I’m not walking back my love of ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2 as a game, but I am going to register a bit of frustration.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am currently working on my first set of legendary armor. (If you aren’t a guildie, Legendary Armor offers the same stats as ascended armor with the added benefit of being able to freely change all stats and appearances of the armor at will. It’s a HUGE QOL improvement to players who like to fine-tune their builds, or who need more than one build for multiple play settings (PvE vs PvP or WvW).

Legendary armor is also usable by all the toons on the same account, with the one restriction that character classes in GW2 can only EVER use one armor weight (light, medium, or heavy) meaning you need three sets of legendary armor to outfit all your toons.

Currently, the easiest way to achieve legendary armor in Guild Wars 2 is through the Secrets of the Obscure expansion pack (which also fast tracks the acquisition of GW2’s most versatile mount: the skyscale (think flying dragon you get to ride. WAY better than the flying mounts in Warcraft in my opinion.)

Secrets of the Obscure corrects a long-standing issue in Guild Wars 2 where players were forced to compete in either PvP or WvW, or to participate in a heck of a lot of raids, to get legendary armor. With SOTO, no player-on-player competition is required, and neither are raids or dungeons. In other words, you can get this armor without having to rely on other players wanting to do the same thing at the same time, and also wanting your build in their party.

That’s not just good. It’s FANTASTIC.

The problem with SOTO is that you gain progress by inches. I’ve been working on my first set of legendary gear for several months now. (I’m on the last piece, finally.) I’ll have to come back with different toons to get the other two sets. The maps aren’t that large, and the grind is… well, tedious. The same things over and over and OVER for weeks on end, and anything gets boring.

Two out of the three maps aren’t horrible. Amnytas and the Skywatch Archipelago are interesting enough, with metas that are fairly fun to complete.

Inner Nayos is a hellscape where the big meta (a map-wide event in which players come together to defeat one big boss that a player will have defeated independently in an instanced story, most typically) almost always fails.

In fact, in all the times I’ve participated in the “Eparch” meta, I have seen it complete successfully… once. Usually, people start arguing about the fail of the event about six minutes before it actually fails, which isn’t helpful.

Add to that I can’t stop thinking about the Kronenberg World episode of Rick & Morty, and I have to say I really, really HATE THIS MAP!!!!

And I have to spend months and months there to get my armor.

FML.

So here’s my current strategy: when it comes to the West Meta (the meta in Inner Nayos that leads eventually to Eparch), there are a lot of steps. You can get pretty much the same rewards (including a daily Hero’s Choice chest that allows you to get a case of congealed screams) from killing the dragon Knaebelag, so I plan on never playing past this point in the meta again. Why should I? The Eparch event takes 30 minutes, almost always fails, and about 50% of the time it fails with people complaining about PUGs.

It’s OPEN WORLD! Everyone is a pug.

Guildies: the best gaming community I’ve found (outside the forums which are a tragedy). But some people are just so damn rude and full of themselves. That’s not GW2, though. That’s just … people.

(still a great game! promise. just a hideous map with poorly designed events. Pobody’s nerfect!)