Guild Wars 2

250 lodestones/giant eyes is far preferable to something like 1 precursor.

With the former you can make steady progress to it, getting/buying a few at a time, and this even helps to hedge against price hikes (if you had 125 of the 250 already, then a sudden price jump of 20% only hurts you 10%, etc.).

People aren’t supposed to make Infinite Light overnight.

So I listened to some of the things in twitch and it turns out most of my assumptions were correct. In addition, it seems like his target audience was not expected to know about T5 conversion. Nor was conversion even a key focus of his stream.

If you cant differ between contructive feedback

I agreed with your ideas up to here.

and a demand to change something

and I decided this seemed a bit demanding.

Going back to conversions in general, average returns aren’t well known even for some T5 mats, much less T1/T2/T3/T4, because it is widely assumed the distribution isn’t linear. The people who do have that data generally keep it to themselves for obvious reasons. Egg Baron’s site includes only T5->T6 because those numbers are far more known and accepted.

I’m sure you or anyone else is free and welcome to offer your own spreadsheets or data about expected returns of lower tier mats so people can make informed decisions, and that it would even be promoted on the stream if you did offer it.

Otherwise, I do agree with Aidan that

If you want the information for other promotion levels, do the kitten work yourself, dont ask for it to be handed to you.

If he’s throwing out the T5 spreadsheet as the best conversion out there obviously he’s doing a disservice.

If he cant provide a better spreadsheet atm, at least he should make his followers aware of it.

We’re picking at semantics now (and I’ve never actually stated my own position on whether or not he should do this). My own position is that he simply shouldn’t pass it (or imply) it as the best conversion tool.

The fact that you think its a time sink

I believe I clarified it to be a (lengthy) time investment that may require some understanding of math and/or economics that not everyone has.

The choice should stay with the audience

This is going into semantics again, but I’m not sure this is the case. There is no way the guy’s stream can be advertised “this is the best way to make money” so there should be an implication that “this is a way to make money”. So long as what he’s offering is superior to what the viewers already know, he does not owe them anything more imo.

I pointed out an error he made so he can make it better.

Most people here would agree (I as well) that that would make it better. Others were objecting that you seemed to think he was obligated to do this.

Second, you cant list lower than 14% of the current low without using multiple bids, otherwise someone will simply buy your sale listing and repost at a profit.

This doesn’t help someone who is listing theirs right after the undercut gets posted but before someone else sees it and snatches it up. The 14% is irrelevant, though, since it may well have been “70 silver, 1 seller”.

Just as likely, using multiple bids as you mentioned:

55 silver, 1 seller
60 silver, 1 seller
65 silver, 2 sellers
75 silver, 5 sellers
76 silver, 10 sellers
76.5 silver, 15 sellers

Of course the market will stabilize back to ~75 soon. But perhaps not before OP sees only kitten when he sells his. Most of the time this situation doesn’t happen, and all of time it doesn’t happen for long. But some of the time it does/will happen for brief instances.

1 hour of weekly gameplay

because i know at what day of the week to put in my buy orders and when to sell. The Blade Backpack Iron Frenzy and Bazaar Trader Mat Sinks certainly helped to increase my average in the last 2-3 months.

Why are you arguing with me that T5 promotion is inefficient? That’s just preaching to the choir. I think for starters we probably disagree on how many players even know about T5 promotion in the first place.

First you quoted a weekly time sink and then you basically proved whatever you did has a start-up time of research and experience, something many players do not want to bother with. Most people don’t know the best days/times to buy/sell and this information is wisely withheld by the people who do know.

Admittedly I did not watch the stream myself, and I assumed it was for people who wanted to make a bit of extra on the side. If it is for people who already know these “basics” (T5 promotions, etc) then what I said earlier has no relevance here.

So passion aggression. Much defender.

On a serious note, T1→T2 is a time sink most people watching that stream don’t want to deal with. T5→T6 (reg/fine/rare) is about as much of a sink as most people can stomach and the return on investment (gold and time) is good enough for most of them.

You’re arguing about two separate things in this case.

In the case of fluctuating prices, the price should drop down to 700g. Someone who saved 700g will simply have to wait a few days for the price to come back down (or simply put in a buy order which may fill anyways).

In the case the price does not drop back down to 700, then the price was not supposed to be 700 to begin with, and player should save up another 100g or up to whatever the new stable price is.

I don’t think you’re arguing that the fluctuations (point 1) will permanently cause the price to increase (point 2), but I feel like I should point this out and say I don’t think this is true either.

Ryn.6459:

Question about GS+Hammer.
What’s the point of this convination? The idea is to camp on hammer right? Is GS just for pulls?

GS and hammer don’t synergize as well as GS and S/F, so I don’t think it’s not a must-have. Taking GS would probably be mainly for the pulls and blind.

If the pull isn’t as important you may get more out of S/F for more blind rotations. Second weapon can be useful at the start of an encounter for blinds/blocks, and later on after some things have started dying and protection is no longer as useful.

phys.7689:

That said, my claim is not really that precursors are being “manipulated” merely that there are times when it makes economic sense, to try to buy out the supply, or list them at high prices.

Precursor speculation creates more net loss than gain. The only difference is that the gains and losses are not uniform. A lot of people gain a bit as the speculation goes on, and then a few people (sometimes also the people who gained a bit) lose a lot when it crashes.

Nobody knows when the bubble will burst, so it’s a high risk, medium reward venture.

i see people like to disagree with me, and pay little attention to what i am actually saying.

You’re speaking to people who make their profit from the inefficiencies of the market. Some of them have a conflict of interest in discussing more efficiency/velocity in the market, and others are blinded by their position in the current status quo.

There have been plenty of people whose replies to you have been less educational than no reply, but understand that some of them are also being rationally irrational. I think Wanze himself has been pretty fair.

In addition, there has been valid skepticism of profitable precursor manipulation, as there are many more safe and profitable ways of investing that 1000-2000g. People have not been arguing that precursors aren’t being manipulated; they’re mostly saying that it’s generally not profitable and they wouldn’t touch it with a 30 ft pole themselves.

OP is saying information can be “hidden” by manipulative traders and impatient or clueless sellers. Something like

50 silver, 1 seller
75 silver, 5 sellers
76 silver, 10 sellers
76.5 silver, 15 sellers

hides the “true price” of an item. This information can still be obtained by trying to “buy more” before selling, and the question is whether this step should be necessary.

It’s probably (mostly) not manipulation but the effects of high variance.

On the other hand something like Mjolnir costs more than most precursors with even fewer transactions, but is far more stable because it is “chunked” into charged lodestones (and the other mats to a much lesser degree).

I think the issue lies elsewhere beyond the price. Variance has to be lower (precursor crafting should help bring things more in line with things like Mjolnir, even if it doesn’t lower the cost or supply). Additionally the game needs more gold sinks to combat longer term price inflation.

Shortbow and trident in my 38 run (I got nothing as expected).

The post patch data seems to show 41-50 (the paths with buggy drop rates) are finally superior to 31-40 now.

Whether these are “good enough” is still open to debate.

illo.5106:

Making up to 1000G+ only with this ONE niche (Dusk) is pretty easy in my eyes – just think, how much time and effort it costs to get this amount of gold the “common” way.

Risk-reward says lolno here.

Precursor price is fairly stable short term (long term is quite a different story) which means flipping is somewhat minimal.

You saw people make a bit of gold as the price skyrocketed to 2000. Consider how much people lost as the price came back down to 1200.

tolunart.2095:

I was responding to Phys:

“i think the economy overall would be better if more items were mostly provided by intention rather than random chance”

…

“Crafting mats primarily from loot bags/chests teir 5s and 6
Lodestonea from champ bags and boss chests
Ecto from rare drops which primarily from random
Sigils and runes primarily from random drops or forge”

I’ll bite on this. I think the key word here is byproduct

Crafting mats from bags are byproducts. The ones from salvaging are arguably intended, but more or less a byproduct with the intent being luck points and/or getting more on average than vendoring.

Lodestones are a byproduct of open bags (again, for the expectation of profit of some form, not the lodestones)

I have to agree with you that ectos are definitely intended salvages from rares (with exotics they are usually byproducts, but so many more ectos come from rares that this doens’t matter) and the crafting mats and upgrade components are the real byproducts.

As far as intended vs random runes, I’ll just leave Strength runes (random) vs Scholar runes (intended) out there for you and everyone else to decide. Even though the price for both is fairly stable, I’m not sure prices of the former are what we should have in a (mostly) horizontal progression game.

Everything covered above except Strength runes and ectos are byproducts of something else. I have already shared my opinion on Strength runes. The nature of ectos, on the other hand, may not be a bad thing because of the sheer volume and availability. The use of them in just about everything makes them effectively another currency.

Going back to ignoring you now.

I would appreciate it, if the alternative is more strawmen.

tolunart.2095:

So? I was talking about crafting mats – blood, claws, scales, etc.

I see very few people complaining about the crafting mats.

It seems you’re either guilty of a strawman, or guilty of grouping everyone unsatisfied with the current state of precursors into one united group.

Most of the “I saved up 800g but the price went up to 1000g, then saved to 1000 and it became 1250” complaints are not about the price but the inability to effectively hedge against the price increase.

tolunart.2095:

random distribution of loot has its place

For example, if I need 100 basilisk fangs to complete the Sword of Awesomeness, and every basilisk I kill drops a fang, then all I have to do is go to where they spawn and keep killing basilisks until I get enough fangs.

But if I need 100 glowing rubies, which is a rare drop from many different creatures, I have a choice of regions to explore in order to find enemies that drop them, and I am motivated to continue exploring and killing enemies because I can find the rubies faster that way than waiting for the same six creatures to respawn.

A precursor is the equivalent to needing 1 single ultrabright megaperfect superflawless godblinding ruby.

Your 100 glowing rubies example is pretty consistent with the idea of precursor fragments I’ve been tossing around earlier.

**Again I should mention I have no issue with the (total) price of a precursor. Fragmenting them would simply allow people to better hedge against price changes while letting the supply and demand work as before.

Close analogy would be thinking of Mjolnir as a precursor and charged lodestones as the fragments.

So I’m curious, for everyone who says precursors are fine where they are due to supply and demand: what about the Chaos of Lyssa recipe?

I see a bunch of QQ on other threads and if it’s the same people who say precursors are fine, it would seem to be ironically hypocritical.

tolunart.2095:

This means that the TP would quickly empty of any rare or exotic equipment as players rushed to complete their precursors, and new items would be listed at a much higher price than they are now. New players and players with alts to gear up would not be able to afford to buy rare/exotic equipment to use let alone salvage for a precursor. The prices of mithril, ori, etc. would crash as an unwanted side effect of salvaging for EoLeg.

Other than harming the rare/exotic markets (people who actually want to use the gear can’t get any) this doesn’t change the situation at all, you need to grind a lot of gold to get your precursor quickly, and when there are thousands of new Twilights running around the open world, doing it the hard way just makes players feel bad.

First off, I agree this discussion is purely in the hypothetical (I’m happy to discuss things in the hypothetical, but if that’s not your cup of tea I understand). Second, let me add that I have no problem with the number of precursors in existence right now, only the variance/distribution.

To begin with, I’d want these fragments to be thought of on a similar level (and thus price/rarity) as lodestones.

I don’t think this would increase the number of Twilights at all, nor should it (significantly) modify the demand of rares and exotics on the market. It should simply shift the market from throwing these rares and exotics in the force to salvaging them. Admittedly there might be some impact on ecto and major sigil/rune prices.

Let’s suppose players should expect to salvage 15000 rares (1/15 chance) to obtain enough fragments for a precursor (suppose it is valued at 1000 gold, or 100000 silver). Casual players are not going to be able to “rush” this. Furthermore, this would add 6.67 silver to the value of salvaging the rare.

You might see (all) rare weapons rising to kitten silver instead of 35-40, and given how often casuals get rares I don’t see this as a bad thing. Most of the ones that do will simply throw the fragments on the market, just like they do with lodestones.

Other than harming the rare/exotic markets (people who actually want to use the gear can’t get any) this doesn’t change the situation at all

I feel like pricier rares and exotics actually help most players, because they actually get them in their game play and can end up getting more for them. Hell, even pricier T5/T6 mats help them, because everyone gets them anyways. As I said before, I am not interested in increasing the supply of precursors, but simply spreading pieces of the precursor out so more players can benefit from them.

tolunart.2095:

Yes, Legendary weapons were never meant for “the average player.”

Ascended gear was not meant for the average player either, but the design of ascended gear crafting allows the casual players to contribute to and profit from it by selling their unneeded time-gated mats to the more hardcore players.

ANet could (not necessarily “should”) similarly implement measures to allow more of the player base to contribute to and gain from legendary weapons being made. One idea I offered earlier in the thread would be to cut the drop rate of the precursors while introducing “fragments” (dropping at a considerably higher rate and/or salvaged from rares/exotics) that could be combined into the real thing.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Zerker-MM with D/F and Staff ob Subject 7, easy going.

If that was @me for Humble Victor, necro is one of the classes I don’t have to level 80

I can run just about any setup on warrior/guardian, and most DPS setups on ele/mesmer/ranger.

What are people doing for Humble Victor?

I burned most of my tickets on 8-orb Liadri so I don’t have much left to keep experimenting with.

Saint.5647:

I’m actually working on ‘Blobs, Schmobs’ as well. I didn’t do the pavilion last year but judging by the video it looks like it was a lot different. The adds spawn on the boss instead of on the PC.

I find that when I take my time on it, the boss ends up outhealing. If I go for about 75% and then rush to kill, I end up killing adds. Has anyone come up with a good way to do this?

I used a zerker warrior. Rifle with sigil of accuracy + air, piercing trait to make sure you keep hitting boss (strafe if you’re piercing adds). Just use 1-4 rotation, and finish with kill shot. I don’t think I even ended up switching to sword/final thrust for the last bit.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Supply and Demand is not the same as Inflation. If I were to buy out all existing Dusks on the market, then post my own for 5k, that would mean absolutely nothing in terms of “inflation”. Now if my lone Dusk sold for 5k, that means the Demand was so stronk in that individual, that he was willing to pay my price.

Here is the inflation I was talking about.

http://i.imgur.com/5Ort2bH.png

I realize you probably have a personal conflict of interest and want these items to keep inflating, but we are not and never were talking about your hypothetical strawman situation.

Your lone Dusk selling for 5k would only indicate high variance. Individual demand means little in the grander scheme of things.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

DaveGan.8065:

tolunart.2095:

No, they are complaining because someone else has the extremely rare item that they want but don’t have. The only way to make this complaint go away is to give them the item. The irony is that if you give everyone who complains the item, it’s not rare any more and becomes far less valuable. It’s just another exotic that sells for 2g and change on the TP now. So they’ll complain that giving those other people the extremely rare item too devalued the item until there is no prestige involved in having it.

So, what they are really asking is that Anet gives me me me and only me that rare item so they can make other people as jealous as they are now. Not going to happen.

Clearly you didn’t read the rest of my post.

breaking Dusk into 1000 tradable “Fragment of Dusk” (combine 4 stacks into the mystic forge for the full Dusk) and making the drop rate of these fragments 1000x that of Dusk. You could even keep Dusk drops in game by cutting the drop rate of Dusk in half and offer a 500x drop rate on the Fragments. Alternatively, offer a 10%-25%/100% chance to get a fragment when salvaging a rare/exotic weapon of that type.

I said nothing about the drop rate. This would not increase the number of precursors at all. The only suggestion here was that the variance needed to be reduced.

You have it all wrong. The complaints stem from the individual sense of Entitlement. It’s all about “I want it cheap and I want it now” sorta thing.

So people are crying “wolf” when it’s a tiger. Not that surprising when we’re talking about the “uneducated masses” they’re referred to here as. Precursor prices may not be a problem themselves, but a symptom of the larger issue of inflation. Perhaps stronger gold sinks and not material sinks for starters…

We may choose to disagree on the “entitlement” issue. So long as people aren’t complaining about T6/ecto I’ll continue to think it’s overstated and overused just like “toxic” and “cancer”.

tolunart.2095:

No, they are complaining because someone else has the extremely rare item that they want but don’t have. The only way to make this complaint go away is to give them the item. The irony is that if you give everyone who complains the item, it’s not rare any more and becomes far less valuable. It’s just another exotic that sells for 2g and change on the TP now. So they’ll complain that giving those other people the extremely rare item too devalued the item until there is no prestige involved in having it.

So, what they are really asking is that Anet gives me me me and only me that rare item so they can make other people as jealous as they are now. Not going to happen.

Clearly you didn’t read the rest of my post.

breaking Dusk into 1000 tradable “Fragment of Dusk” (combine 4 stacks into the mystic forge for the full Dusk) and making the drop rate of these fragments 1000x that of Dusk. You could even keep Dusk drops in game by cutting the drop rate of Dusk in half and offer a 500x drop rate on the Fragments. Alternatively, offer a 10%-25%/100% chance to get a fragment when salvaging a rare/exotic weapon of that type.

I said nothing about the rarity. This would not increase the number of precursors at all. The only suggestion here was that the variance needed to be reduced.

laokoko.7403:

That’s the problem. What if they just make a quest which says grind 2000 gold for a precursor. People will be happy?

How is that much/any different from now…?

On a serious note, though, it would serve as a massive gold sink to doubly counter the longer term precursor prices.

(well people will, but I know I’m not since I actually have a brain which thinks)

Passive aggression is not appreciated in a serious discussion.

I know I’m not happy with the tier 6 material price. People seemed to complain less, since they can grind a bit everyday and get hit with inflation less.

I’m not completely satisfied either, but I can live with it. People are fine with amassing 2500 gold of things to make a legendary. They are not happy when 1000 of it is one item.

laokoko.7403:

or you can just buy from the TP.

Even if they added precursor hunt, they never said it’s going to take less effort than grinding 1200 gold.

People are not complaining about the cost of the precursor. They are complaining about the inflation and the variance. Remove even one of these factors and 99% of the complaints will disappear.

A lot of complaints would disappear simply by making a vendor that sold precursors for 1000 gold. It could even be a variable price, say, 1500x the average cost of all rare weapons of that type sold the day/week/month before.

The precursor is a single item, either you have it or you don’t. In order to maintain a high price you need a very low drop rate, and this splits the community/playerbase. Alternatively, breaking Dusk into 1000 tradable “Fragment of Dusk” (combine 4 stacks into the mystic forge for the full Dusk) and making the drop rate of these fragments 1000x that of Dusk. You could even keep Dusk drops in game by cutting the drop rate of Dusk in half and offer a 500x drop rate on the Fragments. Alternatively, offer a 10%-25%/100% chance to get a fragment when salvaging a rare/exotic weapon of that type.

Why would this work? You don’t see people complaining about the cost of the rest of the legendary, even though the precursor is only 30-40% of the total cost at worst. People accept the cost of the T6 mats and ectos because they can get them bit by bit, converting their game progression into legendary progression without waste or fear of inflation.

Breaking down these larger pieces into smaller ones allows the larger ones to maintain their value allows people to make steady and real progression, even if it adds steps to the process. It also reduces the impact on progression when prices go up or down.

What fight/setups are people using to get this?

(In particular on warrior/guardian, possibly ranger/mesmer/ele)

Gyler.8150:

I guess this mentality is still alive to this day, with all the staff guards and such. My boons help!

Lindbur.2537:

must be fun rping as gandolf with that lootstick

A lot of newer/more casual guardians (players in general) are clueless about weaponswapping and just camp one weapon for the whole fight.

Staff guardian can be a good next step to becoming a better player, as then the player treats the second set as a prebuff set (or oh-kitten-heal set in the case of a staff).

All this said, sub-optimal weapons overall can be optimal in the right group setting. Pre-patch, even random eles in CoE would know to drop FGS but not stack might, so staff 4 at least gave the party 12 stacks of might before FGS4 got used on Alpha.

If they took fractals beyond 50 they’d have to actually code and implement fractal skin boxes.

…so it’s never going to happen

mtpelion.4562:

The point was that they were designed as a bow class, as their weapon skills were exclusively bow-related.

This is not how I saw it at all, so it is definitely news to me. Ranger was about far more than bows.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Secondary_class#Secondary_profession

Rangers had innate access to Marksmanship/Bow Mastery but any class in the game could access these skills as well.

The line-of-sight/melee meta was in place long before GW2 came out, and it meant bows defined rangers far less than other weapons defined the other classes. These are things that also come to mind when I think about GW1 rangers.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Pet
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Nature_ritual
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Trap
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Poison
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Cripple

GW1 allowed for some very creative class building which allowed players to find ways to do things that weren’t designed.

I’ll give you that (necro) touch skills were probably not designed, but I see all the other elements as working as intended (although a lot of it did get somewhat nerfed).

I honestly hope you don’t take this as semantics or devil’s advocate. I’m just offering the perspective of someone who did not see bows as defining the class in GW1.

I suspect we’re also getting way off topic, so I’m happy to further discuss this in PM or a related thread.

mtpelion.4562:

Even people who played Rangers in GW1 would expect Rangers to be a bow class in GW2.

With Expertise, rangers were very strong with hammers, axes, daggers, spears, and scythes in GW1.

At times and/or in some content they were stronger with those weapons than warriors, assassins, paragons, and dervishes were.

maha.7902:

People always say this, but whenever swiftpaw joins groups on her ranger she’s only ever come close to being kicked once, and then they recognised who she was.

I feel like some of these stories are just exaggerations or lies.

I had to put in a quick word for her when she joined my pug CoE run last night (someone was like “idk not sure about rangers”), but it quickly deescalated after.

“27 daily swamp rolled. I have zerker/spotter/frost spirit/no bear”

I would join this right away. Granted it’s more work and effort for you than with other classes, but the ranger profiling/stigma in general is not unwarranted.

Apparently you only need to be above 90% HP 40% of the time to make it more efficient so I would say probably not.

If you’re getting consistent aggro your damage contribution may be crap anyways so you would be one in the party who wouldn’t have to worry strictly about efficiency. Note that in this case kiting/dodging effectively so your party can maximize its rotations does preserve your party contribution.

You also should be using pies (Blackberry, Mixed Berry, Omnomberry Pie) as they can pretty much almost double the “regen” from healing signet to keep you up.

Slaying potions can have the same effect, as things will die faster and do less damage to you.

What is usually in your party that you’re getting aggro?

And do you have any toughness anywhere?

Are you using healing signet?

Are you using pies? (and is your crit chance not kitten so the pies trigger?)

If it’s just lag/missing dodges/not knowing the encounter/playing with pug groups, then Strength runes are a good alternative.

My roommate just did this on Sorrow’s Furnace, and I transferred and did this as well just now.

Using posts from the last few days,

Not Working:
Dragonbrand
Fort Aspenwood
Henge of Denravi
Northern Shiverpeaks

Worked (for someone in the past few days, but YMMV):
Sorrow’s Furnace 1/15/13 (worked for my roommate and me)
Maguuma 1/14/13 (source https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/Is-there-a-server-with-a-working-cattlepult/first#post1210066)
Yak’s Bend 1/13/13
Aurora Glade 1/13/13

Please help to update the list
EDIT 1/15/13: As I have gotten the vista for myself by swapping to Sorrow’s Furnace, I will be paying much less attention to this thread. It would be greatly beneficial if someone else maintained the list of working/non-working servers

Can we form up a list of servers where Moorwatch Tower is not bugged?

We shouldn’t have to have to resort to server transfers, but it could make for a decent last resort

It would be really nice to be able to finish area/world completion.

(It is broken on Dragonbrand)

0/10/30/30/0
Two soldier armor pieces (gloves/boots). Rest knights.
6/6 Soldier Runes
Knight Hammer/Accuracy Sigil (not shown in tooltip so add 5% to that)
Accuracy Sigil in Shield/Leeching Sigil in Scepter

Screen with Omnomberry Ghost/Master Maintenance Oil (43+5% crit chance without food)

I use the armor more for aggro control (equip emerald trinkets if I need to outarmor someone to take aggro from them). Would probably run a more berserker guardian if I didn’t pug so much.

swiftpaw.6397:

Svarty.8019:

Exedore.6320:

Against thieves, I rely on the Retaliation boon to do a lot of the work. Glass cannon thieves will kill themselves on it. I use GS and Binding Blade will hit thieves in stealth as long as they’re in range. Do that quick, pull them in, then use Whirling Wrath and that will help finish them off. GS symbol also grants retaliation, so drop it and sit in it to get the full 4 stacks initially.

I used to be able to survive using retaliation against thieves, but it feels as though there has been a stealth-nerf to toughness, this is the real reasoning behind my original post. Of course, I have no solid evidence, but over the past week I have felt a lot weaker than before.

A few of my guildies and I are of the same opinion, If anyone has any info/data to support this i’d like to see it.. I’ve certainly had to be alot more cautious lately.

swiftpaw helped me to run some tests to see if toughness is working as it should be, and our conclusion is that everything is normal.

Here is a link to the results (may need to zoom once or twice to read text) https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_xmJrNwyBJMN0hpbFNPUXRwd2s

Rest assured I was not the one who reported. My first sentence to you was thanks for a serious reply, and I do appreciate the dialogue.

I also don’t see why you would be this vehement against my proposal, as it would have little to no impact on you. You mention playing with friends who understand that you run MF and that they have no problems, and neither do I.

As far as making a rule for no MF in guild, the author of that reddit post admits to leeching in his own guild runs by fooling his guild. It’s pretty clear that some in the community are not as honest as you, so I am asking for a tool to remove this deception.

I don’t believe that you can’t be effective (others not as much); I do believe that you could be more effective, and that by not doing so you are setting a bad example and precedent as more and more people will feel compelled to run full MF or completely shun PUGs. That is the problem with the current prisoner’s dilemma.

Another edit: I may take you up on the offer to boot legendary wielders (they can be transmuted, by the way). My (limited) sample size has indicated those users are generally in the lower half of the players I play with. But I will boot 4/5 signet warriors long before I do that (I cringe, make a few jokes in guild chat/TS, but let them stay).

EDIT 2: I’ve thought of a good compromise. From now on MF Consumables = Kick in my groups (I’ll offer blackberry pies or other food as alternatives if people have nothing else). I suppose the loss of sigil of luck (instant kick) and 30% from food (50% from boost) may be enough incentive to deter people from my parties.

My last post was directed at the other guy in this thread, sorry. It was an unfortunate coincidence that I forgot to quote him and your post came before mine.

Kaimick.5109:

Again your blaming the gear instead of the player.

I’m blaming both in this case. Either better players or two team members not running magic find would have finished the job. It’s much harder to filter out player skill than it is to filter out selfish stats. That run, by the way, was why I started demanding no magic find in my parties.

My gear to exo’s
- 91 power
- 31 precision
-16% crit

I have 28% crit on my character as it stands with out exo

And what is this deficit after trinkets, runes, weapon, and sigil? Running defensive runes on semi-defensive armor (soldier runes on knight armor) on my guardian and I still manage 1857 power/59% crit chance/71% crit damage on 16k HP/2955 armor. The knight set is more for aggro control in PUGs (emerald trinkets in storage as well if it’s not enough), as I’d probably run closer to full glass with a regular group.

No we complete the dungeon with no wipes at a good time pace that doesn’t mean we are less of a group lol, that means we can complete a dungeon just as effectively as your group can in less superior gear, to me that makes us the better players.

No interest in self-handicapping unless we’re talking about full blown untwinked. I’ll take my faster/cleaner runs.

Your not a result guy your an effort, so again you would rather have bad players in the “best gear” wipe you ten times and drop and make your run twice as long and that is fine with you. Although God Forbide you take on a player that knows what he is doing in MF gear that can complete the dungeon with no wipes and no deaths because he isn’t doing the damage you expect or deem he should be doing. The fact that you don’t want anyone in your run in MF is your choice, but being an elitist and gear checking them is just as unfair, the game main purpose is to play how you want… now you want everyone to appease to your style of play.

I’ll even take a guy in full greens/rares who’s never done the dungeon if he’s willing to listen and cooperate. I can and will teach/help. I never said anything about best gear. I only said “not self-handicapping”. When gear above greens/yellows becomes easily accessible to newer players then I’ll start requiring that.

I have no issue with you or anyone else getting extra loot, but not secretly, without our consent, and at our expense. I’ve been posting “no magic find” on all my LFM postings, but I fear people like you will start joining them knowing you’re less likely to be stuck with another MFer. If you can promise me that MFers will never ever join my runs, I’ll shut up and go away. Otherwise, I’m seeking the best alternative to an inspect function and/or the complete removal of MF.

How does explore gear cause you to not be able to dodge as much

I meant that survival stats allow you to dodge less. But, since you asked this question anyways, traits like vigorous precision will grant longer vigor uptime with higher crit chance.

by your statement I take it you assume the only way to dps is in melee

Melee damage very follows ANet’s model that it be significantly greater than ranged, as it’s multihit and generally has higher skill coefficients. One possibly notable exception is the scepter on the guardian, but it only surpasses melee weapons (never the 1h sword) on single targets that don’t move (requires someone to hold aggro which you’re probably not doing). Almost no comparison between warrior greatsword and warrior longbow/rifle (longbow has nice combos for parties; rifle I cringe every time I see one).

If you want a reason to be socialized with, perhaps don’t be selfish and leech?

Aside from my trollish moments, I’m actually considered a nice person in game, as long as people listen/communicate/cooperate/don’t gimp themselves for selfish gain. I get friended on many of my higher level PUG fractal runs because people see me as an effective teammate. I’m also happy to run with many of them again because I see them putting as much effort as I am, both in planning (gear) and execution (gameplay).

Perhaps if you put in similar effort you’d get a similar social experience. In the meantime I don’t feel I’m missing out socially one bit at all by excluding you.

If your in a group that has a prefect run no wipes no deaths everything goes smooth and you finish it with in 28 minutes and three people say yeah I got two exotics I love my magic find gear, are you going to yell at them and tell them that you could have run that dungeon 5 minutes quicker if they weren’t greedy?

No, but I would add that person to my block list and not ever run with him again. That 5 minutes you mentioned would apply (probably in increasing increments) for each party member running MF. Do you really think it would be just 33 minutes if all 5 were running MF? If not, then yes, you were leeching and being carried.

rest of your post

Can you please run through the intent of my proposal again (and, if you haven’t already, I urge you to read the reddit post itself)? Improving party performance (clear time/wipes) and one’s own success (loot accumulation) should not be mutually exclusive. More and more players are feeling forced to run MF, or play exclusively with friends/guild, because it is beneficial to themselves, and at the cost of party performance. Neither of these is healthy for the game in the long term.

I also realize that not everyone wants MF gone. The option to disable magic find in a dungeon would be open and clear to the entire party, so you could join another party that chose not to disable it. You could then run your MF with no shame and secrecy, and the rest of us would no longer have the prisoners’ dilemma of helping ourselves or helping the party. Because, if/when everyone chooses to help themselves, nobody will end up getting much.

I also don’t want to have to ask everyone in my group to ping their gear, which is why I proposed this instead of echoing others’ demands for “inspect”. The comparison of an experienced player with magic find and a random PUG is not relevant; the more appropriate comparison is a random PUG with magic find and another random PUG without magic find, and I will take the second one every time because statistically he will have a higher expected contribution and a higher ceiling potential.

But, if nothing is done about the current state of MF, I will be forced to become more and more elitist. If this results in players being forced to farm up another set of CoF armor with real stats and runes just to try to “trick me”, then at least that player will have that set to change to if a run goes poorly, and I would have the assurance that the leechers that get by my check are not just “some random PUG with MF”, but a “PUG with MF and a brain”.

Kaimick.5109:

This is a game of player skill not gear.

It was until ANet felt the need to add even more vertical progression into the game. The “skill not gear” argument is nowhere near as credible in GW2 as in GW1. In GW1 there was maybe a 15% difference in optimal and sub-optimal max level gear. In this game, optimal max-level gear can add 50% more more damage and/or survivability. There are definitely other sets of stats I’d prefer not to have in my group, but I can tolerate players running suboptimal gear if they aren’t intentionally gimping themselves for selfish reasons. That the game rewards this behavior is beyond broken.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

You want the party leader to have the option to disable MF at the start of a dungeon…

Fine, but everyone in MF gear gets the option to kill another attribute on everyone else.
And let’s stack it!

Party leader wants to kill the MF on two players, in fairness those two get to kill the power and toughness of everyone NOT in MF gear.

Karma is a kitten!

Someone didn’t understand the intent of my proposal…

If the party does not want MF in the party, you are free to join another party that does not have it disabled.

Also, toughness and power should be disabled on everyone, just like MF would be disabled on everyone. Have fun leeching that party…

Intentional or not, you do raise an interesting point about ignoring toughness. If an experienced clear group wants to run full glass cannons, disabling toughness would grant their wish of getting the glass cannons they wanted.

PS: welcome to my block list.

Kaimick.5109:

This is absurd, by all rights simply absurd. Yet again another post and thread amongst many that claim the hurtful nature of MF and yet show no supporting evidence that someone in MF hurts the groups run.

First off, thank you for a serious reply.

When a party wipes on the last boss of the grawl shaman in fractals while the boss has only 10% health remaining, and there are two players running magic find, it’s not exactly difficult to figure out a major contributor to the wipe. Ranger in the party was gimping his damage while the guardian was gimping his survivability.

The simplified damage formula works as follows (the full equation is known, by the way: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage):

(Power * WeaponAtk * SkillCoef) / (EnemyDef + EnemyToughness)

Before you zealots go off on your witch hunt just please show me
How much power = raw damage
– meaning how many points in power do you need to get +1 damage

This depends on the enemy total armor, as well as your roll on WeaponAtk, and your crit chance. Power scales linearly with damage, though, so adding 5% more power gives 5% more damage.

How many points in Precision Adds to your crit chance ?

21 precision = 1% crit chance. The fury buff is effectively 420 precision. You also forgot to mention crit damage, but it’s added onto a 150% multipler, and the multiplier is used whenever you roll a critical hit.

How much Vitality adds to your health

10 HP per point of vitality.

How much Toughness mitigates how much damage?

Toughness does not scale exactly inversely with damage, but total armor (def from armor/shield plus toughness) does. A player with 2000 total armor who takes 2000 damage from an attack would take 1666.7 with 400 more toughness (2400 total armor) and 1333.3 with 1000 more toughness (3000 total armor)

I have ran Arah path 1,2,3,4 with a full MF group, we did it with no wipes. How are we any less of a group than a group in all exo’s?

It sounds as if your group knows the dungeon fairly well, and you are trying to compare yourselves to PUGs doing the dungeon for the first time, although they have standard exotics. If you were to compare yourselves to a group of equal experience running full berserkers or whatever optimizes their party, then yes, you guys would be less of a group.

If I need to state anything for the sake of credibility (I don’t think it’s necessary myself but others may not share this view), I have the Dungeon Master title myself and my main is at 33 in Fractals right now.

I have been running MF set as a Mitigation Gaurdrian concealed as CoF gear and I have only died 3 times in the past 2 weeks which includes All paths in Arah, CoF, SE, TA, AC and HoT, how are you going to tell me I hinder a party?

I’m not a results-oriented person; I’m effort-oriented. Any person not trying as hard (emphasis on “trying” and not “accomplishing”) as possible with their gear and game play abilities is not welcome in my or my guild’s runs. As I’ve mentioned in other threads, I would expect more in Arah from the warrior that soloed Lupicus than I would expect from a guildy or PUG doing Arah for the first time.

As a side note again, I realize knight’s and explorer’s gear have the same damage on paper. But, being able to dodge less and keep DPSing, as well as being able to stay in melee longer rather than range, will both improve damage in game. Also, a set of knight armor will generally have runes that help with survival and/or damage, while the explorer armor will have more magic find runes.

Also, since you mentioned playing as a guardian, playing in glass MF gear (explorer/traveler) will dramatically reduce total armor vs knight/soldier armor, and will throw a lot of the melee aggro (favors highest total armor) onto another party member. If you are going this route, perhaps this is why you died so few times. Going full defensive MF gear (wayfarer) gives no offensive stat boost, so you would maintain aggro but do much less damage (~30-50% loss of DPS via power, and probably the same amount more from loss of all the other stats). I keep a set of emerald trinkets alongside my main ruby trinkets to increase my total armor in case someone else in my party is the aggro magnet and cannot handle it well enough.

Reading this forum and reddit (most notably http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/15jmk7/confessions_of_a_magic_find_leech), I’ve seen many proposed changes to the magic find stat, and many valid arguments why they may not be good changes.

Proposal: allow the option to disable the magic find stat when making a dungeon instance. With magic find disabled, a player in magic find gear has no incentive to continue to wear MF, and will either swap to his/her DPS or protective set for a smoother and faster run (note: I realize knight’s and explorer’s gear have the same DPS on paper, but being able to dodge/kite fewer times and/or stay in melee longer produces more actual DPS), or will join a party that is not disabling magic find.

This addition would remove the prisoners’ dilemma that one is only hurting himself by not leeching extra loot to the detriment of the rest of his party. There is no fear that somebody is secretly contributing less than he/she could and getting more, because nobody is getting more and a slower run will hurt the leecher as well. Besides removing the dishonest/secretive leeching described in the reddit post, there will also not be the potential downsides that may come from completely removing MF, or adding an inspect function. My opinions on those two options are below.

Inspect function: I am actually strongly in favor of this, although many will argue that it will lead to (arguably) unfair exclusion of some other players that either run full healing, full tank, full glass cannon, or do not yet have full exotics. I myself am willing to help an inexperienced or undergeared player as long as he/she is willing to listen; unfortunately some others may not feel the same way, going by results instead of effort, and inspect will make it easier for those players to exclude others.

Complete removal of magic find: I personally would not mind this change, as I myself do not run magic find. However there are casual players in open world PvE who like to magic find, as well as parties of guilds/friends who knowingly use magic find with each other (perhaps in a preset rotation if the dungeon is not viable with five magic finders). Almost all would seem to agree that magic find is only an issue if someone is “leeching” with it without the knowledge/consent of his party members, so complete removal is possibly overkill.

Your guardians need to figure out who the primary aggro magnet will be (generally whoever has the highest armor—not toughness nor vitality). That person cannot be near downed people, and is an immediate priority if he goes downed. If he can’t get up right away, then your secondary aggro magnet needs to assume the role temporarily.

Also, were your guardians running wall and shield of the avenger? Just one is usually not enough here. Also using shield5 when the utility skills are on cooldown can sometimes work wonders, especially if working to res someone.

Other thing probably worth mentioning (not necessarily to OP) is that when the boss is near 25/50/75% HP, and anyone is down/defeated/low health/critical skills on cooldown, damage must stop until those issues are no longer issues.