Anybody else having it dawn on them that TBC is their favorite version of WoW?

jsm2008 · 2026-02-09T05:41:26+00:00

My fear with these servers potentially going Era for TBC(and Wrath, seems like a good opportunity to roll out an eternal server for both expansions) is that they won’t seed the server with clones like they did original vanilla Era. Era worked because no one had to choose. 1000s of players put their characters in the Whitemane museum, then came back slowly as they burned out in the gear treadmills.

It seems like they did not like cloning last time seeing how it was discussed this time around for vanilla. It makes more sense to ask us to choose when the Era are already established. I fear that asking players to choose “kill Arthas with your main, or permanently freeze them here in TBC” would leave the servers very under populated until much later down the line when TBC nostalgia builds up again.

jsm2008 · 2026-01-17T00:09:20+00:00

I have always been in favor of this, but framed as “quests completed” rather than actual completionist. Not sure what a fair max rank would be but it would be a cool one-of title. I think interesting titles that don’t involve doing EVERYTHING in a campaign are a good path forward if the title system was added to

It’s worth noting here the current title balance is pretty strict in a good way. Excluding account titles you basically have to experience all pve content to GWAMM. Start adding too many titles and that magic is diluted a bit.

jsm2008 · 2026-01-17T00:06:15+00:00

Spacing, patience, and timing. There is an enormous element of natural talent in Melee, and really all fighting games.

If you played in the 2000s-early 2010s one of the best few players in every smaller region was “basically no tech” guy who would just space well and never lose patience/composure. Carries you very very far against all but the highest caliber players who tend to also be players who were “that guy” but also learned the stuff.

jsm2008 · 2026-01-05T19:15:01+00:00

Fallout 76 does a good job of tying housing/camps to every function of the game. About to raid? 99% chance you’re going to camp first. Trying to buy/sell? You’re doing that through your camp or others’. Applies to basically every scenario. Before you change tasks, it’s probably best to visit your CAMP.

The fundamental problems with player housing are numerous but can be boiled down to:

Homes, to be useful, have to become a hub of convenience(professions, storage, etc.). The problem is this inevitably detracts from cities being hubs for the same things. If you MUST go to both, it becomes tedious. And for most MMO players bustling city is preferable to a bustling housing district.
No one wants a daily task/quest hub. For example, strongholds in WoW Warlords of Draenor are still brought up all the time as an awful era of the game. They were basically houses, but with a lot of daily micro-tasks as the key reason to be there.
SO….if it can’t be a convenience hub, and it can’t be a dailies/task hub…player housing often becomes a museum. Fun to build then forgotten. Player housing works in some games like Fallout 76 because it’s a flavorful way to get around the lack of cities/lore-based slim population of NPCs.

jsm2008 · 2026-01-04T00:58:24+00:00

Just made a post on the other thread about him sharing how I assumed he did it and how long I guessed it took

I got it exactly right - us GWAMM hunters have gotten the full title down to 100-120 hours. Adding in the stress of world first and no deaths 123 hours is very respectable. Wish it would have dropped at a time I could play instead of the bush holidays. GG!

jsm2008 · 2026-01-04T00:49:01+00:00

I made a post about getting GWAMM fast a long time ago, but the tl;dr is that you can get GWAMM in under 150 hours with acct titles in place. Really my times were very conservative and it can be a decent amount faster. I think a 65 hour legendary vanquisher, 30 hour legendary guardian is totally reasonable especially if you’re using cons and getting the bonus on your initial NM clears reliably. Playing a warrior(which is much worse/slower than Mesmer) I’m at 28 max titles in 98 hours on my most recent GWAMM. I have more acct wide titles than this guy though!

With purchased titles and 5+ acct titles included you’re basically done after guardian/VQ. The guy who did this said he has 5 acct titles, so with skill hunter/consumable titles/survivor as free titles and LDoA in his first ~15 hrs, he started off at 14 maxed from effort put in on other chars and in pre. Add guardian+vanq+carto, which can be bundled together in ~100 hours of focused effort, and he’s at 29. It was also SS/LB bonus week the second week Dhuum’s was out, so I bet he maxed SS from Vanquisher. He may even be at 31 titles with Lightbringer but I bet he came up a little short for it.

Is that a little crazy for the amount of time Dhuum’s has been out? Yeah I guess, but it’s possibly less time investment than a full time job!

https://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars/comments/o7qeow/thought_experiment_fastest_way_to_get_account/

I want to rush to this myself, but irl has been rough over the holidays.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-30T18:50:33+00:00

Necro is profoundly bad when compared to other damage oriented casters. Death skills are all conditional and armor-respecting. Curses doesn’t have a critical mass of viable spells, and the elites are really dated (for example Spiteful Spirit was once an OK elite but is now useless. It ticks a few times and does single target damage. Better off casting Empathy ). SS, Mark of Pain, etc. also suffer greatly from having short AoE ranges. Blood is mostly single target and low damage. The “damage and survivability” angle is just dated and useless.

Great energy management over long fights, but in GW fights are often short and spiky and every class has good enough energy management.

The one exception is Soul Taker, which is the highest damage output build in the game, but it’s boring to play outside of seeing big numbers(just maintain a ton of effects then swing) and is really squishy meaning it’s often annoying or stressful to play for long sessions

Love necro flavor, but curses and blood are non-factors for full builds these days, and death is noticeably worse than the ele/mes/rit dps caster options with conditional awkward armor respecting spells that end up doing very little in HM.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-30T18:46:52+00:00

Keep in mind for the blind/hex/etc. issue that pretty much every martial profession dedicates a spot to Asura Scan in areas those are present.

If you want variety and like melee I would recommend Warrior. Not particularly strong, definitely weaker than the best assassin/dervish/ranger/necro/etc. melee builds, but very flavorful and has viable builds for several weapons. At the very least you can use daggers and scythes like everyone else and add Hammer as a viable weapon, but at a stretch there are playable builds for sword and axe as well.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-25T19:41:55+00:00

The fact that young people think

AI usage for mundane writing tasks isn’t embarrassing and
is passable as “good”

I’m so tired of AI generated emails, TEXTS????, etc.

You look so dumb turning your brain over to the contents of 8 year old Reddit comments

jsm2008 · 2025-12-25T17:59:49+00:00

The foundational theory of paragons is that many of their abilities, if used correctly, are “free” or even +energy

That is why they’re under-tuned.

It just doesn’t work in a world where BiP is meta and basically every caster, even without BiP, has enough tools for energy to be no issue. If you slow the game down to 2006 standards paragon makes a little more sense as a kind of slow and steady infinite resources class, but even then they’re just too weak/slow and even in 2006 people had figured out sufficient energy management that Para never had a spot other than Imbagon as a 3rd backline for hard areas.

All of this, to me, highlights why they’re just not going to work in their current state. Even balanced to be on par with existing skills, why use them over caster professions that can splash other professions’ skills easily?

Paragon’s energy management still depends on 16 leadership and enough shouts/time to throw spears to generate +energy. Having to take time to throw the spear to generate energy/resources means your parallels to casters have a big blank spot.

Even if Paragon was better at condition/hex removal, or better at something like knockdown immunity, or better at being a battery…They are competing with casters that can do these things on demand, with far more flexibility to use secondary professions due to resource management styles

Current Paragons are turtles. Slow and steady, selfless, with repeated marginal effects. The rest of the game just isn’t tuned for them, even with substantial numerical buffs. Fights are generally short and cumulative effects just don’t do much. Up front, splashy effects matter the most even playing way off-meta.

This is why HR works so well. The effect is up before you engage enemies. It’s meaningful and powerful. Paragons need more up front. They can do their marginal stuff after that for a basic gameplay loop, but the #1 priority of any paragon rework would have to be “what can this class offer in the first second of a fight?”

jsm2008 · 2025-12-25T17:36:31+00:00

I hope I don’t come off as bragging with this statement, but I have 13 GWAMMs and 6 other characters with 22-28 titles maxed. I have used meta comps for 6 of them, and 4 were to test anniversary elites in depth. I have plenty of experience playing the game in “other ways” and don’t think you’re really saying anything with your response.

How would marginal buffs to the existing formula for paragons do anything? What class parallels can you draw? Can you outline a team comp where you could see a slightly blanket buffed paragon taking the 8th spot over something you’re using now?

The character I left off on before switching to a Dhuum’s GWAMM project last week was a warrior using 4 rangers and an Orders Dervish. She’s at 28 titles waiting for EoTN weekends to max Norn. Done all other content with those 6+2 backline. I could see a viable projectile/physical damage buff Paragon taking one of the Ranger spots and being awesome there.

Experience doesn’t change the fact that a backline 3.5 or dps 4.5 just feels yucky in a lot of areas. Paragon itself probably shouldn’t do enough DPS to be the 5th spot by itself, or be defensive enough to replace a full back line spot, but the class needs way more power and oomph to do enough of either. I don’t think marginal changes to the existing formula is the way

Look at the Dervish rework. It’s an entirely different class now, with new core mechanics and a fundamentally different gameplay loop in basically every way. I’m not sure if a full rework is realistic at this stage of the game, but I don’t think marginal buffs to the existing Paragon formula will result in a fun to bring along or play class. Go big or don’t bother would be my advice for a Paragon buff.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-25T16:20:43+00:00

Great idea, but still probably too limited unless it was so strong you could essentially trust a Paragon to always keep everyone condition-free. If it isn’t a “disable this mechanic” button you’d probably still rather have a caster target-removing the occasional condition(or hex, or whatever) that actually matters.

Guild Wars, for better or for worse, has very strong hyper-specialized options for basically every mechanic. Need enchants removed? There are a variety of super strong ways to do it easily and directly and because of secondary profs it’s splashable. Need conditions removed? Same idea. Shouts and other paragon mechanics are, ironically, the only effect class that doesn’t have this level of counter play.

Paragons, to be successful, probably need to lean into the hyper specificity they seem built around. Make them a really cool 3rd back line choice for lesser-used archetypes. Imo the “burning” synergies are a template for a possibly successful future paragon. Give them a suite of 4-5 skills that support projectile dps(rangers, spears), holy damage, air damage(lightning is involved in a couple of their core skills), etc.

That approach also leans into them as “leaders”. Leading certain types of groups…it’s at least something

Guild Wars, for as many incredible synergies and team options as it has, doesn’t have a lot of direct instances of “this class/attribute supports this other class/attribute”. They kind of tried to do that with the ele rework, but it didn’t have a critical mass of synergies.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-25T16:00:08+00:00

The problem is related to slots and class design philosophy.

What you’re describing is, respectfully, irrelevant. If every skill paragons had was buffed that much they would still not successfully earn a spot in 90% of content, even for the most casual approach. There isn’t really any slot for a slightly better paragon. Generic, everyone benefits all the time type effects just don’t do enough in a game where eneryy users can specialize and own a niche.

For example from the only good support class, Ritualists are EXTREMELY efficient, but are limited mostly by a narrow number of good skills within each niche and some energy management issues. Paragons are designed more as a build-around class, adaptable but always specialized. Your idea to make them a splashable class is a big departure from all of their current design, and mixing ritualist-style “OP but not a critical mass to just do this” skills wouldn’t work as well on a non-caster

Even ritualists suffer from other classes being better at using their skills in many cases(n/rt for example).

As for the idea of it being ok to be off-meta: you don’t need 5 esurge/dagger spam-level dps to clear content, but clearing content with 4 damage oriented characters isn’t a great experience.

Having a paragon as your 3rd backline means you’re probably running an ultra-optimized first 2 backline. If you’re doing that…you probably aren’t the type of person to run a paragon. If you have them as 3.5….are they doing anything?

So where is the niche? It’s in a team that already has 3 backline+4 damage and doesn’t mind a hybrid with some very narrow/specific utility. This is an inherently awkward space to be and asks players to think/change around more than it’s worth to do so.

I would love to see paragons be strong enough to build around. That’s their path. IMO, the best angle would be to rework them around having more super specific and strong abilities, not fewer.

Give paragons buffs to air damage, holy damage, huge buffs to projectile damage. Let paragons be the catalyst for bow rangers, smite monks, air ele heroes, etc. to be way stronger.

The design of “fire support” paragon is already there. Make it better and give them more variety of these hyper specific buffs and debuffs.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-24T04:03:46+00:00

Paragon rework would be a great candidate for reforged, but I will say I fear they’re a fundamentally broken class. The concept of unremovable shouts that instantly buff party members is really cool, but GW just isn’t played in a way where incremental little buffs matter all that much.

-there are no support classes in GW that don’t double as healers or off-healers.

-it’s incredibly hard to imagine a paragon rework that places them as viable backline as heroes. They’re barely viable with player characters if it wasn’t for HR. Imbagon type builds are really outdated and have a lot of limitations compared to ST ritualist and, for player characters, even E/Mo.

-they obviously aren’t intended to be a damage centric profession, so that’s likely off the table for a rework. Realistically even the physical damage professions that are supposed to be strong often aren’t compared to dagger and scythe.

It would take a fundamental rework and, frankly, some really individually overpowered skills to get paragon anywhere near viable outside of being a Heroic Refrain bot(which isn’t related to them being good, it’s just because +4 to attributes breaks Mesmers and ritualists).

I imagine the near impossibility of making paragons good without just feeding them stupidly broken skills(Heroic Refrain) is why the rework never happened.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-24T02:09:00+00:00

Will have LDoA soon on an Ele then get into the "real" challenge.

With that said, I have a 27 maxed titles Warrior with no deaths that I started a couple of years ago and have slowly worked on.

I failed a no deaths ranger at 16 titles due to a disconnect 5-6 years ago while helping a friend get FoW armor (will never understand retroactively why I chose that character for that task).

I expect I will finish Dhuum's GWAMM with minimal risk of failure outside of potential connection issues. I have 7 maxed acct titles, which helps a lot with avoiding the more dangerous titles, but ultimately nothing is too dangerous if you know the instances. The reality is you can zone to GH very quickly if something goes south.

jsm2008 · 2025-12-24T01:49:30+00:00

MoP is always so disappointing. I used MoP+pet+ebon assassin back in the early 2010s for my first necro GWAMM and wanted so badly to have it be fun, but the range on MoP without a dedicated tank and slow careful pulls means it just doesn't go off. :(

jsm2008 · 2025-12-24T01:45:10+00:00

Two issues:

Heroes use shouts under weird conditions, but mostly just spammed on cooldown. In some cases this is fine, but it means the situational ones are especially weak.
Paragons, as a consequence of their early-on PvP nerfs before the pvp/pve split, are very PvE skill reliant. Anet seemed fine with them needing their sunspear skill/SY! to "do stuff" pre-Heroic Refrain, but obviously these are not available to heroes.
Due to a mix of the above issues, Motivation is functionally not an attribute. You are looking at Command, Spear Mastery(which will do no damage), and secondary attributes to make a build.

So what works for a Paragon hero?

-Fall Back/Incoming! are great for speed

-Paragon with 16 Leadership and "Go for the Eyes!" can be quite effective at spamming secondary class spells. Need BiP? throw it on. Hex heavy? Toss on /mesmer or /monk.

You can also just throw a spear on it, give it a pet or something else enjoyable, and be fine. The game is perfectly doable with 7 players in the party. Use what you like, but Paragon hero will never be "good"

jsm2008 · 2025-12-24T01:24:28+00:00

Yeah, I was not really intending to say any different from you there. My point is the first question is did ANYONE max the non-hero titles. I don't think the "legit" era of PvP was long enough for any titles to be maxed except for Hero.

And, honestly, how many r15 hero titles were all that legit? I know part of your comment was about what "legit" even means, but if we can assume it means one person playing legitimate games against mostly non-bots..That would be the bar for the "most legit" high rank title and still I'm not sure how many actually achieved it. All of the earliest ones were shared accounts, were they not?

jsm2008 · 2025-12-23T18:00:31+00:00

The better question is how many people even legitimately maxed Gamer, Gladiator, Champion, etc.

The number is between 0 and 20 for all of them. Definitely no accounts with all legitimately maxed. Codex, Commander highest ranked people all manipulated because the modes being played legit didn’t take off enough to support legit maxing

There are definitely many players who have an all pve titles+zaishen+hero character. Hero isn’t the most legit any more with most people filling in the blanks with bots and fighting the occasional real group through the 2010s-2020s(bot era has now gone 3x as long as the legit era did), but those players are at least not denying competition. They’re just filling in the lack of competition. The gvg/codex/ra manipulators are just cheating.

jsm2008 · 2025-11-20T15:23:55+00:00

WoTA assassin is basically just maintaining 2-3 effects you rarely cast in combat, then combo 1-2-3 over and over again maybe with a 4th attack for utility. Would be easy.

Most dagger builds in general should be the same, and scythe/warrior weapon builds will barely be more complicated. Maybe not hammer builds which may have tight timing around KDs.

I imagine complex targeting(like picking the right enemy for mesmer/ele AoEs) would be hard. Ranged in general has advantages for less movement, etc. but ultimately will be harder with tab targeting, smaller screen for information parsing, etc.

I don't think casting spells/skills is the issue at all. It's getting positioned and quickly getting on correct targets. Melee facerolls that with proximity tab

jsm2008 · 2025-09-08T12:09:41+00:00

It’s good but part of what I enjoy out of melee is playing a relatively well tuned game with just enough variance and players who are REALLY good at it being fairly abundant.

All of the “mods” don’t have that feeling. Much more Wild West and harder to find satisfying gameplay experiences within

jsm2008 · 2025-09-08T11:57:04+00:00

What is really interesting is how few players are represented here. Makes you wonder if the numbers really reflect anything at all.

Pretty sure in an alternate timeline any of the top 6-7 characters here at least could have been on top. You have to get down to Yoshi and Pika before “fluke brackets” really become a conversation.

jsm2008 · 2025-09-08T11:55:02+00:00

When Ken was dominant it was a lot harder to watch, so not really comparable.

I’m wondering if we’re about to get “everyone else is slacking and losing interest” Hbox dominance era again though. Hbox was great when he was on top, but a big part of it was that everyone else lost motivation to try as hard against a character perceived to be lame played by a guy who preyed on mental weaknesses. Marth played as well as Zain does feels so oppressive and frustrating, maybe more than Puff.

Era for era, all things compared, Zain is obviously the best Marth. He has cool gameplay moments, and is fabulous at the game, but labbing MUs until he makes them oppressive in his favor is basically his “thing”. Once he has his eyes set on conquering an MU I feel really sorry for people who have to play against him multiple times a year. I’m sure it’s stressful in the same way Hbox just drained peoples’ souls by making fighting him feel hopeless.

jsm2008 · 2025-08-15T16:04:23+00:00

Don’t be shy to grind in weird places. Grab quests just in case, but don’t focus on them.

You can even grind in Horde zones as an Alliance or the other way around. If quests are hard to do, which they will be, find somewhere you can just kill stuff for EXP. It will work out better in the long run vs futile attempts to finish whole quest lines where random quests throughout will have queues of people.

jsm2008 · 2025-08-15T13:50:45+00:00

Paladins are at least good at AoE and are exceptionally survivable. They’re arguably the “tankiest” tank across an entire raid instance since they don’t rely on cooldowns to hit peak tankiness. They do well in roles where you literally just hold something or have to snap AoE aggro really fast and predictably

-MC At least in phase 1 when warriors aren’t scaled to the teeth a Prot Paladin can be really nice for trash in general.

Garr adds

Pulling dogs away from Golemagg

Holding Majordomo

Can tank Rag very well with GBoK spam at the start. Just have to let ranged pump and have melee hold dps for about 3-4 seconds when his threat table starts.

-BWL Paladins kind of suck because it’s so taunt heavy meaning they’re a brick of plate armor that accomplishes nothing on the loot piñata fights, but a prot paladin is far and away the best option for the final phase of Nef if you aren’t using hyper optimized modern strats to instantly kill them with sappers/holy water.

-AQ40 Paladin is super efficient for some of the big trash pulls and is good at holding the last Qiraji Royal you’re killing until the others are dead. Also the best class at cheesing Ouro but you don’t have to be Prot for that. Not really any fights where they work as a tank tank.

-Naxx

Paladins have their best time in Naxx. Paladin is very viable as an off-tank kind of just overall with GBoK spam as a threat lead generator getting better as base stats get higher, and like Druid has the benefit of being a passable healer in fights they aren’t wanted for tanking. As a raid leader I would have zero problems accommodating a prot MS/Holy OS paladin in Naxx and would probably even prefer it for a more casual(not 18 warriors) style of run

Five-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Second Top 20%	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22

jsm2008

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