwner.4012:

They fixed a bug. It does not ruin the class in dungeons, it barely changes anything (fear is 1s anyway wtf can you do in 1s?). Stop making the Necro forum community look like whiny ignorant kitten

What can you do in 1s? Interrupt a skill.

I suspect they still believed grenades to be too powerful. After all, most of the forums here were all saying “Grenades are the only viable build for engineer, ever. LOL flamethrower, LOL anything else.” So when they added sigils it buffed all kits by (let’s say for the sake of argument) 10%, and they felt they additionally needed to bring grenades down to match the power of other kits.

Besides, look at it optimistically: they decreased the damage of grenade 1 by 30%, but increased the damage of 3 and 5 by infinity percent!

I always thought fear working on bosses was intentional. The duration is crazy short and both skills that have it are on long cooldowns. We don’t really have that many CC skills to effectively deal with stacks of defiance. When mobs use it on us it’s usually like 5 seconds long, but ours are all 1s base.

But most important things were immune to it anyway so I guess I won’t worry too much over it. It was only a part of what I did.

Every class forum thinks their class is the most UP and people will flock to tell you not to play it because it’s sooooooooooo broken. Play it, see if you like it. Don’t listen to what other people think. If you think it’s fun, it is. If not, it’s not.

If you think the highest damage dealers shouldn’t be able to do much damage on heavy armor classes, you’re literally asking for them to be invincible.

I like it! More poison fields. Raaaawr.

This patch made me want to play my ranger again. It’s amazing what a constant 25% speed buff can do to make a character more fun.

If stealth was on all the time I could understand a reason to detect it, but when it only lasts a couple seconds I just can’t see it. It’s hard to sit on a lower peg than “a couple seconds at a time” before you just hit “doesn’t exist.”

So is there really a setup where shout heals would perform better than regen banners? Also curious of the radius on these types of things. I usually have regen banners going in dungeons.

In general the pets seem to work, but melee pets seem to have more issues. Through observation, it seems that Bone Minions and Flesh Golem have the most problems. Their normal issue is that they just stand there while a fight is going on, but after a certain amount of time will close in to attack — usually when the enemy is nearly dead anyway. Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, and Shadow Fiend don’t seem to have any significant issues forgetting to attack. So it seems to be a melee concern primarily.

If you walk into range of the enemy and let the pet engage the fight, they won’t have any issues most of the time. It seems to be when the player or another pet initiates combat. After all, if left to his own devices the Flesh Golem will constantly run around attacking everything in sight. So he has the ability to attack, but something about not letting him start it it bugs him out.

I suppose it’s possible that melee pets go through a phase where they stand there trying to attack at range before they realize they don’t have any ranged attacks. But it’s probably more complicated than that.

Joshua.2974:

They’ve stated that they promised to add every npc outfit, so Countess Anise’s outfit will be in game eventually

I hope so. I love that outfit.

The alt+f4 thing is hilarious. The game I came from just made you stand perfectly still without any actions being taken for 10 seconds when you logged out. I like this one even better.

YumCHA.8706:

So this is about Rangers having the ability to ‘reveal’ stealthed enemies? I’ve already wasted my words in another useless thread some weeks ago about the same suggestion but people defended against it as a bad decision to give Rangers some sort of tracking ability for stupid reasons.

Mostly because they implicated that it might become too overpowered and misused in the PvP environment. Not to mention thiefs aren’t the only profession that have the ability to stealth. I do believe mesmers have something similar.

Imagine the QQ threads placed upon Rangers when we actually have a tracking skill that reveals stealthed enemies in an instant. They would be calling for nerfs 24/7.

I really just don’t understand why Anet designed a hunter style profession that has no ability to track stealthed enemies AT ALL. What could possibly have been in their minds? I mean, isn’t this class called a Ranger? Seriously.

TL;DR
Stealth is overpowered and needs a counter-offensive like oh I don’t know…. a tracking skill?

So you want a skill that you admit yourself will cause a lot of complaints and balance concerns, based only on the fact that “the class is called ranger,” and that you think stealth is overpowered.

I guess I should be saying, if you want to waste an elite slot on unstealthing someone who’s going to unstealth in a second anyway, have fun?

Gaiawolf.8261:

Wow, that cabalist armor looks quite a bit different than on my charr!

Armor tends to use the male armor appearance on charr and asura since they aren’t sexualized.

I recommend watching some Mr Prometheus guides. Staff, sword(s), pistol, focus, all good. You just have to know what you’re doing. Mesmer isn’t the type of class that just stands there attacking. You have to react to combat intelligently.

It’s pretty cool, there are a lot of situations where I might swap out the level 10/20/30 trait skills but not necessarily respec. Also just to try some out to see if they’re worthwhile.

I kind of like the free poison fields, but maybe I’m just in love with Death Nova.

You can view most armor sets here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets
http://www.gw2armor.com/

For mesmer I’d recommend:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cabalist_armor (pom pom shoes are adorable)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exalted_armor (frilly)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Masquerade_armor (if you want to be over the top)

Cheers.

I found the alot of help. Problem solved, ranger pets.

The armor I where is on my body. I thought that’s where everyone wears armor.

zone.1073:

A strong offense is the best defense.

I disagree with that. A strong offense can be a good defense. But on all my squishy high-damage characters I always have to watch my health bar and think about what I’m fighting or I could die. Tougher scuffles in this game take too long even if you have high damage output. But the one character I have that I never really worry about dying is my warrior who has a million HP, a billion armor, and three forms of regeneration at all times. That last one at least isn’t an exaggeration.

Fellknight.4820:

So let me get this straight Thieves should get there stealth that makes them unique and has been the traditional role of there class. Which has also made them the most represented and played class in both tpvp and spvp.

But Rangers shouldn’t have track or reveal which has been there traditional role in MMO’s going back 15 years, without it making them the least played and represented class in tpvp and spvp. Sure makes alot of sense lol and your serious too!

Who gives a kitten about tradition? Tradition also dictates that we should have a tanker and a healer class. An idea should stand on its own merits in context and not just because “that’s the way it’s been.” Stealth in this game is so rare and such a short duration that making it revealable would make it pointless entirely. Games where stealth needs to be countered have stealth that lasts for super long durations or is just on until the person attacks.

I ran around on my necro today spamming Greater Mark staff skills everywhere and seemed to do fine. Was really only there for the exploration but there were several scuffles.

Alice.8694:

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

Firstly cluster bomb is just as effective as death blossom in close range, you can launch and detonate very fast, almost fast as you can death blossom. While moving I should add.

Yes, but then it’s not ranged, which was one of the “advantages.” If you use it from range it does one stack of bleed slowly. Even if it is better for initiative spent over time, I haven’t seen any “melee shortbow” thief builds running around. Although that would be funny.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

If you death blossom to get 9-12 stacks of bleed on something, you’ve run out of initiative, even when you trait for extra initiative. The extra initiative gained on crit from traiting isn’t going to make it up either and that trait ability is in a different line than the one that just giveg extra initiative.

It is nice solo but crap in a group with other condition builds. If you are the only condition build in a group…unlikely in a W3 zerg…it can come in handy and is nice.

Isn’t too bad of a move in W3 when you’re back stab didn’t work and you need to mix it up a little but it isn’t a move that my thief would consider a go to move for damage, especially when my gear doesn’t have any condition enhancement on it. I’ve used it instead to make the other player think for that split second to determine if the bleed is actually doing enough damage to warrant it’s removal, and also to flip to their other side for a second back stab try while they are trying to locate me in the mass of other players. If I fail that second backstab, I’m out of oomph and have to run.

There are a lot of ways to regain initiative, especially in the Trickery tree which you’re taking if you’re doing condition damage anyway. I mean, you can keep arguing about it, but lots of thieves are doing this with a condition build these days.

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.