Guild Wars 2

You think that guy was trying to scam you? I’d say it was pretty obvious he was trying to scam you. Report him using the “support” link on the upper left of this page: On the page that pops up, hit “submit a request.”

Not sure if Anet will do anything about this since you weren’t actually scammed.

They did add a dungeon LFG, but one where you can get griefed by people merging with your party and destroying your instance.

They added an ENORMOUS grind through Ascended gear.

PvP is the same. No new game modes.

They didn’t explicitly say they would nerf zerkers, but Anet’s MO for fixing balancing issues is usually to nerf and to nerf hard. So hard that whatever’s being nerfed is never used again.

Anet’s likely painted themselves into a corner here because the existence of the Ascended grindfest and having more diverse builds/gear loadouts directly conflict with each other.

You may not believe the stats are worth it at the moment, but notice that Ascended gear has infusion slots while exotic doesnt. Infusion stats are maxed out at +5 right now, but you can almost guarantee that Anet will implement infusion slot stat grind next. It’s +5 now, probably +7 next, then +10, etc.

So you’d best start the grind now else risk missing the grind train.

No on seasons, yes on another set of achievements to bring the PvE players in (speaking from a low tier here).

Anet’s default solution is to nerf and nerf hard. Depending on how they do this, they could lose a lot of players. The Ascended grind was bearable to many only because they knew they needed only one set: zerkers.

If not a direct nerf to zerker gear, they’ll probably introduce really cheesy mechanics designed specifically to counter zerker gear. For example, make all bosses “structures” that can’t be critical’d.

Considering the direction this game has been moving, I have very little faith they will come up with a good solution.

Anet can’t win. If they create situations where different types of gear are required, or if they nerf zerker gear into the ground, then people will be upset they have to grind through another set of gear. But if they keep things the way they are, the game gets stale.

Of course they put themselves in this situation by introducing the Ascended grind.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The problem with the zerk meta is that it’s just too good and overwrites any possibility of running anything else….

Everything you said is right. But if their solution involves pushing people to have more than one set of gear, then many are not going to be happy. Ascended gear is here and people simply don’t want to grind a second set.

Their efforts to make the game less stale directly conflicts with the existence of Ascended gear grind.

With the advent of the Ascended gear grind, this could well be a bad thing, depending on how they do it.

Currently, for PvE, if you have zerker Ascended, you’re all set. You only had to go through the unholy gear grind once. If they make changes so that you require another set of gear (through nerfs, through more “structure” bosses, for example) then people will not be happy.

It’s hard for Anet to win because of the situation they put themselves in. (They can increase the viability of other gear, but Anet’s MO is usually to nerf and nerf hard.)

I’m upset I have to do PvE to get world completion for my legendary — why can’t I just do the WvW POIs.

Tree.3916:

Here is a solution to all QQ’ers.
1. Make new characters so you have no open character slots.
2. Get those characters to Lions Arch
3. Park them at the jumping puzzle in the top right of the map
4. ??? (Get the chest on a daily basis)
5. Profit.

I have 7 characters sitting at that JP chest and i get about 1-4 Silver doubloons a day from this method.

You all can thank me later by showing me screenies of your juggernaut.

…and what if you have no open character slots?

I think a better (but similar) idea is for those who are working for Juggernaut to advertise as much as possible that silver doubloons are available in this way and that silver doubloons are worth a lot of gold. That way the price of the doubloons will decrease as the supply increases.

Unknownhero.6745:

Gee thx for the sale, sadly im average income player, with bad luck… I have already spent way too much money both real and ingame, to get one claim ticket, I really don’t have the patience and or the money to hope for more. Even at sale price, 3-5 tickets to me seems ludicrous. I will sit on my one ticket in hopes that someday a new set of skins I might like is introduced.
If the random (crappy) drop rates ever change, and we are guaranteed atleast one scrap of a ticket per chest(which would still require me to buy anywhere from 30-70 chests), then I will reconsider buying chests again…

Buy the item that sells for the most on the TP for the ticket you have. Sell it, and then buy the item you really want off the TP.

Or: wait until the next Living Story update. These usually come with skins that are 1 ticket in price. Buy the item you feel will be worth the most after that Living Story chapter ends. When it does end, sell your ticket and buy the item you actually want.

Don’t work directly for what you want. Work for what gets you the most gold out of the TP and buy what you want. Yes it makes you feel more like a soccer mom than an adventurer who kills dragons, but that’s how this game is set up to be played.

Ayrilana.1396:

Go to different areas where you are downscaled and note the new stats. Then do an analysis.

Here’s what someone did:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dynamic-Level-Adjustment-1

Unfortunately, the google doc link is no longer valid. The other link spits the data out in a pretty much unreadable format unless you sign up for that website.

skullmount.1758:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Get to level 80 and start crafting as soon as possible. The gear grind train has already left the station, it stops for no one, and so you’re going to have to work hard to catch up.

A good way to get crafting materials as you level is to do the Queensdale Champ train. It’s also good for keeping your weapons and armor pretty much up to level.

Thief is a good profession to start as medium armor uses leather, which is — at the moment — relatively inexpensive on the Trading Post (light armor’s crafting materials are currently quite expensive).

Well he can also just buy the armor straight off the TP, its sometimes just as cheap, if not cheaper. That is if he doesn’t want to deal with crafting.

He’s gonna have to deal with crafting sooner or later, may as well get the materials as he levels — the Champ train is really good for this.

I personally find that playing the open world content doesn’t net enough mats/gold/gear to keep up with your level. I think Champ training is a really good way to (at the very least) supplement your open world exploration time so that you don’t always feel undergeared and poor.

Get to level 80 and start crafting as soon as possible. The gear grind train has already left the station, it stops for no one, and so you’re going to have to work hard to catch up.

A good way to get crafting materials as you level is to do the Queensdale Champ train. It’s also good for keeping your weapons and armor pretty much up to level.

Thief is a good profession to start as medium armor uses leather, which is — at the moment — relatively inexpensive on the Trading Post (light armor’s crafting materials are currently quite expensive).

The current system, with the new randomness variability, so far looks ok — there hasn’t been nearly as many big disparities between ranks in the matchups as before the seasons.

Furthermore, T1 seems to be matched up together every week. Looks great. Everyone stacked into T1 so it has way better coverage than everyone else — hopefully they’ll be matched up together for the rest of eternity (or until the coverage gap is, for whatever reason, diminished).

Oh and I don’t think we’re allowed to talk about this on these forums anymore as it’s matchup related. gw2wvw.net is the new WvW forum site that allows matchup talk.

What’s the best type of gear for low level dungeons like AC? I noticed that critical damage is down scaled quite drastically (no access to the game right now, but I think ~40% critical damage downscales to ~5%).

Could it be that the downscaling algorithm makes it so that you get more out of putting stats into non-traditional (power/prec/crit dmg) stat lines?

For example, upscaling in WvW of very low level toons can be “abused” so that they end up with huge amounts of certain stats. Is there a similar situation in downscaling where certain stats are downscaled “less” than other stats? Does anyone know the downscaling algorithm?

Never. It would show how unbalanced the professions are for 1v1s.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I love how the last Living Story releases were kind of overlapping, or how the destruction of the tower was coupled with player interaction.

The destruction of the tower was not coupled with player interaction. Unless you believe that the player interaction caused it to be destroyed precisely on time, at the end of the two week interval.

Please do NOT put more of this illusionary content into the game.

fadeaway.2807:

I’m sick of soloing dungeons only to have a couple of punks join and kick me out.

Also, I did fotm 49 earlier today and with the final boss on 20% hp, a couple of guys kicked the poor warrior in my group and replaced him with a guildy for free lootz. Fortunately they liked me or the same would have happened to me.

Thanks.

More like: “Fortunately they didn’t have another guildy logged on or the same would have happened to me.”

The moral is: Always enter the dungeon first if you’re going to pug with people from the same guild, and always use a proxy when you sell.

If you farm 6 gold per hour then if the price of one silver doubloon is 2 gold, it’d take 83 hours of farming. Is that so bad?

The whole point of having three different Ascended materials is to force you to do multiple aspects of the game (whether you like it or not). I find it extremely unlikely for them to give you a way out considering “it’s working as intended.”

BobbyStein.2315:

Azure Prower.8701:

… onto the compost heap.

Are we going to get SAB returning shortly after?

Because lets be honest. This is the only living world update the majority of people enjoyed.

Actually, we have metrics on every LW release. While SAB was indeed successful in terms of participation, so were the other releases (Scarlet ones included). I understand that forum feedback can color perception on which releases were the most popular/best received/most enjoyed but opinions on this are largely anecdotal. Please keep that in mind.

Now to your question: will we see a return of SAB? That’s not for me to say, but if it were to come back, what would people like to see from it? Harder/easier content? New world? More/no Moto story?

Or would you like future LW releases to cover other topics? Share your thoughts, but please keep it constructive. Thanks.

What do you mean by “successful?” Number of players who participated? If so, have you considered that some (many?) who participate don’t actually enjoy the content?

Metrics are good, but only if you interpret them correctly.

Not sure why people think the spelling mistake implies this is fake. There are a HUGE number of spelling mistakes ingame that have been there since launch.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you enjoy grind, it’s actually really really fun.

I don’t enjoy the grind, I enjoy the things I can buy from grinding…

GW2’s like real life where you have a job (grinding) to support your actual interests (whatever you do with what you buy from grinding)?

fadeaway.2807:

Agree. It saddens me to see people stacking on easy fights like the ac bosses. Just have fun?

Some find it fun to beat the boss/dungeon quickly. Some are just there for the gold to aid in the ascended grind. AC is actually easy without stacking also. Are you saddened to see people not running it naked with no traits and only white weapons?

If you enjoy grind, it’s actually really really fun.

There already is a reward: The Leaderboards. Oh, wait.

Tachii.3506:

Nothing in life is fun if you keep doing the samethings repeatedly without new experiences.

If only Anet would realize that and stop giving us what’s essentially the same Living Story gameplay every two weeks.

Kevan.8912:

yeah. only ascended gear can be infused. and the most likely the progression will be in infusions.

This. And here’s the kicker: Even if you have Legendary gear, you wouldn’t be immune to this grind!

dodgycookies.4562:

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/12/gw2-ascended-armor-stats/

for ascended armor stat comparisons. for the most part you are looking at a 50-60 increase in defense rating (works out to a 2% increase on total armor rating for a heavy with 3k armor) and total increased stats of +36 (or 42 for celestial). Which is like 1-2% per stat type. The difference is less than 1 stack of bloodlust and much less than than the differences in stats that can occur from the wvw bonus stats from ppt.

Each defensive armor stat you gain means you can swap a defensive stat elsewhere in your build for a power/precision/critical damage stat. Those three offensive stats synergize so that instead of gaining 2% in defense, you can instead gain more than 2% in offense.

We need 1-click crafting:

You select the object you want to craft (assuming you know the recipe) and click on it. All recipe items (that are not already in your possession) that themselves require crafting are automatically crafted before your target item is itself crafted. And if you do not have the materials necessary, nothing is crafted.

The current crafting method of having to create each sub-item one-by-one brings absolutely nothing to the game but tedium.

Henri Blanche.8276:

The manifesto was a nonbinding document; but many of us were excited and pleased by what it said and implied. So we’re understandably disappointed and unhappy by how certain aspects of the game have veered away from the manifesto.

To coin Douglas Adams: ArenaNet is a bunch of kitten kitten who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

This. When you see an awesome trailer for a movie but the movie turns out to be really bad (and the cool scenes from the trailer aren’t even in the movie), you feel lied to and betrayed. Same thing here.

Neural.1824:

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.

We see this same thread over and over again. At this point, even if Anet is technically not “at fault” for the misunderstanding, from a customer service point of view, they should do something to make it more clear to players that you can only equip one of these at a time.

You might be having a chuckle now, but when they start the infusion slot stat grind:

+5 for each slot now, then +7, then +10, etc. you might not be so happy.

Naz.9518:

Hello i have just started playing guild wars 2 and wondered what is the best gear for wvw is it exotic or legendary ? i am not sure can someone tell me please thanks.

The best gear is Ascended. It is an ENORMOUS grind to reach that level. Legendary (weapons only) also has top stats, but the grind is even worse .. the trade off is nice skins and the ability to change stats out of combat.

I’d suggest you start the grind process for Ascended weapons first as they offer more significant stat bonuses over exotic than Ascended armor does over exotic armor (at least at the present time). There will almost certainly be more grind to come so if you don’t start now, you’ll feel left behind (assuming you don’t already).

Naz.9518:

Hello i have just started playing guild wars 2 and wondered what is the best gear for wvw is it exotic or legendary ? i am not sure can someone tell me please thanks.

The best gear is Ascended. It is an ENORMOUS grind to reach that level. Legendary (weapons only) also has top stats, but the grind is even worse .. the trade off is nice skins and the ability to change stats out of combat.

I’d suggest you start the grind process for weapons first as they offer more significant stat bonuses over exotic than armor does (at least at the present time). There will almost certainly be more grind to come so if you don’t start now, you’ll feel left behind (assuming you don’t already).

Kevan.8912:

so…as someone like to underline that “manifesto” is no longer valid or etc etc etc (no talking about it here plz)

just about facts.
i think, as in the title, that the direction the game is evolving in is no longer what i’ve bought the game for.
i wanted a game without grinding AT ALL. and BiS to be acquired in a short time after lvl 80, and then just think about having fun.
(oh, it reminds me of something, but it’s difficult to understand what.)

is there some of you who wanted gw2 for these same reasons?
and now struggle to login again.
i uninstalled it for this reason.
i’d like to know about people who feel the same.

You’ve already done the best thing you can do, and that’s not log in. Anet is all about metrics and not logging in shows up in their metrics. (Of course, how they interpret the metrics is a different matter, but that’s on them).

In any case, the good news is that you can re-install anytime you wish if the game begins to move in a direction that you’d like it to. The bad new is that that almost certainly won’t happen.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Wait, what? If I have an Ascended weapon with a skin on it and then I infuse that weapon, I’ll lose the skin?

Yes.

Wow. Is there a reason for this? Do you get a warning that your skin will be wiped?

Doesn’t this pretty much discourage people from putting skins on their gear and thus causes fewer skins to be sold in the gemstore?

Da Sonic.6521:

Ascended armor is a negligible increase in stats, and approximately a 5% increase in toughness via armor (and that percentage lowers as you add toughness through stats on armor/weapons/trinkets). So yes, it does make an impact. Is the impact very big? Not really. I would be willing to say the majority of the time, if I am at <5% health, it’s pretty guaranteed that I’m going to be downed soon.

The effects of the 5% shows itself not just when you’re at 5% health. If you have traits that are only effective above a certain percentage (e.g. Diamond Skin) then that means longer uptime because you now have more health above that percentage and so foes have to hit you more to get you below it.

As an example, if you have 15000 health and your trait works when your health is above 90%, that means it has effect when you’re over 13500 health.

If you add 5% to your health, then it becomes 15750. 90% of that is 14175.

So with ascended armor, you’d be able to take 675 more damage before you’d lose that trait’s ability.

Currently, Ascended armor is only a small stat improvement over exotic. However, I predict that Anet will begin an infusion slot stat grind next. Currently, infusion slots can each hold +5 stats. I’m predicting that Anet will gradually increase these stats (I’m talking on the order of every few months) from +5, to maybe +7, then +10, etc., with each increase tied to a large amount of grind. These stats will, at some point, add up to become significant.

And the kicker: only Ascended gear has infusion slots.

So even if you do come back now, I’m guessing you’ll have to face the Ascended grind (plus more) in the not too distant future.

I’m more concerned about the stealth deletion of posts — I’ve noticed some of my posts being deleted without any notification of any sort. As far as I know, you always used to get a PM about why your post was deleted — but no longer, it seems.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The OP has it wrong. The game doesn’t rely heavily on the TP, only the impatient players who wants everything quickly and conveniently.

Like all those impatient people who were too impatient to farm those 15,000 candy corns for the Halloween pail?

Wait, what? If I have an Ascended weapon with a skin on it and then I infuse that weapon, I’ll lose the skin?

“We’re not just removing and moving sub-forums, but we’ll even be adding a sub-forum that many of you have requested!”

First TAkittendungeon removed and replaced by Aether dungeon and now this. Anet: you know that it’s ok to add to the game without deleting stuff as well!

Hilarious!

Mugo.5723:

No complaints coming from the bottom servers. From rank 13 (HoD) on down the tiers are scrabbled up every week. In the last four weeks AR has fought 7 different servers (Kain, DR, NSP, FC, DH, ET, SF).

But is this because the new matchup system is good or because of population shifts following the leagues?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

gambits

(quoting parts of threads is difficult on this forum!)

I think implementing gambits for both dungeons and fractals would be a relatively small change that can really positively impact the game.

In lieu of new content, it’d actually be a good substitute — personally, I’d prefer it over the “usual” LS content we’ve been getting. There was some rumors of gambits being datamined a while back but I’m wondering now if that was just the instabilities that showed up in the new fractal patch; if so, that’s a big opportunity to freshen up the game that I think Anet missed.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lord Kuru.3685:

I’m not saying that they will someday in the future increase the grind. I’m saying they will start the infusion grind soon — within months and that those holding out for real content are just wasting their time.

Plausible. Especially if they do any work on Fractals to tweak or add new things into it at higher levels. Though I suspect those infusions would be for higher AR values rather than statistics.

Also, don’t Ascended armors lack normal upgrade slots? As a sort of balancing factor against Exotics, where you can use a set of six Superior runes to achieve a large bonus on each piece?

Ascended weapons/armor do have sigil/rune slots and infusion slots.

Anet will definitely increase AR values for the infusion slots when they increase the max fractal level — I believe the original intention of fractals was to have it be a vertical game mode for those who like that, so I accept that (though IMO the whole AR business is stupid and Anet should move the fractals more toward using player chosen gambits — just like the Queen’s Gauntlet — to increase difficulty).

I find it hard to believe Anet won’t pass up the opportunity to increase stats in those slots. My guess: they’ll do it slowly, on the order of a few months per increase. Max stats now is +5 for each slot. Next will be +7, then +10, etc.

Like I said, I’ll keep playing and struggling to keep up with the stat grind until I feel truly disadvantaged in WvW — then I’ll quit.