Guild Wars 2

Dont know if this is the right place but its tied directly to crafting so here we go.

Before addressing the topic I would like to give you some background.

1. I have no need for ascended, I have legendary weapons (staff/hammer) which fulfill my needs in wvw and the few times I do dungeons and fotm I can use those or just use an exotic. I have no personal gain in by posting this topic. Its just a reflection of the current state.
2. I don’t do much zerging in wvw, the only time I join up in those is when something close to our group is going down and we see an opportunity to help out in the attack/defense.
3. When I zerg its because we don’t have a full group online in my team.
4. Im rather casual atm, we are talking about 10-12 hours a week in wvw. You know im a grown up with a business and a family. The fact is for family man im probabaly hard core.
5. We focus on guards, supply camps and cutting the enemy zergs tail.

Why improve rewards? Well I played in wvw for 6 hours the last two nights and I ended up with less than 20 mats of each of the three ascended mats dropping from bosses, champions, etc. And the only time we got any was when we joined up with the zerg. None of us got any by killing guards, supply camps, players or doing caravans.

With the above in mind I have come to the conclusion that rewards in ascended material just have to improve. If the above is close to correct it would take me 150 hours of effective gameplay in wvw to get the mats to one ascended. If a play 10 hours a week in wvw this would mean it would take 15 weeks to get one ascended weapon. If I play with 3 weapons (hammer+scepter/focus) it would take 45 weeks. Add in a 6 week vacation and we are talking about one year.

The same could be achieved in approx 20 hours (or two weeks for me) by doing dungeons and worldsbosses/champions.

Basically the current system encourages zerging, if it’s an ascended weapon you want. This is really bad imo. We don’t need more incentives to do zergs, we need less.

There is no ascended reward at all for supply camps, caravans, kills and guards or at least during 6 hours of playing we didn’t get any and I have aoe loot keybinded and spamming it. To me this is close to absurd since those activities are what can be called “small group content”.

Well how can this be solved, that small groups cant progress at a decent pace in wvw/ascended?
It’s easy really:
1. Make caravans and guards drop a minor chest with ascended material in them, 1 piece of each type is good enough.
2. Make supply camps drop a chest with 2 pieces of each.
3. Make wvw badges tradeable and you get one ascended crafting material for each badge. You need 1500 badges for one ascended.

Supply camps do drop empyreal fragments, they just go straight to your inventory.

Astralporing.1957:

Supply camps do drop empyreal fragments, they just go straight to your inventory.

Either its random or bugged, didn’t get any during my last session and we grabbed 3 camps last night.

camp supervisors drop empyreal fragments. If you didn’t hit the supervisor, you’re not going to get squat. I’m not sure why it’s not rewarded with the medal for actually flipping the camp, but it’s not.

Also, it doesn’t encourage zerging, it encourages pve. World bosses vs. keep takes? Gee… which of those can I do more of in an hour? Champion loot? Considering how few champs there are in wvw, same thing. 10x as fast to just go to pve.

Camp flips for empyreal fragments are the only thing that’s even close to pve, except you can just camp 80s at the end of jumping puzzles and not actually need to do ANYTHING for those except log in and press “f”.

You have to deal enough damage to the claimer/tower lord , i got 200 frags in wvw in 1 day. Crafted my GS last night , no nerfs needed , if anything it needs to be reduced.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

camp supervisors drop empyreal fragments. If you didn’t hit the supervisor, you’re not going to get squat. I’m not sure why it’s not rewarded with the medal for actually flipping the camp, but it’s not.

Also, it doesn’t encourage zerging, it encourages pve. World bosses vs. keep takes? Gee… which of those can I do more of in an hour? Champion loot? Considering how few champs there are in wvw, same thing. 10x as fast to just go to pve.

Camp flips for empyreal fragments are the only thing that’s even close to pve, except you can just camp 80s at the end of jumping puzzles and not actually need to do ANYTHING for those except log in and press “f”.

Than it is a bug since i got the kill for the supervisor but no empyreal in the loot from him. Have to check this up when i get home, i might have been sloppy since i wrote this post as a reflection of the current state.

I agree it encourages pve as well, i wrote my post from a small group perspective, hence the background in the post, compared to zerging. Running in a small group will make it take for ever to get it, hence promoting zerging.

Buffalo Sabres.1072:

You have to deal enough damage to the claimer/tower lord , i got 200 frags in wvw in 1 day. Crafted my GS last night , no nerfs needed , if anything it needs to be reduced.

If you join in on the zerg fest you can flip camps, we saw that yesterday when the xerg didnt mind at all for the objective of the map since the incentive was to flip as much as they could.
Check what i actually wrote.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

Camp flips for empyreal fragments are the only thing that’s even close to pve, except you can just camp 80s at the end of jumping puzzles and not actually need to do ANYTHING for those except log in and press “f”.

At 2-3 empyreals daily from one jp you are going to do it for a looong time. Camps are far better option because not only are they repeatable, but they get flipped very often.

Astralporing.1957:

Terra Dactyl.2047:

Camp flips for empyreal fragments are the only thing that’s even close to pve, except you can just camp 80s at the end of jumping puzzles and not actually need to do ANYTHING for those except log in and press “f”.

At 2-3 empyreals daily from one jp you are going to do it for a looong time. Camps are far better option because not only are they repeatable, but they get flipped very often.

Until you consider they also drop from dungeon runs (20 at a time). Unless you’re doing nothing but running between camps killing the supervisor for fragments and moving on to the next one, pve’s still going to give more. Only used jumping puzzles as an example because you have to do literally nothing except log in, press f, and log out to get the fragments from those. And a camp flip takes longer than some of the easier jumping puzzles even if you actually do the puzzle (the one in Queensdale takes like 30 seconds and has TWO chests in it that both give fragments). Only advantage the camps have is that they’re repeatable.

Why are we arguing about the only material that isn’t completely kittened in WvW though? The thread was about increasing the drops of those that are. Zerging down an orr temple is at least 100x easier than flipping THREE keeps. And you’re likely to get more than one champion out of it too.

PvE rewards more than WvW. Don’t even get me started on the dragonite. Nothing new here though unfortunately : /

Terra Dactyl.2047:

And a camp flip takes longer than some of the easier jumping puzzles even if you actually do the puzzle (the one in Queensdale takes like 30 seconds and has TWO chests in it that both give fragments).

Three chests, there’s one at skelks too. I was writing the previous post when i didn’t know that you can get dungeon drops more than once per path, and that you can get empyreals drom free-standing chests in PvE. that does indeed change calculation a bit.

WvW trains are already trading flips while passing the enemies and not engaging. I’d say remove all ascended rewards from WvW immediately.

Should be able to buy them with badges…. enough badges so the time investment is close to the same.

Tom Gore.4035:

WvW trains are already trading flips while passing the enemies and not engaging. I’d say remove all ascended rewards from WvW immediately.

And how is this diffirent from people deliberately losing Temples so they can be recapped for moar dragonite ore? Guess we should remove Temple rewards aswell.

They should add a character daily limit just like on Temples for Keeps. And drastically increase how much Dragonite it awards. No point keep trading if you only get the reward once.

covenn.7165:

Should be able to buy them with badges…. enough badges so the time investment is close to the same.

That is a no go either, since ANet a few patches ago started handing out Achievement chests filled to the brim with Badges. PvE players have thousands of badges stocked that they wont use. Allowing mats to be bought with BoH and everyone just dumps their otherwise useless excess and rushes the whole ascended stuff for free.

If ANet hadnt handed out badges like candy on Halloween it might’ve been a viable option. You could say that the people who had badges had atleast WvW’d for them. But now these badges mean nothing, infact people who dont WvW likely have more badges then the people who do WvW all the time.
They dont spend any badges on anything and they have had waaaay more achievementpoints and thus chests with piles of those badges.