So, I’ve been WvW’ing since level 10. I’ve been 80 for 3 weeks or so and I’m at a lousy 160 badges. Sometimes i’ll be doing it for 5-6 hours straight and come out with 5 (yes 5!) badges. Am I just meant to farm jumping puzzles everyday untill I can buy 1 item? Or am I missing a ton of loot bags in the middle of these zergs? I don’t think so, I always watch out for them. (I don’t always zerg, It’s boring tbh, but It’s not often I meet someone for a 1v1 out there on my own, so I mostly run supplies, get camps and stuff, which you get no badges for)
So, please enlighten me on the secrets of getting some of this gear. I know I can just craft it or whatever, but it seems redundant to even have this gear in the game if noone buys it, since it’s so much easier getting exotics elsewhere. Perhaps lowering the price of wvw gear would be something to consider.
I’ve never been able to get very many badges in WvW at all. I try to tag all the mobs I can see and hope for the best. For my Ranger, I ended up just farming karma and getting one of the cathedral sets in Orr. If you aren’t getting badges, just get Karma armor.
I run a healing support spec on my ele, so I don’t do much dmg. I crit for like 1k dmg at most; on well geared ‘tanks’ I hit for below 100 sometimes. But boy can I bring the boons, heals, and combo fields.
So coupled with the fact that ele AoE is 5 targets only and my low dmg; my badge earning is super low. Yet I have almost 3k kills now but only 201 badges.
But no matter, I bought 2 sets already that fills my spec needs from the TP for around 30g at most. Just a minor annoyance, I guess.
The big badge earners are the classes and or specs that do absurb amounts of burst dmg thus ensuring getting loots. Support specs just don’t cut it when tagging to get loot. You need like at least 1.5k dmg to even get exp.
I’d like for them to reconsider how badges are collected personally. Something where you just get badges for being involved with things on a regular basis. Then raise the price on some things accordingly. It’d still take a while to buy the good stuff but at least it’d be consistent.
You should get a badge for completing an event at least.
I think the trick to getting PVP tokens is to group. I never group, and in 20 days and 800 or so alleged kills, I have 80 tokens to show for it.
Once I attacked a group that was assaulting my tower. I’m sure that I hit everybody, because I was in the middle of them and spinning around with a sword. Then a zerg guild comes along and finishes up what I started. One guy says “Alright! 10 tokens!”
I think I got a couple of junk fangs out of the deal. Then most of the time, I just forget to loot the bag. I’m not complaining at all. I could care less about the gear or the tokens, but it would be nice to read about what goes into determining whether you get one or not.
I agree, i play an Ele also, and have collected about 1600 badges. Support specs get robbed on the badge drop, low dps gets robbed on the badge drop. In my evolution of gear/spec’s i’ve gone from full rare karma pvp set (survival over dps) to a full Bezerker exotic set (dps*aka glass cannon), and the badge drops have gone up quite a bit.
Oh also, i’d recommend getting the rare WvW karma armor and weapons set, its pretty cheap, and karma is easy to get. Then upgrade with pieces either from PvE or Badges to exotics.
Get the lvl 78 Exotics, theyre good enough to last you awhile while you work your way up to lvl 80 exotics. At most they’re 2-3 stat points difference only.
I have leveled my thief almost exclusively in WvW. I am currently level 38, and have 222 badges. I think the secret is to not zerg. I typically run in a group of 15-20, and i’ve noticed a much higher drop rate. When i am in a zerg, the drops taper off to almost nil. I believe this is their “anti-zerg” mechanic, but since it’s never been verified, it doesn’t work.
Ya. I simply can’t tag players on mesmer. I basically have to land the finisher to do tagging damage. And it is different in a group…it’s like the tagging threshold drops by a lot. Playing my ele is compleatly different…it just rains loot.
The badges are only really good for buying siege equipment (1 badge = 1 silver). But I agree that the whole mob and player tagging system is broken for people focusing on support and debuffs.
Folks need to join groups, not just run solo with the zerg. Assuming the code for PvE kill credit is the same for PvP, you need to do a certain percentage of the total in order to get credit for the kill. However if your in a group, you get credit for your groups effort as far as percentage of the total, so your effort becomes more or less to just tag the same mobs and you will get kill credit provided your entire group did enough to get credit for the kill. More kill credits, more chance for loot bags, more chances for badges.
That said, currently the armor that you can purchase is limited in stats it provides, if they do not fit your build then you shouldnt be buying them. I bought the jewelry set because I couldnt find power/toughness/vitality elsewhere else.. Almost all my armor is player made.
“I’d like for them to reconsider how badges are collected personally. Something where you just get badges for being involved with things on a regular basis.”
I’d rather they drop badges altogether. Go to a point system (similar to Karma only separate) for damage done perhaps even healing (not yourself only others).
You have to join a group. I was solo’ing for a while too and got almost nothing. Joined a group and was getting seriously about 10x the loot bags as I would have doing the same thing solo.
I think the design, especially for “casual” players, encourages you to diversify your sources of gear. Get a piece or two of karma gear, get a piece or two of badges gear, get drops, maybe get dungeon gear, TP or craft it yourself.
The economy design has these four currencies (not counting pvp). WvW is really good for gold and karma. Badges are slower to accumulate. If “casual” means not gonna grind for what you want, then you have to take what you can get. You can always gem-store a pile of gold and get it from the trading post.
that’s rough luck