Guild Wars: *$#! Ascending

[LionelThompson]

My 17th level Ranger/Monk made it to the endgame last night where he can complete the three trials and ascend to whatever or wherever it leads.

The problem is nobody else in my guild is close yet, and while I will spend time with them getting them caught up, it is a total pain in the ass to find a competent group to tackle any of the trials. I have gotten to and entered two of the three several times now and one of the following inevitably happens:

- some dumbass complains the whole way through about the group not being optimal

- said dumbass, after one death (and at least 2 or 3 people are around to rez whoever) the idiot leaves the group, leaving us shorthanded and stuck

- even worse are the people who drop as soon as you zone in

- and this is if you can even FIND a group. Unless you are a main monk, you are bottom of the list for finding a team as there are infinite groups of 5 waiting to enter and one spot for a monk (why they just don't get the henchman I don't know)

- one idiot just running every which way inside the trial. These things are very tough and require strong teamwork, when some jackass goes roaming and dying, we are s.o.l. and lose

I have no idea what awaits at the end of these, but it darn well better be worth it! :x

[Mister Widget]

I agree; the difficulty level ramps WAY up once you hit the desert. Suddenly, the consensus among most players is that you are required to group to complete the trials. I was really enjoying the lack of forced grouping in GW up to this act. Everything about Ascension is a big fat reminder of why I hate grouping up with random people in online games.

The quality of teamwork in GW pickup group is hands-down the worst I have ever seen in any MMO. It's not just a little worse; it's in a special extra-festeringly bad class of its own. I've seen everything Lionel mentions above over and over. People routinely bail on a team after a single death. Half the players seem unable to stop and regroup under any circumstances -- it's run forward until dead, the rest of the team be dammned! They've never heard of everyone focusing on a single target either; it's a bunch of people each trying to solo a mob. And if you try to discuss strategy, you're usually met with stony silence (or someone shouting "why are you guys still back there? move up and heal me you #@$!#s").

The good news is, you can REACH each of the 3 trials with just henchmen -- I've reached all 3 after giving up on the pickup group scene. Of course, after you reach the trial area, you have to BEAT the trial. The crowds in the mission entry area are much smaller, so it's even harder to find a group there-- as Lionel says, if you're not a monk, settle in for a long wait. I have beaten one of the trials with just henchmen; no luck yet on on the other two.

Grouping with good people >> grouping with henchmen >>>> grouping with random B.net kiddies. I'll be glad to help people do these trials once more folks get up to this level. I'm on as Tarsus the Dreamer, Tarsus the Wanderer, or Tarsus the Tranquil.

[JPR]

Nobody from the Qt3 guild is to that point yet. I know myself and at least 1 other person are to Divinity Coast, and a couple of others are to Lion's Arch. We should be along to assist somewhat pretty soon. :) I don't think any of us at that level are healers, though....

[LionelThompson]

Just an update nobody cares about, but I finally ascended last night. One part was easily done with henchmen, the other two required COMPETENT teams that took forever to find.

If anyone has any questions or wants my help, let me know.

[Kunikos]

Does that mean you've already beat the game?

[LionelThompson]

Does that mean you've already beat the game?

A WINNAR IS ME!

Actually, I thought that was the case, but it seems that there is at least one other continent to be explored that you cannot reach until you've ascended. In addition is the Temple of Ages which has some challenging quests that cost 1000gp just to enter.

Also, you can still gain xp, but instead of levelling, you just gain a skill point. As I have 15 of these still, I'm not TOO interested, but there are still a few skills I need to capture, so I will be buying more signets.

Of course there is still the pvp, and the fact that my doggie is still only level 19.

[Soldats]

I'm currently at The Wilds mission with my level 17 Necromancer/Mesmer, but I'm afraid I messed her up with a bad redistribution of skills... I'll find out tonight when I group with a friend and try to take on the mission there. Man, you've got me all stoked about Ascension. :twisted:

[Mister Widget]

There are at least 4 missions after you ascend, and quite a few explorable areas. Like Lionel says, you continue to earn skill points each time you level. The extra skill points are not a big deal unless you've changed your secondary profession and need to buy a bunch of new secondary skills.

I also managed to finish ascension over the weekend. Of the 3 trials I did one with henchmen and two with competant groups (after failing many times with incompetant ones). Once you know exactly what to do, I believe all 3 trials can be beaten with henchmen. A group of Qto3 folks will certainly not find the trials as frustrating as Lionel and I did :O

[JPR]

And I'm in Druid's Overlook with my level 16 Mesmer/Necromancer (I played alts all weekend after we got there). At this point there are a bunch of people who should be past Lion's Arch, so we should have a reasonable 6 man team in that area (8 by then, I guess?) within a couple days.

[Tyjenks]

A group of Qto3 folks will certainly not find the trials as frustrating as Lionel and I did :O

I don't know. I hear some of the QtoT Guild members are morons. :wink:

I thought I had been playing a lot!!!! I forget how much "a lot" really is. :)

Did you two mess around with other characters or blast through with one? I spent a lot of time searching out and exploring much of the pre-sear world and got to level 8 with my first guy (Mo/W) and 7 with my Me/R. I know many of you jumped right into the ashes at earlier character levels.

Just wondering how much time you have spent along the way.

[EvilIdler]

I spent a lot of time searching out and exploring much of the pre-sear world and got to level 8 with my first guy (Mo/W) and 7 with my Me/R.

I've spent a lot of time exploring (what I think is) ALL of pre-searing with
two of my characters. It's fun, gives you several extra levels, plus the
occasional skillpoint for quests. I will rush out of the newbie-area after
doing all the primary quests hereafter, if we ever get an extension to the
number of characters.

The newbie-areas are manageable, but I feel quite lost at times in the
real game. So many quests and places :)
They did have the foresight to mark the primary quests (stuff you REALLY
should do), so you can fly through the game doing nothing but those
if you want. You'll be terribly low level by the end, though.

[LionelThompson]

I'm currently at The Wilds mission with my level 17 Necromancer/Mesmer, but I'm afraid I messed her up with a bad redistribution of skills... I'll find out tonight when I group with a friend and try to take on the mission there. Man, you've got me all stoked about Ascension. :twisted:

You really can't screw up your skill distribution. Thanks to refund points, you can change your character completely as you see fit and since you get 1 refund point for every 250xp (up to a max of 24 refund points), it does not take too long to get them back.

One of the major changes I had made with my character was done at the Ascension areas where I brought my marksmanship from 12 to 10, and all of my other ranger skills back to 1, and poured all of the points into Healing Prayers to help me find a better group. To be honest, I am glad I did this, and it has made me a 'better' player.

Regarding the other question about this being my first character or not, it pretty much is. I toyed with a couple of other characters, but haven't gotten them to the second skill trainer in newbie-land yet. That will surely change in time, but for now I intend to help guildmates (and anyone else seeking it) get ascended themselves.

Also, I did not play beta and my play time for this character is about 60 hours BUT I would guess that 10 or so of those was spent with my character just standing around while I made dinner/housework/took care of my son. The nice thing about spawned instances and henchmen is you can just sit around in a mission for a couple of hours while you bathe your kid and read him his stories and come back right where you left off.

[Soldats]

Yeah, thank goodness for the redistribution skills. The only problem is, I used up all my redistribute points for the current attributes that seemed to be messed up! Hah. Oh well, it'll only be a few hours time before I can go back to my Curses & Domination Magic palette.

I started a Monk alt earlier today, and I'm finding it a lot of fun with her too. Guess I'll never lose my love for priest-type characters. :wink:

[Xaroc]

I'm currently at The Wilds mission with my level 17 Necromancer/Mesmer, but I'm afraid I messed her up with a bad redistribution of skills... I'll find out tonight when I group with a friend and try to take on the mission there. Man, you've got me all stoked about Ascension. :twisted:

You really can't screw up your skill distribution. Thanks to refund points, you can change your character completely as you see fit and since you get 1 refund point for every 250xp (up to a max of 24 refund points), it does not take too long to get them back.

One of the major changes I had made with my character was done at the Ascension areas where I brought my marksmanship from 12 to 10, and all of my other ranger skills back to 1, and poured all of the points into Healing Prayers to help me find a better group. To be honest, I am glad I did this, and it has made me a 'better' player.

I have had to do this as well with my E/Mo. I am a devistating nuker but when we need a healer I swap a couple of levels into healing out of fire and bam I can be heal bitch with no problems.

-- Xaroc

[InfiniteJest]

Just an update nobody cares about, but I finally ascended last night.

So does this mean you can change your secondary profession? I've heard that's the case after ascending, but I've never heard it confirmed.

[Mister Widget]

So does this mean you can change your secondary profession? I've heard that's the case after ascending, but I've never heard it confirmed.

Yes, you can. There is a different quest for each class that you want to change into. After the change, you have zero spells/skills for your new secondary, but you can go back to the skill trainers and buy missing skills with skill points. Any quests that give spells for a specific class will now be open to you, along with their class-specific rewards, but any quest that gave you a generic reward (1 spell from your primary, 1 spell from your secondary) can't be re-done.

For example, I changed from Mesmer/Elementalist to Mesmer/Monk. I went back to Ascalon, and nobody in the main town would give me any new quests. However, when I went outdoors and found Grazden the Protector, he offered me his whole series of monk-only quests. He never had an exclamation point for me at all before, because Monk wasn't one of my classes. There were a few other NPCs scattered around who had monk-specific quests that I was able to do for free skills. I had to use cash + skill points to selectively buy whatever else I thought was crucial.

I'm told that if I ever changed back to Mesmer/Elementalist, my old Elementalist skills will be there waiting for me. I haven't tried that out for myself yet.