Guild Wars 2

[Extra Floof Taur]

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...

 

[Icepaw]

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

 

[Extra Floof Taur]

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.

 

[Icepaw]

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

 

[Extra Floof Taur]

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...

 

[Icepaw]

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

 

[Extra Floof Taur]

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.