Guild Wars 2

Otokomae.9356:

Ascended Sinister Trinkets are still locked behind a ridiculous bunch of Living Story season 2 Achievements that, as far as I can tell, are either impossible to solo or nearly impossible.

The thing is, I got all of these achievements solo. Most of them on the first try. The boss centaur and the shadow dragon achievements are tough, but far from impossible. Heck, I’d say the only reason why they took multiple tries is because I’m a clumsy and discombobulated individual.

My advice is to go max DPS. It really helps.

Aomine.5012:

Viper ascended accessories and Rings do not even exist yet lol..

Viper ascended amulet is lock behind a series of tedious AP, which is way harder than any Sinister pieces.

They’re rare drops from the bosses in Spirit Vale.

I’m talking about far more than just doing DS. Dragon Stand is pretty easy: tag up, and they will come. Players will split up pretty evenly between preserver/boss group on their own, and the only hard part is balancing the 3 lanes.

I’m talking about organizing a tier 4 VB night, or a Chak Gerent kill. Here, when you’ve got to split up groups to different commanders or into different areas, roles, it is like pulling teeth. In VB it is especially hard, as most people don’t join your squad, don’t communicate, and just follow you around no matter where you tell them to go. Even if they join your squad, and you parse them into different groups, they still don’t follow directions.

Sylent.3165:

How does one get addicted to this expansion?

Its easier than you’d think. I’m actually quite bored at the moment myself, since most of my gameplay lately consists of getting cash to make ascended weapons for all my toons. I usually turn on the TV and then watch something else while I do stuff. Right now I’m watching crappy subbed anime.

By introducing a more necessary power creep into the game (along with achievements), you’ve essentially got people hooked on a goal. This is different from regular play, where the “play” is the point of the whole thing. Now, by having something that needs to be achieved, you’ve created a situation where people will play when they don’t want to, for the sake of that goal. That lingering desire that eventually the game will be fun will keep them playing for a lot longer than the game actually being fun would.

I command whatever happens to be nearby quite regularly.

The hard part is getting people to listen. For some reason, the idea of “communication” is lost on some players. They’ll refuse to listen, turn off chat, then run around frustrated because they don’t know what to do. They get mad at the “fail commander”, then leave and go join another group to repeat the exact same failure. Its like: Why leave, when you’re just going to be equally as terrible in the next group?

The hardest part is the bystander effect. If I need to split the squad up or send people to different ends, nobody does it. You’ll get 40 people all standing around, waiting for someone else to volunteer. There’s an important lesson in life here: Everyone is waiting for someone else to do the important thing, so you do it. No one else will, so its gotta be you.

Tspatula.9086:

IT IS NOT A LTP ISSUE. There is no build to counter back to back to back immobes. Or fear, then immobe, then knockdown with significant damage, then immobe again etc… It’s fun to play issue. I never said I can’t do it, or respawn, rally, or get; ressed. I can make it through all the meta events just fine on all the maps. It’s BORING and frustrating because in many of these situations you have very little control over it.

Harper and Yargesh, If you want to play that kind of content and YOU think it’s fun, good for you. Just like Mike O’Brien said about no one just plays world vs world, you are the minority in this game currently, as far as I can tell. There is a reason why my post is not the only one of it’s kind, and yours are a lot less common for HoT…

edit* And lets not forget this is all happening alongside a near constant spamming of condis, torment, and confusion by the mobs. Tell why does a tenderil have over 30K hitpoints with evasion? it’s absurdly stupid, not challenging

It is a learn to play issue. You’ve just given up and resolved yourself to failure, because you lack the creative capacity to figure out how to beat the enemies.

The solutions are there, and many times they are really obvious. You just have to be willing to look for them.

Interesting enough, macs have that feature built in. Its buried in the preference somewhere, but you can invert the screen display. It is actually a surprisingly useful feature if you’re writing code, as the whole “gigantic white screen in your face for several hours” gets old pretty quickly.

I don’t know if it is on windows 10 either. I suppose a google search can solve that, but I’ll leave that to anyone who cares. What I will say is that watching stuff with inverted colors is pretty cool. People turn into these bright cyan ghostly monsters.

I’m not sure thief needs a lot of things baseline as much as it is that our utilities, traits, and skills should be stronger. The thing with changing base thief is that it acts as a buff to every build ever conceived, which means that making build diversity would require tweaking every potential “strong” skill down just to compensate. It is a lot of work to put in.

I do prefer spot balances. Anet has been dragging their feet with specific changes, because they fear the infamous “invincible perfect thief” might come back, and because of this we’re effectively receiving no balance of any kind.

I wouldn’t call it an endorsement at all. If anything, the achievement is biting criticism of alcoholism. The time it takes away, the money it costs, the relationships lost… quite clever, really.

To be fair, it probably isn’t the most insane thing I’ve ever seen anyone attempt to do in an MMO. That would go the the 1 billion agility xp runscaper.

I think there’s no point if it isn’t kinky.

Hey, if playing a human female is like playing with barbie, then playing a human male is like playing with Ken. That’s worse, btw.

Arrow.4619:

Not really. Smart yes, wise no. What I see here is intellectual arrogance mostly. The implicit assumption is that off all the millions of people involved in GW2 (i.e., players and developers), apparently all the adults work at ArenaNet and everyone else is a child. I’ve been around the sun 50 times myself and from what I’ve seen ANet’s earned a fair amount of the ire that’s been directed their way.

I’d call it wit more than anything. The ability to see plainly makes someone rational, not wise. There is quite a few incorrect assumptions going around, so I will go into depth a bit more.

A)This does not mean that all complaints are illegitimate. Indeed, there are many criticisms that I myself hold of Anet (and NCsoft). What it does mean is that a lot of complaints are inflamatory, illogical, illegitimate, selfish, trolling, and in such regard that swift + immediate responses will just make things worse.

B)It does not matter if you think your particular complaint falls into these categories or not. What does matter is if Arenanet thinks your complaint falls into these categories. It isn’t some methodical decision, where there’s a chart of how to dismiss complaints, and there’s a guy working in the basement of a building sorting them out. As a person, a developer is likely to dismiss something, even a well founded issue, as one of the above, then disregard the feedback without a second thought. As a company, Arenanet is subject to group-think issues, and will constantly reassure themselves that their decisions are right. If not immediately, then eventually after everyone has “fixed” themselves to the new system.

C)The hotly debated topic about age differences is something I wish wasn’t true. But, every once in awhile I will hear of the statistics regarding the age of the average user of various online services (youtube, facebook, etc), and it is always young skewing, if not by the number of hits then by the degree of usage. The thing with kids is that they have the free time to dedicate to these games. More importantly, they have the free time to dedicate to hating the game.

This really feeds the flames, as empathy and compromise are not the hallmarks of immaturity. Drama and ill-conceived notions are. It isn’t a particular insult aimed toward anyone, as much as it is the fact that children are insufferable and their presence takes away from the room.

I always find it interesting how when I write something in generality, that players will take offense to very specific things. Anyway, I digress.

I’ve worked in customer service before. Everyone I know has. It is like a right of passage, really. And everyone I know has found it to be among the most soul crushing experience ever. Essentially you end up getting screwed from both ends: your company treats you like dirt because you’re a replaceable cog, and the customers treat you like dirt because you’re a replaceable face representing that same company. It is some kind of agoraphobic nightmare to have endless people you’ve never seen before run up and instantly hate you.

At least in real life you get the benefit of a face to face interaction, which will soften the rage. But here, this is basically being in perpetual argument with the youtube comment section.

Honestly I just like looking at chicks. It is a hobby of mine. Well, was, until I got arrested that one time. But hey, do in virtual what you can’t do in actual.

Seriously though, I’ve got one of those aspergers-y minds, so I’m disturbed whenever things aren’t equal. Currently I have two humans both male and female, two norn both male and female, two sylvari both man-shaped fruit and woman-shaped fruit, and one female asura. I’m at a wall there, since there is neither a class left that I want to play, or a character that I want to make. Don’t much like the charr or male asura.

You know, I lived in an alcoholic family, too. An abusive one at that. And you know what? Get over it. Laugh about it. I did, and I do.

I’ve been around the sun a few dozen times. I can give some insight as to why it is this happens. AKA, the harsh and terrible truth as to why devs won’t talk to you. Not a direct “you”, but the “you” in the general sense, so don’t take it personally.

#1: You blow things out of proportion. A change doesn’t actually have to be big before people will moan endlessly about it. This is the internet, and people are always making a big drama about something, and just because you’ve gone on to the forums and found a dozen people who agree with you doesn’t mean it is an issue even worth mentioning. You’ll get over it, and if you don’t get over it, bye. We don’t want you here.

#2: You can’t be placated. If you’ve ever tried to reason with a tantruming child, you’d find it is impossible. And of course, being an online videogame, the majority of complaints come from just that. The playerbase is young, full of hormones, and also full of life’s little frustrations over how unpopular in school they all are. You aren’t looking for a solution, you just want to be angered by something. The reason why the devs won’t subject themselves to your every beck and call is because it would only fan the flames. Calm down, kid!

#3: Your complaints are irrational. Yes, just because you’re mad about something doesn’t mean that it makes sense, or is practical in any sense. The fact is that the devs can’t make the sky blue and not blue at the same time. and yet people will be angry at others for not doing their crazy bidding Whether you’re factually wrong, the solution you propose is worse than the problem, or you’re upset over something that can’t be understood by the rational mind, what you want isn’t correct.. There’s nothing to gain from talking to someone who is insane, because sanity is a per-requisite of meaningful communication.

#4: Your complaints are illegitimate. There’s a lot of vitriol leveled at the devs not because what they’ve done is necessary bad, but because something is bad for you. Even if other players want things differently, you are there with your own uncompromising desires, dead set on trying to make the world yours instead of better. Sometimes you have an ulterior motive, sometimes you’re just trolling, other times you just don’t care what other people think. Either way, your “feedback” is flailing wildly in a crowded room: it goes nowhere and just makes people more upset.

#5: Your complaints are a minority. Angered players speak out, content players don’t. While it seems like everyone agrees with you, in fact it is an echo chamber where the same 10 people just yell at their own shadows for days on end. Ultimately, to change any complaint you have it takes resources, and if there are a handful of cantankerous players irate over something, it doesn’t mean it is worth dealing with. The quality of updates and changes is subjective, so if you find yourself constantly out-voted on the matter, accept the horrible fate that your life will be filled with nothing going your way.

#6: The devs already speak with you, but you aren’t satisfied with the exact manner or how much. It is a goalpost that can be constantly moved, so to the belligerent mind can never be sated. Yes, the emotional black holes out there are all aflutter when something isn’t said fast enough, or where they want it to be said, or whether enough is said or not. No matter how much of a dialogue is trying to be casually opened, the fact is that you will always be looking to punch a gift horse in the mouth..

In short: You aren’t worth talking to. Now, I’m going to add this on to the end:

#7: The devs are people, too. Fact is, the devs don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Most people don’t. Most things in life are gambles. They’re going to make mistakes, and they’ll feel bad about their mistakes, or they won’t realize that something is a mistake. Thing is, you’re the worst person to tell them their mistakes. For the 6 reasons above, but also because you’ve assigned a air of mysticism around their work, and thus see anything that doesn’t suit you as the actions of a defiant spirit of some kind. The whole “fester with rage in their public spaces for weeks on end” is not a good look. It is not always going to be immediate that a problem even exists.

Personally, I find all these players with human females to be disturbing. I like my women Norn.

Personally I’d just give thieves more boon stealing. It works as both a buff (we get might and change) and a debuff (they lose their boons) at the same time.

Boon stealing should be everywhere. So much so that nearly any build you make should comfortably have one or two sources for jacking boons.

ham.8209:

Rio.4259:

It’s easier to follow the commander tag and spam your skills, than to learn what to actually do. Many would blindly follow the commander off the edge of a cliff. >.>

That was only partly serious. >.>

hahaha i dont know about that i think some honestly would do just that and

blindly follow the commander off the edge of a cliff. and not question it or even why

hahaha

See, now that you guys have said it, I want to give it a shot.

Lambent.6375:

Id say for the same reason some of us need teachers, even though you can learn all you need to know simply from reading the textbook.

My background working in education is screaming at me right now, so give me a second to go off on a tangent here. You can’t learn everything you need from a textbook, because a textbook is a poorly written abridged account of what you’re researching. Textbooks are written to contain information first, and as such make for horrible instruction. The best way to learn any subject is to have someone there to actually instruct you. Because then, when there’s actually an open communication about the subject, all of the little intricacies can be worked out and misunderstandings addressed.

Now I digress.

I bought a commander tag recently, and as an investment it is already starting to pay for itself.

I originally bought it for King of the Jungle. Yes, organizing pre-debugged Nuhoch lane without a commander tag is like herding cats. You need to collaborate with others to get accurate counts of who is in what lane, because the numbers were a highly specific thing, and Nuhoch was usually under-staffed. Then, you need to make several groups to handle different missions, because otherwise everyone will bunch up into a tiny ball and fail the event. Without those subgroups and other commanders, the event was guaranteed to fail.

Should it be necessary, I may step up and lead a wurm for Triple Trouble as well. There, you also need commanders to organize the 5 parties (each wurm head, condi team, reflect team), and get accurate head counts, and also to delay long enough to finish explanations. Without that communication, the event is doomed to fail.

The commander tag is information. It is a plainly understood communicator which instantly indicates where something is going on for the entire map. It isn’t drowned out or blocked like map chat. Because of this, whenever there is an event that I want done, I can just tag up and suddenly people arrive in droves.

It is really handy to have an “i’m in charge” badge. It gets people to listen to you, and lets you know who you need to talk to in order to organize things. Otherwise, you’ll get random people yelling to do the wrong things, and there’s no way to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

This should probably be on… reddit.

It occurred to me that I’ve never actually stated my position on this. It all comes down to what qualifies as challenging.

While I’m not actually good at playing the game, many people would say I am good at the game. This is all due to the preparation and analysis I make. I build to the maximum and I figure out simple tricks and tactics to beat encounters. Because of this, nearly every encounter in this game (and most games, for that matter), can be reduced down to a series of steps toward guaranteed victory. Once you know those steps, everything is pretty simple, really.

If you are familiar with the game, figuring out these steps should be pretty easy. Yes, there is a good chance you’ll be downed by your first sniper, but after the 3rd or 4th one they’re pretty mundane. If you aren’t familiar with the game, it might take a bit longer. But, so long as you are observant and have decent problem solving skills, victory will come naturally.

A real “challenge” is when executing those series of steps is difficult, or if there isn’t a series of steps at all. The latter is really rare, but the former not as much. Most of the overworld content isn’t too challenging. It is quite a bit harder than the base game overworld is currently, but that is just a series of steps.

I would say that raids are quite challenging, though.

A thought occurred to me: if players spent all the time that they actually spend complaining about grinding to actually play the game, then would they be done with the “grinding” by now?

I do wonder about it. I don’t think anyone here has had experience with an old school MMO before. Let me recount the history a bit: The “max level” was not something you were meant to achieve. Your level was actually the point of progression, not gear or alternative XP or something like that. Because of this, the amount of time you had to invest in things grew exponentially as time went on. And it wasn’t just leveling, either. No, your skills could be divided up into several different categories, and you were lucky if you could simultaneously train them. Getting money, getting materials, training skills, raising your level, and crafting were frequently completely separate tasks.

Here’s the kicker to it: these were all subscription MMOs. Prolonging gameplay was a big thing, so everything was designed to take more than a month to accomplish. GW2, by comparison, is no comparison. You can level things while simultaneously getting money and getting materials. It is all really convenient.

The inventory management can be a bit taxing at times. I just make an appoint to save all of my boxes and bags until I have a free moment, then do the sell/salvage thing. Having a full set of 20-slot boxes helps, too.

pigpen.9780:

Oh and to get GEMS only 1 way to get them and that is REAL MONEY . So ya you are kittened .

Lol no.

Mahou.3924:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

IndigoSundown.5419:

xarallei.4279:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’d like the see those claiming HoT is not challenging link videos of themselves soloing stuff like, say, some of the Hero Challenges, maybe the one in VB with the Vet Teragriff, pack of wolves and mender. We might learn something.

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not but isn’t that one the easiest one to solo?

Forum warriors can claim anything. If HoT really offers no challenge to the OP, surely posting such a video should be trivial for him.

But posting that doesn’t prove anything. That is literally one of the easiest HPs to get in VB. Now if he had a video of him soloing it back when it was a champion then that would be an entirely different story. Or pick any one of the other champion HPs.

I disbelieve his claims, and I’m inviting him to prove me wrong. I’d accept a solo of that point as a modest declaration that he possesses some skill. If he believes that a greater challenge would be more informative, then he can have at it.

Look, I can solo that point, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make a video to show disbelieving players that I can solo it.

I think you are mistaking your position here. He doesn’t need to prove to himself that HoT is too easy. He experiences it. To him, making a video of himself soloing a Hero Point is akin to making a video explaining why the sky is blue. If anything, you should make videos of yourselves failing that HP, so then the OP can understand why it is so hard for others.

Just to get ridiculded by the god-skilled forum warriors in return where maybe 2-3 people actually would offer any helpful advice (other than in the specific profession sub-forum)? That would be the same as the forum warriors posting their OPness and in turn being labled as show-offs/braggers or so.

So you see how ridiculous the whole thing is? Posting a video to prove something isn’t hard is as equally silly as posting a video showing something is too hard. You’re doing it for indignant players, so why do it in the first place? The terms are ill-defined, so there are limitless ways to move the goal posts. In the end it accomplishes nothing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

xarallei.4279:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’d like the see those claiming HoT is not challenging link videos of themselves soloing stuff like, say, some of the Hero Challenges, maybe the one in VB with the Vet Teragriff, pack of wolves and mender. We might learn something.

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not but isn’t that one the easiest one to solo?

Forum warriors can claim anything. If HoT really offers no challenge to the OP, surely posting such a video should be trivial for him.

But posting that doesn’t prove anything. That is literally one of the easiest HPs to get in VB. Now if he had a video of him soloing it back when it was a champion then that would be an entirely different story. Or pick any one of the other champion HPs.

I disbelieve his claims, and I’m inviting him to prove me wrong. I’d accept a solo of that point as a modest declaration that he possesses some skill. If he believes that a greater challenge would be more informative, then he can have at it.

Look, I can solo that point, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make a video to show disbelieving players that I can solo it.

I think you are mistaking your position here. He doesn’t need to prove to himself that HoT is too easy. He experiences it. To him, making a video of himself soloing a Hero Point is akin to making a video explaining why the sky is blue. If anything, you should make videos of yourselves failing that HP, so then the OP can understand why it is so hard for others.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The contradiction is when you said cross-weapon comparison is isn’t super important, then followed by saying that is it important after all by stating that the weapon could still be underpowered even with cheaper cost — implying that it is underpowered in comparison to other weapon sets. Do you see it now?

Yeah, you’re imposing your own notions onto the situation, them blaming me when that doesn’t make sense. The contradiction exists only in your own head. Whether a weapon is overpowered or underpowered isn’t a matter of internal thief balance, but class balance as a whole. Heck, you don’t even need to go that far. Just compare what a weapon set used to be capable of in the past to what it is capable of now

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What you’re confusing is that you’re looking at the impact of the weapon set individually when instead you suppose to look at the impact of 12-15 Initiatives pool.

Um… no. My whole point is that looking only at initiative costs isn’t the only way the balance. Only looking at initiative costs just limits our options.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That’s not necessarily true. Just look at FS/LS, their cost are not justified by their impact. If what you say is true, then LS should cost more however that is not the case. The cost of skills looks beyond their impact and in FS/LS’s case, LS is simply being gated.

That has absolutely nothing to deal with the idea that stronger skills should cost more, or if I have somehow contradicted myself.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That’s a lot of false statements only means that you’re arguing for the sake of arguing.

Oh please. I came into this topic to say that weapon balance should be open to both power increases and cost reduction. You’re the one who has decided to get defensive and cut posts into tiny little lines so you can nitpick them incessantly. Just FYI, that is a big waste of time that accomplishes nothing, because instead of talking about the topic as a whole you just derail into 50 irrelevant tangents.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You’re arguing that they are justified without basis nor supporting argument yourself when the facts are showing that it clearly supports mine. Denying the facts is not a way to progress in finding a resolution.

Except I’m not arguing that at all. The whole point is that your proposed balance stance is arbitrary. You haven’t provided a single “fact” to support your method of balancing over any of the other ways to help out the thief. At all.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

And how exactly do you know that S/P if overpriced?
How do you know that the skills in S/P are not worth what we paid for it?
In a vacuum, S/P is not overpriced at all.

Well, its quite simple: the skills were nerfed repeatedly, and base thief was nerfed repeatedly, and there was no consolidation between these changes to balance around one another. This results in an accumulating overnerf.

The reason why the staff is so much of a better weapon is because the staff was designed for the post-June thief. Thus, it both cheaper and more powerful, and these two facts are independent of each other, too. But you don’t need staff to know the other weapons are too weak.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You’re making a lot of false statements that you’re not making any sense.

“True” and “false” are not bound to be what you prefer the most. Your memory is short, and you’ve mistaken what I have said numerous times. If you think I’m just going around making false statements, then it means that you lack the capability to discern truth.

#1: Get Nuhoch Mastery rank 1, Nuhoch Hunting. It lets you get caches as drops from enemies that will contain map specific currency.

#2: You can get airship parts from events… sort of. As you further the meta status of a map, you get more and more of a reward percentage. You’ll regularly receive reward boxes as the map progresses, giving you more rewards the more you’ve done. These boxes frequently contain airship parts.

#3: Use Crowbars on airship cargo.

#4: The Hero Points that spawn groups of enemies/champions drop rewards, which sometimes contain parts.

Shirk.6421:

Sorry, but I don’t understand why so many people say HoT is so “hard” and “challenging”.

Have you tried playing poorly?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The biggest problem with balancing initiative costs cross-weapons is that this isn’t super important. What is important is the initiative cost per the impact of each individual skill. If a weapon’s skill set is wimpy, you can scale each skill to only cost 3 initiative across the board. The weapon could still be underpowered, even though in overall cost it is actually cheaper than the others.

You’re contradicting yourself here. If what’s important is the initiative cost per skill impact, then if the impact is nerfed, the cost needs to go down also. However, you’re implying that the impact is great that the cost needs to also be great. As I have posted, that causes a problem only because the Thief don’t deal with skill cooldown, which where it makes sense — greater impact has higher cooldown, but when it comes to initiatives, that’s not a good thing as I have posted.

You have no idea what contradiction means. Contradiction means asserting two things that cannot be true at the same time. When I say that comparing initiative costs between weapons isn’t good, and that analyzing initiative costs of a skill by itself is good, those aren’t opposing statements. They are both true at the same time. Likewise, saying that a low impact skill needs a lower cost, and a high impact skill needs a higher cost isn’t a contradiction in any way that could be understood by humanity. In fact, it is the exact opposite of a contradiction. It is consistence.

The launching point for your whole topic is happenstance, and every direct suggestion you’ve made so far boils down to “This skill isn’t worth what we pay for it”, with a bunch of other things added on to the end. The whole "balance around 15 initiative cost’ is arbitrary. There’s a plenty ways to do something other than that (I.E. raising skill potency, increasing initiative regen from either base or outside sources, increasing base initiative, etc), and there’s plenty of ways to argue against your initial premise (why 15, when thieves start with base 12? Why is higher than 15 insufficient when steal from trickery gives you 17 starting initiative effectively), and the reason why there are plenty of ways is because your initial premise is nothing. It is a number that is convenient in your own mind that you’ve plopped down out of nowhere, and simply declare to be correct with no supporting argument.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Obviously the skills will never get better, thus it has to become cheaper. If you compare the overall cost of S/P to the overall cost of Staff, then compare their impact, you’re suggesting that Staff skills need to be more expensive — which is detrimental to the Thief profession — when the total cost of S/P should be cheaper instead.

Except that’s not what I"m saying at all. I’m saying that the skill should be worth what we pay for it. That doesn’t mean staff should be more expensive. And for that matter, who cares how much staff pays for its skilled, when S/P is overpriced in a vacuum?

The grind really isn’t that bad. You get masteries by basically doing anything in HoT. It takes awhile, but unless you’re running around in circles killing the same 3 enemies, it isn’t a grind. You explore the map, check out the metas, maybe get parts of your collections done, and the next thing you know you’re nearly full on masteries and the whole world is open to you. No rush, either. The masteries are account bound, so once you have them you’ve got them for good.

There’s an asterisk there. Technically, everything in the gem store can be obtained in-game. You just need to accumulate enough gold to buy the gems for it.

It is a very common thing. Explanation time!

Maps have certain sets of circumstances that will cause them to “close”. When a map gets flagged for closing, that shard has a one hour timer before the entire map is deleted and you get forcibly moved into a new instance. There are two circumstances which cause it to close:

#1: Low population. This is a strange one, since it isn’t always truly low pop. What happens is, a bunch of people will start taxing others in to join the instance. But, this taxi doesn’t truly count as players entering the map, so this doesn’t change the “low pop” flag. This is quite troublesome with meta events (and triple trouble, interestingly), because these maps tend to form via taxis. Even if you zone in without joining someone else’s instance, the map is still flagged to close and you don’t personally count enough to change that, so you’ll suddenly find that everyone gets scattered among other instances with no warning.

#2: ? circumstances. This might be a bug, or it might be intentional, but this is what I refer to as a “high pop closure”. While the above gets closed when there’s not enough people, there are instances when a map will get flagged (not closed, but flagged) while there is a sizeable population. Currently I think this is a bug: Guild instances will be flagged to close if they are too high population, in order to spread people out and get everyone “in”. If this program isn’t being applied correctly, then each time a map caps, it gets flagged to close to force players into less populated instances.

The whole system is really wonky at the moment. Anet really needs to fix it.

This is a very hard question, because the value of gems tends to fluctuate with the value of gold. While the actual amount of gold needed to buy gems would increase, the relative amount would stay the same, as gold would be easier to get.

What would annoy me isn’t the conversion price, but the actual price on items. If anet starts making everything cost 1200, 1600, and 2000 gems, then we start to have a problem.

Raids were designed to need a more dedicated healer. All of the soft roles are still there, though.

The biggest problem with balancing initiative costs cross-weapons is that this isn’t super important. What is important is the initiative cost per the impact of each individual skill. If a weapon’s skill set is wimpy, you can scale each skill to only cost 3 initiative across the board. The weapon could still be underpowered, even though in overall cost it is actually cheaper than the others.

While I do agree with many of the individual changes you’ve suggested here, the basis you started with initially is flawed, and creates constraints that need to exist. The issue is better described by saying “Most of our skills are too expensive compared to their overall impact. Either make the skills better or cheaper”.

My opinion is that you should invoke the power of the coin.

The coin is a mighty tool, but it is only as powerful as you make it. Invoke the coin, heads humans and tails sylvari. Whatever the result is, roll with it.

Coulter.2315:

The problem I see was that it was becoming doable by pugs just before the nerf, if they had left it another week the problem would have solved itself with players just playing better.

If they were going to do anything the spawn timer would have been best target, nevermind though.

Not really.

A big issue with the difficulty is that players just gave up. It got to the point where guild runs were the only runs, and if a PUG couldn’t ride the wake of a guild they wouldn’t even try. Once a player did managed to succeed, they would grab their mistwalker helmet and never come back.

The PVE community in this game is highly resistant to self-betterment. As much as I would like to think that hard content makes players self-critical and refine themselves, mostly it just gets rid of the people who don’t.

Melee skills hit for a whole lot more than ranged skills. You really need to check the math on that.

You’ve done your math wrong. At 1700 condition damage, bleed does 124 damage per tick, and burn does 395 damage per tick. Your mistake was you forgot to factor in the initial 131.5 that comes with burns. 1700 × 0.155, which is burns scaling damage is 264, which is only a little more than twice the bleed.

I think you’re looking too hard at the specifics, and missing the overall picture. The type of condition is technically irrelevant, as how much damage any skill does can be adjusted by changing the stacks or duration. In the short run which kind of condition inflicted matters, because it changes how fast they can do damage. In the long run, only one thing matters: overall skill DPR. The *D*amage *P*er *R*echarge tells you much damage you’ll be sustaining with your conditions.

The combat, mostly. In this game I actually feel like I’m engaging enemies, whereas with other competitors are basically a graphical overlay to spreadsheets.

They’re clearly based on the English.

From my experience, it is highly random and RNGesus loves surprisingly few people.

I think the half-shaved look is pretty horrendous personally. But, since that is the “style” that is in right now, you’ll have to deal with them.

Ayrilana.1396:

Slowpokeking.8720:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m a bit conflicted about the update myself.

On the one hand, I enjoyed the thrill of the difficulty. A successful run truly felt like an achievement. It wasn’t impossible by any stretch. you just needed everybody on the same page. The “high DPS, pay attention” page. but once you got that organization together, it was beautiful.

On the other hand, my complaint is in essence that more people get to do the event successfully and more frequently. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I’ve been on enough pug runs to know that getting a successful kill out of randoms was incredibly tough, and now more people get to do it.

The real question I have is this: It that O.K.? My general experience with randoms is that they are hard because they are undergeared, poorly built, and don’t listen. I’ve been lobbying for a general increase in difficulty because faceroll easy is boring and doesn’t hold interest. King of the Jungle was one of those events. You had to try to beat it.

Go to raid if you want challenge.

And for those that like challenges that require groups larger than 10 players?

Guys, it isn’t about whether I want to be challenged. It is about whether this event should be challenging or not.

I’m still doing the zerker thing.

Marauder is not a bad choice by any stretch. For the low HP classes it is definitely passable. However, for guardian you aren’t hearing much about it for the following reasons:

#1: Guards have a lot of active defense. Between Aegis, Courage, Focus, Shield, Shelter, Renewal, Wall, Sanctuary, Retreat, and all the heals they pump out, most guards are more than capable of sustaining themselves.

#2: Raids are a hard DPS check. It is better to wear Zerker and hope for a better run than wear Marauder and have 10% shaved off of your peak performance.

#3: Marauder is expensive and complicated to craft. Zerker is easy and always available.

I’m a bit conflicted about the update myself.

On the one hand, I enjoyed the thrill of the difficulty. A successful run truly felt like an achievement. It wasn’t impossible by any stretch. you just needed everybody on the same page. The “high DPS, pay attention” page. but once you got that organization together, it was beautiful.

On the other hand, my complaint is in essence that more people get to do the event successfully and more frequently. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I’ve been on enough pug runs to know that getting a successful kill out of randoms was incredibly tough, and now more people get to do it.

The real question I have is this: It that O.K.? My general experience with randoms is that they are hard because they are undergeared, poorly built, and don’t listen. I’ve been lobbying for a general increase in difficulty because faceroll easy is boring and doesn’t hold interest. King of the Jungle was one of those events. You had to try to beat it.

For PVE I pick bound, for a very simple reason: Bound w/ Signet of Shadows is more damage than Dash with Assassin’s Signet.

Should I find the desire to use both, I’ll frequently swap to dash, go through a bunch of dodges to stack a minute of swiftness, then switch back.

Tangled Depths

Fixed an issue that was causing the chak gerents to scale too aggressively when players joined their lanes.
Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented the Rata Novus golems from engaging the chak gerent in combat.
Fixed a bug that would cause the Scrap Rifle Field Test adventure to end if you were imprisoned in goop.
Fixed kill participation credit in a number of events in Tangled Depths.
Turning in ley energy now gives participation credit for the “Power [East/West] Sentry L.O.X. with energy from the ley-line energy collectors” and “Repel the invading chak. Power up the golem for added firepower!” events in Rata Novus.
Fixed a bug that prevented players from getting the Lane Defender achievements available during the King of the Jungle meta-event.

Good news is, the Novus Golem has accepted its fate and no longer wishes to be a real boy. Bad news is, I’m not certain how necessary the guide is now. People are saying that early kills are a lot easier now.

I wouldn’t worry about the protection. On the chance we aren’t stealing it, removing enemy quickness/fury/might is already cutting their offense, thus letting us live longer.