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If you want to stand still and spam, you're going to have a bad time reviving all the time. I think the best example is a close-combat thief. If you're good, you can avoid every single bit of damage and still come out on top. If you're bad, you'll be almost dead or dead very quickly.

If you try to play it like WoW you'll think it's like WoW.

The heart system isn't meant to replace quests, it's just some extra content for you to do while exploring the world. Dynamic events and personal story are meant to replace quests.

Corpsesarefun wrote:@LordOfHats do you mean getting multiple sets of skills per weapon? So Greatsword set 1 would have A,B,C,D and E skills whereas Greatsword set 2 would have V,W,X,Y,Z, etc.

Sort of. I mean Great Sword has skills a-z and I can pick as many as will fit into my skill bar customizing how I use it. I'd love that personally, but they do seem to be making different weapons to be better at different things. Life for the warrior, greatswords are huge aoe brute force damage. Dual swords however are more focused on bleeds and crit damage (looking at traits as well). Longbows are for dealing with groups, while rifles are single target damage. So on so forth. While I'd love more variety to customize my skill bar, I can see why they wouldn't go as far as I would were I the designer.

AresX8 wrote:- Dynamic events are no different from the public quest systems found in Warhammer Online and RIFT.

Except that the area events in Rift sucked. What's that? Huge boss? Sweet. Hope I'm in the group of 20 people out of the 200 present who get the credit for downing him. While Guild Wars 2 is totally reinventing the wheel here, lets at least give them credit where they deserve it. They've taken ideas that have been tried before and made them work.

Oh and the quests events actually come in decent variety!

What's stopping a caster from standing in one spot and spamming spells when they don't have mana to worry about?

The mean warrior with a charge with more range than their attack distance, a stun, and a greatsword. Go ahead and stand there. You're helping

Yes, melee weapons have a slight AoE. So? That doesn't change the fact that all you have to do is stand still and spam abilities.

If you want to be a stationary target. Some of the things they've done are slight and subtle, but PvP in this is going to be very different. Even in PvE, if you don't learn to dodge, you're just going to keep dying, over and over and over again. This game is mobile, and not in the run around like an insane person trying to keep your opponent in line of sight while trying to stay out of theirs stupidity that is WoW.

Sure, in higher levels you might have to start dodging, but even the implementation for that is shoddy (possibly because it hasn't been polished yet).

I will actually agree that the dodge mechanic could use a little more polish. I found it slightly sluggish at times to respond to my key presses.

EDIT:I say this thought. Guild Wars 2 is the first RPG I've played in years that doesn't suffer from 'everyone other than you is incompetent' syndrome. In the Char storyline, I'm running around with other NPC characters taking on the baddies. Some world events have you fighting alongside NPC's, and the story (I only finished the Char starting zone) as I saw it, doesn't have me solving all the worlds problems because everyone else is too idiotic to do it. Huge difference between walking into a Sith tomb and a soldier saying "My lord, we tried to do our job, but we couldn't, can you do it for us" and walking into an area and hearing about some soldiers wanting a little help while I see them out there fighting those ghosts.

LordofHats wrote:

Corpsesarefun wrote:@LordOfHats do you mean getting multiple sets of skills per weapon? So Greatsword set 1 would have A,B,C,D and E skills whereas Greatsword set 2 would have V,W,X,Y,Z, etc.

Sort of. I mean Great Sword has skills a-z and I can pick as many as will fit into my skill bar customizing how I use it. I'd love that personally, but they do seem to be making different weapons to be better at different things. Life for the warrior, greatswords are huge aoe brute force damage. Dual swords however are more focused on bleeds and crit damage (looking at traits as well). Longbows are for dealing with groups, while rifles are single target damage. So on so forth. While I'd love more variety to customize my skill bar, I can see why they wouldn't go as far as I would were I the designer.

Yeah that's unlikely to ever happen, they had a similar thing for guild wars 1 and as expansions added more and more skills it became impossible to balance. With this balanced system of limited skills then can simply buff or nerf weapons rather than worry about how individual skills impact every other individual skill, it also means they can add new weapons with ease (which they have confirmed will happen).

A lot of things about GW2 are designed to be very modular so that expansions/updates can add to what is already in the game without negatively impacting the vanilla.

I figured something like that. Personally I'm also hoping to be able to eventually use spears... without being underwater. Or maybe they'll add halberds

Corpsesarefun wrote:If you try to play it like WoW you

Suck as a human being!

Melissia wrote:

Corpsesarefun wrote:If you try to play it like WoW you

Suck as a human being!

Aw come on Mel, we may have some recovering addicts among us as we speak!

Karon wrote:
The combat system is different from WoW and EQ2. Bullets/arrows are actual projectiles and can be blocked, swipes from weapons are in a slight aoe due to the weapon swing.

This is slightly incorrect.

Bullets/arrows can be evaded, but only when in an evading state. Normal movement will not stop you from getting hit once the attack has been registered. Similarly, the same thing is true for the AoE from melee attacks. That's why simply strafing some enemies won't work, since the area of their attacks can be very deceptive.

Oh, yeah, I know that. I just meant that if you stand in front of someone who is being shot on the correct angle, you'll take the shot and damage instead.

Well originally I thought I would stick with GS guardian, but Iv found that if your going to go melee you need to be pretty mobile, while GS guaridian has a few tools to get into combat range after playing a sword/dagger theif the guardian just feels a bit slow.

Sword/dagger theif was great fun, being able to teleport and stab people, cripple them if they try and run and dodge around to the enemies back and give em a good stabbin.

Being able to stealth when the situation goes bad was pretty invaluable also.


The other character I tried this time was a staff necro, definately does less dmg than either the melee theif or guardian I played but as the necro I barely ever died, being able to chill people and slow them down was fun as well.

I like pistol/dagger + dagger/pistol thief myself. Very fun shadowstepping in and out of a fight.

Xeriapt wrote:
The other character I tried this time was a staff necro, definately does less dmg than either the melee theif or guardian I played but as the necro I barely ever died, being able to chill people and slow them down was fun as well.

Staff does piss poor single target damage, but marks are really good when comboed with other skills. I find, with the necromancer, you can't just pick one weapon and stick with it, changing when a specialized situation called for it (for example, using a ranged weapon to pick off enemies, and melee when close). I used primarily a scepter and dagger in one set, and a staff in the other. I found that I had the most success when I would be constantly switching between sets.

Start with staff, place some marks, switch to staff/dagger, throw down some conditions, switch back to staff, throw down more marks, use utility skills to spread everything around, switch back, etc.

Additionally, I find that Necromancer is a pretty poor choice against weaker enemies and smaller fights. It's not that they're bad, I was perfectly content soloing quite a bit as my necro, it's just that they're not as good as the other classes. I played a fair bit with a friend's warrior, and he cleared through enemies before I was even set up. The thing about the necromancer is that they take time to get started. Longer, attrition based engagements are definitely in the necromancer's favour. Given time to set up and spread their conditions around, they're capable of doing an obscene amount of damage over time, all whilst spreading it around. Additionally, they can keep themselves relatively safe while doing so (unlike my friend's warrior, who would lose a fair chunk of health even in the smallest of encounters, I had a tendancy to stay relatively untouched).

Fafnir wrote:

Xeriapt wrote:
The other character I tried this time was a staff necro, definately does less dmg than either the melee theif or guardian I played but as the necro I barely ever died, being able to chill people and slow them down was fun as well.

Staff does piss poor single target damage, but marks are really good when comboed with other skills. I find, with the necromancer, you can't just pick one weapon and stick with it, changing when a specialized situation called for it (for example, using a ranged weapon to pick off enemies, and melee when close). I used primarily a scepter and dagger in one set, and a staff in the other. I found that I had the most success when I would be constantly switching between sets.

Start with staff, place some marks, switch to staff/dagger, throw down some conditions, switch back to staff, throw down more marks, use utility skills to spread everything around, switch back, etc.

Additionally, I find that Necromancer is a pretty poor choice against weaker enemies and smaller fights. It's not that they're bad, I was perfectly content soloing quite a bit as my necro, it's just that they're not as good as the other classes. I played a fair bit with a friend's warrior, and he cleared through enemies before I was even set up. The thing about the necromancer is that they take time to get started. Longer, attrition based engagements are definitely in the necromancer's favour. Given time to set up and spread their conditions around, they're capable of doing an obscene amount of damage over time, all whilst spreading it around. Additionally, they can keep themselves relatively safe while doing so (unlike my friend's warrior, who would lose a fair chunk of health even in the smallest of encounters, I had a tendancy to stay relatively untouched).

You're really not meant to be playing alone, like at all.

Most of the time i've been playing alone, except for events or when I happen to see someone doing the same quest.

I much prefer it, because I don't have to worry about getting in anybody's way, and nobody is getting in mine; for example, I found out just how annoying it is to have a Hammer Guardian Banish a mob across the park as if it were a cricket ball, and i'm having to chase it again; even worse if it's a ranged mob, and triple worse if it's a centuar archer, because they like to take every opportunity to bugger off.

Banish, Judges intervention, Banish, etc...

Get's em every time

Corpsesarefun wrote:

You're really not meant to be playing alone, like at all.

It tends to happen in places when you're going for 100% map completion.

Avatar 720 wrote:Most of the time i've been playing alone, except for events or when I happen to see someone doing the same quest.

I much prefer it, because I don't have to worry about getting in anybody's way, and nobody is getting in mine; for example, I found out just how annoying it is to have a Hammer Guardian Banish a mob across the park as if it were a cricket ball, and i'm having to chase it again; even worse if it's a ranged mob, and triple worse if it's a centuar archer, because they like to take every opportunity to bugger off.

Whenever I ran into a problem adventuring alone, I'd yell across the map asking if anyone wants to do something together. I almost always got some help from a player that wanted the skill point I wanted or even a player that was just being generous with their time.

This often worked out considering most people were around my level. I'm afraid this may begin to be a problem when people hit higher levels and the density of players per zone dwindles.

However, as an Engineer, I always felt guilty using the plethora of knockbacks and pulls we have access to. I felt that I was disrupting the smackdown that other players were doing. Regardless, I hope that the other players appreciated the interrupts at the very least. I tried to at least smash the enemy into a wall or something not too far away.

I doubt they hated it. After all, the longer the enemy was held down or knocked back, the less it was attacking them.

Absolutionis wrote:
However, as an Engineer, I always felt guilty using the plethora of knockbacks and pulls we have access to. I felt that I was disrupting the smackdown that other players were doing. Regardless, I hope that the other players appreciated the interrupts at the very least. I tried to at least smash the enemy into a wall or something not too far away.

As a necromancer, I HATE it when someone knocks an enemy out of my marks/AoEs.

My build is centered around loading as many conditions as possible onto a single enemy, and then spreading them to everyone around him, so if someone were to remove my target from my range, or knock them out of the AoE that would put a vital condition on them, then I might as well just go sit out in the corner.

Personally, my necro build is based off of absorbing as many conditions as possible from my allies and either consuming them or transferring them to my enemy...

Mind you, this can be somewhat deadly at times.

I like to cut the middleman out and stack them on myself.

Throw a tonne of marks down, layer on the bleeding/poison/weakness with staff/dagger, transfer it to everyone else with epidemic, and then finally toss everything I've done to myself in the process (bleeding from Blood is Power and Vulnerability from Epidemic) over to the enemy once more with Plague Signet, or just use Consume Conditions for the clutch heal.

Relatively quick way to get 10+ stacks of bleeding and a million other things spread around really quickly.

Perhaps, but the way I do it helps keep the rest of the group alive, and allows me some rather powerful healing.

Is dagger/dagger + staff minion master necro a good idea?

Dagger/dagger probably isn't, staff very much is though.

Dagger/Dagger is more for a blood mage than a minion master.

What's a good secondary weapon set for one then? Axe/horn? Scepter/focus?

With minions you want them to tank while you're at a distance, scepter is a great mainhand for this and both horn and focus are good offhands.

Dagger mainhand is just bad for Necro, from what I find. Melee range makes you an open target, and even though necromancers are tied with Warrior for highest health in the game, they're still very squishy as hell with light armour. You also don't really get enough to justify all that risk either.

That said, dagger offhand is AMAZING on necromancer.

Scepter's good at a distance, but staff is even better, what with the longer range. Scepter's primary goal is to stack DoTs and then crunch them with Feast of Corruption for even more damage.

Warhorn has some useful skills, but they're more fitting a mainhand dagger or axe because of their short range. You generally don't want to be in the position where you'd be using those skills in the first place with a scepter.

Focus is solid, but I've always felt more comfortable with dagger.

Really, I'd say the best necro offhand is dagger, it just offers so much. But that doesn't mean that the other offhands are bad. They've all got their uses.

From my experience the necro is really survivable (though every class dies fast if you try to just absorb hits in this game), on par with the warrior and guardian.

Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of getting hit at all in the first place, but I've only really noticed real survivability on the necro when I pop the super sayain. And I generally dislike doing that unless I'm really in trouble, since it makes for a great clutch escape and I don't like getting caught in a moment when I really need it and it's half empty.