Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Epidemic only spreads remaining condition duration, it won’t ever increase it.

Thanks! I wasn’t sure, since it does use my Condi Damage. Anyway, it’s a pretty fun use of the skill.

CHIPS.6018:

Let me just say that when me and my zerg get to 600 range, and then I start using a 2 second cast time skill on a specific target:

Yes I often get interrupted or CC’ed, usually from random AoE. Not all the time of course.
Yes people do dodge away from our zerg. Not all the time of course.
Yes lag and culling is a huge issue. Not all the time of course.
Yes the immobilized is often gone before epidemic finishes, due to skill lag and condition cleansing. Not all the time of course.

I am not saying it never works. It did work for me here and there. But it is the lack of reliability that’s the biggest problem with it.

I group with an Engineer most of the time, and if they can get their double-tap immobilize to land (Net Shot and Net Turret toolbelt) it’s like 5 seconds of Immobilize that is awesome for Epidemic. IIRC Epidemic works on my stats and not the Engineer’s so my Condi Duration brings that 5 seconds (not accounting for lag) up to around 7-8ish AoE. Haven’t tested it, but it seems to work because that Immob lasts a while.

It helps that we play in the same room and can just talk to each other to set stuff like that up.

Empiren.6401:

PinCushion.7390:

Rennoko.5731:

The question of the day might be, shouldn’t you be able to destroy them more convincinly with such a higher skill level?

His build is designed to mitigate as much damage as possible and wear his opponent out over time. So, no, he shouldn’t be able to destroy people more convincingly. He’s dominating people by severely reducing their damage output and winning the cooldown war. I found it entertaining to watch, and wasn’t surprised that those guys didn’t really know how to fight back. He’s playing in a rather unusual way. Most people just try to outburst the other guy rather than outlive him.

Very cool vid.

Uh….he’s actually a burst build.

So yeah, he should. Considering he’s just going there and unloading its not a cooldown war or war of attrittion by any means.

He is trying to outburst them actually, axe, dagger, and lich? Yeah thats necro burst.
——————————————

But hey its WvW, its not like its really a talent show. cough talentless cough

Was looking at his other utilities, really. Walk, Wall, and Well of Darkness. It’s all based on mitigation. I just assumed his build was based around it. I’d think BiP or the other wells would work better for bursting.

Rennoko.5731:

The question of the day might be, shouldn’t you be able to destroy them more convincinly with such a higher skill level?

His build is designed to mitigate as much damage as possible and wear his opponent out over time. So, no, he shouldn’t be able to destroy people more convincingly. He’s dominating people by severely reducing their damage output and winning the cooldown war. I found it entertaining to watch, and wasn’t surprised that those guys didn’t really know how to fight back. He’s playing in a rather unusual way. Most people just try to outburst the other guy rather than outlive him.

Very cool vid.

I think the biggest problem here is that, no matter what some ANet Dev said in some poorly worded forum post, our class isn’t supposed to be hard to run away from. Our class is evidently designed to be one people are supposed to run away from. It’s designed to get stronger the longer a fight drags on.

Chills delay our opponents cooldowns. Poison makes their heals less efficient. Vulnerability gradually builds up, causing allies to do more and more damage. Weakness takes its toll, reducing their damage output and ability to dodge. Their conditions make us heal more, or get transferred back to them. Fear interrupts key abilities at (hopefully) critical moments, which puts them further behind the curve. Death Shroud allows us to soak burst damage, and puts them even further behind the curve. Even the simple act of fighting and killing things gives us more fake hitpoints to waste our opponents attacks.

Our class is designed around keeping our opponents behind the curve so we gradually make their victory more and more unlikely. We aren’t supposed to keep people from running away. We’re supposed to make them want to.

The primary issue I see with this is the same issue most “nudge” classes in most MMOs have. If your core function is to nudge the odds in your favor over time, what use are you in fights that last 5 seconds. In other words, we aren’t going to be good at ganking/roaming no matter what. We excel in pitched battles, where both sides are committed to fight to the death, and where running away means losing something of value. Like many have said already, balanced for sPvP node fighting and not roaming around in WvW.

As for what’s to be done, I can’t say. Currently the primary problems are that encounters are too easy and fast in most PvE for “attrition” to matter, too chaotic and mobile in WvW for it to be effective, and too contrived and controlled in sPvP to allow many changes to the other two areas.

I use staff all the time without Greater Marks. It’s ok. It isn’t fantastic, but it’s ok.

I do this because I don’t usually like taking “Quality of Life” traits. I don’t like Blasting Staff for the same reason. It makes my nukes appear larger, without making them any better. It’s still got a 5 person cap. It still does the same damage and has the same range. Sure, the unblockable feature is nice but I don’t think it’s worth 10 trait points.

In sPvP this might be different, because with the trait the marks cover an entire node. But, I don’t do sPvP.

QOL Traits make me mad. They might as well add traits to give you 1 extra inventory slot or turn your spell effects blue.

OMG my eyes!

Please go back and edit this post to make it readable. I’m sure you have some valid points somewhere, and I’d love to read them. All I see is a giant column of text where every paragraph starts with the same bad joke.

Bhawb.7408:

Tiborb.1453:

…

Then play a roaming class. You are obviously looking for a roamer build, which is something that necromancers are not, at the moment. You are looking for a thief or elementalist.

He’s got ya there. In sPvP a class reroll is about 5 minutes away.

I keep P/V/T gear in my bags specifically for bad pick-up groups in dungeons. I usually run a heavy crit conditions build, but once I figure out that nobody in the group knows what they’re doing (usually the first boss, when they immediately die) I swap a few traits and some gearing around and I’m instantly a tanky power build! Because I might not be able to solo a boss completely, but I can solo a few of them down the last 10-15% if I play my cards right. And the extra Vit/Toughness really helps in rallying people (over and over and over again). Also, Signet of Undeath, Well of Darkness, and Plague Form come in handy in failure groups. I swap the last one out between Plague Signet (terrible, but it sometimes works) and Well of Power. The one truism about bad groups is nobody ever has cleanses on the bar, and nobody talks about it beforehand.

My normal gear is a mix of Rampagers and Rabid, and my traits are spread between Spite/Curses/Reaping. I try to use dodge, blind, cripple, and death shroud as a replacement for tanking stats. This only works if my group isn’t terrible.

Aank.4837:

DeWolfe.2174:

This game has grind because there is only one real method of getting what you want, by killing.

I did try to ask mobs politely for exotics but they just made funny noises and tried to hit me.

I was pretty floored by this comment. The only method of getting what you want is by killing things? Seriously?

You can get a Legendary weapon by sitting in town and playing the Trading Post all day.

You can get to level 80 by crafting stuff, and if you know how to buy/sell mats intelligently you can actually make a decent (if sometimes slow) profit. Not to mention that gathering materials doesn’t need to involve any combat at all.

Most of the POIs and Vistas can be gotten through avoiding combat. Many of the renown hearts can be achieved through non-combat methods.

There are even loads of DEs that involve just running around and picking stuff up off the ground.

Heck, you can even participate in WvW as an active scout, be invaluable to your server, and never once strike another toon.

GW2 is the first MMO I’ve ever played where it’s realistic to play a fully pacifist character and still be able to participate in a surprising portion of the content.

As for grind….this game has no grind. None of the difficult to get stuff is required, max stat gear is easily attainable. Farming stuff for a Legendary is the most “grind” that this game offers, and even that is doable in a few months if you absolutely must have the pretty weapon skin.

I fail to see how this would be a nerf to anything. If the dungeon path is too easy, then it should be made more difficult. If you can currently skip over a third of the dungeon, then it should be altered so you can’t. Sure, people have slowly turned this dungeon into a way to farm easy money but that isn’t ANet’s problem. ANet’s problem is designing a game world where activities are enjoyable in and of themselves, and not delegated to “Easy Grind” status. They should find the current trend to farm that dungeon path as a sign that they need to revisit the design of it and fix the problem.

And if they were to ask me if I minded, the answer would be a resounding “No!” I avoid any activity that stinks of exploiting design mistakes. Poor environmental design does bad things to people. It brings out the worst in us. It makes us judgemental, selfish, and narrow minded. When there is a “best” way to do anything, suddenly we have a measuring stick by which we can judge other people. Even if that measuring stick is “How fast can you run CoFp1,” which is remarkably silly, it taints everything around it.

And suddenly, other design decisions (e.g. how much new stuff should cost) is influenced by average player income. And average player income is, of course, influenced by CoF p1. Just fix it and get on with the rest of the game. There’s plenty of ways to make money. We don’t really need this one.

Rennoko.5731:

Also everyone needs to wait and see what happens next culling patch fix. Supposed that extra 2 seconds of stealth thieves were getting is going away, which should make those shenanigans less possible now. Also some revealed mechanic change happened, but who knows what that is going to REALLY mean. Chain stealth being impossible now would be nice.

Also I solo camps all the time, even upgraded ones…. that isn’t something the necro can’t do… we have an easier time than most doing it. Of course if they are defending the camp I cant do a 1v 2+8 NPCs.

In transit from objective to objective is where I tend to have issues with these thieves in general. You can either chase them, fail to kill them, and waste time.. or let them pick people off the back of your group (the uplevels). Yes you can ignore them, yes you can go to the objective and that 1 or 2 thieves can’t stop you… but they are dropping 3 or 4 times their number of players easily with no risk.

Wait and see next patch….. maybe it will be more balanced then.

Personally, I can’t wait to read the forum tears of rage when baddie thieves can no longer abuse culling to hit people that can’t hit back.

I don’t even care if they still own newbies just like before. I’ve scaled my WvW back quite a bit because I find getting pummeled by someone I can’t see or target too frustrating to bother with.

Kravick.4906:

Who solo caps camps?

Elementalists apparently

Kravick.4906:

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb got a good point that if the necro forced the enemy to run away from an objective, the necro won

Only to come back 10 seconds later after they’ve reset their HP bar. Remember that other classes have their abilities on much shorter cool downs. I do this to necromancers all the time on my thief. They’re an extremely easy class to beat down.

I’ve noticed, having dealt with various styles of Thief. The fights are always the same. They jump out, do their special combo, fight for a bit until they figure out that I’m not instantly dying, then run off.

Then they come back 10 seconds later and try again.

The most amusing one was the bleed Thief that kept tossing his bleeds on me and stealthing while they worked their magic. I wonder how long before he figured out that I was just eating them or throwing them back at him w/ Dagger 4/Staff4.

It didn’t matter, really. I cleansed/transferred all his garbage. He cleansed all my garbage. I stayed above half health for a few minutes. So did he. Then he decided he didn’t want to play anymore and left.

And there was nothing I could have done about it.

Bhawb.7408:

Tiborb.1453:

At the moment attrition based opponents are like an encounter you can just skip in a dungeon! :P

This is absolutely true, only in WvW, and only when you are roaming. In PvE mobs don’t skip you. If you are trying to defend a supply camp and are getting wailed on by a necro, “skipping the encounter” means you lose the supply camp, which is a win for the necro. If you are defending a tower or a keep, you can’t just skip the encounter and let them take your keep. In PvP you can’t just decide you don’t need to hold that point anymore and run away because a necro can’t hold you down.

That is the one thing keeping mobility from completely destroying this game; objectives. If this were TDM, then yes, mobility would be far and above better than everything else because you couldn’t get locked down to die, and you could catch up with anyone trying to run away. But this isn’t TDM, almost all PvP in this game (besides running around killing things in WvW) is objective based. If you run away from the objective, you lose, period.

It seems like this is only true if you’re the one with reinforcements on the way. If your opponent has reinforcements on the way, then you’d want to finish the fight quickly and move on.

Kravick.4906:

Yep, pretty much.

The point that needs to be reiterated is that while necros can blind/weakness/poison/vulnerability spam, there is another class that can do exactly the same thing but without giving up large amounts of damage while doing it. Any condition a necro wants to apply continuously requires the necromancer to drop all damage output in order to maintain it. Other classes don’t have that problem and will continue to stack up the damage, or provide some other utility along side of whatever condition they’re stacking.

Its all about efficiency in PVE. Thats what its always about.

Well, that’s a bummer.

Necro always plays like it’s been overbalanced, tbh. My other toons have lots of abilities that do multiple things, and traits that can combine in interesting ways to make even more new abilities. RTL on Elementalists is used to attack, escape, chase, or just cut down on travel time. Auras are used to do whatever it is they do, or proc other traits like Zephyr’s Boon, or share with other people. Engineers have loads of weird combos like that, whether they’re combining toolkits with weapon swap sigils, turrets with combo fields, or just interesting traits (When you get Swiftness you also get Vigor.)

Necros seem very much a WYSIWYG class. Beyond Corruption skills giving you conditions that you can then eat for more healing….there doesn’t seem to be a lot under the hood to work with.

Kravick.4906:

Talentless.5708:

This is not an kitten contest. Play a necro right and you will be fine. Even talentless noobs can play this class and make walmart special videos from just an hour or two WvW this afternoon:

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to prove linking this. These are very poor examples of good PVP. This was nothing but a montage of you 2v1ing people and killing up levels.

Meanwhile…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XubClqLgJnY

That entire video, all I could think was, “Wow, Stealth is so OP (in WvW).”

The only way that type of gameplay is possible is with stealth or extreme mobility. Occasionally I’ll get lucky and stumble upon 2 or 3 people in WvW that are just terrible players, obviously up-leveled, getting attacked by a bunch of mobs, or otherwise at a large disadvantage and stomp them. But it’s nowhere reliable enough where I could hunt those kind of fights. And definitely not reliable enough where I could make a series of videos based on those fights.

And honestly, it’s fairly obvious why this is the case. There is no defensive setup that equals the amount of damage mitigation you’ll get from stealthing or teleporting away from 4-5 players wailing on you.

So, what I’m reading here is that because PvE is generally very easy debuffs aren’t needed. But, since PvE is generally very easy, buffs to damage are desired because they make easy PvE content go by much faster (e.g. Might stacking, Vuln stacking, etc).

The current quadwarrior/timewarp fad for CoF1 is just a comical exaggeration of general PvE, where Necros aren’t very good at anything anyone really needs.

Does that about sum it up?

Is there no value in dungeon running in AoE Weakness, Chill, and Cripple; or easy boon-stripping access; or easy Vulnerability stacking?

I haven’t done a lot of dungeons on my Necro, and am still deciding on my build. It seems we have a lot more to offer than AoE Blind and bleed/poison spamming.

In my experience DEs will get you the fastest xp provided they are around 4-5 levels higher than you. You can use your 80 to run your gf through events quickly, and then it becomes about knowing where they spawn and which zone to move to next.

The largest frustration I have with Turrets, that I also have with Necro minions, is delay.

Let’s take the Thumper turret. It’s got a knockback ability on it, which is awesome. It’s great for interrupting big damage or getting melee off of you….

Or it would be. The problem is when I press the button to have the turret knockback I need that knockback RIGHT NOW! I don’t need it in 3 seconds after the pretty spark/smoke effect, after the turret finishes its current attack, and after I’ve eaten half of some melee’s burst combo (and the turret’s probably dead anyway). I need it now.

Necro’s Shadow Fiend have the same problem. I see a warrior charging up his killshot, I click the fiend’s blind skill, the fiend finishes its current attack, does a weird animation, teleports, then (maybe) blinds. At this point I’ve already eaten the killshot and either need to heal or am dead.

Give me my skill use instantly please. Turret health is something I can work with using range and placement. Damage is so-so, but not a huge deal. Delay severely limits turret utility and should really be fixed, considering I can’t move them and can barely control what they attack anyway.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

play necro and tell me what you think of the boon stripping skill

It’s amazingly awesome. I sometimes run a Boon Hate build on my necro. Corrupt Boon, Well of Corruption, OH Focus for Spinal Shivers, trait that boon-strips at 25% life. Guardians melt like hot butter, and some Warrior builds just fold. Elementalists don’t do too bad because they can just cleanse all the conditions off or RTL out of danger. It definitely puts boon dependent builds on the defensive in a hurry.

Corrupt Boon will ruin people’s day. It’s the only utility I try to make room for in every build when I’m in WvW. PvE it’s pretty bad.

InfamousBrad.5879:

The subject of boon stacking came up in one other regard: their explanation for why thief spike damage is so high is that they were specifically worried that, since they were striking from stealth, they wouldn’t be able to use a boon stripping ability first, so they needed to be able to hit through any plausible combination of boons. They admitted that this made them too powerful against other builds, and said that they can’t do anything about that unless they decide to nerf boons across the board, which they said they’re considering, but only very cautiously if at all. That part really would hit elixir engineers, but no harder than it would hit several other classes.

thief spike damage is so high … to be able to hit through any plausible combination of boons…(and ANet) can’t do anything about that.

Seriously?

I don’t even….

BobbyStein.2315:

Raine.1394:

The key to understanding the understanding issue is in their recent blog on the Living Story. What they have given us so far are ‘teasers’, not actual content. There is also a reference to developers rolling off other projects now available to expand upon the story. The monthly events had to happen as they are a key value proposition for Anet. So, absent the ability to provide actual content, they occurred as ‘teasers’. I would expect the content to be fleshed out more properly over time and this should make the story more understandable. TLDR: You haven’t been able to get it because there has been nothing to get.

Correct.

Wow. Now I feel kind of dumb for complaining.

Baladir.2736:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Elementalist has light armor and lowest base health in game. We need to go full on on healing power if we want to last as long as the other classes do. Neither do we have stealth, death-shroud or lots of aegis boon procs.

No, but we have procs for vigor, (100% endurance regen) which can be up at all times giving us nearly bottomless dodges. Dodge is the best defensive move in the game. Our dodge also procs all kinds of effects in addition that are both offensive and defensive.

This guy’s right.

Perma Vigor, loads of weapon swaps for a sigil of energy, traits to buff endurance on top of that. Yeah, we can dodge all day long. In addition, our stun breaks are actually useful beyond being stun breaks. Compare Mist Form to Engineer Goggles. That’s not even counting our weapon skills, all of which have either a teleport, invuln, or a heal.

Elementalists have loads of damage avoidance and healing. What we don’t have a is a high hitpoint pool or armor value.

And getting a few seconds of Protection and a nice burst heal every 10 seconds isn’t that shabby, even compared to Aegis or Deathshroud.

People look at the prices of precursors and assume that it’s all based on rarity. It isn’t. Think about what’s going to happen to them over the next 6 months to a year as the people that care about getting a Legendary weapon either get one, stop caring, or quit the game. The prices of Precursors are 100% demand based. Don’t buy one when everyone else is buying them.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Thanks for the replies.

I’m having fun, but I also feel like I’m wasting a lot of time and resources making builds without ryhme or reason.

Because I don’t really understand every aspect of how the different parts work together, I’ve really just created a mish mash armor base on whatever I can build/salvage/afford. It seems to be working for me (except in dungeons), in PvE for the most part, but I still feel like I’m doing something wrong…or if not wrong, just ignorantly.

I’ll take a look at your links and see if I can make some sense of it. Do you guys know of any sites that have pre made builds outlined? It might be easier for me if I can see a build or two that work really well, and then reverse engineer it to understand why.

What I did to save money when I was still testing things out on my Elementalist was to buy/craft Masterwork (green) or Rare (yellow) armor and weapons for the build and try it out for a few days while I made a few minor tweaks. Also, I’ll often go to the Mists PVP Lobby and change things around to try out new combos or test damage output for different traits/runes/sigils/whatever. Respeccing and Regearing are all free in the lobby, and fighting the golems and test NPCs there will give you an idea of how well your build will work in actual gameplay.

Gear can be made in several varieties, and each type has different kinds of stats.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

These items can then be further upgraded by adding a Rune or Orb. Orbs have the same kind of stat grouping that gear does, but Runes add various other abilities depending on how many of that kind of Rune you have equipped at once.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune

The stats from your gear, the stats/effects from upgrades, and the stats/effects from your traits combine with your chosen weapon and utility skills to form your “Build.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute

There’s a basic breakdown of what each stat does, and why you’d want it. As for your “Build,” it can be as complex or simple as you like. Builds with interesting little tricks baked into them because of how their effects combine have what’s called “Synergy.”

For example, Engineers can equip the Medkit whenever they want and it counts as a “Heal Skill.” Superior Rune of the Adventurer has an effect, when you have 6 of them equipped, that reads, "When you use a healing skill you gain 50% endurance. (Cooldown: 10s). Combine these together and you can easily get 50% endurance every 10 seconds. If you want more, then equip a Superior Sigil of Energy. This grants you more endurance when you weapon swap, and swapping to a toolkit (including Medkit) counts. If you need still more dodges, there’s a trait in Alchemy that grants you Vigor whenever you get Swiftness, and another trait in Tools (?) that grants you swiftness whenever you equip a toolkit. Add it all up and you get all your endurance back every 9-10 seconds, plus swiftness, plus vigor all from pressing 6 twice.

That’s not “the best” example of build synergy, but it’s only an example of what you’re looking for. There’s nothing bad about making a straightforward build that just hits things and heals, but half the fun of designing a build is finding the little hidden treasures inside the different stat combinations.

For the above Engineer build, since we’re focusing on maximum dodge power, we might design armor that is high in offensive stats (such as Berserker’s) and trust that we can dodge anything that comes at us. If we wanted to be extra durable, we could aim for Knights and depend on the Toughness to help take a few extra hits. If we wanted to use pistols, we might go for something like Rampager’s or Carrion for the condition damage since pistols put out loads of conditions. It’s really up to you, though. It’s your toon, so build it how you want.

If you’re not having fun then you’re doing it wrong.

Natedogg.9254:

Honestly, I love my elementalist. I always have a blast playing it. I find success to be very rewarding, because when I beat someone I know I earned it. My biggest problem is that anet’s written intention for the class doesn’t even come close to actual game play. They say in the description of the class, right here on this very website, that elementalists are supposed to make up for their low defense by dealing massive damage.

At least change the description, guys! It should probably read something like “very skilled players can eek out small edges over baddies over long drawn out fights.”

I think that description was written before the community figured out how bad Power/Condi hybrids really were. In a magical land where hybrid builds output more total damage than crit builds their description fits.

It’s the only thing I can figure out, really. I truly believe they had no clue how huge a difference base-weapon damage + crit damage would really be.

I’ve been waiting for someone to do a decent comparison, so we’d know how long a battle would have to go on before Condi builds caught up to Crit, and how hybrids would fare on that scale. I don’t think there will be such a thing, because the answer is most likely “Never.” In my experience, Condi builds never catch up to crit builds even in cases where the bleed cap is never reached and cleansing never occurs.

@OP

Imagine how easy it’d be for your Warrior buddies to land their 100b with all that immobilize you’re running. Imagine how hard it is for enemy Warriors to land their 100b with you knocking them on their bottoms every 3 seconds.

And, btw, I might just steal your build for WvW grouping. Everyone brings DPS. Nobody ever thinks about Control until some Ele just leaves a fight instead of getting stunned, chilled, knocked down, crippled, and immobilized over and over.

Dredge and Flaming Legion are invading Diessa and Wayfarer through portals. Innocent folk ran to the safety of Lion’s Arch, but many died while fleeing the carnage (so we have to go get their dog tags to deliver to their families). Some who made it to LA lost some important heirlooms, so we have to root around in the countryside and find them.

This is a pretty dull exposition, honestly. But, what do I know? I’m just a gamer, and writing is hard.

Pustulio.8207:

PinCushion.7390:

If you want to see a cosmetic cash shop done right, look at Aion. Since they went FTP they have been deluging players with clothes, vanity pets, housing furniture, and various sparklies.

The game play is still pretty bad, and no contest to GW2. But ANet could learn a few things on how to get players to happily max out their credit cards for meaningless digital shinies.

I wanted to play “Aion” again. It was pretty fun…kinda. The problem was that NCsoft didn’t bother to finish the job on the “3.0” release. The files were incomplete, and they didn’t bother to respond to the people that pointed it out.That’s a korean company for you, though. It’s sad that “A-net” is associated with them

I thought it was a fun game for a while, but even with all the recent grind-reducing updates it’s still too much grind for me. In terms of game play GW2 has Aion beat handily, but Aion’s cash shop is incredibly well designed. And I don’t mean just in terms of customer experience. I mean in terms of making customers LIKE blowing money on useless pixels!

They’ve got the regular shop for people that just want to buy stuff quickly. They’ve got the Cube, so you can try to min-max for the best value of stuff you squeeze into it. They’ve got the Wheel of Fortune (or something) so you can get your gambler fix on. It’s full of little temp buff scrolls, temporary and permanent mounts, temporary furniture, temporary and permanent pets, and some neat weapon/wing skins. It’s honestly kinda fun to just shop, and they really know their market.

They run sales and promos pretty often that ramp up the urgency so you spend faster. They run custom promos, such as “All Asmodians get 50% off select items, because you guys are outnumbered in WvW.” They have certain pretty items and clothes run for a limited time only, so if you don’t buy it when it’s up then you can’t ever get it again. They have loads of stuff you can sell on the in-game TP for instant in-game cash. And, because of that, there’s very little Pay2Win in it. And they also hand out freebie items quarterly just to educate everyone on how to use the cash shop in the first place.

Seriously, the Aion Cash Shop is a work of absolute marketing genius. I wish I had invented it. They found a way to make truckloads of money and make us enjoy giving it to them! Props to NC Soft. Please send ANet a memo.

P.S. I’m so glad I don’t play Aion anymore, and so is my wallet. I kinda hope nobody at ANet reads this….but I kinda hope they do.

If you want to see a cosmetic cash shop done right, look at Aion. Since they went FTP they have been deluging players with clothes, vanity pets, housing furniture, and various sparklies.

The game play is still pretty bad, and no contest to GW2. But ANet could learn a few things on how to get players to happily max out their credit cards for meaningless digital shinies.

Read the thread. Watched the video. Most of the “best wvw combat heals” came from running perma-regen in a siege.

Color me unimpressed. War healing is ok, but it’s somewhat silly to sacrifice an entire build simply to get more green numbers.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Well, I also think that it makes zero sense how they made a caster
classes most effective and well rounded spec a melee build(d/d).

I don’t find D/D to be terribly well-rounded. I think the popularity of the weapon set is a combination of how much survival you can squeeze into it combined with how trivial it is for most high-damage melee classes to close range, CC you, and spike you to death.

Xanes.2641:

I feel like the complaints are more about HOW the Ele “has” to be played, as opposed to how good the class is.

Many people expected a heavy damage Glass Cannon from the Elementalist, and you just cant do that imo. You can do some nice burst, but as far as consistent damage goes i feel like its the weakest class in the game.#

On the other hand the bunker build is just borderline OP and the most durable class in the game, with great mobility/CC and decent damage/support. Its just not what people want/expect when choosing a mage profession.

This is exactly it. Our damage application is very clunky, and in order to get optimal damage we have to know how all our traits and skills fit together AND play our keyboard like Rachmaninoff.

I find it interesting and enjoy the feel of it, but I can understand how people might be put off by having to jump through all those hoops to get damage that any random zerk Warrior can beat by pressing #2.

Video just makes me want to roll a Thief. There were multiple times that first match where you got spiked from full to nearly dead in a second.

Otherwise it’s a cool vid. I never thought to actually use Fire Aura to apply burning to things by getting hit on purpose (though I guess that is the intended use).

Over 6 months into the game and we’re still having this same complaint?

Elementalist damage is fine. You do decent sustained and decent spike. The primary problem with the class is it’s difficult to play well, especially in PvP. The damage is all based on stacking effects and trait bonuses together, and utilizing CC so that your delayed cast skills actually connect when you want them to. In PvP that is very challenging, especially if your opponent knows what you’re up to. To be honest, that is really my only complaint with the class. It isn’t that our damage isn’t there, but that Thieves and Warriors can apply their damage far more easily.

I don’t, however, think that should be changed very much. It’s part of what keeps the class interesting for me, and why I find other classes (besides Engineer, which has similar challenges) boring.

I find Cleric’s helps a ton when I’m facing people that don’t burst insanely high (e.g. Guardians). When I’m against someone with tons of burst, then my low health pool just can’t hold long enough for the healing to matter (e.g. Thief/Warrior).

Also, culling and missing someone’s opener has a huge effect on this. It’s hard to come off the defensive if I’ve completely missed dodging Bola, Bull’s Charge, and half of 100b because the Warrior hadn’t been drawn yet.

Edge.4180:

Lynne.8416:

I’m sorry OP, but I have to disagree with you. Anet allows you to play the game your way. IF you choose to PvE via the hearts plus follow all of the chain events. Then you can be in “awe” when monsters like the shatterer appears.
But there are those that choose to level their characters via WvW or Dungeons then try to get additioanl “loot” by farming each “chest spawning” monster.
The problem with your suggestion is that now you are depriving PvE only people their ability to receive decent drops.

It is impossible to be “in awe” when monsters like the Shatterer appear when the sheer number of players present combined with the game’s inability to handle them results in a completely lackluster experience.

So, where is your pity for the players who are being deprived an epic experience?

As others have helpfully suggested, for those players that are only attending for the loot.. there are other ways to get loot out to them. And I guarantee you that is going to be an easier route than providing a whole new set of “epic experience only” content for players who are just after fun gameplay.

In other words, it’s easier to move the gimme-gimme-loot crowd somewhere else than it is to recreate a set of additional epic world-boss content for adventure-loving players. Frankly, the former bunch would be satisfied with just visiting a rare-drop vending machine. Less demand on the server, too.

If you want an epic experience without huge zergs of people then I think dungeons and fractals were designed specifically for you. World events seem to have been designed for people with no gamer friends that still want epic-looking stuff to appear on the screen.

I can log on after work and within 10 minutes be in a siege in WvW, or be in a hotjoin sPvP match. I can, with difficulty, be in a dungeon group or fractals group. I can easily be making incremental progress on any number of PvE goals, or be halfway done with my daily (if I care).

Other MMOs I’ve played take hours of prep time before you can even start to play. My other MMO is EVE Online. It’s a great game, but it takes loads of logistics just to be able to get started. You have to have the proper ships in station beforehand, you have to have already skilled into the proper ships and weapons that your guild (ok, “corp”) uses, you have to know what time the fleet will form up and be there on time so you can wait 30 minutes for everyone who’s late. I enjoy both MMOs, but EVE is my “when I have loads of spare time” MMO. GW2 is my “when I have an hour before bed” MMO. I find EVE to be a more typical MMO experience in terms of time-investment. GW2 is far easier on time investment and therefore MUCH more casual-friendly.

Grim.9274:

Alloy.2839:

In my opinion GW2 is going to be successful long term by not following the traditional MMO rapid vertical progression gear grind treadmill model. Doing this would put them in direct competition with the other MMOs, including subscription model games that introduce new gear every few months. By staying with a slow (or even non-existant) vertical progression model they appeal to a large market of players who either do not enjoy rapid vertical progression, or are simply tired of that model and would like to try something different.

You mean like fractals? Or Laurals? Or Guild Missions? Or ascended gear in general?

Nope, no treadmill here. Anyone who claims that is clearly wrong for no reason aside from going against glorious Anet design.

Or wait, you’re going to say that ascended gear is completely optional and that you don’t need BiS gear.

What would you need Ascended gear for besides doing fractals? And since fractals is largely how you get Ascended gear…..what’s the problem?

So, from what I’m hearing, defensive stats in Fractals are not worth it? That’s a somewhat odd way to construct PvE encounters. I’ve never done any Fractals, but would like to start as I’m running out of PvE content to do otherwise.

I usually run Cleric’s gear with ruby orbs and accessories. Weapons are traded between zerker and cleric’s depending on if more healing or more damage is needed.

I use a turret build to farm stuff, and it works pretty well. I use the toolbelt skills with Static Discharge trait, drop my turrets and use their cooldowns quickly, then blow them all up. If I need heals I’ll drop all my turrets except for the heal turret, F1 for the water field, then blow the turrets as fast as I can while using the Rifle 5 charge. If I’m not lagging I’ll get 2-3 heal finishers. If I’m lagging I’ll get 0-1.

I never leave the heal turret out for any length of time. I just drop it for the heal, perhaps use the cooldown if I need to condition cleanse, and pick it back up. The cooldown is very short, and I don’t usually blow it up unless everything is nearly dead.

Sometimes I swap one of my turrets out for the bomb kit so I can use the fire bomb for Might finishers, but it’s usually not necessary.

I’m currently using the trait that makes turrets knockback when they explode as well as the one that lets me ground-target turrets. This build isn’t “optimal” but it gives me tons of versatility. I can swap from burst DPS to sustained damage to CC to burst heals/cleanse depending on what the situation needs.

And if I’m just killing loads of random trash then I’ll leave the turrets out and let them shoot stuff because #lazy.

Also, I’ve learned that tossing a Thumper turret on a wall in WvW, using the cooldown, then blowing it up is pretty effective at keeping the ramparts clear. Rifle turret does something similar with a shorter cooldown. It’s not amazing, but it gives me something to do between farming runs.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

@Baladir:

If your interpretation of the OP is true, then he/she will likely have trouble keeping any profession alive, because the playstyle “Use-all-my-skills-one-by—one-while-standing-in-one-place-while-the-enemy-tries-to-pound-me” never works.
In my opinion, a player who does not know how to dodge (and refuses to) will have a very hard time with only little enjoyment of the game.

It took me forever to unlearn the bad habits of other MMOs. Fighting Ettins in Queensdale was a good way to get practice on how to look for tells so I would only dodge the good attacks and not waste all my endurance on garbage autoattacks that did next to no real damage.

-Check the Trading Post price for EVERYTHING! You never know when one of your little bags or drops will sell for a lot more than the vendor will give you for it.

-Erase the word “Legendary” from your brain. It’s a hyper-expensive pretty weapon skin that will absolutely ruin this game for most people. If you don’t care about getting your legendary weapon then you don’t need money for much, and the game becomes a lot more fun. If you have the time to grind out a legendary weapon, then you probably won’t be reading this post. If you don’t really have the time to grind that much, or you just don’t like grinding that much, then trying will likely burn you out and make you hate logging on.

-If you have a decent job, and find yourself logging on specifically “to farm cash,” and you kinda hate it, just buy gems. That’s what they’re there for. Most adults have enough income to toss ANet $10 here and there and not feel it. Some of us spend that much on a trip to Starbucks.

-If you don’t have a decent job, or are morally against paying money to a “free to play” game, grind out some gold and buy enough gems for a spare bank slot and perhaps a spare bag slot. You’ll be glad you did, as it’ll open up how much junk you can store up until it’s time to sell it or throw it away.

Zenyatoo.4059:

4. Necro – power/vit/toughness I guess? It wont be optimal, but it will be tanky! Run plague form. When in plague form you are now essentially immortal. (plague form gives ~18K more hp, and almost 3000 bonus toughness) No, I do NOT suggest this build at all ever. But it is tanky as heck.

You’ve got 2 options with Necro. The first, and easiest, is to get loads of Soldier’s or Cleric’s gear. Soldier’s would probably work better, and it’s what I used. Then max out your Toughness and Vitality skill traits. Take all Minion skills. Take the traits that make minions Life Siphon for you, make minions steal conditions off of you, make Life Siphon 50% more effective, lower the cooldown on minions, and make minions have 50% more hp. For weapons, take Staff (for the AoE Regen, AoE Chill, AoE Weakness combo, and AoE Condition Transfer) and whatever else you want besides Scepter.

You are now very tanky, and effectively immune to conditions. Be sure to keep an eye on your Blood Fiend’s health, and eat him if he gets close to dying. He should have a 15s cooldown.

You also have Death Shroud for times when your pets get hit with AoE and die too fast (effectively doubling your already massive HP pool). It’s also handy for when you need a quick fear to interrupt stuff, or to cast grasp to keep chill on something.

Finally, your pets damage is static no matter what stats you have. It doesn’t matter that your crit is low if a lot of your damage comes from pets. When I run this build I usually opt for a tad more damage, and put 20 in the Power line (for the trait that increases minion damage), 20 in the Toughness line, and 30 in the Vitality line.

The other, probably tankier build is….

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Abomination-necromancer-tank-build

Electro.4173:

Focus is definately my least favorite of all the Elementalist weapons. Lack of healing on Water attune sucks, many of the skills seem like lackluster / more limited versions of other Elementalist skills (Freezing Gust is meh compared to Frozen Ground / Chilling Burst, Fire Wall is meh compared to Ring of Fire or Lava Font, and Air #5 is meh compared to Dagger Air #5), the whole weapon being largely single-target is annoying, and overall it just seems mediocre. The only amazing skill Focus are the Earth attune skills, which are pretty nice.

I’d definately like to see some Focus improvement. For starters, maybe a Focus-boosting trait, since its the only Ele weapon that doesn’t have one (though technically Dagger’s trait doesn’t work). All Focus skills have a duration of some sort attached to them whether it be a self-buff or a debuff, so maybe the Focus trait could be something like “Increases duration of attacks by 50%” or whatever number wouldn’t be overpowered. They could maybe combine Comet and Freezing Gust, making Comet inflict AoE chill, to make room for a healing ability. Fire Wall cast time needs to be sped up. Maybe have Air #5 knockdown enemies in a small radius around the target.

I’m torn. I like it, but it does need work. So, yes I can now use my Utilities for damage….but I also have to because Focus has no great damaging abilities.

I think it’s a great utility off-hand, but I’d tweak the Fire skills to make them not awful. It wouldn’t take much, honestly. I’d lower the cast time on Flame Wall a bit and add a low AoE damage effect (and blast finisher if my dreams came true) to Flame Aura.

Flame Wall is irritating to place, and the current cast time on it makes it difficult to weave into a rotation.

Adding damage to Flame Aura (even if it’s just 1 damage) would allow it to apply On-Crit effects. Adding a blast finisher to it might make it OP, but would really add to the amount of utility that Focus brought to the table.

Leo G.4501:

Did you try using S/F with offensive utilities? Glyph of Storms, Arcane Wave + Blast, a conjure, Arcane Power, etc. One thing liberating about Focus (especially with scepter’s mid-range) is you can use and trait those offensive utilities to be pretty nice. Arcane Blast itself is quite underrated considering its damage/cooldown (and its range!!!!!11! 1500 range!!) You can trait the arcane skills to do some pretty nasty stuff that I wasn’t even aware of.

The earth skills in focus alone give you much more freedom than anything in dagger, at least from a PvE perspective.

I’ve started using Scepter/Focus in PvE, and while the Focus did take some getting used to I found that it was nice to use something besides Cantrips for my utilities. With all the control and defense in Focus I can finally slot those low-cooldown Arcane skills I’ve always liked. And with Vigor on Crit, Vigor from Phoenix, and Arcane Skills Give Endurance I can dodge 2-3 times more than I could with my D/D build. More control, more defense, more endurance, decent damage….how can I complain?

Ok, let me complain. I love the weapon set except for 1 thing. The AoE is pretty bad.

But, that’s what Daggers and Staff are there for.

rolos.7491:

PinCushion.7390:

I just assumed they were there to offer us the same flexibility every other class has included in the Weapon Swap mechanic. Warriors can change from Melee to Ranged with the press of a button (e.g. from Greatsword to Rifle). D/D Elementalists can’t. However, we can bring Frost Bow and effectively swap to ranged for a short time at the cost of one Utility Slot.

I’ve always found them best used for a couple of skills, and then dropped immediately.

But take the greatsword, for instance. It’s an elite skill on a long cool down. Seems like using it for a couple of skills and then dropping it would be wasting the slot.

Why? It gives you some high-damage, high-mobility attacks to use when all your good stuff is on cooldown with your normal weapons. It sounds like a decent deal to me, especially if you’re traited into Fire and get bonus damage on Burning.