Guild Wars 2

roam in wvw, learn how to play in pvp, do meta events in open world, get into fractals, learn raids, log in once a day to do dailies then log out, how you want to play is up to you. So what do you want to do? This game won’t punish you for it. The players are a different story though.

Just do hearts and personal story. Check the dungeon lfg now and then, or start your own. Use any boosters you have available, guild, exp, etc.

I’d suggest bringing it up to 80 then maxing out druid 1st. Ranger as a core class isn’t much of a threat when compared to druid due to how annoying ancient seeds can be coupled with their increased suitability brought on by the access to ca form, which brings with it a full condi clear, decent healing bursts, additional cc, and additional access to stealth. In addition to these, they get access to staff which brings with it a new mobility skill.

You can use anything really, as long as you know what you’re doing. This is my personal build for fractals
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYRjM0Q1N2dDe2A7NWKGspVwMIGEFAGAdr4e4QMJC-TxhHQBkTfA9U/hgK/q1TAAAnCANqEsc7PAA-e

I sometimes swap the gs out for a wh for the swiftness.

soul eater changed to: Reduces recharge on greatsword skills. Greatsword skills siphon health when striking chilled foes.

Shivers of Dread adds a 20% damage modifier when striking feared foes, or effect being changed to become a 10% damage modifier vs chilled foes.

Deathly Chill changed to: Gain a stack of deathly chill, increasing your damage by 2% per stack(max stacks 5) when striking a chilled foe. (reaper’s personal gotl when applying chill) Alternatively, to be more supporty: Chilling a foe applies deathly chill to them, increasing all damage they receive by 2% per stack (max stacks 5).

Edit
Forgot some necro traits. Spiteful renewal: When struck while your conditions meet the threshold, cast lesser consume conditions. conditions removed 3, health per condition 362.

And ez mode pvp and wvw now that they’re getting legendary armor.

Dungeons are mostly dead content and fractals are ruled by necros and ppl that know what they’re doing. But mostly necros, the condi kind that spams epi to kill trash mobs instantly to be more specific.

As it stands necros are only able to play condi and power. Next expansion is suppose give us a support spec. There’s also talk of a rework on reapers to make them the power based spec they were supposed to be in the first place.

You zerg or you roam in wvw. If you zerg, you’ll have to have a build that synergizes others in your zerg . Current meta comp is 2 guardis for stab 1 rev for resist 1 necro for boon removal 1 healer ele and 1 war, and the other classes just tail and get used as cannon fodder.

Roaming gives you more freedom with your build as you basically just have to have a build good enough to survive npcs to cap camps, and sentries, while at the same time able to handle the occasional player or 20 that you’ll run into. PVE BUILDS WILL NOT WORK. (Exception being if you have god-like skills.)

Side note progress will be slow depending on both you and your server. Also WvW is the best place to farm transmutation shards thanks to the pip system. ( I get around 20-30 of them over the course of a week for doing random things.)

Here’s hoping, I don’t want to farm bitterfrost again for another one.

I’ll be fine with the decay if having it on you made you immune to cc.

Would it be possible to add the recipes to stat swap aquatic breathers with hot stats in the mystic forge? I want to change my vipers one into a marauders one.

A shade is a class of ghost anyway, still falls sortof under necromancy I guess. I mean we can already summon a normal shade, this 1 is just made of sand.

I noticed something weird with VG’s pathing while I was fighting it; when we would run to the green side of the arena, vg would run off to the middle then run back to the tank. It happened every time we moved to the green section, and only on the green section.

mesmers can’t corupt boons. They can strip them but they can’t turn them into condis. Additionally, the scripted nature of pve makes reapers lack blocks, evades, etc a non-factor especially when taking into account the necro’s ability to self-sustain with blood magic, parasitic contagion and/or blighter’s boon, improved defenses through death magic, and 2 hp bars and naturally high hp, or any combination of these factors. Basically, if you know your class, you’ll do well in pve.

If you’re using a raid scenario, then just stick next to the druid, they’ll get rid of those condis for you. The 25 vuln stack gorseval gives doesn’t stay that long, and is no immediate threat, especially if you’re staking behind them.

Additionally, a guardian at gors will be more like: Watch me kill myself faster than anyone can say “kitten stop” by going ham on this boss while it’s on retal phase. ( this also applies to eles, especially to eles)

The argument I’m only applies to pve scenarios, pvp scenarios are a different thing, and those self condi are more harmful than it would be in pve.

if it’s just pve, I would recommend swapping cpc for plague signet. You can also swap consume condi for any other heal skill. There isn’t that great of a condi pressure in open world.

The build I use for open world looks like this; http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNArYRjM0Q1N2dDe2A7NWKGspVwMIGEFAGAdr4e4QMJC-TRSFQBtTXQCOBAjUJoveCAvRLQ/U/BAHCgGq8zd7PQKgJlGB-e, you can try it our if you want.

I’m confused, what game mode are you referring to?

You seem be over capped on crit chance. You have 49% base, plus 50% while in shroud and another 50% from 25 vulnerability stacks. Might I recommend adding some valk gear to lower your base crit? From my experience, GS+shroud autos are more than enough to get you your 25 vul stacks. Or you can drop decimate defenses and take chilling victory to get more might out. I would also suggest trying air, strength, or rage sigils over frailty sigils as your vul stacking is already decent without it. Also, this is a personal choice, but try using strength runes. I find that 1 good hit from a mob is usually more than enough to get you below 90% hp denying you the 10% dps boost of scholar. I would also recommend blighter’s boon if you’re having some difficulty surviving.

Additionally, I did some testing, and nothing can save you does not add any vulnerability stacks unless it strips a boon. If you are using it to add vul stacks, it doesn’t work. Try using well of suffering for vul stacking instead, or even you are all weaklings for a stun break and more might generation.

For open world and low level fractals, sure, anything (and even nothing) can work in open world. For high level fractals, it’s more about how familiar you are with the mechanics than your build. For wvw, unless you’re very skilled, you will get eaten alive with zealots.

Is this in regards to pvp or wvw?

In theory. I’ve seen zerk mes pull off anywhere from 6-8k dps, and I was able to pull off anywhere from 4-5k as a commanders mes. As a full minstrels I can do anywhere from 2-3k.

The amount of dps you’ll personally get as a chronomancer switching from minstrel to commanders, or zerks for that matter, is minuscule at best. The boons you give to the group will account for more, in terms of group dps, than you as a chrono ever will irregardless of the stats you use. With that being said, as long as you can pump out the perma alac and quickness, while maintaining the highest toughness in the group, I see no harm in doing so.

Legendary armor, in terms of stats, are the same as ascended. Fractals and crafting are, in my opinion, an easier way to get ascended than raids. Legendary equipment only offers the convenience of a free stat swap at your leisure and whim. You can stat swap ascended armor and weapons at a cost at the mystic forge.

http://qtfy.eu/

If you’re looking for builds for open world, then the ones you have found will most likely work.

Just want to add something here pertaining to something I recently found out about the precursor heavy armor. If I’m not wearing the gloves, my norn guardi’s hands float! Is this the same for the legendary armor?

I have yet to find anyone that has complained about what class and/or build I play as long as I perform the mechanics properly. If you want to learn more about builds for raiding and fractals, I would suggest: qtfy or metabattle.

As for your question to revs, all classes are viable anywhere, it’s just that most people get caught up with what is optimal, in the theory that it would allow them to finish the content faster than a non optimal group.

I know but I’m bored of it and wanted to try something new. Plus it felt weird using axe as a condi weapon

I’m thinking of swapping my condi trailblazer necro for a power build in wvw. I could use some feedback on a build I’m planning. This is focused mainly on zerg fights and I’m planning on making a tanky front-line based build, focusing on boon corrupt.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kjGomGsaTwdTgeTsULYxbxx4ZMKs9vKBQdtAQDA-TByHAB+o8DgDBQ47PEnSw3V/5b9BKfCAK4JAQKAR3ZB-e

Thank you in advance

I mean it’s shiny enough to be a legendary. Might as well make it one. You don’t even need to add moving parts! It looks legendary enough as is.

That might work. Not sure how much they should give though. If they give too much, they run the risk of making the encounter too trivial. Too little and there would be no difference than normal mode.

While that is true, I don’t believe that would translate well to fights like escort, sab, or trio where it’s the npcs that are taking damage. Or on sacrifice mechanics like sam and mat, where the group’s lack of cc or missing the timing of ccs is what causes failures. It would help on some, but not all and considering these mechanics are present in all raid wings in one way or the other, anet would have to do more than put a damage reduction on players for easy/story mode.

a weird glitch that happened on the last part of Ensolyss’ fight

In the context of raiding, I’d argue about taking parasitic contagion. We already have 2 druids dedicated to healing in raids for the most part and a majority of the damage in raids is easily avoidable and the rest caused death with no room to heal.

I’d also argue about taking off bip in raids, the bleed it does and the bleed and torment you transfer is more dps than a spectral grasp unless they gave spectral grasp a 5 sec cd and a 200% increase in its projectile speed. If the group is having troubles ccs that much, take flesh golem over plaguelands, the later isn’t that useful against bosses that move around a lot like vg anyway.

Signet of spite is decent but yes, cpc, and suffer are better options than it.

Vamp signet is a personal dps loss but it does help the group keep up their scholar runes, but again, we already have 2 druids dedicated to healing so in a raid scenario, it’s not worth taking unless your healer is particularly bad.

Using power build on kc as a reaper, in my opinion, should be a last resort kind of thing, because thief and guardi are better options than us in theory (in practice most pugs I meet struggle to get over 10-15k dps irregardless of the class on most bosses).

These are all in context of raiding, for fractals which are more disorganized, I would listen to frostdraco’s advice. (except for maybe the bip, no war means you’re on your own for might stacks) Contagion is a life saver especially when you epi, spectral grasp has its uses in there, and spite signet as well. Personally I take bip, epi and you’re all weaklings! (for the might and stun break) or epi well of power plague sig for afflicted instability/condi heavy fights.

In terms of pvp, we’re a punching bag that corrupts 3 boons on 1 person every 15 seconds base, and 1 boon on 5 people every second for 5 seconds if all 5 of them decide to kill us on point every 40 seconds base. Oh and we have some random corrupts as well on our traits, axe 3 on power, scepter auto on condi, and gs 4 if you take the clunky thing. Either way we’re dead within 3 seconds of people realizing we’re a necro unless either your opponent team is a bunch of headless chickens, or your team knows how to peel for you.

It makes 2 or 3 bosses easier because of epi, namely mursat overseer (normal and challenge) and deimos challenge. They’re a bit double edged on sloth because an ill-timed epi will end the boss fight then and there, but a well-timed one will put pressure off the group by killing slublings without the need to re-target to them. They’re passable on vg, and 2 of them will allow epi bouncing. If you’re planning on pugging, then yes I would recommend ele/thief only because pugs aren’t known for their flexibility for the most part.

If you are planning to get into raiding though, I would suggest you start by practicing your rotations, then watching videos on bosses irregardless of what class you play.

exotics are orange in colour, yellow is rare quality.

Think of fractals as a bunch of mini dungeon with a jumping puzzle built in and a boss at the end with mechanics you have to pay attention to especially if you get to higher tiers. This is the only in-game content that requires you to have ascended to progress and is one of the more profitable things to run. Higher tiers are basically a rehash of the lower tiers with more mechanics added onto them and the opponents. Think of t1 as a short easy mode raid in wow and t4 as normal mode, with t2 and 3 serving as stepping stones to ease you in. You can use the lfg feature (looking for group) to find yourself a group for this or any of the others.

WvW or World vs World is a large open world pvp scenario that uses your gear stats instead of a pvp amulet. Naturally this is more chaotic than spvp(structured pvp) but that’s half the fun of it for most people. Two popular ways to play is is zerging and roaming. If you haven’t changed any of your keybindings, the default button to open it is b. There are also asura gates that will take you to them.

World bosses are basically all over the world. Check out https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers for the times and places. use the lfg(looking for group) to find these. As for pvp you “can” do it with any class, just that some are easier than others.

First thing I’d recommend is gearing your toon up with at least lvl 80 exotics. From there you’re free to do whatever you want; open world, boss farming, wvw, fractals, dungeons, pvp (though you don’t need to be 80 for this), or raids. Fractals will require you to get ascended gear for agony resistance if you want to get past t1, rest of the content can be done in exotics or less depending on your skills.

AnariiUK.7409:

There is a bug in his second phase (75% -> 50% HP) where his green circle attack is completely unavoidable, could that be what’s damaging you? His explosion during the green circle attack will only lift you into the air if you don’t have stability.

The only way to avoid this bug is to push him quickly to phase 3 with good DPS.

Yeah, I see this bug more often than I’d like. It made getting my jade heart on the first few attempts rather difficult, and not because of personal skill. =/

Photoloss.4817:

Sephylon.4938:

Where were you standing? If you’re in-front of Cairn, all 3 of its swipes deal damage.

Obviously somewhere in melee range not paying attention to his facing
Do the “3 swipes” actually hit simultaneously? My issue is not the total rate of incoming damage but getting spiked in an instant like a VG green or Sabby timebomb popped.

The swipes will be one after the other, left swipe, right swipe, then left swipe again. On the 1st left swipe, Cairn will drop the teleport circles, on the 3rd swipe, the 2nd left swipe, Cairn will shoot the jade shards, and the teleport fields will pop.

Photoloss.4817:

So the first thing I noticed was that I seemed to be taking random 10k+ spikes every now and then while standing in melee range, usually downing me on the next “proper” attack. Nothing even remotely close appeared in the combat log. Am I being silly or is there some hidden trick?

Where were you standing? If you’re in-front of Cairn, all 3 of its swipes deal damage.

Photoloss.4817:

Secondly and unrelated to the first, what determines the damage of the red poison (Shared Agony?)? Because I have taken variable amounts of damage standing in only one of those, it seems to be about 4k base but I’ve been chunked for 8k single-hit no-crit, again with only one red circle in existence. Actual mechanic or did I sometimes luck out on a shared damage reduction? (too strong for regular Protection though)

The shared agony deals hp% damage if I’m not mistaken, this is hearsay so take this with a grain of salt. I’m not too sure myself.

Photoloss.4817:

Thirdly, is there a bug with the spin swipe/“pool noodle” attack where it hits through defensive abilities? I could’ve sworn I got hit by it while I had Blur/Distortion on me, in one instance I literally saw the pink icon in my buff bar right before and after I got hit.

To my knowledge, the swipe attack can not be blocked, or invouned though, only dodging will work. I’ve tried to distort through it as well and had similar results, the special action key works in evading it though.

Photoloss.4817:

And finally of course a remark on the fake difficulty of our skill FX drawing over the telegraph of the port circles. Hard to see is one thing and totally fine, but impossible to see because we’re properly using our abilities? Bleh.

As for this part, yeah, I’ve had people complaining about the same thing. Try playing on best performance I guess? One advice I can give is that the teleports will appear on Cairn’s 1st swing and there will always be three of them. Keep an eye for the orange outline of the teleports, they are the most noticeable thing in my experience. Also the teleports will pop as soon as it makes its 3rd swing, so you have until then to position yourself accordingly.

Just out of curiosity, if arenanet does make a story mode, where would the story be?

tldr: As far as I have been able to tell, stories from raid wings aren’t in the boss fights, they are in intractable objects scattered throughout the instance, and in re-playable cut scenes at the end of each encounter. The story behind all bosses, as far as I’ve been able to tell, is: “oh look a boss, let’s kill it to save people”. So where and how and where will they put the story in an easy/story mode raid?

long winded rant(feel free to skip):
People who want the easy mode raids for the story will most likely be disappointed, because the boss fights will offer no story. I only learned what the Vale Guardian was when I read the notes scattered around the area. The story behind Gorseval wasn’t revealed in the Gorseval fight, it was revealed in the event leading up to them. As for Sabetha, I still have no idea who she and her band of merry bandits are, other than a boss we needed to kill. Wing 2 offered nothing better, with the story behind boss fights there being “oh look a boss, let’s kill it to save people”, Escort and Keep construct falling under the same category. The story in the Cairn, Overseer and Sam fights were given through a mix of Scholar Glenna and intractable objects before and after the fight but not during the fight. The only fights that I know of that offer hints to a story during the fight are Xera, where she constantly taunts us that Lazarus is coming back, and Saul, where he monologues about his backstory while we’re too busy fighting a boss, therefore missing out on what he’s saying and being more annoyed at the fact that he’s detracting us from the boss fight with his monologueing.

If they do add a story to the boss fight to the story mode raid, how will they go about adding it and where will they put it? How will they tell us the story of why this giant magic anomaly is blocking our way, and what is it? Will they use the normal mode’s way and put the information in scattered journals, or will they add a story in the boss fight? If they add it to the boss fight, how will they convey it to us during the fight since Vale Guardian is a silent boss? How will they they tell us the story of who Gorseval are and how they came to be? Will the event leading up to them tell it to us like normal mode? If it’s in that event, then what will be the point of the Gorseval fight for people who just want the story? Will they make Gorseval more chatty? If so what will happen to the spirit run event? If they decide to put the story in the boss fights in story/easy mode, then that will ironically make the story harder to access than normal mode. Having to fight the boss rather than just reading about them in journals scattered around the area. More importantly, how much time and resources do they have to put in to figure these things out and implement them? How will this affect the release schedules of future expansions and living world stories? Will it be worth the time and effort to do so?

I’d be happier to see this content as a dungeon for heart of thorns maps. I would like to see dungeons getting some attention and love.

only exception I can think of is crucible of eternity where you need 4 people to get past 1 of the puzzles

I would recommend trying the looking for section of the forum, it might also be helpful to mention what timezone you are in.

Currently, the weekly cap on magnetite shards is 150 and resets every Monday 02:30 UTC-5. It will take 4 weeks of capping 150 shards to get the amount you want, which can be done by doing a full clear on all bosses, excluding the new ones. I believe full clears go for upwards of 300g? Assuming that, at a best case scenario, it’ll cost you upwards of 1220g (weapons do also have a gold cost on top of the magnetite cost) for 1 weapon.

if this build is meant for pve, why are you using the pvp tab in the build editor?

a guildie of mine was messing around with that idea last night. He came up with the idea of using crusader stats with monk runes along with transference and water/force sigils to increase the healing that vampiric aura provides to the group. I believe the build looked something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kGRolGsmGwxGg9Gs0NYTPgBQAgqDMCKUxNwK4GE-TRSBQB4TXw90CAgjAQJVCiQ1f03jAIL7PgRlfW4EAQKA/GDA-e

The idea of the build is to pop into shroud as often as you can and use transfusion as much as possible, relying on reaper’s onslaught to reduce its cd every time you kill something, while also providing an extra dps and healing boost to the party via vampiric presence. The 2 wells that are on are there for dps, feel free to swap them out with plague signet and/or well of power for some condi control if it’s needed. You can also trait in blood bond if you can get bleeding stacks from somewhere to proc a lesser vapirism signet every 20 sec or so.

edit: grammar and spell check

p.s.
the ranger’s search and rescue also moves downed allies

Of the 3 classes Nike mentioned, Chrono and Druid are the ones that don’t contribute to the group’s dps directly by themselves and provides unique buffs to the group; Alacrity, and Grace Of The Land(GOTL) respectively. Retaliation isn’t really used in raiding though it may have used in fractals now that something has been done about boon thief (I can’t recall what though). As for stunbreaks, most bosses will telegraph when they will use a move that will cc you, giving you ample time to doge it. On some occasions, such as sloth or gorseval, tempests are asked to take the gale song trait, which will automatically stunbreak themselves and 5 other ppl should the tempest get cced. Though it isn’t uncommon for people to ask druids to take protect me for an extra measure of safety on sloth.

Chronos are expected to fulfill either “tank” or dps buff bot roles (we say dps, but even in full zerk their dps won’t be that 1% needed to kill the boss in my oppinion). Tanking is a whole different topic on its own, suffice to say, if you don’t want to tank, don’t get toughness. Your main goal as a chrono on either set-up is to obtain 100% boon duration on yourself to ensure maximum uptime on quickness. This is done through a combination of leadership runes, sigil of concentration, boon duration foods, and platinum doubloons on exotic accessories.

Druids on the other hand are expected to play 1 of 2 roles: Full heal or condi ranger. Though you can, on rare occasions, find people that play condi healer builds. Due to somewhat recent changes on how healing power scales, magi stats became a somewhat mandatory set for healer druids. Your main goal as a healer druid is to build as much ancestral force as possible so you can enter avatar form and stack gotl on the group. Outside of avatar, you have your glyphs to apply gotl to the group once you trait it.

There are also some non-meta support builds out there, such as healer ele, healer rev etc. While you probably won’t find those in an average pug, guild raids to bring them from time to time. All of these are made in the pretext of raids. I’m not completely sure if it applies to high level fractals or dungeons. I hope this helps clarify a few things. Happy supporting

You’re going to be hard pressed to get into raids as a power necro. Your dps, at best, is equal to that of a ps war, but you don’t offer as much buffs as they do. You might be able to get in high level fractals as a power necro, depending on how well you know the instance. As for open world pve and low level fractals, you can run anything you want for the most part.

If you’re going for optimal dps; I would recommend zerk with scholar runes, and use sigils of force and air. Feel free to replace as much of the zerk with valk if you take decimate defenses and death perception. Keep in mind that decimate requires you to stack and keep 25 voun on your target to get that 50% crit, and death perception only works in shroud, which is a dps loss.

If you just want to face tank everything; you can try the 100% crit chance caval minion master. It’s by no means optimal but I personally found it to be fun, I believe I used something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6khGodTsbTwyGg9GsMNYSDgCQAI+DmCfhUxgbQmC-TxRBQBJSfgB3fAAPBAPp+zDOFAoRJYXU+BA-e

He’s suggesting that you run the reaper trait line, it has a trait that causes all chills you apply to also apply bleeds. Along with that he’s also saying to run reaper runes which causes shouts to apply chill. This requires you to be running shouts for your utilities though, which requires the reaper specialization. If you are unwilling to take those, then the bleed from staff 2 should be enough, you also have mark of evasion in blood for some bleeds while you’re not on staff, and the possibility of corrupting a boon into bleed.

aww =(

Thanks for the information though, thought the rune applied the buff to all that were affected by the well. I guess I’ll just shelf my necromancer until called for.