Guild Wars 2

Arnhildr Grimdotter – 6.5/10 – First name needs more vowels but I like how it sounds. Surname suggests a condition necro, but doesn’t sound very Norn-esque imo. I think it’s the “dotter” part.

Mine is Chugg Elderbruun (chose the blacked out at moot storyline too).

I was hesitant to want pistols only because I want to avoid being too much like mesmers. But the ideas I’ve been reading here have changed my mind. A phantasmal duelist is very different from the dark soul hunter we’d become. Something a la unholy Alucard would be insane, casting marks that would curse an area, firing corrupted bullets, blanketing an area in choking dust, etc.

Umut.5471:

Ascii.9726:

Warrior effective base health: 21284
Necromancer effective base health: 18372
Engineer effective base health: 16265
Ranger effective base health: 16265
Mesmer effective base health: 15082
Guardian effective base health: 12518
Thief effective base health: 11652
Elementalist effective base health: 10805

As for “best tankers” were far from.

Warrior and Necromancer both have 18372 base hp.
Warrior has heavy armor, necro has ds life pool. So their tanking abilities are nearly the same. But obviously the best tankers are guardians despite their hp.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health

That’s too general of an explanation. A warrior’s heavy armor doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to condition damage. Conversely, DS is more effective at countering conditions.

Or just keep 3 skills but make the 3 skill unique & super strong. Since you’d have fewer weapon options for damage & utility, the #3 skill needs to do something to make up for the trade-off. Like a skill that shadowsteps you to your target, hits really hard, and then evades backward but costs like 9-10 initiative. Or one that drains all remaining initiative or slows your initiave regen by 50%. Swap to that set for a huge spike when needed but then you’re out initiative.

I’ve done both and can tell you that condition is much slower at lower levels. Go power with either axe or dagger mh and bring minions for open world PvE. You can take on groups easily.

Incurafy.6329:

P/D is incredibly boring, imo, and if you’re looking for an active playstyle then 5, 1, 1, 1 repeat probably isn’t what you’re after.

The fastest way to level in PvE is D/D death blossom spam with Caltrops, Dodgetrops, and Mug + a S/B while waiting for initiative to regen. By the time you’re out of initiative though, everything around you will have 20+ stacks of bleed and you’ll be at full health thanks to Signet of Malice and Mug

Disclaimer: All of my thief ascertions are based on the build editor and the wiki.

At a glance, P/D just seemed like the most obvious condition based weapon set due to Shadow Strike (torment) and Vital Shot (bleeds). So going D/D I came up with:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKPXay5E+5ExmCfKUvHflsmVTBNtJA-jADB4MRkmGk8AKFKi5QCZZSolhAFMMas6GYaUpWlSIyjoIa1A-e

Having never used steal/mug, how effective is it?

Edit: Check that. Swapping out Thrill of the Crime for Bountiful Theft.

Don’t sweat it OP. In a couple days you’ll be able to get back in. What made Black Gate successful wasn’t the name of their server but the quality of the players that organized to beat Tequat’l. Tons of guested players from every other server just means more chaos and less organization. They’re hoping to slide into a successful event. Once the BG Sparkfly becomes too saturated with non-BG players and the event fails time & again, they’ll start to migrate back to their servers and organize there. Just my prediction.

So…not conditions. I’m not looking for button spam mode if that’s what that is. Something fun and dynamic. Thought conditions might force me to play more actively to kill as fast.

Going to roll a thief and I’m wondering if leveling condition is viable and fun. I’m thinking P/D + SB like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYVlcmaOXaS0E+5ExWBf69gsj1saPopNjJA-jgDB4MRErBgWAgmGk8AKFKi5QCZZSolhAFMMas6GYaUpWlSIyjoIa1A-e

Obviously, that’s at 80. Any advice for lower levels?

K U T M.4539:

Engineer and mesmer (When played at high levels) are two of the least passive classes in the game.

^ this – i recommend trying both

Mesmer clones deal damage but you’re not passive. Often times you’re generating new ones or shattering the ones you’ve got. They’ve got more mobility than you think too.

Engineers have a very dynamic style. A lot of mobility. Their varied weapon/kit ranges mean bouncing back n’ forth from mid to close to long range and back again. Kits offer a unique no-CD weapon swapping. Since you’re used to a thief’s only limitation to spamming weapon skills being initiative, you’ll enjoy being able to constantly swap kits and fire off skills.

The idea is fantastic. An evasive melee and/or ranged nature fighter with an animal companion at your side. I love the fact that we’re not limited to bows. Our pets can pull aggro and attack when you’re disabled.

In practice however, it’s clunky. Even in open world PvE with Agility Training traited my pets will miss on attacks. F2 skills rarely hit for drakes and spiders and devourers. And they’re unresponsive. Pets don’t have enough flavor or control to make them truly amazing.

I honestly have no complaints about the actual ranger character, but the pets (the bread n’ butter of the profession) are a mess. If you can get past this fact, and just view them the same way you view your dumb dog at home that doesn’t listen to you either when you tell it to fetch the paper or stop crapping in the kitchen, then you’ll be fine.

Andele.1306:

For lore, Human (technically only race that is allowed and can use necromancy to its full potential)…

I beg to differ. Ghosts of Ascalon book had a female sylvari necro as a main character. I’d say that’s fairly adherent to the lore.

Knote explained it rather well.

Clearly you didn’t read their explanation for why they’re doing it this way. After all the whining on the forums about bugs in live implementation, now we’re going to fault them for rolling out a feature that can’t really be tested effectively with their small alpha sampling? They’re kitten ed if they do, kitten ed if they don’t.

Changes are coming 10/15
LFG is currently rolling out

Vortex.3712:

passive- when pet dies gain a small buff to all stats
active- sacrifice pet to double state gain from passive ( puts all pets on a 180 to 200 sec cd and stows all pets)

I like this idea. Make the stat bonus not so big that we’d force kill our pet on CD but enough so that the passive bonus would ease the cost of us losing our pet. And with such a long CD on the active, sacrificing our pet would only be done for bursting the final 20% health of a boss or enemy player. But you’d be without your pet (-40% dps) for a while after. I’m thinking…

passive – when pet dies gain +15% to all stats
active – sacrifice pet to gain +30% to all stats for 30 seconds (cooldown 200sec – all pets unavailable while on CD)

I agree with everything that has been said in this thread.

What does it matter if Zhaitan is alive or dead? If a dragon dies do all of his minions die too? If not, it’s completely feasible that Tequat’l sucked up magic energy and evolved. If so, well then I guess we’ll be seeing a new Orr sometime in the future.

15 mins of combat = 1g if you win, plus the 5 chests

Also, I think right now at least the challenge and fun of it can’t be discounted as a reward. <gasp> doing something cuz it’s fun and challenging?!??!?!?

Not to mention bragging rights.

Personal Story
Dungeons
Fractals

In fact I believe they’re adding reward boxes to champs daily reward.

Yea if they were going to push it to a grandmaster they should have moved it to another tree.

I know it was said above but it bears reiterating. Play the class you enjoy the most. I think that’s paramount. Whether or not warrior or thief are “the best” at PvE or PvP won’t change the fact that you still enjoy playing ranger more. Just be the best ranger you can be. Which sounds lame but seriously, it’s easy to play ranger but to master any class takes ingenuity and experience.

Also, don’t ever let the forums get you down on a class cuz every one of them gets ragged on here.

Except playing thru the entire personal story. Crafting to 80 and doing the whole PS will take a number of hours. I’m ok with this method IF the ascended item is soulbound. Let the character choose the stats and then soulbind it. Perhaps add an extra story quest to make it interesting. A holy grail/sword in the stone kinda thing.

Those all sound good. More environmental scenery the better imo.
Lorewise, I’d love a return to the Crystal Desert. The Jade Sea and the Echovald Forest would look incredible in GW2.

I’m pretty happy to read a lot of this. Some improvements to things that have been asked about repeatedly in the forums shows that while the devs might not comment on every post, they’re certainly reading them.

Happy to see PvE/PvP skill splitting. Players and monsters are so vastly different that I think it’s necessary. I’m hoping to see some impressive changes to turrets/summons/minions to make them more viable in PvE but not OP in PvP. Glad to see PvE is getting some love.

And QoL improvements are always a plus. Only thing I didn’t see on here is an option to choose what appears on the right hand side of the UI. Sometimes mine is clogged by things I don’t care to track.

Adine.2184:

Eve was here name . As you may recall she had a pet skull named Adam

Which is available as focus item in GW2

We need the GW necro armor back. It was all so good. The scar armor especially.

I’ll admit that I’d LOVE to play a Charr. I want a kitten character with the cool lore and awesome racials that Charr have. But they look a mess curently. If they get fixed, I’d reroll a character.

Comparing skills/traits between different professions is pointless. It’s apples to oranges. Every skill/trait has to be taken from the perspective of the whole profession. One profession’s evade may be incredible compared to another, while it lacks any vigor generation or stability access that another profession has.

While not game breaking or cause for quitting, I will agree that the right of the screen can often become overly inundated with notices. I still haven’t finished my personal story but don’t need an ever-present reminder. Complete my daily..now I gotta look at my monthly progress whether I want to or not. Nearby DEs are fine but I don’t need to know that the SAB is in Rata Sum everywhere I go. I got mail for that.

The “deposit collectibles” function is used constantly. It would be a huge QoL improvement to have a dedicated button rather than a drop-down. Just make sure to add to hints an arrow pointing out its function.

Largos & Kodan

Tengu only if they look like they did in GW, not the spindly-legged, awkward pigeons they’ve become in GW2.

They should be designed like the Scarrans from Farscape. Class hierarchy had at least 3 distinct looks for the race: the more upright, the more evolved and highly placed. Thus you can create a hunched over brutish warrior or an upright intelligent leader.

What spoj said is right on. Open world leveling with minions is ez-mode, and the elite minion deals some pretty solid damage. And now they regen out of combat.

If the upcoming patch rumors are true then they’re going to get heartier and <gasp> maybe even dungeon worthy?

Leveled a ton of alts and all of them got boring after a while. Engineer was the only to keep me happy due to all the variety. Eventually though, that too felt too restricted.

Tried Mesmer and it’s not bad but also got boring.

Picked up my long-abandoned Necro and found that it’s gotten some love in the 6+ months since I shelved her. I love all the condition manipulation, having a great selection of actually useful utilities, and the DS mechanic is (while a bit too straight-forward) like having a constant 3rd weapon set to swap to.

Ascii.9726:

Seras.5702:

I believe the OP was including the 2nd health bar we get from DS. Essentially giving us 36,744hp.

Deathshroud scales with 60% base health, not 100%. Deathshroud health would be 11,023 for a total of 29,395.

I had it in my head that they updated that recently to now be 100% but I can’t find it in the patch notes. In any case, if it is 60% you can get an additional 30% by speccing fully into Soul Reaping. Even without the trait points we’ve still got a lot of effective health.

Ascii.9726:

Warrior effective base health: 21284
Necromancer effective base health: 18372
Engineer effective base health: 16265
Ranger effective base health: 16265
Mesmer effective base health: 15082
Guardian effective base health: 12518
Thief effective base health: 11652
Elementalist effective base health: 10805

As for “best tankers” were far from.

I believe the OP was including the 2nd health bar we get from DS. Essentially giving us 36,744hp.

I leveled to 45 with conditions, staff + scepter/dagger. It was easy but slow with a lot of kiting and could only take on a couple enemies at once.

Then I switched to power axe/focus + staff MM and steamrolled thru Tyria. If conditions got to be a problem, I just swapped my focus for an oh dagger and continued on my way. Very easy leveling.

I remember my first oh yes! feelings best. When I rolled my first toon in Caledon and joined huge groups actually completing DEs. Doing my first ever JP in Morgan’s Spiral. Feeling like I’d climbed Everest. That feeling of accomplishment as I unlocked my weapon skills and utility skills.

Fast forward to my first ever dungeon run, getting to Orr, and hitting 80. Those were pretty awesome moments.

I haven’t had many of those moments lately. There’s very little that’s new to give me that oh yes! feeling of accomplishment or discovery. Everything “new” is temporary, shallow, and gimmicky. Getting 16/16 for a LS meta just isnt’ oh yes! worthy. It’s usually oh finally!

I’d like more of a balance. The strong mob is good and often requires strategy to avoid getting beat down. But they can also be autoattacked if the damage avoidance is too gimmicky. Conversely, a swarm of enemies can become overwhelming if proper group strategy isn’t used. I like that. Needing a mixture of dps to not get overrun by numbers, but also group support to bolster defenses (reflects, protection, etc). We see groups of mobs as “trash” and the big guy as the boss, but a legion is stronger. I want my 5-man group to stand strong like Spartans and fend off a horde of baddies using superior tactics.

I have 5+ stacks of bloodstone dust taking up bank space. Eventually I’ll be able to refine it and then I’ll be happier but I’m def not trashing it. I’ll just store it on an alt until my artificer gets 408 → 450. No great rush.

Awkward looking running on all fours
Armor clipping
Look terrible in anything but male heavy armor
Too hunched over

Which stinks cuz they have the coolest racial skills and I’m guessing a great personal story.

I think if they ever add cleave to dagger they’ll have to increase axe range to make it a valid option. Otherwise, everyone will absolutely take dagger.

FT is not a condition kit. Spec for power and try again.

I just bought a full set of Rare Dire armor from the TP for about 2g. The stat difference seems small enough (37 cond dmg, 27 v&t from 6 armor pieces) that you can effectively test a build out before investing in Exotics.

I like the first one a lot, though I think Field Strip’s 8s stealth is too much to be standing still. I don’t know everything about stealth mechanics but it seems like you’re either a sitting duck if you can be knocked out of stealth or just resetting the fight if you can’t. I think 4s would be more than enough.

Classes only have 1 party-rez utility so Defibrillator would have to replace Elixir R. Which I’m honestly ok with.

I think Axe is an easier main hand weapon than Dagger only because it stacks vulnerability and isn’t melee range. When you get more comfortable with Necro and get access to more traits, swap to dagger for harder hits. Bringing minions makes leveling super easy.

In PvP you’re auto-leveled to 80 so you have access to all traits & skills.

Staff is a supplement weapon.

Newish to Necro so excuse the potentially dumb question but, why not use full Dire armor? Then you don’t have to worry about defensive runes. If you want crit you can always go 1/2 Dire 1/2 Rabid right?

Dark Evasion: drop a dark combo field at your location and leap backwards thru the shadows 600 range. (dark field + leap finisher for blinds)

Wicked Wall: summon a ghastly wall that absorbs ranged attacks. Each attack absorbed generates 1% LF.

Summon Wraith: summon a wraith that steals health from its target. Sacrifice wraith, absorbing its essence and gain vigor for 10s.

I’m happy with this upcoming update. We’re not talking about more temporary content. We’re talking about a LFG tool which the community has been calling for for months. And GW2’s first raid-style boss. These are both pretty big changes, the first of which will change how we play dungeons/fractals, and the second of which might determine how Anet approaches new large-scale content. I think the data gathered after this patch will be heavily scrutinized by the devs. How we play as a result of this (and the last champion update) will impact the future of this game.

The main problem with running full condition builds (with any profession) is the cap. 25 stack bleed caps mean that your party members can overwrite some of your bleeds, especially if there are 2 full condition players. And with burns and poison stacking duration, yours can be completely overwritten too.

Ideally, you’d have a plethora of smaller numbers just popping all over the place. Instead of seeing 2-8k strikes you’re going to see a zillion 250’s and 180’s rolling off your target. But your full potential is mitigated by other players’ conditions.

Also, there tends to be ramp-up time to get from start to full condition stacks. This is opposed to power builds spiking right away.