Guild Wars 2

It’s less that specializations will be “better” than the standard ones, so much as they add new dimensions to gameplay.

The devs basically told us that going a specialization means gaining something, while losing out somewhere else. The stock, non-elite, builds will still have general utility.

Not having new playable races, while adding in a new class fits with ANet’s historical MO. As for new allied races, there are some good hints that aside from the two types of Maguuma Hylek, the other allied race is seems to be The Forgotten, based on their general shape and morphology.

That would fit, considering how Living World S2 ended, and where it ended.

The price for HoT will probably run about $40 for the regular version, $60+ for a digital deluxe edition. $80+ for the box deluxe edition.

A $40 price tag really isn’t too bad, all things considered. While some will get up in arms in this forum if that is the case, well whatever. They can complain about paying too much for too little, conveniently forgetting that many of them pay just as much (if not more) for less content in standalone games.

Now, I’m going to cook up some popcorn.

For gameplay’s sake, the calendar corresponds to ours.

In a lore sense, the seasons had been officially 90 days long, with Season of the Colossus having five extra days added later to better reflect the sidereal year. This was done much later, after the development of the calendar.

The Mouvelian Calendar was still likely influenced by the Canthan Calendar, which was probably the main calendar in use for the world until the adoption of the Mouvelian Calendar in Elona and in the nations of Tyria.

Don’t take the following seriously, just me throwing some gasoline onto the fire of speculation…

Conspiracy Theory #1: Anise is a Mursaat using illusions and is seeking to gain some form of control over Kryta much like how they controlled the White Mantle. Considering that the Isles of Janthir are not too far from Kryta…

That… actually is a scary idea, considering just how dangerous, and ancient, the Mursaat actually are.

Conspiracy Theory #2: Anise is a member of the White Mantle and has taken a different approach to the rest of that organization in making herself Queen Jennah’s advisor. What better way than to control Kryta, than from the shadows?

A lot of it will depend on preferred play style.

ELE:

+ Highest AoE Damage
+ Good Single Target DPS
+ Flexible roles and can switch roles on the fly with attunement swapping
+ In high demand for group content.
- Lowest survivability of all classes
- Lack of weapon swapping (replaced by attunement swapping)
- Difficult class to master
- Personal Story and Living World content are somewhat more difficult due to lack of survivability.

Elementalist (which was the first class I leveled to 80) can be challenging to play for the simple reason that the lack of weapon swapping means that your range and play style is locked for the fight. The attunements balances this out and allows the elementalist to be a very flexible class to play, with utility for just about any situation. While condition builds are lacking for elementalists, they are designed for raw damage output.

Solo content, like the personal story and living world story content, can be more difficult due to elementalists being the squishiest of all the classes, so don’t hesitate to ask friends for help if you run into a brick wall.

NECRO:

+ High relative HP due to deathshroud
+ Minions make solo content MUCH easier
+ Weapon swap gives some flexibility
- Lack of mobility and stun breaks
- Limited Utility in dungeons
- Relatively low dps without minions
- Minion AI is quirky

The Necromancer is a rather balanced class and has what is effectively the highest HP of all classes due to deathshroud, making them hard to kill. Minions add in some utility and make solo content much easier, and is about the only use they have in dungeons (more targets to distract enemies). The Necromancer is of the least utility in dungeons due to low dps without their minions, which further limits their utility due to other skills often being of decent use in dungeons, but causing the Necro’s dps to suffer, badly.

Devil, the complaining comes from the fact that ANet is changing things after the player base got comfortable with the cookie cutter builds as they are. I’ve seen this enough times in enough MMOs to know that once they play the game and get used to the new system, they will wonder why ANet didn’t do this sooner.

The current system is broken, and the changes fix the worst problems of it. Will there be problems with the new one? Certainly, if only because of the growing pains involved, or that fixing the problems exposes other issues that weren’t really noticed.

Actually, there are strong indicators that the Nightmare Court have been influenced by him from the start. In many ways, the Nightmare can be considered Mordremoth’s early attempts to gain control of the Sylvari under the Pale Tree’s protection.

The protection is the first layer of security for Sylvari, the second layer is their own willpower. Sylvari such as Tahearne and Caithe, as well as the PCs, are not going to be affected as strongly, though dealing with that might actually make a good personal story line for Sylvari in HoT.

I don’t think Wyld Hunts are a remnant of Mordremoth’s influence, so much as they are a creation of the Pale Tree. It’s something he can use, as Sylvari are vulnerable to his control, but the Wyld Hunts were not his creation.

I’ve actually been doing MM when I decided to roll a necro when I came back to the game. I find it is useful in solo content, but not against large groups. I have found that using medium range (Axe or scepter) main hands and starting my attack just out of range tends to have my minions most active.

Not always, but there does seem to be a sweet spot in terms of attack range and positioning.

It’s less broken than it was intentional on Anet’s part to make t7 mats time consuming to make. Provided you have all the mats, you’re still limited to one bolt of damask a day, not because the bolt is on a cooldown, but because the thread is on a cooldown.

It doesn’t take three months. You can farm all the mats to craft one of each per day, but you will be doing nothing but farming the mats each day, a process which can take several hours.

Cam,

I have experienced the same problems, but found a partial workaround. For everyone, please read below:

Guild: Feridaid [FBGM]
Server: Borlis Pass

The interface seems to be functioning only in instanced areas, so on a story mission or in your race’s home area (i.e. Salma District for Humans) you can still acess it properly and use it.

I have advised people on the Borlis Pass server to do so as it seems to have worked.

Current Problems:

All of these are outside of instanced areas

Build Queue not displaying out of instanced areas
Guild Bank not functioning
Not able to activate any guild items
Not able to Build for the guild