In my last few months of Guild Wars, having completed God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, pretty much the only reason I would log into the game would be to hit B and watch the monthly GvG championships. It was like a game-within-a-game, drastically different to the PvE game, infinitely complex and with it's own tropes, trends and memes, controversies, heroes and villains.
Watching the pros go about their business each month taught me how to do da PvPs: I never played GvG myself, but I used the skills I saw the top players using whenever I entered Random arenas, alliance battles or hero battles, and I think I was better for it.
I'm hoping that the introduction of observation mode in GW2 will allow me to absorb some of the new skills which have been incubating in the sPvP community since launch. I can imagine that there are countless nuances of the genre which just haven't made it out of the community which surrounds it simply because n00bs like myself haven't been able to hit B and stick our noses in to watch how it's done.
Monday, 29 April 2013
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
[GW2] Mega Boss Nerf
If you've been playing Guild Wars 2 over the past few weeks you'll know the dramatic effect the recent changes to the world event chest drop tables have had on the community.
For a lot of people, the entire game has become about hopping from event to event, on multiple characters and across multiple servers (via guesting). Seeing as you now get at least a rare, if not several or an exotic or two from each chest (and then there's the rest of the loot from mobs, the event rewards and the other chest drops too) it is incredibly lucrative.
On the plus side this has pushed ectoplasm prices down to a more manageable level, on the down side these events are now completely gridlocked and lagging like a motherflipper.
ArenaNet's fix is to separate the guaranteed rare drop from the rest of the chest loot into a daily chest style reward which can only be gained once per account per day. You'll still get the event chest, it just will no longer guarantee you a rare item. ArenaNet are yet to confirm whether this event chest still has the chance of dropping rares - much like the event chest used to do.
What this means for the current situation is that it will effectively make hopping from server to server to maximise your reward across several characters less profitable, and not worth the effort without the incentive of a guaranteed rare item. This, in turn, should ease some of the lag and overflow problems players have been having.
I think this was a necessary change - something had to change anyway, and my idea was always just: "no chests for guests!" (it rhymes, so it must be good!) but this is a far more elegant solution to the problem - which is probably why they're the devs and I'm just a lowly serf. The situation couldn't stay as it was; players weren't playing the events across 8 characters and 3 servers for the fun of the event, they were doing it to grind out rare drops, and this is precisely the kind of gameplay ANet want to try to discourage. Noone wanted the loot tables changed back to the way they were before, noone wanted to start restricting guesting,
Yes, in the short term the prices of ectoplasm has skyrocketed again and precursor weapons have once again risen another notch out of reach, but there are other ways to bring the prices back down - and hopefully this will mean that instead of grinding Shatterer, Tequatl, Frostmaw and The Shadow Behemoth, players might start to spread out to the other world events like the Temples in Orr.
For a lot of people, the entire game has become about hopping from event to event, on multiple characters and across multiple servers (via guesting). Seeing as you now get at least a rare, if not several or an exotic or two from each chest (and then there's the rest of the loot from mobs, the event rewards and the other chest drops too) it is incredibly lucrative.
On the plus side this has pushed ectoplasm prices down to a more manageable level, on the down side these events are now completely gridlocked and lagging like a motherflipper.
ArenaNet's fix is to separate the guaranteed rare drop from the rest of the chest loot into a daily chest style reward which can only be gained once per account per day. You'll still get the event chest, it just will no longer guarantee you a rare item. ArenaNet are yet to confirm whether this event chest still has the chance of dropping rares - much like the event chest used to do.
What this means for the current situation is that it will effectively make hopping from server to server to maximise your reward across several characters less profitable, and not worth the effort without the incentive of a guaranteed rare item. This, in turn, should ease some of the lag and overflow problems players have been having.
I think this was a necessary change - something had to change anyway, and my idea was always just: "no chests for guests!" (it rhymes, so it must be good!) but this is a far more elegant solution to the problem - which is probably why they're the devs and I'm just a lowly serf. The situation couldn't stay as it was; players weren't playing the events across 8 characters and 3 servers for the fun of the event, they were doing it to grind out rare drops, and this is precisely the kind of gameplay ANet want to try to discourage. Noone wanted the loot tables changed back to the way they were before, noone wanted to start restricting guesting,
Yes, in the short term the prices of ectoplasm has skyrocketed again and precursor weapons have once again risen another notch out of reach, but there are other ways to bring the prices back down - and hopefully this will mean that instead of grinding Shatterer, Tequatl, Frostmaw and The Shadow Behemoth, players might start to spread out to the other world events like the Temples in Orr.
Friday, 8 March 2013
[GW2] Crest Economics
At the moment I'm rocking all Explorer's armour. As a guardian, that means that my health is relatively low - ideally once I've managed to get my legendary weapon I will switch to using something a little more useful - probably Clerics (Power, Toughness, Healing Power), but I'm debating over what runes I should be rocking. Having looked through them I can see a number of attractive options for a healing-focused guardian such as myself:
The rune of the Guardian (with all 5 runes attached) would result in a total 165 Toughness, 50 Healing Power and 1 second of burning on my enemy when I block an attack. An interesting offer, but I'd lose a lot of the power which I have enjoyed even by using my Pirate's runes (which focus power and MF) and whilst I don't plan on focusing on DPS, it is nice to be able to contribute.
The rune of Mercy focuses on giving advantages to aiding downed players - but if I'm having to spend all my time resurrecting people, perhaps I'm not doing my job properly?
There's a number of healing power focused runes on the market, each of which result in a 165 healing power boost in total, with a number of minor effects (boon duration, gaining various boons when you're hit, summoning birds etc). On the face of it, these would look like the most attractive options, but again they don't really jump out at me - I can spam boons so fast that a longer duration isn't particularly attractive (except, perhaps for swiftness in WvW), similarly, with all the boons flying around, what use is one more when taking a hit? Finally, who wants to summon a pesky bird which will just stay in combat when you want to fall back etc? No, no thanks, I'll pass.
So, I've been looking at the severely under-utilised crests. All crests follow the same schema in terms of dealing out stat points (bar Magic Find): +20 for the main stat, +14 for two minor stats.
The stats break down as follows:
As a guardian, I'm not hugely interested in Condition damage, so I'll exclude Rabid straight away. I'll also eliminate Traveler as I'm moving away from Magic Find.
Having eliminated those, it becomes a toss up between Magi, Shaman and Soldier. I'll break down the stats below as if I had a crest on each piece of armour:
So, when you slot Crests over Runes you sacrifice +65 on your main stat and the various secondary effects, and instead you get the 2x +70 on the minor stats. Seeing as there aren't really any of the secondary effects which jump out of me - currently going for a crest set-up is looking quite attractive.
Does anyone actually use these things? They're a pittance on the trading post. Once I've finished my legendary weapon and bought T3 human cultural armour, I'll be completely skint and I'll probably only be able to afford the crests - which, looking at the stats above, might not be such a bad idea.
ps. Information liberally stolen from Tasha - who I'm sure won't mind...
The rune of the Guardian (with all 5 runes attached) would result in a total 165 Toughness, 50 Healing Power and 1 second of burning on my enemy when I block an attack. An interesting offer, but I'd lose a lot of the power which I have enjoyed even by using my Pirate's runes (which focus power and MF) and whilst I don't plan on focusing on DPS, it is nice to be able to contribute.
The rune of Mercy focuses on giving advantages to aiding downed players - but if I'm having to spend all my time resurrecting people, perhaps I'm not doing my job properly?
There's a number of healing power focused runes on the market, each of which result in a 165 healing power boost in total, with a number of minor effects (boon duration, gaining various boons when you're hit, summoning birds etc). On the face of it, these would look like the most attractive options, but again they don't really jump out at me - I can spam boons so fast that a longer duration isn't particularly attractive (except, perhaps for swiftness in WvW), similarly, with all the boons flying around, what use is one more when taking a hit? Finally, who wants to summon a pesky bird which will just stay in combat when you want to fall back etc? No, no thanks, I'll pass.
So, I've been looking at the severely under-utilised crests. All crests follow the same schema in terms of dealing out stat points (bar Magic Find): +20 for the main stat, +14 for two minor stats.
The stats break down as follows:
- Magi - Healing, Precision, Vitality
- Rabid - Condition, Precision, Toughness
- Shaman - Vitality, Healing, Power
- Soldier - Power, Toughness, Vitality
- Traveler - Magic Find, Power, Precision
Having eliminated those, it becomes a toss up between Magi, Shaman and Soldier. I'll break down the stats below as if I had a crest on each piece of armour:
- Magi x5: +100 Healing Power, +70 Precision, +70 Vitality
- Shaman x5: +100 Vitality, +70 Healing Power, +70 Power
- Soldiers x5: +100 Power, +70 Toughness,
+70 Vitality
So, when you slot Crests over Runes you sacrifice +65 on your main stat and the various secondary effects, and instead you get the 2x +70 on the minor stats. Seeing as there aren't really any of the secondary effects which jump out of me - currently going for a crest set-up is looking quite attractive.
Does anyone actually use these things? They're a pittance on the trading post. Once I've finished my legendary weapon and bought T3 human cultural armour, I'll be completely skint and I'll probably only be able to afford the crests - which, looking at the stats above, might not be such a bad idea.
ps. Information liberally stolen from Tasha - who I'm sure won't mind...
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