Just Got Back After a Year Break

Hello everyone. I just got back after a year long break, and man, all I have to say is that things have changed dramatically. Skill tomes that let you learn every skill for your class for a paltry 10k? AND unlocks them for PVP? Rediculous! (But pretty cool, I suppose). I come back to my account and discover all of my good old items and precious money is still there, so I start asking around... and am pleased to find that the value of money has increased! This gets me giddy as well, because while my 500k a while back was chump change, apparently today, its good stuff I never invested in ecto, but I hear those that did lost a lot.

What else has changed, for an oldie like me? Any tips on what I should do with all this money? Keep saving? What kind of characters should I be making? And lastly, anyone else in a similar situation to me and has recently returned to the game?

You want a tip? Save everything - ANet has made a series of questionable decisions recently about loot and gold income for average players, so hoard everything. It's all just going to get rarer, so hold on to your stuff mate.

Oh yeah, you missed a ton of nerfs, crowned by the nerf to Soul Reaping. Seems that Grenth is now unionized and only reaps 3 times every 15 seconds. Woot.

Oh, and now they have hard mode, where the tumbleweeds blow unfettered. They basically took out the AOE avoidance logic for normal mode, and (for a while) this also applied to your heroes and henchies, so that they would sit there and take it.

Gold has decreased to < $7 for 100 plat again, so we see the bots are as usual adapting and having a field day.

If you do not have Nightfall, get it. They introduced heroes who you can have 3 accompany you, and set their skills however you'd like. That is no guarantee that they will use them properly, but they can interrupt anything anywhere like nobodys business.

Welcome back.
TabascoSauce

skill tomes only unlock one skill for that character, and only if it's already unlocked on your account, i.e. available for PvP already...

Welcome back

Main differances between a year ago ? Lulz....here's a quick list.

1. Sins now pwn PvP. The current general sin build lets them kill in less then 3 seconds, once every 20 seconds, and then just slap on temporary invinci-mode and walk away.

2. Soul reaping nerf, but its really not as bad as people make it out to be.

3. Expertise nerf. Not sure if this was over a year ago now, but expertise no longer affects "general" skills from other class, nor does it affect stances from other classes. As a funny
Bonus and slap in the face to everyone who complained about touch rangers, Expertise affects all touch range skills irregardless of whether or not they are spells ( lol starburst )

4.Iway has been nerfed so many times if they nerf it again they would have to outright delete the skill.

5.General nerfage. See guildwiki for list of nerfs to other skills. To put it simply: You've been nerfed. NNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRFED.

6. Loot scaling and solo farming has been nerfed so that the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer.

7. More Bots then ever. Trains of them, thousands of them. Everywhere.

8. Hero battles: Cap shrines Cap shrines Cap shrines CAP SHRINES ( No actual fighting )

9. Ok some good stuff now:
-More storage
-Ability to save Builds in a template
-PvP characters can now create whatever weapons they want ( You no
longer have to rebuild them all the time )
-Most of the nerfs were good.
-Zomg minipets in townz lolol1111eleven1!!
-inscription system pwnz
-Titles now grant bonuses ( can also be considered bad in some ways.... )
-Pet controls !
-Skill tomes
-Hard mode ( ignore the complaints, most of them are unfounded )
-PvE only skills

thats about it.

You might want to check your accuracy a little bit, now in order of appearance, but numbered differently.

1. Sins only dominate in Hero Battles

2. Expertise affects the following and has since day one, no change has ever been made;
* All Ranger skills
* Attacks from any profession (that cost energy)
* Binding Rituals (ranger and ritualist)
* Touch skills from any profession

3. I don't farm and yet I have no problem increasing my bank balance on a daily basis, of course I don't go hog wild and buy every little shiny item that comes my way either.

4. ANet bans over 300 bots per day and that number is increasing

Wow. Yeah, a lot HAS changed.

First of all, I'd like to say that wow, I really misunderstood skill tomes whenever someone first explained them to me. I thought they were broken as hell, but now I honestly think they're pretty useless. (I was under the impression that a skill tome let you learn all of the skills from your class. Good thing I didnt buy one).

So tell me, is it true that plat has seen a severe deflation? I mean, it seems that way.. things seem very cheap, relatively. I hear underworld armor isn't 2 mil anymore. That was surprising.

And 'Sins rule now? Nuts! I mean, seriously, I have a level 20 assassin that I played in Factions.. But 'sins sucked back then, and the only way that I was every able to get into a group was to say that I was a "Crit hitting ranger."

But guys, thats why I quit. Factions was rediculous. Nobody talked to each other, there was such little interaction between players, the PVE was WAY too quick and easy (lvl 20 in 2 days? Come on now). It seemed like a lot of what was GOOD in prophecies, was not in factions.

I'm feeling better about nightfall. I've made a bunch of friends already, and it seems to more have the "spirit of prophecies" than factions did. I can still level up ridiculously quickly (Who knows, I might make 20 before even leaving the island), but something about it seems better.

I dont really know what to do with my money. My weapons aren't worth much anymore, apparently. I hear Sup Vig went down dramatically too. All this stuff is so surprising

I need a new monitor. I had to go back and re-read your sentence, it looked to me as if you had said that ANet nerfs over 300 skills per day, and that number was increasing.

I was all fired up to disagree with you, too. They only nerf a hundred (100) skills daily. So stop exaggerating.

Oh yeah, you're talking about.....bots.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Fissure armor is only 900k now about, with ecto and shards. 300 bots a day, 400 bots come back that same day so I don't see how it's helping really.

Yeah I suppose gold is worth more, but that's because nothing else is worth anything. Sure req 8s and a few random rare skins are still and most of the rare skin HA drops (that most PvErs won't get unless they have money) are worth a good fortune. Skill tomes can bring in money. Greens are at a low, runes and dye too.

Guild Wars is still a good chat room though!

So how has the game play changed in the past five months? I too haven't been able to play lately, and will be playing again VERY soon and I'm wondering how the game play for Spellcasters (Monk, Elementalist, Necro, etc.) is going since thats all I play?

Keep in mind this is in comparison to what sins were a year ago. Back then sins were rarely used seriously. Now they are frequently used in most forms of pvp, especially HB.

FALSE. Did you ever play as ranger before the expertise nerf ?

Expertise used to effect ALL non-spell skills. This means stances from other classes, general skills, Shouts, Ect.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Game_updates/2006_October

I dont either, I pvp. But many people have had this problem in my guild.
JUst because they ban alot of bots does not mean their are less bots. The loot scaling nerf made it so botters need 8X more bots then they used to have, and thus they do. Its alot more common to find bot trains then before.

You're right. 'Sins were horrible back then, absolutely horrible.

Guild Wars gameplay change and not be the same monotonous game that it has been for the past year? Come on.

to the op: I would say don't bother. This used to be a fun game but Anet in their infinite 'wisdom' have decided to change so many core elements because "they never worked right" that the game has lost most of it's fun and has become just a boring grindfest.

Although I fully agree the game is nowhere near what it once was, it still remains virtually grindless.

Ditto to the above poster, Muspellsheimr. I do not think there is much of a grind in this game. I get bored with MMORPGS just BECAUSE of the grind. I find that teamwork here is very good, and I love random conversations with strangers (So ditto to the guy that said that GW IS a good chatroom).

I also enjoy socializing in teamspeak with guildies, although I'm not in a guild as it is right now. It's going to be hard for me to get back into a guild, because I am irellivent as far as PVP goes these days. Not only do I have no NF skills, but I have been away from the metagame for so long now that I would fall instantly in GVG. I used to be in a top 20 guild (If anyone, by some random arse chance, remembers The Morning After and Breakfast Cerials from nearly two years ago). Not happening until I can do well in PVE though

That depends. Finishing the game requires little grinding. If you want to keep playing the only thing left is grinding.

Actually, I'd disagree, Omniclasm. If you want to keep playing, the other alternative is PVP. What I REALLY liked is how closely pvp and pve were related in prophecies... your ability to PVP depended on what you could get unlocked in PVE. Now, that connection has loosened a bit with fast leveling and PVP packages.

Well by 'grindfest' I'm not even talking about pve skills or titles I'm just talking about tediously slogging through the game in the very limited way that Anet seems to insist we do.

PvP is grind. You take the same build, go into the same place, and probably fight the same build you fought last time with different names. The only thing that changes is the shit talking.

Haha. Man, I dont know.. I assume you've been playing for a while. I appologise for my limited knowledge of the current game, but the "Grind" in factions, and from what I've played so far, nightfall.. is nothing like the grind that was prophecies, whenever it originally came out. I remember it taking nearly a month for me to get to level 20 (or 2 weeks of nonstop playing), and there was so much teamwork and fun (even though it was a bit tedious, people worked it together). It seems like modern GW just doesn't capture the essence of the fun I had in prophecies, although it looks like NF is better.

Maybe GW2 will be cool, who knows.

It will never be as good as prophecies. People had to work together to beat the missions most of the time because everyone was a noob. GW in it's current state, any decent player just plays through with heroes, which means 9/10 pugs will be complete morons who can't manage to finish the mission with heroes. That, and soooo many people are into getting titles, so they go in alone so that they can run around and scrap the edges of the map to get that 100% explored title (YAY). Guild Wars has just went to hell. The only people you ever see in towns now are bots, traders, or frenzy+heal sig users that have no clue how to play the game. Granted, I don't mind playing with new players that will listen, but it seems that all the retarded people now are cocky. Won't listen to how to do the mission, over aggro, and insist that because 3 warriors have monk secondaries that we don't need an actual monk.

I agree with this statement. Its about at the time that anet asked me to grind its silly "Friend of the Luxons" title track just to get skills to work... that I decided "to hell with this," and joined a korean supergrindfest... if the game is gonna be about grind... might as well have fun instead of doing something I hate.

Actually, I've been playing a ranger since the WPE, however I did miss that update and since I very rarely use outside skills that would be possibly effected by expertise, i completely missed that little update. Not a huge deal IMO however, I wouldn't exactly call it a bad change.



Granted, there are a lot of bots in a few areas, unfortunately though, not all of them are actually bots so they can't simply take a big net and just toss them all out, they have to be careful or they get people coming on here claiming that they were unjustly banned from the game for botting when they've never done it in their entire lives. I think what ANet should do, and I'll admit it's incredibly harsh, is leave the bots alone, but instead watch for their customers and punish them instead. When people start getting the message that both sides of the equation are violations, maybe they'll think twice, no customers, no bots.

Tomes are awesome cause you can sell them for 10k. Thats how I make my money's.

Once and while I want one one cause some skills are just a pain in the ass to cap, but easier to unlock at the priest.