Guild Wars 2

There’s crafted level 80 exotics with all sorts of different stat combos available on the TP. Along with the ones gotten via drops.

There’s exotics bought with karma from temples in orr with some stat combos.

There’s all the different dungeon exotics, more stat combos.

Between those 3 sources you should be able to get just about whatever setup you want. Mix and match if need be.

After you’ve got your stats setup as you like, if you don’t care for the way you look, then you can always get stuff with looks you like and transmute it onto the gear that has your stat setup.

The dungeon armors are really meant to be more for skins you transmute onto other stuff.

If they happen to have stats on them that you want, that’s great, but they’re really intended to be for looks.

I would assume the reason it wasn’t in at launch was due to their web based TP client making previewing more complicated to code.

Precursor prices will go up and down based on ecto prices.

For people putting rares in the MF, though no ectos are used they use t5 mats to craft those rares. Those mats go up and down based on ecto value.

For people putting exotics in, those take ectos directly to make.

Thus if the price on precursors aren’t high enough, less people will bother using the MF (creating precursors) and will just save up and buy precursors instead (presumably to make a legendary, removing precursors). Less precursors = price up accordingly.

If you see 2000g precursors eventually, it’ll have to be with ectos costing 1.5g or something with it. Else people with a lot of money will repeatedly make precursors in the forge and sell them for profit (more precursors = price down).

Precursors are rare from the forge but not THAT rare. I’m willing to guess that for every horror story you hear about someone that put in 2000 rares and got nothing, there’s 10 people that just did it quietly and got a precursor (maybe more than one in fact)

My anecdotal experience lines up pretty well with getting on average .8 ectos per rare salvage.

That doesn’t mean when i salvage something I get an ecto 80% of the time, but considering the times you get 2 or 3 from the salvages…when I salvage a whole bunch of rares I end up with 80 ectos per 100 rares approx. Was a time in the past where I crafted a bunch of rares, salvaged them, and sold ectos in the past for some small % profit. I don’t think it’s quite profitable atm though.

Up for consideration is doing a bunch of gold —> gems.

Get like 10,000 gems together for later. Have to figure stuff will show up here and there over time that you’ll want. You can have that taken care of for years.

In general, you’re better off selling the mats.

However, don’t think that you can’t profit with crafting, you can. However, it’ll take analysis of the TP much like it does just buying and selling for profit. If you just blindly make an item and sell it, you probably lost money. There are windows of time where all sorts of items are profitable to make and sell however, vs selling the mats. When one window closes another opens. Funny enough, opportunities to make money are more prevalent on sub lev 80 items, where less attention is paid to any particular item vs the lev 80 item market which receives the most attention.

It isn’t uncommon at all to find things in the mid levels that cost 10s to make and are sellable for 20s.

The serious answer is that the forge would give you a random lev 80 exotic greatsword.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I’m on one of the lower population servers, Ferg’s Cross, and there is still usually a bunch of people farming this area. Good luck trying to find a server that doesn’t have a bunch.

I play an engineer, so I am pretty good at being able to tag a lot of the mobs. I still can’t average anywhere near where some of these guys are. But this place is a good steady source of T6 materials.

If you use guesting there’s quite a few servers that aren’t crowded at pen/shelt even during prime time.

Try some of the ones listed as lower pop on the list.

The fact that it’s not sub based means there’ll always be people popping in and out.

Eventually I’ll get bored and mess with other stuff. I’ll still come back to the game to play the new stuff.

Only ones I don’t like are ones where players can end up in hostile situations due to ‘screwing it up’ for others, namely the dodge and especially the revive one.

Not because either of those are any harder than anything else, but just so we don’t need to worry about killing a mob that someone is trying to dodge, or preventing an npc from dying people wanted to ress.

One of the things I like about this game is there’s no real reason not to jump in to anything that’s going on, invited or not, whenever you feel like it. You aren’t stealing loot or exp etc which was a great design decision. The revive/dodge components of the daily set that a step back. Not a big deal but we’d be better off without it.

You play ranged for less risk and less reward (lower damage).

Or melee for greater risk and greater reward (more damage).

Don’t really see the problem.

I use both.

I still have good luck with the jade maw chest.

The normal end boss chest from each fractal however…

Just changing it from 2 to 3 needed to kick people would help a fair bit. Not sure why it hasn’t been done already.

Have to chime in on people saying you can’t melee bloomhunger.

If you’re willing to give it a try a few times and get downed some, you’ll find it’s actually relatively easy after a bit.

I used to be the same way, did bloomhunger ranged probably a hundred times. Random guy in my group once just fought in melee the whole time, didn’t get downed. I saw that, gave it a try next time, got downed some, tried it some more…now I just melee bloomhunger exclusively.

As an elementalist.

You know, I’ve made a few hundred trips through the fractals at this point and I don’t recall any situation where someone was kicked unless they went offline or literally couldn’t enter (pre patch, like we’re running FOTM 26 and the person doesn’t have it unlocked yet).

Have randomly had every profession in the game in my groups many times…

Think there’s some exaggerating going on here.

Make a group of like minded people that want the fractal mats and farm dredge. Don’t even need to finish the fractal. Just kill lots of stuff, exit, repeat.

It won’t take long.

Joining the high level FOTMs without the basics down is pretty baffling to me.

I mean if you’re on fractal difficulty 5 and the closest you can find is some group LF1M for level 8, go ahead and jump right in. But joining FOTM 30 groups with no AR is just silly.

I actually feel extremely comfortable carrying parties as a support ele. They aren’t QUITE as good at it as guardians, but they’re still great at it (with high boon duration).

The idea of summoned weapons not having charges is something I’ve considered in the past and agree with here. I don’t see them being so powerful that they need to be limited. If some combination comes up where it’s a problem, I’d be fine with numbers being adjusted accordingly.

Make Scepter earth #2 an aura.

Raise the damage of scepter water #1. The damage on this could seriously be doubled and it still wouldn’t be anything of interest.

Scepter air #2 and #3 should be combined into one attack. Add something new. We have 2 instant attacks, one damages and one blinds. Have 1 instant attack that just damages and blinds instead.

Reduce the universal attunement swap cooldown from 15 seconds. Then lower the reduction arcane gives accordingly. 30 in arcane could still leave you at 9 second cooldown in the end, but maybe having the base be 12 seconds instead of 15 would have people feeling a lot less pressured to go deep arcane.

Make the 10 point arcane trait Elemental Attunement (boons on attunement swap) a baseline ability everyone has.

Have a weakened form of the 15 point water trait healing ripple (50% of what we have now) be baseline to the class. When someone with 0 in water switches to water, they heal for 50% of what someone with healing ripple does now. The new healing ripple trait would double the heal, making it be as it is now. As with the arcane change, it makes it feel a bit less necessary to go into water, while certainly still being desirable to do so.

Damage across the board while underwater needs a pretty significant boost. It’s hard even finding a place to start, damage on the majority of abilities are lacking. If every ability we had underwater was doubled in damage tomorrow (exception of water #5), it probably wouldn’t be overpowered. That’s how bad it is right now.

After a while you get to find the right balance of when it’s time to switch and when you don’t want to put fire on cooldown.

For S/D and D/D, there’s no question you want to attunement swap alot. If nothing else, the #1 attack sucks across the board and if you don’t attunement swap alot you’re going to be using it. That’s before even getting into any boons. As SD or DD, you will outright do more damage by attunement swapping alot.

For Staff, Fire #1 is okay damage, and most of the non fire attacks on staff do awful damage (Even earth 2 is bad considering the cast time). So you’re left in situations where your best damage option is just staying in fire, particularly against non moving bosses. Sometimes the right choice really IS to just sit in fire on staff. If you’re not getting hit, in no danger, nothing needs to be crippled/slowed etc, then it’s fine.

But making the decision to not attunement swap based on simply “I don’t like to attunement swap”…Well if that’s the case for an ele, they’d be better off with another profession.

Biggest thing for tagging = Join a group.

When in a group, all the damage anyone in the group does counts towards doing enough damage to “tag” the mob so you get exp/drops from it. You do still have to damage the mob at least once in order to get credit though, but if your party does 5000 damage to some trash mob and then you clip it with the tail end of a fire Dagger #2 or something just before it dies, you’ll still get credit.

As far as simply touching lots of mobs, D/D has tons of easy ways to do that, so get in a group and you’re set.

If you’re looking for a profession with lots of different builds, elementalist is not it.

If it’s better, it’s not enough better to justify it taking 20 minutes to kill bosses.

I’ve never really noticed any difference in loot quality period. I guess I get more stuff from a 30 fractal than a 10 fractal, but just from the trash and only because there’s outright more trash and thus more loot. As for the chests, haven’t noticed anything.

When he vanishes I just run away from where he was for a few seconds then dodge (away). Seems to be sufficient.

Clouded Judgement.7834:

This has happened to a lot of us. The frozen maw seems to ignore the rule of levels, in that it can give any type. I have gained all three from levels 20+ whereas in the first three fractals you will only ever get shards on 20+

That’s not true either, as I’ve gotten both vials and globs from the underwater fractal on 26 and 30.

Every path in every dungeon is fully completable without rez rushing.

Isn’t it okay for a group to fail sometimes? To wipe and have to try again? Not 100% success guaranteed?

They’re harder, certainly doable sub 80 though.

When the game was new there was spam in plains of ashford “LFM AC exp” and anyone that was 35+ was being taken. Sometimes it’d be completed sometimes not.

Diviner.7405:

Everyday this topic appears and everyday it ends the same way.

I guess today instead of the usual arguments I make against changing the precursor method, Ill focus on something else.

What determines skill in this game? I have done every single path in all dungeons, I go to WvW and fight players, I have done all temples even some of them solo, and I have done a lot of the events throughout all maps in this game.

Does this make me a skilled and deserving of a legendary? I do not know the answer to that question. Is what I have done in this game even that skillful? Is learning boss mechanics and how to dodge their attacks really skill?

This is the thing about Guild Wars 2. There is no skill, at all. Everything comes from learning and experience and there is little need for skill at all in this game.

This game is not Starcraft, a Moba (besides LoL), or any other game that requires skill. In those games I could learn the game and what everything does, but actually executing it is another matter entirely. This game does not have this, and thats fundamentally why this game will never be an e-sport.

So the skill argument does not exist. What could possible come up with that determines a player skills in a game where there is no skill to be had at all.

Have to agree. Been playing MMOs as long as MMOs were a thing and there’s very little in ANY of them that could really be described as skill. Most things considered difficult in MMOs are basically just a checklist of things to do or not do. Don’t stand in the fire, do kill the adds, don’t melee the boss after he does this emote, do stand over here so you don’t agro stuff through the wall etc.

If someone tells you what to do or you read a guide, you’re already halfway to doing it. Sure it can still take some practice to do certain things right, but it’s uncommon that it takes so much that it’s really much of an accomplishment to do things successfully. Even in the case where it does take a lot of practice, such as certain WoW hard mode raids over the years, it’s really just because there’s a bigger checklist and you have to worry about everyone else knowing the checklist too.

Something like the mad king jumping puzzle does take skill, but that kind of gameplay isn’t something I think most MMO players would be interested in focusing on.

Karizee.8076:

I think Moot has the coolest footprints by far

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ba_Dvd_PBQ4

Moot did become pretty awesome with the patch.

I also think when you /dance that a disco ball should appear above you and shine a spotlight down on you. Then you could never be outpartied.

I hope they continue to add more fun stuff to legendaries. First to the ones that are lacking effects of course, but additional stuff to all of them after that too.

At least all you did was waste money on one sigil and now you know.

Some people play for months with improperly stacking sigils equipped and argue with people about it.

Probably worse than trying to chase down a bunker ele or stealth thief is a full bunker guardian. At least with eles and thieves you can snag them with the big stuff sometimes if you catch them at the right time.

It’s so much worse when a guardian just walks away from you at normal speed and you just. can’t. kill them. Then you have to do that walk of shame move where you give up and just turn and go in the other direction after they facetank you through cripples and chills across a quarter of the map in WvW or something.

It’s like they’re not even running away but just laughing at you.

Just switch a few cleric items out for some pow/tough/vit gear (soldiers).

I’m assuming you have 30 water so you’re hanging out at about 13k hps. If you can get in the 16k hp neighborhood with some vit on your gear that should be sufficient.

We have dagger for close/mid range AOE and Staff for long range AOE.

Would be nice having a Bow for long range single target (Along the lines of the Warrior rifle) and a MH axe for close/mid range single target. The scepter seems to try to do this but struggles with what it’s actually specializing in.

Don’t really care what the weapons actually are, just having long and short range single target weapons would be nice, with the appropriate additional damage.

I can’t see any viable build that doesn’t go deep into arcane at least, simply because how much better we are with the attunement cooldown reduction.

9 sec attunement swap cooldown needs to be baseline imo. Any greater cooldown means you’re wasting time using our crappy #1 attacks.

Honestly all 3 ele heals are quite usable, even without traits that improve a particular heal.

Signet of restoration is the one I keep loaded by default, simply because it synergizes well with our other healing incoming from water attune, water roll from evasive arcana etc. This is probably the best choice for ordinary run of the mill play with D/D. You probably should switch to something else while using a staff though, due to the slower attacks.

Sometimes I load up ether renewal when I’m in more dangerous situations but feel comfortable that I can do the channel. Sometimes in PVP, more often in PVE dungeon play. If you can get away with using it every time it’s up and can complete the channel, it’s the “best” heal as far as pure healing throughput. Obviously it has uses.

Glyph of elemental harmony I use the least in the D/D bunker, but I fiddle with it sometimes. Of course in 30 water build it’s yet another condition removal if used in water to apply regen. It gives ALOT of regen too if you have high boon duration. Since it gives 10s of regen base we’re talking 17 secs of regen with 30 in arcane and 40% from boon duration runes. Not shabby at all especially when you keep adding onto it by switching to water as it’s running down. Honorable mention for the protection from using this in earth attune too while armor of earth is loaded. Earth switch, armor of earth, glyph used in succession means your protection boon isn’t going away any time soon.

For lazy purposes, using glyph of ele harmony you can actually have 100% swiftness while just sitting in air attunement too with boon duration. Just using the glyph and shocking aura as they come off cooldown is enough (With 70% boon duration bonus, both give 17s of swiftness each, both are on a 25s cooldown) Glyph, Shock aura, RTL to get around. Course that’s not useful for anything important and I’m not using it as an argument to support the heal, just something to fiddle with when getting around in LA or some newbie zone.

So it’s no problem making a case for all 3 of them. You’re probably doing yourself a disservice actually by picking one. Much like a 30 water ele should switch back and forth between the 2 grandmaster traits (aura share or regen removes conditions) depending on situation, you should probably switch your heals as well.

Yep no weapon swapping. Though of course you attunement switch to access other abilities.

Certainly would be nice to be able to use the weapon swap hotkey out of combat though. Tired of having to fiddle with the inventory menu.

Just making rock barrier on scepter earth an aura would make scepter so cool.

The entire elementalist class hangs by a thread based on the 10 point arcane trait elemental attunement (boons on attunement switch).

If someone doesn’t take that, and switch attunements often to take advantage of it, honestly everything else they do is moot and they’d be better served playing another profession to do better whatever it is they’re doing.

MF is pretty lousy out in the world, since MF seems to be what is reduced by Diminishing returns.

People skip mobs because killing them is a boring, unrewarding, and unchallenging process.

When that’s resolved, they can look to making things unskippable.

Would be nice. Being able to do the same with the Infused Books like Koss on Koss would be nice also.

Would be funny having a glowing sparkling quaggan on your back, but no.

This is common in all popular markets where people flip for profits.

There’s a couple markets I really babysit my buy orders in, passing through many times during the day to 1c outbid across the board, usually for small quantities since I know they won’t be filled completely before I’m overbid and I don’t want to tie up my money (3-10 buy orders per item) Just dealing with 1 person (me) in those markets is probably annoying already. Now consider how many people play this game that do it.

Thanks for posting on this forum so often John Smith.

Been playing MMOs for as long as there were forums for them and I can’t recall a major one where an employee diligently replied to as many threads on a daily basis as you do.

The precursors seem to be following a natural increase in price relative to the cost of the rares and exotics thrown into the forge to make them.

When it costs 35s instead of 20s to make a rare to throw into the MF (or similar price increase if you’re using exotics), you can’t expect precursors to sit at the same price.

A quick glance at t5 prices shows that it costs almost 30s just to make the incription to craft a rare, not including the mithril components.

If precursors sat at the same price, then less people would MF for them and more people would buy existing ones off the TP instead (presumably using them to make a legendary, lowering the amount of precursors in existence rather than keeping them roughly constant), raising the price on precursors until it was a vaguely even deal to MF for them or buy them…which seems to be around where we are at now.

Given the conditions of the game currently, they aren’t too expensive. They’re about what they should cost. If one wants to say “There should be more precursors entering the game, so the price is a bit cheaper” then that’s another thing entirely and is something I agree with.

Funny enough, you can blame the price on precursors on increased demand for ectos more than anything else, even though precursors are often mystic forged without the use of any ectos. Demand for ectos is what raised the price on those t5 mats more than anything precursor related and unfortunately ectos come from salvaged rares, rares crafted with those same t5 mats people need to craft inscriptions to make more rare greatswords (or bows, or daggers, whatever the most expensive of the day is) with to throw into the MF.

Or if they’re throwing lev 80 exotics in the MF instead of lev 80 rares, well then they need ectos directly since they’re needed to craft the exotics.

The next time the bubble bursts on ecto prices, watch precursor prices fall.

I’d like to see the hps on the boss at the end of ice fractal reduced. (Your weakness makes me laugh!)

I think it’s the most boring boss fight in all of guild wars 2. Extremely easy but takes like 10+ minutes because he’s got so much hps at high difficulty levels and it just drags when he hops onto the hill and stalls for 30 seconds goofing around with easily avoidable red circles. I used to think the jellyfish fractal boss was boring but this one is so much worse. Has a group ever wiped to this boss? Might as well just reach the room empty then put a big 15 minute timer on the screen so at least we can alt tab out for a while.

I know it’s one of the shorter fractals so maybe time can be added elsewhere in the fractal. Beating on this punching bag boss with heavily padded hps is no fun though.

Cliffside fractal is too long. The initial boss fight at the entrance should just be outright removed. He isn’t stopping anyone from doing anything. Or at least dramatically lower his hps (the boss at the end can remain as is).

I like having a thief in group that uses pistol #5 against trash in fractals.

Just start a group saying “LFM CoF, everyone welcome” on gw2lfg and I’m sure all those non warrior/mesmers that want to play will join you instead.

I see the new utility slot on the laurel vendor ascended amulets that take that kind.

Just wary of getting one with a utility slot if I won’t be able to upgrade it to (infused) for the +5 base AR on the item. (since it might be some sort of PVE only based amulet).

Wondering if someone in the know would be willing to chime in on this one, so we know whether or not we should stick to offensive/defensive infuse slot amulets when we have enough laurels to snag one of the amulets from the vendor. Would be nice being able to get 40 agony resist, but I don’t want to find out that the other amulets can be upgraded to infused while the utility slot ones can’t.

Quick note: Not talking about putting +5 AR infusions in the amulet, but upgrading the amulet itself to (infused) status, like we do with rings and backpacks for the base +5 AR on the item itself.