Guild Wars 2

There is a very strong indicator in-game that Jormag has to be viewed as at least semi-valid as a sprit: Norn Racial skills.

One for Snow Lepard,
One for Wolf,
One for Bear,
On for Raven,
One for Owl,
And… a Worm. An Ice Worm – for Dragon.

This is actually part of what makes the Svanir so different from the rest of the Norn Society – most Norn don’t make a huge deal out of which spirit they feel the greatest kinship to. Outside of shamans, its hard to tell at a glance. The Svanir put their choice of divinity right in your face every single moment, and they do it with a lot more unformity in outlook and dress.

You kitten off wolf or bear and you can expect a pack of like-minded hunters to come gunning for you with a loose hierarchy based on legend. You kitten off a Svanir steding and what comes out looking for blood might be a LOT more like an army than Norns typically field with a very definite “general” figure shouting commands.

The language I would use to explain Norn wouldn’t invoke the word “peaceful”

Norn are generally violent.
Norn are generally NOT militant.

Which is the big difference between them and Charr, who are violent AND militant.

The Norn and Charr can get along well because they have a mutual understanding of butt-kicking as grounds for social status. They get puzzled looks when dealing with the other race’s efforts to mass armies – Charr being exceptional at it, Norns being completely ambivalent. Both of them end up wondering how such great (fellow) warriors could could be so wrong-headed about it all .

Dreamslayer.7659:

A wealthy man once told me something about the wealthy: “If you did what they did, you would have what they have, but you have what you have because you do what you do.”

Everything we do in life has a result and when most people don’t like their result, they try to change the game instead of changing themselves.

Yup. I don’t have a legendary because I didn’t buy this game to play the market. I have people do that for me in the real world which is why I have the free time to play this pretty much as much as I want when I feel like it.

On the other hand I have better stats than at least some of those people who have one or more legendaries (tuned exotics + ascended back + 2 ascended rings). I also have the exact shades of dye I want and what I find to be the most pleasing armor skins in the game. So truthfully my efforts have gotten me the thing I want most.

I’m creeping towards a Legendary because I want to fill the little medal on the log in screen, and my prgress directly reflects how much I care about that: some.

I’m glad there is some sign ANet wants to tie precurrsor acquisition to non-TP effort and less pure extreme luck, but I’m in no crippling rush to see it manifest. I anticipate as the Ascended grade spreads to more and more slots, we’ll see the stat gap widen between those who buy their gear, and those who then take that array of oranges and leverage it to acquire reds in some form of adventuring.

Then it will be the trader’s whining that their preffered playstyle doesn’t carry the best rewards and the wheel turns on and on .

Ethics.4519:

Everybody and their mother wants a legendary. Anet never intended everybody to have a legendary.

Why do people say that? Last I checked every player has a big hollow icon on their log in screen tapping them on the should saying “Get your Legendary yet?”

Well, hollow for every player who hasn’t gotten one yet .

I can’t imagine having 46 ectos sitting around.

Copy/pasting from legendary to legenday just makes both of them LESS unique.

While it may need something to give it pizzaz, trying to get that pizzaz by robbing another weapon of it is not an optimal solution.

Hate to say it, but it only works if they are right-pricing.

That those items used to sell for less doesnt’ mean people won’t pay (MUCH) more for them.

If they’ve overplayed their hand, they lose their listing fees. If they are right that someone will -however grudgingly- pay it, then all they have done is helped the market reach a truer equilbium.

Son of Elias.5420:

Let’s have some dishonourable assassin cultures. You never see those anymore. It’s all rules and oaths and assassin guilds, where’s the dirty fighters who just murder people for money?

I think that’s Lion’s Arch… you just got in about a decade too late .

The one that owes Traherne an amazing debt for off-screen services blathers on about it at some length if you quiz her at every step of the personal storyline.

The master and apprentice killers out in the lake in Maelstrom add some more dialogue if you are good at swimming at the exact same speed as they do while you click [F] Talk. There was a semi-talkative one in the Karka storline. There are several near identical ambush events in most of the 50+ level zones with the same “Are you looking for a challenge? I am!” before they jump you (and in all cases I’ve been party to they bit off rather more than they chould chew…).

Its a mostly mostly Arabic inspired set of phonics attached to what is to me a bog-standard honor-bound-assassin s h t i c k.

Like I said, its possible I just read too much .

I don’t get the seeming universal foot-fetish of players… Does every Legendary need to leave footprints to be special?

Nappychappy.7046:

I gave up about a week ago.

Honestly, that’s going to be this game’s epitaph. Theres a 600+ post thread in the bugs forum that is the inheritor to a previous 1000-post thread that amounts to something went horibly wrong with the November 15 patch and the focused pursuit of any mob-harvesting goal triggers some hidden anti-bot code and you end up getting close to nothing at all if you stay in any particulr area killing the same critters repeatedly for more than a few minutes. …There just aren’t many areas to choose from for this particular drop.

While both my impromtu partners litteraly gave up in disgust and logged out within 40 seconds of my announcing my third drop, I was -trying- to keep their spirits up with the knowledge that we hadn’t prompted the game to shut down all possibility of geting a decent drop yet.

I got 3 charged lodestones today, my new personal 1 day record – but the 2 others I was running with for that 90 minutes both got zilch. This is after something close to a week long dry spell of getting nothing despite 1-3 hours of farming per day. Its brutal out there.

At the other end of the spectrum, I don’t have a smartphone and couldn’t care less.

Happy to hear the coder time is being devoted to making the game stronger on it’s native platform if there isn’t manpower enough to do both simultaneously.

Its possible to place a buy now order for multiple items and have the order only partially complete (because some of the items sold while you were placing the order, and the number still available at the price you agreed to is less than the number you ordered). If that happens you are only billed for the number available that fit your offer, and a partial number show up to be picked up.

I’ve seen a couple Vigil NPCs with pistol/horn.

Thats a class I’d be mighty curious to play.

People keep saying Trahearn should become a villian as a twist. I think it would be a far more effective twist making him into a character I actually respected.

Bit more challenging to write, but it might retroactively justify some of the junk up to that point.

Toxyn.9608:

The only one I’m interested in is the Largos. Their honor, skill, unique model, and mysterious nature all draw me in.

Really? Because I found them hiddeously generic, culturally. Too much reading fantasy novels I guess.

Neat models though. I assume they’ll move front and center if we get a campaign expansion vs. Bubbles (dragon #5).

Go here. Make noise.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Issues-with-character-art-weapons-or-armor/first#post879104

Having been to Japan, I can totally imagine it. Many asian cultures hate each other with a passion Americans can hardly imagine – and one of the few things they can agree on is hating it just as much those times when the rest of the world can’t tell the difference between them .

If you can’t figure out how to profit on an Elite that grants stealth to any class’ toolbox… …I’m guesing you’ve never been to the rich Oricalcum node.

Inflames.6340:

passed 2 months but you guys did nuthing lol this is how you take care business ?

They told us how they are taking care of business: Slowly.

Any such adjustment to the process WILL NOT mak an appearance in the next two and a half months, and even then is still only in the discussion phase.

If this is a hot-button issue for you I suggest dumping the game for a few months – you’ll see it when you get back, and nothing is going to give them a sense of urgency quite like declining player base.

:Waves 100$ bill around:

Still waiting for those playable centaurs .

Research on the one polearm in the game’s database suggests it’s a 2-handed weapon if that makes a difference to people’s thinking.

Chessrook.8643:

You’re forgetting other races. Skritt, Ettins, Dredge, Grawl, Harpy, Centaur, Dwarves, Ghosts, Risen, Kodan, Krait, Largos, Ogres, Tengu…… DANG there’s a lot of sapient races…

Don’t eat Risen. Just don’t. That many preservatives isn’t healthy for anybody.

I have a recipe for dolphin-safe quaggan steaks with a nice mango-salsa around here somewhere.

Bard.7215:

Greiger.7092:

Aren’t hylek extremely poisonous?

Only the poison glands on their back are.

So preparation is a bit like fugu then? That means cooked to perfection you’d have family-sized frog legs with the thrill of that little tingle of neurotoxin dancing on the tongue…

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

Karka, with a large amount of butter sauce.

During the karka world event I told everyone on the map to pull out their stacks of 250 of butter and throw it at the nearest champion to put a debuff on it.

Good times.

Revan.6259:

I think the point is that, like legendary weapons, they don’t want everyone running around in T3 armor. It’s a prestige thing.

I think with the kitten litter-box droppings that happen in the tradepost every day adding to the distorted income between adventurers and traders, attaching “prestige” to anything that costs coin is a joke.

“Nice armor. You must be an awesome trader.”

Everyone has seen Infinite Light – every harpy on Tyria has one.

And yes, I’m hunting the mats for it far more seriously than I’m pursuing any legendary…

Please consider – the amount of server power they are willing to expend on an event may be a couple orders of magnitude higher that what they can permit for every single individual mob on the entire map.

Comparing what can be done in one case at a time and what would need to be done in hundreds if not thousands of cases simultneously may not be directly helpful.

The solution has to work on a budget, and the more shoestring that budget, the more likely it can be implemented.

Personally I don’t get the obsession over leaving footprints, ort the beleif that making them all the same in that regard will make any of the better. IF anything it would make all of them a non-descript set.

They each need their own awesome. Some of them deliver that better than others, but copying the awesome back and forth is not helping the design of Legendaries as a whole.

In what universe is there a meaningful difference introduced by adding yet another “decimal point” to the way the game counts the exact number of copper you have? Its not like our money has weight we need to condense.

All a “platinum break” would do is make the buy, sell, deposit, and withdraw windows even more annoyingly twitchy to opperate.

Boat = Sailed

Maybe they’ll actually achieve a “legendary” feel to the process and the result when they do Legendary Armor.

Its not the AC troll. The troll is level 35. The staff is level 80.

Ascalonian Catacombs = not a valid candidate

My experience is there are TONS of locations where there is a second layer of critters “held in reserve”. You kill what you see in the area intially and the is a spawn (NOT a respawn) of a new critter almost on top of where you were fighting. If you kill that, you get the remaining time before the intial critter completes is 2m cooldown. The second layer of critters is also on its cooldown though, ready to spring out litterally the second the primary resident is down a second time.

If people aren’t successfully killing the reserves (either dead or running), they won’t see that after the second wave is down the area is quiet for a brief period.

Orr IS particularly bad for this behavior.

You might achieve a satisfactory result with~

When monster dies, count the absolute number of players within about 1.5x its aggro range centered on its spawn point (not where it died). One check only.

If that number is 2 or more, start (current) respawn timer A
If that number is 0 or 1, start (newly introduced, longer) respawn timer B

If I’m in a good duo we can anhilate pretty much anything the map throws at us now. Its soloing dense areas that gets tedious or overwhelming. That dichotomy is particularly true for support or tanky characters, who wonderfully compliment the ubiquitous DPS partner, but when facing stuff alone face little risk but also very low kill rates.

I don’t have good specifics for you (my guard build is probably very different from yours) but I will channel a little Sun Tzu and point out that success is going to lie just as much in understanding every step and skill and trait in that Elementalist’s dance as it will in strengthening your own play.

How well could you read his build from his actions?

I kinda think the profession Dev for Guards would be the parent – that interaction didn’t come about by accident.

Don’t tease. If I could walk around on land with my Trident out… whole new ball game that would be.

I’m deep, Deep, DEEP into the casual side of market use. I’ve gotten used to the bizare property that I can put an offer in on just about anything I need on a day to day basis for 1c more than the highest listed offer and it’ll fill within about a minute. Abyss Dye selling for 8.55 gold? I bought in in less than six minutes with an offer just over 5g and only about 3 silver higher than the standing highest offer at the time. Weird, but that’s my experience. Either the power traders have the game wired like an involentary nerve response, or there is something a bit wonky with how the game presents data from the inside… but that’s a different topic .

As a casual seller I have 4 markets I track:
Sigils – because they are a byproduct of my current Ecto-gathering
T5 dust – because they are a byproduct of my Charged lodestone gathering
Mithril Ore – because I have 1000s of shiney rocks from my penchant of harvesting every node in sight while out scouting the daily Oricalcum movements
Mystic Coins – because my gut says that they aren’t gonna stop rising until they reach closer to 40s and the current cycle of little tiny creeps upward are just begging to be arbitraged into bloody submission

First thing to know for context: I’m out in the world killing and mining most of the time. I only come by LA to pick up my sales proceits and manage my inventory 2, maybe 3, times a day. That means I am in absolutely no hurry to get that coin.

I place sell mithril and dust offers randomly during my harvest migrations to periodically clear bag space. Both represent high volume goods so I don’t undercut at all IF the number being offered at that price is high 3 digits or more. If it’s less than say 400 being offered I’ll open a buy order read where the intevitable 1000+ hump is and I’ll either join it, or more often under cut that by 1c – meaing I’m not under cutting at all, I’m overing but at or below the static hump.

Sigils I’ve gotten to know reasonably well across their normal price ranges and have first hand experience with the utility of a lot of them to guide my decisions pricing. I list them for sale basically once per day after I’ve cracked my haul of rares for the day. If there ar 4 or more at the lowest value I’ll join that value. If there is only 1-3 (and the sigil isn’t total litter-box clumps), I will frequently list for higher, because again, I’m looking to pick up my coin tomorrow when I log back in and sigils don’t seem to come into the system fast enough to maintain a steady base. Sometime in the next 24 hours those 1-3 will be gone and I will be the lowest asking price for somebody in a hury.

Mystic Coins…. I just quietly offer +1c best offers to buy in lots of about 10 and watch the market spasm for about seven minutes per gold I’m willing to shell out. I have yet to sell any, but already I’d be making 50% profit or more on every one I release back into the wild.

I’m glad we entertained you. Now, hopefully you’ll put out a brightly colored graph that will entertain us .

How is pretty relevant to why – the speed at which you can assess the field absolutely dictates your strategy. Wether you are setting up transactions every few minutes, hourly for 5 hours, or one time per day totally alters the optimal undercut.

I recently reflected a Risen Catapult shot in Orr. The effect created a big red circle but the projectile was centered on me and hit the wall just before it would have hit the ground and splatted the whole area. So it may be possible to reflect other AoEs if your placement is perfect.

…Wish I could have seen the damage when that flying chunk of goop found its way home…

Doing a little analysis – it has the damage output of a two-handed weapon (with pretty high deviation).

Pure spitballing now, but I’d expect by or shortly before the Bubbles expansion we’ll have encountered~

Tidal Lodestones (Water Elementals) → Vortex Lodestones (Minions of Bubbles)

And with the Sixth Dragon something like~

Heartwood (Ents) → Blight Lodestones (Blighted are suspected of being the 6th Dragon’s agents already seen in game)

The nice thing is there are a fair number of Sigils and Runes already in the game that have no recipies that might be hooked up to these rare materials as they come into play.

Looking at it in game, its a Order of Whispers weapon – the folding, segmented blade is very much their theme as are the animated spinning gears. The interesting thing is that while the style is blatantly OoW, its not the skin used for their spear (Whisper’s Secret Harpoon).

It should be a faction skin, but its level 58, so it’s clearly an NPC-only weapon – alternative ways of getting the faction weapons would be a no- no. Might see it in the hands of a Whispers Agent in an instance, but since we see Centaurs and Hylek both use spears on land, I’m guessing the polearm designation is an internal code to remind Devs that its a “land-spear” and its an asset they chose to salavage after the decision was made to NOT have polearms as a player weapon type.

Too bad, as it is really cool looking. Maybe folks will turn up more polearms in the DB and we can ferret out a bit more about what the weapon class was all about. Maybe the partial work done will encourage them to reintroduce the weapon class in an expansion.

So your solution is unistall the game until we see an expansion?

If your current driving goal is Infinite Light you have only two ways to progress – generate an astronomical amount of gold to buy the lodestones (and thereby fill the coffers of day traders so they can work you over with a stick somemore…), or farm ’til carpal tunel sets in.

Its not that this actual going on right now scenario is not fun, its that its actively detrimental to the well being of the game. I don’t expect ANet to take action because it’ll make me happy, I expect them to take action because its in their own best interests to do so.

I’ve seen a nice observation that the scepeter map lines up perfectly after you turn it about 40 degrees clockwise. North is not up in the raw bitmap.

Hmm. Time to get out photoshop.

Sure. I agree the Onyx to Piles link is the weakest. It could be Onyx is forshadowing the 6th dragon (some theories about that hang together very well) and we have yet to see uncorrupted essence, but will once the rest of post-Zaitan Orr is opened up as new zones.