Westenev.5289

Different people have different motivations. A new player might want to "catch up", while an older player can feel validated by small gestures like birthday gifts. Some don't care about the "Jennah-rous" gifts, while some get greedy and want more. Personally, I fall into the "don't care" camp, but I figure a title can't hurt if it makes someone else feel happy.

I'd actually be interested to know the statistics of people who bought this. It seems so superfluous and not worth the 600 x 6 gems (it's character bound too), if only because you still have to go to the areas around the wp's to reach hearts and PoI's...

Turtle can take a passenger to any wp on the same map (including personal wp's), which can aid in map skipping. But even a raptor can make it from rata sum to orr in decent time.

Map difficulty/tediousness is generally tied to hearts or obscure PoI's that don't show up on the map. I actually wouldn't care if wp's were account bound. That being said, roller beetle already solves this niche problem. In style, I might add.

Problem is, not every class or build wants to slot in a block. Every build can kill enemies though.

Stats to choose: Berserker stats (+power, precision, ferocity) with Scholars runes. Weapons should be Axe/Axe Greatsword with sigil of force and accuracy. There is an armour set called "devona" on the trading post which is level 80 exotic with berserker stats, you can generally buy it for cheap. Getting a longbow with a sigil of fire would be a good idea too, so you can tag mobs for loot. Getting accessories on a new account is a pain though. You'll need to do daily tier 1 fractals for a couple of days for a red ring of death and a crystaline band (ascended rings). Level 80 backpacks, amulets and accessories are a bit harder to come by without access to living world. Crafting? Your first character should probably be armoursmith and weaponcrafting. Gw2crafts is a great website to plan the cheapest way to get 400/500. Import a build? Just look up snowcrows or discreditize (the fractal guild). Mettabattle is meh but it works to. This is a mmo. People have information and are willing to share it if you're willing to ask.

I'm glad it's gone. I hate it when the golem did its spinny attack and threw mobs like a lollie scramble. It'd be okay if this was a point and click game with huge aoe, death beams and magic missiles, but this game is mainly about the 180-360 unit melee cleave.

Once I get my head around relics, I think I'll enjoy the expac more.

Idk, I've never been able to sit through a gw2 stream/video and fully agree with a streamers views on the game (particularly in regards to wvw or PvP), so to me this sounds like a terrible idea.

It takes a lot of damage to hurt casual customer loyalty, because casual customers don't care about behind the scenes like blogs, company dramas or patch notes.

In an ideal world, Anet would drop the numbers and run both games concurrently under different titles in the same universe (gw1 is an entirely different experience to gw2, and not in a negative way).

Honestly, GW2 is all endgame. Everything before level 80 and getting geared up is a tutorial. But, if I were to give you some focuses: ~ World Boss trains are low-effort gold. Great for players with physical disabilities or slower reflexes, and can be somewhat social. ~ Meta Event farms, like Auric Basin. Gotta get gold for shiny legendries/gems. ~ Fractals. To run fractals you need to obtain ascended/legendary gear to slot Agony Resistance. You'll need about 40 AR to do T2 fractals, and maybe about 100 for T3. ~ Raids/Strikes. To run raids you'll need to find a dedicated group. Strikes are for anyone and everyone, and are just mini raid bosses without the fluff inbetween (except Forging Steel). ~ Explore the world! Embrace the murderhobo lifestyle. Whatever is red is dead. ~ Don't rush your dailies, especially the jumping puzzles. Avoid using helpful Mesmer's. ~ PvP - you don't need to be any good at it, just play ranked and get rewarded! ~ WvW - You'll need to join a dedicated wvw guild to get the most out of this, similar to raids.

Hot take: Shadow Behemoth wouldn't take twice as long if more people didn't afk at the dps point and actually hunted down portals.

I'd argue the most useless mounts in the game is probably the Springer, who has been basically outdone by the Skyscale in every way except the coinfarm in Amnoon. The way a friend described it to me was to think of the skyscale as a flying raptor rather than a VTOL aircraft - and that made the mount a lot more appealing for me. But, yeah. I don't see why turtle needed nerfing, especially since it's the first "play together" content we've seen in awhile (we have a lot of "play alongside" content, but not a lot of play together).

Did you use the mount on the same map? I doubt anyone is hitting 30k DPS when scaled down to level 15-25.

I'm kind of undecided. EoD was just last year, so my fear is that Living World is just getting rebranded. Because I hold an expansion to a higher standard than a normal living world episode, and I hold Living World episodes to a higher standard to what we've been getting since Champions.

I think in terms of the state of balance on release and replayable group content, HoT was the best. Sure, you had broken buggy BS like Revenants always phasing into walls/floors every time you hit sword 3, and pocket raptors/mordrem sniper firing squads/frogs need no explaining. The jungle legitimately felt threatening, oppressive and surprisingly vast with gliders, and exploring felt rewarding with collections hidden in nooks and cranies. Meta's like Chak Gerant, Auric Basin and Dragons Stand have also remained relevant to this day. I also preferred the state of balance of E-specs, which offered powerful options that was subsequently nerfed into uselessness (RIP herald shield). If Anet has gotten better at anything, it's that PoF and EoD most certainly have better stories (imo), but from a gameplay perspective they don't hold a candle to HoT.

No voice chat, but my guilds do use discord to post memes and communicate throughout the day (we can't always be online!)

I didn't have this problem. I was more than happy to slot an empty traitline and fill it as I went (especially for specs like Reaper which drastically changes how you play even without traits/utilities).

I mean, what's a guild going to do about it? They don't have the power or anet connections (I assume) to kick people off the server.

The story was decent (and I only experienced a game breaking bug once, which is a miracle in and of itself), but I think the strong sticking point of this expansion was the 4 strike missions. I like the E-specs too, although I do find bladesworn to be a bit difficult to justify using. I can't say EoD is all good though, because fishing and skiffs are extremely niche content. I suppose it's nice that the option is there, though I would have liked to have seen more skiff-related content.

I wish they'd use half this artistic talent to bringing us new horns/hair/beards/cosmetics.

The biggest problem, I think, would be the HoT boss fight - especially hard mode for the "migraine" achievement - which is essentially 3 consecutive boss battles. It wouldn't be hard for experienced players, but it has mechanics you need to learn (or the fight resets), and the instance is known to consistently bug or crash for certain people (but not for others), forcing a reset. It's one of the only fights in the game where if you die, the boss resets. I don't generally need to log out during story missions, so I can't tell you how great the saving feature is, but I have had a few long-running instances that reset when I went out-of-boundary or logged out (mostly living world, S4 ep 3 was a shocker).

An invisible weapon skinline would be cool (it would complete my Saber cosplay), but I could see how it could be problematic in a pvp setting. For Foci, I generally use claw weapons like peacemakers foci, chains, or a bracelet like dragonsblood focus. Unfortunately, daggers and scepters are very noticable, so pick your favourite.

If the studio pushes out big pvp/wvw updates and proves competent, I think this should be up for debate. Not before.