Guild Wars 2

I’d wager the reason why any company would try to avoid an Oriental theme campaigned simply to avoid the stigma of becoming an over-generalization and yet another example of Western Orientalism in a market that is oversaturated with just that. It becomes too quick and easy to create the Orient as an exotic Other to provide for consumers seeking something a bit different than homogenized Western Culture.

Hell, there’s even a TV Tropes entry for it. So considering how Anet has been making strives to differentiate themselves via intelligent cultural discourse (unobtrussive homosexual relationships, race politics, theological exploartion), I can see how NCsoft would be hesitant to throw that away by having a potentially marring the hard work of everyone involved by making a potentially overgeneralized Asian themed content. The worse part is, I often see these same values presented whenever discussing the Tengu as a playable race, which ironically would be even more problematic because now the Tengu is not just an example of Orientalism but by being another species than human they become the perfect Other.

Though I’d love to go back to the sprawling city streets of Cantha City and to walk along the stone surface of the Jade Sea, or even to punt a tree hugging Kurzik, I think that at the moment there’s risk management that has to be taken into account. If Anet does return to Cantha, I want them to do it right.

I play Necro the most, and solo’d it for the entire mapping of PvE. Didn’t have any real problems.

I never had a real issue with well AoE to be honest… but I also run a Dagger/Focus with Staff onhand so was up in Combat 90% of the time anyways. In PvE it’s a pretty simple affair to kite circles around enemies while keeping them in the AoE. Especially with Dagger 3. Wells aren’t exactly small areas. The only welll I actually find Problematic for staying in is Well of Blood, which can get filled with Enemy AoE and effectively cutting you off from the best healing portion of that skill.

@Windrasi: The first problem in your Match-Up is Kormir, who has absolutely nothing to do with Water save that she supplanted the previous God of Water (who’s domain of Water was actually given to Grenth who turned it into Ice before it was split up once more in the next 250 years to be Ice and Water under the domains of Grenth and Lyssa respectively). Kormir stops you from effectively matching up the Dragons because she’s the Goddess of Spirit , Truth, and Knowledge.

Similarly I’d argue that Jormag and Dwayna is also a bit of Stretch. Arguably Grenth doubles as both Zhaitan and Jormag being both the God of Death and Cold and Ice.

The next problem I have with that kind of match-up is that the Gods you’re using are not necessarily the Gods that would have originally entangled themselves with the Dragons.

If you REALLY want to link Dragons and Gods, I’d argue it’d have to be with the original Deities as best as we know. That being:

Dwayna
Melandru
Balthazar
Lyssa
Abbadon
Dhuum

However this list is, in my opinion, still inadequate because it is known that Abbadon wasn’t even the original God of the Oceans/Secrets/Knowledge. He supplanted another, as of yet unknown/unnamed God. However even using this technically incomplete list suffers its own problems.

Balth – Primord
Abbadon – Bubbles
Dhuum – Zhaitan
Lyssa – Kralkatorrik*
Melandru – ‘Green Zone’ Dragon. I’m hesitant to use the name Mordremoth.

*I know Konig has issues with this, but I think one of the biggest links between the two is colour and theme. Lyssa is a multi-faceted God, with heavily idealized concepts of beauty and perfection, as well as the general raw Energy and Chaos that often seems to carry with Crystals. No it’s not perfect, but still smoother than most

Once more Jormag is the odd one out (assuming you agree with Kralk and Lyssa). There is no God of Ice at this time, as Water is still the domain of Abbadon who is the God of Oceans, Water, and Secrets. In all honesty, I think there is a link between the Power of the Gods and the Dragons. The GW1 quest made this reference, but whether its specific Gods to Specific Dragons is currently unfeasible without more knowledge of who Abbadon supplanted as the God before him.

EDIT: Also the list of the ‘original’ pantheon also potentially screws up because we do not yet know whether or not Balthazars father was a full fledged God of the Pantheon before his Son.

Except there’s no defined timeline, so your entire basis of ‘chapter per month’ is really just pulling numbers out of thin air to try and create a timeline where there is none.

Only static Class Mechanic? Overdramatic much, don’t you think? Or do Guardians, Mesmers, and Thieves not count in this weird world you live in?

Well lets look at everything. Trade from Cantha and Elona stopped with xenophobia/undead take overs respectively. Then Lion’s Arch, arguably the largest trading hub on this side of the endless ocean gets flooded with Zhaitan’s rise and a dramatic increase in pirate activity (living and dead). I’d say there was probably a market crash.

Of particular notice, all the Xunlai chests are gone, and the only one we have found is in the Eye of the North and still locked, so arguably the local ‘bank’ was sealed off and everybody lost their money further inflating the worth of Gold on the contenant of Tyria.

Also likely exasperated by two of the largest nations (Charr and Humans) have likely ammassed a huge debt in their continued war over the past 250 years. Wars are expensive, not just in lives, but also in money and the Charr have and Humans have clearly been spending a lot. One NPC even references how much the Asura charge for Divinity’s Reach to send supplies over to Ebon Hawke, which was arguably the last reason why the Charr and Humans were even fighting still. (I mean, it’s not like the Charr were going to be able to march over the Shiverpeaks again to wage war on Divinity’s Reach).

Also consider how Norn don’t really seem to save money, more they’re in a state of constant spending. Despite however often Skritt are described as Hedonistic, the Norn are by large either stuffing their faces with food or ale and passing out in a stupour later (probably with unpaid bar tabs).

The only slightly enterprising nation is the Asura, who manage to screw up every potential product they could every try to market (Ooze salesman in Metrica, Toy Maker Tixx, etc…) thus providing a large market to be desired for, while demanding exorbitant costs for what services aren’t potentially life threatening. Add in their penchant for meglomania and world domination and whatever money they do make is likely put aside to buy the rest of the world off with later.

Soooooo loss of Trade with 2 Human Empires, the (temporary) loss of a huge trading hub coupled with massive increase in unsafe sea trade, century-long and resource exhaustive wars against one another and against exterior factions, unsafe land trade, the complete loss of all money held by the previous banking institution, rampant consumerism and exorbitant cost of transportation…. frankly I’m surprised the system doesn’t use Coppers as the highest valued currency.

Well there is an Asura personal story plotline that deals directly with them…

However spoilers on that aside, I find it unlikely simply due to where they are and where the events are taking place.

The steam creatures are largely an above ground menace, we haven’t had any dealings with them undeground as far as I’m aware. The problems we are seeing are hinted not only far north of Lornar’s Pass (the only in game area with Steam Creatures) which puts them at a long distance from where the events are taking place, but the threat appears to be coming from underground. As you yourself said, the steam vents are opening up from fissures in the ground and are releasing a great deal of heat.

The majority of the trouble, if I had to place a bet, seems to emminate from slightly north of Wayfarer’s Foothills and Diessa Plateau Waypoint. Both maps have a stream of refugee’s coming from there, meaning that the threat is existing a little further north than that effecting Norn and Charr a like. I think the biggest culprits right now will likely be Dredge or Destroyers until we get more info.

In the original Guild Wars title, Dhuum, the first god of Death disallowed any form of Undead or Ressurection. This was why he was viewed as an unfair and largely unforgiving entity. Grenth and the Seven Reapers opposed this and struck him down, deposing him as the God of Death and allowing Grenth to assume that mantle. Grenth subsequently allowed for both Resurrection at appropriate locations, as well as for quasi-undead. That being the construction of minions from the dead, but not actually re-animating the bodies/attempting to harness the dead souls.

Also a correction concerning the skills we use. 1) We don’t really know what the Shade is. Arguably, it could be some kind of spirit, but I would say considering the nature of necromancy in the game and how they created, it’s most likely a minor elemental constructed of darkness and cold. 2) It’s not an Animated Wurm. It’s a constructed flesh wurm. It’s built to imitate the form of a wurm, but from parts lying about.

Our minions are very much more a kin to Frankenstein’s than Zombies and skeletons. Built from the dead, but not re-animating them as they once were. Whether this is a cleaner version of necromancy or simply a more freaky version of grave robbing is up to your perspective.

I solo’d it on my necro. Was a good time, but as Karizee said try to find some guildies to help out if you’re having trouble.

It’s a Prelude. So we’ve only seen the first signs of the story.

Also, if you wanted more info on this story, did you read this thread? It’s got a lot of good posts about where this story could be heading.

Anyways, as always, Anet has tried to make all content available for all players in the initial push. (Halloween, Lost Shores, and Christmas all being examples of this) so it doesn’t come a big shock that this first initial discovery of the story unfolding at the level 1-15 stage. Will it stay like that? No idea. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I dislike the OP’s suggestion for the same reason why I’m not super thrilled about Jagged Horrors: It tries to force players to be Minion Masters. Not every necro player wants to babysit minions. Would I like a buff to Minion AI so that the boards quit getting spammed with that complaint? You betcha! Do I want to ever use Minions. Not really.

And I’m glad we could have another user who is more than happy to demonstrate mob mentality and fallacious debate strategies by attacking the person. But I’m amused by HiSaZuL’s post so lets break it down to see how angry this guy is when somebody doesn’t agree with him.

[Quote=HiSaZuL]All I read is “blah blah blah… I run with dagger and I think this is what necromancy is all about[/quote]

A bit of a double whammy, implying that if you don’t play with Minions you’re not a ‘REAL NECROMANCER’ while conversely suggesting that style of play sucks. Well done, attacking both somebody’s idea of a necromancer and their gameplay in one swift sentence.

HiSaZuL

Anet is awesome. WTB moar kitten to suck on

BAM! Triple Accusation: That Bas is not only a mindless fanboy, but also male homosexual. If not homosexual, that they are female and are still addicted to performing felatio.

[quote=HiSaZuL][quote=HiSaZuL]

Obviously the ‘Earth Element’ in Guild Wars leans towards rectangular/square shapes.

Consider the fact that Asura’s draw out the arcane power in stone, unsurprisingly their design is almost always square shaped.

Melandru is the Goddess of Earth and Stone and is said to have terraformed much of the planet. So can we really consider it a coincidences that these mountains have formed distinct, rectangular shapes around much of Tyria? I think not.

I’m getting the same vibe from this thread as I got when people first discovered that Norn do the Carlton. A serious lack of humour on the players side.

Not everything has to be dark, spikey, and bad kitten for it to be end game gear. I didn’t even relate it to Bronies, mainly cause I think it’s a stupid show. I thought it was a reference to Robot Unicorn Attack personally. Which made the weapon infinitely more awesome.

Quip has a special place in my heart too.

Besides, they’ve already said they’re going to make more legendary weapon skins. If you don’t like the funny stuff, hold your horses until they’ve made more. Yeesh.

As everyone has stated, I’m also currently sporting a P/T/V build and am absolutely loving it so far. I’m sporting D/F and Staff secondary. Don’t have any issues with LF generation and the dps is enough to keep me in the game, with the Staff AOE having gotten me out of some nasty situations. Using a Dagger primarily means I also don’t mind taking Well skills because I’m up in Melee range half the time anyways.

Traits I find are also rather malleable, I find myself switching them around a lot especially in fractals along with my skills. Overall it’s a grand ol’ time.

Ratphink

-Players will proceed to flood this board with complaints because Anet didn’t devote an entire balancing patch to Necros.

And so the first sign of my prophecy is made true.

Daddy.1825:

if its lore, why are minions in Domain of Anguish… i just figure now, that we summon them from there :|

Because those aren’t minions. They’re Demons, like everything else in the Domain of Anguish which is why they take more damage from Lightbringer Skills as opposed to Holy damage. They simply use the same models as the Minions from GW1.

Lots of what Reedju has said is valid, but something I think he’s neglected to mention is that we as a class have access to a LOT of blind spam. Where Guardians get to to throw around a lot of Aegis [and blind to a lesser a degree] and block stuff, we ‘block’ via spreading the Blind condition making opponents miss.

The Elite Plague form is largely considered a very defensive/supportive elite. Even condition spec’d the damage tends to be meh, but if you slap on the Blind Plague it’s more or less 20 seconds of going ’Can’t touch this’. Whether you want to take up an elite slot for this kind of play is a questionable tactic depending on your playstyle though.

Alternatively you have access to blind via Dagger 4 and Well of Blindness.

In addition you can trait up Blind with ‘Chilling Darkness’ in the Curses line which slaps on an additional 1 second of Chill for every stack of blind you lay on an opponent effectively snaring them much like a cripple allowing you to remain mobile.

You’ll find that a lot of the Necro’s playstyle that the devs seemed to have in mind involves less ‘buffing yourself’ and more ‘debuffing your enemy’. So instead of swiftness we have access to cripples and chills to slow the enemy down. Instead of aegis to block, we have blind to make the target miss, etc, etc. Again though, how successful the devs have been in making this reality you’ll find to be a controversial topic on the board.

Narcemus.1348:

Balthazar: “Hmm, I’m getting my tail handed to me by my half brother. I’ve lost all of my armies, and I’m in a total pickle. Oh I know! Why don’t I get a group of 8 of those meaty flesh bags to do what I, a god, can’t do!”

Knowing Balthazar, he was probably trying to show up Grenth.

I mean lets face, if you were the God of War wouldn’t you be kitten if some Half-God and 7 pasty necromancers managed to pull down the Omega Death from his tower to supplant him as the rulers of the Underworld.

I bet Balth let his domain fall to crap just so he could round up 8 assorted mortals to do something epic for him.

The puzzles began in LA when a moustached plumber was sent into the sewers concerning some turtle problems with Water Closets. He jumped to places they never thought possible.

The idea behind Corruptions is that Necros boast some of the highest amounts of Condition Manipulation in the game.

From being able to transfer those conditions you applied on yourself (dagger 4), to changing them to boons (well of power), or noming them and increasing how much you’re healed by with Consume Conditions (a freakin’ awesome heal skill). You can then taken those conditions you just spread to an opponent and spread them via epidemic.

Chill of Death: I usually pop this trait on whenever I know I’m fighting those annoying Gong wielding Dredge. I can confirm it does in fact rip the boons off the target, didn’t even notice it wasn’t damaging them.

Oh. It’s this thread again. I’m glad we waited for the patch before we started another one.

Oh well, I see people with the same overall tone as the last one so I may as well copy/paste my response from the original.

My expectations are as follows:
-Players will proceed to flood this board with complaints because Anet didn’t devote an entire balancing patch to Necros.
-Players will continue making ‘DS mastery’ jokes until Zhaitan has raised that dead horse so that we can cudgel it and drag it around some more. (I would like to point out that this point has already been proven false as I haven’t seen the joke on this forum all month. Thank you, all of you, for proving me wrong.)
-A Dev, probably Jon Peters, may come on the board to get people to calm their kitten. It won’t work, people will just turn whatever he’s said into another bad joke to run into the ground.
-We’ll probably see some more ’I’m quitting the game’ threads.
-Thus is my prophecy made, and so shall it come to pass!

Vilar.2680:

I’m just sick of this kind of argument underestand this : the assosiation of viatality and healing power is done in ALL CLASSES of the game, they can’t change it without creating a biiiiig problem.

So in other words STOP asking to change this kind of thing it just won’t happen!!!!!!

now the real problem is that life stealing isn’t affected by healing power, that is something they could fix if they loved us a bit.

Actually the Warrior’s Healing Power is in the same traitline as Toughness. Or should be if I remember it right. Haven’t played mine past level 15 to be honest so somebody feel free to correct me on this.

I partially agree with your second point, minus the usual bit about Anet that you see on these forums. I do find it odd that Life Siphoning is effectively by stuff like Poison but isn’t effected by Healing Power. I’d be fine with the Poison reduction if it meant that Healing Power was brought into the equation, however if that’s not going to be the case I’d like that -33% effectiveness from Poison to be removed from it.

I stand corrected! Much obliged for updating me on that

I think some clarification is still in order.

Lifeforce depletes naturally via percentage. Skills like Lifeblast if I remember also depletes the LF bar via percentage when using it. So increasing Vitality does not effect these percentage base losses. What increasing Vitality (as well as the Soul Reaping trait) does is allow you to soak up more direct damage that would be dealt to you while in Death Shroud.

I may be wrong on the Lifeblast point so somebody correct me if I goofed on that.

I think the biggest disappointment I had was the absolute waste of space that is the Home Instance.

What little you add to it from the Personal Story becomes completely neglected by the time you join an Order. With next to no means for actual customization, and actually no reason to ever go back there save for Personal Story Quests I still have absolutely no idea what this area was intended to be. I mean, it’s not even much of a trophy case since the things you get in there aren’t easily found to begin with.

And yeah. Zhaitan was an underwhelming fight, but luckily by the time I did it I knew that and I wasn’t as disappointed by that. It’s a kitten shame though, because his model in game was pretty awesome. A shame they didn’t use it more, especially considering all the work that went into it.

Ideally I’d have you say it as many times, as illustratively, as constructively, and as much as you please. Unfortunately the case that seems to be lost on most of you is that I’d have you do it in the same topic for more than 24 hours. Like I previously pointed out, by making the same topic 25 topics, you are simply drowning the forum in known issues at the risk of new issues not being seen because you’re all too busy getting caught up in things that have already been posted. You also run the increasingly prevalent problem of misinforming people by complaining about issues that have been fixed.

Example: Somebody just last week was still under the impression that Plague Form was still not being effected by the Chilling Darkness Trait (by the way, they fixed this a few months ago. Thought I’d add another memo).

Lastly you promote a wonderful ‘lynch mob’ mentality that has also taken a firm foothold in this forum. I’d like to thank Manticore Five for being, as he always is, the best example of this behaviour on the Necro Forums. One can see that he always illustrates the argument of himself (usually described as ‘us’ despite only ever speaking for himself) and whomever he is arguing against, or ‘them’. Anybody who fails to fall in line with the tirade of complaining and bemoaning known issues is subsequently belittled, personally attacked, and told to go elsewhere. The irony being is that if he, or anybody else who doesn’t like these posts telling them to show some decorum on forums, is also welcome to use the same strategy to go somewhere else.

Now. Sit up straight, elbows off the table, stop making double threads and show some class ladies and gentleman! You may all dig up bodies, but you don’t have to act like a Risen and frenzy all over the forum spewing out conditions.

As far as Regen being crappy… I dunno if I’d say crap, but I find it’s definitely made problematic by the fact that our Healing Attribute is in the same line as our Vitality. It means that as we increase our vitality, it feels like we’re getting less bang for our buck. Healing is often made to feel more rewarding when the base health pool is low allowing you to stay at max hp easier.

In a perfect world I would have preferred coupling Toughness with Healing power to maximize damage reduction and hp gain. Alas, such is not the world we live in.

Hardly. I said that they are flooding the boards with the same topics. ‘By trying to get stuff done’ you run the risks of burying potentially new problems in a rising tide of old problems.

All I want, all I yearn for, plead, beg, ask, demand, call for is that people start posting intelligently.

Have a complaint about the class. Use the search tool. Find an existing topic. If one doesn’t exist, THEN make a new topic about it. If one does exist, then bring it back to the front page.

Lastly ‘This class sux’, ‘This class is borked’, ‘CALLING OUT ANET’, ’I’m quitting the game’ are unconstructive posts that do nothing for this forum or this class.

Lets take the Original Post since we’re here.

jassking”

Point some things out that the necro needs like more and fixed minions, or weapons with AoE or cleave, better minion pathing, a better minion system, the ability to have more minions, better survivability, better elites, and better F# skill.

This. This is what I hate about this forum now. This is a summary of about 5 different threads with no solutions being offered to fix any of the problems that apparently caused this post to begin with. Nothing new is being brought to the table. There isn’t an attempt to offer solutions like at least some people have the courtesy to do. It’s simply pointing out common complaints because they see everybody else is complaining so by golly they should be allowed to complain to!

Every suggestible complaint in the Original Post has its own thread already. We don’t need one thread to bundle them all together unless the Mods want to merge essentially this entire forum into a ’Necro’s gripping about necro’s’ Post of colossal proportions.

If you want to see unconstructive and useless complaining you need only go so far as the Original Poster. They may not being complaining about complainers, but complaining for the sake of complaining is about as constructive and useful as a chicken on your head.

Softspoken.2410:

Ratphink.4751:

You’re arguing that people who complain about poor forum etiquette are a bigger problem than those who flood this forum with the same threads every day. You are claiming that they don’t bring any ‘documented problems to the table’ when this entire sub forum is rife with documentation of the problem. Every day brings new threads complaining about known issues. Every time people speak out about how many complaints are misinformed and largely exaggerated they are brow-beaten as being ‘care bears’ or ‘anet cheerleaders’.

Why, exactly, do minions stop attacking targets that the Necromancer is attacking?

I’ll try to be more clear with this. This forum is rife with documentation that the vast majority of users who utilise it show poor forum etiquette by spamming it with threads containing the same complaints (Necros sux, I’m changing classes, I’m quitting the game, Minions sux, it’s not a necro). Apologies for confusing you.

EDIT: Also, to humour your ‘sharp wit’, I’d like to say that the only minion I ever use is Jagged Horror (because I regretfully have to in the Toughness line) and that Minion regularly attacks who I’m targeting and even in Orr I rarely see it draw aggro on its own. 9/10 when it does draw agros, I accidentally spammed the Tab and started attacking another mob.

Manticore Five.9867:

You know what’s even more tired and boring than people complaining about necro?

People who complain about people complaining about necro.

At least the first group can point to some actual, documented problems. The second group’s complaints consist of whining that they don’t want to hear it and/or some magical thinking fallacy that complaints will drive away the gods… er devs.

Perhaps it’s time we treat the second group the same way they treat the first.

This is a fallacious argument that is as tired and beaten down as the repetitive complaints about necros being broken beyond use.

You’re arguing that people who complain about poor forum etiquette are a bigger problem than those who flood this forum with the same threads every day. You are claiming that they don’t bring any ‘documented problems to the table’ when this entire sub forum is rife with documentation of the problem. Every day brings new threads complaining about known issues. Every time people speak out about how many complaints are misinformed and largely exaggerated they are brow-beaten as being ‘care bears’ or ‘anet cheerleaders’.

If all of you are allowed to repetitively moan about this class, than the rest of us are allowed to repetitively moan about your poor forum etiquette sir.

Check your minor traits if you’re spec’ed into Blood Magic.

Alternatively cheek out your back/rings/amulet/trinkets

Yeah, enjoying the jumping puzzles. I’ll usually look up the entrance on the wiki but figure ’em out for myself after that

Originally in Guild Wars 1, when a Necromancer with minion dies the minions just start attacking whatever is closest be they friend or foe of the Necromancer who summons them. There’s even a quest on Shing Jea Island where you take out necro minions that are running rampant without their master’s leash.

This does not suggest they have free will though by any stretch. It means they’re basically programmed with basic abilities. Movement and attack. The Necromancer normally controls both of these by tethering them to him, but without the Necromancer they just blindly start attacking anything that breathes.

In GW2 the minions don’t seem to have this problem. For whatever reasons, this side-effect of minion summoning has been removed over the 250 years of advancement in Tyria.

EDIT: If you’re going for RPing a Twitchy/Scared to poop necromancer, the only thing that could come to mind is maybe one who’s dabbling with forbidden magic (ie zombies and the raising of the dead through more than just macabre meat puppetry). Though without context to the question this is really just going out on a limb.

I actually found the shift of Secrets to Truth to be a more symbolic change in how Kormir runs things.

For instance, not only was Abbadon the god of Secrets but also the God of Water and the Ocean. His power resides in the dark depths, where vision is scarce, and things can be hidden for a looooong time. Secrets in this case meshes well with that.

Kormir’s ascension marked one of bringing secrets into the open, of finding Truth and Knowledge. So to find her as becoming a Judge for the living is rather fitting.

Also would be greatly interesting in knowing with you found that line Konig. Almost makes her sound ominous!

@Elias: Not sure if they’re all that cut off to be honest. There is that story mission where we speak with one of the Reapers, he does mention what Grenth desires. Canonically that entire scene plays out at the doorstep of a living Elder Dragon. I think the Gods are genuinely keeping their distance after all of the trouble they’ve caused in Tyria by their existence. Abbadon being a very dark stain on their history after all.

Amityel.5324:

not everyone sees necromancer as minionmaster….

The idea I’m getting from this thread is that those of us who don’t want to be a Minion Master are doing it wrong.

Softspoken.2410:

TheGreatA.4192:

Even then it will usually target some random NPC instead of the player trying to stomp you.

You could always target the player stomping you yourself.

+1 for beating me to it!

You know you’re right! And Warrior’s shouldn’t have to deal with Defiant either. Their CC should work immediately as well. Hell, lets just remove defiant altogether. It makes the boss fight too tactical. I’d rather just sit there spamming CC skills so that it can’t do anything until its dead.

Wait…

EDIT: In some serious, the only thing that irks me is the Fear Immune. That legitimately ruffles my jimmies when I’m fighting mobs in Orr. Other than that, this complaint is largely a ‘I don’t want to tactically co-ordinate CC usage in boss fights so that we can interrupt bosses when its important’.

I didn’t realize tinfoil hats were coming back in season. I always saw them as summer apparel, you know, to help keep the heat off your noogan. Don’t see the benefits of tinfoil winter apparel, but hey, when you gotta be fashionable you gotta be fashionable.

In other words, you’re all making mountains out of molehills. You don’t know how this update will effect us, so step on a chillblains and chill out. Save the QQing for after the update like you all usually do. It makes life slightly more pleasant on these boards.

The Fractals are simply part of the Mists. The Mists being the space between worlds that connects all universes together. It’s made of… well I think the best word we’ve been given is a proto-matter or something similar. Anyways the Mists actually take strong memories of the past and recreates them (hence the Ascalon Fractal, but also the Battle for Kylo, among other PvP maps in the Mists). As mentioned in another thread, the Mists cannot change history. They are not going back in time, but rather recreating a moment in time, or trying to. Think of it as looking through fun house mirrors. You can recognize what’s in them, but they’re off, distorted, imperfect, but still can offer useful glimpses of past, present, and future events in the Guild Wars universe.

Is it possible there’s a link between the Agony used by bosses in the Fractals and the Mursaat? Quite possibly, but I’ll remain skeptical until more concrete evidence shows itself.

1) It’s a bug fix, not a nerf. You all KNEW it was a bug considering the circumstances revolved on activating it, and any who say otherwise is merely lying to themselves. So please don’t mix up terminology in transparent attempts to martyr the class. Nerfs are reducing the effect of something working as intended. Bug fixes are just that, fix skills/abilities not working as intended.

2) This wasn’t fixed quickly. If I remember this forum right, somebody had made a youtube video (in other words, publicaly displaying this bug on official forums) sometime in either mid October or November. So that’s a few months with it being untouched.

Each Dragon seems to corrupt differently.

In this case, Kralkatorrik appears to need something of substance to corrupt. The Ghosts seem to be immune to the corruption in similar ways to how Sylvari cannot be raised as Risen by Zhaitan’s corruption.

Zhaitan as Kalas pointed out doesn’t seem to be restricted to corrupting only mortal Flesh. This can be seen in the case of the Eyes of Zhaitan, as well as the Spectral Weapons, and Wraiths who all appear to be connected to Spirits in some fashion.

The main reason why you won’t see Anet go those routes though is because of the armor that’s been set up in game. Think about it. For every margonite, harpy, centaur, or naga they would have to completely redesign some of the armor due to how strange most of these bodies are set up. From tail, to no legs, to more animalistically exaggerated than the charr, to the potential of having 4 arms, it puts too much variation on the armor that they’d likely stop looking like the armor for any of the other races.

Personally I’ve grown fond of the Hylek, but I try not to get my hopes up on seeing them in game as a playable race mainly because they’ve stated in a book how they were the poster child of having fun with armor that didn’t have to conform to the 5 playable races.

Invictus.1503:

I’d love for a MM weapon, though I don’t think every skill needs a minion, but be minion friendly (with some minion summons of course). I’m hoping for some new content in February/March that introduced one new weapon per class (necro being this) and that fixes our other minion bugs and problems.

Ummm, they’ve already stated they’re not looking to add new content but rather to finish polishing the rough edges of the content they have in game already. Adding new weapons and new skills will simply compound the issues surrounding bugged traits and skills further. I’d rather have them get the classes to where they want them to be before they start adding crazy cool things.

As it stands, I do like the idea of Minion based weapon but until they get the current necromancer issues sorted I’m not holding my breath for it. I’d rather see Axe turned into something useful beforehand.

The Realm of Torment is thought to be renamed to ‘The Redeemed Realm’ as this name pops up in the old GW1 .dat file during one of the mining expeditions into it. However, this being in the .dat means that it’s a theory, and not solid fact though I think it stands on solid footing for the most part.

As for the the Desert proving an obstacle, I think the theory that the Realm of Torment is involved could have something to do with it, but I’m fairly skeptical. If the Order of Whispers is using Abbadon’s old realm to travel between Tyria and Elona, it would most likely be through Abbadon’s Mouth in the Desolation. However the only other two portals to the Mists that exist in Tyria exist in the Norther Crystal desert at the Tomb of Primeval Kings, which currently seems to be near where Kralkatorrik is nesting, and the Door of Komalie which leads directly to the Foundry of Failed Creation. Last we had heard of the door however was that it was sealed with the soul of the Lich being killed on the Bloodstone. So I’m rather skeptical that they’re using the Realm of Torment as a means of bypassing the Dragons, though I suppose it does remain a possibility.

EDIT: I suppose if they somehow found a way to navigate the mists to the extent of moving from Realm of Torment to the Mists battlegrounds that has an Asura portal going to LA in it that would be something else entirely. Though I’m not entirely sure if the Mists are set up for that kind of travel around.

Konig man, you need to chill out enjoy a joke now and then.

Even Anet gave props to Wizards in GW1. The boss ‘Selvetarm’ (who is a Dryder in GW1) is named after a Drow God.

I saw the Wizards comment as just that, a good natured joke for levity. Not everything on this board has to be super serial all the time.

To get back on topic, I do agree with you Konig when you say it’s really more a matter of we haven’t been to the places on the map where Dryders have been most populated. I’m sure they still exist in the Underworld considering how big a roll they played in that area, and I definitely wouldn’t be surprised to see if they were still on the Ring of Fire. But until such time, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Oldbugga.7029:

To those who just want to cheer lead “the necro is OK” then that is your prerogative but I do not want to remain shoehorned into really limited playstyles just to be competitive when this profession offers so much potential that is held back (maybe deliberately).

Crap you cracked the De Vinci code! I knew my bosses at Anet weren’t very good at covering their paper trail. All of us ‘cheer leaders’ (ascii and others) are just double agents working to try and hide the fact that Anet devs are in fact actively working to keep this class down. I bet your tinfoil hat kept our psychic positive energy waves out of your head too.

People kept thinking it was Cox who started this, but in fact she was just a fall girl to divert attention away from the TRUE mastermind of this scheme: Mike O’Brien himself who sits upon a gilt throne built on the bones of Necromancers. This entire game has been an attack on Necro classes across the gaming world because they’ve been too popular for all these years. Yes.

However did you figure it out?

Do you guys know how crazy you sound when you start suggesting that Anet is actively working to against this class. I’m sure those tinfoil caps are very fashionable though.

I find myself ignoring Axe because I can get better Vulnerability stacking elsewhere with better damage. Running Dagger/Focus gives me 12 stacks of Vuln and when I throw Blood is Power into the mix just maximizes damage for minimal effort required. The time spamming Axe #1 for Vuln can just be done better that I just forgo the axe entirely. Though I haven’t looked into Nemesis’s build, though perhaps I will.

I’m waiting for the day when the word filter changes from kitten to skritt now.

Skritt, because they’ve stolen my shinies heart.

I think I’ve stated else where, don’t care much for Tengu. I’m sure they will be introduced, but I find them boring. Same goes for Quaggans who I view mostly as things that must be saved.

Kodan are probably right next to Skritt in terms of favourite race, but even then they’re cool because I’m not them. If that makes sense. They’re aloof and mysterious and keep their distance, but not so much so that I have no knowledge of how they’re actually fairing (ie Tengu). So I guess I like the Kodan because they’re aren’t player characters running around as polar bears calling me a newb or scrub.