Guild Wars 2

Try using an Earth elemental when your tank just dropped and you need a distraction, then come back and say they don’t have any utility.

The only thing they need to change with our summons, is the fact that in WvW people can rally off your elementals, which makes them not only useless, but a liability.

He probably made 400g because he spent his time playing the game instead of crying about it on the forums.

Also, Legendaries are NOT endgame. They are a bling option. If you choose to grind for it, that’s your choice.

I find that ONE fractal run is enough to cover an exotic item (usually get 1-3 gold from a fractal run). I decked my character in all exotics in no time… in fact the main reason why I don’t roll some alts for fun is because I don’t want to level to 80 again, not because getting gear is any kind of a problem.

So yeah… you can get gold easily. The fact that people choose to pursue the absolutely most expensive vanity item in the game is not a sign of flawed game design, it is simply their personal choice.

As I said before, the above “solution” has only two outcomes.

1. Everyone and their dog and their dog’s fleas has a legendary.
2. The system is actually so hard skill-wise that 99% of players can’t even hope to get a legendary.

In either case much crying would ensue.

Of course it will end. The precursor prices will level out as soon as they hit the limit of what people are willing to pay for them, just as with any other market. Sans an occasional rich boy willing to blow thousands of real world dollars on gems→gold transactions, there is a limit as to how much you can pump up any price, no matter how desirable an item is.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Vol.5241:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Legendary weapons are promised to ‘evolve’ with the game so if you do all that work, it’s not wasted. THAT should be the main reason for wanting a Legendary, although the bling factor is just as important to me. Prestige is really just a nice to have. That being said I want to work for it to feel better about that prestige. I will value it more if it was hard to acquire.

I DO NOT however want to grind mindlessly for years to get one. That is bull kitten.
Clovers are account bound, why not make precursor as well (IF THERE IS A REASONABLE WAY TO GET ONE). You should not be able to just buy a Legendary.
You have to earn many of the gifts, why can’t we earn a precursor?

You can earn one. You buy one.

Buying is not earning. I do not think the market players and manipulators should control who get’s a Legendary.

Buying is not earning? Only if you bought your gold with your mom’s credit card. Look, right now there is really no skill involved in getting a legendary (and please, beating a 5-man easy-peasy dungeon is not skill). In fact, I’d say there’s more skill and thinking involved in TP flipping than in PvE grinding. Grinding, now that is something any monkey can do. Hey, bots can, see?

Gold is so easy to come by in this game, it’s not even funny. There are so many things you can do besides just grinding ‘till your fingers bleed to get gold. Just accept that it will take you several months of smart playing to get enough resources to get a legendary, and if that doesn’t suit you, wait until ANet rolls out that scavenger hunt (though I wouldn’t bet on the system being that much different from the current one).

JK Arrow.7102:

Gaudrath.6725:

Essence Snow.3194:

Gaudrath.6725:

JK Arrow.7102:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Acquiring a precursor through the MF is already insane grinding unless you are very lucky. I mean where do you get all those rares to throw in? Either from running dungeons for exotics(which are anywhere from 200-390 tokens) or farming mats to make rares or farm gold to buy rares off the TP. Regardless, unless you are just doing 1 try a day, it will require you grind. And how the hell can legendaries become more devalued than they already are? I mean for christ’s sake gold sellers sell em as well as being able to buy em off the TP.

Believe me, they can. As you said, the only thing preventing further devaluation is the precursors not being readily available after only a few months of grinding. But guess what – right now they totally are. Grind gold and get one… easy.

My personal opinion is that the precursors should be:

1. Account bound on acquire (no TP listing possible)
2. Awarded for completing an extremely difficult, multi-tiered, multi-skillset challenge. Something only a select few can accomplish via gaming skill. And I mean only a few. Like 1 in 300 people or something like that
3. Available via really, really low RNG as an alternative, because having luck in the world just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can guarantee you people would be complaining ten times as much as they do now though.

My question is why make legendaries so rare that only 1 in 300 people get em? I mean all they are is a skin. Who cares if someone else has one. I mean look at everything else in the game, everyone can get it and it’s an MMO where no one is actually a unique snowflake. I mean if you want to be semi unique, play an MMO that has hardcore raiding and join the top raiding guild and devote 8 hours a night to raiding. This game doesn’t have raiding vs casual so i’m guessing you want the legnedary to be the status symbol that differentiate the casual from the hardcore?

The very reason people want them is because they are not everywhere. You have many cool skins in the game, some arguably way more cool than legendaries, and yet you don’t see people clamoring about those. Why? Because anyone can get them with relative ease and there isn’t much of a prestige factor tied to them.

Make legendaries common and nobody will care. Make them common and actually wearing one will become cheesy and unwanted even. It’s like a Super syndrome… everyone wants to be Super – but when everyone’s Super, no one is.

People want legendaries because they have shiny pixels, footsteps, and swirly twirlies. They look different than other skins. Not just because they are rare. Oh, and the fact there is an achievement for it and an icon on the character select screen staring at you every time you log in.

And if everyone has Twillight, how different from other Twillights is it? It becomes a very shiny, very boring item nobody cares about. Rarity translates directly to value. Humans are like that. Prestige means exclusivity, the particle effects are there just to make it more obvious who has it and who doesn’t.

I was unaware the “prestige” meant exclusivity. I was more under the impression that is was admiration or respect for achievement or quality.

Nope, it isn’t. Prestige stems, basically, from having stuff other people don’t have. Doesn’t sound all noble and pretty, but that’s humans for you.

GW2 is a prime example. It takes literally NO skill whatsoever to get a legendary, and yet those items are highly wanted for their prestige value. Simply because they are hard to get and/or relatively rare.

That may be true for some people but it’s not true for all people. I buy things in MMO’s because I like the way they look, not because they are rare. In fact I’ve even considered just making an exotic whose skin I like better than the legendary. If not for the fact that legendary stats will be better eventually I would have made it already.

It is true for most people, which is why prestige exists as a concept in the first place. Some of us don’t care about that and we usually just pick what looks most appealing to us.
Most people do not function like that. The world would be a much different place if they did.

As Son of Elias said, earth as a name for soil is far older than Earth as the name for our planet. So it is the other way around, we call our planet Earth because we always called the ground we stand on earth.

In terms of elemental magic, earth stands for the “element” of soil, dirt and rock and pertain the quality of such. Soil is common to every continent, and has metaphysical properties, continents as such do not.

So we say “the element of Earth”, the same as we say “the element of Water”, where we do not mean a particular body of water, but water in a metaphysical sense.
“Element of Tyria” would make as much sense as “Element of Unending Ocean” or “Element of Camp Fire”.

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

Arnianor.5489:

Hi everybody,

I was wondering about the drop rate of precursor in the mystic forge. Do we have any official NUMERIC information on this topic ?
Not the common answer, the higher the level and the rarity, the highest your chance.
Since Christmas, I already threw over 1’000 rare daggers lvl 80 in the forge, and quite a few exotic as well: got nothing.
Using Magic Find runes, stuff, boons and so on didn’t help.
So let’s have a look at it. 1’000 weapons give 250 tries, 0 precursor. With 100% magic find bonus, is the drop rate really still below 1 over 250 ?

Magic find is, as far as i know, only influencing monster drops. Neither Mystic Forge results nor dungeon chests.

And don’t misunderstand drop rate. 1% doesn’t mean you get one on the 100th try. Some may need 50 trys a few unlucky 2500.

This. People do not understand what random number generators do. They do not have a fixed drop rate. 1% means that EACH time you get loot, there is one in a hundred chance that you will get that drop. The next time you get loot, there is again only one in a hundred chance you will get the item you want. That’s why some people luck out on their first try and some have to keep trying for months.

The reason behind this is that RNG makes it possible to keep the overall percentage of players who get the item steady and low. Other games are far more punishing with this – for example, WoW also has RNG, only this time it is concealed in the dice rolls in addition to drop rates.
Since GW2 doesn’t have loot rolling, and instead makes loot unique for every player, the drop rates have to be adjusted accordingly, which means much lower drop rates than in games with more traditional loot rolling system.

However, the funny thing is, in GW2 it still takes you a lot less time to get the items you want. Because you only have one layer of RNG to deal with, instead of a totally unpredictable factor of other players rolling for the same item (as anyone who played vanilla WoW, for example, can attest to).

Prices are getting hiked up because there are obviously players who are willing to pay that kind of cash. Precursors are being sold left and right despite their exorbitant price tags.

And ANet won’t cap prices because of listing taxes, which are excellent money sinks on their own.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Gaudrath.6725:

For those interested, I will be in Wayfarer hills offering Ice Bow services, 10s a pop. Get them while they’re cold! I also will be offering Premium Ice Bows (with 10 extra charges!) for an additional fee of 5s apiece.

You’re welcome to contact me about setting up a franchise, but my idea was clearly patented before you arrived on the scene…..

My fireballs are bigger than yours therefore I can do whatever I want. I also offer complimentary hot chocolate with my Ice Bows, hah!

For those interested, I will be in Wayfarer hills offering Ice Bow services, 10s a pop. Get them while they’re cold! I also will be offering Premium Ice Bows (with 10 extra charges!) for an additional fee of 5s apiece.

Those mobs do not drop loot. Tried to explain it to them but they were too busy mashing #1 button so I guess all their brainpower was depleted by that.

Essence Snow.3194:

Gaudrath.6725:

JK Arrow.7102:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Acquiring a precursor through the MF is already insane grinding unless you are very lucky. I mean where do you get all those rares to throw in? Either from running dungeons for exotics(which are anywhere from 200-390 tokens) or farming mats to make rares or farm gold to buy rares off the TP. Regardless, unless you are just doing 1 try a day, it will require you grind. And how the hell can legendaries become more devalued than they already are? I mean for christ’s sake gold sellers sell em as well as being able to buy em off the TP.

Believe me, they can. As you said, the only thing preventing further devaluation is the precursors not being readily available after only a few months of grinding. But guess what – right now they totally are. Grind gold and get one… easy.

My personal opinion is that the precursors should be:

1. Account bound on acquire (no TP listing possible)
2. Awarded for completing an extremely difficult, multi-tiered, multi-skillset challenge. Something only a select few can accomplish via gaming skill. And I mean only a few. Like 1 in 300 people or something like that
3. Available via really, really low RNG as an alternative, because having luck in the world just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can guarantee you people would be complaining ten times as much as they do now though.

My question is why make legendaries so rare that only 1 in 300 people get em? I mean all they are is a skin. Who cares if someone else has one. I mean look at everything else in the game, everyone can get it and it’s an MMO where no one is actually a unique snowflake. I mean if you want to be semi unique, play an MMO that has hardcore raiding and join the top raiding guild and devote 8 hours a night to raiding. This game doesn’t have raiding vs casual so i’m guessing you want the legnedary to be the status symbol that differentiate the casual from the hardcore?

The very reason people want them is because they are not everywhere. You have many cool skins in the game, some arguably way more cool than legendaries, and yet you don’t see people clamoring about those. Why? Because anyone can get them with relative ease and there isn’t much of a prestige factor tied to them.

Make legendaries common and nobody will care. Make them common and actually wearing one will become cheesy and unwanted even. It’s like a Super syndrome… everyone wants to be Super – but when everyone’s Super, no one is.

People want legendaries because they have shiny pixels, footsteps, and swirly twirlies. They look different than other skins. Not just because they are rare. Oh, and the fact there is an achievement for it and an icon on the character select screen staring at you every time you log in.

And if everyone has Twillight, how different from other Twillights is it? It becomes a very shiny, very boring item nobody cares about. Rarity translates directly to value. Humans are like that. Prestige means exclusivity, the particle effects are there just to make it more obvious who has it and who doesn’t.

I was unaware the “prestige” meant exclusivity. I was more under the impression that is was admiration or respect for achievement or quality.

Nope, it isn’t. Prestige stems, basically, from having stuff other people don’t have. Doesn’t sound all noble and pretty, but that’s humans for you.

GW2 is a prime example. It takes literally NO skill whatsoever to get a legendary, and yet those items are highly wanted for their prestige value. Simply because they are hard to get and/or relatively rare.

The game is relatively new and drop rates are still being tweaked. That said, it is relatively easy to make solid gold per hour, gold that can be turned into lodestones of one’s liking via TP.

Right now, focused farming (farming to get any specific item) is actually the worst way to get that item in any meaningful quantity. Farming for profit and then turning that profit into items you wish is much more productive.

But the OP said that he doesn’t like either direct farming nor trading on the TP, so that would be a problem.

All fine with me. I just want to ask everyone to tell me what they think when they see a player in full CoF armor. Do you think “oh man, look at that guy!”, or do you think “sheesh, another flame boy”?

I am betting it is the latter. Why? Because CoF is easy to get and is guaranteed. Nothing amazing about it, even if the armor skin is one of the coolest I’ve seen in a MMO.

Same with legendaries. If every player is guaranteed one, then pretty much every player will have one, and seeing someone with a legendary weapon will be the same as seeing someone in a CoF armor set. Shiny pixels are NOT the main reason these items are so desirable.

But hey, don’t get me wrong – I am a working man, and getting a legendary is out of my scopes because I don’t have the time. If I could get a shiny, I’d get a shiny… just keep in mind that when everyone has shinies, the skritt come. And wearing T1 iron swords will be considered cool because of the novelty factor.

So basically you find lodestone drops too low and would like them to be buffed?

Basically you just confirmed my initial statement that you would like a lodestone gnome to hand them out. Sorry, but that’s what it looks like. Your argument can be applied to virtually any hard to get item in the game, including precursors.

I am sorry, but with 1500 hours logged, you should have been able to gather enough gold to BUY way more than 3 lodestones. Hey, I need lodestones too! Do I plan on grinding insanely to farm them? Of course not, the drop rates are too low.

Which is why the TP is your friend. Play the game the way you like, find a way to get as much gold as you can from it, then use that gold to buy the stuff you need. That’s why the TP is there in the first place.

WvW for me. That is truly the only infinitely replayable content that never gets old. More features, the better.

dukefx.9730:

The usual response of someone unable to comprehend a simple sentence that states: I don’t want to play the market, never did, nor will, nor do I want to see others do it!

Fortunately nobody made you King. I suggest looking at things from a less self-centered perspective.

JK Arrow.7102:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Acquiring a precursor through the MF is already insane grinding unless you are very lucky. I mean where do you get all those rares to throw in? Either from running dungeons for exotics(which are anywhere from 200-390 tokens) or farming mats to make rares or farm gold to buy rares off the TP. Regardless, unless you are just doing 1 try a day, it will require you grind. And how the hell can legendaries become more devalued than they already are? I mean for christ’s sake gold sellers sell em as well as being able to buy em off the TP.

Believe me, they can. As you said, the only thing preventing further devaluation is the precursors not being readily available after only a few months of grinding. But guess what – right now they totally are. Grind gold and get one… easy.

My personal opinion is that the precursors should be:

1. Account bound on acquire (no TP listing possible)
2. Awarded for completing an extremely difficult, multi-tiered, multi-skillset challenge. Something only a select few can accomplish via gaming skill. And I mean only a few. Like 1 in 300 people or something like that
3. Available via really, really low RNG as an alternative, because having luck in the world just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can guarantee you people would be complaining ten times as much as they do now though.

My question is why make legendaries so rare that only 1 in 300 people get em? I mean all they are is a skin. Who cares if someone else has one. I mean look at everything else in the game, everyone can get it and it’s an MMO where no one is actually a unique snowflake. I mean if you want to be semi unique, play an MMO that has hardcore raiding and join the top raiding guild and devote 8 hours a night to raiding. This game doesn’t have raiding vs casual so i’m guessing you want the legnedary to be the status symbol that differentiate the casual from the hardcore?

The very reason people want them is because they are not everywhere. You have many cool skins in the game, some arguably way more cool than legendaries, and yet you don’t see people clamoring about those. Why? Because anyone can get them with relative ease and there isn’t much of a prestige factor tied to them.

Make legendaries common and nobody will care. Make them common and actually wearing one will become cheesy and unwanted even. It’s like a Super syndrome… everyone wants to be Super – but when everyone’s Super, no one is.

People want legendaries because they have shiny pixels, footsteps, and swirly twirlies. They look different than other skins. Not just because they are rare. Oh, and the fact there is an achievement for it and an icon on the character select screen staring at you every time you log in.

And if everyone has Twillight, how different from other Twillights is it? It becomes a very shiny, very boring item nobody cares about. Rarity translates directly to value. Humans are like that. Prestige means exclusivity, the particle effects are there just to make it more obvious who has it and who doesn’t.

Narkosys.5173:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Acquiring a precursor through the MF is already insane grinding unless you are very lucky. I mean where do you get all those rares to throw in? Either from running dungeons for exotics(which are anywhere from 200-390 tokens) or farming mats to make rares or farm gold to buy rares off the TP. Regardless, unless you are just doing 1 try a day, it will require you grind. And how the hell can legendaries become more devalued than they already are? I mean for christ’s sake gold sellers sell em as well as being able to buy em off the TP.

Believe me, they can. As you said, the only thing preventing further devaluation is the precursors not being readily available after only a few months of grinding. But guess what – right now they totally are. Grind gold and get one… easy.

My personal opinion is that the precursors should be:

1. Account bound on acquire (no TP listing possible)
2. Awarded for completing an extremely difficult, multi-tiered, multi-skillset challenge. Something only a select few can accomplish via gaming skill. And I mean only a few. Like 1 in 300 people or something like that
3. Available via really, really low RNG as an alternative, because having luck in the world just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can guarantee you people would be complaining ten times as much as they do now though.

My question is why make legendaries so rare that only 1 in 300 people get em? I mean all they are is a skin. Who cares if someone else has one. I mean look at everything else in the game, everyone can get it and it’s an MMO where no one is actually a unique snowflake. I mean if you want to be semi unique, play an MMO that has hardcore raiding and join the top raiding guild and devote 8 hours a night to raiding. This game doesn’t have raiding vs casual so i’m guessing you want the legnedary to be the status symbol that differentiate the casual from the hardcore?

The very reason people want them is because they are not everywhere. You have many cool skins in the game, some arguably way more cool than legendaries, and yet you don’t see people clamoring about those. Why? Because anyone can get them with relative ease and there isn’t much of a prestige factor tied to them.

Make legendaries common and nobody will care. Make them common and actually wearing one will become cheesy and unwanted even. It’s like a Super syndrome… everyone wants to be Super – but when everyone’s Super, no one is.

Um NO- the very reason Anet tells you and pushes you to get them that is why people want them. That is the reason. If Anet stopped pushing them like they did and removed a lot of the value for them they would be significantly easier to get.
Instead they push it as endgame and the only endgame with ascend worth grinding for hence the price.
Tell Anet to stop being a pusher and reward people for time and dedication and skill not rng or bank account.
Make it mean something then and only then will it be reduced in value. More intrinsic value=less gold value.

I don’t remember ANet telling me anything, or pushing legendaries on me. In fact, with the current lackluster selection I wish they made more of them so I might find something actually worth the effort if only for the bling factor.

Consider the social factors that come into play here. The only thing ANet did with the legendaries is give them special coloring and effects. That’s the bling factor. The much bigger factor is prestige… the fact that not everyone can get one. THAT is why everyone wants a legendary. It doesn’t give you an advantage, it just makes you stand out a bit more. It makes you special. Everyone wants to feel special. Thus everyone wants a legendary.

And those that have them (I am not one of them), don’t want to see everyone get one, because then they lose their prestige value. Simple as that. Players determine what has prestige and what doesn’t… not ANet. ANet just sets things up, it is up to the players to sort out what “is hot and what is not”.

Which is why that gargoyle staff (Final Rest?) would cost a lot more than Bifrost, even though it is only an Exotic. Prestige value derived directly from rarity.

Mungrul.9358:

Ye gods, why does it always come down to entitlement with people like you Gaudrath?
As it happens, no, I don’t want them just handed to me, but I’d like a method of acquisition that was fun rather than an abject chore.
Seriously, next time you’re about to post something along the same lines as the above, stop, think, and don’t.

You haven’t asnwered my question. What method would you prefer? You rule out PvE, you rule out PvP (karma), and you rule out trading.

I mean, that sounds to me like you don’t want to spend time and effort to get them. If I am wrong, I really am interested in hearing what kind of system you envision for getting lodestones.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Gaudrath.6725:

Then you approach the kind of percentages that currently exist with RNG, thus keeping legendaries rare and rewarding only those who are skilled enough.

Thanks for your comment.
Unfortunately I disagree with the quoted statement in that, with the current system, player skill has nothing at all to do with obtaining a precursor. It is pure luck based for most players, those unfortunate enough to enjoy the game content and not powertrade every minute played. The suggestion merely gives this luck based part of the legendary crafting process a hard cap.

I’ve also read through various posts you’ve recently made regarding precursors and it seems you feel very strongly about legendary weapon exclusivity. While I appreciate this and feel that many will agree that the legendary weapons system is severely flawed from a player skill perspective, it deserves a thread in its own right and it will not add anything to the topic being discussed here.

My statement was meant to say that RNG right now is keeping legendaries rare. Which it does. It doesn’t reward skill, if you wanted to reward skill, your system must be harsh enough so that the RNG maintained levels of rarity are not disturbed.

Reading other suggestions here, I get a strong feeling people just want handouts.

Do not agree as it would guarantee precursors. Guaranteed precursors imply that the ONLY obstacle to get them is time, which means down the road everyone and their dog will have a legendary.

Want a skill-based challenge?

That challenge needs to be:

1. Instanced. It is your skill that matters, not how many friends you got.
2. Insanely difficult. Think Mad King Clock tower x10 + soloing a legendary boss + time limit
3. Randomized, as in procedurally generated (basically the puzzle, and the way to solve it, has an infinite number of randomly assembled variations based on modular design). This means no online guides.

Then you approach the kind of percentages that currently exist with RNG, thus keeping legendaries rare and rewarding only those who are skilled enough.

I suppose you would like to have a lodestone gnome in the game that just gives you the lodestones if you ask nicely?

You already have multiple ways to get them. Farming, buying them from TP, trading karma for them (really nice for us WvW players) – what more do you want? If farming doesn’t appeal to you, and buying them for gold doesn’t appeal to you and getting them for excess karma doesn’t appeal to you, I am really curious as to what does.

@Sauzo, all true, so ANet can:

1. Just give up on legendaries and make them easily obtainable
2. Try and correct the damage already done by making the system harder, not easier.

And how exactly would the game benefit as a whole from cheaper precursors?

You want to talk game design, talk percentages. You MUST limit the availability of legendary weapons to a small percentage of people, for reasons stated earlier. And experience has shown that simply introducing time (as in, grind) as the only obstacle is not an obstacle at all.

dukefx.9730:

Yes, it is. It’s a parasitic behavior. It’s not difficult to play the market at all, even a monkey could do it, but it’s the most disgusting thing you can do in this game.

The usual argument of people who tried to play the market and failed miserably.

Sauzo.6821:

Gaudrath.6725:

Sauzo.6821:

Acquiring a precursor through the MF is already insane grinding unless you are very lucky. I mean where do you get all those rares to throw in? Either from running dungeons for exotics(which are anywhere from 200-390 tokens) or farming mats to make rares or farm gold to buy rares off the TP. Regardless, unless you are just doing 1 try a day, it will require you grind. And how the hell can legendaries become more devalued than they already are? I mean for christ’s sake gold sellers sell em as well as being able to buy em off the TP.

Believe me, they can. As you said, the only thing preventing further devaluation is the precursors not being readily available after only a few months of grinding. But guess what – right now they totally are. Grind gold and get one… easy.

My personal opinion is that the precursors should be:

1. Account bound on acquire (no TP listing possible)
2. Awarded for completing an extremely difficult, multi-tiered, multi-skillset challenge. Something only a select few can accomplish via gaming skill. And I mean only a few. Like 1 in 300 people or something like that
3. Available via really, really low RNG as an alternative, because having luck in the world just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can guarantee you people would be complaining ten times as much as they do now though.

My question is why make legendaries so rare that only 1 in 300 people get em? I mean all they are is a skin. Who cares if someone else has one. I mean look at everything else in the game, everyone can get it and it’s an MMO where no one is actually a unique snowflake. I mean if you want to be semi unique, play an MMO that has hardcore raiding and join the top raiding guild and devote 8 hours a night to raiding. This game doesn’t have raiding vs casual so i’m guessing you want the legnedary to be the status symbol that differentiate the casual from the hardcore?

The very reason people want them is because they are not everywhere. You have many cool skins in the game, some arguably way more cool than legendaries, and yet you don’t see people clamoring about those. Why? Because anyone can get them with relative ease and there isn’t much of a prestige factor tied to them.

Make legendaries common and nobody will care. Make them common and actually wearing one will become cheesy and unwanted even. It’s like a Super syndrome… everyone wants to be Super – but when everyone’s Super, no one is.

Well, if getting a Legendary is the only thing keeping those people playing, I say they’re going to leave anyway really soon.

RNG is fair because it is not biased. Everyone has a mathematically equal chance. Doesn’t matter if you are poor, rich, skilled or not, you have the same chance. The only thing making it more fair would be removing precursors and legendaries from the TP entirely, but yes, that would mess with ANet profits, and I can totally see why they would leave them on – they have a business to run.

And you want to keep precursors difficult to acquire because their rarity directly impacts the legendary rarity (which is why they are in the game in the first place).

Personally, if I get an AAA MMO to play sub-free and with no restrictions and the only price is that I can’t get a shiny sword, I say we need more of that!

Sauzo.6821:

Acquiring a precursor through the MF is already insane grinding unless you are very lucky. I mean where do you get all those rares to throw in? Either from running dungeons for exotics(which are anywhere from 200-390 tokens) or farming mats to make rares or farm gold to buy rares off the TP. Regardless, unless you are just doing 1 try a day, it will require you grind. And how the hell can legendaries become more devalued than they already are? I mean for christ’s sake gold sellers sell em as well as being able to buy em off the TP.

Believe me, they can. As you said, the only thing preventing further devaluation is the precursors not being readily available after only a few months of grinding. But guess what – right now they totally are. Grind gold and get one… easy.

My personal opinion is that the precursors should be:

1. Account bound on acquire (no TP listing possible)
2. Awarded for completing an extremely difficult, multi-tiered, multi-skillset challenge. Something only a select few can accomplish via gaming skill. And I mean only a few. Like 1 in 300 people or something like that
3. Available via really, really low RNG as an alternative, because having luck in the world just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I can guarantee you people would be complaining ten times as much as they do now though.

I find D/D is superior for roaming simply because it is more effective for dueling (when you inevitably run into other roamers). S/D unfortunately loses a lot in that field due to Tooth being slow and difficult to land. Phoenix is ok when used close range, but at longer ranges it just either misses due to being slow or is easily dodged. D/D also has more CC options, great for chasing people down.

In zerg fights, D/D is also a bit better due to all the instant AoE attacks, although S/D offers a bit more survivability since you can stay at range (even though I rarely stay in the zerg long enough to get hit much).

The big selling point of D/D is that all of its attacks are instant. Scepter just doesn’t offer that. I love it in PvE, it is my weapon of choice for that, but not so much in WvW.

Mesmer was fun for me at first, but then kinda grew boring due to lack of skills and combos and whatnot. I mean… with my ele not only I always have 20 skills to choose from, I can enjoy ranged combat, melee acrobatics, flashy effects, I can whip out a huge hammer if I feel like hammer time, I can play around with a bow or a sword, I can summon pets, zip around the battlefield like crazy or just stand there and take the hits (in PvE, of course).

Can’t see myself playing any other class chiefly because playing ele has spoiled me for options.

If I see players telling others off because they’re “ruining” their dodge farm, I’ll nuke that mob into the ground and then put them on my ignore list. They don’t deserve any better. This kind of selfish people, especially ones who let others die so that they can revive them, deserve no consideration whatsoever.

Makes you wish there was PK-ing in this game…

plasmacutter.2709:

Gaudrath.6725:

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

say that to the 20 pointer talent restorative mantras.

The heal happens on charge, not on release, which means you ONLY heal if you choose that.

Then ANET wonders why nobody does mantra healing builds.

The reason nobody does it is because healing others in this game is a “top-it-off” thing, not “heal-me-kittenmit” issue. Everyone can heal themselves, and the most effective heals are self-heals.

Condition removal is far more important if we talk about support.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

What they don’t get is:
1. Nobody wants the precursors “handed to them” as they claim. We want to earn it. What is the point if you just get something for nothing? That is why we are playing an MMO, for kitten’s sake.

Earn it how exactly? Think about it for a minute. If you are guaranteed a precursor after an X amount of effort, then those are being grossly devalued if that X is anything sensible.

If ANet makes it so that you have to grind for four years minimum to get one, then people would complain.

If ANet makes a solo, instanced skill challenge so difficult that only a tiny percentage of people can complete it, then people would complain.

Bottom line is, whatever ANet does in the future, they will keep the legendaries rare (and people will complain).
Either via RNG, insane grinding (unlikely), or impossible skill challenges, doesn’t matter. They will keep them rare or might as well just recolor them to orange, slap them on karma vendors and be done with it.

Mad.1932:

about the supply, there is a huge supply. The problem is there are exploiters that filled theyre banks with dusk and dawns when it was possible to obtain them for nearly nothing and now can control the market forever. All ANet has to do is Add a quest that requires the 3 final gifts to start to obtain the precursor and it would fix the whole mess

The supply is tiny. You have maybe a few hundred precursors, spread that out across several hundred thousand players, see?

Precursors are not a problem. People who feel they should be guaranteed one are.

You are not guaranteed to have means of acquiring a legendary, nor should you ever be. All anyone should be guaranteed of is the chance to get one if they play the game.

Guess what – we already have that. The only issue I have with the current system is that it is too impersonal and boring. But I definitely do not want to see precursors being handed out either, even though I have no legendary.

Gasoline.2570:

It just has nothing to do with being dedicated or skilled at the actual game, just how good you know your markets. It’s really sad the state anet went with these “legendary” weapons. On one hand you have a player who does dungeons, wvw, pve whenever hes on and plays the actual game, on the other you have a guy who just looks at the market and sees an oppoturnity and takes it. I mean this is how anet sees rewarding the player right now, “play our markets or forget your legendary”. It’s stupid and makes no sense to the people who actually play the game.

So the market is not part of the game now? Only skull bashing applies? Market manipulation is a sort of emergent minigame for those who know how to do it. Most of the rage we see on the forums stems from the fact that most people find that sort of thing too complicated. Of course, if someone is actually skilled at spotting opportunities and playing an in-game market, that doesn’t count, right. That’s not skill, right?

Tough cookies. Go bash skulls then and stop complaining.

And by the way… has it occurred to anyone that even though the precursor prices are hiked up due to market being controlled, the actual number of available precursors is really low? Even if all the precursors currently on the market and in possession of the market manipulators got released for free right now, it would be enough for just a tiny fraction of people who actually want to have one.

Why? Because ANet designed it that way. And that way it will stay. You can remove them from the market, you can do whatever you wish, but forget about them being handouts, simple fact. Legendaries are legendary because they are rare.

And for the record, I am all for creating close-to impossible and totally unfair gameplay skill challenges to test who gets a precursor and making them account-bound on acquire. Do note however, that this would completely and utterly prevent 98% of the playerbase from EVER getting one.

I don’t think people understand how fair and even RNG is… no matter how bad or good you are at the game, no matter what is your particular skillset, you have a chance of getting one. With the above, some of us would have NO chance whatsoever.

Not gonna happen. Again, what would happen when everyone is running around with a legendary in two months? There would be lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, that’s what. Especially from people who got them the hard way.

Just face it people, precursors are never going to be easy to get, nor are they ever going to be a guaranteed drop at the end of a grind.

There is no such thing as “long, hard road” in an MMO. You have a ton of teenagers and schoolkids with nothing but time on their hands, and they will ALL eventually own a legendary if the only obstacle is time.
And how legendary will the legendaries feel when every other player has one?

No, whatever ANet does, I can guarantee you one thing – the precursors will NEVER be a guaranteed reward. The closest they might make it is by creating a challenge system so fiendishly difficult that only a tiny percentage of the playerbase will even have a prayer of getting one via skill and effort. The rest can forget about it and just pray that RNG stays in as an alternative.

Why? Because it is all about controlling percentages. You guarantee something, and no matter how long it takes, if it is guaranteed people will grind and grind until they get it. RNG ensures that only a set percentage of players have the precursors and that only a set amount of precursors are available on the market.

Whatever new system ANet comes up with, will definitely keep those percentages and numbers in check or else they might as well give them out for free.

The game is not all about DPS, but the game is all about versatility. Take healing, for example. A traditional MMO warrior has very few, if any, means of healing themselves, therefore they need a dedicated healer to do it for them.

In GW2, everyone can support themselves in the traditional sense of making sure they don’t die, through active gameplay (dodging, self-buffing and self-healing).

What GW2 support is, is a force multiplier. This means everything from laying down group combo fields, AoE heals and debuff stripping, AoE buffing, projectile reflection, etc.
Instead of making sure your party stays alive, the support’s job is much more exciting – they make sure their party stays at peak efficiency. Instead of being reduced to the role of a healbot, you now can actually contribute to the fight in more ways than just healing.

This also includes damage. You have weapons, use them. Use everything you got, and then you and your party will all benefit from it.

People have to realize that playing support in GW2 means doing both healing/buffing AND damage at the same time. There is no reason to do only one thing when you can do them both.

If you know what you are doing, you don’t wait. They won’t. And what will you do? Attack a clothie? What if they are a necro or a bunker ele? Armor won’t help you.

3vs1, you either attack or flee immediately, and let the situation unfold as you go. You don’t ponder their fashion sense.

If you are a massive noob, you check out their armor first.
If you are a moderate noob, you check out their skill animations.

If you know what you are doing, you check that d**n class icon they have on display.

Totally support the OP.

And I think ANet will add this functionality when TESO comes out, since in that game any class will be able to wear any armor, stats and all, and ANet will want to compete at least visually.

People want to be guaranteed things. Unfortunately for them, whatever ANet does with precursors, they will never guarantee you can get them.

Otherwise everyone and their dog would have one.

He means for the S/D build, since fire is the only AoE in the scepter line worth mentioning.

Well, that’s the problem. You have to limit the % of people that have legendaries. Right now, they’re doing that via RNG.

If they added a surefire way to get them, then those would have to be account bound. Otherwise they’d just get farmed.

And INSANELY difficult. Something like soloing a boss with HotW levels of HP, massive damage, on a Mad King Clocktower type of arena, maybe even with a timer. That hard, to ensure only a select few can display such a weapon.

I somehow get the feeling we would see a lot more QQ on the forums then….

Name: Maelstrom
Description: on your back it looks like a simple staff made of very dark, gnarled wood with some shimmering silver runes on it running in a lengthwise spiral.

Effects:
When out, the staff acquires effects that vary depending on the wielder:

If wielded by an elementalist:
Fire – the staff bursts into flame trailing smoke
Air – the staff turns into a solid lightning with occasional arc of lightning curving to the ground
Earth – staff turns into craggy rock shaft with spinning pebbles and dust falling off
Water – staff turns into a shard of ice trailing fog and droplets of water

If wielded by a class other than the elementalist:
Necromancer – the staff turns into a shaft of darkness with an occasional flash of green light and shadowy wisps trailing off of it
Guardian – the staff turns into a pillar of bright light with godrays coming off, trailing golden-blue sparks
Mesmer – the staff turns into a purplish spatial distortion, similar in effect to the Anomaly.

For elementalists, these effects change as the elemental attunement changes.

So would you guys be happy if they introduced a way to get a precursor via, say, a solo combat challenge that is so hard only 5% of people attempting it have even a chance of ever winning it?
Even if it means that for those of non-godly skills (which includes you, me, and pertty much everyone) would have zero chance of getting one?