Been gone since Nightfall....What have I missed

I stopped playing right as Nightfall came out so I never got the expansion. I recently picked up Eye of the North and might be looking to get back into the game. Along with answering some questions of mine just tell me everything I've missed from pvp to pve to exciting skill changes to the new dominant guilds and hoh teams.

What are standard builds for hoh? gvg? What has changed in these areas.

Does rank mean anything now? I quit when I was rank 9 which was pretty much the pre req to getting into a good group. Has anyone hit 15?

Is crystalline sword still the most sought after weapon? If not what is?

Is Eye of the North any good? What changes has it brought?

Thanks

Don't know anything about HoH or GvG.
Rank seems to be a big deal for people looking for a group for HoH... usually r3+ works? I donno much about PvP.

Umm... crystalline sword is still up there, but elemental swords are coming in popularity as well.

EotN's story is okay. It brought in Ursan... which ANet thought would be the "class balancing" skill to bring world peace...

Are elemental swords from eye of the north ? How are those obtained?

What is Ursan?

Elemental swords, as far as I know, aren't worth much at all. I got mine from the zaishen chest and chests in the desolation. Crystallines are still worth something I think.

Ursan is a pve skill introduced in Eye of the North, it's quite stupid.

Yes, they are found in EoTN.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page
Some stuff can be found here.

Ursan is an elite skill found in GWEN that makes you close to invincible.
People run it with others along with a monk or two in the party.
Its widely despised by people who want to do it "the real way."

The rankless FotM is a bunch of rangers and necros pretending to be rits , also known as Spiritway or just "sway". Balanced is still run by pretty much anyone with skill. Don't really know *too* much about this, so take a look around the PvP forum, or spend a few minutes on obs mode.

No-one's hit r15 yet, There's 2 or 3 on rank 14 and still have a while to go til 15 last I checked. People will argue that HA is dead and all the good players left ages ago and blah blah. Play it if you find it fun, don't play it if you don't find it fun. There's still plenty of HA guilds floating around that actively play. Again, I would go check out the PvP forums or obs mode.

Crystalines are probably still the most expensive, but there's still plenty of things that go for 100k + XX ectos. Take a look around the High End forum to see what's what. Elemental swords were introduced in Nightfall and also drop in EotN. They're nowhere near the status of Crystalines and can usually buy them for like 5-20k. They're obtained from some areas in the Desolation in NF, and in Asuran areas (are farmable, hence the price drop) in EotN.

Ursan is an elite skill called Ursan Blessing. A PvE only skill from Eye of the North. It replaces your curret skillbar with a bunch of other stuff. And you basically just button mash your way to victory. It has in built Damage, Knockdown, some party support and reduces the effectiveness of enemies. It's the favoured way to do things in PUGs as it's pretty hard to mess it up (yet still some people fail at it). Ursan's hotly debated, some people love it, some people hate it and blame it for reuining the game. Have a search for "Ursan" if you're feeling like puching yourself in the face. Actual Details of the skill is here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ursan_Blessing

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ursan_Blessing
New title tracks tie in to PVE cultures, and they have associated PVE-only skills. Ursan blessing is a rather overwhelmingly popular skill that is frequently used as such (http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Build:Any/Me_Ursan) to the effect of frequently dominating high-end play.
I would suggest reading the game updates on the unofficial wiki with annotations to get a feeling of how things have changed in the metagame. Especially note the recent split of some skills into PvP and PvE versions and the buff to shadow form that currently rules farming.
The tournament skill usage charts from guildwars.com provide many of the standard high end PvP builds at the moment.
I personally found EotN enjoyable but short, with pretty scenery and more Monty Python references. I would recommend not reading ahead about them, since one in particular was hilarious mainly since I was not expecting it.

To PvP - almost nothing. Few new heroes for HB/HA/GvG, very few skills, some useful, some not.

To PvE - continued the destruction of skill > time by adding Ursan Blessing and few other overpowered skills.

Yeah quite a bit was changed, I recommend you check the official wiki updates.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_updates

Go to the archive to look farther back. That'll tell you a lot of what you want to know, not about PvP though.

You have missed the death of the game.

Move along.

methinks the first person who noted elementals as rare actually meant eternals.

The eternal sword is fairly expensive, tho nowhere near the price of a nice, low req cry sword with a good inherent (non-inscribable) dmg mod

You might also want to check out the news about the Hall of Monuments, good or bad, make your own call.

The whole game has changed, in my opinion. Some of it is good and some of it is really bad. One of the good things is that all the weapons are easily customizable. You can add a 15^50 or a +5 energy. That has changed the "value" of weapons, so that what was once rare, is now easily created. Same thing with armor, in terms of customization.

Mostly, A-net's attitudes have changed. In the beginning they were really conscious of an imbalance and would nerf something if a really smart group of players came up with a really intellegent skillset, like 55 monk, etc. Now, they give everyone a somewhat, but not entirely, invincible, set of skills called "Ursan" that lets even the dumbest and least skilled player the ability to play the game like it was "Doom" in cheat mode. And, now, everyone can buy powerups called consumables, that boost your skills and health temporarily. That was needed because they found that even with the Ursan build, these players still couldn't beat the game without an additional boost.

But, don't worry about them. You can do all the missions with Henchies and Heroes. Heroes are your own set of henchies that you cloth and equip, much like you would in the "Sims." Also, in EOTN there are dungeons with chests at the end. I suggest doing those in Hard Mode because you get double prizes from the chests. Oh yeah, Hard Mode is new. OK not really. They just made Normal Mode much easier and Hard Mode is like it was when you played the game when there was just Prophesies.

i say turn the other way my friend to much has changed

If you like grinding for titles and the right to buy reskinned crap armour,plus a load of overpowered bullshit skills then go for it, otherwise leave with your memories of what was intact.

Yep GW has gone in the grind > skill direction majorly, now it's virtually impossible to get into a FoW/UW/DoA (Domain of Anguish) group if you're not rank 10 Norn with [ursan blessing].

Then again, we now have perma-[shadow form] farming.

And a con set.

It's a different game now with Ursan and consets in the mix.

Hmm, if you left at NF's premiere then you don't know about Hard Mode. HM was introduced soon after NF. That brought with it new vanquishing and guardian titles, lockpicks and tomes. If you play PvE at all then this is a major change. If you only PvP then you probably don't care.

You missed a lot of good reasons to QQ.

Befora Nightfall there was no Inscription. Items that doesnt have that (tyrian, Canthan items) Are worth alot more then inscriable ones (inscriable = you can change inherent dmg/hct mod in weapons & mods on shields)

Non Inscriable Crystallines, Dwarven axes & tyrian Serpent axes are probably only items worth loads nowadays

And Ursan is PvE skill from Eotn that ruined the game.. its Overpowered skill .

r6 is Good for Hoh and theres 3 ppl with r14 Some rumour is there that one of em hittd r15 allready though.

If you have enough to do with Factions & tyria i dont recommend getting other expansions, but if you dont, get em. as you cant PvP proper without skills from em.

-Pleikki