Duncan The Black & Slaver's Exile

After watching

Woodenpotatoes

on Youtube play through Nightfall with a Dervish, I was inspired to play with mine a lot more.

Seeing as I have already done all of the missions and whatnot, I decided that I would try to finish all of the GW:EN dungeons over again.

I don't really do the dungeons much at all, in fact, I've pretty much only done them once, twice or three times maximum. When I compare those numbers to the frequency at which I've done other things, like how many times I've done EVERY mission in the game (at least 20 each, as per legendary guardian on 10 character

s) - it turns out that I've "barely touched" the dungeons at all.

So with scythe in hand, I set off a few months ago to casually trod through them at a leisurely pace. As of writing this post, I have only two more to beat: the Catacombs and the Menagerie.

Most of them turned out to be incredibly (and quite surprisingly in some cases) easy! Frostmaw was a pushover, all of the undead dungeon types were exploded via holy damage and things like the Ooze Pit were torn down with some lovely scythe AoE damage.

So I figured I would try my (now more experienced) hand at Slaver's Exile again. Back when I did this on my warrior, I had the help of a few players who knew what they were doing in there. I had a very easy time (though, I doubt my monks did) and got it done no problem. This time, however, I was using a hero team exclusively.

Most of the dungeon parts were still quite easy. The best advice for Slaver's is to take Frozen Soil and a very well rounded hero team. The current meta of necros, rits and mesmers can pretty much clean house - just know when minions are going to be useless and swap those skills accordingly. I shouldn't need to say this, but pulling is also essential; know what you're doing and you'll have a much easier time.

Anyway, after having fun with the preliminary parts, it came down to Duncan's section. It has taken me around six or seven tries over a week, but I finally beat

him with just heroes and some henchmen! There aren't a great many things that still give me a feeling of accomplishment in this game (apart from PvP) but this was one of those times.

Some of the failed tactics I tried were:

-necro/spirit/mesmer setup: unfortunately, Duncan can spirit rift all of your damage (i.e. spirits) into oblivion, instantly

-roj monks and melee buffs: while rather nice and easy to get to the boss, the high AoE damage from the monks pretty much destroys your own team due to his pain inverter effect.

-not taking swap and just fighting straight up: this tactic was a mistake, I simply forgot the skill and tried to beat him anyway. It is impossible.

Eventually I settled on trying to use a soul twisting defensive ritualist. This was the saving grace of my whole set of ideas! Along with that, keeping a lot of interruption in the builds was also key to lowering Duncan's damage output, by not letting him cast his spells.

The key tactics are to engage very, VERY carefully (after moving his spirits of course) and to flag heroes and micro skills accordingly. He will someti

mes get a spirit rift off, which means you must move your heroes. However, shelter can negate a mistake when re-flagging and save you a wipe.

Keeping the soul twister out of the fight, but within spirit range is also key. This means that Duncan will not target his spirits at all, thus they will stay around long enough to negate spells. Be

aware that having the hero stand that far back means that he will NOT renew shelter or union on his own, YOU MUST MICRO THIS HERO. Even if that means not dodging spirit rifts, the shelter hero is 100 times more important.

Finally, make sure to disable skills that will be useless. Panic, ineptitude, displacement, frozen soil and roj are good examples (I found that one roj would make Dunkoro take almost an entire health bar of damage AND make Duncan run around).

Eventually, Duncan should fall and you'll be a happy chappy. If you're lucky, you might get a nice gold drop, but if you're like me, a green spear with a super nice skin will be perfectly lovely.

More Minor Updates [MMU]

No, this isn't the name of a new guild but it does concern the subject.

[KISS] and tell posts concluded

Moved guild

Old guild lost

First on the list is the lack of a proper conclusion to the previous posts. I apologize for that, but I lost the will to write anything more about it! I could simply... Actually, I will just post my notes that I took from my final day's experience:

-someone begging for help in naphui, I turn up and noone is there, no response afterwords

-same person who ignored my offer of help begs for builds

-warm welcomes but instantly forgotten

-lots of wtb/wts but not many completed trades

-price checks on very normal items

-guy not reading shadowform description and clueless about nerfs

-no idea about hard mode titles (asked what my guardian of cantha title was)

-terrible players so far, hells took forever to finish, generally bad builds (we had an awful setup and the mission took over an hour)

-being blatantly ignored on several occasions, offering to buy goods or help people

-ele running a dervish build in HM and boasting to me about how good it is, but still needs my help on minister chos estate

-no idea what a tormented shield was, same person as above

There was a lot to write up in to detail here, but frankly I couldn't be bothered. The moral of the story is that [KISS] is not very good, and that I found plenty of evidence to support that.

Secondly, I have not mentioned that I have moved guild once more. I am now in the [ARK] alliance - so click on that link to be taken to their forums. More specifically, I am in the [ELF] guild, along with a few youtubers that I know; Guildwarsbuddy and Woodenpotatoes - HURRAH! I thought I should probably mention that, due to the blog being the title of my first, old guild and that no longer adding up.

On the subject of [WFF], I found out just today, that it has been lost entirely. My old guild leader somehow got hacked (and yes, I know the initial thought is "what a moron, he shouldn't have let his details go" BUT I know that he would not have done anything to break his account's integrity.)

After being hacked and forced to start again, all of the members of [WFF] have been kicked out of the guild and it has been stolen. Honestly I don't know what a hacker has to gain from owning a blank guild, apart from causing grief. Oh well, I suppose it could have been worse for them.

I'm not completely sure if they own the new guild they're in, but [TSS] Those Stupid Spellcasters, is now home to my refugee guildies -hah.

Best of luck to them and I'll hopefully get to chat more with the guys soon.

[KISS] and tell - an insight in to a cult alliance #2

Part 2 - First Impressions and Day 1

Joining the alliance as an observer was interesting; it was a concept that I'm glad I tried out. Initially I decided that I would sit back and try to take in everything I was reading in the alliance chat, with the main goal being to expose and point out the flaws and bad eggs.

On first impression, the alliance seemed very friendly. Everyone is encouraged to "welcome" new members in alliance chat as soon as they join. Over time, I noticed that this was literally the only time people would acknowledge your presence, unless you shouted in alliance chat to announce your arrival. After the welcome, I was plunged into the depths of the massive, faceless guild roster to be lost forever - victim to noone knowing each other.

Looking down the guild roster, it seemed to me that there were a lot of active players; none had been offline for longer than a week. This could have meant one of two things, that the leaders kick people who don't come online much, or people are inclined to come back and stay in the guild for longer periods of time. I took a few screenshots of the guild history over the few days, I'll post a final shot of that on the last post I make.

One question crossed my mind more than any other while I was a part of this alliance, and that was "if there are so many people here, why does noone really talk to each other?"
The chatter was highly limited to basic stuff, which didn't so much bother me because I'm British. The English work very hard to talk as little as possible between ourselves and if it wasn't for the weather, it would have stayed that way forever.
Anyway, what little was spoken during my time was mostly people trying to trade, beg for help, beg for builds, or just boast about what they're doing.

Looking back on my notes for the day, some of the specific quotes and things that I noticed were:

- "can heroes not get sunspear skills like whirlwind attack?"
- "what is WiK?" "Wiki" "War in kryta..." "oh whats that?"
- "killing the indestructible golem takes all day..."
- Several builds were pinged, asking for criticism or just talking about how good they were, but not accepting anything they didn't want to hear.
- Unrealistic builds pinged as general usage ones, ele nuker for the deep.
- Begging for items (one person begged for a build repeatedly, then didn't have the skills, so begged for tomes.)

By the end of the day, I had a good idea of what [KISS] was like. One particular lyric comes to mind, from the great Pink Floyd - "all in all you're just another brick in the wall."
This is exactly how I felt while I was in the guild.
They draw people in with the prospect of having 1500 people to play with, yet when you're in, hardly any of them are worth playing with anyway and even if they are, they don't acknowledge the requests for help.

What is the point? I knew already that I would be leaving quite soon, but I decided that I'd let them have one more day to "redeem" themselves, or at least show some good reasons to join...

[KISS] and tell - an insight in to a cult alliance #1

Part 1 - Grilling The Recruitment

I'm sure we've all seen or heard of [KISS]. They have people spamming recruitment messages in towns all over the game, surely you can't miss them. There's also a great deal of horror stories and bad press associated with them too, but is it all true? Are people just pumping up their stories for shock factor, or is there some truth to them?
So I made it a personal mission to find out why people are so attracted to this alliance, and if the stories and preconceptions are true.

Step one was to find a recruiter. Normally this wouldn't be a challenge because they seem to be everywhere at all times. However, as typical as my luck is, it took me almost an hour to find someone. I had a series of questions prepared for the chap, so I took some notes just based on this particular person's answers. Please excuse the minor paraphrasing:

Talking to: Trumpcard Ace
Are there any requirements to get in?
No.
(A lot of his answers were very, very basic, as if he didn't feel the need to give the alliance any character.)

Are there any rules to follow once you're in?
No cursing in alliance chat or vent and all of the usual sorts of things, but we're not against using ac to trade or look for groups.

How are the guilds divided, are there euro and american guilds or something like that?
No knowledge of any sort of organisation as such, some guilds are more into pvp, but not serious stuff.

Are there any kind of regular events that go on?
[KISS] birthday event every year, town sponsoring during event weekends and if someone gets things together, runs and mission help will happen.
(I also later found out that they do have weekly UW and DoA runs, but you have to sign up on their website for a place in the team. Quite frankly I find this idea difficult to justify.)

Is there a core of experienced players?
We're mostly casual players, some officers and older members do UW runs and such.

How many people do you know personally in the guild?
4-5
(Clearly this is an indication of exactly how casual the alliance is. Out of 90 members when I joined, this person only knew 4-5? That sounds quite cold to me.)

What do you personally think about KISS as a whole?
If you're looking for a guild that helps every time you need something then this might not be it -"it feels like a mini Kamadan".
(I would agree, but would sway to calling it a mini Old Ascalon.)

What would you say the main drive for the alliance is? Title grinding, faction, pvp?
Anything really...
(He had already given several hints towards the answer to this question, they don't really have any sort of major driving force at all.)


So given all of this information, I bit the bullet and joined in. Find out what I had got myself in to by reading my next two posts...

God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals

It's certainly been a long haul, but I finally finished 30 titles and maxed out the Kind of a Big Deal track.
Not having the burden of being told exactly what I need to do any more is amazing! It suddenly feels like I have more freedom to do whatever I want in the game now. I'm not sure what I intend to do yet, but I'll casually start helping out more often and finally finish the last few missions I need for all 10 legendary guardian titles.

I know for sure that I will eventually max out my Kurzick title too, but for now that is not a priority and there is certainly no rush any more. I may even guild hop a little, just to see if certain alliances are all they're cracked up to be.

Heh, expect a "guild buggery" post to come very soon...

Another title update

This post is purely to reflect on the final set of titles I've gotten, or will be getting very soon.
In the last post I talked about the new build and all the changes that have happened (if you didn't read that post, then I suggest going back and doing so - it'll explain in more detail than I will now).
However, I missed out the changes that have occurred to certain titles. Drunkard is now a completely spammable title, just like sweet tooth and party animal. This is highly typical of my luck, as I had achieved 9,999/10,000 minutes of the title the "old way" of actually sitting there in real time. I must say, I am a little bit bitter about the change, but it's for the best I think. It's a shame that it's suddenly devalued, but I don't think anyone really cares all that much by this point in Guild Wars' lifespan. There was another change, but I'll talk about that soon.

I also forgot to mention that I had bought my elite Luxon armour. I actually got it on the weekend of double Cantha faction, back a couple of blog posts ago. Again, this isn't really huge news or anything but it does develop my warrior a bit more - at least now I have a set of proper hammer mastery gear!

A few days after that weekend, I also went ahead with some other titles that were close to completion, namely vanquisher of Elona/legendary vanquisher, the cartographer title in Elona, sweet tooth and I finished off the final minute of drunkard. I was pretty glad to have left the Cliffs of Dohjok as my final zone to clear; it was a nice and easy one to finish the title with. So after all that was done I was hugely relieved, if you've done as much vanquishing as I have then you may understand how tedious the whole thing is!

With the end of my God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals title in sight, I was sitting tight at 29 titles maxed out. This left me with little choice in what to finish with - at the time, the Kurzick title was the only clear outcome. I didn't want to take forever in getting the lucky/unlucky titles, or open chests and identify items, no thanks.
Suddenly though, the survivor title was changed completely out of nowhere. Now, you only had to gain the experience without dieing (like normal) but you no longer are denied the title if you do get killed. Instead, the experience counter just resets to zero and you have to start again.
This presented me with a new contender to finish off my 30 titles! Knowing that I'd already gotten survivor once before, I decided to go ahead with it to save myself some time.

Originally I planned to attain it through FoW clears, but after 3 successful runs, I died (very slowly I might add) to a stupid sodding thing in the forest, because my healer heroes were busy discussing the outrageous prices of tea... Or something. "Oh well," I thought, "I'll just use Kilroy for it." So I have done, and as I write this post right now, I am just 5,000 experience from finishing my GWAMM. All I have to do is accept the quest reward for Khobay The Betrayer in one of the Zaishen outposts... Just try and stop me!

Embark Beach build update

I've been putting this post off for a while because I've been so busy playing around with the new stuff.
So, Embark Beach has arrived, and with it, the ability to see the status of your minions if you're a ritualist or an MM. Oh and the whole "being able to fill your team with 7 heroes" thing, that too.

I waited with great anticipation when the build was due to release, and when I logged back on, was treated to a rather messy UI. Of course that was easily fixed but multiple fixes were released over the next few days that kept returning it back to the state you can see in the picture. I know that's not news or particularly interesting, but it made me giggle a bit.

Anyway, with the new ability to make entire teams, I had to take them in to the Fissure of Woe to really have a good play with them. All in all, my first run with paragons went quite well, however lacking in damage it was. In the end I clocked in at just over a 2 hour run, which isn't terrible, but isn't exactly fast either.

Later on, after playing with builds a few times and swapping to my warrior, and after a couple of runs - I had got the timing down to 1 hour 38 minutes. Though, in a later clear I shaved another 10 minutes off of that time too. The builds shown in the pictures are really solid for the job, at least in normal mode.

I also tested the capabilities of the heroes in the Underworld. With a bit of proper flagging and a little luck, I cleared all the quests but 4 Horsemen, which was a massive pain but I couldn't see how I could have finished it with the setup that I had. It was fairly disappointing to fail after so much time down there, but as soon as I can find a team build to clear the place, I'll be right back to do just that.