Guild Wars 2

Ideally you don’t want a single strategy to work 100% of the time with no thought or else the game gets boring. That’s why veterans and champions exist, and why mobs have a variety of skills. Some of which are annoying. For instance, I get more annoyance out of Harathi mobs that spam knockdown on my warrior than with AoEs on my necro.

If ALL mobs did what you’re saying, it might be cause for concern. But I see nothing wrong with SOME mobs being more difficult and requiring a different strategy to take on. For instance, bowling them over with the Golem or spiking them with Minion explosions. Or standing away from your pets and helping them spread out (this is a thing, even if you don’t realize it).

I played MM from 1-80, and still play it. Yes some mobs can potentially kill all your pets with strong AoEs if you let them. However, I don’t even play with the +50% HP trait and I never had significant issues.

Skritt or Tengu. But I already have one of every race.

I played MM necro to 80 as my first 80. I learned a lot of stuff here, but I also feel you missed a lot. I’ve been thinking of doing a guide myself, to this helped me learn some new information. But my feedback would be:

Spite is a good tree, since it lets you do more damage personally, and with 20 points you can get a trait so minions do 30% more damage. That ups their input a lot. I use a staff/minion build and with Greater Marks I do a lot of damage in a large area on top of what my minions are up to. You also get more condition duration, which if you’re using staff or Death Nova, contributes a lot. So, my build is basically the second one you showed. 20 spite, 30 death, 20 blood.

Bloodthirst DOES NOT work with Vampiric Master. It’s an unfortunate truth, but the wiki says so and I did some testing myself to confirm. I would take something else unless you have some other means of siphoning you’re relying on. It’s possible this will change in a future patch, though. Personally, I use Mark of Evasion since it gives the pets and myself more regen, and spams bleed on enemies.

Flesh Worm isn’t a bad pet, but I tend to use Minions instead. They do a lot of burst from their explosions, and they recharge quickly. They also combine with Death Nova to not only do a poison patch, but combo with themselves and do AoE weakness as well. They’re an on-demand poison field, and you can fill a large area with poison and weakness using them. Also one reason why Spite is a good tree, since it makes both these last longer.

Honestly, I find both Flesh of the Master and Minion Master to be unnecessary. The skills recharge fairly quickly anyway (except Flesh Golem, which is really no better with the trait). The HP isn’t that big a deal if you’re using staff and spamming regen on them, and I try to make things target me anyway. You even said yourself that in PvP nobody’s going to bother with the minions. And honestly, if you’re using Death Nova, it’s perfectly fine if they die from time to time. They would be fine traits if you aren’t using staff, but with staff there are much more important skills to take like Staff Mastery and Greater Marks.

Both of the 30 skills you took, Necromantic Corruption and Fetid Consumption, are probably great for PvP, but I found no real use for them in PvE. I would recommend at least suggesting alternatives to those.

I had been using staff primary with axe/dagger offhand. Mostly so that I could switch over to something that lets me drop a lot of conditions when I’m in trouble. But I may take your advice and try double dagger just so I can siphon and immobilize. Axe seemed nice for retaliation, but that’s really all I was using it for.

It’s also funny you say to be careful in dungeons and go last. I’ve done all the dungeons on my MM and I actually alpha with the flesh golem and go in first. I’m durable enough I don’t have any issues with anything.

My build is right now mostly power/toughness/vitality gear, but some of it’s power/toughness/healing. Once I fiddle into ascended stuff I may drop a little condition damage since it’s not that hard for me to do 5-8 stacks of bleed and constant poison.

I’m gonna go buy another dagger and play around now.

If you have to ask for an ETA, you should know the answer is “Soon.”

Note that “Soon” can mean anytime between tomorrow and the end of the game.

I must’ve missed the dev post saying this patch would fix all of the thief issues, so I guess I’m not upset that it didn’t.

I have more sylvari than other races. I love the sterotypical British accent. And I love their culture and personality. They’re also far more customizable than any of the other races. I wish my humans could have anime blue hair.

It’s still incredibly stupid that the only elite you can use underwater kills your minions. So if you do actually play with minions, you either can’t use them underwater, or can’t use an elite.

Also annoying as hell that every time I step into ankle-high water my flesh golem goes on a 60s recharge.

NeryK.5301:

1. Nope.
Example : if you have a sigil of air (chance of lightning on crit) on your offhand, you will not get a lightning when critting with your mainhand.

Is that really how it works? The wiki says the exact opposite.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

“Sigils that trigger on critical hits can trigger on any critical hits; the critical does not need to be scored with the associated weapon’s skills. For example, a character with an off hand weapon imbued with a Sigil of Rage can still gain quickness with a critical hit with their first three skills.”

Deified.7520:

1. Don’t use your gold to buy gear upgrades. Save it for when you’re 80. Buy gear upgrades with karma from zone karma vendors.

Weird, I would recommend the opposite. Buying an entire set of new gear every 10 levels (at levels that end in 5, starting at 15 and ending at 65) costs almost nothing. As long as you aren’t dumb and try to buy rare or exotic items, and just stick with green accessories, they can all cost under a silver each. It’s unlikely you’ll spend even a gold going all the way from 15-80 just buying stuff off the market. Hell, sometimes I buy extra higher level armor just for the looks because it’s virtually free.

Karma on the other hand I would prefer to save for high-level karma gear.

Tulisin.6945:

ImagoX.4718:

It’s useful, definitely, but not terribly SEXY.

This sums it up pretty well. Steal is far from a bad profession mechanic, and it actually compares pretty favorably with other profession mechanics, especially if you stop comparing them in a vacuum and see how each synergizes with the profession. You can no more compare Steal to necromancer’s “z0mg extra life bar”, than you can straight-up compare two profession’s auto attacks and ignore everything else.

Could we at least compare the rate at which it’s used? Of all the classes, thief’s is used less than anyone else’s, by a fair margin. Several classes have always-on mechanics, or ones you can spam every couple seconds. At worst they have skills that recharge in 10 seconds. Steal is 45, and usually doesn’t give anything that exciting.

KirinDave.6451:

Dispari.3980:

KirinDave.6451:

Can’t you just rotate the skill slot and recast?

Not that this is anything but clunky, especially in PvP.

If you wait on the recharge every time, yes.

It triggers the cooldown if the minion was still out? I was pretty sure last night I was running around leveling my necro doing this and it wasn’t. Is my entire life a lie?

I tested it before posting. It sets the power on cooldown if the minion is out when you do it.

For PvE only, my feedback would be that my thief is the least durable of all the characters I have. I have one of every class. I don’t have much ability to deal with groups or hard-hitting single targets. Which basically just means dealing with small groups of regular enemies.

Since thief has so few support abilities, my options for not dying pretty much just involve stealthing and running away, or spamming dodge skills. I don’t feel that the damage they do offsets their squishyness. Pretty much the safest and most viable build I found was to just go D/D and spam Death Blossom and do nothing else. It’s boring, and even then not as safe as basically any of my other characters.

No opinion on PvP..

KirinDave.6451:

Can’t you just rotate the skill slot and recast?

Not that this is anything but clunky, especially in PvP.

If you wait on the recharge every time, yes.

Elmentcius Koronel.6234:

@ Dispari: what staff is that? Looks awesome!

As MissKitten said, Modniir Quarterstaff. You can get it in Harathi Hinterlands at Scout Greta’s heart, top right (NE) corner. She sells every weapon with a Modniir skin. Most of them are awesome.

Megothier.3847:

I’m new to Guild Wars, but I can’t help but think anyone that wants minions to regen doesn’t understand the minion’s purpose. I mean they are summoned undead, there is no “quality of life” for undead creatures. They aren’t pets, they aren’t meant to last and survive battles, their job (save for the Flesh Golem) is to distract your enemy long enough for you or your Flesh Golem to finish them off. They’re cannon fodder, and aren’t meant to pose any real threat. You’ll notice that the weaker minions have a CD timer of 30-40 seconds whereas the only minion that regens health is on a 60 second timer, that seems to point to my minion philosophy being the intended philosophy. At least this is how I view/treat my minions, and I think they’re working as inteded.

Cue the veterans ganging up on the new guy for having an opinion.

I’m perfectly okay with my pets dying from damage, because that means they distracted an enemy. But it’s stupid to run into a group and a pet IMMEDIATELY dies. That’s not really the same thing as being cannon fodder. If anything, your argument is FOR them having out-of-combat regen. You can’t be cannon fodder if you can’t take any hits.

quickthorn.4918:

1. Some will prefer to play a humanoid that is either an avatar representing them, or someone they would find attractive. I suspect this is the biggest reason for not playing them.

Pretty much this. ANet released a chart showing the most popular races and professions. The most popular race is human, and then norn, and then sylvari. Few people play asura or charr by comparison. It’s simple: people want to be pretty. And they want to look relatively normal.

This isn’t everyone of course. People will still play charr. Just not as many as are playing human. I myself have 2 humans, 3 sylvari, 1 norn, 1 asura, 1 charr.

The female charr voice during cutscenes sounds fine to me. My issue with the female charr voice is mostly just the falling and pain noises. Before I rolled one I remembered hearing those pain sounds when fighting charr, and to me they sound like a younger male charr. Then I started playing a female charr and realized those are my pain sounds. It’s still hard for me to associate the noises with a female charr.

My necromancer, Sudona Forte, who originated in the first GW.

It’s all exotic, since I don’t care much for some of the high-end dungeon stuff.

Drakent.9605:

adding regen to pet wont help.

I have enouf boon buff to get 8 sec from 1 mark of blood and i can use mark of blood every 4 sec plus i have added the mark of blood cast when you dodge , i pretty much can keep regen on them all the time but it still wont keep them alive .. pets survibility is pure garbage even with the 50% health buff they die in like 4-6 hits and if there aoe damage they are dead in a blink of a eye

I am minion lover and is the reason i started playing necro and the reason i stop , pets system on this game is broken and useless atm

You can’t use Mark of Blood outside of combat. I have the same thing, with quite a few points in healing, and I still run to the next battle with pets on half or less HP very often.

I agree it’s dumb to run into a fight with pets on low HP so that they die instantly, making it so they go on recharge. At least some of the pets you can destroy and resummon, but you still have to wait on recharges. It’s just obnoxious.

The concept of a mushroom-cap sylvari necromancer always stood out to me. I probably would’ve made one if I didn’t already have a human necromancer.

So my normal dungeon group that’s done all the dungeons so far did this path and… we weren’t able to do anything to this guy. We checked some threads and saw some replies from other people saying it’s stupidly difficult, but most of the threads are over a month old.

The issue is the purple boss repeatedly resummons elite mobs, and about six of them. So we have to deal with fighting a purple plus six elites at the same time. We tried killing them, but he just dismisses them all and resummons them all with full HP, on a very short timer (at times he resummoned within about 20 seconds). But that many targets has too much firepower for us to just ignore them and focus on the boss.

Is this normal? Is there some way to do this that we missed? Like I said, we’ve done everything else up to this, sometimes having to adjust strategies and tweak builds, but we don’t know how to survive through that much damage all at once if that’s all the encounter is.

Spent about 1.2g buying a gladiator set to transmute. Currently not in the pickup window. Mmhmm.

Aga.8641:

Yes the auto attack on axe is pathetic, even that is an understatement…Will it get changed any time soon? No, because the devs aren’t reading the necro (or any class forums), every now and then there’ll be a red post saying “We’re reading what you’re saying and taking in the feedback, the reason why we don’t reply is because we’re all too busy”, which is utter bullkitten.

I read the class forums, and what I learned is that every single class is the worst class in the game, ANet hates all the classes, every class is getting unfair nerfs, and every class needs huge buffs to keep up with the other classes.

Aexrael.5918:

It’s also a legacy of the whole “tank/healer/DPS” trinity. People still want a tank to hold aggro or at least being the one that gets the attention of the mobs.

I was about to say that. Probably people looking for warrior/guardian are of the mindset they need those to “tank.”

Uthar.8967:

the best game i have played that allows decent minion build is city of heroes mastermind. Control, survivablity you could set minions on different mobs, the damage you took was spread out among the minions and you so in pvp people couldn’t just ignore them. Now that class was a true minion masters dream. The AI was something else. Fun

My necro went GW → CoV → GW2. I liked the mastermind class, although they got pretty shafted in high-end trials. I still kind of like the GW2 approach where you have different ones and they have active abilities. But they definitely need to fix the fact that they just stand around in the middle of combat.

I don’t know if the minions in this game would fit the CoV MM style. MMs there were built around the pets and pretty much didn’t function without them. So of course they had extensive pet controls and commands. But necro minions are totally optional, so their usefulness has to be self-contained as a utility skill.

Oh, and it would also be great if they didn’t desummon every time I get transformed by something. And Flesh Golem could swim.

Do stuff with friends. We’ve done all the dungeons and none of us took a warrior, guardian, or thief. And I took my necro.

My necro’s 80 and I’ve had no troubles! It’s been a fun and easy ride. Moreso than any of my other characters so far, except maybe my warrior.

No worries here, although I don’t do PvP. The one thing in my build that did get nerfed was a bit too powerful so it wasn’t surprising.

The bone minion combo is a bit buggy too. I had to stop and test it for a while. When you blow them up in a combo field things around you do get weakness, but it doesn’t show up as a combo icon when they do it, and it’s delayed by a couple seconds for some reason. It still works, if you watch the debuff icons on enemies. Just a bit wonky.

yurtshone.7325:

the blood fiend fix would be nice if the blood fiend was not the first thing ANY mob goes for, and kills it!
I have never understood this. What’s the point of it doing ANY healing at all if I am at full health till it dies and only then do I take any damage!

Seems like your heal skill works pretty good if for a period of time you’re taking no damage at all because badguys are attacking something else. They even made it more durable so it’s even BETTER at doing that.

Incidentally, the shortbow t1 has the same cast time and range, and does the same jumping (albeit with one less jump), but is free. It actually does more damage than Dancing Dagger. So the difference is 4 initiative for a cripple.

Looks like all buffs for my minion master necro!

Shadowdawn.7946:

Dispari.3980:

I only play female characters, so of course my one charr is female.

Me too. I’m a girl, and no offence males, but I just don’t want to play as one of you.

Agreed. Boys are icky and have cooties.

Hmm, I guess it depends on your skills. I had a few issues with engineer before, but I picked up the Elixir Gun recently and I like it. It has a space-maker and a heal and the toolbelt is regen. The t1 also spams weakness which is basically -25% damage right there.

I suppose it’s a bit like thief. You don’t really have a ton of skills that give you more defense or regen, so you gotta take what you have. Elixir S would give you some ability to dodge for a bit.

But yes, I do spend most of my time walking backward. Also personally, not a big fan of shield.

I only play female characters, so of course my one charr is female.

Elixir fixes would be nice. After falling in love with Elixir Gun I was disappointed to see that the trait that makes Elixir powers recharge faster doesn’t work on at least 4 skills specifically flagged as “Elixir.”

Focksbot.6798:

In all seriousness, there’s nothing that says sexuality has to have anything to do with reproductive options. If a race is sexually dimorphic, then the male who pursues the male is a homosexual, the female who pursues the male a hetereosexual, the male who pursues neither an asexual, and so on.

A more interesting question is: why are Sylvari sexually dimorphic? Plants, of course, have both male and female parts. Is there any chance the Sylvari are similarly hermaphroditic? What’s nature’s plan for a race that don’t reproduce through any kind of sex but are still outfitted with sexual organs?

I don’t believe they’re hermaphroditic. There’s no reason for them to be; they can’t reproduce anyway. The suggestion seems to be that they have organs matching their assigned gender. The differing genders only exist because they’re based on humans.

BabelFish.7234:

Man, I would not want to be a human having sex with a Sylvari. There’s comments made about how Sylvari think humans are squishy in the story mode…if they’re hard like wood this implies a rather painful experience…

Just take a few minutes to think of how many euphamisms are related to plants, and you’ll realize just how punny sylvari could get.

Been doing this for a while actually. I have all 5 slots as pet skills. Notably I have:

Training of the Master – Minion damage +30%
Staff Mastery – Staff skills recharge 20% faster
Protection of the Horde – +20 toughness per minion
Greater Marks – Marks are bigger and unblockable
Bloodthirst – Siphoning health is 50% more effective
Vampiric Master – Minions siphon health and transfer it to you
Death Nova – Minions leave a poison cloud when they die

Notably I DO NOT have:
Minion Master – Minion skills recharge 20% faster
Flesh of the Master – Minions have +50% HP

After lots of playing and tweaking I found that neither is necessary.

I start combat by attacking whatever, making it focus on me. Minions don’t die much when I have everything’s attention. The high vitality, toughness, bonus toughness from pets, and constant siphoning from their attacks makes me pretty durable. With the greater marks it’s easy to do regen on myself and pets. I found with the poison staff 3 generates, and the ones that jagged horrors spawn frequently, I can use staff 4 or Bone Minions to set off lots of AoE weakness. I also have an alt weapon setup just to stack a bunch of debilitating (not necessarily damaging) conditions.

It works quite well, and I run around Orr dealing with whatever. I started tweaking and experimenting until I got to the point that dealing with giants or veteran abominations or two veterans at once wasn’t as painful.

Oroborous.2694:

Ba air.1372:

They lack the ability to reproduce but not the ability to have sex. It’s been confirmed, as far as I’m aware, that they do indeed have bits that work.

Can’t remember where this is, it’s in human area, but there’s a sylvari working at a winery, and he’s drunk. Talking to him with my sylvari he says something about me being a female sylvari, and when I correct him, he says" …I can’t tell my pistils from my stamens". Which are the reproductive parts of plants. So yeah, sylvari have bits.

Following links from the wiki on this topic leads to an interview answer:

CDA: One of the lore questions that bother players the most is – do Sylvari have sex? Are they able to procreate on their own, or just keep sprouting out of the Pale Tree?

Martin Kerstein: I’m not exactly a lore person, but as far as I understand – yes, Sylvari can have sex and they will have sex with whoever they like, they are fully capable of doing so. But they don’t do it to create to new Sylvaris. They actually grow from the tree.

So the summary on the wiki is most accurate, stating “while sylvari can and do have sex, it is not for reproduction as sylvari can only be born from the Pale Tree.”

First of all, I don’t know why people would run 5 signet builds in any circumstance when FGJ gives more damage. And it buffs your party too.

I admit I run around with 4 signets when I solo, but in team scenarios I start grabbing banners.

I dunno, I like my sylvari warrior’s armor. It’s a combination of two sets.

Because they have the most customization options. I’m usually drawn to human types. I made a human and tried to make a norn a few times (and hated their culture). For fun I was playing with the character creation screen on some other races and tried sylvari. They can be a wide variety of colors, and you have a ton of options for unique hairstyles and faces. Once I got in game I loved their culture and the uniqueness of their race. I also have a thing for British accents. Right now I’m 3/3 on human and sylvari characters.

Bearhugger.4326:

There’s too many combinations.

For interesting romance role-play, you need at least 2 choices otherwise it’s not really role-playing. Then, in 2012, after Bioware opened the door to that, you’re pretty much expected to have a same-sex option too, so the actual minimum is probably 3 romance options per race, and per gender. That would force Arenanet to write 30 romance story, and this looks like quite an undertaking.

If the devs are willing to put the resources to do that, I’d be very, very happy. I’d absolutely love to see my character fall in love, but I feel I’d be asking a lot to the devs to make it true.

If you want to make it really interesting they might throw in some cross-species romance options as well. The sylvari are pretty open on relationships. One could fall for a human, for instance.

It’s a neat idea but it does sound like a lot of work. Maybe for a Valentines update?

IMO if necro got another weapon option it should be another bladed weapon. I like how their skills get focused through axes and daggers. I would be in favor of sword/sword or sword/axe. Dual wielding axes might be fun.

I would say torch but I don’t much like torch skills.

Styopa.2538:

I’d just like all my pets not to DIE TO COOLDOWN because some water splashed in my face. And if I’m in the water, I have to surface when downed…and there go my pets again.

Yeah, if anything needs to be fixed it’s that the golem needs to be able to swim. The only elite I can use underwater kills all my pets. Which means either I can’t use pets or I can’t use an elite. All the other pets swim. Why doesn’t the golem?

Interesting to know. It’s certainly possible I was trying to save time and jumped on a node while my pets were finishing something off. Kind of annoying though, since any time you take a step in Orr you have to fight 15 things. Jogging to a node can take an hour! (slight exaggeration)

Not sure if I’m missing something or this is a bug.

I’ve been getting ruined logs from Cypress trees in Orr. But I’m using Orichalcum tools. The wiki says that not only should Orichalcum be good enough for this, it should be good enough for the things above it. And in fact, I’ve used it on nodes in Orr to get ancient wood before. I know there are master harvesting tools, but AFAIK they only come from story quests which I’m just about out of.

Anyone else having this issue or know what I need to do?

It would be nice if they just didn’t have degen. Or drastically slowed it down. -20% HP per second is a little obscene.

They aren’t much fun for minion necros either. Really I found they’re a big pain in general. One of the worst veteran units out there. Would be nice if that frenzy was limited to something reasonable.