Since HoT came out, I've been spending time fully unlocking all the elite specializations for my characters. Meso, my Ranger, was my first (naturally). Moose, my Warrior, was my second (surprisingly). Somewhere along the way, I completed Cor, my Engineer.

As I said in my beta-research, I've been terribly impressed with Scrapper, the Engineer elite. It's turned out to be a very useful and powerful job these days, and is increasingly popular in the newly released raids. So, I've spent some time gearing up Cor for Scrappin' accordingly.

Here you can see him with his new Hammer. It's a Corrupted Sledgehammer. See, I mystic forge practically all my rare weapons. I often get special weapons which are hard to obtain otherwise doing this. One weapon I obtained was the Etched Sledgehammer that's required to craft the Corrupted hammer. So, naturally, I crafted it and used it on my Engineer. I plan on re-working my Engineer/Scrapper spec in the near future, changing my gear to be better at raids and updating my look. I think I'll use the look of the Corrupted hammer to theme my new changes. Stay tuned.

Been doing a lot of HoT content lately, with the primary focus being obtaining Hero Points for my elite specs. Here's Genova opening chests under Tahir. Thus far, I have everyone's elite specs fully unlocked with the exception of Molina... I've been just as underwhelmed by Dragonhunter as I was during the beta...

I've also been spending time leveling up my two new characters. Here I am doing a Hero Point as my new elementalist, and here's "Dont Hurtem Hammer", my Revenant, leveling up in the starting Sylvari area.

I've also been doing more [SAND] runs. During my last one, I actually lead the uplands events. I have no actual tag, so I popped a mentor tag and lead that way.

Another thing I've been doing lately is trying for the Legendary collections. I'll admit, it may be a completely fruitless endeavor, as the end result is often more expensive than just buying the precursors outright.

For one collection, The Moot, you have to find and kill a number of Drake Broodmothers. Most are fairly easy to find. One is rather difficult.

The Marsh Drake Broodmother only spawns as an event in an obscure area in Metrica Province. Little is currently known about this event, as the wiki (at the time of this writing) has scant information on it. Turns out, that there's a class of Asura studying some bizarre Asuran sciences stuff being taught by a Professor Hamm. During his lecturing, various things spawn and must be dealt with. One of those things is this Broodmother. So, what you wind up having to do is sit there, waiting for the damned thing to spawn.

Eventually, it spawns as a tamed creature, only to turn on its students and attack. This is when it can be killed and its drop obtained.

All told, I've been attempting something on the order of 7 different Legendary collections. I'm going to try, at the very least, to finish the Bifrost, Dusk/Dawn, and Astralaria ones. Here I am completing the first tier of the Bifrost one, and here I am fighting the Shark for the Moot. I should note that this shark is annoying as fuck. First, he only spawns if two other events fail in the zone, which means you're constantly pleading with people to get them to not do the events and let them fail (something which is very hard to do, as most people either ignore you or refuse to listen). Then, once he spawns, he's a champion, which means I can't solo him. Finally, the drop isn't guaranteed- to date I've killed him more than 15 times and am yet to get the drop. Arrgh!

Raids were released last month with a certain amount of fanfare. As many did, I spent a lot of time on the first day trying them out.

The first raid released involved fighting your way up to a Vale Guardian, and then defeating said Guardian. The fight was made complicated by the fact that there are different strategies and attacks you need to be aware of. For example, on the way up to the Guardian you fight three subordinates, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Then, the Guardian itself fights with the combined abilities of each of the subordinates. At some point during this battle, the Guardian splits into the three subordinates again, and they must be defeated before a final phase occurs complete with its own strategies and attacks.

I went as a Druid (Ranger's elite spec), decked out in my new Magi's gear. After some frustration, I did manage to get with a group that beat the boss (only to fail on the next section :-)

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to do the raids before Turkey Day break, so I'll need to return to the raids again soon. I'm debating about switching my Magi's gear for Zealot's as that seems to be what many other Druids are using. I'm not entirely sold on it yet, though. Magi's gave me such great healing power, and yet the precision kept my damage high with criticals. Basically, I'll probably have to experiment with Zealot's and compare it to Magi's before I make my final decision on gear stats.

For as long as I can remember, I've been Mystic Forging all my rare weapon drops.

See, when you plop in four weapons of the same type (4 hammers, 4 axes, 4 swords, etc) into the Mystic Forge, you get back a new weapon of the same rarity or greater. This means if you trade four rares you may get back a new rare (likely), a new exotic (less likely), a named exotic (even less likely), or a precursor (extremely unlikely). Many people do this trying for the precursor. Personally, I do it to try for a precursor, or for exotics to sell (I've not made a fortune doing this, but it's been a nice supplement to my income and has yielded several special exotic weapons I've wound up using as well).

In the three years I've been in this game, I never got anything greater than a named exotic... At least, until November:

I plunked in four random, rare, level 78+ Axes and the friggin' forge gave me back Tooth of Frostfang, which is the precursor axe for the Legendary axe Frostfang.

Holy. Friggin'. Zombie. Titty. Fucking. Jeesus.

Of course, I realize the irony of just starting the various Legendary collections only to have my first precursor ever drop not days later...

A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) once confided something to me while we were playing FFXI... He confessed that he was attracted to the Star Sibyl, Windurst's leader.

I always found this a bit... strange.... But whatever... The heart wants what the heart wants...

Anyway, in GW2, there is a character that reminds me very much of the Star Sibyl, and I think this friend would really dig her. Her name is Taimi, and she's a teenage Asura prodigy who joins your team during Living Story Season 1.

A couple of weeks back, [SAND] hit a pretty major milesone: Their 100th T6 Dry Top run! It was pretty awesome to be a part of it!

The real kicker of the 100th run was that the Dune Soarer spawned during it! For those who don't know, the Dune Soarer is a very rare mob that spawns in Dry Top during the sandstorm. It's an extremely rare spawn that is, now, needed for at least one Legendary Collection. Unfortunately, we melted Dune Soarer so quickly that I didn't get a very good screenshot of it, only the aftermath.

After the 100th run, we gathered together in the Guild Hall on the airship to take screenshots and set of some celebratory fireworks.

Started out by doing some Guild missions with [SAND]. Nothing much to see here, just your ordinary runs. Honestly, I don't do these anywhere near as often as I should...

Justin, a long-time ClanAM friend (he was Meretrix in FFXI and raprot in Unreal Tourny), started GW2 with me waaaay back in 2012. But he left sometime during Living Story Season 1 (the fact that we were getting this episodic content that could be missed greatly pissed him off). He recently decided to try the game again, and here's my first screenshot of him re-joining the game:

Only time will tell if he stays in the game, but I sure hope he does :-)

Wintersday 2015 started this week. In years past, I never really got into the Wintersday events. This year, I'm really giving it a try. So far, I'm enjoying it, even if the shoulder item reward is kind of annoying to get...