Guild Wars 2

Beta access didn’t really have any impact on my decision to pre-purchase HoT, and I wasn’t even planning on participating initially. Glad I did, though. I had a blast this weekend! So here are my thoughts:

Elite Specs:
I tried Tempest, Reaper, and Dragonhunter, but ran out of time for Chronomancer (lol). I main a Thief; only class I’ve managed to get to 80 (I’m a very casual player). I couldn’t really get into the other professions. After playing some time on an alt, I just miss my thief! So I came at these 3 being somewhat unfamiliar with the professions at max level.

Tempest seemed cool, but I couldn’t really get into it. Play style of the elementalist isn’t for me, I guess.
Reaper was fun. Definitely fun to watch! Gives me something to look forward to when leveling my necro.
But my favorite so far is the Dragonhunter. I usually find ranged combat to be boring (I love my melee thief!), so it surprised me that I enjoyed the Guardian’s longbow skills so much. I think that plus the traps and new Virtues just made for really engaging gameplay. Only issue I noticed was the Dragonhunter trait (grandmaster?) that knocks back close range enemies almost never worked for me.
I get where the name “dragonhunter” comes from. My guardian is a sylvari, so she got to hear Mordremoth (nice touch, btw!). Guardians are champions of good. If the dragon is the manifestation of evil and corruption in the world, then it makes sense for the Guardian to be their greatest enemy. However, “dragonhunter” sounds too…casual. I think “Dragonbane” would fit the elite spec better; it is the Dragonbane’s sole purpose in life to put an end to all works of the evil dragons.

I realized when playing the Dragonhunter that elite specs are similar to the secondary professions from GW1. It felt like I was playing my Monk/Ranger with heavy armor instead of a tanky pet. I missed the secondary professions, so this is really awesome. Looking forward to seeing the rest of them revealed.

Revenant
I am in love with this profession. Almost like it more than thief. Adding Shiro and weapon swap made a HUGE difference from the Revenant beta. Dual swords are so fun! The profession mechanic is similar to others but different enough to be unique. I figured the energy + cooldowns on skills would be a problem, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Energy refills pretty quickly, and you get half instantly by swapping, so it was easily manageable with a bit of practice. Because the summons are so different from each other, you almost have to split your focus to get the most out of both of them. I felt like my Revenant had two faces. It was interesting. Very cool idea.

I mainly used Shiro and either Mallyx or Ventari depending on the situation. I loved how I could mix up the weapons and skills for interesting and engaging gameplay (for example, slashing away at enemies with dual swords and teleporting all over the place while ventari’s tablet zips across the field, or flipping between Shiro and Mallyx utils/elites while using staff to provide constant minor healing/support). I didn’t even touch Jalis this weekend, and I know there’s the elite spec coming, so this profession has a lot of fun possibilities. I do wish Ventari’s Tablet was automatically active when switching to Ventari since the rest of the skills do nothing without it. Also hoping there are a few more utility options (either some generic ones like signets, or one or two more specific skills for each summon).

(cont’d)

Verdant Brink
I love the idea of the 3-tiered map. We only got hints of that in this beta, with the unfinished bottom layer and inaccessible top layer. I am really looking forward to exploring those maps when the expansion comes out.
Events were bugged this weekend, so I wasn’t able to explore as thoroughly as I would have liked, but what I did see was pretty awesome. The Itzel village in the trees was cool, and I’m guessing we’ll see more of them in the rest of the maps. I’m super curious about the Exalted and the lore behind that. Seriously, the whole map is impressive. Given that it is one portion of one level of one map, I have no doubt that the rest will be spectacular.
Didn’t get to test the masteries beyond the first gliding and Itzel levels. Gliding was awesome, and I can’t wait to fully master it. The bouncing mushrooms added a nice shortcut to areas once I got them unlocked, but some of them didn’t work as intended (unless I was supposed to be launched into a wall… ).
Masteries are a great idea for progression after lvl 80. Experience is useful again! It was a bit frustrating to level the masteries, but that was due to the bugged events. It would be nice if there were more solitary events here and there (I dislike event hunting), or like in the Silverwastes, where events are so frequent, they often overlap, but failure doesn’t break any event chain. In VB, I did manage to get to the end of one event chain and fight the wyvern. Some of the objectives weren’t clear, so other players had to explain what to do, which broke immersion a bit. It was a lot of work for one chain, which is fine, but I’m not really sure what the reward or purpose of it was. What’s the difference between a success or failure? How did it impact the night? Couldn’t really tell.
On that note, I like the concept of the day/night system. Feels a bit unpolished right now (likely due to the event bugs), but it has potential. I had fun smashing monsters at night, but I do hope that night isn’t just “defend against monsters” all night everywhere. I like the combat in VB (enemies are plenty challenging and keep me on my toes), but I also want to explore, and that is difficult if the whole map is a battlezone. It would be cool if there were designated war zones with high mob density, as well as some non-combat areas that were quiet and peaceful at night, even if we had to work for it during the day. I enjoy the night more than the day because of the glow effect and the night sky, but it would be frustrating if that whole time is spent trying to not die. I’d love to be able to just wander and enjoy the epic nighttime scenery.

Despite the few bugs, this beta was a lot of fun. Looking forward to the next one.

I have discovered that I missed quite a bit in the beta. I would love to have had an instructional email or something telling me how to access the features to try them out. I only played as Revenant and earned my glider, I did not try out Dragonhunter or any of those because I had no clue what they were (although from reading the forums it sounds awesome). I really enjoyed the parts I did play and I am loving the glider mastery, I would really love it if it was available in the other parts of Tyria because I love jumping from high places but I always die because of it.
It would be nice if the events like gathering tasty bugs had a guide or an indication if it was being completed or if the basket was full. I gave up on this event multiple times because it just wouldn’t end and I felt like I wasn’t doing it right.
I am very excited for the expansion and I hope the map is much, much larger than the small part we able to explore. I liked the new map so much I want it to be big enough to explore for a long time.