Guild Wars 2

They buffed the Honorable Shield trait the other day.

It gives both +90 Toughness and 20% off shield cooldowns now.

Shield is great to use. I use Hold the Line + Shield of Judgement and its 11s of 33% damage reduction every 30s or so. Shield of Absorption is more situational, but in PvP I use it to knock people off ledges/cap points or to knock people away so I can rez friendlies.

PvE its very good for interrupting mobs or for spreading out packs of really hard hititng mobs.

I use Staff as my secondary. It has reasonable range as a ranged weapon, good AOE spread, and situationally good abilities. Damage wise it’s kind of meh, not as good as the Greatsword. I use the AOE heal when all my other stuff is on cooldown and it heals for almost 3k.

Thiefs can usually hit me for half my HP in their opener, but I can basically outheal them in my +Heailng set to the point I outlast them.

Signet with Purity is prettykittengood in PvP. 2 conditions removed every 10 seconds.

With a +healing set, it heals for about 80% of your HP.

It’s partially proximity aggro as well. The closer you are, the more like you’re going to be attacked.

The other races looked too generic, boring.

Humans – Looked too “supermodelish”, too fake looking. Like looking at a doll.
Norns – Big humans.
Charr – Not into furies.
Midgets – Look too funny.

Sylvari IMHO are the most customizable race. You can make yourself look like a plant or you can go for a generic elf look. Also, the different skin patterns and the color highlights really add more to your look.

The story telling cut scenes and general layout is more fluid and interesting than in SWTOR imho.

Also, the characters move around like they have ADHD or something and its annoying in the character creation when you’re trying to eyeball fine details.

The one thing that caught my eye is the skinner you made your character, the more your ribs show.

Have to look at the total package.

Guardians have a lot of defensive / healing abilities. They can take a serious beating before they go down if they’re specced for it.

Kinto.9485:

Hmm. Well it seems you don’t enjoy the dungeon because you don’t care about the cool dungeon skins. I can’t help you there =(. I’d honestly say you should just skip dungeons in this game then. I wouldn’t do them for experience or loot.

Edit: In reply to ComeAndSee

If the dungeons are going to require as much skill and proper speccing / gearing than I’ll just do them at 80. By then I can join a guild, get VOIP, and breeze through them.

Pre-80 they aren’t worth it. Crap loots, overtuned, and you have to grind them to get the items you want.

Maybe AC is just a fluke, but I’ll check out the other ones if I have the patience.

Kailthir.6384:

The problem is not so much the lack of the holy trinity (which is good btw), it the lack of people actually working together, and finding out what the new rolls or mechanics of a group is. Someone else already touched on it… People now just zerg the mobs without even looking at what is happening to the party.

If it’s just an area boss, no one takes the time to see what others are doing. They all just try to spam the target with everything they have all the time. Spawned extra mobs are not being picked up, toons being downed and no one reviving them(if it is feasiable). Just everyone out to do the most damage on the boss. I think it may be a combination of the learning curve for the game and people wanting to get the gold medal.

Area bosses and quests are just massive zerg fests at the moment. The second they pop up you have about 20 people converging. There’s no real risk of wiping. People basically camp on the spawn points.

The learning curve of most MMOs is they give you only a little bit of your tools at a time and you gradually add more to as you level. This game hands you everything up front except for skills and traits which aren’t hard to get. By level 30 you have most of the ones you need anyway.

Kinto.9485:

ComeAndSee.1356:

Kinto.9485:

It’s not really the dungeon loot you should be after, but the tokens =].

Which is just going to be replaced by gear I can craft anyway.

The tokens don’t seem worth the effort. You get what? 20 a run? Weapons need 200? Gear like 60? I rather just finish leveling to 80 than put any more time in these overtuned dungeons.

Not sure if you realized it yet, but you do NOT grind for gear in this game. You grind for skins. In fact, you can get the best gear( level 80 Exotics) in less then 10 hours after reaching max level. At least, I could if I wanted to spend the rest of my money.

When you do dungeons while you’re leveling you’re not doing them for skins, you’re doing them in order to acquire better gear and experience. I mean, you can buy gear from the relic vendors that are better. :/

Once you’re at lvl 80 than it’s about acquiring the proper gear and making yourself look unique.

I thought this game would of learned from Aion Online when you make the early dungeons too hard and it deters people too much from PvE in the long term. I mean, what’s going to happen eventually is people will start skipping all the trash by kamikazing and then having a stealther come in and res them after. It happened in Aion and Burning Crusade and I’m sure its going to happen again here.

Killing bosses in AC Explorer mode was like killing raid bosses. It takes 10-15 minutes of repetitively doing the same thing over and over because the bosses have so much health. My group didn’t fail at the end, but because we picked the impossible choice of options. (defend the stupid ghost artifacts)

NRChemicals.4029:

And please, for people complaining about “drops” in dg’s, take a second to understand where the rewards come from. You complete a dg on story mode so you can advance to explorer mode. in explorer mode, you recieve tokens after each boss and at the end after the last boss. These tokens are unique to each dg and each dg has a vendor in Lion’s Arch where you spend these tokens on gear, weapons and more. Any loot that drops in a dg is best used for vendor coin or salvaging.

Have you seen the cost of the items? The bosses we did manage to kill in EX mode only gave 5 each. The weapons alone are 200.

You have to GRIND these dungeons which is only feasible if you have the proper group comp.

Hawken.7932:

ComeAndSee.1356:

Seems like a waste of my time if you need perfect group, perfect spec, lvl 80, and voip to do a low level dungeon that drops crappy loot.

I’m going to pass on this dungeon because from what I’ve been told the lvl 80 ones are faceroll easier and give better rewards.

That’s a shame — as AC is quite fun, and very do-able without much wiping. Rewards and rewards… you know, it’s random. I’ve done AC a couple of times now and gotten some nice rare weapons, and other times with not much. Such is RNG, and so it should be. If you’re giving it a pass, you’re giving up the chance to challenge yourself and strive to work better with your fellow players.

When I’m in an actual guild, level 80, and geared/specced out properly than I’ll hit these up again.

Kinto.9485:

It’s not really the dungeon loot you should be after, but the tokens =].

Which is just going to be replaced by gear I can craft anyway.

The tokens don’t seem worth the effort. You get what? 20 a run? Weapons need 200? Gear like 60? I rather just finish leveling to 80 than put any more time in these overtuned dungeons.

Kinto.9485:

Looked at this thread yesterday, and set out on a personal quest this morning: Let me try and prove that Ascalon Catacombs Explorable Mode is doable without wipes when people are working together. So, after consulting with some guild mates, we strategized and theory crafted ways to make an ultimate teamwork composition with guildies who volunteered to do Explorable Mode with me.

Lets break this down.
Me a Warrior
A Thief
A Mesmer
A Gaurdian
A Elementalist

We looked at our vastly different profession composition and looked for which weapons for each of us could either support the party, debuff the enemies or even both! We then realized, “Hey, why not throw combo fields into this!? Lets get all hardcore with combo fields!”. We even took it a step further. “Lets trait ourselves to be more supporty!” We all payed no more then 3 silver 50 copper to respect into more supporty traits.

At the end of all this character building, we ended up with:
A supporty Warrior
A supporty Thief
A supporty Mesmer
A supporty Gaurdian
A supporty Elementalist

Dear god. We flew through Catacombs. In fact, each successive run got even faster. So here is how we did it.

Warrior: Mace/Shield &Hammer for swap
Thief: Dagger/Pistol or Sword/Pistol
Mesmer: Staff
Guardian: Hammer
Elementalist: Staff

Warrior, Guardian AND Thief stay front lines. The Thief will constantly use the offhand pistol 5 skill to apply a smoke field in between him/her and the enemy. Now the trick is, to get your Warrior and Guardian into that smokefield and have the warrior spam 1 while the Guardian goes apepoop. Each hit that anyone does to any enemies WHILE in the smokefield will apply blind. Now think for a second: If 3 people are constantly hitting the same enemy with each hit applying blind, how does that enemy hit you? Now, for the off chance that the enemy IS able to hit you, that is what that Warrior applying weakness is there for. Regen Banners is a plus!

Elementalist in Water Attunement: COMBO FIELDS EVERYWHERE!!! No seriously, we were regenerating like crazy!

Mesmer was awesome at applying conditions to our foes while granting boons to our party! We were able to give ourselves 25 stacks of might + the other boons when he copies over his boons to us. His Wall of Reflection was amazing for deflecting the Lieutenants Daggerstorm ability.

Okay, I meant to only type a bit, but this is turning into a full on novel. So instead I’m going to post a recording of one of our runs so you guys can see =].
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
TL:DR: AC Explorable Mode is doable without wipes. Here is video proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_zRO2FfSL4
About a 45 min run through the whole thing over 3 parts.

Seems like a waste of my time if you need perfect group, perfect spec, lvl 80, and voip to do a low level dungeon that drops crappy loot. I mean, Burning Crusade had some of the hardest hard mode dungeons I can remember when that expansion pack was released, but you were still able to beat them without the perfect group combination.

Also, I want you to show me a video of you doing the burrowers one where you have to defend the two ghost essences. Impossible.

I’m going to pass on this dungeon because from what I’ve been told the lvl 80 ones are faceroll easier and give better rewards.

It’s not about healing, but more about using all your abilities to keep your group alive.

You can’t sit back and heal because of the short range and long cooldowns of your abilities.

Really it’s like a class that can tank, dps, and heal all in one, but it’s a jack of all, master of none. I think this class fits me well because I like to do all of those things.

The staff is basically there as a healing weapon. I only switch to it when my mace stuff is on cooldown and use the aoe heal or when I want to give everyone around me a speed boost.

I like how the system is now. Basically everyone has to support each other.

I have a Guardian and even with heavy armor + shield we can’t take a beating without flopping over. If you spec. into it though you can get a lot of heals which makes you able to sit there and face tank some bosses.

Story mode AC is doable. I did it my first time and didn’t find it too hard.

Explore mode AC is ridiculously hard and impossible to beat unless you choose the right option (which we didn’t find out until after).

1. Spider Boss has this poison dot that lasts almost a minute long which just continuously mows down your group. Also, at the same time you have those gargoyle wall mounts that you have to destroy. This boss was hard, but we did it with a few run backs each.

2. Second boss, Lieutenant Kohler was ridiculously hard. He comes with two adds and you can only beat him by dragging him away and leashing the mobs. We figured out how to beat him, but it took almost 15 minutes. He moves slow so we just kept running away from him, but he would occasionally suck you in and instantly gib you.

3. Trash mobs to the Lovers chamber was just ridiculous. We wiped a few times on them.

4. The burrower boss is impossible. Eventually you get 3 different burrows up simultaneously on different sides of the map with those Stalkers running aroundkitteneveryone. The only way to win is to kill all the burrows which is impossible. We gave up after this.

I’m seriously disappointed by how difficult this dungeon is because the rewards aren’t worth it. You would have to run it almost 50 times to get all the items you want from the vendor.

I like challenging dungeons, not impossible ones.