I just finished watching a “Combat Master Class” on the official Guild Wars 2 channel on Twitch TV. For those of you who may have missed it, the stream was recorded and will be added for your viewing enjoyment soon. In it, lead systems designer Jonathan Sharp grouped up with Jon Peters to do some general PvE content which in and of itself wasn’t necessarily noteworthy.
What was, however, is that Jonathan answered plenty of fan questions on future plans for GW2 running the gambit from sPvP and WvW, to some more basic tips such as how he has his key mapping configured. It’s also worth noting (and a subtle point potentially missed by many of the people in the channel during the stream) that Jonathan was playing a mesmer and providing a metric ton of great tips for people interested in understanding the profession better.
Chances are, profession popularity has shifted a fair amount by now, but at least when I spoke to Jon Peters a few weeks ago, the mesmer was the least played of the eight professions. Not by a massive margin, but enough to take note of. Some of that can be attributed to the overall complexity of playing the mesmer well, while a good part of it boils down to the fact that – of the eight professions – mesmer is perhaps the most unique to Tyria and doesn’t have as much of a clearly defined archetype that players can mentally equate them with from other games in the genre.
For example, warrior, guardian, ranger, necromancer, thief, and elementalist are all professions that are easy to wrap your head around if you’ve had much experience playing RPGs or other MMOGs. Engineer and mesmer tend to be the two professions that players aren’t quite sure how to approach, and at least in my experiences those are the two that I see the least often in-game. If you’re looking for info on either, don’t forget to check out our handy profession guide portal where we’re continuing to produce plenty of in-depth guides for each profession.
A final thing worth mentioning that was addressed during the Combat Master Class are the subtle differences between Confusion and Retaliation. Here are a few things to be aware of:
Confusion is a negative condition that you can place on an enemy, or that they can place on you. Once confusion has been applied to a target, whenever they attack they will suffer damage for the duration. A shining example of confusion in action is The Lovers boss encounter in the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon. Watch your conditions during that fight because you’ll no doubt be hit with confusion often, and will want to stop attacking whenever it’s active.
Retaliation is a positive boon that you can place on yourself (or allies) that will cause damage to be reflected back on any enemy attackers. For example, in a recent change in WvW, retaliation can no longer be used to destroy siege weapons. What people were doing is using the boon whenever ballista or arrow carts were being used from beyond a range that they could be destroyed with normal skill usage.
Apparently retaliation is still being tweaked and is considered a bit too powerful in its present form, so it will be interesting to see exactly how it impacts various professions and builds once any new changes are made in a future game update.
On that note, I’m off to get things put together for our next giveaway. It’s going to be pretty awesome, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for more details.
Speaking of giveaways…
Signed Guild Wars 2 Soundtrack Winner Announced
The team at GW2Hub wanted to extend a special thanks to everyone who participated in our signed GW2 soundtrack giveaway last week. Once again, our readers stepped up to the plate and offered some great feedback on their favorite aspects of the audio in-game.
We’d like to congratulate our latest winner, Brock Samson (awesome name, by the way) who was selected at random from the complete list of entrants. If you didn't win this time, never fear; our next giveaway is right around the corner, and we have an awesome prize package lined up. More details to follow!
Much like a swarm of delicious flies, the Guild Wars 2 community has been buzzing with discussions about which race they would like to become the next playable option. Many signs point to the Tengu if you're paying close attention in-game. Not only is there a giant, walled-off tengu city that's sure to open up at some point, but the tengu also have strong ties to Cantha. If it's true that the main reason for trade between Tryia and Cantha being cut off was due to Zhaitan's army, then with the Elder Dragon's defeat it could potentially open up travel there once again.
You also have to remember that the third Guild Wars 2 novel, titled "Sea of Sorrows" is scheduled for release at the beginning of next year; a perfect time to make an announcement about future release plans involving that same area in some form or another.
With all of that said, as much as I truly enjoy the creature models we've seen of the tengu so far, I think all of those feathers would be far too itchy. Not to mention the amount of grooming you'd have to do to keep them looking pristine.
No, the next playable race should be the skritt. There, I said it.
Comments
Playable quaggan with an underwater capital city. You know it makes sense.
Classic era AD&D players would recognize the mesmer as the illusionist. It was perhaps the least popular class back then too - and never made the cut past the first edition.
But I'm seeing more mesmers in GW2 now. Once you wrap your thoughts around it and adjust your playstyle to it - it is amazingly effective.
But its different. While being a completely different profession from how it worked in GW1, it still has the same "this is not just another profession" feel and the mechanics are still heavily based on an indirect approach.
I notice anytime I'm in an area with Skritt, people spam click the NPCs to hear their funny lines - over and over. Its still funny, despite how often you hear it.
With the Tengu ties to Cantha, and the Kodan tying to the Swedish Frat boys that turn into bears which are adored by Jeff Grub... The next races the developers will want to push on us are probably those two.
Birdman and Arctic Panda.
- That said Cantha lore seems to imply its become a humans only region. Which is interesting considering how often the Krytan humans play up the "we're a dying race" syndrome - just across the way they still own a city the size of an entire continent, were they've killed off everyone else in a move that would make Charr seem like Hippies. So Tengu may in fact -not- have much place in a Cantha Xpac beyond the same place Dwarves have in the current game.
And everyone seems to have picked the same fan race. Everyone seems to enjoy the Skritt. But their hive mind might be complicated to work for a player race... how do you reflect a character that is a dolt when soloing, but in a giant WvWvW zerg would make Einstein seem like a fool.
- You could give them a magic find penalty / bonus based on how many other skritt are in a certain range... but we all know that would lead to armies of skritt farming bots. :p Likewise if you did it to crafting.
But if you ignored it, player Skritt would just feel wrong compared to the NPCs.
The skritt are definitely a good source of comedic moments in the game, and given their popularity with players I do expect we'll be seeing more of them in the future. Maybe not as a playable option, but as you noted it would introduce some interesting game mechanics. For example, as more players show up for dynamic events, enemies get tougher, but then the player characters could too. On the flip side, there's already a zerg / hive mind mentality running rampant in WvW so all it would do is add positive reinforcement to the notion that you can simply zerg around the map to phone in a win.
I had completely forgotten about the illusionist! Outside of the original GW, the closest thing to a mesmer I've seen in other MMOs would be the EQ enchanter, but that was a lot heavier on the crowd control aspects, and it obviously played a lot differently than a mesmer does.
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