Guild Wars 2

I was just doing a little research and I’m wondering if Extended Potions have any actual value.

For a small case study, let’s use the Ruined City of Arah, and assume you’ve already purchased the Recipe: Extended Potion of Undead Slaying for 400 Shards of Zhaitan. The total mat cost adds up to about 70s54c. This will give you 10 Extended Potions, which is equivalent to 20 Powerful Potions of Undead Slaying (2s20c each or 44s for 20) in regards to time spent in said dungeons. Both extended and powerful potions offer the same value in damage done and taken. Therefore, you are taking a 36s54c loss by using Extended over Powerful potions in this particular situation.

I’ll use Extended Potions of Dredge Slaying as another example. The total mat cost for 10 of these is 27s42c. The total mat cost of 20 Powerfuls is 20s60c. Again, another loss. Not to mention all paths of this dungeon can be completed under an hour with a competent party. Our guild runs P1&3 in about 20 minutes for a frame of reference. So, unless you are going to run each path multiple times, you’ll probably never need that extra hour. I also don’t see why you should when running a fresh path in a different dungeon is much more rewarding than running the same paths over and over again.

The only dungeon where these statistics can’t be applied is AC due to the fact the only potion of ghost slaying is an extended one. Making 10 of these costs 3g53s04c due to the use of a charged loadstone. This raises the value of each potion to 35s30c, or 17s65c per hour in AC, the Urban Battleground fractal (this potion might be necessary here PRL 40+), or farming ghost events. If you really want to kill ghosts fast, there is no way to get around this to my knowledge.

Conclusion: In most situations extended potions just aren’t worth it. The only thing the majority of them offer is extra time, meaning a few less clicks, with no additional benefit to damage done or incoming damage when compared to Powerfuls. And if you have a decent group, almost all dungeons (Arah the exception excluding speed runners) can be completed within an hour. How can anet fix this? Simple – 12% increased damage. This is 10% increased damage for the whole party. Time is saved and the extra investment is suddenly worth it.