Druitt.7629

Um If all the "grind" that various people have complained about, not just you, in these forums, the game would be:Purchase game.Get everything immediately upon entering the game.The end. I was actually arguing against the original poster and making the case that this is either: a) not a grind at all, or b) not the soul-killing grind that they described. I made very clear that gaining 2 million XP is not a grind. As I said, that's "playing the game". So your argument is not with me. I did not get the Skyscale anywhere near when it came out. As you say, it's not compulsory. But I did find certain events that were required -- but out of the way and it's rare that people do them -- a grind. It's unpleasant trying to wrangle people to help you, or parking a character at an event and checking in again and again to see if someone else has finally started it. Having to follow a guide is a grind, honestly. I tried to do the underwater mount thing on my own, but the hints were so obscure that I put it aside until a guide came out. So, to be honest, a quest chain that someone has to explain even where to go is painful and NOT just playing the game. I don't expect anyone to hand me anything, but I also don't expect to be forced to access third-party guides to even have a clue what's going on. I accept that if I want to be GOOD at a fractal or something, having an explanation of roles and mechanics is quite useful, but it's just not good design if I'd need to have a third-party guide to even know where the fractal is. I have all mounts -- except the Warclaw, since I don't PvP and only dabble in WvW -- and I earned them. Your criticism is misguided.

I hated the grind for the Skyscale and Beetle. The grind for the underwater ability was not bad at all. Just play the game, basically. And that's the thing that we need to distinguish: 2 million XP is not a grind. It is simply playing the game. You can choose to kill mobs (eat or drink something that boosts XP from kills first), you can choose to explore maps, you can do anything you would ALREADY be doing. If that's a grind, then the whole game is a grind. But when getting a mount depends on doing things that hardly anybody does, so ANet makes it part of the mount collection to force folks to do it, THAT is a grind. When you have to collect a specific object that's a rare drop, that's a grind. When you have to follow really obscure clues, that's a grind. You're forced to do things that you would ONLY do because of the mount collection. So yea, following a bunch of obscure clues to a couple dozen locations and collecting rare drops is a painful grind. But playing the game and gaining XP is NOT a grind. (At least no more than anything else.) I got most of my 2M XP by running around and exploring the map on a couple of characters, plus some experimenting with a couple of builds and killing lots of mobs. And magically, in two or three days, I got 2M XP.

Here's mine, from the login screen. Whenever I try in-world, the contrast darkens things up too much.

Random matchmaking for things like dungeons doesn't work well in other games. Either: a) a majority vote can kick a player, or b) you're stuck with the random group no matter what. In the former case, you have the same problems you describe of folks being subjected to gear and DPS inspections and kicked if they're not the meta spec for a speed run. In the latter case, you have problems with folks that insist on doing the dungeon their way -- and you're stuck -- or you have a problem with folks that make you carry them. There's no perfect system.

Why duplicate a Ranger as another profession's Elite? As Kodama notes, most classes already have minion mechanics. (Actually, they underestimate things: Engineers have two different minion mechanisms: Turrets in base, and Gyros (mobile Turrets) in an Elite spec.) Not to mention that minions and pets have been problematic in terms of behavior and reliability for a long time and building an Elite around them would probably not be a good idea mechanics-wise. And balancing pets is very hard: they can't do so much damage that you can stand back and have them defeat anything, but neither can the toon have so much damage that the pet simply puts you over the top. Pets are also not very compelling in general. They tend to distance you from active participation -- which sometimes you want, but in general it's a cancer that gives the whole profession a bad name. Specs that have pets or tough minions (Ranger, Necromancer) are generally regarded as lower skill and become boring after a while. (A pet/minion is never going to provide the interactivity that the player can provide via direct-control skills.) That said, with sufficient imagination, it just might work. For example, a Warrior might spec into "Commander" and basically give them some "soldiers" that they command. To avoid being overpowered, the Commander would have to lose stats, skills, etc, during any encounter that they used soldiers. Maybe a Commander's Mindset debuff, or something? That doesn't really appeal to me -- and I think most Warrior players would hate it, too -- but if there's no tradeoff you'd end up with weak minions that are just fodder.

I believe that the prototypical Battlemage is a caster that wears heavy armor and fights in melee range with melee weapons, but also uses magic. In that case, the Guardian is the Battlemage (of Light) in GW2. Revenant would also fit the bill -- though not quite as well in my opinion. Almost all other processions can do the "magic plus melee" thing, but without heavy armor. And the Necromancer Reaper is essentially the Battlemage of Darkness. (They can't wear heavy armor, but have mechanics that let them act as if they do.) Other classes, like Elementalists or Mesmers can be tankish Battlemages, but again I feel like a true Battlemage wears heavy armor. (That's the key distinction: traditional Mages suffer penalties when wearing more than light armor.)

With the change to elementals, I'm experimenting with several things.

Yes, that means that CC skills do pretty much no damage now. (Which I think is overall a good thing, though a big change should be compensated elsewhere.)

Some tips: Spend almost all of your craft leveling time in Discovery. You get new insignia recipes as you hit various levels, and the idea is to use the other components you can make to discover each piece of armor (head, shoulders, chest, etc) with each insignia. When you first level up to a new insignia, you get about 5 levels for each, and as you reach the top of the band, you get less. Actually making the item repeatedly will only get you a fraction of that.Trade in laurels for the potion that causes 50% crits on crafting. (I forget its name.) That speeds things up a lot -- if you have enough gold to buy what you need and do a bunch of leveling in a single session.Do some scouting of the Trade Post to see what items sell for the most gold, and if you have a crafting/discovery choice prefer that.Some things are better choices to discover/make if you already happen to have a bunch of the ingredients.

I've jumped there twice and once was immediately attacked. Not many examples, so when I read this I went there again. I did some logging very close by and was attacked by a caster. After which I killed another caster within shortbow distance of the scroll spawn point. I would guess that there are multiple ways to get attacked there.

I think they've nailed the mounts very well, and Skyscale is the default on all of my characters now. I still use the Griffon, Roller Beetle, and Skimmer, and the and I have to admit that the Griffon is way smoother and more agile than the Skyscale -- it's more fun in some sense -- but the Skyscale is a workhorse that handles a wide variety of tasks well and deserves to be the default. That said, I absolutely do not look back on the Roller Beetle or Skyscale grind with fond memories. I didn't rush to get them done in the minimal time, but it was slow, painful, and felt like Anet had all the devs throw various ideas for tasks onto a whiteboard and then instead of picking the best they decided to use them all. I can't lay out a better plan -- you do have to earn this elite mount -- but I think they could've cut out a third of the jumping puzzles, collectible items, etc, and still have had a reasonable challenge. (Yes, some people would rush through it in a matter of hours and complain how "easy" it was, but...)

True, Basilisk is not really useful solo solo, it's mainly for OW bosses that have breakbars. (I've spent a lot of timein Bjora Marches around where the Boneskinner spawns and want to be ready for breakbar.) Dagger Storm has historically been my favorite elite. Defense and offense combined. Also, using Hide In Shadows for healing has the disadvantage of a long cast time. And I forgot to mention that Dust Strike also siphons with Cloaked in Shadow. But I'm going to try Signet of Malice to see if this build gets reasonable healing from it.

Just throwing this out there... A commonly recommended OW build is Acrobatics/Critical Strikes/Daredevil, with the alternative of swapping in Deadly Arts for Acrobatics. It appears to me that Acrobatics is mostly to give you more dodges to let you unleash Bounding Dodger more. I can't quite figure out why Deadly Arts, except for grabbing Executioner. I'm sure it's my own lack of understanding, but I wondered if Shadow Arts might not be a more fun trait line. (I've read that in PvP it's not so great, but this is OW PvE, so...) Here's what I've been trying out... http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PakAYVlFwuYYsG2JW2PbtaA-e Concealing Restoration ends up giving 4 seconds of stealth on heal, and coupled with Hide in Shadows (3 seconds of stealth) this ends up giving 7 seconds of stealth on heal, every 24 seconds. This stealth is long enough that you can get multiple pulses of benefits: Leeching Venoms (3 stacks of Spider Venom) which I use, or Shadow's Rejuvination (healing and initiative), etc, and can be quite useful if you get into trouble and have to just run. It's long enough that I don't feel the need for Shadow Refuge, which means I can slot in a damage utility (Fist Flurry) instead. Fist Flurry -> Palm Strike is a 2-second stun, Basilisk Venom gives multiple hits of Stone if you have allies nearby, so I can contribute to breakbars. (Also, stealing causes stealth via Hidden Thief, which places you right next to the target with Hook Strike available, which is a 2-second knockdown. This also breaks the bar, but is a nice opener in its own right.) I'm still accumulating gear and mostly have store-bought Exotics in a Power-oriented build. Mostly use Staff, though I can swap to Shortbow when I need to stand off or tag lots of mobs that spawn far enough apart that Bounding isn't going to hack it. The trick I'm still learning is how to use Bounding Dodger correctly. It can hit surprisingly hard in an AoE, but it has a small radius so if you're already in melee range of a group and you dodge, it's likely to take you far enough away that you don't hit anything. I guess I could use Debilitating Arc to dodge backwards, then dodge forwards, but I've been trying to learn to target a mob that standing out of melee range and use Weakening Charge to charge through the group towards the laggard, damaging along the way. Then dodge backwards and hit the group, and repeat. It damages multiple targets each direction, like a Saw-o-Death.. Cloaked Shadow blinds on stealth and also siphons life on blind, which means stealing and Hide in Shadows both siphon. (As does Infiltrator's Arrow, if you use it to end up near an enemy.) Anyhow, I'm not an expert and the mantra around here is that you can OW without traits it's so trivial, but I'm feeling like this build hits pretty hard, has lots of health replenishment, carries its fair share of breakbar damage, and works up close or from afar. For your consideration.

Multiple crashes in Bjoran marshes by a cave entrance. According to the dump, it took 13 seconds, but it wasn't even that long. I didn't do anything or even move, though at least once someone else was within my sight.

How low does the population of a map have to go before you get the message ("There are few players remaining on this map...") and offer of reward? How few is "few"? I've read somewhere that the maximum number of players on a particular map is 150. Is that true? When we say "map" I assume we mean a particular process on a particular (real world) region's server? So if there is a max limit of 150 and there are 15,000 players running a particular map, there are at least 100 similar map processes running. They cover the same area of Tyria, but the state of events, patrols, spawns, etc, are different, correct? (At least when I take them up on the reward for leaving a sparse map, I end up in the same place but usually with a a different state of affairs.) On a sided note, I've been burned a couple of times when switching to a new map in ways that are logical but that might initially be unexpected: 1) your in-flight status is not preserved so if you were hovering over a spot on your Skyscale, you'll end up on the surface below, which might be a bad place to spawn, and 2) since the state of events is different you might end up spawning right on top of the Champion who wasn't there on the previous map.