Guild Wars 2

Sounds more egomaniacal than “elitist”, but I do agree for the most part.

Decreasing loot is part of the plan to make the legendary grind take longer. It’s simple. They’re making precursors more available so they have to make the mats rarer/harder to get.

Most people in the game don’t realize that. They said they wanted more precursors. They’re getting em, but that doesn’t mean T6 mats won’t be rarer in the future keeping the time the same, or more likely, longer to attain a legendary.

I can’t imagine working on a legendary now. All the areas that I farmed for karma, and/or T6 mats are gone. You really are left with horrible options or the TP/COF gold farm. Play how you want?

Your last sentence about sums it up. You will have to farm (gold or cores), sorry. Buying will become an even worse proposition in the near future as more and more precursors are made available, the demand for lodestones (especially charged) will only go up.

Kind of a joke that it’s not account bound on crafting.

In high level fractals you dodge, reflect, or die. There’s really no “taking damage”. Everyone makes a mistake every once in a while and dies. No big deal. Melee on bosses in such a situation is very risky as 1-2 hits will take out anyone.

On lower level fractals/dungeon I can akitten and facetank with AH guard in all knights/zerk. Not sure how get downed in such a situation?

Yup I remember the FOTM nerf hammer coming down on loot. Mobs started dropping junk where before you actually had a decent chance at lodes/cores, etc. I’ve had 40+ runs with not a single rare. Sometimes I’d run with new people just to introduce them and it’d take several hours not getting quick fractals.

While players mostly akitten cof making 10x the reward. Only MMO (or heck game) I’ve EVER played where the most difficult content has the worst reward.

It’s like anet wants to reward you for being bad at the game?

In other news bug fixes to “too much loot” were implemented asap, where’s the bug fix for skills that are broken and/or haven’t worked since launch?

Don’t feel bad with culling leaving the event I didn’t even see the karka. I was running to meet up with some friends when BAM!, one shot without seeing any mobs.

For a second I felt like I was back in Orr and risen chicken had come to get me.

Actually they nerfed bag drop rates in dredge fractal too. They also nerfed mob loot at Jade Maw months ago along with most other FOTM mobs. Thus you get content that is much more difficult than COF yet rewards much worse no matter how you cut it.

More “bug” fixes. How about fixing bugged skills/abilities before going all nerf crazy on “bugged” farming areas. Never played a game where they consistently move the same goal further and further away from the average player.

It’s a skin not a weapon, so I’m pretty sure you can’t throw it into the forge. A skin that you need transmute onto another weapon.

How about new content without cash shop RNG?

I don’t want “end game” content, I’d like more challenging content added. Take the lessons from molten and other encounters add them to new series of dungeons/events.

Add a new open lvl 80 area with the difficulty that it’s impossible to get around without a group. An area where people would band together because of high risk and high reward. Dynamic events that require more than pushing 1 over and over.

Killed karka queen earlier today and besides having to move 2 inches to avoid an AOE I wasn’t even paying attention. Good thing it’s easy because with culling many ppl there couldn’t even see it.

Actually a few friends and I enjoyed farming dust and it wasn’t just union. Several hundred dust a day was possible between the two of us. Now, that just can’t be done. I’d easily do this over running a horrible dungeon over and over and over.

It has nothing to do with people using it, nothing to do with the recipes or demand for the item and everything to do with the supply being cut off artificially.

And yes the intent is to extend the amount of time it takes to reach a goal in the game. It’s so obvious you’d have to be trying not to notice it.

I’d like to see them fix all of the bugged Mesmer traits and phantasms before screwing with things more. How about making the game work before changing it?

GW2 where you can’t farm the open world, but you can sit and farm the TP all day. Anet isn’t going to fix the crystalline dust shortage because they created it.

Anet punishes people working slowly towards their goals, and in doing so rewards those manipulating the market even more (gotta love that volatility)? How about nerfing TP farming into oblivion? That would be funny to see.

The constant nerfing to push player goals further and further away is a cheap tactic. If supply goes up and demand does it so be it. Most of the time I’m sure we don’t even find out about it. They were “caught” so to speak with their hand in the cookie jar on the salvaging “bug”. That alone should have sent up red flags for everyone playing the game.

I don’t agree GW2 is pay to win in any fashion. Besides, there isn’t any difficult content in the game that you’d need good gear for anyways.

Why would they nerf one of the worst farms in the game? Skelk had a better return ratio so they nerfed that, and it was barely even worth it. If instigator is worth farming it will be nerfed.

Anet nerfed several good farming areas recently, union WP and Colonade WP. It is obvious they want this high use material to be expensive.

They could say “bots”, but I farmed union WP and rarely saw a bot there. Had one friend get 5 stacks over a couple of days of intense farming. This benefits everyone, but he didn’t sell because “anets gonna stop it”.

If I spend 2 minutes in Southsun I see bots all over the place farming blood/scales and no nerfing has happened there (can you say living story).

I’m not sure what advice I have, other than I’ve taken a break from the game because of the focus on things I’m not interested in (living story), and the intense control they have over the market by keeping prices high through fixing supply and recipes.

Doing, events is another option to. Put on about 70 skillpoints over a couple of days with killstreak boosts/xp boost.

Otherwise, fractals are about the best way and enjoy the horrible loot. When I was grinding I did a 26/36 each day. with a decent group and luck on the rolls 40-60mins per is pretty easy.

I used an alt for one of my shards as well. Picked a thief for decent speed and stealth communing when I didn’t feel like fighting.

Another option, while painful if you have the money, level crafting if you haven’t. I did no crafting on my first 80 so I just leveld some of the cheaper ones up for a quick 30 skillpoints as well.

It seems like the content added is getting easier, not staying the same level of difficulty, and definitely not getting harder. I find that odd?

When they mentioned guild missions I really thought we’d be see 10 man+ dungeons with more difficulty bosses that were more than weekly.

I’d really enjoy to see guild missions not requiring so much influence and being daily, not monthly.

I thought the rewards were more than fair considering the scope of the encounter. Compare the rewards of that, to the rewards of completing say, the Grenth Temple. An event that takes multiple coordinated 80s and can fail at any time and takes much, much longer. In fact I can’t think of another activity in the game that has had of high of a time to reward ratio. It’s obvious they REALLY want people playing living story content.

I spend a lot of time running higher level fractals and there really is no downside to full zerk gear. 1 hit and you’re probably down anyways no matter what gear you have.

I will say I haven’t had the guys to transmute my legendary yet so that does add some toughness/vitality, but I keep a power/crit GS on hand as well. Currently running 20/20/0/25/5 mainly for the focus reflect and phantasm damage. I have a full set of PVT gear in wvw and it helps with survivability a lot.

Union Farm was the fix to this problem. Getting 20-30 dust an hour was easy. Plain and simple a huge supply avenue was cut off for a high demand item.

I did the exact opposite. Got a ticket in my first few crates that dropped on patch day. Figured the drop must be decent and bought a few more with my gems. Quickly, I figured out the rate had to be as low or lower than Flame n Frost.

I’d be much more inclined to gamble in black lion chests where you could get other valuable or useful items.

If you combined the initial release of southsun content with the molten dungeon style concept you’d have something. Put the meta- event somewhere in the middle of the story.

Outside of a few orr temples there really aren’t any challenging dynamic events. Molten Facility final bosses were much more difficult than most dynamic events and the whole dungeon I thought was kind of fun.

What I don’t want to see is living story content ending in a 11111111 auto attack meta event (ala jungle wurm, fire elemental, jormag, etc.).

I remember reading posts here to just buy the dyes on the TP. They were all half or less what they are now. I bought a few random packs myself, realized how rare they were then took the advice of the forums and bought the colors I wanted.

Some of them are still relatively low priced imho given that they have better detailing than other expensive dyes (abyss/celestial)and the higher rarity (gem purchase rng only).

I don’t do “speed” runs and I don’t see GW2 adding any content difficult enough to require “gear inspections”. FOTM is the closest with AR but you can always tell about what lvl someone is once you’re playing and even then it’s not that big of a deal if they’re a good player.

I would uninstall before joining 24hr lol zerkwar only speedrunz for cash. Nothing against that, just not my cup of tea. I wouldn’t be against the option of a voluntary gear inspection option (say when in party or private chat), but don’t really want ppl randomly walking buy to inspect me. I’ve always found that odd in other MMOs.

Why start another FOTM thread when no others have been answered? FOTM has the worst reward for difficulty of any content in the game. Updates have been ignored for months with the exception of nerfing loot on mobs making them even worse.

I’d love to see some udpates, but Anet seems more intent on adding entry level content.

It’s been the same at Jormag for a long time.

They nerfed Jormag mob loot. They nerfed fotm mob loot (to discourage running the dungeon). They nerfed Lyssa union mob loot. They nerfed shelt/pen by adding horrible vet spiders with no loot. They nerfed plinx loot.

See the trend here? The only loot not nerfed on mobs yet is pretty much Southsun. Every time a good farming event is located it is swarmed by dedicated players, lots of PVE or WVW players trying to make up the money gap between CoF speed run players and TP farmers.

I am also disappointed. Disappointed that more difficult content in this game rewards far worse than easier low lvl content. I’ve done FOTM 30+ runs without even a rare, yet I have friends that do multiple auto-attack faceroll, lvl 20 and under events and get rare gear? Same with running arah. In the time I do that, others can run mindless events and get better results. I mean, I like the challenge, but don’t get the reward strategy here?

To me that seems odd. Likewise, the best money maker in the game is speed running easy content. In many other games you can at least do ok running harder maximum lvl content. Not so here?

I agree I logged in today thinking, well I bet they got rid of this, but after reading the patch note was like ok, it’s not gone. Log in and my friends are like, man they got rid of it! I don’t believe that is a good policy for company to have. Anet please just change your patch notes to reflect what you really did?

It was never keeping ppl from completing the event. 2 dedicated ppl could complete the event in seconds. Seen it happen before. It was literally hurting no one other than TP exploiters and COF runners. How about nerfing those too? I dislike playing the TP and think COF is ridiculous so this was a nice alternative.

Honestly, I’d prefer to run a harder dungeon Arah P4, FOTM 40+ and get rewarded for the extra time, but since that will never happen back to speed running faceroll content over and over……

Don’t waste time with confusion and your life as a mesmer will be much easier. If I see someone using a scepter in pve I find myself shaking my head. Wikitten weren’t so, but it is.

You will rarely get the full damage of warlock unless you’re running a specific group or in a large dynamic event. It’s as situational in that aspect as a stationary warden.

Heck count the reflect from ranged mobs and warden is doing much more damage than warlock ever would.

No. As much as I have enjoyed the game, I had high hopes for it and while new stuff has been added, it has gone in the wrong direction imho.

- I expected guild missions to be accessible to all in guilds, more akin to epic fights and for grouping beyond 5 to be possible. Seriously how hard is it to allow larger group size? I don’t know, but I’d imagine not too hard.
- All added content lately has been what I would called aimed at newer players. Not much for those that have been playing since the beginning.
- The living story is an interesting concept, but shouldn’t be the end all be all. It would have been nice added 1-2 years in once the game matured some.
- Class balance in a game that is touted as “all classes can do anything” is not there. Fixing bugged traits/skills would be a start then go from there.
- The DR and reward inequality is the antithesis to “play how you want” mentality. That a 2 minute wurm/FE DE rewards as good/better than high level PVE content is just laughable. I know why they do it (push ppl to certain areas), but it really does feel forced. That one of the easiest dungeons is the best money maker is kinda funny too.

Warden is strongest phantasm by far. That said it has to hit and it’s stationary.

If you also trait it for reflect and add that in, It is devastating but takes more skill than other phantasms that range or hunt the target down.

Well I hate to say this but at higher level fractals no one can take a beating. Just can’t do it. Damage avoidance is the only game in town. Why I love playing mes at that level, so much damage avoidance entirely.

Still take guard/war in fotm any day all day. At least up to 2. Can carry a subpar group easily.

I have come to the conclusion that running fractals is not considered a viable way to play the game. It is the only challenging high level pve in the game yet it has been ignored over they past few months for more “beginner” friendly content.

Why should a player have to do dailies/guild missions to get gear to run fractals?

They should be able to be purchased with pristine relics ( and I know we have all have tons of those wasting away).

Guard tops for PVE utility overall use. Mes would be my 2nd choice for utility/DPS and elementalists/thief a very close 3rd (in some situations equal to mes).

War is always good DPS, but very limited utility.

I’d place all others together based on content/situation.

Honestly, I think many of the profs are good depending on situation. You have to think, do I need more damage, or do I need reflect, condition removal, stealth, healing, etc? Many times it’s damage, but maybe not.

I’ve run lots of high level fractals with more optimal groups (war, guard, mes, thief, etc ) and with mish-mash no heavy groups. Good players can make both happen and to me it’s fun to see what profs cover one another on certain fights. On harpies I’d kick every war in the group for guards lol.

This is of course my opinion in more difficult pve (mainly fractals, arah, etc), not cof faceroll level content.

Take maneuver skills (be it stealth, blink, etc) and use phantasms. If they don’t target the phantasms and keep on you just use your defensive abilities and continue. Use shatter at key times. Even phantasm builds can still get large shatters. I like to keep a few stealths available for repositioning during the fight.

If you use warden, lock them down first. Make sure they’re not moving, melee them in it. Or drop the warden the switch to GS for some ranged defense.

Reflect + phantasm = win. I’ve noticed the fotm for rangers is tank builds. They can be more difficult to burst down, but they do so much less damage it’s a non-starter. Make sure that you use all of your defensive abilities and avoid the pet or even better take it out.

Honestly, I’m not sure why Rangers don’t take a bigger penalty from losing their pet. I know if I lost my pet I’d be dazed for at least a good 30 minutes or so :P

I run 20/20/0/25/5 build mainly pve and with sword/ focus you will spend a lot of time “in your face” and have good mob control as well. Leaps, pulls, blur, blink, etc. will have you moving in and out of melee range a lot. Phantasmal Warden will do phenomenal damage once you get used to it and when/where to place in conjunction with cc.

For a secondary I use GS. Even bugged it puts out decent damage on trash mobs and the cc is nice in places. Switch to staff as pertinent. Times when you need that chaos armor, phase retreat or the hard hitting ranged phantasms on bosses.

Staff is not exciting for me it’s mainly a defensive weapon and condition on mes imho is boring at best.

This is mainly pve advice, but much of it can be adapted to wvw as well, and of course shatter on c/d, when burst is necessary.

Please fix the zerker. It’s currently by far my weakest hitting phantasm in a straight up power/crit DPS build (full zerk gear).

I used to end with the last hit for 5k+, and a total at times of around 8-11k. Now I see a lot of hits doing less than 3k overall (that’s when I see them hit).

It is definitely not hitting more than it says and usually connects no more than 2 hits. I keep thinking why did I even cast #4? It’s basically only useful as a CC.

I run 20/20/0/25/5 right now and it’s working out great. Used to run 20/20/0/10/20 to run a hybrid shatter build. The focus reflect greatly increases damage and survivability in fractal. Weapons are GS and Sword/Focus. I keep a staff on hand for certain fights and in case we’re stacking conditions (for warlock). Also, for hard hitting mob trash.

Just like guard, reflect, reflect, reflect. I’ve had my highest numbers with warden phantasm, it just takes practice knowing when/how to use it.

Constantly switching skills, but TW, reflect, null field are up 90% of the time. Also signet of inspiration at times (with arcane thief) and blink and of course portal in swamp.

Full zerker on fotm 40+ with few issues.