Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Lotus Victoria]

Been grinding IBS Mastery Points to get to 514 (currently 502). I don't know how the f* GW2 kept going after Champions. It is truly the lowest point of this game.

And to think IBS started so promising...

[Edge-]

Been grinding IBS Mastery Points to get to 514 (currently 502). I don't know how the f* GW2 kept going after Champions. It is truly the lowest point of this game.

And to think IBS started so promising...

I caved and ended up getting a few of those final points from collections. I'd been sitting on the last IBS mastery since the last update shipped at least and just have never had it in me to do the grinds to unlock some of the others, or just never ran the strikes. Thankfully you don't need IBS masteries for anything other than your own sanity, tho.

[Lex Icon]

gotta go visit that event again

[Edge-]

Oh that's a nice little video. Grothmar Valley is a really nice zone and was one of the highlights of IBS IMO. Got some apparently good little GW1 nods, some good events, a nice JP, a meta with some surprisingly legit metal, and it's just darned pretty. I do hope we get to go more into races cultural stuff with these expansions moving forwards, especially if we can face things...less kinda "reality ending" or similar threats.

I'm still into SotO and all and am here for the update (Tuesday, btw!), but sometimes you just wanna have to head off something comparatively simple like a civil war.

[Edge-]

I have finally been blessed with the choco charr. They were in Mistlock in all white dancing around. Today is a blessed day.

[Haytham]

I think I tried playing this game around 3 times since it launched.

Played thief and elementalist. The classes felt ok but what really put me off was the character models and the story.

Areas themselves were ok but that alone could not keep my interest for long. I may try it again,it's been many years but it's always a pain to join a MMO late in it's lifecycle.

[PACOX]

GW2 is heavily discounted for the holidays if you are someone even remotely interested

Up to 75% on various bundles.

https://buy.guildwars2.com/en-us

[Ghost of Cow]

So I finally resolved to make a new character and just do the entire GW2 story from start to finish since I never really did it before. Always in chunks out of order here and there as they came out, or whatever. Just finished the original story part and figured I'd write the blog post no one asked for.

Settled on a Charr Guardian and went Willbender with Sword/Sword and Greatsword.

(Unrelated to the story, this spec is absurd in open world. The mobility and resets on Virtue 1 make you into this little pinball of doom, just bouncing around everywhere murdering stuff. I'm not even using a proper build as best I can tell, just Berserker items and whatever traits sounded good, and everything simply explodes when I look at it. Most things can't even hurt me, either, even though it's pure Zerker. Just too much mobility, boons, aegis, blinds, etc. Maybe this is just the result of power creep, but jeez.)

Anyway...I've heard people say that the beginning portion of the story is the best part, and it's still true. The Charr opening story had me wanting to keep going to see more. Lots of good character interactions, some political stuff, a reasonable amount of uncertainty in the story...it was quite nice. It's fun to see what Dinky has to say at various points, and Rytlock is a fine gentleman.

The shift to the Order storylines is really, really, jarring as a Charr. Even moreso than I recall with other races. You really don't see any Risen in the Charr starting areas, and Zhaitan is never mentioned once. So the first time someone tells you, "Ok, now go get Zhaitan, champ!" it's really, really weird. Not to mention just dumping the new warband you made and effectively abandoning your now-successful military career at the Citadel.

Of course, I ended up picking Whispers because Tybalt is a goddamned hero.

Once you're finished with the Orders, you're on to Orr, and that part really didn't age well. Trahearne isn't *bad* but he just kinda comes out of left field, everyone knows him already, and he's great at everything. Sorta steals your thunder as the protagonist, but that's not an inherently negative thing. As for Zhaitan, the story just never seems to present him as a credible threat. I remember almost feeling bad for him the first time I did this back in 2012 and not much has changed since. For about five minutes the Risen seem like they're going to be dangerous, then you're immediately crushing them for the rest of the story.

The final act doesn't do much for this impression...you're already winning with swords and arrows, then suddenly you have tanks and airships! It makes the entire Orr campaign feels downright silly.

The part with the Risen mesmer had some potential, probably the best part of the Orrian story.

Making Arah a solo mission was a great change, and they should do that with all the story dungeon paths. Should also make them part of the story the way XIV does, because you level so fast now that you're just plowing through all the story and before you know it you're nearly 80 and everyone has been talking about Destiny's Edge and you don't have a lot of context.

All in all it was a fairly enjoyable experience. Some of the whiplash in the story is probably from the Charr personal story being more detached from the main story. Sylvari - in comparison - are seeing Risen and meeting Trahearne right from the start so it seems to flow better.

On to Season 1?

[Edge-]

(Unrelated to the story, this spec is absurd in open world. The mobility and resets on Virtue 1 make you into this little pinball of doom, just bouncing around everywhere murdering stuff. I'm not even using a proper build as best I can tell, just Berserker items and whatever traits sounded good, and everything simply explodes when I look at it. Most things can't even hurt me, either, even though it's pure Zerker. Just too much mobility, boons, aegis, blinds, etc. Maybe this is just the result of power creep, but jeez.)

I roll with longbow instead of sword/sword usually since it's a pretty decent ranged option and swords are a bit underwhelming (though fun), but WB has become my primary open world/solo build because of this. You don't need much more than zerker gear to make it work well, it's a good spec.

All in all it was a fairly enjoyable experience. Some of the whiplash in the story is probably from the Charr personal story being more detached from the main story. Sylvari - in comparison - are seeing Risen and meeting Trahearne right from the start so it seems to flow better.

On to Season 1?

I keep meaning to start a project like this. I started it sorta on my engi in EoD, playing through HoT and some of S2 (S1 wasn't fully out yet) to go back and complete meta achievements and the like. I've got an asura thief that I've still got to take through the storyline to see their racial story (done human, charr, norn, and sylvari ages ago so I doubt I remember too much from them heh) that's only a bit of the ways in.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The shift to the Order storylines is really, really, jarring as a Charr. Even moreso than I recall with other races. You really don't see any Risen in the Charr starting areas, and Zhaitan is never mentioned once. So the first time someone tells you, "Ok, now go get Zhaitan, champ!" it's really, really weird. Not to mention just dumping the new warband you made and effectively abandoning your now-successful military career at the Citadel.

When I did the Charr story, I thought that the game did a decent job giving the male Charr PC motivation for fighting Zhaitan, since he perveted and enslaved one of your comrades. The desperation in Ron Yuan's voice acting sold it.

I do agree that it's quite strange to leave your party behind. Icebrood Saga And then they get unceremoniously killed off as minibosses in Drizzlewood Coast with no commentary from the male Charr PC..

Of course, I ended up picking Whispers because Tybalt is a goddamned hero.

Picking the spy guild never made sense to me. How does being sneaky help fight dragons? The Vigil at least can stave off the Dragon's minions, and the Priory can at least try to research weaknesses of the Dragons or find magical artifacts that can aid in the fight.

Once you're finished with the Orders, you're on to Orr, and that part really didn't age well. Trahearne isn't *bad* but he just kinda comes out of left field, everyone knows him already, and he's great at everything. Sorta steals your thunder as the protagonist, but that's not an inherently negative thing.

I never felt Trahearne "stole" my thunder. He spends most of the time planning where to build bases, organizing the ranks, negotiating for additional reinforcements, etc, while you get to go heroing. And you're the one who people hail as the dragonslayer.

As for Zhaitan, the story just never seems to present him as a credible threat. I remember almost feeling bad for him the first time I did this back in 2012 and not much has changed since. For about five minutes the Risen seem like they're going to be dangerous, then you're immediately crushing them for the rest of the story.

I felt that the Risen were threatening, given that they had apparently made it as far as the Shiverpeaks/Kryta by the Charr chapter 3 story, and then they wiped out a fort right outside a dense urban city and were ready to take it and flip everyone there into more soldiers before taking the rest of the continent, and then you have to push through several Risen zones and get a few missions where you seeing squads take casualties. I do agree that the dragon Zhaitan himself does raise questions, such as why he doesn't show up until the end. He can fly and has enormous bulk, and before the giant laser was introduced, there was little in the setting that could prove much of a threat to him, so why was he just doing nothing? He could have easily won if he had personally flown up to the densely populated cities and began flipping the masses into his minions and then overran the continent.

The final act doesn't do much for this impression...you're already winning with swords and arrows, then suddenly you have tanks and airships! It makes the entire Orr campaign feels downright silly.

I don't think the game does a good job showing the humongous size of Zhaitan's army. He has already zombified one kingdom, and unlike living civilizations which have to have people farming or mothers rearing children or civilians building stuff with only a fraction of the population being soldiers, every single zombie under Zhaitan was dedicated to war. Zhaitan should have considerable numerical superiority that could only contested by the combined might of every civilization and organization in Tyria working together. But you go to the Risen zones and you find a few dozen zombies shambling around and you mindlessly solo them. Now, maybe it might not have been practical for GW2 to stuff zones with tens of thousands of mobs, but they could have made them feel more threatening, like in FF11 where a normal mob can take 6 players to kill, and when you're in enemy territory like Xarcabad or Dynamis it really feels like you're struggling against the Shadowlord's armies.

On to Season 1?

You will have to tough it out. It's a boring slog and doesn't start getting interesting until towards the end of season 2.

[Ghost of Cow]

When I did the Charr story, I thought that the game did a decent job giving the male Charr PC motivation for fighting Zhaitan, since he perveted and enslaved one of your comrades. The desperation in Ron Yuan's voice acting sold it.

That must depend a lot on what story paths you take, then. I never had that scene!

[PACOX]

If you're replaying the story don't forget you can get a legendary from the 'Returns achievements.

[Edge-]

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topi...pdate-preview/

Jan. 30 balance update preview. As always I don't know what's going on with most classes and don't even know/care much about most of the changes for my class (Guardian) since they more affect PvP or higher end PvE stuff I don't do but...

We've also reworked the Radiant Fire trait to be less dependent on always having a torch equipped to make room for condition builds to swap between off-hand torches and pistols.

Radiant Fire: This trait no longer grants Zealot's Flame when critically striking an enemy, and instead it grants an additional ammunition to Zealot's Flame. This trait also causes Zealot's Flame to inflict additional burning to enemies in PvE only.

Holy fuck, yes. This is fucking fantastic. ZF is still gonna be an absolutely mandatory trait on any condi build and torch is 100% still mandatory as well, but we're finally unshackled from needing torch in OH with every bloody build. Now we can rock a proper pistol OH on swap or use something else.

Banking an extra charge also helps avoid missing procs when you pop your tomes and don't want to/can't swap back to your weapons to use the charge.

Rest of the changes are whatever, not too much that really looks like it affects me so I don't have any commentary really.

But really, finally not being completely tied to torch OH is gonna be nice.

[PACOX]

Mostly nerfs to some over performing builds instanced content. Not a bad patch. I'm guess its someone conservative because weapons are around the corner.

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/statu...73724108747062

I would link to the GW2 news post about this but it doesn't exist. I will never understand Anet, why schedule a tweet but not promote an in-game event with a simple blog post on the site?

Anyways, continued problems with idiots making decisions at Anet aside, there's an IMO underwhelming "Return to S1" event going on focused on the Battle for Lion's Arch. Only reward worth anything is your pick of weapon skins from the strike for the meta-achievement, and a ton of sips of karma along the way. Normally I'd do these events as a matter of course and for the cosmetic reward, but I dunno if I even want to bother. These events have turned out to be so insanely underwhelming and I'm unsure what purpose Anet even thinks they serve when they're this unrewarding and this infrequent.

[PACOX]

New race just dropped!



Not really, but its a helm that's part of the Lunar festival. Anet went ahead and fully animated it, mouth flaps and everything.

Pic fromhttps://twitter.com/that_shaman

[Edge-]

We have Dracthyr at home, honey.

It looks surprisingly good. I might actually have to log back in and make sure I nab one.

[Scyth]

New race just dropped!



Not really, but its a helm that's part of the Lunar festival. Anet went ahead and fully animated it, mouth flaps and everything.

Pic fromhttps://twitter.com/that_shaman

How do you even get it? Can't seem to see it on the TP.
Black lion chests ?

Interestingly enough the new armour set is only available through black lion chests as well instead, thought they would make it available for purchase instead.

[PACOX]

How do you even get it? Can't seem to see it on the TP.
Black lion chests ?

Interestingly enough the new armour set is only available through black lion chests as well instead, thought they would make it available for purchase instead.

Its the reward for doing the Lunar New Year festival achieves. Takes about an hour tops.

The armor that person is uses a miss of gem store and gameplay rewards

[Scyth]

Its the reward for doing the Lunar New Year festival achieves. Takes about an hour tops.

The armor that person is uses a miss of gem store and gameplay rewards

Ohh it's an achievement reward, thanks! Found it now lol