Guild Wars 2

So I’ve spent a decent amount of time doing Adventures since launch. They’re awesome. I’m not sure that GW2 NEEDED mini-games per say, but the A.Net devs implemented them exactly in the way they should have. Could do to be available more often but… other than that, wonderful.

In particular, the Salvaging pit was my personal favorite. I couldn’t tell you why, I just found it really enjoyable to try and beat my friends times, then my own time, then random strangers times. It was soothing. And today, I finally did it. I Got the #1 Lifetime time at 27 seconds

Of course, the only thing I have to brag about this is the above screenshot. I don’t have a handy Leaderboards link to show off just how awesome I am (and compare my times with others) Which makes me kind of sad. Is this a feature that will be coming in the future?

Also, At 28 seconds I was ranked at #4. Does that mean I was the 4th person to reach 28 seconds, or that there were 3 people faster than me (Meaning that I’m now one of 4 people to have a 27 second time?) I don’t really know how the leaderboards work, and it’s hard to tell since I can’t see anyone else on them other than my friends (and even then, only sometimes. The Adventure leaderboards are a bit buggy about that, and showing the correct daily times)

TL;DR: Can we have Leaderboards for Adventures that will allow us to see everyone’s ranking? Also how do the Adventure leaderboards handle tied scores?

khani.4786:

On the crafter backpack section though there’s one line that leaves me wondering what that means.

….“come with a bit more combat flexibility than many players might have seen.”

What does this mean ?

Currently, if you want a backpiece at level 30 (or was it 35?), you have a single option on the trading post (one which drops from AC) (you can also get a level 0 back item from your personal story at 33)

The easiest answer is that we will have more stat options viable to low level characters for back slot items now, which is nice. So my DPS Warrior can use a stat-appropriate back item at level 60.

Today’s blog post was very vague, so I was hoping we could get some clarification about parts of it. I’ll break it down by section.

Leveling Items
What we know

• The rifle shown in the blog had stats equal to Rare level 39 rifles already in the game. As such, we can infer that these weapons are “3 levels” better.
• We know we can craft them (Somehow) and that we can get them as loot drops
• We know that none of them will be level 80 (Hopefully, none of them will be > level 77)
• We know that they will be account bound.

What we don’t know

• What materials are they going to cost to craft? At the moment, crafting blues/greens for leveling characters is very rarely worth it due to the cost of the crafting materials, regardless of the stats on the items.
• What level crafting do we need? 400? 500?
• How will we obtain these recipies? Are these rare recipie drops? Availble from a vendor? Are we getting them for free?
• Can we craft items of a rarity not typically seen for that level? Like Exotics at level 40, or level 10 rare hats/Shoulders?

Crafter Backpacks

Actually these were pretty straightforward. Crafted profession based back items with more stat options than have traditionally been availble for low level characters. I’m okay with that.

Profession Loot

• Will this affect armor drops?
• If so, What mechanics are in place to prevent light armor classes (Who would get more light armor, and therefore more things that can be salvaged into the expensive cloth (linen, cotton, etc.)) from being the “better” class to play?
• Will this affect level 80’s?
• What percentage of drops will this affect? Diablo 3 implemented a similar system a while ago, which made almost 99% of drops useful to the player’s class. Are we talking the same kinds of extremes, or just a slight bias? (I understand we probably can’t get hard numbers, just want to know how big of a change this is going to be)

It seems to me that including new stat combos, while it increases the number of THEORETICAL builds, it will not necessarily increase the number of PRACTICAL builds, thus leading to ways for inexperienced players to shoot themselves in the foot.

As such, It’s important that we focus only on stat combos that create practical builds, things that would be useful for players, and push them in one direction.

For example, a FEROCITY/power/precision set, at first glance, seems interesting. However, it is in direct competition with Berkser’s armor. Assassin’s armor also seems to fall into this rut at first glance, but precision by itself is a utility stat used in a large number of “on crit” procs (it’s only good for damage if paired with ferocity) giving it a different niche roll. Ferocity mainstat armor does not have this utility going for it, and will compete directly for berserkers for best in slot for pure DPS considerations. Regardless of which side is better mathematically, there will always be players who don’t do the math and put on the wrong armor, thus shooting themselves in the foot. We want to avoid that.

Boon duration and Condition duration are currently the hardest to get stat bonuses on weapons/armor. Boon duration is excellent for support builds, As is condition duration (for immobilize/blind/weakness application) Condition duration is also interesting for condition damage based builds (although they have a large set of problems which has been much more eloquently argued to a.Net then I could ever hope to manage in a reasonable way.) Sets which incorporate those would be very nice.

Since we have the penultimate Damage build (Zerker’s.) which is pretty much the best you can get at DPS, sacrificing literally everything else, I’d like to see armor sets which are obviously geared towards the other two rolls in this game.

Healing Power/Boon Duration/Condition Duration seems like the penultimate “I want to support!” Armor, with a complete disregard for damage and living. Unfortunately, I can see this becoming the “dead weight” armor for inexperienced characters, even more so than Berserker’s armor, and waiting on that till the Support aspect of the game is expanded may be prudent.

Healing Power/Toughness/Vitality is the best tank/survive ability build I can imagine.. I cannot even begin to comprehend the consequences of allowing players access to that much survive-ability. I know I’d run it on at least one character if I had the option.

Those are the two main ones I’d like to see. I’m sure there are other interesting options, but I lack the time/attention to do a proper analysis on all the juicy possibilities. Maybe later.

Currently, Berserker’s armor is the armor which has no defensive or utility stats (Well, precision is kinda a utility stat, but that’s a different problem) It is the armor which can be utilized to kill things the fastest. (Enemies, or yourself for that matter)

Given the nature of this game, If you are very skilled at playing this game, you should be able to avoid most damage, and heal what damage you do take via your heal skill/traits. Being able to keep yourself at near-full health throughout any given fight through skilled gameplay should be a thing that fights are designed for. (Other fights in other games are balanced as such, and whilst they use “The Trinity” for player roles, there’s nothing saying we can’t steal their balance goals for combat, even if we’re not stealing their numbers/mechanics.)

Given these two assumptions, Berserkers is going to be the natural choice for players whom are the most skilled at this game, as it allows them to clear content as quickly as possible.

I do not believe this should change. Having an armor set for skilled players such that they can showcase their skill and be rewarded for it (by means of faster runs) Is good. It is a method of rewarding skilled players that does not alienate unskilled players from being able to do content. If a poor player takes an hour to do a CoF 1 path, but he/she CAN complete that path, then the player is going to feel good/happy. That player can play the game, and get the rewards that everyone else has. This is a good outcome.

HOWEVER, while the idea of having berserker gear being “Best in Slot” For murdering things as quickly as possible is sound, I do not believe our game is properly modeled correctly to have it reward skilled play. I believe the current boss/encounter design leads to rewards based on high DPS, allowing for sloppy/bad players to be rewarded even when they wear berserkers gear.

The Champion Slave Driver of CoF P1 fame is probably the best example of this. Unskilled groups of players will often get downed during this fight, but because their damage is high enough, they can just DPS through it, rallying the downed through the bosses death. You do not have to be skilled to pass this boss, even if you’re wearing paper gear. So long as you can do damage, you’re set.

Let us look at a better example: Lupicus. All of lupicus attacks are dodgeable. Lupicus cannot be bursted down to death instantly (Well, he can due to reflects, and some other shenangins, but that takes a fairly large amount of skill to do, so I’m okay with it. God knows my party has never managed a <2 minute kill on him.) This creates a fairly long fight. Lupicus also hits like a truck, making those in zerkers gear SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to die than people in tankier armor. This makes Soldier gear actually GOOD for the lupicius fight for people who are not as good at the game. I’ve read several walkthroughs for lupicus outright stating that he was impossible without an alternate set of soldiers gear. (they’re old walkthroughs, and it’s most certainly not true, but people believed it was true at one point, which is amazing considering how currently soldiers gear is thought of as “It’s for WvW players and that’s it.”)

I think the best way to make Berseker’s gear less prominant as the “end all be-all” Is to rework the major encounters that people would want to be wearing the gear for. It’s not an easy solution. But by revamping the fights that exist, and making skilled positioning/dodging/etc. a larger requirement, we can reduce the Dominance of berserkers gear as a requirement for completing content.

Talking about the living world is moderatly difficult, as I’m not entirely certain what Qualifies at the living world and what doesn’t.

For example, Ascended weapons. Those have been coming for quite some time, and were released in our bi-weekly schedule as per normal. Was that just because it happened to be done then, or was that part of our world “Changing” adding this new loot for the Tequatl patch the week after that.

Was Tequatl a part of the Living world? He got an entire update to himself, but there wasn’t any particular story element to him. I believe Rox stood out there for a week wanting to see some dragon teeth, but it more seemed like an excuse to take a week off (for the writing guys) And just have a patch dedicated to rennovating an old/bad event.

I think we can all agree that the Flame and Frost Story was a part of the living world. But the other things that came with those patches? Daily achievements, previewing on the trading post, WvW ranks. Do those count?

I don’t really understand what “Living World” means to A.Net. If it’s more along the lines of a “Living Story” Then I love it. We’ve recently had a lull/slow period, ever since the scarlet invasion it seems the story part of our bi-weekly updates, but Coming here every other week to see the next chapter in the gripping tales of “Guild Wars 2” Is an experience I can get behind, as I can’t find it anywhere else.

Or is the “Living World” more of a promise to change something in the game? “Don’t worry, in 2 weeks we’ll have updated/changed/moved Something that you used to know!” I’m not entirely sure the idea behind that works for me. Yes, the world should change (Orr, southsun, heck, the area outside Divinity’s reach could use a looking at, as we can’t stay at war with the centaurs forever.) but without a sense of Player Agency… a sense of us CAUSING the changes… They’re just arbitrary updates. The world is no less “Living” than… well… any other video game.

I don’t understand what A.Net hopes to achieve with these living world updates. I had thought, pre-release, that it was to provide us the players a method of impacting our world and causing change. That’s not what’s been delivered to us. When we got the first of our living world updates, it seemed like it was a storytelling vehicle. Episodic content. That wasn’t what I was expecting, but it works. But recently…. I’m not sure WHAT you’re trying to do. I suppose that’s the purpose of these threads, to enlighten us as to your direction?

Most of my problems with the difficulty spikes (The rapids, the waterspouts, Gong.) have been brought up before, and are being looked at, so Yay for that.

I just finished up world 2 last night, however, and I wanted to bring up a section that I thought was…. I almost hesitate to say it… Too easy.

The Storm Wizard.

First: The music was freakin’ awesome. I’m listening to it as I type this. A+

Now, before I say that the second boss was easier, lets compare the boss of world 1 to the boss of world 2.

The first boss had several mechanics present in the arena. There was the poisoned water, his amulet, the shockwaves, the BIG shockwave (which is a different mechanic since you cannot jump over it) and his Tongue attack.

Our second boss had more mechanics! This is good! The lightning shield, and projectiles for phase 1, the charging in phase 2, and then the phase 3 mechanics. Those were the Moving outer ring, the summons, platform destruction, and the lightning blast to the center.

So, our second boss had more mechanics. However, my opinion is that those mechanics were easier than world 1 bosses mechanics.

Our boss toad had an attack that you needed to counter in order to deal damage to him. This is equivalent to our lightning shield and projectile reflection mechanics in phase 2. HOWEVER, the penalty for failure vs. toad is a very difficult to dodge attack that attacks every party member, whereas the penalty vs. Wizard is a 3 projectile attack targeted at one party member. This is far more forgiving to the players.

Moving onto our next World 2 mechanic, the Wizard’s charging. I’ll be honest, I’ve not figured out the “Correct” method for handling this mechanic. Dodge rolling through him SEEMS to sometimes allow me to avoid the attack, but I’m not 100% certain. Even if it is, you won’t have enough endurance to dodge them all. However, I will point out that I was still able to beat the boss and only die two times, even not understanding what the mechanic of the fight was. That suggests to me that the difficulty is lower than the toad, as without understanding his mechanics you could not win (Which is also true almost everywhere else in SAB)

Finally we have the Platform. The approach appears to be to stand in the middle of the ring while the dragon summons lightning sparks for you to defeat (They never did damage to me, so they do not appear to be too dangerous) Then you jump to one of the edges while the dragon makes the middle ring a lightning filled deathtrap. The boss then blows up an edge piece, and then you beat him to death with your stick. Lather/rinse/repeat.

The description of the mechanics, probably matches the length of a write up I would make describing the Toad mechanics. But if we compare the two, the jumps between lilypads vs. stone blocks are much shorter. I’m pretty sure you can just walk between the two areas unless one of them is above you. The attacks are significantly easier to dodge (a safe spot is always one (easier) jump away!)

The boss fight was fun. It was moderately epic, well scripted, and the mechanics were clear (charge not withstanding.) I greatly enjoyed it. That being said, I feel that if I compare it to the king toad fight, while this fight was BETTER, it was also easier. I’m not sure if that’s a thing you would want to change, but since Josh seems to be looking for feedback, I figured I’d throw in my 2 cents.

PMilkos.9103:

You math is horrible.

A 2% stat increase on each item means a 2% total stat increase on the full set.

(2%)/1 item = 2%

(2%x13 items)/13 items = 2%

You are correct. however, a current character in full Ascended/Exotic gear mix has 6% more stats than a character only in Exotics. Since there have been 6 slots released with Ascended gear, it can be said that each ascended item will give a 1% increase to total effectiveness. Spread across all item slots, that would make a character in ascended gear approximately 12% more effective in combat. Which may have been what he was talking about originally.

Fun trivia fact: Ascended gear appears to be approximately 8-9% better than Exotics, depending on which piece of gear you’re looking at, so the 12% figure cited above is probably an exaggeration. (Trinkets give a lot more stats than armor)

Red Rojas.1572:

agree, made some gold playing tp and i was thinking of buying mats and now…….. it freaked me out

Back when they announced that the Sanctum Bazaar was coming, they let slip that you would use older crafting mats to make the boxes that held the celestial recipes in them. Prices on lower tier mats skyrocketed…

Only to come right back down to sane levels once it actually came out.

Now, It won’t necessarily happen that way this time, it could very well ruin the economy forever! Probably won’t, I trust John Smith too much for that, but it could! Too early to tell though. Not enough details, and I’m not an economist with a working model on MMO economics.

cerberus.1937:

Martin Kerstein posted in Magic Find [merged]

To answer a few more questions:
•If you currently have listed an item with MF on the Trading Post, they will be returned to you, as they become account bound.
•Upgrade components that currently give MF bonus will be updated with new functionality.
•All existing drops and crafting recipes that have created Magic Find gear will be replaced with new stat combos.

So with that last post on mf we can see every question has been answered with the exception of one; at least that I can think of:

1) will those that have 167% mf on armor just get the stat change and start on even playing field as the rest or will that 167% mf be applied or partly applied to the new account bound magic find?

Thanks for all the answers and clearing up the questions about magic find as always if there are any remaining questions about the change feel free to ask

Since they are giving you something different (Any armor set stat you want) In exchange for the 167% MF on armor, it is HIGHLY unlikely that they will give you any free MF on top of that.

Everyone should be starting with the same level of account-wide magic find (that is to say, 0% before achievement bonuses) And will need to upgrade it via the various methods to get more MF.

That being said, I don’t know that for sure. But I would be VERY shocked if they gave those players a head start on everyone else, in addition to the other things they’re getting. That goes beyond compensation and starts dipping into rewarding individuals for having that gear type. I can imagine that would upset a fairly large number of players.

An exotic Neck item Plus jewel provides +115 main stat. Similarly, an Exotic one handed weapon plus Orb provides +110 main stat. Thus, we can assume that Ascended 1 handed weapons will have stats approximately in line with Ascended neck items.

Currently, Ascended neck items have +23 total stat points (11 main and 6 off) difference between exotic neck items. That means, with this update, a berserker character will obtain +22 power, and +12 precision over what he had before. (and probably around 2% crit damage)

Zerkers builds with around 3000 power (with full might/bloodthirst stacks) will get around 2-3% more damage from this once they switch to ascended weapons.

On the super crazy lightning hammer Ele that crits for 10k damage per swing, that’s about 300 more damage. (maybe less, I’m being generous)

This does not account for the theoretical increase to weapon damage that we may see with Ascended weapons.

Does this matter? I don’t know, but that is the change we are probably looking at.

Donari.5237:

I just wish those weren’t the most boring professions to raise, for me. I’ve maxed everything but Huntsman now and only recently got Weaponsmith to 400. Why? You don’t make pretty things, like with armor. You make starter-look weapons all the way through. I’m not looking forward to 100 more points of leveling chunky wood items.

I’ll try to get Huntsman done this weekend, assuming I have enough mats; I sorta used up my inscription-making stock on Weaponsmith.

I actually like how they did it with weapons more than how they did it with armor. I liked to craft Rare gear for my characters while leveling them, and the rare armors all look the same (and I don’t find most of them aesthetically pleasing.)

Rare weapons are always different! So when you spend a lot of mats to make a particularly awesome weapon, you get a new skin each time you hit a new tier! (It just so happens I don’t find them aesthetically pleasing either, but…)

Ideally it would be a combination of both though.

We still don’t know what the 100 levels of crafted stuff is going to be, we may get entirely new skins. We’ll have to wait and see.

Currently people are going crazy with speculation. There is always weird market upsets when that happens.

Wait till a couple days after the patch, and then we’ll see what is what.

From what I understood from the blog post a while ago about their direction this year, They will be permanent bonuses, but they will provide diminishing returns. So one may give you a +1%, but then the 2nd one only gives +.5%, etc, etc.

Although they’ve not revealed specifics, so things might have changed since their intial blog post.

Rivalz.3142:

“You can boost your account’s Magic Find using Essences of Luck, which can be earned by salvaging Fine or Masterwork items.”

Is this boost permanent or temporary?

It is a permanent boost given to your entire account, from what they have stated.

Check that post I linked to again. It’s not on that specific post, but the next post he makes (You can access it by clicking the down arrow under his name) He specifically states that the MF Utility Infusion will not be changing. To be very specific:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

• Utility Infusion will still work.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Magic-Find-merged-1/page/2#post2713566

Utility infusions will still work. No clue about the runes.

PMilkos.9103:

DaMunky.6302:

The Living Story has been nothing but GLOOM AND DOOM THE WORLD IS ENDING for months now.

Are you entirely sure you’ve been playing GW2? Because with this update we complete 4 straight months of nothing but parties and festivals.

And we haven’t had a festival in which the aetherblades didn’t try to kill everyone since Christmas.

Although to be fair, we did shoot down their airships at the Bazaar, so they didn’t really have much to do there (except try to get their gold back)

To quote the page,

We’re removing Magic Find as an equipment stat.

Magic find on Boosters, food, Guild bonuses, etc. Should not be changing, as those are not pieces of equiptment.

As for how Magic find is going to behave on sigils, runes, weapons, armor, and trinkets…. We don’t know. We were told that those individuals would be “Compensated” previously, but we still lack details on how.

EDIT: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Magic-Find-merged-1/page/2#post2713566 This is how it’s going to work. Still not sure about sigils/runes.

It was stated that there will be diminishing returns.

So if 1% MF costs you 10 salvaged blue/greens the first time, then the next 1% will cost 20, and then the next 1% will cost 30 (or maybe even 40 depending on how they do it)

So while yes, theoretically what you’re saying is true, we will quickly reach a point where it will cost twice the price of a legendary just to increase your drop chance by 1%

It shouldn’t remotely be worth the $$$ to raise MF to the point where you can get precursors reliably like you’d fear.

Morsus.5106:

Just wanted to point out that there is indeed a stat bonus on ascended (at least rings). Ring of Red Death gives 103 Power, 68 precision, and 8% crit damage for example, while Orichalcum Ring of the Berserker and Exquisite Ruby Jewel only gives 92 power, 63 precision and 6% crit damage. Small increase yes, but with enough it’ll make a small difference.

Ascended gear is better than exotic gear, true.

However, we have 100 levels of crafting to get through now with this release. If they followed the progression that we’ve had thus far, that’s 15-20 levels worth of new gear (Ranging from blues to exotics) Since they’re not increasing the level cap, and Ascended gear isn’t till we hit 500, they need to provide something for us to craft between 400 and 499 that isn’t an item with better stats.

So, either new Skins, or new stat combinations. Or maybe something else crazy that they’ve thought up. Hopefully they’ll enlighten us as to what that will be. Or we can wait a week.

But I’m impatient, and want to know now.

Shiren.9532:

codingCaptor.9428:

I’d personally rather have a villain or enemy that is pseudo relateable, vs. the “oooh we’re big and dark and scary because that’s just how the world works” That is the dragons.
Scarlet might fit that, if they continue with the backstory they posted for her. Or she might just be lame. I’m waiting to see.

As for this content… It’s 2 weeks of SAB. I’m willing to put the story on hold for 2 weeks for more jumping and fun themed content.

I mean, people want more SAB, so they have to find some time to release it. Now is as good a time as any. Serves as kind of a breather episode between major plot points.

I would argue that Ceara is the character in the story. Once she takes on the identity of Scarlet she seems to lose a lot of what makes Ceara an interesting character. Ceara is searching for something, Scarlet has seen the Eternal Alchemy. She isn’t searching for answers any more, she thinks she has found them and they appear to have made her crazy.

I think Clockwork Chaos should be the indicator for most people. That’s the level of story telling they want to put forward, that’s the type of characters and consequences they want to have. They set the bar. They could have killed a major character and raised the stakes, instead they killed some nameless NPCs. Whatever you think of Scarlet, it would appear she is the nemesis.

I think at this point, for your own sanity, it’s probably best to accept that the standard we’ve seen so far is where the Living Story is aiming at. Some people like it and are happy, some people are not (there are a lot of people who like Scarlet and the events happening in the Living Story). I doubt the Living Story will deviate much from we’ve seen so far.

I would argue that NOT killing a major character was the smarter move to make at this point. Other than Lord Faren, there isn’t really a character in this group whom we’ve really had time to connect to and identify with. Killing Rox or Braham would have had about the same level as impact to me as killing those 10-20 random NPCs did. It’s… kind of pointless to do it now.

The “raise the stakes” moment was already had, an attempted assassination, introduction of a threat, an example of power. Murdering people on top of that? Kinda meh. I can see the sarcastic forum posts now, talking about Game of thrones and how A.Net only wishes they were that good at writing.

The living story is only starting. They’re thinking ahead to tell a long term kind of story, and I’m 100% okay with that. They could mess it up, and how they’ve handled Scarlet thus far worries me that they may not be up to the task (Or, more realistically, that they’re writing for the lowest common denominator, a SAFE story that will keep their players happy) But I’ve always been an optimist, and I’m willing to let them show us their cards before I tell them they’re bad at poker.

Nick.6972:

PERSONALLY I never liked SAB I played it once and never again, and I didn’t come to complain here about it, but that’s not the point.
I’m asking whether we will get anything remotely as mature as for example Mass Effect or Bioshock. – Story.

Looking back to GW1 – at least the story was coherently written with characters you could relate to, and the villains.

The GW1 story was complete though. And if we look at the parts of GW2 story that is complete, it also has about the same level of writing skill that Prohpecies or factions had. (The writing in Prophecies wasn’t very good, I’d like to remind you. The story was sound, but presentation was very lacking)

The living story stuff isn’t complete. We’re still really in the introductory stages, letting us see who our heros and our villains are. They’ve got time to go the places that you want them to go. There is still plenty of story to be told.

Also, if attempting to cook people alive isn’t dark enough for you, I’m not entirely sure what is.

I’d personally rather have a villain or enemy that is pseudo relateable, vs. the “oooh we’re big and dark and scary because that’s just how the world works” That is the dragons.
Scarlet might fit that, if they continue with the backstory they posted for her. Or she might just be lame. I’m waiting to see.

As for this content… It’s 2 weeks of SAB. I’m willing to put the story on hold for 2 weeks for more jumping and fun themed content.

I mean, people want more SAB, so they have to find some time to release it. Now is as good a time as any. Serves as kind of a breather episode between major plot points.

From the new update page: “Craft your way to 500 to become a Grandmaster Crafter and to learn the secrets of crafting Ascended weapons!”

That implies that we are only getting Crafted Ascended weapons. This would make sense, but raises some questions.

1. Will only the Weaponcrafters (Weaponsmith, artificer, and Huntsman) Be able to go to 500?
2. Would it be okay to assume that Ascended Armor will be crafted in the future as well?
3. What about Ascended Jewelry? We can already fill all the trinket slots from other sources, and you seem devoted to making Guild Commendations the primary method of acquiring Accessories. Will that change?
4. Are there other benefits to crafting to 500 OTHER than the ability to make ascended gear? Since there are no other stat bonuses, what kinds of things would we craft? Exotics with new skins? What about jewlers (who don’t have skins)
5. And while we’re at it, what is the equivalent to “Ascended Food?” Are we going to see a new tier of consumables? (possibly with Agony Resist?)

Anthony previously stated that there will NOT be a one time event (like the mad king jumping out of the fountain) That post can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/speech/One-Time-Event-inc

While we don’t know for CERTAIN that it will be instanced (The queen could just stand there giving a speech on loop for hours) Considering the build up I would be shocked if it was not instanced.

Regardless, you shouldn’t have to worry about missing anything.

Daecollo.9578:

She isn’t a dreamer, because honestly … well look at her intentions, mother would not accept such a thing!

Ya know…. I’m not so sure about that….

The Nightmare court’s object is to free the sylvari from Ventari’s teachings. They’re doing so by changing the dream, feeding the Nightmare therin. Basically removing what they view as “Super religious mumbo-jumbo being taught in our schools!”

What if Scarlet here is the first sign of success? Not from the Nightmare court, with a purpose to corrupt the dream, and not a Follower of the Venntari’s teachings, but a… A middling. To make a joke of it, “A strong Independent Sylvari that don’t need no Centaur Philosophers.”

Could be the beginning of a very harsh look at what’s going over on in magumma

dukevonart.2691:

As an additional note for other people in this thread to talk about: What would you think of conditions if excess conditions over the cap applied a portion of their total damage immediately?

Thanks for the advice, that’s…. very constructive and encouraging.

As for your question, I think that would help. It makes additional bleeds not completely useless, while at the same time keeping them in balance because they don’t end up doing that much damage.

But I’m not sure if that’s the right answer to the problem. As far as I understand it, the bleed cap is a technical limitation, kind of like how Culling was. If there are too many stacks in existance on things then the servers explode trying to apply them all (because each stack of bleed has its own condition damage/duration, so it has to apply the damage from them individually, etc. etc.)

The IDEAL solution, the one we should hope for, is not the kind of hacks they did with culling (Differing caps for friendlies and enemies, etc.) But the final solution (Removal of culling in WvW, and now in PvP too) Which is to remove the condition caps altogether.

Alternatively, shifting the caps around a bit might ease the load on servers a bit. For example, a cap of 15 on regular mobs, 25 on veterans, and then 50 on champs/legendaries. Or something similar. Basically shift where our processor ticks are happening for calculating our conditions away from the trash mobs where the condition limit isn’t likely to be hit (and if it was, the mob will be dead soon anyway) And allowing more conditions to be applied to the monsters who will live through them anyway.

Thanathos.2063:

Leader of Aether Pirates? Thought it was May Lin, but apparently they still have some commanders (Sylvari – or is she even the leader?)

Mai Trin stated at the end of the aetherblade dungeon, “This has all gone to crud. Scarlet’s gonna have my noggin for screwing up.”

So there is someone who was a higher up than her, by the name of Scarlet.

The only reason I think she’s for real the end boss this time is because of how secretive A.Net is being about this release, as well as the inferred suggestions that this will finally bring everything they’ve been doing since F&F Back together. It fits just from a storytelling pacing kind of sense. But other than that, you’re right, there really isn’t any evidence that this can’t just be another throw-away villian.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Any information on this would be nice. ZAM is calling it an Experience Scroll.

So really, what is it?

My guess?

It’s a scroll, that somehow makes the users more experienced.

But I am also very curious as to what this could be.

I don’t know if you noticed or not, but it’s looking like our main villain who is running the entire aetherblade show (And who is also inferred to be behind the molten alliance) Is a Sylvari.

It’s also worth noting that nightmare court usually only target other Sylvari (since the pain/suffering of other races isn’t reflected in the dream, making it not really that useful) So who knows what this particular Sylvari’s deal is. She’s special. I’m looking forward to it.

After securing a peace treaty with the Charr, the humans are finally now only fighting a single front war. Against the Centaurs (Well, bandits too.) And we’ve been kind of destroying them recently (what with the sudden rash of human adventurers combing the countryside for slime covered boxes.)

I suspect, after the appearance of an evil Sylvari running the atherblades(that probably isn’t associated with the Nightmare Court, as they historically have only attacked other sylavri) She’s going to declare war on the pale tree.

I’m purely PvE (I don’t have no dog in the WvW Fight) And I’ve been recently playing around with Condition Damage builds, and I managed to make one that I thought was increadibly Stupid Good. But I don’t play ele that much outside of staff support, so I wanted to get people’s opinions on it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQJArdhMmYbtR0wjDIhHHACUAjHggG0hlCzAA-jAyAINAsWCpFAUFwcYR0YrmFRjVdjpjJiqFCYxaA-e

Basically, 100% bleed duration nets me 12 second bleeds on scepter autoattack. Since I get an auto-attack every 2 seconds, and they apply 3 bleed stacks per auto, that’s perma 18 stacks of bleed on any target I choose. With the sigil cooldown, and the extra burning duration I have, I can keep burn duration 100% uptime as well just by using sigil of fire. We can also throw some chill and/or cripple in there, which is pretty useful support.

With the rabid gear, I have 50% crit chance without fury. Sigil of earth gives me a 60% chance to apply a bleed (5s bleed, 10s with my condi duration) per crit. I end up with around 1 bleed proc every 3 attacks. My auto-attack hits 3 times Meaning I’m going to have 23-24 stacks of bleed up on a single mob. All the time. Just by auto-attacking. Which, considering the 25 bleed cap, is not shabby at all.

Runes of undeath and Diamond skin gives eles stupid high condition damage too, especially comboing well with scpeter 2, which gives toughness, which nets us even more condition damage.

I could switch out the heal for condition cleansing, and/or swap out the offhand focus for dagger (Giving me AoE potential with churning earth) But auto-attacking is only moderately less damaging than churning earth, and the invincibility/projectile reflect from Focus is good for the added survive-ability (since that’s kind of a ele problem in general.) Third utility slot could also be swapped out for survive-ability as well, mist form is my first thought for that.

Traits….. I don’t really know what to do with the points in fire. 30% condition duration is just too good to pass up, as that’s equivalent to more than 600 extra condition damage. But the build doesn’t really get anything out of the traits offered there.

I’d appreciate some thoughts and/or feedback.

Fake Difficulty, as defined in the article you linked, has 5 different Facets that can qualify something as having said difficulty.

Looking over those definitions, Only one of them has anything to do with your own points, that is that Bad Technical Aspects can increase the difficulty unfairly.

Only two of your complaints against the fight, those being that of the bad camera in the arena, and the weird floors, fit into this definition.

Considering the number of times I have lost because of poor camera angles or not being able to see the red circles (hint: Not very many.) I would say that the fight offers more Real difficulty vs. Fake difficulty, as defined by TVTropes.

The fight is approximately as difficult as the designers wanted it to be. Some people think that’s too hard, and that’s a valid opinion to have. Personally, I enjoy the challenge they have presented.

Whose condition damage/duration is used when applying conditions via Venomous Aura? Is it the thief’s, or the party member’s?

So, I Was running through fractals last night on my thief, and swapped from my dagger/dagger to sword/dagger for one particular section which I wanted the immobilize for.

As I was running along something seemed… wrong. The sword wasn’t where I expected it to be. When it hit me, I loudly proclaimed in Vent “Oh my god I’m right handed!!!” Much to the amusement to all present.

I’ve always thought my character left handed. I don’t know why (I’m right handed myself) But it was just always a Thing. Ya know, something I took for granted. And now I’ve learned that it was all a lie. It’s… unnerving.

I can imagine the technical fiasco that this would cause, probably not worth it, probably something I’ll never see, but I wanted to let the powers that be know, that it is something that I would very much love to find in game.

If I recall correctly, someone managed to calculate perma swiftness for all classes (by messing with boon duration and cooldown reduction) It’s not particularly good/easy on any classes other than Engy/Ele/Warrior, but it’s possible.

Ranger, for example, needs 90% boon duration and the trait that reduces the cooldown on his Call of the Wild skill. Not particularly useful, but possible.

gw2db has been my mainstay for such a service, although since it pulls its data from the game files (instead of from user input), they’re not always correct (Extra items, slightly wrong names, etc.)

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?

Challenge accepted!!!

Select how much money/hour you think is feasible for a character to gain (I’d say around 1 gold personally. Maybe 2 gold if you’re feeling nice.)

Players cannot gain more than that amount per hour from monster drops or vendors. Players are also capped per hour for profits from the trading post. (Defining profit is an exercise left up to the reader)

And hey, we can monetize that! For the low price of 800 gems, you can double that cap for a week!

And if that Modest Proposal piques your interest, Just wait till you hear about my great idea for solving economic problems in Ireland…

John Smith.4610:

Yes, many, many good reasons.
I don’t currently have the time to go into the reasons as it’s a vast discussion. I think it may have been discussed some time ago on these forums, I don’t particularly remember.

I’ve never seen this discussion, and this particular topic is one I’m very interested in.
A company by the name of ThreeRings has made several games I’ve liked using a buy/sell order system for their versions of Gems/Gold, and they were met with moderate success. I’ve always wondered why more companies don’t do that, and when I saw how gems/gold were handled here, I was very confused as to why you didn’t do that. It made more sense to me than what you currently have.

But then again, I’m not an economist.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m pretty sure my password was changed after September 12th, but is there any way for us to check short of just waiting to see if we’re forced to change it? I don’t want to change my password if I don’t have to, but will happily do so if I need to. I’d rather do it sooner than later so it doesn’t sneak up on me is why I ask.

After you log into the launcher, but before you launch the game, you will get a news screen. If you are going to be targeted by the password change, you’ll see a red bar up telling you that you REALLY should change your password.

If you don’t see it, you’re golden.

I just tried guesting with a friend in Blazeridge steppes, and ran into the same problem. Went from Tarnished Coast to Northern Shiverpeaks. He had not been experiencing a problem, but as soon as I logged into his server and joined his party, we both started being kicked regularly. Each time our progress would be reset to where it was at when I joined the map on his server.

Once purchased it should be permanent on your character.

I’ve seen no language suggesting this is a limited time only item, so it should be a permanent addition to the Gem store. Of course, only A.Net knows that for certain.

I have no idea what this means. it could be nice, I guess, or it could be annoying. I need to see it in game to decide.

Wouldn’t mind seeing a devs thoughts on it and why they changed it.

There are so many great things in this patch, and I am VERY happy with it.

However, there’s next to no balance changes in this patch. Just a couple minor bugfixes to some traits and “on hit-limited use” abilities. Engineers got a major buff with their bundles (Which, I guess they needed) But there was very little else.

I’m curious about that…. Curious and worried.

That would make sense, and in a world where people on the internet where mentally stable/intellectually savy/ PATIENT individuals, would be perfectly acceptable.

If A.Net is going to Taunt us with new content/goodies/rewards that we can’t even start working torwards for a few more days….. Imagine the Obscenities people would levy in their general direction!!!

Speaking of, here’s the list of ways I can see this going down.

1) Doing the daily Early rewards you normal rewards, Waiting till after the patch will Rewards+
2) Doing the daily Early rewards you normal rewards, after the patch everyone who’s done today’s daily gets Rewards+
2a) Same as above, but people who did the Daily Early only gets the Laurels.
3) Doing the Daily earns the same rewards for today’s daily, and some point in the future (Tomorrow, or next month) The Laurel rewards are activated.
4) Doing the daily early nets us normal rewards, and then the daily resets at patch, giving everyone the option for Rewards+

Personally, I think option 4 will cause the least amount of people complaining, with 1 being the easiest/worst option. 3 seems to be right in the middle of effort/complaint, and is what I expect. But a clarification is always nice.

The patch goes live sometime in the next 14 hours (source)

Dailies reset in approximately 6 hours.

After the patch, people will receive Laurels from Daily and Monthly achievements.

We know that we will NOT receive laurels for January’s monthly achievement.

My question is this: When do we need to do the next daily achievement (The one that starts in 6 hours) Such that we will receive laurels for it. If someone does the Daily before the Patch arrives, will they miss out on a Laurel? Will dailies Reset when the patch hits, since Daily achievements are “different” Now? Should I do my Daily twice? Not at all?

Answers are not required Methinks, because 1 laruel is not too big a deal. However, I would like to know such that I could plan for my evenings Festivities.

You can only receive the FotM daily reward chest once per day per account per difficulty Tier.

So if I have 3 characters, and I run FotM level 10 on each of them, I’ll get 1 Daily chest.

However, if I run FotM level 2 on one of them, FotM 10 and 22 on my 2nd, I would receive 3 daily chests (as the dailies for 1-9, 10-19, and 20-29 are all separate.)

Keep in mind the daily chests for 1-9 will not hold Pristine relics or Ascended rings.

A while ago people figured out how to cheat and copy/paste codes into the chat window to ping items without actually owning the item. There are several sites (Gw2db.com being the one I use) Which has these chat link codes availble for all items.

[&AgFTTwAA] <- Krytan Leggings.

I’m very interested to hear about PvE consumeable items (like ash legion spy kits) They are very cool, but I’m curious about the design philosophy behind them, and their greater place in the PvE world.

I’m also very concerned/curious how they are supposed to play into WvW (If at all) as some of them still are fully operable in a WvW setting. Mayhaps some will become available for purchase at secret WvW vendors in the future? wink wink nudge nudge