to dispel some myths about survivors

myth: survivors have been powerleveled or dragged along by their guildies.

truth: there are at least some of us out there who would rather just play the game well.

i think most people here can think of several ways to gain any amount of exp in relatively short time with little or no risk. but do you really want to do that? beat up those stupid minos over and over again for days? rope your guild into letting you hide in some corner while they do fow/uw quests? powerleveling?

where's the fun in that? after all, if you want to farm your title, just go for lucky/unlucky. ask anet, but there will surely be more occasions to gain points in that.

my ranger here has mostly just been playing carefully, and got the exp from canthan and tyrian quests, missions and elite captures. he's born in cantha, so survivor (1) was trivial. he shipped over to save tyria and get some prophecies-only elites, then proceeded with the canthan storyline (from the luxon side mostly).

most of the time he has been going with henchmen. only a few times have my guildies been helping him, most notably thk (our monks were so nervous, at the merest scratch i was crushed under a stack of enchantments. i think our main healer started becoming a drunkard about then), and snake dance (had to go three times to catch thul boulderrain, and the stability ward of my trusty elementalist made that much less frustrating). many thanks for that.

also thanks to anet for adding the titles feature, going for survivor has been an exciting and challenging mode of play that the standard pve just can't provide anymore.

It was 1337!

Bwahahahaha

Congratulations, I know you've had lots of fun playing 'hardcore'.

congrats

welcome to the 1337 club of legit legendary survivors

and have exit key binded to an easily accessible location and not be unfortunate enough to experience lag spikes in the middle of a mob

Your build sucks

F12-Enter FTW, fast and easy.

And that's the problem: while there are 'legitimate' Legendary Survivors just as there are 'legitimate' Incorrigible Ale Hounds and 'legitimate' Grandmaster Cartographers, there will always be people who take shortcuts.

Remember when FoW armor was the pinnacle of GW achievement, and people were hailed for showing it off? Remember those who, instead of congratulating others, said something along the lines of "Damned eBayer" and complained that the owner of the FoW armor didn't "work" to obtain it? As long as there is a chance of someone 'cheating' along the way, there will be people who doubt the 'legitimacy' of any online accomplishment.

In short, while some Legendary Survivors actually play the game well, some Incorrigible Ale Hounds actually spend 1000 minutes drunk, some Grandmaster Cartographers actually walk everywhere with henchies instead of running, and some FoW armor owners actually obtained the materials to craft their armor from drops, there are always some others who do not.

-Shyft the Pyro, Tyrian Grandmaster Cartographer as of 04/26/06, the first day titles were introduced.

is all the survivers rangers and warriors? any caster that's survivor?

BTW, I don't count having a "legit" survivor title as having skill at the game...

Well good for you, but I for one will not take Survivors with me if I lead a party. That title has to be the single most team-unfriendly title there is. By default it only encourages self preservation, which I suspect a good many will pursue first and foremost. They might (and probably do) take more self defence skills, which don't help the team. They'll probably avoid combat a bit more and any notion of self sacrifice to save a more valuable character (e.g. if the monk is getting beat up) will almost certainly be gone.

Example: Arborstone the other day - there were not very many people around (Euro servers) so 3 guildies come along to help, and the rest are public. One Survivor keeps trying to get into the group - I keep turning them down, for the simple reason they can't be relied on to stick around if things get too hot to handle.

I'd rather have 8 in a team who will stick around and be prepared to res in case things go wrong, than risk one of them who has a higher chance than average of quitting the mission entirely (leaving 7 behind, making it worse for the whole team)

Survivor is in my opinion anti-GW. It's not about the teamplay.

i will personally die for the team if it helps.. so survivor title for me doesn't matter, still nice work on it to the OP

Not all survivors are as bad as advertised. One of my guild mates, a level 1 survivor monk, was on a mission with me and a few others, getting some other guildies through Nahpui. Due to unfortunate circumstances, he got body blocked by a bunch of minions and got ganked before anyone could save him. He was upset, but stayed around because he thought he could help, rather than doing F12 at the first sign of danger. Thus he lost any future progress on that title.

my Rit got lvl1 from the island quests

surely no assassin has gotten the title legitamately

that's alt-f4.

and yes, lag spikes are among the most dangerous things you can encounter.

some kid said it on the internets, so it must be true.

true, and unfortunately correct in many instances. but this doesn't lessen the achievement, and only matters if you give much stock in the opinions of every semi-literate teenager in the game.

i don't quite understand what you were trying to show with that example, except that you let prejudice guide you. even though the prejudice might have been justified in that case - i can't imagine a real survivor trying to go with a pug, personally i'd take henchie all-stars over a random pug any time of the day.

That specific example: there were few players to choose from anyway. Why should I and others spend ages getting a group together, to risk it with someone who might quit when things might go wrong? PUGs fair enough it's expected there's a chance that there will be quitters etc. that comes with the territory. I think due to the inherently self centred title (not calling you selfish, but this title very easily leads to the survivor being out for number 1 only) in my opinion increases the chances that person's going to quit when things get dangerous.

Let's be generous and say the chances of a PUG having quitters is 7/10. It is not unreasonable to think that chance goes up if a survivor comes along, as they have more reason to bail out. It's hardly prejudice.

Actually your original post kind of shows in a way how the title actually detracts from teamwork - e.g. monks going out of their way to keep just you alive, whereas normally they'd be a bit more team oriented and try to keep the rest alive. Using phrases like "all star hench" also doesn't help as henchies again aren't exactly teamwork. It's just you, directing a bunch of AI bots and wording like that implies "it's me that's important, and not the team" which really is the kind of mentality this kind of title tends to propogate. Again, just my opinion (hence it was in italics ). I'm not saying those are your thoughts or mentality, but that's how it can affect players.

It's a great achievement if you've done it without resorting to tactics such as those described above and putting yourself ahead of everything else, but it's not unreasonable to have these kinds of thoughts at the back of your minds - it's about risk management, and sorry to say, survivors, maybe not intentionally, do increase the perceived risk.

Another example is the increased unwillingness of people to take assassins; sure there are some good ones, but also quite a few not so good - and as a result people are unwilling to take them. Again, by default the title can, and does, encourage exceptionally un-teamlike play i.e. quitting when things go wrong. That's why I don't personally take them - it's one less risk to deal with.

obviously, his build does not suck - or he wouldnt have survived over 150 hours while capping 124 elite skills
you make whatever build is best to cap whatever skill you are after. and, if you go after the max survivor title, you dont want to buy a lot of skills because you need every skillpoint for cap signets.

why wouldn't they have gotten it legetimately?
there are enough skills that a assasin can use to survive.
i just used protectife spirit to survive those double dmg bosses and take them out :P. (ok it's only tier 1 but that will change some day)
proof:

I agree. I have an assasin and have gotten the survivor title. This is a A/W that uses watch yourself, shields up, the shadow heal and recall. Mostly I didn't even use recall, you just have to be smart and careful. And no I wasn't carried through by higher level characters, but it is also key to use henchies effectively and farm monsters for Exp at a lower level letting the easy quests give you more exp when you really can't get exp for easy to kill monsters. However, I have had to delete a character or two because of lag + afflicted explosion. Also a critical strikes ranger (A/R) does pretty well, as well since they can use henchies as living shields and really not come under fire as well as having the same armor as a ranger and better running skills (let's face it not all battles go well).

...would you scream at me if I say I don't call survivors who gained MOST of his EXP from skill-capping as "those who play the game well"?

Uh, you still have to play the game to get those caps. Sadly, they're not available at the skill trainer

I can't help but think ANet purposely added the 5k xP bonus for capping elites as an option for those going after this title. How else is one expected to earn over a gazillion (I exaggerate, of course) xP to earn this title?