Guild Wars 2

My prediction is that he’s involved with Rytlock’s newfound Revenant powers. Seems like a fitting way to introduce a character made entirely of the Mists and who can change profession at will.

“I have seen many wondrous sights in my travels with you, yet there are countless paths left to walk. What other knowledge might I gain by looking at things from a new perspective? Maybe it is time for me to answer a different calling. What say you?”

Last night I got a an Enchanted Snowball Box which holds an endless tonic that turns you into a giant snowball. A. Giant. Snowball. You just roll around Divinity’s Reach winning all of the snowball fights. Think of the shenanigans you can get up to now waiting for world bosses to spawn.

So many people are making a huge deal about about this gaudy, crazy expensive shoulder piece when the coolest cosmetic reward can be bought for ~20 gold and I haven’t seen anyone talk about it.

Ashen.2907:

Ehra.5240:

As a GW1 player, I’m sure you’re familiar with the fact that holiday events were a chance for players to earn something new without having to get into the heavy time/money sinks that other ingame prestige rewards called for.

The massive amount of time and uncounted platinum spent working on the lucky and unlucky tracks in GW1 during holidays qualify as heavy time/money investments IMO.

I guess I should have made it more clear that I was talking about cosmetic rewards. Title tracks were a huge grind, but they were never required to actually get the minis or costumes that came with holiday events.

Chrono.6928:

However gw and gw2 has always been about sideways progression. Meaning its easy to get exotics in several ways, but if you want certain skins you have to work for it. This is where the grind/no grind confusion debate comes in. There’s nothing wrong with anet making something hard to get, or costly.

As a GW1 player, I’m sure you’re familiar with the fact that holiday events were a chance for players to earn something new without having to get into the heavy time/money sinks that other ingame prestige rewards called for. You’re right, there isn’t anything wrong with something being difficult to get and there are MANY items ingame that fit that criteria even if we just look at recent stuff; the new legendary weapons, legendary PvP backpack, Nightfury, Scribing, the new high end forge recipes, the legendary armor whenever it gets added, ect.

Meanwhile, there’s little to nothing that gets added for the casual players. Holidays like Wintersday use to be a good time to add something new that the entire playerbase could reasonably expect to earn, but now it’s being used to add yet another huge gold sink to a game already full of them.

The flip side of what you said is that there also shouldn’t be something wrong with new stuff being easy to acquire, yet how often does that actually happen compared to new content being a large time/gold sink? I think people are really overestimating how often new cosmetics are actually casual player friendly; outside of the launch of vanilla and HoT there really isn’t much that comes to mind.

Xae Isareth.1364:

It’s not like there’s nothing else that came with wintersday or you are entitled to get this skin.

Unless I’m missing something, this IS the only new cosmetic that was added with Wintersday that isn’t sold through the gem store.

Also, we already have a lot of prestige rewards that have been added recently. New legendary weapons, Nightfury, pretty much all of Scribing, the legendary PvP backpack. Plus we’re still waiting on legendary armor. You’re acting like the high achievers have been lacking for new rewards to work towards.

Not too sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I think it’s starting to wear thin that most new stuff that gets added is either a black lion box RNG money sink, or a ridiculous grind. A holiday event like Wintersday should be a great way to throw players a bone by adding some new cosmetics that the playerbase as a whole can earn and enjoy. Instead we get a meta achievement that only offers old minipets and a new shoulder skin that costs close to a thousand gold in consumables to earn. We have enough crazy gold and time sinks as it is, it’d be nice for something new that didn’t require jumping through hoops for a change.

On the other hand, I have no sympathy for people who make the argument that it’s unfair that they’re unable to complete a form of content and get the reward associated with it. I’m never going to be able to get raid or high end PvP rewards, that doesn’t mean I’m going to complain about how Anet needs to make those rewards obtainable by me. When SAB was around I wasn’t good at JPs and so I missed out on completing most of the achievements. When the first Hallween event was around I never got around to fully upgrading my book and now I may never get another chance. Not everything needs to be obtainable by everyone.

Llethander.3972:

It is not a requirement, simply a convenient upgrade as it has always been.

Anet is designing the later parts of the raid around the assumption that the players have ascended gear. A designer literally said " Last boss should be full asc." The closest they’ve said to what you’re claiming is when Isaiah clarified that they were “merely” saying that the fights would be so tightly tuned that the improved stats would be necessary, rather than there being any hard-coded requirement (such as how Agony Resistance is a hard coded requirement for fractals).

Anchoku.8142:

Describe the functional niche your specialization idea fills and how it addresses shortcomings of current necromancer builds. The theme is irrelevant.

Doesn’t really fit with what the OP described, but I think the Vampire theme or something similar would fit with making Necromancers into a type of life siphon based party healer. Someone that might actually conceivably want to have healing power. Maybe even let them steal boons directly from enemies and spread them to their party.

Biggest issue with it is that it’s hard to think of a trait line that doesn’t just feel like a better Blood Magic.

Algreg.3629:

to sell the expansion?

“Buy back access to content that we removed from the base game” wasn’t an advertised feature (for 100% obvious reasons), so the idea that this helped sell copies of the game is dubious at best.

The simple fact is that this was a terrible decision and it just makes Anet look like they’re not confident enough in their product for it to sell without resorting to underhanded practices like this, along with nerfing Fractals rewards then letting us improve them again with masteries. And it’s just completely unnecessary, the game is good enough to sell on its own merits. And I’m surprised people haven’t made a bigger deal out of this; Destiny locked people out of doing their dailies unless they bought the expansion and the internet absolutely flipped out.

Between stuff like this and the whole “Oh, new players totally need the base game to play the expansion and so we’re going to put the game on sale. Surprise! The expansion actually comes with the base game bundled in, and now all of you new players who bought the game under that pretense need to pay full price for an expansion now!” fiasco, Anet has engaged in a surprising amount of anti-consumer practices lately. I would have never expected this sort of thing from the same company that made GW1.

No, it doesn’t. I’ve just gone in game, removed all of my traits but Transfusion, didn’t summon any pets, pulled a mob, let it hurt me, then poped into shroud and hit 4 and I did not gain any life outside of what Vampiric Strikes gave. I can even marked down my HP totals before and after using Transfusion then added up the HP gained by Vampiric Strikes just to see if Transfusion’s self heal for some reason doesn’t appear in the combat log, and there’s nothing. Just a passive trait that’s a lot better than people give it credit for.

Never suggested you should spec out of Transfusion, just saying that it’s not a self heal. Same with leeching bolts in shroud.

With that said, another benefit of Death Nova is that you can explode a bone minion immediately before you go into shroud and pop 4, giving you a bunch of poison stacks.

Spec completely out of Blood Magic, removing all of your leeching traits, and try using Soul Spiral inside Nightfall. You won’t get any HP back.

edit: Although now that I test it more, I’m having trouble getting any healing out of Leeching Bolts, even when out of RS and using Gravedigger.

edit: nevermind, the heal works with Gravedigger. Just wasn’t noticing it at first.

This is almost exactly what I’ve been running with some trait choices being different. Like Diovid mentioned, I run Death Nova over Unholy Sanctuary. I feel the damage it offers far outweighs the sustain granted to an already sustain heavy build. And if you’re going to run Blighter’s Boon I see no reason to skip over Chilling Victory, although I prefer to use Decimate Defense and Reaper’s Onslaught. Death Spiral alone gives you an almost perma 12% Vuln.

I also use Axe over Dagger since if I need to get around then I can just swap out a trait for near perma Swiftness. With the dagger gone I typically end up just swapping in Ritual of Life, but I’ve also played with swapping out a pet for Blood is Power and comboing that with Mark of Evasion to proc Blood Bond for a nice single target burst / heal (if only there were a more reliable way to keep a few Jagged Horrors around to trigger the bleed requirement instead….. Or maybe just use something like a Sigil of Geomancy. I’ll have to mess with it more).

I’ll also confirm that both Leeching Bolts and Transfusion do not heal you while you’re in Shroud. With that said, if you’ve got a large enough ball on you Vampiric Strikes and Vampiric Presence (which DO heal you while in Shroud) can still recover a nice chunk of HP with RS 4 (as does Locust Swarm).

But, overall, it’s a really solid build for running open-world content. The minions give you easy, lazy DPS for random trash, and they don’t end up being redundant when you do large zergy events as something like a well may. As I said I prefer taking more offensive traits, but it’s very easy to move to a more defensive/sustain focused setup without having to swap out lines. Banshee’s Wail is just a click away for near perma Swiftness, again without having to swap out trait lines. Flesh Golem absolutely demolishes breakbars, and you have enough CC in your toolkit to be able to stun many champs just by yourself.

Between the sustain and having a ranged option it’s very rare that I find myself in danger. And, despite giving up Spite, I feel the pets still help put out enough damage that I don’t feel like fights take longer than they should.

Devata.6589:

Still not my experience at all (more like 1 charged core every 2 runs). But even if you are right here, grinding Silverwaste (when going by the 10 gold an hour people seem to get) is a little faster, less effort and not / less time-gated.

And what you people don’t seem to get is that this would still be true even if precursor crafting didn’t involve massing large amounts of crafting materials. Even IF the process instead involved months of completing various “legendary challenges” (we’ll ignore that the forms of ingame PvE content that is actually challenging and can’t be facerolled through zerg surfing is minuscule), as you guys like to say, it would still be more efficient and quicker to just farm Silverwastes at the 10 gold an hour you’re quoting and buy it off the TP. The only way this would cease to be true is if the “legendary journey” was laughably easy/short, if precursors were removed from all drop tables, or if precursor prices on the TP shoot up.

So, as I argued in my previous post, it really comes down to people being upset that the new method isn’t easier/faster than the old method. You’re able to earn the materials through “normal” ingame content, but you dismiss those methods because they aren’t “as efficient” as farming Silverwastes. And I’m still predicting that a large number of people arguing for this supposed “legendary journey” will also be arguing how unfair it is that legendary armor components are earned through raids which they can’t/won’t do for whatever reason.

Presumably the reason to not AFK every match is because you’re playing the game to have fun rather than fill out icons in your bank/wardrobe.

Nausicca.6038:

I’ve always used my wvw gear for pve and I still wait to see anyone complaing about it.

People like to make noise about this sort of thing but there’s really no way to enforce it. I remember when Ascended Amulets came out, there was a big thread where someone was going on about how they’ll auto kick anyone they find out is using a “selfish” utility slot infusion instead of taking the super valuable +5 stats to help their party. Even ignoring how ridiculous the idea is, there’s just no way to know unless someone flat out tells you what they’re wearing.

Needless to say, I’ve been enjoying my free 20 Magic Find and have yet to have anyone call me out for holding back the group.

As for berserk/sinister gear specifically, people really overestimate how valuable those sets are in random pug groups I’d rather my party members run full Soldiers and actually live through the entire fight, dealing more damage overall than these people slap on Berskerkers and think they’re doing “20k DPS” for the 10 seconds they were alive because that’s what a guide said. Turns out there’s a pretty big difference between groups formed through LFG and guild speedruns.

abode.2549:

Linken.6345:

abode.2549:

Linken.6345:

If you dont want to work for your precursor in game then work out of game take out your card buy gems convert to gold and buy your stuff of the tp.

You actualy got more options now do your legendary journey travel around gathering materials yourself or pay for others to do so third get lucky.
Instead of before were it was get lucky or pay others who got lucky.

i think you’re not getting the point, i’m just gonna copy/paste what fixit.7189 said above
“Going by the current prices, it’s cheaper to buy the pre-cursor straight up from the TP and save 400+ gold than do this legendary journey. Then some say, well just collect mats and it’s free! But it’s not, if you sell those mats and use proceeds to buy a pre-cur…again you will be saving 400+ gold. So what’s the point I wonder?”

Its the point that some people wanta journy to collect their own materials and craft the precursors.
If you dont want that then by all means buy it of the tp, it wasent asked give us precursors cheaper it was asked give us a sure fire way to earn our specific precursor and they have.

a sure fair way to get your precursor was already there, go farm mats, gold, etkittenil you can buy it off the TP.
what you’re talking about wasn’t the OP’s problem, the OP was asking for a more engaging way to obtain the precursor. for example, instead of “collect 1500 x ore”, go kill a boss or solo something.

Of course people want that, because “killing a boss” or “soloing something” is incredibly easy for the vast majority of this game’s PvE content. Just zerg down a bunch of open world events, solo a few champions, maybe kill some fractals bosses, and expect to get a legendary out of it.

Legendary Armor components are going to be rewarded through raids, which fits with everyone’s claim that they’re fine with the process of earning these things taking awhile as long as it involves engaging in skillful content rather than ruling the TP. But I’m going to predict right now that a large number of people making this claim will also end up complaining about not being able to get their legendary armor through easier/soloable content. Because it’s not really about the TP, it’s about the new method not being easier than the previous method. If Precursor crafting involved killing some 75+ difficulty fractals bosses I guarantee a lot of people would still be complaining.

Nike.2631:

Ehra.5240:

Nike.2631:

I’ll agree that “elite” was a terrible choice of names,

Why? As I explained above, it fits perfectly with other uses of the word “elite” in regards to character abilities.

It’s terrible because of the expectation of superior performance it evokes for many players. Off the top of my head in 30 seconds~

Secondary Specialization.
Focus Specialization.
Dedicated Specialization.
Alternate Specialization.

That language is dripping with choices that show the new options are not part of the core choices but also not inherently superior either. “Elite” was a poor choice and my eyebrows went up the very first moment I read that they were being called that.

But it’s not poor. It means exactly what elite means every other time it’s used in this series. You can only have 1 elite skill equipped at a time, and elite skills are powerful, unique skills without being “superior” to normal utility skills. They’re more expensive than normal skills and require more effort to obtain (higher hero point cost in GW2, hunting them down in GW1).

The term elite comes with its own connotations in this series, its use in this case is completely inline with its past uses. Even down to the fact that you can only equip them in a specific slot.

Nike.2631:

W

I’ll agree that “elite” was a terrible choice of names,

Why? As I explained above, it fits perfectly with other uses of the word “elite” in regards to character abilities.

Serophous.9085:

Reaper has made me hang up my warrior. It just does everything so much better than that profession now. Faster might stacking, faster stacking vulnerability, better shouts, interupts, survivability….there is just no reason to play a warrior anymore.

Its really really sad.

Reapers, just like base Necromancers, still provide little to no support to their team. All of that might stacking you’re hyping up is self only, as opposed to a Warrior being able to actually support their teamates. If anyone steps on a Warrior’s shoes in parties I’d expect it to be a Revenant.

I haven’t been able to confirm this myself, but I have been told by a guildmate that the Chest of Exotic Equipment granted through the login reward system has not been updated to offer a chest for Revenants.

The basic/non-upgraded Mad Memoires looks pretty good for a Necro/Reaver looking to avoid flashy wings.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/48/Mad_Memoires.jpg

Rhego.6590:

Today is the day before the expansion release. I am still unsure exactly what is happening. I am looking for a source to find every change so I am ready for tomorrow, but I can’t find it. I can’t find full expansion notes anywhere

What info are you looking for that isn’t covered on the official wiki?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns#Features

Sywo.4851:

Hello!

If i would like to play a druid, do i need to have the new Heart Of Thorns expansion?
Can i see how the new specialization plays without the expansion in any way?

You’ll for sure need the expansion to play the specializations in PvE and I’m 90% sure you’ll need it to play them in structured PvP.

Zach.2618:

Seriously though you can’t ask for a refund just because your expectations were dashed.

You absolutely can. When something is released with the implication that it’s going to return regularly (Back to School happened ~6 months after the first run, the hub featured walled off entrances to additional worlds that were implied to be released in future runs) then never appears again, it’s absolutely valid to expect a refund. This is along the lines of how Anet ran all of those sales for the GW2 base game, told people they would need the base game for the expansion, then suddenly announces that HoT comes with the base game bundled right when it’s available for pre-order. They eventually at least conceded by offering the character slots because enough people raised a stink over how misleading they were.

If it turned out that Guild Halls weren’t ready and we wouldn’t be seeing them for 2+ years later, it would also be reasonable for people to expect refunds for the expansion if they desired.

IchbinVol.5407:

Now, the hero challenges of yore, will be replaced with the new content. Why scour Tyria, for 1pt each, when you can just power level, and go straight to Maguuma Jungle?

There was no reason to scour Tyria for hero points anyway since you just ended up with 200+ that sat in your menu unspent. I guess you could argue there’s a small amount of power creep happening here with regards to hero point acquisition for new characters being made from here on out, but since it’s such a minor thing I have a hard time really being bothered by it. The only real purpose most of your hero point completion served in Central Tyria was progress towards map completion, and they will continue to serve that purpose going forward.

And old F2P grinder I played once upon a time called Two Moons had a feature where you could tick a box to display onscreen ads when you go AFK for a minute or longer in exchange for a XP boost. As far as I’m aware it was never properly implemented and always just showed the name of the game itself, but in theory I was fine with it since it was just a static image that only showed if I stopped playing for awhile.

I’m saying this because even if Anet did something as unobtrusive and optional as that, I can’t begin to imagine the explosion of outrage we’d see on the forums. Being advertised to isn’t something most people are too keen on. I’m normally not someone who gives much credence to comments about things “breaking immersion,” but that would absolutely be a big one.

The most reliable and least controversial way to monetize the game is to create compelling content players want to pay for. Assuming HoT goes well, I hope we see a new expansion come out sooner than 3 more years from now.

Kulvar.1239:

The elite specialization should only unlock the new class mechanics and associated traits
New weapon and new spells should go “baseline” for accounts with HoT.

You’re currently saying to waste a whole trait line slot for the sole purpose of taking a spell or a weapon.

This is my main/only issue with the current setup. I’m worried that so much is tied to elite specs that classes may well only end up having 2 trait slots to actually play with outside of very specific builds.

As someone with Mad Memoires, I’d be perfectly fine with it being made obtainable again. Enjoying the game is enough of a reward for being around since the beginning, I don’t need content to removed from the game and made unavailable to newer players for my time ingame to be validated. I view the birthday gifts as plenty of a reward for being an early adopter.

No bobble-headed rabbits. I’m not paying for lazy updates like this, consider my sub canceled.

thefantasticg.3984:

Since all these new GM traits were s/tPVP based, I won’t be using them… except for the 50%+ more damage while enemy is poisoned one. That one might be useful in pve/dungeons because of sword #3. I like running a 20/30/15/5/0 build so far but that’s about to change to a 30/30/5/5/0.

*EDIT: Nevermind on that poison master. I’m not going 30 into WS for a PVE/Dungeon build. So yeah, I will be using exactly none of these new traits. GG, Anet.

Man, I WISH that trait were a 50% damage increase while the target was poisoned. It actually just makes the poison itself deal 50% more damage. That ends up working out to about 1 stack of Bleeding worth of damage from a GM trait.

Just figured I’d clarify in case you weren’t aware.

As a Necro I don’t see myself using it very often. Consume conditions is a much better self heal, and as a group heal it would need to remove 3-4 conditions to be better than Well of Blood. And I have better ways of removing conditions from allies than with my healing slot (even with Putrid Mark’s apparent bug).

Devildoc.6721:

Why are you so afraid to add enemy cast bars? They were in GW1 and were a great help, I especially enjoyed them when I played interrupt based mesmers and rangers. Enemy cast bars would instantly solve this charlie foxtrot of particle effects problem by giving players another cue to work with, it might also make interrupting more viable, that is, if you found a way to make defiant not completely prohibitive towards interrupt playstyles.

So, I hope you can address this post, most notably the fact that enemy cast bars would improve quality of life for a lot of people and solve a lot of the issues with particle effect clutter, but also in the long term scheme of things, depth of the combat system needs to be addressed someday, this playstyle of dodge and dps really needs something else.

Good post, particularly this part. It wouldn’t be as bad it there were more consistency in use of the visual cues already in the game. Why do some mob AoE attacks give a red circle indicator while others don’t? During large raids with tons of particle effects and bodies flying around I can usually at least keep my eyes glued to the floor and notice when the red appears (and we’ll ignore that this goes against Anet’s whole ‘watch the action’ philosophy), but there are lots of AoEs (especially in melee range) that never give the red indicator, and instead rely on you watching the mob. Which is fine solo or with very small groups, but once you get a lot of people around you just can’t see what the mobs are doing.

Why doesn’t every charged attack give an indicator showing where the attack is going/targetting? And if Anet doesn’t want to add casting “bars” because players would be watching the bars and not other parts of the screen, why not just use the red AoE indicators the game already has? The Secret World, for example, does this and it works beautifully, a white outline appears on the ground showing where the mob’s affect will target, then lines radiate from the center of the outline to the edges. This acts as the game’s “cast bar,” once the lines reach the edge the mob’s ability will go off. Two important bits of information (when and where) are being conveyed with one visual indicator. Then all you need to do is reduce the visual clutter enough so that the red circles can be seen clearly.

Valve just released a video demonstration of the controllers they’re working on, which I thought looked pretty good. When they come out we may see people start trying to use them for existing games they play. For the most part GW2 would work pretty well on a controller with its limited number of skills and more actiony combat. One of the bigger hurdles of using a controller for this game would be camera control, needing to keep a button held in to move the camera around rather than just moving a joystick or track-pad.

Adding a toggle that lets you “hide” the cursor and naturally move the camera around with the mouse would make the game handle much more comfortably on a controller. If you could even go the extra mile and add a targeting reticule to the center of the screen, things would be great.

And I know there have been threads asking for this in the past, so it’s not like only people using a controller would take advantage of it. Better controller support would just be a nice bonus

Minus the helmet, this was my favorite set for warriors

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warrior_Ancient_armor

Aelaren.3784:

I don’t miss “LFG MONKS” hulabaloo at all.

Yeah, it`s “LFG zerk Warrior” now.

The difference is that previously you needed a healer for just about everything. What you’re complaining about is closer to UWSCs than anything else, since pretty much the only time I see widespread demand for specific classes are CoF or Fractals speed runs. There’s a difference between actually needing something and a group of players demanding something for the purpose of accomplishing a specific goal (clearing the dungeon as quickly as possible).

Any time I make a post on gw2lfg and specify that any class is welcome my groups full up quickly enough.

vince.5937:

Please no. DCUO tried that and failed miserably; their game suffered because of it.

Yeah… I’m someone who actually enjoys DCUO, but SoE has outright said that the console hardware holds them back. Same thing happened with FFXI…. heck, I think I may have read that FFXI eventually dropped PS2 support. I think the only MMO I know of that was developed for both PC and consoles that didn’t eventually suffer for it was Free Realms, for kinda obvious reasons.

Yeah, clipping is pretty bad especially if you play a Charr. But thankfully I haven’t run into any clipping errors quite as bad as the GW1 Warrior Ancient armor set. Clipping when you’re using certain strange gear combinations, during certain animations, or even with certain races can be understandable….. wearing a full set of armor designed to be worn as a set, in a game with only 2 character models that can wear that set (male and female warriors), and STILL having the set clip through itself in a way that makes the set literally impossible to exist in a physical space WHILE standing completely still was really silly. I just don’t know how that sort of thing happens.

Profit/hour isn’t something that hugely concerns me. I almost never get exotic drops and rares aren’t particularly common either, but I’m fine since I enjoy playing the game anyway. And I think that’s the key point. There are people I see on this forum who seem to act like their time playing the game is wasted if they don’t get X reward, and I wonder why they’re playing the game at all if all they care about is how quickly they can reach their goals. There are plenty of MMOs out there, surely one of them has actual gameplay they enjoy for the sake of playing, and not just as an obstacle getting between them and their loot. And I’m not saying that like “if you don’t like it then why don’t you just git out!!?” It’s just….. if you aren’t having fun then why keep banging your head against the wall?

I do dungeons and large events because I like them. The rewards I can ultimately get are just a way to guide me along, they’re not the ultimate goal. Having fun playing the game is. And as long as gear progression doesn’t ever get out of hand and we end up with a WoW-like system where you’re locked out of content because you didn’t farm out the previous tier of loot, I’ll keep having fun for a long time.

I still think the best compromise for the moment would be letting bleeds instantly deal a portion of their overall damage if the target is at the bleed cap. No idea what could be done for poison and burning, but that seems like a fair thing to do for bleeds if the capping issue can’t/won’t be changed.

Honestly, I think that would be a terrible idea. Just because someone wants to get a certain legendary doesn’t mean they necessarily use that particular weapon a lot, they could want it just because that’s the skin for that weapon they like the most. Like I said earlier, if I were to ever get a legendary it would likely be the shield, but I almost never actually use shield on my Guardian. I’d just get it because it looks nice. If I had to grind shield kills for 4 months before I could even use the item I otherwise already earned then I’d probably get so sick of the weapon that I wouldn’t use the legendary once I got it.

Not sure if it’s completely relevant here, but I recently discovered that Ruby Orbs are pretty much the best thing the put in your armor upgrade slots from a pure damage output perspective. The one exception are Runes of the Scholar if you can consistently keep your health above 90%. It makes me wonder how useful the other orbs are compared to other Rune options. Might be obvious to many, but I had previously just over looked the orbs and figured they were meant to be a poor-man’s alternative to Rune’s, not viable competition.

The more you know.

Leo Paul.1659:

I understand your point, but what you’re saying doesn’t really speak ‘legendary’ to me. Grind gold then TP as opposed to farm the mats going around the world and actually earning the mats and gaining ‘mastery’ over various aspects of the game. The difference here is that getting the gifts in various locations at least gives a sense of purpose as opposed to just randomly killing stuff (i.e. doing stuff what you want to do) which becomes more aimless than anything.

But, since getting gold can be done from almost any aspect of the game, while getting specific mats requires only doing specific content, gold acquisition is has more potential to allow the “mastery in various aspects of the game” than mat farming does. Sure someone could just endlessly farm CoF for cash, but that’s no different from someone farming specific spots for lodestones.

Anyway, I think anyone would agree that neither method (farming mats or farming gold) is really “legendary” in the way anyone but a business major or economist would typically imagine :P

Hopefully the scavenger hunt, whenever it comes, manages that aspect of it.

Suddenflame.2601:

they have to be exact same tier and type.

Yep.

To expand on this, to get the 6 piece bonus from the Superior Rune of the Monk you need to slot 6 Superior Runes of the Monk into your gear. Major Runes of the Monk will give you the Major Rune of the Monk bonus, Superior Runes of the Soldier will grant the Superior Rune of the Soldier bonus, and so on. They’re very specific that way.

As for how useful they are, they can be very useful. It’s just that you’re not likely to get a full set of Major or Superior runes from drops alone, you’re going to have to buy the rest.

I don’t know if there are any solid numbers on the ID rate of different types of dyes, but my gut reaction is that you’d make more coin on average selling unidentified dyes than identifying them and then selling.

I don’t know what it is, but it seems like some people have a mental block that keeps them from grasping that every drop they get has a monetary value. If mob A drops a crafting material you need that can be bought for 3 silver off the TP and mob B drops an item you can sell on the TP and make a 3 silver profit from, then obviously both mobs gave equal progression towards your goal. But it seems like a lot of people who post about how difficult it is to reach goals in this game look at the mob B situation and conclude they didn’t get anything they can help them. I don’t know if the TP seems scary to some people, or if there’s just some kind of mental tick that makes 3 silver outright seem so much more significant than an item that you can make 3 silver off of, or what.

It’s like that post earlier with the guy saying he threw 10,000 rares into the mystic forge and didn’t get a precursor. That is literal gold he was throwing away, he could have just sold all of those items and had enough gold to skip the precursor and outright buy just about any legendary he wanted. But in his mind he was just tossing out extra daggers, the thought never crossed his mind that they had a value associated with them beyond their status as forge fodder.

And crafting materials are similar. I see all the time that materials are expensive on the TP so someone will save money by gathering them themselves, but you’re still essentially paying for the materials anyway by using them and not selling them. There’s not a large difference between farming the actual materials vs acquiring gold to buy the materials when it comes to ultimately reaching their goals.

If anything I see farming for specific materials to be more restrictive to a player’s ability to reach their goals while playing the game the way they want to. Gathering specific materials requires farming specific areas, while coin can be earned pretty much anywhere (ignoring that certain spots are obviously going to be inherently more profitable to farm than others). But for some reason getting the materials outright seems to generally be more satisfying to people than the alternative.

I’d most likely sell any precursor I got…. the only Legendary that I think I really want is the shield. Dawn is pretty, but for now I’m happy with my Ghastly greatsword (although I wish the daytime skin didn’t get swapped out for an ugly blue skin during the night. I’m fine with the blue flames, I just don’t like the new skin that goes with it).

It’s nothing like games built for that kind of gameplay, but my Guardian feels very tanky in dungeons. I don’t have a taunt, no, but the combination of having low base health, high toughness/armor, and typically being in melee range means that mobs tend to stick to me like glue, even when I’m trying to get them off me for a few moments while a cooldown recharges. I didn’t even build my character intending to be a tank, but I usually end up being one just because the mobs love me for some reason. So much so that I built some extra boon duration into my build so I can maintain perma Protection if I ever need to bunker up for some reason.

Combine that with the multiple ways I have of providing Aegis, Protection, and Regeneration and I have quite a few ways of supporting my party. I can’t healspam someone from a quarter of their life to full in a few seconds, no, but other games typically don’t let me reflect incoming projectiles away from my team either.

Anyway, my point is that while the game may not officially support being a “tank” or “healer,” you’d be surprised at what you can do with the right class, gear, and traits.

If I didn’t like my race/class combo then I would have realized it long before I hit 80, so no.