Guild Wars 2

PLEASE, make obsidian shard vendor somewhere else because no one ever is going to do the balthazar temple event as there are no lvl 80 mobs for T6 mats. Please Anet create other vendor that gives Obsidian shards for karma.

if you have an abundance of karma, I got quite a lot from orrian boxes. It will cost much more karma but you also get other goodies out of it… as well as useless minipets

I understand where you’re coming from Wuk, but no. I just want my shards. I don’t want to trade laurels for them (I have alts to gear) or faff around with the randomness of the boxes despite all the other stuff in them. I think that it is a net karma loss getting shards from boxes anyway.

And as very few do temples any more, or they are open only for a brief window when I’m asleep on the other side of the world, then I second getting them in a direct karma trade from a vendor elsewhere.

Yeah I know I am just saying if people are sitting on a giant load of karma that could be an alternative.

I also don’t understand why the obby shards have to be in that specific temple. Btw I think the reason a lot of people hate doing it is because the whole event chain is really long and one of the last events is easily fallible. And if it fail, oh goodie let’s start all over again.

While I do like the idea that you have to go through some sort of activity to get a vendor for shards to show up… I don’t like that it’s balthazar with the infrequency of it actually being done, the merch should be tied to something that is done a little more freqently like some of the dragons or something.

This thread.

I was going to make a longer version because I too need shards and the only reaction from people is, “Guest to a server that has it done noob!”
and I’m like,
“…..YEAH BECAUSE PEOPLE TOTALLY WASTE TIME WITH TEMPLES NOW REGARDLESS OF SERVER.”

The fact is Temple events are a cool idea but unless they reward people with amazing things they simply are not worth doing and unless ANet wants to change the scaling so a single person can do it or groups find it rewarding to COMPLETE (which they don’t seem to be fond of doing) then they need to scarp the idea and move the karma merchants somewhere else.

TL;DR
Move Temple karma vendors somewhere else and make them readily available
or
Figure out how to actually design rewarding event chains that encourage completion. (I’ve made suggestions on how to do this in the past but I’m not gonna bother now.)

I think there is site where u can check which temple is open. I’ve used it once to purchase my armors. Google it. Search guild wars 2 uncontested temple. Let me know if it works out for u.

Balt is pretty much perma closed on every single server since the borked the scaling a few patches ago.

Ive been looking on gw2stuff.com for 2 weeks now trying to find an open temple of balth. I totally support adding obsidian shards to another temple merchant. I check every server multiple times a day, and can’t find this temple open anywhere.

Castaliea.3156:

This thread.

I was going to make a longer version because I too need shards and the only reaction from people is, “Guest to a server that has it done noob!”
and I’m like,
“…..YEAH BECAUSE PEOPLE TOTALLY WASTE TIME WITH TEMPLES NOW REGARDLESS OF SERVER.”

We were doing them every night on NSP… …some of us actually Guesting there just to make sure they GOT done. …well until this latest event basically stole 3/4’s of our “Force” and barely left us with enough people to do Gates (much less Grenth or Lyssa or Balth). …And before that there was some run-ins with Ember farmers as well getting in the way.

But the biggest problem… is Anet made all of these Temples HARDER in the last patch (especially Balthazar) and people can tell too, they’re not stupid. They know there’s a lot more challenge, and only the same old rewards which can’t keep pace with the Rampant gold farming going on everywhere else.

…which by the way…. Doesn’t make it any easier to get a Precursor. When things get more expensive b/c of Gold inflation, guess which are always the first heavily Flipped items to go up? ….yep Precursors. Flippers aren’t stupid either, they know EXACTLY when there’s more Gold pouring into the economy.

I always check on GW2state.com/temple and it is always correct, but balth temple is never open on any EU servers. I have seen some NA servers open but cant guest them from EU.

Honestly just get them with orrian boxes. You will have too many eventually. Aslong as you use karma for boxes for making some money every now and again.

spoj.9672:

Honestly just get them with orrian boxes. You will have too many eventually. Aslong as you use karma for boxes for making some money every now and again.

It’s something like a 3% chance to get shards from a box.

Not exactly a viable method if you are specifically trying to get shards.

Wukunlin.8461:

I also don’t understand why the obby shards have to be in that specific temple.

Short answer: Lore reasons.

Longer answer: Obsidian Shards were a high-tier component for “Obsidian Armor” (regarded as THE status symbol armor . . . often in pure Black or White Dye, though for a short time Pink was in) in Fissure of Woe. They ONLY dropped in that one place which was a never-ending battleground between Balthazar’s faithful and his half-brother Menzies’ armies.

ah, didn’t know obby shards were tied to obby armour (just started play gw1)

Why did they make the Balthazar event even harder? I remember it already being one of the most failed events in the game.

Jewelry boxes are probably your best bet. They are random, but it’s a good chance. I have over 500 sitting in my bank after using the ones I need for my legendary.

You can also buy them for 15 fractal relics.

What we really need is a way to get rid of them that doesn’t also use up ectos.

This is a serious issue that needs to be looked at , it’s a pain to find an OPEN uncontested temple of balthazar currently .

There is a 75 page thread about this event where people post when it opens somewhere so we can hop in and guest for 5 min and get our obsidian shards..

I hope we get a fix soon.

I believe the Shards were available though the Super Adventure Box the first time around. I remember reading that it was the most efficient way to purchase them. I was not ready to get them at that point in time but I need them now.

I wonder if this will be the case when SAB returns in a few weeks?

get them from fractals, its extremely easy to get a stack in no time

I always check 50 Shades of Bear for temples open/closed…..same with dungeons.
http://www.gw2bear.com/status.quaggan?check=Balthazar&server=NA

But yeah, I’m running low on Obby Shards now (after making two gifts of mastery) and last we tried on TC, the Balthazaar temple was bugged and we couldn’t get it to finish.

I’ve been looking for an open server since the last patch and haven’t seen one. I really want to make some clovers, but nothing is open.
Last night, I guested on to NSP because I saw they were working on it, but it failed due to lack of people. Then, I hoped over to BP but they failed again due to lack of people. :\
I don’t want to buy karma boxes because I still need over a stack of obi shards and that hasn’t been a very reliable way for me to get them. Guess I’ll just buy my karma infusion and farm events until I can get a large enough force to open the temple on a server somewhere.

khani.4786:

I always check 50 Shades of Bear for temples open/closed…..same with dungeons.
http://www.gw2bear.com/status.quaggan?check=Balthazar&server=NA

But yeah, I’m running low on Obby Shards now (after making two gifts of mastery) and last we tried on TC, the Balthazaar temple was bugged and we couldn’t get it to finish.

You can check all day long…. but if we can’t muster the manpower b/c everyone feels like they’re in a Farming Race right now, then the view in your Browser ain’t gonna change.

Now I dont’ even have a normal use for these things b/c I ain’t in no hurry to build no Purple oopingas sword just to show off to people I don’t even know. But there are still 2 things I’d be willing to do to help those who actually need it: #1: Record all the spawn locations of these Veterans who cause it to Fail (and probably include footage of how you deal with them) … Or #2: Get a commander Tag and just lead people (who can actually follow a minimap) to where they need to be to control them.

But until there’s some kind of coordinated Guesting efforts to make that happen on both Sides of the Globe, there’s gonna be a lot of people missing out on Obbies. The easier solution might actually be to get a straight answer from Anet’s D.E. or Scripting Designers to find out WHY they did this… Either way, people are going to have to make a real effort here if they want this situation to change….

Nuka Cola.8520:

get them from fractals, its extremely easy to get a stack in no time

I am also doing fractals for a capacitor and can not give up almost 1k relics for obsidian shards that I do not really need right now, I just want to be done with gift of mastery and clovers if I ever will make a legendary.

Wukunlin.8461:

I think the reason a lot of people hate doing it is because the whole event chain is really long and one of the last events is easily fallible. And if it fail, oh goodie let’s start all over again.

Yeah, this kind of frustration doesn’t exactly foster an enthusiasm for gameplay.

something
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12 days ago

Celtic Lady.3729:

Wukunlin.8461:

I think the reason a lot of people hate doing it is because the whole event chain is really long and one of the last events is easily fallible. And if it fail, oh goodie let’s start all over again.

Yeah, this kind of frustration doesn’t exactly foster an enthusiasm for gameplay.

I was thinking the same thing and I was on a run on SOR that managed to succeed on the Balth temple last night. We had some good commanders but we barely managed it by the skin of our teeth on that last absurd stage of the escort quest.

Escort quests are never much fun and this is an escort quest to the nth power. The NPCs are typically uncaring about themselves and their morale plummets without ever seeming to recover. What’s worse, the NPCs often just stop and stand there with NOTHING happening to the point that the quest often seems bugged. When they decide to move, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and that is not a fun game experience.

The escort is needlessly long with far too many pauses. It feels like a bunch of timesink mechanics were heaped into it in an attempt to make it feel epic but only manage to make it tedious. Particularly when you consider the numerous earlier dynamic events needed to even get to the escort quest.

Our group managed to be successful at it so it ended up being a worthwhile but I’m sure my attitude would have been far more negative if I had wasted all that time for nothing. The tension created by the close-success was hardly what I would call enjoyable because of the tedious and needlessly long nature of all the earlier stages. If the earlier stages were actually fun that might be a different story but ‘escort quests’ and ‘fun’ seldom go together.

Challenging content is fine, but content that seems to be deliberately trying to waste players time is something else.

No one does balth because it is bugged to be near impossible.

They changed moral to go down on health drop instead of death, but forgot to make the balth NPC’s rezzable like the other places they applied this change.

Additionally the risen vets that do the AOE circle are bugged and apply 8 stacks of the circle at once instead of 1. This causes the event to instantly fail if you have too many people there.

What most people don’t even realize here, is that it’s not even the main Pact NPCs that constitute the Morale Bar here… It’s the unnamed or generic named ones that you simply can’t let die. And half of them always run strait into melee.

Another misconception I’m seeing is “HEAL THE PACT!” … No sorry, these Wells deal 2000 damage per tick. The most you can heal any ally for is about 300 hps per tick and all our ally Heals all have a target limit of 5 and the worst part about that is the fact that the game prioritizes healing human players & pets in range before healing these NPCs.

Now for something that might actually help… Here’s video proof (with a funny ending) that they won’t cast those wells as long as the players with Aggro are staying in Melee Range to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0rUMPDWm7k

This isn’t a theory either, it’s proven…. so is the opposite extreme that they will cast wells 95% of the time the instant they get up from a careless LB ranger using PointBlankShot on them. So if you see careless rangers or some other ranged n00bs attacking these that way, be sure to PM them about it and let them know that they’d literally be more useful if they were just AFK’ing instead.

ilr.9675:

This isn’t a theory either, it’s proven…. so is the opposite extreme that they will cast wells 95% of the time the instant they get up from a careless LB ranger using PointBlankShot on them. So if you see careless rangers or some other ranged n00bs attacking these that way, be sure to PM them about it and let them know that they’d literally be more useful if they were just AFK’ing instead.

Or you could not be an kitten and just tell them to use a melee weapon. Bonus points for telling them why.

I think it’s really important to be a kitten to bad rangers. They need as many people as they can telling them that their class is just bad overall and keeps getting worse every update. Then they can switch to maining another class that’s easier to play correctly and eventually Anet will have to take notice of the record low playing-time the class gets in their datamining … and hopefully … eventually … stop nerfing ranger in PvE & WvW just b/c some guys had a ranger on their team and won some silly E-Sports thingy @ PAX.

(they wouldn’t have ever nerfed Warrior or Guardian for that reason…)

There is currently 4 ways of getting Obi shards:

1.) Balthzar Temple (Karma)
2.) Karma Boxes (Karma)
3.) FOTM (relics)
4.) Laurel Vendor (Laurels -not suggested)

Getting them from FOTM is really easy and highly profitable. Technically you would be making money from doing FOTM route and since FOTM gives a large number of greens, blues, rares, and exotics (account bound but can be used to make dark matter) you would be making a large enough profit with no wait times usually (if there is its only for a couple of secs just keep hitting refresh on gw2lfg and eventually a group with the fract lvl you want will appear.

ilr.9675:

I think it’s really important to be a kitten to bad rangers. They need as many people as they can telling them that their class is just bad overall and keeps getting worse every update. Then they can switch to maining another class that’s easier to play correctly and eventually Anet will have to take notice of the record low playing-time the class gets in their datamining … and hopefully … eventually … stop nerfing ranger in PvE & WvW just b/c some guys had a ranger on their team and won the Tourney at PAX this week.

(they wouldn’t have ever nerfed Warrior or Guardian for that reason…)

I guess you don’t play PvP. Spirit rangers were over-powered and the nerf was expected for a long time before PAX.

Plus, that nerf didn’t really effect PvE because nobody plays a spirit ranger in PvE.

Thank goodness I bought these in bulk. I went to the Temple of Balth when it was open and asked my guildies what the obsidian shards were for. They said they were for legendaries. I never planned on making a legendary, but I thought, “What else am I going to buy with my Karma?”, so I bought 200 of the shards on a silly impulse because they had a purple name. I’m awesome.

Nabrok.9023:

Plus, that nerf didn’t really effect PvE because nobody plays a spirit ranger in PvE.

I play one…. especially in all the Straits of Devastation events.

Infact those spirits are one of the reasons my server continued to open Balthazar every night after Vet Subjs were given this incredibly bugged instant-cast Well Spam.

I recommend you use this site for finding an open temple:

http://www.gw2state.com/temples.html

At the time of this posting Balth is giving everyone a big middle finger but last night during prime time there were a few. Also I believe that, at the moment, more people are doing the temple events for the dragonite ore so the odds of finding one are higher for the time being (I could be wrong). Anyway, this is what Im planning to do. Sure aint spending laurels or factal relics on obby shards. Happy Hunting.

Ha, its open on Ehmry Bay. Quick, run, get your shards!!!

Spread around the pact NPCs and pull the Risen with Guardian’s GS and Mesmer Focus/GS. Keep the NPCs as far away as possible from combat, focus the mobs who use AoEs and equip as many blinds as you can. This will make the last escort mission a breeze, we did it with 9 guys yesterday on SFR.

Wolfheart.1938:

Spread around the pact NPCs and pull the Risen with Guardian’s GS and Mesmer Focus/GS. Keep the NPCs as far away as possible from combat, focus the mobs who use AoEs and equip as many blinds as you can. This will make the last escort mission a breeze, we did it with 9 guys yesterday on SFR.

9 might be close to a sweet spot. If you being 30 people the event ramps up and spawns more of the escort killer mobs, too many to control if the group isn’t coordinated.

^Yes Aggro managesment is also really really important. Pull/Yank all the harmless mobs away from the Subjugator Vets and hopefully the Pact “Redshirts” will chase ’em.

The WORST THING you can possibly do in this Escort, is have a ton of people who are only focused on just insta-nuking everything at Ranged, and also applying Speed Boosts to the Pact. By doing that sort of indiscriminate nuking, they’re pretty much guaranteed to aggro the Subjugators who will then spam the Wells instantly. It is incredibly important to leave the harmless risen minions alive as long as ya can until the Subjugators are dead.

Balthazar temples ALL CLOSED on NA servers. Saw it open on one EU server, which doesn’t help.

I can pursue Obsidian shards else where, but just wanted to say Balthazar temple is still fail.

Wukunlin.8461:

I also don’t understand why the obby shards have to be in that specific temple.

Probably because they originally came from the Fissure of Woe, which is Balthazar’s domain.

As an alternative though, you can get them by spending fractal relics.

You can also purchase them with laurels, though the 2:1 exchange rate is rather terrible.

The Shards are fine as they are. Opening the temple is half the challange of getting those obsidian shards for the legendary.

SoPP.7034:

Balthazar temples ALL CLOSED on NA servers. Saw it open on one EU server, which doesn’t help.

I can pursue Obsidian shards else where, but just wanted to say Balthazar temple is still fail.

You have to check that page several times a day, I know Jade Quarry and Blackgate usually do it every 2-3 days or so, though it only remains open for a few hours.

I hope they fix the scaling in that event, it would have higher uptime if it wasn’t for that 90% chance to fail.

I just check http://www.gw2state.com/temples.html every other hour when I’m playing and want shards, haven’t had any problem getting them within a day or two since there’ll be a server with it open eventually.