Guild Wars 2

Well. Don’t I feel sheepish. Not that much, though, since that really should have made the patch notes!

Just finished fractal 100 and noticed on loot sifting afterwards that my stacks of +1 Agony infusions and Journal Pages are gone from my character. Poof, disappeared!

The problem is this: we’re the last place server in the last tier, and we have come in decisively third for weeks on end now. There’s no further to fall to get a competitive week, and somehow the server is full so there’s no chance to pick up any new guilds to begin to recover.

Every single WvW guild of any real size and dedication is gone, unless you count WL. If there is a tag it’s a pug tag with 5-10 people on them recapping the other servers’ paper trail. You can even just look at the reset skirmishes to see how bad it is – last place every time by a wide margin, not having our garri well into the night, no maps queued within an hour or two. At least one of the other servers holds a T3 keep on our BL the entire week.

I log in various times throughout the day and unless there’s an invisible zerg hiding somewhere there is absolutely something wrong with the pop algorithm. We have at best half the numbers on EBG, nothing at all on the enemy BLs, and often outmanned on our own BL. All day long. Something needs to give.

I’m not switching to counter-comp, I switch before I even enter the queue, so the algorithm should be taking my chosen class into account when making groups (an obviously biased and non-empirical observation is that I tend to get put on the team with a messy comp against one with a much more balanced and solid comp). In general I only switch when I’m on one of my poorer classes (e.g. thief) and the comp is really bad (e.g. we have two thieves against a full DPS comp, we have no healer and need one, etc.) I didn’t swap out at all during this streak.

The time I’m playing I guess could be a factor, it’s usually 11 PM Central time onward.

Stick: each match is different obviously, and what I am doing or not doing well varies by the class I am playing (I understand that makes it difficult for others to offer direct advice on play improvement; I’m not turning that down but it wasn’t the point of the thread so I don’t have a specific situation in mind).

Generally I will take home and then mid if I am on my thief or mesmer, and mid on any other class. I don’t far at the start unless the team agrees during countdown that our comp warrants a home/far gambit. (some maps on theif/mes I will try to go decap far after home if mid seems to be under control).

If I had to generalize an issue across many of the matches it would be the mid fights. My teams seem to always lose them (whether I am at mid or not) and things fall apart from there. But again, it’s always something different – sometimes it’s overwhelming condi pressure, sometimes it’s getting interrupted so much can’t even get a skill off, sometimes we’re winning the fight but they are able to run back quickly and meantime their roamer has capped sides on us, sometimes we have someone go far without saying anything first and then we get blown up 3v4. Always something, but shouldn’t the other team be facing these issues as well if MM is working well? And as I and others have said, we see these streaks even playing just one single class, and the results don’t show closer matches when I’m on my strong classes to justify a “oh, it’s because I wasn’t doing well on X” theory.

FWIW to those mentioning my multi-classing, I have been doing that forever. They’re all meta builds, updated for each balance patch, and have basically been the same builds for the past few seasons. I am certainly better on some classes than others, but I know how to play my build on each class, what that class/build’s role and weaknesses are. I am not saying I don’t have plenty of room to learn and improve but I don’t think it’s much of a factor here (especially since in prior seasons I have experienced similar or worse streaks playing a single class each night until I won).

I guess this is yet another in a sea of complaints about matchmaking, but I’ve pretty much had it at this point. You can see from the screenshot how my pvp experience has been lately – and that’s just the last 10. Before that I was chaining together 1-2 wins between 3-4 loss streaks generally.

None of those matches were even close – even the one where we had 400+ points is a mirage; we never lead and only ticked up some points because the other team was just bunkering one point after awhile for the easy win.

What kind of matchmaking algorithm gets you stuck in a slaughter loop like this? How is it even fun? And this happens to me EVERY season. I understand that the system is not designed to give you an even chance to win every match, but shouldn’t random chance put me on the favored side enough to win more than this, or at least not get stomped?

It would be one thing if these long losing streaks were balanced out by winning streaks, but they aren’t.

Just so, so frustrated. Either make the matches more competitive, or make the placement more accurate, but season after season of this is absolutely killing my desire to click that queue button.

I’m using standard tools that you get from the vendor – it always before required another button press for any additional strikes (different from getting multiple quantity on the same strike). Maybe they changed the mechanic on this? Still, I used to routinely get 15-20 flax per harvest, and now it’s 11-13.

I don’t want to be the guy that insists that his small sample size is the only truth, so it may be as you say just losing the buff + bad RNG, but it still seems fishy. As I said, before even on the weekend when Power of the Mists was at its weakest I’d get some extra strikes; hard to believe the removal of a few percent chance would account for an 0-fer. But maybe?

Has anyone else noticed that they are no longer getting any extra gathering strikes for nodes? I have a bunch of alts parked at flax farms and it recently dawned on me that for a couple of weeks I didn’t think I’d had a single bonus strike. So I started paying close attention and in the days since, nada.

Someone suggested to me that it’s due to the WvW PVE buff removal, but that can’t account for this complete lack. Even on the days just after reset I formerly could expect a node or two across all my characters to get another strike. But now nada, not one.

Seems like more than bad RNG here… anyone else observe this?

It’s not just revs. Any long-range skill, particularly those with 1500 range (i.e. rangers and engie mortars) works. These players hang on the corner and sidle in and out of combat and snipe off anyone below, ducking back when they are targeted. It essentially ruins the Arena as a fun place to brawl; if you’re not one of the vultures you’re dead meat.

I use the “Send Report to ArenaNet” option every time I crash, but I made it happen again just a bit ago to copy and paste here. (I chopped a bunch of it out because of the character limit but I assume from this you can find the full log if needed):

• Crash <—*
  Assertion: !m_handle || m_handle→IsIdle()
  File: ..\..\..\Services\Asset\Asset.cpp(111)
  App: Gw2-64.exe
  Pid: 4756
  Cmdline:
  BaseAddr: 000000013FB30000
  ProgramId: 101
  Build: 75528
  When: 2017-04-19T03:53:52Z 2017-04-18T22:53:52-05:00
  Uptime: 0 days 0:02:33
  Flags: 0

• Error Logs <—*
  issing mip chain: 0×0ef3bf
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a25d’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×011f2e
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×011f30
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a25d’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a259’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×0197f3’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×07a25d’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043723782889023’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043792502365751’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1452426965190581768’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043792502365747’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043723782888996’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043088127729184’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462042851904527907’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043582048968225’
  Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1462043723782889019’
  Texture ‘0×03539b’ dimensions too small
  Loading ‘0×03539b’ texture failed

It’s not client side. It’s been around for a couple months now, ever since they implemented the restrictions on swapping once the match starts. It happens whenever you switch to a character that is in Lion’s Arch – other locations are fine. I have a fast computer and I still barely make it back into the match before it starts (with no time to adjust build/weapons/skills) when I swap.

Given how common it is to park alts in LA, the punishments for not making it back in ranked, and they way they want to position PvP, I would think this would have gotten MUCH faster attention from ANet. Can’t understand how something so noticeable, impactful, and easily reproduced could be allowed to persist this long.

Maybe a few twitch streamers need to proc the bug and complain to get some attention.

I know, I know, ANet doesn’t really care about activities. And SM is actually one of the less buggy, better balanced ones. But just in case here’s a list of the bugs I’ve found:

1. Warrior dash auto-targets even when that option is unchecked. Extremely annoying when you’re stealthed or trying to get away and it veers you into an enemy or wall.

2. On the other hand, it also often ignores your actual target. If you have someone selected (say someone trying to res) it will veer and hit the downed person or a nearby wall instead.

3. Like all activities, Guardians get the advantage of a stack of Aegis at the start of the match which can be a big advantage. You fixed this for Winter Wonderland, fix it in ALL activities!!!

4. As others have noted, profession selection is wonky. If you select it before the 10 second countdown, you will be assigned a random profession. Not a huge deal if you know this, but still a bug.

5. Not a bug, but the piercing shots and skill regen powerups are so low in duration and so far away from the action that they are utterly useless. Doesn’t materially affect the game but if you want those to be in play strategically they should move.

6. Also perhaps not a bug, and maybe impossible to do anything about technically, but if you haven’t left the starting platform it shouldn’t teleport you back at the start of the match. Since the teleport location is random it can easily screw up your start.

7. The range on the ice fields (particularly the downed skill) is much bigger than the graphic. The existing size is fine, it should just display properly.

8. The scout snowball barrage skill (#3) will go on cancel cooldown if you try to turn and hit the skill at the same time.

9. The scout sniper shot (#4) sometimes fails to channel all the way and just shoots weakly. I particularly notice this when being pelted by a downed player.

Other than that, thank you for an extremely fun, really well balanced mini-game where all of the profession skills are useful and there is good play/counterplay strengths and weaknesses for each against the others. I look forward to it every year!

So that’s why I am constantly getting the message “You cannot use this skill while in combat” when trying to brawl this year!

IMO, it’s only the second biggest issue with costume brawls, the biggest being the jerks who use the completely broken gem store toys to deny everyone else from winning. (The third biggest is people using CC in the brawl pile which is just irritating).

I feel like with as hopelessly imbalanced as costume brawl is (and completely irrelevant outside of Halloween since it stopped being a daily), the least they could do is not have your brawler score ever reset, so even if you get a crummy transform or are besieged by trolls you can eventually win.

Still not working as of the latest patch. It also doesn’t appear on the bug tracker, but they have to be aware of it at this point, right?

I regularly play kitten mes roamer (largely for defensive purposes), and the situation is not nearly as dire (:D) as you’ve made it out. Yes, it’s one of the current extremely powerful (and thus ubiquitously annoying) roaming builds, but it can be countered.

First, you cannot just slap dire gear on a character, mash buttons and win with the build. Some players are better than others – I am not the best, or the worst, and I win some and lose some. The reality of current roaming is that forcing a player to run is a win.

Second, we don’t have as much condi cleanse as you seem to think. It’s likely the mes you’re facing has one on weapon swap, and one on each torch skill or shatter depending on the variant. That’s it. Any class that can lay down a bunch of aoe condis (berserkers, burn guards, necros) are tough to beat. As someone else pointed out, power mesmers are also a tough challenge.

Also, the build has one stunbreak, no stability, no CC in the scepter/torch variant (and on the sword variant the CC can only be used in a close fight, not to stop someone from escaping) and the mirror effect causing you to be revealed at inopportune moments against any player with a speedy ranged attack (rangers, DHs, thieves…)

I hate fighting cancer builds too, but IMO the hyper-mobile thief and warrior builds or crazy bunker guard and rev builds are a bigger pain/problem.

Was the Revenant cat in HotM removed due to the Halloween redecoration? I can’t seem to find it based on the wiki screenshot…

There is already an 11 point variance on one match up between first and third. That’s 8 hours of holding first place just to catch up. With four and a half days left to play it is already an insurmountable lead. The skirmish system and victory points have solved nothing in the long run.

EDIT: It would be more than 12 hours of holding first place while the current first place was held to last place to catch up. That is because even last place still gets one point.

This.

I think the perception that scores are “closer” is purely psychological. Because the numbers look smaller, it feels like the match is closer, failing to take into account the now rigidly timed way of catching up and the percentage disparity between the placements.

Issues:

1. While softening some of the impact of extremely low-coverage time slices, it in turn magnifies the hurt of middle coverage times (where you are going to lose but you have enough pop to minimize the damage). Net gain, 0.

2. There is now a hard line after which it becomes mathematically impossible to change your placement. Before, with so much score coming from PPK, it was more fluid. Now anyone who can add 1, 2, and 3 can figure out “We have no chance.”

It will be interesting to see how the numbers shake out in terms of actual percent margin of victory for the old vs. new systems as the weeks roll on. Would this be clearer to people if the win scores were 3000/2000/1000? As it stands now it would appear this change in isolation is just a new hat on the old system in terms of results, with less flexibility.

Can we please get the confirmation for using Tomes of Knowledge removed, or at least add a Consume All?

Why do we need a confirm on this? Someone might not be sure whether they want to use this extremely common consumable item that you get for nearly everything you do, on top of the gobs and gobs of ways to pour XP and levels into a character, and which serves only one function (consume for (also useless) spirit shards) once you hit 80?

Anybody else think that the Black Citadel Engine (one of the new 4th birthday achievement backpacks) doesn’t look very good on Charr? Presumably this should be the race it is “designed” for, but it looks very small on them and just kinda hovers on the round part of your back.

The “I am Evon Gnashblade” TP code is not sticking between play sessions.

It’s already irritating enough to have to re-enter it after every patch! Please fix, or better yet, make this a permanent visible option selection on the Trading Post screen.

We were fighting the Bloodstone Crazed shark boss in Bloodtide Coast, and still had ~10 minutes on the timer, when the boss just disappeared.

What I suspect happened is that the boss rotation changed (in this case, I think to the “break” portion as the Levvi’s Detector didn’t do anything when I clicked it, which is some some pretty unclear messaging) and as a result it despawned our boss.

Either it needs to be clear in-game what the cyles are for the bosses, or any spawned boss needs to last its full timer. It’s bad enough that if the cycle changes while you’re hunting mobs you’ll never know until you realize it’s been way too long.

You didn’t offer a “dissenting opinion.” You stated that my/others experience was WRONG. To wit:

“It’s been perfectly explained,” – when everyone has taken the time to state why it was NOT perfectly explained to them.

“and they are well visible even through the bloodstone flux.” – except I could NOT see them.

When you fail to appreciate that not everyone comprehends things the way way you to or experiences things the way you do (some people have visual disabilities, for example) THAT is arrogance.

As far as “raw factuation” (whatever that is), I have also provided plenty of explanation (some using your own screenshots) for why I felt the opposite, which makes this not a FACT, but an OPINION.

For what it’s worth, I was not rushing at all. The first time I do a story instance I listen to all the dialogue and try to talk to all the people. I even RP walked through the entire Eir memorial because it felt right to do so. I still had the troubles I described.

Your very point that if it “play it again” I will understand it represents the basic fallacy of your argument. The design of a teaching encounter is only important the FIRST time someone plays it. If they have a prolongued, confused, frustrated experience due to poor design, you have failed, regardless of how well you thing your design worked. If you watch Silicon Valley you would have seen a great example of this last season – the engineers were so proud of their design that was vetted by other engineers, but in the hands of average users it completely bombed.

drkn: So, if I understand the gist of your comments correctly, because you found the mechanics to be “perfectly explained,” the rest of us in this thread should/could not possibly have been confused? And because you could see the tells through the visual clutter everyone else could/should be able to as well?

Discounting the arrogance of that tone, it doesn’t change the facts that:

1. The training encounter with the elementals does not require you to do anything more than run up and bash the elementals until the shield drops. It happens fast and there’s little chance to learn what you did that worked. Also, “flux” is an ambiguous term – for my part, I assumed it meant the big pulsing purple field on my character. As others have pointed out, when you’re fighting right next to the stone you can’t even see the trail.

2. The special skill is fine once you understand what exactly it does, but it is not at all clearly taught. In the very screenshot you showed, Marjory describes the skill this way: “Interesting. Countering the magic of these bloodstones returns whatever magical properties it absorbed.” What this reads as to me is that you need to get close to the stone, use it to “absorb” a property (e.g. the shield) then activate your countermagic to “return” it. As I and others have said, in practice it seems like you just get superspeed and the bloodstone becomes vulnerable for you to kill it.

This feedback is not about dumbing down the fight – the mechanics are fine, they are just poorly messaged, and a fight that could be fun becomes frustrating. After all, this is not a fight most of us are going to repeat more than a couple of times. It’s really feedback for ANet regarding the scripting of new mechanics.

Donari – I was on my warrior. I pretty much just walked up to it and started smashing, as warriors do.

Icdan – From the NPC dialogue, what I thought was happening was:

1. Get near the bloodstone. Acquire beam suction ability.

2. Fight something until its “power” is absorbed (e.g. the shield)

3. Activate the special skill to gain this power for yourself (weird because it didn’t give you the shield but instead gave you a long burst of superspeed.)

4. Kill the bloodstone shard because… um… I dunno why those are damageable, since they regenerate and killing them doesn’t seem to be part of the fight mechanic.

This fight needs a bit of tuning.

First, there’s a clear bug where Marjory and Rytlock don’t engage in the fight – they just stand around, so they don’t even help aggro/fight the endless trash mobs for you.

Second, it’s not at all clear what you are supposed to do to drop Adrienne’s shield. The bloodstone elementals that are supposed to train you on this don’t require that you pass the beam through them – just fighting them while it’s on you is enough.

Once you figure it out, it is still very frustrating because the margin between “went too far and the beam drops off of you” and “stayed too close and Adrienne knocks you back” is ridiculously small. Meantime you’re taking DoT from the shard and constant peppering from all the trash mobs.

Once you do drop her shield and you’re trying to DPS you’re surrounded by a huge purple and red light so you cannot see her tells. And she hits HARD, and since you are still being hit by 5-6 trash and hurt from the DoT you’re going down.

I see what they were going for and the fight could be fun, but it needs a bit of tweaking to remove the pain points:

1. Fix the bug so your friends help take aggro
2. Fix the training so it’s clearer that you need to pass the enemy through the beam connecting you to the shard.
3. Increase/don’t have a tether limit when you are trying to pass her through the beam.
4. Reduce the visual noise of the shard effect so you can see her tells.

This struck me oddly as well. For that matter, the Norn speech was “fine” but not particularly personal. You say that Eir was a “friend” but there’s no acknowledgment of her role as your mentor and supporter. And given that the Norn culture is supposed to be about building/spreading your legend in boastful gathering, it would have been nice if your character mentioned about something you did with Eir (e.g. slaying Zhaitan). Some of the NPCs do a decent job of this, would have been nice for you as well.

I would like to see better visual feedback for mortars and trebs. Other than (maybe) getting numbers when you hit an enemy wall or gate, you have no way to know if you’re hitting or even close to your intended target. In the heat of an attack, unless you’re the only one there you need a skilled person on the seige and can’t afford to “learn on the job,” and during lulls you have no target to gauge.

One idea could be an additional mastery pip that provides the following effects:

1. When interacting with a mortar/treb, you get a subtle AOE overlay of concentric rings indicating 3-4 general distance zones to help target

2. Shots you fire ping on the mini map

I also had an idea for a trick that, when used on the ground out in the field, creates a mark for some duration for you to aim at that gives direct feedback. At the very least, a “Hit!” popup when a shot touches it, but could be enhanced to include some general positioning guidance (arrows to indicate left/right and more/less power adjustment).

I think this would be a very useful addition that would not create imbalance and help players use these seige weapons better.

Anyone know if the exotic accessories required for the “Treasure Hunter” collection achievement are possible results from the Mystic Forge? With all of the HoT collection items in the form of account bound exotic accessories, I have been blindly forging them with the faint hope of getting something I need, with no success. It would be nice to know if it’s even possible or if they only drop from the relevant world boss and I should just salvage for ecto.

This was likely done to alleviate false counting of people in WvW that use the BLs for crafting only

Why do so many people think this? You really think their metrics for “active wvw population” are so unsophisticated that someone who is only present for a couple of minutes and contributes no world score counts heavily against the population caps (if they even count at all)? That the floodgates will open to closed servers if only these legions of crafters would get out of the BLs?

If anything doesn’t it stand to reason that this “problem” (such as it is) affects all servers more or less proportionally equally, and therefore its removal will “benefit” all servers proportionally equally, and therefore status quo remains?

The earlier post from someone else talking about the removal of XP from WvW and its impact on crafting there is actually the only theory about this whole thing that really makes sense.

There really does need to be another quick access crafting area from which you can return directly to your world locale. If you need your artificer to craft something, and your artificer is parked somewhere or exploring a remote corner, it is definitely not convenient to WP out to a city and have to navigate back. (Also the reason I never bought the airship/DR passes)

It’s interesting to learn that they made the change based on some data, but I can’t help but wonder if the data was granular enough. McKenna states that queue times are longer, and their data shows that there are people spending a (presumably) significant time crafting. But are those people crafting during queued times?

I realize it’s anecdotal, but having played WvW pretty much daily since launch I have some frame of reference. People don’t sit in a queue, long or short, to go craft. You go there for convenience, and it’s not convenient if you have to wait 15 minutes to get in. And if it’s not queued, why do you care what other people are doing on the map? They’re not preventing anyone from doing anything and may rally to help when they otherwise would never know.

The only potentially affected situation is when you have a zerg on another map AND something on your home is attacked that requires a response AND the full zerg can’t get in AND the other team has a map queue that results in a numbers situation in their favor and STILL that means the opponent outplayed you past your defenses. I really can’t see that these crafting squatters (who, again, I rarely see more than 1 or 2, and often none, in T1) really have as much of an impact on the matches as some people think.

Players should be in WvW to play WvW and not for crafting, farming or afking. Players coming to do other things than play WvW are adding to servers population preventing them from actually obtaining WvW players to compete. I not only think they should have removed crafting stations, but also farming nodes, Gift of Battle reward track, Mystic forge, and anything else that brings players in to do things other than play WvW.

Instead, they should make a server wide chat and make some cities server based, especially lions arch so players have some place to recruit and bring players into WvW to play WvW for the right reasons. WvW needs players coming in to actually play WvW not farm and craft.

I enjoy the purity of the core wvw experience (zergfights, tough defenses, havoc, etc.) as much as anyone. But this kind of zealotry just leads to you standing alone on an empty map preaching to an ever-dwindling choir. The facts are: most people who play want to acquire in-game stuff. Therefore they need their playtime to be profitable. WvW is already far less profitable than PvE, and you want it to be worse?

You will not recruit or convert more casual players by trying to get them in for the “right” reasons. You make it useful to be there, easy to get involved, and profitable to stay, and those with the desire and aptitude become stronger contributors.

No one is sitting there crafting from 0-500 on reset night. The vast, vast majority of people are there for a minute or two to access the bank and maybe combine some mats, and the majority of those people are on their way in or out of the raid. This idea that “crafters and afkers” are ruining the population stats is utterly false. First, there’s no way ANet can’t figure out how to account for that kind of activity in their metrics. Second, AFK gets kicked after a very short time, so unless they are purposely AFKing to troll its also minimal impact.

All the complaints amount to nothing more than modified elitism that is not in any way supported by the reality of play.

A vocal minority have been clamoring for this change for years, but I never really saw the point. I am a very active (rank 1700+) WvW player on a T1 server and these “PvE crafter” bogeymen that get scapegoated on the forums don’t really exist. I have played all hours of the day, all days of the week, and I never see more than 4 or 5 people at the crafting stations. Coupled with the fact that maps other than EB are rarely queued outside of reset, I think the impact of the few minutes people stop to craft in WvW is minimal at best, especially compared to the QoL loss for all players.

Not to mention that stopping by my home BL to do a quick craft or drop things off has frequently resulted in my staying a few extra minutes (or, er, hours) to defend a camp, rally to tag, or help out in some other way. With no way to communicate with your server at large (megaserver), and reduced incentive for people to “come for one thing, stay for another,” it can only hurt the awareness and use of the game mode. Really wish they would not have listened to the complainers on this one.

Yeah, they are boxes from before the season. I would have assumed since it requires the same effort to get them using the same reward track (and is, in fact, the same reward) the loot table on the boxes would be updated to include the cores. I really don’t want to have to repeat that track 4 more times when I already have the boxes in hand!

I have 4 Glorious Armor Boxes stashed away (the final reward from the Glorious Reward Track). Supposedly, they contain mist core fragments for the new backpiece, but it doesn’t show up in the item list when I click it. I emailed support but they responded by blowing me off.

Is this a bug? Is it being worked on? Does the core drop even though it’s not listed? Anyone else had the problem?

It used to be that all CC would make you drop the gift – Warrior charge, the gunner snowball shot and stomp worked too. It was much better that way, it offered a lot of counterplay if you were a good, smart player. I snaked a lot of gifts at the last second and brought them through the shortcuts for a big turnaround. Really miss this functionality, the way it is now adds to yet more zerg play and runaway victories.

The volunteer button doesn’t and has never worked in any team activities (SM, Keg Brawl, Dragonball, etc.) Guessing it’s never going to be a priority to fix.

Surprised this isn’t getting more outcry – you can’t do the bounties at all right now, as you say.

You also didn’t mention the problems with guild challenges. For sure Scratch Sentry Defense doesn’t work, you can’t start it once you’re in the instance. Not sure if others have a problem as well.

Still happening for me as well. Last night I tested a logout/log back in and settings persisted. Logged in today and everything reset again.

Windows 7, 64-bit client.

Probably been mentioned before, but:

1. Probably the biggest reason Gilded Hollow won is convenience. Face it, 9/10 times that you are in the guild hall it’s to use the services, and the services are more centrally and conveniently located in Gilded.

2. But yes, I’m sure some significant portion of the population chose Gilded because, as a shiny hall made of gold, it feels more valuable and important than a dusty sandstone ruin. It’s also more intimate – LP just feels lonely and exposed, especially with the constant wind sound effects. GH isn’t ideal but at least it feels like a place you could hang out.

3. But honestly, as others have pointed out, there’s a lot lacking in our options for guild halls. The choice of one broken down ruin, or another different broken down ruin isn’t exactly a compelling one. While the “restoring” concept is a good one, there should be more effect on the overall hall as you progress through guild levels and restorations. With the only thing being affected the proprietor buildings, that still leaves a gigantic map of, yes, broken-down ruins, even after your hall is fully “restored.” At the very least when you have all upgrades completed it should truly restore the whole map to a beautiful, proud headquarters rather than still having to pick your way over rubble and makeshift bridges.

4. No fair putting funny money in the Gilded Hollow secret vault! Why can’t we use the dough we found there to pay the extortionist prices for scribing? ;_;

Well, I dunno about sPVP, but I can say without a doubt that team color matters a lot in Keg Brawl. Red team fills first, which is a big advantage in a game that usually fills late or not at all. Additionally, the top players on the winning side of the previous match tend to get placed on the red team in the next match. And whatever method they use to assign teammates tends to get stuck and place the same good/bad players together for extended streaks. Also, volunteer reward is/has always been broken.

Not that ANet really cares about KB, but I do, so I thought I’d mention it.

I was also very disappointed with the death of Eir. I understand that for logistical reasons games have to play very fast and loose with the rules of what does and doesn’t kill someone: after all, our characters endure all manner of stabbings, explosions, and blows from gigantic creatures (and each other) and are at worst “defeated,” ready to fight again in moments. Typically the reasoning that gets made to distinguish between our abilities and NPC cannon fodder has to do with special powers, training, and ability.

GW2 has always blurred this line in confusing ways with its revive mechanics. After all, while you do see your share of death, most often you will run across NPCs that you can pick up again and again from defeat, no worse for wear. This is especially true of your named allies in instances. The are fellow heroes with heroic abilities who have and can make it through those extraordinary challenges.

In this case, despite any attempt to reason around Eir’s physical state when you find her, it’s really just bizarre to think of the number of times she has been alongside of you and taken a full nuking with some sliver of health coming off, and here… one stab, one smash, and gone.

And worse, as others have pointed out, is how easy the fight is with the creature that took her out. It gives a very bad taste, knowing how much rougher of circumstances she has made it through with you, and really draws your attention to how much of a plot contrivance the event is, rather than an organic, character-driven moment.

And my big issue is, when you play through this instance on a Norn character, your reaction is exactly the same as other races. You don’t sound sad or broken up, the only thing you do is gently tell Braham to take his time. This woman was your mentor – she identified you as having the ability to build an epic legend, and guided you from boar-killing greenhorn to dragon-killing warrior over the course of a year? Two years? (in-game calendar). She should mean something to YOU, not just Braham, who has spent FAR less time with her than you. Really sour.

Perfect, just the tip I needed!

However, I think I’ve fallen victim to a bugged out final boss. Keep getting the rifts appearing in the middle of the sky, or if i make it to the part where it says “Take to the sky or shield yourself” there’s no way for me to do either, that I can find (at least in the couple of seconds you have to figure out what to do).

So in the final story instance, I feel like I must be doing something wrong in the Blighted Eir fight. I’m on my ele, wearing ascended zerker gear and strength runes. I take out Garm, and I have just a few seconds to DPS Eir while she rezzes him. I dump everything I have…. and her health bar barely budges.

Is this fight supposed to take an hour? After looking for help and learning there are several more fights ahead and losing at any of them puts you right back at the start I just gave up. There’s no indication that the final instance requires a 5 man, and after all the fuss about Zhaitan being a dungeon fight and the work to make it a solo instance I did not expect to encounter the same thing in HoT. So what am I doing wrong?

I’m not a bad player – e.g, I soloed all of the mastery achievements for all of LS season 2 instances. This has me frustrated though.

Can this be made into a permanent setting, either in the options menu or on the TP itself? I am kind of tired of having to type in the phrase every single time there’s a patch or update. And many new or returning players probably have no idea it even exists! For something that’s so useful, I am surprised it is still so “hidden.”

I was just noticing this as well. I don’t understand this choice at all, WvW is a guild-based play mode, and guilds store their seige and food in their… wait for it… GUILD BANKS. Removing them seems to add an extra layer of inconvenience for no reason at all.

Is there any initiative going to help small guilds do their claim? I have been asking in map and in lfg and don’t get even a nibble. Maybe a time when a few interested people can trade claim help with each other?

Posting to increase the critical mass of people against this change. As has already been pointed out, the most active and dynamic part of the week for WvW is the weekend (when people don’t have work or school). This change cuts that time by 1/3-1/2, since all of Friday night then becomes irrelevant.

And while there is no way to please all timezones, and it is a worldwide game, plunking the reset in the middle of the day ensures the majority of NA players won’t make it because daytime is for getting RL stuff done.

I think a lot more thought needs to be put into this. The articulated “benefits” in no way approach the negative impact to this will have to the way WvW is played.

I started the evening with 66 matches played as a mesmer. Played 3 games in hotjoin, and when I went back to the lobby, my pie chart still said… 66 games played as a mesmer. I’m assuming that other relevant achievements (e.g. wins as a mesmer) did not increment either.

The fourth birthday gift should be an upgrade to the birthday blaster that gives us the ability to blast out a 10m utility buff.

You can see your title in the hero panel where you select it. Why would you need to see it above your character? For a momentary thrill? There are no skills that require you to select yourself and you can’t click yourself or your name when using the toggle. It serves no purpose at all but visual clutter that impacts many players negatively during pvp where visual real-estate is already too messy.