Guild Wars 2

Updates already! Nice work, Emya the Mad is particularly amazing O.O

Paul.4081:

What an incredible waste of your time. Well done, now get your kitten outside

4k hours played is a lot, but certainly not unique among people who have played since launch. How many of them have all 9000 legendaries? This is only wasted time if the OP regrets having done it. Congrats Kor!

I do agree with Paul though, you should go camping or something to celebrate.

Great post, Ralk! Thanks!

Alright guys, I made the leap, freed up a character slot and got my butt in gear leveling.

Rory Wrenchface, level 6 going on 80!

Thanks for the tips =)

The example with your mesmer looks really fantastic. I love the style and you’ve executed it really, really well. Quite often I’ll find artists whose style is about 80% appealing to me, but there’s usually something odd going on, like a weird face or lifeless pose that keeps it from being spot on for me. You’ve really hit the nail on the head though, for me at least. I’d sign up, but I see you’ve already got quite the waiting list, so I think I’ll just eagerly stay tuned for when you post more work.

I have something like 14 level 80 characters because I like being out in the world and leveling gives me the motivation to do that, and I also like having the option to play whatever profession/race combo I’m in the mood to play. I have several 80s of some professions, and at least one 80 of all professions.

Except I have zero engineers.

Recently I’ve had a lot of trouble finding fun stuff to do in the game. And I’m thinking, for the hundredth time, of making the engineer alt that I’ll finally get to max level.

My question is whether there is an enjoyable playstyle for leveling an engineer. In past attempts, I was sick to death of the basic rifle and pistol skills by the time I was level 20. Grenades and flamethrower were fun for about a level but got old really fast, and after that it was really painful to log on and play the class, so I usually abandon it in the 30-40 range to free up a character slot.

Are they fun in sPvP? I know they can be good, but are they fun? What about WvW?
What has been your experience leveling engineers and what advice do you have for someone who is about to give it one last try? Any tips are much appreciated. Thanks!

It would be awesome if ANet would create a courtesy pop-up box for people making mistakes of this caliber. “You are about to destroy the precursor weapon used to create the Legendary rifle The Predator. Are you sure you want o do this?” The bold text should be bold and flashing and maybe surrounded by neon lights, just to drive it home that this is not a typical caution pop-up box.

White knight disclaimer: I’m not saying this isn’t 100% user error or that I think ANet owes it to us or anything, bros, I’m just saying I’ve seen a handful of posts recounting tragedies like this, so it would be cool if they implemented something like this.

A major problem associated with letting the buyer pick which price/seller to buy from is that you allow gold sellers to use the TP to deliver gold purchases.

This is how it worked in a previous game I played. In that game, I would sometimes do as you’d like to do, OP, and I would buy from someone who was clearly undercut by a small amount, when it was obvious that they were undercut. I don’t know why, since i don’t really have a problem with undercutting. Anyway, that was nice to be able to do now and then, but I wouldn’t trade it for what we have now, which IMO just works better.

Lecikin, your style is really fantastic! If you decide to open up for commissions for game gold, you can stick me right at the top of your list, just name the price. Until then, keep up the great work =)

If you’re feeling guilty, OP, you could alleviate some of it and balance out your karma by sharing tips with those of us who haven’t the gaming time and/or savvy to make money, even on the TP.

I am a scientist. That’s right, I go to work everyday and do science.

Every tip you give me translates into less time I spend fumbling around the TP and websites and more time in the lab, saving babies and hot women from bad, bad germs.

Support babies and hot women. Give me some pointers.

Meh, maybe if they hadn’t nerfed the zerkatron, it’d be gross OP, but combine it with the decrease in crit damage as it’s not as OP as people are making it out to be, imo.

It is pretty nice though.

There was a bit of talk about this in the Guardian forum, I think someone mentioned there that they got it up to 80 or so per tick at level 80 and traited for healing. Not amazing, but an improvement for sure.

Honestly, I’m thinking about these for an ultra tanky regen warrior.

Regen banners
Healing signet
Adrenal health
Dolyak runes
Feel like I’m forgetting something…

It starts adding up. Of course, you’ll hit like a truck made out of tissues…

What the actual kitten.

I’ll send the gold right after posting.

No need to stick to the exact pose here, do whatever you’re feeling. Also, if the tattoos don’t look right or are otherwise problematic, you can drop them.

A disclaimer: I have one Legendary weapon.

Some of you are getting sick of this discussion, I know. We probably don’t need another topic about it, but I’ve made this one anyway to flesh out my thoughts because I don’t see many people saying what I’m thinking. If it bugs you, feel free to not read it. I’ve broken the post into subsections and tried to keep each of them fairly concise.

The issue:
Those who crafted more than one of the same Legendary weapon prior to the announcement of the wardrobe feature feel blindsided and are requesting some type of compensatory action from ANet. The tone of the posts I’ve seen range from outrage to calm discussion. Both types usually request some information from ANet about whether there will be compensation of any kind.

The responses from the community I’ve seen include:

“You’re not losing anything, it’s just that everyone else is gaining a little more than you.”

“You still have another Legendary weapon, which is more than just a skin. You can change stats on the fly and it will always be best in slot.”

“Your time and gold invested has already been rewarded, as you’ve had the opportunity to use what you’ve crafted prior to the implementation of the wardrobe.”

Some proposed solutions I’ve seen:

For anyone that has a duplicate Legendary, unbind one of them so that the owner can either equip to rebind it and keep it, or sell it.

Replace duplicated Legendaries with a token that can be traded in for another Legendary of choice.

Refund all the materials used to create duplicate Legendaries, the owner can recraft it or sell off the materials.

My thoughts:
Some of the above proposed solutions are not well thought out, in my opinion, but assessing the viability of these “solutions” isn’t what I want to do here.

All I really want to say is that I’m sort of disturbed at the lack of empathy from everyone on this issue. Most of the people I’ve seen responding to others who are requesting compensation or information about compensation seem really eager to point out that person is losing nothing and therefore deserves nothing. Why?

It seems very clear to me that with the new wardrobe system, the pros and cons of taking up a project like the crafting of a duplicate Legendary change dramatically. I agree with those who have pointed out that sometimes making changes to a game has unfortunate consequences for a minority of players who made decisions based on the previous system, and that shouldn’t be used as justification to leave poorly-functioning systems in place, especially if changes would result in improved gameplay experience for the majority of the playerbase.

This is what I’d like to discuss:
To those who are arguing against compensation of any type, why? What does it matter to you? Assuming ANet comes up with a system that only affects duplicated Legendaries, and only rewards with roughly the same amount of effort that was put into crafting the duplicate, what’s with the vehement opposition?

The only flaw I can think of is that for some percentage of cases, individuals who have been dual wielding the same Legendary for a significant length of time would be able to sell off one of those Legendaries for profit, and will have gotten all that use from it for free.

On the other side of the spectrum, there will be individuals who had literally completed the 2nd weapon in their dual wielding set days before the wardrobe announcement. Do you say to these people “Well, you do have a best in slot weapon and can change the stats, so you get no pity from me.”?

What if it were you, and you only wanted the weapon for the skin (as we can be sure is the case for many Legendary crafters), would you be happy to have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of gold on something only to immediately afterward learn that you could have had it for the price of a transmutation charge if you had waited a couple of months longer?

A question regarding gem store dye replacements:

I purchased two Cinders dye from the Trading Post. This is a gem store dye, but I didn’t buy it with gems. Will I still get a Cinders replacement dye sent to me via in-game mail, or will I only get the usual unidentified dye as my replacement?

To the OP: No one here can answer your question, and as you can see, discussing it for the sake of discussion is not productive. My unsolicited advice is to wait until patch day then submit a ticket, maybe you can get something for your efforts.

This is a cool post, +1 to you, OP. And nice job on the fellblade!

Kaz.5430:

Someone (or some people) has seen these little hints, and it led them to an idea. They then went searching for other evidence to try and support the idea. The entire ‘debunking’ that’s going on is debunking the ‘other’ evidence, not the theory itself. It is possible to arrive at a correct assumption, even if the route you take to get there is totally wrong.

Good post, Kaz. I agree in general and have been a bit irked by the people who claim to have debunked it because what they presently see as the best arguments for the minion theory don’t hold up all that well. I hate to start bringing up logical fallacies, because when the lore-warriors do it, it seems really pretentious, but there’s a pretty well-known one that has to do with straw and men.

I’m not saying the minion theory should be accepted as canon. I’m just saying, as Kaz has said, quit claiming it’s “thoroughly debunked,” we don’t have all the info yet.

I’m confused as to why there are no dev responses to this post.

I have earned three full sets of Arah heavy armor for my guard and 2 warriors.

Would it be nice to get something back for the time spent earning the extra sets? Sure, but if not I really don’t care. If wasting a bit of time earning extra dungeons sets that are useless once wardrobe is implemented is the trade-off for getting a wardrobe, it’s fine by me.

What I don’t understand is how it makes sense to give out a reward for a pvp tournament that cannot be used in pvp game play. If I were an spvp player who enjoys tournaments, I’d be all dubya tee eff right now.

Psychol.5783:

Unsellable items are a cancer of this game kind of annoying.

Yes, I agree with you.

I just want to say to the OP and others discussing this stuff, thanks. I love reading all these ideas. And also, some of you have made good cases for what will and won’t be happening in the next update, but remember that just because something doesn’t seem to sit well with established lore or rigid interpretations of hints based on tidbits of information does not mean ANet won’t be doing it in the update. Whether it makes perfect sense that Mordremoth could be under LA does not necessarily matter. They could just do it anyway and explain it away by creating some new bit of lore that hasn’t been revealed. Because Tyria is not real; this is fiction, not history.

Brace yourselves, inconsistencies are coming.

ANet has come up with some ways to break away from zerg content actually. Marionette required understanding of mechanics and strategy much more than numbers. Lion’s Arch is actually fantastic in that it requires that many people work toward the same goal, but don’t have to run around in a zerg to accomplish it. You can rescue and defend citizen completely solo and make a significant contribution to the goal.

From my perspective, it seems ANet is well aware of the fact the zerg fest is not fun, and they’re learning pretty quickly how to get away from it.

Saint.5647:

It may just be you. I can say at this point that the story itself hasn’t been as bad once Anet took into account the community’s input. The presentation however has been, and continues to be sloppy.

Events are connected through retroactively added plot conveniences instead of gradually built connections and exposition. This continues to be the case to the day.

Where are you getting this information? Specifically, why are you so sure that ANet changed the story in response to community input? I remember reading something where an ANet writer said they knew the whole season 1 story before the first patch was released.

It’s just you. IMO.

Two things you want to consider are WvW and general server population. If you are super competitive you might want to pick a server in the top 6 or so in the WvW leaderboards. If not, it’s probably a good idea to pick one of them anyway, since they’re the more populated servers. I’m on JQ and we have a lot of great guilds here.

in for blood.5670:

Am I missing something?
Because every CoF speed run I’ve ever been on was 4 Warrs and 1 Mes.

No Guardian in site.

Guardian has better sustained DPS than warrior. COF groups like(d) warrior because for a while it was might shouts + banners + time warp + hundred blades = boss dead in 10 seconds. The OP asked about WvW, where hundred blades is mostly useless because your opponents may be using their brains.

As for the people saying warrior is the OP class, warrior is probably the class with the best damage at least skill investment in pve content because they have nice burst damage skills and a high health pool. You can check out the professions forums if you think I’m not on the money, the numbers have been crunched many, many times and warriors do not have the best DPS.

Your info is wrong about warriors and guardians both doing medium to low damage, they can both do good damage, as can most classes if played correctly. Both can survive well in big fights, though guardians slightly better, IMO. Sounds like the only thing keeping you from guardian is the idea that they’re too supporty to offer nice damage. That’s not true, so I’d say you want guardian, based on what you’ve said you’re looking for.

foofad.5162:

Wow. Makes me wish my engineer was a woman.

Thanks, but why not roll an alt thief or ranger? Or dare I say, another engineer? :P

Nike.2631:

I’m almost alarmed how well that worked.

Haha thanks, so was I. I had just made the spinal blades through to the exotic version, and I thought to myself, this will probably look pretty cool with my medium aetherblade set. And it did actually. But then I thought I’d try it with the Zodiac legs and that looked pretty cool too. Then, not really even thinking it might look good, I tried the Zodiac chest and was all O.O

Hey! Some of you guys have really come up with cool mix-n-match armor and/or dye themes! Nice work! Others… not so much

Here’s my space-punk thief!

Oh, is it lore-breaking?

#getoverit

I’m normally reluctant to propose anything about intentionality as confidently as you’ve declared “it is an OBVIOUS bait and switch,” but honestly I don’t see another good explanation for this. They could have easily added a laurel vendor and crafting stations to the Vigil Keep, but they didn’t. Okay, so maybe they forgot. Well, tons of people have mentioned these things specifically in another thread, which has received dev attention, so we know they’ve been made aware. Since that time, there have been new patches to fix bugs, but they haven’t added this stuff to the Vigil Keep. I don’t get it, and I really don’t see an explanation that fits better than cash grab.

I already stated that I’m buying these, but I thought I’d leave some more thorough feedback in light of the fact that Danicia mentioned she’ll compile this stuff for the artists to read, and a lot of the people posting here are requesting (demanding in caps?) changes.

A re-release without the blue or with it dyeable:
Personally, I think the blue is fantastic. That, combined with the nice details like the curved tips on the shoes, really makes these sets unique compared to what’s already in the game. I don’t know how seriously you guys will take these requests and honestly I don’t care about issues like whether there are two versions of this armor or not. But I’ll just ask that you do not change the versions you’ve released, as done with the Flamekissed set. I bought that set and had it taken away, for reasons I understand and can’t really disagree with. But please don’t make this kind of thing the norm. Considering community feedback is really great for improving the direction of future work, but there are so many players out there who don’t come to the forum to request alterations, who love the product as you’ve released it. I’ve already purchased 1600 gems and spent 800 on the medium set for my thief. It is amazing. I plan to very soon use the other 800 on the heavy set, and will certainly be buying another 800 gems for the light set some time in the near future, probably when I hit another elementalist kick. Some people are recommending that you make changes like switch the medium and light sets, because in their opinion the light seems more appropriate for medium. When you consider these things, please keep in mind the people that have already forked out their support for the armor skins as they currently exist.

That is all, and once again, I think you’ve done a really nice job with this set, please keep it up!

I think it’s great, have my $30 ANet, I’ll take one of each.

darkace.8925:

I firmly believe ArenaNet has stretched their resources so thin trying to maintain the bi-monthly release schedule for the Living Story that they don’t have the resources to work on things like new races. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

I’m just wondering what this firm belief is based on. Are you inferring based on the quality of the LS updates to date? They’ve clearly stated that there are multiple teams dedicated to LS updates, so I’m not sure I’d judge their company-wide resources based on your opinion of the success or non-success of LS updates. If your belief is based on something other than a decision that you made to believe it and then become confident in that belief, would you mind sharing your evidence with the rest of us?

For the record, I don’t have any knowledge one way or another whether there are any plans to expand playable races.

And here is the change you requested =)

Here it is! 5000 × 5000 pixels, png format with a transparent background. Enjoy!

Hi guys, this has been popping into my head a bit lately and I’m wondering if other players are feeling it.

I’m wondering where the armor sets we were hoping to see trickling in with updates since release are. I remember when I started playing there were a few endgame sets like the arah gear that got me really jazzed up, but for the past year or so, I’ve just been going from update to update trusting that ANet will come up with something soon. Then finally we got the Ascended gear, something that could be a long ish term goal but would be a fun motivator, and it was just such a massive letdown aesthetically, IMO. Then this flamekissed fiasco comes up and I’m thinking they’re gonna replace it will something great (Gaile told us directly that it was going to be really great) and we get this feathered skin and I’m literally dumb-founded.

I really don’t want to discuss the flamekissed situation, I guess all I’m trying to say is that I’m starting to worry that despite the awesome art and amazing character modeling and the way the game was marketed (earn shinies), I’m worried that there is a real disconnect between what the devs seem to think we will like and what we actually want to see in the game. Of course, if I’m the only one feeling this way, just say so and I’ll shut my hole.

Thoughts?

Oh, and let’s try to avoid inflammatory comments, fellow interneters.

IMO, your best choice for heavy armor on charr is cultural T3 or Arah dungeon gear.

In general these are really, really nice skins, IMO. I just wish there were skins like this available for people who don’t want a glowing heart on each weapons.

Really great job! Here’s my human warrior:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/82384/thekraken.jpg

I couldn’t disagree more that they looked good when they were huge, but I agree 100% that it was ridiculous for ANet to change them after selling them.

As far as I understand it, they can do this because of those clauses in the EULA that state the digital items belong to ANet, and we’re just trading gems for the right to use them, but it makes no sense to treat your customers this way.

Yes, of course it will.

Too bad, it might have been interesting to roll a human female, buy T3 medium, then sex change to male to wear the female T3 medium on a guy o.O

Yeah, I saw what was in Scarlet’s Lair when people posted it on the forums. It’s cool and interesting, but having seen it on the forums I now feel even less motivation to do the boss fights and get what I need to go to her Lair myself. I did not check out the LA instance yet, and I do plan to do that, but that’s story, not content. It’ll hold my attention for 5-10 minutes, right?

For example, while playing this weekend, what is there to do other than:

1) fight boss
2) wait 2 hours
3) fight boss again

lordkrall.7241:

The OP does however seem to either completely ignore (or might be unaware of) the fact that there are much more than two boss-fights in the update.

I am also unaware. I know there is an LA thing and Scarlet’s lair. I’ve seen a couple Aetherblades guarding those electrical dealios out in the world, but that’s not really content. What is there to do? I ask because I’ve still not had a chance to do the fights because I won’t afk in Lornar’s or Bloodtide for 2 hours while waiting, and every time I check in to see what’s up, there’s nothing going on.

I was really looking forward to some content after the long holiday break, but I’m not seeing the content you’re talking about.

gobflinger.8653:

…when I opened the ‘not so new dye kits’ I got to day; I found out – to late – that Anet simply put the same thing up there again…

These dye sets were called flame and frost for their previous releases, and they’re called flame and frost again. It seems pretty clear they were putting the same thing up there again.

Blade Syphon.4325:

So..in order to get what should be simple achievements….

Why on earth are you starting with the assumption that achievements should be simple?

I’m happy to have something that’s more personally challenging than “Stand in a zerg while the event gets completed by those all around you then repeat 4 more times.”

Though I do agree with your later comments about getting it done yourself, but failing to get the achievement because other people don’t hold up their end.

I’m impressed that they replaced it, good on them and good for you, OP.