Guild Wars 2

I’ve been trying to finish up my Sky Pirate achievements, but I haven’t seen any pirates spawn at Hologram Generators for days. Is this a bug? Is there some trick to get them to spawn now? I’ve tried running past, sitting and waiting, killing the holograms, Killing the holograms and waiting for the generator to reset.. Nothing seems to work.

I had to spawn camp the stash locations to get the achievement. Many others were doing the same.

I assume people are running past the holograms and not bothering to kill the dragon bash spawns, only the aetherblades. So then you come along hoping to find aethers, but all you get are the spawns no one wants. Makes it really hard to get the achievements except by camping the caches.

They should have at least made us activate the holograms instead of having aetherblades just appear when we get close.

I really don’t understand why the spawns at the hologram projectors were nerfed. Whose definition of ‘fun’ does camping a static location and smiting pirates at 1 minute intervals 25-50 times meet?

The spawns haven’t been nerfed. What happens is that there’s a 50|50 chance that any given holo site will be Aetherblades. People decide to run past them if they are Dragon Minions, meaning that, over time, nearly all the holos will be dragon minions.

In an extreme hypothetical (with all the math working out neatly):

1. Initial spawn after reset: 50 holos are Aetherblades (AB) and 50 are Dragon Minions (DM).
2. Players kill the ABs, but leave the DMs and those 50 holos reset into half of each. New total: 75 DM, 25 AB.
3. Again, players go after the ABs, ignoring the DMs: new total 87 DM, 13 AB.
4. Repeat: 93 DM, 7 AB.

And so on, which gives the appearance that the pirates were nerfed out. (And yes, I’ve tested this “theory” in several zones — activating the holos and returning, the new set is about 50% likely to be AB foes.)

Instead, what people should do is to activate every DM holo they pass, even if they are on their way some place else. Since the DMs are invulnerable for 1-2s, after you pick yourself up, you can run away without aggro. Even if the DMs aren’t killed, the holo will reset.

Plus, it can be fun to see the ABs spawn in the middle of a group of DMs.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The spawns haven’t been nerfed. What happens is that there’s a 50|50 chance that any given holo site will be Aetherblades. People decide to run past them if they are Dragon Minions, meaning that, over time, nearly all the holos will be dragon minions.

Did a test – a run around 3 holo locations, killing everything anytime. After 5 circles (that’s 15 holos – and i don’t count their initial state holograms, which i killed off as well) i still haven’t seen any aetherblades. Seems their spawn rate really was severely reduced.

Fortunately i have my aether pirates achievement already cleared. As it is now, doing ascalon version would be really problematic (seeing as the only ascalon non-holo spawn location is in Vexa after rather annoying jumping part, and with the location kicking you out anytime someone kills the boss).