Guild Wars 2

One of the coolest parts was finding the grave of a deceased character from one of the books. I really really liked stumbling upon that in game.

Zaphid_sl said:

I thought Scarlet Briar was really shitty villain, straight out of Blizzard lore, her character was "I'M SO EVIL" but she was completely impotent. If the Aetherblades (which are really cool) really involve alternate dimensions and potentially time travel, then it's really lazy writing. You have 3 continents from GW1, huge parts of the map are not explored yet, old gods, god's own realms like Underworld and the best thing you can come up with is "other dimension" ? I really like a lot of other things though, they pulled off the world really well, though my favorite continent is definitely Elona.

Super Adventure Box puts me to sleep, looking forward to Tequatl next week and the lfg tool. I think monthly updates would be much better too, it gets tiring to keep track of that stuff so often.

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Yea the last three patches really sucked on the lore side of things. They had something decent to build on in both molten alliance and aetherblades, and now they've thrown both in front of the same (short)bus as the minions of avery bad cliche villain.

The Tequatl revamp seems to be differentiating it from the generic meta boss list by giving it a unique loot table, if they follow through on that I'm looking forward to it (and other big name bosses getting the same treatment).

Are they saving the expansion of the main story ( the elder dragons ) for some later date? All the updates they have done so far, while some being very fun, have just been like a distraction. Could have used all that time / resources for building up the other elder dragon storylines. /shrug

At PAX, they said they haven't forgotten about the other Elder Dragons and that story content for them would be coming, but they really didn't lay out any time frame or exactly how they'd be added.

Expansions I guess ? There's no way the living story keeps the whole team busy and the gems can't bring in THAT much money. Zhaitan got hell of a build up, hopefully they deliver with the others too. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more of Kodans.

I dont see any expansions coming soon, the last statement was that they arent working on them and putting all their effort into the living story and fixing the pvp parts of the game. They might not tell the truth of course and have 50 people on that project, who knows. They have alot of good lore angles that they could explore, so I dont understand why they dont use the living story to set the stage for that instead of turning it into saturday morning cartoon quality.

The releases throughout the summer seemed very rushed, I guess they are working a few months in advance at best. At the time of the Super Adventure Box in april it was uncertain wether it returns or not, and now 5 months later we suddenly have part 2 for that. Several story parts of those patches felt disjointed or forced as well. That coupled with the uncertainty about an expansion makes me think they dont have anything concrete, at least nothing like a plan for a year+. I mean, how long exactly did it take to add an LFG feature worth mentioning? A fan website has been actively providing that service for half a year or longer and even TOR managed to add a group finder in the half the time it took Arenanet. I have no faith in any claims they would make about long term plans.

My guess for the rest of the year is October will be two patches of Halloween stuff. Last year that was pretty good and that as their very first content patch, so I hope they can keep that level of quality and quantity (it was the only patch that added substantial permanent content to the existing zones).

November most likely the promised fractals stuff. it would mesh well with fractals being one year old, ans they promised it for this year so when else would they release it Last november was the only patch that actually added new land mass to the game (fractal dungeons and southsun).

December will be wintersday, that was also a decent patch last year so again I hope they repeat it. October and December will also show if they want to keep the old holiday stuff and add to it (my preference) or do entirely new stuff every year. I dont see what they gain by not repeating the old stuff for new people or those that missed it, but they seem to love throwing content away after using it once for 2 weeks.

What's going on over at Anet? Before the game released they were talking big, on how they would split the team and work on equal parts on content updates plus expansions. The game sold well, why wouldn't they have expansions for it?
Besides, stuff like the adventure box is pretty fun and works well as a filler, no complaints there. But it has fuck-all to do with the actual lore/world, why not expand that.

I logged in the other day and my guardian was standing around in Orr. While I immediately noticed a couple of nice features and additions they had put in the game since the last time I played; all desire to play was killed when I heard the "Death, good!" and "Everyone, come!". They could just add the coolest event ever, the thought of spending any more time in Orr makes me puke.

So I just wish they would get a nice expansion out there, with new zones, maybe a weapon or two and some new skills, rather than adding tiny bits and pieces to zones I've already spent dozens of hours in.

Orr has been dead for months now, I haven't seen anyone over there in a long long time.

They mentioned they are making enough money off gems to not have to bring out an expansion any time soon. Their expansion team doesn't need to go full steam with the rate they're releasing living story stuff, especially now that they are done with the year round events they can just focus more on living story, which I'm sure is sucking more players into buying gems at a faster rate. A lot of fluff shit lately though, only so many back pieces I'll bother transmorging since you have to buy another back piece to use so you don't waste your other back piece skin, more and more and more achievements, mini games out the rear.

The lfg tool took so long I guess because of the amount of options they included, with pve, wvw, spvp?, breakdowns. Rift had the lfg tool done a month after release. Nothing seems simple to them, they couldn't release something simple and then add as we go along, same with commander tags they want to add a lot of extra shit so don't want to make extra tags in the meantime. Teq 2.0 looks like Jormag 1.0, will have to see how much can stand doing it after finding out how shitty the drop rates will be.

Hekotat_sl said:

Orr has been dead for months now, I haven't seen anyone over there in a long long time.

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Actually, with ori and ancient wood prices spiking after last patch, a lot of people have been farming mats and the temple events are all the rage, my server usually has a train of people doing all the big events listed on gw2state. You get guaranteed rares, exotic here and there and dragonite ore.

No matter what they say, there's no way they aren't at least in pre-production of an expansion. I'd understand if they don't want to draw the attention away from their updates and that they wanted to setup some seasonal events just like any other MMO, but you always have some kind of long term roadmap and there's no way they will sustain the game for the next 2 years with just living world updates.

How are classes these days? Were there any interesting updates? Are Engineers still annoying to play? Are Necros doing anything other than power or condition builds?

Some things have been improved, some were left untouched.
Necromancers can play power builds with 100% crit in death shroud that can actually hurt at range, but are still limited by a (imo) shitty weapon choice: no cleaving, dagger only for top dps and autoattacking is the only thing worth doing. EDIT: with this I mean that you can't sustain death shroud forever and thus you're forced to use axe#2 and focus/warhorn to build up life force as fast as possible.
You can of course play zerker necro with dagger, wells and flesh golem for a nice amount of burst, but the class still sucks compared to others in terms of sustained damage. It can stack vulnerability quickly, that's true, but doesn't really offer much to a party.

Condition builds are strong with the addition of burning combined with terror (damage on fear) and + duration, it's possible to do quite some nasty dotting, but it still suffer from the usual condition issues, aka more than one player applying them and it's a total waste.

I played power necro above condition exactly for that reason, trying both a pure damage build and a super tanky build (soldier armor, wells healing, etc.) for soloing champions, but in the end I always fall back on the thief as that remains my favourite class and I love playing with all the arsenal of weapons, all of them good, fun and with a purpose.

My Engi is level 21, can't help you much there.

On NSP Orr is getting cleared 2-4 nights a week. NSP native have hard time getting in our own map because of those guester Our overflow was clearing it the other night.

I only play warrior and 95% of my playtime in WvW.

Warrior as of right now are pretty good.

The skullcracker mace/shield/Greatsword is great and fun. It's easy and a very good 1v1 build and many class whine about it. This build was made to counter necro in Spvp and it really do an amazing job even in WvW. I played it at first for a short time. It was fun in solo queu spvp but in WvW it didn't bring much to my guild. This will be slightly balanced/nerfed in today's patch.

Hammer/Longbow is pretty popular also.

Condition/bunker warrior is also really popular right now.

Sword/Horn and hammer is pretty good when you run in group of 10 or more. This build should get a pretty decent buff today. They will improve shout heals(if rumors are true). 25-30% more heal, will scale better and the trait will change so now you can cast more shouts.

I know might stacking build are getting more popular also but I know little about this one.

Miele_sl said:

Some things have been improved, some were left untouched.
Necromancers can play power builds with 100% crit in death shroud that can actually hurt at range, but are still limited by a (imo) shitty weapon choice: no cleaving, dagger only for top dps and autoattacking is the only thing worth doing. EDIT: with this I mean that you can't sustain death shroud forever and thus you're forced to use axe#2 and focus/warhorn to build up life force as fast as possible.
You can of course play zerker necro with dagger, wells and flesh golem for a nice amount of burst, but the class still sucks compared to others in terms of sustained damage. It can stack vulnerability quickly, that's true, but doesn't really offer much to a party.

Condition builds are strong with the addition of burning combined with terror (damage on fear) and + duration, it's possible to do quite some nasty dotting, but it still suffer from the usual condition issues, aka more than one player applying them and it's a total waste.

I played power necro above condition exactly for that reason, trying both a pure damage build and a super tanky build (soldier armor, wells healing, etc.) for soloing champions, but in the end I always fall back on the thief as that remains my favourite class and I love playing with all the arsenal of weapons, all of them good, fun and with a purpose.

My Engi is level 21, can't help you much there.

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Except for terror builds, which no one used when I last played, sounds like the Necro is in the same exact place. I played power/well builds for the same reason as well. I could never get a good DS build that I was happy with. It always felt too gimmicky compared to other classes.

To be honest necro is now quite good compared to the release status. In sPvP is dangerous (so they tell me) and in PvE it's good enough to be worth a slot in every group. Life force generation is a lot better and some DS builds, if undisturbed (very rare occurrence) can spam lifeblast for ages. The issue (as always) is that one hit from a mob and a good chunk of the LF bar is gone, two hits and you got to start from scratch.

The build with DS now takes advantage of a few traits:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBH...OTUBkh6h7sOfIA

Close to death and axe training work together (if you go DS while wielding an axe)
Deathly perception brings your crit chance likely to 100%, pretty much giving you 1% LF for each life blast (Reaper's Precision) or much more if you pack mobs in a line and make good use of piercing projectiles (Unyelding blast).
The issue is that most mobs, even in Orr, won't last beyond the 3rd life blast if your gear is good enough (and full zerker of course).

It's certainly fun and definitely stronger than it was. You should try it out, a respec is 3s50c after all

Are Rangers still shitty?

That's excellent news about them clearing those big events in Orr, I'm going to re-install and hopefully catch one.

The new Tequatl drinks players' tears. I expect a lot of bitching and Arenanet not budging. Kind of nice that they buffed HP on low lvl bosses, so they die in 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds.

Confirming that. The encounter is great and I pray that Anet doesnt cave to the whiners and nerfs it. Done 4 attempts so far best was 85%. The open raid nature takes getting used to I think, especially for GW2 players that are used to facerolling. Alot of people just leeroyed in, died and didnt revive expecting to get resses and loot within a minute, when they realized neither is coming the chat filled with tears.

It will be interesting to see how fast the strats trickle down through the playerbase. I mean, it doesn't look all that complicated to anyone used to WoW encounters, but I kind of miss reading forums while doing bosses The jump pads are really neat, they let you move around so fast.