Guild Wars 2

If the box contains nothing but regular gear with no new skins and random stats, gosh have I been grossly disappointed…

Malleus Maleficarum.2603:

Guys, seriously??

how is this another gamble…It’s GUARANTEED something rare, or exotic, and specifically something your class can use

this is as nice as it gets for gearing my many alts, especially since i dont often do dungeons so my source of exotics is crafting/map exploration(which is almost NEVER something i need or what i’m looking for)

i literally cannot believe people can find something to complain about this

Alright so I have a Lv80 thief who uses healing power, toughness and vitality. If I buy the box I might get something below Lv80, and I might get a rare not exotic. Further more what’s the stats in there… I mean ANY class can have ANY stat… so how can a stat be class specific? I mean why would I buy a thief box hoping to get lv80 exotic gear with healing power, vitality and toughness in it?

They just make no sense at all, why class specific gear boxes? Any class can have any stat and work out just fine. I cared little for the stats but my curiosity was towards the looks, do these boxes contain unique skins? If not I really don’t see a point, even for gearing an alt.

Edit: Also it’s not about complaining, we’re not complaining – we’re curious. Curious as to what’s in there, curious as to what the stats are, and as to WHY should we buy that? But honestly as far as I go, if there’s unique skins in there the armor could very well be Lv2 that I’d buy it, I want me some necro skins because there’s barely any necro-like armor in the game as it is.

Am I the only one dying to know what’s in there?
Of course I kind of doubt that Anet released new armors just like that without some sort of notification on them, but who knows (I guess I’m just being hopeful).

I mean why would they make those class specific gear boxes for 5 laurels without actual class specific gear? What’s in there? Just random armors that “look” like a specific class? I mean that’s kind of underwhelming and such… maybe it’s new armors with specific looks for each class?

I NEED TO KNOW! Of course no one has enough laurels to have bought it yet, by tonight I’m sure someone will have, it’d be nice if Anet actually let us know what’s in there but I’m pretty much sure they won’t… so we’ll need an unsuspecting victim to buy it so we can know!!

Curiosity made the cat buy crafting starter kits.

Curiosity will also make the cat buy those class specific gear boxes that the cat is SO curious about just to find out he spent 5 laurels buying regular armor that there’s nothing new about.

The reason they most likely will keep dailies is quite simple really, it’s no more than a marketing scheme thing. When the game gives you some sort of reward for playing EVERY single day, it’ll reinforce players to actually play every single day, that way the game has more traffic and more people keep coming back again and again to acquire that reward the game gives you every day.

This happens in many games in many ways, like some games giving you one hour of double XP bonus every day, etc. It keeps people coming back.

So no one knows? By now I’d assume someone must have gotten it. I myself won’t get it since I’ve already reached 400 with every single crafting so it’s pointless for me, though I’m still curious.

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks for the feedback on the Living Story portion of Flame and Frost: Prelude. Here’s some context on how it works:

• The Flame and Frost story content progresses over time. You will not see everything today, tomorrow, or even the next day.
• Expect subtle changes at first. Maybe you’ll encounter some familiar characters. Perhaps you’ll be introduced to some new ones. You might see a new structure where there wasn’t one before.
• The Living Story content is initially about the thrill of discovery. We’ll put some markers on your map, maybe send you a letter, or parcel out details through certain characters, but the rest is up to you.
• As the weeks progress, you’ll notice bigger changes in the world. New events may appear. Plots will advance and characters will develop.

As always, we welcome your opinions. This is a new thing we’re trying so we appreciate your patience and input.

See, this is nice. Some sort of information, though minor, is appreciated. This way we know what to expect!

Najten.2418:

There has been information about Refugees in Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills already. Why do people need an X on the map for every event? Some of us think it’s fun to discover stuff and not always know everything up front.

The patch went live on the 28th, we had no info about the event, many looked and found nothing. We didn’t know if we were supposed to find it, or if it wasn’t there yet. Only later did they say things would start on the 29th, not 28th, then said we’d get in game mail. We got no mail until much much much later than they said, for a while there were only refugees in Wayfarer Foothillls and none in the Plateau… so things have been scattered and not very well informed, that’s the issue.

I’ve realized that if you’re asking for help or for information usually no one cares to say a thing. But if you’re complaining or raging about something, suddenly the thread has 100 posts… :c

Edit: I don’t know, so I can’t answer.

I agree with SideStep entirely, I mean I appreciate the fact they don’t just downright tell you exactly where and how to do everything but we need SOMETHING to go on. They can inform us about what to do without revealing any spoilers about the event.

If I hadn’t come here I would have no idea there were refugees in Wayfarer Foothills, and though they said there’s new stuff in both locations, I’ve yet to see anything at all in Diessa Plateau, so what’s going on…?

By now people can buy them, since by now you can have 3 laurels… so did anyone buy them? Does anyone now know what they do in detail? I’m very curious.

Hileron.2931:

I got an achievment on my ranger i was leveling in the Norn starter area by clicking the refugee broken sign…no achievments for giving badges of dead refugees though…

Everything you do adds 1 to the overall achievement, you just happened to finish a tier by doing the sign. After you do 15 things you get an achievement, then 40, then 75. With 75 you get a title.

I also got no ingame mail, nothing at all. I’m actually a bit upset at the chaotic disorganized attitude towards this event. We have no idea when, where, why, what. I mean we were supposed to get mail hours ago but nothing, there might be something going on with the refugees but no notification or information ANYWHERE of that for us. Nothing at all…

Edit: I even said to myself; “how unusual, there’s no overflow here…” well of course there’s no overflow, most players have no idea this is going on so a lot of people are actually not there helping the refugees.

Jareth.4813:

Erm Necros are incredibly survivable.

I have 3000 toughness on mine with 30k hp not even including DS. I think I’ll be fine surviving. :p

How DO you do that? I have 2700 toughness and 27kHP and I have 30 points in Death Magic, 30 points in blod magic. All my gear is exotic, some ascended and ALL my gear adds vitality and toughness.

I also disagree, if there’s one thing I don’t have an issue in is surviving. Usually I draw a lot of aggro while fighting mobs due to various AoE but even getting bombarded by various enemies I still manage to survive just fine.

Either using skills like fear, knockdown, chill, blind, immobilize etc to “cripple” the enemies from dealing too much damage to me, or by using minions to act as distractions for me when I need a breather.

Really though unlike some games this game’s survivability isn’t about how much damage you can take before going down, it’s about how well you’re able to avoid taking damage.

My mesmer is fragile as a baby kitty yet is one of the best tanks I have because of the variety of ways I am able to avoid taking damage, teleporting, breaking stun, using clones to distract enemies, etc.

Every class has their way of surviving, such as guadians being able to outheal the damage they take, necros using blind, chill, and fear along with DS, mesmers using clones and teleports as distraction. Thieves using stealth, etc. Every class has their way of surviving, but usually that doesn’t include “stand still and take hits”.

On a side note; I have a thief I use as a tank, seen so many people complain about thieves being squishy but that is so not true if you know how to survive with thieves. Usually running dungeons my thief is always the last one standing, always running around casting stealth on people to help get them up.

Tolmos.8395:

I don’t think they need to change the current system so much as they need to emphasize how important it is to go talk to the heart vendor when you finish. There are a lot of them that drop pretty useful stuff and a lot of folks look right over them.

The letters they send you in the mail start to get… repetitious after a while. Those would be a good place to start. Maybe list, in the mail, the items the heart vendor is now willing to sell to you when you finish.

Yes! absolutely brilliant, every now and again I try making myself read what they have to say in the letters but once again, it’s usually pointless stuff – repetitive as you said. It’d be great if they gave useful information such as what they’re selling, and things like places and people around there who would need your help (kind of like the scouts but in a more subtle way).

Minion of Vey.4398:

The fact that you know the heart npcs have stuff to say and choose not to listen to them shows that you have no interest in what they have to say.

So why do you want the game to make you listen?

The reason I don’t talk to the Heart NPCs is the same reason I don’t want tedious and repetitive quests. Usually the Heart NPCs just talk about what they need; “oh adventurer, my dolyaks have run wild and I need to get them back, please lure them back using this lazer gun gives you a lazer gun”, what they have to say is usually pointless.

I want something the makes you explore and interact with more meaningful things, as I already explained having an NPC in the Grove which asks something of you related to the tablet would be wonderful.

Something that gives you a reward while also making you explore, learn and enjoy the experience.

All in all I’m not complaining about the heart npcs, they do their job in populating the areas around the game with plenty of activity, but there are some places in the game (cities) which are just lacking.

Also other than the heart npcs or event npcs out in the world, what’s the point of other npcs? If they could come up with something that those other npcs could do or ask of you, SOMETHING that would help you interact with them would be nice.

I agree with FrizzFreston, it’s what I mean. I don’t want the tedious quest system, I want what quests represent, the idea and qualities behind it. Interaction to learn and explore in places and ways you wouldn’t normally.

Crappy minion AI isn’t a secret. Today I was in WvW with my flesh Golem, got attacked, started attacking, and he stood there right next to the person doing literally nothing. I used his ability to charge, he charged, knocked the person down then ran back to my side without attacking once.

I still stick to a minion build however because it’s how I like my necromancer, it’s why I made a necromancer and I’m sticking out till the end. It is however sad that in every game ever I’ve loved necromancers and now I kind of wish I had made my main a mesmer instead of a necro… sad sad day indeed.

Daecollo.9578:

Oscar.4628:

Could be useful but also op.

Well, atleast necromancers may have something “a little OP” about them. (but moving that trait to a major from a minor is kind of a balance thing.)

I play a Necromancer, I have 20 points in toughness, this is what they currently do for me.

5: sometimes makes a dumb pet that dies immediately after it spawns.
15:

Isn’t this some kind of problem?

I do agree, and I always think it’s kind of an obvious thing to do; to change those two minor traits. In every patch and update I just assume they’ll do it, but they never do.

Why not give something that adds to your toughness and something that adds to boons since this tree adds boon duration. Like 5 being something somewhat along the lines of 400 toughness while channelling (which actually, at Lv80 400 toughness does matter. For a non toughness build 400 toughness would be kitten, while for a toughness build it’s still a really good help), and the 15 being something like “gain 3 seconds of protection whenever you go into death shroud”, something like that.

As it is those two minors are ridiculous.

On a side note; if 400 toughness doesn’t matter why do people bother making exotic armor instead of sticking to rare? Because the armor different and stat differences from rare to exotic isn’t even 400 each.

A weapon (one handed) from rare to exotic gains about 200 damage increase and 31 stat points over all increase. 400 points is a big deal.

It’s the situation with you CAN do something, but you have no REASON to do it.

Like high level characters going to low level areas, if they didn’t make event rewards scale to your level and the loot drop also scale to your level, you COULD go back to play low level areas but you’d have just no REASON to do so.

You can do a lot, but unless you have a reason to you wouldn’t do it. Like monthly, if monthly didn’t have a nice reward I’d not bother doing it. If WvW kills wasn’t in monthly, I’d never bother going to WvW.

If there wasn’t kill variety in daily, I’d not bother exploring different locations.

It gives you something to do and a reason to do it. And in a lot of areas in the game which have been left isolated (especially cities), that’s what’s missing.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Almost all the NPCs will talk to you about something if you click on them. Many are quite funny, too. The thing I hate about traditional quests are the immersion-breaking icons floating over their heads and even worse, the boring slog from one side of a map to the other just to hand in my 10 sticks of firewood or whatever. Such a waste of time.

Well that boring move from one part of the map to another to hand stuff in isn’t actually out of the game at all. There’s many hearts and events in which you have to gather up items such as metal pipes and hand them in, or just bring items one by one by one. So though they managed to remove most of the tedious work that quests had, a lot of it and the core concept of the tedious quest system is still there.

Yes most NPCs do talk to you if you talk to them, but you have no motivation to do so. You have no reason to, no rewards for doing so, many areas are just pointless to explore because going to them just serves no purpose. A lot of lore from the game I had to just by mistake stumble upon because I have no indication, nothing to make me go seek out that lore.

Like the tablet in the Grove left behind with the Sylvari teachings, one day I just happened to stumble upon it by accident and was amazed by it, I found it to be so cool that it was right there. If there was a quest in the Grove that had you do something with the tablet like going and “taking notes” on it, or some sort of task that makes you learn more about the tablet, it’d be fantastic.

Things like that which teach you and make you interact with the world and people around you, without being repetitive; like an NPC asking you to gather 10 wood logs, then 10 wolf hide, then 10 copper ore. Those kinds of quests (which kind of are still in the game) I agree have no purpose, but more meaningful quests should be in there.

I’ve finished map completion but I also agree that WvW has no business in map completion. Especially with paid transfers coming in.

Out of all the people who also did map completion that I know at least 90% of them did by switching to a better server because their server simply wasn’t doing too good in WvW and thus it was simply impossible to complete the WvW maps.

This system does indeed penalize people for being on weaker WvW servers, while it rewards those who are already in strong WvW servers or transferred to be in them.

I myself simply would not have been able to finish map completion at all unless I switched servers, now that server transfer will be paid I can’t help but feel really really bad for the people who could not take advantage of free transfers.

A LOT of people in a lot of servers will simply have to give up on the idea of map completion all together or pay money to get it.

I understand the idea that Anet wanted to remove the traditional quest system from the game as it could be very tedious and repetitive. However there’s something really nice and good about quests; they let you interact with NPCs, understand the lore, the story and the situation and condition of the area you’re in and the NPCs from that area. Without quests these NPCs and areas are left isolated.

We now have the Hearts which in the end are a type of collective quests without the middle man, I mean you don’t have to talk to them to know what’s going on – you just have the stuff you have to do, usually kill things and done.
You can complete all hearts without ever talking to a single NPC or figuring out what’s going on, which is what I did after my first two hearts.

After I found out you didn’t need to talk to the heart NPCs I just ignored them completely unless I wanted to buy something.

Quests are a nice way to talk to NPCs, to interact with an area and care about exploring an area.
For example Lion’s Arch is a huge city with a huge amount of NPCs but they’ve ALL gone to waste, if they’re not craft masters or trying to sell you something, why would you talk to any of them? They’re nothing more than scenery.

I’ve done world completion and saw all these awesome places which were just isolated and ignored because there’s no point or reason for any player to explore those areas further. If you had quests which took you to those areas and made you talk to NPCs which asked for something and explained about the area, you’d learn a lot more about the areas, the NPCs and so much more.

You’d have an actual reason to interact with all the fantastic locations in the game.

They didn’t need quests to be repetitive, only add quests where quests matter. Only have quests that tell you something about a person or area. That way you have a reason to actually talk to NPCs, because as it is, you currently have none.

So no one knows? Shame.

War Mourner.5168:

if you really want more minions, why don’t you use any other rune set that gives you a ally? The jagged horror is the only rune based pet that bleeds to death.

Unfortunately I can’t test it right now, but if you really want to know, just try it in the heart of the mists, you can get the rune set there for free, and kill the test mobs there to find out: i.e. get hit until the runes give you the jaggy, then finish off the mob and see if you get another. That’s the only way it might interfer, it shouldn’t just increase the CD of a trait somehow.

Doesn’t work, target golems don’t attack you so I can’t test being hit. Only the actual fighters hit you, either way that doesn’t work because once you finish them off for whatever reason a Jagged Horror actually doesn’t spawn with the Reanimator trait.

Also I want runes which give me toughness or vitality or both, the condition duration is nice enough and the reason I pick this over other runes with pets (well I haven’t yet picked it, I’m still looking into it) is that unless the rune gives me a necrotic-like pet, I don’t want it thank you very much.

Edit: I obviously want things that are useful to me but more than anything it needs to look cool and match my character, I’m a Necromancer, I want dead things. Which is why I just down right ignore the Shadow Fiend, that thing’s not dead, it’s just a dark shadow monster… not dead rotting flesh – I do not like it.

I’ve been searching and searching non stop yet I can’t find the information anywhere.

A while back I think I might have read somewhere that the 6th rune bonus which has a 5% chance on hit to summon a jagged horror with a 60sec cooldown would actually interfere with the Reanimator trait by triggering when a Jagged Horror would be summoned by killing something, and that the cooldown for that would end up being 60 seconds instead of 30.

Now I’m not sure if my memory serves me right and not sure if they fixed this if it was indeed an issue, anyway the point is;

I’m trying to make a perfect minioon build and I’ve been wondering about some runes, I wanna know; does the Rune of the Lich’s 6th ability and the Reanimator trait interfere with each other? Will I be able to kill something, get a Jagged Horror, get hit and ALSO get a Jagged Horror? I mean… can I have two Jagged Horrors out at once using both different ability things?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I fear those bosses you just listed with regularity (save power suit, since I’m usually running up top and avoiding combat). Only thing I can suggest is that someone else is CCing the boss at about the same time you are, so your fear gets eaten by the new stack of defiant.

It might also be possible that you had another mob targetted (we all know how easily the client changes targets on you) and feared that one instead.

I also used to fear these bosses with regularity, no longer do I. When you use fear they get the little icon under their name as well as the fear animation over their heads, however I’ve noticed they are not ACTUALLY being feared, maybe you see the fear icon and animation and think they’re feared fine? But maybe you haven’t realized they don’t actually stop attacking? Maybe, I don’t know.

I gave thought to the possibility of someone else CC them and my fear getting barred by defiance once more but then that would mean that the other person’s CC skill ALSO didn’t work, as the boss never got interrupted at all. Not to mention that it can’t be so since I actually paid close attention to the stacks of defiance and when I feared them (plus I used the insta cast DS fear) so if someone else CC’d the boss I would have seen it.

Also no I didn’t target another enemy as I was closely paying attention to the actual enemy I had target the entire time since I was closely watching when and how my fear would hit.

This is something that happens a lot, in the AC boss in path 2 (I think the AC boss in general), he also avoids CC completely. Even when I use my Flesh Golem to run at him and knock him down when he’s channelling the scream thing. I mean when my Flesh Golem knocks him down, the word “interrupt” shows over his head as if it worked, but his attack never actually gets interrupted.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bosses ignore Blind because Unshakeable makes Blind only effective 10% of the time. This is on the buff’s tooltip.

Some bosses are simply immune to fear. Any massive ones (like Lupicus) and Unstoppable, plus any with stability.

As for the bosses in fractals, I have never had any issue with fear not working, even after the change with defiant. Which boss was it? Some of them give themselves short-duration stability while the grawl shaman has unstrippable stability.

I know blind doesn’t work on bosses but what I meant was regular enemies that use AoE attacks ignore blind, when the same doesn’t happen if I’m blind and I use an AoE.

I also know some bosses are immune to fear, but bosses that aren’t now are – all of the bosses I’ve done so far. This includes both the dredge power suit and the ice elemental boss in the dredge fractals, the hammer dude boss in the giant’s fractal etc. All bosses that I used to be able to fear, I no longer can even when they have no stacks of defiant.

I’m also aware the grawl shaman can’t be feared, I mean I realized some bosses were immune to fear and some weren’t – however no boss I try fearing is feared anymore.

edit: On that note I have a very personal opinion on powerful enemies being immune to most if not all CC effects simply because they’re powerful. I mean if it makes sense with what the enemy is sure, like dredge being immune to blind because they already are, or fire elementals being immune to burn etc, that’s all fantastic and makes perfect sense. But bosses being immune to most if not all CC effects just because they’re bosses is bull.

I mean I have my CC skills there because I may need to use them to save someone’s hide, using CC skills when needed to prevent death, in a strategic and intelligent way. So when a boss is just immune to everything why the heck do I even have CC skills in the first place? I mean I sure don’t need CC skills with trash mobs that are near to no threat to me in the first place. I need CC skills to enemies that ARE a threat to me, such as bosses, which is upsetting when bosses are just immune to it all.

Defiant makes sense to regular epic bosses in which there will be some 30 players fighting it, if the bosses had no defiance then they’d get stun locked with the 30+ players. However in dungeons where there can be no more than 5 players at once, the defiance really should get eased up – CC skills are nearly 100% useless on bosses, fear being the only exception. Now not only does it not bypass defiant but it’s not been working at all for me.

gamefreak.5673:

Defiant now blocks fear, ill see if i can find the post about it for you.

Yes I’ve realized, however even when the boss no longer has any stacks of defiant fear is not working. I’ve tested this out multiple times – as I’ve said on my previous post.

I’ve noticed this happening quite often lately, I had gone away before the holidays and came back early January – and noticed something.

Though I’ve kept up with the patch and update notes, I’ve seen nothing on this (maybe I missed it?).

So I’m not sure if it used to work as intended but fear used to be able to bypass defiant, I had no issue fearing and interrupting bosses at will with fear since it would bypass defiant. I used to use this often in dungeons and fractals to cancel a special ability, like the dredge fractal where the boss would sit down to heal – cancel his heal by fearing him. Or I’d simply fear him into the pouring lava if he wasn’t in the right spot.

However I’ve started to notice fear no longer bypasses defiant, although the boss gets the fear icon under his name as well as the fear animation over his head.

Alright, so I guess they just changed that and I didn’t see them saying they changed it anywhere, alright so fear no longer bypasses defiant, sure… except no.

I realized on multiple occasions where the boss had no stacks of defiant left, I used fear, he got the icon and the animation however he simply never stopped attacking, didn’t get interrupted and didn’t move from the spot he was on. It confused me and I thought maybe I was seeing things so I started to pay very close attention and time it just right – and to me it seems like bosses are just completely ignoring fear all together.

I tested it out on a boss I was doing in fractals the other day, I slowly watched his stacks of defiant tick down until he had none, I then used my fear and nothing happened. He was beating down a party member, I feared him and he simply continued to beat down said party member.

So SOMETHING is up, I’m not sure if it’s just with me or what but fear used to be able to bypass defiant, now it just doesn’t work at all – period.

This personally is quite upsetting to me because my build focuses a lot on crippling (so to speak) my enemies, it’s how I help my team stay alive. By blinding, immobilizing, crippling, chilling, weakening, and fearing enemies a lot.

So many bosses simply ignore blind entirely for whatever reason, and most if not all AoE attacks done by enemies also entirely ignore blind when my own AoE abilities do not. Crowd control in general is lessened on bosses with things such as chill, immobilize and cripple lasting only a fraction of what they’re meant to last – and now to top it all off fear doesn’t work, period.

What’s left of my build? How useless have I become?

Honestly personally the only reason I don’t use Lich Form (I know we’re talking about Plague form) is because I find it just hideous. I’m a master of death and decay… why the heck do I transform into a giant floating radioactive neon green shining muscle buff dude… what…? Not only does it make you the center of attention in PvP, but it looks kitten ugly.

So I’ve ended up either using Plague form which I personally actually adore, or Flesh Golem. Plague is awesome when I’m running a tanky build (which I usually do), it makes me nearly invisible with the ton of HP and armor, plus cripple, blind and thanks to traits – chill. Although it does indeed deeply sadden me that many attacks and enemies just do ignore the fact they’re blind.

So answer me this, how come when I am blind and I use an AoE skill, it just misses EVERYTHING… however when my enemy is blind and THEY use an AoE skill they just bypass blind completely? What?

Can’t please everyone. It’s a curse.

Well Anet themselves already said that they don’t plan on getting a bunch of changes, updates, and fixes and sending them all out at once. Doing that would have a high chance to cause an unbalance so they said they prefer to send out little by little and see how that affects the game.

To that effect, it’s depressing so far since the game’s release (and necro minion’s have had their problems since before the game’s release) that of all the necro minion fixes, all they did was reduce health degen by a bit on the jagged horrors.

So don’t expect there to be a miracle patch that has dozens of minion fixes, only little by little as time goes by. That being said I honestly imagined there would be more so far, or at least… some. At the very least I honestly imagined that with the Halloween update they would at LEAST fix the AI, they didn’t, with the Wintersday update I thought; “well this is it!” – but nothing.

It’s just frustrating seeing that patch after patch there’s just nothing.

So playing through other games for a while I’ve been looking at the necro minions (I tend to play necro in other games a lot, or necro-like classes).

Mainly though I’ve decided to revisit Diablo 2, Diablo 3, and Guild Wars ( 1 ).

Classes which are minion based/focused etc. are supposed to have minions which either deal high damage but have a hard time surviving, or deal miserable damage yet act as meat shields.

In Guild Wars the necro minions would degenerate health and would require a lot of attention to keep alive, if you lost attention for a moment they’d be gone – however you had a high number of them out and to top it off they dealt really nice damage. They acted as separators from you and the enemies but mostly they were there to deal damage for you.

In Diablo 3, they were having the same issues Guild Wars 2 is having with the minions (Witch Doctor minions in this case). The Witch Doctor minions were supposed to act as meat shields, they did miserable damage, however the minions were simply dying way too fast. They dealt no damage and they provided nearly no protection at all – they were useless in other words (much like the necro minions in GW2, at least the Witch Doctor minion AI works decently enough).
So naturally with time players quickly stopped using Witch Doctor minions all together, they were put away to never be taken out again, much like necro minions in GW2. However luckily the cries of the players was listened to and they gave thought to the minions, they were supposed to act as meat shields but died in a second or two, that simply would not do.

Quite quickly (two maybe three months from the game’s release, somewhere along those lines I forgot exactly) Blizzard fixed the Witch Doctor minion problem, they made them scale with vitality, added more defence, and gave a damage cap to minions – the minions could not take more than a set percentage of their max HP in one single blow, preventing insta kills and preventing them taking too much damage too quickly. Today I’m able to happily strut around with my horde of undead as they serve their meat shield purpose.

So in a general sense, minions are meant to be either short lived damage dealers, or powerless meat shields – one or the other, not neither. Currently GW2 necro minions do not serve to deal damage, nor are they useful in taking damage.

Quite naturally most players ended up not using them, simply storing them away, after all why would you give up other skills for broken minions? I do admit from time to time I respec my necro and use minions for a while (because deep deep down… I really want to), however usually it doesn’t last more than 20 minutes for me to remember how horrible the minions actually are, and I put them away once more.

So this has been puzzling me, I understand that changing the minion mechanics and how they work in general is complicated and time consuming. However there are some obvious fixes and solutions which for whatever reason have been ignored. I mean players have cried about the jagged horrors, they by far are the most 100% useless creatures in the game, not only are they useless in combat, but tend to do more harm then good to you in certain situations.
Anet did something about it, by reducing the health degen rate, but that just made something 100% useless into something 99% useless. Why not remove or reduce the cooldown at which jagged horrors get summoned? It’s not as if a necro could overwhelm anyone even if he had 5 jagged horrors out at once, those things can’t take a hit and deal miserable damage.

I mean really, why did they make such a huge cooldown on jagged horrors? It’s not as if having multiple jagged horrors will make you over powered in PvE, and especially not in PvP where killing even one player is already a feat, so it’s not like being rewarded with a jagged horror for each kill will unbalance PvP either. And WvW least of all, even if you had 10 jagged horrors out at once, in the chaos that is WvW they would die the moment they show up anyway.

So why I ask you, why do what you did with the minions? I don’t doubt that Anet realizes the issues with the minion, including damage, usefulness, survivability AI, etc. But there are some simple and obvious solutions that to me are a mystery as to why they’ve not yet been taken.

I understand that to redo a feature you’d have to test it out well enough to see if it works properly or not with itself and the rest of the game. But the minions are already in the game, changing or fixing a couple things here and there really shouldn’t take so long.
I mean really, if Blizzard managed to fix their Witch Doctor minion issues, it’s puzzling to me as to why Anet has yet to really even touch the Necro minions.

Same for me, after the lost shores patch I’ve been crashing a lot and experiencing horrible lag – both of which I never had before.

Not to mention I have audio glitches as well.

All the conspiracy theories aside from loot being worse than before, there is one thing that simply is a fact – champions are simply not giving loot every time I kill one, that’s for sure.

Last night I killed 3 champions in Orr and only one of them gave me loot, it was a shameful blue item but either way – they were all supposed to give me loot but didn’t. Same issue happened with the people running those champions with me.

I am all up for the new content and new gear – very excited for both, I am however even more excited for all the possible bug fixes and class balancing more than anything else! <3

Currently we only have exotic gear and we’re able to play through the current content just fine, completing dungeons with exotic gear just fine – many people do dungeons (including arah) without exotic and instead rare and have no problem.

I understand the problems with power creep but it doesn’t really seem like this is the case, we’ll still have the same areas to travel but with new gear, you don’t have to get it if you don’t want it – it’s not like this game is completely dependant on what gear you’re wearing, such as Diablo for example where gear means life or death.

Also the Agony condition is a specific thing about the dungeon itself it seems, it’s just an interesting fun gimmick that I’m excited for. The new gear together with the new agony mechanism will allow a more diverse experience.

I think the female lv80 orr karma light armor is quite pretty, but the male one is rather ugly. That’s the thing though female asura use male armors, so naturally you’re wearing the ugly male version (on a side note, most light armors look extremely simple and boring on males, or they are all very symmetrical, there’s maybe 2-3 which aren’t at least 90% symmetrical).

I agree though, as far as necro-like armors available to us we have only 2, both of them karma armors, dry bones and that other one… I forgot the name. Even cultural armors we lack completely, as far as I recall no cultural light armors looks anything at all like a necromancer (never checked on charrs).

Humans for example; tier 1 is just a very simple and boring armor (which actually looks pretty on females, but bland on males), tier 2 is EXACTLY and perfectly a mesmer armor from top to bottom, tier 3 is exactly and perfectly an elementalist armor – we have nothing.

Zepour.4965:

This is a well known and documented issue. You can find plenty of reports on this very forum. I’ll share my experience with it. It happens when I engage in melee combat and have weapon skill #1 set to auto fire. It always happens in the middle of a weapon skill chain (for example Double Strike->Wild Strike->Lotus Strike). It can happen using different melee weapons with different professions, I have it on my thief, guardian and warrior using dagger/pistol, dual daggers, greatsword, dual axes, axe/shield, axe/warhorn etc. I have never experienced it with my dual dagger elementalist or with my other characters using ranged weapons. (Altough thief’s Disabling Shot occasionally fails too, but that might be a completely different issue.) It’s also something which has never happened against player characters for me, only against non player mobs. It’s not dependant on damage type. Sometimes, this “failed dodge” actually prevents incoming damage, but the character still rubberbands back to original position. In any case, it always drains endurance as the dodge has actually happened. For me, it’s a game breaking issue.

It happens only to certain players, many seem to be unaffected by it. I’ve been experiencing it since the headstart. Funny, I can’t remember seeing this issue during BWEs.

Everything else (skills, mobs etc) work normally, no lag there. I dodge ranged or AE attack perfectly fine. (My lag in Rift is typically 35 ms and gw2.exe -diag trace shows 26 ms, I live in Europe.)

Don’t mean to spam but wanted to address this.

I play a ranged necro and a ranged mesmer, I’ve had issues with dodging with both classes even though I’m using ranged attacks.

I have no issue with latency in any other aspect of the game what so ever so it honestly makes no sense that dodging of all things would be the ONLY thing affected by latency.

I doubt it’s a lag problem.

Many people have commented on this issue before, it seems that if you try to dodge the exact moment you autoattack your dodge fails, happens to me all the time.

Early on in the game I realized the two norns standing outside the Hoelbrak Asura Gate in Lion’s Arch had some horrible pixel issues, I assumed it was such a big deal it’d be solved soon, but they’re still there looking as bad as always.

And on another note while I’m here, the Exalted light armor shoes have some pretty bad clipping issues.

Gauradan.8361:

Budchgon.2108:

‘’The guy was playing a kitten warrior, a profession with big damage output and little thinking requirement. He was failing, yet, despite his inability to render himself useful to the group…’’

I think this is what a lot of players are trying to get away from… You don’t do max damage so you suck and should not be in a group/cannot play properly/should quit game etc …

I was hoping GW2 would be free of this :-(

Nobody said that you need to do max damage. However, when you’re the one failing and you’re kicking someone for pointing out the fact that you might be doing something wrong in a manner which was not even close to being rude, you’re an kitten Period.

The issue with that is OP did not in fact tell him he might be doing something wrong – and even if he did no one likes to be told they’re wrong, which is why the OP went on such a defensive and insulting stance when everyone told him he was wrong. It’s only natural to not want to be told you’re wrong.

Either way OP didn’t tell him he was doing something wrong, he said “are you lacking gear or something?”, is more like saying he IS wrong. It’s offensive, it’s passive aggressive (which I find to be the worst because unlike a direct insult you can’t really argue against a passive aggressive insult as the person is trying to maintain a ‘holier than thou’ stance, which is why so many people would say he’s being elitist), it’s really unpleasant.

Either way if that truly is ALL he did – it was undeserving of a kick before the final boss like that. The group had the right to kick him because he was in fact, whether you accept it or not, offensive – yet they were still being jerks by doing so.

Ruberia.7946:

lordkrall.7241:

Ruberia.7946:

To all of those saying that I might have worded it differently, if I had, I wouldn’t be here asking to report them because I would have deserved it and nothing would come out of it.

I worded it pretty much the same way I wrote in my original post, and after they kicked me 3 of them spammed “hahahahahhaa” in chat, so no, I don’t think I did anything wrong (how do I know this? the 4th guy told me).

You can’t report them for kicking you after insulting one of them.
Simple as that.

If you worded it “pretty much the same way” then it was a clear insult, and they have all right to kick you.

I’m sorry, but I don’t consider this as an insult. I consider it pathetic that some of you do, the ONLY reason I was asking him was because I was busy fighting the ghost boss (whatever his face) and wanted to know if he would like to replace roles, where he’ll tank him and I’ll kill the acolyte to improve our DPS.

I find it absurd, pathetically so, that some of you find it an insult to ask someone if their gear is not the best in the world. I can’t believe that this is what this community has come to, it wasn’t even criticism, it was a freaking question to help us finish the dungeon faster and you people call it an insult? jesus christ..

So every other post you do is insulting in one way or another, now calling everyone pathetic because they have a different view point from yours. From the sour and bitter personality you’re displaying here I really don’t doubt there’s more to the story then the simple passive aggressive comment you made to the warrior. If you thought something was wrong then you most certainly should not have made such a snide remark about the warrior, just because you didn’t realize it might have been offensive – doesn’t mean it wasn’t offensive.

I made sure to be as perfect with my character as possible, full exotics and spending hours on my build to find perfect synergy, yet I don’t made rude comments about other people if they’re not as obsessive about being perfect as I am. I was doing Lupicus the other day with a guardian that kept dying, it was his first time and he was almost always the first one to die – a guardian, and we had an elementalist in the group.

Instead of raging and telling him his gear or build was bad, I took a few minutes and talked to him about his build and gave him some pointers on which abilities would be good to use against Lupicus, using the trait which reduces aegis passive to 30 seconds, using the elite which makes invulnerable for 3 seconds and recharges virtues and so on and so forth, trying to help him understand what to do in that specific fight.

If you found a problem instead of being rude and passive aggressive, be polite and try understand and communicating your concerns, so far what you’ve done in this thread is being rude time after time again.

If someone simply told someone from my party what you said, I’d find it rude but most certainly wouldn’t kick them. I really do assume there were other things to factor in, we didn’t really get to hear both sides of the story.

Either way however, unless you were being a complete and total unbearable jerk they really shouldn’t have kicked you in the very last fight of the dungeon.

I’m sorry Ruberia but once again you sounded a tad rude, who knows if the comment was elitist or not but at the very least it did sound rude, and your reply to people calling you elitist was also a rude one.

Calling everyone kids simply because they don’t exactly agree with you and telling people to grow up and saying this community is worst then X community.

Instead of being defensive and trying to offend people you should have simply given more detail to your side of the story to understand if you were elitist or not.

I am doing condition which is why getting greater marks is so useful for me, giving mass conditions to a large amount of enemies is wonderful. I don’t care much for the boons in this case (though I do care for the horrid minor traits we currently have).

The issue is I also sometimes play a power build with dagger/dagger and staff, even then I barely have boons available to me. Unless I actually use the very weak and under powered axe (which is only really useful if you’re running a full minion build) and/or warhorn, I get no boons to myself at all.

We don’t have horrible options of boons available for us, although I do believe we’re so bad with boons we only lose to the thief (who still has boon giving minor traits in the boon tree, something we do not), but the thing is I can’t actually make full use of the +boon duration unless I specifically use an axe as my main and use the nearly useless spectral. Nothing else gives decent boons.

striker.3704:

Delryn.7235:

You know what? In the tree that gives you BOON DURATION, why not actually give you some sort of bonus directed towards giving you BOONS? The necro has a shameful arsenal of boons available for him, why not something like – whenever you kill a foe get retaliation/regen/something for 5 seconds (10 second cooldown). Something like that?

Just something because another thing that saddens me about Death Magic is that it adds to boon duration… WHAT BOONS?!

regen (mark of blood, retaliation from axe 3, movement speed from warhorn, protection from wells) mostly the only boons you get as a necromancer are from wells and the staff, which would be the only reason to spec into the tree anyway.

If you spec into a tree not for the traits but for the stats it provides, you are doing something terribly wrong.

The staff is ranged, the marks are tiny, the odds you’re gonna give yourself regen (also there is only ONE mark that gives A boon) is highly unlikely. Even if you got greater marks you still only have one mark that gives you a boon, and only if you’re close enough. Also scepters don’t give boons, both main and offhand daggers don’t give boons. Axe gives one boon, focus gives a boon which most likely won’t land on you anyway.

No healing skill gives a boon, wells do not give a boon unless you spend a major trait to specifically give you a boon using wells. The only other boons you have are spectral.

So far the only boons you actually have available to you is one attack with 3 different weapons and spectral skills, end – end.

It’s a shame, I wanna go into that tree for toughness and staff traits, I’d love to have a few boons here and there but I don’t play with spectral skills and I use a scepter and dagger. All I’d have as far as boons is one regen that most likely wouldn’t hit me with my staff, that’s it. I do use wells, so I’d have to spend a major trait JUST so I’d be able to give myself a boon – A boon.

So it’s ridiculous that with everything I have I’d only be able to unlikely give myself ONE boon, TWO if I spend a major trait.

Most other classes can give themselves a few boons without even thinking about it, ESPECIALLY if they trait into the “boon tree”.

I’m simply not okay with using spectral skills because they’re extremely situational and thus most often nearly useless.

You know what? In the tree that gives you BOON DURATION, why not actually give you some sort of bonus directed towards giving you BOONS? The necro has a shameful arsenal of boons available for him, why not something like – whenever you kill a foe get retaliation/regen/something for 5 seconds (10 second cooldown). Something like that?

Just something because another thing that saddens me about Death Magic is that it adds to boon duration… WHAT BOONS?!