Guild Wars 2

Amun Ra.6435:

Guardian has the best survivability in PVE so I don’t know how you can say Warrior is “simply the best solo class”.

Because if you know what you are doing you can also solo as a warrior whilst having the advantage of greater damage potential.

That isn’t to say that guard isn’t amazing in pve as well ofc.

I’ve got a couple of warriors and a couple of guards so i’ll offer my take on it for what it is worth.

PVE – You should have no problems farming, running dungeons or running solo with either of them as both do extremely well in all facets of pve.

Warrior though edges it because at the end of the day, pve really is extremely dps orientated. If you know how to play and can run a full zerk warrior without eating dirt every five minutes. Well then warrior is top dog.

WvW – Again, both do extremely well. Both can be used as frontline smashers if you want to roll along with a zerg. Both can solo roam (although quite why you would do that when thieves and mesmers are better suited for it is beyond me).

Whilst warriors are cool in w3 and whilst both offer group utility, the guard brings alot more to the table for the group with stability, boons, shout cleanses and heals. I would say that the guard edges it.

sPvP – The guard wins this one for me as it has generally always been there or there abouts in terms of being one of the more important, better performing classes. Warrior on the otherhand, hasn’t.

Generally, the guard offers more versatility, outperforms in pvp and brings more to a group. The warrior is top dog in pve due to its damage potential and can do very well in w3.

Whoever is to blame, it’s been an utter shambles in all honesty. Sadly, I’m not really surprised.

Tellerion.8102:

Renner.2574:

Apparently Xeph asked MistLeague if he could join and they replied yes. It was only after that did Anet go over the legal stuff and then not allow it.

Sounds very professional then.

das moran fool.1072:

I don’t think anet needs to nerf cursed shores, because that’s just stupid and is playing whack-a-mole with the zerg. I do think anet needs to limit champ map chests to something like 4-5 per account per day.

You don’t think it needs a nerf and then go on to advocate a nerf.

zenleto.6179:

I don’t know why they would nerf it though. As long as people aren’t interfering in event completions then its most probably all intended.

I’m keen to get down there and have a go of those champs. I haven’t been there in months.

It’s ANET, nerfing the heck out of CS is their raison d’etre.

It will get hit with the nerf bat sooner or later.

Blix.8021:

Claudius.5381:

I have 3 guardians with different builds and gears. My zerker guardian with a more dps oriented build does well in pve, while she is still quite supportive. But for the zerg in the Queen’s Pavilion my trusty pvt guardian with supersupportive build is best. Damage does not matter there, there are enough people dishing it out. But healing, buffing, condition removing and especially never dying – very useful.

uh, i’ve been running around in the zerg on my guard in full mf gear, and on my war in full zerk, you don’t need ptv gear, just need vigor to dodge around

Indeed. I have a couple of guards and I have been running it with the one with full on zerk gear/ruby orbs and it has posed zero problems.

For the vast majority of pve content (Queens Pavilion zerg included), zerk seems the most optimal approach. For w3 and spvp though it is a different story.

There isn’t any build which is really hard to kill that doesn’t involve timing skills and dodging.

But the typical builds are the 0/0/10/30/30 midpoint control bunker (soldier runes, energy sigils, clerics/clerics) or the 0/5/30/30/5 AH build (same gear).

Personally if you are going to pug it up/soloQ and you insist on bunkering down, then i’d use the control bunker meta. The AH build is too reliant on your team mates hanging around with you.

In terms of condi clearing well with 0/0/10/30/30 you remove two conditions with each shout (of which you will have 2-3 on your utility bar) via soldiers with Pure of Voice, a 10 sec purge via Purity and a tripple clear from Absolute Resolution.

LordByron.8369:

COMPLETELY FALSE!

Those 1000G ends up in a legendary and possibly a good part of it sinks in NPC shops.
Thus 100% vanishes from the game

Soulbound
Taxes and stuff are to combat inflation.

the market parasites instead reinvest…..
Keeping more gold on the market.

lol wut? It is not false at all.

The gold is added to the game. You know when you get your gold from running CoF. That gold wasn’t in the economy until you had run that dungeon, it is then added into the total economic pool.

When someone gets 1000g from running CoF and spends it on a legendary. The gold doesn’t suddenly disapear as you seem to have suggested, it simply moves to the person who sold the legendary…. The point is that the 1000g used to buy said legendary was added into the market via a pve farm.

Now when someone flips for gold. They do not ADD gold into the economy, they remove it.

It is really quite obvious that there is an astronomical difference between “farming” and “flipping”.

To demonstrate, let’s take a look at (the soon to be killed) CoF1 farm and compare it to flipping.

If you have 10 players running CoF1 ad nauseum, then each players potential earnings might be 10g per hour (that figure is merely an arbitrary number used as an example). So the amount of gold being added to the economy is 100g per hour.

Now the issue here is that as more and more players cotton onto the fact that CoF1 earns a large amount per hour, they also pile in on the action. Now we have 100 players running CoF1, each earning 10g per hour because they are drawing from an infinitely large resource pool. So now we have 1000g flooding into the economy every hour.

How about a 1000 players running it, or 10,000? Well the gold rushing into the market will keep on piling up. Hence we get epic inflation.

Market flipping on the other hand follows a gold sink/deflationary model. Excess gold is not flooding into the market from flippers, it is being removed from it (transaction costs) as gold passes from one player to another. If you have a flipper earning 100000000000 gold in a day (i lol’d), then that gold has not been added to the economy, it has merely passed from other players.

As more players look at flipping, you do not get more money coming into the economy, because it is a competitive zero sum game which at no point adds gold into the economy. In fact, the more flippers there are, the harder it is for the flippers involved in the market.

PVE/Farming in this game is not a zero sum game and has essentially zero competition. Which is part of the reason it leads to inflation. Moreover there is little to no risk involved and no entry barrier to immediate earnings.

CoF/Farming -

Infinite resource pool.
Adds gold to the economy.
Causes inflation.
Little to no risk.
Zero competition.
Isn’t a zero sum game.
Guaranteed returns.
Unlimited number of participants.

Market Flipping -

Finite resource pool.
Removes gold from the economy.
Deflationary.
Medium to high risk.
High amounts of competition.
Is a zero sum game.
Potential losses.
Limited number of participants.

I am all for increasing gains from farming/pve in general and look forward to the update on the 6th. But suggesting that farming is comparable to flipping and that top end flippers should somehow be nerfed/hard capped is ludicrous and betrays a complete misunderstanding of what is actually going on.

It should never have been included in the first place. It really is a terrible mechanic and the version in this game is one of the worst.

phys.7689:

the argument that it isnt fun, isnt right, many people in this thread and others have said they immensely enjoy flipping, John smith said its a playstyle.
Also remember this is a game, i think its flawed to build a reward system that most rewards activities even people who do them think of as being the least fun.

As far as competition, and risk, i was thinking about that and i would be all for them adding some of these elements to other parts of the game.
they could have daily challenges where people who place at the top get rewards
they could add a skill based minigame to crafting certain items that can fail
they could allow duels and self gambling
they could make a survival mode area where you have to pay an initial fee, but if you last long enough rake in the profit.
they could add dungeons that require skill points to get into, and if everyone dies you fail. If you succeed you get better rewards, and if you succeed with a high rank, you get additional rewards.
an area where each time you succeed you can choose to continue for greater reward, but if you fail you lose everything.

there is any number of ways to add risk and gain.

Im not saying success should be easy, im saying in a game, they should use reward to enhance the experience of playing the game in multiple ways.

I dont think its a good game mechanic that people do something they hate so they can get what they want.

I wasn’t alluding to the fact that people didn’t enjoy flipping.

Doing a JP is not about how much gold you make, it is about how good the JP is. Trading is about how much gold you make, you might enjoy it, but it is a purely financial driven activity. There is a clear difference and it is understandable why one returns more than the other.

Who exactly is being forced into flipping?

phys.7689:

why do you think the only hardcore player that should matter is the TP flipper? do TP flippers work harder than 10 hour farmers?
do they work harder than master explorers hitting every jump puzzle in a day?
do they work harder than people speed clearing arah?
do they work harder than the crafter who actually has to do a lot of the TP monitoring, but has to actually create an item some one can use and has the desire to buy?

the problem is not that you have to work or play well to get things, the problem is one style of play rewards money at a different mathematical order than other types of play.

The people exploring, doing jps and doing dungeon runs et al. Well they are actually getting something other than gold out of that activity. They are doing said things because they enjoy them, gold/loot is an additional byproduct.

The people flipping on the other hand, they are doing it specifically for gold gain. There isnt a load of fun pvp, pve or exploring thrown in on top. It is all about making gold.

So why exactly would you expect a similar earning potential? Why would someone running around doing jp’s be expected to earn the same amount as someone trading?

Moreover, given most of the activities you cited involve zero competition and pose little to no risk to the players involved. Again, why should there be a similar earning potential given trading activities involve both competition and risk?

Hell Avenger.7021:

I mean there are few people running a bit more complicated model than 3rd party providers, but you cannot get complex in this simple market at all.

I agree.

MatLab, that is very interesting. Isn’t that an academic stats tool? I didn’t know it is employ on a commercial basis. I have used it before. I don’t work in programming HFT, because I am not programmer by trade. I work in the investment industry, dealing with mutual fund and hedge fund. Your model and my model will differ dramatically. Your model is heavily quant and data mining, and my model will include more qualitative.

It was just an example. MATLAB can/could indeed be used for creating and testing an initial model/hypothesis (even something opensource like R would also do the job). For actually running the model/system though, well that would not be done via MATLAB usually, it would be via an in house or otherwise optimized bit of kit due to speed issues.

With regards to the latter part, again I agree with you.

My GW2 model? A freaking joke, but made me 600 gold in a month and half of simple trade.

Nice :-)

Edit – SMC is just me being too lazy to type sequential monte carlo, VECM is vector error correction model.

Hell Avenger.7021:

You sure it is just a few? I have noticed several other people just within the market I am dealing with. They very well could be using some external tools rather than spreadsheets that I have. Some people know exactly what is going on. A true sense of arbitrage cannot happen in this market, there is no short position. You would never end up with theoretical 0 risk.

Let’s face it, most hedge fund don’t even hedge. If you think the real world has true arbitrage, you are dreaming. You say carry trade might be a form of arbitrage? nah, it isn’t. currency risk is there.

Arbitrage exist in the academic realm, we try to get to that level but it is extremely difficult. Spread trading were used to employed by traders in the real world, btw. Not some avg joe in the basement, but on trading floor. However, most of that is computerized, HFT!

“You sure it is just a few?”. What do you mean by that? I suggested that very few people in this game are running high order econometric and/or arbitrage models when playing the TP in this game. Do you disagree with that, if so, what kind of models do you suggest they are using exactly?

Plenty of people are no doubt using websites and associated “tools”, but I can’t see people running baskets of assets through MATLAB, using SMC, VECM models and the like as well as looking for cointegration.

As for the real world, well i’ve worked in the HFT arb and market making subset of the financial investment industry for several years now. There are multiple types of arbitrage (not all of it is risk free funnily enough) which have nothing at all to do with carry trades.

I am aware that the average Joe doesn’t use it. Tbh i’m not entirely sure what you are trying to tell me here. I explained that it is highly unlikely that people are going to be running full on econometric models and arb in this game and I also alluded to the fact that most retail practitioners in the real world run what is in effect, highly naive/spurious models at best anyway.

That’s all rather far off topic mind you, if you want to have a debate about it feel free to PM me.

Why do people keep referring to taking the spread as arbitrage? It is not that at all.

The kind of trading we see on the AH is extremely basic, even the kind of rubbish day traders often use (totally spurious TA et al) is more complex than what is going on here.

There will be precious few running actual economic/arbitrage models (probably none at all).

Flippers are looking at a website and/or a basic spread sheet and simply trying to capture the spread. They are tying up capital, taking a risk in doing so, competeing against other players trying to achieve the same thing and they are providing liquidity to the market place whilst doing so. There is nothing at all wrong with that.

Hell Avenger.7021:

EgonVenkman.1907:

Fenrir.3609:

So you expect a zero risk venture which has little to zero player competition and which every player can do in a short frame of time, to have the same returns ceiling as a high risk venture which takes a large capital base to achieve and puts you in direct competition with other players?

As I mentioned before, general loot rewards could certainly do with being updated (and ANET seems to be in the process of that given the upcoming patch). But trying to “nerf” flipping seems utterly unwarranted.

I disagree.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/ and half a brain turns your “high risk venture” into a “Very Low Risk Venture”. I would go as far to say that you have a better chance of losing more money in a bad dungeon group that wipes a lot.

The reason people were farming was to get gold/materials. And materials are just gold anyway. Why bother trying to find somewhere else to exploit/farm and risk getting it nerfed or in trouble, when you can sit in Lion’s arch and abuse the TP.

Not all will transition to the TP, but with enough nerfs to the farming spots, the TP is going to become the center of attention and the go-to spot for making gold.

If plenty of people do it, it turns into high risk business, because you are competing with everyone.

Indeed.

Furthermore I fail to see how someone could kitten up a dungeon run or open world farming enough for it to cost anywhere near the listing costs/risk associated with top level flipping.

You take on more risk, you need a larger capital base and you are in direct competition with other players. The more players involved in the activity, the harder it becomes. It is no surprise the ceiling for returns could and should be higher for such activities.

EgonVenkman.1907:

While my own feelings are split, something should be done to pull the TP profit mongering down to match other areas of the game.

Anet has pretty much an anti-farm stance. While they can be slow to update things, they have continuously been making changes to locations where players are farming. Dungeon update, recent Arah farm spot change, etc..

To leave an area of the game completely uncapped, unregulated, etc. would not be good for the overall game. In short, it tells players, that in order to make gold, play the TP.

You and many others simply seem to be caught up in the suggestions for a fix, rather than acknowledging that a fix is needed. Whether it comes in the form of additional/increased fees, limits, or even a time limit on postings is irrelevant.

So you expect a zero risk venture which has little to zero player competition and which every player can do in a short frame of time, to have the same returns ceiling as a high risk venture which takes a large capital base to achieve and puts you in direct competition with other players?

As I mentioned before, general loot rewards could certainly do with being updated (and ANET seems to be in the process of that given the upcoming patch). But trying to “nerf” flipping seems utterly unwarranted.

SoPP.7034:

mtpelion.4562:

Time is not an investment, it is an expense.

And skill in actually playing the game? Or progression even, meaningful steps to achievement in PLAYING the actual game. You want real life, you should go back to it. This is a game and end game content shouldn’t be limited to those who enjoy flicking through spreadsheets.

It isn’t limited to people flicking through spreadsheets though is it.

Those people who like spvp or wvw, well their endgame is tournaments and server ranking. Whilst I woudn’t like to speak for others, I highly doubt the likes of Team Paradigm really give much of a kitten about people making more money than them playing the TP…

Are people who enjoy high level fractals or who just like socialising with their guild really spending their time thinking about uninstalling because some dude is making more money than then flipping in bulk?

Rewards/loot for general gaming does need changing/tweaking, and hopefully the update on the 6th will go towards doing that. But expecting a cap to be placed on flipping, or thinking that flipping is the only “endgame” just seems somewhat odd to me.

TooBz.3065:

Sorry, I no know bigum words. But I do best.

Not everyone agrees that Arbitrage is always helpful or good for the economy. For example. http://home.uchicago.edu/weyl/Second_Draft_Arbitrage.pdf (I know — those communists at the University of Chicago, but what can you do?)

Even if it is good for a general economy, this is not a real economy, it’s virtual economy. As other’s have pointed out the normal rules may not apply. For example, John talked about some unexpected effects increasing the precursor drop rate could have on the price.

The goal of the game isn’t the efficient flow of capital or allocation of risk, it’s the enjoyment of the gamers. Often one group has to limit their enjoyment for the good of the collective (look at the farming nerfs, the changes to dungeon running, world bosses, etc…)

Finally, no one has even address the fact that ,as many people point out, the trading post is a gold sink and does not generate any money on its own, every copper that you make in “arbitrage” is just moving a copper from either the seller or the buyer to your pocket.

Flipping (capturing the spread), is not arbitrage. It is basically just extremely crude liquidity provision/market making.

Cross market and cross asset arbitrage is not possible here due to the fact we have one market place venue and there are no synthetic instruments. Statistical arbitrage may well be possible but I HIGHLY doubt there is anyone running VECM/OU models et al on baskets of items in order to churn a profit.

The arbitrage that might be going on will MF/market and crafting/market arbitrage. Neither of which are going to be making a massive impact on the economy and neither of which are “evil”.

Market making (flipping) provides liquidity and is certainly not a risk free enterprise (especially in a market with such inordinately large transaction costs and one in which you cannot operate in the HFT domain with LOB models). As such there is no reasons flippers should not profit from their enterprise.

Trying to buyout, buy and hold or otherwise “game” a market. Well whilst that is not exactly morally whiter than white, they take on an increased risk when tying to do so.

I would have to question just how may players are actually capable of gaming the market to such an extent as to have an impact upon the general gameplay of other users. Without having any information (which we will not get), then it is impossible to make claims from one side or the other.

I really cannot see a reason to try and artifically limit trading activity to set a profit cap and I honestly think any attempt to do so would probably either a – not work or b – have an adverse impact.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Dante.1508:

So you’re saying Avoiding said content was better than getting something nice from actually taking it down..

Wow what a fun mmo your asking for.

I’m saying maybe we shouldn’t be so greedy. We do get some nice things from Champs, we don’t need ‘guaranteed golds’ which is where this is headed with the way people are complaining. A game can be enjoyable without being loot-centric. Yes, loot is expected in these types of games. Having the best shinies handed to you on a silver platter is not, and that is exactly what people want. They don’t want to have to work for anything, they just want it handed to them and until they do, they roll around on the floor in a tantrum screaming ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme! I want! I want! I want!’

I’m all for a system that rewards you appropriately for the amount of effort involved. I am all for more content that is challenging to do; things that take thought, strategy, and teamwork. However, this is not that. This is catering to the caterwauling of spoiled children.

You could often get a better return from farming a node for 5 seconds, then from spending x minutes taking down a champion.

Whichever way you look at it, the “rewards” for killing champions is out of whack with the time involved in the process and these updates are indeed needed.

And no, this is not “catering to spoiled children”, this is addressing the reward imbalances in rewards in the game and the lack of options in getting various crafting materials.

There will always be a small segment that wants “moar”, but you cannot not update loot/rewards when said update is needed, simply because you fear some kind of slippery slope.

With the dungeon adjustments and additional options to get rare/fine craft mats, this update looks promising from a loot/reward overhaul point of view. In fact it looks to be one of the best updates we’ve had if you factor in the spvp updates as well.

Loot changes and solo Q. I must admit this is an update that I am very much looking forward to.

You do have to wonder just how well it would manage if it had the traditional themepark sub model. Or quite how well older themeparks would have done with a B2P model.

I personally find the game pretty lackluster in all honesty, but it is clearly not dying on its backside at the moment and it has more than likely already turned a good profit (total guess ofc). Eitherway I certainly wouldn’t be using a FB metric to judge it’s success or lack of it.

Oh and I had a good old lol at the EVE comparison :p

Hunter.4783:

Ummm…. 10/30/30 is a pure DPS build with 0 team and party support. DPS fanatics like GK seem to advocate it but they do it in full zerker gear. The build is used as a secondary DPS guardian or when zerking trivial stuff like CoF

Assuming you are talking about 0/0/10/30/30 (gotta make that clear if thats the case), this build offers 0% DPS support to the party and only suboptimal heals in a PVE environment. The fact that you have good condition removal and long prot does not account for the fact that your party has to 4 man the entire dungeon. 0/0/10/30/30 in DPS gear is silly just as well

AH/EM is usually rolled with PoV and soldier runes and gives you 2 cond removal per shout as well as improved consecrations. The DPS when mixing knights and zerker gear comes to about 70-80% of that of a pure zerker build but has a ton of support, the anchor effect and can carry others.

Yes I meant 0/0/10/30/30. I skipped the two zeros given I have mentioned the build multiple times in the thread already and given the fact that I assumed it would be pretty obvious as to what I was alluding to due to the fact I was speaking about a support build. Sorry for the confusion caused.

I already alluded to AH being an anchor in dungeons given full 0/0/10/30/30 would be overkill in terms of support. I assume you mean overhealing by the suboptimal part, as x/10/30/30 is not going to be undersupporting an AH build, regardless as to environ.

I am unsure of quite why anyone would run dps gear with 0/0/10/30/30.

Silentstorm.7531:

I don’t see what the issue with AH is. Hmm I look away a little while guys start to forget what I started when the game began. Look you’re a guardian which means you should be protecting something. Ah is almost the core fundamental you should have. It actually helps heal and guard the team. Not as much as it used to but as I’ve shown for almost a year now. It does a kitten good job of it. When used correctly however just mashing buttons doesn’t help.

AH is a suboptimal support/bunker build compared to something like 10/30/30, especially in terms of “protecting something”.

In comparison it has reduced team heal output, less buff uptime, less condi clear, less group condi clear, less self/group stun/cc breaks, less blinds and weaker virtues. You also have far less self heal when solo bunkering down or otherwise caught alone.

AHEM allows you to stack up in something like knights with zerker trinkets whilst having enough self survive to faceroll in a zerg on in open pve. It can also work as an “anchor” in dungeons. But then, you can faceroll in a zerg in a fair few builds really.

For solo roaming it’s pretty darn poor and for most dungeons AH is simply overkill. You are more likely to bring more to the group with higher dps whilst still having group cleanses. If an anchor is needed and full clerics 10/30/30 is too much, then AH will do the job in that instance.

AHEM is far, far from a bad build and it can indeed be use as an anchor even in high level dungeons/fractals. But in my opinion it is simply not optimal in the vast majority of situations (speaking of the traditional 30/30/10 with knights and zerkers).

ProxyDamage.9826:

Clockradio.3257:

ProxyDamage.9826:

I’m saving it, using it when I want exotic weapons/gear. Might save 500 for a Gift of Battle if I ever feel like a legendary.

With the announced changes to legendary weapons, I’d start saving up your mats.

The problem remains the same: The Precursor.

That and most of the legendaries looking like utter crap, but that’s a different issue…

I assume he means that they might be used for the crafting of the precursor. I agree with him.

I think saving up w3 badges, charged quartz and dungeon tokens with an eye on the upcoming precursor changes is a good idea.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Fenrir.3609:

By handing out so many free badges, people can essentially, completely avoid one of these activities.

I can’t even begin to give half a kitten about this complaint. How about you play however you want, and let other people play how they want? If you wanna grind WvW for your legendary, go ahead. Feel free to delete the tokens and do it by hand (it’s not like it’s the hardest part of the legendary is it? You can farm 500 badges in a week at most). It’s like the people complaining some other guy read the spoilers. What do you care? Don’t read them. You can’t sell legendaries, so they’re not affecting you in any way.

Fenrir.3609:

If you are going to allow pve players to completely bypass w3, then you should offer w3 players the chance to bypass dungeon runs.

Yes. I’m sure the piles of gold, bonuses and free gems do not help WvW players in PvE at all.

Why don’t you let people play how they want? That is exactly what offering badges OR dungeon tokens would do.

Getting anything for free is nice, but the system is clearly somewhat lopsided and offering the option to take dungeon tokens instead would have been a superior system in my opinion (clearly not in everyones although I am unsure why).

I think it’s great to get them, I simply think that it is somewhat skewed though and that an optional system would have been better.

The complaints arise from the fact that in order to gain a legendary (via the crafting process), you are meant to have taken part in a number of gameplay activities.

By handing out so many free badges, people can essentially, completely avoid one of these activities.

It’s nice getting free stuff, even tons of badges. But it would have been a better system to offer a choice between say badges and dungeon tokens. If you are going to allow pve players to completely bypass wvw, then you should offer wvw players the chance to bypass dungeon runs.

Both are needed for legendaries, both can be converted into items/gold.

marnick.4305:

Put all that effort into real world day trading, make a fortune and buy gems. If you’re going to learn speculation, at the very least do it somewhere where you can really make the big bucks. Flipping ingame is for wannabes.

Not sure if serious…

It looks promising on paper.

AHEM is a nice all rounder build, but i’m not entirely sure how people can think it is somehow “the build” or even an optimal build for most activities.

Ezeriel.9574:

You people make no sense. All I’m hearing is….

“AH+EM is only good in groups”
“The only thing AH+EM does is let you live longer” (that a bad thing?)
“What’s the point of living longer if you aren’t giving your group boons”
“random insults”

Is that all a guardian is? A walking boonbot?

Really, is that really what you are getting from this?

What you should be hearing is -

AH + EM might heal you and you alone slightly better if you are running in a zerg. For smaller scale fights and spvp, bunkering down with 0/0/10/30/30 is more often than not, far more optimal in terms of both self survive and team survive.

You have less team support, less condi clear and less self survive running AH + EM.

Why exactly do you think 10/30/30 is so prevalent in spvp? Do you think tourny players have somehow missed the supposed amazing synergy that is AH + EM?

For dungeons and pve, higher damage builds are often more optimal as you can learn to dodge most attacks and raw dps and/or group support (10/30/30) is again better than AH + EB.

So for soloing, dungeons/high level pve, open world pve farming, small scale pvp, roaming and spvp, other builds will more often than not outperform AH + EM. For group support and combating the current condi meta, other builds will more often than not outperform AH + EM.

For facerolling in a big old zerg, well AH is cool, but quite a lot of builds work in the faceroll that is a big zerg and those other builds will either bring you more dps or more group support.

I know you are asking what’s good in the market, but honestly CoF1 is going to churn out way more gold than actually farming/selling things unless you have a large starting capital base.

Plus for some reason, it appears to be nerf proof.

Ezeriel.9574:

“Otherwise why are you taking AH?”

because I want to live for more than three seconds… even with AH it’s hard to live that long.

and 0-0-10-30-30 doesn’t work… all the damage skills are physical, you lose more physical damage than you pick up in condition damage …and once again AH+EM is more healing that you get with Absolute Resolution.

So you’re doing less damage, have less toughness, and do less self healing.. Fail.

You are not concerned about damage when bunkering down/team support.

It is unlikely that you are going to be getting more heals from AH when there is no one/limited people around to proc off, especially when the bunker build is running clerics.

You provide less team heal output and team support from AH.

You have less condi clear/breaks.

You have less buff uptime.

For a build that is “fail” a fair few tourny teams have/do use it..

http://forums.intothemists.com/index.php?/topic/46-top-gw2-tournament-builds/

AH is great for running in a big old zerg though. Again, it depends on what you are trying to do.

Ezeriel.9574:

^is that staff or mace? hammer?

Do you use apothecary for that?

For spvp, clerics with soldier runes. Hammer (or staff) with scepter/focus (or shield), sigils of energy. Although, no doubt other sets are just as good with that build.

Really depends what you are trying to do. AH is a great build, but it is certainly not the only one. It depends what you are wanting to do and what feels comfortable/suits your playstyle.

0/0/10/30/30 spvp build doesn’t revolve around it.

It does seem somewhat OTT at this point in all honesty.

An option to take badges, T6 or dungeon tokens each time would have been nice. That would add a bit more flexibility.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Esplen.3940:

What players typically do (at least for CoF p1) is bump in a few players who participate in those parts.

In CoF P1, you can port for all 3 boulders, but then you can’t open the gate. Have 4 people open the gate for you while you kill and proceed to continue soloing.

CoE lasers are impossible to solo. It’s possible to solo one side of it, but not the entirety.

I don’t think it’s possible to solo the Searing Effigy. 1 person can’t bring enough DPS.

I believe that Wethospu has done it on warrior.

Serval.6458:

Champion Tower Person!

I feel this may offend all the furries, transspecies and the like.

Maybe “Champion Tower It” or “Champion Tower Something With Just as many Rights as You” would be more advisable.

AntiGw.9367:

The thing is, inflation is going to happen anyway. The availability of mats, on the other hand, is fixable and can regulate inflation itself.

Inflation is inevitable, so let’s have certain systems massively out of whack with everything else, who cares!!!

Nerfing CoF is not what is needed and it is certainly far from the only issue with regards to loot/rewards in the game. An overhaul of the entire reward system to remove (major) disparities, more effectively reward time and effort and to redress supply issues is what is needed.

Whether the blog will point to any of that happening… well that is another matter.

AntiGw.9367:

Nerfing CoF is of lower priority than farming mats, and that’s even IF it’s necessary.

All that farming CoF does is increase inflation. There have to be some mats to buy with all that gold, and if you balance mat spots, all that gold farming becomes pointless.

Inflation isn’t a minor thing, at all. Nor are massive disparities like the ones we see in game at the moment. You can’t cite disparities as an issue and then try and gloss over the games biggest one in terms of rewards.

The reward system is broken, hopefully we will see some pointers towards it being fixed (or at least some consistency) when the blog hits in a week or so.

AntiGw.9367:

Fenrir.3609:

AntiGw.9367:

Lord Kuru.3685:

AntiGw.9367:

Gotta love people that try to hide stuff from developers. So funny

I don’t think anyone is trying to hide anything from devs. Rather, if you tell other players your great farming spot, then it will fill up with players: that’s what leads to the inevitable nerfs.

And why would those players fill it? Isn’t it because it gives a disproportionate amount of loot that should be fixed?

No, they would fill it because ANET have nerfed pretty much every other open world spot of any value into oblivion.

The loot/reward system in this game is generally totally borked.

The loot/reward is actually great, unless you want to acquire abnormally high amounts of loot in a very short time.

If you play the game normally, you’ll get tons of stuff. If you try to farm, you’ll never get enough.

Yeah, it’s great that the ability to loot materials has been nerfed to kitten whilst you can farm a disproportionate (“abnormally high”) amount of gold via CoF1. It’s just so amazingly consistent and does wonders for the economy.

It’s so great in fact that ANET are actively looking to overhaul the system.

Blind Pew could see that the time/reward system in the game is out of whack and that CoF1 is out of whack. The whole reward set up has been in dire need of an overhaul for a good while now and the current model is as far from “great” as you can possibly get.

AntiGw.9367:

Lord Kuru.3685:

AntiGw.9367:

Gotta love people that try to hide stuff from developers. So funny

I don’t think anyone is trying to hide anything from devs. Rather, if you tell other players your great farming spot, then it will fill up with players: that’s what leads to the inevitable nerfs.

And why would those players fill it? Isn’t it because it gives a disproportionate amount of loot that should be fixed?

No, they would fill it because ANET have nerfed pretty much every other open world spot of any value into oblivion.

The loot/reward system in this game is generally totally borked.

Daecollo.9578:

Riss.1536:

How can people craft it yet ? I thought the quartz or whatever were time gated…
And how do you know you can’t sell it ? You didn’t craft it…

Its account bound on all the pictures. Nobody should be forced to craft to play a game IMO.

You aren’t. You are “forced” to craft it if you want one specific set of gear.

I’d rather not have to run AC for tokens for a legendary, but I certainly don’t think it is something “forced” on me.

If said gear was the only viable option in pve/w3, then I could see your point. Although it takes all of ten minutes to master a craft to 400.

Quick Mouse.7635:

gw2spidy.com

Show me this inflation you speak of.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24358

There has been a massive drop in sell listings a relatively stable amount of buy listings and thus a massive rise in price.

When you nerf the kitten out of the ability to farm materials and then do not nerf one dungeon speed run which pumps gold galore into the economy, then you get inflated prices.

Is CoF totally to blame for rising prices? Ofc it isn’t.

Is everything inflated out of whack? Ofc it isn’t.

Does it make any sense whatsoever to nerf the heck out of pretty much every farm in the game and leave the biggest gold farm of them all totally untouched? Ofc it doesn’t.

Does the disparity between CoF and pretty much everything else make any sense? Ofc it doesn’t.

Does “oh people will just move onto something else” hold as an argument in any way, shape or form? Ofc it doesn’t.

I have zero issue with people running CoF and zero issue with people trying to be as “gold effective per hour”. I do the same. But it seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with the current set up.

1. Borked loot/reward system.
2. Borked pvp balance.
3. Culling.

Personally I think they are major/fundamental issues.

The whole CoF situation is a total joke in all honesty.

The fact that it hasn’t been addressed in all this time, well, the mind boggles quite frankly given the nerfs we have seen elsewhere.

One would hope that the up and coming loot/reward changes should do something to rectify the situation (and the current rather major issues with regard to time/effort vs rewards we see in the game), but I would not hold my breath.

Elementalist.

Guardian as well, but it depends what you mean by “full and effective ranged play” really.

Not sure why, but noticed a heck of a lot more lag and for the first time lag related crashes during the short run of this match up.