Guild Wars 2

“We can’t do X because it won’t work well on the console version.” …. yeah definitely not a win.

Are you sure you are in the correct pen and interacting with the correct object? There may be multiples of each. I have the collection finished but I don’t remember the details. I maybe have complained about something then found what I needed a few moments later. :P

Where is that chest you mention after the end of Drone Race? The only thing in the area I can think of is Gertrude’s Satchel.

Bifrost would be much easier. If for no other reason than the fact that having The Legend means you only have to do half as much stuff.

Ashen.2907:

They did offer LS2 to you for free. You, essentially, turned it down. Now they offer it, still free of real money cost, for a willingness to trade gems.

I do think that including it as part of the HoT purchase might have been a good idea to add value to the expansion.

All of that said, I do not think that, “greedy,” is an accurate decision for choosing to charge for a product that the company spent money to produce.

Including LS2 in the HoT price tag would being good or bad would have been debatable. For some people it would be yet another thing ANet would be double dipping on.

Different sigils do not share cooldown. The same on two different weapons probably do share but it is easy to test in heart of the mists.

Ohoni.6057:

However, like I say, I typically can’t follow someone else’s path as shown in a video. I have trouble translating what I see there into where I’m supposed to turn or when. It works okay for most JPs, where I have as much time as I need to orient myself; it’s not good for adventures, because they are timed. (Although, I will sometimes just go far enough in to find a tricky spot and practice that and restart.)

Yeah, most speed runs are pretty confusing if you don’t already know what you’re doing. I tried to watch one of the speed runs just to refresh my memory of the layout before giving tips, and even knowing how it works I had to keep pausing and rewinding.

I think anyone serious about “teaching” with these videos rather than just showing off their time (not that that’s a bad thing), should take the added step of using slo-mo, freeze frame, and annotations to explain the method as they go (“ok, -pause- right here -circles icon- is the icon, you want to press 1 next to it and it boosts you over -unpause- here. Then you want to . . .”).

The videos are on YouTube. You can already run it in slow motion if you want.

Video for the ley line run “holy crap route” doesn’t work anymore. The video is set to private.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

@Younger. I am less agile than the average player and somehow I managed to do it. I agree: getting silver (which I’ll have to do again, apparently, if I want a raven staff) is a pain in the, urm, kitten [sic].

Here’s how I went about:

• I parked a toon at the start.
• Each day, if I felt like it, I’d try it out and keep at it until either I got silver (never) or yelled at my computer screen once (ok, sometimes twice).
• I kept at it and eventually learned a couple of tricks.
• I got faster and faster and finally silver’d it.

I have watched vids of other adventures and they can be fun to watch — I am impressed with the madd skillz of our community. However, I have yet to find one that actually helped me get better at a single adventure, never mind get silver. I can’t tell where exactly people are when they do some sort of trick, even after stopping/starting the vids — I just don’t have the spacial relationship skills to translate the 2d video into my 3d space.

What helped more is
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Guide-Adventures-Silver-Gold-and-beyond/first#post5923849

This guy offered specific tips in text that I could use, gave me a sense of which are hard for everyone, and a general sense of what to expect — none of the vids I’ve seen (even the ones he linked) have helped as much as that text.

tl;dr try it for 5-15 minutes each day and don’t worry about mastering it today or tomorrow. You will get it eventually.

aka it’s Zen & the Art of Adventuring for the Agility-Challenged.

The 18s Ley Run video was pretty helpful for the path to go.

Lahmia.2193:

And Anet wonders why no one runs duel axes on warrior.

I run that from time to time but I would never take the Dual Wielding trait because all the master traits in arms are terrible for dual wielding axes.

Every profession. Mix of stats …

John Smith.4610:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Chris Cleary.8017:

John Smith.4610:

It’s me.

My Bearbow math is stronger than ever before! You are no match for me!

JS levies a 10g tax for every arrow fired from a ranger’s longbow if there’s a bear pet around.

This literally was my plan. No arrows, no bearbow.

You can still shoot the bear as a projectile. Then the bear runs back and you can shoot again. That would be a more literal bearbow.

skullmount.1758:

Khisanth.2948:

The tenebrous crystals also come from mining the ore node in the guild hall. You get anywhere from 0 to 10 a day.

Its more like anywhere from 0 to 10 per swing. In theory (probably has been someone lucky enough), you could get 30 in a tier 1 node.

I’ve been mining in two guild halls for months and I am pretty sure I have never gotten 30. Seems similar to getting the charged quartz from the home instance node. I’ve been mining that one for years and haven’t gotten more than 1 charged quartz either.

Necro’s Vampiric Aura works. Also shows in the combat log.

Revenant Focused Siphoning and Assassin’s Annihilation also works. Does not show in the combat log but the damage and healing numbers can be seen popping up on screen.

Haven’t tested other stuff yet.

DoctorDing.5890:

So, a summary of this thread might be:

1. The game does nothing to help players learn about CC and break bars.

2. The skill descriptions do nothing to help players work out what skills count as CC (be they soft, hard or, um, tweenie).

3. But it’s OK, because you mostly don’t need CC to kill stuff.

It’s not exactly a compelling argument in favour of players changing their habits.

On the other hand people complain about HoT being too difficult but CC makes it much easier …

Manasa Devi.7958:

Dav.9152:

Also, for a lot of casual players in big boss events, so long as the boss is losing health, and they are winning, they are probably not aware of doing anything wrong by not CCing. “Was the event successful? Then I must’ve been doing it right.” That also furthrs the “I don’t care about CC” attitude b/c they didn’t need it last time. They end up getting carried by everyone else and don’t realize there’s more to learn. Only by repeated failure will they finally stop to figure out what’s going wrong.

The vast majority of the time, people are actually right when they think they don’t need to break that bar. Most encounters are easily winnable without ever putting even a slight dent in the bar. That sure doesn’t do anything to educate people, and after fighting dozens of enemies with useless break bars, running into one where not breaking it has major consequences, they’re still clueless.

… maybe those were meant to teach people to deal with break bars

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Mushroom enemies in Heart of Thorns zones now drop sizable amount of Flax when killed, I’ve received four Flax from a single kill. That’s a helpful influx of Flax for Linseed Oil, so if you need it you can go to the Heart of Thorns areas where mushrooms are plentiful and farm there, or participate in events that have mushroom enemies. You can even just make a note to kill the mushrooms you see while travelling.

I will never be that desperate for flax.

It was removed from the rotation because the skills weren’t working. Basically whoever is the first to pick up the crab will win unless they get run over by the veteran karka.

Danikat.8537:

Sartharina.3542:

Randulf.7614:

Well in their defence, not closing it down and not protecting their copyright, would probably have caused much greater problems with setting a precedent for allowing infringement. Hence why so many lawsuits that seem so silly and petty get filed. It is the unfortunate nature of the copyright law in certain countries.

On topic for GW2 however, it is more interesting to see such a (seemingly) high % of accounts who wanted to play the original format. Expansions can have the effect of changing the game beyond recognition and it isn’t the first MMO to derail due to excessive exapcs (LOTRO..). GW2 isn’t suffering quite in that regard, although it veered a little off course with HoT in some places, but it goes to show what a fine balance between progressing an MMO and keeping the vision which attracted so many in the first place.

Ehh… it’s not like the developers of this game don’t radically change the game without an expansion. Remember when we had to unlock traits by doing specific events scattered throughout the world? (And nobody ever rolled another alt until that was discontinued) And we can’t forget the still-present NPE and butchering of the Personal Story.

To be fair players asked, repeatedly, for traits (and skills) to be unlocked by doing specific challenges in the world. They said they wanted something like GW1 where you were awarded skills for doing specific quests or finding and defeating bosses. So Anet did as they were asked and it rapidly turned out a lot of people (including some of those who had asked for it) really did not want what they thought they did.

Also they fixed the personal story. It was a while after they broke it, but it’s been back in order (and with some new improvements) for quite a long time now.

Hmm .. slightly distorted truth.

They didn’t just add the alternative method for unlocks for the people who asked for it. They also made a massive increase to the price using the old method for everyone else. Some also involved broken events which combines very badly with the price increase. Asking people to spawn camp event was never going to end well. There were also some nonsensical ones initially like Frostgorge Sound map completion for what should have been low level traits.

Missing the wrong underwater weapon.

It still spawns regardless of how fast it is killed but having one always spawn at a fixed location(maybe right under the head?) at each transition wouldn’t be that bad. It would make it more interesting for anyone trying do the triple hit spot. :P

Astralporing.1957:

Randulf.7614:

Flax now drops from mobs quite a bit so they did make changes. Plus when you consider there are specific patches with lots of flax in one place you can farm nearly 1 oils worth at a time, then they probably thought it was in an OK place.

Yeah, nearly 1 oils worth… with everything requiring tons of those oils.

They may have thought it was in ok place, but it wasn’t. Which was pointed to them long before the patch.

They have also done something to improve it and maybe that is still not enough but we’ll have to wait to see if that is the case.

Dinks.2478:

And then in a year support can be flooded with “Hey, I used my gift of exploration but now I feel like I want a legendary and all of my toons are completed cause I used my gift of exploration.” right?

No, go do world completion. Its easy, its fast, Its rewarding, and I’ve done it 16 times and am planning to do it again. If you can’t be bothered to spend a day or two to do world completion then just spend a couple of hours grabbing the major waypoints.

That seems like the biggest long term problem with the OPs suggestion. If all you are after are waypoint it takes even less time especially since some WP are pretty much useless like the one on Jinx Isles in Malchor’s Leap and the majority of WP in Straits of Devastation since they are contested most of the time.

Hmm … had to do DS meta twice for HOPE. That is definitely not soloable either.

Asumir.1978:

How about OSX? I changed my screenshot key to PrtScr (yup, got a Windows Keyboard I can be merciless to, use Windows key instead of the CMD key). Been digging but would rather hear it from a gamer playing Guild Wars 2. Anything in specific?

You should be able to do the same thing using the ln command.

That note could certainly have used some more details. I think it just means that they all scale the damage portion with power and the healing portion with healing power as opposed to be a fixed value for some and scaling for others.

The axe looks nice when wielded but when stowed it is one of the saddest looking thing.

AliamRationem.5172:

maze.9713:

When playing HoT lately, I noticed that players barely use any CC during the relevant phases of a boss fight. Today I witnessed a wyvern matriarch fight that ended with only a minute left on the timer because it wasn’t downed a single time. With 20 people around I felt like I contributed almost half of the CC done. When encouraging players to use more CC someone even asked what that means.

I believe we actually reached a point, where completing bosses has become a lot harder than after the release because people don’t give to kittens about boss mechanics.

Are you experiencing this too? And can we do something about it?

I’m pretty sure this is a scaling issue. I’ve observed that if you go up against a wyvern with 3-5 players the breakbar is never an issue. But the larger the group, the less likely you are to hit the breakbar.

Just a suggestion, though: Instead of spamming “CC!” when a breakbar comes up, it might be a good idea to provide a quick explanation at the outset. As a new player to GW2 coming over from WoW, I am familiar with the definition of “CC”, but breakbars are a new concept. My initial reaction was “Why should I use CC? I can’t stun/interrupt this guy!” I asked my guild about it and they explained how breakbars work.

Well if you have 5 people and 3 have CCs that is 60%. If you have 50 people and 3 people have CCs …

I use it for the HoT keys.

Where did you try it and what did you try it with?

It worked fine for me using a hammer, pistol, flamethrower while wielding pistols, rifle and flamethrower while wielding a rifle. All against pocket raptors in Verdant Brink.

What part of it is bugged? They never showed up in the combat log except for the necro blood magic traits.

yinnyari.2576:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If you completed that Story Level arc on any other race/character, you won’t get another Mastery Point. Only 8 Mastery Points are awarded per Personal Story per account. One for each PS Level arc.

This was the first time I’d completed the Personal Story – as it was the first time I’d completed the achievement.

First time completing the achievement doesn’t matter. It is still possible to have completed that chapter number on a different character of a different race.

Are you referring to the two that they announced that they would be removing in the patch?

Wanderer.3248:

Sird.4536:

There is not ‘tutorial’. In the core game you are introduced to the idea of dodging early on but once you enter HoT there is nothing telling you this is how this works or that works etc. Not everyone reads blog post that outline new mechanics and it’s frustrating playing with others that have no idea of what I consider basic gameplay.

If you mouse over the break bar it tells you what to do.

I suspect that a lot of players never slot CC skills and don’t practice using CC.

Maybe it tells you on some bars but definitely not on the one I checked earlier. It only said something like “stun when broken”.

Oh and I finished mine on April 13. You can calculate from when HoT was release how long it took but it’s not like I was focusing very hard on it and some of the items needed are much easier to get now like Ley Line Spark. Just getting the 250 was kinda horrible then but now? I have over 500 spares.

khani.4786:

I think part of the problem is that for the longest time there was the mentality that CC was bad and there were people raging about all the knockback/pull/CC that moved the bosses and now we have a breakbar rather than defiance and CC actually has a purpose other than to kitten off folks that just laid down a nice AoE by moving the enemy out of their AoE field. So lots of folks got used to not using their CCs and now that we need them they’re less sure of how/when to use them.

And if you ever not sure which skills count as hard/soft CCs for breakbars, look at the conditions on the boss: if it’s grey – it effects the breakbar.

CC is still somewhat bad for the Chak Gerent unless you are doing SCAR lane then it is just irrelevant.

Actually it was never really bad when used appropriately but more often useless. Randomly spamming CC on things is still bad.

Silberfederling.9302:

One thing i noticed and (tinfoilhatmode) what i think is ging on is the old mmo tale of “i have to do x amount of dmg to get my loot” and therefore peeps often do not even slot CC but go for dmg\aoe. I might be wrong though.

That is still partially true in GW2. For both loot and event credit. I just did an AB event where you were supposed go around helping pact soldiers with pact medical supplies. I did that for at least half the required number of soldiers but because I wasn’t attacking the mobs it only gave silver event credit. That is not the only time it happens. That sort of thing just trains people to ignore everything else besides attacking mobs even if simply attacking mobs will never progress the event to completion.

You can buy exotics on the Trading Post.

ekarat.1085:

Khisanth.2948:

ekarat.1085:

Khisanth.2948:

ekarat.1085:

cptaylor.2670:

I’ve found a way to make them at next to no cost with a slight initial investment that might net me some profit later. Unfortunately it’s a slow process and will take awhile to accumulate all of them. Do some research, I’m sure you’ll find a more affordable way.

Making them yourself with the cheaper bulk recipe is cheaper than buying them, but I wouldn’t call it next to no cost.

Until very recently, it was cheaper to buy crests/orbs/whatnot rather than upgrading them with a jeweler, but it’s not much of a savings either way.

All in all, I’m skeptical that it can be done at “next to no cost”, unless you mean using/upgrading gems that drop. Technically, then you don’t need to buy anything, but you’re still not getting the money you would get from selling the loot either.

There is also the t5 upgrades but that might come at the cost of breaking your hand.

True. That can give amalgamated gemstones occasionally, but trying to get all of them that way is absurd and eats up a ton of spirit shards. If you want to convert spirit shards to gold anyway, then sure, but I try to conserve mine somewhat, since I can’t farm more. (Now, if they created a mastery track that dropped a single spirit shard every time the bar fills, then that’s different…)

There are no shards involved. 4xt5 => 1 t5/t6/amalgamated gemstone

As for getting spirit shards that is pretty easy with HoT too. They are in the airship cargo/exalted chest/crystallized cache/noxious pod. Before the patch those weren’t a good option but now that they are practically showering you with currency and keys that isn’t a big deal.

Oh, the other t5 upgrades (common, fine, and rare) do require spirit shards, but universal upgrades (eg gems/crests/doubloons) don’t. You are right — I stand corrected, as I was thinking it followed the pattern of the common/fine/rare recipes.

How frequent is this? I generally think there is a 20% chance of getting a t6 upgrade back from t5 upgrades, but how often is it an amalgamated gemstone?

The result of forging 4×250 t5.

So a bit under 7/250 since that t5s generated some medallions and I also forged those together as well.

ekarat.1085:

Khisanth.2948:

ekarat.1085:

cptaylor.2670:

I’ve found a way to make them at next to no cost with a slight initial investment that might net me some profit later. Unfortunately it’s a slow process and will take awhile to accumulate all of them. Do some research, I’m sure you’ll find a more affordable way.

Making them yourself with the cheaper bulk recipe is cheaper than buying them, but I wouldn’t call it next to no cost.

Until very recently, it was cheaper to buy crests/orbs/whatnot rather than upgrading them with a jeweler, but it’s not much of a savings either way.

All in all, I’m skeptical that it can be done at “next to no cost”, unless you mean using/upgrading gems that drop. Technically, then you don’t need to buy anything, but you’re still not getting the money you would get from selling the loot either.

There is also the t5 upgrades but that might come at the cost of breaking your hand.

True. That can give amalgamated gemstones occasionally, but trying to get all of them that way is absurd and eats up a ton of spirit shards. If you want to convert spirit shards to gold anyway, then sure, but I try to conserve mine somewhat, since I can’t farm more. (Now, if they created a mastery track that dropped a single spirit shard every time the bar fills, then that’s different…)

There are no shards involved. 4xt5 => 1 t5/t6/amalgamated gemstone

As for getting spirit shards that is pretty easy with HoT too. They are in the airship cargo/exalted chest/crystallized cache/noxious pod. Before the patch those weren’t a good option but now that they are practically showering you with currency and keys that isn’t a big deal.

ekarat.1085:

cptaylor.2670:

I’ve found a way to make them at next to no cost with a slight initial investment that might net me some profit later. Unfortunately it’s a slow process and will take awhile to accumulate all of them. Do some research, I’m sure you’ll find a more affordable way.

Making them yourself with the cheaper bulk recipe is cheaper than buying them, but I wouldn’t call it next to no cost.

Until very recently, it was cheaper to buy crests/orbs/whatnot rather than upgrading them with a jeweler, but it’s not much of a savings either way.

All in all, I’m skeptical that it can be done at “next to no cost”, unless you mean using/upgrading gems that drop. Technically, then you don’t need to buy anything, but you’re still not getting the money you would get from selling the loot either.

There is also the t5 upgrades but that might come at the cost of breaking your hand.

Cyninja.2954:

Without steam (or other digital distribution platforms) the entire gaming industry would be in a very different spot than it is now (anyone remember Starforce CD/DVD protections in its early stages?).

Steam allows small developers to release without having to slave for a publisher (see the entire indie game industry) for example. It cuts release costs and allows for easy purchase.

None of that is relevant to GW2. ANet itself is already owned by a big publisher. GW2 exists without steam so all the other infrastructure need to exist regardless. ANet staff has to monitor and enforce stuff related to cheating anyway so the protection thing isn’t relevant either.

maze.9713:

When playing HoT lately, I noticed that players barely use any CC during the relevant phases of a boss fight. Today I witnessed a wyvern matriarch fight that ended with only a minute left on the timer because it wasn’t downed a single time. With 20 people around I felt like I contributed almost half of the CC done. When encouraging players to use more CC someone even asked what that means.

I believe we actually reached a point, where completing bosses has become a lot harder than after the release because people don’t give to kittens about boss mechanics.

Are you experiencing this too? And can we do something about it?

Well with the changes from the patch there is also no point in wasting time with matriarch when you can just fight the other bosses instead. I don’t bother going there unless I am somehow absolutely out of options which is basically impossible since there is always the “don’t fight any of them option”. I know the fight but I don’t go because issues you mentioned. The environment of the fight also makes it really crappy for trying to use any sort of melee CC at least half the time. If you are really bothered by this I would recommend bringing one or convincing some Venom Share thieves to join the fight.

Furajir.3815:

If I have the gold, what kidn of timeframe am I looking at?

If you haven’t done anything yet then a minimum of 12 days because the first collection requires an item that takes 12 days to unlock. You could get all the non-tradeable stuff in the mean time like bandit crests and obsidian shards. There are also a bunch of fractals and jumping puzzles you have to do but you can’t do those ahead of time since you won’t get the relevant items until the collection is unlocked. The world boss kills have similar restrictions. The items from the Orr temples can be more annoying due to the long cooldown but you might get lucky checking in the LFG. Depending on how much you play and luck that could add several more days.

Oh and you have a lv500 weaponsmith right?

and I forgot a VERY important factor. You must max out ever mastery line except the one for raids.

There is the recipe that forges 10 at a time now and it is even cheaper too.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Option-to-Display-Over-Head-HP-Bars-in-PvP/6120272 probably the same bug

The tenebrous crystals also come from mining the ore node in the guild hall. You get anywhere from 0 to 10 a day.

2000-3000g worth of stuff

The patch made some stuff trivial to get. For example I just got gift of insights and still have plenty of currency to spare whereas it took a while to get them when I was making astralaria it took quite a bit longer. Since those were never tradeable it didn’t change the price tag by much.

Some floating islands like the Kingdom of Zeal in Chrono Trigger would be nice.

but the metas do have the daily chest with the selectable stuff … like reclaimed plate from VB

You can get the component but you are still limited to crafting one.