Guild Wars - Second Impressions

Played around a bit more last night and here's where I'm at. Got to level 5 (And past that to lv6, actually) and picked up my secondary. As I said, I went with the Dervish because that way I'll get to look at all the new Dervish skills, too. It's not doing much for me at the moment, though. There's two skill I have that I'd like to use – Imbue Health for the heal, and Heart of Holy Flame because more burny – but those are both tied to Mysticism, the Dervish's primary attribute and, thus, useless to me.

Picked up a new henchmen, Dunkoro (I call him “Dunk”), who's a Monk. He replaces the henchie Monk I was using so now my party stands as follows:

• “Herman” Mend Our Chuck, a Paragon/Dervisher
• “Carson” Koss , a Warrior
• “Dunk” Dunkoro , a Monk
• The Dervish henchie

I like to run melee heavy but it works pretty well. The only problem I've had so far was with a quest called “A Decayed Monument”. It said, “Master Level” whatever that means and I figured, what the heck? And several spawns of lv13~14 critters later I was regretting it. I managed to pull it out thanks to my nasty degen and a handy nearby rezpad that let me whittle down everything but I pretty much lost the chance for any “no deaths” titles. Wasn't about to quit though because they'd dropped a black dye and a rare Scimitar (The mod was, are you ready? “Show me the money” which apparently is just like the old “Valuable” making it sell for more money. Thing only does 11~14 damage, too. Boy, I love low-level rares. But, still, it's better than anything I've found so far and Koss is rocking it right now. Still looking for a good shield and spear for myself.)

Also, worked up my farming and I've gotten to the third Sunspear rank. That netted me a nice improved version of rezsig and 15 attribute points. I still prefer the Paragon's own rez signet because it's multiple use. And, well, I tend to die a lot in PvE because I just henchie zerg things. But at the level I'm at those attribute points were like mana from heaven. Getting them was like going up three levels in an instant. So, my current attributes have me at Leadership 6, Motivation 5+1 (picked up a helmet with a bonus when I upgraded my armor), with the garbage points in Spear Mastery. I'm getting 3 energy back every shout which helps a lot. Here's my current bar:

• Anthem of Flame
• Mending Refrain
• Zealous Anthem
• They're On Fire!
• Barbed Spear
• Wild Throw
• Signet of Synergy
• Signet of Return

I mentioned last time that I was going to be dropping “They're On Fire!” but now that it's covering 17% damage and I'm dealing with hardier foes (and longer burning durations), it's actually starting to pull its own weight. Instead, I dropped Lightning Spear – not that bad a skill but the damage wasn't all that impressive and the energy's starting to get tight – in favor of Zealous Anthem. Which, bam, on top of Anthem of Flame makes the many attack skills my party sets off really pay for themselves. It's at 4 energy an attack skill right now which is good for an en every five seconds for each of three characters – it's a lot of energy to burn myself but the party actually nets from it. But, to pay for it I've gone to pure adrenal attacks. And my increased Leadership helps me defray the cost even further. Mending Refrain's starting to show some wear and tear so I might be replacing it with some other form of party healing soon. And Wild Throw's nice but not working as well as I'd like – mostly I stick with Barbed Spear for the degen.

So, mostly I'm just running around doing quests and hoping to get to whatever Sunspear rank it's going to take to get my next set of attribute bonuses. I have to get to the next rank to complete the next primary quest so, yeah, I'm still not a big fan of the whole promotion points thing.

What I am a fan of, though, is how any skill that damages you now gets its icon displayed and retained for a little while so you can check out what it is they do. One of those little touches that makes things so much easier. I wonder if it works in obs mode because that would be amazingly useful. Obviously, haven't spent much time checking out the PvP scene, though.