Guild Wars 1 GvG is amazing.. how a top guild was defeated after 33 minutes of stalemate. I’m going to miss body blocks in Guild Wars 2..

Guild Wars 2 features a secondary set of weapons (primary and secondary secondary set.. heh) for underwater combat. Along with all-underwater events, underwater-only pets (sharks are confirmed!), and no breath bar, people can have a blast searching for lost cities.. (or more sharks!)

I would have a hard time deciding between the various topic creators on Guild Wars 2 Guru forums who are spewing nonsense, or the topic contributors who push them into the double digit page counts.

I am as excited about Guild Wars 2 as anyone else, if not more so. Sad to say, I refresh their main page at least 5 times daily hoping for an update, and once or twice a day I head over to the wiki to see the recent changes. I’ve watched practically every official video they’ve released, including videos of their presentations. Hell, I am already in love with this game.

But it seems there are another set of fanboys trolling the interwebs. The god-hated whiners, the failures who fail so failingly at theorycrafting that their otherwise hilarious ignorance and sheer suckiness is making me RAGE!!!

There are, at any given time, no fewer than 6 completely moronic topics relating to game balance, lack of features, or any combination of the above two themes. Here are the popular ones as of now:

PvP survivability of each profession 

What the fool is whining about: “if every profession can heal, heavy armor professions are going to be so damn OP”

Reason for stupidity: If you don’t see it, my response applies to you as well.

My response:

Design your cross-profession combos!

The topic: People are trying to design effective class combinations. This is usually a good exercise, and a key component of valuable theorycrafting, if only we knew all the available skills. Which we don’t.

Reasons for stupidity: It has turned into a flame war with some noob saying “duuuude that combo sux cuz dey can’t do dis!”, without knowing the full capability of each class. (OR even what all the classes are.. sigh)

My response:

Ranger Pets Still Borked? 

Darwin award: Pets suck, rangers suck

Reasons for stupidity: The poster is an idiot

My response (note the cleats):

LFG need 3 guardians….

Wah wah wah: Guardians are the shit. Guardians are OP. Aside from that, this person still has no clue how grouping is meant to change in GW2 (one of the key selling points of the game)

Reasons for stupidity: I hate this person with a fiery passion that rivals Balthazar’s.

My response:

That is all :)

There has been a lot of talk on the interwebs about the last Guild Wars 2 profession (other than Mesmer, which is obscenely obvious at this point) being an Engineer. I was skeptical at first (mostly for the hell of it), but I have seem some extremely compelling arguments.

Key points:

• There is still one profession left that focuses on ranged combat with rifles. (Obviously not the mesmer)
• There are at least 4 different types of turret concept art that can be seen in Daniel Dociu’s concept art slideshow (Hai Romania!)
• A fan on Guild Wars 2 wiki has GIMPed the shadow of the profession to show a very turret-esque object sitting to the left of it. Others have speculated that to the right is a wolf head, as there are supposed to be 2 pet-related professions.. and it is very unclear whether the Necromancer counts as one. Either way, check it out:

So, pretty convincing evidence for the Engineer, eh?

Snaff dies. Glint dies. Logan gets laid. And to hell with the Nightmare Court.

Now that the spoilers are out of the way, let’s get on to the good stuff. There are two main things about this sweet, sweet book:

1. It gives away quite a bit of information about the professions in Guild Wars 2

2. It is awesome

Perhaps the most amusing thing about reading this book after the Guardian profession has been released is seeing just how much of a Guardian Logan Thackernay is. This book was released prior to the profession announce, and savvy readers could’ve seen it coming :) Two other key spoilers are rogues and mesmers. 

I’m not sure whether rogue is the term used for the dagger-wielding Sylvari, but the fact that she uses daggers, sneaks around, and deals severe damage ‘from behind’ is explicitly stated. No other profession uses daggers. Thanks for the hints :)

Mesmers on the other hand, such as Queen Jennah (who Logan totally shames through the use of a mantra of persistence and various cries of pain (by which I mean he nails her) ) are explicitly mentioned. And it sounds like they can conjure hallucinations :o

While I doubt it was a hint at anything, there was mention of a scythe, although in fairness, it sounded more improvised than not. So, perhaps dervishes won’t make their way into Guild Wars 2 after all :(

In any case, this pretty much confirms everyone’s suspicions of mesmers and assassins. Not that we needed any more proof, really :/

As for the book itself, holy crap. It is amazing. One thing I noticed is that it takes place before the events from Ghosts of Ascalon, which is pretty cool. Krakaltorrik’s (however it’s spelled) reign of continued terror can be attributed to Logan’s burning desire for Queen Jennah’s symbolic posture.. by which I mean her butt.

My favorite part of the book was the beginning, which was in my opinion a shift between a boring portrayal of a Norn crafter’s life and the exciting tale of how a Charr and Human made best friends. And the Sylvari was there too, but who really cares, right?

The majority of the book details wicked fight scenes, and memories of Gladiator popped into my mind a few times.

As Tony the Tiger would say.. this book is grrrrrraspable by the majority of your feeble, non-Asuran minds. Read it, it’s awesome.

I hope this will stop all the annoying, uninspired conversations rampaging over the net ranging from “omg how will tanking work in pvp” to “guardians are monks l0l0l0l”

A useful article to clear up some of the misconceptions about the Guardian’s intended purpose.

I found this randomly on the web, but does anyone notice the striking resemblance to the ‘mystery’ 3rd profession with the Charr silhouette? Also note how it is using some sort of gun, which coincides with people’s suspicion that it will be a gunner or engineer type of class? :O

I’ve recently come across the Hunter’s Insight blog, and I couldn’t help but notice the many, many articles all focused around speculating on which profession will be next. The one thing that is slightly upsetting is the constant mention of “healer, cleric, paladin”, or other such cookie-cutter profession placeholder. This is not aimed only at the poster, but at the commentators as well. It seems people really haven’t gotten the message that traditional gameplay mechanics are being re-defined.

That said, the recently released guardian, in many ways, fits into the traditional description of a cleric or paladin.. with a twist (of course). The additional gameplay mechanics of summoning (reminiscent of the ritualist of the original guild wars) as well as the showcased area-of-effect abilities (through skills and virtues) allow it to do more than just heal and take damage.

So, we have the tactical warrior, which seems most true to the original warrior of guild wars, where a player’s skill is determined by their weapon switching, spiking and pressure abilities, as well as positional maneuverability (although since body is removed from Guild Wars 2, it will come in a different flavor). In a sense it should be the hardest profession to suck at, although the difference between the elitists and casual players will be very, very noticeable.

Then there is the elementalist. The original elementalist (depending on its purpose of course), essentially only had to worry about managing exhaustion, its position, and which enemy to target (which really didn’t count if you were running a team spike build). The addition of attunements and the ability for elementalists to switch their element on-the-fly will add a LOT more depth and difficulty to mastering the class. Imagine if an original elementalist could switch between a pressure DPS build to a warder. They would have to pay much more attention to both the enemy’s formation and status as well as their own team’s, to see which role would fit it best at any period of time. The new elementalist is therefore going to be a lot more challenging, and therefore fun :)

Sup ranger? You haven’t changed I see. That’s cool, at least you’ll be a lot more fun for PvE and completionist fanatics (like myself). I hope that traps work differently to make them more viable in real combat, so that the ranger doesn’t turn into a ‘ranged warrior’. Then again, pets are much more customizable, potentially allowing for a more detailed PvP experience. But still, nothing too exciting.

Ah, the necromancer. Class of choice for metalhead punks this world over. But seriously, it’s pretty sweet. The original necromancer was so instrumental not only because of its mobile minion summoning skills, and its curses (which were the same in nature to the mesmer’s hexes), but also because of the concept of soul reaping. Soul reaping essentially meant that if enemies are dying rapidly around you, you won’t run out of energy. This allowed them to play solid healers, as well as solid high-mana-spell-spammers. While the mechanics seem very similar in Guild Wars 2, the addition of fear and death shroud make them much more powerful (potentially). To anyone who has played WoW, you will know fear (at least back in the day) as the least fair, most annoying condition possible. I hope that ArenaNET implements it without failing. The death shroud, however, adds a new role to the necromancer. One that, like the elementalist, will force players to learn when to use it, and when it is a complete waste. Yay!

So, what’s left? There are 3 professions left and we have very strong reasons to believe one is a mesmer, and one is an assassin. Why? See for yourself:

It doesn’t really take a lot of ingenuity. The one on the right is almost certainly a mesmer, as described in the Guild Wars novels. Mesmers follow the god Lyssa, the god of beauty. I’m not 12, but that mesmer looks pretty cute to me. As for the class on the left, it just screams rogue. We know what to expect from an assassin, and we know what to expect from a mesmer. What we don’t know is how they will differ from their original Guild Wars counterparts.

Perhaps more shadow stepping for the assassin? Combination skills? Poisons? What about the mesmer? Yeah, we’ve got hexes.. great. Fast casting, that’s pretty boring. Perhaps some sort of new spell mechanism like linking spells between enemies and causing effects to trickle between them? Whatever the exciting new mechanisms will be, they are not as intriguing as the mystery charr class.

What IS this thing?? Some have speculated that it is some sort of ranged weaponry class, but as the ranger and the warrior can both use bows effectively, it seems unlikely. Others have suggested a sort of shaman-esque class, because of the apparently large hunk of weapon in his hand. It’s possible, but the guardian seems like it would be very similar. The similarity of the silhouette to a tauren makes me hope for a druid, but as far as the lore of the game goes, I don’t think that will be likely. So what is left?

Dervishes? Are area of effect melee classes coming back? It seems unlikely, as I would expect the warrior to be able to use a scythe if it was an option. Paragons? Very similar to the guardian. Ritualists? Same story. Monks? Yeah, right. 

Whatever it is, I am 60% sure ArenaNET will reveal it last. And that is why they are evil.

I can’t even begin to describe the levels at which skills like this will bring Guild Wars 2 competitive play to. The sheer amount of split-second coordination required to make maximal use of area-of-effect skills such as these within a team is going to be staggering. Even Guild Wars 1 PvP, which was (and is) MILES ahead of any other RPG at the time in terms of skill required, doesn’t come close. Thanks, ArenaNET :)