Feedback on Hearts of the North questline

I would like to know if this part of the game is required to start the new Winds of change in Cantha?
Could be I missed it somewhere, does anyone know?

No, not required. Having cleared Factions will be tough.

Ok thanks, I ran a few of my chars through the solo quests, not sure I want to do all of them. Long walk from ToA to ventari's. :/

I'm surprised that the quest rewards still haven't been nerfed, 1k+5 WS (which can go for 400-500g a pop) plus 1.25k vanguard faction for a mission that can be done in 7-8 min. reminds me of the corrier runs. Let's see how long it lasts.

Yeah, I don't really care on how this would affect the prices of Oppressor Weapons, but it makes no sense to me that some Wanted bounties are quite lengthy to do and yield much lower amounts of war supplies, while runs from Hearts of the North take 7-8 mins to complete for 5 war supplies and vanguard points.
For example, Vess the Disputant yields 15 war supplies (hard mode), but it's roughly a 20-25 min run to complete due to the fact that you have to pass through the secret river passage to get to her.

Its much worse than that. The first mission can be done in 3 minutes without any cons.

Just hoping they don't nerf the vanguard faction... much more appealing than speedbooking.

Again I dont know where to find these quests, please dont delete this post, it is a serious concern as most other pve noobs are probably suffering from the same thing. Anet can at least tell me which NPC to talk to in the updates to get them.

You have to have finished the Battle for Lion's Arch and followup dialogue in the Hall of Monuments. Then go to beetletun and exit into watchtower coast looking for a sign of Keiran in the area, good luck.

3 minutes? Are you talking about Arrowhead?

Can you give me some tips? Fastest I've done is 5 minutes...

and you can't use cons anyway, as far as I know (haven't actually tried myself, who needs them?)

EDIT: OK, some consumables can be used:


http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hearts_of_the_North

"Your health, attributes, and energy are fixed while under the effects of Keiran Thackeray (disguise); these cannot be changed by using consumables (e.g. Candy Apple) or equipment upgrades (e.g. armor runes/insignias or weapon mods).

The bonus from Red, Blue and Green Rock Candies do, however apply."

Never even thought to use them.

If you get a lucky spawn at the end, maybe. I tried several runs and could only solo once, and it took 8 minutes because there were two support rits. On the last try I had two sins plus a nuker/rit with Agony. No chance.

I think 3 minutes is an exaggeration. I can only complete arrowhead at the quickest is 4 mins and 30 secs with the dialogues included (I even outran the mobs and left Miku behind after killing the first group). Mantle's Guise takes roughly 6-7 mins (7 minutes is with the lengthy dialogues)

Ran the second one in 5min with cupcake. tried a second time but couldnt break agro on boss alone

I haven't read all of this thread, so excuse me if this has been covered already......

Now that I've gotten to the fifth part of the quest chain ("Rise"), I think I can see what the purpose is with this. It seems to me that the Keiran's skill set at this point is a lot like the skill layout for GW2. That is, an "elite" (Keiran's Sniper Shot - though not marked as an elite), some weapon specific skills, a buff for others (or self) and a couple of healing skills.

If this is meant as a test or lead up to GW2, I'd have to say that my first impression is rather negative. I really don't want to have to keep taking my concentration away from finding and attacking targets, to have to heal others - especially while being a solo player being attacked by multiple foes.
The whole "elimination of the trinity" thing may be new and different, but I'm afraid that, for me at least, it's doesn't seem to be much fun. I long ago gave up trying to heal others while being an attacker, and I either play as a healer or not. The "Wammo" was a bad idea in GW1 - it's not going to be better in GW2.
So, thumbs down overall.

And speaking of "Rise", I've only tried it twice so far, but wth?! There must be something I'm doing wrong, or missing, and hopefully I'll figure it out but... it's hard at this point to even get the desire to try.

Playing Keiran is similar to playing a Paragon, except for the OHKO button. Paragons play a mixed role of support and ranged physical. Heck, Keiran even gets paragon skills at the end.

Keiran's bar looks like how GW2 characters will play. A cool party heal/damage/support build. It's a very up tempo style of frenetic game play and a great way for ANet to see how players take to their skill system.

I'm not the biggest fan of the HoN quest line. Its mostly the running around and winded dialogues that bored me after my first run through. But, the GW2 play style is what makes it bearable and even fun from time to time. The fun part was that you didnt have to rely on a holy trinity or heros with rediculous bar compression. You are the holy trinity with rediculous bar compression.

Miku's Promise of Death reminds me of the GW2 Warrior's "On My Mark!" shout. Even with the horrible melee AI, it shows the synergy of cross profession combos. Keep in mind, I doubt we will be so overpowered in GW2. But if this is similar to how GW2 will handle, I look foward to it.

OK I exaggerated slightly. Under 4 minutes. My /age says 3 minutes when finished. It is somewhat spawn dependent but very doable. The majority of mobs can be not even aggro'd at all if you hug the left wall, then cross the hill at the right time; and when you do have to engage check for any condition snare-ers and gamble on 1-shotting them.

"Skill" or at least thinking about what you are doing does matter when soloing the last group. Getting a healer + defense ele can be a pain if you are not interrupting their key skills.

I had a beef with WiK because it was rinse repeat with H/H over and over same enemies and a boss here and there.

Now its just rinse and repeat solo, boring, yawn, pass the dutchie to the left hand side.

C'mon does it really seem like anyone would enjoy doing the same mission 3 times in a row, because that is what these are like.

There's not too much else in mmos. Fedex this, scavenger hunt that, kill the bad guy, protect the good guy/s. I thought the storyline for WiK was superb, and I don't usually take any interest at all in that kind of stuff.

Hearts of the north is a little repetitive though, and the story didn't grab me at all, probably because I never really took an interest in Gwen. For those who did, which I expect is a lot of players, it was probably great.

Good thing about Keiran - and warrior's banners in GW2 - is that you don't have to target your ally to heal him. Just use the skill if you notice someone might need it, while still focusing on killing rather than healing. I see nothing wrong with shouts/banners/aoe stances/mantras/etc on primairily aggresive, and even frontline, characters.

GW is an RPG. I want to play my characters. Playing someone else's character with different skills is not really fun for me, its more like a chore I get through so I dont miss any of the storyline.


Its also repetitive so far. Every pull is basically the same.


I also would like some consistency. When you die anywhere else you res at the nearest shrine instead of fail the instance. Making failure in this way makes bad spawns or a bad decision waste a bunch of time. It makes for unnecessary repetition; it does not make the instance more challenging or more fun.

tl;dr for me,
Basically I reckon the quests were great, Nice bit of story in those few quests and slightly challenging too from time to time.

Although my only gripe is the lack of localization. I've found myself playing this through in German, only to find out that after the first (and half of the second) Quest, all the quest related dialogue suddenly turned to English.

I'm sure there was a place to note this for ANet if it hasn't already, but I'm unsure as to where.

Then don't do this particular mission. It's optional. It is not required. Play your character all you want. Do the mission if you want.

Can't argue with that. The missions are nearly identical. They could have done just the two missions and gotten the same result.

You fail all missions in which you have a goal of "X must survive". If X doesn't survive, you fail. That's consistant.

That's true. And my Paragon has only two main builds - one is an Imbagon, and the other is sort of like Keiran's. Now that my Paragon has done all I want it to do, I only play the Imbagon.

I don't want to have to play all of my characters like they were Paragons.

The sin was selling popcorn.Just standing there.Also someone said the villagers rez every 20 sec.Not even close.Just 1 rezed.That was it.