Guild Wars 2

Lishtenbird.2814:

Also, agreeing with Xalugami up there: Indigo Mushrooms as well as Bauxite Ore and other precursor collection node-drops should go into material storage. They do not sell with trash – I would’ve never started these collections had I known they would spam and clog my inventory on all characters

I kept getting Bauxite Ore as well, however unlike Indigo Mushrooms, they stopped for me when that particular Collection was completed. On top of that, Bauxite Ore at least has a sell price so it has some form of value for extras outside of the Collection, meanwhile Indigo Mushrooms can only be crafted into consumable food buffs or deleted. I would much rather see Indigo Mushrooms disabled and removed from the drop table once their respective Collections are done instead of continue to exist as they do now, but having a slot in the Material Storage would certainly ease how often they show up. With the Indigo Mushroom Milk in the Material Storage this increases the default amount of gatherable Indigo Mushrooms you can fit from 250 to 6500 if my math is correct. I do not feel like items specifically used towards Collections have a place in the Material Storage unless they become a permanent drop for the account after completion. This is because there are players out there that do take pride in a fully maxed Material Storage (Xunlai Electrum Ingots make me cry), and having a limited window to gather a Material would actually be detrimental in this case, especially if they’ve already passed that point.

This list looks incredible so far, it incorporates just about everything included in my in-depth post on the old thread with everything related to crafting. Tremendous work on putting this together, I can’t wait to see it when it’s completed. There are a few things remaining that I still feel like should be added into the Material Storage somewhere and I’ll try to provide a good enough reason as to why I think so.

• Siege Novice’s Guide, Siege Master’s Guide, Siege Grandmaster’s Guide.
  (Common Crafting Materials)
  These honestly aren’t too important on their own to add into the Material Storage, however they are still used in crafting different items than just Siege. The main reason I’m bringing these up again is because everything else sold by Miyani (excluding the Legendary Gifts) is showing up in your current list. This would clear up the only inconsistency with her wares, which might end up making some players confused or annoyed, especially if they mass combine Siege or spend their Spirit Shards in advance.

• Golden Fractal Relic.
  (Rare Crafting Materials)
  They are used in a few merchants as currency, just like all of the Living Story 3 items already present in the Material Storage. Besides the sales you can use them for, they are also used in crafting the different types of Gold Fractal Weapons and they even are salvaged out of the weapons too. Once you have all of the weapons you’re interested in, there’s no use of them and will eventually become an issue like how Blade Shards are currently and we’ll be mimicking the same problems we’ve already had.

• Amber Quantic Dipole, Azure Denaturizing Agent.
  (Rare Crafting Materials)
  These are basically just lesser quality variants of the Mists Essence items already present in the Material Storage. These both drop from Fractals and are used exclusively in the Mystic Forge for upgrading (just like the Mists Essences). Another consistency problem.

• Integrated Fractal Matrix.
  (Ascended Materials)
  This one’s the weakest one I feel like belongs here. Its only use is being a currency so ideally this would have a space in the Wallet instead, however since it currently doesn’t and is given to players whether they need it or not, this basically turns them into their own type of Chak Egg item which were a large part of earlier complaints. The only reason I added this again was because there is nearly every step of refinement on your list and this item is loosely a refined Stabilizing Matrix.

• Indigo Mushroom, Drop of Indigo Mushroom Milk.
  (Cooking Materials)
  These two items definitely have to be added in. They drop from all high level mushroom nodes in Tyria and are used in Cooking Recipes. They stack up faster than every other material on your list. These continue to drop even after their Legendary Collection has been completed, and considering one of those Collections is a Tier 1, this means anybody simply starting their journey towards The Bard will have these dropping for the rest of the game. Honestly these are the most frustrating items HoT added so far and absolutely deserve a place in the Material Storage more than most things.

• Jorbreaker.
  (Festive Materials)
  Same reasoning as the last thread. You can still earn Piece of Zhaitaffy in-game (just like Candy Corn), and still access the vendor to compact them into Jorbreakers (just like Candy Corn Cob). Pieces of Zhaitaffy, Candy Corn, and Candy Corn Cobs all have a place in the Material Storage but the Jorbreaker is excluded for no reason at all, despite functioning the exact same. Basically just another inconsistency that should be cleared up for polish.

• Rare Scribe Trophies.
  (Scribing Materials)
  I noticed the users posting before me mention them and they do sound pretty important to add to the Material Storage. These items do stack up over time and there’s nothing we can do besides keep them in our Banks, especially considering their sole purpose is being a Crafting Material. I personally see Lumber Cores, Feldspar Cores, and Pristine Feathers the most frequent and it’s very unfortunate that I have to manually bank them if I want to craft using them later.

Since you also mentioned you would be looking to make cuts to your list, I’ll provide my opinion on what items would make sense to leave out.

• Eldritch Scroll, Anthology of Heroes, & Bloodstone Shard.
  These all stand out for being items you would buy from Miyani within a minute before using them and have no possible way to earn passively or have a leftover amount (this also includes the Siege Guides mentioned above as an addition). I believe cutting these would be the least impactful compared to some of Miyani’s other stock.

• Scribing Pulps, Nibs, Blotting Powders.
  These almost feel redundant to me considering all of the base materials used to craft these things are in the Material Storage, followed by the outcome of these items also being added to the Material Storage. I do like the thought of having almost every step of crafting material able to deposit, but if you really wanted to make cuts these would most likely be the ones with the least complaints or confusion and by far the largest amount of items removed. This would also open more space for the Rare Scribing Materials.

I feel like we should follow a consistency we can continue to build on in the future, filling in and cleaning the few small gaps in the Material Storage Update is the best way to start this, even if it does become a bit more work. I definitely understand this is no easy task and I can’t even express my gratitude towards your work ethic and amount of effort you’re putting into your pet project, since this is huge for dedicated players. It’s great to hear your progress so far and please keep up the great work! Seeing you ask for the Community’s second opinion is the way I wish every piece of this game’s development could be going. Thank you very much for reading!

I’ve been waiting to see a suggestion thread for a long time about this topic that ArenaNet will actually look into. I went though my entire Bank and picked out items that are specifically used in crafting something through either general Crafting or the Mystic Forge. Some of the items may be old and discontinued, but that does not excuse them from not having a slot in storage like they should’ve had since they were first introduced into the game. Any items that have a weaker link to this rule or the possible tab placement will include my personal reason on why they should be included.

Common Crafting Materials

• Milling Basin
• Crystalline Bottle
• Bag of Mortar
• Philosopher’s Stone
• Mystic Crystal
• Siege Novice’s Guide
• Siege Grandmaster’s Guide
• Sheet of Coarse Paper (Fine quality, but other crafting refinement goes here)
• Sheet of Rough Paper (Same as above)
• Sheet of Fine Paper (Same as above)
• Sheet of Smooth Paper (Same as above)
• Sheet of Quality Paper (Same as above)
• Sheet of Premium Paper (Same as above)

Fine Crafting Materials

• Blade Shard
• Shimmering Crystal
• Tenebrous Crystal

Rare Crafting Materials

• Elonian Wine
• Eldritch Scroll
• Icy Runestone
• Badge of Tribute
• Unidentified Fossilized Insect
• Essence of Time
• Golden Fractal Relic

Ascended Materials

• Augur’s Stone
• Anthology of Heroes
• Lesser Vision Crystal
• Vision Crystal
• Integrated Fractal Matrix (Doesn’t have a use for crafting, but it’s a refined Stabilizing Matrix)
• Dynamic Assault Knight Power Core
• Static Assault Knight Power Core
• Synergetic Assault Knight Power Core
• Legendary Insight

Gemstones and Jewels

• Copper Doubloon
• Silver Doubloon
• Gold Doubloon
• Platinum Doubloon
• Amalgamated Gemstone (Isn’t classified as a Gemstone upgrade component, but the most logical tab name)

Cooking Materials

• Indigo Mushroom

Festive Materials

• Wad of Enchanted Stuffing
• Drop of Magic Glue
• Mystical Cog
• Ugly Wool Socks (Currency, but used by Mystic Forge and a salvage result item)
• Ugly Wool Hats (Same as above)
• Ugly Wool Sweaters (Same as above)
• Jorbreaker (Piece of Zhaitaffy’s answer to Candy Corn Cob, why do we have the one but not the other?)

I know this thread is just for the Material Storage, but I can’t help but toss in suggestions for the Wallet as well, since I feel like they are grouped together despite being different systems. Again most of them are probably discontinued, but I felt like I should round them all up regardless.

Wallet

• Pact Victory Token
• Captain’s Council Commendation
• Fortune Scrap
• Queen’s Gauntlet Entrance Ticket
• Festival Token
• Mordrem Bloom
• Custom Arena Time Token
• Reclaimed Metal Plate
• Chak Egg
• Blood Ruby (Remove salvage. Allow players to buy a bundle of Unbound Magic for 1)
• Petrified Wood (Same as above)

This next section I feel is more important to find a solution for. The best way to implement them would either be an additional tab in the Material Storage or a second tab next to the account Wallet on the Inventory window. It’s Keys.

Key Storage/Wallet

• Completed Aetherkey
• Zephyrite Lockpick
• Bandit Skeleton Key
• Key of Greater Nightmares
• Pact Crowbar
• Exalted Key
• Chak Acid
• Machete

Lastly, these last few items I’ve been already seeing people mention in their suggestions. I wanted to share my thoughts against them being included as materials.

• Aetherkey Piece, Essence of Nightmares, Pile of Silky Sand, Fractal Research Pages.
  These items are weird because they double-click and become a completely different item. We have that system already in the Material Storage with Mordrem/Evergreen, but those items at least stay in the same section. I think these are fine to leave outside of any Storage section.

• Bauble, Bauble Bubble, Continue Coin.
  These are a mixture of Currencies with some used in Crafting. I don’t think these have a place getting changed because it could mess up how Super Adventure Box functions regarding the Bauble Purse and where it pulls Continue Coins. My thoughts are to leave these as-is.

• Legendary Gifts.
  I don’t feel like these have a place here at all. Almost every Legendary Gift is crafted from items in the Material Storage and the only reason you would ever have them is if you were crafting the specific Legendary shortly afterwards. The only Gift that people could have a surplus of is the Gift of Exploration, but even that one seems like a rare case.

Apologies for this being a massive shopping list of items and thoughts. It would be many huge strides forward if we can get the Material Storage (and eventually Wallet) to a solid consistency. Very glad you wanted to get community feedback on this subject and really appreciate the chance to get our responses heard.

I was trying to swap the stats on my Ascended Aquabreather and apparently Vigilant (Laranthir’s) is missing from the available stats. Along with that, Trailblazer’s (Pahua’s) is also apparently missing from the stat list too. I wonder why this is the case. Other HoT 4-stat sets are available, and so are other sets including Expertise, so I don’t know why these only 2 specific stat sets are missing since nothing is particularly special about them.

Definitely sucks after spending all the Crystalline Ore to unlock the recipe, and then craft the Insignia.

I was wondering if this is a bug as well. My small Guild isn’t Lv.22 yet and can’t even begin to unlock the Decorations Merchant 2 upgrade, but the Scribe vendor is selling absolutely everything. We’ve been wanting to decorate our Guild Hall for months now so we’ve been buying up all the different objects and having the most fun in our Hall since we’ve completed Arena 2. Definitely seems too good to be true though.

Forgive me if this isn’t the right subforum for this, wasn’t entirely sure what category this would fall under.

I want to buy Heart of Thorns as an Xmas Gift for all of my friends who started with me that couldn’t afford it. I’ve seen other threads show up about buying multiple instances of HoT with the same credit card payment info getting all related accounts banned (including the main, first account). I also know there are a large amount of flagged HoT keys that would cause the applied account to get banned.

The plan I’m thinking would be this: Buying multiple sealed physical copies of the game at a local Walmart (listed under the official retail locations ) but using the same credit card I pre-purchased my digital copy of HoT through in-game.

My question is, with the above scenario, would everything be fine buying like that? Is there a chance for my account to get banned for having my original purchase information shared through obtaining multiple HoT keys? Considering Walmart is an official retailer, would there be any risk at all of those keys being flagged as fraud and locking my friends out of their accounts?

This would be such a fun gift, but if there’s any risk of them losing their whole accounts, then that kinda contradicts the outcome I would hope for. Also more priority on keeping my account safe; 6k hour playtime, 2 painstakingly crafted legendary weapons, and way too many gem purchases is something I never even want to think about losing.

I just wanted to be absolutely sure this was possible and risk-free to avoid turning the holiday into a nightmare.

Hopefully quoting each chunk is a good idea, would like to make sure everything gets my personal input. Chronomancer will probably be the only elite spec I absolutely dedicate a character for and play until GW3 releases and beyond.

Robert Gee.9246:

Shield Functionality Updates

• Echo of Memory/Deja Vu: Changed functionality. Now blocks all attacks for a short duration rather than a single attack. If this skill fully channels, summon an Illusionary Avenger. Deja Vu is available if any attack is blocked during the channel time.
• Deja Vu: Fixed a bug which allowed players to constantly cancel cast this skill to get a longer than intended uptime of the block effect. Canceling this skill now removes the Time Echo buff.
• Illusionary Avenger: Increased damage of this phantasm by 20%. Fixed a bug which prevented this skill from displaying the benefit from Empowered Illusions. Increased alacrity given to 2 seconds per hit. This phantasm no longer shoots a bouncing projectile but instead initiates a melee attack that slows enemies and gives alacrity to allies within a 240 radius around the target. Removed old phantasm description.
• Tides of Time: This skill now attempts to bounce back if it hits a wall. Fixed a bug where the time freeze caused by this skill would not show a stun icon in the status bar.

This is all just amazing. I’ve already settled on using Shield just because I love the idea of the weapon on Mesmer. The annoying wall/cliff bug deleting the Tides of Time wave now simply bouncing it back early is great, I hate missing out on half of its effect and lowered cast time just because I accidentally shot it into a pebble poking out higher than the ground. I assume you can reliably use the Illusion exactly like iWarden, where you cast it just out of range as you’re running in and have it get created at/near your targeted enemy. As for iAvenger’s new tricks, I’m not sure if I like it… We already have a melee shield-bearing Illusion and it was nice to have a ranged Illusion on a melee-focused offhand, plus the name reference makes more sense to bounce the Shield off enemies. Changing the Alacrity to an AoE on hit is way better than hoping it triggers on someone that could use it. Maybe iAvenger could still toss the Shield and have the Alacrity be applied around each damaged target from up to 2 bounces or something?

Robert Gee.9246:

Well Tuning

• Gravity Well: Now performs a knockdown, float and then pull. No longer gives stability on end. Increased final damage by 50%
• Well of Action: Increased damage per pulse by 17%. Lowered aftercast by 0.2 seconds.
• Well of Calamity: Lowered aftercast by 0.2 seconds.
• Well of Eternity: No longer gives vigor per pulse to allies but instead removes conditions from them. Increased recharge to from 25s to 30s. Increased base initial heal by 25%
• Well of Precognition: Updated functionality. Now gives blur for 1 second per pulse during its active portion instead of on end. When it ends, allies within the well regain 35 endurance.
• Well of Recall: Lowered recharge from 45 seconds to 40 seconds. Updated functionality of this well. It now chills for 1 second and deals damage every pulse then gives 5 seconds of alacrity to allies when it ends. New pulse damage is 70% of previous end damage. Effects have been updated to reflect this new behavior.

Gravity Well sounds like the best skill in the game right here. Hopefully the Float duration isn’t super short since that’s where the PvE elite control is coming from (champion defiant & stability piercing), but the idea of seeing the whole skill as described on trash mobs (or defenseless pvp players) every 90 seconds makes me so glad I put $100 down on HoT to play Chronomancer. Well of Action getting increased power is definitely making me look at it more, and the aftercast reduction on the Wells is much needed since I always thought I was lagging after using one. Well of Eternity curing Conditions is a great way to replace our old trait for that and gives me a way to keep a cleanse on me, this one I’ll definitely be retrying to see if I like it now. Well of Precognition seems a little backwards, Blur on pulse is great but if you wont need to evade while its active why replenish Endurance? This also gets rid of our only option to gain unblockable which was why I think the skill was good in the first place; it also reflects the duality theme where we evade them while its active and they cant evade us when it’s over. Well of Recall I still don’t see a reason to take, now it almost feels like Well of Action.

Robert Gee.9246:

Traits

• Illusionary Reversion: No changes.
  • There is a pretty clear division of people that would rather have an ICD on this skill and those that prefer the illusion requirement. After some thought we’ve decided we prefer the current version (illusion requirement) as it is an easier to understand limitation when compared to internal cooldowns. I know that some have asked that this requirement be toned down to 1 illusion required but this wouldn’t solve the original problem of being able to get large bonuses from your shatters without an investment.
• Lost Time – Added a 0.25 second delay between earning stacks of this buff. Fixed functionality: This trait previously applied slow on the first critical hit after generating 4 stacks. It now applies slow on any hit (does not have to be a critical hit) after 5 stacks are generated.
  • We’re still looking at good ways to limit some of the power from this trait. For now we are trying a small cooldown on the rate at which stacks can be generated. This primarily affects skills like Greatsword 1, and shouldn’t have a high impact on other weapon skills.

After being able to test iReversion it’s definitely not bad with the Illusions limit. I can go either way here, so if you guys think it’s just superior with the Illusions limit then I’m fine with that. Now, Lost Time. For investing completely into Precision (not as much power and less defensive stats) you’re able to keep Slow up with a GS for just under 50% uptime from my experiences both BWEs. This is on a target that can’t evade, block, or LoS you. I didn’t feel like Lost Time was too imbalanced trying Stronghold, but it was pretty good (as a Grandmaster should be) in PvE. It wasn’t the make-or-break reason we won any encounters, but it at least made me feel like I had impacted the fight a little bit. The cooldown on stack generation to slow down it’s effects on GS is understandable, but making you earn a 5th stack on top of it seems a little excessive. Maybe keeping the internal cooldown on stacks but dropping down to 4 stacks before the next hit applies Slow would be better. Chronophantasma is an incredible trait, but having nearly 50% bursts of tiny 2s Slows felt almost good enough to not build up right into double shatter-bomb. I can understanding making this Trait less powerful if there was some kind of Slow Rune set in the game giving increased duration & base Precision we don’t know about. Much like how I feel about Alacrity, the duration you get when you actually activate it feels way too small to begin with before we start talking about lowering its potential.

Robert Gee.9246:

Bug Fixes

• Continuum Split – Fixed a bug which caused the Continuum Rift to take no damage from attacks.
• Flow of Time: Fix the description to show it gives alacrity per illusion.
• Illusionary Reversion: Fixed a bug which caused this trait to fail when used with Continuum Split.

Bug fixes are always good. Besides the fixed Tides of Time wall/cliff annoyance I’ve had one other issue: Both BWEs so far I’ve experienced a few cases of not snapping back to the Continuum Rift when the duration ran out, and continuing like I never even used that shatter until I walk waaay out of range from it and suddenly snap back a mile with the HP & Skills I had when I dropped that Rift when the combat was still going on. If that’s fixable then that takes care of my list.

Exciton.8942:

Current iteration of gravity well is pretty good. It is very strong CC but only has small radius and long cast time. It is definitely not as strong as time warp however it is at only half of the cool down so it balances out nicely.

There is really no need to be obsessed with float just because it looks cool. The previous iteration of gravity well is simply useless.

Yeah, but that’s what I was trying to point out in my original post. In regards to PvE: Having the old Float being able to disable literally everything regardless of status was powerful, but a little hard to setup and could still be useless; While the new Pulls do much less than Float did because Focus 4 stacks mobs up faster/better and also has no effect whatsoever on Champions. Before you mention helping with Defiance stripping, I can clear full stacks of Defiance (on instanced area Champion mobs) instantly with basic Mesmer skills and I’d rather use Focus 4 to move him once where he needs to go than instead use my Elite Well to possibly get him where we need to stack. The old/new skill effects are reversed in PvP however, so the new one is very strong but the old one was pretty trashy.

Float didn’t just look great during BWE 1 in PvE, it was an incredible tool in dungeons. The current version of Gravity Well for instanced content is most likely tied for worst Elite skill option to bring.

Folcan.7645:

The pull just seemed like a different version of the temporal curtain we already have. The float was something new and really cool. I really looked forward to using it once the actual game came out. It was so disappointing to see it gone today!

Exactly this! I didn’t want to prod at it too much in my main post, but I feel like the AI is so awful in PvE that one Temporal Curtain will throw all of the mobs together in a more convenient stacking spot. The Float didn’t bunch everything up but it was much more distinct.

First let me start off by saying I absolutely LOVE this skill. The icon is probably my favorite icon in the entire game and the visuals it makes on the skill active are amazing. The 90 second cooldown provides us with a skill that gives us an offensive combat option we don’t have to wait 3 minutes between uses plus it syncs up very nicely to our new profession mechanic’s cooldown. I even love that it’s a Dark field going with the space theme. The actual skill effects however is a mixed one…

Last BWE I found that the Gravity Well with only Float at the end was very strong overall. Using a 90 second cooldown skill for a 100% chance to disable for 2 seconds regardless of Defiance – as long as they’re in the AoE. This felt incredible and fitting to allow Mesmers to have an elite disable of this caliber. In all of PvE this felt like a fantastic addition to my skill bar and finally gave me a reason to swap off Time Warp that’s been stuck on my bar for almost 3 full years. PvP and WvW it was almost useless using it randomly, but if you set it up in advance and try to use other disables to make sure your target is in the area when it ends was very satisfying but not too much to gain off of it. In addition to all of that, the visuals on Float fit in very well with the Gravity Well theme and was a really fun sight to see giving off a mixed vibe of powerful and silly.

The new Gravity Well is… something. For actual combat situations in open world PvE with trash mobs the constant Pulls are pretty great. However with Champions or anywhere in Dungeons/Fractals the loss of Float makes this skill almost completely useless. So far it seems pretty threatening in PvP/WvW as long as your target doesn’t have easy access to blinks or an instant few stacks of Stability. The center Pulls are also very fitting for the theme, but it’s certainly not as impressive as before.

Overall these two versions of Gravity Well are equally as fitting to the skill’s theme but feel like two halves of a whole when you look at each of the game modes. The Float effect is incredibly unique and visually impressive while still feeling like an elite disable skill. The Pulls for each pulse are actually really effective with mobs and players but drops off instantly with Stability stacks or Champion targets. Perhaps there’s a way the skills could merge together without being too strong?

I would suggest replacing the last Pulls or two for the old single 2 second Float. This way there’s still the big casting time tell, and the danger of getting pulled to the middle while your time is running out before the big disable. Stability can still counter this but it keeps the pressure of needing to stay out of the AoE. This basically has no change with mobs in PvE and returns access to a 2 second disable to Champions regardless of Defiance/Stability (basically like Basilisk Venom). For PvP/WvW as mentioned above, with Stability you can still ignore the Pull but they’d have to leave the area before the Float happens.

Which version of Gravity Well do you other Chronomancers like so far? If you like neither of them, what would you do to change it? Do you think we’ll see Gravity Well ever genuinely being a better option over Time Warp?

I felt like the Chronomancer was incredibly refreshing to play during this last BWE. I may not post in forums often or keep up on knowing DPS meta and whatnot, but I really wanted to throw in my feedback to help the Chronomancer release in an enjoyable state.

The changes here to Gravity Well seem interesting, except I feel like the Float made it significantly more unique and made the skill very fun. It was powerful, but I felt like that was justified for having a 3 second start up before the Float happens and it having a 90 second cooldown as an Elite skill. Having the counter to this skill be knowing not to stand in the Well and make sure you get out of its area in time before you take on the devastating final effect is pretty neat, since you then need to setup a reason for them to be in when it expires. If it’s only going to have 3 pulls then that wont be as interesting and seems like it might be entirely useless in PvE outside of some mob stacking, rather than the 2 seconds refuge for anything you get when they Float. I think having a single initial pull to the center to start it up and dealing only the pulse damage until the Float would be perfect; that way it retains the concept of racing out of the Well in time and includes a pull that would make it so you would first need to strip Stability for maximum chances of landing the skill. Hopefully you reconsider working in Float for this Elite skill, I don’t want to run Time Warp for another few years.

Echo of Memory’s fix/change seems justified. I wanted to mention for Tides of Time, the wall has a bad habit of disappearing completely, which takes away its return trip effects and doesn’t allow you to reduce its cooldown (which the skill really needs on that long of a base time). I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do to fix that easily or not but its very annoying losing half of the functionality on a skill due to issues with terrain.

I agree with everyone else here saying iReversion just needs an internal cooldown instead of a illusions limit. Almost defeats the purpose of the trait if you need that start up cost for it to work.

Alacrity I felt was in a weird spot. From my experience with Chronomancer I hardly felt the effects of Alacrity helping, and dropping the duration of it on its introductory trait seems like it would make it worse. I think keeping self-Alacrity per illusion at a full 1 second rather than 0.75 would be nice so it’s at a flat number on the base specialization, and it would make the impact of the 50% Improved Alacrity trait a lot more appealing. Adding Alacrity at the end of Wells is a really good idea, but also takes away Chronomancer’s access to Condition removal. On top of that, Well of Recall’s main use would have to get changed a bit since you can just run other Wells for party wide Alacrity when they end instead of relying on this skill’s main trick.

Stacking Slow with Lost Time I felt was good. You’d have to be heavily built into Precision to constantly earn enough critical hits to gain charges. Even at 100% crit chance there’s very few skills you could do to pile on all 5 charges, so the Slow does have its downtime while you rebuild you charges between skills. It did seem a little stronger with GS, but the time between auto attacks needing to finish 2-3 times to gain enough charges still barely gave 50% uptime on Slow. For needing to build completely into one stat, sacrificing other stats to do so, and ignore other interesting traits just to make it possible to get roughly 50% uptime on Slow is a huge leap to make and should at least stay viable for people who want to have that playstyle.

Sorry for the wall of text, didn’t know how else I could fit all my opinions for these any shorter.

I still don’t know why they haven’t added a Daily Treasure Hunter.

This would take care of having Jumping Puzzles as a Daily without forcing players who hate them to play them. It would be a short total (Chests Opened #/3 or #/5) of opening hidden idle Chests around the world – or region if they want to condense it. Players could then run Jumping Puzzles if they like them and still be rewarded for it towards the Daily, while players who hate Jumping Puzzles can go look in some spooky caverns for any Chests nesting in the wild, Mini-Dungeons are also more appealing knowing their Chest goodies will count. Any combination of exploring will work since it would require a small number of Chests opened and not just one-and-done. It would promote exploration, still have a min-max route for each region for the grindy group, and make players feel doubly rewarded (read: happy) for getting loot for getting loot.

I loved Daily & Monthly Jumping Puzzle Achievements, but Treasure Hunter would basically be that without excluding those who don’t like the niche gameplay they offer. Seems like a fun win-win achievement category to me.

I know there’s a flood of SAB threads already, I just felt this was the right time to post this as well.

Within the past couple years I’ve been taking pretty frequent trips to the ER mostly due to heart issues, collapsed lungs, and some pretty dangerous clotting. My bones, lungs, & heart have a multitude of issues going on that I’ll ignore listing out. I’m very much not in a good place at all, especially not for my age.

Super Adventure Box was fantastic. A lot of heart and soul went in to making it one of the greatest love letters to my favorite point in gaming’s history. Guild Wars 2 itself is a really good game, and to see it adopt something as amazing as SAB as a totally rad platforming dungeon for up to 5 friends was incredible. They’ve even tied it into a wonderful story about Moto and his ex-krewe, which has me itching to see where that leads. Sure platforming is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it was completely optional content which had absolutely no effect on the remainder of the game (besides the April Fool’s prank of escaped Pixel creatures & Baubles).

Between the amount of fun SAB is, how much love the SAB team put into their project thus far, and how amazing ANet was for letting Josh try out his concept within GW2… My only request is to save the Princess before I get a Game Over.

I’m sure a lot of you may ignore this thread or just shrug it off as another knee-jerk reaction; but I genuinely love everything the Super Adventure Box represents. I’ve been on the fence posting this for a while because honestly, I’m scared; but the fear of SAB not returning is personally a lot more sad than not making it through my illnesses.

Amnariel.3659:

I killed him 3-4 times until now,2 was with my lvl 80…It’s enough for a lifetime that boring 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 fight…

What would you do to change it? Would you just change that phase or add extra ones?

Now that I’ve seen GW2 evolve with some new features through Living World, it made me think how they could put some of the new ideas into the Zhaitan fight to make it better. The Story Journal really puts the icing on the cake for replayability as well.

The whole dungeon feels incredibly cinematic and gives off the proper vibe of “Well team, we’re heading to the Elder Dragon himself.”. The one thing I’d change that doesn’t relate to the actual current fight would be adding some kind of draconic battery or cannon onto The Humble or The Glory of Tyria. Everything remains unchanged all the way through to the fireworks battle. The idea for the battery would be for Zhaitan to knock it off during one of his flybys (such as when he destroys the front of The Glory of Tyria, it could have had the battery attached to it). Zhaitan will fall from his perch via fireworks display, and the pillar falls with him, and everyone celebrates success exactly like it is now.
One of the NPCs would then run up to Destiny’s Edge and exclaim that Zhaitan is trying to crawl towards the wrecked battery from earlier and consume its magic to regain strength. The Glory of Tyria would then descend to a survivable drop-down distance from the ground and you join Destiny’s Edge in putting a stop to this. From this point on, a meta event starts with a bar (specifically NOT a numerical timer) that slowly fills up over time (10 minutes long at most) which shows the distance between the battery and Zhaitan.
Waves of Risen will start heading towards the battery which you need to help Destiny’s Edge clear, after the bar reaches about 25% one of them would say something cliche like “We can’t keep focus on the minions, we have to stop Zhaitan”. Logan will use his over-powered Guardian skills to channel a huge Line of Warding separating the party of Heroes with Destiny’s Edge and the Risen.
After a short jog towards the battery, you’d come to 5 pressure switches that would need to be pressed together, upon doing so would open 5 passages each with their own unique flavor to them. One passage could be a lite Jumping Puzzle, another could be a straight path with a couple simple mobs, another could be an underwater path; pretty much 5 different roads that each encompass a simple version of different GW2 gameplay. The paths would be limited to 1 player each, such as giving each player a different buff (named with what flavor the path is) while on the switches when they’re all pressed, and that buff would let you into the path. The goal is to get to the end of your path and channel a console, unlike in CoE explorable where it’s timed, but a simple UI event like “Consoles Charged: X/5”).
Blocking each console would be an weak Legendary mob “Head of Zhaitan”, which is just one of his severed little mouth-dragons trying to kill you. This entire section would be a fail-state like the Bomb Room in CoF path 2, where if the bar reaches the end, everyone dies and the event restarts from the beginning. After the 5 Consoles are triggered, a cutscene would pan out above the consoles and show that all 5 blocked consoles were connected to the battery, and the 5 of you overcharged it, shooting a massive beam of energy straight down through Zhaitan the long way. Then the dungeon ends here, with just the 5 of you separated at the ends the paths. No NPC would even come up to you, and all you see is Zhaitan in the near distance with a massive gaping hole all the way through him completely still.

I feel like this idea would give each player the weight of worth. It’s not something that you can get carried through, and it becomes a matter of personally not letting down your other party members (ya know, the HEROES) for failing. Much like the Marionette battle, even though the bosses were easy, it felt beyond satisfying breaking your tower and cheering on your lane-mates. Using the AoE buff concept from the Assault Knights and Marionette fight portals, it would solve the problem of limiting 1 player per path. Every player would have a unique experience through the end due to the different gameplay of the paths and fighting one of the five Zhaitan’s heads. Delivering the death blow as a 5-man party seems way more personal than helping the Pact shoot fireworks at him too, if the heads weren’t enough. This also wouldn’t add too long of a section (I’d estimate 8 minutes as an average clear time from the start of the meta event, with a 10 minute long bar-timer), or try to bite off more than they could chew making an epic Elder Dragon fight with weapons (because it’s probably going to be an HP sponge that way). With the introduction of the Story Journal, this opens up replayability by unlocking an achievement for doing each path at the end, which means more players will be running Arah Story, which means it will constantly be easier to get players for Victory or Death.

I believe that got added in for the PvP Toymaker’s Bag. I’m not 100% sure though, but I know I had the skin unlocked for it before going through the historical stuff in my account bank (which was after logging into each character and the PvP lobby).

When this gets fixed they should mass-send every account mail with a small apology about the stuck reset and # Laurels attached for each day that goes by this persists. That seems like a nice way of going “Hey, we’re sorry we weren’t able to fix this fast enough, here’s what you could have earned if this bug wasn’t active.”.

Wings of Fortune on the NA server Sanctum of Rall is looking to recruit more members!

We’re currently a really small Guild but we’ve been around since headstart (however our members come and go). Our Upgrade Categories are currently half Lv.4 (Politics & Economy) and Lv.5 (Art of War & Architecture). We have mostly every boost available- already made and ready to activate. Also we have Guild Bounty (and its Training Mission) fully unlocked and ready to go, but not enough players online to make it happen.

Wings of Fortune started out as a Guild mostly aimed for close friends, but soon expanded when other players were looking to join in on our adventures. We mainly PvE (map exploration, jumping puzzles, dungeons, Fractals), but we also do PvP and WvW too (less focused, but we have some members that hardly PvE as well). Of course we’ll help out any member with just about anything they’d like too. Guild Missions will also be done on a routine basis when we have the numbers available to handle them.

As for requirements, Wings of Fortune is really lax. Besides being home on Sanctum of Rall, all we really ask is just to be kind to others and have fun. We don’t require a specific level of skill, character level, or 100% Rep (of course we don’t allow 0% Rep either). All players are welcome to join.

Why should you join?
Well, that’s actually a pretty good question. Most large Guilds I feel like some of its members become “just a face in the crowd”. Joining a smaller Guild I feel helps prevent that feeling. We’re all very friendly too, so Guild chat is pretty busy. There are also multiple Ranks to earn your way up as well. Guild Missions may become an option soon, so you could share our excitement working up towards unlocking the bigger & cooler Missions. We also have a Raidcall group, so if you’d rather talk than type, that’s a free option.

If you’re on Sanctum of Rall and looking for a small friendly Guild, Wings of Fortune would be glad to have you. Just please bear with us until our numbers do start increasing.
Please send a Message to Xalugami.2096 if you’re interested!

Ajaxx.3157:

Also, if you use Lyssa with no condys on you, what 5 Boons will it reward?

I’d assume none. It only removes 1-5 conditions and grants 1-5 boons depending on how many conditions got removed. At least I can still keep my 4 Lyssa Runes in PvE for the heal-boon.

So reading that blog post left me with a question I probably know the answer to, but don’t want to believe. When this patch goes live, are we 100% forced to use our PvE skins for all of PvP unless we use Transmutation Charges? Then we’d need to use more Transmutation Charges to change back into our PvE skins after the PvP play session?

As an example: I use pretty simple armor I like the looks of in PvE since I mostly just do whatever, but in PvP I wear the bulkiest armor since I like to bunker. Is this now impossible to do without wasting Transmutation Charges each time?

I feel like I should thank ANet for making an Icy-themed Gathering Tool available. I wonder if there’s any hope for an Ice Pick and an Ice Sickle since both of those could both be punny to make. If they do, I’d buy them asap just like this Axe.

Are there any specific elemental Tools or themed Tools you guys are looking out for?

From all of the images it looks like changing Dyes will total 0 Transmutation Charges every time, you just still need to click Apply to set the changes.

Is it confirmed that its all-or-nothing? The way I’m reading that is there will be a separate appearance slot you can move your Town Clothes into and it overrides the armor from that slot.

What’s a guy gotta do to wear his glasses with his Heritage armor?

I wanna say it’s Canach, just because. Could have been sending bird mail while in jail.

Pretty coincidental I find a thread like this after making a utility skill version of a certain old skill. I too like the sound of Cry skills.

So I was thinking about how every other profession has access to permanent Swiftness or at least a speed Signet, while Mesmers just get Temporal Curtain which is 12 seconds (or less) of Swiftness on a 25 second cooldown. What if we were to get a Utility skill for this? I’m aware Mesmers are supposed to be at the bottom of the movement speed chain (for some reason), so there’s plenty of side-effects to be had.

I feel Mesmers should get [Illusion of Haste] as a Manipulation Utility skill. It would work almost the same way as in GW1 but with a bit of a twist. The skill itself would be on a 12 second cooldown, instant cast, remove Cripple upon use, and apply “Illusionary Haste” to the caster for 10 seconds. This way if you trait for Master of Manipulation the skill will be off of cooldown the moment “Illusionary Haste” wears off. The “Illusionary Haste” buff applies either 25% or 33% additional movement speed (whichever is more balanced) although it’s not a boon so it can’t be stolen, corrupted, or removed. After the “Illusionary Haste” buff clocks down to 0 the player will gain Cripple for 6 seconds. For the first 8 seconds after casting [Illusion of Haste] the skill will sequence to a different skill that allows you to send your current “Illusionary Haste” buff to a target in 900 Range (1200 Range when traited with Far-Reaching Manipulations). Doing so will transfer over the buff to them for as long as you had remaining, and then apply the cripple to them instead of you when it wears off.

This way we don’t have to rely on Focus for Swiftness, Mesmers will finally have access to good amounts of movement speed on their own, and it’s still got a couple drawbacks. It’s not quite permanent unless traited, you’ll either have to deal with the Cripple or passing off the buff early, and it doesn’t really do much other than fixing Mesmer’s speed issues and playing with your target’s movement speed. It seems like a unique way to handle Mesmer’s movement in exchange for wasting a valuable Utility slot.

What do you guys think?

People please, put down those torches and pitchforks.

I just wanted to say that I’m impressed at how successful the Living World team was at accomplishing their goal with Scarlet thus far. From what I remember, the initial goal with our “personal rival” was to make a character that the players hated, like deeply hated, and felt the need to rise up against her. This has been sitting in my mind with each update, and everytime she dips her grubby little twigs into the lore I remember they wanted us to hate her. It makes me look back on the past many months of Living Story and kinda chuckle how us players, as a community, all came together to hate such an abomination of character presentation.

Most likely this was the ironic way of achieving this (rather than an actually fleshed out and solid villain), but it still makes me smile how it got the job done. I do believe everyone here is excited to see her story put to an end; which is exactly what the goal was.

Has anyone else shared these thoughts?

BlackyWarsX.5384:

- don’t get hit by any of the champions aes (though I’m not really certain of this one)

I’ve got all of the achievements too, but I feel this point is incorrect.

How I completed dodging the sword was by loading in and immediately rolling over to the border of the arena next to the chain generator. I decided to just tank any of the warden’s AoEs that show up as long as I was out of the sword’s reach; I have no idea how I didn’t get downed though. I did pop my invuln skills each time the warden’s AoE started which seemed to only do light damage on each remaining tick of the attack.
I do feel that the sword was the most difficult one to obtain though, just keep at it. It’s definitely possible.

It’s an infinite achievement.
If you’re looking to get all the achievement points for repeating it, you need to successfully complete it 300 times.
20 Completions per Reward, and 15 Rewards.

It can’t be done in Toypocalypse, so that could be a thing.
Also you can just start the Infinirarium Instance, ignore selecting a Toy (event path) on the panel, break everything, and then leave out via escape panel at the south of the map. There wont be a single mob to disturb you and you can take however long you want.

You get 1 Gift for making it to the end with the Checkpoint or without talking to Tixx. You get 3 Gifts for taking Tixx’s Present to the end. As for opening Tixx’s Present, I’m not sure what you get because that seems like such a cop-out (but still a great addition for the people who can’t do it).
The Karma, Snowflakes, Tonics, & Booster were daily completion rewards last year, and are removed for this year.

I’m a little confused here. If you’re saying it gets boring after 5 rounds (25 waves), why would you suggest more waves?
I do agree there should be a harder mode though. Also a unique trade-able skin (exactly like how the 3 Sanctum Catchers were handled) for completing this hypothetical Toypocalypse Hard Mode would be a special touch, considering this activity is the big culmination of Wintersday.

Doggie.3184:

I haven’t even got to play it because I kept joining empty instances and being sent back to Lions’s Arch. .-.

Are you entering with a party? Because it won’t bring you into another party’s instance.

Also, I don’t think the Waypoint shows up on the Minimap, but it definitely shows up on the big map. Didn’t take me more than 10 seconds to go “hmm, maybe I should open up the map and look for a waypoint to respawn at”.

So is there a chance for next year to implement activity grouping? Or should we not expect that at all because making a general matchmaking system for activities sounds too hard? I’m sure this would be a great addition, especially if 2014 is as filled with minigames like this year was.

I was so psyched to play Bell Choir with my guildies after hearing the Wintersday stuff will allow parties to enter. Cue the nope.

Just finished my 2nd time keeping all 5 Dolyaks alive too. This time I think we got a perfect keeping them all at full HP.
I’ll see your 360 noscope ballista action and raise you a death maze.

I love how they handled the JP this year. Much better than how it was last year. The risk/reward system with Tixx was fantastic and I really hope this system gets expanded for many more puzzles.
I even like how they let you plank the entire way through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plQkUf9yCJw&hd=1

Mimizu.7340:

that looks odd.
500 laurels, 12.5k ap, and 69% mf?
dont you like luck?

and me, 78 laurels. (3.2k ap,91% mf)

Yeah, the daily from reset 30 minutes ago just pushed me into 500.
As for the Magic Find, I’ve been outfitting alts with exotics so I’ve never had a good supply of Coin. Unless its a Daily/Monthly I wont bother salvaging anything (unless its a Rare) and instead toss it at a Merchant or the TP if I can profit off it.

Save up a total of 500 Laurels at one time? (Make that 505 in a couple hours)

Now, I still think Laurels should be able to get traded in for unique skins. Mostly because this currency is the best to display time spent playing the game. If more people feel like Laurels are worth it, more people would be temped to log in & play to earn them, and the game maybe wont feel so empty all the time (outside of LA, in my experience).

How many Laurels do you guys have?

I was gonna make a post here, but then I didn’t.

* I chose those Skill cost numbers because I feel that the challenges should take 3 tries at max to understand and complete it for an average player, which would actually equate to just-above the regular cost. The goal here was to promote the fact that if you really pushed yourself you can achieve success in less attempts, meaning saved Skill Points.

TL;DR- Skill Point costs should increase on Hero Panel because Scrolls. Add Skill Trainers to the major cities. Buy Skill Tomes from the Skill Trainers at a double-edged discount. Must complete a challenging instance/event to earn the Tome, lose and must pay again. Adds choice to character progression since Skills will be a big role.

tl;dr @ bottom

So I was going to post this in another thread, but it started seeming like it deserved its own post. It was a thread about how the only option for obtaining Skills is simply by clicking the mouse twice (for those with excessive Skill Points, which became a bigger issue with Champ Loot) which is a pretty stale way to do it for some; and I agree.
After being introduced to Anti-Toxin Spray, I was sad that it was a new skill to unlock by spending the Skill Points or just buying it with Coin (along with the fact it was 25 Skill Points for a garbage heal). But while reading the previous thread I mentioned, I recalled that Anti-Toxin introduced something extremely promising.

Here’s my suggestion to make the Skill system carry more progression:

You can unlock Skills for an increased amount of Skill Points like already implemented: 3 (Heal Tier 1), 5 (Heal Tier 2), 3 (Utility Tier 1), 6 (Utility Tier 2), 9 (Utility Tier 3), 20 (Elite Tier 1), & 30 (Elite Tier 2) Skill Points each *. Of course existing Skills could be re-sorted to be in a tier that makes sense.
This way people who don’t want to effort can still unlock the skill after patience of doing whatever they choose as normal.
Skill Point amounts increased because Scrolls of Knowledge are so common (helps beginners get more Points), as well as the vets already sitting on tons of Skill Points (wouldn’t effect much, but hits their funds slightly harder).

Here’s where the Anti-Toxen part comes in; Marjory was selling a Tome that teaches you the skill without using Skill Points. If you’d like more progression, instead of clicking on the Hero Panel, you could go to a new Skill Trainer NPC and select the Skill for a reduced cost: 1 (Heal Tier 1), 2 (Heal Tier 2), 1 (Utility Tier 1), 2 (Utility Tier 2), 3 (Utility Tier 3), 8 (Elite Tier 1), & 10 (Elite Tier 2) Skill Points each *. A popup will confirm your choice on the skill selection, and then proceed to open a solo instance.
The instance would have a short but harsh event inside. The Healing event could have you surviving against a hoard of mobs for a time limit (with a permanent revealed debuff). The Utility event could have you do general tasks or fights with a twist/limit based on profession (think Mistlock instabilities, but profession-aimed. example- can’t generate Clones, can’t use Earth Attunement, etc). Elite events would probably consist of fighting a Legendary mob (with toned down health) similar to the Queen’s Gauntlet. Or anything else that would be fitting for a fun challenge.

Upon successful completion of the event, you receive a character-bound instance completion reward which yields the Skill Tome of the selected Skill. Congrats, you just unlocked Time Warp for 8 Skill Points. However, if you die (downed is allowed, of course), the event fails and you’re removed from the instance. No refund on those Skill Points either.

Adding this seems like it would be perfect. The addition of Scrolls of Knowledge would make the general Skill Point amounts increase regardless, so changing the Hero Panel numbers seems pretty justified. This will still allow people who play primarily a specific sector of content (WvW, FotM, Champ Farming, etc) be able to continue to earn skills regularly as they release. This would also be a start into becoming a slightly bigger Skill Point sink if Skills start getting released in bulk (which would combo nicely with needing Skill Points for crafting recipes).
Now on the other hand, Skill Trainers would add in the progression that a lot of players want to see. Hunting down the specific Skill Trainer (probably just in the 6 cities) that has the correct Skill you want will add the sense of adventure. Gambling Skill Points on an event adds the sense of excitement if you’ll be earning (yes, earning) your desired Skill at a reduced price. Since it was announced new Skills were going to be a big part of the new character progression, the most important addition would be choice of how you want to get there.

The best part is that we already know being able to unlock Skills by Tomes, character re-positioning at the cost of an object via NPC, challenging yet balanced solo-instances, one-time character instance rewards, Skill Points being currency, instance-altering buffs, etc. ALL actually have been proven to be possible; it just needs to be woven together.

The story mode is one of the Fractals. So may as well get used to it.

If you can’t finish it or figure it out now, what would you do when it shows up during a regular run? If I was looking for a group to play Lv.30+ Fractals with, I certainly hope we all know what to do in each Fractal.

Stars.2179:

Living Story is meant to be temporary. It is a design choice. Whether it is bad or good, it is rather subjective. I think it is good. You might think it is bad. But that is the rule of the game. If you are not there when it happens, it is too bad. You snooze you lose. That said you can still enjoy other contents or upcoming living story content. If you don’t want to play by the rule, simply don’t play it.

I’ve been playing GW2 daily for every day since headstart. I was so excited to get the Mask of the Night and to experience the Blood & Madness update.
Then my lung collapsed and I was rushed to the emergency room and needed a major operation to adhere my lung to the inside of my chest, and then I got to wear a fancy chest tube between my ribs for about a week. Doctors then forced me to stay afterwards for more X-Rays and blood tests. I could have died, and that was the first thing to break my GW2 daily chain since… well, ever. Upon my return I have lost out on all of the new content; I was so excited for it, I was counting the days until being able to see Mad King Thorn yet again. But nope. Snooze you lose, right? Thanks for the temporary-only content…
At least thankfully my best friends decided they’d keep my Daily Laurel chain going and complete every achievement for me, despite being against the ToS.

Also, before you say “but you should be concerned about your health”, I find real life to be horrible and I’ll only suffer through work for the income. If I’m unfit for gaming, then I’m done.

PS. Sure this was a Holiday-themed event, but what I’m getting at is something like this could happen during a regular update with no chance to see what happened. Felt horrible knowing that my dedication to the game did nothing, and surviving through this chaos was only met with me never seeing the content because spontaneous near-death happened.

Thobek.1730:

The only thing they are running out of is new alliances to form.

Don’t mean to cut in to your reply, but I don’t think the above snip is true.

When every possible race is paired up with another, they’ll dump all the races back into the hat and start making duplicates (like Nightmare Court + Inquest Alliance). Eventually when every race gets paired up with each remaining race, they’ll start pairing up Alliances (like the Twisted Aetherblades or the Molten Toxic Alliance). So this can go on for an incredibly long time. I can almost imagine when GW3 releases and Scarlet’s still making Alliances (because this is the vibe I’m getting so far).
That is, unless we actually get some sort of story* in the Living Story. But until they feel like doing more than sifting through cards in a hat, it feels like we’ll be plagued with the current 2-Month Alliance before watching Scarlet disappear to start forming the next pair of races to get allied together.

I’m just waiting for the update that says “Oh the Pact killed the other Elder Dragons while you were busy, so now you can keep focus on chasing Scarlet forever.”

*As in cohesive plot that will amount to something more than what happened 2 months prior with the last Alliance (I guess the current routine still falls under “story”, but that’s just like reading the same book again and again).

I’ve been able to start and join the final instance. However only in one group did I keep getting disconnected each attempt to get me in there. The Party before that, someone else kept getting disconnected on each attempt.
Nothing too shocking though, can’t have an update without some crazy surging gamebreaker for a day or two.

I think it’s too late to convert event items to infinite account use. There’s far too many event-related items. They should at least give out free bank tabs if they’re gonna go this crazy with it…

I’m scared that this is only just the beginning.

Once they start rolling out new profession skills, they could easily be 50+ Skill Points a pop if the skill is actually good for something (unlike this heal skill). That’s the vibe Antitoxen Spray is giving me for being a whopping 25 Skill Points.
This definitely wont effect old players with tons of skill points on their main, so of course they’ll just sit here and disagree with my worries. But to new players or players with a lot of alts, having to collect ludicrous amounts of Skill Points just for a new skill sounds like a ton of work, especially when there’ll end up being more than 1 skill to go for at a time.

I knew ANet was going to handle adding new skills extremely poorly, so I’m not sure why I’m so shocked at the outcome. At least it’s not like we need Skill Points for anything else, like weapon skins or siege weapons… oh wait.

azurrei.5691:

Awesome looking gloves? The skin is not unique – it is your standard named exotic drop skin – you can buy one from the TP for ~1g.

I actually think these are unique skins, I don’t recall them from anywhere.
However the Boots from last year were just reused skins.

UltraUltraman.9280:

I got to 8, and then it reset to 0. Is that supposed to be a thing?

Yes, this is an infinite achievement.
If they’re going to keep it this way, they need to remove the achievement points awarded for it. If they don’t then they shouldn’t make it infinite.
Definitely can’t have both of them simultaneously on a temporary achievement; that’s the definition of stupid.

Kimhyuna.1035:

This would just reiterate how much ANET hates alts. 500 is way too steep imo.

That doesn’t make much sense to me at all. Would you really need to craft Eternity for every alt you own who uses a Greatsword?
Laurel headgear wouldn’t be an easy replacement to gear up alts with Ascended-quality helms (since crafting Ascended armor would be out). It would be a muuuuch longer to obtain item to show you’ve been very active, via exclusive skins; tied to high stats simply because of the time investment.

On the subject of a Merchant selling a Legendary item, I don’t see what’s wrong with this. You can already buy every other Legendary right off of the Trading Post, and current Legendaries aren’t too hard/long to obtain in the first place. Adding a second Legendary Helm (since this wont be related to the regular Legendary armor sets) that takes significantly longer to obtain seems worthy enough to be able to swap stats on the fly. I’d have to say that grinding materials and coin for a few hundred hours is at least on par, if not less of a feat, than playing actively every day for more than an entire year.