I have yet to see a “critical” craft. Am I correct in believing that these exist? I have always loved a “+1” craft system… but my goodness if criticals exist, I have yet to see them at 400 Armorsmithing. Very unfortunate, because I think these could be better incorporated (even if it is a small visual upgrade or small stat upgrade).
OP, great post. I refuse to level a second craft, because I have to save money for exotics… quite sad.
you definitely have. crits in crafting don’t change the stats, just give additional xp.
i’m of the impression that crafter can learn new sets beyond the crafted default (theres something you do with a chestpiece of the desired set, a bunch of mats and something else at the mystic forge and you get a recipe for a box of that armor) but there may be limitations to that.
the problem is that it’s too easy to loot something equivilant to what can be crafted. looking at the difference in the price of copper and iron, i’d say that most people haven’t gotten their crafting very far. if there was something unique about crafted items (maybe if looted items didn’t have the sigil/rune slots?) then maybe you’d see it become worthwhile. currently it’s only a method of getting items with specific mods (love my berserker lb).
by the time i got my main to 80 (though i bought cooking mats whenever i saw them off karma vendors) i pretty much had enough mats to level cooking by discovery (load up guildhead and knock them off one at a time). with the exception of copper, i had enough mats to level jewelry also on that same character (got stuck at the karma recipes until i actually play this character).
this just means that i have a lvl27 mesmer that i don’t know how to play.
i don’t remember the exact recipes but i think you can also upgrade the t5 to t6 with the mystic forge. i’m sure it’s a total pita but might also be viable if your getting those mats while your farming the t6 drops.
you can check this wiki link but i’m at work and the wiki’s blocked here so i can’t tell you exactly.
don’t know if the op is happy with his answers but i thought i’d add here (as an 80 ranger with 400 huntsman/leatherworking btw) that he might also consider weaponsmith instead of huntsman if he’s more focused on melee or also (because of the diversity of mats) get jewelcrafting or cooking.
level and rarity determine the numbers. also with crafting, each tier (after the copper tier) only provides 2 blues and a green (generally 3 insignias @ the starter level make blues, 4 insignias make blues 5 levels higher and then 7 insignias make greens 5 levels higher than that) so there might not be items at the exact rarity and level you’re looking for.
refining tends to give more than the raw mats. not enough more to justify buying the raw mats, refining and reselling…just more than selling the raw mats to beginin with. i get the feeling cooking will be awesome but not enough people know about it yet. armor and weapon crafting are cheapened by the fact that equivilant or better items drop.
that leaves…
with the exception of jewels (not really that lucrative but better than all the others) crafting has minimal income potential in the current market. why i don’t regret getting them…exotic longbow with berserker stats.
brother, i could say much of the same thing about 400/400 crafting. basic problem is that mats are more expensive than the finished products. if i didn’t craft (400leather/380-something huntsman on my ranger…400cooking/tier1 jeweler on my mesmer and in tier3 on ws/as on my guardian and tier1 art/tailor on my ele) i’d have the money back that i spent on keeping up with my zone…i wouldn’t have the crafted berserker exotic chest on my ranger (but i wouldn’t have spent the karma i did on cooking mats and would have a 42k karma cp instead…that looked a LOT cooler…exotic crafted medium looks TERRIBLE!!#*!#^@!%#$!@RF!).
thellena mentioned a lot of what i was going to say (we aren’t seeing the ultimate failure states).
the other thing is that a lot of de’s have plot and the best voice acting in the game…most people just don’t look for it. people see orange and run to it until they see gold reward then they immediately run from it. i find a lot more satisfaction when i’m not, “on my way to somewhere.”
if you didn’t see tales of tyria last weekend, bridger did a really great job of showing a few different related de’s that were triggered off each other. i would hope for more planetside-type base control scenarios but i’m sure those will come. they’re planning on regularly changing de’s. the problems i see arising from that is when that zone isn’t that popular and the pop goes somewhere else. i guess it depends on how you scale it.
there was also a (youtube) video from wayfarer hills that follows a couple npc’s through intersecting de’s. that de meant a lot more to me when it wasn’t just, “bears are spawning…kill some bears,” but instead the consequences of these 3 kids trying to get the stuff together to summon bear spirit so they could impress dad.
it’s one of the reasons i prefer to play solo in this game.
yeah. if anything, it should be higher at lower levels. maybe there’s a specific mechanic that kittens crit chance with the scaling down because of that.
yeah. too expensive. if i’m in iron marches and i’m going to arah… i can see it costing 2s… if i’m standing next to a wp, it should cost a copper. i don’t think you should have to chose between running everywhere or not leveling crafting. i can’t imagine how anyone who doesn’t completely play the tp can afford the crazy 25g cultural armor.
… I’m not in a guild, and that’s by choice for various reasons, but that leaves me just one option and it’s pugs. Now if I’m in each dungeon with different people, totally strangers, am I required to learn their skill sets and abilities and explain myself every time just to have a fighting change in story mode? I think not.
a couple things there:
1. yeah, i’m a pugger who avoids guilds and in doing so, have to accept that this is going to limit what i can do.
2. it’s good to learn what other classes do. part of my schtick when i’m on my ranger is dropping the healing spring and knowing that the melees can leap into it for a group heal. those things are important to me in taking my gameplay to the “next level”.
3. i don’t know how to approach, ‘story mode is too hard.’ even playing a lb ranger, i tried to challenge myself (switching melee and attacking things that my pet wasn’t) and dodging damage that my guardian could safely eat. as a pretty mediocre to bad player, i haven’t found the story modes to be that hard. you don’t really need to coordinate the support in story as long as there’s some. maybe your problem has been that your pugs all went full dps.
yeah, personal story in general could use some rethinking. i realize a lot of that is based on the awkward mechanics of having to make the stories modular but some of the scenarios after choosing a faction are odd and one character in particular (you’ll never guess who) seriously kills my enjoyment. arah ended up actually exceeding my expectations since the personal storyline had spent 40 levels driving that into the ground.
also maybe they should’ve taken note of how other games handle big bosses (vindictus is actually pretty solid in that regard and would’ve been a good model for anet).
your reference to gw1 adds credibility to your statements
doesn’t the stamina require a certain economy of skill though? dodging the wrong move doesn’t mean that much if the target is going to be dead soon anyway. i’ve got pretty limited explorable experience (the problems that have affected me the most have been player-caused…i’m the only limited support and nobody has cc…)
why do people need additional motives to play the game? play it for its own sake or do something else for a while. don’t expect anet to keep stalling you from cancelling your sub like other games have in the past because that’s not their focus. the idea of this game is that it should be fun to play – period. they’re not going to shove busy-work down your throat to keep you obligated to play.
i’m not sure that people are looking at the armor and weapons vendors for them. i’m doing ac (eventually) for the undead-slaying sigil and the ghostly skins. i believe rune sets are on there too. by ‘reward’, do people mean they want rares and exotics to drop in there? i think dungeons have a chance to drop exotics but that’s not why i’m doing them.
am i the only person who sees all medium dungeon armor from every dungeon as the same medium pirate set?
it’s been like that for me since release (i think) though i could see the actual skins during beta.
i haven’t seen this problem for anyone else so i’m kinda wondering if it’s just me…guess it’s an easy one to bug with a ss but hadn’ty thought to do that yet.
i’m a terrible pvper and i always thought ranger was pretty forgiving. i never used any meta builds…just lb and ls/d with a crit and condy duration (for poison and vulnerability…only really used poison for the healing debuff which is pretty significant). seemed pretty survivable with 1v1 and precariously survivable with 1v2.
next time i go in though i’m going 30 power, 30 ws and go sb and a/t.
sometimes i’ll play a little in an event i’m passing with no one else around. eventually other people show up long after i’ve left and complete them. maybe this is what happened.
…The simplest and most obvious change would be to reduce the number of fine items required per craft…
yeah, as someone’s who’s pretty aggressively leveling all my crafting about as efficiently as possible, this has felt a little off…especially now that they’re going to be even more rare with the changes to loot bags.
when life hands you chocolate and butter, make a chef.
if they raised the drop rate on rare trophies outside of the bags that would be fine with me. those things seemed a little stupidly rare initially and will be even less frequent now. i am so glad i spontaneously started leveling cooking a couple of days ago and bought a little too much stuff.
ok, i just pugged ac today and i can definitively say that you guys just need to get better at the game. it’s not really that hard. maybe go out of your way in the persistant world to solo stuff and practice your e&e because dungeons (ac at least) are working as intended.
i’m scratching my head wondering how people some people say the dungeons are impossible and others have the first 2 dungeons on farm.
they’ve (anet) said that dungeons were intended to be high-end pve content that wasn’t for everyone. some people may need more practice or may never be good enough (myself included).
the less you spec defensively and the more melee you build (i would include dagger ele and necros), the more you need to know the full extent of your skills.
Most of the classes seems 1 button to win for me sadly =/, thieves, elementals, and warriors mostly, the rest are a bit harder.
how you use 1 button can vary. chain skills usually have some boon/evade/condition on one or more swings and can be timed (with auto-attack off) to provide that at the right time (gs on ranger for instance has a dodge on the 3rd swing which can be helpful when used at the right time.
if you hadn’t put much time into d/d ele btw, do it. it’s fun as [kittens]. the highest skill cap is definitely not ranger. as a ranger main, i’ll tell you now pets make it way too easy to play straight dps.
think of the hearts as magazines in a waiting room. because of a lot of the ‘hidden’ content, you could easily spend several hours in the starting areas (and because of the down-leveling and loot-scaling you could theoretically level to 80 without ever leaving queensdale/wayfarer/metrica/caledon/ashford).
follow npcs and pay attention to what’s going on in the game. even after playing since bwe1 and following the game since 2007, i’m still learning what habits and preconceptions i’m bringing from other games.
put them on passive and use them for the f2 if nothing else. i tend to leave them out of zergs and send them after dudes that break from the pack and chase people down. ranged pets are cool but they always seem to pull aggro from a group and get beat down by a straggler.
so i’m seeing that some servers are borked on cursed shore and i was wondering what the events were suppoed to look like. i’m on gates of madness and the meta event only says that a couple outposts are under attack or they’re waiting for reinforcements down south (that seems to be as far as the event goes from what i’ve seen). talking to npcs hasn’t helped.
can someone post the actual stages of that event chain to open arah? it’s not terribly clear for me.
i thought swiftness was capped at 25%. also i think the passive runspeed traits and things don’t stack with the active skills (from what i’d read in bwe theory crafting).
funny thing is that i thought ele and thief were the fastest.
check out your weapon sets and see what kinds of options you have. unless you’re using dagger main-hand, you should be able to maintain a distance. even after getting to 80, i’m still practicing using my weapons on my ranger to avoid damage. maybe you should try ranger since the pets make it a little more forgiving with aggro.
between gear, traits and utility skills you can either exhagerate your focus or compensate fot your weaknesses. maybe make an adjustment to gear, utilities or gear…
