(edited by Unspecified.9142)
You aren’t supposed to farm story missions….
Thank you for the response. What I was looking for was something more akin to:
AC – Undead Slaying ?
CM – Outlaw ?
TA – Nightmare Court Slaying ?
SE – Dreadge ?
CoF – Flame Legion ?
HotW – Corrupted or Svanir (which enemy needs to die more?)
CE – Inquest?
Arah – Undead
I’m also not sure if there is significant variation in mob type/distribution between explorable paths or not. I thought I might ply the wisdom of the community and what they’ve found works to make my first runs as painless as possible.
Pretty much the title. I’ve not really done any dungeons to speak of (AC, CM, Arah story modes only). I’m fairly well off so I see no reason I can’t fork out a bit of cash on slayer potions but I’d like to know ahead of time which ones for which dungeons (google didn’t return anything obvious). Some are fairly obvious (e.g. Arah = Undead). Others like HotW I’m not sure if Icebrood or Sons of Svanir would be better, or if it depends on which explorable path.
So if some kind soul might be willing to jot down a list for me of which potion I should use for what that would be great. I’m sure the PUGs I inevitably run with would appreciate too even if they don’t realize it.
People would cry way more if instead of undercutting by 1c on a 150 gold item it was 1% each time.
150g
148.5
147.015
145.5448
144.0894
142.6485
141.2220
139.80980
Seven people undercut the original price and each other and the price drops by just over 10g. Guess what, sell orders went down. Average price dropped dramatically. Perceived value tanked. Yours at 150g is way less likely to sell because people will start thinking of it as worth ~140g instead. It keeps going obviously.
Thank you for fixing this Anet!
Just ran the EB jumping puzzle and only failed a few times (all my own fault) instead of the headache that it was earlier.
There are currently 14 servers you can transfer to and 10 are full.
Last week it was only the top 5 WvW that were full all the rest could be transferred to if you wanted.
First, Yes it sucks. It needs to be fixed. Anet is working on it.
In the mean time here’s a few hints for people who care to help you cope until it is fixed:
1) Don’t try to jump immediately after landing. There seems to be some problems with ground collision detection and you will often not be considered “on the ground” for a second after landing.
2) STOP before you try to jump. I mean stop completely. This helps avoid problems with uneven terrain and makes your character “settle” on the ground.
3) Running jumps to not get you more distance. You can cover the same distance from a dead stop as you can if you run 20 feet first.
4) Push W (forward) and then Space (jump) about .2 seconds after. If you jump then move forward you don’t go very far.
5) Use speed boosts for some of the longer jumps and “under-shoot.” It’s easier than trying to jump off the edge right now.
Again, it sucks this is a problem and it wrecks our muscle memory for the time being. Until it’s fixed though things are still possible you just have to ‘relearn’ how to jump.
Hope this helps some of you.
If you were using this bug and didn’t realize it was an exploit… /facepalm.
You should have known it would get fixed. I mean you had to mess with your traits to pull it off before combat started. In any fight that matters it won’t make a difference. Besides the amount of time you spend setting up 2 traps of the same type probably makes killing take longer than if you just played without exploiting. Legitimate trap spec/use is unaffected by this.
No, just no.
I have 30/50 in the HoM and no. Things you acquire in GW2 should be better than HoM stuff. Though I still like the Fire God’s Vambraces better than anything in GW2 (except they don’t work with all chest armor).
Well now rangers will be even more hated….
Seriously, I can full heal my pet with F4. I do NOT want my party heals going to my pet. I don’t even want my Healing Spring regen going to my pet if there are party members around.
A less than 10s reduction is a crash?
Fair point. I guess I shouldn’t have said “crash.”
Really what I find curious is simply that there has been a month long trend of steady price inflation. Suddenly multiple markets started to drop on the same day, at roughly the same time. Though it’s only been 48 hours so far it’s been 48 hours of steady decline in the average price.
It’s too much of a coincidence for it to be caused by nothing. Maybe there’s just one really rich guy (or group) cashing out. I don’t know, that’s why I was asking if anyone knew the cause of this sudden shift in markets.
What happened at this time? Several high end items have started declining in (average) price for the first time since the the Lost Shores weekend, and the most significant price drop since the start of November.
Ecto: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721
Vial of Powerful Blood: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24295
Armored Scale: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24289
Pile of Crystalline Dust: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24277
Unidentified Dye: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20323
There are others, but you get the idea. It all just seems a little strange to me to have so many markets start to crash simultaneously. Especially after such a long period of inflation. Maybe they’ll level off, maybe they’ll continue to crash. I don’t know.
Does anyone know what ‘event’ might have happened on Nov. 30 at Noon Pacific?
Key aspects of this instancing can be seen throughout the game, players commute in a single city and spend much of their time “Looking for a group” to enter an instanced area that incentivises players to repeat the same content, many of the open world zones are rarely visited by many players, this could be due to low population or player reward factors dependent to the location.
I don’t want to imply that I approve of this system but….
Please point me in the direction of the MMO this does not describe perfectly?
I’ve said it before in the “GW1 isn’t an MMO it’s a lobby based multiplayer RPG” debate. WoW is a one big kitten lobby while you wait for raids (the real game) which are totally instanced.
I want to one day have eternity for my ranger. Just to piss off the warriors and guardians. I also like my greatsword. I got turned on to using it when I got the Greatsaw at halloween. I could have sold it but… pissing off warriors and guardians.
I also want the shortbow though because rainbow pew-pew is just too funny.
Interesting idea. I only really have 1 character worth contributing though:
80 Ranger – 451 hours, 326 deaths (768 WvW kills, not something I do a lot)
My other 2 characters of notable level each have 2 crafts at level 400 sooo they haven’t really had much chance to die and were seriously over-leveled most of the time.
48 Thief – 40 hours, 16 deaths
60 Guardian – 65 hours, 39 deaths
It actually looks to me like people are “cashing out” on a lot of different items right now. Perhaps they decided that the market has reached the peak it can bare and it’s time to get out.
Either way, everything seems to be crashing hard right now. Not a good time to be holding stuff.
I’ve been watching this more out of idle curiosity than anything (I’m not so good at the speculating thing). One thing I’ve noticed is that people are not doing their math. There is very often Exquisite Passion Flowers and/or the Passiflora jewelry sitting there for a day or more at a much cheaper price than buying Passion Flowers (especially after you factor in the ectos and ori required).
Right now Passion Flowers are 32 silver a piece. 15 × 32 = 4.8 gold. There’s Exquisite Passion Flowers for less than 4 gold (which require an ecto and 2 ori ingots as well).
4.8 × 5 = 24 gold. There’s jewelry up for less than that and again that ignores the extra ori needed to finish the crafting.
Still seems really expensive, but just pointing out that sometimes it’s best to look at all the levels of a crafted item because there can be lag in prices rising if the raw material spikes.
Used in ac dungeons. That 10s can easily be 14s, and the bar spends for itself already (almost)
I’m not really familiar with dungeons and how much silver the enemies drop in 30 minutes so perhaps in dungeons Omnomberry Bars are better. I don’t think they effect bags of wondrous goods or rewards though.
But, for farming in the open world Spicy Pumpkin Cookies are still (even after the spike) the cheapest way to get that +30% magic find. Especially when compared to the tarts the OP was talking about.
Edit: Actually since they last 45 minutes (50% longer) and give +15% xp instead of 10% and skill points can be used to make money they would need to cost around 5-6 silver to be on par with most other magic find foods (bars may be an exception) in terms of cost for the value. So 1.3 silver is an amazing value right now.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
Think it has something to do with hp and toughness, not sure though.
I’m 99% sure it’s connected to your stats in some way.
I haven’t gotten around to testing it for sure but in the past the Champion Risen Abomination at the end of the Plinx chain would always chase someone else around while I plinked away with my shortbow. It didn’t matter how close I got or what I did, I didn’t get aggro.
I recently changed my Knight’s armor to Apothecary armor (trinkets and weapons are the same berserker’s they always were) and my build from 20/30/5/0/5 to 0/30/30/0/10. If I’m there for the Champion Risen Abomination, I have aggro. Every time. Same with the gladiator at the end of the Gladiator Arena DE.
I don’t know what is causing it exactly, but I went from never having aggro to running over to the champ abom DE when he is half dead, I shoot him once and he bee-lines for me.
Thanks Unbroken! I definitely want to switch between things and so that trait spread sounds promising.
Just one last question: spirits, are they really as unviable as I hear they are?
Spirits have a few problems:
1) They have an internal CD which prevents them from proccing very often (I’ve heard from 3-10 seconds it may vary from one spirit to another). This basically makes them useless as a solo utility because they just don’t have enough up time to make them even on par with other choices.
2) They die incredibly easily to the more powerful enemies in the game. This makes them more or less useless in any group situation like dungeons or WvW because they are always dead from AoE or body-blocking a shot. Go to the mists and try fighting the elementalist NPC with spirits up to see how quickly they die. Even fully traited they only have ~5k health.
3) Their active abilities are very difficult to hit with because of limited range and being centered on the spirit itself. So for the spirit to hit anything with its small AoE active ability it has to be up in the “Accidental AoE Death” range and stay there through the cast time.
They aren’t exactly ‘bad’ in theory just in practice they are either under-performing or dead and on a 60 second CD.
I think it’s more that most people use Omnomberry Bars when doing MF stuff.
Although I am personally very dubious of the value of +40% gold from monsters. Most of my money when I’m out farming comes from selling items to vendors or on the TP and from event completions. Most enemies don’t drop money and those that do it’s only ~50 copper in Cursed Shore. Hardly justifies spending ~4s on Omnomberry Bars, imho.
I don’t think that extra 40% dropped gold in 30 minutes even totals the ~3 silver extra I payed for the Omnomberry Bar. Which would mean lost money. I could be wrong, but I have a stockpile of Pumpkin Cookies to use.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
There’s 2 main build types I’d suggest you start with:
20/20/5/0/5 (put the other 20 somewhere)
If you want traps bumping skirmishing to 30 is really optional though it does help. This gives you Signets or Traps for utilities easily. You also have the 5 in Wilderness Surival and the 5 in Beastmastery you should always have.
0/20/30/0/5 (put the other 15 wherever you like)
This tends to be the more tanky ranger (unless you’re going full tank with Signet of Stone and 30 Marksman). Both 30 point traits in Wilderness Survival are a huge boon, and the situation determines which is better. In my opinion this is also the more versatile build frame. You can swap to traps or survival utilities and grab the traits to go with them (shouts and spirits are really garbage by comparison right now). You can also easily go melee or ranged, condition or power, tanky or squishy. The gear/weapon choices make the most difference for this build. And, if you want your pet much past 20 in BM is dubious in its usefulness but you could put it up to 20 if you want.
Sorry for being vague but without really knowing what you’re after specifics are hard. I personally run 0/30/30/0/10 and I find that swapping around my gear, traits, pets, and utilities I can go full condition damage, power/crit, or very support/control oriented very effectively. I suffer a bit in the ‘tanky’ role due to not having signets but I can kite like a hot kitten if I bring Shortbow, Frost Trap, Spike Trap, and Muddy Terrain.
If you want full-on builds you can play with I could throw up links/explanations to a bunch for you but this already got pretty long and I’m not sure what areas of the game you’re playing. I don’t know anything about sPvP or tPvP though.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
Well, so much for 15 silver a piece. It spiked to 30 silver a piece apparently… :-/
Edit: gwspidy.com is apparently a bit behind, it’s 38.9 silver for the cheapest Passion Flower.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
It’s also worth considering what it actually takes to make one of these trinkets.
75 Passion Flowers
5 Ectos
14 orichalcum ingots (for earrings and rings, 16 for necks)
At pre-spike prices that is: (75 × 9) + (5 × 32) + (14 × 4.3) = 8.95 gold
If you assume people buy the mats off the TP and want to actually make a profit you have to add 15%: 8.95 × 1.15 = 10.295 gold
At the current rate of 15 silver per Passion Flower it’s: [(75 × 15) + (5 × 32) + (14 × 4.3)] x 1.15 = 15.4698 gold for someone to break even on an earring or ring.
Edit: This isn’t to say there isn’t a problem (I’m kind of neutral on it because the stat combo is very useful for certain classes/builds). Just pointing out that 15 gold for the trinket is actually reasonable given the mat prices.
right now these flowers are mostly only available on the gem shop.
its a paid shinny.
get it if you really want, otherwise get another kind of shinny.
doesnt matter really.
Actually the Consortium Chests disappeared yesterday (or the day before?). That’s likely part (or all) of why the price spiked.
Best thing I’ve seen a pet do since beta:
You should really be using runes on your armor and not orbs/crests.
If you find the right rune set for your build it’s generally miles ahead of any stat boosts you’d get by putting an orb/crest in the same socket.
This: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exquisite_Passion_Flower
Is obviously the equivalent to an orb, but I guess it can only go in trinkets? Regardless, you could just use runes of divinity and get pretty close to the same. If you’re using a heavy healing build Dwayna, Flock, or Water are good choices (depends on class and build. Grenth or Undead could also be really good choices for extra condition damage.
GS’s maul does 3 stacks of bleed, which pales in comparison to Axe + dagger (5+3 =8 stacks). Plus you get chill, weakness and poison. Or you can use axe + torch which will give you burning.
You have 2 weapon sets, use both.
People also seem to be entirely focused on single target (which makes sense for PvP I guess) but Maul is an AoE and hits really hard, way harder than split blade on the axe even if you do hit with all 5.
But personally I carry around a Shortbow, Longbow, Axe, Horn, Torch, Sword, and Greatsword at all times. I use what is best for the situation and for general AoE PvE farming Greatsword is great.
I just gave up naming my pets because of this problem. I simply change pets too frequently depending on what I’m doing and I can’t be bothered to rename them every time.
Even if it was just Name X for the pet in slot 1 and Name Y for the pet in slot 2 it would be a huge improvement in my book. Ideally I’d like “My raven is named _______” and “My wolf is named ______” etc… so every single pet has a specific name saved for all time. But I understand the database required for that might be a huge waste of time to create and manage.
I’m surprised how much confusion this seems to cause. In the beginning Anet set a price for gems from gold.
Player buys gems with gold = price goes up.
Player sells gems for gold = price goes down.
It’s a very simple system. When the game launched everyone was broke in game so no one was buying gems. Many people wanted in game money so they bought and sold gems. That kept the price down.
Now lots of people have in game money and less use for it but they are wanting gem store stuff (events helped). People spent in game money on gems because they have no real life money to spare or just didn’t want to. Price went up.
People still have lots of in game money and still don’t want to spend real life money (or just don’t have any to spare). Price keeps going up.
It’s the simplest system imaginable. There isn’t some ‘supply’ of gems out there. That’s just a useful way to think about it for some situations. It’s the same system Anet used for material vendors in GW1 without the possibility of being temporarily “sold out”.
Edit: I have no proof but I would bet you a million gems that when a player buys gems with real money and spends the gems on BLT stuff it has absolutely zero effect on the gold/gems ratio.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
and you auto-leap to fleeing targets.
..After you leap away first. Would be logical to leap to the target, then leap away.
The 3rd part of the 1-chain leaps you to your target as well (or off a cliff if they died).
If you’re going for Fortifying Bond take +33% regen duration and take Healing Spring as a heal. That combo actually works really well together. If you get your pet in the AoE of Healing Spring and you stand in it too your pet will have permanent regen more or less.
Permanent Regen + Natural healing + Compassion Training + Carnivorous Appetite + Signet of the Wild = A really kitten hard to kill pet.
I toyed around with fortifying bond a lot early on but it’s just so hard to actually get a decent amount of boons to put on your pet by yourself. My main problem is I always wanted 20 skirmishing for the weapon swap boons and Carnivorous Appetite, 20 Wilderness Survival for Companion’s Defense and Off-Hand Training, 15 Nature Magic for Fortifying Bond obviously, and 30 Beastmastery. But you just can’t do that…
The trouble is always that for a good pet you need the traits from every line except Beastmatery but you want Beastmastery for the stat boosts.
Also consider a Superior Sigil of Strength for the might stacks on crit.
The main use of a greatsword in a condition build is that you can be a stationary target. I actually use greatsword and axe/torch with flame trap, spike trap, and viper’s nest for general farming and it works great.
1) Pull everything with your axe and bunch them up.
2) Drop all 3 traps (Spike -> Flame -> Viper) and then Bonfire (Add entangle in there somewhere if you want).
3) Fire off Split Blade through as many enemies as you can.
4) Swap to Greatsword.
5) Swoop -> Maul.
6) 1 spam to win (usually takes 2-3 seconds). Edit: Pet swap here for more evades.
I AoE farm all areas of Orr that way. The only things that give me any problems are when there are too many ranged enemies and I can’t LoS to bunch them up nicely. Throwing out traps everywhere and spamming 1 on either axe or greatsword (depends on DE) makes mob tagging in DEs incredibly easy. I do swap out greatsword for shortbow on champions though.
Every other ability is situational and mostly used against veterans. I have a preoccupation with killing veteran risen giants. I just don’t like them.
Here’s the build if anyone cares: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAR3fjEV11tVyVo2Bi2DAYeMxeAAH9oXh0XwqG
The blank traits can be filled with whatever you fancy really. Empathic Bond can be swapped for Bark Skin without much loss and might be better depending what you’re farming. You might also prefer Martial Mastery over Off-hand Mastery but I like the bigger Bonfire more than lower CD on the Greatsword. Pets can be changed to whatever you like (Edit: I would use drakes if they worked right). For gear I’m currently using Apothecary armor with 5/6 pirate runes and 1/6 travelers (it’s a farming build) and a mix of berserker and valkyrie trinkets (left over from my old build) but I want to replace them with Apothecary trinkets as well eventually.
(edited by Unspecified.9142)
i don’t know about you guys, but i’ve ran solo in WvWvW since day one. getting to know all the jump spots, know when to take advantage of terrain but mobs as well. get really good at running away when you have a feeling kitten will hit the fan, keep your camera alwayse moving and watch the map for odd movements on flags and dolyks.
today i basically controlled the Spirit’s/Spirits equivalent by just solo roaming for 3 hours today in Yaks Bend Borderland. i had the benefit that our zerg was the main drawing point, but i denied supplies for everything for that time period, and really only lost to a perma-stealth thief or a bad situated 3v1. but then again i only attacked when i had ambush advantage or the ability to fall back to safety behind a camp officer.
Ranger’s make great roamers, if done properly they can solo camps between 2-4 minutes. it’s the best feeling to cap a point just as your zerg turns around the hill, you join them and take advantage of the one sided fights and then split off again because sieges don’t earn you money.
This is basically what I do in WvW on my ranger. I just wish we had better mobility/escape tools, but oh well. Dolyaks, supply camps, check points, and neutrals can all be soloed pretty easily regardless of upgrades.
I’m not sure if it was ever said, or just implied, but I’ve kind of gotten the impression that balance patches are once a month. So I’d say 2-3 weeks until the next one.
Don’t quote me on that though, I’m just speculating.
I think it’s been covered. Parties in this game just don’t serve a function in open world PvE besides giving you a little blue dot on the map to track people and a private chat channel.
Random invites without at least a “Hi, want to group up for ________” will be auto-declined. I don’t know you, I don’t know what you’re doing, or why you want to group with me. Heck, I don’t even know if you speak English (nothing against foreigners, just hard to be social when you can’t communicate with words).
Otherwise, if you ever see me in the open world and want to follow me around, go hard. I randomly afk on mountainsides, mass pull, and runs through large groups of mobs to get where I’m going faster sometimes. But you’re welcome to tag along.
If you need help with something just ask and I’ll help if it isn’t going to cost me 2+ silver just to get there. I’m going back to what I was doing when we’re done whatever though and I probably won’t join a party just for it because it’s unnecessary fiddling with UI stuff.
A lot of people will be reluctant to give away their best farming spots because then those will be so overcrowded they won’t be able to kill as many.
Or Anet will nerf them. Anet loves to nerf farming.
Seriously though, I agree with the above posters. Just farm what you are comfortable with and/or enjoy farming and sell them. Then buy what you need.
From that website linked above (didn’t know that existed, awesome that it does) I use the helm they call the “gunner” on my asura. It’s got a piece of jawbone on either side and a few smaller bones used to hold it together.
A lot really depends on your race and the choices made during character creation what looks good. You can use the PvP locker to preview almost every armor in the game, so I’d check that before you invest in something. That way you know what it looks like on your character.
While leveling (especially early on) beastmastery is the best thing you could possibly put points in.
At higher levels (~60-70+) it becomes less useful but it’s not worthless. Some specs do work with beastmastery.
Side note: you say “20 vitality” which I assume means Nature Magic. If so, don’t. NM is by far the most useless trait line we have. 10 has its uses for the +33% regen duration but after that it’s junk. Even the 15 point share boons with pets isn’t that great. It sounds good but you pet swap so much at high levels it just gets wasted a lot and there is better things you could spend trait points on.
I’ve been having similar issues. I’ve been getting hit with massive lag spikes (game ‘pauses’ for 5-20 seconds then goes super speed to catch up) and the occasional DC since yesterday. Whereas I was one of the ones that experienced very few issues during the Lost Shores events and generally experience zero lag or DCs.
Not really sure what’s going on for me only that this is abnormal and I’ve changed nothing. I figure it will get sorted though. Might be Anet, might be something between me and Anet.
There is currently 5,721 ectos on the market (give or take) and a demand for 76,185 (give or take). It should be pretty obvious what the ‘problem’ is here.
In terms of you as a player, nothing but kudos. Great creativity with the build, good play, and all around awesome.
In terms of the game as a whole, this is sad. The ability isn’t really that OP but racials are supposed to flavour and not be better than the profession utilities. Sadly Pain Inverter seems to be miles ahead of anything the ranger has. This just shines a light on a very unflattering problem with rangers.
If you’ve already gotten to level 50 on your ranger and you enjoy it then stick with it. It honestly doesn’t change that much between 50 and 80 for general PvE purposes.
The problems with rangers are in sPvP, WvW, and dungeons. That’s not to say rangers don’t have problems in general PvE but if you enjoy it then the problems don’t matter since you don’t have to deal with groups. When you only have to answer to yourself (e.g. general PvE) decide for yourself.
Fingers crossed the ranger will be better some time this year.
Your race and choices during character creation play pretty heavily in to what looks good, and of course what style you want. I’m very partial to the Warhound armor mask for my asura (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warhound_armor) because it fits with my “armor made out of dead things” motif. I don’t like it so much on other races though.
My suggestion to you is the same one I give everyone asking about armor cosmetics. Go to the mists and use the PvP locker to preview almost every single skin in the game (cultural isn’t there and maybe a few others). Once you’ve found one you like it’s pretty easy to find out the PvE equivalent or come ask on the forums and I bet someone will know.
I empathize quite strongly with you OP. For your own sanity though ask yourself "Why are these people posting these things? There’s really only 3 possibilities:
1) They DO love the game and want to make it better and these rage filled posts are their misguided way of trying to improve it. I am guilty of from time to time writing what could be seen as a very negative post about games I love. It’s why I try very hard to include something positive or at least “I do love this game” in any negative post I write and phrase it constructively.
2) They hate the game and want it to fail. These people are essentially trolls and should die in a fire. I mean seriously what kind of kitten goes out of their way to destroy something others enjoy which is not harmful to anyone or anything?
3) They thought the game was something it isn’t and feel let down so they are lashing out. This is the hardest group to deal with. Not every game is for everyone. Sometimes people misjudge what they are getting and feel lied to. Some publishers really do lie about what’s in their game (Skyrim economy, ME3 endings, etc…). It’s a buyer beware market these days but I think Anet was very honest and transparent about the game and anyone who really followed it and did their research shouldn’t have been too surprised by what they got. But people have a hard time admitting they made a mistake these days and always want to blame someone else because ‘their the victim’.
tl;dr The people writing these super negative posts either love the game and are trying to make in better in a very misguided way or should just be ignored because they hate the game and need to move along.
Then there’s this part in the Chris Whiteside blog:
We also want take the opportunity to talk a little bit about what we have coming into the game soon from a high-level standpoint, an aperitif if you like before our Thanksgiving celebrations.
The “our Thanksgiving celebrations” is what makes me wonder. Was he talking about ‘our celebrations’ as in the American people, or ‘our celebrations’ as in the the GW2 community?
I read that too and thought “Oh, maybe we’ll get the return of the Special Treats Weekend”
Obviously it was never anything much but it was nice to get a bunch of pie and booze over the weekend.
Wait! Champions have loot? (I kid… sort of)
More seriously, until the recent patch notes about it (which seems to have changed nothing) I had always just assumed the ‘loot’ from champions was whatever they were guarding. I used to always kill champions when I was leveling my ranger (solo if I had to) because it was a fun challenge but I did it believing I would get nothing.
Still getting nothing and now I just distract with my pet and grab whatever it is I’m after then leave.
I echo a lot of what other people said. My biggest reason for soloing and not doing any dungeons other than Arah and AC story is I just can’t guarantee I won’t go AFK mid dungeon due to circumstances outside my control. It’s not fair to those I would group with to make the decision kick me or wait for me to get back if I do have to go AFK. Rarely can I actually get time where I can just play uninterrupted. It was a stretch getting my personal story done for that reason but it’s not something I could do regularly.
Overall though I’m happy with the “solo-friendly” nature of this game. I’m a little concerned about the future of Ascended items and what options will exist for the solo player but I’m still in ‘wait-and-see’ mode.
My experience with Guild Wars 1 and what was said about GW2 prior to release is the only reason I even ventured in to another MMO. I just need my game(s) to be flexible and be scheduled around my life because my life can’t be scheduled around a game. When you play MMOs with other people you kind of have to schedule life around the game (to an extent) because there are real people with lives of their own involved who want their time in game to be fun and engaging, not sitting around waiting on that guy who is always going afk.
Sometimes I wish more people would focus on what IS there instead of what’s not.
Personally I always use a simple formula to decide the quality of a game:
(Number of enjoyable hours played) / (Cost of game) = (Quality of game)
A higher number is better obviously and the word “enjoyable” is subjective but incredibly important. For me the first number is still going up and the second is static unless I choose to spend more. Not to mention GW2 has already far exceeded the quality number of almost every other game I’ve played.