Guild Wars 2

If it’s common enough, you should be able to get the person’s name (with or without a screenshot). Create a support ticket or email exploits@arena.net with the details, especially the time (and ideally, use the /ip command to find the address of the instance you were in).

Alternatively, if you can see from where they start the blink, you can give that to ANet and they will “plug” the hole.

Fissure of Woe was instanced content, just like a dungeon. GW2 already has content like that.

I would agree that I’d like to see more, newer instances, like Fractals (but not necessarily another fractal). In addition, the two most recent maps are considerably more challenging for a lot of L80s (just look back to the number of people complaining that the pulls and conditions make the fights too difficult).

I have taken the developers recent comments to mean that build templates aren’t part of the expansion. However, it seems to me that ANet is working on them in some capacity. Apparently, there’s some reason why they think this is more complicated than we, the players, think it is.

I think you should follow the same advice people give to new home buyers: do it while you can afford it and have the interest.

There are existing legendaries which are currently cheaper to put together than they have been in a long time (lower cost of ectos, T6 mats, and precursors). Some indeterminate time in the future, there will be new legendaries and, because they are new, any ingredients that can be traded will be in high demand.

If you really want a legendary now, I’d go for it. If you’re not bothered by waiting up to a year, then you might as well wait for the new shiny.

I can’t really see that one streamer (plus fans) will make that big a difference. The game has sold millions of copies and probably has a few hundred thousand playing at peak hours.

It’s a mathematical certainty that in a popular map, the first one you see is more likely to be low pop.

• If it’s full, you can’t enter.
• If it’s near full, you can’t enter it except by taxi.
• If it’s pretty full, you will enter it if a party member is, but not otherwise.
• If it’s getting close to full and 30% or better towards the meta, a “good” map will use LFG to taxi folks in, making the map fit one of the above.
• If it’s not getting close to full, those people who use LFG will leave the map and head for the fuller ones.
• That leaves the 1-2 remaining maps as low-pop.

This will happen pretty much 24/7, except when a lot of people sign on for the day (e.g. right after reset or other peak periods).

I don’t know that I think this is either ‘good’ or ‘normal’ — it’s just an unexpected result of the way we perceive the effort:reward ratio for this particular map.

Incidentally, a similar thing happens in Southsun starting about 10 minutes before the Karka Queen is scheduled. Instances get full quickly and new ones are created often. In each new map, especially those created at e.g. 5 minutes before, you’ll see people complaining in /map that they got into a ‘bad overflow’, when it’s just a new map and within 30 seconds, it, too, will be full.

NGoHT.1932:

Hello! I just bought guild wars 2 and i just wanted to say Hi till its downloading

Also any starter tips for a newbie elementalist/necromancer are welcome since im planing to start one of those ^.^

Hi, OP. Welcome to GW2.

Play whatever you like. There will be plenty of people to welcome you to their groups. (But do be as communicative with them as you have been with us, e.g. let them know you are new.)

Standard Tuning Crystals have a vendor value of 18 copper. They cannot be sold on the TP for less than 20c because that’s the minimum price that allows the seller a profit after deducing fees.

Prior to the ‘floor’ being added to the selling process, people were able to list buy orders for any price. Thus, there continue to be existing orders for less than the minimum.

While ANet could theoretically remove all those offers, it would be a support nightmare. It’s easy to write a decent script that would do this, but it’s very time-intensive to thoroughly test it to make sure it doesn’t remove any offers it shouldn’t. If it makes any mistakes, it would cause massive confusion among people trying to sort out what happened to their offers (“I didn’t get all my money back” e.g.).

In the end, it’s just easier to let those unfulfillable offers stand and let folks remove them manually.

tl;dr not a bug

The tl;dr from the original post seems to be

• First player(s) to hit a creature is/are more likely to get kill-credit for loot and events.
• The same people are likely to be ‘first’ for all mobs (quicker reflexes, ‘faster’ builds, …).
• Some players can miss out on loot and getting event credit, especially for world bosses.
• A description for how they tested their hypothesis against specific events.

I disagree and/or quibble with a number of their points. However, that said, I agree with these parts of their conclusion:

• This setup causes conflict between those players who camp loot-bearing champs and those that complete the other parts of a chain.
• This setup sometimes penalizes people who aren’t in groups (shouldn’t be required) or have more support-y builds (such as being able to heal, protect, or speed NPCs).

That said, I don’t think this is a bug and I think that ANet has improved the situation recently. The problems first starting being noticeable on high-pop servers, long before megaserver, because of the sheer masses chasing bosses on those worlds.

ANet has responded with event-chains like those in Silverwastes were you are guaranteed credit for participating in small as well as little events. And they have updated events-chains like Tequatl, so that you get credit for active participation in several parts of the event.

I think ANet has more work to do, especially in some of the events mentioned by the OP. But neither do I think it’s as critical as the OP suggests.

my own tl;dr:
Yeah, there’s an issue with event credit, but I think ANet has been doing a good job to date of addressing it and I hope they continue to work on it, especially for existing event chains and world bosses.

Brux: thanks for the update. Very helpful to know that.

If I recall correctly, the Royal Terrace launched without the trainers. At some point, these NPCs were added to the complement. Then they disappear during some (but not all) special events, such as Canthan New Year.

It’s especially unfortunate because this has happened before and (see below) I expect it to happen again.

(Speculation follows.) What seems to happen (in this, as well as in GW1) is that the devs seem to have a ‘just before’ and ‘during’ copy of certain zones (such as Divinity’s Reach). They are supposed to restore the ‘before’ copy after the event. But for some reason, they restore a ‘previous before’ version instead of ‘just before’. (Perhaps, because someone is using such a copy during testing or design phases and doesn’t realize it isn’t the latest/greatest.)

Keep in mind that ANet sometimes re-uses identical names for items that do similar (but different things). i.e. there might actually a Tome of Influence that grants 4,000i and another that grants 1,000i.

The Wiki article includes quotes from the developers confirming that more MF only increases the likelihood of getting somewhat more of the better loot that might drop, generally from foe deaths only.

A number of people did substantive testing when MF was armor-bound instead of account-bound. They compared near-identical runs (same area, same number of killed foes) between characters with e.g. 0% MF and 200% MF.

The qualitative results were very consistent across all the published reports I saw, where there were 100+ kills per test. In particular, more MF meant:

• More gear, less ‘trophies’ (i.e. stuff that can only be sold to vendors).
• Substantially lower fraction of gear was blue/white; more was green.
• Minor increases in rares.
• In L80 zones, slightly higher fraction of T6 compared to T5 mats.
• In sub-80 zones (for which there was significantly less testing), more noticeable higher fraction of Tx+1 mats compared to Tx (e.g. more T4 vs less T3).

tl;dr when player testing was easy, players observed exactly what the devs said: MF improves the odds of getting slightly better loot.

All things equal, it’s better to have more MF. If you mostly do dungeons or chase world bosses, you won’t see significantly better loot — the kill counts are too low. In contrast, if you farm Orr temples, the Ulgoth-chain (whether he appears or not), or the Silverwastes, you can expect better drops after hours and hours and hours of play — those activities involve tons of kills and benefit the most from MF.

pdavis.8031:

What other solutions that we haven’t looked at, that could possibly be viable?

As I suggested in the other thread:

• Slightly increase the number of scraps obtained from salvaging armor and “salvage items” such as garments and rags.

As others have suggested

• Create a gossamer demotion recipe for the mystic forge, i.e. a stack of gossamer plus one silk plus one crystalline dust + some MF crystals.

Any solution ought to be

• Adjustable, to allow for tweaking and changes to the market for other reasons.
• Incremental, to avoid a massive market disruption.
  • This allows for a proportionate response to an issue that critics refer to as a problem of fairness and/or parity.
  • It also means that we won’t have the predictable reaction problem of existing Ascended armor owners becoming enraged over how much they “wasted” crafting their own gear. No use in mollifying a plurality of moderately cranky players only to create a new plurality of supremely angry players.

zombiedeadhead.9830:

Well I’m not at all surprised that the first and only reply is someone trying to be clever by talking to me like I’m an idiot.

On the contrary, I was trying to be helpful to someone who had provided very little information on what was going on or what they had tried to do to troubleshoot.

I’m sorry that my reply was upsetting to you.

1. You have to be perseverant and patient to transfer to a full server. Keep trying early and often (as well as late and often).
2. I’ve been on TC since 2012 and I’m very happy with it still, especially due to its great WvW and PvE communities.
3. It’s more convenient for RPing in PvE, but hardly essential unless you are still looking for RP pick-up groups.

Donari.5237:

Now, your home server supposedly makes a difference in that maps try to prioritize lumping together people with the same server.

It absolutely makes a difference, especially in LA and Divinity’s Reach. Friends in Blackgate and Yak’s (as well as other worlds) hardly ever end up in the same instance as I do for those cities (as well as other maps). (Of course, if we are partied up, we always end up in the same instance.)

Donari.5237:

But the open-area RP community on TC has yet to fully recover from the conversion to the megaserver, and RP is more likely to attract trolls and griefers than before.

I can’t agree. Even if you make the etiquette mistake of RPing in /map instead of /party or /say, you aren’t likely to attract trolls (depending on when and where). Trolls get bored quickly if ignored (which is easy if you /block them). Well before megaserver, I saw more issues between conflicting RPers than between RPers and trolls.

Megaserver definitely introduced some wrinkles to RPing, but they are mostly minor for most people most of the time.

Donari.5237:

Even so you will generally stumble across RP in the major cities, and I assume that it is more likely you will do so if the game considers you to be a TC resident.

As noted above, it’s definitely more likely. Also as noted above, there are ways around it.

AFKers are certainly annoying and, in a close call situation, they make it more difficult to succeed.

However, I have yet to see the presence of AFKers alone matter to the success or failure of the events currently in the game. People are always going to have to go AFK from time to time (babies, on-call emergencies, neighbors, barking dogs, etc.). We don’t need to identify all of these situations, let alone punish people for having a life outside the game.

I think, therefore, the OP’s main points can be reduced to:

• It should be harder to AFK and get rewarded.
• It should be easier to identify those are who deliberately leeching the game and it should be more obvious when ANet takes action against them.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Age.4190:

There are some in LA that are bugged.It would be very nice to get GW support back.

Again, which ones are bugged? How are they bugging for you? I ask because I’ve yet to experience a single vista in this game that was bugged.

Same, I’ve just run through a few and they worked fine.

Is it possible that you had just taken damage of some sort? You cannot activate a vista if the game thinks you are in combat. Are you having trouble reaching them? Some of them are tricky. People in /map chat are usually willing to offer suggestions.

If you have received “no reply,” then it’s very likely that your email provider is identifying anet mail as ‘spam’. Check the various folders to make sure it isn’t going missing.

If you are sure that ANet auto-replies have gotten to you, add a note to the sticky for tickets that have gone more than 7 days without a human response. Michael Henninger will be sure to follow-up; just needs a ticket #, the date first submitted, and a brief description of the issue.

I’m not sure what you mean by “none of the loot rewards showed up,” since they don’t “show up,” they appear in the bonus chests that you have to manually click to obtain. Further, for Tequatl, you have to get credit for each defense wave to get all four of the bonus rewards: the blue, green, yellow, and orange consumable chests.

I’m also not sure what you mean by “disappearing Ascended recipes” — recipes don’t vanish. It’s possible you changed crafting disciplines (in which case, you wouldn’t be able to see them) or they were on a different character than you remember. (Most of us have done one/both of the above.)

Guhracie.3419:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

However, I agree with you that I feel that the incremental changes to the forge, over the past year or so, have resulted in … incremental changes overall. There are a handful of new items, new transmutations (e.g. promotions or demotions), and some things generate a few more skins than they used to. But it basically feels like the same forge as before.

Mind you, I like the forge as it exists. It’s quite useful to me personally and a lot of fun at times.

Huh. Could you explain why you like the change that made it so the forge would start returning items of lower levels than it did previously? I’m not being sarcastic, here.

Besides what others posted above, there’s a misinterpretation of my statement.

I don’t necessarily like each individual change made to the forge. I do, however, find its current incarnation is both useful and profitable to me. That is: I am perfectly satisfied with the forge as it exists today; I was only slightly happier with the old forge being more predictable.

I also think the old forge was much easier to explain to non-professionals.

Again, regardless of whether I like the old or new forge better, it doesn’t feel all that different since its introduction. So I still wonder what John Smith was getting at when he said we’d be happy when all the changes were rolled out.

Stuck? I don’t feel “stuck” at all.

However, I agree with you that I feel that the incremental changes to the forge, over the past year or so, have resulted in … incremental changes overall. There are a handful of new items, new transmutations (e.g. promotions or demotions), and some things generate a few more skins than they used to. But it basically feels like the same forge as before.

Mind you, I like the forge as it exists. It’s quite useful to me personally and a lot of fun at times.

You do anything in the game except chatting, you get stuff, including just logging in. That stuff can be sold on the TP or to vendors, for which you get coin, i.e. gold. That coin can be spent on the stuff you really want.

That’s what ANet staff are saying: you don’t have to grind for specific items typically.

Obviously, playing more often or more efficiently also matters, but they aren’t saying that every thing you do is going to get you lots of gold.

There are a few skins that can only be obtained from karma vendors (via direct purchase or recipes) and a lot of chef-crafted foods that require supplies from such vendors.

There are several unique items that only drop from certain bosses, including many of the world bosses, Orrian temple bosses, and local bosses (e.g. Rhendak).

Naivea posted in another thread that it turned out that there were hidden transactions (due to sheer volume), i.e. there wasn’t any missing gold or transactions.

@Breadfrenzy: what did the support team say when you contacted them? (not including the generic insta-reply).

AFAIK, there are no documented cases of people actually losing gold or items from the TP. It has always turned out that people just couldn’t see (or, in more cases than players would like to admit, they clicked “pick up” and forgot about it).

I don’t mean to suggest it’s impossible for the OP to have lost anything. I do mean that they should work with support to find out what happened; we won’t be able to help them here.

Good luck, Breadfrenzy, and let us know what you find out.

FYI for others: there’s a limit to how many transactions and orders the TP will post. When that happens, the “load more” button appears at the bottom. Use that to see what current (or past) items might be ‘hidden’.

While I sympathize with the OP’s disappointment, I find it hard to be outraged, since this is a cosmetic item and will be returning, at some point.

Sure, an opportunity was missed through no fault of the OP’s. I commend them for valuing their RL over any game.

And that’s why I can’t be upset that ANet is having one-day sales on limited-availability items. It’s a game on which the items in question have no impact.

I’ve seen some good criticism of the status quo (and some not so good). Some good defense of it, too (and yeah, some not so good).

What I haven’t seen yet is a suggestion for how to change the status quo without doing something predictably horrid to the economy and/or risking mass rage-quitting of all those who already have their ascended armor.

Changing the number of silk scraps needed for bolts upends the demand, as would changing the number of silk bolts required for damask (although that’s easier to tweak). People have already been up in arms about the game’s minor tweak to the amount of light armor that drops for light-armored-profs.

I suspect the only thing that ANet could do to slowly change the current equilibrium is to make tiny changes to the amount of cloth scraps that drop from salvaging armor and salvage items. Currently, things like rags and garments (e.g. frayed rags, frayed garments) drop ~1.8 scraps of one sort or another, torso armor drops ~3 scraps, and non-torso ~2. (my personal data, not necessarily reflective of the true rates)

Herr Doktor Smith: what about upping those ratios by 10% or so, to 1.9, 3.3, and 2.2 respectively? (pretending that my numbers are even close to accurate)

Could be someone repping. while in invisible mode

I’m with Matt Visual: let’s just call them Dragons. Little ones, to be sure. (Heck, if folks can consistently refer to an Elder Dragon’s mere Lieutenant by its boss’ name , I don’t see any trouble with calling Wyverns by a completely different name.)

Alternatively, I would love for ANet to actually tell us (in an official way) how they think Tyrians should pronounce the name (and perhaps its different among the different races, e.g. perhaps Asura say why-vern, but charr say vie-vurn, and grouch-o says, why-not?)

Warkind.6745:

In the future, I think I can see GW2 going pay to wing.

IrishPotato.6327:

…what makes you think they will ever be pay to win?

(emphasis added by me)

Well played, OP.

(And thanks first respondent for reminding all of us to carefully read what our fellow players post.)

AFAIK, you can’t gift account upgrades (since the gem store interface can’t tell which ones your friend does or does not have).

If you are still willing to spend the equivalent of 2,000 gems at last week’s conversion rates (~110-150 gold), I’d recommend one of the following:

• One or more enameled dyes: some very vibrant colors that are hard to match from the main spectrum.
• Abyss & Celestial Dye
• A Crimson Lion skin
• Arthropoda or Crustacea, or any of the dozen or so named exotics in that same ball park.
• Gem Shop lottery tickets (enough that they are likely to get something nice), such as:
  • 20 Crimson Lion Dye Kits
  • 25 Black Lion Chest Keys

I always think of the ‘perfect’ gift as something the receive wants (or would enjoy a lot), but would never spend their own coin on.

Great idea, Vukorep. Not the challenges I’d put for myself, but I love the idea of extending your personal “end game” by finding new ways to explore Tyria.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…the key to this is variety.

In other words, “more everything:”

• outfits
• armors
• tonics, for combat or brawling or jumping (or all three?)

And from all sources:

• gem shop
• RNG
• earned, by skill
• earned, by collection

GW2 might have a global community, but ANet has a Washington-state-centric business model. It’s very unlikely that they will change the standard release window anytime soon, if ever.

ANet’s office hours are roughly 9 am to 5 pm pacific. They have released every scheduled update (but for one) within those 8 hours. Emergency patches (anything that wasn’t planned in advance) are more likely to occur during those times as well, although plenty happen later, depending on the severity.

This is best for the community, since it means that the maximum number of people are around for each update, just in case anything goes wrong. This includes the QA and dev staff to respond to any bugs, but also support staff, change control (the folks who annoy the devs to ensure that the right stuff makes it into the live servers), and so forth.

punkinkatt.4823:

A ranger (full exotic armor) doesn’t stand a chance in WvW when my server obviously does not do WvW.

My mesmer disagrees. My server did well sometimes, but I also got WvW map completion by being persistent and patient: I worked on ‘our third’ of the each map as we were assigned different colors (back in the day when this was never randomly adjusted, so sometimes waiting weeks to get a particular color). I also tried to go out at weird hours, when there weren’t many people fighting at all.

Another thing one can do is use the LFG tool (or /map) to find partners to explore with. A couple of times, I’ve seen commanders volunteer to take a side trip to help folks get a POI.

punkinkatt.4823:

I absolutely give up on map completion.

I’m sorry to hear that. I felt it was about the only substantive challenge to map completion and I enjoyed having to work through a game mode that held no interest for me originally.

To be sure, that’s my personal take on the requirement and I can see why some PvE-focused players aren’t interested.

punkinkatt.4823:

I hope you all are right that WvW will be removed from the WC requirements with HoT.

I haven’t seen anything from the Dev teams that supports this theory. (It came from people seeing a demo with the map completion summary was missing exactly the number of POI, Vistas, and SPs that make up the current 4 WvW maps. But that could be because the test servers don’t include WvW yet, as well as several other reasons.)

Personally, I’d be sorry to see this change, even if it wouldn’t be that surprising considering all the push back about it.

I support the OPs’ idea.

However…

…this tiny change.

Changes to graphics effects are rarely “tiny.” I’d much rather ANet’s art/animation teams work on something else than work on updating the Oontz Effect.

If they are going to change it, I’d love it if owners were able to apply this to ascended amulets (as an infusion).

Gibson.4036:

This happens with every new release of remotely interesting new gem store items. There’s been buzz about the wings since last week.

Why don’t people buy gems in advance of the gem store releases and avoid the crazy spike in prices?

Not that I’m complaining, since I’ll time turning some gems into gold with these spikes. I just don’t get why people wait until the last minute then complain when the thing they want is suddenly more expensive in terms of gold.

1. Some people did buy gems in advance of gem store releases, including most everyone to whom I suggested buying while it was cheap.
2. Not everyone is aware of the hype, since not everyone logs in every day, not everyone follows reddit/guru/these forums (and some don’t even follow /map chat).
3. Plenty of folks don’t realize they “want” something until they see others with it (sometimes it’s keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, but sometimes it’s just you don’t realize something is “cool” until you see it in action).
4. It doesn’t take all that many people suddenly converting gold to gems to start spiking prices. Once that happens, others start to panic about not being able to convert before the really huge price hikes begin.

In other words, not everyone has the same data as you do and not everyone responds to the data they do have the same as you do (or might).

I like outfits. For some of my toons, I like the simplicity of not having to micromanage their armor skins and colors.

Messorem.3105:

Every once in a while I throw in crafted krait greatswords (rare) just from weaponsmithing and materials i gather playing. Been doing that for a bit and got Dawn awhile ago. I was just lucky, but I had nothing better to do with the materials so why not?

Exactly. The joy of getting three ecto from four rares is meh. The excitement of getting an exotic from time to time is better. (But I’m guessing both of us can afford to “throw away” the 50-120 silver we could have gotten from the rares.)

VocalThought.9835:

What’s the difference with the Mesmer between games?

They aren’t the same profession at all. The GW1 mesmer is about punishing the enemy for …being an enemy. The GW2 mesmer is about using illusions to damage foes (in a variety of interesting ways).

In GW1, you could create a situation in which the enemy takes damage for using any skill and for failing to use a skill; there is no similar skill-punishment tactic in GW2. The closest is confusion, which is ineffective in PvE (mobs don’t use skills often enough) and easily avoided in PvP. The closest GW2 really has is Feedback, but a skill or two doesn’t make a profession.

Similarly, in GW1 you could prevent casters from…casting (in PvP, not PvE), by denying them the ability to use or regenerate energy (sort of like being able to remove initiative from a thief). There’s no similar mechanic in GW2, so it’s a style of play that can’t be replicated at all.

Originally, it was extremely tough to play the GW1 mesmer: steep learning curve, difficult to master techniques, etc. After the great Mesmer Un-Nerf of May 2010, it got a lot easier and mesmer heroes are extremely powerful now. Similarly, the GW2 mesmer is also challenging.

Mind you, I love the mesmer in both games; it’s still my favorite class. I just consider them to be two entirely different professions that have the same name for nostalgia, not for their game play.

NaotsuguLH.8915:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Gaile Gray has been explicit about this before: if you can walk away from the keyboard and get caught, they will ban your account.

It doesn’t matter what we, the players call this. ANet considers it a breach of the Terms of Service.

Could you show me where she has said that? I haven’t seen it anywhere in Terms…

Some of ANet’s official responses were posts here (in the forums) that have since been removed, so I hope you’ll be ok with posts that quoted the original.

For example, this post quotes this policy clarification , which includes a list of questions you should ask when determining whether something is ok or not. One of the questions is:

Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?

Similarly, GW2 Guru has a copy of the original text.

Some will be compelled to say, “buh buh, if I’m alt-tabbed, I’m still at the computer” and “buh, buh, buh, if I’m reading a book, I’m still at the computer”. And they are welcome to take that pedantic approach to the English language. I don’t think it will get them very far.

Put another way, I don’t think that the “terms of service” could reasonably be explicit about all of the likely conceivable player actions (never mind some unlikely ones). I neither expect the ToS is going to spell out predictable reactions by ANet staff.

Or in less theoretical terms, I don’t want to be in a situation in which I have to be arguing with ANet about whether my behavior violated the letter or the spirit of their guidelines. I prefer to maximize the time I’m playing the game, rather than risk the possibility that I have to spend time arguing about how the game is meant to be played.

CureForLiving.5360:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Forging for precursors is like playing a lottery: if you play a little, expect to lose all/most of your investment. I recommend saving for the precursor you want.

Granted playing the lottery a lot doesn’t particularly guarantee winning either :P

RL lotteries? No, certainly not. Vegas-like gambling (roulette, craps, blackjack)? No, not that either. In Vegas, the house usually has a 1-8% edge (you risk $100/hour for a year, expect to walk away with less than $99/hr). In lotteries, the ‘state’ typically has a 50% edge, after taking into account the winning payout (they are designed to return exactly 50% of the ticket value to participants).

However, in GW2, Zommy will return a profit to efficient forgers in the long run. The main problems are:

• The “long run” for the Mystic Forge is really long, e.g. over 4,000 rares forged without a precursor.
• To be “efficient,” you have to do your research and buying/crafting appropriate rares (average level of 75, means you can combine e.g. (L80 x3 + L60x1) or L75 x4.)

One particular poster realized just over 17% profit, after forging 10,000 gold worth of greatswords.

That suggests that the typical player is far, far, far better off saving the money (or investing it) than gambling. And that’s exactly the same as it is for playing the lotto: it’s good fun, but it’s a lousy investment in terms of earnings.

Forging for precursors is like playing a lottery: if you play a little, expect to lose all/most of your investment. I recommend saving for the precursor you want.

I disagree with the OP. I find there are a lot of worthwhile builds, for anyone who is not attempting to speed clear. I would change my builds regularly, if it was easier to swap.

There are at least 3-4 builds per profession that I like for each game mode. The only reason I don’t use more than one each most of the time is that I really hate the UI; it’s just too tedious.

That said, the existing skills and traits could stand improvement: there are some that I never hear about being used and some that seem always to be in use. In some cases, I think a small tweak to a trait or two might go a long way towards putting certain weapons in play again (e.g. guardian focus is a better ‘shield’ most of the time than guardian shield).

I am curious about ANet’s metrics on each trait, utility, and weapon. Are there some skills that get used a lot that aren’t part of the meta? Are there traits that literally no one uses after full trait unlock?

sartanman.4710:

It’s a shame that one person can ruin it for many others.

Preach it, brother.

The only primary source for the new nodes is from the TP or from the Gem Store.

You can see a list of tradeable nodes by typing “node” into the search (the Mystic Forge Node is the only non-harvestable ‘node’ on the list). You can see a list of gem-bought nodes by searching for “basic” in the gem shop (there’s a cloth node, that doesn’t use the word ‘node’ in its name).

You can also search gw2tp.com or gw2spidy.com. The wiki also has a list under the Home instance article.

Bran.7425:

DeWolfe.2174:

Is it botting or exploiting, no it is not. The misuse of these terms is getting out of hand, really. For your scenario, it should not work. The events scaling system, as far as I understand it, is designed to discern between active and inactive players. You and your pet wouldn’t draw aggro if idle for some time. Which means you wouldn’t get a reward then. If you drew aggro, from any of the SW mobs, you’d certainly find a dead character when you returned to the game. Unless you were saved by active players. Which is then leeching and well, you shouldn’t do that at all. Have you not seen the many complaint threads of AFK in the SW?

Not entirely sure on that as I have parked myself in fairly isolated corner in SW or DT and went away from keyboard briefly (i.e answer door for delivery, get a drink, or use the bathroom) and returned to have event credit and loot, but that more might be people attempting to pull creatures onto me during a event though.

Attending to RL is always fine. The issue is when people do this repeatedly for extended periods of time.

As a player, I can’t tell if you are AFK momentarily or if this is a pattern. But ANet can, by investing the log. So, I might report someone (for botting) who seems to be sitting in place throughout the vine event, especially if it’s a ranger. I’ll let ANet decide if it’s worth investigating or not. (I usually don’t though: I know a lot of players with kids, who have to leave suddenly and most of them don’t think to alt-f4 first.)

Palador.2170:

As stated above, you gave them access to the bank to withdraw things. You can’t cry fowl now that they’ve withdrawn things. ANet has no way of knowing what was really happening or why, so they will not get involved.

Sorry.

That’s different from my understanding of ANet’s policy.

ANet won’t act to replace the missing gold. But they will make note of your report. If the player never does anything scummy again, then no, they won’t get punished. On the other hand, if there is another report about another occasion during which that same player does something inappropriate, their past infractions usually matter.

Most of the time, ANet can’t be expected to know or research the background. But in this case, it’s easy for them to see when they took the items from the guild bank, when they quit (but were not kicked from) the guild, and when they blocked the GLs.

It’s not enough to cause ANet to act today. But I believe that it will matter later, if that player falls into similar patterns in their dealings with others.

tl;dr I think it’s worth taking the time to document and report, sticking to the bare facts, i.e. don’t offer your opinion about why. Just provide times/dates and screens. Don’t expect ANet to act (or to tell you if they have), but know that this makes it slightly more likely that your ex-guildie won’t get away with similar behavior down the road.

PS I’m sorry this happened to your guild, OP. In the best case, someone rage-quitting a guild is unpleasant for everyone. It’s all the more horrible when they leave with guild assets (even if they were the primary provider of those items).

PPS Good luck going forward and in the future, consider restricting access more aggressively to those who don’t participate as often or aren’t fully supportive of your community.

Best way to save gold for later, in my opinion:

Make a ridiculously low bid for a precursor (or whatever you covet today). For example: 100g for Dusk or 5g for one of Taimi’s or Glint’s dyes.

• If your offer is actually accepted, great! You got an excellent deal.
• If not, your money remains hidden from view and out-of-sight = out-of-mind, so it won’t be burning kitten in your pocket.

Later, you can add to your offer (as you like and/or can afford and/or want to hide more). Or you can make multiple offers on the same or different items. (Choose the same item to make it easier to find your offers when you want the coin back; choose multiple items if you hope to get lucky when the market shifts.)

Gaile Gray has been explicit about this before: if you can walk away from the keyboard and get caught, they will ban your account.

It doesn’t matter what we, the players call this. ANet considers it a breach of the Terms of Service.