Guild Wars 2

I really like the new zone and the events feel engaging with lots of activity all over the map.

Really like the story until the last fight. I was away for work this week so only played through yesterday. I am susceptible to motion sickness and any inside/underground, windy type areas in any game affect me, but often can push through. However when the puzzle rooms started spinning I had to close my eyes and already felt bleh. Then to last fight. It was so awful. I had to leave my pc mid fight and was physically ill. I came back and managed to finish it. Had to lie down for at least an hour after just to recover from nauseas feeling and headache. I have never had that bad an experience in GW2 before.

Dreading trying it on my other character that I do all stories on too.

Same did it last night before reset and just did it now and standard loot.

Ah now you pointed that out it is obvious blush Thank you. After seeing the untethered still available assumed it was bugged.

This thread can be deleted – mistaken – no bug here!

I have done all three achievements for bitter harvest (screenshot 1), however the story journal master achievement is only showing 2/3 (screenshot 2). When I go into the instance again and kill both sides of the ramp and kill Faolin it still doesn’t fix it.

You can we weren’t hit because untethered is still available (even though we already have achieved it before)

This is for both of us who did the achievement together first time and subsequently.

http://imgur.com/a/usNLd

I have the same problem. Got expert killer and the achievement was still showing at the end. I did die, but surely if that was a condition the achievement should disappear then.

I carried on doing it solo after the death near the beginning as the achievement was still there and took ages.

I went to Queensdale and killed boss Oakheart and others for 1.5 hours, went to Hirathi for 1 hour and came back to Queensdale and it dropped off an Oakheart (not boss) within a few minutes. My husband who joined me just before going to Hirathi got it 3 oakhearts (also not boss) after me! Another guildie got it in 15 minutes – RNG for you.

Got quite a few coloured 4 slots bags off the boss though :-)

I am using this rune on my Cleric Druid. When I am outside the raid in other maps and even at the start of the raid my healing power includes the healing from the rune, but after we’ve started the first boss it no longer includes the healing from the rune – it is exactly 175 less. It is fine for the first 3 trash mobs. If I re-log it sets it back to normal. I don’t know whether this happens after a death or after a start of a fight, as I always check it before a re-try. We have only been doing first boss. If I use a glyph the healing power does go up by 500. In the 2nd image I have delicious rice balls on me for an extra 100 HP.

http://imgur.com/a/G4DJ7

Our guild also had problems tonight with guild mission. Wolf race a number for us kept running through last flag and it didn’t pop and no reward for us. Then Quaggan race – failed even with doing 15/15, tried with other guilds too and still didn’t complete.

Same here never got Verdant Brink map completion. Have world completion on this character.

I tried resetting mine in various maps, logging in and out and can’t get it to reset. I saw that solution yesterday with the stones. Initially (yesterday)I couldn’t interact with 3rd – reset, back to chp 13, logout, redo chp 14 and then couldn’t go past 2nd stone. Today reset to see if the stones worked and got the poison gate after not having it yesterday.

I have submitted a bug report. Yesterday I could activate it but couldn’t interact with the stones. Now after the fix I restart the chapter and now have the poison requirement gate message.

I can’t do it on the very first one. Tried logging out totally both in different zone and this one, quitting and restarting story in different zone and still can’t interact with it. I was in a Chp 13 story instance when the new build came out last night and never logged back after game closed to update when I was completed. Just logged back in this morning.

I don’t mind the unlocking of elite specialisations too much and see it no different to leveling a new class where you get your skills as you level. We are already 80 which means we still have utilities we can use until we get the rest. I can see this becoming a pain if I had loads of alts.

However, I did make sure that both the characters I intended to play (Chrono and Druid) had the Tyria hero points already before the expansion – for Ranger I ran around and farmed all HC challenges in Central Tyria before HoT, as I don’t have world completion on that character. I’ve unlocked Chrono and only have 6 more left to do on Druid. Because I already have masteries and already know how to get to the HC I need it is a bit easier on Druid – I also knew I had to get guildies to help with champs. We are a small guild so really asking others to take time out of their progression is not ideal and wish there were more people around doing them.

What I don’t like is that so many are Champions. There was nothing worse than finally figuring out how to get up to a HC only to die on activation as I was solo. I think it would be good if those were made veterans. For some reasons the maps feel empty and other than first day there aren’t many around now to do HC. I think they need to increase the numbers on maps to accommodate for the size and how spread out the base is.

Perhaps if they dropped a Hero Challenge Tome type thing in PvE too to be earned over time for alts.

TL:DR

I don’t mind earning the elite specialisation, but think if you have a lot of alts it will be a pain.

My suggestions

1. Make champs HC veterans
2. Increase map population
3. Create Hero Challenge Tomes that drop in PvE and earned over time to make it easier for alts.

My first character was ranger, which I dropped and mained mesmer for a long time. When I raided in past life I had 2 classes hunter and healer I raided on, so decided to try Druid as it combines both. I am in love with this class, though have only tried it in Verdant Brink.

I agree with a lot of the feedback on Glyphs and improvements on skills, but really loved the play style. I just healed on the Legendary Wyvern, which I had only tried on Chronomancer before.

I was using Ancestral Grace to get into melee pop some glyphs, dodge out go into CA pop heals where I logically thought people would need healing, pop out use sublime conversion when he breathes fire for regen field and so on. I was moving around a lot dodging attacks to get to where it felt like I was needed putting down seeds in spots that looked like they would need support. Obviously in raids, etc this will be more focused and will learn where we need to be.

I’ve tried various second weapons like GS, LB and SB so far. I personally didn’t like GS. LB was nice for when I needed extra dps. Tried SB thinking maybe condi might be nice, but hard to say in open world with any of these. I found for easy trash type mobs I stuck to damage weapon and in harder champions and legendary I stuck to staff. Will try axe and the offhands too.

I was in full celestial gear and got gold for all events I was in. I’m not a theory crafter so my feedback is more to give a thumbs up for the play style and I’m sure with some obvious improvements it will hopefully only get better.

About us

We’re a small PvX guild of gaming friends that have played a number of games together. We recently came back to GW2 and started up a new guild and looking for a few more members to join our gaming community.

We’re looking to do fractals, dungeons, spvp, wvw and all aspects of the game with other gamers who prefer to be in a smaller guild playing with friends than larger guild. Most of us are on Far Shiverpeaks for WvW.

Our members/friends range in age from late teens to older from around the EU

Why join us

We’re a community rather than just a guild and many of us have become friends through years of gaming together. We’ve raided, played hardcore and not so hard core through various games.

If you’re a tolerant person, a gamer at heart and happy to come along while some of us catch up on Fractal levels, etc and you’re interested in joining a guild like this we’d love to chat to you and find out more about you.

Whisper Kylar.2416, Taek.4671 or Areya.6038 in game to apply

Kaleygh.1524:

Questular.8359:

The WvW guilds of FSP are trying to get FSP back in shape again, i wonder if the Gandara players have noticed any form of improvement since the last time we met

Running with bigger numbers is not actual improvement)

I didn’t see any comment there saying that the way FSP is getting in shape is through bigger numbers. As AoA we do bring new people in and do quite a lot of training to help them improve in WvW. Punk also works hard in WvW and has helped to new WvW focused guilds to come to FSP. Same goes for all the guilds like Kale and others who play every night and who are doing extra events.

You comment really puts down a lot of hard work a lot of guilds are doing to make FSP stronger again.

Had good fights in Gandara BL last night. Especially at bay. Punk joined Gandara a bit later and had some good fights in Gandara Garrison, even though we never took it. RIOT saved the day on the last push on bay while we were on the border by keeping Gandara busy till we got to bay.

The Gandara guilds I can remember seeing last night were Yak, Rage, DYE, IC. Thanks for a great evening!

AoA has added a lot of extra events, especially outside of prime time, to our calendar for the leagues.

Another good reason to come to FSP:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Well-played-Anet/first#post2924568

AoA is definitely going to fight hard to support the server and not throw any matches. There has been talk in map chat of throwing the match, but AoA won’t be doing that. We will be fighting alongside all the other FSP guilds to get every point we can. Our commanders have been very active, especially in home border doing exactly that.

Dranul.2094:

Last matchup vs you lot, my 18-22 guys had to deal with 43 AoA (on your comms) + pugs. Over and Over again, many victories many defeats. Was a glorious week. Although you didn’t seem to notice our warrior night and we fought you with our 12 (last matchup).

AoA did notice your warrior event. Initially just our warriors were sent to meet you at one of the tower battles and then we had groups of 2 classes sent in to battle you while the rest of us stood back and watched how they fared against your all warrior group both at the middle island at at vale camp. It was quite funny. It’s a pity you guys never noticed that we did notice and were having some fun with you.

Monkeymonger.9235:

Good to see that FSP woke up. Thanks to everybody that actually fought us tonight, particularly to AOA. for the intense and fun fights over bridge and middle island.

Also nice to see that you enjoy defending your eb towers. I don’t know why not more people share your passion for siege weapons and repairing. Keep it up!

Was on EB this afternoon and then started this evening on GH BL but got called back to our own BL and had some epic fights with GH guilds. Really been some of the best fights I have had in a while. There were moments in the supply camp and on the bridge when we had 3 different GH guilds stacking to take us on. Then Fury showed up close to the end of our event and we knew then that the battle just got more serious and a whole lot harder. Was really great fun.

Only joined the late AoA event on RoS bl and had a great evening. Was great to encounter VcY again Last time they were one of us not our enemies.

Lion did a fantastic job working with AoA on RoS bl and Lion King songs were sang in their honour on our TS.

I know our guys were on FSP bl earlier in the evening with one of our other commanders and hear there were some good fights.

We have been really impressed with RoS and always like FR, though never really encountered them on RoS bl last night. Looks like it will be a good week.

Teel.9036:

Awesome fights today against AoA especially, kudos to you guys for being so persistent and using a lot of tactics in your gameplay, portals and smart ambushes etc.

We also had some awesome fights against AR on our BL. The cooperation between your guilds is impressive and you kept us on our toes. There always seemed to be more of you rolling in and you were always close behind. And those kitten ele’s and their static fields were a real pain

It is always nice to meet a new enemy who uses tactics that are different.

Army of Albion [AoA] is a WvW focused international guild based on Far Shiverpeaks [EU]. We run events 7 days a week and take WvW seriously, but at the same time have fun and are a friendly guild. Join AoA and have fun defeating Far Shiverpeaks’ enemies on the battlefield with organised, tactical warfare.

What we have to offer:

• Regular WvW events almost every night of the week with great commanders.
• Strike team fun or roaming with guildies.
• Weekly Guild Missions.
• Guild buffs and food for WvW, as well as hero banners.
• Active on our server TeamSpeak and run all our events on voice.
• WvW basic training for new recruits.
• Advanced WvW class advice for full members to help with builds, skills and strategies.
• Commander training for any full members interested in commanding.
• Guild members often running dungeons, fractals or spamming world events between WvW
• Active, organised guild with a fun and friendly members

The AoA way

Capturing some of the spirit of AoA are our random moment videos. These roughly edited snippets from our events and guild crazy moments show off some of the craziness that happens in our events.

To join AoA for some fun defeating Far Shiverpeaks’ enemies with organised, tactical warfare:

Apply on our website: http://thearmyofalbion.shivtr.com/

Or whisper anyone of the following in game:

Cryara: Thorzar.3895
Silver: Silver.1803
Alphazen: Alphazen.3058
Hylo: Memphisjz.1405

And if you you would like to hear why some of our guildies joined AoA and stay in AoA you can read this thread on our forums

AoA: Conquering our enemies together.

This is happening to quite a lot of us both in PvE and WvW – very annoying.

I think a way to break up zergs is by giving bonus points for the number of camps, towers or keeps you own on any map, not a combination, but say if you have 2 camps you get a bonus or 2 keeps, or 2 towers and it goes up by number of type you hold.

Maybe the more camps you own the faster Dolyaks spawn or stuff like that. Make it worthwhile to spilt up through the points system.

I haven’t really thought through this in detail, but think that there needs to be an incentive to be in more than one place at once.

I use a rune of vampirism that turns you into mist form at 10% health. Could be that or another set bonus that has an effect.

I have been in Diessa Plateau on FSP and having similar problems. Mobs I can’t see doing damage suddenly the mobs are appearing and disappearing all over the place and then when I try blink it won’t work.

On voice with friends in WvW and they can’t do anything either.

I don’t think there is any alliance between FR and UW. I have seen them go all out against each other when there have been 3 way battles or seen UW run in and attack FR after wiping us or FR do that to UW. I mostly play on enemy BLs and have seen a lot of players from all 3 servers. Sunday night though looked like FR had events on FSP BL and UW didn’t have much. That doesn’t mean an alliance.

I have found this week fun. FR have some good open field tactics and UW are very good defensively and both have given a nice flavour to the fights. Someone always calls alliances every match up. I think strategically some servers decide to concentrate more on a certain server and if they both choose the same one it might look like that. FSP usually have had enough man power to focus on both our enemies for sometime. I think both UW and FR have similar numbers and we all have more at different times of the day and week.

UW fought FSP for weeks in T7 and should remember we seldom had large numbers for reset. That hasn’t changed. If I wake up on Saturday morning and we are winning I am shocked, as it means we had a rare turnout. Last night we had one of the worst turnouts in many weeks.

I am pretty sure you will get some decent fights and we have been looking for some good challenges, as many were getting bored in recent weeks with the fairly easy wins. FR brought some great fights last week and we have seen how well UW has been doing and are looking forward to a more challenging week. We enjoy fighting our way back after our weak resets.

See you on the battle field.

Aisina.4963:

After our few weeks of clashes, we were under the impression this AoA group was your pugs Kaleygh – had no idea they actually communicated.

AoA is a guild who has opened up their events to smaller guilds and individuals who want more organised WvW. They rarely play on GH BL and mostly can be found on the DE BL’s or our home BL when needed.

GH BL is where DW and their alliance go because that is where they like to fight, especially Xaoc. If you have seen AoA on GH it is probably their members following a pug zerg.

Silver.1803:

I think you should first of all get your facts straight, but as you seem to be on some rabid rant let me point out the facts for you.

> 5 regular EB commanders were on and chose not to put their commander tag on.
> AoA and Cryara said to the pug army to follow others and we would support, but I guess you chose to igonore that.
> We held all key areas of EB and SM for the two hours we were on for our reset event
> We supported the taking of SM at the start, fighting off both zergs with the pug army, we did this together!
> Ele Marlin communicated to the FSP pug army based on comments that the pugs and you were yelling in chat were clueless on tactics and they needed to be lead by the nose, even though we were here to support our well known pug army.
> We offered anyone to join us on vent
> When I play on EB I dont listen for commands, I follow and understand what I need to do, the hundreds of regular pug EBers do the same, insisting what you are saying is putting down their skill and dedication
> We are one team at the end, making kitten up wont help anyone and in the end only makes you look like a kittenhead
> Regardless of what you reply, you have made your decision and have your opinions which I doubt anyone will change, that is the nature of forums and the army of trolls that forums contain. Enjoy your limits.

Wish everyone many kills and play with honor!

Silver

This!

Based on this article: http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/210/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-I.aspx (Thanks to omlech on reddit)

Colin said this:

What can we expect from guild missions?

Colin: It’s really spread out all over the game and it depends on which type of mission you’re doing. There are actually five completely different types of missions and based on which one it is – bounty hunts, for example, is the really basic one, that’s the one that you can get right off the bat when [February’s] release first goes out. You actually have to unlock all the other missions types, so it’s literally going to take months for your guild to build up enough influence to unlock all of them. It’s really a progression here, […] it’s on the whole unlock tree just like any of the other guild abilities, so you make your way down all that stuff and you’ll use influence to kick off missions as well. So, finally, you’ll have a use for that giant pile of influence. Some guilds are probably going to tear through really quickly cause they’ve got huge piles of it but it is going to take a while. With bounty hunts, you can pick which tier of bounty hunts you go on and it randomly generates bosses in different zones that get spawned because the bounty hunt started and it spreads your guild out all over the place. If you do a really big bounty hunt it will actually spread your guild across five different zones, where there is a boss in each and you have, say, 15 minutes to kill all five of them. So, you actually have to split your guild into five different groups and send them to all the maps and find them to take them out.

So perhaps the dev meant to say the last one required AoW 5.

EDIT: Added this too as it is relevant to smaller guilds too:

Some of us have small guilds, we don’t have 500 members and some challenges could prove quite hard. Are we going to see any collaboration mechanisms set in place?

Colin: Our hope will be that [collaborations] will kinda dynamically come out of this as sort of emergent gameplay. The bounties, for example, have different tiers so there’s a small tier that you can do – even small guilds can get those – you’ve got three bosses in three zones so maybe 10-15 people can do that, a small guild, and you can pick which tier you want to kick off based on how many people you’ve got online. Maybe one of the things that will come out of that is “our guild is going to do the tier 3 bounty which takes a lot more people to do, so let’s get 3 guilds together and our guild will kick one off and you’ll help us do ours and then you’ll kick one off and we’ll help us do yours” and the 3 guilds all work together to accomplish [it]. I think that kind of emergent gameplay hopefully will come out of that for sure. We don’t really know what to expect just because it is so hard to test internally to see what guilds are going to do [when all this goes] live. So, some of this is going to [emerge] when we put it out and we’re just going to see how guilds interact with it and what they do and then it will help us determine what other features and additions we need to work on.

I don’t think there is any alliance going on. We spent the whole evening with AoA on AM BL. Blos was also there. We kept the whole one side of their map blue for our entire event. Why would we do that if there was an alliance? Sunday night we were there too and we even took their Garrison.

I think it is a others have said before, servers fighting tactically for position and taking advantage of other servers attacks. Like when we go in somewhere and then another server comes in behind us, wipes us and takes it instead of us or sometimes two servers fight for a big keep like Hills, while one defends.

I received a gold selling mail last night with something I haven’t seen before in it. They were offering precursors for real money, not only gold. Said they were the biggest supplier of these.

I did report the mail for spamming, but it is something to consider in all of this.

This may seem obvious, but people are still falling for this and being scammed.

The Story to watch out for:

A friend this weekend fell for this and against our advice and decided the person seemed genuine enough to take the risk. He loves collecting mini pets and even bought more character slots in hope that we will get a birthday gift like he got in GW1.

The deal was send me 60% of the money I will send the pet then you send me the rest. After sending the first amount. The person then just told him that they never received the money, so he would need to send more to get the mini pet. Obviously he didn’t send more, as he realised this person was probably scamming, as he was very careful to make sure he sent the gold to the correct person.

When he told the person he will report them, they just laughed and said have fun reporting me. He did report them in game and to customer support and got the usual there is nothing we can do about it.

The reason for this post:

I dislike con artists so wanted to start a thread to warn people and help others identify a possible scam. I guess the easiest is to say don’t do it, but human nature means some people will still wrongly trust.

Now either this person has hacked someone’s account and doesn’t care whether there is a ban, as the gold is sent off to fund gold selling or nothing is done to stop these people. I have seen Anet’s comments on threads, which suggest they do investigate scamming, but it takes time.

These scammers are using all sorts of stories to con people. Just like people fall for them all the time on the Internet they fall for it in game too. They use all sorts of reasons for not putting it on the TP from I can’t afford the listing fee to others.

So what are the reasons you have heard where people trusted a scammer and stories you have heard people fall for that resulted in them being scammed?

Please don’t name anyone is this thread as it is against the forum rules.

TL:DR: The heading says it all and please help others by telling them of different types of scams and how they gain your trust.

Azunai.1065:

Awsome fight @ MS Hills

MS in the lord champer
SF wth 2 catas + 1 treb on the bridge
GU on the inner north gate with 3 Balistas

Enjoy our beautiful keep, you’r welcomed as guests only!

It was an epic 3 way battle that lasted hours and eventually FSP took Hills. MS had some serious siege inside the lords room. Thanks to all servers for a fun night.

It seems the original post was deleted instead of merged. I can’t see it anywhere now.

I did search and never saw this mentioned. We had a lot of friends from different servers in EU in our guild and decided to kick them from our guild and make a friends guild for that. The reason is it looked bad for new recruits with so many not representing and secondly we also do WvW and go up against their servers.

Last night one of our guild members guested on another server and logged off there and it kept his location as the guest server. I wasn’t online yesterday evening so wasn’t aware of it. I came on this morning and kicked the remaining people not on our server. I unfortunately kicked our guild mate as it showed he was on the another server, which he has friends on. I assumed he had transferred.

So my issue is that in the Guild List there is no way to know if someone is guesting or has transferred. I think the colour should be different or have brackets around it to show that one is guesting.

Also someone could have transferred and said they are guesting. Yes we could make them go to WvW to really find out, but that isn’t the point. Maybe there are other ways to find out that I haven’t noticed. I just think we should have to go in search like that.

Far Shiverpeaks is a great server. We have just gone into T6 and are doing well. You can read more about us here:

http://www.farshiverpeaks.com/ and http://www.farshiverpeaks.com/forum/

and read this thread about us:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/A-Server-s-Story/page/2#post1298306

The fights in T6 have been great and we are holding out nicely and currently in first place, but it is only the beginning and we have worthy opponents. It could go anyway.

I am really proud of what our server has achieved after everything we went through. We now have a stable and growing community of people who are here because they want to be on Far Shiverpeaks and have come together to make it happen. Our results in the last month are proof of months of work starting early in the free fall.

We no longer have guilds that only want glory, but guilds that want to fight for their server, who have experienced both T1 fighting all the way down to T7 and understand sticking by their server through glory and hardships. We are also a server that has realised we don’t want fair weather guilds. Because of this we don’t depend on any big guilds or alliances. We are a server where both small and medium guilds can make a difference (and large ofc).

Paid transfers won’t deter these big guilds from moving (in my opinion), as some of the hardcore WvW guilds are rich, through taxing their members, etc. so probably can afford to make a move and pay for their members if they really wanted. I think our server now has less risk than servers depending on big guilds and alliances, who also sometimes decide to go to different games.

So if you are a single player or a guild who has decided to move and looking for a new home where you can make a difference, and want to belong to a great community I think you should seriously consider Far Shiverpeaks.

And to give Maloki a hurrah: I know we can

This is a great write up Biganorak. Proud to be part of this server, the positive fighting spirit and see the enthusiasm of all the new people in WvW.

Rayya.2591:

but the fact that FS already gave up is just ….
you got 10 ppls maximum in home borderland… the issue is with you , not with SFR … in my opinion you should check your own backyard.

FSP have not given up. Many of our WvW guilds have gone to SFR, Desolation and BT. We lacked numbers over the weekend. We are trying to rebuild and getting new blood into WvW, but with a big PvE event it is hard getting them into WvW.

We did not climb back to T3 without effort, stuff we did last week worked better than expected. We had awesome battles last week and if we drop while we train new people up, so be it. BUT we won’t give up and have some WvW guilds that are here to stay and fight.

Smartbean.5960:

I see what you mean. However, the dread (caused by lack of amount of radiance) also influenced your incoming and outgoing damage by percentage (excluding mitigations). Dread could only be countered by a combination of Hope tokens and Raidance gear. Later that got split up and Hope tokens countered Dread and Radiance countered gloom (not sure of the term now).

But unfortunately in GW2 we don’t have mitigations to counter effects, we only have boons and conditions, and with this Agony condition being ‘forced’ upon you and you only have 1 way to counter it (i.e. acquiring and slotting a specific infusion into your gear) there’s this gating mechanism created for which you need to get an item in order to experience the rest of the content. And in that light I think it has the same effect like Radiance had in LotRO; it prevented people from progressing and/or experiencing (new) content.

I am not disputing that it in a way gates the harder levels in that it was required, I just don’t see as the same beast as radiance, which totally prevented some players experiencing content. Hence my reason for saying I don’t think it can be compared to radiance and gloom (as you rightly pointed out the new name ) It is probably the lack of mitigations that they needed to find an interesting way to mitigate new damage types they introduce. Could there be better ways to do this – maybe, I don’t have the answer.

And again because this comes from a merged post I will say again for anyone who does read this that I am feeling uncomfortable about this as I came to GW2 to get away from gear grind/ hamster wheel/treadmill. I am going to wait and see if I like it or not and how much of a grind was involved. If it is a fun grind that happens with me not noticing much while I still do things I enjoy in this game, then I probably won’t have a problem with it and if this is the last time they add a new quality that could make other qualities obsolete aka the slippery slope others have mentioned. I play both PvE and WvW and hope they allow those that only do WvW some way to have the improved stats too without forcing a play style on them they don’t like.

Smartbean.5960:

If you keep the bold bit within the quote above in mind, reading the article linked in the OP would make an awful lot of sense, so people who didn’t play Lotro, but do play GW2 can see what’s coming.

In my opinion the Acsended gear and even the infusion slots could be interesting, BUT the Agony condition is a very very bad idea as it’s the same gating mechanism as Radiance was in Lotro, locking out players from experiencing ‘new’ content!

Imo, it would be best to revert this mechanic asap, before it’s too late.

I still don’t agree you can compare the two. Agony is a damage type and dread isn’t. In Lotro you have mitigation to negate the damage types e.g. all the new wound, diseases, etc. that were introduced, plus could bump this through character stats. Raid sets had bonus mitigations on them. You could try hard mode without it but it would be extremely hard or do it with them and be easier. I see this as the same, except there is no easy mode and hard mode, but phases from easy mode to hard mode. Based on what I have read we will be able to do the early levels without anything special, but to do the harder levels we will.

To me this is like saying hard mode in Lotro is gating because you need to do easy mode to get the gear to do hard mode.

With radiance there was no chance of even doing easy mode without it. To me that is the difference.

I am an ex Lotro raider, who raided before radiance, during radiance and post radiance (quit playing in March this year) and I don’t think this is like radiance at all. Lotro’s stats and combat mechanics work differently. Stats provide resistance to certain “conditions”, you have ways to mitigate certain damage types and raid sets have mitigation as a set bonus. They are not required to do a raid but make it easier, especially hard modes.

I don’t see the difference to having mitigation as a stat on jewellery or as a set bonus to having it as an infusion. Radiance did gate raids in that if you didn’t have it you couldn’t even do your skills as you were constantly cowering, mitigations just make it easier.

I think comparing radiance to this us comparing apples and oranges.

Now saying all this I am playing GW2 because I wanted something different. I have hardly done any dungeons here. I am feeling very uncomfortable about this more because it possibly could be a gear grind I was hoping never to do again. I was happy to have farmed for my exotics in a way I found fun and was getting on with my still long to do list of things I find fun in the game. I left lotro after limelight gorge introduced a new grind of must have, better than the raid items and I just didn’t have the heart to do more grinding. And now I feel I may be in the same situation again. I will wait and see how it works before deciding whether I like it or hate it.