Guild Wars 2

I have never seen the Knight event completed, despite trying several times every day on various servers since release. And forget about the achievements! They are not attainable with skill, time, or even money; 100% luck of server draw. There is nothing I can do, personally or with my guild, to complete all Living Story achievements, and this is extremely disheartening.

I have to go to YouTube to see what the Prime Hologram and Scarlet fights are like. That’s how I get to experience Living Story content. Fun. Stuff.

Back in December, for some reason, my account was banned from purchasing gems. I tried several credit cards, PayPal, etc. and just got an unhelpful “failed” message in a red box in the game client.

After a back-and-forth with support, I got the equally unhelpful:

In reviewing the purchase attempts, we have found that you have triggered our Risk Management security feature. As we are unable to override Risk Management, the only suggestion we may offer at this time is for you to locate a local or online retailer offering the the product you wish to purchase. Gem Cards are available from several retailers around the world. Here is a list of authorized retailers that are selling Gem Cards.

and

I understand that you are frustrated; but this is not a bug. Our system is working as intended.

As I stated in my previous response, we can not override our system. We appreciate your support of Guild Wars 2 but I can only suggest either using Gem Cards or waiting and trying your purchase again later.

I made it clear that my account was not the victim of fraud, nor am I a fraudster myself. I just want a little golem that cuts up asparagus and a server transfer.

Has anyone else run into this issue? It’s been three months and I still can’t buy gems from the game client. ArenaNet, if you are reading this, can you please take my money?

I was also traveling, between airports, and missed the fireworks. I know it’s not a huge deal, but I hate seeing those empty, hopeless achievements.

I wish they’d give a larger window, or at least not put a timed event on a holiday weekend.

I was traveling for Father’s Day weekend, and seem to have missed the event entirely. I’m a little disappointed.

Reposting for relevance: http://i.imgur.com/8w7birP.png

I first did skipping stones a couple of weeks ago only with the help of a fellow mesmer. We kept portaling each other up when one of us fell. I think mesmers’ portals play a very critical role in this game, because they allow us to save each other a lot of frustration.

I offer a port almost every time I complete a jumping puzzle, and never expect or solicit a tip. It makes me happy just to help.

I too would like the answer to this question, and to have it addressed if the answer is no.

I still follow the salvaging guide outlined in #1a-d of this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/So-You-Hit-80-A-Quick-Endgame-Handbook

We already have casual PvP:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Costume_brawl

The Nightmare Tree is a tank/spank no matter which path you do. With a dedicated, coordinated group, you can melee and DPS it down, but in a PUG, ranged is almost always best. You don’t always know what other players are going to do, so ranged you can both stay safe and watch everybody.

As for the spiders, kill the ones that aggress you, and do so immediately. Dodge the cha-cha dance, and you’re golden. Killing it ranged only takes a minute or two.

After the 5th vine goes down, the boss spawns, and one little vine is left. At that point, most people just target the boss, because all the other adds go down once he is dead.

To answer your question, the boss spawns another little vine at 75% health and another at 50% health. If you can’t survive 3 being up, you can kill them and go back to the boss, but it’s not ideal, because it gets chaotic at the end with all the AOEs and the blossoms. You kind of want to stay put.

Note that if you wipe, you may as well restart the dungeon. When the boss resets, all the vines reset, and now you have 6 vines and a greater nightmare vine. Still doable, but harder.

PM me sometime if you want me to run you through it. I love Twilight Arbor.

I would much rather have a bar that shows me percent completion toward the final tier of achievements. I have no problem being rewarded achievement points at certain milestones, but this tiered system with no information about the total hurts my sense of progress. I have to look up the totals on the wiki.

“I make a pretty good team!” -my Sylvari mesmer

“Jennnnaaaaahhhhh…are you serious?” -Logan in Caudecus’s Manor story

Mesmers have Time Warp and Mass Invisibility, both of which are incredibly useful in certain circumstances.

I spent a lot of time on this chart, to catch you all up:

I have read every post in the recent magic find threads. Everyone agrees that magic find has some negative effect on damage output and some positive effect on loot, but no one understands what precisely those effects are, and what the cost-benefit analysis looks like. The discussion goes nowhere if we can’t quantify the impact.

And no, you’re not losing a full 40% of your effectiveness. These calculations ignore stat boosts from trait lines, time spent not in combat or waiting for cooldowns, the asymmetric relationship between power and critical damage, unintentional condition damage, etc.

I am recruiting 4 people to help me collect data. We will learn a dungeon really well (probably CoF), and run it a few times every day or many times over a weekend, with and without MF on a single player and the whole party. We are trying to find out:

1. To what degree are others “screwed” by a party member’s magic find?
2. Is it more or less profitable to run with magic find, and does it depend on your party’s gearing decisions?

The ideal candidate will:

1. Be genuinely curious and unbiased about the outcome.
2. Be flexible, dedicated and willing to find time to do many runs.
3. Be friendly and willing to contribute work (e.g. video recording, data entry, report writing) to the project.
4. Have a basic understanding of statistics, quantitative modeling, and economic game theory.

I know this is a big undertaking, but I think the community would love to see results from a project like this. Any takers?

P.S.- I’m mildly afraid this will turn into a flame war. If it does, just send me a direct message. I’m serious about doing this.

How do people feel about utility infusions? Is it selfish or unacceptable to get an amulet with a utility infusion instead of an offensive/defensive stat? You’d be doing less damage than the people who picked an offensive infusion.

mercury ranique.2170:

-wink- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Portal_Entre -wink-

I really couldn’t do it until I found a mesmer to join my mesmer. I got really far solo with my warrior, though.

Keep in mind that if you have stability, you can jump on the edge of the bowl and then back on the floating rocks when they come back. This allows you to make a mistake or two and still finish.

While leveling, I place buy orders on sets of blue gear every 5-10 levels. I don’t infuse them. When I’m done with them, I sell them. It’s practically free, and sometimes generates a small profit.

I would say gold if you do dungeon runs, MF if you do event farming.

But really, it’s up to you and your personality. Gold drops will be more consistent. Magic find can return nothing or really awesome/expensive loot.

There seem to be 2 totally separate arguments against magic find here.

1) Practical: Wearing magic find considerably hurts the experience of your group. The group has to “carry” the MF player.

2) Philosophical: Magic find gives you a boon that others don’t directly benefit from. This is selfish and unfair.

If you want people playing a very specific way, find a guild with like-minded individuals, and only do content with those people. To dictate the actions and experience of everyone in the open world is extreme. Clearly, some people enjoy playing with magic find, and if it doesn’t affect you, and it makes them happy, just let them be happy.

After all, the point of the game is to have fun.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I can quantify how much averaging MF across the group impacts me. You have nothing other than your perception that me having MF on my gear impacts my performance at all. You don’t know my build or my play style and I’m fairly confident I could change my MF significantly mid dungeon and you would never notice.

This kind of says it all. There’s been no data to show that MF has an appreciable impact on gameplay. That is to say, the effect is so minimal that it may as well not be considered.

Imagine what you would need to prove otherwise. You’d need a representative sample of all players, and hundreds iterations of dungeons or events with and without a single player’s magic find (and the others are a control). You’d need to look at the p-values to see what’s the likelihood that you may have received these results by chance alone. And to quantify what? Time of completion? Sales revenue from posting rare drops on the TP? Overall player satisfaction?

Magic find has no place in a PUG berserker CoF farming run, where an extra 6 seconds tick people off. But everywhere else, it really doesn’t matter. The players, and their cooperation and skill is what matters. Different players can deliver different results with different sets, and to judge them only on numbers is very narrow-minded.

I wish I could just buy you all drinks and talk this out over a couple of beers.

You should sacrifice something to get magic find. That makes sense. You’re making your life more difficult in exchange for increased drops. It’s like gambling; it’s fun for some.

To be honest I don’t understand why everyone picks on magic find. There are lots of other stats that don’t help others. You’re stretching it to say that my vitality helps you. And ban all potions because your potions don’t help others; they only help you.

Just let other people play the game the way they want. It’s not a numbers game. Telling other players what armor to wear, what weapons to equip, what skills to use, what traits to invest in, what consumables to consume etc. is not fun.

This conversation got so off-topic that I had to scroll up to remember what the thread was about.

daimasei.4091:

Besides, we already have Knight (T/p/p) and Emerald (P/t/p) so, why we can’t have Soldier and Sentinel?

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think this is true. Knight and Emerald are the same set, and in certain specific cases (e.g. when jewels are used as an upgrade), precision becomes the main stat. So creating the same stat combination with a different primary stat (Sentinel) sets a precedent.

In a nutshell, I agree with most other posters on here. There are opportunities for more novel stat combinations like Giver’s.

Mystic.5934:

it would of been funny if sentel was precision (primary), power, crit
I’d LOVE to see people argue about which is more elite between that and berserkers.
it’d be even better to see groups such as “berserker gear only” … “sentinel gear only”

I too would LOVE to see this flame war.

I had a really subpar experience playing on a MacBook Air (shocker, I know). To be fair, this was the fully specced i7 (Intel HD 4000) with 8GB of RAM. Lowest settings, I got about 30fps on the 11" screen, and 13fps on an external monitor.

Note that the hardware requirements of the Mac client are higher. I believe this is because the Mac version is a port, so some performance is lost in translation. Just follow the minimum requirements (and preferably get a MacBook Pro with a discrete graphics card), and you should be fine.

Remember that you’ll get better performance for less money on a PC, so don’t let GW2 be the driving force for the MacBook purchasing decision.

Here are two threads I found for you, that more or less discuss the same thing:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-So-We-Are-80-What-Now-from-here
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-End-Game-Options-Are-There

haha this question was in response to a player map-chatting in Lion’s Arch requesting a “MF run.” I literally thought this meant running around Orr with magic find gear, and was very excited to do so.

However, that is not what the player meant. XP

I agree the minor change from Soldier’s is silly. Especially because as players become more skilled they tend to rely less on toughness/vitality and prefer more power (and this is a step toward more health).

I’d like to see a stat combination of power, condition damage, condition duration. Probably wouldn’t out-DPS Berserker’s, but it’d sure be fun.

Were you expecting a thread about magic find, the Mystic Forge, or the Molten Facility?

IMO crafting is the fastest way to level, but only if you have the gold. Your story quests grant a ton of experience so keep up with those. Second, do dynamic events at or slightly above your level. But most of all, just enjoy the game, and you’ll forget about the leveling piece. Almost anything you do grants experience.

Almost every time I go to use the mystic forge, I see one or two defeated players in the middle of it. Sometimes they’re alive and dancing. Can someone explain to me how and why this is accomplished?

Sabreene.8062:

I just ran across this and had to reply, especially after seeing that last post. I can see my name, lol! (Rienke)

Although not new-new to TA (I’d guess maybe 8 to 10 times, mostly on the up/up path, a few f/f and once f/u), I really appreciated your leadership on that run. I’d caught on to some of the tricks before by imitating the others I was running with, but it was really nice to hear what should actually be done, why & where. I learned a few things, which I always like.

Plus, it was really nice to be with a group that was pleasant and encouraging, rather than sniping at one another. All my runs have been through the lfg site, and this was one of the best groups. At the time I didn’t know you were looking to help people through the dungeon, and I remember thinking how refreshing it was to have someone go out of their way to help (especially when Klem joined).

Thanks again!

Danireathorn.2814:

Hey guys!

Just want to throw my experiences out there. We ran with Tony tonight and it was GREAT. Amazing communication and he really knows his stuff. I have only good things to say about him.

Thanks! It was awesome to run with you. I’m glad I provided some value, and am genuinely impressed at how fast people picked up the run/tactics.

Thanks for the many replies; I’m glad there’s a lot of interest here.

I ran one of my first coaching sessions, and took a small snapshot of the chat afterward. This really makes the run satisfying for me.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Ohhh, I misread. I thought this was about story mode. Sorry!

Yeah, I have all three explorable paths still to do.

Tony, can I add you to my friend list and ping you in game some time?

Of course!

Some pick-up-groups are downright mean, and this doesn’t give new players a pleasant opportunity to learn speed runs. I happen to know TA explorable very well, and I want to help people learn how to do it and how to deal with various PUGs.

Please PM me in-game or on the forums if you’re interested. Hopefully more people can spend a few hours sharing their knowledge, and less time being frustrated at others.

To Khaolic’s point, is there any player that continually wipes with Magic Find gear and then turns amazing when equipped with Berzerker’s? They’re not doing any DPS if they don’t know what they’re doing. If you have to carry someone, it’s their lack of experience, and not the gear they’re wearing.

Explorer’s does just as much DPS as Knight’s.

I’d like to preface this with the fact that I AGREE magic find gear has no place in dungeons, only because loot you get from enemy drops is low (you’re usually skipping mobs). It’s not about hurting others; it’s that you’re not really helping yourself. Why wouldn’t you throw those stats instead into toughness to (at least) make your life easier?

That said, I don’t understand gear checks, or the logic “magic find is selfish.” Isn’t toughness, vitality, and healing power also selfish? Do you guys kick magic finders and allow tanks? Sure, if you die, you’re hurting the group, but what if you’re skilled and you don’t die?

As an example, I ran TA f/f (I have hundreds of times), and the guy who volunteered to stack oaks had no idea what he was doing. I had to switch to an underleveled alt at the boss to get the 60 tokens. Well, everybody died and I soloed the tree just by kiting the oakhearts. I was in blue gear with white weapons, and lv45 in a lv55 dungeon.

What I’m getting at is that (in this game) skill plays a much more relevant role than gear. Also, it’s silly to assert that there is one optimal build (e.g. berserker), because it sucks all the fun out of the RPG aspect. Just let people play the build they want to play, and help them when they struggle instead of yelling at them or kicking them.

I also find this achievement impossible. How does one obtain it? I’ve never even seen a crystal prison…

I’d like to echo that this also happens to me with every reset and is super annoying. It’s very embarrassing to ask my friends with generic handles who they are.

A friend of mine bought his first box(es) of Warrior Gear and got Zap. Lucky guy.

I’m not taking the gamble and instead saving Laurels for ascended trinkets. You can’t buy those with gold.