Traits and Updates

First and foremost, an apology. Life came kicking down the door and responsibility was not far behind. I have been very  busy with work and school and I am nearing completion of both. My goal is to have everything finished before GW2 hits the shelves. I also plan to post more once I am able to play GW or GW2. As it turns out, I haven’t been in GW in several months either. My titles are just sitting there incomplete

On to the news.

As you know, there have been lots and lots and lots of updates about GW2 lately. I’m talking all professions revealed. A limited press beta with gobs of video (click here for more on that). Hunter does a great job updating quickly and efficiently, so he’d be someone to keep an eye on for opinions about recent developments.

That being said, the big fuss at the moment is about traits.

Necromancer Traits

I’m actually a big fan of this system, though like everyone else, I have my criticisms, so I’ll start there.

1. Traits were originally set up to be acquired through in-game task completion. Now it is set up more like skills/attributes in GW. You must purchase a book from a trainer to unlock a tier and you gain points as you level that can be spent on each of the 5 lines. I’m sad to see a change in the acquisition method. I liked the idea of tracking down a master to learn something. Still, this has been iterated into the skill point acquisition system, so it’s not a total loss. I’m eager to learn about those tasks.

2. Seventy points just doesn’t feel sufficient. I know it is probably a good balance as it is, but I would love to have, say, 10 more points to play with. I’ve been playing around with the numbers a bit (like millions of other GW2 fans are doing right now) and I find that I can get just about what I want but I have to compromise more than I’m happy with. Take a look at these sites if you want to play around as well.

The rest is sheer nitpicking, which I’ll spare you.

I am excited about having access to all of the available traits up front and I hope that feature makes it into the game proper. I also appreciate the skill challenges to acquire skill points which unlock skills. ANet has done a great job of encouraging people to explore and play the game in new ways. Hit up Youtube and search for GW2 Jumping Puzzles if you haven’t heard about this yet.

As for the current fuss of the community: that we should be able to respec our traits wherever and whenever we want without paying a fee (oh, yeah, btw, you have to go to the aforementioned trainers in town and pay a small fee to reset your trait points), I say quit your whining.

Yup. I called it whining.

As the trait system stands, you are a bit more invested in your play style. You do this with nearly every role-playing game you play. You make decisions about specializations and attributes and you commit. You save your game and it is done. If you’ve played an RPG, this is nothing new to you. The confusion and the arguable “bait and switch” was the ability to swap your attribute points in GW1 anytime you were in town. You still had to set them before leaving town though. All the GW2 system does is encourage you to think about your play style and build a character around it, rather than spec your character before each fight for the purpose of that fight. I hated doing that in GW1, especially when people would whine about your build and kick you from the group if you weren’t running exactly what “was required” for the situations. I’m looking at you UW and FOW.

So what if you have to go back to town to respec your traits? You had to do that in GW1 also. So you have to pay a fee. Big deal. It will ultimately be negligible and it serves the purpose of encouraging you find a build you like and stick with it. It’s also a minor gold sink, which is fine by me. I’m sure it will take you all of 5 minutes to knock some mobs around and earn enough gold to pay to respec if it’s that important to you.

Me, I’ve already come up with 3-4 builds for each of my characters, as I’m sure lots of people have. My goal is to have one or two builds that I run regularly, while also having a couple more specialized for when I want to focus on a role. I’ll use ranger as an example.

In most situations my ranger will be specced with 30 Beastmastery and 10 in each of the other traits. This maximizes my pet and healing options, while giving a moderate boost everywhere else. It leaves nothing ignored and allows for flexibility. I also plan on speccing my ranger: Marksmanship 30, Wilderness Survival 30, Beastmastery 10. This is a more offensive build emphasizing conditions. My third build is: Skirmishing 30, Nature Magic 20, Wilderness Survival 20 to emphasize crowd control with traps and/or nature spirits.

I don’t plan on swapping my builds a lot, but I do know how I like to play my characters. I will be posting a bio for each of my GW2 characters soon and will add my builds to the bios. I am eager to play around with this for real and have my fingers crossed about being picked for beta.

Clone Army

So, I thought I’d have some fun with the new Mercenary Heroes. I first turned all of my alternate characters into heroes and had fun for a while, but then I read this line on the Guild Wars Wiki:

A quick way of creating mercenaries of any profession would be to create a PvP character (already at level 20), give them appropriate armor, and register them. Delete the PvP character and create a new one in the profession of choice. With enough mercenary credits, you can create up to seven mercenaries of each profession.

So basically, you can make pretty much how ever many of whatever you want. I decided to take this opportunity to make a clone army.

That's a lot of necroes!

I plan to take them vanquishing when I have enough money to equip them. For now they have no runes or insignia. I managed to get them all weapons at least. And I did take them out for a spin. I completed Vizunah Square in HM using the  2 Man Discordway build from PvXwiki. It could use a bit of tweaking, but otherwise it worked just fine. Vizunah isn’t really geared for Discordway so much as MM and AoE. But lemmie tell you, it was kinda cool being one player with 15 heroes/henchies, 2 NPCs, and about 25 minions. Those afflicted never saw us coming.

The Iterative Process, or “how we plan to bring you the best game possible”

[Originally posted on Talk Tyria]

Iteration, or the iterative process, is something ANet has discussed many times. It accounts for changes between versions of their games. Each GW update involves iteration and iteration accounts for the content and mechanic changes we see between GW2 status updates. Put simply, the iterative process is simultaneously responsible for what makes the Guild Wars franchise worth playing and what is delaying the release of GW2. Over the past years and coming months (I refuse to think of GW2 as over a year away) we have enjoyed teasers, concept art, videos, updates, interviews, profession reveals, and demos of GW2. One thing has remained constant about the information we receive about GW2: nothing is set in stone.

Isaiah “Izzy” Cartwright (left) and Martin Kerstein (right) at Gamescom in 2010 (from ANet’s Flickr)

Iteration in Guild Wars 2

Case in point, Izzy, that is Isaiah Cartwright from ANet, not our own personal Izzie here on Talk Tyria, posted an article today talking about changes to the attribute system and some of the skills we’ve seen in profession reveals and gameplay from PAX Prime. For details of those changes, give the article a read. Izzy was primarily responsible for balancing skills and other systems in Guild Wars, but now plays a larger role in the development of Guild Wars 2. He has talked a number of times about changes made to yet-to-be-released GW2 content and the above article talks about some of the content from GW2 that we are already familiar with, including some of the necromancer and warrior skills, that have changed since we last saw them. A quick example is the necromancer skill Grasping Dead which was changed from a line effect to an AoE. The skill video on the GW2 necromancer profession page is therefore outdated and incorrect–a constant reminder that everything is subject to change until, and after, the game is in the box and on shelves.

The aforementioned article focuses primarily on changes to the attribute system in GW2. The short version is that ANet is interested in simplicity and versatility regarding attributes. This is explained in detail in Izzy’s article. Here is a quick visual of the old and new attribute systems:

Attributes as we saw them at Gamescom and PAX

Attributes as we will see them at PAX East

Iteration in Guild Wars

The iterative process still plays a big part of the original Guild Wars game. A recent major update added lots of new features to GW and changed many others. It is under constant debate even here on Talk Tyria. The update can be boiled down into three major changes: 1) Parties/Grouping, 2) Pre-Searing, and 3) Titles. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Parties and Grouping

Embark Beach is a location that functions simultaneously as a guildless guild hall for the purposes of venders and a hub for Pick Up Groups (PUGs). It is accessible from the map like the major ports of each campaign (i.e., Lion’s Arch, Kamadan, Kaineng Center, and Great Temple of Balthazar) and allows every character to join groups who are interested in completing any/all missions across any/all campaigns. Of course, you can’t participate in mission you haven’t yet accessed in the game. The major purpose of Embark Beach is to help people group together more efficiently and cut down on group splitting (moving from larger to smaller areas and having to split the party up to enter the area because it only allows parties of 6 or 4 instead of 8). This will ideally save people time when working to complete missions and progress the game.

Seven (7) hero parties and Mercenary Heroes are another change for groups. This is primarily a change that will affect solo players, but is also a perk for people who want their alternative characters (alts) to be heroes. Seven heroes allows a player to make whatever party they want/need for pretty much any situation. Mercenary Heroes allow for people to have additional control over the heroes in their party and allows for truly unique parties of 4+ heroes of the same profession. It puts a whole new spin on Discordway for sure. Again, the benefit of additional heroes is to streamline the PvE process. For people playing GW once GW2 goes live, this will be almost a necessity considering GW will likely be a ghost town for sometime for anyone not seeking titles.

Pre-Searing

Pre-Searing got a nice shot in the arm. ANet provided an alternative to death leveling with daily quests. Now people can get Legendary Defender of Ascalon in a slightly more appropriate, if completely non-epic, way. Props to all of the death levelers out there with LDoA. Now I can go for the title because it doesn’t take hundreds of hours at the screen that I just don’t have. Additionally, now perma-pres (people who keep their characters in Pre-Searing permanently) can put titles in the HoM and have access to barred secondary skills from a vendor. Things are looking up for the past.

Titles

Changes were made to the Survivor and Drunkard titles. Everyone now has a second chance for Survivor based on the time span between the last time you died and reaching the XP requirement. This means that all of us old school GWers who made characters back in the day before Survivor can earn that title on those characters (FINALLY!). Also, there was a minor change to the Drunkard title that made it the same as Sweet Tooth and Party Animal. Essentially, use the item and get a point for it. The old way (the way I did it) was maintaining a “level of drunkenness” for one minute per point. That amounts to a minimum of 10,000 minutes sitting at the computer. Most people I know did this by playing the game regularly and occasionally clicking on the booze. I did it by watching season after season of Scrubs and clicking the button every three minutes on a timer while sitting in my guild hall. To each his/her own I guess. I’d personally love to have that time back. Additionally, there was the addition of Zaishen Vanquishes that encourage vanquishing. Despite the title and the minuscule rewards of XP and gold following a successful vanquish, this daily update allows for more significant rewards for killing all the baddies in a given zone. Incentive and reward: they’re what make the world go around.

Summary

Iteration, however, is what makes the GW world go around. Without it, the game would stagnate and become very unbalanced. Though we balk at game balance updates and skill nerfs, they are there for a reason. I wasn’t happy when they added a minion cap based on Death Magic and I was very outspoken with all of the changes to Soul Reaping, but in the end it made the necromancer more manageable and less of an overpowered energy and minion factory. We all have fond memories of the “good ol’ days” and times pre-nerf or pre-updates. They bring us together as a gaming community and give us something to talk about on the forums. Ultimately, however, the iterative process and subsequent changes make GW and GW2 better, more efficient, and more fun to play. And really, who doesn’t want to have more fun?

Warriors and Dervishes

Well, I vanquished Silverwood today with a team of 3 warriors. I ran a Build that focused on Cultist’s Fervor [elite], Order of Pain, Dark Fury, and Blood Bond with PvE skills, regen, and condition removal to round it out. My warriors were as follows:

Goren – Hammer Warrior

Earth Shaker [elite], Crushing Blow, Hammer Bash, Bull’s Strike, Flail, Enraging Charge, “For Great Justice!”, and a rez.

Koss – Axe Warrior

Warrior’s Endurance [elite], Cyclone Chop, Power Attack, Distracting Blow, Dismember, Executioner’s Strike, Flail, and a rez.

Jora – Sword Warrior

Hundred Blades [elite], Deadly Riposte, Riposte, Sun and Moon Slash, Steelfang Slash, “To The Limit!”, “For Great Justice!”, and a rez.

The warrior gang and me in my blood magic getup.

I have to say, I liked the builds, but they weren’t terribly effective in this situation. Silverwood is full of centaurs and mostly centaur warriors. Spells work great against warriors, not other warriors. In addition, I had to do a whole lot of targeting with these heroes since, as you might expect, they all wanted to rush in and attack the nearest target. This was great if that target needed a good butt whooping, but in most cases it allowed bad guys to approach the monk and me and cut us down in short order.

I got the rhythm down of sending Goren after the guys who came after me or after the meddlesome casters, letting knockdown do it’s job. Jora engaged the warriors one on one and had pretty high survivability with her riposte and blocking abilities. Koss pulled double duty with groups and all around damage dealing. Halfway through I wished I’d have brought more crippling capabilities.

It took twice as long as I expected to vanquish this area due to crappy healing/support (my fault) and bad pulls. Also, I may have been watching television at the time.

All in all I was happy with these warriors, but I think they are better to supplement a group that has some strong healing rather than as a fighting force by themselves. Maybe when we are able to outfit our entire parties with heroes I’ll group them with healing heroes and see how well they do.

As for dervishes, well, everything was going well until the dervish update. I had all 3 of my dervishes ready to go with builds from PvX wiki and watched them get cut down in HM since they were no longer balanced. I’m currently doing my research on the new update and will reskill my dervs and prolly reequip them as well. We’ll see what comes of them when I take them out into Mamnoon Lagoon and Sage Lands later on.

Vanquishing Beyond Kryta

Kryta has been vanquished! Verata, as I expected, gave me the most trouble due to the sheer quantity of bad guys. I kept with my Thackeray/Gwen/Livia Shining Blade team for the rest of Kryta and they served me well.

All that remains are areas in Maguuma Jungle and Crystal Desert. Twelve in total, but I’m planning on doubling up on a couple of them. Onto the plan.

I’ve been looking over PvX and coming up with some builds for vanquishing with other hero trios. I have also been outfitting my heroes and now I’m out of plat Yes, I know, heroes can share (and that’s exactly what I plan on doing with Major Vigor runes), but I want to outfit them all because, frankly, they deserve it.

I will report back my progress one hero trio at a time and post builds and pics.

Vanquishing Kryta in Style

Let me start by saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That being said, let me also say “Variety is the spice of life.” There are hundreds of zones in Guild Wars to vanquish and to undertake a task such as Legendary Vanquisher, one must have a plan. I’ve blogged about vanquishing before and there are many other blogs devoted to the subject (e.g., A Tyrian Odyssey), but I haven’t blogged about it in a while and according to my year in review, that’s what people are reading about.

Now, about variety. Sabway, Discordway, Spiritway, and all of the other team builds ending in -way (see here for all the “great” vetted team builds on PvX wiki) work well. Many of them will allow you to breeze through the majority of areas in hard mode and offer a “let the hero do the work for you” style of play. This is fantastic if you’re going to vanquish the world. In fact, I’ve ctrl+c, spacebar’d my way through gobs of areas while watching reruns of Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother. It works too well and, frankly, makes for boring game play.

I don’t play games to be bored.

So, I decided to do something nice with the remaining areas. I have less than 20 and they’re all in Tyria. I finished the Shiverpeaks over Christmas break, because who could pass up all that snow? What remains are about half-a-dozen areas or so in each of Kryta, Maguuma, and the Crystal Desert. Why not have some fun with it?

I intend to use the same group of 3 heroes for the remainder of Kryta (more on that in a moment). As for the dozen or so zones remaining in Maguuma and the desert collectively, I think I’m going to work my way through my heroes and try new things. I have many of my heroes equipped, but not all of them. I foresee this costing me a small fortune in runes and weapon mods (yes, I know I can recycle to keep the costs down). I’ll post about them as I vanquish with them.

As for Kryta, I have the Shining Blade Dream Team. I am a N/X running my traditional SS PvE build consisting of Spiteful Spirit, Pain Inverter, EV Assassin, EV Sniper, Enfeebling Blood, Weaken Armor, Barbs, & Mark of Pain. I am also decked out in my Shining Blade Uniform.

Left to Right: Belzan, Livia, Gwen, Kieran Thackeray

For my heroes, I tried to cover my bases. Livia has always been my N/Rt, but for this case I specced her as a bomber/prot hybrid (Jagged Bones, Bone Minions, Death Nova, Masochism, Reversal of Fortune, Prot. Spirit, Aegis, & Renew Life).

Gwennie has always been my interrupter, and that hasn’t really changed. I’m essentially running a Keystone Mesmer build with her and have enjoyed running signet heavy builds in the past on my own mesmer (though I haven’t played her since this build became popular). Her exact build is Keystone Sig, Sig of Clumsiness, Unatural Sig, Sig of Disruption, Sig of Distraction, Mantra of Inscriptions, Symbolic Celerity, and Sig of Return. I am a big fan of Symbolic Celerity and love the guilty pleasure that comes from maxing out my Fast Casting and getting the bonus to my Sig of Return.

As for Keiran (hooray for a new hero!!!), I saw no sense in putting a spear in his hand, so he will forever be a P/R. I’m running a modified Motigon build that emphasizes using a shortbow and zealous string to recoup some of the energy loss from the build. His skillbar is as follows: Volley, “Go For The Eyes!”, Song of Restoration, Aria of Resto, Ballad of Resto, Aria of Zeal, Aggressive Refrain, & Signet of Return.

The way I see it, I can’t split up Gwennie and Keiran. They’re married afterall. Livia is a member of the Shining Blade and I’m vanquishing in Kryta. Based on my Shining Blade logic, however, I should prolly switch Gwen out for Hayda and run a Command Hero build. How funny would it be that I’d be running 2 necroes and 2 paragons though?

So that’s that. I’m not sure what order I’ll vanquish in, but I’ll be sure to blog about it. I’ll post my builds and (hopefully) my success stories. I am happy to indulge any hero combination ideas. I plan to take triplets out for some of the zones (i.e., all 3 warriors, all 3 rangers, monks, eles, dervs, and paras). In fact, I think I might make it my initial goal to find a successful team build for each trio of like-professioned heroes (clearly that has been done to death, pun intended, with necroes). To be continued…