Guild Wars 1

[Black]

https://store.guildwars.com/en-us

GW complete for 10 burgerscredits.

 

[Lacrymas]

I decided to continue my pre-Searing character for funsies. I'm going for Necromancer/Monk (Blood Magic/Smiting Prayers drain tanking instead of the more common and more boring minion build), but currently am lvl 5 minion + ranger pet build. I'm going for Legendary Defender of Ascalon and hopefully survivor at one point. I had a lvl 8 pre-searing necro before, but deleted it due to dying and resetting my survivor progress.

 

[luj1]

PvE is okay, but PvP used to be where this game truly shone

 

[Lacrymas]

Hopefully Arenanet are going to do something substantial for the 20th anniversary next year. Remaster? At least add PvP to pre-Searing (along with prestige cosmetics for it). This game still has so much potential, yet Arenanet are squandering all of it on that abortion they call Guild Wars 2. As far as I'm aware, even GW2 fans don't like GW2 anymore.

 

[Lacrymas]

This is only in pre-Searing. This game isn't dead.

 

[Black]

To be fair, pre-searing has surprisingly dedicated community. People just can't let go.

 

[Lacrymas]

People can't let go of GW in general. Which is good.

 

[luj1]

This is only in pre-Searing. This game isn't dead

better than I thought

 

[what am i doing]

PvE is okay, but PvP used to be where this game truly shone

Most of the ingenious aspects of Guild Wars' skill system barely even apply in PvE, to be honest. Like the aspect of needing to suppress an enemy team's defences before you can actually kill one of them (which is arguably the best part of Guild Wars), barely ever happens in PvE outside of one or two areas.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's both. Since mobs have player skill bars it enables the quick creation of interesting and diverse mobs by giving them unique skill bars.

 

[Lacrymas]

After dying 2 more times trying out various builds, it seems like it's better to soften up the mobs then keep Ben and the imp alive until you get to a high enough level. The minion + ranger pet build didn't work out too well because you overly rely on them but the minions are annoying to maintain and die like flies while the ranger pet does laughable damage when you don't have points in beast mastery. This is my current build. I'm going to eventually switch Shielding Hands to Banish and even later on to Vampiric Touch. Reversal of Fortune is there to cover Blood Renewal when there are charr chaots in the group.

 

[Lacrymas]

Lvl 11 now, no deaths yet, I became a necro/monk quite early on because it's a pain to level a pure necromancer with the eh skills they give you to try out the other classes. Yeah, you lose out on 1k xp by not doing the other quests but I decided the trade-off is worth it. And it was. The damage I do is still eh, but it's keeping me alive and I'm using Shielding Hands and Reversal of Fortune to keep Ben alive.

 

[what am i doing]

Hopefully Arenanet are going to do something substantial for the 20th anniversary next year. Remaster? At least add PvP to pre-Searing (along with prestige cosmetics for it). This game still has so much potential, yet Arenanet are squandering all of it on that abortion they call Guild Wars 2. As far as I'm aware, even GW2 fans don't like GW2 anymore.

For changes I'd like to see, I think my number one would be to have minion degen removed. Minions used to have an issue where, IIRC, they both didn't degen and had no limit to how many you could have. That was a problem, but ArenaNet went overboard fixing it with both a numeric cap and gradual degen. Constantly replacing them is a pain, and feels like "balance by tedium". There's a bit of legit balance in there (as opposed to "balance by tedium" which isn't balance at all), I guess, in that if you could always approach a fight with a full set of healthy minions, it would be more powerful, but I don't think it would be an actual balance issue, and they could always tap their stats down slightly to make up for it.

I love minion master builds, it was my favourite build type in Diablo 2 and in Age of Conan and in basically any game that'll let me play it, but while it's viable in Guild Wars, the whole deal of having to continually replace minions turns me off it. Also there's the problem of going AFK, which I do a lot. Yes, I could put Heal Area on a hero or two and they'd somewhat help, but that shouldn't be necessary.

 

[Lacrymas]

I like the degen because it makes the minion build more active. Maybe have them degen only in combat.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

If there was ever another big update one thing I would want above anything else is for the items in Prophecies and Factions to start dropping inscribable variants so that they're brought into parity with the rest from Nightfall and EotN. Too many great skins basically never see the light of day because the non-insc inherent mods are usually shit and natural 15/50s and 20/20s are rare as hen's teeth.

It would also be great if we could see equipped weapons/shields displayed in towns with a toggle.

 

[Lacrymas]

The biggest hurdle facing a GW1 remaster is monetisation. Adding endless skins for sale undermines the whole philosophy of horizontal progression for prestige. Ironically, GW1 is too consumer-friendly and can't fall into the modern degenerate monetisation practices that plague its sequel. Tbh, I'd be happy to pay a reasonable, optional sub that periodically gives me bank space, character slots, "free" content from time to time (like the bonus mission pack), etc. and I'm sure most fans would also like that.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

New desert gear for my warrior.

 

[Average Manatee]

The biggest hurdle facing a GW1 remaster is monetisation. Adding endless skins for sale undermines the whole philosophy of horizontal progression for prestige. Ironically, GW1 is too consumer-friendly and can't fall into the modern degenerate monetisation practices that plague its sequel. Tbh, I'd be happy to pay a reasonable, optional sub that periodically gives me bank space, character slots, "free" content from time to time (like the bonus mission pack), etc. and I'm sure most fans would also like that.

I don't really understand the kind of person who buys a thousand skins when they can only use one at a time, but doesn't GW2 basically pull this off? The game is still essentially horizontal progression. I find it hard to count a 6% increase in power level for legendary equipment over cheap as fuck auction house stuff as having a slope. It'd be the equivalent of giving like +3 armor in GW1 for obsidian.

If I had to speculate I think the issue is that whales only play games with an online system like GW2 where hundreds of people can see their bling at any time. In GW1 that only happens in cities and the majority of the time you're only playing with a max of 7 other people.

 

[Lacrymas]

GW2 makes a lot of money from convenience items, bag space, the previous story seasons, box sales for expansions, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if skins aren't a huge money maker compared to those. The problem with skins is that the endgame is designed around prestige skins you can get for achievements in-game, whether those are PvP or PvE. Selling skins for real money undermines that.

 

[what am i doing]

Had the "am the only Monk in 6-player party, keep letting teammates die" nightmare again.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Had the "am the only Monk in 6-player party, keep letting teammates die" nightmare again.

RIT LIFE 4 EVA niggas.
"zomg guys, great team! btw I was so wet seeing you press four buttons every 50 seconds, here's my number."

 

[Lacrymas]

Just got to lvl 15 by grinding the (in)famous 2 bandits near the hub portal during the Farmer Hamnet quest. I haven't died yet even though I came close 2 times. This is probably going to be my final build. It says 32 unused attribute points because pre-Searing doesn't have the 2 attribute quests that give you more (unfortunately). Protection prayers are as low as possible because the only skill from them I'm going to use is Reversal of Fortune as a cover for Blood Renewal and Retribution against Charr Chaots. I'll use a Blood Magic rune in my head slot so I can get a total of 13 Blood Magic (12 gives you +3 health degen/regen on Life Siphon, 13 gives you +6 regen on Blood Renewal) and a +1 Soul Reaping rune somewhere else. I want a lot of Soul Reaping because spamming Vampiric Touch isn't cheap, but I also don't want to skimp on Smiting Prayers because Symbol of Wrath is going to do a lot of heavy lifting and I want Bane Signet to do as much damage as possible due to its long cooldown. I'll see if I'll put a Smiting Prayers rune or not because I'm thinking of using +energy runes to help the already-mentioned Vampiric Touch spam. I don't think there are any mobs that can 1 or 2 shot me, so +health isn't going to do much for me since all my skills heal me and I'll always have at least a +9 health regen going. It's a much more active and engaging build than the more common minion build imo, but the damage can be on the low side without the imp. Life stealing also doesn't count as damage, so it's not boosted by mobs using Frenzy unfortunately.

 

[Lacrymas]

Oops, I died at almost lvl 16 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Pro tip: don't do the undead annihilation quest.

 

[Naraya]

 

[Lacrymas]

Some more insights since I decided to go for the LDoA title and continue to post-Searing - after getting to lvl 17, the vanguard quests become *very* dangerous, especially the bosses. Since I'm not playing extremely carefully anymore due to dying previously anyway and opting for more damage in my build, Blazefiend Griefblade killed me once, almost twice, and that's with the imp tanking the other two adds. I see why people get two accounts to scale down the quests when going for the survivor titles. The most efficient and safe way to do this is to get to lvl 20 by farming the Hamnett bandits to lvl 20 and then scale down the vanguard quests.