Guild Wars 2

The answer is more siege.

Of course, the answer to everything is more siege.

Psychatog.8246:

i prefer just to get them to around 5% in down status and let them rez the long way

I laughed out loud. That’s so evil.

Area Denial.

Wells are for Area Denial. People are supposed to move away from them. That’s why they’re stationary (also why they all look pretty much the same). You deny enemies access to an area for a limited amount of time.

The fact that area denial is of marginal use in most of the game is a different problem. Necros and Engineers both suffer from the fact that area denial, most of the time, doesn’t really matter. When it does matter, such as bunkering on a node in sPvP, people say it’s cheesy or lame.

Skill Coefficients

Dagger 1’s 3rd attack, Necrotic Bite, has the highest skill coefficient available to a Necro (on a per-hit basis). Interestingly enough, Putrid Mark has nearly the same coefficient on a weapon that typically has higher damage and Life Blast (above 50% LF) has the highest of all.

So, if you’re just looking for big numbers on single attacks your best attacks that will give you the biggest numbers are Necrotic Bite, Putrid Mark, and Life Blast (holding a staff and above 50% LF).

That isn’t to say those abilities are “the best.” It just means that those attacks will give bigger numbers than other attacks at our disposal.

Kyton.3815:

I’ve played 4 classes post release and 1 other in the beta. Warrior, Eng, Mesmer, Elementalist, Necro. Necro has been my main and is my only 80 so far, but the others I do have elites unlocked for (30+). Done a lot of WvW, but I’ve only played a handful of sPvp maps so far so can’t say much for that.

The Good:
– PVE: Mob tagging with wells/marks. Good survivability, I died the least on this class while levelling thanks to minions and cripple/freeze + range. Some decent control options in dungeons with blinds ( I love plague form in any non-dredge one).
- WvW: People are terrified of red circles even if they don’t do much to them. Targeted well builds + staff are great for breaking up small zergs in the rare open field/bridge fights. I run with a lot of toughness/vitality, which I’ve found good for surviving vs thieves when solo roaming to get supply or intercept lone dolyaks (stalemates, neither of us kill each other). Epidemic is good if running in a group that can stack conditions.

The Bad, aside from bugged stuff that is gradually being fixed:
– PvE: Feels very slow to kill mobs with. Hard to get drops in large groups due to damage you apply taking place so slowly (you get the exp from tagging very easy). Can’t use minions in dungeons as they die instantly. Cannot revive players or interact with things in any elite form or Death shroud…which I feel is quite unfair. Very hard to kill inanimate objects.
- WvW: Necros are so sloooowww. No leaps/jumps/teleports in combat (aside from worm which I find useful only in rare occasions). No Vigor, so dodging is hard to keep up. No swiftness unless you use warhorn which I personally don’t like, or spectral walk which while good means that utility has to be on your bar. No burst, so hard to quickly down anyone to take them out of the fight fast. No stability (sorry, but I don’t count 30 into 1 trait line to toggle in/out of DS for 1 second for stomps). Very hard to catch up to runners…even though that’s supposed to be one of our strong points. Elites/DS drop your 6-10 skills, so no heals, no utilities, etc make them of limited use. Cannot damage siege effectively.

Overall feel: A decent PvE class so long as you don’t mind kills taking forever and you always party up for DEs to get credit for loot drops. Ok as a support class in WvW, but there are much better classes to play as in there, at least at the moment.

This is the most accurate assessment of the class I’ve read so far, especially the WvW stuff.

Well, yeah. There are more Thief players, so making thieves OP makes more customers happy.

Money talks.

Necros are good for making the Thieves fights longer, which makes them feel awesome when they win them (or easily run away).

Wayfarer.2051:

Reaper’s precission desevres an honorary mention!
33% of all crits give 1% LF?
Wow.
This losses even to bugged traits.
Make it 100% crits and at least 2%.

Works a third of the time, every time!

+1 to letting me pick the color of ground circles, so I can pick a color that I can actually see

I find it not awful now. It isn’t amazing, but it isn’t awful.

Just to try it out, I tried a power build designed to stack vuln. Axe 2 was hitting for 2 to 3k non crit. Around 4k crit. That’s with 20 stacks of vuln and the Axe Training trait (which also gives it a 6 second cooldown). So, we won’t be bursting anyone to death anytime soon with that. But still it isn’t terrible.

Patch took the weapon from “Terrible” to “Mediocre.” It’s at least a step in the right direction.

Rukia.4802:

It’s all quite obvious, not enough rewards. Why do you think everyone farms plaxi in Orr and doesn’t do a single different event in the game? I have solo’d multiple boss mobs and you know what I get at the end for my decent time investment, the same reward I would have gotten with 20 other people lol…

If lower level events would actually scale to high level 80 event rewards (if you are 80) then more people would be scattered all over the world.

Everyone?

Everyone farms Orr events?

Why? Why in the world would you do this? After hitting 80 I can’t NOT make money. I go explore, gather a bit, do some DEs, and make money. I go WvW, hit a couple of gather nodes, die a few times, get a few kills….AND STILL SOMEHOW MAKE MONEY! Why in the world would someone do something as boring as grinding repetitive content just to make money slightly faster?

I got my first 80 decked out in all exotics without grinding. I got my second 80 decked out in all rares, and am on the way to all exotics without grinding. I’ve dabbled in dungeons and already have enough tokens for half a set of dungeon gear. I’m going to have these characters for years. Why grind if it’s so boring? Just do fun stuff and the game gives you money! Waypoints? I barely notice! One waypoint trip is basically 1 or 2 gather nodes.

And to answer the OP, people have scaled back their playtime because loads of people played the daylights out of the game after release. Some are gone for good. Some are just not on as often, or at different times. Some are on alts, or WvW, or sPvP. Basically, people are far more spread out than they were at release so the world seems empty.

My strategy is stat for defense and hope for the best.

If a thief or mesmer (or 2 of either) catch me at 75% health, I usually die before I know I’m being attacked. There’s nothing I can do other than bunker up on Toughness and Vitality, and try to spot them ganking other people and be extra careful (i.e. hope for the best). The class is too good at running away for me to really try to win the fight, so I do my best to make sure I don’t lose it. Generally, if they tag me with their burst combo and I don’t die they just pick a softer target next time.

This problem has gotten far better since I hit 80. I guess not being upleveled in WvW makes me a less tempting target.

I don’t cry about it, though. They’re burst classes. That’s what they do. If they can’t drop a caster from 75% to 0% with their combos twice a minute, then they can’t do their jobs.

He described it with words, and other people just posted the build based on his description because they are supah sleuths!

I’ll probably start using it on my elementalist, since I run with a pretty high +condition damage build. Unfortunately, my necro is a norn. Hooray for the bleed owl….

Thieves (and to a lesser degree, Mesmers) get the QQ because they have very good escape mechanisms.

On my necro, the supposed “Attrition Class,” if I jump a zerg I die. They all tab-target me and unload, and I just die. Maybe I’ll get my one obvious teleport through a worm minion and live a bit longer….but not really. I’m still targetable, so I’ll just get charged/immobilized and still die.

That’s why people QQ about Thieves. It isn’t because they do a lot of damage. It’s because they do a lot of damage, and stealth makes them much more difficult to to deal with than any of the other classes. Not impossible. Not uncounterable. Difficult.

Most people are playing classes that can be countered by Tab 1,2,3. Thieves can’t be. It lets them farm newbies. It makes people cry newbie tears and rage.

Sorry you guys are getting nerfed. I was just getting used to dumping AoE into your little stealth houses.

My money is on an extension of the “Revealed” debuff, and a retuning of Backstab/CnD/Heartseeker so it’s harder to frontload quite as much damage. But I’ve never played a thief, so I’m just guessing.

I don’t think they’ve refused. I think it’s just difficult, time consuming work.

Doesn’t siege ignore the 5 person AoE limit?

Without defensive siege, and the knowledge to properly place/use it, a keep or tower is just a prison you lock yourself into on purpose. You sacrifice nearly all of your mobility and unpredictability for the safety of walls.

And yet, I have personally watched a decent sized zerg just crumble when they beat a keep door down only to eat 2 ballista bolts as soon as they crossed the threshold.

My primary problem is that I don’t yet know when the best times are to drop siege, and where the best spots are to place them. I keep blueprints in my bags, and drop siege when it’s asked for, but I’m really not good at placing or using it.

Any pointers?

Nerf Asurans!

J/K. It’s nice to see a racial ability actually being useful.

I constantly get extra node gathers because of it. That’s the most noticeable part, for me. The others are nice, and become noticeable when your server is doing very well. The bonuses get better the higher your score.

Meaningless? Seriously?

Serverwide buffs in PvE and WvW are meaningless?

Power of the Mists may seem like small boosts, but they really add up. By participating in WvW and helping to earn points you get to give everyone on your server a constant buff to everything they do all week long. How is that meaningless?

The game may change, but the trolls are always the same.

I like it because it’s subtle. Upping damage or a flat fear duration increase is, as you say, blunt.

And it doesn’t turn necro into a super burst class. Our burst is currently very cumbersome, and that’s probably by design. We’re turf-claimers. We’re supposed to entangle enemies to rob them of their mobility, and at the moment we do a mediocre job.

Great video. I love the meticulous testing you did. If you haven’t already, be sure to cross-post it in the “Suggestions” forum.

Farming Orr. They (allegedly) drop in the bags from Cursed Shore mobs. I’ve never actually seen one, as they are incredibly rare and I despise Cursed Shore.

Razeo.2309:

PinCushion.7390:

mjharrison.3209:

I love WVW, but I truly hate having downed state in PVP.

There’s a reason why no other self-respecting PVP game has tried it, it’s a bad idea.

I hear this a lot, but don’t quite get it. What’s so wrong about the downed state? It makes ganking harder, but otherwise it seems to add another tactical layer to combat.

I’m sorry……. but you have no idea what you talking about. Please explain how it adds another layer of tactical combat since all you do is spam 1 or 2 buttons depending on your class. Not to mention some class’s downed abilities are way more stronger than others. Having the downed state in WvW also discourages small scale group pvp in WvW because having more people around you makes it harder for people to pick you off from a zerg since numerous people can just rez you in 2 seconds.

It adds another tactical layer to combat because it makes farming zergs in hard hitting strike forces more difficult. Those strike teams now have to make a decision. Do they avoid the zerg altogether, tail them and pick off stragglers, waypoint back home and tag a keep on the other side of the map in an attempt to split the larger zerg, harrass them to slow them down, bait them into a choke point or friendly keep and call in reinforcements, etc. etc.

Those are tactical/strategic decisions.

Even the decision to stop fighting to finish a guy off vs. keep fighting his buddies while occasionally smacking him to keep him down is a tactical decision.

As opposed to the “Everyone gear for burst damage and gank as many zerglings as possible before bailing out” decision that would be THE decision without the downed state.

One solution is so obvious, easily implemented, and cheap that I can’t believe it isn’t in the game yet.

Whenever a player kills another player (not downed, but killed) their client should broadcast the map with a message that says, “Player1 has just defeated Player2.” Suddenly players have access to something so much harder to get than badges or karma. Fame. Not just fame to their realm, but fame to the enemy realm as well, because they’ll be able to see those messages too.

I remember in DAoC there was no greater feeling than a time when I was RvRing and got a lot of kills one after another, and I had people I didn’t know /whisper me with “What the heck are you up to? You just killed like 10 people in a row!”

Sure, I had a group behind me. And, sure, I was DPS assist at the time so I was bound to get lots of kill shots. But still, it felt great and made me want to RvR even more without caring about points or keeps or anything. And that feature probably cost next to nothing to implement, was totally optional, and is already in this game’s sPVP.

mjharrison.3209:

I love WVW, but I truly hate having downed state in PVP.

There’s a reason why no other self-respecting PVP game has tried it, it’s a bad idea.

I hear this a lot, but don’t quite get it. What’s so wrong about the downed state? It makes ganking harder, but otherwise it seems to add another tactical layer to combat.

striker.3704:

If you make the shadow fiend use his blind as your first attack, it usually makes all the minions attack that target.

It also helps if you attack the enemy from <600 range.

Second what he said. It works very well for me.

Don’t dismiss the Shadow Fiend! The blind ability has a very short cooldown and is instant cast! Not only that, but usually when you have it blind someone all the other minions follow it (usually….).

Thanks for posting this. I’ve been running this same experiment with decent results. I’m still in mostly Masterwork gear, so I won’t really know for sure if it’s doable until I can bump up to exotics.

WvW = Killing poorly geared, upleveled newbies for easy badges.

I’m beginning to think any build at all would work if you’re in exotics. I’m going to try a MM build in WvW just to test it out (it’s the crappiest PvP build I could think of).

Epidemic is awesome because loads of people don’t bring cleanses to WvW, and many in the zerg might not have even bought their cleanse skills yet. Most people don’t load up on Vitality gear, because they want Pow/Pre for kills. They stand in wells and die. I’ve seen so many people just stand around while ranger pets tear them apart.

So, in short, play what you want. It’ll probably work ok. Just remember:

1) Don’t stand in red circles
2) Condition damage hurts
3) Defensive stats matter
4) Pets do damage too
5) It’s usually easier to go around a zerg than through it

All that said, I’ve seen WvW oriented guilds that run groups designed to work together and they dominate. Other than that I think any build will work well enough, so play what you want.

It also looks like a lot of fun. Active, dynamic, fun combat. Stealth gives you the information advantage. Mobility gives you the range/positioning advantage. Healing gives you the longevity advantage. Why doesn’t everyone play that class?

They took their TP model from EVE Online. They took their item model mostly from WoW. In EVE items get destroyed. In WoW they don’t. A suit of armor lasts forever. That means that crafted items will never, ever retain their selling value because supply will only ever increase while the number of prospective customers for an item will generally decrease.

EVE has the best MMO economy out there partially because every PvP encounter destroys something that must then be replaced. Without destruction an economy ceases to function.

They ripped off WoW’s “Soulbound” model combined with finite storage space to simulate item destruction , but that model has always been pretty weak. The addition of the Mystic Forge to encourage players to voluntarily destroy items is innovative, but still doesn’t go far enough.

Imagine what WvW would be like if every time you died you lost a random piece of gear forever. It would be terrible, right? Now imagine what that would do to the market for crafted armor and weapons. Not so bad now, eh?

Trays of anything sell fairly well.

Agree with Daulnay 100%. Crafting in GW2 is a skill based game, because buying and selling raw materials and finished products in a highly competitive, highly efficient, highly transparent market is HARD! The fact that so many players have just accepted that crafting is a gold sink by design is evidence of how hard it is. Crafting is not a gold sink. Crafting is, for most, a gold transfer. Players happily transfer their money to other people in exchange for the joy and xp of crafting an item that, in most cases, they didn’t really need to begin with.

And, if I’m being honest, I’m one of them. I’ve happily paid some stranger to farm crafting mats for me via the TP just to turn those mats into an item that I then vendored at a loss. I did that because at that moment XP had more value to me than silver.

One other thing about profitable crafting. It takes time. Lots of time! Holy cow it takes so much time! First I have to look at the buy/sell spread for each crafting mat. Then I have to look at the buy/sell spread for the finished product. Usually it a loser. Then I have to look at the buy/sell spread for every intermediate product to see if there’s an opportunity for savings there. Then I have to reanalyze the buy/sell spread of the finished product to estimate how long it’ll take to sell and decide if I’m better off putting my cash elsewhere. Over and over again. And I haven’t even gotten to all the various karma or skillpoint to gold conversions that have to be done for some recipes!

And don’t get me started on gold to dollar conversion, and weighing if I’d be better off just saving the time it takes to get all this gold and spending real dollars on it.

TL → DR version: Crafting is profitable. Crafting is skill based. It’s just really hard.

Can’t be sure, since I’m at work, but I thought if you swapped the skill out for a different utility it desummoned the pet as well. It’s only out of combat, but it’s something.

The game takes on a new spin when you play “Keep the mobs off the pets.” They actually put out some decent damage if you make fear/CCing stuff away from them into a priority.

Usually I run Epidemic and Scepter for dynamic events, but minions are fun for a change of pace here and there.

Perhaps the point of the class is to tie up opponents and waste their time/cooldowns, thus negating the fact that they do lots of damage. There’s no way to be sure, but I’ve wondered if perhaps the sole reason Necros exist is to waste everyone’s (both player and opponent) time.

Deathly Swarm is very good in Corruption builds.

digiowl.9620:

Only for those that has effective skills that recharge within 10 seconds. The rest are fire and forget for the most part anyways.

Yeah, upon further thought it seems chill is best used to lengthen the cooldown on someone’s healing skill a bit. Kind of underwhelming, now that I think about it.

Weakness: Endurance regen decreased by 50%; Does other stuff nobody cares about

In other words, it’s better for small fights where dodging really matters. You put it on people to soak up their Endurance. It’s an offensive skill more than a defensive one, even though the name would suggest otherwise.

Chill is the condition that wrecks damage output. Skill recharge reduced by 2/3. Ouch!

cerulean moth.2743:

Jack of All Trades is the perfect description of necromancers in my opinion. Other classes tank better, other classes escape better, other classes melee better, heal better, condi spam better. We can do it all in one build though. We’re tough and resiliant. We’re good at spreading conditions. We’re very good at blind/chill.

This is the one thing I love about this class. The one shining virtue that makes it somewhat entertaining. Necros can take a beating! I haven’t seen a single build that wasn’t tough as nails to bring down.

If you think it’s a chore to play Guardians, then you’ll absolutely hate Necromancers.

Most classes don’t really come together until level 60 or so, but Necro is the worst I’ve experienced.

It works, but I don’t find it fun at all. I’m leveling it to 80 now out of pure spite.

It seems like it’d be great for defending nodes in sPvP, but I don’t really do sPvP so I couldn’t tell you.

Elementalist and Engineer have been the classes with the most versatility, and there was rarely a challenge I didn’t think I could overcome through swapping out a few skills. Guardians are easily the most solid class I’ve played. They do what they do very well, but there aren’t that many bells and whistles.

Necros are difficult to play well, and don’t really do anything other professions can’t do much easier. I found Elementalists and Engineers both more intuitive and fun.

Oh, and before I forget

—obligatory Minion AI complaints in a necro whine thread—

Popular Elementalist builds right now include 30 Earth to make the signet passive permanent, or 20 Water/20 Arcane to provide almost constant regen, lots of burst healing, and lots of condition cleanses.

I have to agree. After playing an Elementalist extensively I find Necro to be very cumbersome and slow. Minions are a ridiculous joke. Condition damage is outdone by other classes. Mobility is almost nonexistent. Survival is great, but there’s very little punch to help you win the grueling attrition fights that the profession is supposed to shine in. There’s lots of CC, but not much to keep enemies that want to flee from doing so. The weapons are fairly unimpressive, which makes the class very dependent on Utility skill choice. Death shroud is a huge missed opportunity for what should have been a very interesting and fun class mechanic.

All in all, though I’ll continue playing my Necro until I get it completely figured out, I find it a frustrating experience because nothing seems to really synergize together into a cohesive, fluid whole.

People like complaining. Nobody can believe that they died because they suck at their favorite hobby, so the other guy must be cheating.

Let’s keep it simple.

Trenches in front of keeps with wooden spikes and caltrops in them.
Murder holes on the ground floor of keeps so you can shoot at people without being on the ramparts.

At the moment keeps are like a prison. They inhibit your combat ability and view without providing much benefit. It’s why so few people bother with siege if they can avoid it.

Zid.4196:

The way to reduce zerging is to organize. Zergs are moving loot bag trains for organized attackers, doubly so with portal bombing at present rendering issues.

So much this.

Zerging is not a problem unless your zerg is smaller.

Soloing low-level champions isn’t that hard. It takes a long time, but it’s certainly doable. Intelligent healing, CC, and DS use is necessary. The Flesh Golem helps a lot just for absorbing damage and cripple (assuming you can get it to attack the right target).

BS Thieves have to blow most of the cooldowns for their better burst, and have to rely on their class mechanic (stealth) to not die. This seems pretty cool and very similar. Good show! This is a total commitment build. Either you win or you don’t. I like it.

Thanks OP. You’ve improved my opinion of this profession.

I think stealth was designed to be the CC/Escape trump card, just like DS was designed to be the burst trump card. It’s too bad that one of those tools is far better than the other.

Sprawl.3891:

PinCushion.7390:

I think the dev was attempting to say that a necro’s strong suit is control, if we trait for it. Being “inescapable” doesn’t necessarily mean being able to 1v1 everyone. It means being able to lock people down while our buddies beat them senseless.

Whether or not that’s true is open for debate, but I don’t think it was anyone’s intention for any class to be the king of 1v1 all the time.

it’s not true, even spec’d to max chill/fear/ whatever. most classes can escape with ease. I don’t care how you are spec’d on my mesmer I can escape any necro spec with stun/blink/stealth and can keep nearly any class in combat and in my range with phantasams, stun, blink.

That’s because “Escape Abilities” aren’t really about escaping. They’re about MOBILITY! Mobility allows you to dictate the terms of the engagement, including when it ends. I’m not sure how this simple fact slipped through the design process, but it’s having an enormous impact on game play.