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Unidentified Dye drop rate fixed. Was good while it lasted, lol.

The patch on the first accidentally increased it by a massive amount. Like you could get 5-10 days a session. Clearly wasn't meant to be so high.

They added a new patch in the last day as well, which is actually a nicer one... "Authenticators now remember your network, based on the email security" thing... which is really nice not having to grab my phone every time I decide to repatch the game.


- We have been developing a “remember this network” feature for the mobile authenticator in line with the same feature used by email authentication

- This feature became active tonight during the planned maintenance updates

- For any account which has already selected to remember a network, the mobile authenticator will respect your existing settings

- This means that if you are logging in from a location that you permitted via email authentication, the mobile authenticator will not currently prompt you for a secondary code

I found a thread for you Maz.

(And anyone else with a Necro)

[EDIT]

On that note, I did start leveling a Necro. And yeah, that profession definitely has problems. A LOT of them.

SpoilerMinions suck. That's just the brunt fact of it. Their health is pitiful, and the AI is in no way conducive to keeping them alive. And since enemies love to target them, that means they're even less useful than Mesmer clones, which can be put up reliably, and for which it's not a big loss to lose them. Plus, why would the class tied for the best Health pool, with siphon-based gameplay, need a tank? Isn't the point for them to play like Drain Tank Warlocks from WoW?

Death Shroud, while useful for evading the downed state, is not useful for anything else really. The AoE fear has its uses, as does the Shadowstep. But nothing game changing. I mostly keep my Guardian virtues on passive, and they seem to do more for me.

Weapon options are FAR from satisfactory. I hate the Axe. It's slow, it's clunky. Midrange is better than melee, but not enough to really have maneuverability. The ability to get up a strong retaliation is pretty nice, but it has no siphon skills so you wouldn't want to main it for a tank build anyway. The Scepter is nice--I like the synergy between 1-3. I really don't like the staff. Trap-like skills are generally best for classes with a lot of maneuverability, which Necros don't have (which was actually nerfed). I also fail to see why the Staff would need their main attack to grant life force, as I see little reason why DS should be particularly synergistic with it. You don't want to shadowstep to melee range--you are using a long range weapon for a reason. AoE fear might be a reason, but you should just pop into the shroud, pop your fear, and then pop out.

I DO like the Focus offhand. The scythe bounce and chill are nice utility, and their CDs aren't too long for them to be for special circumstances only. Jury is out on Dagger OH. It'll really come down to whether or not syphon tanking is worth it. Warhorn, like for all professions, is more a PvP weapon. Easy access to swiftness is nice. And daze isn't bad. But with those CDs, you have better options.

I don't like any of the heal spells. If gameplay revolves around me transferring my conditions to another enemy, having to use them to heal myself instead would suck. Blood minion is useless, because the heal is pitiful and it dies too fast for the syphon to be worth while. If I had a way to keep the enemy on me when drain tanking, then it might be different. Maybe the answer is to just give it a long range and program the AI to avoid the mob? Well of Blood, I haven't used yet. But group dynamics are way different from solo, so no point really including that here.

Utilities. I really don't want to chime in here, because I don't really have extensive access to these yet, but I will say one thing. Necro utilities are DEFINITELY harder to use than just about every other class. Synergy between them seems to be getting a heavy emphasis. That can be awesome, when the synergy perfectly matches your situation. It can also suck really hard when it doesn't. /shrug. Withholding judgement. But I have now tried 3 of the minions, and all of them have been pathetic. So my hopes aren't high on those.

Love Signet of the Locust though.

Traits. Very unhappy with them. Only profession worst for waste, imo, is the Elementalist (which is much, much worse to be fair). But some things don't make any sense. Why would I want to buff my toughness as a minion master? That might be nice if they actually stayed away from the fighting, but right now they just end up as meat shields...

So yeah, I don't think I'll be keeping my Necro for the time being. Maybe I'll wait to see what the Nov patch brings. But that character slot can be better used elsewhere.

Edited, Nov 6th 2012 5:20pm by idiggory

Basically, back when they were using just 'email' verification, if you checked 'remember this IP address" then it wouldnt ask you again if you wanted to verify that specific IP... but you would need to verify it if say you went out of town and were logging in from 60 miles away at a friends. So if you clicked remember that wouldnt show up, but the Google Authenticator (the one that gives you the 6 digit second key) is now also only needed if you log in from a different IP.



I but I ..

Edited, Nov 6th 2012 4:14pm by Dyadem

I agree, minions suck...they need a lot of work... I'm one of the people that does use, and love DS though. I have it traited to removed conditions and heal, so I toggle in and out of it constantly in my build. Same with Staff as my primary weapon, and traits so the marks have a shorter CD, I can spam "mark of blood" constantly and keep a heal on players and a bleed on npc's constantly... as long as there arent other people casting bleed on the same target and its stacking to over 25... thats the main issue.

Here is my build.

I swap that out a lot I should have mentioned that, I do like the golem though because he regens his own health, auto cripples, and is 'dumfire' pet when I need him. I do NOT run around with him precast... I will more so cast him when I need to kite something, or to keep a mob or two busy while I harvest/click/commune/etc.

And I'm back! But I just flew 4000 miles for 12+ hours and I'm tired so I'll be on tomorrow. Managed to do a perfect skirting of both Hurricane Sandy and the Noreaster now incoming.

I've never felt particularly squishy on my Guardian. I have a lot of heals, and my effective health pool is probably larger than my Engineer's at this point. My build is based around Meditations, since I do use Sword as my primary weapon, and Judge's Intervention gives me an additional gap closer. I then use Smite Condition as a second Meditation, with them traited to heal myself on use.

Obviously "full support" will mean using a Staff as one of your weapons. You can use Mace/Focus or Mace/Shield as your offset for more survivability, or Scepter with either of those. I actually prefer Focus over Shield as a defensive weapon, and only really use Shield on my Guardian for its aesthetic value. I know I would me far more effective going Sword/Focus and Scepter/Torch (or swap the Focus and Torch, depending on how you play). Focus gives you a ranged attack that also heals allies it passes over, and an ability that blocks three attacks. In PvP, this is certainly amazing, as it can and will save you from HB Warriors. If you plan on mostly doing group work, Save Yourselves (draws all allies' conditions to you and adds a ******* of boons to you) followed by Contemplation of Purity (converts all conditions to boons) is an insane combination.

Elementalist is probably #2 on the list of professions that have serious problems.

They're kinda a mess right now. For one, their bug list is ridiculously long. None of them are as serious as non-functioning minions or siphon healing your enemy, but some are still bad.

Arcane Power is supposed to give you 5 crits, and it just doesn't. Certain skills "use" all of the crits, certain skills won't even crit if you're <3 charges (but still eat them), etc. If your Phoenix ever hits an invulnerable mob, it ceases to exist instead of finishing it's loop like it should (because it isn't a targetted attack in the first place). This actually IS a really big damage loss for scepter builds. Quite a few of the profession's skills with boons don't match the time of the actual buff (like 4s instead of 6, 5 instead of 10, etc.). Burning Speed often explodes at the start of your slide instead of at the end, so you can completely miss your target and lose your combo. Another huge damage loss.

I could keep going, but I think you get the point? If all the bugs were fixed, Elementalist damage output would increase by quite a bit.

But even then, the profession has some serious issues. For one, it's a LOT of work, but there's no meaningful payout. You have to jump through a ton of attunements, setting up nonstop combos, just to break even (and not even) with other professions when played by lazy players (meaning, not played well). It's a problem. I'm not against complex professions and simple ones at all--I even think that they SHOULD break even. But it has to be relative. If an Elementalist is going to put a lot of work into their playstyle, then they should be reliably hitting a higher output (in support, control, damage, or whatever) than a Ranger or Warrior does when played half-assed. I think that's fair.

On top of the sheer amount of work they include, they also have trait issues (which I discussed a lot earlier in the thread and I think Sho (?) disagreed with me. But honestly, after a lot more time spent in the game, my position hasn't changed. It's definitely an issue to me that the trait lines for the elementalist are tied to attunements. On literally every other profession, I can go down most of my trait lines with whatever weapon I want and construct an appropriate play style. It may not be optimal, but it'll work. And with planning, it will work well.

You just can't do that with an Elementalist. Outside of the element's spells, the traits in most of the trees just aren't impressive. It's not worth taking traits (which aren't that strong) just for the 7 second out of every 28 you'll be in the attunement. The end result is that any major traits that are limited to a single attunement, barring certain conditional ones, are highly devalued. Because even if that element IS the crutch of your build, it's just too small an investment when you'll spend so much time outside that element.

For instance, Air/Water 25, Arcane 20 is a popular dual dagger build. Air spells are its main source of damage. The Major Traits are glyph recharge, cantrip regen, +20% damage to targets under 25% health, condition removal on water attunement, buffs on attunement, and arcane shield when your health drops to 25%.

What the build is essentially doing is searching out the traits that will be useful at all outside of air attunement. So it takes glyph recharge to lower the heal spell CD. It uses a 75s cd cantrip for temporary invulnerability, so this spec gives them regeneration once every 75 seconds (woo). Just makes the oh-sh*t button slightly better. You only switch to water for your 4/5 skills, so this is an occasional condition removal. And you buff your survivability some.

It's a precision build, so the fire traits that aren't bound to fire are still worthless for it. It doesn't take con damage, so Earth is super weak (and they have a heavy focus on dodging, so the "when endurance is full" earth traits do nothing for them). Obviously they don't want "in Earth/Fire" traits, because they're used almost exclusively for combo fields or finishers (slight caveat is that Earth has some control skills that are situationally useful).

So, really, you're just falling into water. It's the least useful of your attunements, without any finishers or fields, and you realistically only even use it for your 4/5 skill because 1-3 are stupidly weak (through 3 isn't attrocious if you just need to get away because U GON DIE). To that end, you make it remove a condition on attunement. And because it has what is (arguably) the best Elementalist 25 minor trait (2% damage for each boon on you, and Eles are boon machines), you go all the way to that one.

Really, it's creating a spec by choosing what is the least useless. Outside of the 20 points in Arcane, nothing really matters that much. That's boring and uninteresting. On EVERY other profession, stats and weapons and whatever don't restrict you. Even if you don't go for condition builds, there are usually plenty of useful skills in the condition trait line.

For instance, say you're playing Sword/Shield + Staff Guardian. You don't take any fire-based utility skills. Your only fire-based skill is Virtue of Justice, and you're not really relying on it for personal damage. Doesn't matter, you still have a ton of great traits to choose from.

Three minor? Blind nearby foes when you activate VoJ, VoJ is renewed when you kill a foe, deal more damage to enemies inflicted with conditions. All useful even if your build doesn't revolve around burning at all. And only 4 of the major traits have anything to do with burning, only 2 of which (maybe 1--depends on if Spirit Weapons scale with your stats) care about condition damage at all.

Going Fire on an Elementalist without building for condition damage? Have fun with that--the only traits that are more than just token buffs (like might on cantrips) until you get to the very end of the trait line.

That's not fun or interesting. And it makes Elementalist builds the most restrictive of all the professions. They all go at least 10 into Arcane, usually more. And then they're either Fire/Earth or Air/Water. (Caveat 1: there are some pure-survival builds that go Earth/Water, and some specialized WvW builds that go Fire/Air and are intended purely for maximum damage when attacking from the ramparts. Caveat 2: Some builds, occasionally go 10-15 points into might purely because there isn't anything attractive left, and they use the 3-5 skills for mobility).

But, overwhelmingly, the profession has no build diversity. Because it's just far less effective not to go one of those two routes.

Engineer is odd. I would suggest taking one to the Heart of the Mists, where you'll have full access to all the skills, and playing around a while. Turrets are pretty "meh" at the moment, but the kits can be pretty awesome. Grenades, Bombs, Flamethrower, and Elixir Gun are all awesome. Personally, I run a Pistol/Pistol Elixir build. It's mostly laying on the conditions and kiting. From what I understand, you can make a pretty tanky Flamethrower build. My biggest gripe is the lack of gear that screams "engineer".

I think that set works well, as long as you use a different head item. Goggles maybe.

Certain aspects of it just really jump out at me. Obviously, the coat. It's more prim than I'd expect a thief to dress. It's scholarly, artistocratic even. The gloves are big and clunky. Good for protecting yourself from sparks, heat or sharp edges when working on gadgets (and the general wear and tear of working with your hands), but not what you want to be wearing when you attempt to pick someone's pocket.

Another small but great detail? The knee pads. The engineer is going to spend a lot of time kneeling when he's out in the world, fixing things, deploying turrets, mixing elixirs, etc.

You can just imagine those canisters on the side of his body hold gunpowder or other explosives/abrasive fluids for his mad scientist needs.

I'm not saying that it's the pinnacle of the engineer look, but I do think it's better for Engineers than the other two. Only thing I have an issue with is the hat.