Guild Wars 2

I second the thanks. It has been, as always, an awesome experience, and the support of the players is integral to that. Thanks, everyone.

My thoughts on Scepter probably are a bit biased. I’ve spent so much more time, comparatively, sitting way back from the fight that the increased range also likely has an inordinate amount of appeal for me.

My main problem with MM comes from my other PvP main, mesmer. One moa and all the minions are dead. It really neuters the entire build so hard it hurts, and the other mesmer elites aren’t really good enough to hope the bird won’t be there anytime a mesmer is.

Well, that and bunker warriors. A good bunker warrior can ignore most MM builds without being in too much danger, due to the lack of hard spike damage.

Bhawb.7408:

MM Necros have the ability to use Axe/Focus because you don’t need it to deal damage, but the utility it brings is very helpful for an MM because everything synergizes decently with minions, whereas most other builds would not have that synergy as YOU are needing to deal your damage; an MM build has the luxury of having about half their damage done by their utility skills.

However, if a strong support/tank main-hand or 2h weapon was introduced I’d probably drop axe in a heartbeat.

Okay, I can appreciate the value of the AoE cripple for a MM build. Goodness knows the class has few enough tools to deal with kiting, but a Scepter or Staff is still arguably better. Scepter can pair with the focus with an aimed cripple on the 2 while staff has its poison/chill and fear.

Excellent point, though.

Sarrs.4831:

Bhawb.7408:

I think they should take the #2 skill, and add it as a chain to the auto attack, but with only 2-3 hits, make it cleave, and then re-balance it with that in mind. Then make the #2 skill a frontal cone burst skill.

Personally I really like having the channel as it is. It feels visceral and rewarding to press, imo.

What if the frontal cone was 1’s chain skill? So it’s more like slash-slash-boom, a bit like how Warrior Axe 1 is backloaded.

I actually did a bit of research on this topic, because I had the same realization. The axe 2 skill -felt- really powerful, but I knew from my PvP-ing that it really wasn’t. It actually does similar damage to the dagger’s life-syphoning channel, only it lacks the life syphon.

It -feels- powerful because the 1 skill is, for lack of a polite way of wording it, complete trash. It doesn’t stack enough vulnerability, it doesn’t do enough damage, it doesn’t cleave, I would actually argue it to be the worst auto-attack skill in the entire game, with the (possible) exception of some of the underwater weapons that I’ve not done experimentation with.

Necro axe needs work, simply put. I really wanted to like it too, since the skills for it actually do -look- pretty awesome and flavorful, there’s just no situation I can imagine preferring it over other weapons. Even MM Necro is generally better using a staff to spam regen on the minions against most foes in my experience.

Seifer Thalaen.7869:

Why should someone play necro if you can play hambow with 20+ might 24/7? Same level of (no)skill but way more effective. Necro is really good only when going power with random lichform 5k autoattack spam…you get 30 secs of the most brainless cheese of them all…but after that you’re done

Unfortunately, even that has a hard counter in the form of Moa. Literally every PvP Necro elite can be immediately ended by this one Mesmer elite.

This is a recurring theme with the class. It has a few builds that can perform specific functions very well, but every one of them has at least one hard counter. Add all the other problems the class has (listed out fairly well in this thread) and it is simply hard to justify bringing the class to a serious fight.

It’s also in the Box O’ Fun items and a few other places in the game, like Elli’s hologram in the main story.

I would assume, for the sake of a competitive future, it is on Arenanet’s to-do list.

In my experience Engineers can be extremely problematic for certain builds, depending on how they’re built. Lots of engi builds completely screw melee builds, some can sit way off-point and just laugh at bunkers, and bunker engie can survive way more than seems fair, but all of these builds have their counters and weaknesses.

Most of the bunker-smashing builds are easy to kill, bunker engineers can’t handle mass conditions, etc. etc.

If what you do doesn’t work, figure out the build that killed you (ask if you have to, sometimes people will straight-up tell you what build they’re running) and figure out what it can’t do.

It’s also regularly an issue for Mesmers if a clone is left alive somewhere. I suspect part of this might have to do how long someone you hit/hit you remains in combat themselves. I find it to be much more likely that I remain in combat when disengaging from an ongoing fight than from a quick skirmish.

When rank is above 50 or so it is usually a decent indicator that someone knows what they are doing. Restricting lower rankings from playing would introduce an entirely new problem, however, in further restricting the PvP population.

Even worse, it would discourage new players. Much of the appeal of PvP is that they don’t have to grind their way through the entire game to be able to play it. There is a huge amount to learn about PvP, but having a rule that prevents people from enjoying it however they like until they’re “experienced enough” is more than enough to prevent a lot of people from caring at all.

It also makes the rest of us look like elitist snobs. Ultimately you can’t punish players for being bad or inexperienced, else the losing team would always have at least one or two players being punished. Take the bad with the good and try to remember that everyone was brand new and learning once.