Guild Wars 2

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that they will not allow MKC to be made after the event, because MKC tend to drop more candy corn (which is required to make more MKC) and thus the supply would not diminish between holiday events. Of course, I could love to be wrong on this, and it would be nice to see an official response one way or the other.

Is magic find gear expensive? Might be worth getting a set for the character that has the chests, but I’m not sure if that even affects the chests (though it’s a good idea if it does.)

I don’t think any of the items it produces are soulbound, so you might consider just opening them on one character and transferring the items you wish to keep from it to the other character(s) as needed. I know this doesn’t answer your original question, but it might get you what you want in the end.

My question is this… Will the Mystic Forge recipe for the Mad King Chest still work after the holiday event is over? In other words, if we have candy corn left over and we continue to open regular Black Lion Chests after the holiday and use the tonics and boosts with the candy corn we saved, can we continue to have a chance at these holiday skins (the weapon skins in particular) throughout the year? Or will that cease at the end of Halloween?

lisamee.2408:

What is a boost?

The items that grant a “boost” to XP or Karma (or similar) for a set duration and/or for a chained number of kills.

szthesquid.9576:

TigerDragon.4037:

I’m coming from a background in GW1, and I don’t recall any RNG prizes for holiday events from there.

There were plenty; it’s just that you didn’t have to pay real money for them. Gifts, ToT bags, lunar fortunes, etc.

Let me clarify. I don’t recall any RNG weapon prizes for holiday events from there.

The ToT bags, Gifts, Lunar Fortunes, etc were mostly bags of consumables (sweets, booze, etc) The one item that included a “skin” for a holiday that I can recall wasn’t for weapons. The new year miniatures come from lunar fortunes. That’s the one exception I can recall of something like this, and the chance on those is quite a bit higher than the chance on getting a weapon skin from the BLC and MKC from what I can tell based on feedback on these forums. I used my keys (rewards from personal story/map completion) and made a few MKC with the junk I got … and still got junk in the end. I haven’t opened nearly as many chests of either type as some of the folks here, but based on the amount of upset that seems to be on the forum over this, I can’t say that I would be willing to pay for a few keys to get more chances at it. I’m just going to give up on getting the item I want unless I happen to make enough gold and/or get lucky with more keys (still have some lower level characters that can do personal story for the key reward.) I’m not holding my breath on it at this point, though.

1. Will you or will you not be buying black lion trading company or random number generation materials again?

No.

2. Did you buy them in the past?

No.

3. If you would not buy trading post material/gamble, would you support direct to buy weapon skins and what general price do you find acceptable from a business standpoint both as a customer and realizing that they must make money as a business?

Yes. Make them comparable to the costumes.

4. Do you believe that future events will also be handled with random number generation to make profit based on limited time item acquisition?

Yes

5. If you believe that the future events will be handled in the same manner, does this realization negatively effect your trust of Arena Net in regard to handling micro transactions for permanent content?

Sort of. I’m coming from a background in GW1, and I don’t recall any RNG prizes for holiday events from there. There are plenty of nice items that are RNG based (Gifts of the Traveler come to mind) but those are not restricted to a limited time frame to obtain, and I quite enjoyed hunting for specific weapons / the Moss Spider Egg, etc from that feature.

I will be restricting my purchases made with gems-bought-with-real-cash to non consumable (and in particular non RNG) items. If I happen to pick up gems by gold, I might (maybe) drop some gems on obtaining keys and/or special transmutation stones, etc, but those types of purchases will be few and far between.

Has anyone gotten weapon skins from the Mad King chests yet? The only posts I’ve seen for skins is shoulder skins so far.

From that video, it looks like the items that have a timer are actual equipable weapons. This seems to suggest that the weapon only hangs around for the 4 hour timer listed, but that doesn’t seem to indicate whether the skin itself is limited to 4 hours. If you transmute the look onto another weapon, theoretically, it should be permanent from there?

Just to put the D/D is for single target only thought to rest … D/D has some really nice area damage, as well… it’s a matter of where the caster is in relation to the area effect that makes staff superior in certain situations. For area, fire has attack 1 and 2 (cone) 3 (line of fire) 4 (ring of fire), water has attack 1 (straight line) 2 (cone) 3 (small radius pbaoe), air has attack 1 (comparable to area affected by a one handed sword user) 4 (the burst at the end of the ride is area), and earth has 2, 4, and of course 5 is massive area, all pbaoe. On top of the area damage, water has 2 really nice area heals (2 and 5) and an array of entry methods (air 4, fire 3, and earth 3.) Toss in the various conditions (bleeds, vulnerability, burning) and as long as you don’t over aggro, you can take down a nice group of mobs in a short amount of time.

I’m not fond of the scepter or focus, but that’s purely a personal preference thing. I go dagger/dagger for most PVE encounters, but if there’s a large group encounter with a champion boss (the giant that stumbles into Nageling is a prime example) I will use staff for the range. I find that dagger/dagger offers some of the most well rounded fast combat for elementalist so far. Please note that this is purely from a PvE perspective. I’ve not done any sPvP, and I tend to use staff more in WvW. In the end, the trick is to complement your weapon set with utilities and traits that enhance your play style. For example, with d/d I like to use the lightning cantrip that teleports you to shift my churning earth mid cast, but for staff, I like to take arcane blast to use right after geyser for a boosted area heal.

Swapping attunements is optimal. If you sit too long on any one element, you are losing out on the support, control, and conditions the others offer. Even in quick fights, I find myself using at least two elements, but in long fights I rotate through them all multiple times to keep the pressure on with stacks of bleed, burn, vulnerability, etc, and to benefit my team with heal/regen and fury and might that all get granted just for switching (traits are wonderful.) In the end, though, you need to find a play style that fits you and the situation at hand (I prefer double dagger, but I’m not opposed to bringing out my backup staff for long range challenges like group event champion bosses.)