Guild Wars 2

I have an SSD and have noticed longer load times as well.

After around 50-60 attempts I finally got the hang of all the nuances of the fight. I refined my weapons, traits, skills and gear quite a few times to find the best way I felt to do it.

I ended up killing her with a Scepter/Focus combo. For skills I used Signet of Spite, Spectral Armor and the Locust Signet, with the Lich Elite skill. My gear was power/vit/toughness ( Invaders ). I can’t recall all my trait choices 100% (30/30/10/0/0) but I think I took signet/focus cooldown reduction, longer scepter conditions, longer spectral skills, increased bleeds and the 30 point spite trait to increase damage to enemies below 50%. I also used the Orrian truffle meat stew for boosted endurance gain for dodges in phase 2.

To start, I always keep that stupid orb thing dead. Especially in the second phase. It will ruin your day if you don’t kill it.

In phase 1 I found it quite easy to dodge her grasp spell that she throws. The spell targets where you’re going, so if you stay close to the edges you have plenty of time to see it coming. I mostly just strafed back and forth quickly and the spells just fly off in either direction of you. Luring the shadows to the light spots gets pretty routine and quick to do. It’s phase 2 that’s a bit tougher though.

In phase 2 I start by popping my spite signet as soon as I can damage her. This gives you a good start to position yourself and start dropping ranged on her while she’s slowed. The AOE pattern in this second phase seems brutal, but it’s really just 2 patterns with 2 safe spots that alternate.( the AOE pattern almost looks like an hourglass, with the safe spots being the sides ) If you stay closer to the center of the arena you will have less ground to cover when you need to rotate to the next safe spot. If you get caught in the middle of the AOE, just dodge. The truffle food helps here a decent amount.

Anyway, use your chill on your offhand to keep her slowed when you notice the signet wearing off. Use your offhand vulnerability on cooldown and keep laying in to her with your basic attack to stack bleeds. You can also use your feast for added DPS and the grasp to slow her more, but they’re not as important. If you need to get Liadri off you, you can also swap to Deathshroud quick and hit her with a fear. Use your Spectral armor when you feel like you’re taking too much damage and use your heals as soon as possible. If your heal is on cooldown, use deathshroud to buy time.

At any rate, once you get her down past half, that’s when I pop Lich form. If your signet of spite is up and it should be for a second usage, pop that and then go lich and spam her with your attack and she should be done.

Bent the Necromancer class over a barrel and showed it the 50 states.

Nearly 700 votes now and the results are starting to segregate more in the direction of buyers remorse.

cough If you want pure data, I’ll just leave this link here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/halloween/Poll-What-s-your-stance-on-the-Halloween-related-BLC-Mad-King-Chests/first#post535572

I know it’s not as verbose as your query, but it’s similar and the votes are starting to add up to a number that can give a fairly decent glimpse on the topic of buying keys.

NinjaKnight.1340:

I think you missed something in the polls. People who would have bought keys if the drop rate were higher. Option 4, includes people who have heard about the low drop rate of skins and therefore did not buy keys.

Well, to make that fair you’d need to present a suitable % of chance that people would agree on that is higher and also know what the base line is to begin with. That would actually be an interesting poll in and of itself.

Something along the lines of; What would be the lowest percentage of chance you would accept as fair before you decided to not gamble for these skins at the current cost.

Personally I’d say around 5%. But that’s just me.

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

I opened about 20 chests so far from the event but I have not bought a single key. I have been saving I get for mission reward and just random drops for something like this since nothing in the Black Lion Chests is of any interest to me. Your poll need to include a selection where you will be opening chests but not buying keys.

That sort of option would be heavily biased and not really in relation to what this poll is about. If you have keys, it’s highly unlikely you won’t use them. This poll is more so to find out who is and isn’t buying keys in relation to obtaining holiday items.

Modus Pwnens.1932:

I suspect this may be somewhat skewed given the population you’re polling. The number of people browsing this forum to complain or commiserate is, judging by posts, pretty high. There’s no real way to gauge how accurate a sample this is going to be.

I’ve posted this on reddit as well. While it’s true that the venue’s are limiting in terms of the overall amount of exposure, the content and opinions are what they are. This is the Halloween event’s forum and not specific to complaints or even the cash shop. It would be difficult I think to get a better view barring some official poll on the login screen or something. I’d cross post this across the forums here, but I’m not sure that’s allowed.

Shhh, we can’t let the secret out of the most plausible way to obtain these!

Over 100 votes so far and it looks like things are shaping up to be a split decision. Just posting this reply to unbury this poll. Don’t be shy about posting if you voted and what your choice was, if not to express your view, at least to keep the post up top and the voting active.

Thanks

Title says it all mostly. I made a poll so that maybe we can have a better feel for how well received this idea is. This is to provide a form of feedback for Anet to look at. Instead of endlessly flaming/ranting and generally being crazy, lets let the numbers speak.

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=50895773e4b061e6546aadcc

Feel free to discuss below if you have an interest in doing so.

This sounds like a great idea. Considering boosts are an ingredient, it should limit the flow of the items greatly to those who were wanting to spend money on these items in the first place, but instead got heaps of boosts. ( amongst other things ) Now we might actually get what we set out to obtain when we spent money in the first place. Although I’ll reserve the majority of my glee and praise until we have a better idea of the contents and frequency of said contents.

Thanks for the quick solution.

That’s the thing about a lot of fan boys though, they complain about complaints and think they’re doing the company good by defending it. In reality, they’re doing exactly the opposite. Lots of companies sink thousands, if not millions in to marketing research so that they can find out what people think about their products or why people don’t like them. They do so in order to find out how they can change what they have, to make people happy, to generate more revenue for themself.

A big difference and boon that online game companies have in contrast to most companies that sell physical products at physical locations is that they have forums. The marketing research data is practically dumped on their laps. These forums are convenient for their customers to access and rant on, which is why they have them. Sure, some people get way out of hand, but those people are dealt with on an indivdual basis and have their threads/posts locked or removed.

The next time you have the notion to white knight for a company, maybe you should think twice. You’re not they’re employee, you don’t know what feedback they find valuable or not. The feedback is not meant for you to make up excuses for. Go play the game you have no problems and keep your opinion of an opinion to yourself.

zeroaegis.1932:

Grim Faust.6349:

zeroaegis.1932:

Upset customers is not equivalent to “the company made poor choices”. The fact that they’re making a change is to appease the upset customers. This change shows how much Arenanet cares about the customers, not that they were wrong in the first place.

Oh, so they’re rectifying a good choice.

I see. That makes sense.

They aren’t rectifying anything, how did you get there?

Wow.

Yep.

There’s pages upon pages of complaints. Anet acknowledged they’re changing it now that they see the results of what they did. It must have been a good idea. Totally. I’m really agreeing with you.

zeroaegis.1932:

Upset customers is not equivalent to “the company made poor choices”. The fact that they’re making a change is to appease the upset customers. This change shows how much Arenanet cares about the customers, not that they were wrong in the first place.

Oh, so they’re rectifying a good choice.

I see. That makes sense.

Xai Xo.5649:

KorKor.9452:

I’m baffled anyone would listen to people like TSL or Xai. Any business trying to follow their model would run out of customers fast. An empty restaurant, high end shoes nobody pays for, a theatre that people drive past to the one ten miles away to avoid it. That is the kinda place they’d run.

Nobody is asking for the main mystic forge hard to get skins to be changed or the many other fun things during the event. They are asking for a single thing to get changed that was a bad model anyways that many companies have used. It is great news that Anet is deciding to change it for the better.

They are not catering to entitled people of which you have no understanding of the word anyways or whiners. Anet is fixing a bad choice for the paying customer. The item is not being given away for free. This item will instead be rare in another way as it should have been. Even if more get it the item will still be rare due to people changing skins later, players fluxing in ‘n’ out of the game, new players, etc.

So ya, you kinda peeps need to get over your arrogance, fanboyism, whatever. It’s not good for the industry.

Interesting – Casinos seem to be quite popular. Most gambling is. Nobody goes in expecting a win, they go in because there’s a chance of winning big. They pay money for the chance of winning, not a guaranteed win.

What you seem to think is that A) these skins matter, and buying keys/using BLC entitles you to a skin, and C) that RNG is a bad model.

At no point has ANet stated that the BLC skins are common, or guaranteed. Everyone seems to assume otherwise. The skins do drop, albeit at a low rate. As such, nobody should be complaining in this manner. Complain about the drop rate, sure, but practically every page of this thread is ridiculous; filled with vitriolic statements about how ANet are scamming people. That is ludicrous. The drops exist, they happen, ergo this is not a scam.

Take the OP – 22 chests, and he expected what? I don’t go play roulette or slots and then accuse them of being rigged because I didn’t hit the jackpot.

I fully understand the word entitled. For those who do not:

en·ti·tle (n-ttl)
tr.v. en·ti·tled, en·ti·tling, en·ti·tles
1. To give a name or title to.
2. To furnish with a right or claim to something.

People seem to expect that these rare, holiday-themed items should be common despite that never being alluded to. Others seem to think because they put money into an RNG they somehow deserve them. They seem to think that because an RNG has a low percentage chance of dropping these skins that ANet is somehow cheating them, which is an absurd viewpoint. If the skins did not drop at all, or some chests didn’t give any items at all, or anything like that, it’d be a scam. However, that is not the case.

There are free ways to get other Hallowe’en skins – Buy them off other players on the TP, or craft one of the 3 available skins in the MF. Doesn’t cost you a penny.

TL;DR: If you think this is a bad business model, look up Las Vegas. If you think it’s an unjust business model, that’s fair enough. If you think you’re entitled to the skins because you paid money for gems, you’re an idiot.

This isn’t a casino, this is a video game cash shop we’re talking about. In Vegas you can spend a few hundred and quite possibly win thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions even. This is why that model works for them and people understandably accept it. Here, you get pixels. Novelty Items. ( If you’re extremely lucky at that ) So don’t intermix the two and act like you make sense on acceptable proportions of the ROI of this games cash shop.

The situation involves the company and it’s source of revenue. The people who provide this games revenue are agitated by the poor choice Anet made, so they’re letting Anet know. Anet agrees now and sees their mistake, so they’re making a change. This is how things get done. Companies need to know when they’re in the wrong, otherwise they lose customers and money.

skullmount.1758:

Grim Faust.6349:

I love how all these awesome new costumes and items to get in the spirit of halloween are mostly obtained with gems. The Black Lion Chest scam was genius. I spent $70 on keys and not a single kitten weapon skin. I guess I should have known better. Crafty capitalists. It’s almost as bad as when they announced the perma versions of those 3 items added to Black Lion Chests. That is the LAST time I fall for their gimmicks and dump money on those chests. What a sick money grab. Guess it worked out for them.

When did they say the 3 perma versions (I’m assuming you mean the shield/bow/staff ones) were in the BLCs?

I was talking about when they added in perma versions of items to summon your bank, a merchant or a trading post npc.

See now, here’s the thing that a lot of people are missing or are saying that it should be expected of lottery style items like the BLC. This is for halloween, a holiday that people celebrate and typically revolve around fun and festivities.

Anet took that fun and cashed in on it by stashing all these cool novelty items in chests with incredibly low drop rates. This is what has people chuffed. You could spend hundreds and not get a single holiday related item. I have no problem spending money on novelty items like this, I have in other games, and a lot at that.

The problem with Anet’s take on this is that they essentially are making you gamble if you want these items. Instead of making them a purchased item and actually letting people buy what they want, they’re trying to cash in on the fact that people want these items and that they need to beat the odds just to get one.

The whole situation stinks and I’m glad they’re making a change. It should serve as a lesson to Anet for what they pulled and also for future buyers. There’s a reason why those chests aren’t worth squat on the trading post, because that’s their actual value. I hope next holiday Anet doesn’t try capitalize so much on their players willingness to try get in on the holiday spirit. That sort of mentality is what loses you return customers.

I love how all these awesome new costumes and items to get in the spirit of halloween are mostly obtained with gems. The Black Lion Chest scam was genius. I spent $70 on keys and not a single kitten weapon skin. I guess I should have known better. Crafty capitalists. It’s almost as bad as when they announced the perma versions of those 3 items added to Black Lion Chests. That is the LAST time I fall for their gimmicks and dump money on those chests. What a sick money grab. Guess it worked out for them.