Showing Posts For Vard.5621:
I am curious on how you got “Blobs, Schmobs”. I ran a sword/shield + hammer spirit build with Mistfire Wolf before I found this thread as one of the dozen or so combinations I tried, to include the popular scepter one from last year, which no longer works because due to oozes spawning on Subject 7 instead of on the player.
I find that I can out-dps the ooze heals without any problem, but I can’t avoid hitting the oozes with either a passive burn or sword combo and killing them. I have tried moving slowly into Subject 7 with auto-attack but as the oozes spawn randomly, I can launch it with Hammer 4 or clear the area with Shield 5, but I can’t avoid hitting oozes as Sword 1 strikes three targets even off-axis in a wide arc.
If you have a video, I’d welcome it gladly.
I went out and bought a hammer (T3 weapon vendor, 63k karma) and put Superior Sigils of Ice and Chilling on it.
I run Triple Meditation often so I left two of the traits in the Valor tree (I, XII) intact and just for good measure took Glacial Heart (VIII) even thought it has a terribly long cooldown.
For slot skills I took Judge’s Intervention, Smite Condition, and Contemplation of Purity because they all give me 2.2k healing per shot, but only Judge’s Intervention matters here.
For short-range meat tosses: The important thing is to just auto-attack and spam F frequently (I went with 1, 1, F) because sometimes the meat drops close to Strugar and you may not see the “Meat Hunk” label in time.
For medium-range meat tosses: Hammer #5 is optional in keeping Chomper from getting to the meat. One, if not two dodge rolls should be sufficient to get to the meat before Chomper, especially if Chomper is chilled (running Knights or Zerker for crit helps to keep him that way). Running is a no-go since Strugar has an unexpected pull.
For far-range meat tosses: Hammer #5 is optional to start, but two dodge rolls usually suffice. If I am caught out of position, I use Judge’s Intervention to close with Chomper, dodge roll to the meat, and welcome Chomper with Hammer #2.
For multiple meat tosses: Once I get to the meat, Chomper is usually right on top of me and I launch him with Hammer #4 away from the meat. Then I run or dodge roll to the other meat.
If you want hard, then the Subject 7 Achievement “Blobs, Schmobs” is it, and I haven’t cracked that one yet. Since Sword auto-attack hits 3 targets and blobs this year spawn on top of Subject 7, I am having a devil of a time even fully traited (i.e. Honorable Shield, Sanctuary) keeping oozes away from not getting killed.
I just saw this “npc” in LA and had never payed attention before, but he appears to be a new class sign. Mercenary
Did you not look at the other side of that same courtyard, where there’s a heap of Brawler, Citizen, Mercenary NPCs?
Actually, now that I think about it, Anet needs to make those fighting pits and NPCs available for players to engage in combat with, like training dummies, and that red arena outside the wall which is not used right now for … something good, hopefully.
I had hopes for immersion when I started at launch. Personal Story ruined them.
Personal Story is a fake experience where nothing reflects what happens in open world. Orr will always be a Risen-infested hellhole, Shaemoor will always in flames. Finishing it now means nothing but AP and a 2g+ Pact weapon token, after reams of substandard instanced content.
NPC interaction is lacking. The Charisma/Dignity/Ferocity mechanic is pointless. The instanced content in Personal Story does not affect the character except some backstory in the Hero Panel to read, then it is back to an open world of non-moving NPCs and canned dialogue. About half of the canned player responses are trite, sarcastic, or otherwise badly written.
GW2 is now QD/FG champ trains, dungeon sellers (6g per Arah run), AP hunting, farming world bosses on gw2stuff timers, FotM 3-4 times a day. There should be more RP-supportive content. There should be 1000x more dialogue with NPCs, more NPCs in cities, much more walking with all NPCs (even the vendors should walk a bit) and the Personal Story should affect interaction with all of them.
Personal Story should also change, like Living Story; such as Norn legend, which should be ongoing, be influenced by Claw of Jormag kills, Honor of the Waves. Right now after Arah Story it is a dead end which means nothing. Hearts are static and pointless.
Edge of the Mists using Living Story to bridge open world to WvW. The open world needs a bridge between Personal Story, Living Story, and itself for the sake of immersion, but this game is busy chasing imitation endgame content (Wurm, Marionette) right now.
Charr + Norn = corn! their kids would be candycorn! oh the horror we’ve been eating people all along! (perhaps an assumption too far?)
Thanks to this Norn Elite skill, love can bloom given 30 seconds.
Probably more like 25, as very awkward things can happen when the timer expires.
For the vast majority of the human race, getting zapped by a taser is an eyeball-blasting crescendo of pain. For a tiny fraction of this crowd, getting hit by 50,000 volts is the height of erotic fantasy. This is the sort of parallel which probably describes best player sentiment towards The Vegetable.
This is supposed to be the personal story. Not some underdeveloped rubbish main story where a world boss dies in a steampunk-esque instanced aerial turkey shoot after the majority of players with light or medium armor stack dozens of repair tabs after having to banzai charge the content to get through. Of the three arcs in the personal storyline:
1. Racial
2. Faction
3. Zhaitan
The first one was grossly underdeveloped, the second had extensive depth followed by the player getting punted (i.e. snuffing out Seiran, Tybalt) in the first of many NPC executions, and the third had the massive structure issues in both the instanced fight content, rewards, and premise behind the episodes which have been pointed out ad nauseum. Vegemite could have had a trilogy written about him and lit the Olympic cauldron in London – doesn’t matter. It’s not a lore background issue, it’s a structure issue with the entire daft storyline, and conjecture on how the player is really the hero after being dropkicked is Walter Mitty and not even supported by developer statements (emphasis mine):
Your personal story is told through private, instanced chapters that are specific to your character. If you need a little help, you can always invite friends along to experience your personal story with you. As “guest stars” these players can help you, but it’s still your story and key decisions are yours to make. These key decisions not only determine the story’s direction, they also change and update your home instance, a personalized home area located in your character’s racial capital.
Personal choices could have been facerolled as well as each and every last one of the choices during episodic content. Everyone ends up at Arah, and button mashes artillery into an undead aerial pinata. Your presence as a player doesn’t matter for the reunification for Destiny’s Edge because the decision behind that is pre-scripted anyways and occurs off-camera. Lore conjecture and satisfaction with faceroll content should not be an excuse for whoever conceived and executed this mess to walk away thinking the achieved anything other that LOLWUT.
It’s like being mugged waiting for the tram by a 50-pound turnip and being told by a doomsday cultist it was a rewarding, world-enriching experience. Pass.
(edited by Vard.5621)
It’s been a while since I did this fight (solo, as a Guardian) so my recollection isn’t going to be exact.
- Your NPCs will all end up face down. All of them. Don’t try to stop this.
- You need to be packing some sort of ranged weaponry. If you’re a Guardian, bring the tennis ball launcher – the almighty scepter, in order to execute pulls.
- Use the pillar as cover. Pull and kite each of the Orrian spectral weapons out of its orbit, take it behind the pillar and DPS it down. You need to get rid of all of them before you work on the Mouth.
- If you have a Mistfire Wolf, minion, et cetera, use it to aggro the Mouth and take threat off of you. Do your best to rez each of your NPCs to around 95% (do not rez any of them 100%; tap ESC).
- The Mouth is going to periodically receive food from upstairs transported by Risen servants. If you don’t have the means to stunlock/DPS down with a quickness, just ignore the servants.
- Rapidly rez your three NPCs. This should take no more than 5 seconds tops since they were all at 95% prepped and ready to go. After this, DPS the hell out of the Mouth. I went all melee with greatsword at zero contact distance and stacked burning on it. After that, it goes down with a quickness.
That should be it – though I can’t say for certain this will work for anyone else. I do not recall a bug being in place for this instance.
(edited by Vard.5621)
“He isn’t an good military leader and he is a bit bland.”
“He is basiclly unable to work without support, and you are unable to reach your goals without his knowledge and neutral standing.”
He is basiclly a very clever person, he knows that he sucks at military operation. That is why you make all military based decisions of the pact. He holds the title of Marshal but you are the military leader of the Pact."
“He acts basiclly as your chief secretary, he gathers information, attents the boring buisness meatings instead of you and sends out chrismas mails to all business partners (a.k.a. the orders).”
So you’re saying he’s absolute rubbish as a war leader but he runs the G-2 functions even though the player is second-in-command.
“every task which requires a bit of management (and a wars usually does) will work exactly like that.”
Higher echelon commanders do not personally perform staff work on behalf of subordinate commanders. Unless the organization in question is structured for failure on one or more levels, such an inverse command relationship does not exist.
Considering the player is supposed to be the “military leader of the Pact” it is nothing short of stupendous irony the player is executing a disproportionate number of missions alone or with negligible service and support, never mind subordinate leaders.
Trahearne’s natural position of command is face down on the ground in need of a rez from the player after getting owned by a mob. The only reason he’s asking the “Commander” for advice on any given CoA (Course of Action) is because the structure of the personal storyline demands Choice A or B for progression. There isn’t any retcon psychobabble which could explain this away as making the player boss and remain believable.
Your central thesis on why the player should like Trahearne rests on him being such a wallflower that he makes the player look boss by comparison. This simultaneously demolishes any sort of credibility he could have as head of a military coalition and nullifies need for his presence in the storyline other than as maybe head of the targeting cell at Pact HQ with a teleprompter script. I could have a Quaggan tell me I need to make Choice A or B instead. A Quaggan would be nicer to hear, probably last longer in combat, and push better DPS with just its back flippers.
The personal storyline isn’t rubbish because of Trahearne – which is perhaps where you’re getting mixed signals. The entire structure of the personal storyline is rubbish. The Vegetable is merely the grating reminder every time a cutscene opens after Claw Island that the player is a purposeless tool.
I adored my Order of Whispers storyline for its cinematic tension, and then the daft game punted me out of my happiness with a turnip.
(edited by Vard.5621)
I think you may be underestimating the difficulty of telling a cohesive ending to not one, but hundreds of possible variants on a story without some unifying force. Without Trehearne or some plot point like him it would have been incredibly difficult to get everyone on the same page.
The plot point sufficient for this purpose was Claw Island. It had about as much impact on Tyria as Pearl Harbor, 1941. A functional alliance under a triumvirate of Efut, Fairhaired, and Darkwater would have been exceedingly simple to execute. Instead of limited instances with ongoing balance issues, using the Dynamic Events already in place with additional cutscenes to create personalized event chains would have worked much, much more seamlessly, considering players had to traverse the same terrain and trash pats anyways to get to the rubbish instances in the first place.
Gone are the problems of NPCs watching you get beaten to death as you desperately kite something with 35 stacks of Frenzy. Gone are the banzai charges of constant Waypoint rezzing and running into the same mob to attrit them. However, this personal storyline is like getting a tattoo during a drunken night out. Like discovering you can’t turn back the clock after you discover your goldfish’s name is stenciled on your backside in a lovely pink heart, retconning this rubbish is like expecting rain to fall skywards.
The player is stuck with Vegemite, and the realization (which may not dawn for some, ever, out of denial or what have you) that the personal choices at character could have been facerolled and it all comes down to blasting an existential threat out of the sky with a blimp in about as much time as it takes to make a spot of tea. My personal storyline reward in the end (and likely that of others) is a Masterwork backpiece, a sandbox environment where I get to play with exploding undead chickens, and the vague recollection I did it all on behalf of a sodding turnip.
Ya he is not bad at all it just from what I’ve seen people was expecting the Personal story to focus on their characters to be some kind of Chosen One who units all and Saves all and becomes so grand hero of legends that people would tell story about him or her and build statues of their character.
Uh, no. Abso-bloody-lutely not.
The overarching theme of Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be the fight against the Elder Dragons. Epic battles and epic storyline call for epic leadership. I would have raved fighting under Master Riel Darkwater or Preceptor Doern Velazquez. Instead, what is presented are cutscenes involving a turnip with a tweedy accent who probably should have sang the role of Cossette from Les Miserables. I would have been absolutely furious (and probably more so) if the pendulum was swung the other way and my Norn had streets named after him in Ebonhawke, mead named after him in Hoelbrak, et cetera.
After Claw Island, the instances are canned, badly written hack events where a player can either faceroll through them with ease or gets one-shot the moment aggro is triggered. Any and all NPCs where emotional involvement is encouraged (i.e. Tybalt, Apatia, Hekja) are killed off relentlessly and then dumped out of the personal storyline. Trahearne is the face of this rubbish because his appearance coincides with the downward spiral of an already dodgy personal storyline, and he’s there all the way for the roller coaster ride of fail until he fobs the task of taking down Zhaitan onto the player.
The worst aspect of this entire debacle is that there will likely be no significant changes other than hp/dmg/aggro tweaks to mobs and event triggers within instances, rather than an unequivocal return to the drawing board, which means as expansions appear it will be a resumption of the personal storyline with more appearances by Marshal Vegemite or another NPC as contrived and unbearable.
As flippant as it may sound, a Quaggan as God-Emperor of Tyria would be boss compared to what rubbish this personal storyline under this potted plant has been.
He doesn’t steal your personal story, but you didn’t read my post so you wouldn’t know.
He doesn’t steal it – only because the personal story in any meaningful form simply vanishes after Claw Island whether he’s there or not.
Trahearne is merely the coup de grâce in a personal storyline where post-Claw Island, choice is immaterial because everyone gets dumped into zombieville where the penultimate boss dies in a 5-man instance thanks to aerial gunnery in about as much time as it takes to make a cup noodle. Nuking Zhaitan with a Searing Cauldron somehow didn’t get written into the operations order.
Rationalization of Trahearrne’s injection into the personal storyline as “chief secretary” is infeasible; a military organization would collapse immediately with such a command structure, even if Efut, Fairhaired, Velazquez do become wallpaper. Your OP apparently rests on “Trahearne is shy and needs you, so you are really the hero.” The irony of your inability to understand the opposing view is in dependency on the same singular point: Trahearne is a weak and deeply flawed character. For a good number of us, this is an absolute dealbreaker. For you, evidently it is not. I congratulate your ability to enjoy the personal storyline in spite of its flaws.
(edited by Vard.5621)
So, my problem is that I just feel disconnected with that character… and of course it feels like my legend in not growing with him around.
Because it’s not really any player’s legend. It’s scripted, middling instanced scenes where NPC pathing and behavior are such that they watch you get beaten to death (Claw Island) if they aren’t dying (Trahearne if you take your eyes off of him for longer than a few seconds) or mobs are either grossly overpowered or ragdolls in terms of solo play, and the Choose Your Own Adventure which throws you, whether you like it or not, into 5-man Arah, forcing a good number of players to wait in Cursed Shore LFG like they’re waiting for a cab in Lower Manhattan.
If instead of limited instanced scenes it was driven by Dynamic Events in the world and cutscene camera à la vista viewing mode, it would have been a fabulously immersive experience without the you will get kicked out of this instance time now. I love the game and am truly appreciative of the work ArenaNet has put into the rest of the game over the last several years. No, I am not going to play (that other MMO). I understand even counting head start it has been out less than a month on retail. But I can’t for the life of me see where Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee had a hand in the personal storyline. There is no true epic arc. There is only The Vegetable, his Wyld Hunt, his tweedy accent, and the vague sensation of having been slapped by a tomato.
Paradoxically, personal storyline is the one aspect of the game where individual choice matters the least other than faction. By hook or crook, everyone ends up in Arah, depopulating the rest of the world because outside of the 5-man instances or farming crafting items, there is no channelizing towards non-zombie content (Claw of Jormag deserves an epic arc). Instead, the pinnacle of personal storyline is killing an Elder Dragon in a 5-man rather than as instanced or world raid content, and having thereby aided The Vegetable in reaching personal nirvana, even after he dumps Caladbolg and inexplicably decides killing Zhaitan is your problem and not his.
I suppose I should look forward to expansion content. Devs, please make Trahearne’s replacement a Quaggan. If you’re going to make some NPC the God-Emperor of Tyria, it should at least be from a lovable species.
(edited by Vard.5621)
I even had the fight bug out as I died in the bullet hell part – the two lesser eyes didn’t despawn and I had to start completely from scratch.
I ran this with a guardian myself likely before you did, and ended up having none of your issues even without ranged weapons on hand.
“Bullet hell” only fires from a frontal arc, so a long circle around hugging the wall and working straight to the big eye immediately will let you avoid getting kneecapped.
“Landmine hell” (my term for the other phase) is just a path and timing issue which can be dodge rolled through into the gaps.
I am not telling you L2P. No doubt you had difficulties and the fight bugged out on you, but there is a solution set for this instance. However, the fight is incredibly tedious and I found it unchallenging in the extreme. Trahearne is completely useless, and the entire fight needs to be redesigned for it to be worth the trouble of it.
Mr. Vaughn, I ask for:
1. Trophies. As a Norn, I’d like Issormir’s carcass mounted somewhere. For 100% Explorer, a world map of Tyria on the wall perhaps. Trophies collected from clearing dungeons, Dynamic Events, WvW achievements, whatever it may be, on the walls.
2. Bank and GBank access from inside the home instance. Makes it practical rather than just a spot for an RP moment.
3. Many more faction representatives. I have one lonely Order of Whispers agent in there.
4. Punt some of the NPCs out of there. Why do I have Hylek in Hoelbrak in my home instance? Yes, I helped you. Why are you on my doorstep? You’re an amphibian. The only water available here is frozen. Please go south.
I would gladly pay gems for cosmetic upgrades (furnishings, et cetera).
It’s quite a disappointment to ponder that the personal storylines will likely not undergo any overhaul other than tweaks to rewards, environment, mob behavior and placement – asides from hotfixes to missing voiceovers in cutscenes and typos. This of course means the Generalfeldmarschall Shrubbery cutting your orders after Claw Island will remain front and center of the personal storyline.
Plans for future expansions aside, being funneled into Orr under Lord Asparagus nullifies race and storyline choices in their entirety. As a Norn, my storyline emphasis should have rightly been on Jormag. As it stood, choosing a Spirit of the Wild did not matter. The other choices resulted in negligible rewards for scripted instances that did not mesh with the overall story arc. All this was a significant letdown (and the initial bugginess of some of the instances did not improve matters) but rolling the personal storyline into “Marshal Trahearne and his Wyld Hunt (and you)” was beyond the pale.
Dynamic, interesting characters were either marginalized through being killed off or parked in home instance or faction headquarters, never to emerge again save for limited cameos. Instead, what was left was very badly crafted milspeak for a MMO version of the Normandy Landings under the command of a head of cabbage in constant need of “You can do it!” motivation. Destiny’s Edge doesn’t exist, aside from an occasional canned mail drop. But General Radish is in-your-face with taskers that demand you support him.
The entire personal storyline reeks of backward planning:
1. Funnel the entire playerbase into Arah.
2. Find excuse to channel everyne into Orr (LOLZORS PACT LANDINGS RAWR)
3. Use a leafy Stuart Smalley to keep you in check.
4. Kill an interesting NPC where emotional investment is encouraged every 3-4 episodes.
Long before “Congratulations on completion of your Wyld Hunt” rolled around, it was abundantly clear that the uniqueness of the personal storylines was dead, to be displaced entirely by zombie-killing taskers issued by a turnip with a tweedy accent. As Strongback stated above, unified military council would have been fantastic, alongside Destiny’s Edge. Conspicuosly absent are major figures such as Queen Jenna et al from what is supposed to be a defining event forTyria, killing an Elder Dragon. Instead of the epic cast in an armageddon beyond Claw Island, it’s you, a celery stick in need of a confidence boost, and a cast of killable NPCs against the zombie tide (button smash, go) in nickel-and-dime instances against mouths, eyeballs, and a finale which requires you to LFG.
I just can’t shake the bloody feeling I’ve been had with this personal storyline, and all I did was play a mash-up parody of The Wizard of Oz where Tin Man, Straw Man, and Lion are all bundled into Trahearne. Adieu, and thank you for the backpiece.
(edited by Vard.5621)