Guild Wars 2

I’m at about 105% and I already feel like I get a lot of rares and about 1 exotic per day, I would love to hear the subjective experience of people who are running 300+ all the time.

For most PVE content, Zerker is great as long as you know what you’re doing.

You can’t go in and face tank, but you can usually get in, let off your big skills and then either cc, blind or roll out to avoid damage.

I have 2 sets of zerker armor (one with ruby orbs, the other with Travelers) and a set of Assassins (ruby) and PVT (Soldier) and Celestial (boon duration).

The ruby orb sets deal the most damage, but it’s worth giving up a little dps to have perma speed in most general PVE situations.

If you run zerkers and go down most of the time, you should consider mixing in something else but if you’re usually the last man standing, then you’re doing it right and you shouldn’t listen to the haters – it’s a min/max style that bothers some people who think you should be more “balanced”.

Syn Sity.5826:

Dreamslayer.7659:

I agree with Blood Red.

Sometimes people want to do a certain thing, a certain way and there are a few players who think that they are an exception.

We saw this with the Underworld Speed Clears in GW1 and you saw it with the COF P1 speed clears.

I run Fractals 48 almost every night and I can’t remember the last time I saw a gear check request – maybe if someone has very low achievement points or if they die too easily people will ask them, but it’s not like it was a while back.

For some reason UWSC (or any sc in gw1 for that matter) didn’t get the organization hate that speedclears in this game do, I’m not sure why. Maybe because the difference between balanced way and speed clears in gw1 was a difference of many hours and hardly anyone did uw without either speed clearing or solo farming. I did uwsc almost exclusively for like 4 years straight and I don’t think I ever had one person join and demand that he be able to run with us just because. You got the occasional idiot who spoke no english and was on a warrior and just joined until he was kicked, but no one ever actually kittened and moaned about people wanting to do things in an organized manner. It was just a generally accepted principle I guess, let the speedclearers do their thing and if you want to do a casual multi-hour uw run then just try to form your own party. I miss that game and it’s players.

I remember it a bit differently.

At least early on, UWSC was a small community and you got to know the people that were good. When someone you didn’t know wanted to come along, you had to see their build and I remember a fair number of people who wanted to be unique snowflakes and just run a build they slapped together (apparently at random).

There were the “you guys just run cookie cutter builds that anyone can look up, this is my special creation, how do you know it won’t work!?”, etc.

Then there were the people who ran the right build, but couldn’t perform. Perma-stealth Elementalist required extremely good energy management and a thorough understanding of your area as well as how to recover from various problems or cover for other people.

I stopped playing when you had to run candy buffs every 10 minutes to make it work

The special snowflake people always stuck with me because their argument seemed to be that the build is what made people good, but a build was just a tool – almost an instrument and even though the builds were the same, there was a very large envelope for you to push and show what you could do.

Those were my favorite times in Guild Wars….

I think I’m chasing a little bit of that in Fractals – it’s not the same, but it could be something very good with a bit more attention – I’m hoping the upcoming Fractal level brings a lot more updates and rewards.

I agree with Blood Red.

Sometimes people want to do a certain thing, a certain way and there are a few players who think that they are an exception.

We saw this with the Underworld Speed Clears in GW1 and you saw it with the COF P1 speed clears.

I run Fractals 48 almost every night and I can’t remember the last time I saw a gear check request – maybe if someone has very low achievement points or if they die too easily people will ask them, but it’s not like it was a while back.

It’s presumed to be there to keep someone from running a script/bot and going crazy on the TP.

It can be a pain when your bags are full or you want to sell off your inventory but if you wait a little while, it goes away.

so I did 4 CoF P1 runs, then on my 5th run, the Empyreal Fragments dropped to 10 (and everything else was half the normal amount)

I just needed about 23 more so I did another run and for some reason, it all went back to normal – 20 fragments, etc…

Is it about doing a certain amount in a certain period of time?

Do you guys know how the Empyreal fragments work in dungeons?

I’ve been running CoF P1 and P2 several times since reset and I’m still getting 20 fragments, but I’ve heard that can go down to 10.

Does it follow the same rules as dungeon tokens?

It’s 90% yield on average, but your chances of getting [some] ecto from a single salvage are probably about 50-65%

There is a significant chance of zero ecto but in large samples, the occasions of 2-3 ecto help pull the average back to around 90%

The assumption is that Silver Doubloons are “broken” is questionable. I think they know what they’re doing and these items are intentionally rare.

I have 3 level 20 alts parked in a jumping puzzle and I get about 1 SD per day between the 3 of them and I forge the pebbles I get to make them as well.

They are very obtainable and Juggernaut is well worth it.

Should this be in the suggestion forum?

The counter argument is that if you made them account bound, everyone would pick the one they could use on the most characters and you would see a lot more of Bolt and Bifrost and Sunrise and a lot less Juggernaut and Dreamer.

This would distort the market and drive the price of those precursors even higher.

It would also have the effect of making a legendary more common as once you had one on your account, you could show it off on any character that could use it. This seems like the benefit you’re looking for, but it would make them more common and require less consideration and thought when making one.

The fact that they are stat selectable is a HUGE advantage and that feature alone justified keeping them soul-bound in my opinion.

One thing they could do to reduce re-rolling is what they did in GW1 for Underworld.

Charge Admission.

I think they need to up the rewards right now and there is the problem of having 1 person pay and then get kicked and a substitute brought in but perhaps there is a way around that.

One of the things that made Underworld speed runs so fun was that there was money on the line – the payment for admission, as well as the price of the consumables so when you messed up, it was costly, but when you succeeded, it was a great feeling.

If there was a slight cost to re-roll fractals, that would reduce the amount of re-rolling.

This is what I would like to see in Fractals:

1. Fractal Skin Chest – choose your skin like the Ascended Weapon Chests.

2. More uses for Relics and Pristine Relics:
a. 3:1 trade for other dungeon tokens
b. Additional items from the fractal vendor: potions/pets at a minimum
c. Fractal Armor or at least Fractal Runes

3. Fractal specific recepies for items that require pristine relic(s) as an ingredient.

4. No more Account Bound Exotics

5. Retro GW1 skins only available in Fractals.

6. Gambit Fractals – let us choose some disadvantages in exchange for fabulous rewards.

A few different looks…

I use these in my general PVE armor (aka, my “dress armor”) as I spend a lot of time on the champ zergs where falling behind often means you don’t get kill credit or loot boxes.

I had been running my thief but I just prefer my Guardian for everything so I’m in love with these runes. They may not be ideal for special builds or the ultimate min/max zerker but they are great for most PVE content.

I don’t really dislike the skins, but I don’t love them either. To me, they are a bit on the “immersion breaking” side of things.

My disinterest in the skins is affecting my interest in SAB. It’s strange – I appreciate the overall concept and idea, but I want to play Guild Wars 2, not some 16 bit anachronism.

I’m probably in the minority though.

If I’m not mistaken, these were originally basically a windfall drop that people had plenty of time to sell at a profit.

If you had sentinel items for sale and they did not sell, then you were asking too much.

The market changes, often in unexpected ways and putting something up for sale is not the same as making a sale – otherwise, I would put this limited edition keychain up for sale for $200,000 and then use that pending sale as security on a new home. What could possibly go wrong?

I have a set on my Guardian now, love it.

The tool tips say they can gather all resources, I think they would upset the player base if they made a new tier of harvestable mats and these don’t work on them.

For them to keep selling items like this, there has to be a certain level of trust – if they break these a few months after releasing them, their credibility (and future sales) would be diminished.

I love underwater combat too.

I just made Mirage and I’m working on Kamohoali’i Kotaki

I know it’s not that popular, but a lot of people don’t seem to have a good understanding of what their class can do and I see a lot of people with under leveled weapons which does not help at all.

I think if they added some good underwater content with good rewards and got people more used to it, it might catch on a bit more.

If you want to make a sigil switch, you should limit it to sigils that the player actually applies to the weapon. Maybe you have to combine 4 of the same sigil in the forge, then add the super sigil to your legendary and then it get’s added to the list of options.

Guhracie.3419:

CryxTryx.9208:

Most of you didn’t actually read the entire keyboard description..

The ‘macro’ keys located behind the F-key row are raised so that you can basically slide your finder down from one of those keys while pressing it and land on the F-Key underneath.

This fits exactly with what Anet considers acceptable. It makes it easier to press two buttons with one physical action, but you are still pressing two buttons.

As for the keyboard itself, I agree with the above poster that this is NOT a gaming keyboard. There are much better choices out there.

A macro is not the same as a keybind.

It might be to the Steelseries marketing team.

The main feature of the keyboard is the look and branding. Some people like to buy branded accessories to remind them of their favorite games or licenses.

Outside of that, most gaming keyboards, in addition to offering macros (against TOS), will also let you program specific keys into their macro keys which can be done within guidelines.

One very useful example is to program several keys to be “left click” and then roll multiple fingers over those keys to rapidly click your mouse. You’re still in “one button, one function” territory, but you’re using multiple fingers to, say, open your karma or drink your liquor.

Also, I did have a judge sign off on a warrant for my tone. Promise

I’m pretty sure you can play other games and use other programs with that keyboard.

Let’s not pretend to imagine that every bit of functionality on every device is appropriate for every situation.

“Oh man, I just crafted Immoblus and Infinite Light to sell on the TP, but now I find out they will be account bound in a week?”

(Overheard in Lions Arch)

since I play 1 character almost 90% of the time, it was worth it to get the perm tools

they seem to work a little faster than the other ones, but I suspect thats just because the animation is more entertaining.

I like not having to worry about what I’m harvesting – especially in low level zones and the whole “is it worth it” when you have the Ori tools and wondering if you’re going to run out at a bad time. Probably one of the best gem store items for me just for the peace of mind.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

There is a lot of inexpensive MF gear on the TP – I personally bought 6 full sets of MF based armor (about 80-90s per piece) anticipating future need – I’m hoping Sentinel is an option when they hit the reset button.

Also, it apparently becomes account bound when they activate so your window to flip is pretty small.

What happens to the gear on the TP? Will it become AB if you try to pull it and relist?

What about the runes?

I’m fairly annoyed by this development.

I bought 2 of the steam minis for what seemed like a reasonable price for a new exotic mini.

Had I known you could make them with a specific recipe (and had they not had cool new attack “features”) I would have been more circumspect.

The last time they had a 4:1 mini thing, they stated it clearly.

Congrats to the guy who made a ton of gold, boo to Arena net for throwing this surprise curveball into the normal process.

Most of you would cry if you knew just how much these devalued in a day.

No joke, I have killed about 40-50 level 2-3 mobs in Queensdale with a mini today.

It’s pathetically slow and anything about level 5 or higher will one-shot the mini.

Some of us were wondering if they would level, they don’t seem to (now we know why)
I can understand keeping them from fighting – and mostly because you want them to not die every time you fight, but it does shoot lasers so it’s disappointing to see that neat bit of flair removed.

I think it would be great if they would “mock fight” with you – neither taking or giving damage, but, like a brave little puppy, trying to protect their master…

I don’t mind the ascended tier of items, it just bothers me that they are so time gated.

I think they did the right thing to roll them out slowly so there isn’t a huge imbalance from people who can afford to get everything immediately but it makes it hard if you want to play multiple classes.

ColinJohanson.2394:

If you do want to turn everything up to insane, you also now have that option to see an extremely large number of people in all their graphics glory. The choice is entirely yours!

Challenge Accepted!
- My 5Ghz i7 and Dual 780s

The only one I’m familiar with was the snowflake “exploit” from Wintersday.

It allowed people to salvage a jewelry item for a good chance at ecto and a very good chance to retain the main (most valuable) portion of the item so it could be cheaply re-created and the only thing lost was some mithril.

This was controversial because some people felt that since the game engine allowed this to happen using normal gaming mechanics that it shouldn’t be considered an exploit.

It was also compared to light shoulder crafting which is when someone combines silk, thread and T5 crafting material to make a rare item that can be salvaged for ecto. Once the item is salvaged, the player is left with some residual silk scraps (and about 80 ectos per 100 salvages)

The main difference is one of proportion. In the snowflake jewelry scenario, the residual material after the ecto salvage is well over 50% of the value of the item (possibly 85% or more) where as in the case of the light shoulder armor crafting, the residual silk is less than 5% of the value of the item salvaged.

The market has not really been in a place to support light armor crafting for ecto for at least 6 months, but when it was “working”, it worked very well if done in large quantities and if costs were carefully managed – but it was also possible to lose money if you had a bad salvage run or the market took a sudden turn.

I think that anything that lets you generate significant value very quickly, with no risk and without proportionate effort should be looked at with the same skepticism that we regard “get rich quick” schemed in the real world.

Do you know which drivers you’re using?
Also, are you using a dual link DVI cable – or something else?
Also, are you trying to use 3D mode on that monitor? (It’s not supported by Nvidia in 3D mode)

I run dual 780s and 3 ASUS 3D monitors. The 3D worked for a while but after one driver update, my right screen would have really bad flickering and tearing.

Also, since I upgraded from dual 680s, the performance is much better, but I have a lot more issues with drivers and weird crashes.

My advice would be to try as many of the recent Nvidia drivers as you can until you find one that fixes your problem and then be judicious about upgrading the drivers unless absolutely necessary.

You might also see if running 60hz instead of 120hz helps.

Keep us posted.

There are things you could do on a small screen – crafting or bank management, maybe some farming or map clearing.

I didn’t know that it only worked with Steam games, I wonder if more GPU power makes the streaming experience better?

If it works with GW2 and wouldn’t break TOS, I would be pretty interested.

I think at this point, a few people should have 40-45 AR from the new trinkets. I know I’ll be up to 40 in about a week.

I’m at fractal 32 and I still don’t have my back piece. I need about 100 more relics but even without it. you can get 25AR with 2 rings and an amulet.

One thing I’ve seen is that the Legendary no longer is named just “Legendary” but “Legendary of Sigil” ie: Twilight of Rage, etc

Also, if you ever want to make Eternity, I don’t think you can do it with a transmuted legendary.

Nobody knows about the “best in slot” situation since they are currently best in slot – but worst case scenario, if it lost this ability, I’m pretty sure you would be able to transmute it onto an ascended sword when the time comes.

The market changes all the time – back in December, it was extremely profitable to craft rare armor to salvage for ecto. I think I made some 1200-1500 gold in about 3 weeks by doing that…

I do think this games needs some features for item protection.

1. You should be able to lock items and characters with a permanent or semi permanent lock and to override it requires 24-48 hours.

2. You should be able to lock individual items – at least exotic, legendary and ascended level items so that they cannot be lost this way. Even putting a 5-60 minute delay on this would prevent accidents and UI errors as well as make ravaging hacked accounts more of a pain.

If nothing else, you should (as an option) be required to enter a captcha or even a secondary security phrase when performing an action to destroy the highest level item or items you have locked down.

I have 2 Exotic equipment bags from FotM because I carry a lot of gear and still, when my bags get full and I start swapping items, my Juggernaut can start floating around in my general inventory.

It makes me nervous that I’m often 2 errant clicks away from losing it.

Anet, why not create an Asuran Recycling Center and a new law in Tyria:

To stem the tide of mystic pollution, you can no longer salvage legendary and ascended items or exotic items containing a (potentially toxic) Eldritch Scroll. These items must be taken to an Asuran Recycling Center where forms must be filled out and after a 24 hour long “mystical dissipation ritual”, the items will then be salvaged and the resultant material returned to the original owner.

Too much work but still…

The purpose of the Eldritch scroll is to put a gate on certain items that requires you to play the game. It can be a decent way to convert XP into gold.

I made my Volcanus about 2 weeks after my Juggernaut and in both cases, the last few skill points ended up being the bottle neck.

I’m fine with the combat system in GW2 – I play a guardian and I play melee 95% of the time.

Your post reminds me of the days when Starsiege:Tribes was new and the people who loved it loved it A LOT. After the game died down, a lot of hardcore players were just always looking for that exact feeling they got from that game. It wasn’t enough to have a jetpack in a fps game.

Once you fall totally in love with a game, and play it for years and know every little detail about it, no similar game will ever take it’s place – it’s just not possible. Nobody is going to give a FF game GW style graphics or a GW game FF style mechanics.

Anyone who has played a game that much has developed a very strong neurological reward/response system where they get little micro shots of endorphins every time they do something they consider rewarding or fun. These neurological programs are non-transferable to other games so when we move, we feel like we are playing a similar game, but without that internal feedback system we slowly built around the previous game, the new game just feels hollow and “wrong”.

It also happens when you try to switch to a different OS or something similar. All those rewarding little competencies have to be rebuilt. Keystroke by keystroke.

When you salvage a rare, you have a pretty significant chance of not getting an ecto – I would estimate it at 25-30%.

In large samples, it generally averages out to about 900 ecto per 1000 salvages (with Masters Kits)

People read that and then assume that if they salvage a rare, they have a 90% chance of getting an ecto – which is not the case at all.

Anet does not say what the ecto salvage rates are, but they have said that if they change them, they will make it known in patch notes.

Achieving a higher level means you can get more than one chest per day, you get more relics per fractal completed and probably best of all, you can get a truly staggering amount of karma by being a high level player and then doing a low level run.

Mousey.5079:

So what do we need to do to raise the gold transfer limit? Bought some gems to convert to gold for hubby thinking I could surprise him…bad mistake…

Do we need to clear the map? Personal quest? Play time?

How old is your account? My understanding is that the transfer limit is for the first few days to prevent people from making fraudulent accounts and transferring a lot of value very quickly, then reversing their credit card charges.

Most MMOs have some kind of limit on new accounts to make this kind of fraud more difficult but you should put in a ticket and ask support to take a look.

Thanks to Gaile Gray and the support team for reviewing my account and getting this issue resolved!

To everyone waiting, I know it’s frustrating, but hang in there and use the support system, they will take care of you.

I’ve been running running a 15/25/0/10/20 build with hammer and GS (in PVE)

I have PVT and Berserker armor and berserker trinkets (and Emerald if I want).

It’s not nearly as bunker as I used to run, but if you are careful with your protection and retaliation (and the damage reduction signet), you can do a lot of damage and stay alive with ease (again, in PVE).

I’m used to having to slug it out with mobs, but with this build (bloodlust on hammer), everything just melts – the retaliation and the hammer symbols and some big hammer crits are very nice.

I’m not a numbers guy, but I’d like to see someone break down

You could always try buying a gem card from a retailer.

Gisei.5749:

Calae.1738:

Dreamslayer.7659:

I just finished Juggernaut today and let me tell you – it feels like an achievement to me.

And that’s what counts.

What you’ve felt is not an achievement, it’s relief.

You’re glad its finally over.

Oh, tell me how I feel next!

I’m not “glad it’s over”, I’m enjoying the natural progression of effort to reward. I enjoyed the process and the level of sustained motivation and effort and now I’m enjoying the fruits of my effort – what could be more natural than that?

Yield for ecto is about 91% in large samples.

Most people read this and think they have a 90% chance to get an ecto – this is not the case.

You actually have a very good chance of getting zero ecto from a salvage – my estimate is about 20-30%.

The reason you average 91% is because you have a chance to get more than one ecto in a salvage.

Imagine the odds look like this (this is pure speculation to illustrate the concept, I don’t know the numbers):

25% = zero
60% = one ecto
10% = two ecto
5% = three ecto

My math might be a little off, but you can see that in large samples, you would be somewhere in the 90% yield range, but on any given try, you have a 25% chance of getting zero and a 75% chance of getting “some” ecto.

I just finished Juggernaut today and let me tell you – it feels like an achievement to me.

And that’s what counts.