User:Aranimda
Aranimda
- From
- The Netherlands
- Gender
Male- Pronouns
- him, his
- Region
- Europe
- World
- Ruins of Surmia (EU)
- Played
- 12372 hours in 136 month(s)
- In-game ID
- TheQuickFox.3826
- Achievements
- 38,705 (Exalted Achiever)
- PvP Rank
- 168
- WvW Rank
- 3745
- Guild
- Unskilled And Afraid [BAD]
- Alt Guild
- Newbie Love [LOVE]
- Best Title
- God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals
- Favorite Profession
Elementalist- Favorite Skill
- Glyph of Lesser Elementals
| Achievements | Legendary Insights | Mastery Level | World Completion | PvP Rank | WvW Rank |
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| 38,705 points Exalted Achiever |
915 | 530 | 100% | 168 Dragon |
3745 Platinum General |
About Me[edit]
As Guild Wars Legacy player who pre-purchased the game, I started playing during the first beta weekends. However, only a few weeks after the game's official release I more of less got disappointed by the new weapon-based skill system and could not find a build that suited a convenient playing style for me. This ultimately resulted in taking a long break with the game until around the Season 1 finale. But after this break I gave the game a second try and a nice and convenient leveling build guide on YouTube. Having finally found a nice build I quickly found myself back into the game, finishing the main story line. Here I regained an old hobby of me, namely Title/Achievement Hunting like I did in GW1. I also find great enjoyment in just exploring the game, including trying to break out of the normal accessible parts of the map and void jumping.
The new achievement system has proven to be a good motivator for me to try out new content and game modes, including WvW and some PvP. Fast forward to 2022. GW2 has been an important part of my life for years now. I slowly and step-by step learned to up my skill level a bit. I got over most of my raid anxiety and now regularly join normal mode and emboldened raids, which is quite a personal milestone to me. I'm still far from a top class player (and never will be) but I can play my role. Sometimes I get carried but I also carry others who are at the start of their own personal journey.
See below for more about me, what I play and my history with the game.
For my Guild Wars 1 page and story, please see my Guild Wars Wiki user page.
Character[edit]
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Build and stats[edit]
General purpose Celestial Tempest[edit]
GW2Skills link: Build and full stats at gw2skills.net
Build Template: [&DQYfFRoXMB91AHUAvgGRAHYSdhIcARwBJgCWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]
Build video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTGAAtkWX6U
Fractal Celestial condi Tempest Tempest[edit]
GW2Skills link: Build and full stats at gw2skills.net
Build Template: [&DQYfFRoXMBt1AHUAvgHLAHYSdhJyAJEAJgCWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADVgBnADEAAA==]
Raid & Strikes Power Tempest[edit]
GW2Skills link: Build and full stats at gw2skills.net
Build Template: [&DQYfHSkrMBvHEgAAvgEAAHYSAADLAAAAJgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]
Build Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpPqQhC6f0I
Raid & Strikes Condition Tempest[edit]
GW2Skills link: Build and full stats at gw2skills.net
Build Template: [&DQYfFSUlMBsnDwAATQEAAHMAAAByAAAAJgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]
Build Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seuPtarvp2c
Dungeon completion[edit]
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Story | Path 1 | Path 2 | Path 3 | Path 4 |
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 Ascalonian Catacombs
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 Caudecus's Manor
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 Twilight Arbor
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 Sorrow's Embrace
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 Citadel of Flame
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 Honor of the Waves
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 Crucible of Eternity
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 Ruined City of Arah
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Raid completion[edit]
| # | Raid / Wing | Encounters | Completed | CM |
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 Heart of Thorns
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| 1 | Forsaken Thicket: Spirit Vale |  |
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| 2 | Forsaken Thicket: Salvation Pass | |
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| 3 | Forsaken Thicket: Stronghold of the Faithful | |
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| 4 | Bastion of the Penitent | |
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 Path of Fire
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| 5 | Hall of Chains | |
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| 6 | Mythwright Gambit | |
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| 7 | The Key of Ahdashim | |
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Killproof link[edit]
Hall of Monuments[edit]
See the [HoM section] of my Guild Wars Wiki user page.
Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2: A personal story and thanks[edit]
As originally posted in the Guild Wars 2 forum: on May 2018.
Warning: Long read
After all these wonderful years, I think it is time for a "thank you".
I probably must explain a bit first. 2006. The MMORPG genre always intrigued me but they existed for many years already and I surely thought I missed the boat already. It was very silly to think this way in hindsight, but that was what I thought. Also, most games of this genre required a monthly fee and because I only had some pocket money to spend what was simply no option. I've seen a few magazine ads of Guild Wars but I was playing other games by then (Mostly Unreal 1) so I was in no hurry to try anything else. See, I have some autistic traits in my personality which for now mean that I'm feeling quite a bit of resistance before I try anything new.
The year was 2006 when I finally started playing Guild Wars. I finally bought a beautiful Prophecies Deluxe edition when it was for sale in a local shop. It was my first MMORPG and I was stunned by both the beauty of the game and the ease of the controls. Point and click, Space to apply. just like Windows. I quickly made my first Elementalist character Hyper Nl (mentioned like my Unreal nickname) and started exploring.
I loved the idea that **I** was finally and actually playing a MMORPG and I absolutely loved the beautiful lands of what is now known as Pre-Searing. I was too shy to actually to anything social yet, but just exploring the world and learning the game was enough. I quickly became Ranger secondary just to be able to charm a Stalker and I thought I was the best. Killing everything with Flare, Healing myself with Troll's Unguent. Who needs more skills? Well, then I left pre-searing, and it was quite a shock. Not only the tranquil lands of the tutorial area was gone, I also had to face real opposition. I was quite low level of post-searing and the game was HARD for a newb like me. But still, the game explained itself very well and slowly but surely I managed to find my way through the endless lands of post-searing Ascalon. Here I was picked up at one of the missions and had my first group play. While I never even heard of something like a _build_ and forget about something like a _metagame_, I got experience, leveled up and progressed through the story just fine. And wow, what a story it was. Still, to this day, nothing gave me the experience of an epic journey like the original Prophecies game with all its plot twists.
I have to thank the countless and forgotten players who picked my up in one of the many PUGs and sometimes showed true heroism of finishing the Desert missions while everyone else was laying dead on the ground. The game continued to fascinate me with it's beautiful graphics, landscapes and not to underestimate: Jeremy Soule's amazing soundtrack. I think the summit of this were the final missions at the Fire Island chain. I never felt so lonely as when I was roaming there at seemingly the end of the world with the Abaddon's Mouth soundtrack in the background.
It was a few months later and I knew that I discovered something very special with the franchise. I bought the Factions and Nightfall Collectors Editions without hesitation and continued on my journey. I slowly started to learn something about skill combinations and finally abandoned my /R Melandru's Stalker for something actually useful. After finishing both new campaigns I found a great motivator in the title system. I had seen players with "Tyrian Grandmaster Cartographer" under their names and was very much impressed by their accomplishments. (To the GW2-players: This title means that a character has visited every tiny corner of every map of the continent.) To me this meant that I had to revisit every area and started scraping to accomplish the same. Something that took me months and again I got great help of my fellow players: This time at the Guild Wars Guru forums who made a Photoshop map comparison of my nearly completed map with their 100% completed one. (Marking the areas I missed) From one title came the next until I was both Legendary Cartographer as Kind of a Big Deal. With later game updates, the KoaBD title track was expanded again and again and this was my ultimate motivator to keep playing. All the then-new hard-mode titles were still off-limits for my player skill level but I progressed and actually used a somewhat balanced build.
And then Eye of the North was announced.
YouTube:Eye of the North trailer
I never was so hyped. I immediately pre-ordered and took two weeks off my work at release date in which I completed the main story and some of the dungeons. The title system became my ultimate motivator to try new things. I already achieved KoaBD rank 3 and continued to play to achieve whatever was within my reach. Still, everything on my only and main Elementalist. I like to keep things simple and focused. And then things turned slower. Guild Wars 2 was announced together with the GW:EN release but kept being delayed and I mostly played Fort Aspenwood Kurzick because I just loved the mission. Of all the time in the game, I probably spent half of it in this mission alone. Here alone I finished both the Savior of the Kurzicks and Luxons titles and in the mean time I filled my Hall of Monuments to prepare for Guild Wars 2 which was only a hype by then.
YouTube:Guild Wars 2 Teaser Trailer
Then it became 2012 and in August of that month, Guild Wars 2 was released. Again, I was astonished by the beauty of the game and again I made an Elementalist, Aranimda. But here I ran into a brick wall. I had a hard time adjusting to the new weapon-based skill system and I experienced the game as one big struggle because every weapon seemed to give my other skills I had no use for. I missed the select-target-and-spam-fire-magic method I grew to love in the original game. Now attack skills started to slide my char back-and forwards and I had to ground-target my AOE before I could fire them. Disappointed, I quit GW2 and went back to GW1. Living World season 1 came and went and I almost completely missed it, which I regret until this day. Then I tried again. On YouTube I found a great guide for a leveling build for an Elementalist which revolved around earth magic and stacking bleeding conditions. It worked out fine and after a lot of trial and error I finally found a weapon set that worked perfectly for me. Scepter/Dagger. It offers a nice mix of the ranged attacks of the scepter with the raw DPS of the offhand dagger. While my builds changed, I still use this weapon set today. I finally reached Level 80 late into 2013 and again found the achievement system as a great motivator to try new things. As Legendary Cartographer of the first game, I first went for World Completion, which was a lot easier here than in the original games. And then it went quickly. World Completion brought me into WvW (Which by then required to have completed all WvW maps) and AP hunting ultimately got me to PvP and the Dragon rank, which would be unheard of if you would ask me if I would ever have this in the beginning of the game.
In some ways, I still feel like the newb who started this journey, but in other ways I am proud of what I have been able to achieve, slowly but surely, bit by bit. Last year, I returned to Guild Wars 1 and finally started playing Hard Mode. The 7 hero teams and builds finally allowed my to do it and also survive. This and a lot of patience lead to the unimaginable: Reaching the GWAMM title in 2017.
As for now I slowly but surely continue to discover this amazing franchise. Sometimes I still suck. Sometimes I own. But always I am thankful for being able to play this game. I may have whined. A lot. Usually for a reason. About various bugs, and issues about everything that can be improved. With this, I do not want to tell you that Guild Wars/GW2 sucks, in contrary. I love this universe and care every bit about it.
Thanks for making the franchise. Thanks for the Epic Journey. Thanks for being so accessible and forgiving with your game. Thanks for being such a beautiful part of my life the last 11 years. Thanks to Jeremy Soule and the GW2 music team for the beautiful soundtracks. The game would have been nothing without it. Also, thanks for all the random players who helped me along the route. Thanks for finishing the missions where I was clueless. Thanks for showing me around or just being there to play the last very hard Nightfall missions in hard mode. Thanks for being awesome. I hope you will never leave me, Guild Wars!
/bow
Ara’s guide to get into raiding for players that were too insecure to try[edit]
Originally posted at the Guild Wars 2 forums on August 2022
- Background: I’m probably an averagely skilled player. While I got more than 9000 hours clocked in GW2 I am by no means amongst the highly skilled players. I got my limitations on how much chaos (simultaneous happenings) I can handle and I got some difficulty learning new concepts. Last year I had the chance to get a taste of GW2 raiding with our guild training runs as they existed then. There I had a great experience but by the difficult nature of the content it also was very intense for me to keep up. At some point I hit a ceiling on what my brain can handle with my build/rotation. I was good enough for some raids but not all of them. Maybe this was the case for more players as we mostly focused on Wings 1 and 4. The weekly guild raids ended for various reasons and with that my raiding as well. Anxiety and real-life events hold me back from picking it up any further until recently.
Guild Wars 2 raids are among, if not the most challenging content in the game. It takes considerable effort and coordination of a 10-player group to get success. The input of every player counts. Raid bosses each have an unique set of mechanics that need to be taken care of and at the same time players need to engage in combat.
The complexity and chaotic nature of this gives many players anxiety to try this content. Afraid to let their team down, not know what to do, have low DPS or healing or making mistakes with the many mechanics. Therefore many players just don’t bother with this content, which is a pity as it is an unique experience with beautiful locations and interesting back stories.
A recent game update brought some changes to encourage new players to try to get into raiding, namely the Emboldened buff and the split of the Raid LFG between training runs and experienced runs. Emboldened allows teams to get a significant boost to their DPS, healing and HP to help them get success. Every week one raid wing is selected for the emboldened boost, which rotates to the next wing every week. The LFG split gets a clear separation between experienced groups that want fast and efficient raid clears (often with proofs of past raid clears) and inexperienced groups that can take the time, allow for failure and are prepared to explain a bit.
To me, this was the encouragement I needed to try to get over my anxiety and get back into raiding. If that sounds like something you wish to try, here is one way, not the way how to approach.
- It is very helpful if you first get some experience with other instanced group content like strike missions. Here you can learn the basics of positioning, playing in a team and breaking the break bar with interrupt skills (cc).
- Pick a role (DPS, tank, healer) and try to get a build and equipment with stats that fits the role that you feel comfortable with. You can get inspiration at sites like MetaBattle and SnowCrows who have recommended builds specially for raiding. For now you don’t need to get the build exactly right but try to get in the right direction.
- Get a bunch of food items that help with the stats / build you need and use them.
- Watch Mukluk’s Get To The Point guide for the raid wing you want to play. These give a good introduction of the boss and mechanics you will encounter. The videos are short and to the point.
- Find a moment where you have all the time to complete a raid. It is normal that a beginner group has many failures. A training run can easily take 4 hours. Trying again and again and learning in the process.
- Find a group in LFG (raid training) or via a guild that hosts raid trainings. Be sure to read the group description. Of the group needs a tank, don’t join as DPS. If the group needs a commander, don’t join as follower. If the group asks for players who know the mechanics, don’t join if you never did the mechanics.
- Tell which role you are and what you bring to the table. Example, power DPS, condition DPS, quickness, alacrity, tank, heals. If you’re new, tell that you are new and that you watched mukluk’s GTTP guide. Then the team can take this into account.
- Have patience, do your best and listen to your team members that have experience. Either via chat or better via voice chat. (discord/teamspeak etc.) Even if you don’t have a mike or are too shy to talk you should still listen to what the commander has to say.
- Disclaimer: This is my experience from my point of view. This is by no means the only approach to get into raiding. I’m aware that the Emboldened mode is somewhat controversial at the moment. As raiding is considered by some as an exclusive game type for the most skilled of GW2 players and that making it easier with an Emboldened buff erodes their past achievements or exclusivity. They of course have a point with that but at the same time players have been asking for a more accessible way to experienced raids for years. And because all mechanics are still untouched, Emboldened mode is everything but easy casual gameplay.
What I like best in Guild Wars 2[edit]
- Most of all, vastly improved graphics of the game world and characters.
- The beautiful soundtracks.
- The achievement system which rewards players for trying new parts of the game.
- The trading post including the gem store.
- The easy to use storage system.
- The dynamic events and epic world bosses.
- The fact that you automatically participate in group content and get rewarded accordingly.
- The mastery system.
- Gliding.
- My Griffon ❤️
Things I miss from Guild Wars 1[edit]
The Epic story-line missions.(Path of Fire fixed this for me. Great work on the storytelling there.)- The versatile skill system.
- The Heroes and Henchmen for playing solo and exploring content at my own pace.
- The tradability of most items. GW2 binds much more items to your character or account.
The continent of Cantha. I hope we will see this again in one of the expansions.(Ty for bringing it back!)- The competitive mission Fort Aspenwood. I probably spent thousands of hours in this mission alone.
Other gaming Interests[edit]
I'm active in the Unreal (The original Unreal most people refer to as Unreal 1 nowadays) community since 1999. For many years I was just another Deathmatch player but in 2003 I 'discovered' cooperative play and decided to make my own Unreal coop server. This was where I learned to know the small but driven community behind the aging game. I received a never imagined amount of support which allowed me to create a great gaming experience for anyone who joined my server. Over the years I worked together with many developers and scripters, allowing me to have the latest add-ons and game types and allowing them to have a valuable real-life testing field for their projects. Nowadays I run 4 Unreal servers with different game types. Coop is still my main focus with my 'HyperCoop' servers. I also run a website with much background information and resources for dedicated Unreal players. My interest in cooperative play eventually brought me into buying my first MMORPG game: Guild Wars. :-)
For more info on my Unreal activities and servers, see my Unreal website.
User boxes[edit]
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- Users who play(ed) the original Guild Wars
- Users who contribute to both GWW and GW2W
- Users who play Guild Wars 2
- Users who play Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns
- Users who play Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire
- Users who play Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons
- Users who play Guild Wars 2 Secrets of the Obscure
- Users who play Guild Wars 2 Janthir Wilds
- Users who play both PvE and PvP
- Users who favor Dwayna
