Elite Skill Titles

Since I got Protector of Elona a while back, I've been sitting at nine titles for a while now.  Getting ten titles will make the Rainbow Phoenix spawn in my Hall of Monuments.  So it came down to which title I could get the fastest.  I tried speedbooking, which would work, but is kind of cumbersome, having to constantly re-obtain the necessary quests.  But then I looked at my Ranger's skill list and realized I had been at one point trying to get the elite skill titles on him.  So I'm progressing fairly rapidly towards Tyrian Elite Skill Hunter at this point.

For the uninformed, elite skills in Guild Wars are powerful skills that can't be learned from a skill trainer.  Their icons have gold borders, and you can only have one of them on your skill bar at any given time.  To get an elite skill, you must buy a special skill called Signet of Capture from a skill trainer.  This skill is unique in that it's the only one you can ever have multiple copies of in your skill list and on your skill bar.  Once you have your Signet of Capture, you need to track down the boss that has the elite skill you want, kill them, and use the signet.  Then a dialog pops up and you can select from the boss' skills which one you want to learn.

Anyway, my previous progress was admittedly very small.  I have all the Ranger elites (because I have all the Ranger skills in the game), but I had maybe four Monk elites and one Necromancer elite, and none for any other class.

That has changed now.  Before I got organized and decided to knock off Tyrian Elite Skill Hunter first, I was just going through the list of Monk elite skills by attribute and mapping around the game getting them, ignoring which continent they were on.  As a result of that initial disorganization, I have most of the Monk elites now.  Then I got organized, shortly after I facepalmed and realized that you only need 90 skills for the Tyrian title, whereas the other campaigns have more.  So I switched and got the remaining Tyrian Monk elites I didn't have and moved on to Necromancer, where I now have all of the Tyrian Necromancer elites.  Next up is Warrior.

I've prepared to capture all the Warrior elites, and to demonstrate what that preparation entails (and show my progress so far), I bring you a screenshot.

Right in the middle of all those titles is the Tyrian Skill Hunter title track.  I'm exactly halfway done, at 45 of 90 elite skills.  The other continents' title tracks have more progress than I've actually put in effort for because some of the elites in Tyria are classified as Core elites, which means they're available in all continents and count towards all three title tracks.

Next time I log on I'll go grab as many of the 16 Warrior elites in Tyria as I can.

This sounds like it costs a lot of money, and even though skill trainers start out charging low prices and gradually ramping up, the effective cost of the vast majority of the capture signets is 1000 gold (1 platinum in-game).  So after a certain point, you basically need 1 platinum for every skill you want, meaning the Tyria title alone costs 90 platinum.  However, this matters not because as you work your way to each boss so you can kill them and get their skill, you get money and drops that you can sell for money.  I started out on the Monk elites with 25 platinum in my storage, and since then I've captured over 30 elites and bought the 16 capture signets you see in the above screenshot.  So in other words, money isn't an issue.  Getting to some of the bosses is harder than getting enough money for more capture signets.