Guild Wars 2

The image should explain all, if not I’ll elaborate.
Laurel wreaths do not behave quite like this in motion; the leaves are not made of elastic.
Just a minor visual bug but no less irritating, considering 400 gems were spent. I would be quite happy with the headpiece being entirely static.

Quick question from someone looking to acquire one of the newly released three hairstyles (specifically Norn): Are they available only via the makeover kit or the self-style hair kit as well?

The wiki is giving mixed messages and I want to be sure.

Thanks.

First and foremost I would like to outline the minimal quantity of different titles – in total there are roughly fifty, half of which are merely checkpoints along a single title string (such as the Hall of Monuments).

The vast majority – indeed if not all – serve only as an acknowledgement for the achievement of some feat of varying merit, colloquially known as bragging rights. However, they provide little in the way of depth beyond simply saying to others “look what I did!”.
For instance, “The Emperor” title denotes that a person has invested a considerable amount of funds into aesthetics, “Mercenary” denotes a person has equaled or surpassed a fixed number of PvP matches and “Master Crafter” marks the equaling or surpassing of a fixed level across all crafting professions. Whilst these are all worthy achievements and some players may be quite content to bear these badges upon their person, they do little to embellish personality in your character.

I would like to see the implementation of new titles to augment this dull roster with the main aim being flavour; titles that help to define your character’s personality or outline their strengths or preferences and aren’t simply totems of accomplishment.
Right off the top of my head, as an example, the title of “The Martyr” could be awarded for being downed a set number of times whilst in the process of reviving another player. I accept that this is still a fixed number but the attaining of said number does not directly imply success in line with the set parameters of the game, in fact this title denotes quite the opposite; failure. Yet such a title would be far more descriptive of character.

I would be interested to hear any and all thoughts on the matter and perhaps leave your own purely flavoursome title suggestions (make sure to include how you think it would be obtained).

Brando.1374:

the “condi meta” is just to boring and I am a wvw heavy condi dmg necro so I know what it is.

+1

Too Frisky.9165:

As a long time Necro player it makes me cringe when I see players assuming power builds actually utilize Precision or Critical Chance/Damage. True power builds stack Power/Vitality/Toughness and then stack it some more because the whole point of a true Necro power build is not to hit like truck with crits, but to hit hard consistently while being able to tank an opponent. Outlast not out dps.

While this is certainly true, dedicated DPS is still possible and some may find the style of play to be fun.

Generally when using a power specializing build, I avoid the staff – partially because I resent its supposed necessity for every build – however, for a DPS build it does have its uses. Being a glass cannon, you can’t dance about in the thick of it constantly – the staff allows for the accumulation of LF from the fringe, whilst also applying pressure and otherwise softening up targets for the “burst”.

Improvements to this build? 30/0/10/0/30.
If the focus is on DPS in deathshroud, then you might consider the spectral skills – I find them highly underrated. To this point, pick up Vital Persistence and if using spectrals, Spectral Mastery in place of Soul Marks. If you’re sticking to wells though, Ritual of Protection, if not, Spiteful Vigor.

Psynocide.4965:

Over the past month or two this issue has been plaguing me…

“2 months ago”.

This inconceivably irritating, bug-riddled dungeon/party system still persists.

Before you churn out yet more content, it would be most appreciated if you would prioritize on fixing the content that already exists.

As with any mediocre player running off a predetermined, optimal build using a predetermined, optimal rotation if you break the rotation, they panic. Because now they have to use their initiative, as their CDs are scrambled ever so slightly and initiative isn’t something certified by good-natured individuals using spreadsheets to be effective.

If you suspect this is the case at hand, CB on stability and blitz both terrors. At the very least it’ll give you a laugh.
However, it gets interesting if the player in question happens to not be running a simple, mental automation. In this case, play it defensive – utilize any movement benefits and penalties, such as the wurm active ability and Dark Path – and wait for the correct moment to CB.

Another /whine

However, one point sticks out that I have to agree with; the defenders upon a wall are at a disadvantage to those below simply because of LoS issues.

You could stand upon the crenelations yes, but that leads to being yanked off by any passing mesmer, thief or necromancer and rightly so.

XelNigma.6315:

1. I love the name Necromancer and everything it implies even if none of it was added into the game.

Would you prefer playing with a ouija board?

1: i liek bleeds
2: Corrupt boon > guardian
3: Deliciously fitting SFXs for skills, such as epidemic.
4: It’s considered UP.
5: The ability to bring otherwise dead and buried forum threads back to life, however briefly.

Greater marks, condition build – stealth wut?

Andele.1306:

Well then gratz Schrödinger since yeah, might is worth bugger since all basic damage boosts take your static stats into effect (reason why full exotic level 80 does better in a dungeon than a level 40 despite being downscaled to identical stats in AC) and the 4 long stacks (no matter what 4 you use to transfer em) of bleed are ok side thingy you get, but the 10 ~ 15 stacks of bleeding a condi necro should hold in a dungeon are easy to achive by spamming 1-2-5 S/D and 2 on staff.
On the other hand being able to get burning and confusion with a boon for yourself (that if i might remind you as condis dont get that much, perma regen and fury if you really wanna shroud hop that much and protection when you are half dead) is worth more, even CPC is better than BIP since it had a hard defined role, while BIP is like the Steam Box, even for rampager/hybrid build it has a weak defined role that mostly says, and i should use this over X or Y why? At least lyss is on a low cooldown and you get stuff you cannot normally get (despite it being random).

Also may Lyssa confound you!

This is very intriguing and I agree on all points that aren’t relevant.
However, all evidence to the contrary – citation; every conditionmancer ever.

Kiriakulos.1690:

BiP- The might stacks are good but PvE condition damage is far outshined by direct damage coming from Zerker gear, so Bleeds are low damage and you need to use another skill besides this to send the total 4 stacks to your enemy.

Entirely situational – if totting up damage in practice or say, something insignificantly easy wherein the player is not punished for investing in survivability, this is certainly true (such as CoF).
However, try running full berserker in a level 30+ fractal for instance, you’ll find you get very little returns in terms of damage whilst you’re flat on your back and rotting.
Bare in mind that the stats on the average conditionmancer’s gear is precision, toughness, condition damage i.e: two offensive, one defensive as opposed to all three being offensive – given this, I would say the damage dealt is considerable.

Either way, this is off-topic – carry on fair ’mancers.

Over the past month or two this issue has been plaguing me and it seems to be related – if not directly connected – to the party UI malfunctions I.E; ceases updating party information such as numbers, locations and character.
Having put up with these hiccups for a while, the line was finally crossed today when I had to simply give up and leave not one, but two parties bound for Fractals.
I tried every trick in the book that I’ve learnt as work-arounds to no avail – logging out, re-invite, waypointing, manually entering – I might as well have stood on my head and counted to one thousand, ridiculous.

Mislabeled tool-tips, bad pathing and occasionally getting stuck in walls are all tolerable but when you’re actually restricted from accessing content, this is the line drawn.

Xirin.8593:

shadowbrk.2438:

what class is op right now in wvwvw?

Every class except the one that I play.

Lol’d.

+1

PredatoR.5247:

Hello, glad you are all taking interest in countering my guild. It’s nice to see both servers theory crafting on idea’s but you won’t beat us unless you bring a good group of 20 or more people together under the same teamspeak channel with proper builds who listen to their commander.
It wouldn’t hurt to combine all of your organized guilds together as 1, that’d be challenging I think.

Sounds like an awful lot of effort, I’m sweating just thinking about it.

Err’day we’re puggin’ it.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Hmm. Dragons are the main Protagonists.

Curse me for being pedantic but surely you mean antagonists?

Protagonist dragons would be a nice change however.. I’m rather fond of dragons and get ever so tired of killing them in every game.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

and EQ.. and UO.. and fact of the matter is most of the Genre is straight out of Norse mythos, Tolkien, and tabletop DnD.

Don’t forget Greek mythology – harpies for instance.

Wood elf, dark elf, blood elf, night elf, high elf, African-American elf.. Snoooooooore.

My Asura happens to be about as bad kitten as is possible to be at 2 feet tall and I love a Charr.

Norns however are a different matter although the issue is more of an attitude problem, the concept is still sound.

Pro tip for any budding necromancers: avoid the Necromancer forums section, there is nothing for you here but unbridled, stomach-turning pessimism.

/whine
Good God this is tedious.

Sorry, I thought we were playing a game involving vomiting opinions passed off as facts.

Dabbling in sincerity for a brief moment, truly my experiences playing necromancer are at complete odds here.
It works. It’s not perfect, granted but it certainly could be worse.

I seem to recall early monthlies involving WvW kills – equally irritating for those not of the WvW inclination.

Share the pain.

Is this live? Are we able to get our glow back? I just want to be certain before I blow another 350 gems.

No.

Add me to the list of sad Sylvari.
I had used one kite previously on my male (still male) Sylvari without any issues – I’m unsure but I believe the glow was absent for about a day, however it returned. Or perhaps I started paying attention, I don’t know.
Used a second kit a few days ago on my female Sylvari to completely revamp her, two days passed without noticing any glow before I decided to check the forums.

A fix sooner rather than later would be grand, however I’m concerned it may involve utilizing yet another makeover kit to reapply the glow.

In PvE:
Staff – 2, 3, 8(BiP), 7(Epidemic), 4, 2, 5 – switch to S/D roll, 2, 5.

Not 100% of the time – depends how much I’m paying attention – but generally this is my rotation.
Greater Marks, Staff Mastery, Sigil of Earth in my sceptre, Mark of Blood dodge trait.

2 starts the bleed chain, 3 keeps the pack clustered and adds poison, 8 goes without saying, same with 7, 4 transfers the self inflicted conditions (debatable as to whether or not hitting 4 after Epidemic is worth it but usually in a group, other physical DPS classes appreciate just a bit more vuln.), due to the 20% less recharge rate I get in another 2, 5 pushes them back and interrupts any casts whilst laying the way for the switch, roll into the group, 2 cripples to prevent the pack spreading further, 5 to finish then retreat.

The bleeds overall fluctuate but this maintains control over the pack whilst also keeping up constant 12-20 bleeds.

Rennoko.5731:

Of course its all PVE, and its all easy

Pay a visit to the Priest of Grenth for tea, then chew on that statement for a minute.

Depends how you play.
I use my Necromancer in fractals often, having gotten the farthest with him and I’m rarely the first to go down if at all.

Just another short sighted assumption.

Login.5102:

Necros are one of the best dungeon classes there is.
l2p

/thread

Does this mean I won’t be able to solo it now?

XiL.4318:

Maximum damage comes from a combination of conditions and power. Pure conditions is a self imposed nerf.

Not really.

I only used minions up until about level 50, I never encountered issues such as those noted in the original posts. My problem with minions was they were a bit lackluster – my other utilities proved superior in every way.
However I would like to retry a minion build but there’s one niggling oversight I’d like seen to first; currently we have little to no control over our minions, this is very irritating in dungeons for example when trying to precisely pull mobs. Give us the abilities of the hunter pet commands (aggressive/passive option, call pet, attack target) for our F2-F4 keys that act as commands for every minion currently summoned.

Devon.5672:

..But maybe you should just learn the class better?

Correct response received.

Necromancer is my first and favourite class – speaking from experience garnered through five level 80 alts in total, so this standing cannot be invalidated via claims of being selective.
I’ve clocked 633 hours on my Necromancer and not once to my recollection have I encountered a bug or glitch that so infuriated me as to be unable to work around it.

I have said it before, I’ll say it again; game forums are seldom used by anyone other than those looking to complain.
The profession works.
It’s not perfect but it’s certainly sufficient.

[Edited by Moderator: Quote removed]

Strikingly similar to my own independent build.
However, I’ve traited 0/30/20/20/0 as the staff is quite good in conjunction with a sceptre/dagger if you need a quick burst of conditions and the traits you can obtain in the death magic tree for staves are brilliant. Also, I find the health siphons to be lackluster to say the least.
I would argue that, even though bleed duration is paramount, it’s not worth sacrificing that extra condition damage from a full set of afflicted/undead runes, as such I use a sigil of agony in my off-hand – total 45% passive bleed duration + 40% from nourishment + 33% from sceptre passive = 118% with 127 more condition damage – having put the corruption stacking sigil in my staff.

Still, a good guide for budding necromancers that are looking for an alternative.

Oh well, more bleed stacks for me.

Ratphink.4751:

..you don’t have to act like a Risen and frenzy all over the forum spewing out conditions.

But surely that’s one thing Necromancers do best?

In the same boat.
I certainly am capable of gathering all the guff necessary to create one – without even trying I believe I have enough karma/relics for example and I would like one simply to show my dedication to the game.
However, Necromancer is my first and favourite thus it’s the one I would want a legendary for but either I dislike how a legendary looks, it’s unfitting, or I simply don’t use that weapon (sceptre/horn and staff conditionmancer).

Often the Eye of Rodgort is suggested but I’m not quite comfortable with the idea of swinging a bulging, bloodshot eye around my head, call me crazy.
I have also tried to obtain Final Rest but I’m unwilling to expend effort on what may only be a myth, especially considering the circumstances under which it is hypothesized you obtain said staff – the event chain is in an obscure location, next to no one there, three champions and a legendary to kill and on top of this it’s likely only a rare loot from the chest.
I ran it solo thrice then decided I have better things to do.

I suggest waiting for a release of new legendary weapons first, instead of working towards one of the current legendaries you’re not entirely fond of.

That doesn’t make any logical sense, clearly it is not unique seeing as I have two of them sitting in my bag.

We’re not being elitist are we? Surely not..

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

..Case and Point in the MMo industry ~ if you create content that the players want to skip/ignore/avoid – then your doing something wrong.

A sound argument.
Understand that personally I enjoy a challenge, especially when it comes to bosses; I’m always attempting to solo this and that.
However, if most people would rather skip it.. Then something’s not quite right.

I wouldn’t say to nerf it; whilst I like a challenge, the one thing I can’t abide is mechanics that leave the player with no viable counter other than to grit their teeth and bear it “because-it’s-meant-to-be-hard”.
Specifically I am referring to the Shaman’s one aoe blitz ability – it has no cast time, no animation, it just casts instantly over the area the targeted player happens to be in, causing upwards of 5k damage and there’s not a blasted thing you can do to avoid it preemptively.

Give this ability an animation and cast time – it doesn’t even need to be long, just not instantaneous – and I’ll be content.

Skipping the tedious monologue meant to draw sympathy..

I recently obtained a second Khilbron’s Phylactery ring from my daily fractal reward, which – I thought at the time – was perfect, now my necromancer has two rings perfectly designed for the rabid style conditionmancer.

Turns out, as the title of this thread would lead you to believe, you cannot equip two ascended rings of the same type.

Am I blind and just missed this catch? Is it a bug? Confirmation on this would be appreciated so I may feel appropriately foolish or justified in my annoyance respectively.

Regardless, I feel it should be more boldly stated if this is not a mistake – what if it wasn’t merely from the daily but someone actually bought a second ring with their pristine relics? 10 of the blasted things down the drain.

Panacea.4927:

…

Thanks for the input, mostly this confirms my suspicion that thief is a one-trick horse.

What is this “unicorn” build you keep referring to though? I’m going to make the assumption that it’s a derogative term and that no unicorns are involved.

I’m curious as to whether or not anyone has managed to come up with a viable alternative build to the typical outright DPS thief.

I do not like having several characters built to function exactly the same, currently I have four alts, each of which I’ve been able to find a unique and effective specialization for.
Example; switched my warrior from what I considered to be a tedious style of play (DPS) to a toughness/vitality tanking setup using both a hammer, longbow and alternatively switching to axe/shield.

However, I cannot fathom any other method of playing my thief other than the one we all see day to day – which holds no appeal.
Is it possible to create a support thief? A condition thief? Some bizarre build that’s never been seen before yet is highly effective?

Please, any thoughts on this would be most welcome, I am at a loss myself.

Because no one uses a forum when everything is satisfactory.

I happen to have leveled four characters to 80 – Necromancer, Warrior, Hunter, Mesmer – geared them up, used all four in every scenario I care to try from WvW to dungeon runs (PvP; /spit).
Necromancer happens to have been my first and is still my favourite – and most effective – in all situations.

Most whom are unsatisfied with this profession – from what I’ve seen of this depressingly pessimistic section – have been focusing on power builds with a single-minded intensity I would otherwise expect from warriors.
Also, due to the nature of these things, you’re only seeing one side of the story by looking here – people are much less likely to come into the forums to give the thumbs up than they are to complain.
I’ll quickly state I did in fact dabble in a power build with dual daggers whilst leveling and for a week or two at level 80 and it was indeed my first character.

There are two main – and very different scenarios – to take into consideration; PvE and WvW. (Don’t give a monkey’s buttocks for PvP).
The issue I faced with a power build in PvE was an inability to negate or otherwise contend with the damage I took. I had put 30 points in the vitality tree, had all the siphons and a full set of vampiric runes, it still wasn’t sufficient.
It was far worse in WvW; never-mind attempting to take the damage, I could not even get close enough to begin dealing any out without going down – even if I tried axes, which is a good alternative to a dagger for outright damage, 600 range is nothing in WvW.

I’ve observed in both instances, an inability to cope with damage whilst also dishing it out.
However, I eventually made the transition to a condition damage build – which despite how much I initially enjoyed a power build, is far superior.
Combat goes a lot smoother in both PvE and WvW, using a sceptre + dagger/horn (I prefer horn for WvW) and a staff I can blitz most mobs down with ease whilst staying at range, which is the most important aspect.
Interestingly in WvW, because of the natural hit and run tactics employed, by which I mean when two forces meet, 75% of the time is spent dancing about waiting for an opportunity to strike or healing from the previous surge as the moment you break the 1200 range barrier, you’re vulnerable regardless of profession, I would say a condition build has the advantage; innumerable times have I engaged only for a few seconds to apply conditions, hit Epidemic and retreat then watch the conditions tear the opposing players apart from a safe distance – this is the advantage of condition damage.
I don’t even feel the need to use DS whatsoever, except as a separate life bar when things are dire and I need a moment to recover.

I will say however that I’m unsatisfied with the elite skills; none of them compliment this style of build, insisting upon forms that remove your normal skills and completely spoil the style of play. Yes they’re pretty cool, but not very effective, nor helpful.
I can see potential for a fairly effective support setup, perhaps for dungeon runs using shaman gear and such but I’ve no interest in this and haven’t spared it much thought.

Oh, most importantly; did I mention I actually enjoy playing necromancer?