Guild Wars 2

The best point has been made already. These items are not in the hands of better players, but rather in the hands of players who simply log more hours grinding or bought gems and used the currency exchange.

The best gear should be rewarded to players. Reward the skill, not the time. However, often this means chance drops which brings me to the next point.

Rewarding the lucky. RNG is the absolute worst. Just look at Aion. That game was a RNG nightmare. It also had the worst grind I have ever experienced. That was mainly because drop rates were horrid. Rewarding the lucky is worse than rewarding those with more free time to play. Especially since the “lucky” tend to also be those who ‘no live’ the game. After all, you roll that percentile dice enough times and your are bound to roll a 100 sooner or later.

The problem with games trying to simulate real world economy is that it fails to have the rules and regulations that exist in the real world. The real world has a plethora of checks and balances that prevent exploitation. In this case, the term refers to companies exploiting the customers.

Wants are more expensive than needs? Umm actually that is not true… The largest bills I pay each month are needs. My rent, electricity, gas (home), groceries and child care are the most expensive things I have to pay for each month. The only ‘want’ (which can be debated as a need as well) that rivals these needs is my car.

As for wants being more expensive…

The biggest need is a place to live. My rent is 1150 a month. A nice sport boat would be something I don’t need. It would be a “want”. I can get one for 20K. If I save for 5 years (a typical length for a finance term), I would only need to save $333.34 a month. I can get it right away if I’m willing to actually finance and pay interest. I’d still be looking at less than 500 a month. That is less than half the price per month than something I need. Then after the 5 years, I can probably use it for another 10 years on top of that. So if I finance right away and get a poor interest rate so I pay 500 a month for 5 years. I will actually pay 30k for it. But if I have the boat for a total of 15 years, that is 2k per year or just 166.67 per month that it works out to. That is less than my electricity and natural gas bills combined.

Then there is paying more for look. Again, this also does not reflect real world at all. I’ve seen people compare a Ferrari to a Corvette as an example for this. The problem is that you can buy a Ferrari body kit for a Corvette for a fraction of the cost to actually buying a Ferrari. This is because you pay for a multitude of things…

1. Brand Name.
2. Engineering.
3. Rarity.

The first is pretty self explanatory. Quite often you can buy the exact same item for less if it’s not being sold by a popular brand name company. The second comes down to the cost to make and the ‘substance’ that it has. Not all cars are made the same and often the exotics are made with more precision than most. There are many cases where some are made by hand rather than mass produced on an assembly line. It costs more to make it as a result. Also, unless you want to pay for a Corvette that actually cost the same as a Ferrari, the Ferrari will have more horses under the hood. Finally there is rarity where these companies will often make a limited number of these vehicles. They sell much fewer at a much higher price to make the same as most other companies make by selling a bunch at a much lower cost.

As for look? Nope. I can buy a Ferrari body kit for a Corvette and basically have a vehicle that is a near perfect replica on the outside for a fraction of what an actual Ferrari costs.

The biggest problem with in game economies is that they are run by greed and allowed to be. Players want the money and they want it fast. Combine that with rarity and people will charge as much as they can get away with. They are not looking to get rich by selling a lot for little but rather they want to get rich for selling that one or two items for a lot.

Yet can you blame them? After all, if someone is willing to pay….

The biggest problem is that it only takes a minority few no lifers or people willing to throw real cash at the game to make it near impossible for the majority rest to obtain these through normal use of the game. Without getting extremely lucky that is.

The title is misleading. I couldn’t think of the right words.

It has to do with ground targeting skills. Whether it is for helping allies or hurting the enemy, having to select the ground can be a pain. So I propose an idea to make a change to how ground targeted skills work.

Offensive skills: If you have an enemy selected, these should cast at their feet automatically. If you don’t have an enemy selected, it can work normally if you don’t have the right mouse button held in, or it can auto cast at your own feet if you do have it held in.

Defensive skills: If you have an enemy selected, it will either work normally without the right mouse button held in, or it will autocast at your feet if you do. If you have an ally targeted, it will cast at their feet.

Not only that but if you can get your flesh golem to enter the water, it gets stuck. It’ll eventually disappear and trigger you CD.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hey folks,….

Open World → Zerg: So we are expected to have to use a ranged pet on champ mobs where it takes a zerg to take down because of the lack of pet survivability? Not even the tankiest of tank pets and traits will help huh? That’s actually quite pathetic.

WWW → Solo: Most dangerous game for the ranger class is more like it. If you are looking to disable and kill quickly, pick a different class.

→ Zerg and Wall: We rely on the pet being 40% of our damage output. That is just so we are on par with other classes. If our pet is not dishing out the dps, we are doing 40% less damage than every other class. That is a massive kitten to the class.

Dungeons: Again, forced to use range pets at boss fights or else you have two dead pets and a min CD. Bringing a pet that benefits the group is unlikely. Out of the pets that we have, not all provide a benefit to the group. Those that do are not ranged and what they provide is often brought by other players who can do it far better.

Honestly. What you wrote only makes the ranger’s short comings stick out.

Also, with so much focus on what pet for which situation. Where is the loyalty? Where is that bond? You treat the ranger’s pets as you would a sword or dagger. Just a tool to be used. It’s sad.

I think the pet shares the same problem as mobs do. Any Champ that attacks using melee is dirt simple to kite around because they stop moving to make their attack.

That video contradicts itself and in some cases just flat out wrong.

I like the chess example. It’s true that the game is perfectly balanced. Because it is perfectly balanced, it comes down to who the better player is. In a PvP environment, this is very important. Why do you think that any character that goes to do WvWvW is boosted up to lvl 80. To help balance the difference that a difference in lvl would make.

Now looking at the game rock, paper, scissors. This game is more chance based (you can try and “read” you opponent to take an educated guess at what they are gonna do) but that aside, it too, is balanced. Perfectly so.

Players understand the concept of rock, paper, scissors and how it applies to MMOs. The problem with the RPS element is that it will detract from player skill. Rock beats scissors no matter how good a player scissors is.

If the ranger was specifically designed to be able to beat thieves, then you can have highly skilled thief players getting beat by rookies playing rangers. This is why the chess concept is better than the RPS concept in games like this. We have multiple builds and skills to work with. Many options. The skill of the player comes down to know what skill to use and when in the current situation. However, you can’t take every skill with every build. While a particular build can give you a certain strength and weakness, no build should be better than another. Just different. And while some builds will be better for a particular situation, that shouldn’t mean that all the other possible builds are not at least viable in that same situation. No one single build should excel in every situation.

Min/maxing is not a good thing. This works under the idea that a particular build is better than another and not just different. It leads to, “if you use that build, you are playing the game wrong”. It is the product of the kind of imbalance you don’t want where a particular build isn’t just different, it leaves you in a kitten state where another build will work better and not just differently for a different situation.

With a game like this, the RPS concept isn’t a circle but rather a spiderweb interconnecting all the race/class combinations against one another. You also don’t want this concept completely just as you don’t want the chess concept completely (where everyone is identical to everyone else). You want to find a balance and incorporate these two concepts together in a way that works for the game.

Also, there have been issues that people have not changed their tune about since launch. I think that is beyond the “wait a week and see if the players come up with a solution”. Coping with a flaw, drawback or shortcoming is not the same as players playing the meta game.

All they need to do is make it so that the pet and ranger dodge as one. If you are back with your bow and your pet is up on the enemy, when you see the enemy about to do something you dodge and so your pet does too.

Maybe during these leaps (this goes for every class) we should be evading for a short time.

Clearly someone wasted their conditions on a Ranger’s pet. I haven’t done much pvp in this game but I have done plenty in GW1 and WoW. Mind you I am still leveling my ranger but as it is now, I am easier to take out than my fern hound is.

Which is why the pet is usually ignored. Kill the pet and ranger keeps on going, eventually bringing out the other one. Kill (not just down) the ranger and they are both gone.

Maybe it’s different with this game, I don’t know. I know that in this game the pet is about 40% of the ranger’s damage output. So I can see that being a decent reason except that you would have to take out their pet in less time than it takes for the swap CD to run out.

Except that in GW1 you actually had to place pet skills among your 8 skill limit. You needed one just to have the pet leaving you with 7 to mix and match accordingly. If someone was BM heavy in GW1, that was a very good reason to take out the pet. Yet, my pet was most often ignored.

When I did the task that requires you to become one of the nightmare court. I new then I would have to make one.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

Imagine all the condition transferring =o

Like a STD convention turned orgy.

slingblade.1437:

I think he means they did a good job improving the GS, and now it’s time to work on the LB.

Lol yeah, I clued into that a couple minutes after.

Kinda how the warrior fires two arrows? Also, you didn’t talk about the great sword…

While the auto attack option is an option for personal preference. Being able to turn it off does not dismiss the point that somebody shouldn’t have to in order to get their evade to work properly.

It doesn’t dismiss that the evade command should supersede any current action your character is making at the time.

Chokolata.1870:

Actually it sticks you to your opponent like glue , furthermore it buffs your pet and cripples the opponent . Attack 2 is great for leap finishers or escaping , press 2 press 180 degree turn press 2 again . No 3 is a free evade and flanking tool .

But if you insist on not turning off auto-cast u can always stop the chain by using hornet sting , the no 2 attack .

The sword is quite amazing

This reminds me why I never noticed that the evade didn’t function right with the sword. I always timed the sword skills to evade with so I never needed to use endurance.

I’m still leveling my ranger and I can’t wait till I buy my next armor/weapon set (golds are still quite cheap to buy). I decided to go with axe/torch for taking out multiple enemies at once but with a sword I can potentially hit more than three enemy in one swing and those evades plus poison along with two ways to burn enemies (one of which is aoe).

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

sword is good but only in sPVP in www sucks because you just jumping around target and if target moves you miss most of the time and dmg is awfull

So, target just stand there in sPvP do they?

IMO this is a good pick up. The dodge command should supersede any action you are currently performing.

Jabronee.9465:

Agreed 100%!
But the problem is all Elites have long cooldowns.
And gaining buffs from it aint good enough as it can be stipped or turned into conds easily.

Unless its an Active/Passive Elite Signet.
Passive = Pure Ranger no Pets increase Precision & 10% Chance to gain QZ on hit.
Active = Beastmaster. Pets active.

lol i bet no one gonna active it

It would be nice if…

Passive: Currently pets do ~40% of a ranger’s total damage. With the passive effect, that 40% is given to the ranger so that the ranger does the full 100% without needing a pet (since there won’t be one). The ranger would also get bonuses to their stats, a 10% increase but not 10% of the ranger’s stats. 10% of the pet’s stats is what is added to the rangers. So if you would normally have a bear active, you are gonna see a bigger boost to your health. The canine would cause the ranger to see a decent buff to toughness. Etc.

The ability to swap pets would still be there. By swapping your pet, this will potentially change the pet’s attributes and thus, the buff to your own attributes would change accordingly.

Active: You take on a wereform depending on the pet. Ex. any canine (wolf or dog) would cause you to become a werewolf. Any bird would cause you to become a Tengu. And so on. When in this form, you gain the skills that your pet would use in place of the pet command bar. So for a wolf, F1 would be Crippling Leap; F2 would be Terrifying Howl; and F3 would be Brutal Charge. The basic attack (bite in this case) wouldn’t be used.

haxi.9038:

No you are wrong…Most newbies don’t really know much about other classes. Most people would be absorbed in the open world pve (which rangers are pretty good at, feels so kitten saving others from that vet mob). So many things to discover like crafting etc and before you know it you hit 80. Thing is, pets are op when everyone is wearing blue or green gear.
Ah but once you start playing abit more from there, you realize some of the problems rangers face in end-game/high-end pve and people start to think about whether they can handle this class or not. While I agree with you that some “noobs” who find that the class does not suit them will start to roll guardians and whatnot, good players aren’t just going to sit either there when there are other classes that better reward their skills , be it at killing players or killing ai.

And btw what was all that talk about longbow about? It states clearly in the tooltip about different damage at different range if you so much as hover your mouse over the skill. Please show some respect to new players, they may be new but not kitten

People don’t say to themselves “well I’m new to this so I’ll roll a ranger”. They will pick the class that is appealing to them and when people see ranger, they’ll think pet and bow. Not everyone will like those two things. Some people find the idea of magic more appealing and so they will be looking at the ele, mesmer and necro. Other people will find being sneaking more appealing and so they will try out the thief. Yet, others still will want to step toe to toe with the enemy and laugh at their futile attempts to do them harm so they will role warrior or guardian for the tanking.

Whether or not their expectations are met or not by how the class works in game is another story. This is where those who have had their expectations met, or those who are die hard fans of the class will stick with it. Those who have been disappointed will try out other classes.

I’m speaking from personal experience here. I’m new to GW2 but not new to MMORPGs. I’ve always been a fan of the ranger. The first character I made was a ranger and only got to lvl 24 before I finally decided to try a class that appealed to me second to the ranger. The necro. Only after getting my necro to 60 I tried another class. I now have a lvl 20 guardian. Then I finally went back to the ranger because I’m a die hard fan of the class. I’m also slowly getting it to work for me. I’ve soloed more champions with my ranger than I have with either of the other two. Although I have a feeling that I could solo even more if I get my guardian up further.

For those that pick ranger, even for pve will be surprised at just how fragile their pet is. Especially at the lowest levels since you can’t even trait into beast mastery and beef up your pet’s survivability. I know I was. After having played GW1 or worse yet, WoW where a tank pet can be almost as tough as another player character.

So again I say that those who have max out their ranger are people who have made it work for them (or at least they think they made it work for them) or those who are simply fans of the class and will play it no matter how kitten ANet makes it.

Yeah, every time I hear my ranger say “I choose you”, I want to hit a dev.

It’s funny that people believe that Rangers are some default new player class. People are gonna choose what appeals to them personally regardless. It’s not the new players or “noobs” that will continue to be rangers through the higher levels. It’ll be those who made it work for them and/or those who are die hard fans of the class that will continue to use it. The “noobs” will be the first to move on to a different class that is easier to play (AKA new player friendly).

Which brings me to the point. The ranger class in this game is not new player friendly. There are quite a few quirks that keep it from being new player friendly. Just two that I can think of are…

1. The bow (particularly the long bow) is seen as a signature weapon of the class. Yet, what most new players won’t have any idea about is that the long bow does more damage at it’s max range and reduced damage at point blank range (something which shouldn’t exist).

2. Pets, die very easily. Especially during champ fights. If in a group you are better off using a range pet and make sure that pet stays at range while some guardian tanks. If you swap before your pet dies, your swap timer is less than if you wait for your pet to die before swapping (again, something that should not be the case). So at what point do you swap? With how fast they can die, your pet can easily go from having a few more hits left to insta dead. This makes swapping at just the right time a very tedious and frustrating ordeal.

Pets also lack any development of their own other than being of equal level to you and so their stats are set appropriately to their level. A trait that gave your pet a % of your stats would be awesome. If you spec yourself to be a tank, your pet will be a better tank. If you spec to do better condition damage, your pet will do better condition damage. Etc.

The only trait that may work to your benefit is Nature’s Bounty. The thing is, any regen that has 100% up time will not be affected because they already never end. I also tested this trait against Troll Unguent and was disappointed to see that it did not bump the time to 13 sec from 10 sec.

The only thing I see Nature’s Bounty working with is the Salvari hound’s regen howl (I have yet to test this) which makes it a good combo with Commanding Voice which you said you use. Assuming it works.

Edit: Just compared the pets howl with and without Nature’s Bounty. No difference and I reconfirmed Troll Unguent as no difference.

Edit2: It works on Healing Spring and Healing Seed but only for the regen part. It won’t increase the up time of the skill itself. This works really good. By default the pulse is almost synced with the regen timer but with Nature’s Bounty, the regen timer is about 2 seconds longer. This causes whatever time left to be added to the refresh. By the time the skill is done, leaving 15 seconds of CD, you have 10 sec worth of regen on you. If you take the trait that allows your pet to have any boon you get, then your pet can benefit from the Healing Spring without even being in it itself.

Something needs to be done about the ranger’s pets. It is as if it’s just an afterthought on ANet’s part. I’m still leveling and it doesn’t matter the pet, their survivability has been garbage from the start. The other classes can go to hell. If we need our pets to be up and fighting in order for our damage output to be on par with the other classes, then our pets should be very difficult to take down. If we didn’t need our pet’s damage to be on par with other classes, and have the pet’s damage be above and beyond, then sure, keep them easy to take out.

Basically the title says it all. It would be nice if weapons were included as well. I remember that the weapons in GW1 could be dyed.

awesome thnx

LoL, stupid body length nonsense.

Does it exist? I made me a Salvari after my main did the task which involved becoming one of the nightmare court. I was disappointed when I didn’t even get to start out in Salvari armor. Does it even exist in the game?

Honestly I see no reason why they shouldn’t. If you are out of combat it only takes time to either replace them or heal them. If it’s possible to do these two things out of combat to give us full hp minions before the next fight, then having out of combat regen does nothing but saves us down time between fights.

I am quite enjoying GW2 as I knew I would from playing GW1. There is just one thing that I find to be a bit annoying.

I has to do with the personal story. I find the story quite appealing and it keeps me interested. I always want to know what happens next. I especially like how you can choose multiple paths, either within the same race or by selecting a different race. It really helps with replayability.

What doesn’t, is the static world that exists. Now I know there isn’t much you can do about that world and, well, you are doing quite a bit with it so that it isn’t so static as is typical in MMOs and kudos on that effort.

But…

Why force players to break in the personal story to grind up levels in that world? You have a system that will drop a person’s level so that they just don’t run around one-shotting everything. The world content is always worth exploring at any time, even after reaching level 80.

So my suggestion is to adjust the xp awarded doing the story missions so that you are just the right level to enter the next one.

ANet has always had Holiday events and they are annual. This game is what? 7 months old? GW1 came out in 2005, with Sorrows Furnace released a few months later, while GW Factions came out in 2006.

WoW was released in November of 2004. Burning Crusades came out in 2007. In that 3 year period, what new content was released? Any? Other than new gear, what new events, missions, dungeons, etc.?

I think they are making a good effort with what they are doing. Just today I played my guardian through an area I had already done with my necro weeks ago and ended up doing events that I never did with my necro. For a moment, I actually got the feeling that the world had advanced through time.

Of course that feeling imploded when I returned to the area later on with my guardian and that event was active again.

ANet is adding new content to existing areas but the new content is still locked into a time loop. The “living world” is still too shallow.

People have mentioned how new players join never knowing the significance of certain things. This is where the world’s history needs to be made available.

Now I’m going to bring Skyrim, or rather TES in general, into the mix. I know that it is a single player game but I feel that it is possible, with a certain level of creative thinking and programming, that you can have a MMO like GW but have a game world where such a game world advances as it does in Skyrim.

One of the things I’ve mentioned before was how I was standing by some NPCs and they just looped some script day and night over and over. In Skyrim, while some of the conversations were repetitive and predictable, every so often, they would talk about something new and that something was usually something your character was involved in. This is where new players could pick up on the significance of things.

The NPCs also have a day/night cycle of sleeping, working, eating, etc. when they were not directly involved in a story/mission/event.

Honestly, I would love to see GW2 work in the radiant AI system.

Something they should think about too is more player character involvement. Take a look at EVE. In null sec, it is entirely owned and run by the player base. What a player does actually matters. It has an impact. Alliances form and fall. Corporations do the same. When ANet does get around to the next expansion, and opens up new land masses, these land masses should simply be unsettled. Occupied with nothing but beasts, monsters, and the like. Allow the Guilds of Guild Wars claim the various territories, build up settlements, build walls around those settlements. Let them form alliances and go to war with each other. Let the expansion live up to the name of this game.

Honestly I hate MM. I’m leveling with wells and doing quite well with it. I can easily go into a mob of 6 or more and wipe them in no more than two rotations.

I agree with the OP. This is not a living world. In fact, it was funny when I was standing there looking through my controls. This npc kept saying the same thing to another npc over and over and over and over. I bet if I go back there, those npc’s will still be there and the same thing will still be said. Those NPC are there 24/7 never sleeping or eating. Just hanging out repeating the same dialog over and over.

I know AI is limited but to be honest, despite developers talking about new break throughs in AI with their games, I haven’t noticed a difference in AI in over a decade.

When I first read about the game, I was under the impression we can choose sides in a situation. If a bunch of bandits were attacking a town, we could help defend the town or we could help the bandits take the town. Instead we are forced to play the “good guy” in every situation.

Also there is no consequence. Our actions have no real impact. So the bandits attack the town and now you are either successful at defending or you fail. If you fail, the bandits take over the town. You can then later fight to take it back. If you are successful at defending it, the bandits will later try again. These events are nothing more than a tug-o-war and are not very elaborate nor deep.

I think what is really holding developers back is that they feel that there is this need for every person to be able to experience the exact same content. As long as they feel that they have to do this, then they can never ever create a game world that actually advances through time.

Eg. You clear a cave out of baby spiders, and finish by killing their mother (boss) deep inside. The spiders shouldn’t spawn again. The cave is now empty. Only after some time, that cave may become a haven for some bandits or a cave troll might make it a new home. That cave troll could then be a champion boss. Players come by and kill this troll, and the cave is now empty again. In a couple hours that cave may then become a den for a pack of wolves.

Part of a world that actually changes and advances is the concept of “right place, right time” and in this game, that simply doesn’t exist because if you are late for an event, all you have to do is wait and the event will happen again.

Rather than having a story line that each person can experience individually, they should just make the open world itself the story line. A story line that advances regardless if you are logged in or not. That doesn’t mean that everybody has to be all at one place at one time to experience the “story line” because the “story line” isn’t between a handful of characters at a specific location and time. The “story line” is the world itself in its entirety.

Since AI is too limited to do this in an automated manner, this is where the developers stop being game designers and start the role of a “puppet master” where the npcs of the game are the puppets and the game world is the stage. Events happen all over, are forecast so people can plan where they want to be. People will have to make choices as events would happen at overlapping times and/or multiple events would happen at the same time all at different location. Events are developed and run once, with an actual change depending on the outcome. If you miss a particular event, oh well. You’ll just have to make sure you don’t miss the next one that interests you because the one you missed is now part of the past and won’t be replayed again.

NPCs would then only need to be given a daily routine to follow when not following an event script. The game has a day/night cycle. NPCs should have a 24 hour automated cycle of sleeping, working, eating, partaking in local gossip which should cover recent events as common topics so as events come and go, what these people talk about changes.

Much of that automated AI has been done by Bethesda.

Let’s take a look at those heart quests. You clean up a pond, set traps, revive fishermen and kill off hostile creatures. Every player will do that exact thing for the same NPC as everyone else. It doesn’t stay cleaned up. The fishermen don’t stay revived unless you constantly fight off a respawning creatures. Those creatures don’t stay dead.

Action without consequence. A world that is really frozen in time.

Unless the act of dodging is consider a single action. Then that would be one click for one action. I could set up the arrows for moving forward, backward, strafe left and strafe right. Then I could macro Alt + arrow keys for each of the d-pad directions using the Alt for the dodge button.

However, I would like to get confirmation that this is not a violation first.

I was wondering if there was a way that I could bind dodge to individual keys?

Eg. The left, right, up, and down arrow keys on the keyboard.

I had recently bought a Razer Nostromo and by default it places those directional controls as a d-pad directly under the thumb. This would make dodging much more responsive and convenient.

I’ve found that I enjoy playing the necro above all others except for underwater fighting. I don’t care for the MM build but it seems like MM is the only option for underwater.

The biggest factors regarding attrition is survivability, sustainability and control.

If necros are to be attrition fighters, we need to be able to survive burst dmg and be able to recover the loss before the next burst comes. Regarding classes with burst damage skills, it’s not enough for us to survive just one or two skills. They will chain multiple burst damage skills, then they will go on the defensive until the next burst chain.

Attrition fails if we die by the time they finish their first burst chain. If that chain consists of instant skills, and we depend on using skills with cast times to survive it, then that is also fail. We shouldn’t have to rely on getting the first hits to weaken them so their burst is lessened enough to survive it.

The way someone survives is simply damage % mitigation.

What do I mean by “damage %”?

As an example, a warrior deals an average of 500 damage to us. If we have 10k hp that 500 damage is 5% of our total HP. If we have 20k hp, that same 500 damage is only 2.5%.

Another way is to reduce the damage inbound. Higher defense rating, weaken them, buff yourself, etc. If you can reduce that 500 damage down to 250 damage, then with 10k hp you just reduced that 5% down to 2.5%.

This is where sustainability comes in. If we need to rely on skills to pull off the survivability over a drawn-out time, then our survivability skills must have sustainability regarding use. It doesn’t do us much good if we have to blow through a couple skills and then be left without any more survivability for the next 25 seconds. We wouldn’t survive that long. How many skills do we have access to in a fight? 5 per weapon set plus 5 more for a total of 15 skills. If we have 8 skills that benefit us in some way regarding survivability, then we should be able to use them in 4 sets of 2 (situationally dependent) and by the time the effects of the 4th set are used up, the 1st set is off cool down.

But what good is any of that if we don’t have control. An attrition fighter depends more on controlling the fight than any other type. Not only do we need to be able to put out damage during their offensive, but we must also be able to put out the damage during their defensive. We need to be able to negate their damage avoidance and reductions to do this.

One issue I’ve noticed thus far is that the necro attacks are too easily avoidable. Wells allow the enemy to simply leave the area. Marks can be avoided unless you cast at their feet. While some others like Plague Form simply means they can stay their distance from us.

Now I’m new to this game so take what I’ve said with a grain of salt. Although new to GW2, I’m not new to MMOs and have played GW1 quite extensively. The question you have to ask yourself is…

Do Necromancer, as they are within this game, have adequate survivability, sustainability and control to be attrition fighters?