New Blog Home

I will now be writing posts at two locations. My larger posts such as articles and guides will be posted to the Marked Souls website. I have already moved some posts there already.

My personal story posts will now be done from Tumblr at http://kousei.tumblr.com/. Please don’t hesitate to use the “Ask Me Anything” link at the top of my tumblr blog.

 

Level 30 Gold AP Accessories

As soon as you can get Abyss Points, start saving for level 30. The level 30 gold AP accessories can easily take you through level 50 and they require no medals. I would suggest that you try and fill up all your accessory slots as soon as possible with level 30 AP items.

 

Templar Cooking Items

The following are recommended Food and Drink items for Templars with cooking level and description next to each. I have placed a star (*) next to my personal favorite within each category.

Foods

• Starturtle Aether Steak (420) – Physical Attack increases by 10 and Maximum HP increase by 200 points, and Flight Time also increases by 10 seconds for 30 min.
• Starturtle Steak (395) – Physical Attack increases by 10 and Maximum HP increase by 200 points for 30 min.
• Calydon Meat Dumpling * (385) – Physical Crit increases by 50 and Accuracy increase by 50 points for 30 min.

Drinks

• Lunime Cocktail (385) – Natural Healing increases by 10 and Natural Mana Treatment increase by 15 points for 30 min.
• Cellatu Porridge * (365) – Natural Healing and Natural Mana Treatment increase by 12 and 18 points respectively for 30 min. There is a low chance of getting a stomach ache due to the poison of Cellatu. (If you’re going to run this be sure to have healing potions to remove the possible debuff.)

The benefits of cooking may not be well known to you now but these foods can give buffs valuable in both PvE and PvP scenarios.

 

Templar: Severe Blow Skills

There has been a lot of discussion about which one of the Severe Blow skills is “the best” for Templars to be using. I’m kind of disappointed in our Templar community with their responses so I decided to write this post. What was their response you ask? Blunting Severe Blow is the default response of the community. The problem I have with this is that they simply leave it at that. Blunting is a good skill but the other two are much better in certain situations. To get the most out of your Templar, you have to choose 1 of the 3 skills based on the current situation your Templar is facing.

The Three Skills

Let’s start by taking a look at each skill individually.

Blunting Severe Blow is an an Accuracy and Evasion debuff which can only be done by Templars. The skill reads “Deals 73~77 physical damage to the target and decreases its Accuracy by 200 and Evasion by 200 for 12 sec”.

Weakening Severe Blow is a Physical Defense debuff which doesn’t stack with Chanter debuff and can also be used by Gladiators. The skill reads “Inflicts 71~75 physical damage on the target, and decreases its Physical Def by 500 for 6 sec”.

Dazing Severe Blow is an Attack Speed debuff which doesn’t stack with Spirit Master or Chanter debuff. It has two versions and the speed debuff is said to be 20% for version I and 40% for version II. The skill reads “Deals 62~66 physical damage to the target. The target’s attack speed decreases for 12 sec.”. This skill also has the fastest animation of the three.

Situational Use

Without knowing what you’re fighting, you can see just from the above information that there are things to be taken into account before you choose which one of these skills to use. Do I have a Chanter, Spiritmaster, or Gladiator in party? If I have a Gladiator in party, does he/she actually use Weakening?

PvE Tanking

While tanking, I tend to lean towards Dazing to slow down the damage coming in which in turn gives my healer a break. Blunting can also mitigate some damage but there is a huge BUT that goes along with Blunting while tanking. Blunting increases your chances of Dodge or Parry. People quickly jump in here and say this is great! Not completely. Dodge and Parry come in play Block in terms of game mechanics. That means the more you Dodge or Parry the less you Block and the less your shield skills can be used. This includes Provoking Shield Counter which is one of the best Templar enmity building skills. After getting Dazing II, the competition between the two lessens even more in favor of Dazing.

Also, I tend to use Weakening once a mob is down to about 1/8-1/4 of their health if we only have 1 or 2 mobs aggro’d and the party has at least 2 other physical damagers (glad, sorc, sin).

PvE Greatsword

When using a greatsword, I lean towards Blunting. All the negatives of Blunting as a damage mitigation tool go away the second you swap to greatsword. Unless a mob is 2-3+ levels higher, I usually stick with Blunting. On higher mobs, I tend to use Dazing since Blunting is harder to get applied and there the chance Evade/Parry diminishes on higher mobs.

PvP

Here I tend to lean towards Blunting on melee and Weakening on casters. Every now and then I’ll throw Dazing on a melee class picking on our healers to lower the pressure.

Conclusion

I’m sure I could write for hours about all the different situations I would pull each one of these skills out but I think you get the picture. I’m not arguing that the way I’m using the 3 skills is the best. These were just some examples and I know that in time I will find more uses for each one of these skills. The point of this post is to get my fellow Templars to realize that all 3 of these skills can shine if you switch depending on the situation you’re playing within.

 

Alchemy’s Money Saving Recipes

I played with Alchemy this weekend (CB5) because I wanted to see how much of a drain on my Kinah leveling this would be before release. If you plan on using work orders to level up alchemy, plan on spending a lot of money. After finding this out I went hunting for a solution and I found it: “free” recipes.

It won’t stop you from having to spend money on some of the work orders but there are enough “free” crafting recipes out there that it’ll definitely make a  difference to your pocketbook.

The first 40 levels of every level of alchemy except master can be gotten without having to spend a single Kinah if you’re up for gathering a lot of elemental stones and ore. Levels 1-40 of each level can be gotten by turning elemental stones into either powder or water and levels 21-60 can be gotten by turning ores into powder. (the elemental stones and ores will differ w/ level of course)

 

Week of June 22 Traveler Tip

This week Nicholas the Traveler is collecting Rolls of Parchment in exchange for his Gifts of the Traveler. (5 Rolls of Parchment per gift)

A quick tip for those that don’t want to buy Rolls of Parchment. Prophecies and Factions crafters will craft one Roll of Parchment for 5 Wood Planks and 20 Gold. This could definitely save you some money.

Good luck with those gifts!

 

Collectables: To Keep or Not to Keep

This article is not to tell you whether or not to keep items but to help you in deciding what collectable drops you think are worth keeping.

Profitable Rewards

These rewards once traded for will make you more gold than selling the collectable items themselves.

The entire list of profitable rewards can be found: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Profitable_trophies. It’s a pretty handy list to have bookmarked with the new storage upgrades.

Rewards Worth Keeping

* Alphabetized by Collectable Item

• Blobs of Ooze x 7 = Refined Jelly (1 Sweet Tooth Point)
• Charr Hide x 4 = Fur Square (Rare Crafting Material)
• Destroyer Core x 250 =Destroyer Gauntlets (Armor)
• Diessa Chalice x 50 = Blindfold (Armor)
• Dredge Manifesto x 5 =Scroll of Hero’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Enslavement Stone x 5 =Scroll of Adventurer’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Glacial Stone x 100 = Glacial Gauntlets (Armor)
• Golden Rin Relic x 25 = Dread Mask (Armor)
• Kurzick Baubles x 5 = Scroll of Adventure’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), Scroll of Rampager’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), or Scroll of Hunter’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Luxon Pendant x 5 = Scroll of Adventure’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), Scroll of Rampager’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), or Scroll of Hunter’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Mahgo Claw x 3 =Scroll of Berserker’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Mandragor Roots x 3 = Mandragor Root Cake (1 Sweet Tooth Point)
• Seared Ribcages x 12 = Scroll of Slayer’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Sentient Spores x 5 = Bottle of Vabbian Wine (1 Drunkard Intoxication Level)
• Stone Grawl Necklaces x 8 = Honeycomb (1 Sweet Tooth Point)
• Superb Charr Carving x 250 = Mask of the Mo Zing (Armor)
• Unctuous Remains x 7 = Scroll of Hero’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)

Holiday Event Collectors

• Halloween Collectors
• Wintersday Collectors

At both of the above links you will find collector items that give items that will aid in Sweet Tooth, Party Animal, and Drunkard titles.

If you’d like to do more research, a complete list of collectable drops can be found: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Trophies

 

Zaishen Challenge Quests

Sorry in advanced for the rant…

I’m very annoyed at the PvP slant that these quests rewards show. Not only do they consist of 60% of the rewards each day but PvP characters can be re-rolled and gain the rewards multiple times quite easily.

So let’s take a look at some past quests and their rewards:

23 April 2009 = Blood Washes Blood (70); Kanaxai (175); Guild Versus Guild (350)
26 April 2009 = Raisu Palace (90); Rragar Maneater (105); Jade Quarry (105)
29 April 2009 = Consulate Docks (50); The Stygian Lords (105); Random Arena (105)
3 May 2009 = Dzagonur Bastion (90); Fenrir (35); Guild Versus Guild (350)
4 May 2009 = Boreas Seabed (90);    Rotscale (70); Alliance Battles (175)

So according to the above ANET is equating:

• winning 6 AB matches to doing Hard Mode The Deep to kill Kanaxai
• winning 9 JQ matches to doing Hard Mode Stygian Veil to kill the Stygian Lords or Hard Mode Rragar’s Menagerie to kill Rragar Maneater

I have a VERY hard time accepting these rewards as equal. Alliance Battle and Jade Quarry are both much easier than both Domain of Anguish and Deep in normal mode much less hard mode. Complete newcomers to the game can complete these JQ and AB requirements. The team aspect of JQ and AB would allow day 1 players to create a PvP character and get these quests completed.

And what if you choose to do the quests in normal mode? The Deep is only worth 50 zcoins while Rragar Maneater and The Stygian Lords are only worth 30! What an insult!

Whoever came up with these rewards is completely biased towards PvP. Now I’m not going to argue against the GvG, HA, etc. rewards because I personally know the work that goes into them. The other PvP area rewards are in need of a serious balancing act though.

 

Zaishen Quest Clarification

I wanted to let everyone know that you can have 3 of each quest type in your quest log at a single time. This means that you can have a total of 9 total Zaishen quests in your log. Enjoy!

Update:
- 04 May 2009 :: Grammatical mistake

 

What Have I Been Doing?

I have been Kurzick point farming through vanquishes, Jade Quarry, etc. and gold farming to buy Drunkard, Party, and Sweet points. These 4 titles are the final titles that Kousei needs to be a God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals. Unfortunately, these activities do not provide the most intriguing material for writing.

Because of this, I started working on a few guides that I hope to have published here soon. Wish me luck!