Goofin’ off in Guild Wars

What I really appreciate about Guild Wars is that it consistently delivers a instantly gratifying visceral experience of ass-whooping. In the PvE side of things, it couldn’t be easier to grab a quest, fill up your party with friends, henchmen, or heroes (henchmen you can level and load-out), and follow the green arrows to wherever you’re supposed to smite, while smiting everything along the way.

PvP is even easier. The game is by no means deep (though more crunch-minded folk than myself can make a career out of min-maxing their characters’ stats and skill loadouts for maximum tactical excellence). But when you just need to go cleave monsters in twain RIGHT NOW it delivers.

I’ve got a sword and a sheild and several skills that use them to deadly effect. I mash the skill that lets me sprint up to an enemy before it can use it’s tricksey magicks against me. I’ve got a bash and slash skill that hits hard and quick. A wicked slashing attack that opens a bleeding wound and a crippling final attack that will exploit the wound for massive terminal damage.

Here is a silly little video of my main character, only level 8 out of 20, and a squad of npcs tearing carnage across the lush countryside. [VIDEO HERE (eventually)]

Shadow Form Farming

Last weekend I spent my gaming time getting a freshly squeezed Assassin straight out of the Canthan academy to farming level.  It was actually kind of fun because I had not started any new character for quite some time.  The journey to get her up to speed was rougher than I thought because I could not remember what would be required to journey into the elite area: The Underworld.

The reason it was so profitable (and fun) to make her was the buff to the skill Shadow Form a few weeks ago.  Shadow Form is a very interesting elite skill that makes you immune to any direct attacks for half a minute.  It is an enchantment though, and enchantments are one of the easiest skill types to increase their duration with items.  On top of that the build uses the Glyph of Swiftness and Deadly Paradox to reduce the Shadow Form so that it the buff can be kept up indefinitely.  The build is rounded up with some damaging skills that mostly just burn enemies, and the Dash skill to break monster aggro as necessary.  A more detailed explanation can be found here.

There are two reasons to farm the Underworld: 1.  It is an elite area, and therefore theorized that the loot tables are better.   2.  There are globs of ectoplasm (ectos) that can almost only be found coming from the Underworld, and these are probably the best tradable item in terms of salability and worth.

My run through the Chaos Planes was great.  I went slowly both running there and rounding up the mobs to kill, mostly because I wasn’t familiar with the farm run, but it was great fun.  I made pretty decent loot, and even got a Passage Scroll to the Underworld, which saves me the 1000 gold entrance fee for next time.

ArenaNet has stated that they are watching the “high efficiency” farming utility of Shadow Form, and it is possible that this build won’t last much longer.  However, I had a blast with it, and it was a refreshing experience to play quickly through the aging game with a serious goal in mind.