GW2: Dyes and staff… (Blaugust Day 29)

What an exciting week for Guild Wars 2!

This week, Guild Wars 2 turned 3 years old and to celebrate this, from this point on, all characters will get a very special birthday presents on their own 3rd birthday (yes, this means the character has to be 3 years old, not your account): The Celebratory Dye Pack. This lets you choose one of the rare dyes in the game that were previously only available as a random drop from dye packs bought in the gem shop. Some of those dyes are priced above 200 gold even with the most expensive one being 1000 gold (if you want to buy it from somebody directly via the Trading Post). Of course, that most expensive one, Electro Blue, is the one I took from the pack now. :p It’s just a nice coincidence that only a few days ago, I wrote about the dyes I still need to buy and how expensive some of them are. Now I just need to wait for my characters’ birthdays and I can get some of them at least.

There is also another booster item that buffs your character for a certain amount of time, some “teleport to friend” items and another level-up scroll. Only that it’s not level 20 like the ones from the first birthday, or level 20 from the 2nd birthday (mentioned separately here, because they – still – don’t stack with each other despite being identaical). This year’s item boosts your character to level 30. Nothing there that I really need or use. But the dyes are awesome! :)

We’ve gotten another elite specialization reveal this week. After seeing the teaser image for the next elite specialization on Twitter on Monday, I had gotten rather excited! But I decided to remain calm until we’d get more information…

Then I had seen the datamined skills for the thief. The blog post today just confirmed what I already knew: I am very excited about this specialization! Thief is my third favourite character. But what I saw about the warrior specialization didn’t interest me much at all. To be honest, the warrior is a very solid profession that can withstand a lot of damage, and she’s convenient to play, but at the end of the day, I actually think it’s a rather boring profession. The thief, on the other hand, is a lot of fun! Seeing the staff and reading about the specialization, I know I want to try her out! Maybe when/if we get back from our vacation on time, I can hop into the beta for an hour or so on Sunday evening.

I also cannot wait to see the thief in action in tomorrow’s livestream. Because what I’m still missing is seeing the animations. Because I actually like the style of having a melee class fight with a staff. Warning: Anecdote incoming!

Back in my early World of Warcraft days, I had made a female orc warrior, Grola. She ran around the Barrens, rather clueless on what to do next, when she found a staff (probably swallowed by a lion there). Even though it was stat-less, it was better than the weapons I had carried (she was very young and inexperienced). The animations were so good! Fast, agile, and just generally fun to look at. I turned to bookahnerk and told him excitedly how much I loved the staff with my warrior. Unfortunately, he had to tell me the truth: While a warrior can wield a staff, there were no staves in the game with non-caster stats. And in a game that heavily relies on the stats on items, there was absolutely no way I could have a viable staff-wielding warrior.

So now I’m sitting here, all excited, because I can get my little agile, sneaky staff-wielding thief. I just hope I’ll like the animations. But… we will see tomorrow. :)

This post is part of Blaugust 2015.