Guild Wars 2

They work with Desert Shroud, the last Shroud skill. I think the wording needs to be adjusted on some of the traits because a lot of people (myself included) were confused about that.

Kaladel.1670:

I like it, but I think the support part needs a buff to be usefull.

Seconding this. Maybe I’m just used to how long you can camp in Shroud on Reaper/base necro, but I feel like Barrier degenerated way too fast to be very useful/the skills didn’t give enough of it in the first place.

I also think some of the wording for traits could be clarified a bit, specifically the base traits about entering/exiting Shroud. Since the F skills are still called Shroud skills even though you don’t enter Shroud to use them, it was confusing to me (and other people, it sounds like) whether the traits would work when placing Shades, using any of the new skills, or just on Desert Shroud.

I prefer the “all-white + a dead animal on the shoulders” look for mine.

Dadnir.5038:

I like the fact that spectral walk allow me to return to my position when I miss a jump in jumping puzzle.

I don’t know how I ever got through a jumping puzzle without Spectral Walk. It’s basically an instant redo button.

I also love the minions- having a small herd of friendly undead monstrosities following me around was the thing that got me hooked on necro in the first place.

I’m a hoarder with 9 lvl 80s, and currently have 3 bank tabs (you start with one, I believe) plus a personal guild bank (but I don’t think that’s very easy to get anymore?), a few shared inventory spaces, permanent salvages, and permanent harvesting tools. Of those, bank space is probably the thing you’ll need most, especially if you’re going to go after legendaries or other things that require a bunch of mats/account bound things. You can also buy expansions for your material storage, which might be handy. The other things I listed are pretty much just conveniences, and like I said, I got along fine without any of them for a while. I haven’t bought any inventory expansions because my main has all 20 slot bags (there’s collection items to get the bags cheaper than buying or crafting, if I remember correctly) and I regularly spend a couple minutes emptying them out so space there is rarely a problem. I don’t switch gear/builds as often as other people do, though, so I don’t need to carry a whole lot of equipment at once.

As far as making money-there’s a bunch of ways to do that. I’ve made a few runs through HoT metas, salvaged the loot, sold the materials and made 20+ gold in maybe 3 hours. You can make more doing fractals, and farming various materials (leather, wood, metal, blood, flax) can make pretty good money too, but personally I enjoy the Auric Basin and Dragon’s Stand metas more.

The Engineer NPC is south of the farms and fights Balth’s minions in an event, but that’s the only other one I know of. I rode all over the place Friday and couldn’t find anyone else.

TheUndefined.1720:

Just a suggestion, sorry if it’s already been made; please make the mounts larger / proportional to the Charr models. I don’t know if just increasing the raptor size will fix it, but with the raptor for now, the Charr model looks very clunky on the mount.

I think the problem is the Charr are so tall (at least looking at the female model). It’s almost the same height as the raptor itself, as well as the width of the shoulders with the Charr’s armor pauldrons.

I’m seconding this- maybe make Charr mounts a bit bigger? Although Charr are so top-heavy compared to other races I’m not sure how much it will help.

My only other issue with mounts is that some of the races seemed to bounce around in the saddle too much. The Charr and Norn looked fine, but Sylvari and Asura were bouncing all over the place when running/jumping. It’s a minor aesthetic complaint at most, but as someone who’s done a lot of horseback riding, it looked extremely uncomfortable.

Zoltreez.6435:

Power Reaper buffs changes in the traits and Spite tree rework confirmed to bring Reaper back in line as a Power build….

this alone got me hyped to hell….

no specific infos yet tough.

Also MOUNTS well animated MOUNTS with abilities and Dying freaken can color the MOUNTS !!!!!!!

I love Power Reaper so much, I’m glad it’s going to be more of a thing again! I’m curious to see how Scourge plays- I don’t think it could top Reaper for me personally, but I’m glad necros are getting a dedicated condi/support elite.

And as if I wasn’t excited enough about mounts (seriously, who doesn’t want to ride a DINOSAUR), I love all the animations I’ve seen for them. Specifically that one idle animation where the raptor shakes itself, throws the rider off-balance, and the rider just gives it a “are you serious?” gesture. I’ve had horses do the same thing while I’m riding and I’ve reacted similarly, so it was really nice to see that sort of detail in the game footage.

Same thing happened to me on my Reaper, who already had map completion- got awarded map completion xp 4 times, + 4 chests of necromancer gear with these numbers- [[⁸³⁰⁰⁶⁶]] [[⁸²⁹⁹⁰⁰]] [[⁸²⁶⁴⁵⁰]] [[⁸²⁹⁷⁰⁸]]
Trying to open them results in “That content has been temporarily disabled. Please try again later.”

seizer.5891:

Hey all, still using Centurylink, in the Denver Colorado area. Game is working just fine for me still after changing my DNS servers to Google’s.

https://support.opendns.com/entries/95614747-Windows-10-Configuration-Instructions

This article shows how to do it if you are unsure how to set your DNS manually. After you set your DNS I recommend flushing DNS cache and renewing your IP connection. This can all be done through a command prompt.

Easiest way to run a command prompt is go to your start button and type cmd. Windows will pull up Command Prompt. Right click it and run as administrator. (You don’t need quotation marks for commands) First command to type is “ipconfig /release”, then type “ipconfig /flushdns” and lastly type “ipconfig /renew”. Once Windows renews your connection, you can check that you are using the manually input DNS servers, by typing “ipconfig /all”. Look for DNS servers and make sure it’s the choice you put in. Close your command prompt window and try running GW2 normally.

I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but it does for me. I was able to raid and fractal last night and am still logging in today with no issues now.

Thank you! I was having the same issues on my MacBook (I also live in Colorado and use CenturyLink). I couldn’t even get the launcher to show up for the last few days, despite restarting multiple times, which seemed to solve the problem last time it happened. Then I tried changing the DNS, and it’s worked like normal for the last couple hours. I don’t remember if anyone else posted how to do it on a Mac, so here’s the instructions I followed:

Changing the DNS: http://osxdaily.com/2015/12/05/change-dns-server-settings-mac-os-x/

Flushing the DNS: http://osxdaily.com/2015/11/16/howto-flush-dns-cache-os-x-elcap/

I’d love to join in on this. Sadly my only raid experience so far was an MM only raid group last week, but we didn’t get anywhere because a lot of people didn’t seem to know mechanics for the Vale Guard. I’ve been itching to do more raiding since, especially if it’s an all-necro group.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Reaper is everything I want in an MMO class. Tanky, still able to put out good damage, wields a Greatsword (I’m a sucker for Greatsword aesthetic, don’t judge me), gets right up in the thick of everything, enjoyable sustain mechanics with Shroud interaction (I have always enjoyed it anyway), and some baked-in mobility with Reaper’s Shroud.

I literally couldn’t be happier. Not that everything is perfect, but this is what I was hoping to get out of the expansion from an experience perspective.

This. I’m loving how much melee damage the Reaper can dish out while still being pretty tanky. I love being able to aggro a mob, facetank everything thrown at me, and destroy all of them while my health bar is barely threatened.

Johannes.4638:

Yubria.5671:

- The BL merchant event seems to start at about : 33

I see this part, but is it a specific hour?? I have been hanging around the map in that spot all day and the event never triggers for Draithor.

I think it’s every hour? I went there just before 8:30 EST today – the BL merchants spawned a a few minutes earlier this time (:27, I think), and after it succeeded I had to wait a few minutes for the slay Draithor event to start, but I got the item drop.

Thanks for the info! I’ve edited them into the original post so we can keep it all in one place.

Edit: I changed this post to include anything useful regarding the Dark Harvest collection. Feel free to add more information in the comments, and I’ll continue editing this post.

Here’s the wiki collection page: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Harvest_

Draithor’s Reaping Crystal

- Apparently it can drop from either event in which you slay Draithor. This is different from the wiki, which indicates that the “Free the Black Lion merchants…” event needs to fail.
- The BL merchant event seems to start at about :33

Pristine Shadow Claw

- Mellaggan’s Valor Waypoint – three smokescale spawn nearby (1 is a vet)
- Coztic Grounds has 1-2 spawns

Anchoku.8142:

Minions have it rough trying to catch up all the time in VB. Sometimes it gets weird.

Honestly, put minions on gliders and you have to do the same with clones, turrets, banners, bears, elementals, spirits, etc.

I’d be okay with this too.

SlayerSixx.5763:

launch allies from the treb.

Full soldier gear, Death Magic (mostly for Unholy Sanctuary), either Spite or Soul Reaping, and the three shouts I’ve unlocked so far.

Your level-up awards sometimes include hero points, and by the time you get to 80, you’ll have enough of them to unlock all of your skills and traits without even doing any map completion. You can’t refund your points once you’ve spent them, but you definitely don’t need to worry about running out. If you’re sticking to PvE for now, you don’t need to worry too much about having the right build until much later, unless you want to do a lot of dungeons before you hit 80.

I don’t know as much about elementalists, though (I normally camp fire and burn everything to death), but I’d suggest looking in the ele subforums for other posts from beginners. Also, this might help: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE

jia li ng.8415:

I chose to create a Sylvari Revenant stylized with the appearance of a lost Priory Magister,
Figuring that if Rytlock can dance in the mist and return why not Sieran …

I both love you and hate you for this.

That’s strange – it’s been automatically sending extra xp to another mastery for me. I have some progress in three different mastery tracks I don’t even want to work on yet because of it.

I’d suggest the karma vendors in Orr – I just got a full set of exotic berserker armor for my Revenant yesterday, and all it really took was a little time to run there from Lion’s Arch. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor Some of the vendors also sell trinkets. Just remember that everything you buy from them is soulbound.

As for dungeons, all I’ve heard is that you get less gold from running them now. If you’re farming for the dungeon tokens to buy armor, my guess is you’ll be fine. I haven’t read up on the fractal changes much.

I’m really loving it as well. My only real complaint is how difficult it is to get around the maps before you get the gliding and mushroom masteries, due to the multiple map layers, difficult mobs, and few waypoints (although I’m not inherently against any one of those things, and I do get confused on new maps pretty easily, so take that with a grain of salt). But I love having a point to post-80 exp again, all the new cool stuff to unlock, Auric Basin is gorgeous, the music is wonderful, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the story so far. I’m also excited to find out what type of masteries we’ll get in the future, even though I’ve only finished 5 of the ones we have now.

The elite specializations in HoT are completely optional. Given the extra effort we’ll need to unlock them and the complaints I’ve heard about some of the elite specs, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people just stuck with their base class.

I’d also recommend making several characters so you can try different classes until you find something you like. I made several characters within the first few weeks of getting the game (mesmer, necromancer, warrior, guardian, maybe thief) and fooled around on them all for a while until my interest settled on the necro, and I’ve been maining him since.

Not rerolling, because Reaper is going to be too amazing, but making a Revenant is definitely the first thing I’ll do. I’ve been hyped for this since I saw the first announcement!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Revenant-Leveling-Tomes-Scrolls-etc

Necromancer.

I thought I was going to switch over to loving Revenant more with HoT, but then the Reaper happened.

Thanks for the suggestions! I hadn’t even thought about drawing the dragons for some reason. XD

Zanther Deathbringer.4762:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Nah, OP isn’t over-exaggerating. I witnessed virtually the same thing at one point last night.

We had 3 DPSers on a point trying to kill a Reaper Bunker. A Ranger chewing his kitten up with a LB from ranged, a Warrior CCing him down 50% of the time so he couldn’t move and then a normal D/P Thief backstabbing and heartseeking the kitten out of this Reaper. It took over 60s in a focused 3v1 to drop this guy and he wasn’t even a cool dodge rolling Bunker genius. He was just face tanking enormous amounts of DPS because he was a Reaper Bunker.

I don’t feel Reaper DPS is a problem but whatever this Bunker build is, it has way too much sustain. The guy was seriously face tanking like dungeon boss and I’m actually not over-exaggerating this. Dunno, I guess it’s possible I witnessed some hack mod. I’m not familiar enough with HoT specializations to really make a call on it at this point.

I can do the same thing as a bunker Guardian.

Nerf Guardians.

I can do this with a normal necro.

It’s October again, which also means it’s Inktober! Since I’m super hyped for HoT, I figured I might as well feed my obsession and theme all of my Inktober drawings around GW2. You can see the first one on my art Tumblr, and the next five, which will be of my characters, should be up by Tuesday. Sadly, I don’t have enough alts to spend the whole month drawing them, so I’d love some suggestions from you guys for what to do next.

I’m open to pretty much anything as long as it’s PG – PCs, NPCs, places, objects, monsters, etc., just be sure to include screenshots and any relevant info if it’s a PC. I won’t make any promises as far as how many or what order I draw the suggestions, as it will depend entirely on what inspires me the most when I sit down to draw. Bonus points to anyone who can get me pictures of a dev’s character, because I’d love to thank them for making this game so fun to play.

Oh goodness – I have a slow learning curve when it comes to video games, so there are countless things I didn’t realize until after hitting 80. My armor and weapon stats were all over the place, and I thought I was dying so much in dungeons because I was just bad at playing.

When I first started playing about 1 1/2 years ago, I was also utterly terrible at anything remotely resembling a jumping puzzle… and played with a friend who loved them. After struggling through my first one, he suggested we go up to a harder one in Lion’s Arch. I almost die a lot, but my friend somehow managed to keep me alive and it didn’t seem as bad as the previous puzzle. Then we get to the edge of a cliff, and he’s like, “Okay, this is the hard part. If you miss a jump here, you die and have to go through everything again.”

I miss the very next jump.

I still haven’t finished that jumping puzzle.

I agree – at first I thought it was kinda stupid, but by the time it ended, I loved it. And there’s something about the chef’s charm that makes me believe she’s actually a Sylvari who’s super excited about all of the different types of food in the world.

I second both the necro and the staff ele. Minion Master necro is incredibly fun to level up with – your minions take most of the damage for you while you spam AOEs with the staff and get all the credit. I main a Soldier necro with traits focused on Shroud, so I’m super tanky, but it takes a while for me kill anything if I’m solo.

Staff ele is also a lot of fun, but I don’t know that much about class mechanics. I pretty much just run around burning everything in casual PvE.

Just noticed the weird numbers in the description on Plague and Lich Form in PvE. All the other elite descriptions are fine, and I think all the regular skills are fine too.

Have you looked at all at the Shiro legend for Revenants? I haven’t played it much, but Shiro + sword/sword reminded me of a thief in heavy armor, with the evades and slashy-ness.

Just saw the Primeval skin in the gem store today. I wasn’t looking for the other two, but I’m assuming they’re up there too.

Invictus.1503:

I just got my first precurser drop in over 3 years (been playing since day 1) and so have the ability to make The Moot right now. Unfortunately I just don’t know if that legendary will look right on my “Dark Knight” sylvari Revenant I’ve planned.

1st world problems I suppose…

Do it anyways.

I’ve had a full set of Carapace armor since a little after announcement (I got it purely for the Revenant) and a growing stack of Tomes waiting. Now that I’m done getting Mawdrey for my main, it’s back to prepping for the Revenant!

Farming the Silverwastes is a pretty fast way to get gold: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/938738-guild-wars-2/70908435

And if you’re going to fight world bosses, do Tequatl. You get 1 gold + several chests daily, which is more than other bosses (that I’ve noticed, anyways).

In GW2 your abilities depend on your traits, skills, and weapon/armor stats that you select, so no class is locked into the role of tank, healer, etc. You get a few racial skills exclusive to your character’s race, but I rarely notice people use them.

I’ve been playing a bunker necromancer for a little while and it’s been pretty fun, but guardians are currently the meta bunker build (see metabattle). I think some elementalist builds can get pretty tanky too. As far as ranged damage goes, I think elementalists and mesmers have it the best right now.

And as for HoT – you won’t be able to access HoT content (which includes the Revenant and all elite specializations) until it drops next month. The beta slots allow you to test out the Revenant/elites/new maps, but only during the Beta Weekend Events, and I don’t think the next BWE has been announced yet. There’s a FAQ somewhere that tells you about them in more detail.

Zetsumei.4975:

Quin.6105:

Ok thank you Yubria, The first paragraph is super helpful, the second lost me a little. What exactly are boons and conditions, how do i actually tell if i am in a rotation that will fear or proc from the last cast or action? I am sorry for all the questions, I am just really lost.

Good idea to read up on these :

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrupt_Boon

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Reading the tooltips of your skills will tell you what boons/conditions they output and also what combo field or finisher they produce.

Yes, all of this. If it’s still confusing, just focus on using the skills you currently have. Once you get more familiar with them, go back and look into builds/the wiki again, and things will hopefully make more sense. It was all pretty overwhelming for me when I started, and honestly, I still don’t understand conditions/rotations well enough to use my elementalist properly (so I just have fun and burn everything in sight with her, then switch to my necro if I actually need to play well).

Vydahr.4285:

Yubria.5671:

Just the one main that I love so dearly, almost to the point of forgetting that I have other characters.

This sums it up perfectly. I only have one and it’s the first character I leveled to 80, plus the only character I have map completion on. He is quite the glorious, well traveled Sylvari

That’s funny – mine is also a male Sylvari, the first I got to 80, and the closest by far to map completion (~80% on him, vs. ~30% on anyone else).

Just the one main that I love so dearly, almost to the point of forgetting that I have other characters.

Personally, I enjoyed the dagger/warhorn + staff, with Death Magic and minions for leveling. The staff has range and AoE, the dagger has dps and a few other useful things, and the warhorn has the interrupt and swiftness/cripple. I tried different weapons, but ended up using staff almost exclusively and just kited everything while my minions did most of the work and took all the aggro for me. Tons of fun running around with my own personal undead army. The great thing about PvE is that it’s not super hard, so you can try out everything to figure out what you like.

As for rotation, that’s the order you use your skills for maximum cool down management and best effect with combo finishers and applying boons or conditions. You shouldn’t have to worry about it too much, other than deciding if you want to fear your enemies away, or try to keep them nearby/trapped in your wells with cripple/etc. Just using the skills and learning what they do should be enough to figure out a rotation of sorts, unless you decided to go for a condition build later. Those are more complicated.

I wouldn’t worry about your end-game build just yet. Leveling goes by pretty quickly, and personally, I think it’s annoying enough just remembering to keep up with getting new gear every few levels, so I don’t pay too much attention to the stats on my under-80 characters. It’s PvE, so pretty much anything can work (unless you want to do dungeons regularly), and you might as well play around with different traits/skills to see what you like. Metabattle has builds you can browse through, although it doesn’t always explain how to use them well. I’ve seen some pretty good tutorials on Youtube that go into detail about how a build/gear works, so I’m sure you can find something there. Both of them have pretty recent/updated builds as long as you pay attention to when it was posted or last updated.
I’ll add that a Minion Master build is incredibly fun and easy to play while leveling up, since your minions will frequently do the bulk of the work for you while you kite and let them take all the aggro, and you still get exp/loot from whatever unlucky thing they kill, even if you go afk while they do it. I used MM on my main until I got to 80 and, after deciding to run some dungeons for a while, realized how terrible my build was, then switched to a facetanking build and have been having loads of fun since.

Alternatively, you can ignore all that and go right into doing PvP if you’re interested, because there your PvE gear stats are meaningless and you can change them for free on a whim.

Finally, here’s some abbreviations: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Abbreviations
It doesn’t include all of the forum ones, but it’s a start. I’m still fairly new to the forums myself, but I’m pretty sure “kitten” is just a stand-in for an expletive of your choice.

I agree. I love my necro main, but Death Shroud just feels so inadequate now.

Has anyone tried this, and if so, what was your build and what were the results?

I feel like I didn’t do so well with it when I tried it in a few matches, but that could be due to any number of reasons, including but not limited to: I’m not the best PvPer, I’m not the best at making builds, and I might have had some weird lag/control issues.

Hopefully I can try it out in PvP soon. Thoughts from running around in PvE for an hour -

Greatsword: Seems too slow and too low on damage. I’m okay with moving slower, but there needs to be a lot more damage happening to make it feel effective, especially when moves are repeatedly interrupted or miss. Aside from that, I like the GS skills overall, and I think they work well together once you get some sort of rotation going. Grasping Darkness sometimes pulled the enemies all the way to me, and sometimes only part way, but I’m not sure if that’s a problem with the move or if it was interrupted or something.

Shouts: I like them so far, but I haven’t looked at them in too much detail.

Reaper Shroud: I love it. I would play the whole game in it if I could. It’s the faster, melee version of Death Shroud I didn’t realize I needed.