Things can definitely change but you're kind of in the wrong franchise. Always massive war, death, and tragedy in Tyria.
And literally all your allies sacrificing themselves, including the ones you met 5 minutes ago.
But yes the world always needs more Joko.
That is very true, but I do think "End of Dragons" does indicate a paradigm shift in that regard.
Remember that dragons has been the story of GW2 right from the very get go. The reason things are dire, tragic, and horrible is that each new dragon represents a whole new apocalypse scenario. The stakes are always high and grim with GW2 because the circumstances of the story up to now have demanded as such, and has delivered as much.
I think if this is truly the end of the dragon arc for GW2, then the next step for Tyria is going to revolve around a lot more individual world building exercises that can vary between light hearted adventure romps and super dire world threatening consequences. For example, I know everyone working on GW2 has been waiting patiently for over a decade to delve into the Isgarren lore (that castle in Kessex Hills). Maybe now they can actually give it the arc it deserves without having to make it about dragons or a raid wing or a dungeon or a fractal or a WvW map or a PvP map or whatever. (or maybe it can be all of those )
I don't really play anymore, except to log in and claim the living story chapters. Logged on recently because I figured the birthday thing was coming up (and I was right).
I know it's not the game's fault, but man... having not played for 2 years, logging in and ending up with this as my inventory... does not make me want to get back into playing because I'd need to take hours looking up what still matters, what doesn't, what is a "keep if you want to make ____" and what is a "just sell that."
*Snip*
Hope that helps
It does genuinely help, yes. But as you mentioned bank alts... I had a few of those. I wonder what they were doing when I stopped playing...
Looks like they were full up on junk is what they were doing. (Also the 2nd half of my bank if there's anything in there that you feel like giving advice on :P )
I didn't realize how many skins I was just sitting on that I should just add to wardrobe and get rid of. But yeah... the game definitely pulled enough "hope you kept this crap from a year ago, it's worth something now!" stunts that it made me a hoarder (or at least enabled my hoarding tendencies).
(Boo, my browser decided to actually hide a chunk of this thread before)
I read somewhere that a Dev had explicitly said end of dragons isn't the end of GW2, but it will be brilliant, as @naengwen has said to delve into Tyria without the purely draconic focus.
I'd love to find out more about the other Sylvai trees, the Olmakhan and potentially other races in divergent cultures. Maybe there's an abandoned Asura outpost of 'feral' Asura who have abandoned science?!
It does genuinely help, yes. But as you mentioned bank alts... I had a few of those. I wonder what they were doing when I stopped playing...
Looks like they were full up on junk is what they were doing. (Also the 2nd half of my bank if there's anything in there that you feel like giving advice on :P )
I didn't realize how many skins I was just sitting on that I should just add to wardrobe and get rid of. But yeah... the game definitely pulled enough "hope you kept this crap from a year ago, it's worth something now!" stunts that it made me a hoarder (or at least enabled my hoarding tendencies).
I want to steal your account just to sort out your inventory...
Some quick wins:
You can partly help your problems by using the extra bag slot in your bank .
Opening and using those recipie books is another quick win.
I'd attune then salvage the acended rings unless they are vipers, berserkers, assassin's or harrier stats.
The festival tokens can be consumed as they are now currency.
Use your level 80 boost for a free shared Inventory slot
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I hope we get some follow-up on the Ministry of Purity, because Winds of Change was one of my favourite GW1 bits.
It's pretty cool to see a bump in population the last week or two. It could be entirely anecdotal, but everywhere seems a bit more crowded. It's also funny as there must be some new or long returning players, because there are some pretty comical deaths in large public events (moreso than normal in my eyes). I think a chunk of folks came back, bought a berserker's suit, and ran into the fray only to be eaten alive by new or unremembered mechanics. It's been very lively.
After countless interations, I've fallen into a comfortable cycle of 3 mesmer styles: 1) Trailblazer's Mirage in which I have a beer or three and roll my face across the keyboard, 2) Viper's Mirage where I try and do cool bro DPS but die way more, and 3) Power Chrono which I pretty much never play despite spending a ton of time unlocking mist shard gear and dragonsblood weapons. I think, overall, I just prefer version 1. I'm just not really into competitive coop anymore I guess. I'd much rather take my volatile gathering tools and my skimmer out to sandswept isles and soak up the sun (and material nodes) for a while.
I would really love to do challenge mode with people I actually know and not a bunch of elitist pricks asking for 15,000 Raid Kill Proofs or whatever. It seems like it's fun and interesting.
I was contemplating a similar thing Lucid. I'd want folks who've some experience in the new frac though - ran it twice yesterday for various chievos and the difference on the last boss people "getting it" vs not was staggering between groups!
I was contemplating a similar thing Lucid. I'd want folks who've some experience in the new frac though - ran it twice yesterday for various chievos and the difference on the last boss people "getting it" vs not was staggering between groups!
Well, I've got some experience! I can at least get through the normal mode on 100 without a wipe
Almost there on Go Big or Go Home 3! Conflux, Howler, Legendary armour set 2 and Meteorlogicus are in sight.
All the WvW, Raiding and World completion requirements are done! Just down to materials... whimper: a stack of mystic coins, and some misc T5/6 and leather left. Hopefully done in the next few weeks when login rewards take the edge off the coins at least!
It's weird, people always say that T4 is not too bad while T3 is horrible. But I farmed T3 for a fair bit in pugs with mostly good experiences, and every time I tried T4 people got incredibly mad about the smallest things.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
T4 generally has people who are putting out much better dps compared to T3. I avoid the groups that ask for KP etc., and it's usually pretty much okay with most groups.
Except for Mai Trin because people apparently still can't dodge the cannons even now they're much simpler.
And now I'm going to post in defense of the groups with requirements.
Today was T4 Underground, Molten Boss and Twilight Oasis. With the exception of the last, these should be relatively painless with any group composition, and the last one not too terrible with a healer.
I was in a "fun" group that took almost 2 hours. Rotating cast, but we always had a healer and alac, sometimes had quickness. People definitely didn't know or understand mechanics;
I had to explain to people to stop getting off the buttons in Underground (I know you can ignore it with Stab, but we didn't have enough).
Many people couldn't jump in Oasis
Amala took us numerous tries, and even then it was me and one of the others duoing the last phase. Even though we'd reminded folks to use the special action key to avoid all the death
Hey all, I am currently crafting a bunch of Guild Heroes Banners to level scribing (but also because it seems helpful to have those). PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY LOWER TIER BANNERS until I am done! I need them to craft the higher tier ones, and they are expensive x_X *edit* DONE! We now have 25 Guild Heroes Banners. Also, apparently I might be able to deposit Ascended Feasts into the Guild Bank, so I may do that.
*edit* WOOO yeah, turns out you can indeed deposit ascended food! Same panel as Guild Banners! Unfortunately, the Consumables panel doesn't actually tell you what the food *does*
So in short, of the stuff I put in:
* Sous Vide steaks are Power food
* Fruit Salads are Healing food
* Oyster Spheres are Celestial (+ All) food
And now I'm going to post in defense of the groups with requirements.
Today was T4 Underground, Molten Boss and Twilight Oasis. With the exception of the last, these should be relatively painless with any group composition, and the last one not too terrible with a healer.
I was in a "fun" group that took almost 2 hours. Rotating cast, but we always had a healer and alac, sometimes had quickness. People definitely didn't know or understand mechanics;
I had to explain to people to stop getting off the buttons in Underground (I know you can ignore it with Stab, but we didn't have enough).
Many people couldn't jump in Oasis
Amala took us numerous tries, and even then it was me and one of the others duoing the last phase. Even though we'd reminded folks to use the special action key to avoid all the death
There has to be a middle ground somewhere!
Amala is the worst. That whole fractal gets an A for story and a D for playability!
I did a lot of random T1 and T2 fractals throughout the bonus week, and it did not, generally, convince me of the good and benevolent spirit of Humanity. It was mostly dudes screaming at other dudes about botched wisp runs, missed jumps, low DPS, and class specific build gripes. I really can't fathom what PUG T3/T4 looks like.
It really didn't used to be this way! GW2's community has changed a lot as blood has been transfused over the years. I think a combination of MMO fatigue in experienced players and younger players who came up on competitive coop (be it Battle Royale or stuff like LoL) have really pushed the majority vibe away from chill, social pretty princess dressup to aggressive, min/maxy, gotta get all those cheevos fast bro (with pretty princess dressup still being peak performance of course).
I don't think this old, gnarled, middle-aged oak tree of a gamer can keep up with today's multiplayer games. =P
The bonus week was actually worse for toxicity than normal weeks in my limited recent experience. I'll actively look for a group with an off-meta composition as they tend to be far more chill, but I do find myself getting annoyed by people who are inexperienced and don't say that they're not sure about mechanics when asked. Happy to recap things for returning players, but if they won't admit or accept help, I get irritated to no end.
Today Goldy and I had an awesome group - I advertised for Exp, offmeta welcome, and had one of the smoothest runs I've ever had with an standard healbrand and alacrigade (suprised they joined!) and three condi dps Epi did it's beautiful thing on many a mob, much cc was had, and when folks went down on the odd fail, folks just resed and got on with it. Everything oneshot, and someone* even got good loot :P
We even all agreed that it should be "Meow, Meow, Horrik, unleash the kittens"
It really didn't used to be this way! GW2's community has changed a lot as blood has been transfused over the years. I think a combination of MMO fatigue in experienced players and younger players who came up on competitive coop (be it Battle Royale or stuff like LoL) have really pushed the majority vibe away from chill, social pretty princess dressup to aggressive, min/maxy, gotta get all those cheevos fast bro (with pretty princess dressup still being peak performance of course).
I don't think this old, gnarled, middle-aged oak tree of a gamer can keep up with today's multiplayer games. =P
It's also that ArenaNet actively stopped trying to engage with the community back in like... jeez o flip, back when HoT launched, actually.
Game communities have to be cultivated, they really do. Warframe just got nominated for a Golden Joystick for Best Community and there's a REASON for that -- they have nearly weekly streams where the devs are open and honest and deeply engaged. And then there's Cyan Worlds, which... we'd be here for like four days if I went on about how Cyan has done right by their fans (shortest examples? Their MMO failed, so they... MADE THE SOURCECODE OPEN SOURCE, AND SAID "hey fans, we'll host a shard of the game for you if you want if you basically just pay us for the elecriticy and upkeep costs, and we promise that's ALL we're gonna charge you for!!! " and THEN ALSO SAID, "if you make really cool things on your own personal forks, tell us, and maybe we'll even put them in the 'official' version someday" AND THEN THEY ACTUALLY FUCKING DID TAHT!? WHAT???*) ArenaNet has sorta kinda started trying to do streams but they're still so burned over the backlash over HoT that they just... can't. And that tends to drive away the lorehounds, goofballs, and just here for a good time folks, and only leaves the Hardcorez Time Triel You Must Do Your Rotation Perfectly !!!1l11!! and then whoever the newest "This game looks fun I will try it!" folks are, with no "middle" keeping it going.
* this was only possible because Cyan owns the building they operate out of and owns their own IP and never sold their IP to anyone, so they just. can. be like. "lol you want the source code sure actually "
Thanks to all those who helped with various activities along the way, and most importantly who helped me with pretty princess dressup for 2 toons tonight
The demon haunted weapon skins too. They're just the haunted skins with blue flames, but still interesting. Would be better if there was a matching armor set for them.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Some observations after a few days back after having not played GW2 since 2017, and not having played seriously since 2014 or so:
1) There is a lot more story content than there was when I left. I have two expansions and four Living Story seasons to catch up on, and I don't know if I'll ever sort through it all. I guess that whole Scarlet thing got wrapped up, eventually? I should have all of those episodes unlocked but I guess they took it out of the game and it's a cutscene now. Bummer.
2) I have GW2 characters that are older than my daughter. And with better birthday presents, to boot. I don't know how to feel about that.
3) Leveling is ridiculously fast now. I remember buying XP boosts and cranking out cooking recipes just to get through the 60-80 stretch back in the day, meanwhile I got my Necro from 60-66 last night without leaving Kessex Hills.
4) After doing some online research into what classes are doing well and worth playing in PvE/WvW, I've come to the conclusion that every specialization is somehow doing 10-15% less damage than every other one, and I shouldn't plan on doing Fractals again unless I'm playing a Druid or a Holosmith. Also, according to Reddit the Reaper is a specialization with good survivability and plenty of condition damage that no one plays because it's trash and the people who play it are bell-ends. So, I'm going to finish leveling my Necro and try Reaper out. I apparently started a Lightsaber Engineer before I quit last time, so that's an option too.
Some observations after a few days back after having not played GW2 since 2017, and not having played seriously since 2014 or so:
1) There is a lot more story content than there was when I left. I have two expansions and four Living Story seasons to catch up on, and I don't know if I'll ever sort through it all. I guess that whole Scarlet thing got wrapped up, eventually? I should have all of those episodes unlocked but I guess they took it out of the game and it's a cutscene now. Bummer.
Yeah, its been a consistent complaint. Fortunately, they did add some of the original experiences in Eye of the North recently, with indications of more to be added in the future. I hope we get the marionette back someday
2) I have GW2 characters that are older than my daughter. And with better birthday presents, to boot. I don't know how to feel about that.
There are some pretty awesome gifts over the years. Make sure to check trading post on dye prices as you open up your dyes.
3) Leveling is ridiculously fast now. I remember buying XP boosts and cranking out cooking recipes just to get through the 60-80 stretch back in the day, meanwhile I got my Necro from 60-66 last night without leaving Kessex Hills.
They want everyone to get to endgame as quick as possible. I think expansion purchases even still give you a free 80 boost.
4) After doing some online research into what classes are doing well and worth playing in PvE/WvW, I've come to the conclusion that every specialization is somehow doing 10-15% less damage than every other one, and I shouldn't plan on doing Fractals again unless I'm playing a Druid or a Holosmith. Also, according to Reddit the Reaper is a specialization with good survivability and plenty of condition damage that no one plays because it's trash and the people who play it are bell-ends. So, I'm going to finish leveling my Necro and try Reaper out. I apparently started a Lightsaber Engineer before I quit last time, so that's an option too.
The guides are dated. Druid still holds up, but there are absolutely more powerful alternatives for fractals now. That said, the "meta" (generally this gets quoted by folks doing raids, and what is necessary for a 10 man group is often not whats needed for 5) doesn't matter unless you're doing Challenge Modes (CMs), and people who demand otherwise, even for T4s, are just pissants who are scared of their fractals taking more than 5 seconds. The sooner they retire, the better.
That said, if you do want to consider the meta for purposes of making your fractal life easier:
- Lets start with the prior powerhouses. Chrono and Druid. Still a powerful combo, but recent fractals and nerfs/buffs to other support specs have left the limitations of these two specs a lot more pronounced. They don't have the prevention power they used to, mobs in newer fractals aren't as controllable which reduces the power of mesmer focus, and lots of bosses push harder on rapid break bars which puts Termite Shovel Skill 2 as king of Fractal CC. No, seriously. Just buy some fucking shovels and it doesn't matter who you play anymore.
- The current kings of PvE support are Heal Quickness Firebrand and Alac Renegade, dubbed the firebrigade. Healbrand has all of the utilities that chaos chronomancer used to have before it was obliterated back in... what, 2017? You just load up your party with boons, stability, resistance, whatever is needed at the time while shoving quickness on them, max might with staff 4, and as long as they're not stupid on where they're standing their health bars will never dip. Alacrity Renegade's Kalla elite mixed with orders from above takes off any of the slack. That said, they work best as a pair - chrono can replace the alac renegade in a pinch but you lose the lifesteal, healbrand will need both a quickness chrono and a druid to replace. Or...
- The black sheep of the bunch. The mechanic deleter of fractals. The one, the only, SCOURGE.
Most fractals are balanced such that any damage not telegraphed to end you in 1 hit (read: the sort of mechanics where the fight stops and a giant expanding circle of death appears with someone screaming at you to GET TO THE SHIELD QUICKLY), at worst, barely below the amount that the lowest HP classes have in glass cannon builds. Adding some vitality and toughness to a glass cannon build makes most of them fairly trivial, but of course that can be expensive for ascended gear so not exactly an easy ask. Barrier from scourge effectively gives everyone access to that HP while running their glass cannon builds, and they can just give people that HP any time and it'll override whatever damage they're taking from any mechanic. Applied correctly, nearly everything fractals can throw at you can be negated by a smart scourge. Even if you aren't a smart scourge but have a dedicated scourge healer, bring it along, use stability on heavy knockdown fights, cleanse condis, blood is power if you don't have a might generator in the group, transfusion if people are going down frequently. Then notice how suddenly everything is just a walk in the park. This is the spec that is always just below everyone's radar because the people who determine these metas are heavily biased insist on comps that maximize damage potential by limiting number of necessary support specs to maximize quickness, alacrity, might, fury, and heals, but unless your team are spoiled rotten, absolutely nobody should say no to a scourge.
- Banner warriors are simple to set up and any group will benefit from at least one. Just grab the high damage warrior spec and replace the utilities with banners. Boom. Done.
- Honorable mentions go to heal elementalist and scrapper. Heal ele has all of the healing necessary to be a powerful addition to the team, make no mistake - its only limitation is lack of boon power compared to the other supports. Scrapper by all accounts SHOULD be workable, but ANet has carefully positioned all of the applicable offensive boons on other classes making this a poor selection for a fractal group.
- Anything else just grab a DPS spec. Again, every class has a high damage build or variant. If you're that worried about your group damage just look up the damage spec, put that on, and practice it for a while on the golem. If you can get your DPS above 20k with boons and food on, then you're good for any raid, fractal, or CM that isn't attempting a speed clear or some shit, and for some classes cough thief warrior cough you can hit that just spamming your autoattack.
Your reaper will crush fractals just fine.
naengwen on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Banner warriors being considered a support class by many people when they're putting out 30k dps still amuses me.
Druids are actually still good because they provide permanent 25 might to their group solo (assuming you're filling Avatar guage at a normal clip).
Oh absolutely. Chronos and Druids are just fine. But they took a lot of the super cool things from back in the day and gave em to firebrigade. That doesn't mean they can't still fulfill the exact same functions they have for the past 4 years, just that ANet finally managed to succeed in providing viable alternatives.
Oh absolutely. Chronos and Druids are just fine. But they took a lot of the super cool things from back in the day and gave em to firebrigade. That doesn't mean they can't still fulfill the exact same functions they have for the past 4 years, just that ANet finally managed to succeed in providing viable alternatives.
And, of course, the second there were viable alternatives, everybody glommed onto those and declared them the ONLY ACCEPTABLE CHOICES!!111!!1111
Mostly, I just wish gear acquisition in this game wasn't so unbelievably irritating, *especially* for T4 Fractals. If I could quickly and easily obtain gear for a carry scourge or an alacregade, I would do it... but the necessary stats are *always* locked behind some kind of heinous grind. At this point it's like, 4-5 different possible grinds to choose from, but it doesn't make them not heinous grinds.
The whole agony infusion thing is pretty atrocious. Its the main thing that has to be reworked if you want more people getting into fractals. Something is very wrong when Raids are less touchy about gear requirements.
Posts
And literally all your allies sacrificing themselves, including the ones you met 5 minutes ago.
But yes the world always needs more Joko.
That is very true, but I do think "End of Dragons" does indicate a paradigm shift in that regard.
Remember that dragons has been the story of GW2 right from the very get go. The reason things are dire, tragic, and horrible is that each new dragon represents a whole new apocalypse scenario. The stakes are always high and grim with GW2 because the circumstances of the story up to now have demanded as such, and has delivered as much.
I think if this is truly the end of the dragon arc for GW2, then the next step for Tyria is going to revolve around a lot more individual world building exercises that can vary between light hearted adventure romps and super dire world threatening consequences. For example, I know everyone working on GW2 has been waiting patiently for over a decade to delve into the Isgarren lore (that castle in Kessex Hills). Maybe now they can actually give it the arc it deserves without having to make it about dragons or a raid wing or a dungeon or a fractal or a WvW map or a PvP map or whatever. (or maybe it can be all of those
Also skeptical of an xpack 4, got a feeling this will be this game's EotN. But we will see.
It does genuinely help, yes. But as you mentioned bank alts... I had a few of those. I wonder what they were doing when I stopped playing...
I didn't realize how many skins I was just sitting on that I should just add to wardrobe and get rid of. But yeah... the game definitely pulled enough "hope you kept this crap from a year ago, it's worth something now!" stunts that it made me a hoarder (or at least enabled my hoarding tendencies).
I read somewhere that a Dev had explicitly said end of dragons isn't the end of GW2, but it will be brilliant, as @naengwen has said to delve into Tyria without the purely draconic focus.
I'd love to find out more about the other Sylvai trees, the Olmakhan and potentially other races in divergent cultures. Maybe there's an abandoned Asura outpost of 'feral' Asura who have abandoned science?!
I want to steal your account just to sort out your inventory...
Some quick wins:
You can partly help your problems by using the extra bag slot in your bank
Opening and using those recipie books is another quick win.
I'd attune then salvage the acended rings unless they are vipers, berserkers, assassin's or harrier stats.
The festival tokens can be consumed as they are now currency.
Use your level 80 boost for a free shared Inventory slot
After countless interations, I've fallen into a comfortable cycle of 3 mesmer styles: 1) Trailblazer's Mirage in which I have a beer or three and roll my face across the keyboard, 2) Viper's Mirage where I try and do cool bro DPS but die way more, and 3) Power Chrono which I pretty much never play despite spending a ton of time unlocking mist shard gear and dragonsblood weapons. I think, overall, I just prefer version 1. I'm just not really into competitive coop anymore I guess. I'd much rather take my volatile gathering tools and my skimmer out to sandswept isles and soak up the sun (and material nodes) for a while.
"Just" need a week or so of WvW, 1 map of world completion, some mystic coins/clovers and a LOT of Memories of Battle and T5!
Detail stuff in the cut!
72 Skirmish tickets remaining!
879 Memory of Battle (I'll probably end up buying)
Howler Specific
Done!
Metor Specific
0/1 World completion scroll.. 97%
Raid Armour Specific
Done
General
42 Mystic clovers
lots of T3-6
Thanks for help with the dungeons after missions last weeks folks
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Well, I've got some experience! I can at least get through the normal mode on 100 without a wipe
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
All the WvW, Raiding and World completion requirements are done! Just down to materials... whimper: a stack of mystic coins, and some misc T5/6 and leather left. Hopefully done in the next few weeks when login rewards take the edge off the coins at least!
meanwhile, I am pretty good at T4, but boy howdy is the T4 community toxic as fuck still.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Except for Mai Trin because people apparently still can't dodge the cannons even now they're much simpler.
Today was T4 Underground, Molten Boss and Twilight Oasis. With the exception of the last, these should be relatively painless with any group composition, and the last one not too terrible with a healer.
I was in a "fun" group that took almost 2 hours. Rotating cast, but we always had a healer and alac, sometimes had quickness. People definitely didn't know or understand mechanics;
There has to be a middle ground somewhere!
*edit* WOOO yeah, turns out you can indeed deposit ascended food! Same panel as Guild Banners! Unfortunately, the Consumables panel doesn't actually tell you what the food *does*
So in short, of the stuff I put in:
* Sous Vide steaks are Power food
* Fruit Salads are Healing food
* Oyster Spheres are Celestial (+ All) food
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Amala is the worst. That whole fractal gets an A for story and a D for playability!
I did a lot of random T1 and T2 fractals throughout the bonus week, and it did not, generally, convince me of the good and benevolent spirit of Humanity. It was mostly dudes screaming at other dudes about botched wisp runs, missed jumps, low DPS, and class specific build gripes. I really can't fathom what PUG T3/T4 looks like.
It really didn't used to be this way! GW2's community has changed a lot as blood has been transfused over the years. I think a combination of MMO fatigue in experienced players and younger players who came up on competitive coop (be it Battle Royale or stuff like LoL) have really pushed the majority vibe away from chill, social pretty princess dressup to aggressive, min/maxy, gotta get all those cheevos fast bro (with pretty princess dressup still being peak performance of course).
I don't think this old, gnarled, middle-aged oak tree of a gamer can keep up with today's multiplayer games. =P
Today Goldy and I had an awesome group - I advertised for Exp, offmeta welcome, and had one of the smoothest runs I've ever had with an standard healbrand and alacrigade (suprised they joined!) and three condi dps
We even all agreed that it should be "Meow, Meow, Horrik, unleash the kittens"
*Spoiler alert: not me :P
It's also that ArenaNet actively stopped trying to engage with the community back in like... jeez o flip, back when HoT launched, actually.
Game communities have to be cultivated, they really do. Warframe just got nominated for a Golden Joystick for Best Community and there's a REASON for that -- they have nearly weekly streams where the devs are open and honest and deeply engaged. And then there's Cyan Worlds, which... we'd be here for like four days if I went on about how Cyan has done right by their fans (shortest examples? Their MMO failed, so they... MADE THE SOURCECODE OPEN SOURCE, AND SAID "hey fans, we'll host a shard of the game for you if you want if you basically just pay us for the elecriticy and upkeep costs, and we promise that's ALL we're gonna charge you for!!!
* this was only possible because Cyan owns the building they operate out of and owns their own IP and never sold their IP to anyone, so they just. can. be like. "lol you want the source code sure actually
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Thanks to all those who helped with various activities along the way, and most importantly who helped me with pretty princess dressup for 2 toons tonight
https://fast.farming-community.eu/festivals/halloween
1) There is a lot more story content than there was when I left. I have two expansions and four Living Story seasons to catch up on, and I don't know if I'll ever sort through it all. I guess that whole Scarlet thing got wrapped up, eventually? I should have all of those episodes unlocked but I guess they took it out of the game and it's a cutscene now. Bummer.
2) I have GW2 characters that are older than my daughter. And with better birthday presents, to boot. I don't know how to feel about that.
3) Leveling is ridiculously fast now. I remember buying XP boosts and cranking out cooking recipes just to get through the 60-80 stretch back in the day, meanwhile I got my Necro from 60-66 last night without leaving Kessex Hills.
4) After doing some online research into what classes are doing well and worth playing in PvE/WvW, I've come to the conclusion that every specialization is somehow doing 10-15% less damage than every other one, and I shouldn't plan on doing Fractals again unless I'm playing a Druid or a Holosmith. Also, according to Reddit the Reaper is a specialization with good survivability and plenty of condition damage that no one plays because it's trash and the people who play it are bell-ends. So, I'm going to finish leveling my Necro and try Reaper out. I apparently started a Lightsaber Engineer before I quit last time, so that's an option too.
Yeah, its been a consistent complaint. Fortunately, they did add some of the original experiences in Eye of the North recently, with indications of more to be added in the future. I hope we get the marionette back someday
The guides are dated. Druid still holds up, but there are absolutely more powerful alternatives for fractals now. That said, the "meta" (generally this gets quoted by folks doing raids, and what is necessary for a 10 man group is often not whats needed for 5) doesn't matter unless you're doing Challenge Modes (CMs), and people who demand otherwise, even for T4s, are just pissants who are scared of their fractals taking more than 5 seconds. The sooner they retire, the better.
That said, if you do want to consider the meta for purposes of making your fractal life easier:
- Lets start with the prior powerhouses. Chrono and Druid. Still a powerful combo, but recent fractals and nerfs/buffs to other support specs have left the limitations of these two specs a lot more pronounced. They don't have the prevention power they used to, mobs in newer fractals aren't as controllable which reduces the power of mesmer focus, and lots of bosses push harder on rapid break bars which puts Termite Shovel Skill 2 as king of Fractal CC. No, seriously. Just buy some fucking shovels and it doesn't matter who you play anymore.
- The current kings of PvE support are Heal Quickness Firebrand and Alac Renegade, dubbed the firebrigade. Healbrand has all of the utilities that chaos chronomancer used to have before it was obliterated back in... what, 2017? You just load up your party with boons, stability, resistance, whatever is needed at the time while shoving quickness on them, max might with staff 4, and as long as they're not stupid on where they're standing their health bars will never dip. Alacrity Renegade's Kalla elite mixed with orders from above takes off any of the slack. That said, they work best as a pair - chrono can replace the alac renegade in a pinch but you lose the lifesteal, healbrand will need both a quickness chrono and a druid to replace. Or...
- The black sheep of the bunch. The mechanic deleter of fractals. The one, the only, SCOURGE.
Most fractals are balanced such that any damage not telegraphed to end you in 1 hit (read: the sort of mechanics where the fight stops and a giant expanding circle of death appears with someone screaming at you to GET TO THE SHIELD QUICKLY), at worst, barely below the amount that the lowest HP classes have in glass cannon builds. Adding some vitality and toughness to a glass cannon build makes most of them fairly trivial, but of course that can be expensive for ascended gear so not exactly an easy ask. Barrier from scourge effectively gives everyone access to that HP while running their glass cannon builds, and they can just give people that HP any time and it'll override whatever damage they're taking from any mechanic. Applied correctly, nearly everything fractals can throw at you can be negated by a smart scourge. Even if you aren't a smart scourge but have a dedicated scourge healer, bring it along, use stability on heavy knockdown fights, cleanse condis, blood is power if you don't have a might generator in the group, transfusion if people are going down frequently. Then notice how suddenly everything is just a walk in the park. This is the spec that is always just below everyone's radar because the people who determine these metas are heavily biased insist on comps that maximize damage potential by limiting number of necessary support specs to maximize quickness, alacrity, might, fury, and heals, but unless your team are spoiled rotten, absolutely nobody should say no to a scourge.
- Banner warriors are simple to set up and any group will benefit from at least one. Just grab the high damage warrior spec and replace the utilities with banners. Boom. Done.
- Honorable mentions go to heal elementalist and scrapper. Heal ele has all of the healing necessary to be a powerful addition to the team, make no mistake - its only limitation is lack of boon power compared to the other supports. Scrapper by all accounts SHOULD be workable, but ANet has carefully positioned all of the applicable offensive boons on other classes making this a poor selection for a fractal group.
- Anything else just grab a DPS spec. Again, every class has a high damage build or variant. If you're that worried about your group damage just look up the damage spec, put that on, and practice it for a while on the golem. If you can get your DPS above 20k with boons and food on, then you're good for any raid, fractal, or CM that isn't attempting a speed clear or some shit, and for some classes cough thief warrior cough you can hit that just spamming your autoattack.
Your reaper will crush fractals just fine.
Druids are actually still good because they provide permanent 25 might to their group solo (assuming you're filling Avatar guage at a normal clip).
And, of course, the second there were viable alternatives, everybody glommed onto those and declared them the ONLY ACCEPTABLE CHOICES!!111!!1111
Mostly, I just wish gear acquisition in this game wasn't so unbelievably irritating, *especially* for T4 Fractals. If I could quickly and easily obtain gear for a carry scourge or an alacregade, I would do it... but the necessary stats are *always* locked behind some kind of heinous grind. At this point it's like, 4-5 different possible grinds to choose from, but it doesn't make them not heinous grinds.
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