Guild Wars 2

Softspoken.2410:

DeathenShada.6397:

Ya they are talking about weapon swap, they haven’t said anything yet on DS UI…. They’re probably just busy or too lazy to deal with it right now.

I’m somewhat of the opinion that ArenaNet needs more programmers badly. It’s not founded in fact or anything, but I get the impression they have these massive swaths of the game (WvW back-end, Event coding) devoted to two people each. I mean I think they do good work, really I do, but the pace is glacial.

Edit: So when you talk about a changes to the profession sector of the game, and more to the point one specific profession out of eight, I feel like there just aren’t enough work hours available without delaying work on the overall game.

It seems like this is the case. Some of their decisions are just downright strange without considering any manpower problems. I think an advocacy system would help though, sparing the developers from the time it takes navigating all the different sub-forums for consensus and issues.

Bhawb.7408:

Who brings AoE into a 1v1 fight? Besides PVT elementalist AoE hitting like a wet noodle, there is tiny amounts of AoE in the current meta for side point fights; which is where you should be as an MM necro, imo. I’ve run minions with multiple groups against a lot of people at they are my absolute best side bunker build.

Not to mention minions are single highest source of boon stripping in a meta filled with boon stacking.

You’re just parroting the same information and ignoring the biggest pitfall that’s been pointed out since beta. You need to roll the dice for minions to work. If you guys stopped being overprotective of arenanet, we might see some minion fixes. Saying everything is fine hurts us.

Bhawb.7408:

Minions are probably our strongest 1v1 build in PvP (at the very least our strongest commonly used build), and have become really popular in the new patch.

Sometimes I wish you and Bas were right. I would love to use minions.

Mr Crazy Moose.5760:

Avatar.1923:

skyrim is a masterpiece.
a rpg changer.
everybody knows that, to say otherwise is to be part of the minority.

A minority who knows that Skyrim really didn’t change that much, lost quite a bit and gave an experience on par with what people had managed with tweaking it’s predecessors years before.

The one really new thing Skyrim did was apply massive marketing.

Yep. Most of the new features in Skyrim were based on oblivion mods (which isn’t a bad thing exactly, as it showed the developers were responding to the desires of their players). A lot of minor “two-step back” decisions have really prevented me from enjoying skyrim. Not to mention the way in which the game handles mods this time around. Better be happy with the mod you installed, cause it’ll be there until you start a new save. Doesn’t matter if you uninstall the mod or not.

Anyway, I do think people who use phrases like “it’s just a game” don’t understand how MMO’s achieved there popularity. Housing, fishing, and all manner of fluff is what keeps people attached to a “world”. I think this transition into dailies and number crunching is what leads a lot of MMO to there doom — because MMO’s end up competing with single player games, netflix, itunes and all manner of other new and hyped forms of entertainment.

Bas.7406:

@kulde – In our last podcast, Symbolic pointed out that the main issue with running anything other than conditions in a tournament is the unreliability of power builds setup. Wells are easily avoided, and is an all in build whch can lead to serious issues in high end tournaments. In pve where things are more static or in wvwvw where you have a mass zerg of 20 people wells are strong and prove to be more reliable. However in tournaments they are very unreliable because of how active classes play.

In fact, I would say a MM has a better chance in tournament play then a well melee mancer.

Comparing the two in tpvp leads to the same argument as it does in any other facet of the game. While wells begin to lack efficiency in small organized pvp, they are more reliable than abilities of which are known to be unresponsive and fickle. It’s about what’s practical, you can use wells in combination with tactics and control to actually hit something (once again, we’re forgetting about conditions and focusing on the merits of wells vs minions in this setting), with minions its a coin toss.

Until the AI issue is resolved, that’s what its gonna come down to for me and many other necromancers. I don’t want to pull a slot machine lever and hope for the best. It’s a real shame, I joined this class for the minions, I spent all of the beta bug reporting in game and on this forum about the minion AI. I desire to use them, I want to be a minionmancer. But other builds provide me with more entertainment just because they work when I need them to.

Great group of people these are! Don’t wait and sign up!

Maximum Potato.5923:

Baralendir.3941:

FLFW.3105:

…. should be removed.

Yes its just a pixels and 95% of guild wars population wont become animal abusers because of that but we have children playing here. Proposing that bashing rabbits or kitties to death is rewardable ( which is what anet is suggesting here ) is wrong and i bet in some form – illegal.

Yes yes this is a game but we have too much violence in games already, why add more?

GW2 is rated T for Teen. If a teenager cannot discern the difference between reality and a virtual world, someone should step up and seek some help for them.
The average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day. By the time a child reaches 18 they will have witnessed over 200,000 violent acts on television. I don’t think bashing a few virtual rabbits in GW2 is really adding anything worrisome to the list.

It’s more about immersion. My character in GW2 is a ranger, so naturally going around shooting rabbits doesn’t really fit with her personal story. It’s not a massive deal, I just don’t do the ambient killer quests. I dislike it, but that’s because of my character – I’m sure there are lots of people out there who have designed their toon to be sadistic, and this daily will work well with them.

Doesn’t the ambient killer daily fit with your class better than any others? I mean, you don’t need to be sadistic to have a refined taste for wabbits.

Until minions become reliable (i.e. “they work sometimes when you press x, x, square, circle, start” is not reliable) they shouldn’t be considered anything more than a novelty. When I occasionally blow off the dust of my minion utilities, I’m reminded why I don’t use them. Sure, on paper the damage disparity is fairly impressive — but our other utilities are much more reliable damage/defense because they aren’t at the mercy of the atrocious AI.

So I guess it boils down to this; minions are like a piano hanging by a string — if it happens to land on your target it could be devastating. Wells are like a high-powered rifle, they take a while to reload but are dead accurate and fairly damaging. Which would you take into a dungeon? I imagine the piano would be fairly burdensome…

Heh, I could do this all day.

A whole slew of dailies and monthlies become much easier when a level 80 zones into queensdale. Especially particularly frustrating dailies like “aquatic killer” or grindy dailies like “daily kills”. It’s also nice finishing up your dailies without being CC’d or swarmed every two seconds.

What about the sentient beings we’re constantly slaughtering? Surely this will have a negative impact on all the toddlers playing? But seriously, never play minecraft. That whole game is one huge animal-murder-fest.

Whether I’m running Nemesis’ abomination build or a straight up MM, consume conditions always seems like the better option to me.

Withdrawn.. Didn’t realize you were looking for experienced arah players. :P

Did the patch break “fireforged trigger”? It seems like the reduced CD is applied but then goes back to its default CD after a second or two. Noticed this happening repeatedly on the elixir guns #5.

Excellent news, gives me something to shoot for. Thanks!

MethaneGas.8357:

Hell Hex.7039:

Necromancer is a rare breed. already you see few in pvp. beacuse they are so underpower..
The only necromancer i seen are the minion master . that got pets all over the field that just run around like bunnys and the condition managers. but low low damage even on them*and you need time. In a few months hardly anywone will play on them .
I love necro in gw1 but here is just a piece of joke.. im not going to be support that dont even got good cc(there are a few that can be counter very very easy..)
For exemple necro vs other class =
- necro vs thief = thief kills you in 3 sec with basilisc venom.
- necro vs guardian = guardian heals the hell out of you..
-necro vs eng = eng boons boons boons and your dead
-necro vs mesmer = who is the real one.. beacuse i got few aoe.. that can be dodge easy.
-necro vs ele = lets hope he did not see me..
-necro vs ranger = with my range i will never get the ranger..
-necro vs warrior = lets hope hes not using sword or axe.. beacuse im dead if i stay long in fight with him if hes got Flurry/Eviscerate..O wait there is no burst damage on necro…

- Last time i checked, boons don’t kill people

Retaliation can kill you.

emikochan.8504:

crazy people are crazy, some of them also play games.

Nothing more to say than this.

A video game may have sent this person off the handle because it was the most readily available trigger. It could of just as easily been a snarky comment, a basketball game, a rumor he heard, or someone was playing their music to loud. An emotionally unbalanced and/or disturbed person killed someone, case closed.

Bas.7406:

BobJoeXXI.2493:

If a function of the game doesn’t work it should be fixed. Leaving unfixed just for the sake of balance is immoral. If it needs to be tweaked after it is fixed, in the ever-distant future, then it should be tweaked.

It’s like leaving the having Necromancers not benefit from the Soul Reaping tree because “they have the highest hp in the game!”

Overreaction is not helpful. The Minions have been gradually fixed and are better now than they were at the start. We are probably close to 70 percent of the time the Flesh Golem attacks the right target, and 95 percent of the time he will eventually start attacking. The rest work almost immediately as long as you don’t switch constantly.

I haven’t seen any significant changes to the minion AI since beta, in fact sometimes it seems like they’re getting worse. The fact is that since beta a core class mechanic has been utterly broken. Whether you believe it’s working 70% of the time or 98% of the time, the fact is it does not work as intended and is thus broken. Especially in a competitive area like Spvp or a challenging area like dungeons — randomly working correctly isn’t good enough.

It’s great that people can work around or adapt to the broken state and pitfalls of the class — and I don’t say that sarcastically. It really is great to see players who love this class stick with it. It is, however, unfortunate to see people defending the developers ignorance or willful neglect of what could be a fun and effective build.
Anyway, I don’t mean for my tone to sound abrasive or confrontational. I just want to see my favorite class fixed.

Most of the replies seem to be from people who run the classes in question as alts and not main classes. From that perspective they’re probably fine. You already have your warrior/thief/guardian/ele to efficiently tackle most obstacles in the game, these alts are for flavor.

Now I can’t speak towards the state of the ranger or engineer, but the necromancer is definitely not “fine”, however, it’s not weak either. The problem with necromancer is that it is the king of mediocrity. What it does it does decently, but not as well or effective as class “x” or “y”. Of course most people will shrug these off as “L2P” issues, but that’s typical of the general forums and goes to show how much those people truly understand these classes.

I love necromancer, I’ve been playing it almost exclusively since the second beta weekend — I never feel useless or weak in any sort of content in the game, however, I certainly feel that the classes around me are almost always better suited for the task at hand.

CHIPS.6018:

Yes necros are OPed. I play wvw a lot and I often kill 7 thieves at the same time all by myself. I chase down eles and kill them even when they are in home waypoint. I have a special ability to see which mesmer clones are fakes so I have no problem killing the real mesmer. I charge head first into a warrior and dagger them to death. I can debuff a zerg of 60 enemies at the same time all by myself. I can res all dead allies on the whole map every 2 minutes. My Flesh Golem is invincible, every time it losses its head it grows back 2 new heads. When I turn on Lich Form every enemy in the map runs away. Plague Form is Chuck Norris.

There are tons of videos on Youtube showing you how this is done. Necro should be nerfed they are ruining the game!

Great, now we know who to thank when the devs nerf us because you exposed our secrets. Thankfully, you left out the secrets and tactics to mastering deathshroud.

Factions/Cantha is the only reason I have a level 20 character with semi-decent gear in Gw1. Literally had my friend carry me throughout the expansion so that I could experience all the different locations and music. A return to Cantha would solidify my love for this game.

Guild Wars 2: “That one MMO where playing a caster is actually fun and offers diverse styles of play.”

PTV is my preferred play-style with necromancer. It’s a build that generally does well in all aspects of the game (wvw, open world, dungeons, etc..), and its a great stat distribution that can salvage a dungeon run should your group be a little wet behind the ears.

Using all rare jewelry until I got enough laurels for ascended gear. I rarely see anyone tank as well as I do.

Not every 10-15 minutes in my case. In fact they don’t seem to have any discernible pattern.

Ascended rewards + interesting tasks will motivate me to do dailies now.

Sky.9347:

It’s the Cash Shop and Vertical Progression literally draining the very life of Tyria.

Soon, it will seem as if you’re playing on the moon.

I’m in the midsts of forming a new guild called “AVALANCHE”.

I really hope we see minion AI fixes tomorrow. Been crossing my fingers since they mentioned they’re working on it. I’m stoked.

Could be reanimator.

This is an excellent idea. Gives more purpose towards exploration and just plain enjoying the scenery.

I’m using the Corsair K90 keyboard (which is a mechanical hybrid) and sometimes double-tap the elite button due to the keyboard being overly-sensitive. I suspect this is what is happening (as I do it with DS sometimes as well. You can imagine how frustrating that is in combat, lol.).

To much? I’ve always felt that there wasn’t enough steampunk elements.

I got around 40 tonics before the endless tonic.

Played around with the customization a bit more and I can get the entire system for $1550 (Holiday instant -$100 promotion) if I keep the default processor ( i7-3630QM) and add the 7970. From what I’ve read, the Sager is supposedly a highly upgradeable laptop. I was under the impression that laptops stayed the way they came out of the box as well, but apparently this brand is the complete opposite.

Thanks for your help, Solarnova. My head has been spinning this past week trying to decide what I should be prioritizing. I think I’ll go with the 7970 and upgrade the CPU later for better performance in WvW and such. But I suspect this will cut through PvE content pretty well, eh?

Thanks for the suggestions, SolarNova.

I should have clarified that $1500 is my absolute limit. Anymore than that and I’m breaking the bank. Since you think that the 675mx isn’t that much of an improvement over the 670m — do you think I should go with the 670m on th NP9150 and reinvest that money into a 3740Qm?

Obviously this rig is primarily for GW2, but will downgrading the 675mx to a 670m hurt me in other games or is it completely negligible?

Edit: Also sort of set on the Sager because, apparently, it’s very upgrade friendly. So, supposedly, things like the GPU/CPU can be upgraded later on.

Hey Guys,

I’m seeking a bit of advice on purchasing a laptop with GW2 in mind. I know desktops are far superior and quite less expensive — but I’m currently looking for a laptop.

Been spending the past week now reading up on mobile technology and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that GPU is king when it comes to gaming on laptops. So I’ve since been solely focusing on that aspect while trying to find something decent. The problem I keep running into are often contradictory opinions on certain GPUs.

While some say that the 660m and 670m are both similar and decent GPUs for gaming, others claim that both are rubbish and only the 675mx need be considered — still others claim that it’s either the 680m/7970 or nothing at all. Needless to say, I’m paranoid that I’m gonna invest $1500 in a 15 fps paperweight if I make the wrong choice.

So instead of asking for laptop model suggestions (although go right ahead if you know a good one), I’m more interested in opinions on GPU’s, experience with certain laptops and lowest frames per second of certain models/cards. Currently, this is what I am considering:

<a href=“http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP9150”>Sager NP9150 (With 675MX)</a>

<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Gamers-G75VW-AS71-17-3-Inch-Gaming/dp/B007MW73C2”>ASUS G75VW-AS71</a>!

So yeah, any thoughts or opinions would be very appreciated. I’m at my wits end.

Merry Christmas and may the burning keeps and supply camps of the mists bring warmth to us all!

It’s not really a black and white issue. Necromancers do well in some areas and are lacking in others.

With Sheobix’s “Juggermancer”, I’m finding my runs through dungeons much more fun and effective. The problem with necromancer has never been dungeons, at least not to a significant extent.

This is a really good duelist build and I’m starting to prefer the focus to dagger OH. Although I think that spinal shivers in CQC has a really lame cast time. In fact, I can’t imagine why it is so long.

He’s right about the story, that’s about it.

I mean, no one is saying that dungeons are now impossible for necromancers because fear doesn’t interrupt anymore. The problem is that necromancer sucks just a tad bit more because it lost an interesting mechanic. A mechanic that really couldn’t be abused by necromancers precisely because it was and is an interrupt and not some epic warrior fear (/hyuk hyuk).

That’s where my optimism comes from. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.

XiL.4318:

Terok.7315:

Damn, Savan… Take a day off.

Yeah, the defiance mechanic was obviously changed without necromancers in mind. In all likelihood it’s an oversight they’ll fix.

They screwed over Minions in beta without regard to Necro as well. Guess what? Ranger pets do everything Necro minions are supposed to do now, yet Necro Minions are still 100% garbage outside of Flesh Golem for charge (every 45 seconds you get a single useful knockdown… and Flesh Worm which offers you a teleport escape. That is it.

So where exactly are you pullin your optimism from? And does it involve the processing of fully digested food?

Because if I wasn’t optimistic, I would probably have heartburn like you do.

Damn, Savan… Take a day off.

Yeah, the defiance mechanic was obviously changed without necromancers in mind. In all likelihood it’s an oversight they’ll fix.

Savan.8495:

and grubs spawned off of your pet?

Yes, either my jagged horrors or the other necro in the group. Our guardian pointed it out, and I also saw first hand the grubs spawning on my ogre pet whistle pet.

+1

Let’s not make Giganticus Lupicus any harder than he needs to be.

Are they in your collectibles tab?

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

They are no different then your Hall of Monuments Minis which are also Account Bound. They are supposed to be exclusive to you.

I think the problem is that people are getting duplicates and the randomness by way of real currency should warrant their availability on the TP. As another poster stated, they should have let you just buy them outright like at halloween.

It’s so infuriating that the developers seem so intent in putting resources behind tweaks and fixes that are very low priority to the players. I’m sure there are people out there that focus exclusively or regularly on underwater combat — but these people are so few as to not warrant any attention.

We have issues with minions, build diversity and general balancing that far outweigh any problems taking place under the waves. It completely perplexes me that minion A.I. has not been touched even a little bit. I often wonder if the developers think we’re exaggerating when we use the word “broken” in reference to them? Perhaps they think that minions work, but are not always responsive? These patch notes lead me to believe that the latter is true.

The class philosophies in the notes are even more confusing. Wasn’t this game suppose to allow playstyle freedom with each class being more flavor than pigeon-holed tank/heal/dps? Whatever, I’ll wait patiently for the next patch before seriously playing my necromancer again — though I suspect I’ll be making a similar post when that one comes around.

tl;dr

fix minions.

• Mounts trivialize a major aspect of the WvW death penalty.
• Mounts tend to shrink what would otherwise be considered massive areas.
• Mounts create undesirable latency issues.
• Mounts are unsightly in public/crowded areas.
• Mounts make speed buffs irrelevant.
• Mounts suck.

DegoLocc.5976:

Terok.7315:

DegoLocc.5976:

Derk.3189:

DegoLocc.5976:

Basically they like the idea of MMO’s but don’t like the grind. So they want a more arcade type game.

I think they should play games more suited for them, ie: league of legends, and fighter beat em ups, where there is no gear.

They forget, if we all had the same gear out the gate, what’s the point of even having gear? Cosmetics? Yea we’ll see how long that holds your average MMO player.

Last I heard, 7 years+. Guild Wars 1 says it all.

But guild wars 1 is NOT an MMO, it’s not even marketed as one.
Playing guild wars 1 hardly means you’re an MMO player. lol.

Define MMO.

And the point is, Name one successful REAL MMO, that has no stat progression. And I will stop telling players that they are looking for their casual game in the wrong genre.

I don’t think I can. “Real” MMO to you seems to be a world of warcraft-esque game (i.e. treadmill). So trying to fine a non-treadmill game given your understanding of “real” MMO is a pointless endeavor.

DegoLocc.5976:

Derk.3189:

DegoLocc.5976:

Basically they like the idea of MMO’s but don’t like the grind. So they want a more arcade type game.

I think they should play games more suited for them, ie: league of legends, and fighter beat em ups, where there is no gear.

They forget, if we all had the same gear out the gate, what’s the point of even having gear? Cosmetics? Yea we’ll see how long that holds your average MMO player.

Last I heard, 7 years+. Guild Wars 1 says it all.

But guild wars 1 is NOT an MMO, it’s not even marketed as one.
Playing guild wars 1 hardly means you’re an MMO player. lol.

Define MMO.