Good Morning Friends! I’ve not put a ton of effort into it but as I get time I have been collecting cats for my home instance, and I noticed in Rata Sum one of them has started hanging out with this random Asura on the roof. I think this is pretty freaking cute and that you all needed this in your lives. There are times when I question who the hell I am anymore. Firstly for so many years I was diametrically opposed to Guild Wars 2, or at the very least I did not understand what people saw in the game. For even longer I have been one of the most anti-PVP people I know in my circle… and what am I doing now? I am dabbling in PVP in Guild Wars 2, and enjoying myself. I legitimately am wondering if I need to find an exorcist.
It all started simple enough with Thalen repeatedly making the comment that we need to find someone into PVP so we can get the reward potions for the guild hall upgrades. At that point, I had been enjoying World vs World in the game for a while, and it planted a thought in my brain. If I can enjoy this game mode where I spend most of my time dead and running back… maybe I can actually enjoy the structured PVP in Guild Wars 2. One of the things that I enjoyed about the siege combat of the battlegrounds is that there really is no negative to it. The deaths don’t incur a cost, and almost any amount of time spent there is rewarding so it is pretty much a win/win situation. Lately, I have been using the rewards tracks to farm up Mystic Clovers, and my extreme need for them also planted the idea of maybe doing the Drizzlewood track in PVP as well.
So for the last several days, I have been on this weird mission to farm as many PVP potions as I could. This has more or less meant doing three of the four PVP dailies each day, with the fourth being inaccessible because I have no interest in joining a tournament and waiting around for it to start. Through sheer happenstance, I have landed on my Ranger as my WvW character and my fledgling Engineer as my PVP character. So each day at reset I do Tequatl, then pop over to Belglory my Engineer and knock out my PVP dailies, then finally land on my Ranger for some WvW dailies. The end result is that on an average day I am knocking out all but two of my dailies in total. Depending on how fast I get through all of this I often end up working on leveling the Engineer that is now I believe 73.
So far in my travels, I have encountered two different modes of play for PVP, the first of which being Stronghold. As far as I can tell there is only one map here called Battle of Champion’s Dusk, with the layout shown above. This is essentially a highly condensed version of Summoner’s Rift from League of Legends, with your objective being to break into the enemy fort at the end of your lane and kill the “Lord”. This is done by summoning “creeps” to borrow the LoL parlance, which travel down the lane and bombs the fortified door. These are summoned through collecting supplies that spawn in the center of the map and are a contested resource. Additionally, there are trebuchets on both sides that are constantly attacking the door, and players can disable these to slow down the progress of the enemy team. It is a perfectly cromulent game mode, but it is far from my favorite.
The mode I would far rather play is Conquest, which is essentially this game’s version of capture the flag or as I am most used to it Control from Destiny 2. There are three objectives that can be held by moving your team members into the circle and waiting for it to capture. Each objective you hold contributes points to your score and the first team to 500 points wins. Each map in the rotation also has some sort of a secondary objective that might be taking down NPCs that spawn at regular intervals for bonus points, or pushing through to an objective and channeling an orb to capture it for your team. I am not sure what it is about this mode but it feels much more simple and as a result more enjoyable. It seems to be way more flexible for random players, whereas Stronghold feels like it needs a fixed strategy and core teamwork. I may also be biased because my dumb turrets build seems to work swimmingly in Conquest and mostly fails in Stronghold.
Friends… I still have no clue who the hell I am anymore. I am championing a game that I resigned from the alpha testing for because I thought it felt awful. Now I am playing a game mode that I have traditionally railed against for breeding toxic players. I mean sure I have run into a few knobs so far in PVP and WvW but for the most part, everyone has been damned chill. I am certain that the toxicity exists, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised to just follow along and do some content. I did run into a commander the other night that was kicking anyone who would not join his Discord, so there was that. However, that has seemingly been the massive exception as opposed to being the norm. With my Necro, I mostly enjoyed taking camps, but with the Ranger, I find I am actually enjoying objective defense.
We need literally multiple hundred PVP potions for upgrades, so I am trying to ignore this and keep plugging away at it. We knocked out several of the other objectives in a similar faction by just contributing a little bit each day, so I figure slow and steady here will also win the race. I think more than anything that is the thing I am enjoying about Guild Wars 2. Progress is measured in weeks and months rather than days… which makes it feel not so crushing when you can’t do a certain thing on a specific day. All of the gearing objectives are working towards a long-tailed objective that isn’t also moving further away from me. Eventually, I will have Legendary items in the game, but I am also in no real rush to get there either, and not having them is not adversely impacting my enjoyment. So far at least it feels like pretty much everything is doable in a good set of starter exotics.
“pretty much everything is doable in a good set of starter exotics”
I think this is still true nearly a decade after launch. What was the endgame gear then is good enough for most things now. Of course, Ascended is better, but there’s a huge difference between a game where something is “necessary” and one where it’s “desirable”. Ascended is still mostly aspirational for a casual player, not essential and Legendary is for would-be hardcore and min-maxers who think it’s worthwhile hot-swapping builds all the time.
I haven’t done any PvP in years. You make me feel like its about time I did. I think the last time I realy did much was when Engineer was broken and doing insane damage. I had a great time with a turret build for a couple of weeks back then until they fixed it. I might take my Ele in again and see how fast she dies. Usually doesn’t take long!