Guild Wars 2

It means that there is, once again, no good reason to have an alt.

While Thieves are great for damage, so many people ignore their support capabilities.

MikeRocks.9243:

I thougt Greatsword was the big thing with Guardians? Then again, I haven’t played my Guardian in a few months, so it’s likely that changed. I’m a little iffy on Mesmer as well. I leveled as a dual sword/greatsword Mesmer, so that probably skewed everything for me since I never shattered my clones ever. I might have to relearn that class completely.

Magical math was done and it was discovered that the Hammer actually has more damage over an extended period of time due to the Symbol of Protection combo and the frequency of Mighty Blow. That’s not counting how great 5 second blast finishers and 50% Protection up-times are. The Greatsword is still better at spiking and Binding Blade is still one of the best CCs in the game, but as far as extended boss fights go it’s a choice between the Hammer and Sword rather than the Greatsword.

I recently decided to actually play my ranger, and I am hearing “I’ll revive you soon” or whatever a lot lately. I am the worst.

BobbyStein.2315:

MikeRocks.9243:

I really hate that Norn line:

“I pray to the Spirits of the Wild, but they rarely answer.”

Just drives me nuts, really.

We marked those lines for a rewrite because the norn don’t really pray to the spirits. For whatever reason they didn’t get addressed (tools bug? oversight? budget?) so we’re sort of stuck with them for now. We may change some of them the next time the actors come back.

Oh man, I really hope you get a chance to change them/replace them. Even aside from any in-game lore errors, this line always seems to be delivered so kitten and lazily [you’d think something like this would be jarring or important to the character saying it] and also just kind of comes out of nowhere (why is the merchant I have accosted to engage in trade suddenly informing me about her spiritual issues?!).

I’d play it, but I’m an engineer and we own underwater.

They do both, which is what all almost all developers tend to do these days. One team on bug fixing another on additional content. SOP in developement.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Knut Whitebear is a reference to this lovely little fella’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZLKb_5S21E

And there is a personal story mission called “Through the looking glass” which is a reference to Lost.

Kids these days…

Through The Looking Glass was the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (better known by the name Alice in Wonderland) both by Lewis Carol and published almost 150 years before Lost was even thought of.

The Windmill King who mistakes you for a dragon has to be a reference to Don Quixote

Wow. No one caught The Hunger Games gravestone in Ebonhawke?

Rue, our little songbird?

Agenteusa.6380:

I can´t believe no one mentioned the reference to Diablo on the new random world events.

You find a chest in the open world, you open it, out comes a skritt with loads of bags on his back and starts running.

You chase after him and loot keeps fropping and you can’t let him escape to get a final chest.

That’s an obvious reference ofc and at the time I got that achievement I thought it was common but seems not many people saw that skritt yet :P

Another obvious are the way some chests open borderlands style.

Actually I would say its reference goes all the way back to Golden Axe.

Agrios.1957:

Why didnt anyone posted the video of the “airplane emote” during BWE. That was hilarious.

:D

You used to be able to fully fight in costume while holding a Kit/Bundle item. Such as being in costume and fighting with engineer kits and elementalist weapons. I loved this “bug”. The Flamethrower kit and Mad King outfit matched perfectly with my engineer. I would run around back in the farming days of Orr as The Great Mad King Charr burninating all the undead.

Unfortunately there’s a “No Fun Allowed” rule in GW2 so this was fixed in some patch earlier this year and now when in costume and dealing/taking damage you instantly revert to normal armor.

I never really went and complained about the ascended gear, but I was extremely lukewarm at best about the whole thing. Kind of felt like something that wasn’t terribly necessary, arguing that I’d rather just have bunch more unique looking exotics.

I find that I actually kind of enjoy the presence of the gear now, and am looking forward to it being on armor.

I’m generally in agreement with the OP: It’s not particularly grindy, difficult, or tedious to gradually acquire the gear.

A small detail that I personally love about the ascended gear:

I enjoy uniquely named equipment. The fact that most of my gear was called things like “Berserker’s Feathered Mantle of Divinity” was kind of bothering me. It is just a simple (Stat) (Base Skin Model) (Upgrade) jigsaw to determine the name.

The fact that I now have things called “Lunaria, Circle of the Moon” makes the items feel significant to me. This is just how I feel. Even the uniquely named Exotics (i.e. Eternal Ice, Vision of the Mists, etc.) would invariably take the suffix of the upgrade you apply to them.

A minor, personal reason, but just another tiny thing I find that’s growing on me.
I look forward to having my armor become unique, named gear! Eventually, I hope ANet will add Ascended gear all around the world (that are not available from a merchant) that people seeking unique looks can hunt.

Trahearne forgets when I’ve already met people and keeps re-introducing them to me. (My mesmer was introduced to Tegwen and Carys due to a choice I made, and then later when they are part of a Pact mission Trahearne behaves as if I’ve never met them before. Fortunately, during the mission, they don’t pretend to have just met me.)
Trahearne sounds like a text-to-speech program, with about the same emotional range as a toaster.
Trahearne is placed above the Orders’ leadership due to being impartial. Cool, we [the characters in the game, I mean] all agreed that one member of one of the Orders, which included our player character, might not be impartial. But apparently a side-effect of being the Marshal means Trahearne gets to take credit for everything you and the notable NPCs of the world do.

Somehow Trahearne is the one who gets credit for the Pact despite it being the player character’s idea.
Trahearne seeks out your advice for various things and then claims he came up with it. It starts with simple things -- your character tells Trahearne what to call the fortress the Pact is building [Fort Trinity], but then the next time it comes up he tells everyone in a rally that he came up with the name -- and grows.

I would need to get back into some of the missions to snag more dialogue for examples, but there are several, like the one mentioned above about the Priory.

The idea of Trahearne, that of a scholar on his own Wyld Hunt to heal the lands being forced into a position of leadership and to command warriors, scientists, explorers, assassins, etc. and bring together disparate groups under one banner, is genuinely pretty good.

But too often the storytelling praises Trahearne, focuses on him, and/or ignores details about who you are and what you’ve done. When paired with his poor acting, the writing surrounding Trahearne makes him an awful character.

Each of the mentors you work with prior to being paired with him had far more personality as well.

I dislike Trahearne because he repeatedly takes credit for things he didn’t do.

Fyrebrand.4859

I mean, the daily and monthly achievements can already be done on any character — and laurels are account-wide — yet, still they are somehow “anti-alt.” And, of course, you also get jugs of karma and mystic coins, which are also transferable between characters. I don’t know how much more alt-friendly they could have possibly made this.

The reason why people would argue that the laurel system is anti-alt is because laurels are account bound. It might be alt-friendly in that you can gain the laurel with one character and spend it on another, but it’s anti-alt because you will only be getting one laurel per day per account — no matter how many characters you have.

For laurels to be alt-friendly, daily achievements themselves would need to be able to be achieved per character and not per account. As it stand right now, you need 30 laurels for an amulet. That would take 30 days. If you have one alt, it will take 60 days to outfit both instead of 30 days to outfit both. If you have two alts, it will take 90 days to outfit all three instead of 30 days to outfit all three.

Top gear is now time-gated, and time-gated per account and not per character. Back when exotic gear was top gear, you could outfit all your characters at your own pace, but now you are hard-limited as to what pace you can gain your equipment and that pace is lengthened per day, instead of how long you work, based on how many characters you have. That’s why this game has become anti-alt.

Sure you can argue that top gear is not necessary, but this is an mmo and people don’t want to get left behind.

There was a clarification after the manifesto was posted, because it confused people due to editing. Colin is talking about dynamic events, Ree was talking about personal story.

So a couple of years before the game comes out, developers talked loosely about the idea of what they wanted to do with the game, which is what a manifesto is, btw, a statement of intent, and then people pick it apart word by word, often completely out of context.

Old promo tool is an old promo tool that 90% holds up. It’s a pretty good average. I just wish people would let it go already, because it’s getting old.

It happens with all newly released games.

They are over-hyped at the beginning, getting tons of amazing reviews that top the charts, making everyone buy into all the great features and innovation it is bringing. Then a few months down the road, people start talking about how the game really is. You get your mixed responses, people saying to give it another shot still, people bashing on everything negative about it without seeing any of the positive, etc etc.

About half a year later, most sites give bad reviews cause of a bad experience with one thing, while others are still enjoying the game for what else it has. Then in about a year or two, everything settles, patches are released to improve the game, community has settled in and started enjoying things again, and sites are starting to give a second chance at it after all the new updates.

This pretty much explains how all MMOs start out. MMOs are a rough path to take and usually cause the most pain/joy. The fans are very dedicated to this genre, and it definitely shows. Whether negative or positive, they express that deeply. But it takes time for the storm to calm. Just gotta have patience and wait for the dust to settle.

Edit: Sorry forgot to answer the question (my bad).

As for still believing, I don’t know. I still believe that one day this game will be big and become something amazing. I still believe that this game will change the way we play MMORPGs in the future. They have good ideas and some nice changes to the genre that I am happy to see.

But things have been done that seem so out of the element, that I am unsure whether I believe this game will still be what it once was. The game now is vastly different from the game that was advertised and sold to us when we got it. While it might be good for others, it is bad for those of us who wanted what was advertised and got something completely different instead.

So as for believing, probably not. Skeptical, yes. But I still have a bit of hope that things will turn around and take this game back to its former glory.

I have 8 level 80’s representing all classes and races. All are decently geared (full exotics – my guardian gets the ascended). Only four of these are full master crafters (lvl 400 in their respective crafts, all crafts). I leveled all of them the “old-fashioned” way — doing things I felt like doing and not really thinking about levels. Much like in GW1, I wanted to learn how all the classes play out in the game which, to me, offers a broader understanding of what the game is all about.

With these characters I am satisfied that I am enjoying the game more because of the flexibility and variety of game play that I experience. There’s a warm satisfying feeling I get when looking at the character selection screen and having the choice of playing any class I feel like playing. It keeps me in the game.

Harmadda.5971:

I play every Profession.
All of them.

I level to 2 and go straight into PVP.
I do have one level 40 but that was my first toon.

Like I said, I love to PVP, but not if this is going to be happening.
It doesn’t matter which one I was playing.

If you are playing every profession, go and do some PvP on your Thief. Figure out how he did it and go practice to do it yourself. Then see what you have to give up and how often you actually manage to do that and is it even as usefull as you think it is.

Overpowered – (adj.) An expression of imbalance, used to describe everyone else’s class but yours.

Fanboy – (n.) 1. A sycophant; a player in immutable agreement with ANet’s design policies. 2. Someone with whom you disagree 3. Freakazoid’s short-lived sidekick.

Casual – (adj.) 1. Accessible; undemanding; without obligation. (n) 2. A satisfied player, usually characterized by keeping sane hours, prioritizing real life, and playing for fun. 3. The mortal enemy of the Hardcore. See: Hardcore

Hardcore – (adj.) 1. Difficult; demanding; a quality of game design which requires a high degree of mastery and practice. (n.) 2. A player whose time invested in a game is inversely proportional to his/her satisfaction. 3. Rytlock Brimstone

Inviable – (adj.) 1. The state of being untenable; unable to perform; not dependable. 2. A term used to describe a skill, weapon or profession that falls short of perfection in any given scenario. 3. Of situational use 4. Infertile offspring.

L2P – (acr.) 1. Learn To Play. 2. An expression suggesting disdain toward another player’s problems, legitimate or otherwise. Often preceded by LOL.

Endgame – (n.) 1. See – Carrot. 2. A concept of MMORPG design describing content that requires a player at the highest level, used to maintain a player’s interest. 3. A mediocre action-thriller movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and that one guy from Deliverance.

Carrot – (n.) 1. A long, crunchy root vegetable, orange in color. 2. (idiom.) Carrot and Stick – any unreachable goal. 3. The holy grail of MMO players and, incidentally, donkeys.

General Discussion Forums – (n.) 1. The Guild Wars 2 Community Hospital, characterized by a lobby perpetually overflowing with the ailing and the suffering. Highly contagious and generally toxic.

Roleplayer – (n.) One who participates in roleplay. A specimen of player who behaves and speaks in a way that preserves and enhances the immersion of the game world. 2. A frequent inhabitant in the taverns of Divinity’s Reach, characterized by a love of flowery prose, a contempt for outsiders (See: Hardcore) and bristling with indignation. 3. A favored target of angry trolls fresh from a loss in WvWvW and hunting for a seemingly easy target to mock. See also: Hardcore.

sPvP is like a sport, WvW is like a war. Not all soldiers are equal, and they don’t have to be. I haven’t noticed any issues with this.

Either a full venom share, or personally I like deception skills and master of deception (for 48/24 sec Improved recharge) with Shadow refuge, blinding powder, scorp wire or smoke screen, Lot of choices really for 3rd based on situations.

Shadow protector to give regen boon when stealthing allies, Infusion of shadow to gain 2 initiative anytime you enter stealth. Trickery for thrill of the crime & bountiful theft at least. I like hastened replenishment for 4 more initiative on heal. This synergizes for condition damage.

shortbow is my favorite choice when it comes to pve and overall support. you can deal great bleed damage by cluster bombing with proper detonation, poison combos, and have sword/dagger off if you need to swap for stealth, dagger 4 can also be handy. Dual pistol is another possibility since pistol off has good utility but I think sword pistol is the best overall set thanks to infiltrator strike. For cloak and dagger though it may be worth keeping a dagger offhand which is why the following has sword dagger secondary set

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mckc0mz0mFnRomFnRo9MxaxzcVcVkq

Thief ability to support is highly tied to the team composition and especially what kind of field they bring to the table.

For example with durable fire fields you can give 25 stacks of might easily, with a water field you can become the best healer of the game.

Of course you need the shortbow, and bring along some utilities like shadow refuge, caltrops, smoke screen, scorpion wire, blinding powder or agility signet. Venom share also works but i really think it’s overestimated in pve.