Guild Wars 2

Ok so first, want to say I absolutely love the crafting system, by far the best I’ve ever encountered and I’m absolutely addicted to it.

Now on to my main point:
Why in the hell do we need the rarest of all crafting materials to craft runes and sigils? Even the minor ones requires ridiculous types of materials (and I’m not talking about the exclusive stuff that requires event mats, or special event recipes…those make sense to need difficult mats) . I don’t ever forsee any benefit, in any form, of crafting sigils and runes that you can otherwise get from drops and simply salvage out, especially when actually crafting them requires expensive and hard to get mats. So shall we see a change or refinement on this in the future? I don’t forsee a more favorable drop rate on the mats themselves and I understand why, mainly because legendaries and other hard to craft stuff use them, but can we get some kind of reprieve?

If anyone else feels the same feel free to post about it, just please keep it constructive. I really would like for them to take this seriously.

In regards to low level Runes/Sigils (Minor and Major, to be precise), it’s fair that they use items that aren’t easily accessible.

Why?

Because players aren’t, in the confines of the game, supposed to have easy access to them. They’re supposed to be bonus goods to put on your items. The only problem with this, having said it, is that they ARE easy to access out of the realm of crafting.

Upon playing the game, you are immediately thrust into level 14 Masterwork items (not including karma items). These level 14 Masterwork items all contain Sigils/Runes allowing you to boost your stats tremendously. From this point on, using and maintaining Sigils/Runes becomes trivial and, in some cases, even meaningless.

However, pre-level 14 is the only time in the game where Runes and Sigils will make an overwhelming difference in your gameplay experience (yes, it makes Runes and Sigils at level 80 look like wearing a Hero’s Band instead of not wearing a ring at all). Why is this? Because at lower levels, let’s say level 1, you’re supposed to have access to very little amount of stats.

In fact, assuming you’re playing this game with no previous experience, you have just your base stats and that’s enough to kill mobs. Now, let’s take a step forward. There’s level 0 gear (which is, ironically, stronger than level 1 gear) that you can wear. This gear will give you a total of 12 Power.

You start with 24 in all stats, so 12 is already 50% of what you have. (And starting gear gives you 0 stats.)

Now let’s add in Runes/Sigils. Each rune can give you 10 in any stat you desire (11 in Condition Damage if you want to be fancy, but that won’t add anything before upscaling at this point). That’s another 41% in your stats. Note: You can use 4 runes at level 1.

This means that at level 1, the game expects you to have 24 in all stats, but it’s possible to have an additional 52 in all stats before going into Runes and Trinkets (yes, you can use trinkets at level 1).

So, there’s a Polla and a Hero’s Band. The Hero’s Band will give you 2 to all stats (and 2% critical damage, which is infinitely more than is physically possible to attain at level 1). Polla will only give you 1 to Power, Precision, Vitality and Toughness (but those are the stats we are looking at in this dissection).

So you now have an additional 3 stats, which you can improve with an Adorned Jewel which will add an additional 4 to any stat you choose (and you can use 2 of these).

We now have a total of 63 bonus stat points.

So, we move onto a Sigil. With Sigils, your best bet here is to go with a stacking sigil or an on-critical sigil because the others will only give you a 1% boost (3% on specific mob-killing which is somewhat useful, but I digress). A Sigil of Bloodlust, however, will only give you 25 bonus Power at level 1 (which is still better than nothing, a LOT better), so we’ll go with that.

Now we have an additional 88 stat points. BUT WAIT! The weapons will give 5 or 10 Power (5 for 1 handed, 10 for 2 handed), which means you can have an additional 10 (let’s say you’re using a 2h because there aren’t many good sigils you can use at this point, anyways).

So we’re now at 98 bonus stat points.

You have a base of 24 and then you have an additional 98 (before food).

So… 122 stat points when you’re only supposed to have 24. That’s 500% of what you’re supposed to have. You can then add an additional 20 Power (since that’s what we’re using because the armor gives power) from a Grilled Steak. (I don’t include Nourishment since it will add 1% of your Toughness/Vitality which will only give you 1 at most, if you’ve been stacking Toughness/Vitality instead of Power.)

142 Power. Nearly 600% of what you’re supposed to have.

At level 80, however, you pick your Runes for the secondary effects (in certain cases) instead of the stat points. You will never reach 600% of your current stat spread via runes/sigil/food after level 1.

Ok I can see your point about the low level ones, but considering you can just buy a master sal kit and pull them off of just about anything for sale for vendor price in the TP, it makes crafting them trivial, which I think you mentioned anyway. And that was my main point salvaging them nearly for free>crafting them any day .

The problem is that they’re too easily obtainable at low levels, which is when they matter. They were supposed to be rare goods, but they’ve become common goods since they are guaranteed in Masterwork items.

I almost wonder if the new Magic Find consumable gotten exclusively from salvaging blues and greens will change the availability. I would say no because more greens will be salvaged. Then I realized that if you are constantly salvaging blues and greens to get this MF consumable then we’re less likely to use a costly salvage kit to do so. Many runes will be destroyed in the name of boosting account MF.
Just a thought.
Otherwise I agree totally that crafting these are ridiculously expensive and are much better bought off the TP.
EDIT: removed random characters. Also I just wanted to state that I don’t ever salvage masterworks for their runes but some may. And the fact that they can’t be bought from the TP as easily ‘because’ they’re being destroyed for the consumable means less supply.

Except most people don’t salvage masterwork’s for their rune.

You also have to remember that drop rates on these ‘rare materials’ were quite different at launch then they are now.

This game is quite a different game, and some recipes are now just plain ridiculously expensive as a result.

It’s possible that salvage kits may be changed so that we have to choose what we want to salvage out of an item (similar to how in GW1, you had a choice of salvaging either the inscription, suffix or prefix of a weapon, with a chance that the weapon would get destroyed during the salvage). If we had to choose between salvaging runes/sigils and ectos/MF resource, we’d probably see a steep drop in supply of runes/sigils in short order.

There is a new item that was data mined that will allow you to extract runes/sigils without destroying the associated armor/weapon. Probably will be a gem store item.

Or a higher priced / rarer salvage kit (that’s what they were in GW1). If the item is account bound, I’d consider buying it. If it’s soulbound….I doubt it.

Esplen.3940:

Except most people don’t salvage masterwork’s for their rune.

Not incorrect, but a lot of people are loosing out by not at least glancing at what their greens have on them. I give all mine a cursory glance while looking at them on the TP sell screen just to see if something interesting pops up. There are a number of minor runes and sigil that are worth +20x the item cost (30s or so). If you are just Tossing every green in the Mystic Flusher, then I can’t blame anyone for not looking.

There are 5 Minor Sigils worth more than 4s. All of them are not capable of being on dropped Masterwork Items.

Masterwork items will only carry a Minor Sigil.

If you then apply the probability of successfully salvaging, you’re not really making that much…

Brother Grimm.5176:

Or a higher priced / rarer salvage kit (that’s what they were in GW1). If the item is account bound, I’d consider buying it. If it’s soulbound….I doubt it.

Esplen.3940:

Except most people don’t salvage masterwork’s for their rune.

Not incorrect, but a lot of people are loosing out by not at least glancing at what their greens have on them. I give all mine a cursory glance while looking at them on the TP sell screen just to see if something interesting pops up. There are a number of minor runes and sigil that are worth +20x the item cost (30s or so). If you are just Tossing every green in the Mystic Flusher, then I can’t blame anyone for not looking.

You make an interesting point. I salvage everything worth <2-3s, regardless of rarity, and when it comes to rare/exotics, I salvage whatever is worth less than the cost of a single glob of ectoplasm. I use the mystic salvage kits, seeing as I’m salvaging so much, that having a stack of 250 kits is simply more convenient and efficient in terms of space. I wind up vendoring most of the sigils/runes I get, seeing as they’re often only worth a copper more than vendor price on the TP, and severely over supplied. (Now I play with them in the Mystic Forge).

If you’re vendoring them, you might as well just take up some bank space and start mystic forging them. There is that off chance that you pull something useful and/or profitable. It also counts towards a daily.

Esplen.3940:

If you’re vendoring them, you might as well just take up some bank space and start mystic forging them. There is that off chance that you pull something useful and/or profitable. It also counts towards a daily.

I do this with about half my greens and vendor everything above 1s50c. Still salvaging the majority of low vendor price for Luck (after checking the TP profit numbers for everything up front….not much profit on TP for greens these days, however).

Keep the runes and sigils until you Daily Forge Smith pops up and toss them in the Mystic Flusher too. Majors can net much better gold.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Ok so first, want to say I absolutely love the crafting system, by far the best I’ve ever encountered and I’m absolutely addicted to it.

What is it that you love about the crafting system?

I’m very curious because I find it to be the absolute worst part of the game:
To me, there’s zero gameplay involved — only tedious clicking through an absolutely horrible interface.

Found WvW is good place for obtaining components for rune & sigil crafting