The API keys that you submit to GW2efficiency (or any other site that accepts them for that matter) only allows the site to fetch your data from ANet’s servers. The site can’t modify the data in any way. They can’t take anything away from your account or add anything to it. Its perfectly safe to give them the key. Plus, when you make the API key you can choose which permissions to give it. If you only want to be able to check your wardrobe on GW2efficiency then you only have to give it the “Unlocks” permission and it will only be able to see what skins, dyes, tonics you have and what you are wearing on your characters, nothing else.
Well, that’s good. I hope the security is as good as they hope it is.
Thanks!
Ahhh, I see. Thanks!
Worse: you can’t remove an API key. That’s a security nightmare waiting to happen.
How can we know gw2efficiency is safe? Those API keys they require have a LOT of power.
A 2D mini map is not ideal for a 3D world.
That’s sure true!
Minions and viper gear. I’ve seen both of those elsewhere. I’ll take some time and investigate those.
Thanks!
OK, I looked into viper gear. I’m wondering why viper over Pahua’s? I barely survive most fractals with my carrion armor, and it has vitality. With neither toughness nor vitality, I’m not sure how I could cope with most mobs.
And, how does he move from the left console to the right after he triggers left?
Looks like he used Consume Conditions to cleanse the imob.
I mean, how did he move. You’re immobilized when you trigger a console.
Technically, mordrem would fall under the plant slayer, as would the shrooms. …
Technically, mordren SHOULD fall under plants. It’s really absurd that they don’t.
A few thousand visits? Not really. A few metas will open up most of any map. If you want to explore outside that then head to dulfy and mmorpg life for maps and YouTube for videos on how to get around.
They’re no help while you are playing. And, they “count” as part of those visits.
I admit, though, that “thousand” was hyperbole. But, it’s not a small number.
(Of course, part of it is my age — I even forget my kids’ names sometimes. Grandkids I still remember, though. Maybe because they’re cuter.)
Even so, a navigation helper like the one you get for the story, but only for places you’ve already visited would probably help a lot, you click the point you want to go to and the arrows will guide you there. You would still need to explore new places on your own without the guide but you could revisit any place easily.
And, I wouldn’t be opposed to having the extra help gradually appear. The first time through a tunnel, make it very faint, or leave most of the line off. As the toon goes through again and again, make the lines more defined, until they’re complete after maybe 5 times through (or whatever).
Unknown territory is supposed to be difficult to navigate at first. Have you ever been in an actual jungle? Tangled Depths is exactly how it’s supposed to be. And if you go there often enough, you will know exactly where to go and how to get there. It just requires a bit more effort than the vanilla maps, but they were just flat lands anyway (never mind the mountains; there is absolutely no challenge in crossing vanilla maps).
Did you read the part where I said “After a character has been through a passage, from then on …”?
The places themselves are great. But the mini map is horrible, that IS true. A map that doesn’t help you navigate is not a map, is a decoration.
Yeah, and a decoration that takes up space. It’s nearly useless in those zones.
Outside of collections, is there a way to see which weapon skins you have and don’t have, at a glance?
I’m specifically interested in fractal and golden fractal skins, but I would love to learn about any others I might be missing, too.
Whether ANet will admit it or not, the HoT maps are horrendous to navigate. Even after you’ve been through it, it still very difficult to find your way around. Perhaps after a few thousand visits it might be committed to memory, but that’s not the kind of game I like playing. (Especially at MY age.)
So, and idea: After a character has been through a passage, from then on that passage should be displayed in the mini-map (and the world map) by transparent colored lines. Use one color for higher and one for lower. I recommend green and red.
For color-blind folks, allow them to use dotted or dashed lines.
The further a passage is away from your character, the more intense the color (or more frequent the dots). Or, perhaps, the closer ones are more intense.
The same effects could be used in core for caves, tunnels, rivers, and overhead passages. However, there aren’t nearly as many in core.
When it comes to crafting, I just wish all tab-categories began collapsed — that would be a dream-come-true…
I second THIS motion!
As we warned earlier this year, we’ll be closing out the infinitely repeatable achievements and capping them at a reasonable achievement number due to these rankings and the rewards we plan to add to total achievement points someday. These achievements will get capped with this release.
Daily/Monthly achievements won’t be changed.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Achievement-Leaderboards/first#post1676424
That post is 3 1/2 years old. Further, it specifically says that daily and monthly achievements will not be affected.
So far, I have yet to see a cogent argument as to why it should remain capped. But, I’ve seen plenty as to why there should be no cap, the biggest being they are punishing their most loyal players for being loyal.
Do they want us doing dailies, or not? If not, remove them completely. If so, then remove the cap. That’s a yes or no question, and neither answer works with a cap.
Laser room is easy to solo
…
you can also do it the other way arround with spectral wlak and flesh wurm doesn’t make a diff
I saw that (and others), but I can’t find an explanation of how it works, and the video flies by too fast.
Is he going to the west door and using spectral, then running to the other switch and unspectralling back? That part makes sense, but how does he then get to the force field room quickly enough? And, how does he move from the left console to the right after he triggers left?
Minions and viper gear. I’ve seen both of those elsewhere. I’ll take some time and investigate those.
Thanks!
In fractals recently, a guy (in a pug) made the statement that a necro can solo Thaumanova. I said, “How? I sure can’t.” He then said they could solo just about anything.
Now, I’m no slouch at the game, but my age does prevent me from reaching the pinnacle of adventuring. However, there’s no fractals that I think I could solo at even moderate levels.
What do I need to do to be able to come closer? Like, surviving all the way through Mai Trin or Thaumanova would be fun. (In a pug, that is.) I’m only interested in improving my Fractals game on this guy (for now). I want to be a better teammate in pugs.
I have a full set of carrion armor. It has 133 AR, so I can play up to level 90 (in fact, beat it for the first time last night — with a great team!) I generally play scepter/focus and staff.
Suggestions?
Ok guys looks like i was really in the wrong midset, it just felt to me that some things about the gem to gold and vice verca was really dodgy and guided.
I thank everyone that participated in this conversation and made some very good points and engaged in a creative and respectful manner.
Thanks for opening my eyes to how this whole system works.Salonikios
Thanks for understanding! I’ve had many people who simply refused to think it through. You are to be commended!
Even if you buy gems with RL money, you still have to “grind”, ie do some work in RL to earn the RL money.
Whether you are grinding in RL or grinding in the game , what does it matter?
This made my day! Thanks!!!
It’s absolutely true, but I never thought of it that way before.
I dont know what to think anymore, my mind is really confused….then…why play a game that doesnt reward you at all and only seeks to take from you?
Thanks for explaining to me the gem-gold, i was really in the wrong there, i know when to admit a mistake.
Actually, you are not alone. People don’t recognize this even in real life.
For example, there’s a large segment of the population that says “short-selling” is ethically immoral.
Short-selling is when you sell a security that you don’t actually own, intending to buy it back when the price goes down. It’s basically a bet on a decline in the prices. But, it sounds just wrong.
In reality, it stabilizes the markets. Why? Because without short-selling, only those who actually owned a stock could sell it. Since they want the price to go up, they never would sell, even when they really should, financially. Short-sellers even the playing field.
Gold-to-gems performs a similar role in GW2, although to a lesser degree.
Am i the only one that sees it this way? :/
No, there are lots of people who don’t understand the economics properly.
I mean its amazing to be able to buy gem store items for gold,am i right?
Actually, I would call it brilliant. It virtually eliminates trading-created inflation. The only inflation left is caused by harvesting and killing. And, they can regulate that with ease.
Without gold/gem conversions, the economy would experience huge mountains and valleys of inflation, all dependent strictly upon how much time each player plays, over time. During holiday festivals, the economy would go crazy, only to fall steeply once it was over.
Has anyone figured out what the exchange rate formula is?
ie if you start converting gems into gold in large amounts, 250G is the largest, when will you see the exchange rate for gems > gold start falling?
Actually, there is no formula, except for rounding differences. It’s an auction. As people generate more gold by adventuring, they are willing to offer more to get gems. So, the price of gems in gold goes up.
As people decide the price of gems is high enough, they spend real money to buy some, and then sell them for gold.
The only things ANet has in the way of forumulas is:
15% of every transaction is paid to the garbage can. Really: it’s is tossed out of the game forever.
The second formula is when you buy, with gold, a few gems versus a large number of gems. 100 gems will be slightly cheaper than buying 1 gem 100 times. I’m not sure what the target number is, but my guess is it’s in the millions. So, the rounding error doesn’t amount to much.
That’s it for formulas. The rest of the gem/gold exchange is a zero-sum set of transactions.
Well, that cant be true, cause i can buy lets say 10000000gems with real money and throw them into the game economy and rended gems worthless,people would be able to buy them for copper, do you really think that this system is so deeply player driven?
Except your analysis fails because that can’t happen. It’s a zero-sum exchange (except the 15% fee). You simply cannot buy enough gems, no matter how much you spend.
It’s just like the NYSE or NASDAQ or the silver market (just ask the Hunt brothers). Except the commissions are higher in GW2, and there aren’t as many options.
All the people that think that this boss is OK for pugs at 50+ please add me in-game and lets have a run. I’d love to succeed at least once. Thank you (and for your replies).
The key is reviving your allies while they are still downed. Obviously, that doesn’t apply during cannons, but at all other times, the only higher priority is survival. DPS is basically meaningless against her. But, once you’re down to four characters, it becomes a seriously uphill battle.
So, don’t let that happen. And it’s OK to take risks to revive others. It’s NOT OK to keep shooting unless she has very few HP left.
(edited by Daddicus.6128)
On the contrary, I feel like I’ve been handicapping myself with the druid.
That’s what I feel. And, it’s why I started this thread. ANet isn’t the kind of company to purposely nerf a class so badly that they can’t compete any more. But, they ARE the kind of company that would do it because they didn’t think it through, and refuse to fix it once discovered.
@ OP,
Are you planning to stick with the condi build or would you consider a LB/GS power build? I use a power build for my druid and quite frankly, PvE is kind of a joke with how easy it is and the amount of damage my druid is able to dish out.
I’ll entertain anything, provided it’s not too expensive. I already spent a fortune only to have ANet nerf it into the ground. I’m a little gunshy about that.
I also like all the tools to help break the bazillion break bars that every mob in HoT has when you’re out in the open world.
I never truly appreciated that until I hit Auric Basin!
Can you explain further? One of the big reasons it has taken me so long to get where I am in HoT is the prevalence of interrupt bars. They’re bad enough on regular bosses, but putting them on veterans is really hard. Soloing with any character (mine, anyhow), it is absolutely impossible to break those bars.
But, overall, I am extremely happy with the changes, at least up to about level 65 or 70. (Avengers are just too much. They force you to stack or stay close to each other, even when that goes against ones play style.)
The current reward system is very good.
But the high level fractal instabilities are still not very fun to play with.
THAT’S for sure. And adding fractal avengers is like rubbing salt in a wound. As if we didn’t die enough already.
OK, so I was mostly correct: druid is most useful in groups. I do spend half my time playing fractals these days, but that’s mostly because my ranger was nerfed so badly. Perhaps I’ll try her in fractals.
The other half of my time I run solo in PvE. So, I would like to know some builds where a druid can do well soloing PvE. She’s currently running rabid, which was hideously expensive to create. So, I would prefer not having to swap out all my gear. Still, if she became playable again, I would consider it.
The only thing I won’t play is berserker or something similar, unless the druid stuff makes up for the abysmal hit points and armor. I hate glass cannons, and I sure don’t want to be one.
Achievement points are a feature which is aimed at completionists.
I thought they were aimed at people who want to brag about trivial things.
Wrong. At least in my case.
I do like putting up a title, but mine is from GW1, so it hardly applies.
My reason is to get the radiant set of armor skins. Without the cap, it was going to take me 6-7 years. With it, I’ll never make it.
It’s a bit tedious because you can’t see kitten, they should rework the visibility of the platforms, the effects on it and the boss itself. Difficulty-wise he’s fine.
There’s another vision problem: many times you will not experience all three fades of the platform before it disappears. I think this is a graphics problem, but LOTS of people have reported it. So, I think they need to rework the pads such that it can only disappear when it has flashed 3 times FOR YOU, not 3 times as the server counts them.
The first rule I call out (it’s my personal assessment) is to not run around like a chicken and try to delete as many platforms you can.
EXCELLENT rule!
I swear, people believe they will automatically die if they stop moving.
Move when you MUST move, and at no other time. Kiting doesn’t need to be done except when you are the target of the ray gun or bubble machine.
NOTE: The opposite is true of the final boss in Volcanic. This illustrates another point mentioned by someone else: practice and adapt.
Vince, I think your skill level has put you a bit out of touch with the ability of the average fractal player. Thaumanova has encounters that are harder than many fractals’ end bosses.
The boss is definitely one of the more challenging fractal encounters. I’ve never pugged this one without at least two party members dying halfway through. The main issue is that when you’re downed, you usually fall from the platform and that’s it. No one can save you, and if the rest of the team isn’t skilled and dedicated enough they’ve got to wipe and start over. Not so much hopeless as infuriating, imo.
Well, there IS a way, but most people are too biased against it to try it: revive them (while there are still extra people alive).
It’s a great tactic that works almost every time, but is employed by only a small percentage of players.
This is a serious question, and is asked from a PvE-only perspective (and no, I don’t count raiding as PvE for this purpose).
My best character used to be my ranger, hands-down. But, all of the other professions were dramatically upscaled by their elite specializations. Rangers seem to have been destroyed (for PvE) by an inability to use their elite spec except in organized groups. They seem to have to give up most of their power in order to play the spec.
My ranger has the Druid completed. She’s a condition-based (Rabid) ranger now, although I would entertain changing that.
Can anybody describe things that I could do to actually play a druid, and be able to succeed?
Thanks!
No. It does not need a cap. You think it should have a cap based on other repeatable AP, but that’s not the same as need.
The cap was put in place after multiple threads appeared on the forum begging for a cap because people were doing hours each day of daily AP grinding. However the reason they were doing all that AP grinding was removed and this also removed that reason for the cap. I think ANet should reconsider the AP cap. It’s part the rewards for doing dailies that has been in place for years and removing it from veterans is penalizing those who have played the most.
Precisely.
The game also has loyalty rewards in the form of character birthday gifts.
Are you joking?
There is simply no reason for a cap. All that were mentioned above have no basis in reality. A game like this should REWARD their players for staying loyal, not penalize them. They should double the daily AP rewards after a certain point. And triple them after that. Etc.
They should remove daily AP completly. It was a big mistake to attach AP to them.
And you should see collecting AP as an Iron Man and not a 100m race. It will take time and dedication to reach 30k. 5000 hours since release sounds about right for 30k, 32k+ will take you another 5k hours
I’ve got 5400 hours in, and only 20k. So, your math is way off.
… not that great dps, conditions need time to ramp up.
You mean burst dps. Conditions always beat power in damage-over-time, hence needing time to ramp up.
Cool! Thanks for the opinions!!!
I feel this same way, though I was able to unlock Gliding (just the first point) without taking too long. However, now that I have explored Verdant Brink a little bit more, and now learn just how ridiculously frustrating this first map is for me, I am stuck halfway to getting the first mushroom jumping Mastery. I already have a huge distaste for the HoT maps, so how can I possibly make myself do enough events to fill up the XP bar? On top of that, even though I changed my stats and build on this one toon, I still feel like I die too easily, so that further dissuades me from engaging in the map events. I like to think I have good situational awareness in games….but the vertical labyrinth of even VB is beyond me. I can never seem to get to anywhere I want to go. It’s really making me want to give up on HoT and it’s Living Story…
Try taking another character in. Now that you’ve learned the ropes on one, that should make a second one easier (to a point).
By doing so, you may earn enough XP to cross a line into another mastery.
The moral of the story is: don’t use jargon words unless you want to discuss their usage. Instead, find other ways to explain the relevant issue, so we can focus on that.
Lesson taken to heart.
You didn’t even have to take your best character there.
Oh, yes I did. Maybe not all people, but I would have quit the first day on any of my lesser characters. It’s only because I was riding my killing machine that I even made it long enough for gliding, I think.
But, this is an idea for all, not just me. So, you are definitely correct: many people would do well with different characters.
Ironically, you’re creating the grind that you’re trying to avoid.
You’re right, but I think it’s too a much smaller degree. For those points earned for the 2nd character also advance the rest of the account towards those same masteries. So (if 1/3 were the divisor) by the end of the 3rd character, the whole account would be done (up to that point).
Your post brings up another issue, though:
This idea really only works for the early masteries. It could exist for the higher-tier ones, but it isn’t really needed for MY purposes. (Others probably have different ideas.) So, the idea could be limited to just storyline-required masteries.