Guild Wars 2

Honestly this is something I have only noticed recently, I used to play necro a TON, and recently came back to it, and previously, my fleshy would ALWAYS be attacking, the problem would be getting it to stop attacking and leash, this is something I paid a lot of attention to, so when I got back on necro and all of a sudden he won’t attack anything anymore, it definitely stood out.

It’s also something i had never seen happen when fighting other necros either, when fighting i would always have to down their flesh golem because it was doing such good dmg and crippling me, so idk what has been up with all of your flesh golems if they have been doing this since start, but it has NOT been the case with mine, or anyone i have fought. Until recently…

When i see this post, and see the responses, i think of the power ranger. It’s been a while since i played one, so I don’t know if they finally changed it, but basically if you wanted to play power you were forced to use 2 or 3 signets, or your build was useless, then when you complain you have no variety, people tell you to rerole as a condi ranger or switch classes.

Not everyone wants to play the meta… personally, i am like the OP and many others in this thread, I specifically roll with classes that are less used, and roll builds that nobody, or very few people, would use, or think of. Anet really rode in on the “we want you to have a ton of variety in how you play the game” horse, and instead, everyone is basically forced to use certain utilities on certain classes, or suffer by having a kittenty build.

Aside from the fact that engi’s are forced to use kits, I think new weapons just make sense on the class, just as much, or more-so than guns.

- Hammer: Engi’s build things, you use hammers to build stuff
- Torch: Anyone ever heard of welding?
- Mace(wrench): again, a wrench is another building tool, maybe a little more far-fetched, but you gotta have some kind of one handed main wep to go with torch.

Monkeymonger.9235:

I’m sorry but i have neither seen nor heard of any players using it (effectively) in tpvp or solo queue. The simple reason is that they can’t kill anybody in a reasonable timeframe, while at the same time being unable to hold a point.
They are rather common in wvw because there it doesn’t matter nearly as much how long it takes to kill.

Maybe you have not seen them used effectively in tpvp, but I on the other hand, have. on numerous occasions i have seen venom thiefs drop people VERY quickly, and to be honest, they are harder to counter than direct damage thieves. Condi mesmer on the other hand is typically not as quick, but used in a team fight, i have seen it prove quite effective.

the point stands, that condi is the meta, and more people have stopped playing these classes less effective at condi to move to more effective ones, and should those classes become more effective, you would see a lot more people rolling condi guard, ele, etc.

Monkeymonger.9235:

With the exception of engineer and ranger (to an extent) i don’t see which classes don’t have “very much condi removal”. If you don’t take condition damage into account you will of course be weak towards it. It’s a conscious choice.
It’s the same as playing a build without stunbreakers then complaining about being cc’d.

Since apparently a lot of people here believe that conditions get reapplied constantly and aren’t aware of the skills that apply them, maybe try playing a condi build for a while. It might help.

IF you read my quote, i said that many classes do not have a lot of condi removal, UNLESS you go out of your way and change your entire spec to be based around dealing with condis, and some classes STILL dont have good removal after doing this. Like i said before, this kind of ruins anything else you may have wanted to accomplish with your spec because you had to do so.

I am also an avid build-crafter, and have played every single class, and have tried an excessive amount of builds on every single class, and have used both power and condi on every single class as well. I have hundreds of hours on every class in the game (not something that really makes me all that proud by any means), and i have had a lot of experience facing all other class types with each class and build as well.

Do not assume that you are the only one who has played every class, and do not assume that everyone else is completely ignorant, and talking about a topic without first having experienced things from multiple perspectives.

Monkeymonger.9235:

Why do people always claim that “everybody runs condition specs”?

Pvp: Thieves, Guardians, Mesmers, Eles have no viable condition specs. Warriors have, but primarily run hambow. Condi necro will be pretty much eliminated after the next patch (and already there are more mm and power than condition necros ). You have a point for engis and rangers, but there simply isn’t a viable power alternative for them.

Wvw: Condition builds are popular for pure roamers. Even for them i see a lot more power than condition specs. The other 99% of the wvw population that switch between small and large scale don’t run condition specs because they are useless in big battles.

I see a lot of thieves and mesmers running condis in pvp, guards, obviously not because they CANT, the only damage condi they have access to is burning, if there were a possible way to make a condi guard viable, people would do it. eles are the same, they can reliably apply burning, but other than that have minimal access to other dps condis, and again, if there WAS a way for them to use a condi build, you would see loads of them.

condi IS the meta, and it is such, because people can spec for condi without losing either A)their tanky survivability or B) their high dps with power prec condi (i.e. hambow) and because people cant reduce the damage of condis by being tanky.

one of the biggest reasons condi is so strong is that many classes dont have very much condi removal, or to get it they have to spec completely towards condi removal, which makes the build practically useless. Add on the fact that you can get insane durations using runes/traits/food, AND can reapply every condi that someone had on them right after they do use their mandatory removals and it becomes ridiculous.

Nury.3062:

I am glad that there is a “hard” to get material,without that ascended would be just easy to get,the new “exotic”.

Nobody said that it shouldnt still be hard to get dragonite, there should just be more than one decent way to get it.

Sirendor.1394:

I agree. It’s incredibly stupid that they bring in some PvE grind armour in WvW. This alone makes me want to go for the next big RvR.
WvW is bad as it is with all the noob zergs… ascended just makes it worse.

Exactly, and its these big zergs that get rewarded with dragonite from taking keeps, while the small group havocs, and roamers don’t get squat towards ascended. (Sorry, we do get emp fragments, but you can get a plethora of those from anywhere else in game)

This is definitely a well thought out argument, seems pretty sound to me. As condi stands right now, it is definitely much more powerful in pvp/wvw than a direct damage build of any kind, which is why you see everyone running condi builds.

I think many of the fixes you suggest could work, and should definitely be looked at, especially that personal stacking condis idea for pve, it would really fix the problem of groups only allowing one condi user into a party, if they even allow that. As it is, Anet is simply buffing condis over and over while lowering regular dps, when the only place condis are hurting is pve, why they have not gone to the system they had in gw1 (skills with different effects in pve/pvp) is beyond me.

One thing that may need to be added is something to address condi tanks as well, because the loss to damage for specializing in this type of build is none/minimal, in other words, you can still do INSANE amounts of damage while being a super tank that can survive practically anything. If you take a look at someone playing a power tank, or look at any bunker guardian, you will think to youself, why does anyone play that spec when they can’t do any damage whatsoever, and could get just as good defense, and multiply their offense by a mole, if they played condi tank.

As Anet has recently given us ways to make money, and level our characters through pvp, i think it would be a good idea to be able to get ascended mats from pvp, either through glory, or dailies, or something, so we wouldnt have to grind world bosses, or any type of pve for that matter.

thoughts?

edit: currently, i don’t really have trouble getting dust and star things, because i do some wvw, and pve events/leveling every now and again, but basically the only efficient way to get dragonite is farm world bosses, and thats probably my least favorite thing to do in game…

yes, and when i ACTUALLY intend to use the option i mean it too, but the whole point of the pop-up is in case you click the wrong thing, which is why there are pop-ups if you hit salvage on exotic gear, or when you go to log out, or when you go to choose an order. i have had this problem happen multiple times during important events where i hit the wrong thing and whole game closes, it kind of presents a flaw to their system of forgiveness for mistakes. i know i wouldnt want to misclick on one of my exotic pieces like a foefire’s essence, or illya, and have it disappear instead of asking if i was sure i wanted to salvage it.

does saving yourself 1 extra second really make a big enough differene that you would rather save that second each time you log out, instead of maybe saving youself from closing your game during the end of a dungeon, or during a world boss, or wvw event?

the game asks you if you are SURE you want to log out when you click log out, but when you click exit to desktop, it apparently assumes you are CERTAIN that’s what you want to do, so it instantly closes your game without any chance to cancel it.

now, sometimes, im clumsy, and i move my mouse on accident when i try to change characters, or on certain occasions i have even accidentally hit esc instead of f1 or ~ and then went to click and hit exit to desktop. My proposal is simple, either add a pop-up asking if we are sure we want to exit the game, or maybe add a small timer after you hit exit, giving us time to cancel.

tldr: add a pop-up, or timer in case we accidentally hit the wrong button, so our game doesnt close instantly. (after all, we already ave those pop-ups for every other thing in the game)

Yeah, you seem to be under the impression the 1% crit dmg = 1% dmg, and it does not. So by dropping the virtues tree for crit dmg tree you not only lose that static dmg boost, (which is prob just as good as ur extra 20% crit dmg) but you lose all the extra utility of the virtue line, which is the main reason people want guards.

Pve isnt about taking hits, its about avoiding them, making them miss, and redirecting them. As much power as you get with full valor line and soldier runes, its not good for pve to have such low crit dmg and chance, and losing it for toughness and vit isnt a great idea. Anything worth doing in pve will basically 1hit you regardless of toughness, vit can help sometimes, but isnt worth putting in that much. The exception would be world bosses, because some of them do so much you cant really stand close for more than a second or 2 with low guard vit.

To sum it up, guards have amazing skills and utilities that help keep them from getting hit, so focus on high damage, while using supportive utilities and traits that will keep you from being hit.

First off, how is dodge not gunna happen? Guard can have perma vigor with 5 pts in radiance, add in energy sigils and you got an kitten ton of dodging, plus you can get heals on dodge if you spec for it.

@Deathmonger
How is war better retal? Guard has “decent heals, group buffs” as well, probably better all around group buffs actually, and you can get perm retal on guard, heck perm group retal if you want.

Retal builds are great in wvw, but dont work well in pve, because anything that takes longer than a few seconds to kill, you dont want touching you in any way, let alone hitting you enough times for retal to be useful

I havent tried it since update, but the notes say it only gives 4 secs of swiftness on the FIRST tick, and any later ticks, in which you already have swiftness, you only get 1 second. So either they did a poor job with wording, both during the release, and before (because they worded it the same for the preview), or they worded it right, in which case it will get nerfed again, assuming it really is giving 4 seconds a tick.

Upham.6137:

I’ll give them a number from 1 to 5. It’s just to have a general idea of course.

tPvP

Warrior 5
Necromancer 4
Ranger 4
Engineer 3
Thief 1
Note: I don’t do tPvP much lately and I never played engie so might be wrong there.

WvW zerging

Warrior 5
Necromancer 4
engineers/thieves 1
rangers 0

WvW roaming

Warrior/Thief 5
Engineer 4
Ranger 3
Necromancer 0

Dungeons

Warrior 5
Thief 3
Ranger 2
Engenieer 2
Necromancer 0

General PvE

Any class does fine but warrior/ranger are the best in my opinion.

It wasn’t totally fair giving a 0 to necros in roaming. In an organized (baby-sitting) group, I’d give them a 4.

I lol’d when I saw a lot of these, you can’t really put a valid number on the classes for each aspect, but if you were going to, youd have to take all the viable builds into consideration.

Only viable ranger in tpvp is spirit ranger, 2 viable wars, thats stunlock and condi tank. Thief aint a 1 cause they can be great roamers, but I also wouldnt bump them up to the top by any means.

Zerging I dont do tons of but cant see war being a 5 as engi is 1? Engi has nades…

Roaming id say is pretty fair except necros can be nore of a 3 or 4 depending on builds.

And for dungeons I lol’d at engi and necro, they both have great cc, aoe dmg, aoe condis, and only valuable war is a zerker.

Molch.2078:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Entropy

+1, nuff said.

I combine it with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lord_Taeres%27s_Shadow
and
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_Links

I would actually suggest an engi, they have insane amounts of snares, cripples, blinds, pushes, pulls, etc. While still applying lots of good dps condis like confusion, poison, bleeds, burn, and also doing decent physical damage if you prefer it.

GRRR, I had a response all eloquently written out on my phone and when i went to post it it logged me out and got deleted, so it won’t be so expertly worded this time, but bare with me.

I had thought about the loss of stats beforehand, and that was the way I had thought of fixing it, was giving more stats if only one wep was equipped, but there may be another way that works better. They could possibly take the stat loss into account when designing the 4th and 5th skills and use them to compensate for that loss in some way.

As far as offhand skills having 5 skills to them, I was not suggesting they get 5, nor do I believe they should. Thinking about it logically, no one runs around with JUST a shield, or JUST a focus (as much as i would love to use a single shield, or dual shield character, the likes of which i used in Demon’s/Dark Souls), they simply add those offhand items as an alternative to two-handing a single handed weapon. This brings me to another point, which is that a person wielding 1 sword is not, and should not be at an intrinsic disadvantage to someone wielding 2 swords, because with 2 free hands to utilize your weapon, you have the ability to make it do things for you, that the man with 2 swords simply cannot do with 1 hand per weapon. (the same way a person with a great-sword is not at an automatic disadvantage to someone with 2 swords, or a person with a shield and sword in the same situation) Weapons can be used different ways depending on how they are wielded, and what other weapons/items they are used alongside.

When I first started playing this game, I made all types of classes to see what I prefered. When I came across the thief, I noticed their 1 handed weapons have seperate #3 skills if you’re not using an offhand weapon. Almost a year later, being extremely bored, I decided to make a build for my thief using D/- and P/- and discovered just how crappy those skills are, and this made me wonder why they were added in the first place if they are so crappy noone will use them.

After this experience I got to thinking about how, recently, Arena Net has been trying to give people the option of more build diversity, and it dawned on me, they should give all 1 handed weapons a full set of 5 skills (for all classes not just thief), and make these skills good enough that people would actually consider not using an offhand weapon. This generates a lot more diversity in how people can choose to play the game.

TLDR : give 1 handed weapons a full set of 5 skills so people can choose not to use an offhand.

Also take into account that more and more gold is entering the game, and that gold is becoming less valuable.

well it appears i made a boo boo lol, ty for that, i was expecting it to show in the main part of the tool tip, not like an actual skill

This is true, and I understand that, just seems like theres been a lack of effort in any area other than living world, to me.

There are a lot of things I find wrong with this game that can get me in a funk, this just happens to be the most recent as well as the “straw that broke the camels back,” and since this is my first thread in a very long time, all my anger and annoyance from the other problems got let out on this one…

As far as the dragon festival goes, it was not glossed over, I did mention the helmet in my post and gave credit. Im also only referring to the “free” items we’re getting from the Day Of Holiday events, the wings were something that required you to do achievements if I remember correctly.

As far as my statement about holiday items becoming rip-offs, I agree I went overboard there as it has only been one, so let me reword.
WILL all our events items simply become rip-offs of masquerade style masks from now on?

My anger does not solely lie in the lack of holiday theme, but partially in the fact that they made all sorts of neat new costumes for the holidays that you could BUY, and yet the only item we got from the event was a junk mask that we could have 15 different variations of, that are nearly the exact same, if we really wanted, for a few silver or karma.

Last thing I swear. I want to explain the spit in face comment.

Because of my experience from gw1 in the past, I get excited when holiday events come around cause I love getting neat new, unique skins. So when I participated in “Mad King says,” and got my reward, I felt a big glob of saliva hit my eyeball.

Picture if you will, the “mask of the night” skin we got this year for halloween, then picture for me, the freezie crown, pumpkin crown, scarecrow mask, the many dragon masks, from the days of gw1.

Is it just me, or have our event items become rip-offs from other “masquerade” style masks already found in the game? I understand that there was the dragon helmet, at least they tried with that one, but it seems as though the only way to get a single decent skin nowadays is to buy it from the gem store… Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with ANET making a few extra bucks from the fashion savvy, gotta-have-its, but at least stop spitting in our face with things like the mask of the night, not sure if you’ve noticed, but about 1/5000 people playing wears those masquerade style face masks, and half of those do it cause they don’t have anything better.

Before people start ripping on me, saying “this aint gw1.” Let me just say, I know that, and I don’t want it to be exactly, like gw1, but that doesnt mean they should trash all the good things they had going from that game. For instance, they had unique holiday masks for every holiday, always with an obvious theme, even if some people complained that they sucked, at least they had imagination, and they came out with something different every time. All of this while they still had numerous REALLY cool costumes that you could ONLY get by spending real cash. Did people refuse to buy the costumes because they got the free masks? no, tons of people still bought the costumes. GW1 also had numerous different types of pvp options to choose from cough but that’s for a different thread.

My dragon festival box is sitting in my inventory unopened, and my mask of the night will most likely do the same, or possibly even get deleted. Any other masks or town clothes we have gotten from events have long since been deleted and forgotten.

Basically what I would like to see is more effort being put into the holiday items we receive, as that is the only part of the holiday I, and a number of other people I have spoken with, look forward to. (living story shouldn’t require the full attention of everyone on duty at ANET)

I totally agree with this, and hope that devs will take a look into the mm necro. Currently, whether it be in PvE/WvW/sPvP, the only time I ever come across someone playing a minion build on necro is in 1v1, and when I did some experimenting with a few minion master specs, often times people would refuse to duel me because they said i was too over powered(op). This is true- in part -in 1v1 a minion master is VERY strong, and can beat most people with ease(assuming they dont have high powered aoe).

However, as was mentioned, whenever i see a minion master encounter more than one person(in any game type), the build gets entirely shut down.

Necromancy – nec-ro-man-cy [nek-ruh-man-see] a method of divination through alleged communication with the dead; black art.
Now, I dont believe that Guild Wars 2 was designed to be a 1v1, pvp only game, so why the build that everyone thinks of when they hear “Necromancer” has been designed in a way that makes it useless in anything BUT 1v1 is beyond me.

I would like to point out that, with the recent update, mesmer phantasms and clones got an increased or decreased amount of health dependent on which game type mesmers are playing in(WvW/PvE/sPvP), and that one way to help bring back the minion master would be to give minions more health in certain game types than other, so that they won’t be too overpowered in one game type, while being extremely weak in another. Similarly, seeing as minions focus on a single target, it might be helpful to give them an attack chain that includes an aoe attack on every third attack, or something of the sort.

Thanks for posting this thread, I think that this is something that has needed to be touched on for quite some time.

Yes, I’ve done lots of testing with it, and it never seems to work during spvp, but recently I have gotten both of them to work on npcs in heart of the mists, thought i wish the range was mention in the skill because it seems like I’m having to stand right on top of them to get the fear on down to work.

So I havent really played necro since very early in the game, back when fear did almost no damage, until recently when i died in spvp, and saw i had taken 8k fear damage. At this point i decided to make a fear build to see how fun it was, and two of the traits i chose are “Reaper’s protection” ( Fears nearby enemies when knocked down, interrupted, etc. 90 second cooldown) and “Fear of Death” (Apply fear to nearby foes when downed – 90 second cooldown). While playing ive noticed that my “Fear of Death” trait NEVER activates, is this because the internal timers for the two traits are linked? or is the trait broken? Also, if the CD’s are linked, then why the heck are they? and why doesn’t it tell you they share a timer? they should be individual!

I’m not 100% sure how the aggro works in this game yet, I think it takes proximity, health, and dps into consideration, possibly a few other things, and i haven’t played any tank class yet in pve or dungeons so i don’t know how hard it is to keep aggro, but there is definitely no lack of roles.

If you want to you can role a full out tank, or a super effective support role, I actually just turned my guardian into a pretty darn good heal/support character.

As far as dungeons and pve go, try putting a solid group together that has variety, when I run dungeons with friends, we go into vent, and talk tactics about certain bosses, we use a tankier person for some things, and sometimes someone with good healing. Can you go into a dungeon and zerg a boss till its dead? yeah, but you will most likely spend a lot of time reviving downed players, or teleporting to a waypoint and running back in because you died. If you go into a dungeon with a tank and a healer and use tactics and things like vent, you can avoid most of those issues, and by doing so have a lot more fun, a speedier run, and less repair cost.

One thing I do think they need to do better is reward those people who play support/healing roles, as of right now, i think you have to do something like 5% damage to a mob to get a drop? While that’s not hard, I think they need to add in a mechanic that takes into account how much healing you do for your team, because if I’m focusing on heals and keeping people alive, that % of damage that I have to do gets harder and harder to accomplish.

glad to see we are getting feedback, and to reiterate, i am 100% sure that i did not receive credit for “Branded Mine” and “Collapsed Observatory,” as I started the day with 0/10 explorations, and had never even been to the zones that contained those puzzles, so it would not have been possible for me to have gotten credit without knowing.

I would like to add that I understood that we only needed to find the puzzles, and not run them for the monthly, and that I only ran through the entire puzzle to be sure there was not some glitch that didn’t count a puzzle until it was finished, but did not receive credit afterwards either

I’m having this same issue, not only did i “discover” the puzzles i was finding in order to complete the monthly, but i went ahead and completed them all for the chest. However, with both “Branded Mine” and “the Collapsed Observatory,” i did not receive credit for “finding” the puzzles. I also had an issue with “Chaos Crystal Cavern,” where i got to the end and the chest had already been opened, when i had never even been to iron marches on any character, let alone the one i was currently playing on, but that’s a different matter on its own.