Guild Wars 2

Bright.9160:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Bright.9160:

No, I think he means that he’d also like that there are unique weapons that drop only from a specific dungeon that are sellable, on top of the tokens. It worked really well in GW1, and I support the idea as well.

Fractal skins were a good idea. So were dungeon recipes. I don’t think that adding more RNG to Guild Wars 2 is going to make it any better off, there’s enough of it already.

Well, did you play GW1? Because like I said, it was a system that worked really well. It revolved a lot around supply and demand, with the mediocre skins that dropped from mostly easy dungeons becoming really cheap and the awesome skins that only dropped from the harder dungeons being worth quite a bit. That way people actually went out of their way to do the harder dungeons, and it fostered a really big PUG scene where PUGs actually bothered learning new stuff. Yes, you could get carried and yes there were sh*tters, but it’s still better than what we have now: people only running the easiest stuff, that happens to be the most rewarding as well.

Yes, less of the bind on pickup unsellable crap RNG mechanics. Make skins drop, make them sellable, put them in the dungeons, watch more people amazingly run the dungeons other than just the easiest/fastest for gold farming.

More AH transactions means more gold being taken out of the economy; which curbs inflation.

End up with happier players overall because not only just the ones blessed by the RNG can get skins; because they can buy them for a reasonable cost if inflation is kept down.

BillFreist.1527:

Guess what? This is fixed. I’m not sure what release it’ll make it into since I just fixed it today. Its a pretty risky change, but I’ll do what I can to get it out asap.

A couple notes about the bug:

• It can affect ANY Necromancer (doesn’t matter when they were created)
• It can happen in ANY game type, PvE and WvW were just waaaaay more common because of certain circumstances
• This particular bug ONLY affects Necromancers. I noticed there was some speculation that it could affect a couple other professions

Thanks for all of the info and sorry that I didn’t look into this sooner. Also thanks for keeping on top of this issue in the forums, it keeps us in check

-Bill

Joygasm time!

Wells and the stats that help them:

Well of Blood Conjure a well of blood to heal allies.
(Healing power)

Well of Corruption Target area pulses, converting boons on foes into conditions (Power/Prec/Crit dmg/Cond dmg/Cond duration)

Well of Darkness Target area pulses, blinding foes with each pulse.
(Cond duration)

Well of Power Target area pulses, converting conditions on allies into boons.
(Boon duration/healing power for Regen boon)

Well of Suffering Target area pulses, damaging foes and inflicting vulnerability.
(Power/Prec/Crit dmg/Cond duration)
——————————-

Trait-lines with Well specific traits:

Curses
Focused Rituals – Well skills use ground targeting.

Death Magic
Ritual of Protection – Wells apply protection for 3 seconds when cast.

Blood Magic
Ritual Mastery – Wells recharge 20% faster.
Vampiric Rituals – Wells also siphon health every time they pulse.

For all we know those are old/incomplete if they are even genuine.

Really hoping it is purely distance based; that would be the best way to keep the classes with teleports and charges locked into fighting unless they want to eat a large chunk of damage.

I use Staff + Scepter/Dagger in a marks/wells build that uses both Carrion and Rampager gear. It does ok. In WvWvW I usually try to keep at med-long range dropping marks/wells and using my allies as a screen if there is not any terrain nearby I can use to break LOS; and if someone does break off and come after me, I swap to scepter/dagger to skirmish and bleed them while waiting out staff/mark cooldowns.

That’s what my assumption is as well. I would like to point out that it doing this can be to our advantage if we use Epidemic after Putrid Mark in multiple faction fights.

Assuming of course Putrid mark does not bug out and make the condition stacks go poof.

Checked this myself; definitely appears to be an issue with multi faction/type mob fights.

Methodology/Expected result: (Greater Marks+Staff Mastery) Mark of Blood to place 3 bleeds on 2 or more enemy targets; followed by Putrid Mark. Condition stacks and types should not change unless enemy has placed a condition on me.

HotM: 2 Golem test dummies; no transfer or purge of conditions between targets.

Sparkfly Fen: 2 Marsh drakes; no transfer or purge of conditions between targets. Poison they placed on me was placed on one drake.

Sparkfly Fen: 2 Marsh drakes + Hatchling Marsh Drake; no transfer or purge of conditions between targets. Poison they placed on me was placed on one drake.

(Last two were repeated with same overall results of expected Putrid Mark behavior)

Sparkfly Fen: Hermit Crab (yellow- I auto attacked once and led into 2nd mob) + Ridgeback Skale; Observed initial 3 stacks of bleed on each, then after Putrid Mark applied, 6 stacks on Skale.

Conclusion: Something is getting the Putrid Mark mechanics confused when it comes to what counts as an enemy or ally of the caster when fighting multiple mobs of differing factions/types. It’s possible the mark mechanics are checking for conditions to transfer based on whether or not available condition donor targets are enemies of the condition recipient target instead of whether they are enemies of the caster.

I mean in the sense of the total number of bleeds available to move around not changing.

It still is odd that it would move conditions off of an enemy onto another one though.

That’s what made me wonder if the recent bugs to our Mark traits is having something to do with it.

I’d be happy to check myself but stuck “working” at moment.

Example 1: makes sense if both had 3 bleeds then after Putrid Mark the Skelk had none and the Ettin 6 bleeds. Was that the case, since I’d assume Putrid Mark would have to designate at least one mob struck as the primary target?

From the wiki:
—-
Notes

• This mark will last for up to 30 seconds if it is not triggered.
• Always transfers conditions from the caster when triggered (as long as it is not evaded or blocked), whether or not the caster is inside the mark’s radius. Other allies have to be within the radius to have their conditions removed.
• For each condition removed from allies, including the caster, the mark applies the condition, including its duration, onto one enemy within the mark’s radius. It does not transfer all conditions to all enemies in its radius.
• Triggers combo fields twice.
  —-

Have you tried using MoB on 2 type differing mobs than just putrid marking one to see what happens?

Edit: either way, it should not be transferring conditions OFF of enemies at all. Very odd.

Wait.

Are you using Greater Marks? If so, I wonder if the unblockable upgrade is playing havoc with the mark enemy/ally filtering.

They don’t trigger on anything that is an “object”. Turrets, most dragons, downed players, graveling mounds, etc.

I just usually wait the couple seconds it takes for some schmuck to run into range to attempt a rez before dropping marks on a downed enemy in pvp.

Necromancers as a whole would be better off if ability activation times and cool-downs we given an in depth balance pass rather than trying to shoehorn burning in (even though I’d love torch as a weapon option).

Make it so that we can reliably keep condition pressure going on an enemy even if they cleanse would do a lot for condition builds on the offensive front.

Another thing would be quality of life adjustments like allowing us to see Death-shroud ability cool-down timers in normal mode and regular ability cool-down timers while in Death-shroud would also help immensely while not overtly increasing the top end power potential of the class as well.

Edit: or hell, they could do a two for one improvement and make the Life blast abilities automatically corrupt one boon per hit. That alone would be a great help for condition builds in using Death shroud as anything other than a HP sponge to ablate hits.

Asura. Too cutesy/mascot like, and the improbability of a creature their size and proportions being able to go toe to toe in combat with enemies in this game and live more than a second violate my suspension of disbelief (even in a fantasy physics game) too badly to tolerate playing one.

With our luck that would be the 5th DS ability. We get to mass kitten conditions onto foes; but die doing it.

Salvage them with a good kit and save the ectos and flowers for a day when the prices go back up.

Just keep in mind that is likely to be a very long term investment; but at least ectos and flowers have their own collectable slots.

How about instead of linear scale spawning mass hordes of hatchlings/juvenile/lower tier mobs, have the event scaler past a certain minimum player thresh-hold start exchanging 3-5 of what it would have spawned for minions at a time for veterans/etc instead.

For example, if right now the spawn code calls for 50 minions due to player presence, instead have it call for 25 minions, 5 veterans, and a champion. (ratios of course adjustable)

Might also help with client and server performance issues to spawn fewer but tougher (but individually more rewarding) mobs instead of lag hordes that either focus fire players into paste before they can react or get mass AE farmed.

Just tweak the cool-downs. Anything else is too hard to balance.

Yeah I had spent a while trolling through Kessex and Snowden looking; but I think the RNG was just hating me if they dropped from those goups..

And actually I’ve got a couple alts I would not mind parking in Bloodtide to level+farm mats (I have a couple boon based alts that chocolate oranges go well on) ; I’ve noticed thanks to Southsun a lot of other zones are building up xp bonuses. Just wish there were more people there; it gets boring being in an empty zone.

…this thread reminds me of a kitten observation I saw made shortly after release that “Necros get 2 health bars so that they can die twice!”

But besides that, condition transfer/manipulation. Other classes may have better straight up removal; but Necros have options for turning enemy conditions back on them.

Let me get this right….this trait is MM focused and forced on any spec that uses Death magic; yet does not work properly if you actually go MM spec and use more more than a couple of the minions that are worth a kitten ?

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Finally got 3 bars out of a bag from Dredge in the north east Lornar’s pass.

And of course plenty of butter.

I’ve spent the last 2 days porting across the face of Tyria trying to find bandits/pirates/centuars/seperatists/svanir/dredge that drop bags that actually have chocolate bars in them but no dice. Not one bar.

Where are people getting them from now?

/jranger

Gilosean.3805:

Overkillengine.6084:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

That’s the general idea. Look at the Wintersday Skins, no one uses them because they were soooo common. It’s been 5 months since Wintersday and the skins are still at less than 10 silver.

The idea behind rare items is to give them value. Yes, putting them in lottery boxes is a way to make money, and yes they are a company that needs to make money to continue to keep the game running, but no one is forcing you to get this skin. If you think it’s unfair or you don’t like the way it’s implemented… the solution is simple, don’t get it.

Rarity has jack all to do with no one using the Wintersday skins. They were ugly/goofy looking.

I liked the Wintersday gemstore skins and bought several of them. The particle effects are nice, and I’m looking forward to getting my warrior to level 80 so he can use them (no sense in transmuting while leveling, it happens too fast). If you’re talking about the toy skins, then yeah, those are weird looking. The only nice one is the Princess Wand. Hammer is maybe good to keep around for next Christmas.

Honestly, I’m tired of fighting the RNG battle. There’s so many nice skins in the game already that I honestly don’t care anymore, I can always find something I like. At this point, nothing we can really say will stop ANet from putting these out, and there’s a whole huge gambling industry to show that building a business on the back of suckers and addicts is viable. ANet isn’t going to turn down that revenue stream.

Yes, the toy skins. Not that it matters, I had already learned from the Halloween event to give up on getting any skins locked behind RNG. They may as well not exist; since it does not matter how much or how little effort one puts forth to obtain them; it’s random, and at kitten odds.

I just wish they’d devote some of that time wasted on RNG locked item skins to something more worthwhile to the population at large.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

That’s the general idea. Look at the Wintersday Skins, no one uses them because they were soooo common. It’s been 5 months since Wintersday and the skins are still at less than 10 silver.

The idea behind rare items is to give them value. Yes, putting them in lottery boxes is a way to make money, and yes they are a company that needs to make money to continue to keep the game running, but no one is forcing you to get this skin. If you think it’s unfair or you don’t like the way it’s implemented… the solution is simple, don’t get it.

Rarity has jack all to do with no one using the Wintersday skins. They were ugly/goofy looking.

Edge.4180:

To make this clear: Ability to enjoy content solo = good. Ability to enjoy content in a group = good. Losing the ability to do either = not good. You have the ability to dynamically scale difficulty based on the number of players present and thus support anything from solo play to full groups and all the iterations in between, so can you please make use of it?

This.

Needs to be more content that allows group scaling. Less of the “solo, 5 man or gtfo” stuff.

Pendragon.8735:

I’ve been trying Carrion for Condi after being Rabid for the longest time, damage isn’t noticeably different, though its more up front and less susceptible to cleanse. I feel more squishy without my max toughness though, heals aren’t as good.

I think either works though, perhaps even a mix, if you want to retain some crit for bleed procs. Also the perfect EHP point would be with a hybrid of the two.

I mix Carrion and Rabid gear on a staff/well build, works fairly decent and not cramming on as much toughness as possible seems to help with being able to avoid/shed aggro easier in dungeons if I have to. It’s not optimized for speed runs or anything like that but it is functional.

djooceboxblast.9876:

ManaCraft.5630:

Well, I suppose some cautious optimism is in order. Still, I think the lack of viable stunbreakers in particular needs to be addressed. I also don’t understand how Death Shroud is supposed to be the attrition mechanism of choice for the necro if its skills are to be based around keeping you in close contact with the enemy. If I’m trying to mitigate damage, that’s the last place I want to be, so I just don’t understand the logic behind that decision. Unless you’re a dagger necro maybe…

Necromancer lacks good stunbreakers. I would love to see a stunbreak on signet of the locust! I think the most common mistake for most necromancer players is that they play way too defensively trying to stand on range as a turret. Whenever they get attacked they panic and try to run away putting down marks or whatever hoping for the best. Up close is where the condition necromancer puts out the most pressure. Being up close makes it easier to hit ground targeted abilities and grant use of traits like weakening shroud and mark of evasion while being able to proc geomancy (which by far is the best choice for a condition necro). When reading posts about the necromancer profession i always stumble upon players thinking that necromancers are slow at applying conditions, which is true if you are being passive on range. One of the main strengths of the aggressive condition necro is rapidly applying multiple (+10) stacks of bleeding.

Ironically, I find that my setup of Staff and Scepter/Dagger works better in melee or near melee than it does at range. Projectile speed doesn’t matter near as much when you are already in their face. The issue is surviving any focused chain CC if you time your approach wrong.

I wonder how they are going to deal with the sustain issue if part of the reason Necros have issues in that area is the whole chain CC’d into oblivion thing, but yet they do not want to give the class steady access to stability or vigor…

I mean either you have to be able to avoid incoming CC (vigor →dodging) or ignore it (stability) otherwise you are locked out of being able to use any sustaining abilities.

The only thing I can think of is maybe making more of our abilities instant cast?

Bhawb, I think the issue is while we do have finisher abilities, many of them are often so unreliable or conditional that they may as well not exist. With the other classes they feel like they are a nice bonus on top of something you already want…on Necromancers, it feels like to get a decent amount of combos off that are useful, you gotta gut yourself in some way. Or run in a group 24/7 and hope that your team mates are smart enough to capitalize on the fields you are dropping.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unpredictability.4086:

Overkillengine.6084:

Had another idea for both a new condition and a DS 5 ability.

New condition:

Torpor: Abilities and actions take 50% longer to complete. (Fixed magnitude, stacks in duration, increases effect duration with % condition duration.)

Sounds nice, but this is not Necro at all! This is Mesmer. You just created Fustration.

Actually, closer to Faintheartedness.

If this condition did make it into the game, it would highlight the long casting time issue with necromancers so we might actually get some re-balancing done there. I can deal with suffering for a month or two to get some real buffs that we definitely need.

Or even if we were really lucky (yeah right!) having the issue actually prioritized the moment something like this was added internally, ending with both being released at the same time. A man can dream.

Iceflame.5024:

Overkillengine.6084:

4) Well of blood is a Light combo field. In a team combat situation there’s a decent chance someone will drop a blast finisher on you if you are duking it out with an enemy.

Edit: and ideally when facing an opponent likely to cleanse one would throw out a couple of nasty but disposable conditions on them first to get them to blow their cleanse, then apply something like this to keep the fight on your terms. If you dropped everything you had on them all at once and lost it all to a cleanse….you deserved to lose, sorry.

Just to specify: A blast finisher on a Light Combo field gives area retaliation while Projectile and Whirl finisher give a cleansing effect.

Fair ’nuff, I just knew dropping my well of blood in a fight almost always got conditions off me if I had nothing else off cool down in a group fight. Must be because it had devolved into someone trying to melee me while my allies shot them.

Iceflame.5024:

Why are you trying to make a L2P post? One of the problems that necro has is in fact slow cast times and suggesting a condition that would possibly slow down a necro’s cast time even more is kind of strange. Surely we have putrid mark yes, but it’s on a 25 or 20(if traited) second CD and it is obvious that you should keep it for the moment when you have a lot of conditions on you so you can just send them to your foes. Deathly swarm on the other hand however has an incredibly slow projectile and is easy to dodge. Consume conditions would take 2,5 seconds to cast, that’s like a century. I personally prefer to use off hand warhorn rather than dagger. I’m talking about it mostly from the perspective of 5v5 sPVP. How often would you run well of power in sPVP anyways, it seems like a very strange and very situational utility to have for us on top of being on a huuuuuge CD. Underwater combat is very limited in sPVP as well.

You came across as being somehow unaware of or unwilling to use the plethora of tools Necros have to deal with conditions; tools I personally have had no real issues with in the venues that I prefer to play in. So I guess if you refuse to use them the condition would be crippling to get hit with. How else am I to respond?

Plus, we do not know for sure just how much access other classes would get to it either; though we do have the painful example of how well Fear worked out for us.

1) Putrid mark (if you are pvp’ing and not running staff as at least an alt weapon…wtf?) would allow one to judo it right back onto the giver + the blast damage.

2) Deathly swarm (offhand dagger) would transfer this as well.

3) Life blast (underwater) would also transfer it.

4) Well of blood is a Light combo field. In a team combat situation there’s a decent chance someone will drop a blast finisher on you if you are duking it out with an enemy.

5) Better yet, use Well of Power and convert it to Quickness.

6) Having it mainly be on a DS ability would mean you’d encounter it rarely at best….’cuz, you know, Necromancers in mass pvp where it would be most crippling are getting rather rare.

Edit: and ideally when facing an opponent likely to cleanse one would throw out a couple of nasty but disposable conditions on them first to get them to blow their cleanse, then apply something like this to keep the fight on your terms. If you dropped everything you had on them all at once and lost it all to a cleanse….you deserved to lose, sorry.

My Charr Necro is a bit of a traditionalist and went with a very standard rags and skulls motif complete with grimoire:

Had another idea for both a new condition and a DS 5 ability.

New condition:

Torpor: Abilities and actions take 50% longer to complete. (Fixed magnitude, stacks in duration, increases effect duration with % condition duration.)

DS 5th slot:

Decay: Target gains Torpor for X seconds. You gain life-force for each ability activation performed by the target for X seconds.

Theory behind this: An ability that would help a Necromancer draw out a fight; by both decreasing outgoing enemy spike damage as well as leaving their target more vulnerable to having abilities interrupted thanks to longer activation times. Would combine well with the Chill condition from within the Necromancer class as well as have some team synergy with interrupts from other classes. Also not so theme specific as to disallow its usage on other classes.

Shortness is not a flaw, you got the achievement now you have all that other time left over to do anything else you want instead of grinding an event.

Tinni.4351:

Whether you buy keys or consortium chests is your personal business but I would like to point out that more people would NOT buy skins just because the skins were directly purchasable because the skins would become less desirables as collectors items.

True, some people would buy the skins directly because they liked the look and they might even buy multiple versions of the skins even if they were 1200 gems each, which is about 40g at current exchange rates. But it would also keep some people away because the skins would be relatively easy to obtains.

Also, Anet is not stupid and they do have data – which we don’t. Clearly they found that directly selling weapon skins (like they did during Winter’s Day) did not work and they realised that part of what motivated people to try for the special skins was their rarity. You may not like RNG but it is absolutely indisputable that RNG makes items rarer and thus more desirable as collectors items.

The “rarity collector” demand by definition would not be enough to bring in the funding needed to support the current “pay to RNG for a 99+% chance to not get what you wanted” model. Because the more you sell, the less rare it is!

Rarity of a skin driving sufficient sales thus becomes a bunk argument as had been repeatedly shown in thus thread alone. Elitist collectors are a minority.

The problem is we have a large number of people with disposable income that do not fully understand how much of a toilet the RNG boxes are. Until they get burned enough I guess.

That said, I don’t mind RNG boxes dropping from content you’d likely be doing anyways, just make sure to them trade-able on the TP, it’ll help both people to collect what they want and add another highly sought gold sink.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I can guarantee you that Anet makes more money with gambling boxes then direct purchase skins. How do I come by this knowledge you ask? Simple…

Anet tried doing direct purchase skins for wintersday. People no longer wanted them because they weren’t “rare” since anyone could buy them. Therefore very few people bought them. Anet did not make a lot of money. Anet puts a 0.1% chance of getting an item in a box. The item is “rare” now and most people won’t get it so everyone and their mother spent $30+ on these boxes for a chance at the “rare” item.

Whatever your personal opinion on the matter is, it doesn’t matter because Anet gave the players a choice and the vast majority chose RNG boxes.

People didn’t buy them because they were goofy/ugly.

Rarity of something purely cosmetic don’t mean kitten except to the dumb kitten elitist minority. You can’t fund a game just based off their revenue though, so your argument is a load of tripe.

People will buy if it looks good and is offered at a fair price; no matter how many other have bought it.

City of Heroes was a good example; their costume packs sold very well, as the stuff in them usually was pretty good looking and it was a permanent account unlock instead of an attempt to nickel and dime players who just wanted to have characters that looked good.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Clearly the majority of players dissagree with this post. Anet tried doing the whole buy skins directly thing for wintersday. Guess what, they weren’t rare since everyone could get them so no one bought them. It was a failure. Anet has repeatedly said that they will put things in the gem shop based on what players like to buy. Significantly more people spend more money at the chance for a rare skin then those who buy a skin everyone has access too directly.

You have no one to blame but the players themselves for this.

I didn’t buy the Wintersday skins because they didn’t look good enough for me to spend any amount of time or effort to obtain, as they were mostly goofy wooden toy themed.

Had they offered something ice themed and cool looking, that might have been a different story. Anet only has themselves to blame for making something that a lot of us did not want to buy, gamble, or grind for at all.

I’ve refused to buy keys or chests ever since the Halloween event. The only thing “random” I’ve spent gems on since then has been buff booster packs because I can use/want the majority of the buff tokens in them, instead of being stuck getting an overwhelming chance of trash drops that I (and hardly anyone else) wants and thus can’t sell, or even worse, is auto bound to me so even if I WAS willing to sell it, I can’t.

It’s not a price problem. It’s a service problem.

I’d be happy just being able to see guild members on the map (as long as they are the same server) as gold dots; group can still be blue, and allies green.

Or how about guild leaders of a certain rank (set within the guild) show up on the map with their rank symbol if they are representing and you are in the guild too?

It is better that emotes are in the store rather than pay to win items.

Zacchary.6183:

Essence Snow.3194:

Keep the Peace on Southsun Cove
Inspector Ellen Kiel of the Lionguard has been tasked with restoring order to the island, but she can’t do it alone. In this all-new content, you’ll partner with Kiel to protect the settlements on Southsun Cove and uncover the source of the mysterious animal attacks!

This does not make me want to go back to Southsun.

Karka are shellfish kittens. The rewards for dealing with them are out of line with their difficulty.

It would reign in the prevalence of burst builds a lot better if it did.

More frequent and longer duration access to chill and cripple would do wonders at that, if anything dark path should just get its recharge/travel time reduced to help make it missing not such a big deal.

Necromancers just need more ways to remove enemy mobility both offensively and defensively. I noticed a massive increase in how much I helped my team in WvWvW when I moved from a vamp spec to a blind+chilling darkness build. Anyone that got near me was fodder for focus fire from my team; only real issue was of course chain ranged cc directed at me and the large gaps in debuff coverage.

-Change Black Powder into a self buff that makes the next X pistol attacks drop smoke fields at your location that lasts 1-2 sec each; and large enough ones that you cannot move completely out of one at combat speed before firing off at least one auto attack.

This would allow one to use Black Powder on the move without completely losing its benefits; and it would help other team members to proc blinds and stealths as well via spreading smoke fields around.

-Change Ricochet to also include an increase to pistol attack range. P/P needs the extra range to be available to make up for having less evasion tools.

-Vital shot needs to not suck; since most p/p attacks cost large amounts of initiative. thematically it should excel in single target damage the way Shortbow Trick Shot excels at multi target damage.

-It would be nice if there were a good reason to use Body Shot at all outside of team focus fire situations; the 100% finisher chance and vulnerability are nice but not enough to make up for the cost/damage deficit p/p has.

-It would be nice if Unload had a use in condition builds.

Blight: Target has their boon duration reduced while the blight condition is active. Blight deals damage based on number of boons active when either it is removed or it expires.

We can only hope that Primodus or some other Elder Dragon had their minions level the slums in Kaineng; because that place suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked hard.

And it’s not even that far fetched; place looked like a tipped lantern away from an inferno even centuries ago.

Some runes always drop as soulbound regardless of the method used to get them.

+1 here for wardrobe skin storage. this is one of the things DCUO and COH got right, please learn from their example Arenanet!

Your sales of transmutation stones will skyrocket if you implement a convenient system for appearance management; monetize that kitten all you want, if you make it well and don’t price gouge too badly, people will happily pay to use it!

It’s the same old design of trying to force pver’s into a pvp map they don’t want to be on by dangling a completion carrot in front of them.

It was poor design in the past and it continues to be poor design now, regardless of who implements it or why. Some people will never enjoy being forced into pvp areas to obtain a reward that has little to no specific relevance to pvp.

Edit: And I say this as someone that has enjoyed more than a few nights of WvWvW. If you don’t want to be there of your own initiative; then I don’t want you there either as you are far more likely to be taking up space that someone who wanted to be there could have used.

A fairer solution would have been to offer a pve and pvp route to creating Legendaries; but for some reason Anet has not done that despite one of their stated policies being to play what content you want.