Guild Wars 2

Why would you be upset that legendary weapons could be put on the market?

Because eveyr single part of them is Account Bound? And we already have items that are both Account bound and Soulbound on use?

Whats weird about defning exploit, as using an unintended system behaviour that allows to skip significant costs of actions due to its misimplementation? Is there any doubt that salvagining said jewelery was an exploit considering it has since been blocked? TBH every single person involved should be banned, just like they did with karma exploit. No mercy this time though.

Ath.2531:

The question i would like to ask you is: Does this bother some people because its nearly impossible to manipulate the ecto market?

Just a thought.

Really? Some people must not have made hundreds of gold on recent jewellery exploit, through exploits. Some ohters will not make extra hundreds more when ecto prices rises again?

1) Yes, discrete. Sorry not my native language.
2) Not easier for trader. Easier for both sides. But even if its for only one side it would still be good. One of characteristics of money is convinience. Market and its prices are not a labolatory simulation with objective goal of finding equilibrium, but its a means for people to sell and buy. Anything that hinders that goal is wrong. Maximixing profits/promoting certain traders is not part of its purpose.
3) Rounding is a mathematical operation that changes numbers from Real set to Integer set. Doesn’t matter if it happens in ALU by discarding extra bits, or in code by appoximation. Thus it doesnt matter if program stores floating point numbers or integers, the mathematical operation of transformation from floating point value to integer value still happens somewhere.

In a discrete set with step of 1c rounding introduces issues such as items at 2c and 3c both having the same listing fee, despite difference in possible profit. Thus it creates a bracket where selling for 2c is less profitable then selling for 3c in terms of return of investment. Thus giving 3c more value [in comparison to 2c](or actually not 3c, but rather selling price of 3c) then would otherwise stem from the actual value of that amount.
By extension, if you use range to determine max lower sell price, you will reverse the issue from listing fee. IE there will exist sell prices such that the maximum lower sell price a(x), for x and x+1c will be the same a(x)==a(x+1). Which will mean that x is never the correct value to sell for, despite being discrete number that has actual value in monetary system.
So no, you are not proposing to change listing fees, and i never claimed you do, but like i wrote, you would introduce numerical problems where they should not exist at all.
4) Form a society POV there is no intrinsic value to being the first seller. Thus there should also not be any benefit from being the first seller. What you propose, creates such a benefit, in the form of imposing your pricing scheme on others. If someone believes that item is worth 5s.99, when there already exists an item for 6s, the trader of the latter doesn’t hold, and shouldn’t, the right to prohibit the former pricing at -1c.
5) What you propose is extremly silly when taken into account of volume trading. If there are items priced at 6s, all i have to do is put one item at 5.94, then put several stacks at 5.99 (at this point 5.94 is the smallest item) to circumvent it at an insignificant loss (1? of PPU, if i sell 1000 units, this might even be lost due to rounding).
Similar method could be done for single unit trading (by placing at 1c, placing another at price -1, and immediately removing the 1c listing).
You can keep adding more constraints but they will only introduce more problems and alternative solutions (such as extra accounts for trading, using proxies to circumvent ip checks, creating predetermined discrete ranges for prices etc) – ultimately resulting only in making the market less friendly for casual buyers and sellers – which is contradictory to the purpose of this place.

The real problem with the TP is that it shares characteristics of financial instruments, instant trading of abstract goods, while it actually deals in commodities. And unfortunately without logistic troubles dealing with commodities brings.

Thats my point precisly. You do not understand what distinct value is, hence you dont understand that changing distinct value step from 1c, to an ambigous x% distinct value step, creates a profit bracket, making it difficult to estimate potential profits, as well as removing value from 1c at certain (again arbitrary and ambigous) levels, and decreasing the freedom of the sellers (as in, the profit brackets would be arbitrilly imposed by other sellers).

TP already uses floating point numbers when eveluating listing fee and net profit. There already exist profit brackets where goods varying in price, have the same listing fee/net profit due to how rounding works. This is bad. What you are proposing, would spread this problem from the low coppers to the whole range of prices.

By requiring that if you undercut you do it by at least, say, 1%, it helps push markets closer to their equilibrium point faster.

No. There is no difference between one arbitrally chosen distinct value and another.

All it would do, would be creating brackets of profitability and broaden the distinct values (for profit calculations) from easy conceptual ‘1c’ to ambigous and prone to computer math issues floating point range – which could encompass anything from 1c to 1g52s34c.03463628 and beyond.

Please read up on data structures so you can understand the way floating point numbers work on computers, and what a distinct value is.

Place a buy order.

Because you are only supposed to get gold through gem shop and power trading.

Unless they have extremely well written shaders – not going to happen.

Nah, the hurry some people are in to jump over the edge is too amazing. Yesterday i fell through in grawl fractal, and lucikly fallen to a ledge below. I ve calmly looked around, found the exit, swapped to blink and dropped into lava and then tp’ed out. Then i look at chat, and see ‘oh noes, lets all die now’, i turn back toward the lava and what do i see? 2 guys taking a head dive.

“Rule doesn’t sound so absurd to me.”

Because you have no clue about programming and user experience solutions?

The fact that one person cannot be kicked from party without destroying the instance is WRONG and should be treated as major priority bug. It doesnt matter why you want to kick them or why they want to leave or why they are forced to leave (obviously fractals dc by leader doesnt occur to you, or is deliberatly ignored by you). As long as any player cannot leave the group without destroying instance of the dungeon this is a bug, especially considering how easy it would be to not have that behaviour.

Its just another misguided attempt by anet to control the game.

[QUOTE]Why should the current legendary owners go through what they did to get it and see bunch of people just wait in line with some quests following step by step guide to get one so easily?[/QUOTE]

Np. As long as i get the same chances as they did. Karma exploiting in certain events, certain dungeon exploits, a certain weapon for 21 karma that could have been easilly crafted into precursor and a few other things, that have since been removed from game. There is plenty of people who abused them – and they should have been permanently banned for that, and their inventory permanently frozen. Majority of legendaries already made have their origins in one of those activities. So why dont we talk about ‘exploited welfare legendaries’ instead?

Also, this is a game. Games are meant to be entertaining and fun. There is nothing fun about being forced to either spend 500+ hours on a tiny skin – either through grinding mats or through grinding gold. ‘Welfare legendaries’ is exactly that – items available through no challange. There is nothing challenging about current legendary item crafting. Its RNG for some parts, and a lot of gold farming for the other parts.

To give you a context for what deserves reward – in Prince of Persia, Warrior Within there is an alternative ending, available if you can visit several hidden places. They are all slightly out of the beaten path, and all have increasingly difficult set of traps to go through. None of them requires extra grind/external cash/RNG. All you need for everysingle one of them is good enough coordination and skill. And for that you are rewarded with a tiny little bit extra – one extra boss fight, and one extra cinematic. And legendary items are similar in their reward level, but the only thing that is truly legendary about them is the time requirement. Which is being increased with every patch, as more and more farming spots are nerfed (same spots which previous legendaries were farmed on), and the prices are driven up by gold being frozen in flippers savings (same people who farmed those now non existing places) and through their schemes.

Considering the above, any reasonable person would conclude that yes, a different system for obtaining legendaries, one that actually rewards active participation in primary game mechanics such combat, dungeons and dynamic events, would be much more preferable.

Mesmer dont need much in terms of defensive stats as far as pve is concerned. We have enough options between blurred frenzy, distortion, clone meatshields, chaos armor, multiple condition removal options, and several others, that if you play well, you are almost perfect with just the base vit and toughness.

Pure phantasm build is not ideal for dungeons. Setup time is too long for trash, while bosses ussually have too much aoe to ever allow you to set up all 3 phantasm for max dps.

I go for 20/20/0/0/20 (+10 into choas for 50% fall dmg, but Illusionary Persona would be much better), and summon, dodge, phase retreat, allow a few attacks and mind wrack. This setup allows me to constantly setup new illusions (clones or phantasms), either to add tiny dps, serve as meat shields and soak up attacks, steady dps through phantasms or simply spike dps through shatters.

Or to answer your concern directly – clones serve multiple roles, not just as damage. In dungeons, contrary to open world, their role is heavily influenced by encounter. It pay off to be more flexible there.

Yeah happened to me on several times – seems that fractals can load extreme amounts of data, to the point where they starve the system. Then, even if some more mem is freed, its stuck (still doing something though).

So a few cents of me chipping in:
1. Wearing MF gear is not selfish. Its a same choice as wearing full power gear, full precision gear or melee weapon sets only. The complexity of determining that or other build is mathematically superior is imense on its own, without taking out what could or could not be replaced by MF. So the only way to judge would be to run ALL dungeons with ALL class combinations with ALL build variants with at least 2 sets. Come back with your claim that MF corresponds to slower runs when you can prove that statistically for every build.
2. The argument that you are loosing time/efficiency due to having MF is an invalid generalization. Dungeon run does not compose of XXX hp you have to whittle down, and YYY dmg you have to endure/block/dodge. Even if you could prove that on a dps dummy you loose 5-15% overall dps, which obviously is not true for all build variants, that does not have to translate to the same % quicker dungeon. I ll give you a quick numerical example so you can follow:
Two players meet a monster with 900hp. First does 200dmg every second, the other does 180 dmg every second. In your logic, where dungeon has generic XXX hp to be whittled down by your combined stats and dps, first player is more efficient because he has more dps. In real life or in game, due to existance of multiple caps, both are actually equally good, killing each such monster in 5 seconds. 10% dps difference, 0% time difference.
Its easy to directly translate stat loss into time loss because it seems the connection seems simple. It is not, due to complexity of mechanics involved, on more levels then just numerical damage calculations.
3.There is no reason to discriminate between two groups where one does dungeon X minutes faster then the other, in a PUG. You PUG, you accept what it entails, not enforce the group to be your slaves. PERIOD. You want strict control over what other people do, go into a legaly binding contract with them. Sounds extremely silly and elitist when put into context of playing a game for fun.
4. And finally. Anyone with an ounce of brain, should be able to reason out why MF is just a bad stat for any game, and should not have ever been added to a game with personal loot-tables.

Some of the responses here made me laugh.

FE, mesmer being unable to tag – reroll. Seriously? Also I am not saying the game is unplayable or boring, as some of you seem to think.

I am saying that the game is structured and designed in such a way, that majority of its content is not accessible for ‘an average joe’ (like me), and that those who already have play through it, have no incentive to go back.

Sure you can say that friends alliviate this problem. Then again, friends would help you out with mawing the lawn if they were friends and you were hard pressed. Argument that you can access content by having a group of people that does what you want is silly – its a truism. And it doesnt change the fact that nobody really wants to do fe CM, or that is nearly impossible to participate in tournaments as a solo player.

Why would being in guild change anyones motivations? Friends and guilds still have priorities for their time. There is no incentive for them to go grind 30+ runs of CM (for example) if they need no tokens from there.

It saddeness me to write this, but inside two months you ve managed to kill the game for anyone that doesnt stick by it everyday for hours.

I ve dedicated quite a lot of time in august and september to the game, then played occasionally in october. I come back and start playing more in november, but there are barriers that are unpassable by me.

I cannot complete some dungeons – there is noone playing anything but fractals. By extension i cannot get any dungeon armor or weapons. Again by extension i cannot do monthly achievement. Which puts me at a disadvantage to a group that can making me even poorer by comparison.

I cannot participate in pvp – without tournament group all i can do is mindlessly grind glory. Which maybe i should do, because nobody will believe me that i reached rank 20+ solely through tournaments. PLaying tournies without a group is an excerise in futility. I d rather waste time watching paint dry then have 150+ points each game, only for the rest of my team to have 10,10,10 and 0. So by extension – no monthly pvp achievement.

I play a mesmer, which means i have zero or next to zero tagging capabilities – no dynamic or world events for me. At the same time, anyone being able to generate gold is getting ahead of me more and more – if not by directly generting gold, then by flipping.

So all in all, I cannot enjoy pve, cannot participate in pvp, and in general, im left out of everything. All because of silly design choices like: reward seperation between different dungeons in pve or no separation between premades and randoms in pvp.

Way to go ANet – lets kill one of the staple builds of mesmers, and since among all the other non-existent and silly non-optimal builds we get, only shatters remains, considering mantra recharge time, and irreliable condition application and confusion being so silly against champion+. Even less aoe options, even though we are already weak in that department, especially when tagging is considered.

I haven’t been playing the past few days, and i see i ’ve not lost much, apart from reason to log in again. Why dont you fix the multitude of broken mechanics we have first, before breaking the only ones that work?

If you got moa’ed – you deserve to facetank all the damage that will come in the next 10seconds. Its not like it has a huge and long telegraph animation, that can either be dodged, interrupted, or alternatively you could just kill the mesmer while he is attempting to polymorph you.

And then, if you actually DO facetank all the damage that will come to you in the next 10seconds, you DO deserve to die. Out of the few times I have offensively moa’ed someone, probably less then 20% ended in a kill – once that my immobilize+phantasms+frenzy+shatter combo would probably win anyway. The other 80% players either run away, los’ed, dodged, or simply their teammates – yes this is a team game – suddenly made themselves more important to help their moa’ed friend.

In short, this skill is rather well balanced, considering the fact that it has very long cooldown, can easilly be dodged or interrupted, and even if it lands, its only a soft disable, allowing you enough control to actually make the spell wasted anyway.

The only reason people complain about is the psychological aspect of getting their kitten handed to them while being a giant pink chicken, completly ignoring the fact that this outcome was probably not chicken-dependant as much as they would like to pretend.

Its like saying conditions shouldnt work while their creator is stealthed or pets shouldn’t attack while stealthed. Plain silly.

Confusion should work slightly differently, but its not that bad. Primary advantage of confusion in pve is that its applied in aoe mostly, which means multiple enemies will be hit. Terrible against champions though.

+1.

This doesn’t even promote afking that much, as any afker will likely get swept away instantly anyway.

Sure. Phantasm mesmer with portal is much better defender of short point due to being able to defend point that is not constantly contested, while contributing to fight at another point or objective.

I find them effective in several roles on different maps, both offensive and defensive. And I find them managable in both, either by denying their boons, or by controlling their attacks. At my level, which is not the highest, I win as much as I loose (primarily mesmer here). Never seen roaming guardian though – even though guardian guildmate claimed they can be done.

@HasuGhost You have an example of particularly valid strategy against bunker guardians presented in Xeph’s post. Also, not all compositions require counter composition. Sometimes just being able to adapt your tactic is more important. Somehow, im not seeing those 3 bunker guardians + 2 roamers team in tournaments. Just the fact that you (or me or anyone else) can’t come up with counter to such a setup, doesnt mean its OP immediately.

If the playerbase permits, it should be full random in one group (ie 5 randoms vs 5 randoms), and full premades in another.

There shouldn’t be any kind of queue with 1 extra person, and in addition, there should be mechanism obfuscating when play starts, so that sync joining is not possible.

But considering there is no spectator mode, this is unlikely to happen fast.

“Let’s assume that the best bunkers as of now are guardian (1st) and engineer (2nd). Why would anyone pick eng instead of guardian?”

Because asymetric design doesn’t compare Y and Z by placing them into X, but by placing them into [X,…,W]. This isn’t 1vs1, but its 5vs5, and while there will be some situations in which guardians will be best, there will also be situations in which engineers will be better. He doesn’t say: guardians are the best bunkers. He says: “Currently in meta, guardians are considered best bunkers”. That’s not the same.

@GankSinatra One class being better then another task is not called being overpowered. Its called asymmetric design. Always in that kind of design, one setup is better then another in some specific situation. It just stems from definition of ‘asymetric design’ and pure math.

And currently no class is best at every possible role in tpvp. There are minor balancing issues with most of the classes, but there hardly is anything that is game breaking.

The only logical argument you could make about this balance, is that in current (perceived) meta tiers, all the roles are fulfilled by mesmers/thieves/guardians so much better then other professions so as to make them unusable. Which is blatantly false, and anyone claiming that clearly doesn’t play tpvp against good players.

You dont have to go to Lions Arch. There is a mystic forge in heart of the mists, right next to the tournament guy.

Other then, pretty much as above poster wrote: buy a pvp salvage kit for glory, and salvage all the gear you can’t fit into locker/don’t want. Store the mats you get, or use them to create new gear.

I didn’t say it shows skill, merely dedication – ie time spent (which in turn can imply skill). And yes, current setup of spvp does promote grinding rank through, fe, win trading, which is precisely the point made by OP – that currently mindless grinding is being rewarded instead of skillful play.

And the reason it is being farmed in any efficient way, is because there are rewards for it (thankfully only aesthetic), and because at some point we will get the same elitism we had back in gw1 where having proper /rank was more important then being able to play well.

For phantasm cookie cutter: 10 (III)/10 (II)/0/25(V,*)/5 and the remaining 20 points where you feel like. Sharper images (15 dueling) would be good with iduelist and izerker, as well as Phantasmal Haste (Illusions 20 X), but going for some defensive traits wouldn’t be bad either, as for gear you d go mostly power/precision/crit dmg.

Do not take clone on dodge – you want 3 offensive phantasm up, and when you have 3, dodging (or any other clone creation) will overwrite that clone. You want that trait only when you go for shatter build (and possibly when going for confusion build).

For pure power build, probably 30/30/0/0/10 mantra build is the best way, but mantras are lacking in many ways.

Confusion being our main condition is not misconception. Taking bleed as our main condition is. Just take a look at trait and bonuses we get. To stack bleed with sharper images and iduelist, you have to significantly boost precision. Since you also want conditions damage, you will take illusions – which boosts critical damage, which does not apply to condition damage. In short, if you go full cDmg after that, you are wasting points from traits. Taking those traits you are better of going for phantasm build with supplementary cDmg, which will be much more beneficial in both solo and group play.

Also, stuff is rather poor for condition damage for one simple reason – is not deterministic. You can get vulnerability 100 times in a row (excluding pseudo rng if its implemented), and never get that burning or bleed. Not to mention its slow!

And finally, bleed in itself is poor condition whenever you group up. 1 mesmer with 3xiduelist can apply 24 stacks of bleed consistently. 1mesmer and 1 any other class can apply only 25 stacks, meaning a lot of wasted potential damage.

So to sum up why condition builds are not viable:
1) Condition we can apply most consistently is bleed – which is very common, and gets overwritten often. (And since its one stack its easy to remove).
2) To apply bleed consistently, you have to spend points and traits in a way that would benefit more if you just went phantasm build. Which would eliminate the overwriting problem somewhat.
3) You want to instantly drop full 25 stack of conditions, or multiple conditions on enemy, not slowly build up. That is not possible, due to how slowly you can do that with staff, or cd on iduelist summoning. (Just compare to dual pistol engi with turrets/ d/d thief/ sword/sword warrior – they drop either multiple conditions at once, or high amounts instantly and they do not waste points while specing for cDmg).
4) Many of our traits and skills apply confusion, which is misconceived condition damage in pve, due to slow triggering vs low uptime.

Right now, any condition build done by mesmer, will be subpar to other professions conditions builds.

@Ezekeel – ‘people rather spend their time with a boring mindless grind’ speaks poorly about people, not about the game.

And the damage is obvious – rank is there to show dedication to pvp, not dedication to mindless grind.

Mesmers dont have really strong conditions builds, because we are based on confusion being our main condition. This is especially visible in pve, where monsters attack slowly and infrequently. In PvP its slightly better, since ppl tend to spam abilities.

Hi

I’m a rank 20 mesmer, playing phantasm and shatter builds. Also dabbling into guardians, engineers and thieves from time to time. Have some tournament experience.

Looking for an english speaking pvp guild, that is actively playing tournaments – 2-3 hours every day, does not have to be extremely competitive.

I am available on most days from 17-24 CET (though I d probably prefer to commit less time), have mic and i’ve used ts/vent frequently in the past.

PM me, or post below some contact details if you are interested in further details or organizing some trial.

[Underworld] Guilds also doing pve from time to time are especially welcome.

Have you never exchanged currency in real life? Cause it works pretty much the same. There is an average at which currency is exchanged. From that average, a slightly increased price is used for selling (to you), and slightly decreased price is used for buying (from you). The difference is the profit for the person/company performing the exchange, and in game-terms is a gold-sink.

The primary reason this is broken is the easy of getting larger bags from pvp. Glory is plentiful, all it takes is a bit of time to rank up.

I understand there is a difference. I ve been showing that with math ;p. What i m saying, is that the difference is small, compared to the cost of that difference – 60 sec cd on utility skill, and being locked into that choice beforehand too.

10seconds difference is kind of a small benefit if you consider its only once every 60seconds, and you’re profession locked. I believe there are better uses of portal, and better mobility snapbacks.

Well at masters level it would be significant, i ll grant you that. We re nowhere near that though.

Thank you for taking the time to measure the times though.

9 seconds making a big difference when its not even enough time to reach closest node – clocktower? Just no.

Also, regardless of professions involved, both teams are one less player if there is a fight at treb. One because its attacking treb, the other because its defending.

We also compared classes at treb. And we re using mesmer as defense at treb – because most of the time he can be elsewhere, but can zip back to defend when needed. That is a much safer use of portal.

Beacuse portal – which does grant amazing options – seems not to have cooldown

So lets say, 25 sec one way.

Mesmer-no speed up – needs 25 seconds.

Any class with just 33% speed buff – 34 seconds.

9 seconds difference. Lets say one shot plus re-arranging so you know the shot will hit something. And the difference is mesmer will have to have portal equipped, meaning one less skill in combat (for example instead of blink). In comparison, thief with 25% perma speed buff and short bow for arrow looses nothing, and can easier (ie quicker and without need to be ooc) swap with someone else, fulfilling a different role if need be.

EDIT: That doesnt even count in the fact that once you use that portal, its on 60s cd. If two trebs are destroyed, then repaired, and immediately destroyed again, mesmer doesnt get any speed buf, but thief still retains his. :EDIT

And no, you dont want to bunker points. You want to cap them, and keep opponents points decaped, but you want to be as mobile as possible to avoid drawing opponents treb. You want to make it as useless as possible, by denying it to opponent, whether through destroying it or by fighting its operator, and by making its shots useless – by dodging and by not sitting at points.

Lumines.3916:

Seeing the trend here? Their damage and mobility aside (which is heaps better than most), they pack all the good stuff on much much lower cool downs, and they get all of it to pick from.

Obviously not… Must by my bad English then.

No, you are for some odd reason trying to say mesmers are the end—of-all profession, which they are not.

If anything is true from what you are saying about mesmers utilities – its the fact that on two most viable builds (atm) we are more free to choose our utilities then other professions – because there is very little synergy we can get between utilities and weapon sets/traits. And that is not a good thing.

Really? How long does it take to get to repair kit from treb? 15sec? So mesmer only has to do it once – thats 15sec. Say ele, with swiftness up and ride the lightning has constant 35% speed buff, does double trip 30sec, but due to speed up he only does it in 20sec. Thats 5 seconds difference, enough for 1 shot in the space where it was targeting, meaning that likely nobody will be hit, because on khylo you re not supposed to bunker points (due to treb mechanic), and if you play tpvp you can see the meta shift to more mobile setups on that map, to deny treb significance.

Adjust those numbers as you will, the difference is so minor as to be irrelevant.

And like i wrote before, mesmers are superb on trebu not because of repair speed. But due to the fact they can fight the attacker below the platform with phantasms, while still shooting the treb.

Can you please theorycraft me how does mesmers have more mobility then perma 25% bonus thieves get, plus infiltrators arrow/rangers with perma swiftness? Or how we do more damage then haste PW spam? You could even ask your friend to help you out preparing the raw data to prove your claims.

You cannot hide if opponent pays attention. There is bar above your char with hp. Clones are always full, mesmer rarely so.

Mesmers are not the only class using treb. Any condition build/turret build/pet build (including phantasm) is good, because it will allow to help the person defending the treb fight the attackers, while still allowing you to shot – because most of your damage does not come from your direct attacks. And thats the only advantage you should consider when choosing treb profession. Professions other then mesmer can ussually repair just as fast anyway with swiftness.

Also, if you are going for treb, see the mesmer drop portal and run for repair kit, and you destroy the treb anyway – you are bad, and you need to learn to play, or stop playing.

Portal is also not used only on third map. Due to this skill, mesmers make splendid short point defenders – because they can drop the portal, run up to mid point, and if someone is attacking short point you can go back instantly, and also possibly bring someone with you. This goes especially well with phantasm build – because they will stay behind and keep fighting even when you have to go back.

Anyone complaining about thieves/mesmers/guardians just needs to l2p. Not being able to dodge/los/stun break/properly select/trait for anything but static dmg increases makes you at most pr0 (as in zero). And no, your rank 10 or 1/2nd position in 8vs8 doesnt mean you know anything.