Guild Wars 2

There were parts that followed the usual GW2 fashion of being extremely tedious. The tower on the landing pad surrounded by (respawning!) risen gorillas was frustrating as hell, and the only place I died due to being in a permanent state of knockdown. I find it fascinating that someone actually looked at that and thought it was good game design. Yay perma-stun!

I did like the mouth of Zhaitan part… after the seemingly neverending drudgery of bosses that just serve as hp punching bags, this guy required a strategy (albeit as simple as a strategy you could get) different than whittling down a puzzlingly large hp bar.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

I’m particularly looking forward to Victory or Death in solo mode. Hopefully I’ll survive it lol.

I came back specifically for that, and remembered why I quit in the first place. Hope you enjoy packs of respawning, perma-stun risen gorillas; long, tedious airship rides with flying hit point punching bags you have to use turrets to kill; and hitting your 1 key over and over and over and over…

BobbyStein.2315:

osuracnaes.4930:

Are the personal story fixes not part of next week’s update? I didn’t see any mention of them in the patch notes.

The full patch notes haven’t been published yet.

Well then I’ll cross my fingers and eagerly await the full patch notes later today. Thanks for the response!

Are the personal story fixes not part of next week’s update? I didn’t see any mention of them in the patch notes.

I’ve never understood why traits that benefit remaining at high amounts of adrenaline were even in the game in the first place…

“Yes, let’s have warriors do better when they ignore their one-button profession mechanic!”

I believe the “Greatest Fear” chapter was cut. Not sure if any of the Orr story was cut, but the chapters were moved around.

Ok, you can all stop making me feel bad that I haven’t seen any for a few weeks now. I think my question has been answered.

:P

The Blind Man.3642:

Randulf.7614:

RNG I’m afriad.

This right here is beginning to kitten me off. “RNG this”. “RNG that”. What the hell do you guys want Anet to do?

Guaranteed celestial and abyss dyes off of EVERY mob! And a pony!

Geeze…. I just wanted to see if it actually was a couple-week-long stint of RNG hating me. I didn’t mean to upset you to the point of bringing kittens into the conversation. I hate cats.

mercury ranique.2170:

Ihave witnessed this can be done alone, but it is challenging. It should be marked as a group event in my opinion.

Oh, I managed to finish it solo. I had to completely change around my utility skills and weapons though. I guess my complaint is the inconsistency in having a veteran just instantly one-shotting all of my minions (and therefore making all my utility skills useless)… something I hadn’t seen before, and had no in-game way of knowing before doing the event.

I apologize in advance for the following rant.

So I’m strolling through Metrica with my necro, my posse of freakishly hideous zombie-creature-things in tow (sans jagged horror because he dies faster than a freaking mayfly), having a pretty good time as they eat the faces of anything that gets in my way. Except champions because I don’t want to spend like 15 minutes beating on the same mob.

I stumble upon this place called the Anthill… except it’s full of Skritt so it should be called the Skritthill or something… and – hey! – there’s a heart guy girl I have to help. But wait! Dynamic event!

“Kill the chaos creature.”

‘K… it’s a veteran… no problem. Except it looks like the big brother/sister/genderless sibling of my my own wittle shadow fiend, so I hope mine doesn’t have a problem killing it. Anyway, I pull out my staff to set up some marks and send my minions in and…. oh, wait… what’s this? Lots of large numbers and my minions are all dead.

Ok, no problem… minions aren’t exactly a shining example of quality AI anyway. I know how to avoid attacks that deal lots of damage because mobs always broadcast those without fail! So I run up with my daggers and… oh, wait… what’s this? 90% of my health is gone.

…

Several minutes, a couple longer-than-I’d-like-because-the-event-blocks-the-nearest-waypoint runs, and one condition skill set-up later, I manage to kite the thing around (because kiting is always fun, amirite?!) and slowly whittle away its health to a very unsatisfying victory. Especially when I see the waypoint is contested again pretty much the next time I look at my world map.

Why does the thing have a non-broadcast (as far as I could tell) AOE melee attack that’s practically a one-hit kill?

StriderShinryu.6923:

My experience is that they seem to drop more often for lower level characters in lower level areas.

Now why would you do that to me? Now I’m all depressed that I’ll be seeing them less often than never.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I usually get 1-2 per day, sometimes when lucky 5-6 in a day. I usually play about 2 hours a day; but, of course, sometimes more.

That’s what I remember getting several months ago. My two most recent characters are both at 20 now… 100% completed the Asura and Sylvari zones. Not a single dye found in either of them. It was just such a drastic change from what I was used to I found it hard to believe it was all RNG.

Cool – thanks for the replies.

Now I just have to figure out what I can sacrifice to the RNG gods to get them to stop tormenting me so.

I came back a few weeks ago after a several months long break and finished a couple starting zones with some new characters. Much to my horror and dismay, I noticed I didn’t find a single unidentified dye! I remember starting new characters shortly after release and sometimes I’d get a few before hitting level 10.

Did they seriously reduce the drop rate for these? Or is it just RNG hating on me, as usual?

Paken Kai.5970:

I think it mostly depends on what skills/traits you currently have for your level, as well as group composition. Stability is super helpful, as are projectile reflect/absorb skills (I mostly run with a guardian who has access to group/area versions of all of the above).

Yay for elites being the only source of stability for necros. And projectile reflection? What is this you speak of? :P

Paken Kai.5970:

It sounds like you had bad groups both times. Remember, especially in PUGS, communication is key. If you think there may be a better way of dealing with a situation, speak up. There’s no reason to try the same plan of attack over and over if it’s not working.

Yeah… my suggestion to kill the adds first was met with the response, “just focus target the f—-ing champion,” so I’m leaning towards it being a bad group.

I tried to run this twice the other day with one of my lowbie characters (a lvl 14 necromancer) along with a friend (lvl 20 mesmer) but both groups failed to get past the pack after the first drill machine… got the pulling oozes the first time and the fire elemental things the second. The oozes tended to be one-hit kills with the pulls and general lack of stability for necros, but on the fire elementals I was usually the last person left alive… which seems to point to a fail group vs. a fail me. (Also, is it usual to focus down a massive-hp-snore-fest champion first? At least in other games I’ve always followed an adds-first mentality… is GW2 different?)

I understand that running at lower levels means you’re missing traits and/or utility skill slots, but seeing how (some) people are saying this is an easier dungeon (and the fact that I had less of a problem staying alive than others in my group) I was wondering how much that mattered. Should I aim to hit a certain level before trying again?

A friend and I tried running the dungeon as a 20 mesmer (him) and a 14 necro (me) along with higher level people. It didn’t go very well. At levels that low, you’re missing out on a lot of useful traits and you don’t have all your utility skills unlocked yet.

The dungeon’s there for a couple weeks, so I suggest leveling up to at least 30ish (as suggested above).

jazzyskye.2397:

PS. I really want the tabs for song of time

6. 1… 3. 6. 1… 3. 6 8 7. 6. 4 6 7. 1. 8 2 1—-

Also… the Morrowind title theme:
1 2 3… 3 4 6… 6 8 4… 5 4 3 2 1… 1 2 3… 3 4 6… 6 8 9… 8. 9…

Tarvok.4206:

I’ve dreamed of playable musical instruments in an MMO since the days of mastering the bard skills in Ultima Online.

You mean like the full three octaves (plus accidentals) you can play in Lord of the Rings Online? :P

The bells sure don’t beat that, but it’s my favorite part of Wintersday for sure!

So why did we have to do the whole bring-the-pacts together thing to build an army to defeat Zhaitan? All we had to do was give Tixx a call.

Jason King.2647:

Is everyone experiencing this using the dodge roll keybind, as opposed to double-tapping a movement key? We’re aware of a bug related to using the keybind, but if you’re not using that to dodge, it could be a separate bug.

As mentioned by others, I do see the bug when double-tapping to dodge. As a hammer-wielding guardian it happens every time I try to dodge between my 2nd and 3rd attacks (Hammer Bash and Symbol of Protection). I have auto-attack enabled.

I started a guardian, but after seeing this change I think I might have to switch to necromancer. It seems like they get bugs fixed much faster, and I’ve heard they’re really OP.

Mace/torch is definitely one of my favorite weapon sets when leveling/soloing. I’ll usually swap to shield though when running with groups for the group utility with protection, bubble, and heal. But on my own I’ll usually start with hammer, leap in, then swap to mace/torch and just set everything on fire, finishing them off with the mace symbol and block skills.

The event to retake Bloodgorge Watch is almost undoable due to the respawn rate. I have to clear all ogres from an area to make any progress retaking it, but it’s kind of frustrating when I kill an ogre just to see a group of three respawn on the other side of the area. The NPC allies that pretty much fall down at any sign of trouble aren’t much help either.

I was trying to do the Ogre Wars meta event in Fields of Ruin last night. Wow, what a dead zone. I started the Capture Bloodgorge Watch event, and if it wasn’t for one other person to come along and help, I don’t think I could have done it solo. With the stupid fast respawn rates and NPC allies that go down in seconds, I couldn’t clear the ogres fast enough to make any progress retaking not one but two areas.

We managed to do the next group event with just us 2 (yay guardians!), but it sucks that people might miss out on fun events like these because no one’s in the leveling areas (especially the charr ones) any more.

I mostly use hammer with a mace/torch off set, but mace would probably be good for greatsword as well. Mace #2 is a short cooldown symbol that you can use with greatsword #3’s leap for area retaliation. (It’s a little easier to use with hammer since hammer’s 3rd auto-attack chain skill drops a symbol.) Mace also has nice defensive abilities with a heal on its auto-attack, a regen symbol, and a block.

Although I just carry one of each weapon with me so I can swap out and try different things if I get bored with one! Only one I’m not a fan of so far is staff.

Ziro.3295:

Coming from TSW (and SWTOR), the writing is downright horrible.

I wouldn’t exactly consider GW2’s writing Pulitzer-worthy, but I’d consider it much, much better than any of the drivel I’ve seen in SWTOR. (TSW is a different story – that actually had some pretty cool stuff.) The only way I’ve been able to even tolerate playing SWTOR is to critique it MST3K style with a buddy… which, in that case, the game is unintentionally hilarious!

The “Escort the supply dolyak to Snowdrift Haven” event is bugged on the Crystal Desert server. Ramsy the dolyak isn’t moving… not sure where the event starts from, but I attached a screenshot of where it’s stuck.

Heh… so I randomly saw this event start last night when I followed the separatists to Nageling. No way in hell the Underworld was I going to do it again. Then like 15-20 minutes later, I just had to laugh when some people asked if anyone was doing it and map chat was full of people politely declining since it’s just not fun.

Greyfeld.7104:

Personally, I would rather do an event because it’s a blast to play; but if you’re going to create boring and monotonous fights that put me to sleep, at least tack on a reward at the end so that I don’t actively avoid the event when it pops.

I think this is the big thing. I personally don’t really care too much about rewards – I want to play the game to have fun! Sure, tossing in a chest with all sorts of great items and lots of gold at least gives some sort of an incentive to pound on the same mob for 5-10 minutes, but it’s still not fun.

Hm… I was constantly in melee range – maybe that’s why I didn’t see him do anything other than his one-foot stomp. Although I also kind of zoned out after about a minute of doing the same thing over and over, so I might have missed it. :P

Preface: I’m still enjoying the puppy (puppies > kittens) out of GW2, so don’t take this criticism on one specific aspect of the game as a gripe about the game in its entirety. I <3 ANet!

- Anyway -

I (playing a melee guardian – Hammer and Mace/Torch… no ranged EZ Mode for me!) did the Defeat the giant assaulting the Town of Nageling event in Diessa Plateau last night… talk about a snore-fest. He has two mechanics: a stomp that hit for about half my hp with a knockback and cripple, and a fear shout that didn’t do damage. (Speaking of which… got flashbacks to the Kol event in Harathi…)

Ok, easy enough – dodge/block the stomps (that is, unless my dodge bugs out and I get hit anyway) and suck up the fears….

… for a good ten minutes. While the 8-12 people with me whittled away his obscene health pool.

Do we really need to repeat the same, easy pattern over and over for ten minutes for a little bit of xp, karma, and copper? This seems to be the general idea for champion mobs (with a few exceptions… some of the meta event bosses are pretty cool), and just seems like lazy design to me. Have Mr. Giant toss a rock at the folks standing at range every so often. Make some buildings destructible so that we have to take him down in a certain amount of time (or each building that remains results in a unique merchant). I don’t know… something that isn’t dodge rolling every several seconds?

To quote Mr. Green… “Thank you.”

Kudu and his golems aren’t the last boss in SE story… you still have one more to go after that. It’s a shame, too, since the real last boss is the most fun fight I’ve seen in GW2.

Of all the problems we had on Kudu, crashing wasn’t one of them.

The number one thing for me is just the massive amounts of HP mobs have without interesting mechanics to justify it.

… Really?

He felt like the same whittle-down-tons-of-hp boss that almost every other boss has felt like so far. None of his mechanics felt very threatening… I could pretty much ignore the scarecrows, pumpkins, and his attacks. I thought it was pretty boring, actually.

The Iron Forgeman fight in SE is my idea of a great boss fight.

• As mentioned, hope someone in your group has effective projectile reflection and have them use it as much as possible. I did this as a thief with no projectile reflection skills and if it wasn’t for a mesmer in our group I would have been toast.
• Stay as far away as possible. This makes dodging (NOT ROLLING) the fire easier.
• You can dodge the group-targeted fire without rolling! It requires really tight timing and understanding that the golem leads you with his attacks… i.e. if you keep running in one direction while he’s shooting the fireballs, they’ll land where you’re going to be! Once I got the timing down, I was able to completely dodge the two fireballs by starting to run in one direction when he began his attack animation, then switching directions after the first fireball, then switching directions again after the second.
• As mentioned, try to keep conditions minimal. A few damaging conditions (burning, poison, etc.) are OK to use, but don’t go overboard.
• Make sure you have some skills that remove burning just in case you do get hit!

Despite a number of people saying you just need to learn to play, some of the personal story quests are actually overtuned/bugged. It looks like ANet has been fixing them, so your best bet is probably to report a bug or post specifically about which quest(s) is/are giving you trouble, along with the level you were when you tried them and your class.

Set To Blow, I’m looking at you.

Enter jaded contrarian.

I disagree. :P

While I definitely feel he’s one of the more fleshed-out characters, I didn’t like him at all. I joined the Order of Whispers as a thief because it sounded like a secret organization based on intelligence gathering and shadowy intrigue. Then I meet some goofy-cat, bumbling Charr who’s supposed to be my mentor? Ugh.

Great character, just in the wrong place.

Server: Crystal Desert
Map: Queensdale
Chhk the Windmill King doesn’t appear, but I can see his dialog.

So I’ve been running around Gendarran a lot lately trying to find some fine crafting materials, but I’ve been noticing a distinct lack of events in the area compared to other areas.

I maybe see the same two or three on the west side (Tamini moguls and the rock dog event), and a few on the far east side, but they’re few and far between. A lot of times, even when I see there’s an event I arrive too late.

I played through Caledon, Brisban, Harathi, and about 2/3 of the way through Bloodtide, and they all seem to have a good amount. Gendarran is the only area where I’ve actually struggled to find events to do.

So what I’m getting from this thread is that Jeffrey Vaughn is amazing.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this amount of communication and feedback-based updates between game designers and the community.

It would be nice to go back through and re-play some of the story lines that were updated (to see if Set to Blow is doable now), but that’s more of a thread for the suggestions forum. :P

Unless I need condition removal with Hide in Shadows, I use Signet of Malice on my thief. It’s especially nice with sword/pistol, since the sword attacks are AoE and the sword/pistol dual skill is a flurry of attacks – each one of those attacks heals me!

Thief here.

There were a few tough parts, but I found the quest to be much more doable than a couple others up to that point (like, oh, say Set to Blow…. had to get two other people to help on that one and we still wound up all dying).

Reviving Mira on the beach was the only part I had trouble with… the boat kept bombarding the area where she was. The Risen ignored me for the most part. The Risen I did have to fight weren’t too much trouble… but pistol off-hand for thieves has an AoE blind that makes most PvE cake.

If anything, I might say the objectives for Claw Island weren’t very clear. Especially after lighting the beacon, when I was supposed to hold off the Risen in the courtyard. They just seemed to keep respawning… nothing really indicates you just need to wait.

Yeah…. about those skritt quests…..

I’m a thief and had to get help for both of the destroyer ones. Even with two other people helping me in Set To Blow (a ranger and a necro), we still all died the first time the queen came up and there were other destroyers around.

And running away just to pull the destroyers one-by-one just doesn’t feel like the intended way to do the quest. I’m really, really hoping there’s a tuning bug here.