Like Elisabeth at Massively I am working towards a legendary, and my pace is going to match hers. I am just going to play, bank, and see what happens. Some of the portions of a legendary do require more focus, such as the Gift of Exploration. I am dreading the Gift of Zhaitan I will need, but for now the Gift of Exploration can be done mostly during the leveling process. Who wouldn’t want to complete each map, cries my completionist self.
I hate that I swapped to Blackgate. I wanted to stay in WvW Tier 2 because I felt I could learn a bit how the enemy operated, and for Exploration it needed to be done. To my defense I did not kill any Sanctum of Rall comrades during that time. However, Tarnished Coast chumps were fair game. My goal was only to snag the handful of points of interest (PoI) I needed in the Eternal Battlegrounds. Tier 2 is interesting because I feel Sanctum of Rall holds its own consistently in second place. I think Blackgate constantly wins because they do a better job beating up on Tarnished Coast. In other words, Blackgate wins because they capitalize offense far better than Sanctum of Rall does.
Moving along. My last PoI was Ogrewatch Post in Tarnished Coast’s territory. This small tower was all that was in my way for the glories of the Gift of Exploration. I did not want to transfer to salty Tarnished Coast to get that one PoI, thereby having to wait another week before heading home. Luck was my lady last night.
It just so happened that to spite me Sanctum of Rall decided to take Ogrewatch, which I had not seen held by my server since focusing on Exploration. Tarnished Coast was quick to respond, and they started pounding on the walls of the tower. I stood on a ledge with Blackgate’s Stonemist to my back. I was safe enough to watch knowing there were Stonemist fanatics holding siege weapons throughout the night.
The Tarnished poured through Ogrewatch as the wall fell, but they were met by stiff defense by the Rallites. Instead of the usual train to the champion, they were held up in the courtyard. I decided to make my death run for that last PoI anyway. I sped through a sea of red and snagged my PoI. I did a happy dance in my head fully expecting that my character would die in a horrible fire. Instead, nothing. I was not focus fired down like I expected. Well there was plenty of area-of-effect madness, and my health was ticking down pretty fast. As a necromancer, this was less of an issue for those microseconds I stood there not understanding why I wasn’t just dying.
Finally after those eternities had passed (anybody playing in a tense PvP moment knows these), I ran back out through that sea of red. Laughing in madness I decided to pop my Death Shroud, both for the additional health bar, but also to slap the Tarnished in the face with Life Transfer on the way out. A mesmer peeled off from the Tarnished ranks and followed me zapping along the way. I was spent. I made it to our guard post, but the mesmer downed me fairly enough. The NPC guard did his best to come to my aid.
BOOOOOM! Those freakin’ Stonemist zealots started pounding the mesmer with catapault fire. Coupled with my fear, the mesmer exploded in fine purple dust. I rallied at the mesmer’s death and rejoiced clutching my shiny new Gifts of Exploration. This was a moment I will never forget, now set in blogger stone. Guild Wars 2 seems full of these moments, I just have to remember better to write them down.
–Ravious
What fascinates me the most is that your descriptions of playing Guild Wars 2 sound like a totally different game than the one I play. It’s like I’m reading a post about some other game I’ve never heard of.
I’ve yet to enter a PVP area myself, as I know when I do I’ll never get to the PoI as I’ll be insta-ganked the moment I move anywhere.
Congrats.
Congratulations. I plan on doing some WvW on my alt. At least thats’ what I tell myself. :-)
For contrast, as a native to Blackgate my last couple WvW PoIs have involved logging in each morning to see Blackgate with 80-90% of the map and tagging the keep we control that I haven’t hit yet. On more than one occasion, I’d run to the keep as we’re losing it and end up stuck between the inner and outer gates. You can take a decent amount of damage while watching the vista in the east BL keep with all the NPCs attacking you. :)
(Granted, with us moving up a tier this week and the keeps I needed not being red, I was a little more urgent.)
Right on spot. :-) Had a similar experience when roaming the Eternal Battlegrounds looking for my last pet, which is only found here (wolf). Total gaming newbie (playing a computer game for the very first time since four months back) – but educated geographer. Found my way through the map and past a couple of enemy positions. Tamed the wolf. On my way back, I got a little lightheaded and wanted to collect a couple PoI, too. Realized too late that one was red. Fled the crowd who was coming after me. Shot one arrow backwards – and killed on of their blokes instantly. That was really phat. 8-)