Guild Wars 2

As you say it’s indeed personal preference. Ranger or perhaps necro but you didn’t mention them specifically. I’d say consider making a new guardian or the elementalist. Think a bit about what theme you feel fits you the most, what armor types you like etc.

To help you along. Close your eyes, imagine you are facing countless enemies. It’s the calm before the storm, all your friends are in peril, hope is lost. The hour of men is taking it’s last breath. This is the last stand of all that was and all that will ever be. You hear rattling weapons, death and destruction is on your doorstep. People around you are starting to scream and panic. Soldiers are abandoning their post just to see their families one last time. As you hear the dragons roar in the skies above the black army of doom heading toward you, you open your eyes. They are burning in rage. All you are, all you have ever done has led you to this point. This is your story, this is your fight. Who are you? Do you rush in with your sword, are you like Conan the great warrior (CROM COUNT THE DEAD). Do you ready your bow, say a prayer and shoot an arrow between the eyes of the closest enemy (think Legolas meet the sniper in saving private ryan) or are you like Gandalf, opening the skies and rain down meteors and thunderstorms over the closing armies?

I might have gotten carried a way a bit.

I agree. I’m a min-maxer type of player myself so the difficulty or gear requirement etc isn’t a horrible problem for me personally. Even if you like raids being somewhat exclusive; it doesn’t change the fact that they have taken this game in a different direction now. You should be able to make a top notch group and get great rewards, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be accessible for a larger audience in my opinion.

Instead of having the discussion “it’s too hard” vs “it’s great that it is hard” I think we should all agree that these things shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. It’s almost 2016, we have people making jet packs and robot pets, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be possible to make it enjoyable, and possible to participate in, no matter what class or spec you want to spend your time on – and whether you like hard content or just a good challenge with friends.

I’m wondering if that is correct and what GW2 is picking up.
In the Razor GUI you can build e.g. Mouse 5 to “press” 1,2,3 with e.g. 1 second intervals.

I would suspect that GW2 only picks up the information that 1-2-3 are pressed in this case, and it won’t notice any difference whether it comes from a macro or you actually physically press 1-2-3.

So it’s not one macro that enable all facets, it’s 1 macro which click 1-2-3 and therein lies the difference.

All games are against macros, 3rd party enhancement programs etc, however I have yet to ever meet someone that was banned from using the Razor macro tool in any game.

I like them but personally I feel the fire overload is a bit out of place when I’m playing with a staff. Instead of spinning around in melee I’d prefer some sort of long range super meteor or some other fiery bad kitten thing that comes crashing down.

I hope the mastery system will get some improvements and cool additions with time, it surely sucks when it gates content/places for you but as a principle I think the mastery system is great. Right now it might not be super exciting – but now when the system is in place, there are endless possibilities for the future to add cool things. Personally I don’t see why people don’t approve!

Yes! It has its problems but in the end most games do. Some things will change for the better over time, some might for the worse, in any case I love the game in general so I’m going to buy it!

I hope you get your mats back or can get it credited towards Sunrise. You are not the first stepping into this which makes me believe ANet should make it more obvious.

They have communicated it but at one point they should make an effort to “foolproof” it more, since it’s painful experience for several people.

It get’s better. In the beginning I felt pretty frustrated as well, places gated by mastery, you don’t know whats up or down in the zone, mobs are tougher and running around exploring in your own pace often ends up with smashing your face into a group event, you die and can’t WP to any place in reasonable distance.

That being said, after a while when you understand it all, know the events, have the masteries, know where the HPs are and how to get there – even if you can’t solo them always you can get there within reasonable time if someone ask in map chat – the new zones become much nicer even if you are super casual. On my first toon I had a terrible time in the new zones, but now on my third I’m having fun and I don’t mind them.

I’d like if we also could have new, fun and improved ways of doing DPS!

I’d like CA to follow the weapon, so for raids you can have a staff => CA is like today with healing/support things.

If you are doing dungeons, fractals or open world and use e.g. a power based LB build, the CA should turn into some celestial being of doom, think boomkin from WoW, Lunar fall, stars falling and carpet bombing a big area etc etc. Of course you won’t build AF so fast, but when you finally do get into that CA – for the limited time it lasts – things be melting

Honestly I haven’t had too much problems myself although there are so many people running around that no matter what I seem to do – I never end up doing them solo it seems. I have some friends though that just want to run around on their own and explore solo and I know they are having some issues. I think they could have balanced it a bit better in the sense that people who prefer solo play could find some more enjoyment and at the same time there could be hard events which people needs to team up for. I absolutely cannot understand people with the attitude “gtfo the zone if you think it’s too hard”, which quite a few have been saying. It’s an expansion everyone has paid for so it should be a grand effort from ArenaNet to make sure everyone has lots they can enjoy, no matter which playstyle they prefer.

Mastery system I agree needs a review and should be more based on “I’m doing this thing and I become better at it” not “I’m doing CoE and become better at a totally different thing”. Like for example you find and click 50 bouncing mushrooms, you understand how they work and can start using them, or whatever, but at least related to the thing you want to “master”.

I never thought I’d say this but I find the hammer to be amazing, heh.

I had a huge problem with finding a main as well there was just something that didn’t click with everything I tried.. Closest I came was Ranger but it was more because it felt and looked awesome rather than being an awesome profession, I realized at one point. Then I tried Revenant – people can say what they want, but I absolutely love it. If I hadn’t found it i’ll probably give up the game at one point. Doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you but you should giev it a go, play a few zones, try some different weapons

Yeah I noticed the same, if the mob is close to a wall etc it can bug. Doesn’t seem to be every time though. Yesterday it bugged me into having permanent mistform.

He is in his laboratory deep underground cooking up nerfs

DarkWasp.7291:

On my Ranger, I have logged 3,707 hours. I started using sword since launch, even before the meta builds formed. I still use it, it is my MAIN weapon receiving more focus, priority and dedication than any other weapon in the game on any class.

I still disagree with how it works.

It does have one advantage, and I kind of agree with the OP on this. It FEELS powerful, aggressive and when in some situations even satisfying. However, here comes a massive list of bullet points of where it falls short.

PvE (This is my main game. I’ve Rangered through exploration, farms, story, LS2 challenges, Liadri, Fractals, Dungeon Master, Dungeoneer, solo holding SW forts .etc)

• Aside from the Lyssa boss in Malchor’s Leap, I can’t think of any other case where the sword’s leap/chase was of any advantage in PvE over free movement.

• Whenever I need to type something to the party during melee in a casual fractal, my attacking stops because of the need to have auto-attack off.

• Turning off auto-attack is nowhere near flawless in preventing accidents. Two days ago a party member or two heavy-bursted an enemy dead on a platform a split second before I had the chance to not-press 1 again.

• The free movement of the greatsword feels better than sword overall. Shame it doesn’t do much damage.

• Any weapon that relies heavily on the ESC key, I cannot suggest. ESC’s cancel functionality cannot be rebound to a more convenient key.

• Skills 2 and 3 are very nice, but they have a relatively high failure rate. In PvE there are even some cases (Tequatl for example) where their evasion is completely ignored by attacks that still can’t hit regular old dodge rolls.

• Sword AA will always “push” an aggroed enemy back. This can greatly annoy your party. There’s nothing you can do to stop it because enemies tend to back away from point blank attackers. Unlike with other melee weapons, sword does not have the option to stand back and keep swinging.

• Ironically the sword can still be annoying in stacks because you can’t position yourself inside the enemy like everyone else.

• You can’t take advantage of using your camera angle in addition to untargetted swinging when surrounded by mobs. If you do this, you will leap away. That’s often undesired.

• Any competent player can chase a target they crippled. They don’t even need the leaps to help them.

PvP (I’m not an expert here, but I have experience. I am Tiger rank. 99% of my PvP experience is on Ranger. I almost always win in 1v1 scenarios against other Rangers.)

• Sometimes the sword is great, sometimes it isn’t. I found that early on, it helped me chase foes a lot, but not quite as much anymore. In certain fights against enemies with teleports or wide movements, I can even get thrown off. If they don’t have minions, teammates or clones for me to swing at then the sword AA won’t even help me leap at them in that case.

• In contrast, I have no problem chasing with the greatsword.

• My best sword moments usually accompanied point tanking condi builds where skills 2 and 3 were part of the evasion-tanking and the AA was only really used to help slam fools who stuck around. The chasing intention of it was pretty much ignored.

In conclusion: I’m not a top level PvP player, but I do quite well in PvE. If anything, the sword’s AA functionality has no place in PvE. I can see a few good uses in PvP, but I can also see enemies learning how to turn it against us if builds including it became too popular.

I suffer through it because I love Ranger and I love swords. I still dream of a brighter future for this otherwise wonderful weapon.

I think this is good feedback, I hope it’s on the dev’s radar.

Simply all the discussions and posts like this regarding the sword over the last years should warrant the devs looking into it imho. Even if some people do well with it doesn’t mean it has a good design and shouldn’t be looked into.

Hi Silent,
Thanks for the amazing effort!

I hope you dont mind me asking you a few questions:
I’m struggeling with choosing between your 2.0, 2.5 and Berserker 3.0 build.

I usually play with a small groups of friends and we are more the exploring-lets-have-fun kind of bunch and do not spend most our time in dungeons etc.

What build would you suggest – can you point me in the right direction?

Also on a sidenote: what armor do you have? It looks really cool

Thanks.

Unspecified.9142:

There’s too many problems with a ranger condition build that people seem to consistently ignore.

1) Shortbow only bleeds on flanking. This is fine in lower level PvE where enemies actually care about your pet. Once you get to Orr the AI seems to actually understand you get an advantage hitting them in the back and they are NOT okay with it.

2) Traps are necessary for a condition damage build to really shine. That means 30 points in Skirmishing which prevents you from ever really maximizing your conditions which requires wilderness survival and marksman.

3) Bleed/Burning/Poison caps. This is a huge deal. Especially running 2 rangers that should both be able to maintain near 100% burning uptime in a condition build alone. That means with 2 people you have too much burning and it’s just wasted DPS.

I used a condition build right up to around level 75 and then switched to power/precision/Crit% and haven’t looked back. Shortbow can easily get up to ~400 regular hits and ~800 crits which at a fire rate of 2.2 attacks per second is pretty freaking awesome. I still use traps but mostly for the utility they bring (e.g. CC, AoE tagging, poison to hurt healing).

What trait set up are you using?
I was planning the same as I am fed up with relying on conditions from my time as a Necromancer. Specially the bleed cap is a horrible annoyance.

I am afraid of being to squishy, so I guess I need to invest quite some points into thoughness or health. (perhaps if I get thoughness from traits, then focus on vitality from gear and v.v.)

Yeah – I really hoped it would be better than this.
I got mine right before my GF: She worked so hard for it, she hates PvP and the WvW stuff was such a challenge for her (and her pc).

When I opened the reward chest I had to leave the room so she wouldnt see the dissapointment in my eyes!

I wish I could get myself to use Longbows to be honest.
They look so cool on my Sylvari and all that, unfortunately they are not so good compared to Shortbows. I also tend to get bored watching the Longbow (1), put on some fast music and run around with the Shortbow ftw.

It’s like comparing a camping sniper in COD vs Quake :P

That being said, it’s such a shame they made a joke out of the Shortbow skin =/

I’ve been playing more on my Ranger lately and it has been really fun.
I think I am at the stage where I doubt I will be going back to my Necromancer…

Nice video, I thought it was funny

I would LOVE to have mounts in the game.
Lvl80 only and not for PvP.

I found farm those mounts to the end of time.
Now I usually use waypoints as much as I can, with some epic looking mounts I would be much more inclined to run around the world. (=come across more events/people that need help etc etc.)

For all I care they wouldnt have to give it such a huge movement speed bonus either, just a bit faster then running at least.

It is impossible for them to no be aware, I think.

I would imagine it takes some time for them to determine the best course of action – test things etc, as the work needed on Necromancer is much more then just tuning numbers and percentages.

I love the quest system but I think OP has a point, indeed.
In some/most quests you will not have a problem but there are a few that takes really long time due to the lack of mobs/lootable items etc.

The swamp is indeed a good example, and another one that annoyed me was that Kessex hills quest where you have to find fallen Seraph badges etc.

I totally agree.
The 25 stack limitation must go!

As a Necromancer your damage is already bad enough – having this issue on top of it…

Yeah, even though I want to try other builds etc I always end up going back to my scepter. The condition scepter/dagger feels way much stronger then the other builds at the moment – which is a shame.

I tried some power build and it was almost ok (very good with lich form) but it just wasnt worth it in the end.

I’m getting tired of the scepter casting animation and I havent found any cool looking scepters yet

Hi,

I agree with many of your statements but in regards to sPvP I don’t think it’s all that bad. (I can’t speak for tPvP – perhaps there are just much better players there.

In any case I played a while and wrote down the outcome of 1v1’s (r20).
Obviously this doesn’t prove anything, but just for fun:

Scope:
I only counted if both players started with 100% HP.
I only counted if the match went uninterrupted by other players.
First one to get downed lost.

Engineer: 4 wins and 2 loss.
Thief: 2 wins 3 loss.
Mesmer: 4 wins 2 loss.
Warrior: 2 wins 2 loss.
Ranger 1 Win 2 loss.
Elementalist: 4 wins 0 loss.
Guardian: 1 win 1 loss.

As I said it doesn’t really say anything at all, but I’m an ‘average joe’ and these are other ‘average joe’s’ I meet in my sPvP. Of course in some fights I got absolutely murdered (the Warrior and Mesmer losses mainly), but I also won some with good margin.

Even though the numbers above is a joke to draw some analyze from, they do reflect the feeling I have after playing Necromancer up to r20: Sometimes you get hammered, but more often than not you can have a nice fight that can go both ways – and even though I wish we were stronger, I don’t feel we are utterly worthless like many others seems to think.

Finding ‘fair’ 1v1’s in sPvP was quite difficult though, seeing that noone wants to defend anything and everyone is roaming.

In that regard one of the most annoying things was that by the time you could secure the kill on your opponent – chances are that you have already been swarmed by 3 mesmers, 2 theives and a ranger with a rabid boar.

Also the fact that you have to make sure you get all your spells off good and at the same time be skilled at doding stuff, as some things just wreck you, whereas others just focus on getting you in a stun/postion or whatever and press 1 button to break you.

Survivability wise I pass my Thief/Elementalist/Ranger by a long shot, except for defensive traited staff Elementalist which basically needs to be raided.

I love them, specially if done together with friends where you can make a bit of fun.

Best tips:
- Disable double tap to thumble.
- Try the easiest solution first.

(Sometimes they actually are just up that ramp and not some Indiana Jones puzzle.)

iRonin.6940:

Action shot of mine

V——V

What armor is this? It looks pretty cool.

Well Necromancers looks cool at least
I made a big male Norn – figured it would look cool with the gear (hope they didnt just make the greatswords look cool!).

The woman next to me is a Necromancer as well, also looked very nice

I mainly use it as a survivability tool to be honest, but I think the skills there are ok.
To be honest I wish I could have a build that centered around massive DS damage.

So when you are in a boss fight the goal is to get as much life force you can ASAP, then to DS and use the attack there are as a ‘nuke’ with massive single target damage or AoE damage.

The ‘1’ in DS seems so weak always. Too bad because I look awsome in DS!

Maybe I’m only playing noobs (rank19) but I think Necromancer is ok-ish in PvP.
We don’t have much OP stuff and some skills from the other professions can be tricky to deal with – however I feel most of the time that I stand a chance in 1v1 situations.

I’ve tried most of the classes and besides Thief I feel I do the best with the Necromancer, to be honest. I am not afraid of 1v1 scenarios and I often come out on top. I can survive for quite some time, even 1v2 until help come (sometimes at least )

Calling us broken is taking it a bit to far, friend!
I’m sorry you do not enjoy your Necromancer!

Btw I saw a post here that pointed out a lot of bugs, specially related to condition boosters from traits. When it get’s fixed we should be in an even better place!

I am struggeling more in PvE to find a specc that I like. I have played Scepter/Dagger most of the time and it works great. I mean its really good PvE wise, but I feel it gets a bit boring waiving that scepter around all the time like I am meleeing stuff.

I want to use the staff because it looks cool, but I do not want to use mionions!

edit: I will agree that our traits are a bit weak and does not seem so refined as others. With other classes I was happy to reach the 5/10/15 etc and choose something new and cool etc but now I have the feeling its ‘meh’ and trying to find the thing that suck the least.

It is way too spammable to do this kind of damage.
I run elementalist/necromancer, on the necromancer I have alot of HP and thoughness, however I frequently see HS doing 12-14, up to 17K damage on as low as 3 hits.

OK – I get that it can be dodged and whatnot, in any case it is way to much compared to other skills/other professions.

Pistol whip also does crazy damage but there you stand still at least when it ‘channels’, so it takes more skill/can be dodged easier. Heartseeker cling to you like some bad disease.

I enjoy them being hard – I hope they do not nerf them to badly
That being said though, it would be cool to get something nice in return for the time spent! (first time is ok for story, but after that we need some more incentive to go back!)

Thanks for the video some extra awareness always helps.
That being said I really do hope heartseeker will be nerfed soon =)
I run 1.7k+ thoughness and still I’ve been hit for 17k damage from 3 HS hits.

It’s just way too much damage for a skill that is so spammable (and teleports you to the target).
Something in the lines of flat damage reduction or reduced damage for following heartseekers on the same target would be nice!

My friends and I have often had the same issue with respawn rates. It leaves very little room for kiting and can lead to situations where you have to just decide to be hit or pull in more mobs. I have noticed this in every zone / cave / whatever so far so it seems the general respawn rate is just to quick.

Yesterday we fought a champion Ettin up in the 25-40(?) Norn zone, before this champion there was 2 veteran ettins. We were a bit on the low end of people fighting it but the veteran ettins (and some smaller ones outside) respawned like 4 times during the champion fight.