Guild Wars 2

Back with more GW2... this time, with my son's help, I managed to quickly get all hero points for the elite specialization Vindicator, and it's a bunch of fun. Though, most of the time I only stick with 'the orange one' (I can't remember his name for the life of me) of the Legendary Alliance Stance, which focuses on offense. None of his utility skills is an 'upkeep' type, and they have good AOE, so I can comfortably use them without worries of them draining my energy too much, and hitting as many enemies as possible.

On another note, I spent this whole morning to get all the golden badges in Silverwastes, for the mastery... the majority of them were in the massive and dreadfully long jumping puzzle underground, so I needed to stick to a YouTube guide. Even then, without the dragon mount, I feel like a number of times I'd have failed a single step and lost my progress, and I'd probably have just turned off the game in frustration. I dunno why/how the hell I managed to do this back then... because if I do this now, without mount or gilding, I don't think I have enough patience for it, ever.

My next stop is Lion's Arch, looking for 50 karka throughout the map, and a good number of them are in the jumping puzzles in the city... I'm going to hate my life so damn much doing this...
 
Wish you luck with those puzzles, I don't got the patience for them myself. More so if they're Asura jumping puzzles that require complicated steps you gotta use a wiki to figure out. As for Vindicator yeah the 'orange' half of the alliance legendary stance is what I use most too, got it so the other side heals me every move but that elite skill of Blue is such crud. Rather than healing me it heals allies and bleeds me of health every second, locks me in one spot and only heals me a fraction of what I lost when i dismiss it. I am making progress on getting the Vindicator's sword though... having to map complete that forest full of jade brotherhood and Speakers though is a nightmare. I had to use a wiki for some of the stuff hidden in their camps but I'm now tormented by the mastery point I apparently missed and got no clue how to reach so...that's wonderful I suppose >_>

Mastered the turtle so all my mounts got a ton more HP, working on fishing as it requires more points than the boat atm...and I need to fish up a certain fish in that area for the sword..and my guardian's willbender sword requires another so...why not get the skill to obtain them. Sucks I gotta beat up Soowon for the vindicator sword though.... Dragon's End meta completion going to be a nightmare but...I do need to do events in that zone for that one armor so...may not be too bad. Might work on my ranger more too as I wanna get him into EoD and snag a cannon turtle pet to see how good they are as I keep seeing them lately
 
OK, I never tried the blue guy of the Alliance stance, but... healing everyone while damaging you, is a stupid idea, and makes no sense. Maybe it's meant to show that you're willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, but there're better ways to do it than actively hurting yourself to heal others. I wonder if anyone wanna play as the blue guy...

The forest full of jade brotherhood and speakers is a mess... and if I remember right, a number of mastery points and hero points require you to access through a teleport platform (uses 1 battery charge). Then there's a POI that is only accessible after the meta Aspenwood...

After you fully master the fishing skill, there're fishing supplies NPC that sell you "Angler chest skin" for 6 gold and 315,000 karma. If you don't mind spending some gold and you're low on transmutation charges like I am, then that's an option if you feel like.

As for Rangers' pets, I notice that most of the pets from DLCs are only terrestrial, not usable underwater... which is super weird. The tiger from HoT and White Tiger from EoD are the only DLC pets that are amphibious. All other DLC pets are terrestrial... including the cheetah from PoF (it's a feline same as the felines of base game, why is it not amphibious ?), and the turtle from EoD (you're telling me a tiger can move and breathe underwater but a freaking turtle cannot ?).

Speaking of Ranger... I'm wondering if I should change her Druid gear to be Power / Toughness / Healing power to have a bit of damage... as of now, she's going with Precision / Healing power / Vitality (I think ?), and she's awfully weak.
 
Yeah that entire zone is a mess, lots of soldiers mindlessly walking about with guns. Mount stealth makes it...better but still annoying but at least they don't insta dismount me like the forged do. Basically the elite skill for the blue side of Vindicator turns you into an Urn and you pulse healing, dispell debuffs, but it gradually kills you so...yeah idk why that's a thing. The other moves are like you heal and your allies do too, you cleanse all debuffs from you and allies within range, a disengage that heals you... all of them are helpful but for the elite skill of it to slowly kill you as if draining your life to save your allies..I agree is real dumb. Worse there isn't anything on the elite spec tree to change that, seems like none of the points effect the elite skills. Overall the elite spec is... interesting but I still prefer renegade. Been trying to make the spirits freak out about the assassin spirit and vice versa but..I guess it has to be passing by someone which if so is rather dumb.

Yeah you'd think a turtle with a giant cannon would be able tot read water but I guess it's not water proof..but the fact cats can breath under water and be amphibious pets is also baffling. Power/Toughness/ healing power might work but idk much about druid personally besides it heals and maybe removes debuffs from allies. Ranger sure has some odd looking armor pieces all the same. The HoT one has animals and branches coming off the shoulders, PoF elite spec Soulbeast has leopard heads on the wrists of the gloves, and the EoD one has a boar's head on your helmet. Would..of loved seeing a bear or wolf for the helm but a boar... idk...don't see people even using boar lately so the idea of a boar for the helm is odd unless I'm missing something.

As for fishing I know a special fishing rod skin becomes available for purchase when I master the last part of Fishing, Local legend i think it was giving a fishing rod that looks like it's made of Spiritwood. Might look at the chest piece too but I may need to build up Karma as I spent a ton recently but I forget on what
 
Still at work, but I got a plan to recover some more of my funds... selling all the 20-slot Gossamer Bags in favor of the 18-slot Silk Bags instead. The 20-slot ones are nearly 12 gold, while the 18-slot ones are only 2 gold. 2 extra slots at the cost of 10 gold !? No thanks...
 
Funny thing is 20 slots aren't even the highest capacity bags, my engineer has a 32 slot hidden bag. It cost me a bit of gold to make but I got it all the same. Think I spent around 200 gold on materials for the bag...it's a nice bag though I'm just not depraved enough to try making more
 
That's one hell of an 'investment' for a bag... I'm just gonna stick to the 18-slot and save up money for something else.

As I'm writing this, I also plan to (re)try daggers with my Spellbreaker, to see how it goes...

Edit : Spellbreaker with dagger is OK, but I still prefer greatsword due to the AOE.

I also tried the Berserker gear (power / precision / ferocity) with the, well, Berserker elite speciation, so raw strike damage instead of condition damage... and it was a blast.

Spellbreaker is good for clearing out mobs because you only need 1 adrenaline bar to use the burst attacks, and the Full Counter is excellent when the enemies gank up on you. Berserker good for boss fights cuz you need the time to build up adrenaline.
 
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mostly cost that much as I bought the special runes and the chains, besides that it was cheap. If I had better luck with getting the runes and chains I wouldn't of needed to pay that much but rather the price to make a 20 slot as it takes 2 of any 20 slot to upgrade them to I think a 24 slot then a 28 and finally a 32. The recipe for the 24 slot is in the same spot you get the chains but the 28-23 are discovery by adding more chains and runes to essentially get the bag bigger. 32 slot bag i ascended to my surprise which makes me wonder if there is a legendary bag
 
Yesterday I sold all 20-slot bags to get the 18-slot ones, and recovered a whooping 250+ gold. I'm using that money to buy the PvP custom arena kit so I can just do the daily with my son. Heck the PvP and WvW in general.

I honestly wish you can choose bots as your opponents instead of actual players, so you can practice and learn the game modes, without getting destroyed by sweaty veterans. Instead I gotta buy a kit just to make custom matches, so lame... but, whatever.
 
Bought the PvP arena kit... had to specifically put the room name as "1-1 private no entry" so others know not to enter it and ruin my custom place. There're options that can cause the matches to NOT give you any progression towards reward track and daily/weekly objectives of Wizard's Vault, so I have to work around them.

But, it worked as intended ; last night, me and my son managed to do 1 match. He won, but both of us got progression to our reward track.

Now I understand why people can get angry if you get in their private arena room...

Hopefully things go smoothly tonight. Once I'm done with today's daily and this week's weekly objectives, it's off to Dragon Bash.

Side note : I try translating the base classes and elite specializations to Vietnamese just for fun~
 
I finished all the Wizard Vault festival objectives for Dragon Bash, and also a special objective that asked me to unlock 6 Slumbering-something weapon skins (from Janthir Wilds). I just bought them off Black Lion Trading, easy.

A few days ago I was joined the Convergence meta, but a number of people didn't seem to know what they were supposed to do, so I had to use my mentor tag to communicate. Thankfully the final boss was Hell Sister so we didn't get destroyed.

The day after that, I did the Convergence fight again, but it was Umbriel. That time, I switched Almorra (Guardian) to tank/healer build, and whenever the boss started doing the ridiculous axe attack, I used "Save Yourself !" shout to draw everyone's conditions to me. Honest, I feel a lot better about myself able to save the players, than able to do big damage.
 
This may sound odd, but Guardian DPS with hammer is absolute banger. I try to buff up the SYMBOL (the last attack of skill 1 chain) with...
  • Symbolic Exposure (Zeal) : Symbols inflict vulnerability on targets. Strike damage is increased to vulnerable targets.
  • Symbolic Power (Zeal) : Symbols deal increased strike damage.
  • Symbolic Avenger (Zeal) : Strike damage is increased whenever Symbols hit a target.
  • Writ of Persistence (Valor) : Symbols last longer and can heal.

I also use the trait Permeating Wrath so that Justice passive effect triggers more frequently.

The result is that my auto-attack with skill 1 chain causes burning from Justice passive effect MORE than when I activate it. And damage is fairly consistent.

Pair this with Litany of Wrath (heal based on damage dealt), I can easily get my health back to full very quickly, with just a few swings.

Also, from now on going forward, I'm not gonna restrict myself to just runes of the classes anymore. Instead...
  • Strike damage DPS : Berserker (power, precision, ferocity) + Rune of the Deadeye
  • Condition damage DPS : Carrion (power, condition damage, vitality) + Rune of the Soulbeast
  • Strike damage and tank : Soldier (power, toughness, vitality) + Rune of the Scrapper
  • Tank and healer (so far only Almorra is the best for it) : Cleric (power, toughness, healing power) + Rune of the Flock
 
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Berserker equipment and Rune of the Deadeye makes my Reaper/Harbinger go absolute bonkers on the enemies, even champions ! Reaper if I wanna play safe, with essentially 2 health bars ; Harbinger if I wanna do the risky "kill them before they kill me" DPS race. I'm absolutely loving this~

Honestly, this equipment combo can go well for pretty much all classes, as far as I can see. Since I don't have to worry about expensive-as-hell weapon sigil anymore, I don't have to worry about destroying my wallet.
 
Started trying to get the raven helm from dragon bash but idk how the moa gambling works so I might need to skip that one lol. Also found out that the dragon bash arena isn't a good spot to grind exp for my ranger to hit 80 but I felt it worth the try
 
Icepaw said:
Started trying to get the raven helm from dragon bash but idk how the moa gambling works so I might need to skip that one lol. Also found out that the dragon bash arena isn't a good spot to grind exp for my ranger to hit 80 but I felt it worth the try
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For the moa race, you can bet on ALL of them, so that no matter which one wins the race, you always progress in the achievement. As for the arena, it's almost impossible to solo.

My best way to gain EXP is map completion, doing events, and finishing story missions. Given that your ranger isn't level 80 yet, I think you haven't 100% the entire map yet, and might not have finished much of the story either.

But, if you still wanna progress during this festival while grinding for EXP, then I suggest the Hologram Stampede (or something like that). The events happen at specific maps at fixed time, not random, so you can follow it if you want.
 
I more so meant how do I even get to bet as the asura won't let me and when he's taking bets my character keeps telling them never mind but it is nice to know I can bet on all of them if need be. As for my Ranger he's done most of his personal story and is level 71 almost 72 from map clearing most of the Ascalon area of the base game map. I may just finish up the spot that remains as I haven't finished Iron Marches yet. I still gotta participate in four more of the stampede for the annual achievement that goes towards the raven mask though. Lot of stuff to do and time ticking down but we'll see if I get that helm skin...not sure who'll wear it but I suppose I could save it for an alt or something. Honestly would of loved to see a wolf mask done in similar fashion to the way the raven and dragon masks are for charr but idk maybe next year as the celebration vendor in lion's arch who sells prior year stuff doesn't got one so I didn't miss out
 
Icepaw said:
I more so meant how do I even get to bet as the asura won't let me and when he's taking bets my character keeps telling them never mind but it is nice to know I can bet on all of them if need be.
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Oh yeah, this. Kinda got me lost at first, too. Turns out you need the candy IN YOUR INVENTORY to bet. If they're in your bank, you can't.

Icepaw said:
As for my Ranger he's done most of his personal story and is level 71 almost 72 from map clearing most of the Ascalon area of the base game map. I may just finish up the spot that remains as I haven't finished Iron Marches yet. I still gotta participate in four more of the stampede for the annual achievement that goes towards the raven mask though. Lot of stuff to do and time ticking down but we'll see if I get that helm skin...not sure who'll wear it but I suppose I could save it for an alt or something. Honestly would of loved to see a wolf mask done in similar fashion to the way the raven and dragon masks are for charr but idk maybe next year as the celebration vendor in lion's arch who sells prior year stuff doesn't got one so I didn't miss out
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I got all the Wizard Vault festival objectives finished so I don't really bother with the festival itself anymore. If anything, maybe I eat any zhaitaffy I find until I get the achievement of eating 1000 of it (RIP my char's teeth lol).

Also, finally trying Janthir myself, mainly to get the on-land spear. First impression ?
  • Guardian spear has somewhat low dmg but decent healing, so I find it best for tank/healer. Given its short range, it can be the same as mace/shield and hammer, I think.
  • Warrior spear is strike damage and faster than rifle (the F1 doesn't prevent you from moving !), so it has potential to burst damage pretty well. Warrior only has rifle or longbow for long-range, and both of them are pretty slow, so I'm liking the spear.
  • Revenant spear is an absolute blast, condition damage through the roof ! So fucking much better than mace-axe, with lots of AOE. I found myself spamming both spear attacks and "orange Vindicator" skills without having to worry about energy cost.
  • Engineer spear is also nasty with condition damage and I love it. Pair it with the jade mech's short-range condition attacks and we're in business.
  • Ranger spear is strike damage, and is pretty cool, with skill 5 giving you stealth to enhance other attacks 2 to 4... but it doesn't really stand out much to me. So far I feel like it's not different from greatsword.
  • Necromancer spear is strike damage, and is a MUST for short-range. Greatsword can be pretty slow (skill 1 chain almost reminds me of guardian hammer skill 1 chain before the speed-up...), and dagger severely lacks AOE or damage to begin with. Spear has both covered.
  • Mesmer spear is strike damage and is excellent for short-range with its AOE. Much better than dual-swords for me. Also, very flashy and flowery effects, I like it.

I'll try thief and elementalist next tonight...
 
Elementalist spear has a kinda trick to it.. skill five has to be used first then the other three moves to make move five do full damage. Basically it makes a magic circle of that element and you need to use 3 of the others of the element to charge it. Kinda..weird, really crazy with Weaver as it just needs three other spells to power it up but the fire circle is worth it as it creates a volcano that spews fire damage at all foes around it. If you change element and try to activate skill five after three spells the prior circle goes to waste as you'll just be setting down a new one for the new element. It's fun though you throw elemental charged spears at people but the skills take some getting used to. Lot of AoE, self buffs, and the like if I recall right. I liked it better than staff so my weaver got the meteor spear. Oh and um..maybe don't eat all the zhaitaffy...you'll need it to buy recipes for furniture and build said furniture that's themed after Dragon Bash. Was a way they tried to make holidays relevant to the personal house...that all your characters share. One thing I've yet to test is..if you leave a character in the homestead and change characters they're supposedly walking around as if an NPC till you sign into them again.

There's also some achievment for giving Drooburt 1000 pieces of taffy to supposedly free him from his imprisonment or whatever but I ran out of taffy. It looks to award you a star shaped cookie though...or what I'm guessing is one
 
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