Guild Wars 2

Don’t delete the toon, if it is that old it should have all the traits.

This is where a guild tends to come in handy. I’ve seen similar efforts in my larger guilds that were looking to help out a hacked toon like yours. And I know my sister really has trouble with JPs, she would probably have been happy to gear up a freindly mez with some decent stuff just for porting her to finish some of them. I’m sure others feel the same.

And speaking of JPs, you can still do a few of those easily enough and get a few level specific things.

Its not a great solution, but its something

I really like axe/focus, with a staff backup. It gives you a lot of ways to engage the enemy in PVE. But I assume most necros are like mine, with a nice selection of alternate gear in their packs just because.

yep, in-game buddy is nicer than most anything else. Especially with the trait fiasco.

4 good solid bags is probably the best item, remind him that they are shareable if he decides to roll something new.

If you were going to spend actual money, I think one of the more useful things is the permanent harvesting tools, not sure if they have a minimum level though. I’m pretty sure you can gift them.

Some gold to get rolling with will help for sure, I wouldn’t craft much for a lowbie except on an as-needed basis. The gear becomes obsolete too fast. Maybe some consumables, especially if he is not going to craft right out of the gate.

Brother Grimm.5176:

You are correct that none of the karma vendor items are worth using….however, the SKINS are worth obtaining from them. (only buy the cheapest Blue ones if Skin collecting). Obi shards and possibly Temple Armor (note you can’t salvage it) are the only high end items that are worth spending Karma on. There are some Exotic Jewelry and backpieces also at the Orr Temple NPCs, but you can now CRAFT better back pieces (stat wise) and Ascended Jewelry makes an Exotic piece that you cannot salvage a waste of karma.

Exactly what i do. Grab the level 40 (tier 1) karma weapons in groups of 4, that unlocks the skins and leaves you with 4 low level rares to throw in the forge. The result is a low level rare usually about level 47, which will bring a few silver on the trading post.

You can instead do the level 80 weapons, that will at least give you a rare worth salvaging for potential ecto, and I did get an exotic from this process once. But it is far more expensive to do this in general, so stick with the lower level. Don’t forget the weapons vendors in ebonhawke and at the end of the pirate JP in lions arch.

Keep some karma handy in case you want it for something special. Breathing apparatus comes to mind. 100k is not a huge amount, so save what you have until you hit about 500k and make a mini quest to go gather skins, do a few JPs and random events on the way, have fun with it.

Not sure how this really affects a mature community that is mostly level capped players. Unless i am reading the notes wrong, at level 80 the distribution is unchanged.

I’ve done a complete 180 now on crafting and feel it is best in most ways to just buy a set of greens every 7-8 levels until 80 and then you should have enough coin to kit out mostly exotic, if somewhat incomplete. But at that point your crafting and equipping strategy takes on a whole new form.

I look at it like this; if I were to buy this today and start playing today, would it keep my interest the way it has for the last two years?

I think it would, but i also think I would begin to burn out after a couple years. And that is where i am, i am burnt. My old circle is defunct due to conflicting schedules (it happens), I’ve done so much so many times that I find it more enjoyable to hit this up a couple times a week at most now.

So in the end, I have to consider some of the disappointments are just burnout, especially with the OCD completionist crowd who bring that on themselves somewhat.

Seems to me that this accomplishes absolutely nothing, and the real fix:

Put the downed state skills in the weapon skill tab of the hero panel just like all the other skills. /resolved

Probably the only two effects this will have are

1) change the way some keyfarmers operate, but in the end, farmers gonna farm….

2) The same category of players this is intended for will be just as lost and frustrated at level 5.

There is one advantage not mentioned. The animations on the current sickle were messed up originally, and a patch was made shortly afterwards which sped it up considerably, so that harvesting plants with one is much faster if you are a run/swipe/run-to-next-node type.

It only seems to be that one sickle, none of the others are like this. And it is a small advantage, worthwhile in a niche situation.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Yargesh.4965:

Forzani.2584:

Yargesh.4965:

Forzani.2584:

Isaac.6041:

Forzani.2584:

Yargesh.4965:

Ascended trinkets are easy to get so just break down you exotics. If you really, really need every single exotic armour then you are going to have problems with any option mentioned above.

I am not really sure what you mean

He means salvage/sell exotics and clear your banks for ascended gear only

I have played the game since a little after it was released. I have 2 ascended items…rings that I just had drop recently in WvW. I could buy a couple more jewelry items with Laurels…..armor and weapons? I can’t sell the exotics since they are used. Salvage gets me a piece of wood or something which does me no good.

Even WvW you get dailies. So rings/earrings/amulets can be gotten ascended variety. You also get a discount for ascended jewellery in WvW. Since you do not craft you will get very little to none ascended weapons or armour so if you need to keep them they are soulbound and can only be stored in your personal bank and used by 1 character. Those pieces of wood are worth a lot of money.

Yep, I complete my daily about 25 times during a month. I also finish the monthly. So I have about 200 laurels. I could buy a couple of rings or necks and have a slight improvement of stats…if I bought zerker stats though and wanted to go condi ..or healing…or bunker etc etc then those pieces would need to be stored.

The best answer I see is to use alts as storage. Which is what I will do. That answer was helpful.

good, as long as you realize that an alt cannot take soulbound equip from another character even from the bank.

Except soulbound items don’t exist anymore since the patch, and everything is accountbound now. So that particular problem is solved!

Not sure where you got this idea but it isn’t true.

You can transmute up to wool in the forge as well. The return is questionable, but it i an option.

I don’t care for mace because it gives you no leap.

horns really need to be traited to get the best effect. I personally like sword and horn, but I like rifle as the off weapon because I am all about stacking the bleeds.

Or if all of that is too much, just remember that total toughness is added to total armor value.

So if your armor gives you 50 and you have 75 toughness, then your final armor value is equivalenbt to someone with 125 armor and zero toughness.

rifle too

/15 characters

drops sure do seem to nosedive faster than you can safely roam an area.

Leo.2641:

Spear, (not for water), pikes, javelins, halberd, etc..

yes some kind of polearm, single hand with a ranged pull (like a javelin), maybe, or more of a 2H halberd with a massive mAoE and a leap.

Possibly a crossbow, but war seems pretty comfy with the bow and rifle.

what about blood and agony? Sounds cool at least

I run a PvE casual build that might give you some ideas. It is survivable enough in less intense WvW and PvP situations but is probably not optimum. It is a lot of fun PvE with a single sidekick, especially ranged. It seems to grab and hold threat pretty well, drops conditions easily and stays mobile enough to kite-tank. Consider it just another idea.

Focus on toughness, followed by con-dmg and precision. No ferocity, the precision is for the proc alone. Power could be swapped with precision. This build arose from scrounging gear rather than building an all out custom kit, and slowly changes. A lark, but it has been surprisingly fun in many cases.

Sword/horn – Rifle. Sigil of blood and one other (still experimenting) on both. Traits can vary but deep cuts + blademaster, Dogged March + cleansing ire, and lung cap, quick breathing and vig shouts.

for skills I like healing surge, signet of stamina and rage, and two shouts; shake it off and for great justice. I tend to go with regen pies or pizzas for condition.

That leaves you with the following in theory:

Heal:
regen + adrenal heal + two shouts plus big self heal, and proc the sigil for one more.

Cleaning:
Cleansing ire, two horn skills, a shout and signet for cond removal

Threat:
high toughness along with long running condition spread seems to hold threat well on bosses or multiples, if your partner(s) allow it.

Movement and CC:
allows good field movement and target swapping, and plenty to slow them down.

If you are wanting a min-max build forget it. If you want to experiment, this is “different” and doesn’t focus on power. You can trait it in many different ways, and substitute something else for precision (even healing, it does make a difference with this build).

I’m curious, for those who are struggling mid-level, do you use the mouse to click on skills? Do you use the keys to turn?

I do not, I only use the mouse to turn, and only the keyboard to fire skills, so aside from WASD the only keyboard action is left hand skill firing (in combat). I have zero problems and find PvE to be better after patch, for both new and existing toons.

I ask this not to preach or to ridicule, just curious if the issue may be more to physical interface styles. Those having issues, you have my sympathies, sorry, don’t know what else to say.

I admit I never thought about them either, D’oh!

Thanks Starscream!

If you have just that perfect name in mind for a toon, you can use them to hold that name while using them as suggested above. That way your keyfarmer can do double duty.

That’s what I read. But it must take a minute or so at least.

Of course, the griefers now have a new venue….

But if no one hits it he just seems to stand there. How long do you have to leave it alone? That sounds like a bad design to me, as 3 people can destroy it in about 15 seconds, and we had waited 15-20 seconds before starting.

Especially considering a lowbie area, more chance someone else will not know everyone has to stand around twiddling their thumbs instead of actually playing the game.

Ah well.

I had assumed that the new timing mechanism would control the pre-events, but I’ve done the pre-events several times and after the totem is destroyed, Brogun goes back to grab a beer and watch NASCAR.

While I’m understanding of how important quenching a Norn’s thirst is, I’m still left wondering if these “fake Maws” are working as designed and the pre’s are triggering outside of the schedule, or what?

I’m cool with changing things around, this isn’t a complaint thread, just want to know if this is what we should expect with the new megaserver system.

hmm, I guess I hadn’t checked the wiki for this in awhile, thanks to one dedicated poster over there though I have enough confidence to run with it (for now):

quoted from wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Blademaster

“Tested it with 90% crit in the Mists. It does NOT affect Greatswords at all. Even if you have a sword equipped on off-hand, it does not increase crit chance on other main-hand weapon (axe, mace) attacks. Even if you have a sword equipped in main-hand, it does not increase crit chance on other off-hand weapon attacks (tested with Whirling Axe). It does appear to increase crit chance from 90% to 100% ON SWORD SKILLS ONLY. "

You guys should try age of conan if you want to see what this eventually ends up like in chat. It is not good.

ahh, that is good to know.

Anyone lurking that has done any recent tests on blademaster? Now that it costs per trait I’m sure there will be future newbies who would like to know.

thanks for that. Didn’t think about maxing and looking for non-crits. If the runes are cheap enough (some sets are) I may try those out actually.

When you say golem, you mean the training dummies?

Okay so was it confirmed (pre-patch at least) by an overwhelming consensus from player tests? I’m not disputing it, just asking because I never saw much discussion on it.

Also, any suggestions on the best way to do an A/B test to see if it works now?

Obviously it either does not work, or else the stat reporting does not work, either way it is broken and confusing.

Has there been any detailed analysis, maybe on dummies or something, that indicates whether it is “working” and just not displaying, or if it is simply not working at all?

This has always been a potential key to one of my builds, and it looks like that build gets even better, but I always felt like it was wasted points simply because I can’t see it working.

We experimented passing the wooden toy sword skin around amongst guildies, it seemed that all you had to do was take it out of the guild bank and put it in your bag and it was unlocked for you. Then someone took their turn and it said skin locked, and they did not get it. However it could still be sold at the TP

Very strange and confusing. Maybe some of the skin stuff just fell through the cracks?

As I’ve expanded my vault space more and more, it would really be helpful to me if each section had a place for a label, similar to what the guild vaults have in each section.

Nothing else, 20-30 characters would suit me fine. Nothing to complain about, just wish I could label the sections, it would help me in the way I organize my storage.

I can’t find anything in dev notes about OoM ending and I can’t find anything by browsing. Search is obviously little help.

I just want to know if there is a drop dead for using the cores or not.

No I was talking about the other festival items, candy corn, fortune scraps, that you can still trade with a vendor. Unfortunately no one wants all these poor little ugly wool items, even though they would keep baby kodans from freezing to death.

Evon Gnashblade said just the other day that poor little char cubs are losing their rear paws from frostbite because they have no socks, and the devs won’t allow him to trade in them. Probably some scheme by that Ellen person to favor the consortium.

Terrible, just terrible!

:(

well they did sort of start this with sonder but apparently only for certain tokens. Sure would be nice.

yes the everlasting. They used to be account bound but apparently not now if you don’t use them. going for several hundred gold.

Sonder wasn’t trading them, so you can check that off the list (merch near laurel vendor in LA)

mine is stuck too

I got tied up and didn’t make it in game until just now.

Were all of the wool item vendors erased with the patch or is there a ninja vendor somewhere like the candy corn guy in Ft Mariner?

edit: Sonder the seller, candy corn, zaitaffy, fortune scraps, etc6

Sure hoping they continued in that tradition.

Here’s some strategies I use

Do dailies/monthlies/LS achievements with a designated alt. The XP boost is really substantial from these. Altoholics are often daily taskers at heart anyhow

Try and complete all WPs and hearts (but not necessarily POIs and Vistas) on a map before moving to the higher level regions, because…

…you can logically plan out your daily achievements. Shiverpeak Events is up? Then head to the lowest level region you haven’t explored in the Shiverpeaks and concentrate on events and hearts. Ascalon Killer? Same thing. You will likely cover others as well like Gatherer, Vet Slayer, Leveler, whatever.

It’s also a great opportunity to grind out some of the weaponmaster achievements. Warrior main will never get the warhorn done, but a necro alt can take a big chunk out of those numbers.

For crafting, I make my non-crafters chefs only. I don’t use it for a lot of XP but it lets me do the crafting and related dailies with the alt. I’ve pushed crafting XP on an alt and it was mind numbing. I would much rather run around the map. YMMV

I’ve just opened my 15th slot, because other than my key farmer slot I always end up wanting to keep a fairly specific build, finding it easier to swap toons than to swap gear, skills and traits.

Besides, it is always nice to have another minion parked in the chest mines of LA. And very few of them have the high level maps completed at all so there are several exotics waiting too.

Or you know you can start selling stuff now and wit until later to buy luck on the market when all the grinders have given up.

Some people just have this fixation with completion. I can empathize. But if those people think it is the game and not them, then they will be disappointed when they move on to their next fixation.

Maybe they could sell you tokens in the store to complete dailies without doing them?
:D

By contracting the karma supply, maybe they have further plans to make it more valuable otherwise?

How valuable is karma really?

A popular karma purchase is fine salvage kits, that isn’t a huge windfall or anything but useful, and puts karma at a hair over a penny a point.

Orrian jewelry boxes are also a popular karma sink, at 4500ish a pop. Hard to put a cost on them as they give back a small karma refund. On average I think they are probably worth about 50 $ilver apiece for their content, so one karma = 1 copper is still pretty close.

What else? Chef wares? A penny a point still seems pretty accurate. Karma gear? 42k karma at a penny a point is kind of a high but reasonable midpoint for most pieces of common exotic gear on the trading post. That is a little iffy too, but has anyone come up with an average?

You could burn karma for rares to throw in the forge, but that is an order of magnitude higher cost (95k karma for a 1gold item). Not recommended (though I had done it before orrian boxes became available)

Or leave it and allow the option of a charge of a little in karma for waypoint travel? I could go for that. I think it would have me socializing a whole lot more. The WPs would become like mini LAs where people stop and say hi to others they see regularly. Because the general flow of traffic will tend to funnel people through the same paths. Control traffic and you can foster easy PvE stytle, what I call “solo grouping”. Imagine what it would have meant for the scarlet invasions.

For those who think they know what the inflation rate is in any MMO over time, I urge you to track the prices on goldseller pages. I am not condoning the practice of goldselling and wish it didn’t exist, however if you track a given game’s gold seller prices across several sites, over time, you will see trends that indicate a real world correlation between real money and in game currency.

Don’t forget to use wayback machine for legacy data. (I recommend keeping virus protection at full, not clicking on anything, and taking a hot shower with lye soap afterwards). You might be very very surprised at how your conclusions hold up to this track. And you might be pleased by how GW2 has kept a lower inflation rate than many others. In fact it appears we are almost back to September 2012 levels. I noticed a spike around May/June, but things are back on track, indicating the staff has obviously done two positive things; clamping down on the sellers, and managing the game growth.

Don’t be tempted to compare separate games this way, it doesn’t work.

And I think I should add that I would grab several more of these tools nyself if and when they become available.

Propeller hats, well, probably not.

Actually they could bring them back without new animations.

“Evon Gnashblade has just procured the contents of a hidden warehouse as the result of a recent trade dispute; amid mostly worthless rubble were several cargo containers full of special pickaxes originally intended for the Frost and Flame alliance! Get three today before they run out! Everyone else is!”

“In addition to these fine tools, there were also several containers of propeller hats, and while not usable in combat they make a great addition to your wardrobe that no one ever gets to see. only 1000 gems, because Evon is feeling generous…”

:D

right, I did sanctum sprint. Unless you actually have to finish in 1st place? I was not in last place, but did not win.

I had a theory that just maybe spending the karma and then completing the activity (without logging out) could possibly reward both.

as I suspected, the daily activity achievement does not work either. Can’t test laurel vendor achievement obviously but I’m betting it too would not increment.

Anything in latin would be appropriate. Or a latin title or suffix would work as well. Think of them as roman soldiers.