Guild Wars 2

Autumn.8043:

I can’t really give you the answer you want because I haven’t played Elementalist much but I can tell you that Ele tends to be squishy and so a Warrior/Guardian would help.
If you’re not in to heavy’s then maybe Necro (a lot of health and survivability thanks to death shroud).

Problem with that is that people know necro is tanky and has sub-par damage if they spec for tanking or DS stacking, so they’ll focus the poor ele down then take their time with the necro. Ele has far more DPS and control potential, because to be frank the Necro’s fear in pvp is weak because of short fear times and long cooldowns. IMO warrior has a better fear mechanic because it lasts long enough to actually be effective without having to forge an entire build around it.

So burn the elementalist first because they’re squishy if they’re DPS…. which 70% of players as a whole are.

I know this because that’s what I would do.

Main problem is that other than the mesmer, no other class has a way to break targeting as early and often as the thief.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Spiteful Vigor is not as good as people make it out to be. It ONLY triggers off of Consume Conditions. This is probably a bug, but it does not trigger off of either of our other healing skills.

No, it’s supposed to be like that. It’s supposed to be like the Thief’s {III} Vigorous Recovery (gain vigor upon healing) in the Acrobatics trait line. That skill also only work with the slot 6 healing skill, even though I’m also specced to heal whenever I am in stealth. It does not give me vigor when the healing ticks in stealth.

Braxxus.2904:

Cosmo.8176:

the other classes which can only dodge twice every 8-10 seconds

What?
Ele’s – perma vigor
Engi – perma vigor
Theifs – nigh infinite evades

Necros I have no idea, they seem to just facetank hard
Guards don’t need no stinkin’ dodges

Warriors – potentially have equivalent to perma vigor… kinda

• Edit: Mind you I’m not saying Ranger’s are bad off in the dodge/evade area. Just saying most classes have far better than the baseline dodging timers.

Warriors don’t have perma vigor, but we do have Signet of Stamina that gives us +33% bonus to endurance regeneration speed. Vigor is 100% bonus. Not bad, IMO. The fact that Signet of Stamina cures ALL conditions makes the skill all that much nicer, so it evens out in the end.

Vigor is fairly easy to come by if you’re using the right skills or specs.

If you’re doing a signet build without Marksmanship {IV} Signet Mastery and {XI} Signet of the Beastmaster, you’re doing it wrong.

Not to be a troll, but you guys clearly don’t understand how signet builds work. Signet Mastery lowers CDs by 20%, Signet of the Beastmaster makes signets’ active effects also affect you. The passive effects already affect both us and our pets. They are fine as is.

And if we’re talking about signet builds that suck, Rangers have it off WAY better than Necromancers. Necromancers’ signet builds barely synergize, have weak passive effects, and have long cooldowns to boot. At least Ranger signets all work in tandem quite well.

Sure, Signet of the Hunt has a weak active effect, but it’s almost as good as perm swiftness. Not a huge difference between 125% speed (signet) and 133% speed (Swiftness).

Depends on how you’re specced. But if you spec for max healing + pet toughness and signet effectiveness, your bear can literally solo champions. 30 points in Beastmastery’s 30-point skill {XII} Natural Healing + Signet of the Wild + Signet of Stone when specced with full Cleric’s + Sapphire = LOL. Your bear can just faceroll mobs.

I’m not kidding. My friend had that build for a while, and I watched him as he AFK solo’d a Champion Ice Wurm. Some elementalist rolled in out of nowhere and the boss killed him. All the while my friend’s bear (named Sir Tank ‘n’ Spank, lol) keeps going like nothing happened. I just hit the boss once to get credit for killing him, but I just watched for the most part.

If by some freak chance your bear actually dies, you can just switch to your other bear. Lol.

Bad part is with this build your DPS is abysmal. On the plus side, your bear is a living, walking, breathing fortress of lulz.

Galrond.5972:

Any kind of tanky support.

I would say glass canon thief, because D/D is already tanky support. Also knockdowns out of stealth would be quite nasty, especially with culling.

Keep them busy/knocked down while the thief bursts them.

That would make an incredibly lethal combo in sPVP. Or in WvW for that matter.

I hate it when people do that to me when I’m on a Flame Ram.

So therefore I must say that’s a most excellent idea. I’m so gonna try that next time I’m defending a keep in WvW.

If you do a stun build, many people (not all) will be too panicked to try to attack you. They will be too busy blowing their defensive cooldowns and stun breakers to try to attack you.

I don’t PVP too often, but when I do I can almost completely lock down any opponent in sPVP with my Soldier-specced Warrior. I use interrupts, dazes, and stuns to screw up my opponent’s play style and put them on the defensive, protecting myself in the process.

When the enemy realizes that you’re able to stun/immobilize them while making them eat a full 100b to the face, they’ll start to panic. I’ve had full-invisibility thieves just run from me. I thought they would stealth then backstab me, but they just ran completely. Yeah, I can’t believe it when it happens, either. But having anywhere from 2-7 stuns/interrupts available at any point gives you so much leverage, even if my DPS sucks (though when my enemy is running or being stunned for 50% of the time, their DPS sucks worse, lol).

This is great for general PvE roaming and Dynamic Events. You essentially have a permanent Swiftness/Might with a single ability. My friend used this build for a while. The Tactics trait line is not my cup of tea because I like to hit really hard, but if you’re running a support build with either shouts or banners, it’s great —- mandatory, even. You can partially make up for the lack of DPS inherent in the trait line by using Knight, Rampager, or Berserker armor. If you’re building for healing shouts, Sapphire trinkets, and if you’re building for DPS, either Emerald or Ruby trinkets.

Manijin.3428:

Warriors are fine. Heck, I laughed when I saw the condition removal note in the patch notes. Really? Shake It Off for AoE Condition removal, a low-ish cooldown signet that removes ALL conditions, a heal on a low cooldown that heals 2 conditions and, if you don’t wanna use Utility slots for it, a Warhorn trait that CONVERTS CONDITIONS INTO BOONS. Warriors have EXCELLENT condition removal, we just don’t have any passive condition removal like some classes do.

As far as balance is concerned, I’d like to see more options for different weapons encorporated into their traits or design (maybe sword crits grant vigor, axe crits grant retaliation, hammer crits grant prot, all at a % chance on crit, of course) which would allow warriors to plan around using different weapons for different builds, instead of defaulting to different roles based solely on weapon skills.

With the above suggestions, you could see an odd, retaliation stacking Axe warrior, or a Crit-based hammer warrior, or a sword-shield warrior that has blocks and crazy endurance uptime (i.e., a sword/board warrior that can be a somewhat effective tanky character).

Warriors have excellent condition removal, it’s the heals that are a bit weak, since you choose either between condition removal healing or slightly more powerful healing (which is perfectly fair). But considering that we have 18k HP even while being a glass cannon (like my warrior, lol), I’d say that is fine. As long as I stack plenty of toughness using Knight-type gear and don’t attempt to face-tank stuff, it’s ridiculously hard to take me down even with my Signet build (which lacks stun breakers).

In sPVP, I use a completely different build. I go for a tanky Power/Toughness/Vitality build with Mace/Shield + Greatsword.

On a complete side note, in WvW a kiting Rifle Warrior with AoE buffing and condition removing shouts can be very difficult to deal with, assuming he/she is decently skilled. When I run in WvW I use a shout build, and I love it. Being able to support teammates with your relatively shouts helps a lot in zergs when you’re on the frontline.

Burjis.3087:

Sheobix.8796:

Total Stat Spread:
+2355 power
+2153 Toughness "
+2153 Vitality "

I don’t understand. How did you manage 2153 vitality? I try to add up the stats on the gear you posted but I can never get that high. Is that without boosts?

Are you remembering to include the Crests of the Soldier?

Crest of the Soldier:
+20 Power x 13* = +260 pwr
+14 Toughness x 13* = +182 tough
+14 Vitality x 13* = +182 vit

*Assumes you’re currently wielding dual weapons that also have Crests of the Soldier in addition to all your modification slots, like me.

Yumad.7341:

We have F2-F4 unused, why don’t we have a minion attack button? It would also be nice if bone minions exploded regardless of being killed or manually detonated. Either that or allow us to explode them during the summoning animation, because people being able to kill them before they finish summoning and denying any use from them at all is extremely unfair.

I totally agree with this.

…Not much else for me to say. We need some way to control our minions aside from being forced to use their cooldown abilities to attack targets when they’re bugged. (And if your Bone Minions are bugged, forget it. You can’t use them because they detonate where they are, not on their targets.)

Terok.7315:

With Sheobix’s “Juggermancer”, I’m finding my runs through dungeons much more fun and effective. The problem with necromancer has never been dungeons, at least not to a significant extent.

I totally agree. If they would just tweak the Death Magic trait line to fix those forced minion traits, I would be completely satisfied with Necromancer, like I am with my Mesmer, Warrior, and Thief.

lettucemode.3789:

Other responses:

I tested out Death into Life yesterday…you’re right, it’s not very good. Should be higher, especially since any heals only use a fraction of your healing stat anyway.

Fair point about Spectral Grasp. It’d be cool if it made the Chill last longer, I know that when using it with Spectral Wall the protection boon you get lasts longer than stated on the tooltip. Will have to test this too.

I agree. Healing needs to affect your siphoning a little more. Having Siphoning Health from Vampiric capped at 38 (which doesn’t scale with healing or ANYTHING) when you take both traits {II} Bloodthirst and (10) Vampiric, is beyond ridiculous. It’s not like the necromancer has a super fast attack rate anyway, bar a few of the channeled abilities. {V} Vampiric Precision seems fine, though. That does seem to scale a little with healing power, though IMO not enough to offset the loss of a defensive stat (toughness or vitality, take your pick) when you spec for +healing.

Personally, I’ve been having issues with Spectral Grasp. While I’m fine with what it does (the chill duration is fine), it’s been not hitting recently even though I’ve been within line of sight AND well within its 1200 range. If you ask me, this ability’s “projectile speed” needs to be increased or something to make it work more like the Thief’s Scorpion Wire (which I’ve never had any trouble with). And there are a lot of times where it only jerks the target a few feet and doesn’t actually reach me, and thus the target doesn’t get chilled. Overall, it seems to miss an awful lot because either it seemingly misses or doesn’t work as intended… my success rate with it is roughly 60% or so. Or maybe I’m just using it wrong. Does anyone else have these problems with Spectral Grasp?

For the most part Necro traits seem okay, EXCEPT for the Death Magic trait line. Being forced into Minion traits when you’re not a minion build is annoying beyond measure. I have 4 other lvl 80s and I’m pretty sure no other class forces the player to use certain build characteristics in a trait line like this. isn’t the very purpose of Minor traits to be useful to almost any build, then you choose Major traits to suit your utilities, weapons, and play style? It just doesn’t make any sense.

In my opinion, (5) Reanimator should be switched with {1} Dark Armor (though it may need to be lowered to +200 toughness while channeling for balance) or {VI} Shrouded Removal, and (15) Protection of the Horde should be switched with either {I} Dark Armor (leave +400 as-is) or {VII} Spiteful Vigor, in order to bring the trait characteristics in line with other professions, such as Mesmer.

Yeah I still have issues with my minions. I attack an enemy and half of them just stand there doing nothing. Sometimes even after I’ve started taking damage. If anything we need a mechanic like the ranger’s F1 to let us tell our pets to attack a specific target. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

I think most of the classes are fine, but for some reason my necro still feels either really squishy or really underpowered, depending on how I’ve specced. I’m probably just speccing my traits wrong or using the wrong utilities. >_<

Brienson.7319:

Braxxus.2904:

I mean have you even watched the warrior forums? People have been going round and round trying every blasted weapon set, every blasted spec idea, every gimmicky thing.

have you seen any class forum? literally every one except thief is a total pity party of people arguing that the class is the worst in the game, needs a total overhaul+buffs, and that it is outclassed by [class xyz] in every way possible.

it’s the most pathetic display of whining i have ever seen in any video game. all everyone does is kittening complain.

warrior is fine, shut the hell up and learn to play.

QFT. Warrior is fine. People need to learn to man up and learn to play their class. I have 5 lvl 80’s (warrior, guardian, mesmer, thief, and necromancer), and so far warrior is my second favorite class right after mesmer.

The amount of builds and weapon combos is nearly unparalleled. I think only mesmer outstrips the warrior in terms of build combinations, but even then has nowhere near the variety in weapon set and AOE control and condition removal. Necromancers essentially only have 3 viable builds, thieves tend to be very squishy unless they spec for stealth (like I do), and guardians have iffy mobility if they’re not specced just right, or if they’re an AH tank.

I think people forget that builds are about tradeoffs. If you build for DPS, OF COURSE you lose some toughness or vitality. If you build tanky, OF COURSE you’re going to lose some DPS. Duh.

If you build for Shouts, you lose some control (unless you grab hammer, mace, and/or shield). If you build for Physical utilities, you’ll gain control but lose condition removal and some boons (unless you build with warhorn). If you build for Signets, you’ll gain absurd crit chance and useful (but selfish) utilities but you lose a lot of stun-breakers (not much you can do in that case).

What did you guys think? That you were going to be able to cruise around with 30k health & 3.5k armor while critting for 2800 a hit, all while having stuns and shouts to remove conditions? Reality check please.

Thief, for the stealthing backstabs. Mesmer just can’t compete in terms of overall direct damage considering thief can go invisible almost at will. The mesmer’s teleports only help slightly because the thief would have stealing and Heartseeker to close gaps.

Mesmer has those nice illusions to soak up damage and agro as well, whereas Elementalist you HAVE to be on your toes continuously.

Also memorizing your 4 spell sets per weapon for each attunement and knowing when and where to switch elements adds an additional learning curve. I myself still haven’t gotten the hang of it. :P

Braxxus.2904:

CrazyAce.3842:

Maybe they could at least have the Strong Bowstrings trait at least give 20% cooldown reduction to the longbow. That would at least make the longbow builds worth taking, if still not ideal.

Or maybe make longbows fire faster or maybe have a chance to apply a condition (e.g. burning) on hit. Rangers would appreciate a better longbow as well since many rely on those.

I love my ranger longbow just the way it is now that the projectiles move faster and people don’t ‘dodge’ them simply by moving around naturally as they would anyways in combat.

Is the fast projectile speed enough? That’s good to hear. I haven’t played mine in a while because I was struggling to get decent DPS with my bows.

It’s situational whether to use GS or Hammer. Obvious application is for stuns, though I also use it for controlling points by knocking people out of areas.

Direct DPS is not that great but due to its stunning nature it can hold its own if you’re skilled.

If you’re using a Hammer I highly recommend you take a Rifle for your main DPS weapon to make up for the Hammer’s innate sub-par mobility. With a Rifle you can still “reach out and touch someone”, if you know what I mean.

It all probably evens out in the end. I can’t imagine this is a huge issue.

At least the Warriors didn’t get a bunch of nerfs like the Guardian. Be thankful our builds are all still viable.

sinican.9250:

GummiBear.2756:

djtool, i get quire easily get about 15 stacks of bleed as well on my stack between sharper imaigne +me and my 3 staff clones spamming wind of chaos (about 45-50 crit rate), and i get a little burn on top of that too consistently, add some poison weakness and chilled together with daze once in a while from chaos storm, or even confusion, cripple and blind from chaos armor if they try hit me… AND i put boons all the time on me and/or my allies too… so how did you say gs was better condition weapon again?

^^^
This

Doubly QFT. Not to mention that the Greatsword has that useless skill (Greatsword 3). Whereas all staff skills are useful.

Why would I want a skill that not only self-roots me, but also does terrible damage? Stripping a single boon seems a poor trade-off for the positional disadvantage I gain when I’m self-rooted for that second and a half or so. Sure it’s only a second or two, but 2 seconds is an ETERNITY in sPVP.

Derk.3189:

You can run into zergs with either rune just fine. TBH i think dolyak is crap though.

Dolyak is great if you have a high +healing stat or you have lots of toughness and vitality (large HP pool and mitigation). It’s designed for tanks, and I use it on my Guardian PVE and Warrior sPVP to great effect, but those are tank-y builds. It doesn’t work as effectively if you’re a hybrid DPS.

Flame Legion is quite useful, but only if you’re setup to be a condition DPS Guardian.

If you’re a direct damage build, I personally recommend Runes of Strength:
(1) +25 power
(2) +20% might duration
(3) +40 power
(4) 3% chance to gain might for 20s when hit. (Cooldown: 5s)
(5) +90 power
(6) +5% damage while under the effects of might.

Xavi.6591:

Whatever you choose, make sure to take Illusionist’s Celerity (5 points in Illusions). It is pretty much mandatory for every Mesmer build.

^This. No reason not to take Illusionist’s Celerity trait. There is no situation in which I would trade this trait for, well…. anything.

By far the Mesmer’s best Minor trait.

Only problem with confusion is that NPCs don’t attack with a fast enough rate for it to be effective like it is against players that use skills continuously.

Honestly the only thing they would need to do to make confusion more effective in PVE is increase the duration a little so you can maintain stacks a bit easier.

Aside from that, nothing you can do. It is, by its very nature, a PVP oriented condition.

Schwahrheit.4203:

^
Yeah well your build isn’t relevant to the concept of the video though.. sorry if it came out bad but he’s asking for the build I used.

Well you didn’t answer his question so I did. I couldn’t see your traits so I obviously couldn’t tell him your build. So I told him the stun build I used.

They’re fairly similar, at least in concept.

Though if you want MAXIMUM stun, go for Hammer, though IMO it doesn’t have as effective DPS pressure as a Greatsword.

Maybe they could at least have the Strong Bowstrings trait at least give 20% cooldown reduction to the longbow. That would at least make the longbow builds worth taking, if still not ideal.

Or maybe make longbows fire faster or maybe have a chance to apply a condition (e.g. burning) on hit. Rangers would appreciate a better longbow as well since many rely on those.

Deria.9158:

How fast IS Warrior’s Sprint?

Also, if you have it and apply Swiftness are you X percent faster from Warrior’s Sprint and Y percent faster from Swiftness (ie: cumulative) or does Swiftness just set your movement rate to the base + 33 percent (ie: not cumulative)?

Has anyone done any tests?

I’ve used it but considering the speed dropoff in combat anyway, the speed you gain from the trait is negligible enough that I’d rather take Heightened Focus or Inspiring Shouts, depending on my utilities and other traits.

Schwahrheit.4203:

^
You want to show your build? Make another thread. This thread is about how to enjoy the Warrior class.

Woah. Why the hate? He asked about builds, so I answered his question about a possible stun build. No need to get all testy.

CoaxialMazer.9140:

Ty for your response, but could we get some insight on what might happen to Warriors?
A majority feel that we are in need of fixing (not the same as buffing) and that many of our other weapon skills and utilities are subpar to greatsword for melee. I would prefer to see more work done on other weapons than on greatsword (like you said – most people never using arcingslice aren’t complaining since berserkers power is better than the adrelanine waste) Thank you for any more responses in the warrior’s forum.

Lies. I haven’t used a greatsword since lvl 60, with the exception of my stun build for sPVP.

I’ve used both Dual Axes and Dual Swords to great effect. Dual Axes’ burst DPS and the Burst ability itself are great. Swords get mad bleeding on the target, plus has a nice burst ability that roots AND bleeds the target.

If you’re only using Greatsword for melee as a Warrior, you are seriously missing out.

I use a similar setup for sPVP. You can get amazing chainstuns/knockdowns + great survivability from this build:

http://guildwars2grandmaster.com/builds/warrior-control-tank/

It’s specced 30/0/30/0/10, and uses a Mace/Shield as the main weapon set. I utilize a Greatsword for the secondary swap set. I lose ranged capabilities (rifle is a great weapon) but I make up for it by being able to stun them or use Bolas then unleash Hundred Blades on a target for massive damage.

You damage isn’t incredibly impressive and you can sometimes have trouble with ranged builds that stack conditions, but your opponent is locked down for most of the fight because of your interrupts, anyway, so if you’re continually stunning them like you should be, their DPS will be demolished.

The build from Grandmaster is a physical build so that means you’re going to be in the middle of the fracas, therefore you should grab as much toughness and vitality as possible. In PVE and WvW my warrior is a glass cannon and I use an entirely different build, but for sPVP I love this build because I can literally sit on a point to defend it and no one can take it from me. I use the Soldier’s Amulet, Dolyak runes, + Paralyzation sigils (Sigil of Battle on my Greatsword) to keep myself up and to keep the enemy down.

Xavi.6591:

You forgot Staff Shatter Mesmer which I would argue is more popular than GS Shatter build.

• Staff Shatter Mesmer (10/30/0/0/30) [attain excellent burst by summoning illusions, letting them attack, then shattering them – in addition to your own attacks. Staff + Sword/Pistol]

True but as I said, I can only give account of builds I’ve actually tried out. I’ll have to take a look at this one since I’m a big staff fan.

Disastro.4086:

lupercaleb.6041:

it’s sad. it was only nerfed because duelists gave more regen than other phantasms. they fixed the wrong thing, again

Yeah I feel that this was very much a knee-jerk reaction that little to no actual research went into.

That’s because they’re letting the interns determine class balance.

Dastion.3106:

The current iteration of Mantras is viable, just poorly done. Back when mantras were all single use and boring I even suggested they give them multiple charges. Not that us receiving them was a result of a post on gw2guru I’m sure, but I’m just saying that I liked the idea and I’m glad they did something similar.

The problem is that in my mind I was picturing a sort of spell preparation type mechanic. You take the time to charge up the spell and, in exchange, get multiple uses of a short CD utility.

Instead, they just split the effects in half and put them on a negligible CD, in effect doing nothing. Mantra of Pain isn’t two separate direct damage attacks so much as it’s a two hit combo you have to spend all of your time charging up.

Mantras need a set lower than average CD that occurs after every use of a ‘charge’ of the spell. That way each use can be as potent as a normal skill with the lower CD balanced by the need to charge it up after 2 or 3 uses. Ie MoRecovery needs a 10s CD after each activation, but should heal as much as a 15-20cd heal. That gives you enhanced healing at the start of a fight, due to your preparation, but the need to essentially daze yourself for 3-4 seconds to prepare the heal again is a severe detriment in long fights.

They should also consider a trait or perhaps just an innate effect during the charge-up. Such as MoPain channeling damage in the area, MoRecovery ticking healing, etc. that could add an almost bardic aspect to the skills during their charging.

I totally agree. They should have left the spell preparation as it was (approx. 4 seconds) and lowered the CD times between the final-cast time and the next preparation time.

The traits don’t seem to help much aside from the 30-point Dueling trait that adds another use onto the mantra casts. I also personally think that the healing skill is still underpowered considering that the cooldown time is incredibly long when you take into account the preparation time and low amount it heals. Sure it’s instantaneous, but you have to cast it 3 times in a row (assuming you grabbed the trait) and it STILL doesn’t heal as much as any of the other healing skills.

Mantra builds are cool in concept but poorly done. Only thing about them that was done right was that you can cast readied mantras while you’re in the middle of prepping one.

Condition is slower to start off, but once you get those higher stacks of bleed, and combine it with burning and the fact that you’re beginning to hit harder with increasing vulnerability, you can burn down people without them realizing they’re in trouble, unless they’re paying close attention to their condition icons (I have seen people who very smartly back off when I get a few condition stacks on them).

But that’s mostly in WvW where you have tons of space to fight and can kite slower classes. In sPVP the staff isn’t as effective as a greatsword or sword/pistol combo, UNLESS you are running a confusion build where you’ve got a lot of +condition damage stats stacked in your build.

Confusion builds really show how condition can be effective in sPVP and WvW (which is what I run with). People will literally kill themselves by attacking/autoattacking before they realize they need to either cleanse themselves first or stop attacking for a few seconds to let the confusion wear off.

Mesmer is probably my favorite class, aside from the thief and warrior. There are simply so many ways you can play it, it’s utterly ridiculous. The number of viable builds is possibly the greatest I’ve seen in any GW2 class aside from warrior and elementalist (though every class has tons of viable builds).

Here’s just a few:

• Confusion mesmer (20/0/0/20/30) [Glamour type – my current sPVP and WvW build – Staff + Scepter/Torch]
• Condition mesmer (30/0/20/0/20) [Additional bouncing type w/ Staff + any weapon – I use Sword/Torch]
• Tank mesmer (0/5/30/30/5) [increases your own toughness, health, and overall suvivability but sacrifices a lot of DPS – not recommended if you want to deal good damage – Staff + Scepter/Torch]
• Shatter mesmer (20/20/0/0/30) [attain excellent burst by summoning phantasms, letting them attack, then shattering them – in addition to your own attacks. Greatsword + Sword/Pistol recommended]
• “Balanced” mesmer (10/20/20/15/5) [my current PvE build; it fits 90% of all dungeon situations due to its great survivability and condition damage, but lacks heavy burst DPS and struggles with really large groups of mobs – I mainly use Staff + Sword/Pistol]

These are just ones I’ve tried out. There’s lots of mesmer builds out there. I’m truly astonished how many there are. Mine might not fit your playstyle because I’m in love with the staff, but it’s an all-around fun class to play, assuming you understand how to utilize your illusions and conditions to their fullest.

Keep in mind Mesmer is not designed to be an AOE damage class. If you’re looking for that, you’d be better off playing as an Engineer or Elementalist. Mesmers shine when they’re burning down a single target while hardly taking any damage themselves.

Mesmer. Better survivability + can burn the ranger down with conditions easier. Pet gets on you? Use Decoy and go invisible for a few seconds to break targeting and agro. Spam illusions on the ranger, ignore the pet by kiting, and eventually you’ll win through attrition.

Yeah it bothers me a bit. My Guardian heavily depends on buffing allies to heal, so this cuts into that quite a bit.

I don’t see the reason it was nerfed in the first place. The cooldown was already long to begin with, even with the shield trait taken.

+1 Signed. Get rid of it and give us something actually useful for a 5-point skill.

Savan.8495:

No +healing does not apply

Before you decide weapons you need to ask yourself whether you want to run
a) condition spec or hybrid of – AOE dps
b) power spec or hybrid of – Single target dps
c) Minion master of hybrid of (note this is presently broken-ish)

Also power toughness vitality is not needed in PVE dungeons, that post is a WvW spec

Thank you. In that case I suppose I should switch to a condition type armor and go to a AOE condition DPS spec then (time to run lots of Twilight Arbor I suppose). It’s too bad because minions can be fun in dungeons because they make great meatshields and distractions. I know they’ve saved me from being overwhelmed on many an occasion.

If you don’t mind me bothering you guys with one more question, I heard that Toughness doesn’t scale well with the Necro. Is that true? If Toughness isn’t worth it, I won’t try to get a Precision/Toughness/Condition armor.

Thanks.

Everyone makes their Necromancers so darn dark, so I figured I’d break from the norm and make a colorful one.

My staff is Imryldyeen, so I purposefully dyed my armor to match it. Took me forever to figure it out, but IMO Leprechaun, Mintay, and Stem dyes work best, at least for cloth. YMMV. Hopefully I just saved you an hour of time trying out different color combinations for matching light armor with the Imryldyeen staff.

My tank Guardian Hintorlo Keneione. I went for full Human Tier 3 cultural with this armor colored just like the character creation. Or as close to it as I could get. Colors were Mithril and Pastel Blue. I rather like how he turned out.

I went for the Assassin’s Creed look with my Thief. I know, I know —- not very original, but I just couldn’t resist.

My lvl 80 Mesmer, Kimmitry Olacke.

Armor is full Khilbron’s with an Emberspire. For those that are curious, the colors used are Cherry, Illumination, and Abyss.

Just to be clear, when I say Health Siphoning I’m referring to both weapon skills that steal health from enemies and heal you and NOT Life Force (the core class mechanic), and how it interacts with the two Major traits in the Blood Magic line {II} Bloodthirst (Siphoning health is 50% more effective) and {VII} Vampiric Master (Minions siphon health and transfer it to you).

Does adding healing power meaningfully raise the Health Siphoning to a point where it’s worth it to get Cleric’s type gear (Power/Toughness/Healing)? Or should I keep saving up for the Ascalonian Catacombs or Sorrow’s Embrace Power/Toughness/Vitality set?

Also, on a completely unrelated note, right now for my weapon sets I’m using Dual Daggers + Staff. Should I switch my weapons to maybe an Axe/Dagger + Scepter/Focus for some condition damage? (Or any weapon combos you fellows might recommend.)

3.) Still playing with my minion build, however.

Jagged Horrors are still little pieces of crap that die in one hit, but they give me poison combo fields, so it’s not all THAT bad.

But seriously, either make Jagged Horrors have no degeneration or lower the cooldown of the Reanimator ability considerably. Because as it is, the skill is a waste of 5 trait points.

Though I’m not playing necro as much as my 4 other level 80s. It’s a shame because it’s a cool class, but it still feels rather squishy even with Knight’s gear. Annoys me that you can’t have good damage with the necro unless you’re a condition build, because my minions seem braindead. A lot of times they stand around doing nothing even when I’m attacking enemies or being attacked. >_>