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?

I think the 5k xp was added to help with getting skill points. And Gaile said the devs wanted the titles to be extremely difficult to get, so with Legendary Survivor, it looks like mission accomplished.

Capping a skill is hardly diffrent from getting a quest reward. unless thats cheating too. but then it would be impossible to get without lots of powerleveling.

My monk and bro's Rit (channeler!) is at ~609k exp. Stay tuned.

ah. i see what your problem is.

there are more modes of play in gw/pve than always going with full guild/pug parties. you can play the entire game with henchmen only, and the game design explicitely takes that into account by slightly modifying the missions when you are the only human player (but you probably won't manage to get all bonus/master with henchmen only).

personally i usually prefer to go with henchmen, this allows me to explore and adventure at my own pace, stop to guild-chat, get a coffee or whatever whenever i want, and generally not be annoyed by incompetent or rude players in my group.

i think it's obvious that survivors and random pugs don't mix. a survivor needs to know that to expect from party members, some people picked up on local chat just won't do. the few times when i grouped with other players we had an understanding that i might bail out to save the title. that was necessary only once though, and only after finishing the quest objective.

exactly. other than elite skills, i have only questable skills and heal spring on that character.

but even with all skills, i don't see the need to change anything in that build. it's not a damage ranger, it's a defensive build. the flame trap is good to scatter mobs, heal spring helps keep henchmen and quest npcs alive, interrupts prevent lots of damage. there are other stances than whirling, but whirling also has that slight scattering effect. usually there would be a rez instead of read the wind there, but in that screenshot it was just a five-minutes-walk out of lutgardis. i used broad head arrow as my elite vs some of the more dangerous elementalists in cantha, and savage shot instead of punishing until i captured that.

not at all. everybody has his own criteria for evidence of good play.

also, if you check the screenshot, my ranger got 717874 exp from questing, misisons and kills; and 620000 exp from elites.

exactly. the elite capture reward basically added 180 major quests to the game, ranging in difficulty from the trivial (walk a dozen steps out of a town in cantha) to the insanely frustrating (basically everything after dragon's lair in tyria).

my ranger has done all or most quests in tyria (from kryta onwards), kaineng and jade sea. the remaining quests in echovald and the remaining bonus/master rewards might yield another 200k or so. after that, without the rewards, i would have had no choice than start farming or doing repeatable quests for more exp.

Hey I am a big fan of this thread. I just started my furture legendary survivor ranger by hench only for the second time. First time I got to 700k and got lazy.........

Really to be honest I dont think this is all that crazy. At times hard and at times stressful, but not impossible.

BTW I largely approve of your build. Whirling, trolls, read the wind and two interrupts is the perfect survivor bar IMHO. People who don't understand how interrupt rangers work or who aren't very good with them would not understand how powerful this is in both offense and defense.

Sadly, for every one like you, there's *far* more who've been rushed via guilds. That being said; nice work there mate!

Truth: Survivors bail on there team when there in trouble....
Earning Survivor proves your a good bailer or/and you've been power leveled.

"their", "they're", "you're". you'd be a much better troll if you learned to spell.

five characters have to be entered for post..unless anet can nerf it somehow
saix the spartan...im not gonna get banned and say what i want to you...ever hear of prot spirit or healing and henchys and taking your time without rushing, frenzy and aggroing everything?

Lost my chance at second lvl survivor when i went into a mission with other people for the first time in vizunah square. decided to heal with another monk and we had 2 aggromaster mana eating wanna be tank assassins...im still mad about it

fact, most survivors bought the title lol just look at the service area in trade menu, many survivor title power levelers

Troll???? Wtf i'm no troll, and what's the problem if i don't care bout spelling on a forum...

If you do not spell correctly, no one will take you seriously.

That being said, as a Survivor, I refute all rediculous claims as to being power levelled, though the henchies are to blame as my levellers at times.

Bailing? Only when rezzing everyone is suicide. In which case a quit is necessary.

Think about it, it makes sense.

Good people take everybody seriously. Even as that other person is less intelligent as they are.

Survivor level 3 takes some effort. Even if it took you a whole lot of money, you still worked hard for it. Respect!

So everyone who isn't native English speaker shouldn't be taken seriously, because they have some grammatical mistakes?

Anyways, on topic, I have survivor title that I earned, and I keep it on. And I have died some 300+ times, sooo... Suppose it's the generalization again. Ohwell, atleast it's easy to turn off so people won't avoid my charas due to the title.

disagree. a perusal of the last posts of the poster in question reveals that he has little worthwhile to say.

or are you saying that everybody should take every unsupported opinion and generalization as fact?

taking the village idiot seriously pulls the entire village down to his level.

where do you get the idea that that isn't a native speaker? my first assumption was of a mentally lazy native speaker, which the poster in question affirmed in his followup. most non-native speakers will make an effort to write correctly, to not sound stupider than they are.

Your arrogance makes it hard to respect you.

Can we get back on topic again?

I did a mission with a Mesmer yesterday wearing an "Indomitable Survivor" title. The guy was spectacular, and most certainly never died. He was not hanging out in the back, in fact he was pretty much the intregal part of our team, being that he was soloing the spirit portals.

He most certainly changed my perspective on those who wear Survivor tags and how they play.

You can easily tell the difference between an AOL-kiddie native English speaker that just doesn't care about how he types, and a non-native speaker who is trying.

Kaguya, that wasn't a racist comment and you know it. It was badly worded, but the intention is clear if you're not trying to troll up an argument.

The fact is, you cannot make fun of someone or in any way diminish their accomplishments if you don't make a decent attempt to use proper grammar. You just look like an immature little kid nagging away for no reason at all, and that's the truth.

The fact is, those who proudly display their survivor title most likely have died and cannot progress any further, so the paranoid about their quitting mission is just silly. There are two types of ppl displaying survivor titles in town: either have died, or just don't want to be bothered with annoying PUG invites. And in general, survivor players are a notch above the rest, because I've seen many ppl wanting to get that title but just couldn't. Even those with guildies help, they wouldn't get help like that if they weren't good players with some status within their own guilds.

You mean, like an elementalist ?