Guild Wars 2

GreyWraith.8394:

These sad people have not yet discovered the awesomeness of Asura.

Lol I still love my Asura ^_^ After meeting my goals I’m going to gear it! :D

teviko.6049:

mulch.2586:

I think a big difference between open-world zergable targets and instanced encounters which can be tuned to 5-member groups.

The open-world bosses tend to be especially simplistic, and I can give ANet a pass on that, because if they required skill, timing, or strategy, the player base would complain.

And yet the player base IS complaining, because they are too easy, have too many Hps and are woefully boring.

It didn’t take long for people to figure the mechanics of the dragon fights, or for fighting any ‘certain’ type of challenging encounter out there. People will figure it out, EN MASSE and once figured out, at least it would be interesting, instead of a 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 fight.

I can think of teh champion risen abomination as a prime example, of where one person in a sea of dozens gets aggro and spends the next 15 minutes uselessly kiting in a circle, hopefully skillfully enough NOT to reset the mob while the other dozen or so wail on it for 15 minutes. No skill, no need to move, I don’t worry if someone else has aggro, BECAUSE HE GETS IT FOR THE WHILE FIGHT!!!!!!! I just stand there and hit it with 1 until its HPs finally swindle away and I claim my (oh goodie) gold medal and 2s15c reward. The excitement just sizzles through my body.

And were supposed to swallow this as ‘fun’???

I kind of enjoy risen abomination on my thief, especially with aggro. Shortbow 5, lay down smokescreen for blind, and use basilisk venom when it starts throwing its tantrum, and switching to daggers for added DPS (unless I still have aggro). Shadow refuge downed players, and repeat. Like I say elsewhere people enjoy different things. I don’t like the knockdown timer since you’re ensured to go down, giving him free hits, and at least drakes do their icebreath right at the end of your downed time if you’re knocked down (provoking their spin knockdown, dodging, and getting behind them to unload damage while they commit themselves is great vs. these mobs, if drakes stand still, be careful, it’s preparing something).

It’s still nevertheless an entertaining encounter watching something so enormous and clumsy looking move with such speed.

Yeah, guys should have a right to play female characters, but if too many guys exercise it… I’m not going there since I know how these threads go down lol!

I don’t, but do realize they are a necessary evil. Glass cannons shouldn’t be viable for everything due to balancing. This, coming from a thief.

Knote.2904:

God they have so much to work on.

Events and tagging are such a kittening mess.

Yes, yes they are. Like I mentioned people sometimes blow long CD elites before they can reasonably expect to tag it. There are many who don’t like Orr, and with the annoying mob density who can blame them? But it does have farming nodes and efficient karma and gold. I think they should have a mode that converts all regions to level 80 (in this mode only t5 and t6 drop, but if you switch to regular you get the low level mats in case you want to help your lowbie alts craft and gear them). I also think party size needs to be expanded to 20, and current dungeons would be balanced around it but with the same rewards, but you could also be in a party of 20 for more cooperative karma runs.

Face it, right now, it’s too competitive, but it is, so we have to adapt until it’s changed.

Graill.8596:

@Josher, you nailed it on the head. The Op doesnt have a clue when it comes to gaming but it seems he/she has plenty of experience farming and selling gold. This is not a good thing, especially being called or associated with farming. Anet pulled a great magic act in keeping this type of mechanic downplayed until the game released, so we really only have ourselves to blame for letting these clowns fool us.

I don’t sell gold and in fact have spent real money on gems. I’m actually going against my own interests by telling people this, as the more people at a disadvantage and not knowing what to do means more loot for whatever groups I tag. I understand “farming” has negative connotations, but what else do people call it? Some people don’t know how to or want to know how to play the trading post, and crafting for the most part is unprofitable. Us wage earners in the game bring more gold into the economy by selling off our trash and get very marginal gains from the DE itself.

People always want to make more gold, and there is no “fast” way of making gold, but everyone wants everything right now. Delayed gratification is part of what separates us from other animals, we can patiently wait for a greater reward down the line. We may as well have a fun journey along the way (party chat between rounds is entertaining and I typically group with many of the same people, you know, community) and maximize our gains. Again, you won’t have 100g farming overnight, it may take a few weeks (and selling orichalcum ore and other resources you mine, sit on resources that sell for very little and wait for them to rise or just craft with them if you can), but don’t be left in the cold like I have in the past. We gain experience playing this game, and what does experience bring? Wisdom and knowledge.

Josher, hey that’s cool, not every game was meant for everyone and I respect that. Some people need more hardcore (EvE, Vampire Masquerade MMO coming up with permadeath) or more casual (WoW, and farther down than that Farmville)

5. Strategy.
We now arrive at this part… estimating when the mobs arrive. If it has rendered then it’s already too late. Use the stopwatch feature on your phone or IPod to time between renderings, and afterwards countdown to when it was rendered, and subtract a second. For example, after the Plinx second stage ends, wait until you see the third stage quest text and count to 8 approximately, as they will spawn in 9 seconds. Because remember, and I can’t stress this enough: if they’re rendered they’re already dead. Penitent and the first part of Plinx have random spawns, you simply don’t know what you’re going to get. In that case stay a little far in the middle back, that way you could get to either side faster without overcommitting yourself.

Also, people will blow their attacks, don’t mindlessly blow CDs and resources, use them wisely! Don’t run towards a pack that’s almost dead and use dagger storm or even waste initiative (or for other classes CDs, for every second it’s on CD is a commitment to not using it for that period of time, even when it would be great to do so, you can’t).

There are parts where this isn’t reliable, like when the veteran risen drake and the circle of slimes sometimes spawn together, or the drake dies first and then the slimes, slimes never come first. But if both are up go for the slimes if you can.

If the champ broodmother is up, you have agro, and the second wave of tiny slimes is defeated, or stage 2 has begun, lure the broodmother towards Plinx, as he will happily tank it for you for the extra karma (insert “awesome!” smiley here)

A rule of thumb is: Don’t blow major CDs on the veteran; you will need them for the packs of trash that will come after it.

And never, ever, use an omnomberry bar unless you have a group! And don’t be shy! Don’t be afraid to type, “Need group!” in /say, you need a group! I cannot stress this enough! In fact it is so basic I almost forgot to include it!

Good luck, happy farming, and don’t forget your phone or IPod for your stopwatch needs!

You walk into Cursed Shore after harvesting nodes in Straits of Devastation, pick up some more mithril/elder/ori/ancient/omnomberries along the way, and Plinx starts. You arrive, consume an omnomberry bar, blast away at mobs, and what do you hope for? At least a couple masterworks to sell off ( Insert “Oh heck yeah!” smiley here) but… find you only got a white and piece of trash for the entirety of phase 1, and managed to get a minute of poison stacked from the risen hyleks to boot (wishes there were a dejected smiley to put here). And to make matters worse, you see a silver medal, despite you being there the entire time (strongest possible crying smiley here). You’ll notice that I’ll give most examples from a thief centered viewpoint, this is because it’s the class I’m most familiar with.

Does this sound like you? Do not fear, for where there is a will, there is a way. We will cover topics ranging from weapon choices, builds, and classes.

1. Classes
This is by far and away the most basic element of farming, your class. Does your class have a reliable spammable high damage AoE (axe 5 for warriors and greatsword 2 for guardians for example)? If not, you may want to level a new class, and I hear Mesmer has it really difficult in this regard.
2. Builds

How do you tag mobs and get a better chance at loot? Why, damage of course! So logically you should put 30 into your precision and power trees and mix berserker gear stats with some magic find pieces. The extra 10 points should go into either vitality or toughness. You won’t be optimized to fight risen abomination or broodmother, so be careful of that. This is also why you shouldn’t do dungeons and farming chains interchangeably, as changing between your farming build and dungeon build would really add up to be quite expensive (adds “gasp!” smiley here). Dungeons go beyond the scope of this post, and you can get away with farming on your dungeon build (for DPS that would be 25-30 in the power tree, full vitality or toughness and between 10-15 of a secondary defensive stat, or for support 30 in both defense stat trees and 10 in the utility, so 30 earth, water, and arcane for support elementalists), it just wouldn’t be optimal.

3. Weapons

What weapons can your class use? As a thief, pistol/pistol is great for single target ranged burst damage… not exactly ideal farming material, sword/dagger on the other hand, has some promise, but the hits with the sword are too weak (medium crying smiley) . That leaves us with… the shortbow! Yes, it is a slow weapon with a charge time and takes too long to reach its target, but it does ricochet, but shortbow 2, clusterbomb, is the star of the show. You’ll need to manage your resources and stay close to your target (or else everything will die before the slow bomb hits =( ) You also have dagger storm, but you need to watch your environment to ascertain the right time to use this. See a bunch of guardians spinning around shooting white light and warriors whirling axes, and see fire in every direction (both magical and from flamethrowers)? Then it isn’t quite time, but I’ll get into elites in the next section. If you have a warrior use that instead, axe/axe 5 is your friend, it does high damage and has mobility.

4. Utilities
Now, how to optimize 7-10 for farming? On a thief, you have haste, assassin’s signet, and the other signet that grants a 15% movement speed buff that never leaves my utilities, and of course dagger storm. You have to not only know how to use utilities, but also when. What is the competition doing? If someone is whirling axes, and is taking damage while it’s being rendered then it’s already too late, you missed the boat. Basically, you want haste and passive damage increase, and elementalist has a glyph of storms that allows it to pump out extra damage too.

SWTOR had a major rhakghoul event many months ago, TSW’s theme is essentially fighting against undead, and now GW2 has the risen theme. We’re tired of zombis and zombies by another name alreadeh!

bombastinator.8965:

Lorana.2468:

Armoured Scales come from Krait/Drakes in WvW, best place to farm it if you can take the risk of being in a pvp zone.

otherwise your stuck transforming T5 scales into T6 with the forge.

also Heavy Moldy Bags drop all t6 materials, albeit at a low drop rate.

My toon is a guardian, and my server is low ranked. Guardians as a rule don’t dare go near WvW since the nerf, and if I farm in WvW im effectively doing it alone. Repair price for me is 1.3-2.6 silver. And I effectively cannot defend myself from anyone in wvw, let alone a pack of 5 or more.

Sounds like either a gear or learn to play issue. You have excellent defensive utility with the proper traits, utilities, and weapon set. Maybe you’re an offense oriented guardian and frequently get outclassed by rangers, wind elementalists, and thieves? Your class still excels in dungeons, and a warrior, guardian, elementalist, and any two other classes can easily clear any dungeon, especially if they all go down the power tree (25-30 points), leave the precision tree alone, max out a defensive stat tree, and put the other 15-10 into either the utility or secondary defensive tree. With the right gear set this is really powerful! Or, a support can go two down the defensive trees all the way, and 10 in the utility tree, so that would be 30 earth and water and 10 arcane for great water tanking.

“Tried that. For days. The areas ae 2/3s bots and they make the spawns so bad it’s pretty close to suicide to try. Went in with 50 silver for repairs and i left with 13 the last time. The good farming areas are so covered with bots they are unusable, which leaves only the areas so dangerous and unproductive even the bots leave them alone.”

You could try tagging and damaging mobs and the bots finish them off for you.

“I don’t want to mouse turn…”

“I don’t want to rebind WASD”

“I don’t want to build this way…”

Welcome to the art of questing, where you’ll need to learn certain things to maximize your results. The game involves situational awareness, and it’d be great if the game had a raiding group system so the entire zerg can get loot instead of groups competing for it.

DR is a pain to deal with, and relogging doesn’t work anymore =(

bombastinator.8965:

Day.4501:

Weeks of farming and you cant upgrade to level 80 gear? Sorry to say but you are doing it wrong.

I said I can’t do it without buying mats from the TP. i am so disgusted with how the botters and market manipulators are ruining the game that I refuse to do it.

I actually want to play the game instead of trying to make a living off it, or as an opportunity to perform trading scams that have long since been made illegal in the real world. This behavior (actually playing the game) is strongly discouraged by the game mechanics.

It used to be at least possible to do this though. It was hard and slow but it was doable. These days if you want to play the game you actually have to pay the people ruining it for the privilege.

There are whole website communities devoted exclusively to gaming the economy. I am getting the impression that economic manipulation is the actual purpose of the game, and I was a chump buying the game to begin with and for even thinking i could actually play it.

The market is loosely based off Eve’s, and while other communities hate resellers in these MMOs it’s apparently not only acceptable, but a viable way to make fast money if you know how. I’d rather stick to gathering and selling vendor trash as it’s more reliable, but some like to play the TP.

Again, if you’re going to suddenly throw some amount of difficulty at people at least make it not such a buggy NIGHTMARE!

I’ve seen much worse in launches where very important quests would bug out, and not the kind of bugs that benefit players, but those bad bugs that halt progress and break game balance. Yeah here due to rendering issues thief is more OP than even it was intended (and I main a thief) in PvP, but they have to do these fixes gracefully and cleanly, they don’t want to create bigger problems elsewhere.

4) I really, REALLY do not like the scaling in this game. Thought I would, find it makes my progress feel utterly worthless and doesn’t give enough appreciation to how you build your character either. Shifting from a raw damage character to a more tanky, crafty one seems to have very little difference save in perhaps the game-play itself.

Do you enjoy roflestomping lowbie mobs? It may have been fun in WoW for the exalted achieves and getting BC drake mounts, but here it isn’t necessary.

This makes no sense and brings to question why we even bother to do anything besides a more evasive or defensive character? My defenseless, glass-cannon killed things about as fast as a more defensive orientated design! The only difference was she couldn’t stand for very long…

World mobs weren’t meant to be a challenge, especially in smaller packs.

5) Water combat is god awful and makes you wonder why it was implemented in the first place if you can’t even use your character’s carefully selected abilities. It’ll often outright undo the benefits you had on land making it a living hell. Then they jam pack it, almost consistently, with an abnormal amount of mobs to take on.

Not cool.

Agreed. It used to be fun for me until the whirlpool nerf. What’s also annoying is how the can chain dunk you, and each dunk last three seconds. I have learned somewhat certain routes to avoid these kinds of mobs that minimizes water travel in Orr, and when an ori node is underwater I use stealth to get at it and swim back up.

6) PvP is just confusing, especially in WvW I really don’t know what’s going on half the time. It does a poor job of ushering you into things and not only that, but regardless of what Arenanet says, the disparity between levels/time spent can be an enormous factor.

Getting killed in a few shots while I couldn’t dent my target kind of gave that away. It’s just another layer of frustration and disappointment—lot of broken promises and what they did adhere to, wasn’t that great of an idea to begin with.

When the game first came out even crafting was somewhat confusing for me, then I got a handle on it and use the search function like a boss. However, since crafting is beyond the scope of this point I will mention that maybe you didn’t counter glass cannons properly? And if you could, you yourself would have a counter, and if you were balanced like me currently you can’t outdamage glass cannons and tanky builds easily soak up anything you throw at them, yet could take hits better than the glass cannon and dish out more damage than the tank. Maybe you aren’t running with the right zergs and always happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Siege is also your friend. Like I said elsewhere: sometimes the zerg steamrolls you, sometimes your zerg steamrolls them, but you have fun all along the way.

7) Now a question; Is this game even worth completing the story? To continue collecting and completing for whatever bizarre reason? It went from one of my most anticipated, most hopeful titles since like… EVER to being nothing more than a pain in my behind. I’m serious when I say most of what this game offers is done better elsewhere and what it does uniquely just drags it down generally speaking.

Hate to rip on a game people likely enjoy a great deal but I’m pretty sick of it at this point. Ready to drop MMOs entirely, as I am not going back to you know what, and find my place in another genre instead

All thoughts, feelings, suggestions on improving my experience are welcome. Just don’t expect me to be too happy-go-lucky obviously.

It is worth it if you want 100% world completion, but my main is only up to his level 70 story quest. My former main is up to 76, and one of the 70 story missions was almost entirely underwater… in Orr.

Kelliak.9152:

I’ve been playing this game a bit now, sitting at about Lvl. 73(almost 74) and I am rapidly becoming less and less excited to finish it up.

1) The story continues to get worse and less cohesive. Voice acting at given parts doesn’t help, some of it is horrendous and would be better in mere text. Honestly, for a game touting a more “RPG” experience it’s failing horrendously on this front—WoW does better quite frankly.

I agree to an extent that voice acting doesn’t really work for playable characters. SWTOR got away with it somewhat, but it feels more like watching someone else complete a quest than doing it ourselves. In other words, it feels more like Final Fantasy than Dragon Warrior, and the later traditionally has a silent protagonist as the player himself is the hero. TSW also knew this, but it was funny watching our characters there stand around like a drooling lump lol so they didn’t really do that right lol!

2) Guilds are utterly worthless. I can rarely ever get a group going, assistance, or even a conversation much of the time. This appears to be a reoccurring theme among friends who also played(keyword here). Are people just joining them for perks or just ’cause with little desire to actually mingle?

Maybe you need better guilds?

Been in several, not much luck it would seem.

3) Some of the content in this game is downright INFURIATING. Take one of the skill-point locales in the Straits of Devastation; can’t get to it because a veteran mob is spawned there along with a couple of regulars. The veteran is not only buggy and easily reset(very problematic as a thief relying heavily on stealth to survive) but him and his companions have this neat trick of dragging you down and paralyzing you the entire duration for 3 seconds or so.

It is oftentimes infuriating, but you also have to see if it’s a gear issue or if you have the right abilities slotted for the situation. As for the skillpoint the intent is to group for it. That stun is environmental, not a skill from the mob. Just try luring it out from behind the curtain of green smoke.

Why they thought this was a clever component, for such a random moment in someone’s leveling career, is beyond me. You’ll see this sort of thing throughout the game and Orr LOVES to dump it on you in heaping doses. Guess they didn’t count on the community being lifeless knuckleheads unwilling to assist unless there is a clear objective stamped out on their map.

Many want to assist, but simply either might not have the resources to do so. A guildie of mine wanted to do TA explorable, something I need myself, but I couldn’t help because I’m in some magic find gear with magic find gems on the one hand and beserker gear on the other, not exactly ideal dungeon equipment. I do have an exotic knight’s dagger that I swap glimmerfang out for, but it’s only one piece of equipment. I’d also need to buy a GM book to give myself a viable dungeon build: 25 power, 30 vit, 15 toughness is what I’m looking at for my thief to give it sustained damage and survivability required for dungeons. People might be afraid of dungeons because they run glass cannon farming and PvP builds and can’t be bothered to pay some money to change traits. 30 in power and precision may be great for low end PvE (Plinx, tars, and Penitent), mid-end PvE (Grenth, other world legendary bosses other than medium high end dragons, where glass cannon starts being unviable) and PvP, but not for high end PvP (dungeons).

Welcome to MMOs… WoW and SWTOR had it and I think it’s downright dumb. The irony is melee can stand under you and punch the air under you while you can’t hit them with your spell or arrow, which is an added layer of ludicrous.

I spy a… cheezeburger cat! :D

I’ve noticed that too, but most of the dyes are common (which is to be expected, but…) It seems like the rare and even uncommon dyes have had their drop rate nerfed to the ground.

Also applicable to the making money thread, but stock up on illumination dye before people figure out that it’s a much better gold than “gold” is, and the irony of silver being rare yet “gold” being uncommon is cute. Also, redemption compliments illumination well, as secondary colors are usually best a shade or two darker than the primary.

azurrei.5691:

Promega.7628:

captaincrunch.6731:

I’ve found that having 2 or 3 level 80s in orr mining orichalcum every day can be rather lucrative – and painless (takes a half hour or so).

8 toons X minimum 11 ori spawns X minimum 3 ore per spawn X ~3.2s per ori (after15%) =

8.448 gold per day >minimum< just from orichalcum.

So, spending 4 hours+ per day running around mining in Orr is the best way to make gold? Sounds like a fun way to play an MMO – spend all your time mining to be able to buy anything. This is why the gold rewards from doing in game activities (you know, the FUN stuff) needs to be drastically increased.

I don’t actively seek out orihalcum, but there are some elder nodes that can be a challenge to go through. Sometimes there’ll be a vet earth elemental or risen with fear and lifesteal and clean out the mobs before taking it down, and if the floor cripple thorn vines are activated in that particular region then if you have a stealth use it, it doesn’t go after invisible characters. Then, you fight your way to the other nodes, craft your rares, and salvage for your ectos.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

My secret method is making legendaries a LONG TERM GOAL.

As in: not getting one in the first year of the game. Everyone is so fixed on wanting the kitten things NAO…

I noticed that too. I’ve already seen a sunrise and a couple of twilights (one in WvW and one in Orr). I’ve even seen a legendary longbow and the incinerator. Delayed gratification is one of the things that helps makes us human and the time and difficulty it takes to acquire an item makes it valuable. If everyone has a legendary then how impressive would they be? By Christmas maybe like half the players will have one.

Ditton.3149:

I find most of the mechanics in games to be tedious, inane and boring. WoW included. I hate artificial mechanics created just to damage a creature, id rather have high hp. If you want to force tactics, give the creature abilities that make it put people out of their comfort zone or have it not be alone..honestly why are champions on their own anyway, its a huge boss..let it summon a horde to fight with it like the dragons do..have the dragon hordes destroy anyone on the sides firing at the dragon..seriously why are all the champion creatures letting all those guys sit on a hill and fire mindlessly at their master? Have the Centaur overlord cast a knockdown on all melee opponents. and then an AoE..lets see who mindlessly beats on it then. I dont want to have to do a hokie pokie to kill a boss just because, I wouldnt mind the bosses having new and interesting abilities that force you to think outside the box.

1. You fight through packs of trash already.

2. Bosses should be tough enough to stand on their own. I agree with the pack summoning for certain bosses, but not all.

3. I’ll agree with the knockdown only if it’s telegraphed, and the telegraph has to be visible through AoE fire spam.

4. Some bosses already do, for instance after Plinx I usually swap out dagger storm for basilisk venom. An ability meant for packs of trash isn’t effective against a boss whereas anything really fast and throws a high damage tantrum can be shut down for a second. But that isn’t a dungeon and knowing how to get away if you have aggro (especially if you aren’t a tanky build) takes some on the fly thinking and energy management.

Keep in mind that high boss HP pools are important for class balance. Tanky sustained DPS characters need to be useful too and against champs they shine.

I frequently type “mith”, “elder” and “rare” to ensure I only make what I want to. Still, typing in search bars may be good for Google and Windows Explorer, but when it’s necessary for crafting…

nidwin.6731:

@Daiva

Give the Mesmer a go. It’s the most dynamic of all the possible heal/support toons out there. But you won’t be able to heal before level 60-70 although.

I thought guardian was supposed to be the game’s star supporting class? Makes them both viable in PvE and PvP since players need boons and protection in both situations. Like I said elsewhere here, be a strong support tank (ele has a lot of resources, I really don’t have experience other than thief and ele and from beta warrior and necro) so that you can’t be ignored. “Ignore the tank” is why WoW instituted capture the flag objectives. Understandable, since people other than high burst damage glass cannons want to be useful in PvP too.

Auesis.7301:

Your own fault for using the 10 clover recipe and flying right past the 1 clover recipe that has a much better average.

Actually, I used the 10 clover recipe and while it only gave out 10 clovers a time I got 10 clovers three times in a row, I only started using the single recipe after getting desperate for skillpoints after obtaining 70. Still have 4 bloodshards left after crafting my 77 =)

Remember OP: It’s no one’s fault that you gambled away your resources. Take a deep breath, go out for a run, and come back prepared and ready to “attack” the game (you already are, but the context in which I use “attack” has different connotations than vicious complaints).

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

No. Why:

What exactly would be the point.

Wedding attire costumes, like guild wars, and if you want to have your own roleplay wedding, sure. But you don’t need an actual system, and you don’t even really need costumes.

Yes, you need costumes. A white wedding dress on the bride and black tie on the groom or it’s not a wedding.

Melchior.2135:

THEN his parents found out that he’d had his sexy cat-lady character fake-marry my big bearded wizard (a BLACK MAGE no less, clearly a minion of Evil), and they completely flipped out and made him move out of the dorms lest we further convert their son to what I can only assume they imagined was a Satanic pansexual LARPer cult.

So… uh… yeah! I’m totally in favor of GW2 Marriages!

I actually like the term black mage far more than “elementalist”, it just has an appeal and isn’t necessarily “evil”, it’s what you do with the magic that counts. Burning zombies with pyrokinesis = good, for example.

Are you serious about your dorm mate’s parents?! They sound like the kind of nuts who protest Harry Potter movies and people like that are a laughing stock on Youtube and among the best lulcows! :D

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Then they would need to introduce a new class… divorce lawyer.

Or an item mall divorce stamp ^_^ They could also sell “town” wedding clothes and I’d support that. I like this idea, and a certain other game that most of you never heard of already has it ^_^ They had a dragon soul quest before WoW too.

I “absolootely” love the pun. Apart from the precursor (which is a total crapshoot, but that makes it all the better when you do obtain it) the runestones are easily the second hardest part, for me at least simply because of the money. Obsidian shards are somewhat “harder” than badges of honor due to the grind and players not always drop bags (and even if you do get in some kills your bag drops are oftentimes unobtainable. I had a loot bag drop but couldn’t pick it up due to losing server connection =( ), but WvW is the funnest part of the entire game so long as you’re the right build, class, and log in at the right time.

Sometimes it’s dead, sometimes their zerg steamrolls you and no one wants to help defend a keep, but that’s just how it rolls, the other side has to and will eventually be the efficient military machine that steamrolls over you, but you take comfort knowing you’re guaranteed to be in the bigger zerg than them eventually. The karma is also decent and you could easily get your dailies done in WvW zones. It’s not Orr, but it is funner, and you do your server great justice by joining.

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand you have people that would use it as a backdoor inspect feature while while on the other sharing builds and gear would be great without needing to link them. Someone may say, “You PvP and have 0 in critical strikes!” or, “You wanna do dungeons but are running a full glass cannon build! Are you nuts!” people will then think and research what’s best for what game feature.

But I don’t agree with the backdoor inspect so… -_-

Unpredictability.4086:

Cause nobody else would be there otherwise. The kills take forever, you can easily get ganked, and it kills your performance. They need to encourage people to play though so it’s a monthly.

I knew there’d be carebears in GW2, but not at that scale. WvW and siege warfare was one of the most anticipated features by the fans. Sometimes you’re in the zerg that steamrolls others, sometimes you get steamrolled, sometimes you shadow refuge yourself and a warrior at their gate… and someone actually comes out! It’s part of the game. There’s also a jumping puzzle where it’s mandatory to lose most of your health due to the fall damage, and ideal spot for lulz camping.

Here you could play an ele with 30 points in earth and water and 10 in arcane for a support build, and spec for toughness/healing power/vitality. Water tanks I imagine are high in demand for running high end dungeons.

Dra Keln.2015:

10 sq miles is a lot my friend, Skyrim is only 25sq miles and its certainly much much larger than 3 cursed shores

Ehh, true. But then again there’s no conversion from real world into game. But the lore Cursed Short is likely to be much bigger, since like I said we only explore a small part of each zone.

If they nerf raw damage then tagging mobs will be even harder for farming on a thief =(

Wonder if they’ll nerf warrior’s damage too? (lol like that’ll ever happen!)

"

What seperates thief burst from other burst, imo, is the difference in difficulty to execute that burst. For thief it’s easier to do that other builds/classes.

So how to balance it, I suppose, would be to have the overall damage remain the same, but have it harder to execute and give it more opportunities to be countered.

How this is going to be achieved, i suppose we have to wait and see."

More opportunities to be countered? Are you kidding me? Such changes would effect PvE, and mobs sometimes already annoyingly turn around during the backstab charge time.

Notice the common denominator of the first two pictures. If you have to ask then I won’t tell you, but those in the know will “get it” =)

Although not pictured here, I typically have either blood or emerald as a main color with abyss as a secondary.

The first is honey ice main, and pastel rose as a secondary.

The second has a main of icing, secondary of indigo.

The third picture is me using illumination dye as the main (the best gold dye I think) with a secondary of redemption (the two compliment each other well) After all, nothing says “irony” like a shining, gaudy ninja ^_^ )

Many will disagree with my sometimes “unorthodox” dye combos for my class, but the game is about having fun after all, and when I’m in an orthodox mood I’ll just switch over to blood and abyss like I mentioned. If everyone ran around in abyss or midnight sky then it’d be aesthetically boring.

It’d be nice to have a scale comparison to the real world. My human thief for example is slightly taller than the middle setting on the slider, so he’s probably 5’9"-5’10" given that the middle is probably 5’8". Keep in mind that the areas we explore in the game are tiny parts of those regions lorewise, and when you go through a portal you’re character is lorewise walking down a road, maybe taking a carriage, etc., to the border of the next zone. I’d say the playable part of Cursed Shore is maybe 10 square miles?

I still don’t even feel safe equipping my precursor, never mind swapping sigils out.

SteepledHat.1345:

Nah, those guys were just more skillful at throwing their weapons into the forge. That’s why they got their precursors. More skill.

Totes.

Maybe not skill per se but persistence. There is a .1% chance using rares (too low I think, maybe .5-1% is good), meaning that an average of 1/1000 tries will yield one. Also, keep in mind that some cultures are very luck oriented and actually enjoy gambling, and this is one of the Eastern/Western divides.

I have played Eastern MMOs that have had worse mechanics than the Mystic Forge, which honestly isn’t even bad apart from precursor odds. Imagine in some other game you try putting 5 ingredients into an alchemy bowl, many of which are rare, and with 5 you have no room for a drastic odds increase object as 5 slots is maximum, and could get literal garbage from the attempt at making the item whereas the Mystic Forge is guaranteed to give back an object of at least equal value. Imagine throwing in 4 rares and getting back a 1c piece of crabmeat bad, and you have other games’ systems. Though even the rarest items there had way better chance than precursors (lowest I think is maybe 10% with 90% chance of trash -_- )

The Mystic Forge is nevertheless a far better mechanic than some other games and some may even say it holds our hand for the most part.

Keep in mind that some other weapons look like precursors. I have Usoku’s Needle as my main weapon, but it has the same model as Spark.

“This means joe-blow could put 4 swords in and get Dawn, where as I could put 10 million in and never get anything”

I know you are using 10 million as an extreme example, but even with RNG and true randomness at far less than 10 million you are still guaranteed a precursor. A .1% chance is an infinitesimal chance, but it’s still a chance. Just remember not to blow all your gold on the gamble, as rares could be crafted. Although you might be better off simply selling the gathered mats and just saving for it outright.

Now, this may sound harsh, and the OP does have my sympathy, but if people regularly got a precursor from throwing exotics in it’d be a 10% chance of obtaining one (4o exotics = 10 attempts), which is still way too high given how rare legendaries are supposed to be. Maybe a 3% chance using exotics is reasonable.

Just made mine today, and while I did many attempts (though nowhere near the stories I’ve heard of thousands being thrown in) I did manage to get a precursor today However, I agree that the RNG is too much after reading about all these situations. Usually, I salvage my crafted goods for ectos since I need 150 more for the gift of fortune (hardest part for me =( ) and haven’t even gotten started on Twilight Arbor explorable yet (still need the GM manual so I could allocate 30 points into acrobatics and 25 into deadly arts for my dungeon build). I just had a feeling I should use the mystic forge and take a break from my ecto crafting, but my previous advice still stands given the typical scenario: craft rares of the same legendary type you want only using gathered mats while buying fine T5 ingredients (minimal expense given how much you’ll earn questing), and sell exotics from the forge on the TP while saving for your precursor with vendor trash event profits. This way, you’ll not only have a chance for your precursor, but if you never get it you’ll at least have some gold saved towards it. The buying up and reselling of precursors seems to have halted, so they’ve stabilized at around 250-350g.

With 100% world completion, 25 icy runestones, a gift of wood, all the mats but the dungeon token item for the unicorn statue, and 360 PvP marks I’m almost there.

You could try Orr, starting with Plinx and ending with the risen abomination…just remember to switch out your “farming” or dealing with large packs of standard mobs skills for your fighting a big boss skill. As a thief this means swapping out haste and assassin’s signet for shadow refuge, smokescreen, and since it’s a special case that justifies it ( in particular a very fast moving, hard hitting champion whose damage connects before the animation is finished and could easily catch up to you long after you blow your energy and sometimes can’t find the green shortbow 5 circle to get away), swapping out dagger storm for basilisk venom.

OMG OMG I love his jokes! :D They’re so “punny” ^_^ Whoever wrote those should start writing lines for Stephen Colbert! :D

One of the things that made GW2 popular was no mounts. However, since there’s no open world PvP other than WvW it kind of mitigates the no mount idea somewhat, but not entirely since you’re forced to deal with mobs. I think mounts are a good idea (no flying mounts although I love the concept behind them for PvE servers but they just wouldn’t work with GW2’s architecture and zones are basically instanced, so no flying from Cursed Shore to Melchior’s Leap) only if they have a jousting system too. Thieves could have a spear main hand and dagger offhand or use shortbows from mounts while warriors could have lances (a new weapon introduced that’s exclusive to mounts and traditionally muscular classes like guardians and warriors).

The Mystic Forge is great for things other than legendary precursors. I obtained some good armors and weapons out of it. Sure, you could sell exotics back at a loss (so it’s preferable to craft stuff you throw in so you keep most of your gold since you’ll only spend some on T5 mats) or make a profit. You can also upgrade from T5 to T6 mats using the forge.

Tried editing my above post since it’s obviously in the wrong thread -_-

“toughness reduces damage. if you are taking enough damage to justify the use of toughness then you are probably playing it wrong.
Tiny investment in vit with tiny investment into defensive traits outperforms even 1k additional toughness. That is what I learned the hard way.”

In dungeons though you will get hit, guaranteed. Energy is limited and some mobs you simply cannot outrun. Remember: You are beating on a hard hitting boss with mountains of HP, you need to survive the impact long enough to win. Heck, even the trash, but not as extreme as bosses obviously.

Blokje.3914:

Agemnon.4608:

Yet even more (I can’t post enough of these!)

What kind of armor is that? I like it :D

Named gear has the same look and there’s a set for pretty much any stat group =) The helmet is crafted.

The same armor, but with different colors:

The first is in front of a campfire with redemption and illumination gear, second in natural sunlight.

The third is icing dye with indigo trim ^_^ I won’t say why I like that particular combination, but it has sentimental value for me ^_^