Guild Wars 2

Devs have stated that MF does not effect chests and your ‘plan’ is exactly why. Being able to use gear for maximum damage and the switching to an MF set to boost your reward would render the whole point of having the gear pretty worthless. If you want to use the gear then you have to accept the handicap with it, you will get increased drops off the mobs but the chests will give you the same regardless.

I appreciate how that’s supposed to work. But my experience on the matter has been very different. Just taking burn and bleed, the most common conditions:

Bleed – I’ve seen this have seriously crashed damage, if a player with max cond damage applies a bleeding affect, so has a naturally high tick damage from bleed, and then another character with no condition damage applies bleed, the whole tick is ruined, and I’ve seen the damage go from huge amounts to nothing thanks to this effect, it’s painful and renders bleed useful. (Rangers shortbow in particular can crash a bleed stack)

Burning – Now this is a truly godawful condition, it should be amazing, but there’s no stacking (durations just seem to overwrite each other) and I’ll be kitten if the burning damage is ever added. It just seems to fail across the board.

My best experience of this was in CoE p1 when it was bugged and the boss couldn’t hit the towers, so we had to condition him to death. Two of us were using bleed and two using fire, and I actually found I did more fire damage when the other person switched to bleed based attacks than overwrote my fire damage.

Maybe it’s just bad experience but in my opinion the conditions need looking at as I’m sure they don’t work as intended.

Gehenna.3625:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Gehenna.3625:

lolitsage.2185:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Gehenna.3625:

I quit playing cause the game just bores me and it didn’t grab me like GW1 did, however, my wife still plays and she enjoys it and she does love that new outfit. So I sold all my gear and sent her the gold so she could make gems with it.

I’m playing SWTOR and she’s enjoying GW2. Works out that way

Mind if i ask why your still on the forums i mean i felt the same way about SWTOR you do about GW2 but i dont hang around there forums.

As for the op there always adding. And updating content to this game jan and feb are sapose to be huge

Some people still like to keep up with the games progresson

Exactly, I played GW1 for a long time and you never know, perhaps at some point Anet will make some changes that turn the game around.

And I still want Anet to make this a better game from my point of view.

Still think it would be more productive to actualy log on and play the new content for a few hours than it is to log into the sesspoll we call gameing forums (not just gw2) to see if there is anything that holds my intores

That is your opinion, but I have mine. You can think what you want but in the end I decide what I like to do or not and I am not impressed by people who try to tell me what to do, especially since you guys have managed yourselves to completely derail this thread from the original topic by asking me about this instead of focusing on the actual topic. Funny thing is, I don’t see that as productive.

So how about we agree to get back on topic?

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen forums about killer diseases that have kinder things to say than the majority of the forum going community has to say about this game.

I personally don’t get it, a four month old game with monthly updates and this much content is incredible and it can only get better. If you’re hoping it’s going to head back to the direction of GW1, you’re likely wasting your time. The Devs have stated multiple times the games are completely different, it’s not just a sequel, it’s a completely different entity.

If you were unhappy with the so called ‘vertical progression’ you may just get more upset as it has been stated that in future expansions upping the level cap is a possibility, though not guaranteed. The ascended gear will continue to be introduced into other aspects of the game, they’ve admitted they made a mistake in the way they handled it and it will become more world friendly.

But short from that it really would be better to experience the new content yourself, you can get an impression from the forums, but you’ll need to take it heavily with a pinch of salt and wade through a colossal amount of kitten before you find something actually relevant.

Erasculio.2914:

1) You are assuming that time spent is worth anything. It’s not. Other MMOs have indoctrinated people into believing that the recipe for “success” in a MMO is spending a lot of time (usually repeating content that isn’t fun), but that’s not how real life works. Someone who works 12 hours a day doing mindless, repetitive jobs don’t get paid nearly as much as skilled and talented people who work less time (compare Chinese factory workers to Steve Jobs). Believing you deserve anything better than someone else because you simply spent more time is nonsense.

Now, I agree in principle with this, yes there is a degree of indoctrination, however your analogy in its own right isn’t by any means perfect. Your comparison is of two completely separate tasks. Comparing the two would actually make more sense if we were comparing two different games. But as it’s one game, and the argument is time spent then it boils down to the closer analogy of two workers for the same company, paid by commission, one working hard, the other procrastinating and floating around, by all rights the hard working one would get more, though the procrastinator would still have his chance to obtain large sales etc. through a bit of luck. Most of the time the hard worker would come out on top, but not always.

I feel RNG fits this analogy better.

Maybe my use of ‘better’ was incorrect there. It wasn’t meant as in ‘better’ as in than ‘wow, he looks good’, but better as in ‘I think I look better than x’. It is internally reflected, I don’t give a kitten as to what people think of my character from the outside, I want my characters to look better and different, unfortunately a lot of the time this is the much rarer equipment, but not always.

Though, even between the masterwork sets, you can see a large jump in value purely because of the skin. Just so happens the stuff I like is the rarer stuff.

I’m going to attempt to outline a few major points in systems for rewards that I can think of keeping in mind a few principles:

• The game should be accessible to everyone, ranging from your casual gamer to your hardcore gamer.
• There still needs to be some level of item differentiation for time spent on skinning your character to those just getting level appropriate gear.
• The rarer the item, the more people will want it.

First off, we’ll start with the RNG, this allows easy access to content across the board, all skill levels, casual and hardcore gamers alike. The drop rate can be easily specified by the designers allowing for control of how many of the item enter the world. Unfortunately, people who ‘open x boxes’ and don’t get their item will whine. However providing the item isn’t account bound then it’ll be for sale allowing acquisition in time through the medium of gold.

But then, if we don’t have RNG, what methods are there?

Well, you could have a method like dungeon running for a large number of tokens to acquire super rare items. BUT the only way of ensuring that this item will stay rare, will be to set the token price high, but then the gamers will declare this a ‘grind’ and ‘goes against the manifesto’ so looks like that’s not a decent method.

You could have a long quest chain, or a highly skilled quest chain that would reward players. But if it’s skilled you have the issue of the game not being ‘casual friendly’, a long quest chain will then be a ‘grind’ and if it’s not marked clearly it’ll be ‘too hard’ (look at the Lost Shores event where there was no quest markers, just clues to see the reaction on the forums) and there will be a guide on the internet the following day anyway. So you can’t have a rare item through a quest reward, as it’ll no longer be rare.

Then you can make a highly skilled event, like say the Halloween puzzle, or a turbo boosted Wintersday bells, but even they were surprised at how many people managed to complete the Halloween puzzle. And then you get the reaction from the population that ‘timed’ puzzles discriminate against slow internet connections, people with handicaps etc. So that’s not really a great way to introduce rare items.

Forge recipes has also been suggested, however, the only way to ensure that these are rare is to have a large list of materials required, some of which item bound like legendaries. And then it becomes a ‘grind’ from the RNG on material drops etc. I for one, am beginning to lose my love for the legendaries as I see more and more people with them, I want something not many people have, there’s no longer the ‘wow’ factor when I see someone with Twilight or Sunrise, it’s a shame but I guess the way it’s going to be.

And, just looking at the idea of giving everyone access to all the rare items would offend the people who want to have the rare stuff, want to be different. I spend a lot of time and materials on my equipment, I want to look better than someone who hasn’t spent any time on it. That’s just the way it goes, if I’ve got an endless Wintersday Bell, I don’t want everyone to have it, it loses its value and becomes pointless, thus there would be no carrot in the game to keep the majority of people who want the rare things.

I will admit, I get jealous when I see a player who’s played for less time/not as skilled/isn’t as mindblowingly sexy carrying an item I want but haven’t had the luck to acquire. But I don’t hate the RNG because of it, it can suck but it’s by far the fairest way of maintaining a rare item’s existence as actually rare. What I feel it boils down to is a feeling of entitlement, that people have played it more so should have it and that’s not how it works. You take away the rare, hard to acquire objects and you lose a big motivator for a lot of people.

Sorry for this being so long, but as a final question. If you are against RNG, why are you against it? And what system do you feel should be employed instead?

Miflett.3472:

The new marketing idea is “lets sell them the least amount of content we can for the most amount of money.”

Cynicism to the max. And to be frank, that’s the same operating strategy ANY company will run. The difference is, GW2 is offering huge amounts of content for FREE, before any of the optional extras which you’re charged for.

That’s hardly ANet’s fault though, just because some people wanted to obtain everything as soon as it came out. This programme of rolling everything out was probably the way they always intended to do things. Just because some people had to have them straight away has nothing to do with ANet.

I’m not saying it’s guaranteed, I’m just saying that people are flaming way before the event is up and if they jumped the gun then they only have themselves to blame.

What’s to say, that by the end of event, they won’t all be available for sale? You’re jumping to conclusions before the end of the event.

So everyone has been ‘outraged’ or ‘angry’ or ‘insert appropriate synonym here’ about the way the mini pets have been handed out. Without even waiting to see how the event has panned out. So far, every day, a new mini has been added to the TP for you to purchase, without any gamble.

Maybe, a bit of patience would go a long way? Less of the hate people. Stop blighting the forums and wait for the event to happen before you cast judgement on something you don’t even know about yet.

I didn’t get any swiftness at all on my mesmer and guard and completed it without issues. Why would you possibly want swiftness?

Yeah, the PvP achievements promote selfish play, which is a shame as the event itself is a lot of fun.

But, in order to increase your achievement you must land the ‘downing’ blow on the enemy carrying the present. Using #3 on support and knocking the present out of their hand doesn’t count toward the achievement.

So the best way to do it (how I did it anyway) is to play scout, wait until the present carrier is on about 50-75% hp, cloak and get near them, and then hold a full charged sniper shot. You’ll take them out and you’ll add one to your achievement.

In Coddler’s Cove:

‘Just one last orb and I’m done…’

(At least the Quaggans revive you!)

CarlCosinus.1763:

subscribe
this dungeon is impossible to beat. as it is right now. and it sucks really hard.

Really isn’t. Literally just did it. Waves of mobs are a bit of a joke, would appreciate it if they were halved, would still be a challenge then. But it’s easily possible. With a group that included myself, a guildie that never runs dungeons, a friend that’s pretty casual, and another couple we did it. None of us are majorly skilled and yeah we died. But it’s definitely possible.

3. Mad King, I’m like totally below you!

2. At the end of the world!

Here’s a selection I have acquired:

1. A genuinely gorgeous view from one of the jumping puzzles.

This isn’t a whine, I personally completed my event, got my chest I’m all fine. BUT, on behalf of some of my friends that don’t frequent the forums as much as I do I was just wondering if there’s anyone who:

• Got a chest mailed to them who is currently on Aurora Glade?

or

• Got a chest mailed to them on a European server?

I’m just wondering as I know quite a lot of people on AG and I’m yet to find anyone on there who got a chest. Has Europe not been done yet, has AG been missed or have I just not known anyone who got one?

(And btw, in my chest I looted a grand total of about 3g worth of exotics. I didn’t get a precursor, but I’m not sour, congratulations to all that did!)

Ah, well that’ll be one of the vendors in either Malchor’s Leap or Cursed Shore. HOWEVER the armour from these vendors actually have mixed stats, the helmet has one set of stats, shoulder a different set etc. etc., so you’re going to struggle to find a full set of toughness and vitality from a single vendor.

I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in the understanding of how inflation works. And I would just like to clarify that I do not have an in depth understanding of economics.

Tolmos.8395:

Everyone is forgetting the massive bot ban. That is a LARGE part of the reason for price increases right now. I mean, surely you can’t tell me that not one of you noticed that within days of the bots being banned the prices of everything went up?

Less bots farming mats, getting dye drops, getting item drops, etc = higher cost of those items on tradepost since there will be so much less.

Honestly, I just view it as the economy evening out. It was balanced on the shoulders of the bots and gold farmers for so long, with them gone it needs to find a new base line. Give it time and it will.

Of course supply and demand is another factor. The bots farmed a lot of the low level mats rendering them effectively worthless as the supply was so great, and yes, the economy will settle again.

BUT while there are ways of farming (and by farming I mean looting and selling to NPCs just for clarity) and earning large amounts of gold per hour, it will exceed that which people spend on TP.

People who flip TP items, fair play, I can’t be bothered with it, I play this game for fun, not to watch a market. If I wanted to do that I’d play the stocks in real life and make my money that way.

The perceived value of all the high end items will keep rising as the gold values decreases and the supply of items stagnates. A lot of it is perceived value as opposed to actual value, which is where the monopolisation of the market sucks as that is direct manipulation which I’m not a fan of. But everything is still easy enough to acquire if you’re unwilling to pay. I’m currently banking materials related to five named exotics that I want, and I’m attempting to do so without using the TP as best as I can. It’ll take a while but it’s my own personal F you to the greedy traders on the economy!

Right, I’m not after a flame war, I’m just trying to get some opinions of the players out there at the moment.

There are a large number of repeated threads at the moment, especially ‘ascended blah blah’, ’I’m quitting’ and the such but there is also two threads which tie in together, often mentioned by people in similar veins…

People are ‘unhappy’ that their favourite methods of farming gold are being nerfed, which, at it’s base level, yes is annoying. But then, there are a large number of people complaining about the ‘state’ of the economy, I’m guessing with the given inflation levels at the minute.

Has no-one realised these two things are directly linked? All gold farming is going to result in inflation, all prices will rise. The more gold there is in game, the less value it has, you can’t expect everything to stay at knock down prices while everyone is still farming gold and throwing it around. The gold farm is exactly the reason why the economy is the way it is.

In my opinion the fact that Anet is actually taking measures to reduce gold farming is a good thing, they’re aware of the damage it’s causing to the economy so they’re restricting it. I am frustrated because every now and then I did love to run around filling my bags with random loot from Plinx for an hour or so and raking in the gold.

People need to look at the bigger picture. If you want a stable economy, you can’t have easy access to gold; if you want easy access to gold, you can’t have a stable economy.

Farming is akin to printing money to use in circulation, it devalues it. Think hyperinflation (at the extreme end of the spectrum) and you should be able to see why they HAVE to continue nerfing gold farming methods.

What server are you on? Maybe the server that you’re on itself is relatively unpopulated?

A lot of the maps can be quiet, but if you’re like me, and harass map chat a bit you can quite easily get a map conversation going. People are normally there, they just aren’t good at starting the chat. Just throw a few feeders out from time to time and you’ll find you can liven the zone up quite a lot!

Check the North of Fireheart Rise. There’s a field of them there.

Providing you want the skin of the named sword. Yes, as the name comes with the skin, the stats are a separate section.

The stats themselves are all relatively cheap, unfortunately the skins are where the price comes into it. The nicer the skin, the more expensive the price. You don’t so much pay to get the best gear in this game, you pay to make your player look kick kitten

The spam suppression feature is actually very easy to circumvent. Three messages containing exactly the same text, even over somewhere around ten minutes is counted as spam. All you do is change the text slightly each time and you can write as much as you want, when you want, I like it this way as it allows me to have conversations on map chat with people. However I dislike it as it doesn’t stop the spamming if they do exactly what you said and change the letters at the end.

It’s a ‘ kitten if you do kitten if you don’t’ situation.

Midnight ice is very nearly black with a blue tint, that works for most things!

Nah, do what I do. Ditch the gear when you’re in a low level zone. Might as well go in naked as MF has no effect on material drops if that’s what you’re just farming! Plus, if anything goes wrong you don’t get a repair bill. Winning!

There are loads of weapon skins available, the thing is they’ll be located on other weapons. The best thing to do is to use a website like www.gw2db.com to view the models of daggers, then work to acquire them. If they then don’t have the stats you would like then you can use a fine transmutation stone (for level 80 weapons and armour – basic transmutation stones work for levels 79 and lower) to take the stats from your old weapon and the looks from your new weapons.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation

Daddicus.6128:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Edit: Has anyone tracked how often they get “extra items” if you do the daily consistently? Because for a while when I was logging in every day and getting it done I was getting a fairly consistent flow of “extra items”.

Starting with tomorrow’s, I intend to. I’ll log them here every couple of days. If more people want to track them, though, I’ll start a new thread so the tally can be kept at the top rather than at random pages inside the thread. (Or, on the wiki. The wiki folks might already have a page tracking daily drops.)

It might be better to contribute to the wiki research on the daily drop rate. Although ultimately an RNG at least we should be able to get percentages out of it.

If you head to:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily/Drop_Rate

There’s some simple instructions for you to enter the information and it’ll automatically add your results to those that have already been added and work out a cumulative percentage. Unfortunately the sample size is small at the minute, but if threads like this can draw attention to it then maybe we can get some decent data.

PaWryce.9702:

got another question on same topic. How often do you guys more then jug, casg and mystic coin? I havent gotten anything for 3 weeks now.

I think I get a little treat about once a week! And then it’s normally a repair canister or something crappy like a merchant. I would much prefer the Black Lion Salvage Kits!

There’s no logical reason to it, I think it’s just a case people aren’t aware of the bonuses it can provide.

That said, during the PvE I don’t tend to bother unless I’m in a dungeon, there’s nothing in the world that really requires any stat boost. I do use it during WvW though, nice to have a boost to the vitality for the bit of extra staying power!

Gilandred.9870:

Alk Trio Fan.6357:

As a rule of thumb, if you don’t craft or WvW or dungeon, you’ll have to do two zones of a certain level bracket to get to the appropriate level.

That hasn’t been my experience at all. I’ve never had to go to another same level zone, craft, WvW or run a dungeon yet. Usually I am right at the level required to move to the next zone as long as I’ve done every heart, vista, skill challenge, and the dynamic events that are usually around the heart areas.

Fair enough, I’ve always encountered it I do every completion, I spend a lot of time on the DEs and such but always find myself a few levels shy of the next zone, you can start it, but by time you’re finishing the next zone you’re like 6 levels lower and it’s actually a challenge to continue so I always do two zones just to give me the edge.

Actually, it’s kind of random for me. I generally get 5s, but sometimes I get 5s61c and varying amounts. I have no idea why but this is all on 80s so I don’t know what causes the fluctuations.

As a rule of thumb, if you don’t craft or WvW or dungeon, you’ll have to do two zones of a certain level bracket to get to the appropriate level. Best thing to do is do one map until the heart quests are about three levels above your level, then hit another map of the same level bracket, which you should be able to run to completion and then go back. That’s what I do anyway.

Raylina, are you perchance playing WvWvW? Because if so there’s you’re problem.

If you’re looking to invite, you either need to use the command /invite, or get them to use the command /join. Though if you can see them click on their character then right click on their portrait. There’s no right click menu on names in WvWvW. I’m not sure if it’s by design or what but it’s always been like that!

I managed to bug, I think through lag once, slipped of an edge but got caught for a while while still falling, then it catapulted me into the ground for an epic 5 million damage. Wish I had screenshotted it now!

There is a large portion of the dungeon running community that appears to have anger management issues and a lot of elitism, BUT it’s not all bad, don’t let a few bad apples ruin your time.

I run a lot of dungeons, and most of the time I have to find myself a PuG. Now, normally I prefer to run this myself so I’ll generally start a new group then I’ll do a few things to work out in what way we’ll run this group:

• Is everyone 80? If not then I won’t do a ‘speedrun’ where you skip a number of the mobs, should the low level in particular die then they’ll struggle to get back
• Check the achievement scores of players, this is actually a good way of approximating how skilled the player is, it’s not meant offensively to those with low achievement scores, but those who tend to have a high achievement score are likely to have played the game a fair bit. If a low level player has a high achievement score, they’re likely not new to the game.
• I will not tolerate abuse in my runs, and this is the main reason I like to have control of the run. I will enter the dungeon, so no-one can rage quit the run and kick us all out. I will warn anyone who gets aggressive should something go wrong (I like to have a laugh, sometimes I do stupid stuff for the sheer Hell of it), should they continue they’ll be kicked from the party.

One of my entertaining experiences in AC the other day was when I found a party of 4 rangers, as I also happen to have a ranger I rerolled into it so it was a 5 man AC ranger party. I found this hilarious. Anyway, fast forward to the Troll, as it spawned, I ran off to grab Kholer (luring the two together makes them fight, wait until Kholer’s hp is down to 25% and then start laying into them both for loot off of both bosses) and proceeded to run back to the troll.
Unfortunately, something went a little wrong, I got knocked down, stunned then grabbed and murdered by Kholer, then the party wiped. The lowest level ranger with us (and lowest achievement score by far) just up and left the party. I see this as unacceptable and anyone who leaves without a word gets added to my block list (which is quite substantial now) but I whispered him asking why he left. His response was ‘Because you don’t know how to run the dungeon’ and then a serious of insults because I made a mistake and the two bosses didn’t fight. I found it funny, but that’s the type of person I am, don’t take it to heart, people are only so aggressive because it’s over the internet!

I’m having the same issue on my transmuted Charr T3 cultural armour with the gold dye. So annoying!

So you’re unhappy with the price of the T3 armour and want it more accessible? Interesting…

I can in a way see your point, but I completely disagree with it. If I’m going to take time to earn the money and buy a skin for a lot of money, I don’t want a lot of people having the same skin as me, it’s the same reason I never ran CoF solely to get the armour, everyone has the skin and it ruins it. If you see everyone around with the same armour it makes it pointless to acquire.

Are you later on going to say that some of the weapon skins are extortionately expensive and you want them to be more accessible to everyone? For instant the skin Volcanus is now going on sale in TP for 550g, that’s one item, purely cosmetic. Has NOTHING better than a standard exotic yet people are willing to shell out this price for it as it’s exclusive. People want exclusive things, and this will remain one of them purely on the difficulty to acquire it. (Also a weapon I am working toward as there will be very few people with one).

The rare → exotic argument although in a way valid, is also in a way redundant. As by time you get to 120g to afford the armour, you’re going to have a full set of exotics to help you farm it and so you’ve acquired all the stats you want, all you want to do is transfer the skin across.

tl;dr – Armour price makes it exclusive, exclusivity is good. Also, no-one who’s buying it cares it’s not exotic.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Which reminds me of something I’ve been curious about. It really feels as if you get more drops from being in a party, even if it’s just a party of 2. Can anyone confirm this?

Well, the first Guild Wars had what was known as ‘Loot scaling’ which meant that the bigger your party, the more loot you get. There’s every chance that there is indeed loot scaling in this game as well. I think that it very well may take affect as I will hit the same number of mobs in a party as outside of it and I easily get 3-4x the number of drops when in a five man party.

As for magic find, it doesn’t increase the number of drops however it does increase the chance of the drops becoming a higher tier. If you’re interested in purchasing a MF set, purchase a masterwork set, before runes it comes to less than 1g for the whole set and offers only 5% less (6% if you have a jewel in your back slot) than a full exotic set. Yeah there is a stat drop elsewhere but everything in the world can easily be done in a masterwork set, I just wouldn’t advise it in a dungeon!

I see a lot of topics these days about some players that are struggling to get through to their first exotic set because of the cost of them. A lot of these poor people are sneered at derisively and told to learn how to play and I for one must say this just isn’t fair.

Now, I currently have 3 level 80 characters, so obviously I’ve now got a bit of a feel for the game and just wanted to share a few hints and tips with people in case they are feeling a bit strapped for cash.

• First off, crafting (in my opinion) is a money sink. That’s not to say you can’t make money with it, but these days there is so much on The Trading Post (TP for short) your profit margins are are going to be razor thin, and so it really isn’t worth it.
• Gathering materials – this is worth it, especially for some of the lower levels, copper at the beginning of the game actually sells quite handsomely on TP and will easily lead you to turning a tidy profit.
• Loot bags – We’ve all seen them, tiny thorned bag, mouldy bag etc., now, there is a desire within all of us to open these, but don’t. Check on TP to see if you can sell them for more, a lot of the bags, especially higher level bags sell for much more than their vendor price, as well as a lot more than you’re likely to make should you open the bags and sell the contents. This is generally due to a lot of these bags having a rare drop in them, but the likelihood of obtaining it is slim, you’re better off selling.
• Dynamic events – this will be a lot of your income, along with the heart events, save it all up and it will amount to something. The higher level events start offering 4 silver a run. Twenty hearts and that’s nearly one gold, and just for exploring two zones and doing stuff you can do while exploring.
• Restrict your spending – At most, you should buy gear every ten levels, that’s not to say you can’t improve gear with drops you find, but there really is no need to buy gear any more regularly than that.
• When you buy gear, go green – I can’t stress this enough, don’t waste your money on rare (yellow) weapons and armour until you’re level 80, it’s simply not worth it, there is no outside world PvE combat you cannot handle in masterwork gear. If you find a rare drop, again, check the trading post. From level 60 onwards, just forgoing a level 60 rare and keeping yourself a green piece can leave you 50 silver richer…
• Map rewards – Oooo, look at the shiny goodies you get. Now again, can you use these or would it be better served being turned into silver on TP and sitting in your pocket to make yourself a nice piece of exotic gear? A lot of people get caught up with the exotics they get in the zones from level 60+ and I put it to you this way, you can either wear that armour for ten levels, or you can sell it (most of the time for over 1g) and think of your future.

I’m sure there’s more, but these are just some key points. On the first character I ever got to 80, by time I hit the magic number I had 14g, and I was totally new and didn’t follow most of these points. By time I levelled my third character to 80, I was hitting 80 with 20g in my pocket knowing I could easily afford an exotic set.

I never ran a single dungeon until I hit 80 (quite franky I was scared of them) and with my first character I didn’t even know how to use the trading post. But don’t be afraid, dungeons are a great way to boost your income.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I hope some people read it and manage to get at least a few tips.

If you’re on Aurora Glade, then see you in game…

I’m sorry, but this isn’t a bug.

You get shown EXACTLY what you’re doing, you take the appearance of one, and the stats of another – including class, damage etc. and you have to confirm it all in the transmutation screen.

Unfortunately it’s not Arenanet’s fault and tbh, they shouldn’t do anything about it as it’s obvious what’s going to happen if you put the skin of a legendary onto an exotic. Much like putting the skin from the cultural armour (rare) onto an exotic armour and you get an exotic with the rare skin. You took the skin of a higher tier and put it onto a lower tier. Unfortunately it’s your fault.

I have to agree, it’s definitely becoming a pain to find people to talk to. Though it’s not impossible.

I’m one of those people that will always be on map chat trying to spark some kind of nonsensical conversation, I stick away from the boring topics – food, what I’ve been doing, what I’m going to do – and move on to anything to get some kind of reaction in map chat. Once you get a reaction you can bounce off the reaction and start a conversation, EVEN if that conversation is a ten minute rant against you from numerous other players (I’ve had this, actually keeps me entertained).

Just a word of warning, sometimes people can be humourless kittens, so trying to crack a joke or engage a bit of banter can lead to a whole map turning on you and trying to give you a verbal bear down. But hey, risk comes with reward! ;-)

tl;dr: Just hit map chat and force a conversation, most of the time you’ll be able to start something with someone, just be prepared if you try banter!

Wow, it’s slightly shocking to see so many people defend this as ‘the’ method of completing the Magg defend part.

The simple answer is NO, that is not, by any means the best way to complete that part and defend Magg, the issue is that it is the easiest. And so now the dungeon is old and so many people run it, it has become THE way to complete it.

The best way to do it (in my opinion) is to have a pretty balanced team, if you have more than two ‘squishies’ in your group, then you’re unlikely to be able to hold your ground unless they are extremely good at what they do. Then it’s a matter of hitting the groups of mobs hard, ensuring that you have a dedicated and competent targetter who prioritises the right mobs and that everyone knows the mob spawn. You don’t need voice comms, you don’t need a ‘perfect’ setup, but you are going to need a ‘balanced’ team and you need to keep each other alive.

In my experience, it’s certainly doable, by no means impossible, but it’s a course of weighing up the risk. If you all wipe, which is a possibility, then you’re all going to have the repair cost, if you do the ‘death train’ method first time then likelihood is you’ll only die twice. Whereas a PuG that constantly fails could well run your repair costs a lot higher.

If you’re gonna PuG a lot, then you’ll have to accept that this is the way it’ll be done. However, if you want to try you can get a group of friends to join with you, it can be done, and you don’t even need to be THAT good to do it.

Ps. prioritise smokelords, fanatics and stalkers if you do the run, those things are the source of most damage.

Well, you can acquire it for ‘free’. What you will have to do is save up your in game gold, convert it to gems (the price of gems is obscene at the minute so I wouldn’t even consider it) and then you can buy the deluxe upgrade for either 1000 or 2000 gems. I’m not sure which.

If you are hoping for a completely free upgrade I will pose this to you:

If you were to buy a new television (PC or some other form of shiny device) that was top of the range. Then three months later (two months, a week – the time doesn’t matter) there was something better on sale at the same price, do you think that there’s any way for you to be able to get an upgrade to the newer version, PURELY because you paid full price a while ago?

Shadowlancer.7102:

Path 3 in CoF, is the hardest. The torch is an issue due to mobs respawning too fast and the timing of the in sync of the clicking of the torches.

You see the torch takes 3-5 seconds to click, if you are interrupted or have any condition damage on you that causes damage, it messes up the channel.

Also the group has to split up and take each torch on their own. Each torch area can have 3-9 mobs to kill.

Ermmm, lolwut?

There are numerous mobs around the arena BUT there are only 3 mobs in front of the torches that matter.

The timing part isn’t an issue, and nor is the respawn time. It just requires some basic communication and organisation. If you can’t manage that, then I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t be running a dungeon. Dungeons are supposed to require teamwork and it’s parts like this that actually show where people are playing the game properly or just trying to play the game on their own.

Haha, I personally think it’s the other way around.

I enjoy the wave and hallway of explosions yet I think the boss is one of the most boring boss battles there is!

Chalk & Cheese

I’m pretty sure that they game will suppress you for shouting the same string three or four times within an as yet unknown period. The easiest way to at least circumvent it in some way is to change your message. So add a little bit here or there and you should be fine.

I regularly have full blown chats on map chat where I’ll have more than 20 lines every few minutes. So just mix things up a bit!

I feel your pain bro.

Yesterday I ran a lot of fractals, and in total I acquired about 5 rares outside of the reward chest you get after the maw. The only problem is, everyone else in my party was getting rares, vials of condensed mist essence and all manner of other lovely drops. I was getting a grand total of naff all, I was thinking the same thing, maybe there was a loot nerf, but all my party members rendered that idea moot!

Let’s hope for better luck today!