Guild Wars 2

The irony of all this is that within that monthly acheivement rotation is the requirement to do fractals dungeons. So if you’re going for the monthly then you might as well do fractals.
Never stepped foot in them since I can’t always stay at the computer long enough to do an entire dungeon. Lot’s of quick afk’s. Still I haven’t completed a monthly since they started requiring dungeons. It’s okay though because I knew this would be a limitation for me.

Just wait ’til you have to get to the SP behind the priest in Grenth.

I just wanted to add some observations today. I played on my alternate account for a couple of hours. (I bought a second account on X-mas day when Amazon had it for 29 usd)
I played the lvl 33 warrior for a bit and hit DR running a few DE’s. As soon as I moved to a new zone I began getting good loot again. This also happened after I created a new mesmer character on this account. I ran around trying to level her and got to about lvl4 when she hit DR. I couldn’t move zones so I tried to just move to the higher areas on the map, take a few pot shots at enemies with other players around. After a couple of kills I ran back to the starter areas and ‘presto’ the DR was gone.
WHY does this work so well on this other account and not on my main?
Sure I could just play this other account but I have invested a good amount of time and gems on the main (maxxed bank slots, bag slots, maxxed crafting on all but 2 disciplines, etc. ) And does it have anything to do with the fact that this new account is on Tarnished Coast (main is on Blackgate). Or does it have to do with when I got the account? The main I got pre-release and played the Beta’s.
Also while playing on this laptop I have found that even a small amount of lag greatly affects the loot drop. More lag obviously means less chances for loot. By going back to low level zones and killing mobs quickly I almost always get better quality loot. Does this somehow tie in? Is this how grouping tends to make quality and quantity go up?
Before when I was on the gaming rig I could really do well in Orr, Cursed Shore but only while grouping. Now that I have the crappy-lappy, even in groups my loot has been halved.
When I have more time I will try again to gather data. Just throwing out some questions that plague me each time I compare accounts or compare gaming on different systems.

@Vlad – Did your wife get the exotic from a chest/box or from corpse loot? I have yet to see an exotic and the boxes aren’t working for me yet.

I still see next to nothing from champs and vets. Completed the kill vet daily and got a single blue on my alt that is the total from all vets. Also killed the Giant in Disseau and got nothing for my golden effort. Though others doing a lot of damage also reported getting nothing. So that is two days of champs and vets rewarding 0 – blue loot only.

Also DR hit hard on my main yesterday. I got two greens and 10 blues then the rest white. Only 5 mats both T5/T6. I only played on it for about 45 minutes until switching to the alt. I can only guess that DR hit from the previous day and had not reset yet. The alt I logged into did not get anything more than blues from about 2hours of playtime while I completed the daily and the refugee acheivement.

I did not see any boxes yesterday on either character. I like the idea of the boxes as a tracking device once it is properly implemented. Though I would like to see them more visually distinguishable than they are now.

Lesson learned: 1-When you suddenly experience great drops after a patch… keep your mouth shut.
2-That the entire thread on reporting drop rates is a ruse. If they know exactly what drops and how much to the point they rush out a patch to nerf it within hours… well then they know exactly what all those people in that thread are whining about. (<- myself included)
I don’t play the TP. I don’t make tons of gold on anything. I just want to feel slightly rewarded for my time. I would like to create more than one set of exotics for my main. I would like to gear up my alts as they reach lvl 80. I want to do it all by crafting or drops. (still haven’t seen a single exotic drop in game, except map completion & karka chest).

The new PvE chests are not working since I have seen white items in them and most greens and the two rares I’ve seen come from looting a corpse not a box. In fact I have only seen two boxes so far. (EDIT: I did get 1 box with a green in it)
I love the idea of the box for its use to track loot quantity and quality but it has to work first.
And don’t get me started on the fact that champs and vets still drop lousy to no loot at all.
If people go hardcore and monopolize a market or drive prices down by farming a ton of mats.. that is their perogative. What is to stop someone that has horded ori ore since the start of the game suddenly list 20-30 stacks and totally control market prices? Same goes for ecto. What is to stop someone from driving prices in one direction or another simply by hording tons of them.
As a casual that has seen DR attach itself and not go away for days sometimes longer, let us get some mats. And no changing zones, switching to alts, doing DE’s, gathering nodes, killing varied mobs.. does not change it. It just happens and doesn’t go away.
Let us have our shiny loot/mats.

The earliest hint was that we would receive an in-game mail to let us know the refuge event had started. Hence many people, myself included, were worried when the mail didn’t show.
My observations. In Disseau there were no markers and no mail for some time. People were in chat and talking about the event but there was a lot of confusion. A new build was pushed through and I moved into Wayfarer Foothills just before this happened. When logging back in I saw the map markers and the refuges/signs were on the map. I got dc’ed and when I logged back on the mail was in my box.
I do believe some servers were experiencing issues. In my case there were no hints or markers showing. This was Blackgate server other’s servers may have been different.
People are worried they’ll miss out and try very hard to be online when these events go live. Being vague is fine for a flawless rollout. For some there wasn’t any visual indication that the events had started. For those people Anet should give a little reassurance that they won’t miss out. Simple fix and still not a spoiler for those that had no issues at all.

Me neither … Blackgate… Can’t find anything either.

I had one chest drop off of a drake hatchling in Gendarran Fields. It contained a green longbow.
After a trip to Cursed shore I had 2 rares and 3 more greens but they came off of corpses only. Not a single chest dropped during that period of time.
The boxes seem to be a way for the devs to track actual drops and drop quality. <— once it’s working properly that is.

Some people got lucky yesterday and did the first set of dailies before the reset; then they completed the second set as well. At max you could get 2 laurels yesterday.
I only missed out on the first set by minutes because of the fact I was only getting credit for about a third of the combo’s that was part of the first set of daily requirements.

I feel for the people who haven’t yet gotten that skill point behind him… Wait.. oh yeah I have alts.
Isn’t this the same boss that people constantly fail on purpose to farm? Maybe the dev’s decided to get a lil’ pay back. I have only been there twice. Once to get that skill point and a second time, following the chain of events. Promise I’m not trolling, just asking if this is the one that people fail on purpose? (to clarify: when I say fail I obviously don’t mean die. )

After the patch I logged on with my main. I am still playing on the laptop with a good bit of lag and low frame rate. Went from Lions Arch to Gendarran and completed most of the new daily there. Found the Champion Rock dog in his pen and solo’d him for a single blue item (scale pauldron). Found two more centaur veterans and solo’d them. Got nothing for either of them. I saw one chest that came from a drake hatchling and it had a green longbow in it.
Then I waypointed to Cursed shore to try to run Penitent/Shelter event to see if drops were better there. The lag killed me. First time through I wasn’t in a group and got almost nothing. I attribute this to the lag and the fact it was crowded with people, more than normal.
When I did get a group I ended up with two rares and 12 moldy bags plus 3 greens. All the ‘uncommon’ items from Orr were looted off the corpses not from boxes. The boxes are small but are easily distinguished from a corpse sparkling. I had to give up because my lag and fps was just horrible. ETA for the gaming rig is at least 10days so I can’t offer much unless I am soloing out in PvE land somewhere.
The vets and champs are still giving little to nothing in terms of rewards. And I love the concept of the box in terms of tracking rewards for troubleshooting purposes. However none of the rares and most of the greens I got came from corpses and not boxes.

100% hearts done. 97% map completion <- WvW is all thats left and got a lot of it done. I deleted all my heart mail after taking the money. Guess my main is “Out of Luck”.

Balance the classes (stop nerfing and actually balance them out via fixing bugs, buffing underpowered, and improving AI for pets/minions). Psychologically speaking people dislike seeing their numbers drop. Better off buffing than nerfing unless something is really wrong/buggy.
Fix loot drop or/and protect those who seem to have the perma-DR attached. Let DR reset after one hour or have a way to make sure it is removed once a player moves zones. Should work but doesn’t for some.
EDIT: forgot to mention – Risk versus Reward is horrible at the moment. Champs, vets, bosses do not drop decent loot, nor does going into zones above character level provide any better quality drops.

We could even get mats from the fish: scales, blood, bones, etc.
It would be a great way to take a break from monotonous killing. I used to love fishing with Link. We can always hope.

Not that I have anything new to report. I still have no gaming computer to play with. I am using my laptop to run alts around (15-20fps). So even if I did report something it would not really be legitimate since I lag so badly I don’t know what is going on most of the time.
During my time off from playing the main and keeping up with this thread, I began to wonder if this could be server/group related.
I did notice that while playing in a group drops increased in quantity and quality. I got more rares while grouping post lvl 80, than ever levelling to 80 while playing solo. I can’t test it now but others can run with 5 friends soloing DE’s then grouping for DE’s to see the difference.

No one here has really kept track of which servers the problems are occurring. It wouldn’t be hard to simply add in the name of the server you are on at the end of the post. Not that specific servers are an issue but then again we certainly haven’t ruled them out either.
Anyway here’s to hoping for a fix with the new patch. It’s sad that I haven’t missed playing. I log on to finish up the last of my crafting before the cost to do so exceeds any method I have to get gold. The cost of mats alone is depressing and makes me wish I had gone ahead and levelled all the crafts before the jump in prices. If I feel lucky with my dismal fps I’ll run a DE or do a personal story on an alt then log off. DR/RNG loot drops is killing the fun for me.

server: Blackgate

Nope they need to stay hidden. Easter is around the corner and we eat ham or turkey so they may get company when the pigs find out.

Some of us actually enjoy crafting (the actual act of ). That said it is not very profitable nor viable at endgame. I make my own gear and that is the extent of its viability.
What is so destructive or unappealling for the dev’s to add a few crafting recipes for ascended?
In the end they will be as vanilla as the exotic recipes that were included in the crafts. I don’t think we should have recipes available until they are done with including ascended in all areas of the game. Once that aspect is complete crafting will be officially dead or they will eventually have to include recipes to revive it.
If ascended was truly the step between exotic and legendary (both of which are available on the TP) then the next logicial step is to integrate ascended into the entire game, crafting included.
If it was intended before game release, that is.

Pirates having the market on oranges begs for a joke about ‘scurvy’.
But on a serious note, it’s true. I grabbed a bunch of bags on the TP from pirates ‘booty’ and ended up with a decent amount.

^Agreed. I didn’t see disrespect either. Could of just been a ‘bad’ day and he presumed it was rude/disrespectful. Hard to 2nd guess a response like that.
Guess I won’t be making anything that requires lodestones anytime soon. I have 650+ hrs ingame and have yet to see one drop from any source.
Maybe they’ll make a recipe that includes putrid essence. I have 30 of those

Here lies Infernia eternally burning
she thought her dedication to her pets went both ways.
Her last words: 3 lick wounds 3 lick wounds! awww lick kitten…..

Revan.6259:

Perhaps you’re thinking of the legendary shortbow? The legendary longbow doesn’t shoot rainbows. It shoots flowers

Oops… my bad
Well it might be well suited for a Sylvari then. Or anyone that likes the disparity of a tough looking character using a ‘different’ type of weapon.
Just isn’t for me and that’s okay. I just wanted a little more choice especially since Legendary could be a year or more in the making for someone like me.
Thanks for the correction I wouldn’t want someone to be disappointed when flowers come out of longbow instead of rainbows.

Since they have included the absolute BiS on the TP (Legendary stats will be adjusted in the future) ; the next logical step would be to include Ascended on the TP. However, as others have noted, this step would kill crafting. Crafting is already in its death-throes, so to speak.
The argument from the OP is simply from his perspective of a WvW player that doesn’t play PvE and doesn’t want to be left behind (in stats) by players that enjoy the PvE aspect of the game.

I’m pretty sure that if a tier of gear with ascended stats was introduced into WvW specifically and no where else, there would be a ton of complaints.

To the OP, they have said the ability to earn Ascended gear is coming to WvW but there are no specifics or time-lines. I don’t think your request is unreasonable. At the same time it would take a lot of revamping of crafting unless they plan to let that part of the game become obsolete.
I like WvW and PvE but don’t particularly enjoy dungeons (too much of a time constraint atm). Personally I think adding Legendary to the TP was a bad move but that is just my opinion.

@The Blue Ace – exactly why I am not even going to try. Lodestone prices make some of the exotics not even worth a go. My favorite GS skins all require a ton of lodestones.

Then there is the legendary LB which my tough female Norn Ranger won’t be getting. Honestly I felt sorry for any male character having to shoot rainbows with a legendary LB.
For me it isn’t even a case of Aesop’s ‘sour grapes’ when it comes to a legendary. Sure I don’t have nearly the playstyle to get one, but what’s available isn’t my type either. I am waiting for the Ascended weapons in hopes there is something there I can work towards and enjoy.

Actually you need a control where you don’t move around, don’t change mob types and stay there for the same amount of time that you were participating in the experimental phase.
It gives you a baseline to compare your ‘moving about & playing your normal style’ to.

I think Anet would have shown a lot more validity by asking users permission to observe the account activity of each of the members that posted. Basically give us a ‘sign up’ thread to participate in their observations. At least then they could take our information and compare it to the averages they are seeing. I know they could look into any account they want but it would have been a show of good faith with the community who felt something was amiss.

Good luck with this Meowwilson

I wish there was a flag/visible cue that let us know DR was in effect. That would make the whole ‘perceived’ issue a little easier to evaluate… Oops wrong thread.
I really do wish we had a visual cue though. Unfortunately that is something that won’t happen because then there would be teams of people trying to figure out how to shake it so they could program their bots accordingly.
I don’t like farming but there are times when I need mats to craft armor or weapons. It shouldn’t take weeks to get those mats because DR hits and hangs around. I understand if you stay in one spot, in one zone, on one type of mob; but what about the DR hanging on even when you switch?

I made the Mystic forge longbow that looks like a blue version of the inquest weapon. I also have rust tooth <—which I really like even if it makes my Norn look a bit psychotic
Honestly I will never have the time or gold to make a legendary weapon but the alternate weapons I like require a huge amount of lodestones. Considering the rarity and expense of those… I’ll most likely just stick to crafted weapons or those with more realistic mystic forge recipes.

“Pika pika”….. “I mean Coooo”

To those that have never had DR follow them around; it doesn’t matter where you go (zones), what you do (DE’s, kill multiple types of mobs), or who you do it to/with(play WvW for a bit or switch to alt). The DR can and will stalk you if you happen to be one of the unlucky.
I agree with OP. I go to Southsun for the Powerful blood and Karka shells 1 day of the week for about an hour. I start on one side and run to the other gathering nodes, killing karka, killing skelks, breeze riders etc. But after that first hour… ‘forget about it’.
Even if I go all the way to Frostgorge I am not getting anything that I can craft with or so little of it, it won’t do me any good. Oh and don’t even think about logging onto an alt to escape it… DR knows… it knows
Don’t forget some people like the mind numbing repetition of farming. Some don’t. Either way the DR will punish them.

Lol the baby quaggan backpack really reminds me of my daughter’s pikachu backpack. Not totally immerision busting for me.
I will agree that the Store needs more variety in town clothes and skins. Something people will be willing to pay RL money for and yet not take away from the skins that are increasingly difficult to obtain (ie. those that require lodestones to acquire not dungeon skins).
Pilot glasses aren’t too bad if you consider a good portion of the game has a ‘steam punk’ kind of feel to it. There is just too little variety for most everything in the store. Pet armor skins, weapon skins, weapon dyes, etc. <- these kinds of things will sell if they are done right.
Just look at the Wintersday skins. They seemed to have one winner out of the lot, the princess wand. But it was a winner and people were willing to pay the gold to get it. Something with themes that fit with the lore. Branded weapon skins would be kind of cool or ascalonian skins. I will shut up now since I’m sure you all get the gist.

If they don’t look into the drop rate on regular mobs; they are going to see some massive Veteran and Champion mob ‘camping’.
Even that 0*2^10000 drop rate chance is better than some of us are getting off any mobs. EDIT: <—- Total Sarcasm intended. My math is rusty but not THAT rusty. And the camping concern is ‘if’ and ‘only if’ they fix the drop from Vets and Champs and don’t touch the regular mob loot drop.

My gaming computer is ‘dead’ so I will have a few weeks off from playing the game. When I return I will do some major testing since there is no way the DR beast will be able to find me after that kind of a break. I hope…

^^That would be a very viable solution. I like it too.

Maybe not by default but by placing it lower on the trait list it would alleviate the allocation headaches when ppl want to trait for something other than LB/SB.
I personally like the LB/GS but have not found a viable solution for the two. Instead I use LB/Sword + warhorn. I know if I switched to LB/SB I could be more effective. I constantly switch from giving myself the extra 20% for swords back to Eagle eye for the LB.

Honestly if they clean up the traits and make them a little more viable for different builds there wouldn’t be a need to have this by default. And I just won’t mention the pet issues even if they do tie in with traiting.

Just gonna agree with most – Rangers, Necros, Engineers

My main is lvl80 Norn Ranger… I find myself leveling alts a lot lately instead of playing her. The traits need help, the pets need even more help and oh I wish I could use a Great Sword/Long Bow combo again. Yes I know you still can but it’s hardly as viable as it once was.
My gaming comp is ‘belly-up’ so maybe by the time it’s fixed I can enjoy playing her again.

My time on this game is dwindling in direct correlation with the rewards dwindling in-game. I push the lever over and over run to other zones, different mobs, DE’s, etc. rinse & repeat. I push the lever but I get food pellets that even the scavengers and decomposers won’t eat.
I think that either Anet gave more reward up until November and adjusted the loot tables, (instead of rewarding players up until higher levels like in the article) or something went horribly wrong with a subset of players like myself.
Either way it has come to the point that I must farm to make gold to afford to play the way I like to or drain the last of my resources and enjoy them while they last.
The concept, the design, and even the implementation were/are great.
I just feel that I am falling behind and that sucks the fun out and makes the game a lot of work. This is my escape from work and stress. When the scale tips and the game becomes stressful and work it no longer functions as enjoyment.
No matter how many times you push that lever if all you ever get is trash and no food pellet… well you have a starving rat with no room to move in a Skinner box full of crap. The incentive to push the lever eventually wanes.

Not trying to derail this thread at all, I promise. I just wanted to know if there were any other torches with blue flames other than: Warden’s Torch & Fractal Torch?
I like the blue flame with my alt guardian and would love to work toward one.
Oh and thanks for all the pics of the actual flames and radius of light. Makes all the difference when comparing them as opposed to the wiki.

Rotating the colors at reset seems to be a good compromise.
-PvE players in WvW would surge at reset then wane
-WvW players would benefit once the initial surge is over

As far as badges go… they need to increase the drop rate or something. I have over 250kills and 15 badges. In fact I rarely get loot at all in WvW as a Ranger. I don’t go to WvW constantly or I would have a lot more kills. Without decent loot dropping it’s a decision to go there just for the fun of it and when I have enough gold for repairs.
I came to WvW for the map completion and enjoyed the PvP enough to return in measured doses. I still have a lot of poi’s and vistas to get but I have tons of patience.

And as someone else mentioned the Borderlands being the same maps. I too was thoroughly confused the first time I went to a map that seemed the same. I was sure I had already done them once before… A decidedly ‘derrrrr’ moment. It would have been nice if they had made each land a tad bit different and in return giving each a slightly different battle strategy.

Don’t want to hi-jack the thread so I’ll try to keep it short. I just wanted to clarify that I don’t try to single out one mob. The LB has AoE Barrage and then if I get a good line up of the mobs I can usually get three of them with quick shot(rapid fire) since I traited for piercing arrows. On the 2nd hand I have sword and warhorn but I would like to try out the GS and see if it makes a difference. The sword has less chance of hitting more than one mob than the GS but as most know that GS is slower and since I’m kind of glass cannon-ish …
I am thinking that mixing in the melee will help loot. I just have to get a few accessories to give a little more toughness and less zerker stuff. Fact is playing in a group made all the difference in quantity and quality of loot. Makes little sense because playing solo and beating up mobs still gives poor loot even if I’m killing multiple mobs. Sadly I have no hard facts.

Good to hear about the variety in the daily/monthly. I don’t do dungeons either and it’s been some time since I have been able to finish a monthly. I recently decided to pay attention to the slayer acheivements and have completed quite a few of them just because. Even better news is that this will be rewarded in the future.
If they really want to fill out the lower level maps they could add acheivements/tiers that apply to each of the maps or DE’s within.

@Surmaturma.4823 – This is an interesting concept. I play as a Ranger and use the AoE barrage of arrows with LB to start then pick a single target and use a condition and quick shot to hit that one target or stack them since piercing arrows can hit multiples.

My observations are similar to yours though. I rarely get drops in WvW to the point I can’t really afford the repairs. I am getting credited with kills but it seems not enough to get loot.
I noticed this in Orr DE’s as well. If it was just me I wasn’t getting enough damage in to get loot but if I group up, all of a sudden I am getting more loot than I can deal with at times. Even the quality improved slightly.
I would attempt melee with a greatsword but my build is a bit on the glass cannon side. I wonder if there is some merit to the DPS tying into loot somehow. Maybe if others test out the AoE and we see a definite pattern then the devs can take notice and test it themselves.

I’m at Blackgate and I can’t recall us changing colors …. well since I have been going there. At least a month maybe more. I finished all the Pve maps and now it’s all WvWvW. 96% completion and no progression.
I can’t in good conscience go to WvW and not participate. It just feels wrong. Still without us changing colors I won’t be getting any farther with map completion until we do.
+1 for the suggestion that the colors are rotated.

@jwburks – you are not alone. The prior thread, before being closed, was full of people with 100’s-1000+ hrs that had not seen an exotic drop.
I still haven’t and am around 650hrs + 96% world completion. (Aside from map completion and the Karka chest)
I see people post how they can make 100g in a week and think: how in the kitten are they doing it? They must have some seriously good luck and a lot of time.
Playing the way I like to, running different maps, dropping into WvW, exploring all the nooks and crannies of the map, running whatever DE comes up and fighting champs that spawn… I get barely enough to get by. And I have never seen a lodestone drop but I have completely finished my elementals achievement mostly on the lvl70+ ones.
I did recently find that running in Orr between Peni/Shelter is the only way to make the gold and even then its about 1g-2g. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over but otherwise I will be flat broke.
For me playing the way I like to is more costly than fun atm. I don’t need shinies everytime I play but its that feeling of ‘OMG that is an awesome drop’ when a yellow rare popped up, that I miss.
Even the dailies reward have gone from ‘what kind of black lion thingy is gonna drop to Karma jug + coin is all.
Oh and WvWvW is no more profitable for me because I think I am not getting in enough damage to get drops. I have zerker gear that I crafted + full pirate runes and a mix of zerker, soldier accessories. My Ranger is getting kills but no loot(above blues and only rarely) or badges. 200+kills and 15 badges…. Yeah I don’t go there that much but at the same time I am spending a lot on repairs from the insta-zerg from thin air issue. I like playing there but I can’t afford it.
At least let me break even.
This thread is sad. Someone at the company can take a snapshot and find exactly what is dropping and where. They can look into any one of our accounts and find exactly what we are saying to be true. The burden of proof should not be on the player since we have no way to keep track of exactly where, when, what drops. Without an injection of a third party app to keep track for us, the players are at a loss. It’s their code, their system and we have no idea what to try to change our ‘perceived’ issues.
Please Anet give us a bone. Tell us something we can test. A specific mob for a specific time period, in a specific map. You ask for information but don’t give us a clue what kind of information you need; all we can do is give you the patterns we see.

I don’t think Anet intended low level players being able to mine Ori but….. If there is a node in WvW and a lvl2 can get a pick using Karma, well then they can. This doesn’t seem any different.
It’s not an exploit unless they have found a way to get to the node via a glitch. That lvl2 still has to survive to get there and pay repairs also. Although their repair bill will be much lower than lvl80; they can’t get out of it if they die. I don’t see a problem with it.
If some of these alt-o-holic people take their 20 alts to the ori node every day is that an exploit? They are all legitimate char’s and these ppl love creating them for whatever reason.
Personally I don’t go to Southsun on a daily, more like a bi-monthly visit with one character. Still if I want to take all the alts there (lowest is lvl23) I should be able to. I just don’t feel like making a mad dash through the entire map. But if others like it, more power to them.
If they glitch to get there or find ways to mine it multiple times on a single char, that’s an exploit; this is not. And that is only my opinion worth so very little at the current inflation rate.

I have to say that my account has ‘seemed’ to be doomed with bad luck from beta. It just seems to get worse. However and it’s a big HOWEVER… RNG is factored on really big sample sizes.
Just have a look at the Mystic Clover chances as an example. It was said there was an ~ 33% chance to get them. That is not on an account basis but on a game-wide basis. Meaning that out of millions of tries the probability is 33%. So you could be the lucky schmuck that gets them 100% or the unlucky schmuck that gets them 0% out of 100 tries. Not because the probability has changed but because the sample size is simply too small.
And yes I just totally oversimplified and such. I just wanted to make the point that probability is working on a large scale in the game. It just seems to some of us that we got the ‘short end of the stick’ and can’t catch a break.
600+ hours and I still haven’t seen an exotic drop for me aside from karka chest and map completion. That doesn’t meant the loot tables are out of whack, just that I happen to be unlucky. I still have my doubts about how magic find works or how grouping and fast kills produce better loot quality but that is another topic.

continued…
Day 3 – I logged in still in Cursed Shore at Penitent. Solo’d for a bit until I found a group. While soloing I noticed that no matter how many mobs I tagged and proceeded to do good damage to (I am a lvl80 Ranger with zerker + full pirate runes), I couldn’t compete with a damage demi-god warrior. Meaning I only got a single loot from 5-10 mobs I definitely did a lot of damage to.
I grouped up and started seeing the difference immediately. I only came out with about 10 green and 1 rare this time. The rare was from a regular mob I decided to kill while waiting for the next DE to start. The loot was much less than Day 2 but…. DR could have hit me too since it hadn’t been a full 24 hours since I had logged out.

I don’t have a second set of armor to test out the DPS theory or I’d have already done that. I am really curious about the fact that fighting in a group that is not spread out but concentrating on the same mobs, effects the quantity and quality of loot. The damage done should be affected by this aspect but as stated previously, it should only count towards whether you have a chance of getting loot at all certainly not the quality of the loot itself.

Has anyone else seen this happen? And maybe it is why magic find seems to have little effect with some people. The only other credence I could lend to this is that before coming to Cursed Shore I ran from Hoelbrak to Frostgorge a lot. While passing through Wayfarer Foothills I got a rare once and at least one green each time I did. Each time the kills were very fast in comparison to mobs of my level. Once in Frostgorge I got mostly blues, whites and the occasional green.
I don’t know anymore. Speculation is making my brain cry.

@Krosslite – can you link a post to that claim? Because if that’s true it’s the first I’ve heard about it. Really minimum10 person group for DE’s in Orr?
Or am I an idiot and just totally missed the sarcasm of the post?

600+ hrs and no exotic dropped; not in WvW or in open world. I have only run 1 path of AC as far as dungeons and didn’t get even a rare. That’s the only dungeon I’ve ever done. No lodestones have dropped either. At least I got the lvl 70’s exotics from the karka chest and map completion exotics. Otherwise I could claim none ever.
I still hope my luck will change.

Actually if you read this:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

it says there will be ascended weapons, eventually.

“You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. Legendary items were always intended to be on par with other “best-in-slot” items. So fear not, all existing Legendary weapons, which are currently on par with Exotics, will be upgraded to be on par with Ascended weapons at the same time that we add Ascended weapons to the game. Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items. All Legendary items going forward will be of Ascended power. We also have plans to add more fun ways to acquire Legendary precursor items with a more “scavenger hunt” feel than they are acquired currently. "
EDIT: quoted post

Tale of Two days and the difference between the two.

Day 1 – I went back to Cursed Shore after staying away for at least a month. I didn’t even know where the Penitent event was or the Shelter event but I assumed it would be pretty easy to find. When I did map completion in this map originally I just ran around doing everything and not really paying attention to where I was or what event until I came to the entrance to the Arah dungeon.
Ran through the events 3 times each without grouping/partying. 10 blues – 3 greens -1 ancient bone – and the rest whites & porous bones. Nothing from the veterans in the event except one time a blue dropped.
After this I went on to find some resources to mine/gather/chop and then logged off.
Day 2 – I logged off in Cursed Shore so I started right back up. The results were as bleak as the day before and I was about to leave when I got a party invite. I took it and all of a sudden I was getting greens then a risen chicken dropped the first rare I have seen since November. Total of running the event 3 times each… 3 rares, 12 greens, 25 blues, 5 ancient bones, and inumerable whites plus about 80 porous bones. I have never had that many rares drop for me since I started. I didn’t want to stop playing for fear I wouldn’t see it again.
This makes no sense to me other than kill rate is extremely fast with 5 people staying relatively close to one another and targeting the same enemies. At one point we were spread apart and the drops were much less in quantity and quality. As soon as we fought next to one another the drop rates went right back up. Again how can this make such a big difference when a person solos they do all the damage and still get lousy drops. Unless the time it takes to kill a mob also factors into the equation; I just can’t put my head around how this would make a difference. The only difference it should make is whether or not you have done enough damage to the mob to get loot at all, not effect the quality of the loot.
Oh and on Day 2 the veterans still only gave out blues at best and most gave nothing.
Sorry I didn’t do a spreadsheet or pay more attention to the whites that I got because I didn’t really think there would be any difference at all. For the first time since pre-November I had issue with bag space.

This is my weird bug/glitch. My charr got stuck with her torso twisted around… I got to fight with the sword behind my back til’ she got ‘un-stuck’.
It was a bit unnerving and funny at the same time.

Too bad there’s no Skritt creeks or they could be found up Skritt-creek without a paddle.