Guild Wars 2

I do agree—

Would be nice to see lots of normal mobs bunched up instead of three or four Silver mobs.

With that said, I thought the trash in Dredge, Cliffside, and Grawl Fractals were a step in the right direction as far as the concept of trash goes. Lots of normal mobs with the occasional Veteran tossed in.

Honestly, I think ArenaNet took a more “middle-ground” as far as gear progression goes. The thing is that in most MMOs, there are generally new tiers of gear that often replace the old tier of gear, complete with full sets of armor and trinkets. That meant that Best-in-Slot gear you have earned in each slot would then be replaced by the next tier and so on … thus creating the proverbial “treadmill”.

Right now, it’s just Rings and Backpieces. Meaning: we still have life in most of our Exotics. If anything, future gear would just be more slots but the Ascended rings and back pieces we have now would not be replaced by anything stronger (unless the level cap is increased). At that point, the only reasons why you would ever replace an Ascended piece are: you changed your specialization (eg. using a PTV back piece to be more tank-like instead of a Berserker or Rampager piece for more damage), or you wanted a different skin (Fractal piece, Quiver, or Book).

If I remember something from the previous AMAs, the intention was to release Ascended gear to various parts of the games and that it was a “mistake” to make them dungeon-exclusive.

Honestly, I see this as a suitable compromise. Instead of releasing new tiers of Ascended gear every month that would probably replace old Ascended gear, we just get more Ascended gear in different slots.

I wouldn’t mind tagging along during weeknights and can mostly make the 7 PM EST scheduled time (unless I’m at work since I sometimes working the night shift).

I’m a grenade Engineer and have a significant amount of dungeon experience as well as the Dungeon Master title, so I’m mostly there for tokens to purchase the dungeon set … and perhaps relearn the content since I haven’t been there in quite some time. If you need someone, feel free to send me a PM!

Gate of Madness!

RNG could determine if you fight the Undead Lich or Shiro Tagachi in the end (but you could fight both of them at the same time on higher difficulty levels).

Nialiss.6459:

Back to the point, I’d prefer people call it cheating or abuse of a mechanic or something like that. Just saying.

Those are usually what falls under the blanket term of “exploits”.

Although, when I do report exploits, if I think a certain glitch is more like a “grey area” sort of thing, then I’m more likely to flag that one as a simple ‘anomaly’ … as in it feels exploit-like but I’m not sure if it’s a real exploit.

With that said, I do have a somewhat set of guidelines of what could constitute as an exploit, and these include but not limited to:

• Can you use this trick to completely trivialize the encounter? If I can AFK-autoattack a boss from 100 to 0% HP, then chances are good that it’s an exploit that should be reported. For example, the infamous “tree” exploit with the Mossman. On the other hand, bunching up on Subject Alpha in melee range in CoE Path 1 is not something I’d consider an “exploit” unless that same technique prevented him from using all of his attacks instead of certain attacks.
• Can I skip an insane amount of content with this trick? I suppose “insane” amount can be tricky to judge, but I guess it would be determined on what’s being skipped. Running past mobs, in essence, is not really exploiting; but preventing the mobs from reaching you by taking abusive advantage of their simplistic AI could be.

Repeating similar words back and forth is no longer an intelligent argument in progress, but just a sudden de-evolution into pure bickering and mockery.

With that said, there have been talks about this particular feature and that it will be “coming soon” … how soon and how it will function in comparison to what is more commonly known in more established MMOs? Who knows!

I remember DoA. I liked it and hate at the same time. I liked it in that it was challenging and allowed me to complete any of the four paths in any order before fighting Mallyx. That same concept also applied with Duncan the Black in Slaver’s Exile, which I also found moderately challenging.

I hated DoA in that I played a Ritualist, and had to depend on my guildmates to vouch for my skills if we had to pug someone. If you played a profession that fit the usual meta-group at the time, then no one would ask questions except when something went wrong. Otherwise, people would look at me funny. This was when there was no “Hard Mode” and the four different paths had zone-wide conditions regardless of difficulty. If I remember right, you needed a tank of some sorts (Warrior, Dervish, or a properly-specced Elementalist), three nukers (usually Elementalists), a BiP Necro, and a Bond-Monk, and two other types of healers (usually Monks). I actually had to build my Ritualist to fit one of those roles— I went with being a Channeling-based “nuker” and it worked surprisingly well. Though I suppose having a high Lightbringer rank (around 6) also helped.

A thought crossed my mind in that what if all the eight original dungeons had a “Secret” path that would only open up if the three previous paths (or 4 in the case of Arah) were completed before the reset? This secret path would be tuned for Level 80 characters and would actually require a considerable amount of coordination to complete it. However, if you complete it, then you might end up with more dungeon tokens than usual. The encounters in this secret path should also be varied somewhat to keep it interesting, perhaps by placing different branching paths or different boss encounters.

Thanks for the email address, Robert. I sent an email on an exploit that I have tested recently in Fractals (I figured I might as well report myself before someone else does it for me. :P )

Great work in making the dungeons a bit more enjoyable for those who seek it complete them more legitimately. Thanks a bunch!

Nice video!

Defending Magg without WP-zerging is definitely possible providing you have the AoE-DPS to take them out in a suitable amount of time. Having Guardians that can use their GS-pull ability to help bunch them up, and then have glass cannons lay waste to them. It’s a text-book tank-n-spank method but it seems to work. Although, in your case, you have two Warriors and two Guardians. If I knew any better, the two Soldier professions tend to synergize very well with each other for devastating effects. It doesn’t really surprise me honestly.

Often times, when I run dungeons with randoms, the most common food buff I see is the Omnomberry Bar (+30 Magic Find, +40 Gold Find, +10 XP) and well … I suppose we could debate about the use of Magic Find in a Dungeon all day, but I’m thinking more down the lines of this—

What if all foods gave Magic Find? Or at least a certain set of foods. I mean, not only you get the benefits of Magic Find but you also get some stats that are actually good for clearing content faster, like Power.

Currently, what I have noticed is that most high level foods generally give:

• +100 Primary
• +70 Secondary
• +10% XP
  Exceptions: Some may list only one stat but have an on-kill or on-heal proc.

I suggest this:

• First, get rid of the Omnomberry Bar, which is an All-Greed food.
• Second, implement four sets of foods for higher level characters that can give one of the following: Magic Find, Gold, Karma, or XP. Those four would fall under a category called “Greed Stats”.

That would mean that newer foods would follow this formula:

• +100 Primary stat
• +70 Secondary stat
• +10~30% Greed stat

For instance, a Bowl of Truffle Ravioli gives +10% XP along with Toughness and Precision. Meanwhile, there could be other kinds of Orrian Truffle recipes that provides the same Primary and Secondary stats, but different Greed stats, like Magic Find or Karma. If it means introducing more food materials to allow for more classifications of foods, then I’d welcome that change!

That way, there’s a little bit more logical thinking when choosing which food buff you want to bring to not only maximize your performance for your group, but also maximize whatever monetary resource you would desire the most.

Need more Karma to burn on Obsidian Shards? Then eat something that gives more Karma per event.
Do you value loot drops over coin? Then go with Magic Find.
Do you need more skill points? Then go with food that gives bonus XP.

What do you guys think? Could it work?

What I personally would like to see if some improved LFG tools. Whether that is the ever-popular Dungeon Finder in most modern MMOs or even a fancier Party Search feature like in GW1, it obviously has to be better than what we have now.

Sure some people could join one of guilds with hundreds of people and hope for like-minded members to party up and do dungeons, but I shouldn’t feel forced to join one of those larger guilds just to run a dungeon. Even then, it’s still not a guarantee that I’d find a group (good, bad, ugly, whatever— a group) for the dungeon I want to run, especially for higher-end dungeons like Arah, harder paths like SE path 2 and CoF path 3, and less-popular paths like most Story Modes. For some folks, they’re just happy with their small band of friends, even if some friends can’t be on at the same time to run content.

Likewise, I shouldn’t have to rely using a 3rd party website, like GW2LFG, spamming Lion’s Arch, or a combination of many other crazy methods of communication just to find a group. That sort of stuff should be more simplified and easily accessible as an in-game feature.

Pretty nasty example of one of my recent Fractals run:

We get to Jade Maw Fractal. Party members want to skip trash, but instance owner wants to kill mobs. The mobs end up getting skipped but the instance owner rage-quits and kills the dungeon. Pretty extreme example but it could happen.

I do agree that there needs to be a way for the dungeon ownership to pass on the leadership to a new person when the original leader has to go due to unforeseen circumstances (or in my case, uncertain rage-quits). Emergencies happen and it can be tricky to avoid it.

It’s interesting to speculate.

I’d like to see:

• More availability for Ascended items. I don’t expect all stat combinations to be available for crafting, Karma, or WvW; but at least some of the high-end items available can be available elsewhere so that the higher level GW2 community is a little bit more spread out instead of confined within Fractals. As far as Agony Resistance goes, since that is a dungeon-exclusive stat, Ascended gear obtained outside of dungeon content wouldn’t have Agony Resistance built in, but would still have the slot available for it. Likewise, an infused version of that item could be made using materials found only in dungeons. That way, there’s still some minute form of “gear progression” for those who are into that stuff.
• New Zones. Especially level 80-only zones. This would also spread out the higher-level community a little bit and give them something to do. I’d imagine the Northern Shiverpeaks would be a great place to look since Jormag looks like the next Elder Dragon to take on. Though, the Crystal Desert might be interesting to look at. Or even the Isle of Janthir with the White Mantle and the Mursaat.
• New Jumping Puzzles. I found it quite surprising that the Monthly achievement includes jumping puzzles, so I would at least expect some of these in the next update.
• Changes to Dungeons. Encounters being re-tuned and re-balanced so that it’s a bit more enjoyable. As such, exploits would be fixed. And maybe the trash could be worth killing instead of skipping. While we’re at it, maybe Magic Find could be modified to be more party-friendly when it comes to instanced content that requires small groups of people.
• Improved LFG Tools. GW2LFG.com is nice, but there needs to be an in-game option for those that want it. Though I have yet to see my account become compromised due to posting my character information on GW2LFG.com, it would probably give a better peace-of-mind if these options were available in-game. Whether that would end up being a Dungeon Finder common in more modern MMOs, or the Party Finder from Guild Wars 1, it obviously has to be better than what we have.
• New Fractals. Despite some of the glitches and bugs in some Fractals, I still find it to be moderately enjoyable. Seeing that Fractals could represent anything and everything about Tyria in any given time period, I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of favorite GW1 missions were remade into Fractals. Heck! I’d probably kill for a different end-boss after each even-numbered Fractal. I kept wondering to myself: “What if Kanaxai was there instead of the Jade Maw?”
• New Armor skins. And I hope it’s something that not a freakin’ trenchcoat for medium armor wearers.
• New Legendaries. Some of us aren’t into rainbows and ponies. It would be nice to have a pistol that looks more B-A!
• Order Missions. To give some kind of significance to the Order we have chosen in our Personal Story, it would be nice to have a daily errand we could do for our Order each day.

Personally, I don’t mind the trenchcoats, but I do wish I had a wider selection of pants to choose from. Right now, the closest thing I could get to a Subligar would be the Vigil pants … which obviously means you have to part of the Vigil to purchase it. Otherwise, I get mostly skin-tight pants. Would be nice to have cargo pants, baggy pants, maybe even MC Hammer pants!

I agree with Chrissle in that if the killable object has less HP and would take less time to kill it than to actually go up to someone and revive them, then it might be best to rally them up instead of reviving. There’s a certain tactic behind it. In Fractals, it becomes more important to keep your teammates up because there is no waypoint zerging, which I think is a good thing. I’d say do anything and everything to get your teammate back up if they go down. If that means rallying, then do it! Teammates helping teammates is obviously teamwork, regardless of what actions are being performed.

This might be an extreme example, but I thought I was under this mythical influence of “Permanent DR” myself … then I transferred servers and now I get suitable loot again. Not exactly raining precursors, but it feels like I’ve gotten better loot overall. And I generally farm with a random group.

It’s probably not a suitable solution since you’re a guild leader of one of the most active guilds on your server, but maybe one of your farming buddies could put that theory to the test.

Hello!

I wondered about this for a while, but if I add someone to my ignore list, could they still be allowed to join my party for dungeons using the /join command? How about being invited by other party members? Would I get some notifications that an invited party member is on my ignore list?

The reason I ask is because I’ve met a very annoying person in one of my dungeon runs and wouldn’t feel hip about running with this person again. Not necessarily a good or bad player … just plain annoying. However, I have this odd feeling I’d bump into this same player again if I start running this same dungeon on a constant basis.

Thanks!

Stx.4857:

I usually play during the night hours, until the early morning.

I almost never get a chance to farm air elementals, because no one wants to go take the temple of Dwayna that late at night. Theres barely enough people in the cursed shore for the bigger events.

I find this very frustrating. It would be okay if there was a place to always farm air elementals, and controlling the temple spawned another location of mobs or something. But the way it is now, A-net is basically saying, “Sorry, you dont play during peak hours so you are not allowed to farm for the Lodestones you need”.

Its really annoying, especially since the Fractals patch that took all the players out of Orr.

I do agree that Fractals is probably a big cause for all of this. Everyone wants to go in an get their Ascended rings since it’s the “cool thing” to do. Hopefully, Ascended items becomes available in other parts of the game so that the high-level player population is more spread out. At least give people a reason to go back to Orr again.

Alternatively, it would nice if there are other places to farm elementals for these lodestones. Personally, I’ve tried farming the small patch of Air Elementals in the Diedre’s Steps jumping puzzle in Mt Maelstrom, but I think the drop rate is just as pitiful, the mobs aren’t plentiful, and don’t respawn fast enough to make any meaningful progression. I can’t think of any other locations that has Air Elementals or Sparks which could be farmed for Lodestones (or even Cores would be sufficient).

I came up with another question and it regards Magic Find:

• Regardless of anyone’s opinion about bringing Magic Find items in a dungeon, I think anyone can agree that Magic Find only benefits the person who’s utilizing it and not their teammates. For example, I can bring a Guardian that has many defensive stats and abilities and they benefit my party by keeping us alive a little longer; while bringing a Warrior with offensive stats and abilities would benefit my party because stuff dies faster. However, bringing a Warrior or Guardian with Magic Find gear would only benefit those two and no one else in my party. If Magic Find is here to stay, then What is being done to Magic Find so the stat is more welcoming for group content?

Sarcasmic.6741:

Skipping mobs (safely without abandoning your team) isn’t always a mindless task. Rooting, pulls, cripples, stealths, blocks, and other measures are needed in quite a few places to actually get past the mobs. Skipping in and of itself is the reward for being able to do it. If you understand your mobility well enough, the capabilities of the rest of your party, and the mobs you’re passing, then your reward is not having to time sink by killing them.

In that case, I see that more as an “art-form” than anything. That’s like those crazy people who practice the art of Parkour running. Sure you get from A to B a little faster than the average jogger, but I think it’s more of a flashy way to get around, and usually pretty risky if you’re not careful at what you’re doing.

I did mentioned in my original post that I don’t mind skipping a few mobs, mostly those that are usually out of the way of the general direction, but skipping an entire Fractal … it just feels very weird. It doesn’t make sense— again, why design content that’s meant to skipped? Why design it at all if that’s the case? If the mobs were meant to be skipped, then there really should be heavy penalties for not skipping them, like turning those mobs into Champions and giving them abilities that could kill you in one hit (which in that case, the running-past mentality is no longer an art-form but a run-for-your-life sort of thing). In a designer’s point of view, I just find that sort thinking kind of bizarre.

Rhysati.4932:

If it’s optional, go for it. Otherwise I want nothing to do with it. I’m on Tarnished Coast(RP server) and it’s very, very full. There are people everywhere in the open world. And a lot of them are roleplaying while they quest. We don’t need a bunch of people from other servers harassing our community.

The thing about Tarnished Coast is that it’s an unofficial RP server. It was designated as such by the community and not by ArenaNet. If this concept of a megashard would happen, then all servers would have to be considered in some way or another. If the RP community really wants to keep the harassment away from anti-RP players, then they would have to engage on some hardcore lobbying to convert and create RP servers.

In that case, I would say make four RP servers, Tarnished Coast being a converted one and three brand new ones (for the sake of WvW balancing). All the RP worlds would share the same “underflow” and “overflow” servers so that regardless if you end up in an overflow or not, you’re more likely going to end up with players who also RP. Optionally, you could also join a non-RP overflow by right-clicking a party member’s portrait and choose “Join In Lion’s Arch” or whatever zone.

Sarcasmic.6741:

One could say skipping all the mobs in the Jade fractal was more intended than elsewhere. Anet expected people to skip as soon as they could, and placed in a special achievement for having actually killed everything.

It’s my firm belief that these dungeons were designed fully with the notion of skipping possibility intended. As such, until there is reason for not skipping (be it significantly better rewards, or mobs requiring to be killed to progress) I’ll keep skipping.

It’s true that there is an achievement for killing all the mobs in the Jade fractal, but to achieve that one, you would have to go out of your way to kill the mobs that are behind you when you spawn in. Most people don’t pay attention to what’s behind them unfortunately, and often botch the achievement by forgetting those mobs that are hardly ever noticed. Same goes with the crab critters.

To each their own as opinions go, but if someone wants to go straight to the boss, then why design trash there in the first place? Why not just put an Asura Gate that takes you straight to the boss and get it over with … that’s how I see it.

Personally, there’s a certain line I follow and it’s this: “if we aggro it, we fight it.” Although, I’m not always the leader so that doesn’t always go true.

As far as skipping trash, some areas seem fine for me provided that there’s a legitimate shortcut around them. The part after the first boss in SE Path 3 where you can jump down and get attacked by spider mobs instead of more dredge would seem somewhat legit; but exploiting through the terrain in CM Butler and Asura paths is a red flag in my books.

Another red flag is skipping the entire trash found in the Jade Maw Fractal. I’m not a big fan of skipping all that trash, but PUGs do it anyway. I don’t know who designed the trash, but I shouldn’t be allowed to skip the entire Fractal just to get to the boss. Maybe a small pack or two, but the entire Fractal? For this one, my suggestion would be to space out the platforms far enough that you have to be out-of-combat to jump to them. Since most of those mobs have wind-up abilities, their attacks should be changed so that they open up with a quick attack that would put anyone immediately in combat. If you’re in combat, then the slowed running speed should be enough to miss the jumps. And if they could try to bypass it with Swiftness or Stealth, just put some kind of environmental effect that prevents Stealth and strips Swiftness every time somebody jumps. Or even introduce mobs with abilities that disables your ability to jump.

On the other hand, skipping bosses, like Kohler, is something I’m never big fan of. Granted, some of the bosses in this game are nothing more than a damage sponge, but I’ve always been kind of iffy about skippable bosses in just about every MMO I played.

If your guild name has some words that could be considered “offensive” in another language, then you could probably convince someone to report it as such.

Other than that, your best bet is to put in a support ticket and see if they could help you. Minor stuff like misspellings, typos, and that sort of stuff might considered, while a completely different name might be harder to justify.

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Profession: Engineer

Problem: Inquest Shield (and probably the Mystic Shield reskin) clips through my ARM and HAND while unsheathed. This shield can be purchased from the Crucible of Eternity armor vendor in Lion’s Arch.

I have attached two screenshots of the shield unsheathed while wearing two sets of armor with the same shield and a Seraph Pistol (Human T3 pistol) on the other hand:

• Screenshot 1: All armor pieces are part of the Sorrow’s Embrace “Furnace Reward” set from the Sorrow’s Embrace armor vendor in Lion’s Arch (except for the pants which is the Vigil Leggings that can be purchased from the Vigil armor vendor in Genderran Fields).

• Screenshot 2: All armor pieces are part of the Crucible of Eternity “Inquest” set from the Crucible of Eternity armor vendor in Lion’s Arch. Though not as noticeable as the first shot, the shield still clips through my HAND.

The point of glass cannons is this: MOAR DAMAGE!

Obviously, you sacrifice a lot of survivability to do more damage. It’s basically min/maxing to the very extreme end, which is quite common in other MMOs that incorporate the traditional Holy Trinity. DPS will stack damage-centric stats, Healers will stack healing-centric stats, and Tanks will stack survivability-centric stats. Since GW2 has no “dedicated” roles, everyone is basically equally responsible for their own survivability. Sometimes, a little bit of Toughness or Vitality could go a long way. But if you’re already familiar with the content and feel comfortable enough to sacrifice some survivability for damage … then why not.

However, playing a glass cannon requires a bit of skill and footwork to make work well. Otherwise, you’ll get what you just experienced— a lot of downed players. That means dodging at the right moment and remaining mobile whenever possible.

Personally, I cringe a little when I bump into a Signet Warrior into my dungeon run, but I have been proven wrong before— I happen to know a few Signet Warriors who happen to hold their own out of many I have partied with. Like most glass cannon builds, the learning curve to make them work without dying a lot is pretty high. I’d say that for unfamiliar content, go in with some survivability gear but when you feel a little bit more comfortable, then you can go in with more damage. On my Warrior and Mesmer, I have a survivability set and a glass cannon set, and I switch between the two depending on my comfort zone. For the most part, it works quite well.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind the Gift of Music being a requirement as long I could craft the item any time of the year; similar to the Halloween weapons which required a specific gift, a bunch of Lodestones and Ectos, and other expensive stuff. After all, 250 Ori and Gossamer is not pretty easy to come by and would probably take longer than the entire duration of Wintersday, unless you’re full of money.

Otherwise, if the item could only be crafted during Wintersday, then it should require only items that are found only during Wintersday.

If you’re a Guardian or Warrior, that might be difficult to do since your armor is probably shiny to begin with. With other armors, you might be able to get away with just using Dyes that are not “Naturally Metallic”.

You can use this catalog to find out which dyes are metallic or not: http://www.dragonsworn.net/dyes/

I think the RNG can be there for those who like surprises. The ones that come out of the boxes can be Bound on Use, but there should be a way to get one that doesn’t require randomness.

The crafted one, as you mentioned, should be Bound on Acquire to keep the BoU version from being de-valued too much. That I can agree about.

However, it should sort of like be a mini-Legendary, but doesn’t require 250 of everything in the game. I think the Mystic Forge recipe could look like this:

• Gift of Wintersday : 100 of any Snowflake (so that low-level characters can obtain it), 100 Ugly Wool Socks, 50 Ugly Woot Hats, 25 Ugly Wool Sweaters
• Unbreakable Choir Bell: 250 Choir Bells, 250 Mystic Cogs, any Minipet frame, and a Gift of Wintersday.

Of course the numbers could be adjusted accordingly to what seems reasonable and what kind of gathering could be accomplished by the average player during the general time-frame of Wintersday.

So far, I have opened over 2000 boxes of various sizes … no bell yet.

I like how you can go into Hearts of the Mists to test different builds with the target golems without burning some coin at the Trainer for point refunds. However, it’s only limited to PvP stats. I suppose it makes sense if you intend to build for PvP, but since the builds I test are often PvE-oriented, I would have to rely on some mathcraft to find the more accurate amount of damage and/or suvivability I would be having with the gear I have. So I would suggest this:

Allow use of PvE gear
… BUT only allow it for the staging area for the purpose of testing them on the Target Golems. For obvious reasons, we shouldn’t use them in Structured. For those who have mix-and-match sets of gear instead of gear with all one stat, tests could be performed with those mix-and-match stats for a more realistic view of damage and survivability.

Provide PvE versions of the PvP Amulets
Apparently, the stat distributions for some of the PvP Amulets are different than in PvE. For example:

PvP Berserkers:
+923 Power
+644 Precision
+329 Vitality
+20% Critical Damage

PvE Berserkers (assuming all slots are Exotic with dual-wield weapon, and have Ruby Orbs in armor and weapons, Exquisite Ruby Jewels in jewelry, and Rare guild backpack)
+1161 Power
+808 Precision
+78% Critical Damage

I can see why some stats in Berserkers and Rampagers have their itemization stats reduced for damage and more into Vitality, and that’s to allow a little bit more survivability in a PvP environment; but since Vitality is not present in Berserker’s PvE gear, I shouldn’t need the PvP vs. PvE gear discrepancies when testing builds. For obvious reasons, you shouldn’t take these PvE amulets with you outside of Hearts of the Mists, but by providing PvE versions of those amulets, we can easily optimize our gear towards the stats we desire.

Target Golems with more HP, and even Champion/Legendary versions
Apparently, conditions work differently for Champs and Legendary mobs, so by providing those versions, we could see how our conditions affect them. It would also be nice to have a Golem with more HP to accurately figure out how much DPS we’re doing over a longer period of time. While we’re at it …

Bring back Master of Damage !
In Guild Wars 1, there was an NPC called Master of Damage that would calculate your DPS for you! I propose the Guild Wars 2 version of this NPC would be in the form of an Alpha Siege Golem instead of a Kournan Scribe. This same NPC could either be out in the open, to test your DPS while being affected by conditions applied by other players; or it could be in an instanced area, like your Home instance in a major city so that it only calculates your own personal DPS without the interference from other players.

Be on the same page!

What do I mean? Well, there are some encounters that can be done more than one way. However, some methods often clash with each other. For example, the Dredge Power Suit and Ice Elemental boss in the end of the Dredge Fractal. Some people like circling around the room, while others like moving back and forth; but if some people are going different directions, the fight can be longer and harder than it should. If you are the party leader, let everyone know your strat and make sure everyone sticks to it!

Say something and be concise!

As in use party chat. I can probably decipher most scribbles on the mini-map without having someone to translate for me; but unfortunately, most probably don’t pay attention to it. Instead, read chat and, if told to do so, pay attention to the mini-map.

Stick together!

For some instances, you may want to wait on those behind you, especially when it comes to shortcuts, jumping puzzles, the Underwater Fractal, and gasp skipping mobs!

If you’re the “skipping” type, don’t expect everyone else to follow you and rush along. This may be true if you happen to be in a guild group that doesn’t skip. Kohler is notorious example in that in my guild, he always dies! If we pug you and you like to skip Kohler, then don’t expect to stick around with the group any longer.

Honestly, the “highest level” restriction would mostly benefit guilds and close friends where a certain level of trust and skill-synergy has been built amongst each other that a 30+ group wouldn’t mind bringing along sub-10 players to their runs. In a sense, guild cohesion has been restored somewhat because guild members are more likely to group up with other guild members. With this change, I don’t feel bad of being left behind due to real life obligations, and can now join them in their 30+ Fractal runs (assuming that I have the Agony Resistance for it of course). In addition, we can also do alt-runs amongst each other provided at least one character stays on their main to actually qualify for higher level runs. Again, assuming the alts have some Agony Resistance for the run, at least the cohesion of guild structure still remains.

In PUGs, this might cause an issue where some people may request you to link your Ascended items to see if you are up for the job (which can easily be fabricated using links from gw2db), and then boot those who slack behind with almost no hesitation once they have ratted out your “low levelness”. It could be Elitism to an extreme level.

In short, the new system could promote the use of a “buddy system”. Meaning that if you want to PUG, bring a guildie! Almost always, I tend to bring another guild member along. If my friend or I gets booted out of a party for something illogical, we both leave and the party leader’s nerdrage commences.

That seems to be on the very extreme end when it comes to that change. I mean, a level 2 joining a level 53 Fractal group would be a very extreme example, though I’m sure people trying to build groups for higher fractal levels may request to see if they have a certain amount of Agony Resistance before proceeding.

On the other hand, I guess that means I’ll be able to bring my alts along if I want considering that most of my guild would be 30+ to begin with, and we could start accordingly instead of holding everyone else back.

Better late than never, I suppose.

• Condition specs can be fun for some professions, but they definitely need work when it comes to doing group content with other condition-specc’ed players due to the stacks capping at 25. Conditions also fall flat when it comes to certain objects in the world, like the graveling burrows in AC and siege weapons in WvW— as in objects aren’t affected by conditions. Can we expect some improvements to conditions in the next big content update?

• Are there any planned revisions for the leveling system used in Fractals so that the dungeon-running community is less fractured by it? At this time, progressively-minded people have no reason to run lower level Fractals other than to do “dailies”, but if progression could still be made by running Fractals by just a few levels lower than usual, then I think it might not be that bad.

• The Auto-Grouping function currently used for the Toypocalypse dungeon is pretty nifty and works for its intended purpose, but it is very basic. I posted my initial thoughts here with the impression that this feature would be used as a basis for a queue-up system used for finding groups for dungeons. However, should we expect something more out of this when/if it becomes implemented for the original eight dungeons and Fractals?

• Will there ever be a Public Test Server for players to join so that they can test future content? If not, then how would I go and become a Private tester for future content? Considering that some of the features that debut seem to be heavily scrutinized, I think ArenaNet could benefit from more testers, whether Public or Private; especially specialized testers that focuses on a certain facet of the game (eg. dungeon-specific testers, WvW-specific testers, and so on).

• Will there ever be more exclusive Armor skins that could be crafted? I think more recipes that utilizes the lesser-used Lodestones could add some more value to them and match them up with Charged and Onyx Lodestones, thus farming any kind of Lodestone could be quite lucrative, not just previously mentioned two.

You can’t kick party members out
I tried it in Toypocalypse. There was no menu upon right-clicking a character’s name in the party UI. Maybe this could be a good thing if we all lived in a perfect world, but since there will always be trolls running around, there should be an option to boot unruly people out of the party. It should also be limited in that party members shouldn’t abuse the feature by booting people for silly reasons like “You’re NOT 80!” or “Your class sucks!” or “No first-timers allowed!” or something to that effect. Instead, it should be used to boot out people who do not cooperate, talk trash in party chat, or people who are AFK/disconnected for a prolonged period of time.

On the other hand, the ability to kick people should be disabled while in combat to prevent those from booting party members during the final boss fight, thus preventing them from obtaining their final reward.

Path choices?
Since Toypocalypse only has one path, we don’t know if our paths will be chosen before queuing up, or after the party has been formed and in the entrance of the dungeon. Most people who look for groups in Lion’s Arch generally advertise their path that they will attempt before the full party has been formed. It would be nice to see if we could choose a path that we would like to run before entering the queue.

That’s all the comments I have for now when it comes to the Auto-Grouping feature currently in effect for Toypocalypse, but I do appreciate the effort in the teams involved in putting in a feature that would allow us to be participate in the Toypocalypse dungeon without having to spam LFG.

Personally, I think it’s not ready for primetime yet, but with more feedback and suggestions, I think it would be the greatest thing ever! I’ll say “Thanks!” to that! The feature is well over-due, but it’s very welcoming as a great Wintersday Gift!

I’m under the impression the “Auto-Grouper” function is being “tested” with Toypocalypse Dungeon before being brought over to Fractals and the original eight dungeons, so I might as well shed in on some feedback before the feature phases in with the rest of the dungeon content by bringing in some key points and some improvements.

Assumptions
Based on how this grouping function is implemented, it’s obviously based on how grouping in sPvP works. In fact, you end up using your sPvP gear and build instead of your regular PvE gear and build. I’m assuming that this is an error and should expect to be using my regular dungeon gear in a future revision of this feature. Right now, the Auto-Grouping feature seems to be a copy-and-paste from sPvP joining features.

With that said, I would also expect that similar NPCs would be found at the front door of each dungeon instead of in Lion’s Arch. This ensures that people have to at least discover the instance portal leading to that dungeon before participating in it. It’s one of those “immersion” things, I suppose.

This feature doesn’t work well with non-full parties of any size.
On a dungeon stand point, I don’t see this as a big deal if you have a party of five. You got your party of five, and the only thing this feature would do is essentially auto-port your party to the dungeon. In a game with no griffins, pegasii, or other flying animals to lug your lazy butt around, it would make sense that this wouldn’t be able to auto-port your entire party. After all, porting to the dungeon is just as simple as pressing M, zooming out of Lion’s Arch, zooming in to the dungeon door, and teleport.

However , if you’re in a party of 4 or less, you currently would not be able to use the feature to find a random person to fill in that spot. What the feature ends up doing is breaking your party apart and having you placed with totally random people. That means resorting to spamming “LFM” in Lion’s Arch or similar locations just for that last person, which is a very troglodyte way of finding people.

Party-chat seems to be borked
Oddly enough, if I do queue up using the Auto-Grouper while in a party, I can communicate with people who are in my original party (even when party members are split up) but in order to communicate with PUGs, I would have to use /say chat.

You can join a dungeon in progress!
However, you don’t have a choice to accept or deny that invitation. Though this is great for groups who may end up with members that could leave mid-way, this also means that those who want to start from the very beginning are stuck with whatever party they end up with, regardless of progress made.

For Toypocalypse, this means that if you’re attempting the achievement in keeping all the dolyaks alive and you find out that one yak has died before you walked in, your only choice would be to leave the party and hope for a new instance.

It would be nice to have a notification of a dungeon in progress before joining them so that we can make logical decisions whether to reap the entire benefits of the dungeon, or just grab our ending tokens and book it.

No penalties for leaving early
Okay, so you ended up with a bad group. First notion for some folks is to leave and requeue. That leaves your other party members wondering where you went. I suppose that with no dedicated roles (“The Holy Trinity”), finding a replacement would be incredibly simple as opposed to waiting on a replacement for a healer or tank. However, I do think there should be penalty for constant leavers, possibly by putting the Auto-Grouper on cooldown. That cooldown could be based on how long you have been with the party, with the longest cooldown enacted if you leave within the first few minutes (possibly due to an early “ragequit”). This ensures that party members stick together until it gets really bad instead of first sight of problems that could be corrected if people cooperate. There might be other penalties for leaving early, or even more rewards for sticking around regardless of how bad your party is.

[continued]

It really depends: if you already got the materials to make rare weapons, then go nuts! However, if you’re buying out the materials to craft rare weapons for the purpose of Forging them, you’re probably better off just buying the cheapest Rares and dumping them in the Forge.

Well … I managed to get a semi -premade together … apparently, only 2 of our party of 5 made it together, while another two appeared in another group, and one got thrown into a bunch of randoms. The original plan was to have everyone queue up at the same time, which we did … but I suppose the huge influx of people trying the event may have caused us to separate.

It does get moderately hectic near the end, but I thought it was more like a miracle that my group managed to get through the entire 10 waves with all the yaks still alive.

However, it is rather lame that we had our original group split over across other groups.

The event itself looks interesting, but when we all entered, we were tossed into different parties with complete strangers in them.

Also, I was in my sPvP gear instead of my regular gear, which I do find somewhat odd. Is there any way we could queue up as a party instead of individually? If not, then that should be a suggestion to put in! I would appreciate that!

I almost forgot about that one— thanks for reminding me. I guess I don’t run it enough for me to remember it.

Your name makes me hungry. But that’s besides the point. :P

As far as the Jewelcrafting recipes go, RNG would have made sense if there were alternate means of obtaining that same item with those same stats at that same quality. For some recipes, that may be true, like Koda’s Gift , which has the same stats as a Chrysocola Orichalcum Earring ; but for Rabid items like Colossus Fang , that is our only option as far as Exotics go and hoping for RNG to award us with a Rabid jeweler recipe can be … daunting … either that or grind Pristine Relics for an Ascended version. But last time I checked, you can’t sell any of those Ascended rings, so that wouldn’t work as far as making money is concerned.

It would be nice if I could burn some tokens at the vendor just for the recipe. I suppose you could make that 400 tokens, the same price as the Artificier stuff at the token vendor.

That’s sort of true— Token-to-Ecto conversion would only apply to CoF, CoE, and Arah tokens to the best extent. It could also apply to other dungeons but then it would be a much bigger gamble because you’re basically hoping that one Exotic you burned 180 tokens on will turn into an ecto, as opposed to the 6 Rares you buy from those three listed dungeons. As such: it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get an ecto if you salvage any of the Rares that you purchase with those tokens.

In that case, the value would be a suitable range instead of a near-static amount, but who knows if RNG will bless you with a lucky salvage streak or nothing at all.

Some things to consider is that you still get a chance to get a Lodestone from the chests in dungeons. It could be something to factor in. Either that or a few Cores in which you could turn into Lodestones— just pay for the price of Wine and Dust.

I do agree, however, that some of the prices for Lodestones are a bit too high; but a 1-to-1 conversion of gold to tokens might not be a hip idea. Introducing more Lodestones to the market would no longer make the value 1-to-1. At 180 tokens, at least you’ll get a Lodestone per day, minimum, but you still have a chance to get more from the boss chests and maybe (as a suggestion) from Bags of Wonderous Goods.

Two things to consider: does ArenaNet think the price of Lodestones are reasonable ? And: Should they value all Lodestones (and even Purtid Essence) equally? If they value all the T6 Rare materials equally, like the Rubies and Sapphires in GW1 Nightfall, then I bet they have something planned that would increase the value of lesser used T6 Rare materials (more crafting patterns), but add other ways to help reduce the costs of heavily valued T6 Rare materials (possibly by increasing the droprate).

At that point, 120 tokens for a single Lodestone might devalue those materials further than expected. There’s way more math to consider when it comes to the final value of these Lodestones when it comes to using tokens. It’s just that the value of Coin always changes based on the player-controller market, while the intrinsic value of dungeon tokens will always remain the same (unless ArenaNet decides to increase or lower the price of dungeon gear).

I think 120 might be a tad bit low for a Lodestone. 180 might be reasonable. There could be even Cores as well for about 70~90-ish tokens. The reason for lower amount of tokens per Core is that you still need to buy the Elonian Wine and use T6 dust to make up for the discount.

Might need a little tweaking but this are the intro part of The Sunleth Waterscape from Final Fantasy XIII:

78765 1 54323 9780152 96 780152
78765 1 54323 678041 95 6-8-76

As such, 9 means to downshift and 0 means to upshift octaves. Results may vary depending on game server, general latency, and a bunch of oddly placed variables as determined by the Alchemy.

I suppose I could attempt to transcribe an entire 3 1/2 minute song into Choir Bell Notation Format. Might take a while, but who knows how long this bell can that kind of abuse.

Raebfle.5914:

WoW makes you wait a week for valor reset from dungeons, and raids have a 1 week lock before you can have the instance reset, but that’s about it, and it’s to stop people farming and getting all of their stuff in such a short period. Imagine being able to run end-game raids every day? How fast would you be geared?

The gear is supposed to be ‘hard’, in a sense, to get. It’s supposed to take time and work.

DR is one of the most amazing things I think. I haven’t had an issue with it so far, in any game i’ve played. I understand why it’s there and that’s the important thing.

Content lock-outs makes sense in a subscription-based game. If you were to get all your gear you want, you’d cancel your subscription and resub when new content is available.

Since GW2 has no subscription fees, lockouts don’t make sense. Instead, the DR is there to slow you down in getting that skin you want for your gear. You could run that same content multiple times if you like, but you’ll be rewarded less for each subsequent run for the day.

In short, DR for running the same content over and over in one day makes sense, but DR for running multiple dungeons really don’t make much sense since the rewards for each dungeon is a different set of armor, weapons, and runes.

I’m not a big fan of how DR currently works. For me, I eat, breathe, and sleep dungeons whenever most of my guild goes online so I usually hit DR very often. Personally, I think DR should be dungeon-specific— as in keep the DR there for doing repeats of the same exact path over a short period of time, but the DR shouldn’t be considered if I want to run another path or even a totally different dungeon.

At the meantime, some of us have been running Fractals during our “DR Downtime” since that is not affected by DR. It keeps us a little entertained and sometimes helps the other guildies in catching up with the rest of the guild.

Here are some pictures of my Engineer, Fleeting Flash. I adopted a similar color scheme to the gear that Lightning wears in Final Fantasy XIII. I think it works out well on CoE armor. As far as weapons go, I usually go with CM or Human T3 culture weapons, though it would be nice to have more gunblade-like weapons in the game, if not an actual gunblade.

Edit 24 Dec 2012: The third screenshot is in a restyled Sorrow’s Embrace armor (w/ Vigil pants) equipped with an Inquest shield. The pistol is the same as before. I think I might like this look.

From what I understand in regards to the Temples in Orr, if they are deactivated, elementals are spawned instead of undead Risen mobs around the smaller corresponding temples. In theory, the reason why lodestones cost a freak-ton more than they were before is the availability of mobs that you can kill. Though, I suppose the banhammer-wave of bots might contribute to that, another factor to consider is the availability of the contested Temples in Orr.

I know that I rarely ever see Dwayna and Melandru uncontested ever since Fractals came out, which means that there are hardly any high-level air and earth elementals, respectively, to farm. When I do see those temples deactivated, it’s usually deactivated for a short time. Then it gets taken back by the Risen.

I’m not sure what the exact amount of time those temples remain open once they have been claimed by the Pact, but it does feel somewhat shorter (either that or I just don’t play at the right times).

I suppose this could also apply to Balthazar but I do think that those temples should be open a little bit longer than their intended period of time. That way, we don’t have to be rushing to buy our Obsidian Shards or farm surrounding elementals for Lodestones. Either that, or people should be more aware of the benefits of keeping those temples defended when the Risen do decide to attack them.

Anyone want to pitch in on this? Does this make sense somehow?