And when the level cap is increased, will we all start again in the new level cap greens?
If they increase the level cap, I will leave the game permanently.
They’ve already said that they’re going to increase the cap at some point.
And that’s fine. I’ll play until that point and move to something else. The only way I’ll stay is if they automatically bump 80s and 80 gear up to the new level cap (Which I can’t see happening). I’ve already leveled my 80(s) and have no interest in grinding out 20 more levels and new gear. This would be a game ender for me, and I know I’m by no means alone in this opinion.
I’d be surprised if they did now… ascended gear and the time and effort that goes into it don’t seem like the type of gear you throw away as a new tier comes along (or a level bump). They may have had been considering that as an option pre-ascended, but the way ascended is designed if there were ever a level cap increase unless they upgraded all ascended gear you’d never see it crafted again.
There’s one thing GW2 doesn’t and probably never will need is a level cap increase. It simply doesn’t make sense to do so.
Unless they only increase Ascended and Legendary to the level cap and leave exotic at 80. This would be bad…
And when the level cap is increased, will we all start again in the new level cap greens?
If they increase the level cap, I will leave the game permanently.
They’ve already said that they’re going to increase the cap at some point.
And that’s fine. I’ll play until that point and move to something else. The only way I’ll stay is if they automatically bump 80s and 80 gear up to the new level cap (Which I can’t see happening). I’ve already leveled my 80(s) and have no interest in grinding out 20 more levels and new gear. This would be a game ender for me, and I know I’m by no means alone in this opinion.
And when the level cap is increased, will we all start again in the new level cap greens?
If they increase the level cap, I will leave the game permanently.
People asks for anything.
Few people complained of vertical progression and they clearly bought the wrong game…..
Anet didn t listen that monirity, they just found the easiets way to keep people playing without introducing real content.
Ascended is the worst type of vertical progression
It doesn t have skins mostly (everyone trasmute them) and are just numbers, since them they also buffed mobs and bosses so the trendmill could work.
A full ascended character plays exactòy like a full exotic used to play.
Its a full exotic character that got obsolete, instead.
An old trick that is easily explained by the word treadmill….if you run you stand still, if you stop you fall behind.
There is no content in this game that that 5% difference is going to make or break a player, especially for armor. Ascended was simply introduced to placate the hardcore. Over time, I’ll get the 3 trinkets you can get from the laurel vendor for fairly cheap and eventually a legendary weapon, which has ascended stats. This is all I plan to pursue for ascended, unless I get lucky drops, of course.
You know, you’d think the money trail would be easy to trace. The bots have to siphon that gold to some other account through probably the mail system. Once a bot has been positively identified, the account should be locked as well as any account it sent gold to, with an appeal process for those whose accounts were locked. ANet does some press releases about the approach, within a matter of months, the problem is solved as the word gets out because people are too afraid to buy money from gold sellers. My personal opinion is that ANet never really cared about the bots or gold sellers all that much. Really, if they actually kill all the bots, then they lose their justification DR. Teleporting bots is another example, these should be dead simple to identify and kill. Why do they still exist?
Mmm, no.
Ascended weapons aren’t required for me to fight the Shatterer. I am not wrong on this.
If they make a single bit of difference in how much damage you do, they are no longer prestige items, they are required. Failure to accept the truth doesn’t make it any less true.
Saying you aren’t required to have the highest tier item in the game is like arguing that you don’t have to bother leveling to the cap. The word that sums that up is “stupid”.
I don’t need Ascended gear for anything, and don’t do fractals and I for one will not pursue ascended crafting. I am working toward a legendary, and the pursuance of ascended would have to preclude me ever getting a legendary since I don’t have time to play 6+ hours a day and don’t have the patience to grind relentlessly when I do play. I also refuse to pay real money for virtual gear. The stat difference between ascended and exotic is minor enough that it will not make deciding of a difference in a fight.
I was thinking I’d seen quite a few more necros in Orr.
Strange that so many of them are bots though. I thought Diminishing Returns fixed botting. Makes you wonder if that is what DR was really about.
I wouldn’t be surprised if DR’s reduction on player income pushed more people toward botting/black market gold sellers, thus making up for the fact that DR reduces bot income.
DR’s just like DRM. It hurts the honest customer more than the dishonest.
Of course it does. Or people simply leave as we saw with Diablo 3, but Blizzard’s ego caused much of that. ANet seems to have managed that balance of poor drops and cash shop up to this point while maintaining a player base, but I question how long they can keep it going with these small updates and vertical progression and the grind that comes with that. The grind involved in getting ascended gear and legendary gear is inconceivable to most casual players…the players GW2 was originally marketed to. I question the long term viability of GW2 since it has essentially become not much more than a gold grind which may put off a lot of new players.
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Immersion and Exploration.
Some of us feel that Anet backpedaled on a lot that was promised from the Manifesto.
The only thing I REALLY want in 2014 is more immersion and more exploration. More content.
I want to find little cathedrals and cemeteries tucked away in remote sections of mountains that almost no one ever bothers to go to because nothing was ever there. I want to find little holes and caves at the bottom of pools in the swamps that lead to nothing more than a vet/champ and a chest (deeper ones – vast subterranian caverns that are accessible from the open world, and not instanced).
More places to go. More stuff to see. More monster types. It gets really boring seeing the same models repeated ad nauseum. Moa this and moa that. Frost drakes, river drakes, marsh drakes, peppermint drakes, backstreet boy drakes, drake this and drake that. Where’s the variety? Where’s the massive bestiary that only a scholar could completely catalog?
More skills and weapons to increase build diversity.
Playable Tengu and Kodan (especially Kodan).
Expanded map zones. What’s behind the Tengu walls? What’s north of Frostgorge? MOAR
Oh, and I know they’re not going to do this, but remove the barriers between zones and loading screens – make Tyria a seamless open world.
I agree, I’d love to see more persistent content and even another playable race. A new playable race could open up an entire new set of regions and personal story.
For your last comment, they can’t make it seamless for no other reason than sheer memory size. Many computers would likely have problems loading the entire map and all related items in to memory. It would also break much of how the achievement system around exploration is built.
I’d open a ticket with support.
I run quasi-MM necro, looks like MM on the outside, hell back last year when there were lots of bots, I’d sometimes run with the bots, especially in Orr, it’s a quick and dirty way to make some gold. Tag up the mobs and let the bots do the heavy lifting. Personally, I never report bots for one reason, not that I agree with what they do, but the more bots in the game, the lower the prices in the TP are, and this is something I do care about. When ANet did the big bot purge last year, ~35000 bot accounts in one night, you could just watch the prices going up pretty much hourly because, Who was putting most of the supply in the TP at the time?…bots.
It’s my understanding that if you dual wield legendaries you get the particle effect, foot prints and/or aura of the main hand weapon only.
Just another sword, no added affects.
This…I know a guy who has two incinerators…no difference.
Something to keep in mind… A condition build, regardless of the profession, is extremely powerful PvE solo (Or small groups), also in WvW and PvP, but due to the condition cap and nature of conditions are much less effective in PvE large groups, dungeons and world bosses. Marks also don’t affect world bosses. Stronger enemies, such as world bosses and many of those found in dungeons also typically shed conditions like water on wax paper or have some immunities. While I run a pure condition build necro (Dire/Undead), I still use 3 minions, which are not ideal for the build, but they allow me to be more effective in PvE groups due to the cap. I love my necro, but am building the GS guard to be more effective in PvE groups and a more viable player in dungeons. My necro will be retooled to be a minionless WvW condition beast once my guard is ready. My hope is that one day they will remove/raise/retool the PvE condition cap so that condition users are more effective in PvE.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
Another big problem with GW2 is that there are too many currencies and too many soul/account bound items. Why should sesame seeds, or any cooking supply for that matter, be account bound…it makes no sense. Same goes for ascended crafting supplies like dragonite ore, there’s no reason for raw materials to be account bound, and imposes terrible grind when the game was advertised as anti-grind. :/
What amazes me are the sheer number of people with legendary weapons I see doing the Queens champ train. I do the Queens train occasionally as a means to collect karma, work on the event monthly, and do a bit of leveling, though slow going now at 60+, but I never do the trains with my 80 anymore due to sheer boredom and the rewards aren’t that good since they nerfed the trains.
I’m finding with a guard that too many of the master and grandmaster traits are too closely ties to specific weapons, greatly limiting the build. At the master level for valor, only 1 is not tied to a weapon, the others are tied to mace, hammer and shield. None of which I currently, or plan to use, and my current build does not use meditations, so I find myself using an adept level trait in my master slot.
…. Okay. The problem is that it doesn’t matter how many times you have killed something that had a precursor in the loot table, you still have the same chance as when you first started playing. 1 h of lvl 80 champion kills, say, at 500 playtime hours = 1 h of lvl 80 champion kills at say 5000 playtime hours. It has no bearing whatsoever. If you have the luck, if RNG likes you, etc, then you might get a precursor from a mob, champion, dungeon boss, wvw chest, etc etc. if you haven’t gotten one in 5k hours, that stinks! But it still has no bearing on your likelihood of getting one from the next monster you kill. That’s not a myth. That just is.
Herein lies the problem…there is no guaranteed reward for time spent. The AP chests are an improvement over what it used to be, which was nothing, but overall ANet punishes you for time spent with ridiculous RNG, which I still think is broken, and DR. Endgame items should NEVER be based on RNG. I don’t think DR was ever about bots but market control and time gating. If it were about bots, why was it not removed when the majority of bot accounts were removed? Because, it was never about bots.
There used to be tons of people in Orr and it was easy to find groups, but then ANet drastically nerfed loot (Most notably from temple chests) and changed events, making them essentially unfarmable. At least now you have the one a day reward for temples.
What’s wrong with Orr? ANet screwed it up so the reward in no way reflects the effort, so no one goes there anymore. There are easier and faster ways to make money in this game and when you need such vast quantities of money anything that is easier will draw the majority.
Yet they let the champ trains continue unabated……. go figure.
Its a reflection of the severely inconsistent direction of the development of the game.
Agreed, though they did heavily nerf the champ trains a while back. I think last year, when they nerfed Orr, they still had the idea that they were trying to make a farm free, grind free game. They didn’t want people farming or grinding, they felt it was a negative aspect and really went against what they envisioned for the game. Now, a year later, the gem store more fully entrenched, level 500 crafting and ascended gear which require unbelievable grinding/farming, vertical progression, etc. Would they bother to kill Orr today, like they did last year? I doubt it, they would just try to figure a way to streamline it, control it and monetize it. The champ trains are there to serve a purpose, probably there by design, and to give people a place to farm…a place ANet controls. I typically only do the champ trains for karma and really only when achievements are involved…the repetition kills me.
myth: after you hit 3000 hours of playing guild wars 2 you will reweave a precursor from a drop. that was non mystic forge,
myth: Busted played 2251 hours on mesmer and 3703 hours total. myth way busted
I don’t really think this is a myth. I don’t know a single person who actually thinks that their number if hours has any bearing on their precursor chances.
The point is, precursors are extremely rare as mob drops. More come out of the forge, to I’m nearly positive of. Some lucky folks do have them drop (like me, one Storm from Malrona, excellent!) but I have really good luck.
I think the real myth here is that everyone in the game deserves and will eventually get a precursor. Regardless of their hours. I can say that I’ve been into a shop that sells lottery tickets every day and I still haven’t won, but then it might also have been the case that I never bought a ticket. Don’t expect a precursor as a drop. If you wanna win the lottery, play the forge. That’s the only way you really have.
Probably more cost effective to farm gold and buy it. I know of lots of people who ended up spending more money crafting the PC, than it would have been to actually buy it outright.
Would probably still be people there farming karma if pent/shelt wasn’t nerfed multiple times.
For sure there would be. Plinx/Penetent/Shelter/Jofast was my regular run.
Why is there hardly anyone in Orr any longer? It’s like a ghost town.
For those playing since launch, it’s quite inconceivable to think that a human being can tolerate doing the exact same thing for 16 months.
Yet, this is exactly the type of behaviors hardcore players embody. Isn’t repetition essentially what an MMO is all about?
The TP is great in GW2 in that you can buy almost anything you want. But has Anet tweaked the RNG numbers so that we’re too reliant on the TP?
Farming for items or getting good drops from “normal” play is pretty much unviable in this game, considering RNG drop rates (as an extreme example, consider the 20-slot pail from halloween). If you want something then almost always, by far the easiest way is to farm gold and buy off the TP. So that means players are conditioned to play for gold.
Basically, you get a mind numbing tedious job that earns you gold (e.g. Champ farming), spend most of your time doing that, then spend that gold during the little bit of free time you have left over.
Certainly, players do have a choice, but Anet basically entraps people into playing this way. Is this a real-life simulation game? What’s next? Guild Halls with mortgages and utility bills? Mounts where you have to get a loan from BLTC to buy?
The focus is certainly to drive people to the gem store, so the actual game becomes like an endless assembly line or treadmill, but if you want to spend real money you can buy your way off the line and get in to the elite crowd. Or, you can put in the time and grind that treadmill until you finally get what you want. There is a 3rd option…simply ignore the endgame content and play the game, refusing to partake of the treadmill. real life doesn’t have this option. Personally, I refuse to spend any more real money in the gem store, if for no other reason, that I feel ANet is trying to force me there. Once my remaining 900 gems are gone, that’s it.
There used to be tons of people in Orr and it was easy to find groups, but then ANet drastically nerfed loot (Most notably from temple chests) and changed events, making them essentially unfarmable. At least now you have the one a day reward for temples.
What’s wrong with Orr? ANet screwed it up so the reward in no way reflects the effort, so no one goes there anymore. There are easier and faster ways to make money in this game and when you need such vast quantities of money anything that is easier will draw the majority.
My personal opinion is that ANet is waiting until later in the spring, probably late March to early April before they release anything major (Closer to the TESO launch). Perhaps some living world stuff in between. It makes sense in that they try to re-engage their core base of players before major competition is released and whether anyone likes it or not, F2P, P2P, doesn’t matter, TESO, will be a major competitor, at least for the first few months, until we see just how buggy things are and how well the game plays. Some industry sites claim it’s the most anticipated game in the history of computer gaming. I don’t know if this is true, but it does set it up for either an epic success or epic failure and not much in between. I can tell you that GW2 has ~1M likes on facebook and TESO has ~1.7M, while Neverwinter only has about 200K, so there is A LOT of interest. Nearly everyone I know who games plans to try TESO, whether it’s a subscription based or not.
Keep in mind too, GW2 has had well over a year to streamline things and work out a lot of the bugs. Early on, GW2 had some pretty ugly bugs that stopped progress, many which persisted for months, and ANet has had a less than stellar track record with new content which is more often than not terribly buggy, plagued with lag or just plain broken.
I love GW2, I wouldn’t be on the forum or play the game daily otherwise, but I believe they will have some serious competition in the coming months and that ANet will need to step up their game, so to speak. Rehashed and/or temporary content won’t be enough to keep people’s interest forever.
Myth: A casual player can get a precursor without sacrificing his first born child to the Goat Lord.
LOL Awesome…and about true. ;-P
I dont want to be pessimistic but i doubt that most of the ppl that were playing in launch they still play, but yeah there are more new ones came as well
I’ve been playing since September 2012, though I did take about 7 months off due to frustration related to some serious loot nerfs that happened in November 2012. I played to about March 2013 and became disillusioned with the lack of loot, the complete destruction of event farming in Cursed Shore (One of the few aspects of the game I still enjoyed at the time) and was a little burnt out from map completion.
I too am leveling a guard…rolled 57 last night. My build is a balanced power build (As opposed to zerker) and is pretty tough. If I want to use conditions, I’ll just use my necro which is a pure conditimancer build and I love it, but am looking for something more effective in dungeons and world bosses. For a weapon, I’ve chosen the GS as my main and have scepter/torch for an alternate. I do like the hammer as well, albeit a little slow and the staff, but I’ve read it’s a little too situational, so I’ll have to experiment. My focus has been on leveling, so I’m still learning some of the skills and weapons. Currently I have “strong” gear with “wurm” runes and trinkets to add toughness/survivability. My remaining 8 upgrade slots are Seal of the Soldier (x6) and Seal of the Assassin (x2). I believe seals are the only 3-attribute upgrades you can get at level 50 and ultra cheap for what you get. All gear is of rare quality. Once I hit 80, I’ll probably stick with great sword as a main and at the time experiment more with other weapon sets.
I don’t remember Spelunker’s Delve specifically, but Dark Reverie isn’t bad. That said, I am using an Asura and still have to adjust camera angles a bit in a couple spots to get a clear view. Due to their sheer size, Char and Norn are simply the worst races for jumping puzzles. The worst spot in Dark Reverie is that one tricky jump that if you miss it you die, or if you’re a tank and can survive the fall, you have to start over from the bottom. Better than starting over from the start of Morgan’s Leap though.
What you can do is submit an in-game bug which will let you attach a screen shot and hope they do something about it.
Unfortunately a lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into simulating as closely as possible a random event in mad-made systems, particularly computer games, in order to get around the human instinct to manipulate patterns for their own benefit. And part of the reason it works is because even if we know it’s actually random, and no matter how many times we hear, or say ‘RNG is RNG’ we don’t want to believe it.
But there are problems with the RNG…
A while back, I threw 62 crafted rare staffs, plus the rares returned, and received 7 unnamed exotics back. Now it’s supposed to be random. This is what I got, in no particular order…
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Shaman’s Etched Batch of Rage
Rampager’s Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Carrion Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Valkyrie Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)So, 3 identical dire orrian staves of rage, 3 pearl quarterstaffs with no upgrades, 4 staves with superior sigil of rage. This from ~20 tries. If this is considered random…it’s broken.
I’ve seen this pattern many times out in PvE. I rarely get rare drops from anything other than the world bosses, perhaps one every few weeks, unless I do the champ train, but when I do, it’s very often followed by a second rare within minutes and that second rare most often is from the same group, so both berserker or carrion, for example. I’ve had this happen well over 10 times. Once, I had had the exact same weapon, including sigil, drop twice within minutes of each other, one from the Jormag chest and one a few minutes later from some random mob near Jormag. When you can reliably predict the outcome, it’s not random.
sooo what’s the issue here? It’s all RNG. You can do a thousand more combines and you could end up with 1-2 more situations where you get the exact same outcome three times in a row.
Heck, I remember getting 7 straight exotics. Did I freak out and think I came across something other than RNG? No. I took it as a random occurence.
With the sheer number of exotics and possible combination with various sigils, the odds of the above situation are astronomical as are/were with situation explained in PvE and as I said, when you can reliably predict the outcome, it’s not truly random. A couple times I would chalk up to randomness, but the sheer number of times I’ve seen it happen, it’s simply not random. It’s weighted, at best. My best guess is that there are situations which cause a bad RNG seed. It also used to be that the first 2 hours after a new build yielded vastly better loot than normal. I don’t know if that’s the case anymore, but again, points to problems with the RNG. 7 exos in a row I can concede to randomness since it is only 20% chance. Multiple similar or identical items in a short period of time, especially when my account has a history multiple similar drops to the point of being predictable, points to a bad RNG seed.
It does go the other way too. If I happen to hit a lucky day I can far exceed the average. I was counting on the 10 clover recipe to get me some T6 mats and ended up getting clovers 7 out of 9 tries…6 hits in a row. Overall I ended up only spending just under 120 shards. Unfortunately, from what I’ve read on the the forums, my luck does tend to be somewhat below average, but oh well. I’ve come to terms with it and only mention it here as a possible reason why some people seem to have better luck in the forge than others.
There were huge threads related to loot and RNG problems last winter. This sort of behavior is not an isolated incident.
Unfortunately a lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into simulating as closely as possible a random event in mad-made systems, particularly computer games, in order to get around the human instinct to manipulate patterns for their own benefit. And part of the reason it works is because even if we know it’s actually random, and no matter how many times we hear, or say ‘RNG is RNG’ we don’t want to believe it.
But there are problems with the RNG…
A while back, I threw 62 crafted rare staffs, plus the rares returned, and received 7 unnamed exotics back. Now it’s supposed to be random. This is what I got, in no particular order…
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Shaman’s Etched Batch of Rage
Rampager’s Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Carrion Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Valkyrie Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
So, 3 identical dire orrian staves of rage, 3 pearl quarterstaffs with no upgrades, 4 staves with superior sigil of rage. This from ~20 tries. If this is considered random…it’s broken.
I’ve seen this pattern many times out in PvE. I rarely get rare drops from anything other than the world bosses, perhaps one every few weeks, unless I do the champ train, but when I do, it’s very often followed by a second rare within minutes and that second rare most often is from the same group, so both berserker or carrion, for example. I’ve had this happen well over 10 times. Once, I had had the exact same weapon, including sigil, drop twice within minutes of each other, one from the Jormag chest and one a few minutes later from some random mob near Jormag. When you can reliably predict the outcome, it’s not random.
Hey GD, what are some of the common myths associated with precursor mystic forge crafting? Doing some individual research on precursor rates, and I hope to debunk some of the popular myths other there about precursor crafting! (You can find my progress in the crafting section of forums)
I’ll start off:
1. Level 80’s have a better chance of crafting a precursor from the mystic forge.
DEBUNKED: I’ve done over 1200 forges with exotics on my level 28 TP mule, and got about 16 precursors. This rate is about the same, if not higher, than some of the research done with level 80’s. Safe to say character level has no effect on precursor rates!
16 for around 1200 exo combos. ~1 for 75 combos. You’re definitely doing much better than the average. Everything I’ve read seems to point to a number of about 0.3% chance of getting a PC from exotics, so ~1 in 333 combinations. For my time, I’ll just farm gold off the TP and buy what I want.
What were you using? Crafted exos or those purchased off the TP?
There is, or at least used to be, something terribly wrong with ANets RNG. Some accounts seem cursed, while others blessed. Magic find gear, when it was still gear bound, actually made drops far worse for those affected. There was a large thread about drops and RNG on the forums last winter and there was wide speculation that for some unknown reason some accounts were getting stuck with some form of permanent DR. I had such an account and it was disheartening when you’re in a group and they’re consistently getting good gear while you get vendor trash. I remember farming cursed shore and getting more than 100 porous bones/hour while those around me were regularly getting exotics. Then they made Cursed Shore unfarmable, at which point I stopped playing for near 7 months.
That some accounts are created with better luck than others
It’s all RNG.
There was a point at which the problems with the RNG became apparent and there were patterns that were identified that proved there were issues. Probably why they changed how MF works. Again, I don’t know if this extended to the mystic toilet, but there’s no reason to thing they wrote a separate RNG for this.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
Use yellow kits and salvage all possible rares, you will need lots of ectos for several purposses. 1st batch of 250 you should salvage. This will give you lots of luck to bump your MF while at same time it will give you lots of T6 dust which is necessary in some “gifts” for legendaries as well as T5 to T6 material conversions in MF.
The MF isn’t worth it but I agree with the part about the dust. All the legendaries are going to need 250 dust for the gift of magic.
The ecto is where the real value is in salvaging t5 crafted rares.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
Another way to get them is usually by making the clovers. If you do the 10 batch recipe in the mystic forge and are “unlucky” enough, you can get quite a lot that way. So, do your clovers ASAP if it’s a legendary you’re going for.
LOL I was actually counting on this to get some of the T6 stuff and ended up uncharacteristically lucky for me and got all the clovers in 7 of 9 hits on the 10 clover recipe and about 15 tries on the one clover recipe for the final 7. Ended up not scoring a lot of mats. :/
Farm moldy bags. Do events in Orr.
Please don’t do this. You’ll ragequit eventually due to lack of actual loot.
If only I could really tell you guys how to make 8-12 g an hour farming Orr :P
In the meantime, my sig can suffice
HA!! It used to be easy to make that in Orr. Then ANet nerfed everything in to the ground…even now, Cursed Shore is a deserted compared to what it was a year ago.
IMO, it’s gone a bit too far and the game has moved a bit too close to real life where you “farm” money in a soul-destroying job to buy the stuff you really want.
Not the game just people’s mentalities.
Its only like that if your only focus is getting stuff you want using the quickest and most tedious means possible as apposed to just enjoying the game’s playable content and letting gold and mats come to you as you go. Then yeah you are laboring in a game like its a job, which could happen in even the most casual of MMOs.
That’s true to a point, but it’s gone so far that if you don’t farm you’re looking at years to complete some of these things. That’s a lot of dedication.
When I was playing in around November 2012, I figured that at the rate I was playing and getting drops, it would take me more than 3 years to get a legendary weapon, and things were A LOT cheaper then.
The best way to do practically anything in this game is to farm gold and buy off the TP.
IMO, it’s gone a bit too far and the game has moved a bit too close to real life where you “farm” money in a soul-destroying job to buy the stuff you really want.
That’s a great description of how things are. Well, at least I know where I stand, so I can adjust my strategy for that. Thanks.
What is the best way to farm T6 mats? Some of them drop so infrequently that it’s maddening to farm them. It’s not unheard of to farm for hours, an not have one drop…and when you need 250 of each… Lodestones are even worse…I’ve never had one drop from any mob that is supposed to drop them. The only lodestones I’ve ever had drop are from the FS champ train and even then it’s extremely rare, especially since they nerfed the trains. Is the best option just to farm gold and buy mats?
Keep in mind too, that 5% gain for the armor is only if you have a full set, which requires enormous grinding. If you only have a piece or two, the gain is barely worth mentioning other than bragging rights. Trinkets give you a slight stat bonus, plus an extra stat, but take away the ability to mix stats. i.e. Say adding a jewel such as emerald that gives toughness to a trinket with P/V/CD stats. You can’t customize ascended trinkets…so there is a downside.
Since the karma nerf, making renown hearts repeatable, say one every month or even once every 3 months would help get people back in to at least some of the zones as they go through farming karma. This is one of the main reasons the Queens champ trains has stuck around so long. It’s one of the only really effective ways in PvE for an 80 with map completion to farm karma. Long story quests that span multiple maps is another way to get people in different maps, but it would be less effective and only temporary. Adding more monthlies/dailies specifically aimed at getting people in to different areas would help too.
It’s not about stats, it’s about looking pretty and having bragging rights. The cost of Mjolnir or Eye of Rodgort or Volcannus, or even the legendaries is driven by the market demand, especially of the raw materials, not necessarily what the finished items are. Charged lodestones are needed for several legendaries which, in part, is why the cost is so high and as result Mjolnir is so expensive. An item requiring an equal amount of glacial lodestones is equally rare by category, but at under 12s per lodestone, they’re vastly cheaper due to demand. By your definition more expensive should mean more powerful, which is not the case. …nor should it be the case.
If you’re looking for just looks, have a look at the Primeval skin in the gem store. Probably the nicest human female heavy armor I’ve seen in the game, that actually looks like armor and not lingerie. Not that I have a problem with the skimpy armor, but I have little kids and armor that looks like armor is just a better choice.
The level 40 reinforced scale armor is nice looking on a human female too. It dyes very nicely. I’m currently level 51 and I like it much better than the level 50 gladiator armor. So, I used some of those copious amounts of transmutation stones to transmute the look. Have a look, it’s a nice looking armor at any level, though it could use a different helm, so I tend to hide the helm.
…and ascended is ugly for the most part, so would require a transmute really not worth all that grind for only 5%.
While they are technically “explorer” achievements, I think they added the map tags on the achievement panel because many get done so infrequently. For me, I have map completion and can’t be bothered to run around randomly looking for things I missed. Perhaps a better option would be if the map tags didn’t show up until you have at least one character with map completion.
Map icons, like the Vista and such?
There’s an option to turn them off. Maybe add an option to add dungeon, mini-dungeon and jumping puzzle entrances to that toggle?
No, no ,no,. If you go in to the explorer achievements and click on Goff’s Loot, for instance, there is a button “Kessex Hills” which shows you exactly where to go for the achievement. I’m suggesting hiding these buttons until map completion is achieved on at least one character to encourage more exploration.
That said, I’d like to see an option for JP entrances, but again, only after having completed them at least once on the account, or after attaining map completion. Kind of how dungeons are now, where they just show up on the map when you reach the respective level, whether you have the area explored or not. IMO, map completion should show you everything, as a reward.
Eh, I dunno. Personally, I think the less advertising the better:
1. It encourages exploration, which also helps with immersion.
2. It encourages the community to interact through asking where certain things are.
3. Failing that, it doesn’t spoil the sense of exploration for those who don’t want big stars and arrows pointing where to go, while those who want the ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’ approach have a source to get the locations from.
While they are technically “explorer” achievements, I think they added the map tags on the achievement panel because many get done so infrequently. For me, I have map completion and can’t be bothered to run around randomly looking for things I missed. Perhaps a better option would be if the map tags didn’t show up until you have at least one character with map completion.
I would be really nice to have a dungeon that is considerably easier than AC story. First time I stepped into AC story it was a huge system shock. Mobs seem to have stupidly high hp and they hit so hard. It’s such a huge difference from plowing through events and world mobs. After experiencing that dungeon I basically waited till 80 to do any more dungeons.
It’d be nice to have a dungeon that is a bridge between the two experiences (Open world and dungeons). I know story dungeons were supposed to do this but I don’t think they were remotely close to successful. Even as a fresh 80 I had trouble completing a couple of them. Now that I understand the way dungeons work a bit more they are much easier but those first few were painful.
Like I said, try Flame Temple Tombs or Forsaken Fortune. They’re challenging, but nearly as punishing as AC.
Zero. I’m not going to sacrifice or waste my game time, effort, gold or cash crafting. Until I can earn them as rewards through regular gameplay of my choosing without an unreasonable grind and purchase them off the bltc,
I agree 100%. I hate grinding and wasting time. Luckily I don’t have to do that in this game, so I’ll probably get 2 complete ascended armor sets over the next few months.
This isn’t considered grind? WOW, it’s like we’re playing different games. ;-)
There are easy ways to address the issue if the technical difficulties are to be believed. If there is already a full stack of bleeds convert additional bleeds to direct damage. Even if the damage was 1/2 of what it would be as a stack of bleeding for the full duration, it would still be a massive improvement for groups of condition damage players.
Objects could be handled in exactly the same way. Convert the damage that would of occurred if bleeding was allowed to direct damage. The ratio of the conversion could be easily tweaked.
Yes, and yes. Certainly not perfect, but an improvement. For the inanimate objects, I can understand poison, or control effects not having an impact, but fire should, and I consider bleeding to be cuts and scratches, which could easily be converted to damage against inanimate objects in a similar way to what it is now, though it should be scaled down a bit in that direct damage should cause damage faster, especially against inanimate objects.
If you go to the explorer achievement panel, a lot of the mini dungeons will actually show you where they are on the map. This way you only have to figure out how to get in and get the achievement. Keep in mind that while the content is easier, not all mini dungeons are soloible, Flame Temple Tombs and Forsaken Fortune comes to mind. I would consider both of these very good training dungeons for the real thing.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
I believe the issue might be with the actual ticking nature of conditions. I always felt that odd.
As the very first condition is applied to a mob, the timer for that condition starts. After that, as long as that condition is applied from any source, it ticks once every second, taking into account the stacks and the stats of those applying the stacks. Once every second from all sources, the ticking moment determined by the moment when that condition was first applied.
The old bleeding damage indicators looked good, as if the damage was actually seeping from the victim, but the new indicator showed its true nature(if you didnt figure already just by looking at the massive health-drop of weaker enemies when your 15bleeds ticked once with no direct damage being done to them at that time).
Why is this a problem?
Take a look at direct damage. It is inflicted when the attack is successfull. A Hundred Blades attack deals its damage regardless of the fact that 0.02 seconds after its first strike, another Hundred Blades is starting to damage the enemy from another warrior. Then only 0.004 seconds later an elementalists Lightning Strike hits for full damage again. A thief backtabs 0.2 seconds later, an engineer starts her FlameJet (flamethrower #1) at the same time. During the next second up to 80 new direct damage is inflicted from 80+ sources (many attacks damage more than once per second). Its a Big Zerg. The amount of calculations in that one second blows my mind.
Lets jump back to that moment when the first Hundred Blades started to inflict damage. Lets say the full bleed stack was already applied at that time, and conveniently enough, it ticks at the same moment when that 1st HB starts inflicting damage. In the one second while 80+ direct damage sources are accounted for from the direct damage attacks, the bleed stack does nothing. Its probably busy determining which applied bleed should even count for the next tick.
During that 1 second, a necromancer’s Grasping dead (3bleeds) overwrites another engineer’s shrapnel grenades (16 seconds, 3 explosions with 3 bleeds if traited) that the engineer just threw 0.8 second earlier. Because no sane person brings condition builds to PvE boss zergs, lets say that only about 20 skills with bleed happen in that same second. Some inflict more bleeds than others. Among the last few, an elementalist who must have misclicked to earth attunement, started throwing Stone Daggers, and overwrote the necros Grasping Dead bleeds just before the global bleed tick happened. Fun fact, that ele was a specced berzerker with no Condition Dmage investment. Blame his misclick on his lag.
So while 80+ direct damages were calculated down to the moment of each of their respective inflictions, only 25 bleed damages were calculated only once, on the moment of the global bleed tick moment for that boss.
Now, i dont know how to fix this. But its obvious that the rate of calculation between direct damage and condition damage is highly unbalanced.
As you point out here, at billions/trillions of calculations per second for modern processors, processor power is not the problem. The claim is that there is a bandwidth issue, which I don’t buy any more than anyone who claims the calculations are too complex. God, hire a mathematician for a day to write the algorithms, it’s all straight algebra, so they’re not that complex for anyone with a bit of a math background. While you’re at it you should have the mathematician look at your RNG, because it’s buggy as hell too.