Guild Wars 2

Returned to the game after half a year, made a new engineer (because I deleted my old one to make slot room; in retrospect a really bad decision) and what is this?

I equip kits and…

and…..

there are no hobosacks.

Did they really do it? They did, didn’t they?

YESS!!!!! NO MORE HOBOSAKSKSKS!!!!

That’s the bad way to do it. The nice people I’ve had do that would ask first, then help kill the boss with their 80 character, then while one of us watches the cinematic they switch out with their low-level and get the exp that way.

Well by this point it’s the book to unlock any single trait.

Ok I admit this is a really trivial thing, but I always wondered why only the engi and mesmer have these cheapy-looking open book graphics for their trait guides while every other profession has better-looking ones with their profession symbols on them? Seems like a really trivial photoshop job to create similar ones for engis and mesmers.

Oh god, I have to try it out in pvp!

I didn’t think rangers were more important than thieves, I just didn’t know what thieves were good for in dungeons aside from stealth and dps.

I’m just curious. It’s easily understandable why warriors or eles would be wanted in dungeons. Even rangers can have a place (as small as it might be).

But thieves as far as I know (and I do have an 80 thief, just haven’t used it much) are good for sheer dps and stealth-skipping. Is there something else they’re supposed to bring to the table in dungeons?

All this time I thought you lost all your adrenaline if you missed, so ironically this doesn’t change anything for me.

Well I do also have 6 points into Strength, so I must be a very selfish warrior indeed!

But I see what you mean.

Curiously, what’s wrong with adrenal health in pve?

I’ve been playing around with healing signet + adrenal health after using healing surge for a long time. I like both so far, but I’d like some outside opinions on what you guys think of healing signet with adrenal health vs healing surge. (I’d add mending but I haven’t used it yet)

Also this is in context of PvE, especially in prolonged dungeon battles.

Well guardian is by far the more welcomed in groups, including dungeons. In the role of supporting a group, they’re much better than necro.

I have one at 55 and have run a necro to lvl 30 or around that level before stopping it. I personally found guardian more fun for a number of reasons:

1. Necro weapon skills are pretty boring and aren’t that great.

2. The design of the necro class forces one to commit their build and utility slots to either power and damage with wells, or to condition damage and spreading them, or to minions. There’s too much separation among these three necro styles and the skills and traits don’t really synergize well with one another. Whereas in a guardian almost all skills and traits can contribute in some form to whatever playstyle you pick, and the weapon skills are fun to use and are quite useful.

In pvp I hear both classes are great. I don’t play much pvp so can’t comment more than that.

EDIT: You really should try each class and get a feel for them yourself. That’s the only way to be truly sure.

I’m levelling an ele now and have met with good success balancing out the profession’s natural glassiness with defensive gear and accessories. My question now for more experienced ele players is how should I prioritize toughness, vitality, and healing power?

I also say the warrior class mechanic is poor not because it’s useless, but because it’s so simplistic it’s sleep-inducing. Necro’s death shroud is also one button and in a sense the two work in similar fashion (both have a gauge that needs to be filled to be effective) but death shroud takes so much more thought to use.

I’m returning to GW2 after a very long absence. I want to ask how are all the classes in PvE? How easy or hard are they to level, how effective they are in general, or in group situations like dungeons, etc. I’m looking for an overview evaluation of the professions in pve. Thanks.

I’d still play female characters here, cause they look great compared to many other games.

I play a human female guardian. And this community is so much better than WoW’s because it seems like everyone here knows that a female character they meet in-game is usually just a guy who’s playing a female character and not an actual female player. I tried a female character in WoW and some random dude came up to me and started hitting on me. It was pretty….. weird.

My sister plays on my account and she has a male human thief.

You can also trait virtue of courage to be a stun-break. Also renewed focus elite skill renders you invulnerable to three seconds and can be channeled while moving. It also recharges your virtues, so that’s another aegis plus stun break you can have.

Retreat shout is also good for the swiftness. And don’t forget if you find a random critter in the distance in the direction you’re fleeing, target it and hit judge’s intervention for a 1200 distance teleport away from enemy players.

You don’t even need to turn off player names. Like it’s been said, you can tell apart the real one by the movements they make. If they’ve got deceptive evasion, even more obvious cause they’ll be regularly dodging, and clones never dodge.

You know you’ve played Guardian too long when you go to another prof and realize the game has actual ranged combat.

(Scepter isn’t that bad. In pve)

Guardian is great. Warrior feels like just run up to an enemy and stand there hacking away as fast as you can, and run away screaming, pew-pewing with rifle if the heat gets too hot. With guardian I actually bounce around quite a bit with judge’s intervention, GS #3, Sword #2. I also get to bounce around enemies a lot with stuff like GS #5 or Hammer #4.

It’s more work, but I feel like a heavy armor version of a thief or an ele, both of which bounce around amongst enemies and feel like ninjas. In that sense, as a guardian I’m a ninja that wears plate armor. It’s the closest you can get to the fluid, dynamic, cannonballing through the air and into enemies sort of combat that you have with thieves and eles but still have the heavy armor and healing abilities to take the damage.

I started a new human mesmer and killed both elemental hands at the same time. Lol!

I also had to wait for the gate to open and as long as the centaurs came at me in roughly line formation I could kill all of them at the same time. (I gave myself GS through deluxe edition golem banker)

PS: I got deluxe edition upgrade for free, before someone berates me for getting it.

I don’t know why you’d choose a prof that pretty much puts you to sleep over one that actually engages you like mesmer. If you want to brag that you can level or clear dungeons fastest, sure take warrior. I can’t do it though, because I’d probably fall asleep after thirty or forty levels of Spamming for great justice and GS #2 and 3. Even guardian, the other prof considered Fotm, takes hell of a lot more work than warrior.

They appear to have fixed aquatic spear #1. Can anyone see if they fixed WvW clones appearing without weapons?

This might put it a little close to rangers, but I think the various minions should take place of DS and be put on the F1-F4 skills. After that, depending on what utility or weapon skills we use, all your minions inflict a certain amount of a certain condition per each hit. Or if you use scepter two on an enemy and your minions happen to be in the aoe, then they’ll start inflicting cripple per hit as well. After that, the utilities can have more space available for things that help the necros last through a fight, or utilities that give your minions an effect, like chill all enemies in a radius around each minion, or cause them to lifesteal, etc.

Basically I’m thinking of what it’d be like if we merged the minions and conditions sides of the necro closer together at the expense of DS (which has it’s use but I’m not too fond of as a class mechanic skill).

I’d go with improving scepter. I think weak ranged is supposed to offset the guardian’s great melee capability.

Also I don’t know about the class using shortbow or longbow. It’s a magic-user class. In plate armor, sure, but guardians use a lot of magic. The profession has a trident as its ranged aquatic option, for one thing. All the magic users in the game use trident, and the non-magic professions all use harpoon guns.

So fitting with the plate-armored magic-wielding knight theme of the guardian, I don’t think it’s appropriate for them to use short or longbows, or rifles when they can shoot magic instead.

EDIT: As awesome and hilarious a 1200 staff autoattack would be, it’d also be OP as hell. Imagine you’re ikittenerg facing another zerg, and all you have to do is to face their general direction and spam 1 to whittle down the health of everyone in that group at once. It would be total lulz.

nolop.8095:

Minions still just watch you fight.
If a dungeon boss or normal mob just looks in their direction they all die.
They don’t scale with your gear AT ALL.

tldr: minions are terrible

My advice, try mesmer. Illusions are as durable as minions but much faster replaced.
Plus phantasms scale with your gear and can deal tons of damage unlike minions.

I’m sorry, but I have experience with both classes in pve and pvp and I’ll say that illusions are NOT, in fact NOWHERE near as durable as minions. Illusions are either momentary distractions, shatter bombs, or phantasmal burst damage. Illusions can drop in single hits even to normal mobs, and phantasms even faster. What saves illusions in this case is the fact that you can generate them fairly quickly, and once you get deceptive evasion you can pretty much have the enemy up to their ears in clones.

Illusions do not take and keep enemy aggro like minions do. What minions are best at are keeping the enemy distracted long enough for you to take them down. And for their specific abilities like immobilize or knockdown.

Of course minions in turn are nowhere near as durable as ranger pets, especially when traited for beastmastery. You can’t really compare minions to pets though, since they serve different functions. In the same way, illusions are very different from minions.

A cross-profession discussion? Not something you’d expect normally, personally speaking. This sounds interesting and I would like to see more happen.

I’ve played both professions so this is of interest to me.

wiazabi.2549:

Necro
dmg = weaponskills + utlity skills
utility = weaponskills + utility skills

Others
dmg = weaponskills
utility = utility + weaponskills

You bring up a good point that’s worth expanding on. I think the comparison is more like,

Other classes:

dmg = weapons + small amount from utilities
utility = utilities + small amount from weapons

but Necro:

dmg = utilities + small amount from weapons
utility = utilities + small amount from weapons

Or to put it simply, other classes rely on weapons to do the bulk of their damage and rely on their utilities for the bulk of their utility. Necros, however, rely mostly on their utilities for both damage AND utility.

What are the most valuable Necro skills? Corrupt boon, epidemic, the wells, blood is power, and so on. What’s the common factor between all of these? They’re ALL utility skills.

There are some kinda decent to nice weapon skills, such as marks, dagger 4, dagger 1 and 3, or scepter 2. Despite the usefulness of those skills, they provide some utility but they don’t form the foundation of a necro’s offensive power. Even a power build with dagger involves wells. The things that really nuke enemies are stuff like corrupt boon or epidemic, and those are all utilities. Skills that have cooldowns, and take up your valuable three utility slots.

Contrast to other classes which rely on their weapon skills and class mechanic F1-F4 to deal damage to the enemy, and only use those three utility slots mainly for utility things. Skills that help give you an edge in a fight, but they don’t form the bulk of your offense.

PS: Now I sound like I hate the necro class, but I do like it. It makes pve a breeze compared to say mesmer, which when levelling early on is like flogging yourself. And necros are so well-suited to nuking guardians which are so lauded for their survivability. But the flaws are there.

Kuldebar.1897:

That’s is the Necromancer’s problem in a nut shell: too narrow of a focus, lacking the relative versatility of the other professions in the game.

It’s interesting because I think the necro’s problem is the other way around: not enough focus and too much trying to be too many things at once. Let’s take the profession design of the others (except engi cause I haven’t played it yet):

Warrior’s profession design is simple: get in people and things’ faces and hack away, and tank the damage via hp pool and shouts, etc.

For thief it’s mobile, stealthy glass cannon.

Guardian is a long-lasting straight up damage dealer that relies on buffs and heals to survive.

Ranger is about your pet taking the aggro for you while you do damage relatively unhindered.

Mesmer’s all about illusions and the whole class is designed around using them to do damage in the form of phantasms and shatters.

Ele is about direct magic damage and using spells and attunements to out-heal, tank, or flee from enemy damage.

Necro is different. The profession’s trying to be a condition master, a minion master, and an AoE master all at the same time. It’s almost literally like the skill and trait list is split into three sections and you’re forced to commit to one or use some relatively weak hybrid of all of them. Unfortunately you’re not superb even if you commit because the entire profession’s design hasn’t been focused to support and enable a fully-commited conditionmancer, minionmaster, or well/aoe type of caster. Commit to any one of the three major necro build categories and you’re missing out about 2/3 of the entire profession’s potential.

Compared to the other professions, which all are relatively focused on one, simple idea of a class and the entire profession’s available skills, traits, and class mechanics have been built around that one idea.

It feels like anet had an “image” of the necromancer, as a dark caster who’s surrounded by undead minions and is inflicting curses and such on his or her enemies. Then they tried to build a profession to invoke all of those conceptual elements of a necro all at once, and ended up with a profession that lacks focus in any one of them.

If anet buffed each of the three groups of necro builds, then maybe we’ll have a profession that can choose to be one of or a hybrid of the three current types and succeed well relative to other professions.

So far this is the only class I’ve played in spvp that can laugh at guardians. Especially when they pop that shout that gives them a billion boons, and I do corrupt boon and turn those into a billion conditions and their entire health drops in like two seconds.

I seem to be at the opposite end. I haven’t found necros or other mesmers to be that hard, especially mesmers. On the other hand thieves give me the most agonizing of headaches, especially either the ones that keep hugging my face with heartseeker, or the ones that are near perma-stealthing. Exactly what are you guys doing that makes thieves so relatively easy?

Hammerguard.9834:

FLIMP.8172:

necros and eles are good. Consistent aoes and high mobility – something we dont have lol

Necros also have poor mobility.

Pretty sure he’s talking about just roaming the world. In that aspect, necros and eles both have it a lot easier than mesmers.

In-combat mobility and escaping, necros are the worst. Mesmers are better, and then eles moreso.

Kravick.4906:

Conditions might actually be worth while if ANet didn’t see fit to give every class 50 ways to clear conditions. Well, except maybe rangers. I hear the only condition removal ability they have is to remove poison. Poor rangers… They get pooped on by everyone.

Just to nitpick, rangers have:

healing spring
bear’s shake it off
Empathic Bond
Signet of Renewal

They have more than one condition removal ability.

Balance issues are in ALL games nowadays. You can’t have a relatively complex game without them.

So ignoring those, I am very pleased with this game. This is actually my first MMO I’ve really played, after years of FPS, RTS, and Diablo+Diablo clones. I tried WoW starter edition and I couldn’t see the point of it, but GW2 is a whole different story. I just tried spvp for the first time last night and it was ludicrously fun. It’s the most chaos and madness in a multiplayer game I’ve experienced in a long time, and I’ve sorely missed that sort of craziness.

So keep working on those balance issues anet and you’ve have a winner game that can also last for the long-term. Thank you!

I learned to accept that whatever class I use, whether it’s this or necro, will never be as good or liked as warrior and guardian, moved on, and just enjoyed the game. And it’s fun.

In terms of tanking enemies in pve. In comparison to greater elemental (earth one specifically) and ranger pet.

Elementalists can keep up and surpass other professions but have to work many times harder for that. Basically the bottom line.

Distaste.4801:

Escaping is part of survivability. I’ll give you an example! On my thief if we engage in a WvW brawl and I’m getting focused I can pop into stealth and dodge away. That gives me time to heal up and re-engage. Being able to break combat(escape) and re-engage drastically adds to your survivability.

Is it really? If you escape and heal-up, your opponent’s healing up too and you’re back to square one, and if you had to run away because your opponent forced you away it’s likely going to happen again, or you die.

Escaping happens because you can no longer take the heat and have to bug out. Time spent escaping is time spent not doing damage.

I have a lvl 18 mesmer and I tried out the thief to lvl 7 so far, and I was surprised at how squishy the thief was. Mesmer was way, way easier to level.

You just have to keep in mind that every class plays differently. With mesmers, your illusions are your main tools and keeping as many of them up as you can, using phantasms, and shatters at appropriate times are what constitutes the mesmer playstyle. Trying to play them like a burst-them-down thief won’t give you success. Mesmers are better at drawn-out fights, which is likely the biggest thing that made that class easier than thief for me.

Is it make a bad joke day? Then what do you call a charr after you hit it with a burning condition?

Charr-broiled meat!

runs away