Guildwars. Hunt. Kill Skuls. (Part the Two)

Hurray, my Me/N just become "Weh no Su", the Canthan term for ascended. Except that...after that, I realised that I have still 2/3 of the main story left to do. Meanwhile I'm racking up pages of sidequests. Out of curiosity, I decided to try out a different secondary, so now I am Me/E. I mostly run with a full Mesmer skill bar anyway, with supplementary skills from curses when fighting the "Zergrush" type of mobs.

I think my newbie mistake was to mistake Elementalists as just pure nukey mages (aka the blasters of CoH). Turned out they have some interesting utility skills. In addition, once I get some gold I can pick up some skills to make an echo nuker (albeit a weaker version since my elementalist skills will be capped at 12) and actually get into teams. Either way I feel like I am a lot more survivable. For some reason, when I am playing solo with henchmen, the game AI always picks me as the priority target, even if I hide around corners and order my warrior henchmen to rush in first.

But then, I always attack the mob mesmers and necromancers first. With enough burst damage, even the mob monks can't save them. After that, the monks die. I assume the computer is trying to do the same to me. :P

Except that it seems most people I see in the game seem to believe there are four types of professions in the game. The tank, the monk, the nuker, and the minion master (this one is new). Also, the monk needs to be a healing monk, and the nuker a fire elementalist. It's true that you really need monks in guildwars though. I personally think the monk henchmen are pretty good. The computer never makes mistakes, and it has instant reaction.

So there I was, standing around moping by at the entrance of the mission area and rearranging my skillbar. I'd tried to solo the mission a few times with just henchmen, but kept failing at the final boss. In my last try, the last henchman killed the boss the very same moment as she died, and that didn't count as a victory. I was pretty sure that if I kept trying I'd eventually manage but I was pretty sick of doing the same thing again and again. Meanwhile, lines of "GLF monks / tanks" and "GLF MM" or "GLF nuker" scroll by. Suddenly, group invites me. 5/8 ... ok let's try.

(Sidetrack: I like how the GW team invite just lists a bunch of people at your teambar instead of creating some horrendous popup like in CoH. It feels ok for people to just ask me if I want to team that way because I don't get some popup in the middle of my screen I have to click away.)

A team with a mix warriors, elementalists, and necromancers. Duh. I was puzzled, why did they even invite me? Then they picked up someone else and grabbed two monk henchmen. No standing around whining "GLF monks" nonstop. They actually had some kind of strategy and really ripped through the mission with minimal deaths.

Anyway, back to the game itself. One thing I'm rather disatisfied with is the high cost of living. Even crafting some armor bankrupts me. I managed to pick up a bunch of purple items but I don't feel like broadcasting to the world hoping to sell them off. Happily, someone gave me two free green mesmer weapons so the weapon side is settled.

I'm thinking of joining a guild. It gets pretty boring just soloing. But there isn't a directory and something about the weird broadcasts of "XX guild recruiting YYY stats 100 members" puts me off. Attempts to get my CoH supergroup to play with me have failed:P