Blaugust Day 25: Asura Alt Collection – The Rest (GW2)

The other asura in my alt stable are nowhere near as formed as the first three.

I just made them to have them, and start them on the whole birthday gifts process, while filing them on the “to someday level” list.

Shood is literally the youngest of the lot.

I made him fairly recently, when I realized I was probably never going to get anywhere further on my human female elementalist (seeing that she is both conveniently at a really good level for opening champion bags for cloth items, and also rapidly running out of clothes options that isn’t just bare skin and boobs.)

Some day I’ll get around to leveling him over level 5.

I could use an experience scroll, but then I’ll have to have level 20 gear prepped for him to get started and all that. So, meh. Another time.

I see him as a bit of a young prodigy, probably the equivalent of a nobleman’s son of some kind. Other than that, backstory is still pretty much open for now.

(And yes, this time the naming is very much on purpose to sound very close to Shodd, and Shud, and Shudd… What? Sue me.)

Shuddi is probably the first purposefully cute and snub-nosed asura I’ve tried to make.

I’m oldschool and belong to the “ugly-ass Vekk is how most asura ought to look” school of thought, but well, I’m running out of ugly asura styles and need a bit of contrast.

So we get cute, but serious, Shuddi.

I really wanted to name her Shoddi, to play on “shoddy” since she’s an engineer, but someone else has cleverly already thought of that and sniped the name first. So I got the next best thing, and continue my chain of asura names that sound/look all fairly similar.

Right now, she’s mostly just a bank mule. I’m likely going to level and max out my charr engineer first, so her fate is pretty much to sit in Rata Sum and hold my junk for now.

Shayddi is the oldest of the spare asura alts, not counting Kujl or Shudd.

I made her very early on when I realized that my norn thief just wasn’t really doing it for me. Despite the fun contrast and backstory of a thug-like runty norn thief, the fact of the matter is that however runty a norn gets, he’s still a goddamn big norn.

That means super-readable combat animations, which means I get pwned on a thief, whose schtick is that they’re supposed to be all stealthy and stuff. So he goes into stealth for a couple seconds… when he comes out, people go “Ah, look, the fat fellow is still over there! Pewpewpew” instead of “dammit, where did the tiny squirt run off to?”

So I said, well, maybe I ought to try it on another race and see if it gets any better, or if it’s just my lack of thiefly skills/mentality or my latency to blame.

Sadly, I never got around to that experiment either. Discovering other classes seemed more fun, after I’d already tried out most of the thief skills and traits on the norn. Maybe someday.

I went for something almost anorexic scrawny on this character. I have the vague idea that she has more of a street rat background. Not so much academically smart, but very very cunning. Probably even murderous, given those eyes. I steered away from Minnie Mouse-cute, and tried to do something almost tomboy-ish, in a vein similar to all the female street rats out there who dress like boys (warning: TV Tropes link!) and are absolutely mistaken as male by 95% of the populace who evidently aren’t using their eyes.

(And yes, her name is a play on “Shady.”)

—

And that’s all of them for the moment. I am still missing asura necro and asura mesmer. (And revenant, eventually.)

Only a matter of time, I’m sure.

This post was brought to you by the letters B for Belghast and Blaugust, and the number 25.

Blaugust Day 24: Asura Alt Collection – The Warrior (GW2)

I find it very tedious to run dungeons.

My charr warrior that was originally planned as a dungeon/fractal runner somehow ended up as a Teq and Triple Trouble Wurm killer, hanging out around Sparkfly Fen and Bloodtide Coast.

Between hanging on to PTV soldier gear (for Tequatl before it could be crit) and accumulate a great deal of blues and greens and champion bags and dragonite ore from all those chests being opened, plus a few tonics for in-between waiting fun, plus consumables for the “need emergency dps” moments, his bags are overstuffed.

That usually means I get through 1.5 dungeons before my inventory overloads and I start looking around for salvage kits… and realize that I’ve left the copper salvage kit in my other pants (aka the WvW alt, that also needs to salvage on the fly, or the cloth salvaging alt, etc.)

Which leads to extra stress attempting to sort and clean inventory on the go, while the rest of the group is in “go go go” mode trying to finish the other 1.5 dungeons.

So, maybe, I would be less stressed out if I had a second warrior, with lots of bag space, officially designated as a dungeon-runner and make him fully meta-compliant with the proper (and expensive) runes and consumables an everything?

Thus was Peacemaker Yolo born.

And yes, I kept encountering the YOLO meme and kept thinking it would make a great asura name. Not to mention, be extremely hilarious to yell it in caps and then charge headlong into a bunch of mobs like Leeroy Jenkins, if entertainment and a combat initator was ever needed.

Naturally, there is no way in hell “Yolo” alone was available as a name, so we had to get roleplayer-creative and give him a title of some kind.

The Peacemakers are an organization that has always intrigued me within the asura culture. They’re like a police force (complete with golems) and defensive army protecting asura territory and patroling Rata Sum and its outskirts.

I’ve always wondered how they ‘fit’ within the general academic asuran culture where it’s all mainly about research labs and krewes working on individual projects and politicking their way to the top. Are they intellectual drop outs that turn to more physical military pursuits? Or are the peacemakers also a well-respected job occupation in asura culture? Then there are shades of military and thought police, I’m not exactly sure how far asura will go,  given their frenetic pursuit of modernity and semi-loose morals, in a way. And then there’s their relationship to the Inquest. I presume they’re somewhat at odds and the Peacemakers tend to jail the troublemakers of that faction, when they get too disruptive.

No concrete canon answers as yet. Just idle speculation. But enough to feel interested in naming a character as ‘belonging’ to that organization.

I contrasted Yolo from Kujl and Shudd by making him an older asura.

Here’s a veteran of the wars, of a sort. This guy has been around the block a couple of times. He’s definitely a sergeant or higher in terms of police rank, whatever the asura peacekeepers use.

Is he set in his ways? Yeah. He’s probably a traditionalist of some kind. I see him as the most xenophobic of the lot. This guy is “for asura, by asura.”

Only asura are people. The rest, well, bookah is probably too familiar a term. He probably doesn’t call them anything at all. If he does say bookah, it’s probably with an intonation of “outsiders”/ “other” / “alien.”

He likely spends most of his time in asura territory or Rata Sum, only going out on special assignment to take down troublemakers that require SWAT team-like special forces (*cough dungeons cough*).

I see him more as an inadvertently hilarious character.

The guy’s deadly serious, probably doesn’t have much of a sense of humor anywhere in him at all, beyond a dry wit.

He probably has no idea how adorbs he looks when he’s all suited in his get-up.

To him, it’s probably like standard operating procedure. Protective goggles, make sure your face is concealed to protect operative cover and anonymity, leave no witnesses, blah blah, etc.

If anything, I guess he likes that he looks young and spry when he’s all Batman or ninja-masked. “Still got it,” even after all these years.

And boy, does he hit hard with hundred blades.

The benefits of being meta-compliant.

Sadly, despite having this guy in my alt stable, clean bags, dungeon waypoints finally ran to and unlocked and all, I’m still procrastinating dungeon-wise, so I guess the issue is just me.

This post was brought to you by the letters B for Belghast and Blaugust, and the number 24.

GW2: Norn Thief Alt

I am Norn.

The chill of the Northern Shiverpeaks does not faze me.

A wade through one of its many streams is bracing, and puts me in the mood for a good hunt, and ale at a warm hearth when my work is done.

I am Norn.

There is game here aplenty, wood and ore and forage for those who know where to find it.

Survival is bred in our bones. Like others, I call these snowy mountains my home.

I am Norn.

I revere the Spirits of the Wild.

I respect all the lessons they have to teach me. Bear gives me strength and self-reliance. Snow Leopard teaches the value of strategy and stealth. Just like me, Raven is not above a bag of good tricks and there is wisdom and knowledge in its caw. Wolf guides my road, and advises the best time for loyalty and friendships and running with the pack, and when to leave and wander alone once again.

But I am not your average Norn.

They used to laugh and call me a runt. Perhaps it was meant as good-natured jest. Perhaps it was merely a way for their tales and legends to outshine all others.

Trust me, when even a Norn called “the Short” has a couple of inches over you…

You know you are anything but average.

It matters not.

Like other Norn, I live for the hunt. I will not back down from a challenge.

I have learned to use my size and speed to my advantage, to attack weak points and be where the prey is not looking.

I’ve heard the humans have a saying. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

—

Looks like playstyle preferences win out in the end.

I tried. I still like the necromancer and the elementalist, and they are nasty in close combat with double daggers and have the advantage of long range spells, but there is just something magical about how thieves just rip stuff up or die trying.

That, and the eventual hope that I can use him in WvW someday, I want to play around with stealth, lone wolfing and hit-and-run tactics – it seems a complement to how my guardian is more of a group force multiplier, which gets occasionally frustrating when there is no group around to speak of. I need something to rambo with when I get tired of moronic brainless calls, and lord knows there’s been quite a number of those in my timezone lately.

No doubt by the time I get the thief up to a level that won’t just melt and die in WvW, I will find out that organization and morale has improved and there is a need for more group-oriented builds once again, but oh well, having the option for another gameplay style will be nice.

The thiefly weapon options are really hard to choose from. Double daggers is sick, of course, and even in just its five skills, there seem to be quite a few options for fighting. There is the death blossom (3) spin to win, which applies bleed condition damage while evading. There is the standard dagger autoattack chain (1) that applies poison and does very decent out-of-the-box damage. There is heartseeker (2) spam that can do a nasty amount of burst as the target has less and less hp. It’s amazing how the initiative mechanic gives thieves more choice in how to apply quick burst fast at the cost of some downtime, or maintain a sustained dps chain. And there is the stab-stealth (5) which can be followed up by a very nice backstab (1) if you can maneuver behind an enemy while in stealth. And I’m just getting comfortable with the thrown cripple dagger (4) as an opener, which also chains to more than one enemy and softens up a foe before closing the distance.

Sword/pistol is another combination I’m liking. The blinding powder field can be quite effective for keeping the thief alive in close combat, and the sword gives a decent cone attack that hits a couple of enemies at once and is reminiscent of my guardian’s sword.

I found the pistol mainhand to be a decent ranged option too, though I haven’t settled on which offhand is the best complement for it yet. I’ve not played with the shortbow much, but it seems like it has its own bag of tricks too.

Then there’s steal, which also takes some getting used to, but I suspect can be rather powerful, if one knows what to steal from and when to use the stuff you get best.

And there’s the whole mobility aspect to a thief, which I -really- need practice in, but seems potentially powerful in the right hands. Shadowstepping in and out of range, evading here and there, stealthing in and out, blinding to and fro.

Some day I’d really like to learn more about all the different professions, because they seem to play so differently, but we need to start somewhere, I guess…

…I can hear altoholism calling again. Won’t be surprised if I end up playing yet another character for the next week.