Guild Wars 2

No one has mentioned the 10 second cooldown reduction on utility goggles. That’s the whole lynchpin of what will become the new DPS meta.

I am also getting this message under similar circumstances. I was in WvW, logged out and can go through entire login, but when I press “Play” it hangs for a bit then says “The game client is unable to gain access to the login server at this time. This is most commonly caused by firewall or router settings, security applications, or connection through a campus network. For additional support, please visit http://support.guildwars2.com. (Code=42:4:11:143:101)”

A couple of the hay bales in the WvW desert borderlands don’t seem to be preventing fall damage.

I for one welcome our new overlords maps. Although the maps are larger, there is generally more time to respond to a contested area, and I like the automatic upgrades. When you find fights the terrain is much more of a factor which is fun. If a zerg hits a sentry then you can see them in map now, and that can be great (except that good zergs are now avoiding sentries).

Unfortunately the maps have been a bit lonely. It’s been hard at times to muster enough people to take a tower or camp, much less take the fire keep, but when a zerg gets together it can be fun and often the big wvw fights happen in those locations when one zerg is trying to take a keep and the other is defending. I think solo players have a much bigger role acting as scouts in these maps, letting people know when they see small groups or zergs either traversing the area or starting to take a keep. Even solo players can help coordinate the whole map.

Unfortunately the rewards for those solo players suck. You get nothing for telling a zerg where the enemy is. A large map can lead to a lot of cooperation, but the people who help coordinate need some rewards, potentially in a map-wide system such as we are seeing in the new PvE areas, or maybe some increase to defense rewards. The maps also seem to require a large number of players and I imagine that the lower tiers of WvW must be very boring with occasional sentry and supply flips. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I like the idea of stepping away from the rapid point to point karma trains we had before. I like the idea of maps with a lot less turnover where strategy and coordination are more important, but I feel like we’re not fully there yet.

It’s early days still and people are still finding their way around the maps and figuring out their strategies. We also have a few bugs to resolve, but I think regular WvW players will soon know these maps like the backs of their hands and they wont seem as huge anymore. I am taking an optimistic view that we will settle in to new and more interesting WvW play styles with some tweaks from the devs along the way to help reward the solo roamers and small team players.

My feelings regarding the scrapper are similar to many of the ideas already expressed here, but I will detail them below:

I really wanted to love the gyros. I was looking forward to filling up my skill slots with them and finding the best combo, but unfortunately I never found much use for them. The Shredder Gyro does exactly what it says it will do, but I did not find much use for it, even when able to produce lightning, fire, and water fields. The toolbelt skill is pretty good, but all in all it just seems like it could have been a turret since it doesn’t move anywhere. I tried using the Bulkwark Gyro a lot, but one hammer-3 skill and I was out of its range for an entire fight. If you activate it before engaging it will never catch up with you, and if you activate it after engaging it is down before it does the first watchful eye (or has flown off to have word with whoever hit it). Again the toolbelt skill is good, but Elixir-U has a reflect that lasts a lot longer. The Sneak Gyro is so slow and meanders so much that you can only cover a small distance under it, so I decided to use it in one place to build up stealth, however when a group of players ran past me, the Sneak Gyro decided to head off with them and left me stranded. The Detection Pulse worked well, and I used it nicely in WvW.

I thought the hammer was a lot of fun, and enjoyed using it. It would be nice if skill 3 could be counted on not to let us fall from a cliff when we attacked an enemy that was near an edge, but if that’s the price we pay for it I’m OK with that. I found skill 2 (Electro-whirl)‘s animation and reflective effect didn’t line up exactly.

Tonight after the client crashes because of too many toons on the screen I am unable to restart Guid Wars 2 without rebooting. After many attempts I get a popup that says:

“The application ‘Guild Wars 2.app’ can’t be opened. -1712”

I just wanted to add that I am experiencing this issue. It’s really made the game unplayable. I keep trying to do WvW and if I’m lucky I manage to run to the battle before I freeze and log back in dead in PvE.