Guild Wars 2

dan matthews.2736:

So basically im grinding a dungeon over and over for gear that im not actually sure will benefit me.

Technically no.

You are grinding a dungeon for the skin on the armor. The look.

If you figure out you want Power/Precision/Crit … or Power/Toughness/Vitality … or whatever else, in two weeks time, you can just buy that off the TP and reskin it with your dungeon ‘look’.

Exotics are top tier equipment and interchangeable. The only thing you have to grind for is what you want it to look like. That has been the philosophy behind GW1, and now 2.

Oh wait …

I just created an automobile race, that tests driver’s skill against each other.

Here is my philosophy:
- All racers & their teams are on equal playing fields to be fair; only skill matters.
- Any racer & their team can walk away for a time, and yet come back later and compete as if they never left. You will never be locked out of races for taking time off.
- There will be no ‘grind’ for better and better, faster and faster cars. I do not make grindy races.

In this race, you sign up, pay your fee, and I supply you with a box of parts. You and your team build your racing car from those parts supplied and only those parts.

There is no parts grind. The speed limit you see today is it, and you can easily achieve it. Now over time, I’ll add new paint job options, but those are optional. If you want to spend extra for a radical paint job you can, but your top speed will always be the same as the guy with unpainted gray car parts … fair is fair. You’ll look better, but you’ll still be equals.

Fast forward 3 months

Attention: I’ve decided to start offering higher speed, faster parts for the cars in my race. This will be the start of my new, faster parts initiative. Maybe some people were unhappy with cars having their previous top speed, maybe not, I’m not going to explain myself.

Also: Newly added racetracks will require the new parts. Sure you can compete with the old parts at first, but as I add faster and faster parts, you’ll obviously have to upgrade or be left behind.

To those of you who have a fully built car, painted the way you want it … well you have the privilege of working your way through and getting the new, faster parts to stay competitive. It’ll be FUN! Oh, you didn’t want to do that? … wait, why are you quoting my philosophy above?! … quick, someone who loves parts grinding get in here and defend me!

Why didn’t they just add new slots on our character page solely for Infusions, which only influence the new content? Hell give me a “belt” slot or something, where Infusion items go, with NO STATS, so they don’t add stat creep and call it a day. People that want to engage in the agony mechanic and infusions can … the rest of the population isn’t suddenly forced to dispose of their exotics.

Sure, gating sucks horrible, but at least it wouldn’t mean jamming another tier in and potentially winding up the treadmill. I remember this stuff from Everquest … horrible and I hated it. New expansion? Everything has bigger and better stats so you must farm it to get through the gated material. Oh … done with all that? Guess what?! New expansion with a steeper treadmill .. yaaaaay!

Phuriok.9307:

There’s been a couple of factors.

#1: the score. Yes our server is lame, full of players who see ooo score let’s go win while we’re winning. (if you’re having fun who cares about the score)

#2: A lot of players/guilds (mine include) have been pushing a bit harder for participation in WvW this week as well as improved inter-guild communication which has been amazing.

Last I checked we actually have a full server and people have been having issues trying to transfer in to the server so It’s sad really that we need to try this hard just to get a Q in a bl lol. But it’s ok give it time and let our community keep building itself and we’ll be back to full/semi-full Q’s

Im primarily a Pacific time zone WvWer as is most of my guild, at least play time wise. We tend to get our greatest numbers in there usually around 20-40 depending on the night from about 5pm-10pm PST (Server time).

DB suffers, as it always has, from being “The Unofficial PvE Server” since early access. When we lost the main bulk of our WvW guilds weeks ago, the server dipped from being full … and then filled back up, with almost exclusively PvE or PvX guilds, excited to get to play with their PvE friends on Dragonbrand that they were locked out from this whole time.

Without Orbs, and therefore a massive imbalance that leads to a crazy score spiral, more PuGs have been around. .. and as Phu’ said … winning makes more people show up, still.

There have also been more guilds fielding more organized groups in there as well. I’ve been very happy to see my guild regularly field a group or two for WvW during our prime time.

That said … I haven’t had a queue for anything other than Eternal and I have almost always had the outmanned ‘boon’ on either competitor’s BL during prime time.

Sadly, I think a solid number of our regularly Friday-Night-Reset-Queue, on Dragonbrand at least, is made up of PvE’ers trying to rush in for PoI’s, Vistas, and the free-karma-train that comes from being part of the zerg. lol

Crafting Exotics:

- You purchase the recipe for the “insignia”, for Karma from your crafting vendor.

- Make the insignia (it’ll cost 5 ectos + other mats) and use it with your top tier ‘parts’ (in your case, gossamer pieces) to discover the final recipe just like any other tier of items.

- The appearance/skin will work just like all the other tiers of crafted armor.

I feel like the ability to get people’s names through the report function was an oversight by ANet and they should probably fix it for this reason. If they want us to be able to talk to each other in WvW then put that ability in … don’t leave a weird loophole to do so.

That said, I admit I’ve had some decent conversations about builds with rivals from other servers. I’ve also let sub-80s & PvE’ers pass who have messaged me (and asked nicely), that were looking to get a vista or do a jump puzzle that I was at. No real glory in me stomping a level 30 trying to get achievements and port out, IMHO. They weren’t actually competition for anything and I’d feel like a playground bully lol.

Sadly, I’ve also had people wig out on me and sling insults, have meltdowns, and overall just be poor sports about WvW.

I’ve had a few issues I figured were latency.

Had a couple pets attack me after I was stealthed, attacks that didn’t seem channeled too.

Otherwise just the usual “channeled attack still hits me” thing. I think some players realized this happens and now use them against thieves. .. which feels like, to me, someone using something buggy against me.

Astraea.6075:

Let’s try this to illustrate the point. Player A is trying to get a precursor for their legendary. He hasn’t had much luck with getting it from the mystic forge, so he decides to start saving up gold to buy it from the TP. Player B spends real money and gets enough gold to buy a precursor from the TP. If enough people follow Player B’s example, then the price of precursors rises, meaning Player A has to save even more gold before he can afford to buy it.

I appreciate the response, but do not see the validity in the argument.

1.) This already happens. People can, and do, already exchange real-world money for in-game gold … legitimately, through ANet. There is just a gem step in the middle. Due to the cost, granted, the amount of people doing this legitimately is limited.

2.) How is Player B dropping $100 on gold through the BLTP and then buying a precursor from the TP (before Player A got theirs) different than someone else who farmed the gold and buying the precursor from the TP (before Player A got theirs)?

If 100 people follow Player B’s lead and buy gold … or 100 people follow Player A’s lead and farm gold … either way, a precursor is sold and the next one is available for purchase. Either way, the price probably goes up as demand increases and supply decreases.

The only difference I can see is the amount of time it took for each group to go from “desire” to “purchase”. … and frankly, since ANet doesn’t get paid subscription fees, they receive zero benefit if we play/farm longer hours. Actually they make money from Player B … but not from Player A.

3.) Also, in your example, does Player A deserve the precursor more than Player B? Is Player A more entitled to it because they farmed Orr for 8 hours instead of farming their job for 8 hours?

“The Market” doesn’t care who makes the purchase.
The seller doesn’t care who makes the purchase.
Why should we?

With electronic “stuff” …. some people will buy it at full price.
Some people will not buy it at full price, but will wait to buy it at a reduced price.
Some people will desire the item so much they’ll stoop to pirating (or RMT sites) because they can’t justify the actual price … but they would totally buy it legit if they felt the cost was worth it.
Some people will pirate (or RMT sites) because they’re just jerks.

You can’t STOP the jerks from being jerks, you can only ban them and their suppliers and publicly hate on them.

What you CAN do, though, is cut down on that gray area … the people that say “I really want that item, don’t have the time/desire to farm/whatever to get it … but would pay to have it .. but WHOA not that much”. There is a price point where you can win those people over. Lowering rates to more reasonable rates would draw some of those “evil, money buying kittens” from the Dark Side of RMT sites & if ANet lowered their conversion rates to get more gold-for-cash, ANet would be getting something out of people that want to buy stuff now.

Heck, look at Steam (evil as it is). Pirates, yes pirates, have admitted they’ve paid for games they pirated previously, to own legit copies, during Steam sales. This is revenue lost due to illegal activity that suddenly reappears (albeit a lower amount), but still …
sure, they were total jerks to pirate in the first place … but, wouldn’t the developers rather accept 1/2 price Steam sale dollars than no money?

Edit: Also … I could have sworn I saw a thread or five about how, during a long stretch of time when the TP was DOWN and people could not purchase gems, nor convert them to gems, the exchange rate changed by a solid margin. It went down at X amount and came back up at X+20%, for instance.

If that really happened, how is that possible if the rate is all market driven, and the market was nonoperational.

>.. and then Arthur, in all his glory, took upon himself the four exquisitely made longswords he had collected, and threw them into the Lake, only to have one of lesser value hefted back at him.

“Kittens!” said Arthur, as he stuffed the lesser sword into his pack. “I shall have to go forth, and farm’eth three more swords to pitch’eth into the lake now!”

Suddenly, Galahad rode by on his mighty steed, proudly waving the Legendary sword Excalibur to and fro, light glistening off the mystical blade.

“HAHA Chinese goldfarmer kittenhole!” shouted Arthur, throwing horse feces at yonder Galahad.

“L2FARM NOOB” responded Galahad, before riding off to meet his international friends, the identical Rangers Qqqqffffff, Qqqqffffgg & Qqqqfffggg to whom he owed much.

Hexin.5603:

It’s so frustrating to see a great advancement, followed up with a unmanned, defensless keep.

At this point, when in a keep or tower as the enemy arrives, if I turn around and don’t see everyone on my team leap off the back wall or teleport out I’m in awe.

“_ under attack, bail.” is one of the more frequent things I hear in WvW.

That being said … I’m not going to queue upgrades, or drop siege if I am almost certain no one will defend the place. So I guess I’m part of the problem in a way. lol

Nilgoow.1037:

I get a lot of the same thing on Maguuma as far as people disobeying direct orders from commanders. We just have to try our best without them.

-Nilgoow
Supreme World Commander
Maguuma (US)

It is a tough system we have, in game. Everyone knows becoming a Commander is just a P2Command situation, therefore the little blue Dorrito doesn’t actually command much respect in-and-of-itself.

Those of us that WvW regularly will start to recognize Commander’s names, and know who we can trust (or at least who will have semi-decent plans/ideas). PuGs don’t tend to play often enough, or care, to learn names. So they either blindly follow the blue icon, or just do their own thing and tell you to kitten off.

That being said … buying the icon doesn’t really give anyone actual authority, either. You can’t be court-mashalled for ignoring some random internet dude. I’ve listened to commanders I didn’t even know that have asked nicely (“Hey could your 2 groups hit XYZ then defend it while we hit ABC?”) over ones I’ve immediately recognized but just spam chat or send tells in caps giving “direct orders”.

Olba.5376:

Someone logging in for the first time ever could have enough gold to buy a full set of level 80 exotics and a freaking Legendary off the TP before they’ve even gone through the starting area.

I don’t see how someone buying the game, then getting a Legendary & level 80 exotics “instantly” has any affect what so ever on your play experience.

Since the precursors, and the mats to make Legendary weapons are basically created out of “thin air” by the game over time … it isn’t like that one Legendary owned by some person with extra disposable income is taking it away from someone else. They’re rare because they take a lot of time to get (or money to get) not because they’re actually limited in quantity of production.

The person next to me owning a Legendary wouldn’t make my own (if I had one) more or less useful, or valuable to me personally. They stats don’t diminish as more copies exist and the skin doesn’t degrade into a newb weapon as more of them exist.

The only actual diminished “value” of someone else having a Legendary is kitten value, which is wholly invented by the beholder and has no real value to anyone but thkitten-measurer and rubes they convince they have much kitten.

… F2P game: Those who can cash shop have an advantage.

Since you can convert real-world money into gems and then into in-game cash … everything in the game that is tradeable can be purchased for real money. Adding the “gem” step to the middle doesn’t make things less real-money-purchasable … it just adds a way for ANet to get an extra cut of the transaction.

Any person could, right now, purchase a Legendary and Exotic anything for actual money. Yes, right now. Making it less expensive would, economically, earn ANet more “right now money” because more people would dump cash into the game to buy what they want, because what they want would suddenly be more affordable.

I’d love a full set of 80 Exotics right now for each of my characters without having to farm Orr for a few days, or karma, or whatever. If I could plink down a few dollars for it, I would in a heartbeat. I’d rather do fun things in game than farm for gear. My time is worth a certain amount of money, to me, and under that threshold I’d give ANet real-world currency for the privilege of not having to farm for my equipment.

Now .. you could say .. “well then wait to get your exotics”. Yup .. I’m doing that .. but there is zero benefit for ANet if I do that. If I buy now, they get real money, if I slowly farm they get zero money because there is no subscription fee. Me playing earns them nothing … they got their box price, and I’m just soaking up bandwidth now.

I feel this is very important (and I hope John reads this and blurts it out in a meeting):

With the way the game focuses on aesthetics, and how all exotics have the same stats, the easiest way for them to get money our of players like me is the roll out new skins for me to collect or buy, and get smaller amounts of money from me as I continuously change my look. I would rather purchase with real cash, than farm.

If I could buy the exotics I wanted right now with cash, I would. If new exotics came out with new skins next month and I liked them and valued them, I would purchase those too. Each new update … each month even … could be a way for them to get $5-15 out of me in cash-to-gold; I’d have been paying it anyway if I played a subscription game, so that amount is easily recognized as disposable to me, but for the money I have to GET something I feel is valued at that amount of money. Right now they get zero, because a couple gold isn’t as valuable to me as the cash it costs to purchase it.

However, that leaves the people who still want to buy their way into power in a rut. They could buy from ANet at a higher rate, or they could get into buying from the illegal sellers. And let’s be honest, unless you’re thinking of buying massive amounts of gold, the rates that ANet gives are reasonable. And if you’re thinking of buying massive amounts of gold, I think you’re playing the wrong game.

I disagree and feel ANets rates are not reasonable for me, personally. If the amount of gold I received for my investment was higher, more people would buy into the market, I know I would.

I also disagree with “buy into power”. All the top level stats are the same. We’ll all have the same stuff, just with different skins. Really its just “buy so I don’t have to waste time farming” or “buy to look better”.

I’m torn.

As someone who currently plays on a server with the outmanned buff on the entirety of WvW most the time I am on, my small group that we can field REALLY hate orange swords.

We’ve actually become more afraid (and have run from) our own random non-guildmember player that saw us and ran over “to help” … than we run from the opposition.

For us, Orange Swords = death. The 4 or 5 of us, if another person shows up and triggers the swords, cannot fend off a 30+ player rush that happens right after the swords pop on the map.

Kita.7819:

Dear Dragonbrand:

Please step it up in Maguuma Borderlands. You can’t let us fight your Maguuma force, take the keep and then a couple minutes later expect to re-enter the game. If you want the tower, take it, but unless you defend it we’ll just take it back.

I was on your (DH) borderland all weekend, and during times when I figured we’d be in full force (“primetime” slots) a headcount of available bodies came up with 2 .. maybe 3 full groups if we wrangled jump-puzzle players to the cause.

We just didn’t have the players to accomplish anything, and if we did get organized and try and take a tower, the 12 of us would get rolled by 40+ DH who would rise out of the lake and roflstomp us back to spawn and then stick around defending with overwhelming force. If by luck we got an objective faster than your players could arrive, there was no way in kitten we could defend it against 3x our numbers with zero supply or camps.

I think “oh well, just flip it for karma/badges/silver” was what we were reduced to.

That being said, my group did get some good fights in against roughly equal sized groups in the field, but I doubt many of them were your A-Team or anything.

SKuDDer.1860:

why? everyone who sPvP’s demanded nerfs to the guardian because of retaliation being op’d in sPvP and look what happen? They have gotten to the point now where they actually nerf guardians for sPvP only because of how different the mechanics are (we have different timers/descriptions for some abilities for WvWvW-PvE and sPvP), so why cant they do the same for other profession in WvWvW?

I don’t argue that in sPvP this combo might not work well for thieves(lets face it, this build in a sPvP or tourny match would hurt your team only being able to burst down 1 person every minute in a limited duration match is bad), but in WvWvW, its a totally different story.

.. but sPvP is supposed to be balanced. It is an equal numbers, team-based thing. No one class should be absolutely necessary (and 1 skill even moreso) or your team fails. That, in and of itself is pretty much textbook class imbalance.

WvW? … chaotic, never fair, never balanced, you play with whatever overpowered gear you have, with rendering issues all over the place making things silly to even play at times. A game mode where it all comes down to who has the highest numbers almost exclusively.

How do you balance things around utter chaos? You can’t take the same approach to WvW PvP as sPvP, IMHO.

Can we get it with female vocals next? Please? lol

SKuDDer.1860:

All these, “its your fault you aren’t paying attention, you have no skills, l2p, have better awareness” comments are just as invalid for WvWvW, sorry I can’t pick out the thieves from the group of 10,20,30+ that jump right in and smoke players, you are right that is my fault for not knowing he’s about to teleport from 1200 range with basil and venom prepped, and not dodge roll the second he CND and steals. I must be getting old, my reaction time cant handle that .25 seconds anymore.

I’m pretty sure this is why people are screaming in your thread that you can’t just QQ about WvW and demand nerfs, because people CAN’T AVOID EVERYTHING.

Guess what … I’ve been killed by 100b warriors that come out of seemingly nowhere in clumps of players much more than I’ve been killed by these mystical backstab thieves. Know why? Same reason. I can’t see them coming. Theres 5 people on my screen doing stuff, I can’t watch all of them. … oh, or worse, that whole “rendering” issue … guess what, I’ve been unable to see classes other than thieves too! Oh noes.

Personally, these arguments about being a 1 hit wonder are not an excuse. Every class has to wait on cool-downs, but can no where near output that kind of burst damage thieves can with little that can be done to dodge or avoid. And thieves can do plenty of sustained damage when they are fighting with a group.

Well, the “1 hit wonder” thing can be taken one of two ways:

- people who spec into the backstab burst build can do that ONE thing and that is it. (I feel this is pretty true.)

- thieves in general are really only good at “jump out, kill fast”. (I feel this is mostly true.)

Sure, you can spec for bleeds/conditions … but everyone can easily wipe those away. Sure you can spec for more gradual, sustained damage … but you’re still wicked easy to kill.

Turning thieves into lower-hp, lower defense, lower-damage warriors wouldn’t be good, and I’m afraid that is where we’re headed. (.. and warriors can still do that crazy burst).

I guess all these topics make me think … what do people think thieves should be? .. and secondly, how is that their niche and still a distinct and useful class?

Maybe we just need a booming voice (ala Mortal Kombat announcer) to deeply belt out “BACKSTAB!” and “CRITICAL!” a second before it hits. That way, people will know it is coming and dodge.

saiyr.3071:

Maguuma (and probably Dragonbrand) are pretty much the same. Sometimes we can queue up a single borderlands after that, but it’s never more than a few minutes.

Dragonbrand had tiny queues on Friday night. I was let in maybe 10-15 minutes after I hopped in queue very soon after reset. After that, I haven’t seen a single queue even in EST primetime, and even for EB.

Remember: Any thief that ever killed you somehow has twice as many Skill Points as you so they can buy EVERY possible skill combo available, and is able to run using every utility at once (Signet, Trick, etc.)

If I thought it was possible, I’d swear my DR is stuck in the “on” position.

I ran MK’s dungeon just short of 30 times. He dropped WHITE gear for me EVERY time, including the first time I did it.

Only once did I get a yellow out of the chest, and it was a level 78 speargun .. which, weirdly, two other people in the group got the exact same one from the exact same chest.

Well, unless you count the stupid rare/yellow 1 time use transform potion I got. That’d make 2 yellows in almost 30 runs.

Ben K.6238:

Sure, he killed a lot of people, but it was all in good fun.

You can’t spell ‘Manslaughter’ without ‘laughter’!

Hey, I haven’t seen any of the kids EAT any of the candy …

Maybe they’re hoarding it to flood the market in a few months.

Oh, and to answer the OP – for me personally it was the charr cub between the bridges. I tried to farm the MK dungeon (and failed to get anything good) and was just dumping my extra corns on that kid because I popped out next to him.

- Have 1 friend to hang out with you and res you. /thread

Plus, you do realize that if you just show up AFTER the fighting happens you can get the page without going through the fights, right? I didn’t even know there WERE fights until the third time I did the quests, as there were so many people there and the ghosts were already up.

Vorpal.4683:

That’s a good point, and I’m amazed and baffled that Arena.net switched to week long matchups while still allowing 24 hour transfers. That’s a sure fire recipe for disaster.

Additionally, however, the mechanics promote snowballing. We’ve had very balanced matches (like last weeks’ TC/FA/DB) that end up ludicrous blowouts, because as soon as one realm gets all 3 orbs and nightcaps and the people in the other two servers wake up and see the whole map owned by the enemy and all 3 orbs and them 20k-30k points ahead, about 80% of the population just gives up. This is true on every server, except possibly at tier 1. It doesn’t matter how balanced the populations are or how tense and even the fighting was, once one server gets a lead you get a huge blow out.

The only come from behind wins I’ve seen have been masssive, massive midweek server transfers, or something like we pulled vs sea of sorrows when we realized they had no NA presence at all.

^ Plus, even the moderately-diehard WvW fan realizes that the above will happen every night and stops showing up. That feeling of “no matter how hard we push, we’ll log back on to the same kitten” turns people off. Sisyphus’s story wasn’t about how much FUN can be had in these situations.

Secondly, if your server relies on PuGs to fill in the numbers to even up vs the enemy zerg, you get to the point where you simply cannot field enough people to survive. Throwing together 2 groups of decent WvW’ers to take supply camps doesn’t help much if your side doesn’t control anything to supply. And once the snowball-server realizes, “hey these guys only hit supply camps”, they’ll just plant their zergs at them and GG, you have zero places to go/fight.

Horndrid.5794:

Why dont you people attempting to paint an entire server with the same brush get a brain. Myself and my friends and guild have never hacked or exploited a thing. SO kitten and go back to your holes. Alot of nice folks on BG and saying a entire server is trash because of a few losers makes you a bigger loser

It sucks, when a whole server gets labeled like this because of a few people.

The reality is:
– it is usually only a few people (who we all hate, and report regularly & only ANet can banish);
– free transfers enable hackers & exploiters to go wherever they feel like, and they can easily screw up matches all over the place and make servers look bad easily for the lulz;
– the bigger a server population, the more common hackers & exploiters will be (per capita);

… and the big one, IMHO …

- with the way WvWvW is designed (orb buffs, zerg tactics, etc) one hacker or exploiter can severely throw the balance of matches rather badly.

One kittenhead can flyhack 3 orbs and suddenly the balance of power shifts as the orb buffs ramp up one server vs the other. (IMHO Orb buffs are screwy and need fixing.)

Once people see the orbs stolen in this way, they often bail (“screw this, I’m not playing with these kittens”) .. and THAT moves the balance of power in the hackserver’s favor.

People (zergs mostly) don’t always realize the silly exploits happened. If 30 people are beating on a keep door (melee, no rams, because they’re not very bright) and someone runs up and drops a portal and says “quick, we got a portal inside!” … will they go through? Will any of them ask “gee, how did you get it inside?” No, they zerg in, take the objective and dance around thinking they’re hot-kitten.

WvW is a snowballing points game … and 1 hack or exploit at the right time can be the focus that starts that snowball.

I seriously think my DR switch is flipped “on” all the time. lol

Did 6 runs last night as an 80 with the same core people, only swapped out 1 slot for guildies that hadn’t run it yet.

I got whites. Yes, whites, from MK’s corpse (while running MF gear) and blues & greens from the chest each time with a spattering of ToT bags & holiday crafting mats. Got the 10 slot ToT bag first run (and merchant’d it … why isn’t it ‘account bound’ and not soulbound? ).

Others in the group got exotics, though nothing but mystic-forge randoms really, no holiday stuff.

Aww, I showed up late. I was gunna suggest [U QQ] as the tag.

I sit on corpses of mesmers blatantly inside keeps waiting for res, or people obviously spying. I don’t subscribe to the “make other people miserable for teh lulz” online playstyle though, always felt like a bully mentality to me. I’d rather the player I killed be all “wow I just got my face stomped by that person, gg dude” than “zomg i h8 u and ur emote skills i so mad!!!!”

What bums me out is it is such a 1-sided conversation.

I mean, you can be one of a few random defenders in a tower, fight the good fight, down and maybe kill 3 people yourself amidst the enemy zerg mindlessly hacking away at the Lord … and then some random person finally takes you out and spams /laugh for 2 straight minutes over your corpse?

I’d love a /point out that you took out 3 of his friends while outnumbered 25-vs-3 emote, ya know?

… or a way to flag people you dislike, so you can recognize them later and get revenge. It is too hard to keep track of who you’re fighting when you’re all spray-painted 1 color and usually wearing the same gear.

The Rune itself, once made, will work on any armor and I assume be tradeable like all the other Runes.

If the recipe says Armorsmith, it is for Armorsmith. You can’t just cram it on your tailor and have them tailor an Armorsmith recipe.

Darn, I came in here because I saw 3 X’s and a pair of vv’s.

I assumed there was vampire porn in here.

“WTF!!! How do I get the vistas in battlegrounds, the doors are locked and red named things keep killing me?!” ~Dragonbrand

I doubt any server is going to jump up and shout “no thanks, we have enough talent” except the T1’s or those with clogged queues in NA prime time.

Really though, in a perfect world we’d have all the servers roughly equal so we’d all rotate around and compete against each other instead of stacking tiers to ensure servers almost never move in rankings and have to fight the same opponents every week. I guess having 5 or 6 solid servers is better than having 3 or 4, but WvW still seems rather imbalanced.

Hakato.9650:

By the looks of it Sea of Sorrows has enough.

Obviously, Dragonbrand lost a large chunk of their regular WvW population to SoS recently, and SoS picked up some people from elsewhere as well.

Some SoS members are still recruiting (some still trying rather hard to poach the last couple visible WvW guilds Dragonbrand has left, even) to get everything all sealed up as a 24/7 server for fighting T2 matches later.

I can’t answer what Dragonbrand needs right now though (although I would probably say “Everyone, come!”) since it hasn’t had a real WvW since the mass exodus to feel out who is left on the server. Getting paired against SoS and the guilds that just hopped servers left a lot of people to skip WvW this week, or GW2 in general. It could take a week or two before DB realizes who is left and what time zones are solid or not.

Somehow, despite losing so many people, DB is still a highly populated server, too. Maybe those “it is the unofficial PvE server” comments are dead on, and in that case I’m not sure what the remedy is.

Don’t complain! Buy buy buy!

Obviously the unicorn should wink, with one of those cartoonish “twinkle” flashes when it does so.

… and maybe it should giggle like a small girl at a tea-party.

Personally, I think they should just make the boon on the orb into a condition, and have the orb ownership itself add points to the ticking totals.

That way, those people taking orbs are making a strategic decision. Do we grab the orb for the points it will give us, knowing it’ll collectively give us a condition that makes us a little weaker?

They also have a downside to holding them (and especially holding multiples) and the condition can give the people trying to take the orb away a better shot against odds stacked against them.

Monsoon.2589:

Until you are able to flush out whoever is doing this in your rank then the whole server is at fault…this is how it works, you can’t hide behind the fact that you can’t control people.

This is not how it works. This is how you, some random internet person says it works, but I do not believe that is how it works en large.

There is almost no way to actually do this. If some random person’s account gets hacked and the kittenhead takes it for a joy ride and fly-hacks with it, or someone transfers servers just to troll like this, there is no way for anyone to actively just “know” who it is and somehow stop them.

Sure a server can police itself somewhat, but it isn’t feasible to keep tabs on every random shmuck that is on a server running around at all times.

The only shady things reported this week were because of players from DB.

Incorrect. Every week this type of thing gets reported against multiple servers. See other threads currently going on for proof.

Sorry about that, I know it is annoying but your server has lost all credibility.

Also incorrect. At most, a server will lose ‘credibility’ in the eyes of a severe minority of people on the enemy team that want to point fingers. Most rational people know this kind of crap is currently going on, hate it, and are glaring at ANet to fix it … but we aren’t going to get pitchforks and claim some mystical “internet cred” is being sucked away because of some alleged hacking idiots.

And lastly, what do you want a server to do if someone allegedly uses ‘hacks’ to steal an orb? Should that server take the accusers word for it (usually with zero proof) and just march the orb back over and give it back? That sounds awesome! I hereby accuse both servers that we are ever fighting of having at least 1 member of their community being someone who hacks. Therefore, I require them to personally hand over all orbs at all times, to me, so I can triumphantly hoist them on high and claim to have fairly acquired them.

I’ve lost in-game currency to #1. Selling Items to Buy Orders three times now, that I know of, potentially more because I do not keep strict check on each transaction. I have had instances though, where I sold an item to a buy order and the money never showed and I took note of it, only later to NEVER have the money show up.

I’ve also lost money by purchasing multiples from sell orders but without an error message (usually with crafting supplies). I’ll enter, say “20” as the quantity I want to purchase, and click to buy them. The funds for all 20 will vanish from my inventory, and the pickup tab will only have ONE of the item I purchased. The remainder of the items never show.

I’ve literally paid 40c for a single butter this way. This has happened several times (I’d wager even as high as 1/4th the time I purchase multiple quantities even).

Have had it happen with: Butter; finished food items (paid for 20 cherry tarts, got 1, lost the cash for 20); half-finished crafting materials (buying 5 steel mace heads, etc); fine crafting mats (paid for 6 scales, got 1).

I thought at first it was a case where I tried to purchase 10 from someone who was selling 10, and someone had nabbed the other 9 first … but this has happened to me when buying 10 of something at a price where 1000+ are listed for sale.

If you put something up for sale, then cancel it, does it fall into your inventory or the “pickup” area like purchases?

If it ends up in the pickup area, then this is easily exploitable if they let you cherry pick what you pick up.

People could just put all their loot in TP for 1cp, cancel it (and only lose the 1cp) and pick it up whenever they got back to town. It’d become near-unlimited storage for junk loots … though that might reduce the amount of people that still put junk blues/greens on TP for vendor price+1cp.

Edit: Oh, and yes, good points above. People could just buy up whole stocks of things, because they’d not have to worry about inventory space, and then repost it at higher prices (or sit on it, leaving it in the TP interface) until they were guaranteed higher prices. While this is possible now using alts and bags and bank space, that all runs out (and costs gems to increase).

You can gamble, but the odds are against you.

AFAIK the prerequisite weapons to make Legendary weapons (of which ‘The Hunter’ is one) require you to stuff 4 rares (or exotics; level 70+ .. or maybe its 76+?) of the weapon type you want into the forge and then hope you get super lucky with the random number generator and it spits out the exact exotic you want (in this case, ‘The Hunter’).

Basically you’d be feeding, at the cheapest, 4 high level rare rifles into the My$tic Forge over and over and over again. You’ll get a lot of “hey I put in 4 rares and it gave me 1 rare back that isn’t any better”, maybe a few “hey those 4 rares turned into a level 80 exotic, but it isn’t the one I want”, and if you’re lucky 1 “zOMG my Hunter!”

IMHO, save your cash. Either the rifle you want will drop in price if the supply goes up (not too overly likely) or you’ll find a different skin you want (more likely, especially as they add content in the future).

You discover them using the runes you buy from the leatherworking master guy. Just copy the recipe you already know using higher level materials.

Oops, sorry, misunderstood / didn’t read carefully.

No. To trade gold for gems you just use the option through the market in game. No credit card needed. Once you have your gems, you can buy whatever you want with them … no need to put bank info in for a character slot if you can come up with the in-game gold.

Enjoying the fight so far. Spent a good amount of time in Wv3 Saturday and had some decent battles go on.

I will say though, I totally despise those stupid bridges at the bottom of the borderland maps, they just turn into tug-of-war matches and, worse, ranger-vs-ranger stalemates. I always wonder why the two ‘Invader’ worlds always fight each other over that stupid empty island (and then try and cap each other’s first towers when you just KNOW the other world will get kittened off and take it back) instead of pushing north and taking the fight to the ’defender’s.

Oh, and Blackgate … what the kitten is up with all the naked people? I must have fought a dozen+ different people in their underwear this weekend. They go down like paper-mache.

You guys have a problem with naked karma farmers or something, or do people actually believe they can be useful nude? Get a collection together and at least get them some newbie armor or something if they’re so upset about the repair costs, it’d be cheaper to just chuck it and get a new set. lol

Thieves are good for mobility.

Passive 25% runspeed signet.
Infiltrator’s Arrow (though the range on it is kind of dinky, so you need to spam 2 or 3 in a row to leap ahead a decent distance)
Heartseeker spam without a target moves you a few jumps.
Shadowsteps are fun and speed you up if used right. There is a signet that shadowsteps. Cooldown is longish though.
Sword mainhand gives you a ‘step into melee range & ’Steal’ will do the same. Use them on random 0hp creeps (bunnies, racoons) to warp to them.

If a thief has their abilities up (like when running supply) they can zip along pretty quick. If your cooldowns are off (like when fighting and then realizing you need to GTFO) you’re going to get your squishy kitten mashed to pulp.

Edit: OH .. and if you’re looking for the BEST option I’ve seen for mass running supplies it has to be a couple Mesmer’s chaining portals. Saw a group basically hop from keep to supplies lightning fast.

Hello. I like the guild emblem system, and understand that opening it to anyone with a photoshop program would lead to all kinds of lewd emblem possibilities … so I won’t suggest you just let us all upload whatever we want.

That being said, my guild is humbly requesting a rabbit emblem.

Now, before anyone shouts “but that’ll take someone off an actual important task”, there is already a rabbit-head emblem in game. If you look on the PvP tab of your ‘Hero’ sheet, glory ranks 1-9 are “Rabbit”.

… so, the thing exists, the art is there, and we are pleading with one of the guys at ANet to just slide the graphic’s silhouette over to the list of available guild emblems.

I’m trying to adapt to dungeons. I’m 80 and going back to do them since I didn’t play through them originally. I play a thief, so I’m already aware I’m going to be ‘squishy’, but I’m getting the “make one mistake and insta-fail” vibe and I dislike that greatly.

This is with switching from PvE farming DPS & MF gear to more rounded equipment too, BTW.

I get 1 shot by big attacks. Not “oh no I’m downed” 1-shot, like .. from full health to completely dead & running back from a waypoint 1-shot.

Trash mobs can down me with their standard attacks pretty quick. Usually so many are unleashed on the group that I’m destined to be mauled. All I can do is run and kite and pray the rest of the group can complete the encounter without me. I feel like I’m not only offering little to the group, but I’m a liability unless they just consider me bait to keep half the trash mobs busy.

I haven’t really seriously played MMO’s in a long while. I don’t have “WoW mentality” or a holy-trinity focus (I actually hate the trinity system, total snoozefest). I did most recently play some Secret World for a little bit. They did the whole “danger circles on the ground” mechanic. I see circles in GW2. I can avoid world PvE “big hits”. Dungeons though? By the time I see the circle under me here though, I have no time to react, it feels like. I miss dodging once, I die. Maybe I’m just getting old and too slow :p

I also don’t understand how Aggro works in GW2. The other day I saw a nearby event in Orr, and headed over. Champ mob, at 75% health and dropping, big group of people mobbing it, lots of ranged folks. I hop in next to them, fire up ranged DPS and literally just take a couple plinks at the mob with my shortbow (standard auto-attack) … and it b-lines RIGHT for me. I spent the next 5 straight minutes running in circles around the event-zerg while they laughed at me, because the mob would not come off. I stopped fighting back and just ran, figuring someone would aggro it off me. Nope, it was fully and wholly focused on my destruction over anything else, for what looked like zero reason.

I even dropped ALL my stealth skills. The mob would turn away, take 5-6 steps to go after someone else, my stealth would drop and it’d instantly 180 and rush right back at me. There was zero chance I could survive that fight if I didn’t just run 100% of the time.

Frankly, that is what I’m getting out of the dungeon experience too. Get hit = I die. More than 1 mob = % chance I get hit skyrockets = 1 die, guaranteed. AoE? I die. Someone comes to revive me? They get AoE’d and I die.

If I’m lucky they’ll be straight melee mobs and I can kite them. If there is a ranged mob and it is after me I’m lucky if I don’t get 2-shotted, even after burning my heal.

Maybe I picked a crappy profession for survival, or am “playing it wrong”. Thing is, I can sleep through most world PvE. On the odd chance things go badly, I never have an issue fleeing if and coming back to reengage and try again. Dungeons though? Just feels like a meat grinder.

I’ve dropped dead in CoE fractions of a second after the group engaged mobs, when I hadn’t even done damage to anything tokitten it off, had zero idea where the mob was that was attacking me, and had no way to counter it. Just “ok, next group” – “sounds goo-” and I’m dead. Again, not “downed” but dead. Combat log checks after were just “____ hits you for 1000-2500 with _” about 6-10 times in a row. I got hit so many times in rapid succession in a blink of an eye that I felt I had zero recourse.

I dunno, like I said, just having a bad experience with dungeons.

You might be able to find someone to help you if you give them a cut of the profits … but … if they can do this already, why would they bother helping you? .. and you also run the very real risk of getting badly scammed.

I mean, geez, I can’t even get guild mates to give me tips on “playing the TP” because they’re all acting like divulging their methods will ruin their monopoly on moneymaking

I was able to complete the quest last night, before this newest patch. Previously I couldn’t because Zott never followed.

I will say though, the whole “if you miss one ‘4’ key you will die” mechanic sucks in this quest. I died a couple times because I got knocked down (either by the giants flinging rocks, or the ships firing fish). Once I got knocked down, my character could NOT get up by the time the next attack hit.

So, if I made a single mistake, I was locked into a knockdown spiral until death and had to try again.

… oh, and why am I the only one that can shoot silly cannons? Theres 2 other NPCs standing there staring into space while we’re in mortal danger, leaving all the work to ME to do.

That is two guard NPCs of different colors fighting each other. It shouldn’t happen, but it seems to.

Had this happening last week, I was setting up siege and fixing walls in one of the orb keeps and heard fighting. Poked my head over the wall and there was a red-named Veteran Guard in the middle of our claimed courtyards.

Killed him, stuck around, and saw a Vet Archer, and then another Vet Guard spawn.

Seems something is broken, and enemy guards keep spawning INSIDE places your team captured.

In this thread: Dude gets all angry over getting a standard form letter that lacks a personal apology for something that wasn’t the sender’s fault.

1: while you play you gather materials and if you have a maxed crafting skill you can craft your own items with no cost.
2: the price of rough materials will decrease probably faster than the number of crafters will increase (everyone can gather but not everyone will approach crafting) so the profit margin will be higher
3: learn a discipline gives you tons of xp = skill points = mystic forge
4: for an exotic amulet: rough materials 2.25g – amulet 2.65g it’s almost 20% profit

13g spent for crafting ? you did something wrong. To me for 400jc it took more or less 50s

1. Collecting your own materials as you play, and using them to craft is a good way to play, sure, but it is not free/“no cost”.

Opportunity costs exist, and basically demolish any benefit of making your own item. If you turn 10 copper into ingots, you didn’t just get “free ingots”. If you sold those copper on the trade post (I’ve seen copper go for ~18-20cp each) you’d have MADE money off gathering. Those ingots technically just cost you 1.8-2silver.

Anything you make with copper won’t be worth that much. The copper itself is worth more than the output good you can craft with it.

I leveled a crafting skill to 400. I wanted to make my own exotics. I priced things out, if I collected the materials and sold them on the TP, then bought what I was going to make, I’d come out ahead. Funky, and it doesn’t feel like it is working as intended.

2. Prices have stabilized for some items but I do not foresee prices on raw goods decreasing. Raw goods have an XP gain value attached to them.

Think about it … a big pile of raw materials can be used to gain 10-15 character levels via crafting. You can basically turn money into XP. That is a huge thing.

Now lets talk liquidity. A bunch of raw materials can be used by more than 1 trade profession, exchanged freely, stack to 250, etc etc. Demand is high. Alts can and will be made, and skipping content you ‘did already’ by throwing some cash down and skilling for an hour will be a huge draw for people.

That green item you can make with the materials? Well it is useful to ONE person, then it is Soulbound to them.

Outgrow copper? Sell the rest, recoup what you paid for it.
Outgrow that green item? Either blow it up for a scrap of what it was made out of, or sell to merchant for hardly any money.

3. Agreed. XP = time spent. Time = Money. (… and right now, the XP-per-hour from crafting >>>>>> XP-per-hour questing. You can’t get 10-15 levels in an hour unless you are crafting.)

Thing is … read what you wrote. You didn’t say “learning a discipline lets you make cool stuff you can use, and/or sell” … its “learning a discipline has a side-benefit … you gain XP … the stuff you can make is largely junk, but oh teh XP .. om nom nom”.

If the tertiary benefit you get from doing something winds up being the benefit people are most excited about, somethin’ seems a smidge imbalanced. Hell that is what ANet seems to label as exploits. lol

Hey I’m gunna’ take up Weaponcrafting! … Why? To make myself some exotics? Nah … to get XP to buy a book to turn into a Mystic Weapon instead! lol

4. As addressed prior; after the 15% cut from the TP you’ll be lucky to come away with a 5% profit. That is if you get lucky and no one undercuts you. Someone could easily drop 50+ of that same item at 1cp less than you. If more people follow suit, suddenly the price on the item falls to 0 profit, and your piddly 5% profit item will sit there for eternity, never selling.

… and lastly … JC is a pretty cheap craft to level. It doesn’t require mob-farmed materials. So if the poster didn’t do JC, then your comparison isn’t apt.