Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

As much as it pains me to make a thread with a theme of “dissatisfaction” (call it a complaint thread if you will), I am seeking advice from the community. Lets be honest: nobody likes reading a complaint thread.

I am currently sitting at 699 Fractal relics (call it 700), and have progressed to level 13.
I have run the daily around 7 times.

I have never looted a ring.
I have never looted a Vial of Condensed Mists Essence. (Needed to craft my own ascended gear)

Getting hit with Agony pretty much downs me in level 13 (85% of my health gone). I do not want to be a burden to future parties with me dropping like a lead weight on boss fights, so I hesitate to progress any higher.

What are my options?

• Farm ~1200 more fractal relics to get the agony resist on the back piece
• Buy a full Magic Find exotic set and pray to the malevolent RNG gods (they have forsaken me)
• ???

Please try and keep this thread constructive. No complaining please.

I’ve decided to keep a log:
—————
Day 1
Level 15 Cap ( +2 )
756 Fractal Relics ( +57 )
0 Rings, 0 Vials, 0 Globs ( +0, +0, +0 )
—————
Day 2
Level 17 Cap ( +2 )
826 Fractal Relics ( +70 )
1 Rings, 0 Vials, 0 Globs ( +1, +0, +0 )
—————
Day 3
Level 17 Cap ( +0 )
879 Fractal Relics ( +71 )
1 Rings, 0 Vials, 0 Globs ( +0, +0, +0 )
—————
Day 4
Level 19 Cap ( +2 )
925 Fractal Relics ( +46 )
2 Rings, 0 Vials, 0 Globs ( +1, +0, +0 )
—————
Day 5
Level 21 Cap ( +2 )
1104 Fractal Relics ( +179 )
4 Rings, 0 Vials, 0 Globs ( +2, +0, +0 )
—————
Day 6 – (4 hours cumulative waiting for groups – only ran 21 – no daily)
Level 22 Cap ( +1 )
1131 Fractal Relics ( +27 )
4 Rings, 0 Vials, 0 Globs ( +0, +0, +0 )

L2P

No seriously, learn to avoid the agony attacks. It WILL make you a better player in the end, infusion or not. Level 13 shouldn’t be such a problem yet without resists.

Its quite possible to get to lvl 29 with 0 agony resist. Yes you will die at the jade maw at 20+, but any nice group will understand your problem.

Good advice, stof. Yes, this is what I have been doing for now. I am pretty good at dodge rolling and anticipating the incoming agony attacks from bosses, but I am only human, I WILL get hit one or two times. At higher levels I am guessing nobody will want to group with me.

VexHelElEldZodEth.4271:

Good advice, stof. Yes, this is what I have been doing for now. I am pretty good at dodge rolling and anticipating the incoming agony attacks from bosses, but I am only human, I WILL get hit one or two times. At higher levels I am guessing nobody will want to group with me.

Well the point is that, while you advance some more levels (which you can do) and improve yourself in the process, who know? Maybe you’ll get the ring you need.

I’d say level 13 is a little too early to have a brick wall effect. It’s not very far though. And RNG is a problem with the system yes, it’s stupid but what can we do?

I think the point of the matter is why have RNG for something necessary towards progression? Why not just drop the ascended rings on the dailies and let the RNG (scaled based on difficulty) be whether or not it has the desired stats you want, whether or not it’s infused, or maybe it drops an inscription? Forge recipe so that 4 “junk” rings can be rolled for a chance at a ring with the stats you want with a small possibly at an infused ring.

Idk… I just see a cheap method of hamstringing progression as a cheap method of hamstringing progression. Oh noes, they’ll hit the cap faster? Then maybe the player base has more skill and Anet should give us a real challenge over a inflated dmg challenge.

My suggestions for you VexHelElEldZodEth are:

• Go ranged for the end bosses. Whichever profession you are you’ll have some kind of ranged ability. I play a Guardian and use my staff for some fights. Yes the dps is way worse than greatsword, but then I almost never get downed too. You have more time to react to a lot of the Agony mechanics when there’s distance between you and the boss.
• Yes, get a full Magic Find set. I know – I don’t like using MF in dungeons either, and wish it wasn’t possible or was shared out amongst the group or something. But it does help you get better drops from mobs. So it won’t help you get a ring, but will help you get the vial you need to at least make a back item mean time. You could always switch to proper gear for end bosses or for fractals without much trash. The 10-19 bracket really isn’t that hard with a reasonable group, so the MF gear shouldn’t cause you too much trouble.
• Which profession do you play? Some profession have immunities that you can use to stop a lot of the damage when you do mess up and get hit with agony. For example Renewed Focus on my Guardian blocks 3 seconds of agony damage. Well, all damage. I’d imagine Distortion and (maybe) Mist Form work too? There could be others.
• Can you heal much, or set up a healing spec? You could save up all your heals for when you do get hit with agony and then pop them all, so you won’t be left at almost dead after it finishes ticking. Use Regeneration and suchlike to keep yourself topped up in between if you can.

That sort of thing. Mainly just stay on your toes for the end bosses, so you don’t get hit with Agony in the first place. Much better that you reduce your dps (by going ranged, or focusing on positioning and dodging) than go down due to Agony, and possibly drag someone else away to revive you.

I agree though – the RNG system on ascended gear is kinda stupid. What can you do?

Thanks for the advice, Aldred.

I am trying to progress with my one and only character, a condition Ranger (lol).
Naturally, I don’t have issues attacking bosses from a safe distance. Rangers have a couple of abilities that can mitigate the damage of Agony. Hopefully I don’t have to sacrifice too many of my preferred utility skills.

Can I heal much? Nope

I am worried that I will struggle on trash if I use a Magic Find set (I will probably use a Longbow since my condition damage will be bad).

Anyone have insight on Ranger Magic Find gear? How much gold will it set me back? How vulnerable will I be in FotM? Which weapon should I be using with a Magic Find set(LB,SB)?

Honestly, if the set is going to put me back 10g or more, I may just roll the dice and hope the RNG gods bless me with Vials and Rings.

Honestly I only had 7% MF and I’ve gotten 2 Vials and 2 Globs so far. Its more to the fact that people don’t skip mobs these days. People just want to bypass everything and go straight to the next part. Most of my items came from things that people normally skip like 2 came from Jade Maw trash and 1 from the Norn people in the iceland after defeating the elementals. The last I gotten was in the water from fish but we always killed them to open cages. But the point is more groups need to skip less in order for them to get more drops. Otherwise what is to complain about when your not even taking the chance to even received the drops.

Thanks for the feedback on the drops you’ve been getting so far Shammy (I am jealous of your luck).

What level in the fractals have you progressed to so far?
How many Fractal Relics have you acquired?

I would like to gauge how unlucky I am.

I’ve been just staying at lvl 21 with the time I get to play just doing all 3 dailies with each tier. As far as crystals I think I have about 400 now. I know I just reached 100 runs achievement. I gotten all the bags and 2 of the agony resistance crystals 1 was versital. I just found out that we could upgrade the backs from the vendor and it looks pretty nice so I’m in the process of saving for that now needless to say I already gotten everything else needed :P.

With the rings though I have gotten 1 ring that gives 10% MF I also am going to eventually make a MF outfit in my spare time just to get more rares and exotics to create Ectos IMO. Fractals seem to be a very good source for them may not be as fast as farming directly but your also getting upgrades for other things also in the process so I’m killing multiple birds with 1 stone.

Also with all my runs I’ve only gotten 4 rings so considering that with doing all these daily its not that lucky. Not to mention the rings may or maynot but what you’d normally wear anyways because of the stats but hey you could be a agony res gem in it and hopefully your first time is a defence slot heh others might hurt to have a trash ring with offence slot.

Well, I ran fractals a whopping 3 times now. I really liked all the different settings and mechanics, but unless I’m willing to stand around in LA shouting for lfg endlessly, I can’t find groups for level 1 anymore already. 2 out of those 3 runs players joined who were higher in fractal rank and equally unwilling to let people learn the new things or wait it out longer than 2,5 fracs. Then I come here and read how many runs of this thing actually are needed, and that it’s still RNG…?
Well, no thank you. I’m not doing it. Because you just need to run this thing just so you can… run this thing. There’s no agony elsewhere, right? And I’m expected to stand around aimlessly in LA for it, shouting for a group (meaning two or three times, because you’re muted after that), and this when I still have to discover the entire world, there’s wvw and pvp and jumping puzzles…? Nope, not doing it.
I’ll wait until ascended stuff comes to me through a chance group, world loot or other means without this silly grind. In three years or so.

There is a web sight for LFG now. I normally spend like 2 or 3 minutes tops lfg. No matter what tier I do in which case I do 1-3 daily.

I got to 18 without any Agony Resist although I have a non-Ascended Capacitor and 2 Ascended rings, and I still progress. In fact, I’m usually the person who runs to the boss to res right under him. As a Mesmer, I can dodge with 2 rolls (3 or 4 if I eat a Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew) and use F3 and F4 to prevent Agony and Blurred Frenzy (although I can’t res with BF).

I hear you, I feel your pain, and here is my pain.

230 Fractals Complete.
Level 20 on my main had to craft the backpice for 1.850 + 225. (dailys since day 4 after release)
Level 15 on my mesmer. (done daily 5times)
Level 10 on my engineer. (done daily 2itmes)

I iv done all of it without any agony ress all the way up to level 20, ofc, Iv only tryed 20 today, as I finaly got my +5 agony ress from backpice.

1.073 Hours played.

Still no ring.

Pokerjoker.7246:

230 Fractals Complete.
Level 20 on my main had to craft the backpice for 1.850 + 225. (dailys since day 4 after release)

Why craft the backpiece with offensive slot instead of the defensive slot?

stof.9341:

Pokerjoker.7246:

230 Fractals Complete.
Level 20 on my main had to craft the backpice for 1.850 + 225. (dailys since day 4 after release)

Why craft the backpiece with offensive slot instead of the defensive slot?

He wants to spend 20 gold for +5 precision instead of 50 gold.

I did not spend any gold on it.

to my experience resist only makes boss fights more confortable for you and for the team.

Sold everything I’ve got to craft a quiver and I also have a ring (2 actually but because of they are being identical i can only use one and thats another story) which makes a total of +10 resist. Also this means a bye bye to my T3 cultural armor dreams.

But at the end I realized that agony doesn’t help alot. It only allows you to be lazy in some boss fights.

You need zero resist to complete winterstorm, ocean, swamp, asura, jungle, char. It only helps a little in lava and dredge because there are alot of things around to dodge.

Team setup and knowledge adds much more than your agony resist. I saw people that have +20 agony, mindlessly diving into hordes of dredge etc and blaming the group because of his death. They think they are immune to anything with their imba resist?! Also even 20 resist wont save you if you’re taking the debuff to your face everytime when it happens.

You know what is hard at lvl 20+? Winterstorm ice elemental, dredge from start to the end excluding boss, Asura lab harpies and Old Tom, veterans at char map, breaking the hand seals in jungle. In a nuthshell, any little encounter that seems easy at first glance can become a vital thread if you lose your coordination. Resist must be the last thing you should worry about.

Try finding people you like to play, make friendship and progress together. You’ll get your resists sooner or later. You’ll progress skillwise much more.

I made my progress to lvl 16 with a guy who was a lvl 6x necro (he has 80lvl alts). He realized he was using a lvl 26 green weapon at the end when we start to struggle with 0 resist. We just LoLed as a team and continued. Precious fun times..

Pokerjoker.7246:

I did not spend any gold on it.

So… you accidentally made one that had an offensive slot instead of a defensive slot? Is that what you’re saying?

TheRabbit.9478:

Pokerjoker.7246:

I did not spend any gold on it.

So… you accidentally made one that had an offensive slot instead of a defensive slot? Is that what you’re saying?

I made it offencive by choise.
I used 40 crystals, instead of 240 philospher’s stone’s.
Crystals giving offensive.
Stones giving Defensive.

I dont fully understand your point. Do you mean that Offensive is useless / worse?

Pokerjoker.7246:

TheRabbit.9478:

Pokerjoker.7246:

I did not spend any gold on it.

So… you accidentally made one that had an offensive slot instead of a defensive slot? Is that what you’re saying?

I made it offencive by choise.
I used 40 crystals, instead of 240 philospher’s stone’s.
Crystals giving offensive.
Stones giving Defensive.

I dont fully understand your point. Do you mean that Offensive is useless / worse?

If you use a defensive slot you can buy the defensive infusion for 75 fractals rather than needing the versatile one that costs 200 something.
it just saves you fractal tokens in the short run. The long run is a different story.

Zenyatoo.4059:

Pokerjoker.7246:

TheRabbit.9478:

Pokerjoker.7246:

I did not spend any gold on it.

So… you accidentally made one that had an offensive slot instead of a defensive slot? Is that what you’re saying?

I made it offencive by choise.
I used 40 crystals, instead of 240 philospher’s stone’s.
Crystals giving offensive.
Stones giving Defensive.

I dont fully understand your point. Do you mean that Offensive is useless / worse?

If you use a defensive slot you can buy the defensive infusion for 75 fractals rather than needing the versatile one that costs 200 something.
it just saves you fractal tokens in the short run. The long run is a different story.

Well im swimming in tokens, so thats not a problem, for me anyway.

Explain the difference between offensive/deffensive

Zogyark.4597:

Explain the difference between offensive/deffensive

infusions have rarity just like normal items. There are fine (blue) masterwork (green) rare (yellow) and so on. Currently we only know the recipes for certain fine infusions, and have access to the ones the fractal trader sells.

ascended gear has infusion slots, offensive, defensive, and I believe also omni?

Offensive infusions go in offensive slots, defensive in defensive, anything can go into omni, and versatile infusions can go into any slot.

Offensive infusions will typically have offensive stats, for example one of the current infusions you can craft has +5 precision +5 agony. Whereas defensive infusions have stats like +5 vitality and +5 agony. Versatile infusions can have either stat, I believe we currently know the recipe for a versatile +5vitality +5agony infusion.

The fractal seller currently sells 2 infusions, both give +5 agony. However 1 is defensive, and the other versatile. The defensive one is cheaper. This means that when creating a backpack, or acquiring a ring, unless you are specifically looking to craft an infusion with other stats, a defensive slot will allow you to use less fractal tokens.

As time goes on, we may either discover, or be introduced to higher rarity infusions with better stats, at which point choosing offensive or defensive infusion slots will matter more. But as of right now, there’s almost no reason to choose an offensive slot over a defensive one outside of cost.

I just want to know how many could afford to craft a exotic ring to ascended not to mention ascended infused. Then also do the same for the back items. If you think prices on items have rocked now imagine then. How many groups would be past lvl 30. Putting rings on vendors would be the real brickwall and would be the real grind trying to make all that gold to buy or go and farm mats yourself. I guess for Anet it would benefit them more since people could just buy gems and then convert it to gold to buy what they needed.

But where does that leave the other 70% of the game consumers who don’t pay irl cash to buy gems. The demand would be so high the market upkeep cost couldn’t keep up because the 20% of people couldn’t get a ring from a daily. My advice keep trying if this place has been out for awhile I could side with you but its way to new to consider not having a ring a bottleneck. Where are you can still get +10 agony resist with a back piece that is fully craftable

Currently on Fractal 11, myself, with ~450-500ish tokens earned.

I’ve gotten three vials of mists essence, and all of it from mob drops; if there’s any real argument for “Wear at least a little MF in fractals”, that’s my input.

I don’t have any real issues with agony on anything besides Jade Maw at the end. No agony resist, no rings, no nothing. It’s ~1800 relics to get the ascended backpack, but I fully expect to spend my relics on Obs. Shards instead, so I doubt I’ll be getting any real agony resist anytime soon.

Guardians OP etc etc, sure, but that’s what I’ve seen so far. I intend to head into Fractals with some friends with a bunch of lowbies soon, so if we get into 10+, I’ll pop back in then.

Thanks for the input Auvic,

Please elaborate, how much Magic Find do you run with?

I got a offensive infusion slot ring but dont wanna put a offensive infusion cause its expensive and the rings got horrible stats, can i put a defensive infusion into it anyway? the agony resistance would help on lvl 20 jade maw i guess instead of getting 1 shot, but if its offensive only then i wont bother with it.

Nope – you can only put a defensive infusion into a defensive slot, offensive into offensive slot, and versatile into either.

The versatile infusion is more expensive at 225 fractal relics because it can go in either slot, but the real question is – why do they have a defensive and versatile infusion for sale rather than a defensive and an offensive (which would presumably cost the same price).

But then – I really don’t understand why they bothered splitting infusions up into offensive/defensive to start with. I’m normally all for some extra complexity, but this doesn’t add anything in my view.

Praise the GODS OF RANDOM I got a ring finally!!!!
No vials or globs yet.

I’m curious, as I’m 8.99 * level 10 fractals done and no ring, how many who seem to be having amazingly bad RNG luck like I am are also NOT receiving any WvW bonuses?

I’ve also, seemingly, never received WvW bonuses, and it seems that 8 days ago they announced a fix “in a future patch”, and I wonder if these could possibly be related. I’m secretly hoping so as I’d really like, one day, to get an Ascended ring, and as there’s no actual announcement of alternate methods, and FotM isn’t cooperating, I’m not sure how that’ll ever happen.

• The 0.99 was my last run, where one of our party somehow fell to the bottom of the overall zone and couldn’t die or get to any mob, so left the instance, and did this when the Maw was at like 30% and the 4 of us remaining instantly got ported to LA – at that point I decided that I was done with this buggy dungeon until it works properly.

stof.9341:

L2P

No seriously, learn to avoid the agony attacks. It WILL make you a better player in the end, infusion or not. Level 13 shouldn’t be such a problem yet without resists.

It’s possible for L2P part if you are a range dps to avoid most of the agony hurt. I only got one ring from previous grind and worked fine during frac runs until I entered lvl 20+. I died EVERYTIME when changing phase in maw’s fight with my poorly 5 agony resist. No matter what I did, how well I dodged, or other attempt such as focus on healing to save my life, I DIED again and agian. I’m dungeon master, so don’t say I’m not good about my class or need more patience.
I need higher agony resist for higher lvl. What could I do? I only got 1100 relics, not enough for backpiece. I don’t have enough G to buy T6 to forge a backpiece. There’s nothing I can do to avoid this death. I want to try higher difficulty lvl, but agony resistence stopped me.

Okay, day 4 already. Where are all the vials and globs? My luck cannot possibly be this bad. This has to be a bug.

Which Areanet database admin do I have to bribe to get a vial placed in my inventory?

It is rather funny that all the defenders evade the simple problem:

Total RNG with a chance at nothing sucks. END of story. It was a stupid mechanic back in 1999 in Everquest a game built on camping and grinding, and it is a stupid mechanic in GW2 a game released in 2012.

Let me put it like this:
The 2012 version of Everquest 1 – ALL nameds drop at least one item of use. There is no “nothing on the named” symptom we have with the Jade Maw. The devs of the game realized killing mobs to get nothing was not fun, nor has it ever been fun. It is sad that GW2 devs don’t realize this. They fail at loot tables. They make it either too easy (exp token system) or too frustrating (Fractal RNG drop rate).

I have YET to hear any viable defense to RNG other than “you don’t need it”, but that is hardly the point.

To me the “you don’t need it” debate sounds like saying Corpse runs and dropping all items on you body is a good idea, because if you don’t die you don’t have to run!

Talk about RNG. I looted a Vial of Condensed Mists Essence on my 4th run.

The RNG gods have bestowed upon me, not one, but two rings today! I shall slaughter a bunny rabbit and make 4 rabbits feet (for luck) in their name.

Now if only they would gift me with a Vial

I have yet to see a RNG drop form me. I have been doing lvl 10 & 20 at least half a dozen of times a day. I did get 3 vials & 1 glob while grinding them. I’m starting to see 20+ groups require 10+ res minimum. I could keep continuing higher levels but my group would hate me for having no res against agony. I’m thinking about calling it quiets and wait for Anet to do something about it.

I have done up to level 31 with no agony resist. Once at that level it can be annoying. You cannot go an entire run at that level and not get hit by agony at least once. There’s always that wtf just happened moment… and that becomes annoying. So I’ve decided to just sit on level 30 and do the daily till I get something good, haven’t had any luck so far.

I would much prefer that the rings be made available with tokens also, some people just have rotten RNG, I know someone who’s been at it since it came out and still has no rings to show for it. They do however have stacks of tokens just sitting there… It must be mighty depressing.

Harp on about L2play all you want, but learning to play has no affect on Random Number Generation. Even if you feel you don’t need them, I’m sure you still want them, I’m sure you would be pretty annoyed if you had done 15 dailies and still had no rings to show for it. Hell if everyone just learned to play, they may as well just delete their rings when they receive them.

swiftpaw.6397:

I have done up to level 31 with no agony resist. Once at that level it can be annoying. You cannot go an entire run at that level and not get hit by agony at least once. There’s always that wtf just happened moment… and that becomes annoying. So I’ve decided to just sit on level 30 and do the daily till I get something good, haven’t had any luck so far.

I would much prefer that the rings be made available with tokens also, some people just have rotten RNG, I know someone who’s been at it since it came out and still has no rings to show for it. They do however have stacks of tokens just sitting there… It must be mighty depressing.

Harp on about L2play all you want, but learning to play has no affect on Random Number Generation. Even if you feel you don’t need them, I’m sure you still want them, I’m sure you would be pretty annoyed if you had done 15 dailies and still had no rings to show for it. Hell if everyone just learned to play, they may as well just delete their rings when they receive them.

just a note: Make sure you do fractal level10, 20 and 30 per day. This will give you 3 chances of the ring every day. It’s still a poopy system, but hopefully it’ll cut down on the time before you get a ring.

Zenyatoo.4059:

swiftpaw.6397:

I have done up to level 31 with no agony resist. Once at that level it can be annoying. You cannot go an entire run at that level and not get hit by agony at least once. There’s always that wtf just happened moment… and that becomes annoying. So I’ve decided to just sit on level 30 and do the daily till I get something good, haven’t had any luck so far.

I would much prefer that the rings be made available with tokens also, some people just have rotten RNG, I know someone who’s been at it since it came out and still has no rings to show for it. They do however have stacks of tokens just sitting there… It must be mighty depressing.

Harp on about L2play all you want, but learning to play has no affect on Random Number Generation. Even if you feel you don’t need them, I’m sure you still want them, I’m sure you would be pretty annoyed if you had done 15 dailies and still had no rings to show for it. Hell if everyone just learned to play, they may as well just delete their rings when they receive them.

just a note: Make sure you do fractal level10, 20 and 30 per day. This will give you 3 chances of the ring every day. It’s still a poopy system, but hopefully it’ll cut down on the time before you get a ring.

Oh yes I have been, I’ve just not been very lucky >_<

Think I’ve hit this wall too. Gotten 121/150 Fractal Frequenter, level 20, & 0 rings I could use. Been kicked before the level 20 even starts due to lack of agony resistance.

But at least I’m 300 relics away from ascending my capacitor back piece, or maybe I’m playing the wrong game.

i read that you can do till lvl 20 without AR….

Maybe but having AR15 i can easily say:
Equip >>>>>>>>>skill

this is what GW shouldn t be…..and what have become.
I can facetank with my ele any boss and survive just because i have agony resistance….when my party get whiped guess who’s the last standing always?

The player with most AR…..
Without you die not only for a mistake, but also if boss randomly force you to evade before putting agony….

With AR….what’s agony?
This system is just a wall to force people into grinding if they want to access content…

Log bump – no groups -