Help for the noob

I just recently started playing the game, and I had the thought for a pet heavy build, using ranger/necro. While I am not entirely displeased with the way it is running, I'd very much like any advice anyone can give me on issues such as energy management and means to keep the necro beasties alive. Or, if this build, from experience, has broven to be truly unworkable, I'd like to hear about that as well. Thanks in advance for the help!

I'm assuming from your post that you mean minions. And if you want to do minions you should be a necro primary, because the amount of minions you can have is determined by the amount of attributes you put into death magic, and on a non necro primary the most you can have is 8 minions (12 death). But if you're dead set on being a R/N MM then Blood Of The Master and Veratas Sacrifice are 2 spells to keep your minions alive.

I've been rapidly arriving at the conclusion the I DID indeed do the build wrong. I know there are ways to change the secondary, but I think I've decided I rather like the debuff side of necro, so instead of the minion route, I'm trying debuffs for a bit. Once again, any advice is greatly appreciated, and thx for the tip on the skills to keep the minions alive.

If you are saying that you're using a bow + some necro skills to debuff then that sounds fine, just remember that Expertise does not lower the cost of spells.

If you are saying that you're using only necro skills then again it is better to play a necro primary: more energy, soul reaping to provide energy, +1 to attribute from hat, runes to add to attributes.

what dean said, except to add that touch skills are affected by expertise (example: vampiric touch). In my opinion there are really only a few times when heavy touch skills are better than a good bow build, but they do make for good self defense.

I'm working on a bow/debuff build. I've only been playing about a week, so I'm still unfamiliar with the skill names, but I'm currently running two of the necro debuffs, as well as a drain life type skill, the whirling defense stance, power shot, ignite arrow (Not sure if that's the actual name, off hand), dual shot, and charm animal. One of the necro skills is faitheatedness, and the other, I don't recall the name, does a slow life drain effect (-hp for foe, +hp for me). While I'm sure the charm animal doesn't really fit in with the rest of it, I've been primarily soloing, so having another body to run about with helps at times. Thought having a bit more information might help those wanting to give me advice

Quote:

Most rangers will encounter serious energy problems if they fill their skill bars with spells since they are not affected by Expertise. Also, your expertise should be at least 9 for most general usage and well above for many builds. See Guild Wiki for a good chart that shows the cutoffs on energy reduction of skills with respect to expertise level:

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Expertise

If you are running with a necro secondary, I would suggest looking at Plague Touch and maybe Enfeebling Touch for PvE usage. They are considered 'skill' type skills instead of 'spell' type skills as most necro skills are and therefore area affected by expertise. Plague Touch is generally best suited as a condition removal for melee classes, but can be handy against enemies attacking you at melee range. Enfeebling Touch could possibly be a decent defense against attacking melee type enemies that are near you to reduce their damage by inflicting weakness.

Beyond this usage, however, I would suggest you stick mainly to the ranger line of skills.

You won't be able to solo for much longer. Troll unguent is good healing, if you need that. The minions can help distract the monsters for a while during a battle, but they don't live long and you can't really do anything about it.

Weaken armor and rotting flesh are pretty good. Also, 2 or 3 henchies really help with the bigger groups.

Why not Hunter's Shot instead of Power Shot? My Ranger does almost the same amount of damage with both, and there's the Bleeding that HS has if you hit a moving enemy. And it's half the energy cost.

Chris

Instead of going around in circles, wouldn't it be easier to just post the current build you are using, and then we can pick apart things for you and help you improve in the areas you might be wanting or how to point you in a direction that may be better.
Edit: I see you started to, but going a little more specific might help out.

I keep on meaning to put up the exact build, but usually I'm not looking at my character build when I'm posting on the forums, as I'm at work or at school, and therefore don't have access to the game. So when I get home from class tonight, I'll get into the game and write stuff down so I can do that. Essentially, I'm still experimenting around, and trying to find something that works for my playstyle, and everything that's been posted so far has helped me tremendously. In fact, while I can't give you more specific information on my build, I CAN ask some more specific questions.

First off, there was a comment about my time soloing being almost at an end. Is that due to the build, or simply due to the difficulty of the game itself? Either way, is there a viable way to extend the solo range of playability by a more careful selection of powers?

Second, I am discovering that I do indeed enjoy focusing nearly entirely on the ranger abilities, and have been foregoing the necro side of things. I looked at various different "Bow Builds" on the forums, but am having difficulty figuring what might be best for me for two reasons: I'm still unfamiliar with all the abilities and I don't see a lot of skills that do what I want to do.

Which leads me to my next question: what abilities are out there to keep enemies out of melee? I play PvE, so I know some of that will be due to standard reactions of mobs, but I only saw one skill the last time I went to the trainer the only skills I saw that looked close to the effect that I wanted wwere crippling shot and pin down. What I would love to find are two or three immobilizing abilities (I play City of Heroes, so if you think along the lines of what immobilize does there, then we're on the same page), but my searches through the skills lists have not turned anything up. Am I missing something, or are there no immobilizers, just cripplers that will have a slowing effect?

Once again, thank you for all the information, it's helped me out a lot, and I'm learning a lot faster than I thought I would!

In prophecies, and given the ranger/necro class combination. you're only way to slow opponents will be pin down until late in the storyline. Many folks feel (myself included) that the first time through the game is training for how to play. After is when the real strategy game comes into play. Because GW has a fixed low easily obtainable level cap, easily obtainable 'max' weapons and many 'free skills' in prophesies, a LOT of the game is getting all of your elite skills and creating a new skillbar for yourself later once you have more to choose from.
Early in the game (in my mind that's anything pre 20th level) you are more limited in resources like skills and equipment choices, so there isn't going to be a perfect build until late game. The max rated armor in prophesies is basically unobtainable through normal gameplay until you are level 20 for example. Max weapons slightly earlier.
On immobilization: different professions have differing strengths and some will augment each other well and some are slightly more of a stretch (or more advanced if you prefer). Ranger/Elementalist or ranger/mesmer (or in factions ranger/assassin) are the commanders of making others go slow. There is no real complete immobilization in GW though, no. The 'slow down' effects DO stack however.... for example crippled ([wiki]Pin Down[/wiki]) and say a hex like [wiki]Imagined Burden[/wiki] combine effects so that the target is moving at 12.5% normal speed. Two cripple skills are the same effect as one though so its a waste to do that.
Ele stuff: quite a few water attribute spells slow 66-90%, earth has a few as well.
mesmer stuff: lotsa hexes with slowing effect in illusion attribute line
ranger and warrior: some crippling ability, ranger advantage is apply poison and other conditions are spammable and therefore an awesome pressure tool. warriors can spread conditions, but usually single target (seperate one from the herd if you will). R/W or W/R have some interesting synergy with apply poison and area effect warrior attacks(there are some axe/sword and hammer however most use axe).
necro: none that I can think of unless you want to think in terms of minions body blocking...with the exception of plague touch and similar skills which can pass a condition to an opponent.
monk: nada

I took a moment to look over the R/E and R/Me skill sets, and I have to say, I believe R/E would work for me. The only fear I have is energy management, as if I read correctly hexes are outside the effects of expertise. But I do really like the look of the water stuff, and I'm going to take some time to see some sample builds of the R/E to see if there's anything that looks good to me.

By the way, I don't have Prophesies...I'm playing Nightfall only. I just hit level 20 a couple of days ago, and have been trying to build a bank to get good equipment (though I have yet to find what the definition of good equipment is).

Oh, and looking things over, it looks like crippling effects are unneccessary if I run with the slow effects from water...is this a correct analysis?

Experimenting is good, keep doing that.

For a ranger, a good general purpose bow could be a recurve or longbow with +15% damage while health is above 50% (15^50), a poisonous or crippling bowstring and a bowgrip of shelter or fortitude.

If you're into the crippling thing, Dervish has [wiki]Harrier's Grasp[/wiki] and [wiki]Grenth's Grasp[/wiki], though I've found cripple to be less usefull for most PvE.