1661

It’s the survivor title that’s making me cry out in frustration. The Kilroy method is mind numbing boring and the others are too risky. At least the reward is decent.

1662

The problem is I keep dying to the last waves.

1663

I gave the Ranger a second try and I’m really loving it now. :D

The problem with the pets always dying isn’t so much of a problem when you can easily substitute a fallen pet with a pet in reserve, sort of like Pokemon. I didn’t even know you could do this! It works great.

Some of the Ranger’s weapons are a blast! The sword especially where you can quickly duck out of melee if you get targeted and then jump right back in with a stinging blow. And the other attack has you zipping around to the back of the enemy and leaving a poison trail.

And the warhorn! You can make hawks swarm onto an enemy’s face! I laughed so hard when I saw that happen. :D

So yeah, the Ranger has redeemed itself.

I also did a quick run through of about 5 personal story quests and I was shocked by how much experience they give you! Like half a bar of experience! And that’s not even counting the loot you get.

I’ve now gotten a good feel for the majority of the classes in the game, so the classes I want to play on release in order are:

  1. Elementalist
  2. Guardian
  3. Warrior
  4. Engineer
  5. Ranger
  6. Mesmer
  7. Necromancer
  8. Thief

I have NOTHING against the Thief or really the Mesmer; they just aren’t my style.

The Necromancer is a bit too weird for my taste and I didn’t really fall in love with any of the abilities.

As far as race, it’ll likely either be Sylvari or Human. I’ve already played through 1-20 of the Norn twice, so I probably won’t be revisiting that at least for a while. I quite enjoyed the Norn areas though. I actually saw a TON of new events this BWE from the first, so that was really cool.

Overall, couldn’t be more impressed with Guild Wars 2 (aside from performance issues).

1664

I really enjoyed both the engineer and necromancer. My friend played mostly warrior (his go to class) and was so bored by the whole experience that he cancelled his preorder.

I don’t get it either. (The warrior class does look pretty dull to me, though.)

1665

If you need help, I could try it with you. I’m not sure if I’m able to join War in Kryta quests though if I’ve already completed it. I know I can join with regular missions, but not sure on WiK ones.

1666

The cool thing about the warrior is their versatility; the weapon they use really does decide their role in combat. They turn into a ranged class when using a rifle or longbow; they turn into a beserker with a greatsword/warhammer; they turn into a tank with a shield; a support role using the warhorn; and I believe the sword/axe/mace has some crowd control abilities.

So, you really end up picking the two roles you like to play and alternate between them depending on the situation. I loved using the rifle to cripple my foe and do some damage right from the start and if they weren’t dead before they got to me, I’d pull out my greatsword or warhammer and bash their faces in.

I’d definitely say the warrior is the less interesting of the classes. There aren’t really any complex mechanics going on with the class; it’s mostly rushing into combat guns (or swords) a blazing.

1667

It just seemed from looking at them on the wiki like even though their central focus was being able to use almost any weapon, their actual skill sets weren’t that different with quite a few of them. Whereas, say, my engineer could only use about four different weapon configs (not counting unique kit weapons like the flamethrower or elixir sprayer), but the actual skills were quite different from weapon to weapon. I haven’t played one, though.

1668

In the spirit of Nephrinn’s post, the order in which I’ll probably play upon release:

  1. Guardian (For some reason this class just clicks for me)
  2. Elementalist (Might slip lower, because I’m just no good at it; Very flashy and fun though)
  3. Engineer (Haven’t gotten to play this one much, but I’m suspecting it’ll be one I like)
  4. Warrior (Dual wield axes and guns? Sign me up!)
  5. Thief (Surprised me with how enjoyable it was, but wasn’t speaking to me as much as the previous 4)
  6. Mesmer (Was fighting alongside a really good one today and I realized that the skill barrier was probably going to be too high for my slow reflexes)
  7. Ranger (Would be higher, but there are too many of them already)
  8. Necro (Buddy of mine is going to play one, so haven’t bothered to try it yet)
1669

And the second BWE comes to an end. I can already feel withdrawal setting in again!

1670

I’m going to attempt to keep it to 5 characters so as not to have to buy extra slots and have one of each race. After 2 BWEs, I easily eliminated Ranger as too powerful and not interesting. Necro just didn’t click, but didn’t get a whole lot of time. Didn’t grab me, got tossed aside.

The tough decision was booting the Engineer; I don’t usually like the heavy armor classes but I enjoyed both Guardian and Warrior too much to toss them aside.

So for me it’ll probably be:

  1. Mesmer. Assuming the illusion mechanics are nicely fixed; I didn’t play it at all in BWE2 but devoted most of BWE1 to it and loved it.
  2. Thief. I’m generally a caster/healer type, but I was quite surprised by how enjoyable pistols and daggers were on the Thief.
  3. Guardian. Gotta have my healer, even if he is in heavy armor. Felt a little slow, but I do enjoy just standing there and telling the mobs to bring it, I can take it.
  4. Warrior. I can’t even say why; on paper it seems boring, and I don’t like heavy armor classes. But in practice I had a lot of fun with him. I really thought this would be the Engineer.
  5. Elementalist. Had to choose between this and Engineer; they seem somewhat similar with multiple “kits” or “attunements” but limited weapon selection. I think the Engineer might actually be better later on, but the Elementalist combat was more fun from the get-go.

Odds of buying at least one character slot to slide in an Engineer are fairly high, unfortunately.

1671

Come on Anet, give us a damn release date already. I don’t even care if it’s December, just something! :(

1672

I love the fact that I can roll a new level 1 and pop right into PVP with a full level 80 skill bar. Really helps get a feel for how the class will play. I spent all my gems on character slots and will probably do the same thing on release.

1673

Wait, you can buy character slots now? Blast it, I’ve been deleting characters to try them all out. Teach me to ignore the gem shop I guess. Do you remember how many gems it was per slot? Or does it not matter, as I’m not sure they’ve released info on dollars to gems conversion yet. I just haven’t paid attention to that side of it yet, blergh.

1674

800 gems per slot. I think you get around 2000 if you put in your credit card, but they don’t charge it.

There is also a gems->gold and gold->gems commodity board that lets you trade both ways.

1675

You were also given 500 “free” gems to start you off.

1676

Looks like the end of BWE event didn’t start successfully on the Vasburg server. We had some chests give random buffs and that was it.

1677

I agree that the warrior has the most straight-forward class mechanics/playstyle. For me, this moves the player skill cap to the actual game itself rather than class functionality. For example, as a warrior I found I was more able to focus on pulling off stunts in combo fields or bringing buffs to the area that need it most as opposed to say… a mesmer, where I’m focused on tracking my illusions, timing shatters, etc.

In some ways with the warrior, I felt like less was more.

1678

Arenanet just posted a couple discussion threads about leveling and difficulty and wants as much feedback on people’s experience in those areas. So definitely take a minute and tell them how they did in those areas so the game will be even better. :)

Also, an interesting comment about the release date:

We’re glad that some of you feel that what you saw is release-ready, however remember that there are parts of the game you have not seen that the team is testing and polishing. Furthermore, as others have mentioned, there is still work to be done on optimization and testing features on a large scale.

That to me sounds like at least a couple more months.

1679

Don’t really understand the slow leveling complaints, if anything, the other way around. I restarted from lvl 5 with my fiancé playing her 23 or so character, and by the time I hit 20 she was 32. Nice if you care about levels, but a little lame from the perspective that she vastly outleveled the equipment that dropped along the way.

I guess the main reason I don’t understand the complaints is that I really enjoy all their lowbie content and didn’t run out of it. Really, I completed the starting zone 100% and had the base level of the next realm (15). I only did 1 personal quest! I did do crafting/gathering though.

This BWE I finally figured out “deposit collectible” which I had largely ignored. They need to be more blunt about pushing you to use it, because it really fixed all my inventory management issues. The command is named stupidly – while it does let you deposit collectibles like pets, it also allows you to deposit commodities – I mean, 5 scraps of cloth rag is hardly something you’d associate with being “collectible”. Would be nice to see them add a button to “deposit all collectibles” on the inventory screen.

I saw a lot more bugs this time. We couldn’t send mail to each other for the longest time, until I deleted some old mails I had taken the items out of. No real indication of what this limit was or why we weren’t getting mail. Also I could never see the gem shop although she could.

Due to some download snafu, we got the game at different times. The game is far less fun while solo, but we are still loving it.

My little list so far:

  1. Guardian
  2. Necromancer
  3. Mesmer

??? Engineer
??? Ranger
??? Elementalist

-1. Warrior
-2. Thief

I didn’t really give warrior/thief much of a chance, but as of now they are the low men on the totem pole.

1680

I noticed when fooling around with the different classes that the weapon type had a lot to do with my enjoyment of a class. Warrior with the horn was boring for me, but then I ended up with a sword in one hand and an axe in the other and having an enjoyable romp.

So, did I miss something or are there no weapon vendors anywhere? Feeling like I would need to experiment more with different items before writing off a particular class.