Guild Wars 2

I had been saving these for use on the high level ores/wood. Turns out, they don’t work and give me ruined ore/wood. The tools do not say what their maximum harvest level is like normal tools. Is this intentional or a bug?

The biggest problem I have with combo fields right now is their duration. By the time I realize one has been dropped, its already to late to run over to it and activate a finisher. Theres also loads of worthless combos such as the frost armor that was already mentioned. The bolt combos are also in that category since they fly off in random directions and never hit anything.

The might, retaliation, chaos armor, and blindness combos are all pretty awesome. The heal one is worthless since it only heals for like 100-200. Everything else is meh. It would be awesome if the blast finishers actually did additional damage in addition to their effects, but they don’t. As such, its not going to change the outcome of a fight in the slightest.

We won’t see em for a few more hours. If we’re really lucky though, 30 minutes from now. Anet has never given patch notes at the same time they release a patch. Theres also going to be several undocumented changes. Anet is notorious for that.

With regards to riposte, I’ll hit the button, the icon immediately goes on cooldown (Its not a lag issue at this point), but I don’t actually raise my sword and start blocking until about a second later.

kandolo.2574:

Kravick.4906:

kandolo:
What stat grouping do you have on your armor/jewelry? The armor category on the build you linked doesn’t show any so I’m not sure what stats you focus on.

Linking jewelry in the build calculator breaks the link on the forums because it adds a semicolon.

Because bursts restore energy, if you love dodging between interrupts you could forego defensive stats. I’ll probably wind up going all celestial as this build really is a jack of all trades and has a solid crit base with fury up.

It also depends on your playstyle. You really only need the 30 points in Discipline. You can also go support by swapping out the stomp with a banner (also comes with a blast finisher when summoned and on its #5) and going full tactics with banner regen. Then you’d want some healing stats. You can actually push out a lot more blasts & might with a banner than you can with stomp… but stomp is a lot more fun.

So what do you use then? Berserker’s? Knight’s?

kandolo:

What stat grouping do you have on your armor/jewelry? The armor category on the build you linked doesn’t show any so I’m not sure what stats you focus on.

@kandolo

What type of armor and gems/runes are you using for that build? That actually looks rather interesting. I’d like to give it a try.

epiphany: not all weapons are used solely for dps

So then why is the longbow the only one that does this? The mace and hammer are both CC/defensive weapons, yet both still have a respectable damage output. Not as high as the axe, sword, or GS, but they both still carry their own weight damage wise. Why can’t I expect the same out of the longbow?

Nope! The boon radius is slightly larger than the ability’s AoE.

Are you sure? It happens to me on a consistent basis. Any combo finishers I use don’t trigger unless I activate them near the center of the field. If my leap doesn’t go through or land in the center I don’t get the fire aura. If I leap stops short of the center or goes through the edge, nothing. Same for my whirl combos on Axe #2 and #5.

TLDR: So I field tested the longbow for 3 days straight using 2 different builds and I hate it. I seriously don’t get how this weapon is supposed to work. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. If so, please explain why I fail at longbow.

So I’m a huge fan of the rifle secondary. Used it exclusively up to 80. For the past 3 days I’ve been using the longbow instead to try and learn how to use it. Three full days of longbow usage… and I honestly hate it. It feels so weak.

The #1 ability is by far the worst ability in the warriors entire arsenal. The projectiles are as slow as kitten. The rifle auto attack by comparison can actually sustain itself DPS wise so you don’t feel like you have to swap out once you put all the skills on cooldown. Rifle auto attack also has synergy with both power/crit and condition builds. The longbows auto attack on the other hand is very bad damage period, so it doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything useful.

I don’t understand whats going on with the #2 ability. Since fire damage doesn’t tick over the targets head I can’t tell whats really going on with it. I know if you hit a target at pointblank range with it you’ll stack up to 6 seconds worth of burning instead of just 2 seconds, but my swords auto attack bleed stacking does way more damage than what this skill does for less effort. I also find it extremely counter intuitive for this ability to be even worth using, you have to be at pointblank range. Not saying I have a problem with pointblank range abilities on ranged weaponry, but every other pointblank range ability is also a CC of some sort and is designed to get you back into range (this goes for other classes as well). I’ll say it again. My swords auto attack does it better and requires way less effort. If I am not specced for condition damage, this ability is freaking useless and does pathetic damage.

The #3 ability is actually pretty sweet… if you can manage to successfully land it on a group of targets. The projectile moves so ridiculously slow that its really a bad idea to aim it at anything further away than 300 yards. Any further and the mobs will have most likely moved out of the way. The cooldown is also a big limiting factor of this ability so its not very effective for AOEing down a group of mobs. Honestly, axe skill #5, sword burst skill Flurry, and rifle traited for piercing does it better. The combo burst ability is another problem I have with this ability. If you time this ability with the Combustive Shot burst skill you can lay down Area Might, but only if you’re standing right in the middle of where the arrow explodes. Otherwise you get nothing. I don’t know if this is bugged or by design but for a ranged weapon, it doesn’t seem right to need to use everything at pointblank range to gain combo finisher boons.

The #4 ability is ok I guess. You can’t go wrong with a well timed AOE blind. However, this ability needs to do way more damage. Especially since the bow is supposed to be the AOE ranged weapon for warriors. Its damage is utterly pathetic and does even less damage than the #1 auto attack.

The #5 ability doesn’t make any sense. This is the AOE weapon. Why is this ability only single target? It does you absolutely no good to root one mob out of a group when the purpose of switching to this weapon was to hit that whole group of mobs with explody fire and burning doominess. If this ability was meant for you to kite the odd single target, then I hate to say it, but rifle #2 does it way, way better. Longbow’s auto attack simply does not have the sustain damage output to even bother trying to kite anything with it. Again, the damage is also a joke.

The burst skill actually kinda cool, but suffers from all the same problems as the #3 skill and the #2 skill combined. I have to say that I do like the combo field, but there is something wrong with it. Even though the field is showing this huge area, the actual field itself is only as big as the #3 skills targeting ring at the very center. So if you’re outside of the very center of the field, you won’t trigger any combo field finishers. Probably a bug I’m sure. Also, if you’re not condition specced, this ability is simply not worth using for its damage. I see it mainly as a combo field generator in this case.

Also, I feel naked without my rifle. Its kinda like those dreams where you suddenly realize your naked and there is this huge crowd of people around you, but up until this point it was a really good dream. So now you’re faced with the prospect of forcing yourself awake to save yourself the embarrassment, or stay in the dream knowing you’ll feel humiliated for the rest of the night.

These responses are honest, but without vitriol and angst. Thank you. Now I understand why there are so few engineers. Unfortunately, I’m gonna have to pass. I’ve already leveled a class to 80 thats in the same boat as you guys. I don’t care to repeat that mistake.

Level 80 warrior and level 76 necromancer. Overall 5/10

TLDR: Levels 1-60 was awesome. Most fun I’ve had in a video game yet. 60+ is absolute trash. Necromancer isn’t a class. Its random bits and pieces of code that has somehow managed to congeal itself into a single entity. This code has also become sentient. Its sole purpose for existing is to troll the ever living kitten out of anyone who plays the necromancer class in GW2.

Non-TLDR: The necromancer was my first class, but I will say my two cents on that later. For now, I’m going to focus on the gameplay. Levels 1-60 were amazing. I give this part a well deserved 10/10. I had so much fun with the event chains, heart quests, and the beautiful scenery in these zones that its seriously pains me to say what I’m about to say next.

The 60+ zones are absolutely kittened. They’re so kittened that I honestly cannot believe that the same people that made the 60+ zones were also the same people that made the 1-60 zones. Its just not possible, and I refuse to believe otherwise. The 60+ zones are completely boring and bullkitten in terms of QA. The rush job here is insanely obvious. Gone were the compelling and story driven events. Almost every event I ran into was either bugged or broken in such a way that it was impossible to complete them (many STILL are, especially in Orr). The heart quests suffered the same fate and, providing they even worked, turned into nothing but kill X mob quests. Don’t even get me started on the kittening horsekitten that is the Orrian zones. I just… I don’t wanna lose my temper so I’m just gonna stop talking about it. 60+ zones 1/10.

Now for the necromancer. What a complete disaster of a coding and balancing job. It is painfully obvious Anet had their interns code this class without any supervision what so ever. The week the necromancer was scheduled for QA must have been the week the QA team was all on vacation or something. Or maybe they all called in sick knowing ahead of time what they were in for. I am absolutely appalled how Anet could even call this collection of bugs a “class”, let alone a working class fit for a finished product. It has to be some kind of joke, and I’m almost expecting Anet to suddenly drop a huge patch saying, “We’ve finally decided to add the real necromancer class. What you’ve been playing before was actually just an elaborate troll that kinda got outta hand. Sorry about that!” Apparently the engineer is in the same boat, but I don’t have first hand experience with that class. Really, Anet needs to feel ashamed that they let this game out with a class in such bad shape, let alone two of them.

I am absolutely bored to tears on my level 80 warrior. I hate the way all of the dungeon armor looks and I have no desire to go back to Orr after seeing that broke kitten collection of zones. Thankfully WvW is still interesting for the time being.

I’m curious as to how engineers currently stack up to other classes right now. I’m currently playing a warrior. Been 80 for a few weeks, but its getting boring. While warriors do have a multitude of different builds, they’re still pretty one sided and I’m looking for something that is more involved than just pressing the same 3 buttons. However, I am curious as to why I almost never see engineers in either PVP or PVE. Its honestly the one class I know almost nothing about since they seem to be pretty rare ATM.

Mostly, I’d like to know if its worth leveling an engineer to 80. I’m not looking for a faceroll class (I already have one), but I don’t want to get to 80 and be so underwhelmed by the classes effectiveness like I was with the necromancer.

I feel this on riposte. When I activate riposte it doesn’t go off immediately and will usually take a second until I actually raise my sword. This has caused me to miss rather important attacks that must be blocked. I always chalked the delay up to lag, however. If this really is a programmed delay, it needs to be fixed.

Condition build is fine in PvE. Not so good in WvW, everyone is packing condition removal, and you won’t have the ability to stack too many bleeds anyways (i’m assuming your running a sword variant with rifle swap?)

This isn’t true at all. Yes, people have condition removal, but once they blow their removal skill those bleeds just stack right back on em. Properly traited and runed, a warrior’s auto attack is generally where most of the bleed stacks come from anyway. Besides, most of the time the condition removal skill ends up eating my cripple instead of the bleed stack.

Honestly OP, warriors are not going to ever have that sustainability you’re looking for. The only class that can survive a beating like that in a zerg is the guardian.

You can still hit them when invisible. Don’t stop swinging your weapon. Spam your auto attack button.

Step by step instructions on why you’re getting destroyed and how to fight thieves.

Its even more ridiculous on my warrior. With Signet of Earth plus the bleed on crit trait, I can maintain a stack of 14 bleeds on a target with just sword auto attack only. This doesn’t even include the 8 additional stacks I can add through impale and riposte abilities from my off hand sword. If I use flurry I can easily hit 25 stacks of bleed for a few seconds.

I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet. If I pop frenzy, I can hit those 25 stacks of bleed in about 2 seconds. I should also mention that this is all on top of critting for about 1.5k-2k each swing with my sword while stacking these bleeds. I don’t have an exotic weapon yet so these crits can probably be higher.

Edit: Oh, forgot to mention. All warriors auto attacks hit up to 3 targets at once in a cone in front of them. I can maintain those stacks of bleeds on 3 targets if necessary.

You’re better off with a thief, mesmer or necro if you’re speccing into condition damage, since these classes also do it better.

I can’t speak for thiefs or mesmers, but I can as someone who has a level 80 necromancer. The only thing necros do better is transfer conditions on a target to other targets around it. As for actually stacking bleeds? They’re terrible. My warrior can easily stack bleeds up to 10-12 with auto attack alone and keep em there with the proper rune and traits. Then I pop flurry and can hit 20 no problem. If I use frenzy at any point, 25 guaranteed stacks of bleed in 2 seconds.

The best I can hope for on a necro is 7-8 stacks with auto attack only and 12-14 stacks using abilities plus rune/traits. Now if someone else is there to help stack the bleeds? Oh god, the numbers flow like a waterfall. However, thats not something I can accomplish on my own and is the exception, not the rule.

Warriors definitely do it better on a single target than necros.

AuldWolf.7598:

stuff

/clap

No, seriously, very well written and explains it better than I could.

DusK.3849:

When GW2 was selling significantly faster than ANet anticipated, they turned off first-party digital sales, the very sales that make them the most money, so that people who had already purchased the game wouldn’t have to deal with unbearable network lag and server instability and would be able to enjoy the game.

Think about that for a while.

Which I’m sure someone at NCsoft was screaming at them over. I guarantee there is at least one exec still fuming over this decision.

Yeah, despite this games flaws, I’m still sticking with it. Even after leveling my chosen class to 76 and finding out it is barely working (looking at you necromancer) I still can’t help but love the game. I’m still in love with the necromancers mechanics, but to many abilities are outta whack for me to continue with it. Someday after they finally fix the broken I’ll go back to my first love, but for now its all about my warrior.

For a 30 point skill its pretty lackluster. TBH, when I first read the description I thought it was something that would temp buff my damage output for 20 seconds and make me immune to CC. Instead it swaps out your weapon bar with… a punch, a kick, a rock that you throw which I can only assume you pull out of yourkitten and a dumb little twirly dash thing. Oh and a crappier version of Stomp. I dunno, I was expecting a lot more from a 30 point skill on a 180 second cooldown.

I honestly feel that Signet of Rage is the only worth while elite we have. Guess thats why I see every warrior using it.

Charr don’t eat humans. At least they don’t go out of their way to do so anyway. According to one of the NPCs I over heard talking in the Black Citadel the whole charr eating humans thing was a rumor started ages ago to scare humans. Psychological warfare at its finest IMO.

Though that said, I’m sure if the charr found themselves in a situation where they were cut off from resupply the charr would have no problem eating whatever was lying around. If that happened to be dead humans then so be it. Meat is meat after all.

Don’t roll a necro until they get around to fixing them. Currently that class is… well, not working very well. Other than that, this game is pretty awesome.

I’m starting to see this too. Was just in Fireheart Rise doing the chain of events out of the Snow Ridge Camp waypoint. The first run through the chain of events ended with us failing at the final event. To many veteran mobs spawned and we got destroyed. Honestly, I was a bit surprised because usually we always win these events. We decided to wait around a bit for the chain of events to start over so we could try again. We went through the whole thing again and noticed we were getting substantially less exp, karma, and money this time around. I mean substantially less. We ended up winning the final event this time, but to our horror we ended up getting less than 400 exp for finishing it, despite the fact we had failed the first time around.

Its getting to the point where its not even worth doing events any more. I’m already seeing a problem of certain events not having enough people to complete them. Some of them you can’t even do solo no matter how skilled you are. So now there is absolutely no incentive for someone to go back and repeat an event once they’ve completed it.

Its like Anet doesn’t want us to play their game or something.

Wanted to edit my post, but the stupid forums are bugged again and won’t give me the option.

Wanted to also say that outside of instances you won’t have any real issue leveling to 80. Any class can level to 80 even if they didn’t spend any trait points. However, other classes will probably do it faster.

I love this class, so it kinda hurts to say this, but necros are meh ATM. Don’t get me wrong, I had a ton of fun playing this class, but its painfully obvious this class didn’t receive very much attention code wise past its initial conception. The trait trees are sloppy, bugged and all over the place and most utility skills either function partially or don’t work at all. In instances, your minions will get your group killed when they run off and aggro random mobs. They also won’t live past 2 or 3 hits so they’ll end up on cool down for 90% of the instance. You’re not going to be surviving any close combat boss fights (no one does actually) so dagger main hand is out of the question. You’re either going to run staff or scepter/dagger. Staff is horrible damage, but thankfully scepter/dagger does better. Its still pretty low damage when compared to other classes though.

With that said, when they iron out most of the bugs and finally give necros more viable build options (condition spec is realistically the the only viable one ATM) I will definitely come back to playing this class.

I’d rather be playing a necro than a warrior, but I don’t foresee any serious fixes until about 6 months from now. Until then, I’m having fun stomping every necro I see in WvW. I single them out actually. They’re a free kill to me in their current state. Though this might have more to do with me having intimate knowledge of how necros work.

Ahlen.7591:

Every class says that every class 3 shot mobs. I’ve seen it on every forum.

It’s just grass is greener syndrome.

I understand what you’re saying, and yes, that does happen a lot. But in this case its not hyperbole. I am not exaggerating when I say I’ve 100% → 0% regular non-veteran mobs with just Hundred Blades alone. Bunch several of these mobs up together and my warrior literally turns into a meatgrinder.

Speaking as someone who plays a necromancer, at least you guys have a working class. The necromancer is so screwed up right now its baffling to me how anyone can even call this “class” a class.

Just as an example, I picked up a Fiery Greatsword the other day that some passing by Elementalist dropped in front of me. I was completely floored as to how much more damage that thing was doing compared to my condition build (the ONLY viable build necromancers even have) that I was fully traited and geared for. I was mowing through groups of mobs like mulch in a wood chipper. To say the least, I was disappointed when the weapon ran out of charges.

Chigure.6859:

Here’s another treat

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Greatsword-s-Rush

One warrior ability is broken and a red rushes to assure that it will be fixed, while we have yet to learn whether or not necro will be seeing any work on our numerous troubles

Because the warrior is one of the most played classes. Of course they rushed to assure them fixes are underway.

Look, I’m trying my best not to be a cynical kitten here, but I’m seeing history repeat itself with this class. Every MMO that has ever released has always had a problem class. Like clockwork, the developers always manage to largely ignore that class, save for a few seemingly unjustified and heavy handed nerfs, until the first expansion. At which point they then go back and “reevaluate” the class, along with a few others. This typically results in overtuning the problem class into a monstrosity, and for about a month the class is now viewed as an unstoppable killing machine. Then the devs drop a massive nerf hammer knocking the class back down to mediocrity status while retaining a few key abilities that make the class at least have some kind of effective role in group situations. Of course this results in a net buff for the entire class over all, but that class never rises to any kind of meaningful popularity.

And then you have necromancers, whos abilities are either bugged and flat out don’t work, work in a manner that is different from what the tooltip says, or the information on the tooltip is incorrect.

Anyone who has ever played vanilla WoW will understand what this means. For those that haven’t, watch this very short video first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX1dPTAQ5_U

Let me start by saying that I have a level 76 necromancer. I haven’t quite hit 80 on the necromancer yet, but by the time I hit level 10 I knew there was just something off about this class. The entire time while I was leveling I’d look around me and see other classes 3 shotting mobs while I always had to work extra hard for my kills. Last weekend I was turned down for a CoF story mode group on the basis that necromancers are a broken class and I’d just slow them down if they took me. I was honestly surprised beyond belief when I was told this. Last weekend Anet didn’t have these forums up so I couldn’t really confirm or deny if what he was saying had any merit or if he was just talking out of hiskitten A guild mate last night told me that Anet finally opened up class forums here. I’ve just spent the last hour reading various threads here. Especially these gems.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-bugs-compilation

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Plague-Signet-is-bugged/first#post82625

So basically, that guy who denied me the CoF group last weekend wasn’t talking out of hiskittenafter all. Based on this list of bugs alone he was perfectly valid in denying me a spot in his group. I can’t see why anyone would want to take along a class this undeniably broken with them to dungeons. This whole time I’ve been using Plague Signet in dungeons thinking I was actually helping my group, when in reality all I’ve been doing is hurting myself. I had no idea my damage was so lackluster in comparison to other classes (more on that below). Don’t even get me started on minions.

I decided to do a little bit of research on my own. A side project of sorts. For the last 4 days I’ve been leveling a warrior. I got to level 55 today. I am sad to report that the difference is like night and day. Unfortunately, the warrior is extremely one sided and boils down to equip greatsword, press 2, win. EXCEPT WARRIORS DO IT SO WELL! Whole groups of mobs mowed down in seconds with Hundred Blades alone. If anything happens to survive I just hit Bladetrail and finish them off in one move.

Necromancers sadly remind me of warlocks from vanilla WoW. It was my first class in that game as well. I seem to be cursed to always pick the broken class at the launch of any game. Generally the warlock in WoW was regarded as a free kill in PVP and the worst of the worst when it came to running instances/raids. The ONLY reason anyone took a warlock for raiding was because of their soulstone res ability and curse of elements. Most guilds I knew only ever took 1 warlock with them. The term “X got warlocked” was often used on Blizzards forums to refer to when a class ability was nerfed.

Of course Blizzard eventually fixed warlocks and, for a time, they became unstoppable killing machines themselves, but that was a year and a half after the fact. These changes only came when Blizzard revamped all class abilities and talents across the board for the Burning Crusade expansion. I don’t want to go through that again. Problems like these aren’t going to go away any time soon. Its going to take time to rebalance and fix this many issues. Lots of time. Time I don’t feel like wasting on. I’m not going to wait around for several months to a year hoping and waiting for the developers to finally decide how they’re going to fix whats obviously broken this time around. I know that Anet isn’t Blizzard. Actually, no, thats not entirely true. A lot of the Anet talent splintered from Blizzard just before WoW released and probably worked on vanilla WoW.

I’m not even so sure I want to even continue playing any more at this point, though. Warriors are just too mind numbingly easy to play for me to make that class my main. I mean I really really love the feel and concepts of the necromancer class (or at least how its supposed to work anyway). I really really want to continue playing the necromancer, but I refuse to play another handicapped class again. It was way to frustrating and the aggravation was not worth it. I want to love the necromancer, but in their current state, necromancers are beyond pathetic.

I’d like to say that Anet has made a great game here, but there are some serious problems with Necromancers. Not just glaring issues. I’m talking oozing puss filled gangrene infected wounds that need serious medical attention kind of problems.

wakko.5248:

I’d rather have big expansions like nightfall and factions

I have to agree with this.

Anet tried the mini pack thing once in GW1. It was basically just a series of mini missions for weapon skins. None of the skins were very good though. In fact I never saw anyone use them. I don’t think it was a very popular idea. Back when I was playing GW1, I asked several of my guild mates and even asked random people about those mini missions and if it was worth paying the $10 to unlock them, and almost everyone said it wasn’t worth buying it. Of course, only Anet really knows the numbers there.

Sandrunner.2853:

And this, my friends, is what nostalgia does to people

No, not even. I was playing Diablo 2 right before the Diablo 3 launch. This definitely isn’t a case of fondly remembering an old game. I was playing Diablo 2 very recently. Like I said, with the exception of graphics, Diablo 2 is the better game.

marianitten.1247:

average game? Best dungeon crawler today…
Users give a lot of zeros because they were lied to about what was in the game.. give me an example please. Diablo 3 is Diablo 2 with today technology. What did you expect? Call Of Duty 5?

Are you kidding me? I have no idea how anyone can say this with a straight face or not be some paid corporate shill posting PR non-sense.

Diablo 3 is NOTHING like Diablo 2. Diablo 2 was the superior game with the sole exception to graphics. Diablo 3 had so many missing features from the previous games that it shames the series to even be called Diablo 3. No randomized maps, itemization prefixes and suffixes are terrible, the crafting system was a joke, uniques are worse than even some standard blue drops, and to make matters worse they gutted the Horadric cube and enchanter from the game during beta (totally willing to bet money they bring em both back in an expansion as a “new feature”). The game had zero replay value when compared to its predecessors.

All of this is pales in comparison to what J. Wilson did to Deckard Cain though. It wasn’t the fact that he killed off one of the games most iconic figures. Bad things happen to good people all the time and even frail old men are not spared the demons wrath, but to kill him off so unceremoniously like that without an epic cinematic to herald the event is an insult. Instead we get some dumb “dream vision” thing where Leah falls asleep and dreams about Azmodan invading a fortress. I don’t even… How they handled Deckard Cain’s death was just bad. It was literally, “Oh no its Magdah! BLARG, I’m dead! Oh wait, here let me fix this sword real quick. Ok, now I’m dead for real this time.” The writing and the voice acting were just terrible. God, the voice acting especially was NOT up to par for such a high budget production. They had no excuse for that failing.

The lack of an offline mode, coupled with the obvious herding of players to the AH, also shows their true motivations.