Guild Wars 2

Sounds like fun with a sigil of cleansing and shrouded removal. I rarely use staff unless opponents have stealth or keep insane range as it absolutely sucks having to kite with the thing till you can switch back.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

MandJ.8965:

Necro – Spectral Walk/Fleshworm 1200

Spectral Walk is technically unlimited range, but the Necro has 8/12 seconds to cover the distance they will teleport.

Think of that skill more like a shorter duration, personal only, single-use Portal on its teleport.

I still remember when you could use spectral walk and then waypoint and then pop it again to end up in a loading screen to take you back to where you were. Easily the second best way to avoid a zerg, stealth is first.

I’m boycotting HoT until I hear word of dueling. I’m excited for revenant, but I’m not excited to pay money for the opportunity to get ganked in wvw on a new class.

Terrahero.9358:

runeblade.7514:

Terrahero.9358:

runeblade.7514:

• Players get to duel uninterrupted anywhere they want.

Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure they won’t be interrupted by other players or mobs?

They can’t get interrupted by players because players can’t do anything about it. If duelers get interrupted by mobs, then that’s okay.

So me throwing skills in the mix is not going to affect anyone? Not even remotely distracting either?

I’m willing to bet within no time at all duelist would complain about others players around. Getting in the way, distracting, pulling mobs.
And of course the GVG crowd will get mighty rowdy that other unsupported play styles get adopted but not theirs.

That’s far better than a zerg running through your dueling posse, or hell, people who simply wait for you to begin dueling to gank your opponent. The GvG crowd should be rowdy that this games name is cake.

I didn’t think about the fear being cleansed either. I’ve seen some rangers use that as a solution so I just threw it out there.

Terrahero.9358:

Dueling is just like GvG. It’s something that could be done using the things the game already offers. But they are both unsupported.

I don’t give a toss about dueling, I’d rather they put effort in to other content.

Some of us do. Besides, anet can just use the resources that they waste on adding and removing things like the new player experience.

DeceiverX.8361:

Not much you can really do about fighting this spec as anything, really. Too tanky, too much condition spam, too much gap-opening, combined with a ton of innate sustain.

The refuge may have been that player’s saving grace, but Sic Em is honestly the only reliable way I’ve found to shut P/D down enough such that it will shut down their SA line and make their damage and sustain almost non-existent.

Bursting them down is just not possible if they’re half-decent. Dire gear and the SA line give so much durability that nothing in the game will spike one – even my thief build is incapable of taking out most condi dire thief builds.

I knew they were somewhat difficult to handle but it was never an issue since I used to play my plague signet necro almost exclusively. Now that I’m messing around with other characters, p/d thieves just happened to be the first spec I ran into that casually mopped the floor with my ranger.

I would like to have as many answers as possible for p/d thief without sacrificing too much of my abilities against other classes. From the sounds of it, it’ll take a good maul in refuge and sic em’ for any real work to be done.

Puck.9612:

They don’t have to be in the center for maul to hit, the cleave radius is almost the same as the radius of shadow refuge, odds are you will hit. Since most thieves tend to use shadow refuge when there health is low maul and maybe 1 or 2 auto attacks will usually down them.

I never keep sic ’em on my bar. If I see a thief coming I check to see if he is running condi food, if he is I equip it before engaging. Most condi thieves are terrible players, if they get the jump on you it is pretty easy to get out of combat and swap a utility.

I’ve never felt that way about maul, but I will attempt this next time. Also how do you feel about heal as one over troll ungent against condi thieves? I find troll ungent is heavily hampered by their poison uptime (and everyone slotting sigils of doom), but their are windows where I don’t have poison on me which I feel I would benefit from another burst heal (the other being the 6 proc on defender). I’ve only just recently picked up my ranger again so I never noticed the buff to heal as one.

Edit: Nvm on the HaO buff, I’m mistaken. Also maybe even healing spring is a solid option with a couple leap finishers since I’m traited gs and s.

@ Puck:

I don’t have a thief and I don’t have the mentality to play them effectively so this is pretty nice advice, although my mauls only hit for about 4-5.5kish (mostly 5kish) against glassier targets. I currently use SotW but maybe I could afford to take it off for sic em’ and pray that my traited pet cd’s will let me swap in time before they melt. I use rune of the defender so losing the passive regen won’t be a massive killer.

Thieves tend to sit in the center of refuge? I’ve never played a class which has to actually hit a thief directly when they enter refuge so this is new grounds for me. I’ve seen montages where thieves tend to stick to the edges but I guess this is against aoe heavy opponents targeting the middle.

@ Bazzooong:

Shouldn’t you want help? there are plenty of thieves out there and you are simply one person. Also even as a ranger myself, my quest is to cull the bearbow rangers like the rest of the non bearbow population and I am quite effective at it (not an achievement). Isn’t sword a horrible choice simply because of the root? I can imagine if you land one hit, without a target the second attack in the chain will send you flying out of his refuge. Your second point is very solid and it’s how I was able to get him to start relying on refuge in the first place.

I don’t have too much problems against normal thieves (s/d, d/p, and d/d) because they have to come in close to get their kill giving me the opportunity to do some work once refuge is on CD. Today was the first time I fought against refuge on a build p/d thieves can afford to kite till refuge is back so there is some learning to be had.

Edit: Poor wording on my part. I meant my ability to fight thieves like this got worse because of how much pewpew ranger I’ve been fighting.

I’m looking for any more answers into the mentality of thieves.

He was clearly angry. Most necros would never miss the ambient creature farm just SW of SM or any towers along their way. Besides, back when I used to play powermancer I would use that small window when I ran out of dodges and a mesmer would shatter on me to possibly mount a counter attack after tanking it with DS. There is none of that with 0 life force.

This is a very good case of being blinded by anger that I have yet to experience in this game. At worst, the people I beat just bring more friends.

Hello thieves. Ranger here to ask some questions on refuge since I’m having loads of issues countering it and I’ve come to the conclusion that I should just suck it up since I’ve met my maker.

Background: I play on a sort of whacky hybrid ranger that uses gs sw+d which I have had great success with against most match ups till I ran into this thief. He was your typical p/d condi unloading thief and while it took me a while to get accustomed to his unloading (he beat me probably 3 times before I got used to fighting p/d thief again, too much pewpew ranger…), I reached part two of the fight in which he would enter refuge. He would then enter refuge 2-3 times during the fight until I made a mistake in which I would die.

So also having a necro in which my best answer to refuge is to drop every mark I own on it + ds 5+4, I’m assuming all I can do is wildly swing my GS in hopes that he goes down. Getting past him holding my pet hostage for stealth was hard enough and I am now stumped. I probably answered my own question in the intro but is there any recommendations short of using lb channels, sic em, or the fear from the wolf?

Wasted opportunities here. It pains me when a thief takes your pet hostage for free cloak and daggers and you can’t even tell it to stay put somewhere far away because that in itself is a utlity. Druids making use of pets still is the very reason I’m not too interested in the ranger specialization.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Well as it has been anounced the expansion will NOT bring any new weapons I expect your wish only can be fullflilled as a alternate GS sword skin (would be strange as the animations do not lean themselves for 2h-AXE so IMHO such a decision is not wanted…) or in a future the expansion -after- Hot… so I think you need some 3 yrs worth of patience… if you’re lucky…

Really? I think they work out perfectly since they are all wide swings, over hand swings, and rotations. If there were plenty of lunging, it would look stupid but that’s not the case.

I hope such skins make an appearance because I really don’t like gigantic swords.

Foefaller.1082:

Monoman.2068:

Options never hurt anyone. If it is a mandatory change though, I’m against weapons because Asura.

Do you mean you’re against weapons because the look silly in Asura hands? Or are you against them because it’s hard to see what weapon an Asura is holding?

If it’s the former, I understand, but it’s something that every Asura of every other profession kinda already has to deal with. If it’s the latter, only place where that matters is sPvP, and there is an option to turn all your opponents into basic, easily-differentiated human models for Ranked PvP and custom arenas with the right options selected. You should always have it on. Plus I’d be shocked if any change to how kits are displayed didn’t also come with a status bar indicator like elementalist attunements, so that it won’t matter if they replace hobosacks with hipsacks, or more visual weapons, or nothing, or give us the option of any of those things, because you’ll be able to tell what kit an Engineer is using, if any, the moment you target them.

It’s the latter. I would agree if the basic models covered all forms of pvp or if you had the options to simply force the hobo packs back on though options. I already have a hard enough time discerning what asura are doing with the current hobo pack system from a distance.

Well I only care about my necromancer and ranger and making builds for the two. My ranger is solid but I’m interested in the necromancer specialization. So I’ll only be getting the expansion if the necromancer specialization is interesting enough and if the revenant has access to 100% mobility in some form without traveler runes.

Speaking of specializations, I’m assuming they will rear their heads in pvp zones which sounds like a recipe for disaster.

@Vayne: They probably call it a feature pack by comparison to other mmo’s because anets definition of a feature pack is usually mediocre at best.

Human. If you start messing around with high evasion builds, norn size and animations won’t cut it.

Knowing Anet, that’s a no. I’m sure they would like to take a couple screen caps of all the revenants running around on the new maps to throw on some gaming websites to hype the expansion up further. I would frankly do the same since I don’t care for pve content in this game anymore.

Char posture? Just give me a humanoid cat person and make it canon by saying it’s the product of a char and human walking through an asura gate that went awry.

Backwards feet would be no more.

I just wish Necromancers signets had more utility that makes sense to the class. On other classes, I’m actually surprised more people aren’t using their signets (I guess their other utilities are that powerful?). I personally use 3 signets on my hybrid regen ranger and I make good use of both the passive and actives on the SotH, SoR, and SotW. I actually hope that anet roles out healing and elite signets for ranger.

In the case of signet of the locust, it’s active is only really good against mesmers and a couple other quirky ai based match ups (spirit rangers, hyena rangers lol, thieves guild thieves, minion masters, etc.). It is fairly weak in outnumbered cc heavy situations which is an experience every necromancer should be accustomed to. I just consider SoL as a pve signet which would be fine if I didn’t feel most of necromancers signets had problems.

The passive is pretty horrible which sucks since the active is very nice. Having condition unloading classes who drop everything they own on you without a care think twice out of fear of it coming right back is always a plus.

@Rising Dusk
I like the idea of a working passive and +condition duration definitely sounds like the kind of passive that will make you miss it should you use the active. Although a 30s CD is extremely powerful for a complete transfer and being traited would make that a 24s CD. A forty-five second (seriously?) CD is probably more reasonable but I would even keep the 60s CD with a useful passive.

This is my latest ranger/necro look.

I would hope so. The sooner anet adds dueling, the sooner I can stop wasting a slot in wvw and actually have my preferred method of enjoying this game.

While I would like a map dedicated for dueling, I’m sure the player base is creative enough to choose a map (make use of mega servers) if we are given the option to just right click a player and challenge them to a duel. It’s a very simple feature so it astonishes me that this game is almost 3 years old without it.

Options never hurt anyone. If it is a mandatory change though, I’m against weapons because Asura.

Hopefully this means a fix for blood magic and the signet of vampirism, a not the current tactics line for warrior, and a look at the ranger beast mastery line.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

I like that they don’t move. We have other wings in the game that move.

They don’t have to flap but I at least wish they were rigged to move with your character (ex you turn right, they swing left or you leap and they shoot back). I’ve heard people say it looks like cardboard cut outs glued to your back and they are not wrong.

This is priceless. I was standing in front of the dwayna statue and was surprised that the wings were out when I saw one person run buy with them. Not even thirty minutes later and I’ve seen probably 20-40 people with them.

The 24 hour sale is icing.

Fext.3614:

@Monoman maybe there is a misunderstanding – I do not see this as an armor feature. It should be rather a change of game mechanics.
Your stats should be tied to your character, so even naked, at level 80, if going the berserker style, your stats will be the same as, say the ascended stuff. Your armor rating would depend on the armor though.
Every piece of armor has the same level of stats, and it does not matter what type of armor it is. OTOH it is the function of character level. Obviously it belongs to the character and not to the armor.
Check feature envy antipattern http://blog.codinghorror.com/code-smells/

I understood what you meant. My point was anet won’t even make this a feature of their ascended armor which takes an entire month+ to grind (if you’re light), there is little chance they would tie it to your characters. The reason why there is little chance this will get tied to ascended is because this is a feature of legendary armor and this change will destroy anets daily grind which secures a portion of their player base.

Your idea is infinitely better than ascended armor being able to change stats but it is extremely unlikely anet would do that, so I want to meet them half way with ascended but even that feels like too much.

This is how I wish ascended armor functioned, but even with how hard it is to get it, I feel like that’s too much to ask of anet. As someone who has to make dozens of versions of a single build before being satisfied, it is gigantic waste of time to even put the resulting build in ascended because anet can nerf it and waste a month of my life.

I like the idea OP, but it is probably going to get tacked on to legendary armor. Not to mention it destroys the daily grind.

Simon.3794:

its gonna be overused by everyone like the shattered wings and then no body will use it anymore because it’s overused.

I can see people dropping these wings sooner just because of how static they look. They don’t have to flail around like the other wings do (even in death), but if they just sit there during movement heavy animations (like running, dodging, leaping, teleporting, etc). I can see them getting old quick.

I would put it on my revenant if it did move.

There is no such thing as balancing downed state. The mechanic is dumb and all you can really do is tell yourself that you downed him first so you win. It’s why out numbered fights are insanely difficult and it’s why barely winning a fight can very well mean that you are dead.

Can’t we just give warriors boon strip and avoid making the class even more mindless to play?

Wow good guy anet much? I was having trouble picking between water runes and dwayna runes on my hybrid regen ranger and then these come out.

As someone who uses plague form quite religiously, this may potentially hurt.

I’m hoping it has mobility since all my best classes require it for roaming and closing distance. I’ve fallen out of love with my guardian ages ago due to it’s lack of mobility and over reliance on traveler runes if you wish to get anything done alone.

OP you should be happy if resistance is used to rework mechanics that have little to no counter play (outside of revenant). There are a few immunities out there that force condition based classes to sit on their hands, but resistance can potentially cut down on this while allowing anet to be more generous with it’s distribution.

however, if anet leaves these immunities intact while introducing this new boon, then you should be up in arms.

I personally like it if it spells for changes to immunities. I’m hoping anet will introduce it to horribly balanced traits and skills like berserker’s stance (feels extremely likely with that no counterplay quip) and diamond skin and then rebalance them and their classes accordingly. In the case of diamond skin you can always have resistance while above say 75% hp and on berserkers stance they could have it apply resistance and heavily lower the CD. They could even tack it on to automated response since -condition duration means little when you are about to die.

It’s why I use dagger warhorn. The cripple from the warhorn makes up for dagger 3 having a long cd and makes dagger 1 more viable, while the dagger 2 is used for foes who stealth and/or kite around ai.

This is why I wish ascended armor was soul bound but the stats could be changed for free preferably. I completed the grind once, but my character no longer uses such stats so the armor is effectively useless.

I grinded out a set of armor over the span of an entire month and I only have 8+ wasted bank slots to show for it.

Made a full set of ascended armor for a non-condition necromancer (that damask) with barely enough crit damage to work 2 or so weeks before the crit damage nerf was announced. A portion of it was zerker, but I’m neither a thief, a zerg baller, or a player with a death wish.

I’m so sour.

Wouldn’t that be another world of overpowered for rangers who still trait for empathic bond?

I’m going for a fitted agile & tomboyish look and it just had to be sylvari. There aren’t many staves that work since I’m using abyss (because the dye channels for previews are wonky) and the gloves might change, but the rest of the look is staying for sure.

Hamfast.8719:

Same outfit, different color scheme. I kinda like this one better. It looks more “serious” with the leather top and less like Sir Peter of Pan.

Very nice look. I liked your look in the original post but something felt off, these changes are much better.

This is my sylvari. I absolutely love this look though it’s missing magitech boots but I’m not exactly in a hurry to spend 10 dollars on only the boots. Finding a look that didn’t involve a trench coat took and extremely long time for me and I messed around with the same jerkin you use but I didn’t even cross those pants.

Thieves have been less of a problem for me recently since a lot of people still play the d/p and it gives me a nice opportunity to catch my bearings. S/D thieves are still a large problem for me because of their evasion spam and disengage. They don’t rely so much on stealth but when things get rough you can bet your top dollar they will enter it. I’m still tweaking my builds to give them less windows to abuse me.

My regen ranger can take them because you just have to evade after they evade though regen ranger is overpowered and I play it when I don’t want to die.

Quells.2498:

I don’t even attempt fractals or dungeons on Necro anymore but it would be nice to do so. I’m personally hoping for a power based weapon with lots of cleaving and life siphon. I think it would compliment the profession well and play on already existing traits and abilities the Necro has.

I forgot about life siphoning. I actually agree and hope this is a raw damage weapon focused on life siphoning. I have a celestial 100% condition duration necromancer with a decent amount of healing power and I would love to actually make use of it since our signet of vampirism sucks.

I think celestial is just decent. While all celestial builds may not necessarily abuse might, I think might is the bigger problem.

I have a guardian in celestial and it doesn’t work out all too well because and entire stat is wasted on the class.

BrotherBelial.3094:

What’s with the Logan hate? I like the way Rytlock and Logan interact.

Logan has a bad case of *ahem before bros…

I don’t blame anyone for disliking him, especially when his counter part is a gigantic angry cat with a voice that makes children cry.

Roll spectral walk necromancer, rejoice. I’m actually sort of serious since these issues seem deep rooted into the game.

Yeah it will definitely lessen the experience but I’m thinking most people already accept this as a part of gw2.

Something to shake up the class a tad I hope since most of it’s builds feel like they play the same. Most changes either seem to just barely buff/nerf the two main guardian builds.

Longbow seems most appropriate.

Sylvari here. I’ve been using mostly humans up to this point but I’ve recently decided that they’re sort of boring and usually look fat in heavy armor. I sort of wish this anet that goes back on it’s word will also look into race changers so I can make my human necro a sylvari.

This is my planned look for my revenant (with more exciting colors of course) if I’m still playing when the expansion comes out and you can see why I’m starting to like Sylvari:

Smitty.9432:

PvE – Female Human
PvP – Female Asura

Speaking of which, I hope this expansion introduces the ability to turn asura into other races in other pvp zones.

Mine will probably be human.