Guild Wars 2

Yes – I’ve had the same problem. But has anyone else noticed the Heritage Pauldrons are displaying too large since the Feb 26 patch?

My human warrior now has norn-sized pauldrons which look silly and clip with the chest armor as soon as you wield anything.

I’d say the chances are slim in the short to medium term, but maybe one day.

There is room on the world map for two or three times the zones we have already, and there are the other dragons to face. My guess would be that we will face Jormag, Primordus, Kralkatorak and Bubbles over the next 2-3 years, and see bouts of map expansion with new zones as we face each Elder Dragon. Whether these will coincide with paid expansions (likely IMO) or as development of the Living Story, I’m not sure.

The point is, there seems to be a lot of room on the current map, and quite a lot of story to go with the Dragons before we are likely to see serious work done on Cantha.
Maybe in a few years time, when looking for new plot ideas, decisions about Cantha will be revisited. I doubt we’ll see that until the game is 4-5 years old though.

I loved Factions, and would love to see Cantha again sooner than this, but sadly I can’t see it happening any time soon.

No – couldn’t delete an 80 after the time I’d invested. I’d just park them near farming nodes or crafting stations or use them as extra storage. Knowing me I’ll come back to them in the future if I feel like a change of gameplay or want experiment with new builds or weapons which may come to the game at some point.

I have eight level 80s in full exo now, one for each profession, and I actually enjoy playing them all. I have friends and family still levelling alts so will often pick a char to play when helping them depending on which zone or on the balance of the party. I have some of my alts geared and traited for different jobs in the game whether farming, or dungeons, or speed mining runs round Orr etc

To my mind the cost of a new character slot, or a makeover kit is just a few pounds for the gems and a lot cheaper than my time in levelling a new character. On top of that I get quite attached to my characters by the time I’ve got them levelled up and it wouldn’t seem right to delete them.

I agree – let’s just make it free for any character to travel to waypoints in their racial city. It would add incentive to go there for members of that race, making the cities livelier and adding to the cultural flavour because there would be a preponderance of native characters there.

Then link up the city chat channels for easier grouping etc and people wouldn’t have quite so much need to be in LA and only LA.

If we started to see some of the minigames that were planned originally in each city (like keg brawl in Hoelbrak) there would be another reason to gather and the chance of developing distinct identities for each of the cities.

Jaxon.5392:

But i would hate for it to be a collection of pieces, it needs to be full set or nothing. Legendary shoulders on some other armour would look stupid and devaluing

This.

By all means make the armor expensive and a project to work on over a year or so, but let it come in a box with the whole set in one go.

Otherwise it will take so long to piece together enough to make it worth wearing that we’ll be talking about GW3’s imminent arrival before you get to enjoy it…

I loved the three dragon swords in GW1 and was pleased to see that two of them made an appearance in GW2, but although I thought the FDS looks great when wielded, it’s a shame the fire effect persists when the weapon is stowed – it looks rather silly, and it puts me off using this skin.

I haven’t seen Jormag’s Breath in the flesh, so to speak, but it would have been on my wish list so thanks for the heads-up. It would be nice if these minor nitpicks could be fixed, because the design of the weapons is otherwise great. While we’re on the subject of nitpicks – the inventory icon for the FDS needs work as currently it is directly lifted from GW1 and looks out of place.

Perhaps we’ll see the vampiric version appear in a future expansion…

[Also, think about how flooded the zones will become if you include specific areas needed for the Daily. Unless players had different zones, and you included all zones in the list and had some sort of statement to say that if x people have this zone, assign them another, it would become a lag fest for those running less-than-stellar specs. [/quote]

I don’t know – I always thought adding a specific area to the dailies, and changing it each day, would be a good thing. Some of the middle level areas are so empty now it would be nice to see more people running around the zones. The beauty of the daily system is that if this bothered someone who was levelling through that area, it is only for one day and then the attention would move somewhere else.

I would be surprised if the crowds got bad enough to cause lag – although I agree it would be better if the daily asked for something zone-wide like ‘Do 5 events in Bloodtide Coast’ rather than targeting a particular boss, which certainly would cause problems with camping.

The idea with the dailies is for them to be achievable through normal play. There are a lot of renown hearts where the objectives include rezzing various NPCs who are found lying around for precisely this purpose. Many DEs need you to rez NPCs when defending or retaking an outpost.

All part of normal play, no cheating involved. I still make a real effort to rez other players and will go out of my way to do so if a see someone downed on the map.

I’m at work at the moment so can’t post a picture, but for my Norn guardian I found a combination of the primeval armor with the Norn T1 cultural pauldrons and fiery vambraces (from the HoM) worked well. Gunmetal or graphite with tarnished steel works well for met but YMMV

I like the heritage armor set in abyss for my warrior as well.

Sorry, but I disagree.

In my opinion one of the nicer aspects of the changing dailies is that it enhances the sense of community because people have a common goal. For example, on the first day there were a bunch of us in Wayfarers killing barracudas for the underwater kill achievement, and lots of talk in map chat about how to get the combo kills to work – it was fun.

This will get better when they introduce the 4/6 system and start having achievements which take players to particular areas. We’ll see much more activity in those areas for a short while which will help to alleviate the feeling of empty levelling zones.

I enjoy that sense of momentary camaraderie and shared purpose. I agree the crowds can sometimes slow things down, but that’s not such a bad thing in my opinion.

Crafting is not too bad – even for a non-crafter : just get your a char a token crafting skill, and then refine 10 basic raw materials, it takes about 10 seconds. Got mine just making 10 copper ingots with level 0 jewelling.

Tested the combo kill field – works best in a low level area with one player shooting the mob and friend puts down a field over the player when the mob is about to die. Best for the friend not to shoot the mob at all. We used two asuras, a thief and an engineer, both with radiation field. We took turns to shoot icebrood in Wayfarers Foothills, shortbow 1 and pistol 1 skills worked fine through radiation field and we got the 10 kills in about 5 minutes once we got the knack. I did notice several times where we thought we had the kill shot through the field, but the achievement did not increment – maybe a glitch or some sort of RNG, not sure. Certainly best for the field layer not to attack the mob at all, leave it to the other player.

I think the Trading Post runs as a service which is independent of the individual servers of the rest of the game. I expect we’ll see it go ‘Down For Maintenance’ at some point soon, then we’ll get the new items.

I think the daily is supposed to change every day, so it will be worth seeing what kind of variety we get over then next week or so.

Also – I think the ‘4 out of 6’ functionality is supposed to be coming in Feb or March – and then we’ll start seeing daily achievements that take us to different zones etc…

Runcore.5107:

Im on fractals every day and whole day so i know how difficult fractals can be and this is main reason why only those ppl who did hard work there should get ascended only. No work, no ascended. Do daily is not hard work enough to get ascended item. Try imagine how now feel all these ppl who did on fractals really hard work with hundreds hours on FotM and now they know that all can easily earn ascended through daily/monthly. I really want know if Anet give to these players some compensation or bonus for this nonsense step with ascended for laurels and I hope that it will cost months and months of daily/monthly for one piece of ascended for laurels.

You want to be fully outfitted? Go to FotM and make ascended rings and back like other industrious ppl and dont wait until Anet make unfair shortcuts for lazy players who want best items without work.

Hmmm – you tell us you spend all your time playing a video game and then use terms like ‘industrious’ and ‘lazy’. It makes it difficult to take your statement seriously.

Granted – you may have personal problems which prevent you from working, in which case you have my sympathy. You may be financially independent and do not need to work – in which case you have my congratulations (and a little envy).

Either way, you’re not really a typical player, and while I respect your commitment to the game and your single-minded determination to go after your goals, I don’t think Anet should calibrate its reward system on your example.

In particular, the problem with fractals is that is has encouraged players to focus on this one area of the game to the detriment of other areas. I’ve enjoyed playing fractals but I don’t want to have to spend all my limited gaming time doing this one activity.

Legendary items are supposed to be the ultimate reward, and these should take commitment and ‘hard work’ to get, so as not to cheapen the emotional reward of achieving this goal.

Ascended items – not so much. I think being able to pick up one item a month through regular play (and don’t forget that consistently getting daily and monthly rewards is not trivial for many players with jobs and families) is reasonable, bearing in mind if you were only doing it this way you’d need about a year to completely gear up a single character with armor, trinkets, weapons etc. Those non-lazy entrepreneurs with the drive to grind fractals will get the reward of being able to kit out several characters far more quickly.

I found my gaming got a lot better when I stopped using the keyboard to move. Mouse buttons left plus right to move and steer etc. You can use the A & D keys to strafe or get a mouse with side buttons and map the strafe and dodge keys to those. This leaves the keyboard free for skills.

That said, a lot of what you are seeing in the videos is the result of a lot of practice and natural talent. And possibly underpants of +10 dexterity…

I like to take screenshots of the beautiful scenery in the game, and it’s fun to keep a record of your character’s adventures,, but it would be nice if there was a UI toggle option which we could bind to a hotkey. I’ve seen this in other games and it would be a great and hopefully simple feature to add. This way we could quickly remove all the UI elements for a screenshot and then quickly turn them back on to continue playing.

Bonus points for making this also switch on higher resolution screenshot capture. I recall this being an option in beta but seems to have disappeared now.

“Do you think it’s friendly?”

A simple tick box in the options screen would suffice to set ‘show player name’. Can’t see this being difficult to do and would solve the problem. It would be nice to have the option to see this.

As I recall in GW1 titles did not display unless you moused-over the other player, otherwise just the character’s name was displayed.

I really like the idea to be able to flag /afk as well.

I use a Razer Naga mouse with the 12 buttons on the side. I’ve set the mouse up to handle all movement as follows:

1 = dodge left
2 = dodge right
3 = dodge forward
4 = dodge back
5 = strafe left
6 = strafe right

then 7, 8, 9, 0 = skills

11 = S for walking backward

12 = Ctrl-T for calling targets

My keyboard setup is pretty much as standard, except that I’ve switched ‘r’ to look behind which is useful for checking if someone is sneaking up on you in WvW. It’s a Razer keyboard though and has a few macro keys down the side which I’ve set with chat functions to switch between /say, /map and /guild with a single keypress.

Oh – and ‘thanks’ and ‘np’ which are handy for being polite when someone rezzes you in a fight. Finally, for a laugh, I have a key which makes my char shout ‘Brave Sir Robin!’ for when we are running away from a champion etc…

Me too – 6/8 have reached lvl 80 so far and now I’m finishing off with my Necro at 14 and Thief at 13. I’ve only completed the maps on my first character though, so not as dedicated as some of you guys ;-)

I’ve managed to get four of them in full exo gear so far. I’m leaving the last two, my mesmer and ele, until we know how the AoE nerf will affect the builds. I guess once they’re all levelled up I’ll start running some of the others through map completion while working slowly on a legendary and getting some laurels for ascended gear on my mains.

My kids play GW2 with me (I have five boys) and I had to look for inexpensive options. I found that reconditioned graphics workstations such as the Dell Precision M6300 run GW2 at medium settings very well – they have Quadro FX mobile cards designed for 3D design applications but will handle gaming 3D, and at present you can pick these up on eBay for about $200-$300 depending on the spec. A good option if you want computers for kids – the screens are true 1900×1200 WUXGA as well and the machines are built like brick outhouses…

I you prefer to get a new or more modern computer then probably best looking for and actual ‘gaming’ laptop but at the budget end of the range. At least if marketed for gaming it should have a suitable graphics card, which is going to make all the difference to the performance.

@HawkMeister-

You are correct, and I am aware daVinci’s ‘aerial screw’ was neither the first historical reference to the helicopter idea nor the most practical, but in popular parlance the daVinci helicopter meme is well known, so I used it to highlight my point about the effects of magic on technogical development

Tyria is an alien world with several sentient and semi-sentient species co-existing, and there is magic. It is just not possible to compare technological development with human history on our own world.

For a start – magic is integral to daily life even in the cultures that prefer not to use too much of it. Magically enhanced materials are used for armor and weapons even in the Charr culture – we know this from crafting. The Charr have magic users in all three legions of the armed forces (you can play all professions as a Charr) and are not above employing magitech weapons technology (the Mortis Verge is supposedly based on Charr technology according to the Durmand Priory).

So while the Asura have the most exuberant and advanced magitech in Tyria, all races can be seen to use magic mixed in with their technology to varying degrees. This is only logical – magic is one of the fundamental natural forces in Tyria, so any engineering and technology would develop to incorporate this to some degree. This completely changes how we would expect technology to develop. For example, many design bottlenecks in our engineering history were due to the lack of of sufficiently strong and light materials, or lack of a suitable energy source. Leonardo da Vinci and chums could probably have built the helicopter he designed if they had the energy source that runs the lathes in Lion’s Arch crafting stations, or the magitech which magically infuses and strengthens cloth in light armor.

My point is that in a world where magic is real, the kind of steampunk creations we see in the game are actually quite appropriate to the lore. Technology would just develop differently and probably more rapidly in some areas due to magically enhanced materials and energy sources.

Whether or not this is to our own personal taste or not is another matter – I love the steampunk stuff myself but respect the OP’s tastes are different.

I’ve also seen the commander icons put to good use organising guild events or group farming runs – makes it a lot easier to keep up if you get separated from the group.

Mount Maelstrom (60-70) has 11 hearts and is another zone you can miss on the way to Orr if you travel down via Bloodtide Coast and Sparkfly Fen – possibly did one of the hearts near the gate behind Fort Trinity and forgot to go back?

It took me a while to get the last few PoIs in WvW – I’m on Gunnar’s Hold as well. Worked on the borderland maps as we swapped round each week, and sneaked around getting all the skill points and out-of-keep things I could in EB.

We never seemed to own Stonemist though, and those last few PoIs and vista were all that remained. I considered swapping, but by that point we were falling through the rankings and I figured I’d wait till we got low enough to play against a server we could beat.

Finally a few weeks ago, we managed to rush Stonemist first straight after the changeover and I finally got world completion. Since then we’ve held the castle a few times – and my guildies and I took the precaution of running all our alts to the castle while we could, in case we decide to to world completion on them at some point.

Proseph.3504:

So I just hit 34 and brown stuff just started coming out of my character.

Maybe he’s just really scared…

;-)

<j/k>

I think having the name of the crafter on every crafted item would be a good idea, not just legendaries – but it would solve this particular issue. An achievement title such as ‘Legendary Weaponsmith’ etc would help too.

I agree with this.

@declan -

I agree that loot overall needs to be revised. Champions should certainly have drops that make them worthwhile targets – ideally then we’d see players making the effort to visit the champions regularly and getting out into the open world. Traffic to all zones would improve and the world would be a much livelier place – there would be more people around for events too.

Loot tables are a priority – and I’d be surprised if Anet don’t address this in the coming updates. My suggestion is for an additional feature beyond the current loot tables, to add some extra excitement to the zones.

An idea to provide incentives for high level players to explore the wider world again.

What about named powerful boss monsters in the PvE world, which roam the world on complex paths which take them through various different zones. The paths could be programmed to change to make their movements unpredictable – even have a small chance for them to pass through low level zones to spice things up occasionally. Maybe even use some AI to vary the path depending on local conditions or dynamic events – perhaps a creature that deliberately avoids crowds etc These bosses should disappear from time to time and have random respawn intervals when defeated – maybe appearing a few times a week or less, more likely at peak times for each particular server.

They should ideally have novel combat mechanics and take require a large group to take down, somewhere between the level of champions and the dragons now. They should drop good rewards when downed i.e. minimum of tier 6 materials or rare items and chance of a named exotic weapon specific to that creature.

The idea is for these to be elusive and special – no-one knows where they will be apart from perhaps the general region of Tyrian they often roam in. They should be creatures worth hunting and a cause for excitement and lots of running around when one is spotted and the cry goes up in chat etc…

Hi – the game is definitely not dead, although at present it is at risk of disappearing up it’s own… er.. fractal

Joking apart, I think the game is fine but there are areas with less activity at the moment. sPvP is one of them although hopefully that will improve with new formats and maps in the forthcoming updates. I’m pretty sure this is on the roadmap for Anet, but we’ll see.

As other posters have said, the time of day makes a big difference. My initial joke refers to the somewhat unusual situation since the November update, where the majority of the end-game population are working on Fractals of the Mists levelling, because at present this is the only place to obtain Ascended items and (a reasonable chance of) exotic item drops.

Anet have commented that in the February and March updates, they will be adding material to encourage players out into the other zones again – so hopefully this will improve too.

I’m out levelling alts on Gunnar’s Hold most of the time and doing WvW – still plenty of people out there in my experience.

Can’t see this being a problem using 2 computers – we have five accounts running from our house with various family members all playing the game – there would not be any difference with you running two accounts – provided you weren’t using any third party software, and only controlling on character at a time.

Running two accounts off the same computer would probably be tricky, as I suspect this would be impossible without the use of third party software. I’m no IT expert though, so could be wrong on this latter point.

I agree it’s best not to rush through the game – certainly not on your first character. It does take time to learn to play each profession well and it is worth taking time to try out a few different builds on the way to see which you like best.

Having said that, there is a place for speed levelling when you’re running alts, especially if you’re trying to collect a level 80 of each profession, or you decide you want a particular character for a specific role where there are advantages to being level 80 (maybe you decide you want a mesmer for WvW or a guardian for dungeons etc) You can make a game of this in itself.

It’s still important to learn to play each character, but you might not need the full 80 levels to do this, so boosting 20 levels with crafting is not the end of the world. There is a very useful guide on Guild Wars Insider now which shows how to level the Chef crafting skill on the cheap – it costs about 2 gold and 1200 karma for the materials. Picking up some the items can be an amusing scavenger hunt and it takes about half an hour. It’s a cheap way to get an extra 10 levels quickly if you need them.

Always run using food and a maintenance oil or sharpening stone (+10% exp each) and use XP boosters from the black lion chests or gem store if you like. Hearts and events are probably the most efficient source of XP in the open world, and this is at its most efficient if you hit an event which also helps you complete the local heart. Make sure to gather all materials as you go because these will give XP and count towards the daily achievement. It is worth running the storyline as well, especially in the lower levels as these give about 20% of a level in XP for each installment.

To sum up, I’ll repeat the advice at the top – in most cases, it is best to take your time and enjoy the game at a steady pace. The game is tuned to work best for those players who do a bit of everything – hearts, exploring, catch events as they happen and gather materials and craft as you go along. This is largely why following this approach actually maximises your XP gain.

The whole game is the end-game. In GW1 you would spend the majority of the game at level cap still working through all the campaigns, material and achievements. I suspect Anet are aiming for something similar with GW2 and we will see some of this in the January to March updates.

It’s best not to spend too much on levelling gear, mainly because you will be outgrowing it so soon. Blues and greens are fine for levelling. My strategy was to buy a set of masterwork (green) armor from the trading post every 15 levels or so. These go for a few silver a piece, but do give a noticeable improvement over blue items and seemed to hit the right balance for me.

Once you get to 80, then it’s worth saving up for your exotic etc either with cash, crafting or karma vendors.

These days I tend to buy a masterwork level 80 set and put superior runes on it first, while I save up to buy the exotic pieces. Then I use a transmutation stone to transfer the superior runes across. Saves on buying a rare (yellow) armor set in the interim which can be a couple of gold in itself.

Hi deffy -

Sorry to hear you’ve had trouble finding people to play with. You’re more than welcome to party up with my sons and I who play on Gunnar’s Hold. We’re in the game most evenings, and I play some daytimes in the week after night shifts. It’s quite common for me to be playing with my two-year old watching Fireman Sam on the laptop next to me, and my five year old is very proud to have his warrior up to level 13 now.

Between us we have quite a few alts at all stages of levelling, and mostly do PvE and a little bit of extremely casual WvW for fun. Trying to get the boys geared up for story mode dungeons at the moment. Anyway, feel free to add me and say ‘hi’ when I’m online, and if what we’re doing suits you you’d be welcome to join us.

The world is your oyster

But since you’re asking for suggestions – if you enjoy the story it’s worth completing the storyline, but also the story-mode dungeons. The Destiny’s Edge story takes place in the dungeons, but to complete the main storyline, you need the last dungeon in Arah anyway.

You can also finish off world completion. Apart from the title, you’ll get quite a lot of skill points, transmutation stones, and karma, as well as the gifts of exploration which you’ll need if you do decide to go for a legendary down the line. The higher level zones give 40 T5 or T6 materials on map completion as well.

Then there’s WvW which is great fun, and sPvP if that’s your sort of thing, not to mention all the jumping puzzles. You can work on getting an efficient farming run for the T6 mats – either for your own legendary or named exotic weapons, or to sell. See how quickly you can do the run.

You could also collect alts – working on getting a level 80 character in every profession can be good fun, although from your post I suspect you’d prefer to stick to one main character.

Anyway just few ideas, and most of the above (apart from the sPvP) are the things that keep me interested in the game.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I just want to echo a message of thanks to everyone at Anet for their hard work and creative brilliance over the years – my family and I have had wonderful times in both GW1 and GW2 and we very much appreciate the effort and loving attention to detail which clearly goes into creating these virtual worlds.

As the rest of my family will be asleep, I’ll see in Christmas Day at midnight in Lion’s Arch, so will raise a glass to you all then.

I’ve played ranger, warrior and guardian throught to lvl 80 and they are all pretty good for solo play in my experience. The ranger with sword+warhorn and traps actually does give reasonable AOE and coped quite well with cursed shore farming, but does require more care than the heavy armor classes in this regard.

Of the three professions I found that warrior gives the best uncomplicated survivability and decent damage for solo PvE play – although may not necessarily be the most interesting class to play because of this. Guardians are of course very good too and it pretty much comes down to the build you use and personal preference – I’ve tended to build my guardian to shine in group play with altruistic healing builds.

So, in summary I’d say if you love the ranger, there are ways to make it work very well for solo play with the right build. If you want to try a new profession which is easy to play, harder to master but gives a good balance between survivability and damage my top pick would be warrior.

That is so seriously cool

InfernoX.9638:

I Agree Make Them Soulbound On Acquire

I don’t feel that strongly about this, but I can see that having legendaries on sale adds incentive for some people to use gold sellers etc.

But I’d rather see them account bound, not soulbound. At least this way you’ll have the option to swap between characters – especially if over the long term you come to favour a different character, or new races & professions are released.

It is a skin – and you can transmute it onto a level 80 backpack with a fine transmutation stone. It even works with ‘hidden’ backpacks that you normally can’t see.

Just used it on the rampagers spineguard I got from completing the storyline and it worked well, got the high-end stats and the appearance of the toymakers bag with toggle setting to display or not.

Enter the airship from the Grand Piazza in LA, and just after entering the group will get a menu ‘Which toy do you want to make’; the party then votes on which toy – i.e. which city’s instance to run. Need to make sure you have agreed with party in advance which one you need.

On the fifth day of Wintersday the Asura gave to me…
Five Ascended Rings!
Four running Logans
Three shiny ‘shinies’
Two Quaggan hatchlings
And a partridge in the Pale Tree!

Edit – LOL just seen TWO people beat me to it

Well there’s no reason the collector npc can’t be easy on the eye ;D

I really don’t like the RNG chests – I’m not a gambler and it just feels like money down the drain to me. I get enough keys through normal play to keep me supplied with armor repair cannisters and the like.

Each to his own, of course and I don’t object to the chests being in the game for those who do enjoy them. I doubt I’ll buy them myself though.

I’m very happy to shop in the gem store for items that will give me value – but I want to see what I’m buying. Four of my sons play the game too, and with christmas round the corner I’m sure some of their presents this year will be virtual. The boys have already asked various relatives to get them gem cards rather than other types of voucher. If Anet put some nice costumes, skins and pets in the store this time, they will do well out of my household over the holiday period.

I’m sort of on the fence with this issue, and here’s why…

On the one hand, I agree with the underlying principle that playing the events should be its own reward, in that we’ll have a great time doing it – after all that’s why we play this game. In general I regard any rewards as icing on the cake, or a nice souvenir for my character by way of saying ‘I was there…’

But on the other hand, getting an unexpected and valuable treasure is also great fun. I’d hate to see Anet stop this altogether, and with prices for everything on the TP steadily rising it would be nice to get the occasional windfall. It would improve the overall ‘feel-good factor’ of the game to come out of Wintersday with a few nice presents – I don’t mean precursors, necessarily, but perhaps a nice exotic weapon or trinket with useful stats and an appropriately themed skin. Something a level 80 character would find useful enough to keep, but not at the level of being game-changing.

Well, I’ve been enjoying playing through all the professions, but when it comes down to it I’m a melee player first and foremost. I agree completely with the above posters that when you examine the fantasy genre there are always melee characters there alongside (or more accurately, in front of) the magic geezers. They don’t call it ‘swords and sorcery’ for nothing!

To answer the OP’s primary question, when it comes to feeling powerful it is hard to beat a heavily armoured, well armed character that can just wade in amongst the enemies and kitten them with an axe, large sword or other sharp pointy thing of your choice. I enjoy the intellectual challenge of playing the squishier classes at times, but for sheer bad-day-at-work-relieving smitey goodness, its a warrior’s life for me.

Finally, when you actually think about it, in Guild Wars lore, all the melee professions make extensive use of magic as well. Or do you really think nailing fifteen lizard scales to your sword improves your power, precision and toughness?

+1 from me – thank you.

Best wishes for Wintersday and the real-life holidays…

Oh yes…

And many other weapons, please – scythe would be nice to see again too. Ditto crossbows, knuckledusters, throwing stars, whips, flail, holy hand grenades – bring it on.

But seriously, I can imagine new weapons being the way Anet plans to expand the skills available over time. Each new weapon would represent a lot of development time so I would have thought these will come in the big paid expansions, but you never know…

It occurs to me that there is room for bringing in variations on current weapons, which would carry different skills. For example, bring in something called an ‘Eldritch Sword’ weapon type which you use like a sword, but would have its own set of skins and skills.

The game is young – there’s a lot of room for innovation.