Guild Wars 2

Runiir.6425:

Actually there is a benefit to being larger. This benefit is largely relegated to REACH.

Whatch an asura guardian and a norn guardian do the shield 5 skill (the dome shelter). The Asura barely is able to get allies while a single norn could protect 20 people without trying.

Larger characters also hit a larger area with melee weapons. I tested this just last night to make sure. Warrior axe 5 skill, spinning whirlwind. The asura seems limited to about 300 radius while the other races are able to hit 600. That’s a pretty large discrepency.

That said, there is no difference when it comes to things like shouts or any targeted aoe spell such as elementalist storms or necro marks.

Also, amusingly enough, you can hit an asura in melee from farther away as everyone shares the norn hit box size.

The benefits of being small, are outweighed by the fact the larger races get more bang for their buck from melee reach.

Reach is limited to effects of animation alone. All races have the same movement speed, reach, jump height, etc. The devs were very particular about this when people raised concerns during early development.

Edit: My testing is consistent with ranges being independent of character size.

TheDaiBish.9735:

1) Have you not heard of paragraphs or full stops?

2) I’ve managed to make my own gold fine by playing the game (rather than repeatedly farm the same areas, which is when DR kicks in), Do events, dailies, selling crafting mats ect.

3) This sounds more of a rant than a constructive suggestion, so I see this thread being closed soon.

Agreed. Although, in the interest of having something resembling a constructive discussion on the Internet (yes, I know how foolish that is), my son’s experience differs from yours and mine.

He wanted to get to 80 because that is what it would take to make him feel “strong”. He did so. But, along the way, his gear gradually fell behind. He didn’t want to face the unknown dangers of a new zone, so he tended to stay in familiar surroundings. He didn’t get a lot of level-appropriate loot, so his money and gear started to fall behind.

Over the levels, this trend built upon itself—he was unable to face level-appropriate content because his gear was too antiquated, so he was unable to catch up. He did not earn enough money to cover the repairs inflicted on him by sub-par gear and performance in a scaled environment.

So now, he is 80, has a life savings of about 20s, does not have access to the Grandmaster tier of traits, and has only a single piece of exotic gear… most of his gear is blue with a few greens. The recent loot changes and my pushing him into and carrying him through some FotM / Lost Shores content brought the required level of most of his gear up to 80.

So, there are people out there that genuinely need money. My advice to my son is a very blunt “suck less.” Less bluntly, my advice is to set goals and work towards them until your goals are to simply “do what you want to do to have fun.” That is what he had forgotten earlier; he was so fixated on getting to 80 so he could “play the game” that he actually compromised his ability to do so. He is gradually getting there, though… one painful almost-completed fractal at a time. My daughter seldom plays, but she doesn’t have these problems, because she isn’t trying to force character progression. At level 13 she is an asset in a fractal (note: if she was 30+ she would be a better asset, but we are not carrying her through the content, she contributes her fair share).

If there are too many targets stacked on on top of another, size becomes largely irrelevant—either the general area is good enough or another target of equal size could just as easily prevent my clicking the target i want.

If targets few in number, tab-targeting will find an asura as fast as a norn. In a PvP environment, my desired target is generally 1-2 taps away.

If the desired target is marked, then your desired target is 1 tap away.

If targets are large in number, unmarked, and spread out, the effort involved in clicking a desired small character does go up, but not by enough that I’ve ever noticed it. The difficulty of finding the right target in that mess has little to do with size, it is like doing a “Where’s Waldo” puzzle while being shot at.

Even conceding a small advantage for smaller characters in that last situation, you want stat buffs that apply in all situations to compensate?

But what are we compensating for? I play a norn warrior because I want to be seen in combat. It is an advantage to my team in WvW or PvP for me to be easier to target than my teammates. In PvE my allies can see where I am more easily and this facilittes graphical situational awareness. My armor is bright yellow so I can be seen and identified at a glance.

I believe that, last night, I observed 2 guardians with searing flames attack the same target and it stripped 2 buffs.

I also believe that I ttacked one target, stripped a buff, then attacked another target, inflicting burning, and did not strip a buff.

So it appears, if I observed correctly, that it is a cooldown for the guardian.

I wasn’t watching for this, I was just staring at the boss’s buffs, so I could be mistaken.

Zogyark.4597:

I’d like to see more fractals putting you in place of important moments in history, the Charr taking over Ascalon is my most favorite fractal, maybe you could give these individual characters some talking (while moving no dialogue) to give some personality.

The two events I want to relive are stopping a golem from killing Sarah in Ascalon and I want to play as the dwarves killing Rurik (seriously, man up and lead your people instead of being a whiny suicidal ninny).

My opinions:

There is nothing wrong with gear from karma vendors, but, at the same time, there is nothing sepcial about it, either. Purchased, crafted, dropped, karma… its all the same in the long run. If a nice peice of armor drops, use it. If you can buy a decent upgrade at a karma vendor, go for it. You should try to keep your gear current, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to replace gear that is 5 levels old—at 10, I’d consider going out of my way.

You can get by without crafting, but there is a catch. As a crafter, you can turn raw materials into finished products. The value of the products tends to be around the value of the raw materials. Therefore, you can generally sell your raw materials and buy the finished product with minimal difference in cost, should you have a strong desire for crafted equipment. However, you lose flexibility; you have to rely on somebody providing the goods you want at a price you will pay and paying the price you want for materials—this all can take time. As a crafter, you have to invest time and money into the craft, but you lose the reliance on others. Of course, your time and money has value, but you do gain experience for it…

So while you don’t necessarily lose by avoiding crafting, you don’t gain, either.

My elementalist ran AC story mode for the first time at 30. She did just fine, but I should point out that I knew the dungeon already from having run it on my guardian. Being a higher level doesn’t make you any stronger necessarily, and lower levels can have some advantages. The most important points to remember when running dungeons are teamwork, caution, and preparation. My elementalist did as well as she did because I knew the dungeon and she had top-shelf gear for the level. Everybody knew the fights and what roles we all brought to the table, so it was pretty easy. When you have people that just run ahead and spawn a dozen ghosts at once… you have problems, no matter how good your gear is.

Everybody has a different approach to leveling based on what they enjoy. I point this out as a disclaimer that what works for e might not work for you.

For my main, I am a completionist. I’ve been 80 for over a month but still have many stages of my story to go. I’ve been too busy working towards 100% map exploration (all hearts, points of interest, etc), dungeons, and so on. I never found myself lacking for experience because there was always another zone to compelte that was level appropriate.

My 6 alts take a different path. I don’t have any special interest in completing all the maps with them, just getting them to a point where they can access content so I can bring the right tool for the right job. When I log on an alt to play, I generally try to do all my daily achievements and complete hearts and events in the area, but rather than stay in a zone to 100%, I always try to stay in a level-appropriate area. I didn’t have a chance to do my dailies last night, so I logged on my engineer for an hour this morning before work—thats all it took to go from 18 to almost-21. Every 10 levels or so, I go abck and work on my personal story—I have the levels to compelte a full chapter and possibly have all the relevant waypoints, too.

Edit: I just realized that my elementalist has been hanging out at the Ascalonian Catacombs for the better part of two months now… she really needs to get that medicine her friend’s father urgently needs before his condition worsens…

I can only access level 1. I ran once with a random group of strangers and twice with my family. I do not feel qualified to try anything harder at this point.

My first try was a 3-man family run, just to see what this new content was all about. We got to the last boss of the colossus, but couldn’t take him down with only three of us (two after my son was killed, which always happened very quickly in the fight). I think this was a good experience for us, and I feel confident taking on the challenge with a group, but am I ready to take it on in a harder context? No, certainly not.

The next run was a PuG. We did the flame legion storming the ascalonian ton and the swamp. We won the first with a lot of learning curve and deaths, the swamp we gave up on. Knowing what I know now, the swamp should have been trivial, but we weren’t thinking after the first one. Again; we relied on brute-force tactics and not planning or strategy. While we beat the one, I wouldn’t say that I’m ready for the next tier.

Last night my wife, son, daughter, and I tried the dredge one. Again, we made it to the last boss, with a little difficulty, but couldn’t finish him. We should have been able to, but, well, my son is now grounded for getting his mother killed several times.

Now, I would like to think that my wife and I could do a harder tier with the right group and no issues. However, I accept that I still have a lot of learning to do for all these dungeons and until I do, I shouldn’t be allowed to ruin the experience for a group of people because I still need to learn it. Even if I could do it, what about my son? Should he be permitted to join a harder tier despite not having exotics or grandmaster traits? As a level 80, he passes the first test that most groups pose, but rest assured he will be found lacking once combat starts. Until he can earn access to level 2, he is a level 1 player.

There will always be a casual base willing to do level 1 because they either need to or they just enjoy the content. Already many have moved on to 4+, but I still see plenty of level 1 groups forming.

If I thought that rares and exotics were avluable loot, I’d have to agree that the loot is pretty bad. But crafting material drops in great abundance here—I’ve almsot gotten enough blood for another set of berserker’s armor after 3 hours of killing.

My group gave up on this one earlier. I had better luck than most but I couldn’t get to an open segment of the wall… it might be the last segment you reach that is left open, which means coordinating running from both sides towards the center… but even then I doubt we would have had enough time to make it with the champion drake constantly getting in the way and the norn popping out of nowhere to 1-shot people.

I’ve made ~7g off Large Scale to Armored Scale conversions in the last 48 hours, just popping in once in a while to take my money and run another batch. You really need to know what you’re in for before you start or you may easily be upset.

The yield is random. The least I recall receiving is 5, the most 12. Since the recipie calls for 1 to be used, this means 50 large yield 4-11 armored.

I tend to run in batches of 250 large scales. The yield for 250 is typically 28. Sometimes lower, sometimes higher (more often higher than lower), but 28 is the median and what I base my investments on.

This holds for all other fine t5-t6 conversions I have done.

Getting 5 will no doubt leave you feeling cheated; you got on the low end, it happens. In the long run, it tends to balance out to a gain over the price of buying rmored scales—i typically run a profit doing this, and that counts the 15% TP cut. Lately the profit margin has been shrinking and I expect I’ll be moving onto other products soon—I wish I had enough money laying around I could diversify all the time, but alas, I do not.

swiftpaw.6397:

It’s almost as if I’m talking in another language..

I replied to drkn. Lost the leading quote. 2 conversations, 1 thread.

swiftpaw.6397:

You aren’t this amazing player that everyone aspires to be. You are a person who can survive in a magic find set and not drag the team down. wow. That must mean everyone can do that. No, they get the bad idea from you and then go and ruin my dungeon runs.

Yep I’m the horrible person. For telling people, that 2 stats are not as good as 3. I’m just a horrible elitist for telling people what common sense should have figured out, but is destroyed by people like you.

I don’t wear MF to dungeons, but I respect the right of others to do the same. I wait to see how the run is going and how people are working out before coming to conclusions about their preparedness and my willingness to group with them again.

I undertand that a player in MF is not at their peak. I get that. Read my kitten-loving post before saying I don’t understand this seemingly simple point.

Trying to attack my reading comprehension to make your point establishes your lack of ability to form a cogent argument or understand the perspectives of others.

If you cared about what a player does relative to their maximum, you wouldn’t care about their MF, because it doesn’t contribute, you would care about everything else because that is what you need to find out if their build actually works or is just a mess. The only conclusion is you don’t actually care, you just have a crusade to wage.

As I said, you have a case in the ideal world. Lets look at some real world exampels and how they fit into your mold. (italicized terms are anonymized-but-accurate)

I used to play a MMO with a ranger that would always get high right before a dungeon. This impaired his reflexes, severely enough that everyone noticed. He wore top-shelf gear. Clearly his attitude was off but he flies under your proposed radar. the onyl way to catch this type of person is to see them in action, which is exactly when you would catch somebody offering sub-par performance in MF gear, if they were in fact performing sub-par.

A relative of mine plays GW2 and, despite being 80, wears, at best, low-70s blues. His chestpiece is a mid-70s white, transmuted to match his other armor, with a rare rune in it—the only rune of any rarity he has. Just putting him in a group drops their effectiveness considerably. He tries hard to do well, but is so used to failure because he adamantly refuses to change his gear to something better, and he can’t farm level-appropriate areas because he has let it go for too long. You won’t hear me say he doesn’t try, but MF gear would be an improvement for him. If I spotted him a set and he put it on (he needs the money for repairs just trying regular open-world content), you would exclude him not because he is borderline inept, but because he is wearing gear that is better than anything he had been wearing to-date that is no the best he could have.

There are people that have never done the content before, or have never done it on the class they are playing. They are willing to try hard, but you’re not willing to take them because they don’t meet your “experienced dungeoneer” threshold. Who is willing to try harder? You’re consciously putting completion time ahead of other people, and that is greedy.

Your test does not achieve your stated objectives, therefore it should be rejected. You have both false positives and false negatives with real-world examples.

drkn.3429:

Because you still could contribute more if you’re better than other players. The sole fact that you’re in a party with terrible players doesn’t mean you can slack off as well.

But they could work harder and get better to contribute more. Is it really so difficult to not dodge everywhere you go so that you have enough endurace to avoid some hits, or to trade out a DPS amulet for a tanky one? Possibly swap utilities ebtween fights or remember to use the ones you ahve when appropriate.

In the ideal world, you have a point. This is not ideal.

swiftpaw.6397:

‘Ineptitude is far more of a liability than stats. You know this. I know you do, you’re too smart not to.’

Hey you stabbed someone.. but you know what would have been worse? If you killed them. So it’s ok.

No. That’s just not how it works for me. You have the capacity not to take the MF to begin with and be even better. You take magic find, likelihood of bad player increases. Not everyone who wears magic find is bad. We know this. But there sure is a higher chance they will be when you are taking someone you don’t know. The only argument here is this:

-Same player-
-same scenario-
-Two different gear sets-

One set Magic Find
One set three stats that contribute towards performance.

The played does better in the set with the thee stats. In many cases the set with the three stats compensates for the player’s ineptitude at playing the game.

This is not hard.

If I can contribute more in my magic find gear than you can in your 3-stat gear, I am not the one that is screwing the party over. Yes, I could make the run go better for everybody, but I can handicap my own performance and still outperform you and everybody else (in theory). Don’t I deserve a little something for working harder and getting more done?

I get that you hate people that wear MF gear. I understand that. I undertand you have a bone to pick because somebody did something that screwed you over once. You’re looking at the wrong group—you’kittengeting the wrong aspect of play. You should be looking for a way to effetively combat people that don’t contribute to groups, as opposed to people that are contributing less than their theoretical maximum but potentially more than anybody else. You cannot claim that these people, even hindered by sub-par stat choice, are necessarily worse than anyone else.

The fact that you akittengeting magic find, and magic find alone tells me you don’t actually care about creating objective assessments of your potential group mates, you just care about being holier-than-thou.

@drkn: We’re saying the same thing, except you want everyone to give 100%, and I want everyone to contribute 20% of the group’s effectiveness (assuming a 5-person team).

If I can match the contribution of everyone in my party while wearing full MF gear, why shouldn’t I be allowed to? Isn’t that my reward for being better at the game than they are?

drkn.3429:

Noticing that 3 defensive and/or offensive stats pumped up are better than 2, with the third slot wasted for greedy mf, is not really misinformation.

Ineptitude is far more of a liability than stats. You know this. I know you do, you’re too smart not to.

The misinformation is that a player wearing MF gear must be worse than a player without. Why else would this be the only stat that matters? Why aren’t you looking at gear quality and level instead, that would tell you as much or more than simply the MF tally. To assume that this one little stat summarizes the whole of a player’s ability is to be willfully myopic, and to encourage players to do this is to spread misinformation.

Ethics.4519:

This is why on the TP sometimes the ingot sells for around 2xOre-10%. People know that there is inherit value in the ore by way of extra XP.

To expand on this, why would I ever make and sell iron ingots?

Either I need the ingots or I don’t. If I need the ingots, I’ll use them. If I don’t need them, why would I make them in the first place. Doing so prevents exploration of alternate uses (iron ore is used to make steel and some potions, for example). There is an inherent flexibility in the raw material that creates value the refined materials lack. Right here we’ve established that refined products are generally worth less than raw materials due to the reduction in demand. We’re not talking a player-market demand, we’re talking about actual value of a good based on its properties. The raw materials, beign flexible, have values the finished product lacks. The vendor price is a control intended to reflect this.

For whatever reason, lets assume I have a stockpile of refined materials. Maybe I produced the material to save space, or I miscalculated my needs, or whatever. The vendor establishes a price floor. The reason that people keep bringing up the player market is because if there was any appreciable demand for these goods, the free market would dictate that non-trivial price. All the vendor does is fix the rate at a minimum in the absence of any real value.

If raw materials ever dropped in value enough to hit the vendor rate, if this idea were to be implemented the combination of low cost of materials and guaranteed break-even point would cause a large rush of practicioners looking for free experience.

when you factor in the player market, where prices are already higher, you’ll see that supply far outstrips demand for these materials, which is why the value is inherently low. Yes, I pay for the ability to raise my skill, to help keep my armor current, and at 400 armorsmithing, I can finally make items that have value aside from that which is forced by market controls.

swiftpaw.6397

Doesn’t matter what we say, they will call us elitists and scum and get mad at us and etc.. these are the kind of people who come on here and complain about dungeons being too hard and so on. I am now just using this thread as a way to find out who go’s next on the block list so I don’t invite them by accident when I’m pugging and have to put up with it.

I advertise for people with a decent gear set and experience and yet they still apply so, best way to avoid it.. especially for Arah Path 4. They don’t understand it. ‘So it takes a little longer’, ‘so you have to res us every fight.. ’ blah blah blah. Guess what? I dont want to be in a dungeon for ages. Guess what? I dont want to have to res you every fight. Guess what? It’s none of your business who I choose to take in my group. If you want to run Magic find, it’s not going to be in my group, take it to another group or to your plinx farms.

Last night my CoE run that usually takes 25 mins took twice as long because 3 players thought it was a good idea to all run magic find. Needless to say they died about 5 times + each Alpha encounter, and me and the other player had to hold everything together till the magic finders ran back.

Where to begin…

First off, I vehemently oppose the suggestion. Secondly, I feel that dungeons are either balanced properly or too easy. It is a tough call, it really depends on where ANet wants the line to be; either way, I’m fine with the difficulty.

You want people with decent gear and experience and you get other people. These people are called “liars”. Assuming that you properly qualified “decent” to make it clear that you wanted combat-centric gear, they lied about their qualifications. I don’t want these people in my groups either. It has nothing to do with their choice of gear, it has everything to do with their integrity. If I can’t trust you to tell me “I’ve never done this before” or “I forget this fight” then why should I commit 30-120 minutes to working with you? I can’t, so I won’t. I support this idea, but I see the magic find crusade as a witch hunt.

I support your right to be an elitist, if that is the label we’re using this week. If you only want people that have certain qualifications, that is fine by me. I insist on qualifications in my dungeon runners too. Well, I should—I tend to cave, and I need to raise them, but that is a separate matter entirely—too many people are focused on getting 80 that they neglect their gear, then they become an under-geared liability thinking that wearing level 70 blues to AC will be fine because of the scaling.

What I resent are the calls to eliminate this as a viable playstyle—I will break out the MF gear when things are too easy or I’m carrying the rest of the group… also, it is much cheaper to repair than my good gear. I oppose any move that encourages the community to be misinformed—by publishing this information, you encourage people to screen out players in MF gear, not because they are a liability, but because they were trained to do so.

I’m sure that you know better, and I’m sure you are completely reasonable, but the world is a big place and not everybody is as reasonable as your or has the forethought to recognize how complicated assessing “capability” can be. I don’t care that you don’t want these people in your groups, what I care about is planting the seeds of prejudice based on misinformation.

My elementalist has had no issues in dungeons in level-appropriate gear. The scaling of gear as you level is pretty consistent with the downscaling of an 80 in exotics to various levels. Sure, the dungeons are a little tougher when you go it with a group that doesn’t have a lot of options or top-tier traits, but I’ve never felt it was unfairly difficult.

The first dungeon she ran was AC story mode at 31 while wearing level 30 crafted gear. During the lovers, I took one more or less solo while the rest of the group dealt with the other. I died once, but got back in the fray and continued pretty fast.

I really don’t think the dungeons are unduly difficult when close to the minimum level. The more I researched the scaling mechanism, the more I became convinced of this, too.

Crater: Having a 2-year old does more to my effectiveness than MF gear ever did. It was a conscious choice, and I could get a baby sitter, but it is a conscious choice not to. She might be 2, but she knows how to open the refrigerator and get me a soda, so I derive benefit from her, but my group mates do not. Nobody knows about her unless I say something. How is this any different? Why are we not looking to resolve this?

I go back to my point that measuring MF on a player is being done in the absence of any assessment of that player’s capabilities. This means we are not taking measures of where that players capabilities are relative to where they could be, but we’re taking an absolute measurement of where they fall relative to other people on this scale. This is the basis of prejudice and antisocial behavior, not cooperation and teamwork, far more so than the act of wearing MF gear is.

swiftpaw.6397:

‘They made a choice that penalizes not themselves, but everybody around them, so by your logic, they should be excluded.’

They also have the choice to change their build so that they do not affect others around them, comparing them to charr and norn doesnt make sense as those people do not have a choice.

Rerolling is always an option, too. Just because it is harder doesn’t make it less possible. Rediculous? Yes, but I find the original concept behind this thread no less rediculous.

drkn.3429:

Quick question – have you ever been to Arah explorable with that glass ele?
You will change your mind about extra tough and vit as soon as you try it out.

No, but one place where she doesn’t work does not mean that she is not viable in other places. I use her as an example of what is possible because people are positing that toughness and vitality have an inherent value because they must be used in any content.

drkn.3429:

Thing is, if you’re running something suboptimal and it’s not MF, you’re probably doing it unknowingly, whereas using MF shows your independent choice.

This is the very essence of the min/maxer at its worst.

I do not play the way you do (the hypothetical you, that is), because I want to have fun, and I don’t think that greatswords are fun. But you’re telling me that a graetsword is better than sword and board. Or focus is superior to a shield. You say you are right, but I can tell you that it is less fun for me. I might boost my damage by 10% doing it your way, or my survivability, but if I am not having fun, why am I even playing the game?

Guild Wars 2 has no content that demands 100% from everybody. At best, top-tier content asks for 80% of what a player is capable of, and a portion of what a player brings to the table cannot be measured in stats, as it is the highly-subjective skill. I choose how much I bring to the table, but when you start nitpicking gear, you’re talking about adjusting a data point that is relative to my personal capability; that may be higher or lower than another player, why should I have to not only carry a weaker player, but earn the same reward for doing some of his/her job too?

Should we ban norn and charr because they are large targets and make it difficult for people to observe their surroundings? This is quite clearly a drain on the performance of other players—I know that I’ve missed some boss cues because a charr was standing in the way. They made a choice that penalizes not themselves, but everybody around them, so by your logic, they should be excluded.

Crater: I have no points in vitality or toughness on my elementalist. She is the exact thing that people are talking about when they say ‘glass cannon.’ But, she doesn’t die, because I don’t let her. There are survival skills that aren’t stats—there are dodges, and traits, and knowing what-the-kitten you’re doing when you go into a place. If I don’t take a hit, toughness is, but the very definition, irrelevant. If I take so few hits that I can regenerate it incidentally, we’re in teh same boat. In both cases, extra Vitality is just as irrelevant, because I do not use it. It is that simple; skillful play and a competant group negate my need to soak hits. Thats all. It can be done. I’ve done it. Q.E.D.

Now, I didn’t say everyone is in that boat, but I said it can be done. This is all about judging the quality of a player by the gear they wear. One coutnerexample is all it takes to disprove the hypothesis. I think it is pretty clear that a player is far more than the sum of their stats. Playstyle, reflexes, traits, knowledge—they all matter too.

I broke out the numbers because people insist it is debilitating to a player to bring MF gear to a dungeon. Numbers don’t lie. It is no more debilitating than many common actions, even if you want to step up the penalty for considering runes. Just because people can suck doesn’t mean you have to promote a culture of prejudice against people that wear a certain stat, when they can be just as or more productive than members of a group wearing the ‘right’ stats. That is what this is about; people wanting the tools to promote prejudice.

@GamerToukotsu.4219: Once I out-level one item, I move on to the next. Raw materials, in case you hadn’t noticed, tend to be very cheap. Many sell at the trivial point, and we’re talking the baseline materials form which it is proposed other materials be priced. I can buy plenty of these effortlessly and use them to skill up (look at artificer, especially). The finished product from these is worth 10c to a vendor currently (5×2c). I lose money doing this. A lot. But I gain skill. If the finished product could be sold at cost, I would have skilled up much faster.

I don’t see how there is a design flaw when I gained something (experience, finished product) for a cost (raw materials). The finished product is valueless in most cases, and can jsut be cut from the cost of the raw materials since it will just be sold. As the coin value of the result approaches the cost, the cost to gain that experience drops. If potions were worth more, I would have 5 400-level artificers, rest assured of that. Ditto for cooking.

As a hobby, I make armor.

We’re talking real-life armorsmith/leatherworking/tailoring.

I’m not very good at it, and it can be very expensive (until I can justify the cost of a CNC plasma cutter, I’m not going to be working on plate armor).

Most of all, I do this because it is fun—I enjoy working with my hands, and I love the act of creating something that will bring joy to another.

I sell some of what I produce. I charge primarily for raw materials, but given how inefficiently I use the cloth and leather I have, and the number of botched attempts at some pieces, I charge below my cost.

So, yes, I craft things in real-life and sell them below cost, to subsidize the cost of increasing my skill while simutaneously enjoying the basic actions. And I am in my right mind.

TWMagimay.9057:

Ethics.4519:

Also, Anet does not set the prices. The set the drop rates which in turn set the prices. Saying what prices should be doesn’t really do anything. It’s up to us, as a free market (aside from minimum selling prices) to set the prices.

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about vendor prices, not TP prices. Which is easily explained with exp gain anyway….

If vendor prices were adjusted, the player market would move in stride. You will not see profitability result from price floors created by increased vendor offerings, you’ll just see higher prices, as players are now prevented from selling below that price.

Shifting prices is nothing that routine inflation doesn’t already do.

Edit: To clarify, the vendor price of raw materials is irrelevant, only the player-market price (where they can actually be purchased for use) is relevant. Items either have a non-trivial value, or are valued at approximately the vendor rate (the trivial case). Changing the vendor rate only shifts the trivial point, but does not increase teh value of the consumed product.

If the cost of generated products were based on the vendor rates of the component products, you would actually encourage more people to pursue the crafts, driving up the prices of raw materials even more. If I can’t convince people to buy weak potions for 4c each, why should I expect people to pay 45c? When the value is already trivial and I am only making it for skill, this trivial price point is what prevents me from creating an overabundant supply, while forcing me to lose enough coin that I cannot just sit and craft constantly.

The effort to turn raw materials into finished products must have a cost associated with it if crafting is to be profitable.

Since the goal is to raise the gold value of the finished product, incurring a goldbased cost is irrelevant. Similarly, any other currency is equally useless. You need either specialization or time to produce a non-gold based value.

• Recipies that are not available to everybody will increase the value of those recipies. The tendancy is, however, that enough people will acquire these recipies to reduce the value to the point that it becomes worthless.
• Varied results can produce value. I want the stats of an exotic but with the appearance of [something else]. This could be implemented as a rare-recipie system (same as above) unlocked achievement (same as above) or mutually-excluded paths. This last one would be worth considering, except 1/4th of the characters practice each tradeskill, and each player has a minimum of 5 character slots. Therefore the number of players that can practice each skill can be expected to be near to the total number of players, which means the number with any specialization are effectively as unlimited as the current crafter population.
• Per-capita production limits are never popular, but they work. Restrict certain production to once / interval. This is the one of the most direct ways of adding “time” to the cost.
• Increase the production time of goods. I’m not talking change the time from 1 second to 10 seconds, I’m talking creation times in the hours and time only ticks if you’re offline near a crafting station. This is the closest to modeling the real world, and it might be a fun experiment, but it is not the GW2 style, IMHO.

I don’t see a viable solution, as the value added to raw materials by the act of crafting is really non-existant, given how common crafters are.

Increase your prices by ~18% and you will get the amount you want and pass the tax on to the buyer. It is all a matter of perspective.

swiftpaw.6397:

A good analysis and I agree, there are worse monsters. But when taking people who you have never played with, I can understand why people would be a little weary as you need to be a good player to account for the sacrifice. As you say, you play a glass cannon ele but don’t get downed because you are a skilled player, I wish that was the case for every glass cannon ele I see.

But this is my (and Kashien’s) point. My gear is not what determines my contribution, it is a summation of so many factors that asking for this little snippet of information is encouraging shallow, biased attitudes. It tells the novice that “you need to watch out for these people.”

Group with a person. If you feel they are not pulling their weight, either have a talk with them or boot them outright, but base this decision on their actions, not a theory-crafted conjecture based on one little number.

Edit:
Well, building round it is the 4% number, ideally. So The range of penalty spans 4%-13.5%. The 4% is trivial, the 15% numbers I gave I think are pertty fair and represent not building around it.

300 points is the equivalent of putting 30 points in a trait line where you only really benefit from one of the stats offered, if you want to look at the 4% in a different light. Many people pick traits that seem to help them, but ignore the stats involved, sometimes with great detriment.

My point was not that MF is necessarily ideal, but it is a small part of a larger whole, and it is the whole, not a part, that should be judged. The loss of effectiveness can be mitigated very effectively through immeasurable (player skill) means.

Alright, we all know that the stats on your gear make so much difference, having MF gear on must tank your perfromance. Obvious, right? Lets look at the numbers.

I will assume full level 80 exotic gear and ignore runes. I don’t have all my spreadsheets handy, so I have to rely a bit on the wiki—I may be off a little due to either wiki error or my misinterpretation of wiki content.

A level 80 will have 916 in the 4 basic stats and 1400 trait points. This is a total of 5064 stat points. This is before gear.

You get one major and two minor attributes, with the minors being worth a total of 696 × 2 = 1392. We’re at a total of 6456 now.

The major stat, which is Magic Find in the two exotic MF sets, contributes 1001. Actually, it is less in this particular case, but let’s not quibble, we’re mathing a worst-case analysis.

This means that MF drops your effective stats by about 13.5% I ignored food buffs. As best as I can tell from the wiki, this is in full MF gear, but not including armor runes.

This is a significant hit, if you look at it in the abstract. If you build around it, however, it isn’t quite as dire.

There is a very viable guardian build that is very heavy on the support that really only calls for condition damage as a stat—others are nice, but really, the damage just isn’t there regardless of gear.

Toughness and Vitality are only needed if you take a beating. Support players tend to be the most adept at avoiding damage, so in this case, they aren’t that necesary. The guardian’s natural regeneration and mitigation potential are also second to none.

Guardians that want to inflict condition damage are not beholden to crits. So precision doesn’t make any difference.

Critical damage, power… not for this build.

Healing Power is useful, so we’ll earmark that one.

Boon duration cannot be had on gear, but is very valuable for this build. Condition duration less so, but is also not available on gear.

So far we can consider:

• Vitality / Condition Damage / Healing Power
• Condition Damage / Vitality / Power
• Condition Damage / Precision / Toughness
• Magic Find / Power / Condition Damage

Of these four viable gears:
The second is the most readily available.
The fourth is what we’re assuming the player already has.

What did they actually give up from the stats that matter to this build? 1001 condition damage is replaced with 696 condition damage, for a loss of 305 points (4%).

Conclusion
This means that the best-case for a player wearing MF gear is effectively a 4% reduction in stats. Consumables can offset this loss, and I see many people run dungeons without consumables, or under-leveled consumables. These people deprive the group of at least as much as some people that go in full MF gear.

4% reduction in damage output is being downed once every 4 minutes and immediately rezzed. Don’t talk about “more likely without toughness/vitality” because my glass cannon elementalist can stay standing through a dungeon.

4% is asking your group to stop for 30 seconds once an hour.

I know we’re looking at a best case justification on the worst possible numbers. We’re also looking at a very trivial downgrade. What is a 15% loss—the case where you really need that stat that was replaced by MF?

Being killed 5 times in a dungeon is about a 15% loss (very difficult to geta firm value when you look at variable distances to run from waypoints, etc.)

A 2 minute break for your group is a 15% loss.

So, all things considered, there are far worse monsters than somebody who knows what they are doing and wears MF gear.

There used to be buff vendors. There still are—they sell food. Slightly different than the implementation you described, but in appearance only. The effects are still pretty much the same.

Cameo.4073:

I do think that guild leaders should be able to see when characters or accounts last represented and perhaps how long in the last week, so they can clean house as needed.

In addition to (at the least) last login time and last represent time, I’d also like to see the influence contribution of each player (aggregate and/or last X days).

I think that leaving the tools in the hands of the players is the best course.

oZii.2864:

TravisTrout.6803:

Kinglette.4906:

I smell a troll

The OP makes statements that are contrary to how the game works so it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion. For example:

bombastinator.8965:

Tried that. For days. The areas ae 2/3s bots and they make the spawns so bad it’s pretty close to suicide to try.

This statement has no meaning. It does not accurately reflect any aspect of how the game works.

The original premise of the thread is also fundamentally flawed, to put it kindly. There are 5 ori nodes in Cursed Shore, 5 in Malchor’s Leap, and 2 in Frostgorge. Orichalcum ore has a 100% drop rate; you have only to locate the nodes, which you can harvest every day. The locations change when the server resets, as for a patch.

Further, I cannot find a logical basis for the OP’s claim that he is “stuck” with level 65 gear as a level 80 character. Both the assembled items and the components required to make them are readily available. The OP’s claim is so far from reality that it, too, is without meaning.

We must conclude that he is simply having a go at us, and so it would be best to leave this thread to rot.

Dont bother OP is a troll see evidence here in the Black Lion Trading forums

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-would-like-to-see-the-trading-post-gone-Or-at-least-down-for-a-month/first#post633664

OP didn’t know you can get the Ghastly Greatsword for tokens. OP thought it was a drop from inside the dungeon. OP clearly doesn’t know much about the game all opinions and posts from op should be viewed without much weight behind them or much experience.

Guardian, but feels useless in WvW.
Could get full carrion (power/vit/cond damage), but can’t get armor. Carrion is what my guardian uses in WvW when I am decimating armies
Troll. /agree

For several weeks, I made a handsome profit refining t5 to t6 materials. I used only TP-purchased materials and tracked the cost/profit.

Lately the price of Blood has shot through the roof. The cost to produce has similarly shot through the roof, but with a median yield of 28 t6/250 t5, the profit has been almost unchanged—the percent profit has dropped tremendously, but the value of each skill point is almost unchanged.

In this case, it is more worthwhile to sell t6 materials and refine t5 materials with the money.

In other cases, t5 materials cost more than the corresponding t6—people will use bone to make rares for throwing in the forge or salvaging for ectos, but there is no similar demand for the t6 material, and carrion armor/weapons are not in sufficiently heavy demand to carry much of a price.

So, across the board, it varies.

Troy.3497:

I just wanted to get others opinions on the following: I personally am not to thrilled with the ability to represent option in guild. I feel it takes a way from the social aspects of the guild & basically causes division among members.

I appreciate what ANET is trying to do but I do disagree with it. Isn’t a guild supposed to be a group of people that are united as one, with similar objectives within the game, socially & gameplay?

I realize that players have different tastes WvW sPvP PvE & not always is a guild going to have the people on or the people into forming a group for ie WvW & I can see the convenience of being able to guild hop but can’t the same be accomplished via friends list? I just find the current system causes a lack of cohesion in the guild.

Besides If a guild isn’t meeting a players gamestyle etc: etc: quite easy to find a new home that will make them happier & accommodate their playstyle & needs. Quite simple.

I don’t know maybe it is just me & not used to it, I don’t think so though. But curious to see other peoples opinions on this.

I am in 4 guilds. We’ll ignore 3 of them and focus on my guild of dungeon buddies.

You an make the case that it is a glorified friends list, but the key component is that it is a network, not a list; other people can grow the list, not just me. So, yes, while I read it like a friends list, the compilation of its roster is anything but.

Of course, that guild also discourages members from representing. We understand that we are not a primary guild for people, we’re a support network.

Hypothetical abuse:

Scammer: WTB all [X], Paying [Y]
Players scurry to check the TP for Xs, and note that several are available for less than Y. Players purchase all X valued under Y.
Scammer: I already have enough, thanks… also, thank you for buying all mine off the TP for far more than they are worth.

Forcing the TP tax also curbs inflation by requiring the seller to have a percent of the asking price before listing the item. With this portion being forfeit if the item is not sold, it discourages people from knowingly overpricing items.

@Wethospu.6437: Yes, the solution for all these player types is to either kick them or take more time to either overcome their shortcomings or to help them be better players. That doesn’t mean that they don’t drop the group’s power by being there. My point was not that these are insurmountable obstacles, just that they are more of a drain on the party than a capable, knowledgable person wearing MF gear.

Rather than work with people to overcome shortfalls, the general mindset is to exclude players that don’t work “your way.” If they fail to be a team player, sure, removal is always an option, but shouldn’t you make these calls based on performance rather than a stat that has so little to do with their ability to contribute?

If you have difficulty with trash but not bosses, it means your group is lacking in the support and control areas. This is natural because most players don’t develop these skills without being forced too—the regular PvE content is far too easy to force players to develop these skills.

For story mode, the bar is set low enough that any group of 5 players should be able to do it.

Explorable modes require a more balanced group—in theory. In practice the bar is higher than story mode, but imbalanced groups that know the content often do just fine.

Being able to handle multiple mobs that are, themselves, threats is something not experienced elsewhere, or experienced so seldom it is a non-issue.

If you are waypoint zerging, you’re doing something wrong. You need to go into each fight with a clear target and a plan to mitigate the havoc each foe can cause. Failure to overcome each challenge generally means either your plan was flawed, or your execution was. Refine your plan and go again, or refine your implementation and go again, but each try should be better than the one before it.

Thats another thing not needed elsewhere—a plan.

I feel that the introduction to dungeons does nto do enough to prepare the player for the severe shift in difficulty, however, I don’t feel there is anything wrong with the dungeons themselves, simply the expectations that players have when they first approach them.

If you can provide an adequate explanation as to why having magic find on your gear means you necessarily contribute less than somebody that doesn’t have it, you will have my support.

Many have tried, nobody has ever succeeded.

The loss of stats due to magic find can fairly easily be made up through the use of two consumables. The impact to stats, weighed against base stats + gear + traits is fairly small.

Unlike other MMOs, player skill is not simply your ability to follow a community-approved best-practices skill rotation. Players are expected to be observant and react. A failure to observe or react in a dungeon will most likely result in you being downed. A single distraction takes more from the group than an entire run in MF gear ever did. Do you want to also see how many kids I have? How many people on my friends list might whisper me? number of guildmates that like talking? Number of people that might call me? Drinking habits? Sleep schedule? If you’re going to try to screen out players that you consider non- or under-contributors, you picked a really kitteny metric to use.

Edit: Other situations worth considering:

Wethospu.6437:

MF-guy is dragging team-performance down so I guess party should know.

The two know-it-alls that bicker over the “right” way to do things drag performance down more.

The person that has never done the dungeon before, or forgets it drags the performance down more.

Mr. This-is-the-only-skill-set-I-will-ever-need drags the performance down more.

The big-number obsessed “greatswords are the only weapon worth using” fanatic drags the performance down more.

The casual player that doesn’t invest in maxing out gear drags performance down more.

The PvP nut that is dismisive of PvE content and is “slumming” because his “leet” guild took the night off drags performance down more.

The player that just respeced to a new build but has not yet purchased a full set of gear to support it drags performance down more.

Why all the hating on something as simple as magic find when there are far more severe issues out there?

Material support (including running things in GW1) is probably more than I can offer, but if you’re just looking for advice and pointers, that I can certainly give. If you have specific questions, feel free to ask here or PM me, or find me in-game. If you would like general advice, that I can certainly do as well.

Assistance in GW1, well, like I said, I probably don’t have the time to help with that, unfortunately.

I have a feeling it relates to this:

Flesh tone dyes + underwear + immaturity + audience = ?

Problem: I have a jerk in my guild that is not representing us.
Solution: Prevent people from being in multiple guilds, forcing them to represent mine.
New problem: I have a jerk in my guild, don’t know it, and he is giving us all a bad name.

I don’t disagree the initial problem is a problem, but I fail to see how removal of multiple guild memberships is a solution. If these people made it into your guild, perhaps you need tighter controls and a more personal recruitment event to make sure you know who you are inviting and so they know who and what they are joining.

Getting jumped after Sanctuary ends does suck, but the key point is that your opponents had to wait through it—it was your team’s responsibility to use that time to gain an advantage. The support from a guardian won’t turn the tide of battle on its own, it relies on the actions of other players to seize the opportunity it creates.

I cited 1v1 as an extreme case where a guardian that can counter abilities as fast as they can be activated is clearly overpowered. I look at 1v1 as an edge case that must be considered, but not used as the baseline for balance.

I used a warrior’s cripple as an example of a control ability that can be used against us fairly readily. Our condition removal isn’t anything too extraordinary, but the point I had wanted to illustrate was that we don’t need to react to every action taken against us. It is when that cripple/immobilize/stun lands as the big red rings appear around your feet that it matters—this is when you use your abilities, not when you’re not in danger. The guardian’s strength is that our protective abilities affect our allies, not just us, so when any of our allies is in trouble, we probably have a skill to help them out of it.

Because I run with a group, I don’t see my cooldowns as being prohibitively long. I feel they are generally well balanced. If you run solo, yeah, I can see you feeling as if they are too long. I wouldn’t mind seeing cooldowns tied to the number of allies affected or something where a middle ground could be found, but even when I run solo, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything—my skills as a guardian are not a rotation, they are a collection of situational ‘oh kitten’ skills.

Abilities meant to be used as actions have short cooldowns because they are meant to be used.
Abilities meant to be used as reactions have long cooldowns so they can only be used at the opportune moment.

A warrior can cripple you all she wants, and most of the time it doesn’t make a big difference. When you really need mobility, you remove the condition and do your thing—wasting a condition removal skill on each cripple effect is wasteful and the cooldowns are as high as they are to discourage that.

Shorter cooldowns allow the negation of too many actions, especially in a 1v1 situation.

Regarding Zealot’s Defense, I’d rather it function more like Magnetic Wave than simply permit mobility.

captaincrunch.6731:

So I guess everyone should just be thieves or warriors right?

>_>

Guardians have no trouble moving about either.

Sanctum of Rall has been climbing the WvW ladder (moved up to 5th place in NA as of last week), but I’ve never found it wanting for PvE participation.

LameFox.6349:

I assume it means they’re for testing your damage without having to account for random variance.

This.

Attack a golem, then respec and attack again. Look at combat logs / check the time to see how the spec changed your damage output.

Vary your stats while looking at damage numbers (with custom arenas, you can vary your target’s stats, too) to reverse-engineer the damage/mitigation formulas.

The low damage and lack of variation make them perfect for these purposes.