Guild Wars 2

I mean, with enough skill, faith, and willpower everything is possible for humanity, right? Or something.

“I know that some people will say that your idea is **** and you have to move on with the game but I was thinking of doing a big event in Cursed Shore that we would have have to kill Zhaitan ! "

You are right. I am one of them.

Buffalo. What else?

If you liked WoW Raids with meh mechanics and a dense, lush annoying jungle theme HOT is just what the doctor ordered.

And why don’t you use it?

*Excluding Medkit.

insanemaniac.2456:

hmm

when you put on full viper, you get enough condi duration to max it out without dedicating your runes to it. so you then pick berserker runes simply because they offer the most damage of all the condi rune sets.

when you have 0 expertise, maxing out condi duration is no less important for that style of condi build, so the most efficient rune for doing that is 4 nightmare / 2 trapper.

condi pve engi should not take balth or krait runes because you would then focus too much on 1 condi and lose out on both types of damage (overcapping 1, undercapping another). ((unless youre just getting started on engi, but it shouldnt be your ultimate goal))

Krait gives an extra bleed on hit. The 5% boost to condition duration is useless in comparison. As a long-time user I’m always pleased when it triggers. Using anything with more utility than stats is always preferable because stat gain from sigils is naturally mediocre.

You only get 175 + 5% so with full Viper’s you not only get less overall condition damage but get basically nothing from the runes themselves towards a condition build. The gain on burning does not make up for this since Engineers have so few sources to begin with and they typically are just so short when weighted against their cooldowns.

Strategically speaking getting an extra stack in when you’re hit is worth more than 5% when you have a higher base. Perhaps I’m old school but I am a firm believer in not diversifying and playing to my strengths; engineers produce far more bleeds than burns and do so far easier.

Wow. This is serious.

As I personally use the Inventions trait line I like it where it is thank you.

HappyHubris.1096:

1) Do you find tool-swapping to be a satisfying mechanic? It seems overwhelming to build reflexive use of all those tools/skills!
2) Is engineer effective in world PvE/instanced PvE/sPvP?
3) Is this type of build typical for the engineer class? (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Power_Grenadier)

1A] No.
1B] No.

2. All classes are effective to a degree. Are engineers the best at anything particular thing? No. Can they do all things? Yes.

3. There is no “typical” engineer. There are many imitators but the ones that are the best typically use their own set-ups. Engineer is one of the classes you do have to be intimate with to succeed further than a nub. No amount of keyboard practice will beat actually knowing what you’re doing and designing your own build.

This has the an unhealthy show of empathy.

But yes, I feel your pain, though nowhere near as heavily as you do I presume.

Oh, I did dailies for the sake of doing dailies. I feel dumb for not realizing the whole AP thing.

Thank you very much.

Stalkers need love too?

… Is a full set of gear with the concentration stat worth?

Basically how much concentration / expertise are included in a full exotic set of gear with no trinkets, add-ons, socketables, etc. including weapon(s).

Just do more DPS.

Yes. Bow is terrible.

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna piggyback on this thread real quick. Is Viper gear worth the added expense?

No.

Precision takes a good sized hit, and you lose some condi, to increase power (not your main focus for this build) and gain some condi duration. Since crits is how you proc alot of the bleeds and burn, isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot?

Yes.

Wouldn’t Sinister or Rampager or a mix of the two be better?

Now that is a good question. I don’t know off-hand. It depends on what you’re doing with traits and strategy.

This is a question I’ve had for several condi builds, but especially for this one with two traits giving conditions on crits.

Also armor runes: Krait, Balthazar, Berserker, or Nightmare?

It depends on which condition you intend to focus on. If you’re running something to stack bleeds like a madman, Krait, if they are equivalent in stacking speed however, Balthazar, Berserker should never be taken for condition damage builds because it only adds condition damage and condition damage is double reduced so all additions that are percentages take two individual hits. Nightmare … I personally prefer to stick to a plan but you could take trapper/nightmare.

As for the crit element and question it’s not an easy answer. It truly depends on what you intend to do all the way throughout; if you are playing solo or pug I recommend bringing your own crit rather than waiting or hoping someone has it for you but if you are playing organized teams or raids or whatever then you can just forget about it.

On that note condition duration is always better than condition damage prior to a certain point; if you specialize or focus a specific condition (I.E. Rune of the Krait for bleeding) you will always do better taking Sinister’s and if you do not you will always do better taking Viper’s. It’s just that simple.

Since I personally solo/pug my advice comes from that behavior. I really don’t even know what I will get or who I will end up next to. If it’s your bros though disregard this entirely.

Go druid. dddddddd

It was an idiotic oversight. Forgive them as you would your other brethren.

Though that makes me wonder if they know how their own game works half the time. Didn’t they desig… Nevermind.

The game wasn’t grindy.

Turns out players like grinds. Legendary weapons are proof of that. What greater achievement is there than throwing your life away for hours so you can build not one but two Legendaries to turn into a third?

vesica tempestas.1563:

Ask yourself this, why do you feel like you ‘need’ to grind for something. If you don’t want to aim for the ascended gear don’t worry about it play at a fractal you are comfortable with, exotic gear is perfectly fine. If you are doing anything that you feel is a grind, then don’t do it, that applies to any game that has a power cap, there’s no race. Same applies to legendries, its a skin.

You can’t be both the hero of the universe and only get the Infinity Sword. You need the Infinity Sword +1. There’s really nothing else to it. No one wants to say “Oh, I got to fractal (insert any number that isn’t the max) and then just realized that I was satisfied being hero of the world versus hero of the universe. Those raids? Pft. I have CoF1. I am the hero of Shaemoor. That’s good enough.”

Asking why someone wants the best available to them is like asking why you won’t eat moldy bread even if it won’t hurt you.

Oh, and iirc, Legendaries are a “skin” where YOU CAN HOTSWAP THE STATS AT ANY TIME!? All caps required.

So what you’re saying is you are poor?

Understandable.

The 1% doesn’t even care.

I would buy the ability to just never level up anything again.
Full ascended when I hit 80 + starting level 80 + a unicorn.

Yes, the unicorn is mandatory for me to purchase. $250.

Bonus: for $100 you get random legendary for the class in question.

Please remember that the Norn in this game currently, after being shoved out of the Shiverpeaks and basically on the run, have greatly weakened spiritual power. After all: “I pray to the spirits of the wild, but they rarely answer” isn’t just a statement vendors are randomly scripted to say, it is a lament, an outcry, to you, dear player, to go kill that nasty ol’ dragon upstairs.

If it is Bubbles the next character better be one of those sea buggers who hunt things relentlessly for no reason. I liked running into them.

“I wanted you dead you wouldn’t even have known it.” etc.

Rezzet.3614:

lets see how open minded people are
What do you think actually needs nerfing ?
this is the statement no one has made
Be Specific dont just go and say sustain or damage because that could mean anything

Well … stuff. You know? Because devs.

That’s how complaining on the internet works!?

Well seeing as they buffed Shatterer it’s probably Kalralka…um… kartoric?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The hardest part about reading this whole discussion is that it is premised on some very incorrect definitions and assertions.

#1: There is a “sink” in the real world. In fact, there are a lot of sinks. Everything you buy will wear and tear and break down, to the point where it doesn’t provide its original function, and thus the item effectively disappears. For example: food. When I buy a meal, I eat the meal, and it will give me pleasure in taste and the pleasure of being full, but that will fade, and I will need to buy a different meal. Thus, my stomach is a food “sink”.

The only thing close to this is planned obsolesce. Mandatory consumption is not a “sink” so food wouldn’t even …

I’m not doing this.

Khyan.7039:

DGraves.3720:

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Tell me how because with ascended cloth armor you will not see the 46 golds difference you mentionned. You will even lose golds if you don’t do berserk at the first place with the insignia.

You should compare such things with viper for example. But it would be a bad example too since you can’t sell viper insignia.

You’re probably right. I wasn’t thinking of buying the item outright but building the insignia for cleric’s using Elaborate Totems (which are about half the price of Vials of Powerful Blood) and then converting using Anthology of Heroes.

onevstheworld.2419:

DGraves.3720:

Now I must stop. I need to eat or else I will die.

Likewise.

Btw, can I trade you a Degree of Economics (University of onevstheworld) for a Degree of Economics (University of DGraves)? It’ll look good on your CV.

Sure, it’ll be fun to show off on my wall.

Kayberz.5346:

Was that analogy too complicated for you?

Yes.

“Homeless” person asks for money for “food and shelter” you give them money and they spend it on drugs/alcohol and go back to their apartment at night

Mmo company asks for monthly subscription fee to “support the servers and development costs”. The company makes more than enough money from initial game purchases + ingame cash store for these expenses and the sub fees go right in their pockets

Both parties are scamming people out of money for personal gain under the guise of “necessity” and “survival”

But you saying it’s the case doesn’t make it the case. I mean it isn’t as if it isn’t openly a for-profit business. They do the fee with the intention to cover ongoing costs plus make a profit. This is no scam because no one is actually lying. Furthermore we don’t actually know where the money for the initial sales goes; in many instances the developers are not their own masters, like Anet with NCSoft, so some of the money goes to other projects and leaves the studio when it is absorbed into the whole company.

The presumption that unit-by-unit (dev teams) sales are separate isn’t necessarily accurate.

So yeah, that analogy has me confused, unless “homeless” beggars wear a shirt that says “I am not actually homeless, now please give me your money so that I can just not pay for my monthly expenses. Thanks in advance.”

No, for two reasons:

1. You need to learn to commit to your ideas. I wouldn’t give you, in good conscience, the ability to simply keep wiping the floor with your face because you think equipment is the key to victory rather than strategy as a developer. There is more to this than 1 + Scholars and well over half of you aren’t that good.

2. That encourages people to buy terrible runes to complete collections. I do not want people to suddenly start running rune of the centaur!? That’s just … no.

Well the question when we talk about the time value of any funding is “can we produce a model that expresses it?” to which I dare say, no. In GW2 buying an item of any type can be done in two ways:

1. Put out a bid. Someone (the seller) accepts your price as they are willing to sell at it.

2. Buy it at a price demanded by another person.

The TVM is ruined because when you talk about time value of money you need a stable element. For instance if I work for $22/hr. and I miss a day to go shopping on my brother’s birthday my opportunity cost, or the Time-Value of Money, there would be equivalent to at least $22/hr. In GW2 because the money is worthless, the components are infinite, and the exchange of components is completely possible through intermediary systems (The TP) you can’t produce a stable value. I guess if you wanted to all you had to ask was “What is the value of 1 hour of gameplay?” If you can find an answer let me know, because that’d be great, otherwise the time can be considered leisure and therefore also have no value.

I guess if you’re an esports pro that might be different though, but it definitely isn’t the primary case.

But this actually leads to a really relevant point on time in virtual economies. In truly virtual economies time is relative versus direct and linear; for instance we all must eat at least once a week so we have no choice but to buy food, it is a need, and without it we will die however playing every Friday with your guildmates is a privilege and if you have homework or work late or your children start trying to gnaw through cables again and you must save them or your leg falls off and your spleen falls out that time rapidly changes. Generally speaking people do not lose anything by not playing so then the balance of convenience is based more on whim than time.

So such we can explain people buying gems; presuming normalcy no one would buy gems with their last dollar over a loaf of bread and gems are a commodity. Gems however are indeed the only means of converting to a TVM so if you can’t show a TVM through gem acquisition there isn’t one.

For instance you say “let us look at the opportunity cost of mining iron”, but since all is luxury, I redirect your question to “let us look at the direct effect of mining iron on the player.” If you don’t need iron then even if you mine it to sell it you are not mining “iron” specifically. You are mining gold. Gold has no intrinsic value and therefore no time is gained or lost (no TVM) considering the endeavor. You are simply raising currency to do something else. If however you need Iron the equation changes, suddenly it is your time considered, but it is not the mining tool, because the tool is required to achieve your own desires. You are not concerned with the funds required to achieve the iron, only the acquisition of the iron, so in turn you can also write off the waypoint cost. Written in two other ways:

Profit = Selling price of Iron – (Tool + Waypoint (Cost))

Object = Iron for recipe / Time.

By the way we have to remove time from the profit expression specifically because we do not consider enemies, drops, or other elements which are A ) unpredictable and B ) impossible to truly account for. You may kill 10 enemies and get something that sells for more gold than all the iron you’ll collect for the next 10 years. You may kill 100 enemies during your expedition and get less than 5 lumps worth.

RNG ruins us for modeling.

This is also true of the creation of items. Salvaging yields unpredictable results so it may take no time, it may take an incredible amount of time, or it may just not matter due to the size of the playerbase. After all does it really matter how much mithril is going into the market today alone? Probably not. It’s a huge number. We know this. We know we can’t deplete it and it’s creation is both random and deliberate at the same time due to how salvaging works. The luck system makes this worse.

Now I must stop. I need to eat or else I will die.

There is in fact no way to actually control supply. It is player based supply (meaning that it is player based behavior that dictates how many of something there is; the game generates nothing for the TP as far as I know) so when fundamentally looking at the concept of acquisition and control soul and account binding do not have the desired effect. Instead what happens is you simply have items that cannot enter the market as they are but that does not mean they do not re-enter the market which is the problem, actually.

In order to enter the market they must be broken down which in turn raises the resource count of all items within those categories which cheapens them. This is good if you want to discourage convenience and encourage entrepreneurship, that is, the crafting system, because it will almost always be cheaper to craft the item yourself. The main issue with this however is that this bloats the economy in it’s own way because with people able to acquire an infinite set of resources and produce an infinite set of items which can be sold so long as they are not equipped but when deconstructed yield their main piece (the insignia) which is the base of the expense itself you have a truly free market surrounding equipment, resources to build, and all other elements tied to such.

The resources are de facto worthless because of this. You acquire items through gameplay that deconstruct into other items you need to construct. You can deconstruct items you once used for items that you need to construct. You can simply buy components which were salvaged and thus also have the same problem. The resources are actually not only infinite but also impossible to render worth anything more than the buyer’s demanded price. That is to say the price of mithril would not go up or down even if someone bought 75,000 of it in an instance simply because there is just too much and that much is being produced far, far faster than it is being depleted.

The reason why ascended crafting is time gated is because of this reality. They will get cheaper, but slower, because supply is slower which makes the convenience worth more. It isn’t that the time is valuable it’s that people are impatient that makes the prices what they are. In reality there’s actually still more than can be reasonably depleted. I hope Anet was smart enough to know it cannot replicate a real economy since real economies are based on actual scarcity; there are no “sinks” in real life because you don’t need them because allocation of a pool of funds that are not guaranteed and not infinite is dealt with in a totally different fashion.

Riveting.

Your point has some validity though.

Note: *"You also need to factor a major source of demand that does not exist in real life:

NPC vendors who have an infinite currency supply and will pay a fixed amount for items regardless of demand.

These guys give value to otherwise worthless items, and are a source of infinite currency. In isolation, these guys create a huge problem, but other checks and balances keep that from happening."*

They are not a benchmark. A vendor will buy a sigil of any type for a specific price, 2s 16c to be specific, but there are sigils players will not buy at all, ever, for that price and the system prevents selling below the vendor specifically because people would buy them for less than he vendor to sell them to the NPC. The NPC vendor in the game has no measurable effect other than a price floor which is not a major determinant in demand and thus buyer power and selling ability.

99.4% … is not enough. :p

Huh…

“I can’t even imagine what an economy of infinite resources and infinite currency looks like, so I’m not even going to try.”

This is one.

There is no scarcity within MMOs for the most part, that is to say, all items you require to play the game can be bought within the game itself and all of these items are infinitely produced by the game itself. The value of all items including the currency is de facto zero. So how do prices arise?

Buyers. That’s how. In a truly competitive market, I.E. an MMO for example, you have people willing to pay X currency, which has no worth, for X convenience, which has worth; the thing is in a truly competitive market the selling price and the buying price are rarely far apart for very long and furthermore the selling and buying prices are not based on scarcity but popularity.

In real life if you were starving an item of food costing normally $1 would be worth $10 to you if offered at that price because you need it. In a game other than pure impatience you can wait indefinitely for a price to come down and prices tend to over time lower. They just always do. Even with price spikes due to new content and uses they always drift south.

This also breaks into the law of supply and demand a little bit because unlike real-life where supply is controlled by demand in MMOs demand is actually controlled by supply, that is to say if there were 10,000 Eternity on the market it would be worthless (not “worth less”) to acquire because everyone has one and the goal is to have something others do not meanwhile if there were only 3 of said super rare weapon skin it’s worth an incredible amount simply because of it’s rarity. However it’s rarity is not equivalent to it’s scarcity. It can be acquired by others infinitely by doing whatever is required but they just don’t want to.

This means that GW2 has a “service” market, not a “goods” market, in which people pay for the convenience, not the actual rights, to the items bought. Gold sinks exist specifically because of this reality; gold is worthless so giving gold value by diminishing it constantly means that items have a boost in value despite also having an equivalent value of natural zero.

Fun stuff.

Warlord.9074:

so use your arah tokens to buy some berserker gear. And play the auction house to get cheap mats and craft the rest.

Thank you.

Einlanzer.1627:

IMO, there is almost nothing fun about any of the HoT maps.

I agree. But ironically I think they suck because they are like other games; pointless difficulty, pointless point systems that end up being required to complete the game, and frivolous nonsense regarding the story. Zhaitan’s reach spanned an entire continent and most of the known world of Tyria at the time. Mordremoth couldn’t even get out of the jungle but was supposedly stronger?

We could say that Mordremoth destroyed Lion’s Arch through Scarlett but honestly I don’t know, a horde of undead and undoing an entire continent versus just building a weird puppet in the mountains and punching kitten in a city … I just don’t know man. I just don’t know.

GW2 is this weird combination of directed behavior and directionless sandbox; it just isn’t good at either. You need to craft X, Y, Z or do a build / rotation of A, B, C to be considered in the group aspect so that’s just straight out falling in line unless you’re a “respectable name” and then at the same time the game says “play as you want” and you can just hang around Queensdale until you’re 80.

The sandbox problem is that you design kittentons of content no one every sees and more than half of your players couldn’t give two kittens about and then the directed problem is that players feel pressured to do specific things in specific ways as they’re peers somewhat reject them on the sandbox element. Megaserver was created out of the reality that so few people visited certain maps while so many clumped into certain ones causing issues.

I just wish gw2 had picked a side. Either it’s truly sandbox and ascended nonsense should never have existed or it’s truly directional and you have to pretty much follow the story line, get all the skills in the content to proceed, and have a clear understanding that this is a true requirement to play.

One or the other …

FogLeg.9354:

How does increased HP bar improve those bosses? It just takes longer, thats all, its still boring as hell and you still only press auto-attack to get it done. You just will be bored for longer and press auto-attack more times…

More time for me to get there after I DC 3 times for apparently no reason?

Milkshake.4038:

Anet can see the playerbase better, if they make a change it has a good reason. They made ascended items and legendary weapons account bound in 2014, because they saw something and they wanted to react.

I don’t know much about ascended salvaging, but:

1. it has a cost
2. you will get account bound items: Ball of Dark Energy and Vision Crystals (Stabilizing Matrix is so rare and cheap that is has no impact)

That’s the point. The only aspect that matters is what can be traded. Ascended Salvaging basically goes into the Legendary system which in turn is all account bound removing the value of it’s happenstance from the economy by and large. In essence nothing happens. Crafting a legendary once makes sense, because you shouldn’t have to 9 times, but crafting elements like exotic whatever is frivolous because you can get all the components for free (so the market for them has zero effect) and they are not terribly rare. Furthermore the market works by basic hotswapping; your tooth for my scale, so again the net effect is zero or too minimal to consider, thus soul binding items has no real economic effect.

Does it have an effect on stopping exploitation? Not as far as I can so.

So what is it’s purpose other than frivolous frustration? It just makes items worthless, and not “worth less”, just worthless; this is counterintuitive.

There just needs to be two megaservers, 1 that is normal mode, 1 that is hard mode; sadly with GW2’s quarterly performance this “hard mode” server shall never come into existence yet.

Hehe.

Milkshake.4038:

It doesn’t matter, account bound or soulbound items cannot go back to the market. Account bound items are a little help for casual players as they don’t have to grind to make multiple sets of ascended armor.

You can deconstruct ascended items now so that isn’t true. Furthermore accountbinding and soulbinding have different economic precedents. Soul binding means you have to buy 1 of each for all of 9, account means 1 and you’re done, but because there’s no net effect on the marketplace between either when considering maximum effectiveness soulbinding becomes frivolous.

Zenith.6403:

Ah the good old broken window parable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

How would this apply?

A misunderstanding is not an accident or an eventuality in the same sense.

Milkshake.4038:

Soulbound items are good for the economy.

I disagree with this too.

The best gear (namely ascended rings) is account bound. You only need to build one set of ascended gear in any particular insignia so it is not in your best interest to work towards the greatest materials or most expensive materials since to change the armor or weapon all you need is an insignia of your choice.

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Legendary weapons further undermine this notion.

Do not improve either of these Anet.

I am often happy when the daily is this and I need not do anything. For the others I have to actually stop watching Netflix/Youtube on my second monitor. Do not ruin my casual lifestyle.

If you had 3,000 condition damage as a stat you would gain 6%, or 180, condition damage which would then only take 6% of that, as per bleeding, into consideration.

At 3,000 cd a bleed does 180 dmg base and at 3,180 cd a bleed does 190.8 That’s a 10.8 dmg difference. So now we can look at it.

Presuming you swapped every 9 seconds you would gain 648 damage total to a Geomancy ( 10.8 * 3 * 20 ) weapon swap.

Presuming you crit over 80% of the time you would get an additional 10s 1,800 total damage bleed. about every 4s regardless of rotation.

I personally would not suggest an insignificant boost in condition damage for piddly numbers over new stacks. Better yet the two can work in tandem since they are not the same sigil type if you have 100% condition duration from elsewhere. Basically using the false 3,000 you only have a gain of .0036 on any given bleed.

Why take Bursting over Earth? You will get more out of Earth than bursting. Bursting is terrible.

Malice is the better of the two. Do not take bursting. It’s a waste imo.

MF should, as it was designed, be a background mechanic. You should not “aim” for it. It should not “drastically effect” you. It’s an over-time thing specifically because economies are sensitive to perks and advantages.

That whole “1%” problem in real life is a by-product of just small perks like tax breaks for giving to charities … even if you owned the charity.

Kayberz.5346:

Jarvis.9540:

Doggie.3184:

Jarvis.9540:

Logged back into FFXIV.

Sounds expensive.

$12/month isn’t expensive. LoL

Giving the “homeless” drug adict on the corner a couple bucks isnt expensive either.

Doesnt mean its not a scam

What in the kitten?

Hannelore.8153:

You’re all missing the point.

The problem is not the disconnect, the problem is that when you DC or crash you lose everything, your map, your rewards, your time, all for nothing.

The problem is a double-edged one though. Making segmented content is equivalent to building short-dungeons (again) and disorganized content (again) meanwhile making prolonged and linear content is equivalent to building risk of loss through any hardware or software failure.

To be honest I am not sure what the best option would be. I mean yes, going through X, Y, and Z and disconnecting at the moment of victory is terrible, I agree, but at the same time segmenting it (I.E. Living Story-ing) is a pain the kitten because you have to chase the start points rather than seamlessly go from one to the other.

I guess it’s a question of whether you want a world with a load screen or not. I mean no load screen is seamless but at the same time there would be fewer checkpoints / autosaves, etc. meanwhile a world with loading has more checkpoints and autosaves but … well it takes longer to go from A to B and breaks that feeling of “rush” in a sense?

There is only one solution: Anet, no NCSoft, should buy us all T1+ internet packages.

To be totally honest and barring all nonsense it really doesn’t matter.

A fresh level 80 with no gear, nothing to sell, no gold from events, no karma, and nothing else but a singular playthrough backing it is worthless. All the gold you accumulated the first time you hit 80 and finished the world map is nowhere near enough to support or sustain three or more of these insta-80s and worse yet you won’t know how to play them even if you get them to 80.

Its not an enlightened state, it’s just a number.