Guild Wars 2

There really wasn’t much to this patch, which is disappointing. But other professions didn’t really fare much better than us — mostly tool tip or AOE ring adjustments — and Elementalists got LOS checks added to two of their skills. In that sense, this was a good patch to not be mentioned.

I think you’ll get (legitimate) complaints from other classes that grenades are enormously powerful AoE and having them auto-attack would be overpowered. I can’t think of other build-defining AoE like that that’s auto-targetable.

As people have said, in PvP/WvW you’d miss a lot because people tend to move and grenades are slow, which might make a difference, but…

This is a documented change to the game. It’s now supposed to work that way.

ANet? Hello? Anyone looking at line 1157 of module 2 to see what’s up?

After many trials, the downloads finished. (And it did it all again this evening.) But I’m now stuck at an empty window after logging in, and 80% CPU utilization.

Looking through network traffic, it looks like authentication works (maybe), and there’s a bunch of binary data, but the last readable text is:

<Error server=“1001” module=“2” line=“1157”/>

Ring any bells ANet?

This is due to China coming online and ANet not being ready. I have no other connectivity problems or network speed problems to any other site. It’s not a DNS issue. I finally got the download to complete, but now it’s using 80% of my CPU time to display a blank box.

I can see it contacts 8 different servers, including cider (I’m on a Mac) and the authentication server. This isn’t a Verizon problem.

A second day where there is some kind of slow, stalling-for-long-periods download occurring while the splash screen indicates nothing.

I’ve had it installed forever and played last night. Tonight, it’s stuck on the screen as pictured — no real status update. Watching Little Snitch, I see it downloads for a minute or so, then stalls. Super annoying, since I’ll now be missing my play window for the evening.

I do think that the new Trait system gained a lot by consolidating points and allowing free refunds, but it may have lost even more with the 30/60/80 unlock of tiers and the point-every-6-levels system. It should be a point every 5 levels (two points at 80), starting at 20 with tier unlocks at 35, 50, and 65.

As it stands, it really stretches out the most boring part of leveling. If they don’t want to change their new system, at least change the scrolls to add 20 levels rather than just advance you to level 20.

The new system would be a MAJOR win if it weren’t for the unfriendly choices in terms of trait point progression.

Excellent guide, I learned a lot!

loseridoit.2756:

@jportell

there is no point arguing against them. Many Necros do not understand the deficiency with other classes condition removal. Many of them dont seem to play other classes to see why necros are viewed OP.

Necros OP? Riiight. You’re as ignorant of Necros as you claim they are of other professions. On top of which you’re talking only about 1v1 situations. In group-on-group situations with at least a minimal amount of organization, condition removal is pretty much continuous and automatic.

crestpiemangler.7631:

Scepter has more range and sustained damage than an Axe at the cost of less burst

I agree, and for my playstyle I use Staff and Scepter/Focus. With Epidemic, the Scepter/Focus do become pretty powerful against groups.

I’ve never been a fan of the Axe, though I tried running it for a while because of Nemesis’ guides. On the other hand, I don’t tend to end up in encounters where loading up conditions is not useful, and I like a hybridish build.

sorrow.2364:

I’m getting tired of repeating the same things over and over.

I’m not up for a straight nerf to CC. I think Necromancer healing should be buffed on all the line. But if ANet doesn’t want to do that, I proposed another solution to the REAL problem I’ve tried to point out in this topic the lack of variety among healing skills.

Don’t kittening get mad every time you see something which barely resembles a nerf proposal.

No, you proposed a straight-up nerf to CC because it’s too strong. Look at your own title for this thread. Just because you ALSO proposed other changes doesn’t mean you’re not asking to nerf CC.

If you can admit this and understand that it’s okay to talk about you wanting to nerf CC but buff other heals, you’ll still find that almost every other poster here disagrees with you for one of two very good reasons:

1. They don’t see the artificial need to have all heal skills be equally useful to all builds. As long as one heal is broadly applicable, the others can be more specialized and therefore used a lot less often. Or,

2. They believe that CC is fine and the other two heals need to be buffed or even modified in their mechanics.

You strongly disagree with #1. Fine. There’s no right or wrong answer on that one, it’s a matter of class “feel” and many of us are okay with niche heals.

You can work with #2 if you want. Buff and modify the other two heals, per the many suggestions in this thread. You’d come out the hero for it.

But instead, you want to pretend that no one else can read, and that if you nerf A and buff B that you really haven’t nerfed A at all. Your title says it all: CC is “too strong”, and you proposed that it be nerfed — and other things buffed — in order to create a situation where more Necros use different heals. You’ve so rigidly insisted on this, and on you being right and dozens of others being wrong, that you’ve lost the debate entirely.

Sorrow: “The issue is the lack of variety in healing skills just because CC is better in every situation over other heals (or WoB and BF are niche, see it as you want), not that CC is overpowered. I’ve never said that.”

Actually, your proposed solution was to nerf CC. You wanted to remove an aspect of it, and you have repeatedly said that aspect is too powerful. So yes, technically you didn’t say the words “nerf CC, it’s OP”, that’s what you’ve proposed.

The other two heals are niche by design, and I don’t see any way to strengthen them without making them OP under some circumstances. BF is for MM’s and people who want to level in a certain style. WoB is for those who want to support the team better and who either fight in a clump with their team or trait for ground-targeted wells.

Which answers the question you keep asking: when would you use the other two? Nerfing CC — excuse me, I mean “removing capability but we won’t call it a nerf” — won’t actually make the other two more attractive in the vast majority of use.

Not sure if people have made it explicit enough: it will attempt to move you 1,200 units towards the Wurm, even if the Wurm is way beyond that range. You could be 4,000 units from the Wurm and still blink towards it. (Terrain glitches can mess up your plans, though.)

HUH? Both Blood Fiend and Well of Blood are niche because they ARE NICHE, not because CC is so great that it pushes them into a niche. You’ve got it entirely backwards.

Well of Blood is a good team support skill. Problem is, a “team support” skill that’s cast on you isn’t really a team support. So you have to take a specific trait to make it actually useful for support. The combination of working in teams and only with an extra trait marginalizes it.

Blood Fiend has so many issues that it’s not worth using. First, there are problems with minion AI. Then there are many situations (in many dungeon encounters, WvW, and PvP) where having minions out causes problems. Then the BF is a balloon waiting to be popped, and once popped you have a 20 second cooldown. Not a 20-second cooldown followed by a big heal, mind you, but a 20-second cooldown followed by a second-and-a-half cast, followed by a small stream of heals.

The only Necro the BF fully makes any sense for are MM’s in open-world PvE. That’s niche, too.

This is no different from a profession that has two terrible elites and one good elite. The good elite isn’t OP, no one uses the other two because they’re terrible. Fix the other two, give them a less-niche distinction, and they’ll be used in a heartbeat.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

olive-ish dyes look pretty close ty
(the first two pics look like the outer glow and inner glow respectively; the third pic dye is awesome)

Are the actual dye names there in each screenshot anywhere? Maybe I’m just missing it, but it appears that there are still a lot of dyes with “Olive” in the name.

flow.6043:

Aoe skills prioritize any proc or utility that comes with them on targets that are closest to the center and then going outwards.
So according to that order, once you proc Withering or Dhuum on one target the internal cooldown starts and can’t trigger on the next.

Thanks for the excellent explanation. It explains why, in my experiments with Dhuumfire and marks, I’ve only ever gotten it to proc on one target. Although I’m also not sure that I’ve ever gotten a mark to crit on more than one target. (I’m guessing at a minimum that each target rolls separately to see if it gets crit — against the caster’s crit percentage — rather than a single roll by the caster.)

Raif.9507:

Durzlla.6295:

Um…. if you’re just now realizing that Ele is the Hybrid prof of the game i’m kinda thinking you should get your eyes checked…

That being said they don’t want ele to be the BEST at anything, they’re certainly not going to be the worst at anything.

EX: An ele will NOT have the damage of a warrior, but it’s going to have high damage, and it WONT be as mobile as a thief, but it will still be one of the most mobile profs (or can be). etc.

Why roam on a class that can be caught by any other class save the necro very easily.

Why support on a class that can be outclassed in boon generation by the guardian?

Why do damage on a class that can be outdone by a warrior or a thief?

If you are second best at everything, it means you don’t shine at anything save doing everything. It means there is no need in a coordinated group to have this class, as there really is no need to bring the second best, when you can have the best.

You do realize that several professions all say this very thing? Go read the Necro forums sometime and you’ll see people strongly arguing that no one takes Necros into dungeons because every other class can do everything a Necro does, except better. I haven’t checked lately, but at one time that was the cry of Thieves as well.

Even ANet recently admitted that Ele’s were the most mobile of all professions, so I’m not sure that I understand your point. The one profession that actually has no means of disengagement or escape — per ANet’s stated design — are Necros.

It’d be interesting to know what build/weapons you run with that you feel you can’t escape at will.

I haven’t spent a whole lot of time yet, but I have been pursuing a more nobility-based look.

If I could modify my Necro however I wanted, I’d want to make him the smallest Norn possible, which would add four more transforms to the repertoire, including a stealth ability.

chefdiablo.6791:

Edit; I could not reproduce the results of landing the Dhuumfire on more than one target on a single cast.

I just ran into a situation where a Reaper’s Touch put Dhuumfire on the second target it hit, but not the first. It stood out to me because both were in a dark area and I didn’t see the second until it came running towards me on fire. Perhaps the angle and lighting conditions for your Moa’s were such that it looked like they were both on fire but only the second one was.

To be honest, I think it’s fair that Dhuumfire can’t hit AoE. For me, scepter/focus is mainly for single-target and the Dhuumfire and my scepter/focus sigils are aimed at strengthening that side of the hybrid. The staff is more for the support and AoE side of the hybrid and Close to Death logically can work well in AoE situations. (From that point of view, it would be better if Close to Death helped Condition damage to some extent.)

So in a dungeon, for trash mob or other predominantly AoE fights, I’d switch to Close to Death, and for bosses (or outside of dungeons entirely), I’d switch to Dhuumfire. I really think it’s a nice idea to have both as GM talents in Spite.

HiSaZuL.2843:

You and the guy you seem to defend so much sure like to put everyone and their crippled grama in same kettle.

No, I was simply pointing out that it was the other person who lumped several separate posts into one and lumped a bunch of different aspects of the game into one and claimed that someone else was saying something that they weren’t.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Simple fact: if you can do something in the least amount of time with 4 warriors + mesmer that means exactly that. Least amount. There is no place for a necro because frankly you can neither tank/heal or dps as well as other classes.

First, “least amount” requires a context. If it takes 35 minutes to clear someplace with 4 warriors and a mesmer, and 36 minutes to do it with a Necro included, most people won’t care. (Not saying these numbers are correct, just illustrating a point: “least amount” needs a scale to be truly meaningful.) Second, it assumes that you place min-maxing above all else, including friendships, challenges, creativity, etc. Some of us don’t. Third, you’re not accounting for player skill, profession synergies, or any of a host of things that make that magical combination more of an opinion than any kind of fact.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Also… kitten don’t link someone else doing something and then come out of the closet with grandiose claims about how easy everything is and you can do it naked blah blah blah. Then get anally tight when someone points out flaws in your non-existent logic.

You’re confusing people here. I provided no links. The person who did provide a link provided it to back one of their claims, which the other person completely took out of context. As I said, I’ve tried to solo dungeons and failed pretty miserably.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Was there anything good in that patch? Sure. Did it make necro better… maybe for some. Not for me… and do not assume for me because I neither share your sentiment on the subject nor frankly give a kitten about your kittened logic in the first place

I didn’t say a thing about HiSaZul and whatever opinion you have. I don’t care about your opinion, since it’s obviously extreme and you’re a pretty touchy fellow. Necros were nicely improved, period. There are areas that still need attention (minion masters, stability, etc), but this whole kitten -on-everything attitude makes no sense.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Anet set lore for their necromancers then kitten ed on it from a high hill. Good or bad isn’t the point.. its not what they advertised, even if individuals that do care about lore choose to ignore the blatant disregard to everything.

Sounds like roleplaying is important to you. Great. I take the flavor of the profession as what it is, and Necro is the most interesting profession in the game, in my opinion. Sorry that the drawings you put up on your wall when you read about Necros doesn’t match what Necros are.

I just tried to check out if an AoE can trigger Dhuumfire on multiple targets. I never saw fire appear on more than one target.

It could be that only a single target can experience a crit. It could be that Dhuumfire will only hit a single target, even if multiple targets are simultaneously crit. It could be that each target rolls separately for a crit, rather than the caster rolling (for all targets), and in my limited testing I just never saw multiple targets lose their rolls. (I have about a 40% crit chance.)

The combat logs get cluttered quickly, but it appears that I never had more than one target that was crit. I’ll have to test more.

Lily.1935:

When they say PvE, I’m going to think they mean every aspect of PvE. Not just the over world. So this includes story, over world, dungeons, fractals, events and mini games.

People usually differentiate between “PvE”, “dungeons”, “Fractals”, “PvP”, and “WvW”. Your broad interpretation is pure arrogance on your part — where you immediately assumed they were saying something stupid and obviously impossible. The rest of us knew what they meant.

@Bhawb: Which makes me feel better about running with Dhuumfire for now. Though I’m going to have to look at my sigils to make sure I’ve got the +%dmg one on the right weapon. I’m trying to be a hybrid so +%dmg still plays a role, but now I realize that it affects one side of the hybrid and not the other.

@seraphenslaved: Seems like a reasonable rule of thumb. Which if true, makes me happy, since I have about 1200 condition damage and about 2000 power in my hybridish build. A condition build would also need some condition duration as well (I have about 66%).

Lily.1935:

Again you make claims that I can’t believe. Make a video of you running dungeons naked, by yourself and complete them. Then I’ll believe that you can do it. Until then, I can’t take what you have to say seriously.

No, they didn’t. They claimed they could solo dungeons. You disagreed. They claimed PvE was so easy you could do it naked. They didn’t claim that you could run dungeons naked. Two different messages, two different claims, if you read them.

And yes, I see people PvE’ing naked every day. It’s a sub-game for some people. And yes, Necros can solo some dungeons — not naked, of course — though I’ve not done so well when I tried. (Though I also don’t have any Legendary gear, either.)

Necros are fine. Someone, perhaps you, said there’s no need to have a Necro in a dungeon. Um, there’s no “need” for any profession in a dungeon. Some make it easier by allowing you to bypass content, some can speed up trash, some are better for bosses, but not taking a Necro because they’re “not needed” is nonsensical.

Bhawb.7408:

However, remember that Close to Death does not raise your DPS by 20%, it raises your direct damage by 20%.

Ooo, I mis-spoke then. So it really doesn’t affect damage due to conditions? In which case it would be related to Power, Crit%, Crit Damage only, and not by Condition Damage, Condition Duration, etc.

LastDay.3524:

Thing is I believe most changes like these were made just to prepare for the next batch of changes in the future.

This makes a lot of sense to me. The design and the development schedule may not sync up.

Which suggests to me that they need an additional person/role that works on the “logistics” of getting from here to there from a player perspective. It would be easy as a developer to say, “Hey, we’re working towards this great goal, and the players are just short-sighted, so just keep your head down and ignore them and wait until we’re justified by the final result.”

Problem is, it’s a service industry and you literally do have to reach a goal, but the process by which you reach that goal matters. More like running a hotel than building a car: you may need to refurbish the lobby and other parts, but you have to do it in a way that minimally affects guests.

As Stikci said, 20% to all damage is big. Take your entire dps and 20% of that’s fairly substantial. If you’re AoE’ing down multiple mobs, it can apply to multiple targets at once. Also, since it’s not itself a condition, it would be better than Dhuumfire in a group where there might already be plenty of burning applied. (Burning stacks in duration.)

I’ve been using Dhuumfire, though, for a few reasons. First, it applies to your target at any point, not just when health is below 50%. Second, it’s an additional condition, and we have a couple of skills and traits that benefit from more conditions on our target (Feast of Corruption, Epidemic, Target the Weak, Terror, maybe others). Third, I don’t have the best stats, but I do have around 34% crit rate with my scepter/focus and 38% with my staff, and +66% condition duration (with food), which I figure means I’ll have Dhuumfire on a target about 45-50% of the time.

The bottom line is that both of these traits are Spite GM traits, so you can switch back and forth out of combat, depending on what you anticipate doing next. At any moment in time it’s either/or, but it’s a trivial decision in the sense that you don’t have to pay anything or go anywhere to change your mind.

ManaCraft.5630:

Also looking forward to trying out a power based build for the first time in a long time, even if it’s not usually my thing. The patch did revitalize my passion for the necro, if nothing else.

It feels to me like ANet has been encouraging a hybrid build for a while now and this continues down that road. I’ve been experimenting with a 30/30/10/0/0 build that’s hybridish, with Scepter/Focus and Staff, and it feels even more solid after this patch. (Haven’t jumped into WvW yet, though.)

Bellamy.9860:

So essentially we just became some semi to hard nuking caster with still close to zero attrition. Great! I guess i can finally give up on nec.

Can I have your stuff?

DS is now a solid class mechanic. A couple of patches ago, they fixed the UI. Now they’ve filled out the skill bar with a new mechanic, improved the mechanics of two of the pre-existing skills, and no longer remove spectral effects on shifting. The last item suggests to me that other “not in DS” options (e.g. healing) may become options down the road.

We got access to another Fear that can be used in an offensive or defensive manner, and another two conditions. Dagger #4 is significantly faster for more reliable blind and condition removal. We got more Life Force generation, another boon removal, reduced well cooldowns and a stun break, and health regen out of combat on two minions.

If you can’t be happy — not totally satisfied, but happy — with some solid improvements, you really should play a Guardian or Warrior and be happy.

Boon Corruption was capped, but then again, when Boon Hate arrives leaving boons on the table may not be an advantage for the target. And a lot of how big the cap is depends on how they prioritize boons to corrupt.

Yes, yes, we didn’t gain mobility — and we won’t, as far as I can tell. We gained more survivability (DS changes, etc), and we gained a bit of anti-mobility, but need some more anti-mobility. It’s a tough balance though: Necros need to be able to restrict others’ mobility so that attacking a Necro becomes a serious decision, but Necros can’t become the “if you have a Necro in your group, no one can escape from you”. (I’d propose something like a 15-second-ish condition that can’t be removed that penalizes a player if they again attack the Necro in that time period. Exact mechanic TBD.)

“It is nice to be able to run around exterminating other players, but there are still weaknesses and counters.” Well yes, every class should have weaknesses and counters.

Can I have your stuff? (An old joke from WoW when people threatened to quit. Meant as humor, for the humor-impaired.)

Necro damage in solo PvE is reasonable. I’ve started comparing myself to other professions while wandering in Orr, trying to attack the same kind of mob starting at the same time as they do and see who kills their mob first. Most of the time, I win. (Right now, running a 30/30/10/0/0 hybrid-ish build with Scepter/Focus and Staff, and a Flesh Golem out. Only exotic gear.)

In WvW I don’t seem to get as many badges as I’d expect, but I make a solid contribution to the team effort, especially when besieging fortifications.

Fenrir.6183:

Well, asura or sylvari elites are much better than norn’s that’s for sure.

Maybe if you’re a Thief or Mesmer. Otherwise Snow Leopard is way, way more useful, giving you access to stealth and a charge. On my Necro, I’ve used the Sylvari elites once or twice and saw no advantage to them over the professional elites, in any situation.

I can assure you that if I could change the race of my Necro, I’d pick Norn any day of the week for access to Snow Leopard. It wouldn’t permanently replace my professional Elites, but it would definitely be used multiple times during any playing session.

(Not to mention that with four racial transformations plus three Necro transformations, the fun factor would be through the roof.)

I’m experimenting with 30/30/10/0/0 right now (S/F and Staff) and am pretty please, though I’m not a dungeon-crawler, so can’t speak to that. Outside of dungeons, I keep up with other folks DPS-wise as far as I can tell.

The Necro levels as fast or faster than any of the other professions I’ve tried. In fact, my Necro is the only one that I stuck with all the way to level 80.

Marks are incredible for tagging mobs in Orr. As far as I can tell, the Necro actually has more variety and viable builds than most professions. I can’t really speak to how popular you’ll be with pick-up dungeon runs, though.

If I were going to start another Necro from scratch, I’d be tempted to roll the shortest Norn possible. Necros naturally have three transformations: Death Shroud, Plague Form, and Liche Form, and Norn would add four more. (The downside is that taller characters have more camera issues, and in WvW people already like to target Necros because we don’t have much escapability, and a large Necro is an even more tempting target.)

The Necro forums are the most complaining of the forums, though.

I really liked the Warlock in Wow, so naturally wanted to try the Necro. But the lower levels were boring: squishy pet, boring axe, etc. So I hung it up for a while and tried several other classes. When I returned and switched to S/F and Staff, things worked much better.

Now, it’s the only profession that I’ve taken to level 80, and it’s never boring. Marks are clever, we have three elites that are great (many professions don’t), things like Epidemic are really different. Yeah, it’s a fun class.

iFocus.3781:

But I feel discouraged by the amount of complaints I find on the forums :/

That’s the first trait that is required in a Necro: Ignore The Whiners. You have to take the trait at level 0.

From my own experience and from what I read, the Necro is the most fun profession in the game. Also, apparently, the hardest class for ANet to figure out how to balance. If all you care about is dominating PvP or WvW, a more boring (but OP) class may be for you. Otherwise, it’s Necro all the way.

And it appears that ANet is finally beginning to get a handle on Necros. It appears that they had some firm ideas in the design phase, but ran into severe balance problems in pre-release testing and made some draconian changes without going back to see how that had affected their original vision. Some recent actions and comments by the devs give me some hope that they’re finally coming to grips with this and they’re trying to move forward while not turning us into Dark Paladins.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Go into the water.

I hadn’t used the Golem in a long time due to minion AI bugs, but have been experimenting the last few days with him. Had the funniest experience: I attacked a Drake that was at the edge of the water, and for some reason the Golem ran to the side, into the water, and POOF! I knew he would poof if I entered the water, but seeing him suicide into the water was hilarious.

Kyotee.7851:

I’m just worried of getting bored casting ground target spells most of the time.

Honest question, I’m not being sarcastic in any way: how are non-ground-target spells kitten ring (“boring”) than ground-targeting? As far as I can tell, ground targeting is actually more interesting than pressing buttons while your spells auto-target.

That said, I’ve found the Necro to be the most interesting class. And I think these forums are pretty unique in that even when people complain about particular tasks/roles that they think Necros have serious problems with, you still see a lot of “I have a lot of fun on my Necro, but…” or “… still, when I have a choice of any of my chars to play, I choose the Necro.” or things like that.

I’m still not an Axe fan, but it does get stronger later in the game. (I’m currently experimenting with Axe/Focus for Vulnerability Goodness.) I’m a big Staff fan because I like the flexibility of marks: you can pre-place them, you can block areas with them, you can cast them and if somehow you miss, they still have an effect on the situation, and you can cast them behind you. Much more flexible than typical AoE.

I’d echo spoj’s comment that Necros can be amazing underwater.

In terms of PvE utility skills, I’m partial to the Flesh Wurm. It provides a 100% projectile finisher, it can attack inanimate objects, it can provide an escape, and it maintains health well — either because it’s out of range from mobs, or because you can drop Mark of Blood’s on it when its (melee) attacked. It can also provide a needed distraction for you.

If you get used to the playstyle, Spectral Wall can also be useful. It can keep protection on you for 10 seconds (33% less damage), and if you can drag a mob through it twice you’ll be doing 20% more damage to them for 10 seconds, with a 20-stack of vulnerability.

Noctis.2738:

Better than other professions of course? What do they excel at? Because the last time I asked to some 80 Necros in game I was told they are not the best at anything. Other classes stack conditions better and Ele is better in AoE damage, they said.

I think you need to specify the “where” of your question, and what you intend to do. Talking about “stacking conditions better”, is in itself situational and has totally different ramifications in solo PvE, dungeons, and PvP. Comparing the highest stack classes can obtain on a target dummy is totally niche.

You also need to specify the “why” of your question. I’ve played several classes and follow several forums and while the Necro forum seems to have more whining than most, it also has more statements to the effect that people love their Necros and prefer to play them when the goal is to have fun.

So is your goal to have fun? Is it to solo and do dungeons with friends? Is it to be a competitive PvP player? (Which is where a lot of the complaints come from.)

“Best” needs a context to be meaningful and without qualifications you’re going to get the answer that is essentially “solo against a target dummy” or “roaming in WvW”, in which case yes, there are classes that stack conditions better, etc.

I’ve been playing GW2 for a while and have even been a big advocate to my friends. Unfortunately, I’ve run into one too many infuriating encounters and have really soured on it.

You know, those encounters where two of you stumble on a village that’s under assault, and NOTHING says “[GROUP]”. Yet the bad guys keep respawning in twos and threes faster than the two of you can possibly kill them.

Or Orr, where I’ve logged in twice a day for a week and couldn’t find a single temple that’s open. (The Narthax was open for about five minutes before it was raided and I was slaughtered.) So a bunch of us try Grenth. First stage, ok. Second stage wipe, but recovered and won. Third stage, someone lured the spider to the NPC and the NPC called it quits. 20+ minutes (or was it 30 or even 45, I lost track) of a 15-20 folks time and, nothing to show for it.

So I’m sitting on enough karma to get the last two pieces of gear, but there’s nowhere to get it. How ridiculous.

GW2 is different from other games in its mechanics and I like that a lot. The encounter designs are way, way behind the times, though. There’s either no scaling concept, or it’s so poorly implemented that once a tough group fails, every smaller group that comes along will be overwhelmed. It’s infuriating.

Blaine Tog.8304:

2: Can provide almost permanent AoE Regeneration while still providing good DPS. This is always strong but it’s especially good for Minion Masters (helps keep your minions alive longer).

Even if it’s just the red rat from Reanimator that degenerates, I can keep it up nearly indefinitely with the regen. Hmmm… now that I think of it, if I timed the 5-rat mark from Liche Form for just before Liche ends, I wonder if I could keep all five up on a target since it’s AoE regen?

Remember, you can switch weapons in combat. So you can start with staff, then go dual daggers until your staff cool downs are up, then back to staff to drop marks, then back to daggers. In fact, it’s almost always good strategy to switch weapons regularly during a fight. (I’m thinking in particular of weapon upgrades that have effects when a weapon is equipped.)

Also, while the Staff #1 is not incredible, it does have two very nice traits. First, it pierces, so if you get used to lining targets up you can hit two, three, or four with one shot. EDIT: As rizzo points out, my second point was that it could hit at farther than the stated 1200 range, but it appears that this was a bug that has now been fixed — at least from some quick testing I just did. (You used to be able to hit at 1500, even though the button was red indicating out of range.)

If you trait for it, the marks are quite large and can’t be blocked, making it hard to miss and even if you do miss at least there’s a trap on the ground. You can also trait so that fear does damage, which is also quite nice, though you’d have to see if it would frustrate teammates’ strategies. Not to mention that marks can be cast behind you.

Staff #4 is also a blast finisher and you can go with Staff #3 as your field, or use a utility skill (spectral wall, etc).

I played Druid and Warlock a lot in WoW, and I think you’ll like Necro. You’ll notice a lot of cool improvements in this game versus WoW.

Steel yourself to ignore the high negativity in the Necro forums: it has the highest complaint factor of all the forums, as far as I can tell.

I just hit 80 with my Necro and love it. At this point I’m mainly D/D (dagger main hand, dagger offhand) and Staff, but early on I liked S/F (scepter and focus) and Staff. Pet AI can be wonky, in particular melee pets sometimes stand around and don’t fight apparently because they can’t find a path to your target. So I’d not recommend a build that’s heavy minions, but some people make it work.

Oh, one tip I totally missed and felt stupid later: once you level a bit you will begin to get Trait points to put into your trait lines. Once you have 10 points in a line, you can choose a trait skill. You can’t change how many points you have in a trait line without respec’ing, but you can change which trait skill you pick as long as you’re out of combat. That can be VERY useful, and pretty much everyone but me realized it, but just in case you don’t.

Also, this game rewards moving a lot. Grinding in one spot doesn’t get you nearly as much XP as moving from place to place and doing lots of stuff.

@Anchoku: Yep, I’ve been saving the containers and boosters from several characters that haven’t made it to 80 (a couple of 40’s and a 71) plus my Necro that’s at 76 and that I’m excited to be my first to 80. I’m hoping that if it’s wise to get Karma gear I’ll be able to get a whole set in one swoop once I hit 80.