Guild Wars 2

DeWolfe.2174:

Husanak.3769:

If anything the people who on a consistent basis convert game currency to pay currency are in fact MORE important

Never! Players that spend actual money on the game will always be THE MOST important players in game. Paying customers keep the company and the servers running. Without external sources of revenue to the company, that’s the bottom line.

Its not that simple. Frankly the people more important to the fiscal health of a MMO are the people that in fact do not pay any $ at all. The “hard core” element that play for hours every day and “earn” all the games goodies. They are what drive people with $ who don’t have hours a day to give there $ to Anet.

It is also very clear that anet gets that… which is why they are turning 30+ million per quarter profits with a none sub mmo.

As long as the game has a healthy number of the “hardcore” players that are willing to grind and drive the economy. Anet wins. A strong in game economy means new players, or those without tons of time to spend playing… will find it much easier to throw some $ at the exchange market at find themselves flush in others surplus in game currency.

Look at how they set up there market and its clear they understand who drives the flow of $ into the game. Anytime a “hardcore” player thows 35g into the pot to grab an extra bag slot or whatever it is they want… Anet is making money.

The key is keeping the balance at a point where the hardcore people KEEP playing and keep the economy high enough that a reasonable amount of in game currency can be had for a reasonable amount of real life currency. If the number of grindcore people drops to low the economy would falter and the overall amount of $ coming in would slide. On the other side of things, they need to keep things just far enough on the grind end of the scale to entice those with extra $ / not enough time / or both… to find value in simply buying form the store or converting for gold.

Think I am saying both are important and neither can be ignored because if Anet looses to much of either… they die. Simple as that.

Tken.1986:

People who spend gems to buy things should have the right to give opinion, BUT not everyone has the right to complain. People who convert gold to gem shouldn’t be complaining. You are basically obtaining things for free.

I’m not really sure what it is your on about. This part however you are not really right on. People that convert game currency to pay currency are in fact drivers of the economy. By playing the game and earning gold, or working the market and pooling the games resources they make it attractive for people with $ to buy Gems to convert to game currency. Without those types of players people would be much less incentivised to in fact spend any $ at all.

If anything the people who on a consistent basis convert game currency to pay currency are in fact MORE important to the fiscal stability of Anet. So yes there thoughts would be just as and perhaps even more important to the Devs.

This is the only MMO I can think of where event vendors don’t hang out for a few days after the end of the event. Its sort of stupid. Or an underhanded way to sell more bank slots. Congrats you have a handful left over… or you didn’t log in for the last day of the event and have more then you are willing to toss. Don’t worry buy some more bank space… perhaps we will let you do something with them in a few months. Its cheesy frankly and one of the few things I honestly don’t like about Anets cash collection model.

The listing issues are annoying as well. I was gone for months, I was expecting to see some changes. Instead it looks exactly like it did before I left. They have done I think a good job of making general lower level stuff move with the crafting system and stuff. As someone who is more likely to spend 2-3 hours of play time just working a market… this game is both great and highly frustrating all at once. Again this morning, log in and spend an hour going though a backlog of items before I could even hope to pick anything up off the TP today. If it is just a way to slow the market down a bit instead of stopping people that would be low enough to automate junk… well its not any better from my end. Either way it frustrates me to the point smacking my keyboard around. lol As much as the other games I play have lesser markets at least I can play the market there to RELAX… :/

Indeed likely what will happen… really love the market in this game, one of the more fun to play. Well until you realize it has taken you 30min to do something that would take 2min in pretty much any other game. Perhaps this time when I leave I’ll send my 2000 or so gold to a friend so I’m not tempted to come back. lol

I don’t really under stand why someone would pay 7g for a bag that can give you nothing more then 1.5g . I guess there are plenty of dumb people in the world, you don’t have to be a member of Mensa to play a MMO it would seem.

OK this is one of the things that drove me nuts when I left almost a year ago. Been putting up with it the last week… really don’t think I can handle it for much longer… again.

last time I chalked it up to some over zelous super annoying anti bot thing… now I’m wondering is this some bug that people know how to fix… or is it really some heavy handed anti bot that Anet hasn’t found a better way of doing in over a year… I really hope its a bug I can fix, I have been reminded why I stopped playing and I do love this game.

I have 2 pistols I swap back and forth one torment one earth. I mostly just run the torment pistol. In some Pve though I’ll slot the earth pistol instead.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqalcTp6qFYxELseNiAqAgJ6xjBZT2nHvFbBhA-zgBB0CIEEgk3AlgRrgJIVRhFA-e

Something like that… Grenades are the fastest way to put a ton of bleeds up super fast. Run something like that… What I do is open with Shrap grenade (grenade 2), with a Freeze Grenade (Grenade 4) followed by a couple quick grenade 1s or tool kit grenade. If I really want to stack conditions I’ll switch to my gun and posion dart and blind them.
Pretty much in 3-5s they have
15-25 stacks of Vulnerability
7-10 Bleed Stacks
Torment
Chill
Fire
Poison

To top that off the direct dmg from grenades is not terrible on its own.

Ok I have started playing GW2 again after being off playing other games for 7 or 8 months.

One thing that is driving me insane is the mechanics of retraining / respecing a toon.

In other games I have played it is as simple as saving loadout 1 and load 2… and clicking a button back and forth. In other games I play its not something you can do on a PvP map or in a Qued or Dungeon map. However it is 1000% easier to swap back and forth before you head off to do what ever content. In the other games I play the system remembers any items you have different as well as specs ect. It saves me hours of clicking and swapping over a month of playing a game.

I think it would be great to have something like that here in GW2. IMO it is something that could be added to the Gem store. I would gladly pay a bit more money to unlock an extra saved “loadout”. IMO this is something that could make anet a lot of extra money, I could easily see me getting 2 or 3 extra loadouts for a few of my toons. As long as you could only swap loadouts while out of combat and not while inside content pve or pvp I don’t see this being anything more then a convenience feature. Something useful to drop a little more cash on instead of silly finishers or skins.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQRApc8ejkO5uFPCPMxBC0jrUFscekkpQeVB7A-jgCBYfBCJM0EEhmuIQJnCRZoasFTFRjVvATVKpKYCyA-e

This is what I’m currently running. I was bored of what I was doing and this seemed like fun. Sword/Shield + Mace/Sword… traited to reflect projectiles on block, and built adren fast to clear conditions / lockdown. Not the most optimal dmg or condi build… super fun to play though. Had to do something different then the standard GS it was feeling old. This build is pretty active and if you time the blocks well you are well rewarded.
Hop around with the sword and shield… block reflect and stun with the mace/sword combo.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

sorry; i shouldve included that this is for a pve build, i love poison in pvp just because half the players dont seem to understand that it cuts into their heal

but; if a player were to stick in kits all the time (i doubt i would… the utility would draw me out occasionally)… wouldnt one handed weapons be better because you can slot two sigils (and according to the wiki the rifles higher base damage isnt taken into account because kits have their own stats)

Ya for pve honestly I mostly just go pistol pistol… but the shield can still be nice.

The dual sigiles is great of pve ya you can run a blood lust or corruption and still have room for a on crit sigil. (for pve I find it effective… its not to hard to have good crit chance on almost any engi build so I find for pve they are the way to go)

We don’t have lots of weapon choices on the engi but they are all usable. I keep a few exoitics of each around when I feel like changing it up.

One tip you can start to channel skills out of your kits and then swap out of the kit and be ready to go….

So you can combo things like Tool kit 5 magnet pull with rifle 5 jump shotfor some burst.
You can also start your cast on something like tool kit 2 nails… as your moving around and getting something else ready to go…. ect ect.

If you do want to use bomb kit its nice to be able to drop some bombs… start the cast on your magnet pull and then jumpshot right away… it can make some big pops… but in pve I mostly find the mob fest is easiest to pound on with dual pistols for the blow torch bleed and aoe sticky glue… the pistol pistol 3 4 5 AOEs are very effective vs multi mobs.

If you are planning to do “farming” type pve… honestly the firearms ultimate pistol skill… coated bullets is underrated a lot… piercing sucks on most wepaons… but on pistol each hit does a little mini aoe explosion… so when they start piercing its hillarious… you do massive dmg to grouped enemies.

There both good choices.

Rifle gives you some nice control.

Of course so does pistol in another way…. at low levels it might not seem so great… but Pistol 3 is an aoe blind on a pretty short cool down.

Even the poison is underrated… ya it misses a few hits… still a great way to put a pretty long poison up in pvp.

If your pvping I would say pistol shield myself… lots of control. A stun… a projectile reflect + knock back.

Still there are times the rifle can do the same stuff…

Mostly you will be swapping around kits blowing cool downs… but I always like having that insta blind ready to go if I need it on pistol… it has no cast time which is awsome. If I have no block and need a second of breathing room its an insta fire.

I have been running a very similer build for wvw myself.

Elixer s / Tool Kit / Nades With Pistol Shield

What I love about it is its the perfect reactionary build IMO.

Super long range high dmg… Medium range dots… Upclose and personal pry bars to the face.

For the Zerg… Ben has it right… lobbing a bunch of nades into a pack is a bad idea at times. Some groups though you can get away with it. If not… I’ll try to stay on the outside… and magnet pull some poor target out of the pack a bit pry bar em… drop some nails… throw some conditions up. Then spam my shields and laugh.

I wouldn’t say we have the perfect zerging class…. but I play my build like a hybrid roamer… I try to stay out of the zergs… but if I have to we have all the tools we need to do better then average. As long as we use things at the right time and don’t mess up.

That’s sort of the Engi Motto isn’t it… Time it right, and don’t F up.
If you time things right Engi has a very good chance of coming out on top in every situation imo.

We gain the sigils from our weapons on our kits.

Frankly I wouldn’t want to have to purchase a ton of extra sigils to put on my kits.

One advantage to our class is being able to save a bit of scratch on one set of sigils.

Exactly it is a hard setup to master…

and frankly its undone by a sigil of null in no time.

I run around with my HGH engi now and then… Like Oeggs says. The skill cap is pretty high on nades… it is finger busting camera crunching. It also only works if you buy into the build hard with multiple might stack runes and battle sigil… with out them the build still runs ok but you won’t get the 25 stacks people like to complain about.

Seriously keep a boon strip weapon around if there is a good hgher around swap it in… nothing more annoying then having your stacks stripped.

I’ll swap my nades out for the wrench sometimes… just to change it up and give my fingers a rest.

Good build… yes… one of the few good builds engies have left… yes… Overpowered… hardly. We are not the only class that can stack 25 might with runes and sigils… there is lots of opportunity cost… and it can be countered.

I think we can all see the another nerf smack down coming for the nades anyway.

My suggest would be add another kit… all the classes are getting close to a add 1-2 new skills time to keep things interesting anyway.

Add a Rocket Kit… that can be traited to 1500 and it could be similer to the Grenade kit with some reduced dmg… but the longer range. (wouldn’t it be cool to see a rocket back pack… and have us bend down a bit to fire rockets like a Star Wars bounty hunter. lol)

The Nade kit should be reduced to 900 base range (perhaps even 600)… with 900-1200 traited… its sort of crazy to think we are hucking nades with more range then our pistols have isn’t it ?

If we where going to have a super long range weapon wouldn’t a rocket make 100% more sense.

You would be pretty light on dmg… turrets are annoying.

I would suggest at least one kit… if you want to mainly use the pistol. Consider going P/P for blow torch. Learn to role around and use your glue shot and you won’t miss the shield defense. (also tool kit will give you gear shield… no push back but great 3s shield.)

For Build….
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalspSXnwSyF17IBoHAOv8V0jHT5J/pAbB

Try something like that…
Coated bullets is very underrated for dmg. Pierce sounds so so but you have consider that Pistol 1 is an aoe explosion. Grouped enemies will take lots of dmg from pistol with coat and you don’t have to do any funny lining up of targets.

Tool kit if you never swap to it what ever at least you have the very useful throw wrench skill. Its 20s and nice dps… but consider switching to Tool kit for pry bar (#3) at least.

What I will do sometimes… is dodge into range after opening with my pistol cool downs. Switch to Tool kit Pry bar… then dodge back out. (if you are out of endur you can pop Elixer R to insta fill it… with R you can dodge 4 times in a row every 30s or so if you need to)

For PvE I run 10 30 0 30 0 most of the time.

HGH is just to good in pve not to run it… I swap things around and run either Flame with Jug… or Coated bullets with tool kit.

Coated bullets are underrated I think for pve. The pistol #1 will decimate grouped enemies. Pop in for the pry bar smack on anything larger and presto. If I am fighting big things I can’t get close to I’ll run Elixir R, That way I can dodge into range… and dodge back out with no issues. Its nice to have the Toss R as well. Teammates love getting downed healing… and once or twice I was even fast enough to drop it on the ground just as I went down which will make you smile for an hour after.

I love the utility of a multi kit build… but ya the lack of condition removal is just so painful.

There are a few small changes they could make to help make the multi kit builds a bit more viable… I would say in tools take something like IV Kit Refinement and swap it with X Leg Mods. Then Add to Kit Refinement a Wipe one Condition on kit swap (5s cool down). I think that would be a tempting add… and considering Power wrench is another option there it would make for a choice in build layout.

For turret builds they could add something simpler to either Inventions XII rifled barrels or better yet explosives IX Acclerent-packed turrets… something like a AOE condition clear when a turret explodes. (using it as a clear… would mean loosing its dps putting it on cool down ect)

I understand every class needs to have a weekness or two. Still I think adding solutions higher up in the trait lines is a good way to ensure the jack of all trades class, gets played multiple ways, as intended.

I have one of everything else at 80… then I got around to engi.

Really wish I had rolled the engi first.

Sure some of the mechanics are clunky… not every option build wise is going to work (which is how a more advanced class should work anyway)

Still all the miss fires and misshapes… are all in character. You can completely role play the bumbling medieval tinkerer from every bad holy wood movie. Ya know the guy that screws up a bunch but pulls off a few kegs of black powder or some other silly gadget, for the Deus Ex Machina ending.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VVRR;2Z;0h0q5sTFx0;9;5T-T9;147A;116A1;0TJ0;0J0-rRYCqoF27ZY

This is one of my fav builds.

HGH I like Elixer C… I know I’m one of the few, I will double up and switch in cleaning formula if I’m dealing with a ton of conditions. Often though having the 30s full wipe and 30s partial combo gets the job done.

This build pops up to 25 might pretty quick… I like having SD on instead of putting 10 in explosives… means I’m more likely to keep rolling my thrown Elixirs. lol

The boon duration and the combo of Elixar B + thrown B + hidden flask… will keep the crit rate up over 80 at all times. (90% when someone drops under 50)

When your in range with the thrower it will just be a constant stream of crits… and it will throw up a ton of bleeds and burns and vuln.

Missing a stun break of course… eh but its fun. I run almost the same build to farm with.. I run 4 alturism + 2 water runes instead for the might on heal and boon duration.

Swagg.9236:

wat
Look, you went down. You pretty much deserve to die. The opening exchanges of a fight is typically where much of the proceeding action is determined. If someone bested you, it should be up to a teammate to get you up. It shouldn’t be you somehow turning the fight around after someone beat you. That doesn’t make sense.

Besides, look at Toss Elixir R and tell me that that isn’t silly good.

Well I think you are playing perhaps another game… cause this one has downed state mechanics. Have you been beaten when your downed… no.

Does every other class have a better tool kit to turn things around in there favor… yes.

I will say we have some of the best options in trait wise for buffs when our health gets low… still in pvp yes the downed state is a big part of the game. For the engi in general when you are downed… yes. You are dead.

For every other class… 50/50 but in general not unless they are focuses/tag teamed… or make a second mistake. (going down being the first one)

Our downed state is pretty terrible.

I would say move 3 to 2… reduce the dmg on it a bit and perhaps make it one of the longer cool down 2s. (not still terrible… just not op. It should not be hard to balance that with a cool down and a dmg reduction)

Make our #3 something like the ranger lick wounds. Have it drop us a Rez turret/probe… give it just enough HPs to save us unless someone targets it fast enough.

That would feel much more engi like to me… force people to back off to avoid our short range bombs… and at the same time force melee at least to come into range to destroy our rez turret.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckmMMzMzoRLvooRLvoax0x0oMRqMsb8kij70z7khi70z7070z7kGI70z7kNh70z7kNf7kIp
My build is very similer to Evanovix…
I use 3 signets and I keep them active giving me might… I run runes to boost my might duration 50%… I also have might on dodge.
I also have a ton of initiative returns… so I am almost always getting that +10% from Crit Strikes tree.

I like to shadow step in… then roll back twice… and then use my Signet step… this gives me a quick bunch of might… the endurance comes back fast enough in most cases but if needed… Agility will refill it instant like and give me even more might.

With all the control options I have never had any issues in pve with it. Combine that with pretty much perma endurance in this build… as long as you are rolling all over the place and shadowsteping aorund your golden… you should be able to keep a nice stack of might going for larger fights. One of my favorite builds and classes to play, play style wise… most pve mobs don’t even get a hit on me.

Why do the insanely rich in the real world continue to make money ? Sure they might get a bit more generous with there fellow man… but they don’t stop making money.

I myself like to get filthy rich in every game I play, it makes the game more enjoyable for me. I have been here since the Start of Jan myself… I have one 80 toon with a full exotic set of armour and weapons… and around 50g in the bank… in the next month I will no doubt hit 200g and another 2-3 toons at 80 full geared… and then ya I’ll start helping friends. For me its one of the funnest parts of a MMO… being able to say ya your right that would work good for your toon… hey check your mail. Not every person that works the market is evil… some people in fact find it fun as Mr. Smith is suggesting.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Husanak.3769:

Indeed all this means is people are dumping what ever they had short term…. and wait to rebuy in the next few weeks when prices level out… and wait, for the rebound.

This doesn’t make much sense. If you are dumping your goods for cheap, only to buy them back later at higher prices, that means you’re losing money.

I think what you meant was that people are dumping their goods, and investors are gobbling them up and waiting for the rebound.

No I mean investors are taking profit still as the prices slide… and will use the profit to buy even more product when they believe the price has leveled out… if I was making 30% and I expect the price to drop to say -15% of my current buy in… I may take a profit of 15% durring the early slide. Planning to rebuy at -15% of my current buy price when I feel its time to do so, thus increasing my stock for zero cost… and freeing up liquid capital until its time to move.

In a real world market this happens all the time with commodities. I have sold thousands of units at prices I know would be 20% less then what I could do with the same product 2 weeks later… however I freed that liquid capital up for 2 weeks. Sometimes things that seem illogical and stupid to those of us that learned how to save from out grandparents and there lessons involving piggy banks… are just plan not the way to get rich.

A large part of the fun in playing a game that tries to create a real market. Is in fact playing that part of the game…. go figure. If Anet didn’t want people to treat the game like a real wold market… they wouldn’t have set it up to be played like one… and they wouldn’t have hired economists to help them set it up. The market manipulation your talking about happens in any economy… in this case we are dealing make belief items, if I want to role play the viking version of Gordon Gekko. Not understanding how that is somehow immoral… its an odd word to choose, when talking about a video game, that allows my Gordon Gekko character to run things through with a sword when I get bored of trading make belief toys.

Indeed all this means is people are dumping what ever they had short term…. and wait to rebuy in the next few weeks when prices level out… and wait, for the rebound.

Business is war… likely this person has some idea of the market swing depending on the time of day and is looking to build a stockpile of lower priced inventory to dump later or perhaps on a weekday/weekend when they predict the price will be higher.

Of course as I say business is war, if I see someone doing this with a category of items I am looking to short sell for profit… I will go to war with them and buy there supply holder and return the pricing. In most cases you can do this with out loosing any capital… However sometimes taking a small loss of a few coppers per item to stick it to your enemy is worth it. I have fixed a few people trying to build inventory this way a few times and when I do it always makes me laugh picturing them pounding there keyboards… with the small margins on most items in this game they will mostly back away rather then continue to loose future profit.

The other option is to list for 5-10% under the high gap price, if you know what I mean… like if the highest order is 20s… the sell is 30 (there dropped one) and the next highest is 60…. list all yours at 50-55… and destroy there hopes for profits before yours sell anyway.