Guild Wars 2

Lily.1935:

DrPhillGood.2598:

The staff takes on the look of a scythe when you use it.

ON a further note. Lily, you make a good argument and i everything makes total sense. They seem to compare to “vampires” in your idea of them. Using references to GW1 also makes your argument more viable than others. I think there are just many ways people look at necros.
Im one of those people that see them as overlords that spawn hellish creatures to fight. Thus “hellish” bringing in the fire element i guess. I cant really think of a better way to explain it at the moment

yski.7642:

Lily, aren’t you forgetting the whole evil fire thingy? Like.. green flames? Or flames from some fiery abys? Burning demons?

It’s not what we’re used to when it comes to necromancers, but with Dhuumfire added we already have fire, so why not? Besides, ever looked at the skill “Hexer’s Vigor” from gw1?

I admit, there are plenty of other interesting things to choose from, but I like the sound of “melee cleave weapon” and “mainhand torch” in the same sentence.. Use your imagination and tell me that doesn’t have potential!

EDIT: Ninja’d with the whole “fire works too!” argument

To answer both of you at the same time, I’m against the necromancer using fire in any way. I’m big into the lore and it grinds my teeth to see dhuumfire added to the necromancer. But I’ve beaten that topic to death.

Hexer’s vigor? I don’t see what that skill has to do with anything. It was pretty terrible. Unless you are saying there is fire in the art. If that’s the case, I don’t see any fire.

hopefully we will see an expansion that will add new weapons to the game and some new skills to expand all the professions. It would be nice to see that.

I, too, firmly believe the Necromancer’s niche is about ice, chills, and death.

That does not, however, preclude fire.

I really like the idea of a torch that glows green or blue with ethereal light, and I really like the idea of it being able to be either mainhand or offhand. It’s also a great way to expand our condition repertoire and give us much-needed things like a cleave.

Torch (Main-Hand or Off-Hand weapon)

1. 1 Flare (1)

Swipe the target and one additional nearby foe with your torch.

Does damage to two targets.

Eerie Blaze (2)

Catch your foe by surprise with a sudden burst from your torch.

Hits your target for more damage than (1)

Seal Fate (3)

Strike the foe a final time, and ignite their very misery. If they have 2 or more conditions on them, they burn for a short time.

1. 2 Spectral Fire

Places a Mark of Flame at the target location that burns foes that cross it and shrouds you in a protective sheath of fire.

Burning (8s)
Protection (4s)
Recharge: 35 seconds

1. 3 Entrancing Light

Watch the pretty fire, don’t take your eyes off it.

You weave your torch back and forth in mesmerizing patterns, captivating nearby enemies. Foes in the radius are Dazed, and if they are still within the area after a short time, they become Confused.

Damage: 900
Range: 600
Daze (2s)
Confusion 4 (6s) [if in range after 5 seconds]
Recharge: 25s

1. 4 Coldflame

Fire need not be hot to burn you.

Ignites the target foe and any foe within 700 range. If the condition is cleansed, or when it expires, the burning turns to Chilled.

Burning (6s)
Chilled (3s)

Recharge: 15 or 20s

1. 5 Light the Way

You raise your torch and cast an eerie light past the ever-thin veil of death. Living foes find it easier to cling to life, and dead ones find the way back less treacherous.

Grants regeneration to allies and revives one downed ally within 900 range. If more than one downed ally is within the area of effect, the effect is split between them, up to three. (So it will revive one, half-revive two, or one-third revive three.)

Damage: 600
Regeneration (15s)
Split revive
Recharge: kitten

New trait

Ethereal Guide (Soul Reaping or Death Magic master trait)

Light the Way no longer splits its revival, instead affecting each target as if it were the only one present. However, the cooldown is increased.

Obviously these are just rough drafts, and the values are purely conjectural, but I like the base ideas here.

I welcome feedback from anyone with something to add to them, or to change.

Edit: It won’t let me put “# 1”, etc. It just gives me an indent and then a 1, no matter what the number was.

Edit 2: Also, why does a 45 seconds recharge for the last skill autocorrect to “kitten”?

Hundred Blades doesn’t hit for 19k unless the warrior is stacking serious crit chance/crit damage and has might on him/vulnerability on you. It also roots him, and if he Frenzies to get it off faster, enjoy the free +50% damage for 6-8 seconds, depending on traits.

Glass cannon warriors are easy to dodge and easy to kill. I can’t stand playing one, myself.

A 6.5k Eviscerate as a defensive warrior is flat out wrong, my Eviscerate crits hit for ~3.5k-4k geared, gemmed, and specced fully offensively, even with buffs up. Playing a more balanced build like I usually do (30 Defense/20 Arms/20 Discipline) with Hammer/ Axe+Shield, I can get on average 10 stacks of might on myself, and only hit for around 3k on the Eviscerate.

I have no advice to give you on avoiding Thief lolspam, but HS got nerfed, so that might help a little. Still doesn’t alleviate Pistol Whip, though (I get hit for ~9k through heavy armor and 3.4k toughness with that -.-).

If you’re going to post facts, at least post correct ones.

Also, he got hit by Pulverize, meaning he had at least 4 stacks of vulnerability (Warrior mace off-hand 4 skill, damage + 4 stacks of vuln).

Some of everything, though I’m more of a PvP kind of guy.

I don’t get the comparison to WoW warlocks. Warlocks in vanilla were crazily OP with no Fear DR. I should know, I mained one.

Elementalists can’t swap weapons. You’d know that if you bothered to play one at all, since it’s apparent even on level ones; hence, your evidence is either falsified or you are extraordinarily unobservant (not meant as an attack, just truth).

Attunement cooldowns are, in general, longer than weapon cooldowns.

The PvP Mesmer nerfs were needed; they had excellent control, and burst, and survivability through misdirection. Sorry, but it’s true.

So I’m considering making a necromancer, as the title informed you. My main is a warrior, and while I enjoy him, he feels a little… bland, for lack of a better word.

Necromancers, however, seem awesome, in terms of cool factor and skill-based playstyle. A major reason that I played the Warrior in GW2 is because I played the Warrior in WoW; the WoW warrior playstyle required not much skill to do decently, but a lot of skill to do well, with careful timing, situational awareness, and other such things paying off much more than with other classes.

However, the GW2 Warrior doesn’t really give me that feeling. I can run a Greatsword Frenzy build and oneshot idiots every 60 seconds (boring) but lose to any competent player (annoying) or I can be full support (alright, but boring). There’s not really an in-between. However, with what I’ve read about Necromancers, they seem very fun; managing Life Force/skillful use of Death Shroud, debuffing and controlling multiple targets, and the like sounds like a blast. I’m not really worried about class viability; I’m used to playing a somewhat UP class, and Necromancers sound like they have the potential to transcend their flaws in the hands of a good player.

However, before I invest several hundred hours into a character, I figured I should ask the community what they thought, so at last I ask my question:

Why do you play a Necro? What do you think of it? What do you like? What tips for quality of life do you have? What can I expect and what are my playstyle options?

Thanks in advance.

Something I noticed, though, is that you take Warrior’s Sprint in several of these builds. This trait has been empirically proven to not be functioning in PvP; it was reported in both Warrior bug threads.

Kudos. Several of these builds interest me ( I run something similar to the Teutonic Knight, usually) and all look viable. Welcome to the Warrior community.

30% crit damage is good, I agree, but it’s utterly useless without stacking crit chance, which mandates 30/30 Arms, something that typically doesn’t work for any Discipline build. Anytime you’re looking to put points into Discipline, at all, they’re misplaced, except maybe for leveling. Are you support? Why are you even considering Discipline past maybe adrenaline on shouts in the first place? If you’re DPS, are you maxed out in Strength? No? Max it. Yes? Are you maxed in Arms? No? Max it. If you’re maxed in both… those 10 points really do better in Defense for the survivability.

The only thing I found it even somewhat decent for was a Hammer/Mace+Shield build that revolved around control, 10/10/30/0/20. The faster swap was nice for alternating between defense and offensive control; this build, despite being offensively-minded, did next to no damage. It was a fooling-around fun build.

It’s our coolest, most versatile, most iconic tree, and it’s next to useless for serious play. This saddens me.

I agree with the majority of this post.

Having weapons balanced around certain traits irks me to no end and vastly reduces our versatility of playstyle. I really can’t stand sPvP because of this.

We lack uniqueness. Our stated flavors are fine, but they don’t come through well, or at all in many cases. Weapon Master? Too bad I can only use the Greatsword/Hammer/Double Mace/etc. cause that’s what I’m traited for. Oh, and my weapons swaps are identical to everyone else’s unless I put 15 points into a sub-optimal (though cool) trait line. Front-line soldier and commander? What? Our shouts could do this… but Guardians have them too, which they never should have. Theirs are also cooler. (Stand Your Ground! is a Warrior thing to say,kitten)

Our sole unique mechanics are either a boring throttling device (adrenaline/burst skills) or useless for everyone but heavy support builds (banners). This kind of sucks. I do like how the Strength line at least makes us interact with our endurance a little bit.

As it stands, I feel like the only real “Warrior-like” trait line is the Discipline one, which is well-designed, but the passive bonuses are just so terrible (especially when compared to Strength and Arms) that no DPS warrior could ever justify it, and the bonuses aren’t useful past the 10 point mark for any other build.

And it struck a chord that anything we can do, someone else (usually multiple someones) can do significantly better while also doing more on top of that. I can’t think of a single reason to bring a warrior over a Guardian, ever. It was this that made me finally quit WoW, and if it turns out this way it GW2, too, I have no idea what I’ll do. At least the other classes in WoW were at least mildly interesting.

shrug The tiger statue in my school library (our mascot is a tiger) is anatomically correct. I’ve grown used to seeing genitalia on statuary.

Wow, really? Gim.ped is censored? What’s the logic there, AN?

Also, to clarify, I don’t think warriors are broken, or even boring. I just think they’re not as engaging as they should be, and they lack class identity.

Edit: Earlier in this page, two things that I fully support were suggested. One would be to give us an extra weapon swap set, which I think would fit the class perfectly (I also feel the Disc 15 Fast Hands should also be baseline) and the other was for AN to take a second look at the class now that the game’s released. Since we’ve bled a significant part of our flavor to other classes, some tweaks and touch-ups in the class identity department are warranted.

Not that it matters, but I play a Hammer/Mace+Shield spec for sPvP. The damage is laughable even when gemmed and traited completely offensively, but I just can’t stand how the Greatsword plays, and I don’t feel that Axe/Axe damage is good enough to justify its squishiness. I like the way I can tank multiple people with my build; to me, a high-damage, high-durability class is what the warrior should be, with the ability to swap either offense or defense for heavy mobility by use of traits.

I’m not arguing against banners, or shouts. I like them, I think we should have more of them. But I do agree with the OP inasmuch as nothing of mine seems “warriory.” I think of warriors as the leaders in battle, the experienced front-line soldiers who cause mayhem and discord in enemy ranks because they’re just that good. They epitomize the concept of “weapon masters.” And I just don’t get that sense from the class or its abilities.

Guardians are just as masterful with their weapons as we are, and they also have better defenses, to boot; they can put out almost as much damage if specced offensively as we can in a Greatsword build, while being just as tanky as a Defense warrior. There’s something wrong with that.

The only thing I see that really says “master of weapons” to me is the Discipline trait tree, with the reduced cooldown and bonuses to weapon swapping. I think that’s a great concept, but I don’t think it should be a trait line, and it irks me that it’s in a trait line almost no one uses for anything. I include 30 Discipline in a lot of my builds because I think the 5/15/25 bonuses are some of the best we have, and there are good traits for every slot; but in doing so, I’m often kittening myself because of the fact that other trees, notably Strength and Arms, just offer passive bonuses that are so much better it’s not even worth bothering.

I want to feel like a Warrior when I play a Warrior. I want simplistic complexities of play, where it’s easy to learn but difficult to master, and I want there to be a meaningful reward for mastering it.

Someone mentioned that the simple things like dodges affect us the most. That’s true, but only in a negative sense. We’re the most punished by missing a dodge, which is fine, but that means that executing a well-timed dodge should benefit us the most, as well. We shouldn’t have to put 20 or 30 points into a trait tree just to make our weapon choice useful; traits should enhance our weapon choices by making them do something interesting, not just increase damage and decrease recharge, in a way that we’re balanced around already. Traits don’t make our weapon of choice better; they bring it up to par.

The class has good bones. Its concept is excellent, and elegantly simple. It focuses, in theory, around weapons and maneuverability, being inherently tanky and powerful; trait allocations, theoretically, involve our weapon choices to make them even better and allow us to shift the focus from a balance of defense and damage, more toward one of the three extremes: defense, damage, and mobility.

The problem lies in the execution. I don’t feel like a warrior right now. I feel like a kittened Guardian. And something is wrong with that.

Enigma.8461:

I love the comparison to WoW warriors, I suppose Charge, Hamstring, spam Mortal strike is way more complex than knockdowns, timed jumps and directional combat and support utility.

Warrior is amazing, I cannot get enough of mine.

People compare WoW warriors to GW2 warriors because they required a lot of complexity. You can’t just list the basic rotation of MS, hamstring, and Overpower and say “look they’re just as simple.” You have to take into account Heroic Leap, clutch Spell Reflect timing, effective use of Disarm and Intimidating Shout, reverse-kiting with Piercing Howl, and any number of other factors that require skill to manage. I love the warrior archetype, but the real reason I main a warrior in WoW is because I enjoy the feeling that I have a lot of abilities that are situationally useful, and I can increase my own skill when learning how to use them all.

What “skill” is involved with a GW2 warrior? Dodges? Every class, especially melee, has to master those. When to pop Frenzy? Please. It feels bland and uninteresting because it boils down to “wait until they’re vulnerable and then wreck them” if you play our most viable, and also most boring, build.

I like Hammer and Mace-Shield. You can spec fairly offensively (I use 30/10/30/0/0 or 30/0/30/0/10 most times) while having a remarkably controlling and tanky setup. I also like Sword+Warhorn/Longbow, but that’s more of a WvW build.

I rather like the 30/30/0/0/10 Axe+sword/Rifle Bleed build, but I’m finding it a little hard to get used to.

They don’t. Nor do they trigger or obey the cooldown; if Defy Pain procs, you can chain normal Ignore Pain right after it. But the only reason that most people use these traits is to free up a skill slot, and use something else.

Defy Pain and Last Stand are also currently not working, and Shrug it Off is finicky.

pharazonic.8694:

@MolotovkittentailParty: Nope.
It’s not British vs. American pronunciation; click on the US flag:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/quay
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/centaur

(I was wrong about “golem” though).

You can see the second pronunciation on quay is “kay,” which over time developed a w sound in the middle of it. The common American pronunciation is kway; even my professors say it like that.

Uh, I think this is just because you’re a Brit. In America we say “Kway” and “Sen-tar.” Since the game is American, it uses American correct pronunciations. In case you didn’t notice, it also drops the “u” in words like armor and color, and uses z’s instead of s’s.

If we’re the weapon masters, we should focus the most on weapons.

I had the idea of allowing us to set more than one weapon swap set, which I think would work, but would be clunky to implement. Honestly, I think the best solution would be to take weapon swapping away from everyone else – because it really is iconic – but Anet made a bad decision and that’s not really an option now.

At the very least we should feel like our weapon choice matters more than everyone else’s does. As it stands I feel like there are some annoying contradictions of design in certain combinations, or that one weapon lacks a complete toolset to do its stated job that requires a certain other weapon.

i.e. the Rifle has a slow and a knockback, but no root. The Longbow has a root but no other kiting tools. To play a ranged warrior effectively – with kiting – it feels like we’re pigeonholed into that combination.

And I, at least, feel like our weapon choices are never viable until we spec 20 or 30 points into a specific tree just to use it well. Like all Greatsword warriors are expected to take Forceful Greatsword, so all of the GS skills are balanced around taking it. Until you have it, you’re subpar.

By comparison, the Guardian (the other traditional melee class) has things like “Greatsword now does this for you” or “your Hammer autoattack now heals” – cool, trait-worthy things that are above and beyond what the weapon already does. You can be a GS Guardian without taking the trait, and you’ll be just as effective as a Guardian who took it, just using a different playstyle.

And it doesn’t help that half of our traits and some of our abilities are still bugged.

No, your damage does not increase the further away you are. Even when we’re waving around a gun, warriors get in your face.

MH Sword/ OH axe should have what you’re looking for.

Ranged Warriors tend to be better in PvP because melee just gets destroyed sometimes, whereas ranged can safely keep people off of them and attack from a distance. This is the case in virtually all MMOs.

Only difference between Rifle and Longbow is that Rifle is primarily single-target (doesn’t have an AoE that I can think of) and Longbow is meant for AoE. Longbow skills burn, and the burst skill creates a nice combo field for your friends. Rifle shots bleed, and can be traited to pierce.

As far as I know, ranged warriors are as viable if not more than melee for most things.

It sounds like a bug. None of the Hammer skills remove boons, but some of them (Knockdown, the 5 skill, and the F1 burst skill) do stun. I think it’s probably an error on your end where the stability isn’t actually negating stuns.

That or you might be getting hit by the 4 skill, which interrupts and knocks back but isn’t a stun, and might not be negated by stability.

Progulous.1763:

“Face Me!” – Recharge – 60s
Shout. Forces foes to attack you and inflicts Weakness. Gain Protection and Stability.

*Radius – 900
*Taunt Duration – 3s
*Weakness – 8s
*Protection – 8s
*Stability – 8s

It would work like a reverse-fear. Enemies would run toward you.

Sounds cool, but would it work on players?

Stuff about I Will Avenge You being an Elite

I support this. IWAY wasn’t that good, but it was awesome. You could make it so that it applies its buffs to everyone in the area but double to you (to keep it competitive with the banner) and ress everyone nearby with like 2/3 the banner’s insta-ress radius if you kill someone. It should also make downed players temporarily unkillable/uninterruptible. All of this might be too much, but I think it returning as an AoE buff that made downed people not killable and not interruptible with a ress attached to kills would be cool.

I usually run a Mace/Shield + Hammer build, 10/10/30/0/20. Great control, not bad debuffs, great survivability, and decent burst. In Arms you’ll want Unsuspecting Foe for the +50% crit chance on stunned enemies; Rending Strikes can also work, but I think that might be a master trait.

Defense has both Hammer and Shield traits, but I usually go with Shield Master just because Merciless Hammer doesn’t apply its damage increase against targets unless they have a debuff that none of the weapons I use provide. I usually go Missile Deflection/Shield Master/Spiked Armor.

Power, take what you want; Berserker’s Power is nice, but I also play around with Death From Above just for fun. This is just for the +damage.

Disc is mostly meant for the 20 trait Sweet Revenge because that thing is awesome, but the 10-point trait that gives you might whenever you block is also great. This build also relies a lot on weapon swaps to keep the enemy controlled and debuffed, so 5 strikes of adrenaline on swap + the lower CD is nice.

Reposting mine from the other thread:

Trait “Sweet Vengeance” (Discipline-20)

Gives you a 100% chance to rally if you score a kill while in Vengeance.

Does not appear to be working. There have been numerous occasions where I kill the mob or player I was fighting but the Vengeance buff stays on me and I still die.

Trait “Sweet Revenge” (Discipline-20)

Gives you a 100% chance to rally after scoring a kill in Vengeance.

Does not appear to be working correctly; there have been multiple occasions where I killed the mob or player I was fighting, but the Vengeance buff stayed on me and I died as normal when it ended.