Guild Wars 2

“Warning: Transmuting an item will make it soulbound.”
did they stealth change this???
the item I just transmuted came out soulbound.

salvaging into dust then selling the dust will net you a little less gold than just selling the ecto (about 1s), but it will gain you luck.
there are hundreds of uses for ectos. If you don’t know how you want to use them, selling them to the TP is not a bad idea. here are some ideas for ways to use ectos: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glob_of_Ectoplasm (under Recipes)
do a bit of research before you sell them. ectos change price so quickly and by so much that you can list for more than the lowest sell listing and still sell them in a reasonable time (less than an hour). check http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 for the highest sell price within the past day or so for a guide at where you should sell them. (as an example: current price is about 30s. but was selling at 32s around 15 hours ago – ectos bounce a lot)

RoyalPredator.9163:

This is a thing what should been choosed at Character Generation (at least the playing shounds, LORE narration would be huge & costs mutch more $)
We may see this option mutch later. I hope so.

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1
I don’t even pay much attention to looks, and I still would of wanted the ability to select my character’s voice from maybe 6 choices.
I’d probably even pay for a makeover kit just to select it.

what would also be good: make your own. read a bunch of sentences, crop them yourself, put the files in the proper spot; it’s your voice on your character! (probably a lot of female characters sounding like dudes and visa versa…)

Vol.7601:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Are flame dyes back in the store or something?

yup, all flame frost. Many ppl who held them are PO’d. Glacial holders especially.

LOL! this will be the 3rd time I get to flip these vials of molten gold.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge

wvw: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge#Siege_weapon_blueprints
Mystic Forge is how you make superior siege from basic siege.

underwater has different utility skills, but cooldowns are shared.
meaning: if you use utility skill 1 underwater, then get out of water, utility skill 1 will be on cooldown. you possibly used underwater utility that is in same position as your run speed signet?

most likely you’re in combat. difference between 25% and 33% is barely noticeable for that short a distance. but combat is 30% slower. so signet + combat = -12.5% vs. +33% swiftness is a huge difference. The way I check if I’m in combat is to see if I can change the utility skills (that little arrow at the top of the skill).

another option is they are hacking. I can’t see much sense in hacking to do champ train 0.001% faster, but maybe they are math-intolerant hackers.

there are a very few things that give +50% or higher movement speed. not sure if they are stilled bugged to cap at +33% or not…

next time you see someone moving faster than you, click on them and see what boons they have.

I think the core of the problem is rng.
20 players enter portal, one platform gets 6, one gets 3, one gets 5, one gets 2, one gets 4.
6-player kills champ in 20 seconds and waits.
4 and 5-player kill champ in 60 seconds
3-player kill champ with 20 seconds to spare and barely destroys console in time
2-player can only get champ to 50% health

can’t blame bad players on that one. sure, any skilled player can kill a champ given enough time. very few do it in under 3 minutes – especially with mechanics like ‘immune to attack from the front’ – so only one of the two is actually dealing significant damage.

con confirm 2 things:
- these can be dodged
- they are harder to dodge. could just be the delay of dodge giving you evade, but you pretty much have to be in the middle or end of your dodge to evade these red attacks.

all a vendor value would do is increase that 270g needed to 27,000g (assuming 1s price). harder, but not impossible.

a true bot isn’t even needed to do this. auto-clickers can be set to click 1000+ times a second, coupled with stacks of 250 and the multiple buy order delay feature and they can just use a macro to place a million buy orders within an hour. From spidy records, it looks like it does take them around 1-3 hours to place these. And this type of macroing is against the rules. So if I’m not allowed to do it, they should be banned for doing it.

The TP API is not the same as a bot. it can be, but not necessarily. For the most part, it just gives information. current price, etc. I can’t imagine why they made it possible to place buy orders through it, but I’m guessing it has something to do with making it easier to program the in-game TP. Have you ever used gw2stuff.com or anything similar that shows what events are going on? that is directly from the API.

I bought the permanent black lion merchant contract because I wanted to retrieve black lion TP profits anywhere. I’m sure you can guess how disappointed I was when I opened it for the first time.
All I ask is that you take the words “black lion” out of that name and add it to the perma TP contract name where it belongs so future people aren’t as disappointed as me.:

Permanent Merchant Contract
Double-click to bind this item to your account, giving you a Personal Merchant Express which will summon a personal Merchant for 5 minutes anywhere. Allows you to access basic supplies and sell loot. Reusable.

Permanent Black Lion Trading Post Express Contract
Double-click to bind this item to your account, giving you a Personal Black Lion Trader Express which will summon a personal Black Lion Delivery Agent for five minutes, allowing you to pick up trading post purchases and profits. Reusable.

When I saw these I thought they might of changed the look of all red circles. I was disappointed to find out this wasn’t the case. make it so!

a bot placed 2.7 million buy orders (probably at 1c = it cost them 270g) which put it on the ‘highly demanded’ list = first thing everyone sees when going to the TP, so everyone was reminded about the item and just HAD to have it, so now the price is higher.
I really wish these botters would tell me before they do this to items so I can make strategic investments :P
I’m sure what’s annoying for anet is that even if they ban the account that made the buy orders, that won’t necessarily be the account that made thousands of gold off the price increase

Dungeon tokens that can buy soldier’s weapons and armor:
AC
SE
HotW

this would increase how many precursors enter the game, so they would decrease the drop rate of precursors from the MF to compensate.
so instead of 1 in 200 chance at precursor it would be:
1 in 400 slowly changes to 1 in 50 as you don’t get one.

tech support.
really, they need a better system for getting d/c mid-event. trouble is that you just know it’ll be abused (tag the world boss, then leave to tag another one, for example)
they shouldn’t just assume they have a bugless game.

I almost have more of those than 3 of the others (toxic, molten, aetherblade). It’s all in what enemies you kill. Toxic has chance to drop toxic, etc. get on siege and be sure to pick up the goodies every now and then and you’ll get 10 per event.

pretty sure you need to destroy all 5 chains.
and the event fails when enough mobs get past the people on any of the 5 paths, so that’s why it failed. probably just happened exactly when one chain was cut.
There may be more to the fight after all 5 chains are cut?

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

It should have been something like this:

Basic: Copper/Silver/Gold (Rich nodes) (800 gems) = 25s/day
Advanced: Iron/Platinum/Mithril (Rich nodes) (800 gems) = 30s/day
Master: Ori (Normal node) (800 gems) = 12s/day

And they should also add woods.

added values to your suggestion. I can never understand why ori (and all the other T6) gets so many short sticks. promoting T4 to T5? 250 becomes 110. T5 to T6? 250 becomes 12.

I never look at those and think ‘air elemental’. maybe ‘lightning elemental’ or ‘spark’. nothing air-related. would of preferred a cloud spider.

edit: decided to google it cause sometimes the internet helps you like that. not entirely disappointed… http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/089/f/f/cloud_spider_by_sageroot-d4uetcy.png

Legionnaire.1586:

rhapsody.3615:

As for the windcatcher skin, you can transmute it to a white quality back item. It will then become account bound and you’ll have to use a transmutation stone or crystal to put it over another back piece. The alternative is to buy a transmutation splitter from the gem store, and use it on the skin (this would separate the skin from the back piece).

If i use the splitter or use the first method will i be able to sell it on the market?

nope. I believe all items out of a splitter are account bound.

it’s how they go about making an item that requires 25,000 of something. it’s not as elegant to require 3 stacks of watchwork sprockets – it looks cleaner to turn 500 sockets into 1 mechanism, then require 100 mechanisms to make a go-kart you can drive. it also hides the true price.
you know, I would definitely pay 50,000 sprockets for a go-kart… it has perma-swiftness and it’s own health – once it gets destroyed from enemy hits you have to make a new one.

also a general rule of thumb: if it sells for more than 10g, chances are you can’t get it from the MF.
Divinity and Travelers are the only exception :P

I expect:
Basic = Copper, Silver, Gold (800 gems)
Advanced = Iron, Platinum (800 gems)
Master = Mithril (800 gems)
Grandmaster = Ori (1600 gems)

They always seem to treat T5 has better than T4, even though prices don’t reflect this.

celestial is +x to all stats. it should stay that way. please don’t make it 47/47/47/47/47/47/76. that just looks stupid, for starters.
Just make it 52/52/52/52/52/52/52 and you’re good to go.

this botting activity DOES increase the item’s prices.
kinda like how that guy posted on reddit, “I have 10,000 gold and I this is how I make money: … recipe: light of dwayna and recipe: shadow of grenth are good investment opportunities” – then those recipes double in price within hours.
increasing the buy orders to hundreds of thousands / millions puts them on the in-demand list, attracting attention, people buy it, increases price, botters sell theirs at 2x what it was worth. kinda like advertising
makes me want to buy a lot of lightning catcher skins then go on reddit and say “this is awesome, I’ve made 100,000 gold off lightning catcher skins” then watch the price go up 200%.
LOL I had to look it up – http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/43909
buy listing volume went from 80 to 2 million from 1/12/14 to 1/16/14. price went from 40g on 1/12 to 98g on 1/14

I’d say this is more benign botting (compared to bots that gather materials or kill mobs 24/7), but still upsets trends and such so they are annoying.

FuriousPop.2789:

Mystic.5934:

3 copper ore = 120c
3 silver ore = 240c
3 gold ore = 440c
total = 8s / day
800 gems = 59.92g
time to recoup cost = 749 days
I’ll probably buy it anyways.

Great logic, not only did he do the math – but hes going against it!

Pay me 60g and i’ll give you:
3 copper ore
3 silver ore
3 gold ore
each day for 749 days!

I can’t explain why, but this deal doesn’t seem as appealing. even if it was “each day forever”, it still isn’t something I’d sign up for. psychology. I think I bought it simply for completion-sake. the fact it’s called “Basic Ore Node Pack” makes me think there will be an “Advanced Ore Node Pack” later on.

I guess I didn’t understand how this trait worked before.
or, rather, how the others worked.
Debilitating Dissipation, for example: “Clones apply a random condition to nearby foes when they are killed.”
It was always my interpretation that creating a 4th clone destroys the 1st clone. not kill it; destroy it. so creating the 4th would not have the 1st give random condition to foes.
If this is the case, then this update doesn’t affect any other skills or traits. am I wrong about how these skills worked together?
I thought this was a pretty benign update – where dodging simply wouldn’t replace a clone currently out there. personally, I was happy with the update – if I have 3 phantasms out there, I felt like I couldn’t dodge or one of them would go away.

I tried out first person view on GW2. It was fun to do once, but I prefer 3rd person so I can see more of the battlefield. melee battle was very confusing. being an asura, it actually had the camera at my character’s head level, so looking straight ahead I was seeing a lot of crotches.
you might be asking how I tried it: in the beta for edge of the mists, there was a first person view checkbox under ‘developer’ in the options panel.

the problem is that in pvp, all builds /are/ balanced. even pve soloing everything all builds are balanced. So if they made a particular build stronger, then it’s not balanced. Conditions from multiple people is bugged, but that’s another issue. The issue you are seeing is that people are lazy and just want simple damage without worrying about tactics. you wouldn’t believe how many times I see berserker players get killed, then I’m left to solo the dungeon. That’s a prime example of non-berserker being a better build.

Sorry :P I have so much info it can easily turn into walls of text.

with MSK, you have a 42.35% chance of getting the inscription/insignia
with BLSK, you have a 61.21% chance of getting the inscription/insignia

BLSK is the best option if you want the insignia/inscription.
however, BLSK also costs a bit less than 1g atm (compared to 61c for Master SK). If you factor in the price and return rate of the insignia/inscription, you’re probably just about breaking even. Unless there is also a valuable socket (worth 1g+), I recommend MSK.

Armageddon armors from fotm can certainly be salvaged for insignia. Make sure the stats are the right type to be able to give insignia (you’ll have to either memorize which stats can or go to the wiki). Ceremonial weapons can indeed be salvaged for inscriptions. I believe they are all Dire?
Accessories/rings/amulets will never give you an inscription or insignia – wrong item type.

Disdroid.6109:

simlified formula incomming
for rares:
if ecto-price*0.9=itemprice or higher -> slavage (if salvaging with master/mystic kit)
if ecto-price*0.9<itemprice -> sell

A rule of thumb for greens:
Salvage everything under 2s

there’s also the rune/sigil those rares have. so technically:
if (item_price > ecto_price * 0.9 + 3s * 0.8) sell it
if ectos sell for 32s, then that puts the cutoff at 31.2s
I like to simply it as:
if (item_price > ecto_price) sell it
I think runes tend to go for 3.5s and sigils 2.5s, but I chose 3s for simplicity

it all comes down to reputation. and players are just not personal enough to remember individual people.
if there was a single account that bought/sold ectos for cheaper than the TP (would probably take <12 hours to pay you) and was well-known to guarantee not ripping someone off, that would work. It’s the whole getting started and having enough confidence that they won’t rip you off that’s the problem.

it’s even cheaper to buy unid dyes, sell, then buy influence, than to buy influence directly from laurel vendor.
unid dyes are just too valuable on the TP.
unless you tie the laurel vendor amounts directly into the TP’s current price, there will always be one item that is a better deal than all the others. you just have to find it
(with commendations, it’s the sentinel’s inscription/insignia)

DarkSpirit.7046:

So it is possible that besides the Ugly Stick, those other named exotics that you previously categorized as not returning an inscription, may in fact return an inscription now.

If you find one that now works, let me know

Some things have to be server-side. otherwise hacking is very easy. Diablo 2 comes to mind as an example. I remember there being battle.net multiplayer and open multiplayer. Battle.net was isolated from single player (stored server-side), while open used your single player character (stored client-side). in Battle.net multiplayer, the worst hacking was multiplying an item (you remember those omega golems? :P). in open multiplayer, people could basically write the stats on items. They would give a small charm +90,000 all stats along with 20 other attributes then multiply it 40 times.
If gw2 relied on the client for things like drop rates, people could edit their client’s code for things like: they get a precursor every time they kill a bandit, eternity drops from killing rabbits, 50,000g reward for completing AC, probably even things like giving the PvP amulet stats to every item in their inventory.
server-side drop tables could be edited without us downloading an update. I believe they don’t change them very often, but they could be changed without us knowing. They certainly wouldn’t change one item that was faulty knowing that there were 8 others that were also faulty

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personal_Trader_Express
was the best purchase I ever made
also good for trolling (only you can pick stuff up from it, yet everyone else will see it)
be CAREFUL when buying it, the permanent vendor is similarly named. I knew to look carefully and I still bought the wrong one.
Permanent Black Lion Merchant Contract = vendor to sell junk
Permanent Trading Post Express Contract = Black Lion Trading Post person

I think what you get out is a white item with the skin on it, which you can then transmute onto another item.

It’s possible. I last salvaged an Ugly Stick a couple weeks after inscription salvaging first came out. But I doubt they would of fixed that one and not any others that don’t give inscriptions when they should.
But it looks like other people have tested it between when I did and this thread, so I’m gonna go with rng.

3 copper ore = 120c
3 silver ore = 240c
3 gold ore = 440c
total = 8s / day
800 gems = 59.92g
time to recoup cost = 749 days
I’ll probably buy it anyways.

a guildie of mine got a precursor from that chest. he sold Carcharias for like 14g.

I get most of my gold from the TP trading. I don’t like item flipping; I do salvaging and crafting.
Anyways, I have a lot primarily because I don’t spend a lot. I only bought expensive stuff one I had a lot of gold because when you trade on the TP for a profit, your gold tends to multiply (at least to a certain point). So if you have none, you get none. The first 100 is the hardest. Took me maybe 6 months to get to 100g (I wanted exotic asap; I would of collected it far sooner if I did any farming instead of just wandering around enjoying the game). Then from 100g to 1000g was maybe 1 month.

some hints to people poorer than yourself:
masterwork (green) items have like 80% the stats of exotics. They are good enough until you are well-enough off to easily afford rare/exotics.
I have a hard rule to never spend more than half of my gold on anything. I’ve been near zero at times, but that’s only because I placed hundreds of buy orders, the vast majority of which wouldn’t be filled and I’d cancel later.

Cormac.3871:

Quick question for Mystic: In your data is there any difference in salvage rates between armour or weapon types? Do daggers and great-swords yield inscriptions at the same rate? What about insignias from gloves versus chests?

I have an inkling that there may be a difference, but this is based on a very small data set ( I might have to but a large sword to compensate

I never directly compared any of what you’re asking. But what I’ve observed is that there is no difference in the drop rates of ectos, inscriptions, and insignia between weapon/armor and dagger/greatsword and glove/coat and etc.
What I did:
I made an app that gets TP prices from gw2spidy, then calculates what is expected to salvage out of each item (did that by hand – going through every exotic and seeing what stat type it has), then compares it to how much it costs to buy the item, then gives a list of items to buy. I started with a ballpark approximation of 75% chance of getting an inscription (one of my guildies did a lot of SE to get exotics and salvage for inscriptions to level his weaponsmith – he gave me the 75% estimate)
I slowly stepped it up, first buying about 20 suggested items, recording the drop rates and such. pretty soon I noticed some items never gave inscriptions (Guild Defender, namely). I had a better drop rate percentage by this time – about 60%. I then set out to find all exotics that should give inscriptions but didn’t. started with 5 of every exotic and salvaged with MSK. then, of those that gave 0 inscriptions, I bought 5 more and salvaged with BLSK (I didn’t know there was a difference at this point, so I was covering all the bases). That gave me my final list of what does and does not give inscriptions (Ugly Stick apparently snuck through this)
I thought there might be a difference between MSK and BLSK, so I tested it with like 20 exotics each and found MSK was noticeably lower (first estimate was 50% vs. 60%)
Then I decided to test MSK vs. BLSK and the true drop rates. I bought 800 exotics – 400 that should give a profit from MSK, 400 that should give a profit from BLSK. Pretty much all named exotics.
Salvaged them, got a result of about 42% and 62%.
Later I tested ecto drop rate of exotics (which turned out to be higher than rares)
When insignia salvaging came out, I assumed the same drop rates. I bought 10 of every named armor that should give insignia and found that they all did.
Then I bought about 200 named exotic armor, salvaged them with MSK and BLSK, confirmed they were close enough that they were likely the same compared to inscription salvage rate (differed by less than 1%), so I averaged them with my other results (25 with MSK, 193 with BLSK)
I’ve salvaged thousands of exotics since then. Used to salvaged rares, but they seem not to give much profit anymore. Some more than others.

However, there IS a difference in how much basic materials you get from salvaging dagger vs. greatsword and coat vs. gloves and etc. This is what I think those returns are:
Heavy Coat = 2.45 ore
Heavy other = 1.35 ore
Medium/Light Coat = 3.1 leather/scrap
Medium/Light other = 2.1 leather/scrap
I tested this by buying a bunch of blue items of the same type over several levels and salvaged and counted the returned materials. about 100 of every type tested.
And some weapon types give ore, some give wood, some give either:
Ore = greatsword, sword, dagger, warhorn
Either = Hammer, Harpoon Gun, Spear, Axe, Mace, Pistol, Rifle, Shield
Wood = Long Bow, Short Bow, Staff, Trident, Scepter, Torch, Focus
(I use these numbers to figure out which items to buy to make a profit while salvaging for luck)

DarkSpirit.7046:

Short of a stealth update on their servers, that would be weird, since you said that you did salvage hundreds of each and every named exotic and did not obtain an inscription from the Ugly Stick before. Thanks for sharing the list.

I had only salvaged 10 ugly sticks before (5 with MSK, 5 with BLSK). the hundreds comment was about exotics that I knew would give inscription/insignia.

well, looks like we were simply unlucky before. I just salvaged The Ugly Stick with a BLSK and got a Rabid Inscription. Time to move where it is on my list

thehipone.6812:

Mystic – thanks for your work and willingness to share all of your research.

The tl;dr on this thread seems to be:
-Named exotic weapons with rabid/shaman/dire stats that ARE NOT specific champ loot bag drops WILL salvage with a chance to give the inscription
-Named exotic weapons with rabid/shaman/dire stats that ARE specific to champ loot bags DO NOT give the inscription. List of specific champ bag exotics here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_loot_bag.

Specific cases:
-The jury is still out on whether the Ugly Stick can salvage into a rabid inscription
-There are no exotic weapons that can be bought on the TP that can salvage into a Magi’s inscription
-It is unknown whether items created by fixed Mystic Forge recipes (x mystic coins, 1 eldritch scroll+other stuff)). However, they tend to be relatively expensive compared to the price of the inscription.

Other sources of inscriptions:
-Items bought with dungeon tokens can yield the inscription/insignia if they have the right stats (I have not yet found an exception, has anyone?)
-The account bound exotic items dropped in fractals also yield the inscription/insignia if they have the right stats.

Unfortunately, if you need an inscription or insignia for crafting and want to try to salvage it, you need to do your homework to avoid wasting gold.

all looks good.
as to dungeon exotics: I have yet to hear of any of them that don’t give inscription/insignia when they should. I don’t do enough dungeons to test all of these, but I’m assuming they all work as expected.
I really wish each item said what it’s stat type is, instead of us having to look up the name of that combination of stats.

it’s a curve ball, but a full set of ascended armor requires 5 lesser and 1 regular vision crystal.

it was a very common recipe from the bazaar a few months ago.
can’t be found since then, but easily purchased from the TP.

I do (salvage hundreds of each and every named exotic, that is)
I’ll give The Ugly Stick another try.
In the meantime, here is my list of named weapons that can drop inscriptions:
Atlatl, Dragonshot, Silence, Al’ir’aska, Shield of the Wing, Bramblethorn, Skybringer, Chalice of the Gods, Tinwail, The Malestrom, Dunn, Trosa’s Short Bow, Razorstone, Kevin, Drakestrike, Winged Spatha, Droknar’s Forgehammer, Jora’s Defender, Axiquiotl, Gearbore, Dragonfury, Vera, Infinite Wisdom, Handheld Disaster, Firelighter, Final Curse, Scorchrazor’s Fist, Remnant of Ascalon, Limitless Furnace, Alderune’s Last Stand, Malefacterym, Finn, Breath of Flame, Khrysaor the Golden Sword, Kenshi’s Wing

and insignia:
khilbron, vatlaaw, galrath, jatoro, errol, yakkington, reyna, jalis, tahlkora, galrath, vatlaaw, Jalis, Reyna, Errol, account-bound Armageddon armor (I get that last one in FoTM)

I started with a list of named exotics (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_named_weapons), selected the ones with the right stats, then bought several of each and salvaged them to test. then did the same with armor (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Named_armor)

thehipone.6812:

There is a slightly more general list and table on the generic champ bag page http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_loot_bag. I’ll see if I can pick out some “favorable” inscription salvage candidates that are not on your list to test.

I found that list :P ty. I never knew the reason, just that some exotics didn’t give inscriptions. For my purposes, I didn’t need to know why, so I didn’t look further. I think you’re on to something with the generalization of champ bag exotics not giving them. though it’s probably not the only reason some exotics don’t give inscriptions

thehipone.6812:

Could it be that none of the named rabid/magi/etc. weapons salvage into the inscriptions? Has anyone successfully pulled an inscrip off of a named exotic?

This is not the case. the list above contains several rabid stats (alderune’s last stand, axiquiotl, bramblethorne, dragonfury, drakestrike, final curse, glint’s scale, kevin, lidless eye, malefacterym, titan’s vengance, trosa’s short bow, etc.). but no named exotics give magi inscription. The only named exotics I know of with magi stats are King’s Remembrance, Monsoon, Scepter of the Highborn – all of which are on my list of exotics that don’t give inscriptions.

I agree that it’s messed up that there are any that don’t give inscriptions when they should, especially since they didn’t say this could be the case when they announced that you could get them.

converting one to another is ok. I would prefer to see potions/things that can be crafted with any/all of them (several recipes for different things – not just one for each). I’m currently sitting on around 2,000 dragonite, 3,500 bloodstone, 3,000 empyreal, 8,000 Dark Matter. I dislike hoarding things that should be useful but aren’t.

CC Danicia.1394:

The thread wasn’t deleted from the revamp; it was removed because it discussed botting/hacking and whatnot, which is not allowed on the forum. Just in case anyone wondered where the previous thread went.

we need more responses like this. I would need both hands and feet to count the number of times I’ve seen threads along the lines of “well, my previous question got deleted, I have no idea why, so let’s try this again…”
I really should be saving the mails I get for infractions so I can make a ‘best-of’ someday. the most recent was for something like ‘being aggressive against another player’ when I was generalizing the entire population’s TP habits.

Sorry to off-track.
T6 mats have been over-priced for a while now. ET are just the first to come back down to normal! I sell all the ones I find because I have no other use for them – if the lowest sell listing is at 16s, that’s what I get for it.

I didn’t realize specific exotics could be got from champ bags O.o I guess they said that much – I just didn’t pay attention cause I never have one drop, you know.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fallen_Adventurer%27s_Backpack
wiki says it can give: Impaler (Berserker), King’s Remembrance (Magi), Lord Taeres’s Shadow (Berserker), Monsoon (Magi), Song of the Temptress (Clerics), Super Hyperbeam Alpha (Berserker)
so far your theory holds true!
other items champ bags can drop that sound familiar: Guild Defender, Scepter of the Highborn, Occultist Flame (not specified which bag it comes from, but it’s in the gallery)
Checking the others I listed:
Defiant Blaze = chests from FotM, MF, chests in dungeons, random drop. clearly that’s where a lot of inscription-giving exotics come from, yet no Shaman’s
The Ugly Stick = MF, daily dragon chest, random drop. less clear, but still fairly common place to get exotics, no Rabid

would of been easier to just have TC give swiftness once and you can’t get it again from that cast. it’s mechanics are totally different from all other aoe buffs – even other buffs where you gain swiftness from running over a spot on the ground (I believe Symbol of Swiftness is what I’m referring to?)
TC is even worse than just not being stackable. let’s say you get swiftness from TC, then run over SoS 5 seconds later. the swiftness duration meter will reset to 100%, indicating you got more swiftness. but when hovering over it, it only shows 5s remaining.
I see no reason why TC is so special and requires special treatment. except, of course, because I love to yoink people with it.