The Necromancer

This profession guide is accurate as of BWE2.

A necromancer is a practitioner of the dark arts who summons the dead, wields the power of lost souls, and literally sucks the lifeblood of the enemy. A necromancer feeds on life force, which he can use to bring allies back from the brink or cheat death itself.

-Official Guild Wars 2 Website

Overall Theme

The necromancer is a bit harder to pin down with one theme than other classes. But, in the end, it all boils down to corruption. The necromancer can raise undead minions out of the ground, and it can steal life from its enemies. However, the necromancer specializes in converting boons and conditions on allies and enemies to be able to change the tide of the battle and maintain the upper hand. As part of their attacks, they generate Life Force, their unique resource. It’s used to activate and fuel Death Shroud, a powerful form with powerful skills. While in death shroud, necromancers take damage to their accumulated Life Force rather than their own health. Many of the necromancers abilities create marks, AoE’s that require a trigger for their affect much like extra-large traps.

Weapons

Staff – The staff is completely AoE. The auto-attack, Necrotic Graps, is a line AoE attack. The rest of the abilities are all marks like Chilblains.

Axe (MH) – The axe is a fairly nondescript mid-range weapon. Worth noting, however, is the Life Force generation possible with Ghastly Claws.

Dagger (MH) – The main-hand dagger is the only melee weapon necromancers have. Along with its immobilize, it also has Life Siphon to siphon life from your foes.

Scepter – The scepter is the long-range weapon for condition-based fighting. Its auto-attack causes bleeding and poison and it also has an AoE cripple. Additionally, Feast of Corruption relies on conditions for generating life force.

Dagger (OH) – The off-hand dagger is a perfect weapon that is well suited to surviving foes. Beyond just blindness and weakness, you can also give your opponents your conditions with Deathly Swarm.

Focus – The focus is a good offensive weapon that focuses on debilitating your opponent. Spinal Shivers is an extremely powerful skill that removes boons as well as chills your enemy.

Warhorn – The warhorn is useful in both offensive and defensive situations. While it can be used to keep foes in range, Locust Swarm is also handy for escaping from melee enemies.

Underwater

Spear – The spear is an AoE-based melee weapon underwater that applies that AoE and conditions for skills like Wicked Spiral. You can also keep foes in range well with skills like Deadly Catch.

Trident – The trident is a more long-range, single-target focused weapon that works more heavily with conditions. Crimson Tide, the auto-attack, applies a five-second bleed with each attack. Sinking Tomb is also incredibly useful, as sink skills aren’t the most common in GW2.

Slot Skills

Many of the necromancer’s slot skills take the same condition-and-boon based approach of the rest of the profession, with the addition of minions. When it comes to healing skills, all of them are viable options. Well of Blood is the obvious go-to for party situations, while Consume Conditions offers the highest healing potential over any amount of time.

Corruption – All four of the corruptions are reminiscent of the sacrifice skills from the original profession in GW. You inflict a condition on yourself in order to inflict a much more powerful effect on your opponent.

Minion – The minion skills all summon a minion (or two for Summon Bone Minions) out of the ground without requiring any corpse. Once summoned, each skill has a toggle with various different effects. Other than the bone minions, the toggle skill leaves the minion alive.

Signet – As with all signets, each skill has a passive effect that can be put on recharge for its activated effect. The signets focus on conditions, stealing health, and life force.

Spectral – The spectral skills are are really a group of miscellaneous effects that don’t actually have a common factor.

Well – The wells are all self-centered AoE’s that pulse a condition-based effect every two seconds.

Elite – The necromancer has two different form elite skills. Plague turns you into a condition-causing cloud, while Lich Form turns you into a lich with strong skills matching the rest of the necromancer’s skills. Summon Flesh Golem summons the strongest minion of all that cripples with each attack.

Traits

The necromancer’s five traits are mostly named after the necromancer’s attributes from the original Guild Wars. The last line is linked to the attribute, Hunger, which increases the size of the Life Force pool.

Spite (Pow/Exp) – The minor traits heal on kill, buff healing, and give might when hit at low health. The major traits buff signets, increase minion damage, remove conditions with ills, add ways of gaining might, increase axe damage, buff marks, add retaliation to Death Shroud, and auto-cast Spinal Shivers on enemies you put below 25 percent health. The final traits are Axe Training and Chill of Death.

Curses (Pre/Mal) – The minor traits cause bleeding on crits, give add fury to Death Shroud, and add damage for conditionso n foes. The major traits buff criticals, lengthen bleeds, buff many conditions, reduce corruption recharges, lengthen spectral durations, add damage to fear, give ground-targeting to wells, and reduce warhorn recharges. The final traits are Lingering Curse and Withering Precision.

Death Magic (Tou/Con) – The minor traits add a chance to summon a minion on kill, buff toughness with minions, and buff power. The major trats buff minions, buff marks, add protection to wells, auto-cast Spinal Shivers when entering Death Shroud, make marks unbockable, reduce staff skill recharges, give armor while channeling, and increase damage to low-health foes. The final traits are Death Nova and Necromatic Corruption.

Blood Magic (Vit/Com) – The minor traits add regeneration when brought to 90 percent, siphon health on every hit, and buff power with high health. The major traits add siphoning to many skills, buff siphoning, reduce dagger recharges, add healing to Death Shroud, increase movement speed with daggers, buff minions, buff wells, drop a Well of Blood when reviving, and drop a Mark of Blood on dodge. The final traits are Fetid Consumption and Vampiric Rituals.

Soul Reaping (Pro/Hun) – The minor traits increase Life Force gain, auto-cast Spectral Armor at half-health, and buff power with Life Force. The major traits fear enemies when downed, add Reaper’s Mark when reviving, reduce spectral recharges, buff Death Shroud, lengthen fear, add Life Force to marks, and auto-cast Locust Swarm when brought to 25 percent. The final traits are Foot in the Grave and Near to Death.

Difficulty

Necromancers are fairly average in terms of difficulty. They’re easy to pick up and play, but take a little more to actually find something that works well. They’re a fairly middle-ground class in terms of difficulty.

Getting ready to crank out a profession guide real quick before I head to bed, but I thought I’d post the specs I’ll be running for BWE3. I’m building a totally new system tomorrow, so here are the details:

2.3 TB HDD

16 GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM

EVGA GeForce 560Ti 1 GB (faster memory than the 2 GB cards)

i5 5570 processor, to be overclocked to 4.25-4.5 GHz

Corsair Hydra H60 Liquid Cooler

ASUS P8B75-V LGA 1155 Intel Motherboard

4 Cooler Master 120mm fans

Corsair 400R Gaming Case

It’s not top of the line, but it’s close enough.

This week, for The Structure, we’re going to venture off the beaten path a little bit. It haven’t seen this talked about for awhile, but it’s probably going to resurface and be debated again since the asura are in BWE3. “It” is the “asura problem”. This is going to be a good deal shorter than most articles as personal stuff has restricted some of my time lately, but it’ll still be worth reading.

Asura… Problem?

How could these cute guys ever be a problem?

The asura problem is the name fans came up with for a forseen potential problem in SPvP surrounding the asura. Everyone knows the asura are smaller than the other races; it’s why we love them. It makes them cute. It also makes them harder to click on in a hurry. Some fans also worry they’ll have a smaller hitbox or reach, but that notion was shot down by ANet months ago. The fans who came up with this idea foresaw rapidly trying to click on little asura in the heat of battle and having trouble because they’re not charr-sized. If it’s really an issue, what could the implications be?

First, the entire competitive field would be asura. If you weren’t an asura, you’d be a noob. Since not having unequal races is the reason behind not having racial skills in PvP, it would look really dumb on ArenaNet’s part. Secondly, it would cause a lot less future-PvP players to get into it when they find out they have to reroll to be any good. Lastly, and more importantly, it would be incredibly detrimental to ANet’s stated goal of making Guild Wars 2 an eSport. If this has you worried, don’t be!

Size Doesn’t Matter For Once

Go ahead, make the jokes, get it out of your system.

The asura problem isn’t actually a problem. It’s not going to be something anyone’s going to worry about. There are some people out there who will swear to it and blame their losses on it when they’re not asura (and naturally credit their victories to their own skill if they are asura), but there’s no issue for targeting.

SPvP matches are relatively small. If they’re at a competitive level where the problem would matter, you’re not going to have large five-on-five fights. You’re going to have a lot of one-on-one, two-on-two or two-on-one fights across the map. So, if there’s an asura in the fight, you can simply hit the tab key at most twice and have them targeted.

It’s a weak reason, but there’s a much better one: you don’t have to target anything. There’s nothing for you to actually have to target. All you have to do is point your character in the right direction, and you’ll still hit the little buggers. If you’re melee, all you have to do is run up on top of them and swing.

Beta Weekend Event 3

As if anyone actually needs a reminder, BWE3 is next weekend from the same noon Friday to midnight Sunday time frame. It’s the last beta before launch, so make it all count! Pay attention while you’re PvPing to the asura, and see how much of a problem they’re not! The Structure will go live on Thursday next week so you can all read it before the beta. I’ll be theorycrafting some builds for all of you to try out and report back on!

I can’t embed this unfortunately, but roughly an hour ago, ArenaNet developers Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson sat down on Twitch and talked about the endgame in Guild Wars 2 and what makes it so special. They talk about Orr, legendary weapons, dungeons, and more!

Hey everyone! Sorry for disappearing on you all. The holidays and then some personal matters came up that have kept me from writing. I promise tonight I’ll be writing stuff again. I’ve still got to finish those profession guides, and of course I’ll have The Structure later tonight as well. I’m also upgrading to a new computer in the coming week, and I’ll post specs for you guys on that so you know what I’m running when we get to the next beta.

At long last, we’ve got the news so many have been hoping for: we get to roll asura and sylvari in the next beta!

Today we got a nice glimpse from ArenaNet into their driving principles and guidelines in making everyone’s favorite new MMORPG.

So, I got a request for a video about making balanced SPvP builds, so here’s two examples with explanations and some general tips.

The Mesmer

This profession guide is accurate as of BWE2.

Mesmers are magical duelists who rely on deception and confusion to keep their opponents in check. Indecision is their greatest ally. Using powerful illusions to distract, they make sure they never go toe to toe with an enemy; they use their powers and tactics to set up an unfair fight.

-Official Guild Wars 2 Website

Overall Theme

Chaos. That one word perfectly sums up the mesmer profession in GW2. Many skills involve random boons or random conditions. Confusion is also a highly-prevalent condition in other mesmer abilities. Then there are the clones, designed for causing confusion to enemies (the actual thing, not the condition). Their unique class mechanic lets them create up to three illusions and shatter them for varying effects. There are two types of illusions: Clones look almost identical to the caster and simply auto-attack their target (causing essentially no damage), while phantasms are easily identifiable and have a specific ability they use.

Weapons

Greatsword – The greatsword is a very straightforward, ranged weapon. Yes, the greatsword is ranged. It’s all about doing damage while keeping enemies away from you with this weapon. Mirror Blade throws a bouncing sword out that creates clones, and Phantasmal Berserker creates a greatsword-wielding phantasm to cripple enemies.

Staff – The mesmer’s staff is much more suited to condition-based combat and actual deception. Phase Retreat teleports you in some direction generally away from your enemy and leaves behind a clone. The staff also has Chaos Storm, which can become very powerful with a ranger or other fast-attacking ranged class nearby.

Scepter – The scepter is more of a confusion-oriented weapon, more concerned with making your enemies kill themselves trying to attack you than actually confusion the enemy. The auto-attack chain from Ether Bolt confuses enemies and creates a clone on the third attack. Illusionary Counter can also create a clone when it blocks an attack.

Sword (MH) – The main-hand sword gives mesmers their only melee option. It focuses on safely fighting the opponent up close, opening their defenses and removing boons. Illusionary Leap sends a clone to your target with which you can then swap places.

Focus – The focus focuses gives a solid movement advantage over enemies. Additionally, Illusionary Warden creates a phantasm to protect an area from projectiles.

Pistol (OH) – The pistol gives you a powerful bouncing defensive shot, while Illusionary Duelist summons a phantasm to barrage enemies with its duel pistols. I have no idea why your illusions can use two pistols but you can’t.

Sword (OH) – The off-hand sword gives more ways of creating cillusions. Illusionary Repost creates a clone if you’re attacked, or you can daze enemies if you aren’t attacked. Illusionary Swordsman creates a blade-wielding phantasm to attack your foes.

Torch – The torch gives you a nice stealth combined with blinding and burning for enemies. Illusionary Mage also summons a phantasm to confuse enemies and give retaliation to allies.

Underwater

Spear – The spear is weapon that gives a lot of extra evasion and movement effects underwater. Feigned Surge moves you toward the enemy and teleports you back, leaving a clone behind. Illusionary Mariner creates a phantasm that attacks enemies while dodging.

Trident – The trident causes confusion to enemies and gives a decent amount of defense through blinding and sinking foes. Spinning Revenge gives nearby allies retaliation while creating a clone. Illusionary Whaler creates a phantasm that shoots enemies with a harpoon gun. Again, I’m not sure why your illusions can use weapons that you can’t, but we’ll go with it.

Slot Skills

Mesmer’s slot skills are just as sporadic in effect as the rest of the mesmer skills, creating a truly unpredictable profession. Of their healing skills, Mantra of Recovery provides the most amount of healing over any period of time, but it requires you to cast it ahead of when you need it with a long cast time. Ether Feast heals you and gives you extra health for each illusion you have active. Mirror reflects incoming projectiles and heals you, making it the best in a tight pinch to make up for its long recharge.

Clone – There are two clone skills. Mirror Images simply creates two clones, while Decoy stealths you and creates a clone. 

Glamour – Glamour skills have various AoE effects with various purposes. The most well-known of these skills are Portal Entre and Portal Exeunt, which create a two-way portal that you and your allies can use with a HUGE range.

Manipulation – Manipulations are several miscellaneous skills without any real common point. From Mimic’s ability to absorb and reflect projectiles to Blink’s teleportation, there’s really nothing that ties these together aside from the name.

Mantra – Mantras are all very powerful skills that can be used any time, even while casting another spell, without interrupting the current action. To make up for this, mantras must be pre-cast before use and have a long cast time.

Phantasm – The two phantasm are Phantasmal Defender, which takes damage for you, and Phantasmal Disenchanter, which removes boons and conditions.

Signet – As with all signets, each skill has a passive effect that can be put on recharge for its activated component. There’s nothing overly special about the mesmer’s signets, though Signet of Illusions plays handily with the mesmer’s class mechanics.

Elite – The mesmer has three very powerful elites. Mass Invisibility has an extremely short recharge for an elite and stealths you and your allies. Time Warp creates an AoE that gives you and allies quickness, doubling your skill recharges and casting speeds. Moa Morph is a fun skill that turns your target into a moa, complete with moa skills. 

Traits

The mesmer’s five trait lines draw their names from GW mesmer attributes and themes of the mesmer class. The final trait line has the mesmer-only attribute, Guile, which reduces the recharge on shattering illusions.

Domination (Pow/Exp) – The minor traits give extra ways to cause vulnerability and increase damage to inactive foes. The major traits cause clones to cripple when damaged, buff shatters, add confusion to glamour AoEs, increase signet recharge speed, buff power while wielding a greatsword, cause torch skills to rmove conditions, add stun to dazes, and allow (non-healing) mantras to be used twice per channel. The final skills are Confounding Suggestions and Harmonious Mantras.

Dueling (Pre/Pro) – The minor traits add vigor to criticals, create clones when you dodge, and cause illusions to confuse when killed. The major traits cloak and clone you when below 25 percent health, increase the range of manipulations, buffs mantras, phantasms fury, cause illusions to bleed enemies on criticals, and give you fury when you interrupt foes. The final traits are Blurred Inscriptions and Protected Mantras.

Chaos (Tou/Con) – The minor traits give regeneration at 75 percent health, add protection to regeneration, and buff condition damage. The major traits give you chaos armor when you rally, cause random conditions when clones are killed, buff reviving, give retaliation when downed, add extra effects to interrupting, increase toughness with staff and trident, increase cloaking (stealth) duration, reduce incoming damage for each illusion you have, reduce manipulation recharges, and remove conditions when you use signets. The final traits are Cleansing Inscriptions and Prismatic Understanding.

Inspiration (Vit/Com) – The minor traits buff phantasms. The major traits increase movement speed for each active illusion, buff glamour skills, reflect projectiles while reviving, remove conditions when healing, increase phantasm health, reflect projectiles with focus skills, add extra healing, give vigor to allies when shattering illusions, and buff condition damage with scepters. The final traits are Restorative Illusions and Restorative Mantras.

Illusions (Mal/Gui) – The minor traits buff shattering and reduce recharges on skills that create illusions. The major traits increase your damage for each active illusion, buff shattering illusions, add confusion to blindness and increase confusion duration, add reflection to distortion (evading attacks), cause glamour skills to blind, and add retaliation to Cry of Frustration. The final traits are Illusionary Persona and Imbued Diversion.

Difficulty

The mesmer isn’t hard to do okay with in PvE, but takes a bit of learning to do well. In PvP, the mesmer is easily the hardest class to learn and master. Not only do PvP mesmers have to learn how to use their skills and learn a build that works for them, but they also have to learn how to visually deceive other players by blending in with their clones. If you’re a PvE player, mesmers aren’t bad for a first profession, but I’d really pick another profession to start out PvP.

The Engineer

This profession guide is accurate as of BWE2.

Masters of mechanical mayhem, engineers tinker with explosives, gadgets, elixirs, and all manner of deployable devices. They can take control of an area by placing turrets, support their allies with alchemic weaponry, or lay waste to foes with a wide array of mines, bombs, and grenades.

-Official Guild Wars 2 Website

Overall Theme

If the eight professions are comic book superheroes, then the engineer is Batman. Engineers get all of the cool gadgets and useful tools to get the job done. From their turrets to their kits (skills that give you a new weapon with five new skills), engineers are all about looking cool while you stomp people. Their major class mechanic, the tool belt, gives them an extra skill based on each non-elite slot skill. Essentially, engineers have four pairs of slot skills plus their elite.

Weapons

Rifle – The rifle offers a lot of skills for keeping enemies away from you. Jump Shot is a targeted leap in any direction and is also handy for jump puzzles. If an enemy does somehow get close to you, Blunderbuss can make them pay at point-blank range.

Pistol (MH) – The main-hand pistol has an emphasis single-target AoE. Even its auto-attack, Explosive Shot, has a built-in AoE.

Pistol (OH) – The off-hand pistol gives engineers a little extra close-range offense, but also offers Glue Shot, one of the most powerful immobilizing skills in the game.

Shield – The engineer’s shield gives some useful defense against both melee and ranged. Static Shield can not only stun attackers, but daze far-away foes!

Underwater

Harpoon Gun – Engineers sadly have only the harpoon gun for underwater combat, but it offers a good mixture between offensive and defense while giving a good amount of AoE.

Slot Skills

Engineers have a lot of turrets, kits, and elixirs for skills, but they also have some handy gadgets. Med Kit lets you start dropping bandages for allies to pick up at will, while its tool belt companion is a straight heal for yourself. Healing Turret drops a turret that does exactly that: it heals you and then provides healing to your companions. Its companion skill will remove all conditions from nearby allies. Finally, Elixir H heals you and gives you a random buff, and its companion skill gives you an AoE with a random defensive buff as well.

Gadgets – Gadgets are little utility skills that have have largely have some form of movement control involved in most of them.

Turret – Turrets are all little devices that you plop on the ground. They sit there and attack targets in range with various effects .Every turret has some sort of overcharge ability on the toolbelt that gives a related, more powerful version of the main effect. Additionally, every turret has a toggle detonate skill that puts the turret on cooldown after the explosion. Turrets may also be picked up for a (slightly) shortened recharge.

Weapon Kit – Weapon kits give you a new weapon that takes over your main bar. Flamethrower gives a lot of burning and movement effects. Elixir Gun has a lot of AoE and condition-based combat as well as some healing and regeneration. Tool Kit gives you a lot of defensive skills as well as the ability to repair your turrets.

Device Kit – Device kits, like weapon kits, give you a new weapon bar. All three device kits are heavily based on explosions and AoE effects. Bomb Kit sets down bombs that explode after a couple seconds. Grenade Kit gives you thrown explosives that detonate on impact. Mine Kit gives you five throwable mines that detonate via remote or proximity.

Elixir – Elixirs are self-buff skills with mostly random effects. Each elixir comes with a tool belt skill that tosses the elixir creating an AoE of a similar random effect.

Elite – The engineer’s elite skills are a fun bunch that also fit the theme of the engineer’s inventiveness. Supply Crate creates a random bunch of bandages, turrets, mines, etc. at the spot which last for 60 seconds. Elixir X gives you a random form elite from the elementalist, necromancer, and warrior professions. Mortar creates a stationary mortar, lasting 120 seconds, which can rain powerful AoE blasts from a considerable distance.

Traits

The five trait lines for the engineer are named after things the engineer uses. The final line has the engineer-only attribute, Ingenuity, which reduces the recharge of tool-belt skills.

Explosives (Pow/Exp) – The minor traits create explosives conditionally and add vulnerability to explosions. The major traits add effects to explosions, cause turrets to explode on death, increase size and range on explosives, reduce bomb and grenade recharges, increase explosion damage, and cripple enemies hit below 25 percent health. The final traits are Elixir Infused Bombs and Explosive Powder. 

Firearms (Pre/Mal) – The minor traits add bleeding to criticals, damage to bleeding enemies, and crit chance against low-health enemies. The major traits increase gun recharges rates and range, add boons or conditions to criticals, add cripple to immobilize effects, increase damage to immobilized enemies, make pistol shots pierce, increase rifle damage, increase harpoon gun damage, and add defensive buffs to the flamethrower. The final traits are Coated Bullets and Juggernaut.

Inventions (Tou/Com) – The minor traits give aid when under 25 percent health and buff power. The major traits buff turrets, give protection when rallying, turn you invisible when immobile, remove boon with mine explosions, add supplies to the Supply Crate, reduce damage taken, and increase movement speed in combat. The final traits are Electromagnetic Mines and Rifle Turret Barrels.

Alchemy (Vit/Con) – The minor traits give boons at 75 percent health, turn some conditions to boons, and increase damage for each boon. The major traits add a chance to poison attackers, buff condition damage, buff elixirs, give buffs to being under 25 percent health, add regeneration to kits, add vigor to swiftness, and buff the elixir gun and flamethrower. The final traits are Automated Response and H.G.H..

Tools (Pro/Ing) – The minor traits buff tool belt skills and increase damage with full endurance. The major traits increase endurance regeneration, buff kits, drop flamethrowers or elixir guns when downed, reduce gadget recharges, add vulnerability to blocks, and give turrets automatic reparing. The final traits are Armor Mods and Autotool Installation.

Difficulty

Engineers aren’t overly complicated, but they require finding a combination of skills that work well together and demand learning the tool belt skills in addition to the regular slot skills. For some players, the engineer will be very easy, while others will find it challenging to come up with an enjoyable style that works.