Dismal Science : Trolling the Theorycrafters

I can nearly imagine the entire conversation at ArenaNet when they were discussing changes to put in for BWE2.

According to my best ability to make things up that sound half-reasonable, it probably went something like this....

"Hey everybody, welcome to our planning meeting for BWE2!"
"Hi, Colin!"

"So, first thing on the agenda. Our players think they've got our combat system figured out."
*group laughter*

"What can we do to completely ruin everything they thought about everything?"

"Let's add tiers to traits, so that you can only put certain traits in certain slots!"
"Brilliant! Any more suggestions?"

"Let's add tiers to skills, so that you can't just purchase the skills you want right out of character creation!"
"BRILLIANT! Any more suggestions?

"Oh, I know! Lets change all the traits too! That way, all of their old builds will be completely ruined and they'll have to figure everything out all over again!"
*group laughter*
"And that's why they pay us the big bucks. Take five everyone."

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.