Guild Wars 2

There will be more elite specs over time. They don’t want to flood in a million new skills because of balance issues.

As to the territory, the beta is only showing 1/4 of one part of one map. There will be much more at launch. Also GW1 territory was basically linear paths so the actual playable area was not that big.

No request to my one and only account. Then again they did say it would be two weeks of rollout, and it’s not yet been one week iirc. The dragon minis all showed up just last Tuesday, right?

I’d like the first part of Glider and Itzel not to get any longer, as basic gliding and bouncy mushroom use are needful pretty early on in the first part of the first map. I don’t yet have a feel for the effort needed to advance the other lines. But keep in mind that you can only advance one at a time. Sure you can swap but I don’t see the point in that as it only means that much longer before you get to spend a point to unlock something cool. (I do see the point in having the function, because people need to be able to switch to something it turns out they’ll need sooner. What I’m objecting to is planning to hop around between them).

So the longer it takes for any one unlock, the longer it takes to get everything you want. All good for long term goals, so long as it’s not tuned to ridiculous levels like Radiant/Hellfire chestpieces or Yakslapper.

Laranthir’s first line addressed to the Commander had no voiceover on any of my alts. My norn Reaper used the “debriefed” comment as well that does not show in the text. On that latter at least it’s much easier for them to add in a few words of text in the chat box and speech bubble than to get the voice actor in to fill things in

I did their event my first time in and it worked all the way to the end, but on my third alt when I headed to it they were just standing on the first platform at the point where they split up. Definitely broken at that point.

You can waypoint out of the starting area and go anywhere in Pact Tyria that you wish, without touching the storyline. I think you can come back to do the story later, in another thread someone pointed out where to find the green star.

They’re the ones you accompany against the giants on the docks if that rings a bell.

I’m pretty tired so I’ll just make some short notes:

I tried out Chronomancer, Dragonhunter, and Reaper, in that order. I liked each one more than the last (though I disliked none of them). I might have liked Chrono more if I hadn’t wanted to test out brand new utilities, thus losing Mirror Image which is a usual Mesmer staple for me. I love a constant flow of clones/phantasms. Also it was the most complex of the three to figure out; I have yet to get a good instinct on using F5 or what any of the synergies are. I will probably make one of my mesmers a Chronomancer, but not all of them.

Dragonhunter had some lovely use for the traps, at least when the enemies came to me. There wasn’t much to do with ranged foes but charge up to them to drop traps on their feet, at least as I was able to discern in my first test drive of the profession. I did keep scepter/focus as a backup to the bow, and of course the bow could help out with ranged foes except it didn’t feel nearly as damaging as the traps. Both my guardians will at least try out being Dragonhunters.

Reaper, wow. So fun! The GS was faster than I expected based on comments, the shroud abilities felt amazing, the shouts were useful though not yet intuitive for me as to when best to use which. All my necros are heading for Reaper. Though I don’t actually use them for PvE as a rule so it may just be RP flavor for them. Otoh if it continues to be the case that each alt doing the story gets a mastery point for the account, well, all 14 of my 80’s had better step up to the plate.

Do any other parts of the game do that to you? I had no such reaction at all. I’m not RL claustrophobic in the slightest unless it’s people surrounding me rather than walls, nor do I mind heights, so I didn’t get the vertigo I’d have thought more likely in the Brink.

Games can trigger phobias, to be sure, but I’m not sure which parts of the Brink would do that other than some short tunnels.

I noticed that. Though I did get XP for the legendary mastery when doing the initial story on a new alt. Evidently that bit of instanced Silverwastes counts as Pact Tyria, but as you have to be in beta lands to access the mastery track UI regular live lands won’t allow it.

I guess you could progress it by making alts to run through the story and then deleting them to rinse and repeat (as a bonus, I think you get another mastery point for each alt that does so. At least my second alt got the point, I didn’t spot it on my third).

My third beta alt is a Norn Reaper. Mordy’s commands to his followers to slay us all were not heard. Also the disgruntled Charr that leaves when the Sylvari Commander elects to aid Laranthir stayed in camp to protect people when I was on the Norn.

KellyCDB, if you did the initial story step on a sylvari and heard a deep growly voice demand that its followers kill us all, that was apparently the part where we do hear Mordy. I was expecting him to try to order me about, so I didn’t realize that wasn’t audible to non-sylvari. Now I wonder what happens if a sylvari opens the instance with party members who are of other races — will the latter hear him or not?

I don’t think of myself as a super good player. I can certainly handle PvE and JP’s, so maybe I’m a leg up on people that can’t, but I’d be wrecked in PvP, or at least ineffective at wrecking anyone else.

Today I made a Chronomancer, a Dragonhunter, and a Reaper, then spent time in Verdant Brink on each one (by “time” I mean “so many hours I don’t know where the day went”). I did die a few times, albeit more from reaper roflcoptering off cliffs than from the mobs themselves. I didn’t do pure Berserker but I did a lot more of it than is my wont.

My verdict? Tons of fun, obviously there are things to learn about the map and mobs, but it’s far from overtuned in the portion we’ve gotten to. The scaling on filling the Ixtel food baskets might need work, though. I mean, it wasn’t deadly, but with just a few people working it those baskets never filled. At one point I had something like 15 grubs in a basket and it still didn’t count as full, then the bats came back … grrr.

Tomorrow I’ll try out a Shiro Rev.

One hint: Some of the time I spent was just standing still after creation, redoing armor and weapon stats, runes, sigils, traits, and appearance, then test casting all the new spells and utilities to see what they did. I didn’t go into the Story step in the default Celestial/Dolyak. This may have helped.

Ah, I did hear that. I was expecting things targeted at me.

I’ve made a sylvari Chronomancer and a sylvari Dragonhunter, and so far I have not noticed a single comment from Mordremoth. The Chronomancer was in a friend’s PS but then soldiered on through Verdant Brink long enough to get some Mastery points. The DH has just done the PS solo. I have Dialogue on max volume.

So I would love to know if Mordy is audible to anyone, or if perhaps he isn’t chatty in the parts of beta I’ve seen so far. Does he chat in Pact Tyria?

You need to have interrupts or fast attacks. Damage interrupts them and pushes them back a little. I feel your pain, on Donari I cannot deal with more than one Mender at a time in my SW rounds. They seem killable with Mesmer and Chronomancer and Dragonhunter, I haven’t really tried with other professions.

Darn it, I was going to beta after the PoI. But then beta started early and the next time I saw the clock the PoI had been over for an hour …. is it on YouTube yet?

Just a flesh wound was being sardonic by twisting the OP 180 degrees, Mercury. No worries, there’s no such email.

I did it on a guardian traited to support/heal. I also helped friends by tossing boons and heals at them. If you want help with it let me know (keep in mind that in 3 hours I’ll be doing beta stuff so I can’t guarantee having time to take a break thereafter )

I have the opposite problem: I want the SMS and have not gotten any prompts to do it. I know it’s coming out in waves. Where does the prompt appear? At login? On the launcher? In game?

Can I preemptively sign up for it via the account page without waiting for the prompt?

I noted in the betas that I could only occasionally hear what the channeled legend was saying over the other game sounds. Jalis most often, Ventari never. I don’t have any sound settings all that low, and I can hear NPC chatter in cities just fine. For this weekend I’d really like to clearly hear not only revenant legends but mordremoth mental whispers, so does anyone know which sound setting controls that?

For the beta revenant weekend I used the ley line staff when doing Ventari. It looked pretty good.

I’ve been collecting interesting hammer skins like Black Fleet and I made the ascended Terracotta one … not sure what I’ll settle on, it depends on race/gender/color palette. I find that I often like to go against the standard expected look for a profession. Eg my necromancers tend to be colorful and notably lacking in skull motifs and my sylvari mesmer’s fighting duds are subdued and close fitting, hiding all of him but his fingertips.

I haven’t really considered sword looks yet as again they depend on the rest of the revenant’s appearance. Nor maces, as I’ve not yet played mace as a regular weapon on anyone. Axe, hmm, I gravitate to Truth and similar real looking ones. But I have the Wintersday one and that might suit quite well.

There have been quite a few threads on the subject. The upshot is the Rev does not get special PS treatment and the head canon seems to be that they have misty timey wimey wierdness so they’ve either always been here after all or they are experiencing a past story (helps that it is in sepia tones when you are in LA).

Since I already don’t ICly have any of my alts as Pact Commander palling around with the biconics, I’ll roll with it as the PS not being canon to my alts’ stories, Rev or otherwise, other than the bits I can extract for flavor. Eg Donari has worked with the Priory — but as an adventurer/bodyguard for scholars, not as a scholar himself, he just likes Indiana Jonesing in old tombs And I used the “never knew parents” as a springboard for a year long plot about thinking he was adopted, only to find out his father actually was his blood father who had adopted to conceal an affair … forget all that White Mantle and gravestone stuff. He does know Countess Anise, because he’s a womanizing noble that she’s able to control on the rare occasions she needs a swashbuckler conman, but it’s hardly the close thing we get in the PS.

Since not everyone in Tyria can be the special snowflake, I let the PS be the story of what happened to other more important people and take my alts out into their own branching tales.

Details of the story won’t be spoiled in advance beyond what we see of its beginnings in beta tomorrow.

What we do know from trailers, dev comments, previous beta stress tests, and other hints is that the HoT story picks up ten minutes after LS2 Chapter 8 ended, that we and the biconics will head deeper into the jungle to fight fiercer Mordrem foes, and it appears that Canach will join the biconics. We also know that sylvari will be feared, sometimes with good reason.

We will meet two new types of Hylek, some floating beings that might be Mursaat, and pursue Glint’s egg. Rytlock will return and make Revenants a thing. There will be new boss fights, presumably story related in some fashion.

Knowing precise details in advance would ruin it for a lot of people. I’m looking forward to the “oh wow” moments and chewing glass on content before I even know what that content will do. Hints are nice so RP can set up storylines as harbingers of changes in our alts, but a road map? No thanks.

The problem is that everything we know comes from that article, and at least one part of that article has already been shown to be inaccurate. Therefore all we can rationally discuss before the PoI is what is in that article without definitive proof that it is valid information. Beyond that, ANet does a lot of iteration, so whatever we think we know in advance of official information is subject to change, as it will be even after the PoI.

I have no issue with your enthusiasm, but I feel you are spinning wheels a bit right now and a lot of what you want to discuss will become much clearer in under 24 hours, at which time we can more meaningfully review what is known.

Lordkrall is right. Hopefully you enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing you were listened to. I was part of the push three years ago for better chat tools for RP purposes and that still makes me happy. Revenant beta testers found a number of sludgy game play issues including lack of weapon swap and provided feedback that led to a lot of fixes.

If you’re part of the testing and feedback, you get a game closer to what you want to play. It’s like voting; if you don’t cast your ballot, you have no ground to complain about who won the election.

I’d lean to Pistol, Shortbow, and Mace, as those are the most goofy current legendaries and they did say they’d try to give us more serious versions. Longbow is … hmm, not so much goofy as a less universal aesthetic that doesn’t mesh with a lot of armor looks, but it’s a contender for one of the three.

This is the thread you want.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Tomorrow-s-PoI-What-do-you-want-to-know-about-Pact-Commander-masteries/first#post5353818

Why worry about what we know today based on a paragraph in a third party article (part of which has already been disputed by Colin) when we can feed the devs questions and get solid answers tomorrow?

The space is irrelevant, you get felined if you use that term.

On legendaries, I’ve yet to make even one because I can’t fathom getting that many T6 mats and I’ve never had a precursor drop. I’d most want Bifrost of the current set, because I love the rainbow effect and because I have more staff users than any other weapon. Since they announced there would be new ones I’ve been holding off even more since perhaps I’d want one of those enough to put in the effort.

I’ve waited close to three years, I can wait a bit longer to see if anything becomes a driving must have or else sort of thing.

Mtpelion, sure, a change to the weight system could be a very good thing. However, it would mean literally recreating every single piece of armor in the game, from scratch, thanks to the technical limitations inherent in their original design. Are you willing to give up on pretty much every other game change and fix while they divert all their resources to this?

Normally I don’t adhere to the “there are more important things to work on” counter to suggestions. However, this change would mean essentially stopping game development for months, so I think for once it applies.

I only just found out! At the time I posted before, that had not been announced.

Hmm! I am eager for all details, but lemme see …

- Will Pact Commander Mastery require the same time investment to advance as other masteries? I really like the idea of helping out new players but even with that urge deeply imbedded in my playstyle I’m more likely to be interested in more selfish lines to start such as gliding and jungle lore. Auto loot and city speed boosts seem fairly minor advantages for the time-resource investment.

I know that what Mastery you level depends on where you are getting the xp. Still, I can see a lot of players bah humbugging this mastery when making their first mastery advancement selections. Can you show us all the currently planned bonuses for maxing out this line?

Check the wiki on Silverwastes for details. The gist is that it is a map that goes through a cycle. First players capture and defend forts, building up their defenses; then players jump into sarlac pits to fight bosses, needing to slay 4 different fort bosses in 15 minutes. After that the choppers land to the west and players go in a multipronged lane attack against another set of bosses, after which if they want they go into a Pac Man maze for phat lewts if they can dodge the one-shot plant wolves.

Meanwhile completing events (which is what moves the map towards the sarlac pit Breach event) rewards things including shovels, which can be used to dig up chests. You buy keys with map-specific currency and if any one person digs up a chest everyone nearby with a key gets to open it. So sometimes people work the events, sometimes they form chest trains to get loot.

After one full cycle from Pact preparation through Vinewrath and Labyrinth, you will have enough loot to need 15 minutes to sort it out.

I think Colin meant he wasn’t sure where IGN got the info for that statement.

Thanks for clarifying, Colin. I’m not sure one weekend will be enough to test all the cool stuff! Which is why you have more than one tester

skullmount.1758:

Theres the panel about masteries Saturday evening (some info already announced here: http://t.co/G23CWH904E)
And theres whatever the announcement is during the WTS finals on Saturday morning (though I think its something PvP related).
Would be nice to get the release date as the morning announcement, but I highly doubt thats what it will be.

This. The height of GamesCom hasn’t happened yet. ANet has told us there is at least one big announcement coming Saturday, plus a big PoI on Friday. It’s like the OP is reading a mystery novel and is annoyed the detective hasn’t solved the murder in the first chapter.

They so far have had anniversary sales of all sorts of old items, and the anniversary is the end of this month, so keep checking.

They also had a huge sale right before the wardrobe change, though that left a sour note because they brought things back for sale a week or two before the change, when we didn’t know about the wardrobe and wouldn’t have bought duplicates had we known — I bought two more Rox’s Quiver skins in that sale for instance. At least they were nice enough to refund my gems.

She did! Her answer to everything HoT related is “banana scythe.” She said so in Twitch chat. “Release date? … banana scythe.”

I envy that iron ore. I seem to be perpetually low on iron, soft wood, and linen for making daily ascended mats. Not that I’m buying it on the TP but if you were to sell it I am sure many people would buy it and you’d make money.

You can use the skin of any armor you collect in the game so long as it is the right weight for your profession. You could kit out a newly arrived level 2 (level 1 if you have a bank golem) with level 80 exotic skins.

So peruse the TP and pick out what you want, buy it, and salvage it or use the Add to Wardrobe option. Then use a transmute charge to make your armor look how you want. You can’t change your statted gear without transmutation charges with very limited exceptions, to wit, the Heritage Armor gained by gathering a few HoM points via playing GW1.

Alternatively you could select a gem store outfit that you like (perhaps the Ceremonial Armor in order to have full plate) and apply that over whatever hodgepodge you are getting at level. But you said you didn’t want gem bought stuff. However, that would be a one-time expense to get something that all your alts of any weight could use forever.

Weapon skins are sold by players on the TP for a lot of gold, as they come from spending RNG-gained tickets at the Black Lion vendors. There is no armor equivalent.

We will definitely see a PoI this Friday, yes.

We will not see a PoI on Legendaries this Friday, no.

These are not mutually exclusive comments. Note that your first image doesn’t say what the PoI’s subject will be.

On today’s Twitch interview they assured new players that they could play beta this weekend if they bought this weekend, so long as they log in during the times the beta is active.

Not this Friday, Diovid, Rubi said “not this week.”

They have said the icons will change so you’ll know someone is in their Elite.

I saw that but put my trust in ANet and watched anyway. So far no harm has come to me.

But that is how. Go to “more posting,” click the Browse button, select the image file you want to use, click Preview to make sure the image is how you want it, click Reply. Maybe you have an odd format? I always have JPEG’s for loading in these forums.

They could also just be sculpted in to suit the Consortium’s desired theme-park look. They did pre-fab a lot of the stuff off site and drop it in.

Looks like they had some people find their way in. The recording is posted now. Of interest, a dev will be giving detailed mastery info in Friday’s Twitch live stream.

https://t.co/oO7FogDkvN around 4 min 20 seconds for the above comment.

I wasn’t sure how to figure out what time this will be, the numbers flew by fast and were in CEST. Hopefully they’ll post their usual blog heads up as to upcoming Twitch streams.

“Sticking it to us.” Yep, they’re showing us, all right, by not letting us throw money at them.

Historically the only reason ANet has not rolled out patches has been that they didn’t have something ready to go, and that in turn derives from them committing resources to longer term projects or else finding too many bugs to release what they have. (Yes, they do release very buggy things now and then, but they don’t do it on purpose. They’re not insane).

The veteran slots are rolled out weekly. So likely this Friday, according to the postings in other threads on this very issue.

I speculate that they are building up to a big anniversary sale and don’t want people reluctant to spend gems after recent purchases, or worse, people demanding refunds because they bought something that then went on sale. They’ve had a big sale each anniversary so far.

But yes, it’s felt very strange to have an empty Promotions tab for so long.

Thanks. By now the Periscope is likely over as it’s been 30 minutes since the start. Hopefully they’ll put up a good link for an ex post facto viewing as they did for the previous one.

Over on Twitter they said they’d be doing a Periscope behind-the-scenes at their GamesCom booth. Clicking the link only takes me back to the Twitter page. I was able to see a replay of the last Periscope via their link, so what do I have to do to see this one live on my PC?

edit: I do not have and will not have a Twitter account. If that’s needed to watch the stream, oh well.