Guild Wars 2

Zoel.9154:

I’ll just leave this here, for those of you wondering what happened to [RET]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNn6g3yWV3o

Awesome video. This is another reason why I love T2. It’s been a lot of fun.

There are a lot of things I would like to see changed. (*cough, 1 hit door contesting)
But, even though I thought I read that they couldn’t do it somewhere (I am getting old after all), I would like to see the maps expanded. Not so much as in new content (which would be nice), but super sized.

The server borderlands, for example, they could expand the distance between the objectives by 2x the distance it is now. And, for EB, I would say somewhere between 2x and 5x the distance. Other than seeing a 70 man zerg, nothing about the current play feels massive.

I almost want to laugh at this, because two weeks ago a thief from FA (can give you the name and account name via PM if you want it) did this to us endlessly. And sadly, chasing them through the ruins was more fun than anything else going on in EB so I did for about 3 hours….multiple days. Actually got her (well, female toon name anyway) down to about 15% health a few times with BiP and some other conditions, but the shortbow 5 up and down the walls in the ruins makes it near impossible to kill her.

She has been doing the exact same thing to LL keep all week when I see her on. And, at least Wed. night, had a player from KN standing about 50 feet from her doing the same thing. They both just hung out kind of taking turns.

Personally, some days it’s fun and others it’s annoying. Both the chasing and contesting. There is no reason it should be this way for the time and cost investment in getting a WP, but it is what it is. And, until A-net makes it so that the gate has to take like 5% damage to be contested, this is what we get.

The sad part of the S.A.B. is that it made me realize I was bored. I enjoyed the box somewhat, and when I was finished with the achievements, went back to WvW where I spend most of my time anyway. It’s just not the same.
Sure, still get in 1v1’s and 1v2’s (both ways), ride the zerg and run supply building siege. Spent way too many hours at WC and LL Friday night, stayed up about 4 hours past my normal bedtime, and it was fun. I think part of it is, I think back to how much fun I had playing all the games “referenced (used loosely)” in the SAB, and despite all of the modern programming, most seem to constantly miss the mark.
I must be getting old. I think Post SAB, I’m gonna go outside.

Yes. People play thieves because they want to appear out of nowhere and hit 3 buttons and kills people. If you want to nuke large numbers of people dumb enough to stand literally on top of each other play an ele or necro. If you want to face tank everything play a warrior or guardian.

I’ll sign removing the aoe cap every time, although they will likely not change it, but the tool tip to read “hits 5 people max” instead of “area of effect” (which is currently not in the game. Even arrow carts are not technically “area of effect” they are “LAOE” or “limited area of effect”.

Were you standing next to siege from your team? Balistas hit siege hard, and used to be that you would take just as much damage as the siege did, but that was supposed to have been fixed already. Somewhere between 4k and 6k is pretty common damage normally in open field (also depends on gear, upleveled or not etc).

I still see a lot of T2 and T3 keeps/towers, but with everyone riding the karma flip train, I have seen a decline in the willingness to upgrade. Probably because it’s going to get flipped again soon anyway.

Not every attack can damage a gate. The necro staff 1 skill apparently was not meant to damage a gate, or it was just overlooked. Haven’t tried scepter or axe yet, but dagger does hit them. First time I tried to contest SM with staff out, I got off like 8 attacks and later thought…wtf?

The alligator is from Pitfall, although this one’s mouth stays open the whole time. You can, however, still jump on it.

Nice info. I have been wondering if the drop rate was affected by the number of classes that could use the weapon. I have played every day since launch, and see the greatsword precursors and legendaries everywhere. (literally, can’t walk more than 20 feet without seeing one) But I have never seen the rifle pre or legendary on any player, and I play about 6-8 hours a day after work. Could be that fewer people are playing those classes to explain the rarity, but that would also mean that given equal supply there would be less demand and more of them about. Does seem that the drop rates might not be equal…would be nice to know. Would also be nice to know how many pre’s are drops vs. the mystic toilet creation.

The issue is the cast time plus animation imo (add lag and it’s worse). I play staff and a the animations seem to double (at least) the cast time overall. Add to that how bad staff 1 is, and it can be frustrating. Been trying to get some video of the delay between pressing the skill, the start of the animation and the cast time, and the time it actually happens.

Seems like the sequence is: press skill, pre-cast animation, casting time + casting animation, post-cast effect, skill happens. But, we seem to be balanced around cast time alone, which is why staff 1 is so horrible.

I play with greater marks, and always center the marks under my target. I will lead them if they are running, but with greater marks, unless they dodge, I have always hit my target. Since the patch, I am constantly having marks left on the ground even though they didn’t dodge and were well within the radius of the mark when it dropped.

Our frog was going well until I completed the daily dodger achievement, he was at like 5% health (if that) and once the achievement popped, he bugged out. We’re still just sitting in here by him trying to figure out if its possible.

The short answer is no. I will buy a powerball ticket, because if RNG is gonna happen there I retire. In game, I already know what the odds and my chances are…I’m saving my money for powerball tickets.

Luvpie.8350:

when you don’t have a single story mode done on 4 80s….

Exactly. I have 6 80’s a 42 and a 23…most of my toons the story line quest level is (3).

I had to reread that, I seriously thought it was just one deck. I need sleep. Don’t ask where the 16 came from, I have no idea.

Although axe cleave would be a HUGE addition, it would be nice if it would actually hit things next to me (even if they aren’t targetted). No other axe needs target lock to hit, so why do we?

I think there’s only 16 aces in a deck, but this is a good idea. Fortunately, the RNG item this time is weapon skins, and, as they look a lot like the kitten weapons from GW1, I have no interest (so, no desire to waste real money on them).

Also, as I have plenty of dice, I think I’ll take that route if they ever make anything I do want (assuming ESO isn’t any good and I’m still here).

It does give the larger radius, but the green circle showing placement is the smaller size, which can be confusing.

You think they would have picked a better name. Doesn’t everyone remember the South Park episode with the Super Adventure Club? I hope this isn’t based off of that.

A lot of this will depend on play style. Personally, I like to stack power. Without food or buffs my attack power sits about 3200 (which is low imo), 33% crit chance 48% dmg. My gear is 4 of 6 PVT with 2 random pieces with healing and condition dmg on them. My accessories are a mix of ruby/berserker and valk. My condition dmg I can’t recall offhand, but my bleeds tick anywhere from 84 to 120.

I run staff and dagger/focus. Staff is pretty much everything I do, and go to the offset for dagger 3 (snare) and focus 5 (slow) to prevent escape and finish. Also, dagger is the only weapon we can use to hit things we can’t target (axe requires target lock – the culling end may offset this some). I tend to use consume conditions (never leave home without it), locust, wells (corruption/suffering), and either lich, plague or golem (depending on what I’m doing).
I change out wells for grasp and corrupt boon as needed, and will add the darkness well in place of locust for sieges.

There is a lot of cleansing that takes place in WvW, so it can be hit or miss on the condition heavy builds. You will wreck some and other times see no impact. The new change to epidemic (which I always found to be buggy anyway) puts a hurt on condition heavy builds (imo the wells are just as effective as epidemic and gives you an area of denial – cause if they stand in both wells, they are usually downed).

The hybrid build I couldn’t get down as it didn’t match my playstyle, but I have seen it used effectively. I always felt it was more of a single target roaming build.

Mostly what I’ve found is that dropping marks and wells in rapid succession will down anyone that doesn’t immediately dodge and move. Great in open field and sieging. The higher your power the harder the marks hit, before the conditions apply. Traited for unblockable/larger marks is great and, if you go 30 in spite, you can add 20% dmg to players below half health. Also, make fear do dmg from the curses line. I run a 30/30/10/0/0 build and still have 25k health…and good toughness.

I would definitely get hours in each build before crafting/buying your final gear. It will help give you a good idea of which fits your playstyle better.

I end up as a “glass completely empty” for patch days.

They will fix a few things for other classes, maybe a tool tip for us. Thieves and warriors get buffed with boon hate, and we will get “balanced” somewhere, meaning less effective, but not enough to call it a nerf. They will say they improved game play for us, read as “now you only have to spec in one thing, cause it’s all you have left”.

How’d I do?

This week has been a lot of fun so far. I hope today’s patch is early enough that we get to play without culling tonight…will be interesting to see just how many people have been in some of these battles.

I would be interested as to day of week and time of day this was done.
I have been testing (and only recently starting keeping stats) and finding that weekend salvages net almost no ecto, where as weekday evening salvages net above average amounts.

Score update for those of us stuck in a cubicle?

For Axe and Focus, the T3 Asura cultural are cool looking.

I’ll avoid the stuff that’s been covered. I main a necro (have all 8, 6 are 80’s) and really like the class. We have numerous issues…see above.

Can’t speak to much for PvE as I don’t do dungeons or fractals, but farm a lot and WvW a lot.

As for general mobs, necro is fine. Personally I have found staff and wells to be most effective, especially for a power heavy necro. Dagger/focus offset for the dps (as dagger is really the only dps weapon we have – tried axe, dagger is better dps overall).

As for WvW, our role was mostly the hard counter to bunker builds. Sure we can pressure and condition, but those usually vanish quickly (too fast to be effective, as most people have a cleanse or someone nearby does it for them). Sadly, with the boon hate that warriors and thieves are about to get, the necro once again becomes “not as good as other classes at”…insert argument here.

I think Anet really has no concept for necros, so they are fine with the way the class is now. It’s not so much that we are broken (buggy as hell yes), but if you are looking to excel at one thing in particular, and that is what you want above all else, find the class that does it best (it will rarely if ever be necro). However, if you like the “thought” (seriously open to interpretation since Anet isnt’ sure what this is either imo) of the necro, and are not prone to rage, than roll one.

Personally, I like the class, I’m just saddened at times when I know others are doing what I do faster and more effectively.

Longest fall in the game I’ve found is from the vista in Mount Maelstrom. Hitting the lava will not save you…lol. Would love to see a video of that one.

I just want the bad guys to appear on my screen before I’m dead, and…get a precursor drop before they turn off the servers. I’m not holding my breath for either, but I HOPE one of those will be this month. (don’t care which one at this point either)

I would rather they take that list, look at the IP address of those richest folks, and than check those IP’s for second and third accounts (mostly looking for their bots).

While I realize it is entirely possible to make large sums of money in mmo’s legally, I see so many bots/hacks that it makes me wonder. I wish the system had a built in way to check, but sadly the only way they seem to know is by players reporting.

And, some of the heart quests give you expiremental weapons to use as well. My favorite is in Iron Marches I think. The one where the guy gives you the grenade kit and you clear the cave. Normally at the end of a quest I dump their ‘weapon’, but with the grenades, I try and clear as much of the map as I can…those things rock (much better then the engi ones).

This has been happening since before the chest “fixes”. You could get gold credit and no chest, even though you haven’t done the event in a couple days. I had shadow and maw back to back not give me a chest. And, it had been more than 48 hours since I had done them last on any character.

I tried doing the events on a different character and got a chest, went back to my necro and started getting them again. Put in a bug report when it happens.

They didn’t always do this, it started a couple patches ago (I think the one that was supposed to fix the unstable balance looking thing, which still happens). It used to just happen zoning into places. Head would be crushed down into your body so you had no neck, but now it happens all the time. Start running, stop running, after a few casting animations. 4 of my 8 toons are Asura, and this is seriously annoying.

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

That description gives exactly what necromancers are capable of doing…?
1) We have highest HP
2) We don’t have escapes or damage reduction
3) We have other ways (LF/DS, weakness, soft CC, healing, condition transfer, blinds, chills, etc) to win attrition
4) We have poison on 2 of 4 main weapons (multiple)
5) We can easily do condition and raw damage at once (why hybrid necros work so well)
6) Daze + fears to interrupt
7) Every single necro weapon has at least 1 way to disable mobility, with every set having 2.

I would say that description was perfectly reasonable?

Sure, if you says so. But all this means nothing when you realize that every other class does every single thing on this list better, which illustrate the point Incarmine was making. Necromancer is trying to do to much at once and thus becomes good at none of them.

1) Tied with warriors, who have the same burst capacity as thieves AND wears heavy armor AND has a metric kittenton of mobility on top of it.
2) Neither do guardians, but they DO have damage reduction. A LOT of damage reduction. Hell, their hammer gives them permanent protection for them and their entire group as long as they’re swinging their auto attack. Necromancers have access to protection for 5 seconds… on a 90 second cool down… for themselves only. Well, I suppose there is spectral wall too, but I have never seen anyone use that skill, ever. Probably due to its long kitten cool down which seems to be a problem that plagues (hur hur I made a funny) all necromancer skills.
3) Guardians are better at attrition. Thieves are the king of attrition. Why would you bring a necromancer to an attrition fight when guardians and thieves do it better?
4) Thieves are better at applying poison. Their burst weapon (dagger) applies poison on the third strike. Interestingly, the second strike in the chain also restores endurance as well which fits very well with the class theme ANet has for the thief. Dodgy and mobile. Why doesn’t necromancer scepter attacks give LF since the core of the necromancer class is supposed to revolve around the use of LF? Thief shortbow #4 drops a poison field that will stack 5 seconds of poison for each pulse for 4 seconds. This can be used every 4 seconds forever (initiative will have regenerated by the time the field ends), and in between each poison field the thief can do other stuff as well.
5) Really? Guess you haven’t seen what the warrior can do with their sword/sword using rampagers gear. Right now you’re saying, “Well why don’t I see more sword/sword warriors then, huh?” Simple. Because the warriors greatsword blows it so completely out of the water at everything its supposed to do. Raw damage, mobility, you name it. Greatsword does it better. So why would anyone purposefully handicap themselves by using sword/anything as a main weapon when you’ve got the greatsword? Necromancer does not have a greatsword equivalent. Everything is mediocre like the warriors sword, so thats all you get.
6) Thieves daze better. A lot better. Every 4 seconds, for 3 seconds, using sword, and whenever the thief wants as long as they have initiative using pistol #4. No cool downs. Fears? Man, I only wish. Warriors and thieves have better fears. Not only are theirs AoE, but they last 3 times longer too.
7) Have you even looked at other classes weapon sets? I don’t even…

This is why no one listens to you. Its hard to take you seriously when anyone who has played both the necromancer and any of the other classes to level 80 can plainly see the necromancer shortcomings for themselves. Once people take the time to learn those other classes, as they already have by now, it becomes very obvious as to why this class has such a low population. Well, that and the incredibly long bug list stickied at the top of this forum that the original compiler simply gave up on trying to keep updated. Most likely he either quit the game or rolled other classes like the rest of us.

Normally when I quote long things I like to shorten it, but Kravick is dead on with his post. Granted, I still play my necro as my main, but I have all 8 classes and only the engineer and ele aren’t 80. It’s amazing the disparity between the classes. I’m not looking for balance (cause it’s not possible), but they (A-net) really should read/re-read/and then read some more Kravick’s post. Then…take notes into a meeting room somewhere and THINK about it. (and maybe some day 8 years from now take action)

In battles of attrition, other classes generally win. Ranger with shortbow is much better at bleeding out a target than we are (kind of like thieves too…sadly). I’ve not encountered an issue with eles yet. Most of their survivability is in boons or escaping, and corrupt boon is great. I also have access to pain inverter (Asura racial) which seriously tips the balance in my favor. Dodge the initial, pop pain inverter and start piling it on.

The only issue with conditions is that they are easily removed. Sure, you will come across people who do not have a cleanse and kill them (or not if anyone nearby helps, and there is a lot of that) or the upleveled folks who are at times free kills.

I’ve run full condition builds and have now switched to a power heavy build. My bleeds still tick from 84 to 120 and the flat damage from the marks and wells hits hard enough to make it worth it. I run without food about 3300 attack power (30/30/10/0/0), and still have nearly 25k health.

I run staff and dagger/focus offhand. I like the snare from dagger 3 and have a sigil of hydromancy on the dagger for the freeze on weapon change. I also run sigil of corruption on the staff, to help increase the overall damage of the conditions. In WvW you get downed a lot, and so the sigil is for little stat boots here and there. Didn’t want to make the build dependent on the stacks to be effective.

Hope this helps some. You definitely don’t see a lot of us in the borderlands…there are a lot of reasons for that, but we do have a place/use.

How you play (style, weapons) definitely affects the result. I have settled in to a 30/30/10/0/0 build that works really well. Staff with wells, corrupt boon, etc.
No stability can be a pain with lag and culling (even with no lag and no culling) so you have to time DS well and be good at dodging. I use DS mostly as a shield not to hit with. Also plague form as an elite just for the health pool. Or, to chase around the ever stealthing thieves. Keep them blinded and conditions and watch them run in circles…kind of funny.
For my offset, I usually go dagger/focus. The vulnerability and the root skill are nice, and single target dagger is still our best auto.

It seems weird to say, but you will kill more people by trying not to. Meaning, I focus on slowing, pressuring (fearing if needed) enemy groups knowing that people around me will kill them if I get their health down enough. Also, we are one of the hardest classes to get away from because (with staff) we can apply our skills to the ground ahead of the target…mostly negating dodges at times. Also, for bunker builds corrupt boon can easily mean their death.

We’re definitely not king of the hill, but we can sure wreak havoc given the chance.

Thanks for the update, I hate Monday…and work I guess. Only 4 more hours to go.

I have 25k health and no pts in soul reaping. It only takes 12k damage to take me out of DS.

Friday was the worst I’ve seen it to date, both the skill lag and culling. Most of the time 6 would become 16 or 60 pretty quick, and I’ve learned to start spamming my heal when I see the first toon, because I know I’ve likely already been killed (or close) and the game just hasn’t told me yet.

But there were a few times trying to get into SM where I saw the Kaining zerg (30+ people) balling up around the corner so they could zerg bomb us. So, with a full 15-20 seconds of prep time I started trying to drop marks and wells to give us a chance. ZERO skills went off, we were than run over and killed and not by auto attacks. This happened in a few encounters for both sides where I could tell one side was clearly using skills and the other side just stood there not even auto attacking.

At one point we made it into the Lord’s Room and stacked up for the 3 way. About 20 seconds into the ball I hit plague form (which lasts 20 seconds) and looked at my game clock. Took about 5 seconds before plague form kicked in. 2 minutes later I was still in plague form and just standing there. We died shortly after that, but seriously…the server side lag in this case was ridiculous.

I had been wondering about how ‘bad’ the ecto rate would be from salvaging from master kits. I have 8 toons and 4 have world completion so lots of zone clears, and have been lucky to always have black lion salvage kits available…but I finally ran out.

Salvaging the items from 2 full storage panels, 1 with the last black lion kit and the other with the master kit netted different results than I thought. As I was only interested in ecto, it’s the only thing I kept track of.

From the black lion salvages I got 18 ecto. From the master salvages I got 26 ecto.
All of the items were rares from the dragon events/maw/etc chests.

We could definitely use a larger sample of the population and a better way to track it.

The only problem with buying gems/converting to gold/buying a legendary is the conversion.

Right now in game 1 gold is = to $1.00 US. So, since most legendaries are 2000+ gold, who the hell has 2000+ dollars to drop on a virtual weapon? I’m lucky to make my car payment and rent.

I’m looking forward to moving back up to T2. Not sure if it will be any different this time around as I expect to be 3rd in points again, but I don’t think TC has ever really been worried about the tally. This week there were more people than I’d ever seen for our side running around, but a good portion of that was people wanting map completion.

I think we just need stuff to focus on, offense, defense or just entertainment. I would rather be on the struggling end of the population disparity than winning every 1vs1 with 20 extra people standing next to me.

The good news is, despite the coverage/population balance issues, there have been a lot of fun moments this week, so thanks to DB and MG for that.

Score update :-)

That was fun guys.

I remember reading a post that they couldn’t make auto-loot actually go into our bags because it broke a few things, that they could never sort out.

(not sure if I am laughing about this next part, if it’s the case)
Why do I get the impression that the reason they have ‘decided’ to go with character bound is because they just aren’t capable of making it account bound? Seriously, like no one there actually knows how to do it.

I like the game, or I wouldn’t play, but every time they change something (especially when it completely negates/contradicts their whole “manifesto” thing [I’m still expecting them to raise the level cap at some point like they are adding new tier of equipment now]) I am reminded of why I left Rift. I know our government constantly says one thing and then does another, is it sad that I want/expect more from MMO companies?

The main thing I’ve noticed about Krait, not just in WvW, is the tail strike. I usually babysit garrison watergate when I’m on, which means capping the nodes and island. Solo before was simple, like most things don’t stand in the aoe, but now it requires actual thought. Still doable solo (I’m a staff necro with wells and pain inverter; power heavy build), but definitely the difficulty has increased. Kind of like the lab in Sparkfly, man krait hit like a truck, kind of fun and annoying at the same time.

My thought is that they added a mechanic where everything with a tail has a tail strike. The drakes used to and now it seems the krait do, or maybe they always did, but couldn’t remember how to do it…guess they have been taking some learning annex courses.

I can’t count how many times someone has forgotten to take out oil or cannons before attacking a door with golems. I easily have over 100 hours just “watching” the TC garrison watergate, and there have been numerous times where after calling out the golem rush realizing (something like) ‘holy crap, those are omegas and why is the cannon still up?’. I have had many a good laugh tee’ing off on golems with a cannon…and watching people try to retreat with them or just eat it.

Not sure what was supposed to be changed, but I ran water support on my ele last night trying to take garr, and I got 1 badge for a veteran guard I hit with a fire spell. All my other healing, and boosting got me nothing. It seems if you do not damage the enemy, you are doing a great service for your team, but you will not be rewarded with anything but praise from comrades.

The only time our downed abilities are useful is against another downed player…and that’s only because our 1 spam is a lifesteal. Only once have I managed to fear someone off a cliff so I could rally off them.

I’ve accepted that grinding laurels for the ascended gear is useless, since they are adding another tier of gear above that (and I’m guessing a new currency then too). But yeah, this makes it kind of pointless to have multiple toons and playing anything but one of them FOREVER. I have 6 80’s, a 40 and my ele hit 20 last night. Granted, I mainly play my necro for everything (dungeons, etc.), but I have leveled all of my toons in what I consider a balanced fashion. Some crafting, zone completions, story line and WvW. I spent last night improving my ele play, enjoying some awesome time on a cannon and blocking treb shots in WvW, but once this patch hits (although LONG overdue) there will be no reason to take any character but your main into warfronts (which has already happened to dungeons and fractals).

I may be mistaken, but didn’t A-net say that they were going to give us credit for the things we had already done in WvW (I’m thinking kills, etc) towards this new system or were they just saying they weren’t taking out the old title lines? Maybe I misread….?

(from the post above me) I emphasize that particularly because this is so critical. If it takes 4 months of dedicated playing to max one character, then I agree that this is alt-unfriendly and is a bad implementation for the game. However, if it takes about the same time to max a character in WvW as it does to max a character to level 80, then that’s totally acceptable.

I really hope this isn’t the case. It only takes me 50 hours of actual game time (/age in game) to get a toon to 80, run them to Cursed and get my karma gear. I’m hoping it will be something like RR in Dark Age, but I’m not holding my breath.

Until they fix the naga mouse double click issue, I would not recommend anyone buy it. That is, unless you have $70 to spend every 6 months to replace it. The “fixes” that people have posted last maybe a week, and than back to uncontrollable double clicking.

On a side note, yes a gaming mouse of some sort that lets you not click as many skills will aid you greatly.

The funny part about this is that the only “AoE” skills that hit hard are the melee ones. And those really are only cone attacks not true AoE, so I imagine they won’t touch them even though they could use some tuning down (i.e. hundred blades for example).

The AoE skills they will likely nerf aren’t AoE either, because the skills don’t hit an area they hit “up to 5 players”. Not to mention that they don’t hit that hard…unless you spec 100% offense and have no defense skills or toughness (poor planning). They can also be avoided, evaded and dodged/blocked.

And, depending on the class, the “AoE” skills, may be the only skills you have that do anything (not that they hit hard, just harder than the rest of the crap they have given your class – staff necro is a great example of this. sure if you go full offense you can hit single target damage that is nice, but you bring no utility to large scale fights, it’s mostly a solo roaming build).