Guild Wars 2

Hey Groucharino,

Can we get the Noble’s Runes in PvP? I really like that set.

I am. I am really excited about the new borderlands map. I also love PvP and can’t wait for the changes. That said, I am not buying HoT because the PvE doesn’t look like my cup of tea, and I only really felt like 3 of the elite specs looked all that great. The price tag was a little steep in my opinion as well. Since they did the f2p conversion(I have two paid accounts)I was hoping that meant they’d sell the professions and elite specs a la carte or in bundles.

I was always into maps like Frostgorge, Cursed Shore, and Maelstrom. The lack of climate diversity in the HoT maps coupled with the fact they look like they are Dry Top/Silverwastes hybrid maps is a turn off for me. Would have been nice to get a fiery map, a tundra map, a new beach/lake/big river type map. All jungly isn’t all that great and after waiting for 3+ years to get a lot of new content and paying about the same as the base game for it but with a lot less content than the base game? No thanks.

PvP and the new Borderlands look great though. The WvW Borderlands map looks like what I envisioned WvW as from GW2 launch. I didn’t like WvW much at all, but I am really excited for it now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Wanted to give you a quick heads up on a handful of notes relevant to Heart of Thorns launch in a few days:

Fractal Dungeon Leaderboards

Back when we announced all the updates to Fractals for Heart of Thorns – the announce blog also discussed more information coming before HoT about leaderboards for Fractals. Our team of folks working on Fractal dungeons kept iterating on this concept and ultimately we have decided to make it something more involved (re: exciting) than our original plans which will extend our development a bit more. This also means you’ll be able to earn the new fractal backpack precursor, but a few of the components for the new legendary will come with this expanded future fractals feature.

As always, we’ll discuss features once they’re far enough along to share development details on; our Fractal Dungeon team will be back with more updates about this and other plans for Fractal Dungeons in the future: when it’s ready™.

This has been pushed back since the “Fractured” Update. Is that the “original” implementation you are talking about, Colin? As a concession, could we at least have rewards for dungeons put back in to compensate for the lack of missing launch features? I am fairly disappointed dungeons have been pushed off to the side, but their abandonment would have been more palatable had there been a few new Fractals added to the game. I really hope the leaderboards are ready™ sooner rather than later. Those of us who really like dungeons and Fractals have waited a long time for their inclusion.

You are making it sound like Fractals getting leaderboards was “originally happening in HoT.” That simply isn’t the case. It was supposed to happen in this update: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractured which was 2 years ago this November.

• citation: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractured#cite_note-1

Don’t pug raids and you won’t have this issue. LFG will do what it has always done and the bulk of groups will run the optimal metabattle raid group and have you ping gear. Find a group of people that is looking for someone to roll raids with them. It takes some work, but raiding is a time investment and worth it if you are committed.

selling hard mode dungeon runs became a way that I stayed interested in that game way longer than I would have otherwise. I could see this as a way to keep people interested in playing raids after they maybe would have taken a break from the game. All that gold from dungeons we are all going to miss out on might as well come from other players’ pockets instead.

It would have been nice on the stream to see all the differences. That’s one thing about legendaries that has always frustrated me(I own Rodgort and Predator)is that theya re wildly inconsistent. One profession has access to certain effects while another is lacking.

That staff skin is amazing. It’s frustrating that they designed these so long ago though and introduced staff as a melee weapon and there isnt a legendary option for it. The hammer style wielding of a staff is also lackluster. It’s half-baked.

I played this game every day from launch(sans vacations and 2 weeks when my computer broke)until March of this year. I wanted progression to be wholly cosmetic and game play. I wanted a big expansion with tons of maps to explore and a lot of events. The x-pac is providing gated maps. That is totally opposite of the base game. Sure, you had to level, but I ran all the way down to Straits of Devastation at a really low level early on. Exploration has been neutered. Players that identify as explorers(Google the Bartle System) haven’t had a ton to do after seeing all of the base game. Gating exploration with having to do things that aren’t exploring isn’t all that exciting.

The mastery system is just an arbitrary gating system. The OP is correct in my opinion. It’s not all that creative a system they’ve devised.

Now the legendary system seems really well thought out. That should have been the progression system. That way, even if you didn’t like the Legendary skins, you still got to play the game at the pace you wanted to play it at.

Artificially inflating the number of hours it takes to get through the content doesn’t mean they added meaningful content. It just means they gated what they had made so that it took you longer to get through it.

There’s absolutely nothing compelling about that and I would still replay the heck out of the content if it is compelling. Locking off stuff arbitrarily doesn’t make me more excited to see it. It’s actually the reason I didn’t buy the x-pac. Also, because there is nothing enticing to me about a gated Dry Top/Silverwastes experience.

the least they could have done was given us 2 or 3 new fractals to do. so many things arenanet do are awesome. so many things are terrible. they really seem to not like permanent content. they wanna add stuff in and then take it away to never be seen again. some of this game’s best content is just gone forever.

dungeons are there but arent worth running which goes against what they were saying about making old content irrelevant once new content comes out. there is very little instanced group content in this game and now there is less of it that is rewarding and the stuff they are trying to push us toward doing wasn’t added to by giving us new stuff to play in it.

when’s the last time we got a new fractal? im so tired of getting excited for a new feature or holiday content or whatever and then having that excitement tempered by the fact they removed or replaced a reward. it happens too often in this game.

I am 100% behind this idea only if they give me the option to auto block players that inspect me with a msg informing the player who inspects me, “You have been auto-blocked. Have a nice day.”

They already went down that road with Prince Rurik. They wouldn’t be dumb enough to do that a second time.

Maclaine and Bret Michaels collaborated on the theme song. that_shaman found it in the .dat files. It’s called, “Every Rose Has Its Heart of Thorns”.

I can’t wait until some crazy balance thing happens in PvP and the Raiding meta is affected by it because they are unwilling to do skill splits. This dungeon thing has nothing to do with the economy. It’s to push people that like instanced group content into doing fractals and raids. The economic stuff is what they are using to push people in that direction.

I just wish we got honest reasons why things were happening. I am so tired of EA style corporate speak as to why this or that feature is being implemented or taken away. Guys! We are giving you BL Keys in PvP but we are taking away 50% of your trans stones!

Yuck.

I specifically stated why I posted this in the main forum. I did it because skill balance is stated, in the blog as being done for PvP which in turn affects all formats.

I have to agree with Aerwyna. Halloween is awesome in GW2 and HoT isn’t going anywhere. Don’t be overwhelmed at too much to do in an MMO. Be thankful. This year for veteran players has been anything but “too much to do”. It’s been a drought. Start off doing Halloween stuff. If you like it keep doing it. If not, you have a whole new expansion to play.

It should be more accessible for sure. It’s an attractive stat combo. More so now that raids and more dedicated comps matter.

My thought on this though is that it will never happen. I would wait until the dust settles on the x-pac though to see how builds shake out after launch. You have a few weeks before the raid comes out after launch, so you will get a better idea.

Another thing to think about is even if they do take this advice, it could literally be months or years before they do something about it.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-esl-guildwars2-pro-league/

Taken from Blog: “We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.”

First off, let me say that between this announcement and yesterday’s Halloween announcement and the return of the Mad King’s Lair, I had a couple of out loud bursts of joyous glee. Thank you for doing this. I can not wait to play in the leagues. I can not wait to dig into the Halloween Event which includes my favorite holiday activity(the aforementioned Mad King’s Lair)that you have put into either of your games.

I posted this here instead of the PvP section because it includes things that concern all formats(WvW/PvE/PvP).

How is the quote from the first paragraph going to affect PvE? WvW? The balance updates are awesome for PvP. Our community there needs it to grow(Stronghold needs better communication tools but that’s a topic for a different time). Without skill splits though, the other areas of the game are going to be affected for good and bad. I have been harping on this since the game came out and I am sure it gets old, but the other formats shouldn’t be affected adversely because PvP needs to have balance. I have always been of the mind that PvP needs balance and PvE needs to cater more to fun with balance being a really close second. Having the balance of the entire game be based around tiny capture points in a single game mode isn’t the best for the overall game.

Question: Do you have any plans to do skill splits so that all modes can be balanced around their strengths and weaknesses without adversely affecting other modes?

I figured with the new trait streamlining it would be a heck of a lot easier to do skill splits than it was with the old trait system. With traits being pared down into a few optimal choices, and with the introduction of skill balance based around PvP, I can’t think of a better time to introduce skill splits so that every mode is balanced unto itself.

I’d hate to see Fractal or Raid builds get the nerf bat due to some crazy thing a PvP player figured out with a team comp. I hope you understand where my concern lies with this. Thanks for your time. Thanks for the amazing news this week!

Actually OP, it’s harder for PvP players to get Legendaries. We are required to play PvE if we want to build one. No one is required to PvP to build one.

This is great! First halloween was the best event ever! Thanks ArenaNet!

I’d be fine with this if we were getting new Fractals to run. We aren’t. So they are limiting the amount of instanced group content in the game even more than it already was. It’s really disappointing. They really don’t like permanent content. Everything needs to be done and then thrown away.

Stop trying to hype people on new fractal stuff. It’s a level cap increase and other little changes that were supposed to happen a few years ago in the “Fractured” update and never did.

Make some new Fractals and stop telling me I can play the game the way I want.

I am really tired of over-hyping and under-delivering and having to put on my attorney glasses so I can read in between the lines of what is actually being implemented in the game as opposed to what you say is happening.

I am really starting to be happy about not purchasing the expansion. This is coming from a life long fan of this franchise. Your guys’ words don’t match your actions anymore and it’s really frustrating.

The least you could offer everyone is some honesty. One of the reasons you are de-incentivizing running dungeons is you want people in Fractals and Raids. That’s a crappy reason to nerf something that some of us enjoy. I want to play this game how I want to play it and I would tell you the same thing if you were doing it to Fractals.

What was the reasoning behind staggering the release of the new Legendaries that were supposed to be out in 2013?

So instead of making dungeons better or removing them completely you will remove any incentive to do them? I hope you can understand why some of us would be less than thrilled by this.

I think I will just keep this game on auto pilot T-6 Material Laurel Daily login farming mode from now on.

Hey, John Smith: I really wish you’d allow some of the designers the ability to put more fun back into the game. Having the game’s economy be intrinsically tied to ArenaNet’s pocket book was the single worst idea for the game ever. Everything in the game’s economy and consequently the fun of the game takes a backseat to how you guys make money and it’s awful.

Well I hope the system for acquiring these is fun. Without the ability to buy these(which I think is a great idea, that way they are legendary)I really do hope that the system is a very engaging one to partake in. It would be a shame if the system was panned as being to grindy. We shall see. Also, why put all the time an effort into a new system and not have the artists make a full set available for the launch of HoT? Kinda makes me think that HoT is going to slow drip content out over the course of a year or two and then we will finally battle Mordy.

Kudos on the designs though. They are really cool looking. I hope you can keep a regular time table on the release of these. We have waited a long time and as a community have had to show a lot of patience after being told a number of times they were coming only to have it not happen.

I am really disappointed these were locked behind the HoT paywall. You guys told us these were coming before you even had any notion of doing an x-pac. Disapointing for those of us not convinced that HoT is going to be all that good but love the base game. The people that waited so long for these shouldn’t be forced to buy HoT to get em. Oh well. YOu made the decision to do so and those of us who waited for these but won’t be purchasing HoT will have to admire them from afar even though we thought we were getting them in 2013.

Agreed. I think it’d be nice to set them up like Fractals. No gate and it scales which actually aids in teaching people how to run them. The byproduct of scaling is that people get to learn how to do it and hopefully they keep raiding which keeps the population of raiders decent.

That being said, the community will gate this for LFG. It’s the nature of the beast. At the end of the day the gear gating for entry into the raid is an odd thing because subsequent raids in 1 year and 2 years and so on will all have the ascended gate for entry. There’s no treadmill. Adding in scaling is a good idea. Each raid can then be learned before hitting the highest difficulty. I realize the “gate” is just a recommended one. The hard gate will be the fine people in “the best MMO community in all of gaming”.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Iason Evan.3806:

I am tired of the inconsistencies. The WvW and PvE legendary materials are account bound but the PvP ones aren’t? PvP needs people to be playing in it. More so now that there are two game modes and GvG thrown in. Make the shard account bound or change the other items in WvW and PvE to be sellable.

Whatever you do, be consistent. And for the love of Pete, please start monitoring PvP gold gain so that we can actually just play PvP as a viable way for a GW2 income. I have to pay your silly BLTC tax, I should be able to make just as much money as someone playing PvE or WvW. Full Stop.

lol…

Paragraph 1: stop giving us ways to make gold!

Paragraph 2: Please give us ways to make gold!

Everything in PvE is sellable, hence why PvE players make so much more gold than you. Now you are getting the same thing but are complaining about it.

So you can sell the Map completion Legendary item? You can sell the WvW Legendary item? Context. I am talking specifically about the Legendary grade items needed in Legendary crafting.

I am tired of the inconsistencies. The WvW and PvE legendary materials are account bound but the PvP ones aren’t? PvP needs people to be playing in it. More so now that there are two game modes and GvG thrown in. Make the shard account bound or change the other items in WvW and PvE to be sellable.

Whatever you do, be consistent. And for the love of Pete, please start monitoring PvP gold gain so that we can actually just play PvP as a viable way for a GW2 income. I have to pay your silly BLTC tax, I should be able to make just as much money as someone playing PvE or WvW. Full Stop.

So many issues with this. Stronghold shouldn’t be launched in the state it’s in. F2P mobas handle that style better. I like stronghold, but only if I am playing in TS with friends. The lack of communication tools that were suggested by the community ages ago are a must for this type of game. Stronghold should launch with one button press lines like, “I’m defending our Champion!”

The removal of 50% of the Trans. Stones is also a poor choice. Why take rewards away from PvP players? Black Lion Chest keys? Great. I am stoked you are adding them. But at the expense of 50% of the Trans Stones? Nope. That’s not cool. It’s bad enough that I’m sitting on a few stacks of Leveling tomes that are next to useless for me now, but to get less Trans Stones is awful. I remember when it was free to have whatever style I wanted in PvP, then you went to stones, and now you are lessening those too?

Not making PvP a requirement and allowing people to sell the new legendary material that only drops in PvP is great, but if you are going to do that then make all Legendary materials across all game modes sellable. I abhor having to do map completion(I have crafted 2 legendaries and doubt I will ever do it again because of the map completion). It feels like grindy nonsense to me.

Overall I feel like all of this is 1 step forward, 2 steps back. Another thing: Making gold in PvP needs to be brought up to the same level as PvE. It was sorta on par when it loot was first introduced, but it’s fallen way behind again.

@logopai: please dont halve the trans. stones.

“Did you hear they’re replacing Geordi Laforge’s character in the new ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ movie that’s coming out and they’re using a Charr actor?!”

“Really, who’s the actor?”

“LeCharr Purrton.”

ArenaNet made specs, called them elite, and put them behind a paywall.

The real concern for me with masteries is that ArenaNet say they can use masteries as a system to build on over time. <— That’s a red flag when it comes to ArenaNet’s design. They implement a ton of new systems but barely ever expand upon them or even fix the ones that they did implement. Many lie broken or were never improved upon.

There are broken collections. Guild Merits and Guild missions and influence are all being scrapped. Heck, there are guild bounties that are still totally broken. The achievement system rewards have never been expanded upon.

I say these things because there is precedent when it comes to this stuff. They have proven time and again that they will put something in the game, leave it broken, and move on to the next thing. I see no reason for masteries to do anything other than follow suit by being a cool feature that never gets refined.

I thought when they said, “Difficult Group Content” they meant gated for player skill not gated for entry. I get that ascended isn’t required, but when are they gonna take off their rose colored glasses and realize the community is going to gate this just like the community gates every other form of instanced, group-based content they’ve had in this game?

The issue I have is not with what the OP is saying it’s with what ArenaNet said before revealing raids and how their words are totally different from how they implemented raids. Difficult content shouldn’t equate to wearing the best gear or excluding players based on gear grind. They should have made it so everyone was required to wear no better than green armor. That way, any level 80 could enter the raid but only those with a certain skill level would meet the player skill level needed to beat the raid. As it stands now, there are multiple gates required to do raids. There is a skill gate, a gear gate and a mastery gate. How is this any different from any raid ever implemented in a raid in any other game? The answer is simple. It’s no different.

If people that say they want raids to be difficult were telling the truth, their gear checks for entry to the raid would all be wearing green armor or less. Players, do the community a favor and require all your LFG team members to ping and wear un-transmuted green level gear for raids.

laokoko.7403:

exotic gear is already really cheap. I think that is all you need for raiding.

Besides berserker gear which is 6 gold. the other set is like 1 gold. You can get a full set in 1 hours of farming.

Now that my post seems a little more spot on, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, what is the actual point of needing to craft time-gated ascended armor to do a raid to get Legendary Armor that has comparable stats to the ascended? For cosmetic purposes, to be sure. What I am suggesting allows everyone who is level 80 to do the Raids and it makes the raids be based on skill and not gear. We can already Fractal at level 80 without gear checks in Fractal level 1. Why shouldn’t they utilize my suggestion so that everyone who is level 80 can attempt to do raids? That way you have the largest possible pool of players attempting the content.

I really have to say I don’t understand why it was designed this way. Saying raids are about skill and then gating them behind masteries and gear seems counter to all that was said about what they were to be.

I’m bumping this because it’s totally relevant to what is going on right now. ArenaNet, You dropped the ball.

They could have done this and it would have been about skill and everyone who is level 80 would have access to Raids and would see if they were “skillful” enough.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Raid-Gear-Suggestion/first#post5453002

Let me get this straight ArenaNet: We the players “should” grind time-gated Ascended Gear in order to do raids to acquire Legendary gear that has the same stats as the ascended gear we crafted? And you’re still trying to sell us raids as based on skill? What’s skillful about “strongly suggesting” the highest stat gear? If you really wanted it to be about skillful play, make all of us wear green gear, and tune the difficulty to ascended. At least that way it wouldn’t be gated content.

A good question is how many things from the million page Ranger thread actually made their way onto this elite spec?

Wanze.8410:

Iason Evan.3806:

Here’s how it is gonna play out: A player that wants Howler isn’t gonna do the precursor quest for Howler. They will do it for whatever precursor is the most expensive that they personally don’t want or like. They will sell that and buy the pre for Howler and have leftover money to put towards their T6 mats etc.

I thought a little more about this and i dont think its neccessarily a bad thing because it brings precursor prices more in line.

Expensive ones get produced amd sold more often and cheaper ones get bought more from the tp.

I get that and think you’re right. My issue with it is they designed account bound pre crafting around the TP instead of around being a better way for people to avoid RNG and have less frustration and more fun. Legendaries should be fun to do all the things for. It should be a good time. It shouldn’t devolve into “how can I make this thing with as little frustration as possible?” Unfortunately, that’s what it is.

angan.6572:

Are you adding a pvp halloween reward track ?

that’s the million candy corn question.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3m5utc/super_adventure_box_in_mario_maker/

Just play this til the actual thing comes back. The platforming in Mario Maker is light years better anyways.

I find it more amusing how slow ArenaNet is to change or fix broken stuff. That Mesmer Focus #4 skill has been broken for the entirety of the game and it’s take 3+ years to address after multiple requests to fix it. 3 stinkin’ years.

I loled at the PvP thing. A single PvE only thing being fixed doesn’t discount the fact that PvP dictates a good majority of the balance changes across all game modes. I have been a lonely voice in the wilderness crying out for skill splits for the entirety of the lifespan of this game. The game should have had skill splits for all game modes(PvE/WvW/sPvP)starting in August of 2012. There is no reason skills shouldn’t act differently in different modes. That way you can design skills based on the areas they are being used in and you don’t ever have to worry about the way they work there affecting how they work somewhere else. It’s still a shame this isn’t the case.

It’s working as intended guys. Don’t worry yourselves with details.

I’d love to see an official link for the armor pieces themselves dropping. That just doesn’t seem like ArenaNet’s M.O. I would think we’d get a recipe drop and then be able to spend a ton of time gathering stuff to craft it. Legendary items have never been drops. It’d be an interesting change indeed.

The price needs to be adjusted for the item extractors. I wanted to salvage some Perplexity Runes off of an old set of Exotic Temple Karma Armor. It was cheaper to buy new armor and new perplexity runes than use the extractor. It would be the same for any runes on my ascended armor sets. I would just put new runes over the top of the old ones. This strikes me as odd.

I feel like some items like the extractor should have variable gem pricing. There’s zero reason for a person employing logic to buy some of this stuff. Then again, maybe logical people aren’t the target audience on some of this stuff.

laokoko.7403:

Reading this post brings tears to my eyes.

You call those people pve players. When in reality is you should call them farmers.

I don’t think you realize how much farmers sacrifice just to reach their rewards. I used to do 10 hours cof farm everyday. And everyday I listen my groupmates whine about how boring it is but they keep going and going. Even if they are tired, they keep going. In the end everyone start complaining they are too tired to play, some of them even says their eyes is hurting. A few times some of them fall asleep while they are farming and we are forced to replace them.

A couple years later. Many of my farm friends have left the game. And it is only me left. You dont’ know how many times I have crawl out of the bed, just so I can kill tequalt to farm karma. Even if I’m so tired, I try to find the strength to walk out of bed, since Tequalt is on a fix schedule.

You don’t know how many “fun” I give up. So I can farm more efficiently. Of course I can do the “fun” things. But the other more boring things give more rewards, so I choose to do repetitive boring things.

I really wish I could say I’m a pve players, or wvw players, or pvp players… But reality is I’m just a farmer. Spending 10 hours throwing maize balm at critters isn’t pve players. Running around picking up chest in SW isn’t pve players… They are farmers.

I just want to say, stop saying it is unfair. Because you dont’ realize the sacrifice farmers give up.

Obviously everyone play for fun. So do farmers. Farmers find getting their rewards so fun, they are willing to sacrifice hundreds if not thousands of hours of having fun. The question is are you willing to make that sacrifice…

Take solace and comfort in the fact that you don’t have a gambling addiction and aren’t one of the poor souls who drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars on gems to purchase Black Lion Chests with because you want that rush of getting an item. Heaven forbid a gaming company protect their customers by not putting any gambling on their cash shop. They do though because they know they can make a great deal of money off of people that have gambling addictions.

Beldin.5498:

Extreme.8350:

You are not gonna wait around for druid its the second most played class
but everyone tell them to re roll guardian because it sucks but there will be
plenty of healers if it turns out to be meta which you don’t know.

But all those healer suck hard because they run around with bears, no matter
that maybe cats will die in 2 seconds at raids anyway .. but better a dead cat
than a bear

Oh .. and btw. @Iason Evan.3806 : there you have your “stow pet” function .. just let it die ^^

:)

I think the issue is that in a game that has been out for a good while the optimum becomes the benchmark. The best players want to play the most difficult content and they are the ones who figure out which professions are the best tanks, which professions are the best CC, and which professions are the best healers. Those professions then become the de facto “group”.

You also have a group of players(myself included)a little disgruntled that Rangers didn’t receive a pet AI fix that should have happened years ago. Those same players could also be a little miffed that Rangers didn’t get the ability to stow pets permanently. That should have been a top priority in the design of the Ranger Elite Spec. Players that don’t feel that way could have just, you know, ignored stowing their pets. A lot of players for a very long time have been asking for a stow pet option and also more options for more control over their pets which ArenaNet said “they didn’t want to make the profession too complicated for new players”. So now we have difficult content in the form of Raids that wouldn’t be for new players and yet we don’t get more fidelity for control over our pets? I’m at a loss for why.

I love that Rangers are getting a really viable support option. They do decent damage. They have nice CC options. Now they have a viable support option. It’s a well-rounded profession. Te issue for me personally is that very few of the core player concerns for this profession have been addressed. Greater pet control, better pet AI, and the ability to stow pets permanently have all gone completely ignored.

The very first Elite Spec for Rangers was a great opportunity to take into account the pages upon pages of player feedback for Rangers and should have at least addressed one of the core issues players have with the profession and didn’t do that and it’s disappointing. That’s why I think there is a bit of disappointment with what is really actually looking like a fun Elite Spec to play despite player’s requests being ignored.

I think people wanted a scavenger hunt for an account bound precursor that they figured would involve a time sink but that wouldn’t add a gold sink on top of the time sink. Does that sound about right? Oh well.

Here’s how it is gonna play out: A player that wants Howler isn’t gonna do the precursor quest for Howler. They will do it for whatever precursor is the most expensive that they personally don’t want or like. They will sell that and buy the pre for Howler and have leftover money to put towards their T6 mats etc.

Am I correct in assuming with the old pres that you can make one this way and it’s not account bound? The new ones are only obtained through the new method? Is that correct?

Doesn’t really matter. 2 eles in a party provide 4 ice bows that still target all 3 golems in SE P1. Boss stacking will still work.

octagon.6504:

We really should be able to keep our pets stored during battle if we want. Necros can do it.

^ this is really the option I want, but because they have been so reluctant to do it, I was asking for the next best thing. Optimally, we would have AI fixes and improvements and we would be able to stow our pets as well. The community has been asking for this for a long time and I don’t think it’s a crazy request to not want to have a pet around when they behave so poorly. Please make some QoL changes to pet AI so that the profession is what it could be. It’s almost there, but the pet is really a detriment to the profession.

Dungeons have been abandoned. Fractals are getting support in the form of new level cap and high end mechanics but we aren’t getting new fractals. Why should I have reason to think Raids won’t end up just as unsupported as the 2 previous incarnations of instanced group content were? There’s a track record here for ArenaNet implementing a type of content and then abandoning it. I’d really love to hear why this will fare differently in its fate than fractals and dungeons.

Heck, throw SAB into that conversation and I would say there could be an outside chance of us never seeing the 3rd wing of the raid. I feel like that’s a reasonable assumption given their history with this type of content in this game.