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.

Heir to the Air

An air attuned elementalist hard at work

After trolling the internets and youtubes and gurus, I have found gamplay video of the GW2 air attuned elementalist. Big thanks to CoolBeens for linking two good quality videos of the air ele in action. In the spirit, but nowhere near the fervor, of Hunter, I thought I’d provide feedback, thoughts, and analysis to these two videos. But first, a bit about the profession then and now.

As you may know, I’m 90% certain my primary (read: Belzan) will be an elementalist in GW2. This has a lot to do with why I’m interested in this profession for GW2. The ele has made a lot of changes from GW1 to GW2 and I think a lot of them are for the better.

Elementalists in Guild Wars

Charmaine geared for air attunement

In Guild Wars there was little encouragement for elementalists to be flexible. Typically eles would spec toward one element or stick with one primary and bring a couple spells from another either for variety or utility. A fire ele, for example, would often bring water skills to snare opponents and keep them in their AoE fire damage. Most of the builds you find on PvX wiki are of the single element variety.

Eles were energy cows in GW as well. Their primary attribute was energy storage, which served the purpose of giving them more energy to work with, since casting 2 or 3 spells would often require you to mortgage your house. Often eles, especially those under 20th level, would be /Me in order to take advantage of the inspiration line and it’s ability to recoup energy.

Each element had a purpose in GW.

Fire was pretty much damage and the application of burning. Most of these skills dealt gobs of damage, caused degen, and were of the AoE variety. Favorite spells of pyromancers include Meteor and Meteor Shower, which also caused knockdown.

Water was used primarily to snare opponents by slowing their movement rate. Water also included some hexes for conditional damage and some defensive skills, but nearly every hydromancer in GW was using it to snare.

Earth was all about defense and knockdown. If an ele tanked, you can bet they used this attribute or at least considered it when making their build thanks to the numerous enchantments and wards. Geomancers were also very capable at keeping opponents on their bottoms. Several spells snared, weakened, or knocked down foes and did significant damage to those who could not escape. Earth also had a number of armor-ignoring spells for increased damage.

Air was all about toe to toe combat and many spells could penetrate armor by 25%. Aeromancers could blind, weaken, knock down, and crack the armor of their foes with ease, which made them formidable opponents regardless of who they faced. In my opinion, an aeromancer is as formidable against one foe as a pyromancer is formidable against a group.

I like air magic in GW because of its versatility. If I need to do AoE, I’ll make a fire build. If I need extra defense or interrupts through knockdown, I’ll go earth. If I need to snare melee attackers or help out a pyromancer, I’ll go water. But really, aeromancy can tackle most any situation. An aeromancer can snare with knockdowns, kite with movement boosts for defense, soften up foes with conditions and damge, and even do some AoE. I likes them a lot

Elementalists in Guild Wars 2

Render of a female elementalist in GW2

The primary ability of elementalist in GW2 is attunement. ANet believes that elementalist should be more flexible and therefore allow them to switch elements on the fly in combat. While most professions have 2 weapon slots with a total of 10 weapon skills available at any time, elementalists have only 1 weapon slot but, thanks to attunements, have 20 weapon skills available to them at any given time. That makes them a major magical threat.

Elements in GW2 play similar roles to their GW ancestors. From what we’ve seen so far, all of the elements have AoE capability and all of them can apply conditions to foes. Fire appears to be the biggest damage and AoE contributor and continues to apply burning to foes. Water includes some snares, knockback, and AoEs but also adds a healing factor to the ele. Air continues to deal damage one on one but gains more AoE possibilities in GW2. In addition, air does a great job of applying conditions such as blind and stun. Earth appears to be protection and knockdown like in GW. Other than that, it’s the only one we haven’t seen yet so it remains a mystery.

Videos

This first video shows off the dagger skills for air and fire attunements. For the most part the player sticks to Arc Lightning and Lightning Field. It looks a lot like a sith on a rampage or an average day for Star Wars Force Unleashed. For the most part, the video is a pretty straightforward example of air attunement and what you can do while so attuned. It’s a nice appetizer for the next video.

This video shows both the versatility and maneuverability of the elementalist. In so many words, this is why I want to play this profession so badly. There is a good mix of weapons used and we especially get to see some hard hitting staff skills, which is nice. Malchior does a fantastic job of engaging foes and switching attunements to change up combat (note: I’m 90% certain it is Malchior Devenholm playing this character in the video. Lemmie know if I’m wrong please. I wanna give credit where it is due!). He also makes use of the water attunement as an alternate source of healing from the heal skill slot.

I like this video in part because I get to see lots of fun air skills, but what really drew my attention was the dagger/focus combination at the end used with the fire attunement. Malchior uses Burning Retreat, Flamewall, and Burning Speed to create multiple flamewalls to provide pressure on the centaurs, which allows him to handle more of them and wear them down. I think it is a great example of how versatile the profession can be even within one element. It’s also nice to see a profession in light armor able to evade and kite so well without using the actual in game evasion mechanic. Good times.

So yeah, I’m pumped about the GW2 ele and eager to try it out. Feel free to post your thoughts about this profession–what you like and you don’t like–and maybe even how you think ANet can improve it.

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…

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.