Guild Wars 2

It should, and you should get a level roughly every 57 crafting levels.

While that is a nice suggestion, especially for its intended purpose. It is way too exploitable.

5-man group gets to final boss, 2-3 people purposefully disconnect and get kicked. The remaining party members sell the final boss and finish the dungeon, while those that disconnected begin to relog. When the remaining party members kill the last boss, they rejoin the people that were originally disconnected and are now at the final boss again. It’d be an easily obtainable permaloop of farming/selling the final boss of a dungeon.

The intent is nice but there is no way the game can tell the difference between a legitimate disconnect and people exploiting.

morrolan.9608:

Neverender.7581:

I for one do not like it. This is just the first of what will surely be many more universal skills to come. If we start adding universal skills, then what is the point of having professions?

This!

Besides the obvious of weapons skills, traits, class mechanics, different hp pools, different armor levels, and non-universal skills/elite skills? I don’t see a problem with providing an option for more cleanse for every profession. Besides, if universal skills are on par with racial skills then I don’t think we have anything to worry about.

And if they do make universal skills a thing it still won’t change that some classes are better with certain types of skills. An ele won’t be able to use a shout as effectively as a warrior or a guard, but it will be able to use glyphs a lot better. Though, that all assumes that if there are more universal skills that they will have subtypes.

Seras.5702:

What if it’s a skill point that can be used once a day by a single character on your account? That would be fun. Recharge the SP every reset. Then you get a free SP as currency for your main or an easy SP for an alt each day.

While I won’t complain about this for my alts, and it would still be a nice addition, I don’t think I need it. 600+ skill points on my main and over 100-150 skill point items sitting in my inventory. Unless the potential new skills before the end of the year cost lots of skill points I’d argue most people who have been playing for a while won’t really need an extra +1 sp a day.

They said back in….June? (or thereabouts) that we would not be fighting another dragon for this year and maybe a bit into next (don’t remember the vague time frame they said exactly). Not saying that makes me happy or sad, just stating it as a psudo-fact (cause I can’t remember the exact timing). So, sadly, don’t get your hopes up for the next ~6months or so, though I know I’d love to hang a fang of Jormag up in my home instance.

Orpheal.8263:

Just wait until the WvW season is over, I think we will see the new skills just with the last years patch of 2013, because they said that they would make no changes to the game, that are anyhow balancing relevant while the season is running and new skilsl/traits would totally change the current game balancing, so it has just to be somethign that wil come after the season…

The seasin is just 4 days old.. it will last 7 weeks, so we have basically to endure 3 patches, until we will find out with the 4th patch at the end of the year out, if ANet can hold up onto their words (promises), or if it will end up as content, that will get into the game with early 2014.

I think similar things. The same could be stated for ascended armor. We may see a very big early Dec patch. Though they may have a way to introduce new skills but make them not usable in WvW.

In terms of new skills. I hope they saw what some of us posted way back when.

New weapon skills. (Not new weapons, though they’ve stated that they’d like to give classes some existing extra weapons before). I’d love to be able to pick our 2-5 skills. As it stands, you pretty much just pick 3 skills. Being able to have more freedom in what skills we choose would do wonders for new build options.

Pariah.8506:

New skill ‘Summon’: 5 second cast, 180s recharge

Thieves summon a boar
Mesmers summon an ~illusionary~ stag
Guardians Summon a crab
Enginners summon a bear
Rangers don’t get to summon anything
Elementalists summon a firefly
Necromancers summon a grub
Warriors summon Zhaitan

Man, that means warriors get the worst of it. We’d only get to summon a corpse/skeleton, sounds pretty lame to me.

I had a bit of a different/random idea as well. Instead of adding another damage condition or conditional damage condition, which we already have a good amount of:

Bleed: Damage
Burn: Damage
Poison: Damage and reduced heal
Torment: Damage and more on movement
Confusion: Damage on skills

What if Toxin did something different/extra. One option is being a new disease from gw1. A different approach that I just thought up: it makes other conditions hurt more.

Toxin: X% more susceptible to conditions (they do X% more damage), and/or toxin must always be removed before another condition (regardless of application order). Just a random thought considering how in PvE are still rather weak, and it would be a different approach instead of just adding more damaging conditions.

Redenaz.8631:

Arnath.2319:

Also this patch is seriously lacking content, i get the feeling Ascended armour was meant to be added in this patch but because of complaints about how ugly the sets looked they are holding off?

We know a couple rewards, and we know the plot setup, but we really don’t know much about the content, other than that it involves helping detectives investigate the Krait tower. While I don’t expect ascended armor to be in this update, I’m expecting there to be more than meets the eye to it at this point.

Also I’m a little happy that the past LS updates have been on the “small side.” One world boss ruined (my opinion), a dungeon path replaced, Halloween. Most of this meta can be gained in 2-3 hours. I still remember lots of people complaining how they had to do ~4 hours of southsun survival for 1 achievement.

Melfice.5091:

Wether it is subject to change or not, all the content in that post was promised to be released in 2013.

Umm, I don’t think you know what the phrase “subject to change” mean.

And we still have 5 more patches to get new skills/traits and ascended armor. Those are the only two things that we haven’t gotten from the “looking ahead post”.

Before you mention crafting precursors or new legendaries.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-precursor-crafting-going-to-happen-or-not/first#post2981770

Most of the stuff covered in the blog you’ve already seen implemented, or steps towards being implemented, however the precursor building (and corresponding additional legendary items) is the one highest at risk to not make it this year.

Edit: Also when the new fractals were announced, the devs said that they would come out at the end of the year.

No Walking.6349:

Universal healing skill?
Cures you and all nearby allies of several critical conditions?

Anyone else see the forming of the trinity here? Someone will have to carry this healing skill in groups, being the “healer” so to speak.

Not saying this is a bad thing, I think GW2 could seriously benefit from a trinity, but it’s funny that they sell the game on having no trinity, then start slowly working it in later because it allows for more interesting fights.

It’s not any different that other ways for classes to heal conditions party wide. Warriors aren’t forced into shout-healers/condition cleansers, for example.

But it does give classes that are lacking cleanse another source of it, which is a good thing.

Marquie Thomas.1873:

If this skill is usable in WvW every person and there grandma will run it in WvW it gets ride of several powerful condition confusion and poison torment and a new condition toxin. Just cluster together and hit your healing skill conditions gone

Well three things, either you’re right, the heal is horrible so it won’t be used too much, or they’ll slowly start to separate PvE and WvW (ie the skill can’t be used in WvW).

Faowri.4159:

I’m actually looking forward to seeing what the next update with the krait is, so long as Scarlet is scarce. It’ll be great to see a pre-established race get to do some ‘living’ in this living world, and making an impact on the world.

But the note about the anti-toxin skill reward did make me cringe. Locking important content like entire new skills behind temporary content does not strike me as a clever move.

If it is temporary, can you at least make it possible for players to acquire in other ways? That’d be an awesome compromise. The same goes for any significant non-cosmetic LW rewards, really.

Or it could be a perm new dungeon (or instance or mini dungeon). Or the way to get the skill could be outside of said tower, in which case there’s no reason the skill can’t be gained at anytime.

Astralporing.1957:

Kite.2510:

A-net mentioned many times that they didn’t anticipated Exotics to become so common.

Which is funny, since before that their stated goal wast to have pretty much everyone be in Exotics at level 80. They didn’t anticipate to ever reach their stated goals? Oh, really?

Also, everyone coming from gw1 expected to get the best gear fairly quickly/easily/cheaply and then just work on other things that interest them. Plus, why is it a bad thing if people get the best gear easily? It’s only bad for people who want to grind hard for the 1-10% boost, which (besides titles) gw1 was never about.

I’m sure Anet also never expected (which they didn’t cause they temp banned him when they first heard about it) the first lvl 80 to happen in less than 3 days (before the game actually “launched”), or for the first legendary weapon to be crafted in less than a month. That doesn’t mean that they should make leveling harder or legendary weapons cost more.

As for my own tinfoil hat, if they intended ascended gear to be in the game at launch (which they’ve stated before), why not tell us about this when the game launched/ shortly into the release. I didn’t follow the news back then, but when fractals were announce with ascended rings, did they ever mention that eventually they’d release full ascended gear?

Astralporing.1957:

Quite unlikly to be another agony equivalent, as this condition is by design uncleansable and can only be reduced through infusions. Since this obviously can be cleansed, seems to be a new “normal” condition. Of course, might just be something for this LS only.

Yeah, I know I was reaching. But I do look forward to new uses for infusions (or just increase the amount of utility infusions you can equip at once).

It’s a known bug. If I recall it happens any time something (trait, rune, etc.) activates while gathering/harvesting.

Valefor.3246:

God i hope they aren’t as delayed as you say. I really want the craftable precursors. I want Bifrost but not going to pay like 800g for the precursor haha.

Pretty sure a dev already said that precursor crafting and new legendaries will be pushed back into next year.

zamalek.2154:

Tower Of Nightmares

Antitoxin Spray will cleanse yourself and nearby allies of poison, torment, confusion, and toxin

Wait wait, what (emphasis mine)? Are we getting another condition? It can’t be a typo for poison as that’s listed.

That, or it will be a dungeon-specific condition.

It could also be a new Agony with new infusions to counter it (they did say a long time ago that they were thinking about infusions besides +5 agony resistance, and the +5 stat ones don’t count). Would also make sense if they introduce ascended armor (bleh) soon.

It’s the same as last year, they are just town clothes.

GOSU.9574:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

DanteZero.9736:

The next content update seems to address that with the addition of a new healing skill for everyone: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/news/page/1/read/28849/Guild-Wars-2-Tower-of-Nightmares-Announced.html

Interesting, not asymmetric, but more healing options is good all around, and looks like it gives another cleanse option for people.

I don’t see the leap to this conclusion. This new “skill” that all players can have is most likely an equipped bundle skill specific to the content only.

Eh, you could be right, I guess I’m trying to be optimistic, and that this is the small start of getting new traits/skills.

this release also introduces new rewards like the Antitoxin Spray, a new universal healing skill that allows any player to cleanse themselves and nearby allies of poison, toxins, and other nasty effects.

To me that sounds more like a “racial” healing skill than a bundle (racial in the sense that it most likely will heal less than current class options, but will at least cleanse).

Also somewhere I think I saw a dev post that most likely precursor crafting and the extra legendaries will be pushed into next year.

That leaves ascended armor and new traits/skills. They have two more “big” (potentially month long) patches to come, but they also said that they won’t try to mess with things during WvW season 1. So if they think that new traits, skills, armor would effect WvW they may decide to wait until December to add those things.

Edit: Also if I recall, it was stated back during the elections that the three new fractals wouldn’t make it into the game until the end of the year.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Since, the topic I posted in was already pushed to page 4 since yesterday.

Furious’ tool tip now says Adrenaline 1, the skill only gives +1 adrenaline on a critical hit (compared to +2, or “x3 adrenaline from crit hits” from the June patch notes)

I did a test yesterday, and furious working just fine, or maybe a bit too strong (from 30% i went to 37 on crit, that actually means its 4 adren on crit). Stop spreading false info.

No offense, but you’re the one who can’t do math/spreading false info. You actually prove me right.

30% of adrenaline is 9 strikes. 9/30*100=30
37% of adrenaline is 11 strikes. 11/30*100= 36.666

Your crit only gave you +1 strike of adrenaline. I have no clue how you got 4 strikes. Also, just look at the tool tip, it now says only 1 strike. I am saying that this is a bug because it is not in the patch notes. The last time Furious was updated was June 25th, and it states “x3 adrenaline on a crit”, that means +2 strikes, for a total of 3 strikes on a crit hit.

This was either stealth nerfed, which the dev said didn’t happen, or it’s a bug. So my point stands.

Ah, I didn’t even know it counted for the meta. I finished it before that achievement went live, and even still I thought it didn’t count.

DanteZero.9736:

The next content update seems to address that with the addition of a new healing skill for everyone: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/news/page/1/read/28849/Guild-Wars-2-Tower-of-Nightmares-Announced.html

Interesting, not asymmetric, but more healing options is good all around, and looks like it gives another cleanse option for people.

Since, the topic I posted in was already pushed to page 4 since yesterday.

Furious’ tool tip now says Adrenaline 1, the skill only gives +1 adrenaline on a critical hit (compared to +2, or “x3 adrenaline from crit hits” from the June patch notes)

Shademehr.1397:

I got my 8-game achievement and I’m never playing this mini-game again. I agree in that the competition is extremely lopsided. About three games in, I just started running immediately to the center and got ghostified. The remaining five games went much “faster”.

I didn’t have a single care for bags or rewards. I just wanted it over.

You realize that’s repeatable up to 50 times (for achievement points), right?

You can craft ascended rabid (condi, prec, tough) weapons. They are called Grizzlemouth’s weapons.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grizzlemouth's_Spire

Ralgondo.1524:

Hey I would like to contribute my research with salvaging ectos for luck.

This was an experiment to get an idea of how many ectos it would take to get to 300% MF. How much gold it would cost from TP, etc.

“Salvage o-Matic”

Bought 250 ecto @ 74 gold

-Luck produced: 26490

-Crystalline dust produced: 440x

Sellback price on dust: 63.06g

Gold lost: 11g

---

“Mystic Salvage Kit”

Bought 250 ecto @ 74 gold

-Luck produced: 26150

-Crystalline dust produced: 427x

-gold lost about 10.5~11g.

---

Drop rates are assumed to be the same for mystic

and copper-fed salvage-o-matic.

If these numbers would remain consistent :

You would have to do this 1585x for 42m luck (300%mf)

42000000 / 26490 = 1585

and would lose…

1582 × 11g = 17435g In the process.

Thanks for the numbers! The scary thing is that some people have already maxed their luck (or are darn close). And the sad thing that I’m not even 5% of the way there yet.

Oh and don’t forget the cost of the kits. 250*3c = 7.5s per stack for salvage matic
Or 26.24s + 3 mystic forge stones per stack for the mystic kit.

Using your numbers, that’s
118.875 g in salvaging costs for basic
415.904 g + 4755 mystic forge stones in salvaging costs for mystic

Not too noticeable compared to 17k gold, but it’s still there.

And I do wonder about the salvage kit for ectos. If I recall, people did tests when you could first salvage them and they concluded that mystic kits were better than basic kits, but the numbers were never too much better.

My main concern is how they plan to introduce new skills after they started WvW season 1. I’m only casual WvW’er at best, but they said that they would not many any balance/changes (if I recall) during the season. That leaves 3 options:

1) They come out in one of the two December patches.
2) They come out before December, but are unusable in WvW until after season 1 is done.
3) They get pushed to next year.

If I recall the dev post about things getting pushed to next year it was just crafting precursors and the new legendaries/new types of legendaries.

So that means we still have ascended armor (yay….) and new skills/traits (which supposedly require some effort to get) to come out in the next 5 patches. Also ascended armor may not also come out during WvW season 1 for all we know, again to try to keep with their current balance. If that’s the case we may get a very big December patch.

To further incentivize spending your points we will not be introducing any new ability lines during the season, nor shall we be making any other changes to WvW, with the exception of bug fixes, until the season concludes.

If they don’t consider ascended armor and new skills/traits to “change” WvW then we could see one of them in Nov and the other in Dec.

Vorch.2985:

Mackdose.6504:

Well, there’s a lot of signal to noise here, and not a lot of it is constructive.

Anet could implement a simple “Last read by ArenaNet at XX:XX:XX on Jan1 2013” on the top of the thread.

That’s…actually a pretty good idea.

There are at least two big problems to this:

1) “the dev’s read this, why aren’t they commenting on anything!!! we want answers NOW!”

2) *5th+ post on same topic * “why aren’t the dev’s bothering to read out post! they must hate all of their players”

While it seems like a nice idea, it would quickly be turned into a way to complain.

Already talking about 1 bug (or at least not in the patch notes) about Furious from a couple of days ago.

Edit: But thanks for your post Tyler, one way or the other I’d like to know if it was intended or just a bug.

Dand.8231:

Ambrecombe.4398:

So in this exemple, should it ever state you gain 3 times the product of a base value, the result should always be 3 times that base value, no matter what. If you do otherwise the description remains inaccurate.
If 1×3 = 3 = triple -> 1 Normal Blow
than 0×3 = 0 = triple -> 1 Blow from Burst Skill

The description can only be true if it was writen the following way “you gain additional adrenaline with each critical hits”, and in this case specificy the amount you gain in the tooltip.

I’ve noticed burst crits gave +adrenaline with Furious.

So whatever the description said about triple, the math formula for actually adding adrenaline must have always been additive for the very reason you stated.

It almost makes sense to simply say Triple, since ~90% of Warrior moves are 1 adrenaline. But the few skills that have a base adrenaline gain of zero, show us the ACTUAL coding MUST have been something functionally equivalent to this:

If Normal Attack then Adrenaline = 1
If Burst Attack then Adrenaline = 0
IF Furious Trait=Yes, and Crit=Yes, then Adrenaline = Adrenaline + 2

In other words, ANet needs to decide which way they want to go with this trait. Do they want it to say “Adds +2 adrenaline on crit” which means adjusting the tooltip, or “grants triple adrenaline” in which case they need to adjust their code.

I vote they just update the wording of the tooltip…. every time they touch the code, something breaks. Look how bad they messed up chaos storm last week!

Personally I always thought the anomaly of gaining adrenaline during a burst skill was related to this (from the wiki)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burst

Burst skills do not necessarily immediately drain adrenaline after connecting with a foe, and will only drain adrenaline upon following up with another skill or effect and widely varies. For example, triggering Furious or a Sigil of Fire will drain your adrenaline during Flurry’s channeling effect. Versatile Rage’s adrenaline gain when swapping weapons can also drain this adrenaline. Following up with a second burst skill will result in a unique zero-adrenaline burst effect.

With Furious (or a Sigil of Fire) caused the adrenaline to drain and then allow more to be gained, but I could be wrong.

Do they want it to say “Adds +2 adrenaline on crit” which means adjusting the tooltip, or “grants triple adrenaline” in which case they need to adjust their code.

Unless I’m mistaken, those are the same thing. And currently both the code and the tool tips were changed from what they were.

Also compare this to the Axe Mastery, Master Discipline trait.
“Critical hits with axes grant extra adrenaline. Reduces recharge on axe skills.” This trait grants +2 strikes of adrenaline on an axe critical, in addition to reducing the axe recharge by 20%.

Compared to the Grandmaster Arms Trait, Furious which currently only grants +1 strike of adrenaline on a critical.

Just the difference between Master and Grandmaster traits makes me think that this has to be a bug.

Redenaz.8631:

To be clear, I don’t care how they earn it. I’m just curious because I like numbers and dislike frequently-repeated arguments.

Woops, sorry if I came off harsh, I didn’t mean to. I know some people consider a leg as a sign of status, when it really comes down to luck, time, and some effort.

I like numbers too, I’m sure Anet has the numbers of mass gem purchases (as well as gems—>gold), but it’s doubtful they’ll ever release that information (I’m much more curious to see the ratio of Teq deaths to spawns over all servers since he was changed). But considering the price keeps going up, we can at least guess it’s because of inflation, people playing the tp (or maybe cham farming) for massive amounts of gold, or people doing gems—> gold.

While I’d argue it’s mostly tp flippers, I remember a post a while back of people talking about doing business in flipping legendaries, so some people have 5-10k+ gold easy. And while I say very few people would spend ~$600 on a skin (though if they have that kind of money to splurge all the power to them), I remember posts back from dragon bash. I remember reading about some people spending $100-$200 on the rich dragon coffers just for a chance to get a jade weapon. So, it’s fairly possible that people can save up over a couple of months to grab the leg that they want.

Khisanth.2948:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Just wanted to point out that the wiki has now been updated to say that Furious only grants 1 strike instead of 3.

The last time Furious was listed in patch noes was June 25th, 2013 (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/June_2013) which increased the adrenaline gain to “triple adrenaline is rewarded on critical attacks.”

The Oct 15th patch notes do not mention the Furious trait, yet the tool tip and the in game effect were both changed. Is this a bug or a “stealth” nerf? Thanks.

Well according to Ambrecombe’s post above there hasn’t been any change to the functionally of the trait. Someone just messed with the tooltip several times.

His posts are related to how the Furious trait works with our burst skills, not the Furious trait for all (crit) attacks. Since the Oct 15th patch the amount of adrenaline gained from a normal critical has gone down to +1 (for a total of 2) instead of what it was before. “…triple adrenaline is rewarded on critical attacks” would mean we should be getting +2 (or 3 strikes total) of adrenaline on a critical hit. While I don’t have any videos pre patch, you can “feel” the difference.

And either way it still was never noted in patch notes, which is why I still hope this is a bug, and not intended.

Redenaz.8631:

For as much as it’s discussed, I wonder how many Legendary weapons actually have been bought with cash. There’s really no good way for us to track that.

Even if someone is keeping track of Legendary sales, there’s not a very practical way to determine who made their mountain of gold by playing the game and who bought it with gems.

Why does it matter? Someone spent time in real life to make real money to put into gems versus someone spent time playing this game to make money (champ farming/playing the tp/whatever). Either way did someone “earn” it, shrug, why does it matter?

The same way you can’t “earn” your precursor. You either grind/buy gold and get it off the tp or you grind/buy gold to throw rares/exotic into the forge and hope to get lucky. Neither of those methods take “skill.” The same way getting enough lodestones/t6 mats is either a grind for gold or luck from drops.

A legendary is just a time commitment, nothing more.

Baclavaman.9054:

Player Character.9467:

Baclavaman.9054:

You see Wallace that is my point, in my Cleric guardian i do damage, i just have a tad over 3k attack but thats it, my role is to tank and support.

A Zerk warrior with its crazy DPS might not have the toughness to resist long but if he has adrenal health and healing signet he has almost the same regen as my guard for 15 points in defense instead of 60 points into the defensive trait lines of the guardian and 1500 healing power.

And in addition to that you have your 6 skill?… Seriously, why do you keep comparing healing signet to a list of traits? OMG MY BEAR PET DOES LESS AUTO ATTACK DAMAGE THAN YOUR THIEF BACKSTAB! Apples and oranges.

You really dont get my point here, so i will explain better.

Warrior, with 1 skill he dont have to trigger and 1 trait that only cost 15 points heal almost as much as a guardian with 66 point invested in both defense lines and a full cleric gear spamming all the skill that could heal him and he has less hp to begin with.

Fair?

P.S. Oh and to take back your example for apples and oranges, they are both fruits so yeah i could compare them if i wanted to :P

But that’s his point… A warrior using the active of healing signet, heals less than passive. And even with adrenal healing just about all of the burst skills are useful (maybe not the gs) so people will be bursting, which does cut into adrenal healing.

Also when you compare healing skills, you really should be comparing ALL healing abilities on both sides. Eles have access to a passive healing skill too, does that mean that eles can heal more too because their Signet of Restoration counts but your active healing skill doesn’t?

Plus, again you are forgetting guardians access to protection and aegis. Guards have the ability to block any telegraphic attack and to take 33% less damage. That is why their health is lower than warriors.

Also again, comparing the classes. The best a warrior can do for “team healing” is shout healing or banners, that’s it, and both are 30 points. Ele’s can lay down water fields, and group protection, while guards can give group aegis, protection, and group healing. Both do this with 0-5 trait points.

Or just counter it with burst damage and/or poison.

While I don’t run a shout heal build, my tanky/condi build still goes down against heavy pressure. Sure the steady heal is there, but against burst damage it doesn’t do much. Plus investing that much into healing reduces your damage by a lot.

Not to mention other classes having access to protection and being able to give it to other party members (and guards having aegis and being able to give that to party members too).

Plus warriors do need to use their burst skills (depending on the build), in which case they lose adrenaline healing for X seconds, while building adrenaline back up.

Just wanted to point out that the wiki has now been updated to say that Furious only grants 1 strike instead of 3.

The last time Furious was listed in patch noes was June 25th, 2013 (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/June_2013) which increased the adrenaline gain to “triple adrenaline is rewarded on critical attacks.”

The Oct 15th patch notes do not mention the Furious trait, yet the tool tip and the in game effect were both changed. Is this a bug or a “stealth” nerf? Thanks.

I am fine with the living story idea, I think it just needs a bit of tweeks (which hopefully have been in the works and we’ll see before the end of the year).

If everything (well most things) wasn’t temporary, it’d be a great idea.

Relating to the living story, we’ve only got 1 new dungeon path (which replaced one, so technically net 0 content), an invasion every couple of hours (haven’t done one in a long time, so I don’t know if people still go to do them or not), a new map and world boss (both of which on average are unpopulated because of the time/reward ratio being off), a revamped Teq (which again, the overwhelming majority of players can no longer kill, so I’d like to count this as “removing” a world boss for 95%-99% of the player base), a couple of new jps, and some new mini games. And by the end of the year, we should have 3 fractals added as well.

We also have reoccurring festivals, which started before the living story, and from gw1 precedence would be yearly, so I don’t really know if they should be lumped in with the living story. We also have reoccurring areas (such as the bazaar, SAB, and Queen’s Pavilion).

But compared to a gw1 expansion, there really is no comparison (a whole new content ~1/3-1/2 the size of the first game, ~12 new missions, 2 new classes, a ton more skills, etc).

I’m not saying anything new here. But the LS can easily take the place of expansion (as people have pointed out, Anet is clearly making money via the gem shop). I’m not saying a new area has to be added each update. But even if a new area was added every 1-2 months that would start to approach what an expansion would be. There is clearly enough area on Tyria alone to explore, let alone Cantha and Elona. Along with all of the other dragons, or any other villains. I mean we have 5 races, who were each effected by a different dragon, and 3 orders with their own mentalities/strengths to fight them. Even if they rotated on a 4 month cycle, getting closer to another a different dragon each month would be awesome.

Even if it wasn’t focused on those things (which we already know is the case for at least this year, and most likely early next year), I don’t think we need an expansion just to get players interested again. Personally, the LS in its current state doesn’t bother me that much, but more permanent content would be great though.

If you remember back in June Colin said that more perm things were being focused on, but still that takes time. We have already seen more permanent things since then (invasions, Teq changes, TA changes) and will see at least more fractals by the end of the year (again, most of those are changes, not additions, but at least it’s a start). Hopefully, the next couple of LS events will introduce truly new content and not replace something already existed, and that continues into next year.

Galen Grey.4709:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Ascended trinkets (amulet, rings, earrings, back) vs. exotic for the main stat only
126+103*2+91*2+56 = 570
90+67*2+56*2+22 = 358

I am confused by these numbers they seem too large and i’ve been trying to make sense of them. Ascended ring main stat is 72 and I am not seeing that there instead you listed I assume 103, where is that from?

same with amulets main is 96 not 126

do you have a mistake or am i missing something?

I just grabbed them quick from the wiki (if those numbers are wrong/outdated, my apologies).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ascended_trinkets

Has stats at:
amulet: 126/85/85
ring: 103/68/68
accessories: 91/60/60
back: 56/35/35

Vol.5241:

Ascended gear in WvW is irrelevant. You will not notice the difference, especially when you consider the other bigger variables, such as orb buff, party buffs and blob size

Well to be fair, just look at the numbers:

Ascended trinkets (amulet, rings, earrings, back) vs. exotic for the main stat only
126+103*2+91*2+56 = 570
90+67*2+56*2+22 = 358

That’s a 212 point difference to the main stat. Adding in ascended weapons (for a 2hander)

188 vs. 179, so a total of 221 point difference in the main stat. Plus the average weapon damage getting a ~5% increase.

Compare that to bloodlust. A 30/50/60 temp boost in 6 stats (at least I’d assume a temp boost, I don’t know how good the higher WvW servers are at holding them vs. each other).

I assume party buffs means food, which if you just look at the stats boosting ones, they give +100 stat base, or +200 stat under a certain condition, and less if you care about stun/condition duration reduction. I’ll agree that yes, food does make up a big difference. But I’d argue that both sides getting food is cheaper/easier than both sides getting ascended gear.

For blob size, you are right. There is very little a zerg 50% the size of the other can do to win, but hasn’t this been the case since launch?

I understand your point/the counter argument. “WvW is meant to be unfair/unbalanced.” That’s true, and I’m no WvW aficionado by any means, but you can agree that to get ascended weapons/gear will take longer and be harder for a dedicated WvW player compared to someone who goes into PvE (or a primarily PvE person going into WvW) to grind out mats/ectos/gold.

Neural.1824:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

1) People already say that you can do all PvE content in rares (which you can), so ascended weapons (the ~6%-12% boost) do nothing other than make things “easier.”

WvW issues aside, I am 100% for this. Taking time to gather materials and put together a weapon that makes things easier in PvE is just fine as a goal. I’ve seen multiple comments over the past year about the game not requiring exotics at all. I got 4 characters to level 80 with just rares and greens. Exotics were the “next step” goal once I got to 80. Gather mats or grind gold to make or buy them. Some of my 80’s are still not 100% exotic (trinkets are Mithril). Ascended gear is the next goal for making PvE life easier, even though it’s not by much right now.

Arenanet brought the forum rage on themselves by going with the new tier of stats. I believe what happened was they realized they messed up with Legendary weapon crafting, but instead of creating a new tier of appearance items with a new crafting system, they went the cheap route and decided to go with the easy path. Just change a few numbers and reuse existing code (infusions, etc.).

Carrying a name like “Ascended” gives many people the impression that something about said weapon needs to be awesome. Something that breaks through to stand above the rest. Instead of investing a years worth of time into creating what would effectively be a whole new line of Legendary weapons, Anet went with better stats*. The results have been seen on the forums since then.

• this is based on the assumption that Anet didn’t have Ascended gear planned from the start, which is something that has been claimed as well

Well I’m not saying I’m against things being easier per say. But it still goes against the principle of easily obtained best stat gear and then grind for skins. If ascended gear had the same stats as exotics (and maybe keep all the extra stat combos) and just had an infusion slot for AR then I think there would have been a lot less complaining. Personally I never felt the grind/power creep from all of the trinkets because they were spaced far enough apart (plus besides the trinkets there isn’t much to spend laurels on), but looking back I can see them being problematic (especially for alts/different builds).

Heck when leveling up my alts, they only get better gear when they get it from a drop, so I have no problem having them fight in 20+ lower level gear.

It was posted in one of the news segments.
Edit: On Oct 15th:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/new-halloween-items-in-the-gem-store/

And also, it was shown in the gem shop that it was leaving days ago. I personally remember seeing 3 or 4 days left and also “leaving soon” before that. The counter could have easily started at 5 days and I missed it.

Kogam.4752:

I see, you basically do what you want and find funny. So you do dungeons to gear yourself and alts? Hm. What you get from daily? Who are those three dragons?

Ah the daily just gives you some AP, some exp (which isn’t that useful when you have 600+ skill points), a tiny amount of karma/luck/silver, a mystic coin, a laurel, and a chance at a gem store item (mostly the laurel is the most “valuable” thing as you can only get 1/day, and some extra from achievement points and monthlies).

I didn’t personally gear up with dungeons (I only started running my “first” dungeon maybe a month or two ago), but a lot of people do. The dragons bosses are Shatter, Teq, and Claw of Jormag. Claw of Jormag has to be my favorite, from a cinematic perspective, even if he is the most time consuming to kill.

Sadly, unless you’re on a server (or guest to one) that actually kills Teq regularly, you will never kill him since his change. There’s about ~10-15 “world bosses” that all give a guaranteed rare, a chest on the ground, and some dragonite ore (for ascended crafting). They’re spread out among a bunch of maps, and respawn ever 2-4 hours.

Danikat.8537:

(Edit: Also why is that these super-lucky players who get regular exotics and multiple precursors never post on the forum? Everyone seems to know one or more players like that, but it’s only the unlucky people who actually post.)

Well I can share some of my good luck stories if you like (though nothing really too impressive). Running the world bosses daily usually gets me an exotic or two every 3-5 days or so. In one night I can get up to 20 rares if luck is on my side.

The day that ascended weapons came out, killing Teq (the old one) dropped a cleric ascended weapon box for me. Also no record of attempts, but I got my 80 mystic clovers (using the 10 recipe) in ~15-20 attempts.

And just running around in WvW for a couple of hours, with the zerg, over the weekend got me 4-6 exotics and a handful of rares (maybe 10-12 WvW ranks worth of caping/killing, and a little over 500 player kills). And I have almost a full set of exotic medium account bound armor for an alt when he hits 80 from fractals (back in the day). My MF is about 100% or so.

Nothing that spectacular (besides the ascended weapon drop), but it’s enough good luck for me. And it seems my average exotic drops are a lot better then others, so I have no right to complain.

I spent the first bit of time working on world completion. When I found a map I really liked (Frostgorge sound) I spend 1-2 months just doing my daily there and running events and doing the three dragons (way back before champs gave loot, and world bosses gave guaranteed rares).

Since then, I just relax and do my daily and world bosses or occasionally I work on an alt, do PvP for 30 min, do a little bit of WvW, etc. Do whatever you find fun.

Also people run dungeons for a couple of reasons:
1) They give good income (maybe 2nd best, next to champ farming)
2) They can spend tokens on exotics to throw in the forge
3) They can use the tokens to gear up alts
4) Fun?

Lexandro.1456:

Faowri.4159:

Lexandro.1456:

But it still begs the question as to why people are fine with legendaries needing boatloads of playtime and mats to craft, but are against a tier with a playtime/mats requirement lower than legendary.

Makes no sense whatsoever.

It does if you remember that Legendary weapons were supposed to be prestige cosmetics, not perma-BiS gear. That has gone out of the window along with a lot of other gear grind principles.

Nope, still makes no sense to me. The grind is fine for something that had zero effect on gameplay? Infact that makes even less sense to me.

In gw1 (and gw2 was said to follow the same principle) players were able to reach max level cap fairly quickly and then able to get best stat gear pretty easily. This was very true with exotics. It can be argued either way about ascended rings/amulets/earings if they are “easy” to obtain (as soon as you look at alts/different builds it’s pretty easy to see that they become “hard”, ie taking a long amount of time).

Ascended weapons took this a leap further requiring massive amounts of materials (compared to exotics) and additional time gates.

People grind for the “prestige” of having a legendary (or they like long term goals, or whatever the reason). When they had exotic stats, people still wanted them despite that you could get an exotic weapon for <2g.

What role do ascended weapons play at all in the game? Nothing.

1) People already say that you can do all PvE content in rares (which you can), so ascended weapons (the ~6%-12% boost) do nothing other than make things “easier.”

2) If content comes out that is actually balanced around ascended gear (besides agony resistance) then you are punishing a large amount of players who hate crafting/don’t have that kind of money to sink into crafting/are not lucky enough to get a drop/etc.

To the OP

While I only really started giving any effort into WvW because of season 1, I agree completely. While my drops in WvW have been kitten good compared to my normal world boss runs, the average WvW person can’t have too much gold for the mats/ectos/etc. required for crafting an ascended weapon, let alone crafting up to 500. While WvW was always intended to never really be balanced (upscaling and what not) I don’t see why another imbalance (and an expensive one at that) should be kept in.

You can play the entire game without having to craft. There is currently only 1 thing exclusive to crafting right now: ascended weapons (you can also add legendary weapons if you don’t want to grind out thousands of gold).

Besides ascended weapons, which require 500 crafting (mostly a big gold sink from 400-500), you can get full exotics from drops, the mystic forge, the tp, dungeons, karma at temples, etc.

You can also get ascended rings from either fractals (even lvls 10+)/laurels (fractals is the better bet if you like it), ascended amulets from laurels (and I think for less laurels & badges too) and ascended earings from laurels & ectos/ guild commendations.

It also comes down to which stats you’d like on your gear, some would be cheaper to get with crafting, but you can buy any gear (except for ascended) that is craftable.

As for “doing well” that comes down a lot to player skill. Just about everything can be done in rares (very, cheap to get via tp and also fairly regularly as drops), some would even argue masterwork (green) items. But getting a set of exotics shouldn’t take “too long”, again depending which stats you want.