Guild Wars 2: Putting some structure into that PvP

WoW calls them Battlegrounds, Age of Conan calls them Minigames, on GW2 it's 'Structured PvP' or spvp in short. And, a quick visit during an early beta aside, I've been ignoring this portion of the game until recently. And that's due to some gaping flaws, which prevent this otherwise fun game mode from being as popular as it deserves to be. So let's start with the bad stuff:

spvp is completely disjointed from the rest of GW2. It's its own, seperate part of the game. When you enter spvp, you get a pvp level of 1, you get ugly noob gear, you're a complete nobody and if you play lots of matches and rise through the ranks, you won't earn any gold, pve levels or pve gear. You can leave after a long, hard day of spvp and you'll have absolutely nothing to show for it in the regular game world.
This is particularly mind-boggling, when you look at the server vs server vs server (aka 'world versus world') pvp where you jump right in and you retain your gear, looks, spec, everything. No such thing in spvp. You need to set up a completely new spec.
On the plus side, NPCs offer every single rune and sigil (armor & weapon upgrades) exotic gear and all the most powerful level 80 stuff for free. Which, of course, only works while in spvp. So not only is this area ('The Mists') the structured pvp zone, but you also get to create every build and spec you could possibly ever imagine for free and try it out against other players, dummies and sparring NPCs. Beats paying for a respec or buying 250 different weapons.

It also means that you can set up skills and traits especially for PvP, which you would never use in PvE, keep both of them seperate without one ever messing up the other. It's a bit awkward and puts off many newcomers, but once you accept the somewhat unusual environment, you'll get the fairest, most evenly matched playing field you'll ever see in any MMORPG. Everyone has the same level, the same item quality, access to the exact same items and upgrades. If some random 12 year old kicks your ass on here, it's because he's the more talented player and not because he's swinging a Legendary Hackmaster +12, which requires 800 hours of 56 player raids to obtain. Naturally, the obvious downside is that you won't be able to kill anyone by outleveling or outgearing them, either, should you happen to be said 12 year old yourself.
I know that lots of self-proclaimed pvp pros will disagree with how I feel about how the classes are balanced in spvp. But when you look at the class forums, you'll see that pretty much everyone considers their own class too weak and just about every other class overpowered. Just like it should be.

I used to play a warrior on WoW until the end of Cataclysm. And over the years I have seen retribution paladins one-shotting everything, followed by invincible blood-spec Death Knights, followed by thousands of frost mages dominating the arena above all other classes to completely invincible healers. Not only that, but every so often, certain classes would get a free talent reset, because the way they worked and had to be played had been completely revamped, particularly around the release of new expansions. I can't begin to imagine how difficult it must be to properly balance the classes in an MMORPG for pvp and satisfy everyone, so I don't want to knock WoW's definition of "balance". But to me, it always felt like their "it's rock-paper-scissors" mantra, as well as people stating it's balanced around 3vs3, not 1vs1, was a bit of a lame excuse. I have quit the game before Pandaria, I cannot say what pvp is like on there nowadays, but during my active days, some classes simpy couldn't defeat certain other classes if both players had equal gear and skill. Some classes would dominate the battlefield for months until they got nerfed into the ground or some other class got buffed to become even more overpowered and broken. Having to wait 10 minutes for a pair of rogues to appear in the 2vs2 arena wasn't fun. Chasing to an idiot mage, who runs laps around a pillar, wasn't fun. Being told that warriors aren't supposed to beat mages or that WoW isn't balanced around 2vs2 wasn't fun. The pvp simply wasn't fun. And I'm not even talking about shit like resilience, blue vs purple gear, level difference and all that crap GW2 has eliminated from the beginning.

Don't get me wrong: Joining a random battleground in full arena gear, plowing my way through legions of noobs and topping the scoreboards was fun for a while. But I won on gear and stats alone, not skill. If you look at my little video up there, I'm joining spvp as a complete newcomer and I'm still topping the charts. But this time, it's not because of some purple crap or because of some cookie cutter build or because my class is the current flavour of the month. It's because the players around me suck harder than I do. Some of the fights you can see in that video were incredibly tight, very exciting and impossible to predict. I fucking love it!
One small complaint, though - domination only? Why? What about CTF? I don't need siege-style pvp or vehicles, wvw is good enough for me, but I wouldn't mind a bit of mindless deathmatch action or something that goes a little beyond capturing and holding points on a map. On the plus side, once you've figured out how it works, you'll know it all. Same ruleset for each map, with only slight variations.
It doesn't offer the same variety other MMOs offer in this department. Having spvp specs and gear completely detached from the rest of the game is awkward and takes some getting used to. But it's fair, it's incredibly well-balanced and killing a bunch of random players for a few hours here and there feels incredibly rewarding. I don't think our little guild is ready for tournament-style pvp right now. But random matches are good fun. I'm happy.

-Cat

Guild Wars 2: The Manly Guide to Spirit Weapons

There used to be a time where the Guardian's spirit weapons could not be targeted and were very difficult to destroy. Then came a balance patch and now our little ethereal friends act like timed pets, meaning they can be buffed, damaged and destroyed. And all the sheep started moaning about the latter, claiming that spirit weapons have now become completely useless. And yes - in a level 80 zone, it only takes 3 to 4 hits to destroy a spirit weapon. Does that make them as useless as a bunch of random strangers on the internet say? Au contraire! In the right hands they're powerful and fun to use. Provided, you know what you're doing. And to make sure you know what you're doing, I am about to share my wisdom.

The whole thing looks and plays like this:

At about 48% crit chance and 90% extra crit damage, this build dishes out almost as much weapon damage as any purely melee-focused spec, while the pets and summons allow for extra CC and burst damage. Altruistic Healing allows for added survivability. 

The idea behind this build is to swarm and crush your enemies with as many pets as you can, spamming them to death with extra attacks and CCs from every single direction. Ideally, you will always have at least 1-2 pets active while the others are on cooldown. Or spam all of them at once against tougher baddies of groups of enemies for a huge DPS spike and added survivability - many enemies go after your pets before they attack you.

Burping, growling and grunting - Manly Skills

For this spec I'm using the Spirit Sword, Hammer and Shield, as well as the Mistfire Wolf. If you don't want to shell out the extra gems on a CE upgrade, you can replace the wolf with Renewed Focus for some extra survivability, which works especially well with 'Altruistic Healing'. If you do have the wolf and possibly a rock dog from Ogre Runes, you'll get to roflstomp monsters with a total of five pets!

Pick your favourite healing ability. I like 'Signet of Resolve', because it's very powerful and cures conditions every ten seconds. 'Shelter' is a valid alternative.

Chest hair and facial stubbles - Speccing like a man!

When a manly guardian focuses on spirit weapons, his trait lines will look something like this:

Sadly, we need to put 20 points into the otherwise useless Zeal line of traits. "Why is extra power useless?" you might ask. That's because from a pure DPS point of view it's so much more useful to max out Radiance and Valor for maximum critical hit chance and crit damage. DPS scientists around the globe agree that a beefy crit rate incrases your damage much more than raw power!
So why are we putting all those points in there? Because of 'Eternal Spirit', which requires 20 points to unlock and allows us to use Spirit Weapon commands (aka using their special attacks) without destroying them. You can command your spirit shield to do some nice AoE damage whilst spreading vulnerability, a spirit hammer knocks baddies flat on their ass and the sword will poke for so much extra damage when told to do so. Alas, without 'Eternal Spirit' triggering any of these cool abilities will instantly destroy your floaty little companions.
While we're already there, we're grabbing 'Spirit Weapon Mastery' in the 10 points section of Zeal, because it reduces our spirit weapon cooldowns by 20%. And if I need to explain why that's a good thing, I pity you.

Next stop: Radiance. Only 15 points go into this trait line, meaning we're gonna lose a bit of critical hit chance - but fear not! With full berserker gear, you'll still reach about 48% crit chance, which is juuuuust enough. Also, we're unlocking a cool passive, 'Renewed Justice' at 15 points. This handy little thing instantly removes the cooldown on Virtue of Justice whenever we kill something. Incredibly handy in battles with multiple enemies - kill a guy, pop the virtue, kill another guy, pop the virtue again, rinse, repeat. That way, you and all your pets will deal massive fire damage and you get some quick, cheap heals while you're at it. But more about that later. You don't need the 20 points spirit weapon upgrade that allows spirit weapons to burn enemies, as Virtue of Justice takes care of that, anyway. Save those points for somewhere else.
For our 10 points Radiance trait, 'Searing Flames' is a good option, as it removes boons from enemies as we burn them. And we burn them all the time. One may argue that, at least in pve, enemies don't really use boons much, so Traits like 'Blind Exposure' (3 stacks of vulnerability when you blind a foe) or 'Healer's Retribution' (3 seconds of retribution when using a healing skill) are valid alternatives. None of them make a huge difference, so don't fret over this too much.

Now we're putting 30 points into Valor. And that's for two reasons: One, we want the full 30% extra crit damage from maxing out this trait line. Two, 'Altruistic Healing' requires 30 points to unlock and heals us whenever we buff an ally - and our pets are allies! With this Trait unlocked, using Virtue of Justice after every kill will always grant us a heal, for as long as we have at least one pet around. Incredibly useful in battles against swarms of pesky spiders or just about any group of foes. The healing effect isn't very powerful, but if Tesco teaches us one thing, it's that every little helps.
For added survivability, 'Purity' makes a good 10 points trait, as it automatically removes a condition every ten seconds without us having to keep an eye on it. As the 20 points trait, 'Retributive Armor' grants us a little extra precision to boost our crit rate. Some suggest replacing either one of these traits for 'Strength in numbers' to raise the toughness of all your pets, but as far as I'm aware, they are not affected by this trait at all.

Our final five trait points go into Virtues, thus unlocking 'Inspired Virtue'. Doing so will cause 'Virtue of Justice' to provide 3 stacks of Might whenever we pop it - and we spam it all the time, allowing for a quick 10+ extra might stacks when fighting groups of enemies.
Alternatively, you can put these final 5 points into Radiance to boost your crit chance some more or put them into Zeal for added symbol damage.

Alternative spec - 20/15/25/10

If you don't want Altruistic Healing, you can put 25 points into valor instead of 30. Beware - putting fewer points into valor directly results in lower crit damage!
You can add the 5 points into Virtues, instead, unlocking 'Improved Spirit Weapon Duration'. This will cause your spirit weapons to stay 50% longer before they despawn, allowing for greater sustained damage. This spec doesn't come without its weaknesses, though: You only benefit from the 50% increased duration if the spirit weapons don't get destroyed by enemies, you will lose 5% crit damage and you will lose some survivability from lack of 'Altruistic Healing.'
Taking the extra 5 points out of Radiance or Zeal, instead, would either prevent 'Virtue of Justice' from being spammable or cause Spirit Weapons to shatter on command, making this entire spec invalid. It's always 20/15/30/0/5 or 20/15/25/10 with this particular build.

Stained undershirt - Picking your manly gear

Armor

In the above video, I'm going full berserker. If you're a wuss or just a fan of high toughness and survivability, adding the odd piece of soldier, knight or valkyrie gear might suit you better. The basic idea, however, is that your pets will take some of the hits for you and 'Altruistic Healing' will do its part to keep you alive. In dungeons, snacking on an Omnomberry Pie will help survivability as well. For the really tough dungeons and high level fractals, vitality and toughness become virtually useless, as bosses start to onehit you anyway, so berserker is the way to go. If you play more casually and you don't like the all or nothing approach, going tanky is somewhat viable. Bear in mind, though, that with reduced DPS, battles are going to take longer and your summons might despawn or be destroyed before you get the job done. Quick kills mean rapid spam of virtues, faster self-heals and a huge boost in damage.

Runes

Ogre runes complement many a manly DPS spec and this one makes no exception. In fact, with the 5% chance to summon a rock dog when we get hit, these runes are perfect for a pet-orientated spec. Sure, the doggie doesn't deal a huge amount of damage, but add him to our spirit weapons and the mistfire wolf and there's a whole lot of damage going out. Besides, Mr. Rockdawg can take quite a few hits for you and he can be buffed by our 'Virtue of Justice', which raises his damage and heals us. Handy!
Alternatively, the usual suspects (divinity, scholar) will do, but why would you reduce the amount of pets in a pet build?

Weapons & Sigils

In the video I'm going with a greatsword, sceptre and shield, my sigils are Generosity, Fire and Bloodlust respectively. The Bloodlust on our shield helps generate 25 stacks of extra power and condition damage, the flame helps with our somewhat limited ranged AoE capabilities. On the greatsword you may want to pick Strength ( = Might) or Blood ( = lifesteal) over Generosity if you so desire, but personally, I prefer the Xmas rune for the simple fact that it removes conditions and puts them on my enemies. With only two passives, which remove conditions every ten second, the Sigil makes it easier to get rid of crap like poison, burning and bleeding and it's just so satisfying to return the favour when a boss blesses you with 40 seconds of yucky poison.
If you prefer hammers to greatswords, they're a valid alternative, though you won't get to upgrade it with traits the way you would on a pure hammer spec.

Maces and shortswords are 2nd choice at best, simply due to their lack of decent AoE damage. Fighting single targets, these one-handers will kill more or less at the same speed as any bigger weapon whilst providing added survivability. However, getting surrounded will quickly leave you helpess. Not only will you be unable to hit all the baddies surrounding you like you would with a greatsword, but your pets will have to keep the adds away from you, causing them to die a lot faster.

Rez pls! - About Dungeons

Like all pet-based classes, the Spirit Weapon Guardian will get his minions eradicated by just about any boss with powerful AoE attacks. Without adds for quick kills you won't get to benefit from 'Altruistic Healing' a lot and your spirit weapons will rarely stay alive for their maximum duration. You will have to time your summons more carefully in these moments and make sure they stay alive long enough for you to use their command attacks. Obviously, you won't get the same sustained damage that way, but you should still get a fair bit of extra DPS out of them. Ideally, your summons will occasionally take the aggro and survive just one or two boss hits, leaving you more time to dish out heavy melee attacks. In case of doubt, keep your distance and shoot that sucker - one healing skill and three virtues to buff party members with are all the self heals you get!

- Cat

Holy fuck, it's GW2 again

My toon, my burning chestplate, my guild keep - what more can a man want?

We've been back in Tyria for a couple weeks now and I can honestly say that I've never had so much fun with an MMO's pve content, except maybe on Final Fantasy XI, waaaaay back in the day. And that's not because the dungeons are so super awesome - because frankly, they are not. They most certainly aren't bad, but over the years, I've become used to the flow and feel of WoW's instances. And to me, GW2's dungeons still feel a bit chaotic and little less polished in comparison.
What's different about dungeons or 'endgame' on here is that it feels "just right". And WoW hasn't done for a while, which is why I've been clean for over a year now. Yes, I'm comparing to WoW again, so move along if you don't like it.

WoW allows you to obtain high tier items through means, which are either too easy, too difficult or incredibly boring - and nothing in between. Let's start with the boring: More and more daily quests. The same stuff, all the time, every time. The latest content update? More daily quests, no new 5man dungeons are planned.
Sure, GW2 also features daily quests, which you don't want to avoid if you want the powerful rewards, but they don't work the way you see them on WoW. Instead, you get a list of daily tasks to accomplish, you pick your five favourite ones for the day and just do them as you play. Craft a certain number of items, dodge some attacks, kill five veterans or take part in two group events, that kinda  stuff. These quests don't restrict you in what you want to do or where you want to go, they give you multiple options and you aren't forced to hang around in one specific area for hours.

As for the too easy/too hard/just right bit - if you don't mind going for a slighly less powerful version of WoW's raid gear, all you have to do is fire up the raid finder, plow your way through simplified versions of the game's top tier dungeons and fifteen minutes later you're probably looking at two or three new pieces of epic gear. Which, by design, is alright. People want their stuff, they want instant gratification, "this is a game and it shouldn't feel like work", blah blah. There is just no feeling of accomplishment. The first time I zerged down Deathwing back when they first implemented the raid finder, I had no fucking clue what to do, how any of the bosses work, I just ran along with the pack and got a whole lot of loot, without ever feeling that I had earned any of it.

Of course there are the "proper" raids and the incredibly tough hard modes to provide a bit of an alternative, but come on now: Why? What for? Sure, they're still gonna be great if you're part of a big, talented guild and you just enjoy the challenge. But the days where you could obtain unique, extra powerful raid gear that average Joe can't have, are long gone. You get the exact same stuff you could loot through raid finder, with a bit of a different paintjob and stats, which are about 5% better than they are on the raid finder version. If that.
Personally, I'd go for these items, even if the "inreased" stats made no real difference. For the feelgood-factor, to stand out at least a little bit, you get the idea. Having been part of a guild, which is neither big, nor good (no offense, guys) enough for that kinda content, I didn't have the option.

And what other options were there? Heroic dungeons? What's the point? You'd get equally powerful gear by AFKing in Alterac Valley or racking up five or so weekly victories in the arena. The whole risk vs reward thing simply didn't feel right. And there was another problem: Who tanks, who heals, who calls the targets? Our little guild didn't have a designated healer or tank. People would do these jobs as they were needed, but we were all geared, gemmed and enchanted for DPS and, depending on the player, there was a sometimes a certain lack of experience with dungeon tasks that went beyond attacking things.
Of course this is a very individual problem. I'm sure if you're part of a large enough guild and have a spot in a competent raid-force, then WoW is probably the happiest place on the internet. But I wasn't so lucky and in my situation, getting all the good stuff was either impossible or so pathetically easy, that it posed no challenge or sense of accomplishment whatsoever.

Guild-wise, I'm in a very similar situation on GW2. We're juuust about enough people to tackle dungeons. And once again we're ranging from 'hardcore' ("I can probably get 2% more DPS if I change this sigil.") to slightly more casual ("I don't care if it sucks, it looks fun!"). The difference is that on here we can access *all* the content without getting excluded from anything or being forced into certain setups and specs. And it never feels like they're just throwing the loot at us for nothing or like all the really good stuff is impossible and way too difficult to obtain. It's just right.
Since there are no dedicated tanks and healers, everyone gets to play what they want and for as long as somebody coordinates the whole thing and people play as a team, everything becomes possible.
Would dungeons get easier if one of us specced into support and threw powerful heals? Sure. Would things go a bit faster if somebody managed to bind bosses and face-tank them while everyone else just deals damage without the need to kite? Probably. But the game doesn't force these decisions upon us. In fact, while gear, stats and skills should never be neglected, they're simply no longer the sole deciding factor. We had more than one situation where somebody with relatively crappy gear would kite a boss around the room and eventually down him solo while the rest of the group was dead and a wipe seemed inevitable. Dodging, movement, timing - when pve combat consists of more than clicking a bunch of hotkeys and watching the animations, personal skill can make a huge difference. I'm not saying skill doesn't matter in WoW PvE, but on there it's more about rotation, stacking clickies and abusing the line of sight. The game doesn't care much for your reflexes or whether you could pull off a dodge move on time.

If you're really good, you can even solo a dungeon. Be warned: Overgearing and overleveling is not possible!

Every instanced content is geared towards groups of five, there are no raids and there are no ultra legendary XXL mega bosses, which the game won't allow me to fight unless I join a massive raid guild. I don't have to settle for second best. If I want a certain weapon or a set of armor, I can plan a dungeon trip with the guild and we'll go and do that shit! In fact, that's exactly what we're doing pretty much every night. Guild members say which piece of gear they're after and where it can be obtained and we go there and get it done. The explorable ('hard') mode dungeons aren't exactly faceroll-easy and farming a whole armor set takes quite a few runs, but each dungeon offers multiple paths and bosses. Fight one possible final boss the first run, another on the second and so on. Of course it still gets grindy and repetitive after a while, but sadly, such is the nature of MMO endgame content.

And since one can't just live on dungeons and dragons alone, I've taken another look at pvp (or wvw, to be precise) and I think I'm in love:

My first (second and third) impression of WvW was that it's all about spamming ranged AoEs on enemy zergs, hoping to score a few kills in the process. And to some extent, this is really true - damage some far away player with a ranged attack and you'll be awarded a kill and some loot when he dies, even if you're not actually the one to kill him.
So my first impulse was, naturally, to do exactly that. Grab a ranged weapon, hit a few guys, hope for them to die before I do, rinse, repeat. Safe, repetitive, boring.
But what's the alternative? Jump right into the middle of a bunch of guys and start hacking away? Well... why the fuck not? There is nothing quite so satisfying as jumping right into the middle of a dozen French guys and going to work on them with a massive chainsaw! Took a while to find a spec, which would allow me to do such a thing (and live!), but now that it works... well, look at the video and tell me this isn't fun!
I'm doomed. I'm hacking and sawing people to bits during the day and I fight my way through dungeons with the guild at night. I haven't touched Mass Effect for anything but the weekend event, Black Ops 2 is collecting dust and Diablo 3... uh, did they add pvp yet? Monster density settings? I don't have the time to check on that, I gotta play Guild Wars 2.

-Cat

Also...

I am now the first ever Guardian to video an Ascalonian Catacombs solo. Some hurrdurr warriors did it, a ranger did it, that about sums it up. Ha!

-Cat

GW2 - Little Ranger Tribute

For those of you fuckers, who visit my blog, yet refuse to subscribe to my Youtube channel. :P

Ranger - Peripheral Sight = Melee and throwing axes by the sixpack

Just a fun little video showing my ranger (you can see the missing pupil at the beginning of the video) and his raven Corky whacking random baddies and 4 world bosses. If that doesn't get you in the mood to play GW2, then you're never gonna touch it.

-Cat

Back to Tyria!

A little while ago, I posted on here about how bored I am with MMORPGs, the grind, chasing after virtual items and currency and all that annoying crap you get to put up with when playing with random strangers on the internet. And really - even the return of my beloved Ragnarok would not change my mind. After 20 or so levels I got so bored of the old "Go there, kill that, repeat 10 times for a level-up", I just ended up uninstalling the whole damn thing.
As for Guild Wars 2, well... I do have this little guild, they want to do stuff, our most active core members are exactly five people (including myself) AKA the exact amount of guys you need for dungeons and stuff. And for as bored as I was with the game, the guild is nice, I don't want it to break apart due to lack of activity and after our long break since sometime around Xmas, I invited the guys to do something together as a group again. We decided to tackle Arah, which is something we had put off for a few months now.

If you don't know about Arah, it's the game's final dungeon. If you want to see the ending of your character's personal story, "beat" the game, get it all done, then there's no way around this place. Also, parts of it are so ludicrously difficult and frustrating, the whole experience is about as pleasant as eating a broken bottle. Through your butt. Or so it was until they re-tuned all the dungeons. Now that was a surprise!
Long story short, story mode dungeons on Guild Wars 2 are now very casual. After finishing Arah posed no problem whatsoever, we made another visit to the Ascalonian catacombs and breezed through there in about 15 minutes with no wipes or major casualties. It's almost a bit too easy.

It makes perfect sense, though. A major part of the game's story is experienced during cutscenes and events, which happen inside the dungeons. And while our guild has managed to finish them all before they lowered the difficulty, some of them would take lots of time to beat and some of them were so annoyingly tough, we didn't really wanna go back there after finishing them for the first time. Some players got so annoyed with the whole thing, they skipped most of the dungeons completely - and a huge part of the story along with them.
Now you can get through there with relative ease and that's alright. The game still has its tough challenges, such as the fractals of the mists. And something tells me that the explorable dungeon modes (aka hard modes) haven't been nerfed much, if at all. We're going to find out tonight.

They've also added a new carrot on a stick, which is surprisingly fun for now. Surprising, really, considering they're presented as daily quests, something I really, seriously hate most of the time. Every day you're offered a mix of ten or so different tasks, such as killing a certain amount of baddies in a certain area or taking part in a set number of events. You pick the five things you want to do out of that list, finish them and get rewarded with a token ("laurels"), which can be traded in for the new endgame tier "ascended" gear. These items are maybe one or two per cent better than the exotic stuff, which you can just find, craft and buy on the tradepost (auction house), so they're more about the feel-good factor than actual progress. But it gives you something to do. The difference between this stuff and the daily grind on, say, WoW is how you're never limited to the same tasks in the same area over and over again, but you get to choose what you want to do, you get to do stuff all over the game world and the whole thing doesn't feel all samey. It helps that you can now loot level 80 rare items off of any random level 20 baddie, thanks to the level scaling. Kill, explore and do quests anywhere you want and always get good loot. No more need to farm boring old Orr 24/7 for your gold. Me gusta!

Another cool thing is how they've greatly increased the drop chances for useful loot from guys like him:

Dragons are now much more likely to drop exotic gear and the much sought-after legendary precursors, which look awesome and sell for triple digit amounts on the tradepost. Sadly, two out of the three dragon battles are really just a mindless massacre, but the whole thing never lasts more than five minutes and everyone just wants their loot, so it's another daily activity with a chance for extra gold and gear. Which, once again, beats having to grind the same old spot every night and day as everyone did not too long ago.

Now that I'm back on there, I'm also faced with the greatest dilemma of my personal MMO history: Choosing the right 'main'. On the one hand, there's this dude:

Ras Deadeye, my ranger, and his legion of pets. I don't normally play ranger types, because I'm not into medium armor, ranged combat, being unable to take hits and standing in the back and all that. I need to call the shots, fight at the front, take a blow for a squishy party member, that kinda thing. But most of these problems don't apply to this guy. He's insanely tough, melees like a pro, perfectly capable of fighting at the front lines like any warrior and... alright, still just medium armor, but look at it! If you get to wear fancy long, leathery steampunk pirate leather coats and stylish hats, there's just no need for fucking plate armor. Ever. And I like having pets. They're weak, they die non-stop in every dungeon, their AI is abysmal and they're good for nothing but the occasional revive, but it's just that much more fun to explore Tyria with an animal companion. But then there's also that guy here:

Grimclaw the Slayer, my guardian. Look at that fucking chainsaw! The flaming plate armor with menacing spikes and shit! This guy deals so much damage, he can jump right in the middle of a dozen baddies, hack them all to bits in mere seconds and walk away completely unscathed. When I log on to this guy, people send me messages to tell me he's the coolest character they've ever seen. He deals nearly double the damage I could dish out on the ranger, whilst sporting a much smaller health pool. And being the heaviest hitter in the group is fun, but being the first one to kick the bucket... not so much.

I tried rolling other toons, but... meh. Really. Don't get me wrong - all the races and classes are really great, but I'm too lazy to get yet another toon all the way up to level 80 and once you've become really attached to a main character or two... well, you know.
Problem is, I can't figure out for the life of me which one of these two I should stick to. Sure, I can play both of them just fine, but you know how it goes. At some point you find that one ultra rare item and you have to decide who gets it. You gotta figure out which one of your toons you like best. Figure out which of these guys to kit all the way out. And with daily and monthly quests required to obtain most of that stuff, gearing up both of them at the same time simply isn't a possibility.

I really don't know what I wanna do right now, so I guess I'll bring both toons to the dungeons and guild activities now and see which of them is more fun to play.
Still, it's nice wanting to come back for more in the first place. I almost forgot how much I liked Tyria. Having to decide which one of my characters I like best is certainly not the most horrible problem one could have.

-Cat