Guild Wars 2

Thanks for illustrating exactly what I meant about “dungeon = everything” players.

Greatsword > sword in solo PVE. It has nothing to do with being fooled by pretty bleed stacks or flying numbers or being scared of melee.

Let’s say we both start 1200 units away from an enemy. At standard run speed, it will take you 2.85 seconds to close to 600 range so you can do an Illusionary Leap.

I have already hit the target with GS #1, GS #2 and GS #4.

What this 2.85 second advantage means:

— if sword does 10% more average DPS than GS, if GS can kill it in less than 31.5 seconds, it’s faster than sword.

— if sword does 25% more average DPS than GS, if GS can kill it in less than 14.25 seconds, that’s faster than a sword can.

— if sword does 50% more average DPS than GS, if GS can kill it in less than 8.5 seconds, it’s faster than sword.

Now of course this oversimplifies things, doesn’t consider swiftness and pretends that DPS is linear instead of varying with conditions/boons/phantasms, but hopefully you get the point. For a short fight, which most of the enemies you encounter during solo exploration are, GS wins.

Because of all the “greatsword sucks” posts I have seen, I started off PVE leveling in open world without it.

And that was a mistake. I was starting to despair over that character, even though it was my second mesmer. The first one though, I leveled with greatsword/staff…

So I tried Greatsword again, and it works SO well in open world PVE compared to other options. Faster, easier, and safer than sword/focus or scepter/focus. Way faster than staff.

Someday I will learn the lesson that just because so-called experts post their opinions about builds/weapons/classes on the forums, doesn’t mean they apply to me and my situation. (Especially when their entire focus is geared toward speedclearing in an organized group, and they have forgotten that anything else exists — and I’m leveling and don’t even have trait points to speak of. Or the equivalent in other games.)

Blast finisher would be cool.

I think if it remains a ground targeted skill, increasing the radius makes a bit less sense thematically than making it similar to traps/marks: it persists for a few seconds and goes off when an enemy crosses it. That way you could lead them a little and still have a chance to hit, or at least make them dodge/avoid it.

I don’t like playing Charr myself, but sometimes the screenshots of them are awesome anyway. This is one of those times.

Xyonon.3987:

PvE you got focus with speed runes in open world.

12 seconds of swiftness on a 25 second cooldown (without runes) gives you an average of 115.84% speed.

With minor runes of speed it’s 116.47%
With major runes it’s 116.7%
With superior runes it’s 129.6% and you’ve spent 19 gold on it for the privelege. And you have vitality runes that don’t help damage or have any other utility other than random swiftness procs in combat.

…or you could just have a signet that gives you 125% at no cost with whatever weapon you want. I know which one I’d choose.

Flarefox.9713:

(and if you’re exploring, you’re probably gonna run Focus for the Curtain).

You have the sense of this backwards. Focus is not a reason for the class to have no passive run speed boost — it is a clumsy, stupid workaround for not having one.

I feel like I am stuck with Focus simply to run around the world, even though I would rather go with Greatsword and Staff. And it makes me not want to play the class.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-for-leveling-a-new-Necromancer/first

MokahTGS.7850:

I would pay piles of good money for a Taxidermy profession…but only if you could do quagans.

Those backpacks in the store have to come from somewhere…

I actually don’t care about PvP at all at this point. I just want to play my mesmer in solo PvE without feeling like I’m limping everywhere.

Bring on the run speed signet.

Autoattack sometimes gets turned off. Try ctrl+right-clicking on the 1 icon.

Why is it always fishing?

Why not add knitting, or rock collecting, or calligraphy, or bobsledding, or taxidermy, or…

wait. Bobsledding would be awesome!

Abusive.1849:

I thnk it matches the “tough viking warrior” personality well…very suitable for heavy armor, brutish classes

However, i can imagine how awkward it would be for “glamorous” classes like mesmers and ele’s to have a norn voice like that

My Elementalist and my second Mesmer are both female Norns. I love the voice.

The armor and colors look pretty good. But I’m going to have to go with the racist answer here too and say that there’s only so much you can do with Asuras.

I’d recommend a hood. With the mask it’s okay from the front, but still goofy from behind.

Also, Charrs run funny.

What skills do you dislike?

There are, frankly, a lot more ways to build a viable Necromancer than some other classes have. If you don’t like any of them, it’s not the class for you.

You can do fine without a scepter, with a power build. I hate the animations too, and the “tennis ball” sounds that they have at least with Mesmers :P

Dagger makes a lot of sense to me thematically for a necromancer. Blood rituals! Dismemberment! Carving dark sigils into the flesh and bone of the fallen! What’s not to love? It makes a lot more sense than mesmers with their levitating 1200 range greatswords.

And Death Shroud is freaking awesome. Maybe that’s a matter of opinion, but the opinion is right.

Honestly any weapon combo for Necro will work, but some are better than others. Axe is very Not Awesome, but you can still kill faster with it in solo PVE than many classes.

No need to hoard skill points if you’re exploring and picking up all the various skill points along the way. You can have both Plague and Flesh Golem and decide which you prefer. (Lich Form is really not worth 30 points though, I don’t think.)

In fact, if you take Flesh Golem I still recommend unlocking Plague for underwater situations.

The way I look at it, Plague is available for 20ss with a 180s cooldown — so that’s 10% uptime. It prevents you from using other skills while it’s up, and while it’s a big AOE, its’s more of a sustained DPS and you can easily burst for a lot more with wells and DS 5/DS 4.

The Flesh Golem is up until it gets killed, until you swim, or a few other things that rarely happen in PvE. Cooldown is 60s. And while all melee minions are as buggy as an ant farm right now, overall I would say he’s doing his job a lot more than 10% of the time. When his AI does work, he is a very effective tank/distraction, eats a lot of enemy CC for you, and his own CC attack is brutal. (Chances are when they fix the AI, he’ll tank more, take more damage and go down faster, and it’ll be just about even.)

I’d argue that dagger/focus is better than dagger/dagger. Dagger/dagger gets more points for style though.

I find that, as I level a Guardian, Necro and Mesmer alternately, the Mesmer is really suffering by comparison. The lack of run speed hurts (and calls for keeping a focus on hand for Temporal Curtain), and the slow damage ramp-up hurts. Kiting with a staff is kind of fun, but having to do it for every single enemy is ridiculous. My Necro can take down a veteran faster than my Mesmer can kill a basic grunt, and I don’t have any confidence in taking on a champion solo with my Mesmer the way I do with my other two.

Somehow I have never gotten the hang of sword/x on the Mesmer, despite being totally confident meleeing with other classes.

I’m currently leveling a necro (have gotten a little past 50 so far, I almost feel like I’m leveling too quickly).

I suggest:

— try all the weapons, unlock all their skills and get used to how they work, individually and in combination. This also counts for Death Shroud — it can either be a lifesaving emergency measure, or the focus of a build. (Look at a wiki because you won’t really have time to read skill tooltips while in DS.)

— make sure to try the different ground targeting settings — you’ll probably be better off with one of the faster ones than the default.

— decide whether to go for power or condition damage. In PVE solo content, you can make either one work. For dungeons and group stuff, power is definitely better.

— however, just because you happen to choose power doesn’t mean conditions aren’t useful or that condition weapons should be avoided. Whatever works! I personally love the staff as a secondary weapon.

— with the current state of minion AI as it is, and recent trait changes, Minion Master builds are not so great for leveling. The flesh golem elite skill is probably the best for leveling though, even though half the time he’ll stand around doing nothing.

— Signet of the Locust (always on passive) is essential for leveling. Running faster is always good. You can swap it out before a tough fight, but most of the time I just leave it on anyway. Definitely try Well of Suffering, Blood Is Power, and (especially if going for conditions) Epidemic. Others are situational; I like Spectral Grab to interrupt or to pull single enemies closer to melee them while also generating life force. After a few skills you should have a pretty good idea of what’s most useful for you. As far as healing skills go, Consume Conditions seems best.

Bhawb.7408:

First, it wasn’t strictly max damage, it only made your weapon damage equivalent to staff (staff had average 1100 weapon damage, axe had 1000, with the trait it increases by 10% to 1100)

The fun bit is that DS 4 and 5 use the offhand weapon for damage, and are unaffected by Axe Training. Staff is better for DS damage all around.

You can make axe work, but as soon as you switch to anything else, you notice how poor it is by comparison. I just switched from axe to dagger and I’m not looking back. If I need to back off I have staff on swap as well as DS.

Guardian staff was mentioned as another 600 range weapon — but staff has that wide spread and triggers that Justice flame thing, so you can use it to spam AOE trash from midrange. It also wrecks buildings with surprising speed, as if they’re taking more than one hit from it. It’s hard to justify using it as a primary weapon, and is probably rare on swap too, but it’s not terrible. Axe could be improved a fair amount by giving the autoattack some AOE.

frifox.5283:

Dump healing power grandmaster in Inspiration, and add a trait that grants 25% speed boost to you and allies within 600 of you.

No, don’t make speed something you can’t have until level 80. Other classes have access to run speed boosts while leveling, which makes a huge difference.

When you wave a stick three times at a sink full of dirty dishes, hoping a clone will take care of them for you.

Chadramar.8156:

IMO this is one of the more annoying examples of why balancing a game primarily or exclusively for PvP is such a pile of steaming BS. Why should any given class be “punished” in PvE, especially out of combat, just because it might “unbalance” some other game mode that any given player might not even engage in or give a toss about?

I agree with this so hard.

alamore.1974:

I dont even like ds… i only use it when i see big hitters coming and a buffer to wait on wOb. Cooldown… and fear in wvw to res my homies but besides that i dont even like it at all… wish we had a choice of a diffrent f1.

Whereas I’d gladly take DS — even untraited — on my Mesmer in place of Shatter, or on a Ranger in place of pets, or on a Thief in place of Steal.

“Any plan that involves raptors is, by design, foolproof.”

“Daddy, there’s a bug on the wall. Can I try out your new sword?”

“It’s everyone’s favorite cheap date, One-Drink Drake!”
“I hate you guys.”

“Hoo, weed. You’re out of your element. Quaggan is about to foo up your day!”

I heard that yesterday. I about fell out of my chair.

“I feel six feet tall!”

I don’t think it’s specifically pathing. Almost certainly minions and enemies use the same pathing code. And they don’t have any trouble pathing once they decide to fight (for instance if you trigger their skills). I think they just have trouble switching from a passive mode where they just follow you, to one where they act independently.

I’m for replacing the passive on Signet of Inspiration too. The only reason anyone ever takes it (at least, outside of support builds) is for random Swiftness procs. I’ve always found the random announcement of boons while standing around at the trading post or crafting stations really annoying, anyway.

I don’t think DS has issues with the number of traits that buff it, so much as it has a few issues with things that don’t work with it.

So far, I seem to prefer a DS-based build for leveling. I switch out utilities to keep it interesting — a little bit of minions, a little bit of wells. Axe/warhorn with staff secondary. Nice variety and very, very survivable.

Most class mechanics are semi-weak if untraited, but good enough to base a build on if you trait for them. I think that describes DS pretty well.

I really don’t think we need to be able to drop wells while in DS, or use spectral skills while already in DS to extend uptime even further than we already can.

I realized that this build is almost exactly like the alternate version of Phenn’s Specter of Death build (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84336-specter-of-death-build/).

All it takes is swapping to Valkyrie gear and switching Epidemic for Spectral Grab, and it’s no longer a hybrid, but a max DS uptime build.

How beneficial is Epidemic really when not going full condition? Wouldn’t a well or two plus dagger 5, scepter 2, warhorn 5, DS 5 + DS4 already handle AOE quite nicely?

Rym.1469:

If I were you, I’d rather go 6/5/0/15/0 now for a little healing (minor siphons, Transfusion as nice burst healing if group is low) and constantly rotate between Scepter and Dagger/Axe.

Your mixed point values there, combined with not adding up, is kind of confusing. Do you mean (under the new system) 6/1/0/3/4?

I’m only at level 33 with my current necro, but I like the way this plays compared to other stuff I was trying. Thanks for this.

The change makes MM builds weaker for leveling.

Before: mini-meatshields at level 15 which help distract stuff from your real minions, whose AI was (subjectively) slightly less buggy than other melee minions.

After: little explodey things at level 80 if you specifically take a Grandmaster trait.

Feh.

Rennoko.5731:

I tried using the black cloud yesterday for a few minutes, and not one fight in, he was standing over at the edge of the supply camp inspecting rocks. Im attacking, spamming things, getting attacked…. nope he is busy cataloging rock sizes.

You summoned the ghost of an Asura!

Sarrs.4831:

Also, minions seem even stupider than usual. Did minion movement speed get changed in the last patch, because they can’t keep up with me at all.

Before the patch, melee minions were about as bright as a stump, and moved about that much during the average fight. There wasn’t much room to get worse.

After the patch, because of my level I lost free jagged horrors and staff cooldown reduction, so it’s just harder to keep minions alive. I keep switching back and forth, but at 36 I’ll probably commit to power D/Wh and wells and forget about minions.

Overall I’m not sure about the new traits system. I’m withholding judgement until I try it, but I have some concerns:

— open-world PVE for levels 10+ is presumably balanced with the assumption that characters have traits. There’ll be a noticeable power difference between a level 29 character with 19 trait points now, and a level 29 character with 0 trait points in the near future. Is there any sort of adjustment for this?

— leveling is somewhat stepped now as far as power goes, but it will be even more so in the future. A 50-point jump in stats and a new trait every 6 levels, as opposed to 10-point increases in stats each level. There might be a bigger difference between level 35 and 36 than there is between level 30 and 35. Seems like that’s going to have some odd effects.

— some trait choices while leveling are taken for quality of life: run speed in particular. That 25% run speed increase I was hoping to see at 20 will now have to wait for level 36. I know some weapons, signets etc. offer run speed boosts, but I’ve always felt that travel speed is a bit of a sore point in this game compared to some others, and that choosing one weapon over another just because it has a run speed boost is kind of galling.

— pushing sigils later in a character’s career means they’ll be less interesting and more cookie-cutter for longer, and is again a kind of a test of patience.

Once you get to know the game, it gets easier. I haven’t played for about a year, and came back and rerolled one of my characters because I was too bewildered to jump back in otherwise. But I brought a new Warrior to level 17 with a few hours’ play so far.

With a new character, I try to acquire one of each weapon type for the class and build up their skills. Then I choose my favorite, concentrate on doing dailies and clearing areas, and occasionally personal story (but usually when I’m a couple above the recommended level for that step).

Gathering and crafting along the way give some XP too. Not a ton, but it helps.

I make a point of always joining in events if I happen to be nearby. Some lower-level champions can be soloed with some kiting and cleverness, once you get used to things. Fighting through camps of stuff to get to loot chests is fun too.

Basically, my philosophy is that grinding sucks, and I’m playing to have fun, not just to increase a number that is, in the grand scheme of things, really meaningless to my life. So I just do stuff that’s fun, and GW2 is one of the better games out there for leveling while doing what comes naturally.

Option to disable character dialog for specifically triggered powers/conditions. Self and other disabled separately.

(I want to hear when I’m poisoned, adrenaline full, boons due to finishers etc. but not “For Great Justice!” every time I hit FGJ in combat. I don’t need that much confirmation every time I hit the button. The game seems wrong with dialog volume slider at 0 though.)

I was confused by this too — having not played for a little more than a year, and logging out of Lion’s Arch before any of this stuff happened. If I’d realized there was a way to LA (or VK now) from the Mists I’d have taken advantage of it all along.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I do think of Mesmers as a feminine-style profession, I guess. The butterflies and all the purple feels girly to me. I know guys that won’t touch the profession because it feels too “girly” to them. Personally, I enjoy it, but then I’m a girl. lol

I don’t know why people buy into stereotypes so much, especially where it comes to gender.

Purple is Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite color. Do people think he’s particularly feminine?

I just completed it with my 80 guardian. (Laurel amulet but all other gear green.) That cannon on the corner helped clear out the hordes and a couple of veterans first. The NPCs actually were alive this time. I knew to watch out for instant exploding death from the acolytes. The mortars from the Vigil are a lot more hepful than the zappy gizmo the Priory has. It all just sort of came together in an anticlimactic way.

Leveling 7 different characters (so far, only two are 80). Trying to decide which is my favorite.

PvE dailies, exploration, random events as I run into them, gathering, crafting etc.

So far I’ve not done any WvW, dungeons, sPvP, nor joined a guild. Haven’t done any crafting about about 275. I’m only at about 45% world completion, partly because I haven’t decided which character I want to do it with.

I didn’t like Guild Wars 1 very much. It was a pretty game for its time, but I never felt like I was really in control of things; I was leading a bunch of NPCs around that did stuff for me.

GW2 is a lot closer to exactly what I wanted in a game without even knowing it.

I found Warriors boring when I tried them; Rangers are sometimes boring as well.

But if you’re looking for a class without much skill required, those are probably the ones. Or Guardian, though death comes swiftly and totally out of left field for them when they feel like an indestructable tank the rest of the time.

What I found is if I didn’t like a class, I switched weapons and tried a different style. If your only impression of Necromancers is with an axe, or your only impression of Elementalists is with a staff, it’s going to be disappointing.

Keep in mind also that most of the classes are a lot weaker and less interesting through the first few levels than they are after they have some traits. Sometimes you’ll hit a threshhold where a class goes from “sort of fun, I guess” to awesomesauce.

I was fighting some Risen elsewhere last night and noticed that the huge damage and pile of conditions (including confusion, which is deadly if you land a big hit right afterwards) happened then too. I wonder if something changed with Plaguebearers in regards to downleveling, or it was always this way.

When I failed it with my 79 engineer, there were a bunch of allies that had kind of stopped on the docks, and a few others that died in the courtyard itself.

I had actually managed to kill everything in the courtyard except two acolytes and one veteran captain, and after several tries I still couldn’t finish off a single, isolated acolyte and the fresh hordes it spawned when I aggroed it. Probably a ranged build could have done it, but I didn’t want to retrain and regear for this one mission when I haven’t had trouble anywhere else with that build.

Norn elementalist here.

Thanks for this guide, Kai. I had been playing a condition/boon bouncy staff build, but it just felt so sloooow to take out a single target. This is so much easier. I wish I’d been using it all along instead of waiting until level 73 to switch :P