Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[PACOX]

Finished all the Return achieves. Seasons 4 and 5 really are the easiest to just grind out IMO.

Basically all maps have an "do x amount of events". The Season 4 maps all have bounties which count as events so you just grind those out. There metas also tend to be on short timers.

Season 5 maps are doubled up except Grothmar and Visions of the Past. You just play through Visions once or twice, done. Season 5 episode 5, just play through it. Bjora and Drizzlewood have 2 tabs assigned to them each. The two tabs share progression. The requirements for Drizzlewood are basically just doing the two metas on the map.

[Tyris Flare]

Gw2 elementalist remains one of my favorite concepts in any MMO that seems so unplayable once you actually start doing anything with it. Then there's double staff mesmer with 3 buttons...

[ryanmahaffe]

Quite a few articles coming out from journos about a small early preview they had into End of Dragons.

https://www.mmorpg.com/editorials/gu...ampaign=buffer

https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-...&utm_campaign=

https://massivelyop.com/2022/01/19/f...trike-mission/

There is three, there are more but for the most part they read the same.

Overall it seems the people that played it were really impressed with the Echovald Wilds zone they got to test, they said the Strike mission they did was more challenging and less easy to cheese than previous ones (this could easily be because they could only play with the new Elite specs) as well as confirming we are getting 4 new Strike missions in the xpac (confirmed to be getting CMs shortly post launch) and ofc, Turtle is fun.

Can't wait for the stream in just 9 days now, as we are most likely to get some kind of launch trailer with release date during that.

[PACOX]

Anet is turning strikes into FF14 trials/raids. Anet can design some damn good fights. The issue they run into is their smaller studio style couldn't justify raid content for 1% of the game. Hopefully their is enough interests for their new strike design philosophy to justify some awesome fights.

I think Anet has been itching to show off their form since the last part of LS5 was rushed. The stream is going to be interesting.

[Saradain]

Anyone else have such a hard time understanding GW2 rotations? Since I have played WoW, play FFXIV, I had no problems learning any class/job rotations and mechanics in those. They have a fluid design, or at least the tooltips themselves explained or gave tips how to use them properly - but in GW2 I feel like you get handed buttons to press with numbers and possible added effects on the tooltips and nothing more, no clue how to use them properly.

So this, leads to reading guides where you'll nearly always find long sequence loops that I personally have impossible time to learn because I can solely trust the guide, and not my own process of understanding. It's really funny how GW2 has the least buttons of all these, but in my opinion I never get taught how to use them, so it doesn't really matter. Weapon swapping also means I can't see the other actionbar while not wielding that said weapon, and since you often need to swap weapon sets for each build, it confuses me further...

EDIT: Let me present an example from Icyveins:

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/retrib...owns-abilities

I chose this guide from WoW simply because I played a Ret paladin mostly, so ignore any comparisons to other classes.

You have simple guidelines, golden rules and the tooltips themselves are very clear how to use the spells. You can figure things out by yourself easily.

For FFXIV - https://www.icy-veins.com/ffxiv/reap...ners-abilities

Reaper as a Job, is about generating a resource, in order to spend it on more powerful abilities, which generates an additional resource that culminates in a final short sequence of fast burst with a grandiose finisher for coolness factor. You have minor positional requirements for very few abilities. You rarely need to use the filler combo, but it's there as final resort if all else fails. I would say Reaper has a priority system combined with small sequences of abilities and the mastering part of the Job comes from timing things properly and avoiding cooldown drifting. This in my opinion, promotes critical thinking and even feels like you can easily adapt things on the fly if needed.

With GW2, I just somehow can't get the same feeling of understanding and improving myself outside of target dummy smashing. It just gets too mushy in my head when I hit these forgettable abilities with forgettable tooltips and trying to keep a coherent logic to what I press.

Hear me out, but I've thought about this so many times before and it feels like its the lack of automated group finding for the game. I ain't saying that system would automatically improve any game, but when I never get to do things on a regular basis like I did in WoW and do in FFXIV, I never get the "touch" to improve myself with tedium.

It's hard to start the grindy skill training in a 10 years old game/game I've played on and off for 10 years (GW2 was released in 2012?) when it feels like it's been so long without proper learning that it's too late to start.

[PACOX]

GW2 definitely doesn't have fewer buttons to press than WoW or FF14, it presents those buttons differently. You have 10 weapon abilities, 4 utilities, a heal, and anywhere between 1-15 buttons tied to your class mechanic.

Rotations are different because the combat system in GW2 vs the other two is very different. Classes in the other games are designed with their rotations in mind, which is usually a resource build and dump. Every person running the same class in those games have the same skills on their bar excluding a few talent choices in WoW but even then most people make the same choices. In GW2 you can have two people playing the exact same specialization with a completly different set of skills on their bars.

The game is not as easy as it seems. It will let you play poorly until you get hits your in the mouth with a ton of bricks versus WoW and FF14 where you're placed in a well defined box and things become apparent once you try to leave that box.

The way a lot of PVE rotations in GW2 work is like this. Your build has some sort of goal/purpose perhaps in the form of a class buff/modifier you're trying to maximize uptime on or maybe a set of conditions (DoTs) you're trying to stack and maintain on a boss.

Condition Scourge (Necromancer) has one of the simpliest rotations to explain. You're goal is to maximaze the uptime of your conditions, mainly bleed and torment. So to do this you take spit out the most conditions, sceptor and torch. Notice I only named two weapons because swapping weapons actually isn't necesary for the build. For your utilities you take ones that also help your apply and maintain as many conditions as possible. So you take Blood is Power an ability that allows to apply many stacks of bleed at once. You take Signet of Undeath, which allows you keep a pool of Lifeforce (basically your mana) and a free slot (usually Epidemic to spread conditions or Shadow Fiend for more Lifeforce). Your last ability is typically Plaguelands, more conditions. So how do you play the build? Scourge can place 3 Sand Shades that applies conditions so naturally you want to have 3 of them down as much as possible. You have a class mechanic that drops a big nuke of conditions where you and the shades are, so you obviously want to hit that on cooldown at all times. Remember I said Blood is Power applies a bunch of bleeds at once? So you want to use that as much as possible too. Plaguelands? Same deal. What about your weapon abilies? Sceptor 2 applies conditions, use it off cooldown. Sceptor 3 applies conditions and hits more based on the number of conditions on your target, use it off cooldown but at a lower priority of other skills so you're using with as many condtions on your target as possible. Torch 4 and 5, one does a CC, one applies conditions, so you want to save the CC one for when you need CC and use the other off cooldown. In between all of that always be auto attacked, skilled players know how to not interupt the end the their autoattack chain for max DPS but rule of thumb is to alway be auto attacking when not doing anything else. And thats how you play Condi Scourge.


Other builds are more involved, some less so depending on what you're doing but at the core of each build is some goal and abilites, skill priorities/rotations that build towards that goal.

Honestly I think most guides in any of the games overcomplicate the actual gameplay of the class/build they are explaining because most people don't care about all the underlying intricacies of a build. They just want to know what to press and when. Its easy to look at a guide and feel overwhelmed because the author decided to needed to hit a specific word count.

Link to the build Condi Scourge build

https://snowcrows.com/builds/necroma...dition-scourge

[Cattleya]

I don't have too much of an issue with the rotations myself (well, depending on the class/build), I won't execute them as fast as the top parsers but I put out plenty of DPS

I do have some issues with the combat though. I get over them, but they still bug me, like coming from other MMORPGs the lack of any relevant global cooldown makes the game feel so button mash-y. A combination of the lack of sticky targeting and (at times) wonky auto-attack is also a constant annoyance in raids.

Also please for the love of god if they're gonna make more mechanic/spectacle-heavy strikes, introduce the option to turn down/simplify effects and particles. Hard enough to see what the hell is going on in the middle of the blob during raids

[PACOX]

Also please for the love of god if they're gonna make more mechanic/spectacle-heavy strikes, introduce the option to turn down/simplify effects and particles. Hard enough to see what the hell is going on in the middle of the blob during raids

Number 1 complaint of the first raid boss. Only happens in a few other places in raids but that particular boss has a mechanic that's hard for a lot of people to see. The mechanic makes noise and changes the edges of your screen but there's so much going on that both of those indicators are also drowned out.

Around the time Wildstar came out Anet started using bright orange AOE indicators.

[Edge-]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/shfin9/date_leaked_from_gameplay_video_feb_28th/

Apparently Anet posted a link to the private gameplay video for tomorrow, which was downloaded, and leaked the launch date. It'll be official tomorrow. Link gives it away so hiding that for now.

[PACOX]

The video revealed the final mastery, the first strike encounter, which was already leaked/teased, revealed 2 (3?) big world bosses/events.

I actually really liked the music. I'm actually surprised they stuck with Feb, maybe their intention was always do it a month in advance but we all know Anet sucks at communicating. Not revealing the date earlier made it seem like they were hiding from February but in all honesty they've always said their was no definitive date before Feb became a packed month. I'll finally pre-order when release the video themselves.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

"They are the most powerful nation on Tyria"

Erm, what? The Asurans with their Star Trek/Stargate levels of tech, and the Charr with their vast legions of 1,000+ warriors and their WW2 era tech of fearsome tanks and machineguns and flamethrowers aren't the most powerful?

[Ghost of Cow]

"They are the most powerful nation on Tyria"

Erm, what? The Asurans with their Star Trek/Stargate levels of tech, and the Charr with their vast legions of 1,000+ warriors and their WW2 era tech of fearsome tanks and machineguns and flamethrowers aren't the most powerful?

GW2 has always played fast and loose with "power levels" so I'm not too surprised.

Hell, half of the plot of the game makes little to no sense given the absurd tech the Asura have. It's anime levels of, "Guy with sword is twice as deadly as a squad of trained soldiers with automatic weapons." sometimes.

[PACOX]

GW2 has always played fast and loose with "power levels" so I'm not too surprised.

Hell, half of the plot of the game makes little to no sense given the absurd tech the Asura have. It's anime levels of, "Guy with sword is twice as deadly as a squad of trained soldiers with automatic weapons." sometimes.

Eh most Asura advances half been explained. A lot of their tech is applied magic and their proximity to the dragons. The Charr a very industrial but they are not the only industrial society. There's no reason that other societies cant beat them in different areas. That would terrible world building.

Cantha is like Wakanda in Marvel. Either existing suddenly invalidate other civilizations that didn't luck up and start next to some super resource. The Asura aren't suddenly stone age rats, Charr machines don't suddenly stop working. The anime trope is that there can be only one technological advance society to set up "machines empire vs magical country folk" like we see in every other anime story.

How did Cantha grow? Time. Resources. Need. Geography. Literally in the GW2 story a group of techno skypirates flee to Cantha. If anything they brought their knowledge with them, if it didn't originate from Cantha in the first place. The lore did not just come out of nowhere.

[Ghost of Cow]

Cantha is like Wakanda in Marvel.

That's just it, though. We already have the "nation with insanely out of place technology" so for Cantha to be Wakanda they're like...double super extra insane tech?

I mean, the first story arc was resolved when we flew the NCC-1701 over Orr and cut the big bad dragon in half with one shot from our phaser banks, and now the new nation is to the people who built that ship what Wakanda would be to us? At some point it's like, "Why the hell are the PCs still out here cosplaying as dorks with swords and shit?"

[bloodkin]

Eh most Asura advances half been explained. A lot of their tech is applied magic and their proximity to the dragons. The Charr a very industrial but they are not the only industrial society. There's no reason that other societies cant beat them in different areas. That would terrible world building.

Cantha is like Wakanda in Marvel. Either existing suddenly invalidate other civilizations that didn't luck up and start next to some super resource. The Asura aren't suddenly stone age rats, Charr machines don't suddenly stop working. The anime trope is that there can be only one technological advance society to set up "machines empire vs magical country folk" like we see in every other anime story.

How did Cantha grow? Time. Resources. Need. Geography. Literally in the GW2 story a group of techno skypirates flee to Cantha. If anything they brought their knowledge with them, if it didn't originate from Cantha in the first place. The lore did not just come out of nowhere.

People also tend to overestimate how strong some factions are. Sure, asura gates are powerful, but other asura tech isn't nearly as reliable as charr weaponry. Not to mention, asura got kicked out of rata novus by magical insects. The charr might have considerable military power are prone to infighting and have been constantly fighting numerous enemies simultaneously, same goes for humans from Divinity's reach and sylvari are way too new.

We jsut don't know much about the new jade tech, the political sphere in Cantha or what's going on the since GW1.

[PACOX]

That's just it, though. We already have the "nation with insanely out of place technology" so for Cantha to be Wakanda they're like...double super extra insane tech?

I mean, the first story arc was resolved when we flew the NCC-1701 over Orr and cut the big bad dragon in half with one shot from our phaser banks, and now the new nation is to the people who built that ship what Wakanda would be to us? At some point it's like, "Why the hell are the PCs still out here cosplaying as dorks with swords and shit?"

Its my understanding that asura lasers are more like magic missile than scientific weaponry. It took a lot magical artifacts and what not for the laser to be effective. Advanced spells, that's why the the second dragon laughed at Asura tech as @bloodkin makes a good point about Rata Novus.

I mean I get what you are getting at but its something you see in all MMOs that mix fantasy and technology. WoW and FF14 have the same 'why can't we just blow it up' and when the bombs do work, 'why couldn't they just block the bombs with magic?' Town wiped out? Why can't the healers just rez everyone??.

Fantasy stories are like that.

[Ghost of Cow]

Its my understanding that asura lasers are more like magic missile than scientific weaponry. It took a lot magical artifacts and what not for the laser to be effective. Advanced spells, that's why the the second dragon laughed at Asura tech as @bloodkin makes a good point about Rata Novus.

I mean I get what you are getting at but its something you see in all MMOs that mix fantasy and technology. WoW and FF14 have the same 'why can't we just blow it up' and when the bombs do work, 'why couldn't they just block the bombs with magic?' Town wiped out? Why can't the healers just rez everyone??.

Fantasy stories are like that.

I know, I know. I'm thinking too hard about things that don't matter!

[Greyvax]

I haven't looked much into the expansion features yet, but planning on playing it.

Here's hoping they have well designed meta events. Some of those from heart of thorns (especially auric basin) were fun as hell.

[Geckoo]

I have to wonder why haven't they made those Jade bots the main feature to talk about since the very start instead of fishing or skiffs. Is not like any of the features is a game changer as gliding or mounts were, but at least they seem to have more impact than any of the main features that they've been promoting for months. With Anet you never know if it was a matter of not having them ready to show or just how bad they've always been at selling their own game.

I also wonder how they plan to bridge current content and expansion. HoT had LS2 as a build-up, PoF had LS3... the events from those expansions start on those living seasons. There are some great fan theories that link LS5 with the Aetherblades and Cantha and maybe they are right, but to me the issue is that at this rate we'll just get a letter from Taimi on the 28th and off we go to Cantha with no build-up to that moment and no visible threat having an impact on the world. Basically, no work from their part to hype the expansion in-game... at least so far.

[Scyth]

New Kaineng looks sick. Really looking forward to checking it out in-game.