Guild Wars 2

punkazzINC.2150:

They’ve pretty much turned GW2 into SWTOR. You won’t have the limitations that free players have, but unless you pony up more dough, you won’t have access to ALL of the content available.

wait… what?!! I get HoT came out and is required to unlock the new content. Is there more than that?

Daharahj.1325:

PvE is pretty much the same, if you can stomach the visual nerfs you should be fine.

If you’re a PvPer though, no, don’t come back yet, gw2’s pvp is going through a dark phase.

visual nerfs? What are those?

I was a pretty balanced player near the end. I probably did 1/3 pve (guild stuff mostly), 1/3 pvp, and 1/3 wvw.

Seera.5916:

Whether or not you come back to GW2 or not, you should clean the dust out of your PC and back up anything important on that hard drive that you would not want to lose permanently.

Thanks. I typically would, but I’ve been so far removed from that “old” desktop that I’ve not bothered. Perhaps I’ll use that as an excuse to login and run around a bit.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Be aware…some things alluded to in the above post require the Heart of Thorns expansion.

Welcome return, if you decide to rejoin.

Understood. HoT sounds like a Sylvari-themed expansion. I always like Sylvari best. They glow at night! They kitten’n glow!

Sharpe.3907:

With that said though somehow… I’m having fun?

that made me laugh.

Roughly 2 years ago I dropped this game. I had played for about 1.5 years straight and was easily putting in 30 hours per week near the end, yet I finally lost interest. Real life was also calling me back.

I grabbed a next gen console to satisfy my gaming itch. I played mobile RPGs as well (addictive little things). Recently I started DL’n MMOs like Neverwinter and ESO and was wishing they were guild wars. On top of that, I’ve been bored recently.

Yet, 2 years ago I had done it all. I had world completion, I had my Legendary weapon, and I was an expert Mesmer and Necro. I used a couple other classes as well. I helped manage one of the largest guilds (blackgate i think was the name) on one of the most popular servers (at the time). I did all that PVE had to offer. I was very good at PvP. Yet, I spent most of my time in WvW. The social, atmosphere was great in comms. My server was almost always in the top 3. It was great fun. Running around solo with a Mesmer was fantastic. Run into another solo mesmer… kitten gets reals! Typically I’d be hitting poi for the server. I’d always be bouncing around comms and such.

I’ve been using consoles and phones for so long for gaming PC would probably feel foreign…

Anyway, what is there for someone like me? I enjoyed the playstyle, the community, and simply the polish gw2 has over every mmo consoles have to offer. Yet, is it worth returning?

My PC is a bit dusty and the HDD (secondary drive) is failing I’m sure my specs are a bit under the bar too…

GandalfTheGrey.9240:

DanyK.3842:

Oh poor you. Having to explore all of the dirty WvW areas to get your precious shiney PvE weapon. Cruel design indeed. Anet pls nurf.

Did I say I don’t like wvw? and that map completion shouldnt be at all in wvw?
I complained about the roatation between the colours, that my server gunnar’s hold seems to always be either red or blue. So if map completion need wvw, they need a better colour rotation.

(btw, I like to play wvw alot)

a lot? If that were actually true you’d have all the wvw poi in less than a month.

Personally, I’m glad people are forced to play some WvW to get map completion. Some would otherwise never play it and never know if they’d enjoy it or not.

But let’s spin this around shall we? Why the heck do we need to get all those hearts for completion? That’s waaaaay to much mindless pve grinding for the likes of me. Nerf!

Thedenofsin.7340:

That build looks like it’s intended to be a side bunker / group support. However, that means it may likely run into a roamer thief or warrior, or a far point spirit ranger or MM necro. How does this build handle those?

I was playing a MM necro earlier and ran into a signet bunker mesmer and beat him down pretty handily. I don’t know what his build was.

MM necros are pretty interesting along with Fetid Conditions and Flesh of the Master. Granted, even with increased health it can be hard to keep them alive long enough to pull conditions off of you.

So… if you’re up against an MM necro use your first burst to burn down a few of his minions.

roll a necro…

OP, the last thing these necro forums needs is someone calling for nerfs on one of the last mechanics necro does well. Running a fear build means you sacrafice survivability due to dumping points into the spite and curses tree. When fear doesn’t work you get roflstomped by pretty much every guardian/warrior pairing there is.

L2P and use some stun breaks for goodness sakes. Necro is one of the weakest classes in the game currently if you don’t count zerg-play.

Hmmm…

First, you want to adjust your play style to not be a target: LoS, stealth, and pop lots of clones. Second, sustain as much damage as possible with phantasms. Third, counter DS with CC (daze, knockback, pull, etc) and then back to create some distance using range weapons to allow DS to burn off. Finally, stay mobile with strafing, blink, and dodging to make it hard for the necro to place marks and wells.

Remember, the necro is very slow in combat. The best disengage abilities they have are DS and Plague form which are both very obvious and slow. If you can keep two or more powerful phantasms like iZerker or iDuelist on a necro for 20 seconds or more you should win.

Also, Flesh Golem is worth taking out early if possible.

a race of witches would be pretty cool too ;d

I tried build crafting based on some of these ideas yesterday, but then ended up going back to my original 5/10/25/0/30 build since my time was cut short. Thanks for verifying that Spectral Attunement does not affect swiftness. I did the same verification last night and dissapointment ensued…

However, even with that setback and, as several of you have mentioned, I could take Spectral Walk, Warhorn, and some boon or swiftness duration increase and have nearly 100% uptime. With +25% boon duration that turns into ((30*1.25) + (10*1.25)) or roughly 50s of swiftness every 48s if I take Spectral Mastery. I could then dump Signet of Locust and Well of Suffering for Spectral Walk and Spectral Wall. I’m not a huge fan of using Locust Swarm for swiftness though due to being put into combat by the locusts hitting something.

Another option for me would be to go 0/10/30/0/30 and take Rune of the Pack. That would give me kitten of swiftness.

I also found out that Axe 3 is a aoe boon rip… That’s amazing. Pity the rest of that weapon sucks.

Dreadlord.5419:

Helios.3598:

so I lookd at the skill once more. If I take Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery I should get 45 seconds of swiftness every 48 seconds. If I have any boon duration or swiftness duration multipliers then I should easily have 100% swiftness uptime (correct me if I’m wrong please).

Spectral Attunement does not increase swiftness duration by 50%. It only increases the “skills”, which in this case would be the duration of the “walk”, from 8 sec to 12 sec.

Really? If that’s the case then it may not be as worthwhile for me.

I prefer a very flexible wvw playstyle and my build needs to work with that. On my mesmer I use Centaur Runes and Mirror heal to have at least 95% swiftness uptime. I will dive in and out of the zerg because I prefer the ability to switch my role on the fly dependent on what I think we need.

@Tongku: I tried a very similar mark/wells centric build when I first started wvw’n with my necro. It didn’t mesh well with my aggressive zerg playstyle. My server also has some very aggressive commanders so, first and foremost, I need to be able to survive. DS seems to best enable me to mitigate the crazy amounts of incoming damage ZvZ dishes out once Plague is on CD.

@Falcon: Yep, as I previously mentioned, I come from my mesmer main and mesmer null field has no such prerequisite trait to enable ground targetting. It’s… painful to have to dump 10 points just to be able to do the same with necro.

However, just recently, JQ’s been dumping more walls on us which include Spectral Wall. It’s amazing how effective they are when timed well or synced with boon rips.

I’ve been looking at ways to get around Signet of Locust for WvW mobility. I first tried dual daggers and Quickening Thirst. I’ve also wanted to make use Spectral Wall. That’s where Spectral Walk comes into play.

When I first looked at this skill it looks nearly useless. Oh boy… some life force and swiftness and a huge 60s CD. However, Falcon mentioned this skill on this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Frustrating-Part/first#post3316939
so I lookd at the skill once more. If I take Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery I should get 45 seconds of swiftness every 48 seconds. If I have any boon duration or swiftness duration multipliers then I should easily have 100% swiftness uptime (correct me if I’m wrong please).

Doing this does require some trait requirements of 0/20/0/0/10 which should work okay. Perhaps I can adjust to a 0/20/0/20/30 or 20/20/0/0/30, but I can’t reach Deadly Strength anymore which is too bad. Going Spectral might also allow me to push more into a Fear build as well which I think would be useful in WvW zerging.

At this point I’ll only have one Well on my bar, which is Well of Corruption. Is it worth keeping Focused Rituals for just one Well? Is it even worth keeping Well of Corruption? I realize Well of Corruption and Null Field are vital to winning ZvZ, but ….

…. this is where I get confused.

I’m still fairly new at using necro and have only recently started running dungeons with the class. However, one thing I do when tuning my class for cooperative play is to search for the word “allies” in the traits and skills wiki for that class.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_traits

From the look of it, we are fairly good at applying regen, some healing, and constant cleansing to our party. Is there a lot of conditions in the new fractals? The old fractals had some spots where cleansing was pretty important like the fractal with the blue giant and the lava one. Additionally, we are good at dealing with large mobs and we can be pretty tanky, yet still provide effective dps, with the right build.

Yes, that sounds a lot like the Guardian, but some people don’t care for melee classes.

What kind of bad experiences? Are you dying a lot? If so try adding toughness to your build. As for what your friend said, I suggest you ignore it and play whatever the heck you want. If we listened to those max/min complaints we’d all be running zerker warriors and the game would be boring.

I second dual daggers cuz they are fun and hit hard. Staff and Wells are always great for big groups. On that note I’d go for the Focused Rituals trait first. For PVE, Flesh Golem is good for solo and Lich Form for dungeons.

I main a mesmer, but have recently taken a break from that class to play on my necro. Falcon says it best. Complaining isn’t going to get you anywhere. If your build isn’t optimized for what you want then craft builds in hotm until it does. Test it in spvp and dueling. Once you feel comfortable in tpvp and are getting at least 50% wins in dueling then you have found a good build.

It also helps to know your opponent. If you’ve enough toughness verse a thief you should be able to avoid being two shot. Keep moving and slowly casting marks or aoe spells to dictate the battle landscape. For mesmers you need to be able to both kill phantasms and maintain pressure on the mesmer at the same time. Mesmers often apply a constant stream of conditions so you need to keep those off. Also, learn to dodge phantasm spells.

Both thieves and mesmer are the most mobile class in the game while in combat. Therefore, don’t worry if you don’t get a kill. Warding them off is typically a victory. Granted, MH Dagger 3 (dark pact) is pretty effective at catching runners.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

I forgot to mention, in quite a coincidence, I’m also running a 5/10/25/0/30 build. Later this week, I’m going to try dropping 15 from Death into Blood to see how the siphon adds to the sustain and if it makes up for the -150 toughness. The -120 power will be a bigger loss, I think.

Also, the proposed balance fix this month doubles the Power added by Deadly Strenth. Hence, 2000 toughness turns into 200 Power rather than 100 Power.

My last build was 0/10/0/30/30 which worked fairly well. I originally put it together so I could use dual daggers for speed, but you could go axe/horn and trait very pro siphon instead.

One way to go about it would be a strong support build with 0/10/5/25/30 that takes Plague Signet, Transfusion, and Fetid Consumption. You’d then rely on Consume Conditions, Reanimator minions, and OH dagger, Staff, and active Plage Sgnet to cleanse yourself from passive Plague Signet.

Thanks for all the insightful responses guys. To be honest, if feels like necro is quite flexible for however you want to play it. I think I just need to play it more in WvW to get a better feel.

For my 5/10/25/0/30 build, I like the extra toughness the 25 in Death magic affords me, but if I may grab a Sigil of Resistance and some toughness runes at some point and retrait back to something like 30/10/0/0/30.

Once Plague is no longer an option I find DS extremely important to sustain while my heal is on CD. I may also take Path of Midnight over Unyielding Blast too since I am so often popping into DS and find piercing Life Blasts is not too effective most of the time.

I was confused by all the discussion surrounding the dev livestream so I googled it and found these useful notes from dulfy for people who missed it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1s9xpo/pvp_developer_livestream_notes/

“Necro: Signet of Vampirism. Active put a 25 stack siphon debuff on the target that lasts 5 seconds. Target has a mark on their head so you will know if you get this debuff on you.”

That’s weird… Siphon stacks? Also, am I correct in assuming that these changes are hitting tomorrow?

Zikory.6871:

It really depends on your groups comp and how you want to play your Necro. For me I have 30 in Soul Reaping for foot in the grave. My very aggressive front line play style requires me to be able to provide stability for my self, this is less needed for back line play or dps focused play styles.

So the answer to your question is yes.

Yep, I’m very aggressive frontline. I typically will try to get ahead of my zerg to absorb as many opposing cooldowns as possible. What build are you using?

Here’s a build that doesn’t touch the tree that is still very good. Don’t mind the fact that the tread is old, its been updated about a month ago and the OP is banned from the forums for other reasons. This build is still very good.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Ascii-s-WvW-Wellomancer-Build/first#post2499132

Interesting. This is very similar to the first build I made up when I first started zerging with my necro.

I’ve been flipping my WvW build this way and that and I keep landing on effective builds that have 30 in DS. DS seems to work great in ZvZ and roaming. I even, somewhat accidentally, came across the nice DS + Rune of Vampirism (mist form) combo. Having mist form give you time to get back into DS is amazing.

After some build critiques I’ve been moving around the other trait points to see where they would be the most effective for my playstyle. I like to ZvZ and roam on the fly. I always put 10 in Curses for Wells ground targeting so it’s mostly those last 30 points. I tried 30/10/0/0/30 with Staff + Axe/Warhorn. I felt I needed more toughness so I switched that to 5/10/25/0/30 to get around 1900 toughness which feels much better.

I suppose my question is, is it even worth investigating WvW builds that don’t have 30 in DS?

EDIT: 30 in Soul Reaping I mean.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Most mesmer builds should be able to clear camps in 30-40 seconds. Just make sure you group up the mobs with LoS or a focus pull and aoe them down. It should be pretty quick.

Well kitten , I guess I’ll go time myself to see. I don’t run staff so I can’t easily just sit and dump on one spot. Granted, I’ve solo flipped hundreds of camps without too many problems.

A fun side note on camp flipping. If you’re on an opposing borderland the NW and NE camps are great traps if you’ve a small roaming group. Flip it and sit out of sight. People will steadily steam in solo or in small, managable groups. You can pretty much farm them for hours with the right comp.

Jackums.3496:

clipnotdone.9634:

PU is probably the least effort/highest return playstyle the Mesmer has right now,

Least effort? Sure. Highest return? Hardly.

I should think stun warriors and heartseeker thieves rank far above that in the “least effort” category. Mesmer, regardless of the build, is always going to have a high skill requirement. That or it seems that some mesmers are whining that their shatter build is less effective than PU…

Veil and MI are mesmer god-mode in WvW.

Might be cool if they buffed MI somehow. Perhaps have it also apply a stack of confusion to 10 opponents in range.

hihey.1075:

Helios.3598:

Some classes have less trouble against us like the condi engine and any necro who knows how to dodge and aoe down illusions. If I pop prestige and decoy without much gain I’m pretty much screwed if my opponent can then close on me and hit me with a cc.

Uhm… what? What do you actually need to dodge from a PU mesmer?

phantasms obviously. Necros often dodge less due to a lot of channeling and ground targeting.

Personally, I’d go after the cheaper power runes. Granted, in wvw traveler and melandru runes are very popular.

Some classes have less trouble against us like the condi engine and any necro who knows how to dodge and aoe down illusions. If I pop prestige and decoy without much gain I’m pretty much screwed if my opponent can then close on me and hit me with a cc.

You need sustained aoe and damage mitigation. I find necro works best. On my mesmer it takes two to three minutes with lots of running around.

awesome, thanks for the suggestions and input everyone. I’ll probably be hitting the drawing board again soon and will take into account your considerations. I definitely feel I have to go power/crit and I feel I can’t go without staff. I also must have 25% movement speed or nearly 100% swiftness uptime. After that I’m open to changing things up. If I settle on something I like I’ll post it as well.

Edit/Update:
okay, I tested this 30/20/20 http://intothemists.com/guides/89-noobers_necro
in spvp 5v5 and 8v8 and it performed poorly.

I then tested this 30/10/0/0/30 build in spvp
http://intothemists.com/guides/1623-power_necro
and it performed very well and felt similar to my old build but takes into account having more power and uses axe/warhorn. I’ll give it a go in WvW.

Andele.1306:

Asthenea.1546:

This wasnt supposed to be a balance patch. I dont know what your problem is

No but they are supposed to FIX BUGS!

You realize software development isn’t easy right?

I went human for this. Human seems to work well with the witch or warlock type theme.

@Nagato: Doesn’t Deathly Perception effect all the DS skills that cause damage (not including Torment ticks)? If not I’m certainly open to changing this and /or Unyielding Blasts to something else. Also, I’m trying to avoid condi since I want this build to be biased towards a more general wvw build that can also handle pve and some roaming. As for the low power, I agree it’s low, but was going more for survivability than burst.

@Haqqa: Isn’t OH dagger more utility than condi? It’s mainly for cleanse and aoe weaken I thought. Also, I must say, MH dagger is nice for catching runners. It looks like your comments are more in regards to roaming than zerg. I typically am always assisting the zerg even when I’m not on them. Occasionally I will run havoc with the guild though.

Wells are very zerg friendly… but I could get away with just going with Well of Corruption. Hence, when I don’t go wells and dual daggers I typically go with Ether Feat, Signet of Locust, Spectral Wall, and Well of Corruption. The thing I don’t like about that is that it typically means my utilities aren’t optimized for my build. Also, do every use Well of Corruption it’s almost a must to have Focused Rituals. Once you take that you’ve already dedicated 10 points to one skill so it feels like a waste to not take more than one well.

This almost makes the point that if you aren’t running Well of Corruption + Focused Rituals with a zerg you may as well bring a different class. The same could be said for Mesmers and Null Field, and Guardian and Stand Your Ground.

Anchoku.8142:

I am curious why you did not choose the war horn for off-hand. You may give that a try instead of dagger/dagger. You can still switch utilities to Signet of the Locust for longer runs. War horn used to be the only good mobility option and it is still excellent for that in combat.

Originally I did take Axe/Warhorn along with a more standard wellmancer build. I just found it to be too niche for zerg-only use. Whenever I strayed off by myself or in a small group I’d get destroyed.

I took dual daggers for several reasons. First, OH dagger is a very popular pvp choice. Then, taking MH dagger, which also happens to be a decent damage option, allows me to take Quickening Thirst which gives me 25% movement speed. Finally, I saw a necro with a similar dagger/wells build in pvp have high sustainability and effectiveness. However, I can’t just go into a full siphon build for WvW. It just isn’t versatile enough.

Hi, I’m relatively new to playing necro. My main is a mesmer and I lean towards using builds that will work mainly for WvW that can perform with zergs, group roaming, and soloing. It also needs to be able to work for PvE dungeons/fractals. I don’t mind adjusting one or two existing traits when I swtich between WvW and PvE. One must is to have 25% movement speed without traveler runes (too expensive). Signet of the Locust is of course an option, but for some reason I leaned towards traiting dual daggers for speed.

The build I came up with and have used so far is this one:
http://intothemists.com/guides/1930-dual_daggers_10
It has worked fairly well so far. However, I’m open to trying new builds or adjusting this one. I mainly would appreciate some critiquing for this build. Also, if you have any other builds that fit what I want I’m open to trying new ones out as well. I currently have both Rabid and Knight armor so I can switch if need be. Thanks.

Down state is a peculiar mechanic. Regardless of the context, when you’re downed your main objective is to “tag” an enemy with damage (npc or player) that you think will be killed before you die in order to rally.

While this pre-death mechanic can be confusing at times or frustrating for new players it actually adds more depth to battles that weren’t there before. For super troll times you can roll a ranger or necro for downstate awesomeness. If you spec your necro right downstate becomes a super power.

this thread is like someone going to a car dealer and asking every possible question about a car before buying it… Honestly, just take it for a drive first, see for yourself, and then comeback with a more concise line of queries.

Alissah.9281:

For 1v1 in the duelling custom arena I go with shatter… because phantasm, lockdown, and prismatic understanding are banned >__<’

wait… wut?

20/20/0/0/30 shatter mesmer? Really? I can’t recall the last time I saw one in spvp or tpvp. I see a lot of GS phantasm builds. I still lean towards conditions though.

SeOne, while leveling get a Greatsword + Sword/Focus and dump your trait points into Dueling to go after Deceptive Evasion. Also put points in Domination and Chaos and use Decoy to drop aggro.

Once you hit 80 your concerns will be different.

gahh.. wall of text

for WvW I could only see this working well for necro (preferably a DS necro)

Old news of course, but I’m always up for ranting on this one if only to be mildly annoying to ANet.

Plex Runes, as most know, are far more optimal on Warriors and even Engineers than they are on Mesmers. Yet, confusion is one of our defining mechanics just as retaliation is for Guardians. Personally, I think we should be given a way to trait additional confusion damage.

I would not classify zerging as a large disorganized fight. That may be the end result when the two opposing commanders go down, but it’s not how I define a zerg. A zerg in WvW is a coordinated group of players that’s larger than one party.

I’m not sure what blobbing is… unless you’re trying to define the behavior of when multiple zergs engage an existing battle. For instance, Blue could have a zerg of 20 and another of 30. The zerg of 30 engages a zerg of 40 from Red. Blue’s 20man zerg “blobs” into the 30man to sustain the battle. Typically though, this is a very coordinated effort on Teamspeak depending on the server you are on.

What are we, the mesmer, trying to accomplish? We don’t keep people alive in ZvZ and we tyipcally should not be spiking much either. We are range damage dealers, manipulators (boon rips and reflection), and utility providers.

As for what builds to use, I suggest soley using power builds and deriving the rest based on your playstyle. Also, as I’ve mentioned in previous threads, greatsword and null field is the way to go in ZvZ. In fact, every class should always consider boon rips when crafting a WvW build since they are a fundamental key to breaking well coordinated zergs.

In the end, I suggest you use what works. This is especially true for mesmer since we’ve so few options. GS, Sword, and Pistol are by far the most powerful PvP weapons we have. Focus is arguably the weakest. If you’re branching away from GS then I suggest you try a condition build.

I keep checking on my cat when this sound goes off…. please remove it :/

Face it, when rangers and guardians have better aoe than mesmer (which are supposed to be a mage class) then you know something is wrong. Your build is about as aoe as we get. Feedback helps a bit I suppose, but is short lived with a high CD. They really need to buff glamour somehow though.

Null Field is a great choice and is likely the best spell in all of WvW to cripple a zerg. I also suggest grestsword over staff if you’re looking for consistent tags.