Guild Wars 2

@Algreg: I think OP is talking about the new ranger pets. I’m fairly sure most of them require a nearby event to be completed to acquire.

They did? Eh, didn’t expect them to do that so fast: it’s understandable, though, considering that the 400 points hit most of the population. I’m afraid that no such swift (if any) change will be made to Fractals, on the other hand.

Speaking of Fractals: I know that you get less relics now, but how much Pristine Relics do you obtain? Giving a quick glance at the dailies, I’ve seen that most of them give pristines: is that how we’re supposed to get relics now?

Everything Novaan said is spot on, just an addendum, mostly for HoT open world: in the new maps, I highly advise to take Dagger/Warhorn instead of Dagger/Focus. Dagger/Focus is good damage and chill, but against the bosses around the new areas you need to take down the defiance bar, and with people still not even trying to do that (seriously, once we were in 15-ish and I was the only one trying to stun the boss <.<) it’s useful to go heavy on that route for now. Going WH5, then WH4, RS5 and 4 for chilling bolts, with Dagger 3 and GS4 if you have time, takes a good chunk off enemies’ break bar.

Got it, thank you. At least I know where to grind. <.<

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

It’s happening
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/HoT-Gift-of-the-Nemesis

I cringed so hard just by reading the first three lines. Ugh.

PS: For those that have already unlocked the full/most of the elite spec: I’ve read that most of the “easy” hero points are in Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. Can confirm?

I lurked and said nothing during all the salt and QQ and the death of the trashcan and the few reasonable discussion, but this…

Covers mouth, tries to avert his look from the horror, starts to speak with faint voice
…a real Nomad Shout Warrior. Is this the end times?
I hope it’s just a practical joke to scare people to death: it’s Halloween, right? No one would really invest that much money in Nomad ascended armor, right?

spoj.9672:

Most groups will have the group might covered (even pugs all seem to have a PS warrior these days). BiP is only 8 second duration. Its basically the new staff guard might. Totally useless in most situations as you will overwrite your parties long duration might stacks with crappy 8 second might stacks.

Ah, okay, got it. Didn’t even think about overwriting better stacks. <.<

Maybe it’s a dumb question, but I’ll ask it anyway: why Signet of Spite instead of BiP?
Is the +180 power more significant than 8 stacks of might for the party? I won’t take it in open world, but maybe there is some merit in considering it as an option for dungeon?
Or PS Warriors and Eles already give high enough Might stacks that BiP would be useless?

Curses
Ugh, now we’re starting to get worse. First: could we ax reaper precision to make room for other traits? It always seemed pretty negligible to me. By removing it, you could also address one of the othe big problems of the line: all 3 of the GM are condition based, and one it’s rather important. I think we should move down the Lingering Curse trait down to master, so that condition build can take both it and either terror or the now-not-so-terrible parasitic contagion (15% is not that bad, I think): we could then fill the third GM spot with a trait useful to a greater number of builds.
Second: do we really need toxic landing? This fall damage reduction trait always seemed a little bad to me, even if master of corruption is now merged with it. Speaking of which: what if master of corruption also briefly granted you the new Resistance (or how it’s called) boon for a couple of seconds after you use a corrupt skill, like the Mallyx Rev trait does?
Third: I’ve always wondered: what if target the weak influenced also nearby allies? Would that make Necro a little more desirable to carry around?

Blood Magic
Is this trait line all over the place because it’s blood magic? Not only the traits are lacklustre (except vampiric rituals. By Dwayna’s feathery hairstyle!), but the line lacks focus and specialize in healing, something that it’s a little useless in PvE. For starters: merge a ton of the traits. Seriously. Bloodthirst+vampiric precision, and deathly invigoration+transfusion. From there, the minors need some serious buffing: extra healing power? That’s…uh. The majors, too need some help: Unholy Martyr is a really cool idea cursed by minuscule numbers.

Beside nuking it and rewriting it from the ground (like they did with Engi’s Invention line), I’d like to talk about what Blood Magic shtick could be: what if Blood Magic was focused on giving you bonuses for having near to max health/endurance, like a turbo-scholar rune trait line? The minors point to that, and the vampiric thing (on paper, conceptually) is supposed to do that. If that was the case, the blood magic line could be the place where we get a (limited) access to defensive boons, like Protection and Vigor: without going overboard (I’m not talking about a 100% uptime), I’m sure it could be possible to come up with necro-y ways to give the class access to an important part of high-end PvE defence (I doubt that DS facetanking does the trick). For example, what about a trait that gives you Vigor (or directly endurance!) when you syphon from foes? A boring but efficient +x% damage when health is above the threshold?

Death Magic
I’ve really not played around with this tree, or minions, enough to make sensible comments. I’ll let more minion-versed people talk about this.

I’m finished (for now): it’s getting late here, and the post has gotten way longer than I imagined…

Slightly crestfallen Necro here!

I mostly read the forums but, like Rising Dusk has said, I think that this is our chance to get heard: with all this traits still (supposedly) in alpha, there’s still chance for improvement. While I share the annoyance at the lack of significant (and long overdue) changes, I feel that shaking our fists at the heavens and cursing Anet isn’t useful to either the devs or us. Voicing our concerns and dissatisfaction one more time has nothing but upsides.
Disclaimer: I’m a scrub. I’ve been playing Necro since release, but the only area in which I’ve played seriously enough was WvW. Aside from the first weeks of the game (where everyone was running around with whatever and you could still WP while the party was in battle. The memories!), I’ve tried to pick up dungeons for a month or so, before stopping because I felt I wasn’t able to pull my weight (both because of my and the class’ shortcomings). I’ll be mostly commenting on the things that look too weak/out of place to me, and let people more experienced than me propose something to patch the class’ shortcomings.

Soul Reaping
I’ll start from the best one. Honestly…I really like what they did here! I was kind of depressed going trough the lines, but seeing what they did with this line restored some of my faith in Anet. They are perfectly capable to make useful and cool traitlines, this is the proof! Ideally, I think this is an example of what we should be shooting for in the different lines: it has a particular shtick (LF, DS and spectral skills), but it doesn’t pigeon-hole you in a particular build (read: the problem that curses has now).
Is that the original Dhuumfire?

Spite
I like this line, too, but there are a couple of things that doesn’t convince me fully. While I really like the minors in concept, I think that the ICD and durations limit them somewhat: spiteful removal and death’s embrace are fine, but what if we removed syphoned power ICD/ tweaked the numbers to allow it to stack? As of now, it just gives a 100% uptime of two stacks of might: would making this a way for Necros to stack might on themselves be useful in PvE, to at least up their damage?
Most of the other minors are cool (could bitter chill be useful to stack vuln, or are engis and eles still doing it better? What if the GS’s autoattack will actually inflict chill?), but a couple of the worry me a little: axe training, signet mastery, and spiteful spirit. Signet mastery just doesn’t feel like a GM trait, while the other two have bigger problems, I think. Axe training should at least get a much bigger damage bonus for such a restrictive condition, and the cooldown reduction is negligible: beside just upping it, what about making it reduce also the off-hands CDs (Reaper’s Touch spam?), or even the utility ones? Too powerful?
As others have said, I really don’t know why spiteful spirit needs an ICD: by being on DS activation, it already has a cooldown by itself.

(Continues in the next post)

Also, making so that in an encounter there are different objectives makes it so players with different skill levels can still participate in a raid: while tanking adds alone is something someone proficient with a class should do, a player not used to the instance may join the DPS group, and learn how to tank alone while watching the other player.

Rewards
Raids shouldn’t give rewards better than ascended! That doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be rewards specific to raids (read, skins). I fully support the idea of pseudo-RNG: you are fully capable to drop the Headgear of Ascended Flashiness from the boss, but you can do raids regularly and acquire tokens to buy it. In that case, I would put a limit on either the number of tokens you can acquire in a single day, or award them only on completion. Keeping it completely RNG is both frustrating and doesn’t make sense: I, for example, have 2 Fractal Focuses, but I’m not a diehard fractal runner, nor a good player. On the other hand, I know people that ran fractal ad nauseam and still have to drop the weapon they want.

Risks
1) Giving the number of people required, PUGing may be required in some cases to pick the last 1-3 players: this carries the usual problems of PUG groups (usually you get nice, skilled people that like to work together. Other times, not so much).
2) Striking the balance between difficulty and rewards will be crucial: if we aren’t able to do that, it will be Fractal/Aetherpath all over again (Immensely fun, but not worth it )

Hi everyone! I’ve been mostly reading the CDIs, but because contents with lots of people is my favourite part of GW2, I decided to pitch in and join the conversation.
Proposal Overview
To make Raids in GW2 an experience that challenges players and makes them use all of the mechanics present in the game, creating challenging content that fills the gap between dungeons/fractals and megabosses.

What is a raid? How many people should be able to join?
People here have been talking about Lich Kings and other guys and places with funny names: GW2 was the first MMO I ever played, so the word ‘Raid’ doesn’t carry a particular meaning to me. The closest thing I know are the Elite Missions from GW1, like Urgoz’s warren, Fissure of Woe and the like: in my head, that is what GW2 raids should strive to be. A challenging PvE content meant for an high number of players, meant to fill the gap between Dungeons (5 people), guild groups in WvW (30 or so people) and Mega-Bosses (150 people).
As such, I think that raids should be instance made for 15 people or so: I agree with most people that scaling raids would be awesome, even in 10-15-20 intervals, but I’d say it’s best to focus on one and maybe add the other in a second time.

Accessibility
First thing: Don’t make it so only guilds can join raids! I’m in a big guild, but I know a lot of people that aren’t, or that just have friends in other guilds. We could make it so that it’s easier for a guild to open a raid, or a guildie to join, but I think it would do a disservice to a lot of people to make such a big part of PvE content (I hope) only to people in guilds.
Regarding gating: there shouldn’t be limits on how much raids a person can join in a single day (or week. I’ve seen people suggest that: was it something that there was in other games? It sounds awful.). Period. As I will say after, though, I agree that certain rewards (like tokens) should be limited once per day. But going back to the accessibility part, I don’t see the reason to put big requirement in joining a raid: maybe a little gold/karma costs for the instance opener, but making things such as AP, titles, agony requirements to enter is pointless, as they can’t be used to gauge the ability of a player.

Encounter Design
Finally the part in which I have more to say.
First: keep up the good work! The encounter design’s getting better and better since launch! You just have to look at the bosses of the first dungeons (with a couple exception) and the bosses in the original Personal Story (looking at you, Blightscale and Zaithan <.<), and then at the new Tequatl, the fights against Scarlet during the first jubilee, the Marionette, the holograms, the sylvary that jumped around at the start of LS2 and the salad dragon in the Grove: we’re leaps and bounds ahead since we started! So, as a rule of thumb, [I] raid bosses should be more similar to LS2 bosses[/i].

To expand on that: first, bosses in raids should promote build and class diversity. And I’m not saying this from a perspective of ‘OMG NERF ZERK’. Talking form personal experience, I’ve run a Condi Necro since launch: I’ve long stopped doing dungeons run with it, and nowadays I mostly run around in my WvW well build.
But during the battle of Lion’s Arch, I felt really satisfied against the three clocworks knights: I was using a build that I liked very much, and I was being useful!
I was about to cite one of GW2’s slogans at launch, but seeing as that usually creates bitter arguments out of nowhere( something that we don’t want in this thread), I will say this instead: GW2 has tons and tons of traits, stats and whatnot, and it’s a shame that most of them are rather useless as of today. We would have to rebuild PvE from scratch to make most of them viable, but raids could be used to put a ‘band-aid’ on that: the LS fights have shown us that ANET can do it, by creating bosses that, while not shaking up the system, give every player an occasion to shine.

Some practical examples:
-Make some very mobile bosses: if Chotorrak, the skritt on crack doesn’t stop for a second, that puts the players with Condi builds and ranged weapons at an advantage.
-On the other hand, in the next room there is The very big earth elemental: stacking is a rather efficient tactics here, but the boss has an attack that throws boulders on top of each player, resulting in disastrous results for the stacked players. This can be avoided, though, if a couple of tank-ish players stands on the near dais, as a number of adds swarm them.
-And you could always recycle some of the boss from the LS. We get to replay awesome content, you save money and man-power
-In short: give different builds a time to shine, while encouraging players to be fluid and flexible in about them.

Continue in the next post….

Thanks everyone.

I’ll try both Guardian and Ele and see which one I’m more comfortable with.
Just to be sure, the Ele meta build is this one?
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYnMISLDWABmNAfEIQAQI9M8gAHGdTYqOA-ThRBABXt/o8DP9E5dCAA4BBQp6PmpEUMA6B-e

Good day everyone.

As per the title, I would like your opinion on which class I should run in dungeons between Necro, Guardian and Ele.

After almost two years, I started running dungeons with my Necro (in zerk obviously) because I need the money for my legendary. :P
I followed the guide posted on Dulfy and, while my damage was okay, I didn’t feel I contributed in anything else for the group.

Motivated by the might stacking and the FGS sharing, I decided to roll an Ele. RL reasons have kept me from playing GW2 and leveling him, so now I come back and FGS has been nerfed. Should I level it to 80 and still run Ele in dungeons? Are they still a desirable class?

Also, I have a guardian at level 80, but didn’t really bother with it much. Should I use it instead to run dungeons?

Ok, thanks! Didn’t know that Ranger’s sixth bonus triggered on minipets.
It’s time for Mini-Liadri to get some screen time!

Hm, I see about the hybrid problem.
Last question: if I’m not confident enough with zerker builds, should I jump straight in Scholar runes or I should stick with Ruby Orbs until I practiced?

Thanks for the guide Spoj! I haven’t done dungeons in some time, and now that I have time I may start running them gain with the Dagger Build.

Just a question: thoughts on Hybrid builds?

Wow, thanks everyone! I’ll start to study everything as soon as possible.
In particular, I never tought about the whole “letting people die slowly” thing!

So, I mustered my courage and posted here. I always seen a lot of animosity in this forum, and with the reward tracks added now it seems to have gotten worse. Still, I won’t learn much if I don’t ask questions to those more experienced and knowledgeable than me.

I’ve been doing WvW a lot in the last months, so I’m not completely clueless, but in PvP I’m still at the level “Can’t tell apart the clones from the Mesmer 40% of the times”.

Questions!
1)Some advice on when to stomp? Never? I usually just keep whacking people until they die, but I’ve stomped some times when I were positive they used their down-state CC. Is it ok, or hitting with normal attacks is always optimal?

2)I gathered that running around capping points is not something to do, but you should stay there to guard those points. Is this right? I’ve done some matches, both in Hotjoin and now on Solo queque (had much more fun here), and I’ve seen both guarded cap points and matches where people were running around most of the times.

3)Some general guidelines on builds: I played Necro since dayone, and stubbornly playing Condi in PvE since then (I just don’t do dungeons anymore :P), so I’d feel more comfortable playing condi in PvP too. From what I’ve read, it’s okay here,no? Do I also have to pack on boon stripping and such (Now I’m using Corrupt Boon,Curses XIII, and Sigil of Nullfification)?

So here there are. Hope someone might help me.

Please don’t eat me

Spoj The Second.7680:

Condi, power, precision. Basically what rampager should be. With this you open up the possibility of 1 condi spec being included in optimized pve groups.

This so much!

RlyOsim.2497:

ascii wellomancer build:

I second this, been playing it for some months, usually with my guild group of 15-25 guildies: it really does pack a punch and is a blast to play

I agree that it’s kind of a pain to put together tough: Melandrus are expensive, lemongrass is too, and you’ll have to do guild missions, dailies and fractal like crazy to put those cavalier trinkets together.

I usually use an Omnomberry Compote instead of Lemongrass (cheaper, and usually that much -condition duration feels kind of an overkill to me), and you could use berseker’s weapon if you got them lying around until you get assasin’s. Seeing that the important with the build is to get that 50% crit, the ferocity change shouldn’t impact the build much, too.
Also, I usually switch around that Well of Power for Signet of the locust, Spectral walk and Spectral wall.

Well, in the condi phase they could have done something like this instead of damage reduction a “Reflect 50% of incoming direct damage. Reflect 1% less for every condition on the Knight”

Would also have helped with symmetry :P

Bunda, I’m sorry that your thread got derailed from the first response

Also, what he said. I’m not very experienced with the TP, but a lot of money can be done as soon as the patch launch (i.e. Iron conversion on the Attack on Lions Arch’ Patch)

As per the title, when Destiny’s Edge 2.0 was all “let’s get out of here!”, I turned around to check Scarlet’s computers and say goodnight to the sweet princess.

There are 3 or 4 interactive consoles behind Scarlet and one of them was particularly interesting: it appears that Scarlet was not trying to sap the leyline powers, but actually to “Disrupt” them (sorry, don’t have the whole text on hand ).

So, we now know that she managed to wake up an Elder Dragon, but personally the way she did it was not what I thought it would be. I mean, I thought that she would “derail” them to feed Mordremoth, not to break them and make all the magic shoot everywhere :/

So, what consequences this could have( big angry dragons aside)? Can this give some clues as to what connections there are exactly between leylines and Elder Dragons?
PS: It seems that we will see the aftermath of the LS after this patch, 2 weeks from now. I went to the Pale Tree (Sylvary Character), but she only said the same things they added on the last patches

“…And I’m Kormir.”
Priceless XD
And that pic of Kiel laughing is beyond creepy.

Ah, the Blood Traitline. One of my favorites, and one I absolutely agree needs some work. While I think is usually a little underrated (I usually run 25 Blood in WvW and 20 Blood in my PVE condi build), I know it needs a lot of work.

Some trait, for example, are good on paper but just have horrible scaling/values, but some have to be completely removed (Did someone ever use Quickening Thirst ?).

Oooh, didn’t read the forums for some time, so I didn’t saw this thread. Nice Idea ^.^
I’ll get to vote immediately (even if I don’t use the Spite line that much anymore…)

How can it be implemented
I know that adding so much text to the game in shot, while less resource heavy than adding animations(I think? <.<), so I propose this: with an upcoming living story you could introduce the journal and some Entries linked to the current living story and some generic ones. Then, aided also by the bi-weekly releases, you could continue to add more entries little by little: it would also make sense lore wise, with entries written about past event( like a recap of the Flame and Frost events, an article on Karka anatomy, an order of Whisper secret file on Scarlet, a Priory research on Steam creatures et cetera).
PS: Bonus if you could make our characters say “UPDATED MY JOURNAL” :P (Kudos to who gets the quote )

What wil this accomplish?
I am, like a lot of other people, a completionist. I love to explore all the nooks and crannies of maps, to read all the books i could find in Skyrim, to fill to 100% the bestiary in Final Fantasy XII, and so on…
While this Journal would not have any practical advantage in terms of power, I think it would give players something to works towards, and also give players and incentive to explore the beatiful world of GW2. It should also be relatively light resource wise, and give a mean to tell and expand on the interesting Lore of the game (and also to incorporate in the game the lore articles on the site in a lore-friendly fashion, as it has already been suggested by other peoples).

Cheers
Signed by an happy customer and Sylvari Necro

First things firsts: I have great hopes that this CDI will improve on an alredy great game

So, I’ve been following this discussion for a couple of days, and i think this has not been already said (tough it was suggested more than one times on the forums).

The Journal

What is it?
Basically, an ingame object that will store a number of information, article, lore bits and mob information found in the game like a treasure hunt of sorts.

How will it work?
You could fill this journal by various means: like with talking to NPCs, doing specific meta events, killing a number of a certain type of mobs, doing activities, jumping puzzles, vanquishing areas(If it will be added in some manner in the game ), arriving in certains places, doing personal or living story and the like.
For example: By talking with a certain NPC in Rata Sum, he could give you the latest edition of the “College of Dynamics gazzette” , where there is an article about toymaker Tixx that will be stored in your journal; or if you kill, say, 500 centaurs, you will gain a journal entry wich talks about theyre culture, and an higher number of kills may gain you a model wiewer of that type of enemies(or even some of the concept arts for centaurs). Or, by visiting the top of the Vizier Tower in Orr, you would gain a story of the fell of Orr(Maybe togheter with that creepy Abbadon mural :P)Harder content may yeld as a reward more particular Journal entries, like some for clearing Fractal level something, killing Teq, and doing Guild Missions.

(Continues in post 2)

1) Condition Cap and Condition in general: As a Condi Necro since release, I have problems in World events and Dungeon. I think that working on a way to improve its cap and scaling would go a long way to make a lot more playstyles viables.
2)Reward vs Risk (FoTM): Already been talked about extensively and more in depth in previous posts. If I had to narrow it to something more specific, it would have to be Fractal: I love it, but the time investement that you have to put into it is not worth it by a large margin Also we’re getting new fractals this year: keep them coming tough Even 1 every 3 months will help the variety of Fractals
3)Better Lore Implementation: GW has such a fascinating Lore, but I feel is not used to its full potential.
Last but not Least: Thanks ANET for the awesome game that is GW2. But there is still a lot to improve, and I’m confident that this is a step in the right drection

Signed,
An hopeful Sylvari Necro <3

First, very useful thread, thanks

So, I use a condition Necro: Some advice to contribute to the fight?
I watched the Blackgate video and I’m about to watch the Deso one: I’ve seen that for the people in the DPS Zerg condition cleansing is important, so I figured that using well of power would help. Tough I see a couple of problems whit that: first, being condi specced, I can’t really contribute meaningfully to the damage, and second I’m afraid that the darkness combo field will get in the way of more important field(like water). The rezz signet is not very good, also: long casting time, ress only 3 people and "A downed, poisoned player with less than 30% health will not be revived(from the wiki) :/
So, should I focus on protecting the turrets? I can do nice AoE damage, and well of darkness/spectral wall/CC would be useful to figth mobs and keeping them away from turrets and batteries. I do barely damage to the fingers, tough
So am I missing something? How can I help my server to beat Taco?

Congratulation guys!

From the Pre-Ascended crafting blog:
“Since all weapons, armor, and trinkets with magic find will become account bound, any of these items currently on the Trading Post will be return to the poster.”

So my guess is that the few Immobulus that were on the TP were returned to theyr owners (previously the Immobulus had Explorer stat, now Assassin) and no one relisted them yet.

Thanks a lot for the lists Mistro!

Thanks everyone
I originally switched from Carrion to Rabid Months ago, but after going back to read some of your post, Arachnid, I’ve decided to give Carrion another chance
I’m going to go find ome carrion gear and Krait and Afflicted Runes and see how it goes.

No one can help me?

First, English is not my first language, so bear me with( and my grammatical errors :P)
I’ve returned from a month-long hiatus from GW2, and I’m searching for some help on making my condi build up to date. I used to run a 0/30/20/20/0 build for some well-team support and still sustained AoE damage, with full rabid an undead runes. Seeing the new trait and abilities I could use the trait point for well cooldown reduction elsewhere ( because they got theyre cooldown reduced), and use a terror build for WvW. I’m not sure of what to use for PvE tough: does terror inflict damage at enemies with defiant(never used a terror build if not in PvP)? If that isn’t the case, what could I use? Signet? Keep wells? I’d be very thankful if you could help me

I’ve found that at high(30+) fractal level, the svanir and wolves in the woods before the boss actually drop something decent, such as rares T5 and T6 mats. It also helps that they are clustered together so AoE can quickly kill them. When I PUG tough people say that it’s not worth clearing them and run straigth to the boss. So here’s my question: Is it just me that find theyre loot’s not-so-bad? Or do you think that the time investment it’s not worth the loot gained?
P.S.: Sorry for any grammatical errors, English is not my main language

Has someone found a recipe tath uses the Heart of Darkness trophy?