Guild Wars 2

Jahroots.6791:

Direct me to these rewarding loot-pinatas in the open world, for I have never seen them and could do with some extra coin. Unless by ‘rewarding’ you mean to say that a cute little bouncing chest filled with absolute tripe pops up every ten minutes or so.

An hour’s worth of dungeon paths always beats the equivalent in open world farming. Hands down.

Only in an efficient group. That’s why people ask for them.

For what it’s worth, I take issue with neither casual and unskilled game play nor coordinated and tactical dungeon runs. There’s room for everyone here. The problem is the people who seem clueless about basic human behaviour and are unable to accept differing play styles.

You mean like this guy?

Jahroots.6791:

Lorgus.6148:

Jahroots.6791:

yhvh.8703:

I think the possibility of these paths being skippable by running through mobs only leads to bad gameplay and puts a very bad impression on new players. I wonder if the community thinks this is actually an issue that needs to be looked upon in the expansion.

You want to know if the community thinks this is an issue? Friend, the community is the issue.

Please tell us more about how the gw2 dungeon community is such a toxic cesspool, what with all their easily accessible guides, teaching guilds and informative videos.

Yes, the community truly is terrible, just look at how they dare play in a manner which doesn’t please OP, and then fail to bend over when he tells them their way of playing is “bad” and leads to “bad impressions to new players”.

That’s not the meaning I intended to convey at all. The majority of the dungeon community has always valued speed and efficiency over everything else, so I find it amusing that the OP even asks this, when the answer is quite obvious. What he considers to be an issue is something most of us have put a lot of effort into achieving. Hence, the community is the ‘issue’.

The “issue” is that there is so much rewarding faceroll leechstick loot-pinata in this game known as open world. People can simply be in the right place at the right time and get fully rewarded so long as they mash some buttons.

These people then go into dungeons and gasp at the audacity that party mates actually have the gall to hold them even the least bit accountable for actually knowing their class or being somewhat familiar with combat mechanics (avoid red circles, etc).

“Efficient” dungeon runs are the only way dungeons even have a chance to top rewards from spamming loot pinatas open world. I guarantee that if rewards from open world get cut in half, making even casual dungeon runs more relatively profitable, you will no longer see this “widespread efficiency dungeon meta”.

frifox.5283:

My math says Knights is 25.2% more DPS than Clerics.

Becomes significantly more when you consider that the guy in knight gear:

• may have some to significant amounts of berserker/valkyrie gear mixed in
• gets additional damage (and some self-sustain) when using life leeching food because there is more than ample precision to make it viable
• may be running DPS runes
• has 100 more ferocity and possibly ~100-150 precision from Valor VI and going the full 6 in Valor

haku.4698:

Dave.2536:

Welp for starters the OP swapped out both warrior banners for balanced stance and endure pain in the screenshot originally posted. The team is in combat with endure pain on recharge and wall of reflection from the guardian active, so it seems somewhat unlikely the skills were swapped solely for running between seals.

Although this behavior appears to be hypocritical, that is honestly all it is. Players can ask for any requirements without needing to actually meet those requirements themselves. It is up to the people joining the party to verify, and upon seeing hypocrisy they may either ignore it. leave the group, or convince the others in the group to kick the hypocrite.

The fact remains that the standard for kicking someone you don’t know is very likely lower than the standard for kicking someone you do know.

I took out banners because banner is not the best skill here, they dont aplly blind when stack and almost no egis at all, in this case, endure pain is needed and I asked ele to use sandstorm blind mobs as I said in the screenshot but I got no response,they wanna do mid but they really doesnt live longer than 10s at mid. The end of this is I switched to my guard, and helped them out. The 1st fight was bloomberg, I cant really tell the guard dead cuz of none AR or he is running meta guard, but 2nd stage proved everything

Thank you for the clarification, as it does put some things into perspective.

Unfortunately the end result is that with them playing as they were, there was basically no way for you to run anything that would have cleared the content for them. They thus took the route of finding someone who could carry them harder (very likely an ele or thief, possibly mesmer), continuing to kick the ones who weren’t good enough until they either miraculously cleared it or finally realized they themselves were the issue.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I suspect the best course of action would have been to leave the group yourself once you realized people were going to require heavy carrying.

Welp for starters the OP swapped out both warrior banners for balanced stance and endure pain in the screenshot originally posted. The team is in combat with endure pain on recharge and wall of reflection from the guardian active, so it seems somewhat unlikely the skills were swapped solely for running between seals.

Although this behavior appears to be hypocritical, that is honestly all it is. Players can ask for any requirements without needing to actually meet those requirements themselves. It is up to the people joining the party to verify, and upon seeing hypocrisy they may either ignore it. leave the group, or convince the others in the group to kick the hypocrite.

The fact remains that the standard for kicking someone you don’t know is very likely lower than the standard for kicking someone you do know.

Perhaps, from ANet’s PoV, this could be unfavorable because it’d cause bad, casual, and/or lower-progression players to get “left behind”, as the higher progression players are no longer “forced” to do lower levels for those rewards, leaving a much smaller pool of experienced players to carry help in the low level runs.

I personally like the proposal very much.

Zenith.7301:

“Those sort of people” is just the kind of language that even keeps them from wanting to improve and try to join the dungeon community. You don’t even know them and you’ve already condemned them with your assumptions.

They can scapegoat me for their own lack of initiative if they want, just like they can go back to mashing 1 on loot pinatas if they don’t want to put in some of their own initiative and work for rewards.

“I play how I want”
“I don’t have/use that skill”
“You’re too picky/elitist, it’s not a huge difference in my opinion”

I’ve seen enough of these people that I will do what I can to try to deter them from my parties before they actually join. Call it profiling or whatever, but I’m not going to cater to SJW whining in a game where everyone is on an almost even playing field and the only significant cost to changing oneself is the desire to do so.

It was never truly about the difference in efficiency, and always about the difference in attitude.

At least a few of us don’t even want most of the general GW2 community because so many of them think they can walk right in with the same open world leeching lootstick mindset and get instant rewards.

The fact that they can go right back to open world loot pinatas is what keeps them from wanting the improve or seriously get into dungeon content.

Differences in completion times are not that insignificant, and it would be irrelevant to us even if they were. We don’t have fun when we are play with those sorts of people.

You encounter a “fear climate” in every dungeon run you do, yet every single dungeon you do has exactly one thing in common: you.

Perhaps everyone else is not the source of your problem?

If ANet cared enough about this they would increase the HP of Maw and also the damage dealt by throwing the crystals.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

So do dark fields still work? I made a thief recently and used SR with P/P and unload and saw the “lifesteal” appear but his health doesn’t move. At first I thought I was too far away, because pistols are what, 900 range? But I tried in a bunch of different spots and couldn’t get it to work.

The sigil definitely still works though.

Dark fields do work. Problem is projectile combo life steal is only about 300 hp (vs ~1000 for the sigil to put in perspective) and unload projectiles are only 20% finishers (so expected 1.6 lifesteals per unload). That and 900 range requires standing closer to Maw.

Sneak attack (the stealth pistol skill) should always be used when possible, as it offers 5.0 lifesteals (5x 100% projectile finishers) vs 1.6 for unload (8x 20% projectile finishers).

Frost Volley (Ice Bow #2) is also good to use (5x 100% finishers), although it may be better utilized on a teammate with crappy projectile finishers.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

What if you had an optional dictator system? If someone wants to protect his own instance and Play How He Wants, he should have a checkbox to do so. If people still want to form their casual groups with no protection from kicks, let them form groups without such a checkbox.

Edit:

ORRR what if the instance owner can choose the kick threshold? IE the person who opens the instance can choose either no kicks, 4 votes required to kick, 3 votes required to kick, 2 votes required, 1 vote required – and make this info available on the LFG

Pure devil’s advocate point here.

People are against even opt-in gear checks in great numbers because they fear the peer pressure and the “meta” eventually making this a “forced” thing to even have a chance of getting into a “real” group.

How is this opt-in system any different, if at all?

Rules aren’t very good unless they’re being enforced and enforced effectively.

Do you have quotes? Because from what I remember, everything they said about it was that stealing instances was a reportable offence, and that they do look into when it happens.

I think this is the problem. We don’t have quotes and even the most egregious offenses (see Sam’s postings here and on reddit) have received red intervention but that the offenders have since contined to do what they have been doing. We haven’t seen much of what they will and actually do, just a rehashing of official policies *with vague deflections like “it’s difficult” and not even any real desire to seek player input in the matter.

pdavis.8031:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

ANET officially supports this behavior, unfortunately. Many of us disagree with them, but they actively promote griefing, trolling, stealing of instances, etc etc.

And pray tell how they do that? Dont they have multiple reaponses about this very thing? An that you should report? Werent they working on changing the kick system to help deter these things from happening?

Just because you dont feel they have, or are, taking action doesnt mean they arent,

I think it’s fair to say the red posts here have seemed poor, inadequate, and even forced. I think the period for benefit of the doubt is long gone for ANet when it comes to this matter.

VodCom.6924:

I’ll be delighted to see an encounter where we are incentivised to spread out just to break the monotony.

Perhaps you’re not looking hard enough.

Mindsets of GW2 players:

1.) I like challenging content that stretches me to my limits. Let’s do Arah and Fractal 50s!

2.) Why do Fractals when I can just corner stack stuff? Let’s do AC and CoF!

3.) Why do dungeons when I can just mash 1 with everyone? Let’s go hit the next loot pinata world boss!

4.) Why PvE at all when I can just play the TP? Time to flip more stuff!

I want to challenge this meta

If that’s truly your goal go do something more difficult than CoF1 and AC. Last I checked Fractal 50 had no issues with corner stack faceroll.

This easily stackable spammable “meta” offers some dungeon “endgame” (lol) content for the people who otherwise go to loot pinatas world bosses stacking and spamming 1. If you want to solve the problem perhaps start from open world.

Think things through before making kneejerk proposals that create more problems than they solve.

1.) Most speed run groups already do/will take condition removal when it’s necessary.

2.) This proposal hurts your YOLOLOLORAPIDFIRESWAG420BEARTANKNOSCOPE rangers more than it does any serious group

3. Organized groups would simply bring an AoE cleanse that ironically benefits from stacking. Yolo anti-stack groups hurt their DPS even further as every member is forced to bring a condi cleanse or stop attacking for a while.

4. LFG “elitism” would expand as requirements for clearing in a reasonable time are now tighter

tl;dr—the “evil stacking meta” groups would take 1-2 hours to get around this joke of a mechanism, and the only people left behind QQing will be the casual yolo runs

Question for you if you’re determined to see this through:

Will this damage be per attack (will cripple any casual pug groups) or per skill use (will have the effect of a tickle on any semi organized group with decent class comp)?

Rising Dusk.2408:

As for Eco’s question, I think the only way to make rolling swamp not a thing would be to intentionally slow it down. The problem with just making the other ones more rewarding is that people will naturally gravitate towards rolling for the first fractal that is most rewarding for its average time investment. To actually solve the problem of rolling altogether, the average time spent on each first-tier fractal has to be virtually the same.

It may not be enough just to make them virtually all the same.

Fractals can be categorized into A, AB, B, BC, and C, depending on which levels you can get them.

As swamp is an “A”, people would still favor it over an “AB” like Ascalon or Uncategorized. This is because if you start at with an AB, your chances of rolling a BC for the second one are now higher than before, coupled with a lower chance of getting a BC for the third fractal.

Obtena.7952:

The only real issue I see[/u] with Ascended armor

Yes, yes. Problem found.

(the ‘real’ needed, not the one people are imagining)

Yes, about as real as the viability of condition guardians. This is gold.

Obtena.7952:

Dave.2536:

If so, then your “need” is a different need than what everyone else here is arguing for.

Ok, so you want to add hierarchy of needs into you argument. The counter to this is simple … that’s not an objective position and silk prices or it’s relation to ascended can’t be balanced based on individual players ‘needs’. Got any more bad arguments to make?

I can’t really respond to non sequiturs because they’re about as effective as your condi guardian builds. Not much to do other than stand there wondering if you were actually being serious.

You got me.

Obtena.7952:

There isn’t multiple definitions of need. You need ascended armor for higher level fractals and nothing else. If people have re-invented the definition of need to justify their fragile, nonsensical arguments, that’s not my fail, it’s theirs.

Your definition of “need” falls on the notion that it must be required to complete content, and anything not required is not needed.

I can do dungeons in full white gear without runes or sigils. In fact my regular dungeon group could probably all wear full white gear and get runs faster than a lot of yolo pug groups. Does that mean everything blue and higher is not “needed”?

If so, then your “need” is a different need than what everyone else here is arguing for. If not, then you’ve been using “need” in multiple ways, either ignorantly or deceptively.

Your egocentricity is so precious.

Obtena.7952:

Dave.2536:

Obtena.7952:

Dave.2536:

The point I was making was that it balances itself by simply playing the game. If your target is fractal levels where you know you NEED ascended armor, then I would question anyone that doesn’t have the funds to access the necessary materials to make it by that time in the game. Frankly, if a player doesn’t, they aren’t balancing their gameplay.

Sorry, but this amounts to “the rich can take care of themselves and the rest of us shouldn’t care about them”. Light armor is imbalanced and silk makes up a huge portion of the difference. Of course we’re going to look at the cost of silk.

That leads to the REAL problem with ascended gear … you have to do things that AREN’T fractals to progress in fractals. This has nothing to do with the cost of silk.

No. And this is where you’re dead wrong about the purpose of ascended gear, including armor. Even ANet disagrees that it’s solely for Fractals.

By the way, the extra defense from ascended armor actually shows the biggest relative returns on light armor vs medium and heavy, so the tank/WvW examples were very valid and on point.

Don’t be sorry, just stop trying to make bad arguments. This isn’t a ‘rich vs. poor’ thread; everyone needs silk for ascended gear and it’s expensive for everyone to buy silk.

It’s comical you state I’m wrong about the purpose of Ascended armor. I, in fact, never said what its purpose was; I’m simply basing my argument off the idea of what is necessary for progression. I do know you need ascended armor to progress in higher level fractals. I also know you DON’T need it for WvW.

That’s just one of a few reasons why basing any argument to change the relation of silk to ascended armor based on WvW ‘progression’ is nonsense.

I just noticed this post.

lol
lolol
LOLOLOL

Don’t accuse me of making my own definitions when you’ve been conveniently playing with the words “need” and “progress” throughout this thread to suit your own subjective and egocentric whims.

Even rares and exotics aren’t “needed” going by your standards.

There is no playing … the concept of what you NEED is simple. Are you actually trying to say you don’t need ascended armor for higher level fractals? You play this game right?

I’m saying that the “need” you’re trying to argue is not the same as what others here are talking about.

For discussion to have any purpose, there is an implicit and common assumption that rares and exotics are needed. The question is whether or not ascended (armor if we want to be specific) is also needed under the same context.

If we evaluate need on the objective basis of BiS and “improvement”, ascended is needed for progression to BiS.

Evaluated on the subjective basis of enough, if we accept that ascended armor is not enough of a gain over the previous tier, we find that the same argument can apply to exotic and rare armor. The tiny gain from upgrading armor is tiny whether we upgrade from masterwork to rare, rare to exotic, or exotic to ascended. But if this argument holds, then our assumption about the necessity of rare and exotic falls apart.

tl;dr: Your subjective use of “need” centered around “enough” has no place in the discussion as extending it violates any possible commonly agreed upon baseline for “need”. Because of this, we fall back to the objective connotation around BiS and “improvement”.

PS: Your adorable attempt at diversion is noted and ignored.

Obtena.7952:

Dave.2536:

The point I was making was that it balances itself by simply playing the game. If your target is fractal levels where you know you NEED ascended armor, then I would question anyone that doesn’t have the funds to access the necessary materials to make it by that time in the game. Frankly, if a player doesn’t, they aren’t balancing their gameplay.

Sorry, but this amounts to “the rich can take care of themselves and the rest of us shouldn’t care about them”. Light armor is imbalanced and silk makes up a huge portion of the difference. Of course we’re going to look at the cost of silk.

That leads to the REAL problem with ascended gear … you have to do things that AREN’T fractals to progress in fractals. This has nothing to do with the cost of silk.

No. And this is where you’re dead wrong about the purpose of ascended gear, including armor. Even ANet disagrees that it’s solely for Fractals.

By the way, the extra defense from ascended armor actually shows the biggest relative returns on light armor vs medium and heavy, so the tank/WvW examples were very valid and on point.

Don’t be sorry, just stop trying to make bad arguments. This isn’t a ‘rich vs. poor’ thread; everyone needs silk for ascended gear and it’s expensive for everyone to buy silk.

It’s comical you state I’m wrong about the purpose of Ascended armor. I, in fact, never said what its purpose was; I’m simply basing my argument off the idea of what is necessary for progression. I do know you need ascended armor to progress in higher level fractals. I also know you DON’T need it for WvW.

That’s just one of a few reasons why basing any argument to change the relation of silk to ascended armor based on WvW ‘progression’ is nonsense.

I just noticed this post.

lol
lolol
LOLOLOL

Don’t accuse me of making my own definitions when you’ve been conveniently playing with the words “need” and “progress” throughout this thread to suit your own subjective and egocentric whims.

Even rares and exotics aren’t “needed” going by your standards.

Olvendred.3027:

Why shouldn’t blocked players be allowed to join your party? Change the scenario up a bit. You list on LFG – 4 players join. One turns out to do nothing, you kick and block him, done. You ask in guild chat, and a good friend of yours wants to join the run. However, it turns out the one of the other 3 players in the party has blocked your guildmate, who can’t join the party. None of the other 3 will own up to being the one who has him blocked, and none of them care enough to kick each other. At this stage, there is nothing you can do short of leaving the party and starting again.

They should not be able to join your party via LFG.

While I appreciate you bringing up this nuance, I feel like it’s not a breaking one.

A better solution would be to prevent players who have been kicked twice from a party in a certain amount of time, from being able to rejoin that party via the LFG tool (though a direct party invite would be allowed).

I would also be okay with this.

EDIT: I feel like the block list solution has further reaching features. Making sure the abusive teammate in PvP never ends up on your team again (although enemy team is not an issue). Dungeon sellers preemptively blocking serial jackers.

etc etc

No. They hit join and automatically move into your party, and (if they are the last one) remove your post from LFG.

While they can only join a certain number of parties in a limited amount of time, I can also only list in LFG a certain number of times.

Maybe if ANet ever implements the ability to hide people/groups based on block lists then people with known bad reputations would find themselves quickly without runs to jack.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Dave.2536:

Yes.

I blocked him after kicking him twice (for not saying anything and not pinging gear). He was still able to join the party 3-4 more times.

The purpose of this thread was not to report a bug, but to ask why this terribad “feature” still exists in this game.

Stop listing in LFG and start asking your friendlist/guild chat.

I have every right to use LFG and trust that people read the description I post. After all, we can all play how we want, right? Does that sound familiar to you?

Marthkus.4615:

Dave.2536:

Made a post in LFG for Fractals

“Scale 30 swamp | Zerker | Ping gear on join”

Guy comes in, stands there doing nothing while orbs are being run. Doesn’t say or so anything, so we kick him.

Relist the run. Same guy comes in. Starts running toward Bloomhunger without saying anything, and doesn’t ping gear when asked.

Kicked again. This continues 4-5 more times, even when we try to delay relisting it (including killing Bloomhunger 4man) We’d list the run and he’d join it again right away.

Why is this clear and utter failure of the block system allowed to persist for so long?

I think anyone who asks for gear pings deserves this.

I join such lfgs to block the group leader then i leave.

Thank you for posting your useless and irrelevant opinion. Please block me now and ask ANet to never show my groups in your LFG.

I’d be happier than you if we never had to meet in game.

PS: lol @ “group leader”…because we wouldn’t have issues like some of these if we had those

phys.7689:

I think you are interpreting more deeply than neccessary, basically they will have to make it easier for some people to get into the dungeon facet of the game. They may have to create special systems, or filters or whatever for that purpose, but if it increases dungeon participation and satisfaction without reducing the current community, or alienating them, its worthwhile, in my opinion.

Nerf all the mindless farming to oblivion, then maybe raise the rewards for story mode, and you’ll see people far more willing to learn dungeons. The game has encouraged them to be lazy players, and lazy learners, and there will be no place for them in dungeons until they realize they need to shape up.

Lorgus.6148:

There’s a limit to how many times one can join the same party. If you recognize his name the second time, I recommend swiftly kicking him repeatedly until he’s temporarily blocked from joining parties through the LFG

I haven’t noticed that feature before, and it could be that I’ve had to relist it every time as he was the last member, making the game treat it as a new listing every time.

I have seen a cap on joining parties in LFG, though, and it seems to coincide with the cap on listing them in LFG as well.

Do you know why the dungeon community is tiny?

Because open world mindless zerging is already so rewarding. People hear about dungeons being nice income so they come “try” it halfheartedly. Turns out you actually need to dodge, read things, and not just spam 1 anymore.

Unlearning bad habits becomes too much work, so they simply blame the dungeon community for being too difficult and unwelcoming and go back to mindless zerg farming.

Yes.

I blocked him after kicking him twice (for not saying anything and not pinging gear). He was still able to join the party 3-4 more times.

The purpose of this thread was not to report a bug, but to ask why this terribad “feature” still exists in this game.

Droggy.7863:

I think this ZERKER mania is stupid.

Every dung finder says 80 lvl ZERKER only or kick. How could a new player of GW enjoy the game when some guy is so blinded by mass degeneration of community who believe that only way to go in dung is berserker stats build.

If this is truth then tell me why other stats are in game? Why are not berserker stats on every single item in the game? Because someone want to people think about their builds. Someone wants to people run different enjoyable builds. Then hodor hodor bam bam.

Please think about it. Not everyone enjoys just dmg. Someone wants to be support for the rest of the party. Or even healer in options of GW2.

WvW. Training wheels. Solos.

But guess what? When I’m forming for a dungeon run, I want neither WvWers, solo condi builds, nor people on training wheels.

Made a post in LFG for Fractals

“Scale 30 swamp | Zerker | Ping gear on join”

Guy comes in, stands there doing nothing while orbs are being run. Doesn’t say or so anything, so we kick him.

Relist the run. Same guy comes in. Starts running toward Bloomhunger without saying anything, and doesn’t ping gear when asked.

Kicked again. This continues 4-5 more times, even when we try to delay relisting it (including killing Bloomhunger 4man) We’d list the run and he’d join it again right away.

Why is this clear and utter failure of the block system allowed to persist for so long?

#puglyfe has taken a dump on me today

Filling two spots for FotM 30 after doing 40 and 50 (already have a warrior/guardian/ele).

“Scale 30 | Zerker | Ping gear on join”

Get a warrior. Pings zerker everything, stuff looks fine and dandy, and he announces he’s going to run PS EA. So far so good, although 2nd warrior isn’t the most optimal.

Another warrior. Comes in, doesn’t move. Doesn’t ping. Ask him once. Goes offline. Kick. Repost. Same guy joins again, starts running toward Bloomhunger saying nothing as I ask again. Nothing. Kick again. Repost. Same warrior. Kick. Screw it, let’s kill Bloomhunger 4 man.

2nd Fractal Ascalon. Relist. Same warrior again. Kicked. One more relist. Same warrior. This time I tell him he’s getting kicked at last boss if he tries to stay. Now tries to kick my friend, so we immediately get rid of him. List again two mins later, warrior joins. Thank god it’s a different warrior

Pings gear, then we get set to go. Couldn’t get any worse right? Until later in the fractal when I mouse over the gear that this guy pings (see attachment)

…
…
…

Olvendred.3027:

Getting a legendary (a portion of which is the only real reward for 100% map completion) was intended to involve all game modes in which the legendary could be used. That’s why you have to do open-world PvE exploration. That’s why you have to get a lot of dungeon tokens. And that’s why you have to do WvW exploration and get your Gift of Battle. It was supposed to indicate all-around achievement.

Where is PvP in this “all-around” deal? And why can people just bypass the whole thing and buy the final weapon? Maybe it’s time for ANet to either follow through or concede that the original vision has become a joke and make the appropriate changes.

It’s already bad enough that people can just spam EotM or SW chest farms to get all 3 ascended mats for vision crystals, while any non-mindless content will always lack one of them.

Wethospu.6437:

I wish I could understand Reddit. Sure, all kind of research and info is a nice thing but for most people that new information is pretty irrelevant. Yet still 500 upvotes. Can anyone explain?

1. Someone updated the GW2 wiki
2. The GW2 wiki is useful
3. This person is useful
4. Upvote
5. (goes to page) What does this stuff mean anyways? Oh well, whatever. Maybe Nike will make a video about it

The point I was making was that it balances itself by simply playing the game. If your target is fractal levels where you know you NEED ascended armor, then I would question anyone that doesn’t have the funds to access the necessary materials to make it by that time in the game. Frankly, if a player doesn’t, they aren’t balancing their gameplay.

Sorry, but this amounts to “the rich can take care of themselves and the rest of us shouldn’t care about them”. Light armor is imbalanced and silk makes up a huge portion of the difference. Of course we’re going to look at the cost of silk.

That leads to the REAL problem with ascended gear … you have to do things that AREN’T fractals to progress in fractals. This has nothing to do with the cost of silk.

No. And this is where you’re dead wrong about the purpose of ascended gear, including armor. Even ANet disagrees that it’s solely for Fractals.

By the way, the extra defense from ascended armor actually shows the biggest relative returns on light armor vs medium and heavy, so the tank/WvW examples were very valid and on point.

Get a mouse with frictionless wheel mode too

I stand corrected on the side note (I’ve seen the argument way too many times, often loaded with misinformation, and assumed it was the same one again), and point out again that it was not a main point.

I do, however, consider a new level of ridiculous when half of a tier would be considered progression while the other half not.

I also fall back to the point about WvW and wanting to play a tank, where the (significant) defense starts to becomes valuable.

Finally, as a player who does Fractal 50, and on behalf of all the players who do, I will call the argument that “it only affects a few things so we don’t need to balance it” a trash point to begin with. It’s essentially a “it doesn’t affect me so I don’t care” statement.

All this, and we haven’t even touched on the “account bound” feature of all ascended gear, including armor.

Players: we’re getting to endgame too quick! Give us some more progression!

ANet: Okay here’s some ascended gear with the equivalent of going about half of a tier of gear!

Players: Lolwat, cloth is imbalanced compared to the others!

ANet (1): Well it’s not progression anyways so we don’t care.
ANet (2): Well only a few players doing certain content benefit significantly from it and we don’t care about them.

Ayrilana.1396:

Dave.2536:

Obtena.7952:

I think this argument goes back to the same thing we see time and time again … ascended armor isn’t a requirement to progress with your character for anything but a limited aspect of the game. In that case, the cost is not prohibitive.

Progression is progression, regardless of whether or not it is “required”, and especially if it offers any sort of stat bonuses (full ascended is about 8-12% stronger than full exotic and 2-3% tougher). The fact remains that the progression is extremely imbalanced.

You are free to set your expectations low, but do not expect others to do the same.

Supposedly, the rate for silk dropping is biased to light armor users

I am sure someone here will dig up a post that this bias no longer applies at level 80.

Except the discussion is about armor which offers very minor increases. Whether or not full ascended increases damage by ~13% isn’t relevant to a discussion about silk prices.

I was going off the context provided by Obtena which seemed to look at the whole tier. I also mentioned the 2-3% defensive boost which comes fully from the armor and can be highly relevant in things like WvW or any sort of tanky build (whose merits and usefulness are not to be discussed when talking about progression in a play-how-you-want game). Some people also find even 1 stat point to be significant progression, and they can and should have that right.

Are you ready to stop nitpicking and contribute to the discussion now?

Obtena.7952:

I think this argument goes back to the same thing we see time and time again … ascended armor isn’t a requirement to progress with your character for anything but a limited aspect of the game. In that case, the cost is not prohibitive.

Progression is progression, regardless of whether or not it is “required”, and especially if it offers any sort of stat bonuses (full ascended is about 8-12% stronger than full exotic and 2-3% tougher). The fact remains that the progression is extremely imbalanced.

You are free to set your expectations low, but do not expect others to do the same.

Supposedly, the rate for silk dropping is biased to light armor users

I am sure someone here will dig up a post that this bias no longer applies at level 80.

Wanze.8410:

Argon.1563:

Axe the amount of silk required for Damask. (Least effort on developer’s part.)

This will not solve the core problem that you have (that damask is too expensive).
If they nerf the amount of silk required by 25%, then there might be 25% more bolts of damask crafted every day. The problem is that Linen/Wool/Cotton/Silk drop at a certain relation to each other every day. So maybe for every 4 cotton scraps, 8 wool and linen scraps, 60 silk scraps are generated on average.
As more bolts of damask are crafted per day, the price for the t2-4 cloths will go up because Anet didnt adjust their output. In the end, those price rises will equal out whatever you save on the silk end and damask wont loose any value.

Cotton, wool, and linen production can increase (with more people opening loot bags and champ bags on low level characters, or more people opting to spend their karma). Wool is so far still economical to upcraft. Silk production cannot be increased in either of these ways.

I suspect you are mostly right, though, in that at least part of the reason silk cannot be easily changed is because wool, linen, and cotton prices would rise as a result and they are already considerably high right now.

I don’t think it would be enough to offset the savings from silk completely though. I think there’s also some substance to damask supply going up and increasing the general demand for ascended armor. This would be reflected in rising prices of elonian leather and deldrimor steel, and I don’t have a problem with that at all.

tekfan.3179:

I got a suggestion on how to equalize and spread the costs for the materials you need for ascended crafting:
Insignias could be made with one of each(damask, elonian leather and deldrimor steel), instead of three bolts of damask.

That would close the disparity greatly, but it may end up shifting the pressure to heavy armor.

Deldrimor steel is used extremely heavily in crafting ascended weapons, while damask is not used at all and elonian leather used very rarely (in bows only).

Windsagio.1340:

Suddenly having 2 (or more) spots open at the end of Arah is a huge risk factor, but it’s also one that almost never comes up in normal play.

I would love if everything could be balanced around “normal play” and its corollary “normal use”.

Maybe then we’d stop getting all the QQ about DPS meters and Inspect functions, or even gear/trait templates, because they would be QQing about things that fell out of the realm of “normal play” and “normal use”.

I would totally take that trade-off.

evilunderling.9265:

Bekkr.6192:

See EQ2 endgame attitudes for a really good example of why log parsers / dps meters are bad. I don’t care how big anyone’s kitten is. Mine included.

It’s not about that. It’s about having a little more information to work with when trying to get better at the game and when trying to work out why things might be going wrong in group content.

As I’ve already said several times, people who are going to play the toxic CYA/blame game are going to play it whether they have a DPS meter for ammunition or not. Just block them, report them, and move on, but please don’t blame the DPS meter for the fact that another player turned out to be an kitten.

But I’d rather get kicked for having 800 AP than for playing terribly!

CMM.6712:

papry.8096:

I will always thanks Anet to not have implemented this kind of thing in GW2.

I agree, the arrogance already displayed in this thread should be a big red flag against it ever being done.

Oh no, I chose to take offense to some people! Now I’m angry and demand that we spite them just because I don’t have full control over my emotions!

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

I would argue that these issues aren’t actually related and shouldn’t be discussed as if they were.

I think the split is actually here:

1. Cost of one bolt of silk
2. Total cost of silk for one bolt of damask

People here may be arguing that in the attempt to raise (1), (2) was inadvertently raised to be too high, especially in relation to other ascended materials.

Ah yes, and here we go with ‘casual’ automatically equating to ‘bad’ again….

I think the fact that I used both words should be a strong indicator that I’m not equating them.

The ones who will have the biggest issues will overwhelmingly fall into this “bad casual” category. Neither “good casuals” nor “bad hardcores” (yes, both do exist) have nearly the number of issues and complaints about self-accountability.

When “defensive” means explaining yourself and “offended” means to try to push back on opposing views, then yes a lot of people will get defensive and offended suddenly all the time.

Using those two words are sort of like name calling when one doesn’t have (or runs out of) actual useful things to contribute.

Feminists know best though. They’re some of the champions at taking offense to things when offense has not been intended.

Red Queen.7915:

snip from all your posts so far

When you take away your personal values and beliefs (pertaining to feminism and objectification) I don’t think your views on the matter (add more skin showing male armor) are in conflict with those who you have “debated” with here.

Most here have little to no issue with the proposal that more skin showing male armor gets introduced, in the name of gender equality or any other reason. They only object to narrow-minded comments like this one:

If you want to see boobs, just own it, but don’t pretend it’s “for a good reason”.

make mistakes less forgiving

This is exactly what ANet wants to avoid. Players bottlenecking parties is why there is so much “toxicity” going around, and more of that will just create more “toxicity” and dividing of the “community”.