Guild Wars 2

I’m an achievement guy. I enjoy getting achievements. I enjoy challenging achievements as well as less challenging ones. The two achievements I enjoy the least are “busywork” achievements, or achievements that depend on luck.

I’d love it if people who designed achievements could look at the achievements and make sure they try the achievements on all professions. Not every achievement should be doable by every person (Liadri for example was fine), but some of the achievements are just silly.

On Swift Wings, to me, is a silly achievement. It’s not clear what you have to do, you end up going to another site to see what you have to do, but even knowing what to do, the achievement is much easier on some professions than others. I’ve just tried this a couple of times on my mesmer and even though I’m on full ascended zerker gear and not dying, the guards I need to save are dying before I can kill the stuff killing them.

I’ve used condition removal on them and they still die.

I can do high level fractals, I’ve finished every dungeon in a game and I really don’t want to have to do this achievement on a guardian, let’s say, because it’s more efficient. I think I’ve been unlucky so far that that sometimes they’re less close to death when others when I reach them.

To me, this is a badly designed achievement. I’ve had problems with other achievement in the past as well.

It’s just silly to have to do this entire mission for ten minutes to get to attempt an achievement that might fail through no fault of my own.

I did it on a Ranger. Having an innate +25% speed boost, a pet that draws instant aggro from enemies, Healing Spring for condition removal and regen on the NPCs, and a 1500 range Longbow to start attacking enemies from a long way away all helped.

Might have to get my ranger through. I got to the two guys by the base of the tower in plenty of time…I just couldn’t kill everything fast enough. One or the other of them would die.

But yes, my ranger kills stuff MUCH MUCH faster than my mesmer does. There’s no comparison. I’m sure if I were on my ranger, it would be done already (and I wouldn’t have known to complain).

The one you really want to kill ASAP is the Tendril. That poison volley it launches is capable of one-shotting the NPCs. Reflects can help with this, but the Tendril has ver few tells before it launches said volley. The best way to keep the NPC safe is to draw the Tendril’s aggro onto you (or your pet) so it fires the poison volley at dodge-capable you rather than the “I tank everything!” NPC.

You also want to get down to the river ASAP to save the Caravan Guard. The Thrasher does a lot of damage and the Guard will stupidly chase the Thrasher around through its poison trails. CC the Thrasher as much as you can with Fears, knockdowns, pulls, anything.

The third NPC up in the tower is pretty safe, so after rescuing the two at the base (you may be able to kill the Tendril, one of the roots, and then leave Braham/Rox behind to mop up the last one) head over to the Caravan Guard. The other NPCs have long “Adrenaline Rush” durations and are usually in no danger.

I did it on the ranger, one shot, no problems. Had I done it on the ranger first, I’d not have even known there was a problem.

The thing is, I did it on the ranger and when I got to the guys by the tower, nothing at all was attacking them. Not one thing. They were never in any danger at all.

Only the very last guy I got to was being attacked by a single husk (which I knocked back and killed).

So yeah, it’s a very weird experience. How can there be that much difference from profession to profession. Why this time was nothing attacking the guys who died before?

Yeah, that’s a strange bug I’ve noticed on occasion too. I can’t figure out why that happens. On the 4 or so attempts I did to get the achievement (all of them on the Ranger), sometimes the tower guys would be under attack, sometimes not. I couldn’t discern a reason for the difference.

Well I got the achievement but I’m not feeling satisfied about it. lol