Guild Wars 2

Viking Jorun.5413:

The ‘guaranteed reward chest’ from world events is character bound, so I’m going to assume the dungeons will be the same way.

I think they are account bound.

Vol.5241:

Kimhyuna.1035:

Vol.5241:

Well it’s your fault for putting your eggs in one basket. Or in other words, creating alts for the sole purpose of running the same dungeon multiple times.

If you love your alts so much, just run them on different paths depending on the need.

Wait what, but anet told us we could play the game the way we want to. There are people in this world that create alts for the purpose of reward, not everyone has holy intentions.

You can throw out that line as much as you want, but there will always be different groups of players that get shafted due to conflicting desires.

Sure, but it does seem like more often that not the people who get shafted are the ones with Alts. Now that it may be that they are shafting everyone and if you have 5 alts you feel it 5 times as much.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I find I have a foot in both camps, and from other posts you’ve probably noted this.

Yes, I hold to each character is its own entity. So things like map exploration, quests, story missions, etc are a requirement of ‘growing’ that character. It is part of the leveling process.

On the other hand, each character is part of a single account, and some things do require account binding. Titles, for example. I feel this is much improved over having to gring the same title on ever char to have it on ever char in GW1. Can you imagine how unfun it would be to do some of the LS achieves on multiple characters?

In regards to the dungeons, I think a balance between alt friendly and account bound needs to be found. I don’t feel its right to punish someone that cant afford to have a dozen alts or doesn’t have the time in the evening to run that many, while the person that does and gets to play 8+ hours a day gets all the goodies. I was one of those people that got all the goodies in GW1 because I was on 10+ hours a day, and I had 44 characters maxed out with which to alt swap and farm events and such, and even then I really didn’t feel it was right, or fair. I justified it by telling myself ‘well, Im doing it for my guildies’ and I did share with my guildies, but I always had way more than I needed to simply share with them, and I profited off it. While there is nothing wrong with making a profit, being able to do it in obscene amounts (which was exactly what I did, and could happen here) is broken.

I agree there needs to be a balance. But I don’t think the balance is as simple as rewards are account bound while work is character bound (which seems to be the way things are going.) (and yes, parts of this game are work, pure drudgery)

I understand the fear that people with one “main” would create dummy accounts to farm the reward, but that’s just limiting the enjoyment of people who play the game with alts because some other people abuse the system.

They could do a lot of things to alleviate this problem. Dyes could be account bound (people with one main don’t die their throwaway alts anyway.) Ascended gear could have been account bound (there would still be a convenience factor associated with multiple sets, but you wouldn’t have to be under-geared. Cultural armor could have been skins that you unlock instead of pieces you buy. Etc…

Instead, sometimes it feels like ANet is farming me.

Edit: Is it also not fair to punish someone who spent the time and effort leveling and gearing up a stable of characters. Also, character slots can be purchased with in game gold so there really isn’t an economic argument.

Edit2: People have gotten rich exploiting the TP, but ANet hasn’t done anything about it. There are no caps on trades per day, no cooldown period between buying and selling. Really nothing at all to cut into the profits of the people who are willing to put in the time and effort into the TP. Why treat dungeons differently?

Edit 3: (Sorry can’t stop) Also, if you play this game 10 hours per day over an extended period of time I would expect you to be obscenely wealthy. In fact, I’d see it as a problem if you weren’t.

Edit 4: Just so my position is clear. I actually want almost EVERYTHING to be account bound. In my view, I am one person playing one game. Whether or not I use 1 character slot out of the 5 I get for signing up or 25 that I purchase, I am still me. Still the same human. Every times an alt says “I’ve never been here before” I think “I have”

A couple of points:

First, I think whether or not any given person sucumbs to the skinner box reward system, it’s objectively there. So you can’t really say it’s a box of your own making. ANet set the rules and constructed the box. The only reason to construct such a box it because they want people to obsessively try for the reward.

Second, adding ascended gear makes exotic gear no longer BIS. The minute they added it everyone slipped from having BIS gear to not having BIS gear. Every laurel you get makes up some of the ground. While you are not falling further behind every day you don’t get a laurel you are also not progressing back to where you were before this gear was introduced.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Considering ‘account based’ is the trend, I am going to assume it is account based, and I am ok with that. IMHO I dont think you should be able to farm the guaranteed reward by just swapping characters. Sort of puts those that don’t have a bunch of characters at a disadvantage (and I do have several so, Im not just thinking of me here). Making it account based puts everyone on a level playing field for acquisition.

To me this raises an interesting point. Frequently, whenever people complain about things being soul bound / rediscovering waypoints / gearing up alts / etc. People say something to the effect of each character is unique and must be developed separately. However, if someone complains about rewards that are account bound people say, well it’s still your account. You shouldn’t get more rewards by just swapping toons.

Either viewpoint is fine, but honestly, can we stick to one. Either each toon is a totally separate and independent character, in which case daily rewards should be character bound or each toon is just an avatar that the player puts on in which case everything should be account bound.

This “kitten alts no matter what” approach that ANet and the community seems to adopt is really annoying.

Thanks. I spend an hour on a calculator trying to figure that out.

Whether or not the OP should have known better (which now you do). I agree that the one thing that ANET should make feel worthwhile is purchases with Gems.

After all Gem purchases with Cash are the thing that ANet is counting on to keep them afloat. As it stands there is very little in the gem store that isn’t better purchased with gold. That’s stupid.

Gem purchases should be a comparable way to get those items. If something sells for 40g on the TP it should cost about 1700 gems to get it through the gem store.

However, the simple fact is that you are ALWAYS better off trading gems to gold and buying off the TP.

skcamow.3527:

…

• Gear-wise, there’s been great advice given. Personally I would establish a goal for where you’d like to be and then gear up accordingly. For your build/play style, I would recommend 3,000 attack, 2,400 armor, 18-20K health, 50% crit chance, 75% crit dmg. The rest of the stats don’t matter as much. These stats are easily attainable with the options we have, and I believe it’ll help balance your damage while getting that survivor achievement.
  …

I confess that I’m an idiot, but I can’t get those values. Can you tell me how you do it?

zeus.2375:

Just because you hate it? why do you hate it? I’m not trolling but honestly want to know. Is it causing an issue?

Only in so far as you see a chest and get a little excited. Then all hope is dashed.

Great advice from everyone. Here are my 2 cents.

Yes, compounding power boosts shatter damage.

I’ve never used the signet of midnight, but you don’t have blink. I always use blink in every build. Especially useful if you try WvW (for example, decoy + blink = one get out of jail free card).

Rending shatter can be really good, but so is greatsword training. Try both and see which you prefer.

Elric, is this aspirational, or do you have the ascended gear yet? The reason I ask is that ascended gear is time gated, so I don’t want to monkey with it if you already have it.

Edit: I notice that all of you sigils have a cooldown. As all sigils share a common cooldown (one won’t trigger if another is cooling down) you are losing a lot of functionality. You can generally have a “on weapon swap” on each set as the cooldown is generally longer than the swap cooldown, but if you either trigger fire or swiftness you won’t get the hydromancy effect.

I agree with Vayne. I recently left TC because of the state of WvW. (Queue times, zerg fighting, etc…)

TC is also right on the border of being full. I suspect that if TC is ever consistently full people will decide that there’s a limit to how far TC will go in WvW (because of the strong PvE RP community that does not WvW) and jump off the bandwagon.

I think it depends on what you want. Here is my recent experiences (over the past month) in T2, some wait times all the time during NA prime time, long wait times for EB lots of Zerg fights (although there is at least one awesome counter-zerg guild on TC).

In T6, almost always outmanned. Never a queue. Roaming groups of thieves who do a coordinated gank of solo players. Compared to T2 LOTS of thieves. People still run in zergs but a smaller zerg. Smaller numbers makes siege even more deadly.

In T4, I’ve only been there for the weekend but it seems to be some zergs some small groups. Occassional outmanned buffs on the borderlands. Rarely a queue.

If you are using sigils of battle do not get anything else that has an internal cooldown. This means on crit or other weapon swap sigils. You will lose the benefit of the staff swap as cooldowns are shared.

For example, suppose you add the sigil of earth to the mainhand. This applies bleeds with an internal 2 second cooldown. If you have a good crit rate more often than not you will crit and cause bleeds shortly after the cooldown ends. Therefore most of the time you will not get the might when you swap to the staff.

Instead, take a kill stacking or flat bonus sigil.

For runes, assuming you are leaning toward power / crit damage, some good choices are centaur, air, hoelbrak, melandru, and ruby orbs.

Vayne.8563:

Erasculio.2914:

Trakarg.2095:

So, I wonder, why did Arenanet implement legendaries in the way they did? They don’t want us to grind, so why make us grind? Why not make legendaries have legendary, lore-rich quests that involve difficult content? Oh, right, because Anet can’t design such things due to laziness, unwillingness, or simply an inability to design meaningful content in a game without the trinity.

Kinda. If you watch the Manifesto, it’s there clear as day – “We don’t want players to grind. No one enjoys it”. The issue is that Legendaries were rushed – a lot of preview articles during Beta had a list of items needed for the Legendaries, and it was significantly less grindy than it is today (the Gift of Fortune did not exist, for example).

There was clearly a moment during the later stages of development when ArenaNet decided to add more grind to the game. The change to Legendaries, turning dyes from account-bound to character-bound, requiring more tokens per armor piece in dungeons… All of those point to a huge philosophy shift from what was stated in the Manifesto, and from what ArenaNet had originally told us what the game would be.

If you watch the entire manifesto instead of focusing on two lines, you’d see the TYPE of grind being referred to, having nothing to do with legendaries. I keep telling you you’re talking the sentence out of context, but you keep doing it.

Repeating a falsehood over and over doesn’t make it a truth.

The first part of the statement is “In most games there’s this annoying grind that you have to get to to get to the fun stuff”

Nothing to do with gear, nothing to do with legendaries….it’s to do with not being able to do big battles until you get to max level in most games. Not only is it clear from the Manifesto, but Anet’s verified it after the fact quite a few times.

Why spread falsehood with the truth is so obvious?

I have always supported the idea that grind for skins is fine. Skins don’t matter. There’s some statement somewhere by one of the ANet guys that says something like if you want to grind you should get a cosmetic benefit. No problem.

But once Legendaries offer increased functionality (guaranteed BIS, you can change it out of combat from zerkers to PVT to rampagers or rabid, etc…) then I think there’s a reasonable argument that ANet has turned is back on the spirit of the manifesto if not the letter.

One of my biggest criticisms of ANet is they make general statements which they allow us to interpret as we wish. They reap the benefit of that interpretation and then later, when they implement something that looks nothing like what they allowed us to believe, people come on the forums saying “they never said that.”

Maybe they didn’t, but they sure were willing to take money from people who thought they did.

I also question whether the title of "The best MMO " is really that great a title. It’s like saying the best Zynga game.

This is probably the best MMO out there, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be better. When something makes you want to scream in frustration, first it’s not good for you, and second, you are actually doing ANet a favor by letting them know.

After all, otherwise you eventually post an I Quit post that ends up in the trash.

I know everyone on the forums is quick to tell people to leave and never come back “maybe this isn’t the game for you” is a popular post. But if everyone who had issues with the game left there would be a very very thin population. Instead, some of us try to work within the system, posting our thoughts and recommendations, instead of quitting in a huff.

That said, Thank you Anet for making a really good game. Please make it better. (And try not to make it worse)

Honestly, for me this game is too frustrating for me to give it an unqualified endorsement. Everytime I want to change out a rune set or a sigil and I have to either destroy the armor / weapon with a black lion kit(gem store) or transmute the weapon/armor into a blue (gem store) because this particular item can’t be salvaged and then salvage the armor / weapon with a black lion kit (gem store) I want to scream.

And even if I were willing to do all that, can’t because I can’t get a full set of rabid armor unless you have badges of honor (which I spent the last time I wanted to do this) or karma (ditto) or lots of gold (gem store).

@Pyro
Absolutely, the only thing that makes the celestial gear worthwhile at all is if you are interested in maximizing crit damage while having some defense. This is only because they didn’t reduce (and in some cases increased) the amount of critical damage for celestial gear. Everything else is decreased substantially.

For example, even if you are interested in 5 of the other stats, you are still better off not getting celestial.

@Ryuujin
Yeah, I was analyzing this outside of all zerker all the time approach. What actually triggered it was I was trying to figure out if I could improve on the stats that Osicat uses in the Shattercat heavy 3.0 build.

Plus the analysis did assume that healing power and condition damage are worthless.

Wothor.4781:

I’ve been using 8 for crit damage iirc, derived from comparing the celestial trinkets. However, the results are comparable.
Celestial I too found to be particular interesting in the reverse order for gear one used to rate the crit damage roi before:
Shoulder, Hands, Foot
Chest
Leg, Head
-> Reverse
as in where Std/with crit looks particular bad versus Std in your table.

However, I guess once I made my mind up, my Ele might be priority for them

8 pts / crit may be a better value to use. The interesting this about the crit is that the more you remove the lower the point value. 10.4 only really applies if you are going full zerker. If you, for example, remove the legs the value drops.

I think the game is really good, but this wasn’t the best time for this kind of promotion. Right now the game is in a state of flux. Nobody really knows which way it’s going to turn.

The living story has been alternately terrific and terrible. The gear progression is either going to be difficult, easy, enough, not enough, too much. Etc…

It’s hard to rally the troops when no one knows what’s going to happen.

So Why is this useful
I don’t know for sure, I’m still thinking about it.

I think it shows that as long as your build desires those 5 stats (power, precision, crit, vitality, and toughness) then you should start with celestial helm, shoulders, gloves, and boots as also provide more total “points”. Chest, Legs, and Weapons provide better value that the crit damage varieties (beserkers, valkyrie, and cavalier) but are worse than equipping other stat varieties. For ascended accessories, celestial is always inferior.

Note: in some cases the differences are minor. You only lose 2.6 “useful points” in the chestpiece in exchange for 45 points of condition damage and 45 points of healing. For legs you lose 1.4 “useful” points in exchange for 30 points of condition damage and healing.

Second Note: As soon as you don’t want the 5 stats (for example, you think you have enough vitality) celestial gear is always inferior to straight stats.

People usually say that Celestial gear is useless because you “waste” points. I wasn’t sure if that was true, so I came up with a way of measuring the effectiveness of celestial gear in a built that is interested in multiple stats. I’m hoping you all can help me refine my thinking.

Valuing Critical Damage Points

Before I did anything else, I needed to figure out how to value the critical damage % points. I added up (using ascended gear) the number of major / minor / and crit damage points you get from each piece of gear. I assumed 1 helm, 1 shoulders, 1 chest, 1 gloves, 1 legs, 1 boot, 1 backpiece, 2 rings, 2 trinkets, 1 amulet, and 2 1 handed weapons.

Adding them up I got 1059 major points, 728 minor points, and 70 points in crit. Dividing 728 by 70, I determined to value each crit point as 10.4 points.

Useful Points
Then I computed a total number of “useful points” granted by different gear. I assumed that “useful points” are points that fall into one of these areas: Power, Precision, Crit Damage, Toughness, and Vitality. I pretending that Condition Damage, Healing, and Magic Find have no value.

Then I computed a total number of points granted for each piece of gear. The results below show the point total for using the “standard” gear without crit, “standard” gear with crit, and celestial.

Gear            Std    Std w/ crit   Celestial
Helm              109       97.8          111.2
Shoulders       80       76.8           80.8
Chest              245       225           242.4
Gloves             80       76.8           80.8
Legs                163      146.2          161.6
Boots               80       76.8            80.8
BackPiece      126      143            ----- 
Ring                 239      254.2          234.4
Trinket            211      223.8          204
Amulet           296      304.6          288.8
1 H Weapon    218      206            212
2 H Weapon    435     400.6          420

All of this is my opinion, so feel free to disagree.

I prefer the X domination trait (greatsword training), to III (empowered illusion).

Generally, I find that the Phantasmal Warden does less damage, its stationary, people can move away from it. So most of your phantasm damage is going to come from your Phantasmal Beserker.

If you take the X trait in domination, you get a zerker every 12 seconds (down from 16.) This means you get to spawn one 5 times for every 4 times without it. That’s a 25% increase in expected damage (cause it’s up more often) which beats the 15% for empowered illusions.

I’m not sure if your phantasm inherits your stat gain with the greatsword, but I think so. If so, you’ll get a 5% of the damage back from the 50 points of power.

You will also be able to use mirror blade every 4.75 seconds instead of every 6.5 seconds. More illusions means more clones out for shatters which means more damage.

Edit: I have to test it out, but I suspect you may get more damage out of dropping mental torment and taking empowered illusion as the adept trait.

It’s always sad to see a good build nerfed into oblivion.

Glamour Mesmer and now Immortal Mesmer.

cesmode.4257:

TooBz.3065:

cesmode.4257:

I know some people arent done with their story, but we are almost a year into the game. Id guess a good majority of the playerbase has completed the main story with at least one character. Time to continue it IMO, and theres been no whisper of doing so.

People who haven’t completed their story and have been playing for a long time have probably won’t finish. In 8 months I have not completed my “personal story” once, and I have no intention of doing so unless they “force” me to. (By force I mean make the reward so compelling that I do it even though I don’t like it.)

And that is completely fine. There are many people that have completed theirs in the last 11 months, some people have done it on several characters. We are anxious to continue it. So by adding more personal story, it wouldnt impact people like you who have no interest in it, and thats fine.

Its just a bit unnerving to realize that they havent even whispered anything about this when it was such a large part of the leveling process, at least for most people.

I agree. To clarify, I was trying to support your post. I agree that they should continue the story for those who are interested in it. People who haven’t done it yet probably wont.

Edit: updated my original post so it’s no longer ambiguous.

I’m kind of in an odd place with my characters. I like the characters in terms of appearance and class, but I am almost eternally dissatisfied with their build. I always want to try out something new. The more I play a character the more I want to tinker with it.

cesmode.4257:

I know some people arent done with their story, but we are almost a year into the game. Id guess a good majority of the playerbase has completed the main story with at least one character. Time to continue it IMO, and theres been no whisper of doing so.

People who haven’t completed their story and have been playing for a long time have probably won’t finish. In 8 months I have not completed my “personal story” once, and I have no intention of doing so unless they “force” me to. (By force I mean make the reward so compelling that I do it even though I don’t like it.)

Edit: +1 to cesmode, continuing the story is a great idea.

I think this is a general problem with the story. They wanted people to feel like a hero so that’s the way it started. (It’s also ridiculous that you choose the course of action with the factions standing around), could have been done a little better. Like the norn story where you take the warrior or the mage (I think, I don’t remember).

As the story progresses it’s clear that the lore can’t support the character being the actual hero so they introduce Tra—- lets call him leaf boy. And leaf boy becomes the hero with you doing all the heavy lifting.

I think the story would have made more sense (but not necessarily been better) if you were always a cog. You start out with an impressive, but not ridiculous career as a grunt, having grunt adventures, maybe you stumble on some information about the risen and get invited into the order. (Different races and different stories could have found different clues that together paint a clear picture).

The end of the story should have been that you work toward a piece of bringing Zhitan down. Again, each race or faction could play a different role. Leaf boy could have been a coordinator. Cuts scenes could have shown him as an actual leader, given directives to the different race / faction and you carry out your part.

But that would have required a lot more story and would have been hard to pull off. It’s easy to criticize, it’s hard to create.

Generally the human areas (Queensdale, Gerredan Fields, Kessex Hills, etc…) are fairly well populated.

I see many less people in the Charr and Norn areas. So if you play one of those classes that may be what’s going on.

Never tried it. I was going to do it once, but I don’t know how to get started. I started to ask on the forums, but then saw some posts about people kittening about poor play and newbies in their queue. I deleted the post and never looked back.

Vol.5241:

You know I could understand your concerns if Anet kept releasing armors.

But they told us that this would be the last tier of armor. We all know they wanted to release ascended at release but couldn’t. Ascended is the gap between exotics and legendaries.

If you refuse to believe in Anet then unfortunately you should probably just move on.

That’s not what I said at all. This is independent of whether or not ANet will continue to release more sets. The question is whether anyone else feels in suspended animation based on the fact that we know a new set is coming out before the end of the year.

I simple “no… you’re nuts” would suffice. In fact that’s what I’m hoping most people would say. Sometimes I do stupid things for the wrong reasons.

Yeah, my point wasn’t really complaining about ascended gear except to question the wisdom of announcing it before its out. I do complain about it elsewhere and rather vehemently I admit.

It was more that I recognized that last night I stopped gearing up my character, I didn’t want to sell crafting materials I gathered, etc…. In other words I became a hoarder. Part of my brain realizes that I’m probably behaving irrationally and I wanted to do a sanity check.

I doubt GW2 has run it’s course for me. The last time I uninstalled the game it lasted about 2 days before I was back.

Hey, I was just wondering if anyone else was feeling this way. It’s weird because I spend most of my time gearing up alts with different gear sets / builds. Suddenly I’m very reluctant to use up any ectos as all.

I don’t even want to use dungeon tokens because maybe they will be used.

Or is this my own pathology and I should just get over it?

Caedmon.6798:

TooBz.3065:

Caedmon.6798:

I just..how do you even buy the Wrong amulet ? YOur looking at the screen,you make a decision,you know they cost alot…and you still manage to click on the wrong item..i just dont get it…

People occasionally make mistakes, even about expensive things.

Hence,you should be carefull when clicking,and looking at your screen..instead of randomly clicking without bothering to look hoping you pick the right item..You cannot expect anet to give everyone another amulet of their choise because they are to blind to pick the wrong one ( sry if it came out harsh,i dont mean it like that..)
For instance,many people would like another amulet instead of the one they picked now,so expect 500 ppl sending tickets all claming they picked the wrong item,while they didn;t but they just want other stats.Do you see what a waste of time this will be for anet ?

Tbh,i would like to have new stats on my amulet aswell,shall i create a thread claiming the same thing the OP did … ?

Nope, I agree people need to be careful. I did say that Anet probably wouldn’t do anything. Some other games have systems where you can sell an item back for a short period of time, or otherwise salvage something out of a mistake.

Ascended gear doesn’t really give you any options, which is unfortunate. But, if you have a reasonable position, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Caedmon.6798:

I just..how do you even buy the Wrong amulet ? YOur looking at the screen,you make a decision,you know they cost alot…and you still manage to click on the wrong item..i just dont get it…

People occasionally make mistakes, even about expensive things.

Yeah, I think that the fact that ascended armor and weapons is right around the corner killed he market for exotic recipes. Especially since we don’t know that the charged quartz crystals won’t be necessary / useful in crafting ascended gear.

Astral Projections.7320:

TooBz.3065:

So sometimes when I need / want to speak with someone briefly about something, I add them to my friends list, because it avoids mistyping in whisper.

Does that make me a follower of them?

Yes, until you remove their name or until they add you as a friend also.

Yikes, that’s creepy. Time to clean up my list.

So sometimes when I need / want to speak with someone briefly about something, I add them to my friends list, because it avoids mistyping in whisper.

Does that make me a follower of them?

You can create a support ticket and ask for the laurels to be refunded, they have apparently done it for people who were confused about the label “unique”.

However, in general they will not correct player mistakes.

In general, I think the rate of earning gold is fine.

I think the problem is that drops are too scarce and that there are some items, like the T3 cultural items which are ridiculously expensive compared to the rest of the economy.

Smith.1826:

kossman.8206:

So tired of reading all the kittening about.. how this sucks.. or I want this… Or do this.. Or do that…. Can’t you people appreciate the fact that your playing the best MMO out there?

I can understand the fact that you want them to excel….

But really?

Can you people say thanks? Is it that flippin hard?

Just Sayin…..

That is all….

It’s far from wrong for a customer to express disappointment or concern over his purchase. There is a very right way of expressing it, though, and sadly most have a hard time with it.

I think, in this case, the customer (us) have a greater right to express disappointment and concern about the direction of the game, because, for many of us, the cost is ongoing.

ArenaNet has received about 75% of my gaming dollar since I started playing in October. Assuming that ArenaNet like my continued support and wants to continue to receive the vast majority of my gaming budget it’s more than reasonable for me to discuss things that I see as concerning. Things that, if left unchecked, I believe will cause me to take my business elsewhere.

Otherwise, if no one provides feedback, someday ArenaNet may be left with a lot less income and wondering where all the people went.

That said, most of the game is awesome. The parts that aren’t, I understand why they aren’t even if I disagree.

tl;dr: This isn’t a book I purchased, a movie, or even a stand alone game, even without a subscription I have an ongoing consumer relationship with ANet; I give then a semi-regular income and consequently I am entitled to provide feedback and critique.

I also think this is a good idea, especially with the coming new ascended gear. Personally, I want to consolidate my stuff one one character that I will play going forward.

I use this http://gaming.logitech.com/en-us/product/g600-mmo-gaming-mouse

I have no problem with working toward something if the process is rewarding in other ways. For example, leveling is ok. Getting to the end of single player games is ok. Getting dungeon armor is ok. Unlocking skills is ok. Heck, crafting firebringer was… well terrible, but anyway.

I have a problem when something takes a long time to get and the process is stupid and boring. “Whooo forge 25 crystals once a day into a supercrystal. Look at that cool animation, I could watch this once a day for the next 30 days or so.”

Hating the time gating on the crystals is not an “entitled” or “instant gratification” thing. It’s a don’t waste my kitten time thing.

I think you are almost always better off trading gems for gold and buying what you want off the TP. A few people get lucky, but I’ve never had a drop from any RNG thing from the store that was worth more on the TP than I spend in Gems to acquire it.

MMO’s in general are known for this kind of stuff.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/intrinsic-or-extrinsic

mesme.5028:

Draknar.5748:

The only ones asking for zerker builds are trying to do speed runs. If you want to do speed runs then by all means zerker is the way to go (assuming you are a decent player, otherwise you are a liability for when the content starts to become difficult).

If you want to do dungeons for the fun of it, then it makes absolutely no difference what your build is and any intelligent player knows that.

It’s hard to argue with the efficiency of a zerker build when doing speed runs.

I just hate playing games like work so I just ignore those groups. Consequently the zerker build people tend to want to stick together. I would just steer clear of them since they don’t want to play with anyone that doesn’t have a cookie cutter build like them anyway.

Honestly, just join an active guild and do guild runs or just make sure you aren’t joining a group that is looking for speed running. Leave the speed runs for speedrunners. That way everyone wins.

I play zerk warrior, im happy to group with anyone, thou that said if i group with say someone in magic find etc i get huge agro as they don’t have the damage to share it, then i have to play 200% better whilst others have an easy time, i don’t complain it’s my choice of play after all.

I think this is perhaps another reason zerks do not like to play with anyone other than zerk, well that and speed runs.

Actually, i had a similar experience when I first got my warrior up to 80, but in a slightly different way. I was running a full set of knights gear with soldiers runes for WvW. I entered a dungeon with a bunch of zerkers and EVERYTHING zeroed in on me. I went down in about 3 seconds.

Yes, under the current meta bezerker gear is the “best” option for PvE content.

In general, raw damage trumps anything else.

Trash mobs are easily dispatched so there is no reason to CC them. Although I’ve had decent success with a S/D thief’s stuns on silver mobs. Bosses generally have defiant, so you practically speaking cannot CC them.

And condition damage is pretty bad. At the maximum 25 stacks of bleeds do about 110 pts / bleed / second, or 2750 per second. Most zerker builds can double that against most opponents (although i don’t have the timing and haven’t stopwatched it.) You would need to stack a massive amount of conditions in order to match the damage output of a zerker.

One way ANet would adjust for this is to increase the armor of some monsters (since condition damage bypasses armor) but so far it’s all zerker all the time.

I think it’s a test to see how far out they can stretch the carrot and we’ll still pursue it. “Yep, if we make them take all their mining daily for a day and turn it into 1 T6 material 10.8% of the population continued to do it. Let’s try 10 days for ascended gear….”

Edit: So far it all seems to be working, we (collectively, not saying anything about the activities of anyone in particular) create our charged crystals, buy keys from the gem shop, etc… However, I think when it turns it will turn hard. They’ll eventually cross a threshold where it won’t be worth it. Or another game will come along that offers rewards on a better time table.

Ok, then an addedum to the Karma stuff. You can use Karma to get temple armor http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armageddon_armor

Dungeon Armor is also available only in different stat combinations, for example, the crucible of eternity armor only comes in Beserker’s, Rampager’s, and Traveler’s stats. If you’re confused about stats and prefixes they explain it here.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker%27s#Triple_attribute

Are you pre-level 80.

Karma is earned by doing good stuff for others. Completing hearts, events, etc. You also get jugs of liquid karma by completing your daily and monthly achievements. The amount of Karma you get from these jugs scales based one your level, so if you get any save them for level 80. Karma can be exchanged for weapons and gear at karma vendors, but generally I recommend saving your karma until you get to level 80.

Copper / Silver / Gold can be used to buy weapons and armor from vendors but DON’T. White colored stuff is trash and you can usually buy better equipment through the trading post. You can access the TP by hitting the ‘O’ key. Search for what you want and you’ll see other people have offered it for sale. If it looks expensive you can place a buy order.

Dungeon tokens are earned by running dungeons. The dungeon tokens can be used to buy rare / exotic armor and exotic weapons from vendors in Lion’s Arch. Each dungeon has its own tokens and its own vendor.

Badges of Honor are earned from doing different stuff in WvW. They are mostly drops from killing other players or certain NPC bosses. They can be exchanged for weapons and armor in the WvW maps.

Laurels are a time gated mechanism that are granted upon completion of the daily and monthly. They can be used for buying ascended stuff from a laurel vendor.

Fractal Relics are like dungeon tokens earned for completing fractals. Pristine Fractal Relics are earned once per day for completing different fractals even numbered in ranges (I don’t run fractals but I think it’s levels 10-18, 20-28, etc…) They can be exchanged for Ascended Rings.

Is there something I’m forgetting?