lol...I might post it someday. :p

Factions is set to release "Spring 2006" according to the GW sign in screen.

Summary of last night: Satis helped my necro to Deldrimor war camp, and from there on I fought my way to Granite Citadel and Copperhammer.

Now that I had Verata's Sacrifrice I wanted to do a few other things so I decided to wrap up a few dings I had left doing. I.e., fight to seeker's passage (easy now I had my minion army), and do Vanyi's quest for more attribute points.


Next on the list are the other attribute point quest, a new quest added with the beta (I think), the profession quests and then continue my missions. Near the end, in any case.


Oh, and those new greens you mentioned Satis: I was in Drok's and some guy was selling them..;asked if I could see them and indeed 2 new greens with names of ppl that didn't sound like dwarves. So they must have got them somewhere else, the UW you can reach in the beta pvp isles or something. We need to group up and go check it out, but I gotta fucking study today. Sigh. Maybe I find some time tho.

yes the new greens are found on the wiki site now if you wanna go look, you find them by going from the old Tombs into Underworld, and then head to the very last zone. Apparently if you get one drop, pick it up immediately, because once you clear the last zone, you get teleported out of there.

check the list here
A lot of people are complaining coz each class gets 2 greens, whereas the warrior gets 4 (a hammer, an axe, a sword and a shield). People are morons.

Thanks Pev! I checked it and omg, the new shield is sexy...but for the STR reg.

http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Victo%27s_Bulwark


Shield

Armor: 16 (req. 9 Strength)
Received damage -2 (while in Stance)
Health +30


Basically it's my current shield with a lower req (but in a stat I don't usually boost), and +30 HP. I'd like to get my hands on this baby.

hehe well sorry I didn't get on tonight ox, i will do tomorrow. I did get my Monk to Augury this morning though, so hopefully her and my Warrior will manage to ascend soon

welp, if you're ever online when I am, let me know and I'll help you ascend/finish/skill cap. More monks are always a good thing. No offense, but for most things your ranger is kinda limiting. Ox needs a monk. :p

I'd really love to get a CK FoW group going.

lol none taken Satis, I know how much ass my ranger kicks hehe

umm...yes. That's exactly what I meant.

hehe i've been putting up with people thinking rangers/necros/mesmers are useless since day one. and oh look, people want them now anyhoo just waiting for ox to get back so we can IDS farm... hopefully drops will be better now.

I don't think rangers are useless. I just think if you're going to take a small, core group of killers in, there are more useful characters to bring.

For instance, 5 man oro

healer, bonder, warrior, 2 damage dealers

ranger might be able to sub for the warrior, what with the stances and all. But they won't be as good as a warrior. W/R would be great... R/W would be less great due to armor classes.

They could do damage, but I don't think a ranger with barrage or whatever will come anywhere near the damage an echo nuker, echo spiter or MM can put out.

So

lol well i know how i can do 250 dmg using only one skill from another class but that leaves me pretty defenseless. But i think one reason i like my ranger is because 99% of gw players are "omg you don't have an SS/MM/Echo Nuker/55hp monk, you suck!" and the whole point of the game is play what works for you. So... ranger works for me. It's different and I don't have to put up with any "omg you're a n00b ranger, you didn't bring *insert skill here*", I just get ignored, and I'm happy

anyhoo me and ox did a couple IDS runs tonight, no luck though *sigh* Got my mesmer to Yaks as well, so thats all good. Ele and Nec are still back in Ascalon, just can't face it right now lol. God ascalon sucks.

I think rangers are just what they're supposed to be...a scout class with many different skills and some very nifty extras (beast mastery, traps, spirits).

They have above-average armor and nice defensive skills, but not like a war. They do good ranged damage, but not like an ele. They have healing skills that surpass most classes, but not the monk. Assuming those are the three "backbone" classes, it's clear that the ranger is a great allround supporter with some unique skills, but they only really shine in specific environments. (winter in hell's precipe for example)

Thinking about it, I must say Arenanet did a great job desiging it. It must be hard keeping a class like the ranger in between overpowered or useless, with skills that branch into so many areas.


P.S. my contemplation only took in account ranger as a single class...I'm sure they can be 1337 mingled with some other classes, I think Pev should try changing around secondaries and tell us which is best.

lol well i'm considering it. I think in a way their all-roundedness is both their weakness and their strength. Trouble is, they can easily do everything on their own, and you can ignore your secondary quite easily and still do everything you want, meaning that often some 'better' mixes of skills get overlooked.

Other classes, although they all work together, have 'better' ones to go with them. E.g. Warrior is good with anything, but all the others require too much energy to be used often. Whereas Ranger/Mesmer is great at interuption, Ranger/Elementalist is great at spiking, Ranger/Monk can be good at both spiking and healing (if only expertise affected spells!), Ranger/Necro can do a small army + beast and Ranger/Warrior can do some wonderful tanking, hell it even has an Elite dedicated to the R/W.

Actually I'm always in awe of anets balancing. Every class has a couple of skills that are "overpowered", Rangers traps, Necros SS etc, but they can easily be countered by other skills, and since they're so well known and such common builds, theres no excuse not to counter them, which kinda makes them underpowered in an odd way. I love how that now I've figured out Ettin farming, I can farm most things in the same way, or tweak around the build to be more defensive/do less damage or vice versa and still farm effectively.

About Ettin farming: is it me or am I getting worse drops than before? Maybe the adjusted random doesn't only apply to how many people farm an area, but also to what character/account does so? Dunno. Not that i'm complaing tho, I get a good rune or two every run. (Sup Smiting prayers last run, went for 9 k)


Anyway, I'm back for more GW with only exam to go (on Thursday)! I played some PvP in the new areas yesterday with pick-up groups, and God did I get owned. It's not to much that the pickup groups sucked -they were nice people overall- but the opposition. Either it's IWAY groups, or a whole bunch of cursing groups, but those are still beatable with a pick up team if you get lucky.

What's worse is that we ran into a Korean guild, rank 70 or something. (the only ranked enemy team we ran into) They utterly, UTTERLY owned us. And the saddest thing is, I don't even know how. I'm not kidding here: they got me from 540hp to 0 in 3 seconds...somehow. Apparently they did the same to everyone else, they coordinate a whallop (over TS I assume) and just focuskill you.

But thing is: I have the best armour in the game (assuming that wasn't all physical dmg), sup vigor, sup absorption, -2 dmg from shield, and no other runes over minor. I was on full HP, I wasn't even attacking or using skills (in fact I was chasing a monk), and then: BADAM -> dead. I saw a line of red figures on my screen (ie dmg) all at once and just died.


Now: if they can do that with my char, they do it with EVERYONE, me being supremely good at taking dmg. So, anyone an idea? What happened? What could possible take me from max hp to death in 2-3 seconds, when i'm not even doing anything?


P.S. I'm not saying they cheat...they obviously were a better trained team than mine (haha). I just wanna understand what the hell went down there!

haven't farmed in a while so wouldn't know, but i do know that if you overly farm an area, you'll eventually get a message informing you that, basically, drops will be shit, whereas just general overfarming of everyone will give no message but reduce the drops. It's account based, not char based either, so swapping chars will do no good.

As for koreans, well they're known for being bloody good.

Take for example the "Warmachine". They were interviewed a few weeks back by anet because they made it into the final rounds of the pvp competition. When asked about training, they said that they have two practise sessions a day. One from 1pm to 7pm for the people who don't work/work nights, and one from 8pm to 1am for the people who do work. Combine this daily practise with TS, which of course lets you coordinate better than typing, and you have one hell of a team to beat. Plus they said that whereas most american/european teams focus on spiking or builds to do all the work, they spend hours checking the maps, finding strategic points etc (fair enough, nearly all rangers will do this though, high point is always good with a bow, and a narrow gully is great for trappers)

on my GW day, my ele is now at er, the one before Beacons, can't remember it, Frostgate? So she's slowly moving on, and my Necro and my Mesmer are both at Yaks.