Taril.8619

Not really. If you want PoF expansion related content, you have to at the very bare minimum participate in at least part of a single mission of PoF. That's neither convoluted, nor really immersion-breaking (Since, for immersion reasons you wouldn't HAVE a mount until that point in the game. That's literally what the quest is about. You receiving a mount for the very first time) All in all, the "Recommendation" for it is not a necessity. It is not required to have a mount until PoF (Even then, its level of actual requirement is minimal, being all of like 4 entire sections in all of PoF's story) If someone wants to be immersed, they can go through the story as it goes. Then they will obtain their Glider at the appropriate time (Then later, forget it ever existed cough Sandswept Isles Story cough) and their Mount at the appropriate time. Just like how there's also "Recommendations" of just doing HoT/PoF/IBS content while farming gold to purchase LW2, LW3 and LW4. Which is a financially optimal way of doing things but literally disjoints the story horribly as a result. This could be a thing. But also, an account literally needs you to do part of a single quest. Which can be acheived via using the level 80 boost you get with expansion purchases. Beyond that, this would also be immersion breaking. Given that there's no reason for Raptors to exist beyond the Raptor breeding grounds in Crystal Oasis. The ranchers there have no reason to head to central Tyria. No-one else has gotten a plethora of Raptors to sell them to adventurers (The Raptor that players use is a borrowed one from the Ranch that we were allowed to keep). The Beetle Races are already kind of bad for immersion given the whole "Time Bubble" thing in regards to central Tyria but at least has the excuse of them having been bred to be populous (For story related reasons that I won't spoil)

And people wont be without them? "But its just another avenue and without it..." etc etc. If you go down that route so much more needs to be removed..and you know what? People would still be toxic. Remove people. That'd get rid of toxicity!

Dagger/Focus tends to be the go-to for PvP. Dagger MH offers a lot of mobility with Fire 3 and Earth 3 and Water/Earth 3 and has some nice utility too. While Focus provides a lot of defence. Sword would provide more damage (Theoretically, given its major damage skills are big slow "I'm gonna stab you! ... Eventually..." attacks that can be dodged fairly easily) though if that's what you're after.

In Season 3 Episode 3 A Crack in the Ice, we have the Unstable Abomination in which we see plant and death magic creatures explode and harm the opposite upon death. In Episode 6 One Path Ends, there's dialogue in Siren's Landing that suggests that where Zhaitan was death, Mordremoth was life, making them opposites. If Anet ever decides to solidify the implication, then Kralkatorrik/Aurene and the DSD are also opposites. This would also indicate that Jormag's unique weakness is not Primordus (and vice versa) and that there is another method to kill both, that may be less harmful to the world. It's also worth noting, that the main "Counter" we would see beyond Jormag (Ice) and Primordus (Fire) would be Zhaitan (Death) and Mordremoth (Life). The latter, however, is mixed due to we only tackle Mordremoth after having defeated Zhaitan which split his power between the other dragons (Including primarily Mordremoth) Beyond that, well, for the purposes of looking to defeat Elder Dragons, we've only really been looking at the 2 that are close to home, Jormag and Primordus. We have not considered taking on the DSD yet. However, one could argue that Jormag and Primordus could both have a similar "Counter" relationship with DSD: Jormag (Ice) vs DSD (Water). Ice is literally frozen Water... Using Ice magic vs DSD would likely counter it by freezing it.Primordus (Fire) vs DSD (Water). Water can quench Fire. But Fire can also evaporate Water.It's just, this hasn't been looked into as of yet. Nor does it seem too likely that it will, if we're taking out Jormag in the current IBS, before we go to Cantha and deal with the DSD.

Either bring back original LA, or re-rework it into something that has more of a feel of being a culmination of all 5 races work. As opposed to being Divinity's Reach 2.0 Seafood Edition

Nah... Underwater armour is a lot of extra hassle, for very little gain. Heck, even Rebreathers are questionable, given that Heavy armour users get given a "Rebreather" that is literally an open faced plate helmet... Due to "Magic" (Honestly, at this point, they may as well do a FFXIV and give us magical underwater breathing. Pass it off as "Aurene's Champion's Blessing Number 1,244,124,415,124")

You must go to a crafting station in order to craft something. In this case, it would be a Weaponsmith Station. Interact with it and then select what recipe you wish to craft.

Guardian. It does things well. It can clear OW content decently. It is very good for instanced content (Both Fractals and Strikes/Raids). It can perform all roles (Power DPS, Condi DPS, Healer, Boonbot, Tank) to a high standard.

This is pure speculation but because Death Shroud and Reaper Shroud are transformations, the empty slots may be due to not having skills available for the transform instead of Arenanet having to mask (block) the utilities that are there when untransformed. What I mean by that is we all assume shroud is kind of a visual effect and skill swap but what if it is a transformation into a different creature that really has no skills besides the ones shown and utilities are not hidden but non-existent? It's literally the same mechanic as Holosmith. But Holosmith still gets to have its utility skills and even its toolbelt skills available while using the Holoforge. On a side note, a similar thing happens when using Lich Form as Scourge, you still have access to your F skills during it (Though, Desert Shroud still counts as a transformation and will take you out of Lich Form... Which also highlights again, that having access to utility skills while in Shroud is possible)

If people are wanting to do some content that requires a certain amount of DPS, surely they should be allowed to make note of when people are not performing to a satisfactory level? Ironically, DPS meters help prevent this very thing. Without DPS meters, people will kick for "Not playing meta". While with DPS meters, people can actually see if you perform to a satisfactory standard on a non-meta build. DPS meters are the reason why people are allowed to play Necromancer. Before DPS meters were popular, people would not let Necro's into parties because they "Weren't meta" but once people realized that Reapers could actually put out decent numbers (For a rando PuG run) they're now accepted into parties. DPS meters are a helpful tool. But they're just that, a tool. It's down to how a person uses it. Many people don't care about other people's DPS, so long as it's not abysmal. They'd rather just focus on improving their own performance and DPS meters are the way to accurately track that. Discrimination from DPS meters is a minor aspect of them as a whole (One that is not unique to them either, just look at LI/killproof complaint threads...). An aspect that their very existence can actually help combat.

Reasons why the Crafting system is bad: There is no point to crafting anything before skill level 400The most worthwhile things to make with crafting, cannot be soldCrafting is the "Easiest" way to get BiS gearThat's it in a nutshell. Before 400 skill when you can make level 80 Exotics and level 80 food, everything you can craft is worthless. Since not only is leveling fast as heck (If not bypassed entirely via boosters and Tomes), but also the game throws gear at you for leveling up (Let alone doing PS quests and getting more gear). There's nothing else interesting to make either, no cool skins from rare recipies, no unique items or consumables. Only [Generic Gear of Stat Type]. After you hit 400 skill, Exotics can be useful. But then you hit the wall of 400-500 skill where everything is worthless again... Then you get to 500 skill and can make Ascended gear. Ascended gear is the main reason to actually level up crafting. Yet, Ascended gear cannot be sold. Meaning that 1) Money making with crafting is not amazing. 2) People who aren't particularly into crafting are still incentivised to level up crafting. Crafting is an easy way to get Ascended gear. Outside of crafting, you rely on RNG boxes from WvW/Fractals as the alternate sources of Ascended gear. (This could be alleviated by having some LW vendors offer armour/weapons for map currency instead of giving us accessories for the 100,000th time) What isn't a problem with the Crafting system: "Interaction with drops". There's no need to make it so a shiny item you pick up from X enemy makes you want to go craft something, since you typically already know what items you care about to make the literal 3 things worth making: Exotics, Ascended, Legendaries."Painful leveling up". It's really not that bad to level up. Outside of Cooking, things follow a straightforward formula of [item piece 1] + [item piece 2] + [inscription]. If you can do math to the level of "2 < 5" you can figure out the "Optimal" way of leveling up on your own. Also, if you're not a brand new player, you might even have a plethora of materials, enough to level up to 500 with a craft. Simply because of salvaging all the trash you get thrown in your face for doing literally anything (Aside from cooking which actually requires you to go out and harvest items or buy off the TP)

Elementalist is the most versatile. It has many builds that can do different things. The caveat, is that Elementalist is more difficult to use. It relies more heavily on playing well to stay alive (If using a typical glass cannon build) and can have more complex skill usage due to the capability to swap "Weapons" via Attunements. Mesmer is more straight forward and has more defence inherent in its skills, with evasion, target dropping and control as part of many of its skills. So I'd suggest Elementalist if you can get through the overwhelming nature of Attunements giving access to 4 different sets of weapon skills (Generally, it boils down to just using 2 attunements most of the time: Fire and Air for Power builds, Fire and Earth for Condi builds, Air and Water for Support builds)

IBS is not part of LW4. It is it's own thing. Essentially being LW5. The only difference between it and previous LW content, is that this is the second LW story to happen within the PoF expansion (Both LW4 and IBS require PoF to access) and IBS was supposed to bring in more content such as features normally released with an expansion when they were finished being made. They later scrapped that idea and decided to announce an expansion so IBS is effectively no different to other LW content. LW1 was done in a different way to other LW content. It was a lot of temporary events occurring that had lasting impacts on the core games zones. As such, it doesn't work for being accessible like other LW seasons, which is a notable gripe about LW1 and also a reason they changed how they did LW seasons afterwards. No. In fact, arguably it is less gameplay. The only notable things they add is the ability to farm currencies for Ascended trinkets and shiny items... The arguments for this absurd cost, is that LW content can be obtained for free by logging into the game during each episode release or failing that, obtaining gold to exchange for gems in order to purchase past episodes. Likely, error in pricing. They misjudged how much to sell LW parts for with LW2 and then chose to use a lower price for subsequent LW content. They cannot adjust the price of LW2 to be the same as other LW content without people asking for compensation for having purchased the content at a higher price. Players don't want to own the game in fragmented parts. But ANet wants people to pay for each fragmented part. As is typical in life, it all comes down to maximizing money obtained at the expense of user experience. You can suggest that. Whether ANet will listen is another matter. I'm sure the current system is rather profitable for them. Having a "Season Pass" for LW content doesn't sound particularly profitable (Unless it had an absurd cost in which case it could provide a short term boost in profit... Even more so if they subsequently then minimize the amount of LW content they release and instead focus more on churning out Expansions, a particularly greedy behaviour that isn't unheard of in video games)

I highly doubt this would ever happen. Shattering is too integral to Mesmer as a whole, just look through their traits, most of them are related to using shatters. Also, the "Gameplay" that was old Phantasms, was literally, use your Phantasm skill 3 times, then AFK the rest of the fight because now 90% of your skills are useless because they would replace a buffed up Phantasm. Even more so, when Chronomancer is currently the "Phantasm Build" due to Chronophantasma trait which makes the Phantasms it uses super strong. Having an additional spec that is also Phantasm based seems unlikely.

For PvP/WvW? Core is fine. In many cases Core Necro can be the strongest build. For PvE? Core sucks. Reaper out performs Core by a significant amount for both Power and Condi builds. While Scourge provides Necro's only support build.

Underwater combat is objectively horrible. Limited availability of skills (Many utilities cannot be used underwater for... Reasons)Limited availability of rebreathers (Especially notable when wanting to put a Rune in for a 6 set bonus underwater)Many traits (Thus builds) become obsolete underwaterObjects and terrain are merely suggestions to NPC's underwater causing enemies to swim inside of the ground and become obstructedTHAT said, there are some underwater weapons that are pretty nice. I love both of Necro's underwater weapons for example, both of them have mobility skills and both have cleave/AoE. You know, the things that Necro is forbidden to have apparently... (Also, Trident has a cool mechanic of "Every skill shoots your auto attack at things") Ranger's underwater weapons are also pretty cool (Albeit a bit weird due to their mix of Condi and Power skills) especially nailing Feeding Frenzy with Piercing through multiple enemies so the AoE cloud procs on every target melting packs of trash or landing a max distance Surging Maw and hitting that 18 bleed stacks. Other than that though, many underwater weapons suck (Exception being Thief Spear, which is OP as sin with Flanking Dive but it's not very fun because it is just 222222222 for max effectiveness)

I mean, no, because you need to carefully pick out skills/traits that layer enough conditions to make it actually worthwhile. If by "Carefully pick out skills/traits" you mean, pick the obvious Condi build that each class has then yes. If you mean that this is in some way difficult... Then no. It is not. Especially since if you struggle for some reason, you can just visit Snow Crows/Metabattle and pick out one of the already optimized Condi builds that has skills and traits all nicely listed for you to copy.... This is not good advice. No, TB armor coupled with condi on whatever class is NOT going to achieve what the OP is asking for. The 'optimized' condi builds on Snow Crows/Metabattle are not optimized for OW.Trailblazer gear offers the most defence while providing significant boosts to condition damage. Snow Crows/Metabattle (MB having an "Open World" section) pick all the condition damage things. IF for some reason, you are incapable of doing so yourself, given how straight forward condi builds are. This WILL work. See: That guy who likes to post videos of his TB Condi Weaver soloing everything. My own Condi Engie that solo's everything. Various Firebrands that solo everything. Mirages that solo everything. Condi Revenants (Both E-Specs) that solo everything. The only thing that I'm not 100% sure on is if Condi Thief and Condi Zerker can solo stuff particularly well. The former because there's not much support for Condi builds in the class (Though, I'm reasonably sure that there could be a Condi DD build that would function for this purpose) and the latter because that 300 toughness loss hits the tankiness pretty hard.

I did it solo as Druid. Basically, I ran around in circles spam healing myself for about 40 minutes while my pet slowly whittled it down. Not the most efficient way to beat it... But whatever, it worked xD

what you seem to basically want is to be overgeared and/or overleveled for all the content in the game so that your level or your equipment will carry you instead of actually learning how to play better/improve your gameplay. This is where you are so dead af wrong, its not even worth having a further convo with u...u assume that i pve......i wouldnt even care if i get a flying pile of gold flown right to my front door. I would never put my energy into there childish story of dragons and gods. Like i said befor iv had the same gear stats for 4 years. That should of told u how little i care about there stat system, equipment, how pve. The only thing this gw2 has going for it is the 1 threw 0 skill system, tab targeting, free to dodge system. If the core mechanic of gw2 that i mentioned wasnt there i wouldn't have played gw2 from year 1. So please do t assume uv been playing longer and kbow more then me cuz u probably dont.All i do is pvp i dout u can hold a candle in my shadow. What i want is for lvling to be meaningfull as it is right now its really not in the grand sceme of things They might as well just make every new toon lvl 80 from the start. There ia no reason to atart up a new toon to juat lvl it at least in my eye not in the wake of all the tomes and acrolls. If you mainly pvp wouldent you be happy you dont have to grind for new gears every few months and that everyone is on equal footing gearwise? On the pvp side of things yes.....but gw2 lacks the real mmo itch for me, where each lvl is meaningful either by getting new skill points or getting the elite peice of gear from a mob. Gw2 juat doeant have that....if u want new gear in gw2 u go grind a raid or in genral juat have to grind tokens for like everything. That just isn't my kind of mmo. The devs have done pvp and the combat system so good but they have abandoned support for it. Iv gone back to playing diablo 2lod for my mmo itch lmao. How funny is that.Most MMO's have levels being meaningless. They're literally just there to put time gated grinding in place before you start grinding for gear. Exacerbated by the trend for MMO's to push people towards getting max level because all content is designed for max level characters. You can argue "But I get new skills when I get X new levels" as meaningful leveling, but in reality such a system is no different to GW2's E-Specs where you get a new weapon set and set of utilities from unlocking it. Or if such games just added the new skill(s) to your character on expansion release. The only times when levelling is meaningful, is when it takes a huge amount of grind to accomplish. For example, Anarchy Online has its 20 Shadow Levels after its 200 regular levels and each Shadow Level requires more experience than all previous levels combined (I.e. Shadow Level 1 > Level 1-200. Shadow Level 2 > Level 1-200 + Shadow Level 1 etc) while BDO has its experience diminishing returns where leveling slows down to almost a halt after reaching the "Soft Cap" (Though even then, any level after what is required for Awakening is pointless... With very minor stat increases) What's the point in making everyone grind out levels and gear when the end result is still "Everyone is still the same"? What does it add to the game other than some boring grind before you get to play the game? Heck, the constant gear grinding is what holds WoW's PvP back, because unless you start PvPing immediately at the beginning of an expansion and so earn your PvP gear at the earliest time possible, you're forever held back from being top tier competitive because there'll be people who just outright have better gear than you (This is made worse by the weekly caps on tokens used to buy the newest season gear... If this cap didn't exist then it'd actually be possible to catch up to be on an even footing with early PvPers) Okay, first off, this is literally no different to having gear to grind out. Only that it takes a bit longer before everyone can "Get the same gear". With lesser skilled players not even able to get the best gear in the game (As it's usually put in the hardest content in the game which will have strict DPS checks and a lot of mechanics to deal with, meaning you have to be a good player to even get a chance at the best gear) Secondly, there's plenty of older and/or disabled people whom can play games very well. I personally know several older people (Including players whom are 80+ years old) who can play games very well. Not to mention there's notable disabled players in some E-Sports (If I recall correctly, one of the best SSB players is disabled and uses his controller with his mouth) - As well as the hilarity that was all the responses to when "Games Journalists" tried to cry that the game Sekiro was too hard for disabled players where there was bunches of disabled players making videos of them beating the game... Tell that to all the people who farmed WoW for Warforged gear with Tertiary stats and Sockets on. Where they all said that it did not feel like an accomplishment and instead felt more like "Thank God that's over!" Also, yes, as soon as you get good gear, it's trash. Since in order to get said gear, you have to grind out the hardest content in the game enough where by the time you get the gear you're fed up with it. Only, now, everything else in the game is pointless because no-one runs it and it's worthless for you to run it because it offers nothing and your gear trivialises it. It's one of the major failings of the gear treadmill design. You grind to get gear to use... While you AFK in a city because you had to complete the hardest content in the game to GET the gear and so have nowhere to actually USE the gear. Meanwhile, when new content comes out, so does a bunch of catch-up gear so everyone can get up to the same level that you are anyway but with much less time and effort. Of course, the irony is in a game like FFXIV, the hardest content in the game is Ultimate raids, which level syncs you down to below the best gear available (Which is from Savage raids) and means that you are better off using worse gear due to how gear syncs work in that game (Materia doesn't work in gear sync so you lose out on a ton of stats if you don't use lower level gear) and the reward from the content is... A shiny weapon skin. That's basically all MMO's in a nutshell. Once you do the required stuff in order to work on your max level gear (Which is often just run a raid once per week due to weekly lockouts and limited numbers of loot options) all your left with to do, is farm for shiny and cool looking items to make new outfits with. The only difference between GW2 and gear treadmill MMO's, is that GW2 offers far more content that is actually enjoyable to play while you farm for pretty items compared to gear treadmill games where 90% of content is trivialized because of current expansion stat increases and gear levels making you stupid OP in all previous content. It's one of my major qualms with the MMO genre in general, that most content has very little staying power, there's little reason to play beyond a bare minimum because everything is tuned to ultra-casual level so that in order to be maximally efficient in farming/progressing your character you only need to play for ~1 hour a day to do your dailies because god forbid if you reward people for spending time playing your game (In a genre that relies heavily on having constant populations for doing group content as well as is often tied to subscription based monetisation which provides more value for money when you play more...)

AFAIK the limitation comes from Steam. I believe it's something to do with how they handle Expansions as DLC which requires the base game in order to purchase. Meaning it would cause issues if someone who already had GW2 tried to purchase an expansion through Steam, as Steam would prompt them to re-purchase the base game (Or more accurately would propt purchase of HoT/PoF) As well as them trying to authorize game keys for expansions (As they'd only be able to authorise the keys they have available, not the ones that are owned by the ANet store) It's a similar thing for FFXIV, which also has this limitation on not being able to convert to and from Steam and non-Steam versions. I know right... Meanwhile, basically everyone who's using the Steam version of FFXIV is asking for the opportunity to swap to non-Steam versions... Due to the plethora of issues that Steam versions encounter, such as the always online requirement on Steam itself, the Steam launcher breaking preventing access to the game (Especially after implementing a requirement to launch from Steam, where you cannot bypass it by just using the .exe in the files), having a double layer of launchers as Steam implements its own launcher before sending you to the games own launcher, the need to purchase everything through Steam (So you don't benefit from new expansions going on sale as Steam doesn't put them on sale until much later) All for the benefit of... Being able to use Steam Wallet to purchase MTX...

Max DPS builds for Hammer, Mace, Shield and Rifle? Hammer - Probably some form of Power Scrapper. Won't be as strong as Power Holo, but can still kick out some damage thanks to Grenade Kit. Mace - Most likely, Condi Renegade. Though, also notable would be Warrior builds, Power Spellbreaker and Power Banner Zerker both utilize a mainhand mace (Power SB uses Axe/Dagger and Mace/Axe and PB Zerker uses Axe/Axe and Mace/Mace) Shield - Uhh... There are no DPS builds that use shield... Since no shields are DPS weapons at the moment. The best you'll get is Power Boon Chrono though which is the "Best Tank" in the game due to not giving up as much as other classes when going "Tank" due to its still good DPS alongside its Alacrity/Quickness uptime. Rifle - Power Rifle Deadeye for sure. Though Power Rifle Holo is also good. Though, for Dungeons/Fractals, go with the Holo as Deadeye has trash AoE. In regards to Scepter, it's very much used by Guardians as it's their strongest weapon. Power Dragonhunter uses Scepter/Focus + Greatsword, Condi (Quickness) Firebrand uses Scepter/Torch + Axe. Beyond that, it's still the only weapon available to be used by any Condi Necro builds (Though, Condi builds are not good in Dungeons/Fractals and Heal Scourge isn't too popular there either so it won't be seen as much as Power Reaper) Strong Greatsword Support build? Power Boon Chrono can utilize a Greatsword and is a good support build. Beyond that, not much. Greatswords are favoured for DPS because they have lots of damage skills, which means they're less useful in support builds where you want support skills...

With the sub model you are being asked to pay for every. single. possible. thing....including those that you do not want. And there is a paywall on all of the coolest stuff, all of the least cool stuff, and everything in between. No, with the sub model you're being asked to pay for access to the game. Which includes EVERYTHING in the game. Including any new stuff they release (Besides Expansions, but that's another topic). I'm not being asked "Please pay $10 to access this cosmetic" "Oh and another $10 to equip another bag" "Please give us $10 so you can make another character" "While you're at it, give us $10 so you can equip another bag on that new character!" It's just a flat "Give us $10 a month and you get access to the entire game". No splitting off all the coolest stuff to sell separately, no shoddy baseline systems to sell it back. Just, "Here's the game in its entirety, for $10 per month" This is before you account for when non-subscription games devolve into using Lootboxes so you can pay to "Maybe" get something which will often be uniquely obtained through said Lootboxes and also often rotated out after a period of time... In FFXIV, you don't get all available things by paying a sub fee. They have a shop which is mostly cosmetics i think (i haven't cheked). So it isn't a guarantee it would all be available for you. And they use more time and effort in making the cosmetics you buy with real money, at least if you believe people on the FFXIV forum. I think lootboxes suck, but the bigger question is, how and why do people keep falling for it?FFXIV and somewhat recently, WoW are exceptions in the way that they are both subscription games that also have a cash shop selling cosmetics, that is true. But they're just that, exceptions. As far as "Time and effort" goes, FFXIV's cash shop has less effort put into it than items in the game, as noted by anyone who's ever bought cosmetics from it and noticed that unlike everything available in game, none of it can be dyed. Even the allure of having the cosmetics which are copies of actual NPC's outfits isn't something unique to the cash shop as FFXIV also does events in-game where you can get notable NPC's outfits for free. Though, FFXIV is an odd case. Since, most of the money that's made from the game's sub fees and box purchases is used by the higher ups in SE to fund other projects and the actual team working on the game gets a mere pittance (Which doesn't seem to have increased despite the surge in popularity the game saw with people flocking to it when WoW's BfA expansion pushed people away, as well as with the sucess that Shadowbringers expansion had). Meanwhile, all the money that is made in their cash shop is untouched by SE and remains with the FFXIV team and put back into the game. As far as lootboxes are concerned, it's typically the way they're marketed that draws people in. The hidden chances for items to drop so people don't realise how much of a waste of time it is to purchase them, the conversion from real money into a secondary currency to divorce people from realizing the actual price of them, the sunk cost fallacy where people spend enough where they think they may as well keep going until they get the item they want. Not to mention Whales and Gambling Addicts whom either don't care about how much money they waste on that garbage, or have a psychological need to put money towards them to sate their addiction...

With the sub model you are being asked to pay for every. single. possible. thing....including those that you do not want. And there is a paywall on all of the coolest stuff, all of the least cool stuff, and everything in between. No, with the sub model you're being asked to pay for access to the game. Which includes EVERYTHING in the game. Including any new stuff they release (Besides Expansions, but that's another topic). I'm not being asked "Please pay $10 to access this cosmetic" "Oh and another $10 to equip another bag" "Please give us $10 so you can make another character" "While you're at it, give us $10 so you can equip another bag on that new character!" It's just a flat "Give us $10 a month and you get access to the entire game". No splitting off all the coolest stuff to sell separately, no shoddy baseline systems to sell it back. Just, "Here's the game in its entirety, for $10 per month" This is before you account for when non-subscription games devolve into using Lootboxes so you can pay to "Maybe" get something which will often be uniquely obtained through said Lootboxes and also often rotated out after a period of time...

Shroud is pretty lame for Condi builds. Would be nice if Shroud skill 1 would have innate condi application besides the Dhuumfire trait. Bleed would be ideal. P.s. Unholy Martyr is still not good for Condi builds because it consumes the condi's when you leave Shroud which means you'd likely eat the damaging condi's you planned to send to the enemy (Not to mention the whole notion of sending condi's to enemies is rendered moot in PvE because Guardians fart out Light fields which means tons of condi cleanse gets spammed out everywhere removing all your condi's before you can send them to the enemy) Lich Form is used in PvP/WvW because Flesh Golem and Plaguelands are literally worthless there and because it provides stability and can destroy noobs. Also, an interesting fact is that one of the human racial elite skills, Avatar of Grenth, gives you the appearance of being in Shroud (Black and smokey effects) but provides the effect of pulsing Chill and Poison to surrounding enemies. Which sounds like a mechanic that could be cool to add to Necro's shroud in some way (As well as a nod back to the old Plague skill which used to be a Transformation into a cloud of condi's before being reworked into Plaguelands. Plague can still actually be accessed, albeit by Engineers, when using their Elixir X skill underwater) The shark was their way of bypassing the need to create swimming animations for the Flesh Golem by copy/pasting an existing asset, when enough people asked ANet to allow the skill to be used underwater. Other minions were given underwater animations for the game's release and as such never were in need of a copy/pasted existing asset in lieu of actually working on them.

Just run whatever you plan to run when you get your E-Spec finished. Heck, you can even use the half finished E-Spec as one of your Specializations to access its weapon and some of its skills. Beyond that: Power build - Berserker/Marauder gear + Rifle/Hammer + Grenade Kit + Bomb Kit + Rifle Turret + Whatever Elite Skill you think is funny.Firearms/Explosives/Whatever Condi Build - Viper/Trailblazer/Sinister gear + Pistol Pistol + Grenade Kit + Bomb Kit + Flamethrower + Whatever Elite Skill you think is funny.Firearms/Explosives/Whatever For Scrapper, the former would transition better as Scrapper is terrible with conditions due to not only having 0 synergy, but also having anti-synergy with condi builds (As it only generates barrier from direct damage dealt, not condition damage)