Guild Wars 2

I would have change :

Water/earth in *Acid attunement" → access to etheral or poison fields. Erosion may be done by air and other stuff. And yes, fire/air deserve the *Smoke attunement" → access to smoke field.

Item acquisition mean from season 1 are long gone while the second season item may be acquired whenever you want just by doing the content.

That’s why you got season 1 item on laurel vendor and you won’t ever see season 2 item on the laurel vendor. It’s just that you got permanent mean to obtain these one.

I vote : Just right.

And, well, necromancer have it’s good point, he just lack some little things that would give him a real value in term of supportive ability.

Much more likely, since there have been data mining leaks, this will be the second part of the revenant profession.

NB.: That’s not what I would want to have but the odd are high for this blog to be next week blog.

Well, you will do poor damage but you should be able to survive in zerg v zerg fights.

Disclaimer This is a just for fun thread in the wait for any valuable information on how specializations will really work.

The first thing I asked myself when they talked about the specialization was what were necromancer’s unique mechanisms.
The first thing I came up with was, of course the death shroud and here I’ve been struck by a fact : DS is everywhere in our traitline, it would be impossible to remove it and pretty hard to change it.
So I looked for others features that are pretty unique to the necromancer : Utility skills/weapon skills/traits. And here we got a lot of things we can do.
- Minions
- Spectrals skills
- Corruptions
- Wells
- Marks
- Siphons
… etc.

So for fun I tried to imagine these mechanisms under a new design.
I had already talked about one of them :

The Horror
The Horror is a way to strech Minions skills. In fact, while in the Horror specialization, I had imagined that instead of raising a minion, the necromancer would have the minion dwelling in himself and then directly access to the active skill of the minion equiped. With this slight change the necromancer specialized in Horror would gain reliable blast combo and a lot of in combat mobility.

The Gravedigger
For the Gravedigger I’m more looking into Maks and Wells. Just imagine that they are changed to something similar to mantra (mesmer) or venom (thief). Instead of using them as set aoe, they become buffs like :
- Marks : Gain x charge of a set mark. Each time the Gravedigger is hitten a charge is triggered.
- Well : Gain x charge of a set well. The Gravedigger can use any charge at will, this charge become an aoe (a lot like mantra).

The Wraith
For this one it have to be about spectrals skills. We can imagine that while on the Wraith specialization the necromancer lose the possibility to gain this second health bar from Death shroud changing our F1 ability in a switch weapon like ability. Then at the same time spectral skills change into selfbuff that allow the Wraith to transfer damage directly to the LF pool for a set duration. We already got spectral armor and spectral walk buff ready for that. Spectral wall could become a selfbuff that pulse fear around the necromancer (Yes, that would be pretty OP but whatever, it’s just for fun) and spectral grasp a 4 seconds buff that pulse 1 second chill every second around the necromancer after using the skill.

The Strigoi
This could be a specialization based on siphon and corruption allowing the Strigoi to grant a buff each time he inflict himself a condition. To make it fun and totally unereliable, we could imagine that each time he inflict himself a condition, an aoe sihon happen around him and for each target hit, he give a number of staks of a set buff per condition to allie around. (of course target limited to 5).

All of this is unlikely to happen but, again this is for fun. So let me ask : And you how would you streched necromancers mechanisms?

I dare to say that an offhand allow more versatility in gameplay than a MH.

A main hand will always be range or mele. An Offhand allow the player to chose a mainhand that may be range or mele and still keep the possibility to use it efficiently. So with a mainhand you’re stuck in a gameplay, while with an offhand you can adapt easily to any kind of situation.

Shield as a main hand would be… Unreasonable.

May we hope that DS is also viewed as a Down State?
…
Nevermind, that was a joke.

Idea already taken by “revenant” class… sorry…

Wethospu.6437:

Necromancer:

• Damage: ++
• Offensive support: Vulnerability ( + + ), Party siphon ( + )
• Defensive support: Blind (+)
• Utility: 0

Other than what added it was pretty accurate.

ranger : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Protect_Me%22

Paragon : http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Angelic_Bond/Skill_history (original fonctionality

Plus spirit effect could be very similar to a lot of paragon’s skill while they are totally different from gw1 ranger’s spirit (like day and night). ex :
- A lot of the paragon’s skill/shout were providing a way to apply burning on hit to allies. That is not so different from spirit of the sun passive effect.
- A lot of the paragon’s skill/shout were reducing damage received or healing allies. Not so different from stone spirit and water spirit passive effect.

I’m not saying that it work perfectly but, this is really similar.

Yeah… We can expect next week to be the new boderland week announce.

Just want to say that according to spvp rank/achievment, paragon is tied to the guardian profession while warrior is tied to the “legionnaire”.

Other than that, you have a “taste” of the old paragon through warriors, guardian and rangers (at least)

Honnestly, necromancer are fine in pvp and wvw… While they are lackluster for pve. The best thing that could have happen for necromancer would have been a specialization with Hammer granting access to blast combo. This would have given a bit of interrest for the necromancer due to the hard need for reliable blast in any group play.

The best we could expect from greatsword is some whirl combo that will have synergy with our field. Issue : This will only make necromancer even more selfish and then, this won’t address the necromancer’s issue which is it’s selfishness.

Necromancer’s greatsword doesn’t address the uselessness of necromancers in parties. I sadly don’t have a lot of hope that what come along will do the trick.

masterful reflection : While under the effect of distorsion you gain reflexion.

Under distorsion you are still suceptible to :
- take condition damage that are already on you
- take retaliation damage.

This work as intended.

Just pop spectral wall at your feet and keep the wall between you and it’s clones.
Just pop reaper mark on your feets.
Just enter in DS when you see him about to shatter.
Just use well of darkness.
Just use a well that does damage.
Just use spectral armor.
Just dodge.

If you do any one of this you will be able to avoid being wrecked in 1-2 second

You’re seeing the GW2 in the wrong sense.

It’s not that they don’t want any trinity, it’s just that they don’t want it to be required. To achieve this, they create classes that can fit every roles depending on how they are build/geared.

Keeping PvE challenging ain’t really hard, they just have to add mechanism that are less forgiving. And the change in the defiance mechanism is a good way to open a lot of possibility in this direction. Same goes for the masteries which involve that we will encounter foes that are resilient to anykind of damage except if you are able to drop it off of it’s resilience for a certain duration.

It would be sad that the only pet profession of the game suddenly lose it’s pet… Well whatever, there will be alway people wanting the “archer” archetype class to be the GW2 ranger. (Which he is not )

Azhure.1857:

I don’t know if “most broken” and “least played” go hand in hand here.
But if I had to guess which class was least played I’d say Engineer.

I think you’re probably right. Even if the engi is really handy and fun to play, it’s probably the least played out there. Rangers would be the most because everybody and their grandma play rangers while every grampa play thiefs . WvW is filled with guardian, warriors, ele and necro. This leave Mesmer that could be toe to toe with the engi.

Still, having an heavy armor will change nothing except skin… and add a gold sink especially for necromancer…

Please please can I have a cheap signboard with “Do not play Necro, It even waste In Game gold!” ?

You are just super lucky. For example, I am unluky because even when i use 4 level 80 exotic item in the mystic toilet, I end up with some level 76-78 exotic cr… item.

Well, that would be interesting but the thing is that she doesn’t fit in any fighting style at all. The best we could guess from her is that she is a kinda Engineer.
I’d say that at best she could be involved in a specialization but not in the core profession.

Jim Hunter.6821:

What we really need are less selfish changes so we can play a bigger part in group scenarios. Change the shouts so they offer group support like stability, protection, etc.
Make empathic bond cleanse (not transfer to your pet) 3 conditions from allies in X radius. Give maul a blast finisher.

Ranger is already full of party support. Heck! There are profession that would kill for half the support ranger have.
- fire and water fields
- blast/whirlwind and other finishers
- traits like spotter
- a signet active that cleanse party condition
- spirits
- Pet’s support shout.

Right now, some of this support is cripple by mechanism like very fragile spirits and long cast time/animation on pet’s support shout.
-What I really hope from druid spec is that it will allow spirits to dwell in the druid’s weapon (which would make spirits a reliable support in large scale battle).
-And what i ask for pets is a some reliable way to make them a bit more sturdy (via traits and change to “guard”), a way to change this behavior of them that make them a lot more of an hindrance than an help for the ranger (via the possibility to disable some of their skills) and, lastly but not least, give them this party support role that they could have if they weren’t crippled by these cast time that make their support absolutely non attractive and unreliable. (do you even imagine an instant cleanse on bear shout? Some protection/fury at the right moment from moa? A pet that won’t be interrupt while he give real support?)

BTW, what you propose for empathic bond is totally overpowered. And I have to agree that maul being a blast finisher would be enough to make GS a shiny weapon.

On guard in particular. I have to disagree with you. What I feel isntead is that guard should do what it actually says it does. confine the pet to a specific area. KEEP the pet stealthed when out of combat. And KEEP protection up as long as the pet is IN the aoe area.

Honestly what should feel like an area denial skill feels like something I spam just to produce na effect not even related to the theoretical function of the skill itself.

Well, what i propose is more a change in the sense of “guard” meaning protect yourself than in the sense of look for this area. Anyways, right now the impact of a pet under “guard” is nothing near an area denial and you’re right about that. But I think it would benefit a bit more the ranger to change this shout in the protect yourself way than in the look for this area way.

Also to the TC, I’m not sure that LB really outshines all of the other ranger weapons. IMO, it’s kind of low tier. Sure, you can do damage with it…but you better hope you finish the job the first time, if not…you have no escape mechanism.

Just look at the rangers around you that almost all use longbow. Do you think it’s just because of fashion or because this weapon have almost perfect synergy with all damaging traits, ok damage, nice burst, ways to disengage (PBS and stealth) easily and outstanding range?

I’d say around 2 to 3 month before they realease the xpac (or maybe before beta release)

Right now the ranger is pretty balanced.
But while signets and survival skills carry almost every possible build, while traps are great addition to condition builds, Shout are totally underwhelmings and spirits are a bit tricky to use.
I’m not saying that everything have to change but there are a few things for which that would be a benefit.

Survival skill :
Sharpening stone : I believe, this is the most enigmatic skill of rangers skills. How come 5 bleed stack have enough value to justify this long cool down? There is certainly a reason but, does even halving the CD make this skill overpowered?

Shouts :
Guard : while it’s probably the most used shout of ranger (due to it’s short cool down) the basic effects are near uninterresting. I believe, this skill could be reworked to be easier to use and give a bit more survivability to our pet. Just removing the targeted area, removing the stealth component and give it instead something like 2 second distorsion for the pet would be way more interresting.

Search and rescue : With this skill, the ranger is the only profession that have 2 revive skill. Is this necessary? When you look at the actual game I believe that it’s not. This skill could be change to a lot of other things that would actually benefit rangers. For example, this could be a shout allowing pets to remove boons on hit for a short duration.

Spirits :
I’d love to see change on how spirits work but, right now i’d prefer to bet on a druid spec that could change that.

Pets :
survivability : The change to pet’s health pool have, in fact hurt even more pets survivability, mainly because with a larger health pool, they just become harder to heal. We just ended up with having a hard time sustaining them. I believe a permanent damage reduction on one of the grand master trait in the beastmaster traitline would have made a greater job for pet’s survivability. Maybe replace “invigorating bond” by a -50% damage trait a la “Bark skin” but without the life percentage requirement.

Maniability : Pets have 4 skills and we end up being able to controle just one of these. Honnestly, at least, we should be able to disable some of these skill so that the pet don’t use them but still use it’s basic attack.

Pet’s shout : While I believe offensive shouts are well done, I also believe that support shout need change. Support shouts need to get rid of their animation and cast time. These are actually the less responsive skills in game with little to no meaning in actual use In Game.

Weapons :
Right now Longbow outshine every other ranger weapon. A lot of dedicated traits, best range, almost best overall damage per second… The heck! with proper trait and sigil it could even be the best condition damage weapon. Other weapon need love.

Axe : Honed axe could use a flat damage boost instead of a ferocity buff. Or, better, an attack speed buff for each axe equiped.

Sword : Common, a bit of love for the sword!!! (well we could say that “predator’s onslaugh” have been made for her but, no it’s a general trait)

Greatsword : The “two-handed training” trait feel pretty weak due to the fact that he is in a defensive traitline. I’m pretty sure it could use a buff like also giving 5% more damage to the pet.

Shortbow : The shortbow used to shine a lot brighter until it got nerfed to the ground. Maybe a slight buff could revive him. I think it could use a little buff to it’s autoattack damage (10%, up from 136 to 150 base damage should be just right).

This is just some though to revive dead stuff on ranger.

Edit: I do not assume that any of the change proposed are balanced in any way

I’m stopping here, you are way too dense when it come to balance and to self centered on your build. It’s useless to try and argue with you since you don’t want to see why even 2 more condition cleansed on a 40 s CD would give to the ranger a huge advantage.

You really don’t understand why it would be overpowered? This is ridiculous… You just want to get rid of the weakness of your glass canon build.

Like I said, this change will be good for your build. But, if you look at things from a different way, it will overpowered other builds. Leading to an endless and needless nerfbat train.

Your energy will be spent in a better way if you were trying to address real issues like shout and sharpening stone. Or maybe the fact that the longbow outshine every other ranger’s weapon. Or our lack of controle over the skills of our pets. Well, things that don’t really impact your glass build but cripple the ranger a lot more.

Celestial on a non-might stacking build… This is what you’re doing wrong. You can use whatever weapon you want, if you don’t have any might stack with a celestial amulet, you won’t do any damage.
The only build that are strong with celestial are build that allow oneself to selfbuff a lot. In this regard ele and engi are really strong at doing this, warrior manage to do it with shouts and bow.

Aomine.5012:

I’d like them to create something like rocket boot, give up all the vigor/ breakstun and dodge stuff, and just make it a CD20 copy paste of the rocket boot if you think LR is so perfect and doesn’t need a change. Or give us a skill exactly like thief’s retreat, 15 CD on a utility slot, but doesn’t heal.

If we have “choice” to pick from our “utilities only” , I wouldn’t have propose this change. Truth is we have no choice, no useful utilities to do the job.

Would I be wrong to say, that what you mean is that you want something that buff your build without having to sacrifice anything.

Thieves have easy access to evade because this is their way to mitigate damage while rangers have traits/utility that do it in an other way. And… thieves are laughable when it come to condi removal in front of the tools that rangers have.

Don’t get me wrong, if i always temper your posts, it’s not a grudge or whatever, it’s just that you seem to want to open the pandora box and, for the self preservation of an healthy ranger profession I must temper you. What you want, will definitely end up in the dhumfire scenario which have hurt (a lot) necromancers.

Well, playing a powermancer without life force is like playing a mesmer with blured frenzy, distorsion, blink and everything you can think of that give you a bit of defense on mesmer, on cool down.

Foefaller.1082:

…otherwise, it’s completing the champ weapon skin set for the Karmatic Converter, and… good luck with that.

Done. Karmatic Converter is… well… not worth the pain to acquire it. And I do more karma than I spend with it.

I hope for a lot of karma skin with HoT.

Capes are things of the past. I already hate them in GW, i’m more than glad we don’t have any in GW2.

PS.: Seem like we are a lot who ain’t everyone

why? you want to force people into the new player experience? Leveling is a really tiny part of the game, tome of knowledge are merely here to allow experienced player to skip an irrelevant leveling phase.
People that enjoy doing map completion will still do it even if they are 80, people that don’t will just be able to enjoy the profession at it’s fullest right away. It’s little to no different then leveling in wvw environment or just using the profession in Spvp.

Knighthonor.4061:

I sense a upcoming problem that many servers will have.

the new map is Borderland. What this mean, is that many of the smaller population servers that have a hard time fulling up EB will have a harder time getting people into Borderland especially when its split up into 3 maps already.

I suggest that the Developers merge all three Borderlands into a single map.

To go deeper into this, I say Merge Servers.

Note: this is for smaller servers, you can leave the Top Servers as they currently are.

I know that it would please some people that they merge server, but actually, the whole issue is elsewhere. I’m talking from an EU server perspective so it may be different in NA but, right now and since almost 1 year the real issue is that there is 1 overpopulated server, some very populated servers and underpopulated servers.

Just to say it, in EU, there is so many people on 1 server that it affect directly EotM. Whatever the color of this server, EotM will be owned by this color for the whole week. (Note that I choose not to say what server it is, but most EU people will recognize it).

People want to be on the winning side, sadly merging underpopulated server won’t do any good. Forcefully move player won’t either. The fact is that it affect only wvw. We could imagine Anet asking for player QQing about queue for WvW to move but they won’t because they just wanna win.

The real issue is not a lack of people wanting to play wvw, it’s a lack of people ready to risk themselves on a bottomline server. (well afterall it’s so easy to grab the first place prize while not even able to enter a borderline due to queue and being stuck in EotM).

Feel like you said to the necro that he is kinda cute while you think he is super ugly… Poor necro…

Sorry, I’m just wondering why you are reporting the asura that play just fine instead of the human? Because, when you watch, the video that’s actually what you did.

Well, these prediction may be totally wrong.

I believe, there are multiple option and every veapon could be a splendid addition.
Sword : could come with slashing spells which are pretty simple
Mace : would come with blunt spells befiting a lot the new tech they add with HoT
Torch : is also an option since it’s really worth an element weapon
Horn : is a bit like mace even if i find it hard to imagine skill befiting elementalist with it.
pistol/riffle/longbow : may be an option (well it’s like Horn, it’s hard to imagine but there could be pretty nice things to do with them)

But in all honesty, I’d prefer mace over sword since I struggle to up my mace weapon mastery while sword is maxed since ages.

This pet is tamable in EB not far away from ogre camp… I’d say, it’s just super easy to get.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Rangers had their own spirits that they channeled in GW1, that is spirits of nature, rather than ancestors or particular beings. Basically the difference between summoning fey and summoning ghosts. Both are “spirits”, but are decidedly different.

Well rangers spirit in gw1 were very different than what they are in GW2. In fact, they were double edge weapon. I miss this part of them (Yes I used to be a spirit ranger slave for monk farmers in the domain of anguish).

It always felt like mesmers and rangers had taken away the “spirit” part of ritualists. Revenant feel like they’ve got the ash and channeling part. It could be fun that necromancer take the enchant weapon part (well, that is if they can lend it to their party. If it’s again a selfish thing, this won’t do really any good to the necromancer, this will just be a little bit different).

dobri.7820:

last
Necro – mass stability,

First time ever I’ve seen necro picked up for having mass stability in dungeon environment…

Otherwise, I enjoy doing dungeon in a party with people that know what they gotta do. It’s fine this way. I enjoy it even more when I can learn 1 or 2 new tricks in the process.
This mean that any class is fine. But this also mean that I especially hate overuse of hard cc in a dungeon (I m looking at you ranger’s longbow user).

Something that eat dragonite…

You know, druids in GW are merely plant spirit :
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

I’ll play it with my charr ranger. Well, that is if the specialization feel interesting or fit some situations at least.

Well… Pet’s have merely 2 thing they need to fix them :

- Get rid of their cast time/animation when they use shout
- Allow ranger to disable some of the pet’s skill

With just this pets would be easier to handle, pets with shout would be a bit more popular and their will be less issues due to pet hurting party teamwork. Would this make ranger better? Probably. Would this make ranger OP? No.

On the other hand, an evolution of pet won’t do any good because, you just seek another pet in the end.

But thief has no real condition damage to weakened the enemy.

You fool!!!

What do you guys think about this ?

I think you’re playing him wrong

imo, you’re not totally wrong about trap but that’s all.

spoj.9672:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Anchoku.8142:

Here are a few more speculative thoughts:

1. GS auto attack probably hits hard but slow and has cleave. Should be roughly equal to staff’s AA but trades piercing for cleave

If Marjory uses the skills we’ll be getting, the auto-chain is actually rather fast, taking 2.2 seconds to entirely cycle. Dagger auto takes 2.1 seconds, for reference.

Her chain also applies a chill on the last AA which has about 50% uptime untraited.

3rd hit of 4, actually.

Its probably only 3 hits. Its a very similar animation to rangers greatsword auto. I admit the spin does make it look like it double hits. But i doubt it actually will. Ofcourse it would be cool if it is the first 4 hit greatsword auto though.

In fact, in one of the LS chapter from season 2 Marjory say that rox is teaching her how to GS. So it will most likely end up in something really similar to ranger’s GS style.

Well… Given the fact that you are level 50, this kind of argument about build efficacity is a bit… out of place I’d say.

Simply put the guy which post the build say that he think the damage bonus granted by siphon trait would be stronger than the damage bonus given by soul reaping. Whether he is wrong or right, I think you shouldn’t try to rely a lot on siphon trait for leveling, except if you play a minionmancer. Vampiric master is probably the most reliable siphon trait out of the entire bloodline.

Anyway, you can take it easy at your point, just try any weapon and tke the one with which you feel it’s easier to play.

How to get xp :
- wandering around
- craft
- doing event
- killing stuff
- doing daily (you even get tome of knowledge easily from daily pvp)
- follow karma train in EoTM
- doing dungeon path
…

If you don’t level fast even with all of this… then just forgot about any mmo that exist, you’re not fit to play mmo. GW2 is probably the easiest game when it come to leveling.

Asuran answer : After that we will still seek knowledge through all mean possible. We will probably end up causing trouble from different dimension.

Charr answer : Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!!!!!!!!!

Human answer : Ascalon should be ours!

Sylvari answer : We still need to grow…

Norn answer : Beer and barehand fight in the snow are the best!

Strangely feel like there won’t be any specialization in this Beta so… Not interested at all.

Right now from what i have seen, revenant seem to have a pretty smooth gameplay, mastery seem pretty well done and it would be difficult in a Beta to try to stir out everything out of them because of time gating. I’m fine with how camera work right now so…

Only thing that could be motivating would be to see actual common champs in game with new defiance bar, but it’s more likely that the beta will not be available out of new map.