Guild Wars 2

My 2 cents on the berserker. I was overall not terribly impressed with the berserker, I don’t think it really offers a really distinct playstyle from standard warrior and the bonuses offered seem a bit weak in general.

I think the core of the issue I have with it is the berserk mode itself, having played it and tried it out it feels really weird to have berserk on a static duration. The point of going into a berserker frenzy is to go nuts until everything is dead not for a quarter of a minute until you’re winded and need a lie-down.

Given that it requires a full 30 adrenaline before going berserk I don’t think it would be unreasonable to have a mechanic that increases berserk duration, I’d suggest something like on kill duration or using a primal burst, either of these would help push the sort of blood-rage playstyle they seem to be going for/what the name berserker implies. With a longer duration berserk mode you could also ad potential mechanics for manually ending berserk mode early and generally make the mode a lot more interesting overall.

Been running with minions almost exclusively since the fix and the only quirks I’ve noticed thus far is that minions will occasionally aggro enemies on their own. The only one that’s relatively consistent in this behavior is the flesh golem, on more than a few occasions an enemy has aggroed and opted to attack fleshie over other minions closer to them.

That said, I’ve haven’t had minions run off to attack something without my consent, the only times they’ve engaged when I haven’t attacked are when an enemy aggros a minion (in which case the minion that was attacked fights the enemy solo until I intervene) or when an attack intended for me hits a minion instead.

Honestly though, given how incredibly responsive they are in attacking and switching targets now I’ll happily put up with having to fight occasional extra trash enemies when using them.

Lily.1935:

Vorgryn.9145:

I would love a use of life force that doesn’t include shroud because Necromancer as it stands is waaay too transformation heavy. With two of our three elites and our shroud all completely replacing weapon skills and denying access to utilities, it’s extremely limiting in any gameplay mode.

I’ll have to show off my Ritualist Specialization when its ready. But at the moment I’m still working on it. :P though I fear I’ll show it off and it’ll sour people’s opinions on Reaper which isn’t something I want to do.

I’ve been thinking about a Ritualist specialization that uses life force to cast abilities as well. Great minds, eh? Can’t wait to see what your take on it is.

Over all I must say I really like the idea of the chanting state, building different chants together and applying them in different ways sounds really cool.

That said, the condition focus of the spec is rather overwhelming, you say there’s room for minionmancer, but the puppet minions themselves are basically just more condition bursty versions of jagged horrors. It could work for a condition based minion bomber, but I do feel they would be more of an afterthought than a focus.

It also has a bit of a support/boon generating angle with the totems, but none of the traits or chanting abilities support this focus so it feels more like an afterthought.

Likewise with the chanting words themselves, with the exception of the chill one all inflict rather hefty stacks of damaging conditions and makes the abilities feel very same-y. It really works against the cool combining effects idea that the chanting state is built around since all the things you can do with it are literally “inflict damaging conditions” with some bonus effects if you stack several of the same chant.

It’s a very cool system you’ve thought of here but I really feel the abilities need to be more varied and versatile to make it actually interesting and appealing.

For example why not have one chant that say transfers conditions? Corrupts boons? Lifesteal focused? Use the whole of the necromancer’s toolkit for the chant skills and you could do some really cool things with it.

Draknar.5748:

Dasefex.4810:

Thief and warrior are the fastest necro is the slowest everything else is in between

Slowest in what way? They have a passive 25% speed signet and can “blink” to a target while in death shroud.

As far as passive movement speed & swiftness uptime necros can do quite well for themselves. However as far as “active movement” goes (leaps, blinks, shadowsteps etc) necro is pretty flat footed.

Death Shroud #2 requires an incredibly slow projectile to connect to blink (you can nearly keep pace with the projectile with swiftness alone). And that’s pretty much all necros have, Flesh Wurm requires setting up before hand and generally isn’t very effecient for it’s teleport/mobility aspect & spectral walk will only ever return you to where you cast the skill.

I think daredevil is quite nice and fitting actually. I mean you have to sort of consider the position they were in with this elite spec. It is basically a d&d style monk, however the word monk is already used in Tyria to describe the dedicated healer casters that eventually became guardians.

What do you call the “monk spec” then? Also keeping in mind that this “monk spec” is being added to the thief class and as such won’t have the same sort of religious connotations of typical d&d monks.

So what would call it? Assassin and Ninja are right out as both conjure images of stealthy characters which the “monk spec” is decidedly not. Martial Artist doesn’t roll of the tongue or offer any really interesting flavor.

Daredevil works, imo, as it’s a thief that’s eschewing a lot of the stealth mechanics thieves use to survive in order to dodge enemy attacks through skill alone. Sounds dangerous, sounds daring, sounds like a daredevil.

There are a few threads here talking about the AI fix but the title and op for this one really matches my jubilation for this.

For three years I’ve struggled against the issues minion AI has been plagued with, and today it’s all better. No more waiting for minions to catch up with you so you have a better chance of getting them to aggro your target, no more opening with specific abilities and cursing under your breath every time you accidentally open with the wrong kind. No, now they just work, no fuss, no tricks, they just work.

We’re back, it’s been far too long, but Minion Masters are a real serious thing again.

Now allow me to do my happy dance!

Brokensunday.4098:

no break bar all it need is 1 more stack of stability and make it last 2 more sec

I have to agree with this, all it really needs is for the stability portion of the trait to be better. 2 stacks for 4-5 seconds would be perfectly reasonable imo.

I would love for necro to get a break bar, but I don’t think this is the place for it honestly.

Nyth.3492:

I agree the difference is quite high. But the longer I think about it, the more I think “it’s fine”. Zerkers have an innate weakness to kiting more so than most other builds; they might need this more than a necromancer would.
Also they trade a lot of damage to pick that up, as their other GM traits are just as mindboggling OP

See, I’m not convinced. How are berserkers any more weak to kiting than standard warriors? They still have full access to everything vanilla warriors have that makes kiting them difficult. The only thing they lose is vanilla burst skills if they are in berserk mode and of those only sword’s burst losing immobilize would make them any easier to kite.

Maybe I’m just a bit salty, but honestly I’m just not seeing any weaknesses or drawbacks to anything about the berserker. :-/

It’s a useless skill fact about the “poison cloud” that the death nova trait actually casts, the actual trait still works fine. Just tested this you can trigger multiple death novas simultaneously or back to back within the “cooldown” of the poison cloud skill.

Hehe, I do believe that may have been my post in the general reaper feedback thread you saw. Reaper Minion Bomber was one of the builds I was most excited to try out this weekend, glad I was able to inspire someone else to try it out. The damage can be very impressive but it does take a lot of setup and relying on a 180s cooldown skill to trigger it makes it sort of impractical a lot of the time.

I love the suggestion as well, a button/command to dismiss/kill all summons would be great for minion bombing but could also be useful for standard Minion Masters who want to reset their minions or for any class that uses summons if they want to dismiss them early.

Here are my thoughts on the Reaper after having played it most of this weekend, although my play time has been rather limited so I can’t fully comment on all the traits.

Greatsword
1. The auto attack chain feels very subpar atm, it either needs to be faster, hit harder or both.

2. Gravedigger feels pretty good I must say, although it could do with some more damage, or be a touch faster to activate as it’s such a cornerstone skill of the weapon.

3. Death Spiral is very good imo, great spike of vuln and reasonable damage for what’s mainly a debuff attack.

4. Nightfall is great, love the effect but please give it a standard AoE ring so we can see exactly where it is.

5. Grasping Darkness needs a LOT of work. It’s currently very hard to actually land the attack as it goes straight out from the direction your character is facing. Make it either go towards the targeted enemy or make it a line ground target skill. Secondly the pull effect is very hit or miss atm, often enemies are only knocked down by the skill or only pulled part way towards you.

Reaper Shroud

1. The auto attack chain feels very good if a bit light for damage and LF generation, Spite’s minor sort of offsets this however as the chain can build a lot of might very quickly.

2. Death’s Charge is very useful but it’s very easy to overshoot your target with it, perhaps have it stop when you reach your target (full distance very time if non targetted), or make it a line ground target skill?

3. Infusing Terror is fantastic, love everything about the skill.

4. Soul Spiral is quite nice and the poison stacking is a nice touch for the condition built reapers.

5. Executioner’s Scythe is very potent, I like it. The wind up feels alright given how strong the skill is.

Shouts

“Your Soul is Mine!” The life force generation is nice but the heal itself feels rather weak, especially with the cast time. Perhaps add an additional heal per target hit?

“Nothing can save you!” This one has a lot of potential I can see. Boon strips plus unblockable buff is quite nice for a lot of situations. Also the shortest cast times of any of our shouts is a plus.

“You are all weaklings!” All around alright. Stun break, might generation and aoe weakness. Does a lot of things so I imagine it will see use.

“Suffer!” The cast time and recharge are rather high for its effects. Could have use if Deathly Chill gets buffed.

“Rise!” Alright so as a hardcore Minion Master I was intruged about the potential of a “minion bomber” spec using this shout alongside bone minions. What I found was that I could achieve a pretty good burst using this then activating lich or plague form to instantly kill all minions for a massive stack of death novas. It’s a cool trick, very niche, and I’d like to be able to do it without triggering a several minute long elite cooldown. I’d suggest making a chain skill for this that lets you kill off all the jagged horrors summoned, this would make a reaper minion bomber spec more than a trick relying on massive elite skill cooldowns.

“Chilled to the bone!” This skill is weird. AoE stun that grants stability but has a massive cast time. You end up casting nearly as long as your enemies end up stunned and you really need the stability at the beginning of the skill in order to cast it reliably. I feel that in most situations where you would want a stun or stability you’d be better served using Reaper Shroud for Infusing Terror and Executioner’s Scythe.

Traits

Augury of Death: The recharge reduction can be good but it feels lackluster (perhaps due to the shouts themselves) Perhaps add an boost to shout activation time to let traited shouts be overall more useable?

Chilling Nova: A nice effect but gated behind too many mechanics, either drop the crit or chill requirement, with one or the other it would make the trait a lot more reliable.

Deathly Chill: Seriously needs a massive boost. The low damage of this trait really hampers every other chill related thing on the reaper. The damage could be over doubled and it wouldn’t be unreasonable imo.

As far as Norn go, I don’t believe they operate much differently from humans. While Norn siblings are common I’m not sure if it’s ever stated if they are “twins” or from the same “litter” as it were, or like human siblings simply occurred from different pregnancies.

While Charr cubs are stated to become functional (walking & talking) much faster than humans, I don’t believe it’s ever stated how fast Norn children reach this stage. As far as later development Norn do seem to match or be slightly faster than humans. Braham was 17 when he was introduced into the story.

On a related note Norn do seem to have longer overall lifespans than humans (assuming they die of natural causes which is rare). Forgal was over 96 when he died and was still very fit and healthy by all rights.

nekretaal.6485:

Suggestion

Superior Rune of the Lich already has a cool down down of 60 seconds.

How about, instead of creating only one horror that it be altered to cast “Rise” Instead.

I really like this idea.

On topic, Rise + Death Nova is the one thing I’m really looking forward to with Reaper honestly. Jagged Horrors are only useful with Death Nova in the first place and this utility can let you pump out a lot more of them at a time, that’s a lot of death novas on the floor, a lot of area denial and poison stacking.

It will be fun to try out a hybrid Minion Bomber with Reaper bringing plenty of damage on it’s own and Rise & Bone Minions for lots of secondary AoE.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Yea, the minions look very weak and crap, wish they’d look like the old ones in GW1.

Yeah the old bone horrors/minions were a great unique design. And the GW1 fleshie, my gods there’s no comparison. The GW2 one feels like this kitten y stunted descendant of that beautiful hulk of flesh.

Wwefan.4982:

dsslive.8473:

Wwefan.4982:

Emm elite specs are not connected to masteries its hero points that unlock them.

ye the skills and traits are, but are the skins you get also through that system? from what i read (and i’m completely possible to be wrong coze my memory isnt that great^^) it seemed as if the skins will be unlocked in a similar way to masteries by playing the elite spec, could be wrong tho , but thats the impression i got :p

I think the new armors will just be drops your class can wear as all classes will still be the same tier of armor such as Rangers are medium so Druids will be medium remember there are no class specific armors all medium classes wear medium armor, all light classes wear light armor and heavy classes wear heavy armor there are no Ranger armors or Ele armors.

Yes, but that part was a given. The Chronomancer shoulders will be a light armor skin while the Dragonhunter gauntlets will be a heavy armor skin. The poster you’re quoting was addressing how you acquire the skins, not if the skins will be universal like some parts of the radiant/hellfire achievement skins.

In this blogpost they mention that every elite specialization will come bundled with a weapon and armor skin (as well as sigils and runes, wow totally forgot about that).

“Finally, these reward tracks unlock everything for an elite specialization: weapon, unique mechanics, skills, and traits. They’ll also reward items, including new runes and sigils, a fancy weapon skin for your new weapon type, and an armor skin for a single matching piece of armor (usually headgear or shoulders).”

This seems to imply that the skins (and sigil/rune rewards) will be built into the “training” menu unlock tracks for the elite specializations. However the wording is a bit unclear as “reward track” is a term I’m sure they’ve used to describe the mastery system as well.

___________________________Heal Skills___________________________

• Well of Blood
  Increase heal per pulse and/or make the skill a water field

• Signet of Vampirism
  Make passive ICD per attacker

• Consume Conditions
  Apply Vuln at beginning of cast (and thus remove it on a successful cast)

___________________________Utility Skills___________________________

• Spectral Wall
  Should block or reflect projectiles

• Spectral Grasp
  Should be a projectile finisher

• Spectral Armor
  Should apply Stability

• Signet of Spite
  Active should apply a larger variety of conditions (torment, burning, etc.)

• Signet of Undeath
  Reduce cast time on active

• Well of Power
  Should pulse stability

• Well of Darkness
  Should block projectiles

• Epidemic
  Self-condition is applied at beginning of cast. Transferred conditions have their duration’s increased by 2% for each condition on you

• Corrupt Boon
  Self-condition is applied at beginning of cast. Convert an additional boon for each condition on you

• Blood is Power
  Self-condition is applied at beginning of cast. Apply an additional stack of might for each condition on you.

• Corrosive Poison Cloud
  Self-condition is applied at beginning of cast. Poison cloud applies 2 stacks of torment for each condition on you.

• Flesh Wurm
  Necrotic Traversal now swaps you with your flesh wurm, creating the poison effect at the location you activated the skill.

• Shadow Fiend
  Haunt instantly teleports Shadow Fiend to the target (the fiend itself does not activate a skill)

__________________________Weapon Skills__________________________

• Axe Skills
  Increase damage of Rending & Ghastly Claws (#1&2)

• Dagger Skills
  Reduce channeling time on Life Siphon

___________________________Elite Skills___________________________

• Plague
  New #4 Skill: Contagious Plague, transfers a condition on every pulse
  New #5 Skill is now Gathering Plague

• Lich Form
  Reduce cast and recharge times of skills #2-5

_________________________Shroud Skills_________________________
Increase projectile speed of Dark Path

____________________________Spite____________________________
Your text here.
___________________________Curses___________________________
Your text here.
_________________________Death Magic_________________________
Your text here.
_________________________Blood Magic_________________________
Your text here.
_________________________Soul Reaping_________________________
Your text here.

(may go through traits later, too tired now)

Well I think Turai Ossa’s impressive stature has been presented consistently enough that it’s fair to say he qualifies as a physically unique character and not just presented larger for gameplay mechanics.

Kalavier.1097:

In lore, the second passage was destroyed by Captain Smash while escaping LA. To stop Miasma or hostile forces from spreading and following the Refugees.

As for the Tunnel, it replaces the Asura Gate. My issue with that is how there is no defenses there at all…

To be honest I don’t think they specifically need defenses right next to the tunnel. I’m willing to bet the plan is to saturate that area with shells from the cannons on the east side of Fort Mariner should any force try to invade from there. Combine that with the fact that the tunnel itself forms a natural choke point and it sounds almost suicidal to attack via that route.

The thing with Kryta is that it was a wholesale change, people are getting caught up on racial appearance but the ENTIRETY of Kryta underwent massive changes from GW1 to GW2. Just look at the flora of Kryta, in GW1 it was jam packed full of palms and other tropical plants, in GW2 it’s all deciduous trees and in many places is indistinguishable from Ascalon.

I’m not sure why we’re discounting the Zephyrites from being a source of jade. Yes at this point in the story they’re basically a non-faction but don’t forget Lion’s Arch had a trade agreement with them for months before the events of season 2. Who’s to say Canthan jade wasn’t among the things traded?

New Lion’s Arch is amazing. Feels really fleshed out and busy, like a proper city.

In my initial tour I ran around without looking at the map, was massively disorienting until I got to the outskirts and found recognizable landmarks.

Love all the little touches, like the performing trio of bards up at the captain’s council. Also when I was down at the lobster docks an npc male human dock worker made a catcall at my female human necro, was not expecting this level of realism lol.

All in all 10/10. Knocked it out of the park with this one Anet!

This is actually a pretty brilliant idea. As an elite signet you could easily double or more the passive LF gain and have it be justifiable. Then half the cast time and you’ve got a pretty awesome elite skill.

As for what would be our new utility signet, I’m not sure what I’d want honestly.

Edit: Thought of a cool signet idea.
Signet of Pain
Passive; Increases Condition Duration (8%)
Active; Cast time 1 1/2s, Mark target foe (25x Mark of Pain, 8s), attacks against that foe will deal damage in AoE (150 radius).
Cooldown: 60s

neilug hyuga.5634:

Goldenrevolver.4371:

i think making the live versions might affect allies would be enough. i think there is no need to buff or nerf the bleeds as our weapon do enough bleeding. it shouldnt be the main reason for taking this utility (as it is now). other classes can deal more bleeds anyways. were not the kings and queens of conditions and putting everything onto one thing…we saw what happned to dhuumfire and signet of spite

Yup, I agree about your stack.

But in my mind, if you look back to GW1, you had really powerfull skills, but requiere a BIG sacrifice. For exemple, Blood Is Power requiered 33% of your Max Health.

So, it would have been nice a similar work into Corruption – not necessary sacrificing health xD.
But anyway, I am sure there is better Game Designer for that option, and I hope they will try to balance it.

While I would like to see the health sacrifice mechanic come back to necro and appreciate that the corruption skill type is attempting to keep that flavor, large health sacrifices worked in GW1 as you would always have a monk or other healer with you who could undo your sacrifice with a single spell. Current GW2 mechanics (and necromancer in particular) simply don’t have strong enough healing to make large health sacrifices practical.

Sevans.4619:

I always felt like when designing medium armor, they made it all for engineer or thief and forgot that rangers existed.

Who romps through the woods and ranges across open lands in a coat that gets caught on every passing branch and stick?

That’s somewhat ironic given that rangers were the only ones with trenchcoats in GW1. Assassins (ancestor of the thief) wore a combination of form-fitting leather, occasional spikes and entire sets of cutlery.

That said there’s enough varieties of trenchcoat in medium armor now to cover pretty much every concievable flavor you could want from a tenchcoat. We don’t need any more, ever.

Have they finally killed Axe completely? That is, with the only truly worthwhile skill (Unholy Feast) now available as a shroud effect and the axe specific trait not actually requiring an axe to utilize its damage boost will there ever be reason to use an axe?

Teratus.2859:

draxynnic.3719:

Specialisations for racial skills is an interesting thought, actually. You could start with mastering the specialisation for your own race (of course!), and then you can develop the specialisations of other races, similar to the HoT specialisations for NPC races and the race title tracks in EOTN.

Because an Asura with a Charr Warband that can transform into the Spirit of the Bear is totally lore friendly

Easy. Charr Warband -> Charr Mercenaries
Become the Bear -> Ursan Blessing

As draxynnic mentioned EoTN gave us a pretty clear example of learning at least partial forms of other races abilities.

Raziel.4216:

^ This MMORPG in particular was advertised as progression grind-free.
The devs said in an interview less than 3 months ago that they didn’t want to invalidate past progress.
So yeah I’d like to keep my unlocked skills and avoid doing more than 2 times the total # of skill points available in the entire game to have my characters back to where they are now, tyvm.

What? Do you actually understand how the change is working? You only have to do 65 skill/hero challenges in the open world. 400 of your hero points are awarded to you for simply getting to lvl 80, which you can do by any method you desire be it WvW, crafting, tomes, etc.

As for the change not being alt friendly. Trait-wise at least it will still be a massive step forward from the current system. Also speaking from experience as someone with 14 characters 10 of which are lvl 80, rushing through maps for skill points really is not very time consuming at all. I think the longest it has taken me on one of my alts was a little over 3 hours.

I’m a bit worried about this as well. Racial skills are, practically speaking, extremely niche at best. But the flavor they provide is massive. A norn who cannot shapeshift is just a big human, the races (especially human & norn) need that little extra flavor ability to make it really distinct.

One idea I’ve heard that I rather like is the idea of tying racial abilities to masteries. Basically the system would automatically unlock the native racial mastery at an early level and at lvl 80 you can complete mastery lines towards the other playable races, unlocking their racial skills as well. Some skills would be aesthetically different, for example, norn transformations would be “blessing” skills similar to the norn abilities from the first game that would be mechanically identical to the transformations but would not physically transform the character.

This system would remove racial abilities from hero points and, by allowing all racial skills to be used by all players, the racial skills themselves could be buffed.

At the very least though I really really hope racial skills are available in HoT and it would be great to hear some dev comments on this.

Maris.3164:

Pyre Fierceshot or Kalla Scorchrazor would be my choices if we wanted charr legends. Or possibly Bonfaaz Burntfur although he was flame legion.

Yeah, Pyre or Kalla are much better choices for a charr legend as we know a lot more about them.

Though it would be a bit weird to see Rytlock channel Pyre given that they have the same voice actor lol.

I’d have to go find my copy of the book to say with 100% certainty but I don’t recall Snaff ever using any explicitly mesmer magic (unlike Queen Jennah).

Snaff’s telepathic control was, like most Asuran magic based around magitech devices. If I remember right it was primarily through use of a special crown/helm that let the user take direct control of whatever it was linked to (Snaff controlled a number of golems/devices with it ranging from battle-suits fashioned in his & Zojja’s likeness to grinder-boats designed to destroy hordes of undead as they boarded the ships.)

Arioso.8519:

You know what, there’s a second solution to the Norn transformation balancing issue.

Give EVERYONE a functionally similar (Or even straight-up identical transformation) but with different aesthetics.
~snip~

An alternate idea to this would be to buff all racial skills and make them all available to all characters through the upcoming mastery system. Characters automatically start off with all of their racial skills unlocked and can acquire other races racial skills through mastery tracks for the other races.

For lore and flavor some racials would be visually different for other races using them. For example the norn “Become the Bear” would be “Ursan Blessing” for non-norn characters and while mechanically identical would not transform the character into bear form.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Your reasoning of the Largo/Bubbles compatibility is sound, but wouldn’t that stick with the Quaggan as well? I think Quaggan would be a front runner between the two.

The main thing stopping the Quaggan from being playable is that they are considered a “minor race”. That is they are tribal, have no unified nation or major city of their own, and are a choice in the order’s minor race story arc of the personal story.

Bathos.6341:

Yeah, driven on by the flame legion. Even the charr think the flame legion were out of line there.
The russians didn’t stop at the russian border when they threw germany out in the second world war either. It’s easy to get carried away in a war for vengence, especially if your leadership is corrupt.

Doubly so when your corrupt leadership worships demonic servants of a mad god. I mean when you consider the events of the Cataclysm it really seems that the charr invasions of Orr and Kryta were a part of Abaddon’s plan and did not have the best interests of the charr in mind whatsoever. Losing their armies in Orr and Kryta set back the charr’s final conquest of Ascalon by twenty years.

JackSpacer.4320:

Rytlok needs braces!

DENTAL PLAN!

Simpson’s references never get old, lol.

On topic, I have two female charr and one male. Honestly not sure if the fluffy tails had a large impact in deciding that but I do agree the fluffy tails are superior.

Dawdler.8521:

Riot Inducer.8964:

Yeah, the medium armor wardrobe is seriously over saturated with trench coats. It honestly feels a bit like being a paragon back in GW1, “You can have any armor you like so long as it’s white and comes with a skirt”.

Too bad your line doesnt even apply to medium armor, it apply to light armor. Medium is far better off than light (and pretty much equal to heavy).

Not sure if you understood what I was getting at. In GW1 the paragon profession’s selection for armor is effectively minor variations on white armor with a skirt.
For reference: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Paragon_armor
Now tell me how limited your light armor choices are again.

quacthulhu.2546:

Speaking of good names.. How many good ones for Revenant have you come upwith /come across in discussions?
i got:
Channel Surfer
Stevie Wonder
Three Blind Specializations
any number of Kenshi ripoffs
Legendary Nerf Stance

I’m really hoping to see some of the funny ritualist names come back for revenants (as they seem to have a strong lore/thematic tie). No funny names have ever managed to top the rits I saw back in GW1.

Tasty was Chow Mein
Clumsy was Oops
and many other similar names, awesome, all of them.

Doggie.3184:

99% of Medium armor is GW1 style Ranger coat armor~ not sure where the ninja is coming from other than my dreams and GW1 exclusively. Seems like you’re asking for medium tribal, shaman and barbarian type armor, which would be lovely. Anet armor designers will just beat you on the hand with a ruler and force you into a trenchcoat though. Someone really needs to stop those guyz.

Yeah, the medium armor wardrobe is seriously over saturated with trench coats. It honestly feels a bit like being a paragon back in GW1, “You can have any armor you like so long as it’s white and comes with a skirt”.

anduriell.6280:

Seems amazing. Unfortunately usseles. Jagged horror are just a mimic, those minions don’t bring anything except one blow that the target has to expend to kill the jagged horror, The dead nova trait, that is a grand master trait is not that strong only 80 DPS/second for 5 seconds (max 420 damage).
They need to revamp and improve the condition damage in necro somehow. Poison is easily cleansed and this Grand Master trait is just a joke.

The shout sounds amazing But the minion casted must be harder. I don’t mean more DPS but been able to stand a normal attack would be good, at least to be noticiable. They could revamp the jagged horror in general so the Grand master could have more sense. In this case harder and little bit more DPS (this minions do something like 30 damage and bleeding that is not even noticiable). Thus we could begin to use it.

Just to clarify the death nova poison field deals damage, pulses and persists for four seconds. It’s not massive damage but can cause some seriously long lasting poison and works very well as area denial & pressure.

phys.7689:

Morsus.5106:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Weapon – Greatsword

• Slow attacks with big damage modifiers

Sounds easily interruptable.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Utilites – Shouts
snip

• Effectiveness based on how many opponents are hit

So it’ll be useful in Courtyard where the enemy tends to zerg, but not very useful when you don’t have many enemies on you at once. Roamers with interrupts will love fighting Reapers lol.

they will probably be the class that can trait a defiance bar.

got to see it in play, but this one seems like it will have a very strong playstyle difference, really expands necro.

now i have to ponder if i should make a new necro… asura with GS doesnt really excite…

I agree, it makes a ton of sense thematically for what they described they wanted the Reaper to be. A slow but unstoppable force character is exactly where I’d put a defiance bar. Doubly so given that Necro as a whole gets very little in the way of boons like Stability which would be the other option for this sort of character.

On a whole I love everything I’ve seen so far and can’t wait to see more. This really feels like it’s addressed a lot of things necros have been wanting for ages. A high damage melee weapon with proper cleave/AoE. A leap/mobility skill, alongside a pull.

Clearly it’s going to be the Groundskeeper. It will utilize it’s greatsword and other blades to keep the unruly plants of the maguuma trimmed and under control.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bhawb.7408:

April 26, 2006 they changed minions to have a cap according to Death Magic, this was 2 days before Factions. So unlimited minions only existed in the game for just short of 1 year.

That said, my friend had a personal record of 36 minions. The nerf was absolutely necessary.

I am of the paranoid belief that I caused the change in functionality to Aura of the Lich some time after EoTN was released. I created a Necro hero team that was able to maintain 30+ minions with ease. When vanquishing with it I was able to keep minions alive so efficiently that they would level up.

The crux of the whole build was of course Aura of the Lich that allowed mitigating the sacrifice costs of spamming blood of the master to 30+ minions. Within a month of me posting my build online Aura of the Lich was changed and thus the whole thing was effectively broken. Ah, I did love making and breaking builds in GW1, good times.

On topic, while I would love to come up with new minions all day long, I’m not so sure it’s what minion masters need at this exact moment. As someone else mentioned the biggest addition I’d like to see for minion mastery atm (apart from the obvious AI fixes) would be a GW2 equivalent of Jagged Bones, spawning jagged horrors on minion death.

bigbobpataki.4796:

I think the name fits very well. Considering that dragons are the great evil of the world, and that guardians have a justice/smiting evil theme, becoming a “Dragonhunter” was only natural. We have to see what other changes they made in the ready up before we jump down Anet’s throat, but so far they’ve definitely met the “Changing classes in unexpected ways” goal for elites.

I agree, I think the article and video simply did a poor job of representing how this spec relates to the guardian. I think the issue was the term “big game hunter”, a guardian wouldn’t pick up a bow and take the title “Dragonhunter” to be some sort of haughty trophy seeker. They’d be doing those things to rid the world of the evil menace that are dragons, they’re merely adapting their abilities to best combat the creatures that can be somewhat difficult to fight with only melee weapons.

Honestly I’m intrigued by the spec and want to find out more about it but I feel the article and video really dropped the ball and failed to inspire.

Ok, I agree with a lot of the article, necros need a lot of work, but this statement, "Necromancers only use minions when they’re new to the game and anyone who uses them outside of that is trolling or doing it ‘for the laugh’. "

kitten you article author. Seriously, don’t make this kind of incendiary statement. I have mained a minion master since GW1. I am more aware than most of how horrid the current minions are, but to imply my persistence in using them is me having a lack of knowledge, trolling or otherwise not taking my gameplay seriously is immensely insulting.

The fact of the matter is when you get past the many AI issues minions have they do in fact embody the attrition playstyle of necromancer better than most builds. Even with their AI issues they’re still meatshields and passive dps and provide far more in protracted fights than many other necromancer skills.

Again, I agree with a lot of this article and appreciate the intent of raising awareness of the issues we have but this ignorant attitude you have presented towards minions will only serve to drive others away from the playstyle that simply needs AI improvements to be more user friendly and universally useful.

lordkrall.7241:

Isnt it a bit funny that people complain about the Living Story or the game overall due to it having you repeat stuff in order to get what you want, and yet they claim that Factions and Nightfall gave them more to do.

Just going through the story of Faction and Nightfall takes a couple of days at most.

That’s implying that all Factions and Nightfall added was story. Last I checked they each also added playable areas roughly comparable in size to the base game complete with quests and content for said areas, along with new professions and new skills for older professions, as well as elite areas/dungeons and new pvp modes and maps to top it off.

The original set of gemstore armor sets are remakes of GW1 armor (Profane, Krytan, & Primeval).

There are some other armor sets that somewhat resemble armor sets in GW1 but as far as I’m aware, heritage and those three I mentioned are the only actual GW1 armor sets in the game.

It’s a bit sad I would like to see some more GW1 armor remakes, especially considering how many weapon skins from GW1 we have.

I’m not up to date on the living story so I can’t comment on what’s going on there but I will say you are missing a rather big point the Order had in season 1. During the evacuation of LA Whisper’s agents were all over the city getting civilians to safety. The Priory and Vigil might have opened their doors to the refugees but they didn’t do jack to actually save the people trapped in LA, that was all the Order of Whispers (not to discount the efforts of the Lionguard of course).

Thank you dlonie for your efforts to keep this thread on topic and focused. The issue of how strained communcation with ArenaNet seems to have gotten is one that’s begun affecting me as well.

How tight lipped ANet has become is kind of bizarre for me. As a GW1 vet I vividly recall hanging out in LA International district 1 for the Q&A sessions with Gaile and The Frog. Directly interacting with the developers who were happy to answer questions and tease about upcoming events and things. It was great.

I hadn’t really thought about the shift in communication with the community until now, after all it’s been years since I logged onto GW1 with any regularity and even longer since there was any reason to have an in-game dev Q&A like that.

Earlier this year I started playing a game called Warframe by Digital Extremes, it’s a 3rd person shooter that’s technically in an open beta phase. But the thing that’s struck me about Digital Extremes and their development of Warframe is how open and responsive they are to their community. At least once a month they host a live stream on their twitch.tv channel and these function very similarly to the old Frog Q&A sessions where they actively answer questions from the fans and discuss what’s coming for the game. They’re happy to show off concept art, in progress animations, renders and even alpha gameplay footage of upcoming features.

Now I don’t want to derail this by drawing more comparisons between developers of entirely different games but I just wanted to point out how powerful those sorts of developer-community interactions can be. I love GW1 to death and greatly value ArenaNet as a developer name because of my experiences in GW1, not only because the games were great fun but because they were personable and fostered a strong sense of community in their game.

I hyped the hell out of GW2 because of that, and at launch the game did in fact meet the majority of my expectations and I’ve been playing and enjoying the game since then. But now we get to this point, two years in, and we don’t seem to have added all that much and there’s no Frog around to assure us great things are on the horizon. I’m just left wondering will we ever see Cantha again? Elona? Hell, will my necromancer ever get any new spells? At this point I’m beginning to question if anything other than story will ever be added.

I don’t know if all of this was specifically on the topic but I felt I had to contribute my thoughts here.

The idea of going out into the world to earn traits is nice and novel but the way it’s handled is too limited imo. Each trait has a specific requirement somethings requiring an entire zone completion or a specific zone. There should really be multiple options for getting any given trait.

I mean if I’m an asura leveling up through zones in Kryta why do I have to drop what I’m doing to go to the boonies of Ascalon for a specific event?

Alternatively simply grouping traits so it’s not so much of a grind to unlock a good variety, for example clearing zone Y could unlock all “IV” adept traits giving you some things to experiment with without forcing you to either ignore traits or adopt whatever random traits you’ve unlocked by exploring naturally.

To more fully explain before the change traits were unlocked by tier, so you would buy an “adept trait guide” from your trainer and it would unlock all traits within the adept tier. So to unlock all traits for your character you merely had to purchase three books for a grand total of about 3gold.

Now traits are unlocked on a case by case basis, either requiring something close to PvE world completion or something on the order of 300+ gold and skill points to unlock all traits.

Many people (myself included) feel this very steep cost to unlock all traits discourages build experimentation (why try out a new trait setup if it’s going to require me to either go do three zone completions +x,y,&z events or 20gold & skill points?) or even discourages new players from bothering to use traits at all given they’d much rather be spending their money and skill points on gear and skills.