Guild Wars 2

Conner.4702:

Sorry this is simply not true as I’ve seen it fail to many times.

Well I’m sold. This is some pretty compelling stuff…

Unless you’re in melee range and not dodging they shouldn’t be anywhere near that bad. If it’s too laggy or whatever then attack them from range, and have ‘stow weapons’ bound to a key you remember so you can spam it when the reflect shield goes up on the Nightmares. Then all you have to worry about is bombs from the floating ones, and the laser cannon from Nightmares (I think if you have 1500 range you might be able to sit outside theirs, but simpler to build for out-healing its ‘meh’ damage output).

If you really want to win on that map, I find it helps a bit to become a waypoint minder for a while. On top of the bugged spawns, there’s also some that appear by WP’s which are nigh on eternally contested and require a long run to reach.

In reward: Aetherblades > stuff/stuff/stuff

In difficulty: Aetherblades > Minions > stuff/stuff

They really need to invent some extra champions for the other types, because right now most of them are so feeble they keel over before I can even get off an attack on them, leaving 1 or 2 lonely champs that get burned down from all sides. Little loot and even less enjoyment by comparison.

In short, this trait is really weird and probably contains numerous bugs. But we keep saying this and they don’t seem to notice/care, so you might as well just roll with it.

I used this for my first few dungeons as a guardian. The main reasoning being that:

-I get a lot of boon uptime, and on skills that primarily apply boons to people, this is a significant boost to their effectiveness.

-I hate conditions.

-With unknown (or um… generally short-lived) group members it helps to get more uptime from them, too. Not to forget yourself, if you’re new to it (do avoid huge spikes of damage though, cleric’s isn’t as immediately durable as knight’s or soldier’s).

-Can easily change to the cooldown reduction for consecrations (or meditations, but… meh) which is handy if I want a puddle of stability or wall of reflect (or, for some reason, a meditation). Also the group-wide stunbreak, if you decide on having less aegis/stability.

-Swiftness for ever and ever.

-Dodging for pretty close to ever and ever, with (significant) heal on dodge.

-Can somewhat make up for its low (LOW) damage by applying 12 stacks of might to everyone with the staff, which will last as long as the skill takes to recharge and also heals them/you. Also the potential for the short-cooldown consecration which gives you a fire field (without losing the condition removal of a shout) if anyone is handy to blow things up in it for extra might.

It’s pretty dull and slow in open world PVE though, but you can take 15 traits trait-points from wherever you don’t need them, and reach for the Virtue of Justice recharge on kills thing, plus vulnerability on blind, and spamming that will get you a lot of fire/might while blinding enemies around you, so you don’t need to change gear really, just traits.

tyler.2569:

This sounds like really good news to me; but what is the Daily Clockwork Achievement?

Check the dailies – daily – until you find one related to Invasions (and perhaps the Playhouse, I’d already got the tonic by the time I noticed these existed so idk if they count or not).

Tad.4109:

i vote eating disorder. every time she says ‘later tater’, i crave tater tots.

I’m not sure eating disorders are contagious…

gwawer.9805:

What’s up with her hairstyle?

Nilkemia.8507:

She’s just evil.

.

BilboBaggins.5620:

I really don’t understand why time gating is necessary on items that are NOT trade-able.

We’ll flood the market our inventories!

In all seriousness though I think it’s a combination of things. In part, some attempt to retain players from other MMO’s which were basically designed as an eternal grindfest, where they realize some people if allowed to actually get what they want will lose interest entirely. Except I don’t think ‘wait a long time’ is going to prove nearly the substitute that needs, because boring-as-all-hell effort spent in getting something is still actually spending effort in getting it, and working toward it is the appeal which (can, for some people) make the dull grind worthwhile. Even if the ingredients for Asc. will be harder to obtain than quartz, with time gating that’s only relevant until you hit that wall instead, and then your work is done; it’s down to waiting.

Then in part, as per Kirschwasser's post, an attempt to keep casual players from being left behind. Which… I guess it would work if they logged in as often as required (and here I’ll just mention that ‘dailies’ are a thing) but ultimately it still creates people you can literally never catch up to – people who have had the game longer – and says to anyone who would have put in extra effort to get extra stuff that they will not be able to.

If anything that makes me sympathetic to the idea of grinding…

Sushihammer.4813:

And by the time you get that much time put in, it’s probably not even worth it, because a year from now, I’m sure they’ll have double-triply ascended gear.

That’s an additional problem between gear stat creep (new gear coming out every few months) and time gated content. Why bother getting the time gated stuff if better stuff will surely be around in a few months anyway.

I could be wrong (can’t remember where I read/heard it now) but I was under the impression they’d decided against (more) creep. Not that it would be binding or anything even if they had, I guess, but it seems like something that might be more obviously a bad idea.

I feel like time gating is something they sort of slowly got into with things like laurels, and guild challenges, and to a limited extent tokens, which weren’t quite so bad because there was a few different ways to get things like the trinkets (and tokens aren’t entirely gated, even if now it would take decidedly more than 8x effort to equip 8 characters). Personally I’d planned on doing a lot more Fractals once I finally didn’t need to externally source a LFG tool, for instance.

Then when there wasn’t any particular outcry against the mechanic in general, they took it to the next level and made the Celestial gear. And there wasn’t really much said about that, either, perhaps because it’s just one stat combo and not a great deal of people found a use for it.

Well, given the rumours of time-gated Ascended gear, suddenly I get this sense I should have said something about Celestial…

^I don’t think it’s possible to fail lore-wise. No matter what happens they leave and it gives a message to the effect that they’ve been forced out (for now).

Lord Kuru.3685:

LameFox.6349:

Their AI often picks a ‘favourite’ target. I have one character, an engineer, which seems to have personally offended bloody nigh every creature in the game, with a few exceptions which would wilfully ignore it until every other player there was dead. Scarlet can appear anywhere on the map… so, I’m guessing that she (and her aggro table) persists between appearances, leading her to frequently pick someone and repeatedly come back to them.

Of course, it could be intentional, but I don’t think it would need to be. Even if it isn’t, given it pretty much fits anyway, I doubt they’d do anything to it.

Does your engineer have high toughness? That commonly makes mobs aggro on you.

It has toughness, but only via a set of knight’s armour + one shield. Pistols, the rifle, and all trinkets are berserk, so I doubt it’s breaking any records or anything.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

With other gear, if I need more I do what I have to do until I get it, and that’s fine. If I want to equip 8 characters, I need to make 8x the gold, or 8x the tokens, or farm 8x the materials, whatever. This is normal and I have no issue with it.

What bothers me is things like… being able to create 1 piece of charged quartz per day. Had I actually wanted celestial gear, it’d take me 5 days per inscription.^ AFAIK each piece of gear should have that same requirement, so for 6 pieces of armour I have to wait 30 days. Not work toward it for 30 days, literally wait 30 days. For a very conservative two weapons, it’s another 10. For five pieces of jewellery (I don’t make this so I could be wrong here, but I’m assuming it’s still 5 per piece) another 25 days. 65 days per character, assuming it needs no more than 2 weapons. 520 days for 8 characters – if I log in every single day.

The key difference here is that I cannot put any extra work into this. It’s literally about nothing but the passage of time. If that’s the direction this game is headed in, I want to know about it as soon as possible, because I’ll go and play something where my progress reflects the effort I put in.

Stooperdale.3560:

I got hit for 21k by a thug’s banner the other day in Frostgorge.

Well if there were a prize for being hit the hardest by these things I think so far you’d be winning.

As someone with multiple characters (one for each class so far, but three still need levelling to 80) I’m curious how this will compare to crafting Celestial. Especially with recent changes making even dungeon token rewards have account-based diminishing returns, it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Will Ascended weapons (and later armour) be something anyone can work towards at their own pace, or is this going to be like standing at a skill challenge once per day, x y z days per character on your account?

Nike.2631:

Ok, after taking time and the literal kick in the pants loot-wise to focus on getting Scarlet spawned and killed I got… 1 shoulder scrap. I forgot I’d done that zone already that day and had LESS THAN ZERO incentive to do anything but farm champs.

(I say less than zero because 1 shoulder scrap isn’t a reward, its an attack on my bag space…)

That scrap makes me wish there was a ‘decline’ option for the reward pop-up.

The only watchwork stuff I’ve seen attain champion rank was Nightmares (the tall ones). I don’t think the others ever get past silver.

videoboy.4162:

The most recent people that were seen doing it, finally started talking to people right as the reward was about to pop. They flat out stated that they were Akitteng on purpose. That brought up the discussion on whether or not it was ok, so I just came here and asked.

It would be hard to AFK accidentally.

Anyway, running into a wall won’t help, I used to try it when I went for lunch or whatever and wanted to be able to check if I’d got any messages when I returned. The game sometimes leaves you AFK for quite a while before kicking you though, and the events only go 45 min at the longest. They’re probably just doing something at the very beginning or end to get credit, then leaving, which doesn’t really matter as far as other people doing events goes. For them to even ruin one you’d basically need a group of people AFK at the event so that they scale it… and even then, it’d be simple to go around it if by some miracle there weren’t enough people to still complete it. It’s not like you run out of them.

I like how this begins with ‘Q: Q:’.

Also, using auto-run is not botting and it doesn’t keep you from an AFK kick. They’re probably in the map, or lagging, or just got distracted IRL.

I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure you get SFA for being there and not fighting, anyway.

Also some Icebrood Wolves occasionally.

Similar thing happened at the Lyssa temple last time I was there, with some elementals and… either fleshreavers or risen knights… don’t remember which.

Their AI often picks a ‘favourite’ target. I have one character, an engineer, which seems to have personally offended bloody nigh every creature in the game, with a few exceptions which would wilfully ignore it until every other player there was dead. Scarlet can appear anywhere on the map… so, I’m guessing that she (and her aggro table) persists between appearances, leading her to frequently pick someone and repeatedly come back to them.

Of course, it could be intentional, but I don’t think it would need to be. Even if it isn’t, given it pretty much fits anyway, I doubt they’d do anything to it.

Conner.4702:

Yes, by farming you are actively slowing down the event instead of progressing fast.

[citation needed]

I can sympathize with pirates… we’re all quite similar when you think about it.

DeWolfe.2174:

If only everyone was a clear headed as you defined it. Earlier today I did a Frostgorge overflow and we didn’t even make it out of the second wave. It wasn’t a lack of people, it was having 4 pins tracking each farming location together. Also, calling out in map chat every champ they found. Which is my retort to those saying farmers don’t tell people how to play. Constantly calling out champs in telling people to come here. That this is what’s important. That here’s a champ and I (the farmer) need help killing it quick.

The dev’s screwed the event up by not equipping Minions with decent enough drops. Or, all of these events should take place in an overflow with a specific set of loot tables. Ones balancing or completely removing champion box drops.

Calling things out doesn’t mean ‘I need help killing it’, it means ‘this thing is here if you want it’. Having more people show up actually makes things harder in this case, but with that difficulty comes more champions and more rewards, so you benefit from helping others find it rather than trying to get it quickly before they arrive. Commanders also do it to make things simpler for people trying to keep track of them.

Veterans in my case. Never been hit by the champ’s one AFAIK.

Also: I just got hit on my warrior in FG for ‘2,877’ by a Twisted Reaver using a bomb (from combat log – only one hit). It took me down to half of my ~19,000 hitpoints.

I have a feeling the combat log is lying to me lately.

Soronthar.7236:

The problem with permanent invasion is that they may hinder people not doing the event: They can use a waypoint just to discover that they are surrounded by mobs that can kill you in a few seconds if you’re alone, or that there is a champ surrounded by elites just where you need to go.

And given the amount of people needed for champs to appear, I won’t bet that farmers will be there (you need to pass the first wave for it to be profitable).

All in all, I expect invasion to be more or less what Karka Queen is today.

You realize they’d see a very obvious marker on the map when looking at the waypoint, yes? Besides which, even when the circle encloses the WP (very rare IME) I’ve only ever seen mobs actually near the waypoint itself when people have brought them there fighting. I like these events because it means less running for me, so I warp to them whenever I get the chance, and it’s never been an issue.

Dristig.9678:

OP says he is level 62 so he is likely looking for a leveling PvE build in which case he doesn’t need uber meta stopping condition removal.

I have no idea what the meta is TBH, I just don’t like conditions or control effects.

If you’re not trying to do the event… walk… around it. They’re not Skynet come to seek out and eliminate players across the map, they just mill around in their spawn area.

^That actually sounds like the exact same place. I forget what my health was though, so I’d have to check when I log in next. What amazes me though is that 9800 is about twice what the combat log said, which I think began with a 3, but (very roughly) somewhere like what my actual health loss would have been.

Equinox.4968:

LameFox.6349:

This is what you get already. Farming aetherblades scales up the events being farmed, not all the events. If people going for completion stopped zerging around when they realized there weren’t heaps of other zergs backing them up, they could split and do lots of easier events at the same time.

So if there are fewer farmers, what changes other than the zerged-up events being easily beatable by the smaller groups?

No, not even that changes, because they’re already easily beatable by small groups. Farmers scale up the events they are at, which will be Aetherblades. Aetherblades, nonetheless, vaporise under their combined damage and are soon off the progress bar. At this point, if you’re farming, you keep going to the remaining ‘blades because the other stuff is near worthless by comparison. Now you’re still only scaling up those Aetherblade events, but all the other people on the map are used to having your zergs around, and instead of splitting up and completing really easy events like reason would suggest, they keep up their own zergs, scale the events, and take longer.

Then they complain in /map that they’re failing because people are ‘farming pirates’. If there was any useful difference made at all by farmers leaving, it would be that the lemming parade never forms in the first place, and thus doesn’t need to worry about thinking hard enough to change tactics after it gets going. However it is of course entirely possible they’d still zerg up and just whine about not having enough people, or enough damage, or something else.

Equinox.4968:

Ayrilana.1396:

As I stated in one of the other threads about this topic; doing anything that puts risk or nerfs drops for farmers will cause them to be less likely to farm the maps. With less people, you’ll be even more likely to fail.

Just look at Crown Pavilion. People have less incentive to farm there so it’s usually near empty; even at peak hours. For those that still need the 100 kills from each emissary, they’re going to have a tough time.

I’m not so sure…with fewer people, the events won’t scale as badly, so it’ll actually be way easier for smaller groups to finish the events on time. Part of the reason why events take so long at present is because of massive upscaling due to huge zergs doing the events.

This is what you get already. Farming aetherblades scales up the events being farmed, not all the events. If people going for completion stopped zerging around when they realized there weren’t heaps of other zergs backing them up, they could split and do lots of easier events at the same time.

Ironically, in this one instance, I find farming more fun. Aetherblades would kick nine shades of….. well they’re harder than the other kinds of enemies it spawns.

I don’t really understand this build. I feel like it’s either doing something very special I don’t comprehend, or not doing much well at all.

For no particular reason I did this to it trying to keep roughly the same idea and make it… more.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUMQNAsdSlYgKCHEyKEfIFRuArHEEgGs+Q8wUgRPC-e

-condition removal more spread out. One each 10s, and one on activation of heal, signet stunbreak, or ‘passive extra damage signet with low cooldown’. Then there’s as many bounce-backs as you can get out of focus #4.

-Blind from sword #3 and focus #4 in addition to virtue of justice.

-Vuln from blind, and hammer’s auto attack symbol. Symbol lasting longer should hopefully keep you in protection given your lack of boon duration. Hammer skills don’t need using very often anyway.

-Still 2 stunbreaks, but now with lower recharge and stability. You could use ‘hold the line’ instead of the other shout though for some extra healing and protection.

-Focus #5 is slow untraited but can be used even if knocked down, etc. and comes in handy now and then.

-Better crit chance for vigour, so you can dodge more and heal-on-dodge more, though depending on your gear this could mean a lot or very little.

-Signet adds a bit of mitigation to make up for less armour.

I would not suggest either of these builds in WvW.

Evasion is definitely handy – or just avoidance for that matter, as there’s no such thing as scaling for them. Since my guardian made low levels annoying and my AH build started to fail in high level areas when few people showed up and none sat in the protection symbol, I eventually switched to warrior with longbow/rifle, and the signet I forget the name of now which cures conditions (active) and increases endurance regen (passive). One cleanse, NO stunbreaks whatsoever, and it’s easy now because I almost never get attacked, and when I do I dodge back, immobilise/cripple, and kite them around that way. And of course nobody drops banners of death on me either.

With the guardian it was primarily healing and mitigation – the healing worked fine but the mitigation clearly wasn’t helping me much, even with my armour itself being reinforced by the signet (and in a lot of cases protection). My warrior in its own melee build had less mitigation but a lot of vitality (in addition to just getting more inherently) and again didn’t have much of an issue, even though occasionally I’d have to sit and regen for a few seconds behind a rock/tree.

I should add though that the guardian with a few people around proved fine in higher level areas. I even sat in front of one of the champion Nightmares once out-healing everything it tried to do, with some people in range of my AOE boons (not the symbol, but still).

I do find it amusing how some of them remain so frail. When I come to the twisted watchwork minions, if a lot of people are around anything less than 10 feet tall had better be a veteran if I want to land a single hit on it before it dies.

direpath.4712:

Thanks for the responses. I believe I have gotten an exotic in bags opened prior. I’m happy knowing the items will be level appropriate (even if green) for when I hit 80.

The whirlwind of LS experience has left my equipment a bit mixed across the levels. For the most part I am up to date, but these levels have been coming so fast.

Use the TP to fill the gaps until you reach 80. Blues and greens are pocket change.

My main issue with events is how futile they are. Can’t count the number of times I’ve done one (alone, naturally) then moved on to another, and half way through I see the first one is back to the state I found it in. The NPC’s run at me yelling for help and I’m like ‘look, I know you’re totally ineffective in combat, and that this will probably be untouched for days if I don’t help, but let’s be honest here – five, ten minutes from now if you’re lucky, your friends will all be dead again and you’ll be yelling at me to liberate your camp again. Do the reasonable thing here and go live someplace else – or install a gate!’.

There are exceptions though, like the really long invasion paths to Balthazar’s temple. For the most part… meh. A bonus reward equivalent to one or two vendored green weapons isn’t going to make it compelling.

ahuba.6430:

Elbegast.6970:

In my opinion, Scarlet isn’t doing anything. Scarlet isn’t planning anything. Scarlet is nothing.

Scarlet is a cardboard cut-out that ArenaNet has stolen from DC Comics because they couldn’t come up with a more original, compelling antagonist.

Have you ever been tempted to amend STOP signs with ‘-moving forwards’ by any chance?

Excalibur.9748:

I’ve found the aetherblades and everything else harder in higher zones.

Well I’d agree for ‘everything else’.

What is your level and gear quality btw? And what do you tend to use for survival (like health, armour, high evasion, healing, and combinations thereof)?

As I said earlier I’m not entirely sure if it’s them or me scaling weirdly. They’re (IME) by far the most dangerous of the invasion mobs anyway, so it’s entirely possible that it’s something like my armour rating scaling horribly, and I only noticed on them because they’re more dangerous to begin with.

Of course, this update has been luring people away from starter zones, considering the better champ box quality in higher areas and that invasions don’t happen under 25. So that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but okay.

Hamfast.8719:

I absolutely LOVE the downed mechanic. I’m pretty good at rallying on most Professions. But I speak of PvE. Please do NOT change a thing for PvE! The last thing I want to do while fighting to survive is accidentally hit some “suicide key” that replaced one of my valuable recovery skills.

PvE and PvP and WvW are different. If so many people in PvP and WvW dislike the downed state, I have no problems with ANet changing it for PvP and WvW. But many of my most memorable game times come from rallying to come back and win a fight. So leave it alone in PvE!

Who said anything about replacing your current ones?

And TBH if you’ve got 5 whole skills (usual 4 plus suicide) and are managing to hit the wrong ones, I begin to see why you’re on the floor to start with…

Vick.6805:

Faranox.4217:

Khunvyel.3972:

I wouldn’t mind it be changed to “set character to 20 if below 20” with the addition of; “if 20+, you get +5 levels”. I find +20 unconditional levels too excessive. +5 is okay.

Why do you feel it’s excessive?

I can’t speak for Khunvyel, but I think 20 levels is excessive because there are far too many ways to level to 80 without actually learning the character. So, we end up with players who have no clue how to play their level 80 effectively.

I do like Drakkon’s idea of just making it award a set amount of exp. I’d actually suggested the same thing in an older thread.

You could have made it for PvP, or have others of that class and want a different appearance and/or race. Anyway, how well or poorly they play really isn’t anyone’s concern but theirs. You’re free to avoid them if they levelled ‘without learning the character’ or – which I think is far more likely – just aren’t very good at the game in general.

I have used hundreds of looted skillpoint scrolls and have over a hundred in the bank right now. How is it people think 20 sp from a scroll they very rarely give out is a lot…

edit: just checked, and I’m back up to 110 after I last consumed them.

Interesting. I’ve also found that if it has no prefix, I could use CC on it and it would get stunned (only stun, even if I tried to knockdown or so), but the veterans just spam ‘immune’ at me no matter what and won’t be stunned. At first I thought it was awesome they’d finally started accepting something besides DPS for that kind of thing, but now I guess it’s just a bug/oversight.

Also, do the champion bags scale just with contribution? I thought it was their level, too. I’ve killed champs singlehandedly before and got junky blue bags if not in a high zone.

With the guardian it was largely in farming zergs that it began to happen, but I would actually have the same issue: the thing lived for some time with scaling, and I was dealing a LOT of damage (full berserk/scholar/unscathed contender) but while I’d get the experience and sometimes karma, loot-wise I got nothing.

Astralporing.1957:

Ironically, the aether mobs at frostgorge are the most dangerous, and can sometimes cause mass wipes of a whole zerg with a lucky stun spam/grenade spam combo – lower level areas do not even come close to that.

While I do notice a lot of people getting annihilated by them in FG (gave up on my group oriented builds in there) IME they’ve been easier than low levels. They seem to spam the same stun fields and grenade effects (chill, vuln) and the same hilarious bleed stacks for swashbucklers, etc. as far as I can tell, except I take less damage compared to my total health at the higher level areas.

Shoe.5821:

Those nightmares are actually Lieutenant-grade, like dungeon enemies. You can tell by the silver circle.

The ‘veteran’ prefix ones, or the ones with no prefix at all? I had heard they added them but I’m used to stuff like AC where silvers still get the veteran prefix.

Either way, it seems weird that their flamethrower is a greater cause for concern than the champions’ version.

UPDATE: so I gave my ranged build another shot in a new invasion, doing precisely the same thing, and found myself in even bigger groups of people but able to tag just as easily as my hammer had been. Note that in none of these cases was I in a party, merely amongst other players, so nobody else was affecting my tagging but me.

I assume it’s still not the result of any DR, since the bags are supposed to drop every time AFAIK. Except now I’m not sure what the hell is causing it. I’ve had the same thing on my guardian before too, but I just put it down to insufficient damage at the time.

Milennin.4825:

In the case of failing the main event, either the farmers took too long to kill all the Aetherblades, or there weren’t enough non-farmers to complete the main event during that time.

I seriously doubt there’d ever be ‘not enough’ on any but the deadest servers. The problem is they prefer to keep zerging, scaling up events and taking longer, then whine at farmers to go attack the events they aren’t able to cover at the reduced pace.

What they should be doing is splitting into smaller groups and thrashing the feeble minions that non-scaled events create.