Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire, or "Uh, I've been away for a year or more so now what?"

I figure the larger thread might be too scary for those of us just jumping back in, so this is for people who boot up the game after a year or so, looking forward to getting their Path of Fire mounts only to discover, oh dear, there’s this mastery business, isn’t there? Or, in my case, uh, I still haven’t done season three. Better get cracking.

So if we want to hang out together, a) make sure you’re in the guild. If you’re not, post your account name here (remember that it’s heythisisme.5987 or some such thing with numbers at the end). We’ll get you invite pronto.

Then, b) if you’re in multiple guilds, make sure you’re “representing” QTT by selecting it on the guild screen.

Finally, c) join guild chat by typing /guild. Then holler with any questions, such as “How does this game work again?”, “Remind me what the deal is with the Mystic Forge?”, “Where is Mankirk’s wife?”, and the classic “Gah, what the hell happened to Lion’s Arch?”

Also, uh, anyone else need to power through season three?

-Tom

I played Guild Wars around release and gave it up a little ways in. Over the years, I would get e-mails saying the people from China were trying to log in to my ArenaNet account. I waved them off because I wasn’t actively playing the game. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when all the buzz about Path of Fire gets me interested, and I try to log in. Turns out if you never respond to those e-mail, ArenaNet thinks your account is a threat of some kind, so I was completely locked out. I can recover the account if I have my serial number… which is most easily accessed by logging in to my account.

Long story short, I’m on a new free account! SadleyBradley.4123

BTW, just chiming in to say that I’ll be playing a ton of GW2 in the next few days (though my gaming time is limited), so if you see me online, just say the word and I’ll be glad to help in any way that I can.

I’ll be playing over the weekend.

Mounts! Mounts! Mounts!

I don’t think I was in the qt3 guild previously, so please do add me.

Banzai.7326

I shall play. Verily.

Could I get invited to the guild? I’ve been playing gw2 for a while solo or with one friend at a time, but it could be fun to do more group stuff. I’m RebelWombat.6210 ingame.

Invites sent.

So I’m still doing season three, and I only just started the second out of six missions. Uh, there’s a lot of stuff in season three. Like, whole new areas!

-Tom

Seeing a lot of bug reports on PoF but it looks like most of them are from EU players for some reason. Any NA players seeing the same bugs or is PoF stable and relatively bug free? Thinking of picking it up but will wait if there are a lot of problems. Thanks.

I ended up having some weird bug last night. The game looks like it’s going to a cut scene and instead I get a black screen with a mouse cursor while I hear music playing.

It doesn’t exit that state, and I have to do restart through file manager. After the third in an hour, I decided that was ArenaNet’s way of telling me to go to bed! :)

Hey @rhamorim, do you have any tips for targeting in combat? I’ve gotten super comfortable with a hotkey layout over the years, but I still fumble around with targeting, basically hammering the tab key until something interesting gets targeting. But I’m working with a necromancer build that relies on stacking up lots of conditions and it can get a bit messy trying to pick out or track specific targets.

Any combat management tips for dilettantes like me?

Also, is there no way to hotkey party members so that you’re attacking their target when you select the party member? Am I just superimposing a LOTRO (and probably WoW) feature on Guild Wars? I know about calling out targets and selecting a called out target, but is there an idiot-proof way to make sure you’re attacking the same target as your buddy?

-Tom

I am jumping back in to give it a go, haven’t played since launch.

Are you able to join two guilds at once (I can’t remember)? If so, add me to the Qt3 guild please: tjrneal.8041

You can be in a whole buncha guilds, but you can only ever “represent” one at a time. I’m not sure what, if anything, that impacts.

I’m away from my main computer now, but if someone else hasn’t added you by later tonight, I’ll get you right in.

-Tom

Ok, so “target nearest enemy” can be a great help. I set it to C, and it’s what I use the vast majority of the time. I’ll select other enemies sometimes using the mouse, and I use tab very rarely. It is sufficient most of the time, though it can get tricky sometimes.

As for the “attack party members’ target” thing, I’m not aware of something like that. Calling targets is as good as it gets as far as I know.

Anyway, sometimes it will get really chaotic. I see it as part of the game (and repositioning and reassessing can then become a big part of mastering combat). But it’s quite possible that there might be some other tricky I’m unaware of.

Aww, I was hoping you would have some hardcore tips about staying locked onto a target or some such thing. Maybe insider knowledge about a sekrit hotkey only powerusers use…

Closest target is, of course, an essential hotkey. I should play around with settings like the autotargeting.

As for the chaos, I love all the visual noise because I know my character well enough to pick our her abilities, targeting, effects, and so forth. It’s all very Diablo III to me in that reading the visual noise is part of the gameplay. I also watch the condition and boon icons a lot. I sometimes even just turn off the whole HUD to admire the visuals.

Do you use any sort of interface mods?

-Tom

No interface mods (and, as far as I know, interface mods are not allowed in GW2). I also use pretty much the default positioning for all UI elements, as I think it works pretty well in GW2.

And yeah, paying attention to conditions and boons is a very important part of playing a necro effectively - well, at least a condi necro. I tend to go with power builds, so I have it a bit easier most of the time - though I recently spec’ed my necro and engineer to go with condition builds, and I’m about to do the same with my revenant. Should be interesting to play with. ;)

But not now. I’m focusing on finishing the PoF storyline with my mesmer and unlocking as many masteries as I can, to make it easier to take my other characters into PoF content (and unlock their new elite specs). And there’s a lot of content there to enjoy, even more for fans of GW1. I’m looking forward to it!

BTW, here’s a tip for people playing PoF: there’s a boss fight in a certain point (a story mission called “The Departed”) that can be extremely difficult for certain builds/classes. I don’t think you can win it without a low ping, more than 2 fast hard CC options, and decent damage. It’s kind of crazy, really.

I do think Anet will scale that boss back a bit, and that they will do so soon, because it’s being frustrating for many players. But until they do, beware.

I’ve experienced a couple of bugs – e.g., one where the game refused to “create an instance” for one of my PoF journey missions.

There was also some kind of Crystal Desert “crash” that booted me from my current instance and put me back in Lion’s Arch with no way to get back to the desert. I ended up having to replay the first chapter.

The servers were a hot dumpster fire yesterday afternoon (I heard all weekend but that was my first attempt to play). It cleared up late last night and hopefully they’ll be able to add some capacity or fix whatever the errors were before the evening crowd comes back tonight.

So far I’ve only unlocked raptor but compared to FFXIV I love how responsive the mounts are.

I love that once you unlock it, the mount button just shows up across your account.

GW2’s super-friendly account stuff stays winning.