Guild Wars 2

The Glint pack was part of it. I know because the day this all came out I opened up the Dulfy guide to see what dyes were in what packs offered by the gift, previewed the heck out of them on my alts, and made a Word document listing my missing dyes in the order I’d like to get them. The Glint dyes were on that list.

My first five 3rd birthday alts were all made during headstart of the game, so there wasn’t time for them to add the Glint pack by the time I was picking my gift dyes.

Fenom.9457:

anything else interesting today?

As I alluded to but didn’t clearly say in my OP, Colin was on at the start of the chat. He didn’t say anything specific but he spoke about the intent to stop creating new systems and work on polishing and deepening the ones we have, adding content to them. He mentioned something we’d see in the next few months, something else later in the year (sorry, I don’t recall what he was talking about, but it wasn’t a definite detail).

But he and Rubi said that some of the Legendary Precursor fixes will be in this Tuesday’s patch, and that Colin’s blog on the State of the Game and the path ahead for 2016 will also be published on Tuesday. The balance patch won’t be Tuesday since next Friday’s Guild Chat will be looking ahead to the balance changes. The intent is to shake up the meta every 3 months or so. By my reckoning, that puts the balance patch in the last week of January, 3 months after HoT’s launch.

Then there was a long segment with Maclain and Lena talking about the evolution of the HoT music. Totally worth watching but if you only want the forward-looking info from the stream then when you view the recording you can watch 10 minutes of Colin and fast forward to the very end for Rubi’s surprise teaser showing gliding off of Malchior’s Leap.

My hope is that Tuesday’s info dump will include an explanation of what that was about.

Dulfy’s summary: http://dulfy.net/2016/01/08/gw2-jan-8-guild-chat-livestream-notes/

The close of Guild Chat just had Rubi demonstrate a glide off the cliffs of Orr.

More info Tuesday??

Given how very many times my guildies have run AC (we have a few peeps who just loooove dungeons) and only one pre drop in 3 years …. well, maybe you’ll complete your AC armor and weapon collection during your quixotic attempt?

RNG doesn’t mean “everyone will get the same loot drops just at different times when they play.” It means each and every loot drop is randomly generated, there will be a bell curve, and some people will be outliers at either end. By random chance your friend has gotten better drops than you have.

I’ve played since headstart and in all that time had two guildies get precursor drops (other than dedicated Forge use); one was Dusk from the original karka invasion chest when it felt like maybe a third of all players got pre’s, the other was the mace precursor off a trash spider in AC. I myself have not gotten any, though I have very rarely gotten valuable exotics and I was lucky enough to get all 3 carapace coat boxes in 4 VW fights. (Sorry about the anecdote there, dace ).

Other people get precursors off mobs on a relatively regular basis. It certainly can feel like they have a “blessed” account, and I suppose software can’t be truly random, but really as far as I can tell it’s just statistical variation. The best way not to let it bother you is to put aside any envy and just be glad for your friend’s good luck.

The 30 rounds of Snowball Mayhem alone will take a good hunk of hours and you’ll need to spend time in Bell Choir and Toypocalypse as well. Getting the dolyak escorts going so you can pick up dropped gifts may cost you gold as most people aren’t donating to Ho-Ho-Tron any longer. You’ll need to watch timers for when Claw of Jormag is up so you can go do that, and you need to do that boss 3 times. I don’t think you will be able to do Grawnk for the Star of Gratitude since as I recall that requires three days of bringing food to the Grawnk.

Here is Dulfy’s guide: http://dulfy.net/2015/12/16/gw2-2015-a-merry-wintersday-achievements-guide/

Take a gander and start planning your very long day … good luck!

They really ought to make those only purchasable via the bank interface so that this error doesn’t happen. Or else have a quick check done when buying from the gem store and notify you that you are maxed so the purchase option is still visible in the gem store for those who might miss the meaning of the little padlock in the bank ui.

I don’t say deny you the purchase, someone might want to buy one on sale on speculation that one day the cap will be raised. While most would consider that foolish, if they really want to spend their gems that way and are warned they won’t be able to use the slot, hey, it’s their money. (This assumes that bank tab expansions are inventory items the way bag slot ones are. I don’t know, I’ve only ever bought them via the bank ui).

A good point, Flesh. That makes sense. But AP and titles don’t actually get you anything advantageous in game the way the botted gifts full of valuables do, so hopefully the ill-gotten gains that are actual gains will be removable.

Maybe it’s just that I haven’t played or even heard of those games, but the bare text you linked seems plenty corny. Perhaps it comes out better in context with voice acting to give it inflection. You say the gameplay wasn’t great — but I bet it provided the “feel” that made those quotes resonate for you.

You can swap back and forth as often as you want to spend 100 gold, fight the mordrem, and reinstall all your decorations.

Or you could visit the Lost Precipice by grouping with someone who has their guild there. If you’re NA I could give you a tour, bearing in mind that we are only level 12 and have stalled out on upgrades due to having 0 favor. But at least you could roam around and feel the ambiance.

(oh and psssst … it’s “Gilded,” as in “covered in gold leaf.” Both halls are Guilded )

Unless, of course, you want to level scribing. At which point you might want to hold onto the fibers.

Thank you for the guide! I have saved the link so I can consider working up scribing with some sort of plan in place. Now if only my guildies will come back from holidays and we can run some missions to get the favor we need …

I suppose we each look at them through our own lenses, since we can’t know what the devs were doing with the discussions on their ends. My sense was that the PvE CDI’s were for systems ANet actively wanted to build but in no way wanted to promise they would build. It seemed to me they did take our input into account; we just couldn’t directly see the effect because of their need to hide development plus the long turn around from suggestion to implementation. Then there’s also the problem that even if a lot of people suggested doing something a certain way, the overall design vision might make it impractical or twist it to something the players don’t find as good.

One thing I think they did implement, for instance, was the lack of upkeep needed to retain a guild hall. Once you get the hall, once you upgrade it, you don’t have to pay monthly fees. So long as the guild exists, the hall exists at the level of advancement earned. This was a huge point of discussion in the CDI and I was very happy to see that it came down on this side of the debate. (And very unhappy about how they set up the costs of decorations, but that’s a separate issue).

I can’t say for certain how much of the Raids CDI is reflected in raids as I haven’t beaten Vale Guardian yet but it certainly seemed there was a lot of community input that made a difference.

One advantage I may have, or if not advantage, one thing that may influence my perception of the CDI process, is that I have a good friend I’ve known for quite a long time now who happens to be a lead writer on a major MMO. Through him I’ve gotten a number of peeks into what goes on in MMO development and gained a great deal of sympathy for what the creative teams go through. I know how unwieldy it is.

Make sure you have fully trained all Ranger traits and abilities. Likely you have if you were able to put any points at all into Druid.

Keep in mind that you are only a Druid while you have the trait line equipped in the third line, as the others said … and that you can only use the traits you’ve unlocked in that line. So you can be a Druid, have a staff on, have the Druid utility skills you’ve unlocked, but you will be missing minor and major traits until you get enough HP to fully unlock the Druid line. You still will have two other full lines, however.

Ashen.2907:

To be honest I think that the CDI program was dead when in active use. It really did seem more like a distraction than anything else.

Are you kidding? The CDI’s on Raids and on Guild Halls went like gangbusters, miss a day of reading posts and you’d have enormous amounts to catch up on. A great deal of the discussion bore fruit in the systems we see now, albeit without exactly matching any one person’s suggestions (as we should expect). Though I did see some people commenting the Ranger CDI was a no-go … I wasn’t really cognizant of any CDI’s outside those in general discussion.

I’d give some examples but I can easily see this thread bogging down in discussion of those examples rather than remaining focused on the desirability of CDI’s as a format for community/dev exploration of ideas.

I almost bought the mini but after seeing Dulfy’s video which did not include any rolling (though it did show the thing adorably swimming about, huh? There’s no swimmable water in the HoT areas, why would it need to know how to swim? ) I elected not to buy the gems I’d need. At 200 gems like Tizlak I would have bought it. At 400, with my wallet feeling the vague pinch retirement has brought and minis not being a big deal for me, I decided the lack of rolling meant I didn’t really want it that much.

The video description says somehow PvE got into the fight but as a WvW neophyte I only saw a small group fighting a zerg, what was the PvE part?

An aside to the OP: I’m pretty sure costuming isn’t the focus of WvW. Though some of the players in the video had nice armor sets on.

Sorry … I know English isn’t your native language, at least based on your syntax I don’t think it is. But I see this even in English speakers on these forums, so here is a small lesson:

“Customer” = one who buys something.
“Costumer” = one who puts on costumes, ie clothing to make them look like someone else. “Cosplay” is derived from this, coming from “Costume Play.”

(Also “witch” = “female caster of spells with an occult flavor” — can also go to pagan magic but I’m keeping it basic — and “which” = “differentiating between multiples of a type.” An easy mixup if you don’t grow up with the words).

I just saw this on the GW2 Tumblr. It’s glorious! Also inspirational. Suddenly I want to work on a legendary (HOPE most likely).

First make sure you have fully unlocked every Guardian trait and skill, as you cannot start training DH until you do that. Then go to your Hero panel and click on the Training tab. At the upper left you will see your current HP total. Click on the DH trait line to get that trait wheel up in the main panel area. Click on the very last trait (upper left on the circle, just before the gap). In the middle it will tell you a total number of points needed to train to there.

Divide that number by 10 and that is how many HoT HP you need to get (you can still get HP in the core lands, 1 HP per HP point visited as opposed to 10 per visit in HoT. Useful if, say, you could get to your next trait training with just 3 more points which might be easier to accomplish than one in HoT).

I think, but am not 100% sure, that if you are a fresh 80 without any HP gained in the core areas at all you will need 400 HP to fully unlock the elite, so 40 HP done in HoT or less there and a bunch in the core lands.

Gaile Gray.6029:

vonbladewing.5973:

we have not had any CDI topics for some time now and i wonder if Devs planing on doing more CDI’s threads in the future?

Not that I know of. It’s possible that could happen, but at the current time there are plans to communicate through other means, including forum posts from team members or on behalf of a team and of course on our official website, in the “news” section. (The “news” is really a blog, and that’s where a lot of info goes. Once posted, forum members invited to share their thoughts here on the topic at hand.)

The thing is that the News topics aren’t quite the same. What the CDI’s did was propose a theme for discussion on something not yet in game, possibly not yet even in development, and encourage in-depth brainstorming from the community on how to develop the idea vis a vis GW2. The moderating dev (usually Chris Whiteside) participated in the discussion while making it clear everything was hypothetical in nature. He might drop in some guiding questions, or ask for elaboration on suggestions. And then much later, if/when the system under discussion came to the game, the community could see how the CDI had helped shape the system design.

That complexity of brainstorming collaboration with back and forth feedback is what people are asking to see again when they yearn for more CDI’s. Yes, communication on development is also being requested, but the CDI was more than communication, it was conversation.

I vote against this. Not because I don’t want personal decorating power (at far less ruinous expense than guild hall scribing) but because I want a proper personal home, not just a cavernous city district. Only the human home instance looks lived in, but it doesn’t have proper housing, just suggestions of it. The noble house is a one bedroom townhouse, for instance, rather than a sprawling mansion.

So I would much rather have a robust system with a lot of choice of housing style and surroundings which you can then very flexibly decorate to your taste than just be able to custom plop down some objects in the existing home instances.

Oh, they only count once, like everyone’s said. That once, however, is key to getting the meta if you can’t JP and don’t have the means to acquire all the food and drink.

As requested previously by the OP and others, can discussion about the choice to post on Reddit go to https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-s-Why-post-on-Reddit/first#post5894252 while this thread remains just for relating what was posted?

It’ll help when the devs are back from vacation and posting stuff more often so there’s something to put in this thread, true, but as someone who fails at finding anything on Reddit without a direct link I really appreciate Flesh’s relaying the tidbits here and would like to be able to read them without all these alarums and excursions.

They absolutely count. Here’s my completed meta. The Bells of Wintersday is on its 6th round, Toypocalypse Survivor on its 3rd, I did Snowball Mayhem in one batch of 30 (and on finishing the 30th got the meta complete), and have yet to get past the snowflakes in the JP so I have zero JP completions at all, ever. As you can see I have not completed either of the ingestion ones. I got Grawnk last year so either it counted as a freebie or isn’t part of the meta this year for me.

edit: I just tried the JP again and made it to the campfire! Then missed the first leap onto a white present. But I still have no JP completions.

I’m not always at the computer let alone in game by noon but if you are still looking for people to help at go time (I recommend you cap your claim group at 9 people, and it’s plenty doable with 6 or 7 if everyone has updraft use) then please feel free to call on me if I’m on.

If it’s something like Orphan Laine’s Letter, then when you drag it from your inventory to open space and let go, you get a pop up saying “Do you really want to delete (name of item) (here, Orphan Laine’s Letter)?” There is a text entry box in the window. Click in that box. Type in the (name of item) exactly as it appears in the pop up box, capital letters and all. Then click “Yes” (just hitting Enter won’t do it).

Esquilax.3491:

If the OP is referring to Winter Wonderland, which i suspect they are, there isn’t actually any timing involved apart from waiting for the footstep present to spawn on the present climb segment. Everything else is simply a matter of memorizing and execution (with plenty of leeway). The snowflakes don’t break unless you stand on them for like 10 seconds which is a huge amount of time. The snow boulders at the end have plenty of time between them for you to move to the safe spot.

You forgot the bit about having your health freezing away so that if you don’t zip up along the snowflakes a lot faster than some want to go when judging their leaps, you will fail the puzzle. That’s the timed part.

EdwinLi.1284:

What will happen to the Sylvari race now that news about them being Elder Dragon minions is out.

Even with Mordremoth’s death in both body and mind during the Season 3 timeframe there may be back lash to the Sylvari’s race and their actions through GW2 storyline. We have seen some tension already with mysterious murders happening in Lion Arch and other place with only Sylvari being murdered.

Really? I have missed this! Where do I go to see NPC comments about the murders?

I can’t find it now but there is a (Q) thread asking why devs post on Reddit, possibly in the HoT forum. Could perhaps debate about the merits of that action move to that thread so this one can remain readable as a source of what they are saying rather than discussion over where they are saying it?

You could go to the Asura cultural vendors (top open air level of the city) to take a look at what they sell and see if any of it is close. I think the art is using the goggles Zojia wears which are t3. Also look at the Cook and Wedding outfits, those vary with race.

If they were giftable I’d arrange exchanges with a couple of people to help them out

The exact sale at this moment is:

Bank Tab Expansion, 450 gems (normally 600) for just under 23 more hours.
Character Slot Expansion 600 gems (normally 800) for “Limited time left at this price.”

The Winter Chimes Dye Kit is “available for 4 days only.”

Mini Festive Lord Faren and Mini Angry Wintersday Gift don’t have time limits posted but likely will vanish on Jan 12 because they are seasonal.

Mini Tizlak should be permanent?

That’s all in Promotions right now (other than the everlasting Raider’s Supply Package and Account Jump Start).

Lighthouse as Behellagh says and also I believe there is still a Diverse Ledges diving spot.

I think Daredevil staff attacks are also a hammer. I’m not 100% sure though.

Ha! Amazing, Flesh, I’m not totally surprised but there are a couple of other posters I’d have imagined would be more prolific than you. Out of curiosity I looked at your page count of posts and it’s 6 less than mine. I must do more walls of text than you (or long strips of images) /laughs.

Clarification: You cannot redo the starting PS up through Zhaitan except with another alt. Living Season 2 (which must be bought with gems if you weren’t logged in while it was live) and the current HoT hybrid of LS and PS not only can be repeated on the same alt but actually have to be if you want to do all the achieves.

It was a lot of fun and a learning experience. I learned that thief stealth doesn’t last long enough to save a lowbie from the long range aggro of Risen when they smell weakness but Scrapper gyro stealth does. I learned that either Engineer underwater skills suck or I suck at using them. And I learned that other players are far too helpful with rezzes when I’m perusing the map before rezzing my lowbie friend! Poor Moose made it maybe two steps at a time between deaths before I swapped to my Scrapper and it didn’t help that I picked the wrong path the first try.

Still we managed it and then got the Green Ball in Diessa and with the Star of Gratitude now in Moose’s bags we capped it with a fast run up Breached Wall Blitz. It made for a feel-good New Years Eve even before I went to a fancy dress party

That sure cut it close

Interesting choice of jump spot. I usually jump off the south side and curve around to the right until I am over the light green triangle made by the large tree root, then aim for that in my drop. It makes a handy target to be absolutely sure I’m in the right place. But someone doing a straight drop like you did would certainly beat me in any race down.

I’m glad it helped. It took me forever to find my way up there the first time (I think a guildie had to point out the updraft).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor

Scroll down about half way to see your “shopping list.” Just past that is a per-piece breakdown.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Predator's_Path

You need updraft use. Go inside the little village and to the south edge to where you can run up inside the hollow tree (mordrem dogging you the whole way). Jump out the upper end of the wood tube of the tree into an updraft, go up and u-turn to glide onto the top of the hollow tree.

I vote Necromancer so you can be a Reaper. They don’t feel as mobile as Ele or Chronomancer (I used Runes of the Traveler on mine just so I’d not be running in tar) but they are so awesome fun and tanky and chilling.. This is a PvE viewpoint as I don’t PvP. Also note I don’t run zerker so you might feel more squishy than I do.

The damask bolts are needed for all the armor, I’m pretty sure, so don’t let that be your only deciding factor.

Ok folks, Moose got the Gold Ball!

Are you NA? I would be happy to help. I can thief-stealth you, scrapper-stealth you (I am not sure how often I can do the gyro stealth, but it can get you past a number of things), or guardian-aegis you as you like. Thief and guardian both have full map exploration already.

The other thing I can do is let you teleport to me if you have a tele-to-friend. However as you are a new player you won’t have those from character birthday gifts so you’d have to pay for one.

I’ll go in game now to look for you and see if we can do this.

I would want a Mesmer/Chronomancer if the player knows how to use them well. Why? I really like playing Reaper so that’s what I’m likely to have in most everything (I have a decked out Mesmer for dungeons/fractals and she’ll be my next Elite unlock, but I find myself going Reaper for anything I can). My beta experience with Chronomancer, however, suggests to me that I will not be as effective with it as I’d like given the complex things to keep track of and the split second timing needed on the F5. So I’d like someone good at it to bring all that good stuff to the party while I chug along freezing things to death

Here is how you do DS:

A few minutes before the map is due to open (see http://dulfy.net/2015/11/09/gw2-hot-maps-timer-famme/ for when that will be until you memorize it, eg for me on the US East Coast it is half past every even hour) go to the arrival WP.

There may be someone forming a squad already, if so, join it and remember who the commander is. If not, stand ready.

The map will close. You will be killed (unless you have auto-shroud, as my Reaper does, usually she just gets tossed into shroud form). You will be put into a new map in a pile of other dead people.

Immediately select the squad commander in the squad ui if you have one and select Join In Dragon’s Stand to get to their map if you are not already with them. If you do not have a squad, immediately open LFG and watch like a hawk for “DS Taxi” groups, preferably “with commanders/tags” in their listings. These fill faster than you can move your cursor so you have to be lucky and not have too many other open world LFGs going on. Join your taxi group in Dragon’s Stand.

You should now be in a map that is organized. Head to your preferred lane or to the one calling for help in Map, leave party/squad, and join the local lane commander’s squad.

Enjoy your next 1.5 hours!

Oh, you buy those for 100 flawless snowflakes from the decorations vendor near the waypoint you arrive at via the go-to-hall button. Same guy that sold the pumpkins.

As I understand it, they looked at the metrics and figured out what is “normal” for transferring. In that linked thread there are dev posts stating that there is a very small percentage of players who were trading more than that in a legitimate fashion but that the vast majority were under the 500 gold limit.

So while larger amounts may be “normal” for you it is not for the player base and likely isn’t affecting most of us. I know I’ve only had over 500 gold one time and that was when I sold off some stockpiled things on the TP so I could buy things I needed for Nightfury. Which may or may not be normal, I can hardly generalize from my own experience, now can I? I don’t have the metrics.

My guild doesn’t have much in the way of decorations yet. How do you do that spiral? Do you need a much larger thing to place and then remove? I tested a bit with some pumpkins by snow and even the tiniest deletion circle just barely touching the outside edge of a pumpkin still erased it and the snow next to it.

Depends on the alt and what I feel like doing for the day. But I have a few niches.

Thief — SW rounds. Replacing him with another mostly due to his current lack of bag space.

Mesmer in Ascended — Fractals and Dungeons.

Sylvari Reaper — HoT metas and collection filling.

Norn Necromancer — world exploration to get mastery xp and advance her HP towards becoming a Reaper.

Human elementalist — pre-80 leveling when guildies are raising alts up. He’s 64 now, that won’t last much longer.

Then I have a lot of alts that exist for RP and I select from my “stable” to fit the desired scenario. Guild adventuring? Thief and human guardian are ICly in the guild. Sylvari angst? I have 3 rp’d sylvari at differing levels of Mordremoth vulnerability. Random encounter? Whichever would be most likely in the place the other players want to meet in, or most fits the tone they want, be it shady dealings, blithe merriment, quiet philosophy, urban adventure, etc.

When not otherwise in use, most are parked at the flax farm in VB.

So you want them to rebuild every map from the ground up to allow gliding without breaking the map and revealing all the “movie facade” unfinished areas?

Gliding in core Tyria needs its own thread the same way Mounts suggestions do ><