Guild Wars 2

Sylvari. For the lore which connects them to the mists in utero, for the impact in the upcoming xpac, and most of all… I’m in love with that glo-glo ;3

Okay, one thing. Can we not call folks who did map completion on several characters within the space of a few weeks “lazy”?
There’s obviously grind and a half in that alone. The issue is that we’ve BEEN the industrious little mmo players. Many players have been preparing any way we could for release, only to find out that the grind from a week ago is massively devalued and we’ll have to grind some more IN ZERG CONTENT in order to actually have the full specs at our fingertips.

I can’t stand zerg content. I tolerate it for brief stretches like Tequatl or Triple Trouble, even for some of the silverwastes. But I hate the prolonged zerging that this type of railroading will force players into. It will just be everyone on the map rushing from hero point to hero point, meta events be kitten ed. That gameplay very quickly puts me to sleep. Before this news, we knew there’d be SOME zerging, simply because anet cannot resist huge fustercluck events. But we assumed there’d be options for those of us who wanted a different experience.

I wanted to explore the jungle, take my time with masteries and learning lore, but that’s moot now. Gotta go on autopilot and join the hero point train which will dominate map chat for months. Then do it again… and again… and again… and again… and again. Then do it fully one more time for my brand spanking new revenant, even though people who’ve tried revenant during all the betas know how incomplete the class is as a whole without the so-called elite spec.

Someone asked earlier in the thread, how is a party going to know that a member actually has their elite spec fully unlocked, anyway? At the very least, I’d like to know the answer to that. I don’t think it’s so lazy and entitled to want to ensure that the party you put together to tackle the hard content actually has all the content accessible on that particular character. The raids will be hard enough and strain people’s patience regardless, as that’s the nature of raids that are difficult. Adding to that fact that a player can’t reasonably expect the other max level characters in their party to fully have their classes is a bit insulting.

Well I feel like a huge fool for spending the last couple weeks getting all the hero points on several alts with prominent elite specs. I could have just waited and gotten far more per hero point challenge if i did absolutely nothing and waited for HoT. Then I’d just have to do around 40 instead of 254. On six alts. And it’s worse for some of the other altaholics around here.

Rage aside, why are they only telling us this now? We’ve been asking for months about how many hero points, discussing our plans to actually play through the story/jungle with our elite specs, and the devs choose 3 days before launch to tell us.

A little alliteration to lure you lookie-loos. (Okay I’ll stop)

Anyway, I’d like to bring attention to the break bars on boss fights. Many of the fights with champs and legendaries in verdant brink are enjoyable and hectic. However, during BWE3’s beta, when the moment of truth comes, where you either knock the wyvern on its behind or let it napalm the entire jungle, that’s where things screw up.

The break bars are scaled up impossibly high in this beta, so that if there’s a zerg in the area, all of us spamming every cc in our kitten nal won’t even take the break bar down to 3/4. And let’s be real-every event in Verdant Brink is zerg bait so this happens for every fight, except maybe the canopy bosses since not every player has the proper masteries unlocked.

So instead of that moment of triumphant teamwork where a swarm of pugs get it together and collectively dropkick a dragon, we just forgo the entire CC mechanic and burn harder. Which was the problem with defiance stack scaling in the first place.

I’ve been discussing it with some of the guilds that have been looking forward to raids. The reaper spec will likely have a place purely on the basis that it hits hard and can in turn take hits. It may not have much in the form of group utility but it has the exact opposite if that makes sense? The Reaper is geared for taking on a group of enemies, breaking them down through any number of means, and shattering them. It’s an anti-group weapon and depending on what enemies we see in endgame HoT, that will be invaluable.

On top of that, it’s incredibly fun to play, which will be enough for people to FIND a place for it in group content. I think the problem will more likely be that too many of the group will want to be reaper. That’s where you’ll reach the limitations because after a certain number, the reaper’s lack of group utility becomes painfully apparent. But hey, that just means it will be another incentive to diversify parties! Win-win!

I still feel like Staff #4 needs to actually do more. The thief’s other weapon skills that blind have far more utility. Shortbow #5 also gives you incredible mobility. d/p #3 shadowsteps to an opponent and x/p #5 gives you a smoke field.

Perhaps make Staff #4 into a PBAoE smoke field as well. It doesn’t have to have a long duration, but it would go a great length in helping staff to synergize with thief’s core stealth mechanics and traits. Further, it would go into the brawler gameplay as you can swing freely in that smoke field for much needed damage mitigation.

The dodges themselves seen extremely clunky. I’ve found that the Bounding Dodge actually roots you in place for a moment when you land. The Dash dodge just feels like ranger sword in that it feels unresponsive and you end up leaping off cliffs on accident.

For staff, maybe if it was given a short duration smoke field on skill 4 to give it something. The lack of reliable stealth reminds me of thief spear in terms of usefulness. The functionality of 3 feels so much like a crappy version of shortbow 3. The evade backwards just seems like a really bad idea for a melee weapon, especially with such an expensive distance closer in skill 5. Skill 2 is remarkable only because you can’t even dodge out of it.

I found myself starting off full daredevil: staff, all physical utilities, etc- and then stripping them back until I had to ask why I was even using DD in the first place instead of the other 5 trees. Essentially, DD doesn’t do anything that another build can’t do twice as well.

My first character was a thief. I always enjoy melee classes, especially with an added element. It’s why my first characters I leveled were a thief and a mesmer.

What appealed to me was the idea of a close quarters elemental combatant. Most games I generally avoid mage classes in favor of those that can get in close for some fun and risky combat. Elementalist did this while adding the flavor of manipulating the elements in each swing.
I mainly play dagger/focus for the added defensive utility, but as I’ve been doing pvp more with the new dailies, dagger/dagger has reemerged as something more than just a weapon set for leveling. Dagger ele just feels so dynamic as you’re always moving, always changing. Playing dagger ele really felt like having the elements in the palm of your hand, and lets you hit someone over the head with it. As ridiculous as it sounds, dagger ele makes combat feel like something out of a comic book.