Guild Wars 2

The sheer amount of materials required to fashion an ascended weapon is ludicrous. I have read fantasy novels ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper and considering “Stormbringer”, “Excalibur”, “Sting and Glamdring”, “Werewindle”, and “Callandor” nowhere could I find a sword that requires over 800 ingots of metal to create. (not counting all the other materials). One can overlook the 1,500 ingots used to create a Legendary such as Twilight as those are used to create a “Gift of Metal” which then becomes part of the sword’s creation. With Ascended however they do not even bother to hide the grind behind the story of a “Gift”, just throw all this stuff into a forge and you will get a sword light enough for you to wield with special powers.

They could have done it differently and still dragged out the process as long as they wanted to. Clues in the world to special recipes, certain beasts to kill for special reagents, skills that need to be required by practice, and so on.

Sadly game developers have lost the ability to tell stories in their games and to make those stories believable. That lack of believable storytelling is what turns great games into a grind. They take the easy/lazy way out by increasing or inflating the costs for items in materials or gold rather then adding real content and sadly this process exists in all games. A game starts out with great promise; there are new stories to be told; new discoveries to be made that fit the story being told but eventually they reach the point where that story no longer makes any sense. It gets lost in the inflation of gold/materials/time or more commonly known as the grind to fill in the gaps.

Single player games have a finite timeline. They have a beginning and an ending to tell a story and thus can be made to be more believable. MMO’s are meant to be ongoing so the timeline they can encompass does not end. The lack of a good story is filled in by the grind and this is a good example of that. One day, hopefully, a developer will begin to understand that the greater and more believable the story you tell the greater your game will be.

This game does not need more developers, it needs more story tellers.

In any major sports league the lowest placed teams at the end of the season get to look forward to picking first in the draft. It is done that way so that eventually all teams have the chance at reaching the pinnacle of the game.

Here is GW2 the lowest placed teams do not have that luxury, in fact the only chance any player has is to go the free agent route and join the highest place teams to at least have a sporting chance at getting their “name on a cup”. That would be like the Yankees getting all the Cy Young, gold glove and batting champions.

If you want to make a sport out of it then for all that is holy put some sport into it!

taek.9386:

espionage is all part of war

Only if you have a fair chance of capturing, torturing and then executing the spy. If you do not then it is nothing more then a glorified cheat!

Although we do not have issue with deployed siege on our server that much we do have issues with (use the polite term) spies, queuing an upgrade just before a major attack. It has happened time and time again where the enemy masses, we have sufficient supply to thwart an attack and then someone orders “strengthen guards” or some other instant supply use item.

We need:
A way to halt or reverse any upgrade before let us say the 10% completion mark
(the initiator would lose gold and karma)
and

A method where we can salvage siege for 75% of it’s supply
(the builder would lose the blueprint)

Well considering that in the wee hours of this morning IoJ rolled the maps on us and turned everything green I doubt the lower servers will ever have a chance at winning even a bronze. IoJ is currently ranked 17, HoD 18 and SF 19 but there is such a disparity in coverage that they enjoy a 70K point lead. The sad part is in a two league system there would be still 4 servers ranked higher them IoJ. Pity the bottom ranked server which is currently AR.

There is no fun in being stomped continuously. There is no fun in being the stomper continuously. However considering the stomper will be getting better rewards then the stompee what side would you want to be on?

Jayne.9251:

Armo.6208:

so you want a pep talk instead?

I happen to know a certain scholar of Orr who could probably manage that ….. For hours and hours

Oh please no! Anyone but the tree Fern! After 8 level 80’s I now turn off the sound whenever he begins one of his speeches. How he inspired anyone without putting them to sleep or driving them to jump over a cliff I will never know.

To the SF Hammer warrior that got my mesmer from behind a few minutes ago while I was fighting 2 IoJ at our Vale camp. Real brave! Why did you run when your IoJ friends turned on you? There were only 2. Or is it because you could not get behind them while they were occupied! What a warrior you are!

You guys have it all wrong. Just before the first season do not transfer to the server at the top of the first league. Transfer to the server at the top of the silver or bronze league. Rewards will be the same for winning that league and you will get lower queue times. Just saying!

Ah but Remember the Alamo! Were they actually fighting Santa Anna’s overwhelming force for the experience or gold? No, they fought for a free Texas and that ideal pushed those few defenders to fight braver, harder and with more ferocity!

Throughout history a few have stood up against many and although they may have fallen they were inspired to fight harder because they were fighting for their homelands, their freedom.

So why do we get a useless buff such as more magic find and experience over something that will actually allow us to fight harder against overwhelming odds?

Remember the Alamo!

In the movie 300 a force of 300 Spartans faces off against 300,000 Persians. Do you think they would have done that if their inspiration against such massive odds included:

+20% Magic find
+33% Experience
+10% World Experience
Take no Armor damage on death

???.

No, they fought harder, they fought more intelligently, they fought more bravely. Why do you not make the outnumbered buff to be something actually worthwhile? Give the Spartans a chance and inspire them to fight harder!

Leonidas: “We shall find more gold before we die! We will hone our fighting skills before we die! Our armor after we die will still be in pristine condition! Now go out and er….. die!”

I would prefer:

Leonidas: “The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a god-king can bleed”

or

" Children, gather round! No retreat, no surrender; that is Spartan law. And by Spartan law we will stand and fight… and die. A new age has begun. An age of freedom, and all will know, that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it!"

Now do you think they were excited about more magic find and the fact that their armor would not take damage!

I have 9 characters, 8 of them at level 80. My highest WvW ranking is 92 but my total rank level between all my characters is 182, so I agree with the OP 182% !

You can access your personal bank by going to the craft stations in the Borderlands. Once you upgrade the keeps with merchants you have personal and guild bank access.

Just thinking here. The issue you are going to see with transfers will not be people moving up to a Gold tier server but people jumping to the top server in their tier to assure a first place win. Inter-league transfers will be the killer. For example using the bottom 6 servers now as one NA league:

SF
GoM
ET
FC
DR
AR

How will it help the lower ranked servers if large groups from those servers decide to jump to Sorrow’s Furnace prior to the start of a season? If that happens the lowest place server in that league will just get stomped while SF will be guaranteed a first place finish. They will not be able to hold onto a camp much less any major objective. We already see that when a server is up against another 4 or 5 steps up in the tiers.

Then just prior to the start of the next season people will hedge their bets and again transfer to the predicted top server in their league. It is easy to go to sites such as mos millenium or gw2score to find out the predicted rankings.

Lol thieves are fun, just get a few mesmers to turn them into chickens and watch them run!

Riddle Time!

Why did the Sorrow’s Furnace thief cross the road?

Answer? To become a chicken!

I want to thank the couple of SF thieves that have been providing us with laughter and bags. It is so funny when they get turned into a Moa, seems their stealth no longer works. Oh my aching laughing muscles!

I usually turn the music off in any game after listening to it once. Then if I want to listen to MUSIC I queue up some classic rock. Nothing like destroying an enemy zerg while listening to “Helter Skelter”, “Easy Living” or “Taking Care of Business!”

Then for the enemy I get a giggle when “Born to Run” is playing!

Plains of Ashes.5941:

While Im on I would really like to call out the HoD night crew and the NA morning crew for their great work in helping make this comeback week happen. It was a server-wide effort around the clock for those that chose to fight (often outmanned) while the majority went off to lootfest, but our night-crew and NA morning crew really did a great job!

Thanks guys! /cheers

-Plains@HoD

I truly believed that when I retired that I would no longer have to work night shifts. This going to bed at 3 or 4 am is unhealthy! By the time I get up the next day it is almost too late to go fishing…or golfing…or chasing the wife around the house….

from this…

“The Ascended Inscriptions all take the exotic inscription of the stat combo you want plus Dark Matter and Crystalline Dust. Dark Matter is a new Account Bound material exclusively salvaged from Exotics.”

you have rng. I highly doubt you will find dark matter with every salvage of an exotic.

So which one of my 8 level 80’s that I use in WvW should I outfit first? If it takes 2 weeks to be able to create one ascended weapon and lets us say that my toons will need 4 each minimum, that adds up to 64 weeks of grind and still does not answer all of the possible weapon combinations.

Definitely an alt killer!

I am using the Thermaltake Level 10 GT case and could not be happier with it. Plenty of room, dust filters for all the intake fans and the ability to hot swap drives makes it a dream.

The big thing however are the dust filters for the intake fans. It will definitely save you in the long run so make sure the case you choose has them!

With that much difference WvW is going to be difficult against anyone with a Legendary especially since the time gating for some of the materials required to build an Ascended. It will be some time before everyone is back to an even footing.

What they need is a new craft profession “Cartographer”.

1) Use existing materials to create Vellum
2) Tiers follow the map ’suggested" levels
3) Visit a point on a map and open your vellum for that map to scribe that point on it.
4) Once complete you can make copies of it in order to sell.

Those that do not want to have to explore everything can then buy a copy of that map.

Quit your whining at least you have a Legendary!

Mepheles.2087:

Oh theft…. hammer is weakest against Mesmers. especially with staff 2 with it’s super short cooldown, all manner of slows, stealth, roots, Hammer won’t touch you very often…. Mk? In that fight, Hammers’ weakness gave you enough edge, coupled with Mesmers myriad of ridiculous escape tools. But since I wasn’t there, I cannot say what was fair and what wasn’t because without those CD you would be pure jelly.

Except I am not a staff mesmer. I use GS and Sceptre/Focus. As well my mesmer does not have full exotics yet, some of his trinkets are still Masterwork. You should tell your people that if they want to set a trap hiding just behind the wall so that their name plates stick out will not exactly do the trick. As well when you try and flank someone have the flanker go out of visual range before making the move to go around. Using stun lock between two warriors is a pathetic way to try and win a fight. Without that I would have taken them all out! Just saying!

What do you get when you have 4 DH and a sentry versus 1 HoD mesmer and Bay gate guards?

Answer? An even fight.

lol I lost count of how many times the two hammer warriors tried to take me out. You only got me once….with the thief ….you need practice.

To the DH group that was humiliated at our northern camp by two little Asurans we are sorry if we embarrassed you! Really we are! I noticed that the perma stealth thief from your group has started to run away from attempting that camp now if my asuran engineer happens to be there. I suppose after being humiliated a couple of times that discretion is the better part of valor but now my engie believes that you hate him! Is there anyway that I can assure him that this is not the case?

Cheer up though, you can still use that perma stealth to gank uplevels!

Turamarth.3248:

Theftwind.8976:

An AC on the supply hut would not be able to reach the front of the gate where the ram and yak were as well as their ac.

The yak I could hit without problems. It is also possible to use the gap as defender.

The problem I had was there was an ac aoe ring that went further back then your arrow cart was. Where I was downed you can see the corner of the supply platform in the picture and I was still within aoe range. The arrow cart that is set up with the Breakout event at the front of that tower cannot do that unless some manipulation is being done that is not intended even with the hole above the gate. I have been on the other side of those breakouts and by playing things as they should be there is no way for the breakout ac to reach that far back with that much coverage of the interior.

That stated I do not know if they placed an ac on the outside corner of the gate as I have shown before on another tower. Placing it there, right against the wall and the gate corner and still being able to shoot through the hole in the top of the gate is a totally broken mechanic. If the arrows are supposed to follow line of sight then essentially what you are doing by placing the ac there is bending the arrows flight path to go from the ac at the corner of the gate, up to the right (or left depending on what side of the gate it is placed on) through the hole and then back in the opposite direction. (like putting spin on a bowling ball or a hook on a golf ball).

The problem with arrow carts is they ignore the wall/gate so line of sight does not come into play. The arrows still follow a straight path from the ac to the target. If this were reality standing at that point and trying to shoot anything through the hole above the gate and hitting a target on the ground as far back as they did would be impossible with the laws of physics.

What bothers me is that when that patch goes live anyone with a legendary weapon will have an advantage over anyone with just an exotic weapon until you can get someone up high enough to craft the Ascended ones. Add to that the time required to get the materials together for such a weapon. Depending on the grind necessary it could be possible within a few days or it could take weeks or even months.

Turamarth.3248:

Shooting trough the gap above the gate with an ac is no hack and no bug. It doesn´t even require special resolutions or a big monitor.
If the devs don´t do anything about it it might be that they see it as a legitimate strategy.
An ac on the supply hut would have been safe I think.

An AC on the supply hut would not be able to reach the front of the gate where the ram and yak were as well as their ac. You can shoot through the gap but not across the full width of the towers interior unless that ac was directly in front of that gap. The AOE rings that hit me, and I was too busy trying to survive to take more screenshots, covered the whole inside of that tower from the gate all the way back to behind the supply hut.

There can be no way that shooting through the gap is an allowable strategy if that is indeed what they were doing here. What is the use in setting up siege in a tower when one arrow cart on the outside can take it all out and yet you in turn cannot target that ac? I have tried it myself and on my 27" single monitor I can target a far greater area with an ac by going to window mode and putting that window as wide and as shallow as possible. It is even easier to do with a multiple monitor setup as many have mentioned.

Stuff like this, which is an obviously broken mechanic needs to be fixed.

Stice.5204:

The current implementation of Runes of Perplexity seems out of balance with both other superior rune sets and other skills and traits that apply the confusion condition.

Sure, they have potential counters just like other conditions, but something is clearly off here, balance-wise.

Are they off balance or do people need time to learn how to deal with them?

The Devs wonder why people are getting fed up with the lack of progress in WvW. Waiting for the major changes would be so much easier if the little things that have plagued us for months were fixed but we go patch after patch, bug fix after bug fix with nothing being done and no acknowledgement from the powers that be that a problem even exists!

I will set the scenario for the attached screenshot. Just after the last patch/reset the enemy started a Breakout event on our southwest tower. I was at the tower at that time. At the same time their main force attacked our Bay keep leaving the Yak, Siegerazer and 2 enemy attackers at the tower.

No problem, I had 100 supply so I should be able to build counter siege and hold off two attackers until the cavalry arrived right? Not a chance! As you can tell by the screenshot I was next to the supply hut in that tower and yet had full arrow cart aoe rings on me. I could not get supply and I could not place any counter siege that would be effective for the front of that tower as they raked the full front of that tower with the arrow carts on the outside, all the way back to the supply hut. There was another ring behind me! Any siege placed in the tower further back would have no effect on the front of the gate.

This issue has been bugged, it has been reported as an exploit, it has been reported as a hack yet NOTHING is being done about it although it has been mentioned time and time again for months! If it is working as intended then please say so as I will gladly hook up another monitor so I can be on the same level playing field but I highly doubt if it is intended to work this way.

It is the lack of any action on issues such as this one that makes people angry when things are done for PvP and PvE and we get nothing but promises. Fixing these little things would at least show people that WvW matters and make the wait so much more bearable.

I have never found an item with a Superior Rune of Divinity to allow me to extract the rune. That should answer your question.

engineers > thieves

With the current magic find system you have one rng “gate”. The higher your mf the better chance you have to find something of value. With the new system you will have to deal with “rng” to first find an item that can be salvaged to have another ’rng" chance that it will break down into “essence of luck” with the use of a kit to finally arrive at the point where you currently are.

Seems like a lot of rng!

Scenario:

Imagine that I have 2 pickup trucks. One with 4 wheel drive and short box is for my enjoyment. It takes me to those out of the way fishing holes where I am guaranteed the chance at landing that record trout. The other is 2 wheel drive but with a long box and it is my working truck. It allows me to haul the stuff that I need to haul.

So they decide to remove the 4 wheel drive from my one truck but allow me to add a long box instead. I ALREADY HAVE a long box truck! Then they offer you to drop you off and pick you up at those fishing holes but you have to work your way up to be able to get into those really out of the way spots. They will not take you there until you earn credits by going to closer, more easily accessed spots first.

The thing is my existing 4 wheeler could already take me to those out of the way spots where those big trout are. Why do I have to work my way up by going to those easily accessed spots first where everyone else is going? The big fish there are going to be real scarce!

Totally kittened!

Sad. With my current MF set on my Guardian and with the proper foods and buffs I can push 200% mf. When I go farming be it in Orr or anywhere else I can usually find enough rares to make it worth my while and fatten up my bank account for my WvW addiction. Now with the mf being account wide I will have to start all over again to build up my mf from scratch.

Rather then changing the mf stat to something else which I do not need (my Guardian has 3 sets of exotic including the mf set, my warrior 2 sets so I do not need another set of heavy armor) allow us to salvage that armor for a guaranteed equivalent boost to our account wide mf stat.

So my base mf gear set totals 121% mf. If the new system scales the same way why not allow those that want to salvage a piece of gear with mf on it the choice to do exactly that, recover the mf stat from it and apply it to their account wide mf stat?

Right now my existing mf gear has a PURPOSE. Changing the stats on it to anything else will not give me any advantage whatsoever as I already have what I need on my 9 toons!

The wife and I with our two engineers are having a blast killing thieves. She is specialized for grenades, me for turrets; drop two supply crates on them and watch them melt away. Silly thieves will try to shadowstep in past one set of supply crates, that is when the other person drops theirs. Works like a dream! As far as perma stealth thieves go just have two engineers throwing grenades at the red circle or just around it randomly. More often then not you will hit the thief.

As far as rezzing a dead mesmer if an engineer cannot keep a thief away long enough for the forced recall then that engineer needs to go back to tech school.

Although I highly doubt they will make dyes account bound I dearly wish they would. As it is now when I find a dye on a character that has it already I have to put it in the vault and log in my other 8 characters one at a time until I find one that can use it. It really is a pain in the er neck!

Miss Firesss.3704:

Theftwind, actually, after we took your Bay and Garrison, we were tired and all going to bed. The golems were a spur of the moment thing, and after Bay and Garri, we parked them, where they probably despawned.

Aww you guys tire out too easily! I guess that is your story and you will be sticking to it but I like my version better!

HoD’s night capping team is smaller then most but we get the job done! We recapped Bay from DH and moved to Crag which was infested by some unwashed vermin.

Having 8 level 80s already with my 9th and final toon at level 49 these scrolls are totally useless to me in their present form. I will not be buying anymore character slots so they will collect dust in the bottom of my vault in case they introduce a new race/profession.

No burning. Not scary enough for the spy. Just equip a shovel and bury them so they can see their screen darken shovelful by shovelful.

Mepheles.2087:

Dear HoD, you will always remember this day as the day that you ALMOST took Hills from us
Sincerely, DH :P

Dear DH

I remember fondly last night as you marched 15 Golems towards our Hills and then being embarrassed because we had put out the welcome mat and you could not sneak in and sit quietly in the back row, ran away. We almost had one person per golem there!

Sincerely: HoD

Player Character.9467:

Theftwind.8976:

Two of us managed to get through the Playhouse the first time we attempted it. Not at all difficult.

It scales to the number of people.

I am aware of that, just trying to point out that it is not all that difficult to run.

It is interesting to note that after reading the OP’s thread the first thing the wife said was "Why is it ok to portray all the females in the game as “battle bunnies” then? Face it in this game or any other females are portrayed sexually while males are portrayed comically. Blame it on the target audience for the game.

I have leveled all 8 classes to level 80 alongside the wife and her 8. If you do not find a 1-17 area challenging enough when you are level 10 move it up to a 15-25 area. Hit Orr when you are level 60. The world is open, areas are not level restricted.

If you want a challenge take a level 1 character and run all the way to Meddler’s Reach in Orr. There are challenges in the game but you cannot sit and wait for it to come to you, go out and challenge yourself!

If you are getting continuously disconnected when running an invasion event stay away from the large zergs. Take yourself to a quiet corner of the map and wait it out.

Two of us managed to get through the Playhouse the first time we attempted it. Not at all difficult.

If you start in overflow do not transfer to another map after the 10 minute mark, You will not get credit.

Get to the map before 10 minutes after the hour or you will not get credit.

As long as #3 is “ejected without a parachute”. Why should the golem operator who is doing the most damage to a tower/keep get away while the rest of his team suffer an agonizing death?

So ejected to safety without a parachute 900 random and 200 up and hope you have fall mitigation traited! Just a bit of spice!

When the kites were placed into the Jumping Puzzles they were part of an event that rewarded the player when all achievements were made. However the one in the Obsidian Sanctum was not at the end of the puzzle but near the end. Now I had ran that jump puzzle before but that week we were up against a strong server who had enough people to camp the jump puzzle critical areas. They would lie in wait and either kill you or knock you off to your death and we did not have the people necessary to defend those that were trying to run it. We managed however to get a mesmer through who spoiled their gank fest by porting people up to the kite from near the start of the puzzle. We did that for anyone on the server who needed that kite and our mesmers ran shifts to help anyone they could.

Now perhaps a jump puzzle expert like Merujsy or Psycho would be able to run that JP with their eyes closed but to most people trying to run a time gated event and getting killed for their efforts was frustrating. Yet you want to call those people lazy and greedy because it does not meet your high standards of proper game play.

Psycho Robot.7835:

The first thing that will happen when JPs start giving out T7 mats is that guilds will organize mass raids where a few mesmers port the entire guild through to collect mats on a regular basis.

And how does that affect you? If a Guild chooses to cooperate in such a manner and work together for the betterment of the Guild and their members is that not what this game is about? Have you ever called for a Guild member to help you out in your personal story? How many of these mass raids do you think a Guild would run on any given night considering they still have to get a mesmer to the end of a JP and some JPs require multiple ports where you cannot port someone directly to the end?

We do not even know yet what the drop rate for Tier 7 mats will be in a Jump puzzle chest and if a mesmer port will be worthwhile and you are already creating mountains!