Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

[lesser_minion]

Now that the expansion has launched and with the play-for-free update, hopefully there'll be enough interest this time around to keep a thread going.

For those unfamiliar with the title, Guild Wars 2 is a fantasy MMO developed by Arenanet and published by NCSoft. The game uses tab-targeting, but with physics-based combat. Classes have distinct playstyles and strengths and weaknesses, but players are to determine their own role in a group rather than adhering to class stereotypes, and the traditional tank/healer dynamic is almost completely absent.

The game is essentially free-to-play -- free accounts are subject to trade, chat, and storage restrictions, but have access to all content outside of the upcoming expansion and can reach the same maximum level as any other player. The story is decent overall, with an interesting setting, although the quality of writing and delivery sometimes drops.

Heart of Thorns is the expansion, which opens up a new region of the map for exploration, adds a new profession (class) and discipline (trade skill) to the game, and also adds new options to all existing classes.

Links:

Official Website (https://www.guildwars2.com/)
Wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page)
Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/guildwars2)
Metabattle -- Build guides (http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki)
Dulfy -- guides, news, information, etc. (http://dulfy.net)
The Orrator -- satirical news blog (http://orrator.com)
GW2 Efficiency -- timers, trade calculators, and similar tools. (https://gw2efficiency.com)
GW2 Dungeons -- dungeon and fractal guides. (http://gw2dungeons.net)

[theMycon]

Alright. I played the pre-expansion game for about a year, and played the Bajeezus out of the first Guild Wars.

The events, when they weren't mobbed by people and slowing everything to 1/7th a frame-per-second, were quite fun. I loved the Christmas thing and enjoyed Super Adventure Box.
I appreciate what they tried with the living story, but it made the game into a job, and the story kinda sucked- as opposed to the core game, where the story was usually OK and had occasional flashes of brilliance (Defense of Claw Island; everything about Tybalt Leftpaw and Magister Sieran).

I stopped playing for three main reasons:
1) Dungeons were a total DPS race. They fixed the "no roles" bit by making dungeon damage insane, to the point where "you can survive one direct hit from a boss" meant "you're considered useless because you obviously put at least 80% of your resources into survivability."

2) Gear Treadmills. ArenaNet said they wanted to prevent a gear treadmill, and ended up with 2.

3) Traherne. Mother-loving fieldmarshal Traherne, first of the firstborn, Chosen of The Pale Tree, Beloved by all, Hero of the last third of the game, personally given a weapon by his creator deity made from her own body, who follows you along until the second-to-last quest talking about how it all really revolves around him, then says "OK, my quest is done, thanks, I'm gonna take a nap while you fight that god-eating abomination that's still a threat to the continent & everyone joined together to kill." He's a Molly-Sue. You're his pet dragon, doing 90% of the fighting, except the one time Traherne decides he feels threatened, and then breaks out a spell that's literally a necromancer elite x6. I wanted to break him into tinderwood and use him to fuel a Charr Steam Tank.

Oh, and latency issues that might've just been my using an older computer.

Have you played the expansion? Does it fix these issues? Does Traherne die painfully, and do you get Tybalt Leftpaw back in his place?

[NeoVid]

Sadly, the beta weekends only let us play through the first scene of the expac's story. I'm expecting/hoping for Trahearne to be corrupted by Mordremoth, but we've only had the barest hints of how the Maguuma storyline will progress.

I have lots of fun with GW2, but I take long breaks from it, because there's a couple of major reasons it doesn't hold my interest for long. The biggest one is being fixed by the expansion for certain: The way there's nothing to grind for, no meaningful progression once you've hit cap. I have every class in the game at 80, because as much fun as I have with the actual gameplay, when a character hits cap, they're fully geared the next day, and then I'm left going, "Now what?" Despite being a huge minmaxer, I don't see much point in putting a lot of time and effort into getting Ascended gear for a 5% stat increase in one item slot...

The Masteries will give me a reason to use characters that are already 80, so will the Collection system, and that's not even counting the new zone's storyline, raid and uberbosses. Despite not playing much in the past few months, I was in every beta weekend and ended up preordering when I realized how damn much fun I was having.

[lesser_minion]

Since I'm vain, apparently, have a handful (http://imgur.com/a/qxPGQ) of screenshots of two of my characters standing around the new Lion's Arch. I don't have any particularly camera-ready non-humans at the moment, but these do show off a couple of different armour types at least.

The girl wearing blue is a ranger, and wears medium armour. Rangers are extremely good at dealing condition damage, which ignores armour, making them good at taking down hard targets like husks. They also bring pets to the table, but sadly, GW2's approach to pets is a bit unenlightened compared with other MMOs. In the expansion, they can evolve into druids, which mainly serve groups as healers.

The girl wearing black is a mesmer, and wears light armour. Mesmers can inflict a lot of burst damage, but are usually taken in PvE for their utility. They have access to stealth and portals to help skip enemies, and can reflect projectiles fired by enemies. In the expansion, they can evolve into chronomancers, which have additional defensive and offensive buffs.


Have you played the expansion? Does it fix these issues? Does Traherne die painfully, and do you get Tybalt Leftpaw back in his place?

The expansion isn't out yet, so we can't really comment much on its story beyond what we know from LS2 and the BWEs. Living Story season 2 takes the emphasis off of Trahearne for the most part. Mostly, you do your thing and he does his thing, and he eventually gets captured in the ending cutscene to Point of No Return. Nothing more is known about his fate, but we do know that, uniquely among elder dragons, Mordremoth has the ability to corrupt sylvari.

As for gear treadmills, the level cap and maximum gear tier aren't changing in the expansion and Anet have no plans to change them in the future. Ascended gear is only a little easier to get than it was in 2013, but you can now change the stats on any ascended weapon or armour piece via a mystic forge recipe, and ascended gear is permanently account bound so every character on your account can equip it as long as it's something they can equip.

Oh, and fair warning: you might want to play through LS2 up to Point of No Return before looking at some of the expansion trailers etc.

[Ogremindes]

I'll probably go back into the game once the expansion hits, and take it from the top with a new character.

[lesser_minion]

So, yesterday evening brought the announcement that the expansion's accompanying patch will include an action camera mode, with the ability to aim attacks using crosshairs. This should make some skills a bit easier to use, but it's not so helpful if you want to perform lots of crazy free-camera shenanigans. Either way, it's a fairly substantial gameplay change and it seemed pretty fun and well thought-out from the footage I saw.

Dulfy also managed to get pictures of a few new skins. Nevermore seems like a better choice than The Bifrost for druids and necromancers (particularly female humans named 'Lenore', if Wikipedia is to be believed -- and yes, you're welcome to accuse me of being uncultured for having to look that up), and Astralaria could fit nicely on a druid as well. And of course, despite the name, H.O.P.E. is a better fit for everything than its series 1 counterpart ever was.

[Morty]

I'm likewise waiting eagerly for the expansion. I'm not happy with everything it introduces - specifically, I'm iffy about quite a few of the elite specializations. But otherwise, it looks good.

Also, the prospect of having more legendaries that aren't hideous is curious. Maybe I'll actually bother with one now, especially since IIRC Heart of Thorns will introduce ways of getting them that don't involve amassing ridiculous amounts of materials.

[lesser_minion]

I'm likewise waiting eagerly for the expansion. I'm not happy with everything it introduces - specifically, I'm iffy about quite a few of the elite specializations. But otherwise, it looks good.

Also, the prospect of having more legendaries that aren't hideous is curious. Maybe I'll actually bother with one now, especially since IIRC Heart of Thorns will introduce ways of getting them that don't involve amassing ridiculous amounts of materials.

Sadly, that's not really true. The RNG is going away, because it's a fairly major source of frustration to players, but they can't really lessen the grind because precursors are a major item sink for the economy. John Smith has gone on record as saying that the cost in materials for a precursor is "still immense" (https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/the-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-economy/).

I seem to have started the process of trying to make The Bifrost either way -- saving up spirit shards and obsidian shards for the Gift of Mastery, and dusts for the Gifts of Colour and Energy. I'll probably need to run Arah just to avoid the whole thing feeling illegitimate, but I was thinking of trying to get the Gift of Zhaitan via PvP, which will also hopefully help towards the Mystic Clovers, Icy Runestones, dyes, and T6s. I've already bought the Gift of Colour and Gift of Energy recipes, but I might end up going with a different legendary first anyway, especially if the Series 2 Greatsword is any good -- i.e., not an oversized slab of metal.

[Morty]

Well, it'll be enough for me if the amount of money you need to invest drops down to more manageable levels. We'll see. The existing legendaries are just too ugly for me to care, but some of the new ones actually look decent. I wouldn't hold my breath for legendary greatswords that don't look like sharpened surfboards, though.

[lesser_minion]

Well, it'll be enough for me if the amount of money you need to invest drops down to more manageable levels. We'll see. The existing legendaries are just too ugly for me to care, but some of the new ones actually look decent. I wouldn't hold my breath for legendary greatswords that don't look like sharpened surfboards, though.

Well, they did make Belinda's Greatsword, Cobalt, Ebonblade, Khrysaor (Fake Dawn, at least at the time of original posting), Kymswarden, and Skybringer, and there are more skins that weren't too far off from being included in that list. I don't think that a legendary along the same lines is really too much to ask. Maybe something more like a naginata, assuming that we're not going to get glaives added as a whole new weapon type in a future update?

EDIT: fully training an elite specialisation costs 400 points, which is the exact amount that it would cost to buy every skill and trait on a core profession. That sounds reasonably OK to me, especially with Maguuma hero challenges being worth more hero points each, but it's still a big number -- in fact, it's twice as many hero points as there are regular hero challenges in Pact Tyria.

EDIT 2: Enlightenment get (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/hot/Upcoming-Global-Change-to-Player-Minions)! Once HoT drops, all pets and summons will ignore 95% of all 'incidental damage' (anything where the attacker hasn't specifically targeted the summon) taken in PvE. Not complete enlightenment -- Jade Maw will still happily laser your pets to death, I presume -- but still pretty welcome.

[Morty]

I'm generally a bit iffy about elite specializations. More options, skills and traits is always a good thing, but... in some cases, they just feel like a no-brainer. Like Daredevil for melee-oriented Thieves. We'll see.

As for the decreased damage for minions, that looks like a pretty good thing. It should help rangers, who need help, and make mesmer illusions a bit more likely to last long.

[lesser_minion]

As for the decreased damage for minions, that looks like a pretty good thing. It should help rangers, who need help, and make mesmer illusions a bit more likely to last long.

I only attempted HotW story once. On mesmer. While I was still pretty new to the game. You can imagine how that turned out. I've asked how this will affect lifesteal on the official forums, since this change actually sounds like it might make certain fights even more horrible for rangers than they were before. They haven't answered, however.

EDIT: In other news, I just managed to get the first few ranks of King of the Costume Brawl. It turns out that the broom that witches get is actually pretty cheesy against a lot of the transforms you can get out of the cauldron she summons, but it was still fun. The Executioner's Axe is still just plain ridiculous, though. Also found an interesting bug where losing a costume brawl as a witch resets the cooldown on your cauldron.

[Morty]

Well, I finished the personal story section of Heart of Thorns. It was really short. And, honestly, kind of anticlimactic by the end. I liked it - there was just too little of it and it ended on a weirdly flat note.

[lesser_minion]

Well, I finished the personal story section of Heart of Thorns. It was really short. And, honestly, kind of anticlimactic by the end. I liked it - there was just too little of it and it ended on a weirdly flat note.

Length aside, the story was a lot better than I expected it to be. It seems like a lot of instances got cut from the expansion in order to meet the release deadline, but I'm assuming we'll get at least a proper epilogue soon. My big complaint is that they really need to stop with the plot device reuse. The post-boss segment of the final instance actually didn't land for me at all, partly because of the blatant fanservice aspect of it, but also because they'd done the same thing in a previous story step already.

Otherwise, I've had a lot of fun with the new content. I've been playing chronomancer since pretty much the expansion launched, and I'm still not even close to consistently using Continuum Split well (it doesn't help that the moment you press that button, all nearby bosses immediately switch to an invulnerable/untargetable phase).

[Morty]

Yeah, like I said - it's good, just... way short. And doesn't have a proper epilogue beyond a brief "good job" from your companions. And there's a lot of unanswered questions hanging about, which I really think they should get around to finally answering.

Either way, now that I'm done with the main story, I can explore the jungle and see what's there to be found. I'm not sure if I'll get Chronomancer for my mesmer, but I might get Berserker for my warrior - it should compliment the dual-axe build nicely. He switches between two axes and two swords depending on what I feel like using.

[lesser_minion]

Chronomancer is pretty good stuff. Even though the shield phantasm itself doesn't really have the punch of most of the others, getting two channeled blocks is nice, and shield #5 completely melts break bars (especially if you double it with continuum split). Free (kinda) time warps are also always nice, as is constant movespeed and condi duration reduction.

I don't personally use wells much -- Well of Eternity, Calamity, and Action don't especially wow me, and while I'm sure Gravity Well is awesome, I find it difficult to justify swapping out Time Warp for it, especially with the possibility of Continuum Split Time Warps. Shield slots very nicely into the tanky loadout that I'm running, and I've been keeping greatsword on swap for ranged damage.

[Morty]

I'm running a condition/shatter mesmer, myself. I'm not sure how well the chronomancer would fit into that. Being able to reset your cooldowns is tempting, certainly.

Speaking of elite specializations, I noticed something weird. According to the pre-release material, the primal burst skill for the greatsword was supposed to create an expanding ring of fire. But when I tried it out in the PvP lobby, it... doesn't do that. In fact, it's very similar to the regular GS burst, except it deals less damage, has a marginally longer range and doesn't grant fury. Strange.

I'm glad to see they did do something about the Daredevil's upgraded dodges, though. They were very awkward to use in the beta events. I think I'll try to incorporate Daredevil into my Sword/Pistol build.

[lesser_minion]

I honestly haven't looked into most of the especs at all yet, outside of Chronomancer. None of my other level 80s were particularly far with world completion, so many of them couldn't even unlock their especs until the patch to reduce hero point costs came in. I also want to get my Thief, Necromancer, and Revenant levelled at some point so that I actually have a full house.

Outside of doing the story, I've mostly stuck to Verdant Brink so far. I'm just starting to get characters seriously involved in Auric Basin now. I've heard good things about the Dragon's Stand meta event, but as part of that requires Itzel Poison Lore, I'm not planning to go there for a while.

EDIT: Well, I now have 63% of druid unlocked. It commits the cardinal sin of healer classes (where all of your healing capabilities are dead weight if you don't have a group), but it can be fun and effective sometimes. Also hit rank 16 -- I currently have Lean Techniques, Itzel Language, Exalted Acceptance, Nuhoch Wallows, and Pact Mentor unlocked, which pretty much covers all of the movement powers outside of gliding.

'Relic' weapons all require Gliding 4, Exalted 5, Nuhoch 4, and theoretically Itzel 4, plus tonnes of crystalline ore and Dragon's Stand wins (and, in the case of Horologicus, for the game to actually cough up the Mesmer Cache I earned in Verdant Brink grrrrr...), which adds up to a minimum rank of something like 41, so this is still a pretty long-term goal.

[JSSheridan]

I just finished the Heart of Thorns story, and I think it's much better than the original GW2 story. It was short however. I think they didn't have enough people developing the story versus people developing the new zones and features. There's a lot of aspects to the lore they could have explored more.

Is there interest in a OotS community guild in GW2? Or for that matter, GW1? I still play the first game a good bit.

[lesser_minion]

I don't know about the first game, but Ogremindes used to run an OotS guild in GW2. I assume it isn't registered yet, though.

It was obvious that they'd cut a lot of story in order to ship, even though they managed some finesse in pulling it off, but there's at least some hope that all of that material will be explored in LS3.

One thing I'll add is that I really liked most of the Heart of Thorns music, even compared to much of the vanilla game's soundtrack.

[Ogremindes]

I don't know about the first game, but Ogremindes used to run an OotS guild in GW2. I assume it isn't registered yet, though.

I logged in for long enough to switch it to the new system. I'm not active in the game ATM, but I'll log in to hand out invites and ranks on request.

[JSSheridan]

I logged in for long enough to switch it to the new system. I'm not active in the game ATM, but I'll log in to hand out invites and ranks on request.

Is it EU or NA?

[Morty]

It's kind of ironic, really. The Living Story frequently felt padded for length in Season One, and sometimes in Season Two as well. But once we actually got the expansion, its story was too short.

[Ogremindes]

Is it EU or NA?

NA, but I don't belive it matters anymore.

[JSSheridan]

NA, but I don't belive it matters anymore.

If you would, please send me an invite. Character name is Kuze Hideo.

[Ogremindes]

If you would, please send me an invite. Character name is Kuze Hideo.

Okay, Done!

[BlueHerring]

I used to play Guild Wars way back in the day, and I have a GW2 account that's been around since Headstart three years back. I quit about a year back, though, due to several problems.

My biggest gripe was the fact that the game dropped all of the crazy plot threads that Guild Wars had set up (Palawa Joko, the Canthan Empire, the Mursaat's potential survival after 250 years, etc.) in favor of - in the words of my friend - "SUDDENLY, SALAD DRAGON!" We've heard from some in-game and out-of-game sources that there's a dragon kicking around that we literally know next-to-nothing about (the underwater one), but ANet felt that exploring salad-dragon and the Sylvari was more important than, say, Jormag or Primordus or even reaching the Crystal Desert to see what's happening at the Tyrian-Elonian land border (IIRC, some sort of war between Kralkatorrik and Joko?).

The new team that you put together was actually kinda cool. I liked them, but following the Living Story was kind of a pain because of how things were structured. But the fact that we were dealing with a brand new plot thread, rather than the five or six we had hanging around was incredibly frustrating to a long-time fan of the original game.

So, does Heart of Thorns still deal with that, or are they starting to bring back plot threads from the original game?

[lesser_minion]

Currently, it's pretty much all Mordremoth. Some Eye of the North stuff gets a cameo, but so far there's been no sign of Cantha or Elona.

The White Mantle were brought up repeatedly during season 2 of the living story, and the expansion involves a giant golden city that somehow has absolutely nothing to do with the Mursaat, but we haven't seen the payoff to either of those yet.

[Morty]

The second season of the living story brought up a few plot threads that go back to GW1, but the expansion didn't elaborate on them at all. It was a little disappointing.