Guild Wars 2

This was a good read on the necromancer forum. I agree with almost everything but the minion part. I still think they need to have the recast time be cut in half and it applies when they summon not on death. This way once they fix the AI we will be able to keep putting them back into the fight quicker. Having them die to 1 aoe is fine, if we can get them back in the fight and not just have a full utility bar of dead minions.

I miss having a army of undead, being able to use just 1 type of minion and to keep spamming that one type because it fit what was needed for the fight was great.

Now the real issue (besides the ai) is the cast and recast times, we cannot keep the minions being spawned back to back like we used to. In the first one, minions died from a sneeze which was acceptable, they didnt hit hard but we could keep the numbers up so it worked well, not to mention multiple of the same type up which in some cases all ranged did wonders or just little bombers of death. We need to able to spam minions because right now they are not balanced with the cast times with what they are and with how little damage they normally do with so little up time.

Flesh worm though is one of the best minions with its damage, range, and its secondary skill. The flesh golem is the second best with its great melee damage, health regan, and knockdown when it works right. The other minions are just not that good. Shadow fiend with its long cast time of its secondary skill actually being killed before it goes off. Same with our other ranged minion, the cast time for its secondary effects are just to long. Having more then one little reanimator up would make that little guy good once they fix the ai, it should still be a choice to having him though. The long cast time and recast for them, combined with the secondary cast times on the skills they have not to mention how long it takes to get them back up is a huge issue. We need to be able to spam these guys back into combat much quicker, and if possible more of them then just 1 at a time would do complete wonders for the minion master build.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

It’s a bird… it’s a plane… NO! IT’S A BIRD PLANE!

I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just there to find
The better part of me

I’m more than a bird
I’m more than a plane
I’m a birdplane
I’m a birdplane
I’m a birdplane

A part of me is a bird
The other part is a plane
See my feathers
Hear my engines
My beak and my hydraulic suspensions

Birdplane (A birdplane)
I’m a birdplane (A birdplane)
I’m a birdplane (A birdplane)
Check me out I’m a birdplane (Check me out I’m a birdplane)

I wish that I could cry
And fall upon my beak
Find a way to lie
And pretend I’m not a freak

It may sound insane
It might be absurd
But I’m a plane and I’m also a bird

You may be confused
Now don’t be naive
Cause I can eat diesel-flavored birdseed

Cause I’m a birdplane (A birdplane)
I’m a birdplane (A birdplane)
I’m a birdplane (A birdplane)
A motherkitten’ birdplane (A motherkitten’ birdplane)

And it’s not easy
To be a birdplane

Brought to you by the Axis of Awesome.

I noticed this earlier and I thought someone slipped something in my drink, glad I’m not going crazy.. yet.

I love this.

If they want it to stay as a multiplicative way to increase life force as alot of us players think it does, they need to greatly increase the value it gives out. It has been awhile since i tested how many attacks it took for me to fill my LF bar without the trait selected, I did find with the gluttony trait it always took just one less attack to fill the bar up. These tests all used just 1 attack at a time and I never did focus multiple targets to test, but only reducing the number of attacks by 1 in its current state is a very poor design.

I agree that if it worked like a additive value for LF it could be overpowered but right now with it being such a small amount only reducing the number of attacks it takes to fill your LF bar by 1 is just to small to matter to most players and in most fights barely even matters to most players. I know anet is not very good at testing these things out but double or tripling the value might help it actually be a good place to start from.

Control Core.1079:

gamefreak.5673:

Control Core.1079:

striker.3704:

I’ve never had any instance of it not going off. The only thing close to it I can come up with is if a small object blocks the flesh golem’s path and he is held against it while charging off screen.

That is also annoying when that happens. I’ll try and make the situation more clear. I’m in pvp and I hammer the button to use the charge skill, most of the times it activates after 2-3 seconds. On some occasions you can see the animation going on the skill icon when you press the button, but the golem doesn’t do the skill and then the animation stops.

Wait, 2-3 seconds, is that not how long it takes for the skill bar takes to finish before he charges, or do you mean 2-3 seconds after the skill bar finish’s.

After I press the button for charge I’m able to use other skills, after 2-3 seconds it charges, or not. As a side note the animation for the skill icon does it thing during the other attacks.

I actually rely on this charge as a knockdown to keep players in my wells as another form of CC and I can say i have never seen him not charge. I cannot say he will charge the right direction but he has never failed to charge for me.

So i am going to blame lag. I do not want to blame it on the connection, so to rule this out, do you lag in other areas, or during giant keep fights with 50+ players all on the screen? If so i will say its lag that is causing the issue.

Wow, i really didnt know about these issues. Ok yes I dont use the skills but this game has been out for months and this is an amazing find.

Control Core.1079:

striker.3704:

I’ve never had any instance of it not going off. The only thing close to it I can come up with is if a small object blocks the flesh golem’s path and he is held against it while charging off screen.

That is also annoying when that happens. I’ll try and make the situation more clear. I’m in pvp and I hammer the button to use the charge skill, most of the times it activates after 2-3 seconds. On some occasions you can see the animation going on the skill icon when you press the button, but the golem doesn’t do the skill and then the animation stops.

Wait, 2-3 seconds, is that not how long it takes for the skill bar takes to finish before he charges, or do you mean 2-3 seconds after the skill bar finish’s.

Alex.4186:

how is performing in dungeon? i’m gearing armor and weapon full soldier and trinket knights (without the medallion) to stack some precision, i dont really need 28 k health for dungeon if i have so much toughness, and some more precision truly help

Well you wont be dying easily but i feel running this setup in instances a bad idea since the longer a mob can live the more chances you have for things to go wrong. Instances are one of the few times i will go all out damage whether it be a hybrid of condition and power, too just straight power and or conditions.

With my necros naturally high health i find getting more toughness and health just slows down the group and doesnt add really much else. This is just how I feel about them. I have 5 exotic sets of gear from instances so I could have an armor set to fill any role i want to play as. I can strongly say the more damage the group does as a whole the better the chances the instance will go in most cases.

Everyone does actully have to play, dodge and such but everyone going for damage just seems to work better then everyone trying to build for support and bunker setups.

striker.3704:

Knote.2904:

I just wish the #4 was more of a neutral skill so it wouldn’t feel wasteful on a Condition Build.

To be fair the condition build already has dagger off-hand. The focus is designed with power builds in mind.

If only we had a weapon to spawn minions, then maybe we could be a minion master actually.

nerva.7940:

i dont see this build being viable for spvp. do you have any experience there? runes/amulets?

This build is viable for wvwvw have not tested in pvp itself but theory should be the same, just takes work to succeed. My build was very similar setup of this build and fought 1 vs 3 with my necro. Issue was I just could finish them off but I kept fighting them for close to 5 minutes before more help showed up to finish me off.

Sounds like he logged out to character select or just hit alt f4 if he or the others do not have a stealth skill.

Opsfor.2814:

ya… i too spotted few teleporters in crystal desert server. They are mining all the nodes in Orr. Some hack can mask out their account name, which will blank out their account name when you try to report them.
It’s very hard to for Anet to detect them, but there’s always a way to prevent it.

I believe anet did that on the last big patch last month.

My only tips is do not have any points for the reanimator trait. That little horror could live long enough for him to wander up to lupi, then a grub be spawned on him and lupi then gets a boost for phase 2 and 3 which makes him many times harder. Now this isnt 100% going to happen but it does happen. Pets are fine in phase 2-3 since sometimes he will target them with his shadowstep thing which is a nice breather for the group.

Besides that, he just sometimes keeps targeting one player until that player is dead, its a bug with the fight and it will normally fix itself once he kills one of the players. Normally that is the case for me atleast.

Been awhile since I tested myself for my own vampire build, but I do not believe any healing occurred to my health while in DS. Which was one of the many reasons I did not think it was a good build since healing did not scale correctly and the necro life leech just healed for so little it was just not worth building my entire traits and armor for it.

Unless using the 4 skill or mobs or players are dying it should not be going up otherwise.

Brilliant post OP. I hope the devs take it to heart and understand why it was written.

Veltoss.9135:

DONO.8760:

Veltoss.9135:

DONO.8760:

Azelroth.6801:

Ok thanks for taking the time to provide your point of view.

In regards to point 1 – yes I do remember what they said… and yes I do remember the manifesto very clearly.

The thing is, everything must evolve with time.

Whoa whoa whoa…stop right there. We are 3 months into the game, and you’re saying “things must evolve with time”?? Ridiculous. I would bet my bottom dollar that this whole fiasco was planned even before release, which means they pulled a bait and switch on us. This game was advertised for 5 years…5 YEARS…as not having any sort of vertical progression. And now its just as simple as “its evolving”? No. That pig doesn’t fly.

All of you people freaking out are just making >huge< assumptions based off of nothing. You’re all reaching as hard as you can just for a reason to freak out. Calm the heck down already. This isn’t a conspiracy theory.

There is no conspiracy, just simple math and common sense. The “iterative” process for this size implementation takes much longer than 3 months, I can guarantee that. From initial proposal to implementation you have all manner of processes that need to be completed…lore, modeling, programming, stat mechanics, concept art, testing, etc. This has been in the works since well before launch, and now they can deal with the backlash.

They added a few Ascended items and said they’ll add more in the future. You and everyone else seem to be blowing this far out of proportion, assuming there will be a treadmill, that the game is entirely changing, etc.

We are not blowing it out of proportion, that is what new stats on gear is for. A never ending quest for a new set of pants with slightly better stats so I can fight tougher mobs for another set of pants so i can keep repeating the cycle.

It was promised to us for 5 years to not have vertical progression.

Draconis.7013:

Veltoss.9135:

Why not get a group together on your server to help clear the event, or ask your guild for help? We’re never really had trouble getting this cleared on Blackgate if people ask for help. It’s always a good idea to build a sense of community in your server for things like this.

The problem is that the event chain is “caught up” or “glitched” thus causing the whole process to be stuck until a reset, Veltoss.

What Draconis said, many times it just cant be done because of a npc issue not starting the chain or being stuck in the chain someplace already started.

I had to server hop just so we could get a guildie into the story mode.

I will skip trash mobs anytime I can, they are trash mobs for a reason. They offer very little chance at a reward of decent loot and most of them have unreasonable amounts of life so its boring to just fight them.

The trash mobs offers me nothing but a way to waste my time and the groups, this applies to every mmo i have ever played. It is why its called trash mobs. This game at least made it so we can skip/run though alot of it. Killing certain mobs does help in case someone has to run back like the dogs in TA for example.

Seren.6850:

you dc. you enter the portal, it ports you to the last retry checkpoint your party is in.

that’s all they need to do for the fix.

This would have been amazing, I gave trying to do the zones because of random DC’s, no way point for a dead player to res himself if he ends up in a odd location and others cannot get to. Some boss’s are buggy like taking no damage from any conditions at all. So many other things are just broken with the game its just no fun to do this zone.

I dislike the new gear, but that is just me.

Iohanna.4863:

Peetee.9406:

buki.3108:

Rendering cannot be fixed to the amount of models that WvW needs.

This gentlemen is correct. Rendering is an unfixable issue unless you want to run around as stick men.

Why can’t we simply run around as stick men when we’re not finished rendering?

Id be fine with this.

Good times on that fight. Since condition necros are kinda left with little damage to the boss. That is the case with a few instance boss. They just do not take damage from conditions, its a sad to see that is the case.

Voltron.1043:

I play due with my fiance. I am Necro, she is a warrior. I am toughness/Viatality/Power tank to hold aggro and do raw DPS with Dagger and she is full Glass Cannon warrior to shut down group of mobs I am holding. It works great thanks to Necro DS and High base Vitality. You may like it

Well the games doesn’t have a tank class exactly but necros can be a good bunker class and in pve most times mobs will target the highest based health and toughness player they can find. Well a lot of the time that seems to be the case atleast.

For pvp and wvwvw I like to be a condition spec so I can spread conditions with epidemic that partner can put on a single target. Most class’s can put bleeds and such much quicker then we can, but with epidemic and being specced for conditions we can spread them to 5 targets in a very nice area around the target using our stats. I personally like a thief and a engineer for this because of how quickly they can stack bleeds and other things on a single target. Warriors are very good for stacking bleeds as well.

Ballistic.4531:

What Anet should do (order is not important):
1. Delete Ascended gear.
2. Edit Infusions to have only Agony resistance.
3. Add resistance slot to exo gear.
4. Make a public apology.

But people have stated this already in these forums many times and I highly doubt it will ever happen.

Still want it to happen though.

They already have that if you goto the map. Press M and its already listed for you.

stof.9341:

Eder.9120:

Wow it keeps getting better… I just found out that because I couldn’t log in 7 hours ago for the final event, I missed out on a free, one-time uber accessory which will cost 1000 shells or about 20 gold (based on current trading post prices) otherwise.

So now, you not only have to be a “dedicated player” running FotM 24×7, you need to log in at specific times too? Seriously… what the hell happened.

It is not uber. It is an accessory with no strong point and just spread out stats all over the place.

That can be a good thing for some builds btw. Not saying it works for everyone but some class’s builds would do wonders with it. My hybrid power/condition necro for one.

Busy testing the it out or did you mean players who just talk theory, well they are sleeping or playing other class’s atm.

I liked swamp itself overall but I just did not like wisp part. If you are a class that can ignore all the snares and such or have access to multiple teleport like skills, it makes it much easier.

I would love to do zones for more appearance gear only. Why i did most of the other zones anyways. I now have 5 sets of exotic gear because I can.

What you get for buying gold, picking a simple password, giving account info out, or using the same password for other games.

If it was none of those, congrats you beat the odds of actually getting your game account hacked.

No its unacceptable they added the gear with better stats then exotics. Should have just added that infusion slot to the armor and such and many more players would have been happy.

Adding more skins, weapon types, with new skills, titles. Adding new costumes for armor in the gem store of things other then town cloths, character remakes so we could adjust our hair, etc would have been a much better idea then new stats on gear. We do not need to progress the stats, just reset them to exotic level and most of your loyal fan base from gw1 and others who do not want any gear grinds will more then likely stay with you.

GW1 went for many years without needing to add more stats to gear and weapons. They made mobs more intelligent, added new skills and for the players to be happy. Not to mention dual class system was amazing for my necro back then. It was more about the skill of the players and not the gear.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Urrid.4593:

Mews of Despair.3704:

Its hard to progress in a game when I feel like I am no longer the target audience.

Well put!

I actually fell down a deep hole when I read this:

" we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” "

The fact that I had bought several character slots, bank slots, bag slots and other assorted stuff from the gem store, and had spent most of my free time on this game didn’t count at all. As I still had no exotic gear, I couldn’t be a very dedicated player…

Should be the players with the most time to devote to the game. i played gw1 off and on for years because i knew I could always come back after a break for work, school, etc. That is why i loved the game. I bought items from the store when I could to show I liked them.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

gamefreak.5673:

To be honest, id go full bersker, your stats do not affect them so might as well just go full blown damage or go with knights armor. I would say clerics if our heals scaled better to heal them or if they didnt die in 1 boss aoe in most fights. There is a set with power, vit, and toughness. Cant remember what it is called, but it comes from AC instance and arah i believe.

I still believe MM is just a horrible choice for necros because of bad ai, horrible damage, and lack of quick recast times for them.

So there isn’t such a set that focus on Vitality , Toughness and Condition Damage ?
or Vitality , Toughness and Healing Power ?

I dont think they have any with those stats, but that is just off the top of my head.

Nismu.4019:

minions don’t do that much damage and true have those ai problems so it is good idea to boost your own offensive stats too. then good amoutn toughness and vitality and you are fine.
I haven’t find healing stat that important. most minions can be summoned pretty soon after death anyway

Minions should be able to be re-summoned 20 seconds, 30 seconds after death at most. Any longer and the necro minion master is left with only his weapon damage and DS to buy time. Those minions when they work right should be up far sooner to be a good minion master. Look at mesmers, they can spawn illusions far faster then most players can wipe them out. That is what our army should be doing so we are not just left a few weapon skills and most of the utilities on cool down.

BabelFish.7234:

gamefreak.5673:

I think its fair.

On a vet mob?
If this was a champion mob, okay they’re supposed to be uber and you’re not supposed to solo them.

You can still solo him, just takes about 10 minutes is all. I did so on my guardian. I almost did it on my necro but i messed up and and grabbed a young add and i just didnt have my wells up to burn it down quicker was all.

Guardian though, many times easier to solo it with then the necro.

I think its fair.

Yes, the lobby room. The fractal lvl appears on a window for you to see. Its bound to the char, so if you try on different ones, each will have its own level. I dont think it just says anyplace else but in the lobby area what your level is.

Dogblaster.6713:

I just dont understand how anyone can throw argument like: ‘’I have life, I have to work and I have 10 kids so I cant play that much’’

And what about players like me and my friends who play 6-10+ hours a day (atm at 1000 hours played)
I ve done 200+ explorable dungeons and have nothing to do in PvE, I had to create several 80 lvl characters and still I have no use for tokens anymore.

The new dungeon is for those who dont have 10 dogs, 10 kids, 10 wifes and 20 works. For those who want to progress something

You cant blame NO ONE but yourself for not having enought time.

The issue is though this game should not have had anything like. You should be able to go away for 6 months and not have to grind your butt off to play with people again.

Gw1 never had a gear grind, and i loved it since I could stop playing to focus on other things, come back and still be able to play with friends in game. They had tons of appearance loot, mini’s, armor for heros, and the game was about skill/skills, not shiny new armor and weapons with higher stats to increase your damage or health.

I was looking forward to be done collecting exotic armor to finally focus on making it all look different, getting hearts done, doing more wvwvw, and everything else to get a legendary weapon at my own pace. Now its about a grind to get gear, got to replace my armor so I can compete with others in a new instance which makes all others almost pointless to run because you will not get the better gear from it. Do not say its just a few stats better, those stats will equal percents once get you get them which if taken to wvwvw gives you a advantage over others.

Eventually your former bored pve players will get bored again, you will want new armor with higher stats again, and the process will repeat. This will drive the loyal fan base they had away. They will be left with a bunch of people who are just looking for shiny new numbers for whatever reason.

I do not mind the new dungeon but they should have just added the infusion slot on all exotic armor and keep adding new skins for everything. Then work on skills and balance issues. Because this game should be about skill, not who has the gear to migrate the damage. Get them to add new skills to the class’s, add new weapons etc.

Once you complete 3 fractals in a row you end up that start area again with the robots to sell and repair. you can see your lvl when at that location.

My army of minions I could basically keep calling in reinforcements when 1-2 of them died quickly enough.

To be honest, id go full bersker, your stats do not affect them so might as well just go full blown damage or go with knights armor. I would say clerics if our heals scaled better to heal them or if they didnt die in 1 boss aoe in most fights. There is a set with power, vit, and toughness. Cant remember what it is called, but it comes from AC instance and arah i believe.

I still believe MM is just a horrible choice for necros because of bad ai, horrible damage, and lack of quick recast times for them.

Gryph.8237:

left my necro for my guardian. Guardian is balanced, has awesome builds, is useful in and out of a group. Got tired of being last at everything. anet has no idea.

I love my guardian, and I the great sword leap, then the teleport to target to extend my attack to about 1800 range.

I will have to remind my buddy to put a ticket in if he already hasn’t, i know this is late but he was really mad he was kicked and when he zoned back in he didn’t get to loot a chest or credit. he just shut the game down.

Columba.9730:

Fundayz.6185:

Lothair.8942:

Eder.9120:

Wow it keeps getting better… I just found out that because I couldn’t log in 7 hours ago for the final event, I missed out on a free, one-time uber accessory which will cost 1000 shells or about 20 gold (based on current trading post prices) otherwise.

So now, you not only have to be a “dedicated player” running FotM 24×7, you need to log in at specific times too? Seriously… what the hell happened.

Wow. Just wow, I have no words anymore for the amount of fail I’m seeing from this company.

The over-reaction to this gear is hilarious. The stat difference between Exotics and Ascended is pretty darn small and will make next to no difference in regards to WvW or content already released.

The big thing here is the Infusion Slots, which are not so much gear progression as they are an additional mechanic being implemented into PvE. While these can act as a gear gate, it seems that Anet realizes that Ascended gear need to come from all types of gameplay in order to avoid the “gear-treadmill”.

The difference is 20+%!!!! not small, lol. if it’s so “small” why have it at all? lol

They only see the small numbers and do not want to notice how much it could change the game. It could really unbalance wvwvw not to mention make doing old instances pointless. I have 5 sets of exotic gear and I still love to run instances, i have no need to but I like to.

I think it would make them over powered if they moved with me. Placing them and wells being stationary is why they are not overpowered since it gives players time to get out of them. Seldom do I find a player slow enough to stay in them for my wells to melt them since most class’s have a port, stability to get out of roots and stuns, etc so very easy to get out and avoid it.

Revolution.6301:

Lysico.4906:

Normal player.. tons of hours..

I have a wife, kids and a job.. could not log in until tonight does to my daughter having her confirmation.. you know REAL life..

My 80 mesmer could not get a group for the new dungeon.. Everyone had to be level 7 or some odd crap to do it….

72 hours out of the loop and ZERO chance to get a group? This game talked about no grinding and you can’t take three days off at max level and not land a group now??

I completly agree with this. I hate the way its going. For instance I want to do CoE BUT NO ONE DOES IT since its to ‘hard’ and what’s awsome it when you find 3 people willing to do then can’t find the last 2.
ANET Please listen to us!!

I loved CoE, but atm path 2 or was it 3 has a issue with a mini boss not working correctly so it could take 20-40 minutes todo just him. So i think thats the reason why in over a week besides the new zone is open you cant find a group.

They have 500 skills, and from what we have gathered only 2 people working on balancing them and or fixing them. So my solution is to hire more people for that so wants that all done, they can work on new weapons and skills for players. I did not expect gw2 to have over 2000 skills like gw1 had over 7 years time but I do want the skills to grow.

I have 5 sets of exotic gear, that will now have to be replaced with new gear. People are already getting to the point of not wanting to do lvl 1 fractals already and asking for full exotic groups and no noobs. I was promised not to have a gear grind, which basically means I will not have to grind out zones every 6 months for new pants so my damage numbers are bigger.

I loved this game because if I was the right lvl and knew the zone I could do the run successfully. I will miss that and soon people will want to have gear scores and ways to check what my gear is what build I am. What happened to just having fun in instance’s, or players helping each out. What happened to just others helping others out in story modes. How about working on new weapons, skills, etc for players not just shiny new armor with stats on them. Introduce more gear for different looks by finding it, making it, exchanging for tokens that anyone can get. Not just the person who can complete a dungeon more then someone who has to work, go to school, take care of kids, etc.

Also any stat increase can give others an advantage over others in wvwvw. Its why it is so easy sometimes to beat other players in 1 vs 1 and other times it can a 5 minute fight.

I like to dip into it for fury, retaliation, etc then go back to my normal skills and burst things down with wells and such. The 20% more crit helps alot in my one power build. Its 30/15/0/0/25 if memory serves me off the top of my head.

I live in the region they sell the game, but the 1 time events all happen when im asleep because of my work schedule. They need to get rid of 1 time only events at only certain times. It really is no fun I missed out and others missed out on the an Halloween event, even if it was a cutscene and this event to get a free 20 slot bag.