Guild Wars 2

That’s what I do for the previews of codes. I whisper to my alt with the easiest name to type. No one gets spammed but me (though I do get a double of each whisper, thanks to seeing Sent and Received).

Reminiscent, yes. But until they deploy hundreds of tiny feet, they dare not call themselves … Luggage.

Call outs to devs are against forum rules, actually, though this is not squarely on point it does indicate a preference:

“Do not engage in staff call-outs. Using the words “ArenaNet” or any staff member’s name will not expedite the answer to your query.”

The forum rules don’t explicitly say not to demand dev answers but it has been made quite clear over the years that the devs are less likely to say word one in a thread asking for their comments than to contribute to a more general thread. They simply cannot allow forum posters to deliberately trigger dev commentary, or every single thread will say “devs please respond” and suddenly they have no time to do anything at all except handle forums.

So while it would be nice to hear them explain the reasoning (and I think the people theorizing that it’s in order to prevent “wasted” XP in the Halloween content that could go to masteries), they aren’t going to do so just because you ask, no matter how nicely you do so.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

It takes about 26 seconds now with tomes.

Tomes took me longer, the one time I did them (for my proto-Reaper norn). I had rewards to select, inventory to manage …

But the OP isn’t looking for a faster leveling experience, s/he just wants to know how long to expect while smelling the roses on a thief.

Where in game is it pronounced out loud? I’m guessing in the PS? I never noticed it, and though I am American I have always pronounced it “key” so I’d hope “kway” would have been jarring to my ears. I’ve done the Vigil defense of Triskell more than once, too.

I was trotting around Dredgehaunt collecting Hero Points for my one-day Scrapper today (just Orr left to go of the 189 points, then any bonus non-tracked points I care to get, yay … and then I have nine or ten more alts to gather HP on, boo). As I headed past some Jotun to the commune point with a vet ghost Jotun guarding it, a candy corn node popped up against the cliff wall, just for a moment, too fast to screenshot.

I know that post-Halloween we get these ghost corns, as it were, but seeing one in advance is kind of cool.

Aye.8392:

THIS will be the year I finally complete the clocktower!

Can’t wait for Halloween

Share your secret plan! Because I can’t beat that sucker, not when I mouse turn, and I have zero WASD skills. The best I ever did in six hours straight trying the first year was getting to the point where you have to jump down towards the rising whirlpool to get on the last spiral up … and that rising whirlpool? It had risen.

The second year I did it just enough to confirm I still couldn’t mouse-control my way up the constant right turn spiral and gave up

They’ve still promised us a Guild Chat on Legendary Weapons. Not today, I guess, there’s no sign of any Guild Chat at all that I can find with under 1.5 hours until it would begin. Anyone know if we get a stream today?

Maybe the filigree grew or got otherwise filled in? So Saul saw filigree but the walls are fully gold clad now?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Halan.7931:

How long will it last? I want to start a Revenant on fresh HoT account, so will start on 23, will I be able to participate in events? Are they for 80 lvl?

The places like the Mad King’s Labyrinth are level 80 areas. I can’t imagine chars doing well in there before around level 50. Not only will low levels get one shot over and over but they won’t be able to do enough damage to get loot.

Actually, the Labyrinth scales you up to 80 but you still get level xp. I got my Asura Necro something like 20 levels in there just zerging in circles and it wasn’t even how I spent all my time in game and in life. ANet’s always been good about making sure that everyone can join in temporary content.

As to having to choose between GW1 and GW2, it depends on how much time you have. An hour a day? Yep, might have to choose. Four a day? Well, now, I’d think you could split the time up in some manner and get full experience of both events. But hmm, if you add in doing HoT stuff, things might could head for the crowded side.

Hmm, I hope that the info in that blog is also discoverable in game. It actually felt rather disappointingly like a spoiler to read that. I know, I know, ANet can’t win, they either give us too little info or too much. But now I feel like I have meta knowledge that my characters simply wouldn’t know yet

If it is also info that unfolds during stories and NPC interactions, I can let my characters learn it more organically as they come upon Tarir.

I left out any comments on build/gear for leveling thief because I leveled my only thief in the first month of the game. Everything’s changed since then, though I just stuck with how I’d built him because it suited his RP. I’m the last one to tell you how to be efficient He was D/D // P/P for a long time, until Bonetti’s Rapier came out and I learned S/P and added Shortbow for event tagging and ranged work. I’ve always traited him for max initiative regen, given him a couple of stealth utilities, and he’s always been sadly ineffective in dungeons. When he goes Daredevil I’ll rework him substantially, methinks.

Meanwhile for leveling yeah, just do what feels fun. I do suggest Hide in Shadows and Shadow Refuge because they let you gallivant past all the aggro as you explore, at the cost of slotting more offensive abilities. Cycle through various weapon sets for five to ten levels at a time to get a feel for what works for you; that’s how I figured out my Guardian was most fun when I had scepter/focus on her, which I didn’t equip until her mid-30’s.

xdarkwind.2673:

unsure here left upper extremity paralyzed by a massive near fatal right sided ischemic stroke on 1-13-2010

Xeveniah Darkwind…

I’m sorry to hear that Was that meant for this thread?

They might open up another raid test given how few testers managed to get into the raids last weekend. So that could be a benefit. Also there is a title, Maguuma Trailblazer, that only prepurchasers get. I’m not clear on whether the spiffy green smoke glider is only for prepurchase or goes to anyone buying Premium or Deluxe ever. I do think the unique guild hall decoration is only for prepurchasers (I could be wrong).

My thief always gets first look at new content, so he’ll Daredevil his way through the jungle. But my heart belongs to Reaper now. I will have at least two of them — one of my three necros will become one, and I loved my norn Reaper from beta so much I have already created her, tomed her to 80 (first time ever doing that) and geared her up to match my beta build. I’ve also only opened 3 trait lines and ignored skill lines I almost never use, then done one of the HP zergs, so she has 250 HP ready. My existing necro only has 190 HP now, with DT/SW/WvW available to eke out some more, so my norn may be my first full reaper if they really do make us gather 250 HP per elite.

Hmm, come to think of it, if the final two unlocks on the elite wheel are just skins, then I don’t have to achieve 250 HP on everyone, just one per profession. A small victory … gods, there are so many of them!

Trying again, for some reason the picture would not attach:

This pic is from beta but I’ve exactly reproduced her as a necromancer ready to be a Reaper. Magnus’ Right Eye Patch (Flare/Caramel), Flamekissed Vest/Legs/Shoes, Profane Gloves (all Midnight Fire). In beta I used the Primitive Mantle but as I’m not so much into skulls in live I’m sticking with the tiniest possible shoulder and hiding it more often than not.

One of the HoT changes will be tracking of such things, like we see in the karka hatchling hunt for Princess. I will work on finishing Dive Master and Dry Top coins once that is in place.

So if you can wait 2.5 more weeks, you’ll have a much easier time of it than repeating all the dives.

Time to queue ALL THE THINGS.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/phantoms-hood-returns-to-the-gem-store/

Some outfits and minis too, per the blog.

I keep most looks reasonably stable but some of my alts have gotten notable changes. The biggest alteration was for my charr ele; she even got her last name changed thanks to her warband guild going inactive, from Razorstorm to Stormburn (which in the game font looks like Stormbum … oy). Donari has only gotten a new hairstyle, and it’s so hard to choose between the ponytail and the dreamboat loose cut. My ’vari necro has also gone through a number of hair changes (and a ton of armor looks but I think this thread is about more permanent choices than armor + dye). Just a hair change for my norn Ranger, too, from a dark fall to an upswept wheat blond crown. My human necro went from a soft mohawk to a thick hairsticked bun and it softened her face considerably without my changing anything but the hair. The rest of my alts remain as they were when made.

Didn’t they say on Guild Chat that guilds could possibly have their halls in the first weekend? I thought it was just 100 gold to start the mission.

I’m sorry I didn’t screenie the map, and I can’t google up any images showing the in-game map from this weekend. When you look on the map there is a brown line heading southwest from the entry WP. You follow that, at one point you go over a narrow green bridge, then you switchback and spiral upwards until you are at the camp with Faren’s wp. There are mushrooms to help but they aren’t needed (warning — I found one that liked to hurl people at right angles at the last moment, leading to a lethal splat. I was much less trusting of mushrooms thereafter, at least when heading to events and not wanting to run back if I died).

Generally about an hour of active play (doing events etc) nets you a level. Any dungeon path gets you around 3/4 a level, I think, but that’s not solo content.

My estimate on time may be off since I don’t focus on my leveling rate, plus I have a lot of account bonuses from AP that tend to accelerate my XP. Looking back at old screenshots I see that my first 80 (a Thief) was 80 by early October 2012, and I began him Aug 25, 2012 and played quite a bit (I took the first week off work, then devoted my evenings and weekends to the shiny new game, doing all the rose smelling in the world as well as some RP sessions). I did have alts I was working on at the time.

I don’t seem to have a pic of turning 80 but here is one from Oct 2, 2012, with him at 80 (and dressed horribly), with my other alt levels showing to help you gauge the time it took.

In most games the prizes are way better, they give you the best in slot gear (which you need in order to get to higher tier raids). There is no gear treadmill here, but ANet raid designers have said that yes, you should be getting better stuff than two blues and a green for succeeding against raid bosses. Ascended boxes and legendary armor precursors are the sorts of loot they envision for rewards.

Warlock.7136:

I am aware of the quote command but it quotes the whole thing and when i try and cut out parts it cuts out everything and leaves a code command and no text on the forum.

I can help you with this part, anyway, though I am too brain dead from my day to coherently address your central concerns.

You click the little backwards arrow on the bottom right of the post you want to quote. That puts up the whole thing, with quote code in brackets at each end, including embedded quotes. Trim out everything you want to remove (as I just did to your post), making sure that any embedded quote brackets have a start and end set. Do not delete any of the brackets in the text you are keeping. Then type your comments after the final bracket. Voila!

That’s pretty accurate. Typically (not necessarily this way in GW2) a raid is a souped up dungeon for larger groups of people that takes longer to complete. It will have more complex mechanics and less forgiveness of player error.

Wokao.7394:

Agemnon.4608:

Physical copy? Welcome to the 10’s buddy where we can directly download a game from the comfort of our home. We have Steam and other excellent online stores that outright obsolete places like Gamestop.

Well, I’d like to put all my games on the game shelf because they are nice to look at and I want HOTS to be among them.

Did you ask them for “Heart of Thorns” or did you ask for “HOTS?” Because the latter is Heroes of the Storm and they may have gotten confused.

I think the problem is that the “Wielded” preview puts all two hand weapons in the right hand, but the bow is supposed to be held in the left hand and drawn with the right (per game mechanics, see other threads for folks asking for left handed characters). So the preview displays the weapon as it will look on the character, except shifted to the wrong side of the body for the grip. It might be hard to code it to be treated as an offhand weapon in the preview.

We do, but only in beta areas. So in the HoT jungle and in the instance SW area, the mastery bar will progress, but in the live areas it will not.

They are vertical spirals of white lines in the air. If you get up to the canopy at night you’ll see some, definitely there are some near the Tetrarch fight.

I didn’t realize you could train updrafts, I thought we were forced into basic gliding and bouncing mushrooms and then were out of points. I hope someone manages it and flies high.

I’ve seen a few comments about being locked to two points. I’ve leveled Updrafts now, and would really like a third point so I can spend it on that. Is it possible?

Look to the wiki for full details. Short form (and will change in the new HoT system):

A fractal is three randomly selected short scenarios in a row, followed by a random fourth. Your personal fractal level goes up as you do fractals at or higher than your current level. At levels 1-9 you need no special gear. After that you start wanting agony resistance to absorb the unblockable damage that comes at various points.

At higher levels, like, um, 30? There start being special “instabilities” that give extra handicaps to fighting in the fractals.

I can’t help you with Necro, I prefer Mesmer for fractals and dungeons.

18. The thread title. “Things I’d Like to See Fixed” might work better.

The opening cinematic is also somewhat off. The video jerks around and not all of Trahearne’s lines are audible. For instance, "If rescue doesn’t come soon, there won’t be — " and the rest is silent though the text still says “anything left to rescue.”

Has anyone recorded the opening cinematic from HBWE2 and from this one to compare them for changes? I really do feel something’s been made annoyingly choppy.

The loincloth is an awesome upgrade. He definitely should get at least a bit stubbly and more tan while he’s running around nearly in his altogether. I also want at least one good Tarzan yell out of him, applied at a perfect moment in the story.

However, while I enjoy his comic relief I feel that he can’t actually be that much a buffoon. He survived hours alone in Mordremoth’s jungle with a beat up sword and a bottle of wine. He survived falling (literally) into Scarlet’s clutches. He was even good in the fight against the bandits in the early human noble PS.

I so very much want him to be E, with all the foppish buffoonery a well-done Scarlet Pimpernel style cover.

Here’s his new look. Sorry for the poor composition and the odd angling, it’s hard to get a clear view when a zerg is surrounding him.

I almost never delete an alt, though I did trash a level 3 female sylvari thief after using a makeover kit on her because she wasn’t clicking and I really didn’t want to level a second thief.

But I do make multiples of most professions (just one each of the Mediums, 2 to 4 each of Light/Heavy), always different races so far, to get a wider range of armor options. I try to do substantially different builds for each, and favor different weapons as best I can (all my mesmers have a GS, all my necros have a staff, I just don’t want to play them without those).

But no, I have not rolled a new race simply because I didn’t like the race I was using. I’ve done it to have more RP stories and more gameplay options.

SpyderArachnid: Your theory would make sense if they hadn’t given us a number of other head pieces as helms that once were town clothes. All the glasses, for example. The sailor’s beanie, too. So they must have some policy reason to leave out the ears and the aviators. Well, maybe they did batch out a lot of conversions to helms and just left those out for some reason and then were all hands on deck for HoT so even a small non-HoT project could not be done?

Speaking of helms, I’d love more hats that have designs aimed at concealing the loss of hair until such time as something can be done about the loss itself. The Ringmaster hat does that very well; the pirate hat does not (though the hanging fabric flap is better than being bald). And I continue to desire a good floppy cut and slash landsknecht hat with plumes. Just flop it down in back to hide the base of the skull and then we can pretend the hair’s all tucked up inside the hat

edit: Come to think of it, the bunny ears are a helm now. I have them in my wardrobe and used them on a revenant. So it’s not even a project waiting to convert them, they exist.

I don’t think that one took money, just corn cobs. It came out last year, perhaps it shall be vendored once again this year.

I have many shots but this was the start of the first Tyrian Halloween for me (ok, not the very start. But this is an easier image to make visual sense of than the hands reaching up to grab the lion).

And a bonus pic of a guild group in the Madness dungeon after clearing it.

I’d be sad to get a precursor on a beta alt, yes. But after three years of play and never getting one, well. I really don’t think the odds are that this would be when it happened, not nearly enough to make me skip all the beta fun.

Although I am sad about the glitch making things too easy and the much worse glitch causing raids to be canceled for the weekend (I’d have gone to see The Martian last night if I’d known for sure I wouldn’t be able to join a raid run), I’ve had a lot of fun testing Druid and Scrapper.

I also am pleased that I did not find a single glitched event. I don’t think anyone’s commented on that due to focusing on other things but remember how the events were bugged to a fail status the last two times? This time Ordnance and Faren went off exactly right every time I played them and nighttime events were as they should be (though I did find one spot that wasn’t as nerfed as others, or at least remained too hard for a Druid to solo, to wit the rally point above Faren’s wp. That’s a very dense pack of mordrem and tendrils to deal with). Ok, on Ordnance the salvage parts were a bit scarce, I got the feeling that they were limited in how many one person could find in a day and if you’d done the event the previous cycle you weren’t going to come across more than one or two the next time.

The bright side of losing out on raids for tomorrow is that I can take my time making two more alts to see how Daredevil and Reaper have progressed, as those will be my first elites in HoT and I want to be able to give some feedback on their current status.

I am so looking forward to launch and seeing all the stuff that’s been cut out of betas to avoid spoilers.

The only quick-type things I’ve found are asterisks to make bold text and underscores to make italics. That’s * bold text * and _ italics _ sans the spaces by the surrounding symbols. I’ve stretched those two text alterations to cover a lot of emphasis in posts.

Maybe this is why I haven’t figured out the break bar. I don’t think any of my beta alts have been able to do much against one except in the first reaper test when we were all chaining the wyvern down. So I’ve remained befuddled as to which of my skills would do thing one to the break bar and just had to hope someone else was hitting the right skill while I kept on doing my normal strikes.

If the answer is “no skills will affect the break bar this weekend,” then I feel less like an idiot

There is a fairly full exploration of the Gilded Hollow in the first Guild PoI.

http://dulfy.net/2015/06/19/gw2-guild-hall-points-of-interest-livestream-notes/

I enjoy Druid. I ran a male sylvari Druid around the Brink for a Faren event chain, then did a couple of HOTW paths with guildies and got a feel for the heal synergies and timings. I felt robust in fights (especially with Gatling the bristleback at my side) and not easily downed or killed, though that could be thanks to the difficulty nerf + staying at range with the staff most of the time.

Speaking of range, though, glyphs and staff don’t work so well together since the glyphs fire off at my location. I mean I can use staff close up, no biggie, but when I’m at range my utilities don’t get much use. Since only Druids can use the staff, and only Druids can use the utilities, it seems odd to have such a range dichotomy between them. It makes the package feel less effective, like one really has to choose either the new weapon or the new utilities for one’s build but not keep both.

I felt this even more strongly as I chose a longbow for my alternate weapon. I almost never felt the need to swap to it, the staff was doing pretty well. Perhaps if I had melee weapons as alternates using the glyphs would flow better. Yet there it is again, the glyphs working best with something other than staff.

What to do about it? I hesitate to ask for ground targeting the glyphs because that tends to overall slow down their use. Maybe there could be a trait to make them ground targeted so players could individually choose as they prefer?

I didn’t manage to play Scrapper very much thus far, since my masteries didn’t unlock thanks to my being in a friend’s story instance on the first run through and thus I swapped over to Druid to get the unlock.

But I did run Scrappy Jones around the Brink a bit, with hammer and lots of drones. I really like hammer, I like the drones as well especially since they work in tandem with the hammer, and I felt reasonably durable (though that could be thanks to the difficulty nerf). I do think I’ll dump the elite because I have more useful things I can do in a Verdant Brink fight than vanish for a few seconds.

It did feel a bit restrictive not having a ranged attack of any note. I’ll want to change things a bit to have more flexibility on fighting distance. That’s a build choice, though, not something intrinsic to the profession design; a hammer Scrapper with gyros is going to be dedicated to melee.

I tried the Function Gyro on some downed players in a champ fight. It worked, but was clumsy because I had to manually click them, then hit F — it was easier to just run up and rez while keeping the champ targeted. Would it be possible to have the gyro pop up if anyone’s downed in range and automatically go to them, the same way we can just hit F when next to a downed person? Sure it might not always get the intended target, but neither does nearby rezzing if there are a few people down.

It’s wonderful and very short-lived, this giant form. I have a trait that procs it when I get low on health, so it’s like Gatling’s got my back. Besides, he needs to be big enough to have pockets to hold all those raptors he’s collecting …

I made it back in on my Druid. But I’m stuck as a blue dorito commander (I made a yellow tag squad initially) and cannot leave the squad or invite anyone in or join anyone, as I get the error of the player being in another group or guild.

Bedtime for me

I made a squad with my Druid next to the Raid Portal. And the game booted me. Now my beta alts get network errors.

My live account can log in but has the UI stuck on the squad with error messages when I interact with it.

You have to go inside the raid entrance to get the ascended stuff. The last I looked the Squad UI was bugged and you need a squad to enter the raid, so …. no ascended until that is fixed.