Guild Wars 2

[Ard]

It unlocks them for PVP, but as a consequence of that it means they're unlocked for heroes as well, who only care if an ability is unlocked on the account somewhere, not if the particular character you have the hero hanging out with knows it. It won't unlock it for your characters themselves for PVE.

So for example, unlock Elite Skill #1 on character A, and character B won't know it - but all of the heroes belonging to BOTH characters will be able to use it.

Holy crap, I didn't know that.  I was going to end up doing this the hard way.  That'll make doing a cookie cutter hero farming build so much easier.

[Nevermore]

Ah, I gotcha.  I keep thinking 'heroes' means your characters, not the heroic henchmen.  Yeah, from my limited exposure to heroes I remember it's actually much easier to unlock skills and make builds for them that it is to do so for your actual characters.

[Lantyssa]

Very much so.  Does unlocking Heroes themselves make them available for PvE?  It'd be an easy way to get one or two more heroes for armor so I can get companion unlocks.

[Ingmar]

No, I think that just unlocks them for hero battles, and I don't think those actually exist anymore?

[Zetor]

You can also unlock skills for your [pve!] heroes by buying the skills from the Balthazar vendor. I used to do this before the hall of monuments stuff came out -- now I'm spending all of my balthazar points on zaishen keys.  

Getting elite skills for all heroes on your account is as easy as capping it on a single character: check wiki for skill location, log on character with access to said location (of course you need basically every campaign finished for this among all of your chars) switch secondary class appropriately, buy/equip capture signet, kill boss, capture skill, profit. As a bonus, one of the most popular/overpowered hero team builds (Discordway) uses the same elite for all 3 heroes (caveat: you need 3 necro heroes, which means doing about 1/2 to 2/3 of Nightfall and about 1/2 of EOTN).

[Lantyssa]

I thought that's what they were talking about?

[Zetor]

Yeah, but I think they were talking about buying an unlock pack ($20-ish per campaign iirc?); I was talking about buying skills individually ingame with Balth points (when you can't unlock them otherwise because you don't have a character who finished a particular campaign, etc). For a hero build like discordway you don't really need too many hero skills... just capping that one elite and getting the other (common) skills either from trainers or Balth faction should set you up for PvE dominance.

[Ard]

No, Ingmar was talking about using Balthazar points, which I totally didn't know you could do.  I thought it only applied to pvp heroes.  I wanted to put together a Sabway or Discordway team, but I'm missing some of the key skills, and am inherently lazy and didn't want to have to go capture them all.

edit:  okay, I was wrong and misread what Ingmar was saying, my bad.

[Ingmar]

No, Ingmar was talking about using Balthazar points, which I totally didn't know you could do.  I thought it only applied to pvp heroes.  I wanted to put together a Sabway or Discordway team, but I'm missing some of the key skills, and am inherently lazy and didn't want to have to go capture them all.

I was talking about the PVP unlock packs rather than the Balthazar points, but they all work the same way.

[Ginaz]

Is it just me, or does it seem like theres and awful lot of people schilling for this on gaming sites? 

[Lantyssa]

I don't visit other sites to know.  As it's the first game to seemingly offer a significant leap forward I am not surprised.

Whether it can truly accomplish this we'll see, but I haven't heard any negatives from the live demos they've had and so far and they are also saying the right things.

[UnSub]

Is it just me, or does it seem like theres and awful lot of people schilling for this on gaming sites? 

There are quite a few who are promoting GW2 as The New Jesus.

It will, of course, turn out to be just like The Old Jesus, but with more RMT.

[KallDrexx]

If Old Jesus is Guild Wars 1, then that's fine with me. 

[Tarami]

It will, of course, turn out to be just like The Old Jesus, but with more RMT.

So it's the expected Jewish Messiah?

[DLRiley]

The mmo industry needs a savior 

[Chenghiz]

If Old Jesus is Guild Wars 1, then that's fine with me.  

With jumping. New Jumping Jesus!

[Paelos]

If Old Jesus is Guild Wars 1, then that's fine with me.  

With jumping. New Jumping Jesus!

Jesus frowns on your jumping. It's not easy in sandals.

[Lantyssa]

Snowy-white modern Christian interpretation of Jesus can't jump.  My New Jumping Jesus gets lots of air!

[FatuousTwat]

[Outlawedprod]

Info on Guardian coming soon.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/showpost.php?p=518576&postcount=140

[LK]

It's the shiny new, the fact it's different and *works*. The limited exposure I had to the game was fantastic, but it was just that: limited exposure. No idea how it would hold up over hours or days. But I want to see more.

[Lantyssa]

Newest class is released:  The Guardian

I haven't read it yet, so impressions to follow.

[Paelos]

Newest class is released:  The Guardian

I haven't read it yet, so impressions to follow.

My impression? Paladin tank.

[kildorn]

skimmed, but I liked the idea of passive skills on your bar (does X if you haven't use it, permanently, or disable the passive for 30s to do Y)

The line that mobs can't cross thing seemed odd and situationally bullshit. Overall, just made me want a gw2 beta already.

[Typhon]

I'm kinda disappointed, actually.  I was hoping to not see any of the trinity besides hybrids that could DPS.  I could be reading it wrong though, because it seems to read like the guardian can invest an ally with his/her tanking ability - which doesn't actually remove the role (so I'm still a bit disappointed).  I was hoping for fluid combat where mitigation was handled via positioning (via snares/jumps) and cc.

[Lantyssa]

It should allow for both.  Both the Warrior and Guardian videos had them moving about.  If tanking means hold the mob still so your friend can set up a combo, it's not a bad thing.

It's only bad if tanking means I stand here letting the mob wails on me while everyone else stands still and throws whatever they have at it.  From all the videos we've seen though, movement seems to be a part of the game.

[Ashamanchill]

Dammit! I don't want to move I'm lazy! Although with only six(?) buttons to push maybe moving around and giving the old rotation a go wont be as bad.

[Lantyssa]

Well, since you can use environmental and spell effects to change the affects of the attacks you do have, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Ashamanchill]

Oh don't worry about me, I was just being melodramatic. Plus, depending on the classes they realease, or how one can 'spec' them, I was actually mulling making this game a rare exception and not being a tank.

[Ingmar]

Playing as melee was generally crappy in GW so I will probably shy away from it myself.

[Mattemeo]

Playing as melee was generally crappy in GW so I will probably shy away from it myself.

Dervish changed all of that for me. Apart from some chronic snare issues at lower levels, it just feels so much more fluid in combat than any other melee oriented class.

As for the Guardian, it looks very much like a Paladin with bells on. Actually reminded me most of 'Good' specced Dante from Dante's Inferno, lots of glowy blue Jesus Disc action.
Loved the videos, if not for the flash bang whizz but more for seeing the friendly old GW foes in shiny new form, Grawls, Drakes etc. Looking very, very good. Still believe art department may be wizards.

[Nevermore]

I just dislike playing melee in GW because it seems like I'm constantly having to chase around stuff just to hit it.  Interestingly, it seems that this Guardian class would be less annoying in that respect since there seems to be all kinds of blue fireballs and shit you can shoot off at ranged targets.

[pxib]

The Dervish changed how I thought about things like enchantments and cooldowns. A number of dervish enchantments worked in three parts: Immediate effect at cast-time, sustained effect during enchantment, effect when enchantment expires. Plus they had abilities which depended upon having a certain number of enchantments up (or which scaled by number of sustained enchantments) and others that would gain effects by removing enchantments, which also (usually) triggered the expiration effects of those enchantments.

A lot of depth in small packages.

The passive-effect-you-temporarily-cancel-for-an-instant-effect that they listed in Guardians sounds like exactly that sort of creativity. They really are the MtG of MMOs. I continue to look forward to exploring the classes more than I look forward to exploring the world.

[DLRiley]

Newest class is released:  The Guardian

I haven't read it yet, so impressions to follow.

Looks like it plays like a bloody paragon. So going to get nerfed.

[Fordel]

The Dervish was the WoW Paladin Judgment system, 'done right' as they say.