Aplethoraof.2643

Depends on what you want to do, but I've had a fair bit of success on this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSBBs+tjlVUx+CcgFOoOGZkWMPqPVA-zRJYmxfZkTi0Rd79FJI+r5ETbA-e I don't have food/crystals up 24/7, but they are just topping for the build's cake. The only real "trick" to know is to (after laying down all your corruption skills on a boss) - use consume conditions to clear then use F2 to clear the conditions from consume conditions. If you feel you need more damage, swap Parasitic (Curses G1) for Lingering Curse (Curses G3). You'll gain health every time you inflict torment (aka most of the time) and every time a condition ticks its damage (aka all of the time). You should also have carapace up for most of the time - you can always get a quick infusion of carapace by using Corrosive Poison Cloud (which should take you straight to 20+ with a couple mobs in the area). You'll also be pulsing 48% damage reduction (with 3 shades + 25+ carapace) as well as 45% condition damage reduction on yourself. Suffice to say - you'll be fairly tanky most of the time (even in Vipers). When in battle, spam out F3 and F5 whenever you can (make sure shades are out so your F-skills also hit enemies). Save F2 for after you use your healing skill and save F4 for breakbars. You can swap from Scepter/Dagger to Staff in your off-hand in you need extra breakbar coverage. Plaugelands is really nice for breakbars, you just need to time it correctly. Once it gets to the 5th pulse, it starts pulsing CC for the remainder of the 5 rounds. So you just need to cast it a little earlier (cast it when the breakbar is about half) and make sure the boss stays in its relatively small AoE. If you need a larger elite or you can't get the Plaguelands timing down - use Ghastly Breach. It also gives you and your allies might, so it isn't bad at all. Use Blood is Power and Desiccate right before a damage spike, or when you are stacked up with other players on a boss. Desiccate can also be used when you are out of life force and/or you need some more and there are a lot of enemies nearby. I hope it works out for you! P.S. Underwater is a little trickier because Corrosive Poison Cloud and Desiccate don't work. But at the same time, Trident will net you a LOT of carapace - so you'll be fine.

First of all, Arenanet doesn't even make final decisions on how they spend their funding. Arenanet is part of NCSoft - they are the ones who make final decisions. Arenanet are not leaders, they are followers. They follow NCSoft. Arenanet has a large amount of control over how their develop their product/the direction they take. But they cannot allocate finances however they like. That is NCSoft's job. So such a thing doesn't even guarantee that Arenanet would see most of the money. That their salaries would raise or their team size would increase. Maybe it doesn't need to, maybe they are have enough fat and are lean enough. Or maybe their team would increase. Secondly - you can already do this. Just buy X amount of gems every month. Boom, you've achieved the optional monthly fee you desire. If you really don't want the gems, you can always give them to me. I'll take one for the team and take them off your hands! :) That, or you could buy some shares in NCSoft. But honestly, gems would be better looking at it from a GW2 perspective - since it'll increase the amount of income GW2 generates and therefore make GW2 look more profitable form NCSoft's perspective. If you really are driven to see GW2 thrive - aside from getting hired by Arenanet, buying gems is the next best thing.

A note for this - you can set the game to the lowest graphics. That'll remove many VFX. Playing a nice-looking game is optional (for many RiP our potato brethren) - so if you do want it to be ugly/'less distracting', there is already the option for this. TBH though, this achieves the opposite effect of balance. You actually want more pronounced and beautiful visual effects for skills - it telegraphs skills to other players. And it generally makes the game more pleasing to observe. Win-win. Conversely, less visual effects hides what is going on and makes it harder/impossible for the player to tell what is hitting them or where to avoid. Making effects invisible or not pronounced ends up making the game more imbalanced and less amusing to watch. Having more bombastic and entertaining visual effects ends up having a gameplay effect - it lets players know what is going on. That is important. IMO, they need to turn up visual effects and make them cooler/more distinct.

Be aware also - this is just my opinion bearing in mind. A lot of people will say "necromancer because it is more noob friendly". I would hesitate to call it more noob friendly, except for maybe open world PvE. Which is noob friendly content on any class, it doesn't get especially challenging until Heart of Thorns (and by that time, you aren't a noob anymore). Even elementalist and thief will have a pretty easy time. Plus you'll be more engaged on them - which is good for your enjoyment of the game. At face value, necromancer is theoretically noob friendly. However:1) Relying on its more passive defenses teaches bad habits. Choosing a class that relies on more active defenses will teach you good habits that are applicable for any class. You'll have to learn these habits on necromancer anyway - only it'll be much later.2) More-so in PvP, a lot of people hear "necromancer is noob friendly" and then go into PvP expecting an easy time. You'll have a harder time than a lot of other professions (at first) until you get used to its unique form of gameplay. It is a bit more sluggish and you really do need to learn some nuances (such as manipulating the z-axis to avoid certain attacks) to get the most mileage out of it.3) People say it is noob friendly - again they mean "noob friendly in open world PvE". Which is easy as cake until you get to Heart of Thorns and have to learn mob attack patterns. Any class will be fine in Tyria Open World (aka before Heart of Thorns). I'd actually suggest going for whatever class people will say is hardest at first. That'll teach you the best habits - and by the time you get to other classes, you'll have transferable skills that make them more of a breeze. I'd advocate that anyone who wants to learn "how" to play the game plays Elementalist at first. Though for you, Thief will be closest to that level of gameplay. After you do that, most anything will be a relative breeze to learn - and you'll know a lot more about maneuvering around the game. I have no idea where the noob friendly "myth" came from - but IMO it is damaging to people's perceptions of necromancer. People will go into the class anticipating that it is a cake-walk. They'll get their cake-walk in the open world (which for the third time - literally any class will also get this), then they'll be shocked by the sudden difficulty when they hit other content. So yeah. TL;DR - you may have an easier time at first, but you'll hit a sudden learning curve as necromancer when you get into more difficult content. If you want to learn good habits for most classes - pick thief instead of necromancer. Then transition back to necromancer if you don't vibe with thief. Learn those good habits from having the lower health pool and less passive defenses - you'll have a better time IMO. You can start as necromancer - just don't touch a minion master spec. I'd start off with a corruption spec, that'll get you more into those "good habits" with necromancer. It is possible to start off as necromancer and still learn them - just a lot of people will try to rail-road you towards a minion master build. If you start as necro, don't do a minion master build - starting off relying on minions will teach you MANY bad habits that you'll have to then unlearn when you inevitably move away from minion master. Just my 2 cents on learning the game from the perspective of having to choose one of these professions. Or I guess just temper your expectations - just because some will tell you necromancer is relatively easy, don't expect an easy time.

Honestly, both thief and necromancer (realistically you'll be swapping specs and builds as you get comfortable with the professions) are viable in all content. Both have condition and power builds and both can partake in both sPvP, WvWvW, and PvE. That said, they do have different playstyles. Thief is more bursty, with active defenses such as evades to keep it alive. Though the down-side is if your rotation slips too often, you'll be more heavily punished. Thief does have some "slow-but-steady" options as well however as well. Necromancer is tankier and a slower. It doesn't have cloaks or active defenses (such as evasion built into attacks) - though it does have healing from traits as well as a lot more AoE cleave built into many of its attacks. Ultimately, it comes down to flavor. Do you want to have a bit more potential towards burst? Do you want to cloak and jump around, evading enemies like an annoying gnat until you deal the killing blow? Do you enjoy moving quickly? Thieves are often used in sPvP for capturing points, as an example - so that is a role you'll often be expected to fill. If that sort of thing appeals to you - moving quickly, cloaking not only yourself but also your team, dealing good amounts of burst damage. . .then go thief. Do you want to be a slower but steadier character? Do you want to have a decent healing build? Reaper has a decent power build which is fairly bursty. Scourge, core, and reaper all have slow-but-steady DoT builds. Necromancer itself has a good amount of CC as well in all its specs. They have little-to-no active defenses (such as blocks or evades), but they compensate by having a few good life steal traits as well as having a large health pool and lots of shroud/barrier. If those things appeal to you, then go thief. ========= In the hands of a decent player (which, I hate to say it - a lot of the 'forum whiners' are not), any profession is useful in any environment. What matters when choosing a profession is: a) It's theme. Do its aesthetics appeal to you. If you hate purple butterflies, you'll have an eye-sore every time you play mesmer. If you get giddy every time you see green and black shadows, of course you'll enjoy necromancer. b) Its strengths. While anyone can do most anything, some have the tools in the class to do specific tasks better than others. Some also bring specific effects to the table.--Necromancers are tanky with plenty of condition application and a few good burst specs. But most importantly - they bring a lot of boon-stripping to the table. This is something other classes don't do as well or at all. They can really support a team with condi pressure and and CCs - dealing a lot of damage and even denying areas from enemies (unless the enemies can deal with the heavy AoE attacks).--Thieves bring AoE cloak and burst damage - as well as the ability to evade nearly permanently (for a time) only the table. They can be really annoying to take down and they can disengage in fights (and heal to full thereafter) more reliably than other professions - only to quickly rejoin a fight they were losing with a full health pool. ========= Worst case scenario - try out both classes and pick whichever one resonates with you the most. You'll have a lot more fun that way. For myself, necromancer hasn't always been powerful. It is in a good spot now, but it has had highs and lows. I've ridden those highs and lows and I enjoyed every minute of it - because I enjoy the profession.

This is pertinent to e-specs, but IMO as soon as you unlock an elite trait-line - all its weapons should be accessible even without its elite trait-line equipped. This would be a quick & dirty way to increase build diversity. It shouldn't be too overpowering (the weapons themselves are pretty well balanced). Additionally, it wouldn't hamper future plans to make e-specs change a weapon (assuming they want to peruse that line of speculated approach to e-specs). E-specs can still modify how a weapon acts, similar to how certain traits do now. It'd be no different to using a weapon without taking the trait-line that modifies that weapon (for example, using scepter without taking Curses GM#3 on Necromancer). IMO it would add a lot to build diversity without too much effort (I think?).

These ideas are pretty inspired. If only all traits were this cool :+1: I especially like the Cold Dirt one and the idea of making it enhance shroud effects in addition to bleed-on-chill.

I like the idea from https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/117073/reaper-suggestions#latest"[in addition to causing bleeding when the enemy is chilled,]15-20% bleeding damage increase against chilled foes." -Lily.1935 Could even be a 10-15% condition damage increase against chilled foes. Something like that would be interesting. IMO that or a straight % increase to bleed damage would be good. Maybe a hybrid - 15~20% extra bleed damage while an enemy is chilled and 50% extra chill duration in addition to causing bleed when you chill an enemy.

As a user of Deathly Chill, I'd say it is still very useful. I've used it in both sPvP and PvE for my condi reaper builds - it works fine. It provides cover conditions and the bleed does a fair bit of damage if you can use combos to stack it up. If it were changed, I'd suggest a slight buff in the form of it making bleed deal more damage. In a similar way to how Demonic Lore causes Torment to do more damage. Condi Reaper builds are far from dead - you can still make effective ones if you put a bit of effort into them. Though getting rid of Deadly Chill would certainly change that - the only real motivation for changing it would be to remove Condi Reapers options. Power reaper builds will still be better off choosing Reaper's Onslaught, it is a very good trait (even for Condi Reapers it can be useful). If anything, Blighters Boon is the trait in need of help. Not Deathly Chill.

Not the answer you want to hear, but don't participate in trashy gatcha mechanics. It only makes companies more willing to put more stuff into them. Ideally, they shouldn't exist or should be so unprofitable for us that we won't want to participate. The anti-gambling legislation really should come to NA as well. That said, IMO it would be a good idea to be able to trade boosters/other shitty black lion consumables back for statuettes. Also, you can get keys from new characters or from sPvP reward tracks & WvWvW reward tracks.

I look on the website for information myself, I don't watch the youtube trailers.

I don't think they are suggesting Steam users get a break. The living worlds should be in the Steam DLC tab though, not in the gem-shop. That way, people will be fully aware there is story-based DLC to be had. They aren't advertised well at all, and people unfamiliar with the game will not know that they are integral to understanding the story. That miscommunication doesn't need to be there at all. And it certainly could be detrimental to reviews/sales. Just put them in the Steam DLC section and make a "complete" edition that prices them together with the game+expansions. And for that matter, advertise them better in the gem shop.

Just have a boon-stripper on your team. It isn't hard to counter bunkers. Just like you have someone with mobility on your team to go cap home+far and rotate. Of course if you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect it to be different the 50th time - you are going to fail. But that is just you setting yourself up for failure. Maybe try learning some of the bunker builds. I know it is hard to make a new character and enter sPvP, but playing them will give you some insight into how to counter them more efficiently.

Ask enough GW2 fourm users - and you will find that every class (and every build) is both trash and OP.

Maybe you should use your unlockables to counter blocking, instead of randomly spamming abilities? Like normal people do. I mean, idk what else to say? Remove unblockables and severely cut down the amount of block abilities/time people can block for? Maybe remove blocks as well? Why not!

Being able to flag up would be great. Honestly, the open world maps are fantastic and PvPing on them just would be an entirely different experience to WvWvW and sPvP. Maybe with the new expansion (presumably) being in Cantha, we would have the Kurzik and Luxon guilds move into Tyria - people could flag up as either as Kur or a Lux and go ham on the other team while flagged up and in the open world. It wouldn't effect anyone else. I don't think there should be penalties for killing or dying - GW2 isn't really that experience. Though, maybe there could be a reward track - where making a kill on the opposing faction gives you points towards a reward track.

Yeah. IMO, expansions should come with the previous living world leading up to it. Maybe as a separate package (one that adds in the cost of the living worlds). It isn't even that they are expensive either. It is that how can a player be aware. They buy the expansion, then realize "wtf just happened with the plot". They do some digging and realize that some previously unmentioned microtransactions called "living worlds" need to be purchased to fully understand the expansion they just paid full price for. Of course that'll leave a bad taste in the player's mouth. That is the kind of bad marketing Anet is known for. There needs to be mechanisms in place to inform buyers about the living worlds and allow for easy purchase of them. Maybe on Steam, they can be clearly marked in the DLC tabs.

Man, anet delivers content slow enough as is. Imagine begging them to deliver content slower in order to "solve" (until another way is found) a non-issue.

TBH - the people who find HoT too difficult could always just group up for HoT (not hard, GW2 has made group play very easy even when not in a party). Most of the things you "need" to do are party based anyway. (You'd think after playing Core they'd have a good grasp of their skills - but I suppose we can blame core's lack of difficulty all the way to the end for that - there really should be some ramp-up). Right now, we have:Core: Insanely easy, trivial.PoF: Middle-of-the-Road.HoT: Challenging (I miss the old HoT). Which I think is decent. People can go where their skill-level takes them, until they advance a bit and are ready for the next stage. Hopefully the next xpac will be something leaning towards HoT or (even better) more challenging than current HoT. This isn't even a casual thing. I'm a casual. I work a full-time job. I just enjoy a challenge, rather than basically watching the game play itself and rolling my face on the keyboard. Why would I even bother playing, if it wasn't challenging?

It isn't bad at all. I mean necromancer, always have. And despite the attitude on the necromancer (and all the other) profession forums of "my class is under-powered, X class is OP" - necromancer is highly capable. I tend to run condi DPS builds, so I can't exactly speak to power or support. But I've run scourge (which I main), reaper, and core builds in sPvP (I don't WvWvW too much, but I mostly run scourge and roam with my friends when I do - I've had bad experience with herd leaders), Open PvE, Fracs, and Dungeons. I've never run into a situation where it is outside of my means to thrive and/or contribute to my team. For sPvP I generally relegate myself to buff-stripping (insanely useful and something that only necromancer can really do well) with a side of condi DPS. For other game-modes, I go full condi DPS. I've been lead to believe power is decent as well now-a-days though, so if burst damage is more your cup to tea then you can do well with that as well. Play what you want to play. Don't chase the flavour of the month, you'll be constantly swapping and you'll never end up having the best time. Take the time to learn a class that you enjoy thematically and you'll do just fine. It isn't without its hitches. I'm much happier now that the necromancer triggers their sand shade abilities than before (I think that the delay on sand shade abilities is enough of a draw-back, and it isn't even that big of one. I've played games with delayed burst abilities before, it isn't hard to adapt to GW2 having a few). But no class is without its hitches. And I'd say necromancer's changes have been very easy to adapt to.

Elementalist would def be my top choice. The versatility being able to control the elements (plus more esoteric element combos with weaver) would be fantastic. Australia's fires, begone!Climate Change Crisis, begone (inb4 I made it worse). Not to mention all the every-day issues one could solve. Nestle stealing all your drinkable water? Not a problem, make so much that the water-selling industry collapses!Police throwing tear-gas to prevent protesters? Blow that crap right back at them.Shovelling snow is irritating? Tell that snow to get off your driveway!Want to grow a garden but your soil is crap? Use earth and water magic to create the perfect soil conditions (perhaps with a little fire magic on some organic essence)! Heck, help out your local farmers and get more food growing.Housing prices too high? Create or shift the elements in the dirt and surroundings to create houses!Flooding? Tell it to piss off!You could just go on and on with the applications of control over the elements. My second choice would probably be necromancer. Control of life and death has its own benefits. Commune with spirits of the dead past to learn more about the history of the world! Visit a hospital and use your plague signet to lift the diseases off of the sick and deliver them onto the people who shouldn't be around anymore. Or just cleanse them to heal yourself. Control of darkness would be pretty handy as well. I hear shadows are everywhere!

Well, this at-least explains why ArcDPS build templates were being banned. They were planning on nickel-and-diming with more micro-transactions. Inb4 they start selling DPS meters on the gem store and ban the current ones.

Exactly. Now let's say I have an hour to day I could freely spend on playing GW2, and a longer one maybe on a raid night. I can either do profitable, high end, value-generating content such as raids and T4, where I am forced to stack and play the game in the META mentality, or I could do fun stuff, open world stuff, events, exploration, etc. where I am not required to play "in one single very specific way" and I get to play however I want. One is enjoyable, the other is rewarding. Here lies my problem.Obviously not the end of the world, but kitten I wish I could do both at the same time. So. . .on the one end, you (seem to) have a hard-core player mentality (with only one hour/day of game time?) where you want to maximize your efficiency for getting rewards (which does require some sacrifices to personal freedom to play how you want, even in single-player games). And on the other hand, you care about your immersion into the game world? It doesn't seem like these two philosophies mesh well to me. You pick one (playing casually like your available time would suggest, role-play like you might in a single-player RPG, do some open world events and have fun) vs (grinding hardcore for an hour every-day. For what end? To power up your character for future hard-core grinds? Because apart from those Fracs and Raids, you only need exotics. Pretty much a self-feeding loop of grinding contained only to a small subset of the game). Also. . .how would you even raid with only an hour or so of play-time? Are raids that short? Also, you'd need to be flexible with your raid-group, which just might not be possible if you can only play for that short of a window of time.

Like majority of the Real old school mmo players? So most of us? I don't think they do. WoW Classic has been out for years. There are a plethora of private servers dedicated to it. Also, WoW Classic (going off private servers, some of which have even offered slight improvements but the many of which are 'vanilla') is 100% nostalgia factor. The game does not hold up in the modern day. It is grindy as all hell, it offers far less variety than what is currently available, the mechanics are dated (the MMO genre has improved on them vastly as a whole) and, of course, the graphics are terrible. It is pure nostalgia factor. There is a reason why the MMO community moved away from it, that was the bare bones for what an MMO should be now-a-days. The people who truly feel like they enjoy it should be booting up private servers ASAP to give it a go. The people who actively enjoy it currently have established characters in communities within these private servers and will need some pretty hefty incentives to move away from them (kind of the same mentality to WoW Killers vs WoW back in the day). I'm pretty sure all Classic WoW is, is Blizzard trying to draw people away from those private servers and into Blizzard-Activision's pockets again. Most people aren't going to enjoy it, it is a very niche game for the people who get their kicks from nostalgia (and dated design). Really? Since the game still exists, the servers are still running, people are playing this game and it still receives new content frequently, I think your statement is simply untrue. That was sarcasm I think. Because people were talking about "Oh, Bless Online is going to kill GW2". Shortly after Bless's launch, we had refugees incoming. Maybe many 'hardcore' MMO players are different (I like to enjoy a variety of games, not just one, which would make me more to the casual side of MMO gaming since I don't devote all my waking hours to it), but anytime a hot new MMO comes out, I see those conversations everywhere on MMO boards. I guess MMO players have more reason to worry than people who play 'games not as a service', since if the MMO isn't profitable enough then the MMO will be shut down for good. Higher stakes, maybe.

I've never run into this problem in any MMO. Though, I also used to roleplay avidly, so most of the names I come up with are the names I would envision the character having and typically end up a little outlandish. Just come up with a few syllables that are easily pronounceable, and you think go together nicely. Then spell it out phonetically and put that as your character name. It doesn't have to be a word (I mean, names rarely are). Bottom line is, you'll run into this everywhere. From character names to user names for emails. Expecting the developers to bend over backwards for your lack of creativity (which is what it amounts to. Not trying to be harsh, but if you are constantly coming up with names that other people have already thought of, that is straight up a lack of creativity), then you need to stop being so entitled and own this problem instead. Using the method above and avoiding actual words, you'll rarely run into this issue though. I'd give it a go.