Team Spode took our third trip into Guild Wars 2, Sunday. The first week we explored Queensdale, last week we played around in Metrica and killed a fire elemental. This week, we had our sights on a Son of Sam Snow Shaman in the Norn newbie grounds of the Wayfarer's Foothills, and the guild jumping puzzle in the nearby Snowden Drifts.
That was the first thing we did that required a guild, but, we weren't enough people to both dislodge icicles from the cavern ceiling and plug steam vents with them once they'd been dislodged, so we failed that.
Mostly we just wandered around the maps, doing skill challenges we found, grabbing vistas and so on. Pretty unstructured, and not what we're used to.
I've been reading up on the challenges that face us. My class, Engineer, has a lot of very specific things to do to support the group in these raids and fractals. Yeah, looks like I picked a support class, again.
Solo, though, my character is a little bundle of explosions. Set up a few turrets and defend them with BOMBS? What's not to love?
Everybody’s a support class in GW2! Also a damage class. 🙂
The minimum for guild missions is supposed to be 6, so it is theoretically possible, but probably requires a lot of coordination. I’d say you’d need three to light the torches and be on the bows, while the rest plug the icicles… And you’d have to be careful to do it in really specific order with the first platform going up first, etc. as opposed to the more people solution of holding onto the icicles and plugging simultaneously.
Unstructured play is what GW2 is really good at though! Hope you’ll hit Plains of Ashford and Diessa Plateau at some point too. The Loreclaw jumping puzzle is a nice underground dungeon-like environment minus the mobs plus some traps and jumping (multiple paths) and the Font of Rhand is a really fun mini-dungeon to explore and figure out.
We did have six people, as well as a few other randoms who were in there, too. But yeah, we were totally not coordinated. First all of us were below, then all at the bows, and we glommed on to the correct strat with only a couple minutes left in the event. We’ll have to give it another shot, now that we know what to do.
Jumping puzzles were always a challenge for us since we were playing DDO… Going “Super Mario” in an MMO has never really been a real success with us…
Re: GW2 jumping puzzles — if you have your “best” jumper playing a Mesmer, s/he will be able to port the rest of you fairly trivially.
Also, heed Jeromai — everyone is a support class. You can really give yourselves some synergy if you plan a bit around fields and finishers. The buffs in GW2 are short lived but significant.
I think we do have a Mesmer. Not 100% positive.
Engineer is great at fields, I think. And I can make a lot of them explode, which is a finisher? I have a lot of learning to do as I level.
It’s not too complex, but surprisingly workable. Many ground targeted abilities are “fields”, many other abilities are “finishers”. Any of these will be labeled as such in the tooltip. Finishers interact with fields that are present in a way that is determined by the type (element) of field and the type of finisher. So, for example, if you use “detonate mine” in a fire field that a friendly elementalist puts down, you’ll grant three stacks of the “might” buff to yourself and nearby allies. Do the same thing in a water field and you’ll heal people nearby. Do it in a smoke field and you’ll grant stealth. Shoot through the fire field and your attacks will do bonus burning damage… etc, etc.
The full list is on the wiki — search under “combo”. It’s a very cool system.
Cool! Thanks! I’ll see if I can get some of these going 😉