What I Played Today: September 20

Persona 3, Guild Wars

Played a little bit of Persona 3 on the train, did a bit of ‘bow-chicka-wow’ with the nerdy glasses girl, then got told by some guy that he was really really excited about dying, and then I turned the game off. This part of the game is really bleak, and doesn’t give you even the least bit of incentive to go level grind, but still expects you to do it anyway. I really don’t want to fight hours of identical monsters for the pittance of experience you offer. Give me a quest!

Also booted up Guild Wars for about five minutes, because I had recently (out of boredom) looked at the wiki to see what all the skills were up to, and found out that my favorite class was getting a lot of love, the skills being readjusted to actually deal damage and stuff. While my love of Guild Wars 2 is absolute and most likely unchanging, I will be sorely upset if they don’t include the Mesmer, because it is the most original and interesting class that has been in an MMORPG for the past ten years. Its flavor is intense, the design is fantastic (they all dress up like they are going to a masquerade ball! It’s like when you realize the power to crush somebody’s mind with your own, you develop an overarticulated fashion sense.), and their place in the party has never really been tried. They play a support role by denial, working to prevent the enemies from ever using their abilities, and it’s really fun, if a bit frustrating to play, because if you’re not fast enough, you’re not good enough, and they tend to be the first target in PvP. (Even above healers, which is something.)

So, I booted up the only character I ever play, my Mesmer, and had forgotten that I had changed out her build into one that focused on conditions (for some reason), and so I decided to see if it worked. It doesn’t. I can’t lay on the conditions fast enough by myself, and really, conditions are never that threatening and easily removed, and a build that exists only to spread them around isn’t that great. So, I got frustrated and quit. Maybe I’ll try to make a build around the skills Mind Wrack, which slowly drains energy and spikes damage when they hit 0, and Aneurysm, which fills up the enemy’s energy bar, but also does 3 points of damage per energy gained, and has been upgraded to also drain the energy of those around the target, which is awesome, because you then turn around and cast aneurysm on them, and so on. It sounds vicious.