Guild Wars 2

Sure celestial is worse than zerk but when its exo vs ascended i think cele isnt necessarily bad when everything else is zerk.
As for wurm, i dont take it 90% of the time cause i raid with my guild. However when i pug in EB nobody is gonna give you a hand. Also water field blasting is not done that often in unorganized pugs. It could still port you the wrong way which is the only real downside. If you are caught with cc however, spectral walk most likely wont save you from the next few CCs. However taking wurm with foot in the grave is a complete waste.

Crit chance never enough? Mix of zerk and valkyrie with pack runes will give you around 30-40% crit. With fury and DS you will always offshoot there. When outside of DS you dont do that much damage anyway. Only single target axe2 or staff AA.

As for foot in the grave, its a huge DPS loss i must say. But if you are full zerk and fully buffed it works out just fine. But still, positioning done right is more valuable than stability so you can take death perception.

Ascended cele would in my opinion be better than exo zerk. If you arent in decent partys then you must go full zerk except maybe 1-2 pieces and pack runes are overpowered. Take wurm or spectral walk for your stunbreak. And instead of 50% crit in DS you want the trait that gives stability. The other option is going woth 0 stability and 50 crit in DS. This way you can mix zerk and valkyrie gear as you will offshoot 100% crit in DS if you dont. Its really sad we have to choose between the two traits and bad stunbreakers.

Cheers for the answers!

Cele ring is alright but rampager chest wont be useful. Try to get in parties with 2 guards, Positioning is key as always, you will survive even if a thief focuses on you because of your party heals and DS option. But its usually GG if enemy train walks over you whereas you would have an escape if you were an ele.

You are really wasting your runes by taking only 1 shout! I must admit that the meta frontliner build (posted above) is pretty beast in terms of both support and dmg. But if you really like your build my only advice is to take out 1 point from discipline and put it in defense to get cleansing ire.

This depends on your enemy comp such that:

If enemy has at least 1 condi dealer namely necro or engi, then you want to keep contemplation of purity and swap judges intervention for stand your ground. These classes are also heavy CC and not very mobile so you shouldnt need an extra gap closer.
If enemy has no condition dealers or one hybrid, you can switch CoP to Stand your ground.

With your comp you shouldnt need many gap closers but Judges Intervention is very handy to surprise burst thieves and mesmers, on the other hand if enemy is melee oriented you wont need this more than you need stability.

As for wall of reflection, its kind of meh, i mean you could take it if enemy is say powermancer+LB ranger but other than reflecting those it wont be as useful as a traited meditation.

Eles are pretty good in all aspects of the game. Guardian is also wanted everywhere but there is the fun factor in hand. Personally i find ele way more fun and guardian feels slow. Beware though ele has higher skill cap and is squishier than guardian in pve. Its difficult to get the hang of say dagger/dagger elementalist in pvp. You wont be able to kill people until you get your skill rotations right and land all your important skills correctly.

Although as a condi necro you sort of counter them with heavy condis, a smart one wont die to tou. Your passive fear procs should scare him enough and save your other fears to interrupt his black powder+heartseeker combo. As others said chill can be handy and try not to save path of corruption for when they are at range.

Unfortunately a very good thief will still get away. Necro is just slow, especially condi. My suggestion is to change your way of thinking. Just accept that you won if he runs away.

What is the optimal ratio of Crit chance to Crit damage? There is a trade off between choosing one to another so there must be a point where adding say 50 precision would become worse than adding 50 ferocity. I know there are variables but for simplicity lets assume only buff is fury (100% uptime). Is there already an article about this?

Edit: something like this break even chart would be immensely helpful but i couldnt find any http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1li5q3/breakeven_points_of_power_vs_precision_mathtable

Im so excited about this! Hopefully its something defensive/passive so that we can use weapons other than longbow to benefit from cleansing ire. It could also be an offhand burst & extra one for two handeds. Perhaps it wont spend all bars who knows?

I really wanted to try something without meditations. But i guess thats not gonna happen. Build seems to work fine against melees but its very very squishy. Id really be happy if they introduced dire amulet for pvp. But at the moment it looks like my terrormancer is stronger.

I think animations are okay when you have them on high setting. Sure they could be fancier but Anet wont ever adress these issues. Simply because they already have a hard time fixing actual BUGs like Eles FGS Skill 5 or Warriors Bulls Charge.

If anything is gonna be changed about the animations of necros it should be reducing cast times so we dont get interrupted like a duck every kitten time. Also DS enter/exit interrupting actions is uncool.

Haha quality trolling.

If you have a decent guild they wont care abiut your prof. But you would be a litte more useful with a different char. Staff ele is really fun to play and feels more like a caster. Its also wanted in all pve content as well as wvw.

*Charge AND Strike your foe* means you charge first, then strike the foe, that is if a foe is present. And yeah we got no fancy portals teleports or stealths so we run towards or away from our targets to get some breathing room. Your ennemy knows exactly where you are whereas with mesmers and thieves its mindgames. So leave rush alone, it just recently got some use to it and was underpowered b4.

I often take this trait. But not sure how much it contributes to building up LF. Anyone have observed carefully? In theory if you have on average 75% crit (easy on zerk with pack runes and death perception), you will get 1% life force on every third of these crits. This corresponds to 25% of ALL hits generating 200 Life force (if you have 6 points in soul reaping 20k life pool). But we all know theory can be different from practice.

Brotip: You can abuse this mechanic if you have Spite grandmaster minir trait. Go into DS when below 25% and get all that might. Somewhat useful in wvw and pve.

As mentioned, spectral walk is good for juking. Wurm is meh and DS 2 is also meh. As for getting pressured on 5v5 and stuff: I often run this build when im with my zerker party. Incredible sustain and theoretically 42.8% uptime on stability! But the damage is somewhat low for my tastes, i do miss close to death and death perception but hey, why am i in a party with 2 thieves?

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fRUQNBmQDbkjmabbtx4GOcTgLUQ+mBQkhQJQdcEGfBA-TlDEwAwUBRvOgoKFIcFA2qEkpSOWqQoVZQHNCt1Ekb/BAPAgHHEAXqPQGgqtA-w

Id go more zerker if i wasnt too lazy to switch gear.

Do you know Harvey Specter from TV Show Suits? Well Im thinking of rolling a human mesmer that looks like him which is gonna be called Harvey Scepter. But i really want an asura too so i cant decide. You could play on the name of an existing character too!

tboneking.2531:

I wish some anet staff would read this post and realize how completely outclassed Necro is at every aspect of PvE gameplay. They can’t REALLY want a class that has no use in their game… can they?

So much this. Top level pvp? Necro gets focused ends up being rallybot that brings no support. WvW Backlines? Low sustain because of well and lich cooldown, no support thus inferior to staff ele who has a TON more to offer. High level PvE? Well you guys explained that in a detailed manner.

Yes please anet, we need to save and load builds for both pvp and pve. Especially pve guardians would love it.

Sylvaris can have wider shoulders, making them look fitter. Id go for sylvari personally. Plus human is kind of, mainstream?

You need to know the shadowstep mechanics. Also check this vid for where in pvp maps it actually works (unless obstructed, sometimes still works through obstacles)

http://youtu.be/LeQDfFHGAT8

I made this build when fooling around on the website:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQRArd8flsApcoNDxbI8DNR8Ql5Y0iW+BvQ1BQC8oA-TZhAwAw2fYcZgOHEgNnAAAPBAA

Main source of burning from Supreme Justice and seems to have very high uptime but i have my doubts:
Are runes and sigils fine? Am i overshooting burning duration?
Besides diamond skin ele, what could possibly counter this build hard?
Could it perform somewhat as good as medi dps meta against some builds or would this be purely yolo?

Before i test it out id like your opinions and improvements on the build.

Ill have a couple of comments on your variations and question about your playstyle. Because typically a necro is paired up with 1 or 2 guardians and stay away from the fight.

Sigil of hydromancy may not be as useful as energy or something else. PBAoE just isnt that useful. If you have a thief on you thats bothering you then use doom or reapers mark.

You are full zerker yet you are missing out a LOT of DPS from not taking: Close to death, Death Perception, Unyielding Blast. Going 6 into spite also gives you the minir trait that gives you might everytime you are struck if you have less than 25% HP. A trick you can do here is pop into DS after the HP drop and enjoy 20 stacks of might. Close to death also enhances Lich forms ability to finish off enemies fleeing away. Foot in the grave is fine but if you have guardians than sacrificing crit isnt that good. This would also allow you to swap some zerk gesr to valkyrie for more survivability. Unyielding blast is piercing and with 100% crit does wonders on enemy melee. Also when you go in DS after dropping wells, they will crit too.

You seem to focus on staff traits but staff is nothing more than a utility weapon. Cooldown reduction isnt that handy and more damage on marks wont do anything cause marks dont do damage really. Axe training or chill of death would be better. If you dont like those take reapers might.

Also there is the matter of stunbreaker. I guess you didnt take one because of foot in the grave. Id suggest one because most times enemy will have stability for you to fear themwith wall. And when they dont, its eles static and earth wall and guards lines that would keep enemy under control. Because when you fear them they are still running away from your team. Also you wasted a valuable utility.

That is why the meta is, the meta.
I hope you will make changes as you play more as a backliner.

Access to quickness is very limited being sigil trait or frenzy. With the first two, you cant always control when its gonna proc. Frenzy is just sacrificing an important utility bar but can still be useful in yolo builds.
For serious gamplay though, 1 hit skills like evis or earthshaker must be comboed by a cc. Other classes like ele have to do a ton of things to get damage, it would just be too easy for the warrior. Channelled skills like 100b or whirling axe could benefit greatly from quickness. But a decent opponent would port away or mitigate it somehow and youd end up with a cooldown on your bar. You can always experiment with quickness and make it your playstyle. I did with sigil of rage on GS and if procced at right time, it did wonders but ofc it was not sustainable.

Thanks for the quick responses! I have been watching streams and youtube montages but i cant relate much at this level. I guess i need more practice to learn from them. My biggest issues right now seem to be pulling rotations correctly and condis.
Ranger was more forgiving but i hate longbow sound (pewpew)

Ive been told that there are a relatively high number of build variations for mesmer, is this true?

So im going to fill my last character slot and after testing each one out for a couple of days its still a stalemate. I had some trouble with mesmer but im open to adaptation, ranger was easier to play overall. I will use my mes/rang only for pvp and wvw roaming.

I have a few concerns about rolling a mesmer though and need some clarifications from u guys. (Ill play mostly non condi builds GS, staff, sw torch)

Do mesmers in general have a hard time with condi cleansing? This is important for me as i know hate getting locked down or burnt to death.

I can adapt to kiting and abusing LoS but does it require too much practice to make succesful combos and deceiving your opponent? (I play d/d ele s/d thief and d/p thief, how does the skill requirement compare to them?)

I do not have lightning reflexes so cant react to everything. Would this be a huge problem for a mesmer or is it something that develops naturally?

Lastly how is both in and out of combat mobility compared to ranger? (especially in wvw)

I appreciate your answers and would consider your recommendation of class as well though i realise this forum can be biased towards the masked ones ^^

Because you have many other things to worry about like, boons and conditions on you and your target, your cooldown, enemy attack animations,pet attack animations, line of sight and it gets much worse in 3v3 etc. The image on signet is such a tiny detail. It should just give the ranger the “effect” icon.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Effect

You cant possible pick out which of the signets is activated though.

Yes i second this. Change pls anet thx.

Yes in pvp 100b isnt that good. Its because its more of a pve skill, if you still insist on taking GS in pvp for the mobility then;

Use it mostly to cleave downed bodies
Chain it with cc of your allies
Break gates or kill svanir
Proc sigil of rage before casting it

Its very situational but you can try to get the most out of it.

I like the idea. However it will never be applied because a “ranger” never battles without his companion. In zergs pets absorb some of aoe like wells or cc like earthshaker. Its much more noticeable if you are the warrior casting it, and you hit a dog instead of enemy asura guardian.

Ill tell you my playstyle so that maybe you will be inspired in some way :P Its a tankier version of GS Axe/Shield meta which is easier to land burst with and dont loose much damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3ejMdUFaZIehwJagqABdlANUfMYuUbA-TFTBwAXOIAq0I84BAcV5WElgYVSQc/B86CWcBAQYCKn6PAOCAkBYZLA-w

Changables: sigils except intellience, sure footed trait, endure pain

Pros:
Very high burst damage
Moderate armor but high HP
Moderate condi resistance (food trait utilities)
Easy to land burst
OH Crap buttons (shield and stances)
Great mobility

Cons:
Full melee, smart kiters like mesmers will kill you
Decent cleave but no AoE
Can be hard to build adrenaline sometimes
Bad sustain if you blow your stances right away

Mobile strikes is one of the most important traits. You have 4 skills to break immob with and 5 if you wanna take bulls charge. Saved my life countless times from rangers, necros, lockdown mesmers and zergs chasing me. Also used offensively as you are purely melee. Downside of this is by missing out on 3% damage per boon on target but i think build has enough damage but not too much utility the other way.

Your burst focuses around swap to axe, use either 3 or 4 to disable opponent and safely land eviscerate which will crit 100% like a truck with 218% ferocity. You wont cast 100b often unless you are taking bulls charge or throw bolas as a utility.

Swapping some zerk gear to valkyrie allows you to be more resistant against condis and take advantage of intelligence sigil. You can still go full zerk because triple stances, double endure pain and shield 5. Oh and 50% vigor uptime from stances.

Here is a 27 minute guide on tactics as a mesmer against thieves. http://youtu.be/3tcjVz12Ago
Thieves hard counter you but no reason to just give up when there are so many weak thieves out there.

One of my 6 chars is a charr warrior. Yes in pve its sometimes boring but on easy content thats always rhe case. I love my armor and how my newly crafted sunrise swings. I dont think you will regret rolling a warrior. My only complain is about pvp but i have other chars for that. If you still want a challenge and like EXPLOSIONS go for engi but reroll a new race. Female human and norns look great in medium armor!

Hopefully with the expansion necros will get some team support so that there will be instances where we are actually preferred over other classes. I think we need small changes here and there but nothing spectacular.
I suggest one of the changes should be an elite for death shroud. Maybe something like:

From Death to Life:
Apply torment to yourself and sacrifice life force in order to revive up to 2 nearby allies. You sacrifice 40% life force per ally.
Radius 600 Cast time 2s Cooldown 180s

It could look like life transfer reversed :P

He could have procced a trait which gives the thief stealth when struck below 25% health. You cant gain stealth solely by using 1-5 SB skills.

First of all unlike you said, its not easy fighting any class as a warrior. Condis wreck warriors and given average skill, a warrior is crushed by any mesmer build because of kiting. Every build has hard counters to it. Wouldnt mesemer be OP if it could beat EVERY class including thief? (I know u guys have hard time against condis too but kiting is very very handy)

Video guide for ranger in dungeons: http://youtu.be/WGUQgncRlMY
General Guide for ranger pve: http://dulfy.net/2014/07/05/gw2-ranger-pve-class-guide-by-lorek-and-cell/#Build

You can always refer to these sources for the basics & builds. I remember for me it was really easy to pick up a greatsword along with my longbow in open world. GS has good cleave and evade on 3rd autoattack chain making it a great weapon for the lazier :P

I deleted my ranger a while ago (to roll a thief). You can take up to date builds from websites like metabattle and intothemists. You just tweak some things for the situation or playstyle. Also i think LB is better than SB in pve.

Never thought of that. Could be about importance of power over precision.

I dont use a build close to that but here are the answers.

All on crit sigils do proc in DS.
In open field you can get it to hit once max for a melee like thief or warr. Other than that its hard unless you cleverly bait, be unpedictable or fight in closed area.
Never tried wolfie because of cooldown and flesh golem knockdown is just too good. As far as i know burning ticks should not depend on your condi dmg but i may be wrong.

I ALWAYS take fire on one of the slots for my wvw builds be it warrior ele or guard. Its just too good of an aoe to pass and every zerg build on metabattle has it. As for the other one, i take force on axe because its my only ascended axe that i also use in PvE. Its not a bad choice but not absolutely needed. As for staff, besides bloodlust you want energy or fire. In some instances you really need that extra dodge but its up to you. If you are broke you can get sigil of stamina lol (refill endurance when you kill a foe with no cooldown?)

My first char was a necro but i main a warrior because in pve warrior is easier and i prefer high mobility in wvw. I have been playing mainly power necro and some other bizzare builds that i made. I have only been playing condi for a month now and i either so really good or really bad. There are some tips on youtube videos like this one http://youtu.be/2dyiUVGLXQE

I will still try to answer your questions though^^

Rotations: A terrormancer does not necessarily have a rotation like d/d ele does. But you must also never just spam your important skills. You can spam like 1-3 weapon slots but high cooldown stuff should either be saved for a better situation or comboed with other skills or CC to make sure they land. Save corrupt boon for when your target has stability but less than 6 boons in total (stability becomes fear, you wont transform stab as its last priority boon). Furthermore if you are in a team fight, you can save it for when an enemy with stability is stomping your friend, also devastating against lich form necroes as your team can focus on him once you rip off his stab. Signet of Spite should be casted if opponent is disabled somehow. DS 2 should be casted before casting Doom to make sure it hits. Follow this up with DS 5 and thats a strong condi bomb right there. If you notice you miss some skills. Or get interrupted, make a note-to-self so you ensure 100% accuracy later.

Life force: Not easy to generate it compared to standard power builds. At start of the fight try to stick with your team and kite from 600-1200 distance. If you go home or far for a 1v1 odds may not be in your favor. After dropping 6+ condis on a target use scepter 3 which is one of your sources. Also spam staff 1 on downed bodies if nobody is coming to rez them. You can also spam this to surroundings like window in khylo or gates or NPC etc.

Damage: Your damage comes from, well everything. You dont have one burst skill or something you should absolutely land. As you said your DS combo can be devastating. Its usually a steady fight unless you are facing a thief which procced all yoir passive fears and ate your other fears and DS combo. Then its GG in under 10 seconds. Happened to me a few times its so funny On a side note try to kite even when you need to fight on node, use your range to avoid soke damage from melee classes. Now if ots a LB ranger just teleport on their face with DS2. But yeah we dont have much defense other than CCs so try line of sighting and kiting when necessary, especially if you sre gonna use heal.

Edit: Sorry for spelling, on phone limited time.

Even with the expansion its not guaranteed we are gonna becom more useful. Greatsword may become our highest dps & cleave weapon. Or we will get new boss mechanics to actually allow things like boon ripping to be useful.

At the moment our DPS is not anything superb, its average like warrior. We dont have better team support then a guardian or better AoE than ele. I still play it every now and then cause i enjoy the theme but its not my “main” in fractals or hard dungeons.

Use it as a passive boost. You should get massive adrenaline from cleaving stuff anyway in a very short time. (assuming this is pve because neither thr trait nor the signet are considered viable in pvp)

Yes when you commander says go full dps your rotation would start by dropping two wells and immediately going into the shroud.

Edit: Forgot to mention you want the trait axe training over chill of death as the 10% damage bonus will also count towards death shroud skills (if you transformed from axe wielding).

Mesmers are broken. Kitten jump and hide everywhere. Their teleports and stealths are OP. Oh wait…

Chimppossible.1829:

Warrior is still viable, in groups. But on solo or in 1 to 1 duels a Warrior belongs now to the lower classes.

The reason is simple, the warrior seems at the moment a bit outdated because he has no range in a fight and most opponents have.

Almost all classes have a constant speed and for warrior there is no signet for this just a trait u get with melee weapons. So you are a bit forced to use swords! Also for mobility. But because condition dmg is op an enemy with range can stack you so much before you finally can hit him that its just simple math..range is op and melee is absolutely not op cause you have less hits.

You can say but the warrios has his rifle…well lets look at the real world out there, I play now wvw 1 year and a half and small 8000 hours but I rarely and I really mean rarely see a warrior that goes for a rifle build. Even with the changes I tried it it wont work. Bow is still better but you lose then a lot of mobility and you are running so slow then so its only ok in groups.

Solution, give warrios like most classes a signet choice for 25% speed and or make rifle a bit more realistic still.

Also make impalement with sword a realistic dmg! Cause in melee you got no range.

Realize this!

The warrior excels in nothing!

The ranger has more range obvious of course
The necro is way more tanky then the warrior and does still great dmg
Thief has way more speed and advantage
The guardian has more protection
The ele has more aoe and healing
The engineer is is op to the warrior saw that now in many duels from other ppl

But being forced to melee weapons and having not a speed signet makes the warrior a bit outdated against the other classes. I suspect there for if nothing changes you will see the warrior less. It wont disappear totally but like 60% of now. It will drop.

I totally agree that warr is worse than average on 1v1. But passive 25% swiftness stuff just arent worth it. I mean they get overwritten by swiftness. Even without warhorn, if you run pack runes and SoR you will have perma swift.

Its easy to play. Its easy to counter. You are worse 1v1 you are better in a team comp.
Warriors will certainly become less over time but it will still be part of any game mode.