Guild Wars 2

Before the recent update to how leveling and skill points work, each dungeon you completed would grant you 70% of an experience bar, when combined with all the mobs you kill in a dungeon, would more or less grant you a Skill Point for each dungeon path you completed. However, since leveling past 80 does not give you any Spirit Shards, the equivalent of Skill Points, the rewards from dungeons have indirectly been nerfed. This change, along with the fact that dungeons (oustide of a select few paths) have long been considered as “not worth the time” by the majority of the community serves as a great opportunity to consider rebalancing dungeon rewards.

There are two different simple methods that I can think of to introduce Spirit Shards into the rewards of dungeons. The first would be to grant a single Spirit Shard along with the bonus (the daily chest) at the end of the dungeon. This is slightly more rewarding than 70% of a Skill Point, and could help to motivate more people to try their hand in a few dungeons.

The other method that I can think of would help to balance different dungeon paths. Instead of offering a Spirit Shard with the bonus chest at the end of the dungeon, each chest in the dungeon (not champ bags, the bigger ground chests) would offer a chance at a Spirit Shard. (at a rate determined by the devs) This would help to balance longer, more difficult dungeon paths that have more bosses such as Arah path 4 which has six chests with the easier, shorter paths such as Citadel of Flame path 1 which has two chests.

I still got spirit shards from champion bags in my dungeon runs. Not sure how many (it’s easy to miss them since they’re deposited directly into the wallet now) but it doesn’t seem like a significant decrease.

Don’t see anything wrong with your suggestion though.

Jahroots.6791:

I still got spirit shards from champion bags in my dungeon runs. Not sure how many (it’s easy to miss them since they’re deposited directly into the wallet now) but it doesn’t seem like a significant decrease.

Don’t see anything wrong with your suggestion though.

That’s exactly the thing; we also got those BEFORE the update, in the form of Scrolls of Knowledge. The Spirit Shards from Champion Loot Boxes is the same after the patch, so they are not relevant to the discussion. Now you no longer get any from completing the dungeon. This effectively is saying “If you want Spirit Shards, go join a champ train.”

In short, this discussion is only about Spirit Shards as a direct dungeon reward.

I remain baffled as to why people care so much about the spirit shard drop rate. What on earth uses them up in such quantities that missing a few is horrible?

This is a serious question. I’m sure there is some useful thing to do with them and it involves using the Forge to make something profitable, but after 3 years in this game (I include beta play) I still don’t grok the Forge.

I ran AC last night and the end reward box had a pouch of spirit shards. I don’t recall how many shards were in it, but it was a direct, guaranteed award for completing the dungeon.

Donari.5237:

I remain baffled as to why people care so much about the spirit shard drop rate. What on earth uses them up in such quantities that missing a few is horrible?

This is a serious question. I’m sure there is some useful thing to do with them and it involves using the Forge to make something profitable, but after 3 years in this game (I include beta play) I still don’t grok the Forge.

I am wondering the same. I am sitting on 5k+ shards and have no idea what to do with them other than building an exotic skin every now and then when the TP is right.

Malediktus.3740:

Donari.5237:

I remain baffled as to why people care so much about the spirit shard drop rate. What on earth uses them up in such quantities that missing a few is horrible?

This is a serious question. I’m sure there is some useful thing to do with them and it involves using the Forge to make something profitable, but after 3 years in this game (I include beta play) I still don’t grok the Forge.

I am wondering the same. I am sitting on 5k+ shards and have no idea what to do with them other than building an exotic skin every now and then when the TP is right.

You can mass use Spirit Shards to promote materials and resell them on the TP. There are several calculators out there that show all the profitable conversions, with the best ones giving you about 1.5g per Spirit Shard.

Kumion.7580:

I ran AC last night and the end reward box had a pouch of spirit shards. I don’t recall how many shards were in it, but it was a direct, guaranteed award for completing the dungeon.

I’m sorry, but there is no direct, guaranteed award of Spirit Shards for completing dungeons. Opening dungeon chests grants no Spirit Shards (I have run about 15 dungeon paths every day since the update and have gotten 0 from dungeon chests, so…) and opening champ bags gives very few (just before typing this post I opened 30 and got 3 Spirit Shards.)

Leveling up after HoT will grant Mastery Points so its not that the rewards have been nerfed.. just that there is a new mechanic coming to replace that role.. its just currently not in the game

Then having fewer spirit shards generated should be a good thing. Casual players would have less access to them and perhaps drive prices of some MF recipe items up. In theory anyway, I’m terrible at working out this sort of thing.

Assuming a player did ten dungeon paths per day it’s only a loss of about 5 shards. I don’t see this having a major impact. Most players probably have at least 1K of these sitting in our wallets and no real use for ’em.

Teratus.2859:

Leveling up after HoT will grant Mastery Points so its not that the rewards have been nerfed.. just that there is a new mechanic coming to replace that role.. its just currently not in the game

And I suspect we won’t be grandfathered into the mastery system to avoid breaking things. So essentially, all the experience our level 80 characters are gaining right now is going to waste.

I wouldn’t mind an option to trade experience points for spirit shards, similar to how using a tome of knowledge on a level 80 character rewards a spirit shard rather than a level.