Grind and new legendaries 

or why I don't want to see HoT maps after I finish H.O.P.E.

Caution: Wall of text ahead.

Many people are not satisfied with how Anet did the precursor collections. "IT'S JUST A MONEY SINK AND GRIND! IT'S AWFUL!" - they shout. I'm at the opposite side. I didn't expect these collections to be anything unreal.

Of course the precursor collections couldn't not be a money sink, that would devalue the precursor price. Besides, only one of the 3 collections is money sink.

I'm not going to discuss here that the price for the collections is more than the price for the TP bought precursor. Devs tried to adjust the collection price according to the TP price as best as they could. If you dislike it, go grind gold. I'd rather do small steps even if it costs more.

My experience with building the new legendary has been quite positive. As I said, I don't mind the money sink that the 2. collection is. It has been fun despite that. My problem is elsewhere.

So let's explain the legendary creation process on HOPE legendary that I've been working on.

You get the precursor from the collection as mentioned.

Gift of Mists is quite easy to get. You can buy almost everything on TP and if not, you can obtain it quite quickly.

Icy Runestones and specific material gift (Gift of Wood) are basically the same as with the old legendaries, so that is ok with me. Combining these three with the Gift of Catalyst (T4 collection) will give you a Gift of HOPE. Now you have already 2 of the 4 parts. Easy, right?

Third part, the Mystic Tribute is similar to Gift of Magic. One of the bigger money sinks, for which you need T6, T5, T4 and T3 materials. Everything can be bought from the TP.

The cost of these 3 parts doesn't bother me. Legendary is not supposed to be cheap, you might have to grind some of them but they are obtainable from multiple sources.

I have the problem with the 4. part. The Gift of Maguuma Mastery. Shocking? Let me explain.
It is also created from 4 parts:

1. Gift of Maguuma is obtained for 100% exploration of 4 new maps. It may take some time, but it's nothing difficult.
2. Gift of Insights requires you to get 800 from each new map currency. It seems like a lot but it can be done quite quickly. No problem with that. Couple meta runs and you're finished.
3. Bloodstone Shard, just ridiculous. Buy it from Miyani for 200 Spirit Shards.
4. Last part is 250 Crystalline Ingots. 

CRYSTALLINE INGOTS - IMO the only bad part of the new legendary creation process. 

My reason is that it doesn't only cost A LOT, it's based on heavy rng based grind.

You can buy 250 Amalgamated Gemstones or you can create them in multiple ways. They are expensive but you have multiple ways to get them.

250 Globs of Ecto is nothing after running the new map's metas few times.

The remaining ingredients can be obtained ONLY one way each - by looting map specific "chests".

Crystalline Ore is one of them and after a big player outcry, devs patched it to be guaranteed at least 1 from each looted pod.

Why hasn't this been done with Piles of Auric Dust and Ley Line Sparks? 

Bottle of Airship Oil is OK, it can be obtained from Airship Cargo in VB during both day and night, that's why I'm ok with it being random. You can however get Pile of Auric Dust only after successful meta by looting 27 exalted chests that MAY give you 1 or 2 or 0 of it. There is a limited number of chests available for only a limited time. Why doesn't it guarantee 1 Auric Dust per chest is beyond me.

And don't even get me started on Ley Line Sparks. You need keys for the map currency like with the previous mentioned ones. However TD meta is not so fast as AB or VB metas. While I can get 300+ AB currency in one full meta, I get only about 170+ in TD. The TD "chests" appear only after successful events and I've noticed that I get 1 Ley Line Spark for 2 opened "chests". For one meta run I was able to get 17 sparks. For one 2 hour meta run.

Someone was maybe more lucky than me. I don't even count how many times I've run Gerent or Tarir or DS and to be honest, this grind made me dislike the maps. They are great, look awesome and have interesting events, however I've been there so many times that after I finish H.O.P.E. I don't plan to return there for a very long time.

And that is a thing that Anet should be aware of. Grind is not bad if it's not insane. This would be quite ok, but rng makes it bad. Again RNG.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Corvus' character

Happy birthday buddy!

What's up with that inactivity?

My (much more famous) YT friends use to do video blogs to share their plans with their audience, reflect on the progress etc. I think it’s time to at least tell you what’s new and explain my inactivity.

I know, I know, my activity has declined rapidly after the release of HoT. More than a month I have not done any new video, any new drawing, I’ve been only spamming you on Twitter but even that has declined.

It’s not because I don’t want to or because I am lazy. Oh no, no, no, no. Actually my list of possible future videos contains over 40 ideas now and drawing list is even bigger.

Of course after the release of HoT, I wanted a small break because I have finished the drawing countdown and just wanted to enjoy the expansion. And I enjoy it still, I think it’s great but that’s for another time.

The whole reason behind my inactivity is real life (Duh). To be more specific, my job. I have started working on a project that requires me to travel to Italy and spend there 2 weeks working with the customer, back home for one week and again to Italy for 2 weeks. Obviously, I can’t take my tablet with me, or my desktop pc. What I have here is a company notebook and the most crappy internet in the world. This doesn’t give me much to work with obviously.

I am travelling back home tomorrow and I can’t wait to be together with my girlfriend, my family, to sit in front of my PC, take the stylus and start drawing again. Or go ingame and record a footage for a Wintersday video.

Yeah, I definitely, want to create a Wintersday video this year. It shall be something… different. (I was inspired by another game, you’ll see ;))

Concerning the drawing, I had big plans for the next year. BIG plans. I even mentioned them in one tweet, but you probably already forgot about it. The thing is, the work project I’m working on, should end in January. Now it seems that it will last until June. This changes everything obviously. Because of it, I can’t have any plans, any social life, anything longer than one week.

 I don’t like this.

That’s why I will talk to my boss about travelling on Monday. If I will persuade him, to let me stay, I will be able to commit to the long difficult drawing project that I will tell you more about, if I will succeed. It will be something new, something that I haven’t even tried and something that I was thinking about for a couple of years.

Of course, videos will continue with the probable cadence of one video a month, maybe more ;)

For this all though, I need to fight. If I won’t be successful, I’m sad to say that everything will be done no sooner than in the summer. And we don’t want that, do we! 

I hope that everything will work for the best. I love creating content for you guys. 

Wish me luck :)

Drawing challenge: 113/365 - Secret Toymaker

Join at secrettoymaker.com

Drawing challenge: 112/365 - Soon™

Only 14 hours until HoT!

The journey starts Soon™

Drawing challenge: 111/365 - Taimi

Less than 2 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 110/365 - The Risen

Less than 3 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 109/365 - Ash Legion tent

Let's be minimalistic again!

4 days until HoT!

Video: Helloween teaser trailer

Drawing challenge: 108/365 - Dredge

Less than 5 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 107/365 - Griffon statue

6 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 106/365 - Ogre

Only a week until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 105/365 - Balthazar sketch

8 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 104/365 - Giant

9 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 103/365 - Mad King Thorn

10 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 102/365 - Icewurm speedpaint

15 minute speedpaint.

11 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 101/365 - Charr buggy

12 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 100/365 - Harpy

13 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 99/365 - Kiel

14 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 98/365 - Kralkatorrik

15 days until HoT!

Just a 10 minute sketch...

Drawing challenge: 97/365 - Jormag's totem

16 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 96/365 - Centaur

Quick 15 minute doodle today.

17 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 95/365 - Hylek Hut

18 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 94/365 - Braham

19 days until HoT!

(S)crappy spec and BWE3

This will be a rant. You've been warned. This is written from the perspective of a person that plays mostly PvE.

THE SAD PART FIRST - SCRAPPER

I was excited to try Scrapper, even though I suspected that I won't find much use for gyros. And I was right. Sadly.

HAMMER
The thing is, I like the hammer. I've been playing the rifle for 3 years and hammer has much more interesting skills that support active play. This is great.

What surprised me, were quite a long cooldowns on hammer skills (IMHO). If I want to use a build that uses the kits as least as possible, I will be stuck with the autoattack that is quite low. Even for zerker. I've realized this problem right after I tried Reaper, Dragonhunter, Daredevil and Herald. After that I clearly saw how hammer's damage is subpar to their weapons.

Some of you might say, hammer is a tanky weapon, it should have low damage. To you, I say, show me a viable tanky build then. Show me a build where hammer is better than rifle. Because for each existing build, a rifle is better.

There were some deaths caused by the leaps of skill 3, which felt a little bit clunky in the end. (delay in the end of the skill) Also, skill 4 needs to be faster, because it's too slow if you want to react to an attack. If you want it to be effective, you need to predict the attacks. And I'm not a fortune teller.

GYROS
Oh boy. Just... bad. Every pessimistic expectation was right. They have low HP. They are slow as hell! They have problems with keeping up when you run without any speed. With speed, they have no chance. And don't even get me started on their AI. Forum and reddit are full of complaints about it.

Function gyro is not only suffering from general gyro problems, a lot of time it couldn't be even used for rezzing or stomping. And a combination with stupid and illogical AI made it useless most of the time. Hell, I was able to use it in PvE 2 times in 3 days. New mechanics? Bah, more like no mechanics.

TRAITS
I don't have much to say about traits. They felt solid. Originally I thought that I will make a superspeed build, because I've mistaken superspeed with quickness. My bad. I ended up with an HGH knight build that offered huge survivability but the damage was as I already mentioned subpar.(even with zerker gear) It was a fun to play though in the raid. I was able to sustain my health and help our team's druid with healing and buffs.

CONCLUSION
Hammer needs a damage boost and some tweaks with skills 3 and 4. Lowering the cooldowns would delight me.

Gyros need to be reworked completely. That nonexistent  and clunky "new mechanics" needs to be replaced with something that will be actually useful. And please, FOR ALL MODES! (But I won't hold my breath for it) Now engis are stuck with the old mechanics, useless utility skills and new weapon with low dmg.

OFF TOPIC - REST OF THE BETA

I was able to try the raid, we killed I think 2 of the 3 thrash bosses and then Anet disabled the squads. I am a little bit disappointed that the raids are unavailable but they said, they will look for a way to test it with us. It still was fun, I'm curious about the actual boss.

Daredevil's dodges are much better. I'm still bad at this profession and die easily, but playing it was a lot of fun. Well, I will need to find some good build that would suit me, but it was much less clunky than the previous beta.

Dragonhunter felt much better, less static and I started to like the traps. The DH longbow seems even better to me than the Ranger's longbow. Traps are great but I think that we should still be able to throw them.

Reaper, oh man. Zerker reaper had insane damage and insane survivability. While playing this class, I realized how low Scrapper's damage is. I kid you not, Reaper's damage was maybe even 2-3 times higher than scrapper's. Both specs are close range and yet... I don't know I guess I shouldn't maybe compare them. Anyways, Reaper is AWESOME.

Druid's staff skills are IMHO very situational but I liked it. Not sure, how I think about the glyphs, I liked the celestial form and that the function of glyph skills was reversed while in that form. And new pets, I'm in love with them. Wyverns were great but my favourite is the Smokescale. And that feeling when it was able to kill npc Smokescales with one burst, was just awesome. Revenge! :D

Revenant's shield was much better this BWE. Staff's damage is not that great now. Too bad, I like it the most. But it's an awesome class anyway!

I started to like Tempest. It's actually fun now! Man needs to find a good skill rotation, but it is already required with ele, so no big deal. And yeah, burning, so much burning!

I can't believe what I'm saying, but now Berserker is so much fun! It may be caused by a build I used though. Anyway, I can finally have a good rifle build with war. And the Gun Flame skill is insane, 18K+ dmg minimum. This is what a sniper feels like.

And concerning the canopy, I expected it to be bigger, but it's beautiful still. Maps in HoT will be awesome.

SO...

To be honest, I'm not that excited about Scrapper after trying it. New mechanics that will change the way, we play engi? Nonexistent. Funny thing is that with the function gyro, they didn't even think about PvE. No loss. It's useless. With gyros, I won't waste my breath anymore.
Now I can admit that every other spec felt stronger. Let's hope for the best.

The BWE was fun, despite the fact that I caught cold, so I had less time to try things out.

One more thing that comes to my mind: I hope that the story mission, we could try, isn't the first one in the expansion. I hope that we will get some missions that will provide more sensible and meaningful introduction. The mission was great despite this.

Drawing challenge: 93/365 - Rox

Only 20 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 92/365 - Quaggan ready for raiding

21 days until HoT!

He's in full ascended gear BTW ;)

Drawing challenge: 91/365 - Skritt therapist

Sorry for the lack of drawing yesterday. I'm still working on the chibi version of Dhuum for Shazbawt. I've never drawn chibi so it takes a lot of time and many concepts were already thrown away during the process.

22 days until HoT! Here is a Skritt therapist ! My GF has the best ideas :)

Drawing challenge: 90/365 - Bear shrine

Drawing while watching INKS' stream is great.

24 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 89/365 - Pact helicopter

25 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 88/365 - Moa

27 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 87/365 - Rata Sum under attack

You know... what if? ;)

28 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 86/365 - Evon Gnashblade

This was really fun to draw.

29 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 85/365 - Zojja

30 days until HoT and yet another member of DE.

Drawing challenge: 84/365 - Caithe

31 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 83/365 - Best buddies

Quick sketch today.

32 days until HoT!

Video: Prelude to Heart of Thorns

Second video of this weekend. I couldn't decide between Pippin's song and this music, so I made both :) Funny thing is that I spent only a little time with the Pippin's song creation and it got significantly more views. People are weird :)

Drawing challenge: 82/365 - Wizard's Tower

33 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 81/365 - Rytlock

34 days until HoT! Quick Rytlock sketch today.

New video! Pippin's song.

I was very surprised, how Edge of the night from LOTR fits Heart of Thorns. So why not make a fan trailer with it? :)

Drawing challenge: 80/365 - Bank of Lion's Arch

35 days until HoT! Only 5 weeks!

Drawing challenge: 79/365 - Destroyed Pact Fleet

Logan here doesn't look like himself ingame. That's because I hate that barbie doll like design, the humans have.

36 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 78/365 - Phlunt

You know him, you hate him, you despise him! Councillor Phlunt!

37 days until HoT! Time flies :)

Drawing challenge: 77/365 - Trahearne's transformation

38 days until HoT!

This drawing was fun :)

Drawing challenge: 76/365 - Engi elite spec

39 days until HoT!

Just a quick spec today. NO, IT WON'T BE CALLED FORGE!

Drawing challenge: 75/365 - Flame legion shaman

40 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 74/365 - Eir Stegalkin

41 days until HoT! I've decided to draw also main characters of the story (at least DE1, DE2), so expect all of them to be drawn until the release ;)

First one is Eir! I hope she won't die in the expansion. Actually I think that DE1 should survive all expansions.

Drawing challenge: 73/365 - Grawl shaman

I was trying a little bit of playing with light source.

42 days until HoT! :)

Bonus: Toxic Krait reworked/finished

I didn't like my yesterday's drawing. I was tired when I drew it so I decided today to finish it. Now I am satisfied with the result! :)

Drawing challenge: 72/365 - Mordrem Trasher

Mordrem are coming to Tyria! 43 days until HoT ;)

Drawing challenge: 71/365 - Toxic Krait

Today something easier. Toxic Krait! 44 days until HoT!

Drawing challenge: 70/365 - Tengu tribesman

45 days until HoT!

Bonus: speedy drawing of a Revenant!

BWE has ended so I did very quick 15 minute sketch of my beta revenant. I will definitely have an asura herald.

Drawing challenge: 69/365 - King of Jotuns

46 days until HoT!