5221

Finally some new items in the Gem store though not nearly enough.

5222

I’m not one to normally say such things, but…

That quaggan backpack is too cute.

In other news, my dungeon group has been faring a little better these days. We’ve been sticking to Fractals for now as they’re seem a little less time consuming, and the encounters have felt a little more friendly and (now that most of the bugs are fixed) polished. It definitely seems to help that we’ve all got quite a few more levels on us and gear (our group is usually 3 80s, a ~55, and I’m 72 now).

We’re planning to start running through some of the regular story modes at some point, but probably will wait until after the January update to see if any of the dungeon changes ANet has been chatting about will come then.

5223

Btw, I’ve really come back strong to GW2 and now am missing people to play with. Anyone playing a lot with a good group? I’m on Ehmry Bay where I started with the Wanderers. Very few Wanderers log in anymore.

hotfreak.5907

5224

Yeah the wanderer roster is pretty weak lately though qt3 isn’t doing great either. I moved my warrior to grindhouse gaming we’ll see how that goes. If anyone has a strong recommendation for a guild or aerver that likes to pve mainly and do some WvW I’d love to hear it.

5225

I moved to Crystal Desert to join Karma, a reddit based guild. Pretty good group. Lots of members, regular WvW pushes, usually pretty easy to find someone to do a dungeon with.

5226

I joined up with the GW2 Ehmry Bay branch of Alea Iacta Est, but they recently filled up. plus I am way behind on levels so haven’t actually gotten to do guild activities.

5227

Hmm, it’s been fairly constant for the last 2 months or so. At least constant enough to have perma PvE buffs up.

5228

Dug thru this thread, but can’t get confirmation of the Qt3 guild (Wanderers?) but would like to go on and join if there’s a group left to speak of. Don’t get to play as much as I’d like, but figured that I might as well chip in when I’m on.

my account name is the same as here: lostcawz (seems like I did read that that’s how the invites for guild go out)

5229

It may have been my play times since I am eastern but the past two months I have never had a representing wanderer online whenever I checked and qt3 had very few representing and very little guild interaction. When I did speak to folks in qt3 guild chat everyone was very cordial.

5230

Pretty sure you need to list the full name in order for someone to send an invite out, including the period and the numbers. So your account name should actually be something like lostcawz.####.

5231

Are you talking about Wanderers or qt3? I’ve been playing a lot lately, all my characters represent WAND and the last time I ran into someone was a few weeks ago.

In any event, if qt3 is still going strong, I would love an invite: hotfreak.5907. I thought I had been invited during the tri-guild WvW we had going at launch but don’t see any indication of that.

5232

Hotfreak, I can shoot you an invite to BFF as well, the Broken Forum guild. With guesting coming in tomorrow it should remove most barriers to getting together across servers (we’re based on Jade Quarry).

5233

Sounds good. Thanks, Reldan!

5234

So I’ve been doing a ton of WvW lately, getting my Elementalist from 40 to 80 in the past two weeks. I transferred over to Fort Aspenwood, which turned out to be a great move because it’s nonstop action on every map at all hours (it has a huge Oceanic pop too).

Anyway, after many hours of crafting and 20-30g, I got my Elementalist decked out in the best gear possible, stacking power, precision, and crit damage galore. I then spent a few hours in WvW using a staff and…it’s glorious. This is a massive death-at-a-distance killing machine the likes of which I could never touch with my Warrior. :D

You would also think I’m as durable as glass, but using the Teleport and Mist abilities with a few other survival tools I can go into a massive enemy zerg, bomb the shit out of them, and then within seconds appear in safe, friendly territory. It’s great.

It’s funny because Elementalist was the class I thought I was going to play going into GW2, but gave up on it for the Warrior and now here I am gushing over it again.

5235

Hopefully (the please soon) bunker nerf to ele’s won’t negatively effect your fun too much.

5236

He doesn’t sound like he is playing a bunker ele (sounds like glass canon packing crits), but there might be a AOE nerf that will surely affect staff-wielding elementalist.

5237

Patch notes are out (too long to post here): https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-January-28-2013

Going to edit this post with highlights.

In WvW, different types of loot chests will replace the bag drop depending on loot rarity. Players should now see bags for loot that is lower than uncommon rarity and chests for loot that is uncommon rarity or higher.

That is awesome!

Lionguard Lyns has returned to Lion’s Arch but no longer has Black Lion Keys available. Donations toward the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch will continue to be accepted until late February, at which time Lionguard Lyns must return to her normal Lionguard duties. Liquidate those Captain’s Commendations while you can.

Nice! I can finally turn in my bajillion tokens for those handy salvaging kits at 250 a stack.

WvW & PvE: Our culling system has been updated to use affinity culling, which favors allowing players to see important enemies regardless of the local player population density.

I wonder how this exactly works? How is one enemy more important than another?

A new Orrian Jewelry Box has been added to karma vendors across Orr.
The item “Heavy Moldy Bag” has been updated to drop more frequently.
Various Risen creatures have had their loot tables updated to provide more varied crafting materials.
The karma vendors featured in temple chains offer new exotic wares.
The Risen creatures all across Orr have had their population density adjusted.
Areas, chests, and merchants in Orr now offer better rewards.

Prices for mats about to get crazy again. =)

Some interesting changes/fixes/additions to Orr in this patch. Looks like they’re putting focus back on it.

Players can now reconnect to the Fractals of the Mists if they are disconnected.
Players can now connect to a fractal map even if they are not part of the original group that created the fractal instance.

Oh thank god.

Players are no longer prevented from entering fractal maps. The difficulty of the fractals is shared, and players will receive rewards based on their “reward level.”

Wow. That’s HUGE! Now we can all play with one another regardless of level! YES YES YES!

It now costs a gem fee to transfer your home world.
Gem fees for world transfers are based on the population of the world you are transferring to.

That’s actually pretty smart. It’ll entice people to transfer to smaller pop servers that may be struggling.

Character load times in WvW have been improved through the use of preloaded placeholder models.

This is something I’ve been having a lot of trouble with lately now that I’m on a highly populated WvW server. There are points when I can’t even see my allies because it’s taking forever to load the character models. Love it if this is fixed!

5238

…and the patch just went live! Woohoo!

5239

Nice. I’m all over this tonight.

5240

Watch out, the patch is well over 1GB, so prepare as necessary.

I read up on the Living Story stuff they’re adding in this patch and it sounds relatively cool. They’re basically using special achievements as “quests” to get people out doing stuff in the world. And the world will evolve as they spawn in heralds in various cities to tell people what’s going on, so there’s even more reason to log in everyday.

The changes to the daily and monthly achievements are great as well.