Guild Wars 2

Scepter is used for conditions, along with a dagger offhand for potency. Axe and dagger main hand are power weapons, with a focus offhand, typically. Staff is a good all-around weapon to have as a secondary, but it’s not mandatory. It depends on your build and the situation. What do you want to do with necro? Do you want to do damage with conditions (bleeds, poison, vulnerability, etc) or do you want to do straight up damage with big numbers? Necro is quite versatile.

It really depends on the circumstances. As far as necromancers go, they have their highest potential damage from conditions, due to how well they can spread them. Overall, I’d say play how you want and don’t worry too much about it, since there isn’t anything in the game that needs to you to run power. To get into specifics:

Dungeons: you won’t be well liked by elitists, but running a conditionmancer is fine for pugs and casuals. The only time you’ll really run into issues is when you have two or more condi builds in the same group, because then damage can start to drop off. If you have a dedicated group where you’re the only condi user, go nuts. Lately, I’m seeing few and fewer condi builds, so the chances of meeting up with another one in a pug are pretty low.

Overworld: the only time you’ll have a problem against champions and world bosses are the ones that are heavily zerged. Temple bosses, champ trains, dragon champions, the ones where there are 20 or so guys on one mob you’ll see an issue. But, in champions that aren’t fought in large groups, or areas with zergs of mobs themselves, condition builds are fine.

You’ll still do damage, since nearly all condition attacks have direct damage components, so getting credit isn’t an issue.

WvW: Conditions are pretty good here. In small scale fights (anything from 1 vs. 1 to 10 vs. 10), the AoE power from conditions and their pressure can do plenty of damage to other players. It is actually pretty good at doing damage. In zerg vs. zerg, sometimes a well formed enemy zerg will pack a cleansing, but a necro can easily maintain AoE condi pressure despite this.

Personally I just have multiple builds.

i made my way up to lvl 80 personal story solo.i’m not a heavy class profession if you think so

There are very few personal stories, in fact I can’t think of any, that can’t be soloed. What profession are you?

let’s see, i have chars in all orders, so… let’s give this a go:

Durmand Priori: explorers, archaeologists, scholars… your run of the mill bookworms, with a few mad scientists and indiana jones/lara croft types tossed in for good measure. generally willing to unearth old knowledge despite the risks, generally the ones coming up with new ideas. if memory serves, they were founded by Durmand, a human, between GW1 and GW2

Order of Whispers: spymasters, keepers of ancient secrets, hidden defenders of the world, puppet masters. the oldest of the orders and the one most versed in politics and the “everyday” world of Tyria (not just the continent). Founded a long long time ago, on Elona, by humans, in order to hold back the forces of darkness

The Vigil: with as many tacticians and paladins as they have brutes and cannon fodder, they are an army that might even rival one of the charr legions in might (i’m sure others will correct my assumption if incorrect). they generally prefer the direct approach and the only order to be founded by a Charr, after her warband was Branded by Glint’s former boss

Tybalt was my first mentor and I was very sad when he died. I’ve since immortalised him through he power of taxidermy as my backpack! It even has a little red apple on the label.

You know, every now and again I get attacked by some goons. Either they’re guards looking for Demi Beetlestone or undead taunting me about Tybalt. That silly cat had better have tricked them.

Sieran is a fun character. I refuse to do the battle for claw island for her own good… anyway, strictly speaking from my perspective the Order of Whispers beat the Priory to it and Sieran never dies

Am I the only one who noticed the pun in the first sentence? Hehehe.

But yeah, I just gave up on the personal story after that. Poor Tibs. He’ll live forever in my heart. And on my back. And as my desktop background. And- gets shot

We got shorthanded when Tybalt died and Trahearne lived during the battle of Claw Island via order of whisper story arc. I haven’t continued passed this yet, but I guess this is where the personal story took a dive …

I want to give my two cents on this topic.

Warning contains spoilers! Read at your own risk

There are a lot of mixed reviews and thoughts on Trahearne as a character, his role in the overall story, and what happens with him when he’s entering combat. Also, going into this know that if you still hate him at the end that’s for you worry about in your next play through. I am writing this as a counter argument to some of the people who have written arguments, fan stories, or done fan-art that completely bashes him as a character. You can still bash him. This is just one thought out of the many.

From what I’ve seen a lot of people think that Trahearne “stole” their story. While I do see why they think this, I am going to state, he doesn’t. How? While he does become leader of the Pact and some people had issues with this, think about what a game would be like if you became Pact leader. Can you seriously imagine how boring it would be to play as Trahearne? I think I wouldn’t have bought the game. That wouldn’t be a fun game. All it would be is planning and then going out only on a few of the missions to help out the commander who is the driving force behind moving the story forward. Trahearne is there as a guide to the player (commander). Now, if being his second in command really causes that much of an issue, then what did you want? I can see at some point here how his wyld hunt seems “all important,” but let’s back track a bit here. If Trahearne had never meet the player character, then he’d never have completed his wyld hunt…

Another issue someone had on him was that he was the leader of the Pact and was going out into the field. That is seemed rather childish to make this happen in the story line. Well, real examples here: leaders do go to the front in war! Sure the president does but there are times in our history (over all human history) where leaders will head to the front and be in battles. Then there is the fact that Trahearne is the only one who can do some of the cleansing rituals preformed or is the only one to really know enough about Orr’s history to be of use in that situation. He helps the understanding of the story and events of that take place throughout your journey through Orr to the cleansing of it.

Trahearne isn’t as random of a character as people may believe he is. If you’re paying attention he does have a reason for appearing when he does in your personal story if you’re not a sylvari character. He’s coming from Orr with a warning about the risen attacking. Random? No. It’s introduced during this part as well that he is held in high regard at least by the order the player character joined in their story.

Now, on the fact players didn’t like him because he was squeeshy. Well, I just completed another play through of the story on an ele and he died a whole three times because I was being an idiot and charged into the battle without thinking in which case all pact members including myself died. But most of the time he wasn’t taking damage at all because either I or an npc were taking all the agro. This might be a bug fix as well.

continues on reply

His personality. “He’s whiny” I beg your pardon, in what way? Sure the quote “This won’t end well” can sort of (stretching it there) come off as whiny, but it’s more something the writers would’ve or might’ve put in there to remind players of what Trahearne has been through. He did travel Orr for nearly twenty-five years on his own! He is bound to weary, if not a little uneasy, at entering battle. The Orr he was traveling isn’t nothing like the Orr we see in game, there were no outposts and no one else there besides him. There is also the fact people need to keep in mind, Trahearne, by nature, is a loner and is trying to get used to a situation he was thrown into by the player character and the Orders.

Last point: his position in game vs. yours in the storyline. When players look at some of the lines it can be shown that he did get more credit or is getting more credit than the player character, but most of it refers, not to his skill in battle but to his knowledge of the elder dragon and Orrian history. When it comes down to bare bone of the matter, you’re still going to be the major hero of the story. You lead the frontal assaults, you get the epic battles, you get face and kill an elder dragon. Trahearne gets to plan and cleanse a land with only sometimes tagging along when he’s needed. He doesn’t face an elder dragon (he has no weapon at that point would be sort of hard for him to do so as it is). Also if you look at the lore regarding the previous game for those of you coming in from Guild Wars 1, you’re character’s not even mentioned. It was the people around you in that game that got all the credit (completely different matter though). At least this time you’ll get a place in history as “the Commander.”

Now that I am said this, I would like to hear (or read) other thoughts on him. If you like him and why. And if you still hate him and why.

I made this post under the wrong category awhile ago, there isn’t an option to move post. So I moved it correctly to here.

Hello,

I normally don’t post on forums but I felt this is important enough to comment on. There are several GW1 veterans that like the story in GW1 and the mechanics. These same veterans, in general, appreciate the personal story for GW2 but there is a flaw. There is no replay value.

What is replay value? It can mean a lot of things but in this case I’m addressing when the player finds the same content enjoyable after completing it. For the personal story there is no replay value for an individual character. Example, in GW1 you could repeat missions over and over again to your heart’s content. You could see things in the story you may have missed the first time, realize how better you’ve become, or just play the mission again just for the satisfaction of it.

GW2 has the “My Story” tab on the Hero panel where you can revisit a text summary of your adventures. Why this is ok, it does not give satisfy any of the previously mention items that GW1 solved so well. If the “My Story” allowed players to click Enter Story on a particular topic this would be fantastic. As of now, the only mission we can repeat in Story mode Arah dungeon. Which brings up the single player story issue.

In GW1, you could play by yourself with henchmen or heroes. In GW2, you can do Story Missions by yourself which is excellent. After beating Arah, the only story related single player Story content is left is…well is there any? Time limited single player dungeons aside what else is left for GW1 players that enjoy playing story based content alone? Don’t get me wrong, I like story mode and grouping up with others but more players are voicing leaving GW2 because of the negatives I listed. Non replayble story missions and lack of story content that can be enjoyed alone.

There is one more reason why GW1 players are talking about leaving GW2. The lack of “hard mode”. Its non existent, for those that do not know GW1 Hard Mode that allowed you to replay the same story missions but on a harder difficulty. The player received achievements for doing this. Frequently the people who preferred single play story jumped at the chance to group up with others for “hard mode”.

In short, I’m not asking you (Arenanet) to make brand new content or release new weapon skins. What I’m requesting is the ability to allow GW2 players the ability to re-enjoy the same content they have already completed just as you did in GW1. I do not want to see more Story driven players leave GW2. Coming out with weapon skins, rewards, and pvp content is great. But please allow us to revisit the content that you spent years of developing (story mode content). I should note, we (the players) are fine with receiving 0 drops and 0 rewards for replaying story mode.

• This post was not proofread but I believe my meaning was clear, if not please let me know.
• For all the gamers, avid fans of GW, etc please respond to this post with your thoughts about allowing players to replay story mode.

Thank you everyone for your time

It would be a nice touch if way before realeasing a specific villain in future living worlds is to add ambient NPC conversations about them. I really liked seeing that Asura chick from the Asura starting area show up as a boss fight. Also with the hero characters. Have people talk about them because it gets a little old and unbelievable to have heroes and super villains show up all of a sudden with no warning under the pretence of “Oh we’ve been here all along, hiding, plotting, also read my back story that isn’t introduced anywhere in the game.” Its annoying to hear from someone “oh hey there’s a story about where and why on the internet” then when I actually do I see a wall of text. I don’t care that much, didnt read it and am choosing to not care and hope this gets better later.

So Scarlet had a mentor and excelled at 2 colleges (or more) in Rata Suum. Great, add an NPC in the game who is sitting on a street corner telling children on this amazing Sylvari.who surpassed all expectations. Make it accessible and fun instead of a chore.

Want to introduce a new hero? Use one that’s in the game! Sword Master Bongo has two characters talk about him. Lord Farren and also some noble in the Vigil story. Use mentioned people in the lore and give them a body and a purpose.

TL:DR add foreshadowing and stories actually spoken as audible dialog in the world.

Tyria has SO MUCH they can expand on, I’m not worried about ideas tbh, they have so much GW1 unexplored lore(or pre-GW lore), and GW2 lore they can expand on. I’m just worried about two things:
-Will they actually expand on that lore?
- NCSoft’s ANet funding..

Surmav.1879:

If anet releases that much content, what if they run out ideas?

their ideas haven’t been that great to begin with. When they start creating good ideas then you should start worrying.

Frost and Flame has been the closest to actual decent content which slowly builds up to a dramatic ending and also leaves a question (mystery) when you interrogate the dredge. That was nicely done. It also allowed you to build a relationship with two new characters who remember you in future patches. The hidden clues given to you by the whisperer agent actual made me interested in what the dungeon might reveal. You learn about the relationship between Braham and Eir, and a bit about Norn culture. The fixing signposts and refugee quests went on for far too long otherwise it would of been an ok start to the patch.

Ever since then the living story has been boring…

A backpiece or weapon skin is one skin. Armour needs to be done differently for, at minimum, each race and gender: that’s 10 skins. That’s for each piece of armour, so 60 for a full set. Multiply that by 3 if the armour is going to be different for each class of armour (heavy, medium, light).

Armour also needs to be able to be dyed, which weapons and backpieces don’t.

Simple solution to this problem imo:

1. No champ loot when event champs die.
2. Buff initial rewards per stage of event, including event completion.
3. To encourage enough players to play the event that champs end up spawning, as was one of the original intentions of champ loot in the first place, figure champ loot into end rewards in some way. I feel this could work best if, given these multistage events, champ chests were rewarded after the event based on how many champs the player helped kill.

Example: Scarlet invades at midnight. Not enough players there to get the event scale for champs, but enough players are there to complete the event. Event finishes, players are properly rewarded.

Example 2: Scarlet invades during the afternoon. A ton of players show up, enough to spawn champs throughout the event. No champs drop loot on death. Players complete event and kill Scarlet. Players are rewarded for event completion, and one champ box for each event champ the player helped kill during the event, scaled to exotic because they finished the event.

Example 3: Scarlet invades in the afternoon. Players are plentiful enough to cause the events to scale and include champs. Champs drop no champ loot on death. Players fail the event on phase 3. Players are rewarded based on that phase completion, and are given champ boxes according to how many champs they took down scaled to rare or masterwork for not being able to complete the event, but still being able to complete stages.

Example 4: Scarlet invades during the afternoon. Players are plentiful, but instead of attempting the event, instead try to champ farm. No champs drop champ loot. Event fails during phase 1, and no rewards are given except maybe minimal karma and coin for participation.

ilr.9675:

Hopelessalchemist.4816:

Shiren.9532:

Zhaitan killed Tybalt Leftpaw. Checkmate.

To be pedantic, Tibs was killed by minions and not the Elder Dragon itself. However Zhaitan is indirectly responsible for killing one of my favorite NPCs, and therefore has earned a majority of my hatred

ehh. Tybalt was killed by them forcibly merging all 3 of our divergent personal stories , back into 1 single plotline against its own will …. which just had another Marysue Plant that has made people loooong for the return of Kormir… (just you wait, he’ll one day MERGE with a dragon and outrank the gods themselves).

But seriously…. consider the ridiculously out-of-character fashion Tybby perished in…

See I had a theory that Tybalt was the real leader of the Order of Whispers, and he faked his death to sneak back into the shadows.

I hope Tybalt reappears with the a new goal of killing the next Dragon Boss…
Buuuuut you know, that’s my wishful thinking.

Thead.2139:

you missed somethings For Example Zhatian was Responsible for the death of Tybalt (aka the best Npc ingame EVER!) though I haven’t completed the last mission yet

Im sure theres a few other ones you missed but that was one of the major ones you missed

I stand correct killing Tybalt raises Zhaitan a couple of pegs.

I miss Tybs

If this is a problem for you, be party leader yourself.

As long as someone else in the group has done story mode, I agree.

Do you guys remember the time when this forum was full of complaints about how other classes are so much better at conditions because they could stack higher and faster, like 3 months ago…?
That was before we got all our buffs that had absolutely nothing to do with transfers, in fact Putrid Mark was even stronger back then.

FinalPatriot.8034:

I actually saw a guy in sPvP today with 3 other condi built classes attacking him and he killed them all. Was pretty darn impressive.

That is impressive, but I doubt he won that battle with transfers alone. On equal skill 2v1 is already too much even if you could counter their builds individually, so my guess is that those 3 players made a lot of mistakes.

Did you swap to a weapon set that does not increase vitality?

First off, I am a WvW-Condi-Necro, try to read the following under this aspect.

Being able to activate DS while in Lich- or Plague-form. This will of course cancel the Elite and set it on cooldown.

And I don’t think necros represent and give the feeling they should to other players (e.g. in WvW).
When I see a Warrior I know this guy is a beast and don’t want him get close to me. Thief is elusive, fast and hard to catch but still can backstab you hard, like a real assassin. Rangers are to reeeaally long range snipers in this game, also I can understand why they want a buff right now. Mesmers are deceiving and confusing with all their clones. And so on…

But Necromancers (especially condition) just feel like a huge damage sponges, but not like the masters of defilment and corruption. I want necros to be like Masters of the Dark Arts who dance over the battlefield, ripping off some boons from the guys right to them, then spreading powerful conditions to the group over there. After that suck in some conditions on themselves just to spread them to their enemies tenfold. Shroud themselves in darkness and cause chaos and terror on the battlefield.
This is NOT about big numbers or mowing down your enemies… but the feeling I want us Necromancers to emit to simply make our enemies crumble and suffer in despair.

We have some great tools to fulfill that, but they just cannot unfold their potential.

Corrupt Boon
Great thing!! Really… but just to rip off the boons, not for the conditions applied because they just get cleansed (but cleansing is another problem)… and the boons reapplied…
Why not make it like virulent debuff which converts every boon applied into a condition on and around (~500 range) the target for the next 4-6s.

Epidemic
Come on.. remove the cast time. Every time I want to cast it the conditions are already removed when it goes through…

Blood is Power
Just used for the might… Remove the enemy bleed and make it an enchantment which applies a boon on us corresponding for every condition we receive in the next 4-6s. (Conditions still get applied, this remake would greatly synergize with Plague Signet)

Plague Signet
Nice idea! But too long cooldown. Remove the stunbreak (after all we have DS) and make it more spammable.

Signet of Spite
What is this? A signet for Conditionmancers or Powernecros? Well maybe hybrid…

Spectral Grasp
Mhh with dagger in main and in spvp this spell may be good, don’t know. Want to hear your thoughts about it.

As a Condinecro I don’t like Death Shroud at all. I just use it to wait for cd and to absorb some damge, maybe DS#2 which is suicide most time. I like Underwater DS more in terms of condis. Maybe DS can have the GW1 Contagion incorporated in weaker form ofc.

Sorry for this wall of pain.. ehh text. I know this is just about conditions and not MM or powernecros, I leave those for you guys. Hope you could keep up with it

FinalPatriot.8034:

But isn’t the Necro considered the worst as a roaming class? I heard you have very limited mobility.

Also, thanks for the info on that build of yours. I know what to look out for now.

Only reason we are considered the worst roaming class is because we have no escape button. we are basically stomp or be stomped class.

I’ll admit, I don’t know the first thing about your class but as a condition warrior with some fairly decent gear, I ran into a Neco today while roaming and he made me look like a complete fool! I know my class well enough that typically I don’t have too many problems with getting a complete thrashing by someone but this guy killed me in all of about 8 seconds. Really…

I never figured your class was all that impressive as a roaming class but the beating I took today was pretty darn humiliating! To be honest, I thought about rerolling my level 80 D/D ele into a Necro just to understand how I was able to be so completely defeated like that.

Are you all really that well skilled in WvW roaming?

I like Lich form very much. As an Elite skill, it is way far better than Mist Wolf, which I paid extra real money for.

The two things about Lich I would like changed are auto-attack is off by default and the form’s large size. I waste at least 1 second turning on the auto-attack and that delay can get longer if there is heavy lag. The large size of Lich means that the camera position/point of view is moved and can violate solid objects so my view is occluded, or the lich itself obstructs my view. This can be a huge problem in confined spaces.

I would like auto-attack enabled by default and for the Lich form’s size to be reduced.

Slots 2 through 5 are more for group support while #1 is direct damage but all are useful. The last 4 skills are just more useful in group play than 1v1.

Two days ago I actually downed the mesmer who Moa’d my necro AS A MOA and would have got him if I didn’t have another teammate of his to stomp me after he downed me.

I’m still not quite sure how I managed that. But it was like the mesmer freaked when I started pecking him after running at him instead of away. ^^

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I always pop the Mark of Horror when I’m in Lich Form just because 5 bodies from one skill is quite handy.

But in doing so, you waste that extra 1.5 lich attacks for 3-4K damage you could have put out, which the little rats will struggle to do. Dropping the cast time on those marks would go a long way to making lich form more interesteing.

Honestly? Screw the haters, Lich Form is a powerhouse. The massive boosts to Power and Precision alone practically guarantee it. 2-5 are largely circumstantial, which is an accurate description of 85% of the game so why should Lich be different?

Saying “You couldn’t have won without using your elite!” is such a pointless complaint. Why else do I have an elite skill, if not to win with it?

Edit: Man I just cannot get over that someone would actually whine at you for using your elite skill. Because what, you’re supposed to go easy on them and let people kill you?

Nay of the Ether.8913:

right, but if you’re going dual daggers, it becomes a hybrid

no it doesn’t. offhand dagger provides condition transfer and weakness, still pretty good for a power build.

anyway i ran this on my necro because i wanted a life siphon build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIRDbkRLZvTzSjfPRIVAbTP424EH0je9enB-jwxAYfBayRoJMAJvioxWOLiGruGTDTEVLFQ5CjA-e

i don’t run it anymore but it was fun for a while and surprisingly durable.