1. Have tried PVP? If not, why?
By no means has it been a lot, but yes, I have tried it.
2. Tried it and liked it or not?
Overall, I found it fun, and I do go back, just not frequently.
3. Are active PVP players?
See above; I wouldn’t consider myself “active”, at least in comparison to PvE.
4. Done both WvW and PVP: which do you prefer and why?
sPvP, hands down. WvW is probably my least favorite game type (turn a corner, get ganked by a zerg is not fun to me)
Not sure what you’re trying to do with this data, but I hope this helps!
I haven’t tried this recently, but it did work for me.
I don’t remember what the specific issue was, but I had to copy it to an external device from one OS, and copy it back via the other, but it did work. I think it had something to do with windows not liking the foreign filesystem.
tl;dr: Arenanet should stop working on things that the OP doesn’t like, and instead focus 24/7 on making him happy so he doesn’t get bored.
9 slots (got a free one with a bug), 8 characters, 6 80’s, 1 45, and 1 12.
Engi and thief are my last 2.
If you want blood effects done right, go play Age of Conan.
If you’d prefer a playable game, stick with GW2.
I consider myself a primarily PvE player, though I do enjoy sPvP with some frequency.
Honestly, what it would take to get me interested in WvW is a change in tactics. I know that the zerg thing is pretty much accepted meta at this point; it’s easy, and extremely effective. However, it leads to extremely dull gameplay and certainly doesn’t endear itself to PvE players who are only in WvW to farm badges or get map completion. Turning a corner to get that last PoI and ending up nose-to-nose with a zerg is extremely frustrating, especially when the nearest uncontested waypoint is 3/4 of the way across the map.
Unfortunately, I can see no mechanic change that would alleviate the zerging mess, so for now, I’ll be sitting out of WvW. I’m glad there are people who like it as it is, I’m just not one of them.
tl;dr:
I don’t like certain game types, so ANet should stop working on those and focus instead on what I want.
They add flavor. If you don’t like them, don’t use them.
Kind of a weird thing to rage about, don’t you think?
(edited by Puddles.6385)
I see threads a lot like this one here and on reddit with alarming frequency. The only difference, usually, is that “RP” is replaced with “PvP”, “PvE”, or “WvW”
I will absolutely concede that ANet has devoted significantly more resources to game types other than RP, but it’s pretty important to remember that RPers make up only a small percentage of the playerbase. Since you’ve obviously visited this forum at least once (to post this), can you take a second to just imagine the whiny kittenstorm that would occur if ANet announced that the next patch was all about roleplay?
Now, to your points:
- Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.
These were never removed. They existed in GW1, yes, but were never promised for GW2. Would they be nice to have? Sure. Also, I’m not completely certain on this, but I don’t believe that Guild Halls were in GW1 when it launched either.
- Epic end game stories and expansions removed.
I’m not entirely certain why you believe that this is a specifically RP issue. If your issue is about lack of lore, I’ll address it later. If you’re afraid that not having expansions means we’ll never see Cantha & Elona again, This Massively article should assuage your fears somewhat.
- No promise of new playable races or classes.
Arenanet learned long ago not to make these kinds of promises significantly before they are ready to launch. While they have been rather specific that there are unlikely to be new classes, I once again fail to see how you feel like a lack of new classes is an RP issue. It affects everyone. While you could make a strong argument that not introducing new races would be a primarily RP issue, there are certainly going to be a lot of very disappointed people in all parts of the game if we never see the much-speculated-upon Tengu or Kodan.
*Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.
I think you may be surprised to know how many PvPers (especially sPvP) feel the same way. The grass truly is greener on the other side here. We all have our gripes, most of them legitimate, every time we see patch notes and the things we wanted weren’t included, but they did all this crap for (insert game type you dislike here). I promise you that most of us feel this way about our preferred way of playing.
- Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.
As mentioned above, Cantha is not off the table. I don’t pretend to know all the reasons that the Cantha District was scrapped, but I’ll wager it’s a lot less simple than most of us are making it out to be.
- Lore updated so slowly.
This is a very broad statement. I may need you to narrow it down a bit. Are you talking about living story lore?
- No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers.
You are absolutely correct here. The existing unofficial RP servers would suffice. However, due to guesting, I think that RP name enforcement would be impossible, if that was something you were hoping for.
1. )
I mean let’s all take our “Fan-Boy” frame of mind out and be no partisan on this topic and get some good discussion going, and who knows maybe arena net will take notice.
I would suggest that, before pre-chastising anyone for being a “Fan-Boy”, you take the time to think about their point-of-view. People post this kind of thing here frequently, and I think a lot of us have started seeing it for what it is: Complaining that the game isn’t exactly like every other MMO ever created.
If you want to run like a hamster on a gear treadmill, that’s totally fine, but this game doesn’t have that “feature”. As a matter of fact, for many of us, this was/is a major selling point. Chasing incremental upgrades is an ultimately fruitless endeavor in most games, because you’re either getting better gear so that you can get past the artificial gating mechanic and into the next raid, where you do the same thing again, OR the next expansion comes out, raising the level cap so that the gear you worked so long and hard for becomes utterly useless in a matter of 3-4 levels. How is this “fun”?
I’m not going to flame you for mentioning raids, but I would like to know: Does raising the cap on party size necessarily make thngs more"fun" for you? Is it not possible to tune 5-man content to be just as challenging as something requiring 10, 25, 40, or even more? My experience with raiding on other games has taught me that the more people it requires, the more of a hassle it’s going to be. Not that the content is harder in any way, just that the more people you try to get doing the same thing at the same time significantly increases potential drama & bullkitten.
Your comment on one-shot mechanics and your complaint about having to use gw2lfg.com belong together. You’re getting one-shotted and having a bad tme in dungeons because you’re insisting on PUGing everything. Taking the time to find a good guild with helpful, knowledgeable folks is definitely worth it, because playing with people you like and who communicate well can easily triple the amount of fun you’re capable of having in this game.
You are essentially walking into a Burger King, after eating McDonalds for years, and then loudly complaining that they don’t serve Big Macs.
I applaud Arenanet for having the balls to try to break some of the traditions that have permeated almost every other MMO for as long as MMOs have existed. Sure, the execution could have been better (couldn’t it always?), but when you consider how much some of ANet’s design decisions have really improved the experience (no ninja looters, no gathering node stealing, no kill stealing, just to name a few), I’m more than willing to overlook a few flaws. Especially when I know that most gripes that I do have with the game have either already been addressed, or are currently being worked on, per ANet.
This is ridiculous.
We have a lot of choices when it comes to doing the daily, but all I see is people saying,
“Well, I don’t want to WvW”
“I don’t want to cut down trees”
“I don’t want to go to a different zone”
“I don’t want to kill things underwater”
“I don’t want to kill things at all”
“I’m a full glass cannon, so I can’t remove conditions” (This person is an idiot)
“If I can’t find a giant pile of corpses within 5 minutes of logging in, there’s no way I’m doing daily reviver”
And then the best part:
“Arenanet lied when they said I would be able to play the way I want to.”
I’ll go ahead and apologize for Arenanet for assuming that you’d want to actually play the game.
This is by no means meant to represent everyone who has quit, or even most of them, but I think this could be why for some people.
In EVERY other MMO that has levels, we have learned that all the rewards worth working for are at max level. There is also absolutely no reason to visit low-level zones in these games, because there are not any max-level rewards to be had, and the content is extremely trivial.
I’ve seen quite regular complaints from players suggesting they plowed through to 80 (getting <30% map completion on the way) and quickly got tired of the three zones currently available for max level characters.
In actuality, however, all the zones in the game have a possibility of granting rewards that are not exactly trivial for max-level characters. Heck, I’ve gotten not one, but two sets of Holographic Dragon Wings, both on a <10 character, and both in Plains of Ashford. While I do not expect that these results are common, it illustrates that, in order to get rewards that you may actually want at max level, you are by no means limited to CS, FGS, and SSC.
10 Months = ~300 days = ~7200 hours
You claim to have played for over 2000 hours. This accounts for 27.7% of every hour the game has been live.
Perhaps your changing perspective on the game has very little to do with the game itself, and more to do with the fact that you have, on average, played over 6.5 hours every single day since the game released?
I’d be tired of anything after that much time. I think you may need a secondary hobby.
Also, you should remember that you got over 2000 hours worth of entertainment for 60 dollars before you came here to complain.
How is announcing to all of LA that you’re a highly-skilled player (solely for the sake of announcing it) not boasting?
For every 50 people claiming to have spent hundreds of dollars getting nothing, approximately one may be telling the truth.
As part of the fanbase, I resent you trying to speak for me.
As far as I am concerned, the system for this event is just fine. I can buy boxes with gems if I choose, and have a slightly higher chance of getting a skin, or I can just open the thousands of regular coffers that I get simply by playing the game the way I usually play.
What if the skins would drop, not from a chest, but from any normal mob, just with a really low droprate? This, I think, would be perceived as “better”, even though it’s exactly the same kitten ed thing in the long run.
I have both, at 80.
Personally, I like the necro better, but there are quite a few people who don’t agree.
What profession was the one that didn’t “click”? Knowing that would help get you guided in the right direction.
I should also mention that you have 5 character slots, so you may as well use them. My biggest recommendation is that you stick it out with a profession until at least level 20-30. Most professions don’t really start to play the way they ultimately will until around that level.
I would say go with a shatter-heavy mesmer or a condition necro with Epidemic.
As a warning, however, neither will be an AoE powerhouse at level 1. I find that most professions don’t really shine at much of anything until around level 30-40.
Interesting. I am NOT a PvP-type player by any means at all, but I, too, had my first experience in spvp very recently (the day before yesterday).
What’s truly surprising is that I REALLY enjoyed myself. I went in with a condition/confusion Mesmer (only a few different utility skills from what I use in PvE), and while I expected to be instagibbed (like what happens in any other game’s pvp), I found that I could be remarkably effective, and astoundingly survivable, provided I was careful, and didn’t try to take down the whole opposing team at once, all by myself.
May I ask what profession you decided to take to the mists? Now that I have participated, I can certainly see how melee-heavy professions/builds could be extraordinarily frustrating.
I wholeheartedly agree with OP. As Tarnished Coast seems to always be getting rolled, and is NEVER blue, I’m stuck at 95%.
You do, however, get big chunks of xp for completing goals beyond the requisite 5. I’m not certain they’re any more than you get while doing the daily, but still noticeable.
I’ve been leveling a mesmer lately, and I have decided to do map completions starting with the 1-15 zones, then working my way up through the 15-25 zones, etc. As this is the 6th toon I’ve leveled, I thought this might be a nice way of leveling, while assuring my squishy self could stay alive and unfrustrated.
Doing this, however, has left me a little annoyed at the individual map completion rewards. So far, I have completed three zones (Queensdale, Metrica Province, and Caledon Forest), and, aside from transmutation stones and low-level crafting materials, I have received the following
1 Dagger
1 Speargun
1 Longbow
1 Medium Headpiece
2 Heavy boots
NONE of which a mesmer can use. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect level-appropriate rewards (I’m 26, but I don’t expect level 26 gear from Caledon Forest), but if you’re going to give me transmutation stones, it would be nice if the gear that drops at least has skins I can use, preferably unique (or at least uncommon) ones.
Map completion at higher levels will give exotics, which can be salvaged for ectos and upgrade components, so that is a reasonable reward even if you can’t use the gear. However, what am I supposed to do with a green level 15 speargun with a minor rune of krait slaying?
Is it too much to ask that map completion reward gear be limited to items that the character completing the map can actually equip? Low-level map completions aren’t hard, per se, but they are time-consuming. I would like to be rewarded for my time with something more than a trip to a vendor for 1.2 silver.
I bought digital deluxe, and probably ~$200 worth of gems so far, and I have absolutely terrible luck. Both in the MF, and with drops.
Why is the number in the tooltip when hovering over a stat different from the stat itself? Which one is true?
any best in slot gear is possible to do solo so your stament is falsh atleast about that as they can be optaind with laurels
so because i want a legendary but dont want PvE i should have a way to optain it in WvW only would that be fair or even make them special in any way then?
its a diffrent example then what you are agienst, but same problem i want something as little game breaking it is for me to gain it that way as it is for you to not going to WvW to get kills from monthly
Actually, back before we had any real information regarding legendaries, a number of people in the community believed that there would be “separate but equal” legendaries for PvE and WvW. This didn’t end up being the case, but that is ok, because one should have to accomplish something legendary to get a legendary. It’s worth pointing out here that getting a legendary is quite a bit more of an accomplishment than completing a monthly.
I don’t really like the process of getting a legendary as it is now, but using that as a comparison to monthlies is akin to comparing winning a presidential election to winning a 3rd grade spelling bee. At a school for the slow kids.
(edited by Puddles.6385)
1.13 gigs, it seems.
That being said, I agree that it should be in the launcher.
Aren’t they modifying the achievement system in the next update (due later today)? Dailies are certainly changing, but some comments suggest that monthlies are as well.
Maybe we should wait until they have posted the release notes to see what they have done (if anything) to monthlies before continuing on this thread?
I waited until I saw the patch notes to reply to this, and was vindicated because of it.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the dailies as they were (aside from being kind of predictable). However, the monthlies, as mentioned already, lock certain types of players out of being able to complete them, and have not been altered at all.
A few people have mentioned that the monthlies are not “required”. As Laurels are now the only real method of progression, and completing the monthly offers an additional 33% Laurels (in months with 30 days), I would argue that, while not exactly mandatory, they are extremely important.
I recall a very early marketing piece from ANet(soon after the GW2 announcement) that stated that everything you needed to do in the game to obtain best-in-slot gear would be possible to do solo. While I never saw a retraction to this, it is clearly no longer true. While it’s possible that someone is able to solo fractals, it would require exploiting bugs and mob AI, which it seems clear is not “intended” behavior. On the same note, WvW as a solo player is pretty much just volunteering to give NPC’s money for repair bills, while accomplishing nothing.
I just want to understand why sPvP players get their own, personal daily and monthly, so they won’t feel it necessary to participate in a game mode that they don’t prefer, while anyone who chooses to exclusively PvE of WvW does not get the same consideration.
EDIT: I should also mention that, were there to be separate monthlies for PvP, WvW, and PvE, I have no problem with people who do all 3 getting triple rewards. I am simply asking for the ability to obtain a monthly achievement without playing a game mode I choose not to. People who want to go to the trouble to do all three should be rewarded for their trouble and dedication.
(edited by Puddles.6385)
it’s 50 kills…..play for like an hour and you’d have it…..
Don’t demand they change the way it’s done for everyone just because YOU have a problem with a aspect of the game.
Funny. I don’t recall demanding anything. This is a suggestion forum, and I am making a suggestion. Don’t be a jerk about a suggestion because YOU don’t agree with it.
Personally, I think this is people making mountains out of mole hills. But, I do believe you shouldn’t play a game for one section of it. You should play it all. The PvE, WvW and SPvP. (I suck at the latter but i still do it)
I could be wrong here, but wasn’t it stated even before launch that you should be able to play the game however you want to play? I dislike PvP, and do not have a desire to participate in it. For this, I am punished by not being able to complete monthly achievements. PvP monthlies only require participating in one game type, sPvP. However, WvW players are required to do PvE (fractals), and PvErs are required to do WvW (Invader kills). Are you saying that I am the only one who finds this a bit unfair?
100% map completion requires completion of all 4 WvW maps, an WvW performance benefits everyone on the server during PvE by providing bonuses, so I am guessing that Anet do consider WvW at least partially part of PvE since they are interlinked.
…and having players in WvW who are only there for world completion eating up queue space during busy times hurts your server’s WvW performance.
Doesn’t it make sense overall to separate WvW and PvE? As it is, I already feel the need to respec and regear when switching between the 2 game types, as the gear and traits I use for PvE are basically useless in WvW.
We saw a huge outcry from WvW and sPvP players over ascended gear, because obtaining those items (at least for now) required PvE, which some people don’t want to do. This will be fixed in the upcoming patch with the introduction of Laurels. However, since dailies and monthlies will be the de facto method of progression, can’t the PvE-only players get the same consideration?
- Please stop auto moving my characters on the character select screen. at least leave them where we first created them or let us order them ourselves alphabetically or something.
I definitely agree with this. Also, DAE think it would be nice if the character select screen could show at least 8 characters without scrolling? With 8 professions, I can’t be the only one who bought enough slots to have one of each, and it would be nice to see them all. There’s certainly plenty of screen real estate to add one more. (currently, only 7 characters are displayed without scrolling to the right)
Having a separate WvW monthly would be more than welcome.
That is probably the best solution. It would give people who participate in multiple game types more rewards (which is fair), and stop punishing those of us who prefer to just PvE.
Title says it all. I don’t like PvP, yet I am REQUIRED to participate in WvW in order to complete the PvE monthly.
Of a slightly less annoying nature, WvW is also required for PvE map completion.
While I know that the PvP monthly only applies to sPvP, I do not agree that that makes WvW part of the PvE game.
Player Roles: while you might enjoy the current setup; it’d be nice to at least have the option…if you don’t wanna heal, then don’t. Tanking doesn’t really seem to be an issue at all.
I understand where you’re coming from, but this doesn’t work. As soon as you introduce a true healing class/spec, the kitten hits the fan. If a healing class (Monk) were introduced today, then mob damage would have to go up significantly, just so the healer would actually have something to do. Once this happens, squishier classes will get one-shotted by these mobs, making tanks necessary, which brings us right back to the trinity.
Since you also brought up lfg, I think we can all agree that finding a full party of 5 is difficult enough right now without needing a specific party makeup of one tank, one healer, and three DPS.
Personally, I don’t miss the trinity at all. And I LOVE being able to take the same spec (with easily altered major traits, utility skills, and weapons) into just about any type of content I choose to participate in.
Just about every profession is capable of performing any of those roles. That being said, some are better than others at certain things.
IMO, building a character with a nice mix of all three (as fits your playstyle) seems to work quite well.
For example, Guardians are generally looked at as the ultimate support class, and it’s hard to argue with that. They have so many abilities that heal, give boons, etc., that they can be pigeonholed into a support role, but Guardian damage isn’t exactly bad, either.
Warriors (since there aren’t “tanks”) tend to be looked at as straight damage dealers, but they have many support-y abilities as well (shouts & banners come to mind)
What worked for me was to choose a class (Elementalist here), and then to choose a weapon that fit my playstyle (dagger/dagger is the kittens’ kitten), then choose traits & gear that work well with that weapon set, then pick utility skills that shored up some of the weaknesses the character had, both in design and in my style of play.
Long story short, I don’t really concern myself with what “role” I’m filling, but more with how I want to play.
Hope this helps.
I’m aware bumping threads is frowned upon, but since it seems a large portion of the community managers is tasked with infracting people, maybe that’s the only way to get verification that anyone at ANet is actually paying any attention at all to this thread. I’m sick of the silence, and I’m tired of waiting for Q&A sessions that answer the same question dozens of times (see the ascended gear kittenstorm), and ignore pretty much anything else.
I don’t know what server you’re on, but I go out of my way to rez other players. I even tolerate some additional work to rez NPC’s. I’ve had the Combat healer title for over a month now, but it’s still free xp!
Only once has a player who clearly saw me lying there skipped the chance to rez me. I still think the guy was a huge jerk, but on the whole, I find people more than willing to rez under normal circumstances (i.e. there’s not a champion mob standing on my corpse).
Forgot to mention also that the practice of merging tangentially-related threads into huge megathreads that are impossible to follow HAS to stop. It makes people with legitimate concerns feel like they matter much less than keeping the forums looking neat.
I’ve given up entirely on the forums, and the Reddit community. Questions and concerns pretty much never get answered, and if they do, it’s usually by some elitist jerk who doesn’t even bother to read the entire post. VERY rarely, an ANet employee will reply, and that’s great, but why have an ENTIRE TEAM of community managers when we get, at most, two responses to legitimate concerns a day, one of which is either a repeat of information already posted elsewhere, or simply a dodge?
Recently, I’ve become irritated by the lack of guesting. I understand that it wasn’t ready for launch. That’s perfectly cool with me. However, we were told, back in August, that guesting was coming “soon”. After three months, I think it’s not unreasonable to ask for a status update, but there is simply no way to ask this question in a way that has any chance of getting an official response.
I talked some friends into buying the game, but it is completely impossible for us to play together at this time, because my server is full. Yes, I have checked at all hours of the day, and yes, it’s always full. I could server switch, true, but doing so would mean abandoning a second guild of pretty good people just so my friends and I can play together. The way that server population limits work necessitates a solution like guesting, and its’ absence serves to further fracture an already very divided community.
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere today, but instead of a big content patch next month, I’d much rather see some attention paid to these kinds of orphaned features. Guesting, minigames, extended experience (iOS/android apps), personal instance, etc. I believe that we, the community, really want better information on the status of features that have been explicitly promised to us by the dev team. Heck, even saying, “We’re actively working on it, but don’t have an ETA at this time” would at least acknowledge that these features haven’t been forgotten about/given up on. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like we can even expect that.
EDIT: Chris Whiteside’s post in this thread, while appreciated, highlights this problem even more. I assume that a sizeable number of people will be getting Guild Wars 2 for xmas. Given the recent win of “game of the year” from gamespot, and likely others to come, I think this is a reasonable assumption. These new players are going to face these exact same problems, only on a potentially much larger scale.
(edited by Puddles.6385)
LOL, I just started the same thread. That’s what I get for not searching thoroughly enough.
I have had to server switch to be able to play with IRL friends (most of whom only started playing because I talked them into it), and a number of us are STILL unable to play together due to servers being full.
I’ll buy a second account if necessary, but with my luck guesting will be introduced immediately after I do so.
PLEASE can we get a status update on this?
EDIT: I don’t really participate in WvW at this time, so the lengthening of the server switch cooldown a few weeks ago only serves to spotlight how sorely needed this feature is.
Would anyone else not be disappointed if next month, instead of a big content update, we could get an update that really focuses on pushing out these orphaned features? Maybe guesting, open a new minigame, and put some touches on the personal instance? That might just be my dream update!
(edited by Puddles.6385)
I like better the game we have now, fortunately. But does anyone remember ArenaNet talked about a lot of “mini-games” like in bars and stuff. Did it get implemented somewhere? Maybe I’m just clueless and don’t know where to look for these activities hehe.
Keg brawl was the only mini-game that made it in for launch. There’s a shooting gallery (locked atm) in Divinity’s Reach, and I’m pretty sure something else in each home city (Polymock? Please?), so I’m sure they’ll get released eventually.
I’ve been playing since headstart, and am really loving the game, but I’ve run into a pretty major roadblock: In order to play with my real-life friends whom I have talked into buying the game, I was forced off of the server I had played on since launch (thereby having to basically abandon my guild) to one of only 3 (at the time) non-full servers.
After a few weeks there (I won’t kitten talk the server, I’ll just say I didn’t like it there), all the servers magically opened up, and I took the opportunity to change servers again. Unfortunately, the server I chose is now one of only 3 “Full” servers. I’m stuck there (actually, I really don’t want to leave) for another few days, and now once again, my friends and I can’t play together.
Guesting would be a great solution to this problem, but like so many features that didn’t make the cut for launch, I haven’t heard beans about it since.
I am contemplating buying a second account just so I can play with my friends, which I really don’t mind doing (just a few less gems this month), but I know my luck. Guesting will likely be implemented 0.02 seconds after the purchase goes through.
So, if you’re someone else who has been caught in a server shuffle, please bump this so maybe we can get some solid answers. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: My fault for not searching, but there already is a thread for this. Please post there:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guesting-eta-and-specifics/first#post1049500
(edited by Puddles.6385)
Yet another confirmation here.
Hello Tarnished Coast!
If you have the hard drive space, and enough free time to do it, you’ll get significantly better performance running guild wars 2 under bootcamp.
Unlike Diablo & Starcraft, Guild Wars 2’s Mac client is basically a third-party “wrapper” of sorts, translating Directx (windows-specific) to openGL (open source). It does work, and work pretty well, but if you like to crank up your graphics settings (and it’s a shame if you don’t in this game. It looks incredible), Windows really is the best choice for performance.
No limit I am aware of .
The only restriction that I know of is that the items must be of similar type. So, 4 armour pieces, or 4 weapons, even 4 aqua breathers. The forge interface will tell you which pieces are compatible by graying out the ones that cannot be used in your inventory selection screen.
I’m not sure this is true. Maybe for exotics only, but I have had no trouble throwing 4 green items, regardless of type, into the forge. This being said, I’ve tossed in 3 caster-type weapons and a light headpiece, and been rewarded with a harpoon gun (useless to anyone who could have used any of the original items).
Perhaps keeping a similar type will reduce how random the results are, but to my understanding the only thing that HAS to match for items to be combined in the forge is item quality.
Jeweler is, IMO, the easiest of all the crafting professions to level, mostly because other than some metals, the materials needed are more or less unique to the craft.
I might recommend taking jeweler on a new alt, as you’ll get 10 character levels on your way to 400.
You do need to be 400, and have some karma saved up, in order to craft exotics. You’ll also need some karma to get from 375-400, which is definitely the hardest part. The good part is that if you salvage the rares you make on your way to 400, you should get a few ectos which will help in crafting your exotics.
To give you an idea, exotic jewelry requires 1 orichalcum setting (two ori ingots), one orichalcum band/chain/hook (2-4 ori ingots, I think), and 5 identical exquisite gems, each of which requires a T6 gem (Orbs), an orichalcum filigree (2 ori ingots), and a glob of ectoplasm. The recipes for Exquisite gems (and the rares you need for 375-400) are available for <800 karma, so It’s not too prohibitive.
I don’t know if this is still true (haven’t tried for awhile), but it used to be that if you used a recipe on a character who didn’t have that profession, it will still show up on the character who does. Meaning that purchased recipes were basically for the entire account.
Can anyone confirm/deny if this still works?
I have this issue sometimes as well. It seems to be linked to alt-tabbing out of the game. try switching from fullscreen to fullscreen windowed, or vice-versa, and see if that helps.
In all fairness to the OP, I know these mats are expensive/hard to farm, but even if the chance of getting a rare dye is as high as 80%, it’s entirely possible you’d get 2 commons in a row. Two is a very small sample size.
I would be more in favor of reducing the material requirements than I would be for increasing the rare drop rate. Rares should be rare, but I know it feels like getting punched in the gut when a common drops.