Guild Wars 2

Personally I’d rather they drop the cripple and make it a vampiric attack again, we already have plenty of better options for snaring.

I agree with most of your points however I have to disagree on #4, we are much better off in the range department than guardians who’s only skills that reach out to 1,200 range are slower moving than our staff auto attack. Engineers and thieves also have very limited long range options, with the former being pigeon holed into one kit and the latter only having one weapon attack that can reach long range.

Ascalonian light armor, there, enjoy your skinny jeans. That is unless you’re female, in which case, quit complaining, you’re lucky to get pants of any variety in the first place! :-P

@Kutai: He’s a charr so gender is irrelevant to the appearance of the armor.

I’d like to second Voodoo Tina’s suggestion, the shadow armor set is very kitten and is available fairly early on (lvl 26 iirc). You can also acquire the same skin from Renown Heart karma vendors in a lot of zones in Kryta.

Endion.9601:

I lack any programming knowledge so I don’t know if this would help, but I feel like in general, all the minions run off the same AI code. The problems you listed aren’t just for the flesh golem but all of them. They may or may not have different codes (different skills/uses?) but yes, it is a problem.

The flesh golem most certainly does not share its AI with other minions. The other minions will only ever attack if you attack or out of self defense, they will never seek out targets of their own accord like the Flesh Golem does. The only behavior the golem seems to share with other minions is the bug that causes them to go idle while you fight things, which is even more incomprehensible with the golem who under every other circumstance rushes off to fight anything and everything that so much as looks at it.

Teknomancer.8475:

I understand how most Tpvp necros want to start a match or upon repsawn be at 100% lifeforce. However I doubt that is a change Anet is wanting to make right away or at all. Other classes will start to complain that they do not also get 100% of their mechanic bar filled too.

I don’t think so, of the three classes with a resource management element necro has the fewest ways to gain their resource. Warriors have utilities like Signet of Fury and Berserker’s Stance that can completely fill their resource instantly or in a few seconds. And thieves have a multitude of ways to regain initiative on top of its inherent regeneration.

Which is why I think changing Signet of Undeath to work out of combat and not have a 3 second timer would not be OP as it would give necros a reliable way to build up life force when there isn’t lots of things dying around them.

Very good read! It’s even more impressive when you take note of just how many defensive cannons are placed around the Citadel. The battery atop the Hero’s Forum is particularly impressive, boasting (if I remember correctly) over a dozen mortars, a half dozen cannon turrets, and capped off with the largest Charr cannon I’ve yet seen.

Dark.6083:

It’s a bug that happens if you shrink their pupils. We can make kitten Herbs!

Aww, the name of the silly grey/yellow pony is censored.

Pretty sure it’s the opposite, my sylvari has the same face and smallest pupils possible and I’ve never seen this. Either that or it’s something to do with a specific graphics setting or something.

Shalissar.6018:

This is really really weird because I preferred dagger over axe mainhand in pve due to dagger’s cleave (albeit small) so I went and tested it out just now and… the cleave is not there??? Did I just imagine that for 40 levels or did something get adjusted?

Did you use minions, or wells? When you start getting multiple things inflicting damage it gets rather hard to track what’s coming from what.

With the Axe, I’d like to see Rending Claws have it’s attack speed pushed up to that of the dagger so you can actually stack noticeable amounts of vulnerability, that and maybe make Ghastly Claws a cone AoE so the Axe can be a solid weapon for short range AoE and not have Unholy Feast be so out of place.

The dagger (both MH & OH) are fine imo, the damage of the auto attack could be bumped up a bit but it’s still pretty solid where it is.

I agree with you about Reaper’s Mark on the staff, but personally I’d prefer a 2s fear. On that note I don’t think any fear ability should ever have more than 2s base duration for it (I’m looking at you “Fear Me!” & stolen Skull Fear). It’s pretty sad when fear, something that was introduced as a necromancer signature ability is now much better on anything but necro.

Seems to me this isn’t really about the change to BiP and more about generating LF in sPvP. Personally I think they should buff Signet of Undeath to apply its effect out of combat and reduce the timer on it, I don’t think a passive that could top off our LF every couple of minutes would be OP by any stretch of the imagination. It’d be mostly irrelevant in PvE and WvW where things die enough to fill our LF faster than the passive could.

Appart from the not attacking bug the main problem I’m noticing is the Flesh Golem’s AI. It doesn’t use the same AI as the minions or even as most other summons I’ve noticed. The golem has a rather large aggro radius and will attack targets of it’s own accord. I don’t believe any other summoned creature does this.

Really all they need to do is fix the not attacking bug and give the flesh golem the same AI as the rest of the minions and the MM necro will be in a pretty good place (traits aside).

I had not encountered this until last night, I only noticed it when I was fighting Frost Trolls actually. When they would start their AoE and the red circle would appear I would be unable to move unless I dodged or used a movement skill even though no movement altering effects had been applied yet.

One other thing, every race gets a personal story reward around level 10 or so that’s called an “Avenger’s” weapon and has a racial skin to it. Sylvari get a verdant skinned weapon. So it’s worth it to hang onto that one and keep transmuting it if you want to keep a plant themed weapon.

I also believe several renown hearts in the Brisban Wildlands offer plant weapons as well.

TESTER.8326:

I’d be happy just to see those war machines in action, even just in a cutscene, just to see what they can do. I’d kill to have some kind of trailer or something that shows a full Charr military mobilization, tanks and everything.

Agreed, I don’t care if we never get behind the wheel of any charr vehicles but I really want to see those tanks in action. We know they have animations to move, in the Black Citadel motor pool you can see one raised up by crane (that must’ve been a feat in and of itself) testing its tracks.

So I was thinking today about what could be done to improve the necro and after looking at some posts on here I had an idea, what if death shroud worked a bit like the engineer toolbelt? More specifically my idea is to add (or replace) two skills to death shroud (or to the F2 & F3 buttons outside of DS) that would change based on what utility skills you bring.

Now it wouldn’t be as exact as the engineer toolbelt, I’m not asking for every necromancer utility to have a “death belt” skill as well. My idea is based around the observation that almost all specialized necro builds take at least 2 skills of the same “type” (corruption, minion, signet, spectral & well). Basically any time you had 2 or more of the same type of skill in your 3 utility slots your 2 “death belt” skills would change to a set for that skill category. So for example if you go full Minion Master and have 2+ minions in your utilities you would receive 2 minion specialized skills.

Here’s just a variety of skill ideas I thought of for this, feel free to post your own ideas for these or tweak mine, this is all theorycraft so don’t hold back with the creativity!

2 Signets or Mixed (no matching skills):
Dark Fury: Break out of stun and gain Might and Fury
Demonic Flesh: Gain Retaliation and Regeneration and temporarily spread conditions on you to nearby foes

2 Corruption skills
Fester Wounds: Extend the duration of conditions on your foe and deal damage for each unique condition on them (channeled skill)
Masochism: Gain life force and Protection for each condition on you

2 Minion skills
Order of Undeath: Order your minions to attack target foe and deal more damage with their next attack
Master’s Summoning: Summon your minions to you granting them Swiftness and Regeneration

2 Spectral skills
Specter’s Aura: Damage and Knockback all foes around you and gain Stability
Spectral Rage: Gain Quickness, your next (x) attacks cause Fear

2 Well skills
_ Lifebane Strike_: Siphon health from your foe, more effective the lower your life force is
Soul Twisting: Drain your life force to reduce the recharge of your non-weapon skills

I tried to make the skills relevant to the types of builds that would be using 2 or more of these kinds of utilities but obvious I’ve not included any hard numbers and this is all just ideas. But I think a system like this could really help give Necromancer’s a more defined and versatile class mechanic.

So I was thinking today about what could be done to improve the necro and after looking at some posts on here I had an idea, what if death shroud worked a bit like the engineer toolbelt? More specifically my idea is to add (or replace) two skills to death shroud (or to the F2 & F3 buttons outside of DS) that would change based on what utility skills you bring.

Now it wouldn’t be as exact as the engineer toolbelt, I’m not asking for every necromancer utility to have a “death belt” skill as well. My idea is based around the observation that almost all specialized necro builds take at least 2 skills of the same “type” (corruption, minion, signet, spectral & well). Basically any time you had 2 or more of the same type of skill in your 3 utility slots your 2 “death belt” skills would change to a set for that skill category. So for example if you go full Minion Master and have 2+ minions in your utilities you would receive 2 minion specialized skills.

Here’s just a variety of skill ideas I thought of for this, feel free to post your own ideas for these or tweak mine, this is all theorycraft so don’t hold back with the creativity!

2 Signets or Mixed (no matching skills):
Dark Fury: Break out of stun and gain Might and Fury
Demonic Flesh: Gain Retaliation and Regeneration and temporarily spread conditions on you to nearby foes

2 Corruption skills
Fester Wounds: Extend the duration of conditions on your foe and deal damage for each unique condition on them (channeled skill)
Masochism: Gain life force and Protection for each condition on you

2 Minion skills
Order of Undeath: Order your minions to attack target foe and deal more damage with their next attack
Master’s Summoning: Summon your minions to you granting them Swiftness and Regeneration

2 Spectral skills
Specter’s Aura: Damage and Knockback all foes around you and gain Stability
Spectral Rage: Gain Quickness, your next (x) attacks cause Fear

2 Well skills
_ Lifebane Strike_: Siphon health from your foe, more effective the lower your life force is
Soul Twisting: Drain your life force to reduce the recharge of your non-weapon skills

I tried to make the skills relevant to the types of builds that would be using 2 or more of these kinds of utilities but obvious I’ve not included any hard numbers as this is all just ideas. But I think a system like this could really help give Necromancer’s a more defined and versatile class mechanic.

I agree, I do love it but it really sticks out in comparison to the other minions. I think it’d be pretty sweet if it looked like a cross between a standard flesh and bone minion and the nightmare style creature from GW1; make it fleshy with a death aura type visual effect on it.

But if not that’s fine, I do kind of enjoy having Blinky and Blinky Jr. (minipet shade) follow my necro around :P

You have to remember that the engineer’s rifle is one of only three possible weapon sets we can have. By that nature the weapons have to offer a wider variety of skills to tackle most situations as weapon kits are in no way shape or form required to play the engineer effectively.

Compare this to the warrior, who has a total of sixteen possible different weaponsets, and then you begin to understand that the warrior’s weapons tend to be a lot more focused in their role.

Now I would love for the engineer to have a kit or something that offered a similar skill set to the warrior’s rifle (lots of long range single target damage). But I would not want to switch our rifle’s skill sets.

RJMazz.6798:

forice.3165:

all races are just ugly and stupid except human. also Eir is stupid. so i selected human for the first time. but i was bored at my character. now i am leveling a necromancer norn because only norn has bleed skill in their racial skills.

Racist.

He also didn’t do his homework, charr’s shrapnel mine gives the same bleed as call owl but on a 10s shorter cooldown.

draxynnic.3719:

I think this one is a bigger problem than just humans – there really need to be more underwater-capable elites across the board. Even now elementalists have to wait until they can scrape together 30 skill points to get an elite that can be used underwater, unless they’re norn… and then they don’t get a racial healing spell to replace the lacklustre elementalist F6 options with.

Agreed, in fact half the professions only have 1 choice for underwater elite skill, often pigeon-holing you into a skill that is useless with your set-up.

Some of the elites that can’t be used underwater have no good reason they can’t be used underwater, from a lore and mechanics standpoint. Look at Reaper of Grenth, mind you I think it’s a horrid elite but the fact is that it’s just an PBAoE effect, how can that not be used underwater?

I would also like to edit and point out that the wiki is currently inaccurate in regards to norn forms and their underwater availability. No norn forms can be used underwater.

As has been said it’s best to alternate between the staff and your damage weapon. Personally I recommend the main hand dagger, it’s got the best damage a necro can get on the auto attack chain and is one of the more efficient life force generators. It is melee range but since you’re specced out for extra toughness and vitality just by getting the MM traits it’s not too bad really.

Zabatakis.3571:

I think people just do not understand the amount of work required to do an MMO. People expect every new MMO to be as polished as WoW day 1. It’s just not gonna happen, and for the record WoW at this stage of its MMO life was a disaster.

From my perspective they are doing a great job. I don’t pve, so maybe Necros are total trash there and maybe not. But WvW if you are not enjoying yourself you are doing something wrong.

Yeah, folks need to get a little perspective, by all accounts GW2 has held its own since launch remarkably well considering the history of MMO launches.

At any rate I don’t think PvE is really that big of a trouble area for necros, minion AI and bugfixes would help but I can still survive situations on my necro that would destroy most of my other characters.

Seems to me most of the complaining is centered around necro performance in sPvP where our survivability to damage ratio leaves us lacking. Could be wrong but that’s the impression I get.

Don’t male norn also hold their greatswords in much the same way as the females? Also check the human forum, there’s a thread complaining about how male humans hold the greatsword which is about the posture people are asking for here. Guess you can’t please everybody.

The terms don’t really translate, at least in the sense that atheism is the denial of the existence of divine being(s). Denying the existence of most “gods” in Tyria is akin to believing the earth is flat today. There’s overwhelming proof that such beings exist, it’s merely a matter of if you believe they should be worshiped or not.

Not sure what your situation is or what server you’re on but it might be that your timezone or just time of play doesn’t coincide with the majority of other players on your server. That and if you’re on a low population server to begin with would certainly have an impact.

I always assumed the point of taking napalm specialist was to combine it with incendiary powder, with that you’d only have to get incendiary to trigger twice in a flame burst plus the end burning will net you an extra second and tick of damage from it. Also incendiary ammo benefits from it regardless.

orci, have you used thief traps? For actual damage and inflicting conditions Circle AoE > Line AoE. Not to mention ranger traps all pulse for several seconds allowing more than one foe to be caught in them.

Overall I agree with the OP that Ranger utilities aren’t terribly flashy or awe inspiring but traps are some of our best skills.

So I just got charrzooka myself and I must say this may be my favorite elite skill thus far. Particularly for my range deprived engineer the ability to pull out a long range can of whoopkitten is absolutely amazing.

Some quirks with it I’ve noticed that will probably help you going into it, it’s limited by time and ammo, you have 1 minute to fire off 15 skills with it. It’s good to note this so you don’t accidentally burn all your rockets spamming #1.

I grew more and more fond of the norn and their lore the more I played Eye of the North. By the time we started getting info about the progress of GW2 I was dead set on having my first character be a norn.

If I’d change any one thing about the flamethrower kit the winner would have to be making the napalm wall do direct damage like the ele’s flamewall. It’s pretty useless as it is right now. Runner up would of course being to fix flame blast to detonate on hard surfaces and not be randomly obstructed.

The actual gadget Mine is unseen and quite good really. It also has a knockback and removes boons so there’s that. Minefield isn’t all that great but in chaotic battles they do just fine, and besides in PvE it doesn’t matter that they are visible and making a sound enemies will still stomp all over them.

Here are my two charr, Argus Grimfang (mesmer) & Fiera Scorchweaver (engineer)

My necro, recreation of my GW1 necro, quite happy with how she turned out.

From my understanding most creatures have an associated spirit of the wild, the norn don’t really worship all of them to the same degree they do the main four. In wayfarer foothills there’s the “bunny worshipers” who, in an event chain actually manage to summon a jackalope. Amusing thought it may be it’s still quite a feat and does point to the spirit of hare actually being real and having a degree of power. Likewise in one of the early norn personal storylines you also meet the Minotaur spirit.

Ben.2406:

Don’t know what rock you’ve been living under my friend but go and play the necromancer in diablo 2 and you’ll probably have the most fun your going to ever have as a necromancer.

I don’t think Anet spent more than 5 minutes working on the necromancer

Beg your pardon but what, stylistically speaking, makes the diablo 2 necro so much more fun?

Personally I find it a bit insulting that you would infer that the art team did not put in any effort to make our minion designs when they went to all the trouble of creating something unique instead of slapping us with the same overused skeletons every fantasy game and it’s grandmother uses.

At current the minion AI is rather buggy, there’s some work arounds and they are quite good at their job when they actually obey you and their active abilities are some of the more powerful skills available to necromancers. That said until the AI is fixed it is a bit like herding cats.

As far as actually building for a Minion Master setup it’s quite easy as pretty much all minion related traits are in 3 lines (Spite, Death magic, & Blood magic).

Guild Wars necros have never summoned straight up skeletons & zombies.

Besides the fact that regular zombies/skeletons are rather boring imo, it also makes it easier for a necromancer to keep visually keep track of his/her minions while fighting skeleton/zombie type undead, this breaks down when fighting shades with a shadow fiend, but I digress.
The other original reason for necros not having humanoid skeleton/zombie minions is that in GW1 minions had to be animated from the corpses of fallen enemies or allies. So to make it more believable and save on art assets it was decided to have minions be nonspecific conglomerations of flesh and bone so that way you wouldn’t wonder how the heck you pulled a human skeleton out of that dead charr or drake or w/e.

Applying this second reason to GW2 still makes a bit of sense in that nonspecific minions keep necros from being too “Human based”. I mean there would come a point a lot of players would ask, why does my charr only summon human skeletons? Wouldn’t charr skeletons look more awesome and fitting?

Went Blood for my mesmer and Iron for my Engineer (stereotypical much, huh?). However I played some of the Ash storyline in the betas and I’m actually really tempted to go back and make a 3rd charr just for that.

1. Minion unresponsiveness will hopefully be fixed before too long. In the meantime there are ways to reliably “activate” your minions for combat. One method that has worked reliably for me is to simply run within aggro range and allow either the enemy or your minions to make the first stike, attacking after this will reliably send all your minions after the target. This is probably not very useful for PvP situations however, and to that end if you initiate combat with a minion active skill you can subsequently attack and your minions will reliably follow your lead, I find the Shadow Fiend’s Haunt is the best for this as it is ranged and inflicts blind which will let it ignore the initial retaliatory strike.

As for dealing with mesmers or stealthing enemies the minions are simple AI so they are always going to be fooled by such things. In both situations it’s best to switch to a staff and just lay down marks as the AoE will thin out illusions and alert and protect you from stealthed enemies.

I’m a bit confused here with the arguments going on. People are comparing the Warrior Rifle to the Ranger Longbow, yes? They are very similar weapons for both professions, they both have a focus on single target ranged damage, both can inflict cripple and vulnerability and both have a knockback ability.

The question, as I see it, is do you just want buffs to the longbow and it’s niche or do you want a rifle for the ranger? The answer to this has very different answers. We’re not going to get the warrior rifle just to have it, if we get a rifle it has to function differently than both the longbow and shortbow.

coglin.1496:

Our down state is one of the best in the game. Perhaps before issuing complaint, some of you should play a few of the other classes a few levels.

Actually I have, as my post indicates I have played every profession, except elementalist, to at least lvl 25 in PvE. And I can say with certainty that I have a much worse shot at rallying with engineer downed skills that the other professions.

ichyboy.2315:

ok here’s what i noticed. most monsters don’t come in packs so what I do I go near them and let them do first strike or let the minions do first strike. most of the time they attack the minions or the minions attack the monster. Once they have done so, cast any skill and the rest of the minions will attack as well. I tried it on many area on the map and never failed.

Have just been trying it out a bit and it is very effective, as long as I don’t personally initiate combat they’ll all always attack. Kind of stupid, but it works. I’ve also noticed you can get them “primed” to attack if you use a minion ability, like the Shadow Fiend’s Haunt to deal damage to an enemy.

Now if only there was a workaround for the Flesh Golem’s hyper aggressiveness.

Edit: I would just like to point out how ridiculous the Flesh Golem’s aggro/AI is. While testing this I could reliably walk to roughly 1000-800 game unit distance from a hostile mob and the flesh golem would run after it. On several occasions I also noticed it would aggro a mob then switch targets to another nearby mob once it got closer to it’s initial target.

I would like to see a change to Napalm personally. I’d say either make it a cone/line, or circle AoE or give it direct damage similar to the Ele’s Flamewall as right now ticking 1 second of burn when an enemy walks through it is not really enough imo. Especially given that it’s on a longer cooldown than flamewall.

I’m for this, my friend ended up not remaking her human ranger she had reserved the name of from GW1 because the humans had nothing close to the epic ponytail she was sporting in GW1.

Psaakyrn.5794:

Buffs granted by sigils remain after swapping the weapon out though, but this might be a bug.

At the very least, it’s a design oversight that will hopefully be looked at soon. I could be wrong but I’ve heard that sigils that apply effects on weapon swapping also don’t work with engineers swapping from kits to weapons.

At any rate even at low levels I’m enjoying this style of build precision/condition flamethrower iskittenfun. I’ve only got the firearms bleeding trait and precise sights so far but even with that a flame blast can inflict very noticeable stacks of bleeding and vulnerability.

Hopefully they’ll fix sigils to work with weapon kits as that’ll make this style of build all the more fun.

Ryuujin.8236:

The people saying it’s fine seem to be talking purely from a PvP perspective. As i said before this is a game of two halves, and the PvE half is the more played half.

Downed skills need to be relevant in ALL scenarios. It’s ok for a weapon or utiltiy to be more useful in PvP or PvE, but a down skill has to be relevant to all scenarios and right now the engineer bar is fantastic in PvP, and almost useless in PvE. The number 3 is all well and good but honestly, who here ever survives long enough to deploy it?

On my mesmer or guardian I always survive long enough to use it and have a good shot at rallying. Engineer, unless i have the good fortune of being ignored by the mobs for a moment I’m dead 90% of the time.

This is exactly the problem I’m having with my engineer in PvE. On my Ranger, Necro, Thief…hell pretty much anything else I have a solid chance at rallying but if I go down on my Engineer I’m pretty much screwed.

I think part of the problem is that the random conditions are not terribly useful in PvE. With the ranger’s 1 skill they deal about the same damage as the engineer but always inflict bleeding and as such can usually stack up enough degen to finish off weakened foes (the ranger also still has his pet to help him revive but that’s another story entirely). Whereas the engineer has a 1 in 3 chance of inflicting bleeding with the other 2 being control conditions that won’t help you rally any faster.

I think another issue is that the #2 skill is pretty much useless unless you can immediately follow up with #3. Most of the time it’s a waste to use #2 before #3 has activated. Whereas with most other professions the #2 slot is useful in it’s own right.

If we get any more weapons honestly I’d prefer we get the hammer…if only for nostalgia’s sake. Bring back the bunny thumpers!!!

Interesting, I will have to test this. But hopefully we’ll get an AI fix so that we can attack however we please and have the minions follow like the obedient little corpses they’re supposed to be.

So just now I decided to help out my friend who is working on her cooking by sending her all the random chef ingredients I’d been throwing into storage. Upon attempting to send her the things I found several items that were labeled as account bound. I’m completely confused here as I obviously have no chef of my own and have never once bought a food item from the karma vendors.

How am I now stuck with several materials I have no use for and cannot be rid of in a productive or helpful way?