Guild Wars 2

One thing HoT gets you is the vertical dimension. I don’t believe any other MMO has done it as well. All MMOs give you the 2D experience — running a basically flat map. But in HoT you have to deal with massive differences in height — which is why gliding is required. There are many places you can’t get to until you travel to a high point and then glide across the map to the point you need to reach. I personally think this is a MMO breakthrough.

To xsys: “It shouldn’t be a requirement to join a guild to play the content.”
You don’t have to. I have played solo so far. Templar, Elementalist, Necromancer, Revenant. Necro I played solo up to 80 and then through the HoT personal story to completion — no help. Other games I was active in guilds but here in GW2 (because of limited time) I have only played solo and not with guilds. You can totally play this game solo if you want to do so.
Tip – as a necro you have 4 companions so you can always play as a self made “party of 5” while running solo.

Ooookay. I will take a stab at it.
1st you say you are new to MMORPG. Well GW2 is a bit different from most MMORPG. The traditional MMORPG has the “trinity” which can be summed up as Tanks (they can absorb massive damage and force the “boss” to focus attention on them), the DPS (damage per second which is all the damage dealers of all types), and the Healer (who keeps everyone alive). Most MMORPG are like that — GW2 is a bit different in that there are no real Tanks, everyone has DPS and Heal capabilities to some extent.
2nd how important “how you look” is really up to the individual. You can be a devastating player while looking like you rolled out of bed in your sweats, and a total loser in fancy dress. Or play hardcore armor. Or play in fancy elegant clothing. Check out the “wardrobe” feature.

That said — GW2 is really in top set of MMOs. You have a HUGE area to explore. You can play solo and be successful, or join a guild and make new friends. (You will need to get a headset with mic to do that most effectively.) You can do dungeons, personal story, or just explore and knock off hearts and hero points — do what you want.

You say you are running a necro. Well necros have minions and with minions you can always have a “party of 5” e.g. you and your 4 uglies. Which means you are very survivable running solo. You can easily make it to level 80 solo as a necro. You can clear HoT as a necro solo. Necros are total kitten in PvE. Read the Necro forum for build tips. (Note: forum changes “bad” words into “kitten” so “bad rear end” becomes “kitten”.)

And don’t forget – you can learn skills to get useful items — for example become a jeweler (build your own rings, earrings, etc.)

GW2 has issues, but so does every MMO. Explore and have fun.

More generally regarding MMOs — if you join guilds and have headset with mic — you can meet some very interesting people. In one game I was in a guild where I hung out with a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang in a poly relationship (him, bi wife, and mutual girl friend), a married couple who were fundamentalist Christians, and a gay black female professional from the rust belt — and we all got along very well together. The MMO experience permits you to meet people from multiple social classes and ethnic groups whom you would never have the opportunity to meet and get to know in “real life”.

The comments are all correct. However I am interest in the “best” weapon in terms of base weapon statistics (kill power) regardless of class and specialization.

Short answer – yes. In any probability distribution, there are is a positive “far end” to the curve. So yes, by pure chance, SOME ACCOUNT will end up on the end of the curve. Just like SOMEONE will eventually win a lottery.

The question is: “what are the best weapons in the game”? Best is defined as maximum kill— not style, not skins. Maximum damage weapons. Uber kill weapons.

Say why you think they are the best. Staff/scepter/sword/projectile.

My only comment: in personal story mode you should be able to reattempt the Mordremoth fight (if you die in the Mordermoth fight) without having to go through the whole previous story stage including the 2 initial fights. If you have completed those (which you have if you are at the Mordremoth fight state) the checkpoint should be set at the start of the Mordemoth fight.

In non personal story mode — I don’t care.

Yes….on my staff elementalist this fight was hard whereas on my staff necromancer it was relatively easy (but not short) because of all the minions attacking the dog. All I can say is – as an elementalist launch the rock elemental and then kite in a circle firebombing the dog. Whenever the dog is dead firebomb Eir. Rinse and repeat.

Tip – buy some armor repair canisters. You will need them before you complete all 3 fights.

Anyone notice that in the loading screen for Rata Sum everyone looks like rats?

Having run both (where with necromancer I run out 4 minions) I believe that staff necromancer is way easier than running staff elementalist when running solo. Yes, staff elementalist is uber-DPS. But in general running the staff necromancer with minions has a much lower fatality rate than running staff elementalist, and time to kill is similar. Switching to a 2nd weapon set (dagger/dagger, dagger/focus, etc.) makes no real difference when doing the comparison.

Anyone else see any advantage for running an elementalist over a necromancer when running solo PvE?

I am curious about why some people pursue legendary weapons. From what I can tell they are no more powerful than any other 1,166 max weapons. What is the point?

I have noticed that up until a couple of weeks ago the Octivine group event usually ran with 40-60 players, taking down all gates and killing the octivines for the chests. Now? 5-20 people. Not nearly enough for the event. There are still people that queue for DS, but that is every 2 hours, and sometimes 4 hours because not enough for a map so they have to wait for the reset.

There was a valid reason to have separate discussion forums months ago when HoT was being released and then released. But now — it is all one game. Just merge the forums. Are we to have separate forums for each expansion forever?

Thoughts? Comments?

Minion master. Because after one single shot from #1 you can back off and let your minions do all the work. (For the standard mob of course — for veterans they will go after you and kill you while you are making your sandwich!)

I believe you are correct about extremism — it is obvious. But realize that left-right is only a mental model, and a poor one at that (because it is only one dimensional, not even two dimensional). And your conclusions are not optimal. For example:
“National Socialism” is what it says — nationalist plus socialist. Nationalist is neither “right” nor “left” — but Socialist is left.

Fascism is defined specifically as making the economics of a nation as subordinate to the state. Unlike Communism, where the economic units are “owned” by the state, in Fascism the economic units are directed by the state — as in, this is what you shall produce, and these are the arrangements by which you shall sell to the state to stay in business — or bad things will happen to you, your family, and your associates.

So called “right wing” is blamed for selfishness an uncaring of others. And this is correct in the sense that “right wing” focuses heavily on individualism and ignores circumstances that negatively impact the individual – at the extreme it is Social Darwinism.

But accepting this definition of right wing — no way is Mordremoth right-wing. He wants “identical unit” slaves who will sacrifice themselves for the “collective”. Using the 2D definition, Mordremoth is a a totalitarian cult. All are servants of the state (which is embodied by him). All must sacrifice themselves for the state (Mordremoth). He is the Way, the Truth, and the Death.

Sad when on a Friday night the game is empty.

Question: I have apparently won a lot of titles — according to achievements — but if I go to select a title the only one I see is “Gladiator”. How do I select any of the various titles I have achieved?

And it takes a longgg time to get the essential masteries.

Not really. The only essential masteries are basic gliding and the jumping mushrooms. All others are really just “nice to have” but you don’t actually need them until you hit Dragon’s Stand where you should have extended gliding.

ap must handle 60 seconds reconnection for disconnected person

Yes — but I would make it 120 seconds. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to reconnect to wireless.

I think the 3D (vertical) aspect is the future of MMOs. And HoT has that in spades. That is a revolutionary advance over the traditional MMO 2D model.

Staff Necro + minions for PvE. Of course you have to kite if you want to take minimal to zero damage. Just run in a circle around the target(s) while auto attack fires and dropping AoEs whenever they are off cooldown.

Jumping from those high vistas in Tyria and then gliding is fun.

I see nothing wrong in putting mastery points as rewards for these minigames. People that enjoy them can get mastery points as rewards. HOWEVER – this is a MMORPG, therefore there should be enough mastery points within the MMORPG content to get all the mastery points without playing a single minigame. Solution — just add mastery points to other content. A simple example — provide 2 Tyria mastery points for clearing all dungeons done in story mode. Another possibility — provide one Tyria mastery point per map for completing that map (but only once per map for any combination of characters e.g. you could not earn a mastery point for a map completion more than once). For Hot – provide 2 mastery points per map for each map completion. Not saying these examples are how they should do it, but they are examples of how they could do it to permit clearing all mastery points doing only MMORPG content.

There is another factor: I have found that if I get disconnected I cannot rejoin the map. I presume that shows me as afk — even though I am not. Permitting a rejoin to the same map following a disconnect would help.

HoT is easily possible to “solo” – in the sense you can run around and progress. Even with a staff elementalist. But realize you will have to join in for the meta events. You don’t have to party up for them until you hit Dragon’s Stand — but then you will be invited to party to do the big runs. As for HoT personal story you can do that solo right up to the very end…where for most players you will need help.

Dog Poop. Wander around and then join the assault, get massive numbers of chests. Easy gold. True you have to wait for the big fight but it is every couple of hours.

I mainly run HoT solo and I appreciate the challenge. I like the 3D (vertical) aspect. And I play a squish class (Elementalist working on Tempest). Sure I die – a lot – that is what happens when you solo. Several times every time I play the maps. That is what way points and armor repair are for.

Well…if you take a “lore” perspective Elementalist is a wizard. Wizards use staffs or wands (the scepter). The offhand is a supplement e.g. the focus. Giving the Elementalist double dagger is pretty odd from a lore perspective. I think the war horn is in response for the desire for a “battle mage”.

I think that HoT has a lot of content. The 3D (adding the vertical dimension) world is pretty revolutionary for MMORPG and will be the future of these games. As for masteries they are just a way to add leveling without increasing the level cap.

Actually I run HoT solo. So far I have also run personal story solo as well (both Tyria and HoT).I like the challenge. I will join up with others when I can benefit (hero point trains in HoT) but otherwise I like to explore and go solo. Reason is it is more challenging to run solo. And yes running Hot solo is harder than PvP or WvW or dungeons or fractals.

Especially the Tangled Depths.

I ran into this yesterday. Tried relogging…nope same empty map. So I waypointed out to an adjacent region and waypointed back and…I was in a populated map! So try the waypoint method and see if it works for you.

When I read through the profession forums it seems that most of the comments are pvp oriented. They complain about this or that class being “useless” or this or that skill being “useless” — against other professions. This seems odd since the game was apparently designed mainly around pve. Is it just that the pve players are mainly satisfied with the build and rotation options on most classes, and therefore don’t post much?

I just want to say that I feel the personal story aspect of this game is excellent. It is far more developed than any other MMO game that I have played. I especially appreciate the different branches due to the different choices that can be made. It really makes GW2 distinct from the other kill stuff, gather stuff, make stuff, and decorate your guild approach of most other MMOs.

Well…it would be possible to provide a single unique race (species) specific feature per race. For example, a slightly built race might have mitigated falling damage (while 2 objects of the same mass fall at equal speeds through vacuum, this is not true when two objects of the same mass but different surface areas are falling through atmosphere). A physically large race might have a mitigated (say 10%) built in resistance to chilling. Etcetera. This would it is true provide more “realism”. However…once you realize that if the goal is not to provide a real game advantage due to these species differences, then the value of doing so is low?