Pumping Irony

I have come to the realization that Guild Wars is my World of Warcraft. I have no qualms about taking breaks, sometimes quite lengthy ones, but I never tire of coming back.

I recently decided to work on another character. I love all the stuff I can do with my monk Benjeth but I need a change of pace. I know I should be working up my assassin into a “PermaSin” for farming but I didn’t want to go there just yet. I have a whole repertoire of characters that mostly collect dust. Choices, choices.

The deciding factor on which character to dust off was (how’s this for out of left field) the death of Michael Jackson. Bear with me. When the Nightfall campaign released in autumn 2006 I immediately made each of the Nightfall classes, the Dervish and Paragon. With the Paragon, however, I made an interesting choice. Rather than going for the “hero dude” look, I intentionally made him appear strong yet effeminate. Michael Jackson (along with a few other celebrities) was an influence on my final choices on Korsin’s look, and the fact that male paragons do the Thriller dance was the clincher.

So I’ve had this paragon for almost three years, but I never quite knew what to do with him. He didn’t (still doesn’t) have many elite skills for me to work with. Other than the first set of max armor from Consulate Docks, he doesn’t have any great gear (yet) to synergize with a build. In short, other than being some sort of support class, I didn’t fully “get” the paragons. The closest I’d come was when I first logged him in a few weeks ago and put together a build to add a minor buff to the group’s damage output and help the group restore health and energy with his elite skill able to remove all conditions from the entire group. It wasn’t exciting, it arguably wasn’t even necessary, but at least I “got” that build. Fine, but I wanted the next step, something fun, something exciting, and something useful.

Enter the Imbagon. This build gets it’s name from being able to create an “imbalance” by drastically reducing damage the group is taking, boosting the group’s damage, and doing very nice damage himself. For a support class, this is the Total Package. It’s the reason that for at least a year or two the Imbagon is the most popular paragon build.

Benjeth, who I’ve been playing as my main character for four years and who is not lacking for resources. When I learned to 600 last month, I walked up to the armor crafter with the fee and materials and five clicks later Benjeth had a new armor set. I walked over to the rune trader NPC and a few clicks later Benjeth had all the runes and insignias necessary to turn the new armor into 600 armor. Other than account-wide bank funds and crafting materials, Korsin doesn’t have that advantage since he has spent most of his life mothballed.

Here’s the Imbagon build Korsin is currently using: OQGjUymG6SPYWYxgAh5iXFpbubA

Like all the greatest builds, the Imbagon is a multi-campaign build. It’s based on the common match of Paragon/Warrior classes, which works well since both classes have adrenaline-based skills. Nightfall (obviously), Factions, and Eye of the North are required to get all the skills.

For attributes we have: (+1 means a minor rune for that attribute is affixed to a piece of armor; headpieces can have their own inherent +1 plus a rune)

Spear Mastery: 14 (12+1+1)
Command: 7 (6+1)
Leadership: 12 (11+1)

Additionally the Imbagon ideally has a Rune of Clarity to reduce blind and weakness effects, a Rune of Superior Vigor to give +50 health, and either Centurions or Survivor insignias on all armor pieces. Centurion insignias give +10 armor each but only while affected by a paragon’s chant, echo or shout. Survivor insignias give various amount of +health depending which amor piece it’s attached to; a total of +40 health if all 5 are used. Korsin currently has one Centurion insignia and four Survivor. Being a bit of a pauper due to his noobishness (and my hard rule that each character in any game must earn his keep) Korsin does not yet have the Rune of Superior Vigor because it’s usually (always?) the most expensive rune in the game and he cannot afford it just yet, but that’s ok for now because I’m working in Normal Mode right now until Korsin gets additional reputation to make the build more effective, and because in general the AI mobs don’t target paragons as much so he’s not taking much damage at all so far. In fact, I’m debating if simply using all five Centurion insignias wouldn’t be more effective as well as less expensive, but I’ll wait until I experience Hard Mode to make that decision.

How it works. The power of the Imbagon build lies in its simplistic beauty. This is yet another example of creativity, putting together a build that is super-effective and super-synergistic. The focal point of the build is the Factions skill “Save Yourself!” which gives +100 armor to the other members of the group (but not to the one who uses the skill). Save Yourself! is also an adrenaline-based skill, so we have three additional skills to assist with adrenaline management. First the elite skill, Focused Anger which for 45 seconds gives a bonus (+120% at Korsin’s 12 Leadership). Focused Anger has a 60-second refresh, however, so we add the Warrior skill “For Great Justice!” which gives +100% adrenaline for 20 seconds, which we activate just before Focused Anger wears off. Then we have Aggressive Refrain which is an Increased Attack Speed (IAS) skill. 12 Leadership gives 21 seconds of +25% IAS. The faster we attack, the faster we build adrenaline. Combine that with Focused Anger or For Great Justice! and we’re an adrenaline generating machine. For additional damage reduction, we have “There’s Nothing to Fear!” which is a brief buff that reduces all incoming damage and then provides a minor heal when it expires. Aggressive Refrain gives a penalty of 20 seconds of “cracked armor” (-20 armor) but as I mentioned (at least in Normal Mode) the AI doesn’t target paragons much. Additionally, Aggressive Refrain is an echo and Save Yourself!, For Great Justice! and There’s Nothing to Fear! are shouts which trigger the +10 armor for each Centurion insignia should I decide to go that route.

Those skills drastically reduce incoming damage, now we add the Ebon Battle Standard of Honor skill from the Ebon Vanguard reputation. At maximum reputation it will provide a 20 second buff where each group member gets +15 damage, and if fighting Charr an additional +10.

The final consideration to great builds is energy management. Currently Korsin has 30 energy. Aggressive Refrain alone costs 25 to cast. That’s where the Leadership attribute comes in. For each 2 points in Leadership, I gain 1 energy for each ally affected by a chant or shout. Every time Korsin uses one of those shouts, that’s +6 energy. Plus there’s the natural energy regeneration. Optimally, Korsin should have a zealous spear as well, but I haven’t found one yet. Zealous would give -5 energy and a -1 to energy regeneration penalties, but provides +1 energy for each hit on an enemy. An Imbagon is constantly attacking, even if it’s merely an auto-attack, and a lot of that is under an IAS effect as well, so a zealous spear should be a big help for energy management when combined with the shouts.

Korsin is currently dealing with a rank of 4 in Ebon Vanguard and rank 1 in Kurzick. Thankfully, the Factions reputations (Luxon and Kurzick) are account-wide rather than character-specific (how I wish LOTRO and other games did that…) so I can use Benjeth and other characters who are far enough into the Factions campaign to help earn Kurzick reputation, which is a priority since rank 1 only provides 4 seconds of Save Yourself! which only helps during a spike, whereas the intent of the Imbagon is to keep up Save Yourself! as long as possible.

Builds like this, and some of my favorite monk builds for Benjeth, illustrate part of what is so great about Guild Wars. The freedom to be creative and take the hundreds of available skills and choose eight skills that not only synergize (which is extremely important) but also combine to quite a drastic effect, in this case a hefty damage reduction buff combined with a damage output buff. Most of the DikuMMORPGs out there use the skill tree system where you can create your character and before you earn a single XP you’re able to look at the skill trees and draw a progression roadmap. The potential for creativity and freedom is mostly lost when you’re limited to 1-3 skill trees to pick and choose from, leaving most characters of any given class clones of each other at level cap. There’s not even any excitement at leveling and wondering what new skills you might get anymore; it’s all there on the skill tree map. Just another aspect of cutting out any sense of adventure in favor of instant gratification…

Sooooo very tempted to do a much-overused and abused “300″ ripoff by shouting “This is Guild Wars!” but I won’t. Or did I just? :grin:

I’ve been enjoying this year’s stint in Guild Wars immensely. I’ve been pretty social with the alliance, which has grown and shifted a few guilds in the past couple of weeks. I even did an Underworld run with one of the guilds and we had an awesome time and I managed to keep everyone alive. That is until I single-handedly wiped the entire group by picking up a quest that I shouldn’t have. Luckily, they took it in stride even though we were all disappointed (we were near the end of the run) and no one said any rude comments over Ventrilo or chat. Quite the contrary, in fact. That was the only noob move I made, and only because the Ventrilo server did one of its momentary stutters and I’d thought the leader said for “everyone make sure to grab that quest.” Turns out he said “make sure no one grabs that quest!” Oh well.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, one of my projects for Guild Wars is to finally come to grips with full-on Protection monking. My old build was a Word of Healing healing/protection hybrid but it seems that for both PvP and Hard Mode PvE that full Protection is more valuable than the reactionary. I’ve come up with a few decent Protection builds that I’m becoming fairly proficient at where I have to alternate between proactively “pre-protting” either a single character (usually a tank if one is in the group) or the entire group prior to a damage spike — if I see (or think that I see) one coming — or reactive condition removal. Fun but challenging and it requires a somewhat different mindset when compared to the traditional reactive-only healing mentality we see in every other MMO. To maximize the efficiency of my Protection builds I wanted to get a “perfect” Protection staff. Last weekend was double drop rate for green (unique) items but I sure couldn’t tell. I spent roughly ten hours on and off in Grothmar Wardowns to get Chaelse’s Staff. I’ve never spent that amount of time getting a green item during normal drop rates! Louden Swain (@GuildWarsLouden) waltzed over and got the staff for me after only a few tries. :mad: Figures. Anyway, thanks for the staff Louden, it’s already been getting plenty of use! (Screenshot is during my final attempt to get the staff.)

This weekend, aside from running some special quests and missions in the Shing Jea Monastery for the Dragon Festival 2009, I decided to finally learn a new solo farming tactic. Just over a year ago, I learned how to do the 55 Monk thing, which I’ve become decent at but still completely unable to deal with mobs casting health degenerations on me. When I only have 55 health to begin with, hexes or curses that nail me at several pips of degen means I’m dead with barely any time to react.

These days, a 600/Smite team is the cool Monk farming. It is a duo team, so it’s not exactly “solo” farming, but the Smiter monk can be a Hero rather than a player. I went to Kamadan and bought the lowest level Sunspear armor I could get — Armor Level 15 — to ensure I’m being hit as often as possible, then went about maximizing the health bonuses by buying a Survivor insignia for each armor piece, two Runes of Vitae and finally the big mamma jamma: a Superior Rune of Vigor which cost 18,000 gold. Equipping that armor set puts Benjeth’s health in the vicinity of 600, give or take, hence the name. The Smiter monk is mainly just to follow around out of sight and maintain four enchantments on the 600 monk, so I setup one of my monk Heroes for the job.

Running the 600 was more challenging and difficult than learning to 55 for me, and took several revisions of the build until I finally came up with one that first and foremost actually made logical sense to me, then arranged so that I could run it easily and quickly because 600ing can be a little high maintenance and busy once the combat starts. So far my proficiency has allowed me to enter several areas in Hard Mode with no problems. Until I got cocky and went into the City of Torc’qua in Nightfall’s Domain of Anguish. I don’t think I’d ever actually been in there before but I am badly wanting to get a Tormented Shield for Benjeth and the Margonite Gemstones needed only drop in City of Torc’qua or The Foundry of Failed Creations.

Each time I stepped into the first wave of Margonites I was immediately spammed with Strip Enchantment, which is lethal to a 600 monk since the entire near-invulnerability relies on 6 to 7 enchantments being maintained continuously. The second my Spell Breaker expired, all Benjeth’s enchantments were stripped and he was pummeled and degened in less than one second!

Surely, there has to be a way to deal with these things? Domain of Anguish groups are harder and harder to come by these days, and I very badly want that shield. It’s sexy! I was hoping the 600/Smite team would do the trick…

Working! :sad: But aside from that, I am once again on break from LOTRO. I was fine and dandy when I returned in April with my focus on PvMP but of course I had to go check on my Lore-master. I did some of the Moria instances with my kinship and got one more Radiance piece. Then, against my better judgment I dusted off my Captain and took him to Angmar where I worked to get him the full heavy Fem armour set. Sure enough I felt the sizzle, which was quickly followed by the fizzle, of burnout again.

It’s not specifically that I’m burned out on LOTRO, however, I think I’m just burned out on DikuMMORPGs as a whole. I thankfully have that Lifetime membership to LOTRO which has always allowed me to guiltlessly come and go as I please. But I am finding it impossible to get interested — much less excited — about any upcoming DikuMMORPG at all.  Aion? Pfft! Please. World of Animecraft with a zone for flying but invisible walls everywhere else? Straight up DikuMMO with all the same old Diku features as every other DikuMMO the past decade? No thanks. To paraphrase Bartle, “I’ve already played Aion, it was called Every Other Frickin’ DikuMMO Ever.” BioWare is working on WoW: The Old Republic which at this point in time isn’t doing anything for me, though I won’t eliminate the possibility that BioWare may actually surprise me and put out a quality game that is fun and different, but honestly I’m just expecting the same old Diku stuff but with the best animated and synchronized Diku combat ever seen. The only MMOGs out there I have even a slight interest in are decidedly non-Diku. I think I can safely say I am Done with Diku. LOTRO will still be my main traditional (and therefore Diku-derived) MMORPG, and I will still tour some now and then that I already own like Age of Conan and Vanguard. I don’t have any faith that Mythic has the ability to suddenly turn Warhammer into a fun and compelling game to get me back there even for a brief visit, but stranger things have happened. But right now I just don’t see myself jumping on the bandwagon of any more Shiny New Sameness from here on out.

So I’m back to the 360 primarily. I still have Fallout 3 to work on. A friend was replaying Mass Effect so I popped that in and started a new campaign with my existing character, and got him to level 50! Plus my usual suspects of shooters, an RTS (Halo Wars) and an RTT (EndWar) to work on, I’m pretty happy.

I also picked up Too Human on the cheap. It received less than favorable reviews, and the demo wasn’t exactly spectacular but I have to say the full game has been extremely fun! I finished the campaign in a few days (it’s short, but I also played a lot) at level 29, then promptly restarted it. I’m pumped up to get level cap and work on the elite armor set and get the elite plasma rifle for my Commando. I will say that for me, the Commando class pretty much solves the iffy attempt at 360-degree control that causes so much confusion with the melee classes. The Commando pretty much sucks at melee and I only do it to knock an enemy in the air to juggle them with my rifle to crank up my combo meter. It’s a ranged ballistics class and is much, much easier to aim just fine and shoot things. Now I know what Pete meant the other day when he complained about Too Human though. It was designed from the start as a trilogy, and just when the story gets really cool, game over. Literally. A story cinema was playing and just as I said “oh, cool!” it all faded out and the credits rolled. Queue up a Darth Vader “nooooooooo!” yell and you get the picture. I’ve got a few AGE guys who’d like to co-op too, so I’m really looking forward to that.

On the PC, I’ve been playing Guild Wars again after close-ish to a year off from actually playing. The new Zaishen Bounty quests have been a blast and I’ve gotten over my fear of PUGs (well, somewhat) and just jump in with my Monk. Everyone runs them on Hard Mode which I have very little experience with, and it’s been a real eye-opener. I normally run Benjeth with the Healer’s Boon build, with a slight personal tweak, but Hard Mode has made me realize that I need to stop merely occasionally dipping my toes in the Protection line and just jump in and learn it. It seems that in Hard Mode — and PvP! — it’s more efficient and important to prevent the health bars from going down than it is to bring them back up. So there’s my project: Learn Protection and PvP. It seems every time I manage to make it for one of Van Hemlock’s Tuesday Noob Club sessions, it’s PvP week and, as I discovered yesterday, he’s come to expect me to sigh in disappointment and vanish once I learn it’s PvP week. No more! I’ll give it a shot again, although I reserve the right to use the Shock Warrior I made just for the occasion in addition to monking with Benjeth!

In the interest of PvE emergencies and learning PvP someday, I started working on getting Benjeth a shield and spear. His current spear is a normal blue with a +19% enchant bonus, so I’ll still need to get a perfect one, but I did get a unique (green item) shield for him: Keht’s Aegis!

I have some more items that I want to get for Benjeth, but he’ll need to start going into Domain of Anguish, Fissure of Woe and the Underworld for them, which are some of the game’s most popular elite areas. Heroes and Henchmen cannot enter elite areas so I’ll have to learn who’s who in my new alliance to get into some groups.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

Most of us are anxiously awaiting news of Guild Wars 2, which has been pushed back to sometime this millennium. But wait! Arena.net still has a small team dedicated to Guild Wars and they slowly push out new goodies. This latest update was a huge deal for the game’s 4th anniversary. Take a look!

Storage upgrades are awesome! Don’t forget to get your free storage pane before May 31st! In addition to four new storage panes available for $9.99 each from either the in-game store or the NCsoft store, they’ve added another bag slot to our characters. The new bag is called an “equipment pack.” The smallest one is a 5 slot bag and costs either 2.5 platinum or 100 gold and 1 Gold Zaishen coin. Characters can run Zaishen Challenge missions to collect coins for bigger equipment packs. The Large Equipment Pack is 20 slots and costs 100 gold and 15 Gold Zaishen coins.

The Hall of Monuments has been upgraded to be able to display achievements from both individual characters and account-wide!

A new zone called the Zaishen Menagerie has been added near the Battle Isles where players can store all their charmed animals! I never leveled my ranger, so I could be way off-base here, but I think the way it works is that rangers can charm, then level, an animal but if they charm a new animal they lose the first one permanently. This Zaishen Menagerie lets you drop off any charmed animal and they can roam around freely and if you want to switch to a different animal, now you can do it! The only real downside is that, unlike the Hall of Monuments where you can bring in other players to view your achievements, only your character and charmed animal can enter the Menagerie.

The Menagerie itself is a good-sized area with varied terrain, ranging from forests to beaches and even a volcanic tunnel. There are Master of Winds NPCs liberally placed who will cast Windborne Speed on you, giving a brief 33% increase to run speed.

Other services include a $9.99 purchasable pet unlock pack which unlocks all common pets. Prestige pets still must be earned legitimately! There are also some trainer NPCs which will unlock individual pets or pet evolution tiers in exchange for either Balthazar faction or gold and Zaishen coins.

Nicholas the Traveler, long thought lost in the Searing, has resurfaced! He’ll be traveling to random cities in each campaign setting, providing new content for those who manage to find him! This is a great way to provide “new content” simply by re-using the existing content for new rewards.

Finally, more transaction-based upgrades for the in-game and NCsoft store, such as character renaming and style changes. The character rename is a simple $14.99 transaction and it’s done. The style thing is a major change, though. This lets us mix and match styles from each campaign into a single character! Purchase Makeover Credits from the store, then visit the Stylist NPC to finalize the new style for your character. Two types are available: a normal Makeover Credit will let you change the appearance of one character, and the Extreme Makeover Credit will let you change the gender as well! Each is priced the same at $9.99.

The past few weeks the citizens of Tyria and Elona have been preparing for Wintersday. Lion’s Arch and Kamadan are decorated and NPC’s offer holiday games and quests. Ascalon City and Droknar’s Forge are decorated too but the only event is delivering presents to children while grentches try to steal them; that event also plays in Lion’s Arch and Kamadan. This year, however, marks the Wintersday celebration at the Eye of the North outpost in the Far Shiverpeaks which has been decorated and offers four brand-new quests and a new 8v8 PvP snowball tournaments.

Completing all four quests makes the Jingle Bear, found outside the outpost in Gwen’s Garden, charmable by characters with a Ranger profession.

Today is the actual Wintersday celebration where every three hours the avatars of Dwayna and Grenth appeal to players for their support. Grenth wants to continue winter’s cycle of death while Dwayna is ready to thaw and bring new life. This year’s reward hats are Rudi’s Mask (Dwayna) and a Grentch Cap (Grenth).

Finally, the popular Secret Lair of the Snowmen dungeon from last year is back! I never did manage to complete that one last year and since today is the final day of Wintersday I doubt I will get a chance to give it another shot this time either.

Yesterday’s patch was primarily a massive overhaul to the Title Track system, which for many Guild Wars players takes up much of their “end game” focus and time.

The update provides several new ways to earn most of the faction-based tracks, such as Luxon and Kurzick from Factions, Lightbringer and Sunspear from Nightfall, and all of the Eye of the North title tracks, as well as making them less of a grind. with new ways to get points for Vanquishing, Challenge Missions, Dungeons, and more.

Additionally, each campaign gets a Storybook which functions similar to the Hero’s Handbook and Master Dungeon Guide from the Eye of the North expansion, where having the book with you as you complete a Mission from that campaign will check off pages in the book’s story. Players can hand in completed books for gold, XP or title track points.

Players who own all three campaigns get an additional Hard Mode-only storybook which covers events of the three campaign missions for additional rewards.

Read the massive full patch notes! And enjoy!

It’s that time of year again in Tyria when the maniacal Mad King Thorn brings his unique brand of sadistic humor to the peoples of Lion’s Arch and Kamadan for Guild Wars’ Halloween 2008 event.

This year unfortunately I did not play Guild Wars at all during the event, which lasts ten days, ending 12:01 am Pacific on November 2nd; tonight. So no Halloween treats for Benjeth this year to contribute to his Sweet Tooth title track. :sad:

I did login last night in time for the midnight (Eastern time zone) event where the Mad King Thorn paid a visit to Lion’s Arch and awarded us with the Zombie Face Paint mask. I would have liked to stay up for the final event in Kamadan at 3am Eastern to get the Lupine mask but it wasn’t happening. Oh well, yet another mask in the growing collection of masks Benjeth doesn’t have…

Screen shots after the break!

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Van Hemlock decided within the past few weeks to alternate PvE and PvP each week. Last week was PvP and I just wasn’t feeling it, so I bowed out. This week, I was up for some quality PvE and the rest of the Tuesday N00b Club was as well. They’d decided before I arrived to head into the Frostmaw’s Burrows dungeon way up in Jaga Moraine. We had a full group of players, so no heroes tonight. Most of the characters I more or less recognized, though the new one (to me) to the group was Sente from A Ding World. 3 of the 8 are bloggers, this could be heading into dangerous territory, though much less so than Casualties of WAR! :grin:

None of us bothered to check either the official or unofficial Guild Wars wikis — a rare thing indeed for GW players — so right off the bat was our first mistake: we chose Frostmaw’s Burrows under the assumption that it was a 4-level dungeon. Turns out it has 5 levels, so it will take even longer to get through. No problem for me, being here in the US, but most of the TNC is from the UK and it’s later in the evening for them. One of them in particular is always limited to a certain time, which was the case tonight, so at times it felt a little on the rushed side.

I played my monk, Benjeth, who was running his new favorite build based around the Healer’s Boon elite skill which allows all Healing Prayers skills to cast 50% faster and heal 50% more health. Van Hemlock played his mesmer, though not using the assassin secondary profession for his (in)famous shadow-tank-mage build, choosing elementalist instead. Sente was playing a necromancer/elementalist who tended to get aggro a lot so apparently he was using a pretty high-damage build that the mobs didn’t appreciate. The rest of the group consisted of another mesmer, a ranger, warrior, ritualist, and another monk. At the entrance to the dungeon, a Master difficulty quest is available which brings along an additional four NPC allies, three warriors and a paragon. Unfortunately, GW does not consider allies to be “part of the group” so any monk spells I’d cast that would affect on the entire group did not apply to them. This particular group of NPC’s were of the “Leeroy Jenkins” school of AI so were more annoyances than useful.

We blitzed through the first two levels with no issues at all, which led us to get a bit careless and over-confident. The third level of the dungeon is where we ran into our first snag, losing five of the group in a nasty battle. Frost wurms and siege wurms occur more often and usually along with a group of elementals or chromatic drakes, which can be problem enough on their own. That mix of enemies combined proved too much and Benjeth (and two others) had to use a tactic I haven’t used in quite awhile: turn tail and run like hell, abandoning the rest of the group to their fate. After all, the ones with the ability to resurrect need to be alive to use it, right? It was after this first near-wipe that I discovered what would ultimately prove to be the group’s fatal mistake: Benjeth was the only character in the group who could resurrect! I don’t usually call people out, and I’m not naming names so I don’t feel quite as bad doing this… The ritualist seemed to be using a dps build with little to no heals, but that’s fine since we had two monks. Or did we? It turns out the other monk was using a protection build. Now, Benjeth’s HB build actually works fantastic when paired with a protection monk. However, this monk had a PvP protection build loaded with only a single light heal! That build was nearly useless to the group other than removing conditions, did not synergize with Benjeth’s HB whatsoever, and to top it off: no resurrection! PvP monks typically do not resurrect, so that’s a perfectly normal approach but in PvE that doesn’t fly. So basically I’m doing all the work healing, and if I go down, no one’s getting back up without a complete party wipe.

Speaking of which, later in that third level we had our first wipe! When I first hooked up with the TNC it was a running joke that they spent most of their time with maximum (-60%) Death Penalty, but I was their first “real” monk and until now had kept them mostly alive and certainly nowhere near full DP. So, tonight was my very first wipe with TNC! Unfortunately, tonight was also my second, third, and fourth wipe with TNC! Yeah… later still in the third level we went down again. The fourth level was even worse, we went down twice in fairly rapid-fire succession. We nearly had a fifth wipe but I ran away into a safe area and was able to get a few of the group resurrected but everyone else went down close to a group of mobs who kept spamming Frozen Soil which prevents resurrection.

At that point, it was getting too late for one of the players to continue and there was no way to keep going without wiping the group again and continuing with a high death penalty. Benjeth had already removed some of our DP by using a four-leaf clover he’d gotten last year in one of the game’s “lucky weekends.” Of course, the xp in dungeons is pretty high and we would have been rid of the DP eventually. Most, if not all, of us dinged a new skill point during the run, and Benjeth walked away with some loot to sell and a black dye to add to his valuable collection! No gold drops to help his Wisdom title track, though…

Next Tuesday is PvP again, so I may or may not participate depending on my mood and availability. I’ll look forward to TNC’s next PvE adventure, though, whether we end up trying to tackle this dungeon again or something else.

A new hero was added to the stable yesterday in Guild Wars and is playable as of today. M.O.X. is an Asuran golem whose primary profession is a dervish and is available to players who own all three Guild Wars campaigns. I found it strange that the Eye of the North expansion is not required, yet that is where Asurans and their Golems were formally introduced to the game.

From Lion’s Arch simply walk outside into North Kryta Province where M.O.X. is waiting with a quest icon. He hands your character a Golem User Manual which is laid out exactly like the Dungeon Master Guide and Hero’s Handbook from the Eye of the North expansion, or any of the character’s books from the Bonus Mission Pack. Once inside any outpost, add M.O.X. to your group then double-click the Golem User Manual to enter five missions, which is a great way to add some short episodic content to the game in addition to the new hero.

M.O.X. is by far the largest hero in the game, and rather than changing physical forms when using any of the dervish Avatar of… skills he changes his appearance slightly, usually a different color depending which Avatar he becomes, so the player can tell without checking M.O.X. skill bar if the Avatar skill is active or not.

Also added to the mix is a new “leveling companion,” the Fire Imp. The Imp is only available to characters who have not yet reached level cap, and can only be summoned for up to one hour. Also only one Fire Imp can be summoned per party which acts as a balance compared to Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support which all human players can bring but the assassins only exist for 12-29 seconds at a time, depending on the race of the opponent. I don’t have any characters under level cap and didn’t feel like creating one just to get a screen shot, sorry.

Anyone want to start taking bets if Asurans will have Golem combat pets in Guild Wars 2?

Arena.net updated their Guild Wars 2 FAQ a few days ago. One particular item was of interest — and concern — to me:

How will character progression work? Will you be raising the level cap

Guild Wars 2 will have the kind of extensive character advancement appropriate to a persistent world RPG. It is our priority to avoid forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap.

Also, to allow players the freedom to play together even if their friends are at a much higher (or lower) level, we are planning to implement a strong sidekicking system, similar to that used in City of Heroes.

We’re applying this same philosophy to competitive play. Players will be able to engage in organized, balanced PvP (similar to GvG in the original Guild Wars) without needing to first level up characters, find equipment, or unlock skills. While inside the organized PvP area, all characters will be the same power level and will have access to the same equipment.

/sigh

I’ve always felt one of the sources of confusion many players had in their attempts to adapt to Guild Wars was having levels at all. It’s a skills-based game, and the majority of the game takes place at level cap. The leveling phase is fairly quick and serves only to introduce you to the basic concepts of the game, nothing more. If you come into Guild Wars with the levels-and-gear-based mentality that most MMO’s have, you’re doing it “wrong” and will only walk away in disappointment.

When Arena.net originally announced Guild Wars 2 would be raising the level cap, or possibly have no level cap at all, I was immediately concerned. This takes away from everything Guild Wars stands for and lowers it to the sewer standards of a typical MMO. Having no level cap raised questions of balancing with mobs and other characters, then I thought of Asheron’s Call. AC is also a skills-based game, but it does have levels. However, your level is not an indication of your power like it would be in other MMO’s, but merely an indication of the total xp you’ve accrued on that character. Vanity abounds in Guild Wars, from elite armors, to green weapons, to title tracks, to mini-pets, and even Collector’s Edition emotes. Guild Wars also keeps track of your total xp (since you still “ding” repeatedly after reaching “level cap”) but it’s only available to you, no one else can see it. Within that context, a limitless level cap would actually make sense in the Guild Wars universe.

However, with this recent FAQ update, and the mere mention of a CoX-like sidekick system, I am very concerned that in GW2 levels, and all their associated problems, will suddenly matter. I think part of me just died inside…