As an Ele main, I’d settle for just having an out of combat weapon set toggle.

I can already do it with the items in my inventory, but if I switch to staff from dagger/dagger, my first dagger takes the place of my staff (deep in my organized, invisible equipment bag) while my second pops into the first open space at the top of my inventory, which is usually full of other gear I’m going to sell or salvage.

Because someone counters with “But you have enough skills as it is!” everytime this issue is brought up with Ele/Engi: OUT of combat weapon swap. We can already do it, it’s just a hassle.This doesn’t really change anything except convenience.

I would rather keep finishers out of PvE.

It’s irritating to have to finish enemies in PvE, and if there’s not another player battling for his/her life on the other end, it’s less exciting than it is a hassle. Up until LS1 enemies started requiring finishers, I thought of the downed state as something heroic that set player characters apart from NPCs. Having to finish random Toxic Alliance dudes diminishes that.

What you’re saying isn’t inaccurate, but we need to be careful with how we present data.

We can make the numbers suggest that light armor costs anywhere from 4 times what medium armor does to only costing less than 1/3 more, depending on how we frame things and which numbers we use.

*A Bolt of Damask costs four times what a piece of Elonian Leather does to craft one.
*Ascended materials for light armor, not including insignia, cost double what they do for medium armor.
*All of the ascended materials for light armor only costs 1/3 more than they do for medium armor.
*The total cost of light armor is less than 1/3 higher than that of medium armor.)

These are all true (more or less, your calculations may vary by current market rates and purchasing/crafting decisions,) but they present the situation very differently.

I was initially confused by your numbers, but I think you’re not counting the damask (18 bolts) used to make ascended insignia. That makes some sense, because every weight uses the same insignia, but it’s not the total cost of ascended mats.

If you include the insignia materials and craft it yourself, it’s only 33% more. (486light, 366g for med, 389 for heavy.) If you add up the numbers for a full suit of armor, the proportions drop even further.

I still think a 120g is too big a gap, but it just goes to show that whenever someone throws out numbers in this discussion, it serves the reader to examine those numbers and understand exactly how they’re calculated.

Edit: Wanze beat me to it. This was a response to Guardian of Tyria’s post.

I like Guardian of Tyria’s solution, adjusting the Light Armor recipes to maintain some value for silk, while bringing the cost of Light Armor more into line with Medium/Heavy Armor, as well as raising the value of Leather.

No one wants to see silk go back to being worthless (hello, Thick Leather Section,) but I haven’t heard a good argument for Light Armor costing substantially more gold than Medium/Heavy Armor, besides “it keeps silk valuable.”

RapidSausage.4620:

As everyone knows, cloth mats from t3/4/5 are ridiculously inflated, causing ascended mats that require them to cost almost 4 times as much as leather and metal ones, and i believe the solution lies in plant harvesting.

That’s just not true.
Edit: I can’t read. Yes, Damask does cost 3-4 times what Leather and Steel costs. The post I’m quoting is accurate, although I’d argue that it’s misleading about the true cost of the armor.

October 4th, 2015
Bolt of Damask — craft 13g | buy 15g | sell 17g
Elonian Leather — craft 3g | buy 3g | sell 4g
Deldrimor Ingot — craft 4g | buy 4g | sell 5g

Most of a suit of armor is the same across weight classes, so we don’t need to worry about vision crystals, insignia, etc. Heavy armor uses 150 Thermocatalytic Reagent instead of 360 Gossamer Thread, but both are sold from vendors and cost about the same. (2g30s40c for thread versus 2g24s40c for reagents.) Therefore, we just need to concern ourselves with the difference in cost between varying amounts of leather, steel, and damask:

Edit: For clarity, the calculations below use the “craft” prices from GW2Spidy.

Light
36damask + 6leather
Medium
24damask + 18leather
Heavy
25damask + 16steel

Converted to gold costs,

Light
468g + 18g = 486g
Medium
312g + 54g = 366g
Heavy
325g + 64g = 389g

Cost Differences
Medium (0)
Heavy ( +23g )
Light ( +120g )

I think it’s dumb that light armor costs 120g more, because it’s not a question of class balance. Just the same, the problem isn’t as severe as it’s made out to be.

Edit: See edit above.

Varonth.5830:

And then there is the massiv difference in cost between different armor types.
A light armor set cost more than twice of a medium armor set in ascended materials.

…Does it really? I made my light ascended armor back in July, and here are the numbers I used:

Light
393damask+12leather= 405g

Medium
262damask+40leather= 302g

Heavy
273damask+56steel= 329g

While I agree that light armor shouldn’t cost so much more, let’s not overstate the case.

It’s possible the numbers have changed since then, or that someone could get different numbers depending on what mix of buy order / sell order / craft they use to calculate values, but I won’t believe it’s double unless someone can show me their numbers.

Hrm. This data is really, really old.

I’m not saying every stat has been turned on its head in the past three years, but it’s not reliable information for making statements about the current environment.

Save yourself the agony of Textile and just use BBCode. It’s a lot more common on forums than Textile is, and easier to use, in my opinion. I’ve added spaces to these examples so the forum will let you see the code, but you can find a good set of codes here.

[ s]strike[/s]
[ b]bold[/b]
[ i]italics[/i]
[ u]underline[/u]

Unfortunately, you can’t do bulleted lists with BBCode on this forum, although you can do it with Textile. This forum software just isn’t very good like that.

I had the same problem, which resolved itself when I replayed the story instance with a new beta character.

If you’re looking for a take on the mana bar / energy bar concept that isn’t thief, you might look at what Revenants are doing in HoT.

Showbiz.9725:

I should have clarified that I’m lvl 61 right now.

Oh! In that case, you can take whatever you want, really.

Personally, I didn’t start crafting until my second character, at which point I had enough coin and materials saved up to craft efficiently. I found while leveling that it was just easier to gear up with whatever dropped, instead of crafting something new every 5-10 levels. To each their own, though!

Artificer. Refining luck is super convenient, and jewelcrafting is of limited usefulness, simply because you can get ascended trinkets from laurels or fractals without having to craft them.

You might already have this, but GW2crafts has a great breakdown of how much each discipline costs:
http://gw2crafts.net/total.html

If you prefer dagger to staff, you might choose weaponsmith. If you’re just gearing up with rares/exotics, you can probably buy whatever you want on the trading post at just a small markup over crafting it yourself, but ascended you probably need to craft.

That said, if you’re just now hitting 80 and getting into crafting, you don’t really need to worry about ascended gear. That’s a long-term goal.

I use light armor, but I’ve always been happy with Denim and Graphite.

Why do you want to be the guild leader? Do you even want to be the leader?

You have to ask yourself what’s best for you, and what’s best for the other players in the guild. I was vice president of a club in college simply because some of my residents (RA) needed someone to sign the form for them, but I was super busy and couldn’t really commit to it. When it elections came around, I gave it up once I was sure someone more capable was going to be taking over. It’s a club, not a trophy.

At the same time, if they gave you the position, it’s your decision what you do with it. You might risk fracturing the guild, driving people off, or just having things decay naturally if you’re not trying to expand it, but they gave up their claim to ownership. If they’re unhappy, they can start their own guild, with blackjack and hoo— quaggans.

I don’t know what happened to the OP, but I’ve had pretty positive interactions with people. You’ll find the occasional jerk on map chat, but I don’t see that a whole lot, and there is a block feature.

I know people can get pretty intense about dungeons/fractals, but as long as you play with like-minded people, you can avoid a lot of trouble. (Casual? Leave the hardcore runners to play with each other, while you find casual players. Hardcore? Don’t join a casual run and complain when someone isn’t stacking. Problem solved.)

If it’s more personal drama, like a guild, there’s only so much Anet can do. Block the people you don’t like and move on.

Dristig.9678:

How can you call a fabricated time gate anything but arbitrary? If it was based on the game market that wouldn’t be arbitrary. The only point for it after two years is to keep the price high. Keeping the price high is still more punishment for people that didn’t care about high end fractals but are interested in Raids.

It’s not arbitrary because it’s serving a purpose, which is to give crafters something worth crafting. Is it an artificial restriction? Yes. That doesn’t make it bad.

I think ascended crafting costs too much, but that’s because of high silk requirements, not the time gate.

You can find some Textile codes in the Wikipedia article, or you can find a more exhausting (and technical) list here.

Be aware, though, that not every code specified by Textile is implemented on the forum:

h1. This should make a big header, for example.

This should make a big header, for example.

I was vaguely hoping the forums would get revamped with Heart of Thorns, but I’m not holding my breath.

Before we start throwing around words like “disgusting,” maybe we should wait and see just how necessary they are?

I still think the time-gate is a good thing. If you want ascended gear immediately, you can buy components from other players, who have something of value to craft and sell. You’re not locked out of anything, and it’s not totally arbitrary.

Arccai.4870:

Not really looking for any players opinion here, just an answer from the devs, since this couldnt be explained as a ticket.

I see what you’re saying, but you’re going to get player opinions anyway. That’s what happens when you post in the forum.

Arccai.4870:

Lets say that two people completed all achievements to 100% (including capping dailies), in other words. they did equal work to reach their goals.
But one ends up having 26.540 Points, while the other one ends up with 24,850. Only because one of them started alittle bit earlier.
I mean, should really achievement points be exclusive? Is it gonna prove the hard work and effort you put down to it, or the time you’ve spent?

If one of the players started earlier, and they both did every achievement available to them, that’s not equal work.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d be pretty annoyed if my historical achievements were made not to count for achievement points. Regardless of whether they’re available to everyone, I earned them, and it wouldn’t be good to literally devalue my achievements.

Something that needs to be understood about Living World Season 1 is that it was designed to be missed. The intent was to make a world that changed over time, and lost things, and built up a history of things past for players to reminisce about. Limited-time achievements, and their points, make sense in that context.

That plan has some benefits, but also some major problems, which is why S2 changed gears. The uneven number of maximum achievement points is a consequence of that.

My main point is that this isn’t really a casual player problem. Getting through the story is a casual player problem. Doing dungeons once is a casual player problem. Putting together a coherent build is a casual player problem.

If I’m looking to expand on the ascended gear I already have, I’m probably not that casual.

Don’t get too worked up over “needing ascended gear for raids” yet. Skeptical though I am that raids will be that finely balanced, even if they are, the final raid wings won’t even be open at launch, since they’re trying to ease people into HoT, and raids.

Should you start making your time gated materials now? Sure. But let’s wait and see what we’re getting into before we complain about how unreasonable it is. If raids start and they’re impossible without perfectly-selected ascended gear, we can flip out about it then.

As for the time gate, it helps give crafting players something of value to craft. Crazy silk prices aside, the system seems to be working at intended.

Balsa.3951:

(I’m pretty sure getting the real legendary will be a super grind and nothing what a casual player can do under 3 months, plus not everybody will buy HOT.)

Can’t a casual player just use exotics?

If we’re talking Fractals, I don’t think there are a lot of casual players in high-level Fractals.

If we’re talking raids, it remains to be seen how casual-friendly those might be, but they don’t seem like a casual activity, and you can assume raiders have HoT.

I think legendary stat-swapping is a simpler solution than making another tier between ascended and legendary, with a complicated stat-infusing system. Hopefully HoT will make getting legendary gear less of a grind, so picking up legendary gear will be an actual solution to the problem, not just a grind for prestige.

That still leaves upgrade components, which is a separate issue that legendary gear still wants a solution for.

I wish they’d do some merchandising, like a soundtrack, shirts, etc. I have the GW2 dragon logo mousepad and mouse, and they’re great.

I never did understand some of their other merchandising ventures, like wall graphics, PC cases, and a 2011 calendar. (Yes, 2011, a year before the game released.)

Did you know there’s a statue of the Shatterer? All I ever wanted was a red/white logo shirt!

And don’t get me started on the soundtrack. Its problems are well-documented elsewhere.

Pretty sure the original poster deleted his/her post, and Crimson Clouds was replying to…whatever the original post was.

The way this forum handles post deletion, especially for the first post in a thread, is pretty wonky. But, then, this forum software is pretty wonky in general, so this is the least of its problems.

BassHunteR.7246:

Geodes you can farm in dry top directly or in chest trains on sw with those sand pieces.. but on sw will be a lot slower than on dry top..

What do you mean by “ToT”?

“Trick or Treat” bags. Using Maize Balm on ambient creatures will turn them into some weak Halloween mobs, which drop Trick or Treat bags, which can be sold at a good profit.

I’ve heard it’s super effective as a farm, but also a huge drama fest. Since the mobs are weak, everyone has to try to tag as many of them as they can to get credit, without killing the mobs too quickly. It’s easy to troll/be trolled/accidentally troll by just cutting loose with your full power, killing things before others can tag them.

LimitBreaker.4165:

Anyone having a cry about it is just lazy af. It’s “End game” suck it up and make your ascended.

I’m not sure I get this attitude. It’s a question of time and interest more than difficulty for most people.

A full set of ascended gear costs something like 350G – 450G. I don’t know what people’s average gold-making rates are, but if you’re making 10G/hour (which isn’t a bad rate!) that’s still 35-45 hours of farming to gear up a character, with a single stat.

That’s not difficult, but it’s definitely grind, and if it’s required for raiding, it’s mandatory grind.

(You can change stats in the Mystic Forge now, but that’s something you want to do once, not back-and-forth as you experiment or do different content.)

It’s probably worth noting that this was just a tweet. That’s not the same as them writing a blog post and saying “Raids are meant to push you to your very limit! Only those with full ascended stats need apply!”

I’m still wary about it, but, you know, perspective. If we want developers to be able to speak off-the-cuff like that, we need to take what they say with a little grain of salt. We won’t ultimately know until raids are available, and then we can get up in arms about how they’re too difficult.

It’s going to look different in different locations.

Ambient lighting can have a huge effect on how weapons, armor, dye, and even characters’ hair color and skin tones appear. The preview window has one specific lighting setup, and where you are in that screenshot has a dramatically different ambient lighting to it.

I’m skeptical that the difficulty will be that finely tuned, but I don’t like the sentiment of it. For a lot of people, that would either keep them out of raids, or restrict them to just doing it on their main, not exotic-geared alts.

Even on someone’s main character, a lot of people would be locked into one build. Stat-swappable Legendary armor will help loosen up builds, but I doubt that’ll be cheap. (And if it requires raids, there’s the cart, then the horse.)

If you’re looking for an answer beyond “artificial scarcity drives sales,” I don’t think any of us can help you.

As long as they bring the removed items back once in a while, I don’t really mind. Business is business, and if an item in the store for a year, then comes back once or twice a year, I’m okay with that.

I feel like this thread is grasping at straws. For a lot of big features, you’re likely to get some push back, but if a lot of people are actually asking for it, it’s not surprising for that feature to get added.

Well, you know, except for mounts. I don’t know how that made your list, besides wishful thinking. I think your “hint hint, soften the blow” theory is inventing a pattern.

I sure hope not. Maybe it’s the writing, maybe it’s the delivery, maybe it’s the medium, but it’s a struggle for me to care a whole lot about the LS2 characters, and Marjory and Kasmeer have never had much chemistry, in my opinion.

The more we focus on the player character and the world, rather than the dramas of the LS2 characters, the better.

Qugi.2653:

Redenaz.8631:

I kinda hate swamp, to be honest. Either a team blows right through it while one person or two people stand around confused, or it’s struggle.

Swamp is so easy if have Mesmer. Have 3 player get orb thing. When do have Mesmer drop portal in middle of map. Done easy.

It’s stupidly easy and quick under some circumstances, but a nuisance under others. I can’t really call it fun.

For my character who does Tequatl almost daily, or when I’m farming world bosses, or if I’m breaking down my spoils from several days in Silverwastes, I usually use Mystic Salvage kits. Sometimes I’ll just use basic, if it’s what I have on hand, and I don’t worry about it.

Mystic kits cost (10.5c/use) more than basic kits, even assuming you have a bunch of Mystic Forge Stones lying around, but since even minor sigils sell to vendors for 16 copper, it breaks even, more or less, especially if you’re using basics on plain items and mystic on anything with an upgrade.

Since it doesn’t make a significant difference, cost-wise, and I have a ton of forge stones accumulated, I use mystic kits for the convenience. Although, they’re most convenient if I’m standing next to a vendor as I tear open loot bags. If I’m opening bags / accumulating items as I run around a map, basics are more convenient because I’m not filling my inventory with sigils to sell.

Convenience is king.

(When I do salvage a rare or exotic, I use a Black Lion Kit, because I’ve accumulated enough of those to spare them.)
((I have no thoughts to offer about the Salvage-o-Matics.))

Well, if you like having a lot of alt characters, character slots are handy, obviously. It’s relatively cheap to outfit a new character with 18 Slot bags, too, which gives you a ton of storage space spread across characters, even without buying extra bank slots or bag slots.

Outfits / armor skins are purely cosmetic, of course, so their value depends on how much you like what you see. If you’re just getting back into it, and your wife is new to it, however, you might want to hold off and see what basic armor sets you like. No sense plopping down money on an outfit if you end up wearing normal armor all the time.

Infinite Mining/Harvesting/Logging tools seem to be pretty popular, although I’ve never seen much appeal in them. (Since you could just buy the materials you need directly, it seems like a lot of work before you’d ever make your money back harvesting.)

I mainly play as a staff elementalist, but while you’re leveling up, I recommend playing a bit of everything, just based on whatever weapons you pick up. Even if you settle on mainly using staff later, it’s good to know what dagger, offhand dagger, scepter, and focus have to offer. Staff is great, if you like the play style, but you don’t need to worry about your final build yet.

Welcome to Guild Wars 2~!

I kinda hate swamp, to be honest. Either a team blows right through it while one person or two people stand around confused, or it’s struggle. It’s short, but something about it just doesn’t seem to click with a lot of people, especially since your team can carry you without any explanation. (It took a while for me to get a grip on it, because people would rather just do it than deal with a newbie trying to figure it out.)

I’ve rolled snowblind exactly once, somehow, so I can’t even comment on it. I’m okay with the dolphin one, because I’ve had some success just getting through on my own, and the team can spawn at the boss. Might depend on the variant of the dolphin one, though.

Edit: For context, I usually do 1-10 fractals. Looking forward to the HoT revamp, but until then, I’m not too eager to try pugging the higher difficulties, mostly because of the time involved.

Opinions will vary. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve fired up GW1 since GW2 came out. GW1’s combat, and exploration in general, feels a lot less dynamic and exciting to me, and I was having difficulty finding a party to go through some of the later missions in EotN. Meanwhile, I can solo most of what I like in GW2, or easily find a party for the rest most of the time.

That said, the mechanics are very different, and some people preferred the old gameplay. I would certainly miss the trading post, though, since GW1 didn’t have one.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/play-for-free-today/

We’ve found in testing that it’s hard to read a list like this and know how it’s going to feel in action. All these changes are live today, so we invite you to see for yourself. Test with a free account and see that it’s the same Guild Wars 2 you know and love; test with a veteran account and confirm that the community is protected.

Sounds like a go-ahead to me.

…Oh, right, you don’t use your regular equipment. That does make sense.

<—-Guess who never does PvP!

Perhaps they should make a note on the refractors’ descriptions warning that they don’t work in PvP.

It’s not a problem that affects a lot of people, but it can be really problematic for the people it does affect, and it’s not like there’s a well-established pattern of cosmetic items not working in PvP.

I recently went through the story achievements for bioluminescent armor (second half of LS2) and found I got a good feeling of progression from that. My character isn’t any stronger, but I had some new challenges to overcome, and a long list of boxes to tick.

Learning to do Fractals, and occasionally dungeons, is another thing I do/have done for a similar sense of progression. I like the progression being “what I know” as much as it is “what I have.”

Of course, the other side is nice, too, and I’m looking forward to HoT to address that.

For what it’s worth, I’ve never heard someone seriously recommend a racial skill, or recommend rolling a particular race just for that skill. You might occasionally find a situation where a racial skill does something useful (like Avatar of Melandru granting stability,) but it’s not something you really need to plan for.

Just play what you like and I’ll be surprised if you ever regret it. I like racial skills, but they’re more interesting than essential.

Oh. That seems harmless, then. Some super early AFKers might have to respawn, but it’s not a big deal.

They’re allowed to spawn bosses so they can get a big group together and do Tequatl on their schedule. It’s a pretty cool feature, actually, but, as you can see, there’s a little room for abuse with it in this case.

Hah! Well done.

If they’re not breaking the rules, I think that’s Anet’s policy. That’s what rules are for. (Noting that some rules are more open than others.)

As for Tequatl, perhaps you could open a thread suggesting that guilds shouldn’t be able to trigger Tequatl within X minutes of its normally scheduled happening. That’s a specific solution to a fixable problem.

While the LS2 rewards aren’t incredibly valuable, I’m not sure I’m bothered by that, either, especially since the Personal Story is pretty light on really valuable rewards, particularly to anyone who already has a level 80 character.

What kind of rewards would you prefer to see from it? I think a character slot or ascended armor/weapons would be too much. (Would exotic gear be better? Or is that not enough?)

A couple gold, maybe? I was going to suggest a home instance node, and then I remembered that you get a Personal Bandit Chest for completing Point of No Return.

Personally, I really liked the Carapace armor, although I’m still figuring out who will actually wear it. Kinda lukewarm on the Light armor, but Medium/Heavy looks great.

I didn’t realize there was a bovine potion missing from my life.

Now I’m sad. ;__;