Guild Wars 2

AcidicVision.5498:

mrstealth.6701:

If the line between legit and exploit gets any muddier people are going to prevent themselves from crossing it by simply not playing this game anymore. Maybe we need an offical post on what amount of gold earned per hour is considered acceptable. :\

I know someone, who has since been banned, that made over 4,000 gold in less than four hours from the snowflake recipe. Now tell me if you consider over a 1,000 gold an hour from a novelty recipe to be acceptable or legit.

Edit: I thought I had a screencap but I couldn’t find it. The number was somewhere along the lines of 4,195.

Those are crazy numbers. I’d take 100 gold an hour to be an obvious exploit, never mind 1,000.

Shifted.3697:

Valmarius.4150:

Hell, you’re probably right. Some posters on reddit are a much more reliable source than someone from ANet, I’m sure.

Well with the amount of info we receive from the dev team, this is somewhat of an ironic statement as the answer seems quite obvious.

Not when an ANet employee makes a post that is a statement, surely. Or is the issue that people do not believe what ANet are saying?

Strifey.7215:

Yes I’ve read that, has nothing to do with money. It references the number of times someone crafted i.e. ectos being created, which are priced by the market.

Ok, first show me how you arrive at the conclusion that “ill-gotten gains” refers only to ectos and not money.

Then, let’s assume you are correct, and that people ended up with a large amount of ectoplasm instead of a large amount of gold. That’s much better. I’m sure they didn’t sell any of those ectos, and had no plans to do so.

Hell, you’re probably right. Some posters on reddit are a much more reliable source than someone from ANet, I’m sure.

Strifey.7215:

Valmarius.4150:

Edit: You know what, forget it. ANet have posted saying that the amount of money made was huge, and I have no reason to doubt them. No point me chiming in when we have no actual data.

I haven’t seen anything that said the amount of money was huge, I did see them say they banned the people who crafted the most which is completely different.

Again, I know someone who made hundreds of gold that was banned, and I know someone who made ~10g from 200 crafts near the end when it wasn’t very profitable.

Please post where they actually measured the gold amount and not the amount of recipes crafted. Because there are plenty of people posting on reddit who had a couple hundred crafts but didn’t make a couple hundred gold.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Bans-for-Snowflake-Jewelry-are-unfair/first#post1132023

Bottom post of the thread. Especially relevant:

“I’m talking a lot of ill-gotten gains that posed a significant potential impact on the economy.”

Edit: You know what, forget it. ANet have posted saying that the amount of money made was huge, and I have no reason to doubt them. No point me chiming in when we have no actual data.

Strifey.7215:

1) Except you don’t get back every mat and the market eventually corrected itself just like every other recipe.

What you get (expected value): .9 Ectos, .8 of your jewel, 1-3 mithril.
What you lose (expected value): .2 of your jewel, 5-7 mithril, 60 copper.

I won’t debate the math, I’ll use what you’ve provided.

If somone bought up 500 snowflakes when they were cheap, we’re talking 2,500 crafts. With 9 ectos every 10 crafts you have…2250 ectos. I think you’ve demonstrated the problem quite well.

Edit: Forgot to take off the ecto cost for crafting… yu have 1750 ectos there. Much better, I’m sure.

Strifey.7215:

1) The chance to get your snowflake back is the same as every other item using a master/mystic kit, which is supposedly .8.

2) The people who made the most got in at the beginning, many people who got banned made very little gold or even lost gold before finding that it wasn’t very profitable on the last day before they fixed the recipe. I know people who were banned on both sides of the spectrum.

2B) The people who made hundreds weren’t any different then the people who made hundreds on many of the other recipes that were introduced through patches. The false information from devs that this was an infinite loop is incorrect, it was an exchange of ‘A’ material for ‘B’ material, it did not create items out of thin air or generate infinite gold, it was actually good for the gold economy to reduce inflation since the only thing it did was take gold out of the economy through kits and TP taxes.

People who got in early on the butter/wood in the mystic forge patch made hundreds, people who converted glacial cores to charged lodestones before they patched the recipe fixed made hundreds, people who bought up T6 mats before the Fractal patch made like 3000% profit margin, the Candy Corn Orichalcum Amulet still only takes 3 ectos instead of 5 which many people used to trade for commendations since it was cheaper to get BL keys that way then through gems. Banning for a recipe that eventually created a market equilibrium that Anet let go for days shows while there have been many other recipes and methods that generated wealth for people through market equilibrium is just shady and is bad precedence. It’s not the same as people “minting” 100s of gold through the chili pepper popper bug, or the obvious 21 karma bug. To ban for this, just leaves a bad taste in many people’s mouths as you can see from all the posts on this forum and reddit, even from people like me who weren’t banned.

1) Great, except you realise the recipe needed only a single snowflake, right? You ever crafted a rare/exotic, salvaged it, and got back every T5/T6 material you used? No? There you go then.

2) Source? While your anectodal evidence is interesting, I don’t put much faith in it. I can link you a post from Anet saying the worst offenders were banned, and that it was a LOT of money earned. If you want it, ask and I’ll go find it.

2b) All debatable unless we know the exact amoutn of money the people banned earned. Again, I’ve seen Anet say it was enough to put the ecomomy at risk. Infact, I’ll go find the post now and edit it in.

I think there were two things that make the methods different:

1) The snowflake pretty much always came back when you salvaged. It was way cheaper to make than the silk shoulderpads. That the market -eventually- adjusted doesn’t mean much.

2) The people who did it made hundreds upon hundreds in hours. Have you made that much from silk shoulderpads recently?

Kanthor.2094:

Yikes, I wonder if the posters demanding permanent bans for everything would apply their logic outside of games. What, he stole some bread? Off with his head!

Chadramar.8156:

Anyone who breaks the rules to the degree that results in a permaban knows exactly what they’re doing.

Citation needed.

I would say this is more like a guy found some bread incorrectly priced (so it was cheaper) and instead of informing the store, or just buying a few for himself, he bought a thousand loaves.

It’s certainly a valid point of view to say it was also the store’s fault, but then, noone could really be surprised if the store says to the guy “You knew that was wrong, but you still did it. You are no longer welcome at this store.”

I think people are not taking in account what actually happened. Remember when one of the devs released figures on the 21 karma stuff? It was like, so many -thousand- items, bought by a few -dozen- players.

The people banned now? I’m betting these were not people who did it once, or a few times, but grinded it out for hours straight, doing hundreds of salvages. One guy claimed he’d made 500 gold in a day.

Bans for things like this are totally justified. Everyone knows the typically rate of income that can be earned in the game. Anything that increases that by 1000% or some insane number is obviously not intended.

There’s a few interesting things come up on this thread.

1) Most people seem to agree that MF food is ok, because a lot of people don’t bother with food anyways. How can someone talk about people “leeching” and lowering their potential, and then, with a straight face, say that MF or no food at all is ok? We’re talking the possiblity of 20% boon duration, 10% critical damage, health regen, large boosts to pretty much any stat and a plethora of other effects. Mixed with oils or stones, there’s quite a difference (purely looking at stats) between people who use them and people who do not.

Why are we not seeing topics on people not using food being leechers?

2) Why are people assuming that everyone who does not think the same was as they do, are in the wrong?

You want to do the dungeon as fast as possible? That’s fine. But if someone else wants to do a run with the goal of getting as many rares as possible, why is your own desire for a fast run more important than his desire for loot? The whole “But is slows us down!” argument really holds no water, because by “us” you mean “me”, and just expect people to accept that speed is the be all and end all of goals in a dungeon. It’s not.

I was running around in circles on a patch of ground in Frostgorge (waiting fwor a friend to finish at the merchant) when I found a area that gives you the “Frigid Breath” condition just by walking over it.

As I was running in circles, I had about 5 stacks and was almost dead before I even realised I was taking damage. Screenshot provided. Walking forward of this point just 1-2 steps will give you the condition. Walking backwards over it does not.

I know that, but tens of thousands seems a rather high figure. And as I say, I -used- to be able to tag 3-4 veteran elementals in the Claw fight.

Vayra.3290:

Veterans scaled to level 84 require you to do tens of thousands of damage to get kill credit. You should always be in a group for these events because it makes getting kill credit easier (it counts the damage of all group members as 1 for kill credit, and only requires you to hit it once to join in the group credit).

Tens of thousands? Can we get some official confirmation on this, please? It would certainly explain a lot of things if so, though it would still be odd that before the patch I was able to get kill credit/loot from 3-4 veterans per wave, and now sometimes I can’t even get exp from one.

I can’t speak for other events, but I do know that before the wintersday patch, the veteran elementals in the Claw of Jormag fight were working correctly. This is a recent issue for this particular fight.

It might also be why so many people are complaining about lack of drops. Not only has the loot has been removed from the small elementals, but the veterans are not awarding kill credit properly.

Unfortunately, my screenshot taking didn’t work out, as it didn’t capture the mouseover on my exp bar. I can confirm the following though:

I took note of how much exp I had.
I attacked a veteran elemental that had well over 50% of it’s health left.
The ice shield was at about 75%.
I did several thousand damage to it.
No exp was awarded. No yellow number appeared on screen, and the total exp bar remained at the same figure it was at before I killed the mob.

This does not happen every time, but it has happened repeatedly.

Just straight up beaten to death. I’m sure you know how long the shield lasts now that it’s half underground. I will double check next I do it, and take screen shots if I can.

I noticed just a short while ago that killing the veteran elementals does not award me with any experience points most of the time.

I at first thought the amount of damage needed to be done to tag it for loot had been raised as a part of the new anti-farming changes, but then I noticed it on several occasions when I had been among the first to hit the mob and had been beating on it the entire time it was alive.

This is not a case of me missing the award notice, I have checked my experience points total before and after several kills, and there is definitely something screwy going on.

I think the biggest problem is that those mobs were the only thing that made the fight worthwhile from a loot perspective. If people want a chest full of blues, there are plenty of other fights to choose from…Claw is the biggie, though. The kitten level 80 dragon. You SHOULD have more chance at loot, whether that comes via the mobs he spawns or whatever.

It can’t even be said that the loot rate was crazy high. I never went in expecting to find a yellow. Yeah, the crafting mat drops were nice, but nothing to write home about considering you have to wait close to 4 hours for the event.

Danikat.8537:

After repeated issues which have lead to my husband temporarily stopping his LoveFilm subscription because it’s currently impossible for us to stream movies and mean I might well miss even more of Wintersday than I expected to I’m looking at changing internet providers.

The problem is all the information I can find, either online or by calling various companies is focused at “typical consumers” and as you might have guessed from the bit above our usage is not exactly typical. I’m not looking for something that will let me check my email and watch the odd funny cat on Youtube (although I want to do that too) what we really want is something that will let me play Guild Wars 2 while he is streaming a movie, at the same time, usually at peak times, without significant lag in either.

For a long time our current BT package (phone + internet, unlimited use and Homehub 2.0) did that but over the last 6 months or so we’ve had periods ranging from a few hours to several days when it’s been either so slow it’s unusable even for normal web browsing or cut out completely.

So I thought a good starting point would be asking other gamers what they recommend. I know services can vary a lot around the country but it will at least give me an idea of companies to look at or avoid.

Something to consider, is that most, if not all ISPs will be using the exact same cables that BT does. You said your problem only started (relatively) recently, right? As in, you didn’t have it from the start? It’s quite possible that there’s a physical problem with the line, and that changing ISP isn’t going to be an immediate fix.

Have you complained to BT about it? If your internet connection suffers, and the problem is not your fault, they will fix it and usually give you money back for the time you didn’t have the net.

tl;dr If there’s a problem with your line, changing ISP won’t help.

Have you considered swapping out those valor traits for the 3 meditation based ones? Meditation Mastery, and Monk’s Focus, at least.

Then skill wise you’d have:

Smite condition – Heals you for 2k (with Monk’s Focus), cures a condition, AND does AOE damage. With Mastery, it’s available every 14 seconds. If you add the trait that makes meditations instant, you can use it even while using other skills. It’s awesome.

Judge’s Intervention – Breaks stun, 1,200 gap closer, burns in aoe, and heals you for 2k.

Contemplation of Purity – Breaks stun, heals for 2k, and turns every single condition you have into a boon.

It’s such an unstoppable combo, it’s crazy. Noone can slow you down, and noone can escape.

Peregrine Falcon.5496:

In Tixx’s Infinirarium, entering from Divinity’s Reach, we encountered a game stopping bug in stage 3, retake the princess dolls’ hamlet from the skritt.

Screenshot: http://oi50.tinypic.com/5scvq.jpg

My friends and I killed over 6 Veteran Skritt and a lot of the normal Skritt, while inside the mission circle, and the bar for the event didn’t move at all. This happened right after the patch. When we did it before the patch killing the Skritt inside the mission circle did cause the bar to move. This makes me wonder if something in the patch broke this event.

Is it possible that we were just doing something wrong?

Killing doesn’t make the bar move. You have to to make sure there are no Skirtt inside the circle, -that’s- when it starts filling up. You can’t have been killing them quick enough before the next wave came to invade.

Glad you all like it. I can’t wait until tomorrow so I can finally build my Princess Doll to go with it…

LordYz.8941:

Anet cares about their female gamers. Thanks. Found 2 of those skin in the wintersday gift and gave to my wife. She is a very happy female gamer.

…cares about their female gamers…

…female gamers…

wut?

LightningLockey.5938:

I have never seen a game fail twice (in a row) at the holiday events. They are suppose to be fun, easy, enjoyable, relaxing and cause spontaneous fun. Here they are just dungeon grinds, junky rewards, next to impossible (if not impossible) jumping puzzles. I have never felt so miserable during holiday events until I came here.

If I wanted content this bad, I would have signed up for World of Warcraft.

I wish I could be positive…. just disgusted.

Going through your list…

FUN/ENJOYABLE/SPONTANEOUS FUN-

I’ve had fun with everything so far, and so has everyone I know. Except for on the forums, I have not seen a single person in game complaining about Winterday (with the exception of a few people talking about minis).

I’ve been involved in a number of snowball fights, both in the jumping puzzle lobby, and it various zones,, that were just great and started up out of nowhere. They varied from all out brawls, to one-on-one duels. One guy yesterday, when everyone was stood around waiting for the puzzle to start said, ’I’m the highest level here. Come at me. Come at me brah!", and then couldn’t get up off of the floor for the rest of the time, he was being pelted so hard by everyone. It was good times.

EASY/IMPOSSIBLE JP-

With the exception of presents spawning high level mobs in low level areas (a bug), and taking in to account that people with certain physical conditions may have trouble with jumping puzzles/the choir bells, I really can’t imagine the majority of people are finding this content difficult.

I’ve 2 manned Tixx twice, and that is not a boast, it’s just not that difficult. Five people eat their way through it.

The jumping puzzle is not hard at all, once you’ve done it once. When I did it for the daily earlier, 6 people made it to the end with me. If you aren’t very good at jumping puzzles, well, that’s a shame, but consider yourself before you complain about the game.

And you can’t even die in the other events.

DUNGEON GRINDS-

This one is almost laughable, and that’s not an insult, it seriously made me laugh (easily amused). Have you done the dungeons? They change every day, have totally different events to do, are obviously designed to be played through once, and only take 15-20 minutes, if not less. They’re also great fun. Spraying the dolls and defending their town from Skritt, were especially enjoyable.

JUNKY REWARDS-

Well, that’s opinion, to be sure. Mainly we have minis and weapon skins to go for. Personally, I’ve enjoyed my candy cane hammer and princess wand (with new matching humiliation shade pink armor…goes well with my unshaved face and scars). They especially draw compliments when I farm Orr. A lot of people seem to want the mini pets, so I geuss they are popular, too.

tl;dr – I’m extremely impressed with this Winterday event. I missed Halloween due to real-life, the Karka dissapointed me greatly for many reasons, but Wintersday is perfect.

Short, easy, fun events that aren’t one day only, and mainly give cosmetic only rewards. Great stuff.

Sinikka.2794:

Haha, great minds think alike!

At least it seems to be the popular choice, haha.

kozeljko.8201:

On the fourth day of Wintersday the Asura gave to me…
Four running Logans
Three shiny “shinies”
Two Quaggan hatchlings
And a partridge in the Pale Tree!

On the fifth day of Wintersday, the Asura gave to me…

FIVE ASCENDED RIIIIIIINGS….

Four running Logans
Three shiny “shinies”
Two Quaggan hatchlings
And a partridge in the Pale Tree!

The simple fact is that AH builds were stupidly overpowered. And I play one.

I could stand there (in power/precision/tougness armor, with all power/precision/crit damage gems on it, and all power/precision/crit damage trinkets) and simply facetank the majority of situations. If I happened to be in a group that was melee heavy, it was basically God-mode. No class should be able to stand there dealing out great damage, constant party buffs, and be nigh-unkillable. Something had to give.

Having tried out the changes, I’ve found it’s not all that bad. You have to make sure your dodges are well used, but other than that, I haven’t found many issues with my survivability.

Zid.4196

You may play any inferior style if you want to. Apparently the guardian virtue burning on ally attack uses the ally’s malice. Yours is irrelevant. But you are free to use whatever excuses you like too for justifying an inferior playstyle.

Interesting, thanks for that info. I assume “malice” means condition damage, in which case, I was unaware of that. However, condition damage is still good for my build for several reasons. My Virtue is not my only source of burning, for example.

I could go on, but I believe you’re trolling me. You’re not interested in discussion at the very least, so there is no more point replying to you.

Zid.4196:

On the contrary, there is a reason and it is called playstyle also known as flow. It consists of things like optimal rotation of skills and optimal distance from target and sometimes it extends to what targets at all you should engage in wvw or defines your dungeon role. It is different for condition and power builds.

When you take runes of divinity “because they buff my burning” on an otherwise power build you kitten yourself badly compared to runes that fully enhance your power damage.

Sounds great. But the burn from my activated Virtue does a couple of thousand damage, -from everybody in my party-. Or the closest few people to me in wvw. Extra condition damage is not just for me, it’s for the team. When you talk about optimzation, you seem to mean watching your own big numbers pop up infront of you.

I would say that “playstyle”, is exactly the reason I can put some condition damage in my build if I want to.

Zid.4196:

Let me be blunt: only bad players use rune of divinity.

In dungeons, using divinity means you don’t understand what the strong sides of your character are nor how to maximize them.

In wvw, healing is only worth a fraction of a full stat and your build’s correct playstyle will favor power or condition, not both. While vitality and especially toughness are never lost, trading 60 of them for a lesser damage potential is questionable. Especially on glass cannons maximizing your damage and avoiding enemy damage altogether is the way to go.

In spvp your question would be moot.

However, rune of divinity being bad doesn’t make rubies good though. Runes like scholar/eagle/air will generally outshine them, depending on your exact build.

As a Guardian, traiting for precision (for a glass cannon) would ALSO increase condition damage. With several rather hefty burn options at my disposal, it would not be a bad idea at all to add a rune that added condition damage as well as power. There’s no reason at all to focus on just one when you can have both.

Really interesting builds, and similar to what I’ve been trying out lately.

I’ve just started running a 10/30/30/0/0 build, using Power/Precision/Tougness armor, with all Power/Precision/Crit Damage upgrades and trinkets.

Zeal
II – Fiery Wrath

Radiance
II – Signet Mastery
X – Powerful Blades
XI – Right-hand Strength

Valor
I – Meditation Mastery
IX – Honourable Shield
XII – Monk’s Focus

My strategy is to pop Virtue of Justice, and then Sword 2 to my target. I have a fair amount of crit rate and damage anyways, but the (really high damage) burn, plus the increased damage from Fiery Wrath and Radiant Power after my target is on fire really, -really- hurt. At this point most people will try and escape, and that’s when they get a Judge’s Intervention to the face.

The trick is to use life steal food. It gives you a steady influx of heals, and when you mix it with the burst heals of the meditations, you can really take a lot of damage.

@Karizee

Personally, I haven’t noticed any changes while opening loot bags or nodes. That’s just opinion, though, I haven’t paid too much attention to it.

@Xaaz

It was 350 mobs, actually, but I agree that it’s a rather small number to be 100% sure of anything. I would like to point out though that the mobs in Orr will quite possibly have a different drop rate than the mobs I farmed, and that you will tend to kill a lot of vets and champions there.

If I get time/willpower, I might repeat my test in Orr.

@Gnatoay

Yes, but my point is that perhaps, when talking about normal mobs at least, it’s better to kill more mobs, more quickly, to get more chances at drops. The MF gear gives you slightly better chances, but a lot less of them (solo killing at least).

If you’re killing stuff as a part of a group, or hunting Veterans/Champions/Mobs with a seemingly better chance of dropping rares and up, then it’s different.

I have heard conflicting opinions of MF, ranging from it’s vital, to it’s useless, and so…

The plan: To test out MF to see just how much it changed the kind of drops I could get.

The method: All tests were carried out in the north of Frostgorge. I killed 150 normal mobs, and 25 Veterans without any MF at all. I then did the same amount with as close to 150% MF as I could get. After every 50 enemies I would go to another zone or log out for a while, to try and stave off DR. I kept a complete record of drops.

The results: There was a noticable increase in both the amount and quality of drops. Specific things I took note of -

White/Blue equipment and T5 crafting materials increased in frequency, but not by a large amount.

T6 crafting materials found were almost doubled. Though, that usually meant it went from 2 drops to 4, still not great.

I saw an increase of Black Lion chests and Unidentified Dye with MF.

The amount of Green tier equipment was the most noticable change using MF, and it dropped mainly from the vets I killed.

In all those kills, I found only one Yellow. I was using MF and it came from a Veteran.

There was an increase in money found, BUT, it can be accounted for almost entirely from the bonus from the Omnonberry Bar, leaving me to believe MF on it’s own doesn’t have much change on the amount of money found.

Final Thoughts: So, of course this may not be entirely accurate. RNG is a big factor, and it could be said I needed a bigger amount of kills, but with about eight seperate sessions of killing, and the four of those with MF giving similar results, I think it may not be far off.

Something to take into account, is that in my MF gear, killing took a much longer time. Not so noticable on just a few mobs, but with the large scale of killing I did, it really added up. With this in mind, I think MF gear is great if you’re part of a zerg in orr and only need to tag mobs to get drops. Events with large amounts of veterans, such as dragon fights, are probably also worth doing in MF gear. Solo, it’s probably better to gear up and get in more kills.

Buy trays upon trays of food. Invite everyone in the game to your birthday party, and throw out all the trays for people to eat. After they’ve eaten, run aorund shouting. “It’s people…Soylent green is people!!!”

We have to get something straight here…the people saying that MF gear is selfish? You guys are -displaying that very same form of selfishness-.

You say its unfair dungeon runs take longer because a guy is in MF gear? That’s completely different from saying a guy should give up the chance of better loot because -you- want an easier time, I’m sure.

And don’t give me that “for the good of the group!!!” crap, because the group is made up of everyone in it. -Including- the guy in MF who is doing the dungeon for loot, and not for tokens/ascended/whatever your personal goal is.

I play at least 5 hours a day (at night when the kids are in bed), and sometimes more (if the wife takes the kids out for the day and leaves me to myself).

-Check see if a dragon is going to spawn in the next hour or so. If so, go and farm the area (possibly do a dungeon run if in Frostgorge) while waiting. This includes finishing the daily, doing DE’s, mining, just killing mobs for loot
-After a dragon is dead, check if another is incoming. Repeat above if so. If not, off to Lion’s Arch to sort my inventory, pick up earnings from the TP, do some crafting. Take my time doing this to see if anyone is putting a group together for a dungeon I feel like doing. As I like running all the dungeons, I usually find something.
-If I get very unlucky (not often) and can’t find anything to do, it’s off to Orr to farm a little.

I can add that, on the dredge fractal, people with blink abilities can port through the walls if they manage to target an enemy. So, even fixing the wall glitch, people will still be able to get in.

I prefer to fight Kholer (and most other skippable mobs, even trash). as he’s fun, not too hard, and gives good money. That said, I’ll happily go with what the rest of the group wants, and won’t let it bother me,

What I hate, though, is no communication before skipping things. Often, I’ve found the party leader, and perhaps one of his guild memers, will just start running, which is especially annoying if I’ve (guardian) just jumped in to get the attention of the mob. Will it really ruin your “speed run” so much, to take a second and say “we’re skipping this part”, before we get to it?

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

And further, I haven’t even run into this problem in game. I’ve never seen someone complain about MF gear yet, nor has anyone complained about my contribution during guild play or pick up groups. I’m only hearing this on the forums so far.

This is actually what got me thinking about it. In a dungeon pug, we had a guy drop an exotic. It was then he told us that he was wearing a lot of MF gear. If he hadn’t have told me, I wouldn’t have noticed. He used his skills to good effect, didn’t keep going down, mobs didn’t take a long time to kill etc. It made literally no difference to our run.

Canoas.8423:

Valmarius.4150:

I’ve sat and thought about people using MF gear…and can’t really see the issue if their skill holds up? The arguments that only come down to numbers doesn’t really work for a number of reasons.

Let’s say I swapped my guardian’s exotic knight set for full explorer’s (we’ll leave upgrades out of it for now). I’d lose 315 armor. Is that a huge amount? I normally use a hammer. If I used a knight’s shield , with a trait that I forget the name of, that would become a loss of only 74. Let’s assume a mace in my other hand.

I’ve lost minimal toughness, my damage dealing stats haven’t really changed, and I’m healing people with my mace. Are people really going to notice my lack of 74 armor?

Just one example.

How is it only 74 armor difference? You’d still have 315 more armor had you not changed for MF gear and you were forced to change your skills and weapons. Yes, your damage dealing stats didn’t change, but are you claiming that your damage didn’t change either? you were forced to change your role.

What if everyone did the same? What if each party member changed to a defensive role in order to use MF gear like you are doing? If they did that then you’d barely progress through the instance.

But like I said, maybe the best option is to allow inspect. Pretty much everyone is exotic geared, there’s no gear score like in wow. The only thing inspect would allow us to check is who is being selfish or not.

I have to point out first, that this is all hypothetical on my part. I don’t even own any MF gear,. But, onwards.

Bear with me, because I’m not too good at explaining things.

The arguments I’m seeing, to me, come down to, and I’m paraphrasing here: ‘People have to be min/maxed or I don’t want them in my group.’ I really can’t see the difference between that and demanding people have exotics only. You want them in a optimum setup, or you don’t want them ay all. It’s ironic people here are always dissing WoW, and then turning around and asking for people in certain gear.

What’s next? Telling people not to eat magic find food, because other food is better for stats?

What I I’d said I normally use mace/focus? Switching to shield would give me pretty much the same damage output in that case. Saying ‘Ah, but you’d have xxx extra toughness if you stuck with your original armor’ is meaningless, -because that toughness never existed in my original build- and it made no difference at all.

I guess, what I’m saying is, taking my example NOONE in the group would notice a lack in my performance swapping focus for shield, and then trading some of that extra toughness for magic find.

Sure, if people are coming in full MF gear, weapons, upgrades etc they’re maybe going to be in for a rough time…although maybe not depending on player/skill/traits,. But all this pitchfork waving is way over the top.

I normally run a AH Hammer Guardian build (go check the stick in the Guardian forum if you want to know more) and that’s about as tanky as you can get. But that aside the answer is…sometimes.

It really depends on the dungeon.

TA has stuff that will just kick you all over if you try to go and face tank it. Those dogs at the start, multiple knights, the spider boss, etc. But the path with the dozens of puppies, I can stand there and kill them all without even blinking.

AC, on the other end of things, I can (if I wanted to) stand right next to Kholer and not bother to dodge his spin. Even the path 1 and 3 bosses aren’t certain to kill me if they hit me with their scream. But some of the graveling trash there can hit really hard.

I’ve sat and thought about people using MF gear…and can’t really see the issue if their skill holds up? The arguments that only come down to numbers doesn’t really work for a number of reasons.

Let’s say I swapped my guardian’s exotic knight set for full explorer’s (we’ll leave upgrades out of it for now). I’d lose 315 armor. Is that a huge amount? I normally use a hammer. If I used a knight’s shield , with a trait that I forget the name of, that would become a loss of only 74. Let’s assume a mace in my other hand.

I’ve lost minimal toughness, my damage dealing stats haven’t really changed, and I’m healing people with my mace. Are people really going to notice my lack of 74 armor?

Just one example.

Just to check, you did actually go IN the bubble right? Meaning, you entered one of the glowy-teleporter things and appeared inside, right next to the mob?

I have a feeling you just stood outside and targeted the mob from there, correct me if I’m wrong.

The problem would not be 5 identical professions, but -possibly- 5 identical skillsets/trait set ups (if noone had any condition removal for example), but how often is that going to happen?

@Mr. Stealth

One thing I agree with you on completely is the retaliation. That goes beyond the simple fix of bringing a friend or three, and demands certain classes/builds. Not cool, but I can accept they’re meant to challenge groups, so there may be no way around it.

I really like the small Karka though. Even as Guardian, and decked out in Knight’s gear at that, I’m in big trouble if I take 2 of those sprays head on. Makes a real difference from just standing there swinging and watching everything around me die without giving me a scratch.

Well, a bit of shoddy maths shows me…maybe:

You’d need 90 level 80 blues to get enough commendations. The cheapest goes to an NPC vendor for 66 copper, the most expensive for 99 copper.

With the cost of donation wrapping (x30) added it on, you get a range of roughly 89 silver-113 silver, which as it stands WOULD save you money.

But then we also have to consider that quite a few blues go for more on the AH, up to a 3x higher price. Out of those 90 blues, you’d only need 10-15 to go for higher than normal on the AH and you’ve lost money.

I haven’t looked at it for every single item combination, but I have a feeling it works out similarly.

That said, I do agree it’s possible to get a cheap key if you hoard the cheapest items you find and sell the rest.

As mentioned, my math is shoddy so I could well be wrong. Someone please correct me if so, I’d love to get cheap keys.

I don’t think it is cheaper. I worked it out at about 1 gold, 25 silver for a key using gems. Looking at the possible rewards…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Captain%27s_Council_Commendation

…and with the price of the donation wrapping added on, I can’t think of many combinations where you wouldn’t just be better selling the ingrediants instead and using that money to buy a key.