Factions Guide... Crappy Builds?

I looked in the guildwars facitons official guide in a video game store today, and I was suprised at how bad the builds were. They seemed to be very quickly assembled ideas, not really perfected or anything. I remember one of the assassin ones had palm strike and repeating strike with a some other nondescript skills. They suggested that you alternate palm strike and repeating strike for maximum damage. I looked at palm strike later, and saw that it had a 12 second recharge. What where they thinking?

The guide book has soooo many god damnt typos etc. I believe there are 30+ typos/skill errors. The editors of it should be shot, seeing as a 11-year old could be a better job. And the people who made and explained the builds, well, I think that they WERENT thinking.

I bought it, for the map, since I could not get the CE with it right away. I also use it as a base source for info. My original Prima guide for Prophecies has so many post-it note corrections and margin notes.. But that's what I like. I got the book basically as a starting point. I think that's how everyone should look at it. its not verbatim gospel, its just a reference... And for the most part that reference does not change much overall. maybe a few minor details on some specifics here or there, but in general you can look up a skill or mission and get an idea about what it does or who its for pretty easy. same with mission goals and such... That's all I use the thing for. Other then that... well most will say its not worth it. But I have to say its nice to look up at my wall and see both maps side by side.

Ya, the maps are worth the money imo.

wow, that basically sums up my opinion/how I use the guide, very nice post!

You thought that was bad? How about hamstorm on the original GW box? A deadly combination, indeed

Several months ago someone posted pictures here from a magazine where the devs said things like they love taking Light of Dwayna into HoH and all sorts of other whacky things like that. The headline was something like "What to take if you want to win in Hall of Heroes" but the guy who posted the scans added a very apt "Not" to the line via Photoshop.

Plus there were several horribly bad PVP templates that the devs put out with Prophecies. Of course they have since been "retired" so it's hard to readily see the full ludicrousity of them at this time. The point is, the devs should have known that those builds are horrendously ridiculous yet they still made them into official templates for all players to use.


Hence any "official" strategy guide is bound to be wonky for some mysterious reason.

In any case, even if the strategy guide was having good info right now,; that still wouldn't matter because it will be obsolete in a few months once newbie players will whine en masse about builds they are not good enough to beat and then Anet will come along and give mad swings with the giant nerf bat crushing into all sorts of things that don't need nerfing.

Thus the "guide" would be worthless anyhow.

Look on the bright side, the wonky info keeps the $20 - $30 in your pocket whereas if it was all good right now, that money may have been wasted in a few months.

They're not gonna give away the best builds in a guide; that would kinda defeat the point of people finding out the builds themselves. Not to mention that guides for online only games are kinda pointless, especially for gw; the only thing that'll stay the same is the maps. Hence I was tempted but didn't bother

The guide recommends you use the skill Serenity in a monk build.

There is no skill called Serenity.

0_o. The only strategy guides that I have ever bought were for Pokemon. =P I dont waste my time with other crap when it changes like that.

Maybe not the best build, but at least the most common, or ones that work.

Telling people to spam skills they can't, are use skills that don't exist: that's not just bad. That's inexcusable (eps. if the designers themselves worked on this!)

If they wanted to include a Build section, they should have common builds like IWAY, and then suggestions how to counter it. Hell, include the builds the NPCs use on the PvP island at least!

Compaired to the non-Anet Proph guide put out by Prima, the with A-net Factions Guide with Prima is lacking to the point of sucking. One would think that it would be better and more informed, but instead its just...lame.

Proph Guide Quests- Mapped out with tips and bonus.
Factions Guide Quests- Lame

Proph Guide Character Builds- All secondaries explained with some nice builds.
Factions Guide Character Builds- Lame


Save your money and use www.guildwiki.org and guru.

Can someone please explain to me the point of buying guides for games that get updates all the time...

Its like Diablo 2, i have an extremely old guide for that that came with the game, nowadays i don't think a single skill remains the same, especially once they introduced Synergies.

This guide is pretty bad, outdated info at release, typos, missing tons of info, not to mention they have a mesmer/Monk build where they recommend putting 6 points into healing when the only monk skill they use is rebirth like wtf.

Definitely sounds like Faction, and I'm not talking about a build.