Guild Wars 2

bezim bezec.8635:

Yes maybe your ideas work in PVE and I admire your theorycrafting, however all the stuff you’ve mentioned just doesn’t cut it in spvp/tpvp.

Well I don’t know about spvp since I haven’t done it for a long while but I just spent the last half hour getting pulled off tower walls in WvW while defending by axe rangers and that’s one top of axe rangers making life very, very annoying just getting to the tower in question. So about now, I have ZERO doubt that, that axe change is going to feature prominently in pvp. Maybe not have entire builds around it, but I am pretty sure there will be some interesting plays build around the new axe #4.

bezim bezec.8635:

This patch has not provided any diversity to the ranger. Infact it has done the complete opposite and forced us to play the two most boring builds; trap/bm spec, which I might add was also nerfed in last patch so we are now completly useless.

Axe 5 has become a pull which is particularly good at being an extra interupt but how is this going to be put to good use in our builds?? Should it be that we pull the enemy into a traps? Should we pull them close to us so we can melee them down with minimal dps while our slow as hell pet runs around in circles trying to find the pulled enemy.. its just one big joke for rangers atm i am afraid.

You could use pets that stay with you. Like spiders and stuff. I mean think about it, axe five pulls enemy to you, you order spider to do its spit thing, which I will point out was buffed. More importantly, spit thing is a poison combo field. At this point you have choices, you can use the axe #5 to proc the poison combo field with a whirl finisher, you can use sword #2 for a leap finisher, continue to use axe main hand to get a poison field proc or you can then switch weapons to (say) as short bow and use #3 to put distance between yourself and your enemy while procing the comb field or you can switch just your off-hand and use torch #5 (which by the way is a fire combo field) to set your enemy on fire.

You can also do the reverse, use the torch first and set the area around you on fire, then switch weapons and pull the enemy into the fire field and then use Axe #5 to proc the fire field and watch bolts of fire shoot off everywhere!

For that matter, spirits are more viable now right? You could just have a spirit near you, pull the enemy to you with axe #4 and then have the spirit cast its special effect. Then switch to longbow and knock the enemy away. If you use frost spirit or stone spirit, your spirits special will also slow your enemy down, which means you’ll have plenty of time to fill them with arrow!

So yeah, the possibilities are there. You just need to experiment a bit with different things, things you haven’t tried and see what works and what doesn’t.

igor.6159:

Tinni.4351:

Warrior

i think i said RANGED class guys
warrior’s most dps is zerkers with 1kblades. bow\rifle warrior is just warrior who dont give a **** about his dps

Well casters are ranged but none of the caster classes are “easy”. Maybe mesmer or a Staff or scepter ele… but caster as a rule are paper thin and you will have to master the art of moving a LOT. Engineers are the only other ranged class but I am not sure the class is easy. Easy pretty much screams warriors especially since to be the “king of DPS” as warrior you have to be made of paper and thus staying at range would be best if you aren’t pro at dodging. Because if that mob doesn’t go down after 100b… you are toast!

PS. You could always just tune out the QQ and maybe take fresh look at the ranger. Try weapons you haven’t tried before, different pets maybe, different traits etc, etc.

ProxyDamage.9826:

igor.6159:

i think i said RANGED class guys
warrior’s most dps is zerkers with 1kblades. bow\rifle warrior is just warrior who dont give a **** about his dps

Melee DPS > Ranged DPS. By design.

If you’re talking PvE the strongest ranged class right now is Mesmer (maybe Guardian too…?)

I understand Mesmer GS was nerfed a touch but GS + staff = 100% ranged for a mesmer. They can be melee but they don’t have to be melee. So mesmer is a possibility.

Guardian however is not a possibility if your desire is to be at range (as is the case with OP). Our scepter is a bit faster but Guardians will never, ever, ever be good at range! Anet has made it very clear they want Guardians to get into melee and stay in melee. They are okay with warriors being plate wearing cowards who hide behind cloth wearing casters with their longbow and rifle but not us Guardians. We have the guard everybody, including the chicken-hawk range warriors.

igor.6159:

well.. after all these changes.. i think for me better desicion is reroll to another class..
can anyone tell me some ranged class with good dps and not that high complexity in playing?

Warrior

KyoHanakaze.8145:

All I ever see are people QQing about being a ranger or dismissing a ranger as worthless, and yet I’ve been playing one since launch and have never really had a problem. I do pretty well in almost every circumstance, PvE, PvP, WvW, and the only class I can’t handle is fighting guardians.

Am I wrong for thinking a lot of the complaining is baseless? =/ I feel like I’m the only one who knows how to play the class sometimes….

I was very unhappy with my ranger between 30-60 but since she hit 80 I have been very happy with her. I have every class except for warrior and mesmer, and my ranger is class I most enjoy doing dungeons and WvW with. But then again apart from the shortbow I am not remotely effected by any trait changes. Not even on pets as I use bears, the one class of pets that were not touched. So yeah…

Wilda.3251:

Can all this happy ranger tell me what build they are using to stay happy …Right now im have a sb that shooting unicorns and those horses do nothing at this moment ..Im traitless in LA confused …I dont want my horses to get fat !!

I use 20/30/20/0/0 build with condition dealing bear pets. Bears may not be the best at dps but kitten they are effective meat shields and have pretty great survivability even against Alpha! I use traps with the trap traits that lets me throw the traps. I mostly use the fire and ice traps because of the combo fields which I can trigger using my bow or greatsword #3 for extra effect and damage. I am also a sylvari and so I use sylvari racial elites which of course this is not replicable by non-sylvari rangers.

Bright.9160:

Delay.6908:

Exile Firestarter.1943:

Scholar and eagle suck. you guys are weird

Is this real life?

I call it: CoF rhapsody

O.O

This must be recorded! Musical GW 2 fans unite and sing the CoF rhapsody!!!!

swiftpaw.6397:

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

make your own post. ‘LF4M CoF P1 anyone welcome’ will fill up almost instantly.

That’s the best ticket to a horrible farm run I have ever read. You get the scum of society signing up in seconds.

just get a sigil of smothering lol XD

Obviously that wouldn’t be a farming group.

@OP sorry to hear you had the negative experience after returning to the game but yes COF P1 speed runs are notoriously “exact” and you’ll probably find that you need to maintain a separate set of weapons with Sigil of smothering just to get into the farming groups. I guess it’s your call if that’s worth it or if you are okay with having slightly longer runs with a group that’s not speed running or just not hung-up on optimisation.

Lian Olsam.9541:

first game that hate melee players… some classes can switch weapon and use one ranged and one melee, i love to play ele dd and i can do anything for keep playing with that weapon, so i have to use staff and i hate it… pls do something about that

o.O I think your topic title is misleading AND does not belong in the dungeon forum. What you are essentially saying is that you want weapon switching for elementalists. For the record, I have seen plenty of D/D eles in normal dungeons and fractals.

GW 2 most certainly does not hate melee players but from personal experience of many, many hours logged in normal dungeons and Fractals, I know that you need a certain level of “comfort” with your class to pull off melee properly. Especially with Guardians and warriors, I can always tell when someone is new to dungeons – they mostly stay at range.

My advice is you keep trying to be D/D in dungeons and you’ll get better at being D/D in dungeons.

Avylin.2635:

Not to mention I’ve virtually never run with a guardian who uses a hammer on any occasion.

I use a hammer in dungeons 95% of the time. I also run into a lot of guardians with hammers in dungeons. What is rare are mace guardians. I think I ran into a grand total of 2 in all my dungeon runs.

Afya.5842:

Imo almost every guardian weapon is amazing except torch lol.

Torch is supposed to be great with 1-h sword and I see lot of “zerker guardians” use 1-h sword + torch. They seem to do okay.

This is probably only tangentially related but I have been meaning to bring-up the topic of gear requirements for PuGs ever since I was confronted with what I consider to be a truly, truly unreasonable gear requirement.

I have been working on the gift of light and so need 100 charged lodestones. Naturally this means a fair few CoE runs. Generally I have had good experience and no one really questions what gear I am running or why. The other day however, I joined a CoE group on my engineer. This was a normal “lfm CoE” and they made not mention of it being a speed run or anything. I was on my way to CoE when suddenly one of them asked “do you have full zerker and at least 5 ascended accessories” o.O

5 ascended accessories for COE? As it so happened my engineer was in full zerker (full COE zerker at that) but only had 2 ascended accessories. In fact, only my main (Guardian) has 5 ascended accessories (soon to be 6) but she’s not in full zerker (she wears knights).

I think in terms of gear, it is reasonable to expect a PuG member to be wearing level appropriate gear. If it is a speed run and advertised as such, of course zerker gear would be required. But IMO, at some point the gear requirements are just a sign of incompetence on the part of the requirement setter! CoE can be tough but 5 ascended accessories will not magically grant a person the ability to dodge Alpha AoE.

obal.3218:

SkyChef.5432:

5K AP = experience. Experience of what? running from pt A to pt B? And beat some dumb mobs while gathering, doing heart contents, daily group events, special events and more craps like that?
I’m pretty sure that if a person have 7K of that kind of experience will wipe the floor in hard contents more than those w/ 3K experience who doing dungeons days in & days out. Any objection to this?

Given the recent direction the game is going, people with those high numbers are probably very good at locating the F key.

I don’t think the achievements were ever meant to be anything more then a gauge of personal progress. A way for you to look back on your GW 2 playing life go “I remember that!” etc. I understand the desire to to want a way to evaluate a player before stepping into a dungeon with them. But even the dungeon master title isn’t a good indicator of a player’s dungeon ability.

Only solution I can think of is a “experience inspect” feature that gives stats like dungeon paths attempted, dungeons paths completed, maybe average time taken etc. The raw achievement number means very little.

Tinni.4351:

I haven’t kept count of how many normal dragon coffers dropped for me but no skins so far. I don’t think I have enough luck left for this round. I mean, I did get both a Sclerite skin and a Fused skin on a very reasonable ratio too! But o man! That longbow and shield and sword and dagger and hammer… T.T

Shortly after making the above post I decided “what the hey” and bought $40 worth of Rich Dragon Coffers… wooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

sob I am so happy!

I haven’t kept count of how many normal dragon coffers dropped for me but no skins so far. I don’t think I have enough luck left for this round. I mean, I did get both a Sclerite skin and a Fused skin on a very reasonable ratio too! But o man! That longbow and shield and sword and dagger and hammer… T.T

Niyo.5920:

I’m happy that clothes like this are no combat-clothes.
That would destroy the atmosphere of the game if there would be people in pink quaggan-hats who are fighting a dragon.
In town it’s ok. Cause there it’s good for RP to have hats for characters that are children for example.
But not in fight. Makes me shiver to even think about a charr-warrior with a pink quaggan-hat. And people would do that if they could. So it’s good that they can’t.

Today, I was beaten to death in WvWvW by a Charr using a candy-cane hammer… I have also seen Charr with purple main, glowing tails not to mention Quaggan backpacks… I don’t think the quaggan-hat would be out of place. I’ll just have a story of how I was beaten to death by a Charr with a Candy Cane hammer, wearing a Quaggan hat with Quaggan backpack and pink armour…

I would go Quip but then again my engineer is a little Asura that I went out of my way to make as cute as possible! So the quip wouldn’t go against her image.

I like the new dungeon. It’s clearly a dungeon meant to lampoon all the speed-runner who run from chest boss to chest boss. So they just short-cut the entire thing and just had a boss. Cool enough.

cerberus.1937:

someone with an actual helpful post would be nice instead of people talking about their own luck, or making comments on sentence structure. once again not talking about people with luck if you read, clearly said without luck; not everyone is blessed with this luck factor people go on about. Yes, people have gotten a ticket on first box, but this is about those that go through hundreds with not 1 Sclerite Weapon Claim Ticket. I mean forging items you got while failing boxes anything but just luck just throwing ideas out there. Some constructive helpful ideas to help the less fortunate rather than gloating on your own luck would really help those that don’t share in your blessed luck.

My idea: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/An-actual-alternative-to-RNG/first#post2075780

My other idea was to have a “loaded die”. Right now your probability of getting a weapon claim ticket does not change between crate 1 and crate, say, 100. But a loaded die would increase your probability of getting a weapon drop the more crates you open. Making it so that opening your 100th crate would have a higher chance of giving you a skin then your first crate.

Onshidesigns.1069:

So only rich players who grind all day long can get a skin? While poor players who have to buy gems still don’t have the money to outbid rich players.

I think your definition of “Rich” is a bit too narrow. Players who are buying gems are time poor, thus they can’t grind all day, but they maybe be cash rich. So they can buy more gems outright, while time rich but cash poor players grind all day to save-up in-game gold which they can convert to gems. So as long as a player is “rich” either time wise or cash wise, the auction system will work for them.

However, there is an inherent “fairness” to the RNG system in that everybody (in-theory) is equal in the eyes of RNG. Still, those who can buy more gems – either using RL cash or in-game gold, are buying more crates/chests and thus giving themselves more chances to “win”. So… shrug

NBrother.6259:

Wat i meant about the tickets getting rarer were the fused tickets last month seemed to have alot better drop rate than these.

My persona experience says that these skins probably have a better drop rate then the Fused Weapons skins, if only because the crate loot drop table is not as cluttered. If you are SEEING less Sclerite weapons around it is because probably because a lot of people LOATHE these skins and so aren’t going after them. They are just not as popular as the Fused skins were. Less people trying = less skins in the community. At least that’s what I think.

The alternative to RNG always seem to involve “just let us directly purchase skins!!!” but that’s not really a good solution from Anet’s point of view because of sticker shock. In this forum alone there are people who bought 100 crates, who spent $100+ dollars on gems to try for a skin. I myself spent $95 trying for a fused weapon skin and this time I spent $20 for a Sclerite weapon.

If the skins were direct purchase, they could not be priced more then $20 and believe you me, a lot of people would rage at $20. I mean, Rox’s Weapons skin set had TWO skins that worked out to be $7 each and there are people complaining that it was too expensive! There is just no going around the fact that people will not spend a lot of money directly buying skins and that’s why the RNG boxes will stick around…

But they don’t have to! My solution is that we hold gem auctions for these skins. Everyday for the period the skins are around (Fused skins were around for 2 month and so will the current skins) Anet auctions off a small number of skins, say 100 (still only 6000 skins over a period of 2 months). It’s a blind auction (so you don’t know how high the current bids are) and you bid the maximum you are willing to pay for the skin starting at a minimum of 700 gems. At the end of the day the 10 highest bidders get the skins. I am thinking that this system might need a “bidding fee” to discourage people from putting in silly bids like 701 gems or whatever but I am not sure.

Anyway, this way players aren’t effected by sticker stock. Anet is still able to sell skins for $100+ without actually offering skins for $100 (because some people will offer that much to get the skin of their dream). The skins are still rare since only a limited number of players will have them, thus there will be incentive for people to bid high. But what we do avoid is people spending copious amounts of money and getting nothing in return. Because if you get a skin, you are happy but if you spend money and get nothing – that’s why you rage.

Anyway, that’s my idea.

PS. It doesn’t have to be a blind auction and you can certainly just try topping the lowest bid. I just thought of a blind auction because that would make people stop and consider how much they were willing to spend chasing one skin and not just get into the heat of bidding and try and out bid each other.

brokkolispinat.1304:

Tinni.4351:

snip

1 Ticket to 15 Crates being a bad ratio??

LoL, i farmed over 70 crates and got a total of 2 faren minipets and one shoulderpiece.
Nothing else

I am sorry, I seem to have given the wrong impression. I did not mean to imply my ratio of 15:1 was bad. I know it’s a very good ratio and that I was very lucky. Especially compared to my Fused Weapon skin ratio which was something like 70:1. What I mean was that as good as my ratio is for sclerite weapons, other people have better ratios and other people have far, far worse. Unfortunately, that’s just RNG. It’s neither good nor evil but it is a jerk (who sort of loves me but not as much as he loves some of my guildmates)!

NBrother.6259:

It took me less than 10 crates to find a ticket. Since then I have been helping my brother get a ticket. We finally got one yesterday after about 400 crates opened…Most of the crates were bought with gold to gems also so it was an expensive ticket. We probably won’t participate in any other rng boxes in the future due to the fact that it is solely based on luck and the drop rate seems to be getting worse on each ticket that comes out.

I don’t think the probability changes based on weapon tickets/weapon skins in circulation. I could be wrong and certain Anet would be able to keep track of something like this but I think what’s actually happening is just probability in action. The drop rate is probably no more then 5% (yes, I do think it is as high as 5%) and that probability of drop does not change whether you open one crate or 1000. So if you are lucky, your number will come-up a 1000 times, if you are unluckly, your number will never come-up.

Mara.6782:

Why they make new weapon skins that are nearly impossible to get? I´m sure that even if you buy 1000 crate you dont get ticket.

15 crates opened 1 weapon claim ticket received! Other people have better crates open to weapon tickets received ration then me but most people probably have worse ratio then me. Basically, its not impossible but some people just have rotten luck.

So I propose the introduction of a long and complex series of actions that collectively form a “luck” ritual that improves your chances of getting a weapon claim ticket from the next crate you open. You still have to buy or farm the crate and the chance isn’t 100%, but something like 85% but it would solve the problem of people who just can’t seem to catch the favour of the gods of RNG.

Of course people would still complain because the luck ritual would be too long and even with a 85% chance, some people will not get the weapon skins etc, etc but it would make people feel as if they could do something other then praying to the gods of RNG that their number comes-up.

marnick.4305:

They don’t bind at all ever?

Only if you transmute them (which I did with the flower) but otherwise, no.

Danikat.8537:

It would be pretty silly to reward 2 soulbound items for the same slot during the same chapter of an event. Chances are most people are going to do all the achievements on one character so one of them would be almost instantly useless.

But I agree account bound is much better in general. I do most/all the Living Story content on my main character but I often want to pass the rewards on to an alt who can actually use them.

Well they could have made it “bind on use” and still allowed it to be passed on to Alts but the true genius is that it just does not bind and you can pass it between characters indefinitely if you please.

Sebulon.7683:

I’ll try doing those rituals when I open them. xD

To give you some hope, I was feeling depressed tonight and since I already had two ice cream cones (they were minis!) I decided to engage in some non-fattening retail therapy and bought $20 worth of gems and bought 10 crates… and as luck would have it, a weapon claim ticket dropped and how my thief has a shortbow with eyes and constantly dripped blood!!!!

So total crates opened 15! 2 drop, 3 purchased using in-game gold and 10 purchased using RL cash! Skins got: 1! And thanks to that, I am significantly less depressed! So yay RNG!

I am sorry but there are are people who PAY to get dungeon paths done. So they can get dungeon master. Someone else does the work and they jump in the last minute and get the path completion credit. There are also people who get friends to play on their character so they can get achievements they would not otherwise be able to get.

Pretty much all the titles are worthless or priceless but it depends on the person wearing it. I mean, I am rather proud of my Dungeon Master title because I did every single dungeon path myself. Including the infamous Arah Path 4 and the often neglected CoF path 3. But for anyone else knows, I could have paid gold to the path completions or was “carried” by friends/guildies etc. Ultimately, only I know how I got the title, only I know the story behind the title and that’s okay! I didn’t get the title impress other people, the title was the bi-product of my desire to experience everything the game has to offer.

So yes, use the portal or don’t use the portal and remember always that you only see the title, not the story behind it.

Gabby.3205:

hawke.7186:

its both a solo instance like Cragstead and the North Nolan hatchery which will unlock a grouped instance. Apparently the grouped will have a different ending from the solo so it will be worth while to do both

I was under the impression that by “The ending is different”, Robert Hrouda meant that the dungeon is not the ending, not that the two versions of the dungeon each have an ending. I like both the possibilities, though. I have no problem doing grouped content but I also like to play only with my two best friends sometimes, so I believe I will love everything about this

I thought that when he said “the ending is different” he meant that the last stand story arc will not end with either the solo instance or group dungeon but with us having to face off against the Queen Karka in a giant free for all orgy of spellfx and broken armour like the Ancient Karka event…

Gabby.3205:

Of course they are expansive, they are The Consortium’s products!

In all seriousness, I understand that there are people with an extremely limited playtime that would buy it to save a minute of their time. However, I’m not sure if there are enough of these people to make it profitable for Anet.

I would disagree with that. I would content that this is probably a very high profit item for Anet. I do not think Anet had to expand a lot of resources in terms of code, artwork, testing to put this product out. But the few people who will buy this item will likely be repeat customers. More importantly, due to low development costs, the margin of profit for this item is likely to be far, far, far higher then a new mini, even a new booster and certainly new weapon skins etc.

So repeat customer + high margin of profit = high profit even though maybe less then 1% of the population is buying the item. At least that’s what I think.

Like many, I have been farming Southsun Cove. I am also a big Daft Punk fan and realised on of their new songs fit rather well into my activities. So I felt this video just had to be made!

Beta Sprite.4169:

BlasiuS.8961:

Dirame.8521:

I can bet you that a lot more people bought Rox’s Quiver and Braham’s Shield than they will these RNG boxes of frustration.

I can bet you the exact opposite.

Seconded. If you look around at players in high population areas, you will see more fused weapons than Braham/Rox weapons, and the fused ones would have taken more gems to obtain.

Perhaps if it had been swapped, more gems would have been spend on the fused weapons, but I wouldn’t count on it without seeing some real market numbers, which we’re not going to get.

Yes, I have been on teams where everybody had one fused weapons. Just in my guild we have four people (including myself) with fused weapons. Those weapons made us all go “me wants!!!!” and we all blew copious amounts of real life cash and in-game gold chasing them. I don’t think any of us have buyer’s remorse. Our guild leader was raging a bit when he kept coming-up empty but now that he has his molten GS, he’s happy as can be.

On the other hand, none of us have any particular interest in the new skins. As such none of us going to be spending RL cash buying gems. I converted some in-game gold to buy 3 crates for the hell of it but that’s pretty much it for me.

Raxus Prime.4218:

i did the molten facility 32 times

got nothing

i bought at least 30 keys

got one ticket

RNG is just grief

and it will eventually turn me off

i wont stop playing but i wont have the stamina or patience to farm on end for a vanity item

i will just stick to dungeons and collecting dungeon weapons because its not worth it in my opinion

I think they would lose most of their appeal if they were not so rare and as you said, they are vanity weapons. I think it is perfectly fine to put vanity weapons and items on RNG. The onus is actually on us players to RNG responsibly. I.e. set a limit “I will only spend X on gems” or “I will only farm X times” and then just walk away if you don’t get what you want within that limit.

One thing I do think Anet could do, and this is without hurting their profit, is put a “load” towards skin drop. Meaning that the probability of you getting a skin increases the more chests you open. I mean, right now if the skin drop rate is 0.01%, that rate remains the same whether you are opening your 1st chest or your 100th chest. What I suggest is that if a person opens 100 chests, that skin drop rate for the 100th chest could be 1% or something like that. This would mean that a hidden counter would have to be added to the account but I think that would be fairer to the players who do go to great lengths to get skin out of these boxes.

Edit: I wanted to add, to be on the level and all, since the posting of this comment I have obtained a weapon ticket. My boxes opened to ticket received is a 15:1. 2 boxes dropped for me and I bought 13. 3 with in-game gold, the 10 with RL cash. Last month I also received the fused skin.

Aegis.9724:

I just don’t understand WHO would buy this. I know i’m not the targeted audience, but who is?

People with EXTREMELY limited play time, for example, working adults with small kids. If you only have an hour to play and you are somewhere far away from a crafting point that loading screen becomes a big deal and it’s not just a loading screen. It’s loading screen + walk to crafting station + loading screen back to whatever zone you were + walk to where you were/want to be. That might not seem much but when every minute counts, that’s a lot!

Even if you say “they can just craft at the end of the day” or something but that just means when they log back on during their next play session, they have to do “loading screen + walk to where they need to go” and again, if you play time is limited and very tight, the $1 is totally justified. Especially when you remember that not everybody loads fast.

Basically, these items are bought by people in whose calculation “time spent going to stationary crafting station” is valued more then the 100 gems.

I don’t really know if this item will sell more if it was priced at 50 gems or less. I suspect that consumer base for this product is pretty stable. It is not something the average player will buy no matter what it costs!

MLieBennett.9031:

For the Fervid Censer? It matches the standard outfit I’ve already been using, so its just added. Sadly, I can’t find a good match to the Fervid Censer’s bright glowing yellow to dye the flower on the T2 Racial to match. Not to mention a bit of clipping issues, but that was expected and ignorable for the most part.

I found that with the Fervid Censer it is best to not try and match but go for very high contrast! I found full scarlet works great for my Sylvari Ranger. The contrast brings out the flower while trying to match the colours I found washes out the flower as it is such a pale yellow.

DanH.5879:

do i really really need to make an warrior/mesmer for pve !??!
any comments from a-net on this problem ?

I have every class BUT mesmer and warrior and I never have issues getting groups. My Guardian mostly does Fractals and Arah. I use Ranger for almost everything else. HOWEVER, I never join farming or speed run groups. If you want to join a farming or speed run group, you usually have to be warrior, some farming groups take mesmers. If you want to “farm” or do “speed” run, start your own “any classes but must be beserkers” or whatever farming or speed run groups.

Sebulon.7683:

Oh my God, I’ve farmed like crazy this week, I now have 5 unopened crates in my inventory… What I want is either the sexy mini or a weapon ticket, looks like I won’t be getting either with those drop rates…

deep sigh

But… that’s not how probability works. Every crate you open has the same chance of dropping a ticket whether you open 1 or 100. Someone could open 10000 crates and still get ZERO tickets. It’s not like Anet “loads” the probability the more chests you open. So you could be lucky and get 5 tickets out of 5 crates! Just remember to sacrifice a karka to the god of RNG (I believe that falls under Balthazaar’s domain if you are human but you can skip this step if you are a Charr), spin around 10 times chanting “nomonomonomo I want some omo”, toss salt over your left shoulder then jump into the pit of lava in the Karka Hive while wearing the goggling while screaming on map chat “THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!!” and open the crates while you are dead. I hear it boosts your chances of getting the skins by a significant margin!

I opened 5 crates so far, 2 dropped from mobs. 3 I bought after conversing about 15g into gems. I got nothing worth mentioning. I don’t really mind, I just wanted to “take a punt”. I am really not interested in the new skins. I bought the 3 chests when I had only had one crate drop for me and I wanted to open a few more. I will continue farming karka for a little while longer. Mostly because I still need 125 more karka shells and 75 more flowers. Probably won’t buy any more crates. Don’t have the gold to spare and I blew my cash to gem budget chasing the fused skins (which I really, desperately wanted). If I get one of the new skin tickets… I guess I could tranmute my necro’s dagger… or get my thief’s a sword… Or maybe I’ll just reskin my Guardian’s Mystic Claymore and give her that creepy, creepy eye GS!

Basically, if I get skin I’ll find uses for it but I don’t care enough to invest money into it or additional time. I.e. I won’t farm longer then I need to after getting the karka shells and flowers I need to upgrade the tenticle backpack.

Deekers.2031:

I think it would be nice if they would provide other ways to get it (like turn in 250 karka shells for example, or have it available for gold, or from the gem store, or maybe even have it not be bound so people could sell them, i’m sure people don’t want a flower backpiece) Some of us really like that thing and would want more than one anyways.

Unfortunately, if they can’t undelete your character, you are screwed, but apparently they only restore characters if you were hacked.

I know it is not the same thing at all, and so sorry to hear about this problem, but maybe your ranger would like having a quiver backpiece, available for gems in the black lion store, or how about a killer whale quaggan which are really cute. Or the tentacle thing, which personally I find really ugly and disturbing looking, but with the right colorscheme and outfit it works and looks pretty cool.

I have two sylvari character but only one Fervid censer which my ranger took, transmuted and thus soulbound to her! She’s now taunting my poor ele with it… my ranger is so mean! So yeah, I would totally love the chance to get a second Fervid censer.

Starscream.6498:

Should allow transmutation along with this. I really don’t want the apothecary stats, although I have it on my human Ele just because it’s so nice :x

??? I don’t understand what you mean. My transmuted my flower to be an ascended beserker flower!

Of course you can’t transmute the tentacle because then you lose the ability to upgrade it via the mystic forge but you know, if you don’t like the stats, upgrading them to be better with the same stats is meh. So might as well transmute!

Treeline.3865:

Tinni.4351:

Also, Anet is not stupid and they do have data – which we don’t. Clearly they found that directly selling weapon skins (like they did during Winter’s Day) did not work and they realised that part of what motivated people to try for the special skins was their rarity. You may not like RNG but it is absolutely indisputable that RNG makes items rarer and thus more desirable as collectors items.

Try measuring player satisfaction. I’m sure they have data.

If you are going to gauge player satisfaction from this forums then you’ll get a biased sample and I am sure Anet is measuring player satisfaction.

Tekietee.5037:

Tinni.4351:

Also, Anet is not stupid and they do have data – which we don’t. Clearly they found that directly selling weapon skins (like they did during Winter’s Day) did not work]

It didnt work because those skins were absolutely ugly.
Do you see anyone using them? No. Case closed on that one.

Actually I did see people using those skins. The greatsword (it’s always the greatsword) was particularly nice. The weapons gave-off this cool white frosty light and was quite pleasing to the eye.

Overkillengine.6084:

The “rarity collector” demand by definition would not be enough to bring in the funding needed to support the current “pay to RNG for a 99+% chance to not get what you wanted” model. Because the more you sell, the less rare it is!

Rarity of a skin driving sufficient sales thus becomes a bunk argument as had been repeatedly shown in thus thread alone. Elitist collectors are a minority.

The problem is we have a large number of people with disposable income that do not fully understand how much of a toilet the RNG boxes are. Until they get burned enough I guess.

That said, I don’t mind RNG boxes dropping from content you’d likely be doing anyways, just make sure to them trade-able on the TP, it’ll help both people to collect what they want and add another highly sought gold sink.

I think there are several assumptions being made here and the biggest of which is the assumption the majority of the keys/consortium boxes whatnot are being bought using RL cash! I do not believe this to be the case. If you play guild wars enough, in-game gold will start to pile-up and there are a lot of players who have a small fortune in in-game gold. The high gold to gem exchange rate is proof that the majority of the RNG is being played with in-game gold NOT RL cash.

Also, I was not talking about hard core skin collectors and really, there aren’t any skins rare enough in Guild Wars to support elite skin collectors. I was more referring to the average player who wants to differentiate themselves from the next toon and is motivated by looks, not just stats. The important thing is that these players will not go for every skin release. They will only go for 1 out of every 10 skin releases and that is why they will not burn out.

Take myself and my guild for example. Most of us have been playing guild wars since it launched and most skin releases we did not play RNG. This was until the fused skins hit… those skins had us spending both RL cash and in-game gold on keys. Thankfully, everybody who wanted a fused skin ended-up with at least one. But it is true that a lot of us blew our cash budget for gems. However, come this release none of us really care enough about the skins to bother with the consortium chests.

There seems to be an assumption in this thread that players who buy gems (either using gold or RL cash) during one event will continue to do so every event. But the reality is very different and that is why the “burn-out” is just not there. But as I said before, Anet has the data, we only have our own experience and anecdotal evidence from our friend, family, guildies. My anecdotal evidence says that the majority are quite happy with how the skins are distributed. If yours say otherwise, that’s fine but only Anet has the real sales data and analysts pouring over not just these forums but other forums, fan sites, player blogs etc, etc to get as complete a picture as possible of the level of player satisfaction.

Celestina.2894:

Except for the fact that it can not be dyed, this would be the PERFECT back piece for my sylvari but because of it’s color scheme it does not match my sylvari (or any other sylvari I have seen) at all.

Please, allow us not only to dye this one, but all back pieces with an appearance.

Dyeable back pieces would be great! In the meantime, since I can’t dye the back item, I dyed the rest of my outfit to really bring out the flower! Besides, life is better in red!

Whether you buy keys or consortium chests is your personal business but I would like to point out that more people would NOT buy skins just because the skins were directly purchasable because the skins would become less desirables as collectors items.

True, some people would buy the skins directly because they liked the look and they might even buy multiple versions of the skins even if they were 1200 gems each, which is about 40g at current exchange rates. But it would also keep some people away because the skins would be relatively easy to obtains.

Also, Anet is not stupid and they do have data – which we don’t. Clearly they found that directly selling weapon skins (like they did during Winter’s Day) did not work and they realised that part of what motivated people to try for the special skins was their rarity. You may not like RNG but it is absolutely indisputable that RNG makes items rarer and thus more desirable as collectors items.

Or it could be that the devs wanted players to have an easily obtainable item with an infusion slot so that players maybe be more inclined to do Fractals and not be worried about hitting the Agony barrier come level 10. Especially since saving-up the 30 laurels minimum for an ascended gear is still a huge barrier for the most casual of players.

Honestly, we are back in the one place that is most closely tied with Fractals and you are wondering why the backpieces have infusion slots O.O

Also, 50 ectos, 250 shells and 100 flowers ONLY upgrades the exotic backpiece to ascended and has no application to the flower.

Lastly, I am pretty sure assigning an infusion slow or a gem slot is as simple as clicking an option in their development tool so “laziness” doesn’t come into it.

It literally gave me nightmares! I woke-up in a cold sweat after a dream where those tentacles were squeezing me to death!!!

Vayne.8563:

While in the past I’ve bought black lion keys, I’ve made the personal decision not to buy keys or chests, because I dislike the cash for RNG thing.

I’m not calling for a boycott, but I am choosing to express my personal displeasure.

Shame too. I really like the new skins..but not enough to play the RNG game for them. Maybe I’ll get one from a chest drop.

I have no problems with the Cash for RNG thing. Anet has to make money somehow but I blew my “gem” budget on trying to get Fused skin (I have one and wish I had more but meh!) + lion cub. So no consortium chests for me! But I don’t care because I am not into the new nightmare skins. Waaaaaayyyyy too creepy for me!

Shiren.9532:

Magnetron.5823:

If u guys couldn’t finish this content in the weeks they gave you, you should consider playing single player games and stop playing MMORPG’s.

You were all aware of the time-frame and had your chance. Too bad you didn’t got it.

Yeah, how dare they have lives and expect content added to a game to stay in the game.

They should have known that adding rich, enjoyable and permanent content to a game was far less valuable than…. wait. How exactly do we benefit from its removal? Oh yeah, we get pressured to play when ArenaNet wants us to play (more gem sales that way) and the world “feels like its changing” because there is no way to add permanent instanced story content with significant changes to the lore of the world without makining it temporary.

When exactly do I have to finish the personal story and kill Zhaitan before they remove that to give a sense of an evolving world? I’d really like to know because that’s a much bigger plot point than some dredge and charr forming an alliance and any game with an “evolving store” which removes content to give a sense of the story changing would need to recognise killing an elder dragon.

Next expansion! Seriously, if you are sitting on the personal story, I suggest you don’t. Because it is pretty clear Anet will actually change the world over time.

Also, I am sorry but what you are saying does not hold-up. There are 5% of people who would have done the content later but 95% of the people who didn’t bother doing the content (which was released piece-meal since January) will never get around to doing it no matter how long its around. Indeed, Molten Facility was a great short term dungeon like the Mad King’s dungeon or even Tixx but as a long term dungeon it falls very short. Only thing that would be achieved from Molten Facility lingering is contempt from familiarity and it is a dungeon way too easy to get familiar with. I understand totally what you guys are saying about RL. I spent most of the two weeks Molten Facility was around away from my computer. I was still able t do it but I won’t always. But hey, it’s an MMO and thus by definition something that doesn’t revolve around me.

Selene.9415:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Flame & Frost is the story that explains how the original permanent content evolves into the new permanent content. By its very nature, it has to be temporary.

Whether one realizes it or not, this is generally good for all of us because it gives ANet a chance to do a lot of experimentation, without forcing us to accept every idea they have. We give feedback, they tweak, and the game is better for it.

If you have time to play through it, great — you got to enjoy some of the transition. If not, well, you’re in the same boat as someone who buys the game in June — you’ll have missed out on some stuff, but still get to enjoy the best the game has to offer.

I’m sorry that some of us won’t be able to see everything the game has to offer, but I really don’t see how ANet can tell an evolving story without time-limiting some of the content.

Instances. The same way they had it in GW1 if you were a Canthan/Elonian character doing content that was Gates of Kryta or earlier (“This has already happened before your character arrived on Tyria. You are experiencing past events.” kind of thing).

Or even just like the bonus content you could buy where it put you in the shoes of key people. Remove the achievements that people were unable to get and let them play through the story in the shoes of Rox/Braham. For a small fee of course.

Removing this content completely, even for the sake of the story, is a waste of effort and incredibly limiting in my opinion. What happens when new players look back on the game?

A:“Wow, this game doesn’t have that much content for being this old”
B: “Well, actually there was more…”
A:“Really? What happened to it?”
B:“They removed it to make the game more exciting.”
A: “Well… is there a way you can access it again?”
B: “Nope.”
A: “So… it’s just gone? Forever?”
B: “Yep.”
A: “…”

This is false comparison if I ever saw one. Game came-out in August, first bit of new content we got was Halloween, that was seasonal and finished without leaving a permanent mark, especially now that the Lion Statue is back. November was Karka even and that left behind Fractals and South Cove. December was seasonal so, nothing permanent. Super Adventure Box likewise is seasonal. Living story left behind Cragstead and Hatchery and is still continuing in a new arc.

So in the last six months or so, the game has grown and changed. A new person joining now will have plenty to do. So what if they don’t get to do some of the things we got to do by playing the game in August. The stuff we have, titles, items, mark our age in the game. It’s not a bad thing.

Turkashi.4502:

Must say all 4 are pretty on your Sylvarri.
4th look more like a medium gear though
and 3rd…arah…
The gauntlet suit more with the 2nd set, imo.
But then again, side boobs win most of the time XD

I do love HOTW and was leaning toward that most. My necromancer is in full HoTW. It’s not very necro but OMG she looks wonder!

Raestloz.7134:

I don’t know how you managed to get that screenshot

But number 4 wins by virtue of being emo and awesome

Lol it is from Dredge lads. Dredge are not if not emo ^.^

Jabberwock.9014:

Why don’t you consider mixing and matching legs/chest pieces? Out of those I like HotW the best however.

Arah will have slightly more prestige but be more of a pain to get however.

I did consider mixing legs and chest and had screenshots mixing things-up but suffered mental overload and so decided to go with the four and see what feedback I got. I do love HotW.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

student-shoulders (transmuted ofcourse), HotW chest, student leggings (transmuted) and try to find a good looking hat or something.

I really want the shoulders to be CoF and I want keep the stone-eye I started with.

Tranc.6780:

Except it generally costs money for museums to keep a special exhibit open, and the exhibit is temporary because the artifacts need to be moved to another location so a different museum can host them. These reasons are completely irrelevant to why the new dungeon must be removed.

For those who want a changing experience, if the dungeon were persistent simply stop playing it and your world will be the same as if it had been removed. On the other hand, for those who have college exams, or are on vacation, on business trips, have family in town, are getting married, or giving birth, etc. keeping the temporary content around makes all the difference.

-Tranc

But there is no proof that you or the OP will do the content next month if you are not doing it this month. As Jamais vu.5284 put it, temporary content gets people to log on and actually do the content while it can be done.

Guild Wars has an “end point” – the personal story missions. Once you have reached the end of the personal story mission you can, in theory, leave your character and not lose out on much. If you leave your character once they are full exotic, you really are “done”. Right now, the only penalty for not logging on everyday is loss of Laurels and thus loss of access to ascended gear. But if you already have 6 ascended gear, that’s not a penalty that applies to you either.

So the ONLY reason for you to log on this month is the limited time content. Yes there will be content I miss because I have something more important on during whatever time the content is on. But that’s life! However I assure if that the devs know what they are doing and the reason they are doing timed content is because they know the timed content will increase connectivity for the month and do not kid yourself, while some of the people would indeed to the content later if they could although they can’t do it immediately, the fast majority who cannot find the time this month, will not find the time next month or the month after that. Because something will always come-up!

Keeping the content around will not increase the number of people who do the content. It would actually decrease the number of people who do the content because the motivation to experience it will not be there.

To continue with the museum analogue, there are many people who live in London but who have never been to the British museum. It’s not that they do not want to or are not interested it is that they can never find the time or when deciding what to do on a weekend, they might always seem to decide on something else. However, if a exhibit came that they really wanted to see, it would motivate them to not put off the visit.

Likewise, JC Penny experimented with a no coupon, non-inflated pricing strategy but it failed because without the motivation of catching a sale, people were not purchasing NOW and putting it off for later AND there was no evidence they were buying it later. This also applies to GW, OP cannot do the dungeon now because he has other things on. Who is to say he’ll ever have enough time, especially if Anet keeps adding content to the game. Would he really go back and do this dungeon when with this finite leisure time he can do something new? I don’t think so.

Xalugami.2096:

I would love to know this too. All these dungeons are fantastic compared to the boring regular ones full of HP sponges.

I recall them mentioning that “temporary content will remain temporary to make it special”. That’s kinda like the same as filling up a museum with all these super unique artifacts, opening it to the public for a week, then setting it ablaze and making sure no one new ever gets to see it again until the grand re-opening where it’s most likely a whole new experience. That’s a lot of wasted stuff.

Except that museums too have temporary exhibits that are often better or just more interesting then the normal exhibits. I mean, right now the British Museum is running the temporary exhibit “Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum” until the September 29th but I am pretty booked-up and apparently I have to book in advance and can’t just decide on a weekend to go see it. So am I supposed to ask the British Museum to make this exhibit permanent?

Special dungeons are temporary exhibits in a museum. Enjoy them while you can and if you can’t… well we all have to make choices and our choices usually mean we miss out on X in order to enjoy Y.

ophidic.1279:

VKP Butcher.2751:

Firefly.5982:

You were probably unlucky with your team setup or were with people, who had never done it before. Once you know the mechanics, it is actually really easy. The boss fight is still challenging, but once you are on top of jumping waves and dodging red circles it really is not that difficult. Maybe try looking for an experienced group!

Pretty much this. Only times I’ve had pugs fail is when no one communicates or cooperates. Then people start getting frustrated and bail and it’s all downhill. Other end of the spectrum it’s smooth as butter…even the boss.

Yeah this is the problem with all this forced dungeon nonsense.

I can’t even learn the patterns in the normal dungeons because I either have to waste my evening standing around, or wiping.

facepalm No one is forcing you. Don’t want to do the dungeon, don’t do the dungeon. But if you want the gauntlet, go earn it like the rest of us!

First time I did the run the dungeon, within hours of it coming out , I started on level 72 thief in a party with 2 warriors, 1 ele and another thief. We had deaths in the first room. Got the message, loaded level 80 guardian. Run went much better but we were all learning so had bumps.

Second time, again started on thief but switched to level 80 Necro mid way when I and another member died during Effigie. No more deaths and got the two bosses down quickly and in the first go.

Third time, was on engineer and we got to the end fairly smoothly but had some difficulty with the bosses but did eventually get them too.

I think the final bosses are the only really challenging bit of the dungeon. It is not an easy dungeon and its not super hard either. I think its doable and very enjoyable.

Benji.9203:

What gloves are those o-O?

Those are the Fused Gauntlets that everybody who completes the Living Story achievements can get. It can be obtained now as it doesn’t required the grand finally!

Mik Hell.8206:

N3 is screaming “I’m a killer with class”

That’s my ele! Only problem is I have to go back into Arah… sigh Why is Arah so bland!

rasmataz.2309:

I personally like the mix of #2 and #4 for your ele. The bulky industrial look of the gauntlets match well with 2/4, both of which show the CoF boots really well.

Hope you post what a picture on what you’ve decided.

Thanks! I will!

MarkusParkus.8467:

1 looks good.. apart from those shoulders.

Unfortunately, I really want those shoulders! They just so scream “ele” to me.

Hi guys,
I decided that once my ele hits level 80, she’ll be the one to get the fused gauntlets. I had already decided to get her the CoF shoulders and I am also leaning towards the CoF boots. But what about chest and pants!

I narrowed it down to CoE, SE, Arah or HOTW chest and pants and settled on 4 different looks that are shown in the attached picture. Which one do you guys like? Help me out here!

PS. The colours will change. I just picked a neutral shade to preview the armours in.