Magi

Soki, on 16 March 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

I love it most when I can skip the irrelevant and fluff content and get to the meat of the instances. Why on earth would I want to clear through 15 minutes of trash mobs when I can skip them and move on to things that drop loot and progress me in the instance. Your attribution of negative qualities to efficient gameplay is horrifically near-sighted.

It's funny that threads like this keep popping up. When GW2 released, my entire guild from Aion came over. By Christmas, more than half of my guild went back to Aion because GW2 "wasn't grindy enough." I kid you not. I'm inclined to agree, too. Not that GW2 needs more grind, but that GW2 has relatively little mandatory grind. In Aion, you had to grind AP from PvE instances and open-world combat (the only type of PvP, tbh) in order to stay competitive. The better your gear, the better your PvP damage reduction and PvP damage dealing, and the better your performance vis-à-vis the rest of the pop. It wasn't just a few days of grinding, either. It was weeks. On top of that, the most damaging weapons came from a PvE instance. So you had to grind that instance daily in order to try and get these weapons. Then, before GW2 released, Aion implemented a new patch with an area that was meant for PvP, but had named mobs inside that dropped keys. These keys were used to unlock chests that gave you AP (PvP currency) consumables. After that point, it was pointless to do anything but grind those keys if you wanted efficient AP gain.

GW2 is, by far, one of the least grind-y MMOs out there. Literally none of its content requires you to grind certain rewards in order to be viable. It's 100% left up to player choice. Fractals, you say? Level 10 requires 0 AR to complete so long as you're capable of dodging properly. Jade Maw's Agony is also survivable. Even so, ANet has implemented Ascended Trinkets and Amulets that you gain outside of Fractals which can be slotted with an Infusion. If GW2 was really so gated and grind-y, would they provide diverse means of acquiring gear to suit an individual's preference? No. If anything, the only flaw is that WvW players cannot gain anything but Soldier's exotic gear solely from WvW content.

tl;dr : GW2 has essentially no mandatory grind. If you're grinding, it's because you, as a player, have deemed it necessary.


Edit: I did a research thread a little while ago showing that full Ascended gear was projected to provide something tiny like a 3% stat increase over the Exotic tiers. I haven't been back through it since the new ascended gear released due to lack of time, but I doubt there'll be any significant changes.

Eon Lilu, on 16 March 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

Oooooor you could go 3 war, 2 mes. Mesmer does more damage than the vast majority of guardians AND you get two timewarps. Not to mention all of the other fun things you can trololol through with Mesmer utility. Namely bugging Ferrah and Mag to run to start the instance instantly with the use of portal. Lastly, if you can't kill the final boss in a hair over 2 timewarps, your party is screwing up their rotations.


On topic:

There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't skip for a quick fractal right off the start. By the time this actually matters, you're well over fractal level 20, in which case you've seen and done every fractal. Multiple times, no less. So, why waste time on extra content you've seen hundreds of times?

I'm with dannywolt here. I love GW2's PvE content, but I love it best when it's done most efficiently.

Literaltruth, on 13 March 2013 - 11:58 PM, said:

iirc, the Asian playerbase takes offense to all of the Asian cultures being amalgamated into the Canthan culture. The Great Collapse in Divinity's Reach was actually supposed to be a Canthan quarter, but they demolished it because of the backlash. I honestly don't know that much about the reasoning behind it, but I hardly see people complaining that the current Tyria is one big caucasian lump, nor that Elona was one big African lump. I guess that when your publisher is NC$oft, you have to make some sacrifices.

Zerk2012, on 08 March 2013 - 02:26 AM, said:

I use the PSU calculator found here: http://www.overclock...c-final-release

It's used by one of the largest overclocking communities on the internet and written by people who have worked in the power supply industry. I actually switched to a 500W PSU because, to me, 430 seems too low. Even though the app itself gave me a power draw of 325W for the build. If anything, it'll allow for xfire in the future. I'm open to suggestions of it being ridiculously wrong, but it seems to have a proven track record.

I'd like to know what kind of performance a mid-tower case can provide to a non-overclocking rig. Airflow will be fine as it's a mid-tower to begin with, and heat generation will be handily taken care of by the stock coolers. Add in some positive pressure fan placement and the airflow will be fine. It's also not my decision on the case. I'm not building this rig for myself, I'm building it for my brother.

Not quite sure why you're being so abrasive, but whatever.

Edit: Forgot to add that the HDD will be a catch-all until he buys a proper SSD for the OS and a few games a couple of months or so down the road. Not really looking for blazing speed in what will become a storage drive in the future.