“P1 zerk speed. Join fast or be kicked.”
I still don’t know what he meant by that…
Probably meant join instance fast or be kicked. I’ve had parties held up by people crafting/clearing inventory/walking via asura gate to the dungeon zone so I can see where this one is coming from especially for some of the shorter paths.
I find it funny when people list “story, experienced only” since I doubt that there are many people who regularly run story modes.
Why does it matter so much how other players play the game? Every time one of these farms comes up most of the toxicity arises when people intentionally antagonize the farmers. Why are you there in the first place if you have no interest in farming? I’m not gonna buy LS as an excuse since “usual toxicity” implies regular attendance.
Personally I can’t stand prolonged guard staff spam so I have zero interest in open-world farm. However, that thought process of “I don’t like how that player is making gold, but Anet won’t do anything about it so I’ll take matters into my own hands” is exactly what drives people to grief dungeon sellers. Nobody except Anet has the right to tell people how to play the game. A fix will come if it comes but until then you’re just as guilty of generating toxicity if you go out of your way to hassle those farmers.
I did exactly what you’re considering and I would absolutely recommend it. It’s like getting two legendaries for about 1000g. If your only concern is being locked out of future content I wouldn’t be worried. There’s no way Anet would do something that stupid. In any case, you could always just buy a 3rd legendary with the gold you make from selling eternity.
Was hoping that it would be released with the feature pack but no luck.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2dv4ev/update_armor_viewer_bonus_datamined_armor/
Also, glorious armor was released recently if you do pvp.
I’d like to see more unique skins like the spirit smith bp. It’s a good start, just need to add some more interesting rewards.
In my opinion Dry Top was the worst thing that could’ve happened to LS. Many people are forgetting that LS really hit its stride towards the end of Season 1 when Anet released quality patch after quality patch. Origins of Madness, Escape from LA, Battle for LA – these patches showcased what LS was capable of when done right: epic, large-scale group content that made you feel like part of a living, breathing world.
Unfortunately, outside of the improved story instances, Season 2 has been a complete disaster. By compromising with the outcry for permanent content I believe that Anet backed themselves into a corner. Dry Top is clearly designed to be permanent content, and it has all the limitations that prevent it from being engaging group content as a result. There’s just nothing at stake – no fail condition, no sense of urgency, no challenge, nothing. Dry Top is destined to become another Southsun Cove. Anet should stick what’s worked in the past, and that’s temporary content that requires high player turnout. The only place I’d like to see new permanent content is in instances.
Welcome to the world wide interwebz. Full of keyboard commandos who sit in anonymity and blame everyone else for their shortcomings.
Also, rifle warrior is terrible. Doesn’t matter the situation.
Eh I’d say fractal 50 pug is one of the few places where using a range weapon is justifiable. It’s pretty common in some of the longer fights such as archdiviner or mossman to melee until your health gets low and swap to range while you regen. And given the recent change to rifle autoattack it’s possible that it’s a better option dps-wise than longbow (i can’t say for sure, haven’t played my warrior since the patch came out).
I think the intent is for the rewards to be a bonus to people who like the skins or happen to unlock many of the collection items through normal play over time. The reward isn’t supposed to be the primary incentive for completing collections. I already had the ascended armor one completed when I logged in today (I do a lot of fractals) so I got a nice title and the exotic chest which I used on Arthropoda and sold for 150g. Now obviously the 1200g or so that ascended armor costs is far more than the 150g reward that I got, but I didn’t spend 1200g for the reward. I spent it for the armor and I consider that reward as a bonus.
Are you kidding me? Ele fared pretty well this patch compared to the other classes. Did you see what happened to ranger’s frost spirit?
Even with the FGS nerf ele’s are in a very good place for pve. The lightning storm from glyph of storms is excellent for keeping vulnerability capped at 25 stacks and following it up with ice bow 4 does an insane amount of damage. It’s just really unfortunate that our elites are in such a terrible state right now.
The only place people directly asked for eles was SE champ box farm. The standard search text is “exp heavies, berserker stat”. But thanks for playing.
Another place is AC. “Heavies only” is 2nd only to “5000 ap” as the most arbitrary LFG requirement to regularly pop-up. For fractals my group would regularly take 1 or 2 eles into our 50 runs. It’s not that eles are in a bad place, it’s just that pug groups like to minimize risk by taking the 2 classes that are most difficult to fail at.
The tooltip on the water ele is bugged. It actually does heal for 6-7k. Unfortunately it takes about 10 seconds for the water ele to cast the heal so you’ll probably be dead by the time it goes off.
It’s only expensive because you want it done now. The whole point of collections is to give people something to work towards over a long period of time. If you had it your way you’d be done with a bunch of collections by now and you would instead be complaining that you have nothing to do. The fun isn’t being robbed by people who bought up the collection items. It’s being robbed by your impatience.
It doesn’t affect me so I don’t care. I’m really surprised at the number of people claiming to be impacted by this change. Did everyone choose to create a new character today or something? Not sure why you would do so knowing the changes that were coming. It’s like people are going out of their way to find something to complain about. I just find it funny that all the veterans are getting worked up over a feature that was never designed with them in mind.
Did anyone actually think that suddenly dumping hundreds and perhaps thousands of precursors into the market would be a good idea? Anyone who does fractals regularly is likely swimming in those ascended chests.
Then you’re clearly not running fractals on a regular basis.
It’s faster to craft Ascended armor than it is to obtain it in fractals by a significant margin, even if you were to farm the gold.
Well I’m sitting on a stack of pristines and have most of the fractal skins (all but one acquired post-fractured) so I think that would qualify as running fractals on a regular basis. At one point I had half a bank tab of ascended armor and weapon chests with terrible attributes and I know other members of my fractal group had even more. I even managed to put together a full celestial set from all the healer/defender chests that I got, which is convenient for wvw I guess.
Did anyone actually think that suddenly dumping hundreds and perhaps thousands of precursors into the market would be a good idea? Anyone who does fractals regularly is likely swimming in those ascended chests.
I’ve always been curious how a full party of asura MoC rangers chaining technobabble and other dazes would do. 5*6s = 30 sec vs technobabble’s 45 sec cooldown. Between that and hilt bash and concussive shot (2 sec, 25 sec cooldown each), daze duration exceeds cooldown.
Unfortunately the defiant mechanic gets in the way for champion mobs so you would really have to coordinate cc well to pull that off. I’ve also tried running with rune of the mesmer to increase the daze time on technobabble to 7 seconds but the damage trade off isn’t worth it. It would be funny though to bring that set-up to wvw and completely lock down an enemy player.
If you’re in a decently organized group a good option for asura rangers is technobabble, which can be traited with moment of clarity to lock down most dungeon bosses for 6s (it’s effectively an instant cast ice bow 5 on your utility bar). Your list really highlights just how awful ranger utilities are for dungeons btw. I don’t think any other class would even consider taking a ranger utility over one of their own.
Post patch I would imagine signet of stone and signet of the wild being pretty standard. Muddy terrain is an interesting option to proc the +10% damage from predator’s onslaught if you prefer gs over the sword.
I solo pugged daily for about 6 months and still do so on occasion. A few observations:
- Fear of kicking/group abuse is way overblown. The only time I’ve been kicked was due to d/c and I’ve only observed a handful of unjust kicks in all this time.
- AC is by far the worst. Everything else is either so easy that it doesn’t matter or only done regularly by experienced people. Most pugs refuse to stack spider even if I explicitly state it in the LFG.
- 49/50 FOTM were pretty good when I used to pug them. I used to run into the same players frequently, which suggests to me that the pool of high level fractal pugs is very small.
- Almost nobody uses food or potions and I don’t know why.
- Playing an ele helps a lot, but it’s a real struggle when the group dps isn’t up to par. Also ele gets all the aggro for some reason (COE golem is the worst offender).
Overall I’d say pugging isn’t as bad as most people make it out to be. I did the organized group thing for about a month and honestly it got stale. Pug groups may be imperfect, but they keep you on your toes, and certainly make dungeons more interesting for me. It’s also a great way to build your friends list. ~90% of my list is people I met in pug groups.
These fixes are not preferential treatment if they benefit everybody. I mean let’s establish something here: would any player oppose these changes? And if so, for what reason? How would these changes negatively impact anyone?
I know many fractal regulars who wouldn’t appreciate making fractal skins more readily available. I’m not talking about the people who do a fractal run every once in a while and complain about bad rng because they don’t get anything out of it. I’m talking about players who do multiple scales daily and have done so for many months – people who have put in an absurd amount of time to get the skins that they have.
Personally it would benefit me greatly to be able to exchange pristines for fractal skins since I’m missing only a few skins and the chance that I get those skins through rng is abysmal. However, I would feel bad for anyone who has dedicated way more time than I have to complete their fractal collection.
Marionette was the best open world group content this game has ever seen. It had the perfect balance of zerg content in the lanes to create a sense of scale while also highlighting individual contribution in the mini-arenas. Compare Marionette to season 2 group content (dry top) and it’s just… ugh. Even most of the other stuff in season 1 (escape from la, battle for la, tower of nightmares, even boss blitz postseason) was way more engaging than dry top.
Judging by the number of people I see on a daily basis who sit there waiting for a revive instead of tagging a nearby trash mob to rally, rallying from downed state isn’t just overwhelming to new players, but many veteran players as well.
Not regarding your question, but you can solo AC P3 boss on ele pretty easily by camping staff fire and staying out of melee range. Just move into grast’s shield bubble if the boss uses the cave-in move. Equip glyph of renewal in case grast dies if you want to play it safe.
So much entitlement over free stuff. I hope this isn’t how you guys react to birthday presents in real life. Birthday blaster seems like a big improvement over mini jennah so I’m not sure what all the complaining is about.
It flopped for the same reason FOTM isn’t that popular. The gold/hour is bad relative to other content and the skins are entirely RNG. Both FOTM and Aether desperately need token systems to incentivize participation.
The dungeon itself I really enjoy. The puzzles are a refreshing change in pace from the standard DPS races and the boss fights have interesting mechanics, though I agree that the ooze puzzle is a pug nightmare.
tokens exchangeable for skins as an alternative.
….which would result in the skins being worth nothing.
Well the aether skins should’ve been account bound in the first place like the fractal skins. There’s really no reason for a unique dungeon skin to be available on the TP. And value depends on the token cost. For fractal skins I’ve heard suggestions of something like 50 pristines which is reasonable.
The rewards for Fractals and Aetherpath suggest to me that Anet were moving towards a system that would emphasize meaningful drops (in the form of unique skins) over gold rewards. This is encouraging but unfortunately they dropped the ball by making the skin drops entirely RNG. What they should’ve done was the SAB reward system which was RNG drops + tokens exchangeable for skins as an alternative.
Reddit downvotes dungeon content (i.e Sesshi’s no dodge Shaman/Ettin solo) to oblivion. so a riot on social medias is out of question.
I don’t think the majority of that subreddit has ever set foot in a dungeon. Had a guy actually tell me that the new fgs would be a dps increase over camping staff fire today. That’s okay though, all you have to do is somehow relate the topic to SAB and it will shoot straight to the top.
Like I said in another thread. The most likely answer is that the design of the outfit only lends itself to a single piece. Making it multiple pieces would have required it to look drastically different with obvious “breaks” in the armor, thus probably not as nice.
Why release the costume in the first place then? Considering the amount of vitriol this costume has generated anything less than a re-design will be a failure.
It’s a great look. People WANT to buy it, however they also want to combine elements from it with other pieces. We have a wonderful tool called the Wardrobe that supports this very endeavor yet we can’t use it. The costume is useless in its current form.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Useless in its current form? This is one of the best looking skins that Anet has produced, even taking into account the clipping issues and oversized shoulders. We should be encouraging content of this quality but you guys are too hung up on the fact that it’s an outfit. Why can’t people just accept that outfits and armors are two separate things both of which have their pros and cons? Outfits offer superior convenience at the cost of customization. Armors allow customization but lock you into one look barring the use of trans charges.
I find outfits to be very convenient since they’re unlocked account-wide and don’t cost charges to apply. They’re incredibly useful if you use multiple armor sets (e.g. for WvW) and can’t be bothered to burn charges on an armor set that you don’t use that often. I’m fine with Anet releasing outfits as long as they can maintain the quality level of the ancestral and ceremonial outfits.
That said, options are always good. The ceremonial outfit is beautiful but the shoulders are a huge eyesore. I would love to be able to toggle them off like the helm. I also share your concern about the lack of true armor sets. I think the last time new armor sets were released was around the time of the last feature pack, which is absurd.
Btw I can understand why Anet has been focusing on outfits over armor sets recently, because let’s face it, many players run around in full T3 or gemstore sets anyway so why bother.
Another victim of Anet’s weird obsession with oversized pauldrons. I actually like the outfit. It reminds me of something from TES: Oblivion. It’s just a tragedy that it comes with the collar and the ridiculous shoulderplates.
1) There are exactly two challenging forms of PvE content at the moment. Teq and Triple Trouble. Even those have to be taken with a grain of salt, because while they do require coordination, any shmuck who show’s up to the map early enough can simply join in with the actual organized players and ride their coattails to the reward while putting in minimal to no effort. This is not the case with PvP, where if even one person doesn’t pull their wait, the whole team will suffer for it.
That has nothing to do with game mode and everything to do with scale. You could say the same thing for Teq/Triple Trouble vs. dungeons/fractals or zerg battles in WvW vs. team fights in sPvP. Individual contribution means less and less as fights scale up regardless of what content you’re playing.
Also the only challenge involved in Teq/Triple Trouble is the logistical challenge of organizing 100+ players in an open world environment. There’s nothing remotely challenging about the mechanics in those fights. The first time I did Teq I was just as effective as the last time I did it. The only PvE encounters in this game that really press my knowledge of both the content and my class on a consistent basis are Imbued Grawl Shaman and Lupi.
To get back on topic though, I’d love to see a 2nd set of ascended dungeon armors/weapons released for the really dedicated dungeon runners (maybe even just throw on some cheap particle effects to the existing stuff like they did with the TA Aether weapons).
I just find them boring. They reduce your character to giant white, glowing blobs which I guess some people like, but I don’t see the point in customization when you can barely even see a character behind all the particle effects. In my opinion the last good BL skin set was Zodiac (the rifle is one of my favorite skins in the game and I wish that I had more excuses to use it). Lovestruck also had potential but they botched it with the heart motif and the grey color.
I swear this fractal was designed to troll us. The knockdown tunnel, the excavator that moves at a snail’s pace, the earth elementals that have stability and 1-shot you, the end chest that contains a whole 1 blue, etc. I can deal with all of that though because frankly it’s a brain-dead easy fractal to complete.
What I’m not okay with is the fact that this fractal has prematurely ended more of my runs than I can count. I know of at least 3 progression-halting bugs in this fractal:
- The steam vents don’t shut off
- The weapons test doesn’t start (yeah I know, never run ahead of the npcs but pugs will be pugs)
- The end boss is defeated and no continue prompt comes up
If Anet isn’t going to fix this fractal (not likely since it’s been 9 months and I’d guess hundreds of support tickets) at least remove it.
That’s what happens when Anet tries to shoehorn instanced content into an open world setting.
Flashier doesn’t equal better for everyone. Zodiac is actually my favorite BL weapon set because it doesn’t reduce the weapons to particle effects on a stick.
I use it on a joke build for my ranger in wvw because ranger is a thief magnet. No really carry around a longbow and have a bear equipped and everyone on the map will target you while you outheal most of the damage.
PvE eles are used for a FGS exploit. You fix FGS, ele becomes irrelevant. Warrior alone can might stack and without bugging out/exploiting skills can put similar numbers.
Are you playing the same game as I am? Because last time I checked absurd dps, permafury, 18+ stacks of might, and aoe projectile destruction are the furthest thing from irrelevant. PS warrior hits like a wet noodle by the way is made obsolete by any half-decent ele.
It’s like the people demanding precursor crafting believe that a precursor will just be handed to them once it’s implemented. You’re going to be disappointed if you think that precursor crafting will change anything. Either way it’s going to require an absurd amount of time and/or resources.
“Cannot be blinded, chilled, crippled, immobilized, knocked down, launched, or pushed back. Cannot be removed.”
Cmon Anet. It’s not fun when mobs don’t play by the rules. In the future you should just spare yourself the hassle and remove all our weapon skills but autoattacks. Defiance is a clunky system but at least it can be worked around in organized groups or with good timing. Indomitable completely nullifies the already negligible control aspect of this game for seemingly no reason.
Frankly, there are an infuriating number of exceptions and inconsistent combat mechanics in this game. We have countless mobs with cc immunity or unblockable projectiles and to make matters worse they often lack any tooltips to indicate their special case. Do I even need to point out how backwards this is?
Here’s a hypothetical example. Say a new guardian unfamiliar with TA up path is about to encounter Malrona and is told by his comrades that this particular boss shoots out highly damaging aoe projectiles. The guardian proceeds to equip Wall of Reflection and roughly 20 seconds later is dead on the ground because the description for Wall of Reflection should really read “reflects projectiles sometimes”. Why is this poor guardian dead Anet?
My fractal group used to 3 or 4-man 50’s. We tried to sell the last slot a few times but had no luck with buyers. Can’t say I’m surprised. I wouldn’t want to pay 10+ gold for an ascended ring either.
Why does everyone try to use math to claim that gemstore items aren’t worth it? You realize that by their very nature these items aren’t supposed to pay for themselves or else the gemstore would be pay-to-win. Just look at the uproar over the watchwork mining pick as an example. By your logic a dye pack should return more than the gold that would be used to buy it. Obviously these items cater to people who enjoy gambling and are looking for ways to support Anet.
Anet has access to sales metrics on all of their gemstore items and yet every random player thinks that they have some unique insight to offer by suggesting that prices be lowered. If the gemstore isn’t selling you can bet that Anet as a business would have the biggest incentive to adjust prices.
CM 1 and 3 are pretty easy with a guard/thief duo. Stealth through most of the path and guardian makes the fights a breeze.
(edited by Kaldrys.1978)
AP is one of the most arbitrary lfg requirements 2nd only to “heavies only”. I’d rather take a 1k AP necro running a meta build than the 1000th pug warrior to join my group who slots signets over banners and has no ability to adapt if things go the slightest bit wrong.
I’m all for making explorable unlock account-bound. Most people doing story mode more than once are doing it to unlock explorable on additional characters and just want to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. That means skipping cutscenes and rushing through content and ruining the experience for first-time storygoers anyway so why not make it account-bound.
I know that Anet is really trying to push open world content, but when the only instances that are succeeding are the ones taxi’ing members in it ceases to be open world content. At this point this content may as well be instanced. OP you’re absolutely right. None of the open world encounters in this game are difficult on an individual basis, and yet despite doing everything right I’ve found myself time and time again failing at Tequatl, Marionette, Assault Knights, Boss Blitz, etc. because I happened to be in a map where the majority of the people didn’t share my mindset. How is it fair that my reward is determined by the people in my map when I have no control over who those people are?
If Anet is deadset on promoting open world content they must do a better job of incentivizing individual contribution. Many players at these events have no motivation to give their full effort because the rewards are tied 100% to groupwide success. As a result you see people afking, refusing to res, autoattacking, etc. However, if a percentage of the reward were determined by individual contribution you would see players doing more to help out at these events. And even if the group as a whole were to fail, you would at least have the players contributing the most towards groupwide success be rewarded something for their efforts. The funny thing is that a system like this is already in place (the reward medals for dynamic events), but it’s so easy to get a gold medal that it’s completely meaningless.
If you’re talking about mob farming like in Cursed Shore events nothing beats guardians for tagging groups of mobs. If you’re talking about World Bosses where you tag a single target nothing beats rangers for afk autoattacking on a bow from 1200+ range.
Have you considered taking obsidian focus over geomancer’s? It would give you an extra 300 toughness while using ether renewal or autoattacking on scepter.
Swap SotH out for QZ before you engage. I use 6/0/2/6/0 SotF build. With read the wind traited and QZ I can usually burst a thief down within the Sic’Em window before they can stealth.
YB only shows up during tourneys. If you’ve been doing WvW for over a month though you should have had no issue with map completion since YB fared pretty well during the tournament, even beating out some of the other servers that you brought up.
I made one when these recipes were first released thinking they were infinite use. Seems like that would be a lot more reasonable given the crafting cost and I could see these actually being used if that were the case. Oh well, at least I managed to sell it off and recoup my losses.