Guild Wars 2

ZanchinFissure.7981:

Dungeons are pretty much dead from what I see. There are more people in silverwaste maps there are people in dungeon maps combined. Don’t believe me? Go look. Seriously, check it out. They’re almost dead. I would say they’re kicking a dead horse, but that would imply they’re trying to get something out of it.

At least they’re being honest in a way. Let dungeons fade away; they’re already burnt out.

In exchange for what exactly? Mini dungeons that are even less popular and just as abandoned content-wise?

Dungeons died because Anet didn’t want to put in the work to add on to them and keep them relevant. Not because of some inherent design flaw.

Behellagh.1468:

Only pure sandbox MMOs like EVE can last forever because a large portion of the content is player created syndicates and corporations trying to control the most profitable parts of space.

Eve survives because it’s the purest form of a PvP MMO experience one can have. So much so that the developers completely condone scamming and general griefing in the game.

People play it for the PvP and that is what it survives on just as FPS’s survive on it.

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

Essence Snow.3194:

Behellagh.1468:

You are too reward driven. Where’s the fun, the enjoyment? Nope, it’s all about the lucre.

In a MMO that’s like saying “You’re too into killing monsters.” or “You’re too into exploring.”

It’s one of the core elements. Explore…kill things…get rewards…with work together thrown in there.

Yes but some are only focusing on the reward. It’s like focusing on the destination and ignoring the journey.

Sadly that’s what MMOs have devolved into. Build the most OP character that’s currently allowed and repeatedly do the content that rewards the most lucre in the shortest amount of time. Genre isn’t important. Lore isn’t important. Profession isn’t important. It’s about getting the most lucre as fast as possible for what? Get the best of everything and then what? You win so onto the next MMO?

the best way to solve that problem is to make content rewarding and not to design goals that are best played through repetitive grind.

But thats a lot more work.

Neither is it profitable as a game developer.

It’s really easy to get blinded by nostalgia and go all “back in my day MMO’s were called MUD’s and we played for the funzies!” while completely ignoring the fact that modern AAA MMOs cost millions of dollars to make.

Zatoichi.1049:

when did they buff rapid fire?

I’m assuming you mean Unload and it was in the last balance patch where they “Increased damage per shot by 26%”

Because thieves didn’t haven enough 5 digit burst options.

chronometria.3708:

Official proof that melee staff is already forgotten.

More like official proof this is an item design from 2 years ago (vastly predating DD/Rev) that is just now finally seeing the light of day.

Ayrilana.1396:

Substance E.4852:

Ayrilana.1396:

Substance E.4852:

Ayrilana.1396:

And once you have everything now that you can quickly get what you want? How rewarding will the gaming experience be then?

lol somebody’s never played the Diablo series of games if you seriously think “getting the drop” = “getting the best version of that drop”

I’ve played both Diablo and Diablo 2. My previous posts had nothing to do with that series. Thanks.

Halvorn was directly describing Diablo 3 and you then proceed to guffaw at the ideas presented.

Maybe pay attention to what you are actually quoting?

I’m talking about the systems he described, not the game.

Which is why I said you must have not played said games as they have such a system and they are great successes when you implied such a system would be a boring slog after supposed instant gratification.

Ayrilana.1396:

And once you have everything now that you can quickly get what you want? How rewarding will the gaming experience be then?

Ayrilana.1396:

Substance E.4852:

Ayrilana.1396:

And once you have everything now that you can quickly get what you want? How rewarding will the gaming experience be then?

lol somebody’s never played the Diablo series of games if you seriously think “getting the drop” = “getting the best version of that drop”

I’ve played both Diablo and Diablo 2. My previous posts had nothing to do with that series. Thanks.

Halvorn was directly describing Diablo 3 and you then proceed to guffaw at the ideas presented.

Maybe pay attention to what you are actually quoting?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The lottery was poorly balanced. The cost of exchanging the leather was not even the cheapest options. If they had made it cheaper than the other mats then it would have drained it out.

Doesn’t matter. The leather has effectively no purpose forcing it down so low no one is buying it above vendor prices at all.

Even if it wasn’t the cheapest, it would be the first mat people would dump in because:
A: They don’t need it.
B: It’s easily replenished.
C: It felt good to use it on something for once.

Ayrilana.1396:

And once you have everything now that you can quickly get what you want? How rewarding will the gaming experience be then?

lol somebody’s never played the Diablo series of games if you seriously think “getting the drop” = “getting the best version of that drop”

Halvorn.9831:

Aretak.3826:

Anet has always prioritised ‘the economy’ too much, to the extent it destroys how players interact with the game. Most gameplay is so horribly unrewarding compared to effort put in, and those with the most money are TP manipulators that rarely even touch actual content. It creates a huge barrier between players, things they might need and rewards they’ve earned.

One of the best comments around the topic.

There once was a game, let’s call it “Devil 3” for a second. It was sold a gazillion times because players liked its predecessor, but somehow it never really was really fun to play. Then the dev company decided for a brave step: instead of forcing players to farm for in game money (or even spend real money) to buy overpriced items they did not receive as loot drops because of crappy drop rates for “economy reasons”, they complete removed that auction house, more or less removed trading as a whole and then increased the loot drops so that you finally had a chance to receive the items yourself. And Bang, suddenly the game started to become fun again.

Personally, in my future gaming life, I am quite sure I will forgo games with an “economy” or someone specially taking care of it. It seems to be a safe sign for an unrewarding, un-heroesqe gaming experience.

lol funny how “name redacted” Entertainment wanted to copy the monumental success of “Devil 2” when said game got by just fine with a direct barter system to the point that gold had no purpose other than repairing gear.

It’s interesting how that also applies here.

1. T5 Leather? Pff ya right. Even the Zephyr festival that let you exchange them for lottery bags and Mawdry couldn’t put a dent in their price. Unless there’s an option to build a secret third style of Guild Hall entirely out of hard leather, it’s not going to happen.

2. Possible but the new systems are designed to enable the more direct acquisition of high end mats if one does the map content.

3. Not broken. Most gems/jewels/Universal Upgrades are low in cost because they are low level items in a game that has had a heavy drought of new players. Add in the fact that newbies don’t have gold to pay premium prices and it’s easy to see why they have low costs outside of Ruby Orichalcum items.

Ill just copypasta my post from the essence of luck eater thread.

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

I had 0% luck. I was on a level 14. I fought Shadow Behemoth. I got exotics.

I learn about magic find. I stack it to 101% and I return to Shadow Behemoth on a level 80 character. Haven’t gotten 1 exotic from him since.

A 100% increase in the drop rate of something that only has a 0.001% of dropping is still only 0.002%.

Even the max of 300% is only 4x the rate. Quadrupling insignificant = only slightly less insignificant.

200% increase only means 3x as likely to drop, not 200x more likely.

CandyHearts.6025:

I had 0% luck. I was on a level 14. I fought Shadow Behemoth. I got exotics.

I learn about magic find. I stack it to 101% and I return to Shadow Behemoth on a level 80 character. Haven’t gotten 1 exotic from him since.

A 100% increase in the drop rate of something that only has a 0.001% of dropping is still only 0.002%.

Even the max of 300% is only 4x the rate. Quadrupling insignificant = only slightly less insignificant.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

At the same time, I always thought it was a major loophole in the system and I’m glad they are removing it.

It’s hardly a major loophole when it not only has significantly reduced access compared to your personal bank, but is also confined to items that are neither soul nor account bound.

This is a cash grab by Anet forcing players to purchase bank tabs, nothing more.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

CA has a cd, every skill that would proc also have cd this is a non issue.

CA’s only cooldown was the time it took to refill the bar.

In PvE/WvW zergs this could be a couple seconds. I once refilled it with Lunar Impact still on cooldown from the previous time.

It’s still a complete non-issue in 5v5 pvp though.

Fermi.2409:

Substance E.4852:

The GTX 960 GPU costs ~$200 right now and an i7 is roughly the same depending on the exact model.

You’re not finding an i7 for $200, especially if you want to get a k model (which you should). $220 will get you an i5, though. Less if you don’t get a k model.

lol my mistake, I was looking at the used price tag on Amazon.

Oberon Vex.1389:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

He’s been there since around the start of BWE3.

and yes, it’s hard to tell if it’s their attempt to show that they want to involve ranger more, or a joke about how rangers are currently being played :P

This is something I just don’t get. Longbow is one of our best power-based weapons (and THE best ranged power weapon). I don’t understand why other players ridicule the ranger class for using it. The closest people get is complaining about D/P thieves for the cheese, but it is no where near the stigma of a ranger with a bow. Why don’t we see deriding comments about a different class using an optimal weapon for a certain playstyle?

A: People love to rag on the Ranger for absolutely everything. We just laugh it off with ironic parody.
B: LB cheese lets you operate at a much longer range than any other cheese and thus kittenes people off that much more. Getting 2v1’d is bad enough but getting 2v1’s when one of them is 1800 units away is much worse.

Paulytnz.7619:

Lastly console gamers HAVE to buy a whole new console every time the new one is out. They can’t just change parts here and there. PC players are lucky they can just replace parts as they come out. Again I think PC gamers have it easier right now.

The GTX 960 GPU costs ~$200 right now and an i7 is roughly the same depending on the exact model.

Those are the only things you are going to be upgrading on a regular basis (outside of incrementally better SSD’s) and both equal the cost of a brand new console on release day when taken together.

At best it’s equal.

epoc.7941:

It’s irritating. I’ve asked around agree and everyone agrees that it’s actually not supposed to function in downstate yet no one has made a complaint about t and it is abused I’m pvp all the time.

Please fix this.

Good thing you’re friends with so many Anet devs. Perhaps asking them why they haven’t fixed it is in order?

Mini Mimic Chest – [&AgFaEgEAAA==]

http://dulfy.net/2015/08/11/gw2-upcoming-items-from-august-11-patch/

DaveyC.4398:

That is not a confirmation though is it? Considering that you have all unlocked at level 80.

Confirmation of what? Anet has explicitly said you simply spend the hero points to unlock the line and purchase the skills (like the vanilla traits/utilities) assuming one has HoT. There’s no special quest or other jazz that you need to do.

The only thing in the air is how many points will be required though it’s likely enough to simply be at lvl 80 and have a good chunk of the map cleared.

You just need enough hero points to unlock the skills and spec line. They have said this plenty of times.

What else wasn’t clear?

lordkrall.7241:

“I’m not looking for an answer like, “No, you should play what you like to play, there is no best spec.””

So you basically only want an answer that say: Yes they will replace the old ones?

No, they’re looking for real discussion on the objective strength/perfomance of builds.

Not some asinine “but GeeDubToo can be played with any build! That means nothing is better than anything else, ever.” response.

Sandzibar.5134:

Maybe that’s the idea though, now the base game is free2play. From a marketing perspective they need to drive sales on the new content, and new stuff being superior to old is the age old way of doing it.

If they are doing it to fuel box sales, then they wont stay as they are for long.

Marching powercreep isn’t sustainable and Anet knows this full well.

6 months from now people will be begging for new specializations and if they’re another set of direct upgrades, the game will eventually implode on itself.

Anet won’t be able to keep pve content inline with the player power (bigger numbers only works for so long) and spvp will fall apart as things become harder and harder to balance till no one bothers playing it out of frustration.

Sandzibar.5134:

Also, not changing the 5 man limit on heals in a 10 man Raid might be by design?

I think they were hoping to keep the door for 2 healers per squad open. This may even be needed in later rooms.

Aomine.5012:

For example, glyphs are very situational, and rarely useful in any aspect of the game.
Most rangers will still stick with old utilities (Spirits for PVE, survival for WvW/PVP, signets for universal use, traps for PVP) than picking up those useless glyphs.

lol then you’re missing the point of the Druid and are a great example of the problem.

The glyphs were great in large scale fights where they allowed for condition cleansing and healing in an aoe with very short cooldowns as well as spreading out and dazing enemies. Ya know, providing the healing support Druid is there for.

Verdant Etching was amazing for support. Not slotting it was one’s own choice and a silly one given the other options.

If you’re not in a situation that calls for dedicated ally supporting, then why are you slotting Druid?

Aomine.5012:

Imagine the QQ if they dare tone down Reaper, Chronomencer or Revenant They’re upgrades, and people already accept Specialization is suppose to be an upgrade.

People can internalize whatever asinine logic they want. Specializations are meant as horizontal progression, not power creep.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

I don’t think the majority of druid players want our healing to be mandatory. Quite the opposite. They want the druid to have flexibility based on which armor you have or which playstyle you prefer.

The problem with this thinking is that people are treating the Druid like some sub-class that will be great in all modes. It’s unreasonable and people need to stop holding it up to the Chrono and Reaper as though they’re the norm. They’re not and if Anet does their job, they will be toned back so their not just a direct buff to their classes.

It’s simply a new trait line that opens up new play for the class. Druid being resigned to healbot is no different than Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic having 0 purpose in current PvE over Marksmanship, Skirmishing, and Beastmastery because they house mostly survival and durability traits.

We don’t even know what the full raid will entail and people are already opening doors to the Druid being toned down for more damage. Anet’s track record with the Ranger means we could very well end up losing out to the Tempest or Revenant after people learn the encounters enough to not need so much direct healing.

Timers are there to keep people from using cheap cheese techniques from beating what is supposed to be hard. Without timers, people could run ultra bunkery sets or just kite for days bypassing the difficulty that is already limited in a videogame environment.

It’s also there to keep DPS’ers on their toes and stay in optimal rotation just as the healers and tanks do in other games.

Then again, this is GW2 and people will kitten about anything they can’t face roll with their favorite ‘just for fun’ RP set.

Nott.8201:

and
Chaos Gloves

Oh god, not the chaos gloves! Never again…

I’m just gonna tell you right now you probably won’t be able to play it right when it launches anyway.

Expect a dozen hotfix patches and game breaking bugs for at least the first day or two.

Bring back Elite Druid but make the male armor the same level of revealing as the female armor.

Calcifire.1864:

Schurge.5194:

Lucius.2140:

In my experience, that alone can be absolutly biased to a total sample, the less population of GW2 players, the higher the charr % of the population go.

I supose its about that we have more roleplayers than most races (like humans that represent a huge % of the population) and that charrs are more unique and arent in any other MMO or game, i mean you can play as an humans everywhere, specially in real life.

Plus our zones and culture are more unique than humans and mostly any race.

Long life tothe Charrs!.

Pd: Give us back race subforum.

Speak for yourself. I’m a Lizardian and I can’t play as a human in real life. Thankfully I can live out my fantasy of being a male runway model in Guild Wars 2. Inside my cold-blooded scaly exterior yearns a desire to be pretty.

Also, I loved that video… but I don’t think the patrons of this forum can handle South Park like satire… though they might relate to the plight of that poor feminist with a Liberal Arts degree who couldn’t get a STEM field job in the SJW video.

what are you doing playing GW2, Queen Elizabeth? shouldn’t you be busy controlling the world’s media with Barack Obama: King of the Mole-People, and Darklord Valdimir Putin?

Illuminati confirmed…

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I’d like to use something like this, but I really do not want to have my GM Minor trait nearly useless.

Adding in a 10-15% damage bonus against immobilized targets on Ancient Seeds would provide a lot of synergy.

We have plenty of immob application options and it would stack with Predator’s Onslaught for solid burst capability at the expense of damage from either Skirmishing or Beastmastery being absent.

While I don’t think the Druid needs more damage per se, I do agree wholeheartedly that it does need more synergy with the class as a whole.

mistsim.2748:

celestial shadow superspeed doesn’t seem to work while stomping.

I think it’s only movement speed, not action speed.

infantrydiv.1620:

What people do want is for Druid to be able to contribute offensively somewhat in PvP/WvW/PvE while still being able to heal well inside of the Celestial form.

You can contribute.

I ran reset night with a longbow for 2 hours straight and only really ever used staff for the movement on #3. Between Lingering light and Trolls I filled the bar in about 2-3 seconds while stacked and still did nearly as much damage as I would have done because I swapped out wilderness for druid in a M/S/WS build.

Ranger was already barely decent in zerg combat. Anything short of a direct copypasta of the necro/ele staff in druid wouldn’t change that.

You have never needed to run staff to keep the bar filled as long as you slotted Lingering Light and the heal everyone already uses anyway.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really think that with Druid coming, that this trait should definitely be swapped. So 10% of Power becomes Healing Power. Then you could go more damage gear wise and still get a decent amount of Healing Power.

It is more helpful for all builds rather than healing power becoming power.

Won’t be nearly enough from the sounds of it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

We are on the road to having zerker druid be less useful than it already is. Not more unfortunately…

Yeah, if they add more damage maybe not. But either way, if the heals get dropped base and increase the healing power scaling then this change to IR would really help out. You would be able to run only zealots armor (15% crit damage drop) with zerk trinkets and still have 700 healing power. Which should be enough to heal reasonably well, plus you have the other support. Not only with Druid, but it helps roaming builds and all builds that use Nature Magic, in fact. All these traits should scale off a Primary stat.

My point is that they want the Druid to spec for healing. They clearly do not want a druid build to have the same offensive capability a vanilla ranger will while still maintaining a solid level of ally healing.

Expecting them to give it to you is a pipe dream at best.

You already give up DPS compared to a vanilla ranger build. Expecting to get a useful amount of support for that sacrifice is not unreasonable, particularly since rangers are already considered inferior in almost every area of the game.

And the places we are considered inferior are the places that have no need for healing at all anyway.

Druid is solid in Raids, WvW, PvP (from what I hear), and will probably be a good pick for GvG in the future.

Trying to shoehorn the spec into content that never had a need for it will just end up making it a crummy hybrid that has no purpose anywhere.

Ya, it bites the big one that we didn’t get strait powercreep like the necro or mesmer but we got a good spec that will ensure us a spot in raids and gave us a purpose in WvW/GvG when we previously had none.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really think that with Druid coming, that this trait should definitely be swapped. So 10% of Power becomes Healing Power. Then you could go more damage gear wise and still get a decent amount of Healing Power.

It is more helpful for all builds rather than healing power becoming power.

Won’t be nearly enough from the sounds of it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

We are on the road to having zerker druid be less useful than it already is. Not more unfortunately…

Yeah, if they add more damage maybe not. But either way, if the heals get dropped base and increase the healing power scaling then this change to IR would really help out. You would be able to run only zealots armor (15% crit damage drop) with zerk trinkets and still have 700 healing power. Which should be enough to heal reasonably well, plus you have the other support. Not only with Druid, but it helps roaming builds and all builds that use Nature Magic, in fact. All these traits should scale off a Primary stat.

My point is that they want the Druid to spec for healing. They clearly do not want a druid build to have the same offensive capability a vanilla ranger will while still maintaining a solid level of ally healing.

Expecting them to give it to you is a pipe dream at best.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

xarallei.4279:

Nike.2631:

xarallei.4279:

Sulfarius.1756:

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

If they want to do this exclusively for raids I might be ok with this. But outside of that? No. Because the rest of the game you are supposed to not have to lug a healer around to do content.

Gearing for a couple hundred points of heal power is not “lugging a healer around with you.”

It is putting a boot on the Zerker’ metas neck and pressing down.

Getting rid of a full zerker meta groups does not mean getting rid of zerker. Nor should it ever. And zerker should most definitely still be a good option for the rest of the game. Hell, it should still be a good option in raiding even, just not have the entire raid be zerker.

Which they effectively did. You need to bring some condition specs and at least 1 healer to beat the first boss.

Zerk was never going to stop being top dps gear for physical damage and Anet can’t force people to slot knights or soldiers gear and still keep encounter timers.

It may end up that a zerk healer could have made the cut after enough time but it would still be a role based on keeping others alive rather than killing the enemy and that was the ultimate point in the end anyway.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really think that with Druid coming, that this trait should definitely be swapped. So 10% of Power becomes Healing Power. Then you could go more damage gear wise and still get a decent amount of Healing Power.

It is more helpful for all builds rather than healing power becoming power.

Won’t be nearly enough from the sounds of it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

We are on the road to having zerker druid be less useful than it already is. Not more unfortunately…

Zatoichi.1049:

Currently all we know is that irenio is planning on nerfing base healing, to add “supportive damage” (whatever that mean). Changes are coming.

Terrible ones from the sound of it but I suppose it was inevitable that the class would be nerfed in pve/wvw to appease the spvp minority as it always has…

Holland.9351:

I think it’s very much a WvW trait where you wisp into a zerg and pop this together with signet of stone and some other Glyphs.

In theory, yes.
In practice, no, not really.

I tried nearly a dozen times on reset last Friday and not once was I able to successfully get into the zerg to pop the skill. The amount of hard CC and immob spam from venom wells means utalizing it to it’s full effect is nearly impossible in a large enough zerg. The stability from Wild signet instantly evaporates.

I came very close one time but stone signet ran out before I could down the enemies and I ended up rallying everyone who hit me once I got instagibed.

It may work in a lord room fight where there isn’t a front line to push through, but for open field fights it’s essentially pointless and a waste of a slot when SotP and Entangle are just so much better.

The only real use the skill has is in it’s astral form for heal bursts to the team.

Diovid.9506:

There are ways to get gems for free you know: For example through contests (sponsered by Arenanet) or through achievement chests.

True, but they represent a very, very small minority of the gems in the system.

No one has anywhere near enough AP to be able to buy the xpac through achievement gems alone. You would need 50,000AP to earn 4000 gems.

I don’t know the average rate of occurrence or payout of GW2 contests, but I’d wager it’s not very often.

For all intents and purposes, one can treat the overwhelming majority of gems in the system as having been generated by cash purchase.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

They didn’t add a single main hand weapon, for some reason. All two-handers and offhands.

The only martial 1h weapons are Sword, Mace, Dagger, and Axe.

They are probably a lot harder to fit thematically than duel wield weapons or offhands.

Druid could only use mace or dagger and it would be hard to make them work on their own as the off hands aren’t magical in anyway.

Berserker can already use three and dagger doesn’t scream blood rage.

Tempest could probably use any of them but they probably wanted to limit the skills they would need to make due to attunements.

Dragon Hunter could probably use axe but it seems like such a violent, brutish weapon for the Guardian to be using. Dagger just seems silly on a heavy armored class anyway.

Necro could use a mace or sword but neither work with the idea of a “Reaper”.

Scrapper could only really ever be hammer.

Daredevil could use axe as a sort of kusarigama “ninja’y” getup but it would probably feel too similar to the vanilla thief who already has Scorpion Wire.

Chronomancer could probably use mace but shield makes about as much sense and one can make a shield that looks like a clock easier than a mace that looks like a clock.

They are digital products sold for a dollar price. Hell, they are both optional, at least for existing accounts.

The scale is the only defining factor that sets them apart.

They are just code and assets. One has more and thus has a higher price. It also is going to be used to generate sales figures and interest in another xpack. Having nice, easy to assemble figures of “we made $X in 4 months from HoT” is going to make their lives a lot easier than trying to figure out how much of it was purchased with cash that was already spent to pay the team making it.

lordkrall.7241:

I have never even implied that ArenaNet wouldn’t get the money. I am simply pointing out that the PLAYERS would be able to get something FOR FREE while others have had to PAY for the same thing.

In the way that gems have always worked for literally everything they are used for.

As I pointed out, the reason is likely completely removed from preventing some from “getting it for free”.

lordkrall.7241:

Player Y can now buy the expansion the the gem store without paying any real money, ergo get it for free.

They may have but Anet still earned $50 for that key generation. Who paid for it is of no concern to a company and is a completely asinine thing to care about. It also flies in the face of the whole point of gems as their primary source of income as a company.

If they didn’t want this from happening specifically, they would have made it impossible to buy the code as a gift for someone.

As I’m to understand, there is nothing preventing me from emailing the code to someone else who did not explicitly pay for it.

This is all likely a way for them to get a large injection of cash spent in a couple of months rather than people buying it with gems and getting it with money that they may have received (and thus spent) months ago. It would also cause a massive spike in gem prices as the stores in Anet’s possession rapidly dropped.

It’s not some optional thing like a hat that only a portion of people will buy. Virtually anyone with the gold to buy the 4000gems probably would. At ~800-900g currently, that’s an awful lot of people.

Even if someone couldn’t buy them all with gold they would likely buy as much as they could and cash purchase the rest.

lordkrall.7241:

Very unlikely since that would basically allow people to get it for free.

In what way? If the system is to be believed, any gems bought with gold are ones that were initially generated with actual money.

Buying 800 gems for ~170G still means Anet got their $10, even if it was from someone else.

A price tag of 4000 gems = Someone having paid Anet $50 for that particular key.

Preventing this system is simply a means to generate income in a smaller window rather than people obtaining it with money that they may have received months ago.

I’d much rather prefer they simply make it so we can target allies and use it that way where it auto fires the same as an offensive skill.

I can see some good synergy with zerg combat in WvW for the Druid and being able to shadow the commander and keep them targeted for auto heals would be a big help.

As it is, it’s simpyl too much annoyance to do this for 3 hours straight to the point that I’ll probably not use the Druid spec unless it’s specifically asked for.

My keyboard’s nothing special, but it defeats the point of “no sub fee” if I just end up buying a new $60 board every 4 months to play the game.

It’s just a game play mechanic and not one that should be viewed as some kind of canonical plot element.

The game could not work without players reviving like Grenth is your personal BFF. It’s no different than any other game that doesn’t have “perma death” design.

We might as well bust out a chair and start to wax philosophical on our characters’ apparent lack of the basic life necessities like food, water, and sleep among the multitudes of logical inconsistencies.

Why can I rapid fire a flint lock pistol?
Where do my arrows come from?
Why is there not an arrow in my hand when I fire the bow at all?
Where do all these throwing axes come from?
Why does anyone walk anywhere when it costs pennies to teleport across the known world instantly?
Why does my sword never need sharpening?
Why can I breathe under water indefinitely even without a mask?
Why did we wait nearly a year to see what happened to the Maguma expedition?
Why can I run for literal hours with no fatigue but get winded after 2 somersaults?
Why can a 2" tall Asura hit as hard as a 10" tall, 600lbs of muscle, Norn?
Why do enemies suddenly reappear out of thin air after I defeat them?
Why is a brick gold worth far less than a single coin of gold?
Why is a full suit of steel plate mail only marginally more protective than a silk ballgown?
Why is stabbing someone with a knife more damaging than hitting them with a meteor or a massive hammer/sword?

And the ever classic:
Where did this wildlife get all this loot/gold?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Seems nobody understands the meaning of “viable” either.

No, what they are referring to is "optimal’ and you now that.

Why not just say optimal then? Since they mean completely different things.

Because people are using a lexicon from other MMO’s where the idea of content needing a specific team comp to succeed is the norm. A class, or particular build, isn’t a viable choice if it means certain failure or a much higher chance of.

That isn’t the case here and people naturally move on the next best thing which is optimal builds/team comps.

Whether something is considered “viable or not” is largely a question of whether it fits into that comp.

lxghostxl.5097:

Most players are not aware but the highest dps build for rangers is Longbow Condi, A/D or A/T

…wut?

Lb/A-D?

Feel free to post this build because this is the absolute first I am hearing of this.