Guild Wars 2

raises hand I have a question:

Would giving players access to volume of sales information lead to better decision making and a more ideal marketplace?

It seems we’re operating in the dark quite a bit more that people realize if entire stocks are rotating in the space of a day.

I deal in mithril ore (that is to say I dig it up then sell it) and I’ve seen that I can price above the first several hundred to low-thousands of the lowest sale offers and still make my sale within an hour. Even then the lowest offer is usually right back where it was when I posted mine by the time I pick up my coin. The volume that gets traded must be staggering.

BTW whan people say the chance is low, words like “infintesimal”, “not in your lifetime” and “farm the unfarmable” come into play depending on which Order you’re with…

There’s another 10 for the monthly, so while it would be bad, it’s not quite that bad.

On the other hand I don’t see any reason those lodestone would somehow not stack with normal ones so it could be a way of supplimenting and accelerating our current acquisition strategies…

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Lindsey stated that she was actively working on it.
Please try again.
Source

Yeah, and then the boss showed up and driectly countermanded that statement, and then back pedaled from that statement leaving us with, in short, “people are thinking real hard about it, but we’re not having actual meetings yet”

I’m seeing more and more signs that Magic Find does affect the group as a whole, and that 3-4 people with magic find grouped together farming lodestones are vastly more effectively than those same 3-4 working together ungrouped.

Heinel.6548:

I wouldn’t trait vengeful on a built where you only get indirect 3sec retaliations. It’s unlikely you’ll get hit much, if at all, in the 3/4 of a second extra duration on them. On the other hand, spike builds could use unscathed contender for a rather huge boost on your burst, especially if you open with blindness, or the ranged skills like sword 3 and torch 4 and 5, or you stand behind another melee and take advantage of the slightly longer range on sword attacks.

Good points. I’m gonna take my Archon out to WvW today to refine it. I’ll run Unscathed Contender and see how it feels.

I do want to get a more definite go-to choice for the Virtues Master slot.

Oh, a quick note for players on a budget (maybe everybody knows this, but I just noticed it) – If you want to use the same main hand in both weapon set-ups you can just leave the main hand slot blank in set-up 2 and clicking swap will only swap the offhand. If you want to try sword/torch and sword/shield you only need one sword and so you will only need 1 Sigil of Generosity (on the sword) to have your condition-transfer in both modes.

That’s my sense too. They still have value, just any player with even a modicum of patience knows they have a definite and reliable way to get them rather than being purely at the mercy of RNG or TP purchases.

Amins.3710:

Sure, you guys keep thinking your 66-75% Crit Dmg is good. I’ll keep thinking my 101-106% is better.

Out of curiousity, what’s your crit chance?

And as for Blocking… my 3.2k attack is only proven better w/ the & 20+ stacks of might from blocking.

Also interesting. How is that comming about?

akamon.2769:

hey Nike, hah, you put this guide up fast! and sounds pretty interesting from first glance.

I’d been playing something very close to it for a long time now, so it was mostly gathering text and spelling out some of the synergies.

i’m used to a shout heavy Guardian, even with different builds so i’ve been dabbling here and there (theoretically only atm) on a build that utilizes the variety of utilities the Guard has.

In some respects this build is a direct rebutal to shouts. Everybody uses them in the heavy armor crowd, and it easy to get wrapped up in the lure of 6x runes of the soldier. The recently introduced Sigil of Generosity is just so good on a high crit hit build that you really can ignore conditions, which lets you get away from shouts/Solider and explore other builds without feeling like you forgot your pants that morning.

Thats really one of the key synergies at work here – high crit/Empowered Might is sort of an obvious pattern the Devs intended, and the behavior of the 3 sword buttons and Right-Handed Strength obvious compliments it, but Sigil of Generosity is something new that ties into that engine beautifully.

are you flexible on WoR and PF? PF i love. WoR seems more situational for me and when running WvW, it’s godsend, but i wouldn’t want to have it on my bar when running small strike missions and run into another small group.

I have 4 guardians – I tend to be flexible about anything the class has to offer, and being able to change traits and utilities in the field is a strength of the game not to be ignored, ever. The list of Utilities above is what I carry walking into an unknown, or when dealing with stuff that just. doesn’t. scare. me. If I’m about to pound Old Tom there is a whole different spread I’ll pull out that pretty much neutralizes his green projectiles. If I’m between obvious conflicts in WvW, Bane Signet becomes Retreat just to cut down on the slog . If you don’t feel like you need to spoil somebody’s day with 2 second of ranged faceplant, Retreat is a better all around skill in that slot.

am sure you’ve thought of this already, but i am a huge fan of indominable courage (securing stomps is so nice) or absolute resolution, especially with your slightly added healing power. so i would swap that with Master of Consecrations depending on the situation. and of course, adjust your bar accordingly.

Loading 20 Honor/20 Virtues is actually the most recent iteration of my main Guardian – I’d run 30/10 for a long time with Battle Presence to maintain a trickle of healing to nearby allies… but the bugs in that trait and occasionally jumping out of my skin when I mistook a red “Immune” for a red name plate finally drove me to give it up. As such the master virtues slot is another one that like button 6 I’d consider a toolbox- I listed Vengeance as my first choice, but the option to ground cast consecrations and the various enhanced Virtue effects may prove more desirable. Even then I’d keep Master of Consecrations as pound for pound its just a very strong choice – 20% cooldown is a common enough reward for a slot, but cooldown and enhanced duration together is a sweet deal (if you aren’t bound and determined to load shouts ). Or maybe I just find myself in the middle of things that need a good, long Purging Flames more often than most.

If you’re more comfortable with Indomitable Courage, by all means, slot that – Its just another uptick to Renewed Focus’ potential. But its a defensive choice rather than an offensive one, so I’d shy away from it unless its been proven that my side is losing the scenario. I’d rather die running the more aggressive set and determine my limits for next time than play it safe the first time out and never know if I needed that extra cushion or not.

not sure if i missed this – what’s your second weapon set?

Amusingly I run sword/shield in the alternate position, using Generosity/Water for those “oh kitty-litter!” moments when defense really IS the better part of valor .

But I do hear the siren call of Greatsword some days. Greatsword is what sold me on the class. So it was a bit of a shock to find out sword/torch played so well.

also, do you feel at all lacking in toughness/armor?

No. Not at all. I get a little Toughness from mix and matched jewelry, but the native survivability of Guardians is really impressive. Now, compared to my tankier guardian I do have a few more hair-rasing narrow escapes… slowly swapping virtures for blinds, heal/regen, or Aegis/protection, then scraping by on 3 seconds of immortality before re-cashing the second set, all to buy precious moments until… Oh, hello Signet of Resolve. Bam! This fight is Mine.

I’m playing it now, and I enjoy it .

I have 4 guardians of various levels and deliberately seperate weapon sets and roles, so I do tinker with totally different trait-lines. I like guardians a lot in all their capacities, I just wanted to share this one. I happen to like agressive support in most games (Nike is my screenname because my mains try to deliver victory unto their allies)

Bane signet IS an experiment. In the last few days its allowed me to mangle a few D/D elemetals and Thieves in WvW. I generally juggle that slot all the time – hence the toolbox comment. I had tried a more commited consecrations layout, but found Santuary to be a bit erratic and Hallowed Ground to be too situational to carry regularly. Since I already had Signet Mastery for self heals I was poking around with SIgnet options and found one that was better in practice than on paper – or at least more interesting .

That said, I am interested in specific suggestions for improvment.

“Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%. "
Hmm, survivability or damage?

“Virtue of Courage is recharged when you rally.”
Hmm, survivability or damage?

“Gain might when you block attacks.”
Damage, yes, but for BLOCKING.

These things are not Optional. You MUST take survivability effects on the 5’s when you go down Valor.

5% of Toughness converted to a damage stat rewards you for… stacking Toughness. And costs you a skill slot that could have gone directly towards killing. When you could have geared for 100% of a damging stat in the first place.

Yes, its not monomanically, crippingly without damage options, they’re just predicated on a defensive base.

If you’re gonna try to compete with the other melee damage dogs, don’t do it with one arm tied behind your back.

Your goal outside of direct beat-down is to build and maintain 6-8 stacks of might on yourself and all nearby allies with fast, high crit chance attacks (around 70% on your sword attacks). Your Empowered Might and activated Virtue of Justice boons last for 9 seconds (+60% might duration, +20% all boon durations), so stacking them is a lot easier than it sounds. Your sword auto-attack will do a decent job of this by itself, but buttons 3 and 5 are amazing. Button 4 and purging flames give you AoE burning options, but do not overlook that button 4 can be re-tapped for a ranged attack and button 5 has more reach than your melee skills – it’s often useful to stand in or behind your Wall of Reflection and use torch skills to keep attacking and sustaining your Might generation

Like any Radiance build, using your Virtue of Justice at the right time is key. You want to get off both 5 and 3 early. Both are huge multi-hit skills which will trigger the kitten burn and almost certainly proc Empowered Might. Then the determination has to be made do you need AoE blindness/Might/Retaliation now-or-later. Remember VoJ resets on every kill, but the 3 stacks of Might lasts 9 seconds, so a kill with the virtue not on cooldown is group-wide Might wasted.

Because of the high crit rate you are going to have Vigor. Lots of it. Do not be shy about dodging for your own safety or to heal yourself and anybody around you. OTOH you are NOT a bunker. You kill things and you help other people kill things. Guardians are very survivable right out of the box, but aside from the extra boons associated with cashing in your Virtues (and resetting them with your elite) your defensive options are not as deep or layered as many Guardian builds.

While your Signet of Resolve and Purging Flames give you some condition removal at a distance (or while fleeing – hey, it happens), while engaged you should have no difficulties with conditions – the Sigil of Generosity will move them off you and on to your target so fast you may never even notice you had them, proving it is indeed better to give than to receive.

Bane signet’s passive is directly useful (moar damage!), but it’s activated effect is excellent for breaking tempo or turning an enemy’s clever escape strategy into a bit of a clown act. It has range, giving you a hidden threat that may be overlooked from a Guardian showing only melee weapons. Slot 6 is a toolbox though; you can switch to other Signets or Consecrations and still benefit from -20% cooldowns as needed.

Your consecrations have shorter cooldowns and extended durations – while you can shut down ranged attacks on yourself you can also drop Wall of Reflection before teleporting in with button 2, creating a solid position for your ranged teammates to fire from while you close to spread the burn and build Might stacks.

Your Virtues are laden with AoE buffs and give you retaliation (extended by Vengeful). Use them. Use them often. You have a full reset with your Elite, and you can cast your remaining virtues during the your elite’s 3 second channel, making sure you’ve milked every second of retaliation out of them before restocking the whole array.

The Archon

First, a quick note about the name – this build is an aggressive support build, devoted to bringing out the best in a team if you define “best” as “we’re still alive and they are all dead now – wow, that was quick…” The name is an homage to the truly ancient Electronic Arts game “Archon” where the player was the mastermind commanding an army of fantastical creatures, using strategy and reflexes to get the very best out of each member of his army. It also plays on the angelic themes that linger in the Guardian profession and are rooted in the Paragons who are the in-game source of Guardian traditions. Enough flowery language – on with the killin’!

Traits
0/30/10/20/10

Primary Trait set-up

Radiance:
Justice is Blind – When activating Virtue of Justice, nearby foes are blinded.
Renewed Justice – Virtue of Justice is renewed when you kill a foe.
Radiant Power – +10% damage to foes inflicted with any condition.

Radiance Adept: II Signet Mastery (-20% cooldown on signets)
Radiance Master: X Powerful Blades ( +5% sword damage)
Radiance Grandmaster: XI Right-Hand Strength ( +15% sword crit chance)

Valor:
Valorous Defense – Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%.

Valor Adept: VI Retributive Armor (~60 precision).

Honor:
Vigorous Precision – Gain 5 seconds of vigor when you deliver a critical hit. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.
Selfless Daring – The end of your dodge roll heals nearby allies.

Honor Adept: I Wrathful Spirit (Aegis gives retaliation when it ends)
Honor Master: VIII Empowering Might (allies gain might for 5s on critical hits)

Virtues:
Inspired Virtue – Virtues now also apply the following boons: Justice/might, Resolve/regeneration, Courage/protection

Virtues Adept: VI Master of Consecrations (Consecrations recharge 20% faster and last longer)

Weapon Set 1: Sword and Torch
Sigil of Generosity/Sigil of Accuracy

Heal Skill: Signet of Resolve
Button 7: “Retreat!” #
Button 8: Purging Flames
Button 9: Wall of Reflection
Button 0: Renewed Focus

1. this slot changes frequently as circumstances dictate

Armor: Rampager (or Koss)
Runes: 2x Hoelbrak, 2x of Fire, 2x Strength (x2 Pirate an acceptable substitute on a budget)

Jewelry: Mixed Magi or Clerics as available. Favor Emeralds when upgrading fractal drops.

Serious as a heart attack: why do people put 30 points in the tank line and expect to be primary damage dealers?

I’m preping an article to post on my 0/30/0/20/20 “Wipe them out. All of them.” build, and I’ll tell you what shouldn’t be a secret:

You do not have thirty points to spare on defense (Valor) if you want to kill things at top speeds.

Vorch.2985:

For real…rather than seeing cautious optimism or mild pessimism, a lot of posts are down right negative with out any constructivism.

Treat that as a sign lots of the millions of boxes sold are in the hands of players who have used up all the one-use story content, have not found the endless repetition of PvP and WvWvW to their liking, and are disgusted at the unmitigated Grind-o-rama required to pursue most of the endgame cosmetic goals (100-350 lodestones in many, many cases).

If the final crown vendor list includes the 7 Lodestones even at 10 crowns a pop, this game has legs for me. If ANet thinks it clever to have me out farming 250 Charged Lodestones over the course of 600 hours of mind-numbing boredom, well, there are other ways to spend my time that will never lead me to browse the gem store during the quiet gaps.

I like where they are going with the ideas in the future, but right now the endgame can be agonizingly grindy if I’m not in the mood to pug fractals that day.

I also have to point out this new “crowns” currency is nothing more than duplicate Mystic Coins…

…minus the abject foolishness of Mystic Coins not having been account bound on day 1.

Not to be mean, it’s a cheerful video and all, but at the end the phrase~

“Sumarizes in detail”

~is getting added to my permanent list of oxymorons.

I thought that too at first – except there is a OoW spear AND polearm.

The underwater hafted weapons for OoW (trident/spear) have the same heel cap, while the OoW polearm shares a heel design with the OoW staff – a dry-land weapon.

Owl is a hope diety.

I’d say its almost a given that the storyline against Jormag will feature finding and either freeing (imprisoned) or redeeming (Jormag’s Champion) Owl.

That’s just how hope dieties work.

:)

1000g? Someone will buy it that hour.
2000g? Day or two tops unless another one is posted before then.

Its interesting to see how many people use the Ebonhawke staff skin .

Well, human Player Characters eventually get the ultimate pick up line:

“Hey, babe. I kill Elder Dragons.”

I think that trumps shoe size comparison in the Norn outlook.

Dreamslayer.7659:

I see no reason to believe that the currency will be your existing achievement points and even if it were, it would be madness to use existing points as the market would implode due to the shunted demand.

Then you may want to read the linked thread in full:

1 per day.
10 per monthly.
And yes, in a later patch, existing achievements WILL grant crowns according to an as yet unknown ratio.

The RNG choke hold on dye will soon be dead, and the resulting demand will go down.

Yeah, reading through his stream of posts in that thead, if I were sitting on a big stock of Unidentified Dye, I’d be moving away from that possition swiftly but steadily. You have about 10 days tops to get your coin and go. People are pretty tired of the drop rate making the current TP price an unpleasant but acceptible alternative. I see a lot of that frustrated demand evaporating.

Same Guardian… dry .

80 Guardian… wet.

Not enough underwater pictures!

I take it back – looking at that picture, fully half the items available are below the visible field (look at the size of the slider bar), so half the items being offered are 3 tokens or less. 1 per day from completing the daily is looking much more plausible.

As a side note rubs hands evilly I have well over 3000 achievment points. If this new currency is granted retroactively Christmas came late but daaayum do I like my presents!

Looking at that picture (thanks for the link/headsup) I’m gonna have to assume tha the daily income for completing the achievments is either 1, 3, or 5, leaning slightly towards 5.

So, if its 5, you get out and do the daily you get one random yellow class item box or 10 dyes. If its 1 token per day then they are looking a more of a one yellow box per week reward for swingin’ that sword. The currency is almost certainly account bound (unlike the debacle that is mystic coins) and I won’t be surprised if the individual rewards are also account bound.

Regardless I’m delighted to see some steady, certain rewards for being an adventurer. It may give us some goals both mechanical and cosmetic behind tasks that can’t simply be bypassed or short-circuited with a sack full of money.

Calae.1738:

In 2013 there appears to be a token reward system where you’ll be able to hand in 5 tokens for 10 unidentified dyes.

Sounds interesting. What’s the source on this? Link?

Structure – all the races contribute three 10 point choices and one 30 point elite to a character’s Elite skill choices.

The one polearm in the data base is clearly and blatantly part of the Order of Whispers set – and is in addition to the Order of Whispers spear – so at one time they were working towards having both types of weapons in the game at the same time.

I like polearms, so I do hope someday they take up thateffort again and give at least some of the classes new option through its inclusion.

Polearm-weilding Elementalists… I’d be all over that!

I’m finding good dodging and Bane Signet pretty well levels the field.

Nothing breaks tempo quite like being inexplicably slammed face down .

Khisanth.2948:

Don’t forget the cultural armors.
The Emperor’s New Wardrobe will require a total of 644g 90s 00c

Arrrrrggg! I want that title too.

Back to harvesting mithril I guess!

Hmm. Thinking on my desire for the Golden title, a factoid I’d be interested in that might be revealing is a graph of peak gold values (assuming the database tracks this).

Basically what % of the player base has ever had 1g, 10g, 100, 1000g, and 10,000g at one time. I’m not sure I want to know if anyone has had 100,000g :p.

A real percentage of the players would have only new characters leveling up and still have probably never broken 1g yet. Only the most dedicated of traders would have the 4 digit and elusive 5 digit moments. But somewhere in there are a lot of folks who have broken the 3 digit barrier at least briefly. Maybe.

The other quandry that comes to mind immediately is WHY would a player be keeping gold? For a dedicated trader I would imagine money sitting is money wasted. For me, as a completionist-style player, I look forward to having 200g in my account bank once, for 1 second, ever, to trigger the availability of the Golden title and score some achievement points, but after that keeping large stocks of coin on hand is mostly superfluous to me – it’s better to get that coin turned into gear, outfit my stable of characters for maximum performance, and get back to swinging that sword or mining that ore. I might like to have a cushion on hand to be ready for new content (“Ooo, new armor skin – wantses it now!”) But for me as an adventurer-harvester, shiney yellow coins are a by-product of my gameplay, not the goal of it.

This is not to say I can’t see and enjoy that my account is accruing value, its just I measure success by having full sets of level 80 exotic items ready and stored for when alts reach elvel cap, rather than sitting on the money to buy that same gear when it happens. I guess I’m investing against the inflation of those items. For my slugishly slow wealth multiplying style it has paid off – I have full sets of Mad King Armor banked from when they cost about 2g a piece – getting that gear now would be 4-6 times as expensive. If I were a trader I could no doubt have done better over that time with that money, but as a harvester, I’d have to rule out getting that gear now as too expensive.

Wow, that’s the first time I’ve watched some go and write a wiki article to back their argument in real time.

Have any in-game references? charater dialogue? Interactive objects?

I assume we’ll see branded weapons when Kralkatoric <sp> is higher on the to-do list.

Then again, you KNOW they’ll take Charged Lodestones to craft, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

My 40th level ranger has a Reef Drake.

I’ve helped a 7th level Ranger get a shark.

Those feel pretty rare to me .

Rimmy.2014:

But I also think it could add praise. People get to see the cool stuff you’ve worked so hard to get!

What cool stuff? All gear is pretty uniformy orange once you are level 80, and being kitted out with full orange isn’t exactly brag-worthy. The only step beyond orange stat-wise is Ascended, and the ascended back pieces at least are very visible if the player chooses to show them off.

All other cool stuff is cosmetic, which means they can see it directly without an inspection tool.

One way of presenting a wealth chart that would be fascinating to me is gold (or other broader account value assessment) vs. hours played.

Not so much an “average gold per hour” thing, but looking at wealth vs. account age to see if there are any distinct bends in the curve. For example, I just finished my master crafter title this week and expect my ability to make gold to go up noticably now that I’m not hording materials for conversion to crafting XP.

John Smith.4610:

When/if I release a Lorenz curve or something similar to show distribution of wealth you can be sure it will be accurate.
It will also only probably be gold only. Counting the value outside of gold would be interesting, but would be hard to do accurately. I would consider doing both, but would definitely start with gold.
I really wanted to get a new blog post out for the first quarter of the game’s release, but I haven’t had the time, and issues in the game have to come first. It’s on my list of things to publish though.

I’ve had similar quandries over evaluating the value of my account.

Still, having information is better. I look forward to seeing more of it .

I would buy cores.

I farm lodestones like a farmer farms things that can be farmed by farming. I have the MF, I have the routes laid out, and most of all I have a GOAL I’m farming towards (Infinite Light, you will be mine!).

A cold evaluation of the value of my time tells me I WOULD pay real money to expedite that process buying cores/lodestones effectively from an NPC – but I WON’T pay money to buy gems and turn them into gold because I don’t want to see that gold go into the hands of other players, even taxed 15%. I don’t want to contribute to the runnaway inflation of money being created without goods being created, and I don’t want to fill the warchests of people flipping lodestones.

Then WHY do you think they are part of that set?

There is a bit of town dialogue between a human and an Norn to the effect of~

Normn Woman: “We wear furs to honor the spirits.”
Human Man: “Well, it sure isn’t to honor modesty…”

I think the Norn cultural armor is suprisingly sensible and pretty deliberately skimpy .

The double l in the given name seems a tad off for Norn phonics, but the appelation is pure Norn down-home cookin’.

“Jora Corrupted” (guardian wielding the Jormag-ice-style scepter Coldsnap and a Corrupted Shield – yes, I keep expecting to get a balista-bolt through the torso every time I drop by Hoelbrak for supplies )

I have a title I want in every MMO that has jump-antics…

“The Mountian Goat”

The whole family of wyrms/wurms/worms words are related to dragons, and that thing, the enormous, godawful THING I killed to start my legend? Yeah. One of those.

If you think 5 out of six things in a set created by Devs are related to an obvious theme, and one isn’t…
Well, we have very different means of speculating .

Dreamslayer.7659:

I’m sure there are some players who prefer a white collar career in GW2 above all else, but there is no evidence to support the idea that skill at wealth acquisition corresponds to a skill deficit in the rest of the game.

I never suggested they the two were mutually exclusive. A trader is a person who spends his time trading. An adventure is a person who spends their time swinging a sword. I would expect most people mix activities to avoid mind numbing boredom. But while a person is trading, they cannot be making progress getting an Ascended item (beyond gathering a set of orange gear to facilitate later adventuring), and while a person is adventuring they are making only second class citizen progress gathering money. I’m glad the game has added some things that favor adventuring as a focus of activity, since up to that point, trading was a more effective way of going about pursuing vitually every long term game the goal has to offer.

I don’t know if it’s an exclusively American troupe to imagine that the football jock is always dim witted or the banker is cowardly and frail but in the real world, many talented people are quite flexible and adaptable – the single talent savant is actually pretty rare.

Heh, I think there’s a similar trope aboout seeing what you want to see in a post so you can make light of it .