Guild Wars 2

What you’re wanting, more variety, I’m all for. As much as I love warrior, I do want to see some more parity between the professions. You can clear the dungeons pretty fast with any group of semi-competent players.

But the subject is records. Not about speed runs in general. In that respect, a record that isn’t actually the fastest is no more the “legit record” than one that uses bizarre exploits to skip around the map and around bosses. It’s one thing to set limits against some egregious exploits, which is what I saw the point of the thread to be about, but another to start setting a bunch of restrictions that aren’t core to the game (Anet doesn’t care how many Warriors you bring).

I could see a category for any comp (ie the standard stacking of classes), and a category for unique classes. But beyond that, where do you draw the line?

Do we suddenly have a category for Only Rangers? Only staff mesmers? No consumables? Whatever you want as long no one uses X ability? All Cleric gear? Because it’s different and entertaining? They might be interesting speed runs, but when you can tailor a category just to say you’re the fastest at it, the time has little value as a record.

If you are trying to set a record, why would you intentionally handicap yourself by running a less than ideal set up? Or, even worse IMO, forcing other people to run a less ideal set up just because you don’t want to run what is currently the fastest?

If you’re about putting on a show, that’s a totally separate thing. And not a bad thing. But if you want the records to really stand for “fastest clear”, then you have to accept that certain groups and comps are faster. Otherwise you have fastest clear* with the footnote of “Not actually the fastest clear”.

Maybe set a separate category for not using duplicate professions. But I wouldn’t go much beyond that, or everyone’s going to have a record in their own category and none of them will mean anything.

Does anyone here actually follow any speed running communities? I’m beginning to think not…

Someone please explain to me why a good chunk of the conversation went to “this is boring to watch” and “this comp is unoriginal”. What does that have to do with speed clearing? The point of speed clearing is to I dunno, clear the dungeon as fast as possible.

Talking about what are exploits and where the game boundaries are is fine. Talking about “entertainment” and creating all kinds of artificial handicaps and excluding classes because you don’t like that the certain comp or strategy is fastest is counterproductive to speed running.

I come from a background in the speed running community for other (non-mmo games) like Super Metroid, Link to the Past, Super Mario World, etc. In those communities, it is widely acceptable to do whatever glitch or skip you may need to get to the end of the game, short of using a cheat system such as Game Genie/Action Replay and the like. Categories are created to determine parameters, or if certain paths/techniques are used that will greatly affect the run time – for example and in-bounds only vs out-of-bounds run of Portal, 100% vs Any% vs Lowest% completion of the Metroid games, etc.

Because of this background, I have a pretty open view on what is acceptable. Obviously, not everything translates nicely into the MMO atmosphere, but when things are not specifically deemed “illegal” to do by the devs, I view them as fair game. Illegal would be something like going completely outside the map (NOT sneaky paths, using stealth, hugging the walls, hiding in corners, or pathing mobs in order to go around them, but things like running through the walls of CoE, blinking through doors or walls, going into completely other explorable paths where there isn’t an overlap). If anyone has ever gotten outside of a map or an instance in this game or any MMO, it’s pretty obvious by the graphics – flat textured files, lots of decorative walls or stones or other features that you can actually pass right through, etc.

Also illegal, as noted by the devs, is attacking the boss from a position to take absolutely no damage nor any risk of ever taking damage (generally this is done by ranging from a position outside of the boss’s attack reach). Again, I view this as different from smart positioning. LoSing to position the boss/control where the adds spawn I feel is fine, and is actually really standard practice in MMOs across the board. Likewise with pushing bosses to corners, walls, etc. I personally see two grey areas in the “boss positioning” category, both of which I find acceptable but others may not. First is attacking mobs through walls WHERE THERE IS CLEARLY A PATH THEY COULD TAKE to get to you. There are very few places where this actually happens, but CM comes to mind – there are a lot of side rooms where you can attack through the walls with certain weapons, but if you aren’t positioned correctly the mobs will come right around to you anyway. The second is related but more general, and that is positioning bosses/mobs where you are the least risk, but if positioning is not exact you will be hit by the boss and hit hard. A lot of them involve stacking and precise positioning for melee groups. Situations such as positioning during Lupi phase 3 to avoid bubbles. I firmly believe there is a difference between attacking a mob from atop cliff/wall where they have NO CHANCE of getting to you and attacking from a spot where they can still hit you if you aren’t in the exact position.

Beyond that, to me, everything is pretty much open. Stacking and rotating reflects? Sure. Whirlwinding into corners to get extra hits? Go for it. Chaining stealth to pass mob? Absolutely. Bringing certain classes/multiples of the same class to a run? Absolutely, as long as it’s the same from beginning to end – no switching from Mesmer on one boss to Warrior on the next or the like. Stacking buffs out of combat and then switching weapons before combat starts? Also fine, because these combo fields and buffs have a time limit that you have to work within, some of which is wasted by switching back and setting up, and also if you mistime or mis-position your finisher with your combo field, you’ve now put several abilities on cooldown, some of which are very long.

All of these tricks, which some consider to be grey areas, are finding the most efficient way to beat the boss/instance and is what speed running is about. They all involve active set up and things can go wrong and go downhill if you aren’t perfect.

I like the crazy view.

Anyway, it’s pretty easy to replicate. Simply beat a cage boss (possibly the frog too, haven’t tried), and relog to character select screen before the countdown hits zero for the level end.

Since I’ve been largely in charge of our guild bounty organization, I wanted to throw a few things into the conversation about Sotzz. I’ll likely have more feedback on the bounties as a whole tonight after we do our tier 3.

I spent some time in Gendarran this morning, early when it wasn’t very crowded at all (hoping to largely have the barrels to myself). I would say in the course of just shy of 2 hours, I found him 3 times. Not a huge sample, but the average despawn time was 1 minute and 44 seconds. There are some spawn points that are roughly a minute’s run from the nearest waypoint (without speed boost, running through mobs if neccessary to make the shortest path, and thus getting slowed occasionally). By the time you throw in “HEY, I’ve found him. Go to this waypoint.” and everyone sees that and gets through the loading screen, it can cause some huge problems.

I also hit a drought where I ended up doing loops breaking the same barrels 3 times (someone on the other side of the map that I hadn’t been to would randomly set him free/despawn him). People like to break things. It’s fun. Heck, there are areas where you’re encouraged to break things for renown heart. Suspicious barrels look a lot like centaur supplies, and they break in one hit. So I start in the southeast corner of the map. About the same time that I get to vigil keep, some random person sets Sotzz free in the centaur cave in the west. If Sotzz should choose to respawn in the southeast, I would have no way of knowing, and the whole search would be wasted.

I think it’s okay to have some bounties that are hard to find, but I think it needs to be balanced out. Right now he has a lot of potential spawn places, with the possibility of getting unintentionally or intentionally griefed by other players (they may not mean to ruin your bounty, but they can’t do much if they get smash-happy and he just happens to pop out.)

I’ve been thinking of a couple of options, for Sotzz or for other mobs in the future.
1. Keep the same number of spawn points, but revert the despawning. Even when he didn’t despawn, he could still take a very, very long time to find. In fact, it was in some ways harder because there were far less barrels to gauge if you’ve looked in an area or not.
2. Keep a relatively short despawn (I’d still say it needs to increase by at least one more minute), but decrease the number of spawn points, or keep them more on the beaten path and less random all over the zone. To make it a bit less punishing, and less travel time from waypoints if you’re going to add in the crunch of how quickly you have to engage him.
3. Who’s to say we can’t have some bounties where the whole trick is in finding them, and that once you found them you didn’t actually have to fight them? Maybe some targets are just good at hiding. That way, you could start tucking bounties in caves or up on hills or in the far corners of the map. Or you could have spawn points truly covering the zone. Put Sotzz at the end of the Provernic Crypt… it’s going to take a good 5 minutes to get to him. People in general don’t look up or in caves or around corners unless they have to for a PoI or a heart.
4. Alternatively, who’s to say there aren’t some bounties where we know automatically where they’ll be, and we have to “fight through their lair” so to speak?

In the end, I think variety is good. I think some should path. Some should be easy to find, but maybe harder to fight. Some should be hard to find – hiding in barrels and trees and bushes, or crisscrossing entire zones – but easier to fight, if you have to fight them at all.

I just opened a chest at the same spot and got level 43 green snakes – the kind that shoot three bullets.

My character was scaled to level 31 at the time.

Edit: None of the other chests have spawned incorrectly scaled monsters, just that one. I’ve gone back a few times (FOR SCIENCE). Sometimes all of the monsters are 43, and sometimes only a couple.

I’ve been watching Dawn for awhile while I gather gold. It seems to jump a huge spike one day, then settle down to only slightly above what it was. It’s at a point where I’m not panicking yet. Don’t let the buy-it-now price scare you too much, try to keep an eye on what the offer prices are doing. I’ve had a couple of guildmates buy Dusk when they were not the top offer.

That said, I have absolutely horrible luck in game, possibly stemming from the whole bug at the beginning of the game where I wasn’t getting wvw bonuses (/tinfoil), so I’m staying away from the forge unless I get rare GS from normal activities like boss chests or dungeons.

Honestly, just post a video. From zone in to end reward. It’s not a 5:10 (your words in the video) run if you skip the first minute to 90 seconds of the instance.

I have no problem with other classes, and hell, maybe you’re right. I wouldn’t mind a bit more diversity.

But theoretical paper dps and “this attack does more damage than your attack” doesn’t prove much over the course of a whole run in a group setting. Nor do excuses of pugs or not a dps group or the moon wasn’t in the proper phase or mercury retrograde.

It’s been discussed to death, but it basically boils down to Risk vs. Reward and Reward/Time. For trash, these aren’t just poor, but practically nonexistent given how long it can take to kill, how much damage some trash does.

If the group isn’t experienced in skipping, it can sometimes take longer than killing the pack, depending on what type of mob (eg, if you can’t avoid or stability the knockdowns, you are going to die trying to run through a half dozen mobs)

If the group IS experienced, then it’s the best reward for your time investment to skip them.

No one’s requiring you to be in a group that skips the trash, just know that your view is in the minority and a vast majority of pugs are formed with that mindset of skipping, so you may have to make your own group.

Please, for all that is good and sane, stop dropping discipline banners on world bosses that can’t be crit. Dragons (Claw adds notwithstanding), SB, Jungle Worm, Inquest Golem mk 2, Fire Elemental

Math question. If you have 0 chance to crit a boss, what’s 110% of 0?

I don’t know if it’s just females (I don’t have any male Asura), but I can replicate this glitch at any time.

If I waypoint and immediately start running, my Asuras lose their neck for about 10-15 seconds, or until I stop moving for a couple of seconds. After which the head will “pop” back up and I will have a neck again.

It does not happen if I remain still when I waypoint.

Okay, fair enough, but Anet is also losing a lot of gold sink potential by allowing that storage (yes, expensive storage, but imagine if instead of paying 10g once, he had to pay 10g every 2 or 3 days).

On a smaller scale, it’s generally cheaper to buy in the middle of the week and sell on weekends. If you can reasonably speculate the weekend price, you can list everything on Tuesday when you buy it. In other games, if you list it on Tuesday, you have to list it again on Thursday. If you want to save it for the weekend, you have to use storage space. Wither or not that storage space is worth the listing fee is I guess valued by the seller.

I’m not saying a time limit would fix any problems, or that I’d even like to see one. But I am surprised there isn’t one.

Ooshi.8607:

Rouven.7409:

I don’t understand why my (sell) offers stay up indefinitely,

Your stuff is too expensive!

Rouven.7409:

there is no incentive on finding a competitive price.

so that they sell quicker?

Don’t need to thank me…

You missed his point.

In other games, you have time limits, generally 24-48 hours. If you don’t price your item where you think it will sell within that time period, you lose your deposit and have to list again (at a new deposit). Thus a bigger gold sink if you misprice, and more incentive to either price competitively or not list at all.

In GW2, you can price things whatever you want because you are not at risk of not selling the item within a time limit. If I get a sword that is selling for 100g but I think somewhere down the line it might sell for 200g, I can put it up for 200g and forget it forever. I will never lose my listing fee or have to worry about relisting it. And maybe 4 months down the road it will sell, maybe 6 months. Maybe never. But you never have to think about “will this honestly sell in x time frame or will I be out my listing fee?”

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit, this isn’t getting us far. Instead let me ask this.
Here are the assumptions that I’m operating under for this question:
1. You feel that PvE and TP have difference levels of gold earning
2. You feel that PvE and TP should have the same level of gold earning

What would be your plan for implementing a reward system that would achieve what you desire, given the constraint that you may not get rid of the trading post?

I would argue that it doesn’t have to be the same level, and would go on to assume that it’s probably impossible to do.

But the common perception is that there is a drastic difference between earning on the TP versus earning elsewhere in PVE. That drastic difference (whether real or perceived) is where the discontent lies. If I make 4g per day and a trader makes 5g per day, then oh well. No biggie. He makes a bit more than I do but the difference is acceptable. If I make 4g per day and a trader makes 20g per day, then it seems more of a problem. (Making up numbers, just examples).

So I don’t think it’s necessary that they be equal, just that the gap doesn’t seem so drastic. That’s why I have been enjoying the new guaranteed rares from bosses. Yes, the value of the individual rare/ecto goes down, but the volume compensates. And yes, I might not make as much money as a trader (and honestly all the ectos I put on the market are that many more ectos for traders to play with if they want), but it doesn’t feel like trading is the only way to wealth. And so I am fine with making less so long as I still feel rewarded for my time spent elsewhere in the game.

I enjoyed the parts where OP was like “Don’t complain about the class makeup” followed by a post complaining about certain classes.

:shrug:

To each their own. I’m an elistist kitten, so I probably wouldn’t go with any of those classes anyway, but the contradiction was fun.

I also don’t pug, so it just avoids this drama anyway.

Currently open on Blackgate, unsure of how long it has been.

Horace doesn’t have a buffed chest. I did that right after reset and the chest was blues, so unless it was changed in a minor patch since then.

Taidha got buffed.

Taking the gates of Arah wasn’t buffed, but I don’t know about defending.

Flame temple tombs/Rhendak the Crazed was buffed.

Fire Shaman (Cinderspire) in Iron Marches was apparently buffed, but the chest is bugged and linked the the Metrica Elemental, so the only times I’ve killed him have resulted in no loot since I looted the Metrica Elemental.

Dredge Commissar in Dredgehaunt has been buffed.

Oh thanks. I forgot he went flame legion shaman in the last phase.

I didn’t have to spike wall kite, just lots of circle kiting, most of his projectiles missed by me constantly moving, and then only had to dodge the font.

Pretty solid tactics though.

Um, let’s see. I did it the week they updated chest loot.

For the elementals, I generally tried to peg one with the rifle and lure it back next to or very close to the bubble. Melee it until health was an issue, then jump inside the bubble until my heals or other utlities (condition removal, endure pain) came back up. As a zerker I could usually get two to three each utility cycle, depending on the type of mob. Later elementals were a little harder to lure so I had to do more rifling.

I don’t recall off the top of my head if it’s the case with these types(I haven’t done it since I didn’t get a chest, and probably won’t until I hear rumor of the issue being fixed since metrica ele is so much easier), but I know with some fire elementals if you are far enough away, you don’t actually have to evade dodge and will avoid at least half of the attacks just by constantly moving back and forth (Think grawl fractal shaman).

Also, I don’t know how many people you had. Could be enough to trigger some obnoxious respawn timers. If that’s the case, I feel for you.

It’s very hard to melee him because he will stun you and then flurry, so you either need lots of stun breaks or lots of stability. If you can get him to stick to an NPC you can melee a bit more.

Otherwise you can circle kite with a ranged weapon and only have to dodge his axe throw. As for the elementals themselves, if you are getting overwhelmed they cannot enter the npc bubble.

I solo’d him on my warrior… I’d rifle kite until he got stuck on an NPC, then burst in and melee, then go back to kiting.

Diessa Plateau has the Flame Temple Tombs. It’s guarded by Champion Rhendak, but if you lure him away and are quick enough, you can loot it before he dies. You can also solo him with some patience and movement.

Cursed shore also has the chest near Rotbeard.

Iron Marches has the flame shaman, but his chest seems to also be linked the the fire elemental in Metrica.

Fields of Ruin has the Foulbearer Ogre Chieftain, but that chain has been bugging a bit lately.

I can confirm that the battle for the vault in Ashford has NOT updated its chest.

While this is true about the Megadestroyer status, other non “world bosses” have had their chests increased. The Maw shaman is only a champion, as are the Dredge Commissar and Ulgoth. The Orr temples are guarded by Legendary level mobs, and do not have the large portrait either. I don’t recall if the Eye at the end of Zho’qafa is legendary or champion. So I feel that the “it’s not technically a world boss” argument doesn’t hold in this case.

Regardless, I hope that missing Megadestroyer is considered an oversight. Especially compared to the Mk II Golem, he requires more coordination and has a longer lead-in chain of events.

I did it on my warrior the other day. It took a decent amount of time, using a mix of melee and range, zerker gear but defensive utilities.

But got no chest, as apparently it’s linked (bugged) to the Fire Ele in Metrica, which I had already looted that day.

I sincerely hope they don’t nerf anything. I haven’t had this much fun in the game in awhile, and one my biggest peeves about the game was that you didn’t feel adequately rewarded by actually going out into the world and doing things. Maybe it’s because I love the world exploration so much. Now it feels at least on par with shelt/pen (or whatever the current farm spot of the month may be at any given time). It also puts it on par with dungeon running CoE/CoF and then salvaging rares bought with tokens. Basically, it gives options.

The patch was only a week or so ago. I’m guessing the excitement will die down after a bit, which should help with the lag. I also imagine that the servers will get looked at.

I don’t think it’s entirely a guesting problem either. It may be partially to blame, but early on in the game I did dragon events where there were enough people to cause or almost cause an overflow, and it didn’t lag this badly. Also, as it has been mentioned, you cannot guest to circumvent the “one chest per char per day” rule, so please stop using that as a reason to blame/kill guesting.

In the end, I’d say give it a couple of weeks to see how things eventually settle down. And in the meantime, go get rewarded for playing the game.

Iehova.9518:

Name bosses that couldn’t be done using “horrible faceroll tactics”. Hard mode: No Lupus.

I’ve seen a few hilarious Alpha “How I dodge?” fail groups.

jROON.7501:

MagnumOpus.5469:

This isn’t to ask why people bother to run past mobs in dungeons, but to ask why that has to be the go-to strategy for people playing dungeons?

It looks like people can’t read, especially not the first line of the post (there should be a study on this)

I thought similarly at first… but the two questions aren’t exclusive. The reason skipping is the norm is because of the reasons outlined in “why people do it”. If most people find it boring/tedious/unrewarding, then that’s my skipping is the main strategy.

That said, I’m inclined to agree that it’s probably not as extreme as the forums lead you to believe. Most of the forum posters are going to be the extremes on either side. I’m guessing a large number of people fall somewhere in the middle, or don’t care either way, or kill some things but not every thing, or will do whatever depending on the group.

Color border or other indicator on inventory icons so I can easily see rarity of item when looking at backpack, forge, and bank window.

Ability to buy more than one of an item at a time from vendor. For example, purchase 100 orrian jewelry boxes at once instead of clicking 100 times.

When crafting, an easier way to make the intermediate items. If I want to make a sword and I have all the raw mats, I would like to look at the final recipe and be able to make ingots, blade, hilt, dowel, inscription, and final sword without having to find 6 different recipes in a list of several hundred (I’m fine with having to click separately for each part, just want to do it from the same window). Cooking can be even worse with some foods.

Dungeon tokens stacking higher than 250. Most exotics take 300 or more tokens anyway. As the most expensive items (gifts) cost 500, I think that would be a number that makes sense.

Those are my biggest quality of life issues at the moment.

I’ve never had a problem with the rush changing directions, but I’ve definitely encountered them going too far and resetting. To the point where i don’t bother with them anymore – it’s a lot of time and work to get him low, only to have him zoom into another room/across the map and heal to full.

Or the abom after plinx… he’s got a relatively small box that you have to keep him in or he goes immune, starts to heal, and runs back to the middle. But almost every change he does takes him outside that box.

I think, for the most part, it’s toned down to be fairly reasonable except in some key places. And these places are nearby to whatever the popular levelling/zerging spots are.

For example, there’s a skillpoint in wayfarer just north of where the Maw event takes place. It’s far enough out of the way that the Maw zergs don’t go there, but apparently close enough that the people afk waiting for Maw are being considered when the game determines respawn rate vs how many people are around. Fighting to that skillpoint, I have had mobs respawn one second after I’ve killed them. There was one or two times it just became a cycle for me, where you are constantly fighting at least two mobs at various levels of health. Stuff spawning behind you that you don’t realize or accidently back into because in your mind it should still be dead.

There are some similar spots in Kessex south of the bridge farm and centaur camp. The bandits respawn quickly, the Krait in the lake respawn quickly, etc.

I understand the system – if you have to kill a named mob or x number of mobs for a heart, but they’re on a fixed timer and there are 20 other people trying to kill the same mob/mobs, so you can’t find any to kill… that’s no fun either. However, I don’t know if it’s possible but the criteria needs some tweaking… either some way to discount afk people and people chilling by a waypoint, some way to lessen the area of influence of an event zerg group, some way to tell who’s ACTUALLY in combat with the same mobs you are. I’m not a programmer. I don’t know what numbers can be tweaked, if any, but as an outsider, that’s just how I see things.

I love running dungeons (most of them anyway), but the thing for me and my guild is that it’s just not worth the time to kill every single mob. There is almost no reward. And risk is one of two extremes – Mobs that are boring hp sponges, or mobs that will straight up annihilate you in a hit or two (which also often have way too much hp). Then there’s Arah, which just has TOO MANY mobs as it is (of both risk varieties). Some of the trash takes longer to kill than the bosses, and at least the bosses have guaranteed loot of SOME kind. They haven’t found a sweet spot for trash where it just doesn’t feel like a waste of time to me.

And that’s not including the loot, which is for the most part nonexistent. I’m not saying everything has to drop exotics or 50 silver, but I learned real quick that the chances of getting something BAD are enough to make it not worth my time. The chances of getting something even remotely good… yeah… no. And then, there’s the fact that most of the good loot like cores/lodestones don’t even have a chance to drop off of trash at all. I honestly think if say, cores had a chance to drop off of ANYTHING in the dungeon and not just chests, more people would kill more mobs… I would probably still skip it, but at least if there’s a REASONABLE chance of dropping something worthwhile, the devs have presented you with a choice that you feel is valid – is your time worth an x% chance at something of value. Then you could decide, depending on what the value of X is, what the mob is, how long it takes to kill, etc. Right now in most eyes, there really is no choice, X is so small a number and the reward for it is so little in value.

Say you do a dungeon run, and you skip all but the necessary mobs (bosses, mobs blocking gates, etc), and it takes 30 minutes (making numbers up) and you get 26 silver plus boss chest loot. In one path of CoE I tend to average 1 rare from the chests, one core, and about 5 greens and 5 blues, give or take, plus usually 3 boss goody bags. There are some paths, where if you stop to clear everything, in that same 30 minutes you are barely halfway done… so your run takes 60 minutes, you get 26 silver, the same boss chest loot, and one extra rare from trash (let’s say worth 35 silver). Per run, yes, you’ve come ahead. But in 60 minutes, I can run twice… so I’ve made double the boss loot, double the boss bags, another 20 tokens, and another 26 silver. Plus, it’s a lot less boring to me.

It’s kind of a broken record to say it, but you do have to seek out like minded people. They are out there. There are a number that seem to post on the forums. Honestly, if you randomly joined my group (say we were looking for one) and you said that you wanted to kill everything, I would probably tell you that it isn’t the right group for you. I’m not going to tell you how to play, but at the same time, I’m not going to let you dictate how I play. Nobody has to get offensive or call either side names. Part ways and go on with life.

If you’re with an organized group or a speed clear, they’re probably going to want more zerker warriors than anything else. But you have to have the knowledge to play a glassy melee class because your survivability is nil compared to shout heals with knight/clerics gear. A lot of it is positioning and knowing when to time dodges to get the most dps uptime. Keep a ranged weapon for a few fights but mostly you’ll want to go either greatsword or axe/mace for melee.

One guardian is usually good… most of the ones I run with are cleric/knights with soldier runes.

I used to run shout heals when I would pug and when the dungeons were a little less forgiving. It’s a bit more forgivable for pugs because the coordination in terms of healing and boon removal will vary from group to group. But beyond pure randoms, most groups would rather have the warrior be pure dps who is smart enough to survive than shoutheal.

Nope, not with the price they’re at. Back when Unidentified Dyes were only a couple of silver I would on occasion. Short of Abyss/Celestial, it’s generally bet to sell your unidentifieds and use that money to buy whatever dyes you want. (And even then, you have to be crazy lucky to get any kind of rare dye, let alone Abyss or Celestial).

I guess I’ve never had enough luck in this game to see it worth my gamble.

Back up on Blackgate as well.

My advice, after struggling to get credit for awhile, is to find a mob with a ranged attack, and dodge right as they throw. Much more consistent in getting credit than melee mobs, where I found even dodging out of their big charge up attacks wasn’t at the right timing to get credit.

Blackgate is open. Just got online though, so don’t have any timetable.

Edit: Server reset. Everything contested again.

I had a guardian friend who went with Regal dye (it’s a rare dye… there are similar colors in masterwork – you might try midday or robin). Mind you, this was with heavy armor… dye does look different in different armors.

I don’t know about all three, as he was doing white and regal. Maybe pastel winter or winter ice would work for a highlight color.

I would say “sort of” but it depends on what your expectations are. They added some things, and are looking to add some more on Tuesday.

As far as end game, it’s a lot the same. We do have Fractals now, which scale in difficulty but can also hinder you with a gear check and a grind (or gold sink via TP) that comes along with getting some resistance (a long while ago there was rumor of the mat requirements dropping but I haven’t heard anything about it since before Christmas). Note that you would have to start from level one, and cannot currently join a higher level fractal (this will change on Tuesday however).

They added Southsun cove for 80s, but the mobs there are really mean. I found it was an okay place to farm some t6 mats that I needed for my fractal gear, and there’s some orichalcum including a rich node.

Dungeons have had little change but players are much more adapt to them, so there are a lot of dungeon groups. Some are very picky and want to speed clear with full dps, so there may be some sour social encounters, but there are other groups available or you can advertise your own on gw2lfg.com. There are youtube videos for every path of every dungeon, which are good to at least review.

I still prefer map completion myself – I like the sandbox nature of it. There is an issue with some maps being underpopulated, so you may run into group events that just don’t get completed. Again, there have been posts by Anet that it is an issue they are looking into (how to get people back into the world), but no official news yet.

Decent-sized update looks to be dropping on Tuesday, so check out the details.

If nothing else, coming back is not like you have to resub/waste money if you don’t like. Why not come back and see? I can tell you it’s great (I’m still having fun), but my opinion would differ. That’s the nice advantage of non-sub games. Once you buy it initially, there’s no commitment and you can come and go as you please.

Honest question, something of a tangent.

Is it still fun at that level? Genuine question. I used to raid hardcore in WoW back in Vanilla-Ulduar and played some other games pretty seriously, as well as working on speedruns in the non-mmo form. I used to have fun doing that sort of thing just to say I could, and that beating hard content was it’s own reward.

Time and life have personally changed my mindset, I just don’t see it in fractals especially. I mean, it’s essentially the same fights, with just bigger damage numbers, right? To me that’s less fun than if there were new bosses every 10 levels or whatnot, where the boss strats become the challenge as opposed to the 1 bajillion damage unavoidable hits (in the case of Maw… I know there are other agony sources that are avoidable). Also, 2 hours for one part of fractals just seems time inefficient for me these days.

Anyhoo, are you still enjoying it?

Open on Blackgate atm, but I don’t know how long it has been.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a non Group-Labelled event that I haven’t been able to complete solo, although the vista in Echoslab Arches in Iron Marches is rough and the Skillpoint in Meremoot Hill in Kessex tends to have the centaurs respawn too quickly.

Having said that, I think group quests are still okay things, especially for the major zone events like the fire elemental and the shadow behemoth and the shaman in Wayfarer.

But major events aside, I think it’s at the point where either some events should be demoted from group status, including some of them at the ends of DE chains – not all those chains need to end with a champion, do they – OR more needs to be seriously looked at and done to get more people out into the world.

Regardless of the reason you’re going after the lodestone (legendary, mjolnir, runes of whatever the lodestone make), I’m in the camp of “something’s not right here”.

A low droprate would be acceptable if you didn’t need so many of them. But for the recipes, you need 100, 250, 350. At current rates, we’re talking 500-600 hours, for just the lodestone part. It’s one thing to have a grind, grinds are part of MMOs to one extent or another. And yeah, some items require more time than others.

But there is a fine line, and we’re getting there. People get frustrated, burnt out if they feel they don’t feel like they have a chance. A carrot is one thing. Putting the carrot so far out of reach is another.

Is this really intended, and it is really good for the game?

Honest feedback? I thought the clock tower was more fun, and not because it was harder. It was just more fun.

As for this, I think the puzzle was okay. Some of the major complaints of the clocktower were addressed. I have no problem with group jump puzzles and I don’t think they’re likely to go away for holiday events. That said, it definitely feels less crowded, and the jumps don’t have to be as precise. There’s room for error, albeit small.

What I think A-net needs to move away from is timed puzzles for the next holiday. An interesting, maze-type thing would be fine. Maybe include an incentive for doing it fast (I would suggest a higher quantity of loot, not new or special loot), but don’t make it a requirement. While I have no fundamental problem with timed jps, I think we’ve seen them for two holidays now so it’s time for something new.

I agree that the wait time is too long. Clock tower seemed about right. This seems too long.

Other than that, I have no specific qualms at this point, and I can’t even pinpoint why I found this one less fun. It was still a quality puzzle just less exciting I guess.

Interesting. Not sure the time/annoyance of the forge may be worth it for me when I have other options.

On the other hand, this probably explains why all my gems got bought off the TP last night.

I have a couple of places, depending on the mood I’m in. The amount is variable though, so if you’re looking for bar none the single best place, I don’t have that.

WvW is good if you can hang with a zerg that captures things. Taking towers is pretty fast Karma. Camps are okay if you’ve got a smaller group that can just camp-hop. Dolyaks and random enemy vetran “control points” are okay for solo, but provide significantly less karma.

Event chains in Straights is pretty good, especially some of the pre-balthazar steps. Alternatively, the area leading in from Sparkfly seems to be pretty good, though I have to admit I’ve had less success there than a lot of people/videos claim.

If I’m willing to take a hit in how much Karma I get (due to downlevelling), I’ve got a couple of lower zones with easy DEs that cycle fairly quickly. Dredgehaunt seems to be my current favorite.

While I’ve never been in a super-duper-hurry-must-have-sunrise-now mood, I’ve actually made some pretty steady progress. Couple of gifts down, couple of stacks or half stacks of t6 mats. Yes, I still need my precursor so I’m taking the rest of the mats as they come. Lodestones, however, are halting a bit.

The thing is, I can find a spot to reasonably farm every t6 mat, or at least t5 mats in enough quantity to transmute. Farm for an hour, have something to show for it. Lodestones, not so much. In terms out outright spark farming, I’ve gathered maybe 6. None from CoE. For awhile I was getting at least some cores from fractals, about 8 in the first week, but that has dropped off too.

There’s just not enough reward for actually PLAYING the game. Instead of farming mobs for mats, due to droprates we’re encouraged to farm gold through events/tp/whathaveyou and buy the mats we need. That’s still fine for a lot of mats, because there is still enough supply out there. With lodestones, at the current rate I can reasonably see three scenarios:
1) Supply dwindles to the point where demand forces the price up to figures beyond what is reasonable to a majority of the playerbase (some say it’s already there, but I’m thinking more along the lines of 20g per or more). Maybe the power traders would juggle around with them, but I’d wager even “hardcore” players would find them (and the items they are used to make) beyond reach.
2) Supply disappears completely, making even the strategy of “farm gold → buy lodestone” invalid. This takes the average player AND the TP guru out of the equation. Maybe one shows up here or there at a crazy price that gets lowered slowly (maybe or maybe not, given that there’s no time limit for auctions, it might just get left up there at 300g).
3) Lodestones become “black market” items, and gold sellers start selling them for cash much like they have precursors. (This may be already happening. I don’t know, I don’t go to gold seller sites). Bots start farming spark spawns, but instead of at least feeding those items back into the economy for gold and also to curb market prices (the only “upside” to bots, if you will… similar to situations with t6 mats spiking heavily after bot bans), the sparks are being stashed to be sold on gold seller sites for cash. Additional side effect of bots crowding out players at legit farm spots, similar to what has happened at some popular DE locations.

At the end of the day, I just don’t want actually playing the game to feel futile. Even one an hour, while disappointing, is still something. It’s a start anyway. You’d still have to spend 100 hours in game to farm enough for a lot of the items (and in most cases, this only gets you PART of what you need – gift of light for legendaries/foefire weapons), and upwards of 350 hours for others (which I still think is too high, but let’s start somewhere…). That’s 100 hours of NOTHING but farming sparks, which occasionally drop gemstones but don’t even have much of a “consolation” loot table compared to say, humanoids. It’s depressing to write that out on paper and think about it. It’s even more depressing to think that such a scenario would be a marked improvement over the way things are now.

I’m pretty cool with most of the ideas, though I think my personal favorites would be:

a) purchase from other dungeon tokens (or even some from fractal relics, as I am starting to build a small collection there) – in part because I like the designs of the other dungeons and would like to see a little more attention paid to keeping them current, updated, and a good time investment.

b) some kind of solo questline(s), for those who prefer to work on their own, or for those times when you just can’t get a group together. The effort/time investment would have to be similar to other methods.

c) A similar upgrade path that they have now, but with a much more reasonable amount of mats. Going from 15 t6 crafting materials to 250 crafting materials is NOT in any way a small step, especially considering that aside from agony resistence, the upgrades are minor (couple of stat points) and less flexible (because the “upgrade slot” stat points are already allocated instead of letting you choose an alternate – say a Ruby Jewel on an otherwise defensive-geared/Toughness item).

d) I don’t pvp aside from a bit of WvW dabbling when I’m bored, but there should be an option for PvPers to upgrade as well, either through WvW tokens, some sort of objectives tracking (ie Capture x number of towers/supply camps), or something similar. I’ll let the PvP players take over with idea specifics.

IMO, the more options we have, the better, though I understand that things like “epic questlines” (my personal favorite parts of mmos) take time to develop. As long as the time/effort/gold cost is reasonably comparable across all methods. Which I think is where the current system fails.

Bonus points if these new acquisition methods get us out actually playing the game, instead of shuffling items on the trading post. Personally, I’m not even against a small amount of actual grind (I think some grind in MMOs is necessary and inevitable, just not to the extent that the current pieces require), but I’d rather grind mobs or events or anything out in the world, than feel like the only recourse is to grind gold to purchase the items instead of obtaining the items myself.

As someone who was bugged to not get these bonuses until the Dec 3rd patch finally fixed it, I still don’t think it’s a necessary idea to move to an icon on your boon/buff bar, and DEFINITELY wouldn’t want more than one icon due to clutter.

You can already see these by hovering over at the top, why would it need to be at the bottom too? And it’s a rather lengthy/wordy list when you do hover over it. At least while it’s at the top, it’s a lot harder to inadvertently/accidentally trigger and blocks less of your view. If you put a popup that size on your buff bar or more towards your health bar, it’s going to a) block a lot of combat space and b) be a lot easier to accidentally pop up through normal play (not talking about clickers here either… that area in general is a very common area to have the mouse while turning, gathering, etc).

I also feel the bottom of the screen is already visually crowded – skills, boons, conditions, health, endurance, mini map, chat, experience bar.

I agree with the idea of bringing more attention to the buffs, but I think where you’re suggesting is actually going to be more of a detriment once the person gets past the “Oh, I get these buffs!” initial realization.

Perhaps maybe, some small icons across the top of the screen, similar to what is already there, but for the individual buffs. Or even something to alert you when the buffs change substantially – Anet added a little exclamation point to the BLTP icon when you have money/items to pick up, maybe they could do something similar for WvW bonuses, so that it calls attention, but doesn’t intrude.

OMG. The bonuses.

I’ve missed out on a lot.

Side note, I logged into an overflow LA and they didn’t appear until I was actually in non-overflow, but now I’m good to go.

Path 2, first boss.

The boss event will not trigger if the gates are contested or closed. (At least, this is the correlation we have come across. If the gates are open, everything proceeds as normal. Every time the gates have been closed or become contested while we are in the instance, the boss doesn’t trigger.)