Actually, hats are easy; the sign can be used to hide the weird perspective shift that happens because Quaggans are essentially spherical with stubby little limbs.
Let me know if you just want the sign without the logo. It's kind of hard to see the OSU logo on the hat.
oh god I'm so glad it's Friday I'm planning on playing SO MUCH GUILD WARS over the weekend. Maybe I'll finish off Orr map completion if I'm feeling squirrelly.
As someone who enjoys the lore in games like this, what is a good (comprehensive) resource? It can be novels, dev blogs, anything really. I've seen bits and pieces here and there, but I would really like to have a fellow gaffer recommend me something.
There are three books; Ghosts of Ascalon, Edge of Destiny and Sea of Sorrows. None are required reading, but they do explain some things in clearer detail or fill in good chunks of the world.
Chronologically, Sea of Sorrows is first (about 100 years before GW2), and details the raising of Orr and the Elder Dragon Zhaitan, as well as the founding of Lion's Arch. Of the three, it is the best written, having been done by the Director of Story and Continuity herself.
Edge of Destiny is next, six years before GW2, and details the exploits of Destiny's Edge, a guild that faced off against an Elder Dragon. All of the members appear in Guild Wars 2 as a central figure in your Personal Story. The game, especially the Story Mode dungeons, will touch on the events in this book at length. Unfortunately, it is also the weakest written.
Ghosts of Ascalon is set a year before Guild Wars 2 and exists as a sort of side story. A few of the characters appear in the game, but none in vitally important roles so far. It's fairly well written, honestly.
As far as Blog Posts go, as you say they tend to be bits and pieces. I keep hoping they will write up some kind of summary of past events. Your best bet here is probably to check out the Wiki and just read through the articles. I'm sorry to say that's the best you're gonna get for the more recent events like "Flame and Frost" or "Sky Pirates of Tyira".
Or Hawkian should do one. Or maybe Ash, since he likes to write fantasy.
What brought this up is that I found myself in Lion's Arch starting the Bazaar of the Four Winds storyline, and based on the conversation between the Male (Norn?) and Human Female I take it that these are people we're supposed to already be familiar with. They even mentioned something to me about how I was a big help in some past mission/event or something.
Yeah, this is where coming late or taking breaks from the Living Story is going to be an issue. I was hoping they would add to the Personal Story tab to kind of document what's been going on, or at least add a new tab for the Living Story, but so far, nadda.
The Male Norn is Magnus the Bloody Handed, one of the members of the Captain's Council that rules Lion's Arch, and head of the city's military, the Lionsguard. The woman is Ellen Kiel, is a captain in that group, and has sort of been our main contact for several storylines so far.
Spoiler tagging this, though really... it's already over so it's not like you can see it yourself.
In the November update, The Lost Shores, a group called the Consortium accidentally drove some nasty critters called Karka from their home on Southsun Cove and into Lion's Arch. We fought them off and eventually established a series of forts; Kiel was the one who basically lead the charge.
She next appeared in the May update, Secret of Southsun, where she's again settling things in Southsun, mediating between refugees (though they were closer to slaves) and the Consortium while one of the former Consortium agents tried to stir up the island's wildlife again in an act of revenge. This is what she and Magnus are talking about when they mention 'being a big help on Southsun'.
Kiel was also connected to the Sky Pirates storyline, where the Aetherblade Pirates murdered one of the Captain's Council members so they could take his seat. When that plot was foiled, Kiel tasked players with investigating the murder. The path eventually lead to the discovery of a hidden base within Lion's Arch, the Aetherblade Retreat (a temporary dungeon). After we beat the Aetherblade Captain, Mai Trin, Kiel arrested her and had her locked up in the Lionguard base in Fort Marriner.
Magnus appropriated one of the Sky Pirate's ships and gave it to Kiel so she could run for the vacant seat on the Council.
I can't help it, I'm a lore nerd. I'm constantly flirting with the idea of buying GW1 Trilogy and EotN on Steam just to play it and see what the game world was like 250 years ago.
As someone who enjoys the lore in games like this, what is a good (comprehensive) resource? It can be novels, dev blogs, anything really. I've seen bits and pieces here and there, but I would really like to have a fellow gaffer recommend me something.
It's definitely not comprehensive, but I definitely recommend talking to as many uniquely-named NPCs as you can find. Some of them trigger dynamic events you can do, but others will talk to you, and there's some tasty lore chunks to be found!
Also I'll second/third/whatever the 3 novels. They're great. Most recent one, Sea of Sorrows, was really good and didn't feel so much like a "video game novel" either.
I'll probably stop in wub wub tonight but a little drunk right now. Been wanting to face kaineg as I think their population matches ours more than some other servers. Will be away tomorrow and part of Sunday
Are there, by any chance, some good guides that give a good indication where to start with either an Ele or an Engi to play them to their fullest the way you mention?
I have some interest to giving the game another chance, and both happen to be what I'd try.
I am particularly interested because I dislike the "power/krit only" stuff going on with most classes. We got all those stats, SOME class got to be able to do good with more than p/k
Like Retro linked, Neko's Elementalist guide provides a great primer for general play. The auramancer is pretty much the profession's standard build right now; it'll let you play the really fun dagger/dagger spec to its fullest and then switch to a solid staff spec with only a few trait changes. Once you're comfortable with those weapons, go ahead and try scepter and fiddle around with focus. As you are leveling, invest your first trait points towards arcane 20 and grab trait V in that tree, then keep building towards the full auramancer build. That build will teach you exactly how to properly play and enjoy the Ele through faceroll attunement dancing.
My engineer is an alt so I can't quite give as much help than on my Ele. I'd bug Kos or any of our other talented engi's here. There's the static discharge rifle and HGH builds, but there rather intensely power/crit and will ruin your mouse's buttons. Right now I'm running with a little bit of condition damage gear and am playing as a sort of steampunk Ele with gadgets and kits (rocket boots are what ride the lightning used to be lol). I'd recommend avoiding turrets, asides from the healing one, at the beginning though as there are much better utilities currently.
Online guild wars discussion seems kinda barren to me. There's this thread of course, slow talk over on gw2guru, gw2 reddit is a strong community, and the official forums are a cesspool like any other mmo's but it can have strong theorycrafting occasionally. Look up some WvW videos are youtube to get a good idea of what all the classes can do in absurd situations. Otherwise, just gear and spec yourself however you want until you find a playstyle that works for you. Until level 80 explorable dungeons and fractals, builds really don't matter and even then nobody will care as long as you pull your own weight. Respecs are fairly cheap and green gear is perfectly fine until you settle on your exotics/ascended.
Spent most of the day playing the FFXIV beta today and wow, once you get used to GW2's combat, there is just no going back.
Just the fact that you have to click on every target before you can attack them drives me insane. Then there's no dodge rolling either, obviously.
So you see a group of enemies, run up and click the target(which can be annoyingly hard), then stand there trading blows until you win from sheer attrition. Yay so much fun... All I could think about the whole time was how I'd love to greatsword leap into that pack of enemies and whirling wrath them all down.
And there's a ton of little "quality of life" tweaks in GW that apparently I've been taking completely for granted. Even just being able to preview armor makes such a huge difference (accidentally busted all my gil on a ridiculous looking cuirass...)
Idk man, just felt like venting a bit. I was looking forward to that game so hard and for so long. I really wanted to make a mega-post in the official FFXIV beta thread, but I figured I'd get eaten alive. You guys know what's up, so I'll just leave this here.
Engineers are quite awesome aren't they? They're actually a better elementalist if you consider kits to be "no cooldown" attunements and their toolbelt skills to be their utilities.
A couple of good TA runs, some WvW roaming and tips from Anno, and got the colossus kite I needed because a friendly Gafer gave up his spot so I could join. Pretty typical night in GafGuild. Great help. Thanks everyone.
Big thanks to Levyne and Anno for their help in WvW. Its been fun grouping with you two. Liking WvW more and more each time I play. Also drinks help Very fun...If you haven't tried WvW I would encourage to do so!
Spent most of the day playing the FFXIV beta today and wow, once you get used to GW2's combat, there is just no going back.
Just the fact that you have to click on every target before you can attack them drives me insane. Then there's no dodge rolling either, obviously.
So you see a group of enemies, run up and click the target(which can be annoyingly hard), then stand there trading blows until you win from sheer attrition. Yay so much fun... All I could think about the whole time was how I'd love to greatsword leap into that pack of enemies and whirling wrath them all down.
And there's a ton of little "quality of life" tweaks in GW that apparently I've been taking completely for granted. Even just being able to preview armor makes such a huge difference (accidentally busted all my gil on a ridiculous looking cuirass...)
Idk man, just felt like venting a bit. I was looking forward to that game so hard and for so long. I really wanted to make a mega-post in the official FFXIV beta thread, but I figured I'd get eaten alive. You guys know what's up, so I'll just leave this here.
The biggest issue that game will face is the pacing of how often you get skills, some of the quest pacing, and the lack of customization for your character from a build standpoint outside of +stat gear. There's no system like Traits that allow you to differentiate yourself from the guy next to you other than +1 to X stat or whatever and we all know that is horribly boring from a gameplay perspective. It's a very competent game, the armory system is a great idea, being able to choose what you can tab target should be in all MMOs and the crafting is quite addicting (but grindy). Music and art are also very good but playing a CNJ was SOOOOO boring. I played one to 17 and going into a dungeon I could single target Cure and AoE cure for heals and my other two healing related abilities were buffs so those are only cast once. Yeah I had a dot and a nuke but tanks would yell at me if I used them and then I would just sit there and spam Cure over and over and over and over. Granted you get more skills as you level up and also leveling up other jobs but man I can't see people sticking it out with the game if they only try a CNJ as their first class. I LOATHE skills bloat but FFXI simply does not give you enough to do in combat (at least as a CNJ) for nearly 20 levels. Also, as you pointed out the combat is just old hat now. It's a polished experience with the Final Fantasy charm but I can't see people sticking it out when there's no way to make your Paladin different from the one next to you. That to me is something they absolutely must address if they have any hopes of people sticking around. Oh and of course there's a subfee so that will lose a number of people past the first month without a doubt. I'll be playing it once it goes F2P though.
Engineers are quite awesome aren't they? They're actually a better elementalist if you consider kits to be "no cooldown" attunements and their toolbelt skills to be their utilities.
My engineer is an alt so I can't quite give as much help than on my Ele. I'd bug Kos or any of our other talented engi's here. There's the static discharge rifle and HGH builds, but there rather intensely power/crit and will ruin your mouse's buttons. Right now I'm running with a little bit of condition damage gear and am playing as a sort of steampunk Ele with gadgets and kits (rocket boots are what ride the lightning used to be lol). I'd recommend avoiding turrets, asides from the healing one, at the beginning though as there are much better utilities currently.
I actually do have a 80 Engineer (who is in full Power/Toughness/Vitality gear, from what I remember and used to be all into grenades). I rather like dungeons, and what turned me off the first time was, among other things, how dungeons (and by extensions fractals) seemed to be pretty much "Go power/Crit or don't come along with us".
I tried dabbling a bit into healing ages ago (with elixir gun and potions) but +healing never really seemed to be all that useful and never really did much. In most MMOs I played either tanks or support characters, and it seems pretty hard to have that running in GW2 due to the "everyone is their own healer and supporter" thing.
Which was a shame, I really liked the elixir gun concept but when I played, you pretty much got told to respec when you tried it
Online guild wars discussion seems kinda barren to me. There's this thread of course, slow talk over on gw2guru, gw2 reddit is a strong community, and the official forums are a cesspool like any other mmo's but it can have strong theorycrafting occasionally. Look up some WvW videos are youtube to get a good idea of what all the classes can do in absurd situations. Otherwise, just gear and spec yourself however you want until you find a playstyle that works for you. Until level 80 explorable dungeons and fractals, builds really don't matter and even then nobody will care as long as you pull your own weight. Respecs are fairly cheap and green gear is perfectly fine until you settle on your exotics/ascended.
Hehe, I mostly asked since I have both the ele and the engi at 80 already,and should have enough ressources for a set of exotics or two from the last time I played. I probably have enough dungeon tokens for half a set, unless they changed dungeon tokens completely in the meantime!
Was talking to Colin in guild about the recent boost to performance with the latest update and he said yeah it's an ongoing thing that they have to do before they can turn off PvE culling.
Awesome seing many Gaffers in WvW today and late into the night. Slow rolling on Kn BL to start out but eventually we had a good sized footprint for a little while. Enough work done for two rank ups anyway
It sounds like you're in much the same situation I'm in now then. I mostly took a break from GW2 around Frost and Flame, Southsun, and SAB. Getting into guild missions and back into fractals, I have just enough tokens to mostly deck out my Ele and start my Engi.
I'm by no means a theorycrafter but while pvt gear is useful in WvW, just like in PvE, you have to focus on being able to do enough damage fast to be viable. Bosses and zergs don't play by attrition and buffing is so fast that you might as well contribute damage. Power, precision, and critical damage (berserker's gear) should be as high as possible for just that reason. Toughness and vitality need only be as high as you feel comfortable with. Lesser stats such as condition damage/duration, healing, etc apparently have rather severe diminishing returns and vary in effectiveness from skill to skill, so get those stats up to maybe ~150(?) depending upon if a build uses them. Magic find is a stain upon all gear.
Since Ele's and Engi's are effectively hybrids, we're kinda of in trouble gearwise. My Ele has mostly pvt gear still with cavalier/cleric trinkets. I'm aiming for berserker's boots, gloves, and shoulders (best crit dmg : stats ratio) and pvt or celestial for the rest. Trinkets are a tossup between more berserkers or celestials. I stupidly want all my trinkets to match so they're all one or the other... still can't decide. My Engi is probably going to be some variation of condition pistol so it's going to have a mix of rabid/rampager gear and whatever for trinkets.
You weren't just sitting in elixir gun were you? It's poor at dps but outstanding at quickly popping in to lay and clear conditions and gtfo while ghostbusters music is playing. The elixir gun and flamethrower have both been decently buffed since the latest patch.
I mostly swapped between grenades and elixir gun, throwing pots all over the place and keeping up the damage increasing debuff from the grenades. Just sitting in one kit never seemed to be a smart idea to me, so that one's at least nothing to worry about.
Power, precision, and critical damage (berserker's gear) should be as high as possible for just that reason.
Yeah, I understand, I just think it's a bit of a shame that it's mostly a nobrainer to go that way, with very little reason to go other ways. Kind of makes me wonder what the stats really are there for.
Either way, thanks for the help. You sure know your stuff it seems (sure, being unsure about gear, but who isn't! I know the trinket feeling for sure)
Wonder if 3 achievement chests will be available for me on Sunday.
To all the new Engineers look into maxing condition damage, duration and toughness. Pick up a pistol and shield, healing turret, tool kit, bomb kit and bomb kit.
Start stacking confusion using skill 3 on pistol + 3 on tool kit + 3 on bomb kit.
Learn to overcharge the healing turret than use shield 4 and detonate the turret to get tons of healing.
The future of Lion's Arch is in your hands! The explosive events of the Effigy Ceremony at the Dragon Bash left an empty seat on the Captain's Council of Lion's Arch. Now, it's up to the players to support a new Council candidate to victory! War hero Ellen Kiel and Black Lion Trader Evon Gnashblade are both determined to claim the empty seat - help one of them and the results will seriously impact the future events and the Living World we have come to love and cherish!
Earn support tokens as you play Guild Wars 2 during the two weeks of the Cutthroat Politics release, and then use those tokens to help your favorite candidate accrue influence. The winner will show their appreciation by reducing the cost of certain goods or services, hosting a permanent rotation of well-loved mini-games, and sponsoring Mists research into one of two historical events.
Along with a vibrant campaign, the Cutthroat Politics release brings with it three new activities and new, exclusive rewards. Participate in the Southsun Survival or Aspect Arena activities, or test your mettle in the new Candidate Trials PVE Challenge. When doing so, you can earn a beautiful Desert Rose. stylish Zephyr Rucksack, or a little miniature Ellen Kiel and Evon Gnashblade of your very own!
You weren't just sitting in elixir gun were you? It's poor at dps but outstanding at quickly popping in to lay and clear conditions and gtfo while ghostbusters music is playing.
I would love to get my hands on some of the stuff they send out to the press... you'd think with the developers hanging out in our guild, we'd get our hands on SOME of that swag, right?
