Guild Wars 2

I’ve also been trying to do this event tonight and same thing – farmers were making the event fail over and over and, after I asked if we could complete it, was pretty much ignored. Well…one person suggested that I might want to guest to another server that wasn’t farming. Thanks :-P

ANet, PLEASE do something to fix this! You want us to enjoy the Living Story? Well, if we can’t run an event we need to complete it because of people fail-farming, then what’s the point?

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t have a problem selling.

Open TP
Click on Sell
See everything I can sell in my bags.
Click on item and get sell popup.

Now I have a problem with sell. Selling a universal upgrade Medallion of the Rabid, vendor price 1s10c yet it won’t let me sell it for less than 1s30c which is the high sale price, claiming it’s the minimum allowed. Interestingly it may be a problem simply because there are no bids in for any.

They changed it so that the minimum sale price that the TP will accept is vendor price + 15% (transaction fee).

Morsus.5106:

Can you prove that this isn’t just a bunch of speculators?

This. There is a large amount of TP speculation before ANY patch, based simply on the general announcements (as opposed to the official patfh notes) of what each patch is going to change. Last week there was a HUGE amount of speculation-driven price swings with minis, and those were all based on an announcement that minis would have to be destroyed to unlock them in the wardrobe (and thus work towards the new mini achivement). Everyone also knew that some of the new collection achievements were going to be related to gear skin unlocks, so that has caused people to speculate on the prices of a lot of crafting materials.

I really would like to know how this patch is supposedly favoring new players over veterans (as some have argued), because it looks like the newbies are getting set back in a whoooooole lot of ways (this after already having been trait-locked a while back).

I mean, I can ALMOST see the sense to all of this skill-gating for a fresh, brand-spanking-new player. One should not have to put up with all of these restrictions while leveling their umpteenth alt, however. How about this: once a player brings a character to max level, all or most of the skill slots (except maybe elite, I guess) are automatically unlocked for subsequent characters?

To be fair, in one of these past updates, they did go back and add condition symbols to the floating damage numbers that appear every time a condition “ticks”: Bleed damage has a drop of blood next to the number, Poison has the little green skull, etc.

That said, I’m not against making condition symbols easier to read (I’d caution against changing the visuals TOO much, especially size-wise since the number of different conditions and/or boons that a given enemy cold have on them at one time is pretty big), but what I’d really like to see are the conditions themselves being tweaked to make them more viable to use, especially in group play.

Stuff I Like:

- Trading Post overhaul
- buffs for Engineer’s Flamethrower
- Ranger balance changes (I am leveling a Ranger right now, so looking forward to the new, faster longbow)
- new collection achievements (yeah yeah, I know some people think it’s just ANet adding busywork, but they might actually give me a reason to do some more map completion on alts if karma vendor items are involved)
- Crafting backpieces + Crafting UI tweaks
- performance enhancement in dungeons and WvW

Stuff I’m On The Fence About:

- the changes to leveling. Rewards just for leveling? Nice. Statistical progression coming in chunks instead of gradually? Uh. Weapon swapping and skill slot unlocks “moved to different levels”? Why? Unless they’re being moved to earlier levels. I still don’t understand how weapon skill unlocks are going to work; I didn’t mind having to actually USE each weapon to unlock skills for it, as opposed to having to wait until a specific level.

Stuff I’m Not So Thrilled About:
- Necro balance changes are rather meh (except for axe and dagger semi-cleave, I suppose)
- Thief’s Black Powder is getting a bit of a nerf

Some other things…

- The Inquest Golem Mk II also gives two bonus exotic-level “gear boxes” plus at least one rare/exotic piece of equipment, in addition to the giant chest.

- The Caledon Forest Jungle Wyrm (not to be confused with Triple Trouble) and the Modniir Ulgoth spawn champion-level adds before the main boss fight that drop champ bags. I have received a few exotics from the champ bags, so they’re definitely worth going for.

- Karka Queen will give you one bonus chest at the end (the usual random rare/exotic), but will also give you a few exotic champ bags in the giant chest that spawns, plus sometimes you can loot her body for an additional champ bag.

- Claw of Jormag is usually around a 15-20 minute fight, because he spams Fear (especially in the first part), and you have to wait on golem bombers in the second part. This is an annoying fight.

- Fire Elemental is a quick fight, but has two pre-events that take about 10-15 minutes total.

- As for the Tequatl fight, you can receive an ascended gear chest (eg., “Tequatl’s Hoard” or similar) from either the giant chest that spawns at the end OR from the exotic-level bonus chest you receive as a daily bonus for completing the fight.

Ashura.7092:

Hello, I’m thinking about buying some gems to get new skins.
My question is: if I buy something (like a weapon skin, a uniform, the kite) can I use it with all my characters or every item is limited to only one character?

Weapon and armor skins are automatically stored in your account wardrobe. They’re free to apply the first time, and while you can use them on other characters at any time after that, you will need Transmutation Charges to do so.

I know that the kites are account-bound, and you can swap them between characters as much as you want via the bank. I’m pretty sure other toys work this way as well. Minis will soon be account-wide unlocks. Until the patch comes out next Tuesday, you can freely trade minis back and forth between characters anyway.

Are you ever going to fix the way conditions work, so that I can actually run conditions builds (and not feel like a dweeb for doing so)?

Hayashi.3416:

Or just right click on random people running with you and click ‘invite to party’.

Or look for people saying “LFM” in chat and right click on them to join.

Zeno Iagara.8540:

I would have loved to be able to sell stuff back to the gemstore, even if it was for only a fraction of the listed price. It would make opening BL Chests less painful when you get more express delivery thingybobs.

They changed the way boosters work so that you can trade a booster you don’t want for another booster of the same kind (with the help of another material you can buy off the TP, naturally, or get in BL chests). I would like to be able to do this with other convenience items, too, like say trade a bank or TP access item for a repair canister. Or trade five of them for a BL Salvage Kit.

Donari.5237:

Celestial.4381:

I’m with you on the separate gold pickup. Sometimes I place buy orders for lots and lots of crafting items (that exceed material storage stack size), and don’t want to have to shuffle all of them off of a non-crafter character that just needs the gold.

I’m puzzled, since the gold goes to the wallet, why not collect on the crafter alt, then swap to the gold-needing alt?

I’d think they need to make it all-or-nothing for previously discussed reasons of avoiding using the TP as a storage vault.

I’ll just give you an example from this morning: last night I had posted a bunch of things on the TP, and this morning logged onto a character that I had done some dungeon runs with last night but didn’t get around to selling the drops off of. As I was posting the dungeon drops, I figured I’d also place some buy orders for crafting materials for another character, intending to pick them up on that character later. Then some gold started to roll in from last night’s postings, but so did a lot of my buy-ordered materials. I didn’t need the materials on that character (and some of them would not have fit into my collectibles tab), but could have used the gold since I was placing buy orders with her at the moment.

This whole situation is more “slightly awkward” than “game-breaking” for me, really. But separate gold withdrawals wouldn’t hurt. Actually, being able to withdraw individual items (or stacks of items) would be even better, if my Cooking alt would just like the stack of Artichokes I ordered and not the two stacks of Seasoned Wood Logs that I also ordered, for my Artificer.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Celestial.4381:

AysonCurrax.3254:

The part i dont get at all is the attribute search. clearly, i have memorized all attribute values for everything from a level 5 blue to a level 80 exotic. would make more sense to be able to put in range, at the very least.

Not all players have all of the attribute sets memorized. Trinkets have different attribute set prefixes than other gear. And when you go into unique-named exotics or karma-recipe gear (eg, the Bloodsaw set, or the Devout set which has different attributes on each piece), it’s even less clear which attributes you’d get from a particular piece of gear. I know that the dagger Usoku’s Needle has Berserker stats, but someone buying a level 80 exotic dagger for the first time might not.

Also, if they extend the stat filters to food, that would be hugely useful. Aside from a few foods that I use regularly, I for the most part do NOT have these memorized such that I can just plug in the name of a food I need all the time.

-facepalm- it was sarcasm, sir, or ma’am. pure, and simple, sarcasm. I cant believe you took me serious. :|

I CAN believe I took you serious since your other posts here seemed to indicate that you were pretty underwhelmed by the TP changes. But, sorry I made you facepalm, I guess.

AysonCurrax.3254:

The part i dont get at all is the attribute search. clearly, i have memorized all attribute values for everything from a level 5 blue to a level 80 exotic. would make more sense to be able to put in range, at the very least.

Not all players have all of the attribute sets memorized. Trinkets have different attribute set prefixes than other gear. And when you go into unique-named exotics or karma-recipe gear (eg, the Bloodsaw set, or the Devout set which has different attributes on each piece), it’s even less clear which attributes you’d get from a particular piece of gear. I know that the dagger Usoku’s Needle has Berserker stats, but someone buying a level 80 exotic dagger for the first time might not.

Also, if they extend the stat filters to food, that would be hugely useful. Aside from a few foods that I use regularly, I for the most part do NOT have these memorized such that I can just plug in the name of a food I need all the time.

Leodious.5671:

As long as the changes include being able to search for armor of a certain type, say, just the cloth items, and other like sifting, I’ll be happy. Probably.

One of the filters looks like it will allow you to search for useable items by profession. This is even better since it would apply to weapons as well.

AysonCurrax.3254:

SRoode.7318:

I wonder if external sites, such as GW2Spidy, will be able to interface with the new TP.

it will certainly not work for a good while because you cant access the data in the same way anymore. I am not even sure if you will be able to grab the URL in the same way you could before since it will run on a different ingame browser, so probably not on awesomium. I guess time will tell. this is part of the reason why i was hoping they would finally release the API v2.

I hope they can eventually get it worked out. Sounds like a lot of the performance issues they were working out had to do with the TP browser individually downloading item icons from an external server, rather than loading them from the game files that players already have. Hopefully this in itself won’t impact the process of gathering raw numbers from the TP browser.

Sakri.7234:

So they are making the game easier for TP players. This feature patch just keeps getting worse and worse.

Not just TP “players”. Anyone who EVER uses the TP for anything will be getting new search features and better performance. I suppose if you gather and craft everything for yourself, these changes won’t mean anything, but I don’t think that is a very big proportion of the player base.

Dayra.7405:

Let’s see how it will work on non armor/weapons, e.g. Recipes, trinkets, materials, water breather, colors, all the stuff that were rather difficult to find in the current one.

Looks like there will be stat filters for armor and weapons…I’m guessing there will be stat filters for trinkets as well, and hopefully this will also be true of food, which is a pain to search for now unless you know the name of the food you need.

Recipe filters would be very nice. At least let us filter by craft. Or, better yet, have a filter for “recipes I don’t know yet” (they should also add this to recipe vendors). Same thing with crafting materials.

“Aquatic helm” (waterbreathers) was always a filter option. I hope we get one for backpieces as well.

Vol.7601:

It says the delivery box will be available everywhere, so I hope they don’t lump it up with the mail system and I won’t be able to pick up mail (that’s my main way of transferring gold between accounts)

I also hope we can retrieve gold separately from items.

I don’t think TP pickup will be available just anywhere, based on this:

“Best of all, it’s always available no matter where you are on the Trading Post. You can now see at a glance whether you’ve got coins or items to pick up, and of course it automatically updates as new sales complete. You can also expand it to get more details about the items waiting for you when you visit a Black Lion Trading Company representative.”

Seems like you’ll still have to visit a BLTC rep to pick up items. The “anywhere” thing seems to refer to the fact that you can check on your pickups while doing something else in the TP window.

I’m with you on the separate gold pickup. Sometimes I place buy orders for lots and lots of crafting items (that exceed material storage stack size), and don’t want to have to shuffle all of them off of a non-crafter character that just needs the gold.

Three things I got from my initial parsing of the announcement:

1) I didn’t notice any of the scary potential changes I was fearing would come, such as posting limits, paying posting fees with karma, etc.

2) FILTERS FILTERS SO MANY NEW FILTERS YAY

3) How will this revamped TP (with a new engine) affect economy tracking sites like GW2 Spidy? I hope they don’t somehow get broken in the rollout process.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the TP changes. Better filters is a QoL change that I’ve been hoping for for a while now – I especially like the stats filters, which will help with gear searches, but also make searching for foods MUCH easier.

Also, I’m so glad that it will be possible to filter out unlisted items as well as armor that the toon I’m shopping for can’t even equip.

Another nice thing about WvW is that you can buy exotic armor and weapons from vendors in the WvW zones, for a combination of Badges of Honor and gold (not super-cheap but not as much gold spent as you would at the BLTP). Badges of Honor are earned through completing WvW events, including in the Edge of the Mists “practice” area (you also probably have some Badges of Honor sitting around from opening achievement chests – check your currency tab!)

Morsus.5106:

Taygus.4571:

Morsus.5106:

Wanze.8410:

Morsus.5106:

They’ll go down again. I bought Mini Seraph Mage at 40 silver yesterday afternoon, sold it at 3 gold, and now it’s 1 gold. I’m guessing Mini Seraph Mage will be back down to 40 silver a few days after the feature pack, just like with what happened to dyes.

Any particular reason why they should go down after the feature patch?
The price spike right now was just fueled by speculation, no minis have been destroyed yet (unless people forged them), so today there are more or less as much minis in game as yesterday. After the feature patch consumption by binding them to players wardrobes will set in, so why would the price go down?

For the same reason dye prices went down. Any repeat minis will be sold off, traded, or given away. By then everyone will have the minis they want, and the demand will go back to what it was.

Cept, there’s ALOT of people who never bothered to collect mini’s or keep them (after the AP.)
THAT will change.
people now going for the new AP, will be forced to collect them. People who are now happy mini’s are actually easy to use, will start collecting them.

There is the fac that people with doubles are more likely to sell them now, but how many would that be compared to people who are going to start collecting?

People will collect the minis they want, very few will collect all of the minis. A mini I sold yesterday for three gold is down to 99 silver, and buy orders are at 40 silver, the original price. Over time demand will be met, and it will be back to the old price.

Exactly what I was thinking. Minis that were always popular will continue to command high prices (in some cases, higher prices than they might have before). The less popular ones (e.g., the generic humanoid minis) won’t suddenly become more desireable for anyone but the hardcore mini collectors and AP completionists. If the average player didn’t want to be seen walking around with a little Seraph archer or Svanir warrior before now, the patch won’t change that.

I do a lot of world boss events and usually group up if the boss either has pre-events where you need to deal damage to get credit for them (e.g, Svanir Shaman, Shadow Behemoth) or spawns adds that drop champ bags (Modniir Ulgoth, Caledon Jungle Wurm). I’ve never missed out on getting credit for defeating the main boss, group or no (as long as I dealt damage to it for most of the fight). But grouping for these events is very simple: just /say “LFG” once you arrive at the zerg and someone should group you up.

My main issue with leveling in any game is gating. That is, what you have to do to unlock certain common features of the game. Level-gating, quest-gating, money-gating, etc. is to be expected in any game, but if you’re going to hold off on giving players access to something, please have a good reason for doing so.

For example, I don’t have a problem with players in GW2 not having immediate access to all traits for their class, but felt that the trait system revamp a while back was a huge step backwards in terms of how it treated new, leveling characters. No traits at all until level 30? What purpose does this really serve? No access to GM traits until max level (and therefore no way to fully experiment with viable builds until then)? And gating the actual traits behind either gold or tasks (many of which involve going to higher-level zones)? I really can’t see how any player wouldn’t find all this more aggrevating than helpful.

As I’ve seen a few people suggest, why not, instead of level-gating the downed state, include a tutorial on how to use it (complete with a scripted downing) in the intro quest? If players are genuinely confused about certain things, then fine, but instead of merely restricting what they can do based on level, why not find some more constructive ways of explaining game features to them?

I really like the basic mechanics of the Tequatl fight; it’s probably one of my favorite events in the game. I disagree that it’s an “elitist” fight open only to hardcore guilds all running teamspeak; almost every Teq run I’ve done has been a PuG and I’ve only failed it once. It’s a hard fight but not in the traditional sense of, “only min/maxers with high skill who’ve done this a hundred times could ever hope to finish it”. If everyone pays attention, it will succeed. If too many people don’t pay attention/AFK, it will fail.

The main problem with Teq is that there are too many points at which it CAN fail. Almost everyone can know what they need to do, but if the turret operators don’t use the best skill rotations, you get the dreaded bone wall. Lose a single battery on the defense phase, and you fail. Don’t kill the champ that spawns atop the Megalaser in time, and you fail. Run out of time on the burn phases due to lack of DPS, and you fail. I feel like some of these steps could be scaled back from “auto-fail” to “you can still complete the fight but won’t get as many rewards”. For example, a misstep on one of the defense phases could mean just one less bonus chest at the end, instead of sinking the whole fight. Also, perhaps tweak Teq’s mechanics so that it’s not the end of the world if one or two of the turret operators has a brain fart.

My advice for the Shatterer or other world bosses is to make them challenging but balance them so that smaller groups can hope to run them successfully, and so that there are less points at which the whole fight can go down the drain.

What I’m most interested in at this point are the particulars about the balance/gameplay tweaks for each profession. Those moreso than the announced leveling changes will determine which mothballed alts I decide to finally finish leveling, or play more regularly.

1) the ability to save builds – traits, skills, gear. etc. – and simply toggle between them (please oh please oh pleeeeaaase)

2) give Necromancers more useful group buffs/utilities

3) re-work conditions to make condi builds actually viable

Wanze.8410:

So in week 3 of the blogposts concerning the new feature patch, Anet will talk about:
In the September 2014 Feature Pack, we’re rethinking the way you collect and trade items!

The “collect” part is interesting. We already have stack size boosters, a currency wallet, a separate crafting/collectibles bank, and tweaks to the way that gear drops are handled have already been announced. So what more could they do on the collecting/storage end?

One thing that would be nice would be a gear wallet similar to what they have in FFXIV, where you can store a few different pieces of equipment for each slot (including weapons). This would not only save bag space but make switching gear sets easier as well.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m hoping for better filters.

This. At the very least, I hope we get some filters for light/medium/heavy armor. Filters for gear stat combos would be nice, too

This took a long time. I beat him with my necro and I probably could have stood on the main platform and plinked away at him with my staff, but I opted to do quick bursts of melee/DS damage while he was actually on that platform. I also had a few minions deployed to wear him down as well.

The most annoying part of this fight was the bombs, which kept knocking me off the platform. Watch out for those, and also watch out as you dodge (I dodged right off the platform a couple of times, heh.) You really don’t have to worry about the worms/tentacles/whatever those things in the ground are, since your party should keep those occupied the whole time. If you have a long-range weapon, great, just get up to the main platform and hit him wherever he goes. If you don’t, or if you’re having trouble dodging the bombs, try to get in as much damage as you can while he’s on the main platform, then wait until he teleports back there. Repeat until he goes down.

Below about 50% health, Aerin puts up a shield that can be broken by using the sun aspect and rushing right at him, which isn’t too hard. You do NOT need to use the jumping/teleport aspects to beat him.

It’s beyond me why there aren’t more armor skins in the gem store. Seems like a no-brainer, this is EXACTLY the sort of thing that people will spend a few bucks/several gold on. Heck, even if they just tossed a couple of medium skins on there that weren’t trenchcoats, they’d probably make enough to keep the servers running for a year.

We do need some sort of wardrobe system to store said skins for account-wide use, though. Or at least make the skin consumable items unlimited use, and account-bound.

I’ve tried both classes, and my Necro is the one I ultimately stuck with and leveled up.

Necromancer has very good survivability, with access to a variety of minions, numerous AoE skills (for when you get swarmed), excellent vulnerability and condition stacking, and Death Shroud. It’s a fun and not too frustrating class to level. When you get to the point where you choose a build, you can reasonably go with conditions or power (or both…I’m trying out a hybrid build right now and it’s pretty fun).

The learning curve for Elementalist is somewhat steeper, but it’s a very powerful class once you get it to full potential.

I agree with rhapsody, check out the two classes’ sub-forums and research some builds to see what each one is capable of. From there it’s a matter of personal playstyle.

I personally have never been interested in PvP in any game, but I won’t begrudge the people who do enjoy it, and I’m fine with it as long as it isn’t open-world/is completely optional.

The problems that the complainer ascribed to PvP – “crybabies, community division, and elitism” – could be ascribed to other aspects of the game as well, after all.

Tibago.8276:

I appreciate all your comments. My point is not that I want to use alts to do daily and monthly achievements. My alts are there to play the basic content and develop like I did my first character. If I am doing dailies then I will rip through them in half an hour with my primary character. What I don’t understand is why I can complete the entire game for a second time with a brand new character (different race and profession), which requires a whole new skill set, and not get a single credit of achievement for it, because I am doing it a second time. And yet I will get credit for playing crab toss (or whatever) for the 15th time!!

What I was getting at is that you CAN get AP with a fresh character. You can complete slayer deeds. You can complete weapon kill deeds (especially true if playing with a new class with access to different weaps). You can complete Personal Story deeds (especially with a new race/background). You can complete Renown Heart, Skill Point, and Exploration deeds (the first one you actually NEED at least two characters to complete). Doing all of the racial armor deeds REQUIRES you to have a toon of every race leveled to 80. AFAIK, you can work towards many of the PvP and WvW achievements with multiple characters.

Yes, once you get to where you’ve killed 1,000 grawl, you don’t get credit for killing any more. Yes, once you complete a JP ONCE, you don’t get AP for doing it again (unless it’s for a daily/monthly). But it would take quite a while to complete so many achievements to the point where ALL of your alts are locked out of getting any more outside of the repeatables.

One of the things I really appreciate about this game is that you don’t have to compete against other players in PvE to the extent that you do in some other games:

Crafting: the “Nodes for All” philosophy is great since we don’t have to compete against each other for most resources, and while it probably does contribute to the weak crafting market, so does being able to level easily via crafting and the fact that you can switch your crafts around without losing acquired crafting experience and recipes. IMO, if they substantially cut down the amount of EXP you get from crafting, there would be far less people who’d be compelled to do it. This would make the dedicated crafters happy – less competition – but would probably upset a much larger group who likes to level their toons this way.

Loot: if I had to choose between the drop RNG in GW2 and the somewhat more rewarding RNG plus group loot rolls that lots of other MMOs have, I’d gladly stick with what we have now.

I’m not sure this is a solution to your frustration, but there ARE a lot of achievements that are account-based and that you can use alts to “chip in” on if you want.

For my part, I don’t care at all how my AP count might stack up against other players, but I do like to sometimes work towards the achievment chests if I’m closing on the AP needed for one. I check out the “Achievements close to completion” (or whatever it’s called) list in the Achievements tab, and if I see anything like a slayer, renown heart, skill point, crafting, etc. Achievement that I’m close to completing, I will usually hop onto an alt and work towards it with them. That way I can work towards a reward AND earn some EXP for a leveling character at the same time.

I do the same thing WRT daily and monthly Achievements. If an alt of mine can make use of the EXP, I go ahead and do stuff like crafting, salvaging, MF, Karma spender, etc. deeds with them.

My server is relatively well-behaved it seems. Not that there isn’t frustration in map chat when the champ train gets derailed, of course, but it’s usually either because:

A) the front of the zerg gets to and kills the spider before the back of the zerg even has a chance to get there and tag it; or

B) there are somehow TWO zerg groups, running (or, trying to run) on different rotations, and previous polite requests to get the two groups to join up for efficiency’s sake have been ignored

In both cases these are zergers getting frustrated at other zergers, not at the occasional random group that triggers a champ spawn.

I don’t really see low-level or random players being verbally abused specifically (at least in map chat), but judging from the number of players I see joining in the zerg wearing starter-looking gear, they are definitely taking advantage of the group rotation. And why not? If you’ve just rolled a toon, it’s a great way to get your feet wet in doing group events, with little or no risk.

I sometimes jump in on the Queensdale train if I need some champs downed/group events completed for a daily/monthly. Here’s basically how it goes:

There are five champs in the zone that the rotation nearly always does: Boar, Oak, Troll, Bandit, and Spider. occasionally a Champ Wasp will show up near the Boar spawn point, so groups will do that one as well if it’s up. The order in which the champs are fought isn’t always the same, but if you leave up map chat, you will often see people mention which champ is up next, so you should be able to get an idea of where to go.

As to how to find the champs:
- if someone says “boar next” – go to Krytan Waypoint, head north past the Hunting Lodge.. You will see the zerg gather on a little hill.
- “oak next” – Phinney WP, then head down into the valley with the Veteran Oakhearts (again, just follow the other people if you’re not sure)
- “troll next” – Vale WP, head south into the cave with the grubs
- “bandit next” – this is usually just after troll. No WP needed, just follow the zerg up to the bandit cave
- “spider next” – Krytan WP again, follow the zerg north up the hill

If you do the boar right after the spider, just run to the spawn point past the Hunting Lodge. No WP needed.

Hope this helps! :-)

Also, keep in mind that the gear at lower levels (1-20) will only have one stat. When you get past level 20, you will start to see gear with two stats (say, Power AND Precision instead of just Power). At upper levels the gear will start to have three stats. So, the higher level you are, the more opportunity you will have to make a more rounded character.

At lower levels you will probably want to focus on Power – if you can’t dish out damage efficiently, you will have problems no matter how high your health is. Anyway, the way a Thief stays alive has more to do with maneuverability, dodging, and stealth that standing toe-to-toe with the enemy and taking hits. You might also consider the Condition Damage stat – this makes your attacks that inflict Bleed, Poison, etc. do more damage. Depending in what weapon set you use (Dagger/Dagger in particular is great for inflicting bleeds), this could help out as well. But all in all, don’t fret TOO much about exact stats in the lower levels…they go by fairly quickly and you will have access to better gear and trait lines very soon.

Hope this helps! :-)

Devata.6589:

The main focus on the gem-store is at a higher level as the developers but look at your last paragraph. You mainly don’t like the Living story because you are afraid it will take time away from a real good permanent update (like an expansion?).

I don’t like the gem-store focus precisely because of this sort of results. Don’t you see the connections? The Living Story is there to get people to log in and buy gems. From a financial viewpoint thats the main reason for it being there jut as temporary stiff and this hair stuff in the gem-store and so on. With a focus on expansion they would invest more time in that big update and less in something like we have with the living story. Priorities change and imo for the best.

It’s not the gem-store itself that I don’t like.. I will not buy anything from it anyway so financially for me I should be in favor of it. But it’s what comes with it that I do not like.

Same as the hair.. thats one of those examples, and personally I don’t care at all about hair options. I would most likely not change it even it it was free and yes if I would create a new char I might pick one of the new ones if I like them but I won’t miss the them now they are not there.

It’s the type of behavior (that I 100% understand from a financial standpoint when having a cash-shop for main income) that I do not like and where I am talking about.

I don’t fret about the gem store because I honestly don’t think it’s siphoning away significant developer resources from potential expansion content, at least in its current form. I really don’t think the developers invest as much time in it as you think they do. There’s a lot of flash there, but the actual stuff you can buy just doesn’t DO much. There aren’t any maps or skills or races or any other complex content available there.

And I DO like the Living Story. Not every single update has been fantastic, IMO, but we’ve had some interesting ones. But if they intend to release stuff like new races, professions, landmasses, etc. as part of the LS updates, then I’d prefer that they go ahead and work on THAT as opposed to temporary-only content. And it wouldn’t be that hard to incorporate new stuff into the LS plot. Want to introduce the Tengu as the newest race, for example? Have Scarlet or whoever attack the Dominion of the Four Winds, driving its citizens out and culminating in all the races storming in from Lion’s Arch to re-take the city. LS is nice and all, we just need more meat.

Devata.6589:

I have played LotR a little but not enough to really know they cash-shop focus. I do know that there are some thinks you unlock one time to then always have available so LotrO might indeed be B2P game that generates income mainly by expansions. Maybe not I do not know but there are multiple ways to do something and a focus on a expansions is the best in my opinion. That does not mean a cash-shop is not allowed it’s the focus we are talking about here. (I did buy LotrO back then because I checked out there payment model and back then it did seem to be more of a B2P model then a F2P model but you can’t really know that for sure untill you play it for a while. I did not play it very long because I did not like the game that much)

In GW2 we see many decision really being based on the idea around selling gems. It’s not just that once in a while they add some nice new things to there cash-shop.

LOTRO went in BIG time with the cash shop system after the success it became in Turbine’s other big game, DDO. Actually, the way they do it, you can also subscribe to get “VIP” status and unlock some account features (which you can also buy in the Turbine Store a la carte). The initial release is free, but everyone must buy expansions (now called “quest packs”) in order to play the full content of the game. There were definitely players who were not happy with the decision to bring in a cash shop and go hybrid-F2P with expansions on top of all that, but player numbers did apparently go up after the switch. So for LOTRO, the system works (for now, at least…)

The main reason that I’m skeptical that ANet would focus ONLY on the gem store content is that this approach does little to bring new players into the game. If the gem store stuff is good/shiny enough, it might retain existing ones (the Living Story is also an attempt to retain players). Expansions (or updates equivalent to expansions) DO bring in new players, so I would expect them to eventually release a major update of some sort.

At any rate, I disagree that the main focus of the devs even now is on gem store content. I mean, what’s on there? Account upgrades/services (which every game has), boosters, convenience items (each one merely replacing a single NPC function or existing item, such as the gathering tools), minis (which there are plenty of in-game already), a few armor skins, and now some hairstyles (via the self-style kits). Nothing essential (yet, and hopefully never), and IMO exceeded by what we’ve gotten for free thus far through the LS updates (not that every LS update has been exceptional in terms of gameplay, but it’s quite obvious that a lot of work went into creating areas like Zephyr Sanctum).

If anything, my concern is that it’s the temporary content that’s taking focus away from full-fledged expansion-type content such as new landmasses, races, and professions. I’d gladly take just one LS update a month or every six weeks if I knew there was a larger, more permanent update around the corner.

Nuka Cola.8520:

i was asking myself why the hell do i need to pay 4s every time to reset traits… that’s cuz anet try to monetize even trait resets rofl soon you’ll be paying 50gems to be in LA for longer than 30 minutes

I don’t mind paying an NPC a few silver, that’s just a typical MMO gold sink (and not a particularly egregious one, either, especially compared to the manuals).

I’ve never had any luck with using the crafted unidentified dyes. Not to say you’ll NEVER get a rare dye from using one, but it’s as much a gamble as the non-crafted dyes are.

What’s more, I haven’t had that much luck in selling them in their unused states, either. Given how many cooking mats they take to craft, I generally don’t bother with them.

Hadder.8093:

I remember before GW2 released they were showing off the trait system with the ability to change your traits on the fly. Then it was removed prior to release. I love you Anet guys/gals but I’ll never spend my money on this Instant Trait Reset.

Please make this a default option in game and give us the ability to save builds.

Well, you can still switch around your major traits on the fly. You just can’t reallocate trait points for free :-/

Devata.6589:

So I totally understand why Anet basically has to put them in there.. I am mainly (and have been for a while) complaining about the reason behind this.. And thats the F2P model that generates income with the gem-sore in stead of a B2P model that generates income with expansions.

The cash shop is a substitute source of income in lieu of paid subscriptions, not the income from expansion packs. I see no reason to believe that we won’t see some sort of large update (whether or not they call it an “expansion pack” or something else is academic at this point) eventually that we will have to pay for somehow.

Several games sell expacs in addition to having a cash shop nowadays. LOTRO does this, for example.

Ashabhi.1365:

If you think this is truly that bad, go try another “free” game for a while and see what a real cash shop is like.

When I last played Aion (a year and a half ago, perhaps it’s different now), the only way to change your toon’s hairstyle after character creation was by using the all-in-one cosmetic change kit – and there was no way to pay for this with in-game currency. You HAD to fork over a few bucks.

LOTRO has an in-game “barbershop” for hair, but they have plenty of other cosmetic perks in their cash shop – cloaks, exclusive mounts, armor skins – and while you can earn their cash shop currency (“Turbine Points”) in-game, it takes a lot longer to earn enough to buy anything substantial than it does in GW2 via gold-to-gems.

I prefer the GW2 system, personally. Of course, I do wish that some of these gem store features were free, or at least more readily available in-game. But at least I have the option to work towards buying whatever upgrade I want with in-game currency if I don’t want to use cash. I’ve already earned a name-change ticket, two bank tabs, an extra character slot, some armor skins, and a few other gemstore items by merely playing the game. The first one especially is something that I would most likely have to pay for in any other game.

I’m working on a Necromancer right now and it seems as if that profession might fit the bill as well if you find Warrior to be boring:

- a wide variety of AoE skills – staff marks, conditions, wells, Death Shroud, etc. So, good for farming. Epidemic is amazing for taking down a boss’ adds.
- possible to trait for conditions or power (wellomancer, axe/vulnerability + minions)
- good survivability with multiple condition-removal options
- I haven’t played much with power builds yet, so I can’t comment too much on burst potential, but Death Shroud has some skills that hit pretty hard. i’d imagine these would be even more fun on a power build
- decent support with minions, and you can trait them to be even stronger

Necro is not as face-melting as Warrior, and the learning curve is steeper, but it’s my favorite caster profession and very fun to play.

digiowl.9620:

azurrei.5691:

Please enlighten me as to what benefit the Trait item in the shop gives me over carrying around 5s training manuals in my bag that already reset my traits “in the field.”

Didn’t ANet disable that?

Yes. A while ago.

I really hope that there will be a Trading Post fix/revamp in the near future. There’s a lot to like about the TP but it’s missing some pretty obvious features (the ability to filter armor so that my necro doesn’t have to wade through all of the Heavy listings, for example). I’d also love to be able to filter crafting materials by craft.