GUILD WARS 2 THREAD OF GENERAL GUILD WARRING TWO

[Ryong]

So hey remember that game like seven of us bought and like three of us still play?

It's getting a free 3-day trial next week.

For those interested. (https://register.guildwars2.com/trial)

[Locke cole]

I sorely wish my computer could run this.

[Doc ock rokc]

Yay Now to try it!

[Revising Ocelot]

I sorely wish my computer could run this.

Eh, my old computer had trouble running it (WuvWuv was stop-motion invisibility), and my new computer eats it for breakfast. But I have a severe arse deficiency and cannot acquire enough arse to bring myself to play it again.

[synkr0nized]

I was going to post this in the existing GW2 thread this morning, but then I finally noticed this thread had already been made.

Come play with us in a beautiful world.

[Doc ock rokc]

Come play with us...

Forever and ever and ever?

[Doc ock rokc]

Sorryfor Double post.
What servers do y'all Play on?

[Ryong]

Me and Arcanum are on Maguuma.

I forgot to ever come around and change servers because Maguuma is dead as fuck.

[shiney]

WHAT THE SHIT GIANT ALL-ENCOMPASSING ZONE EVENTS

[synkr0nized]

WHAT THE SHIT GIANT ALL-ENCOMPASSING ZONE EVENTS

Someone just logged in to play after a few months, eh?

[shiney]

This is accurate. I was in the zone that borders the black citadel and there were molten somethingorothers that fucked my shit all over the place.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

came back to gw2 after six months due to being FFXIV ARR not holding my interest for very long.

Am pleased with the whole luck/magic find change. Power leveled the warrior I've been meaning to level but was lazy. Got tired of how everything looks either really small or silly on an asura.

Been regularly partaking in champ trains for mass luck essence get. 64% magic find at the moment. Splurged on warrior for decent gear to start going to fractals while gathering materials for making ascended weapons. Went to Maw for dragonite ore and get a Hronk's Ascended weapon box. Have this (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hronk%27s_Reaver). Ain't exactly the stats I want but it'll fit the bill until I make zojja's reaver and can use Hronk's as a skin.

[synkr0nized]

Meanwhile, I've been playing fairly regularly and haven't seen an ascended weapon box :P


Cool, though -- I had not been aware when they initially added them that those boxes could drop in world boss events. I'd wager the higher weapon damage and the good amount of precision -- for the healing-based weapons, anyway -- is fine alongside whatever other gear you have and its sigil.


I've had some luck with champion farming myself, at least enough to justify re-skinning some of my stuff. Oh, I had also realized that my Fused Weapon claim ticket could now be used for a non-bound skin, so I hawked that via the TP (found a really high buy order for one) and got some T3 cultural armor, gem store nonsense and upgrades, and a few more flashy weapon skins.

Soooo much bloodstone dust, though. And I can't really afford to mash it into bricks. It costs so much -- 2 obsidian shards for every 100? Bleaugh. I did some and got my weaponsmith to 462, but I am frowny-face about pushing forward to 500 just for a small stat increase.





I did finally get a Teqautl kill. Crystal Desert has downed him quite a lot by now, but I kept getting into Overflows that lacked coordination. Last night, while I was explaining what I was doing standing around in a swamp to my mom who came by, I had the fortune of being in an Overflow filled mostly with the organized members of a few guilds (mostly CD folks, interestingly enough). We pushed through several laser shots and got'em, though I still have three or four achievements to do for the title.

It's really not that bad when folks are working together properly, but that's the rub -- open-world content is hardly organized typically, and it sucks that the event can easily be lost with a few mistakes or ill-planned troop placement.

[Ryong]

Maguuma continues being a terrible server and we can't kill Tequatl.

Been doing a bunch of Ascalonian Catacombs runs to finally get some actual dungeon armor.

Got to 26 gold by selling a ton of crap including a bunch of ores I had. I had never gotten past 6g.

[synkr0nized]

In other news, due to a bug that's been around since the game's launch my Order of Whispers engineer is now instead following the Vigil storyline.

I don't know if this is a full swap or just a Whispers agent being put on loan to the Vigil. I am tempted to delete the character -- not super into engineer anyway still -- or remake her, but if I can access Whispers order armor and shit at max level I don't really care -- I've seen all of the story paths anyway.


Anet unstickied the thread(s) about this both 10 and 6 months ago (the latter having been put up as an update of the former despite no fix) as well as still has no way to revert this error, judging from the old threads I found when searching (which I had to do via Google site search since the forum's search has been broken for quite a while).

I've seen some MMO databases. I do not understand how they have not just set up quests or story progression as flags or references that can be updated in the character's table entry. Ah well...

[Ryong]

5g and a lot of crafting later I now have a Pearl Reaver, a Pearl Basher, a Krait Machete and a Krait Battleaxe.

Time for stupid dual axe and dual mace build!

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

If you're PVE you're better off axe mainhand mace offhand and greatsword secondary weapon.

This thread goes into detail about the current warrior meta (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83915-axemace-dps-build-for-dungeons-and-fractals-62513/). And by damn gum it can crank out some impressive numbers.

[Ryong]

I gave up on my guardian because everyone insisted that no matter what I should be going hammer+GS and then get full zerker gear and go crazy with altruistic healing and such.

I'm not trying to be a special snowflake, I just want to do my own build because there isn't a single specific viable build for PvE per class.

[shiney]

I have 24g which is more than I've ever held at a single time. I could always drop $10 for some gems and sell them but I don't really want to go that route.

I haven't used the LFG tool yet. I think I'm trying to get on at the right time when NPFers or whomever is on. I have yet to do a single dungeon. :< Maybe some point over the winter we can start organizing NPF dungeon runs so I can finally see some of this content. >>

Dunno if my server has downed Tequatl. I'm on...Devona's Rest if I recall. *shrugs* They are pretty together against the Shatterer but that looks like a no strategy burn it down fight so, that's a thing.

Been having fun two-manning champs with my wife...defense/vitality guardian + glass cannon thief = decent killing. It sucks whenever they look my way though. I 'splode.

[Arcanum]

All this talk about guild wars has gotten me to boot it up again. Found out that the birthday gift gives you a scroll to boost a character to level 20. I'm glad I made all my alts on day 1, even though I never played them, because now they are all level 20 :D. I may finally be assed to level some of them up even higher now, since I always found the first 20-30 levels the most boring to level up.

And of course I'd always be up to play some dungeons with my elementalist. Even if I'm not on GW2, just send me a message on steam (or get Ryong or synk to message me) when/if you guys decide to do that.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Dunno if my server has downed Tequatl. I'm on...Devona's Rest if I recall. *shrugs* They are pretty together against the Shatterer but that looks like a no strategy burn it down fight so, that's a thing.

Been having fun two-manning champs with my wife...defense/vitality guardian + glass cannon thief = decent killing. It sucks whenever they look my way though. I 'splode.

Shatterer is easy. Burn the boss, break the crystals, burn the boss. At least with the updates today Teq's rewards are better than the usual fare of blues n greens, so there's more incentive for people to coordinate better. That and idlers get kicked off turrets and such. Though from what I've seen the people that are serious about Teq tend to force fighting in overflow to avoid the people who can't dodge worth a damn or listen to simple directions.

As for vit/tough, generally as a rule the higher toughness a player has the more attracted the enemies are to them. Passive threat generation and all that. Throw on a shield and you're even more a magnet. I'm maining warrior now 'cause despite guardian being fun and all..they haven't exactly been in a good way for a while.

edit: did Maw world boss again. Got Magmaton. debating on keeping it for guardian or pawning it off. I bleev I can make about 19gold from it off the top of my head. Made a slick 24 gold last night from an hour's champ train and sold some exotic sword that looks purple and has a black smoke effect. decent stats but I find it incredibly ugly and don't care for swords as warrior and I don't play the thief at all anymore. 'crept to farm an annoying jump puzzles.

[synkr0nized]

edit: did Maw world boss again. Got Magmaton. debating on keeping it for guardian or pawning it off. I bleev I can make about 19gold from it off the top of my head. Made a slick 24 gold last night from an hour's champ train and sold some exotic sword that looks purple and has a black smoke effect. decent stats but I find it incredibly ugly and don't care for swords as warrior and I don't play the thief at all anymore. 'crept to farm an annoying jump puzzles.

The price on Magmaton was never all that high. You're looking at maybe 3g currently (buy/sell data (http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/27638)).

The newer hammers, Entropy and Genesis, are likely to get you 20-50g these days, but man when these new skins came out prices were two or three times as high.

Lord Taere's Shadow (http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/44969) was also in the hundreds at first, but should continue to hover around 30g depending on who's willing to wait to sell or who wants to make some gold quick.

So my [non-expert] advice for GW2 economy would be to go ahead and keep the hammer if you like it at all and toss that sword up for auction.




Dungeons aren't that bad, shiney. I've done all the story paths and a couple explorables, but I still haven't done as much as I'd wanted. The LFG website and now in-game tool make it easier to group up, though, for sure. So far I have found that people are pretty nice, despite what some of the discussion on the official forums or whatever might indicate.

In any case if you two are fine handling champs in the open world without others, you likely will be better than the average PUG in a dungeon. And you have to do the story modes first to make the explorable paths open for each character, so you can roflstomp your way through that stuff and get a feel for how GW2 dungeons work.

But I will, as I've said before, always be up for a group!

---------- Post added at 07:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:48 PM ----------

ALSO


As frustrating as it can be to have to cross your fingers that you can get into your own server or an organized Overflow for Tequatl, I am more annoyed by far by the huge increase in health given to other world event bosses.

The Frozen Maw shaman has sooooo much health for no reason. It is still impossible to fail that event, but now everyone has to sit there for ten minutes pressing 1.

People on CD, if the timers line up, go to Shadow Behemoth, get its kill and loot, and come back and still get credit on the shaman.


The worm in Caledon Forest, though, definitely needed it. It used to die while it's entrance animation was still running. And at least it knocks melee folks back every now and then.


Still, while I don't want every fight to be quite as large-scale and involved as Tequatl, I don't think artificially extending the fights by dumping tons of health was the best solution, either.

---------- Post added at 07:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:54 PM ----------

Oh right

Now is as good a time as any to dungeon-up, anyway. It'll count towards the current Living Story meta.

Also new haircuts! Get vain!

today's release notes

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

maw shaman's HP buff makes sense, though. beforehand he would die so quickly that the event would be over stupidly fast due to over geared players farming him. Made it a pain to get to his fight as a low by to get that sweet xp.

I'm on sanctum of rall and there are guilds devoted to downing tea kettle in overflow and coordinating on raid call. it's a fun as fuvk fight when all goes as planned.

[synkr0nized]

OK

In honor of the current Living Story nonsense and the fact that weekends are probably better for coordinating, let's generate interest -- and hopefully commitment -- amongst ourselves for dungeons this weekend.

Let's set a time [something I usually am loathe to do] to get us NPF folks together and do Twilight Arbor. If you need/want story mode to knock that out, easy enough. We can start there.

Then I figure we can run it once or twice to get a feel for the new path's mechanics and fights, and perhaps get a feel for playing with one another. If we have time, we can try to focus on achievements and the post-final boss elements.

If this works, perhaps scheduling semi-weekly or whatever dungeon nights among us would be a thing to do?


In any case, it only takes 5 of us, which I think we have. We may even have more, perhaps two separate groups? I know I likely could also bring in another person, probably who would play his necro.

While I am fine with rushing, I also have no problem with a slow, laid-back approach. Running with just us in a group, I suspect we could laugh and walk our way through things fairly methodically without issue.

I look forward to corralling you all into this.
We can knock out living story achievements, TA achievements, and get some chances at the blue-colored nightmare weapon reskins.

[shiney]

Provided I can get some time without the chitlins' then I would be down with this. Friday evenings are best for me, Sunday evenings too. Saturdays are very hit and miss however.

[synkr0nized]

In other news, due to a bug that's been around since the game's launch my Order of Whispers engineer is now instead following the Vigil storyline.

I don't know if this is a full swap or just a Whispers agent being put on loan to the Vigil. I am tempted to delete the character -- not super into engineer anyway still -- or remake her, but if I can access Whispers order armor and shit at max level I don't really care -- I've seen all of the story paths anyway

OK, after getting two GMs who didn't seem to read anything I actually wrote and gave me non-helpful and semi-unrelated answers, I did get confirmation that my engineer was indeed forced onto the Vigil path as if she was a Vigil member. I don't want another Vigil member, and while I realize I can buy Whispers armor and transmute it over to her, I am still not really having as much fun on engineer as other classes.

I will either be deleting her and remaking her, using the level-to-20 scroll and crafting to boost her a bit, or I'll just use the slot for something else. If I do the latter, I still won't have an engineer or ranger at 80. But those classes seem to really suck, so...



In any case, here's the original thread about the bug I encountered (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/bugs/Story-Skipped-or-Changed-merged) from last year. So yeah, not fixed since launch, and the responses I received seemed to imply that they've forgotten about them. If you are still leveling or are working on other characters and what not, make sure to do those listed quests solo OR with someone in the same Order as your character. Otherwise it may swap you to theirs when you accept story completion, as it did to me (was doing The Lost Chieftain's Return as a Whispers member with a Vigil friend).






I may be going to a movie with my dad tomorrow night, but I will tentatively say NPFU should attempt to gather around 8:00 pm EST for dungeon runs.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

4/10 dark matter get
40 something gold made, then spent on ascended type stuff
am at 73% magic find gained over the last couple days. Seeing more exotics trickling in.
copper-fed-salvage-o-matic is best thing in gem shop. ever.
463/500 weaponsmithin

[shiney]

Unfortuantely if available I won't be around until approx 9:30 EST, due to kids' bedtime which occurs at 9 EST. We'll try to make something work though.

[synkr0nized]

Unfortuantely if available I won't be around until approx 9:30 EST, due to kids' bedtime which occurs at 9 EST. We'll try to make something work though.

8 was just a random time; just wanted to get all NPF folks to swarm into GW2 :P

[shiney]

Well Rai is definitely in; she really wants to try something that isn't just grinding heart quests. So we are going to get the kids to sleep ASAP tonight and will be on for dungeoning. We bring an 80 guardian with focus more on bashing and tanking, and an 80 thief 100% geared for max DPS with little regard for survival. We're good at not dying though!

---------- Post added at 08:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:36 PM ----------

Where is everyone who isn't synk, you guys suck.

[Ryong]

So we did some AC, had a laugh about nerfs, got angry at troll then I somehow managed to kill it while everyone else was dead and I was downed and then we had more laughs about nerfs and pulled some crazy strategies.

It was pretty good.

I also figured out why I was thinking story mode AC was hard: When I first did it everyone was 35~45.

[synkr0nized]

Level 80, all traits, and exotic gear -- or I guess rare, at least -- certainly helps.



I continue to just shake my head and feel bad for people whenever I see threads about how they can't complete a personal story mission. Sure, I have had a few deaths when I went through missions the first time, but wow. I didn't think this game's combat was that difficult to figure out.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

the whole concept of avoidance and nullification over mitigation is a bizarre deviation from the land of stand in place and...stand in place...

[shiney]

Anyone up for some CM this evening? Rai is trying to get a group together for 9, 9:30 EST. Could do CM Story, TA Story...yeah I am being greedy and wanting to do all the story ones. :>

Also: recurring Fridays/whatev? Maybe we can have a FB group for calendaring?

[Arcanum]

I'm up for it.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

If I'm not sidetracked I might join in on the actions. Wouldn't hurt to knock stories out of the way on my warrior.

[shiney]

Working on getting the kids to bed at the moment. Will try and be available soon. Don't like put your plans on hold for us if you guys have better things to do.

---------- Post added at 09:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:04 PM ----------

If anyone is still up for it, we have 3 people :) log in

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I got sidetracked. With salmon cooking. Then consuming.

I regret nothing.

[shiney]

We got through CM Story with me Cease and Arcanum, then synk showed up for T&A Story. More to come this weekend! I am gonna set up a facebook group with calendar fun, I'll link it later.

---------- Post added at 11:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 AM ----------

As an aside, GW2 was becoming extremely boring for me and it was a pain and a task to log in, but running dungeons is a breath of fresh air. Thanks to everyone who's come :>

[synkr0nized]

If I am not there when you do Sorrow's Embrace's story path, please be sure to watch the end boss's death scene. It is terrific.

[shiney]

ANYONE UP FOR DUNGEONEERING?? Rai and me are available and a bit early to boot :D

---------- Post added at 09:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:13 PM ----------

YOU GUYS SUCK :<

[synkr0nized]

My power was out last night.

[shiney]

Excused. Arcanum however who was online on NPF and didn't even post, is a bag of butts.

We should make a banner thing for Friday / Sunday GW2s. It's been fun getting in touch with NPF community more often!

[shiney]

Anyone down with some dungeoning tonight? Been running dragons for the past few days, it's fun but losing its flavor.

[Arcanum]

Arcanum however who was online on NPF and didn't even post, is a bag of butts.

I was going to be like "yeah I'll play" but since I'm home for the weekend I'd have to install a fuckton of updates, and I also had friends messaging me on steam asking me to play DotA 2, which was already up to date, so I played DotA 2.

Anyone down with some dungeoning tonight? Been running dragons for the past few days, it's fun but losing its flavor.

And as for tonight, I'd like to, but GW2 is still not updated and also there's pokemon and also I should be doing homework but then again, pokemon.

[shiney]

GW2 is not your job! So have fun, but we should run something soon. We'll talk

[Arcanum]

GW2 is not your job!

OR IS IT?!?!

It's not :(

[synkr0nized]

NPFU guild chat: Pokemon edition

for serious



and I don't even play those games

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I dunno how the folk with legendary weapons do it.

I've gathered roughly close to 50% of the required materials for crafting an ascended weapon and I'm dragging my feet. Pretty sure the hardest part is getting to 500 weaponsmith. Once I get all the time-gated stuff out of the way I'm probly just gonna buy all the non-account bound shit and get it over with.

A visual guide to ascended weapon get. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10003158/gw2/gw2-ascended-greatsword-crafting-resized.jpg)

Also, apparently the forum doesn't like posting images hosted by dropbox? peculiar.

[synkr0nized]

I dunno how the folk with legendary weapons do it.

A good number, at least in the first two months or so, were guild-funded. I don't know why people thought, "Sure, I'll send mats and gold to this guy instead of keeping it." Or worse yet if some guilds had a tithe system. Also some people may have just dumped real-world money into it, though I think even in the early days that was several hundred at least.

Legit collection takes a while -- some people report two months or so of just grinding the various mats and running the correct events/dungeons for their needed gifts -- even before having to deal with RNG.


If the RNG nets me a precursor, unless it's for a legendary I think I really, really want I am totally going to take the cash moneys for selling it. There are still enough named exotic skins that I like out there.




I hate how you only need 5 bloodstone bricks per weapon but there aren't really easy ways to get your weaponsmith level up without mushing together things like the bloodstone dust. I stuffed most of the obsidian shards I had into about 30 bricks, still am not at 500 weaponsmith, and still had an entire bank tab full of the dust remaining.

[shiney]

Ran Frostgorge champ train a few nights now, along with Shatterer and Jormag (my server hasn't dropped Tequatl) and then spent some time running Dwayna and Melandru last night...my magic find has gone up 11% in the past two days, and what's more is I've found a way to really enjoy this game now that it's not just grinding heart quaests and exploration! I might even complete my monthly for the first time ever!

[Magni]

I'm trying to get back in the swing of GW2 after taking a 6 month hiatus. I've been around on NPF for awhile now, but ever since the RO server shut down it's been almost entirely lurking. Some of you may remember me, it's cool if you don't.

Anyways, shiney hooked me up already. I'm up for any and all dungeons so just whisper me if I'm on and you're in need of another. I probably won't be repping NPFU often (can't see guild chat) though my guild is pretty much defunct.

Oh, and I did join the NPFU Steam group forever ago. Feel free to contact me that way also. Ilsalay is my Steam name. If it says I'm online it's likely I'm at my computer.

[shiney]

Anyone up for a dungeon in an hour or so?

[Ryong]

I burnt 39 gold and am now at 448 weaponsmithing.

Guess I have a lot of champ farming ahead of me.

[shiney]

Mine is 423~ because Rai had 115 orichalcum ore on her and I popped a crafting booster and just made ingots to raise my shit.

Now unfortunately it will be extremely and prohibitively expensive to continue raising my weaponing. 'Cause most of that ori is being turned into jewelcrafting. =[

[Magni]

I have a 400 jeweler. I can make you stuff if you send me the mats. I recently made some for a guildy, otherwise I'd say not to worry about the gems. But I kinda ate up most of it. Well, I shot my Ruby supply. Other stuff is fine I think.

[shiney]

Nah it's good, I have a 400 jewelcrafter too. :B He's...level 29! He was level10 I think when I started crafting.

[shiney]

YOU'RE ALL A PILE OF ASSBUTTS WHERE THE HELL HAS EVERYONE BEEN LATELY

I don't want to PUG dungeons =( get online!!!

[Ryong]

I had a barbecue to go to last night.

I was wallowing in despair the night before.

Pardon my continued absence.

[synkr0nized]

I have all of my Halloween achievements done. I should get to WvW Season 1 stuff instead of faffing about in the labyrinth.


Also I was on, but it was probably a lot past your bedtimes, shiney.

@Ryong: Hope you are feeling better.

[synkr0nized]

I will likely be in-game off and on today, if anyone wants to run some shit or explore or level alts or whatever.

[shiney]

Actually yes we are going to be on and off today too. If we run into you maybe we'll talk about dungeoning or just messing around. Magni should be on later too...

[Magni]

I should be on in roughly 30 minutes if people are still on/adventuring.

[synkr0nized]

We need a fractal group (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-for-the-fractals-of-the-mists/).

It's finally account-based instead of per-character, and good rewards are possible as low as level 10.

[Magni]

I like Fractals. I haven't seen anyone on in the NPF guild for like 2 weeks, though.

[synkr0nized]

I was last on the 22nd. I decided to wait and see what people were up to for this new update and also decided to play other things/enjoy the holiday. I hadn't seen anyone else on for a while before that, myself.

[Ryong]

I stopped playing for a while because, while I nearly have all it takes to craft an ascended weapon, I still need to get to 500 weaponsmithing which means I have to do dungeons nonstop for a ton o' gold.

So yeah, grinding.

[synkr0nized]

That whole ~25 damage more you will do is totally worth the grind, too!




What I am saying is if you stopped playing because you don't want to craft something you don't need I guess there are more things you find wrong with the game beneath that sentiment.

[Magni]

I have ~70% of what I need to craft Bolt, but at this point I'm debating on actually keeping it once I have it or selling it so I can have money to throw at being able to make Ascendeds. The upside to Ascended weapons is you can get the stats you want but as synk noted, it's only an extra 50 power either way.

The WvW Season has been fun, though. That's consumed a lot of my playing time. I've been running the Zerg Soldier Mesmer build.

[synkr0nized]

I saw a commercial on television for GW2 today. That's the first I've seen since the game launched. I'll admit, I watch very little television, so I sure could have missed previous ones. But I can't help but feel that's a sign -- either that the game is doing as well as they wish to claim, making them comfortable in reaching out to a wider audience of potential players, or it's not doing that well and they need to grab some more game purchases.

I still haven't logged in since November. I decided to see if I would be very upset at missing the latest achievement points checklist -- and to spend more time doing real-world things-- and I have to say I am not. If anything, missing out on one set of the Living Story's two-week updates helps motivate me NOT to log in for updates. I also am having fun dumping my free time into STO again and Doto.


I apologize if anyone has been in-game and wanting to play and I have not been around for it. Please feel free to message me, add me on Steam, or whatnot. I still enjoy the game and have not walked away from it!

[synkr0nized]

so

As I think I had mentioned before in one of these threads, my engineer was pushed onto a separate story path due to playing some missions with a friend whose character was in a different order than mine. She walked into the missions as a Whispers Lightbringer, and she walked out as a Vigil Warmaster. This is a bug* in the game, and the GMs could not help me (as an aside, what kind of game has no back-end functionality for resetting quests or the means to toggle flags such as "member of ___ order"???).

She's my only non-80, as I finally leveled my ranger and have an 80 in every class but engineer.

If you were in a similar situation, which of the following would you do:
1. remake the engineer and start over to get the correct order and story path
2. push forward, as it's mainly just going to influence which faction's armor and weapon skins you can use**
3. scrap the engineer entirely, as it's a useless class, and make another of something else
4. nothing, just leaving the character where she is, unplayed
5. daed gaem, vovlo fix


* A known bug if you talk to some ArenaNet folks, unknown if you talk to others. I reminded them of the thread on the forum that was stickied at one point but was not at the time this happened (though I was able to find it when searching out my problem), and I got different responses from different GM/customer service folks. They did say they'd pass it on to the dev team, but I am assuming this bug will never go away. No one seems to fix anything with the personal story anymore, for like a year now.
** At this point in the story, I'd just finished recruiting a secondary race and would next be sent to investigate Zhaitan's scouting into Lion's Arch. I would then head to Claw Island where she will now lose Forgal instead of Tybalt. After that it's pretty much all Pact and doesn't matter anymore, aside from some optional NPC dialogue.

I am leaning toward 1. I made her an Ash 'cause I've played some of the Ash story before and liked that legion. But, as an engineer perhaps I should have been more boring and gone with Iron.

[Toast]

If you were in a similar situation, which of the following would you do:
1. remake the engineer and start over to get the correct order and story path
2. push forward, as it's mainly just going to influence which faction's armor and weapon skins you can use**
3. scrap the engineer entirely, as it's a useless class, and make another of something else
4. nothing, just leaving the character where she is, unplayed
5. daed gaem, vovlo fix

I haven't played GW2 in a few months, but my first response would be 2 or 3. Engineer is the only class that I didn't get past 15, I just couldn't get into it. My brother played it extensively, he took two to 80, but deleted both of them because he got tired of its limitations (that and he's the sort of player who will take any class to max level, and then delete it in favor of playing his warrior).

I also don't think that choice of Order was as big of a deal as it was made out to be. If you enjoyed those missions, then maybe it would be worth it. If you just want the weapons/armor of a different order, it is possible to transfer between characters using transmutation crystals, so long as you have someone who is a member of the order you want.

All of that being said, if you enjoy the class enough to start over, go for it. leveling to 80 isn't all that hard, especially if you have one of those birthday gifts that levels you to 20 automatically.


(as an aside, what kind of game has no back-end functionality for resetting quests or the means to toggle flags such as "member of ___ order"???).

This always confused me, as well. Even beyond that, though, I really enjoyed a lot of the missions of Guild Wars 1, even to the point of going back and replaying them from time to time even to this day. That the missions in GW2 aren't replayable (and most weren't that good to begin with) is just another sore point for me on how GW2 could have been incredible, and just wasn't.

-edit-
quoting you and your red text is harder than I thought.

[synkr0nized]

I have the feeling I'll probably end up doing 2 or 3 while trying to convince myself to let the perfectionist in me push 1. In any case it's always interesting, to me, to talk with others about these kinds of things.

I am in no hurry to free up the slot for anything. I kind of dig the name I have for her and having more than one charr, but at the same time the engineer class is so very meh for me.

This always confused me, as well. Even beyond that, though, I really enjoyed a lot of the missions of Guild Wars 1, even to the point of going back and replaying them from time to time even to this day. That the missions in GW2 aren't replayable (and most weren't that good to begin with) is just another sore point for me on how GW2 could have been incredible, and just wasn't.

-edit-
quoting you and your red text is harder than I thought.


Good point to bring up! I have also been lamenting about the lack of a replay option for any instanced mission. While I fully accept that GW1 was not an MMO while GW2 actually is, I can't help but feel they dropped the ball by not doing what they could to preserve some of the neat, non-typical elements of GW1's design in addition to pushing for the typical MMO elements that brought in the wider appeal.


For the edit part, keep in mind I willingly inflict that upon myself, and it's even more cumbersome when I weave responses in between different quotes. But in seriousness it's practically habit at this point, and I don't mean to cause anyone extra work -- it's nice of you to preserve it at all!

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

engineers suffer a massively broken ratio of effort to output. to remain competitive in any aspect of the game as an engi you have to put forth more into merely keeping up with every other class. they bring little to no benefits over what other classes bring to the table with significantly less strings attached.

Engi's suffer the 'good ideas...failed execution' complex. frankly speaking, gw2 would be better off with engineer just being an NPC class only for lore purposes. 'cause lord knows that Anet has no fucking clue how to even remotely fix them.

I vote for just ripping the bandaid off and deleting it. Free up the name for something else.

[synkr0nized]

lol
Evidence suggests she is now a member of both orders.

On a less positive note: my poor class (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/bugs/10-Mesmer-s-Bugged-Skills-and-Counting)

---------- Post added 02-11-2014 at 11:26 AM ---------- Previous post was 02-10-2014 at 12:04 PM ----------

nJFlbegazTM

Lion's Arch is likely to be no more (http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/11/prepare-to-escape-from-lions-arch-in-guild-wars-2s-next-conten/), or at least very, very different, when the Scarlet finale hits. Permanently.


I'm going to record the city now, I guess, for posterity.

[Ryong]

I never was a big fan of LA.

Also, I hope this really is the last thing involving Scarlet.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

What is lion's arch? I only know of Idle Town.

[synkr0nized]

BY OGDEN'S HAMMER, WHAT STORYTELLING!


I just ran Claw Island (the first one) with both Forgal and Tybalt. So that's a thing.

Got me back to working with the Whispers, though. So I think the engineer is officially a Whispers member with an honorary Warmaster joint appointment. :P

[Ryong]

How to play Engineer in PvE:

Grenade kit + carpal tunnel syndrome.

How to play Engineer in PvP:

Bomb kit.

There is no other choice, unfortunately.

[synkr0nized]

http://home.comcast.net/~synkr0nized/screenshots/gw2_twomentors.png

How to play Engineer in PvE:

Grenade kit + carpal tunnel syndrome.

How to play Engineer in PvP:

Bomb kit.

There is no other choice, unfortunately.

That's basically what I've found. I don't really like the rifle skills, and pistols don't pack much of a punch. I had previously been running around with the flamethrower and elixir gun, but spamming grenades and bombs seems to be what's what these days. I will go back to it later and try it, seeing the appeal of Juggernaut and spamming elixirs. On the other hand, it is a little funny to be up-leveled 30 levels for WvW and have people seem surprised when everything around you explodes as they go in for the easy kill.


But yeah not a character I expect I will swap to much once I have her leveled and geared.

[Ryong]

The thing with Engineers is that their weapons are horrible and you're expected to use kits.

Flamethrower is kind of weak, Elixir Gun is fantastic, Grenades are fantastic if you don't mind your wrists splitting apart and Bombs are ridiculous in all senses of the word.

Also, mines + personal ram for funsies.

[Ryong]

CH-CH-CHANGES (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/feature-packs/)

Short version:

Bunch of changes coming next month, not all have been announced yet.

TRAITS POINTS - you starting getting traits at 30, then get one trait point every 6 levels until 60 when you get 2 every 6 levels. Each trait point now counts as 5 of the old ones.
NEW TRAITS - every profession is getting one new trait per trait line.
REFUNDING TRAITS - any time, for free, just need to be out of combat. You can also just take out points from trait lines instead of resetting everything.
TRAIT UNLOCKING - some traits need you to either do a thing somewhere to unlock or just buy a guide at a trainer.

[synkr0nized]

The new traiting system seems stupid and a way to force more play just to get the skills you might want.

[Toast]

exactly. And pushing the first trait point to 30 (and the other changes to trait gain during leveling) will make alts even more of a pain to level.

Also, of the revealed traits so far, most of them kind of suck. 300 vitality for guardians? Increased shot speed for ranger longbow? I'm getting really tired of things that should be baseline for the class being locked behind high tier traits. Hell, that goes for all classes.

While I don't mind the idea behind completing content to gain access to new skills/traits, I can just see the next batch being locked behind the temporary content of the next season of the living story, and once they're gone, there's no getting them. Or requiring fractals, which I refuse to participate in.

Does anyone remember the trait system as it was originally revealed, before the betas? I really wish they had stuck with that idea as opposed to the mess we have now.

[Ryong]

While increased shot speed seems dumb, 300 vitality for guardians is actually big deal.

Also, no, I'm pretty sure GW2 is the easiest MMO to level I've ever played.

While I don't mind the idea behind completing content to gain access to new skills/traits, I can just see the next batch being locked behind the temporary content of the next season of the living story, and once they're gone, there's no getting them. Or requiring fractals, which I refuse to participate in.

No that's stupid, except for the part of hating fractals. Look at the antitoxin heal, it was a living story thing and you can buy it whenever you want. There's no reason they'd lock traits with living story. Maybe they could do it and then when the event is over give it a different requirement, which sounds a lot more likely.

Does anyone remember the trait system as it was originally revealed, before the betas? I really wish they had stuck with that idea as opposed to the mess we have now.

I played during the first beta that had traits and they were just the same system we have now except without tiers, so you'd get the strongest traits asap.

Oh, wait, I remember now, the trait system before the betas revolved entirely around doing challenges and activities to get. This new trait system is the closest thing to that we've ever gotten.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Sometimes I wonder how guildwars 2 would've turned out if made by a competent developer.

[Toast]

While increased shot speed seems dumb, 300 vitality for guardians is actually big deal.

Also, no, I'm pretty sure GW2 is the easiest MMO to level I've ever played.

It may be the easiest, but that doesn't make it any less tedious when levels really don't mean anything due to scaling until you hit 80.

I played during the first beta that had traits and they were just the same system we have now except without tiers, so you'd get the strongest traits asap.

Oh, wait, I remember now, the trait system before the betas revolved entirely around doing challenges and activities to get. This new trait system is the closest thing to that we've ever gotten.

I was more referring to how they were organized. Unfortunately, almost all reference to the first trait system seems to be wiped from the internet, but this article (http://greibach.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/the-big-beta-barrage-part-1-traits/) talks about the change. In short, each weapon set had its own series of traits that could be equipped independently of any other trait and would only be active while you had that weapon equipped. Each class also had several (2 I think, but could be misremembering) other trait lines that affected utility skills. For example necromancers had a trait that gave them an extra minion on some of their summoning skills.

This was also before traits and stat boosts were coupled together, before healing power, condition damage/duration, etc.


Sometimes I wonder how guildwars 2 would've turned out if made by a competent developer.
Sometimes I wonder how it would have turned out if they had made Guild Wars 2 instead of an MMO.

[shiney]

GW2 ended up being an enormous disappointment to me. I haven't logged on in months. :/ They shat the bed in so many ways.

[Ryong]

I can't bring myself to actually do much in GW2 nowadays, but it was such an improvement over every MMO I've played in terms of convenience that now I can't play anything.

[synkr0nized]

I've been digging the single-player RPG that is SWTOR the past couple of weeks, as the story is pretty entertaining (to me) and well put together.

Combat still feels awkward, but meh. Anything's going to feel that way compared to GW2. So at least the active and fluid element of combat was a rousing success.

[Ryong]

GW2 really, really focuses on convenience. Look at today's update.

Sure, there are several problems with it, like always scaling, terrible economy, the fact that the entire grind of the game is concentrated on making ascended and legendary equipment, the bad parts of the crafting system, the DPS race that is every boss...

But hey, teleports from anywhere, changing your armor dyes whenever without cost, the way quests are handled, the good parts of the crafting system, throwing mats into the bank whenever...

It doesn't feel like it's "easy" or "casual" or "themepark". It felt, right from the start, to focus on making everything the least contrived it could. And now I can't play other MMOs because of it.

[synkr0nized]

There's also the problem I have that whenever I see some of the limitations discussed or issues folks have about the game on the official forums and then someone from ANet responds I get these impressions that the root cause is poor programming decisions.

Like my issue with getting into the wrong Order temporarily - one of the devs in another person's thread on the issue admitted that at quest completion it merely looks for the next quest on the party leader's path and assigns that to anyone who accepts quest completion. In other words, none of the coders took a minute to add an if/else statement to check the Orders of anyone who accepts completion to add the appropriate next step. This is basic stuff.

And now they are giving us the ability to wear town clothes in combat and such via a separate appearance slot, but yet it's an "all or nothing" deal that does not allow for mix-and-matching pieces. In other words, no one bothered to code a separate appearance tab for the character sheet, just slapping a pointer to a town clothes armor set like they did in GW1. Which is confusing to me if players can still dye the individual pieces.

And the three coloured Knights that had to be fought in LA before opening up the fight with Scarlet's holograms -- the hologram fight was triggered for the map five minutes after the first knight was defeated instead of basing it on the last. So if either of the other two took a while to bring down (or if players gathered up and did them in order), players would warp into a fight in progress.

It's been how many months since launch, and various skills still don't work correctly.

On top of it all is the cash-grab schemes, such as transmutation (potentially made worse now? I am not sure yet).

GW1 was "convenient" and terrific, and it didn't feel like it had half of the issues GW2 has. But that's my fault, again, for comparing the sequel to the original or holding any expectation that it would be the same. Most of those folks aren't with ANet anymore, anyway. GW2 is driven by those who gave us EotN, the worst/grindiest part of the GW experience.

[synkr0nized]

ololol

ANet continues their tradition of doing silly things in-game for April Fool's by making everyone a bobblehead.

The players, or at least the official forums community members, continue their tradition of being whiny shitheels and complain about it.

For me, it's a reminder that there is a large amount of players who never were around for GW1 and didn't see this coming.

They also never got to read the balance notes that often came out on 4/1, either, I guess. Their loss.

[Ryong]

The thing is, every single MMO I've played has had stupid problems and no convenience.

-Teleports whenever you want, as long as you've been there.
-Send all your mats to the bank instantly, for no cost.
-Material-specific tabs in the bank, to minimize clutter.
-A dye system that also doesn't cost a thing aside from buying new dyes.
-Changing your build - currently to a given degree, completely but equipment-wise on the next upgrade - whenever you want.

The only real grind problems are the crafting to 500 grind and the amount of things you need for a legendary.

I've played MMOs where you kill things for 9 hours, level up, get a quest to either kill 200 things or deliver 20 things so that you only have to kill things for 9 hours instead of 12.

I've played MMOs where item price was linked to how fast you'd level up and some people did nothing but trade all day to the point where it was commonplace for them to trade things that vastly exceeded the maximum amount of money you could have in the money, a number that'd be impossible to reach for all but the most fanatical of people ( to draw a comparision, imagine if a player in GW2 sold a legendary a day ).

GW2 is flawed, but it is still vastly superior to any MMO I've ever played.

[shiney]

I still maintain the problem with GW2 is the lack of any cohesive drive toward endgame because it seems like endgame is just a vehicle to build legendaries. Admittedly purchasing and playing a game like GW2 while simultaneously not giving one shit about PvP suggests that perhaps I am in the wrong business here, as it seems that "endgame" as devised by ANet is PvP, but nonetheless there is a dearth of entertaining activity at endgame for Rai and myself.

*shrugs* I totes agree on the absolute convenience factor though. I figure they put that in because why not. The reason those aren't available on subscription games is, travel takes a lot of time, as does resource management, and that time still counts against your monthly fee. Putting in convenience factors might allow players to progress rapidly enough that they become bored and the monthly subscription fee is lost. By comparison, now I have every convenience, and yep got bored and moved on due to lack of interest...

[Ryong]

I blame the fact that the living story was shit.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I blame the fact that the living story was shit.

the entire concept is shit. a bandaid fix for a longterm problem: Anet has no longterm direction with this game. None. bupkis. zippo. nada. zilch. A weak attempt at holding onto a player base that has run out of things to do other than play dress up simulator and idle in lion's arch, or whatever the new hangout spot is. It alienates the player base that juggles other games or doesn't have the time to commit to guild wars for any length of time. As well as extremely alienating the would-be returning player base.

[synkr0nized]

Map zones all to be part of a new "Megaserver" system (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/), something that honestly GW2 should have had from the start for PvE. Since the world was already split into sub-zones with transitions in between them and population max sizes, I am glad to see a potentially superior system replace the idea of guesting to play with friends and Overflow.

This will probably fuck up world boss timers/events, though.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Yeahhhh...they're gonna fuck it up something fierce.

[Arcanum]

I dunno, looks pretty not fucked to me. (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-megaserver-system-world-bosses-and-events/)

[synkr0nized]

I dunno, looks pretty not fucked to me. (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-megaserver-system-world-bosses-and-events/)

Nice, that's a pretty good-looking system for standardizing encounter times for all players.

I don't like that we won't be able to see if dungeons are uncontested/open or not without traveling to the appropriate maps.

I'm... honestly not sure if it's better or worse for Orr statues to be active based on the local temple only. I really liked that I could help liberate Melandru and not have to deal with those damned rooting statues in other areas, or that I could be in Kryta and quickly check to see if a temple vendor was available.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I dunno, looks pretty not fucked to me. (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-megaserver-system-world-bosses-and-events/)

There's a stark difference between Anet talking about a good idea and implementing the idea without breaking a half dozen other things in the process.

That's what I'm getting at. They have quite the rich history of fuckingthingsuppery in the name of making-things-bettery. Two steps forward, ten steps stumbling backwards. X months fixing the damage. Color me a naysayer, but Anet has done nothing to change my opinion on the matter.

[Arcanum]

Considering the megaserver system (and the new event timings) are only going to be rolled out in the starter zones at first, they should hopefully be able to spot anything game breaking before they add it to every other zone.

[Ryong]

My runes are fucked.

Everything else is fine.

[synkr0nized]

I have to re-tweak some builds now. Warrior's changed a bit, and I am not sure axe/mace is worth it considering how traits seem to push axe/axe. I don't want to drop GS on my mesmer, but that's not really a good choice for the DPS meta. *shrug*

Having to re-do random world events to unlock the few remaining traits (lol @ paying gold at my trainer) is kind of bullshit. I really feel bad for players that are new or still leveling and have to visit certain areas to get the traits they want. I suspect leveling feels a whole lot weaker.


The new wardrobe system is pretty sweet; so many random unlocks from my PvP locker. I can wear my witches outfit in combat now, too.

---------- Post added at 04:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:22 PM ----------

Oh, yes, runes. I never could afford scholars, and the Ferocity mechanic makes the poor man's solution of using Ruby Orbs kind of meh.

---------- Post added at 05:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:56 PM ----------

oh no, the Witches costume as an outfit doesn't seem to include the hat. I have the separate hat skin from talking to the Mad King or whatever that year, but not the one that was part of the costume.

lol @ town clothes as a tonic

[Krylo]

A 'style' or 'wardrobe' tab where you can just equip whatever you want other people to see (or what you want to look at yourself wearing) is pretty standard in MMOs these days. Of the few which still lack that, which I can think of, there are methods of transferring stats from one piece of gear to another to basically work the same way (sometimes with more twinking potential *coughswtorcough*).

Did GW2 not have something similar until recently? And does it still not work as well?

That's kinda silly. Especially considering how lucrative appearance customization can be in F2P games.

[Ryong]

GW2 used to have item transmutation the way it works in anything, where you can make an item take the appearance of another, but you lose one of them.

The new system lets any item you ever wore or salvaged have its skin saved and you can use it for anything whenever.

[synkr0nized]

Yeah, we always had the ability to keep skins with whatever stats we wanted as we leveled or at max level. It's just now the Wardrobe system was expanded to what it should have been at game launch.

GW1 made appearance customization simple via runes and insignias for armor suffixes and prefixes, respectively, and tying nothing but armor value to the actual piece of armor.

SWTOR, as you mentioned, provides shells that you fill with the armorings and mods you want to keep looks and stats separate.

Perfect World had, years back when I had looked into it and tried it, a visual armor/clothing tab and then a stats-based gear tab, allowing you to show the former or ignore it as you desired.

GW2's transmutation system was a little more like WoW's than it should have been but also not enough like it. The stones let you merge appearance and stats of two same-slot items, freeing players to change their appearance however they liked. However this basically destroyed the armor skin you didn't select.

The wardrobe system is now what it should have been from the start. Originally, PvE worked as above with transmutation. PvP had a "PvP Locker" that stored unlocked skins for armor and weapons. In GW2 PvP, gear is normalized so that instead of it having an armor value, rune slot, and bonuses to three stats it just had the armor value (which is the same regardless of skin across armor class) and rune slot. Progressing in PvP (and as you earn defined levels of achievement points) awarded you with skins, or a currency to use on unlocking skins with the base armor value and empty slot. These could be stored in the locker, but they could not be taken to PvE.

But now the wardrobe system has been expanded to be a bit more useful and account-wide unlock skins as you use them throughout all aspects of the game, allowing us to take our PvE skins and add them to our unlocks and freely transmute anything -- armor, weapons, back slot items -- wherever we are in the world, provided we have "transmutation charges" (i.e. the stones and crystals we had before, so they still are something people need to buy). PvP areas now just use whatever skin anyone is wearing, as well, due to these changes.

Also we don't have to go walk to a locker object in the world to see what we've got unlocked.

And random one-time use skin items in our inventories/banks instead unlock the skin for use whenever. I had so many bank slots for things I didn't want to use on a character in case I wanted to use it for something else later also but didn't want to get rid of, and now these are unlocked for my account in this system for use at any time.



Also I have no way to prove this but I am pretty confident that there are a couple armor pieces from my PvP locker that have not been unlocked in the current system.

[Arcanum]

I suspect leveling feels a whole lot weaker.

I started playing again because I was bored and figured it's been long enough since I played the story that getting a new profession to 80 would be a relatively fresh experience again.

Unfortunately leveling my Mesmer is extremely boring. I mean, getting to 30 before was super boring, but now I don't even have traits to help me feel like I'm making progress. It sucks.

Good news is I made all my characters way before this patch hit, so I won't have to do arbitrary events to unlock traits once I hit 30 (except for the new traits).

[synkr0nized]

These megaservers combined with the fact that you must complete specific in-game activities that rely on other players in order to unlock traits is a fiasco.

People don't seem to understand Grenth, and it's bugging me that I have to sit through failures -- and will on all of my other characters -- for trait unlocks.


If I had just started the game, I'd be tempted to ask for a refund, as this system would take a forefront role in giving me a view of what this game was like. This seems like the most un-fun way to level a character (having jack shit but some skills until 30, and then SLOWLY building stats due to the nerfed trait points allotment), as well has having less freedom to explore on your own -- you're almost directed to certain areas, regardless of how you might want to explore or level, if you want to build a character a certain way aim for specific traits.


edit: LOL ok we got a smaller group together that knew the fight and did all right. 1 down, 7 to go.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

These megaservers combined with the fact that you must complete specific in-game activities that rely on other players in order to unlock traits is a fiasco.

People don't seem to understand Grenth, and it's bugging me that I have to sit through failures -- and will on all of my other characters -- for trait unlocks.


If I had just started the game, I'd be tempted to ask for a refund, as this system would take a forefront role in giving me a view of what this game was like. This seems like the most un-fun way to level a character. You're almost directed to certain areas, regardless of how you might want to explore or level.

Yeahhhh...they're gonna fuck it up something fierce.

Called it!

[Ryong]

Literally the only trait unlocking event people seem to be having problem with is the Lyssa temple because after doing the event to take over it - which gives you a trait for participating in - people then have to let the event for defending it fail so everyone can go help take over it again. Defending the temple gives no benefit whatsoever as you also only gain a chest from taking over it.

Shit, I'm sorry but if the megaserver I'm in which is mostly Maguuma people manage to do Grenth several times a day, I don't see how you're having that much trouble.

[synkr0nized]

I don't either -- CD rarely failed events (based on when I was there to see it, as obviously I am not doing Orr events often), but it seemed like this weekend everyone wanted to ignore the shades and try to burn the boss. Then they wanted to act confused when more shades spawned and one-shot everyone.


The Gates of Arah have also been owned whenever I've logged in and checked, so I haven't been able to fight the risen wizard yet. And folks swarmed to the defense event at Grenth for the chest. I am not surprised to hear about that at Lyssa.


http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide
master traits in dungeons that, prior to this system, would see people equipped with grandmaster traits already, adept traits tied to champions in less-traveled areas like the mini-dungeon Flame Temple Tombs, grandmaster traits tied to merely exploring part of a map with adept traits tied to 100% completion in zones meant for end-game/near-max level play, and a sprinkling of WvW event participation

I like that the game encourages players to hit up different parts of it, but it's so much more forced this way. I don't care about game content relying on players getting together -- that's half the point of an MMO, isnt it? What I do care about is a hamfisted attempt to direct players to content that seems at odds with the open-ended nature of GW2 leveling and progression. I think this is the only MMO system now that ties anything of the character's growth and customization besides item drops to specific enemies and locations (i.e. as long as you find a trainer, no one in SWTOR or WoW or even old Tyria cares where you choose to level and how).

I logged onto my engineer to see where I had to go for traits vs. where I had intended to go while completing her story missions and exploring, but even though she's 67 she's been grandfathered. I did not realize that; I was expecting to maybe have Master level traits unlocked and still have to do all of the Grandmaster.

[Ryong]

I expect heavy changes to the system because as it is, it really is a lot of trouble.

Maybe if they were only for some very specific traits it'd be fine, but currently it's ridiculous.

I guess the idea is that they wanted to make it so you start getting used to the legendary grind early.

[synkr0nized]

bleaugh

I just sat looking at stats and numbers for an hour.
I am trying to convince myself it's worth dropping some power and spending gold on a ~1-2% crit damage increase (doin' some rune swapping).

It's a tough sell for me atm. I realize that the Ferocity update cut the crit damage of Ruby Orbs, the "poor man's" berserker upgrade of choice, in half: 2% crit damage per orb became 14 ferocity (0.9333% crit damage) = 5.6% crit damage on a full armor set vs. the 12% it was before. But it also has 84 precision (4% crit chance) and 120 power (the king of stats for boosting damage across the board). Scholar loses all of that crit chance for a 1.6% crit damage increase and a tasty damage bonus at 90%+ health. Ranger gains 4.33% crit chance and the same 1.67% crit damage but has a power loss and requires illusions (in the case of my mesmer) for its bonus damage to trigger. Eagle is similar to Ranger but only gives damage bonuses at <50% health, which means nothing on non-vet or above enemies / half of boss fights.

Traveler has a nice move speed bonus, but otherwise it's kind of rubbish. Pack and Ogre take even further hits on crit damage, making them worse, and I don't see the point in Divinity. And at this point I don't think there are any others I really need to be looking at -- it's more or less agreed upon that Scholar, Ranger, and Strength are good ideas for many 'zerk builds, particularly for mesmers. And I sure as Hell cannot afford Strength, nor am I interested in focusing so much on might stacks and taking damage for a chance at a buff.


Is the damage buff in Scholars really worth it?

[Toast]

it never seemed so for me. Most of my characters are fitted with ruby orbs, mostly for cost reasons but also for consistency. Sure, that 90%+ damage bonus is nice, but you're really only going to keep it against trash mobs and during zerg trains where you don't really need it. I prefer the more consistent damage and the extra crit chance is nice since I don't always go full zerkers and not all of my characters have points invested in their precision trees.

[Ryong]

I got 2/6 superior runes of strength because I got super lucky with getting money for a while.

My old build consisted of stacking boons by having 2 water + 2 monk + 2 traveler and then having 6 platinum doubloons, so now I guess I'm just changing to be more specific about what boon I want...And, as a warrior, I mainly had Fury and Might anyway.

[synkr0nized]

I've decided that it's not worth it to me currently. I don't even have any ascended gear and, at my current rate, I suspect I won't for a while. I also don't run in speed clear groups, so I've decided it's not important enough to quibble over a few hundred points of damage or a few more critical hits.

I do still need to finish all dungeon paths for the dungeon master title. Fuck if I remember what ones I have left, though.


Semi-related, in my process of exploring the tweaked runes: finally letting us reset our trait points on the fly has freed me up (read: my laziness in not bothering to visit a trainer is no longer an issue) to stop running a WvW-oriented build on my thief in PvE, awarding me an average of 2-3k more damage per backstab and heartseeker solo and more with group buffs.

D/D might not be the best for WvW, but continuing to master CnD is an enjoyable challenge.



So basically even when I think that I might be getting bored with the game, logging back in and engaging in a few fights is usually enough to remind me why I enjoy it as much as I do. I still have a lot of leveling to do across my characters in SWTOR, but damn if GW2 doesn't have the best combat system.

[shiney]

It will almost always have the best combat system. If they hadn't shat the bed in a multitude of other areas the game would be stellar.

[synkr0nized]

Oh, nice. I was out of town this week, and I come back to the Queen's Jubilee and the gauntlet returning. Pretty fun.

I got to beat Liadri; didn't get to it last year. Fun fight; pretty proud of having beat her. I guess I need to figure out how to do the fight well enough to handle the 8-orb achievement, though. Not sure I have the chops for that.


lol @ Queensdale farmers

---------- Post added at 05:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:23 AM ----------

Also, it makes me sad when I look at all of the mesmer things that are still broken and then see interviews with ANet staff like this one (http://www.relicsoforr.com/?p=3256):

Chris: I only ever use car analogies. Basically I’m essentially the customer for the group that is building the car. We work together to spec out what the car is. Then the team builds it and I give them my support and tell them how I think it’s doing from a design standpoint. Then we iterate on it and iterate on it so it handles really well and we win races. How about that?

in trying to describe his role as production lead; basically the guy that seems to ensure everyone's doing what they need to do to make the game better

Chris: At the moment I am learning to play a mesmer, but my main is a Warrior, and he is a shout heal spec. 34,000 hit points, and all the good heals, and he is my favorite at the moment.

He plays an awful build for the one class the devs consistently all seem to like and buff across the board. This is another example of ANet staff not being very great at their own game (another was the prevalence of all-signet warriors prior to the buff to all warrior signets, the latter probably motivated by the former). Even as laid back as I am about folks playing whatever builds, as long as the party clears content, I would be rolling my eyes a lot at this warrior.

Erik: You’ve also been working on a Mesmer as well?

Chris: Yeah on Guild Wars 2 China, I have a level 11 Mesmer which is fresh today, and I’ve been learning to play her. This is the first time I have actually played with a female avatar in an MMO so I’m still getting used to that. It’s a little bit weird.

Clint: That will be cool, playing a fresh class, fresh experience, fresh world and everyone coming in is new. That’s going to be fun!

Chris: That’s right. I really wanted to pick a class that I know isn’t the easiest. It’s a cool class but it requires skill. Obviously I’ve had a lot of practice with a Warrior so I really wanted to go in with a class that I could at least to a certain extent be at the same level as other players in the world so I could get a feeling of how they were going through the content. How we were sharing content together and really look through Guild Wars 2 afresh again through their eyes. Right?

No clue on how mesmer works, 2+ years into the game. But could have an influence on the coders working on the mesmer portions of the game, assuming we even have any anymore (we've got bugs from launch still).



I don't think any class gets anywhere near the attention that warrior does in GW2 from the staff. I also know other classes have their own issues. But I feel it's a pretty objective statement to say that mesmers are the most bugged profession in the game still. Aside from engineer, which I've decided for me is a pretty awful class, I don't feel like even half as many skill issues exist, if any do at all, on my other characters. It doesn't help that instead of getting fixes we seem to get a few nerfs and then tooltip tweaks instead over the past few patches.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Synk, I must thank you.

I had a momentary lapse in sanity where I considered playing again.

[Ryong]

Yeah man, it's not like they just fixed the trait unlock system last patch, right? Oh wait they totally fucking did.

It's not like megaservers have made the game not be a empty wasteland outside of a train or the first two waves of world bosses, no, definitely not.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

A few boos from the gallery, I see.

Those are minor concessions in the overall picture of A-Net not knowing what the fuck they're doing in the long run. This is further compounded with the key points that Synk listed. I'm normally laid back when it comes to a lot of games but Guildwars 2 struck a nerve of extreme agitation and disappointment at the same time.

The biggest beef I have with Anet and GW2 is they're seemingly content with mediocrity. Most updates are either fixes from previous fuckups, unnecessary alterations, and are just plain stupid.

Anet has a long history of ignoring problems pointed out that could desperately use fixing. Out of sight and out of mind. For me, it started when following a relatively minor patch players noticed and pointed out to Anet that loot tables were broken across the board and champions weren't dropping anything even remotely valuable compared to the effort put forth. Anet flat out said Nope, you're all dumb. We have tables to look at and you don't. We're right, you're wrong, nothing to see here. Move along. This is referred to as the Final Rest debacle of 2012. So the only real way to get loot for shit was to buy gems or do the dragon trains. Anet then put a daily cap on dragons. This fueled massive lagspikes on the dragon hotspots at all times. So what do they do? Put in server guesting! CLEARLY THIS DIDN'T COMPOUND THE ISSUE! Well after a year of refusing that loot tables were broken? Oh, guess they were. We'll fix that now lolololololol. Not to mention the myriad of problems that have existed from launch, as Synk pointed out.

Enter the luck grind. A grind on top of a grind on top of a grind. Korean mmos have nothing against that shit.

Oh hey, absofuckinglutely no endgame? FRACTALS! Introducing another stupidass useless mechanic requirng another stupidass item grind to get any further because of the stupidass torment mechanic. After a certain point group and spec composition becomes key for survival. That useless fuck of a joke healer shout warrior that Chris Whiteside splooged about? Nope. Deadass liability, dead weight, wasted team slot in any content.

PVP is little more than flavor of the month builds designed around mitigating the latest update's 'balance' pass. WvWvW have interesting mechanics but are ultimately of little use compared to straight up zerging from point to point.

So yeah, I speak harshly of GW2 because it deserves it. I know the game could, and would, be better if the folk running it weren't so occupied with eating paste and give the game some actual direction instead of being an over glorified dress-up simulator. At this point I'm inclined to say the only valid reason GW2 hasn't gone titsup is because it is free to play after the initial purchase.

I want to enjoy the game. I want to play the game. It's simply not enjoyable in every aspect and so far everything Anet does simply turns me off from the game that much more.

[synkr0nized]

I just wanted to complain about how my preferred profession is being coded/creatively directed by people who don't even understand how it works (or, more correctly, doesn't work). Key skills to us mesmers have been broken and re-broken consistently, whereas warriors come out more polished, guardians are strong, rangers even got their pets updated, etc. I'll admit to some bias, mesmer being my pride and joy, but it's a bit ridiculous how long our list of bugs has gotten.


I definitely agree that it's a bit silly that folks involved in making the game run awful specs that would be terrible for high-end content. Like, holy shit. I would expect a team of ANet staffers to be able to handle high-level fractals, but that shout-heal spec probably wouldn't go very far without the other four party members doing heavy lifting.

I guess having started my "MMO" experience with GW1, which wasn't even really an MMO, the grinding for skin drops and shit like that and the meta-build-of-the-month style to PvP doesn't seem abnormal to me. I certainly don't see GW2 as being any worse than other MMOs out currently. Hell, I mostly whine because I like the game.


edit: Like
You're thanking me for getting you to not come back to the game or whatever and pointing to my post in your discussion of your lack of faith in ANet and all that, and I just was focusing on the shittiness of the game's staff not understanding mesmers. After praising the return of the jubilee/gauntlet. So uhm I guess don't thank me for calling the game shit 'cause that's not really what I was doing?

[Ryong]

You've seriously, seriously, forgotten what an actual grind is.

Let's go with Flyff, an actual korean MMO: you level from 1 to 120 then get thrown at 60 and then level back to 120 with more things. From 63 onwards, you have a single quest to do every level that requires at least 30 drops from an enemy your level and that gives you 5~10% towards the next level. These drops have a 40% or so drop chance and each monster you kill gives you around 0.1%. You take anywhere from 30 to a minute to kill a monster and then get to the next one, or maybe if you're fighting several at a time you may do it slighty faster with getting five to follow you and then kill all of them in a minute.

So assuming you don't have to buy any sort of health or mana restoration item at any point and you take an average of 45 seconds to fight off a single enemy, you're getting 7,98% experience PER GODDAMN HOUR. You're going to do that for more than a hundred levels. You get to see new monsters to kill and every 30 levels there's a new dungeon where the only mechanic is that maybe a boss has some sort of instant death move, otherwise anything you're doing is the exact same game but with higher numbers but you're wearing progressively sharper armor and wielding progressively complicated weapons.

That's grind. That's one korean MMO amongst thousands.

Back in GW2, getting a full exotic set at 80 means you can do literally anything in the game but the hardest fractals, which give you ridiculous rewards and eventually you're not supposed to keep going because they don't have a upper limit on difficulty, but you have a upper limit on stats.

Getting a legendary is a huge grind, but that's because that's meant to be a goddamn ridiculous achievement. That's also why luck grinding exists, so you can get materials by selling shit and the more luck you have, the easier it is to get that gold.

But...if you think the game is supposed to be nothing but getting gold and stock up on legendaries then of course you're going to think it's a fucking grindfest.

WvWvW is a mess of zergs with several interesting concepts thrown in which become less important the more people there are.

I'm not going to defend that they've ignored some classes or that they should've introduced new skills by now, or the new weapon types or old weapon types avaliable for more classes.

I'm not going to defend that some of their events were outright broken.

I'm not going to defend that they dealt with world bosses being too easy by making the numbers higher and requiring a gigantic crowd to know exactly what they're doing.

I'm not going to defend that they've made an optimal build for every class that focuses on DPS and nothing else and it works against everything perfectly - except for the part it's much easier for wipes to happen because no one can fucking tank anything or deal condition damage to save their asses if necessary.

I'm not saying GW2 has done everything perfectly.

I'm saying GW2 has a lot of goddamn issues and yet it has done so many things right and so well that I can ignore a lot of the shit they should've fixed already.

[Ryong]

UPCOMING UPDATE:

LIVING STORY IS NO LONGER TEMPORARY CONTENT
IF YOU LOGIN DURING LIVING STORY, YOU CAN ACCESS IT WHENEVER ( on any character I believe )
IF YOU MISS LIVING STORY, YOU CAN PAY 200 GEMS FOR EACH "EPISODE"

and now there's different rewards and achievement shit for completing living story content

[Steel Shadow]

Oh hey, they finally listened about that. Maybe I'll actually start playing again at some point then.

[synkr0nized]

Season 2 of the Living Story is amazing, at least so far, as a story. They appear to have listened to some of the complaints about the story and actually put in effort into making the player feel involved and the main NPCs relevant.

I'm pretty undecided about Dry Top as a zone, though. Hasn't really held my interest, and I haven't done any of its achievements -- I just blazed through story bits and participated in a few events while exploring. Some of the vet/champ spawns have been fun, though. That said, I am in the middle of moving, so I haven't been on much.



In any case if you haven't been in the game please get in and at least unlock the episodes to play when you have more time.

[shiney]

Hey is Logan relevant yet or is he still a dickbag?

[synkr0nized]

Hey is Logan relevant yet or is he still a dickbag?

DE remains largely irrelevant, which is one of my complaints. It is still practically launch for Season 2, so I am willing to wait to see if they get woven into it more. However, some of it is bothersome. Caithe had involvement before, yet despite Zojja's insistence in being involved with player character asura (play an asura, it's a good chance to interact with her to learn more about her) she all but seems to ignore Tiami. And Logan continues to not get involved despite Seraph involvement in Dry Top.

Similarly, while I feel like this is the perfect situation in which we could benefit from Trahearne's knowledge and experience so far there's no evidence to suggest he, or the Pact, are making movements to get involved.


I worry that they weren't able to get the voice actors to come record new lines or something, and we won't see DE interact much with the player character and DE 2.0. The latter are pretty great, though -- they have some more character growth, relationship growth, and are really falling in with the player-character. You get the spotlight, too, and they share it with you. I don't want to spoil anything, so when/if you do play the episodes be sure not to skip through their interactions and make sure to talk to them all when possible.



Regardless

Remember all the fuss made about Ceara having seen the Eternal Alchemy and coming out as Scarlet? You know, the driving force behind most of what she did in life and, thus, the living story?

You should play this story even if it's just for the fact that you stop Tiami's rush into Omadd's machine and instead get to see what Scarlet saw.

[synkr0nized]

Halloween has brought out new outfits. More dress-up time!

http://home.comcast.net/~synkr0nized/screenshots/GW2_nirrti_dress.png


Anyone who didn't get the Master Carver title in the very first GW2 Halloween -- it has returned in this year's holiday achievement category. Otherwise most of the content is a return of the first and second Halloween events.

[Ryong]

Season 2 is actually really, really well written...But the difficulty of the enemies is insane now. Everything does a ton of damage and inflicts a lot of conditions.

[synkr0nized]

I just learned about this reference (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lunar_Wolf) in game. Ha.

[synkr0nized]

Season 2 is actually really, really well written

It's like someone finally paid attention to what people liked about the Personal Story and Season 1 and where the complaints were rooted and then took some time to actually put effort into addressing the latter.

[Toast]

I actually haven't played since August when I leveled up an elementalist. Guh was that a slog compared to how leveling used to be.

GW2 just really isn't offering me what I want out of a game right now, so even the new season story just isn't interesting me enough to play.

That being said, I did pick up GW1 last week and I'm having fun with it again. I started with a necro, but it didn't take me long to realize I wanted a melee class, so I started another dervish. I got through the first act of nightfall and into Kourna, but I'm taking a detour to do some EotN stuff and pick up some of those heroes before I move on.

[synkr0nized]

With a fully-linked account in GW1 (i.e. all chapters plus EotN), it's definitely a good idea to do that and get heroes quickly. You can faceroll through PvE more easily.

I haven't loaded GW1 in a long time out of fear I will keep finding things to miss / lament not having in the "sequel".




Also maybe it might be worth saying this here for anyone who's not logged in to see the current stuff:
- at least logging in unlocks the story chapters for your account permanently, so you can do them later when you have the time/interest
- the new zones (e.g. Dry Top, the Silverwastes) are permanent map additions
- The Silverwastes zone is basically a PvE version of wub-wub, except the enemy forces are an elder dragon's minions. This is actually kind of neat both because I like wub wub, at least sometimes, and it engenders a very natural excuse for events to repeat. Plus it represents what I would expect in the NPCs and organizations, having representatives from all races, orders, and the Pact present (as a result of what you do in the storyline, no less!).

Basically if this is the quality of Living Story they will continue to produce, it will at least be enjoyable if nothing else. Their "endgame" may continue to suffer for lack of dungeon content (last I read, the scuttlebutt is that they don't even have a dungeon team anymore), but at least we'll get new outfits and lore progression.

[Ryong]

I've two complaints of late:

- Dry Top is a complex map and finding stuff in it can be kind of hard.

- Whoever designed the new challenges doesn't seem to understand the notion of "fair". Enemies deal damage to absurdly gigantic areas and unless you have something to quickly recharge your dodges you're screwed on a lot of them.

[shiney]

Been reading a bit about HoT and considering if I want to come back and play. One concern is I don't tend to get into living story stuff, because I can never keep up and if I start it and then miss a chapter or whatever (or fail to find a group) then I feel sort of deflated and lose my will to keep playing. Is this a problem that I might encounter end game?

Is end game less grindy now or is it still a standard kind of "do this dungeon until RNG favors you with a good drop" or collect impossibly rare mats for billions of gold to craft an item 5% better than what you currently have kind of stuff? I get that's standard fare for an MMO but it's really off-putting, particularly when you don't have a guild or a lot of people to play with.

I remember when we started doing NPF dungeon runs and that lasted like 2 weeks before we couldn't get a group together anymore. It was fun but frustrating on that front too.

I dunno. Just spitballin' here.

[Toast]

I guess it largely depends on what you want out of the game. Over the last six months, I've played on and off, but I've avoided the living story because it seemed to me to be achievement grind and otherwise uninteresting content. I also refuse to grind out any ascended gear, because I hate grind and I think it was a terrible design decision.

I haven't been terribly affected by it. I don't do fractals. And for most endgame content stats don't matter as much as pattern recognition, and low enough ping to dodge appropriately, which is something I don't have so I tend to stay away from it when I can. Also, build seems to matter a lot more than stats. Despite Anet's stated efforts, most classes seem to only have 1-2 viable builds, the rest are just subpar.

As for HoT, I'll probably end up getting it, but not necessarily right away. I'm concerned about specializations and masteries more than endgame. What little they've revealed about specializations sounds stupidly limiting. I have the sneaking suspicion that there will be no new skills outside of the specialization, and that the new weapon can only be used while in the specialization. Given that weapons were (stupidly) tied to role, the new specialization weapons likely will be as well, and Anet doesn't have the best track record when it comes to making all weapon sets equally viable.

I also think the number of new zones for HoT seems really small. Over the last year, that's been my biggest complaint. There's nothing new for me to do. The living story is, at best, small chunks of content. Yeah, there's two new zones, but nothing I've heard about them has made me want to rush right over there. I want new zones to explore that are as good as the zones in Kryta. I want challenging content, not hard content.

[shiney]

That's kind of how I feel, along with a feeling that my personal concerns about a lack of content I would enjoy have yet to be addressed. In the process of 0 - 80 I had my fill of "Collect these items or kill those bad guys until this heart is full, go to next waypoint, complete next heart quest" ad infinitum. Dungeons and raids are what's most fun to me, and experiencing content, but it felt like most people aren't really interested in doing dungeons for fun as much as doing them for a reason. Plus I die a lot since I am 100% full on DPS build and I have poor response time. :B

[synkr0nized]

Some good news: The PAX announcement confirmed no new levels or new gear levels.


"Viable" gets thrown around a lot and not used correctly.

If you throw together a combination of traits that enables you to kill enemy things without dying, it's viable.

The dungeon community wants the most optimal builds. Given that the entirety of GW2 combat in dungeon boss and even some world boss encounters revolves around dodging to negate damage rather than a trinity or similar system that focuses on mitigating and managing damage, the best builds focus on the highest sustained and/or burst DPS.

That said, the "community" in this sense is really only relevant if you are using LFG, as the average LFG party is going to want to clear more quickly. Any guild(s) you can get involved in or individuals you can find to run through using whatever will open up the floor to all kinds of builds, even if they are terrible, though it may also be more fun for those involved.




In any case, I would NOT suggest you worry about HoT if you don't intend to progress through Season 2 of the Living Story. And if you haven't logged in, then I guess you've missed out (As long as you logged in for each chapter's release, then it's added to your account and ready for you to play it whenever).

The mechanics may be cool (And they are!), but for me Season 2 improved vastly over Season 1 in making me feel relevant to the world, pulling together PCs and NPCs under relevant causes, and at least trying to give some emotional depth to the world and its NPCs. It's also been a blast with regard to superior boss encounter design in the story missions and the open world, so if that trend continues then maybe even if you miss on the story that's happened in the past few months you'll still enjoy it. I dunno.

[Toast]

That's kind of how I feel, along with a feeling that my personal concerns about a lack of content I would enjoy have yet to be addressed. In the process of 0 - 80 I had my fill of "Collect these items or kill those bad guys until this heart is full, go to next waypoint, complete next heart quest" ad infinitum.

See, that's what I enjoy about the game, and what I want more of. That's also how I feel about the kind of content I want not being addressed.



If you throw together a combination of traits that enables you to kill enemy things without dying, it's viable.

Here I disagree. To me there's a big difference between usable and viable. Guardian off-hands are a good example to illustrate what I mean. You can use the shield and the torch, and they're actually more useful with the recent updates, but they're still not viable because they will never be as good a choice as the focus.


The dungeon community wants the most optimal builds. Given that the entirety of GW2 combat in dungeon boss and even some world boss encounters revolves around dodging to negate damage rather than a trinity or similar system that focuses on mitigating and managing damage, the best builds focus on the highest sustained and/or burst DPS.

The entire game is built around damage being the only leg the whole damage/support/control thing stands on, for pve. Champions and bosses are essentially immune to control and are huge damage sponges, and normal mobs don't last long enough for it to be useful. There's no point in going full support, because you either don't need to to get perma-boons or you cripple your damage to do so for little benefit.

[synkr0nized]

Here I disagree. To me there's a big difference between usable and viable. Guardian off-hands are a good example to illustrate what I mean. You can use the shield and the torch, and they're actually more useful with the recent updates, but they're still not viable because they will never be as good a choice as the focus.

Not being as good doesn't mean it's not viable. A viable build is one in which a player can clear content without being carried. The focus is certainly the optimal choice in guardian offhand (I really like it, myself, despite how much I'd rather take my shield out of storage and use it).

Perhaps this is just drifting into semantics, however, when it doesn't need to do so. (i.e. like I said, too often MMO players use "viable" when they really mean "optimal" or "most efficient"; a guardian with a mace and shield is capable of succeeding, albeit more slowly than one with a sword and focus; I don't think we are actually disagreeing on anything here but the use of "viable" itself)


The entire game is built around damage being the only leg the whole damage/support/control thing stands on, for pve. Champions and bosses are essentially immune to control and are huge damage sponges, and normal mobs don't last long enough for it to be useful. There's no point in going full support, because you either don't need to to get perma-boons or you cripple your damage to do so for little benefit.

Right, that's why I said dungeon encounters are centered on dodging at the right time. The fact that ANet's developers decided to be lazy and make dungeon bosses virtually immune to CCs emphasizes the don't-stand-in-the-fire and press-dodge-at-the-right-time mentality for staying alive. As long as you do that, all your build needs to focus on is pure damage -- anyone playing one of the terrible support-only builds floating around still won't be able to keep someone alive through most boss attacks, anyway.

Plus the quicker your enemies are dead the less chance they have to do any damage to you :P.


For what it's worth, LS episodes in Season 2 -- while they do have achievements [mostly for replaying them], there's nothing forcing you to grind those out. If you've liked GW lore at all in GW2 and have some fond memories of the first game, I urge you to play through them once.

[Arcanum]

Let me tell you the story of my sub-optimal, yet still viable elementalist.

I'm running Power/Vit/CondDmg armor on my elementalist (Flame Legion dungeon armor) with Berserker Chest and Legs because I wanted Flame Legion shoulders, boots, gloves, and head, but different chest and legs for my full exotic armor set (for looks, not stats, but I didn't want to bother with transmutation stones and a second exotic set), bought the chest off the Trading Post I believe, the pants from Orrian karma merchants. I never got around to running the dungeons I wanted the chest/legs from. I've also got full exotic sapphire accessories, socketed with exquisite sapphires (Healing Power/Power/Toughness).

My traits are 6/0/0/4/4, and really the only reason I have 6 into fire is to help boost my damage a little bit as well as for the fury bonus to my blast finishers on fire fields.

I am for all intents and purposes a support Elementalist, and have been since I hit 80 and crafted my accessories from scratch.

And it works pretty well if I do say so myself. As long as someone isn't getting one-shot, I can heal them up to full really quickly. It's not as good as a traditional MMO healer obviously, but it helps keep people alive and I also buff the damage of everyone else on my team with Might+Fury, and Vulnerability stacks. And people always seem surprised by how tanky a Greater Water Elemental can be, not to mention the extra heals it dishes out.

Obviously my elementalist doesn't have much of a place in the super-high-skilled dungeon groups who avoid damage almost completely, but he's a great boon to the average party, and that's the kind of party I find myself playing with the most.

[synkr0nized]

My traits are 6/0/0/4/4, and really the only reason I have 6 into fire is to help boost my damage a little bit as well as for the fury bonus to my blast finishers on fire fields.

6/0/0/4/4 is actually pretty useful for random world roaming and meta events, too. You might also enjoy swapping it to 0/6/0/4/4 if you haven't yet taken the ele into WvW.

[Arcanum]

Never thought my build was terrible since it has always proved surprisingly effective. I'm just aware that it falls significantly outside the bounds of the Zerk Meta, especially with the armor + accessory choices.

---------- Post added 02-06-2015 at 09:54 AM ---------- Previous post was 02-05-2015 at 10:08 PM ----------

So I found out I'm rich in GW2. Way back in 2012 I had made a Mystic Forge Conduit purely for the sake of convenience. Cost me like 15-20G buying some mats from the TP. Apparently those things were a limited time deal and are now worth ~870G. Now I just need to earn another 20G so I can afford the 40G listing fee :D :D :D

[Toast]

Not being as good doesn't mean it's not viable. A viable build is one in which a player can clear content without being carried. The focus is certainly the optimal choice in guardian offhand (I really like it, myself, despite how much I'd rather take my shield out of storage and use it).

Perhaps this is just drifting into semantics, however, when it doesn't need to do so. (i.e. like I said, too often MMO players use "viable" when they really mean "optimal" or "most efficient"; a guardian with a mace and shield is capable of succeeding, albeit more slowly than one with a sword and focus; I don't think we are actually disagreeing on anything here but the use of "viable" itself)

It largely is a matter of terminology. Perhaps a better way for me to put it would be to say that they're not equally viable.

In any case, I am enjoying the mace/torch guardian I started last week. What I miss most compared to my main guardian is actually my traveler's runes for the runspeed buff.

[synkr0nized]

So I found out I'm rich in GW2. Way back in 2012 I had made a Mystic Forge Conduit purely for the sake of convenience. Cost me like 15-20G buying some mats from the TP. Apparently those things were a limited time deal and are now worth ~870G. Now I just need to earn another 20G so I can afford the 40G listing fee :D :D :D

Wow, lucky.

I keep crossing my fingers for a precursor so that, unless it's one of the ~3 or 4 I think I may want eventually, I can sell it for the cash. I'd definitely do it with a conduit, too.

Though I'd keep a permanent hair stylist contract.

[synkr0nized]

doin' a vista daily
Walked up to the one on the top floor of the Almuten Mansion in Genderran Fields and found myself walking through a small group of players role playing as some kind of rich Canthan clan.

It was a bit surreal, but I was not quick-witted enough to utter something appropriately Charr-like as I passed by and overheard their conversations.

There are a lot of cool places I could see people using for RP. I am surprised I don't run into it more often. And, thankfully, the few times I have it's been pretty normal, not the awful "ERP" that basically dominates most popular stations in Star Trek Online (or at least used to, haven't played that in half a year).

[synkr0nized]

At the risk of no-one but the usual ~4 of us who post here reading this:

GW2 is 75% off this weekend, making the Heroic and Deluxe editions $10 and $15, respectively. This means that for the same price as a single character slot account upgrade you can get the game and some additional bonus gear/boosts.

At that price, anyone who's wanted to explore Tyria, the game mechanics, or whatnot really has no reason not to do so.


For current players, the digital deluxe upgrade to your account is only 500 gems now (compared the typical 2000).

[synkr0nized]

Zjs8F03MOYc


F3msv_8SxLg


The olde timey music on death is almost the best part. Time to go die to things while making airplane noises with my mouth.

[synkr0nized]

:V

[synkr0nized]

Karl McLain best GW2 dev, 10/10 would steal again (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/thief/F2-button-for-Stolen-Item-skill-usage/first#post5120234)

[shiney]

I even remember that affecting me too, so good work on Karl and the dev team.

[synkr0nized]

I'll just paste what I sent to a friend over Steam:

synkr0nized: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/
synkr0nized: Finally condition damage will mean something!
synkr0nized: Mesmer confusion will be a mix between empathy style damage and oldschool drain damage!
synkr0nized: Hooray!

-----

In some combat situations, this is far too effective, such as against a very rapidly attacking character. In other cases, it performs very poorly, such as on a slowly attacking boss.
This bugs me a bit -- confusion shouldn't be considered "too effective" if someone attacks rapidly. That's fucking dumb. That said, you can't, like, burn someone more quickly or bleed them more quickly, so in that sense I can see wanting a balance. But that's not how they present it. In any case the proposed solution sounds reasonable to me.


Semi-related: popping necro's SS or mesmer's Empathy on things/people was fun as shit in GW1. I had high hopes for confusion based on that. But that kind of line from the devs shows that they didn't, at least not in the same way. But part of me likes the health drain idea, since it reminds me of other GW1 hexes. And hexes were awesome.

[Arcanum]

So I finally got http://i.imgur.com/oZ0iML0.jpg on my ele. Although since ascended armor looks like crap, http://i.imgur.com/RVaWSUS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Rv8D3tB.jpg

Crafted 5/6 of the pieces. Got the chest piece as a reward for completing the Bio-luminescence collection. My weapon, back piece, and accessories are all ascended as well.

I guess now I just save up things for a legendary weapon?