Guild Wars 2

Oh man, I totally called it. Just last night I was thinking about Revenant and the class ability, trying to figure out how it would work without being too similar to Elementalist and attunements. And I thought “Well, what if it was a reverse Attunement. Attunes change weapon skills, so what if Revenant’s changed utilities instead?”.

I guess now we see how dramatic that change is, but if I continue to be correct in my prediction, then its going to basically be a completely different utility setup to any other class. Revenant won’t have a choosable set of utilities where you can slot different skills into slots like other professions, but rather will have a set of utilities / heals / elites for every “legend”. Rather than setting up your utilities advance and being unable to change them during battle, Revenant will instead be able to use any of their utilities during battle by switching to different legends. So they’ll essentially have access to all their utilities at all times, but of course limited by some kind of cooldown on swapping legends.

I’ve also really been wanting Ranger to use some magical weapons with nature magic. While everyone else was clamoring for rifles or pistols or hammer or whatever for Ranger, I’ve always wanted a staff or scepter (I actually was preferring scepter personally, so I could go Scepter / Warhorn, but staff should be really nice too).

So yah, I’m pretty happy with Druid. Although I hope they don’t change the core playstyle too much. I absolutely LOVE the way Ranger plays right now (even though I know I’m in the minority there), so if Druid changes anything with the Ranger playstyle too dramatically I might be pretty torn.

Like, it would be the absolute worst if they gave in to the constant demands for less pet reliance with Druid, since I love the pet synergy (again, I know I’m in the minority). If I had to choose between Staff or the current pet dynamic, that would suck. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case so far, and Druid isn’t really the type of specialization I would expect to be less connected to pets / nature, so I’m not too worried, but I’ll be happy once we get 100% confirmation on what exactly Druid does besides just give you a staff.

I’d assume the main “difficulties” with adding brand new weapons would be making dozens of weapon models to make the weapon type feel fleshed out compared to everything else. As well as giving it to multiple professions so that the weapon type itself feels well integrated, which comes with the challenge of adding multiple new weapon skills to multiple professions.

Not really an issue with something like making land spears, since the models already exist (they’d have to flesh them out a little, but nowhere near as bad as beginning from scratch). And there are already a bunch of classes who can use spears (underwater only, but still), along with the fact that specializations mean they already have to come up with new skills for existing profession. Give land spears to Revenants by default, and maybe one or two other classes through specs, and between that and the underwater uses they’re already well-integrated and fleshed out.

So I’d say its possible that land spears could potentially happen even with the “no new weapon types” rule in effect, just because they aren’t really NEW and wouldn’t have the main problems that a new weapon type would.

I was under the impression that reason Necros were considered “bad” in dungeons had more to do with the lackluster party support Necro has. No blast finishers or fire fields for the almighty might stacking (well, one blast finisher, but tied to a minion), no party particularly helpful buffs like Fury or Stability, no projectile reflects / blocks, ect.

If all it takes is a decent melee DPS option, then I’d think Dagger would fill that role just fine. So I’m not really sure GS being a pure DPS option would really help much in that regard, though I’m not at all into the dungeon scene so maybe I’m mistaken on the reasons.

That said, a cleave / AoE heavy melee option would still be nice for Necro as its something it doesn’t really have right now. Dagger 1 has OK cleave, but only OK, and none of the other Dagger abilities (or offhand abilities, really) shine at melee AoE either.

The only problem I have with that is that cleave / AoE is all GS ever does on every profession (other than maybe Mesmer). On some level I kind of want Necro GS to be condition / debuff heavy just for general GS variety, but that wouldn’t be very good for Necro variety as Staff kind of fills the condition AoE role. I guess variety for the Necro profession is probably more important than “GS variety” but still.

Gonna have to go with “no” for this suggestion.

If you want to experience more of the maps and walk rather than waypoint, no one’s stopping you from doing so. But don’t force everyone to follow that by removing them outright.

They have said absolutely nothing about what updates will be going in between now and HoT. Other than the fact that we know there won’t be anything that progresses the story in terms of heading into Maguuma and confronting Mordremoth, because we know that HoT picks up exactly where the Season 2 finale left off.

In the interim, who knows. We could get unrelated updates with various activities. I wouldn’t expect Dragon Bash, since celebrating when the Pact has just been dealt a massive blow would be in bad taste. SAB is possible I suppose, it’d be perfect as a side-activity with no bearing in the story and would make a lot of people happy, but I’m just not sure if they’ve had time to work on SAB between finishing up Season 2 and working on HoT.

It also depends on just how long we have until HoT comes out. If, for instance, its set to come out in April, then they might not need anything more than a small feature patch and some WvW / PvP events to keep us busy that long. If its not going to be coming till late summer or beyond, though, then that would call for something a bit more substancial.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe we’ll get some hints during Points of Interest this week or next Tuesday when previews of things to come usually show up.

The most likely place for it to be is probably in your material storage (AKA what used to be called collectables). Go to a bank, go to material storage, and go all the way to the bottom.

You can no longer store minis in material storage, but any that were already stored in it when they first made the change were “grandfathered” in and will be stored there until you take them out, after which you can never put them back into the material section.

Minis are now stored in the Mini Collection, but you need to manually put them in there by right clicking them and saying “Add to collection”. So if you haven’t been back since they made that change, you shouldn’t have anything in there.

If you’ve already started the collection you can still get the parts, that I know. I just got one yesterday from a random chest.

If you didn’t start the collection, though, I suspect you’re out of luck.

The devs have said that the Tribal armor set and other similar armors which were previously PvP-exclusive and now unavailable will be added back in sometime. Who knows when, though.

Randulf.7614:

Turn map chat off

That, along with jumping into the Jungle with whatever character I’m most looking forward to getting specialized (right now that’s looking to be Ranger, since I’ve always been one who wanted a more magic-based Ranger, but once I know all the specs that might change).

I love me some Torch, and even I didn’t know that first one about it auto-tracking. Very handy.

Its the reward for completing the Mastery achievement for all 3 of the Point of No Return story missions.

Once you get the Mastery achievement you can buy more from the crest vendor (in case you have multiple characters who might want to use it, I imagine). Before that, though, it won’t show up on the vendor. You have to do the Mastery achievement.

All of the previous Mastery achievement trinkets are the same way, as well. They only show up on the vendor after you get them the first time.

The LFG tool and taxis are both the reason for and the solution to your problem.

No one wants to stick around in a “fresh” map and build all the way up to a breach doing the defense events over and over. Well, very few, anyway. So people just LFG into maps that are already at a high percent, leaving the fresh ones empty (or leaving them for chest farms). Never completely empty, though, there are often a small few who very slowly build a map up to a higher percent by doing a few capture events, losing the forts, then rinse and repeat. Once it gets higher, they go on LFG and the cycle begins anew. People come in, do the breach / vinewrath, and then leave to the next map halfway done.

I’m really glad that they added the daily chest display into the achievement panel. Only being able to view it once a day when you got your chest was rather silly.

I do agree that the placement isn’t quite ideal, though. Putting it underneath the Recently Completed / Nearly Completed / Account Bonuses would be better. Seeing the daily login chest as the first thing you see when you open the achievement panel isn’t really necessary. Or just a new section, as you suggested.

And actually, the panel where you can withdraw your zenith weapons and hellfire / radiant armor is redundant now anyway, with the wardrobe system in place and those skins being free to use in the wardrobe itself. So they could probably do away with that completely, as long as we’re streamlining the achievement panel.

You could always give my odd key binding setup a try.

Rather than using the 1-9 keys above the normal keyboard, I instead use the numpad 1-9 keys. I use the other keys around the Numpad for stuff like weapon swapping (numpad /) and my elite skill (numpad *). Numpad 0 for jump. I use the arrow keys to move. I use the Ins / Home / Page Up / Page Down / Del / End cluster for profession skills (AKA F1-F4) as well as sheathing my weapon. Shift for loot / interact.

In essence, all of the keys I use to play are clustered on the right side of my keyboard, rather than spread out across the top. So I leave my right hand on my mouse, my left hand on the right side of the keyboard, and I can hit everything I need without moving my hands around too much.

I only put my hands on the normal letter keys when I need to type messages or do inventory stuff.

The Grove’s “special” music only plays when you’re in the center of the city near the spiral tree. Otherwise it just plays generic Maguuma tracks.

So maybe try and see if it shows up there?

That applies to basically anything you do in this or any game.

Clicking around like a crazy person can only result in bad things. Chill out and take it slow.

One spec per profession is pretty disappointing, even if I was expecting it based on what was said during the reveal event. Unless you actually lose stuff by switching to a specialization (which would probably tick some people off), I don’t really see it being much of a choice with only one. I know they’ve said stuff like “it’ll change the way it plays” but I’m not sure how much of that is overhype or if it’ll actually make a significant different. I guess we’ll see.

I guess there’s something to be said for laying the groundwork for future improvements, and the system certainly seems great for that, but I’d like the system to be a little more fleshed out on release, so you can explore it a little more right away instead of a year or whatever down the line.

And maybe I’m just blind, but I see no mention of a new race anywhere in that interview. So where are you getting that little race blurb from?

If it IS true, then that’s super disappointing. Because even if they said its not strictly off the table, if they specifically said its too much work for too little reward I doubt it’ll ever happen. Mah Tengu ;.;

As others have said, there’s a lot having to do with GW1.

Having never played GW1, I still want Tengu, though. Mainly because I like the overall feel and aesthetic of the race (I love beast races, especially ones done with dignity and not just humans with animal heads) and I think there’s a LOT of potential for a whole lot of cool customization options. I mean, given the sheer variety of colors and shapes for real life birds, I imagine the customization options for the Tengu if they used even a fraction of that potential would be second only to Sylvari, possibly even surpassing them.

Compare that to Kodan, for instance, which… are polar bears. They’re big white bears. Not a whole lot you can do with that in terms of customization.

I expect Anet has thought of this and will specifically make future LS events in other areas and NOT in the expansion zones to avoid this very issue.

I expect the expansion will close up all the plot related to Mordremoth and the Maguuma Jungle, and once the LS picks back up we’ll be going in a different direction. Going after another dragon in another region of the world, dealing with some other unrelated problem, whatever.

I’m sure they wouldn’t shortchange their brand new profession by not letting it partake in the brand new specialization system. That would be a huge downer and a terrible decision.

You get rewards for 100% completion, some random items and extra experience and such, so that’s something to keep in mind.

As for experience, all experience gains in GW2 are percentage-based regardless of what level the content is. So killing an enemy, finding a vista, completing a map heart, mining a resource node, all of it will always get you a certain percentage of progress to your next level, no matter if you’re level 10 or level 70. So you’re basically free to level however you want (you could in theory level all the way up to level 80 doing nothing but starter zones, or you can rush ahead and try to “keep up” as far as areas and your own level), and no matter what you do you’ll always be progressing your levels.

I don’t play GW2 on the weekends, except late Sunday night. So I only got a couple hours in.

But then again, all my characters are already level 80 anyway, so it really meant little to me anyway. Just more SP gain, I guess.

Now, if it had also included double crafting experience (meaning the experience towards the craft itself, NOT the normal character experience you get FROM raising your crafting level) then that would have been more handy for me, since I still only have 1 profession at 500.

But whatever, I’m sure plenty of people did enjoy it, so I’m certainly not complaining just because it didn’t cater to me specifically.

Back items rarely get the new stat combinations. They don’t really need to add a specific back item that has it, they just need to add Sinister stat choices to the existing back items that let you choose a combination like the Spinal Blades and crafted back items.

I’m more annoyed that they didn’t release an ascended amulet with a utility infusion slot, personally. I couldn’t care less about a +4 stat boost, I need my 20% magic find!

I’m not 100% sure yet, but I’m leaning towards a female Asura for my Revenant. As that would give me the greatest variety from my other characters.

The only Asura I have right now is a Light armor class, so that would give me a different weight class to pick different armor skins from. He’s also male, so gender variety there is nice. Also, since I already have 2 Sylvari and 3 Charr (and I have no interest in humans or norn) and there’s no new race, Asura is the race I need to “fill up” the most.

My only Heavy armor class right now is a female Sylvari, so while that would technically give me 2 female heavy armor characters, since Asura don’t use the female armor skins I’m not too worried there.

I’m one of those “crazy” people who actually enjoys the leveling process, so I’ll be taking my time.

I might use a level 20 scroll to start just because it seems like the early levels are the absolute worst in terms of restricting things, but after that, I’ll be leveling up the usual way, doing zone completion and personal story and the like.

That does mean that it’ll probably take me quite a while before my Revenant hits level 80, though, considering I’ll probably be spending most of my time with my existing 80’s and experiencing the new areas, masteries, specializations, ect.

aquanaughty.5781:

..ok..I just purchased a second copy/acct of gw2 and activated it…all is well…purchased gems through the gem store/ BLT for my new characters…all is well….now I try to exchange gems for gold to spend in the store…and it says “this feature is disabled, pls come back later”….is it me, or something wrong at Anet? Or just a temporary down thing?

I believe there’s a “downtime” on new accounts before they’re allowed to convert gems and do certain other things. Its a measure to hinder gold sellers, if I’m not mistaken.

I’m still consistently playing GW2 to this day and enjoying it. An expansion that adds more stuff to an experience I already enjoy? Absolutely, do want.

Unless its completely absurdly priced. Like, $300 or something. Or has some other horrible drawback, like causing all my hair to fall out.

But I feel relatively safe to say that I won’t have to worry about anything like that, so yah, I’ll be getting it.

Greyhound.2058:

I’m not mad on SAB I’m afraid, but I could always enjoy a Bazaar of the Four Winds or a Dragon Bash… but for story reasons I doubt we will get either of those now

Will there be any LS updates between now and then? Because the story could actually use a bit of tying up before the expansion; I don’t even know what happened to Caithe and the egg at the end of the last one, unless I missed something.

The expansion is set to pick up right where S2 left off, so I imagine the questions left open by that will be addressed by Heart of Thorns

Plus, they specifically talked about “Glint’s legacy” and the chances the egg are somehow related to that seem pretty high to me.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Well, since revenant comes with the expansion, I expect the traits to be unlocked only in heart of thorns contents. So no worries about having to go back to places you’ve already visited countless of times in Tyria.

I doubt it. Traits are unlocked in the same way for every profession, not on a per-profession basis.

A Ranger has to do the exact same thing to unlock Trait 10 of their first trait line as a Guardian, a Necromancer, and every other profession. If they made Revenant different, that would make it quite an outlier in terms of the unlock system.

Plus, with all of the HoT stuff being level 80 content, that would mean Revenant would get no traits at all until level 80, at least not without just buying them through SP / gold.

I don’t see why they would.

The initial game launched with 5 character slots and yet 8 professions, so you’ve always had to buy slots if you want a character of every profession.

I guess maybe it would be a nice gesture towards people who don’t want to buy the expansion and immediately need to buy something else on top if it just to use the new profession, but… eh. I still don’t see it happening. At most, maybe they’ll put slots on sale at release.

Yah, I’m a bit bummed on no new race. I have 2 character slots just waiting for a Thief and a Warrior of a new race, and now I don’t know what to do with those slots. Save them for another 2 years hoping for a new race? Use them now on existing races, and if a new race does some have no profession left to use for them besides duplicate classes which I don’t really have much interest in? I just don’t know.

Its a small disappointment in a big announcement full of interesting stuff, but a disappointment nonetheless.

Because its totally impossible to be hyped about the expansion, but still be disappointed certain other things aren’t in, right? You either have to be 100% happy about every single thing or 0% happy and think its complete crap, yah?

I haven’t decided for certain yet, but I’m thinking maybe female Asura. I only have 1 Asura character right now and he’s an Ele, so that would give me some nice Asura armor variety (and also, my only other heavy class is a female Sylvari, so that’ll also give me a character that uses the male Heavy variants).

I believe he was talking about the core game (which does still contain Soule’s work by large majority), not just the expansion and recent LS releases. So technically, its still correct.

It would have been nice if they had at least mentioned the more recent composers as having their work in the game IN ADDITION to Soule, but… it probably wasn’t really their focus for the interview.

I can’t see them locking it. The entire game is built around letting you switch up your characters at will, and as the game has gone on its actually gotten easier to do so, not harder (for example, when the game launched you needed to visit a profession trainer and pay a fee to respec, now we can do it for free at any time).

It would be an anomaly in the game design if this one thing was suddenly locked.

Plus, the way they talk about the system, it sounds to me like they’re going to continue to expand it in the future. Add more specializations. It would be quite a slap in the face if you chose, say, Druid when HoT comes out, then down the line they released a new spec which you liked much better, but because they’re permanent choices you couldn’t even consider taking it without creating a new character.

Well, they said there’s going to be a demo at PAX East in 6 weeks, so the very earliest it could possibly come out would be after that. And I’d guess probably at least another 6 weeks after would be the soonest it could “reasonably” be released, just because there wouldn’t be much need for a demo if everyone would get to play it in a week or two anyway.

I imagine the entrance to the Heart of Maguuma areas will indeed be in either the Silverwastes or Dry Top (or perhaps both, as there are areas in both that could conceivably connect to other areas).

However, access to those areas has nothing to do with LS. You can go to them on any character without ever touching the LS chapters at all. The LS just pseudo-guides you through them (moreso Dry Top), but you can go there any time regardless. So I don’t forsee any problem there. It’ll be no different than, say, not being able to get to Fireheart Rise without first going through Blazeridge Steps.

You should probably open up those areas on each character just for ease of access to HoT content, but you shouldn’t need to do anything with LS if you don’t want to.

Shiren.9532:

It seems kinda lame for rangers to get a two-handed weapon (five whole skills) while mesmers only get an off-hand weapon. I expect we will see more than one new weapon per profession.

Yah, I personally would imagine that each specialization will get either a 2H weapon or a mainhand / offhand.

However, someone did point out that the specialization blurb on the official Heart of Thorns site says that specializations will give “A” weapon, so… I mean, I guess its possible that it literally is just a single weapon for each regardless of whether its mainhand, offhand, or twohand. I do agree that it would be kind of unfair and a bit disappointing to do it that way, which is why I personally feel a pair would be better, but who knows.

Another thing we’ll have to “wait and see” about, I suppose.

Each profession will be getting access to at least one weapon type previously unavailable (so far we know for sure Ranger gets Staff, Necromancer gets Greatsword, Engineer gets hammer, Mesmer gets shield, and Theif possibly gets Rifle) through specialization.

However, as far as brand new weapon types, they didn’t mention or show any. Which doesn’t 100% mean there aren’t any, but I feel they would have mentioned it if there were, since its something people have been clamouring about for a while.

We DID see Rytlock using a spear or polearm of some sort, which may mean Revenant gets land-based spears (and could mean other professions might as well through specs, I could see Warrior getting it for instance), but I’m not sure if that really counts as “new” since spears do exist in the game. And its also not confirmed and might just be something Rytlock can do it cutscenes or just something only Rytlock can do period, or some are speculating it might just be a physical staff or something.

We don’t know much about them yet, but I honestly can’t see them making them 100% permanent. They’ve built the entire game around the concept of being able to switch out your builds at will, and as they’ve updated the game they’ve made that more and more easy (at first you had to pay to respec and visit trait trainers for it, now you can just do it anywhere for free). To suddenly make this one thing “locked” would be really odd to me.

Kentaine.4692:

Mursaat would be cool if they add them to HoT, not Tengu.

Tengu have felt more like a Bubbles addition to me from the beginning. I could see them in the Deep Sea Dragon’s expansion.

Are you perhaps confusing Tengu with Largos? Tengu are the bird people, why would you associate them with the water dragon?

It sounds like the expansion takes up directly after the Season 2 finale, so I think its safe to say we won’t be getting any more story missions until the expansion, unless they release side-story of some sort that doesn’t actually progress the main story.

Whether we’ll at least get various side activities to fill the time or not, who knows. I suppose it depends on how long until the expansion arrives. If its 3 months, say, they could fill the time with maybe another PvP / WvW season, perhaps another feature patch (assuming the expansion itself isn’t taking the place of that).

I’m not really expecting SAB at this point, personally, though I’d certainly welcome it.

Maxwell.7843:

draxynnic.3719:

.Yes, charr PCs have that moment where they can intimidate a bully into leaving Camp Resolve…
[…]

Could you tell me where, please?

I never noticed, I want to experience it with my own character

Its in the “Reuniting with the Pact” mission in Echoes of the Past

I’m pretty sure the masteries are going to be specific to the jungle.

I mean, realistically, most of them HAVE to be jungle specific because they just wouldn’t be useful elsewhere.

You get a mastery specific to fighting a certain type of creature found in the jungle, its not going to be useful anywhere else anyway because you can only find those in the jungle.

Ancient languages? I guess that could be stretched out to certain other areas, but I don’t think the races specifically in the jungle would be found anywhere else.

Gliding could technically be used elsewhere, but it would break so much stuff. Jumping puzzles are the obvious big one, but it would also just break the maps themselves. There are already ways to get outside of certain maps, but with gliding it would be super easy to just break out of the playable area of various maps.

Yah, I’m a bit disappointed on no new race. I’ve got 2 character slots waiting for a Warrior and a Thief character, and I’d much prefer to use those on a new race, and I thought surely an expansion would finally give me that.

I mean, its not 100% confirmed there won’t be a new race, but I think that would be mentioned or at least hinted if it were going to happen, and there was nothing. Not even a random Tengu appearing in the story or anything that would be a vague hint.

I’m not sure how to proceed with my character slots now. If I bite the bullet and make, say, an Asura Warrior and a Sylvari Thief now so I can finally say I have a character of every profession, I can guarantee I’ll become too attached to them to delete them (as I have with all my current characters), and then if we do get another race I’ll have nothing left to use with that new race, as I’m not all that interested in making multiple characters of the same profession. But if I keep waiting for a new race, who knows how long I’ll be waiting and if it’ll ever happen at all. If an expansion isn’t the time for a new race, will there ever be, or is this it?

phys.7689:

very disapointed in shield for mesmer. they should at least have a new main and offhand. 2 new skills isnt a big deal/changing your playstyle much.
Also shield doesnt really exemplify mesmer.

Maybe they will have a new mainhand and offhand and we just didn’t see the new mainhand. I mean, we didn’t see anything for half the professions in the game, so I think its fair to say they could still be hiding a new mainhand for Mesmer.

It sounds, to me, like its going to be 1 specialization per class. At least right now, obviously with room to expand later. However, its possible they’re just keeping it all under wraps right now so they can blow our minds and reveal multiple specializations later.

I mean, I do think that it’ll be a little underwhelming if it is only one. If this is supposed to be almost like a “second class” as they say, that sounds like its supposed to be a choice, as your primary class is. Make a choice, and what you choose will alter how the class plays in some way. Just the name “specialization” implies that you’re taking your character down a certain path, one of multiple potential paths. But if its just one spec per class, then there’s really not much “choice” involved. Pick the one spec there is and get extra weapons / utilities, or don’t take it and get nothing. That’s a pretty one-sided “choice”.

There’s something to be said for future possibilities and obviously the specialization system offers plenty of that, but I feel like its not a great introduction if it ships with just one, even if that’s what it sounds like at the moment.

Well TECHNICALLY, a spear isn’t really a new weapon. Its a previously underwater-only weapon, but they do exist in the game.

So maybe if they did make spears wieldable only land, they wouldn’t really count it as a new weapon.

Just for confirmation, the double experience is active now, as of about 45 minutes ago.