Guild Wars 2

Try to get into a fresh instance and look in the cove. Here are some known methods, ordered from easiest to try (and less reliable) to least convenient (but more reliable):

• Guest to another server (I choose Full ones, because it can’t hurt and it prevents me from accidentally transferring).
• Use LFG in case anyone is offering transfers to Gendar, e.g for the JP/Dive.
• Join someone from your guild in another instance.
• Wait for Gendar to be the target of a 4-event daily; when it is, you frequently get multiple instances.
• Wait for a patch. The map is always fresh immediately after.

To help ANet track down the issue, each time you find him… um, unfindable, use the in-game /bug reporting tool, so that they can see the server/location/time. (That data is included automatically when you use /bug.) I know it’s a pain and doesn’t help you directly — it’s unfortunately about the only way that ANet can learn what’s going on with weird spawning issues.

For what it’s worth, here’s what the wiki says

• Wiley can be found as an elite NPC in Wiley’s Cove by default; when his event is active, he swims to a sunken ship in the northern part of Lake Gendarr and becomes a champion.
• Killing either version of Wiley counts towards the The Predator III: The Hunter collection. However, spawn times are seemingly long, so it is recommended to wait in the cove for him to spawn.

They aren’t for sale very often and there hasn’t been a distinct pattern to the timing of the discounts.

According to the wiki, you can prank the NPC regardless of the status of the event chain.

Not relevant.

Besides googling any question you might have, there are forum stickies, the wiki, qtfy.eu, and the sidebar at the GW2 Subreddit

I can’t imagine that ANet is going to do so well with the new traits/skills that everyone is going to be pleased. If you want them to “not mess up,” then you need to give them some idea of what you expect.

I can guarantee that a bunch of people will post furious condemnations of skill balance in Expac #2, within minutes after we learn anything about anything from ANet (or leaks). People who think ANet can’t balance will find evidence that this is true. That won’t mean that expac messed things up.

Or give everything a vendor value of 1c, so it’s easier to dispose of.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sentinel%27s_Mithril_Imbued_Inscription

You can buy that on the TP, but not the recipe.

Labjax.2465:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Labjax.2465:

I think they should do away with HPs being a requirement for elite specs and instead have them be repeatable content that gives map-related rewards.

Please no. I don’t want to repeat identical events for every character I have, to get elite specs.

Incidental, hero challenges are already repeatable content that gives map-related rewards. The difference is that we can choose any challenge we like, on any map.

phys.7689:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Labjax.2465:

I think they should do away with HPs being a requirement for elite specs and instead have them be repeatable content that gives map-related rewards.

Please no. I don’t want to repeat identical events for every character I have, to get elite specs.

Incidental, hero challenges are already repeatable content that gives map-related rewards. The difference is that we can choose any challenge we like, on any map.

huh? dont we already repeat identical events for every charachter to get elite specs? i though he wanted to remove hero points from elite specs completely.

Yeah, I’m just as confused as you, phys. I’m suggesting they are no longer required at all (except, I spose, for map completion, but even that… I thought about proposing that they are removed from the map completion requirement for HoT maps, since they would be even more clearly defined as cyclical content intended for groups in this way and map completion is traditionally something that is designed to be manageable solo).

Right now, you do have to repeat identical events for every character you have, to get elite specs. I’m wanting to get away from that irritation.

Ok now I’m confused. What exactly are you proposing? A single chain of events that you do once per toon? I’d be okay with that.

(Your original description sounded an awful lot like what people asked for and we had for nearly two years: doing one event per trait. That was awful.)

As it stands now, I can do whatever hero challenges I want, whether everything in Core + a few in HoT or lots of stuff in HoT. I can go to WvW and use proofs of heroics. I have a lot of options. It just happens that it’s efficient to choose certain challenges and so some people feel it’s repetitive.

phys.7689:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

phys.7689:

hes not saying it was easier to buy builds in gw1, he is saying it was easier to get builds, which is completely and totally accurate.

And I’m disagreeing. Changing your attributes in GW1? Easy, just like changing traits in GW2 is. Changing your gear in GW1? Often more difficult than in GW2, because not all gear is easily obtained. Some 20/20 sets are more easily found than others, for example.

there is no build in gw1 which takes as long as gearing 1 charachter in best in slot in gw2.
unless you are looking for specific skins

We must be using different definitions. There are several elements to what people mean when they discuss setting up their build:

• Weapons, which determine skills in GW2 but not in GW1
• Armor
• Prefixes and Suffixes, which affect the efficiency of the build.
• Character-selectable stats, such as attributes in GW1 & traits in GW2
• Character-selectable skills (all of them in GW1 & just utilities in GW2)

Best-in-slot gear for GW1 depends on several qualities: the stats on the gear (max for the weapon or not) and the relevant prefixes and suffixes. Some suffixes are really hard to obtain; they are as much part of “best-in-slot” as the weapon or armor.

In addition, not all weapons and armor can be upgraded, particularly off-hands.

On the other hand, if all that you want to compare is how easy it is to obtain L20 gear in GW1 (easy), then the comparable item is L80 gear. L80 gear independent of prefix/suffix is easily obtained.

And I’d agree, that’s not necessarily relevant — people want (or think they need) specific stats. That’s where we disagree: getting fully spec’d gear in GW1 was harder, in my opinion; I kept several storage toons just for the situation in which I needed to swap gear for a new build or a friend needed it (because it took hours in spamadan to obtain it otherwise).

tl;dr best-in-slot gear is more than just max gear — that’s trivially obtained in GW1 and easily obtained in GW2. I’m referring to fully spec’d gear, which is simply expensive in GW2 (for specific builds) and either easy or horribly difficult in GW1 depending.

It might be related to people having trouble with recently updated video card drivers. By any chance, are you running NVIDIA? I don’t recall which driver it was, but apparently it affects other things besides GW2.

Make sure you start a support ticket and include your diagnostic info — that helps ANet narrow down the issues in gw2 that might be contributing.

https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

(If you don’t know how to run DxDiag or similar tools, the support team will provide instructions for you.)

Lahmia.2193:

After hearing that is was the Druids that killed my beloved Zinn, I really felt like going around and murdering every last stinking one of them. Please Anet, let us do this. Let us avenge our glorious leader.

You listened to his recordings? So you know he had it coming, since he was basically using them as fodder for his research.

OriOri.8724:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

OriOri.8724:

My biggest gripe with these nodes is the inconsistency. Yesterday I was running around on the map, got no primordial orchids from the first 2 nodes I harvested, yet the third one gave me 3. Then the next node dropped 2, then nothing from the next few nodes after that. Why?

How is that different from petrified wood, jade shards, or blood rubies?

Its not I guess, I just don’t like how these nodes aren’t guaranteed to drop their mats. Can you imagine mining a mithril or iron node and only having a chance at getting the respective mat to drop? Because to me that’s what these new nodes feel like.

I’m not against them taking 3x as long to harvest and delivering a guaranteed amount of mats.

However, I just ignore the RNG aspect. Over time, it evens out. I got 99 acquisition problems and I don’t let random behavior be one of them.

(Incidentally, the amount of iron & mithril you get is random — sometimes you get doubles, sometimes you get the chance to harvest again, and sometimes you get bonus mats.)

That sounds like a social problem that can’t be entirely resolved by technology. It makes things more complicated for ANet to code & test and more complicated for GLs of other guild that don’t struggle with the same trolls.

What’s your main goal here? To make sure everyone gets an extra commendation or two, without finishing the trek? If that’s the case, I’d run the trek first, let trolls be trolls, and ask who still needs their personal reward and run the trek again at the end of the session. If there are still folks missing the reward, set up another time for them.

Or cancel doing the trek and tell people why they can’t have nice things.

Of course Expac 2 isn’t make or break for ANet any more than Expac 1 was. HoT did well, just not nearly as well as expected by NCSOFT shareholders. The gem shop continues to do well, despite a drop off in sales.

The big question is what happens if the game doesn’t add new communities. HoT sold well to super fans, but didn’t attract as many F2P as planned. Expac 2 also has the burden of a lot of people expecting miracles — they want ANet to have learned from all previous mistakes (and we don’t all agree on what those were). Some people are going to be extra cautious about pre-purchasing, which affects early hype.

Regardless, Expac 2 would have to do absolutely miserably for it to have any big impact on ANet’s future.

We just did it recently and it autolooted for everyone.

It doesn’t fit ANet’s definition of AFK farming, so you’re fine.

• You are moving around.
• You are using skills, not just an autoattack.
• You are (theoretically) available to respond to whispers.

To me, this doesn’t seem like anything particularly less challenging than Silverwastes event farms or the Halloween Labyrinth — you can’t solo those farms either, but in a zerg, there’s no need to pay a lot of attention.

In dungeons & fractals, knowing mechanics is far more important than the particular composition. I’d rather have 5 magi druids who know their prof and how fractals work than any meta comp with people who only think they know how stuff works. (Mind you, I probably wouldn’t join either sort of group, given the choice — better to have 5 people who have a decent build and decent understanding of how to succeed.)

CedarDog.9723:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

OriOri.8724:

My biggest gripe with these nodes is the inconsistency. Yesterday I was running around on the map, got no primordial orchids from the first 2 nodes I harvested, yet the third one gave me 3. Then the next node dropped 2, then nothing from the next few nodes after that. Why?

How is that different from petrified wood, jade shards, or blood rubies?

Jade shards and blood rubies aren’t a pain in the rear to find and harvest. Petrified wood is more spread out and that can be annoying, but you don’t have to deal with all the verticality and the oakheart stuff to get to nodes like one often has to do with the orchids. More work for the same rewards or less.

Well, I find it harder to get jade shards and petrified wood — I find it easier to to get Orchids. The spiderman skill makes getting around faster and the density of mobs is (mostly) lower, making it easier to grab stuff without getting ganked.

There’s plenty of reasons why there’ s no underwater dueling in guild halls: there’s been nearly zero work on underwater combat in the last 4.5 years, other than to remove it. Revenant lacks a weapon to swap to and an elite hero & plenty of profs lack appropriate traits or elites. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that GHs don’t have a provision for Underwater dueling.

In general, GH dueling uses PvE skills. If you want to use PvP skills (that lack Spectral Aid in the downstate), you need to go to Obsidian Sanctum or PvP arenas.

Arguably, if you’re joining a squad, you’re no longer invisible — you’re clearly participating in group content at that point. The option to decline invites isn’t related to privacy.

I’m not against either feature, however, there are privacy features I’d prefer to see first:

• Being able to login invisible, as an option in the sign in window.
• Hiding your presence from the guild if invisible: you can’t use or read /guild chat, but you can be seen.
• Hiding your location on friends lists and especially to people on your block list — you location should be “offline” in invisible mode, otherwise you’re not really invisible.
• Hiding your status from people on your /block list.
• Making your status available only to mutual friends.
• Changing your /away to status automatically to /online if you are active; changing it automatically to away if you haven’t used skills recently.

phys.7689:

hes not saying it was easier to buy builds in gw1, he is saying it was easier to get builds, which is completely and totally accurate.

And I’m disagreeing. Changing your attributes in GW1? Easy, just like changing traits in GW2 is. Changing your gear in GW1? Often more difficult than in GW2, because not all gear is easily obtained. Some 20/20 sets are more easily found than others, for example.

In brief, in order to make it possible to dye even one backpack, the capability to dye all backpacks must be added to the game. That involves a daunting amount of work (and testing). Worse, it increases the future costs of new backpacks (although obviously, not by nearly as much).

That’s why gliders can be dyed (functionality built in from the start), even while their near-identical back items cannot be (functionality doesn’t exist yet).

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think everyone has the same memory or same set of directions. While I had little problem learning this map, I can understand why the OP is frustrated by it.

I can understand why people have trouble when they first encounter it. I don’t accept that it’s okay to stop there and claim it’s a horrid map.

I have trouble on every map. My brain has difficulty distinguishing left & right (and so east & west) and top & bottom (so north & south). And the UI’s limitations for displaying height are vexing even in a single-layer map.

So I know going in that I’m going to be lost most of the time to start with. It is challenging to get around and so it’s worth learning (through trial & error or reading about it) various tricks for navigating.

• The map works like a healix: a spiral shape with a couple of layers.
• In this map, unlike others, lava tubes are your friend. Take them all the way up and glide down to any level.
• Updrafts are less friendly, in that they often won’t take you up a layer.
• Sometimes the best way down is to go up and glide down.
• Oakheart’s Reach is useful everywhere; get in the habit of grabbing it and using it all the time. It can be used while gliding, while falling, and allows you to fix a whole host of mistakes we all tend to make when navigating.
• Identify one spot in each layer and find a reliable way to reach it, one that works for you. (It turns out that there are usually 3-4.)

Or in shorter form: when in doubt, lava tub up the map and glide down, using Oakheart’s Reach as a safety, um, web.

Aeolus.3615:

IndigoSundown.5419:

When asked in 2014 about gear tiers with stats above the Ascended/Legendary tier, then Game Director Colin Johanson said, “I hope not.” I echo that sentiment. Gear progression is a pointless exercise in busywork.

Stil the game lacks progression… besides buy the next traitline to keep competing more easilly.

Classes progress is in damage increase and more condis/boon spam.
They dont actually have a structured class progression trait*build sytem as well, all they have done is added skill that need to be grinded to preggress through maps.
Its controlled time gated gameplay with distractions

I say there’s plenty of progression for the majority of players in learning how to use what’s already in the game. Gear progression is an artificial treadmill. Your characters might get new abilities or skills, but that doesn’t matter if you aren’t able to use them effectively before the next set of options arrives.

Obviously, an important subset of players reach that mark quickly, as evidenced by qtfy.eu’s benchmarks & vanguard-of-the-meta builds. Less obviously, there’s plenty of evidence that they aren’t representative of the majority. Look no farther than how difficult some people still find Vinetooth Prime (AB) or Matriarch (VB) or various slight-better-than-anecdotal data from DPS meters in PUG raiding.

So I write again: gear progression is a standard mechanic in a lot of games that people find fun. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate, let alone necessary, for this game. Those who want to see that change need to make a case for how it would improve things for the existing community, not just its proponents.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

it’s easier to stack sigils than weapons

Xenon.4537:

How so? A sigil takes up 1 bag slot. A weapon (with the sigil in it) takes up 1 bag slot.

If people were only swapping a single sigil, that would be true. But people swap all sorts of sigils. So let me rephrase, “it’s easier to stack several sigils to use over all weapon sets than to keep a separate weapon for each type of encounter.”

A common min-max scenario is to swap in a slaying sigil appropriate to each encounter, e.g. “of justice” against a slew of foes and so on. Min-maxers tend to have a weapon that slots in cheap sigils and another for “of night” and another for non-nighttime encounters.

On the face of it, I can’t see why this matters either, but that’s my point — I don’t think anyone at ANet did either, until they dug deeper in ways that simply aren’t available to us.

• With the overwriting of sigils, it’s probably not important “how often” as much as what the impact of that is on the demand and distribution.

Xenon.4537:

Doesn’t “how often” directly impact demand? The more often players overwrite sigils, the more often they need new sigils. Theoretically if “how often” is a low number, then a swapping feature would have minimal impact.

Sure. My point is that “how often” isn’t the only consideration. It could be that ANet is comparing how often people swap stats on legendaries + sigils to just stats to what people do when they don’t have a legendary for that niche.

• The last question is a bit naive. I don’t overwrite now; it’s far more trouble than it’s worth to me. But if I could buy once and swap easily, I’d do it all the time. And on top of that, I’d be more likely to make a legendary to fill a common niche.

Xenon.4537:

My point with that question is to point out there is no consequential difference to the economy either way.

OF course there is. If it’s easier to swap after a mechanic change, more people will do that more often.

The problem with the questions that you’re asking is that they are only financial in nature, and that’s unlikely to be the only consideration. What is going on has to be more complicated than what we can guess, because if we’ve had plenty of time to speculate as to why there’s been a delay in this feature — the community has been suggesting ways to improve the QoL for upgrades since 2013, not just since we learned of the specific solution that ANet has introduced for runes.

I’m actually more concerned that ANet hasn’t told us why they are using the simplest possible solution for runes. In effect, what they’ve given us is an unlimited upgrade salvage tool that works only on legendary armor. That leaves the upgrade system alone, along with all its myriad of QoL and gameplay issues.

Labjax.2465:

I think they should do away with HPs being a requirement for elite specs and instead have them be repeatable content that gives map-related rewards.

Please no. I don’t want to repeat identical events for every character I have, to get elite specs.

Incidental, hero challenges are already repeatable content that gives map-related rewards. The difference is that we can choose any challenge we like, on any map.

The Champion Bloodstone Charged Lava Wurm ? I’ve seen the pre-event and the champ defeated multiple times on each occasion I’ve been on the map. I suspect that there’s a Merc still running around that needs to be killed — like a lot of culling events, the foes spawn in waves and often the next wave won’t begin until everyone in the previous wave is dead.

Alternatively, you can get into a new instance of the map. Often just leaving (e.g. to a guild hall) and returning will do that, during prime time.

Bring your Raven Egg, Incubation Box, Spider Silk Insulation, and Warming Stone to the lava in Mount Maelstrom. From Maelstrom’s Waypoint, jump into the lava that the Megadestroyer spawns in, and be rewarded with a Raven Chick.

The game is inconsistent about identifying items that are okay to delete (plus: some start off being not okay to delete and become okay to delete, without the item changing).

You should be able to visit GM Craftsman Hobbs in Lion’s Arch and tell him you’re missing some items. If he can’t replace them (for karma), you’ll have to contact support:
https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

You can use the forums (this is the right folder) or the in-game /bug reporting tool — the latter has the advantage of logging your position, so it’s easier for the developers to identify the spot.

Thanks for taking the time to let the devs know.

PS it usually takes a while for typos to get fixed; they tend to bundle up a bunch of such changes at once or wait until they are revisiting the content for other reasons.

OriOri.8724:

My biggest gripe with these nodes is the inconsistency. Yesterday I was running around on the map, got no primordial orchids from the first 2 nodes I harvested, yet the third one gave me 3. Then the next node dropped 2, then nothing from the next few nodes after that. Why?

How is that different from petrified wood, jade shards, or blood rubies?

In the recent AMA, ANet doubled down on a few points they had made before:

• They have no plans to change the difficulty of raids.
• They have no plans to add another method to acquire Envoy armor (the current legendary set).
• They have no plans to design another 15 sets of legendary armor, to be acquired in some other fashion.

I don’t agree with their initial decision to make legendary armor the special reward for the game’s challenging content — I think they erred in thinking that non-raiders would be okay with a special armor set (and one of the few new ones) being gated behind raids.

But I really don’t see how they can do anything else now, not without inventing a new raid-exclusive reward. And frankly, I think that would be far worse for them to do — people are already (ahem) up in arms about how much design-team effort goes into legendary armor. Think of how bad the furor would be if other new armors etc were delayed because ANet was working on something raid-specific.

And finally, even if ANet decided today to offer legendary armor through some other mechanism, it would be at least 6-8 months of focused effort to design, prototype, test, retest, and implement. That’s not likely to happen when they already have an expac unofficially announced, due in 6-8 months, with its key features already planned.

tl;dr there’s no chance we will see any sort of alternative acquisition method for legendary armor anytime soon. Definitely not in 2017, almost certainly not in 2018.

LezardValeth.9453:

i like more options, but why do we work for other options when they mean less?

I think we have to wait to use the new elites in the game before you can comment on this.

It’s long past time for ANet to eliminate breathers as part of gear — just make them a skin that appears (optionally) underwater and use the same stats (and rune) as in the helm.

Although I happen to like underwater combat, it’s clear that it’ incomplete. Revenants only have one weapon, many profs only have one usable elite, tons of runes don’t have any value underwater, and there’s all sorts of traits that break underwater. (And that’s without even addressing balance across profs.)

It’s also clear that ANet has no appetite for doing anything about it soon. They’ve removed underwater combat from PvP and WvW. They’ve reduced it in PvE and haven’t added any significant fights to the new zones.

tl;dr it’s not a massive problem with legendary armor — it’s a secondary problem due to underwater combat being incomplete.

I’m not sure why it matters what players think. The point made by the developers was that they, too, thought it was easy to add this until they looked at the implications in detail. There’s something significant that we are missing and it’s likely that the devs aren’t going to describe what it is until they can resolve it (lest they affect the market prematurely).

Answers to the OP’s specific questions:

• Sigils are different because typically people use only 4 per active set and often not the same ones. Runes are used 6 (or 7) at a time, usually identically. People also own legendary weapons now; no one owned legendary armor before last week.
• Yes, some people buy lots of sigils and swap them for content. Probably not Bursting & Force.
• Some people do acquire secondary exotics. However, if you’re the kind of person who swaps for each encounter: it’s easier to stack sigils than weapons, you care deeply about a few % DPS (which doesn’t matter to the likelihood of success; it only matters for speed).
• Of course far more people use exotics and ascended and nearly everyone uses them for some situations. But legendary weapons are relatively easy to acquire and if there’s a major change to them, the numbers of people who want them might change. Put another way, it’s not that the fraction of people with legendaries is high; it’s that it’s a lot of actual weapons out there.
• With the overwriting of sigils, it’s probably not important “how often” as much as what the impact of that is on the demand and distribution.
• The last question is a bit naive. I don’t overwrite now; it’s far more trouble than it’s worth to me. But if I could buy once and swap easily, I’d do it all the time. And on top of that, I’d be more likely to make a legendary to fill a common niche.

Wanze.8410:

Even though I logged in during episodes 1-3 of season 3 to unlock them, Lake Doric was the first new map i played and now draconis mons.

When I wanted to train the Ancient Magic Mastery line, it told me to go to bloodstone fen or ember bay to unlock it.

Good to know.

That’s a little disappointing to me, though. Of course, I’m not happy with skills or map gating of any sort.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘getting more stuff from unmaxed guilds than maxed guilds’. The higher the tier, the more one can gather.

And, I mean ‘intended’, as it is working as expected by the Devs. It’s not a bug. The post is here on the forums; it may have been Dara or McKenna. I think it was posted back closer to Guild Hall/HoT launch; there may have been another post, again, in the past few months (not sure about that one – or I might have seen that on Reddit, though not as likely, as I only look at Reddit when there is a link to it from the forum here).

What I mean by “less” is: if you’re in two maxed guild halls, you get less than if you’re in one maxed and one not maxed.

What I mean by “not intended” is that it is an indirect effect of intending to use the same resource node ID for all maxed guild halls, and a different one for each other tier. That is, the programming is working as intended; the effect I describe as “less” wasn’t on the list of goals.

I doubt it’s a bug — in fact, I really like that things that happen to my character affect the home instance. (Similarly the Caladbolg NPC only shows up for people who have completed Hearts & Minds & only moves after you finish that quest line.)

Orion Templar.4589:

Maybe they’ll introduce a luck eater (like Sentient Anomaly, Mawdry, etc.)

See above — it would be a bad thing to add pressure for people to max out MF from luck. Right now, people can progress it entirely passively if they desire. Adding an eater would turn it into a semi-achievement, and that’s too hard for MMO players to resist.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

If they have the same upgrade level, you can only harvest one. For a while it was possible to harvest both if they were at different upgrade levels for the synthesizers.

It’s not impossible that was fixed, since it wasn’t particularly intended as evidenced by the fact that the same tier of harvesting nodes in the hall can only be gathered once a day.

It’s not a bug, and was intended to work this way. If desired, you can Google the Dev posts about this issue. (Or check the Wiki – there may be a link to it/them there.)

Good luck.

It’s not on the wiki under upgrades, workshop, or the couple of articles on GH gathering nodes that I reviewed. I haven’t found anything via googling yet. Any clue as to which dev made a statement about it and whether it was on the forums or reddit?

The article on gathering includes a note that explains what we see, but doesn’t mention that it’s intended behavior:

Gathering resources from a guild hall have separate daily limits for each stage of their upgrade progress. When a node has been gathered in a guild hall, that node will be consumed for all guilds at the same upgrade progress for that node, but not for guild halls in which that node is at a different upgrade stage.

It seems strange to me that it would be “intended” to get more stuff from unmaxed guilds than from maxed guilds.

I suspect it’s more like an unintended consequence of the different nodes being different resources in the database, so they don’t share cooldowns, whereas the ones in a fully upgraded GH are identical, so the game can’t tell them apart.

Shortage.5427:

So the game is plagued by casuals who want to downgrade this game to a fashion contest. This actually quiet sad.

Um, the game has been like this since launch. You’ve offered up arguments as to why gear progression is fun for you — you haven’t explained how it would benefit this game or its community to change the way it currently works.

That’s not sad; it’s just a difference of opinion, where the burden is on you to show that it’s worth the effort.

Why did you make 200 ingots? Does that suggest to you that it’s so trivial to earn stacks of dragonite that no one “needs” a demotion recipe?

I’m not against it, I just don’t think it’s needed for the game.

ArchonWing.9480:

Of course I also fear the same from upping the cap. People may go off about how hard they got to 300 and have to do it again. The difference between 300 and 350 would be the difference between exotic and ascended….

Oh I’m sure people would. The difference is that no one would be worse off than before and that 350 MF wouldn’t be as much as an advantage of ascended over exotic — the fractional change is similar, but the functional difference is minor. 50% MF simply isn’t noticeable without collecting lots and lots of data.

TheDevice.2751:

awesome

these guys are literally selling this stuff as a bundle. What is actually wrong with these people? What is wrong with them? how are they in charge of this game?

Backpacks were invented long before gliders were a gleam in someone’s eye. They were designed to be undeyable from the start — heck, the original game hardly had any backpacks at all (and they were mostly ugly ones). Making any new ones dyeable requires going back over all existing artwork for backpacks, in addition to creating the code to make it possible.

Gliders were invented after people had already complained about undeyable weapons and backpacks, so be thankful that we can dye them at all.

Amaimon.7823:

Sometimes when you’re done being launched by the Oakheart’s Essence, the glider doesn’t work. This mostly happens because you touched the ceiling or a wall, and are being shot straight down. At this stage your character is unresponsive to everything, so it’s not just gliding that work, but rather, all control is lost. Worse is, it sometimes causes falling damage, too, which usually kills you

I don’t see that as a bug — long before Oakheart’s Reach, if you glided into a wall, you’d stop gliding and fall (and become briefly unresponsive). I just consider it reason to be careful about where I point my fingers.

Endure Pain: Take no damage from attacks. You are still susceptible to conditions and crowd control effects.

• [quote]Vampiric Aura: Siphon health when you hit. [/quote]
• [quote]Vampiric Rituals: Wells siphon health every time they pulse and grant protection to allies when cast. Reduces recharge of wells.[/quote]
• [quote]Vampiric: Siphon health whenever you hit a foe. Minions siphon health and transfer it to you. [/quote]

The question, therefore, is whether “siphoning health” counts as “direct” damage or not. If the game only considers two types, “direct” and “indirect,” then the OP would be correct that vampiric “should not” count.

The wiki only mentions three damage types: direct, indirect, and falling. Incidentally, the “physical attack” argument is weak in my opinion: the skill says nothing about being immune to “physical attacks”, only about “attacks” — the only question (to me) is whether siphoning is considered an attack or not.

However, ANet is notoriously inconsistent about such distinctions — there are plenty of projectile-like attacks that aren’t affected by projectile blocking/reflecting … and plenty of non-projectile attacks that are.

tl;dr the OP has a good point and it’s worth waiting to hear from ANet.
(Personally, I think it could go either way.)

• Play engineer. High skill floor, high skill ceiling. Fewer people choose to main it.
• Or play revenant. Low skill floor, low skill ceiling. Not recommended by QTFY.eu for any raid role, so as a consequence, no one chooses to play it in other content.

And incidentally, while there are a gazillion and half elementalists, recent not-entirely-scientific evidence suggests that most aren’t playing it to their full potential. So it’s quite reasonable to argue that “skilled elementalist” is an underpopulated class.

As a more direct answer to the first question: we don’t have any actual stats on popularity. The closest is an info-graphic released a few months ago that shows the distribution of all characters across all accounts. Unfortunately, that’s all but meaningless, since few folks are likely to have duplicate professions and certain profs get a boost from things that have nothing to do with the actual popularity.

ArchonWing.9480:

Yea, I’ve never touched scribing. :p
I was referring to actual Boosters though; can scriber do that?

ANet has made it harder to obtain boosters, not easier. I can’t imagine that they’d add new ways.

There’s one big problem with finding other uses for luck which we haven’t mentioned yet in this thread.

Luck was introduced as a way to give everyone Magic Find and separate it from gear and character. Those who wanted to pay dearly to max MF early could do so and those who didn’t mind just accumulating it could choose to do that. It also provided additional market value for fine & masterwork items (at least, for a few months, perhaps a year).

If ANet introduces a new use for luck, it would put pressure on those without max MF to choose between missing out on a new reward or taking longer to get the original reward.

Thus it shouldn’t be anything that anyone considers as “must have” nor should it provide all that much benefit. That rules out using it for boosters, in place of mystic forge stones, or even for transmutation charges.

I think perhaps it might be better to add maybe another 50% to MF-from-luck & make the requirements increase exponentially, so that, in effect, no one could ever earn 350% total from playing the game.

Shockwave.1230:

To take you back to Guild Wars 1, you should recall that the game had loads of build craft that you could do. This was not tied heavily at all the game’s economy. Players mainly experienced build craft through exploring the game and experiencing content.

You must be remembering a different game. First, it was very difficult to determine market rates because there was no global marketplace. The closest we had was an NPC who would buy or sell certain mats (and run out frequently).

Second, there was no craft as such. You collected mats and took them to various NPCs to trade. Some mats were easily acquired and some were not.

Third, armor stats were tied to prefixes and suffixes that were obtained as random drops or through NPCs. When build preferences (i.e. “the meta”) changed, the values of these prefixes & suffixes would dip or spike accordingly. When hero mercenaries were added to the game, for example, those prefixes/suffixes needed for the hero meta were priced out of reach, according to a lot of players.

There was an option to collect tokens to trade for gear, but this was a convoluted mess. I literally maintained a massive spreadsheet to identify which gear stats could be obtained via tokens, where the (usually sole) NPC was located, and the 1-2 foes that might drop the tokens.

It was great for power traders, since there were all sorts of ways to profit on the impatience of others. And with enough coin, it was always possible to afford any runes and insignias one might want. I had no trouble outfitting everyone (and their heroes) with multiple gear sets, but many of my friends had a lot of difficulty managing just a few characters.

In short, crafting was tied to the economy in GW1. The difference was that it was a lot less easy for people to interact with the economy, so more people just waited for RNG.

I’m not against the idea of making it easier to get non-core gear, at least in exotics. For zerker exotics, we have the option of dungeon tokens or reward tracks. Couldn’t there be something as simple for viper’s exotics?

However, let’s not confuse the problem of price with the existence of a global economy. It’s easier in 2017 to farm the leather for exotics — what’s harder is how long it takes to earn enough gold to avoid farming.

Glad you were able to finish
Thanks for letting us know.

MashMash.1645:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There are three possibilities:

• ANet already plans to add this feature Tuesday (or shortly afterward). They didn’t mention it yet, as to avoid distracting from the main announcement that legendary armor arrives with the next patch.
• It turns out the feature is more complicated (for some reason) for weapons and it’s not yet ready. Since ANet doesn’t announce features without a shipping date, they haven’t said anything.
• It never occurred to ANet that players would want this functionality for weapons, despite all the posts about it for over four years.

Which do you think is more likely?

It’ll be number 3.

Turned out to be the 2nd.