Living off the Land

[Lurker Wyrm]

This may be somewhat late, but um... here it is. ANet has released the list of heroes that will be in Nightfall, which can be seen on this page. It looks as though the roster is going to include a bunch of warriors, rangers, elementalists, monks, a dervish and mesmer, and a question mark (from the outfit, my guess would be necro). Well, anyways, I thought that would be relevant to this for the days when we're not at full capacity (which, if the other variants are any indication, will be fairly often).

Also, at the moment, I'm up in the air about what I'm going to do with the extra character slot. I've been planning to make an elementalist, but lately I've been thinking that I might have more fun with a mesmer. Well, I suppose I can figure it out after Nightfall is released. In the meantime though, I think I'll be using my Paragon for the variant.

And yes, this post had the double purpose of reminding people that Nightfall is only a week away and the variant starts in 2 weeks since Halloween might not be the most ideal time to start something.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Post on Guru by Gaile about learning skills. The part of it that's important for us is this:

NPCs can teach skills to your character and your Heroes without requiring a skill point or any gold. You will be able to earn these Hero skills by gaining ranks in the Sunspear title and the Lightbringer title, and once learned, these skills are known by your character and unlocked for your entire account.

Well, there you have it. If you can get skills via these people without buying them from a trainer then, for the moment, there's no need to allow you to buy skills from a trainer. Of course, we'll have to see whether you can get enough skills to fill out a useful bar, but I would imagine you will be able to.

There's more information on heroes in the Guild Wars Insider, which has been posted on the site and you can find here. A neat feature is the ability to unlock different armor sets for your heroes, but that seems only cosmetic and it didn't say whether you'll be able to give your heroes non-standard bonuses (i.e. have Koss use Gladiator's armor). It also mentions giving heroes pets, but doesn't say whether those pets will be permanent or solely for that instance. Well, whatever. The biggest change that I'm happy to see is the ability to disable skills on the hero bar. Now we can put a res on the healer and not have to worry about the AI using a 6-8 second res in the middle of combat when it should be healing (finally).

[Zed-F]

Looks good. I'll probably bring a dervish for my character, since my monk is well-advanced by now. I like that the sunspear & lightbringer points will help us with skill unlocks. Since they are intended for new characters to the game to help unlock many skills for heroes, hopefully there will be enough of them to be useful.

I will be buying Xunlai access; though that's not on your list of only buying ID/salvage kits, that shouldn't pose a problem, given the restriction on removing stuff from the stash.

I wonder whether it will be possible to get elite skills from hero skill NPCs? My first guess would be no, which might leave us shafted for elites. (Excepting, of course, if we buy some cap sigs for use when we are not playing the variant.)

[Hawkmoon]

I am up in the air over whether to bring a dervish or a paragon for my LoL character - any preference from you guys? Or I guess I could start a ranger, since I haven't played that class hardly at all. Or whatever. Let me know what you think would be most useful for our small team. Just not a warrior or monk - already have those well advanced.

My reading of the "heroes and pets" comments was that they would be permanent, showing up whenever the hero had Charm Animal on their skill bar. I hope that's the case; it would be ridiculous if you had to go out and find a new pet each time!

[Lurker Wyrm]

My reading of the "heroes and pets" comments was that they would be permanent, showing up whenever the hero had Charm Animal on their skill bar. I hope that's the case; it would be ridiculous if you had to go out and find a new pet each time!

Well, that's what I would guess too, but during the preview event they weren't permanent so I dunno.

any preference from you guys?

Mesmer! Seriously, though, whatever you want.

edit: I'll post something on the ZoS forums either this weekend or Mon/Tues of next week; I think that'll be enough time.

[WarBlade]

I am up in the air over whether to bring a dervish or a paragon for my LoL character - any preference from you guys?

Play what you want to play.

Paragon: Hang back in the middle of the fight and go attack, defence or area support (or a combination of the above). I tend to find that Paragon's are survivors - When the group falls the Paragon is high on the list of potential lone survivors to break aggro and rez the team.

Dervish: Point blank AoE with self enchants, this class plays a whole lot like an Elementalist with self support buffs and melee range nuking.

Which of those two would appeal most to you? 8)

[Lurker Wyrm]

(Excepting, of course, if we buy some cap sigs for use when we are not playing the variant.)

Well, if Nightfall follows suit with Prophecies and Factions, we'll get 2 skill caps from quests, which should be enough (really, you can beat the PvE game without using elites at all).

I've talked with Jude from ZoS and Aravis from KKoP and both have said they'd like to give this a try. I was planning to wait until after Nightfall came out to post this on the ZoS forums, but if people think it'll be a good idea to get it posted before (so people don't use up their character slots) then I suppose I can do that. Yes, I'm a procrastinator. You guys should have figured that out by now.

I think there's a question that need to be raised, now that I think about it, which is: what should we do about heroes? Considering some of the press releases about heroes lately, I have a lot of reservations about using them since they're easy replacements for players and, if we're not careful, we could wind up using them too much. My opinion is that only the monk heroes should be allowed to come along, and then only if we don't have any monks on the team.

[Zed-F]

My vote would be, if we don't have enough warm bodies for the zone we are in, by all means use heroes. But heroes should never take the place of real players, if real players are available. Nudists died because people left GW for one reason or another partway through the game. Player churn is inevitable; there will be times when we haven't got the player base we would like to have. Heroes are as good a way to address this as any, and can always be replaced if/when additional warm bodies join the team.

At least we don't have any issues with hero gear; since we supply everything they use, and their armour is always level-appropriate, the usual LoL restrictions can be applied equally to heroes as to PCs.

[WarBlade]

I think there's a question that need to be raised, now that I think about it, which is: what should we do about heroes?

-snip-

My opinion is that only the monk heroes should be allowed to come along, and then only if we don't have any monks on the team.

The World Preview Event showed you already that this is not an option.

[Hawkmoon]

I've talked with Jude from ZoS and Aravis from KKoP and both have said they'd like to give this a try.

Yay!!!!! Both Jude and Aravis are cooooooool. I've enjoyed playing with them a lot; I'm excited that they want to get in on this.

I was planning to wait until after Nightfall came out to post this on the ZoS forums, but if people think it'll be a good idea to get it posted before (so people don't use up their character slots) then I suppose I can do that.

Go ahead and post, if you haven't already. It would be a blast if we could get a representative from each allied guild.

I think I'm going to make my LoL character a Dervish. I didn't play that class at all during the WPE, so this will give me the perfect excuse to try it!

About the Heroes, I don't understand WB's comment about not being able to just bring the monk hero, when available.

I tend to agree with Zed's take on it - if we need them to fill slots, by all means use them. But real people are ALWAYS preferred. I don't see any problem with having "guests" for a session, so long as they'll stick by the LoL rules while they're playing with us.