Guild Wars 2

I run with a dagger/warhorn for melee and scepter/dagger for ranged. Similar to what was described above, warhorn #5 prior to entering combat so you have the swarm on you when attacking. Switch to shroud as needed/wanted. I prefer the above over GS/Staff, mainly for speed. They all work in PVE, but I guess it’s dependant on your playstyle. I ran Reaper as GS/Staff for the longest time, but found it really slow in comparison. Great for hammering down bosses during Auric Basin farming, though.

Here’s what I’ve been running for PVE farming and story progression:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNMQJATRnUqAtCiVsAOsAUtgl8A7JEkumaLBgCwpDuu2XHslI80A-TxRDwA9U+d4JAAw83L1fApL44+DJuEgSQSBMxIL-e

I use tiger for melee dps and bristleback for ranged (and back up, if tiger is going to go down.)
I use Rune of Ranger for the pet bonus.
I’m still tinkering with sigils, but that’s what my current two are.
I try to sync up dps with tiger as much as possible, so I’ve added in traits that keep it going.
*Forgot to add: Sic em for initial attack, and off cool down. Signet of wild for passive regen and extra damage when off needed. Signet of Stone for an ‘oh kitten!’ button. And Entangle for initial AOE attack, or run away moments.

So, I basically send in my cat, launch whatever I have at the bad guy(s) with LB, and if they swarm me, switch to GS to finish out in melee, swapping pets as needed. If my heal is on cooldown, I have Avatar to provide some breathing room. Plus, I’m healing everyone around me and my pet, as well, at the same time.

If something doesn’t insta kill me, I generally have enough mobility to move around and keep on attacking (with heal breaks, as needed.)

I would go broke on glitter dyes.

There was a forum topic on this one already: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Achievement-Leave-it-to-Me/first#post6254717

Here’s how I did it a few months ago. Here’s what I did:

1. Kill the nearest wolf to the respawn point by luring it right inside the doorway. It’ll kill you 3-4 times, but you’ll respawn right on top of it. Finish it off.
2. Lure the alpha to the respawn point, by picking at it, running a bit, then repeat. You’ll likely have another wolf tag along.
3. Using the same principle, slowly nibble away at the alpha. I managed to get rid of the spare wolf by fighting just outside the doorway and using my feints to disengage combat, then pick at the alpha to keep it’s attention while the other wolf walked away.
Pull the alpha completely inside the doorway and spend a couple dozen deaths picking away at the health. Took me about 8-10 mins, start to finish. Be careful not to accidentally jump back out to Auric Basic with your respawn click.

Do the cats, in your home instance, go away after a period of time? When I initially ran through, collecting teh kittehs, I had a group of them playing tag with a snowball. Which was awesome. Several days later when I returned, I didn’t see them anywhere. Do I have to consistently travel around, feeding them?

1. It’s a continuation of the LS. So, I wasn’t expecting 3 days of exposition. On my first pass through, I spent a good several hours getting map completion and finishing this chapter. Twas good.
2. That JP was horribad. But obviously doable. I have mixed feelings on it.
3. I really liked how the fire tubes, once unlocked, allowed quick movement across the map. It’s making storyline completion for my alts super quick.
4. Circus?! WTF! But even my character was WTF’ing, so I guess we’ll eventually find out why they are there. haha.
5. Overall, it was a neat experience. Hope to see more relatively soon.

I dropped a buttload of gold on ascended upgrades on my Reaper. It’s a noticeable difference, but not overwhelmingly so. Was it worth the money? Not really for PVE or WvW for me. I don’t run fractals or raids, so maybe more useful there. But in general gameplay, exotics are fine. You’re not missing much, but if you’re trying to squeeze out the best you can do, you should see an improvement. Whether or not it was worth the effort to get that edge…ultimately up to you.

Why did I do it? Eh, I had the money and it was something I wanted to do. haha.

For AB MM runs, I ran GS/Staff. Gravedigger was great for sub 50% health on the vines, breechers, frogs, etc. I run full zerk glass build, as well.

But against anything else out there, trying to tag something at sub 50% was a timing nightmare. If another player was beating on the target, I could maybe get a GD off once before the thing was dead. Then in WvW, trying to make GD viable was pretty rough sailing. Again, trying to get repeated GD’s on a target was painful.

The GS (and GD) is great! But really slow. If you can time it right, it hits pretty kitten hard. I switched up to a dagger/horn & scepter/dagger (for melee/range fights.) It seems like I’m killing things faster (altered my build so I stack might sub 50%) so the end result is pretty close to the same. Being able to hit things quicker, with that constant might going helps with moving target to target.

I’m not a build wizard, but this is what I’ve been running lately and it’s been doing ok:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhtG1JzmQ5mY7mg3mA9mYBXwmyCNhlA0AIA0CirifxyIA-T5QBgARHFAgXAw8+DAA

I typically run in some manner of group, so I have a few options in there to help folks around me. I do find I die a little more often than I did with GS/Staff, mainly because I’m not dropping into shroud as much as I had to with GS. I’ll need to work on that.

Here was my build when running GS/Staff:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJARWnMbClbitbCebC0biluBj6DMCKUxLwK4Gc6BMACAA-TZAOAAw+DAA

I used shroud more often with GS/Staff. Staff at range, then shroud to melee distance, run out lifeforce, GS to either finish them off or back to shroud and repeat.

Very anti-reaper’ish. Hahaha.

Yet…so very devastating. So, win win!

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Look, it’s clearly an exploit. The Exhalted asked for our help, we pretended to help them out of the goodness of our hearts then we plundered their city like locusts. We exploited them in their hour of need.

But seriously, I’ve wanted to ask – how do you multi-looters deal with all the loot? I have all bag slots filled and on just one run I run out of space. Do you wp back to the central city merch to sell stuff in the middle of looting or bring your own merch or what?

Copper-Fed SalvageOMatic for me. I sell my rares, rather than salvage them. So, run through for XL chests only (unless I’m stuck waiting for an open map, then I’ll hit up some of the others while I’m standing around,) and after a couple opens, I salvage all masterwork and below. Deposit what I can, and as I’m auto-running, I auction off the rares. By the time I’ve hit up 8 or so maps, I shouldn’t have much left other than several rares and a bunch of junk/minor sigils.

Then, I hit up my go to spot for bank access, and sell off mats I’m not using, at an arbitrarily set number, as well as vendor off my junk/sigils. Bags clear and I have some time until the next AB MM shift to go do something else.

If you plan on working the AB MM, you should really have at least all 18 slot bags. Not too spendy there and if you don’t have the coin, a few MM’s later, you will.

You work at AB MM for a week or so, doing a couple a night, you should be able to afford a Copper Fed soon enough. I recall seeing some figure where it would never be worth it as a 1:1 vs kits, but it’s not about saving money. It’s about being able to keep up on salvaging without wasting slots on kits.

At that point, you will always have several hundred g’s sitting in your bank if you keep up on the AB MM’s. I like the sparklies, so I’m constantly buying new stuff, but a few days in AB MM and my account is up again.

Oh, forgot to mention, I also use the Windows Mouse Keys option to help open those bags as fast as possible. Num + and rapid fire finger tips. haha.

Even now, I still think it was only worth $50 for a brand new player (both core and HoT.) Existing accounts should have had some manner of discount. However, in saying that, I do like HoT and all that has come with it. It was a little frustrating at first, but once I got settled in, I’m good with it.

It’s still a little bothersome that these new areas are still ‘engaged’ in the living story, however. Like this moment of time that you’ll forever be stuck in. It’d be nice, in some upcoming LS update, that the area just becomes the jungle with standard questlines/hearts, rather than the fight to stop Mordremoth. But then again…Orr is still fighting off Zhaitan and it’s minions. So, it doesn’t seem likely it’s going to change.

But then again…Kessek Hills. The area ‘can’ be changed. I’m not sure of the effort it took to make that happen on a developmental level, but at least as a proof of concept, it can be done.

Yeah, it really boils down to the commanders and LT’s. They can make/break your AB MM experience. The cm can do his/her best, explain everything, but there will always be a few that may not have been paying attention, lazy, or simply not get it. If they bounce between maps wrong, the nicer groups will stick them in the ‘lobby’ and just let them do their thing. Or move them to the appropriate sub group, if it’s just a one off. I’ve been kicked by overzealous LT’s because I attempted to click one subgroup, the little group screen cycled and then I accidentally hit the wrong group. Didn’t even get a chance to correct my misclick. Quick message on the issue and all I got was snark back. Oh well…another group, another time. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, a quick look in LFG will have other MM’s still advertising, and then you’re right back into it.

As previously mentioned, there are now AB MM specific guilds advertising. I thought that was a pretty nice idea. You’d be less likely to get insta-kicked by folks in your own guild, if you’re really wanting to work on maintaining the AB MM paycheck.

I picked up the copper-fed for convenience. I got caught a few too many times with bags of loot and no way to salvage them until I made the inevitable trek to a vendor. Interrupted my flow. haha. Having the copper already, the silver didn’t really call out to me. Now, maybe if I were offered a reasonable discount for ‘upgrading’ (hint hint), I’d very likely consider it.

To me, it’s an exploit. Remember the old Nintendo exploits to get 99 mushrooms, or whatever. It’s not like we’re installing 3rd party software here. It’s an existing game mechanic. Still, it’s an exploitable one.

I wouldn’t say to the extent of a ban offense or anything. One way of minimizing it would be to significantly cut the overall time the chests are present. Once the timer ends, everyone is kicked out as they are now, but the doors will remain open for those that need to get vistas, etc. But the chests are gone. Then, if you were to multimap, well…you’d only be able to loot one or two before your time ended. Kind of makes the logistics of it all less appealing.

For example, the Octovine goes down, then the 5 minute timer starts right off the bat. No waiting. Downfall to this is likely multi-map event participation would drop dramatically. It’s still a great way to get half a dozen, or more, rares, but focus would be on one or two maps, instead of a dozen now.

Even if you don’t attend the multi-maps, if one is participating on your current map, you have a shot of the event taking place, if not succeeding. Rather than no event at all.

But until then, it’s a great way of earning gold quickly to buy all those cosmetics you wanted, but didn’t want to spend real money or effort on! <——why it should probably be addressed in the long term.

Standalone Soul River glider.

Reaper and Revenant. I main a ranger, but outside of pushing story content, I tend to bounce back and forth between the first two the most. Both are massive damage, boons and survivability. I can just wreck things with them.

Justine.6351:

It could be you are standing in the back with pewpew rangers on you glass gear so when you fold to retaliation they are conveiently right there.

I rez with all my characters, however, I feel there is truth to this. I’m a glass ranger and as long as no one is pew pewing my direction, I’ll certainly lend a hand to get you back on your feet…because, well…I’m right there. hahaha.

thunderfall.8095:

Have you seen a apparation? If so describe it.

Have you completed the S3 Chapter 1 Living world?

Have you done events in Bloodstone Fen? If so, about how much.

Have you raided?

1. Yes. Several times. Standing around on a few of them and spotted them during standard event skirmishes/battles. Same weeping character each time. No recognizable features or characters. Only in HoT maps. I don’t hang out in guild halls too often. I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw one in Frostgorge Sound, but don’t quote me. haha.
2. Yes.
3. Yes. All of them. And more, if I’m burned out on AB runs.
4. I’ve attended only two separate instances and we’ve never passed the first boss. I’m not a raider, so I haven’t delved too much into it.

Rauderi.8706:

I got vaguely excited by the title.

It would actually be really cool / informative to have a mode where players can watch raiders in real time.

That would be pretty cool! Just head to the aerodome and queue up for spectator mode on a current raid. We could watch, and learn, in real time. Useful for downtime between farm runs, events or content dry spells.

I really liked the dyes. I used mine to acquire the specific colors I wouldn’t normally be able to afford. And I would have never bought them because there are other things in game I’d prefer to spend several hundred gold on, so no one lost a sale by me. So, worked out great!

Ok, finally accomplished this solo. I still had a character with the Nuoch Warbler, but that didn’t work. So, I had to take out the alpha myself. Here’s what I did:

1. Kill the nearest wolf to the respawn point by luring it right inside the doorway. It’ll kill you 3-4 times, but you’ll respawn right on top of it. Finish it off.
2. Lure the alpha to the respawn point, by picking at it, running a bit, then repeat. You’ll likely have another wolf tag along.
3. Using the same principle, slowly nibble away at the alpha. I managed to get rid of the spare wolf by fighting just outside the doorway and using my feints to disengage combat, then pick at the alpha to keep it’s attention while the other wolf walked away.

Pull the alpha completely inside the doorway and spend a couple dozen deaths picking away at the health. Took me about 8-10 mins, start to finish. Be careful not to accidentally jump back out to Auric Basic with your respawn click.

When The Silverwastes first came out, this was pretty nice. People consistently working together to achieve a greater goal, without the PVP element of WvW. A few more maps like this would be wonderful. Awesome, we got four more. In hindsight, maybe it was a little overkill, though. Two maps would have been fine, with two more being more exploratory like the rest of Tyria.

As a primarily solo player, I like the casual group settings of these community events, where I can roll in, help to my abilities and if we don’t make it, we try again some other time. However, when all you have available are community events (sans arguments that a lot can be achieved soloable, if you know how to play,) you kind of get discouraged when you find yourself alone, or without dedicated help, trying to accomplish these events.

But we do what we have to do, right? Onward we go.

Here’s what I would like to see, again, as a solo player: I want to visit the dungeons and the raids, without necessarily getting the full rewards from them, if for nothing but exploration and story progression. I want to be a part of a persistent world, where if there isn’t another human player available, there are NPC’s to take up the mantle and continue the event.

So, I’m not really advocating creating a party of heroes, such as GW1, but have NPC’s in the game, moving the events along, with or without players about. For example, the fight for Auric Basin and the final run on the city. If you, and several other players, are the only ones active on the map for events, the events continue to progress, but with NPC’s instead. It doesn’t remain, as it does now, in a perpetual failure state until enough players huddle together to make it succeed. You come in, and in a manner of speaking, end up helping those NPC’s take back the city. Even if it ends up just being you.

And I would be all for decreased rewards for such a thing. Perhaps if a certain percentage of real players vs non-players is not reached, full rewards are not provided.

I wonder if this could help alleviate the megaserver concerns, if we’re not relying on logging into an active map with intentions on completing the events. A lot of ‘endgame’ seems to end up being achievement hunting, which is often limited by player involvement. Obviously this is doable and I have done it repeatedly, but I know I would have had more enjoyment if I wasn’t logging out repeatedly in frustration due to lack of map activity.

If the NPC’s were pushing progression, then all maps could be like HoT and Silverwastes. We could even see additional content being reintroduced back into the old world, like we saw in Season 1’s LS, but in a more, persistent manner. There are so many possibilities out there, on those maps, that we would be more than happy to revisit them, rather than doing so only during the several minutes we spend hitting them up for dailies or for legendary farming.

The old version had more character. The new one is nice and shiny, but ‘concrete water park’ is an apt way of describing it. It just seems too open, like a lot of space was being wasted on aesthetics. The old way, the layout seemed more purposeful…build what you can, where you can.

I’d like to see it underwater, really. haha.

I bought the electromagnetic ascended toy to compliment the glider. The only character I have this glider on is my charr…which the toy makes me look like one of the older “Invisible Bike!!” cat memes since the character animation is so wooden. I don’t use it that often, as a result.

Unlike the Spanish Inquisition, this time one can’t say you weren’t expecting it. Bandits in Kryta!

I completely understand, and buy into, working with the community to help get one of the two guild halls now with a small, several member guild. However! Both of them are still way too big for 5, or fewer, people. haha. Maybe a smaller cave, or a tree house or something…where we just have to take down a single champ or an irritated group of veterans, and the three bedroom hovel is now ours for the taking.

This has been an ongoing frustration for me for main events in HoT with megaserver. The map is active and a lot of folks are pushing to tier 4 and then…crickets. The map is now dead due to preemptively jumping to other meta maps via LFG and the survivors are left trying to taxi to fill it back up. And lord help you if you get disconnected during this time because by the time you get back, map is full and you’re dumped into another dead map, and then it’s too late. No main event for you. Last night, the map was pushing hard and we had a guild throw down all sorts of goodies in TD because we believed it to be a meta map. People vanished! Lost Gerant in what seemed to be 2 minutes due to lack of headcount. It was amusingly fast…

The top MMO’s for me were:
1. GW2
2. WoW
3. TSW
4. DCUO

I loved the style, lore and gameplay of WoW, but it always ended up being raiding, etc that you end up working for. Not a raiding fan…I love GW2, but the lore doesn’t seem as compelling as WoW was. But it makes up for it in style and gameplay mechanics. I do wish all the world was connected a bit more like WoW, instead of portals. I also liked the Phase mechanic in WoW, so you could see a before/after of a certain area while moving forward in your story. That would be a good addition to GW2.

For TSW, I liked the modern twist and ambiance of the worlds. The play mechanic and greater story plot, not so much. I do like picking one character and allowing that character the full spectrum of play options. It helps immensely with those of us that have alt’itis. I picked one for each faction and once I got passed the basic story line where everything seemed to merge, I stopped playing all but one. Didn’t seem to be any point since I could convert my ‘main’ to anything I wanted.

For DCUO, well…that’s a very simplistic package that is challenging in end game, but the draw was the lore and story (as much as there was.)

Presently, I play GW2 and then hit up TSW every few months to catch up on content. There isn’t much to keep me there (again, not a raider,) so I end up staying with GW2.

For WoW, I don’t want to pay $15 a month, in addition to the xpacs, to putz around day to day, so I don’t.

For me, it was Engineer and Thief. I would end up simplifying the class to a one note play style, just to grind them through leveling to 80 and through the story. However, when Thief had ricochet, that was one note for me that was pretty fun to play. For now, they both sit, collecting dust as I focus more on Revenant and Reaper. However, I find myself getting bored of Reaper frequently because it’s just so kitten easy to kill everything in PVE with it. But she’s an awesome toon and I always end up going back.

I’ve been working on soloable achievement hunting in PVE. I also bought all of the legendary quests (yes, it was a waste of gold…haha) so it seems like I still accomplish something when I’m out and about doing dailies or whatnot. Otherwise, going back to the old content seems to be a waste of time since I’ve done everything that was originally available. I really hope the next xpac has more than 4 maps…

1. The initial mastery grind was rather long, but now that I have a lot of the needed ones taken care of, it hasn’t been much of an ordeal. I’m a lazy achievement kitten, so I’m not going to put way too much effort into those niche accomplishments. In saying that, I was able to snag up 110 masteries just from playing through the main game and HoT. Granted, if you’re a relatively new player, I can see trying to get up to that being somewhat of a chore.

2. This does suck. It also sucks trying to jump into a meta taxi and then getting ‘map full’ several times, which then locks you out of joining additional parties. 3 strikes, you’re out. Wait a few hours for the next taxi.

3. It seems to be getting increasingly hostile since the expansion. More whining, angered outbursts and overall negativity in map chat has somewhat diminished my view on the community as a whole. Of course, I started my GW2 days when it was server vs server, so the community on your individual server was a little more ‘intimate’ with the easily angered/trolls.

4. Haven’t even bothered with raids. Maybe if I join a guild that allows it’s newbies to tag along. I think I would be fine, but I never liked the raiding mindset in other MMO’s. Just not my thing.

5. I haven’t even tried on the new map. On one hand, it’s pretty impressive! On the other, if you die, it’s a long hike back. Plus, it hardly seems like anyone is in there like it was back in the ‘good ol days.’ But again, it may have been from the sever vs server mindset.

6. Roles are meh. You bring your A game and try to keep up. But again, raiding.

I do like GW2. I play it all the time. I’m still convinced HoT wasn’t worth the xpac pricing for an already gw2 account. I’m really hoping new content springs forth and by the end of the year, we’ll have similar new areas to play in that equal up to what we got with the original game. Along with that wish, I do hope Anet slows down with the meta maps. Prior to HoT, I really liked Silverwastes and having a few different meta maps are actually nice. But if that’s all we see until the next xpac, that’s going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Sure I can head through a HoT map at my leisure, but I know if it’s a event org’d map, I either have to leave, join up or take a spot that someone else could have. Rather just jump into a map and not have to worry about it, you know?

My apologies if this has been addressed in another thread. I didn’t deep dive several pages and the search return didn’t bring back much.

What’s the point of dropping monies on mini’s if they are constantly hidden in HoT? I understand they’re a draw on resources, however, it would be nice if they came back automatically when feasible, rather than remain hidden until you manually go back in and check them again. More rhetorical feedback, I guess, as I really don’t expect this to be addressed anytime soon.

I almost rage quit the hearts and minds final run after several attempts. It wasn’t immediately apparent what I was supposed to do (I mean, why can’t I hide in the bubble with the rest of them?), then the large AOE attack killed me, in which case I had to kill myself again just to reset the boss fight to try again. Then I had to utilize the glider a few more times during the boss fight, making the ordeal really painful with the resets. Now that I know what I’m looking for, it’s actually not a bad fight…just having to do it several times to get it dialed in was a PITA. Also, getting caught in the debilitating AOE was infuriating. But it’s a boss mechanic. Goes with the territory, I suppose.

Ultimately, it was more challenging than Zhaitan, but overall, a bit of a let down. Better story, but not as cool as seeing a large scale dragon fall.

Gibson.4036:

Agreed.

I don’t need an extra character slot. I need to see that there’s enough playable content to warrant $50. I’ve seen a lot of interesting update stuff, like a new profession, elite specializations, gliding, masteries, but none of that is going to significantly extend the life of the game $50 worth unless there is significantly more stuff to do and area to explore.

My stance on the whole debacle. No ‘veteran entitlement,’ etc. Is the $50 expansion actually worth $50 in content? I spent $60 for GW2 when it first came out and even without the LS updates, the existing content was worth the $60. IMO, the LS was worth the gem store usage. Hell, I would have dropped gems on the additional story line updates up front. They’re not that hard to accumulate if the price is fair. I, also, do not need an extra character slot. I had one ready to go for any expansions or profession updates that would have rolled out.

Bottom line…is there close to $50 worth of actual game play content in HoT? Will Anet be nickle and diming us on any potential future LS updates? If Anet comes out and states that the game play content will be similar to what GW2 core offered, I’d give up my cash a lot easier. I’m not asking for vet benefits, character slots, etc. I just want to see that $50 go to something other than ‘Season 3’ and 3 zones.

The HOT expansion is not expansion pricing. It’s new game pricing. There is a lot of misunderstanding about and I’m going to jump on the bandwagon with this one…I don’t understand why the apologists are coming out and trying to defend the pricing on HOT. You can throw in $100 worth of vanity items, but if vanity items are not useful to me, they are unnecessary filler. With the original game, I plunked down $60. 2 years later, I bought the deluxe edition with gems. It wasn’t worth the price, even discounted, for the vanity items. In hindsight, I’m very glad I didn’t fork up the extra up front for it.

So, here we are with round two. Lots of vanity items and I completely understand that you get quite the deal if you were wanting those items. For those of us who don’t, or perhaps are willing to wait for awhile to get them separately, we should have a simple basic expansion price. I have 3 accounts in my household. I don’t need a 4th. What is the bonus core game going to do for me?

In the end, if I’m paying a full games price for a game, I expect a full game. I can see how GW2 + HOT expansion = $50. I do and if you haven’t played before, that’s a great price. But for those of us who already have GW2, the bonus core game does nothing. As I will be paying whatever Anet reasonably asks for to get into the expansion (including this $50 business), I’m not going to be as supportive of them if I find the expansion is not on par with the original GW2 in regards to content. We already know this isn’t going to be the case. We have ‘addons’ to existing professions…not 8 new ones. We don’t have 5 new starter zones for our 5 new races. We don’t have a fistful of new crafting. etc.

Base expansion should be $30. $40 with extra fluff and character slot and up from there for more of the vanity filler. You want to charge $50 for an expansion, it better be worth it more than some vanity items.

I have one for each profession. Every RPG/MMO style game I play, I tell myself I’m limiting it to one character. ‘Maybe’ a backup. Never happens…I have to try them all and I sway towards being a completionist, so of course I have to gun them to max level and spend hundreds on various builds, equipment, etc.

Multiple races? Same thing…I want to know all the stories.

So, I’ll play each, from time to time, depending on my mood. All the professions have their own pros/cons. Flourishes and touches. Sometimes you’re in the mood to hit things with an axe, sometimes you’re in the mood to see sparkly illusions.

Nice to have the option.

*bump for continued conversation.

I think the amount/time investment of dailies is fine, but it is rather mundane. I’ve gotten into the habit of logging in, running a specific route for 30 minutes for the AP, then jet out. Not really all that exciting. It’d be neat to see ‘quest’ items, as previously mentioned. A little personal bit of story running, maybe based on class or race. Even if it’s a FedEx run or kill X things, but with some exposition.

Something other than a 30 min AP run. haha.

~Boonks

Our guild took a month off for the lull between the updates, with the expectation that the Halloween event would be something noteworthy to come back to before the next LS update. We’ve been advocates of the LS update system and tempered the kittening that runs rampant on the forums, but after logging in today and seeing the exact same event as last year, we were all left scratching our heads and wondering WTF?

So, the LS update in 2 weeks…is this going to be a few hour run through for some achievements and we call it good until a revisit to the 2013 Xmas event? We really trying to maintain interest here, but we’ve (our guild) all ran everything we could do other than grind achievements, skins and WvW/PvP. I really hate sounding like the kittening I’ve read so much on over the last several months, but those folks seem to have a point…

Do we just log in every couple of months for a LS update and call it good? If so, why bother buying anything on the Gem store? We’re not going to be online enough for it to mean anything.

Not entirely all achievements for me. I’ll take what I can get, but if I’m grinding for something, I rather it happen in GW2. Playing each separately also gives me a chance to try professions that no longer exist. I’m running a Monk, Ritualist and Paragon. I can see the linage in the professions in GW2. So, that’s been pretty nifty, too. Hasn’t been a bad experience at all, so far, other than playing on a dated engine. Now I really wish I dumped WoW earlier than I had. Haha.

Follow up to my original post. Picked up The Trilogy pack and EotN during the Steam sale this weekend. I understand you can play one character through the entire thing, but I decided to start a character in each campaign (expedite my history lesson) and then whatever character seems to be the sweet spot by the time I’ve finished the campaign, I’ll take them through EotN.

I’ve made it to lvl 8 on all three characters so far. It’s been a good lesson on how much GW2 has evolved and it’s been pretty neat seeing places in Prophecies that I recognize from GW2. The heroes and henchmen are a god send because the community is pretty sparse and quiet…unless you’re in a guild, I guess.

I really hope we’ll be able to eventually adventure to Cantha and Istan in Gw2!

9 Mins into this vid, I can recall where I glossed over world events and stopped paying attention. haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSicD-CA4lM

Good vid so far!

I’ve gone through everything with 8 alts and I’m still struggling to follow the story line. I have to read Wiki’s and the forums to get the subplots of a lot of things that had happened. Honestly, in LS1, I didn’t even bother that much with paying attention to Rox and the gang. I was focused on figuring what was going on with Scarlett that I glossed over so much. I figured they were just bookmark characters for this update and then when some new hotness came in next update, we’d have different characters.

What’d be really nice if there was a ‘what you’ve may have missed!’ vid on why I’m attached to this motley crew as it’s portrayed in the story thus far. At least this time, in LS2, the story seems a little more concrete and focused.

Or I’m just trying harder. Haha.

The group closest to me. Which, I think, were the Norn? So, yeah…it was more of a save myself first than save any one group. haha. The group I would be worried most for would probably be Phlunt/Asura, since they seem naturally the weakest without any tech backing them up. Easier for a plant to chew on, as well.

Haven’t had the experience of a large,fun, PVE guild. On Kaineng. 8 maxed professions, all maxed crafting. I’ll have something useful to you. haha.

On the same topic, but not necessarily directed at you, is should you craft at all?

I haven’t seen a real benefit of maxing your crafting for anything other than vanity items. Sure, ascended gear gives a slight bonus increase and if you find yourself capable of the grind, then being stacked in all ascended gear has a some what noticeable cumulative effect, but if you weren’t trying to deck yourself out in the best, I’d argue that max crafting offers you no real benefit other than the XP for leveling. You get one crafting up to 350 for minimal investment, just to salvage scrap to more useful items to sell on the AH and then buy everything else you need off the AH. I’ve maxed them all and looking back, it was a tremendous time and money sink.

But if you’re looking for specific items that you really want or want the ability to craft some of these newer skins (like the fossil or vine backpack) or ascended gear, then you’ll want to work at it. If you’re just here to pew pew and have a good time, you’re not missing anything by skipping it.

Save your money…buy it on the AH.

Maannn, I have 8 kids to feed…

All 8 alts, one of each profession, leveled to 80 and geared with exotics and ascended pieces. All crafting up to max. I’m broke as a joke. Now, I say all this because my Ranger was my first character. She has 100% world completion. I come from a viewpoint that rangers/hunters pew pew toothpicks of doom and yes, I know that GW2’s Rangers are more awesomesauce with melee weapons, but I have alts that are even more awesome sauce with melee weapons. I want my ranger to be slinging arrows because it seems to be what naturally fits, not what meta games the highest deeps. So, she and her pleasantly plump bears are going to bearbow it all day, errr day, to my hearts content.

If I want to dungeon run, PvP or WvW, I have more suited/capable characters to do so on. For those bearbows whose Ranger is their sole character? Well, that’s all they have to roll with, so watch out for those big, fuzzy kitten running to five different targets, maybe getting a few swipes in before running to another…and smile.

I like to RP all my characters to the point that if someone calls my Charr ugly, I get personally offended. She’s the most beautiful white sparkle princess kitty ever and you need to keep your horrible opinions to yourself.

Yes, I’m a nutter.

I try to log in once a day, for dailies. If I’m trying to grind out something (like Dry Top, for my fossil staff, which I finally accomplished and entirely happy I finally finished), I’ll likely kill two birds with one stone. If I need some cash or mats, I’ll jump into EotM and run that. But if I’m just not feeling the vibe, I’ll head to my favorite dailies spot in Mount Maelstrom, which will knock out the majority of dailies in one session. Takes about 30 minutes.

I’m not a dungeon runner. I’m just not that coordinated. I’m a couple of PoI’s in Arah from my Dungeon Master title, which has taken me forever to get close to finishing, but I don’t have the heart to run that dungeon again.

Former WoW player here…never got involved with GW1. I left WoW and then came straight into GW2. I’m seriously considering jumping into GW1 during the LS update lulls. In my cursory research, looks like there is:

Guild Wars (game of the year or normal via trilogy?)
Nightfall
Factions
Eye of the North

I would really like to link the two accounts so I could garner some of the benefits from GW1 into my GW2 account.

So, my question…
How involved do I need to be in GW1 to see anything noteworthy (achievements, skin unlocking, etc.) in GW2? Do I have to go full on achievement hunting? Dungeon running? Explore everything in all expansions? Or would running a character to max level get me the most bang for my buck?

I’m also doing this for a lore/history lesson as well. I’ve spent enough time in GW2 that I’m curious to see what the world was like in the beginning. Better now while the engine isn’t too dated to be an eye sore. haha.

So far, for LS2, our guild has binged. (edit reviewing the OP, I misunderstood…no binging here, in this context. Rather, we play each update.)

We rampage through the entire thing that night, then grind out any specialties that we find interesting about it for the next several days/week. Downfall is that we don’t really absorb the full impact of the story line that way. Which is ideal for several guild mates…they’re there to pew pew stuff. Can’t be bothered with plot. I personally go through the LS on each of my alts, one of each profession, and by the time I finish with the last, I think I’ve finally caught up to the story appropriately. I’m rather slow like that. Haha.