Guild Wars 2

Ever wondered why A-net dews don’t show themselves much outside of safe, arranged studio recordings?

Reaper. Viable in almost every situation (save needing a huge dps spike) with powerful unique niches that other professions can’t fill so easily (boon corrupts, condition manipulation, insanely powerful revivals if traited for).

Average player caught during gw2 HoT gaming session. In case someone asked why they don’t use cc at bosses…

Can’t disagree with OP in most cases. For majority of professions elites are a must to stay competitive, hell for some they actually make the profession playable again (necro!).

Like a wise person somewhere above said – ditch A-net, go for 3rd party sellers. I got my HoT key for around 32 euros instead of 45 around month after it’s release. Not the biggest money save out there, but it’s still ~25% cheaper, so a save.

Try looking around and waiting for an opportunity. I do agree A-net’s current price is not worth it, least until LS3 brings forth additional permanent content. Depending on how well that does we may have something after that, but currently i don’t blame anyone looking for a reasonable discount/sale.

Sylvari have my far the most handsome faces (for males at least). Only issue i have is that their facial sliders seem to be far less impactful then for let’s say humans or norn.

And as for body – just put some clothing on it. I sure got no complains about my sylvari’s look:

!https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/179217/gw688.jpg!

Well another HoT won’t sell for sure. It could slide once with “making foundation for xpacs” but now they have it and the work better go into content amount this time around. And some more weapons that aren’t just recolors of eachother (machined ones for example).

Not to mention they got quite a few unhappy player groups with HoT such as dungeon runners, legendary hunters, WvW folks and spvp’ers.

That’s logical and all…but it wasn’t me who sung about gw2 spvp being an e-sport. It was A-net. And if you sing it you better bring it. Especially seeing how both WvW and PvE got beefy new maps with HoT, while spvp got shafted with nothing but stronghold..

You can’t have a balanced competitive title if you make changes once every 3 months. Once every 2 weeks (+ hotfixes for totally game breaking changes) is a good start for having a balanced pvp. Hell once in a month would still be acceptable. but once every 3 months? That’s just … not gonna work, period.

And maps? When was the last time before this patch A-net did anything regarding spvp maps (save adding stronghold for which we payed in xpac)? Anyone?

@trub – problem here is we’re taking about ppl on gw2 break/not believing HoT is worth it/who left. They are by default not happy with the game, and need a strong signal it’s changing for the better to go back in. A long period of silence from devs with zero new permanent content (as in new heart of maguuma maps, stat sets on gear) is the opposite of that. And many sources suggest game is fixing itself at pace of 5 milimeters a year, while new content is nowhere in sight.

Remember HoT got bigger sales then it would due to one thing – Living Story. Even if it felt short and unworthy of it’s price, some ppl went through with it, on the basis that Living Story will soon come and pad that missing content to the size of proper expansion. If they fail to deliver on that, the next xpac will be welcomed with pitchforks and torches and extreme prejudice.

And every day they stay quiet and nothing is known about adding new content to the game is a day that already hair thin trust from these ppl gets even thinner…

I do not. I had played quite a lot but had little accident with my hdd 2 months ago and now am on Linux on new ssd. That story aside, reading the website, googling for articles about GW2 current state and upcoming things (not many, noooot many) and reading recent metacritic user reviews for HoT throws warning signals all over the place.

Almost from every direction you get two impressions:
1. xpac is not worth it’s asking price and messed up a good game.
2. game feels abandoned by it’s devs while everyone pretends there’s no elephant in the room.

Now i don’t know how much of above is true, but i know it’s true that this the impression you get after hitting the internet and doing some snooping on how the game is doing.

So i don’t know about their weekly shows for their players, but it’s about time someone from A-net stepped up to the outside gaming media and let them know that GW2 is alive and what’s in store to keep it that way, because the rule of thumb is if they don’t talk about you, that’s prolly cause you’re dead or dying.

Well the next xpac is gonna have a bumpy road seeing the moods regarding HoT. On one hand it’ll feel bit more fair, as this time around the base version (HoT included) will have elite specs to access and use, unlike this time when it’s HoT or go home with your crappy base specs.

On the other it’s gonna be even more brutal comparison of base game + hot content size vs new xpac content volume. If it’s anything HoT sized with nothing added after that (which is what we got now), goooood luck trying to sell it for 50$.

I honestly hope the for a-net’s sake the next xpac will be the underwater dragon one, cause they’ll have a lot of flames to put out if HoT doesn’t see some major content drops before things move on to next expansion.

best two backpacks i’ve seen are HoT glider, and Dreamthistle shield (when stoved). Yeah…this game needs better backpacks.

Man i hate their guts for dungeons. I loved doing 3x ascalonian and watch my gameplay improved, sometimes nearly soloing a boss. And they just decided to leave them in the dust, “have a nice day”..

Let me throw it down real simple and fast like. As much as the game is awesome and fun, from outsider’s point of view, things look like kitten.

It has been 6 months since HoT launch and what does the player on a break/potential HoT buyer hear about it and what’s going on:

1. HoT Price to content ratio is deemed bad by many.
2. Strongest redeeming feature – LS and free additional content that goes with it to fill that hole has yet to be heard of, let alone seen. And it’s already half a year after launch.
3. Numerous loud complaints on all fronts – grindy and short PvE, neglected spvp (one new map and infrequent balance patches (take a look how frequently LoL does it’s balancing), and botched WvW map.
4. Fixes that address the #3 at the same time indicate that we’ve got even longer wait for actual new content ahead of us, since up till now they were working out the kinks on the already existing stuff.
5. Game went F2P. Yes, awesomely made if we’re talking GW2, but for someone who’s not into gw2 specifics, but knows the basic rules of the market, that’s a death flag.
6. HoT sales figures remain a mystery. A-net aren’t the ones to be modest about their userbase numbers and sales figures when things go peachy.

Bottom line – i’m not saying game is bad or dying, but what i am saying is that IT’S GIVING OFF A LOT OF DEATHFLAGS from outsider’s point of view, with no one from a-net core crew stepping up to straigten this out.

If you want an influx of returning players who are on a break, or new players who are already now tempted by new releases (we got booming mmorpg year here) MAKE SOME GODkitten NOISE! Let the world know gw2 is alive, kicking and here to stay with new stuff to come soon!

And now can we all hear a word or two about living story season 3 and upcoming new maps (preferably more in maguuma jungle?)

Reaper. One monster is cute but a lot of HoT mobs = major problem. Fortunately that’s what reaper enjoys the most of all professions, as he’s specifically designed around the concept of “the more monsters the merrier” (at least until it’s up to 5).

Yeah i too wonder when we’ll finally get as much as news that they’re working on LS3. I love maguuma maps (both desert and jungle). Really hoping for some new additions to the zone via LS before it takes us to the new x-pac themed regions.

Yes you should use it asap! It’s hard to find a good perma-downed player these days that’s bound to let you thoroughly test your revival builds & skills!

Even without shroud reaper can still get pretty hefty crit rate from traits alone, albeit it won’t be pure 100%.

Reaper line gives 2% crit per vulni stack on opponent. On cap value (25 stacks) it’s 50% without any ds involved. Not something you can get immediately and always perfectly, but necromancer is pretty awesome at stacking that vulni all by himself, and in a zerg fight vs boss it’s nearly guaranteed 50% crit throughout the whole fight.

then there is the curses line, that offers 2% crit per unique condition on enemy (number of condies, not the amount of stacks counts here). In practice that’s 10-20% crit if the target doesn’t die in first 10 seconds of the fight.

You also get 5s fury when you enter ds, no cooldown on that trait. So if you wanna go shroudless, nothing stopping you from flashing shroud for that fury alone and getting back to business in your base form. That’s 5s of extra 20% crit that’s on 10 or 7s cooldown (depending if you traited for faster shroud recharge or not).

So summing that all up. Albeit it requires to stack some vulni, and putting some other condies on, what we have here in best case is:

50% +20% +20% (fury from curses line) + 4% (innate crit) = 94% if conditions are favourable and most off all applied to your target in number, and that’s without requirement to sit in shroud all day. For any zerg vs boss fights you can safely assume conditions will be veeeery favourable;)

Or you can just go for deathly perception and then get another 50% crit just for being in shroud.

Depends on what you want from it. If every ounce of power counts then valkyrie as it’s mainly power, vitality and ferocity secondary. Also with large healthpool you’ll be surviving condies better and enjoy beefier death shroud.

Cavalier is toughness primary (power and ferocity 2ndary) so if you’re going there you’ll be better vs power damage and you’ll get more out of your healing (less hp lost due to damage reduction from tougness)

Though with that in mind there is the Commander’s (if i recall right) stat set as alternative. It has more power, slightly less tougness, less ferocity but extra healing (which cavalier doesn’t) to stay on top of that sustain while dealing sweet power damage.

These 3 should be your main picks if you want berserker style power damage + sustain. But don’t forget necro is first and foremost a necro, and not just hanger for wearing armor. Majority of your survival will come from using your condies well (chills, cripples, weakenss, fears and some blinds), along with good deathshroud management (switching from nomal health pool to ds, then back, ensuring you got proper amount of healing vs life force gain to feed both your healthpools).

For damage+sustain traits you’ll definitely neeed reaper (has both), soul reaping (again both, focused on deathshround sustain and offence).
The last one is up to you. Each of remaning lines has something good to offer:

Spite makes you a self might stacking machine.

Blood magic provides ample amounts of life leech and healing. Pair that up with proper ds management and your survival goes through the roof.

Curses offer 3rd line boosting your crits (5s fury on entering ds) + 2% crit chance for every condition on your target.

Death magic is extremely noobie friendly traitline. It boosts your meatshields..erm i mean minion’s survival, lets them take condies off you, and lastly offers the most dangerous & powerful survival tool for noobie necros – unholy sanctuary.

The last one is simple and deadly. When you’re about to die, as long as trait itself is not on cooldown and you got over 10% max life force on you (your deathshround bar) instead of dying you’ll be automatically put into deathshroud buying you precious time to either finish the fight, escape, or leech some health back before your life force expires. This intervention will ignore deathshroud’s natural cooldown, so it’s an awesome lifesaver..OR NOT. If you let your instincs take over and try to pop ds as you die, there’s a high chance trait might beat you to it! Trait pops ds saving you, only to have your own self take it off because you forgot about the trait, and are deactivating already present deathshroud with you F1 press, thinking you’d do the opposite! Well done, see you at waypoint:p
If you manage to control your ds itchy finger when nearing death this trait will save your kitten like an undead superman;p

Also two fair warnings before you go into necro:
Necro has good power damage but hardly any burst. He’s just deals solid damage all the time, but no instakill ROAR damage spikes.

And between Ranger and Necro – Necro is the harder one to build (waaay harder) easier to play. Ranger is easier to build, harder to play (managing 3 swaps at the same time – weapon + pet + celestial avatar)

Ranger or Necro (reaper). Reaper has the iconic “get 100% crit with 0 precision investment” via traits, which lets him use Valkyrie or Cavalier stats for power builds rather then being forced to go berserker’s like most others. Plus lotsa protection and some life leech and you got yourself a pretty sustainy and damagy profession.

He’s also a great party player despite what others say. In pvp your boon corruptions do wonders (especially with tempests and their boon spam), in pve your transfusion trait makes you a life saver for big objectives in open world (especially HoT). People WILL die and you will pull them outta red circles of death, ress them and send them back into the fray, keeping the push going rather (especially on dragon’s stand) rather then watching whole wave of players run for their lifes, because front line got crushed hard.

Ranger’s sustain comes from his pet and ability for one to play one role (like dps) and other another (tank pet for example). Ranger’s also pretty darn simple to handle, and as druid (not so easy to handle) you’re a real nightmare in pvp, especially when holding a point. The amount of heals, cc, condi burst and protection you can get is crazy.

Both are good and not overly complex picks. If i had to choose one i would say:
- need flashy, always useful and tanky pick that manipulates condies like no tommorow? – go necro.
- need the simpler, less flashy, but more forgiving and much more ranged option? Go ranger.

Well lack of hearts does make sense, given the hostility of the jungle. Hell we did have heart quest givers die quite often due to events going out of control (especially shiverpeaks’s first map lionguard outpost), but in maguuma all heart givers would be dead nearly all the time, given even hylek village isn’t safe.

You ain’t alone. Albeit i’m on a break from gw2 (if only because i’m on Linux only machine right now) i am dissapointed at no news of new living story content.

When i bought HoT i was expecting to get what i see + future LS content with new maps until 2nd x-pac release. So far it’s just wind blowing past since HoT release on the subject…

Pre-order or pre-purchase? Cause in case of HoT the latter was the controvertial option. I didn’t do it in case of HoT (did not agree with it’s pricing vs amount of content, albeit maps are epic), won’t do it next time unless am given very solid reasons to believe it’s worth every penny on it’s own (not as “you got so much outta base + HoT already”).

My windows disk went to hell. Now on Linux where i can run LoL just fine but GW2 would be bit hard. Screw windows oem:/

I agree with the OP. We should at least already get an announcement and glimpse at the new PvE content being developed to pad the current xpac’s existing one…

I don’t know man…i mean look at that pic closely, especially the body language.
Two daggers held right next to his chest, the bending body position, looks like that thief is terrified and fending for his life…with little to no hope of succeeding. Heck he even turned black & white just to stand out less. yup, he knows he’s screwed.

in the current meta only thing that does not cause a non-necro to fart out a boon is standing idle in base. And even that might turn out to be not enough to not drown in your own boons. Some of them occasionally get applied via skill usage, but these are rarer and more of a side show then actual source….

hm..who knows, maybe it’s telepathy;)

Well, true but you see they did mention pet dragging downed ally to you with Search & Resque….

…at which moment i imagined running the hell away from my pet and having it drag downed temmate through dirt all across the map, muhahahhaha!
And so i forgot to add this crucial part you mentioned;)

Actually i’d like to see it become a curses grandmaster – auto attacks (any weapon) corrupt one boon (internal cd: 3s). I’d buy that for a dollar! And boy could staff auto use this! Staff is pretty horrid (unless you’re a full on condi reaper) – pop marks and then pray the weapon swap goes off before you grow a beard…

In it I was watching yet another dev stream about pvp balance but something was different. Much different. There was no Ruby. Instead there was a big screen behind the dev displaying the current profession getting discussed.

And the devs changed, so each profession got dicussed by the man who actually handles it.

The whole thing lasted 50% shorter, was much clearer in reception and felt like a nice condensed pill of info i needed.
Only some annoying female like muffled sounds coming from nearby closet kept it from being 100% fluid and fast-paced experience….

Am I the only one remembering it’s one corruption per every 3 attacks (3rd attack to be precise). And as a condi necro i already learned that ppl avoid my scepter #3 like the plague, not being afraid to use their dodge only to not get poisoned. Now they’ll pay double the attention to it.

And I remind you about mesmer having boon removal on sword auto for ages, sword clones included if i’m not mistaken. They can rip boons via aa far faster then the new necro, and no one’s crying it’s OP.

I say scepter really needed the change. Finally it’ll have some reason to be used in non pure condi builds (free corruption), and finally a weapon with corruption not twisting condi necro’s arm to go spite all the time.

And the reason for removing settler while keeping magi …is?

Signet won’t help in shroud since it gets deactivated when you enter shroud. I personally would enjoy seeing reaper having some better pulls. Gs one has horrid tracking, spectral grasp is ok, but it’s an utility.

Good riddance i say. I had horrid winrate 44%, but that was due to experimenting with lotsa builds on few professions in ranked. Now if that thing was still there even if i had straight up winstreaks on single profession with build i mastered it would still drag me down due to the past. Not anymore, now i’ll be ranked in my pvp based on my current performance and not how i played half a year ago.

Only issue i have with gyros i use at least (bulwark and sneak) is their pathing. that thing tends to get stuck a little too much for my liking.

Supreme.3164:

ReaperJr.5967:

Atharian.7092:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Why? It’s been the same for years. Now that nearly everyone wants to play some kind of cheap condi bomb you can’t vs the ele. You want to play Passive vs passive then this is what you get lol.

Except I’m a celestial Necromancer, and I can’t use any meaningful CC on an Elementalist with this trait because they can simply heal most of the damage I do to them… This is not just about condition damage, it means I can’t chill, fear, or immobilize them etc.

Except most diamond skin qq-ers are necromancer players like you who refuse to accept that you have counters and are not supposed to be able to win every 1v1.

Ds only counters 100% condi specs with zero direct dmg, it does not counter necromancers, the trait is useless against power necros

It’s very useful even against power necros. To do anything to ele even power necro needs to corrupt their boons especially protection. Except corruption becomes simple boon rip cause diamond skin. And a lot of condies (especially chill & weakness) are needed to see our damage go through, and not just watch ele dodge the damage or run outta range. Axe aa can’t do enough damage. Life blast auto can and gets reflected. Same for Lich. dagger must be in range for aa, and ele can’t be slowed downed or immobilized. Same applies to rs attacks.

And ele is still happily healing/spamming protection all the time…

People in ranked get so kittened when they lose it’s not funny. And I usually mean my team, cause i’m in the bottom half of pvp’ers, and yes, at times i can be a liability.

Well newsflash Sherlock: you gonna lose and …yeah and what?
There are no real winners at pvp, save three groups:

1. the select few premades that make it into ESL and compete for actual real life prizes. If you’re in solo queque, that’s not you, buddy.

2. The ones who learn to calm their anger and emotions and as result perform better in pvp. Though the real win here is the self control, that you can take into rl with you.

3. The ones who plainly have fun, even if they don’t win.

So seriously stop crying all day about a lost pip or even 3. Don’t like it, improve. Don’t like your team? Make a premade. But seriously stop foaming at the mouth cause you lost. That’s pvp for you. Don’t like it, don’t play it.

A good diamond skin ele can tank a raw power necro, including boon corruption/boon rips. All that while still doing decent damage. I think that says a lot about how OP tempest bunking really is, Diamond Skin being huge part of the issue.

Let’s not forget “build diversity” – read: power necro at higher divisions, cause diamond ele shuts down all condi builds.

And don’t give me the L2P crap. If it was balanced you wouldn’t see 99.5% tempests running diamond skin, only use more diverse builds, out of which some, but not nearly all would be diamond skin ones.

Probs cause it reduces idiot factor in your team (like all team going beast at start in forest while enemies get a nice free cap on middle).

need i say more? /15 chars.

Amaranthe.3578:

for pvp the strongest condi is mallyx rev
the build is super op right now it makes condi reaper look like a bad joke

Unless it runs into an actual condi reaper which sends it home in pieces with all the condi transfer and resistance corruption.

funny thing is I don’t recall brown bears having smoke assault.

Maybe i did not clarify it right – mastery over conditions means the ability to manipulate them, not apply them like crazy (which would be ranger’s domain). Agreed on most what you said from that point on – necro indeed has hard coming up with anything vaguely resembling condi burst, his condition game is about constant pressure, but no major bursts save maybe reaper shroud’s soul spiral, but that’s nothing this big.

As for power necro – it’s about melee. Reaper has of damage mitigation, but in pvp it’s also about positioning. As the melee reaper (and shroud is a major part of my play) not only do i have to struggle with ppl getting away from me (for example longbow rangers), but also with the fact, that when in melee it is them who dictate the fight. If i want to damage them i have to be where they are. And they obviously move torwards their teammates where focused death awaits.

As power base necro i got lifeblast that lets me snipe from afar even if it is weaker over 600 range, i’m still not led by my nose into a trap. In practice it’s letting me do some very sweet damage and get ppl downed relatively fast, as long as i don’t push my luck and remember to keep myself in a position that let’s me safely withdraw if things go south.

Druitt.7629:

@ZeftheWicked: You mean “Reaper kept its promise”, not Necro. The Necro class has several structural defects that the Reaper nicely fixed and even improved on. Reaper is probably the most solid class (well-designed, weapons/traits that work together, etc) in the game right now. Given that you only choose two other (non-Reaper) trait lines, Necros do have some build diversity (condition, power, minions), but it’s not as clear as you make it.

I’d also add that the Necro isn’t THE master of conditions. They can manipulate conditions better than other classes (transfer, corrupt), and if a Necro is in a situation where they are able to use Contagion — building off of of conditions that teammates have applied — they’re amazing. Otherwise, not so great: several classes can apply more conditions more quickly than a Necro, and can provide team support (buffs, reflects, etc) while doing so. The Necro provides little team support.

In terms of Chill, it isn’t unique to Necros either. They do have many more traits that strengthen and benefit from Chill, but other classes have more ways to apply it and can do perma-chill as well. Necros do pretty much own Fear, though it’s not really impressive at this point.

Not saying that DH compares to Reaper, but non-Reaper Necros are in worse shape than Guardians of any build, due to not providing any support for their group.

From the start i said it’s about his ability to manipulate conditions. Also which other classes exactly can trait to have damage off chills and fears? I’m all ears.

Shocked i am to say this…but i have to disagree. Power necro (build i’m kinda forced into courtesy of diamond skin ele always running to me with love) is better on core necro. Reaper is better then core in most cases, but when it comes to power damage i strangely find old shroud’s life blast much better for the job and am doing fine atm with it in ruby.

As an avid pvper i can’t help to notice the difference between bristlebacks and smokescales with rangers i fight. Bristlebacks are fine -they hit like a truck but are killable in reasonable time frame.

But once the smokescale is up i feel like i’m hitting a wall. And that’s without any protection on them at all! Now call me crazy but isn’t smokescale an attacker pet? Where does all this tankyness come from and isn’t it high time it got nerfed?

The leaderbords from old pvp are still there and operational. And i got a creeping suspicion they influence matchmaking in a major way.

Could we just plainly scratch all that and each league season starting from 0 for everyone?

^ can’t wrap my head around just what exactly costed so much, given HoT is not exactly the biggest xpac to hit the market in gaming industry…

No discussion. This game needs it now. Enough of these threads that are popping everywhere (and for a good reason) yet fit nowhere!

And you should be done reading here and +1 this sucker with occasional “agreed” to bump it up.

If not here’s an example to convey the message clearer:

Example – “PvP boon span is OP!!”

Where do i put this thread now, huh? Ele and Engi forums? That’s double posting and i want game devs on this, not ele and engi white knight corps. Also this may apply to more then just these two classes, this is outside single profession forum!

PvP forums? Guess what, if changes are made to adress this it will affect PvE as well! They ought to have a say in this too!

HoT or GW2 forums? Good luck with tons of other threads pushing it down cause here nearly everything fits, but amount of posts per page sure doesn’t stretch!

This kitten needs it’s own place on this board, period.