WorldofBay.8160

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said: > Also LS2 and the expansions **are the only parts of the game that have separated sections for both maps/story/etc.** core has a separate section but no meta achievement - does it count? without there are 3 stories with separate achievements and real story metas and 3 stories with combined achievements without story meta (but with combined meta) i don't get why you stress this "the only" so much that you even have to use bold for that when it's actually a draw. also with cantha being the next expansion the odds say that separate story tabs and real story meta will take the lead again even without core. it seems to me you are fully locked in your view and don't even try to look at it differently. with LS3 a new meta achievement category was introduced, it has always had really grindy parts and it has always been messy. IBS has so far the best rewards of any meta achievement by quite a margin and it just makes sense to be harder then.

> @"Kichwas.7152" said: > That seems good in solo content. In group content that toughness boost is going to make you a hyper focused target by NPCs, which dramatically reduces survival odds. I know they say toughness is only used for aggro in raids - but I've found having a toughness of even 1021 from a single back item can make me the near 100% target in dungeons and fractals and very often the target in open world group events. Just shedding that small bit from an old back item upped my survival dramatically on several characters. > > My characters with actually notably high toughness - holdover gear from the Pre-HoT days when I thought Knights was the best gear, or some level boost alts with soldiers... found it just as bad. As much as 1800 toughness, get hyper-focused and while with scores like that open-world gets easy, in dungeons you get so much aggro you get over-whelmed. > > Trailblazers looks like a gearset I would only dare use in solo play, or use in WvW where you can toss out conditions into a zerg and they will be distracted enough by the crowd to not cleanse them. toughness has its strengths and weaknesses and it definitely doesn't make you survive better if you don't understand it, i agree on that. i run around with notable toughness and usually get all the aggro, even if i never engaged in the fight while others did so. however i run full regen with lots of additional passive heals and that is where toughness shines: it boosts your heal. constantly healing 500 HP with incoming hits of 2k is a big difference to constantly healing 500 HP with incoming hits of 3k, as you heal a hit in 4 ticks instead of 6 and therefore need less evades. on the other hand toughness is useless against condis so don't let the rare burn spammer get you. in any case if you would've killed the mob on glasscannon stats even with just 1 hp left, any vitality, toughness or healing power is wasted unless it allows you to spend significantly less time dodging and more time attacking ...

> @"Vavume.8065" said: > > @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said: > > ok, lol after this thread was made, a grp actually did do it., we had 25 people by the time we faced the last boss. > > To be fair there are some achieves that are impossible to get, but that was not one of them :) active guild member for example.

> @"LilSpark.4567" said: > But I started to think he was dead because I don't meet a lot of players.. in this game there are lots of activities that scatter the players around and only rare occassions put the masses together. cities are a lot less dense than in other games i played, partly because of the map instance limits and partly because they aren'T nearly as important, especially if you have a guild hall that offers you bank access, repair anvil and a basic trader. if you want to meet a lot of players in core tyria (i guess you are far from max lvl after 10 days, at least if you have fun in looking at all the little lore gems scattered across core tyria) then go to any world boss except triple trouble - that one is empty outside main times because it needs more coordination and players than other world bosses. you'll see lots of people in the thaumanova reactor each time the fire elemental starts (and when it is up, don't blink or it's already gone) or at the dragon bosses tequatl, the shatterer and claw of jormag. since maps tend to fill completely up during certain bosses (especially tequatl) and additional instances might not succeed (especially tequatl) the players gather pretty early and many there are open for some chatter in their waiting time.

if i look at the past expansions that i bought (and i consider the LSs as expansions as i had to pay gems for new content) only very few wow moments from maps come to my mind. HoT definitely got me with the jungle environment but i love playing rev, especially herald and that's PoF as well. also my so far only legendary is a HoT legendary. after that, the maps never were a selling point to, me neither **before** nor **after** buying. i didn't expect a lot and didn't get a lot. vabbi is the worst map imo, kourna, jahai, thunderhead peaks, lake doric and especially istan come close. oh they're mostly PoF/LS4, but dragonfall, sandswept isles and the desert highlands are actually good ones. so would i buy an expansion without maps? why not? maps after HoT weren't even close to core levels, though a big part of that is their design for mounts which made at least half of the PoF and later maps ugly and unfun. why does kourna only offer 2 wps even though there are at least 2 more obvious wp spots and the map is big enough for 10+? because rollerbeetle. why is istan packed with annoying enemies in every single spot? because on a mount it doesn't matter. et cetera et cetera. i would instantly buy a new expansion which offers maps that never allow mounts because i believe those maps will be beautiful and fun. i would, however, also buy an expansion without maps, those aren't any selling point to me. i do agree on previous posts that an expansion that clutters old maps even more would do more harm than good. be new to the game, start playing some story and whoosh there comes an awakened invasion! who are these, where do they come from? hey and look at that boss marker on the map! oh it's a bloodstone crazed creature that instant-downs you because you lack the mastery from 10+ years in the future (ingame..). more of that is not good, especially since the story told by those events is only present for us who have been active when it was added. the context is lost to anyone in the future. what would be the biggest instant selling point for me? imagine an expansion that adds a new UI entry to character creation to create a non-commander. that character has no access to LS2, HoT, LS3, Pof, LS4, IBS stories but it has a new lvl 1-80 personal story that is woven around the old story, maybe you see a commander that looks like your most played character at some point as you'll be someone in the pact to best zhaitan. that story can then continue after core tyria and expand on expansion maps _in any imaginable order_. it might be that you're not part of the pact fleet but instead travel to bitterfrost for a kodan quest, then visit elona just to hear that a bloodstone exploded and rush back north to bloodstone fen, finding the pact in an awful condition so you move into the heart of maguuma to help out. it's all possible and every non-legendary story is welcome. just a traveler/adventurer that finds itself thrown into the normal story from time to time by totally unrelated reasons.