Guild Wars 2

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

Fractals best loot? AHAHAH! please, Im laughing so hard it hurts.. I imagine for a small percentage of the population who get rares and exos like fraking candy from fractals sure, but for the majority of us, the fractals are absolutely horrible for rares or any loot in general.

And then there are those of us who tilt the other way, Hell lately i’ve been LUCKYYYY if i break 1g from a 20-30+ fractal, hell most of the time i barley reach 50s..

while being stuck watching 1 player linking a rare after rare after exotics after lodestone.

I don’t know about the loot system in general, but it most definatly is broken in fractals.. Its always the same person who ends up getting considerably more or less loot..

The most amount of rares I have gotten from fractals these last 2 weeks have been 3 rares, not one of them was from the chests, they all dropped of mobs.

On the other hand im getting a kittenload of utterly useless condensed mist.

You may laugh all you wish. Fractals have the best drop rates for rares and exotics of any content in the game. This is not my opinion or anecdotal conjecture. They are a mediocre source of gold at best. In the post of mine you quoted I gave an example of a much better, more efficient and more consistent source of gold.

Using your own experience to justify anything that has to do with random drops is a poor idea. I’m sorry that you have had bad luck in fractals; but that is what it was.

The containers of condensed mist items are used in all of the Mystic forge reciped related to ascended/infused gear.

so they average about 1g for 1+ hour of work.. about 1/10 of what you can get.. how is that anywhere near the best way of getting globs?

That said, my average is much lower then 2-3 rares sadly.

He was talking about selling the items on the TP for silver. If you use a master or BL salvage kit you have a chance of more than one glob per rare or exotic item. There is no better way to acquire rares and exotics for this purpose than by playing fractals (buying the cheapest options on the TP is a faster route but you pay for the convenience rather than earning money as you would playing fractals).

Again, it sucks that you’ve had poor drops in fractals on average and I’m sorry. But why you think there’s any more to it than you simply having had poor drops on average… that’s where you lose me.

Dante.1508:

Hawkian.6580:

Dante.1508:

Heijincks.9267:

Kandrick.8054:

So without a loot rule change I think it will soon be a dead game.

Is loot seriously that super important enough that bad drops means GW2 is dead?

Yes.

Does anyone else feel like GW2 is quite simply not a loot-driven game?

If anyone out there considers the GW2 loot to be this much of an issue (and especially if you also disliked Diablo 3), I wanna take a moment and plug Path of Exile. It’s completely free.

If Guildwars 2 isn’t loot driven to you what is it?

If you’re really asking…

-I find the combat extremely enjoyble from a mere gameplay perspective. I play with a controller and I like to do anything in-game that involves combat. It’s fun.
-Exploring the world is one of the biggest factors for me. I’ve found a lot fo hidden stuff just by poking around and going “I wonder if I can get there!” I’m sure I haven’t seen half of it yet, either.
-Ever since I learned there were jumping puzzles in the game I was ecstatic. I love dexterity challenges and I’m on my way to completing them all, and I’ll attack every new one ANet adds to the game.
-Theorycrafting and experimenting with builds is deceptively deep. All of the three classes I’ve spent significant time with have a lot more trait/weapon/rune/sigil synergy than they appeared to at first glance. I swap between three complete specs (Support, Control, Damage) with my first character, and I’ll eventually be making three sets for every character I get to 80.
-I enjoy getting my characters to look the way I want them to (cosmetic skins)
-WvW is a blast, the dynamics and epic moments that can occur in a given session are really something. It’s filled with potential, too.
-I really enjoy the community aspect of doing things with my guild, running unofficial events and races in-game, helping out lowbies, showing people hidden things, etc. This would actually be my #1 reason for playing a game in this genre over other games.

I’m sure I’m forgetting other stuff too…. “everything but the loot” is probably a pretty accurate way to concisely answer your question.

Guildwars 1 is what i’d call a non loot driven game, this version is pretty much 100% all about the loot, just look at Fotm to see that.

100% about the loot? Are you sure you want to go that far….? Doesn’t the fact that FOTM wasn’t even part of the game at all at launch sort of invalidate this point, alongside the fact that plenty of people like me play fractals cause they’re fun regardless of the rewards (which have since been made guaranteed over time)?

It sounds a lot like Guild Wars 2 is all about the loot for you, and that’s fine, I’m just saying there are a lot of other games that would do a way better job of scratching that itch. Again, I’d contrast (and recommend, cause it’s awesome) Path of Exile, which is 100% loot-driven. If that game had GW2’s loot tables it would be absolutely intolerable. The base point-and-click combat is nothing particularly special and there’s nothing else to do in the game in terms of gameplay. Yet it remains awesome, because it is loot-driven and has great loot. You must see the difference.

Dante.1508:

Heijincks.9267:

Kandrick.8054:

So without a loot rule change I think it will soon be a dead game.

Is loot seriously that super important enough that bad drops means GW2 is dead?

Yes.

Does anyone else feel like GW2 is quite simply not a loot-driven game?

If anyone out there considers the GW2 loot to be this much of an issue (and especially if you also disliked Diablo 3), I wanna take a moment and plug Path of Exile. It’s completely free.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Red Falcon.8257:

Dailies are traditional MMO fetch quests.
I always adapted to changes until this one, because it goes straight against the fundament of GW2.
Kill ten rats and other 0/10 fetching should just stay out of GW2.

. . . I feel compelled to point out it was always in GW2, just hidden behind obfuscation with the Renown hearts and Dynamic Events where you’re supposed to gather ground spawns or specific drops to fill a bar. The only difference with DEs is that everyone is contributing, so as long as you just do one you can technically leave it alone and others will finish it.

I agree with your overarching point of course (only a fool would argue that the day-to-day actions you’re doing for a heart are different than a traditional MMO quest) but there are several aspects that help considerably with the obfuscation:

1. There’s no “accepting quests” or managing log, you just do what’s needed while you’re in the area, which makes in-game sense and eases the burden enormously on the player
2. Almost every heart offers multiple routes to completion, some even letting you choose from 4 or more contributing tasks. You can stick to just one (allowing you to, for example, complete hearts 20 levels above yours by doing the non-combat task) or do a mix to complete the heart faster.
3. This may seem silly, but the fact that it’s an unmarked bar versus a “0/10” counter makes a big psychological impact for me. The farmer wouldn’t know exactly how many wasp’s nests you needed to stamp out until the infestation was cleared up.
4. No backtracking, no “turning the quest in,” no delay in the flow of gameplay to obtain your rewards
5. The fact that every heart becomes a karma vendor afterward provides a sense of tangible impact beyond “since I helped this NPC he now no longer has an icon above his head”

WvW rewards the most silver from event completion of anything in the game, but I agree that it would be nice if it would be more lucrative.

You can definitely acquire plenty of gold “just playing” if you do a mix of content.

If you are serious about why you want the gear you want- another set to try out a different build- and not an implied “but I won’t do it unless I can have best-in-slot items”- the figure you quoted for the pieces from the TP is way off. :-/ Please consider 80 rares, or 75-79 exotics, for a massive savings over 80 exotics which have only a slightly higher stat allocation with extreme diminishing returns. I promise you won’t notice the difference.

SandraSolace.7682:

SandraSolace.7682:

Who say’s you can’t do that then? What is your question really?
I rarely do dungeons or WvW. I just play. and get rewarded.

how near are you to get a legendary?
Obviously unless you are one of those few blessed by rng.

As i sait i’ll tell you i play a lot and despite i play mostly challenging content like 30 fotm, and other dungeons, i m nowhere near to buy HALF a precursor…..

Precursors/legendaries are wholly cosmetic prestige items and not related to the OP’s concern at all.

It’s actually been known since EotN was announced, and you get more stuff and more opportunities for stuff the more campaigns you have, so the idea that you don’t get rewarded for having all of them over just one is a bit of a stretch.

Anyway it can be had for about $10 these days, and it’s a fantastic value for that.

Of course they should count as legendaries, they are legendaries. :P Has this been stated to be anything other than a bug?

I support your plight, I hope a solution is offered to you noble lot.

Gamesh.9483:

So humans cant wear them?

Nope. Norns have the coolest cultural armors :’(

Hellkaiser.6025:

The answer is NOT that cut and dry.

It wasn’t meant to be glib… I absolutely believe the answer is exactly that cut and dry. :-/

a. As far as how the game will fare long-term, only time will tell, as the OP concludes.
b. It might be a complex, layered dilemma for some, but I play the game because it’s fun for me to play, and if it stops being fun I’ll stop playing. I haven’t heard anything close to a legitimate explanation as to how there could possibly be more to it than that. If we were being charged a subscription fee I can see how there would be a different mindset on both sides of the equation.

Czar Peter.7961:

I’m thinking maybe ANet can minimize the number of angry players by changing WvW to sPvP style gearing, but with free transmutes for PvE armor skins. The raiders and traditional MMO endgame players can have their gear treadmill, while WvW players can freely experiment with different builds without grinding.

I absolutely do not desire an actual gear treadmill of any kind, I am completely inflexible in this regard and will leave the game without hesitation if one is introduced.

I suppose I have no problem with people being able to make dedicated level 80 WvW characters though. shrug It was ANet’s intent that WvW lie between PvE and the even playing field of structured PvP, meaning that it was somewhere your progression mattered (you can level up playing it, after all), but not as much as traditional PvE. The hardcore that had no interest in PvE whatsoever got screwed by this philosophy and if it would get some portion of the playerbase to stop spending so much time panicking, that would be fine.

Time will tell indeed.

Stop playing if you’re not having fun, keep playing if you are. Cheers!

Sito.6352:

Leamas.5803:

The loot engine is this game is abysmal…there’s no other way to describe it. I do love the game, but the loot issues in the game are eventually going to drive me away.

Same. The game is awesome in many ways, yet it keeps frustrating me with the bugs introduced in every patch and the unrewarding dungeon runs. I mean, running Fractals of the Mists 34 barely gives me 1g. Not worth the time at all..

Fractals have the best rare and exotic drop rates of any content in the game, which is great if you need ectos, and the main reason to run it is for the relics and chance for an immediate piece of Ascended gear. Running it for gold is pretty inefficient… you know that each of the three paths of AC will give you over 1g alone, right?

Granted, I’m of the seemingly rare mindset that you should be running all of the above primarily for fun… but that’s neither here nor there.

It sounds so reasonable when you put it like that, Myrina. :P

(I cannot speak for high-level fractals because I haven’t done them)

I can vouch personally that it’s possible to make it to at least fractal level 18 with no Agony Resistance and without full exotics.

Leo Paul.1659:

Do higher level fotm reward people with a better chance to get precursors? If so, then I completely agree with the OP.

Of course not, nor are precursors or legendaries a single statistical point better than their exotic counterparts.

The really amusing thing about this is that the changes arenanet has made to the typical formula has led to the vocal minority losing all perspective as to what an actual gear treadmill looks like.

I’m pretty sure there are now exotic accessory merchants in Orr for karma as well.

Edit: Mackdose I have no clue what you think you fixed- you can only wear one amulet. If you’re talking about the Triforge that’s a pretty unnecessary amount of work for most people.

Akiko.2364:

Sylvari have a great taunt, for whatever reason mobs hate turrets. I pop out my elite 5 turret mortors and they go straight for them ignoring me 95% of the time.

Mobs seem to favor entities that “appear,” in general. Coming out of stealth near a boss, summoning an elemental or thieves’ guild, all seem to get most mobs to switch targets.

Got your overkill achievement already I take it.

play GW2 for a month, you will have lvl 80 with Exotic armor/weapon and Ascended Rings

play GW for a year ….your sword will glow …. and you can be pwned by someone who plays it for a month because you’re on equal grounds

This is perfect.

harbinger.2698:

Peach Tarts are more or less useless for dungeons. If you don’t have Omnoms, use Raspberry Peach bars for the gold find.

Ok. I’ll check that out. Thanks for the advice.

No problem- generally, you want gold find for dungeons. Magic find is really only useful for farming in my experience.

“Even 1 gold?”

Individual items that are worth over a gold are quite rare.

The claim of “1 gold between Cof 1, 2 and Hotw1” is bizarre and hopefully correctable. Are you making sure to pick up every silver drop?

Peach Tarts are more or less useless for dungeons. If you don’t have Omnoms, use Raspberry Peach bars for the gold find.

People are lying to you or something regarding acquisition of ascended items. It occurs via: 1) Fractal Daily Chest randoms 2) Collecting 10 Pristine Fractal Relics 3) Crafting/forging back pieces with rare mats 4) Collecting laurels from dailies and monthlies.

Neither world completion nor drops provide ascended items at all yet.

If what you are looking for is straight gold acquisition- any path of AC will net you ~1g alone with a Raspberry Peach bar even without a single drop better than a green.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be. Check in with the heralds every so often as the story unfolds. The next major push comes on the 26th.

You’re getting drops at your personal reward level no matter what level you’re running… so the 5-6 rare runs are just you being lucky and the 0, unlucky. You’ve been seeing your personal drop rate get better on average very gradually, but nothing eliminates RNG.

On the daily reward chests, though, there’s a very clear delineation of “better” loot as you go higher:

1 1-9 20 None
2 10-19 Ascended Ring (non-Infused), Pristine Fractal Relic
3 20-25 Ascended Ring (non-Infused), Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic
4 26-39 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic
5 40-49 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic
6 50-59 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic

If you’re going after the crafting mats, you WANT the creatures to drop salvage items. Salvage the whites as well.

Hey this is a wonderful thread

OP, it’s great that you were able to take something ostensibly, objectively wrong with the game and use it as an opportunity.

Mine was last night in Queensdale: doing a champ troll event, somebody says “Are veteran hunting groups a thing? They should be a thing.” Still needing three for my dailies I grouped up and we scoured the marshes near the (dam) together. Great spontaneous moments like that really show what the game had in mind.

edit: Everybody should be disappointed with Arah story. I do noooot get that final fight.

Lillian, you’re entitled to your opinion about the game and that’s fine. Despite the hours you’ve put into it you may even be able to get a refund if you submit the request.

That said:

I (and other ~70% of community) have no reason to play this game past lvl 80 Exotics…

I don’t think it’s a good idea to paint with such a broad brush. Where did you get that number?

After 1700 hours, doing every dungeon path, acquiring a legendary, getting to the 5th tier in fractals, doing every jumping puzzle (40+), and getting world completetion on two characters, you feel like you might be losing steam?

At this point you’ve paid about 4 cents an hour for this product. Please take a break. You won’t lose out by just staying out of Tyria for a while. Check the game out again in a month or three. Thanks for all of the contributions you’ve made to the economy!

I’ve spoken to a few of them, and generally they seem to feel both really honored and humbled by the game’s success. A common theme is also that it’s sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees- and the ratio of negativity to positivity around here can make it easy to see why. And more than anything, a really intense drive to keep working harder and making the game better and better. In all honesty, they’re tougher on themselves than anyone else is whether you believe it as a player or not.

It’s nice to see posts like this. If you ever get to speak to a dev in-game or otherwise, make sure to tell them you’re enjoying the game and to keep up the good work- remind them that it’s not all hellfire and brimstone, and in fact the vast majority of the playerbase is beyond happy with the product.

Vasham.2408:

I’d love everyone championing this game’s broken “no trinity” design to spend one day raiding with a top 100 WoW guild. You’d be kicked before the first boss was killed. This is a classic example of how casuals think: “I’m a bad player, so when I chose an easier path I must demonize those with more skill to make them appear in the wrong, justifying my poor performance.”

This just makes it sound like you prefer another type of game. There’s nothing wrong with that.

A few notes, just from a “bird’s eye” perspective:

1) ArenaNet cannot design content/achievements/encounters/mechanics around the concept that not all users have stable, adequate internet connection. If you lack a connection fast or consistent enough to even dodge a single attack successfully, the fact that you’re able to play the game at all successfully is a luxury and a bit of a miracle. It is par for the course that certain things will not be accomplishable with that kind of handicap, and to be blunt, your daily achievement is kind of least among them. I can’t imagine you could successfully complete any dungeon with lag that bad unless being carried 100% of the time by the rest of your team. Jumping puzzles would be out of the question. Even some of the personal story quests on my path required some decent dodging. Maybe this is discriminating against people with inadequate and slower connections, but it’s not something that can be designed around. Your connection is the fault of your ISP.

2) For the record, dodging is quite forgiving under most circumstances. As many have suggested, finding a mob with a simple channeled or AOE attack- the screech on any Moa- will enable you to complete this daily quite rapidly regardless of latency issues. just dodge into it at any point while it’s screeching.

3) If your only impetus to complete the dailies is getting laurels to get gear, there will be other ways to get Ascended amulets added to the game. Bank on it.

4) Going out of your way to do your dailies rather than what you preferred to do during that gaming session is counter-intuitive. Just play. Don’t think about what you have left as soon as you log in. When you’re done with something (a dungeon run, 100%ing a zone, a big event chain), check your tracker and see what you’ve completed. If there’s something close to finished, go get the last few ticks. If there’s still plenty to go, just keep playing.

It’s easy to get into a sort of bubble where you’re making things harder on yourself than they ever need to be. Good luck!

Red Falcon.8257:

As long as you’re not abusing terrain glitches (I’m looking at you, noobs that jump below Jade Maw to kill 2 tentacles), it’s fine.
If for some reasons you found some terrain the AI can’t access or can’t attack you while in or gets stuck or takes uncommon behaviors then it’s a bug.

Assuming I’m thinking of the same thing you are, how is that a glitch? The level design sort of leads you to that platform. o.O

Kalaster.9014:

DreamOfACure.4382:

Pretty sure PlanetSide2 is doing fabulously.

blinkxzero.8035:

The best part of GW2 is the dodge mechanic. I can’t play any other MMO that doesn’t let me dodge or evade attacks coming at me — and I’m not talking about using LoS like in WoW. I wish every game got rid of “hit chance”, and just let you either dodge it or not.

If you like it that much, you should give TERA a try. They just went Free2Play.

It’s actually an action MMO (unlike GW2 which just added Dodge), where you can dodge everything once you’re good enough at it. All attacks are skill-shots and hitboxes are more relevant in combat.

I Tried TERA as well, combat was cool. But again going back to how you have to read quest logs, i lost my patients XD

The combat in TERA seems outstanding but as soon as I noticed my quest log start to fill to scrolling with x/xs, I lost my nerve.

Raine.1394:

I would prefer that GW2 was subscription model rather than “free” to play. It has been my experience that F2P games are unrewarding in-game and I believe this has to do with the way the game is monetized. I understand the move to F2P from a business standpoint, but F2P games don’t seem to be able to provide a sense of reward for play, which is one of the reasons we play games. Given the choice and my experience, I would always choose a subscription game when it came to my main MMO.

Would you mind clarifying a bit?

What is the sense of reward for play you get from a subscription that you don’t get from GW2?

No, and the hellstorm of fury I would release upon hearing the news would cancel out any financial gain.

It’s a shortbow. The longbow looks completely different.

I’m sure this has been pointed out, but…

I think the implication that a shiny gossamer pink bow with tassles that shoots rainbows is a serious skin that makes for a cool legendary, while the same bow that attaches unicorns to the arrows is a joke, is downright hilarious.

Awesome.6120:

I play alts all the time and I couldn’t care less. My first 75 laurels are going to that fancy cat anyway. Stats are overrated in this game.

This post <3

bluewanders.5297:

Yeah… I’m one of those players that run around with 2-3 gold… and nothing deposited in the bank. It doesn’t bother me because I don’t need “instant” gratification… I play to play, not to get mad lewtz. I have a full set of exotics including 3 exo weapons, all of them named exos, not just “knights” or “rampagers”… I’ve only been in the game for about a month and a half… I don’t play 8 hours a day, I haven’t bought any gems and I’m only lvl 6 on the fractals. I don’t hardcore farm anything… go to a map and work on completion… I go to my favorite spots to get T6 mats and spend 30 min or so in each one then be off… run a dungeon or two if I can find a pug…

I also play wvw and keg brawl (when I can find someone to play with)… I’ve made plenty of money just playing, no grind required. To be exact… each piece of my named exo armor cost around 5-6 gold a piece, I also have 2 named staves, a named sword, a named focus, and a named trident.

The process is simple… I’m working on my second set of armor now… I research HOW to get that piece… if it is craftable I work on getting the mats needed by playing in areas that drop those mats… if it drops from a particular event I make sure to play that event at least once a day. The loot isn’t the point, the play is.

^wisdom dripping from every word.

Those prices are actually way down, people found new popular paths to farm them

edit: Oh, you meant cores. What’s a lodestone going for these days? May have to get in on this one :P

mulch.2586:

Th definitive test would be a lower-level character who earns a chest without leveling, then kills another mob or two sufficient to level.

Low-level chests contain loot up to the character’s level. If there’s loot in the chest from the character’s new,higher level, that would be evidence that chest loot level is determined when it’s looted, not when it’s earned.

I don’t care enough to try to get those data.

The other stuff about non-random RNG… Systematic dependencies can/do happen with digital simulated randomness. However it happens in GW2, I don’t think it’ll have anything to do with the superstitions surrounding it.

You’ve never gotten loot a couple of levels above your own?

Loved GW1 (1500ish hours), love GW2 even more.

shrug

Shayleen.8964:

Wow. I have never, ever gotten even 3g from AC. All paths. No skipping.

Uh. If you don’t mind, could you clarify this a bit? Let’s just leave the rest of this discussion aside for a moment.

I’m quite certain that if you don’t skip anything, sell the loot you got, and don’t miss any drops or chests- you will absolutely break 1 gold per path (or at the very least come extremely close) in AC.

If you then factor in the right food to give you extra gold from monsters… 4g for the 3 paths is not out of the question at all.

What do you find yourself getting?

AkumoAko.2063:

When you start your game, you are asked to choose a home world. Is this the only realm you can make characters on? And if so then, if your server is FULL, you will NEVER get to play with new people joining the game, I.E. Freinds and Family that you told about the game. Seems like shotting yourself in the foot for refferals.

Please respond with a logical fix to this problem, aside from me and the other 10 friends I brought to the game at the start, moving to a VERY HIGH server. Since ALL the U.S. servers are either full or very high.

1. Dungeons and other instanced content can be done cross-server
2. Overflow zones in highly populated areas let you group together cross-server.
3. Server transfers are still free; you should have people who want to join your server check regularly for it to go down.
4. A fully-fledged solution to this problem called Guesting was announced prior to launch and was confirmed to be coming within the next two month

Sitael.4680:

Skribulous.3521:

MF does not affect chests, but DR definitely does.

Pardon me, but what is the meaning of DR?

Diminishing returns but I have absolutely no idea what he means. Diminishing returns affects loot drops in the open world (farming), the number of dungeon tokens/xp/karma/silver you get for repeating the same dungeon path, and event rewards from rerunning the same events in rapid succession. What (how?) do you see DR on chests?

No kidding, the T3 light armor does that? Bummer. Report that bug in-game guys!

ShaiHulud.7410:

And I wanna achieve this bymyself. By grinding. And when I say grinding I am expecting a reward also. And not being cut off from any means of acquiring gold except grabbing my wallet and buying their pathetic gems in order to conver them to gold.

Are you contending that literally everyone in the game with an expensive weapon skin, cultural armor, or even a legendary has purchased gems?

I’ve seen a sentiment a couple times that is reaaaaaalllly scary, so I wanted to provide a PSA:

It is really, really, really, REALLY not worth it to spend real world money to convert into gold to buy an in-game item.

This is what I mean:

They keep nerfing farming and ways for people to make money, to the point it has almost become a necessity to buy gold with real money just to keep up with the economy.

I don’t think some people are getting it, yes the cash shop/rl money to gold is optional but it seems that Anet is kind of trying to push people to use the cash shop with DR and farming nerfs.

My reasons for not buying anything in the gem shop (anymore) is ANet nerfing every single farm to try and force me into it to buy gems to trade for gold. That is such bull and oh so low… blatantly obvious they’ve been doing this since the beginning.

While I truly believe that this is deeply misinterpreting what ArenaNet is attempting to accomplish, that really isn’t the point.

The point is ArenaNet isn’t coming close to “forcing you” or making it a “necessity” or even “pushing you” to do anything at all. It is a matter of perspective shift. If you’re considering buying in-game gold with real money to get an item, you need to acknowledge that it’s because YOU want it now rather than however long it’d take to learn. Even if how long it took to earn was doubled this would still be true.

I can’t stress this enough: nothing in this game is worth real money. And specifically with regard to Ascended back pieces, they are not even at all worth the in-game effort to obtain, with the exception of agony resistance for high-level fractals- but since Coagulated Mists Essence is required, you can’t just buy your way into agony resistance anyway. And even fully “maxing” that slot gets you only +10 agony resistance; for more than that you’ll need rings that you also can’t buy.

Unless you’re attempting high-level fractals, there is no reason, literally none, that you need the three pieces of Ascended gear available (and especially not the one you can mostly buy with gold).

So please, before spending a dollar on gems to get some item, consider what it is you want that item for.

There is a little check mark in the upper left of the box for the back piece on your hero screen. Check it.

Tomkatt.1684:

How did you get the mouse pointer to automatically recenter? That’s the one issue I still have with my config. Is that something with Autohotkey?

Yup, AHK was very much required for this functionality.

I am very interested in this for those times I just want to relax and play when farming and such. I am not familiar with these things though. I have 360 that I use for skyrim, far cry 3 , etc. I assume I need to download this xpadder before it will allow me to use your setups?

If you look in the link I posted it includes everything you need, xpadder being one. You could then try his profile instead of mine by downloading it (the .xpadder file).

Well, I meant, ArenaNet has sort of hinted at just straight up patching the recipes to have fewer reqs. That would be easier :P