Guild Wars 2

Pharazon.3095:

What really annoys the hell out of me is how unbalanced the damage output is. Smoke pooches and frog archers can pretty much 2 shot you without you having time to retaliate. Now I don’t mind a challenge, but it has to be fair, learn the abilities and how to dodge and avoid them. In most cases I’ve been able to adapt and learn to avoid certain one hitters, but the frog archers and smoke pooches seems to be impossible to predict and avoid.

I’m annoyed at going 3 steps forward and getting shot 6 steps back because I was killed by a frog or a dog and the spawn point is far away. Even more annoying when the nearest is contested and you have to travel even further.

Yeah. As a grenade-focused Engineer running ascended zerker/knights, I simply, literally cannot kill a solo frog archer. There are other enemies that are challenging (like the smoke dogs) which are a real struggle even just one-on-one, but my only options when I run into a frog archer are to flee or to die.

I can dodge several single attacks in a fight, but a spammable chain of GETWRECKED that does 70% of my health is pretty ludicrous.

Also, the innate 75% or whatever chance to be missed by ranged attacks… do I seriously have to respec Scrapper just to be able to hit the kitten ed things? There’s no other way I can see to possibly handle them.

HoT content, I’m progressing through it alright. My biggest issues are:
- Requires a group for one-time content. It could take hours right now, just after HoT launches, to gather 3+ other players to help with a Hero Challenge. It’s going to be literally impossible to get these Hero Points within the month, unless you summon your guild from their other “challenging group content” to help you out in unlocking your baseline profession skills.
- Crazy fast respawns. To get to the above Hero Points/Mastery Points, I’m working my way through fights against 2-3 enemies that are individually challenging and are pretty epic as a group. I can barely finish this fight before the group of mobs behind me respawns and joins in. Throw in fights against huge AoE that requires a lot of movement (into other, nearby groups of mobs) and the occasional veteran to blow your pacing all to heck. This stuff gets crazy.
- Gated content. Nothing more frustrating than going through all the above logistical work to get to a Hero Challenge on the first map… then discovering that I cannot access it because I haven’t earned 5 levels of experience in the yet. Gee, go figure. That’s ludicrous; why would you do that on the first map, when you know that no one who reaches it is going to possibly have unlocked the required mastery yet?
- The above, but also it turns out the Hero Challenge fight is bugged.

Look, I’m managing to slog my way through this stuff. Yeah, it’s harder than the core content, but I tend to love challenging content. That’s not the issue here.

The problem is that these maps are obviously designed to be handled by small groups, and the small groups are supposed to gather into larger zergs to handle some of the meta events; however, players who are still trying to unlock core stuff for their characters (Mastery and Hero points) are running into fights that are designed to be handled by groups, but the rewards are not repeatable and they’re gated behind the Mastery system, hidden deep within highly-populated dens of enemies, at the end of a logistical challenge (e.g. “jumping” puzzle), or all three.

It’s not that I don’t like the idea that we form up teams of skilled players to handle tough group content to access cool rewards; it’s that we’re ending up hoping (or begging) for charity from random strangers to unlock the basic HoT content and mechanics for our characters, and that’s just a little bit ridiculous and tiresome.

I was really pumped for this expansion, but I wound up playing for 5 hours then saying, “You know what? I’m over this”. I’ve been convincing myself to go back for a couple of hours here and there to keep hacking away at this stuff, but I’m really to the point where I don’t care anymore.

The core content is just not fun or exciting; is a tedious chore.

Sweet kitten.

That’s a really strong elite spec.

This heart quest was terrible when I was testing the core game during a Beta weekend, it remained terrible when I was leveling after launch, and it was still terrible when I came back to the game this month after two years absence and did it with my new Elementalist. I truly can’t believe it hasn’t been fixed yet.

If you “haven’t had a problem with it”, that’s very fortunate for you; that does not at all help the other 95% of players who wander clueless and frustrated with no objectives in sight, then give up in disgust and rant about it in /map chat.

mauried.5608:

I dont see many Sylvari Necros.
Are there lesser played combos?

My first 80 was a Sylvari Necro. One of the most thematic class/race combos in my opinion, actually (circle of life, mulch pile, fertilizer, etc).

Well… you reflect a projectile that creates a clone. In some ways, I would actually expect the reflected projectile to create a clone.

@Brutaly
That’s close to what I have, though I’ve got 30 in Honor at the moment. Looking back, I think I was referencing some of your earlier posts about having 17k health in sPvP and nearly 16k health in WvW. I can see now where you sacrificed stats in those cases (armor and crit chance, respectively).

I think the difference that I need to make up in health will be in adding Runes of the Soldier to my armor – I’ve got Crests of the Magi at the moment.

I’m still trying to figure, how do you get more vitality on your gear for WvW and maintain your high crit% and toughness? It seems like in every case, adding vitality will cost you one of those stats, dropping your crit down below 50% towards 40% or your armor below 3k. I suppose you would have to lose some precision, maybe swap Knight’s out for Soldier’s (pow/tuff/vit) gear? I’m having a tough time even trying to maintain a 50% crit, 3k armor, 15k health build in pve for ‘tanking’ in dungeons while I finish off my gear.

Awesome, Brutaly. Thanks for boiling down the original 6+ page thread into one guide. Even though I followed it all, it’s been very educational to read your final impressions of the different builds you’ve tried and new tips and tricks you’ve picked up along the way.

Reading your original thread re-introduced me to my guardian; it changed the way I play and added a ton of satisfaction and enjoyment. The truly important thing to take away from it all is, as you mentioned, AH (though hammer has its own ‘virtues’ and I swear by it, myself).

Also, Vote for Sticky! Not sure how to do that officially, but this guide deserves it.

Couldn’t you… buy and salvage exotics from Orr for ecto or something?

Post several sell orders in a row.

Example using 20 stacks of 250 Mithril Ore:
1) Right Click, Sell on Trading Post

• Window pops up to sell that stack of Mithril Ore

2) If less than 250 appear in the quantity field, click Sell All

• Quantity field contains 250

3) Match lowest sell price

• Price now matches lowest sell price

4) Click “Sell” button

• “Success” dialog pops up

5) Click “Okay” button

• “Success” dialog closes

6) Select a new stack of ore, repeat Steps 1 through 5.

• Somewhere after about the fourth stack of ore, you may receive an error dialog after Step 4 instead of a “Success” dialog. The error dialog displays a message something like, ‘encountered an error while trying to sell’.

This seems to be rate limiting or something. If you wait like 20 seconds, you’ll be able to sell one more stack of items, then you’ll experience the error again on a further attempt immediately afterwards and have to wait again. If you wait several minutes you can sell several more stacks of items before encountering the error again.

Lord knows, but it’s really annoying when I’m trying to clear out my miscellaneous crafting materials at the end of the day.

ryokoalways.3450:

Hippocampus.8470:

ryokoalways.3450:

Account bound on equipment is one method in which to limit artificial inflation. It would make the player buying to use the item, not to flip it. To have this implemented though, preview through TP would first need to be necessary in my opinion.

If it’s account bound, it can’t be sold on the TP. Period. So no, it wouldn’t have this effect.

Alternatively (and one I would prefer), you can just add a time limit for an item on sell. Currently (as far as I can tell), the item can be listed indefinitely. If a time limit (say, 3 days per listing) is implemented, then artificial inflation can be mitigated since you would just be throwing away money if you are not pricing it at where buyers would be willing to buy. This would put the power back in buyer’s hands.

Power is already in the buyers’ hands. If you haven’t noticed, buyers have to agree to the price either way, and buy orders for precursors aren’t much below sell listings, relatively speaking.

Point 1 is meant to be account bound on purchase. This way, you are buying purely to use an item, and not to resell it. Problem is, this method is not good unless preview is available so buyers know what they are getting. Additionally, this has to be limited to equipment because account bound on purchase would have adverse effect on materials.

Point 2 is more to address an issue that will arise as more money enters the game. This is purely an issue with Precursors though, and really do not affect anything else. Demand for precursor will always be infinite, so price will have to rise, which isn’t a problem. The issue is the balance between increasing wealth vs increasing price. The goal is to purely punish people that would be willing to put up the Legend for 500g just because he can, and not for legitimate sellers that place it between (at the moment) 250-350g.

TJL

The demand for precursors is no more infinite than the ability to produce them. Not everyone wants all legendaries, not everyone even wants any legendary, and not everyone is going to buy a legendary from the trading post. If someone tries to manipulate the market and mark up precursors so high that few can afford them, then, in the long run:

• More legendary seekers will try to create their own precursor using the MF
• More precursors sellers will enter the market to undercut the person marking up prices

Supply is only limited by the time it takes to tear up Mithril Ore, Elder Wood Logs, and any fine crafting materials in Orr.

No, it won’t force people, but the market is pretty kitten sensitive to random forum posts that point out inconsistencies in the TP prices. A week ago, someone made a speculative post about Glacial Lonestones that shot the price up something like 10s to 35s in one evening, then it spent the next week declining again.

The only legendary recipes they’re used for are the Gift of Ice and Gift of Water, which are not used for very popular weapons (I think the axe and trident). The runes and sigils that can be crafted from it are similarly unpopular (Water, Ice, Elemental Slaying, etc). There’s just not a ton of demand for these materials right now.

Snow.5269:

“The current precursor method fills an important role in the economy: it drains the supply of crafted and looted, rare and exotic weapons on the market. No proposal that I’ve read for an alternate method of precursor obtainment would replace that role in the economy. Those are needed to provide an outlet for the supply of mithril and orichalcum ore, elder and ancient wood, ectoplasm and T5/T6 fine materials.”

I’ve hear this argument before but it doesn’t hold much weight. Right now the way legendaries are currently designed a person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge. 1-3g attempts with a 1% chance of success? No thanks. I like many other refuse to, so what exactly is getting removed from the economy? Most of the precursors still in existence are the result of early exploits & were hoarded. Very few new precursors have been reportedly made/found. If our entire economy is that dependent on precursors to survive then something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Any person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge? Not at all. The scale is large and the risk of not getting a precursor is substantial; however over the long term:

• 3g attempts
• 1% chance of success
• mean number of attempts is, what, 50? (don’t know, haven’t calculated probabilities for a while)
• Assuming the above, average cost 150g with risk of failure
• Throw it up on the market for 300g, turn ~100g profit after taxes

It will always be worthwhile to create a precursor. The price that a player will be willing to both buy and sell a precursor for will reflect the difficulty of creating one. The daunting entrance to the business of crafting precursors means that creating one is currently a very valuable accomplishment and will be worth good money to other players who are seeking that item.

The cost and success rate of creating a precursor, call it 1% or whatever, is most likely in place to both establish a market for creating precursors and an average cost of 200-400 exotic weapons or 2000-4000 rare weapons. There’s a lot of liability with a lot of possible reward in that business, and it creates exactly the high-end crafting material sink I pointed out.

The argument that, “most precursors were made with exploits and very few new ones have been made,” is a matter of opinion and speculation only. There are not an infinite number of ‘exploited’ precursors in existence, and hundreds if not thousands of people are throwing hundreds of thousands of weapons into the Mystic Forge seeking them. It’s more likely that they will ultimately comprise a very small fraction of the whole precursor market.

I’ve played a Necromancer with 24k health plus 24k Life Force. I’ve also played a Guardian with 14k health total. I don’t think you need me to tell you which one is ultimately more survivable.

It was a massive change trying to adapt to a Guardian’s health pool when I was used to looking at my Necromancer’s. Ultimately I’ve found that the low health of the Guardian is not a detriment. Comparing when I take a big hit from a boss on my Necromancer or my Guardian, my Guardian still takes less total damage as well as less percent damage, and can more reliably mitigate and recover afterwards.

I’m currently looking at my last 3 pieces of armor and runes and I’m trying to decide whether or not I even care if I ultimately break 15k health. I don’t think I do, provided I make up for it with some extra toughness. Conditions aren’t going to kill me; I have a substantial number of ways to remove them. For direct damage, stacking toughness, having ways of refilling deficits in my health, and keep up Protection are all more important than having a large maximum health pool.

Probably trying to cause another bubble.

It’s because they’re not yet used in any popular crafting recipes.

The current precursor method fills an important role in the economy: it drains the supply of crafted and looted, rare and exotic weapons on the market. No proposal that I’ve read for an alternate method of precursor obtainment would replace that role in the economy. Those are needed to provide an outlet for the supply of mithril and orichalcum ore, elder and ancient wood, ectoplasm and T5/T6 fine materials.

Day.4501:

Does anyone know which recipe for the reaver of mist is correct? There’s currently two listed in the wiki

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Other_Items

I fully expect it’s the one that takes Globs of Ectoplasm, since all of the other mesmer-ish “of th Mists” items do.

The other one is likely a bug, as the note next to that entry says that it has a chance of producing either the Reaver of the Mists or Jormag’s Needle.

The one issue with fearmongering about precursor prices in this thread: precursor prices are not open-ended. They are directly tied to the current “drop” rate at the MF and the price of the ingredients. Prices are stabilizing based on those factors. If someone decides to sell a precursor at 800g, they will be undercut because it is economical to do so.

When Linsey said, “We will continue to monitor the situation and will make any adjustments we feel are necessary,” that was not a promise that they were definitely going to make a change to the current precursor system; it was merely them re-stating their policy that ArenaNet takes an active interest in their in-game economy.

Believe me, they calculated the likely cost of a precursor based on the above factors and anticipated the current prices based on the current value of gold and raw materials.

You had me in suspense until you finally went back and picked up that loot bag at 3:48.

I think I’d probably still try to make Crithammer work in WvW instead of going Greatsword. From your comments, it sounds like you’re doing the same nowadays. Do you have any advice on how to adjust gear from PvE to WvW? I imagine you want more Vitality, but I’m not sure how to pick it up without sacrificing too much Precision or Power (running fill Knight’s atm).

Tanky crithammer build and loving every minute of it. 0/0/30/30/10, full Knight’s gear and accessories, Berserker’s hammer and staff. In solo PvE I can just auto-attack almost anything (though it’s still better to counter their abilities). In dungeons it’s an extremly active build, great support and very tanky.

I leveled mainly with Mace/Focus until I could put together a proper Hammer build with Altruistic Healing and traits for Symbols. Since then that’s been my primary weapon. Secondary is generally Staff nowadays.

@Freyvin – The issue with that (and other) stat builder sites is that they use PvP equipment, which has different stat distributions. You generally can’t achieve the same distributions with PvE equipment.

gahii.7103:

Trungalung.7850:

I’ll rather use Ruby Orbs over Divinity Runes. Provides more damage and I only lose 60 vita and toughness which is nothing. It’s also much cheaper.

Divinity runes are insanely expensive so I think it’s either Ruby orbs or Superior runes of Strength now. I appreciate it! you’ve definitely narrowed my choices down to just 2! Now what to pick? lol

Well, Ruby Orbs are also much cheaper than Superior Runes of Strength. I’d suggest that you start with the orbs for a total price still substantially lower than 1 rune, and figure out if you like the feel of it.

It’s probably due to a reduced demand for Orichalcum for gearing compared to supply. Supply has remained fairly steady since the most recent change to node spawn rates, but once people have their exotic sets Orichalcum is only needed if they want to try a new build, for really expensive vanity crafts, or for throwing exotics into the forge for a precursor. It’s basically a matter of what the people hunting for precursors and other vanity items are willing to pay for it.

Also bear in mind that Orichalcum can be updated from Mithril using a relatively inexpensive MF recipe, so in truth the Orichalcum supply is not entirely limited to the node spawn times.

Waraxx.4286:

Ghoest.3945:

1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem.

It only bothers people who are trying to sell stuff for more than its worth.

this is probably the most useless post after the “1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem” you could possibly create, congratulations!

please don’t return to this topic unless you have something useful to add.

You have not addressed why his post is, in your opinion, useless. In fact, I find it to be spot on. If you’re selling a good for a value that people are willing to pay, then they will pay it. If other sellers can continuously undercut you such that you never make a sale, then your price is too high considering the supply and demand for the item.

BakedGoodz.4082:

Archer.6485:

I’d much rather see they change the precursor instead of lodestones. Lodestones are managable even if they take a while. You can get some from farming and buy more from the TP. For every lodestone you’ll be a little bit closer.

Precursors however have no progress, you just keep loosing money in the forge untill you maybe you get one eventually.

I agree with this guy, we gotta pick the right battle and it can’t be every 5 mins someone makes a new post “OMG I FARMED MOB A FOR 15 MINS AND IT ONLY DROP 1 ITEM B CHANGE DROP RATE PLZ” yes lodestones are difficult to farm but it is a rare item for a reason, secondly it’s not that expensive to buy them. I mean anyone who plays the tp properly should have no problem raising the money required for that part of legendary. Thirdly as stated it’s optional so stop being a huge cry baby everytime something doesn’t give u the item u want right away.

I farmed a long route of Elementals (Air, Earth, Fire, and Ice) in Malchor’s Leap two nights ago with quite a few Risen and Spirits thrown in. Probably over 200 unique mob spawns and I never got DR on experience or loot that I could tell. Wearing 141% MF gear plus 40% from food. Got a single Molten Lodestone for 6 hours of it. Could that just be poor luck? Yeah, of course, but I’m having a particularly hard time coming up with these Lodestones through any sort of ‘natural gameplay’ or farming.

@Fabsm – In that setup, what hammer do you put the Sigil of Blood in? Still Berserker’s at this point (so no +Healing from gear)?

No… I don’t and have never owned a precursor, but that’s a terrible idea. The precursor lottery currently serves a very important role in the economy: it prevents an overabundance of 75+ rare and exotic weapons from overflowing the TP.

I went searching for an “of the Mists” staff for a few weeks ago. The conclusion I reached: it doesn’t exist.

As far as I know, what you see in the screenshots are the “Abyssal Scepter”, the mainhand weapon type shared by both the Phantasmal Warlock and Phantasmal Disenchanter. (Side note: and how many Mesmers really use a scepter? Would have been better to make it a staff in the first place. Or improve the Scepter.)

The recipe for the Abyssal Scepter is current bugged, however, and produces a Mystic Wand. As far as I know it follows the same ingredients pattern as the other Mists weapons.

Morrigan.2809:

I wish we could get the Foefire skins on a staff or even the Mist one ( sorry can’t remember it’s name 0-0, it is sort of a phantom purple ) it would be awesome.

These are the exact two I would love to see, for my Mesmer and Guardian.

ens.9854:

Doesn’t make a lot of sense as far as AI goes though

Mobs take stacking toughness as a personal challenge to their ability to break through it.

“Tough guy, eh?”

What I love is when I run past a player fighting two mobs on Orr, and his ‘spare’ mob suddenly peels off and charges after me. I didn’t even get within 15 feet of it!

Yeah, Guardians for some reason just have a huge amount of implicit threat.

It doesn’t have to be a re-use of other existing legendaries’ special effects. It could, for example, add musical accompaniment to your skill uses. Just saying there’s a lot of ways they could’ve gone with this offhand, and it appears like it went nowhere.

I think you would have a better chance at stopping gold sellers if you took out the botters. I think I reported the same group of 4 rangers on my server while leveling my Guardian, first in Kessex Hills, then in Gendarran Fields, then in Swampfly Fen, and now in Orr. Those four among several dozen who still hang around various areas in Orr every day for the last week.

Jestunhi.7429:

These days I only really flip items which triple my money (3c returned for each 1c invested in buy orders).

Holy poo. I think the best I’ve ever made was about 10% on margin trading. I suppose I’m just terrible at predicting market trends.

sigh clearly I need to hire a broker.

At some point I will drop a lot of cash on the gem store to trade for gold (because I’m terrible at TP investments and I know it). I’m going to wait for a more favorable conversion rate as well, though; it’s not really worth it at the current rate and it just feels too low still when you look at it side-by-side with the going rates for black market gold.

This sounds like an all-around bad idea. Inconvenience or cripple legitimate players and add only a little overhead to gold seller operations by forcing them into the TP for transactions instead of mail.

I have gotten 8 Ectoplasm from my last 10 rare salvages over the last two evenings with Master Salvage Kit. Sorry it isn’t working out as well for you

At first I thought it was the item in your right hand on the first picture and I thought, “magically delicious”.

Then I realized it was the item in your left hand -.-;

Congratulations, though I agree with you that it appears underwhelming.

I dislike many of the staff skins in this game. They almost universally don’t fit with my Mesmer.

I’ve been following this thread since it started and just began working on the lodestones for Foefire last night. Gonna take… a while, though.

Thanks everyone who’s contributed!

When can we expect to see some human ponytails? I promise you I will buy one if there is also an upcoming human ponytail option, but I probably won’t buy one if we’re not going to see the option in upcoming updates. For a makeover to be worthwhile to me, there have to be some options that I want to change to. XD

So I’ll be honest here. I probably died less leveling my Mesmer to 70 (so far) then either my Necro or my Guardian (both 80). It wasn’t necessarily slower or anything, but here’s a few things to consider:

• The most successful (and common) bots run as Rangers, Warriors, and Guardians. I have yet to see a Mesmer bot farmer.
• Mesmers have a substantially harder time accomplishing simple PvE tasks than most professions.
• I can walk up to almost any standard PvE mob and auto-attack it to death on my Guardian.

A Mesmer is not a faceroll class to play in any field, and especially not in PvE. Mobs are not easily “confused” by your illusions, illusions are relatively fragile, the Mesmer is physically quite fragile and doesn’t have consistent self-healing.

A Mesmer is not bad at PvE, but it takes more effort to accomplish the same things. Much of that effort may be juggling very tight timing on your skills or simply kiting a mob to buy time or wait for it to die.

I don’t pretend to know an answer to “fixing” the Mesmer in PvE. Part of me thinks it doesn’t even need to be “fixed”; Mesmers are simply more challenging to play in that style of gameplay.

What I’d recommend, for both practicality and to extend the life of the game for you, is:

• When you want to farm or just roll mobs, play a Warrior or Guardian.
• When you want to have a challenge in PvE or accomplish tasks that would benefit from tricksy skills (or look good in a dress while wielding a kitten monster sword), play a Mesmer.

Other alternatives include:

• When you want to explode people in ~2s in WvW, play a Thief.
• When you want to get that glazed look in your eyes and drool at the keyboard, play a ranger.
• When you want to re-discover your appreciation for any other profession, play a Necro.

Sorry Engies and Elementalists; I really don’t know you that well.

Artorous.8573:

Zogyark.4597:

Oh look, it’s another cool looking GREATSWORD….

It’s like you haven’t even looked at all the different Staves, Daggers, Sheilds, Axes, Hammers, or any other weapon. Every weapon type has loads of awesome skins to chose from.

Staves do not have loads of awesome skins to choose from. In fact, I find them depressingly bland and ugly compared to all of the martial weapons.

He wasn’t saying he had it, he was saying that the Gift of Light combines with Mystic Coins.

I have the suspicion that’s for the Infinite Light recipe, though.

@OP – Yes, this happens. Why would ArenaNet do anything about it? This is economics and the free market at work, exactly what they intended.

Someone probably trying to drive up the price of Glacial Cores on speculation. Or just trolling in general.

How much do mithril harvesting tools cost you, 1.6s or so?
How much does a single raspberry sell for on the TP? 88c according to GW2Spidy.
If you got 2 raspberries per harvest, those 200 raspberries would sell for 1.76g.
What are you talking about? XD