Guild Wars ramblings

So, after getting Signet of Spirits on my rit and setting up a spirit spammer build on her, which was really the entire reason I made her, I've set up a spirit spammer on my ranger now.

It's not that spirit spamming doesn't work on a primary rit or anything.  It works beautifully.  The issue is unlocked areas of the game.  My rit has very few, whereas my ranger has been everywhere.  I'd been kind of skirting around that issue for a while when farming items for Nick, but this week's item is deep in Factions, and much further into the campaign than I've gotten my ritualist.  It just wasn't feasible to get her there.

So, as I said, I've set up my ranger with a spirit spammer build now.  It's kind of weird to be playing a ranger while using only rit skills.  The ranger's primary attribute, Expertise, works beautifully with the build since it reduces the energy cost of all the binding rituals.  Now if only Expertise could be reverted back to its original functionality so it would reduce the cost of all non-Spells, so Armor of Unfeeling would be reduced as well.

Now that I've done this, there's two things that can happen a lot more quickly and efficiently.  First, I have one more elite skill title left (the Elonian one), and second, I really need to finish War in Kryta so the Kryta zones will revert to their previous spawns.

For the skill title, I need money.  Each Signet of Capture is 1k at a skill trainer (this cost starts lower and gradually increases, maxing out at 1k), and I have 85 skills left to cap (140 total, minus the 55 I already have).  After having done some farming earlier this morning, I'm sitting at about 77k, which is pretty much in the threshold where I'll make the rest of the required money as I go along.  The farming I did, after the farming for Nick, was to get the materials necessary to craft several Powerstones of Courage, which are a consumable item that's basically a reset button.

Seriously.  It removes all death penalty for all party members, then gives all party members a 10% morale boost.  This is precisely what I need for the War in Kryta.  If it's going to be cheap with its spawns and enemy skill sets, I'm going to be cheap with my tactics.  The only real problem is the materials required for a single Powerstone of Courage.  I need Granite, which is balls easy to get (HM Hulking Stone Elementals cough up enough of it to go into the countertop business), and Glittering Dust, which is more difficult.  I don't know of a single enemy that has Glittering Dust as its primary material drop.  I've been farming undead, which do drop it, but their primary material drop is Bones.  Glittering Dust is almost easier to get by salvaging it from things like Luminous Stones and Spider Webs.  The only reason I stick with the undead is because they're low level, thus, the farm is easier.

And yes, a spirit spammer can solo farm pretty much anywhere in the game.  I'm preparing to take my ranger into the Underworld so I can get the sole remaining pet he doesn't have in his menagerie: the Black Widow.  You can just barely fit Charm Animal into the build, so theoretically it should work.

Lots of people have tons more money in-game than I have, but... I've been spending money like fucking crazy, so I haven't really had the opportunity to stockpile it.  Once I'm done with the elite skill titles, the only money titles remaining are Drunkard, Party Animal, and Sweet Tooth, which I haven't actually invested any money into yet.

I'm feeling a little more optimistic about vanquishing areas on Hard Mode now.  I just vanquished Plains of Jarin with no trouble.  While yes, it is a 4-man area, the same tactics I used are applicable to real areas.  Also, maybe now I can go back and grab Eastern Frontier and do more work on vanquishing in Tyria.  Since I last tried it, I've gotten way more skills, and developed a lot better tactics for HM, so hopefully I'll be able to get somewhere instead of stalemating on the first group of Grawl.  I'll hold off on doing the remaining Kryta areas until I've done the rest of the War in Kryta, but I can hit everywhere else.

Seriously, why didn't they make an easier toggle for that than having to finish an almost impossible series of quests?  I can make progress with Frozen Soil in my build, but I hate that I have to bring it to get anywhere.  I still need one of the ritualist skills that kills an allied spirit (preferably nonelite, I like running burnpoison).  If all else fails, Summon Spirits can get it out of the way.

Once I have my Powerstones, I'm going to use a tactic I found on the GuildWiki article for A Little Help From Above, which makes the quest a bit easier but requires a death.  Once you get the key you need to get, the road you had to pave to get to the enemy is now populated with hidden White Mantle groups that pop up as you approach them.  This can be avoided entirely by exploiting how resurrection works.  The only res shrine in the zone is in the safe area where Livia, Zinn, and Blimm are, which is precisely where you need to go after getting the key.  So, after getting the key, go suicide on the first White Mantle pop, res back in safety, pop a Powerstone, and continue with the quest.  Like I said before, since the whole quest line is so cheap, there's no reason to not be cheap right back at it.

Sometimes I think game designers believe that challenge should be instilled through added tediousness.  If they believed otherwise, the groups here wouldn't be as follows:

• All are higher level than the party, which affects the damage equation in their favor
• All groups are at least 10 enemies in size
• A good portion of the enemies have resurrection skills (as much as I exaggerate it, it's not every single one.  It's more in the range of 30-40%)
• The enemies' profession combinations and general builds are not predictable based on their name, unlike everywhere else in the entire game.
• They're balanced for groups of 8 humans, but the area is only accessible from an area which is balanced for a group of 6.  The only way to get a group of 8 there is to start from Temple of the Ages.
• The Temple of the Ages henchmen are level 15 and are thus little more than a liability, which is no doubt contributing to my frustration.  If they can force them to level 20 with better skill sets in Hard Mode, why can't they do the same here?
• Getting a decent party of 8 humans is very difficult these days.  Most people either go by themselves with three heroes and four henchmen, or with another human and six heroes.

I had a whole rant in here about pulling enemies that I extracted and turned into an article in my userspace on GuildWiki. Thank me for this, as this post would have been much longer with it present.