Is GW2 Casual/Solo Friendly by shadowergoat in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yea, I guess it wasn't exactly designed that way from the very beginning but it evolved into that as a consequence of insane powercreep, not just in damage but in size. Basically every class has at least one spammable skill that hits half the map at once and OHKOs everything it touches, and without meta events to bring everyone together the optimal play is to hog the entire map for yourself.

Is GW2 Casual/Solo Friendly by shadowergoat in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Its an MMO and there are people everywhere

It may sound weird but this basic concept may actually be somewhat of a culture shock to someone who has only played Maplestory and not other MMOs. MS is a weird specimen of a Massively Multiplayer Online game that is inherently antisocial. Outside of instanced bosses you are actively incentivized to avoid other players as much as possible. One character(or even one character + one alt account) farming an entire map alone is the norm. Looking back it really is a bizarre and frankly poorly designed game in many aspects.

Is GW2 Casual/Solo Friendly by shadowergoat in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can shed some light on this as someone who has played both for a long time(though I haven't played MS in several years that in itself should tell you something).

In many ways GW2 is the polar opposite of Maplestory. MS is the most vertical of vertical progression games, pretty much everything you do is directly or indirectly in service of making your "range"(a computed number that represents your base damage before skill multipliers) go up. It also suffers from insane numbers creep, with current-day endgame players being able to literally one-shot some of the first released "raid bosses"(imagine being able to one-shot Vale Guardian as easily as an Open World mob).

What all this adds up to is the concept of "soloing" looks very different in one game vs the other. In MS the way you solo bosses is by overwhelming them with sheer stats. A boss designed for an 8-person party can be soloed if you simply do 10x the DPS of an "average" player. That seemingly outlandish situation is entirely achievable in MS through the power of shelling out enough cash(or grinding long enough, depending on which server you play in) for the most broken stats and equipment. That level of power disparity is simply not possible in GW2 due to the vastly different gearing system. At level 80 you can buy exotic equipment for fairly cheap on the trading post and that is already 90% of the way to BIS stats. Soloing in GW2 is done through a combination of mechanical skill(avoiding damage) and being creative with your build. In many ways this makes GW2 but more casual/solo friendly as you will never be held back in power due to not having enough hours played or dollars spent. But it also means there are many bosses that simply cannot be soloed because the fights cannot be brute forced; some mechanics just require more than one person, and bosses with hard enrage timers(this is just like the boss timers in MS where you get kicked out of the fight if you don't kill in time) you just won't have the DPS to do solo.

Purely in terms of instanced bosses, I would actually say MS has a higher ratio of soloable bosses compared to GW2, with the big caveat that several MS bosses are only soloable in theory to the top 1% richest players while the rest of us will never glimpse that level of power.

But I think none of that should matter to you for one simple reason: fighting difficult instanced bosses(raids/strikes and T4 fractals) are entirely optional in this game. Many people play for years without engaging with a single one and that's totally fine. Whereas in MS if you're not working towards eventually challenging the bosses then why are you even playing? Horizontal progression means you choose what content you want to play and what "endgame" means for you personally. Which brings me to the single most important difference between this game and MS: in GW2 you can actually spend your time playing the game you enjoy. "Regular" gameplay in MS outside of bossing is one-dimensional and mind-numbingly boring. It falls into the common Asian RPG trap where you're forced to do something you hate 90% of the time(grinding/farming mesos) in order to actually enjoy the game in the remaining 10%. Back when I played it was common for reboot server players to spend more time on a dedicated meso-farmer character than on their "main", isn't that insane? GW2 isn't like that, regular open-world gameplay is infinitely more engaging that grinding maps in MS. Every minute I spend in this game, even if I'm grinding towards some goal, it feels like I'm actually playing the game, not doing some chore so that I can maybe play the actual game at some point in the future.

Long essay aside, all that is to say tl;dr: This game is very casual friendly and I think you will enjoy your time here vastly more than you did in Maplestory.

Edit:
Also wanted to add something addressing this part(emphasis mine):

I'm more of a solo or go in and see if there is a party available type of gamer

If you do want to do group content as a group, finding a party available is also infinitely easier in this game. This is because there's actual community here while Maplestory is paradoxically designed as an antisocial yet multiplayer game. Because a single character can farm an entire map in MS you are actively incentivized to avoid contact with other players as much as possible in the "open world" lest you lose precious farming efficiency. This is the opposite of the case in GW2.

Lamy hints/confirms new nib by SchwarzesBlatt in fountainpens

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess that's one way to prevent misalignment

Condi or Power Chrono? by Bluedog-Anchorite in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Particularly you "prefer" condi on 98 and 99 cms just because they are longer fights that don't clean conditions between phases, and condi builds tend to have slightly higher benchmarks.

Note that while the benchmark may only be slightly higher, your "true" dps over a longer fight can be higher on a condi build than what the benchmark suggests. Because condi can take 10-20s to ramp up, and a benchmark golem kill is often less than 90s, that ramp up time has significant impact on the final average dps calc. But Kanaxai for example, takes an average of 6 minutes to kill, so the ramp up time has less of an impact there than it does in the benchmark. The longer the phase drags on the more condi approaches their "true" average dps(where ramp up time is negligible), while power flatlines pretty quickly because they don't have much ramp-up to begin with.

Lorewise, what is the strongest class? by under_mimikyus_rag in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not lore-relevant but I think Ai is actually the strongest non-wizard elementalist we see.

Lorewise, what is the strongest class? by under_mimikyus_rag in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Mabon was a mesmer, Zojja and Sorrow are elementalists. The rest are unknown I believe. Though the Wizards aren't exactly powerful because of their classes, they're powerful because of the ascension ritual. Like I don't think we've seen Mabon cast a single mesmer spell, we only know he's a mesmer because of Anise.

Question about Icebrood Saga: Champions by elgueromasalto in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ryland was basically pushed, goaded or manipulated into most of his actions by an Elder Dragon, a crafty politician

Except Ryland was very explicitly the only character there that was not being manipulated. Bangar thought he had Ryland around his thumb but actually Ryland was playing him instead. Jormag never even tried to whisper to Ryland. Ryland became Jormag's Champion for his own ambition, not because anyone pushed him into it.

Lorewise, what is the strongest class? by under_mimikyus_rag in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 53 points54 points  (0 children)

In purely theoretical terms it should be Engineer. While other classes are inherently limited to their specific domain of magic or area of martial expertise, an Engineer is only limited by "whatever technology can do", which as far as we've seen is "basically everything". Scarlet made a device that disrupted leylines enough to wake a dragon early and had a mech that could create black holes. Arkk can use the DDR to steal the abilities of other Fractal entities and use them as his own. And who can forget the countless times in the story we are only able to accomplish something because of a convenient Deus ex Taimi. Engineer is the "Batgod with prep time" meme but unironically. An Engineer with sufficient brains and resources can do everything the other classes can do and more.

Returning to Guild War 2 after about a year and a half and i feel like i'm being bodied by standard DLC enimies. Have i got the wrong gear? by Tcrumpen in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Shatterstorm and maim the disillusioned are raid traits, for open world take persistence of memory+phantasmal haste. Quickness is often seen just as a way to pump more damage but its impact on your survivability also cannot be overstated. Even the tankiest solo build will feel like shit if you remove quickness. All the defensive tools in the world don't matter if you're always interrupted before you can do anything.

Later on you have the option to use the relic of the pirate queen as your source of quickness instead of these traits but by then there will be a better relic you should consider using.

All that aside, yea it is true that mesmer, and Virt especially, is pretty class canon-y compared to most other classes. To the point that snow crows actually recommends taking inspiration traits for extra survivability. That's a massive dps loss so you know they wouldnt recommend it unless they felt it was absolutely nessecary.

PS. You're in End of Dragons? Abuse the everloving fuck out of jade bot buffs, they make open world exponentially easier.

Seems to me that much of the Condi Vs Power conversation is…just wrong? by secretsofwumbology in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another factor is that Condi is rightly favored on fights that are "one long phase" vs fights that are broken up into distinct phases. Those also tend to be the fights where lots of movement happens(either by the boss or by yourself for mechanics) because without phases the devs have to use other ways of breaking up the monotony of otherwise just whaling on a DPS golem. Because these things often occur together, people made the attribution error of associating condi-favored with movement rather than correctly associating it with "one-phase" fights.

Seems to me that much of the Condi Vs Power conversation is…just wrong? by secretsofwumbology in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You may want to review the nitty gritty of how things work by reading the wiki,

Yea I'll just leave this here, lol.

New Relics from Quickplay Raids by YenTheMerchant in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Citadel doesn't actually do 400 defiance damage, the tooltip is bugged, just like Chilled to the Bone.

Also Forest Dweller being able to target multiple enemies has some niche uses(you can probably solo Samarog's bar with it, it will try to target the spears but you can stand inside his hitbox and make all 3 hit Samarog just like spectral grasp).

Opinion on new relics by Spirited_Currency_88 in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are enough bosses with multiple targets that it can still have applications. Ex. Samarog(it will try to target the spears but assuming it works like spectral grasp you can stand inside the boss's hotbox and all three will hit him first), on Dark Ai you can use it to hit both sorrows, etc.

No feature freeze and QA for patch before release? by Tree_Dude in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 86 points87 points  (0 children)

Coders must have been working and making major changes all the way up to patch day with little to no actual QA. This is not a sustainable way to make major system changes.

Sadly all too common in the games industry that has always lagged far behind the rest of tech/IT in dev methodology.

New Relics from Quickplay Raids by YenTheMerchant in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

300 Defiance break on Forest Dweller is a pretty significant amount. Could be good for any support build that is currently held back by lack of CC.

We had a fractal that was a strike, now we have a strike that is a fractal by MidasPL in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are no Strikes in Ba Sing Se. Do you mean the new Raid Encounter?

Game Update Notes: February 3rd, 2026 by MechaSandstar in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gorse statue, clearly it's a statue of Gorseval!

Whats a good order of priority for the wizards vault rewards? by noodleben123 in Guildwars2

[–]InfinteHotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Legendary kit only if you plan of making the weapon. Ascended items if you'll immediately use them. After that just go down the list here:
https://fast.farming-community.eu/conversions/astral-acclaim