The State of My Game: GW2

It's been a while since I reported on my my gaming activity, so I thought I'd do that today (lol, this is a gaming blog, after all). I continue my casual, but steady, march to 80 on Heide Uhrmacher, my Human Engineer in Guild Wars 2, alongside my lovely bride, Sctrz and her Human Ranger, Reina Echowald. I reached 66 last night, but have used transmutation stones to keep Heide in the Pirate garb you see above for about 20 levels now. I love the ability to keep a look I like; which—along with the dye system—allows me to maintain a fairly unique look. I love picking new random dyes and deciding whether to use them on this character, save them for later, or transfer them to another character, with a different color scheme. I'm also glad to not have a mask on anymore, which seemed to be the only choice for medium armor wearers throughout the early levels of the game.

One of the things that has slowed my leveling down is Structured PvP, which is the most fun I've had doing PvP in any game, but gives PvP points instead of XP. I'm like level 11 or something (Deer level), which is account wide. That is, no which character I play, I'm ranking up in sPvP.

After messing around with turrets for a while, I took the advice of a few people on Twitter and Bio Break and shifted to using Flamethrower almost exclusively. Apparently it's not too common, because I've had several people comment on my flamethrower or ask where I got the weapon, without knowing it is an Engineer kit skill. Just last night, I was able to maintain aggro on an elite jungle troll, while other players wore him down. I'm also improving my dodging and staying in motion to avoid damage. Members of KoM got together last night and took on some world dragons—massive events with dozens of players participating. Sctrz and I had a lot of fun doing a couple of them, and I'm glad we're finally getting into levels where we can participate more with the rest of the guild.

Last week, Maric (@PaganRites), one of the founders of Knights of Mercy, and I were discussing the fact that my lovely bride and I had reached the late 50s on our main characters, but had yet to go through even the first dungeon, Ascalonian Catacombs. He suggested we get some peeps together on Friday night, and that's exactly what we did. So on Friday evening, @sctrz and I traipsed over to the Charr starting area and joined Maric and @DeganIMC, with @seawhitten leading the way into the catacombs.

Since others have reviewed AC itself, let me just say I had a lot of fun. @seawhitten did a great job leading the group, and I'm not just saying that because she could probably rip me apart IRL. :P I had a lot of fun throwing boulders at the bosses. Anyway, this is us, I'll get input on characters' names from the krewe but here we are below: Eir Stegalkin (a major NPC), Degan(the short one), Destrominator (Seawhitten), Maric(the tall one), Heide(me), and Reina(Sctrz): Three Rangers, a Mesmer, and an Engineer.

For those who are curious, I would love to still be playing TSW. But alas, circumstances are such that Karl, Hinageshi, and Samantha are on indefinite hiatus.