My group is probably (?) taking a break for a little while. We ran into our first gear check. That's something I really missed from World of Warcraft. Dungeon paths you just cannot do if your number isn't this big. Huzzah. For the record, I'm talking about AC3. AC3 seems to require a total DPS higher than we can achieve to get past that first path encounter (the spawning burrows that you need to put down in like four seconds tops to avoid getting overrun), and I'm guessing that, since the final boss is just Howling King over again but harder, that we'd also be short there if, by some miracle, we managed to stubbornly bash our way through the first one. I still don't know whether we're going to be doing CM (story, and see how much time we have after that) tonight or moving to a different game for a break. Also, Mists of Pandaria can chaw my feisty crotch, since it's the primary distraction the furthest of us back stubbornly refuses to leave behind. That game is an exceedingly selfish game. Maybe I should talk about that in the why I quit thread.
Brian, we ran AC3 in-guild back in September when I was just like level 50 and got past that burrow fight after a lot of strategizing and practice. It's very difficult, but it's not a gear check - it's a skill/teamplay check. I'm not going to downplay the difficulty though - we probably failed more than a dozen times before we perfected a strategy and executed it successfully.
AC3 is more a class composition check. You need an Ele or an Engineer. Nobody else can really drop burrows due to the way damage works on world objects (no conditions allowed, odd damage reduction, wonky melee hitbox). Basically, someone who can reliably drop burrows. Everyone else is just rounding up little dudes, and focus firing breeders. First time I did it the thing seemed impossible on my mesmer. I simply couldn't hurt things fast enough, and a class that ramps up damage is useless in that fight. When I did it on the Ele it was pretty trivial. Frost Bow murders burrows by the way, in case you need to help out a class that can't do much during the encounter. Dumb encounter overall.
Well yeah, that's absolutely true. We were all underlevel and our gear sucked but we had an Ele and an Eng (I think Aaron was the Ele and I was the Eng). Once we had both reconfigured our skills to the AE abilities that seemed to polish burrows off quite handily and the other 3 focused on killing everything else it just came down to coordinating one of us burrow-slayers to always be on top of whenever a new burrow appeared.
It's one of the design weaknesses of GW2. Anything that involves hitting a world object (burrow, crate, whatever) is seriously bullshit and tedious for no reason. Random misses, half your skills don't work, only power builds can really do much.
I honestly still love the game but I've gotten through most of what I'm interested in doing solo in the game (which I'm not complaining given how many hours of fun I've had exploring Tyria that way). I'm up for running fractals and dungeons and team PvP but just need folks to do this stuff with. I'm still coming back with every content patch running all the new content as it's coming out.
Yes. I really wish they'd fix it because just getting some of the Hearts and events done that require destroying objects is really annoying. Some of them just randomly can't even be hit by melee at all and some require you to bury your nose in them and keep hitting forward before they take damage.
Well, to get into the specifics, because this is probably another case where we were terrible, party composition was: 1. Engineer (me). Power build (Grenades and Bombs), which means that my damage was cut by some amount with the latest patch, since I don't have a sigil on my gun to make up for the overall reduction. 2. Elementalist (somebody else here). Support build. I don't know much more than that. 3. Ranger (my brother). Toughness build, which sounds bizarre to me, because I'm not sure why you would primarily spike any stat that isn't one of the two damage methods, but there you go. 4. Warrior (the guy who's trying to split time with WoW). Currently only 40th level, not sure whether he's got any rhyme or reason to his build to date. 5. Warrior (a guy from the guild who couldn't talk, but could hear). Not sure what build was on him, but he was 80, so presumably it was something. We tried a few approaches. The first, where everybody sticks together and you try to just sweep through the burrows as they pop up, had no trouble dropping the first two or three, but the time to kill each increased dramatically after the first, and things just got worse from there, and we crossed the eight second barrier around the third, at which point doubles started showing up and you're effectively wiped. Everybody but me and the guy who couldn't talk bitched interminably about how we couldn't run from target to target fast enough (I wasn't really having a problem). Second approach we tried was splitting and defending the nodes, which didn't go well. Generally one side would last longer than the other, but both ended up falling over. Third approach was trying to defend a single node (meaning that we wouldn't run beyond the halfway point to get the two spawn locations on the far side). That one went chronologically longest, and I think we got as high as 60+%, but that's as much as we managed. We made maybe...what, ten runs or so using those philosophies, or some conjugation of them, and when we went to YouTube and saw how it's "supposed" to go, the only reasonable conclusion at that point is, well, we just don't have the requisite DPS. I'll grant that 4 is probably terrible at this. He dies all of the time and doesn't seem to have a particularly clear notion of how to operate his man and hasn't invested nearly as much time with the game as the other three talkers in the group have. So maybe we just suck collectively that bad, or maybe he sucks so hard that he's dragging the rest of us down, or maybe our builds are just matched up wrong, but, dammit, this time I'm absolutely certain that I have the right build for this particular problem, because there is no better method of demolishing environmental objects than throwing grenades at them (since I get an extra on each throw, explosions stack vulnerability on the crap that flies out of the node I'm attacking, and I have extended range). I'm usually willing to blame myself for any failure, but this time it can't be me. Regardless, at this point we're probably moving on to Caudecus's Manor (well, that or Torchlight 2), which means that I now get to be irritated by the fact that the ground circles on the missiles from the robot are either invisible or too big to be useful and the center spire apparently has no collision with the flamethrowers. I think I'm remembering that right. I also remember liking every dungeon other than these two much more than these two, which suggests to me that the game really does not put its best foot forward.
I was in fact the Elementalist in question! We were underleveled and our gear sucked and it was super difficult, which of course is why it was so much fun. In the end, an Elementalist who properly sets his Staff stuff up can nuke down a burrow before anything spawns out of it 75% of the time. That's if the Elite fiery sword isn't up, in which case it's even shorter; and glyphed, you get a second Conjured weapon for someone else to use, iirc. IIRC we managed it by having me and Reldan exclusively focus on burning down warrens and letting everyone else worry about collecting and holding the critters. I took one side of the room, and he took the other, but we got a feel for the order in which burrows popped up and which ones were the breeder burrows (everyone switched to those).
Is there any way more members can be given invite privileges? There are currently 9 guild members online and none of us can invite.
Sure! Shoot me a PM with the account name if you'd like invite privileges. I'll get it set up tonight.
Is there still a reasonable amount of Broken Forumers playing this? I've been thinking about diving back in now that I have my new PC :)
My group is currently taking a break to do some shooters and pretend that our WoW victim will actually take the time to make it up to higher than 40. I might be back in leveling a Mesmer or a Guardian (which would be great if I could just loan them to those guys for a night, but whatever - I'll at least make sure that I cover as much variety as I can), but I'm getting the feeling that all of my doing-stuff-while-laundry-folders-are-on will go into Persona 3 and 4 on the Vita.
I'm not on regularly, but would be fine jumping in to run some content or do some tPvP. There's supposed to be a patch soon that should make Fractals grouping easier which I'm looking forward to.
Now all they need is a proper LFG/LFD system and all the obvious features that were supposed to be / should have been in from launch will be in. I'm not complaining too much since it was still my game of the year, but I'm probably not going to play much more until an in-game LFD system is implemented. It sounds like they meant 1 different world (plus your home world), right?
All at the low, low cost of five months worth of permanent damage to the future of WvW thanks to server hoppers! I was willing to accept guesting being "soon" after release. Five months? Someone needs to get their priorities straight. Now maybe we'll get lucky and see an LFD system before 2014.
That's weird, I made a post and it never showed up. Which is good, because it was, well, wrong, but still. Odd. It showed up! And was still wrong! So I nuked it. And yeah, I agree with the sentiment - guesting was a major attraction of the game, almost as big as the downlevelling system when it comes to playing with friends, and the fact that it's taken 5 months while we've seen endless overblown and somewhat confusing (yes ok I'm thick) holiday / special events irritates me. But at least it's coming.
I should give this a go now that I have my PC upgraded. Are the WvWvW's still having ghost player problems?
It's a lot better than it used to be, and they're promising more upcoming improvements. Maybe getting rid of culling completely.
I finally took a break from TSW and got back to GW...and the first thing I realized about TSW is just what a lonely game it is. Getting back to GW where you are rewarded for helping, and never penalized for helping is such a great mechanic. Couple that with world/dynamic events- man just great. I jumped on, grabbed some gear upgrades for my Mesmer (some pieces were 20 levels below me) and I am now happily blasting away at foes with unabashed glee.
If nothing else comes from GW2, it will be totally worth it for that design concept to continue to further MMOs. Full XP, full loot, never penalize players for helping or being helped.
Yes! Me too. My guild of friends is a little too small to be active most nights, so it might be fun to hop over sometimes.
New update coming Monday the 28th - Flame and Frost Prelude. Guesting finally getting in is great, and it's good that they're mixing up the achievements and tying gear you'd actually want to getting them.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-January-28-2013 Patch is live and notes are up. Major thing is new currency from daily/monthlies (we needed another currency, rite?) that can be used for ascended amulets and some other shit. GRAVEYARD ZERGING IS GONE FOR DUNGEONS NOW: Waypoints cannot be used in a dungeon while any party member is in combat. Level downscaling has been rebalanced. Downranked content will be harder now. Loot drops have been increased to compensate. Fractals are now open to anyone. You can join higher tier groups and advance your own tier. You can also join groups in progress now. Orr was nerfed. Fewer mobs. WvW pop in has been altered, placeholder models are being used to immediately render players, followed by their actual gear/model. Not sure how well this will work, but nice to see it being worked on. WvW loot bags remain, but if the drop is higher rarity it's a chest instead. Should help you notice if you left some shit on the ground. Few class bug fixes, didn't scan any major changes.
I'm incredibly curious how much revenue they're generating every month. I wonder if they'll ever share a hint of how much it is.
New patch notes out - this update is around 1GB so it's pretty hefty. Major changes: Changes to Daily and Monthly Acheivements along with the ability to get Ascended-quality gear via acheivements. Dungeons have been fixed and players may only use waypoints if nobody is in combat. I assume this "fixes" graveyard zerging. Fractals are fixed. You can reconnect if you get disconnected, and you can add players to an instance later even if they weren't in the original group. Not all players have to the the level of the fractal to participate, and anyone under will gain a fractal level as though they had done one of their level. Guesting is in. Just select a world and you can log into it for the next 24 hours. You can have up to 2 "Guest" worlds active at a time and log into them freely. You maintain all of your home world's guild benefits and all influence earned goes back to the guild on your home world World transfers now cost a gem fee - hopefully this reduces WvW hopping. Orr has been reworked with new items, rewards, and redistributed monsters Tons of other tweaks and rebalancing of skills too numerous to list Overall this is looking like a lot of great stuff. Only real major thing left would be a Dungeon-Finder.
If I still have leftover Christmas sweaters, is there anything I can do with them besides sell them to a vendor?
So I didn't notice this, but apparently they're changing the WvW rating formula. And more importantly, they're doing a rating reset next week. Which means while pairings will look normal, there will be a lot more volatility in the pairings for a few weeks while things shake back out. This is a response to both server transfers being ended, and something with the system not letting servers advance easily. So you wound up with pairings that would always have the same server win in a blowout, but they'd never get paired into the next tier.
Some of them are annoying- I'm looking at you crafting. But I like the variety. For someone like me that some nights only has enough time to hop on and get my daily done it's a nice change-up. Also, Orr is more polished now. the mobs look better and you can actually run places now.
Still no hearts in Orr, though, I assume? Though maybe now I can at least come back and finish the PvE map.
Hearts are supposed to be training wheels for the game's 'real' events. They won't be adding them to any max level zones.
They didn't add any to Orr on purpose, since it's supposed to be the 'endgame' zone. I guess I should've said that instead of 'max level'. I honestly keep forgetting Frostgorge even exists (I hate snowy zones so I never go there after having gotten map completion).
