Guild Wars 2

Celestina.2894:

lakdav.3694:

Thank the gods, i dont need ascended armor.

Do you?

Does anyone?

The only time you’d need is if you are doing level 50 fractals, even then I’m not entirely convinced you absolutely need it however.

Well you need 70 AR for lvl 50-59. You can get 40, not counting the agony resistance slots. Getting 3, +10s is rather expensive (too lazy to compare it to ascended armor right now).

Then you can say “need” in terms of getting the best gear. For people that do WvW it will make a difference, and for people that want speed runs it will also make a difference. Each armor piece has a ~5% increase in all 3 stats from exotics, so it does add up.

Brother Grimm.5176:

VOLKON.1290:

I tell you right now you ungrateful little brats, back in the day we couldn’t just grab us a roll of cloth and smear some blood on it and call it ascended or infused or whatever you dang kids are calling it these days. We had to do it like MEN! We stormed up a mountain in the middle of winter carrying the gear we wanted to infuse with us just to talk to some old hag so ugly she’d make your eyes puke, only to have her direct us to some vile, nasty beast we had to kill, slice open and carefully remove some despicable organ full of some reeking goo and carry it back to the hag so she could smear it on our gear while we stood around in the bone chilling cold waiting, then wear that stinking gear back to town while it dried! Half the time half the party would wind up half dead, and the other half wholly half dead! We did it like MEN and were proud of it! You brats have it easy these days! Now git off my lawn! I’m going to take a nap and expect QUIET!

…and we LIKED IT!!!

And I remember having to do it 5 times, alone in the cold. I say alone because those mercs never talked back to me no matter how much I tried. They just happily took a share of my gold despite taking “naps” in the snow.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You will be allowed to switch stats when you have Legendary armor.

You may think its okay to have to spend 30ish days (along with all of the other associated costs) to get a new set of ascended armor (and longer to replace all of the other ascended gear) if you wish to try a new build, gear a new character, have multiple sets for different activities, or have a patch “nerf” your current build so you have to use something else, but most of us see that as completely unreasonable in a game that was sold to as a focus on horizontal progression and making it easy/quick to level and gear up any character.

Dasboba.1652:

Have you tried transmuting the ascended stats to a white item? That usually returns the item to the account bound state. I’ve never done that with an ascended item though.

If I recall, the soul bound/account bound is tied to the stats. So you’d have a shiny weapon with common level damage and stats. That method only works for transferring a skin from one character to another.

Eh, I don’t see why there should be a limit on the number of times you can do it.

Heck, I’d argue either make it “free” to trade stats (at a vendor for example) or cost a very small fee ~1g. per item. It makes the grind (slightly) more bearable, and whenever they come out with legendary armor it will have the added bonus of being able to switch “on the fly”.

Heck I’d say the same for ascended weapons/trinkets. They need to make the game more friendly to trying out different builds (and also alts but the above won’t help for them).

Soundwave.8739:

When this is crafted, will it still have +5 agony resist right away like it used to pre-patch? Before, it was a listed stat so does it immediately have a +5 socketed in the agony resist infusion slot?

No, after the Fractured patch any <item> (infused), rings and back items, will not have the innate +5 AR. They just have the two empty slots as the person above me said.

That being said, it’s only 16, +1s (plus some silver) to get a +5.

Rigel.3092:

dulfy.1493:

Tailor
Armorsmith
Leatherwork

Thanks for all you do, Dulfy!
Question or let me get this straight:

Tailoring is for light ascended armor, Armorsmith is for heavy ascended armor, Leatherwork for medium ascended armor?

That is correct, and just to also point out, that the above costs are just for the materials for the armor and do not also factor in the costs of crafting to 500 if you haven’t yet.

Kagamiku.9731:

It works good in fractals for me. Because of the easily telegraphed attacks of the mobs that hit really hard…You just activate it and get healed to full health in a split second. It also allows you to tank an attack or two. I love activating it and then jumping into one of the red circles. Like the ice elemental boss in the dredge fractal.

I was just thinking about that actually. I haven’t had the time to run any fractals since patch:

does Defiant Stance counter agony? I’ve never tried using endure pain on it (which should act similarly), so I was just curious.

Refeuh.8493:

Please note that most people who complain, including myself, are, from what I understand, doing so from a “completionist” point of view. We don’t hunt achievement points (I couldn’t care less for actual point values) and we don’t argue about the “meta”- rewards ; we only want what we believe would be a fair chance to at least get all the achievements that are being added to the game.

If I spend 50 hours trying Liadri 8 orbs and still fail, that’s my fault for not being good enough. If I don’t get an achievement because a pseudo RNG-based system I have no control over decides not to give it to me, that’s more problematic.

Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to lump you in with something that you aren’t. Most people I’ve seen complain, just because they want to be #1 on the leaderboards. Since I don’t see myself as a true “completionist” I do find it hard to relate to that mentality. It mostly comes down to time.

Still though, I would rather have this randomness over what it has been at various times in the past. You are right that it sucks if you don’t know you’ll finish on run 4 or run 15, but it technically still comes down to time. 50 hours for lidari (time spent to improve yourself) vs. 50 hours in fractals (time spent on rnd chance). I’m not saying it’s perfect, but as the person above me first pointed out, it wasn’t that improbable to not get the boss you needed after only 7 runs.

Fror.2163:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Fror.2163:

XacTactX.6709:

In the past two weeks I’ve done 7 full fractal runs and brought my personal reward level from 30 -> 36. In that time I got Jade Maw twice and Mai Trin 5 times. I never got the Molten Firestorm fractal so that I could get the 5 achievement points for it. As an achievement hunter this is troubling for me, and now with the Wintersday update, the Fractured! achievements are no longer available.

It’s not realistic to expect players to complete achievements by luck, or forcing them to beat the first 3 fractals over and over again in the hope of getting the last level they need. I’d like to see the time for Fractured! get extended to one month instead of two weeks.

By playing 7 times the fractals, you had 5.4% chance to not get a specific fractal. That means that for every 18 players who played 7 fractals total, 1 was bound to not get it, statistically speaking.

You should have identified that pattern earlier and tried a bit more. I would feel you if you had played one run a day (meaning 14 runs, meaning 0.03% chance), but in this case, I don’t think you tried hard enough.

Not exactly sure how you’re getting that specific number (it’s still early and my brain is still booting up). But I don’t think you’re factoring in how different fractals are set now. (or if you are, then the OP isn’t when thinking that 7 fractals is enough).

You’re not sure where I get those from, but you do the exact same computation? Nice

The difference in results is that I rounded 2/3 to 0.66, but the computation is the same and both the result and interpretation are similar to mine.

;-p It wasn’t exactly the same and that’s why I was confused. Also, I’m tired most mornings before I have my caffeine.

Marna Nindar.8120:

Morsus.5106:

Yowch, 240 gold for such a minor increase? (Ascended Berserker Greatsword has 188 power while Exotic Berseker Greatsword has 179, so 9 additional power.)

You forgot base damage as well as infusion slots. But I agree, the damage increase is not that big, but when taking into account all the ascended items, full ascended get easily an increase of 10% more than only exotic.

If I recall my math from a couple weeks back, full ascended vs. full exotic was

Zerker: ~20% increase in damage
Solder: ~14% increase in damage
Knight: (can’t remember this number) maybe, ~10% increase (I did the math but don’t recall it right now).

I think those values will be slightly less (maybe 0.5-1% less) because I did forget to include the sigil on kill stats.

I also tried to guess at the DR increase, because back when they were leaked we had the stat values but not the armor values. I think I guessed a 10% increase in armor from exotic to ascended (I haven’t checked to see if this is actually right), but it was only a 1-2% DR (for a knight heavy character) increase.

But, basically, if you don’t care about fractals you can pretty safely ignore ascended armor. [Does the extra 60 armor and 30 vit or toughness really seem worth it for the ~250g?] Unless you already have the mats saved up (and don’t want to bother with selling them) don’t worry about it and get them on your own time.

Fror.2163:

XacTactX.6709:

In the past two weeks I’ve done 7 full fractal runs and brought my personal reward level from 30 -> 36. In that time I got Jade Maw twice and Mai Trin 5 times. I never got the Molten Firestorm fractal so that I could get the 5 achievement points for it. As an achievement hunter this is troubling for me, and now with the Wintersday update, the Fractured! achievements are no longer available.

It’s not realistic to expect players to complete achievements by luck, or forcing them to beat the first 3 fractals over and over again in the hope of getting the last level they need. I’d like to see the time for Fractured! get extended to one month instead of two weeks.

By playing 7 times the fractals, you had 5.4% chance to not get a specific fractal. That means that for every 18 players who played 7 fractals total, 1 was bound to not get it, statistically speaking.

You should have identified that pattern earlier and tried a bit more. I would feel you if you had played one run a day (meaning 14 runs, meaning 0.03% chance), but in this case, I don’t think you tried hard enough.

Not exactly sure how you’re getting that specific number (it’s still early and my brain is still booting up). But I don’t think you’re factoring in how different fractals are set now. (or if you are, then the OP isn’t when thinking that 7 fractals is enough).

1st: Aquatic Ruins, Swampland, Urban Battlegrounds, Uncategorized.
2nd: Uncategorized, Snowblind, Urban Battlegrounds, Molten Furnance, Cliffside.
3rd: Aetherblade, Volcanic, Thaumanova Reactor, Underground Facility, Cliffside.
Boss: Solid Ocean, Molten Boss, Captain Mai Trin Boss

So, you can take Thaumanova Reactor as a freebie because its part of the story.

You can also take all 4 fratals from the first fractal out because you can reroll them until you get the one you need.

That leaves us with:
2nd: Snowblind, Molten Furnance, Cliffside.
3rd: Aetherblade, Volcanic, Underground Facility, Cliffside.
Boss: Solid Ocean, Molten Boss, Captain Mai Trin Boss

You may also be able to throw away all the 2nd fractals too, just because you can always roll swamp at level 1 and win within minutes. Then if you don’t get a good 2nd fractal just repeat.

So really the hardest ones to get are:
3rd: Aetherblade, Volcanic, Underground Facility
Boss: Solid Ocean, Molten Boss, Captain Mai Trin Boss

These 6 fractals, in groups of 3 (and remember there are really 5 options for round 3 which makes your chances worse).

For the boss fractal you have a (2/3)^7=5.85% chance to not get one of the three bosses after 7 runs.

For the 3rd fractal (assuming you just need those 3), I don’t feel like doing the correct math, but it should be easier to miss one of these than for the boss fractals (just because there are more options to choose from). So it is quite possible to miss a couple of fractals if you did a “small” number of runs.

All of that aside, if you just look at the options: The absolute minimum runs it would take (not doing any above “tricks”) is 3 full runs, the story, and another first fractal. So basically 4 runs. No offense OP, but 7 isn’t really statically likely to give you all the ones that you need.

Finally, who really cares? You were able to get the meta without luck (thanks to the daily fractal runner) and some could argue that the reward wasn’t worth it. I’ll do all the achievements I can during a limited release, but it won’t bother me if I miss 1 or 2 because of time constraints. If I see something, I’ll go for it, but I won’t not have fun to gain AP. Besides a little bit of gold/laurels, the only thing good out of the AP rewards are a skin (and you only need so many before you don’t like any of the remaining ones) and the account wide bonuses (these I really like). Oh, and 400 gems every 5k achievement points.

I guess I just don’t really have sympathy for AP hunters. I think I was able to get all of the achievements within the 10-12 runs I did during the release, but I was never trying to get all of them, I was just getting to PRL 40.

Finally, this is a lot more forgiving than the previous releases in terms of randomness. I’m happy that Anet is making it easier to get the meta rewards (I just wish that they’d set the standard so that you can get the meta in day 1 if you have the time, and not require you to do dailes to get, though for month+ long metas I don’t see it too bad requiring a couple of dailys, meh). If you remember the scarlet invasions, those were a random hell. Waiting for the 1 or 2 that you needed to randomly hit, and if it didn’t you had to wait 1 hour before the next try.

daros.3407:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

daros.3407:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

daros.3407:

Morsus.5106:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

daros.3407:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you don’t like farming, please feel free to buy all my mats off of the TP. I’ll be ready to unload them tomorrow.

And where i am supposed to get so much gold?……….Ah wait farm?

You can accumulate wealth through normal game play. Farming is a choice, not a requirement.

I had around 10 gold through “normal game play”. Then I started doing Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 and Path 3, every day and now I have 80 gold. Please share with me your definition of “normal game play”.

That is the problem. Someone is doing dungeons 2-3 hours per day and claim it ,,Normal gameplay" But there is no true definition of normal game play.

1 dungeon daily for less than 30 minutes for 300 days = 300 Gold. So what’s the issue here?

And for 300g you have finelly leveled all crafting in 300 days and can finally start making weapons and armor……Yeaaa great!

FYI – I logged in to level my Leatherworker from lv 400 to lv 500. I spent no more than 6 Gold total today. If you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t cost much cash out of pocket. Here are some steps to help you:

1) Set a goal for yourself. Example: Max Crafting discipline
2) Learn the game. Find what content will help you to achieve your goals.
3) Play the content and get drops. Example: Need the T6 mats for crafting? Don’t sell.
4) Goal reached.

Same arguments as with weapons :-D Spending farmed material is same like spending gold. There is NO difference in it. You have to spend gold or amount of materials worth that gold. Absolutely no difference.

Very true, it really comes down to if people want to farm for gold, farm for mats, buy gold (with gems), or some combination of all 3.

Personally, I was able to recoup the all the actual gold I spent (mostly just having to by so many (comparatively) expensive reagents and spools of thread by selling my first 2 time gated refined mats.

It only takes 7-8 days of the time gated cloth to get a full heavy set. I’d rather sell them now (when they’re going for 15-20g each) instead of just save them for myself (like I did for weapons). I have enough stockpiled mats anyways (and I don’t care if I lose a small amount of money by not selling them instead. I’m too lazy to try to make the best possible deal. Plus I figured I’d have little chance with everyone else hoarding mats for the past 2-6 months).

So while it did take maybe 1 week worth of ectos to level up (and a decent surplus of my t6 mats) at least I covered the bare gold cost from leveling up (so it appeared to be free). The biggest annoyance is needing to wait for balz to open up again to stock up on oby shards again, I didn’t expect to spend ~200 of them yesterday (but it was worth it to get rid of ~6k ascended mats).

Also you’re really forgetting about PvE. Condition users get the shaft in all things PvE.

In smaller groups two conditions users (using the same conditions) already cut into each others dps by a sizeable amount, and zerkers already do more damage than any condition user. In larger groups, condition users don’t really do much. And versus creatures you either have normal mobs which die before you can stack up all of your conditions (which zerkers will kill faster because they don’t have a “ramp up” period) or a champ/boss while lets you stack up the conditions by yourself, but very limited to the above stipulations, and still a zerker will be doing more consistent damage than you.

Edit: If anything condition damage needs a boost (at least in PvE) and something needs to be done with the cap to make it on par with direct damage builds.

Seras.5702:

Zerole.7306:

Nothing is stopping a new character from saving up 25 skill points.

Except for having no utilities to use in the meantime.

I’ve been longwinded, but ultimately my point is simply that the argument of having hundreds of stored SP on 80s is invalid due to the inaccessibility of these skills to low level characters.

Agreed. Who cares if I have a lvl 80 with ~400 ish skill points. My lvl 80 alts all have <10 as I’ve been trying to finish getting them to learn any remaining skills.

I could stomach anti-toxin being 25 skill points, but I don’t see how these new skills are.

We start the game with 1 healing skill for free, another costs one skill point, the last costs 3. Why does this new one cost 25? The healing is on par (in some cases worse) that current healing options, so why is it so expensive for new comers.

My friend just started playing last week. He doesn’t have a roster of lvl 80s or a stack or two of skill point scrolls from champ bags. Why should this new skill cost almost as much as the highest cost elites?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Tongku.5326:

Question:

How come none of you guys use guild coms and WvW badges and/or fractal relics ? You do realize that by doing so you can reduce the laurel requirements by a LOT, and I do mean a LOT.

Rings: free via fractals
earrings: free via guild comms
backpiece: reduced via fractals
amulet: free via guild coms

AR infusions: free via fractals
Stat infusions: reduced via WvW

I am looking forward to logging into the game today and gettign at least armorsmith and tailor up to 500. Going to leave leatherworker for later due to simple fact I dont play much leather wearing toons.

I dont see any problem with any of this and think the people that complain about it are the ones who are demonstrating flat out gross incompetence at different aspects of the game such as WvW only players or PvE only players, and as such, should never be able to get any of these items at all, as these are supposed to be best in slot.

^ this exactly. Options are there for players willing to make the effort.

Both of you are not understanding the point of the OP.

Yes, if you have only 1 character with one build then gearing up isn’t really a problem. But the extensive time gating behind ascended gear limits you a lot. Prior to ascended gear if you wanted to try a new build (or gear up a fresh lvl 80) you could do it with some saved up karma, 5-15g and use the tp, or use saved up mats and craft it. Now everything is time gated.

Yes, rings are free (anyone can get a group for fractals).

Guild commendations are not free, you need to be in a big enough guild to be able to do them, so they do not help everyone.

With ascended gear if you want to gear someone up you now need to spend:

0 = Rings, either 20 days for pristines, or get lucky with a drop
20 = Amulet (from WvW)
80 = Accessory (or 0 with 2 weeks min from guild missions)
0 = Back (but you need 1,850 fractal relics)
20-30 =5 laurels per weapon (minimum 4 weapons, max 6)
30 = 6 armor pieces
————-
160 laurels max to gear up one character for one build (80 if you are in a big enough guild).

150 laurels min (70 if you have commendations).

Even assuming you can do guild missions. How can you justify just under 2 months (50 days of dailies and both monthlies) to gear up 1 character or change builds. Or at the longest extreme 4 months (120 from dailies + 40 from monthlies) for 1 set of gear. And that’s assuming playing every single day. And during those 2.5-4 months they still need to gather all of the other mats (guild commendations, 1.8k fractal relics, etc.)

While I don’t have the problems of people with multiple characters (I’m happy just gearing my main in ascended) I can at least understand where they are coming from.

What would you do if you’re favorite build got nerfed to the point of being unuseable in dungeons/WvW/whatever you like to do and you had to get a whole new gear set?

ccastiel.6931:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

ccastiel.6931:

I only play 2 characters. I need 120 laurels for them just for the armor(one set for wvw, one for dungeons). Assuming I craft the weapons instead of praying to RNG god for the drop, and also the right stat set drop (note: I ‘ve never seen an ascended weapon drop) there goes an other 80 laurels. Let’s say I get the rings from fractals and the earrings with guild commendations, and I buy my amulets from WvW, I need an other 80 laurels. So a total of 280 laurels to dress up my 2 chars, which is about 7 months. Well thought.

I’m not at home so I can’t check the recopies, but it costs 5 laurels for each armor slot? 30 laurles for a full set is an annoying amount, I was hoping we’d be crafting the armor by the box. :/

Yes, you need 5 laurels per piece.

Well that is annoyingly lame. Bleh, I was expecting 5 laurels for the whole set, not for each item. I take it that means that each piece also requires time gated mats too. If I didn’t already have the mats saved up I don’t think I’d even bother.

ccastiel.6931:

I only play 2 characters. I need 120 laurels for them just for the armor(one set for wvw, one for dungeons). Assuming I craft the weapons instead of praying to RNG god for the drop, and also the right stat set drop (note: I ‘ve never seen an ascended weapon drop) there goes an other 80 laurels. Let’s say I get the rings from fractals and the earrings with guild commendations, and I buy my amulets from WvW, I need an other 80 laurels. So a total of 280 laurels to dress up my 2 chars, which is about 7 months. Well thought.

I’m not at home so I can’t check the recopies, but it costs 5 laurels for each armor slot? 30 laurles for a full set is an annoying amount, I was hoping we’d be crafting the armor by the box. :/

Hickeroar.9734:

I think laurels made sense when they first launched. Now, with the amount of stuff that depends on laurels, I think ANet should open up the discussion on how best to dole them out. There’s just a LOT of stuff that needs laurels now, and the supply of laurels hasn’t increased at all since almost the beginning of laurels.

On the plus side you can get rings from fractals and earrings from guild commendations. I’m fine with limiting the laurels (then again I really only care about ascended gear on my main, my alts can all trudge along in random drops), but they should give an option.

Let us exchange an ascended item for one of the same type but with different stats. (Selling them back to the vendor for laurels would be somewhat problematic because of all the rings from fractals.) At least this would allow us to change builds almost “on the fly.” With the amount of investment for the gear it would be nice if we had a way to try a different build if we wanted to or were forced to.

It’s pretty similar to karma. Those that have a lot have nothing to spend it on. Those that need more don’t have a way to earn it fast.

Yeah, the last time furious was mentioned in patch notes was June…10th? (I think). When the patch that contained the UI change hit (forget the date) furious was dropped down from +2 to +1 on crit. At least one bug post and mentions in other threads, but we never got a response.

laharl.8435:

It’s not like draconic was known for looking good, that’s the former BiS craft armor. I personally think ascended looks a step above draconic, but it’s subjective.

Hey, I never want to give up my draconic armor. The best looking heavy armor (to me) that I’ve seen.

If I recall each profession (at least the 5 that I have) has 2 healing skills that cost 1 skill point and another that costs either 3 or 6 skill points to learn. Then anti toxin came out at 25, and now we have another profession specific one at 25.

Another work around should be to enter PvP (or WvW) and then take the Asura gate there back to LA.

Xukavi.4320:

Am I the only one that didn’t quite understand the “feature only release” part? As far as I understood it means bundled content but its too general to understand what kinda content. I’m also hoping for new utilities, elites, traits and HOPEFULLY swappable weapon skills.

Realistically I assume it means the few things that didn’t make it into this year:

Craftable precursors
New legendary weapons/items

I hope gameplay wise it means more skills and traits, and yes I’m with you on swappable weapon skills. Content wise, it could be the start of the next “big” thing: another dragon, new zones, Cantha or Elona, etc. Possibly also the start of WvW season 2.

redux.1502:

“Rock Tyria to its core” makes me think that Scarlet plans to wake an elder dragon. Possibly Primordius? Maybe we’ll get Dwarves as a playable race? I would LOVE to explore below Tyria again.

If I recall all of the Dwarves are now stone, so that’s somewhat doubtful. Though it would come out of no where for a playable race (compared to most people for Kodon or …crud…. those underwater assassins).

But I do hope it means another dragon and/or more areas opening up.

I figured today would be the last day of the patch (despite the bar still need a couple of %) just because there was no daily for the tower at reset. That has only happened in the past when that LS is going away with the new patch.

I don’t hate Scarlet, and I think the most annoyed I’ve been is during her “die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die” rants. And to be fair I’ve liked most of the releases this past year (even if they were temporary or reoccurring). But I think more recent patches have strived to have more lasting effects instead of 2 weeks and done patches. Hopefully, they will continue this down the line.

I think my major complaints are the massive gold sinks that the past couple of releases have been (which were introduced because of the previous massive farms they introduced). So really I only have 3 major gripes with the past year:

Ascended gear was not handled the best it could be (what is so wrong with it being easy to get the best gear and have it available through multiple options). And it just hurts the average player trying to craft to 500. I’ll also throw the insane prices of getting AR with the new infusions.

Luck/MF removal was another massive sink. I still don’t think I’m back to where I was with my open world PvE magic find armor.

The Teq patch changes. I hate this change most of all. It introduced content that requires 120+ people to be organized with voice software and special items/gear/trait set ups. I will be very sad when they change claw and kitten to also be unbeatable without massive time/prep investment. Plus, throwing in timers for all of the world bosses are tedious and are just dps checks. If I want to spend 20-30 min to solo a world boss at off hours I should be able to.

And my guess is for the Large Feature only patch will contain new skills (and hopefully traits). Heck I can dream and maybe I’ll finally get my swapable weapon skills (and maybe heading towards a new dragon or continent)! More realistically, I assume that’s when precursor crafting and the new legendaries will make their appearance. Still I’m looking forward for that in March.

They stated a couple of months ago that if anything from the June blog post was delayed it would be precursor crafting and the new legendaries. So expect them both in the next month or two (or three) I wager.

Edit: Ah I think Colin just indirectly answered your question here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/living-world-2013-the-year-in-review/

It seems we have 4 more patches for this “season 1 LS”, after that there will be a large “feature only” patch. So assuming the first of the 4 remaining patches is on Jan 21st. Assume the big content patch to hit mid to late March. I guess that’s when the new legendaries and possibly precursor crafting will come.

It’s sad, but ascended crafting (and the infusions from Fractured) are all just massive gold sinks. And the problem with these gold sinks (mostly for ascended crafting) is that the very wealthy don’t bat an eye, the medium wealthy don’t struggle too much, the avg player has something to work for, and the poor are left behind in the dust.

I know they say that they wanted ascended weapons to take longer and all that stuff because they felt that exotics were too easy to get. Yet, the very rich were able to get ascended weapons on day 1. And now, months later, there are still people now who don’t have ascended weapons (either by choice because they hate crafting/refuse to dump all that gold or because they just don’t have enough money).

A quick aside: Why is it a bad thing that people can get the best gear easily (I mean just look at gw1)?

There should be other ways to acquire ascended gear (rnd luck doesn’t really count). For exotic gear you can craft, you can throw rares in the forge, you can buy it off the tp, you can run dungeons, or you can get lucky via a drop. Ascended weapons and armor just have the first and last option.

The (slight) problem is, if ascended gear could be gained other ways right now, it would most likely be a lot cheaper/faster than crafting. I’m sure some people would love 500-1000 dungeon tokens per ascended weapon, but that is no where near balanced compared to crafting.

Also don’t forget a vast majority of the infusion levels are useless (Assuming Agony needs AR that goes in clumps of 5).

So, realistically your options are:

AR 30: 3 10s infusions —-————- 384 fractal runs — 22g 93s 38c in Reagents
AR 35: 2 +12s, 1 +11 infusions — 1,280 fractal runs — 76g 55s 03c in Reagents
AR 40: 2 +13s, 114 infusions —- 4,096 fractal runs — 245g 7s 48c in Reagents

Getting to 45AR (with 3 +15s) is prohibitively expensive/insane.

Assuming ascended armor has infusions slots (+30 AR), along with the current max (40 AR without using the agony infusion slots). That brings us to 70 AR “base”. 85 if you had things already infused.

I would guess that +30AR from infusions would be the “norm” for fractal runners (more than 1 run a day for a year to get them all), while +35AR would be for most fractal farmers.

Either way AR is prohibitively “capped” at 100-105 AR (or 70-75 if armor doesn’t have infusion slots). The only way we can get more AR is if they let us infuse our amulet and earrings (and possibly weapons/armor which would most likely make us lose sigils/runes). Assuming it’s just the trinkets, we’re at a max “hard” cap of AR at 135-140 (105-110 without armor) unless higher level infusions start dropping.

And considering we already need 70 AR to take 1% from agony (and presumable 85 AR for lvls 60-69) I don’t see how armor can’t have infusion slots, considering we’re already at the “max” cap.

And to even get 70 AR now takes 23g (reagents) + ~338g (infusions) = ~361g (if you already had the infused back item). And each run you do yourself just saves you 0.22*4= 0.88g.

I think it really comes down to playstyle OP. Since the karma patch hit I think I’ve gained roughly 1 mil karma, though I mostly did world bosses and normal events (with some very limited WvW).

I believe that they took away karma from dungeons when they introduced ascended mats, so that’s the “compensation.” Similarly when they introduced luck they took away karma from the daily/monthly. Though besides ascended crafting they haven’t put in any other uses for karma, so it still stockpiles fairly quickly (again depending on your playstyle).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Karma_Reward_Table
Technically if you are doing a fractal level at or above your personal reward level you don’t get any karma at all. It’s only when you start doing levels 10 levels below you that you get anything worth mentioning. And if you just wanted karma I’d argue that doing events will give you karma faster than fractals (if you want the gold and drops then fractals would be a better bet though). Also I’d say it is justified to give karma for lower level fratals just because it gives people already at the top a reason to help others get their own PRL up. Otherwise there’s very little reason to do a fractal level below yours. Dungeons don’t have that leveling problem and therefore don’t need the karma.

I hardly did any dungeons in the first year I was still able to get 1.5-2 mil karma (without consumables) before the karma patch, again just from doing events/world bosses. That hasn’t changed for new players, or for me really. I wish I could trade it in directly for t6 mats or lodestones, and not have to go through the clickfest of Orian boxes.

Heck if you just need karma I wish I could trade you some of mine for the mats/lodestones I still need for my legendary. But to be fair, getting a legendary does not really fit into the “play how you want” mentality.

Edit: Though I agree completely on how annoying it is to have to try to open Balthz for over an hour and still have nothing to show for it. If the other temps offered shards it’d make life a lot easier.

138! Dang it, why didn’t I buy extras…. :/

But sorry OP, you are most likely out of luck. It may return when the Bazaar returns sometime next year, but that’s not a guarantee.

Draknar.5748:

Not sure why I even shared this. I guess to promote buying dyes with laurels? But that would be counterproductive to saving laurels.

You’re right, once you get your gear they don’t have too much of a purpose (sure you get can t6 or dyes, but as others have said you can get money in other ways).

I’d say just set a threshold that you don’t want to go under, and use any laurels over that threshold. I set mine between 100 and 120, if anything comes out that I want, I most likely have enough laurels banked that I can get it, and I should still have a cushion after that. Everything else can go into dyes or T6 mats. I only had to get my 2 amulets (karma and AR) and my earrings (the down side of being a solo/small guild player). Even with taking a ~2.5 month break back around when laurels first came out I still had ~230-240 before I decided to start spending them.

Hmm I think roughly 50% uptime of vigor still may be too strong. 16 secs of vigor means ~4.5 dodges every 30 sec instead of 3 (If I did that right).

The stance trait gives what, 6s per stance? And most stances are on a 40-60sec cd.

If I had to throw a number out there, I’d suggest enough for an extra dodge. 5s of vigor on a 15 sec cd. You get 4 dodges every 30 sec instead of 3.

But I think I agree with bobomb. Keep it at 8 uptime with 15 cd and throw in a condition, of 25-33% chance to proc on crit.

yanoch.7051:

killahmayne.9518:

Scoobaniec.9561:

yanoch.7051:

Enemy see green number when you pop this. Once again warr get easy telegraphed/easy to counter stuff.

If its true, that skill is completely useless

in any sort of roaming or small scale fights, but in zergs it is a different story.

I guess so. In the livestream PvP preview they show the skills in action. The Anet guy is dueling another warrior and he speak about how the enemy see green number. As soon as he pop the healing the other warr stop attacking.

The other warrior(seem really skilled) easily dodge all the telegraphed hammer ability… It was kinda sad to see.

Wait….the hammer’s moves can be dodged? Witchcraft I say! I thought just looking at it put you into a perma-stun lock from which there is no escape.

But that is unfortunate about the enemy seeing green numbers. If they had to look for the icon, that would be fine, but the only way that skill will work in a small group now is to stand in an already placed AoE or hope the enemy is using a channeling skill and out of dodges to break it.

Did they happen to comment how the healing skill interacts with other invulnerable/block skills?

Shield stance, defy pain, endure pain, aegis, etc.

If those skills override the healing effect I think this will easily be our worst heal (outside of big WvW zergs, and even then it may not be reliable enough to count on).

That all being said, OP, people were able to get their AR and do 40+ before ascended weapons came out.

Infused ring x2 = +20
Infused Back item = +10
Earrings x2 = +10
Amulet = +5
————
45 AR

The main cost out of all of those is to infuse the back item, which I haven’t bothered doing yet myself.

As for ascended weapon crafting. Yes it is an expensive gold sink. The down side, as most gold sinks function, the very wealthy don’t really feel the pinch, others are able to manage, and the poor are just shafted. But the main cost comes from leveling up the profession. If you happen to have a stockpile of ectos (50-100) and t6 mats, you can craft yourself from 425-450 and then sit on that for a while. I think I spent a month just doing the daily refinement, because I wanted to milk it for as long as I could. Then you just need to discover another 8-12 items from ~475-500. Is it expensive, yes. But is it obtainable by the average player over the course of 2-3 months, yes. I’m not saying I agree with it, but I am saying that in the past 3 months or so since ascended weapons have been out, you have most likely had enough time to level your crafting profession.

If you have the time to grind out fractals you can take a couple of days and grind out world bosses for the rare items for ectos. And I’d assume, as long as you don’t have many alts to deck out in crafted gear you should have at least a small stockpile of t6 mats (you can always use laurels if you need too). As for the the t2-t5 mats, like many people I’ve been saving up since(/before) ascended weapons. The past 2-3 months have been a good time for me to finish leveling up some alts, and running through the zones to mine every wood/ore deposit I saw.

Also, here’s a tip. Do not hope for an ascended weapon drop, ever. I was somehow graced with a cleric box on day 1 of the ascended patch. Since then I have not seen another one drop (and I try to do most world bosses every day, and I also run around WvW if I have the time, and running from lvl 25 to lvl 40 in fractals). And I have maybe seen <6 people ping them in map chat. If you want an ascended weapon you WILL need to craft it, until anet decides for another sure fire way. Until then, do not rely on a rnd drop because you most likely won’t get it.

Afya.5842:

zerotwo.4731:

You can get away with 50ar at level 40. If you are currently at 40 then you already have a bunch of +1 infusions. It won’t take long to make your own to +10. I already have 36 of the infusions and I only casually play GW2. It isn’t expensive to make the infusions either. Your only buying the one item from the vendor at 15s. He gives you 10 and it only requires 1 of those during each craft of an infusion.

+10 takes 511* +1…….

Along with 7.6g of Thermocatalytic Reagent (and assuming 22s per +1 infusion on the tp, 112.64g worth of infusions).

To be fair, to get a +5 (if you didn’t have an infused ring before the patch) costs less than 4g. And most likely only the 22s for the reagents (you will get your 16, +1s quickly).

And to quote myself from another thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/wintersday2013/Ascended-Armor/page/3#post3325093

30 AR — 3, +10 infusions
35 AR — 2, +12 infusions; 1, +11 infusion
40 AR — 2 +13 infusions; 1, +14 infusion

30 AR — 1,536 Infusions —— 384 Maximum Full Fractal Runs
35 AR — 5,120 Infusions – 1,280 Maximum Full Fractal Runs
40 AR – 16,384 Infusions – 4,096 Maximum Full Fractal Runs

30 AR — will cost 22g 93s 38c in just Thermocatalytic Reagents
35 AR — will cost 76g 55s 03c in just Thermocatalytic Reagents
40 AR — will cost 245g 7s 48c in just Thermocatalytic Reagents

(0.22g per +1 infusion on the tp)
30 AR — 1,536 Infusions — ~337.92g worth of infusions
35 AR — 5,120 Infusions – ~1,126.4g worth of infusions
40 AR – 16,384 Infusions – ~3,604.48g worth of infusions

Chipsnsalsa.2714:

According to the livestream going on right now, it does seem to be a PvP lobby again.

Based on the way they implement all of the mini games (the festive jp’s included) it seems they will always be in a PvP lobby. It has some perks, kicking AFKs faster and making it harder to exploit/farm come to mind. But the biggest down side is not being able to play with your friends/guildmates.

Unless they can figure out a way to let us play with our friends, while keeping us from farming the activity with them I doubt we’ll be able to play with them any time soon.

crosknight.3041:

I WANT AN UNIDENTIED DYE NODE
just make it able to be used once a week per acount

I just hope they’d be both account bound and forge-able.

I still like the idea of a little karka pet, that “outgrows” his old shell and gives it to you.

Another option would be some sort of garden/tree/ore vein. Though they would most likely be a massive gold sink to buy, instead of a meta reward. But still 100g for and ancient tree or ori node would make me happy.

A sword and board (w/ longbow) warrior is my main. It’s what I played in gw1, what I used to fight with in Markland/SCA, and what I play in tabletops. So it was a bit of a no-brainer to continue the trend here. Spent well over 1k hours lumbering as my max height norn. Very nice defensive options (even if I don’t do much damage). Nothing will beat some of the things that have happened to me in my knights armor (thanks to the way some bosses aggro). Seeing the ACp1 boss follow me in a circle and ignore everyone else is pretty funny. By far my most favorite character even if he sometimes states the obvious, “Fire….burns!”

I’ve also played/leveled (maybe ~100-150 hours each) of a necro, ele, and ranger.

Necro: scepter/focus, staff: didn’t have any problems with it, I liked having minions. And I like the staff marks.

Ele: staff: got bored with it around level 30-40. It could have been that i was just using staff or that I really dislike their elites (I love getting the fgs when I’m on my warrior, but I hate using it as a skill). It just felt that I had to wait for the lesser and elite elemental summon skills to come off of cd before I got to go into the next big fight. It isn’t bad, just feels way too squishy. I did build him for healing, so it is always nice when there’s a group nearby that I can help out, but solo it’s pretty sad.

Ranger: shortbow, axe/warhorn. when I got bored with my ele I went to my ranger (and finished my ele after I was done with my ranger). I like the quick attacks of the sb, I feel like I need the speed from the warhorn, but overall I had lots of fun. Until trying to solo the labyrinth I only had ~15 or so deaths getting to 80. The pet was a great tank. It has some stupid moments, sure, but I liked it for PvE. And the really fast atatck from the sb kept things exciting (or very annoying with confusion).

So if I had to rank the fun for the classes that I’ve played it would be:

war > ranger > ele (with a group) > necro > ele (solo)

Also once you gear up your main, you can easily let laurels stockpile. My alts are all stuck in a cave in random drop armor listening to a ghost pirate ramble, or by a crafting station to make my luck easier to manage; they don’t deserve ascended trinkets. Because honestly, what do you really need money for, once you gear up your first character (and alts if you like the variety).

I have used ~100 laurels on t6 mats, but thats to keep for myself. Gotta do the slow legendary grind a bit at a time.

Dromar.1027:

Belenwyn.8674:

Will Arenanet shift the vertical progression to infusions?

The vertical progression will most likely shift towards legendary trinkets and armor.

Except that legendary weapons have always just matched the best thing for that type, never exceeded, and they’ve stated that if a new tier were ever introduced (by the wild spirits I hope not) that legendary weapons would bump up to match it. So why would trinkets/armor be any different. They will match ascended trinkets/armor in stats, but (following the weapons example) allowing the stats to change on the fly.

People upset about the large list of mats required to make an ascended item are not focusing on the real issue which is they add the mats to content we have been doing for a freakin year. Usually in an MMO when better equipment is introduced it comes along with brand new content to soften the blow of the incoming grind.

And in those many MMOs that trivializes any older content because now you’re too strong for it. While you can argue that in gw2 it’d be “okay” because of the dynamic leveling, I’d rather they put more things in the mid level zones to have people go there more. If new content means more gear that I have to grind, then I’m happy with the base game and the LS. (I’d begrudgingly give up Elona and Cantha if it meant I never had to get another set of gear).

TKIB.9061:

It would be nice to upgrade directly our agony resistance from the one we put on our infused stuf:
if we had a +5 agony resistance on a ring, and we put another agony +5, this would be upraged as a +6 directly.

That would sadly (from anet’s perspective) circumvent the gold sink for crafting them up a level. I would just be able if there was a way to remove the infusion from the upgrade.

It doesn’t make that big of a different for a +5 (relatively speaking), but once you get to a +10, it’s such a waste.

Hexel.7208:

I do not live in a remote area, (US East Coast) and do not have bad internet, I have premium internet and pay extra each month for higher bandwidth. My hardware configurations are all standard and 45+ other MMOS work absolutely fine.

It doesn’t matter if you you have premium internet, it matters what the actual dl and upload speeds are. Go to speedtest.net and choose an appropriate server, it will tell you the download and upload speed that you are actually getting.

To expand further on this, it can also be slower if you (or other family members) are using a lot of bandwidth. If someone is using hulu/netflix/amazon prime or just doing some heavy downloading it can affect your internet speed.

A final note on internet, if you have cable, the internet speed you pay for isn’t what you normally get. There will be 1 big cable that everyone in the area will be using/sharing. So if its “prime time” and everyone in the area is on the internet your speed can also suffer a bit from that.

Other problems, if you open up your task manager while gw2 is running (you can just right click the tool bar and choose “start task manager” if you’re on a win7 machine). Check your cpu and memory usage, if either is too high gw2 (and other things) will run slowly. You can lower it by closing any other programs besides gw2, and also closing other programs that aren’t necessary to play, but start up on boot (like skype, spotify, steam, etc.). Your cpu at boot will most likely be ~20-33% and about the same with memory (less if you have a newer comp). After boot both should be less than 50% give or take. If you are hitting 70 ish% it will most likely start hitting performance issues, which means you either need to upgrade your comp, lower the game settings, or close any/other programs while playing gw2. Oh, and if you don’t restart your computer often, it can help to restart to fully refresh the memory (when you close some programs you don’t always get all of the mem back thanks to memory leaks, so the longer your comp is on the worse your performance slowly gets).

And personally I hate that if I want to see what achievements I missed, I need to look on the wiki and compare to what I have. If it bothers you that much, just don’t go into your historical tab. I find it silly that when I go into F&F I only see 1-2 half way done achievements and nothing else. I wish there was something I could check to actually see the things I missed instead of never remembering what I didn’t do.

Khisanth.2948:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

5) The only valid point he made is about the bugs making it through QC. It is higher than any of us would like, but I want to believe that Anet is trying to weed out bugs. I have no clue what the size of their test team is, but it can’t be that large, but how much larger can they afford to make it. [Plus don’t forget about that if there were lots more testers, insider trading might become a bigger problem than it currently may be]. It’s just nice that usually the more glaring bugs are fixed within a day or so. It’s a bit sadder when it takes ~a week to fix others.

I could live with taking a week for a fix but many of the bugs have been around for months or since release. It’s not like they are unknown either, many have been reported numerous times through the forum alone.

One of the biggest problem I have with LS is that it feels like a constant push forward with little to no regard for fixing existing bugs. Sure there is occasional handful of fixes but during the same update there will be an equal number of new ones to replace them.

Many times the fixes mentioned in the patch notes do not even fix what it claims! It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even just tell a friend “hey! They fixed X” it has to be “hey! They fixed X … or at least the claimed to anyway”. I shouldn’t need to go test every fix mentioned in the patch notes to make sure it’s actually fixed. If it says it is fixed it should be fixed. The times where that is not the case should be exceedingly rare. It is currently the reverse.

Honestly I don’t mind the two week LS updates. I like that I can choose not to do something if I don’t like it, and yet still have something new to try within 2-4 weeks. And if you miss something because of work/school/family you won’t be too far behind at all and won’t need to beg friends to do outdated content to get you geared up to do whatever the next new thing is.

You can’t beg friends to do content that has gone away. :P

Well I agree with you about the bug fixes. Heck there was a Warrior trait that was either stealth nerfed (which they said they didn’t do). In June it was patched to do one thing, and when the new UI came out a couple of weeks ago it changed and was never mentioned in the patch notes and the 2-4 bug reports on it have still been ignored. Plus other various, “if you do X with Y trait, Z bug happens”, which like you said have been around for months, some since launch.

And as much as I don’t mind the LS, I also wouldn’t mind getting a week off every two patches to play however I want, or to even take a break from the game and work on my steam or ps3 game backlog. And yeah, I know that’s main the problem with the Living Story.

There’s another thread about a historian, that a lot of people seem to want. Kinda like the pool in HoM from gw1 or the character mission things. Let us “relive” any past living story just to see it (and to be able to rewatch the cut scenes). Heck I still want to be able to redo any personal story missions/rewatch those cut scenes. I don’t even want rewards for it, it would just be nice to be able to play content that I missed at my own pace. Sadly, the last response from the devs about it is that is what they intend to use FotM for. That works fine for 5 man dungeons, but I don’t see how they can show any other kind of content that way.

Finnway.2183:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

If you felt you got more value you can throw money into the gem store to help support them. If you feel that something is “worth it” in the gem store than you can throw money at it and help support the game.

That’s just it though. When people like me bought this game we expected to buy things in the gem store because we were getting value out of the game. Right now, we’re not getting our value out of the game but we feel driven to the gem-store anyways.

See I didn’t expect to buy anything from the gem store. I showed support by buying the CE version of the game and the soundtrack. In general, I’d rather have the overpriced nicknacks than a digital item. And seeing that I refuse to pay to play any game I really enjoyed the fact that I’d be able to save up my gold and get things for with in game money instead. But it’s fine as we just have a difference of opinion about that.

But I don’t understand this:

Right now, we’re not getting our value out of the game but we feel driven to the gem-store anyways.

How are you (and people that share your interests) being driven to the gem store? As I stated they only have cosmetic and QoL items. No booster or unlimited tool is needed to play the game (for example you don’t need the unlimited pick to mine Ori).

There is a general lack of rewards that take time to get that are not linked to gold. Every PvE reward in GW2 is linked to gold, and pretty soon PvP rewards will be as well. But gold is also needed to buy commodity items in the gem-store. This makes it feel like you have two options in GW2: farm gold all day, every day; or spend $10 a month in the gem-shop. GW2 does not have a literal monthly fee, but it might as well for casual players who don’t want to farm consistently.

Very true. The rewards in the game are either linked to gold, karma (which is just your literal time doing events), laurels (your time gated time), or achievements (a combination of time and/or skill). I don’t PvP much, but I am slightly concerned about them going to gold instead of glory. And I hate to use this “argument” but what commodity items do you “need”. The tools are a big “waste” of money that take years to pay for themselves (but then I don’t think I could go without mine because of the convince). Boosters (besides maybe a crafting if you want to save yourself money/mats) are not necessary at all. The only ones that I can see people spending money for is the armor/weapon skins. But once you find one or two you like, why do you need more?

That being said, what do you need money for? I leveled up my main in ~2-4 weeks or so, and paid the gold back then for the T6 mats for the armor I wanted, a MF set. A little latter I made a set for dungeons (and eventual fractal) set. And happily enough, I really liked the default heavy look, so I never needed to worry about my look (plus I play the game more so for killing, less so for dress up, but I know for some people looks are really important). So, after that, what purpose does gold have, other than to hoard it up? I’ve been saving up my gold since the 2-3rd month of the game, if I see something in the gem store that catches my eye I’ll throw some gold at it. If I don’t have enough (or want to save my gold) I’ll throw $10 if I really want it.

But outside of the very expensive skins, I don’t really see what point gold really has, besides getting absorbed by the new sinks that keep appearing in each patch. Most people need 2, maybe 3 sets of armor. Now that can get pricy if you do that for multiple characters, but I make my alts live off the land/account bound exotic drops.

And I’m just curious about what constitutes a “farmer” and a “casual”. Doing anything besides just doing events (champ trains, dungeons, fractals, world bosses, WvW) will at least make you decent money (or give you mats which you can sell for decent money). Now I hate champ farming, and I greatly dislike dungeons, but I love world boss fights, fractals, and now more-so WvW. There must be something you enjoy that is also profitable.

Bleh, I never want to see a level cap increase. I’m annoyed enough as it is, about ascended weapons and armor (and retroactively about trinkets). I just want to see some new traits/skills eventually.

Bagel.4598:

The problem with fractals is it’s generally lower levels that suffer from this the most.
Most players in the low levels aren’t experienced enough for quick runs so it’s a learning curve.
A solution could be to make fractals optional. Having a single path completion with a single dungeon reward. For each consecutive run, another dungeon reward is given and for 3 consecutive runs a daily reward is given.
Obviously shorter fractals would need to be altered or the reward made specific and in proportion to the fractal completed (otherwise people would farm swamp dungeon reward for e.g).
But we all know this would never happen, it would make too much sense.

How does changing the way fractals work make sense? If you want your 15min speed clears, dungeons are already in the game. Fractals weren’t that hard when they were introduced and the lower levels haven’t got any harder since then. If anything people would have ascended trinkets now to give their stats a small boost.

And as to explain what to do if someone doesn’t know, isn’t that being part of the community. I skipped flames and frost, so I never did that mini dungeon, yet after a <30s explanation I was fine doing them on mid 30s.

So I guess I am not “one of the chosen.” When I read that article I see a couple of things:

1) The first part treats the player base like whiny children that can never be happy or satisfied (which is sadly true).

2) If you look at the more recent LS updates, they involve far less grind than older ones. The inclusion of the daily metas (though preferably when they aren’t required to get the meta) and providing extra achievements that aren’t necessary let more casual players have their shot.

3) also if these things are aimed at the casual player, who the heck cares if you miss out on “your achievement perfection goal” is that really a thing? Achievement points had no point until a couple of months ago when they are just a nice way to get some skins, account bonuses, WvW BoH, and gem store items.

4)

Aside from time constraints, another issue with the temporary content is its close ties to the game’s gem store.

The heck is he talking about? The only things offered in the gem store (either for direct buy or via rnd) are minis, town clothes, infinite tools, armor sets/pieces, weapon skins. So either QoL convenience items (which take years to “pay for themselves” if you used gold to gems) or cosmetics. I have never felt forced (or been forced) to buy anything from the gem store.

. This wouldn’t be a problem for most of us though, if we felt we were getting quality content for the money; at the moment however, that’s not really the case.

If people feel they aren’t getting quality content then they don’t need to buy it. Enough said…this game is B2P. For the $150,$80, $60, $40, $30 (and whatever other price I missed) you paid for this game you got your money’s worth. If you felt you got more value you can throw money into the gem store to help support them. If you feel that something is “worth it” in the gem store than you can throw money at it and help support the game. But these opinions/statements don’t represent the truth by any means. And for the people that did spend $100s on rnd boxes or what-have-you and were angry they didn’t get what they wanted, all I can say is I’m sorry and hopefully next time you can do more research before you blindly throw your money and something and complain it didn’t give you what you thought it would.

Also if people didn’t want items that were in the gem store the gold—>gem ratio would be a heck of a lot better than it is now.

5) The only valid point he made is about the bugs making it through QC. It is higher than any of us would like, but I want to believe that Anet is trying to weed out bugs. I have no clue what the size of their test team is, but it can’t be that large, but how much larger can they afford to make it. [Plus don’t forget about that if there were lots more testers, insider trading might become a bigger problem than it currently may be]. It’s just nice that usually the more glaring bugs are fixed within a day or so. It’s a bit sadder when it takes ~a week to fix others.

Have there been LS patches I disliked, sure there have (I’m looking at you Teq, you annoying boss). But I also realize that some people love that patch. Have there been design decisions I did not like, sure. I just find the whole MF change, karma nerf, ascended weapons, new agony infusions, and now ascended armor to all be massive gold sinks to counter the inflation caused by earlier LS. But I still partake in them for better and worse. I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game so far, and I plan to continue to do so.

Honestly I don’t mind the two week LS updates. I like that I can choose not to do something if I don’t like it, and yet still have something new to try within 2-4 weeks. And if you miss something because of work/school/family you won’t be too far behind at all and won’t need to beg friends to do outdated content to get you geared up to do whatever the next new thing is.