Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

Its a long watch, but its really good. He ties in a lot of GW1 stuff for possible story lines.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

That was some good info. I also watched this one earlier:

I hope hes right about us getting missions that take us through the raid maps to get the lore from it without having to actually do the raid. It'd be a great way to get everyone to see the maps and give us the lore without having to watch it on youtube videos.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

That brief moment with Rytlock commemorating Eir hit me in the gut. It's gonna be hard to go through that part with Braham present. ;_; 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

WTF, WP didn't care about Scruffy and his death scene? What an asshole.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

That must be his longest video ever. x_x He made some great points about Ogden. I never understood why he wasn't traveling with us and Trahearne during these dragon fights.. He is literally immortal, incredibly strong and has been alive since Guild Wars 1 researching how to kill dragons. But he just stays in the Durmond Priory reading books. wtf. Hes the last Dwarf too that we know of.. on the surface that is. The rest of the dwarves that became immortal rock dwarves and survived the great destroyer battle are probably still alive deep underground fighting Primordus's minions for the last 250 years since Guild Wars 1 ended. I still hope that regular Dwarves escaped being put thru that rock ritual and have villages somewhere way up north.

WP has so much speculation in that video.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I played the world boss tonight, It was interesting. A lot of getting downed involved. So much AoE it reminds me of the Division at times. I found two communal MP along with a champ fight that gives one... but I still need one more because there is a new mastery line I spent one MP on. What is interesting though is that I was gaining XP for that even though I didn't have it selected. I assume this is a change or else I would have been wasting all that XP on nothing.

The new area is neat. Leyline gliding will make life a whole hell of a lot easier. Hopefully I can finish up the story tomorrow..

I def need to get some blood stone consumers. WTF the bloodstone nodes give you bloodstone dust with a small chance at a ruby.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Bloodstone Fen is something I've always wanted in this game. An open world PvE way to grind for ascended trinkets without the timegate of laurels. Events spawn relatively fast and there is plenty of magic to gather even if the map dies. Since there most likely wont be another map for 4-6 months, I hope they keep BSF fresh. The map wont get any bigger like DT did when ti came out, but I hope they do somethign similar to SW where the meta changes over the course of the story. Vinewrath didn't appear until the last episode of Season 2. I don't expect anything major like that because the Jade Constructs/Unbound Guardian is pretty epic on it own. The map is pretty profitable as well. I made 25g today grinding it for about 6 hours. DR seems to be more forgiving too, especially since you start in the 440's with karma.

After two good days of farm, I'm 2500 away from getting that node. Its the biggest grind of the map besides rubies. I'm glad they added a special set of dailies for the map that gives you karma and rubies. If they keep the map the same, I hope they add another ring and 2 accessories before season 3 is over. The map would stay alive for a long time.

One of the raid bosses appearing it open world was a nice touch for those of us that don't raid. And I liked the added mechanic of forcing us to use reflects on the jade bows. I always love when they toss in mechanics that are more than press 1 and CC for break bar. I'll be curious too see if Tiami's experiment leads to a version of Gorvesal in the open world.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I'm loving this map mostly because its a new map and there is no overall meta to do. Its completely casual yet enjoyable in a group. As long as I can get the node, even if the map dies from population eventually, it'll be an easy way to get ascended rings and back pieces thanks to farming the node daily without ever having to go back into the map except to see the vendor once a month or so.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The fire island chain is giving me some hype. I'm starting to wonder if the living story is going to be just a build up for a Primordus expansion or if we're going to actually fight and kill the dragon in this season of living story and the next expansion will actually be Kralkatorrik. Theres so much lore in this game we really don't need each dragon to have it's own expansion. We could tear through dragons in living story chapters and get an Elona expansion with Palawa Joko or a separate Mursaat expansion. Either way I'd like to see the living story have major enemies and plot resolutions and not just be build up for the next expansion. In hindsight LW2 felt like nothing but a promo for a wrestlemania style event that was Heart of Thorns. Aside from laying the ground work with the egg there was no major accomplishments made in LW2 imo except for giving us a couple maps to explore.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

They're probably going to be promos for expansions. I doubt we'll ever kill a dragon in the LW. Palawa Joko would be in the LW before the expansion. It's possible we get two dragons for the next expac because the world map is running out of space at the rate this LW is going.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Theres all kinds of room left on the map. I was going to take a quick video of the guild wars 1 map and post it but I forgot to set GW1 to download all game files and holy crap those servers are slow. I needed to load up my hall of monuments again because for the 2nd time ANET has took my HoM points and rewards away because of their system to detect improper rewards from a patch they screwed up on a year ago. The map can easily expand in all directions and it's still not as big as the map from Guild Wars 1. And all the calls for an Elona expansion is because it gives us even more land thats not even on the current GW2 map at all. I don't know why I can't find a video of the Guild Wars 1 total map space on youtube. I figure I'll make one for reference. I also forgot how much better the character select screen is than GW2. Moving the camera around at the location that specific character last logged in from is pretty epic looking (edit: I was wrong, turns out its the same location of Eye of The North for all characters, it just so happened thats where my main character was, I guess the screen is set to that because it was the last expansion. Still looks awesome.). Theres still some maps on GW1 I never went to like the realm of torment and other high end game maps. I enjoyed the GW1 plot but I didn't get obsessed with it like I did with GW2. I still haven't beaten the factions expansion either. Maybe I will now that I'm installing it again.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Elona and Cantha could bring more space, but the core map is running thin at the rate LW is going. Especially with the next expac a year away. I'd suspect the fire island chain and far shiverpeaks to be completely uncovered by the end of it unless they slow down on the maps. That just leaves the Woodland Cascades, Isles of Janthir, Blazeridge Mountains, and what will probably be the expansion maps in the Crystal Dessert. There is a land mass southwest of Orr as well. So if they kept going at that rare, 2 expansions from now they're def going to have to go to Elona.

Before HoT came out they had a slower approach. Dry Top was released in tiers where we only got half the map until the vine bridge grew to the second half, and then the sandstorm meta became a thing. SWs was similar as we didn't get the Grotto underground until the second half, and the VW meta didn't come into play until midway season 2. I was expecting no map this next story but we're getting Ember Bay, so I'm curious if they are going to split up the FIC into 2-3 sections similar to the old system.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I made a couple quick videos of GW1 today. Heres all the maps from the core game and expansions:

I still haven't beaten one of the expansions and that land mass is pretty empty for my account. Same with exploring all available maps. I never went hard core into GW1 so theres more maps I still haven't seen. With all the land mass shown in GW1, GW2 still has plenty of room for new maps. The majority of GW1 is instanced, so even though I went to bloodstone fen in this video you can't really see any of it because its only the social area leading into the actual mission that I went to.

Also, heres a look at my Hall of Monuments:

You can see how empty mine is except for minis. Its obvious I didn't play the hell out the game like I could have. I didn't get any of my hero's armor ascended which is why I only have MOX in there. Looking at my weapon and armor stats, I see why the end game stuff was so difficult for me. Knowing what I know now of GW2 stats I should go back into GW1, re-equip everyone and rip some dungeons apart.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

3:05 "Nope, we going north... to Vabbi!!"

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I was able to both complete the map and finish the episode tonight.

The episode was pretty good, the shock value was mostly front loaded this time around, but there were some nice twists at the end. The map trumps the story this time, which is the opposite of last time where the map was meh and the story was whoa.

The map is self is what players have probably wanted this whole time. Its big, its vast, and it has multiple events that aren't tied together in a map wide meta. It took new elements from BSF and HoT overall, and put it into a core style map. It works really good. There are a bunch of champion battles, and a unique world boss fight. It seems the old world boss rules apply here as you only get the "big chest" loot once a day, but you still get the event reward floaty chest.

I maxed out my karma bonus for the map, Ember Bay is going to give EoTM K-Trains a run for their money. Thimbles of karma drop often after killing foes. I got 80k for just what bit I played.

If Ember Bay is any hint at what will come in the future of GW2, map knowledge will be a higher requirement. This map is the size of Snowden Dirfts and it only has 4 WP. The propulsion mastery is the best way to get around the map. Some of these will throw you into 1-2 more launchers, but you can prevent this by deploying your glider in mid flight. Knowing which ones go where, and if you need to cancel the chain is key to getting where you need to go fast. Thankfully they seem to drop the inactivity timer that exist on HoT maps, because that die would never WP if they couldn't get back in time before they lost participation.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I'm really pleased with this map. Plenty to do and enough locations for me to go AFK for 2-5 minutes without dieing. Moving around the map is no issue even though there is only 4 WP. Having all those lava tubes create loops to fast travel works much much better than nuhoch wallows. The openness of the map is much more comfortable and alot less aggravating than the HoT mazes. If all future maps are made like this I'll be a happy customer. HoT maps were so punishing to me because I'd have to go AFK for 1-2 mins to take care of a puppy pad, I'd come back and see I'm dead, all waypoints contested and by the time I got back to the event I lost all credit. Sure they made changes to these maps over the past 6 months, but I still don't like Verdant Brink or Tangled Depths at all because of navigating them. And with Dragon Stand beta a map wide meta event only, everyone gets funneled into the only decent map in HoT, Auric Basin.. and they still haven't addressed the multi-loot exploit. At least Ember Bay is a great step in the right direction. I was loosing faith in Anet, and pretty much stopped the game for 2+ months, but with these living world episodes, I'm actually having fun again

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The best part of this map is the scaling. Sure the Vermingus is easy and can probably be soloed, but unlike BSF, if this map ever dies, You'll still be able to grind it with few people. I pretty much did the Sloth Feeder escort solo and 4-5 people took down the Sloth and Dominator. The Jade Construct is the only boss on the map that requires a decent mob. And the beauty of the dailies is that they give you the "or" option on these bosses.

I really like the map dailies too. The hearts are probably the best in the game because they follow along with your natural gameplay of the map. And their borders are more defined. Some of the worst hearts in core Tyria have weird borders that sometimes start on one side of the NPC and has an odd shape path to where a lot of the objectives have to be kited into the zone for credit. I'd like to see more map exclusive dailies. Now when I log on, I do my home nodes, normal dailies, BFS dailies, and then Ember Bay dailies. It takes me all of 30 minutes if I'm lucky enough to hit Hab when I first load into BSF. Ember Bay dailies are better than BSF because a few of them rotate. I hate rift closer because gliding to them is frustrating when they complete before you can get to them, and then you have to wait on a new batch if the Bloodstone Champ is up. I wish that one would rotate out for another event like Alari, BFS miner, or a "Big Spender" like WvW has.

Ember Bay also runs like a core map on my FPS. I can run my max settings without getting bogged down like other HoT maps. The expac really needs more maps like this with limited verticality. And the verticality they have needs to keep with the fast travel leylines and movement masteries.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I should do my dailies more often, but if I'm in gold making mode I usually login with all my characters, hit a rich iron node and flax farm with each, hit my home instance nodes, guild nodes and then do one of the dailies, either regular, BSF or ember bay.

Ember Bay is a good sized map and is much better with FPS than the HoT maps. The HoT map verticality was too much IMO. There were so many levels on each map it was like having 4 Ember Bay maps loaded at once and the FPS was crap as a result. The repeatable hearts has worked out much better than I thought they would. Being repeatable it makes the ambient mood of the map feel more alive. Theres alot of core maps that feel pretty empty to me once the hearts are done since those NPCs just stand around and have no more interaction with us. Although my OCD tendencies make me cringe at seeing my map completion for ember ray reset daily. x_x

I still haven't done the sloth event in ember bay yet. I'm guessing its the same sloth model from the raid and back piece right?

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

It's a lot easier. The Unbound Guardianis more similar to the raid than the Queen Sloth. 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Lmao when he's jumping on Belinda's corpse.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I played the new episode and map today, but i didn't get to spend much time outside of map completion.

The episode was solid, but lacked any shock value like the first two. The end left me a bit bitter. I've invested 2 years into these Living World characters, and when we started this adventure we were all on the same page. After what Caithe did before HoT, I've been pretty irritated with her to this day. I'll hand it to anet, they sure know how to punch you in the gut and then kick dirt in your eyes. Rytlock is probably the only character I feel i can completely trust. I think the player character his facing their own "Eir & Destiny's Edge" moment where everyone wants to do their own thing. Jory goes off with Lazarus, Rytlock is having to deal with Charr politics, Canach is trying to gain his freedom, and now the end of this ep... the only one thats done me any favors is Trehearne by dying.

The new map is large and follows a similar design to Ember Bay. There are only 2 WP. Right now the map has a serious scaling problem. Its not as event boss centered as EB is... there aren't any event chains, but rather fast cycling events that are in your best interest to keep succeeding at. I soloed one event where all the Son's of Svanir mobs scaled up to 81... with only me doing the event. WTF? The only reason i could complete it was because I was on my Guardian. My Ranger got melted against a group form what little I played. There is one event that scales so hard, its impossible to succeed at it and the fail event chain starts, which also scales like nuts, but is doable. I'll try to explore more tomorrow and get a better feel for the events on this map.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I went a bit OCD on the new episode this week. As of tonight I finished the meta achievement and got my new glacial gauntlets. Aside from working a bit here and there on getting the koda's warmth achievement I'll be playing some more BF1 again. It felt great to finally finish crafting Nightfury after putting it off for about a year but those flying bats do look pretty cool. Winter's Presence is still the better skin imo because of the excellent running effects. But at least Nightfury is also an ascended shoulder piece instead of just a skin like WP. I like the new map so far, except for the potion. I assumed making the potion once would make it a permanent unlock like that one story step in HoT that now lets you open those chak membrane walls. Having to make it once a day to go to 1/4 of the map is something I know I wont be doing on a daily basis and it just causes more inventory issues by having these ingredients taking up space. Same with the svanir disguise. There are so many tonics in the game but they wont turn those 3 armor pieces into an everlasting tonic for us? Instead they get destroyed when we leave the transformation.. that just adds 3 more wasted inventory spaces as we get these things whenever we kill the svanir on the map.

Braham is such a dick. He sounds like a teenager going through puberty after having dealt with a soap opera style drama in his life. I miss seeing Kasmeer. I hope shes in the new ep and we find out what shes been doing this entire time.

(edit)

Also, Anet really needs to not do any more achievements based on 1 hit mechanics. Having to defeat a boss while not getting hit by a single attack he spams at random is some bullshit they need to not have in this game. It ruined the LW2 achievements for me and if not for the fact there is a cheese spot during that boss I would have given up on it completely.

On 11/22/2016 at 2:15 AM, DeathscytheX said:

the only one thats done me any favors is Trehearne by dying.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Sledgstone
added a complaint. lol.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Kaz has been my favorite since the start of my journey. I miss her being more part of the team. It seemed to have shift from the PC/Jory/Kaz/Braham/Rox to PC/Taimi/Rytlock. I miss Canach's smart ass too, we only got a small bit of him in the first ep. If he ever gets his freedom, I hope he sticks around. Braham's a douche, but its good writing, I was so angry at him after the ep. The guild is falling apart before it even starts. But like i said, I hope its not all Destiny's Edge reunion tour part 2. If it was up to me Dragon's Watch would be PC/Jory/Kaz/Rytlock/Canach with Taimi as our technology back up. Screw Braham... Rox hasn't really been a big part of anything ever, I don't hate her, but I don't have any feelings towards her... shes always been completely overshadowed by Rytlock.

I hope we get some resolution on the health of the Pale Tree as well along with Logan and Zojja. If all the Queen Jennah dying rumors come true, it will def be a burned on Logan as he'll probably still be unconsciousness when it happens. I always thought he was a douche until I finished the Arah story. Now he's sorta grown on me, especially after him and Rytlock made up during CoF. I don't know If I'm ever willing to truly trust Caithe again, that dick move she pulled at the end of LWS2 still gets me to this day.

[Myk JL 1,731]

I was finally able to download Guild Wars 2 today. Is there any (American) server that is recommended? Or should I just pick the (American) server with the name that sounds really awesome to me?

....

I swear I would've just messed Char Character creator today if I didn't get myself confused this quickly.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Sledge and I are on Jade Quarry. But it really doesnt matter as it's for World vs. World only. Open world PvE can be played with anyone one any server.