Guild Wars 2

I consumed a chocolate cherry on a level 80 character and spent all 30 minutes of its duration killing everything I came across in a level 80 zone with no stops for mining or anything else.

Here are the results in screenshot form. Don’t be afraid to try for yourself and post your results.

Edit: Forgot to include my rares: 1 rare rifle, 1 rare mace, 1 rare scepter

Specifically in search of full DPS peeps with FotM personal level 6+ and preferably maximum bag slots that like to grind out a few hours here and there farming.

PM keep trying brobee for an invite, no need to rep, just add yourself to my Guild Roster for grouping. If I’m not online send in game mail to the display name ^

Solandri.9640:

SKATE.1394:

3 total exotics (1 medium shoulder, 1 light shoulder, 1 trident)

4 special exotics Twin Talons sword, Cobalt greatsword, Knowledge Is Power focus, Phoenix Reborn axe

I opened up 500 exotic champ bags (2 stacks) during the Scarlet event, and only got 3 exotics. Two generic, one special. A third stack I forgot I tucked away and opened a month later yielded 2 exotics. So I got one exotic per 150 bags vs. your one exotic per 118.

I haven’t seen any change in champ bags. I get an exotic from them about every 2-4 weeks. Which based on how frequently I do the world bosses works out to about once every 100-200 exotic champ bags. Which is exactly the same as what I saw during the Scarlet event.

I suspect nothing has been changed with champ bags. And everyone just thinks champ bags used to drop better loot because they used to open so many more champ bags before. The rate at which you can farm them has been severely nerfed, so even though the drop rate per bag is unchanged, the drop rate per time played has been reduced considerably.

Special exotics have to be thrown out because as I noted they have completely separate loot tables. They drop as a rare chance, in addition to the 1 equipment slot that champion bags typically provide, whereas the 3 exotics I got take the place of the 1 equipment slot provided by the champion bag. This can be verified by my screenshots as all armor/equipment/trinkets add up to exactly 823 items, but I’ve already done all the sorting/counting for you. The addition of the 4 special exotics make 827.

And unless you have screens/some sort of recorded log you can’t really say that we’re only basing speculation off of placebo/memory while you aren’t. Also, I’m pretty sure the Scarlet event came well after the first nerf/reduction to the amount of silver dropped by champ bags, which could also have had a silent drop to equipment/materials as well. My earliest memories of champ bag farming are shortly after their introduction (FGS train) when they dropped 4-8 silver each. I doubt I farmed more than 50-75 bags a day back then for a week or two tops. I had quit the game shortly after the first stunbreaker shuffle balance patch, so I missed out on Queen’s Jubilee when people were farming several thousand champ bags in the Pavilion, I have no conclusions to draw from based on that time period.

And if you sift through the wiki drop research for heavy moldy bags, which are a common container, most users have reported better t6 drop rates out of heavy moldy bags than I’m experiencing with champion containers. Since t6 materials are the bulk of the money made at 50-60s a pop, the fact remains that champion bags still do not provide the same risk/effort/reward ratio that even common quality containers have, whether they’ve been silent nerfed since their inception or not, which was the whole point of their introduction.

Yeah the rates do seem very low, I feel like I get way more rares and tier 6 materials just solo farming trash in the open world, but I do run 300% magic find. I was expecting at least 1 ascended weapon/armor chest. I remember getting at least a few of those in the early days of the Frostgorge Sound train, and I don’t believe I ever farmed 800+ bags back then.

I also feel like you have a much better chance at getting cores/lodestones out of dungeon chests than champion bags. But then again, I forgot they nerfed dungeons to limit you to 1 chest per day, so I’m surprised cores haven’t taken a pretty big jump in value. There’s probably a lot more loot/gold to be earned from parties just “zone clearing” through all the trash of level 80 zones.

I think unless you’re specifically after scrolls of knowledge, there’s not much reason to kill champions anymore. Even with the exclusive collectible exotics that drop, you’re better off just farming more gold/hour on trash mobs and buying what you need from the TP, letting a lucky player’s RNG benefit you from the random champ bags that people happen to accrue while just playing the game normally.

I may open my next 800 champ bags on a medium/heavy class to further test the possibility of profession specific drops. I may also farm 800 heavy moldy bags to see if I end up with better tier 6 material rates (wiki research seems to indicate so). And that would demonstrate that champ bags don’t serve their purpose of providing champion grade loot, compared to containers that drop from regular risen mobs.

Edit Nov 14, 2014: See my later posts for round 2 – 950 bags.

http://s1307.photobucket.com/user/shtskate/media/champ%20bag%20drops/823totalchampbags-5knapsacks_zpsfbb1b801.jpg.html?sort=9&o=0 (R1 – 823 + 5)

http://s1307.photobucket.com/user/shtskate/media/part%202/950totalchampbags_zpsfed919fc.jpg.html?sort=9&o=0 (R2 – 950)

Rares:
18/823, 2.21% or 1:46
34/950, 3.58% or 1:28
52/1773, 2.93% or 1:34 bags

Exotics:
3/823, 0.365% or 1:274
3/950, 0.316% or 1:317
6/1773, 0.338% or 1:296 bags

Tier 6 materials:
74/823, 8.99% or 1:11
87/950, 9.16% or 1:11
161/1773, 9.08% or 1:11 bags

Scrolls of Knowledge:
135/823, 16.40% or 1:6
147/950, 15.47% or 1:6
282/1773, 15.91% or 1:6 bags

Cores:
58/823, 7.05% or 1:14
81/950, 8.53% or 1:12
139/1773, 7.84% or 1:13 bags

Lodestones:
6/823, 0.729% or 1:137
5/950, 0.526% or 1:190
11/1773, 0.620% or 1:161 bags

(Original Post dated Sept 28, 2014)

Just some drop rate research, none of these bags were farmed during the Blix exploit or the Coiled Watch event (or Silverwastes chest farm). I’ve never participated in either of those farms as I prefer small party/solo content.

I was actually pretty surprised at the lackluster results. I feel like champ bags were much more rewarding when they were first introduced (and not just by the amount of coin they dropped), but I never bothered to keep any data back then, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyways, a quick breakdown of the drops so people can decide whether dedicated champion farming is actually worth the time/effort: (all bags were opened by a level 80 mesmer as I wanted to test for the possibility of biased drops via loot bags)

823 total champion bags:

135 total Scrolls of Knowledge

378 total weapons (197 one handed, 181 two handed)

428 total armor (156 light, 138 medium, 134 heavy)

17 trinkets (10 rings, 7 amulets)

995 total tier 5 mats (143 bone, 74 totem, 158 blood, 157 claw, 101 fang, 149 venom, 123 scale, 90 dust)

616 total refinement mats (125 t5 leather, 32 t6 leather, 240 silk, 27 gossamer, 322 mithril, 110 orichalcum)

74 total tier 6 mats (11 scale, 5 totem, 12 claw, 20 bone, 4 venom, 4 blood, 11 fang, 7 dust)

58 total cores (9 glacial, 8 crystal, 7 corrupted, 8 destroyer, 8 onyx, 8 charged, 10 molten)

10 total vile essences, 1 putrid essence

6 total lodestones (2 molten, 1 destroyer, 1 corrupted, 1 onyx, 1 crystal)

18 total rares (2 heavy chest, 1 heavy glove, 1 heavy helm, 1 heavy leg, 2 heavy shoulder, 2 light helm, 1 medium shoulder, 1 medium glove, 1 medium boot, 1 mace, 1 torch, 1 shield, 1 hammer, 1 greatsword, 1 longbow)

3 total exotics (1 medium shoulder, 1 light shoulder, 1 trident)

4 special exotics Twin Talons sword, Cobalt greatsword, Knowledge Is Power focus, Phoenix Reborn axe

178 of the 378 weapons can be considered “profession specific” for a mesmer. The other 200 are unusable by a mesmer. Interestingly, armor is favoring profession specific bias by roughly 11-14%, while weapons are favoring non profession specific bias by roughly 11%. Either this is too small a sample size to determine any conclusions, or could it be that a 10-12% profession specific bias is in effect, however, they flipped the operator for the weapon loot tables as they’ve been known to do in the past, i.e. the long standing slaying potion bug? Something to consider.

Amazingly, the drop rates for rare cores seem to be pretty even, despite the relatively small sample size.

Silk appears to be dropping at a nearly 2:1 ratio over thick leather.

Tier 5 materials seem to have a pretty wild variance, although that could be because certain materials are more likely to drop depending on the “monster type” of the champion, as I do tend to have a lot more bags of certain types due to the areas I frequent most. This could also explain the silk > leather discrepancy.

Something I learned that I hadn’t noticed before, “special/collectible” exotics that are exclusive to champ bags do not take the place of the 1 masterwork or better equipment slot, but are instead a rare additional drop. Also, I never noticed that wood does not drop from champ bags, only ore, and that the only trinkets that drop are amulets and rings.

I’m honestly pretty disappointed in the 18/823 rare drop rate, or roughly a 2% chance at a rare. Only a 3/823 exotic drop rate or roughly a 0.365% chance. But then again, I don’t pay much attention to how many trash mobs I kill between every rare/exotic drop, so I can’t say whether this is better/worse than general trash mob farming when taking high magic find into account. Maybe I’ll explore that more another day.

The 9% chance for a tier 6 material, or 1 out of every ~11 bags also seems a bit low, in my opinion.

There is no way to get another chest, but you can try contacting customer support to see if they’ll remove the Krytan armor from your account and let you select Primeval instead. I’ve not heard of anyone attempting this, but it’s your only possible option outside of just paying for the set with gems.

Same with currently selling transactions, as well. I have certain items I know are listed that I can’t view. Not sure if it’s the 60 day limit (cause the farthest back my list date goes is 2M) or an item count limit, i.e. 200 posted items, don’t feel like counting. Either way, it’s a problem not being able to see everything listed.

Hoping this is a bug, but expecting an incoming gem store item for guild vault access. It’s bad enough that they made guild vault summon cost 1 merit, and they never even explained what the supposed “exploit” was that required such a change.

Voidstar.3620:

Great bug thread. Also, kits are now hiding backpieces.

Kits have always replaced back skins, they only show when your weapon (rifle, pistol/pistol, or pistol/shield) is drawn/stowed. It’s a major complaint of many engineer users, but not a bug.

Vitaly.3418:

Not sure if it’s a bug but when I use Elixir U it will drain all my current endurance to 0. I’ve kept my eye on it today when running a multitude of dungeons and it seems to be a random bug when using Elixir U.

This is normal behavior for Elixir U. When giving Quickness it will also proc either Frenzy (25% increased damage taken) or Haste (drained endurance + 50% reduced endurance regeneration) for the duration.

Some math fun I posted in another thread about BL skin costs:

Based off the results posted by the player that farmed 1,000 BL keys, the average ticket drop rate was 1 per ~35 chests. It would take roughly 367.50 gold worth of gem conversions (at the current avg rate 12.50 gold/100gems), if buying keys in stacks of 25 when they’re not on sale, for every 1 ticket.

In U.S. dollars the equivalent would be spending just about $36.75 per ticket when buying gems.

Multiply that by 5 for any weapon skin that isn’t on introductory prices, and you get roughly 1,837.50 gold/$183.75 per weapon skin. The price would be even higher for fused skins which cost 7 tickets.

They claim the drop rate has been increased with the most recent patch. Let’s be VERY generous and say they doubled the rate, which is very unlikely or they probably would’ve used the world “doubled” rather than “increased”, but that would still equate to 918.75 gold/$91.88 for every 5 ticket weapon skin.

If you were the luckiest person alive and received a full ticket out of every single chest you opened, the absolute best case scenario is $5.25 per 5 ticket weapon skin, or 52.50 gold in gem exchanges.

If you think the prices are bad now, given these numbers, you can probably expect them to at least double once current supply on the rarest skins are depleted.

In my opinion, all Black Lion Weapons should cost 5 scraps per account bound version of each skin, and 2 full tickets maximum for a trade-able version. At the current drop rates/ticket costs you can expect to pay more for each skin than the entire retail cost of the game at launch.

I’ve been waiting for a fix or even acknowledgement that they completely effed up grenade tracking underwater back in April when they supposedly fixed a “double” hit bug, which I don’t think even actually existed. Sick of grenades completely whiffing underwater, or only one connecting out of three, even from point blank range.

Toss Elixir U still has completely random results where it sometimes doesn’t trigger at all (not random as in skill selection, that is intended).

Grenade kit attacks fail to remove blindness, not sure whether this affects the other kits, haven’t bothered to test.

Would like it if Med Kit skills could receive collision detection so we aren’t dropping them into terrain where they can’t be reached.

Bundles/Kits still can’t be dropped mid-air, even though I’m pretty sure they claimed this bug was fixed several patches ago? At least I think remember reading something along those lines in patch notes, so not sure if this is bugged or working as intended.

RE: Detonate Flame Blast, this will get stuck for about 10-15 seconds if the projectile is blocked or hits an invulnerable target. This also applies to other skills that can be detonated mid-path such as Guardian’s Orb of Wrath. Also you can typically aim the trajectory of Flame Blast by orienting your camera in the direction you want it to go, if it’s going straight into the ground it’s probably because you’re using a mostly bird’s eye view and don’t have a target selected.

RE: Fast Acting Elixirs, toolbelt skills are toolbelt skills and do not receive gadget/elixir recharge reduction bonuses. Only the Tools trait line can affect their recharge rate.

RE: Static Discharge, only toolbelt skills that directly target an enemy such as Surprise Shot and Analyze will hit confirm a Static Discharge. Tossed/ground targeted skills such as Toss Elixirs will still send out a static discharge, but whether it hits will depend on player and camera orientation, always worked this way.

Tman.6349:

The cap for swiftness is 5 stacks. The duration is of swiftness is not capped.

Before +25% speed runes, some WvW mesmers used to use SoI to get 20 mins of Swiftness or more before heading out. Not really common or necessary now though.

Pretty sure it’s 9 stacks for swiftness.

loseridoit.2756:

SKATE.1394:

There’s no reason the adrenaline drain can’t be a PvP only change along with many of the other skill/trait nerfs for the sake of PvP “balance”, they just refuse to do it. And the fact they think they can even balance a D&D style RPG that essentially uses dice rolls for minimum – maximum damage values and critical hit chances is just… naive.

You have to understand from a long term point of view.

When warrior get a buff, it will either pvp or pve only. Players from the opposite side will complain that anet is spending x cater that group y.

I wouldnt blame Anet. Once you diverge the two game modes enough. You literally double your work load. Technically, those 8 professions will literally became 16 different classes in terms of debugging.

There is an added headache of wvwvw which kinda needs pvp like traits

Yeah and the whole point of PvE/PvP split is when one skill is stronger in one game mode than another, it won’t matter to anyone because it only affects them in the game mode they’re currently playing. No PvPer is gonna care if we can blow up Jormag for a few million damage in one greatsword swing as long as they feel the greatsword damage is within reason of other classes within PvP.

WvW doesn’t need to rely on sPvP like traits at all, that’s a zergfest game mode that’s all about strength in numbers and allows the use of ridiculously powerful nourishments, utilities, boosters, and siege weaponry that throw any sense of balance out of the window. It could use either the sPvP or PvE split and it wouldn’t matter at all, it’d still be 80 people headbutting into each other for doo doos and giggles.

And they’re 2 completely different game modes, so they should be treated as 16 different professions if they have to, but realistically the differences wouldn’t be nearly that drastic. Most games have done it, including GW1, if you care about the reputation and perceived quality of your game, it’s worth the extra effort to you to make each mode the most fun it can be.

We’ve suggested PvE/PvP split several times, they refuse to change anything outside of a couple of seconds of duration here and there.

I nearly quit the game when they released their first balance patch shuffling stunbreakers around like crazy because it completely changed the way a lot of my characters had played for more than 6 months time, and made some of them less effective in my preferred game mode of PvE.

The new warrior adrenaline changes are especially bad for PvE, because unlike PvP where you can spend a few minutes fighting the same player, in PvE trash mobs go down in seconds and are spread apart so thin that you’re consistently going out of combat all the time, and it makes the tiered adrenaline bonus traits almost entirely useless outside of sustained champion/legendary boss fights.

There’s no reason the adrenaline drain can’t be a PvP only change along with many of the other skill/trait nerfs for the sake of PvP “balance”, they just refuse to do it. And the fact they think they can even balance a D&D style RPG that essentially uses dice rolls for minimum – maximum damage values and critical hit chances is just… naive.

Possible changes to the game mode itself that I think can help promote more even and competitive matches:

Player kills should award 5 points to the overall team score only for each individual’s first kill, and 1 point for each kill after. I feel the emphasis of this game mode should be on actually capturing points, and not rewarding teams that are skirmishing in the middle of nowhere for half the match. I also feel like 5 points for every kill also only serves to facilitate the victory of a stronger team rolling over a weaker or more inexperienced one, and still helps promote mindless zerging.

When the autobalance timer is active there should be a grace period where no points are earned for either team. In 5v3 or worse situations, which typically come about during a triple cap, those 10 seconds can seem like a lifetime that amounts to a huge lead. And players drop unpredictably so you can end up in the autobalancing countdown for like 20 seconds out of 30. The timer should probably be shortened to 5 seconds too.

If the teams become uneven before either side has reached 450 points, the maximum amount of capture points that can be held by the winning team should be 2. This is to slow the pace of the game down slightly to prevent insurmountable leads from quickly being built up while one team is in a disadvantaged state.

If the winning team was holding all 3 capture points when the teams became uneven, their home capture point should automatically be awarded to the losing team, unless an ally was already standing within the ring, in which case it will instantly become neutral, and can only be recaptured 10 seconds after the teams have become even again. A bit like Tranquility only on a smaller scale and as a balance issue rather than a communal powerup.

A stronger team that’s able to take hold of all 3 capture points should be able to build a lead and spawn camp the opposing teams home point only as long as the teams are even. If a player rage quits or disconnects from the losing team, it’s not fair for them to be spawn camped while they’re also down a man, so this ensures the winning team must either send their extra man back to decap, or allow ticks to be given up if they continue to spawn camp with +1. They’ll still maintain their lead, only it will be by a 2-1 or maximum 2-0 capture point lead, instead of 3-0.

Another change I think could be made for tournament play only is the ability to decap/capture contested points based on team presence rather than solely positioning.

What I mean by that is, in 1v1 or 2v2 situations players should be able to defend a capture or prevent a capture indefinitely, but once more and more members of the same team enter a point, it should slowly tilt in their favor depending on how many more allies are on the point than enemies.

Personally, I think bunkers make the game an absolute bore, both to watch and play. I think once it’s a 2v1 or worse on any point, it should slowly cap/decap, even if it takes something like 30 seconds for a decap and 45 for a capture. And the cap/decap time should slowly ramp up in +2 and +3 situations. I just don’t understand why anyone would wanna play a build that tickles people and do nothing but run in circles and heal themselves, and it’s certainly not fun to watch in my opinion, but I guess that’s up for debate. That definitely wouldn’t fly in hotjoin though, cause those matches are so volatile with players dropping all the time.

This first post will be about changes I think should be made to the way rank points are rewarded. My second post will be about changes that could be made to the overall game mode/mechanics, both which I think can promote more fun and competitive matches.

Hotjoin is a nightmare with people that wait out the beginning of the match to see who builds the early lead, team swappers (not autobalancers), team droppers, and spawn AFKers that apparently bother to click to join a team and then just walk away or tab out… Anyone that doesn’t leave spawn within 20 seconds should be automatically moved to spectate.

The emphasis now is entirely on being on the winning team, whether you really contributed or not, because of the 250% rank point increase. Whereas before, the emphasis was on simply farming points by zerg rolling for the objective assaulter/defender and skirmisher bonuses, and winning or losing was entirely meaningless.

The auto balance popup is now a race to see who can click volunteer first for the automatic 525 points, and you can literally spend the rest of the match dancing. Even worse, if all you care about is rank points and you feel no sense of responsibility to the team you just balanced, it’s in your best interest to not help so the match doesn’t drag on any longer than the 7 minutes it has to, and you can quickly get into another game to farm more rank points.

Winning should only matter for rated arena matches. In hotjoin, everyone should get a baseline 300 rank points for playing at least 5 minutes of a match, and all rank points should be weighted for less playtime, including bonus points. The win bonus should be 25 rank points.

There should be a bonus of 75 rank points for any player joining a team that’s losing by 100 points or more. If you joined a team losing by 100 points or more and they end up winning, you should get an additional 100 rank points. This will encourage people entering mid match to join the losing team and attempt a comeback. A strong player may also swap teams in a 5v4 or 4v3 blowout situation to attempt a comeback for extra rank points and not have to worry about possibly sacrificing a massive win bonus.

If a match ends with at least 80% retention of the original players that were there at the start, all of those players should get a bonus 200 rank points. This encourages people to play out an entire match from start to finish even if things aren’t going well, because in this situation a loss still equates to the same 500 rank points as a win under the current system, while allowing up to 2 dropped players in a 5v5 for disconnects and people needing to leave early for personal reasons.

In this system, optimal rank points are earned by being in a match when it starts and mostly everyone remaining in the match until it ends. The maximum amount of rank points can be earned by joining or swapping to a team that’s at a significant score deficit and helping lead them to a comeback victory. This doesn’t punish the team that was once winning by taking rank points away from them, but instead rewards the players that tried to promote a competitive match.

Summary of rank point earnings for 5+ minutes of play:
300 base, 325 for winning
500 where 3/4 to 8/10 players are retained, 525 for winning
575 when swapping on a 100pt deficit while 80% original players retained
375 when joining mid game on a 100pt deficit
500 when joining mid game on a 100pt deficit and winning
700 when swapping on a 100pt deficit and winning while 80% original players retained

Given the key farm nerf, and the fact that the average ticket drop rate was 1 per ~35 chests, it would take roughly 370 gold worth of gem conversions (at the current rate), if buying keys in stacks of 25 when they’re not on sale, for every 1 ticket.

In U.S. dollars the equivalent would be spending just about $36.75 per ticket when buying gems.

Multiply that by 5 for any weapon skin that isn’t on introductory prices, and you get roughly 1,850 gold/$183.75 per weapon skin. The price would be even higher for fused skins which cost 7 tickets.

They claim the drop rate has been increased with the most recent patch. Let’s be VERY generous and say they doubled the rate, which is very unlikely, but that would still equate to 925 gold/$91.88 for every 5 ticket weapon skin.

That is insane. That’s more than the MSRP cost of the entire game at launch.

All Black Lion Weapons should cost 5 scraps per account bound version of each skin, and 2 full tickets maximum for a trade-able version.

I’ve based my drop rate numbers off the data posted by the guy that recently farmed 1,000 keys.

Keep in mind these are long-haul averages, and most players probably won’t ever buy 1,000 keys in their GW2 lifetimes. Based on an individual’s luck, the cost could be lower, and it could actually be higher.

*Edited for math, my original calculations assumed gem cards were $20, they are in fact $25.

Sarah.1825:

Although I honestly don’t expect anyone at Anet to actually read, let alone listen to what I have to say, I am going to say it anyway.

I am one of the veteran players, I have over 4 thousand hours into the game. I am also one of the people who have a lot of alts. I have 16 of them to level 80, with another 20 at measured increments from 20 to 75. (Why yes, I know I am crazy, and I only buy the character slots when they are on sale)

*snipped cause I’m hitting the character limit, but I agree with your entire post

I’m another 5000 hour 37 character slot user, although only 12 of them are 80 so far, but I do have enough tomes to fully level another 2. My goal was to have at least 4 characters of every class in various stat combos; Berserker/Assassin, Dire, Soldier, Celestial etc to have unique builds for just about any situation.

I mainly play for account progression, unlike most people that think the endgame is stale I thrive on farming/grinding. I call it Guild Tycoon 2 cause I’m more about personal empire building than enjoying the actual content. It’s just the way I play.

I nearly quit a few times, when they did their first major balance patch and re-shuffled all the stunbreakers and changed up the way many of the skills worked was the first. I had characters that I’d grown comfortable playing in a certain style with for roughly 6 months and the sweeping changes to my PvE style of play for the sake of PvP “balance” and their insistence on no PvE/PvP split nearly did me in. The fact that they think they can e-sportify a game with 8 different classes, over 10 different stat combinations, multiple weapon sets, and damage that’s variable and RNG based with things such as critical hit chance is a pipe dream. Two characters of the exact same build can stand toe to toe swinging swords like robots and it would still be completely random which one goes down first. You can’t balance the PvP in a D&D style role playing game, yet it’s still treated as if it’s the 8th iteration of Street Fighter 4. If you play PvP in a role playing game, it’s because you enjoy it and have fun doing so, not because it’s an ultra tight reflex twitch based pro gaming experience. And I’m a Bear Rank player that has over 2,000 PvP matches played, with at least 100 wins as every single class, so I do participate in PvP from time to time, but I don’t want my PvE play to be affected by vain attempts at balancing what should be a niche game mode.

The second time was the introduction of the megaserver that really impacted my style of play by taking away uncontested solo farm/event access that I used to have on my low population server. It brought down my efficiency in pretty much all areas of the game, including world bosses that go down much much faster with 5-10 people than 50. With the exception of “hardcore” bosses like Tequatl obviously, but that’s what guesting was for. I could solo Mark II Golem faster than it goes down now on the zergfest spam 1 megaservers. And not only was it faster and a much more efficient bi-hourly dragonite farm with multiple characters, it was actually more fun to kill him alone at 1 AM or with a few other people in my opinion. The ability to loop through chain events in most zones without having to worry about competing with other players for completion was my preferred way to level. I had a cycle down in Plains of Ashford that was so efficient if I didn’t take breaks every 30 minutes I could complete enough events solo to hit diminishing returns within 40.

Those changes only affected me as a player personally, and I’m definitely not the norm, but I was able to adjust and continue on due to the fact that I was already so invested in the game and my account. The move of traits to level 30 and the scavenger hunt unlock system was a huge setback for all players though, and the changes in this feature pack have only made things worse. If this is the leveling/character progression system that was in place when I started the game I wouldn’t have made it past the first few weeks. I wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to kittenize the game so badly that I’d be willing to give up my 5K hour investment, but I think they finally succeeded in doing just that. I have 600 unspent laurels in my wallet as I’ve mostly kept up with my dailies even during the sketch periods I wasn’t sure I’d be sticking around, but now I’m not sure I even wanna bother spending the 10 minutes a day to do dailies in the hopes the game is eventually restored to the former systems.

I wonder if these new changes are the reason those two Anet employees that were recently reported to have left the company walked away? I’d like to see a completely anonymous interview with some of the current developers to see if they’re honestly happy with the current direction of the game, or if they’re just following management orders for the paycheck, without them having to fear losing their jobs.

Leo Paul.1659:

:O For some reason, my game looks uglier. WTF?

I also felt that it looks completely fuzzed over compared to before, a few people agreed with me thinking the game looked fuzzy now, and others said they noticed no change. My GPU is an Nvidia GT 555M, yours? I may try updating my display drivers later, too tired at the moment since I was up all night trying to get a lot of last minute stuff in before this doo doo stain of a patch.

Ixillius.5768:

While they are at it add the permanent contracts. These things would be worth getting for us with a good amount of alts. Specially considering the price attached to all of these tools.

Permanent contracts have a lot of shortcomings that should be addressed before even considering making them account wide unlocks.

You can only have one active at a time, so owning the full set doesn’t help as much as you might think.

If another player has one active, you have to move out of the area to use yours. Typically it’s only a few hundred units, so it’s not that big of a deal, but I still don’t quite see the point in this limitation, especially since other players can’t interact with them.

They last for 15 minutes, until you rezone, or log out. There is no option to destroy them when you’re done with them. Whether you’ve moved 10 feet or 500 yards since you last summoned one, you have to F12 out and back in if you decide to use one again within this 15 minute period.

They require a lot of clumsy micro management for an expensive item that’s supposed to make your life easier. They should be called once per zone per quarter hour permanent contracts.

I second toys receiving their own wardrobe slot, like outfits, so you can costume brawl no matter which character you happen to be playing.

As far as making infinite tools account wide unlocks, highly unlikely that would ever happen, as these are quality of life items that can eventually have a return on gold, not vanity items like skins and minis.

I have 23 of the infinite tools, and I don’t even make full use of them. My only complaint on those is that the watchwork picks are so much more valuable than all the others. I have 8 watchwork picks because it’s realistic that they’ll pay for themselves before I’m done playing, half of them already have due to the current price of sprockets. I have 3 molten picks that I bought before the watchwork picks were released that I would trade in a heartbeat given the opportunity.

Actually, I have a second complaint, and that’s that they aren’t considered the “best in slot” for gathering tools despite their cost. Yes, it’s nice that they’re unlimited use, but there are instances where I still juggle “Master” tools and their karma/laurel equivalents for the extra chance at uncovering rare components. For example, when chopping trees for foxfire clusters and mining nodes for azurite/sunstone.

I wouldn’t consider it unreasonable that all infinite tools have an equivalent chance of uncovering rare components to truly make them the one tool you equip and forget. Or at least make it so you can pay for charges that give your infinite tools an equivalent chance of uncovering rare components. For example, every time you complete a level 15, 35, or 60 personal story instance you could get 125 charges added to an infinite tool rather than receiving a “Master” tool. Or pay 2 laurels to have 125-250 charges added rather than buying “Advanced” tools from a laurel vendor. Or pay the karma equivalent for the special tools sold by Bloodtide merchants to add 25 charges.

And while I’m on the topic of rare components, you used to be able to receive unidentified dyes as a rare component from any plant node. I understand the reasoning for them not dropping as loot when killing mobs, but they were rare enough that I see no reason for them to have been removed as a harvesting bonus. As it stands, the only rare component I can think of that drops from plants now is the occasional chance for a Blooming Passiflora when harvesting a regular Passiflora node. And unlike all other nodes, these nodes are limited to a certain number harvested every server reset per account, rather than per character. There is almost no reason to pick “Master” or “Advanced” harvesting sickles over the picks/axes because hardly any plant node in the game will receive a rare drop now. This has also effectively reduced the usefulness of guild gathering banners and buffs by 33%. I think unidentified dyes should be re-added to plant nodes, or something else needs to take its place, because a pretty large gap has been left in the overall gathering mechanic with its removal.

I always join a random squad anytime there are more than a few commander icons on the map. When there are several up at once it actually lags the entire server, because those particular players’ positions need to be tracked and reported to every single client in the zone at all times so it can be updated on the mini map. It would be great to have a toggle option to just hide them all automatically, cause it’s a pain in the kitten to have to constantly open my map up, scroll around, and click on one of the tags to join squad.

They began to introduce “team deathmatch” as a mode/new arena a little while ago, I remember playing a few matches. Not sure if it’s still around, but you might prefer that over the traditional capture point maps. Or you might have more of the same frustrations since it’s basically a lot of people headbutting in the middle of the map, but I suppose you can skirt around the edges and use the walls/terrain to zone out ranged conditioners and hope one of them follows you.

If it’s still around give that a try, and if you still don’t like it I guess it’s just not the game mode for you.

Bumping this, I just started a new thread about this issue because I didn’t realize this one existed since it’s several months old. Saw this linked in another thread about Koss on Koss/Book of Secrets. Will try to either delete my post or have it reference back to this one since this list is more complete than mine.

Oh you mean the venoms are being applied to the siege itself as if it were an ally? I thought you meant you didn’t think other players receiving venomous aura should gain the benefit when attacking with siege, but I think I see your issue now. If that’s the case, I agree that it is probably not the desired effect. But are you sure it’s not just a UI display issue, and that the doubled conditions are actually being applied on hit?

Conditions are a very favorable and newb friendly damage source in pvp, just as much as power is favorable in pve. Condition ticks ignore armor and protection, and can deal damage while you’re running around, healing, dodging, stealthing. That being said, you can still make plenty of power builds work, and just killing other players isn’t all pvp is about. You can still be very effective for your team simply by knowing when to disengage/avoid a fight, and backcapping points.

There’s no way to truly balance a game that has 8 different classes, a very large pool of stat options, multiple weapon sets, and sigils/runes compounding the issues. pvp should be a game mode you play because you enjoy it, or because you find the rewards worthwhile. If not, just avoid it.

This is probably intentional, as physical siege damage is actually affected by your power, golem HP is affected by your vitality, and the damage of condition ticks on arrow carts etc. is affected by your condition damage. Siege generally benefits from a players stats rather than having a universal effectiveness, so to me it kind of makes sense that they would also benefit from certain traits/skills that amplify attacks.

pdavis.8031:

Yeah the change to silk was a marginal change, but it was also intended for ascended to use that much silk. The market didnt “implode”. It actually bears the prices for all cloth rather well. Yes there is an increased demand, thus an increased suppply, but the prices are what people are willing to pay for them. Even if this new change is as bad as gobax and others are claiming its going to be, then speculators would be buying silk in droves, amd we would see the prices start to rise. But silk has actually dropped 16c since yesterday. All this will do is increase supply, which will drive prices even further down. Thus making the proposed “unfair advantage” of light armor classes even less of an issue. The market reacts very quickly to changes like this, and bears them very well. We may see a small spike, but it will balance out again fast, and there wont be much of an issue.

T5 silk and leather were on equal footing before that change. Silk has since increased over 2500% while leather remains the same. If that’s not an implosion, I’d like to hear what is. Of course the market is gonna bear it, what other choice do they have? If the prices on silk doubled tomorrow, the market would still bear it, that doesn’t mean it’s not an adverse change. I don’t understand your point?

And what the market bears doesn’t have anything to do with light materials being more valuable than medium/heavy, so any bias in drops is not a good thing, which is what this thread is about, so not sure where you’re even going with any of that.

Whether the prices of silk go up or down post patch, it’s highly unlikely that leather or mithril will ever be more valuable than silk, giving an unfair income advantage to any player that receives more light armor than another. Greatswords and daggers are also likely to remain more valuable than rifles or bows, materials aren’t the only issue here.

Berelious.3290:

Some of you guys need to check the dev feed now and then, as this has already been commented on. People who are leveling will get a marginal nudge in drops towards their armor weight/usable weapons. “Marginal” being the key word. According to the dev post most people won’t even notice much of a difference. And while yes, level 80’s will still be affected by this, again, “marginal” is the key word here. Please look it up.

You know, the change from bolts of silk being 2 scraps to 3, was also supposed to be a “marginal” thing to eat up some of the silk supply. When that was compounded with the ascended crafting requirements the silk market absolutely imploded.

Just because they think it’s going to be a “marginal” change, doesn’t mean they’re completely underestimating the impact even a “subtle” nudge can have on the overall economy.

Changes to basic game mechanics like the loot system and the crafting system (as has already been shown with the permanent bolt of silk recipe change) can have major impacts in a game with millions of players.

And when you change the underlying systems of the game, there’s no going back even when you realize you’ve made a mistake. That’s why it was a terrible idea to permanently change a crafting recipe rather than introduce some other temporary way to eliminate excess supply of a material, such as trading for loot boxes with a temporary NPC. And they clearly admitted their mistake when they tried to capital inject more light material supply into the market by adding them to Alliance Supply Bags during the Lion’s Arch events.

So, thousands of usability testers couldn’t figure out the downed state, and now the millions already playing who did have to deal with just straight up dying before level 5 instead of having a chance to rally?

Thousands of kids fail first grade math every year, do we lower the curriculum standards to accommodate them over the general public who gets it?

Basically, what they’re saying is, we think people who tried the game and didn’t like it are more important than those that have been playing successfully for 2 years, so we’re bending the game mechanics in their minority favor.

Same deal with the story not unlocking until level 10, traits not unlocking until level 30, stats being allocated in chunks rather than bit by bit. They’re making it a pain in the kitten for the majority of players that have understood basic RPG mechanics for years, to please a very small handful of people that didn’t like the game to begin with, and probably won’t ever like the game no matter how much you try to hold their hand at the inconvenience of your loyal playerbase, because they simply don’t get the genre…

There are multiple tiers of “Master Harvesting Sickle” given as rewards for completing level 15, 35, and 60 personal story instances.

They are the equivalent of Steel, Mithril, and Orichalcum in that order. Cacti are a level 80 node that requires Orichalcum quality tools.

Hover over your tool to see the listed level requirement, if it is the 15 or 35 version that is why you are getting ruined plant fibers from Cacti nodes.

It’s normal for the “rare” drops such as gems from ore nodes and caches from trees etc. to still proc when using low level tools that result in ruined materials.

Unless it’s my imagination, I’m pretty sure the consortium harvesting sickle has a slightly faster gathering rate than the other sickles due to a shorter animation?

This is why there needs to be a permanent zone like the Mad King Labyrinth that’s nothing but ever respawning mobs where farmers can get their rocks off. Some people like to explore the map, some people like to run dungeons, some people like pvp, and believe it or not there are people that just like to accumulate gold and loot.

Every time a farm becomes popular, whether it be an event loop or a champ train, it’s eventually killed off. Meanwhile, they try and find more and more ways to force people into areas nobody wants to be for things as simple as trait unlocks.

How about offering incentives for branching out into other areas of the game instead of trying to dictate everything for the player. Put up a weekly rotation that offers 50% extra karma for event completion, 50% bonus XP for kills, 33% extra gathering chance, 20% magic find boost, etc. in the lesser visited zones like Timberline Falls.

Give people a reason to WANT to be somewhere other than Cursed Shore, instead of inconvenient ways to make them HAVE to be there just for a trait unlock, or to charge yet another backpiece req.

I’m not a 24/7 WvWer like some people here, but I just have to add that based on the description (since nobody has obviously seen this in action yet) this trick seems to heavily favor the more populated servers.

Coming from a low tier server like Kaineng that has significantly lower player population than most servers during peak hours and only survives certain matchups by the attrition of dedicated late-night teams/commanders that literally run 12-14 hour overnight sessions, I can see this giving a huge advantage to the larger zerg. Now while the 30-40 man enemy zergs are rampaging through our corner leveling everything in the daytime, our 10 man unit won’t even be able to counter a single tower if only 1-2 players can sit back and chuck nades that disable all of our siege for 45 seconds.

I honestly think this trick should only be enabled when the outnumbered buff is active, because it sounds way too powerful as a defensive tool in the hands of a single defender left behind for a server that already has a significantly larger map presence.

I have a lot of respect for the WvW exclusive players that have toughed it out on my server, but I have a feeling this is gonna be the last straw that drives them to finally transfer or just quit. The marathon overnight sessions of just a handful of players are the ONLY reason we maintain any sort of competitiveness against even the tier 8 servers. This is going to make the already brutal daytime sessions even harder on them.

I know Anet has its employees that log in once a month on Blackgate and Jade Quarry and think that represents the state of the game for all players, but it really doesn’t. I don’t think consideration is ever given to how certain changes might affect the lower end matchups. I do think this trick can have its place to bring a little more balance to matchups while the outnumbered buff is active, but otherwise, I feel it’s way too powerful for the server that already has the larger offensive base.

Deepcuts.9740:

For me, many times some dailies do NOT count all the time, at random.
Like Daily Revive. I can resurrect someone, get XP, but number of revives stays the same.

There’s a short cooldown on revives of the same NPC/player for achievement credit. I used to always get my daily reviver at Lake Feritas in Plains of Ashford where the rock drakes kill the NPC fishermen, and I discovered that trying to revive the same one over and over never works, but making a loop between all of them does, because it allows sufficient time to pass between each revival.

Are you applying a dye color that you actually own to the boots, or are you using the color picker tool on a different piece of armor and trying to apply that way? Some armor pieces have a default dye color that are not in the starter set, so even though you can use the color picker to re-dye another piece within the preview panel, when you exit the preview screen the changes will not stick because you don’t actually have that particular color unlocked yet. I noticed this issue the other day, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on, but that may be what you’re experiencing.

I don’t think it’s just a display bug, because my karma and XP bonuses are definitely not being applied. I know exactly how much karma I usually get from finishing a renowned heart on a level 2 character. I normally get 99 karma including my 10% bonus, for the past few days I’ve only been getting 90 karma. So the magic find is most likely not working as well.

When did they make dungeon gear unsalvageable?

I just salvaged ecto and sold the dust instead. The sheer amount of blues/greens you have to go through to get the 30K luck required for an additional 1% just isn’t worth the time invested in my opinion. Like you said, you could spend anywhere from 3-5 hours a day just placing orders and salvaging items one at a time. With ecto you get multiple stacks of 250 items that can be salvaged in a matter of minutes, at a 1:1 ratio with mystic salvage kits.

Even though you don’t profit with this method, the hours of time you’ve saved yourself can be spent farming for more gold, which more than negates the costs involved, and isn’t that the whole point of maxing magic find? For better returns during farming sessions?

More time spent farming, less time spent salvaging/inventory managing, to me salvaging ecto is the only way to go, but that’s just my opinion.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Grenades-underwater/first#post4033064

Tried to PM you the link, but I can’t send PM’s because my account is restricted at the moment, add yourself to the thread above.

I think instead of forcing megaserver on the entire GW2 population for open world maps, there should be a daily rotation of servers that count as megaserver “primary”, megaserver “enabled”, and megaserver “excluded”.

Everyday, one of the 24 (for North America) servers should count as the primary megaserver, meaning it’s the default server that everyone gets shuffled into for all maps. There will be no guest access to the primary server, first come first served basis by default.

Seventeen more servers will be designated megaserver enabled, and act sort of like overflows.

If the primary megaserver is at capacity, remaining players (that don’t specify a guest slot) will be evenly distributed throughout the enabled servers, rather than just filling up one at a time possibly leaving a few full and many empty.

For example, if 1,000 people are trying to do Shadow Behemoth concurrently, the primary megaserver will be filled to 100, while the remaining 900 players are split between the enabled servers resulting in roughly 52 to 53 players on each of the 17 servers. Guesting will be restricted to two slots of the 17 enabled megaservers for that particular day. This ensures that people who want the “zerg” experience while still also partying with friends have a very good chance of getting into the same map due to the fact that each enabled server should have plenty of cap space left because of the automatic even distribution.

Six of the 24 North American servers would be left open for unrestricted guesting. This leaves a lot of room for guilds to make coordinated efforts against bounties and world bosses such as Tequatl and Tri-Wurm. Since guesting slots will be unrestricted on these six servers, large guilds will have plenty of time to find the right server to funnel most, if not all, of their players into the same map before an event.

The world selection screen should color code each server to clearly demonstrate which is the primary megaserver, which are the enabled servers, and which are excluded for that particular day.

This gives players that prefer to solo farm/roam and have uncontested access to events etc. plenty of options to find a low population server to do so. It also allows guilds a much better chance of doing world bosses and bounties solely with guild mates or with only a few random strangers.

Since each day a different server will act as the default primary megaserver, all of them will be host to a large playerbase even in the typically desolate zones at least 1-2 days a month. Anet will have to use their data and one of their math/algorithm whizzes to come up with a rotation that ensures all servers spend an equal amount of time as megaserver primary, enabled, and excluded.

Miners will have access to at least eight zones to gather their materials due to the six unrestricted guest servers and two restricted ones with this system. If this is deemed too much, node respawn time can be adjusted accordingly, to say, once every three hours instead of hourly.

I think this offers an option for pretty much every type of player, whether they prefer solo roaming, guild raiding, or meeting other players randomly anywhere they might go, rather than forcing a certain experience on everybody regardless.

Also, the 1 : 17 : 6 ratio of servers is just an example, obviously Anet should have data on the upper levels of concurrent players doing world bosses at peak hours and can come up with a ratio better adjusted to the numbers.

It would make sense to have LA be the only city that isn’t megaserver, for guilds to recruit players from their own server and wvw players to have a safe place outside of the actual battlegrounds to discuss matchups.

Vigil Keep could be left open as a megaserver hub that isn’t a racial city.

I posted the same question in the giant megaserver thread, seems biased guesting is no longer being utilized, and it’s back to the 2 server per 24 hour limit despite megaserver tech being active on most maps still. No mention of the change in patch notes, so not sure whether this is intentional.

I have 15,000 Blade Shards and I’m still having a hard time convincing myself that it’s worthwhile to trade 100 per Equipment Bag. Once my stock is gone it’d be very time consuming to farm the ~1K needed for a Spinal Blade, whereas masterwork equipment is completely trivial to obtain… and the fact that you can get Equipment Bags for only 40 Festival Tokens makes it an even less attractive offer.

Tomes of Knowledge on the other hand… much more difficult to acquire than masterwork equipment. But even using the 1 : 2.5 ratio of Festival Tokens to Blade Shards for Equipment Bags, Tomes of Knowledge would be 750 Blade Shards each. And that still seems incredibly high given they only dropped at around a 2 : 1 ratio compared to Found Belongings, if memory serves, which were 100 + 20 silver per Tome of Knowledge. A more reasonable price would be 200-250 Blade Shards + 20 silver per Tome of Knowledge, in my opinon.

Guesting is working as it used to pre-feature patch, limited to two “servers” (even though megaserver tech still seems to be active, at least in Gendarran) per 24 hours.

Has the unlimited/biased system been removed, or is this an unintended bug?

Still no love in 5/20 content patch, would like to know if this is a permanent change to grenades underwater or not.

Bumping this in the hope it gets some attention for the 5/20 patch… with the 30% crit damage nerf, and the fact that only one, or sometimes zero grenades make contact even at point blank range, this is easily more than 50% damage reduction for engineers underwater.

If any other class suddenly lost over half their dps on a commonly used weapon set it would be considered game-breaking, and since I spend a lot of time underwater (or used to, rather) I do consider this a game-breaking bug for me. Please give it the attention it deserves.

The glory vendor bags were actually the only reason I played spvp in the early days of release. Ground my way to rank 30 just for the ‘free’ 15 slot bags.

The reward tracks got me back into it and I just hit rank 40, would’ve been great to be able to pick up some 18 slot bags for the 10+ new characters I have that need them now. At 4 bags per character that’d be a pretty significant amount of gold saved. Given the choice between rank appropriate storage bags and those basic monster loot boxes that don’t even give champion bags, I’d much rather have the former.

They could at least add blade shards to the wallet and put out a temporary merchant that will release them in stacks of 25 back into your inventory for people that still wanna craft spinal blades.

I knew it was gonna take them 6 months to deliver when they kicked around the idea of making a wide variety of living story tokens exchangeable, once again biting off more than they can chew.

I have 15,000 blade shards taking up space, but I also have 20 character slots and a fully upgraded bank to store them all, others might not have that luxury.

Is this even on the radar? Engineer is my main class with over 2,900 hours on that character alone, this is affecting my gold income significantly. I cringe every time I go underwater, it’s so blatantly broken.

Try running memtest86+ to check for failing RAM. I had a sudden problem with constant crashes, especially on snow textured maps, after about 6 months of playing the game without issue. Turned out one of my RAM dimms had failed, after I replaced it with a new one the crashes stopped. I’d get corrupted data error messages though, so maybe your problem is different, but it’s worth a try, and memtest is just a nice tool to have for general maintenance of any computer system.

Your crash does always seem to be related to a missing projectile, so if not failing RAM, maybe that particular file is just corrupted/missing, have you tried reinstalling? I’d also recommend downloading any hard drive health monitoring tool, or a S.M.A.R.T. utility.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso
memtest . org/#downiso

I recommend the auto-installer for USB keys, assuming you have a flash drive available. Just start the test before going to sleep and let it run overnight, check for any errors in the morning.