Guild Wars 2

Anchoku.8142:

Elementalist can loan both great sword and hammer. I feel like access to summoned weapons should imply the weapon type ought to be limited so the summoning class has another reason to dedicate a utility slot for it. That is one reason I prefer a spear for land use. How would Necromancers feel if other professions had access to half a dozen mobile weapon platforms? I get that the slills would be different if Necro had access to torch, GS, hammer and everything else but it comes down to how much functional similarity is really necessary between professions.

Elite Summon Scythe – summons a scythe at target location and in your hand (a la Ele summon) and gives new 1-5 skills. Basically an awesome melee aoe weapon.

Wouldn’t really gel with any Necro traits or style but it’d be fun.

Maybe if we got greatsword or hammer the attacks would have a scythe animation like staff’s and it’d be an aoe reaping attack.

I love Epidemic. When running those Invasions and and group DE it just burns through everything. Especially when a champ with the zerg focusing it gets Epidemic’d and everything around it suddenly gets 25 vuln, 25 bleed, poison, weakness, blind, burn, torment….

Alright, I gotta ask though. I always use the double-tap to dodge and have only accidently dodged a few times and always when spamming engi grenades (finger fatigue). I like the ability to dodge in the direction I want by double-tapping. Doesn’t the dodge button just dodge you backwards? I wanna be able to dodge strafe or dodge into my target to close the gap.

While I believe the only way to really know which profession will suite you best is to try it, meh I’ll play along

Main profession: Engineer
Favourite colour: Blue
Favourite animal: Falcon (or any bird of prey)
Favourite mythical creature: Dragon
Favourite school discipline and/or graduation major: Physics
Favourite type of vehicle: SR-71
Weapon of choice: Sniper Rifle (real life) – 1h sword (in game)
Favourite ancient culture (greek, egyptian, roman, mayan, chinese, etc): kittene…Chinese i guess
Most important stat (Intelligence, Strength and Speed ONLY): Intelligence
Religion: Christian

EDIT: Took the test and got Elementalist as a result. Also, I noticed that nobody has gotten a result of Engi and almost no Necro. Interesting.

Obviously, there are always some constraints to exactly how you can play. Take a lvl 7 into Sparkfly and you’re gonna get stomped. Try to solo the Shadow Behemoth in Queensdale (if you could somehow get rid of all the campers) and you’re going to get stomped. If you’re encountering “high level enemies” then you’re in the wrong place. Stay in the zones at or below your level and you’ll have a fulfilling time questing.

I think another problem is that no matter how deep the villians are, no matter how altruistic or evil or driven…we never get the full story. Anet keeps going for the surprise and, as a result, the full story doesn’t get told. What CHIPS wrote about Mai Trin and Horrik might actually be partially true (personal backstory, not the history of the Aetherblades part) but we’d never know because that kind of stuff doesn’t make into the game. In fact, we had to read a short story outside of the game on the web to know Scarlet’s backstory. Shouldn’t that be in a snazzy cut-scene briefing before we venture out to meet the coming invasions? Did no hero raise his/her hand and say “why the ef is this crazy broad doing all this?”

Holy necro’d thread Batman!

Incendiary’s 100% proc is nice but it was easy to keep burns rolling with FT alone even beforehand. Between the long duration fire field and even minimal +boon duration with autoattack, burns were ever-present.

The biggest boon to FT is Juggernaut’s move from Grandmaster to Master trait. It basically gives you a free 10 trait points to put elsewhere. Survivability, utility, movement, you decide. You can try hybrids. Can might stack even easier with 30 in Alch for HGH if you want, or supplement a rifle/SD build with FT for variety (something I’ve been messsing with lately).

manveruppd.7601:

MH-sword, partly because we need another melee weapon, and partly because I had an Icy Dragon Sword in GW1 and I want to recreate that look (BRING BACK SCAR ARMOUR TOO! :P )

Just had a flashback to my GW1 fiery dragon sword wielding, scarred Necro/War unleashing bleeds, cripples, and life siphoning the crap outta people who had no idea what was going on. Muwahahahahahaha!! I want it all back!

I agree Alleluia. I’m hoping the next update brings some big profession changes. We haven’t had any significant skill/trait patch lately so hopfully we’ll see bug fixes and improvements to things like summons, kits, DS, and more.

Alleluia.1320:

Disagree…. <snip>

Valid point, but I think her motives derive from her 1) being incredibly smart and arrogant 2) having journeyed through the Eternal Alchemy believes she knows what’s best for the world more than anyone else.

Being arrogant doesn’t necessarily make you wrong. Or evil. Crazy people do bad things all the time because they don’t know any better. Not that she doesn’t understand that killing is morally wrong. Just that she’s above it. Her goals are loftier than those of anyone else, and thus the killing is justified.

“Die die die die die die die die die” = incredibly insane without any remorse for what she’s doing. Her motives denote that rather than doing it cuz she likes it (pure evil) she is doing it as a means to an end (not gonna say altruistic but rather for a greater “good”).

@kRiza krimos: I agree with BilboBaggins (lol I just said that). Scarlet, though psychotic and lacking morals since her trip through the Eternal Alchemy, is doing what she believes is best for Tyria in the long run. She’s not after power for the sake of power, but rather for the sake of the world. That’s my take on her story.

I agree with Jornophelanthas (could that be longer? lol) regarding Faolain. She (and all the Nightmare Court really) believe their manifesto is serving the greater good. They view the Mother Tree and Ventari’s teachings as a veil over the eyes of Sylvari and their goal is to open everyone’s eyes to the truth. That sounds like a good goal to me. It’s a matter of perception which is good and which is evil.

Many of the lesser creatures we encounter in the world (Ogres, Centaurs, Dredge) aren’t necessarily good or evil, just another faction that is driven by self-preservation. Human vs. centaur “war” isn’t a good vs. evil anymore than Human vs. Charr. Both want to survive, both want land, etc.

The Type I villain (ie – dragons) are boring in the sense that there’s no depth to their drive or goals. What should be interesting about them is the sheer power and magnificence they bring. Evil dragon, got it. Pretty straight forward. But let’s stand in awe for a moment over the incredible power they have, their size, flight, corruption, minions. What makes them interesting isn’t a fantastic story, but a terrific magnitude of godliness.

I’m planning on buying my 8th & final character slot to start a Thief. I tried thief a year ago and couldn’t get into it so he got deleted. Of course, that was back when I thought Guardians & Rangers were fun. Now, I main an Engi and prefer the more complex & dynamic professions, so I’m giving Thief another go. Enough preamble…

What’s a good playstyle for leveling? I’ve heard shortbow is a great 2nd wep set. And I don’t PvP or WvW hardly at all so I don’t need those builds. Just a general idea how best to level and handle dungeons as I go. And if anyone says ‘all signets’ I’m leaving. That’s why I never got my warrior past 16. Thanks in advance.

PS – posting this here cuz I didn’t get much help in the Thief forum

- Keep an eye out for the invasion events. You’ll get get 1-2 levels easy from those.
- Use XP boosters, food, oils, crystals, banners…whatever you’ve got access to.
- If your aim is dungeons, make sure you can access them by exploring your way to the entrances. I leveled my alt 25 lvls from the invasions and now have to wander all the way up to frostgorge and fireheart to access the dungeon entances. Just running through the map to get those WPs will get you 1-2 levels.
- Personal story quests give good XP.
- Obviously, run the dungeons. If that’s your goal anyway, run em for great XP and loot.

Sepreh.5924:

<snip>

Ok, now that does sound fun. I love the idea of a melee, cleaving, life-stealing necro.

I just find that male characters in general don’t look as great as females in light armor (asura is the exception). Especially big hulking norn in robes. I prefer my psychotic yet dainty female raising the dead.

Not profession specific, but I do find that projectile speed and rate of fire tend to be more important than actual damage. When zerging events with my engineer I’ll use my aoe grenades for tagging but when a champ comes up I switch to my rifle and burst all my toolbelt. Fast rate of fire and fast projectile mean I can hit the champ before he goes down. My grenades just fly too slowly.

With necro, when a champ comes up I swap to axe and dish out #1 & #2 because it’s fast. More hits on target seems to get me better results. Despite it hitting hard, Life Blast is just too slow.

Torch makes the most sense. Mainhand would make it unique and potentially give burning without Dhuumfire trait. Can’t be too abusive with the burning though. Thinking like a fire shield and a daze/blind the eyes.

Longbow would actually be pretty sweet. But it’d have to be the anti-bow in style. Can’t be used like rangers & warriors. I’m thinking something with the feel of Lich form and thief shortbow, giving aoe effects, spawning minions, dropping marks. Like a long range version of staff but more active. Staff feels too passive so longbow could fire a channelled barrage of acid rain which poisons the area, fire an arrow into the ground which raises a jagged horror, fire a grappling arrow that pulls a target closer or pulls us to them (some much needed mobility), fire a dark arrow that torments a target (more stacks the farther away).

I’ve now heard that they occur every 3 hours, every 4 hours, and every 6 hours. I’m beginning to wonder if they’re happening on any kind of fixed rotation or if they’re random. Honestly, if Scarlet were any kind of genius she wouldn’t make her invasions so easy to follow.

crossoverAtt.9680:

Actually, that’s half my point… In order to get back into the single player boss dueling session (which likely appeals to one kind of player), you needed to complete several of the most cluster ****** events of all time and a 5 person dungeon (which likely appeal a different kind of player). It was three days before I could even get into a Scarlet event on my server. I can’t imagine what it was like on the highest population servers.

What 5-person dungeon? Scarlet’s Playhouse? That was completely soloable. It scaled to party size. Did you even try it solo?

Nothing should ever be announced in only the chat window. It’s too easy to miss while playing. I don’t read everything that’s going on in chat, especially if I’m in a dungeon. I hated it when we had to fight Canach and read our tiny chat window to know what was going on. Umm…on screen notifications or bring back the orange event assistant on the right hand side. It’d only be there for 10 mins a few times a day.

Can’t believe we still haven’t gotten a red response on this yet

Can’t believe we still haven’t gotten a red response on this yet

Stopped reading the thread about 1/5 way thru but my assumption is that we won’t more tiers, but rather more skills & weapon options to set us apart.

Har har………….har…………………………..

Yes I know how to play GW2. I know what to do. Just looking for how best to do it.

And for some reason I knew Zacchary would respond here after seeing your “rules of posting on the thief forum” post. I almost added a line in my OP asking you if I followed your guidelines.

I’m planning on buying my 8th & final character slot to start a Thief. I tried thief a year ago and couldn’t get into it so he got deleted. Of course, that was back when I thought Guardians & Rangers were fun. Now, I main an Engi and prefer the more complex & dynamic professions, so I’m giving Thief another go. Enough preamble…

What’s a good playstyle for leveling? I’ve heard shortbow is a great 2nd wep set. And I don’t PvP or WvW hardly at all so I don’t need those builds. Just a general idea how best to level and handle dungeons as I go. And if anyone says ‘all signets’ I’m leaving. That’s why I never got my warrior past 16. Thanks in advance.

Yea it is a time gate, but I didn’t expect to be able to outfit even my main with ascended right off the bat. Thankfully (or woefully) Engi got our kits buffed then nerfed in 48hrs so ascended weps are useless unless I need AR (which I don’t). So I’ve only got 1 other toon I’ll shoot for ascendeds for….now to level crafting………

Are they still mobbed with champ farmers or do people try to complete them? I’d think they’ll be even busier than they were, considering they’re less frequent now. They certainly were helpful for leveling my alt.

I only recently started playing Necro. What did the old DS look like?

At such a low level I recommend first unlocking your various minion utilities and your 25% speed increase signet. They aren’t the smartest or strongest, but they do a nice job of soaking up threat while leveling.

I love the Axe mainhand with either dagger or focus oh, depending on your playstyle/needs.

All power here. Stack power and smash stuff while your minions ‘tank.’

Grab some traits that improve your minions and the one that improves your axe. You don’t really need to worry about builds until you get to 40+.

Oh yea, remember that DS is your 2nd life bar. Heal on CD and you’re low on health? Jump into Death Shroud for a bit until your #6 recharges. Not to mention it hits hard if traited.

tinetcat.3026:

…..Btw, I had 137 gold, now I’m sitting at 113 gold, one of my toons is at 456 and another one is at 423, and didn’t have many materials so i had to buy some of them… i don’t understand how you spent that much gold. Buying components to craft exotics maybe?

It’s the 450-500 that’s expensive.
1-400 : less than 20g probably
400-500 : 100g+

Seetoo.9316:

It has an icd (maybe around 10sec). Tried it out on a mesmer using healing mantra. an Icon shows up indicating that you do have the life steal on your next attack).

I thought that nothing procs from the mantra uses, just the mantra charge. I remember reading that in the mesmer forum once.

From what I understand, you can hit 425 really easily and 450 without too much effort/gold. But the 450-500 is either expensive (~100g) or time gated. My thoughts are most people will opt for the slower method, rather than burning through all their gold and mats on day 2 of the patch.

I think it was better before the Magic Find change. Before, it was the best MF gear you could have, since you didn’t have to sacrifice so many stats to get it.

Now though, it’s just a good all around gear set. It’s probably awesome for open world PvE if you’re someone who likes to change your builds a lot. This way you’ll still have a bit of everything whether you’re going for power or condition, and still being fairly hearty.

I think 6/6 of the new Runes of the Traveller (though now expensive) would be best slotted into a full set of Celestial gear for open world PvE.

And this fact was mentioned in the patch notes.

Dig spots inactive for Infantile Mode.
And they’ve reduced the number of bubbles from dig spots too.

Rozbuska.5263:

Its Legendary. Due to time and effort I expect something like this even if you will must unlock every single Sigil what you want to use for thakittens not gamebreaking its just comfort thingy

But it’s not. It’s not “just a comfort thingy” to be able to swap your weapon to any & every ascended stat option available. For me to do that I’d have to acquire 1 of every single stat option for a particular weapon. Which takes not only a lot of time but also gold and a ton of used inventory space. That’s not a comfy thing. That’s game-changing.

Well kitten, that’s a lot of kittens.

I think often times that a profession’s “viability” is completely dependent on if it’s fun. Leveling as a signet warrior is not viable for me, because I would die from boredom. And while people say that Engis require too many button presses to do something another profession can do with 1 press, I think it’s fun.

So every profession is in decent shape. Some are just better than others in a specific area. Necro vs Ele for condition spamming: Necro wins. Necro vs Warrior for direct dps speed runs: Warrior wins. But they’re all viable.

Your dungeon clusterkitten was not a result of Necros being unable to compete. It was a result of a bad PUG, poor communication, not knowing the fights, not knowing the profession enough, or trying to do something specifically that a Necro can’t do (like dodge lol).

Engineer is the only profession that continually holds my interest no matter the setting. I have alts of every other profession except thief and, while they each have their appeal, I always come back to my Engi and blast the crap outa stuff.

I find that when I play any other profession, I compare them to Engi. This profession can’t dodge like Engi (necro). This profession has better single-target ranged dmg (ranger). This profession has different mobility (mesmer). This profession has a cool X mechanic (necro). I want this profession’s rifle (warrior). This profession has boring utilities (ranger). This profession is just boring (guardian). This profession can’t load up conditions as well as Engi (all but necro).

There’s more in common than just movement speed and healing. Every class deals damage; should that be normalized? Every class has access to boons/conditions; should that be normalized? I think the more we make every class like every other class, the more we lose what makes each class unique. Each class has its own mechanics, strengths and weaknesses. To trivialize them is wrong.

Mesmer has no speed signet, but it doesn’t need them for fighting because it can teleport and create clones. You just want it for quality of life when running from heart to heart.

Ranger’s Troll Unguent and Healing Spring are awesome. Way better than Necro’s heals…but Necro can steal health, can have minions siphon health, and have a 2nd hp bar (DS). Because of this, they shouldn’t have a #6 heal as strong as Ranger’s. No 2 classes are created equal, so you can’t expect normalization in 2 areas that will impact overall gameplay.

As for slowing down when getting hit: it’s to inhibit just running around without fighting. It’s there for the same reason we have no mounts. To make journeying thru Tyria an adventure. If you want to bypass that, use a WP.

I’ve never before experienced a game that calls for so many compromises and so much swallowing of things that ruin the gameplay, ruin the game climate and take away so much joy, to be able to play at all and not throw it away. I’ve never seen a game before that makes a player force himself to stick to the game instead of a game keeping them thrilled and enjoying.

Can you explain?

You know Consume Conditions’ heal increases per each unique condition right? Not each stack. 25 stacks of bleeds gives the same heal as 1 stack of bleed.

Conncept.7638:

More curious about the PAX announcement, one of the devs said the announcement will not be a new class, new area, or expansion. Not sure what else they can do that would qualify as ‘big’…

GW2 – now with monthly subscription fees!! And it’s BIG!!!

I say drop the cooldown of RB’s toolbelt skill just a few seconds. It’s a great single target skill for both direct damage and conditioners and comes packaged with one of our most fun utilities.

I’ve never found PBR to be effective as a damage tool. It’s a control tool and one I’ve never needed since I’ve either gun my trusty rifle or ocassionally my P/S.

Other gadgets….Slick shoes is control. Goggles (which I love btw) deal no damage but pretty awesome. Throw Mine is again a control tool (boon removal, knockback) but deals ok damage. Mine field is unreliable: the spread is completely random and the radius incredibly small. Not to mention that many of us are traited to drop a bomb when we dodge and that works better.

Ok so turrets for direct damage then…..yea they die a lot. I mean, they’re mostly designed for damage (flame, rocket, rifle) and sometimes control (net, thumper) but we’ve all agreed that their design needs tweaks.

Elixirs…yea moving on.

So kits: grenades, bombs, FT are all aoe kits and 2 of those 3 are hybrids. ToolKit is pretty sweet, hits hard. It’s our only true melee option. Elixir Gun is an awesome utility kit. Long range, aoe heal, escape, scales well with power & conditions but doesn’t quite do enough in the way of damage to use as our main damage source.

Which leaves our actual guns: pistol and rifle. Pistol does crap damage (tho #3 scales well with power if it hits) but works in the current HGH build (not single target direct damage). Rifle can hit like a truck when built around but requires a lot of moving about. Does have amazing control.

So that’s it folks. We’re reduced to Rifle/SD for ranged direct damage that won’t kill us with Retribution.

But then you increased it from 10s to 12s.
In keeping with our RNG, it should channel one of those conditions at random lol.

Really, every new Engi skill I want I could have (but weak) if I’d rolled Charr. I love my Asura and think Charr are hideous…but their racials are so fun!

I’m leveling a necro currently (lvl 64) and am using a power based Axe+Focus/Dagger DS & minion build. I deal awesome damage with my axe and in DS, but also have my minions to deal damage and soak it up. Open world leveling is a joke this way and I can take on mobs of enemies without much trouble.

With 30/x/x/x/30 I can easily drop my minions and use BiP and wells for dungeons without having to respec. At 80, I’ll reevaluate.

Andele.1306:

• small side note Ele elementals got 21k 21k 14~K and 9~k (Ice, Rock, Air, Fire).

Yea but only 1 via an elite with <50% uptime + a lesser elemental that’s not as tough and also <50% uptime

Sonia.7910:

(Am I the only one who hates soulbound pieces of crap?)

Nope.

Only part I had trouble with was the final fight. Knockdown + Torment with no cooldown apparently had me sweating. Beat her on the first trip in though without any anguish. I was expecting harder solo. Actually, the only part I liked was when I fought her for real as opposed to the gimmick fights (make her hit that red circle/barrel).

I’m expecting useless inventory muck. But I’m waiting till after CC ends to destroy em just in case.

I do think it was bad design not to have the 3 items transmute into the 4th. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were just the 1 crystal in my bags, but 4 is way too many.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Elbegast.6970:

That’s not much of a revelation. It was like being handed a huge carton of ‘Moose Tracks Ice Cream’ and opening it to reveal that the contents were nothing but overcooked brussel sprouts.

Exaggerate much?

Seriously, you need to work much harder on you “Analogy Merit Badge”.

More like opening the Moose Tracks and finding nothing inside…only to realize the Rocky Road was on the counter the entire time…..<Keanu Reeves woa!>