Guild Wars 2

Finally, the proof that there is nothing ANet can do without generating a (semi) legitimate complaint!

ANet gives away — free, gratis, at no charge — one of the best animated miniatures in their 10-year history of gaming and someone thinks that’s a problem.

OP: give it a few weeks, until everyone has one, and then most people will choose to display something else (so they can distinguish themselves from the masses).

Right now, world bosses are trivial content: everyone shows up at the same time, boss always dies (unless the map instance is created late), and so the rewards are all but guaranteed.

This is less true for Tequatl and Breach|Vinewrath events and not really applicable to Tripleheaded, so support these events randomly rewarding special skins that cannot easily be obtained elsewhere.

So, when each world boss gets an update that re-introduces the possibility of failure, then I would also like to see new armor or weapon skins as part of the reward

First, double check to see whether you can apply GWAMM to your characters. It could be that you got the email and yet nothing changed, i.e. only the email was sent incorrectly.

Second, creating a ticket is the right thing to do because only Customer Service can help you resolve this and they can only do so if you filed a ticket.

Finally, during any rollout/update that changes over a million accounts, there are going to be errors: false positives (where a legit GWAMM gets flagged as bogus) and false negatives (where a bogus GWAMM doesn’t get flagged). In theory, those should be very few in number. In practice, there will still be some — and unfortunately, you appear to be one the unlucky ones.

tl;dr wait for Support to help you resolve stuff; it will get sorted out. (And again, I’m sorry you got stuck with this issue.)

You might also want to change it to “We Can See Your Minis in PvP, WvW” (or something like that), since (a) this about minis and (b) it doesn’t matter in PvE.

At launch all of the world bosses were fun. Heck, Clawr of Jormag was my favorite back then. We couldn’t figure out when it spawned, people had to work at avoiding fear, and so on. Now, of course, it’s a snorefest.

A lot of the Living Story bosses have been fun, too.

What happens in any game when the content doesn’t change substantially for 3 years is people figure out how to complete it more and more efficiently, to the point where even Tequatl rarely fails now.

The issue isn’t whether ANet can or cannot make fun world bosses. The question is how can they keep them fun, after the players evolve tactics?

When the TP has borked like this in the past, nothing has actually been lost. What happens instead is that the “queue” that processes the transactions gets slowed down. When it’s happened in the past, it’s usually been an hour or three. I think worst case was someone waiting a day. Now, that’s still very annoying, especially if you had plans for an item or proceeds from selling.

File a support ticket and wait it out. Should be available for pickup … (wait for it) … soon™.

There will always be people who tell you it’s a waste of time to post ideas. There are always people who tell you to post, because, hey, it doesn’t cost you much, so what have you got to lose?

I go by ANet’s track record:

• There are features and concepts that appear to have been adopted only after discussion in these forums, critiques on reddit.
• There are bugs that have been fixed due to similar feedback.

The biggest problem I see is that ANet is terrible about letting us know when this happens. For reasons good and bad, they don’t post much and of course, they can’t point to a single specific thread sometimes. But sometimes they fix or add stuff that could only have come about due to public feedback and there isn’t even a mention in the update notes.

tl;dr share your ideas here. People at ANet are influenced by what we post.

This argument and analysis comes up all the time.

• Some skins are going to be low supply at times and the market price will reflect that.
• You never have to gamble to obtain a BL skin; they can always be bought on the TP.
• Even coveted skins will not rise in price “much” after they stop being available for 1 ticket. At times, I’ve gotten 3-ticket & 5-ticket skins for less than the market price of equivalent “current” skins.
• The biggest price increase only happens after the skin is entirely removed from acquisition-via-ticket, which is usually 12-18 months after the original introduction.

tl;dr this only costs real-world money for those that insist that they only want to acquire the skins via tickets. It is always more efficient and economical to pay the market price on the TP, while the skins are available for tickets.

GuzziHero.2467:

Put your Twisted Watchwork Portal into your bank.
Make a new character.
Withdraw TWP.
Use it.
Fight your way back to Lion’s Arch.
Document your adventure below.

---

Goshdarn it, I got Black Citadel. FAIL.

I have kept a couple of dozen of these since way back when and I give them to people as gifts, with this exact challenge. It’s a great idea (and fun for those willing to risk it).

DelusionsOfGrandeur.9287:

A Tome of Knowledge used on a level 80 hero gives you one Spirit Shard.

Which means that a Tome is worth a Shard… so should the reverse not also be true?

I get that a lot of people like the shards, because they can be used for making legendaries… but to be honest, I tend not to bother with those. They’re good and all, I’m sure, but IMO they seem like way too much effort… so I’d love another way to spend spirit shards.

Personally, I think it would be great if we could buy the tomes from Miyani using shards in the same way that we can with Writs of Experience.

Heck, I’d even be willing to exchange them for Writs, which only one level per 20… seriously, I don’t use the forge at all, and all they’re good for is forging things… and yet I keep getting handed them as a reward for doing the dailies. =(

An option to exchange them for gold would also be a good alternative, if you don’t like the idea of giving away Tomes. Or Laurels. Anything that is capable of being useful without requiring the Mystic Forge, really.

Obviously, all of the above would be convenient for some players. It would also go against the intended use of this specific currency. The point of separate currencies is to tie rewards and/or benefits to specific types of content or character progression. Better than making it easier to exchange currencies would be to eliminate them; that would maximize convenience (and leave a much more boring game, in my opinion).

If you don’t want to use spirit shards for material promotion, then maybe you can use them to unlock all the antique weapons skins. If that’s not interesting to you, then just sit on them until there’s another use down the road.

• Rata Sum has 9 PoIs.
• The Grove has 4. (6 vistas)

I just logged on to a toon in Rata and it’s showing 9 PoI, as expected.

Thanks for posting the follow-up, shadow.

pdavis.8031:

Wait a minute.

We have Mawdrey, Princess, and the Star of Gratitude.

We toss those 3 along with a stack of say, T6 mats, into the forge and gain a karka/mordrem hybrid of doom that eats bloodstone dust, dragonite ore, and empryeal fragements.

After X amount of mats have been consumed by this creature, it transforms into the next incarnation of an elder dragon!!!!

This is how the Elder Dragons came to be!!
They started as small innocent creatures, but grew and changed after consuming so much bloodstone, dragonite, and stars….

BEWARE!!!!! BEWARE!!!!!!

This is how I thought the Thaumanova Reactor disaster happened (before they released the fractal explaining its “true” origins):

• Golem goes to vacuum the gunk.
• Golem overloads, ’sploding into a huge Fire Elemental.
• The spawning of and destruction of said world boss leaves a mess.
• This mess requires a golem to come in and vacuum the gunk.

Now, pdavis has explained the “true” origin of elder dragons:

• Elder dragons awaken, destabilizing Tyria.
• Adventurers are tasked with defeating them, to save the humanoid races.
• The fight and aftermath leave oodles of bits of dragons and their power sources: dragonite ore, bloodstone dust, empyreal fragments.
• Devices are invented to help clean up the oodles.
• These devices overload, causing the creation of Elder Dragons.

thiago.5608:

How much we will have to wait for a release date? Its taking too long, right ?

What are the alternatives?

• They release HoT early, without playtesting.
• They release HoT even earlier, without doing any QA.
• They release HoT early, by removing features.

In that context, no, it’s not taking “too long” — it’s taking just the right amount of time.

Kudos to the OP for posting about how their views on the design evolved. It’s hard to admit to having made a mistake and hardly anyone is able to do so graciously, with allowances made for others who might not share the same opinion.

Whenever something in the game changes, I try to consider how I will feel about it a month after implementation, rather than on how annoying it might be to adapt to the change the day/week its introduced.

Reikou.7068:

Said this many times before.

Transferring to a server with a population lower than your own should be free.

Transferring to a server with a population higher than your own should be prohibitively expensive.

The goal is server balance. Who cares about “implosions” or whatever. Those will only be temporary.

That’s an intriguing idea. It would, however, allow for stacking right after the announcement of a tournament, which would be terrible. So I’d recommend the following variation:

• To high-pop server: painful cost.
• To mid-pop: about the same as a character slot or three.
• To low-pop: free, however subsequent transfers within 4-5 weeks would cost the same as moving to a high-pop.
• Add to this: if you transfer from a high-pop to a low pop, you get a couple of birthday boosters.

This prevents bandwagoning while at the same time encouraging folks to move to lower pop servers.

For PvE & PvP, the choice of server is largely irrelevant (although it does influence the selection of players you’ll run into in heavily-trafficked maps). The choice matters a lot for WvW, so if that’s your cup of vegemite, you might ask around in the WvW forums, too. You should also know that the formula for determining the price of moving is changing in a few hours. In order, read:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/5315121 & then
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/5324934

tl;dr version: prices will be determined based on “average” WvW participation rates. A lot of small groups interested in WvW might be tempted to move to higher pop worlds; I’d personally advise learning about the worlds first — more people doesn’t always mean more fun.

Ele has the worst downed skills? Ele #2 allows you to move anywhere without taking additional damage. Mesmer #2 is just as likely to put you into more danger as it is to take you out of danger. Plus, the stealth only fools people unfamiliar with the mechanic; it barely delays a stomp to those who understand it.

That said, I don’t really have a problem with the skills generally: I don’t think it should be all that easy to escape death after being downed.

What I do is to make sure I have only one character learn all the inscriptions and insignia (I’m lucky that I have a single character with a weapon and an armor discipline maxed to 500).

That way, I always know where to go to craft those items or to check if I have unlocked them in the first place (otherwise, I’d have to track on a spreadsheet, which gets old).

Luisgolas.7046:

Trying to choose an icon for an Android app that use the API, I was wondering if I can use the guildwars icon or related art in some way. I have only found this: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/media/asset-kit/ but term of use forbids its use for a public app (“The content must be used in a non-commercial context for private, personal use only”).

Is there any art/logo that is allowed to use?

NOTE: This topic is not exactly API, but I think it’s the best place to ask. Please, move it if not

Other people use icons for API-related web pages. I can’t imagine there’s an important difference for iStore or Android shop apps, as long as you aren’t profiting from their use, i.e. non-commercial.

If you aren’t charging money and you aren’t receiving advertising dollars, the worst thing that is going to happen (if ANet’s lawyers disapprove) is you’ll be asked to take the app down. Not even corporate lawyers like to sue, if they don’t have to; your risk is negligible.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV. Your mileage might vary.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Link to Knowledge Base:

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/27697743-Refunds

Good luck.

At least one of us (not me) remembered to answer the original question using an official source.

NeuroMuse.1763:

It’s really mind boggling how fast time goes by sometimes. In a couple weeks it’ll have been 1 year since Dry Top release O.o Silverwastes came a few months later. That is a serious content gap. Hopefully we’ll have a solid release date on HoT soon or some kind of pre-HoT content announcement.

Even after editing, what I see here is:

• It’s been one year since Dry Top. Nearly as long since Silverwastes.
• That is a serious content gap.

I don’t know how else to interpret that except that you don’t believe we’ve seen any new content since Silverwastes. That undermines your thesis before you’ve even stated it, since technically, we have seen new content.

Maybe what you wanted to say (and here, I am deliberately putting words into your mouth) is: it’s been ages since the last time there was a massive content update; the last time was when the Vinewrath was added to the Silverwastes in January 2015, over six months ago.

Even though that is true, I’m at a loss to understand what ANet could do about it at this point. Their options are:

• Delay HoT in order to (a) design, (b) plan, (c.) code, (d) test, and (e) implement something new.
• Delay HoT in order to re-release some festival, such as SAB, Pavillion, etc. In theory, that means less design; I doubt it means less of the other elements.
• Release HoT early, without some of the planned content or features.
• Release HoT early, without doing any more BETA testing for balance, playability, or fun.
• Cancel the expac and return to the old system.

Is there another option that I’m missing?

Like it or not, ANet decided on a course of action probably over a year ago and I doubt very much if they could change their overall plans fast enough that we’d see any new content any sooner than we’ll see HoT released.

Shouldn’t they have saved some staff for GW2/vanilla content? Maybe; that’s what I would have done in their shoes. On the other hand, I don’t work there and perhaps if I did, I’d agree that putting all their eggs into the HoT basket was the smarter move.

edit: grammar

I’ll paraphrase one of my favorite quotes:

I’m sorry my letter was so long — I did not have time to make it shorter.

Take the time to edit your thoughts, so that others of us can follow along. I’m sorry you hate bullet-point lists, so don’t do that even if they are a convenient tool. That doesn’t exclude you using other techniques (some mentioned by Xenon). There’s a reason why so many writing teachers recommend learning the 5-paragraph essay: it is incredibly effective, despite it being trite and over-used.

Plus, try not to blame your readers for missing the point. Maybe the idea wasn’t clear in the original three posts. The fact that so many of us are commenting on the length (instead of the content) might suggest there’s merit in restating your case.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Except the Laurel cost of Unidentified dyes. Sigh.

Except for that.

On the other hand, the TP value of unID dyes is still ~90s now, which means you can buy a heavy crafting bag (for one laurel), sell the contents, buy an UnID dye from the lowest seller, and often still walk away with coin. That is, you can still spend one laurel to get one unID dye.

That is by far the best “previously in _” I’ve seen in any medium, including sequels of books & movies, TV shows, radio serials, and other games.

• It covers all the major plot points.
• It does so concisely and accurately.
• Despite the brevity, it does a great job conveying the personalities of the major figures.
• Best of all, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I hope that if HoT includes a summary for new players, they do something like this. (And, of course, Debi Derryberry has to voice one of the kids.)

Let’s say everything that people accuse ANet of doing is true: they were manipulative, they lied about the manifesto, they cheated, they stole candy from babies. (Well, maybe not the last two.)

What possible difference does it make today in whether any of us enjoy playing the game?

Sure, I’d prefer to deal with a completely ethical company, but my choices are limited to AT&T or Comcast (or companies that lease their bandwidth), so… oh wait, we’re talking about a gaming company. Here, the only two important metrics are:

• Is the game fun?
• Does the company’s practices interfere with my ability to have fun?

For me, the answer is yes, the game is fun and no, their practices have zero impact on my ability to have fun. Maybe the answer is different for the OP.

OP: I’m not likely to watch a video without some description of what I should be looking for. I’m sure ANet is less likely still.

If you think there was a hacker, send the video (and an explanation, please) to exploits@arena.net (or create a support ticket).

undouble.1472:

Since the changes to the “daily” and “awards” sections, I note that Laurels are FAR. FAR overvalued and under-delivered than ever before!!

None of the laurel costs changed then or since. Instead, you can now get 55 laurels per every four weeks (if you choose the 28-day reward of laurels), versus 38-41 laurels per month before the change.

In other words:

• Laurels are equally valued since before the change.
• Players can obtain more because of the change.

Or tl;dr we are better off laurel-wise now than we were before.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Then Anet has frankly failed at a very base level. Unlocking the elite spec should only allow your character to use the weapon as any other weapon, regardless if the elite spec is chosen or not.

This inability to use the weapon if you’re not using the spec actively flies in the face of player choice (again) and shows that Anet has had no intention to balance these new specs with the old.

That’s conflating a whole set of competing concepts into one big mess.

• Player choice remains: choose the elite spec…or don’t; it’s up to you.
• Balancing elite vs non-elite spec has nothing to do with whether a single weapon can or cannot be wielded. Builds have to be balanced for PvP, WvW, and PvE.

Maybe the problem is that people are confused by the word “elite,” which means “the best” of a group, whereas in GW2/HoT, an elite spec is just one that is limited to people who own the expac. Perhaps they should have called it, “Expansion Specialization,” since that’s all it is.

I’m not saying the system is perfect. I am saying let’s try to focus the criticism on things that are actually a problem; we don’t need to invent issues.

Loex.5104:

do ppl ever realize that HoT is a prePURCHASE and no preORDER?

Yes, most people will realize that.

and

No, some people will never notice that there’s a difference.

Dinks.2478:

Ignoring all the fanboys here to whiteknight Anet, yes I remember the manifesto and I am as disappointed as well. Anet can backtrack and pretend they meant something else all they want but it won’t change the reality that this isn’t the game we were promised.

ANet doesn’t need to backtrack: they didn’t say what people think they did. People tend to see what they want in a manifesto, which is why Marx wouldn’t be considered a Marxist or even much of a Communist, despite him having written the document that started both movements.

If you want to be disappointed in the game, that’s your right. Personally, I prefer to decide if I enjoy the game that was actually delivered, not as I thought it should have been. As it turns out, I do enjoy this game (even as I wish that ANet would adjust or completely re-do some aspects of it).

tl;dr I don’t care what they said or didn’t say in the manifesto. I care about the game itself.

• More Dollars Than Sense
• Ecto-illogical
• Shinier Than You
• Dishonorary Skritt
• I Spent All This Ecto & All I Have is Skritt to Show For It

Wanze.8410:

Anything that is bought from a vendor with gold or karma isnt salvageable.

Which is fine if you knew that independently; there’s no mention in-game. Plus, gold-bought and karma-bought items often look otherwise identical to those that aren’t.

In other words, it would be very helpful if the items included a note or mark that said, “not salvageable”.

To the extent that anything in this game is “permanent,” that NPC is. (ANet, I’m sure, reserves the right to add/remove/alter/disable content depending on the evolution of the game and its community.)

Aetrion.8295:

Why can’t the game have enemies that can deal with people who sacrificed all survivability for more damage?

It could. Phrased like that, I’m at a loss to understand why it has to ? What do you care if someone else wants to go glass canon?

If you rephrased your question as, “can we get smarter and more dangerous foes?” I’m sure most of us would be on board with that. And so far, that’s been the trend. Silverwastes is more dangerous than other open world areas, the related foes in instances were, too. Now, the AI needs to get better, too.

So I’m hopeful we’ll see more challenging content in the future.

The OP might have hurt the credibility of the bug report by bringing up an unrelated mechanic. That doesn’t change the question:

Is it intended that Resistance (or related mechanics) are able to eliminate the time delay on using portals? Especially since that delay was introduced to prevent insta-ports.

(Personally, I don’t really care: cool feature if it works; I can live without it if it doesn’t. I do think it’s worth asking ANet to think about it.)

Eh, the defensive elements are fine (with the possible exception of healing power, which is weak). People use active defense all the time and defense abilities (like blind, blocks, etc) to good effect. In other words, defense is so good most of us don’t even realize how much we use it.

A bigger problem in my opinion is that the AI isn’t clever enough to deal with these things. Foes move into AoE (not out of it), they conveniently turn corners to fight us (forming clumps that are easily cleaved), and follow predictable scripts that can be easily countered.

For reasons I’ve never understood, some of the start missions can get stalled. There are a couple of work-around, the easiest being to ask someone to taxi you into an instance that is working ok. Another is to “guest” (not transfer) to another server (press [f12] as if swapping to another character, then press the ‘guest’ button, and choose one of the more populated worlds). That often (although not always) puts you in a new instance, which is usually fine.

Good luck.

Zaoda.1653:

Was it confirmed as to how many hero points we’ll need to completely unlock the specialisation traits and skills?

It hasn’t been yet. If anything, it sounds like they are still balancing that internally. Any numbers we might/might not have seen from datamining or the beta are likely to change. For now, I’m assuming it can’t hurt to have an extra 100 per L80.

Vayne.8563:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

Yes, you can get a silver doubloon from any chest, but you have to be the right level to do so. Not sure about specific odds though.

Only chests that consistently drop so-called “universal upgrades” (meaning crests/doubloons/marks/medallions/gemstones). Not all JP chests do this nor do all open-world chest. However, most drop do, usually 1-2 gear + 1-2 universals.

I can’t remember seeing a chest you can’t get upgrades for, like crests. I’ll have to pay more attention.

My L53 parked at rhendak’s tomb opens that chest daily. It’s often a single piece of gear. Occasionally, there will be a recipe or a treasure map scrap. Other open world chests have similar “junk”. Still, the type that have some sort of universal upgrade are more common.

starlinvf.1358:

Lvl 80s also have the highest chance for T6…. while tiny, is far more frequent due to the number of times you can roll champ bags. I’ve also had an instance where a named exotics dropped on a character I was leveling. It was explained to me that the first set of drop table checks are by type only, and that named exotics all being level 80 can’t be anything less. So if you can at least meet the minimum requirements for a table/promotion path that give exotics, you can get a named as a result.

We’re discussing whether to open them on an L80 or an L53-55. For those purposes, the chances of getting T6 are identical (on average; actual mileage will vary).

starlinvf.1358:

Prices are kind of unstable due to speculation concerning the new legendarys in HOT.

Legendary/precursor prices have been fairly stable in the last month or three, since there hasn’t been any new information about what we’ll see in HoT.

Welcome back!

Here are my recommendations about your guild:
Don’t scrap your existing guild, regardless. At worst, it can be your personal bank or a gift to a friend who needs one.

Take the time to try out other guilds. You can maintain your guild and rep something else (or even up to 4 other guilds). Take a month or three to experience the game differently.

After doing that, you’ll have a better idea of what you want from a guild, from the game, and how much you want to contribute to each. You might decide that you found a home in one of your try-it-out guilds. You might find you aren’t satisfied and you want to start over again. Or you might realize you know exactly how to rebuild your original guild.

tl;dr now is a perfect opportunity to see how the rest of the world lives. Your original guild structure is there if/when you need it.

The wiki has sourced a lot of the name trivia, although almost always, when it’s named after ANet staff, there’s little ambiguity.

In the case of “Kevin,” that could refer to any number of people, places, or things, so I’m going to assume that it’s just a name.

Lapider.4829:

Three times I have gotten to the end of this story episode and been disconnected when the dragon is near dead.

A friend had that trouble (turned out to be a problem with the computer, possibly both GPU and CPU, only we didn’t know that at the time). We managed to help him through it by letting him leech the instance:

• Two of us did all the work.
• We asked him to turn his graphic settings to minimum.
• We “forced” him to stand in a corner, facing away from the fight (or around the corner, when feasible).

Admittedly, this was not much fun for him (and the trial/error on all our parts to figure something out that worked …well, let’s just say, our eyes weren’t bleeding by the end, which surprised us). However, it got the job done.

Our friend was able to see/participate in most of the story (prior to the various DCs), so it could have been a lot worse.

tl;dr ask some friends/guildies (or even strangers) to carry you through it and work with customer service and/or a local tech-savvy person to trouble shoot the DCs.

Good luck.

You aren’t going to hit DR doing map completion on different characters.

• Completion requires you to move around the map, which breaks DR.
• Any hidden DR points you pick up are character bound; when you switch, each character starts fresh until you return to the original character. And if you keep moving around, see the first point: you break DR.

tl;dr you’ll be fine.

There is no such thing, in my opinion, as a “traditional caster”. Mechanically, games don’t distinguish between “spells” and “skills” — it’s only a matter of perception that players do.

So the OP is actually asking, “why isn’t there a caster that follows the expectations that some of us have about how mages behave in other games?” To me, the answer is obvious: because GW2 doesn’t care about behaving like other games. That can be a great thing or a terrible one, depending on whether you mind being moved from your comfort zone.

I, too, typically play mages. I like the mechanics to be far-removed from something that happens in real life. I like the AoE and the sparkling effects. I like the challenge of being squishy and still delivering the damage of traditional melee.

And yet I love the casters in GW2. They offer all that plus the ability to play upclose and personal.

tl;dr Why isn’t there a traditional caster? Because the GW2 choices are a lot more fun to play.

The mechanism for granting attendance influence is flawed.

• You can get anywhere from 0 to 80 influence from a single account, although 30-40 per day is typical.
• The attendance influence is granted as each character logs on for the first time.
• The guild history is only updated 1x/day, ~3 am server time.

Alternatively, consider spending 70 silver to buy 350 influence every week and not sweating the details about attendance influence at all. (Such influence can be purchased at any Guild Promoter, located in each major city, close to guild bank (as well as in the Royal Terrace and Captain’s Heirship).

After considerable testing, I have never managed to be able to guarantee the amount of logon influence I get per day. Here are the things that I have found that can, um, influence the amount. (I’ll list the suggestions first and then explain some of how I tested these ideas.)

• Keep character in different zones. Log them in one zone at a time.
• Logon your last-played character first.
• When you logout, make sure they are repping the guild that you want to accrue the influence.
• Don’t change zones until you stop accruing influence.

Here are some of these things I’ve tried. In each case, I’ve opened up the guild panel as soon as the character enters the game and recorded the influence.

• Having every character in the same zone. -> Likely to stop earning after 1-2 characters.
• Changing the zone after logging in. -> Likely to stop earning after 1-2 characters.
• Changing representation to a second guild after logon -> No distinct pattern.
• Logging in characters starting with “most recently played” (a sort of LIFO) -> Likely to stop earning after 1-2 characters.
• Logging in starting with “least recently played” (semi FIFO) -> Likely to stop earning after 5+ characters.
• Changing representation to the intended guild after logging in -> Likely to stop earning attendance for that guild with that character.

tl;dr the mechanism is flawed, it’s easier just to buy influence instead. The typical 50i you might earn “for free” each day saves you only 10 silver and requires a level of micromanagement that will make the game less fun for a lot of people.

edit: grammar

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor

Each of the relevant vendors sells a full set of armor (of each weight) with the same stats.

Thevoidiscold.4910:

I had a pretty solid build and was happy with it. Now that it has changed my build is pretty much messed up. So I was just wondering if it is going to stay the way it is now or if there is a possibility that it will be changed again and if so how far into the future. I want to start working on a new build with the way things are but it would really suck if I do and then it is changed again and I have to make another build again. Don’t want to spend all this gold and time obtaining new stats for my armor and weapons and new accessories for nothing. Thinking maybe condition guardian, not sure though.

In the context of your question, I would recommend that you do spend the effort to adopt a new build sooner rather than later. Consider using rare gear to test it out instead of exotic or ascended.

Also, remember that if you have ascended weapons or armor, you can change the stats using a new Mystic Forge recipe: the original gear, 5 ecto, an exotic insignia/inscription for the new stats, and an “Anthology of Heroes” (costs 10 spirit shards, which you should have in bulk for now). Ends up costing 4-10g + the spirit shards, depending on your target stats. (There’s no parallel recipe for trinkets or back items, because: reasons.)

The only comment I’ll make on your previous build is: I think most of us had to change our builds (which some welcomed the change and some did not). I found that, across my eight L80s, I ended up with better builds because I was forced to re-evaluate each. Even when the ‘new’ build was just the specialization variation of the old one, I am still happier with the new version. (There are some some minor losses, in convenience or utility, nothing major). So I’d recommend that you approach the new build with an open mind about whether you’ll end up with a ‘better’ or ‘worse’ build for your particular style.