Guild Wars 2

You got protection they don’t. They can’t remove it, while you can strip them naked of their boons (albeit then tend to pulse so be careful). If you use deathshroud and your other defensive skills well, the warrior’s initial momentum will go down the toilet.

Remember – the longer the fight drags out the more warrior loses and you gain. Watch out for opportunity when his resistance goes down (in case of stance, one from healing you can just corrupt/strip). That’s when he’ll start being sorry he ever thought of going 1v1 vs a necro..

If you can complain in english about game not being in another languge then you don’t really have a problem. As for the rest, Samuel L. Jackson has some golden advice for them on the matter, famous enough to need not a quote here;)

I won’t agree with this approach – i want some major shakeups in raid meta. But in a-net’s defense, they did give us option for legendary armors from spvp and WvW, so thankfully we don’t have to deal with this Raid meta cancer anymore to get our armors:3

As far as i know that’s a yes to both.

40$ with extra character slot for base package and we’re golden.

You call these “massive”? I’d barely call this “cosmetic”.
As LoL player i can easily point out today why gw2 pvp sucks.

1. No clarity – in LoL i can clearly see which champ does what. GW2? 5v5 clusterkitten.

2. No counterplay. You get zero information about enemy and ally builds until you’re already in 5v5 rumble, and that’s not the best place to study your opponent.

3. No defensive stats. Just take a look at “tanks”. They are all based on their skills not stats. Chronomancers, Dragonhunters, Tempests. Need i say what happens to one class that actually does uses stats for defense? (necro).

4. No balance. How often do we get balance passes? Once every 3 moths? That’s so bad it’s not even funny. And are classes balanced? Hell no. Don’t even get me started on “core spec vs elite” balancing.

5. It’s all too random!!
Teamates – random!
Build they have? Who knows!
Professions you get in your team – random (and duplicates allowed!)
What roles does each player play – who knows!

And i’m supposed to “learn” this kitten and get good with all that randomness. Yeah you do it, i’m not wasting my brainpower for this clusterkitten.

I hope that’s not the case and the “special thing” to take place of specialization reveal this week is not LA…

“Krytan Butcher” – my necro’s a racist and an ex-convict for serial charr murders after the peace treaty, to which he never agreed.

Now released due to lack of hands to fight the mordrem he earns his freedom doing what he does best, only this time to cabba…erm “corrupted sylvari”. Never trust a salad! Or a catcow for that matter!

I didn’t find it “fine” – loose ends (Braham), missing characters (Rox, Rytlock), completely butchering GW1 lore (encounter with real Lazarus) etc.

Not that it bothers me so much, as i play GW2 for gameplay, much less story (there are much better story delivering mmos out there).

But i am worried that HoT masteries will have no place in this xpac. No glider sucks:/

It’s about reminding thieves about this little design concept of risk vs reward.

Backstab has a huge reward for landing, but there’s hardly any risk involved. If you don’t see what’s wrong with the picture then let me pop you an eye opener of a story here.

Imagine you’re in spvp, and my warrior is running at you with axe in mainhand and a sick smile on his face. You know what that means, I know what that means, and the axe knows what that means.

Few secs later an eviscerate is happily flying torwards you! No biggie, you dodged. Wth? ANOTHER eviscerate?! Wth? Where’s the adrenaline burn? And burst skills cooldown while we’re there? Dunno, but your head is about to become a flying object! You dodge again. Another one! You block…4 eviscerates in a row. Nice job! Unfortunately there’s more coming….for roughly 4-15 seconds of eviscerate spam “till it hits” depending on skill warrior used…
Few such experiences later you rage at forums about warrior being broken.

But hey, at least he wasn’t invisible while doing it!

Ofc that’s not how warrior burst works but just letting you know how it would feel if some other spvp “unliked skills” followed the rules set for thieves…

In terms of your proposal what we really need is to replace life blast with plague blast. We’ve been asking for ages for this one. Also would be a very nice buff to core necro since it’s core necro only attack.

Generally a-net dropped the ball hard with elite specs power creep vs core professions. Especially when it comes to necro.

Core necro needs a brand new death shroud, one that synergizes with rest of his kit, unlike this abomination we get today. They reworked lich form, why can’t they rework this?

Asides from that i think every core profession should have it’s most profession mechanic oriented traitline converted into an elite spec, with stronger boosts then before, now that there won’t be a risk of other elite specs getting overbuffed with it.

For necro the obvious candidate would be soul reaping since it’s already stuffed to brim with death shroud specific upgrades.

@above
My beef is how thief as a profession, gets tons of get out of jail cards vs opponents who skillfully interrupt or ensnare them, as well as no punishment for their own bad performance when trying to land a stealthed attack.

Bad thieves that do not realize or cannot properly use that, do not “balance” the general problem with this profession. They just cover it up.

@above – character slots should be standard when game introduces new professions, at least in case of games where you have to create a new character to try out the new class/profession. So EotN not having slots wasn’t a crime – it had no new character classes to put in said lacking slots.

Here however we do have revenant that is a mandatory new character if you want to try it.

Being stuck in emerald for a week now and barely improving as solo quequer stinks. But ok i’m not the biggest pvp kitten around.

But what really gets on my nerves is this pipe or w/e you call it system. I lose a game 491-500 being best in my team i’m still punished. Fine. I lose another game i get one. Yes i know there are certain rules that…On second thought. NO. I don’t know.

Because you don’t care to let me know. I’m sicking tired of this “mystery meat” matchmaking when i have 0 idea how the system ranks my team and opponnets team what are the potential gains and losses to be had.

I long for a simple, clear system that clearly defines where i stand in the foodchain and if the one i face is above or below me before we start our game.

[quote=5801364;SirDrygan.1823:

What you are suggesting will make leveling mastery too easy.

…snip;)
[/quote]

Objection! These things are not related!
Splitting a mastery into many more chunks that are much easier to master does not have to make reaching the end goal easier. It all depends on numbers used. 4 times the masteries per line, with each being 3x faster to level is still 33% more experience total to get compared to previous version.

Having a particular mastery be leveled by the choice of event and not player’s choice in mastery window also does not mean faster mastery leveling. That would be dependant on actual numbers a-net would implement.

The point of these changes is for player to feel his efforts and choices matter and are fruitful in their own unique ways. I just saved Itzel village from Hylek fanatics. Why on earth would that help me train my gliding mastery? Where’s the sense in that? I would think i don’t know…actual GLIDING would push that forward?

Similarly saving Tarir only to see Itzel lore exp go up (cause that’s what i selected), with exalted themselves not giving a flying …flamingo about it (their mastery line not budging one inch) also feels odd.

I don’t know as for others but for me vertical progression has one plus – the feeling of power! To see your character trounces the challenges, how one fart sets half the map flying, muahahahah!
It does however have nasty sideeffects of anything that is not endgame (gear, maps, skills) becoming “very temporary” until the end game part which becomes game itself.

Genius asura level idea:
Give the feeling of power to skilled players! But not with flat stats, but battle mechanic and animations!

• breakdown for veterans/elites - if they can’t land enough damage on a player or group of players during a certain time they start to panic taking more damage, or maybe even self-fearing and trying to make a break for it!

• more brutal animations - animations add a lot to the feeling of power. Now take warrior’s 2h hammer for example. When you see him use it it’s BRUTAL! When i see my guardian use it it’s like…oh..he did a swing..wow… Especially “banish” skill should have far more vigorous, fast, PAINFUL swing animation!

I fully understand the great benefits of skill and not stat based combat – all maps useful, no player shunned cause he doesn’t have that latest patch sword etc. But i still wanna know that when i willl enter orr with my necro and i will play it right, i will feel like death incarnate and those sorry risen will know the business end of that feeling!

I would very much like to know if we’ll be able to customize and decorate our guildhalls, much like housing in Wildstar, or is everyone gonna be stuck with same generic looking hall?

It would totally rock if it was the first case and each guild could make it’s own, original themed hall.

Haha, this is good, this is dropping down to same sex marriages discussion level.

So from the top before it escalates.
Free Extra character slot when launching expansion with content that needs empty character slot to experience is a long term industry standards. Heck F2P games respect that even for most part.

While here we’re being duped into thinking it’s a “privelege” that chosen few (pre-ordering veterans) will get, and others have to pay for it.

Everyone should get one free slot upon purchase of HoT, be it now or after launch. Revenant requires making a new character so a new slot is a reasonable expectation. But ofc someone wanted to monetize rather then stick to basic decency standards when it comes to launching expansion. And seems they’re not very fond of letting go of the chosen path…

Well here’s the thing – the LS plays out greatly to my personal story, because i’m a sylvari character for LS. I meet a boss that appeared in my dream, it’s my wyld hunt to beat it, pale tree is closely related to my character.

But how does it look like story-wise for less leafy players? Do they get some sorta unique comment or motivation to kick the enemies or it’s just “well i’m not sylvari, but i’m here, and it’s this or getting bored so…”?

Yeah i gotta admit dungeons are the ugly side of community. For me it’s less the speedrunners (i like an efficient fast run), but the profession elitits, kicks for low achi points or group “leaders” that quit after one single wipe at lupi. And i pity the fools who think thief is subpar in dungeons. Obviously they know nothing of both damage and support a thief can bring to the table.

I just saw the thread about new LA being awesome, and well, since current marketing is not going too well for a-net, here’s a friendly hint how to get this thing done right:

The new LA if it is as good as you say is a nice, small step to boost HoT sales – it shows your capability for creating interesting and new pve maps, a display of your current skill.

Now the big smart thing you should do is open beta tests of HoT PvE zones with specializations.
Think about it – majority of “I’m not pre-purchasing HoT” crowd asides from dissatisfied vets, are the very large group of “I’ve seen to little to belive it’s worth it’s price”. Now if i was running things, I’d do my darnest to ensure that it’s this group of ppl that gets to ride on in into beta so they can see, believe and awe at what’s coming. Little sells better then a try out of the future game!

And seeing how…“hot” you are for raking some money in here and now…i would definitely consider it if I were you.

Also i would make that slot for vets a feature of all HoT packages, no pre-purchase conditions attached.

Remember where you stand what what you ask – pre-purchase is a very one sided deal in your favor, a-net. If you want to get such deal done you need to put your customers in a really good mood, and build strong player confidence in the quality of your product.

And not try to go for backdoor cashgrabs.

Let me throw it down real simple and fast like. As much as the game is awesome and fun, from outsider’s point of view, things look like kitten.

It has been 6 months since HoT launch and what does the player on a break/potential HoT buyer hear about it and what’s going on:

1. HoT Price to content ratio is deemed bad by many.
2. Strongest redeeming feature – LS and free additional content that goes with it to fill that hole has yet to be heard of, let alone seen. And it’s already half a year after launch.
3. Numerous loud complaints on all fronts – grindy and short PvE, neglected spvp (one new map and infrequent balance patches (take a look how frequently LoL does it’s balancing), and botched WvW map.
4. Fixes that address the #3 at the same time indicate that we’ve got even longer wait for actual new content ahead of us, since up till now they were working out the kinks on the already existing stuff.
5. Game went F2P. Yes, awesomely made if we’re talking GW2, but for someone who’s not into gw2 specifics, but knows the basic rules of the market, that’s a death flag.
6. HoT sales figures remain a mystery. A-net aren’t the ones to be modest about their userbase numbers and sales figures when things go peachy.

Bottom line – i’m not saying game is bad or dying, but what i am saying is that IT’S GIVING OFF A LOT OF DEATHFLAGS from outsider’s point of view, with no one from a-net core crew stepping up to straigten this out.

If you want an influx of returning players who are on a break, or new players who are already now tempted by new releases (we got booming mmorpg year here) MAKE SOME GODkitten NOISE! Let the world know gw2 is alive, kicking and here to stay with new stuff to come soon!

Ah true, they didn’t reveal all revenant weapons. I suppose they now spread revenant into 3 reveals to buy time. One for ventari, one for shiro and one for glint.

Now if only i was a tiniest bit hyped about the revenant, unlike the actual druid…

What they should not do is trying to nickel & dime us with such underhanded tactics like that character slot story.

Before a-net played by the book – if xpac has new professions, players buying it get matching amount of slots to test drive them. Simple, logical, no one died of poverty over there cause they did it.

Today we get this. If we give them an inch today, they’ll take a mile tommorow (next x-pac), mark my words.

Hi i’m a relatively new GW2 player and it’s awesome. However there is a major crack on this diamond – the controls. Guild Wars 2 is epic because it takes so much of old MMORPG garbage and makes it fun, meaningful and not a chore.

But the first thing that greets a first time player is a fist in the face in form of horribly stale controls. By that i mean viewing/turning mechanics. It almost feels like i’m playing one of earlier Resisdent Evil games. Ofc that’s partially on my side, as i use touchpad not mouse, but still this can be done way better. Just take a look at how Vindictus did it.

Turning around and rotating view should be instantenous, intuitive, and always accessible. Because in combat you need to see what’s going on around you and turn immediatly to face the thread. Also the ability to move around while attacking loses alot witout simple and responsive controls for that.

Still waiting for some solid retalliation sources for necro – you know that one profession that’s supposed to get hit by design…

Two man enter, one man leaves. No capture points, no teams, no 5v4, no excuses.
A fair contest of skill on equal footing.

Why i feel that every pvp mode in this game is actively seeking to punish me for craving such a battle (team members, be it mine or his butting in, 5v4 matchups going through, total chaos at team deathmatch map.

+1 if you want duels too. And not for 300 gold on maps that are not designed for it.

Also adding dueling option will greatly benefit other pvp modes. WvW and spvp do feature many zerg moments, it’s sometimes utter chaos. How is a newcomer to really learn to pvp there?

With duels you have only one opponent and yourself. You can learn more that way about how other professions fight, their skills, their builds and weaknesses. Instead of learning that zegs are chaotic.

People who’d spend their time in duels would come out a much more competent players to spvp and WvW, now knowing how to fight different opposition and ready to soak up more knowledge on team tactics and quirks specific to a given game mode.

To reply to some criticism to my post:

• Blood magic is the last traitline to be selfish. Almost all of our party play is there (Transfusion, Vampiric Presence & Rituals, Unholy Martyr, Life from Death).

• Putting shroud traits in one line only is extremely bad design. As to why, just look at warrior and his “Defense line or die in seconds” reality. Perfect way to make already boring class reach new levels of boredom and unflexibility.

• Death magic having passive defenses is good. In shroud you can’t use active ones to help you. Passives or enjoy being cc ragdolled and getting condibombed with no way to retalliate. It’s the quality of these passives that needs work (reaper’s protection is indeed to easy to get around).

• Blighter’s boon is op like it or not. If you go spite, that thing heals you in shroud better then whole blood magic line put together, especially when target drops below 50% hp. And that’s without having to rely on Healing Power investment.

Other big issue here is how good and sustainy reaper shroud is vs crappy Death Shroud. If core necro DS would get a proper rework to give him more unique sustain, then I wouldn’t have to ask for reaper trait nerfs and core traitline buffs to bring the two bit closer to eachother after pressing F1.

As i suggested earlier, ability to activate and deactivate traps manually is what would ring my bell. After placing a trap it works as it does now, unless you:
1. press it’s button again, to deactivate.
2. another press to detonate it (activate).

Two reasons for such mechnic:
- combo field activation without hoping that something walks into the trap
- manual trap control for better effect example: when few mobs walk into it and not one lone stray wonders into it.

HoT – 7.5 metacritic score. Good, but not great.

Mastery system – great idea, so-so implementation. The naysayers touch a lot about it being “Grind Wars 2” with it’s release and there is some truth to that.

The culprit here is the mastery system. Is suffers from quite large design flaws that should be addressed to make it what it really should be.

#1. Masteries are just few skills miles apart rather then a true mastery
Currently instead of having a lot of small steps to make, that over time, build a strong mastery in given discipline, we’re stuck with very few, often logically disjointed ones, that by their nature have huge gaping holes of nothing in between (long hard grinds for a level up).

How much fun would it be if we had 24 points in a given mastery instead of 6, each less meaningful then current ones, but 3 times easier to level up and as they pile up on top of each other something powerful would be happening?

For example the glider. Why do i get extra endurance with step #4? If it’s mastery then shouldn’t it be that i start with really small endurance pool but with every or at least most steps of the way i get a little more until at the end or near it it becomes unlimited? Why does it have to be a sudden leap and at that particular point?

And why are my mastery points only about flying with it? What about getting friendlier with pact engineers and getting some extra visual perks or additional boosts for the glider? There’s room to improve and speculate!

#2. Meaningless masteries We all know which masteries we need to get most of hero points. And 3 of these 4 are forced on us by personal story. Why the others mean so little and offer so little value, especially since they’re higher up in the mastery tree?

And why is it so easy to get a hp without proper mastery for it? I want a verdant brink hero point behind a poisoned bush. No problem. Grab your glider and just glider over the bush into the point. So why should i care about that itzel poison mastery again?

Now using another mastery to get past such obstacle can be good design, as long as priorities are respected. If it’s designed for itzel mastery users, then other masteries should require far higher level on them and much more working around to get it. If let’s say poison mastery was a level 2 itzel lore skill, and to grab it with glider i would need lvl 5 gliding mastery, that would be fair game. But it’s not.

3. Boring acquisition – getting mastery points is cool. Complete your story, glide, do mini-games, search for hidden areas. But leveling mastery levels is boooring. Why? because there’s no diversity!

I want to level Exalted mastery. What do i do? Grind map events. Which map? Any.
Itzel? Same! Glider? Same!

No wonder people complain it’s grindy! Why can’t we have specific masteries be affected more by specific events and activities and others less. And while we’re at it, why not have certain actions influence more then one mastery!

I go to auric basin and help defend it. Is it not obvious that my exalted mastery should shoot up from it, while others not budge one bit or only a little? If i get a mastery point reachable only with glider, should i not get some sweet glider points for it? And if i’m on verdant brink and doing mission for the Pact, like taking out lot of modrem, should i not receive major love from pact engies (who upgrade my glider in this scenario) and a bit of love from the Itzel (because while not directly helping them, less mordrem is always good news).

If we had a system like that i think players would feel their event and map choices are much more meanigful and while still being there and doing the same map events, they would feel their choices matter!

If you agree +1 this sucker, and post below to keep it afloat, if not feel free to correct me or let it die out;)

Regardless it’s over 9 months now, so the “light content” either will get pad properly with LS3, or they’ll have to be very, VERY clear that next xpansion is full of content to the point of morbid obesity..

Target the weak – it must stay a crit buff. One of fun things about necro are the 0 precision, 100% crit chance builds. Right now we have 3 traits for that purpose out of which 2 are needed for a successful build. So that gives you 3 combinations of 2 lines to get the job done. It’s flexible that way opening up more builds. Take away one of them (target the weak) and you’re arm-twisted to use reaper and soul reaping lines. That many unique and fun builds down the toilet if you do that.

What can be done is replacing crit-chance per condi applied with precision per condi applied. That one will work with the very same trait’s 13% precision added as condi damage boost to push that number even further.

Heee’s baaack! Once again he has risen from the dead and into the leaderboard’s top 1000:) My new and improved zombieneer!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUnUISfWWeFWYB5XGhtQGd5wjF5xqfsRAA-TJBBwAG3fAwFAIzDAAcZAA

Unlike the first version this one gives up some defense for bigger hitting power. Following forum suggestion i went with incendiery powder and doom sigil for some extra condi pressure. But the biggest damage boost comes from rune of rage. Huge fury uptime combined with extra ferocity from it and extra damage when under effect of fury turn you into a monster when popping rampage on elixir X, and make the rifle no longer just a utility, but now a serious threat.

Elixir U was a fresh addition to previous build, and it stays. It’s anti-projectile toolbelt skill is diamonds, and elixir itself now sees even more uses in this build, as a support for offense. Popping it to get bigger fire power with rifle auto when chasing opponents, or in a dog fight with most cooldowns blown has proven it’s value.

Healing order should be:

Toss elixir R under your feet before you drop below 25% and then just be sure to stay in it when you’re downed. Unless things went south you’ll be back up in a jiffy, with the very same elixir that revived you off cooldown thanks to minor trait in tools. From there A.E.D. and the 2nd elixir toss when things get hairy.

Also remember that zombieneer has *many*ways to increase his chances of successfull rally. The simplest being damage. 5k+ damage crit boobie traps did happen and enemies did went down with that.
Other ways (and there are quite a few) involve using your own nogging and skills you have. And they’re a very good set for the task at hand.

Much harder hits, some condi pressure and ability to be one persistant zombie that doesn’t stay down are all still here with this build.
The price for the changes is less regen (no minor inventions trait), Other is major loss of dodging power. With no sigil of energy you’re down to regular 1 dodge per 10 seconds + full bar refill every 24s with drink elixir R.

You can however fix that with invigorating speed at cost of losing fast acting elixirs or backpack regenerator.

Also good news for healing turret fans. If you prefer that as your heal (I don’t), then you can free up tool’s trait “speedy gadgets” and put something else in there, like scope for extra rifle crit power at range, or adrenal implant for permanent, passive solution to slow endurance regen.

There is a lot more to a zombieneer, and i myself have not fully tapped this build power. But it sure worked in ranked for me, that’s all i can say:)

Ever wondered why A-net dews don’t show themselves much outside of safe, arranged studio recordings?

Not long ago i dusted off my level 50 necro and while i was getting busy with his tailoring it hit me:

It takes considerable amounts of materials to craft what i need (if we’re talking rares), while results lasts a day or two, before i drop(!!) something better.

Everything rare or even master quality is quite costly given how short-lived it is untill i hit lvl 80 exotics or ascended crafting tier.

My solution:
Recrafting – rather then making new item, you upgrade old one you use to current crafting tier stats.

Benefits:

• you can keep the looks of the item you like without stat sacrifice
• matches the pace of leveling system – you level fast & you can upgrade fast
• helps ascended farming – less mats needed for upgrades = more in bank for end game gear.
• greatly reduces frustrating mats grind, remember not everyone levels by killing hoards and hoards of mobs.
• doesn’t really kill off making new rare items from scratch, as they’re new skins to use.
• given the above it kills off crafting new ugly items or same looking gear – and good riddance.

Absolutely not. And it’s not that HoT is bad in my opinion (4th day playing, too little to pass judgements), but there are strong objective reasons to not pre-order any expansion for that matter:

1. Pre-purchase price – 50$. Well early birds may catch the worm, but late bird catches the discout – i got my HoT key for roughly 32$ at 3rd party retailer. Nuff said.

2. Keeping a-net on their toes. Let’s see how they handle LS3, if we’ll get any more heart of maguuma maps (looking very forward to that) and how will they fix and tweak their game. NOT pre-purchasing the game means they can get customers by fixing the dealbreakers that made them stay away from HoT (like not enough content in their eyes, too linear progression, bugs etc). If everyone pre-ordered, what incentive would they have to work on that which they already released?

Because there is lot of very crucial situations where it’s a stunbreak you need (reaper’s shroud #3 is not one) or just a quick, small stab on short cooldown to finish a crucial task without being forced to stay in shroud for prolonged time.

Example – you just downed a warrior, his buddy is coming. You can use Foot to quickly stomp him and save the shroud #3 for the newcomer, including the fear. And if you have Foot then at most 10s later you will have insta stunbreak + stab to secure your heal goes through. Crucial in pvp is you ask me.

You show me then that bigger fraction of the game that lets me get legendary armor without raids and then we’ll talk.

Cause i happen to be one of these off-meta kittens that like to do their own building and experimenting without having to run to mystic toilet for every minor stat change.

As long as the 2 randoms can kick whole run i will agree with Duke on this one.

Leader system was the only counter-action.

If first problem is solved, that’s another issue. But right now it’s not…

Main issue with guards in spvp is that unless you’re extremely specialized build (like defy pain/signet of might uber zerk warr and a good one at that) you cannot fight a guard on point. To have a chance of surviving and winning you have to peel off guard’s defenses at range, all the while said guard is capping or holding a point and points flow to the enemy team. By the time you dealt with most of his blocks and what not he already has +1 coming to kill you, or so much time passed that even if you kill him and decap, points he earned by simply holding that point before you dropped him are already a huge gain for the enemy team.

Unless another guard comes to that point and they start sharing their heals and blocks…

Dr Evil voice: It’s a start.

Stating the obvious, but since a-net devs were not sure what type of utility to make it, here’s my feedback;)

The problem with “flexible” is that somewhere with scaling there will be “optimal” amount of ppl that for example causes boss to use his killer move less often yet is numerous enough to deliver the kill. And so instead of 10 ppl raids we’ll get meta 7 ppl runs or some such, cause “optimal”..

“real soon” – longest unit of time known to mankind after eternity;)

Depends on what you want from it. If every ounce of power counts then valkyrie as it’s mainly power, vitality and ferocity secondary. Also with large healthpool you’ll be surviving condies better and enjoy beefier death shroud.

Cavalier is toughness primary (power and ferocity 2ndary) so if you’re going there you’ll be better vs power damage and you’ll get more out of your healing (less hp lost due to damage reduction from tougness)

Though with that in mind there is the Commander’s (if i recall right) stat set as alternative. It has more power, slightly less tougness, less ferocity but extra healing (which cavalier doesn’t) to stay on top of that sustain while dealing sweet power damage.

These 3 should be your main picks if you want berserker style power damage + sustain. But don’t forget necro is first and foremost a necro, and not just hanger for wearing armor. Majority of your survival will come from using your condies well (chills, cripples, weakenss, fears and some blinds), along with good deathshroud management (switching from nomal health pool to ds, then back, ensuring you got proper amount of healing vs life force gain to feed both your healthpools).

For damage+sustain traits you’ll definitely neeed reaper (has both), soul reaping (again both, focused on deathshround sustain and offence).
The last one is up to you. Each of remaning lines has something good to offer:

Spite makes you a self might stacking machine.

Blood magic provides ample amounts of life leech and healing. Pair that up with proper ds management and your survival goes through the roof.

Curses offer 3rd line boosting your crits (5s fury on entering ds) + 2% crit chance for every condition on your target.

Death magic is extremely noobie friendly traitline. It boosts your meatshields..erm i mean minion’s survival, lets them take condies off you, and lastly offers the most dangerous & powerful survival tool for noobie necros – unholy sanctuary.

The last one is simple and deadly. When you’re about to die, as long as trait itself is not on cooldown and you got over 10% max life force on you (your deathshround bar) instead of dying you’ll be automatically put into deathshroud buying you precious time to either finish the fight, escape, or leech some health back before your life force expires. This intervention will ignore deathshroud’s natural cooldown, so it’s an awesome lifesaver..OR NOT. If you let your instincs take over and try to pop ds as you die, there’s a high chance trait might beat you to it! Trait pops ds saving you, only to have your own self take it off because you forgot about the trait, and are deactivating already present deathshroud with you F1 press, thinking you’d do the opposite! Well done, see you at waypoint:p
If you manage to control your ds itchy finger when nearing death this trait will save your kitten like an undead superman;p

Also two fair warnings before you go into necro:
Necro has good power damage but hardly any burst. He’s just deals solid damage all the time, but no instakill ROAR damage spikes.

And between Ranger and Necro – Necro is the harder one to build (waaay harder) easier to play. Ranger is easier to build, harder to play (managing 3 swaps at the same time – weapon + pet + celestial avatar)

I don’t know what’s the idea here, but it’s ridicilous that our best pet control skill (it really does go exactly where we want it to!) that is a SHOUT has a 1 sec cast time.

It’s pretty obvious that if it was insta cast it would fullfill a much more important role then ambushes – that is a reactive skill to save our pet from aoe if we’re fast enough.

In fact this skill should be split into two parts:

a) An instant cast , no cooldown pet command (under F5 button or something) that tells it exactly where to go, and it obeys just like with guard.

b) the accual shout that tells it to guard area it’s at, with that protection and stealth.

So moving your pet to a desired location is not at 15 secs cooldown, and shout does not receive OP functionality (compared to other shouts) of being the only skill that truly controls your pets position.

well true, warhorn is the cc, life force gain/cripple tool. Death magic seems the best candidate, given soul reaping already has a movement speed trait (speed of shadows) and how death magic also touches on warhorn’s features (cc and life force generation) + the locusts are kinda unofficial minions;p

If that’s the case i would put it in place of deathly strength, while the latter I would merge with beyond the veil. Even condi necros would benefit here, given how we get wrecked my diamond skin eles with no real counters available for a condi build…

Nope did not get owned by a thief, sorry conspiracy theory thieves. Only thief to own me in recent days was a really really good sword/dagger one and even then after 3rd encouter he had some major hard time with my ranger. On to the subject:

Ok, a-net, you got some explaning to do.
A while ago you said yourself you want to move away from hard counter gameplay into soft counter style, so player skill has bigger say in result of pvp encounters then their build.

And for most part you’re keeping true to your word – quickness and berserker stance becoming boons which can be stripped or corrupted, elite specs filling gaps base professsions had etc.

….except thieves.

Shadowstepping. Stealth not removed when blocked or evaded, , phletora of instant casts including a heal skill that breaks movement inpairment and has massive evade, initiative unaffected by chilling or interrupt induced skill cooldown.

So where exactly is the room for “skilled counter gameplay” against a thief who knows his stuff in pvp? Cause so far all i see is the “hold the point and survive for as long as possible”.

Ok now for my solutions to this guardian revamp:

1. Condition damage builds:

Grandmaster zeal trait – Engulfing Flame

Your continual burns grow in intensity over time, dealing more damage but lasting shorter.

A continual burn inflicted on the enemy will make your burning damage shoot up, but at cost of negative burn duration for you, that grows with each “rank” of burning. And the moment burn ends, even if for split second, burning damage and duration return to base value.

Example (with this trait on):
0-7 sec of burn – damage = 0.25 condition damage
7-14 sec of burn – damage = 0.5 condition damage, -15% burn duration.
14-21 sec of burn – damage = 0.75 condition damage, -30% burn duration
21 sec + = 1.2 condition damage, – 70% burn duration

Also this applies only to your burns and burns inflicted by other players do not count as keeping the fire alive. Only your own burns add up to longevity of the flame.

With this guardians get real reason to care about both condition damage and duration, and look at those burn inflicting traits and skills.

2. Virtue of Justice traits in Virtues line.

Absolute Justice (master tier) - rename it to “Swift Justice”. Passive stays as is (every 3rd strike a burn), active adds 4 seconds of quickness with one minute internal cooldown to you and party.

Quickness “ready state” is displayed by flames around your weapon skillbar burning a lot faster.

Permeaning Wrath - rename it to “Furious Justice” – adds 5 seconds of fury with activation with 30 secs internal cooldown.

Fury ready state is indicated by flames changing their color to visibly more white hue (red doesn’t fit with guardian theme so…)

Passive can stay as is.

Those changes put a carrot at end of virtues trait line for offensive guards – fury accessible with virtue of justice. It won’t replace professions that are meant for the job, like warriors or rangers, but will give you a short window to unleash pain before it runs out.

Quickness in 2nd tier doesn’t hurt either and gives a meaningful alternative to the other two awesome virtue buffing traits.

3. Shattered Aegis - The buning was fine, but it can be staks of vulnerability for your lost aegis. Anyway something that does not end up in fixed number, because it’ll alwas end up with “that’s so op”, or “i prefer tickling them – more damage”.

4. Glacial HeartThat running joke of a trait for 2h hammer in honor line. Lower it’s cd from 30 secs to 15 secs. Give hammer guardians a reason to get those chilling sigils and condition duration to hunt down some frozen tv dinner and cook up in their flames:)

5. Spirit Weapons.

Shield of Avenger just owns. Putting it in my skill slot makes a huge differece. Why is it the other 3 fail to do that for me?

Sword of justice. Should be executing it’s attack all the time, not once per x seconds. I know it can draw aggro, but it’s also on nasty cooldown during which i have neither damage boost nor an ai ally. Passive from bane signet looks better.

Hammer of wisdom - i accuallly like it’s chain a lot. Give it a lower cooldown and we’re home free.

Bow of Truth. That thing is supposed to follow me everywhere i go, like a stalker on perole. Not root iself while i run away from condition field or risen.

Symbol of Swiftness - Old one had a good idea behind it – run in, run out – true to nature of swiftness.

Gems vs online money transfer is no difference money wise for a-net.

However most people who think of buying HoT with gems are delluding themselves.
Something as insignificant as dark wings backpack made gem to gold prices raise by 50%. And we’re just talking here a piece of visual gear, not to everyone’s liking mind you.

If HoT was in gemstore, gem prices in gold would skyrocket so hard, you’d prefer to just buy it with your own, real life money, rest assured of that.