Guild Wars 2

Hi, someone claimed he got 200 badges in one evening, I so far got 450 badges in maybe 80 hours, so it seems I’m doing something wrong.
What determines whether you get a badge or not? Although I often participate in big skirmishes on the field where our group kills lots of enemies, and try to handle my class (defensive elementalist, buff/support/cc) as effectively as possible, I only very rarely find any badges it seems.

Easiest way I’ve found to get badges is to defend something with siege. I’ve got 20 or so in a half hour when helping to kill off a zerg of 50 with an enhanced arrow cart (or whatever they’re called). I could see that scaling when an enemyside is foolish enough to keep running into the raining death.

Two best ways to get badges:

1. Use siege while defending.
2. Play in small groups. When you’re in zergs, you get less loot, period. When you’re in a group of 5, you get loot bags from just about everything; ganking a person, taking a supply camp, ripping up krait and quaggan. The more loot bags you get, the more badges you get.

This game doesn’t punish zergs, but it doesn’t reward them anywhere near as much either.

Thanks for the info

Here’s the best way to get a lot of badges.

1. Be able to kill people.

2. Always ranged the downed players.

Plop on a ranged weapon when the opposing team starts getting a lot of downed people. Not sure how it works but you can do literally nothing in the fight but land a couple hits on a downed person with range and get a loot drop, and the same thing can happen if you do all the work someone else can get the loot, so just always ranged the downed players if you cannot reach them.

I got over 400 badges last week I also did a ton of killing but just plop on the greatsword and hit downed players also.

I’ve been playing since the beginning (nearly 500 hours of game time), close to 3000 kills, and only 600 badges. I could probably make a small mountain out of the bags I must have left behind. Or I’m just really unlucky

I don’t very often run with zergs either. So, I’m sorry, can’t really give you any advice here :P

I always run with a group of 2-5 and go out all nighter on killing people, yak or even ninja a camp. I’m able to get atleast 100 badges in a day, 5-8 hours of playtime. It is not that hard to take badges, you just need to be organized.

The drop rate on badges is pretty low
I have just over 8600 kills in WvW and just a bit more than 1750 tokens
So expect about 1 token for every 5 kills.

The drop rate should be much higher. Bags should give a chance at 1-4 tokens instead of 1-2 tokens. Invader Gear set shouldn’t take 10x longer to get than any of the dungeon gear sets.

Ok I was actually expecting people to respond like “lol you only have that few badges, just what are you doing” but it seems it’s normal that it doesn’t rain badges on you ^^ phew

I tend to get the most badges when Gandara is against the Spanish.

Its a horrible and stressful week but at least there’s no shortage of people to kill. Standing behind a gate spamming AoE and Cons at attackers works very well if you have someone with you to ramp up the damage. Just as many bags as on siege. Works best for Ele and Necro tho.

Hmm, about 750 badges & 3.4k kills.

I notice I acquire more with siege defense.

The hitting downed people is BS, you rarely get anything for that. I’m a ranger, I range every downed person..I know this.

I often get more in small groups, supply camp masters often drop 2 if you do a large % of dmg vs. others it seems.

Always shoot as many downed people as possible, I sometimes get a badge or two even if a ran by a downed player and shot him only 1 time before the people who actually killed him finish him off.

Badge rates definitely need to go up. The gear looks awful and doesn’t have better stats but takes 10x as long to acquire than dungeon gear or even karma gear. Actually badges need to just be rewarded per kill and per successful event. The tech is already ingame to reward tokens to your bag so why don’t they just do that in WvW.

I’m getting about 100 badges a night/day on weekends and about 50-60 / evening weekdays… Sitting on about 7k kills in pvp

Hm, if badges depend on kills/damage you do that means there is no room for support builds and instead everyone should change his gear to glass cannon (and a few protective spells) I guess. That would be pretty awful design by Arenanet though if it’s really true. Any official word on this?

Most of you guys are doing better then me. Just hit 3k kills the other day with only ~400 badges. Not that it matters to me, all the gear and weapons are ugly. Once I get Gift of Battle I won’t care about badges.

Antiriad.7160

Hm, if badges depend on kills/damage you do that means there is no room for support builds and instead everyone should change his gear to glass cannon (and a few protective spells) I guess.

Arrow cart > glass cannon

You still won’t get any badges for actually supporting though.

I am pretty sure I have missed picking up some bags due to the nature of PvP. Shoot-n-scoot all the time, by the time the bag appears after I kill someone, I am already 15 feet away from it. It would be nice if the tokens just auto-deposited into the inventory or the bags should have a more noticeable effect on them.

Valiev.3428:

Hmm, about 750 badges & 3.4k kills.

I notice I acquire more with siege defense.

The hitting downed people is BS, you rarely get anything for that. I’m a ranger, I range every downed person..I know this.

I often get more in small groups, supply camp masters often drop 2 if you do a large % of dmg vs. others it seems.

I’ve heard it goes off of last hit but cannot quite verify that. It really seems like who does the most damage in downed state or it might be last hit. I’ve even had people use finishers while I was doing damage and I got the drop, and I’ve also done a finisher while other people damaged and they got the drop.

I kinda stopped doing finishers in favor or mesmer greatsword unless I’m the only person around.

Maybe Arenanet could no longer keep us in the dark and throw us an enlightening bone of information about the badge-aquirement mechanics? Thanks!

this’s what i believe i have around 1500 badges

u need to do most dmg on the target. that is …

1 on 1 give me badges almost everytime but ofc u have to be good enough to take anyone 1 on 1.

Brust AOE on my necro actually give me the fastest badges.

basically it’s all about dmg

also if u cant do dmg u will sadly need to stick with Arrow cart.

I believe it works like in PvE, you have to do a set amount (20%) of the damage to a mob to get a chance at a loot drop. Not all bags in WvW contain badges. Sometimes I get a shredded rag, and I’m all “WTF? I stopped killing people for this?”

R E F L H E X.8413:

Here’s the best way to get a lot of badges.

1. Be able to kill people.

2. Always ranged the downed players.

Plop on a ranged weapon when the opposing team starts getting a lot of downed people. Not sure how it works but you can do literally nothing in the fight but land a couple hits on a downed person with range and get a loot drop, and the same thing can happen if you do all the work someone else can get the loot, so just always ranged the downed players if you cannot reach them.

I got over 400 badges last week I also did a ton of killing but just plop on the greatsword and hit downed players also.

1. Only 1 in 5 kills gives badges

2. Having to down a player twice is ridiculous to get a badge

3. Having to find a tiny loot bag in a sea of players and while trying not to get killed is ridiculous. Just make the looting be truly automatic for everything.

@Antiriad: Play in smaller groups.

@swilkers: Play in smaller groups.

@swilkers: If you hold alt it will show the name of anything you can interact with, loot bags, harvest nodes etc.
Might be another key by default but there is one to do this. Makes finding loot bags in a mob fairly easy since its yellow nameplate.

The defaults:

Left Alt for anything that would have a green name. This includes other players and friendly NPCs.

Left Ctrl for anything that would show up with a yellow or red name. This includes enemy players, gathering nodes, and pearls.

Proven.2854:

@Antiriad: Play in smaller groups.

@swilkers: Play in smaller groups.

This would have no affect on what I stated. Thanks for playing.

You complained about finding loot bags in a sea of players. Wouldn’t be a problem if you stuck to smaller groups and skirmishes. Sorry, I should have spelled it out for you in the first place.

I’ve found I have about a 1 in 40 chance of a badge drop on my shortbow thief, and about 1 in 10 drop rate on my engineer. I don’t know if that damage output or the fact I move around a lot so I might be missing bags.

Also – missing bags isn’t just a matter of zergs vs small groups. The bags themselves are sometimes invisible or under the terrain surface (sometimes you see the sparkly effect just about the ground). There’s really no good design reason badges aren’t directly deposited into your inventory.

However, I wonder if these discreet badges are really the best way to reward WvW. As mentioned above, they don’t reward support characters. And if it has to do with the amount of damage done, its even more unfair.

Anet should probably create a currency like karma, call it “honor” for example, and award little bits for various activities. Some for how much damage you contribute to a kill, or for being the person who significantly buffs/heals others who are killing.

In the case of a sea of players, you have too much on screen. In the case of clearing a fight and looking for a handful go bags, you can hold down Left Ctrl.

As for changing badges to honor, right now badges are the one thing that can’t be efficiently “farmed”. You have to get a group and you have to do stuff, or you have to get to a location and defend. Both things botters have an overall hard time programming around. Still might be worth changing it to just objectives, but as I’ve been saying, the system now rewards most when you’re in small groups and skirmishes, and changing to something like honor for doing objectives would just benefit zergs more.

Proven.2854:

In the case of a sea of players, you have too much on screen. In the case of clearing a fight and looking for a handful go bags, you can hold down Left Ctrl.

As for changing badges to honor, right now badges are the one thing that can’t be efficiently “farmed”. You have to get a group and you have to do stuff, or you have to get to a location and defend. Both things botters have an overall hard time programming around. Still might be worth changing it to just objectives, but as I’ve been saying, the system now rewards most when you’re in small groups and skirmishes, and changing to something like honor for doing objectives would just benefit zergs more.

Its not simply about zergs (and trust me, I’d rather skirmish than anything else). Bags do literally spawn beneath the ground surface. I’ve seen just the top of the bag or its sparkly bit at ground level. And even if this wasn’t an issue, my general experience in WvW is, you move or you die, skirmish or zerg. Running around to find my bags back, visible or not, is not the purpose of WvW.

Its also the case that in a fight, you should be fighting. Not spamming to find your rewards. Its absolutely silly to have to do this. Do you have to pick up a bag to get your PvE xp? Do sPvP players have to pick up a bag to get their glory? No. And they would howl to the stars if they did.

In terms of bots, I don’t see how an honor points system would change this. Points would still come from player kills, just in different forms. it would be graded to your contribution – be that contribution damage, or in the form of buffs/healing to the players doing the damage.

I understand you like skirmishing over the zerg. Great, so do I. However, your argument that the current bad system somehow encourages skirmishing is weak. You want to encourage skirmishing – I’m sure there are a ton of better ideas.

You can supplement your badges by doing map completion. They patched it a little while back so that WvW map completion awards some badges. I think it was 10 per map, but it might be 20.

It was 10 when I did a borderland.

Personally got 265 badges out of 1800 kills… Obviously their drop rate is fubarred like the rest of the WvW game… Having to pick them up from a bag is outright dumb IMO but hey am not the billionaire corporation dude counting his money at home…

Joiry.2504:

Proven.2854:

In the case of a sea of players, you have too much on screen. In the case of clearing a fight and looking for a handful go bags, you can hold down Left Ctrl.

As for changing badges to honor, right now badges are the one thing that can’t be efficiently “farmed”. You have to get a group and you have to do stuff, or you have to get to a location and defend. Both things botters have an overall hard time programming around. Still might be worth changing it to just objectives, but as I’ve been saying, the system now rewards most when you’re in small groups and skirmishes, and changing to something like honor for doing objectives would just benefit zergs more.

Its not simply about zergs (and trust me, I’d rather skirmish than anything else). Bags do literally spawn beneath the ground surface. I’ve seen just the top of the bag or its sparkly bit at ground level. And even if this wasn’t an issue, my general experience in WvW is, you move or you die, skirmish or zerg. Running around to find my bags back, visible or not, is not the purpose of WvW.

Its also the case that in a fight, you should be fighting. Not spamming to find your rewards. Its absolutely silly to have to do this. Do you have to pick up a bag to get your PvE xp? Do sPvP players have to pick up a bag to get their glory? No. And they would howl to the stars if they did.

In terms of bots, I don’t see how an honor points system would change this. Points would still come from player kills, just in different forms. it would be graded to your contribution – be that contribution damage, or in the form of buffs/healing to the players doing the damage.

I understand you like skirmishing over the zerg. Great, so do I. However, your argument that the current bad system somehow encourages skirmishing is weak. You want to encourage skirmishing – I’m sure there are a ton of better ideas.

I did say that you should finish the fight then pick up the loot. That’s why smaller fights are a bit better; they end sooner, and then while you’re recovering health and getting skills off cooldown you pick up all the loot that dropped during the fight.

But you feel my argument is still not strong enough in general, fine.

Finally, think about what you get for a kill, vs what you get when you pick up a loot bag. The rule about GW2 seems to be that end game goals take farming, while just playing gets you to a high plateau quickly. You get experience for every kill still. You are specifically complaining about badges, which you don’t need unless you really, really want that exotic set, or that gift for the legendary.

Blueprints are pricey, but outside of golems I quickly find myself making enough money to buy them outright with silver instead of with badges.