more Guild Wars stuff

So instead of watching any Rozen Maiden I started up Guild Wars and finished capturing monk elites.  I'll be working through the Factions/Nightfall elites for the core classes next, before grabbing assassin/ritualist/dervish/paragon elites.  Money is literally not an issue, I make enough from drops and the occasional break from capping (say, to farm whatever item Nicholas the Traveler wants each week) to cover it.

I'll take the opportunity to fangasm about the recent unveiling of the ranger class in Guild Wars 2.  You can read all about it here, but I'll summarize in my fangasms.

Also, jump break.

Overall, it looks like the ranger class will be better in every way than in Guild Wars 1.  Rangers have always supposed to have been the intrepid explorers who are one with nature, but in GW1 they mostly played a midline role, occasionally getting to do something else when people realized that it worked, like the bunny thumper and touch ranger builds that both put the ranger in melee.  Rangers in GW2 will be able to be proficient in melee combat as well as ranged combat.  This makes a lot of sense to me, after all, when you think about reality, bows have minimum range, and what explorer doesn't have a blade or two around for cutting things?

Pets were sorely underused in GW1 and appear to have been completely revamped for GW2.  Instead of just one pet, rangers can have three.  Solving the major issue of skill bar space, each pet appears to have its own abilities.  In addition, there are different categories of pets: terrestrial, amphibious, and aquatic.  My guess is that's the precise reason for being able to have three pets, to have one of each category.  In addition, sharks are mentioned as an available aquatic pet.  FUKKEN SHARKS.  Everyone is fangasming over this one, not just me.

In addition, pet controls (which were only added to the game when Nightfall was released) have been expanded to provide a greater range of control over how your pet behaves in battle.  You get three different modes: aggressive, defensive, and passive; as well as three different commands: attack, heel, and stay.  They should be fairly self-explanatory, but are expanded upon in the article.

Traps were a fairly niche skill type in GW1; generally if you had one on your bar you had four or five and were a part of a trapping team.  Trapping revolved around laying tons of traps in one spot and then luring a bunch of enemies over them to spike them all down quickly.  Traps have been completely revamped for GW2, and as such can now trigger more than once so long as the ranger remains close by.  I imagine "close by" will be a large enough range that a ranger can set a trap and then hide somewhere, though perhaps it will depend on terrain.

The big change is that any given ranger can only set one of each type of trap.  This might be viewed as a nerf, but in general, I think it makes things more realistic.  The ranger doesn't necessarily have an infinite supply of trapping tools.

Spirits (called Nature Rituals in GW1) appear to be pretty much the same with only minor, but welcomed changes.  One of the biggest drawbacks to using them in GW1 was that they affected friend and foe alike.  This made their deployment difficult in some cases, as your party had to be able to use the effect to a greater extent than the enemies.  Spirits in GW2 appear to only affect allies (perhaps they'll be like ritualist non-attack spirits, where some affected allies only and others affected foes only), and will disappear when the ranger gets too far from them.  As always, they can be attacked and destroyed.  Only being able to have one out at a time is pretty much just like before, where if you created the same spirit a second time within range of the first, the first one would die.

Last but certainly not least, the skills.  The videos show off five skills, which encompass a pretty good range of the ranger's repertoire.  Barrage looks to be as we know and love it, if not better.  Hunter's Call adds an interesting twist to the gameplay, where you can call in birds to peck away at the enemy.  The Spread Shot video shows off an aspect of GW2's mechanics that I know I'll really enjoy: environmental effects.  The ranger starts a fire and then fires several spread shots at approaching devourers, but if you look closely, the arrows that fly through the fire catch on fire and burn the devourers.  Serpent Strike shows off the ranger's melee capabilities quite well.  Whirling Defense looks even better than its GW1 counterpart.  Rather than you activating it and it just, uh, being there, you actually see the whirling effect.

Ranger was by far my favorite class in GW1, and it looks like it'll stay that way in GW2.  The added decision of race does present a bit of a conundrum though.  What sorts of racial bonuses will be provided from each, and how will they be balanced?  Will there ever be any reason to make a human character?  I hope so.  I want all races to be usable for all classes, so that I can play around with it and see what works best for me.

Sylvari seems like the obvious choice for a ranger, being that the Sylvari are a race borne from a single tree and are one with nature, like rangers are supposed to be.  Norn, on the other hand, have their shapeshifting abilities that could work very well alongside a pet.  Charr rangers, while nothing is obvious, I can relate to GW1 experience and note that they were formidable.  Asura honestly seems more like a caster race, being that they're a race of highly intelligent creatures that deal primarily with magic.  As for humans?  Well, I played one in GW1...  To be precise, I played ten of them.  One of each class.  Humans are generally reserved as the "no bonuses, no penalties" race, but here's to hoping that they won't be completely useless.