Post PAX Perceptions

Run Away!!!

After reading interview after interview, watching video after video, reading article after article, and stuffing myself on all of the new knowledge  from PAX, I must say, I’m exhausted. While Hunter and Nicholas and others continue to analyze the information from PAX, I am content to wait for people to update the wiki with new info about skills and traits and such. I’m also a short skip away from speculating further about professions 7 (mesmer) and 8 (who knows). I do have some thoughts on all of the PAX info though. FYI, I did not visit PAX. I sat at home and hit F5 on the GW2Guru thread like everyone else.

First of all, I am tired of watching guardian and thief videos. They are fantastic to watch and I’m excited to try out the guardian now that I’ve seen more of what they can do. I’m also up to the challenge of playing a thief. I’m just tired of watching essentially the same two videos. I know these guys are the new kids on the block, but there was some interesting information about the other 4 professions that was overlooked due to the zeal with which people created and posted videos of these two professions.

I got to see the warrior wield a greatsword for a little while, which was nice. It looks like a devastating weapon for sure. I also got to see a ranger video that  was well done, though for some reason the player wasn’t using a pet. Both of these videos can be seen on GuildWars2Live.com.

What really disappointed me was I never found a clear video of a necro wielding a staff or of the elementalist using air attunement. These are two of the professions I am most interested in playing and I was hoping to get more info about them. Also, apparently there have been changes made to the necro’s death shroud skills (namely, Shadow Fiend was removed). Thankfully, I found the new skill for that on the wiki (Dark Path if you’re interested). Only a handful of the air spells have been posted on wiki and I haven’t seen any video of them in action. /pout

Crafting UI from GW2

As for crafting, I saw several videos that included people acquiring materials during play. It really was as simple as walking up to the resource, interacting with it for about 5 seconds, and moving on with your business. The crafting UI was available for interaction and viewing, but actual trufax crafting wasn’t available due to the lack of workbenches in the demo. Still, I’m excited about the crafting system as a whole and it looks pretty user friendly and non-punishing. I have zero experience with crafting from other games, so I’m really looking forward to exploring it.

On a final note, or should I say ANet teaser: Aquatic Weapons.

That pretty much sums up my take from PAX East. I’m looking forward to hearing what Izzie at Talk Tyria and Ravious at Kill Ten Rats have to say about their experiences at PAX. If you haven’t seen them, you can watch a video of them with several other GW Fans and bloggers at the meet and greet on GW2Live.

EDIT: New gameplay videos were added for ele, necro, ranger, and warrior on the PAX thread. My evening is planned out for me!

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.

Quick, get behind my Aegis!

The guardian was revealed today, as promised. There is a lot of information about it on a number of other sites and blogs here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (forgive me if I missed one or two or half-dozen reviews). After a dearth of ooey gooey GW2 info goodness, we are blessed with a new profession and lots of answered questions about it. And still, after reading all of the reviews I could find, I (and I’m sure many of you) still have lots of questions about it.

I’m assuming you’ve read at least one article about the guardian by now. I’m also assuming you know what a Blue Mace Lady (BML) or Blue Mace Dude (BMD) is. If none of this is ringing a bell, please click on any of the links above and get better acquainted with the profession of Logan Thackeray.

Blue Mace Lady

I must say I am impressed by this new profession. There was a lot of discussion leading up to what it would ultimately be, but I like the result. I’ve called it paragon 2.0 and monk 2.0 in the past, but it truly has aspects of several GW professions, including ritualist. I am actually very excited about the Spirit Weapons and how much they function like GW1 spirits. A lot of people are comparing them to rit’s weapon spells, but I honestly see them more as spirits or minions, at least as far as functionality is concerned.

I am also very excited about the crowd control capability of this profession. It functions a lot like a necromancer through strategic use of offensive and defensive spells that frequently do little more than upset a foe’s tactics. Wards are great for this. What can I say, I like a tactical profession.

I’m not sure who won the bet on the unique quality of the guardian. Someone was talking about stances and I’d love to give him/her credit for coming the closest (to my knowledge) of predicting it. Virtues are what separate a guardian from others. I think they are great because they are natural buffs that help with solo play and they are party buffs/boons/etc that do not take up a skill slot. I think we will see that, while on paper (on screen?) these appear to be weak or have long cool downs, but in practice they will be more helpful than we think. It’s like carrying a 10% mod on a weapon in GW. You equip it and it helps you in the background.

I plan on making a charr guardian character.

Overall, I’m happy with this new profession. It has aspects of several GW professions that I have had less experience playing, but it is also a strong melee character in its own right. I like the crowd control ability of this profession and its similarities to the GW ele/necro regarding wards, wells, and symbols. I’m also very excited to explore the two-handed melee combat possibilities and like how much this profession is a cross between melee and caster. It is a nice blend for my taste.

I’m curious about how the monk/paragon/ritualist became the guardian as far as lore is concerned. Perhaps I’ll explore this idea in another post.

Conditioner is better. Oh, really, fool?

AAHHH!!! I'm on fire!!!

Conditions are a whole lot of fun in GW1. Every profession has the ability to inflict them upon enemies and some professions (e.g., necromancer, warrior, and ranger) hand them out like candy. Other professions (e.g., monk and paragon) specialize in removing them. And still other professions (i.e., necromancer and mesmer) can transfer conditions from one foe/person to the next. Conditions remain one of my favorite playstyles and GW2 offers up a lot of opportunities to make your enemies suffer.

Conditions in GW1

Nine conditions existed in GW1 when Prophecies was released: Bleeding, Blind, Burning, Crippled, Dazed, Deep Wound, Disease, Poison, and Weakness. The condition Cracked Armor was added later, bringing the total to 10. What do they do? Glad you asked!

• Bleeding – lose health over time (-3 degen)
• Blind – 90% miss chance for melee/missile attacks
• Burning – lose health over time (-7 degen)
• Cracked Armor – you have -20 armor (min 60)
• Crippled – move 50% slower
• Dazed – increased casting time (x2) and easily interrupted
• Deep Wound – max health reduced by 20% and receive less benefit from healing
• Disease – lose health over time (-4 degen); is contagious
• Poison – lose health over time (-4 degen)
• Weakness – deal 66% less damage with attacks; attributes reduced by 1

Accumulated Pain inflicts Deep Wound on foes suffering from 2+ mesmer hexes

As you can see, there are a lot of opportunities for fun in GW1. Many conditions deal damage over time through degen, which caps at -10, and the numerous conditions that inflict degen can stack with each other to quickly reach that cap. There are conditions that work really well against specific professions, such as blind and weakness against warriors, or dazed and deep wound against casters. Condition heavy professions, such as the necromancer and ranger, gain a lot of control over their foes making the monk’s job easier by mitigating potential damage from said foes.

Conditions are distinct from hexes and available to all professions, whereas hexes tend to be caster-specific. Some hexes also have the ability to unconditionally or conditionally apply conditions to their targets. With conditions, everyone gets to have fun!

Conditions in GW2

Conditions are the new hex. A Kill Ten Rats interview with Eric Flannum confirmed that hexes will be no more in GW2 and that more emphasis will be placed on conditions. Still, according to the interview, many of the things you could do with hexes in GW1 can be accomplished with conditions in GW2 (I’m paraphrasing, since the interview was necromancer-specific). Mesmers are the hex-masters of GW1 (with necromancers being a close second). There is a lot of evidence that they will return in GW2, but clearly with less emphasis on hexes and potentially with more emphasis on conditions. If you want to know more about the potential for mesmers in GW2, Nox is your guy

Ten conditions have been released for GW2: Bleed, Blind, Burning, Crippled, Fear, Frozen, Immobilized, Poison, Vulnerability, and Weakness. Returning conditions (i.e., bleed, blind, burning, crippled, poison, and weakness) have been revamped and new conditions offer interesting new gameplay opportunities. Let’s have a look at what we know so far:

• Bleed – damage per second; can stack this condition 9 times
• Blind – miss next attack
• Burning – damage per second*; is stackable
• Crippled – hinders movement
• Fear – foe runs away from you
• Frozen – hinders movement*
• Immobilized – hinders movement
• Poison – damage per second; is stackable
• Vulnerability – current effects unknown*
• Weakness – current effects unknown*

*= speculation of effect or current effects unknown

We see the return of damage over time and movement hindrance in our GW2 conditions. DoT is self-explanatory, however, it should be mentioned that the 3 DoT conditions (bleed, burning, and poison) are stackable. This means that the more times these conditions are applied, the more effective they are. Additionally, you can apply more than one of these conditions at to further increase DoT! They stack with themselves (e.g., bleed + bleed = more bleed) and with each other (e.g., burning + poison = more DoT).

Which way did he go George?

Blind appears to have been revamped a bit from GW1. Before, it offered a 90% miss chance and now it is a flat out “miss your next attack.” I think this allows for more tactical use of the condition (i.e., apply it before the foe’s big attack) and decreases the cast-and-forget nature of GW1 blind that nearly shut down warriors entirely.

GW2 appears to emphasize movement on the battlefield. People are allowed to dodge effectively and flanking your opponents appears to be a fantastic way to hit them hard. This necessitates counters for these cool new tactics. Enter the revamped and new conditions that affect movement. Cripple has returned and appears to have changed little from GW1 to GW2. Frozen and immobilized also appear to hinder movement, but the specifics of these conditions has yet to be fully revealed. I have a feeling frozen will root you to your spot and immobilized will keep you from moving and attacking. As conditions, these can be removed of course.

Fear is unique to necromancers and has thusfar received a lot of flack. No one likes to lose control over their character and there were a lot of complaints on GW2Guru about the effects of fear in PvP. Presently, it has a duration of 2-5 seconds in PvE and 2 seconds in PvP. Izzy has said in numerous interviews that he is continuing to balance this condition. While it is a great way to get foes to get away from you when you are in dire straits, I feel I will have fun using this condition to make my foes run toward traps and wells and marks and fire walls and allies and other nasty things in the environment.

Run Away!!!

Finally, we have vulnerability and weakness. We really don’t know what these do at the moment. I’m speculating that it makes my foes easier to harm and allows them to deal less damage to me, respectively. If weakness from GW1 can be used as a reference, foes will deal significantly less damage.

Overall, I think we have a fine assortment of conditions to play with in GW2. I am interested to see how conditions will fill the role of hexes in GW2 and how/if mesmers will utilize them. DoT conditions are very similar to DoT hexes like Conjure Phantasm and may be the new DoT hex. Mesmers are also big on shutting foes down. The movement hindering conditions do a great job of emulating this concept by limiting a foe’s options. I think vulnerability and weakness are more the flavor of the necromancer, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mesmer dishing out this kind of punishment in the absence of Domination Hexes from GW1. I guess we’ll have to wait (impatiently) and see. But wait! There’s more!

Other Cool Stuff you can do to people!

Why is the world spinning?

Knock down is a staple of hammer warriors and air eles in GW1. It completely immobilizes a foe for a very short period of time and infuriates players like nothing else (ok, so maybe interrupts infuriate players more, but that’s another rant entirely). The best (or worst, depending on who has fallen on their bottom) part about it is it is not a condition. Why is this the best part? Conditions can be removed, and therefore, knock down cannot be removed! Many professions can knock down foes, but few can do it unconditionally (mostly warrior and ele).

Knock down returns in GW2, along with 3 other effects: Knockback, Stun, and Launch. They all sound kind of similar, I’ll admit, but here’s the skinny on each:

• Knock down – foe falls down and is unable to move or attack for a short duration
• Knockback – physically pushes foes away from the player
• Stun – immobilizes and incapacitates foes for a short duration
• Launch – launches foes into the air

These effects offer plenty of opportunities to keep your foes at bay and look like a bad ass while you’re doing it. Many of them are already used by the GW2 warrior, especially hammer and mace warriors, but I can see a special place for some of these effects with the caster professions. Elementalists can use Water Trident to knockback foes and Static Field to stun foes. I can’t wait to see what a mesmer could do with these effects.

So there you have it. Conditions offer lots of gameplay opportunities in GW1 and GW2. They are a personal favorite of mine and allow for a style of playing a character that is more than just hit foe with weapon/spell and watch numbers appear over his head. They are a staple of Guild Wars and will be a big part of Guild Wars 2. I’m looking forward to learning more about them in the coming months.

GW2 Necromancer Revealed

Asura Necro Concept Art

So, ANet just released the necromancer info. Most of it was stuff we already gleaned form Gamescom. Additionally, the videos were leaked to Youtube a few days ago, so a lot of people, including me, saw them before the formal release today. Some questions answered:

• The concept art of the asura from the Manifesto Video (then wielding a sword with a blue background) was indeed the necro concept art. This should temper speculation about future professions based on concept art.
• Necros will indeed use staves (we pretty much assumed that) in addition to all of the weapons showcased at Gamescom.
• Marks appear to be some sort of combination of ranger traps and necro wells. They are area targeted and will trigger on their own or by activating the skill again. I like it. They also appear to have both enemy damaging and ally benefiting mechanics, as per the Mark of Blood example. These go great with…
• Fear. Fear is a condition unique to necros. It causes foes to run away from the necromancer, as seen in the doom video. This is great for use in conjunction with area targeted spells/skills such as poison cloud, ranger traps, and fire walls. Just put your foe between you and the trap, cast Doom, and they’ll run away from you right into the trap. Brilliant!
• Life Force. This is the stuff that allows you to use your death shroud. We already knew that you accrue it by being in proximity to dieing foes (a la Soul Reaping from GW1), and we knew that some skills would help you acquire more, but this release says that, more or less, you’ll always have a skill on your bar that will help you to make this green bar go up.

I have to say, after seeing the videos again and in HD, I can honestly say the necromancer is both creepy and menacing. The charr looked downright scary and watching the Bone Minions + Putrid Explosion video presented a very raw character that truly looked and felt like an agent of death and darkness. Minions are minions–hunks of flesh and bone that act as cannon fodder–but watching the little bone minion cower before it exploded really sold me on necromancers being the bad boys of GW.

Swaddle Me in my Death Shroud

I have to say I am surprised a bit by what I’ve seen and read about the necromancer in GW2. I’ve posted a bunch on GW2Guru about my thoughts, though most of my posts were speculation before the profession was revealed at Gamescom. I was hoping for some sort of unique mechanic associated with the gathering of souls and speculated about a soul battery based on some sort of energy gained for slaying baddies that could be used to affect spells.

Yeah, we got something like that alright.

I appreciate the concept of the Death Shroud, especially regarding both the updated mechanics of death in GW2 and the general lore associated with necromancers. As a unique profession mechanic, I’m still not sold. I am a big fan of versatility and, from what I’ve seen about the death shroud, you’ve got 4 skills and a limited amount of time to use them, and it’s unclear whether these give you an advantage in combat. Sure, it’s pretty cool and I like how it looks in the demos, but after the novelty of “ooh, that’s cool looking” wears off, I’m not so sure I’ll see much benefit in using it in battle. This is, of course, me speaking out my butt since I haven’t personally played the demo and I know there’s a good chance that the final version will be different from what was presented at Gamescom. But hey, what’s a blog without opinions?

What I do like about the death shroud is that it also plays the role of the necromancer’s downed skills. It makes sense that, of all the professions, necromancers would be most proficient when they are dieing. This is where I see a clear advantage for the death shroud. Warriors have “Throw Rock,” but necromancers have “Doom.” If nothing else, the downed skills for the necro sound like the necromancer is in control.

I see a lot of returning skills that I like. I’m also appreciative of the return of minions and I hope that necros a) get a few more to play with both in quality and quantity, and b) get a flesh golem equivalent in GW2. I’d like 10-12, personally, and the demos showed 6-7. As for blood magic, a big thank you to ANet for resurrecting that wonderful, if underused and misunderstood, attribute line. It gets a lot more use in GW2 and appears to be tied to daggers (hooray for logic!). I’m also a fan of the fact that necros get to use axes. Because really, what’s more menacing than a creepy guy carrying an axe?

Death magic appears to be strewn throughout the skill lineup without specifically saying it is death magic. Curses are, well, I’m not sure where. There’s a big debate about curses and hexes in general on the GW2Guru forums. I’m not sure how curses will play out in GW2. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m happy to report that wells are returning and I’m curious about “marks.” Mark of Blood and Reaper’s Mark are two reported skills that use this mechanic. I hope we’ll learn more about this tomorrow in the official reveal on the GW2 website.

All that being said, I’m gonna roll a necro. At this point, I’m 99% sure that my necro will not be Belzan. I’ve come to this decision for a number of reasons including character lore and personal interest in other professions (and possible professions). People change a lot in 250 years…