Guild Wars 2: I cannot properly see the Lion's butthole from that screenshot

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Guild Wars 2: I cannot properly see the Lion's butthole from that screenshot

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orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

The PoF masteries were by far the least painful to me. I returned to the game while LS4 was running and just went through the PoF story first and did map completion and almost always was ahead with points vs. mastery XP to use them. The story mission achievements give a bunch, and the mastery insights are fairly easy to find and pick up. Many of the "core" PoF quest/achievement mastery points are also not a big hassle but you might have to spend some time or /wiki them.

I thought it was a decent progression speed when I did it, and that's good because you unlock cool new mounts and useful abilities for them - and it's nowhere near as bad as core tyria if you're starting fresh, let alone HoT/LS3 (hope you like adventures!). And the LS5/IBS masteries start easy, but then they ramp up and require a bunch of bullshit grinds to finish. However: the later, expensive IBS mastery levels aren't nearly as useful so while it feels bad(TM) to not have them yet or seeing your XP bar stuck, you're not missing out on much in terms of mechanics/benefits.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2022 12:55

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:06

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

drat Dirty Ape posted:

Logged in just to get some freebies and check the inventory of my mesmer who is in one of the HoT zones (second one I think? Around a big temple). Noticed a large group of players standing around when a wall of plants disappeared and they all rushed in. Randomly spammed buttons at things that looked like bad guys (lol I don't remember what any of the buttons do yet). Stuff died and then everyone jumped into an underdround temple where I opened like 30 treasure chests full of random stuff I'm clueless about.

No clue what I just did but it was fun!

Sounds like Octovine and yeah it's great. As long as you have the keys to open the chests :v:

# ¿ Aug 28, 2022 18:53

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

For the past few weeks the -autologin switch has like a 50% chance to do nothing and it's annoying

# ¿ Sep 1, 2022 11:42

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Ineptitude posted:

It is trying to get you to sign up for the SMS feature, when that prompt pops up (like 50% of the time) it blocks auto launch.

Weird, I'm already using the SMS thing and it never shows any prompts, just sits there not logging in until I click the button :confused:

# ¿ Sep 1, 2022 18:24

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

explosivo posted:

Is there a way to get a flying mount without having to buy an additional season of content? Is the Griffon just a standard Path of Fire unlock and would it probably be good enough until there was either a sale and/or I was inebriated enough to buy $20 worth of gems for LS4?

Yes the griffon is part of PoF and doesn't require any additional expansions/living world seasons to unlock. The main roadblock is coming up with the 250 gold for the vendor items you need to buy for the unlock collection.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2022 19:36

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

No they're just there to give people options. Mastery points always suck when they're all rewards for very specific tasks some people might not want to do (because they're too grindy, or in content they don't like etc.).

# ¿ Sep 2, 2022 00:53

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

All the HoT maps are just bighuge meta events, it's what you're meant to do there, and they're fairly profitable as well.

PoF doesn't have this, it only has short meta event chains that repeat on a timer so that's when people show up, if at all: Outside of the daily zone chest the rewards are crap so people usually do the easiest meta event per map and ignore the annoying stuff like Serpents' Ire.

Some of the LS4/5 maps are using a constant meta event design that's closer to HoT and will have higher concentrations of people doing these metas, eg. Dragonfall or Drizzlewood Coast.

And EoD has Dragon's End which is basically HoT Mk.2, but the first zones are closer to PoF where you can gently caress around wherever, eg. to do hearts and single events and just do the zone's meta events when they're up.

orcane fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Sep 2, 2022

# ¿ Sep 2, 2022 01:08

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

MajorBonnet posted:

EU and NA are pretty much completely separate. You can join an EU guild from NA and see guild chat, but that will be about the extent of it.

Chat, send mail (including items / gold), join guild. But yeah, you can never join the other region players in a game instance.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2022 14:48

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Just a bunch of XP I think.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2022 09:21

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Upgrade extractors don't work on the boost freebie gear either IIRC.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2022 19:36

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

You can get a glimpse of Canach's (and Marjory+Kasmeer's) backstory in the LS5 memory instance but that's about it.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2022 10:30

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I was very surprised when he was just offed for real, I mean come on, undead king? that wasn't very undead (LS4 spoiler)

# ¿ Sep 5, 2022 21:05

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Space camp is also really pretty and has great music, you can glide forever and everything's three steps from each other.

trunkh posted:

What are the best utility spends for gems? Is the steam welcome pack Ok?

I remember the copper salvager thing being a good idea but no idea what else.

The Steam Welcome Pack is not a great deal I think. It includes 2 bag slots (those are a character specific unlock) and two 20-slot bags (the cheapest crafted/tradeable 20-slot bags can be had for about 10g buy orders), 5 experience boosters (nice to have but not essential, there are plenty of easy ways to earn XP) and some unidentified dyes (will mostly yield fine rarity dyes which are only worth a few copper on the trading post).

The Steam Elite Jump-Start Pack is a good deal but pricier. Besides the copper-fed salvager it contains a shared inventory slot to put it in (or to put the lounge pass in), another character slot, a set of unbreakable gathering tools (no glyphs though and they don't have any special animations) and the Divinity's Reach 1%-er pass. For 2400 gems which usually only get you the set of vanilla unbreakable gathering tools without all the other stuff. The Royal Terrace Pass means city loading times but it's a lounge pass at least, ie. short trips to all the relevant crafting stations, bank, TP, vendors, mystic forge and IIRC a teleport to capitals.

But in general, after the copper-fed salvager I'd consider 2-3 shared inventory slots (one for the salvager, 1-2 for whatever, if you do play the game long enough the list of "whatever" will fill the max. amount of shared slots). The world boss portal device is very convenient if you do those bosses regularly (for only occasional trains you can check /wiki et or follow a commander's chat link to the next waypoint, though) and the pact operations portal device if you're trying to farm Dry Top (LS2) or the HoT metas. A bank tab expansion or two are also pretty useful because a lot of stuff is account bound so you can store it there and use it on (future) alts or just stuff the bank full of weapon/armor containers forever until you decide which one you want to get out of a box.

Not available right now is the recharging teleport to friend. I don't like how it has an excessive cooldown (1h IIRC) that doesn't tick down while you're logged out and triggers even on failed teleports (eg. if you try while in combat or if your target appears/is offline), but if you don't have hundreds of the consumable version from birthday gifts and other sources it can be useful to go to the middle of a zone you never got nowhere near, or to the end of a JP or what have you.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2022 13:18

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

HampHamp posted:

Started playing this yesterday, I'm a little confused about the best way to get the story content. I'm using the free account, and will be looking to get all the expansions - I'm just not sure how the living story stuff fits into it.

I'm playing mostly for the story stuff, so would like to have access to them all, do I need to buy the most expensive pack for that? Someone mentioned about them being free under certain circumstances.

Between expansions, the story continued through living world seasons. After the launch story, living world season 1 was supposed to take over in a FOMO-inducing temporary format which got scrapped because it was poo poo, then living world season 2 was leading to the Heart of Thorns expansion, while season 3 covered the aftermath of HoT and the introduction of new story threads for the Path of Fire expansion. Season 4 continued where the PoF story left off and led to "season 5" or rather to The Icebrood Saga, supposed to replace expansions while everyone at ArenaNet was busy chasing different projects that all got killed and oops, they had to make another actual expansion (End of Dragons). Right now they're in the process of re-releasing most of season 1 as standalone, replayable episodes.

Access to living world to F2P players has been one of the weaker parts of this game's marketing IMO. Since season 2 the format has been that you get the episodes for free if you log in while it's active, that included the reruns with "return to X" achievements last year (leading up to the End of Dragons release). Outside of these windows you have to pay the living world seasons seperately, either by buying single episodes from the story tab or by buying full season packs. Steam comes with a complete edition that has everything from release to End of Dragons, or a Living World DLC package that includes all seasons I assume (I can't check it out, without GW2 on Steam it won't load for me), but you can't use that with a normal ArenaNet account.

For regular (non-Steam) GW2 accounts they sell the old expansions as a package, the latest expansion is sold seperately, and the living world seasons are on the gem store, and they occasionally go on sale (scroll down to the gem store history to see when the last one happened):
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_Season_2_Complete_Pack
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_Season_3_Complete_Pack
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_Season_4_Complete_Pack
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Icebrood_Saga_Complete_Pack

So to play the complete story without the Steam complete edition, you'd have to:

Finish the level 1-80 story in the core game (free).
Play through the LS1 re-release episodes that are now being worked on. Per ArenaNet "Living World Season 1 episodes will be free additions to the core game and available to all players, permanently.
Buy and play the LS2 season pack.
Buy the HoT+PoF expansion bundle and play through the HoT story.
Buy and play the LS3 season pack.
Play through the PoF expansion story.
Buy and play the LS4 season pack.
Buy and play the IBS season pack.
Buy End of Dragon expansion for its story.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 14:31

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Azubah posted:

Was there an expectation of being geared for endgame when the living world seasons started? It's taking way too long to murder things in the first episodes and holy poo poo the duo boss fight was a slog.

I've only got a full set of exotic gear from the level 80 boost and that seemed to be enough for the base campaign.

I think the assumption is that you have a somewhat decent build and level 80 exotic armor that goes with it. No content other than fractals (because of the agony infusion slots more than pure stats) and possibly raids and maybe CM strikes assume min-max endgame gear and builds.

The mordrem in LS2 and especially most of HoT was a marked jump in difficulty, especially for (back then ubiquitous) glass cannon builds. The expectation is that you bring some defense, which can be active, or can be gear and passive skills and traits. Some classes/specs have better builds for that, especially with "core" gear (no expansion stat spreads/item sources) and without elite builds. They all have some sort of workable open world build with enough damage and sustain, they're not all equally easy to play though.

Note that the level 80 boost starting gear can be a bit of a trap. Originally they put everyone in full soldier gear which is an awful idea because it adds gently caress-all to damage so everything takes forever to kill, but the defense/HP buffer is still not big enough to protect you against expansion mobs and bosses properly. Now they start everyone in celestial gear (I thought they wanted to change that, but apparently not - yet?). This is better but for many builds wastes itemization on stats you don't use (eg. boon duration). Look for open world "celestial" and the defensive gear variants of "condi" builds. What class/build are you playing?

Kris xK posted:

Long time players break out your crystal ball and put in your tinfoil hat cause I have a vague rear end question :

"Historically, how reactionary are anet nerfs?"

I'm one on the multititude of new steam players currently clogging up your screen with an ugly jade robot. I didn't know engineer was fotm when I picked it but it clearly is. I'm really enjoying it, but I don't want to get super invested in case anet take it out back and shoots it. So in the past, how have their nerfs been generally?

They've done wild swings before, but also kept nerfs somewhat low-key in other places. As an example, firebrand was called out for being too powerful for a long time and they only ever nerfed small aspects of it here and there, it's still great. On the other hand, I guess elementalists and thieves? :v:

orcane fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 7, 2022

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 15:10

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I hope it leads to a general improvement of how they approach class balance. Like not having "PvP" weapons heavily pre-nerfed in PvE so you're basically an idiot for using them (they have two additional rule sets for the actual PvP modes, use them). Or having "Low Intensity" baseline options for all classes but in a way that doesn't make optimal poopsocker builds and -playstyles do 1000% more damage which makes balancing stuff like meta events *cough* Dragon's End *cough* impossible. Which might also help when you don't want to give piano classes too much of a lead over "easy" specs (hello elementalists).

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 15:56

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Ra Ra Rasputin posted:

My personal conspiracy theory on the mech dominance is aside from it being the pet favorite of the main balance lead who designed it has been caught saying he has buffed simple weapons because he disliked playing complicated ones (and hated engineer's kits) is that they wanted the most simplistic braindead dps spec imaginable so they could get consistent tests done on pve encounters, or because the balance devs needed to play the game and perform to a certain level to not get fired.

For those concerned mech is going to be nerfed, we've expected nerfs for months, but every single balance patch has been buff after buff or "nerfs" that actually end up as a net positive or buffs for holosmith that actually buff mech more, I finally geared up a brand new Sylvari Engineer I named G-Mo and his robot Mech Santos after the patch that made it so all the mech skills could be crtl-clicked to autocast, removing the only buttons the engineer had to actually press to do top damage.

O
M
G

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 20:21

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I only just picked up mechanist this weekend and didn't follow the class change/balance news since EoD came out so yeah. Setting those skills to autocast didn't even occur to me.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2022 22:37

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

That's just New Kaineng, but empty.

Oh, wait :v:

# ¿ Sep 11, 2022 21:10

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

End of LS4 and then IBS is when loving around with side projects and pretending GW2 will never need another expansion again was starting to bite them in the rear end and cheevos became even grindier than usual.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2022 09:06

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

The only time I had fun with sPvP was with Lazy's sPvP Sunday (was it Saturday? it was so long ago!). But I generally don't like (MMO) PvP so that was a huge achievement.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2022 23:43

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

They were still tradeable and you had to consume them, so you didn't do that.

Also the dyes were cheaper when they were character specific, even abyss/celestial only really spiked after the account-wide dyes were introduced in early 2014 (from 20-30g to about 100 within a year of the wardrobe's introduction).

# ¿ Sep 14, 2022 13:52

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

MajorBonnet posted:

Darn mechanists have really driven up the cost of Nika's.

I was going to gear up a thief on an alt account and it's at least double the price of the named berserker sets for the other weights.

Oh is that why? I noticed last week when I got one Nika's drop and thought "that can't be right". Welp...

# ¿ Sep 15, 2022 15:34

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Without transfering, you can join goon guilds, but you can't play with them unless the other goon's account is also on one of the European servers. You can still chat, receive/send mail and items and you can use guild halls. But you can't join people in their instances of cities, open world maps, dungeons, etc.

However, you don't have to transfer to Maguuma to join goons, any of the US servers is fine to just play with people. The only exception is WvW, until the currently planned revamp goes live in a few weeks/months/years :thunk:

and WvW matchups will pull from guilds instead of servers.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2022 00:19

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Saki posted:

So the barrier is that I'm on the EU servers, not Maguuma specifically? Can any EU goons tell me how bad the latency is connecting to NA servers? I'm based in the UK fwiw.

Yeah the only hard barrier in GW2 is region, except in WvW which is the only place where server still matters.

I've been playing from Switzerland on Maguuma since launch, it's fine. The EU account I have doesn't feel meaningfully better in the content I do with it. If I get noticeable lag, usually everyone around me is also getting it because there are too many people hitting one popular world boss (eg. during reset Ley-line Anomaly, weaponskills just won't go off for basically anyone, doesn't matter if they're in the US).

I was told it's more noticeable in sPvP and I imagine DPS numbers in tryhard content will also be a bit better for fully optimized rotations/gameplay if you have 20ms ping instead of 150 but I don't play either of that.

orcane fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Sep 16, 2022

# ¿ Sep 16, 2022 00:48

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I have a billion characters and only three of them are sylvari, but at least one is a warrior :getin:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 18:05

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

jokes posted:

If any of them are a female charr mesmer, you'll have the rarest and most precious character in GW2.

Hmm sadly I only have a female charr necro

Look at all those anime Barbies at the top... https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 18:38

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

They're also fine on female norn, except you don't get the most blatant fanservice armor (human racial tier 3, especially light/medium).

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 19:31

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I usually grab sneakthief parts if I want to avoid the stupid medium armor trenchcoats :colbert:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 20:00

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Truga posted:

yeah female human ele has always been at the top of the chart

... which is very funny because i never ever see one in game lol

What game are you playing because I see them everywhere. I also remember guild missions with Nilgoow :v:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 21:49

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

These ears are hilarious:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 22:12

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Yeah it actually overwrites your horns and adds the elf ears to the upper set of ears. It's not great, not bad though - they did more than just :effort:

copy-paste. Sylvari get appropriate elf ears too:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 22:52

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

IIRC it's Raven Ceremonial medium legs because the skirt is attached to the chestpiece (unlike the light/heavy versions).

# ¿ Sep 21, 2022 08:49

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

10 years later, bomb/grenade kit still give me carpal tunnel syndrome from just looking at them so I never use those kits no matter how "optimal" they might be at any point in time. Except underwater.

The racial skills being completely useless is kind of understandable (or you run into mandatory race syndrome in tryhard content), but still disappointing. There are some fun skills in there. And then there are the human "god" skills :laffo:

# ¿ Sep 22, 2022 17:43

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I use that for regular AoE skills and it's fine for this, but I hate it for "autoattack" skills.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2022 18:23

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Instead of crafting ascended gear with expansion stats, it may be cheaper to craft a cheap core set, then stat change that in the mystic forge.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2022 01:49

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

Trinkets are not craftable and can't have the stats changed through the mystic forge, all you can do with garbage stat drop trinkets is salvage them for materials.

They're also the easiest to get anywhere, though, because all the core stats are cheap from laurels or guild commendations, and they're the cheaper items from LS3/LS4 vendors if you need expansion stats. The rings/necklace and the backpack from Bloodstone Fen can have their stat changed with an item also sold in that zone for unbound magic, if you care about that.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2022 17:38

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

I went to a Zander HoT train (there's almost always someone on a 30 or 40 there :laffo:

) on a key farm guardian alt who was 61 or 62, still got one-shot a lot and yeah I missed a bunch of the combat points. Especially if I went down, there was not enough time to reach damage thresholds.

And the channeling point in the chak den was impossible. But that was more because in Zander trains no one is waiting or helping you there and some guy died right on the point, missing the poison mastery, so I accidentally kept trying to rez the idiot and lost a lot of time in which the baby chak patrolled around and offed me

It was worth it, the alt was 69 after the run :v:

# ¿ Sep 26, 2022 08:14

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scientist_Vratt#vendor9 eg.

You still need the stones from cheevos or the gem store/luck with login rewards.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2022 09:40

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:06

orcane: Jun 13, 2012; Fun Shoe

CODChimera posted:

I have like 3 frostsaws and at least 4 ascended maces(I use one of them)

PS: gently caress you, my best Dragonstorm drop is a rare norn weapon.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2022 01:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Guild Wars 2: I cannot properly see the Lion's butthole from that screenshot

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