Still getting smoked: what other progression is there?

You seem to be confusing GW wtih other games. In Guild Wars you reach max level/armor/weapons fast. After that you have to improve as a player. You need better skills better strategy and better tactics. Other games reward grinding with more powerful characters that don't require more player skill. In Guild Wars the game gets harder but the players stay the same.

In this sense GW has some similarities to a first person shooter. The gap in player skill will become more apparent if you try to pvp.

I can see how this might be confusing, as most "rpg" games are built assuming the player is an uncoordinated tool who will grind to get an advantage instead of actually becoming a better player. The mmo's are designed to require grinding to maximize the profits earned from subscription fees.



I'd say get over it and look up some common hero team builds(n/rt....) OR spend the next few years playing until you end up with a bunch of n/rt's.

Good sir, you may have just saved my GW RPG experience.

While I have to wrack my brain to come up with a "Mesmer I'd want to bring", character wise, I have a veritable army of necro-voidy-master-of-spirits-and-death personas to draw upon.

Is N/RT still as good as it's looking with a quick google search?

GW is a living, evolving game, no one team set up and no one build will work everywhere. And you can not play it like you play every other game. Gw is it's own game with it's strategies. If you are dying a lot, then you have a bad strategy and you need to adjust it.

No matter how much you may love and be a huge fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, there is no way you would play them in a football game against the NY Giants.

And by the way, I cleared FoW and WoC by myself with just the heroes provided by the game.

Now Eye of the North is designed as "end game" content, the skills and levels the opponents have is designed for someone that has beaten the other 3 campaigns even if it does not require it, you need a variety of skills. When you face 8 windrider interrupter mesmers the difference between life or death may be as simple as whether or not your mes got off panic before they did. Or when the ice golems have slapped a slow skill on everyone can your ele nuker still hit them from the back line. Do you have enough minions from you necro to overcome a double agro or just a lot of low level montsters.

This is pretty much what I was going to say, so instead I'll QFT.

If you are consistantly failing, chances are it's your strategy that is at fault, not your numbers, assuming your heroes are equipped to a basic standard (one elite skill each; at least basic max weapons and basic max armour; the right insignias/runes and weapon upgrades help, but in general aren't neccessary).

Read OP...


If your team is built right, it almost doesn't matter what you are/do in most of the game.

Heros and partial equipment list:

Try to get a major or superior vigors for your heros that you use the most. Money is easy to make so spend it on your team. You will get it back with less wipes and frustration. Use wiki for builds or check forums for specific templates.

1) ST RIT. Practice leaving him in the 1st hero slot and flag behind your group 1.5 bubbles. This is the only hero I run with Radiant/Attunement set. High energy Communing staff or +5e/+5 defense spear and +12e com offhand. Major commun and major spawning runes. His only job is to keep shelter up from beginning of fight til the end. SET TO AVOID

Pure healer or a NECRO Ritualist Healer
Anchorites or Blessed for monks. Green Healing staff are 3-7k in kam.
Tormented and Major or Minor Soul Reaping for necro 40/40 restoration set (15kish from weapons maker in Cantha). SET AVOID unless running ICY VEINS etc.

Pure Minion master wherever there are bodies. There are lots in most places.
Tormented, bloodstained, Major or Superior Death, Minor Soul Reaping runes. Death staff with HP, enchants, etc. You can set to avoid if not running any direct damage spells. I prefer mines making minions and wells to putrid bile or wanding stuff.

The 2 necros can be modified and used as discorders or sabway triple necros build.

SOS RIT
Superior Channeling, minor spawning, minor restore (if running restoration too).
Channeling staff is fine for most of game.

3 Damage dealers: Mesmers, Rojers, Nukers, SOGM, Discorders. Research on wiki and try different ones out.

You can barrage, but there are much better options for you like dagger spam or AP.

Runes. Survivor is junk. Added defense is better. So go with the cheaper class specific defensive runes if they apply or try Blessed (if they have enchants), etc.

You are looking for synergy. So if you decided to barrage or use dags, make sure your SOS rit has splinter weapon.

With the right team, you can basically run from group to group. They can handle several groups at once, when minions and spirits are up in NM and HM. This is a cookie cutter build that is idiot proof for most of the game. On the latest end game content (Winds of Change), I found myself going back to the basics with a jagged bomber MM and/or SOS rit.

END GAME HM CONTENT will require more tuning and strategy. With the right team build you can play poorly for most of the game, but you will want to learn to flag properly and micro certain skills for the harder areas.

Allow me to interject here. While I do like the usefulness of soul twisting/shelter, it just doesn't work well when you have minions running around all over the place. In my experience, your hero won't be able to maintain shelter when it's absorbing damage from an army of minions, even when it's being recharged by soul twisting.

More on topic: You kind of have to change your preconceptions about rpg characters if you want to succeed at GW. More important than individual builds, is how well those builds synergize with each other. There are also many skills and builds that heroes won't use correctly. Glyphs and echo spells almost never get used before the correct spells; a warrior hero with monk skills will often spend more time trying to heal minions than he will attacking enemies.

So, I say, throw out everything you think you know about rpgs, and start from scratch. Find skill combinations that are simple enough for heroes to use, yet synergize well with each other, and everything will become easier. Alternatively, look up team builds online for inspiration.

I do appreciate all of the advice flowing out, and I'm already bookmarking wikis and hero-friendly builds to implement when I get home. I'm also starting to notice the addictive nature of build designing, and the whole "I totally gotta try that" impulse.

Hard part's going to be financing all of this power-gearing, but I've noticed that money isn't hard to come by, (maybe it's always been like that, but I don't recall) and that's just a matter of grinding.

Thanks again, all. I feel a lot better about this undertaking. I really just want to re-familiarize myself with the world and lore, and maybe take a dent out of HOM before GW2

My input here is just to tell you that gw is very unique in terms of your team setup.
Running the pyromancer on fire resistant enemies or a minion master on places with little to no corpses will surely make it hard for you. Also your concept of paladin in here is mostly likely a wammo (at least it was mine) that isn't good in damage nor in healer, aka the useless party member.

In here you shouldn't also run more than on pure healing build char. One dedicated healer is enough and if needed you can have a supportive member able help around, but his main job should be something else. The rest of the job is done by a char dedicated to protect your party by mitigating the damage (prot monk or ST rit usually).

Also seen as counter intuitive is that melee isn't the same as tanker. They're actually one of the most damaging professions able to spike down almost everything (they have lots of counter though). And don't forget that the melee hero AI is just terrible so avoid them as much as you can.

You should really try mesmers once you get around the mechanics of the game (with your apparent background doesn't seem it will take much) since they're pretty unique and very useful after their last buff.
And necros to me are the most fun profession of all. Soul Reap can manage their energy pretty well so they can play almost anything.
Using their main attributes you can go minion master (hero is the best at this) but as an Ele secondary they can play Searing Flames rather well (if things die fas enough). With Rt secondary theres the unlimited energy healing builds that can be very handy sometimes.

So, what I'm getting, here and elsewhere, is that if there was a class that was safe to stack (once the bare bones of party composition is met), it's the necro hehe

It sounds like you were defeated before you began, because this game really boils down to builds and skills. Not looking at the wiki ignores a great resource that ArenaNet has integrated into the game. It would be redundant and needlessly lengthy and complex to duplicate all the information in game that the wikis provide.

You are right that the ST can be taxed by minions and can leave team very vulnerable. I should have addressed it.

For NM it doesn't matter much since you will get an army going and shelter helps keep them up. Nothing wrong with that IMO.

In HM there is usually 0-5 minions making it from fight to fight and that doesn't seem to tax Shelter much unless you are trying to maintain an army of them. In some areas definitely Shelter and no minions. In some other areas, you may want to not run either. I did run dual mm's in some HM WOC areas and had up to 19 minions going from fight to fight, but at that point I was rolling single mobs and some patrols. The main point is to get him to try out the ST rit since it's currently the easiest way to prot a team IMO. When set up right, hero rit can keep Shelter up long enough for the battle to be decided.
Current ST runs...
Soul Twisting, Shelter, Energetic, Sig creation, with Earthbound microd (for my rojs), EoE (depending) and testing serpents quickness since ranger 2nd already. Radiant and attunement runes in open slots. Idk if this an ideal build for others. I tend to tweak to my play style and sometimes I just make it work.

Finished WOC twice in HM which isn't a big deal imo since some quests depends on spawns. Finished Jinnais in the graveyard and teleporting to corner. The corner was far easier, but I failed once cuz a patrol came up from bottom and killed my ST rit before I could finish off 1st mob. Also that tricky quest against the fan am where you flag them back in the corner could be problematic if a 2nd or 3rd group aggrod too soon. I did DC on last HM attempt during the 1st group. When I got back on they had completed the quest for me. Pretty sure the MM and ST rit had a lot to do with that. That's impressive, but also shows that spawns have a lot to do with success in that particular quest.

As with anything, play with what works for you. Minions are great for making the game easy in most areas cuz they are batteries for necs at the very least. Specifically for the nec healer. I notice the MM prefers creating wells and death nova over minions so I have to disable them at times. I'm still on not sold on wells, but it was better than enemies using corpses. AoTL kinda sucked in HM WOC on my healer @ 15 death so I brought another MM with jagged, death nova and wells for some areas or went pure healing on nec rit.

Ha Ha iv'e wanted to say this for years but figured no one would get what im saying :P.
MTG really is a perfect comparison for me.
I miss my goblin deck and my draw card/counter one :P.

OT: If you are still getting smoked but want to try and make your own way.

Start by bringing more healing/prot monks (monks being easiest to set up)
then work your way into more offensive set ups.

Bring one Protection hero and one Minionmaster and that will improve the teams longevity.

Heros and Henchmen arn't players, you need to treat them like pets essentially. player builds will not work well.

If you just want to do stuff fast... You will need to use META builds because all the research is done and they ARE the best way. It'll be a miracle to find a build/expliot players havn't already found.

Goodluck!

Thanks! I never played MTG much, but I watched friends and I think the whole necro MM concept sounds a lot like the "Plague rat deck" my friend used to use, where he would count the cards and proclaim in "the count's" voice:

"Fourteen! Fourteen plague rats! Ah Ah AHHH!"

More or less like that.
Necros are a multi purpose profession.
They excel using their main attributes (no other profession can as efficiently raise minions or go SS spamer for example) and soul reaping enables them to get the most from their secondary.
While other professions generally, not always, rely on secondaries due to their shortness (monks need mesmer for energy management, eles use mesmer usually for arcane echo for more damage, barrage rangers use rits for damage, etc), necros could very well manage a full or near full bar of their respective secondary. (any/Rt and any/A with SoS and AP spike are some of the few exceptions and are for player use, not hero).

Nevertheless any necro bar using those kinds of skills will always be inferior when compared to their respective professions.
An SF necro will never deal as much damage compared to the ele and the N/Rt will never heal as much with a single skill, they are just less likely to out of energy (normally never if done right).

You can also abuse your heroes reflexes and capacity to "overview" the field while doing their job (healing/damaging/"insert other job here"). For example an hero with a mesmer secondary can make good use of skills like "leach signet" and "waste not want not".

Still never forget that it's the synergy between your setup that will determine if you can make it easily or not.
If you only rely on casters bring a good protection against melee or they will get raped by the enemy warr, sins and dervishs due to low armor. If you are a melee don't forget "Splinter Weapon" and "Strength and Honor" as it helps a lot.

Power in this game often comes from skillful use of skills. Completing the campaigns gives you access to more skills for you and your heroes and thus gives you more and better options to choose from.

But aside from that it also gives you a wider variety of experiences that build up gradually in difficulty and let you learn how your skills work and which ones to use. You will learn that sometimes it is better to be able to interrupt enemy skills than to heal the damage, that it is important to learn about patrol groups and agro control and how to pull. The importance of picking the right targets and calling them to take advantage of focused fire.

Lots of professions in the game can be stacked to good effect with the right builds. N/* are very popular because as long as things are dying (or even half dead) they have practically endless energy making them pretty decent at running other profession's builds.

Lastly, EotN is harder because it was, in part, designed to defeat a lot of the builds that were popular at the time. Hence, Destroyers can't be set on fire making Searing Flames completely useless even in NM. The mobs also have a greater mix of professions within them and better designed bars. As well as a few very annoying monster skills that cause knockdowns.

Observing patrol patterns and then proper pulling (flag heroes where you want to fight, use a long bow to pull target group back to your team, make sure the group you want isn't too close to another group) really makes the game a lot easier.

You don't have to read the wiki to learn your skills. For myself, I just never liked reinventing the wheel, so I like to read up on what other people have done and customize it for what I think works better for my particular problem. Cheating would be more like looking up the wiki walk throughs for missions/quests before doing them. Looking up builds is just getting advice on good builds, it's not an instant win button (well, at least it's not in hard mode).

ok my 10 cents worth now.
Someone already mentioned that if heros are correctly set then your profession wont matter - a great example of this is afk glints - you go afk and heros do the job for you.
Now if you havnt got heros set right with builds etc and some synergy then problems will arise.One good way is to glance at gwpvx.com and look at many of the builds so you can see how they work and then try something similar on yourself and heros.
Ive done eotn on several chrs with diff hero setups on all - last time i did eotn i did all quests/missions in nm then repeated straight after on hm.I found it fairly easy in both modes but im not here to brag because if my heros were badly skilled etc then i know sure as hell id be going mad and dying all the time.Thats from my own experiance of gw and if i were to look back 4 years and use what i know now then i would have been a better player without running around with heros that sucked and dying a lot - if there was a title for dying then i would have probably got it within a few months.

There is a lot to more gw than just builds - as others say its also pulling and knowing patrols and i feel gw is a constant learning curve that alters after each buff/nerf to skills.
Moral of the story - dont give up but spend a bit of time studying builds etc which in the long term will pay off

It was one of their acknolwedged influences, too.

Just to highlight the sort of basics that you need to build into your team build in GW: This is something they wanted to change in GW2. A year or two ago they said somewhere on the blog that GW2's more restrictive skill bar is kind of like making sure that people can't build unplayable decks. (MTG analogy: you're forcing every deck to have 24 land and a decent curve. That does mean you can't make plaguerats.dec, but that's probably for the best. It also means you can't make super abusive decks, and who knows whether that's for the best. Maybe it is in an MMO like GW2, anyway...) It's less freedom, and less fun for those of us that enjoy trying to tweak a set of 64 skills, but the benefit should be that nobody ever has as much trouble in GW2 as omedon666 has had.

Honestly, as a guild officer in various games who likes to bring his friends of all walks of life into the games I play, I'm a HUGE fan of the modern "no wrong builds" ideology that has clearly popped up long after GW was designed. I can "dial back" my mind to the times when wrong builds were all over the place (as I am today with GW), it's just... kinda jarring.

It is a tradeoff, though. They have to take away a lot of the flexibility in GW2 to make sure that every build will work (while still providing interesting challenges).

That's not necessarily a bad thing overall. But it's different. And in some cases (maybe not MMMOs, but also remember that GW started life built around PvP as much as PvE, and it took them a while to learn how to break those apart), it would definitely be a bad thing overall. Magic would be a much worse game without the flexibility of putting any cards you want into your deck. But with that flexibility comes the ability to make really terrible decks. (Your friend's plague rat deck, for instance. Fun, sure, but also terrible.)

One of the things that makes good CCGs great games is that flexibility. There's always some chance that someone out there will find a way to squeeze a little more power out of their deck. Similarly, there's always the chance that someone will find a way to optimize their GW build just a little more. GW2 won't have that to anywhere near the same extent. (Hopefully it will have other things that make it a great game. But this is a GW forum, not a GW2 forum, so mostly it's interesting for the contrast. :P )

I apologize for the somewhat necro post, but I figured I could provide some follow-up

I'd like to thank everyone that calmly and helpfully told me "YOU'RE DOIN' IT WRONG" in this thread. I just completed the core Asura story portion of EotN today, and now I'm going through the factions campaign (cherrypicking low end HoM points hehe) with my 7 custom personally relevant and now logistically functional mercs, and I'm having a blast! All frustration has evaporated (the only "failure" I've experienced was a miscue on an escort mission... sadly Brother Mhenlo isn't part of team invincible) and I'm loving the story and the outfits I've now unlocked for my GW2 characters!

I will say that GW shows its age in how easy it is to "build wrong", and it's very true that one can't hope to approach it like an "RPG" when it comes to populating the merc party if they want to have a less frustrating experience. I bent my personas around the game instead of the reverse, and I'm having a much better time now, many thanks to the Gurus on this site.

After years steering clear of the cesspool that are the official WoW forums, it's very refreshing to meet a community as helpful as this one. Thank you again, and I hope to see you all in GW2 in some form or another.

All the best,

-Omedon