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About this blog

Hi everyone!
As most of you know, I consume a lot of fan made GW2 content. We can be honest here-it's and obsession of mine, and I probably need professional help. Anyways, it occurred to me to start a blog where I could post the most interesting stuff I find in case anyone is interested and doesn't have time to look through everything themselves (aka they have a life). It also gives me a place to share gems like "How not to be a raid douchebag" without cluttering up our forums. I assume someone had to be talked down from asking me not to post crap like that (I'm guessing Bone or Ser).

That said: Welcome to Maia's GW2 Memo!

Entries in this blog

Maia

As many of you know I just recently got into fractals. Yes, I know they have been in the game since 2k12. Not to brag-just kidding I'm going to brag a little-I'm pretty proud of my progress in the last 2-3 weeks. In the time since I decided "I'm going to start doing fractals" to now I've 
1. Gotten my personal fractal level to 93
2. Gotten my AR on my condi Druid/ranger to 150, and I only bought 2 +7 infusions. My ele is at 62 and my condi ps war is at 70.
3. Finished the Fractal Initiate and Fractal Adept achievements and have one more left for Fractal Expert (level 71).
4. Gotten my first ascended box. Yeah, it was healers shoulders, but it still counts.
5. Gotten my first golden fractal skin. Staff!
6. Bought the infinite defensive mists potion.
Not bad for exclusively PUGing if I do say so myself.

 The guide I've been waiting for was finally put on YouTube today. Derior, for those of you who don't know, is a member of KING and has great guides to all of the fractals. 

 

Maia

My New YouTube Channel

Hi everyone!
I'm happy to say I've decided to start my own channel on YouTube. The good news for you guys (NPC) is....you get to star in the videos with me (haha).

Getting right to it, the channel is named "Maia's Memo" (yes, that's why I changed the name of my blog) and you can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTaUJCqnRufSlRpZfazaTWw

I've posted a few videos already of our kills from Monday night's Boomslang raid.

I also wanted to let everyone know I'm always open to:
1. Comments: Just keep them kind.
2. Concerns: If something I've posted bothers you please let me know so I can do something about it. The videos do not have our voices in them. I believe they are no less private than Kintari's stream. 
3. Suggestions: I'm, of course, open to feed back and ideas of what you'd like to see. Just keep in mind I'm an amateur (actually, the term amateur is a little generous) video editor and graphics maker (I couldn't even type the term "graphic designer" without laughing).

Honestly, I haven't developed much of a vision for this yet. Right now I'm enjoying the process and learning a lot. Needless to say this is a work in progress! 

If you have any comments, concerns, suggestions or questions please feel free to post them here on my blog or on the channel.
Thanks in advance for your support!

Maia

I used to do "key runs" semi regularly before the nerf limited them to once a week and the Black Lion Chests were redesigned. Recently (a couple of months ago), I decided to give them another try. 

My new key farming strategy is this:
1. Collect as many keys as possible through personal story-aka key runs (there are a couple other methods too).
2. Optimize your wardrobe for the Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlocks (you probably only have to do this once)
3. Open your chests. I've decided to do this on the first day the chest rewards change.

I'm happy to report the first cycle of my plan ended yesterday in success. I had 14 keys collected. The new once a week key farm is way more relaxed and feels like less of a chore. Of course, it's a experiment in extreme delayed gratification, but I did enjoy watching my collection of keys grow over the weeks.


Here's what I got from my orgy of chest opening:

I made my husband do this with me (that n = 2 experiment) and he got two elemental swords. Overall, I concluded that it's definitely possible to get all trash, but you will most likely get at least one uncommon or rare reward (it might even be something you want). I'll be starting the cycle again next week.

I plan on doing some blog posts and a video about my key run strategies and wardrobe optimization as a refresher for interested vets and to help newer players who haven't had the time to think about this stuff yet.


Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

 

SPOILER ALERT: Let me know in game if anyone wants to come visit my jackpot. My home instance is now missing only two nodes :)

Maia

PUGventures

You know you need to leave a fractal pug when you catch yourself thinking:

"That bloodstone shield is really nice. ... Wait a second, is that a DRAGONHUNTER using sword/shield? I haven't seen a single trap this whole run!"

Part of me wishes I recorded that fiasco, but I can summarize it for you: fractal pug with minimal  dps limps through T4 fractals. Condi ranger rage quits when dps is too low to kill molten berserker.

You can probably guess who the condi ranger was :S

 

 

Maia

Advice I Appreciate

I appreciate it when our meta overlords make an accessible, easy to understand video. Recently, Nike posted a video that actually explains the build in detail. I found his slow motion explanation of the rotation especially useful. Hopefully, this will start a new trend.

 

Maia

I'm either exceedingly cheap or old fashioned (or masochistic), but I hate purchasing things off the trading post that I can make or harvest myself. Recent case in point: pristine toxic spore samples. Those babies are 18 silver EACH! Now that wouldn't be a problem  for me if you didn't need 10 of them to make the raid meta utility consumable for power and condi dps classes. 
Why are they so expensive? Oh I don't know, probably because you can only get them on a low level map no one goes to for any other reason. Not to mention they are scattered around that map so you can't efficiently run between nodes, and you have to harvest several nodes that give junk before you finally get a single pristine toxic spore.(If you're outrageously lucky you may get 5, but don't hold your breath. We wouldn't want you to die.) 
This sort of thing leads to some interesting player behavior. I recently read on Reddit (and saw this at every node when I was harvesting myself) players are standing at the nodes while semi-afking for hours in order to harvest them easily and make money. Turns out they re spawn every approximately 10 minutes so maybe it's not too bad, but it's not what I'd call "engaging game play" either.
I've gone back to my old standby: bring out the alts in full force. I used to do this for lemongrass when I was the chef in my old WvW guild. Simply park all of your less used alts in the map (don't forget to pile on the gathering boosts first-guild hall and boosters) and log in every once in a while and harvest with everyone. 
Sounds reasonable, until I calculated I have enough gold to purchase enough of these to raid 9 hours per week for 10 years. That's assuming I actually play a class that needs these all the time--and I don't. Most people would stop doing it now that they know that. It won't stop me.

 


Here's my feeble attempt to crash the market. If you're interested, this is a map of toxic seedling  spawns:kessexmap.jpg

Maia

I'm so hyped over our victory last night!

I want to thank everyone for their tenacity and creativity in putting together our winning strat.  

As most of you know, I've been lusting after the Eye of Janthir mini for a while now, and here it is:

large.58ef76f425463_NewMovie(8).Movie_Snapshot.jpg.edc66677709513a0a71bc976555168be.jpg

 

I've also uploaded my PoV to Youtube if anyone wants to relive our victory from another angle:

 

On to Samarog!

Maia

Brief Hiatus

Hi all, 
You may have noticed already, but I'm taking a brief break from posting here and on YouTube.  I've been busy and exhausted from some real life stuff (long term health issues suck), and I'm going on vacation next week. Hopefully, I'll feel up to posting more when I get back. It's been a lot of fun for me, and I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my random musings and watch my poorly edited videos. 

Thanks for reading and watching!
Maia

Maia

TIL: Auric basin

Today I was in Auric Basin, minding my own business trying to turn in rare weapons for provisioners tokens. The map was on the phase when the chests are revealed under the city, and I hadn't done the meta. I didn't really care because I was just there for the tokens, but I noticed that one of the LFGs that I used said "come get your exalted chests." I thought to myself, "Really? I can just zone into the map, not do the meta, and go in there and loot the chests?" Turns out, yes, you can. You even get the Auric basin hero's choice chest from the first one you open. 

Does that seem wrong to anyone else?

 

 

(Side rant: I don't even have words to express how annoying it is when the provisioners token NPC isn't  available at North and South Watch. Aren't provisioners tokens bad enough without the NPC being unavailable half of the time?!? And No, this doesn't encourage me to do the events. It encourages me to map hop using LFG.)

 

Maia

I'd rather be playing GW2

I hate to drag my normally interesting and funny GW2 blog down with stories from my real life, but I have to get this one off my chest. As some of you probably know, IRL I'm a manager and part of managing people is hiring people. More often than not, hiring is a shit show and it's not very much fun. In fact, it's probably one of my least favorite parts of my job. 

Today, I was screening resumes and came across a candidate who submitted a cover letter ... in Latin.

I assume he thought my reaction as a hiring manager would be "Wow! What a smart guy! I definitely want him on my team!"

What I actually thought was "Wow! What an arrogant douche bag! I have enough crap to deal with without having someone overly impressed with his own cleverness on my team!"

At least this candidate made my job easier. I guess I should thank him for that.

Maia

Wing 4 Kill Videos

Tons of videos of kills of the Wing 4 bosses have been posted to YouTube in the past few days. I've dcided to watch them all and post the ones I think are best. This is no doubt a fools errand, but it sounds like a fun challenge. I'll up date this as I go along.
Here we go:


Cairn the Indomitable 

Absolute insanity: Druid solo and it only took him a little over 4 hours: 

 

Mursaat Overseer
Very simple tanking strategy (did this bug somehow?)  (Brazil) https://youtu.be/nZ7PLR7xgKQ

Samarog 
Shield strategy. Two adds one jotun and one human spawn. The idea is to keep them apart with the human under the shield while you focus the jotun. (Anaconda Ren) https://youtu.be/COflnr5dtbo

Deimos
First kill from qt (fennec, Mesmer pov) https://youtu.be/aSer6fu_nz8
Druid flak kiting from KING https://youtu.be/HuE6_rVq1hE

Maia

Never change reddit

Reddit quote of the day:

 

 
adozu
[Hype] Lead Singer
• 
1d

can't (raid) because of the player opinion on Necros

no, people not taking guardians is an issue with player opinion. people not taking necro is because they are actually bad.

Maia

Hi Everyone,

Here's a round up of the videos posted on my YouTube Channel this week. I've made playlists by night if you want to watch all the kills from a specific night. Well, all the kills I have videos for. I need to work on my consistency as far as pressing "record" goes...

Monday Night Boomslang (3/20/21017): Cairn, Mursaat Overseer, Slothasor, Bandit Trio

 

Wednesday Night Boomslang (3/22/2017): Vale Guardian, Gorseval, Sabetha

 

Friday Night Pick-up Snakes (3/24/2017): Matthias,  Cairn, Mursaat Overseer, Samarog

 

I also wanted to share my new credits for each of the raid squads.

Boomslang:

large.BoomslangSquadOutro.jpg.8ab26d4796e532892efb53fcd9d6b2d2.jpg

 

and for Pick up Snakes:

large.PickupsnakesOutro.png.0f523eec3bc26581240c2e55d099a026.png

Maia

Up until very recently I did not do SAB. For 3 years I had decided it was too intimidating and difficult. I'm not very good at jumping puzzles, so I thought would probably be bad at SAB too. However, this year before release I had the same attitude change that I had with raids and fractals several months ago. I decided I was going to do it, and not just a little bit- all of it including tribulation mode and getting an infusion. I'm not sure whether this all or nothing attitude is admirable or pathological, but it's how I work.

From this experience I present:

Tenish things I've learned from SAB
1. Sometimes suicide is your best option.
2. Don't trust anything no matter how pleasant or cute-looking it is.
3. Dodge jump is a powerful tool, but it should be used with care.
4. 16 seems like a small number at first but it gets bigger and bigger the closer you get.
5. Celebrate every checkpoint.
6. There are millions of ways to fail and only a few ways to succeed. Don't get frustrated if you find a new way to fail each run, blame math.
7. It's okay to laugh each time you select the option "Yes, I'm really into that. Don't judge me."
8. You cannot unlearn tribulation mode. Even in normal mode you will avoid flowers even if you know they won't hurt you. Just accept it.

It's going to take a good amount of will power to pull myself away to raid. If anyone is in the same place I was: not ready to try SAB for the first time on their own, contact me in game and we can get a party together. :D

YouTube Roundup Week of March 26
This was a sad week YouTube wise. Monday I had technical issues that prevented me from recording. I did get our  Xera and Deimos kills from Boomslang's Wednesday raid. SAB had its claws in me by Friday, so I wasn't in on Pick up Snakes but the squad looked great on Kintari's stream.

As a side note, I learned people like watching other people open Black Lion Chests. My video of opening 14 measly chests is my most watched video. xD It's either that or watching mediocre Druid gameplay is boring. I'm hoping it's the former.

Maia

To "Dye" For

I wanted to put this out there as a PSA for those of you who don't know yet. The new guaranteed item in the Black Lion chests is the Zaishen War Paint Kit. This kit contains 2-5 unidentified dyes. It's basically crashing the dye market. However it does mean you can pick up some pricey dies for relatively cheap. 
Here are some examples:
Abyss   Last week (sell/buy): 23.75/19.19  This week: 13.18/10.5
Celestial       Last week 60.92/48.01  This week: 32.96/25.2

I wouldn't be surprised if the prices went down even further because the chests just changed and they usually keep the same contents for 6-8 weeks. 
If you have extra gold sitting around you could fill out your unlocked dyes, which is awesome for those guaranteed wardrobe unlocks (you don't want to end up with a 20 silver dye from one of those if you can avoid it). You could even invest in the dye market. I'd caution you it would be a loooong term investment though because no doubts tons of people are doing exactly that.

Good luck, have fun, and don't spend all your gold!

Maia

So Nike just posted a new video about the importance of the meta, blah, blah, blah. Not that I don't agree with him, but as I was watching his video I found something way more interesting than his argument.

Does anyone else see something interesting around 11:44 in the Deimos fight?

TL;DW: Nike takes the final green circle teleport by himself and appears to kite Saul's final alter ego around while everyone else focuses on killing Deimos on the other platform. What do you think? Legit strat or cheese?

 

Maia

Good enough

I'm a lazy GW2 wealth accumulator. What do I mean by that?

1. I hate losing gold. I'll sit on investments for years if selling means I'll lose money. (Some day Winters day rifle, some day) Could I be using that money to invest elsewhere and make more gold? Probably.

2. This is a game. I already have a job. Therefore, anything that requires hours at the TP, spreadsheets, or intense market watching is out.

3. I like buying things that I want to own. Stacks of cheap ectos and gems pre AB multi loot nerf? Yes! Cool looking dyes that have temporarily returned to the gem store (I'm looking at you Winter Chimes dye kit). Sign me up. The only trouble here is you eventually have to decide whether to sell or keep and that can get dicey for a known hoarder like myself.

What has that gotten me? I recently checked my account value ranking on GW2 efficiency, and I'm a little better than average for my play time. Overall, I'm in the top 10% of players.

Now, depending on your life outlook, you might think: "Ehh. Not impressed. I can stop reading right here."

That's fine. At first I was kinda disappointed myself. But then I thought about it again and realized a little better than average is not a bad place to be. 

Here's the list of things in game that make me smile:

1. My legendaries (Bolt, Bifrost, Sunrise, Howler) and legendary armor

2. Permanent black lion merchant contract

3. Shared inventory slots

4. Almost complete home instance (The price of those new nodes is ridiculous! Come to think of it the price of some of the old ones are ridiculous since the BL chest changes.)

5. Lion's Arch portal scroll (I use it all the time. My husband still doesn't understand why I like it so much: "You know you can just waypoint, right?")

6. Fused weapon skins sitting in my bank. I saved up tickets for years (literally years) waiting for them to come back.

Most important: I'm happy. 

I spend my time in game doing what makes me happy, and I have the resources to do that. I don't stress if I don't spend all of my time in the most "gold efficient" content. What more do you want from a game?

No matter how trite, I guess Sheryl Crow was right (YouTube if you don't know who that is-sheesh): "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got."

 

If anyone has some actually useful tips (unlike this blog entry) on how to make gold in game, I'd love to hear them in the comments!

Maia

As most of you are aware, I have taken on the project of leading the charge to further upgrade our guild hall, starting with the War Room. Even though we might decide to get all of the upgrades in the end, I'm trying to prioritize the order we get them in a way that would benefit our current WvW players. 

In my mind the upgrades fall into two categories: useful and not useful. Useful is further subdivided into three categories: useful for everyone who can claim objectives ( anyone in NPC can do that as long as you are higher than a Green Mamba), useful to leveling scribes, and useful to leveled scribes [i.e., improvements and tactics that scribes could craft that are actually useful in WvW.])

 

As of right now, this is my priority list (please feel free to leave a comment if you would like to suggest a change):

Invulnerable fortifications (for scribe leveling, also a useful tactic)

Hardened gates (next few are useful when made by scribes for defending camps and towers when sentrying or havocing)

Speedy dolyaks

Iron guards

Guild claiming: Stonemist castle (No, I don't think any of us are going to need to claim Stonemist anytime soon. However, this upgrade is a prerequisite for some other important upgrades.)

Objective aura 7 vitality (Yeah! This will be a major milestone that provides all the important aura stat boosts when NPC claims something. If someone complains that they need the extra 20% magic find from the last aura to properly defend something, tell them to stfu.)

Emergency wp (for scribe leveling, also a useful tactic)

Watchtower (for scribe leveling, also a useful tactic)

Chilling fog (useful tactic)

Guild ballista

Guild catapult

Guild trebuchet

Guild flame ram 

Guild siege golem

Presence of the Keep (extremely useful improvement but can only be placed on keeps, hence the name)

Dragon banner (useful banner, but banners got nerfed so hard they are not an important part of fights anymore. Nevertheless, they are fun to use and towers and keeps have a tactivator that can only be filled with a banner.)

Assault roller (fun but it's either underused or useless. Seems like invulnerable dolyaks is a better tactic for a camp)

Turtle banner (seems like people prefer centaur and dragon over this one)

Hardened siege (useless in my opinion because the first thing people do is take down the cannons, mortars and oils and this doesn't do much to stop them. Plus, the other option for this slot is iron guards which gives the lord more health and armor so it's arguably better.)

Sabotage depot (minimal usefulness in my mind. Has some niche applications.)

Armored dolyaks (useless because speedy is better)

Packed dolyaks (I've seen people use this but I still think speedy is better)

Guild shield generator (this one is an outrageous amount of aetherium)

Objective aura 8 magic find

Airship defense (only useable at Stonemist)

Cloaking waters (pretty useless, only useable at Stonemist)

Turret gates (useless. In fact this is worse than useless-it's actually detrimental because it takes away the upgrade slot you could use for Presence of the Keep which is actually good. Please don't put this anywhere if you like your server.)

 

We've made so much progress in the last weeks I'm really proud of us. I know the road ahead looks pretty intimidating, but this is a long term goal to be completed when people have extra mats they don't mind donating to the cause. Also, we still have access to the improvements and tactics that scribes make without unlocking them in the War Room. Anyone who has permission to spend claimable upgrades can use the ones deposited in our guild war chest. The majority of the ones in there right now come from choosing the Improvement and Tactic pack from Skirmish chests. This gives you a random tactic or improvement. Almost all of them are worth more than a gold, so it's actually one of the best options to choose from the skirmish chest-if you are going to use them for the benefit of your server and you don't need any of the other options.

 

Thanks to everyone for all of your generous donations so far. Special shout out to Mold, Fred, Ser, Bone, Pyro, and Khani for their help! (I hope I didn't leave anyone out, I'm writing this at work so I can't look at who donated. I'm super sorry if I didn't mention you!).

 

See you in the Mists! (Unless you're Oddgo. I suggest you avoid his "hugs" at all costs.)

 

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