In MMOs, it's the little things that can make the game.

I wrapped up the HoT story missions as Genova. At the end of it, I had the following conversation with Marjory:

I'm not sure how to feel. This is it, the culmination of everything we've worked toward over the past two years. I feel nervous and anxious, and I feel ready to bury Belinda's sword deep into Mordremoth's heart. (link)

Back in FFXI, completing the CoP expansion felt epic and immensely satisfying. We, in ClanAM, had worked hard for over two years to complete it. It took that long because it was difficult and required a great deal of devotion to beat, especially for people leading and running a size-able Linkshell who also had actual lives outside of FFXI. GW2, on the other hand, is considerably less difficult and requires much less devotion. Thus, you wouldn't think you'd have the same level of epic satisfaction over completing something.

But due to the way in which the game grows and evolves with the Living Story, which metes out slow and gradual story and world changes over time, you effectively get the same thing because things do take a long time to unravel. Living Story season one started in January 2013. In November 2014, Living Story season 2 episode 5 was released, during which Marjory's sister, Belinda, was killed defending Fort Selma. Now, two years later, we arive at the culmination of the story started long ago, and Marjory reflects upon the journey we've taken.

Wow. Awesome.

Anyway, the final battle was quite fun, and finishing HoT felt satisfying.

Spent some time finally getting Dont Hurtem Hammer, my Revenant, to end-game. Here I am in Frostgorge doing a common event chain. My main motivation for getting her to end-game is to take her into HoT with Trix, who recently got the expansion.

I also encountered someone who did a pretty awesome Pooh Bear. It looks like they even have the Queen Bee aura, which is currently nearly 2k gold on the TP... Holy crap...

I mentioned before that I had been neglecting my Necro, Haima Ainigma, for pretty much the last three years. She had been end-game since shortly after the game's launch, and she was my fourth character created, but I never really was able to get into Necro. Aside from some very minor WvW action with her in early 2013, and using her as my Weaponsmith, she had sat untouched for more than two years. Her build was also very neglected, as it represented a fairly naive time for me early in GW2, and she was ultimately somewhat gimped (she had some condi gear, but it was liberally mixed with PVT gear I'd picked up because that was the WvW-meta at the time). The various Necro builds I'd experimented with all focused on minions, which felt entirely too fiddly and micro-manage-y for my tastes. So she was my Weaponsmith, and nothing more. With the HoT expansion, I had hoped that the Reaper specialization would change all that, but I felt underwhelmed by the Reaper's greatsword and abilities in general, so I continued to neglect her.

While I was gearing up my other characters for various, specific,, purposes, it became apparent that I really lacked a solid condi-build. I wanted a powerful condi-centric character that focused entirely on it. I didn't want a mixed condi/tank, or condi/support. I also wanted something pretty powerful and intimidating which could really deal some significant damaging stacks. I liked Warrior, but the gimp back in February greatly reduced their efficacy. Revenant seems to have some solid condi moves, but increasingly I'm seeing people say there's better uses of their skills focusing on boons over condi. I'd also heard good things about condi Engineers, but none of the builds I could find really did much for me. Thus, I was consistently left with Necro as the most viable option. Bleh.

After mountains of research, much vacillation, and a few false starts, I eventually discovered this video, whose author made some very compelling points regarding his build. Additionally, the build directly solves all of the problems I had with Necro by reducing the micro-manage-y emphasis on minions that you see so prevalent in most builds and getting rid of the well-o-gasm that reduces mobility. It also ups the attack speed by using scepter, focus and dagger (three weapons I, really, haven't had much experience with but which play nicely into the rapid attack play style I've come to love).

Anyway, I spec'd and started gearing my Necro anew. Even with only half of my ascended gear done (and my old PVT gear still gimping me) I noticed some impressive condi damage.

Went out with [SAND] on several runs. Anet revamped the way rare mobs spawned in many areas, including Dry Top, so this meant we almost always get a rare mob spawn these days. It's tanked the cost of their drops, but that's a small price to pay considering how needed they are for several Legendary quests and how much easier it is now to get them for those.

I also do quite a few Dragon Stand runs, which are hella-fun. Here we are fighting the Mushroom Emperor, which is required for a quest centering around the raids.

During a Karka Queen run, I encountered the following bug where one of the hatchlings was abnormally huge.

April saw a surprise return of Super Adventure Box!

For those who don't know, SAB is a "Game Within A Game", where you use a device in Rata Sum to transport into a Zelda-inspired game. When you approach the device the scene is pretty crazy. But that's nothing compared to the magical, technicolor eye-gasm that is SAB itself:

The story is pretty silly. A princess (who looks suspiciously like Moto, the Asuran creator of SAB) is kidnapped by an evil dude and it's your task to rescue her. You then journey through severl worlds, battling bosses and tackling mini-games, on your quest. It seems that the goal is to have 4 worlds, however, only 2 are complete. This is actually the exact same number the last time SAB came out more than two years ago, so it's obvious they've not done any additional development. SAB has, honestly, been semi-controversal because it's so very popular and had a few useful items that cost real-world money and yet hasn't been back in the game for a couple of years. Even so, having it back with no new content was still better than not having it back at all.

While doing SAB I managed to hit my 15k achievement points milestone, which was awesome.