1. #37761
    Merely a Setback PACOX's Avatar
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    Black Friday sales are live. Same discount most places - 20% EOD, - 50% HOT/POF, - 30% for all 3 expansions, -20% for everything including living story.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    I totally forgot about that after his arc wrapped up. Either way they've got plenty of space on the map for the next season.

    Just...please no water zones and minimal water combat. Even in a game where underwater combat was intentionally designed it's still trash. Less bad than most other games, but it still functions exactly like combat above ground and doesn't really effectively use the Z axis at all...it instead just causes problems as a mob swims right on top of you and slightly behind you so you have to continually swim backwards to keep them in line of sight.
    I know some people who are really into the lore who think Anet will bring back the human gods. There's a little bit of foreshadowing in EOD. Seen some people thinking they will do more stuff with 'The Mists' as well (kind of related to the gods).

    I think they could do a story about the 'reunification' of the world. Advanced Cantha mixed with more magic reliant core Tyria. Canthian supremacists not wanting to integrate/try to strong as the 'Tyrian savages'.

    Hell it could just be a 'vacation arc' for the player character where you hand things that aren't existential crisises.

    Resident Cosplay Progressive

  2. #37762
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    Just...please no water zones and minimal water combat. Even in a game where underwater combat was intentionally designed it's still trash. Less bad than most other games, but it still functions exactly like combat above ground and doesn't really effectively use the Z axis at all...it instead just causes problems as a mob swims right on top of you and slightly behind you so you have to continually swim backwards to keep them in line of sight.
    Would you be fine if most of the content took place inside breathable underwater bubbles you could walk around in, and the water dragon/monster stuck their head through the bubble so you could fight it while playing your class normally?


  3. #37763
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    Would you be fine if most of the content took place inside breathable underwater bubbles you could walk around in, and the water dragon/monster stuck their head through the bubble so you could fight it while playing your class normally?

    I mean, if it's "underwater" like the reactor in New Kaineng is then that's cool, because it's still ground combat. I don't mind bits of underwater combat here or there, but a whole zone of it is just...deeply unappealing.

  4. #37764
    I personally enjoy underwater combat, but my main character is a guardian and both weapons for that class are pretty good underwater and i usually play firebrand, so my usual abilities work too... but part of the whole issue is precisely how unbalanced things are, some professions are great underwater, others are trash with weapons that don't sinergyze at all with specializations and a bunch of mechanics that can't be used underwater.

    Even if they fixed all that stuff and every spec worked well underwater, it would still be a very divisive subject, because not everyone is comfortable when fighting on that kind of 3D environment. That's why i don't think that an underwater zone is happening, although something like Val's idea could be cool. Personally all i want is a legendary breather, just to have all my gear legendary.

    As far as where the story could go i think it is a great chance for them to have a less 'important' kind of thing, just some cool contained story for a cool map, not tied to anything big but simply moving some stories forward for 1 or 2 chapters before starting to build up the next big thing, that in my opinion is going to be related to the gods, to Lyssa to be more specific. When it comes to zones, i'm pretty sure that old kaineng and the old imperial palace are going to be one of them as well as a jade sea map, although the second one is more of a personal desire as an old luxon player.
    "Mastery Haste will fix it."

  5. #37765
    Herald of the Titans Lotus Victoria's Avatar
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    I'm totally out of the loop on Dragonflight. How are the new mounts compared to ours?


  6. #37766
    So basically, dragonriding (that's how the call it) has two abilities: a speed boost forward and a updraft boost. Each ability consumes 1 'energy' and you have 3-4 energy that recharge at a very slow rate. That resource only recharges if you are on the ground or flying downwards, it also has a small talent tree to improve those rates and some other things.

    It can be compared to riding a griffon with some of the skyscale mechanics, but more stiff and limited. It's fun to use, but at the same time the whole game lacks the dynamism and smoothness that Gw2 has when it comes to moving around between different mounts and gliding.

    Something like instantly using your skyscale to get to the top of a mountain, then launch yourself into the air with aurene's skill, glide a few seconds and then using your griffon to get across the whole zone in a matter of seconds going up and down at top speed. When we translate this into WoW... well, if you use your dragonriding mount to get to the top of the mountain you'll probably have to wait a minute before being able to do anything else, gliding is not an option, not even for the two classes than can actually glide and since the mount has a cast time, neither is instantly summoning it mid-air.

    But again... it is really fun to use, but in my opinion it's still very far from what Gw2 accomplishes and what makes it the king in terms of mounts.
    "Mastery Haste will fix it."

  7. #37767
    Quote Originally Posted by Lotus Victoria View Post
    I'm totally out of the loop on Dragonflight. How are the new mounts compared to ours?
    From everything I've seen...it seems nice, but the movement system seems fairly "fake". It's hard to describe, but when you see/fly around on gryphons the momentum feels natural and like it's part of a complete system built to support just that type of movement. Things flow naturally and how you'd imagine, with smooth transitions between speeds as you dive/ascend.

    DF seems a lot more "fake", in that there's no actual momentum system but it's simply taking the existing speed boost system and slapping on a ton of "breakpoints" to mimic actual momentum. I haven't played and I'll have to ask a friend once he gets his hands on it. Still seems fun, but it'd take a lot more work for WoW to bring the system up to snuff with gryphons, especially with all the official and unofficial races people have created for them over the years.

  8. #37768
    One of the only annoying things I've encountered so far is the "contested" travel points or dungeon entrances.

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    Just finished the main story.

    I got confused at the start and thought the final instance is actually the dungeon itself, so as usual I set up a party because I didn't notice the story marker was just outside the dungeon, and not the dungeon itself.

    One other guy joined me along with someone who was high geared. Turns out he needed help because he was having trouble with one of the bosses inside, so we entered and he kept skipping cutscenes. Due to me not wanting to be rude I kept going with the hope that it wouldn't clear the story for me, because on top right corner it said it was his story. Turns out it asked me if I wanted to complete it so I just pressed cancel lol. I'll know better next time.

    I'm glad it let me do that, was afraid I'd have the same experience as when I played FFXIV the first time and the final two MSQ dungeons for ARR were a complete mess.

    Well that aside, we kinda zerged through the instance when we were together, but it also wasn't too hard when I did it alone. I was worried the Mouth of Zhaitan would be hard because the high geared player said he had trouble, and that's also where the other guy was stuck, but it turns out it's not even about the gear. All you have to do is evade and make sure to throw the fire bombs at him when he is using vortex. It was cool, gave me the feeling of playing a single player game.

    I appreciate the Zhaitan fight being cinematic, but at the same time it required barely any effort from me. It felt like he was easier to kill than any of his minions. It also felt like I killed a beast, not something with intelligence. It was visually cool though, his design was cool. Actually his design kinda reminds me of Yunalesca from FFX. She also had those tentacle mouths like Zhaitan and they were both of the same "decay" element.


    Spoiler: 
    Always nice when an ending of a story rewards you with a beautiful song.


  9. #37769
    The Arah story dungeon is quite the spectacle, riding the airship and seeing the zombie dragons dance around your airship and seeing the other Pact airships fighting zombie dragons in the far distance. It's a shame, however, that the actual final boss of the game boils down to mashing 1 while on a turret. It would be cool of Arah had been reworked into a meta event, with different groups of players on different airships. Zhaitan is the only one of the six Elder Dragons who is not fought in a meta event at all.

  10. #37770
    Well the Dragon Champions felt harder than Zhaitan himself.

    What's a meta event? Am I not going to fight the other ones in the story or something? Please don't spoil the fights themselves if possible.

    I hope that doesn't mean I missed them or something.

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    Oh something else I forgot to mention.

    I'm glad I went through all the dungeons alongside the main story. Made me appreciate the story of Destiny's Edge way more after seeing them in the final battle. I assume that would've been confusing as heck had I not done them prior.

  11. #37771
    Quote Originally Posted by Xilurm View Post
    What's a meta event?
    A meta event is a huge, 2 hour long event chain, usually climaxing in a big world boss battle. Technically the first one in the game is in Cursed Shore, which climaxes with fighting hundreds of Risen on the Steps to the final dungeon, but nobody really cares about that except for people farming exp for Tyria masteries. Starting with the Silverwastes meta event, the meta design starts becoming more sophisticated, with players needing to be distributed across 3 or 4 different lanes across the map and succeeding at their local objectives for the overall event to succeed.


    Am I not going to fight the other ones in the story or something?
    You still get to fight Elder Dragons in story instances. Lorewise, the story instance where you fight an Elder Dragon and the meta event where you fight a dragon coincide at the same time.

  12. #37772
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    A meta event is a huge, 2 hour long event chain, usually climaxing in a big world boss battle. Technically the first one in the game is in Cursed Shore, which climaxes with fighting hundreds of Risen on the Steps to the final dungeon, but nobody really cares about that except for people farming exp for Tyria masteries. Starting with the Silverwastes meta event, the meta design starts becoming more sophisticated, with players needing to be distributed across 3 or 4 different lanes across the map and succeeding at their local objectives for the overall event to succeed.




    You still get to fight Elder Dragons in story instances. Lorewise, the story instance where you fight an Elder Dragon and the meta event where you fight a dragon coincide at the same time.
    Oh ok, good to know. For some reason I thought a meta event meant like a timed event that happens only once or something.

    Cool, thanks. I'm off to start LW Season 1 then.

  13. #37773
    Quote Originally Posted by Xilurm View Post
    Oh ok, good to know. For some reason I thought a meta event meant like a timed event that happens only once or something.
    A lot of them are on timers and there's a Wiki page to track it all (meta events and world bosses): https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers

  14. #37774
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    A lot of them are on timers and there's a Wiki page to track it all (meta events and world bosses): https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers
    No I meant timed as in events like WoW pre-patch events where they happen once and that's it.

    Thanks for that page though.

  15. #37775
    Quote Originally Posted by Xilurm View Post
    No I meant timed as in events like WoW pre-patch events where they happen once and that's it.

    Thanks for that page though.
    Ah. I don't think they've had any "one-off" events like that since S1 (which was supposed to be one-off), everything else is very repeatable. "Meta" just references that it's zonewide vs. a local event.

    And that link is super handy, GW2 wiki is great and the fact that you can access it in-game ("/wiki WHATEVERYOUWANT") and it'll pop open the wiki page for it.

  16. #37776
    This week's WvW Alliance beta... *sigh*

    The beta was announced on the WvW subforum with 2 days notice.

    2 days.

    Most GW2 players don't visit the forums, let alone visit every day.

    Naturally, the beta event came as a complete surprise to many people, and whoops! Many people in our guild hadn't found out about the event and didn't tick the correct guild they wanted to play with in time, so now they got sorted to random teams playing with random people and can't play with us. A lot of people just gave up and decided to sit the beta out rather than play with strangers.

    I was one of the few who got notified just in time to tick the right guild to play with. At primetime, our 50 man squad formed up, and we spent 10 minutes trying to get into EBG, trying to get the bugged out WvW menu to work and pressing F on the gate to EBG. We spent 2 hours in EBG and didn't find anyone else to fight.

    It was primetime, and there was no one to fight on the most popular WvW map in the game. People on the other maps were saying there was no one to fight on the other maps either.

    People were cracking jokes in chat about how much content there was. Then people logged off.

    Anet says they care about WvW as a cornerstone of the game, but they don't mean it. No new maps in 7 years. Rewards haven't been updated. The current WvW game design is still vapid. No one defends keeps, escorting supply caravans doesn't matter. It's just people flipping the same camps over and over again and two zergs playing whack-a-mole. Taking over the map doesn't mean anything. Matchmaking is terrible. I don't know why it has taken 4.5 years and a dozen betas and Anet still doesn't have a decent matchmaking system yet. It reallys feels like these WvW exp events are only trotted out to get PvErs to dabble in WvW for a little bit to get Gifts of Battles for their legendaries, and maybe buy a $20 Warclaw skin off of the cash shop.

  17. #37777
    Over 9000! Poppincaps's Avatar
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    Been getting really addicted to Guild Wars 2 recently. I've been holding off on getting into the game until Living World Season 1 was fully released, but now that it has been I finished the Personal Story, S1, S2, and I'm at the start of Auric Basin in Heart of Thorns. Honestly I've been putting the story on the backburner to get hero points to unlock Untamed on my ranger and doing meta events.

    So far I think this game is phenomenal. The level design is leagues better than any other MMO on the market, the story isn't anything crazy, but is overall enjoyable, and there are so many cool elite specializations that I can't decide which one I want to main.

    I will say, I did do a little bit of WvW because I want to unlock the Warclaw since I only have the Raptor right now and the game mode is pretty confusing. If there's a commander, it's simple enough to just follow him around and capture keeps, but if there isn't one then I just kinda end up wandering somewhat aimlessly, grabbing camps by myself. Also had someone berate me because he was fighting someone and I tried to help. Apparently they were dueling, but I don't know how tf I was supposed to know that. Also had someone whisper me to yell at me because I was afk in the pvp lobby. He called me a bot despite the fact I had a normal name and a gem store outfit on. I've heard the Guild Wars 2 community is friendly, but so far that has not been my experience. Hopefully it improves when I delve into more end game content.

  18. #37778
    Quote Originally Posted by Poppincaps View Post
    So far I think this game is phenomenal. The level design is leagues better than any other MMO on the market, the story isn't anything crazy, but is overall enjoyable, and there are so many cool elite specializations that I can't decide which one I want to main.
    If you're playing Ranger then I would recommend Untamed. It has a grandmaster trait called Fervent Force that reduces all of your cooldowns every time you use a stun. So you chain together 2 or 3 stuns and basically be able to spam abilities nonstop. This lets you burn down story bosses, solo champions and some legendary bounties, and so on. You can also play healer in endgame content as Untamed if you want. Also one of the meta picks in PvP right now as you can chain stun an enemy player over and over, effectively locking him down and making the match a 5v4. Sadly Fervent Force is all Untamed has going for it, and the devs have said that they are going to nerf the crap out of Fervent Force in an upcoming patch, so play Untamed now while it is still fun.

    This is my dual axe fervent force condi build. Use gear with viper stats and krait runes. Earth and bursting sigils on weapons. Walk up to your target, cast storm spirit, press axe 2 > 3 > 4 > 2 > exploding spores > 2 > 3 > Storm Spirit stun (this has a delay and will trigger after the next 4) > 4 (press this immediately so it triggers before storm spirit) > repeat loop. Use sharpening stones on cooldown and heal as needed. No elite skill gives you more damage so just use whichever one gives you more utility for the situation you are in, ie Forest's Fortification if you are soloing a boss, Spirit of Nature to help heal during a meta event, Entangle to stop mobs from moving all over the place, etc. Whenever I start a story mission or zone into a new map, I swap to my longbow with bloodlust sigil, tag as many mobs as possible to build up 25 stacks of power, and then swap back to dual axe and stay on that. Always stay in Unleashed Ranger, don't bother with switching stances or the ambushes.

    EDIT: I forgot that this build assumes you have the Jade Bot from the latest expansion, which gives you 30 seconds of fury every time you enter combat. You really want the fury boon and the way to generate that before you acquire the Jade Bot is to weapon swap. So I had two pairs of axes and pressed the ~ key on my keyboard to weapon swap whenever possible to maintain fury uptime. So don't swap out the second pair of axes for a longbow until after you get the Jade Bot.


    For PvP I use this build, with axe/warhorn and shortbow. The key is to not spam all of your CC's right away, but to instead wait a couple seconds between CCs. Eventually the enemy will run out of stunbreaks and you will begin chain CCing him over and over till he's dead. I start in Unleashed Pet and with Shortbow, press F1 F2 and F3 when in range of your target and press Shortbow 5 to stun. Press F5 to switch to Unleashed Ranger. The wolf is my first pet and his F2 and F3 are set to auto and he usually F2's immediately. I then use Shortbow 2 and then Shortbow 4. Then I switch weapons and pet to Electric Wyvern. Press F2 so the Wyvern does he stun charge. Use Warhorn 5, then 4, then axe 3 and then 2. Press F3 to get the Wyvern to use his knockback. Then use healing trap if I need to, and then Spike Trap to reset my cooldowns and repeat. Use Carrion Amulet, Runes of Leadership, and Cleansing and Absorption sigils. Also works well when roaming in WvW with Marauder gear and durability runes. Don't bring this to a zerg fight.

    I also have more casual, less intense Untamed builds that don't rely on Fervent Force, but after the devs announced that FF was being nerfed I've been playing my FF builds while I still can.

    The other two ranger elite specs aren't as fun to play, IMO. They ignore the pet mechanic, the defining feature of the class. Druid was introduced as a healing spec for HoT, which introduced raids, but then raids were abandoned and other specs became capable of healing, and there has been immense powercreep that has made it so that healers often aren't even necessary. Druid does not increase your damage at all so there is little reason to play it. I've been following a blog of a GW2 player who for some reason, plays Druid, and he is constantly complaining about how it takes forever for him to beat story missions as one (no shit!). Druid recently got some touches to help it out in WvW zergs, but that's about it's only application. Soulbeast does well for parsing in fractals.


    If there's a commander, it's simple enough to just follow him around and capture keeps, but if there isn't one then I just kinda end up wandering somewhat aimlessly, grabbing camps by myself.
    If you want zerg gameplay then you want to join a big WvW guild. Ask for an invite in team chat the next time you are in WvW. You might be stuck on a server with no big WvW guilds so you might have to pay money to transfer. Bear in mind that if you get a commander who is salty in voice chat or if the guild is pressuring you to play a build you don't find, you can try finding another guild, though again you might have to transfer to other servers to try them out.


    Also had someone berate me because he was fighting someone and I tried to help.
    This has happened to me before. Unfortunately there is no way to discern at a glance whether or not you've stumbled upon one of your guys who got ambushed and needs help or if you will be yelled at for intervening. More often then than not I join in and we kill the guy together and move on wordlessly.


    Also had someone whisper me to yell at me because I was afk in the pvp lobby.
    Not sure why that guy would freak out given that the megaserver spools up as many PvP lobby instances as necessary. It's not like WvW maps or Dragon's End where AFKers are keeping other players from accessing the content.


    I've heard the Guild Wars 2 community is friendly, but so far that has not been my experience. Hopefully it improves when I delve into more end game content.
    It's "friendly" in the FF14 sense where people are hardly required to move out of their comfort zone and interact with other people, but there is no true ingame intimacy or community. You make it to level cap and all the way through the expansions without ever needing to talk to people or rely on them or make friends. If you want an MMO with a true sense of community and interaction, then you want to play a private server for an old game like FFXI, where you literally cannot progress past level 10 or complete quests by yourself, so you are forced to talk to people and ask to join their parties or ask people to join your parties, and then you're committed to playing together for at least a couple of hours due to how long everything takes and the stakes of delevelling upon death. I've found that there are usually less nasty interactions on such servers. In a MMO with a megaserver system like GW2 or FF14, you will probably never see another person ever again so you have no real reason to care. You can be nasty and nothing will happen to you. In a small server you can't be nasty because you might see that person again and word of mouth about you might spread and you find it difficult to get into parties, so you have incentive to be on your best behavior.
    Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss; 2023-01-09 at 04:41 AM.

  19. #37779
    for a newbie there's no way to know if someone is dueling but after awhile you'll recognize the locations duelers hang out at and it won't be a problem.
    I had fun once, it was terrible.

  20. #37780
    Over 9000! Poppincaps's Avatar
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    @Val Yeah I'm running an Untamed build with Hammer and Axe/Warhorn. I sometimes throw in Greatsword instead of Axe/Warhorn if I don't need a ranged option because I enjoy the moveset. Not using Fervent Force at the moment because I don't want to be too reliant on it if it gets nerfed into the ground.

    I'm not really looking for a game that really forces me to play with people constantly. I actually like that GW2 has meta events where you get to play with people but you don't really have to go through the process of making groups because they sort of just form dynamically. I downloaded Horizon XI to try and have that more old school experience, but I played through retail FFXI a few years ago, so I kinda felt like it was a waste of time with all the other games in my backlog.

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