Guild Wars 2

I assume, just from a glance at the forums, that minion AI is still kitten.

But anyway, fellow Necros, what is new? Have we gotten any must have buffs to our traits, skills, etc?

Or is it same-old, same-old, carry on as before? (Before, btw, is Oct 12th.)

Lots of love, and Merry Christmas,

Zel (master of the black arts, etc, etc)

Jaraxal.5028:

Zelethul.7982:

Known. Before you post anything about a Necro bug, you should check our extensive bug listing.

I found the bug in the bug thread. I can’t believe I didn’t see that thread when I started looking. I’m also surprised a forum search didn’t bring back that thread.

Ah well, I know where to look now! Thank you!

Happy to help.

And to the poster above me, hmm. Interesting. But, as for myself, I still see the bugged visual effect. It is noticeable on the battlefield that it places a larger mark, but still the original bug of all but Chillblains not showing up as being larger, remains.

Luckily, this is not one of the more egregious bugs known to us, merely a mild visual annoyance.

Torvarren.6295:

Necro is bugged yes, but I just see that as a challenge. And no, necro is not the most bugged class in any mmo, that would be the conjuror from EQ2.

I knew when I said that, that someone from one of the few MMOs I haven’t played would come along and nail me on it. I stand corrected. Necro is one of the very worst in recent history, however. This is indisputable.

In any case, I kind of see it as a challenge in the same fashion as you, but you have to admit, that looking through that bug list at the top of this forum is daunting and disheartening.

Reshbal.8369:

I think the axe’s lower damage is meant to even it out with the vulnerability it applies and its medium range, but even so, it is rather weak. However, I think both attacks 2 and 3 for an axe main hand are very useful, and that skill 1 is the only glaring problem. Perhaps it could be improved to a usable level with a number of ways though: An attack power increase, an attack speed increase, or even an increase vulnerability stack.

I believe the dagger is supposed to be our strongest and fastest weapon, so that’s not too strange. It’s close range and single target are the drawbacks to using it.

I agree that this seems to have been the intent behind the axe. Problem is, because of it’s close range, it is too easy for someone to close range with you, and then you have to swap to dagger anyway for melee. Which makes it’s auto-attack a total waste of time under almost any cirumstance. Plenty of other classes can stack vulnerability better too.

Most people either say that they don’t like the axe, or that the other weapons are better(they are). But almost every necro I have talked to on Denravi (before it became Chernobyl) said that they don’t really know what, but that something has to change to make axe usable.

But when you take a lot of the other skills into account, axe is very clearly meant to be used with DS. So maybe we can make a basis for improvement based on this?

Manticore Five.9867:

I see. Thanks.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying not to use those skills. In fact they are awesome.

But the way I see it, I find being able to spread Chill out, is more of a bonus of Epidemic than it’s own thing.

I will start with #3, and move up from there.

#3
Soul Reaping. Now, this has supposedly been resolved, but the fact that this happened in the first place, and took more than a month to even be noticed, is indicative of the near total lack of attention the Necro class gets both on the forums, and presumably amongst the developers. Our Dev time was clearly wasted, because we have a staggering amount of bugs. Too many in fact, to even tell the overall power level of the class at present. This is egregious almost beyond belief, the broken (and when I say this, I mean as in not functioning. period. not the usual mmo meaning) state of this class outright makes me feel like a secondhand citizen for choosing to play the class I found the most thematically appealing.

#2
Minions are not even remotely viable choices. In fact, the overall lack of viable skill options really does pigeonhole us. But Minions are easily the one thing I was looking forward to the most when I rolled Necro. I anticipated the Necro that all of my friends who played GW1 talked about. The guy who might not have been the top powerhouse class, but who can swamp ‘em with minions. Nope. These ones behave like bad Skyrim mod NPCs. Their AI in inexcusable, they don’t regen health, their CDs are ridiculous, and Reanimator is a top contender for the worst trait in the game. There is, aside from flavor, no reason whatsoever to specialize in pets. A Guardian with Spirit Weapons feels more like a pet class than we do.

1. “Mastering Death Shroud”. This was pretty the worst PR move I have ever seen in this context. I appreciate Dev attention, because without it, we all might as well go roll Thieves and start complaining about nerfs. But trying to deflect attention away from the horrific amount of bugs (seriously, Windows Vista shipped with less issues), we get a response that basically trolled us. Summed up, we got told L2P. I know I, personally, do not respond well to being told this even by random people I don’t care about. Few people do. But when it’s Jon Peters, it hits a good bit harder. The community’s response to this has not been overdone.

Those are my big 3. Taken together, it seems like Necro was barely playtested, if at all. It feels like the leftovers of every other class thrown together into our traits and skills, and given a visual facelift.

Known. Before you post anything about a Necro bug, you should check our extensive bug listing.

Don’t feel bad though, the Necro is probably the most bugged class of anything I have played in any MMO. And kitten near has more bugs than several other classes combined in this game.

Look at the number of ways we can actually inflict it reliably. First being staff #3, then #5 for Focus off hand, then a DS ability, then Spectral Grasp and a trait if they are 25%.

The shortest cooldown of these is Dark Path, the DS ability. 15 sec. Same as Epidemic. The Focus and the Staff are next at 20 sec, and Focus is probably the better thing to rely on for it.

So, every 15 or 20 seconds, you can set off that combo. Which lasts for 5 sec.

1/3 or 1/4 coverage to the people you hit with Epi. That’s why, it’s just numbers.

Now, this has some merit when combined with the numerous ways we have access to Cripple and Immobilize. And I have to admit, Chill is probably my favorite condition in PvP. But given our level of access to it, not really anything to base a build off of.

All IMO, of course.

Just with limited experience with Necro, (only just unkittened my Internet, haven’t played much since), I would think the Minion Master build would be very well served by a simple small change.

Jagged Horrors need to be immune to damage. And preferably, possess insanely aggressive AI.

This actually gives them a purpose besides functionally spamming the “Oh noes, my pet died!” voice clip. It also prevents the more or less free revive that occurs when you down somebody. And it actually makes them semi functional viz a vi Death Nova. They still die when their timer runs out, obviously.

I thoroughly agree with a change to a 15 sec cooldown also. A poison cloud every 15 sec, only if you kill somebody, is hardly OP.

iamzuul.6813:

Interesting! After all the updates and diags I disabled my Windows Firewall (which did have GW2 allowed) and installed Zone Alarm (free) instead. Suddenly I have my connection back.

Mysterious.

Eh… not so mysterious, to be honest. Windows Firewall is one of the most notoriously incompatible programs in existence. Disabling it is pretty much standard troubleshooting nowadays. Kudos to fixing your issue, though.

Mine has been off since I purchased this machine, so I know that isn’t my issue. Which remains still unresolved, and thus the game is still unplayable. As an update, whenever GW2 decides to die on me, and I check my connection status, Windows determines that it needs to reset my NIC Card. To me, this is extremely odd, because were the issue actually a hardware on my end, this would be endemic to my entire system, not just one game.

Maybe my processor is being overloaded? It’s a Core i5, so it really ought to be able to handle low settings, but idk, that could be the case. I have heard of some games being CPU frontloaded on their memory load, which is possible to cause things that look like graphics or network lag. Does anyone know if this might the case?

[Edit: Also, I have the “port forwarding” trick in the shortcut for the game, and it is ran as admin at all times. ]

For the last week or so, every time I have attempted to play, the game has disconnected me, in less than 90 seconds after log in.

The really bizzare thing is, once it does disconnect me, it makes my connection to the internet go completely haywire (I.E., dead) for upwards of ten minutes. (the current record is twenty)

But I have checked my internet connection exhaustively, and I am experiencing no computer or network issues in ANYTHING else I do. I play EVE, LoL, SC2, and a number of other online games, and I have never experienced this issue in any way shape or form.

I bought GW2 on pre launch, this is currently one of my favorite games, equal to anything I have every played. So I am eager to keep playing. But this constant, hideous disconnect makes the game utterly unplayable.

As for technical info, I can provide whatever might be necessary. I am not entirely tech-unsavvy myself, and I can say upfront that I have set the suggested port forwarding listed in the Helpdesk onto my home router, and have run virus and malware scans and router diagnostics. All came up negative.

Thanks for any help in advance.