Category Archives: damnit!

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Time changes playstyle

Have you ever thought back to what your play style was like when you first started? I’m not so far away from my beginning gamer days that I’ve forgotten. I stood as far back as I could and lobbed shots at the target while almost everyone else was crowded in at the boss’s feet hammering away. And I died a lot. A LOT.

There are reasons for why new players don’t get close and die a lot. For me it’s a combination of can’t see what’s going on and can’t process the volume of action on the screen quickly enough to do anything productive. As time passed my eye developed. I was more easily able to process what was happening and my automatic reactions became progressively more fine tuned. But of course that’s not where I started. That’s not where any of us started. Remember that when you’re inclined to make fun of a new player who is as clueless as we all were in the beginning.

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A self-inflicted wound

I’ve got a hardware problem. I know I have a hardware problem . As a result I encountered a self-inflicted wound . . . <sigh> . . . or two.

When I last rebuild my computer system I was running on a bit of a tight budget. I had budgeted for $700. The rebuild cost was under $800 to replace all the bits I needed replaced. The result has been an awesome solid fast and reliable system with one exception. SSD prices at the time were a bit stiff so I scrimped. Instead of getting a 1T or 500G M.2 SSD, I bought a 250g. You can see where this is going. Because the only way to run a game without disk spinup issues is to put it on an SSD, storage space became a huge problem.

Once SSD pricing dropped I swapped out a failing 10K spin up drive (one of two) for a 500g SSD. I then moved all the system files I could to the new SSD to free up space on my skimp-purchased 250g (ugh, just ugh) leaving GW2 on my main drive. I earned a temporary “beauty”, but it was truly only a temporary fix. As time passed it became glaringly obvious I was in trouble.

I did a (supposedly) totally innocuous thing, swapping the positions of my two monitors, a 14″ and a 32″ (TV). Given how awesome Microsoft is (if you don’t get the sarcasm you shouldn’t be reading this) you can guess the result. It blew things up. Totally. I lost the .dat file for GW2, a file that takes hours to download. To add insult to injury, the file was showing in the directory, taking up disk space, but no longer connected to the GW2 install. Oh joy.

So I re-downloaded the .dat file, missing out on some really good guild stuff (missions) while pausing play time to achieve mastery of the .dat file download. I reiterate, oh joy.

So today, in checking the cleanliness and integrity of my file storage I mastered a Level Two self-inflicted wound. I use the Microsoft utility to clean my drives of extraneous files. I’ll give you one guess as to the file it deleted that should have remained sacrosanct. Yup, you got it.

I’m now re-downloading, for the second (third?) time, the GW2 .dat file. Oh joy.

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Equipping level 80’s

I’ve joined a GW2 forum on Facebook. It’s an interesting forum and I’m enjoying it. I see a fair number of players come through saying “do I boost to 80”, “how do I equip my 80”, “I can’t keep my 80 alive” and similar noob posts. We’ve all been there. Yup, every single one of us have danced that dance.

MetaBattle gives user-developed builds that are rated by other players. It appears only the fanatical players contribute builds to Metabattle . . . with few exceptions. One exception is the “basic staff ele” and “leveling summoner” builds for elementalists. The “leveling summoner” is full of lots of super helpful information for a new ele player.

So, given how much information is provided on builds in Megabattle, here’s my two cents worth. This advice is worth EXACTLY two cents. It’s JMPO.
No matter what you play, you have to develop a build you love to play. Read MetaBattle. See what others recommend. Read the notes, play with the build, change what you aren’t comfortable with . . . do what works FOR YOU. Don’t like the way the great sword plays? Try something else. Don’t like the stats they recommend? Try something else!
Here’s my example of lessons learned.
Elementalists are glass. They die very fast. VERY fast. Blink=dead. The first character I ever leveled was an elementalist. Poof, dead. She finished a lot of battles naked because she literally had no armor left to damage. I ran my first elementalist all the way through PoF, fully dressed in the recommended gear. By the end I was so frustrated I deleted her. Gone. Just like that.

That was over a year ago. I now have two elementalists and I LOVE them. They are SO fun to play. What did I do differently? Instead of equipping them in armor that gave them great DPS, I equipped one in all soldier (80 boost, power-toughness-vitaility) and the other in all ascended Tizlak (Commander, power-precision-toughness-concentration), armor chosen to offset how easily elementalists die.

Neither of these stat sets are huge dps producers, nor are they popular/recommended on MetaBattle. Putting them in soldier and commander stat sets was a test and I think, for me, it was a winner. My elementalist STAY ALIVE while I’m killing stuff.

In case you haven’t heard, you do exactly ZERO DPS when you’re dead. The goal is to not be dead. After that, it’s all selecting what you prefer.