Guild Wars 2

Once you have the target you want to keep attacking, hit CTRL-T. That puts a red targeting circle over its head. Until it dies you can reacquire it if you lose target (sadly very easy to do) just by tapping T. If you are in a party, the CTRL-T shows the target circle to everyone, and each party member can move it by CTRL-T’ing a different target or acquire it for themselves by tapping T.

I thought we were to wait for the invite/prompt/nag if we wanted SMS (whereas the authenticator was available the day of the announcement) but based on this thread I went ahead and proactively got it.

Rorc.4619:

(part 2 of 3)
MASTERIES
Does it provide meaningful progression?
In short, yes. As you spend more time in the jungle, you gain abilities (gliding, mushrooms) that help you traverse it more easily and quickly. One think I’d like is if the mushrooms that you can’t use yet didn’t show their names. I think it would be fun if you come back through an area later after gaining the mastery and then you can see all the things that you couldn’t use before because now your character knows what they’re looking for.

Thank you for that point, I was thinking about that this morning and forgot it again.

I can see two reasons for having the objects visible from the get-go: 1) it could be hard to code that yellow object name tags only show up to people with the right masteries and 2) seeing them everywhere provides incentive to get the mastery needed to use them.

But it would be so much more immersive if only those with the skill are able to spot the things used by the skill without getting right on top of the object. I know the “invisible yellow names” do exist, there are a number of game objects such as planks and bottles that you can’t see unless you cursor over them. In LS1 there were refugee items to find that didn’t show up by holding CTRL down. So it would be awesome to require the relevant mastery before CTRL works to show them at a distance.

I should have done the in game report when I got the popup reward but I was pretty tired and achy from a few days of playing So I’ll just note it here.

I cut my final waypoint a little too close (I wanted to put my Reaper in a safe spot so I could play her fast in the next BWE). When I waypointed I got the error message that no beta was active and ended up in character select. I reentered the game on my main, in DR, and he got the popup reward of a blue ??? and a mastery point.

My Reaper had done only one activity thanks to them mostly being inactive, the pit salvage one, and that was hours before beta ended. So I’m not sure where this reward came from; at the end I helped kill a champ troll, glided down to a vine, then tried to wp as described above.

I think the characters are active until you wp, zone, or log. I saw a revenant in DR after I got booted during a WP in the Brink.

There is no NDA. You can stream, screenie, and film anything you do in the beta and share it with the world.

Unless they fixed it, the sneaky method is to go in with a party. Don’t be the instance leader. Do some damage to the initial wurms, then let them kill you. Your friends then complete the fight without you and you’re never hit by rocks etc.

Hint: Don’t be a defense/support guardian when you do this. Even not fighting back at all it took forever for the wurms to end me.

Now it’s over. I waypointed and got tossed out of it. No ending event, alas.

It’s part of the tech that lets us beta in live servers. They make a mirror account and limit it. If they had a stand alone beta server you wouldn’t be able to do the PvP stuff at all, at least not with the masses, so you’re actually getting more than you would in other game betas.

On that latter question, you absolutely can glide in combat. It saved my butt a few times to leap off a cliff away from mordrem or dinos. Otoh if you glide too close to mobs they can knock you out of the air, le ouch.

How in the world is that a sylvari? He’s bearded, hairy, thickly muscled, caucasian flesh colored .. the pointy ear is the only vaguely sylvaran aspect.

I’d want to see the chest piece straight on, but for now I think it’s just an artistic interpretation and not necessarily anything in game.

What Fermi said. I’ve used a HEX since BWE2 and I couldn’t move around the game without it. But I just have the buttons bound to the strafe and back pedal keys; I don’t even do the scroll wheel spin to consume stacks thing, as I need my easy camera zoom.

Paulytnz.7619:

While it is true that Commanders can make squads I wonder if many do in PVE? Of course Anet would have the data for that info so perhaps they could add this feature or a similar to the mentor system. As for your example of multi guilds adventuring together perhaps this will be addressed with the incoming alliance of guilds that has been mentioned. If not it should certainly be looked at!

I know that as the only one in my guild with a tag, I’ve used the squad every time we’ve done an RP thing with participants not in the guild. The coming cross guild chat sounds more like each individual can see all their own guild chats at once. That won’t help if you need a discussion chat channel and the players don’t have overlapping guilds.

Really, the best answer is to make custom chat channels. You create and name the chat, you tell the people you want in it what it is named, they join the chat. That allows much more organic grouping of discussions as people can form interest groups, temporary coordination groups, etc. There can be issues of moderation, but these have been solved in many MMO’s already.

Failing that, the mentor tag needs to include a way to get a lot of people in focused conversation that isn’t map wide or in public /say or /em without them having to join a guild or go into an instance to avoid mixing up all the chat spam.

Ravion Hawk is right, it should be there. Select Two Handed Weapons on the left, then type “Priory” in the search field. You should see it.

Or open your hero panel on an alt with a GS equipped, go to wardrobe, click the GS, and look in your set of things to the left. Again you can type “Priory” in the search field to narrow it down. If it’s there, you’ll need a transmute charge to apply it to your current blade.

That would be nice. Alternatively, just put a basic merchant in at the start spot. Then we can sell the excess gear (this will help the new players who just joined for beta and don’t have enough coin for wp fees in the beta) and buy salvage kits (to help us consolidate inventory as we loot).

Right, everyone gets a glider when they do the mastery. The pre-purchase skin is just a fancier looking one with green energy trails.

Fay, Sea of Sorrows was head and shoulders better than the first two, to the point it was almost worth reading on its own without the context of being a GW2 player.

Emikochan, I think you and I have opposite opinions there. I have almost never found a game book to be a gripping read for any purpose beyond learning more of the game world (and I’ve been reading F&SF including media novels since the mid 1970’s). The authors are constrained by a world built by committee and requirements to stay in canon. Often they have an imposed agenda requiring certain plot points to happen regardless of the narrative value of those points.

I prefer fantasy that takes me to stranger destinations.

So the GW2 books are superb at giving backstory and an overview of the world, but not so good at characterization and plausibility. You can just see the tick marks getting checked off. One of each race. Many different professions. A tour of the landscape.

At least they’re fast reads (And as I said, the third one is much more gripping, as it deals with massive catastrophe and heroic response rather than with petty personal squabbles).

Malediktus.9250:

Mentor tag shows that you want to help people. Completly different from commanding.

This is why the mentor tag needs to have at least the same functions as the commander tag that have been used to adapt it to helping. Perhaps even more refined versions targeted specifically for the purpose.

leftyboy.9358:

My thoughts on reaper traits after playing for many hours.

Minor Traits

1 Reaper’s shroud- Simply plagiarizes other trait tooltips that effect shroud. No additional benefit like you see on any other trait. Death shroud doesnt require a trait to activate so why does reaper?

I’m having a blast with Reaper. After trying Chrono, DH, and Shiro Rev, I settled on Reaper to keep on roaming around with. I am in the middle of something else so I can’t be as detailed as you others in this thread — I just wanted to respond to this one point in the OP.

The initial minor trait in all the elite specs is just the activation of the spec and allowing equipping of the changed weapons and skills. That’s why it’s there.

EnlightenedNavigator.8296:

(also, this isn’t really related to this post, but I can’t figure out how to equip the HoT glider skin. can anyone tell me how to do that? thanks!)

If you stored it in your bank prior to the beta, remove it from the bank on the beta alt you want to use it and double click it. It will then show up on that alt when you glide.

If you did anything else with it, you can’t get at it for the beta.

There was another thread on this subject, perhaps they should be combined as I see good ideas in both threads.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Map-Bonus-Feedback/first#post5364435

Some good points but I’ll mention that the commander tag lets you make a squad whereas the mentor tag does not. This matters if you are coordinating an RP event with people from multiple guilds; you really do need an OOC chat channel to do that.

If they create the ability to make custom chats, and give us a way to distinguish between all the mentors on the map like we do with color coded commanders, then sure. Mentor tags could well replace commander ones. Though even then there should be a longish heads up, and an overlap. After all, people have to divert their mastery resources to becoming a mentor when they might really want to learn some good gliding tricks first.

It was from dev commentary at the time of Scarlet’s attack. I regret that I don’t have a link. I remember being shocked to read them saying that, though, so it really stuck in my head. The in-game implementation of LA always felt like a sleepy little bayside resort to me. Other than a few NPC dialogues about bodies in the bay they didn’t dwell on the devastation that dev comment suggested.

But I definitely recall a dev giving us those numbers. If only I could find the blog, forum post, or video containing it ><

ImLegion.4018:

I do however am a bit scared, giving us 25% of the map, how fast will I have explored the other 75%, cause this 25% went pretty fast. I don’t know if there will be more maps. But if it is just 1, I will have my thoughts with it.

Are you sure you explored it all? I thought I’d seen everything. Then I found an Itzel temple, a fungal cave, an eagle raptor aerie, a view into a closed off section of the map, an abandoned Itzel village full of spiders, and a ravine with a door in it (that I had to die to see, but hey, it was part of the map).

That sounds like a great way to lose an expensive weapon. I hope they come up with a more secure and faster means of spec swapping.

I’ve been building up a huge supply of them. I did recently use them on the one alt I’m leveling, but only because I wanted to get to the next level and get my 12 hero points a bit faster. So maybe one or two here or there to reach a goalpost I’d self-imposed as my “ok I’ll get that and then I can go make dinner.”

Use them when you can’t face that last bit of push to the next level, imo, otherwise save them for shards later.

You only need one Desert Rose skin for your own use, as it will then be in the wardrobe. You may as well sell the second.

On the severed dagger, ask yourself “will I ever have an alt that would use this?” If not, why not make some money? Believe me, I’m a packrat, I have many a skin that I have yet to assign to any alts. They’re account bound, though. The only still tradeable ones I have are ones I went to some effort to acquire in the first place because I liked them so much , and I just need the right alt to come along and say “mine!”

To me, simple possession isn’t enough. I want to use the rare thing and have fun with it. Otherwise it’s just wasted bank space.

PS I personally have zero interest in the severed dagger because eww, gross. This may be influencing my recommendation that you just sell the darn thing.

Rin.1046:

stof.9341:

Or ANet could just let you keep the weapon equipped but dummy out all the skills it gives.

I think this is likely what will happen. You will keep the weapon equipped but will not be able to use any of the skills.

I just tested this on my Reaper. Swapping out of the Reaper spec tossed my GS into inventory and emptied all my utilities that were using Reaper-specific ones. I loaded up some other utilities, then reactivated the Reaper spec. The changed utilities remained and the GS stayed in my backpack. I right click equpped it and it replaced my staff in my second weapon set instead of filling in the top set. I had to reset the utilities once more and put my weapons where I wanted them. (I also had to reassign the trait selection, but that’s standard since there are no build templates).

So it’s not at all convenient to just swap back and forth between Elite and Core. If you get shoved into combat right after you pick a new spec you’re hosed, and I don’t know what happens if your bags are full when your weapon gets removed.

This has been asked many a time. Sadly, it isn’t a matter of “reconsidering.” They’d have to rebuild every single map to allow for view angles not designed in at launch. You’re asking them to do a couple of years of work on that.

There weren’t that many survivors, though. Per the devs it was a city of 40,000 inhabitants and only 5,000 lived through the attack.

Still, they could be determined to preserve the way of life and culture in which they grew up. 5,000 is enough to form a core to rebuild traditions.

She must be the only one of your alts that is one of the professions with an announced elite. Apparently this red ! shows up only for those four professions and is thus related to the beta in some way.

I spotted this fellow yesterday when I went to the first WP in the Brink:

Event glitches aren’t so easy to capture in an image, but there are a number of visual oddities I’ve encountered.

- The little hero figures that show locations of interest, eg for adventures, have a popup label of “Airstrike.” That might mean something when the map is more fully deployed, but right now it doesn’t make any sense. Nothing at those locations says “bomb this from the air.”

- At one point I saw a broken chasm where others saw a bridge. I was able to walk across it but it was disconcerting. Perhaps there is an event that wrecks the bridge in live?

- A couple of times I got the Deploy Glider popup … when deep in a ravine solidly on the ground as low as I could get in that location.

- I glided west to a section of map showing inside the beta instance. However, I smacked into an invisible wall blocking me from going further. Fine, maybe an event chain leads in there or they just don’t actually want us in there yet. The bug lies in the fact that I scraped down the wall a bit and ended up standing high up in the air, able to peer down into the walled off area. I had to jump back to the accessible side to deploy my glider again.

I agree. Though I think unclaimed ones show on the main map whereas claimed ones don’t, so you can check that way.

Maybe a claimed orb could get a different effect or an extra, hmm, disk of light halfway up the light column? Something to make it visible at a distance “I got that one.” I do sort of like that you can still see them, since I’ll want to help friends get to them and that’s easier if I still have a visual marker on the location.

Marjory seems more likely. She’s been training hard with her sister’s sword and has a darker heart thanks to her sister’s death.

Or there may not be a “first” since the Reaper is just a refinement of Necromancer, whereas Revenant is brand new and needed an explanation for its introduction.

You need to do events in the HoT areas (basically, Verdant Brink) to get xp. If those are stalled, you won’t be advancing the bar fast. However, you can get a good hunk of the bar by doing the intro story step. So you can make more beta alts (deleting some at need) and run them through it repeatedly to get the mastery xp.

The portion done in the instanced Silverwastes applies the mastery xp to your Pact Tyria mastery line, likely Legendary Crafting.

Thanks. I hopped around some world bosses on my Reaper to test the map bonuses. It’s a little annoying to have to open the map to see what the next reward is. Perhaps it could be attached to the minimap, just a mouseover button that gives the same popup as in the map? I ask because using the map necessarily blinds you to your surroundings and renders you vulnerable to attack, and I don’t always have the memory retention needed to remember what the next thing is

As to the rewards themselves, they feel like small bonuses for when I’m in the map anyway but not worth the time investment if I specifically wanted that item. That might change with pricier things like Crystalline Dust, of which I still need 200 to complete making all Ascended armors. I’ll have to check the map to see if the Dust is a reward anywhere.

For now though it’s a pleasant extra but not a draw to make me want to play specific maps just for the bonuses, since I’m just not a farmer at heart.

This seems like a good spot to mention something I noted yesterday. I did an in-game bug report (though I think I failed to use the Beta part of the report feature, at least on the first report I filed, oops).

I was north of the Itzel village at a mithril node when the two leader Itzels did their conversation about the low food supplies. I could just barely hear them, and likely shouldn’t have been able to given my distance from their hut. But my character spoke back out loud to them like she was standing right there. It happened again a bit later when I was even further away. That converted the immersive nature of the character talking out loud to an immersion breaking chuckle

Ascended were originally soulbound but the amount of effort it takes to make one made it prohibitive for people with a lot of alts. ANet converted them to account bound as a QoL thing (and lo, there was much rejoicing).

Exotics are so plentiful and easy to get that it is easier to specifically gear up each alt with the set of your choice than to do bank swapping.

I fell into a pit (silly Reaver Shroud 2) and it did the insta-kill we get from leaving the map in a downward direction but it didn’t force-wp me. Instead I ended up dead on a flat stone surface near a door in a wall.

Good point, Just a flesh wound. (Side note, I really want to put more capital letters in your name — do you have a nickname like “Just” or “Wound” you’d accept? /grin). The only thing lost by giving up on the first two weeks of progress would be the two, and pending third, birthday presents, none of which are game changing so far. You might be better off starting fresh.

The only “waste” in the $60 spent three years ago, OP, is not having played the game. That money bought those of us who stuck with it thousands of hours of play and seeing the game grow and change. ANet’s not obliged to give you a cut rate on the expansion simply because you spent money on them three years ago and then ignored their game.

I had forgotten the Map Rewards system was in this test. I think that’s because once I saw that we couldn’t advance Pact Tyria Masteries outside of the Silverwastes beta instance I got it in my head that there wasn’t much new to do in the core areas.

I’d like to give it some testing today. I’m pretty sure one must be on a beta alt to experience the changed system, is that right? And where do you look for the UI people are mentioning? On the map?

That’s odd, I didn’t hear people talking over each other except on my 4th playthrough when I rapidly triggered the dialogues leading to aiding Laranthir. In fact one of my pet peeves surfaced when Taimi began an asuran aphorism and Braham cut her off: in a RL interruption, the first word of the interruption overlaps the last word of the interrupted sentence. But in game dialogues or bad movies, the actor being interrupted stops mid word, there is a pause, then the next actor’s line begins. Jars me every time, since the person talking shouldn’t know they are going to be interrupted at that point.

For the volume, go into your sound settings and slide “Dialogue” to maximum. It won’t help with Rytlock’s lines in the cinematic, which are too quiet, but you should hear the rest of the dialogues just fine. You might also want to lower the music volume in case that’s drowning out the chatter.

Anyway, I wonder if you had a weird lag or something? Because for me there were distinct pauses between every line.

Followup on my previous quick post on impressions of the professions:

I tested Revenant today with Shiro/Jalis. I used Berserker armor and … um … Sentinel trinkets I think? I felt reasonably effective, even soloing a pile of spiders in the Itzel village area. However I found it difficult to keep in mind which mix of Legend and weapon I was in. The variations led to a lot of complexity moment to moment and I died a couple of times thanks to forgetting if I was ranged or melee at the time.

This is not a bad thing. It just means Revenant may not end up being a main profession for me and should appeal to those who enjoy Ele attunement dancing or Engie kit swapping.

My guildie trying a Rev at the same time as me did staff with Shiro and said it had pretty amazing damage. I stuck with hammer (and sword/sword) as I have a reasonable feel for hammer skills by now.

I still have had the most fun with Reaper, which feels most intuitive to me. I have not tried Tempest and likely won’t because I like the four alts I made and don’t want to unlock the wp’s in the Brink yet again.

Now to try to find working events so I can get Updrafts then begin work on the Itzel language. Reaper … awaaaay!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, there you go!

Any links to the video?

I can’t find it (not that I can -ever- find livestream videos without someone else giving the link) but I did find this summary:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3g95oa/gamescom_mastery_panel_livestream_notes/

Ah thanks, that makes a ton of sense. If Laranthir ever gets over his fear of parting ways with his charr buddy at the first platform, I’ll tag along with him.

It happened on time. Ms. Cox sat down and spent some time explaining the mastery system (nothing new to those of us who have been following it) with some videos of it in action (we saw glider leaning techniques, and learning to use your heal skill to remove blue glue from your body in a fight where the enemy spits the stuff on you). There were no reveals or surprise information.

Now, if there were some other actual panel with multiple devs, I did not see it.

JayMack.8295:

Adventures provide mastery points if you get gold, usually 2. So complete them.

There’s a mastery point you can reach with your glider as well.

Are there any Adventures one can do? I decided to do the vine burning one and it was disabled, as have been all the others I’ve found.

My second alt going through the starter beta story got a mastery point as a reward for that. I didn’t notice if my third did, I think I was groggy and distracted at the time.

Watching the PoI now, here are the questions that occur to me:

Will there be color choices for the Mentor star like with commander tags? To help discern which mentor in a map you want to go to?

What is the range on the new auto loot? When I was sniping Mordrem during an escort I could see there was loot on the mobs at the bottom of the cliff but of course could not abandon my post to go get it.

I assume that even starting with a stockpile of mastery points veterans will still have to spend the time XPing them up for each unlock. Is this correct?