Guild Wars 2

Chadramar.8156:

Yeah no, I agree with Wintermute here. Experience with a class, the durability of one class versus another, and other factors can all massively change how much a person can actually contribute. But as it is, you’re kitten ed if you do (play a “meta” character that you’re not “perfect” with) and kitten ed if you don’t (play a non-“meta” character that you’re better at staying alive on).

Here’s my perspective on this, using an example from a few days ago at a fractal pick up group.

We were at Cliffside fractal, I play thief, and we had another thief in the group. We kept wiping, and from my point of view, because we didn’t kill the Fanatics fast enough. I saw that the other thief did only about 25 to 35% of his potential damage, but he stayed alive more often. My guess was that he’s using Soldier’s gear, I was curious and asked who has most health, to be suited for carrying the hammer. He said he had 17k health. Now, my thief has <12k health but does 3 times the dps.

I did not mention my thoughts to him at all. After the fifth wipe or so, he wrote in party chat “we are too glassy!”.

He was better at staying alive, sure. But he contributed only 30% of what he was supposed to: dealing damage. He trades about 70% of his dps for 40% more health. His thought was that we were too squishy and therefore, caused the wipes. My thinking is that if he had come close to my thief’s damage, we would not have wiped that easily. And of course he died too, and wasn’t even the last man standing most of the time.

It’s a proven fact that this game favours fast, offensive dps over defensive builds in PvE. But this guy probably tells the story to his buddies like “Wiped in T4 with a bunch of filthy pugs who used glass cannons instead of proper, sustainable builds. There was this thief who only had 12k health. If they all had put on some gear with Vitality and Toughness, we would have made it!”

He was the one who dissed us, we accepted that he wants to play this build (although we were not happy with it, I was chatting with two other members of the party).

You can play like you want and survive longer, but you might be the reason for the struggle, and for your party members dying in the first place.

You mean the “Machined Longbow String”, right?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Machined_Longbow_String

I think you have to actually kill the dragon and then loot the chest/pods afterwards. Did you just open pods without actually succeeding the meta?

Here’s an older discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3sv9jr/the_component_for_machined_weapons_that_drops/

People suggest that you get the other collection items first.

They could probably make the episodes cheaper the older they get. At some point, the content has been payed for, and charging the same money for them as on day one doesn’t look attractive. GW2 doesn’t cost as much as when released either.

Merc The Forgotten.5610:

Finally i’m done. Never again i will do this way too bad expierence. Now i just need to wait for them to fix the event for Champion Branded Devourer Queen. I see it’s being bugged for a while so guess i dont need to put my hopes up too high.

It’s only been bugged for less than 6 weeks. I did it about 6 weeks ago, that’s how I know it was not bugged then. I suggest you start collecting all the materials you need for HOPE. You shouldn’t really be in a hurry unless you already have all the items to complete it. What’s the advantage of completing the collection and then have to grind for a few more weeks to proceed? The day when you finish HOPE will not come closer if you do.

Leablo.2651:

Further, I am not a fan of hidden mechanics and the breakbar system is effectively that. A CC skill has a very specific description of what it does, but it doesn’t do any of it when you’re fighting any kind of boss. If the breakbar system is going to remain as is, then it is long overdue for breakbar-related facts to be added to the description of every CC skill. Players should be able to tell at a glance not only which of their skills will do breakbar damage but also how effective they are at it. It is a glaring omission for something that has become vital to basic gameplay.

I fully agree to that. Never thought about it yet, but makes totally sense. The tool tips show how much damage a skill does and how long and other stuff, but nowhere its effect on a defiance bar.

I think that might even make some people curious enough to look up what a defiance bar is, and care about it.

Hevoskuuri.3891:

Since the new specs are not meant to be overtuned or in any way better than HoT ones, I think it would be unfair for them to cost more than 250 HP’s.

Right, especially since they cannot expect people to own HoT. They had to design it under the premise that people who buy PoF start with zero or only a handful of HPs, Because without HoT, there is not even a reason to get more than those you get for levelling to 80. My main character has 352, that’s far more than someone can get without HoT, but they still have to balance it. They could require 4oo, but they learned that is a bad idea if you provide the number of HP challenges as in HoT.

So if they require 400, they will add many more HP challenges than we have in HoT. My guess is that they made it 250, and those who own HoT and have spare points can get the elite right away. Why not, it’s not that we didn’t earn those points. We did all the old challenges and all the HoT ones, and a few in WvW.

Zenith.7301:

If I see you playing pistol/pistol thief in a fractal or running a mainhand axe necro, you can bet your kitten’m gonna ask you to change or leave. You’re causing us a huge DPS deficit.

Honest question: in addition to staff, what should a thief use instead of P/P in fractals in your opinion?

Reality is that you might be asked to leave if you show up with a shortbow. If I saw a shortbow thief in a fractal pug, I would ask him politely to switch weapons. But I’ve never seen a shortbow thief in Fractals because people are aware it sucks. I’ve once asked a thief to switch from P/P to staff when we were fighting monks in Urban Battlefield. I switch from staff to P/P and back constantly in most fractals. I rather shoot down harpies in Uncategorized from a distance than stepping on their toes and get shot by 2 more harpies because I stand in their range. And guess what, my dps is the highest of the group there. There are lots of situations where you do more damage with P/P than with staff.

I’ll stop here because you are obviously out of touch with the thief class. Thief and Engineer are good examples that those meta guides should be taken with a grain of salt. Metabattle recommends staff/shortbow for a fractal power thief. If you follow that advice, you’ll cause a huge dps deficit. They don’t even mention Basilisk Venom as elite skill. If you come with a thief to fractals and don’t slot it, I’ll politely ask you to do so.

It’s more like “Play to play new maps”. You can play the game, get gold by doing it, buy gems with gold, buy a story chapter with gems. 200 gems per chapter, it’s about 50 gold. Sounds like a lot but if you return to the game after, let’s say, 2 years, my bet is you have something in your storage that sells for more than 400 gold today, some weapon or skin that is not available anymore today.

But even if you have no gold at all, 50 gold is quickly earned. Do a few dungeon runs, go to the silverwastes, play some fractals. One or two days of simply playing the game gives you enough gold to buy a chapter. Then go play that new map and earn the next one by doing that.

Einlanzer.1627:

Faaris.8013:

In your very first sentence you say that skills are balanced for PvP but not PvE. I explained in detail why that is not the case, I even used bold in the sentence that’s most important. Tell me where I didn’t understand what you were writing, maybe explain it to me like I’m a 10 years old please.

My suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with the defiance mechanic.

Your topic is stuns and their balance in PvP and PvE. The defiance bar is the mechanics that the game uses to stun most champs and to avoid stun-locks. How you can say that your suggestion has nothing to do with defiance bars is beyond me. Can you keep a straight face while writing this?

Or are you talking about Tyria trash mobs? If so, why would you even bother stunning a mob that goes down in 2 seconds? The mobs that take longer to kill either cannot be stunned at all or only through a defiance bar.

In your very first sentence you say that skills are balanced for PvP but not PvE. I explained in detail why that is not the case, I even used bold in the sentence that’s most important. Tell me where I didn’t understand what you were writing, maybe explain it to me like I’m a 10 years old please.

maddoctor.2738:

In the very first story episode of Heart of Thorns you need to go close to a downed Pact chopper. As you are moving away of the chopper and back to the pact camp you face a champion (with lower hp than regular champions) Mordrem Punisher, the one with the charged hammer attack. You fight him on very narrow path, and it’s your introduction to breakbars. Since he is champion he cannot die by random attacks so you have to “combat” the breakbar to defeat him.

There is a part of the story that teaches you the breakbar, but it is often ignored

It’s definitely not enough. I started the HoT story line about two weeks after I started playing GW2, when I hit level 80. I wasn’t ready, I didn’t finish the main story, I just wanted to unlock gliding. I had no clue about stats, runes, sigils, I was like Snow. And yet, I did this part and never consciously used cc. I wasn’t even aware that defiance bars exist and how to break them until weeks later.

If they add a part where it’s taught, it must be in a way that cannot be ignored. If they had locked gliding behind a defiance bar, I would have learned it for sure.

Ayumi Spender.1082:

Yeah, I already got a thief with the hero points for Deadeye.

Have you equipped double pistols with your thief yet and played around? It’s an excellent ranged class if you are fine with 900 range (like scepter Guardian).

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

Why in the world would you ever use Basilisk Venom as your elite skill in PvE instead of something like Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild? You wouldn’t.

I always use Basilisk Venom as my elite of choice in PVE.
I think you are missing that venom sharing is now base for thieves, meaning all your allies around you get the effect, leading to a much longer stun duration (and ultimate damage on breakbars)

Same here, I have Basilisk Venom in my skill bar almost permanently. Only on rare occasions I switch to Dagger Storm. Einlanzer either doesn’t play thief (but why pick that example then?) or doesn’t know how to play thief well.

Thing is, I would still keep BV in my skill bar even if they removed the immediate stun effect. It’s a perfect solution fpr PvP and PvE. In PvP, you have that great 1.5 seconds stun that really makes a difference. In PvE, the real stun comes not from the direct stun effect of the skill, but from breaking the defiance bar. And that is not specific for BV but for all other stuns in PvE.

The defiance bar and stuns work perfectly together, without breaking PvP, in my opinion it’s well thought out. You are not supposed to keep a champ stunned for the whole fight, with 20+ players that would easily be possible the way Einlanzer imagines. Instead they allowed stuns, but only through the defiance bar. That way they can control how hard to fight the mob is. In addition to that, your stun (or other cc skill) is not wasted just because you triggered it at the same time as someone else, it damages the defiance bar instead. Only way to waste your skill is if the defiance bar is so easily broken that one thief can do it and another one casts his BV at the same time, which sometimes happens in Fractals. But a quick dodge cancels the cast, so it’s up to the player to let that happen or not.

I wished ArenaNet would force people to learn about the defiance bar at some point in the story line or to get access to HoT maps. Or at least a short quest that rewards learning it, just like the dodging stations in the starter zones, without forcing people to do it.

Everybody needs to stay cool at the bomb phases. In pugs, that almost never happens. You see people running around like chased by a spider, and then even those who just step out of the red area have a hard time surviving. As Benjamin said, if everybody keeps his nerves, it’s easy.

Einlanzer.1627:

Looks like I was womansplained!

I don’t think you know what that word means, also, I’m not even a women.

Stalkingwolf.6035:

i have the same problem with the event Protector of Verdance for Nevermore in Verdant Brink. I don’t know when or if it starts. Thats the only part i’m missing for the first achievment.

i dit it once. but that was before i started Nevermore.

The whole event chain starts when day begins in VB, west of Mellaggan’s Valor Waypoint:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outpost:_The_Ordnance_Corps

It’s a long event chain. I tried doing it alone, and 2 or 3 random people joined on the way. I was alone again at “Salvage damaged armaments to build bombs”. That’s when I asked for help in map chat and two more people joined. Next and last step is planting bombs at the blightning tree. I asked again in map chat and more people joined, we were about 8 then. Unfortunately, day was over when we were almost done with that tree, and we failed.

Maybe you need a commander tag to get enough people. I’m playing on EU, if you want to try again this weekend, chat me up ingame. I need it for Nevermore too.

End of July, you still had to fail the event with the little quaggan (if OP is talking about that).

I complained here about it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/New-Legendary-Crafting-Problems/first#post6654427

More important is Khisanth’s response though.

Champion Icebrood Quaggans can also spawn during Claw of Jormag and the torch defense events in Bitterfrost Frontier

I got the collection item from the quaggan quest eventually, but I suggest trying the Claw of Jormag event to get it. Not sure how to inteprete “can also spawn”. Maybe they don’t always spawn there? No idea, I only have done the Claw event once, it’s not on my favourite events list.

If you don’t have the Giant Devourer Ichor yet, you’ll be stalled in your progress anyway because that event is bugged and you cannot kill the devourer.

@OP: I don’t know which legendary weapon you made, but my guess is that it wasn’t HOPE used by a thief.

pew pew pew pew pew….

That’s all that needs to be said, a laser machine gun, double pistols. It’s the most awesome weapon in the game, No Regrats!:

Here you go

https://youtu.be/qIzupIckzEI?t=103

Einlanzer.1627:

Unless something has drastically changed in the last handful of years, male players outnumber female players in most MMOs by huge margins – at least around 4:1, although it’s been moving toward greater parity in recent years.

Come on Einlanzer, you can do better. Google is right on that other tab you have opened anyway. Here are statistics from 2017:

http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/

[img]http://quanticfoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/genre-gender-percentages-1024x878.png[/img]

About 36% of MMO Game players are female. Your assumption that only 20% of the players are female is wrong, probably anecdotal (to use the phrase you keep using to argue against others). Please provide a source next time you throw out numbers here, you can expect to be called out on it.

Einlanzer.1627:

Literally the only reason you haven’t seen threads from girls on the topic is because girls playing guys is not nearly as much of a norm as guys playing girls.

According to the study I quoted above (and other studies before), this is not true.

www2013.wwwconference.org/proceedings/p827.pdf

First we see that over a third of players owned at least one
gender-swapped avatar. Table 1 shows that female players are more
likely to own gender-swapped avatars than male players (p<0.001).
This is consistent with past research that a sizable fraction of players
swap genders, and females tend to do so more than males ³⁷.

There are actually more female players who play male characters than the way around. This is not anecdotal, these are hard numbers in the paper. Your assumption is based on personal experience ^^

As for the reasons why we don’t see many threads from them on the topic, one can only speculate. Maybe they play male toons to not get hit on or harrassed, and posting here about it would reveal their account name.

Merc The Forgotten.5610:

It do seem that way. This proves again Black lion chests are worthless.

They are not worthless, they are a gamble. You could have got something that sells for 4k gold on the TP.

Liewec.2896:

i like having a mix,
i like my stupidly huge norn warrior dude and i like my sleek and sexy lady chars.

i dont see an issue with playing either

its not like when i choose to make a lady char i think i’m a woman,
infact if you think about it, its the more manly option!
because it means i’d rather spend my time with a scantily clad babe in the middle of the screen than a guy! XD

You know, sometimes it is a really good idea to write “characters” instead of “chars”. It sounds too much like “charrs”.

Read your last paragraph again but think about a Charr. First I was like “wtf?”, then tolerance took over and it changed to “whatever floats your boat dude.”

It’s funny how many psychologists we have here that have a (distance-)diagnosis at hand, based on what kind of character you play in a game.

According to this study:

www2013.wwwconference.org/proceedings/p827.pdf

Our biggest finding was that
(a) gender swapping is prevalent across player gender and age, and it becomes more prevalent with the players’ age, experience, and activity;

(b) while in an online setting people try to make friends with the opposite sex, they turn out to be of the same gender in real life, indicating that assuming an alternative identity does not completely mask the real persona;

© female players tend to act more masculine and achievementoriented
when acting as a male than actual males do; and

(d) people’s personalities and strategies (such as when trading for items or gold) depend on their assumed identities, an example being that
female avatars, regardless of the player’s real gender, appear more
successful at trade.

@a: The older you get, the more likely you play a character of opposite gender. My interpretation of that is that the older you get, the less kittens you have left to give. When you are young, you are more concerned about what other people think about you, and the other sex is strange. Boys do not do girly things, right? When you are a man, you can do what you want. This is purely my interpretation of it, feel free to have a different one.

@b: This is so true, nothing more fun than beating the crap out of a boss with my girls’ club controlled by dudes. I always assume a male player behind female toons though, no surprises. My account name is male, so far, everybody has noticed and didn’t address me as female.

@c: nothing new, just like in real life when woman work in (traditionally) male roles.

@d: Non-issue in GW2 I think because trade doesn’t involve bartering. You don’t know the gender of the trader.

I have done Vinetooth Prime several times and never failed. Get some friends who know what to do. When you read about people soloing HP champs or killing this or that with two or three people, it’s always those who know what a defiance bar is, how to break it and who set up their skills before the fight and then actually do it.

Most people don’t know what a defiance bar or cc is. I think the game should teach it the hard way. At some point in the story, you should be required to break a defiance bar to succeed, even if you bring 3 friends into the story. We would see many people complaining on the forums about it first, but they would be forced to understand what it is and to figure out which skills their class has to break it.

When I started, I had no clue either, sometimes heard about it, but in the heat of battle, you really see no blue bar, especially if it only appears shortly. As a newbie, you are so busy with other things. It’s like learning to drive a car. At some point, you are on autopilot and can notice other things around you. Now I even watch the counter at Subject 6 when it’s shielded while taking care of oozes.

/rant

hope you get your kill soon, maybe talk about the defiance bar with the squad when you do the pylons and remind them to equip the necessary skills before arriving at Vinetooth Prime. From the point where one understands the defiance bar and how to break it, GW2 becomes a different game. I think the designers could do a better job presenting the players with it and let the game teach it.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Sly.9518:

Offair.2563:

Get some boosters and you are done in 6-7-8hours top. Try to complete as many dailies as possible and consume the potions. A full track is roughly 75 of those.

Edit; Horrible typos.

It’s 6-8 hrs without boosters, with Boosters it’s between 3-4 hrs to complete.

Also there is a way to get the GoB without ever doing any WvW besides going into Spawn and purchasing an item for WvW Big Spender it’s Called Karmic and Ley Line Converters.

So either do 3-8 hrs of WvW or due the Converter method that requires zero WvW.

3-4 hours? I want to see that. I use boosters and it takes 7-8 hours easily and I am mostly on tier 6.

Especially for people without experience in WvW, it takes longer. It took me about 12 hours to get the Gift of Battle with boosters (also from the guild hall). Next time it will take less time because I now know what to do. I expect to get it done within 8 hours. But 3-4 hours? No way.

maddoctor.2738:

As for your meta-battle comment. The meta battle builds are there for instanced content and for optimized teams. As an example, when I’m solo on my Thief, either in the open world or inside story instances, I will never use Bounding Dodger like all metabattle Thief builds want me to. I will always use Unhindered Combatant instead, which is a much better option and makes the open world and many instances so much easier, and is especially good in Hearts and Minds, as well as all LS3 story instances.

Do not copy paste the entire meta battle build for every situation.

This is so true, I never use Bound and always Unhindered Combatant. It reduces incoming damage by 10%, removes cc effects and gives you swiftness. That’s better in my book than the offensive nature of Bound.

But metabattle also tell people to equip a shortbow instead of pistols. No idea what the people behind this think, maybe they stopped playing a year ago. Every thief in fractals uses pistols, if I see a shortbow thief, it’s like watching a bear bow ranger.

The WvW players who argue that they have to do PvE when crafting legendary weapons, and therefore, the way of obtaining the Gift of Battle is just fair, forget that PvP and PvE are not equal game modes that stand next to each other.

PvP is an addition to PvE. Basically every player starts in PvE, and then, if he likes, he can do PvP (I mean WvW here, but it’s player vs. player). Very few players start playing an MMO game immediately in PvP, and stay there all of the time. In a Venn diagram, the circle that represents PvP players would be in a bigger circle of PvE players and only a tiny area of it outside of the PvE circle.

Most WvW players have no problem playing PvE, and GW2 is mainly a PvE game. Sorry, but those game modes are not equal. Just because you have to do PvE to get a legendary weapon, it doesn’t mean it’s fair for PvE players to have to do PvP. There are lots of players who hate PvP, and will not participate. It’s usually the most toxic environment of games. At least you cannot exchange messages with players from other servers, but the map chat is enough to get the picture.

I’ve played PvP in the games I played before I started GW2, starting 17 years ago with Unreal Tournament and Quake (at that time, not every other player met your mom). I have no problem doing PvP in GW2, I just find WvW boring, just as you guys find PvE boring. But I respect that many people have good reasons to stay far away from PvP, and they will not be able to get a legendary weapon. Not because they are not willing to put the work or grind in, other parts of the legendary journey require that, but simply because for them, it’s not just “play a bit PvP”, it means getting ganked in a toxic environment where the locals don’t even want them in their game.

It would be the best for every party, WvW and PvE players to remove that item from the quest or make it available through other means. As far as I can tell, WvW players are not happy with PvE players filling server spots and having no clue what to do. You say just kill dolyaks or capture camps that are protected by NPCs. If half of the server population did that, how would you fill your blob? Best thing for a WvW server would be if only dedicated WvW players filled the available spots, not noobs like me who show up with a Berserker Daredevil using double pistol and PvE traits.

might cost you 500 gold or so to get it, if you are lucky. Not worth it in my opinion. You some stuff cheaper with it, but it will take a loing time to break even.

Since nobody here gave any details, I just went to the forest area and checked. The Giant Branded Devourer event icon in the GUI shows up when you enter the area, but there is no Giant Branded Devourer anywhere. Yesterday it was the same, so it’s not only happening on a single map instance.

About 4 to 5 weeks ago, I was able to trigger its spawn and get the Ichor. Something happened between then and now that bugged the event.

@nickcosta: Fields of Ruin, area north of Sniper’s Woods. Kill Branded Devourers until the champ spawns. Might take 5 to 10 minutes. Did it 4 weeks ago.

But that’s only for maybe 30 minutes, then you have most skills unlocked. Did it yesterday on a warrior, really short period. No problem for me.

Asur.9178:

Imperadordf.2687:

…And sometimes P/P is more viable than Staff or D/P in PvE.

Lol.

Alright, I’m open to get convinced. Apparently, you know something that Impera and I are not aware of when it comes to thief and double pistol. It’s odd because I play that every day and with dps meter in T4 fractals, and every other thief that joins also uses P/P. But however, I’m curious to learn from you.

Now, your feedback so far is kind of thin. “LoL” lacks some depth and detail, so I cannot really make out why our experience that double pistol is a great tool against single targets in PvE makes you laughing out loud.

Can you elaborate?

Thanks

STIHL.2489:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, the toxic behaviour existed in dungeons too, but it could be easily ignored, because it was not supported by game mechanics.

Honestly I can’t remember a single mechanic that requires people to be “toxic” to beat it.

And yet.. so many of them chose that route, Wonder why that is?

Because they live in environments where shouting and aggression works in making people do what they want. And there are other people who act accordingly because they too follow these principles. If people stopped playing with toxic people, they would slowly vanish. It requires others to enable them. People allow their boss to treat them like crap because they want a paycheck. The same way they allow other players to boss them around because they want rewards. It’s complicated and sad.

Asur.9178:

Faaris.8013:

If you count range 900 in, then Thief with pistols is probably top. You can basically play the whole game with double pistol, it’s very effective.

Lol.

You must be one of those veterans who refuse to test out new things and ignore changes that affect weapons that were never used before. Or you only play WvW and cannot imagine that D/S + Shortbow suck in PvE. Ignorance is a bliss they say.

Not sure this is cool. If I wanted to sell raids, I would split up my squad and have 9 people start an LFG to sell the raid (with different wording in the LFG). That way, potential customers are more likely to pick my offer. Maybe even offer slightly different rates to make sure the customer believes there is competition.

Then, as soon as a deal is made, everybody comes back to the squad and does the raid.

Of course this would fill up the LFG and make it unreadable for people who just want to find a pick up group, but ArenaNet specifically allowed to use the LFG tool to offer these services, so there’s nothing wrong with it.

Ayrilana.1396:

The issue with black tags is that they’re very difficult to see. Tags are not an accessory.

The white tag in winter zones is also very hard to see, but it exists. A black tag should be quite visible on all backgrounds except dark ones.

I only use food in Fractals, at world bosses and HoT meta events (I don’t raid). My food is more of a convenience item so I don’t have to focus that much on avoiding damage. I use Candied Dragon Rolls which heal me when I land critical hits (so basically with every hit).

I only use nourishment in T4 fractals. Your personal damage is much more important in a team of 5 than in a zerg with 100.

My personal fractals level 100 for quite some time but I still lack the Fractal Expert and Fractal Master achievements. If you try to do every fractal in sequence, you will need a lot of time and patience. Simply because there are fractals nobody ever does. For example, I never did 63/68/69 and 84/86/88 Thaumanova/Snowblind/Chaos/Cliffside. They are never dailies at these levels, and they are time consuming. Even if you put up an LFG, it’s hard to get people to join.

You either have to ask guild members to “waste” their time there, or you have to put a range of 10 levels in your LFG. If you are lucky, other players who need a few of those fractals for the achievement join you. Two weeks ago I finished the T2 achievement doing that. Had to do 6 fractals to get the 2 done I actually needed. The other members might not need 68, but are willing to help if you help them to get 62 done.

Rumour has it that there are players who skipped T3 almost entirely because they got into a static that did T4 ^^ not recommending it though.

Metavahn.7293:

Most of the time the attention of the boss is going towards a melee, meaning a melee is doing most damages

From what I remember about aggro discussions, how aggro is distributed seems to differ greatly from mob to mob. Maybe the melee players put more toughness on their toons. However, I get aggro quite often when I range with my thief at pug events, and she has no toughness at all. It’s so noticable that I started to not use Unload at the beginning of fights because if I get aggro, I pull and disturb the zerg. That started only when I switched to full berserker ascended gear. So yes, many mobs use damage dealt to calculate whom to finish first.

Sigfodr.9576:

Assuming we are talking PvE here, I cant think of ANY class that dont do alot more dmg in melee then as ranged. In some harder fight, going in and out of melee can sometimes be the optimal, but generally there is only 1 reason to be ranged and that is sleep mode. Now being in melee will often requere that you stay awake and move+dodge/block/distort/reflect when getting attacked back. But the benefit is that your dmg is alot higher then a ranged player.

I know new/un-exp players often feel ranged do more dmg, but this is simply due to not knowing the fights and the class they play. When this knowlange is optained melee will win out every time. So, get in there and you will see improvement

There is an exception, and that is Thief against single targets. The damage from double pistol is about the same as with staff against a single target (that doesn’t have reflects like those Chak vets or stupid golems).

I often play solo, so going close combat wouldn’t give me any more boons either. Add a second or more mobs, melee it is. If I have a target that knocks back or stuns, I also do more dps with pistols because I have less downtime.

Devata.6589:

The dungeon is still there (in fractals) put it in there and suddenly you have people interested in fractals again who were not interested in it for a long time.

Somehow they never seem to understand how to get a good reward system. Most implementations of rewards (like these RNG-boxes) result in people grinding gold to buy the items what results in a boring experience. It was, is and likely will stay one of the biggest issues with GW2.

Maybe you are the one that doesn’t understand reward systems in MMO games, but you think your experience and expertise in that field is greater than that of the people in charge at ArenaNet (and of people with common sense)

Can you even picture a situation where that backpack skin and other S1 rewards drop from Molten Boss fractal (after all, it’s the molten boss jetpack)? Everybody would have it within 2 days. People farm that fractal, it’s played thousands of times per day. It would turn all these items into trash. Soon people would start asking for them to be removed (or at least stack to 250) because deleting jetpacks and other items from the inventory takes time. They would be like Mini Professor Mew!

Being able to buy the items with gold is the maximum freedom you can give people. Even gems, since you can buy gems with gold. If you make the skin (example) a rare drop from Molten Boss, how is that not require players to grind? Molten Boss gives so much gold, you could just buy the skin from the TP after a while, maybe even before you get the drop. Personally, I find having the freedom to get gold in a way that suits me, better than having to grind a specific fractal. Somehow you seem to believe that the thousand ways of getting currency in a game is more grinding than doing a fractal over and over to get a drop.

@Valediction: your comparison with legendary weapons only applies in the following situation: Let’s say I got a precursor drop 5 years ago and then crafted a legendary weapon with it, and then put it in my bank. I’m not actually using it because I plan to sell it on the TP. Then I don’t do anything with it for 5 years. But in that time, other aquisition methods have been added to the game, and even people who didn’t get a very rare precursor drop were able to craft that weapon (like a quest that can be started at a Grandmaster Craftsman Hobbs). So, 5 years after I got that rare item, it suddenly is not that rare anymore and prices dropped. In addition to that, overt those 5 years, many people got the precursor for the weapon and saved a couple hundred gold.

How would I feel? I might kick my own ass because I didn’t sell it in those 5 years, then shrug it off and move on.

Your last paragraph reveals what your real bone here is. You feel entitled to passive income. You expect to drop into a game, get some stuff, then leave, come back after a year or two, and then sell that stuff for 1000% profit. And that might still work for you in 9 out of 10 attempts. It didn’t work with that skin because you waited too long (and you can still sell it for 400 gold btw). This is all on you, sorry. And I don’t have much sympathy with people who feel entitled to passive income and then start whining when they don’t get it.

Trust me, most people there are in Exotic armor too, or Ascended at best, which gives only 5% more on stats. Very few people have Legendary armor, it’s not been out for long (also gives the same stats as Ascended)

It’s not the gear, you need to get your skills in shape and pick good WvW armor stats. There are a few web pages with suggestions, most popular are metabattle.com and qtfy.eu.

Good luck!

Crescendoll.7612:

Esquilax.3491:

Try to find me an example of a long ranged PvE weapon which is actually effective. Pro-tip: you can’t.

Scepter for Necros, Guardians, condi mesmers, and Ele’s? Shortbow and Axe for condi ranger? Longbow for condi warrior? Dude there’re a buttload of them.

If you count range 900 in, then Thief with pistols is probably top. You can basically play the whole game with double pistol, it’s very effective.

I think they could expand the time x 1.5

Not as ridiculously long as those flower trails, but a bit more visible. It’s hard to even see the pattern, they vanish so fast. Had to check the wiki for it.

Flatley.1620:

21,000,000

I’m impressed! I want to see if I can better that!

Oh, it’s on now!

Vinceman.4572:

So your friends words are highly disputable. I assume that he is not honest with you and there’s reason why he doesn’t play fracs. The most obvious one is that he wants to play with his friends, namely you and others, and not with some strangers around which is understandable.
Best thing is to take his hand and do T1 with him together. Since you know fractals T1s become a breeze – for you and for him.

Fair enough, and yesterday some guild members introduced him to T1 fractals (while I was at work). I don’t like pugging either, it’s so much more relaxed with people who know you.

My interpretation of this tag is that people in this guild are talking about real life stuff like their sexual preferences. Maybe it’s even a regular topic. And if you don’t want to chat about these things while playing the game, this guild is not a good place for you.

So yes, thank you for the disclaimer.

Vinceman.4572:

Your friend must be blind then, lying or he was in the wrong section, maybe T2 or T3. There are dozens of T1 groups popping up, filling, disappearing and repeat – in EU and NA.
Only very few of them have requirements, mostly the ones above level 20 because those are the ones where you need AR in T1. The majority is set without any requirements and as a beginner you have a broad choice spectrum.

You must be reading impaired then (yeah, you insult my buddy and you get this in return :P )

I wrote that these groups don’t actually state their requirement in LFG. My guild mate joined a few random groups in T1 and got vote kicked before they started. He just started the game and probably has <200 AP (haven’t actually checked, but that’s what you get after playing a few weeks I guess)

That was enough for him to be discouraged. I know not all groups are like that, but he got fed up quickly. Usually players in fractals have at least 2.5k in T1, those few hundred a new player has are obvious to them. They don’t state any requirements but they implicitely require you to have a decent amount of APs.

Valediction.3275:

It’s all just kind of depressing.

If this depresses you, it might be a good time to take a break from the game because you are taking it way too serious.

Another question that I’m asking myself is: When did you plan to actually cash in? If I understand it correctly, you had this item for 5 years now. Were you even planning to sell it? It was at 4k gold, were you waiting for it to sell for 5k? In the last 5 years, the item didn’t add any value to your life, didn’t make your character look cooler, nothing. You could have played the game without it and nothing would have been different.

And isn’t that’s exactly the same situation as now? What exactly changed for you after the price drop? Are you playing differently? Do your characters look different? I’m pretty sure that since you never bothered to actually sell that skin to someone who would have enjoyed it for 4k gold, you would have kept it for another 5 years. Everybody loses, the person who would love to have that skin, and you because you held onto an item you don’t use. Now the people who want the skin can enjoy it, and for you nothing really changed. Sounds like a better situation to me than before.

How much time do you think ArenaNet should give people to cash in on rare items? Maybe they thought “people are not planning to sell them anyway, so they don’t really need the money, and we want other players to have access to the content.”

You could just play like you never owned this item, that’s basically what you did the last 5 years.

Well, you need to get Silver in some of them when you want to craft a generation 2 legendary weapon. I would have liked to ignore them, but they gave some Mastery Points I really needed. I never do them when they are dailies. Only for legendary collections I return to them.

Maria Murtor.7253:

Did something unusual happened? Only silver or bronze reward? Opened Chests while or before fighting the shroom? Killed many Mobs around the Shroom? Auto loot active? Full Inventory? Other Players around? Something else?

Also, at which time exactly did this happen? I want to check how the stars stood, it might have an impact on the drop.