Guild Wars 2

Firmly on the “No” side. Perhaps the only time we may find ourselves in agreement! <3

I have a feeling ArenaNet might take this one to heart. I certainly could be wrong though.

Well, shrug I have done Arah without full exotic gear personally, and by the way, “knowingly gimping yourself with inferior gear” is a funny way to look at it when that dungeon existed before Ascended gear did. If anything getting all the Ascended slots for the purpose of doing Arah is over gearing for it. :P

As to WvW, the most legitimate complaints regarding Ascended gear lie here. I would argue that WvW is plainly designed to be wildly imbalanced from all perspectives, and thus a gear disparity is inherently unimportant in the end, but whatever. I can see it being frustating that you can be playing against characters with gear that you can’t earn by playing that mode, that’s a valid concern.

The thing is, you’re speculating kind of wildly about what things will be like when full ascended armor sets come. There are a lot of unanswered questions (Runes?) so it’s just too early to tell what’s gonna happen.

To your last point I’d simply say that Ascended items were added to the Laurel merchant inventory specifically because enough people didn’t like the fact that you could only earn them in fractals. Thus the “numbers go up” people who don’t like fractals can still climb some stairs. But again, ultimately the most benefit Ascended gear provides right now is far and away agony resistance. That makes a difference you can feel in high-level fractals, where the stat boost is negligible.

Aaaaanyway, yeah, on the major topic, I agree 100% that the missing stat lines should be added to the choices of rings and amulets.

soldier,

It’s funny, you both identified the reason that the gear does have a stat boost (to give players who crave vertical progression something to watch increase on their hero sheet) and the reason the stat boost is so meager (if these items were simply for fractals…), then jump 15 steps to conclude that Ascended gear will become mandatory.

I legitimately don’t get it. I try and I try and I can’t see it , and I know the game inside and out. Exotic gear isn’t mandatory right now. Level 80 gear isn’t mandatory right now. Furthermore, mandatory for what?

Regardless of what you speculate Ascended gear means, by far the most important thing about it right now is that it allows you to have Agony Resistance. That said, of course I absolutely agree that the missing stat combos should be added to the lineup of obtainable gear.

BoogerSammich.7189:

On top of that, gear capping a character is significant time investment. An investment that currently, many of us can not participate in because the top tier gear is not available in the stat configuration that we have heretofore invested so heavily in. This is unacceptable.

Are you saying that you want best-in-slot gear to be required and it’s unacceptable that the stat combo you desire is not available, or that you don’t want best-in-slot gear to be required?

I don’t know how you can possibly know what the percentage increase in damage output of an Ascended set will be when not a single piece of Ascended armor has been released yes, but fair enough. I figured people were thinking more along the lines of a gear check, “you must have this armor to continue” ordeal, rather than a “well now you can’t continue unless you can do more damage more quickly if you’re specced for it” scenario. My mistake.

It’s important that precision is more valuable at early levels than later levels because that’s a form of diminishing returns on a base stat but feel free to disregard that. You are right that you’ll have a hard time hitting the cap unbuffed and you shouldn’t try because that means neglecting other stats; you probably should be using sigil of accuracy if you need it, and what you said is exactly right about power being more valuable to stack than precision for pure damage. Obviously that means going for precision primary (stacking precision over power) is not advisable for pure damage.

Despite wading knee-deep into mix-maxing minutiae, my overarching point has still not been addressed: there’s no evidence that best-in-slot gear is or will become a limiting factor in this game; “required to continue playing,” to use the phrase originally provided.

Astralporing.1957:

what diminishing return on stacking stats? Most of them are pretty much linear, and of course some stat combos (power, prec, crit dam) ale multiplicative.

Armor (defense rating) itself, first of all. (Am I wrong to assume that most of the hysteria comes from people thinking the base armor stat increase of Ascended armor would be the most significant boost?)

Adding 100 armor for:
•a soldier with 2127 armor gives 4.49% damage reduction
•an adventurer with 1980 armor gives 4.81% damage reduction
•a scholar with 1836 armor gives 5.17% damage reduction

Since toughness is a linear increase in armor, of course it also applies to this:

Converting damage reduction to equivalent toughness gain-
The conversion will be done assuming a 2600-armor character. The formula is A*R/(1-R).
50% = 2600 toughness
33% = 1300 toughness (Protection)
25% = 867 toughness
20% = 650 toughness
15% = 459 toughness (Signet of Judgement with perfect insriptions)
10% = 289 toughness (Signet of Judgement)
5% = 137 toughness

While simple critical chance is plainly additive, precision influences your critical chance such that diminishing returns also apply while leveling:

Critical Chance = Round((precision – 831.36) / 21.16)
At higher character levels, it takes an increased amount of precision to add 1% to the chance of hitting critically (since the formula depends on the square of one’s level):

3.16 points at L20
7.24 points at L40
13.24 points at L60
21 points at L80

So in this case precision is sort of more valuable versus straight +Critical Chance the lower level you are.

Edit: I should have clarified…

Critical Chance is a max of 100% no matter how you get there, so once you get to 80%, the Fury boon causes each additional point of Critical Chance through precision to be erased in practical terms. And getting that high through stats alone means you’ll be sacrificing a lot of other areas including power. Essentially once you get to the point where fury would put you at or over 75% critical chance, it’s typically not that worthwhile to keep stacking precision, unless you aren’t using fury (and you should be if you’re going for high crit).

^Could you elucidate briefly on what “being productive” would mean to you within the game? Thanks!

Also, you forgot to discredit the karma vendors in Orr while ruling out all the potential ways to get gear.

Dante.1508:

Wait until they add all the rest of Ascended in then you’ll see the power curve, its small now because we only have trinkets and backs…

Can’t wait till Armor and Weapons get dropped on us, will they take two years to get and another legendary grind..

The game was fine before all this was added and the community was less divided..

Time will tell, I guess. I flatly reject the notion that there’s ever going to be a point where you need best-in-slot items, or even 80 exotics in every slot, to participate in the game’s highest echelon of content. But you may be right, I just don’t think there’s any evidence that you are yet- literally none.

All that’s happened regarding the acquisiton of ascended gear since it was added to the game is that it’s become easier to get over time (more methods added, existing methods made easier). I hope you can admit that.

morrolan.9608:

There is also the fact that anet did promise that top level stats would be available without or with minimal grind. They have broken that promise. The laurels are a grind even if its not difficult.

In all seriousness, and assuming that by “top level stats” you mean “literally best-in-slot items,” on what are you basing this claim? When was this promise ever made? Think about what you’re actually stating….

This is the quote I see bandied about all the time:

If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game.

It absolutely boggles my mind that people think this spirit has been violated.

First of all, a thousand hours represents roughly my entire playtime since launch, the majority of which actually came before Ascended gear was added to the game.

I have 5 pieces of Ascended gear. In a week or less I’ll have another with my amulet.

Second, of all, the description offered there absolutely lines up with Legendary weapons, which require so much time and effort as to be totally unrealistic to acquire for most players. Lo and behold, legendary weapons are not a single statistical point higher than their exotic counterparts.

And finally… regardless of how hard or easy or grindy or not-grindy it is to get Ascended stuff… “best-in-slot” gear is nowhere remotely close to necessary in this game. I wish the concept that it was would die and never rear its ugly head again :’[ It is ludicrously easy, trivially easy, compared to other MMOs, to get the gear necessary to compete at endgame.

People who only play WvW have a more legitimate argument at how their enjoyment might be affected but I won’t get into that.

I implore you to look at the big picture! If GW2 actually is anti-casual, it will fail almost as a matter of course. I suppose we’ll just see what happens.

I wouldn’t mind getting some clarification on your claims there, if you have the chance.

You say that “in a vertically progressing game you either tread the past of the power curve or you stop playing the game.” I wholeheartedly agree. There are hundreds of these games on the market; we don’t have to namedrop any, I’m sure you have some in mind right now. In those games, it is the basis for the motivation to play. The sense of reward for time invested comes as a result of ever-increasing numbers on a stat screen.

Thus the concern is that GW2 will become that sort of game. While that might well sound like a legitimate concern, I haven’t seen anyone come close to explaining how it is that sort of game now, or what evidence there is that it will ever become that kind of game (let alone do so in the near-term).

If I read you correctly, you concede that the VP afforded by Ascended gear is insignificant at present but have no doubt that it will, at some point, become significant- required to “continue playing the game.” Is that correct?

Seeing as 40g = $0 I think your “bravo” is best interpreted as though you were being serious!

Haha it’s not that I expect to succeed in convincing anyone who’s actually taking the time to argue on these boards, but if anyone lurking and happening into this thread got the impression that they really were being forced to grind for gear took the time to read it, it was worth typing up. :P

Milamber.3184:

sigh So tired of these people who scream “entitled” bla bla bla…

Its like the new “u mad?”

The next time your Electricity, Water, Cable or Internet Connection has issues and you are told nothing is wrong, dont you dare complain about it. There will be no entitlement hypocrisy from you.

This is my favorite analogy ever.

Colin and co., keep up the good work.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes. good luck completely gearing (which includes amulets) two chars in two weeks

You can “completely gear” two characters in about 15 minutes.

The circular path that these discussions follow always strikes me as so peculiar, because they all seem to boil down to the idea that “gearing up” your character means “obtaining a best-in-slot item for every slot.” Why? Is it other games that reinforced the idea that this was necessary? It wasn’t something that I considered particularly important even before Ascended gear was added. First of all, it’s not really cost effective! Lots of level 80 exotic pieces are outrageously overpriced on the TP considering the diminishing returns on stacking stats.

We talk about Ascended gear like it’s corrupting ArenaNet’s vision of a skill-driven game focusing on horizontal progression, while suddenly forgetting what an actual gear treadmill honestly looks like. It’s almost as though someone has been spreading around the rumor that equipping that final piece of best-in-slot gear, finally putting on that Ascended amulet you’ve been required to grind for, unlocks some secret part of the game that you can’t reach otherwise. But such a rumor would be best described as an outright lie.

There’s no individual piece of content in the game that requires Ascended gear. There’s no piece of content in the game in the game that requires level-80 Exotic gear. There’s no piece of content in the game, quite frankly, that requires level 80 Rare gear, especially when it comes to accessories, as my Mesmer still wearing a laughably old blue amulet can attest. Nothing- nothing is tuned to require a specific threshold of gear to be able to complete. It’s simply not that type of game.

I want to stress that this is true even for high-level fractals. You do stand a much better chance of surviving if them if you have Ascended gear, but this is because of the infusions that provide Agony Resistance, and not because of the stat increase. Indeed, thinking that the stat boost of an ascended piece will help you out noticeably in high-level fractals- rather than the needed improvement in skill, forethought and survivability- will get you killed rapidly.

That leaves WvW, where the rather more legitimate complaint comes in that you’re going up against other humans on uneven footing. But I’d counter that WvW was designed to be, at all times, wildly unbalanced in any individual encounter. It’s not meant to put players on an even playing field. Even so, I will indeed be happy when WvW-only players get their method of acquiring Ascended gear.

My overarching point is that when someone says “you don’t need Ascended gear” they’re not trying to pull one over on you; they’re telling the truth.

I just don’t understand where the idea came from in the first place, and just on top of that it really is not particularly taxing to get if you do want it- 10 daily runs of Fractal level 10 for a ring of your choice, with a chance for an extra one each time. It only gets easier from there. Is doing your daily and monthly considered too much for casual players who wish to pursue an ascended piece? Can the argument really be reduced to “I have 6 level 80s and it’s going to take me 6 times as long to get them all the best gear in the game?”

Anyway, if anyone reading and scared that they omg need ascended gear this is a grindy nightmare must get it would like a more detailed explanation as to how GW2 does not feature a gear treadmill in any real sense, I can give one with shiny stats and examples and what have you; feel free to PM me.

Indeed, there is absolutely no evidence that your DPS affects the quality or rate of your drops, to anyt degree.

Doing enough damage is the only way to ensure that you get loot credit, though. It would be nice if reviving or removing boons during a fight counted toward the loot credit threshold.

As it stands soloing a Champion absolutely should get you a loot roll 100% of the time because you will have loot credit for that kill by definition. This is not working as intended at present, but hopefully fixed in one week!

Dra Keln.2015:

I’d like to takes moment to congratulate Beast on his excellent taste. I assume kaylee was to be an engineer?

This!

Bet she was kinda dreamy, too…

Habanero.3694:

Thanks for the responses.

I really do enjoy the elementalist class, especially since we can switch out to different attunements, giving us many different skills to use, even while in combat. I think I have that down pretty well.

I just ran an exploration dungeon with my guild this afternoon, and it was a total blast. I guess from reading this thread, that I should adjust the way I play, which will allow me to be involved in the aspects of the game I enjoy, then do some of the other things in-between world events and dungeon runs. Trying to grind out levels by exploration and completing hearts was getting old as a primary way to gain experience.

I just want to take a moment and commend this post.

Instead of responding that you were locked into your style of play and insisting the game accomodate it, you’re willing to try out adjusting that play and seeing if it enhances your enjoyment.

This is the ideal approach to getting the most out of the game. Do whatever seems fun to you at the pace that seems fun to you- if something doesn’t feel fun to you, don’t just keep doing it in the mindset that you’re missing something and the game should compensate- try something else!

As you may have surmised, explorable mode dungeon runs are the best source of XP in the game. They also provide you with tons of gold (eat Raspberry Peach bars when you get high-level enough!) and the dungeon tokens you’ll eventually be able to put toward gear.

You can mix it for your remaining 20 (19?) levels with crafting, running about the open world doing hearts/events, Fractals, WvW and even straight exploration (try getting some waypoints and vistas in an area 10+ levels above you!).

I’m leveling an elementalist right now too. Great class, so much to manage at once!

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Quick Mouse.7635:

No, it generally becomes easier the more characters you have since dailies are character specific. Meaning you can do the daily multiple times a day!

This is 100% false.

achievement progress is account bound.

He was clearly referring to the fractal daily tier rewards- which are indeed character bound.

You have to level up each character individually into each tier, but if you’re trying to gear up your alts with ascended stuff in the first place, you’ll want to do this anyway.

I actually haven’t seen any indications that any content will be tuned with the assumption that people have a full set of ascended gear, nor can I possibly imagine this occurring unless the acquisition of a full set of ascended gear became markedly easier- and I mean way easier, such that it would be easier to get than exotics are to get currently.

Many people seem to be operating under the assumption that current “endgame” content is tuned for a fully-geared level 80 exotic/ascended player. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Content in-game appears to be more-or-less tuned around the stat base provided by Rare gear, and while it may seem counter-intuitive, please believe me that this includes even Fractals.

By this I mean that, while yes, high-level fractals necessitate the use of Ascended gear, it’s because of the infusions/Agony Resistance and not because of the stat boost. Put another way, high level fractals aren’t tuned around needing higher gear stats but around need more AR. The stat increase is a bonus provided by the hard-earned gear in question.

To your point about having encounters where you “just barely won,” I want to stress both that playing with slightly more or less skill at that moment could have changed the encounter into “comfortably won” or “just barely lost,” and more importantly, that this will absolutely still be the case even if you have a character filled to the brim with best-in-slot gear.

For those that only wish to ever play WvW I can concede that it’s a legitimate complaint since they are being matched up against other human players competitively. I would contend that WvW is inherently designed to be wildly unbalanced, but that’s really neither here nor there.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Sito.6352:

Arekai.5698:

Anet also said they wouldn’t add gear treadmill.

There isn’t. Ascended and exotic gear differ maybe 5%. Hell, rare gear is completely fine to run dungeons etc with.

No it isn’t.

And you give up traits, runes and sigil slots for a 5% increase.

Wait what? How is rare not fine to run dungeons with?

You can get rings from laurels, daily chest drops, and pristine fractal relics.

Your daily Tier 2 fractal chest (10-19) contains a pristine fractal relic.

You can obtain more than one daily chest per day (so if you have fractal level 30, 3 pristine relics per day).

Anyone who requires ascended gear for a dungeon run (in any respect other than desiring AR for high-level fractals) is not desirable to run a dungeon with in the first place.

Ascended gear has indeed only been made easier to get over time so far. I see only evidence that this trend will continue rather than reverse, despite what you may see a portion of the playerbase claim.

Oh, I know for sure it’s irrelevant. I have some fairly fleshed-out theories on the interaction between and disproportionate representation of the vocal minority versus the silent majority. I witnessed an almost eerily similar trajectory playing GW1 from the beta onward and seeing most of my quiet predictions come true while the loud and passionate doomsaying fell by the wayside (until the next thing to speculate wildly about came around the bend).

Also yeah, I’m 13 laurels away (will be 3 away once I salvage like 30 more things) from an amulet and I didn’t ever specifically focus on “grinding for it.” Actually, the laurel merchant (and depending on the day, crafting) are the only daily tracks that I didn’t regularly complete without realizing I was close to doing so. They’re pretty meager requests. The whole “choose your own adventure” aspect coming in 8 days strikes me as pretty generous. :P

Remember when Subject Alpha was twice as hard and gave you 1/3 as many tokens? :P

What, you think there’s a chance people would complain if Legendaries were suddenly weaker than easily-obtained exotics?

Without any idea of what the future holds, this is essentially the last thing you’ll ever have to worry about.

Er… yeah, I don’t have any sense of recurrent identities on these board. LOTS of people post here, sorry! Although, it is basically empirical that negative posts will occur ~10x more frequently than positive ones in an arena of this nature.

Gw2lfg is actually fantastic, the fact that dungeons are cross-server and you can leave/read comments about the run eliminates any potential issues (“But you don’t have berserker’s gear!?!!”) with finding a bad/undesired group, and makes the entire experience quick and easy. I’ve literally never spent more than 15 minutes to find a full group and almost all of the runs composed of gw2lfg teammates went well.

Guild runs are always preferable, but it’s a great resource. ANet would literally need to do nothing but provide an in-game HTML hook to the gw2lfg interface and its work would be done.

Who cares if dungeons have been shown to destroy communities by allowing the worst of the worst players in any community to demand things like dps meters and gear check to discriminate.

I think you may well be missing the myriad benefits of the system.

GW2LFG lets those players group with each other to their hearts’ content, without bothering you. Skip listings that say “must be warrior/have DPS gear” or “only full speed zerg runs” and look for (or create) ones that say “no skipping/fighting all,” “any classes welcome,” “first time,” etc.

I have no tolerance for “you must be [x] to get in group” mentality and I still use gw2lfg all the time if I can’t fill up a guild run. By and large the players I’ve met have been a delight to group with.

Tolmos.8395:

So far only 3 of the ascended items have been introduced and they require between 20-60 days to get all 3. So I imagine when the new ones are introduced, the amount of time to get them will be joyous.

The 10%+ difference in stats between exotics and ascended gear has been just as horrid as everyone expected it would. While the 3 items available so far don’t make much of a difference on their own, it has become apparent to almost everyone (minus 2 posters above me) that the full set will be quite a leap from the current stats of exotic gear.

And yes, despite what one would consider common sense, the stats still affect the world outside of fractals… including WvW.

However, one change has happened in Forums at least- Ascended gear grinders have begun whining right alongside the ascended gear haters at the realization that yes, a level cap increase is coming and yes, this means all their gear grinding is pointless and they’ll get to do it all over again. Looking at some of the “Do you want a level increase?” threads and seeing an overwhelming “No” from both sides at least shows some small semblance of mutual understanding can be reached.

So yes, it is painfully obvious the treadmill was introduced. Grind grind grind to get exotics. They introduce ascended gear. Grind grind grind to get ascended gear. They’ll raise the level cap. Start over grind grind grinding to go back up to the ranks to ascended gear. And the only guarantee we have in all this is that no new tiers will be added in 2013. They were quite specific on that.

So… I hope you like grinding!

Just to be clear- your interpretation of what has occurred is that you are correct, and almost everyone playing agrees with you except for two people who posted right above you?

I did the Crimson Plateau JP in Diessa yesterday when I happened to be nearby. Fun stuff, especially the big jumps.

My fun starts after I finish my dailies and running all paths in TA. That’s when I hit “Log out” and the fun begins.

If I might ask, why are you still playing at all?

AcidicVision.5498:

Ascended items offer a small stat increase over exotics. They do not get normal upgrades and can only be infused, which is a +5 bonus to a single stat.

I agree with your whole post, and I just wanted to make this one note:

The special infusions you’re referring to (with the +stat boost) are literally the items with the worst value of anything in the entire game. The cost vs. benefit is abysmal. Seriously, do not spend anything on getting one of those unless you are so hilariously rich that you can obtain anything that you want without hesitation. A 75 relic simple infusion is an infinitely better option.

I imagine they’ll be added eventually. There’s a sort of “progressive cap” (referred to above) for Fractals in that there’s a “max AR” you can achieve at any given point in the game’s lifespan, and ArenaNet definitely wants to keep this number in mind.

I will say this (though you won’t like it): the specialized infusions, the ones with AR and a stat boost, are literally the worst value of any item in the entire game. The mat/gold investment compared to stat increase is downright laughable, and pales in value to a 75 relic simple infusion.

In your case- even if they did add the infusion recipe to the game later- I’d just stick with that infusion since you spent so much on it, and try to make up the AR elsewhere.

Wouldn’t it make sense that an item that is not found in FotM would have nothing to do with a FotM specific mechanic? If they want people with infused amulets, they can add them to FotM.

Makes perfect sense. I imagine the eventual patch that adds infusion recipes for them would add them to the relic merchant in FotM.

I hate the concept of a gear treadmill and will quit without hesitation if one is introduced.

However… please note that this has not happened yet to any extent whatsoever.

Ascended items are cool to work torward, they have cool names and icons and I very much like Agony as a mechanic (especially the “earn resistance by proving you don’t need it” aspect, reminds me of more hardcore RPGs like Demon’s Souls). The boost to stats they provide is a nice bonus, I suppose; I’d prefer it wasn’t there, because I liked the clearly-marked stat ceiling, but when I look at the game in total it barely has any impact.

The stat increase from a piece of ascended gear is pretty darn meager. It’s certainly nowhere near enough to make the difference in any PvE encounter, at all, nor will it compensate for bad play, nor does it gate you from any content. There’s an argument to be made that it skews the balance of WvW and can’t be earned in WvW, but WvW is also an inherently unbalanced game mode by design and the impact is almost surely negligible.

Essentially, I saw Ascended gear as a nice shorter-term goal for my characters to work toward when compared with a legendary, and I now have a back piece and two rings for my main, one from a drop and one from 10 pristine relics, and another dropped ring for one of my alts.

In conclusion, I don’t feel like the addition of Ascended gear to the game brings the game anywhere near the catastrophic road to endless gear progression that so many on these forums believe that it did. You are- at least for the moment- free to completely ignore it and go on doing whatever you elsewise planned to do with no disadvantage.

Based on your gaming experience and your previous description of your trouble in open-world content, you may need to just spend some time focusing on the core gameplay skill you need to improve and honing your class build. I was at first approaching your complaints in the vein that you were something of a casual gamer. But you should be able to take on content 3-4 levels below you very easily at level 60, and be able to adequately face content 5-10 levels above you with skilled play, and get tons of XP doing it. Almost every dynamic event except for the massive Meta Events does scale appropriately to be able to be completed by a single skilled player.

Do you feel like you have a good grasp of dodging, AoE timing for different enemy types, your self-activated skill combos, and your trait build? Have you been keeping your gear up relatively well?

Unless your complaint really boils down to “the zones are too big and stuff isn’t closer together,” your issues might well be solved by checking out a brand new zone at or above your level and honing your skills.

At level 60, you have access to 4 dungeons. The first dungeon is run with inhuman frequency and you could level from 60 to 80 just doing that one if you so chose.
Every zone in the game has at least 12 hearts (except those that have none).
If the zone you’re in has too few players for your preference at the time, try a quick guest-hop over to another server. I believe Tarnished Coast is the unofficial “guestination” for this concept.
Doing content 3-4 levels below you is roughly equivalent to doing content at your level or 3-4 levels above it. Doing content 10+ levels below you will feel substantially easier and still get you very relevant XP.

It is a critical design decision that not all areas in every zone are marked by roads. The “running around for 30 minutes only to discover you cannot reach an area” is the exception rather than the rule. Usually, you can get to any area that appears reachable, even if it takes some clever jumps or workarounds. Also, many events do lead you to previously unexplored areas.

Hope this helps with some of your concerns!

Mine on this list (sorry if covered):

-Move Fractal Transit Query dialog to upper right
-“Pick up bundle while moving and keep running straight” bug
-Deposit dungeon tokens <3
-Mark minipets as “do not deposit/always-out”
-Display guilde MOTD on login (it’s basically useless for now)
-Sticky daily/monthly achievment trackers (pin open or closed)

I believe there’s no “active” trigger (that is, a step in in the chain is merely kicked off by the invisible timer).

That said, if you’re trying to farm him, just have a nice guest-hop to another server if he’s really not spawning where you’re at. Cheers!

Aesthetically it was awesome but mechanically it was pretty disappointing. So much pressing 2.

:o

One of my most desired features since launch.

A masterstroke to make a part of this update. Awarding some laurels of my own now.

I think the Largos are pretty awesome so I shall put the tally at 2-1 against.

Yeah, makes sense. +1

Fractals do not count as a dungeon; there have been monthly fractals run as a seperate task in previous months.

I know at least two peeps that really do want that darn endless cat tonic

Assyrian.4827:

Finaly someone who realy understand what is wrong with GW2
+1.

I don’t expect this to have any impact on your view, but I want to make a brief point…

While EasyModeX is more than entitled to his complaints and you’re more than entitled to agree with him, my fervent hope is that ArenaNet does not listen to or alter the game around them.

Changing the game to accomodate the things that bother players like you would be unwise from a developmental standpoint- counterintuitive as that might seem. I stand with the overwhelmingly content silent majority playing this game, and who will continue to do so- it makes much more sense to design based around what they want, retaining them and me, with the unfortunate tradeoff that players like you might get frustrated enough to abandon the game and move onto something else.

It sucks to have any player stop playing a game because they want it to be different, but it’s important to understand the sort of dynamics at play here.

CureForLiving.5360:

Psykotik.2691:

Too little too late.
They need to listen to the community and produce what the community wants.

Yes because the community speaks with a clear and consistent single voice, always remembering to keep in mind that ANet only has so much time and money to throw at every request and fully keeping in mind the technical complexity that some of these requests will entail.

;)

I’m confused a bit by “too little too late.” I suppose “too little so far” would make sense if you really don’t believe there have been enough content additions by now (in which case, oh man the expectations), but what would give anyone the impression that roughly 6 months out was “too late” for anything?

silvermember.8941:

They did it by doing monthly which gives 10, but he doesn’t want to do the monthly because he hate dungeons. to some degree I agree, but 5 dungeons can be done in 2 hours which is what I did and found them fun enough to now actively trying to do them every day. I had avoided them since release.

That’s more or less irrelevant, isn’t it? It doesn’t take 30 days just because he in particular is unwilling to do the (largely reasonable for the course of a couple days or a week) things it would take to obtain it in less…

Fractals are definitely the overall best way to get globs, though. Not the fastest (that’d be buy n’ salvage, or just buy outright at a massive loss), but you earn gold/relics/pristines simultaneously alongside the loot drops, and get a chance for an instant piece of ascended gear once per tier per day (after tier 1).

Raine.1394:

I actually chose my words carefully and said what I believe to be the truth. Name me a grindy game where you grind thirty days to get one item in one slot. I now have 8 level 80 characters. To have them equipped with max level gear, that’s what, eight months for one slot out of how many slots are we grinding gear for?

Should I respond to your “you don’t really need the item to play the game” here or should I wait your you to state it?

First, you understand that costing 30 laurels does not mean that you have to play for 30 days, right? People who have attained every laurel so far will able to get theirs tonight after the daily- that’s 18 days.

Second, there’s an extreme assumption that eight months from now, the only options to get ascended amulets will be the same as they are now, and that obtaining laurels will be possible only at the same rate they are now. I don’t know why you’d think that. Ascended gear has only been made easier to get over time already. This trend will continue.

Third, the language you used really implies that an Ascended amulet is the only type of item in the game that can occupy that slot. Surely you will agree that you can obtain an exotic amulet in less than a day, correct?

Fourth, I would appreciate your response to the speculative point you offered. I have yet to see a compelling answer for it and I wouldn’t mind hearing your perspective.

There are 20 slot bags as well, just to add to the suggestions. :P

“It all requires playing PvE”

If that’s what your complaint boils down to, it’s valid if not meshing particularly with the game’s design. Playing WvW alone is definitely not a good consistent source of gold (though the event rewards are the best in the game). If “playing normally” means WvW for a few hours every other day to you, then it will indeed take much longer to achieve things that require a lot of gold by playing normally.

It sounds like you’d vastly prefer WvW to utilize the sPvP schema of instant parity, which is not how it works and understandably disconcerting to a certain type of player. I wouldn’t mind a new static tier of three worlds competing with each other in WvW that allow you to create instant 80, max-stat characters like you get in PvP.

In essence, if all you want to do is WvW, you will indeed need to venture outside your comfort zone to obtain more gold.

Holy buh-wowza. O.O

Sell some copper, man!

Vayne.8563:

EasymodeX.4062:

Vayne.8563:

Right and Anet said all along, it was never intended for WvW to be balanced.

WvW was never supposed to be a fair fight with 5v5s or 10v10s or equal numbers or exact equal conditions.

However, it is supposed to be generally balanced without absurd barriers to entry.

Let’s say that 12% of the people on one server have it and only 8% on another. That doesn’t mean at any given time, the server with less won’t have more people on that have ascended gear.

You’re still making excuses.

WvW should simply use the sPvP ruleset. It is, after all, a PvP game mode.

Failing that, my gear in WvW should be up-leveled to ascended automatically.

Failing that, WvW should not be affected by PvE gear stat creep at all (e.g. make ascended gear have the agony gating stat without any change to normal stats).

Failing that, kitten you.

Those who lose arguments often resort to personal insult. But since I’m notoriously hard to offend that hardly matters.

In YOUR opinion WvW should follow SPvP rules, but I see WvW as a cross between PVe and PvP. After all, you need it for your world completion. It still has vistas and gathering. It has jumping puzzles. This sets it apart from traditional PvP. It was DESIGNED not to be balanced. If you think it should, well that’s okay. You’re entitled to your opinion.

But I seriously doubt your opinion will change the way the game was designed.

Your view of WvW is precisely how ANet envisioned it as well. With the outliers (people who believe you shouldn’t even have to go through the leveling process to get to 80 for WvW) having still attempted to play it as though it was a hardcore, balanced PvP offering.

It’s clear to me EasyModeX would simply prefer another game :-/

However, it is supposed to be generally balanced without absurd barriers to entry.

:-[
There are no, literally zero, barriers to entry. You can play WvW at level one with nothing but your autoattack unlocked.