Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the help. It worked. That was a collection item that sounded easy like the earlier ones at Divinity’s Reach, but turned out to be more frustrating than many others. It’s not a high location and that statue doesn’t seem particularly significant and doesn’t seem to resemble Kormir either.

Thanks again!

“During the night, use the Celestial Cartographer’s Gear in the Ossan Quarter of Divinity’s Reach”

Does anyone have any information on where in Ossan Quarter this is? While running around during in-game night time throughout the whole Ossan Quarter multiple times clicking away on the gear item, nothing seems to trigger it, including not the vista, nor the path of the tour guide.

If anyone can share info on this, thank you.

It’s likely been suggested and requested before (but the search functionality on the forums isn’t very helpful), but can we get a simple popup when the mastery bar hits full. Additional exp is wasted if it’s not applied to a new mastery rank? (Alternatively, the additional exp could be in reserve and applied.)

One positive way to look at it is that there’s so much for players to be engaged with and to be deeply engrossed in, that it’s reasonable that players aren’t closely paying attention to that mastery exp bar at the bottom all the time. Also, a minor point, at the end of the bar, there could be some additional coloring variation to better distinguish between full and almost full.

Thank you.

I was doing Act I The Jungle Provides as the alternative path on a secondary character, and the boss fight with Slavemaster Adryn in the Itzel village does not seem to be a well designed boss battle for the environment.

1. All the npc allies get downed quickly and are of no assistance
2. The bridges/canopies in the treetop village are narrow making it easy to fall off, whether from dodging from the pull of the AoE attack.
3. The boss’ AoE attack has a gravity pull which tends to pulls the player off the bridges/ledges
4. The boss’ health goes back to full if the player strays too far, like after getting falling or getting pulled off the bridge/ledge

It’s one thing if it’s just the players’ dodging which causes the player to fall off which they can learn to be better about, but the combination of no support to keep the boss’ health from regenerating and even if the player avoids the AOE, the players may still be pulled by the gravity of the AoE, just to get back up and find the boss at full health. It seems like a frustrating design for that environment.

This doesn’t seem well designed. If it’s intended to be like that:
1. It’s probably not appropriate for Act I for difficulty and different player skill level.
2. The difficulty doesn’t seem to compare with the other path/option of attacking the Mordrem which doesn’t have those issues.

Unless they address it, I’d suggest attacking the Mordrem rather than defend the Itzel village. At least I know better going forward.

Obviously, including based on the discussion here, the current design associated with the Lyssa event with the trait unlock goes against ANet’s core MMO philosophy. Keep the discussion going and get it escalated.

In the meanwhile, scale up the defense event. Ask your guildies to help if needed.

Pandaman.4758:

Guess what they’re going to do? Maybe squat in your event and scale it to the point that you can never succeed?

Currently, their impact will probably be negligible. The Priestess of Lyssa event once it starts draws a bigger group. Those who do the defense event are usually less than a handful. It’ll go down to a question of numbers…how many want the defense event to fail vs. how many want the defense event to succeed.

Ordinarily, if the defense event’s failure wasn’t needed to start the next event chain to unlock the trait, I’d totally agree that everyone doing the defense event was acting with the intended spirit. Currently, (perhaps also attributable in part due to the megaserver) the interest of some few players is to more actively do the defense event knowing that it negatively affects a number of players who are more interested in the following event which only happens if the defense event fails.

ANet should monitor this and address it more appropriately. My suggestion was to help those who want the event to fail. Perhaps if they are successful enough, it will deincentive those players who actively want to frustrate them. I’d be happy to help the defense event fail, and I’m sure guildies, etc. would be willing to help as well if needed.

Hopefully, ANet will address this more appropriately so that no one needs to “grief” on each other or consider it that way. Different players have different objectives, and usually, players like to help other players unless perhaps there’s some cost or loss to them. ANet should try to incentive that as opposed to creating this silly conflict.

Suggestion for the immediate problem: What worked recently was that if there are enough of you that want the event to fail, go to the event and scale it up without attacking the Risen. Lure any stragglers to the center. You can help the event to fail. Just as the “griefers” are entitled to try to succeed the defense event, you’re entitled to hang out and not attack (and help the event to fail). Fight fire with fire.

In the big scheme of things, it’s not good design that players are now interested in doing this event more to “grief” other players, and that players want an event to defend against the Risen to fail to do the next event to get the trait.

Thanks for the info. I was confused by the language of being given an allotment to restore (or change) your looks since I don’t really have much in ranks, but I have modified the look of a number of characters in PvP based on PvP item/skins acquired (e.g., through Achievement Points, etc.).

The recent features release article says the following:

You will be given a one-time allotment of Transmutation Charges based on your rank in PvP so you can restore or change your looks.

Dulfy’s website has the following from the Livestream notes.

1 Transmutation charge per PvP rank after the patch

How’s this going to work? How many charges will be provided? Is it just 1 charge per rank for the account? (isn’t 1 charge needed for each item slot? or is it different for PvP sets?) Is this number that is provided then account based or multiplied for multiple characters on the account? Are there restrictions on the transmutation charge? Will the free charges be the same, whether for the look in PvE or PvP?

If the intent is that a player can at least fully transmutate one set of skins of his/her choice for each character that exists as of the update (“restore or change looks”)? with a greater bonus for higher ranks?

Some clarity would be helpful. Players might be interested to know whether they are and how many transmutation charges they would be receiving. Maybe they might more likely buy more character slots now before the update if they might be getting free transmutation charges (that would defray/offset some of the cost by getting the slot before the update) if it exists as of the update.

If the quantity of charges is also based on rank, would that be a multiplier that multiplies free charges? Would that be a huge boon to those in PvP with a high rank (also with multiple character slots)? (I don’t have an issue with it if it is)

Just curious what the plan is. Thank you.

I meant the PvP armor and weapon items (which are essentially the skins), but thanks for confirming my understanding. There’s the crafting with the Mystic Forge requiring items using Glory, and I noticed that you can’t put multiples of them in the Mystic Forge and get one…it doesn’t accept that. I just wanted to check to see if I might be missing something before deleting them.

Thanks for confirming.

Ok. Thanks. Other than deleting them or actively using them as a skin on a character, just to check, there’s nothing else to be done with them?

With the removal of Glory, what can I do with a big surplus of duplicate PvP reward skins?

One major reason for the announcements in advance of the change was to get feedback which the community has obviously been actively providing. Just because you don’t hear a particular response or you don’t hear the response you want necessarily doesn’t mean that the feedback hasn’t been heard and ignored (it’s possible though). ANet has until April 15 so they may possibly be looking into adjustments and fixes. We’ll see. You should appreciate that they’re giving you the opportunity to help them by providing constructive feedback. They can’t please all the people all the time, and they’ll make the difficult decisions. They’ve could’ve just released it on April 15 without advance information and then deal with the feedback afterwards.

To follow-up on my suggestion of a 10% increase to Celestial armor and weapons, but no change to a 6% increase for Celestial trinkets.

Assumptions:

1. Celestial gear is not currently regarded as unbalanced or in excessive high demand.

2. Celestial gear is not the target of the change (not anymore than other gear with crit damage).

3. It is desirable to have the value for Ferocity on Celestial gear be equivalent to the other stats.

4. When determining the new stat value, ANet would do normal rounding to the stat value (so a 6% increase for a particular item may actually yield less than 6% when rounding down).

5. Stats are normalized with respect to each other or are regarded as normalized (obviously subject to individual varying utility based on profession, build, and personal choice) so that 100 points of stat A is comparable to 100 points of stat B. (it’s more an apples to apples comparison as opposed to trying to compare their benefits and bonuses.)

Some other assumptions that are a given: the conversion of crit damage to Ferocity is 15 stat points for each 1% of crit damage; players can mix and match gear (to optimize) so players aren’t forced to use all gear being Berserker or Celestial, etc. (so it may be useful to look deeper into categories like armor and trinkets or even individual pieces rather than full set numbers).

(This is based on ascended gear…I haven’t bothered crunching numbers for exotic gear.)

A summary of the expected change to Ascended Berserker Gear:

Net total loss in overall stat points to Ascended Berserker armor: 20 stat points across 6 pieces of armor (2.4% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Berserker 2H weapon: 16 stat points (3.4% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Berserker 1H weapon: 8 stat points (3.4% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Berserker trinkets: 284 stat points (17.7% decrease) (this is where the hammer is dropping! for Berserker gear and most other crit damage gear)

A summary of the expected change to Ascended Celestial Gear (with the 6% increase to stats):

Net total loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial armor: 75 stat points across 6 pieces of armor (6.4% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial 2H weapon: 47 stat points (7.1% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial 1H weapon: 12 stat points (3.7% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial trinkets: 144 stat points (7.5% decrease)

Suggestion for Celestial Gear

A summary of the expected outcome from the suggestion for Ascended Celestial Gear (new suggestion of 10% increase to stats for armor and weapons; keeping the 6% increase to stats for trinkets):

Net total loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial armor: 26 stat points across 6 pieces of armor (2.2% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial 2H weapon: 26 stat points (3.9% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial 1H weapon: 5 stat points (1.5% decrease)

Net loss in overall stat points to Ascended Celestial trinkets: 144 stat points (7.5% decrease) (same as above since it’s still a 6% increase)

The thought is that the impact to Celestial armor and weapons should be further mitigated as the impact to Berserker armor and weapons is relatively minimal. The reason Celestial gear is being disproportionately impacted is really to keep that elegant design of having all the stats have the same value (it’s not some pro-rata across the board reduction in Ferocity as crit damage gets converted to Ferocity).

If there are questions on the data, I can provide more info without inundating this post with excessive computations.

Nike.2631:

Morningstar.2934:

What’s your basis for the 1% crit damage to 10-11 stat points?

Look at the current trait lines – 1% crit damage is given as a direct alternative to exactly 10 points of other stats.

That’s a reasonable basis to make an assumption (which you didn’t state or I missed it), and that may reflect earlier intent, but there is still effectively a stat “normalization” being done (exchange rate) and a loss of stat benefits.

Nike.2631:

Look at a full set of berserker – the other secondary stat is 745 making it directly equivalent to 71% crit damage (with a ratio between 10 and 11 points per 1% crit damage).

If you look at Berserker armor, it would support that 1% = 15 stat points already. I’ll follow-up and provide some summary data to that effect. Berserker trinkets throw it all out of whack so that doesn’t adequately address that.

The whole point of what ANet is doing is to “normalize” crit damage into a stat like the other stats where ANet has indicated clearly and expressly that the exchange rate is 1% for 15 stat points.

No… that’s the ratio they are changing it to, which is why 30 trait points will now buy you 20% crit damage instead of 30.

I can understand now how you’re making that assumption now, but I see that as a separate issue which no one has really touched much upon — there’s going to be a substantial loss in trait benefits when crit damage gets converted to Ferocity. There’s still the conversion ANet is doing and the resulting loss to gear with the change.

It might be helpful to consider comparison between Berserker gear and Celestial gear which are both affected to compare apples with apples with respect to stat loss.

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

If you compare a full sets of armor, celestial’s current Critical Damage stat totals almost match it’s berserker’s equivalent; so for this greatsword it’ll be more, but for other pieces (like the Solaria, Circle of the Sun vs. the Ring of Red Death) a standard minor stat would be more. Although I’m making a point, I still am trying to be fair… Over the set, Celestial’s Critical Damage averages out to be pretty close to that of a minor stat, so I gave the current minor stat number for 2 handed weapons (134) for my calculations.

You should state what your assumptions are upfront to maintain credibility.

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

So you pick the trinket that is statistically the worst celestial piece in existance, prove how even that is losing stats, then try to say that this proves how celestial will be better?.. Very interesting logic. (And as they’ve released 15/1 will be the ratio, 7% crit would be 75).

Your basic arithmetic is flawed. The conversion of 7% based on 15 stat points to 1% is 105.

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

In order to actually fix the damage that was caused to celestial, while still keeping it proportionate the bonus would have to be at least tripple; so 20% actually IS reasonable. Full celestial currently gets 468 added to everything, it will soon be getting 28 (basically no noticeable difference) added to everything and an extremely noticeable critical damage nerf. What I would suggest would make celestial 561 across the board. And before you go jumping on how “outlandishly high” that is, it’s only about half a primary stat (meaning it will be exactly as intended, jack of all trades, master of none.).

You don’t really support why 20% is reasonable. Celestial gear is all-purpose utility gear which may not be right for every profession/build and play choice. Focusing on purely dps-based arguments isn’t sufficient. If that’s the basis, then perhaps Celestial isn’t the right set (there’s certainly support among players for allowing players to opt for a stat change – they did it for MF gear).

I’ll follow-up with a further post of why I think a 10% increase for armor and weapons would make more sense. I think 20% is extreme, taking into account that all gear with crit damage will be affected by this (particularly trinkets).

Nike.2631:

Your ferocity conversion is wrong, and that’s why people keep flipping out over Celestial. If the Current berserker is 1087/745/71% then 71% = 745 ferocity (NOT 1065). Currently ferocity is graded at about 1% per 11. It’s exactly 1% = 10 where traits are concerned.

If you keep trying to say Celestial gear has points assigned to it on a 1%=15 basis, of course it looks whacky. Right now it has something right around 1% equal 10-11. Convert it properly and THEN knock it down to equal the other 6 stats (+6%) and you can see you see that once you’ve applied the UNIVERSAL nerf to ferocity (loss of about 33%), the shifting of points is quite equitable.

What’s your basis for the 1% crit damage to 10-11 stat points? You’re just making this assumption without any basis. The whole point of what ANet is doing is to “normalize” crit damage into a stat like the other stats where ANet has indicated clearly and expressly that the exchange rate is 1% for 15 stat points. There is no current Ferocity that applies. Your conclusory statement of it being equitable is apparently based on an arbitrary assumption you applied.

A couple of questions:
1. Variant named items with the same skin – In the Wardrobe system, how will naming for an item work where there are different name variants for the same skin (including special/unique named variants of items such as from Personal Story rewards)? There apparently won’t be a mechanism after the change to retain and transmute the specifically named item as transmutations will be based on what the skin in the Wardrobe is.

2. Starter Elementalist Headgear – It’s assumed that those who kept them (or start a new Elementalist character and have them) will open up the starter gear skins. Is the Starter Elementalist Headgear going to be fixed so that the skin works after it’s transmuted? (Obviously, it’ll be available to any light-armored profession, not just Elementalists.)

Aren’t they currently used by double-clicking?

I think the impact is that it will further separate the gulf behind the high demand skins/items and the moderate demand skins/items. The demand for the rarest/best skins/items will increase since there is an increased benefit and utility from those skins/items. There’s likely an increased relative demand for legendary weapons (where the use of their skins will replace other skins) even though they become less rare over time.

For ANet, it will probably be helpful in increasing the use and need for transmutation charges and also likely increase the sales of character slots since players will get more benefit in incremental characters on an account. Smart move for ANet…a change that most players seem to be excited about which enables players to more happily make purchases from ANet.

Recommendation to ANet re: Celestial Gear

In considering how the Ferocity change is expected to affect most gear (where there will be minimal impact to armors and weapons and most of the impact will be to trinkets) other than Celestial gear, ANet should consider a 10% stat increase to Celestial armor and weapons to offset the approximate reduction of 50% to crit damage when it changes to Ferocity. This will keep the net total stat loss to Celestial armor and weapons to be similarly minimal (like for Berserker armor and weapons) while maintaining/re-establishing the design of Celestial gear having equivalent stat bonuses across those major stats. A 6% increase with respect to Celestial trinkets makes sense as the impact on Celestial trinkets would similarly be a harder hit just as the change is a hard hit for Berserker trinkets (and other non-Celestial crit damage trinkets).

I think a number of players have recommended a 10% increase for Celestial gear, but I think it makes sense to distinguish between armor and weapons vs. trinkets. It would mitigate the otherwise disproportionate impact of the sharp reduction to crit damage/Ferocity on Celestial gear in order to maintain the elegant design of equal value stats.

Based on the actual impact to Berserker gear, it seems like it’s the crit damage bonuses from trinkets that is necessitating the most adjustment for balance.

Cynar Valdyr.7854:

Going back to the 2-handed ascended weapons and my original point, overall stat-wise celestial will be weaker after the “fix”. As I showed in my last post a wupwup claymore currently gets what calculates to a total of 632 stat points… Adding 6% to 83 makes the new stats likely to be 88 for each of the 7 stats for a total of 616, 2.5% less stats than it has currently.

So even with their attempts to compensate for the huge hit to celestial’s only decent stat, it is weaker overall, even after a 6% increase. And realistically, as it has nothing it’s “good at” anymore, it should be getting considerably more overall to even be equal to what it was.

How do you get 632 as your current stat total for the 2H ascended Celestial weapon? If you convert crit damage to a stat based on the conversion for Ferocity (15 stat points per 1%), current crit damage of 11% converts to a current stat of 165 for a total of 663 not 632. The net stat loss for the 2H ascended Celestial is expected to be 47 stat points for a net loss of 7% (after the 6% increase).

Unless I’m mistaken and missing something, most of the negative impact to Berserker gear will be to trinkets. If crit damage is being changed to Ferocity where it matches the value for the Precision stat, Berserker ascended armor will net a mere total loss of only 20 stat points (with the stat value for crit damage is x% x 15) across a set of 6 armor pieces, with four armor pieces losing a total of 25 stat points, and 2 armor pieces (helmet and chest) actually gaining a total of 5 stat points. Most of the stat point loss will be to trinkets where ascended Berserker trinkets will effectively lose a total of 284 stat points. (I guess that’s why Berserker trinkets may be more effective for the crit damage bonus than armor pieces.)

On the weapon side, Berserker ascended 2H will effectively lose 16 stat points and ascended 1H will lose 8 stat points. For the costly crafted ascended Berserker armor and weapons, it doesn’t seem to be that big a hit.

There’s a stronger argument to change stat sets on the Berserker trinkets, most of which aren’t crafted. (The situation is different for Celestial gear which has a better argument to change stat sets in general where the 6% bonus is much less than the stat loss that’s expected to be applied to crit damage/Ferocity with respect to Celestial gear across the board.)

I want to echo the sentiment that the impact to Celestial gear is still disproportionate, even with the 6% increase (maybe less than 6% due to rounding) that ANet is planning. The least ANet can do to mitigate the disproportionate reduction in the relative benefits of Celestial gear is to provide an ability to swap it to another set.

It’s nice that ANet is providing some information ahead of time to prepare the player base, but their information on the Ferocity change on Celestial didn’t include actual numbers. ANet didn’t disclose that the overall stat reduction to Celestial gear ranges from 9% to 13.5% (the reduction all focused in Ferocity, a stat regarded as very useful as it contributes to DPS) where ANet is planning to compensate with a 6% increase to the other stats (which stats are of varying utility based on profession/build, and the 6% may actually yield less due to rounding).

To illustrate, an example would be a two-handed greatsword, ascended with Celestial stats. Current stats are 83 for six stats and 11% in crit damage (which translates to 165 in Ferocity based on 15 Ferocity for every 1%). Post-change, the expectation is that all seven stats, including Ferocity, will be 88 (based on the 6% increase ANet referenced). The effective crit damage/Ferocity stat will have been reduced from an effective 165 to 88, a net reduction of 77. Based on a pre-change stat total of 663 (where 11% crit damage is 165 Ferocity), that’s a reduction of 11.6% vs. a gain of 6% on the six other stats.

A comparable two-handed greatsword, ascended with Berserker stats would be expected to have a 3.4% reduction overall (with no corresponding increase). Current stats are Power 188, Precision 134, and Crit Damage of 10% (which translates to 150 in Ferocity based on 15 Ferocity for every 1%). Post-change, the expectation is that Ferocity will be 134 to match Precision, with an overall stat redution of 16. Based on a pre-change stat total of 472 (where 10% crit damage is 150 Ferocity), that’s a net reduction of 3.4%.

A more fair outcome for Celestial gear would be a corresponding reduction in Ferocity as similarly applied to Berserker gear (without any compensation of 6% for other stats), so that in the above example, Ferocity for the Celestial greatsword would be 147 instead of going down to 88 or perhaps reduced 134 to match the reduced stat for Ferocity in Berserker gear. (It’s strange that Celestial gear can provide a higher crit damage stat than Berserker gear, but Celestial gear seems to have its own progression scheme.) However, this result goes against the elegant design of having the same value for all the stats in Celestial gear when it goes from 6 stats and crit damage to 7 stats.

Alternatively, ANet could consider an increase higher than 6% to compensate for the reduction to Celestial stats. It should be noted that due to rounding, it’s likely that stat increases will actually be much less than 6% post-change (for an ascended helmet, the stat will likely go from 21 to 22, an effective increase of 4.76% not 6% and the reduction to the stats without the 4.76% bonus is 13.45% based on the reduction from crit damage to Ferocity [3% or 45 reduced to 22] for a net reduction of 9.94% – if there is a round up to 23 as a possibility as mentioned in the OP, the net reduction goes down to 5.85% after the increase is applied). The net decrease in stats for different Celestial gear (ascended) will likely effectively be between 3.7% to 10% for the different gear types, this is after the 6% bonus is applied (with most gear having a net reduction of between 5% to 7% -after- the 6% bonus is applied). It doesn’t necessarily make sense why the net reduction to Celestial gear should ever even exceed the 3.4% reduction that is applied to the overall stats of Berserker gear.

In summary, Celestial gear seems likely to be disproportionately impacted, even with the 6% bonus, because of the need for elegant design of having matching values for stats as opposed to a more fair reduction specific to the crit damage/Ferocity stat yielding a more proportional net reduction. (This is on top of the prior reduction in net benefits for Celestial gear compared with other sets from the removal of magic find bonus due to the change of having account-bound magic find bonuses.)

At the very least, ANet should mitigate the buyer’s remorse that a number of players may feel from the disproportionate impact on Celestial gear, by allowing players to at least change to another stat bonus set, especially given that some players may not have as great a utility for having an all-stat bonus combination (where the big selling point to Celestial gear was the nice crit damage stat).

I just wanted to raise the issue that the Belcher’s Bluff Achievements under Activities has 3 achievements that are currently also dependent on Poyaqui being available. If the assumption is that he will no longer be available after this Bazaar of the Four Winds chapter of the Living Story is complete, players won’t be able to ever complete those 3 achievements if they don’t do so during the Bazaar of the Four Winds.

Perhaps Poyaqui will relocate or there will be a comparable replacement after the Bazaar of the Four Winds.

In any event, for new achievements in general, I would suggest that ArenaNet update its process and requirements for new “long-term” achievements (not based on temporary content) so that completion of any of them is not dependent on the existence of temporary content.

Thank you.