Guild Wars 2

good numbers, maddoctor. I had just put together a comparison between my mf and pvp set (all exotics) and they show a similar difference (though my pvp isn’t berserkers). It’s totally relevant to this, so I’ll copy/paste it here (these are the totaled values in the hero panel):

well, here’s the comparison between my mf and pvp gear. you’ll notice my mf isn’t complete yet, and I do leave a tad of mf on my pvp. sometimes it’s too much sacrifice for that last 5%, and too easy to throw in 10% because the rest of it is nice. This is not including omnomnberry bar or any banner boosts, but does include maxed sigil of luck on mf gear.

_ ___________mf___________pvp________pvp-mf_________(pvp/mf-1)*100%
Power_______1909_________2097________188____________9.85
Weapon_dmg_1,080________1,080________0______________0
Cond_dmg____75__________135_________60_____________80
Precision_____1,742________1,822_________80____________4.59
Toughness____1,133________1,404________271____________23.9
Vitality_______1,127_______1,119_________-8_____________-0.7
Attack_______2,989________3,177________188____________6.29
Critical_%_____43_________47___________4______________9.3
Critical_dmg___33_________78___________45_____________24.59
Average_Attack_4,055______5,088_________1,033___________25.47
Armor________2,197______2,468_________271____________12.3
Defense_______1,064______1,064__________0_____________0
Health________17,192_____17,112_________-80___________-0.47
Healing________25________85___________60____________240
mf___________132________17___________-115__________-49.57
_____________luck sigil____fire sigil
_____________mf runes____divinity rune
for the Average attack I used this formula: (1-Crit%/100) * Attack + (Crit%/100) * Attack * (1.5 + Crit dmg)

Conclusions I see: mf gear provides 98.2% more “items” (better, maybe? iuno, the mechanics are besides the point), while requiring 25.47% more attacks to kill something, and can take only 80.69% as many hits.
As you can tell, my mf is pure glass cannon, while my pvp focuses on adding toughness and more dmg.
From these numbers, I would expect mf to find 232 “items” from killing 100 grubs in the same time as my pvp would find 147 “items” from killing 126 grubs.
sigil of fire would also make an impact, but it depends on mob density, and I have no idea how much damage it deals. I doubt it makes up that difference, though.

So, as far as taking a hit on how well I kill things and a leach on a group: mf absolutely impacts your usefulness. Is it worth it? yes.
Final advice: pvp gear when others depend on you, mf gear in your own time. mix it up if you can’t afford both.

Now, as far as ethics go and how I feel playing with a mf user: I wouldn’t care so long as they didn’t drag the team down. dying drags the team down far more than 33% less effect. If someone dies, that’s 40% of the team that is useless. Not to mention the likelihood of a second one dying when trying to rez. Skill is a major factor here. I would much rather a skillful mf user than high damage noob that doesn’t know what dodge is. I’ve run dungeons with people that later said they used full mf, and those were some of the quickest runs I’ve done. I’ve also been in dungeons with people using non-mf gear that we had to give up the dungeon because they kept dying.

lol, I agree with everyone.
It’s great fun when you’re 3/4 of the way through rezzing someone, and they wp away!
yeah: running for your life? don’t make it someone else’s problem. at the least, stick around and kill it or make sure they get away too.
it’s to everyone’s advantage to revive people during battle. The reviver gets experience, and the battle gets easier for them with you there. That said, if the battle is too demanding then it’s likely no one will have a chance to revive you. in that case, the best thing you can do is warp to a wp and run back. you or your corpse being there makes the enemies harder.
just don’t be a leach and do nothing and you’ll be happily thanked
as far as I’m aware: everything is individual. resource nodes are there and each person mines their own. anyone who helped kill the mob gets equal exp and loot. “helped kill” means damaging it ~5% of it’s health, but I don’t think this is absolute (fighting dragons, frequently much more than 20 people, and it seems like everyone gets loot)

There is one situation in which your participation will decrease someone else’s reward: dynamic events. however, no one is going to complain if you help out, they will probably thank you immensely. a 2nd person means it’s completed twice as quick, and at worst they would get like 15% less reward. Basically, there are 3 tiers for rewards on dynamic events: gold, silver, bronze. which tier you get is determined by your participation. Say you’re defending an area. If someone is just standing there, they’ll probably get bronze. If they’re there the whole time and killing everything: gold. If they kill half and you kill half, you both might get silver. I’m not even close to 100% sure on this, only that that’s how it sounded when reading the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_event)

it took me like 5 weeks to complete this (4 weeks to realize what was going on). I think it’s every week it remixes which servers you are up against, and also the locations. So this week you might be top/right/left/top, next week you might be right/left/top/right, after that might be left/top/right/left. Basically, it’s much more likely your server will have possession of key locations when it is near that side of the map. Now, your server will still have to get possession of it, so help out! and try back every couple hours.

most likely is you switched weapon sets on accident. you can have two sets of weapons equipped, and are switchable with a button-click (I’m not sure what the default is… I remapped mine to T). Anyways, if you have dagger/dagger on one and dagger/nothing on the other, the 4 and 5 key spells will go away if you switch to it.

I’ve also heard it’s the mf you have when the mob dies, not when you pick it up. now that you mention it, I would expect the same to apply to any chest that mf would apply to (if it does apply to these).

When I think of “scavenger hunt” and the types of things in GW2, I would venture that they also call making a Legendary item a “scavenger hunt”.
When they do make a scavenger hunt for a legendary precursor, it’ll probably be something like this:
250 tokens from any 4 dungeons = gift of dungeons
4 unique tokens, location found using clues, in random areas of the map, after a hard hard jump puzzle (I’m picturing labrinth-type, where there isn’t just 1 path to follow) = gift of jumping
gift of gems is purchased from gem store for 5,000 gems
gift of dungeons + gift of jumping + gift of gems + regular exotic item of that type = precursor

But how much do they really fix on the PC side? It seems all of the fixes I’ve heard of them doing are with game content, not bugs in the application. All the bugs on the mac application probably stem from the different ways macs and PCs handle applications.

It gets really tiring when people say things like “they didn’t have to release it on the mac in the first place”. Sure, they didn’t, and they aren’t obligated to. But they also aren’t obligated to make any PC updates or world events or have 100% uptime or ban bots or let you keep all your in-game possessions every time you log out. Not one thing they do is required.
Everything goes back to making money – they make money if they can supply a good product. If they don’t have a good product, people don’t pay them. lack of updates and a poorly functioning platform is not a good product.
That said, I have relatively few complaints about the mac version. But I do know lots of other people do have problems that need to be addressed.
Of course, when I say “need”, I mean “If they want to have people continue to play and buy gems with money and recommend it to friends and make any additional sales”

I use wildcode’s key combo. it saves to the desktop and you can crop it later if need be.
I remapped shift to interact, and it does sometimes get in the way when taking a screenshot. I’m not too distraught over it

After the wintersday update I had lower fps as well. went from 40 normally to about 16. no changing of any settings fixed this. Then I realized it was only around 16 when I was facing the new snow globe mystic forge. If I was facing away from it, I got normal fps.
Might this be the issue?
Did you play it on bootcamp on your mac before now?
What are the graphics set to? try turning them down, it might of defaulted to too high.

I think the video card is probably the most limiting thing when it comes to MBP and iMacs, I suggest getting the best one of those possible, especially as they can’t really be upgraded later.
I can also tell you that I play on a late 2010 Mac Pro with upgraded graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 5870) and GW2 looks marvelous My PC friends that play are even impressed. On high settings, I usually get ~40 fps except in zerg battles in WvW

I found one like these on the south side of fields of ruin. It was funny to run up a mountain range, then there was endless ocean. Look on map and it says there’s solid continent
To get there: event neat Hautclaire Vale, go up the building and just keep going up the mountain side. I was trying to get to the vista south of Stronghold of Ebonhawke :P Careful where you walk, you will fall through a lot of it, resulting in dead.

I also found a micro one of these in the Volcanic Fractal. Just after the shaman jumps, we were heading along the path to the flying shaman. the first turn to the right, the inside corner has fake walls you can walk through. nothing to find, but it was funny. I found it when I Point Blank Shot a bat through the wall. We were shocked the bat disappeared.

It limits you to about 6 sales every minute. the most puppied up method to tell you you reached the limit (by making it seem like a bug), but that’s what’s going on. As vol said: go get a glass of water then come back and sell more.

It has always irked me they did it this way. We all think they want everyone to buy gems with money, yet discourage it in the gem to gold conversion. Personally, when I see that it costs 1.8g to buy 100 gems, but 100 gems will only get you 1.3g, I am filled with a desire to go find an alternate source of gold that pays full conversion value. The fact that gold sellers give you like 10x more gold has nothing to do with it, it’s that I feel cheated out of the difference between these rates.
Now, I haven’t actually bought gold with $, I’m just saying what I would do if the time ever came. The difference in buying and selling gems just makes me not want to deal through it. If they were the same exchange rate, I wouldn’t feel cheated by them – it just feels like the gold sellers are more legitimate and not trying to rip you off.

Maybe have an option to buy gold directly with $ at the gold→gem rate? So if $10 would get you 800 gems, and 1.8g gets you 100 gems, then $10 would get you 14.4g, which you could then use to buy 800 gems if you so desired.

I found one after I looked for it for a while (on the ~5th trip through the whole place). I found mine in a bush on the side of the earth area going up to it’s jump puzzle. Really the only way to find it is to be standing on top of it and an INTERACT button pops up.
It was fun to charge it due to anticipation (I had already done all of the puzzles before even knowing the key existed). Then I posted it to my guild and asked if they wanted to try a boss they haven’t done before. They were very blown away by the idea and rushed to the reactor. fairly easy boss, not great rewards, but it does give you an achievement.
the wiki has several suggested locations. If it’s not in any of those, I’d just try again later (I tried once per day).

I love when I see someone trying to manipulate the market and I undercut them
I saw some expensive crafting components on the TP: 1 listing by 1 person for like 50 of them for 60s (at least 3 times what it cost to make them). I went and made a dozen and listed them for 40s They sold within a couple hours and now the price is back around 20s

We’ve been told frequently that magic find does not affect chests.
I’m not so sure this is true in the case of the chests after the boss of each fractal.
At first I thought it was diminishing returns at higher level fractals, then I realized it was because I was switching to pvp gear for them.
I swear, with pvp gear I get pure greens from these chests with 1 rare every other fractal run (1 in 6 chests). with ~150% mf, I seem to average 1 rare per chest.
I know 150% would at best only increase the odds from 1 in 6 to 1 in 2.4, but that’s what I’ve observed!
Has anyone else seen this?
If this is true, I wonder when it checks it? Could you beat the boss with pvp gear, then switch to mf gear before opening the chest?
I’ll try to do some runs and get harder numbers, but it will take time.

np! I’ve been wondering the same thing for a while, so I’m glad I answered it myself
One last thing:
As you add more mf, it has diminishing returns. I’m not talking about hidden game mechanics (I don’t know about that), I’m talking about math statistics. Basically, you have to remember that you have a base 100% mf (at +0% mf, you find 100% of the items you find)
if you add 50% mf, that adds half again as much items as you found before that (100 to 150)
if you add another 50% mf, that only adds 1/3 as much items as you found before that (150 to 200)
So the first few additions to mf you add make a bigger difference than the last few.

Deathful Dante.1239:

Undercutting at all doesn’t make sense in GW2 tp. You bring the price down, next time you sell it you will sell it lower.
Someone said once that you do not need to undercut because the last guy who listed at that is the one who gets the sale first for that price. Is this wrong ANet?

but anyways, I never undercut, I prefer to keep selling high than selling fast. Everything sells within one day anyways…

I want to make the nature of this trading post clear:
player A posts an ecto for 30s
player B posts an ecto for 29s99c
player C places an instant buy for an ecto, they pay 29s99c to player B
player A’s ecto is still on the TP

A different situation:
player A posts an ecto for 30s
player B posts an ecto for 30s
player C places an instant buy for an ecto, they pay 30s to player A
player B’s ecto is still on the TP

not undercutting /is/ easier (just click check box and submit), but you won’t sell your item as quickly. you would need to wait until all of the current items at that price are sold before yours is sold. Now, that usually does happen quickly with highly fluid items. But let’s say you’re trying to sell something less fluid; maybe precursor? Not a whole people buying those at the sell order prices, so if yours is 4th in line to sell at that price, it may be a couple days/weeks/months, and someone may come in at 1c lower /after/ you post yours, so yours may never sell if the price goes down.

I think a /stuck command, which restarts you at the last checkpoint in the downed state, would help almost all of these. then again, we’d probably just complain that we were then forced to use it…

So that’s what happens!
I’ve been recently noticing this a lot, but I didn’t realize it was when I was trying to pick things up.
The great part about how bag this bug is that you run in a straight line, regardless of where you change the direction you run

I agree she might not have keys when she re-opens. But I also think her inventory is going to drastically change. Otherwise they would of just taken keys off her and left everything else there.
I did the same as Unspecified. only instead I spent about 75g on 84 trinkets and got 1,120 crates (56,000 commendations), which should of got me 196 keys (not counting more keys from chests). Right now I’m wishing I’d kept the trinkets instead. I started buying them constantly when they were at 1.5g, then continued when they went down to 70s, then kept going when they went back up to 90s. probably about 90s on average. It was everything I had, even cashed in saved ectos and every mat. Then went to spend them and was taken aback by what I at first thought was a bug.

I want to see someone corner the ecto market
spend 100,000 gold to buy every ecto in the game, raising the price to 3g each, then eventually sell for 1,000,000 gold.
man, that would puppy up the economy. every high level rare and exotic would also sky rocket in price.

I wonder: when they ban a bot, do they also keep track of that bots sending habits and ban them or remove the loot?
like if a bot collected 10,000 armored scales, sent them to another account owned by the same person, then got banned.
I’ve been thinking for a little while now that Anet shouldn’t be so focused on bots, but should also do sting operations or something on the accounts that sell the stuff the bots collect. I bet the account that sends out the gold holds a lot more of that person’s wealth than the bot account they used to get it. Once it’s not profitable for them to run bots, they’ll stop.

doesn’t gaining a level (well, skill point) have an affect on the guys around you? like it knocks them back or stuns them or something? might interrupt you, but would also help the battle.

it also separates 2-8, 10-18, 20-28, etc. into separate dailies. (you could get 3 chests for doing a level in each bracket.
I’m not sure how many brackets there are. could be infinite (if you can get there, they will reward)

1) When Eagle Eye is used, it increases the longbow range. This increased range is not included when auto attack is used. Basically, if you’re further away than normal range but within range if Eagle Eye is used, auto attack does not work and you have to keep pressing attack.

1.1) Does Eagle Eye also affect short bow? Maybe it isn’t supposed to but does anyways? Either way, this same bug also seems to apply to short bows (near range limit and auto attack stops working. It also has the red bar under the skills to say the target is out of range for that skill, yet the arrows hit with damage displayed anyways)

2) Thunderclap says it has a range of 900. However, it’s range is effectively unlimited (I’ve tested it to be at least 3,000 estimated). As long as you have the target selected, it will hit. It gets fun with those harpies in fractals of the mist after they knock you off the platform (‘now who has the last laugh’ sort of thing)

3) Signet of the Hunt’s boon icon still says 10%

Other bugs I’ve noticed:
1) Uncategorized fractal in fractals of the mist, the electric stairway where the bars come down the stairs at you. their area of effect does not nearly or reliably match their visual location. sometimes you’ll move behind one, easily 500 away, and it’ll down you. Other times you can walk through one and nothing happens.

2) Uncategorized fractal in fractals of the mist, after killing Old Tom, you can go back the way you came, go up and right up the ramp directly next to the boulder blocking your path. It’s possible to teleport through this boulder. Not sure how, but something about an Engineer placing a turret. Lets you skip the second group of harpies.

3) Winter Wonderland (Wintersday jumping puzzle). I didn’t do it yet today, and when I did finish it and claim the chest, it opened but nothing came out (no loot). I tried running it again and got 3 Winterday Gifts, so me opening it the first time counted for the daily despite no reward.

4) I’m disappointed with how easy the Fire Elemental in Metrica Province has become. It seems each patch makes it easier. How many other final bosses can be killed easily with 2 people? and what’s more: where the sole job of one of them is just to stop him from healing while you run back! I do like the delay on it’s attacks, just more health please (maybe 3-5 times as much?)

report for botting!
how likely is it that an actual person is sitting there doing nothing?

huh. didn’t know they were that similar of a recipe until now. glad I didn’t puppy up when I made mine; that would be too easy to do and I was not paying /that/ close of attention.
I doubt you could get a refund, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

the only thing better I’ve ever got from the mystic forge was a named exotic (like Nikka’s) from 4 non-named exotics (like explorer’s)

I’m not sure how to read that ratio. do you mean you got 7 ecto for every 8 salvages? so 80 rares = 70 ecto?

One more point: sure, it’s good to get the highest price. But let’s consider a different example:
you’re in the business of buying crafting materials and selling the crafted item.
You spend 1g on your materials and see that you can sell the crafted items for 2g.

Now, if you list it at 2g, it might take an hour for that sale to complete. You would make 1g in 1 hour.
If you list it at 1.5g, that sale will go through in 10 seconds. You’ve just made 0.5g in 10 seconds.

Now you get to buy 1.5g worth of crafting materials, make the items, and sell them for the greatly discounted price of 2.25g instead of 1c undercut price of 4g, which will again go through in 10 seconds.
1.25g profit in 20 seconds instead of 3g profit in 2 hours.
MUCH higher profit in the same time (1.25g/20sec = 225g/hour)

To give my point of view, I’ll give a recent real life example:
I saw that the Snowflake ori trinkets were underpriced compared to other exotic trinkets (MF them into commendations). At the time, there were sell orders for 2.5g and buy orders for 15s (yes, 15 SILVER).
I placed buy orders for 10 of them at 16s and 1 of them at 1.5g
the 1.5g buy order would go through almost instantly (wait a few minutes later, then place a new one). the 16s buy orders? NOT ONE
prices kept going up, pretty soon buy orders were around 70s.
again, I placed several buy orders at 71s, and 1 at 90s. The 90s would again go through almost instantly and only a couple of the 71s would go through.

John Smith is right: people absolutely look at the spread and if there is one that’s way out there, they will seize on it.
I’ve had times when I was looking to sell lots of 1 crafting material, saw a sell order for half of the next lowest, bought it, then sold everything for just below the new lowest sell order. This is what the OP said is the problem: but that guy actually sold his, and he wouldn’t of if it wasn’t so underpriced (I would of undercut him instead)

I only wish it was easier to switch between the sell screen and browsing items screen, to make this research easierly I made up that word available

yeah, I realized what Gisei said maybe 3 weeks ago. Was a bit annoying when I found that out, but not a huge deal (sold some items I wouldn’t of, lost out on maybe 90c of profit :P). I’d prefer if they incorporated the listing fee into it. it’s even phrase “projected profit”, not “how much you’ll be given if it sells”. profit would take the listing fee into account!

PowerCat.5738:

Galorian.1376:

For a rare (yellow) with BLSK
25% to get 1 ecto
25% to get 2 ectos
25% to get 3 ectos
25% to get 0 ecto

Huh? I don’t think you have an equal change to get 3 ectos than 1.

yeah, from my experience, I’d say the odds are closer to:
20% to get 0
40% to get 1
30% to get 2
20% to get 3

Are there better odds for salvaging exotics? I do seem to get more more often from exotics. like maybe 10/30/30/30?

ohhh, 500k. I thought for a sec these were the same amounts as that monthly achievement a few months ago. but that one was 100k. I was going to suggest crafting to get it (that’s how I met the 100k one), but I doubt you can get 500k experience from crafting (at least not cheaply… you could always spend like 200g and get 4 crafts to level 400. It might not even require 4 – but I would bet at least 2)

On a mac you can press command + option + control + 8 at the same time and it will invert all the colors on your screen (white becomes black, violet becomes yellow, red becomes green, etc.)
This changes gw2 forums from black text on white to white text on black. Much easier on the eyes
Press that same key combo again to revert back to normal

edit: several of those symbols didn’t appear… so words instead!

eh… them getting free ecto is a bad thing. But you should instead look at this as an opportunity to invest in ecto you know it’s artificially low right now, and will go up again soon.
also, now is probably a good time to sell excess over-priced snowflakes and mithril

If only I started buying these when they first came out at like 10c each. I did buy a couple stacks at 40c each. I don’t have nearly as much gold as my investing desire needs!

I would love to sell a lemon when that guy was buying them for 600g

There are like 9 different fractals. When you start the dungeon, it picks a random one and you play through it. You then get rewards, and it takes you to a different random one (you will never play 2 of the same fractals in the same run through). rewards, takes you to a different random one. So that’s 3 fractals.
Now, if you’re on an odd number level (1, 3, 5, 7, etc.), it will take you back to the starting area but this time on level 2. from here you can leave or start level 2.
If you’re on an even number level (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.), it will take you to the maw fractal with the giant tentacle boss (4th fractal). when you beat it, you get another chest of rewards. The first time you beat this fractal each day, you also get a daily fractals chest which contains more fractal relics, pristine fractal relic (if level 10+, I think it’s a bag of coins if not), and a chance of getting an ascended ring (if level 10+).
I’m guessing you have about a 1 in 4 chance of getting an ascended ring from daily.
In a recent patch they added the pristine fractal relic. take 10 of those to the shop in the fractal starting area to buy any ascended ring you want.

this would require people to buy BL salvage kits. why would Anet not like that?
Also, from salvaging high level rare items, I was under the impression you get like 1 ecto on average?

Orr and frostgorge have lots of mobs that drop T6 materials.
and those vendor sales do add up quickly. 1.25s x 80 junk items = 1g
If you’re looking to get high income and are just farming (not in a dungeon), I recommend using mf gear. You don’t kill as well with it, but what you should statistically find more than makes up for that deficit.

I’m 99.99% sure mf makes no impression on items you get from map completion (I’ve read time and again it also makes no difference on chests)
yes, you get 2x as much of better loot. I was referring to how much loot you get that’s actually worth your time.
I just made a post elsewhere regarding mf and it’s usefulness. I’ll copy/paste it here:

well, here’s the comparison between my mf and pvp gear. you’ll notice my mf isn’t complete yet, and I do leave a tad of mf on my pvp. sometimes it’s too much sacrifice for that last 5%, and too easy to throw in 10% because the rest of it is nice. This is not including omnomnberry bar or any banner boosts, but does include maxed sigil of luck on mf gear.

_ ___________mf___________pvp________pvp-mf_________(pvp/mf-1)*100%
Power_______1909_________2097________188____________9.85
Weapon_dmg_1,080________1,080________0______________0
Cond_dmg____75__________135_________60_____________80
Precision_____1,742________1,822_________80____________4.59
Toughness____1,133________1,404________271____________23.9
Vitality_______1,127_______1,119_________-8_____________-0.7
Attack_______2,989________3,177________188____________6.29
Critical_%_____43_________47___________4______________9.3
Critical_dmg___33_________78___________45_____________24.59
Average_Attack_4,055______5,088_________1,033___________25.47
Armor________2,197______2,468_________271____________12.3
Defense_______1,064______1,064__________0_____________0
Health________17,192_____17,112_________-80___________-0.47
Healing________25________85___________60____________240
mf___________132________17___________-115__________-49.57
_____________luck sigil____fire sigil
_____________mf runes____divinity rune
for the Average attack I used this formula: (1-Crit%/100) * Attack + (Crit%/100) * Attack * (1.5 + Crit dmg)

Conclusions I see: mf gear provides 98.2% more “items” (better, maybe? iuno, the mechanics are besides the point), while requiring 25.47% more attacks to kill something, and can take only 80.69% as many hits.
As you can tell, my mf is pure glass cannon, while my pvp focuses on adding toughness and more dmg.
From these numbers, I would expect mf to find 232 “items” from killing 100 grubs in the same time as my pvp would find 147 “items” from killing 126 grubs.
sigil of fire would also make an impact, but it depends on mob density, and I have no idea how much damage it deals. I doubt it makes up that difference, though.

So, as far as taking a hit on how well I kill things and a leach on a group: mf absolutely impacts your usefulness. Is it worth it? yes.
Final advice: pvp gear when others depend on you, mf gear in your own time. mix it up if you can’t afford both.

well, here’s the comparison between my mf and pvp gear. you’ll notice my mf isn’t complete yet, and I do leave a tad of mf on my pvp. sometimes it’s too much sacrifice for that last 5%, and too easy to throw in 10% because the rest of it is nice. This is not including omnomnberry bar or any banner boosts, but does include maxed sigil of luck on mf gear.

_ ___________mf___________pvp________pvp-mf_________(pvp/mf-1)*100%
Power_______1909_________2097________188____________9.85
Weapon_dmg_1,080________1,080________0______________0
Cond_dmg____75__________135_________60_____________80
Precision_____1,742________1,822_________80____________4.59
Toughness____1,133________1,404________271____________23.9
Vitality_______1,127_______1,119_________-8_____________-0.7
Attack_______2,989________3,177________188____________6.29
Critical_%_____43_________47___________4______________9.3
Critical_dmg___33_________78___________45_____________24.59
Average_Attack_4,055______5,088_________1,033___________25.47
Armor________2,197______2,468_________271____________12.3
Defense_______1,064______1,064__________0_____________0
Health________17,192_____17,112_________-80___________-0.47
Healing________25________85___________60____________240
mf___________132________17___________-115__________-49.57
_____________luck sigil____fire sigil
_____________mf runes____divinity rune
for the Average attack I used this formula: (1-Crit%/100) * Attack + (Crit%/100) * Attack * (1.5 + Crit dmg)

Conclusions I see: mf gear provides 98.2% more “items” (better, maybe? iuno, the mechanics are besides the point), while requiring 25.47% more attacks to kill something, and can take only 80.69% as many hits.
As you can tell, my mf is pure glass cannon, while my pvp focuses on adding toughness and more dmg.
From these numbers, I would expect mf to find 232 “items” from killing 100 grubs in the same time as my pvp would find 147 “items” from killing 126 grubs.
sigil of fire would also make an impact, but it depends on mob density, and I have no idea how much damage it deals. I doubt it makes up that difference, though.

So, as far as taking a hit on how well I kill things and a leach on a group: mf absolutely impacts your usefulness. Is it worth it? yes.
Final advice: pvp gear when others depend on you, mf gear in your own time. mix it up if you can’t afford both.

edit: gahhh tabs don’t work
edit: gahhh spaces don’t work either!
edit: underscore kinda big… resizing

the difference between mf gear and other is only like 300 total stat points out of like 3000 (this is because you have a LOT of base stat points). sure, this means you are 90% as effective, but if you get 2x as much loot, it’s a fair trade-off.
that said, I still switch to pvp gear in tough situations

I usually find they aggro the strongest closest person. As a ranger, I usually draw aggro when I get close and deal a lot of damage. That part of the code is probably something like aggro_chance=damage/distance. I’m sure life and toughness play into it too, but I’m not sure how. It’s also puzzling how they change aggro targets, seemingly randomly.

I would like to see some sort of AI update to account for usefulness. Like if a boss is chasing someone for 10 minutes and unable to hit them, they change targets to someone they actually can hit.

hindered, yes. but going from 3000 to 2800 is not a big difference. might make you 93% as survivable. so instead of dead in 5 hits, you’re dead in 4.64 hits. Sure, it’s something, but not something to worry about. If you find 2x as much stuff but kill 93% as much of it, it’s clear which is more profitable. (I use my pvp set pretty much only for pvp, wvw, and high level fractals. everything else I’ve played is ez either way)

I should do an effectivity comparison between my mf and pvp sets… it would be good to get hard numbers. I’ll reply again when I get home and add up the numbers

“It will be in the game during Wintersday.”
DURING
any normal person would translate that as “throughout”, hence all of the misquoting I’ve seen. Their legal department no doubt translates that as “at some point in time but not the entire time” (for example: the last 10 minutes of Jan 3rd?).

As a game developer myself, I can offer this suggestion: On release of new content, the price is often inflated because there is an expected surge of interest and buying. Then, when activity goes down, they offer a ‘sale’ to the real price to increase the buying.
Meaning: remove the items-for-keys cheaper price at first so people buy keys with money for the updated chests, then add it back once excitement over it slows.
Guess they didn’t realize how stealthily they did this; everyone went and bought a bunch of commendations instead of gems without knowing they couldn’t be used.

Then again, they could just be of the opinion that items-for-keys was a bad idea and are removing it completely. But if this was the case, they would just remove keys from Lyns, not all of Lyns. It is because of this that I believe they are not /just/ removing keys – they are likely adding wintersday items. (they might still remove keys, but I would bet they have other plans for Lyns). There needs to be some sort of continuously needed item bought with commendations, otherwise that entire feature would be useless

physically being there is not the same as being useful.