Dismal Science: DRAGON ZOMBIES.

Seriously guys, this happened.

Dismal Science: Part I, Building a Necromancer

I'll be frank about this,  I don't really like MMO PvP. I never really got into it in WoW, it was the reason I left War, so on and so forth. The primary factors behind whether or not an encounter were won or lost typically had almost nothing to do with "skill" or "tactics," regardless of what those 2200 RMP teams will tell you. It was decided by your class, your spec, and the gear that you got as a result of that class and spec. At the beginning of an expansion, any class that had a basic mechanical advantage would quickly dominate PvP, leading to that class out-gearing everyone else. Predictably, it would then go on to steamroll its way through the rest of the expansion. And that has no appeal, whatsoever, to me.

In my mind, PvP should be an exercise about strategy and cunning, mixed with ingenuity and a well-built and played character. And that is what I honestly feel like I've encountered in Guild Wars 2, for the first time in any online game.

That said, I spent the past BWE and stress test doing one thing and one thing only, learning to play a necromancer like I was born with 30 points in Soul Reaping. Necromancers have been described with things like "obtuse", "difficult", and "why on earth do all of my skills hit for 50 damage when that elementalist over there is dropping 2k between shots of cough syrup." After digging into it, I think I've found an a good answer for that.

Dismal Science : Interjection! (And the Stress Test, Reviewed)

(Introductions are hard. Really, what do you start with? I have no idea.)

Hi. I'm Kaenes. I'll be joining Divinity's Reach and working with Entombed to bring our readers the best Guild Wars 2 news, commentary, and analysis that can be conjured forth from our collective minds.

I daylight as a musician, night as an economist (yeah, you have no idea how much fun that was to explain to my girlfriend). I've played essentially every western MMO to come out in the past five years. I've raided since vanilla WoW as a druid, stomped through keeps as a swordmaster in WAR, and sythed small armies of random monsters as a dervish in Guild Wars 1. After all of that, all I can say is that I am sick of standardized MMO's.

And I am incredibly excited about Guild Wars 2.

Also, Necromancers are the best profession. I think I should just get that out of the way, for disclosure's sake.