SerendipityG3A
Guild Wars Ramblings
|
[back to SerendipityG3A's profile] [Back to SerendipityG3A's profile - Guild Wars] If you currently play WoW and are considering coming over to GW, you might consider reading this first. I think I've finally settled on Fire Elementalist exclusively for my main profession, especially now that we can use our secondary profession as part of our spec instead of part of our class, which is totally awesome! Just because I have my gear on my main Guild Wars page doesn't mean I'm really that excited about gear. In fact, it could be just the opposite. I know I need the gear, but I can't be bothered memorising it, so I need to take notes. To me, I think it's fun to challenge myself. I've always asked for interesting guild events, like taking our 20s to low level dungeons to see how high of a zone we can get through without any gear on at all! Nobody's ever taken me up on that, and now I'm seeing guild loyalties break down all across the game, so I guess I'll never get to try that. The closest I've ever come was an all-squishy 4-player party, and we had a blast! and we got really good together too! We were easily able to run dungeons made for our level without dying. Eventually, one of us got pregnant and disappeared (I donno, I think if I was pregnant, I think I'd play GW even more!), and I guess we gradually drifted apart after that. Ah, well, that was years ago. Down below, I'm only listing one profession for each of my characters since the other is always Monk except for my Mesmer, whose second profession is Elementalist. I decided I don't really like playing Mesmer, so I pretty much just use ele spells when I play her. I list her as a Mesmer so that I can say that I have one of each profession, but really all she is is an ele with slightly less energy. If I ever get a better ISP, I'll make a healer build that I can use on any of my monks, and keep healer gear in the bank. I know this sounds complacent, but I used to be the best healer I've ever met until I moved out here where HughesNet and other ISPs like it are the only available broadband services. Now, any group is FAR better off with a henchie healer than with my healing. Bon Bon Mon is my Death Necromancer. I love creating a huge herd of minions to follow me around. Desert Firefly is my Spear Mastery Paragon. Temporary build. Gusty Twilight is my Wind Dervish. Temporary build. Minty Mittens is my Water Mesmer. Okay, I'm using her as an Elementalist, her second profession. Shady Masquerade is my Deadly Assassin. Temporary build. Snow El is my Beast Mastery Ranger. This is one of my favourite professions to play, second to Necro. Sweetberry Pie is my Swords Warrior. I fixed my build! I fixed my build! Oh yes! This is the first fun warrior I've ever had! Teddy Lancer is my Channeling Ritualist. Temporary build. Tiddlywink Breezie is my Fire Elementalist. I do enjoy playing her! As my main, she's not neglected at all. When heroes first came out, I was either a noob or players were not allowed to choose a second profession for their heroes. It might have been both. Anyway, I never paid any attention to that and didn't even think of it. Only just recently did I notice the little drop-down menu in the hero skill window. So I decided I've lived all this time without second professions on my heroes and never missed them, so I set all their second professions to Monk and replaced their generic res signets with real Monk res spells so that we never have to res at the shrine unless we completely wipe, even if we haven't gotten any new morale. Oh, and my real Monk healer heroes are awesome compared to henchie healers, and I will take their build to the grave! Well, unless ArenaNet makes it easy to extract builds from other people's heroes. Man, that'd be cheating! Anyway, I guess heroes don't have to deal with my lag, but then neither do henchies. If somebody gets a hold of their builds, they'll copy it and make improvements to it and copy it again to some online forum, then a whole bunch of other people will copy it and use it, then anet will nerf it, and then it will be useless. Or am I just being paranoid? To Those Who Play WoW: Since I know a number of people who play WoW, I've decided to add this segment to explain in detail based on my own experience what it might be like to switch from WoW to Guild Wars, and how to adapt. Whenever people go from one thing to another, they tend to gripe about what they can't do even when there are a million things they can do, so I'm gonna start with that, then hopefully expand into some more useful feature variations. You can't fly! There are no flying mounts, there is no flight form, and there are no flying taxi services, and in fact, there is no form of flight whatsoever. There are some mobs with wings, and some combat pets with them as well, but they only fly just off the ground, and they can't go anywhere a creature with legs can't go. If you have to travel a great distance, you'll most likely opt to teleport there. This works the way a Mage can teleport himself around or how a Death Knight or Druid can use his teleportation device, or like a hearth stone or a portal found in cities such as Shattrath and Dalaran. You sometimes need to take more than one portal, but you never have to teleport more than I'd say about three times to get to any city, town, or outpost in the world. This is similar to, say, you are in Silithus, and your best friend whispers you asking for help with a quest in eastern Hellfire. Your hearth is in Dalaran, so you could hearth, port to Shattrath, and fly to hell. But wouldn't it be quicker to hearth, port to Silvermoon or Stormwind, and from there, port to Blastedlands, then finally step through the Dark Portal? Of course it would, and if it crossed your mind, I'm sure that's exactly what you'd do! Well, it's that kind of thinking that will help you get around the world in Guild Wars efficiently. I do wish we could fly though, just because flying is fun. You can't swim! If you go out into the water, you can wade out for a bit if it isn't too deep, but once it gets too deep, you'll simply stop and not go any further as if you ran into a brick wall. But you can look in the water and see fish and other sea creatures swimming around in there. Many of the features I'm listing here have a good chance of being included in Guild Wars 2, which is expected to come out some time in the distant future when they're able to catch up with the rapidly developing gaming technology long enough to "blow us away the first time we play it." Swimming is one of those abilities that they have already announced that we'll be able to do in Guild Wars 2, and we'll be able to explore under-water areas as well. In fact, Guild Wars 2 sounds a lot like Cataclism. Even has a similar story if you have a bit of imagination. You can't fall (or jump) off a cliff! Nope, no achievement for falling without dying either. I'm not sure, but I think in Guild Wars 2, they're developing a way to actually climb cliffs, so they might give us the ability to fall too. Whatever, I mean, who likes falling anyway? When you're backed up against a wall, you can't see in front of you. A related common complaint is that you can't free the camera to look around while running without changing your direction. The truth is, yes you can. If you have elected to use the key bindings I'm recommending, then you can do this by pressing the shift key. As for being backed up against a wall, the easiest thing to do about that is not get backed up against a wall. Another option is whenever you do, scroll up your mouse wheel to zoom in all the way so that you see what your character sees. I find it annoying that the game defaults to looking down at the ground instead of zooming in, but I can't help it. What I usually do is fight using the minimap and targeting shortcuts. Once the fight is over, I'll move promptly away from the wall since it makes me feel claustrophobic somehow. There is no in-game mail! Oh jeez, I know, this is one thing I always wish they'd give us! It sucks not being able to communicate with people who are offline and having to actually meet somewhere if you want to give them something. My guild has a facebook group which we can use to send messages to one another. I have a facebook account for exclusively that purpose. There is no auction house! After a while, you realise you don't need it, but I still think it would be a nice convenience. If you're really that desperate to sell something, go to a major city where you think there will be people who want what you're selling, and announce it in trade chat. Very inconvenient, but if it's that important to you, that's just what you'll have to do. There is no buyback! Before you vendor something, be extra-special careful that you definitely wanna vendor it because there is no way to get it back! Oh, and, well, you'll probably figure this out on your own, but the vast majority of vendors in GW are actually called merchants. There are no PvE raids larger than 12 players, and most are parties of 8 players. The cool thing of it is that if you can't fill up your party, everybody can pitch in up to three heroes a piece (which are AI characters who each player owns and can spec and control similar to a combat pet). If the party still isn't full, you can fill in the remaining slots with henchmen (often called henchies - similar to heroes, but more generic, they come pre-specced by ArenaNet, are chosen and controlled by the party leader, and have fewer control options). PvP: There are PvP elements to the game, but I don't participate in PvP on any game at all, so I can't compare them any more than to say that they are said to be something like battle grounds. I imagine GvG is similar to a large PvP raid, but I've never been a part of one since I don't like PvP. Guilds: Alliances are actually what would be considered guilds in WoW, but you can't actually see who is online in your alliance. This is another thing I wish they'd add, but they probably won't because they're busy working on GW2. You can see who is on in your guild though, and that's a sub-group in your alliance. If there are several people in your alliance that you like to chat with or party with, you might consider all getting into the same guild for the sake of convenience. You can always use alliance chat and add your friends to your friends list. Oh, while we're on the subject, all characters attached to your account are automatically in the same guild. There is no way around it. Parties: You have to be in the same city, town, or outpost and on the same server to party with people, but you can whisper across all barriers. Oh, switching from server to server is as simple as selecting it from a drop-down menu in the corner of your screen. You don't have to log off, pay a fee, anything like that. The fact that everybody can give themselves a last name means there are plenty of names out there, so everybody can fit in the same world. Servers exist so that certain areas that get a lot of traffic don't get too full. Local and trade chat only works between people on the same server, but whispers, guild, and alliance chats have no limits. If players leave your party in the middle of a quest or a mission (in Guild Wars, a missions is a lot like instance in WoW), they cannot be replaced without starting over, so if you do a lot of pugging, you might begin to favour alliance runs. Spec Trees! A recent change in the game has brought class customisation to an unbelievable level! When you create your character, you choose a "profession" that will be you for life. Each profession has a "primary" tree that can only be used if you are that class. Early in the game, you will be encouraged to choose a "second profession" which will give you access to trees in that profession, but you will never have access to the "primary" tree in that profession. A LONG time later, after you've levelled up and done a WHOLE bunch of missions, and if you have all the campaigns and expansions, you'll be able to respec using trees from any profession, but you will still never be able to use those professions' "primary" trees, and you can only use two professions at a time, and one of them was the one you chose when you created your character. There is no way to "change your class" for a fee or not. You can create another character, but you'll have to start over at level 1. If you're the type who likes to respec a lot, it's a good idea to learn where ALL the "skill trainers" and "profession changers" are, and keep a bunch of in-game money on hand. Oh, about that, it won't cost as much as on WoW because once you've chosen a profession once, you can respec back to it as many times as you like for free. I guess it's sort of like in WoW where you eventually acquire the ability to duel-spec since then you can switch back and forth freely (not sure how true that is since I've never had a duel-spec on WoW). If you respec on WoW without duel-spec, you have to pay an in-game fee and buy a bunch of spells. Going back to your original spec, you'll have to buy the spells you used to have again. In Guild Wars, once you buy a spell, it's yours for life even if you respec to a tree that can't use it, so if you switch back to one that can, you can use it again for free. Start locations! There are some primary professions that will only start in one of the three starting areas, but most will allow you to start in any. There is but one reason to choose one starting area over another, and that is the rate at which you can attain attribute points (talent points). You can quest and play everywhere in the game, but if you start in Ascalon, it will take much longer to get all 200 points unless you grind hard on quests and missions in Tyria to the exclusion of all other continents. If you start in Shing Jea Monastery, you'll have timed missions, so you'll want to learn to do them quickly in order to complete the bonus achievement. If you will need to continually repeat missions until you can achieve the bonus time, then Chahbek is probably the fastest by far since there aren't many timed missions, so you won't need to do them over just because you didn't do them fast enough. There's one that I can think of called "Pogahn" where you have to hurry to the ships, and if you run to the wrong ship, you run out of time and the mission fails. There's one like that called "Riverside Province," and another called "The Great Northern Wall," both from the Ascalon line. And Dunes of Dispair definitely has a tight clock on it too! So don't be thinking you can get away from that by choosing the slower path. Ultimately, you'll very likely end up eventually doing every mission in the game, so you're not actually getting away from anything but a slow start. Think "Halls of Reflection." Just bring along an experienced player who can make sure you get on the right ship (Pogahn) or follow the right path (Riverside), and you'll be fine (I think the northern wall route is pretty obvious). You also acquire heroes faster on Elona, but you can quest on Elona no matter where you start. You just can't earn attribute points there unless you started there. Now, take this information I've written here and prepare yourself because it's not as bad as it looks! In fact, it's a great game, and you're gonna do fine with all of this! The first step is to create a character. Now remember, just like picking your class on WoW, you want to select your GW profession very carefully because you will never be able to change it! You will be able to use talent trees from other professions, but you will not be able to use primary skills from any profession except the one you choose while creating your character. For your own sake, I'm strongly recommending that you start in Elona. That means to use Nightfall to create your character if the profession of your choice is available in Elona. If it's not, you can choose between Tyria and Cantha. Cantha is the continent where missions are timed. To start in Cantha, you must choose Factions to create your character. Tyria is the continent that awards attribute points very sparingly, so it takes ages to accumulate all of them. To start in Tyria, you must choose Prophecies to create your character. Of course, if your chosen profession is only available from a single continent, you should choose that continent. Whatever the limitations on acquiring attribute points, it's well worth it to be playing a profession that you will enjoy. Next, once you have created your character, enter the world on your new character and watch the cinematic. Once you're at a point where you're just standing there doing nothing, find your "menu" button and go down to Options. From there, go over to the Control tab. This is where you set your key bindings. You only have to do this once since it's saved account-wide on the server. You can set some of these how ever you want, but here are some critical ones: Anyway, once you have your keys set, you can optionally go to the Interface tab. This will make grey lines and yellow text appear all over your screen. Don't worry, it all goes away when you close the Options box. You can use all this to set it up so that everything is in a familiar place. At the very least, you'll most likely use this box to disable the experience bar. In a world where attribute points are a trillion times more important than level, and you only level up to 20 anyway, who needs an XP bar? Anyway, while you're editing the layout, you'll have to move the stupid Options box all over the place to get it out of your way. If you figure out a way to hide it, please let me know. I'm happy with my layout now, and have had it this way for years, but I'd like to tell people here if there is a way to do it. The main things I did were setting up the health and energy bars to look like my name plate on WoW with health and mana, then shrink the effects monitor and skill warmup boxes so that its icons are comparable to the buff and debuff icons on WoW, then move it so that it's directly under the energy bar. I also moved the party box to the left side of the screen under my newly assembled name plate where party members would show up on WoW, and I put the minimap in place and a bunch of little stuff around it, like the menu button, the close button, and the latency monitor. I also put the quest and mission stuff all on the right side where quest tracking shows up on WoW. I also resized the XP bar and put it where it is on WoW, but that was before I realised levelling to 20 on GW is about as fast as levelling to 20 on WoW, so you really don't even need it. Anyway, all my toons have been 20 now for years, and I have no use for an XP bar anyway. I took some screenshots of mine in case you want to see what it looks like. You can click on the thumbs below to see larger versions. They are the layout screen with the Options window blocking the left side, the Options window blocking the right side, the ui in use in an outpost so you can see the server menu (thing in the top left corner that says, "America - English - District 1"), and the ui in use outside where you can see a buff on my name plate and a full party (of henchies and heroes and a pet cat). I have my XP bar disabled. 
[back to SerendipityG3A's profile] [back to SerendipituG3A's profile - Guild Wars] |