Guild Wars 2

As much as people dislike it, and the implementation is perhaps heavy handed, it is nonetheless necessary.

For a good game, you need play and counter-play, and you also need a counter-counter play. Blurred Frenzy is a play or counter-play, you can either use it up front for it’s damage, or you can activate it counter an enemy’s play and evade their attacks. What it lacked, was a counter-counter, even if an enemy knew you might use it there was no hard counter he could sue to prevent you using it.

You can still counter-counter-counter, by using null field or a similar boon strip, to nullify retaliation, rendering your counters effective. So you’re not powerless

At least OP is addicted to a decent class. My mesmer/engineer/ranger fixation is rather counter productive in today’s dungeon meta (And stigmas people attach)

There’s quite a few errors in the guide, or odd wording that is likely to mislead.

Two notable example are the pet descriptions. Cats are higher DPS than birds – this is partially due to the exact arrangement of skills, cats have slightly more damaging skills on lower cooldowns, and partially due to the skills available, notably jaguars, which get additional crit chance while stealthed. Main difference with birds is they have an AoE that grants swiftness, and have a leap combo, plus I believe they also have a longer reach, making it harder to avoid their attacks.

And also the wording on longbow, which states “Longbows have the highest single target DPS of any weapon”; if I was a newbie reading that, I’d understand that to mean “when facing single targets, longbow is the way to go”. This is of course completely wrong, for single target DPS, sword is still the way to go, it just happens the sword is also the best cleaving weapon too.

In fact, there are only 2 single target weapons available to rangers, and both of those are ranged weapons (Longbow and Shortbow). Even then it’s arguable which is “higher DPS single target weapon”, obviously if you’re condition specced, shortbow will out-dps Longbow and vice versa.

Also, the only reason murellow users arn’t kicked from dungeon parties is because most people don’t realise murellow is a class of bear. This doesn’t mean you should run murellow in a dungeon any more than you should run a bear

At the high end of the game, I have all too frequently overheard players entering new, less populated zones – asking “where’s the train on this map”.

Queensdale train has created a generation of players that only know how to zerg and tag mobs. They have minimal understanding of fine gameplay or their classes skillsets (Other than learning which skills provide the fastest, safest tags), not introducing players to trains until ~level 15 gives them time to experiment before people push them onto the train.

So, it’s been a long time since I last did fractals; used to be level 40 prior to the fractal overhaul and played mesmer almost exclusively. Since then, I’ve made ranger my main and hadn’t really played Fractals in that time, instead sticking to WvW/PvE/Dungeons – but today figured I’d work on mastering fractals as a ranger and jumped in at level 20 running a fairly typical full zerker build and gear set (Note: I was switching offhand weapon as per situation, also swapping GS for Lb on fights where ranging is essential)

…And it was pretty abyssmal, ended up looking like a terrible noob, getting frequently downed (Granted I was far from the only party member getting downed). It felt like i needed to revise strategy for fractals, and that dungeon strategy alone wasn’t enough. So I’m wondering if any more experienced Rangers might have some thoughts on tweaks and strategy changes required to perform better in fractals. The main things I ran into were:

• Pet dying almost instantly, jaguar/drake might be the norm in dungeons but the jaguar was dying wayyyy too fast. Often in a single hit – should I still be using my pet so offensively, or should I be bringing in tankier pets/support pets?
• Lack of boss telegraphs for near instant-kill attacks made sword/dagger evades kind’ve useless on many fights (such as hammer-guy on cliffside). Should I even be using sword as my primary weapon at that level?
• The normal mantra of a PvE ranger is “If you’re using a bow, you’re doing it wrong”, does that hold true for fractals or it is time to put a bow on swap? – I ended up switching in a longbow as a fallback weapon in the end but is that simply because I wasn’t playing a good game?
• There’s squishy, and then there’s squishy all the fractal guides say to run zerker and only zerker, and that is basically how I ran fractals on my mesmer. But full zerker as a ranger, I was on my kitten far more than seemed necessary; would I be forgiven for using some cavalier/valkyrie gear in there, or do I just need to git gud?

Anyway, any thoughts to improve my game would be appreciated.

Brother Grimm.5176:

You need to understand this issue can’t really be fixed by ANet..

Speaking as someone who actually knows a thing or two about netcode, I can tell you it can be fixed. Anet needs to rely less on server-side tracking of movement, and more on trusting the client-side responses (In respect to those specific skills), so that if the player’s client says they made the jump, the server trusts that they did indeed make the jump.

Under normal circumstances the server puts a degree of doubt in what the client says to avoid hackers and exploiters, but considering these movements are tied to very specific skills, only obtainable in 2 specific zones, with proper foresight the net code could make exceptions for specific skills or locations to improve responsiveness at a decrease of security (It’s not like botters and hackers can farm anything of use anyway in the sanctum)

At the very least, it’s a terrible idea to design your netcode on the basis that everyone has perfect latency.

Unfortunatly, this was a MASSIVE issue that ruined my experience of Zepher sanctum the last time around. And I’m sorry to say they havn’t fixed a thing

In fact, last time, I was only able to complete the events by guesting to other, quieter servers. Unfortunatly guesting is no longer an option thanks to the wonder of megaservers.

Please please please fix this before the event is over this time anet. I want to enjoy the bazaar it’s a great concept, but it is simply not playable!

The Elder Dragons to me, seem more like the Reapers of Mass Effect (At least as they are portrayed in the first two installments), alien, unstoppable and horrifying; they corrupt the living to become mindless drones, their own minds are largely unknown and probably unknowable.

However, OP your are still correct, that even if an anatagonist cannot directly communicate with the player (Though oddly enough the reapers do on several occasions directly communicate with shepard ), they have to demonstrate that power. And despite people’s statements that we would end up dead if we saw it, this isn’t true – it could make for some fantastic cut scenes to stand by and witness the corruption of a “new brand” forming and creating a new explorable zone and giving that sense of powerlessness to undo the damage.

Honestly, IMO most the light on charr looks markedly better than medium or heavy. Most the light shoulders ACTUALLY FIT, whereas almost every medium and heavy shoulder levitates above the character like some kind of magical drone.

I keep reporting the shoulders as a bug – there’s no WAY they are working as intended. But, over a year in i have my doubts

I can confirm the numbers for that are the total of all the projectiles, fired from point blank range it is possible to hit a single target with all 5 axes

There’s a blood legion charr at brokentooth maw, near lowland burns who is constantly muttering depressing statements to himself and is seemingly oblivious to the rest of his warband.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frotlov_Shattermind

It’d appear that the Charr are still susceptible to mental breakdown under enough pressure.

At the end of the day, a game is it’s OWN set of rules. With the exception of actual bug exploitation/cheating, anything goes.

Game balance should be a contest between player and developer. Players seek new strategies, the developers seek counter strategies, which in turn players seek counter-counter strategies; this is how GW1 developed and was balanced, and it worked well.

The “problem” with stacking, is that it is a great strategy within the rules we’re provided, that the devs have done nothing to provides mobs with a counter. If you don’t counter a strategy, why are players going to find seek new strategies? – The answer is they are not going to, and that is dangerous because it makes the gameplay stagnant.

Imagine a fighting game, where your opponent spams the same move over and over. Naturally there is going to be a counter-move YOU can spam, over and over too, which directly counters and will defeat your opponent every single time; of course this isn’t how a fighting game works, instead each move has a counter, penalties and payoffs, both combatants are constantly trying to guess their opponents next move and react, or try force the opponent off guard. So should be the case for bosses, if one strategy is backfiring, they should adopt another.

Ranger could always do decent damage, people just weren’t/aren’t playing it right.

They buffed Spotter and Spirits a little, and some of the new GM traits made survival skill heavy builds viable for PvP. Also longbow has a stealth move on it now. Also, pets are typically more responsive now though, needs some further work.

Additionally, since Death and Taxes analysed the class and proved once and for all that it’s DPS is comparable to warriors, and the buffs to spotter/spirits, they’ve begun to appear in dungeon speed run teams; whereas 6 months ago speed runners would advertise “NO RANGERS”

sfxblade.3459:

I am wondering the same thing, but i dont think the build matters when you get hit for 17k dmg per hit.

If you dont believe me, go to the jofast event and try to hit the champions in melee.

Anyways, im pretty sure i just suck at this class hah(in pve).

Sounds like it’s a playstyle issue. When meleeing there’s a number of factors to watch out for:

• Watch the bosses’ facing, unless you have his aggro you should aim to be in a flanking position (to the side or behind) instead of his forward cone to avoid cleaves.
• Try figure out what skills the boss is using, and anticipated/watch for telegraphs, dodge or back off as needed.
• Guardians have quite a large range of blocks, invulns, aegis and blinds. Don’t be afraid to use them appropriately (virtues, renewed focus, shelter, retreat! etc). “saving them for later” is no good if you’re dead, they’re there to stop you becoming dead :p

What you’re actually looking at is a ghostly tonic, not a player wearing actual armour.

However the armour set can be obtained in a non-ghostly form as the token reward for ascalon catacombs (medium armour), you could also achieve the ghostly effect by consuming an “omnomberry ghost” food item

A shortbow/longbow ranger isn’t going to work, simply because shortbows are a primarily condi weapon, longbows primarily power – and sticking to one weapon is suicide no matter what class you play.

However in 1 Vs 1, shortbow or longbow, in tandem with a suitable swap weapon are excellent
http://youtu.be/bJQ0KjVS47k?t=5m5s

Longbows should be thought of as a control weapon, used in tandem with snares and immobilises, allows you to deal good damage while the enemy is at a safe distance, or to push him off you with LB4 and LB3 (Just don’t try sit in LB once all your cooldowns are up)

Lightsbane.9012:

i’ve found myself reluctant to play my ranger in wvw a lot because of this, with one active mass-cleanse the ranger is pretty vulnerable to conditions, so anyone who’s said that ranger’s role is not in the middle of condi bomb zergs was right.

A point to the chagrin of any Guild Wars 1 player… are the devs forgetting one of ranger’s most interesting elite skills?
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Melandru's_Resilience

OP, it strikes me that you’re going a lot by what people are telling you and what you’ve read (likely outdated information), and less by how the dungeon meta actually is.

For example elementalists, not warriors, are the current go-to-class for insane DPS (Warrior is simply a combination of good damage, good survivability, bundled with relatively low skill requirement asked of the player), conversely, mesmers are dropping out of vogue these days outside of specific situations where portals or spherical reflects are needed, given their damage is sub-par and they bring little to the table that guardians don’t also bring). On the flipside, rangers while still widely mistrusted, are starting to see greater use, outputting similar DPS to a warrior, having superior DPS mods to use with FGS/Ice bow and having a unique set of buffs.

And let’s not forget, this is speed running, meta teams we’re talking. You don’t need to be any of that in order to get a mixed PUG team that is perfectly capable of beating any dungeon in the game (just much slower)

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

Also, don’t take the forums too seriously. A lot of level 80 meta players that scorn everything that isn’t a level 80 meta posting here.

Ironically, the “meta” people who denounce rangers are themselves often completely out-of-touch with the current meta. The current meta, in sPvP, WvW and Dungeons/Fractals, all have corresponding ranger builds that play to their strengths (Bunkers, Roamers and Melee spirit spotters respectively)

Sounds like a loaded question OP.

You acknowledged they do in fact bring some unique stuff to the table – Spirits and spotter, but quickly dismissed them looking for something more standout than that.

Beyond those two low hanging fruit, you need to refine your question as it’s quite a list.

Asura, if you take the GM trait to double stun durations technobabble yields a 6 second stun (On a 45 second cooldown I think), either way played right it can be a death sentence in WvW.

(Personally I’m a charr for aesthetic and character reasons, but if I had to choose for stats, asura is the way to go)

If I’m not mistaken, don’t rock dogs also have the charge/pounce abilities common to all dog-like NPCs which inflict knockdown and crippled respectively?

(If so that is a significant advantage in PvP)

Bare in mind Dragon’s Tooth is also a low cooldown blast finisher, which makes it uniquely useful in it’s own way, it’s a skill with nuance rather than just another damage inflicting spell with a different graphic.

If it’s a full month, with a friend on the inside, a clear plan of action and willingness to work at it like a machine, you could potentially get a decent amount.

But it’s not realistic expectations. As Azrael said, you’ll be lucky to get 10 points in that time.

Wait til they’re looking beat up, vulnerable, and are probably going to stealth – then use “sic ’em” to apply the revealed debuff, preventing them from doing so. Follow up with a well timed interrupt or stun to prevent them healing, and burst them down.

The thing to recognise is just because the mesmer’s health is low, it doesn’t mean you’ve almost beaten them, they have a lot of tricks up their sleeve to recover (Think of them as un-thieves. Just because you got some good hits on a thief doesn’t mean he’s out the game, he’ll stealth, back off and bide his time.), luckily, rangers are the only class that can actively counter stealth by forcing the revealed debuff onto a character

EDIT: Post sniped by bambula

theblankcalendar.1792:

With the mantra of pain and the trait that makes mantras heal on activation you can heal for about 2000 every 3 seconds. Can this be useful?

It used to have niche use, but better builds exist today.

I’ve had some good fun in both PvE and PvP trolling with the strong spammy heals provided by mantra healing, but especially in PvE it’s far less useful now than it used to be as the meta has shifted more completely towards offence

Lightsbane.9012:

what’s really scary is the thought of going against chinese players in wvw.
as Alistair said it, swooping…is bad.

EU/NA don’t face off in WvW. It seems logical China will be a separate data centre too

People have very thoroughly addressed the PvP side. To address PvE – there really isn’t other than if you want to be lazy.

A GS obviously lets you sit way back at safe distance but still do enough DPS foir gold credit with minimal risk. So if you’re AFK training for champ loot, it does it’s job adequately.

If you’re in a fractal or dungeon team however you probably won’t be pulling your weight if you’re packing a GS because:

• Sword has higher DPS and cleaves. (It also has good evasion)
• Focus has excellent DPS, and packs good utility
• Offhand sword packs an extra defence move, and it has a fantastic phantasm for boss-DPS.
• GS1 requires you to stand out of might spread range, lowering your DPS even further compared to the guys in the thick of it.
• GS provides no support of note. So even the “But I’m support spec” excuse doesn’t fly

Obviously there are some bosses where melee is simply NOT an option, in which case GS is a good fallback, in the same way a ranger might fall back to using a longbow, but asides from those exceptions, GS isn’t really a weapon you should be seeing a mesmer sitting on. There’s a reason it’s colloquially referred to a “noobstick” by some circles)

fabz.4736:

hi there was roaming in wvw using s/d full glass and ranger started attacking me i have vs alot of rangers before but none that have done this sort of dmg 8.7k maul and 7k counter strike kick is that normal. yes im aware im full glass but iv never seen that sort of dmg

Both these skills are extremely large telegraphs.

Maul creates a huge glowing bear claw and roars as it’s used, it also takes a good 1/2 second to land, counter – like any riposting skill, the user holds their blade at an angle and you get that low “hum” sound; many classes have powerful ripostes to watch out for.

Rangers also have a trait that guarantees that their opening strike is an automatic crit. Combined with some other one-shot boosts it’s very easy to create a devestating opening maul. But, like the backstab of a thief, is something you should be able to anticipate and counter very easily, once you know what to expect.

(Inb4 "easy for you to say as a ranger. Reason I’m in the forum is because I’m levelling a thief)

Preface

I’m sure this is something that has been brought up many times in the past, though if it’s been said recently it appears to have slipped back the pages and a search didn’t turn it up – so my apologies if this is “that thread again”

But with the recent Megaserver implementation and boosted player numbers I personally feel that this is something that needs to be brought up again.

A means to selectively disable the rendering of effects

This is something you find in many other MMOs (FF14:ARR for example).

The problem

It’s always been an issue that when large numbers of players are engaging a single, often small target such as a champion, the sheer volume of explosions, beams of energy, clouds of dust, can quickly obscure the actual target, or even large portions of the screen – for example:

http://i.imgur.com/q57XsUm.jpg
(At that stage, gameplay degenerates into blind button mashing)

Since the megaserver system rolled out, the problem has become even more acute, given the much larger volumes of players.

Implementation

On the graphics panel, there’d be a new option, likely with some permutations of the idea, for example:

• Show all – As per normal GW2
• Show team effects only. – Only displays explosions and effects for party members
• Show own effects only. – Only displays explosions and effects you create

To clarify, projectiles and ground effects would still be rendered since these are important; but superfluous effects such as as explosions, dust clouds, giant shards of ice etc, which are purely visual in nature, would not be displayed.

Benefits

There’s a number of benefits, primarily:

• Users with slower machines can opt to not render irrelevant effects to improve performance on big fights.
• Players for whom boss telegraphs and positioning is important, can hide effects so they can actually see those telegraphs and act on them (Thieves and rangers for example often cannot even tell if they are flanking or in front of a boss in extreme cases)

There are very few cons to the proposal, since ground effects and projectiles are still rendered, so players should still be able to recognise the attacks being used, and by who.

AEFA.9035:

What are you guys talking about? Im right here.

Operative word “many” – of course the other reason might simply be “because we haven’t legalised cloning yet, so there’s just the one of you”

The answer to OP’s statement is probably a lot simpler than that:
People come into the class with too many preconceptions, namely that the class is a range(r ) rather than a ranger

You only have to look at the sheer volume of people who accidentally call rangers hunters when talking about them to see the lense through which they are seeing the class; and that is just the people who are playing the class. Now step back and look at it from the perspective of a player who has not played the class; they see bearbows running about sucking, official blurb talking about their mastery of long range combat, and people complaining how the class is weak not to mention some less informed dungeon teams still stating “rangers need not apply”.

It’s no big surprise that few good players migrate into, or are retained by the class, especially in PvE.

A friend of mine made a WvW killshot warrior montage and wanted to share, but he can’t create new topics at the moment. At any rate, enjoy

In light of the upcoming changes it’s REALLY important they address this question soon.

They’re nerfing power based damage in the next patch to encourage people to experiment and branch out; but this will not happen, and this is why:

As I understand it they’re not just nerfing zerker, they’re nerfing power/crit. This means that “lesser” power or crit based sets, such as soldiers, knights, cavaliers, valkyrie – will now do less damage too, so optimum power based DPS is still going to be zerker/assasins (Without significantly changing combat mechanics to better reward defence, we’re not going to see a shift towards soldiers or knights in PvE)

However, we still have to contend with the condition cap – which means conditions are still not a viable option for DPS in PvE – if you have more than 1 person in your team specced for conditions, almost all the second guy’s DPS is going to go out the window.

If anet wants people to “branch out” and “experiment” they have GOT to get rid of the condition cap on champions and bosses, it’s not simply a case of “power being the best option”, power is the only option.

As classes go, mesmer is certainly one of the lag friendlier ones, since a large portion of your actions are proxied through phantasms and illusions and they of course do not suffer lag, since they are server-side pets.

However, GW2 is still a very twitchy game and none of the classes are really “lag friendly” in the higher-action areas, such as dungeons, champions or high-level activity where you need to actively evade attacks or danger zones. Similarly, to play any class to it’s fullest, requires good latency due to that twitchy nature (Compare and contrast GW2’s twitchy style system, with priority or rotation systems in WoW-like MMOs)

What makes me scratch my head, is what they are gonna do to PvE conditions?

The reason for zerker’s domninance in PvE is not “because it’s best” it’s because “it’s the only gear that makes sense”:

Condition: Cannot stack conditions beyond arbitrary cap, limiting to number of condition focused player a party can utilise.
Defence: Since bosses one-shot you anyway, there’s not much point running knight or soldier gear which are as effective as goggles (do nothing), and deal less damage to boot
Offence: Since we’ve ruled out condition and defence, pure offence is the only way to go.

Even if they nerf zerker, in this model people in PvE will still run zerker

Also the calculation incorrectly assumes that players are capable of co-ordinating (spoiler, they are not). Anyone over the 50th spot is dealing zero damage. Similarly if there are more than 150 players in the zone, then there’ll be less DPS too.

Basically there are 2 new cut-off points into the calculation where there was not before.

Honestly; I think what Anet needs to do is simply include more concise on screen instructions. The mechanics of the knight battle isn’t that hard, nor is their hitpoints that high if you have enough people and they distribute themselves properly.

The PROBLEM is that your average PUG has the IQ of a wet paper towel, and is about as survivable. You can scream instructions at them til you’re blue in the face, and they are going to sit there smearing their face all over the bosses hammer even though there is 80 of them on the same boss (and only say, 8 people on the other).

Players have gotten into the idea of being force-fed instructions; so unless anet plans to make real raid instances out of this, they need to either:
a) keep it simple
b) force-feed instructions

You can bring a PUG to battle but you cannot make him think.

Kirschwasser.3972:

… Nexon?

Can’t tell if troll.

Nexon owns a large share in NCSoft, and GW2’s lead monetisation person is from Nexon. Not trolling.

…however that doesn’t affect the language used since Arenanet writes the… well, writing – and they are based in the US. On topic though I don’t see what’s so cringeworthy about amongst I use it all the time (<- English)

I was also a little concerned to see the sheer scale of the new dungeon rewards.

Based on my typical daily dungeoneering and adventuring, I can expect to generate ~15g a day – the keyword here is generate, not total earnings from resale of stuff (Which is much higher), but simply gold from rewards, gold from selling to NPCs etc – new gold added to the economy.

At that rate, i can easily afford a set of T3 armour in a week. Most people will only buy one or two T3 sets on their entire account, and that is the biggest single gold sink we have that a large portion of the population will invest in in their account lifetime (For major TP traders, taxes are the largest drain.)

Still, I trust our resident economist – I’m sure he’s thought things through… right? – Or have the dungeon devs been bypassing the decision making process?

fishkid.6145:

Palu.3405:

What type of content are you planning on primarily doing? That greatly influences the answer that I’d give. Both classes have pros and cons, so how you plan on using them is what matters most.

Well I would really like to play all aspects of the game. WvW, Dungeons, and maybe eventually try the higher end PvP. Although since I do not have a lot of time on my hands the majority of my PvP will most likely be WvW, but I would love to try some of the other forms as well.

Then Mesmer is it. Mesmer is the more flexible of the two being able to do everything, and do it well – which is something a main needs to be capable of.

Thieves are very specialised, they do some things exceptionally, and can’t do other things at all (They are very poor dungeoneers)

Nuka Cola.8520:

“this is what i hear” don’t you have a brain and think for a sec? On a single target three phantasms will outdamage any class and for mobs of enemies you have shatter which deals tones of aoe damage so i dunno how could anyone even imagine mesmers having low dps.

Think about the rate of attack for those phantasms, their rate of attack is much slower than other classes heavy hitters, so while you might see 3 phantasms hitting for 8-9k each, the combined DPS of you and your phanties is still below or comparable to the DPS of other classes – and setting up 3 phantasms has a very long set up time (assuming 3 duellists, you’re talking best part of a minute), whereas a warrior can head-down-sustain DPS from first contact

Compare the attack damage to attack rate. Even in a vacuum elementalist’s lightning hammer does over twice the DPS of of your mainhand sword (our highest DPS attack)

According to the number crunchers on reddit, assuming the character specs completely for raw sustained DPS and sticks to just their highest DPS attack chain, mesmer is second lowest, ranking just about rangers.

(Of course context is important in this regard; for example in a dungeon team, a mesmer is more likely to sacrifice a bit of DPS for support. While in other situations sustaining DPS isn’t possible, so mesmer’s superior burst capabilities shine through – while in PvP going all-in-balls-out on DPS is a quick ticket to being downed. Nonetheless, that is the fundamentals)

There’s a few checks to make first:

• What do you plan to DO with your mesmer
• How confident are you at staying alive
• Are you willing to spend money in future to upgrade your gear?

On the first part, if you plan to do a lot of dungeons or fractals, then condition/hybrid gear is a no-no, you will want to focus on power. Otherwise “gear to taste”.

On the second condition, if you are already confident at not dying then you could jump straight in with berserkers (power) or rampagers (hybrid) gear, these types provide superior DPS, but provide very little defence. If you want some defence, then you can mix in knights (power) or rabid (condition) to bulk out your armour rating at a net decrease in DPS.

If you are willing to spend some gold in future, you could start out with knights (power) or rabid (condition), and add pieces of berserker (power) or rampagers (hybrid) as you become more confident and proficient. The long term goal being to eventually run pure zerker or rampagers. (I would strongly advise against running pure rabid in PvE after all our nerfs to conditions)

That’s absolutely fine by me.

If everyone else has portal, I can stop sacrificing my utility slot for the kitten thing, and anet can stop balancing the game on the basis that “mesmer’s have portal and timewarp, therefore cannot be buffed”

Tom Gore.4035:

Well this is nice and all, but your analogy sucks.

A better analogy would be that if you don’t play, you will actually lose progress, which you really don’t do. You just don’t gain any.

Depends on the frame of reference in which you are observing it.

When GW2 came out, you could buy 200 gems for 50 silver and precursors were around 50g. While technically you may not “lose” anything by not participating, the world and economy marches on without you. Your gold is worth proportionally less when you return.

As for dungeon rewards, they are time gated by the diminishing returns. If you really want say… Balefire’s Cozy Pink Slippers from CoF, but today you’re too busy to play – you can’t run CoF twice the next day to make up for the missed daily – you’ll have less tokens than if you spaced it out over two days. Therefore you are somewhat compelled to run the dungeon to their schedule if you want to obtain the items in a timely fashion, and it’s my opinion that you shouldn’t have to schedule a game into your appointments list in real life

Anyway, as CrossedHorse points out, this is all very much subjective. One person’s grind is another persons fun (And there’s nothing wrong with that!), I figure that a fresh perspective might help some people who’re locked into a cycle of grind re-evaluate their reasons for playing like it did me in the past.

Hands up who knows what a skinner box is?

Hmm, don’t see any. But then, there’s no hands up button on the keyboard. Still I’ll tell you anyway – An operant conditioning chamber, or, “Skinner box” after it’s inventor, is a piece of lab apparatus used to train small animals for behavioral research.

Typically, the animal will be given some task, a light comes on, and when the task is performed correctly it receives a treat, this could be pulling levers, or opening a latch. As training progresses (or sometimes from the outset), the treat is coupled with a punishment – usually the floor of the box dispenses an electric shock. So it behooves the furry critter to do the task correctly every time it comes up.

Once the animal knows the routine, the treat can be withdrawn entirely, and only the punishment administered in the event of failure – unsurprisingly, on the threat of an electric shock, the creature keeps doing the task to avoid the pain.

So where am I going with this you ask?

MMO’s are often built around the same principle. To start off with they feed you a steady drip of positive experiences, new gear, new skills, new experiences, while slowly ramping up the pain – higher penalties for failure, harder tasks.

By the end-game of a standard MMO, you’re largely playing for the sole purpose of punishment avoidance; “if I don’t play, I won’t earn my dailies, I’ll fall behind in the gold inflation; I havn’t done my raid this week!”.

GW2’s manifesto promise was that GW2 would be un-grindy, you’d have many pathways and options to achieve your goals and can do so at your own leisure. But this isn’t true anymore is it? – There’s an increasing checklist of time gated content that you must play and do if you don’t want to fall behind…

• Have I done my laurel daily?
• Have I done my daily dungeon runs for the tokens I’d like?
• Have I done a fractal daily today?
• Have I collected my charged quartz today?
• Have to done the living story grind for my achievement points?

If you don’t do all of the above, you’ll fall behind in the game and essentially be punished for daring spend time away from the game – or spending time doing things you’d rather be doing in the game that don’t overlap with these goals (WVW? PvP? – Exploring, RPing, chatting, having fun?).

This is why, personally – when I’m playing a game, i like to stop and ask myself “Why am I still playing, am i playing because I’m having fun pushing the buttons, or is it simply that I’ll be punished if I don’t”. At the end of the day, the same psychological conditioning you see in rats works equally well on humans, and MMO’s can be your own Skinner Box.

It’s something to think about, and a good way of keeping MMO’s in perspective

/End Public Service Announcement

TL;DR
Play games to have fun, if you arn’t playing for fun, consider playing something else

Clouded Judgement.7834:

There is no way you purchased 524 exotics for 556g (even assuming you reused some of them and only had to purchase 400) this is still an outrageous assumption, unless you purchased them at the start of the game when they were worth next to nothing.

Closer to ~400 exotics. Remember, while you need 4 exotics to make a combination attempt, you receive back an exotic in the event of not obtaining a precursor, so subsequent attempts only require 3 more exotics.

The bulk of these were bought around 3 months ago using buy orders with an average value of 1.4g per unit at that time.

Balkanwarrior.5132:

In conclusion, if you want a precursor, just know that your chances suck either way and its all about RNG. Sorry but the higher percentage from using exotics could only be a 0.0005% increase for all we know

While a sample size of 130ish is far from 5 sigma certainty, it’s certainly enough to narrow down the success rate to several percent either sisde.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Very interesting. I’ve been told that the crafted exotics, like pearl ones, give a lower chance of producing a precursor. In your experience, was that generally the case? Or was it sort of up in the air, and random?

I don’t believe it to be true. I tried many combinations of all-pearl, and all-named and the combines that actually spat out Precusors were never specifically all-named ones.

However, with a sample size of 4 precursors, you can’t really say with certainty, in fact it’d be nearly impossible to get such a large sample of precursors to conclusively say whether or not it is a factor

I’m gonna derail the thread now with a positive story

I’ve been recording my mystic toilet stuff over the months. I have been keeping them to myself, but seeing as how I’ve gone off GW2 in liu of the recent grind additions I figure I’ll share my data.

I’ve made ~950 rare-on-rare combinations (lvl 80 rares, always same-type). Of which i received no precursors (0% success rate).

I’ve also made 131 exotic-on-exotic combines (Level 76-80, usually same-type). Of which I received 4 precursors (~3% success rate).

Of the precursors I recieved:

• x1 Lover in 10 shortbow combines
• x1 Legend in 26 staff combines
• No Dawn or Dusk in 14 greatsword combines
• x1 Colossus in 15 hammer combines
• No leaf of Kudzu in 15 longbow combines
• No Chosen after 31 shield combines
• No Spark in 3 dagger combines
• No Hunter in 14 rifle combines
• x1 Storm in 3 mixed-exotic combines.

In total I spent 556g on exotics to flush into the mystic toilet, and made a net profit of ~1,450g

In conclusion
If you want a precursor, you gotta chuck exotics in there, you’re wasting your time and resources on rares, and if you do that, you might just come out with a profit (I wasn’t even doing the combines because I needed them, I was in it for the money)