Guild Wars 2

Hellkaiser.6025:

Also, I don’t think alts are the answer… sorry but if the issues are with systems designed to lessen the pressure of those with less time, claiming alt-aholic behavior is superior is bad.

If you want good gear, money in the bank, and/or have limited time alts are definitely not a good answer. The game definitely rewards focusing on a main exclusively if for no other reason than you don’t have a further drain on your resources.

They can, however, be fun. You are learning different mechanics and different ways to fight. If you are bored with the game they can reinvigorate you for a time.

I would try running each of the dungeons at least once. Each dungeons also have multiple paths that that may take a while.

Try WvW, other players are much more difficult to beat than any AI controlled character.

Fractals if you haven’t, jumping puzzles if you haven’t (some of them are bland but others are quite interesting).

Complete a map or two. Fight dragons once.

Follow along with whatever the Living Story thing is (although so far there’s not that much of it.)

Start an Alt or two. Pick a class in a different armor category (if you were a warrior, play a mesmer; if you were a guardian, try a thief, etc..)

DarksunG.9537:

Zenith.7301:

When you have 6 lv80’s, that means to get optimal gear on each, which involves an amulet that I can only get by laurels, it means it will take me 6 months to put an ascended amulet on each toon. It will take an extra month per amulet to buy the utility infusion for extra gold earned or MF. A third of a month for the karma one.

Holy entitlement Batman. Why in the hell should you be able to gear out 6 characters in any less time than it takes to gear out 1 character 6 times?

If it were “anti-alt” it would take you 7+ times as long to gear out 6 characters. but it doesn’t.

I swear.. people are complaining about the mathematical properties of reality now… 1 × 6 = 6. Are we gonna start complaining that gravity is unfair because we want to fly like birds?

(sigh). Why does everyone run to “entitlement” rather than trying to understand the point? It has nothing to do with entitlement. I’ll go slow…

The issue is that the mechanism for obtaining laurels is anti-alt (1 laurel a day + 10 / month). Not that alt’s should be geared up any faster than a main.

For example, suppose I had 5 children and you have 1. No one is suggesting that I should be able to feed my 5 for the same amount that you spend to feed 1. What is being said is that limiting us to 1 meal a day makes it kittening difficult to have more children.

Blacklight.2871:

If you want to run a bunch of alts (I do), then don’t expect to be able to gear them ALL up at the same rate that a player who dedicates themselves to a single character, can. If you have six characters, it should take you roughly six times as long to completely gear them all up.

That used to be acceptable to altaholics. That used to go with the territory. I see no reason that needs to change now.

True, but it is also true that you can generally gear up while you level the alt. For example, I can earn sufficient Karma on an alt that by 80 I can buy PVT gear if I want.

The particularly annoying problem here is the introduction of a new items after we’ve already leveled the alts combined with a time gating mechanic.

Personally, I only care about one set of ascended gear because I only WvW with one character; but I can sympathize with the OP.

Orion.7264:

TooBz.3065:

Many things in this game is anti-alts, for example, Ascended gear, soul bound items, DR on dungeon runs (seriously who has time to wait two hours between runs).

DR on Dungeon runs is character-bound. You can get full rewards on all three paths on one character, jump immediately to another, and get full rewards again.

I thought you had to wait two – three hours. Thanks for the info.

Many things in this game is anti-alts, for example, Ascended gear, soul bound items, DR on dungeon runs (seriously who has time to wait two hours between runs).

I think it’s a reasonable question. There is no good reason to make it possible to BUY soulbound equipment you can’t use, it’s terrible design.

If I had to guess, the armor was probably originally intended to be account bound on acquire, soul bound on use, and someone made a change at the “last” minute.

A couple of thieves can stun lock many of the mini-bosses so they never get a hit off.

Whatever you choose, I recommend avoiding the ranger. Ranger’s rely heavily on their pets and are therefore limited by the pet AI.

Before everyone jumps on me, I have a level 80 ranger (so I know what I’m talking about.) He spends most of his time sitting in Lion’s Arch doing nothing.

Roxy Painter.3691:

Thanks for the feedback, nice to know I’m on the right track.

I did have a couple more questions about illusions. When they “die” as opposed to shattering from the F1-4 commands (either through being defeated, overwritten, or their target being defeated), do they do shatter damage then? Or is damage in that case just going to be from the “on death” traits? And is the radius on shatter damage known?

They do not do shatter damage when they die. Only the “on death” traits do anything.

That’s higher than what I get, if I’m actively trying I get about 6-7 a week.

But I don’t run fractals, so I get fewer rares and I don’t buy them.

I understand the race issue; however, once your personal story line has moved into the Trahearne’s stage, does your race have any impact anymore?

I haven’t finished the personal storyline on any of my characters so I don’t know. But it seems weird to forbid race changes for something so minor.

John Smith.4610:

Remember that Sell orders != supply and buy order != demand

True, especially given that flippers show up as buy and sell orders and aren’t really indicative of demand.

But since we don’t have access to actual trade data they are the best indicator we have of supply and an indicator of demand/

Yamagawa.5941:

So… Game starts at 0 money for everyone….

How do you NOT expect inflation for the first 1-2 years?

So people find a way to get top-demanded items…and use it.
How could you NOT expect them to do otherwise?
How could A-Net justify punishing them? ‘They uh… Found something worth making in the forge and uh… Made them in quantity —Permaban!’ Get real.

Admit it, if you knew about the early game precursor recipes, you’d still have several in inventory, and be rich… And be wondering why the heck everyone hates you for having found a way to wealth so early.

Sheesh. Drop the jealousy please.

@Noerknhar – watch: in 2-3 years the existing legendaries will be so commonplace as to be boring. Precursors will sell for just a couple times more than any other exotic item. Patience will bring them to you cheaply.

I keep hearing how legendaries are supposed to show a players accomplishments in the game and not the market… Does anyone have an anet quote for this, or is it just popular hype?

I think it’s reasonable to expect inflation, the question is how much? I just compared the base level crafting components (no insignias, planks, etc) from December 18 to today and the average price has risen 60%. The greatest increase being in Engraved Totems (from 92c to 5s20c) and the biggest decrease in Onyx shards (from 35s to 8s).

I think it’s reasonable to be somewhat concerned about the market right now. Of course, this may all blow over and be a momentary price spike caused by the latest patch.

Serophous.9085:

Wait wait wait wait wait…

So they were ABLE TO TELL if LOOT was dropping TOO MUCH or TOO LITTLE and ADJUSTED IT.

So why the kitten are we posting data in this thread again?

Of course they were able to tell. They have always been able to tell. We’ve known that since the dye drops were identified and quickly fixed. They said in the OP that they don’t think anything is wrong.

So the drop tables and drops in general are where they want them. However, they are allowing for the possibility that a bug may cause certain individuals to experience low drop rates due to some as to yet unidentified bug.

knives.6345:

I understand I only have 2 options:

-Do the things I hate to get reward, for the sake of reward
-Don’t do things I hate and understand the consequences (not getting the reward)

There is no 3rd option of not doing it and expecting a reward. O_O

I agree, except that I don’t see a problem with people saying that they aren’t doing it because it’s boring and not worth the effort. Nor do I see a problem with constructively recommending ways that it would be less boring or more worth it.

For example, I won’t throw 1000 rare great swords into the mystic forge for a chance to get a precursor because I think RNG stinks and I may never get the reward, but I would forge 500 exotic great swords if getting a precursor were certain.

Or better yet, I won’t spend 1000 hours killing bears :-). But I will spend 1000 hours following a quest.

The fact is that it’s easier for developers to just insist on 1000 hours of bear slaying than to develop an appropriate quest line.

For me, a grind is when the reward doesn’t seem worth the effort (purely subjective). I am not trying for a legendary, I am not collecting 250 powerful blood to make a backpack, etc. Each of these activities seems like a horrible grind.

If an activity is fun, then you can require more of it before I consider it a grind. For example, I don’t particular like running dungeons, but I can run COF 3 times and get exotic flame legion gloves, so it’s not really a grind.

I like WvW a lot more. However, at the rate I accumulate badges of honor it would take about 8 days or more to get the same quality of gloves. I view trying to obtain invaders armor as a ridiculous grind.

I think there are elements of the daily’s that aren’t fun for everyone. I personally never really liked sticking around for the group events. Before I had to with the daily’s I rarely bothered. Instead I would just run from heart to heart.

When I first tried to do daily’s I hated that part.

Oldgrimm.8521:

Belexes.4923:

cargan.5689:

Sky.7610:

4. A large amount of investors that contributed to maintain the stability of market has allocated their resource elsewhere, which is why many markets crashed,and if i correctly assume the market they invested in, then their wealth should almost doubled.

ROFL: You mean the people flipping claws and fangs to an unsustainable price have cut and run

So what exactly is this “unsustainable price” ??

maybe he meant unstable prices?

By unsustainable price he means that people have manipulated the price of claws and fangs above their equilibrium price. Therefore, without constant intercession by the manipulators the price falls back to the equilibrium price. Hence the price is unsustainable.

In contrast, if someone buys up all of the stock of some item (precursor), relists it a higher price, and that higher price becomes the new norm, then the higher price is sustainable.

Pirlipat.2479:

So the lesson is use a system as much as you can until it breaks. If you only use it casually and only if you need it you will get screwed. Thx to make that clear.

Yes. It’s called the tragedy of the commons.

Raine.1394:

I agree with OP. Dailies were a working feature of the game and the new one’s debuted broken. The following daily, after combo killer, required me ultimately to allow NPC’s that I was protecting to die over and over just to complete the daily—talk about a break in immersion. I don’t feel any compulsion to do them around ascended gear, but they were a consistent reward in karma for playing the game and it was a positive game experience. I no longer relate to dailies positively. They just represent another element of bad design intruding itself into my gaming experience.

It can be done very easily in the course of the game. For example: Frostgorge sound, rescue the castaways. Done. You also get one event out of it.

I know that when I started paying attention to dailys I altered my play style to achieve them easier. I suspect that we will quickly figure out the easiest / cheapest way to finish the new requirements in short order.

And yes refined crafting material sells for less than the component parts, but not always. Currently 2 iron ore sell for 16 copper. An iron ingot sells for 24 copper.

I don’t think the game has ever favored easy switching of builds. Switching from condition (carrior) to crit (beserker), for example, can cost around 40 gold in new equipment.

I think I month to get the amulet you want is much better than waiting indefinitely for a RNG drop.

Since this patch is suppose to fix the culling, that by itself will be a major nerf to thief gameplay.

They consistently release the updates between 1600 and 2000 PM PST. I would not expect the update for about 12 hours.

Since this topic won’t fade into obscurity until someone gets a nerf (I know the OP wasn’t really asking for one, but it seems like s/he was which is just as bad), I’ll add my two cents.

“Best” does not equal “OP”. IP is a very good trait that increases damage and provides additional and much needed access to shatters. Without IP the mesmers lack of mobility is really a problem.

The ability for short term dazes and invulnerability makes up for the fact that we can’t run fast as fast as every other class.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Mystic.5934:

yes, fine T5’s have gone up. I guess I just don’t consider fines the default when talking about materials unless specified. I thought those went up because the fine T6 mats went up.
I think that in general, bots bring non-gold into the game and hoard gold they can sell them for. so less bots = inflation on everything. some things were going to drop in price anyways, so they stay the same after a wave of bot banning.

It takes (15) T5 Fine materials to make an inscription or insignia – these represent the bulk of the cost of making rare items. Light armor requires between 6s and 6.5s in thread/leather/silk and those prices do not move very much.

The price of Ecto will always track T5 fine material and a large chunk of the ecto on the TP is created by crafters/salvagers. Supply is low right now because it’s just not likely to be profitable under current market conditions.

Funny, I always thought it was the reverse. The price of T5 materials tracks the price of Ectos.

Numbers aside, I think people hate it because it has a non-observable / verifiable effect. For example, if I increase my vitality by 10 points I get 100 health. 10 points in critical damage I do 10% more critical damage. I can see those. If I increase my magic find by 10 points it does what, exactly?

For two days I farmed an hour a day for corrupted lodestones with 175 magic find and got nothing, I certainly didn’t earn 2.75 times the money during that time (or even close). The third day I ran with 0 magic find and got 2 in the first 15 minutes.

They can be doing it to try to force swings in the market. For example, buy 50 at a low price, use buy orders to drive up the price, sell all but 10 of your supply at a high price. Pull your buy orders.

Post 10 for sale at a low price. Wait for other sellers to come in at the low price, buy lower, then pull your 10.

Repeat.

However, this would only work on a slow moving item. In general, I think the TP would absorb the persons supply rather quickly

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

AinSoph.5063:

Not everyone ganking people in the jp is an angry little person. Honestly, you can have some really interesting skirmishes because of the terrain in there.

However, if you think anyone who actually likes to pvp is going to let you walk by and get a handful of free siege that you probably wouldn’t have bought(It seems that most people that complain about the JP are people who don’t really care about wvw or ever pony up their own Coin for siege), then you’re wrong. I’ll kick you off the ledge every time, that’s less potential siege I have to deal with later.

Sorry, PvP happens in PvP zones.

I wish I could sell those siege thingies I got from map completion…. I might scratch them soon. Don’t assume everybody who does that JP does them for the siege thingies.

I think most people don’t care if you get the blueprints or not. It’s just an excuse . When people started complaining about this a few months ago, about two weeks in someone mentioned blueprints.

In general, people just enjoy finding a space with a tactical advantage.

The best way to do the jumping puzzle is to wait until your server is in control of the top. You can usually figure that out through chatting.

Vorch.2985:

Logitech G600.

I agree. This is a great mouse. I have tried the several different mice. For an MMO, the G600 is the best

I would also recommend checking out WvW.

When you first start, look for a commander (blue squarish icon on the map view) and go to him/her. Run with a zerg (big group of people) for a while until you get the hang of it.

I find it more challenging than most PVE content, so expect to die a lot when you first start.

I think that most people’s issue with the legendary grind has more to do with the RNG precursors than anything else.

And before you say “buy one from the TP,” personally, in game, I would much prefer to dive for sunken treasure than to buy a doubloon from the gift shop.

WarMacheen.7124:

Another day, another chance to give the community an actual answer

I wager a stack of 250 porous bone, that this thread continues to be ignored.

The simple fact is that its in their best interest to give you the least amount of reward they can and have you continue playing. As long as most people are playing then there is no problem with the drops.

Also, if they say anything at all about it, they only fan the flames. The OP clearly stated that they don’t see any problem with the drop rate. But they never stated what the expected drop rate should be.

Just to keep on topic. In the last two weeks I have run the level 1 fractals 3 times (couldn’t find a level 2 group) and received a total of 2 rare items. During one run, a party member received 7 rares.

I think that the precusors are not going to go down in price anytime soon. For some inexplicable reason, ANet likes having a random gate to prevent people from building a legendary.

Apparently making a few people feel special is better than having many people be happy.

Economically speaking, unless they do something to drastically shift, the supply of precursors, holding onto Dusk should be a good hedge against future inflation.

I also under-leveled. I think the expectation is that we would take our time in each zone, explore and do a lot a dynamic events. Usually, 4-5 additional dynamic events is enough to bring me up to the expected level.

I could be manipulation or it could be the market. I image many people (richer than I) were waiting to find out about the precursor scavenger hunt. Why spend 300+ gold when you can get one by playing the game.

Finding out that the scavenger hunt has been shelved (delayed, not implemented yet, coming maybe this fall, whatever) in favor of yet another token system, those people decided to buy.

Hi. As stated, as world transfers become gem shop items, please consider giving each new account (or accounts created after some arbitrary date) a free world transfer pass.

Many people want to get on full servers but can’t. Instead, they join another server and start playing, knowing they can switch later.

However, if new accounts can’t change worlds without a fee, it increases the likelihood that they won’t play at all.

I realize that without free world transfers, its unlikely that the full servers will ever not be full, but at least it gives new players a chance.

I don’t know if this will work, but I found that the problem went away for me when I downgraded my video driver. I’ve been running stable for about a week now, so I figured it was safe to tell people.

If this doesn’t work for you let me know. I don’t want to spread misinformation.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Crakitteno-Desktop-MainCli-cpp-591/1212084

I noticed in your Crash reports that you have Geforce cards. I had exactly the same errors (560ti). I rolled back the driver to version 306.97 and the problem went away.

You can get old drivers here http://www.geforce.com/drivers/beta-legacy.

Just FYI. I removed the old drivers from the system using first the control panel add / remove programs and then Drive Sweeper to clean up left over files.

During installation drive sweeper tries to get you to agree to installing other tune up tools at the same time, so make sure to mind the check boxes.

As a final note: McAfee tried to automatically update my video driver, so you may or may not know that you did it.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Gaiawolf.8261:

IP is great because it adds an extra punch to all shatters while in melee range, plus you can shatter even without any clones up. This is invaluable as a defensive tool, meaning you can become invulnerable or daze foes on demand as long as you have the CD. Also, you can CoF/MW back to back to add extra confusion/DD to any shatter attack.

So many possibilities.

This is essentially what I was thinking. You get more damage out of your mind wrack (I believe it scales to 4 clones) plus being able to hit diversion / distortion even if you don’t have clones up to get out of a “oh kitten” situation is priceless. Of course it’s less valuable with a phantasm build.

Here is my recommendation:

At level 40.
20 in Dueling (iv, x)
10 in Illusions (i or ii)

from 40-50
10 in Domination (i)

from 50-59
9 more to domination

At level 60 respect (grandmaster book)
20 in Dueling (iv, x)
30 in illusions (i or ii, vii, xi)

level 61-70
10 in Domination (i)

70-80
10 more in Domination (x)

With this spec you don’t get the Greatsword training until late, but the other traits are just too good. If this bothers you go 20 Dueling, 10 illusions, 20 domination, then fill out illusions, but personally I think Illusionary Persona is one of the best traits in the game.

For a condition build, Pistol / Dagger is a very good combination. You stack bleeds at an incredible rate.

You can just get a pistol in the main-hand and your off-hand dagger will carry over. Although I like a P/D – shortbow combination.

In WvWvW, I find that caltrops aren’t nearly as effective as they are in PVE. Real people tend to roll out of the field quickly. So I would swap out trickery iii for v

For skills, shadow step is also excellent.

Finally, I notice that you have a lot of initiative regenerating skills. You may also consider acrobatics ix. It increases your initiative regen by about 26%.

In general, thieves are more flexible than other classes which is why there is no good answer to your question.

If you want a lot of damage over time skills then condition damage, condition duration are the most important.

If you want an incredibly hard hitting backstab then power and critical damage.

Personally, I have played both a P/D condition thief 10/0/30/20/10. And a S/D thief 0/20/30/20/0. I tried a full glass cannon build but I died way too often.

If you are just starting out in PVE, the P/D condition builds are ridiculous. Cloak and dagger stealths you and enemies just limps away while bleeding to death.

Shadestrike.4372:

You realize that players dictate what price the stuff on the trading post is, not ANet, right?

I think this is only partially true. In the trading post, the price is dictated by the intersection of supply and demand. Players demand and item driving the price up, but ANet could reduce the price by increasing the drop rate.

Of course, if someone is manipulating / speculating on the market, the drop rate may need to increase substantially before an effect is felt.

Sometimes. Prices can change rapidly for rare items. In this case,

Based on the sudden spike in the price without a decrease in the number of items available, it looks like someone bought up all of the gold dye in an attempt to corner the market.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20480

I’ve noticed that a couple of crafting components have prices that change drastically during the day.

Is this pure market manipulation, or is there some explanation for a 25% increase/decrease overnight?

kenshinakh.3672:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Ah, it seems like you are slightly mistaken on how this mechanic works. Allow me to explain it more precisely.

If you have 3 clones out, and use a shatter, these clones effectively no longer exist. The three dots on the gui will still be filled, but you can spawn more clones immediately without causing the older clones to be overwritten (they would immediately die in that case). Basically what it does is that when you use a shatter, your clones become a living projectile attack, no longer permanent creations on the battlefield, but another guided attack heading your way, freeing up the slots for more clones to be created.

With the bug, this transformation of current clones into guided missiles was not done completely, and so the guided missiles got double-loaded when mind wrack was used immediately after the first shatter, as if someone reached into the missile, and added an extra stack of C4 to the payload. The only thing that needed fixing was preventing this extra loading from occurring. Everything else about this mechanic worked perfectly.

Ohh, I see now. That makes sense.

I can’t really say much more about it then. Hopefully devs can explain what was the intention of the .25s cooldown (maybe having the possibility of too many clones exploding nearly at once was too much and needed a short cooldown?).

With a cooldown this short, I’m betting it’s a latency issue. Probably they want to make sure that the server has a chance to mark the clones before another shatter occurs.

Flubble.8093:

that’s because there is no direct way for the pet to get to them as they cant run through doors

the only work around is using “guard” to throw your pet down there or use a ranged pet (that will probably fire at the floor instead)

If only we could have pets that could fly. In all seriousness, it’s a little ridiculous that the raven / eagle can’t fly off of walls or fly up to them.