Guild Wars 2

I have to say I find it utterly bizarre that people ask for Arah armour to run Arah with a straight face. The only reason I’d want to run Arah is for the tokens. If I wanted to farm for gold that will come out of any dungeon anyway, I wouldn’t pick the hardest one with the highest chance of drama and failure.

My position on skipping is simple: Don’t do it in a pug unless you marked the pug as a speed run. When you are in a pug, assume you are NOT running. Not the other way around. This is not because there’s some moral objection to skipping things, it’s about results. It’s a bad idea to skip while pugging because you can’t guarantee everyone knows how to skip every encounter. Time and time again I pug it up with people who give no warning that they’re about to run past this encounter (but not that one immediately before) and don’t spend 10 seconds communicating their intentions, preferring to simply assume. When the dust settles, me and one other have made it to the other side. One guy made it through the mass but is lost because he can’t find the jumping exploit we’re using and is stuck in combat, one guy is downed in the middle of the vat and one guy didn’t make it through and is stuck on the far side and is stuck in combat. Result: you’ve lost all the time that could have been gained and more. “But they should be less noobish and learn how to skip!” you say. Well it’s too bloody late isn’t it? You think they’ve wasted everyone’s time and they think you’ve wasted everyone’s time and your precious speed run turns into a slog.

The problem isn’t skipping in itself, it’s all the folks skipping blindly. You aren’t skipping because skipping is fun, you’re doing it because you’re looking for results. Blind rushing in a pug more often than not does not net you results, it just frustrates people who want to skip and frustrates people who don’t want to skip. If as a pug you approach every encounter with the intent to fight, you hedge against that chance (likelihood) of failure and downtime. The vast majority of drama delays or failures-to-complete I’ve experienced pugging every bloody dungeon come when groups are divided about skipping, or when all agree to rush but then fail to do it when they could have just spent a couple minutes kicking the dogs over. The average pug is not going to have the skill level of even a mediocre guild group with any experience working together and communicating by voice. Strategies (because yes, skipping things is your strategy) that works under those conditions will not work all the time in a pug.

And then you get to the old excuse that “this is what everyone does”. It’s not. There’s no basis or evidence that most players prefer to skip. What’s probably true is that the great majority of runs completed involve rushing or skipping but the vast majority of runs are completed by a small percentage of people. Most people – the ones who pug now and again rather than run 3 or 4 a day every day, are much more amenable to killing things, both because they aren’t jaded and because it’s not going to work for them.

So please, remember that your objective is to be efficient and don’t skip unless you’re absolutely bloody certain the entire party is on the same page.

Of course it exists. We can whine all day about how it’s not fair, or stupid, or how you don’t believe in it. At the end of the day, parties composed of the Big 3 classes are what produces results most consistently. What is stupid is following the conclusion as gospel without context. Every dungeon can be cleared without exploit by virtually any mix of classes and builds played by decent players who know the dungeon’s gimmick and if you boot a Necro to save 3 minutes on a run but wind up waiting 10 minutes to pick up a Guardian, you’ve lost 7 minutes.

When learning dungeons, focus on surviveability. Avoid Spite for now. Invest heavily in Blood, and Death too, if you can afford it.

30 points in Blood allows you to trait for either Vampirism or Wells (in which case, the level 2 trait for ground-target Wells under Curses is a must). Vampirism can give you some good survivability as can Wells. Wells will also help your group members and deal a fair decent amount of damage.

20 points in Death will get you greater marks and -20% staff cooldowns which are solid major traits you can keep on all the time until you’re ready to experiment. The disadvantage here is that you’ll wind up getting jagged horrors on the field, which can be an inconvenience.

Grab a staff and stay on it most of the time. If you feel adventurous you can also grab a dagger to learn (the hard way) when and where melee is useful. Otherwise, grab an axe which will let you stay a bit further off.

Always slot Spectral Walk until you know what you’re doing. It’s both a stun break and a running mechanism. Especially when you’re pugging, someone may start running past an encounter without you knowing it’s appropriate to run. Keep up and do everything you can not to get picked off.

Ranking classes by PvE usefulness only works with context though. What level of dungeon clearing are we talking about? Fractals at 20+? Speed farming CoF? Regular guild group? Pugging into babby’s first dungeon in AC?

At lower levels, the priority is survival and leeway for mistakes. When I pug, I find that other necromancers are extremely rare – probably the rarest of all classes but I rate them higher than anything outside Guardians because it’s relatively easy for them to stay alive. An unskilled Necro is still surviveable. An unskilled ele, mesmer, thief or engi will go down at the drop of a hat. At mid ranges, I find necro is still highly useful for groups that don’t skip all the trash and/or has the gumption to get stuck in with bosses that pugs usually kite/range.

Aside from weakness reducing endurance, there’s also a decent amount of chill which slows people by so much that it often forces a dodge. So no, we can’t really dodge much but we can stop other people from dodging as much.

Necromancers; very much the bitter, neglected spoiler of a little brother.

Solesaver.8764:

Even if you have don’t have dedicated minion build you can get some value out of your jagged horrors. Therefore it is at least a little relevant to any build. In the same way that a thief who wants toughness traits might go in to the Shadow Arts trait line, even if they don’t have a stealth based build, so too can a necromancer choose to constantly whine about the Death Magic minor traits, ignore their effect, or learn to maximize the effectiveness of what they are given.

All I can recommend to you is that you actually pay attention to how your jagged minions interact with you and the environment, then cease spreading myths about it.

I do consider Jagged Horror a liability though not a big enough one to get angry over but did I just see you compare a Jagged Horror with the utility of Last Refuge in an attempt to salvage your point? Because that is anger-inducing levels of sheer stupid.

I don’t do fractals but I’ve not seen a single Rare and hardly any Masterworks since the patch in any dungeon run.

I currently run a healing Wellomancer. Basically, yes, we can support the hell out of our allies. We can do a bunch of different things but by far where we’re strongest are healing and condition removal.

To start, the obvious weapon for support role is the Staff. Your other set is up to you and depends on which offensive stat you opt for. Unless you want to pay for Apothecary gear or sacrifice Healing Power by using Shaman gear, you’re probably looking at either axe or dagger using either Power or Precision.

If you intend to major in support, one of the strongest things you can get is ground-targeted Wells. You’ll need 20 points invested in Curses for this but I feel it’s worth the stat deviation (10 of the points would otherwise probably go towards filling Death and Blood to 30/30). For the other trait option under Curses, I consider Chilling Darkness worth picking due to its synergy with Well of Darkness alone. This will make Well of Darkness spam chill as well as blind, allowing it to be a ranged AoE crowd control and damage mitigation. Just having Healing Powered up Well of Blood and Well of Darkness is worth having ground-targeted wells. It’s worth noting as well that Well of Darkness being a darkness field can be triggered by projectiles for Leech Life. This can be a decent amount of induced healing if, for example, a Thief has the wherewithal to Unload through it.

The other relatively strong traits for support necro are all under Death and Blood. Some standouts:

*Greater Marks will make targeting much easier and help Mark of Blood and Chillblains hit more targets.
*Ritual Mastery will significantly increase the frequency of your wells dropping – this means more heals and greater uptime of mitigation.
*Ritual of Protection shouldn’t be underestimated. It will make Well of Power chain blind, chain chill AND chop a third off any damage that does make it through. A Well of Blood so traited and placed over a ram will keep the boys banging on the door like nothing else.
*Ritual of Life has an internal cooldown but effectively doubles the castability of Well of Blood during dangerous situations (when allies are more likely to go down).
*Transfusion turns Life Transfer into an AoE heal. It is worth 2600 hp per person and unlike Well of Blood, you’re very likely to get it all to land.

Healing:
*Regeneration via Mark of Blood is your main sustained heal and will tick for around 300/s with 1370 healing power – more than the average healing of Well of Blood. You can keep this up very nearly perpetually even without Staff Mastery.
*Well of Blood ticks 11 times over 10 seconds and is a burstier heal. You need 1370 Healing Power for it to tick 700 per tick or 7700 total healing. This is a pile of healing but how much of it you land varies a lot. In fights like Alpha on Path 1 CoE when everyone is stacking on him there is practically no way to go down because you will land all 7700hp on everybody in the party. And, if someone does go down and you rez, that will be another 7700 with Ritual of Life so for sure nobody else will down. Likewise, when cast over a ram at a defended gate in WvW, its effects are very noticeable. In situations where the incoming fire looks bad enough for gate attackers to pull off, dropping a Well of Blood that ticks 700 convinces them to stay and continue attacking the gate. On the other hand, for mobile open field fights in WvW or bosses that flit all over the place, don’t expect to land more than a tick or three.
*Life Transfer with Transfusion is worth 2600-2700 and is unaffected by Healing Power. In the time it takes Life Transfer to run its course, a Well of Blood at 1370 Healing Power heals for 2800-3500 (4 or 5 ticks) but you can move as you Life Transfer and keep your ally in range even if he’s dodging around.

Human
Female
Necromancer

When previewing Researcher’s Pants (L35), the Tier 1 human cultural cloth legs, its colour appearance differs depending on whether it is previewed from the vendor’s window or from your inventory (or anywhere else).

The first screenshot is when previewing from your inventory.
The second screenshot is when previewing from the vendor’s window.

Both previews were done with Midnight Fire dye. When previewing from the vendor’s window, the colour is much darker (and matched up swimmingly with everything else I have). However for all purposes and intents (when previewed from anywhere besides the vendor window; its actual appearance when worn) matches up with screenshot 1.

I don’t find slogging through mobs particularly fun nor find skipping particularly exploitative. What I do find annoying is people joining pugs and expecting to skip because unless you’ve got 4 in a guild and are just picking up one extra, I can guarantee you that you will waste everybody’s time including your own. If you want to skip, then don’t pug. Not because skipping is wrong and fighting trash is right, because it’s not efficient without a group with more cohesion than you find in pugs.

As much as I despise the OP’s elitism, I do agree with him that we need some kind of difficulty scaling. There’s no escaping the fact that something accessible to the majority of players is not going to be remotely interesting to perfectionists. Everyone wants a dungeon just hard enough for them and too hard for everybody they consider beneath them.

I’d be looking at a numeric scale kind of like fractals. The higher you go the faster, more powerful and randomised the boss is. Then smooth it out and try to avoid situations where one highly ranked players will cause a boss to suddenly pull out sackfuls of doom (like p2 and p3 Alpha).

Last night, I did two runs of Twilight Arbor and two of Crucible of Eternity with pugs. TA seems about right where it is as one of the first three dungeons as is Path 1 CoE. Path 2 and 3 are still very difficult to pug due largely to Alpha but also the gimmick bosses (evolved destroyer is incredibly stupid). Which is fine I think; there’s one path that a pug can make it through and better groups can attempt 2 or 3.

Having just gone through TA with a pug, I think the changes made are big enough difference that I’m okay with it. I don’t think people will stop pugging over this but I do expect the success rate to decrease – at least at first. I’m cautiously optimistic however.

Why don’t those of us who pug (and no, having three friends from your pro guild picking up one extra doesn’t count) share experiences?

I just went through two runs of Twilight Arbor (f/f and f/u) with a pug…it actually went okay. The toned down damage on the vines made a big difference. The intended strategy always seemed to be to draw the vines’ fire while melee stack on the vine itself. Previously the vines could destroy someone despite their best efforts. It now seems going down is not common so long as the one drawing fire concentrates on defense. Rezzing from downed became viable (though still dangerous) and miscommunication on targeting seemed less fatal. (Previously, the group could wipe very easily if everyone didn’t know exactly what to target at each stage.)

The notorious f/f path has been toned down. Nightmare Court Knights with the knockdown combo no longer appear in multiples. Overall went a LOT better than I expected it would.

I have to agree there. I mean, now that we can’t abuse them can’t we have like ONE waypoint in Twilight Arbor? Just one? Please? I mean the way it’s laid out why even give us an anvil?

No, as much as I hate the frustrating dungeon runs, this change is good and it shouldn’t be an option on any difficulty mode. However, we DO need difficulty modes at some point because on one hand you have people pugging into groups with people they don’t know, with no voice chat and multiple players that don’t know the dungeon and on the other you have elite guilds who have played many MMOs, sharpened their builds and technique to a fine point and drilled themselves into dungeon clearing machines. Unless you have difficulty scaling, it’s obvious that anything remotely finishable by one group is going to be boringly trivial to another.

My proposal would be to track each player’s dungeon completion in a way similar to fractals. Then, when the group enters, average out the values of the participants and scale each dungeon like a fractal. That way, regular groups that slam through the content as it currently is can go higher and higher up the scale until everything oneshots them and drown in glory and prestige while beginning dungeon runners will be able to start in an environment that allows mistakes and be eased into things.

And that really is the problem – there’s nothing wrong with the difficulty for experienced, coordinated groups, it’s that there’s no way to learn.

As much as I agree with the change, yes pugging is going to be immensely frustrating now.

Astraea.6075:

So how do you define market manipulation?

Is it unethical to flip items within an existing price range (i.e. buying at more than highest buyer and selling at less than lowest seller) to make a profit? The people I’m buying from receive more money and the people I’m selling to get cheaper goods.

How about speculating in a holiday item that I suspect will rise significantly in price after it is discontinued. Is it unethical to buy several thousand of this item and hoard them for sale at a later date?

The TP is made up of transactions between willing sellers and buyers, and while there may be some price manipulation going on in some markets, how much of it is unethical? If I place a low-ball sell listing hoping to get other sellers to “bandwagon” to my new lower price, I’m relying on “lazy” sellers who don’t research price information. While it could be argued that I’m acting unethically by taking advantage of them, I’m not exactly forcing them to sell at the price I’ve set.

There are some trading activities that are truly unethical, such as “pump and dump” schemes, but there a number of others where traders send signals via their TP transactions that they hope have an effect on the market’s movement (e.g. setting up buy walls) that aren’t obviously unethical except as far as these signals may mislead other market participants as to the true state of the market.

I think equalizing prices over time (ie the first two ) are fine. I think lowballing, buywalling and other tactics based on misleading people are definitely questionable. To be fair, I think a simple solution is to have buy/sell entries all be easily and conveniently visible whether you are buying or selling.

goldi.3129:

If you can’t accept that than sorry, MMOs are not the place for you.

It’s a good thing Anet does not have that ideology or they would not be able to maintain a healthy game. For us, it’s a question of when and whether action is needed based on the experience of the majority of players.

Dreamslayer.7659:

The problem with all of these arguments is that they are stated as an absolute when they are, in fact, nothing more than an opinion or a preference.

If you were to say “I do not like the way that the TP has become a minigame” or “in my opinion, the emergence of the TP as a minigame is something I am unhappy with” then you would have a point.

The topic of the post asks for an opinion and I have given my opinion. Your proposed corrections would be statements of fact.

Instead, you are saying that this sort of activity is “illegitimate” when this is simply not the case – at all. It may be unpleasant, hostile, uncooperative, inconvenient, troublesome, enviable, or many other things, but to call it illegitimate is, in my opinion, an attack on other players who have done absolutely nothing wrong except to not live up to your personal code of behavior.
…
We all do this to an extent, but trying to indict others for something that is perfectly legitimate – well, it can hurt peoples feelings.

If someone is being unpleasant, hostile, uncooperative, inconvenient, troublesome, enviable, or many other things they shall have to live with me possibly hurting their feelings.

Asthalon.6875:

Just for the sake of argument… what would you actually do to fight “market manipulation” (a generally vague term, to begin with), and what would you do to ensure that said “solutions” are beneficial? What’s the proper metric to say “Yes, this is now an optimal system”?

My proposal would be: “Be prepared, in the intermediate future, to lengthen or do away with the leash between Rare (yellow) equipment and ectoplasms.”

To elaborate on Necro vs Ele toughness, a properly geared, built and played Ele is far tougher than any Necro (or any other class) but an average player on an Ele is going to have the resilience of tofu (but still hit pretty hard). A Necro on the other hand is the reverse; she is going to be fairly tough as long as you have Consume Conditions and go into a fight with life force, especially against burst, but a poorly played Necro can expect to maintain very little damage while surviving.

The main argument against DS as a utility is that it generally does rubbish damage, which is correct in most situations so the simple solution is to stay in it as little as possible (and avoid builds that want you to stay in it). Bind the key to something more convenient than F1 and press it when kittens are about to get real, then press again. Don’t try to soak everything with it. Think of it as a block with a 10 second cooldown that has no cast time and that you can keep up for as long as you can afford.

The Necro is very forgiving in terms of survivability but is considerably less forgiving when trying to kill things. I play a Wellomancer sacrificing some stats to stack Healing Power and Ranged Wells currently but even when I was running full condition in WvW, even if you do momentarily stack 10-15 bleed, chill, poison and cripple on somebody and land a good epidemic I found that outright kills are actually quite rare (since GW2 goes by Allied rules of kill claiming though, you will still get a kill in your stats). What is much more common is that everyone you just give a crapton of conditions to will have to (or be persuaded to) dodgeroll back and get to safety for a few seconds while they get a hold of themselves and that allows your zerg to move forward or stops them from bombing everyone else from the wall. The principle is the same for marks and wells – they’re easy to avoid or get out of but the key is that’s exactly what they do and so the other team loses position or morale. There’s also Well of Blood which is an absolutely epic heal since mine can be cast from range, ticks 11 times for 700+ and applies protection. That thing alone will keep the boys banging on the door even when everything else is telling them to bolt back and heal. It’s a very abstract and unfortunately thankless way of contributing.

Overall though, MUCH easier time than an Engineer in anything but sPvP

goldi.3129:

Ruruuiye.8912:

The “Trading Post is PVP” is an argument used to justify market manipulation because it frankly has nothing to do with PVP. It’s supposed to be a tool to create abundance through the exchange of goods from players who don’t need them to the ones that do. You may as well say LFG is PVP and that while it enables some players to be kittens, it is fully consensual because players are in too much of a hurry to find friends who all want to play the same game multiple hours a day.

I’ve been playing for a month and while I’ve gotten a fair number of yellow drops, I don’t think any of them combine together as a reasonable set and I have still never received a single orange drop. If it wasn’t for the TP I would not have access to dungeons or fractals and would probably even be in a bit of a slog without a duo partner in Orr wearing blues and greens.

The problem with the market being inflated (whether by people dumping gems into gold and inflating the supply of currency or by manipulation) is not that someone won’t get their Legendaries in four months instead of six, it’s the rise of prices in ordinary items for casual and beginning players.

Wrong. Like Nike said the TP is a Minigame like PvP. In the regards that it is a part of the game that you CAN participate in- you don’t have to.
Go and farm some karma and get the tempel exotics if you don’t like the prizes for exotics in the tp for example. Or run dungeons and aquire the exotics via tokens (No you don’t need exotics for dungeons you can even run them with rares, masterworks or blues).

The tp is the quick and lazy way and it comes with a prize.

In every MMO that has a market you will see people who enjoy PvP, PvE or economies. It is a basic part of the game, again, like Nike said. And like I said noone is forcing you to participate.

The prize of ordinary items is not rising due to market manipulation but due to the fact that the game is growing older and more and more money is flowing into the economy from sources like selling trash to vendors, event rewards etc etc.
Not every prize that increases is due to market manipulation. And if the prize stabilizes after a time, than the old prize was simply too low- if the people are not willing to pay the new prizes manipulation ends very quickly with a hefty loss for the wannabe manipulator

No, the TP is not and should not be a legitimate “minigame”. TP competition is an emergent factor from having an in-game economy. This is something that can be controlled and needs to be going forward to keep the game accessible to new or inexperienced players and ensure that progression in equipment is reasonable and in line with the needs of most players.

You can say all you want that you can run dungeons in blue gear but it’s an unrealistic expectation. Expert players will always be able to trivialize them but those who are less into it need every advantage they can get. Groups will kick players for not having full exotics. You cannot say that blues and greens are valid dungeon gear for most players. And yes, you can say learn2play all you like. You can even justify it by saying that it is generally the highly skilled, superheavy players that pay most of the money to keep the game running, but it’s a poor attitude for the game to take in the long run.

Yes, prices do inflate over time as more money enters the economy. The problem is when the rate of inflation is too high. That is not the same as market manipulation and is just as bad no matter which causes the other. Moreover, you’re forgetting that there is no cost to maintaining goods on the TP and no limit to the number of items that can be kept there. If at any time players are unwilling to pay high prices (whether or not these are caused by manipulation), it is the seller that benefits from waiting.

The hardest encounter in the dungeon, in practice, is probably Ralena and Vassar, the boss that’s actually two bosses and that is still ahead of you, yes. The basic idea is that the two are stronger when standing closer to each other so the party tries to separate them to mitigate this. There are various opinions on what tricks or tactics to use, such as throwing rocks or using the doors in a nearby corridor. The most important thing though, is group cohesion. If you try a trick and it doesn’t work, a group that stands its ground and concentrates on bringing the encounter under control can often find a way to do so.

Make sure you familiarise yourselves with the dungeon (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Catacombs_%28story%29) and have a voice chat program like Ventrilo or Teamspeak if you aren’t already. These dungeons are balanced with the internet in mind.

Generally, the more surviveable the class, the easier it is to survive and contribute in a dungeon.

*Necromancers are by far and away the most forgiving cloth class and has a ton of point-and-shoot skills that are very helpful in dungeons; a pull, a ranged AoE revive from downed and more. Do NOT run minions until you know what you’re doing though.

*Rangers are very strong and easily managed so long as you’ve developed a habit with basic pet controls (the Bear, Stop and Bear, Attack buttons)

The other classes I’ve either not played in dungeons or they’re very squishy unless played with skill and consistent timing (which I’ve never developed despite years of gaming on and off). Strong, certainly, but not easy to start learning from. The elementalist I would say is particularly squishy if you don’t know what you’re doing but I’ve seen laid back pugs give their eles a free pass on frequent death.

The “Trading Post is PVP” is an argument used to justify market manipulation because it frankly has nothing to do with PVP. It’s supposed to be a tool to create abundance through the exchange of goods from players who don’t need them to the ones that do. You may as well say LFG is PVP and that while it enables some players to be kittens, it is fully consensual because players are in too much of a hurry to find friends who all want to play the same game multiple hours a day.

I’ve been playing for a month and while I’ve gotten a fair number of yellow drops, I don’t think any of them combine together as a reasonable set and I have still never received a single orange drop. If it wasn’t for the TP I would not have access to dungeons or fractals and would probably even be in a bit of a slog without a duo partner in Orr wearing blues and greens.

The problem with the market being inflated (whether by people dumping gems into gold and inflating the supply of currency or by manipulation) is not that someone won’t get their Legendaries in four months instead of six, it’s the rise of prices in ordinary items for casual and beginning players.

The dungeons are balanced with the wiki and voice chat in mind, which I find refreshing. For my small guild, when we are able to gather five people on voice chat together, the balance on most of them is just about right. We are not particularly hardcore, nor do we go about things blindly without making use of the information and tools available to us. It’s understandable that some people would find what we find challenging to be trivial and also understandable that others find it inaccessible. It really is about at the limit of our comfort zone though. When I’m alone, I do pure blind pugs. Most runs do make it through eventually on some paths of each dungeon but the success rate in my experience is quite low compared to other MMOs. The elitists are going to exult about how it’s skill-based and how it’s not pandering to noobs, gb2wow etc etc but the reality is we don’t give a single kitten – if the material isn’t accessible, we won’t bother with it and you’ll have wasted your time developing it.

The weird thing is that the “average” run through any dungeon is probably a highly successful one because a small proportion of superheavy dungeon runners is responsible for the vast majority of dungeon runs completed but the devs will need to have a good hard look at what to expect out of a median player’s skill level and how much frustration they are willing to put up with if they move forward with preventing waypointing during party combat.

I expect somewhat fewer players.

Svarty.8019:

Ridgeblader.7135:

Legendary weapons should take a legendary effort to obtain. No more, no less.

Whilst I agree with this statement, the current “legendary effort” is put into marketeering, rather than deeds on the battlefield. This doesn’t seem particularly heroic, epic, or legendary.

Agree entirely and that, I think, is the discussion we should be having – what exactly do we want legendaries to reflect in their wielders? Gems laid down for gold to straight up buy a legendary? Skill in manipulating the TP? Time spent grinding its components?

Unfortunately, there’s no real reward of legendaries to those who help keep the trains running at the Orr temples, tirelessly defend Quaggans or such…

In my opinion, even if market manipulation had, in fact, absolutely nothing to do with attaining a legendary, just the popular belief that this is the case damages the value of the legendary. I do wonder how big camp 1 or 2 really is outside of these forums though. I have a feeling most people belong in camp 3 – Don’t Care.

I’ve always had my sound set on Most Stable even before getting the bug. I assume that it’s making it happen less often than it otherwise would but there’s no way in hell I’m swinging the slider back the other way to find out…

I wonder if a Necro can do this. Shining eyed excitement

“Arrrgh!”
“Urrrgh!”
“My leg!”
“I’m bleeding!”
“Poison! Too strong!”
“I’m on fire!”

I’m proud to say that instead of buying Exotic gear, I spent ~35g on Abyss, Black, Iron and Midnight Fire to get the exact right mix of blacks on my Rare gear. Also puts me in the curious situation of having the dye worth 10-20 times the cost of the gear it’s put on…

disclaimer: Not an economist or really even arguing a position yet. Just laying out the problem in my head and posting the result.

GW2 should allow as many people to enjoy the game as possible but it should recognize extraordinary players in visible ways. I like the way Legendary Weapons work insofar as they don’t offer a massive stat boost to whoever wields it – they’re small advantages coupled with highly visible looks. Having ventured into WvW for the past week, I’ve already seen legendaries crop up with regularity. Making legendaries more common would reduce its value as a mark of recognition so I don’t support that. On the flip side, I feel that making the current set of legendaries more difficult to acquire after the fact by reducing drop rates for its components doesn’t sit well with me either.

As for market manipulation… Normally, buying up stocks of goods when prices are low and releasing when prices are high tends to even out prices and overall reduces the amount of gold in circulation. This is beneficial to those with less information (ie the vast majority of players whose lives do not revolve around GW2’s TP) and increases trust in gold as a currency by counteracting inflation (trading in goods creates abundance by spreading the goods to those who need them and sinks gold due to TP fees). I personally find this a preferable situation to having to hunt down information as to what the next hotcake is so I can buy into it with what gold I have for fear that gold will drop in overall value (ie inflation).

If the situation is reaching a point where some commodities (like ectoplasm) are becoming better as currency than gold due to sustained increase in price, then you are basically punishing people for using currency as a store of value. This is undesireable if only for the amount of drama and upset countenances this will cause. From the perspective of someone who rolls with Rares, who would never dream of getting a legendary weapon and has no plans to really get into crafting, rariefied consumables like lodestones and cores are worthless. I have a handful sitting in my vault right now that someone could be using but if I think that their value will continue to rise (or at least not fall if I expect gold’s value to drop), I will opt to hold onto them instead and that will cause prices to tend upwards some more, causing more people to pause and think whether to sell or hang onto them.

Now, one rational response to this is for “farmers” (in as non-pejorative a sense as I can manage; these are people who see something is in demand and go run dungeons to get it – we need these guys) to increase production. They do this because it is getting more profitable for them to do so.

1) Is there a global limit to supply? If so, the cumulative production of the commodity is limited no matter how many people try to farm it. (If not, that means the production of said good increases more or less linearly the more people try to farm it.)

2) Is having gw2lfg filled with listings for LF2M Core Farm Skip All Mobs a phenomenon that we want?

3) If the good is farmable only in the current dungeons, that is a barrier to entry of a sort. GW2 dungeons have a reputation for being very challenging. This limits the potential to supply.

Then, we have the second rational response, which is for a player to dump money into gems and buy gold. This tends to decrease the value of gold, increase the value of the good further and generally make things worse for the everyplayer.

I’ve gotten this four or five times in dungeons and during heavy fights in WvW. Seems to be harmless in dungeons but it crashed me out of Eternal Battlegrounds twice amidst heavy fighting during the SoR surge on the 23rd.

I’m curious whether it has anything to do with VoIP ducking or overclocking.

Does anyone getting the bug have a non-overclocked (ie stock speed) AMD?

Does anyone getting the bug get it while NOT using any voice software (ie no Ventrilo or Team Speak etc)

I think the pooing all over the humans in the story and blaming them for everything is intentional because they know full well people (GW1 veterans if nobody else) will play humans no matter how badly they’re written whereas with the other races they have something to sell you. If I were to say there was a Mary Sue race it wouldn’t be the Humans OR the Charr, It’d be the Sylvari.

I suppose I’ll preeamble from where I’m coming from: I play human females almost exclusively and have spent the most time on necromancer and elementalist. In other words I swap elements a great deal and juggle conditions on myself as a matter of course. In either case I tend to fight quite “hot” in that I allow my hp to go quite low outside of bosses because I’m well aware of the fact that so long as that number isn’t 0, I’m fine.

Here is what I don’t need:

*I do NOT need to hear that “I’m still standing, barely.” I have a bloody hp gauge on my dash.
*I do NOT need to hear that “Things are getting serious.” I’ll have you know I take myself seriously at all times.
*I do NOT need to hear that I “Hope I’ll pull through.” We are not pulling through anything. This isn’t Ninja Gaiden. Things are under control.
*I do NOT need to hear that I can “move mountains” or “outrun a centaur” because that’s a lie anyway.
*I do NOT need to hear that the poison is too strong or that it’s freezing cold or anything about my leg or that I’m on fire. DEAL with it. In fact, there’s a strong probability that I’m responsible for half of those conditions and all that stuff is getting foisted on somebody else, turned into boons or eaten for hp in short order. I’m a necro, it’s FINE.
*I do NOT need to hear my character moaning and groaning in agony EVEN when my dialog audio is muted whenever crippled or crying like a babby every time she’s launched. That is still incredibly annoying. There are areas full of things like Ebonhawke Seperatists or Krait or Risen where it’s pretty much impossible not to be crippled and some bandits explicitly drop bombs on top of you in bizarre attempts to air combo. kitten happens. It’s not a big deal. I do not want to hear it.

Right now, I play the game with Dialog turned all the way down and my friends always tell me I’m missing out and quite frankly they’re right. Because I DO turn on the dialog now and again and the voice acting in general I find to be quite good. The interactions between NPCs in the environment is hilarious and adds a lot to the game and is one of its strongest points. I do think (as many seem to) that much of the voice acting has room for improvement during the story dialogue cutscenes but there’s plenty of cases where it’s strong too (I loved Zojja while sidekicking on a friend’s Asuran story for example) and in any case you aren’t hearing it every other second.

But your own voice while in the field or fighting you DO hear constantly and right now it is so irritating that I would rather miss out on all the other voices you put in the game than to hear my Necro complain one more time about the cold or the poison or her kitten leg or my Elementalist pratter about her braggably powerful elements which she’s had all of for the past thirty levels. The thing is, the majority of the lines in the game are good and the VAST majority are tolerable. It’s just a small handful – maybe 5% of the lines that ruin the entire experience and make me rather turn it ALL off. Isn’t that a shame? It’s because those 5% of voiced sounds account for like 95% of the voices you actually hear because they just keep repeating and repeating and repeating. I understand also that some people work much better with audio than visual cues – I’m a visual person and other people may not be. So don’t remove them, just give us an option. Think of it this way, I want that option because I WANT to hear the rest of your voice acting.

While you’re at it, let us optionally disable that blowing sound and the bloody hud splatter that happen when your hp gets low. I, and I’m sure many others, have developed enough game senses to grasp the situation in a fight and those cues, while useful for others, becomes irritating.

There’s a cave full of veteran canyon spiders just east of Apostate Wastes (in a U-shaped part of the map). If you go past the chest there seems to be a hole where it’s possible to drop down onto Vexa’s Lab rooftop and then another hole grants access to an isolated area of the lab that leads straight to the boss room. Was this a testing access left in the game by accident?

I don’t mind anyone else’s banter, I’d just like to be able to mute any sound coming from my own character. Turning down the Dialog is not an option because:

1) It doesn’t actually stop all your voices. Every time I get any sort of debuff she moans, groans and complains. It’s all the more ironic because my main’s a necro and getting the odd condition is not that big a deal.

2) It stops all the actually interesting dialogue. The banter between NPCs, especially when different races interact, is one of the strongest parts of the game but I have to turn Dialog off and mute them too because my own character’s voice is unbearable.

Some of the biggest offenders IMO:

Conditions. You get them all the time and every single time your toon has some repetitive remark about them. I just want her to stop complaining, stop groaning and be quiet.

New Area Discovered. How can you put hundreds of areas in the playable areas and not expect the two or three canned phrases to not get irritating?

Deathshroud/Elementalist switching attunement: Again these are things that happen all the time constantly throughout the game forever as long as you play these classes. Do you want to be hearing these same things a hundred times a day a year from now?