GameKnights - The Official homepage of Wednesday Night Game Night

• To start with, here's a page listing all the "Conditions" in the game, what they do. Note how you can see what condition is afflicting you or an ally partially based off the effect on his/her health bar. Also note how the amount of health degeneration, if any, caused by a condition is set in stone.
• This is in contrast to "Hexes" which are non-standard debuffs that stack with each other and conditions wonderfully. Also note that the power/duration/effect of a given Hex is probably mutable based on how many points you have in a given skill.
• Note that Armor blocks magic damage as well as physical damage in GW.
• Armor doesn't block Health Degeneration however, and also note that health degen doesn't count as "damage" so it might not show up on that DPS reader npc in the Balthazaar Isles.
• So you basically can think of damage is countered by Healing while health degen is countered by Health Regen

1. All of these skills are either Swordsmanship, Fire Magic, or Strength (the glyph is technically "energy storage" but as a E secondary i can't take points in that). This means that my entire build can focus on only 3 stats to take, and if I am smart I'll grab a strength-dependant shield to go with it. I max swordsmanship, then grab strength, then fire magic.
2. The warrior skills are very energy light in cost, relying more on adrenaline, which frees up my energy for my much more costly Elementalist skills.
3. Though I still lack a way to effectively counter hexes, the build gives me a way to heal myself and counter conditions, which means I'm fairly self-sufficient rather than a burden to our healer.
4. The build allows me to constantly re-apply burning with each sword swing, so the chance my foe will cleans out of it and the bleed is very low.

This post was edited by machvergil on October 11, 2010, 2:29 pm

Funny, I was just thinking of posting a 'WAT DO I DO?!' thread. So thanks for this. I'm probably going to pick up the GW1 sometime this week on Steam, the trilogy plus the new expansion.

• Dual class is the order of the day in Guild Wars. You can change your secondary class after you get a certain point in the game, but you are stuck with your primary unless you roll a new character, so put some thought into your primary class. Your primary class determines how your character looks, determines the stats of his/her armor, effects their base energy (mana) regeneration rate, and gives them a special attribute that only primary-versions of the class can have. For example, Warriors-primaries have "Strength" which gives all of their auto-attacks armor-penetration. Assassins have "Critical Strikes" which increases their chance to crit and gives them bonus energy for doing so. Monks have "Divine Favor" which increases the amount healed of every healing spell they cast. For that reason, when thinking of your dual class combo, be sure you pick the class you want to lean more heavily on as your primary.
  
  You can go here to learn more on each of the classes.
• There are four campaigns to Guild Wars: Prophecies (or the core Campaign), Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North. Though there are 3 "expansions," only Eye of North is really a expansion in the classical sense. Factions and NightFall are both more stand-alone campaigns which can be played completely on their own from level 1 to finish, or as new stories for your max-level characters to go to for new content. GW:EotN (or GW:EN as we like to call it), is the only one that recommends you be max-level to do it.
  
  However, despite the fact you can play Factions and Nightfall from level 1, I recommend you start with Prophecies, unless you are really keen on playing one of the classes from those expansions (Assassin & Ritualist from Factions, Paragon & Dervish from Nightfall). Both of those are harder campaigns than Prophecies (Factions very much so), though they will get you to max level in a mere fraction of the time, so it depends on your tolerance for "Baptism in Fire" I guess.
  
  That being said the "Welcome to Vanilla WoW" disclaimer also needs to be put on Prophecies. They did it first, and at this point, in a lot of ways, it shows. Much like how BC and WotLK content is more engaging than vanillia WoW's, Prophecies content is significantly worse paced. Still, I find it to be a lot of fun and still am not sick of it running through it again with my buddies.
• Also, just to save you the frustration now, don't adventure with a 1 man party once you're out of n00b zone. ALWAYS take AI henchmen to fill out your party for what players you're missing. Content in this game ALWAYS assumes you have a maxed out party, even if it's of AIs. The game will go by smoother if you do this
• Also, once your out of the n00b zones, you'll encounter these things called "missions" which are like dungeons with zero-wipe-tolerance. Missions play a bigger part in advancing the plot, and I highly recommend doing them over questing when available. The only time you should quest over doing a mission is if the quest gives you more XP (most missions are worth 1,000xp, 2k if you do the "bonus"), or if it will unlock skills (Skills are like Gear in WoW: GET SKILLZ!!!!)

This post was edited by Misharum Kittum on October 13, 2010, 6:08 pm

Another note or two. Guild Wars is as old as Vanilla WoW and it largely shows. Much like how WoW was doing things that were revolutionary for MMOs at the time, Guild Wars was too. Hence the fully instanced world. It also doesn't have all the features that a more modern MMO would, like a true auction house (thought it has several pseudo auction-like market price NPCs). It also doesn't use all the same UI "standards" that WoW set because of this. It isn't nearly as bad as FFXIV for doing things in an unintuitive manner, but there are things you have to read about or be told about if you don't already have experience working with them.

• It's age: It is a 5ish year old game now so yeah some of that shows.
• The "Keep of the Grass" issue - which is to say you can't jump or climb terrain not indicated as passable. This makes manual pathing a pain sometimes but, at least for me, it doesn't ruin the experience.
• Disconnect/Interruption intolerance: due to the way the "all instanced world" works, if you get interrupted mid-mission or mid-quest and have to D/C, you'll re-appear in the last town you visited instead of where you were standing. This is also a pain since it makes you complete things when you attempt them. Although, being able to freely warp to any town/outpost you've ever visited in the blink of an eye at no cost KINDA makes up for it.

This post was edited by machvergil on October 21, 2010, 11:46 am

Personally, I'm just stoked that you guys are even interested in playing (since this is the MMO I play). If you're ever wanting to run through a mission, or would like to help the boy and I slog through Factions (we're having a terrible time with it), let us know -- I know I'm totally up for it

This post was edited by machvergil on October 25, 2010, 9:52 am