Guild Wars 2

Why not just buy the commander tag? Isn’t this a bit redundant? Is this just a PvE free commander tag?

As far as I understand it, the Pact Commander mastery will give you the mentor badge/symbol on the map, a prefix “Mentor” in chat, a speed boost for you and your party members in cities, auto-loot, increased rezz speed on players with a lower level, etc. So it is really meant for PvE content and helping players.

The mentor badge doesn’t have the squad functionality (which you need in case of organized boss runs like Wurm or also for organizing in RP guilds). You also don’t have supply info and such – and as far as I know you also can’t change the colour. No idea if there will be the possibility to use different symbols depending on what you are doing/helping people with.

So yeah, it will be a free PvE tag – not everyone wants to spend 300g if you only need limited functionality (supply info in PvE is kinda useless). So that’s perfect for people who just need the tag for PvE/showing people around/indicating where events are currently up.

I wouldn’t call it redundant. I think the community will find a nice rule set for tag usage -> e.g. guilds who do guild missions use their commander tags, while champ/event farmers will use the new PvE tag… Maybe this way it will be easier to tell apart tags on a map.

Also, depending on how many people actually use their tags for helping out new players, it will be nice for those players to have people they can ask things. There will be trolls too, I guess. But I’ve seen many lfgs offering help to new players. It will help players finding this type of helpful players without lfg (e.g. when they don’t know yet there even is a lfg).

I like the idea and will skill this mastery first, even though I have a commander tag.

We’ll be seeing a clusterkitten of purple stars in mini-map.

Valento.9852:

We’ll be seeing a clusterkitten of purple stars in mini-map.

Doubt it because it requires the mastery track to be active, and most people aren’t going to be running a mastery track designed towards helping other players, they’re going to want the selfish ones.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Valento.9852:

We’ll be seeing a clusterkitten of purple stars in mini-map.

Doubt it because it requires the mastery track to be active, and most people aren’t going to be running a mastery track designed towards helping other players, they’re going to want the selfish ones.

Great, I don’t want many purple stars ruining my fabulosity.

Valento.9852:

We’ll be seeing a clusterkitten of purple stars in mini-map.

The purple star icons were also placeholders. The true mentor icon is yet to be revealed.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Valento.9852:

We’ll be seeing a clusterkitten of purple stars in mini-map.

Doubt it because it requires the mastery track to be active, and most people aren’t going to be running a mastery track designed towards helping other players, they’re going to want the selfish ones.

I’m fairly sure that speed buff in cities and auto loot are things that a lot of people will want.

Monk Tank.5897:

Why not just buy the commander tag? Isn’t this a bit redundant? Is this just a PvE free commander tag?

Maybe to annoy those of us who bought one for 300g specifically for PVE mentoring?

Seriously though, I can see three use cases (plus subcases) for any sort of a tag in PVE. Identifying mentors, showing who is organizing an event (it is handy to just tell people the party with the blue tag needs help rather than explain where they are) and wearing it for bragging rights. There are also minor cases, like doing a champ run and telling if everyone is at the champ yet before hitting it.

Given the multiple cases, a mentor tag makes sense. It can tell new players who is there to help them. Hopefully it is not abused though, although the fact that almost everyone will have it probably reduces the chances of that.

If it does get over-used by players not wanting to help others a case could be made for some sort of a debuff when it is on. Presumably you will be helping players just starting (and thereby in low-level zones), so any build that can handle a zone over 30 without dying every 5 minutes would not have problems losing a few percent of some stat when the tag is turned on.

Menadena.7482:

Monk Tank.5897:

Why not just buy the commander tag? Isn’t this a bit redundant? Is this just a PvE free commander tag?

Maybe to annoy those of us who bought one for 300g specifically for PVE mentoring?

Seriously though, I can see three use cases (plus subcases) for any sort of a tag in PVE. Identifying mentors, showing who is organizing an event (it is handy to just tell people the party with the blue tag needs help rather than explain where they are) and wearing it for bragging rights. There are also minor cases, like doing a champ run and telling if everyone is at the champ yet before hitting it.

Given the multiple cases, a mentor tag makes sense. It can tell new players who is there to help them. Hopefully it is not abused though, although the fact that almost everyone will have it probably reduces the chances of that.

If it does get over-used by players not wanting to help others a case could be made for some sort of a debuff when it is on. Presumably you will be helping players just starting (and thereby in low-level zones), so any build that can handle a zone over 30 without dying every 5 minutes would not have problems losing a few percent of some stat when the tag is turned on.

It could be useful in higher level areas too for people trying for world completion. I have played almost since the launch of this game and the 1st year was rough going. I am older as in AARP older and the only other sort of online action type game I played was DDO. I mostly played single player games before that or flight sims and racing games. I plan on going for this mastery since this was the draw for me in this game, cooperative game play and helping others