As the current GM of [VI] (Naughtius has resigned his position to lead up the MechWarrior Online gamer group) I would like to thank Punch Clock for doing such agreat job on the recritment post revamp. Sometimes I think we take our job too seriously, but one simply cannot skimp on these matters.

I've been with IGC for a year and a half now and it's been great having a consistent, but still growing, group of online gaming friends who are always up for having some fun. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail the recruiter or whisper one of us in-game (Punch Clock Villain or Papaj).

Axis of Insurrection

About Us

Axis of Insurrection was formed in July of 2012 with the foundation of five organized, World vs World Guilds: Violent Impact, Applied Tactics, Open Rebellion,  RAGE Coalition, Ascendance, and Onslaught. Each Guild individually understood that being proactive in setting up a coordinated World vs World structure would be substantially more beneficial than attempting to organize from the available Guilds on their server at launch. From that understanding, we have formed an Axis based on the core values of teamwork, organization, communication, and dedication to the server and the World vs. World cause; this is the Axis of Insurrection.

Structurally, the Axis operates via a Council of Guild Leaders. Outside of the game, the Council makes decisions based on a majority vote, with each Guild having one equal vote. New Axis member Guilds must be voted on, and a unanimous decision must be reached in order to accept them. Decisions in game that pertain to World vs World activities are generally discussed and coordinated through the Council Guild Leaders, or the active representatives of a Guild should their leader not be present.

With the common goal of World vs. World domination through strategic play and focusing more on quality versus quantity, Axis of Insurrection strives to overcome obstacles and overwhelming numbers and become a figurehead representative Alliance for our server. Through collaboration and coordination, all Axis members strive to better themselves, better each other, and become a much closer community of players that eliminates the opposition.

Member Guilds

North American

Violent Impact [VI]
http://www.impact-gaming.us/violent-impact/about
Contact: Naughtius, Ald, Papaj, Maylei

Applied Tactics [ATac]
http://www.applied-tactics.com/home
Contact: Rorek, Strategy, NexusMav

Onslaught [OnS]
http://onslaughtclan.enjin.com/
Contact: Malevolent, Kezorian

RAGE Coalition [RAGE]
http://ragecoalition.com/
Contact: Colfy

International

Ascendance [ASC]
http://www.guildasc.com/home
Contact: Gambit, Goose, Vahlic

Oceanic
We are currently looking for active and dedicated Oceanic WvW Guilds to join our Alliance!

European
We are currently looking for active and dedicated European WvW Guilds to join our Alliance!

Joining the Axis

Presently, Axis of Insurrection is looking to bring in several more North American Guilds as well as Oceanic and European guilds. Our ultimate goal is to be able to provide a substantial World vs World presence from this Axis at any given time of day. Any Guild interested in joining should be fully aware that this is not primarily a PvE endeavor, and members of your Guild will be expected to actively represent the Axis when we are coordinating WvW activities.

Before launch, we will be focused on making the best server decision possible for our members to ensure a fun, and challenging experience that will last the entirety of our Guild Wars 2 gameplay.

If you are interested in bringing your Guild into the Axis of Insurrection, we would request you contact us through the Axis of Insurrection website via: http://www.axis-insurrection.com/joinus

Originally posted by Magnum2103

Planetside 2, but much more casually than Guild Wars 2.

Same deal, but only because we'll have community members playing it. And by much more casually we mean maybe for a few hours before bed on a weekend if our server has a significant lead in WvW that particular night.

No Xobdnas, you win. We already won by pre-purchasing and playing extensively in the betas so that we can show others the light. Got an old WoW friend I raided with for 2 years a beta key, showed him a few videos of our guild stomping things, and pointed him towards the official Guild Wars 2 website and he said "Holy shit dude, this looks amazing." My reply "Bro, I haven't told you the best part yet. No monthly sub." Now, I couldn't see his face as he was 3000 miles away, but I'm pretty damn sure his jaw was on the floor.

This game is truly what every MMO should have been from the very start of them. The more I play/look at GW2, and then play older/other games, the harder it is for me to justify playing any game that isn't GW2. Maybe by 2020 some other developer will release one as good as this, I highly doubt it though, so long as they keep WoW on a golden pedastel, they will be doomed to mere mediocre success.

Originally posted by Trionicus

I was still on the fence about buying GW2 but I've thrown so much money atI[mod edit]I might as well give someone else a shot, if only to ensure competition survives.

While not a particularly sound decision (at least not economically speaking), it is logically a good decision, and a decision I personally feel you will not regret; just make sure to throw out all previous conceptions about what an MMO is/should be, if you don't, you will probably be upset or find yourself complaining about why it is not a re-skinned version of WoW. I will admit, 3 years ago when they first debuted the Zhaitan footage from GamesCon (and I was up to my chin in WoW fanboy-ism) I was charging headfirst screaming "shitty, lame-ass, no skill required, zerg game."

Well, I've since grown up, dropped the naive outlooks, and actually did what any college educated (or even high school educated) person should've done in the first place, and that is critically looked at the game all from an un-biased, purely information based perspective. When I did that about 9-10 months ago, although rather skeptical, I decided I would reserve judgment and give it the benefit of the doubt. I believe if more people took this approach, we'd have a lot less hate flying around these forums and better games in the future because of the positive reception of this genre-redefining game.

Guild Wars 2 is a new kind of MMO, hell, it's a new kind of game in general if you want my honest opinion. This is the direction the genre should have been moving towards years ago, and it's about damn time some serious out-of-the-box game design is hitting this stagnated to hell genre. I wonder if Blizzard is holding back on Titan to see if they need to redesign it (oh who am I kidding? We all know Blizzard never intended to make "Titan" anytime soon, it'll be the MMO version of SC2 and D3. Something they release on the verge of everyone forgetting about the previous games to sucker people into giving them more money).

Can we get moderators to lock/delete threads like this? I think it's pretty evident that you cannot use real life currency to buy any sort of items or boosts in the game that the result of doing so is "I bought this so I automatically win or have a such significant advantage over you that it would be a one in a million shot for you to beat me."

Those simply do not exist, getting XP boosts to level to 80 faster doesnt matter, as all the PvP auto-scales you to level 80 anyway. Getting Karma boosts matters so little because the only thing you can do with it is buy gear from vendors, and gear matters about as much to a PvP battle as losing a $100 bill matters to Bill Gates. And if your guild has a decent size (10-20) of even remotely active players (~10-15 hours a week each), your research will be bottlenecked by the fact they take days to research and that you can only queue up so many at a time.

I'm not vastly knowledgable in the area of economics and the like, but a couple friends are Business/Accounting majors and know what pay-to-win means (they game every now and then, just not on MMOs). But when even they say there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the cash shop in its current form is pay-to-win, I'm going to have to agree with them (even though they merely confirmed my earlier opinion).

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus
hearts are just there as another type of entertaiment, i just use them to get a direction when moving to a new area.

^ This. It gives a sense of direction in the zones like "Hey, there's stuff over here, and here, and all the way over there, you should check these out." It gives you something to do when you aren't doing what the majority of your XP gains will come from (gathering, exploring, skill challeneges, waypoint/point of interest unlocks).

A few guildies and I were running around one of the zones (believe it was Kessex Hills) and we found a Renown heart we didn't do on the map and decided to go do it. Well, it led us into a cave where a  Hylek NPC turned us into Pigs to go collect some mushrooms or some crap from insect burrows. The icing on the cake was that vendor had some upgrades to our underwater weapons and there was a long water-filled tunnel that led out of the cave and into the surrounding lake with mobs to go use them on.

Funny thing you mention pen & paper tabletop RPGs and sandboxes that are over a decade old, we had a pretty intricate guild discussion about this the other day on TeamSpeak. It basically boiled down to 2 things we could all agree on:

1. People evaluate a game based on their own idea of "the perfect game" or compare it to some game that was good for its time, but would never be successful in today's market. An example of this would be those tabletop RPGs and the sandboxes 10+ years ago (MUD days anyone?) or Diablo 2 vs Diablo 3. Sandboxes and all that were cool 10 years ago, because it had never been done before and allowed players total freedom. Or just look at Diablo 3, basically a carbon copy of Diablo 2 with updated graphics and some combat/class additions and tweaks. The problem is D2 was a good game (i.e. genre shattering).......12 years ago, not so much now. There's a little bit of bias in my opinion regarding D3, but all 2 dozen people on my Bnet friends list who were going at it hardcore for the first 3 weeks after release have pretty much all but shelved the game, despite them braggign profusely about it being "the greatest game ever and the only game I'll be playing for a long time." That brings me to my 2nd point.
2. If it was "the greatest game ever" or had "the greatest *insert something about game here*" then why aren't you playing it now? Legitimately, some people still do play those games that they hold that high on their pedastel. But when you go try to show them someting new or talk about it, MOST responses end up being "Oh it has/doesn't have *insert game mechanic here*, it's gonna fail." These people are merely stubborn, afraid that their game will suffer dramatically, or jaded by their thought process that "if a game was good 10 years ago, it must be good today." I'd even venture to say a good portion of them don't even play the game anymore, but bitch about every new game that comes out because it isn't a carbon copy of their favorite game in it's heyday.

Originally posted by Mephster

GW2 standard pvp is nothing more than gloriied 5v5 alliance battles. There is also WvW but thats nothing more than zerg here and zerg there. Thats why the pvp will fail for the long term. 

For WvW being "zerg here, zerg there" zerging didn't seem to do too well for the guys being annihilated despite a 10:1 numbers advantage in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsg3v5PV5-4&list=UUAivsj_sJetFv_cd2dfhh7Q&index=1&feature=plcp

There's also a thread here http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/forums/thread/355614/How-to-succeed-in-WvWvW-with-a-low-population-and-a-small-guild.html which lays out proven strategies as to how to go about being successful in WvW without following around the mindless zerg.

Now on to the actual topic at hand. The OP is right about one thing (much like my good buddy Alders pointed out), and that is that Average Joe MMOer will not be able to fully enjoy and will be frustrated beyond belief. But that point is negated by the fact that non-skilled players should have never even been able to feel like they were "awesome" or successful. If a player wanted that, they can go roll a Rogue or Mage in WoW. Even players that are god-awful at those classes can be a nuisance to good players because of their dozens of defensive cooldowns and hard CC spells.

Just like the bottom line of my last post said, buy it, try it, enjoy it. Put off buying the new Madden/COD for another month or two, or cancel that WoW/SW:TOR/Rift sub for a month or two to help. Or better yet, just don't buy Madden/COD and keep telling game companies that it is an acceptable practice to reskin a game, add +1 to the number on the box, and release it for full price.

This is not a game you need to play 40 hours a week to get somewhere and have "fun" in. Quite the opposite in fact, it plays almost like an RPG. Load it up when you have free time, go screw around for a little bit, and come back another day where you left off. Of course it has things single player RPG's don't, like PvP, a more action oriented combat system, and weapons that change your playstyle. But it has a lot of things similar to them, like vast explorable worlds, little to no linearity, and pretty customizable characters and skills sets.

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Yes was a Gladiator S3 on Warrior and S5 on DK in WoW.  I was also a Duelist every season I played except S4 (quit to go to WAR).  The last 3 MMO's Ive played structured PvP or Warfronts/Battlegrounds are the ONLY endgame activity I do.  Im not a boastful person but I am pretty damn good when it comes to small scale PvP, which I got started in running 8 man gank groups in DAoC.

Lol at being a Gladiator with those 2 classes during those 2 seasons. The seasons of "Stunherald" and where DK's could spam a /castrandom macro with a dozen abilities on it and make killing someone look like taking candy from a 2 year old. Not to mention Blood DK's could solo 2v2s because Death Strike healed them for half their life if they had a BoH and Grim Toll was procced.

Harsh truths aside, pretty much everyone I played with in Beta had only positive things to say about the weapon system. But I suppose we put more emphasis on building a character that had utility and had the potential to be successful in PvP encounters as opposed to "I have to use these weapons because I only like the looks of them." The only real complaints came from the Thieves, because in all honestly they are the weakest and easiest class to deal with in the game. They are really only the best at running away from fights; glass cannon (burst damage) builds are bad in general if you end up finding anyone with a decent amount of HP and total defense value (toughness + armor). Plus, the initiative system puts that terrible resource strain on the class and it really makes some abilities flat out useless because it is not worth the cost.

Someone on page 1 said something along the lines of "I'd rather have 15 abilities and use most or all of them consistently than have 30+ abilities and only ever use 3-5 of them." Obviously that's a personal preference, but one would have to be a rather peculiar individual to enjoy using 10-15% of your skills more than using 75-100% of your skills.

I think a lot of the hate on the combat and skill system in GW2 stems from players growing complacent with the mediocre-at-best combat systems in other MMOs. The combat systems that emphasize and encourage the use of only a handful of skills because they are infinitely superior to the other 2 dozen skills in every situation. I believe the hate/discontent also stems from those players being to stubborn and lazy to learn a system that actually requires the use of more than a handful of brain cells to be successful in (this ties into the complacency factor). Players at the top of their game don't want to leave that known "e-fame" behind and have to re-establish it from Square 1 all over again, especially if they need to learn how to play the system and can't just walk in after crunching numbers with a set of skills that will always be superior no matter what.

Originally posted by grimm6th

I think what you don't get is that weapon sets do several things:

1. they group skills together, making them easier to remember.
2. they force you to use a weapon in order to learn each skill past the first, making the weapon easier to learn.
3. they reduce the number of hotkeys you have to think about at any given time, making things simpler to remember.
4. they limit the number of skills you can use during any one fight, allowing for you to only have to think about that limited set of skills.
5. they define a playstyle within your classes playstyle, making each weapon easier to remember.
6. the fact that you can't change the location of a skill on your bar probably also helps in faster memorization and ease of learning the weapon, assuming you aren't getting hung up on the fact that you can't...

You, I like you. Also, someone mentioned earlier about having specific abilities like their snare/root always being #3 and some other stuff of similar nature. It was then followed up by saying "but if I can't move my abilities, even if I put the hotkeys to how I am accustomed too, in the heat of battle there will obviously times where misclicks happen." Now why would misclicks happen if you knew what type of ability you needed to use and  you had said ability type bound to your familiar/usual keybinding, regardless if the keybinds on your bars read 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 or 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5?

Again, I suppose it won't hurt if ANet lets it happen, but there shouldn't be a downside to not leaving it as is if you actually use the assigned keybinding (whether they be default or custom) as opposed to clicking, which is what it seems like most of the people pushing for the change probably do, click.

The number one thing to remember when looking at/reading about/watching videos of Guild Wars 2 is that you cannot view it as a traditional MMO and make comparisons based on that view. If you do this, you will get the wrong impression of the game, and will probably stick with your out-of-date, previous generation MMO because it's familiar and for whatever reason, appealing to you.

I've played WoW for 6 years, Rift for just under 1.5, STO for half a year, have friends and guildmates who have played FFXI, EQ, EQ2, SW:TOR, TERA, Aion, DAoC, etc etc. You name it, myself, or someone in my guild has played it, and played it enough to know what (if any) redeeming qualities it possessed. I won't explicitely tell you whether the things I'm about to list are redeeming or not, that is up to you to decide, but here is what GW2 has.

• A massive, dynamic, explorable, open world. No quest hubs, no mindless grinding of mobs in an area because some guy with an exclamation mark over his head told you to for lord knows what reason. Straight up run around, participate in events you pass by, snag some waypoints for fast travel, discover points of interest and skill challenges, and have fun while doing so.
• Almost exclusively skill and strategy based PvP (world or structured). Gear treadmills need not be present, hell, you can be any level and participate in World vs World or objective-based Conquest PvP because your level scales to the content and everyone is given access to all the same gear. Immense Worlds to freely run around in with lots of objectives to capture, fortresses to sieges, and players to kill.
• Fast-paced, action-oriented, dynamic combat system offering dual weapon sets for on-the-fly skill set swaps to fit the situation. Emphasizing quality over quantity, the small but utility heavy skill set draws away from the philosophy of spamming abilities and instead brings forward the idea of using them intelligently and according to the situation. Do a barrel roll!
• The ability to access most content at any level (up-leveled in World and Conquest PvP) and to revisit the old content at an appropriate level (down-leveled in lower level zones and dungeons) to maintain the challenging but fun experience be it with friends or just for nostalgia.
• Truly complete underwater combat with weapons and skill sets fitting to the underwater environment. Tridents, spears, spearguns, and underwater breathing apparatuses straight out of a Sci-Fi flick.
• Gorgeous "painted" art style that gives the world a surreal, but somehow alive, feeling to every environment and city. The cities truly feel like cities and not just a place where players go to AFK.
• An information driven Trading Post/Auction House system where trending data is readily available and where buyer's can immediately let their opinion of an item's worth be known rather than being at the seller's mercy until he decides to bring the price down.
• Intuitive storage options that let crafting materials and item enhancements be immediately dropped in the bank from anywhere in the world. Not to mention the bank practically organizes itself with a specific slorage slot dedicated to each crafting material/rune/gem. Maintaining an organized treasury has never been easier.
• Fun. This game was designed from the ground up to be immersive, interesting, and fun from level 1 all the way to level 80. No dragging of the elbows to get past the bland early game, there are always things to be doing that will put a smile on your face, no matter what your interests are.

Originally posted by Nanfoodle

Well said Kuinn, thats my problem. The skills are in order of smallest to longest cool down and thats not helpful to me. I would rather then in the order of, hotkey 1 opener attack, hotkey 2 2nd attact most used, then have my stuns, roots and esscape hotkeys on 3,4,5. 20-30 skills a class I need them in a logical order for me not not smallest to longest cool down.

Well....if the skills are indeed from shortest to longest cooldown (which in some cases they are not) then what you just said about #1 being your opener/most used and #2 being 2nd most used is exactly what will happen. You're going to use #1 more than #2, #2 more than #3, etc etc. Don't try and BS about the 20-30 skills a class, you might have that if you count all of the skills on all of the weapons, but you will only ever have 2 weapon sets at a time equipped (aka only 5 skills that change to 5 other skills). Try having 20 at a time split amongst what is effectively 4 different weapon sets as an Elementalist.

Also, how is from shortest to longest cooldown not a logical order? That's one of the basic ways of organizing things.

Originally posted by Redemp

* Greatsword was toned down, it wasn't gutted but the damage was reduced.

* Wrong ... I do 11k Volleys and 2-3k Long Range Shots. It is FAR from the worthless weapon he makes it out to be.

* I have a feeling condition damage in general will get toned down prior to release, but yes I agree condition builds are currently strong. Greatsword on the other hand doesn't feel as if its vastly stronger than other weapons.

 
* I've only begun to test the Ranger, so I'm sure Magnums experience outweighs my own. From personal experience neither myself nor anyone in my guild has had an issue with a Ranger outside of the first BWE. There are certainly plenty of them in the matchs, I've even faced a few that gave me a run for my money ... but none has ever given me the impression they are to strong.

   
* Guardians healing ability comes at a cost, Your basing its ability off one Alpha build though.

 
  * Engineer is one of the weakest professions. The have one alpha build currently, thats already been nerfed once. Next BWE has already mentioned significant changes and past BWE's the communities voice on the profession being weak was confirmed by Anet Developers.


* Mesmer has an alpha build where two buttons  =  anyone dies in 15 seconds or less. ( It's not based on a bugged trait either and Anet have already stated its working as intended)

* My pick for most OP class. Can build like a glass cannon and yet still have enough health to survive. When built properly you can not avoid their burst. The professions margins for damage to survivability was way overtuned. They still have far to much burst per keystroke.


  * Necromancer pets can tank just as well as Rangers Pets in PvE.
     

* My team has put an equal amount of time into the game, primarily focusing on the Warrior, Ele , Mesmer , and the Engineer. Very little time was spent in WvW , most in SPvP.

   
* You are wrong on this point ... I routinely get 11k burst on my Volleys , which is low compared to the burst a Mesmer and Warrior puts out. Warriors can drop a 11k HB followed by an 8k Eviscerate.
* All in All , I've already invited Magnum into our ventrilo to coordinate some "testing" during a BWE. There are clearly things your missing in regards to some of the professions builds and I honestly can't understand why Longbow is so devalued and Rangers are considered so OP. Perhaps in all the time my team has played we have yet to meet a Ranger that is playing properly, and further perhaps I have yet to figure out how to play the Ranger properly. I will be back on my Engineer for the next BWE to test all of the changes, so feel free to drop me a PM for ventrilo information and we can coordinate some demonstrations.
 

Before we start, when you were getting these ludicrous numbers, what was your build? And also, did these 10k+ Volleys and Hundred Blades bring someone from 100% to near dead? If the answer to both of these is yes (and there is no way that it isn't) then the points you have made are invalidated. Glass-Cannon builds only work against other glass-cannon builds because they have ludicrous damage output and no defense to weaken the incoming hit. It's just like a cannon made of glass, it's good for firing one shot, and it's all over after that.

If it's (Greatsword) damage was toned down, he didn't notice much of a difference, at least not so much of a difference that he was asking the question why people weren't dying as fast.

I would love to see an 11k Volley or 2.5k Longshot to anyone with any sort of reasonable defense value. It is not even remotely in the realm of possibility without you being a glass cannon-power/Might stacking build and without your target also having little to no extra defense (aka being a glass cannon). I hope we do get to coordinate something durign BWE #3 as Magnum and I are both in the low-mid 50's and leveling in zones 20+ levels below us is wasting time we could be testing these types of things with other players.

Note: They are buffing the Longbow for BWE #3 so I doubt you'll get to see it again in its current waste of a weapon slot (BWE #2 form).

Conditions are strong, but condition removal is also strong, and every class has multiple ways of removing, Rangers, Elementalsits, and Guardians have the more powerful removal/prevention spells that we have noticed (Cleansing Flames is just a bit OP, at least it was at 30 seconds, but now it's 50 seconds for the cooldown so its pretty reasonable now).

None of us had problems with Rangers either, at least not one's using the Longbow, maybe it's because we were running around with 600+ defense and 20k hp, but we typically ignored Rangers using ranged weapons and saved them for last. I only ever fought one that forced me to give him more attention than I would have liked to, and he was using the same weapons as Magnum. But I have seen Magnum take on 3 seemingly average players and come out on top; not to mention we "dueled" in an empty sPvP match for about 15 minutes before we said "stalemate, this is going nowhere fast." I'm very interested to see the changes and where all of this goes (mostly because they're removing the trait that grants condition removal on dodge roll, which was a good chunk of his survivability against me).

I don't know if every Guardian is specced healing or if their one heal everyone uses is ridiculous, but I have not seen another profession that I know for a fact use a heal that did damn near 10k HP. Rangers are pretty close, lots of passive regen if built right, and the Spirit Elite has so much healing its almost uncanny, but at least the Spirit is killable. I suppose the fact the Guardian does about as much damage as a fluffed pillow in comparison to other professions that they need the best healing/defensive abilities in the game, but I still think it could use a little toning down (Ranger Spirit Elite too).

One thing I will say about the Elementalist is that solo, at least using a staff and with the build in my 1st post, is that they are indeed well balanced. However, in group play, the closest thing support/utility wise would be a Warhorn wielding Ranger, and all he can do is give AoE boons. The Elementalist drops combo fields that grant near disgusting possibilities to lock someone down and control almost every second of the fight.

I've seen some good Engineers and some bad ones (I've seen a lot of good and bad of everything to be honest), but the most successful Engineers I found were using turrets or mines (mostly turrets) as point support/defense/area denial while keeping away from close range combat by wielding ranged weapons. Now, as a staff Elementalist the multiple turrets is like a Necromancer's or Mesmer's minions/clones, get them grouped, AoE them down, proceed to player. But I'd imagine single target builds or weapons without many AoE abilities would struggle with a support oriented build like this.

I have not seen this 15 seconds auto-win button combination (or if I did I still was alive at the end of it), but I would like to see/know more about it. They do have some of the highest burst in the game though that much I do know having fought way to many of them (thankfully most of them were baddies using the Greatsword), and it is not blatently obvious from what I've seen that it is coming. Overall, my opinion of them is low, they have some excellent burst, but between the clones and phantasms, they're more of an annoyance than a threat in 1v1 or 1v2 play  though.

While we do have a warrior who undoubtedly is capable of what you're saying (wrecking the shit out of people), I always know when his burst is coming, and it 90% of the time comes when he either uses his Bola, or his stun/knockdown. Seeing either of those two abilities go off on me is an immediate reflex for me to hit one of my stun breakers/condition removal and spam dodge roll and CC effects. The do have some of the highest base HP in the game, but they are way to easily kiteable (at least by an Elementalist), and their sustained damage suffers because of that unless they swap to a Rifle, which pretty much none of them that I have played against do (short of the guild member). So basically, dodge roll/control them when they get close, and their sustained damage output is about that of a Guardian; condition builds are probably going to be mandatory if playing one outside of a very, very organized group. And no one wants to be forced into a 'cookie cutter build.'

Disagree with the Necro pet vs Ranger pet tanking capability. The Ranger can 'hot swap' out his pet at any given time to any one of his other pets with full HP and proceed to continue use it to tank a mob. If that's not leaps and bounds better than a Necro then I don't know what in this reality is.

See my comments at the beginning of the post, I am not going to retype it out again. Also, please do PM me the Vent information, we would (I would at least) gladly participate in some tests.