Guild Wars 2

I have been sitting on my dervish’s name for years, waiting patiently for us to go to Elona so I could come home. Nightfall was where I began my experience in the original Guild Wars so the Land of the Golden Sun has always held a very special place in my heart.

I used the name-change contract on my main – whom had been keeping the name, which I will not share because it’s not 100% ethnically correct Elonian – and used the 80boost to mint a brand new human female necromancer. Why necromancer? The Reaper’s scythe feels more like my old dervish than either the Daredevil or the Revenant staves.

I set about straight away earning Reaper and then began trying to recreate her Vabbian armor. And…failed miserably. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had in my five years of playing Fashion Wars 2. “This is human female,” I lamented. “If I can’t make the look what kind of mix-and-matcher am I?”

In the end I said, “-young cat- it, I will just make her pretty!” At least I chose the leggings of the highest shimmer/ooh-lala, so that’s close enough.

Were it not for a weird sense of armor completionism and the fact that I have head-canons for every one of my characters, I would have significantly more sylvari. I love them dearly.

First is Gywlfye, a flamethrower-focused Scrapper. It’s a mix of Aetherblade and Magitech. Unfortunately, some of her design was lost when the “hobosacks” vanished – she had been made with the flamethrower’s backpack in mind. Keeping my fingers crossed that one day it’ll be available as a skin!

Then is Zeirah, a supportive Guardian. I kept things simple for her. Currently collecting pieces to represent her transition into a more offensive Dragonhunter; I’ll update when it’s done.

Next is Metel Dhatura, a mantra Mesmer. I went back and played more of gw1 just to complete her set – the mask, to me, makes it. The rest of her set is mostly comprised of pieces that I thought I would never get to use. Somehow, she just makes it work.

Last is a true work of art…Caladium Araceae, vampiric Necromancer. One of my best Fashion Wars creations, he truly looks as if he grew his set. This is a painstakingly dye-matched and coordinated cultural and TA mix that takes his bark, pattern, glow, and leaf colors into account.

I have another male sylvari, a thief named Sciobtha Venomblood, but I am still collecting pieces and transmutation charges for his set. My last sylvari, my revenant Thaibse Thalia, needs dye work badly and I will not shame myself or my family by inflicting him upon the forums.

[Disclaimer: All opinions and personal experiences contained below are just that: opinions and personal experiences. While some things may be worded harshly, no offense is intended.]

As a mostly solo player, I am confused by the discussion in this thread. What, exactly, are solo players being denied that they – as players who have actively chosen to not play with others – deserve to have? Further, is it worth developer time and resources to give it to them?

With the right professions, build/gear/utility choices, patience, and skill, most things in this game intended for ‘groups’ can already be done by a single player. Many dungeon paths, several low-level fractals, nearly all champion-level enemies, and most supposed “group events” are provably soloable. For the things that aren’t – be they via timers or hard number gates like the lasers in all the CoE paths – the question I’ve yet to see answered sufficiently is, “Why do you want to solo these so badly?”

And no, “Buh Buh I could in Guild Wars 1!!!” isn’t a sufficient answer. This is Guild Wars 2. It is a game that is in a completely different genre than Guild Wars 1 was, so it’s nearly apples to oranges there. You can deny it all you want, but Guild Wars 1 is an Action RPG/CORPG. Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG. Take a look at the listed genre(s) on both’s Wikipedia pages. Yes, I have played it.

So what is it? Are you wanting to see the story of the raids/fractals/what-have-you? If you’re adamant about never ever having to group with other players, the community maintains a fairly thorough wiki. Further, there are countless Youtube videos detailing all those yummy lore bits.

Are you wanting the rewards out of the group content? Then you need to be honest and say that’s what the real issue is.
- As far as I have experienced, there is nothing a non-soloable ‘group event’ offers that any other event does not, unless it is a world boss/meta/required for precursor crafting.^1
- If you want dungeon rewards out of a dungeon that has no soloable paths, you can earn them via the reward tracks in PvP and WvW.^2
- If you want fractal rewards, you can slowly earn relics and such by doing the low-level soloable ones.
- I do agree that locking certain stat combination ascended pieces behind the raid was a mistake, but that is going to be addressed if the AMA held on reddit is to be believed. I advise patience.
This leaves only high-level fractal rewards (skins) and raid rewards (skins, legendary armor that doesn’t even exist yet). The proposal is to make all currently group-only content soloable by either scaling it down or adding npc allies. And perhaps this is not such a bad thing…as long as the rewards are nowhere near the same.

Part of the skill set in a multiplayer game – like it or not – is learning to cooperate with other players. You can choose to not do so, but in doing so you are choosing to not have access to the content that literally cannot be done by a single player. That also means you will not get the rewards from that content. Just as players who actively chose to not do solo-only content never completed the Queen’s Gauntlet, and will never get the mastery points from Adventures. And that’s perfectly fine.

There is nothing wrong with having content in a multiplayer game that cannot be done solo. There is also nothing wrong with having content in a multiplayer game that is solo-only. The idea is to have a variety of content for all type of players, with different rewards therein, which this game (more than any other I have ever played) does. People have already detailed the possible negative outcomes of making all content soloable, so I will not get into that; this post is quite long enough.

I will just leave one final comment: people on this thread keep talking about more choices (“scaling would be a choice!”, “using npcs would be a choice!”), when they seem to have forgotten that choices have consequences. Like, for example, the choice to play exclusively solo having the consequence of not being able to do group-only content.

^1. I guess it has to be discussed what ‘solo’ means. You will rarely ever find yourself alone at a world boss, a map-wide meta, or an event that drops something needed for precursor crafting. Playing alongside others without actively cooperating with them as you would in a dungeon or such is still, to me, being solo. If the content is not solo to you until you are the only player visible on the screen, then I don’t know what to tell you, other than this:
You are never forced to group to play this game. You can get full ascended gear with nice, fashionable skins without ever having been in a party, whilst actively running away from any other player you encounter. Why you’d choose to play an MMORPG at all if you detested playing at least concurrently with others, I do not know.
^2 ‘ermahgerd that’s not solo content!’ There are plenty of PvP rooms – aptly named ‘daily servers’ – where people come together to get their PvP dailies done as quickly as possible so they can go do something else. For the most part, every person involved is playing solo, treating the other players as NPCs – means to an end. And for WvW, taking camps and sentries is completely doable on your own. Is there a chance that enemy players may find you and stop you? Yes, of course. But there’s also a chance you may beat them, and get loot for it.

Westwater.1095:

I wish power/ferocity/condi damage was a thing.

Sure it might seem useless on it’s own, but some classes can build up pretty decent crit rates on their own, particularly guardian which can reach a 58% crit chance without ANY precision at all with a sword. Add in spotter and crit banner and you got a solid crit chance with virtually all the positives of sinister and zerker gear.

As a future Reaper, I would also love to have this stat combination. I can’t think of a good name for it though. Hmm…sinister+berserker…Manic or Maniacal, perhaps?

I’d also like to see a high-ferocity…anything, really. Just to see how it plays in comparison to similar setups.

Currently I have two necromancers, an Asuran female (who has three sets) and a Sylvari male (who has two). The Asuran is my main.
In order: A mix of Pact and Asuran cultural. A necromantic take on Black Mage. And the obligatory “necro using an Arah mix”. Then I play with winged and feathered while trying to bring out the colors of Demon Masque, and finally a mix of various Sylvari cultural and Twilight Arbor that hasn’t been properly dyed yet.

This is my main, an Asuran Necromancer, in her “stuff got real” Pact and Asuran themed set. Design credit goes to Bran.7425 – without whom many of my characters wouldn’t look anywhere near as fabulous. I have plenty of good-looking characters, but this is the only one who has all of her dyes right.

-Disclaimer: These are from a PvE point of view.-

1. Ranger.
> The profession feels unfinished and unpolished. Its class mechanic is somehow simultaneously hardwired into the game code and feels very alien in a faster-paced action MMORPG. The general lack of synergy in its traits and weapons leaves at least me very confused. My main method of condition removal is to shove them onto ~30% of my damage and hope it doesn’t die? 5 of my traits exist solely because this ~30% of my damage can’t equip gear? This ~30% of my damage can neither dodge nor jump when those mechanics are increasingly becoming the only method of damage mitigation? My ‘best’ weapon has an autoattack that roots me in place and prevents dodging? I could go on and on.

2. Elementalist.
> The archetype of the cloth caster exists in MMOs because the role of the magic-user in a table-top RPG – where magic could open doors, see far away places, befuddle foes, etc – cannot be realized. IE, when combat is the only activity that matters, magic must be given something so that it can compete with physical damage. In a typical game, a profession like the elementalist, with its tiny health pool and lowest armor class, would deal ridiculous amount of damage. And they do, “assuming 25 stacks of might, fury, 25 stacks of vulnerability on the foe, etc.” The point is, there is no reason for them to have such a weakness if their “strength” relies on absolutely perfect conditions. Further, looking at their traits, I almost felt like the right answer was given to me, and that the rest existed to give the illusion of choice. When a trait is good, it’s really really good, but when it’s bad, it’s AWFUL.

3. Warrior.
> This profession is listed here because the topic was unclear as to what “help” meant. I’m going with the idea that “help” means “some sort of looking at”. Honestly, it would be #2 if I didn’t have to list the issue I have with Elementalist first for my complaints to make sense. Warrior suffers for the same reasons Elementalist does; it just suffers differently. When combat is the only activity that matters, and there is an undisputed king of combat, why does anything else exist? With high health and high armor, plus higher-than-average damage out of the box, a warrior can afford to build soft and still eat hits to the face that other professions dare not. And when you open the trait menu, it’s as if the right answers are jumping out at you. This may be a bit of profession bias showing, but if I can kit out my warrior in Devona’s armor – straight off the TP, not even bothering with Scholar runes – a Berserker’s Greatsword of Bloodlust, 30/20/0/0/20, 5 signets, and Berserker of Assassin trinkets and go fight pretty much anything semi-afk while texting, while my fully kitted out ANYTHING ELSE has to use every trick available to it with my full attention…I don’t know. It again makes me wonder what the point of anything else is other than flavor. Heck, it makes me wonder what the point of any build other than pure DPS (which I wasn’t even doing correctly!) for Warrior is. That is not a good place for a profession to be.

-edited for grammar. goes back to lurking-

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ranger?s=t
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skirmisher?s=t
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ranger

The problem is that either side will read these exactly as they want to. And while we’re debating it, we’re further dividing our community and directing our attention away from improving our experiences with the profession or discussing how the profession can be improved.

-goes back into lurk mode-