What a Canach

Yesterday was patch day and the next phase of the Southsun Cove Living Story in GW2.

So far the Southsun Cove revisit has not been blowing my robes up.  It's alright.  I feel like there was a bit of a lack of continuity between F&F and the new story but maybe that is because I missed the Lost Shores event.  I mean, I wasn't even sure who "The Consortium" are and then this Canach bloke shows up.

Because I received the mail about the Canach instance on a different character I went digging on the wiki to find out where the instance entrance was and discovered that this Sylvari dude was actually a recurring character.  I guess that's another problem with having an event that only lasts a weekend.  If you miss it, you don't just miss the action, you get a gap in your lore too.

Having finally found the instance (swapped to other toon, check mail and back again) it's fair to say that I was a mite dissappointed that the "solo instance" was a short run past some easily avoidable enviro hazards, only to be confronted with a wimpy mob that can only be defeated with some convoluted, RNG-based method.

Or so it seemed.  I seriously struggled with him to begin with.  Somehow he just kept managing to knock me back into his mines, which then one-shoted me. I mentioned my frustration in Guild chat and I discovered that most people had beaten him because you can stick conditions on him.  Hmmm.

So, I swapped into my old condition-mancer gear and went back.  Well, I dunno what I did wrong but I couldn't stick conditions on him so I once again set about the mine method.

It actually went pretty well; I used the Flesh Golem to tank him and had him down to about half health and then I noticed he had been crippled by the Flesh Golem.  I immediately began attacking him and was please to see the bleeds pile up.  I then stacked him with everything I could and gloated at his pathetic attempts to catch me as I kited him around.

The reward I recieved was pretty nice.  I actually managed to do the Lightfoot Lair (or w/e) achievement too so I only need one more achievement to unlock the Karka back reward.

So, I ate an omlette that I had been carrying around.

And that was that.

So, after my fairly glowing review of the F&F content I'm very meh about this.  I still have a bit more to do and maybe that will redeem it a little but maybe I just don't like Southsun.  I don't like Veteran mobs that are harder to kill than most dungeon bosses.  I don't like the (comparatively) ridiculously difficult Guild Rush there either... but I guess that's for another blog.

The Living Story

This Sunday the first arc of the Living Story will end and two days later a new arc will begin. And I, personally, can't wait. I've thoroughly enjoyed the Flame and Frost story and am so glad I actually got chance to play it.

You see, I don't have a lot of play time. I have a full-time “proper” job, a daily four-hour round-trip commute, a wife and a little boy. I barely see my family during the week so weekends are very precious and I certainly don't want to spend whole days playing a video game. As a result my playtime is limited to between around 8pm and 11pm, Friday to Sunday, which adds up to about 10 hours a week.

I've seen a lot of complaints that the introduction of each part of the Living Story was too slow. It wasn't for me. I was worried I might not actually get chance to do the Molten Facility as I effectively had two weekends in which to do it and, being a real life grown-up, I already had plans for most of those days. I went to a wedding the weekend of the much maligned Karka event; I knew from the day it was announced I couldn't do it.

Admittedly, the first part of the F&F story, the refugees and recurring events in the Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau, didn't really need a whole month before the next stage of content, simply because they continued to run through the entire story anyway. It was very hard to miss. So, while a calendar month seems a long time, two weeks is also quite limiting.

I'm also frustrated that people seem to have very high expectations of the Living Story. It's not supposed to be major content, you know? It's a richness, barely more than a dynamic event, and I think it has filled that role very well so far. Having missed the original Southsun event I have only been there to do a jumping puzzle and two ill-fated Guild Rushes so I am excited that the Living Story will take us back and maybe bring some changes to the zone.

It's fair to say that the Living Story rekindled my interest in Guild Wars 2.  The hype around Wildstar is building and it looks very intriguing; frankly I was geting ready to dump GW2 this Winter.  I just didn't feel I had any attachment to my character or the world.  That's beginning to change.

I hope Arenanet continue the relaxed pace of these updates and keeps including me as a player.  Tyria is a world I'm starting to find my place in.

Patch day

Just a quick one.

You might have seen the “state of play” video interview on gw2guru, where some of the Anet devs outline the PvP balance changes for the April 30^th patch. I don't do any sPvP but a lot of these changes will also affect WvW and PvE so it's worth a watch.

The big news, for me, is that pets will no longer aggro mobs. This is a tiny fix but a pretty huge change; pets really do make moving through a crowded area tedious. As I'm currently running Clott's daggermancer build, which uses the Flesh Golem, this is particularly good news. I also believe they attend to buff her HP as she is a bit squishy.

The other big news is that Epidemic and Corrupt Boon will become unblockable. Quite why Corrupt Boon wasn't like that already I have no idea. I guess the Epidemic change is to make up for the LOS change.

Finally, the devs said that next patch (presumably May) will be focused on bug fixes. They've just been working hard on balance for the last few months and want to see how things go. They did pretty much admit that I had been neglecting bugs to be honest, so that's good to know!

Crafting in GW2

“People” say that crafting in GW2 is broken and pointless. I respectfully disagree and here's why.

I knew I would craft from the start in GW2. I have crafted in both of my previous MMOs and I enjoy it. I get real pleasure from working out how to level up and breakeven at the same time. Let's face it, you'll rarely profit at this stage in most games; it's all about minimising loss.

My first two crafts in GW2 were Tailor and Artificer (necromancer remember). I quickly found that it cost quite a lot to craft. In the early days raw mats were in high demand and the cost of things like copper and jute actually had some value. At the time leatherwork was extremely expensive because leather was relatively hard to come by. By contrast leather is currently effectively worthless. Also, when the game was first released the market was constantly flooded. With a cross server auction house system supply almost always exceeds demand. It's virtually impossible to find a niche.

They do exist, though. Before the advent of gw2spidy I inadvertently discovered that several rare scepters and staffs could yield a significant profit. This was mainly because the skins were pretty damn cool. Crafting rare items also provides a significant boost to crafting exp. And, let's face it, what else do you have to spend that karma on?

Recently, I noticed that high level rare jewellery commands a significant price and decided that might be a nice craft to do on an alt I don't have the time (or inclinaton) to grind up. So, I took the plunge.

Firstly, I have a huge supply of mats built up. I'm a bit of a hoarder. That's not necessarily a good thing. A lot of people still don't have the hang of crafting GW2 and over-produce a lot of base components and end up selling the surplus for a lot less than the materials cost. Luckily, gw2spidy exists and it's easy to check if the materials are worth more sold than crafted. Sometimes, for example, it might be better to sell all your ore and just buy the ingots. The market is funny like that.

So, there's 3 stages to each “level” of crafting. The first stage is crafting components and some very poor quality items, the next stage is a selection of Fine items, which, again, are generally worthless and the last stage is Masterwork.

It turns out that Masterwork jewelry is actually pretty sought after and yields a decent profit. So, if you use gw2spidy and plan right, you can just spend all of stage one making components you need (unless it's cheaper to buy them). Then you have to suck up the loss as you craft crap for the second stage (I dumped most of mine in the guild bank). Obviously, it depends on the craft but, hopefully, at stage three you'll make that money back.

If you still feel a bit short changed take a look at the Rare quality items. Spending a bit of karma could yield some decent profits.

The road to Daggermancer

A little over a week ago I had my first taste of World vs World and, generally, I really enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of siege PvP in Aion, which I liked a lot. Aion had problems, the biggest, aside from a broken flight mechanic, was lag. Since only a small number of forts where under siege at any given time the entire server tended to congregate in one place. This made for some epic fights but it wasn't unusual to suddenly drop to 1 FPS for 5 minutes only to find out you had been dead all along.

Guild Wars 2 avoids that problem by having 3 other zones to play in, although I expect sieges at Stonemist are just as bad as Aion, if not worse.

Anyway, my first run went very well. I went with my guild and got 44 kills, which I was pretty pleased about. However, I did get left at the back quite a lot, not in a rear guard capacity, and kept getting picked off and abandoned. As a result I kept getting stuck miles away from the group and spent a LOT of time trying to catch back up. I soon realised that my build was part of the problem.

I'm a Necromancer, and a norn, not a popular combination. The build I usually play is based on scepter/dagger conditions. It's not bleed focused but I can stack about 20 bleeds solo no problems (being a norn has perks here). I like to combine that with Epidemic and circle strafe until victory.

That tactic works great in PvP, unless you get isolated, which I did. At one point I got jumped by two thieves and, damn, I barely touched them. It's hard to AoE an enemy that won't stay still. While thieves might be the rock to necromancer scissors, I did feel I should have done something rather than die.

I also found, when I got chance to actually monitor it, that my conditions never lasted very long. It seems that most classes can remove conditions quite easily and all classes have an escape mechanism so I rarely caught up to reapply while the removal was on CD. Speed was something I missed out on too. I think Spectral Walk is a necromancer's escape option but I hadn't even unlocked it. That might also explain why I couldn't keep up with my guild too.

So, a big rethink was required, knowing that I needed to make better use of Death Shroud (it has 10 second cooldown for reason!) and that I need to be able to defend myself if it got up close and personal. Since WvW only makes up about 20% of my play time it had to be a PvE build that could be adapted easily. There was no point looking at a pure PvP build because that's just not how I roll. I spent the last week looking at alternative builds and yesterday, I tried one out.

Daily & Monthly Achievements

By and large I'm a fan of the changes to daily achievements in GW2. Personally, I hated having to do the “mob variety” every single day. However, things haven't got much better: annoyance has been replaced with other annoyance.

Surely ANet would know that if you log on in, say, Orr or Kryta you're going to see more undead and centaurs than anything else and that you'll need to go pretty far afield to see anything else. That makes kill variety tough.

Underwater kills? I might have to go to an entirely different zone.

The worst, though, is Daily Healer. There just aren't that many dead people around. I guess the point is to encourage you to rez players, and to encourage players to wait to be rezzed, but I do that already.

That's not what it's supposed to be about, is it ANet? You don't want us to go out of our way to get this done do you?

Having a bunch of Alts helps.  Daily Dodger is very easily achieved with a Death Blossoming Thief and stationing a character at the Thaumonova Reactor is a great way to do Kill Variety.

Exotic

Being such a part-timer I have put off getting Exotics until I had chance to really look into it properly.  I love the fact that GW2 means all the gear of the same level and rarity has the same base stats and that means you're just looking at extra attributes and appearance.

I've been decided on what Exotic armour I wanted for some time: it's a combo of parts from Arah and Twilight Arbour.  However, since TA is not very popular I have subbed in some stuff from Citadel of Flame temporarily.  People always want to do CoF...

Mainly, I like the TA gear for the look but the stats are great for a Necromancer too.  The head and shoulders look totally lame though so that's why I have my sights set on the Arah gear for that.

This brings us to weapons.  I am a condition Necro, apparently.  I don't personally feel the need to assign such labels but it pleases the people that find spreadsheets part of the fun.  My weapons of choice are scepter/dagger and staff.

Up until recently I had stuck pretty much solidly to scepter but when it came to defending a Dolyak or fighting a boss I used staff.  When you do Dynamic Events with a group the AoE of staff helps you get much more involved, otherwise other classes will burn the mobs down before you have chance.  With bosses it usually pays to stay at range.  In short, my staff was not used THAT often.  As a result, I'm not proud of this, I carried a Masterwork staff.

However, joining a new guild has carried me beyond PvE and with more varied play has a come a desire to tweak and "work on my build".  I started to read around and one build caught my eye.  It was for tower defense in WvW (no idea what that entails) but it emphasised starting each encounter with staff to lay your marks and then switching to your other weapon for the nitty gritty.  Maybe you'd switch back to staff to re-lay your marks if you got chance.  The benefits of this were immediately obvious to me and I realised that I was totally neglecting a big chunk of damage.

Since then I have focused much more on switching regularly between weapon sets.  It's really boosted my damage.  This has been most noticable in dungeons where is has become normal for me to get hate from a boss.  Not a huge deal but it at least means I am competing for damage done.

Things brings us back to my search for exotic weapons and an upgrade for my neglected staff.  Yesterday I spent a decent chunk of time looking at weapon models and picked a lot I liked.  Cross-referencing on the TP it became pretty clear what I could afford and there were some good choices.

In the end I plumped for a Carrion Legionnaire's staff, which I upgraded with a Sigil of Battle.  I never really appreciated those "when you switch to this weapon" sigils until now.  Twenty seconds of Might for doing something that's already a regular part of my combat?  Sounds like a deal!

This left me with a scepter and a dagger to find.  I hit the jackpot here.  Searching the TP for Exotic Level 80 daggers I find Claws of the Desert.  Looking at the dagger gallery on the Wiki I see it has a nice skin.  It also has Condition Damage as it's main stat and it comes with a Superior Sigil of Battle.  The knife itself is cheaper than the Sigil alone.  Ker-ching.

Since I am not sure what benefits you can get from an off-hand Sigil anyway, this is perfect.  I can now have 6 stacks of might at pretty much any time during a big fight.

What is not to like about that?