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The Guild Wars 2 Thread

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New blog post on the GW2 website.

No more elite specializations will be added to the game.
frown.png


They have promised to add "new tools" to existing professions. I'm guessing they will either add new abilities you can equip, or perhaps new weapons you can use. Rifle ranger?

The next episode and final EoD story patch drops on May 23rd.
 

Caim

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So I picked this up again. Tried out an Elementalist because I liked that class in the original.

Four elements, three full sets of weapons (staff, twin daggers, scepter + focus, but you can mix the one-handed weapons) and five spells each gives a beefy 60 spells total, and that's just the basic ones you can put together by yourself. That's a lot of options, even though you're somewhat limited by what you can use at the same time. The overworld quest system is really nice, as is the karma system, and the consistent scaling keeps things interesting without you accidentally outleveling things.

I do feel that my crafting skills are woefully lagging behind, but from the looks of it the stuff I get just by leveling (I keep getting these leveling gear boxes that give me pretty decent stuff) I don't really need to craft. I just need to keep an eye out for better weapons and trinkets to give myself an edge.

As for the main quest... well, it's not very inspired so far but that might be because of the early game. My character does talk... except because I rolled a female Norn I'm now playing as a goddamn Skyrim character.

Will play some more, see what it's like.
 
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They started work on a new game yet?

A new Guild Wars game? No. Pretty much everyone who made the original game and built the company are long gone. The current company has tried to work on other projects at the expense of GW2, but they didn't go anywhere and they were eventually shut down by NCsoft and told to get back to work on GW2. A new GW2 expansion is in development, but it will be of even inferior quality to prior expacs (only 2 new zones, no new PvP or WvW maps, no elite specs, no new classes, etc).
 

TedNugent

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I do feel that my crafting skills are woefully lagging behind, but from the looks of it the stuff I get just by leveling (I keep getting these leveling gear boxes that give me pretty decent stuff) I don't really need to craft. I just need to keep an eye out for better weapons and trinkets to give myself an edge.
You can buy endgame exotics for nothing, like 25 gold should get you a basic set, but you'll probably get a full set of exotics just from playing quests while leveling.

Ascended is about 5% better than exotics with gems, and is fully end-game gear for all future expansions. That's the only reason to bother with crafting. If you don't give a shit about the 5-10%, or playing fractals, I wouldn't worry about it. You can do anything in the game with the gear you get for free, except for high level fractals. And even then you'll get a few ascended pieces for free long before you can even queue for fractals with enough agony to cause a penalty.

Getting a full Ascended set is a pain in the ass/a lot of work, so whatever. If you play that much you'll know if it's worth the effort.
 

Caim

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I do feel that my crafting skills are woefully lagging behind, but from the looks of it the stuff I get just by leveling (I keep getting these leveling gear boxes that give me pretty decent stuff) I don't really need to craft. I just need to keep an eye out for better weapons and trinkets to give myself an edge.
You can buy endgame exotics for nothing, like 25 gold should get you a basic set, but you'll probably get a full set of exotics just from playing quests while leveling.

Ascended is about 5% better than exotics with gems, and is fully end-game gear for all future expansions. That's the only reason to bother with crafting. If you don't give a shit about the 5-10%, or playing fractals, I wouldn't worry about it. You can do anything in the game with the gear you get for free, except for high level fractals. And even then you'll get a few ascended pieces for free long before you can even queue for fractals with enough agony to cause a penalty.

Getting a full Ascended set is a pain in the ass/a lot of work, so whatever. If you play that much you'll know if it's worth the effort.
So just keep using the leveling gear from the boxes, and once I hit max level drop a tiny amount of money to get gear that'll put me at 90% of my potential power. Simple enough.

I haven't purchased any of the expansions so far, at what point will I have to to proceed, or at least not be severely hampered if I don't have them?
 
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Do not bother with crafting unless you really, really want one of those legendary armor skins, since unlike legendary weapons you cannot buy them off of the auction house.

Content wise, the game is free up to the end of the season 1 story. After that, you have to buy the season 2 story, then the HoT expansion, then S3, then the PoF expansion, then S4, then Icebrood Saga (aka season 5), then the EoD expansion. Altogether costs $100.

Power wise, you can theoretically beat all content (including expansion content) without the expansions classes and elite specializations. However, there has been tremendous powercreep over the years with the introduction of elite specs and various tunings and ability reworks. The final boss of the Dragon's Stand meta event used to be a 10-20 minute long boss fight in 2015. Now he dies in less than 90 seconds before he enters his second phase. Using an elite spec is just simply more efficient time wise.

Do note that the HoT expansion was initially tuned around players using elite specs. The playerbase was unaccustomed to the increased time to kill and thus Anet nerfed HoT content, but it is still noticeably more difficult than the rest of the game. Again, you can still beat it without elite specs.

If you do any raids or strikes, it is generally expected that everyone uses elite specs. Season 1 has a strike and the playerbase will let you off the hook for doing it without elite specs. All other raids and strikes were introduced after elite specs were a thing.

If you try to PvP or WvW without using an elite spec you will be at a disadvantage and lose more often than not.

The EoD expansion adds more power creep with the Jade Bot, which gives you a raw stat increase and 30 seconds of every buff (crit chance, faster cooldowns, faster attack and cast speed, etc) in the game upon entering combat. The Jade Bot cannot be used in raids, PvP, or WvW.
 

Caim

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I'm not interested in doing PVP or raiding, so the extra specs are good to have as I reach higher level content. I will be needing at least one of the expansions for one of the elite specs, should I play them in order? Or is one of them so bad it'd be best to just skip it and try another? Buying the bundle of the first two seems like a good deal, partially because they're the same cost as just the new one.

Plus, the free trial for my mount won't last much longer so I have to do something about that as well.
 
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Go through the story in order. Don't skip around.

Each expansion has an elite spec. There are 3 expansions so 3 elite specs for each class. If you own all three expansions, you can acquire an elite spec from any expansion as soon as you have enough hero points. Once you reach the HoT expansion, you will start accumulating hundreds of hero points very quickly and can use them to unlock whichever HoT, PoF, or EoD elite spec you wish. You can try out how an elite spec plays in the PvP lobby before committing and spending the hero points on them in PvE.

A lot of the EoD elite specs have issues even over a year after launch but they're still straight up better and a more fun to play than the vanilla classes. The only elite spec you should probably avoid for going through the story is Druid, a HoT elite spec for Ranger, as it was intended for raid healing and PvP/WvW CCing and doesn't increase your damage. I was following the blog of a guy who was going through the whole GW2 story who stubbornly stuck to using the Druid elite spec and he was constantly complaining how long it took to kill anything.
 
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I completed the new episode (IIRC this is the final content drop for End of Dragons, after this we have to wait for the first bite sized mini DLC to release).

That was... well...

This patch dropped on the same day as a new FFXIV patch. I played GW2 first because I thought that there would be actual gameplay, and new high fantasy places to visit.

The episode begins with 10 minutes of standing around listening to Gorrik's journal. *snooze*

The episode was insufferable. More wanking about how the commander has "endured so much" and their "trauma". The first hour of the episode is a crappy attempt at a nostalgia trip. Kissing up to mass murderers, more Blish, etc.

I was expecting a new map, or a second half of the zone to be added like Drizzlewood Coast. What you get is just a tiny sliver of a corridor.


I didn't care about this Yao or Cho-Mool stuff at all.

The demon was very underwhelming.

I guess the dinner date at the end was funny. At least we're not called the Friend's Detective agency anymore.

Disappointing, both gameplay and story wise. No new high fantasy zones to visit, non-threatening enemies, and insufferable millennial writing. The future does not bode well for this game.
 
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The future does not bode well for this game
This game had a future?

The game was doing good between 2016 and 2019. There was a new content drop every 3 months, bringing along with it a full map, new mounts, new raids, new fractals, and so on. Story wasn't trash tier yet. Then after season 4, Anet was hit by layoffs and everything went wrong. The patch cadence slowed to a crawl and each patch had less in it. Map design declined. The masteries in IBS aren't comparable to the S4 or S3 masteries. No mounts introduced. Then we had the long gap until the expansion. The fans hoped that IBS was aborted so that the dev team could pour all of their effort into making EoD great, which it wasn't. Terribly designed maps, lackluster masteries, maps with no replay value, rampant asset reuse, no new side content like raids or fractals, poorly designed elite specializations, PvP and WvW utterly forgotten, and so on. Then people were hoping that the EoD patch content would be GW2's return to form, which it wasn't. We are now 4 years into this decline period and people on reddit now finally accepting that things aren't going to get better and that mediocrity will be the standard going forward, and you will pay more for it.
 

Kane

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We are now 4 years into this decline period
My brother in Christ, we are now at least 11 years or rather 20 years* into the decline. From a scholary perspective, the history of Guild Wars is interwoven with the great decline in video gaymes, in fact, it stands at its very center, first as an act of defiance and then, since 2012, as one of the many harbingers of decline, lending credence to the idea that the decline is inevitable.

You see, ArenaNet these days is entirely composed of fat neckbeards, tatted cucks and insane sluts. You can't run a company on fat neckbeards, tatted cucks and insane sluts, lest produce a game. Well, I guess technically you can - GW2 is proof of that - but its like trying to make a parrot speak: You can go through the motions, put in the effort, see the results and even upload funny videos of your parrot repeatedly calling you a cocksucker to the general awe of the easily entertained masses on Youtube. But at the end of the day you will never be able to have a debate with your parrot about what makes a good game.

* after much scholary debate I prefer the latter date.
 
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New GW2 mini expansion announced.




Not digging the generic artstation MTG look of the splash art. Hope that isn't indicative of the art direction of the expansion ingame. Also not into the generic theme of wizards and demons.


It's a floating sky island themed expac?



Sounds like they aren't going to rework Untamed's ambush mechanic? Darn.

Being able to mix and match weapons doesn't do anything for me. I main Ranger. Playing core/vanilla Ranger is unviable in strikes/PvP/WvW. There is only one elite spec that ties into the ranger + pet fantasy, the Untamed (Druid is a healer and ignores the pet, Soulbeast cannibalizes the pet). The ranger weapons I most enjoy are greatsword, longbow, and hammer, all of which I could use as an Untamed anyway.

Being able to use a shield, greatsword, or shortbow as a Revenant sounds cool though. Those are classic hero weapons.


we’re granting each profession proficiency with an additional weapon.

...

Ranger: Mace (main and off hand)

Ooo. Maybe interesting. Might be cool to have a shield too. Be a shield warrior with a pet at his side. Maybe they will let Rangers wear shields in next year's expansion?


the Elder Dragon cycle that dominated major events from the original launch through Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons™ has come to a close.

The Elder Dragon cycle didn't end. There is still a cycle of Elder Dragons gobbling up magic, getting sleepy, going dormant for thousands of years as their magic bleeds off, and then waking up again. The only difference is that the number of dragons has shrunken down from 6 to 1. The world is still screwed since one dragon can't contain all of the magic, and will either go insane or explode.


In fact, today’s game update includes a small scene to transition out of the End of Dragons storyline. This interlude brings us to a scenic overlook in Seitung Province, where one of our dearest comrades has some…bittersweet news to share.

Oh gosh please tell me Taimi is dead! Lemme log in to check.

New fractal where you used a grappling hook and a parachute to delve into the cave was fun, though I don't see it having much replay value. Missed opportunity for the Kanaxi fight to have you jump from platform to platform as he shatters the pillars you're standing on, rather than just going back to the same one platform.

New story journal stuff was an instance where you talk to Aurene. Hm. The writers remembered the part about Elder Dragons going to sleep but seem hesitant to commit to her never waking up again during GW2. Also once again ignored the part about dragons exploding or going crazy if they have too much magic.

No cutscene where you see her fly off into the sunset? Aw.



That's a cool new skin. I hope it is appropriately scaled for Charr! Right now every Skyscale skin except for the Broad-Horned Bull looks comically small for Charr characters.


Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure skyscale Mastery line includes new abilities, like the Fireball aerial attack you’ll unlock at tier two.

Does that mean we can attack from the air while remaining on our dragon?


Tier 4–Wind Beneath Your Wings - Flying mounts can use updrafts

Only really useful in HoT and season 3 zones as those are the only zones that updrafts really appear in.


5–Combat Launch Gain the ability to mount your skyscale in combat

Sounds like they're going to design more fights where you need to fly to another platform quickly. You can mount up and fly from platform to platform during the Mouth of Mordremoth meta but there is a delay as you have to wait for you to exit combat.


As you fight off the ravages of the Kryptis, you’ll make allies of the Wizard’s Court and the Astral Ward—ancient protectors of Tyria who have been brought out of their seclusion by the Kryptis threat.

Where were these guys during the past 11 years? What, were rampaging Elder Dragons that wiped out entire civilizations and threatened to destroy reality too low level of a threat for them?


The Wizard’s Vault is a new streamlined rewards system that combines the best elements of the daily login and daily achievement systems, allowing you to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to–whether it’s PvE, Player vs Player, or World vs World, or a mix–and earn a wide variety of exciting rewards for doing so.

With the release of Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure, you’ll receive new objectives to complete daily, weekly, and with each quarterly release. As you complete objectives you’ll earn Astral Acclaim, a new account-wide currency, which can be exchanged for rewards of your choosing, such as new weapons and armor skins, a small selection of items previously exclusive to the gem store, crafting materials, gold, mystic coins, legendary crafting starter kits, and more. Those rewards will refresh on a quarterly basis—but fear not! As new items cycle in, any Wizard’s Vault–exclusive rewards will simply move into a legacy section of the vault, where they’ll remain available for the same type of currency indefinitely. Our goal is for Wizard’s Vault rewards are meant to be attainable through regular, normal play; there are no paid upgrades or progression skips, and the legacy section exists to take the time pressure off and allow players to catch up if they take a break.

Sounds like the Great Vault/Trading Post from WoW.


Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure will also introduce a new set of legendary armor: Obsidian armor. This will be the first set that doesn’t require heavy investment into raids or competitive experiences—instead, the various crafting components come from open-world gameplay in Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure.

Hopefully it won't cost $400 in mats to build. I finished acquiring all of the timegated rated PvP mats to craft the legendary PvP armor, and then stopped when I calculated the costs and realized I would have to drop hundreds of dollars to buy the rest of the mats off of the auction house, or spend thousands of hours I don't have no-lifing GW2 to farm them myself.


Overall ambivalent. Half of an expansion in terms of content with only a $5 price drop. Theoretically, the two new expansion maps could be double sized and have HoT-tier level design (there is a reason why HoT maps are still the most populated 8 years later), but given Anet's track record over the past few years that's almost certainly not going to happen. But when it comes to 3D high fantasy RPGs, my choices are extremely limited.


EDIT:
Now that the class rebalances have been out for a few hours...

Yikes at the new ranger changes.

Spirits no longer give alacrity. RIP the low APM alacrity hammer build where all you had to do was keep your spirits up and press hammer 2 and 4 every 6 seconds.

They reduced the cooldown on the Untamed's pet abilities which you have to manually press (unlike vanilla ranger pet abilities which can be automated). Higher APM whether you want it or not.

Fervent Force is dead! RIP our high survivability double axe build.

The devs increased the damage of the unleashed ambush skills. Fervent Force has been replaced with Let Loose, which causes your Unleashed Ambush skills to give boons. None of this matters because flipping back and forth between unleashed pet/ranger stances is still clunky and not worth the bother. You have to press F5 to enter unleashed ranger, press 1 to use your first weapon's unleashed ambush, press ~ to weapon swap to your second weapon, press F5 to switch to unleashed pet, press F5 again to switch back to unleashed ranger, and then press 1 to use your second weapon's unleashed ambush. That is a 5 step process to use this trait.

Dagger's unleashed ambush skill is a shadowstep teleport. That is cool. Combined with Unnatural Traversal, you could become a some sort of nature ninja teleporting all over the place, though the fundamental issue with how clunky Unleashed Pet/Ranger swapping is would need to be addressed first.

Feels really bad. :(
 
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Drakortha

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This expansion looks like the perfect opportunity to bash more bigots. Old wizards are renown for being stubborn. Maybe the main story will see us beating down an old, bigoted wizard covenant so we can make the wizards tower more diverse and inclusive.
 
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Caim

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So I got the HoT/PoF bundle, which came with a character boost. It's a smart move of them to let you try out the boost before commiting, and I've stomped around in the Silverwastes to get a feel for the land and high level gameplay. It's obvious that there's quite the power gap between a boosted character and the players who actually play there, but that should not be too difficult to grow into.

Now the thing is, if I were to commit to the boost where do I go from there? Just straight into the HoT/PoF campaigns and areas? I don't really feel like doing group stuff, so what's there to do for a solo player? Also, how much am I missing out on by doing the boost? Guild Wars 2 seems like a game where you don't really need to "learn" your character over the course of the leveling system since once you've unlocked your abilities you should be good to go (which is around level 21-ish, or just a few hours of playtime). Plus, with how level scaling works I could always go back. So would I be missing a lot if I were to boost?
 
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Now the thing is, if I were to commit to the boost where do I go from there?

My recommendation would be to play through the story in order. Vanilla > season 1 > S2 > HoT > S3 > PoF > S4 > Icebrood Saga > EoD. GW2's gameplay is not concentrated at "endgame". There isn't really much of a raiding scene, and the last raid implemented was two expansions ago. GW2 content updates used to bring more stuff to do outside of the story, but over the last 5 years the only real thing they really add now is new story and zones. Despite the titular name, there is little reason to play in a guild nowadays. Very much for solo people.

The vanilla game's personal story is actually pretty decent in terms of writing was and voice acting. The starting race storyline varies in quality (I quite liked the Charr starting storyline, found the others a snooze) but by level 30 all race storylines merge into the one vanilla storyline.

After you beat the vanilla story, there is season 1 and season 2. The voice actors for the vanilla cast were too expensive, so the old cast of characters got pushed into the background to make way for a new cast. Your mileage may vary on them. Also, the player character is unvoiced during those two seasons but becomes voiced again starting in the first expansion. Season 1 doesn't introduce any new maps and has the worst storyline until End of Dragons, so you could probably skip it unless you want to be properly introduced to the new characters. Season 1 is only like 5 hours though. Season 2 starts setting up the big Elder Dragon saga that GW2 will revolve around from then on for the next 8 years, concluding in End of Dragon, but again the S2 story isn't quite as engaging to play through as the vanilla story. The first expansion is when the story becomes fun to play through again. The cool old cast of characters come back. Player character is voiced again. Fun setpieces. Also from this point, all GW2 zones are unlocked by progressing through the story, so you mind as well go in order anyway. Each season episode introduces a new zone to visit.

what's there to do for a solo player?
Story. Once you get caught up there isn't much to do, even if you aren't a solo player. There is no gear treadmill, so the only reason to do strikes (GW2's versions of trials from FFXIV, ie single raid boss instances) is if you want a cosmetic aura like cherry blossoms floating around your character. You can grind to build a sparkly legendary weapon but it takes an incredible amount of time, or you could just buy it off of the AH for $80, but then you are left with the question of what content you are going to use that cool flashy mace on, and... ???. Again no incentive to do PvE stuff unless you just do it for the sake of it. You can do SPvP for hundreds of hours until you hit gold rank and then realize how small the SPvP playerbase is nowadays and how the upper echelons of gold and platinum rank are controlled by a PvP mafia. You could do some WvW (mass scale PvP warfare like DAOC or Alterac Valley) but that game mode is in a sorry, sorry state. Or you can log off and do other things and then come back to check out the next story update/zone.


how much am I missing out on by doing the boost?

I recall that playing around in the vanilla zones as a new player before HoT launched was fun. There was some threat in the world. Nowadays the new player levelling experience has been nerfed a few times so even if you didn't use a boost, you would reach level 80 and lose most sense of threat in the vanilla zones whether you wanted to or not. IIRC using the level boost does not lock you out of doing the Vanilla story so you can just boost a character and resume it.

Guild Wars 2 seems like a game where you don't really need to "learn" your character over the course of the leveling system since once you've unlocked your abilities you should be good to go

Outside of HoT zones, normal overworld mobs are braindead easy. You can beat normal overworld mobs with any build (except maybe Druid which brought zero damage dealing capability... up until last week's wonky rebalance patch so idk). Veteran mobs are also pretty easy and can be beaten with almost any build, though if multiple veterans gang up on you then you might be in trouble unless you are running a good, balanced build. Champion mobs require a good build to solo. Legendary mobs are designed to be fought by a group but a handful of meta builds can solo them over the course of 10 minutes.

Some instanced story (not vanilla game) boss fights can be challenging and you might die a few times but nothing radical.
 
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Caim

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So the gist of it is that while I could use a booster to get to max level, I don't actually need it to go through the stuff that's worth doing. Alright, it's time to go out and see the world, then.
 
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If you use the 80 boost you'll be earning mastery xp straight away.

You will want to unlock the autoloot mastery right away. Big QoL improvement. It's a vanilla mastery which means you can only farm exp for it by playing in the vanilla zones, Drytop, and the Silverwastes. There should be enough easy mastery points spread around Tyria for you to unlock it. Vanilla and Icebtood Saga mastery points are pretty hard to acquire so don't waste what points you get on the legendary crafting or fractal trees before the autoloot one.
 

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