More Guild Wars here! I seem to be settling into the few specific titles a lot lately. I don't know what's come over me - I'm probably ill or something. I'm sure the wheel of interest will turn again soon; most likely around the Revelations 3 'Trinity' update for EVE Online, I expect. Until then, its on with Eye of the North.
Having accidentally stumbled on yet another world-threatening Terror From Beyond Space/The Deeps/Hell/The Past, this time in the form of the fiery subterranean 'Destroyers', we've now found ourselves among new friends and an odd company indeed. A Dwarf and Asura and a Mesmer walk into a Monument Hall... Ogden, Vekk and Gwen have each put forward a plan to help defend against the coming monstrous apocalypse, and we've decided to start with Ogden's. His big plan is to rally the indigenous Giantfolk, the Norns, into a very traditional army of the old school, most likely to face the Destroyers across a smoky plain, with trumpets, banners and all that jazz. To this effect, we're now exploring the Far Shiverpeaks in an effort to meet, befriend and enlist these somewhat intractable and fiercely independent warriors, starting with Jora.
Its all a bit confusing actually. EoN seems to have dispensed with the time-honoured GW method of putting twenty or so big 'Mission' areas on the world map, with varying levels of successful completion, and instead, seems to hang everything together with a new 'Hero Journal' inventory item book, which seems to do more or less exactly what I'm doing here - retrospectively write up each 'chapter' in the ongoing story. I can retire and finally devote my time to that train-spotting blog I've always wanted!
The progress through the story now seems almost entirely quest-log based, rather than linking together a series of large set-piece missions. Not sure how I feel about it all, to be honest. I was quite used to the old way, but you still get little markers added to the map as you go, which is good enough, I guess. You also still get the ongoing cut-scene driven story too, which is the important bit.
Jora is a young norn with an embarassing social problem, in that, gasp, she can't turn into a bear! This marks her out as a bit of a failure in Norn society, and to regain her honour and status, she has a Quest of her own. When we stumble on her, she is in pursuit of the 'Nornbear', a terrible beast and a worthy prey for the Norn huntress. Given that this is a race of people who can turn into bears, I already had strong suspicions at this point. We offered to help, to break the ice a bit, but she is proud and doesn't want any. We followed along, and across several zones, a number of new towns and outposts, and a few run-ins with the Nornbear itself, eventually joined forces with Jora and chased the bear to a cursed lake, learning the awful truth along the way; the Nornbear is in fact Jora's brother! The same curse that is stopping her from achieving true, er... Beargasm, is making him a ravening bear monster all the time. Her quest, in a suitably hardy and brutal barbarian way, is not to save him, but kill him. Rightoh!
The final showdown, and the first 'mission' I guess, saw us seeking out a wolf blessing, in order to beat the bear. This blessing takes the form of a new kind of shapechange skill, which when used, swaps your current skillbar for an entirely different 'Wolf' set. All a bit confusing, to be honest, and I could do without my skill bar suddenly changing into a completely different and previously unseen one in the middle of a hectic fight, thank you! Clearly, these will take a bit of getting used to, but a potentially useful way to entirely change fighting 'mode' in difficult or unexpected circumstances.
With our new vulpine powers, we literally sniffed out the Nornbear, and ended the curse...permanently. It is the Norn Way, or something. Jora, now convinced that we softy southerners can be trusted and such forth, then signed up as a Hero, and helped us track down and recruit a number of other Norns to the cause, and in doing so, we also got to see 'Bear' and 'Raven' shapechange skills too, each of which seems useful but for different situations. More study needed!
Much to Ogden's dismay however, there is no such thing as a Norn Army. While it may be true that 'No man is an island', it seems every Norn, very much is. The few giants we have met will, individually, have a crack at the Destroyers, on the basis that 'they're quite good sport', but Ogden is going to have to find a Plan B. The Norn do help him get word to the rest of his people however, far to the south, and shortly after the raven messenger is sent out, we rendezvous with King Jalis Ironhamer, of Thunderhead Keep (Mission) fame, and his own army of stout mountainfolk. This seems a good enough Plan B for Ogden, and this brings his branch of the early story to a close, for the time being.
We next need to help Vekk get in touch with his people, the Asuras, and find out some useful knowledge, or help Gwen find the rest of the Ebon Vanguard, the human contingent in the North, currently lost in Charr lands.
Meanwhile, the mysterious scrying pool in the Hall of Monuments shows us ever more worrying portents, of fire and flame and monsters...
I don't know if its the less formalised pacing of the thing, without the Missions looming every five hours or so, but the whole thing seems a lot more easy-going than the previous campaigns, with lots of meandering and working on faction points, side questing and missions, some of which are even true solo affairs, or my own more proactive experimenting with skillbars. Simple gawking tourism too; the Norn mountain valleys we've seen so far are quite majestic, and much more open and epic sorts of vistas than we've seen so far. I do find myself missing the big missions though; the build up, the struggle, the triumph...
A different kind of pace, and by the looks of things, there ought to be a lot to do in EoN after the story itself is finished; Dwarven Brawling, Norn Tournaments, strange extra title track skills, dungeons to explore and more. Its a bit different, in general, but I'm liking it well enough so far.
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Its fun with Conditions today! Conditions are a kind of status effect, shown by the lil brown downward arrow on the health bar and come in a variety of unhelpful effects, from damage over time, like Bleeding, Burning or Poison, to debuffs, like Blinded, Dazed or Crippled. They come from a wide variety of sources, and most professions get a number of skills to choose from that cause some of them on the enemy. Piling up a number of these on a target can make like extremely difficult for them, and indeed, even kill them outright if they go on for long enough.
The Incubation of Malady
Mesmer/Ranger
Inspiration; 12, Wilderness Survival; 12, Marksmanship; whatever is left.
Equipment: A decent Max Damage Bow. Look for 'Lengthens Poison Duration' if you can find it, and '+ Marksmanship' is helpful too. It may be necessary to juggle the skill points into Marksmanship to meet any skill requirement on it. Major or Superior Inspiration Rune and Masque.
Requires Skills From: Nightfall (#1, #5, #6), Eye of the North (#4)
As with most good build design, start with an interesting sounding Elite skill, and work from there. In this case, its Extend Conditions (#6), a simple, cheap and fast spell which makes any conditions on the target last X% longer (81% at Insp 12). The effectiveness of this depends a lot on the source of the Condition and the Condition itself - most Burning is quite quick, whereas Crippled can last ages. A bit of a waste of an Elite for just the one instance of 'Bleeding', so we combine it with Hypochondria (#5), and Epidemic (#7). This turns our target into an incubator for all the Conditions in play nearby.
Use Hypochondria, which will copy all the Conditions on all enemies nearby, to the target, including remaining durations. Then use Extend on the target, in most cases almost doubling the remaining durations for ALL the various Conditions you managed to harvest onto the incubator enemy. Then, use Epidemic to disperse these newly extended durations back to ALL the adjacent foes. Try to aim this little combo on the densest cluster of enemies. 'Nearby' is quite generous, but 'Adjacent' isn't. Then as the target foe falls, switch to another near to him, and continue to work the cycle; gather, extend, spread, until the entire cluster of mobs has variously been bled, poisoned, crippled, burnt, dazed, diseased, cracked, weakened and deep-wounded to death! Actual damage at this stage is nice, but a bonus!
Note that although the descriptions of Hypochondria and Epidemic say 'transfer', they actually copy, leaving the old Condition still on the source enemy. Also, Extend will apply the duration extension to the remaining duration on an enemy, and can be done several times to the same instance of the Condition. All three skills activate fast, recharge fast and cost little energy, letting you keep some of the longer Conditions going indefinitely, in effect, and easily up to the point of death.
The second half of the build, is mostly about causing some actual Conditions yourself. The Mesmer skillset is more about Hexes than Conditions, so there aren't a huge amount of things there to do this job well, but many other Secondaries are good at these. I went with Mesmer/Ranger in the end, for Pestilence (#1), although Mesmer/Necromancer might be a good alternative for this kind of thing. A Ranger/Mesmer could do just as well at this build, losing a little effectiveness on the purple skills, but gaining on the green ones, via the different runes used. Go with Wilderness Survival Mask and Runes for that. Neither Fast Casting, or Expertise are used, and the bow is mostly just used for adding an extra Condition into the mix at the start of the engagement.
Pestilence is a bit of a gamble, like most Ranger Spirits (Nature Rituals), as it affects everyone, friend or foe, indiscriminately. This one works a lot like a version of Epidemic, spreading conditions to everyone around a creature, when it dies. Use judgement wether placing it will help or hinder on a per-fight basis. We tried this with Mandragors, an already very poison-heavy type of monster, and combined with my incubator antics, managed to completely overwhelm our monks with far too much (extended) poison at one point, causing a wipe! It worked well against Minotaurs and Centuars though. Make sure all the Monks have at least one Condition Removal skill each, if using this skill a lot.
I did initially try Traps (With Mantra of Concentration to avoid interrupts) with this build; a good source of a variety of Conditions, but the problems of actual placement during hectic furballs made them awkward to use well, so I switched those out for a Bow, and Apply Poison (#3) and Poison Tip Signet (#4) two skills which broadly do the same thing; make my arrow shots cause the Poisoned Condition on hit. My real work here though, is keeping the incubation going (#5, #6 ,#7, and repeat), and its best to leave extra Condition causing to others; Heroes or other players.
In particular, Melee Professions (Warrior/Dervish/Assassin) can be easily set up for Bleeding/Deep Wound/Crippled combinations, and Necromancers can do much with Poison and Disease. Paragons and Elementalists can help with Burning and Blindness. Have a word with the team beforehand and make sure everyone is contributing at least one interesting and awkward Condition causing skill - the more the merrier, as done right, ALL the enemies end up with ALL the conditions in play, for most of the time!
Drain Enchantment (#2) is my concession to energy management and self-healing. Power Tap or Ether Feast could work well here too, but DE does both, although does need enemy enchantments to feed off. Signet of Capture (#8), well...I still don't have all the Elites yet! This can be replaced with a further condition skill; Throw Dirt perhaps. Fragility and Fevered Dreams are also similar related and relevant skills that might be worth experimenting with in the above lineup.
Start by optionally placing Pestilence (#1), then Apply Poison (#3). Open fire and let the enemy clump scatter as normal. The melee section will clump up on one ally, (usually our Necromancer for some reason!) Switch bow fire to one of these, who will be the incubator, but do not call it (Ctrl-Space). - the longer this chap lives, the better. By this time, your allies will have landed a few extra conditions on the enemies around the target, along with your own poison on a few. Begin stepping through; Hypochondria, Extend Conditions, Epidemic, and repeat. Continue this until the target is dead, then switch to one next to it, and cycle further. It takes a little while to get going, but soon snowballs into a quite horrific monster-knackering cloud of misfortune.
For lone enemies, simply go with Extend on its own, keeping any Bleed or Poison going indefinitely. Use Drain Enchantment where needed, although you draw surprisingly little aggro with this sinister and subtle approach, and a Mesmer's energy regen is easily up to stepping through the three 5-pt skills needed. Once its down to stragglers, switch to the poison bow attacks and help mop up! Good for confusing healers too, as it splits their attention between actual healing, and Condition cleanup, and in any event, spreads the misery over a large number of different victims.
On the downsides, the build has troubles with the 'No Flesh' brigade; golems, djinn, rock monsters, Engravings, and the like. Poison and Bleeding don't work on these, and those two Conditions in particular are important for actual damage. Worse still, are those types combined with anti-magic; Spell Breaker, Vow of Silence, etc. One dungeon, on the way to meet Jallis, was full of Djinn Dervishes, and all I could do about those was halfheartedly plink away with my sub-par bow attacks. Annoying. Mind you, GW is clever like that; with most builds, you'll always find something out there that can throw a spanner in your works, leaving the rest of your team to carry you over that tricky little bit.
Its also quite a spatially aware build, due to the short range of Epidemic, requiring you to swap targets and be flexible, focusing the incubation cycle on the densest group of enemies for the best effect - usually the enemy melee front line cluster. I doubt its a lot of use in PvP either, where people rarely oblige you by all standing still quite close together while you bomb them with AoE effects! Mostly though, it does lack the satisfaction of a big-hitting raw damage output build, making it difficult to gauge one's own effectiveness. Mind you, keeping upwards of six centaurs poisoned, bleeding, crippled and deep wounded for the entirety of most encounters did give me an enormous sense of smug superiority, which at the end of the day, is what Mesmering is all about!