User:Racthoh/PlayingGuildWars

Development as a Player
A personal look into what I feel helped me develop as I played Guild Wars for those three or so years. Involved in the Community: While really it goes without saying there will be things you're completely unaware of it if you never compare yourself to the insight that others have. Thinking back I can immediately recall suggesting using Infuse Health with Dark Aura, theorycrafting possible uses for Dwayna's Light, and complaining that I wasn't respected for having Obsidian Armor. Getting the stupid slapped out of anyone is going to help in the long run, it goes without question. Personal demons aren't the only benefit of being involved with the community though, the resources are another biggie. How many people have actually confirmed the attack rates of each weapon? The energy restored from each pip of energy regeneration? The benefits of various equipment modifiers? There are always arguments you've probably never considered. Playing a Paragon: Yes they were full of design flaws but there has always been something strangely satisfying about playing the Paragon class. There's something about being an invisible target to the AI that gives you an entirely different perspective on combat. When I played Warrior I would frequently get tunnel vision, completely obliviously to the fact that most of the party has died while I triumphantly killed my target. A side effect of soloing so much no doubt. As monk it took a while to get my eyes off the health bars and onto the field, at least to the point where I was performing better than if I were solely staring at the party window. My attention always heavily favored watching the bars. As Paragon though, none of that seems to matter much. It's probably a similar position to any midline character I would imagine where the burden of responsibility shifts significantly. I'm not suggesting midline roles require less attention just the way they view combat is. As Paragon I never panic. I can watch the field, check my skills, check the party's condition. There was never that urgency associated with playing a Warrior or Monk. Unfortunately I never found myself able to transfer that relaxed state over to my other two primaries however. The main reason I played Paragon so heavily before stopping methinks. Signet of Devotion: This goes along with the Paragon thing. Way back in the Boon Prot days Signet of Devotion was a skill you could run without being laughed at. Although I ran Aegis on mine so people probably laughed at that. The thing was what I liked about Signet of Devotion was the field awareness it granted. Being a 2 second free cast you were allowed to cancel it midway through without much penalty aside from the healing not coming. During that time I could do anything, much like the Paragon. I could cancel the cast if I saw a target in need of prot. I could check for interrupts coming my way, hexes about to land on a target. Whenever I played monk after the build was killed I felt naked without Signet of Devotion. I always felt like if I wasn't doing anything besides kiting or wanding that I wasn't putting my prot to use or red barring enough. Signet of Devotion was two seconds every five seconds or so that allowed me to gather my bearings and think. With the pace the game eventually turned into, from a PvE perspective anyway, there became no time for that sort of play. 16 Tactics: AKA, the bar I first used to solo those aatxes and smites. Killing griffins, trolls, and grawls at the time was all well and good but with every other profession handily soloing farming ectos with Protective Spirit or trapping there was nothing for the Warriors. However what was intriguing was not so much that I got something working but rather others who couldn't get the bar to work. Very few were capable of taking the same eight skills as I and producing the same results. It was an extremely satisfying feeling... in a selfish sort of way. The development of the build however was what initially lead me to discover how easy you could make PvE once you approached it differently from other games. It wasn't about what was the best, it was about what would be best for the situation ahead. While there will always be builds that work universally well there will generally always be something better, something tailor made for the task at hand. When I'm asked what build I use I always find it hard to respond because for all I know that person is having trouble with something that my particular build won't help them with, and they'll simply become frustrated when it won't work when I say it works for me. Authority Position in a Guild: As I play World of Warcraft now, eagerly awaiting for my subscription to expire I know for certain that my approach to leadership in Guild Wars would fail miserably in other MMO games. I find myself enjoying a game more when I can play with something who has a good personality rather than someone who I have to tolerate because they fill the necessary role. Being the guy on top allows you to play the game the way you want to which allows you to approach things the way you want. If I say the group composition will work then people will stick it out. I know that sounds rather cocky but when a doubtful person is proven wrong you get the satisfaction of knowing you just had a break through with a narrow minded thinker. They will adapt your way of thinking, granted that can be a bad thing in some cases. But, one also has to take into account the history behind my particular case. The number of guilds founded off a lonely farmer with cape envy can't be many. Anyway what I see now when looking at recruitment threads are generic 'what professions do you play' questions and it puzzles me. If you're a good player who knows how to approach PvE you shouldn't need specific professions to get a job done, you should be able to get creative with the resources available nowadays to get anything done with just about any composition. Sadly the world we live in today revolves around speed clearing so the game has become more demanding than before. PvP: It does. It can be hard to get into, it really can, I was lucky enough to have some exceptional PvP experiences with a number of quality players but even without those people the knowledge taken from the various formats and observer mode helped dearly. PvP players have an attitude, well so do PvE players. At the end of the day though the PvE player is more concerned about getting a job done while the PvP player is more concerned about you becoming a better player. Getting the job done in PvE varies from time to time so what you learn from reaching a particular goal won't necessarily help on future outings. I'm not really sure if there is a good way to put it, but the bottom line is some PvP will do you good provided you have the spine to take some criticism. There's probably more but there became less and less to develop as the game went on so it's harder to remember what made the biggest impacts when trying to think about the older days.