Guild Wars 2

Easy points:
8 personal story
8 completing LS 2 story (not the achievements)
2 Tequalt
1 Karka Queen
1 LA exterminator
1 Dry Top skritt queen
1 for first character reaching lvl 80

That’s 22 points without doing fractals, dungeons, JPs, LS achievements, difficult bosses or rare spawns. And that’s easily enough to max out Pact Commander (19 needed).

As for Fractal Attunement, it pays for itself in terms on MP’s…11 needed, 14 available. Most of the time I get these by accident, asking the group if we could work towards it, or creating a LFG stating it was a MP run. But if you don’t do fractals, this line is useless to you and you can ignore it.

Legendary crafting is a funny one… to craft a precursor, you will need to do lots of different content (Fractals, JPs, specific champs/events, specific achievements, mini dungeons, max level crafting) If you think getting the MPs required to max this mastery out is too much, precursor crafting is more of the same but arguably much harder and definitely more expensive. As someone who has crafted Dusk, I can guarantee the MP requirement is only a mild obstacle in the grand scheme of precursor crafting. If this crafting process doesn’t appeal to you, you can ignore this mastery line too.

TLDR:
Core Tyria masteries ARE tuned to your gameplay preferences:
Pact Commander for everyone: enough easy MPs
Fractal Attunement for the fractal runners: enough MPs in fractals
Legendary Crafting: crafting process requires you to do lots of different and sometimes annoying/difficult content, thus reflected in the remaining MPs coming from all sorts of content (some of which are annoying/difficult)

This thread might illustrate one of the problems with the HoT metas – they bring out the worst in people.
Some folks want exclusive maps, exclusive lanes and an exclusive say in what/when/where other players should be.
Yeah, good luck with that.

Any player who thinks they should have the right to decide who can be on the map is in the wrong game imho.

Game is as grindy as YOU want it to be. Perfect design.

There are several types of orb.

Orange to the sides of the spawn area, gives you access to skill 2 which is a ground target AoE attack for 30 damage.

Orange near the jump pads in the side tunnels, enhances your skill 1, makes your attack fly faster so is more accurate.

White(ish) in the side tunnels, gives access to skill 5 which creates an area around you for a few seconds which reflects projectiles.

Orange in the middle of the side areas, gives access to skill 4 which is a kick interupt (need to be close to enemy).

Blue(ish) on the rocks between the exits to the tunnels at each side, gives access to skill 3 which is a chill trap.

Black on the raised platform above the central area, gives you stealth which does not break on dealing damage.

Red on the rock in the middle of the central area, makes all your damage skills hit harder (60 damage auto attack).

Zenith.6403:

Ayrilana.1396:

The grind that they were referring to would be the grind you would be required to do to do playable content. In other games, in order to do some of the endgame content, you would have to farm a tier of gear in order to even play that content. In this game you can do practically anything in exotics. This includes raids although you’ll have less room for errors. This includes fractals as it’s debatable as to whether increasing enemy stats and adding instabilities is considered content.

- The numbers on the weapons and armor are meaningless. What does that 5-figure number measure? Rolling 6 on a 6-sided dice is the best outcome, but does 14,890 power mean you’re powerful or not? That’s nonsense.

Content means graphics, storyline, unique dialogue, music and so forth. Something that requires effort to create. Good games have generative mechanism that allows for variations with finite content (like Chess). MMOs have no such mechanism and they take repetition to absurd levels. Farming 1 wood log is the same as farming 10,000 wood logs. The experience doesn’t change, you just waste your time.

in the 80’s we collected points and tried to achieve highscores, in the 90’s we tried to get to the end of the game. Now rpg player enjoy collcting and growing material wealth to support their avatar. so farming 1000 is not the same as farming 1 for many, in RPG its not all about the adrenalin rush ands new graphic models every 4 minutes. Some people didnt get trying to achieve high scores in the 80’s, some people didnt get trying to complete games by repeating over and over until they succeeded, some people dont get collecting and RPG’s. Content means many things inclusding having a persistent online world to play in.

One mans grind is another mans pleasure, but if you are fool enough to do something you dont enjoy and call it a grind, then more fool you.

They should charge gems for ranting on the forums.

Djinn.9245:

Bezayne.6459:

Vayne.8563:

It takes literally a few minutes to redo the Karka Queen. Most jumping puzzles can be portaled with mesmers, and there are often mesmers portaling them. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to get more points for you, but many of them aren’t that hard.

By contrast the story achievement rewards are considered hard y a lot of people

You know, I have done all jumping puzzles but the one in Silverwastes. And yes, Karka Queen is no problem. But that is 2 points, when to be able to craft one of the new legendaries I would need 12 points. At the end of the day the question is – is this game fun for me, and do I want to keep spending my time in it? If something is not fun, and impacting my enjoyment seriously enough, I will try and let the devs know about it. Which I am doing here. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with how much (or not) you enjoy the game, nor will you trying to dismiss my experience as invalid help matters in the slightest.

Great response, I agree. We have a right to express our opinion in the forum as long as our posts are within the rules.

I am in a very small guild of friends who used to play regularly. We all had different schedules but every now and then our schedules aligned and we enjoyed playing GW2 together. As HoT approached, Anet started neglecting the game. No new stuff or even replay of old Festivals until the expansion came out. After a while, my friends and I started playing less and less. Finally, Halloween and then the Expansion. We come back only to discover that Anet has decided that our Guild doesn’t count. Since 3 of us are hardly on at one time, and we only party up about half the time as we are often working on different stuff, our Guild is dead. So much for playing as I enjoy.

And the same goes for Mastery Points. It isn’t a question of whether I can find a way to do them. It is a question of whether it will be fun.

With all due respect, Sir/Ms., your sincere disappointment isn’t shared by many, even if valid from your particular point of view.

Further, I imagine many ANet employees disagree with: “as HoT approached, ANet started neglecting the game.” You then proceed to state things that have nothing to do with authentic neglect-a more precise wording would have been “ANet started to focus less on the things I (or my friends) like”, which at least is a factual statement.

It’s annoying, if only because any random reader may take your words at full value and actually think the developers do not care for their own game, which seems VERY far from the truth from the most neutral standpoint.

I also am part of a small Guild (and an even smaller before that), and do not share your views-people just like what they like, and it’s highly unlikely that ANet can just satisfy these immense number of likes in the community. People change , get busy, life moves on; and while I agree it’s a bummer to not be able to share these “family-like” moments anymore, in my case I really can’t fault the game for my old friends’ lack of interest.

I cannot accept that I’m some sort of especially good player. I regularly screw up which power I mean to use, I can’t figure out timing for dodges outside of very choreographed situations, and I just make up my stat allocation without looking at what’s actually giving me the most bang for my buck. I also adhere to builds more because they look interesting rather than actually being effective in combat.

All that said, I have not had any trouble soloing all the content. I solo events in the new maps, some of them just can’t be soloed. No matter how well you play they’ll fail if you don’t have more people covering different areas, but that’s ok. No matter how dead the map I get squeezed into, though, most of the time someone shows up before I reach that point.

The maps aren’t dead because no one is playing. The maps are dead because so many people are playing that you’re on a left over map.

The only frustration to solo play that I’ve run into is the champion hero points. But there are enough hero points, spread across the whole expansion that, along with the reduced requirement for elites, you can get all the points you need without doing those. If you’re trying to get the collection for the skins, well put out a call. It may take a while, but collections are meant to take a while.

If think most people miss something. It’s okay to die in PvE, it means monsters are not pinatas.

Sephas.8793:

Misguided.5139:

The only thing that bothered me about it is that the death seemed pointless.

I have a feeling that she’ll be back.

The Commander and his team, following Garm, burst into the asuran lab. They are greeted by the sight of Braham, standing over a table upon which lies the body of Eir. In his hands, connected by wires to several strange machines, is a crystal glowing a strange green.

Braham: No! Not now! I’m so close!

The Commander steps forward, weapon at the ready.

Commander: Braham! Put the crystal down! You don’t know what you’re doing!

Braham throws his arms wide and laughs, still holding onto the crystal.

Braham: I don’t know? Of course I know! Taimi figured it all out for me. She didn’t want to at first, but without Scruffy to protect her…

Braham’s attention snaps back to those standing before him.

Braham: I’ve gathered enough of the energy released by the Elder Dragons as they died. Zhaitan’s power to bring her back, and Mordremoth’s to make her live again. Don’t you see? I can get her back!

Garm suddenly launches himself at Braham, jaws snapping at his face. Braham lashes out, the crystal catching the wolf in the throat, and with a spray of blood splattering over the area, the beast falls.

Jory: NO!

Rox: Forgive me…

Rox fires several times, quickly, as the others rush in to join the battle or tend to Garm. Her arrows find their mark in Braham’s chest and he staggers for a moment, only to lunge forward and plunge the crystal into Eir’s chest. There is a blast of energy that knocks everyone down, and as light fills the room, Eir’s scream can be heard. And then… Eir’s voice, laughing…

Coming soon to a raid near you!

I just crafted Dawn a couple days ago, it cost me something like 1000g in mats, which is around 300g over the TP price for the precursor, at the time I was thinking what am I doing I must be mad, and I guess I am slightly mad because even though it cost me that much more, it was far far more enjoyable to create Sunrise from scratch, as in, I built every piece of that weapon myself from the ground up, and captured all the components that went into it during the collection phase than it was to have bought the precursor off the TP like I did with previous legendarys.
Upon completion of Sunrise I really did feel a bit like conan the barbarian or something having forged my own weapon of destruction, it was a good feeling and still feels good, I am far more attached to this weapon than my other legendarys, so I guess the moral of this story is, yeah it seems to cost more gold for many of these collections, but the satisfaction it gives you is also far greater, so you have to ask yourself, how much will you pay for that satisfaction, if you even care, which I do.
No regrets, my sunrise really does feel legendary.

I prefer playing the game to level bouncing mushrooms over jumping on a mushroom 40 times.

For me I will still do the full precursor quests even learning the price difference. It is all about the EXPERIENCE. Starting from scratch, and follow a long journey to get your precursor, and eventually upgrade it to a legendary. I work hard enough during the day to worry about farming for in game gold. I have enough money to convert gems to legendary anytime I want. But mmo for me is all about the playing experience, and time is never an issue in gw2 (unlike other mmo where once you slack behind you will never catch up), I will enjoy spending many months in creating my first legendary.

There are plenty of incentives for them to donate. Literally every single guild service is acquired by donating resources to finish upgrades.

If you have to beg guild members to work toward the benefit of the group… why do you tolerate such antisocial and selfish guild members in the first place? Why isn’t your hall a group effort that everyone is excited about?

This isn’t a problem with the system. It’s a problem with your guild. The system creates group content and economic objectives. If your guild members don’t care about the welfare of the groups, that isn’t a problem with the system. That’s a problem with your guild.

The old system was horrible. It did nothing to reward or incentivize group efforts. It handed out advancement just for logging in. It made guilds nothing more than a tag that gave you stuff with no associated groupwide cost or effort. The new system’s dynamics are simple: you get out of your guild what you’re willing to put in.

The old system was passive and boring. The new system is active and creates guild objectives. It’s sad some guilds are figuring out they don’t care as much about their group as they thought they did.

I’m REALLY looking forward to Friday. Then at least most of the whiny forum posts might be based upon having experienced stuff first-hand in the game.

Some of you folks seem to have pre-purchased the expansion and then spent the whole time talking yourselves out of liking what you have bought, before it even begins. Give it a chance. You might enjoy it.

I played a little over a year and a half. Then, i got disgusted. Not at the game, but at the company developing it. I have my reasons, which have been all over the internet, by other players who posted their thoughts. So, i quit, and went and played other MMOs. I found other, better MMOs, but in the end, they weren’t. They were WoW clones, that all had the very same treadmill, that WoW has. I got bored. I missed doing everything with my friends. And i came to a revelation: This game was developed to emphasize the power in groups of friends who love gaming with each other. Literally, everything in GW2 is about playing with friends to achieve similar goals. There is always a benefit to each person in the area, regardless if they needed it or not.

Its not so much the gameplay, or the areas, or even the fights. As every MMO tends to provide a unique experience on their own. It is the social mechanic that Arena Net has developed into a juggernaut, that will continue to drive this game. I realize that now. Its not about you, the hero. Its about you, and your friends, “The Heroes”. TO put a simpler way, this game isn’t about being Batman; Its about being the Justice League.

If you want to be Batman, GW2 is not for you. If you want to be a member of the Justice League, this is the best MMO on the market.

Alternatively, ANet has alot of work to do on itself, and on the game. I think they know that, because we fans remind them every day. I just hope they continue to improve, both internally, and in what they deliver to us in-game.

At any rate, thank you. Please keep up this fantastic game, Arena Net!

I knew people would hate it but I LOVE that you have to go a bit without gliding. Take a look around and appreciate the game around you. You would skip it all just going to objectives without them and thats fine but first time through it shouldnt kill you to hoof it. You appreciate the masteries more once you get them as well.

As for expanding progression for end game they are great. You see them as “Grindy” because you want the benefits right now. However you will get them simply by working towards other objectives in EVERYTHING you do. So just set other goals and you will notice progression over time.

Cyninja and Crimson said it all! It’s to cover.
That being said…

I personally allow my son to play. My 4 year old has his own account and plays regularly on his level 80, Asuran necro who he lovingly calls “My little”.

He loves to follow me and his Nona (Grandma) round in PvE and we have taken him in dungeons. He gets excited to do the same story missions over and over, calling them “Talks”. He has been known to go into WvW and help build siege while running round in random tonic forms. Our server seems to get a kick out of it as have other players who encounter the little guy. I’ve been known to inform people of him being only 4, so he won’t be a big help or might die a lot. The response? It caused a zerg to follow him to see what in the world a 4 year old can do in GW2! Many LOL’s were had by all. He calls anyone in game that helps him his friends and remembers every toon of nearly half our server members in WvW, he can tell us the names of each toon by looking. (He can’t read yet…as far as we know……dun dun duuun) It’s great fun for him and all of us as well.

That said, knowing there are older teens/adults in the game and some people can be mean and down right vulgar…He can’t see Team/map/say/emotes/whispers/party as I have disabled them. He only has guild chat enabled because it is our family guild.

:)

I wanted a means of crafting a legendary that did not include RNG. That is what they are implementing. Success

And the potential 30 days of time-gated crafting is significantly better than 3 years of waiting for RNG to yield a positive result.

The solution, of course, is to always be an asura. Everything they say is brilliant. It’s the closest you’re ever gonna get to being a kitten unicorn

Sweet adorable kittens guys! Just stop, pause please for a moment.

…We calm? Good, let’s talk for a moment.

For the past 3 years since launch, GW2 has broken many typical standards that were in MMOs. Questing, Resources, Loot/Tagging and even the holy Trinity have been more or less revamped towards one goal: Cooperation. Every single PvE activity we do, it is non-competitive, we work together towards it.

Many, many things at launch were difficult when this game launched. Dungeons were back then Arenanet’s original inception of end-game PvE content. Actually, a lot has changed since then, but the overall focus towards creating an environment to foster a friendly community rather than a selfish one continues to exist even now!

Raiding will NOT break any of this down. This panic is based on pure speculation, Raiding in GW2 should not be expected to follow the same principles we ALL fear.
- Loot is not competitive, we aren’t rolling on the same pieces.
- Attunements will not be there, those were…for a lack of a better term, absolute kitten and even former Raiders like myself admit it. What a load of bullocks.
- ANYONE can go into raids. From fresh new players to hardened veterans, bring 9 other friends or strangers it doesn’t matter! We all want the same thing!

…My point being, this game has done so much for every kind of player out there. Yes, there will be players that vehemently disagree with, or rather stick to whatever elitist moral compass they want. Who cares.

Raids are there as group content for everyone to participate in, to fail together, to win together, to cheer as someone gets something they really needed. To FINALLY take down that fiend who bars your way. There is no need to burn bridges, forge them instead. Raids are a chance for you and your allies to grow as players.

As a former top 1000 NA Off-Tank from Pre-BC WoW to End of WotLK, I have seen so much of what I haven’t seen in GW2 yet. However there has been a lingering…want for something like a Raid in GW2, with its combat that I absolutely adore. I may come off a bit sarcastic in game, but I am always willing to lend a helping hand (Ambient people who come to revive me from down-state helps with the humility). Nothing would make me more happy than to hear tales of victory from players who have never raided once in their gaming careers finally take down a boss that has troubled them so. The experience, and emotions are so just in that regard.

Thank you for taking your time to read my appeal to you all.

Yeah, I think people that already have all dyes unlocked should not get the Celebratory Dye Pack, but a Mini Queen Jennah instead.

That way everyone would be happy.

While I agree with you for the most part Nike, I do think it would open things up a bit.

I think we all know that there is strength in a Pillar guard that’s well played. Not everyone is a good player, most people can’t solo Grawl shaman or Lupi with their eyes closed while playing with their toes. To those a Pillar guard can actually make things much smoother.

Of course those types of builds aren’t needed, but if there were discussions on how to actually pull it off well and how it could be utilized effectively then maybe groups that could actually benefit from it wouldn’t be so opposed and preferring to wipe repeatedly to some of the harder encounters.

It’s been a long annoyance of mine about how polarized and extreme the community (mainly on the forums) is. There is strength in well made non meta builds(not staff sentinel AH guard…), and the Meta isn’t something everyone can handle. It’s certainly something people should aspire to, but there are strong alternatives.

Doesn’t mean I want to see a group full of these builds, but I do think many PUG groups would benefit from having a single Pillar guard or the like. But, at this point it’s so demonized that even a reasonable application of these play styles is seen as unacceptable and dumb. I think that could change if there was more discussion about the strengths of that type of play and less of a negative outlook on it.

“Guys don’t play GW2, it’s so broken right now, you have to wait until level cap for your character to have complete control over the build customization.”

“Oh dang OK; so you say you have to hit level cap to have everything unlocked on your character?”

“Yea what was Anet thinking with this one! Sure 99% of your time played will be at level cap, but that 1%, I mean, that’s like the most important, so why even bother playing!”

“Good looking out, dude!”

Yesterday my guildies decided to go to Queensdale and do a jumping puzzle. They are all high level fractal players, full ascended and probably as much AR as possible. They set up their party, checked builds and gear, made sure they had consumables and everything ready. They had snacks and drink close by their desks and was on voice comms ready to go. While I’m no fractal or dungeon player at all, I do sometimes listen to them in hopes I pick up a trick or two.

I could hear that one of them was really nervous. He kept saying “I have a bad feeling about this” a couple of times. They had gathered at the portal out of Divinity’s Reach and a group leader said “we do not know exactly what awaits us on the other side of the portal, so immediately when we have all loaded in, we stack and blast”. 5 seconds after that I heard the nervous go something like “yaoourgghhh”. It was too much for him, he cracked and threw up. The team was 1 player short.

I had no choice than to help my friends. The only ascended gear I have is weapons and trinkets. My armor is exotic. My build and gear was for WvW so not optimal. They gave me 250 gold to get new armor, runes and sigils. 20 minutes later I was as ready as I can ever be. Full berserker armor, check, berserker weapons, check, strenght runes, check, and so on. Proudly I ran to the portal where they waited for me. The group leader gave a speech, to inspire us all and then we stepped into the swirling portal.

Immediately when we loaded in, we stacked. Our glorious leader was quick though and commanded us to run behind the closest building corner and stack there instead, and not in the open. We were soon sitting on 25 stacks of might and every other boon, plus probably a couple of more that doesn’t even exist yet. Slowly we made it from house to house, and then from tree to tree.

Eventually we made it to the garrison, where you fight the elemental in the beginning. Good lord, there were centaurs out in the field. We stacked up again, more boons and even more boons. We pulled the first centaur just to see what it would be like and all I can say is wow. That fight was epic. We had to pull every trick we have ever learned to beat the centaur. We only had 2 people down in our team. The mesmer took an arrow to her knee and I our guardian mistakenly blinded one of the patrolling Seraph soldiers in pure panic.

We had a little breather after the hectic combat, discussed what went good, what went bad and so on. Then panic struck us all. The centaur respawned. The battle that followed was epic. Our discussion after the first encounter really helped. The blinds were perfectly timed this time. Our mesmers Time Warp, it was timed just in pure symphony with the Panic Strike that triggered from my thief, that allowed us to burst down the centaur without any losses to our team.

Our Norn elementalist promised to write a epic saga of this and propose to Knut Whitebear to make it part of Norn lore. We will see about that. After all, its Queensdale we are in. Not sure Knut cares about Queensdale. I might have to take it up with the Queen I guess. Anyhow, feeling brave and inspired, we continued forward.

3 hours later we made it to the Demongrub Pits. We were exhausted to be honest, but very spirited and happy. We had conquered every low level enemy on our way there with minimal losses. I think on average we were downed maybe 9 times each. Only our elementalist got killed when our rangers pet decided to attack something completely different and accidently pulled 2 mobs on us. We all logged out at the entrance, at a safe spot, and we will continue our adventure tonight.

TL;DR: I get it, its a bit annoying when you normally just want to breeze through these zones when you are there. But in the end, its not a big deal. You have a working build with traits and everything unlocked, and you can probably just run and do your thing without caring anyway.

I’ve decided just to spend a few hours per day in silverwastes or dry top to finish off the achievements. If I get a beta key, I’ll consider it a bonus. I’m not a fan of farming those areas.

screw the beta

SAB !!!!!

rotten.9753:

I wonder what’s the point of tomes then, if you already have the maximum numbers of characters or simply don’t want to create another one.

They make a lovely conversation peice for dinner gatherings and are extremely good paperweights. If you collect enough of them you can create your own pile to stand on while fighting MKII Golem

Introduction explaining how this is not a whiney hate post. Second line disproving the statement made in the first. Third line introducing the problems OP has with the new *insert mechanism here* that was shown in the blogpost.

Gross oversimplification of the proposed changes to *insert mechanism here*. Wild speculation of how this is going to ruin *insert PvE/sPvP/WvW/whatever you prefer here*. Assumptions about not being able to use *favorite build* anymore because of proposed changes to *insert mechanism here*.

Threaten to never play the game anymore if *insert mechanism here* gets implemented, while knowing deep down inside that you will keep playing anyway.