You won’t lose anything. The change lets you acquire more.
Just one comment on your image.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-for-the-fractals-of-the-mists/#reward
Completing a fractal will yield a repeatable chest that contains the following (this chest can be obtained any number of times per day):
•Fractal Relics
•Agony resist infusions
•Character equipment (blue quality or higher)
To me that reads that each full run will give you 4, +1 AR infusions. And not limited to 1/day. So thankfully it won’t take forever to get the +5 infusion (just 16 fractals, or four full runs). Otherwise, it’d take 512 days to get a +10 AR infusion (instead it’ll just take 128 full fractal runs). Assuming that you only get +1 from drops, and for all we know, at higher levels we’ll have a greater chance at getting something greater than +1.
The 1/day/reward tier seems to only include
•Empyreal Fragments
•Fractal Relics
•A Pristine Fractal Relic
•Gold
and a chance for
•Fractal Weapon Skins (starting at level 10)
•Ascended Rings (starting at level 10)
•Ascended Weapons (starting at level 10)
•Infused Ascended Rings (starting at level 20)
Basically the reward for the dungeon (if I heard right) is either;
Dragonite Ingot
Bloodstone Ingot
Empryreal IngotPlease Anet, give us something
goodbetter than that! Im already having to delete those because of space…. (not the ingots but since it is too expensive to get to 450 Im deleting stacks of the unrefined parts)
As the poster above me said, that’s the meta reward for this LS, not the reward for the dungeon.
I guess it’s to help people who either don’t like world bosses, champ farms, or dungeons. Though it would be nice if it was more than 1 refined mat (and if they had more uses introduced into this patch).
soo as a fractals Player I Need to hope that they reset pvp/ wvw ranks as well with next season it’s unfair if they implement legendaries out of pvp chests ( wich they will do (datamined chatcodes already ingame) because some ppl don’t have a that high rank and everybody should start of same feet. If they get the Server Population Thing done with wvw they should reset so not ppl on zergservers have higher wxp ranks than others… you think this is fair.. you only don’t care because it’s an aspect of the game you haven’t played…
it’s sad how ignorant ppl are on those Forums just ignore Facts and stuff …
sad sad ignorant community ….
Did I say it was fair? Not exactly, I said I understood while they did it, and it seemed fairly obvious to me. The same way it seemed obvious why you would reset crafting discoveries. It doesn’t mean you need to think its “fair.” But there is a reason why they do it. The devs probably see a community of high level fractal players and want to reward them (though it seems at least a few people would rather op-out of that), so there is a leaderboard.
As for resetting progress, I explained why (I think) they are doing it: to make it fair because they are changing the difficulty for levels 30+.
Also your comparisons don’t really match up.
PvP rank has nothing to do with anything except which vendors you can buy from. And just because the codes have been data mined it doesn’t mean that they will come in soon (plenty of things have been data mined from months ago which still aren’t in the game yet) and you don’t know how they will be implemented. Also, it is just a skin, and has no barring on actual progress inside of PvP.
For WvW, ranks are reset at the start of the season (the person above me pointed that out already). Though, I assume you mean reset back to 0, which if it happened I might be a little miffed. This is slightly trickier to argue. On one side, WvW was never designed to be “fair.” The side with more numbers and time coverage will have an unfair advantage. Those will better gear/food buffs will have an advantage. And, those who play longer to get a higher WvW rank will also have an advantage. Honestly if they reset ranks to 0 it would possibly make things more “unfair,” but that’s something to be debated. If the ranks reset every week (or even every 7-12, whenever the next season is), only the hardcore WvW’ers would be able to build their rank quickly again, so most people would be lucky if they could get a single mastery back up in a given week.
You haven’t present any facts on why people above 30, should keep their personal reward level. Your reward for the past year (give or take) has been the rewards from fractals itself: the loot. The reward isn’t the higher level itself. Now they want to redesign levels 30+ to be different (I don’t think we can say harder or easier until we see what the instabilities are). For people who enjoy Fractals, they can quickly build up their levels again, and you’ll be rewarded for it. First from the loot (as normal), and secondly from the +1s (and maybe higher) AR infusions.
I do try to experience as much of this game as I can (dungeons seem to be the only thing I personally don’t really like). But, I do dabble in just about everything else: Open World PvE, LS, Fractals, PvP, WvW. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I am surprised that I was the first one to realize (or at least post about it that I noticed) that it makes sense why they are resetting the levels.
They said that they are introducing a leader board and reworking fractals levels 30+. Even without the leaderboard I still think they’d reset progress (like they did for discoveries in crafting). For ascended crafting it was to allow people to gain exp, here its so no one can already have “beaten” all of their new content, with the Mistlock Instability with a boss level at ever floor.
It makes the people who are already at 48 plus to have to work back up to the top. For crafting it would have been unfair to people that already discovered everything to have to get exp from just crafting (though I saw at least one person angry because he just wanted to discover everything) here it would be unfair to not reset people. If it becomes harder now anyone who was already at 50 would be getting a “free pass” (not saying a lvl 50 fractal is easy, but I think you understand my point) and not have to work up through 30. At least that’s why it made sense to me why everything was getting reset.
(edited by Moderator)
If they were to ever go in the gem shop directly (which I don’t believe they should), they should be 600 or 800 gems a piece (ie, ridiculous overpriced).
Leveling isn’t that hard to begin with, it doesn’t need to be made easier or enter the realm of “easy to buy an 80.”
Some realistic/more likely extreme ones.
Dodging takes both bars of endurance
Endurance fills 50% slower
Ranged weapons have their range cut in half
Melee weapons are not allowed/have their cds increased by 50-100%
Jumping costs 1 bar of endurance
Reduced movement speed by 25-50%
Reduce direct damage by 50%
Reduce condi duration by 50%
Something similar to the toxic hallucinations, where the enemies can spawn more reinforcements, or just similar to toxin where you constantly take DoT
Reduced vision – enemies X range away are invisible to you (don’t know if that can be done)
You are turned into an animal/have a new skill set
Maybe some direct changes to the Agro mechanic (farthest person away will always be targeted by range, for example).
Using an unidentified dye and getting Abyss dye.
Heh, the same thing must have happened to me a long time ago. As a long term goal I wanted to get all of them unlocked on my main so I have a habit of just using any dye I don’t already have without looking at the name. About 6-8 months ago I realized that I had Abyss unlocked, then I realized how much it was worth, heh.
They should arrive via the in-game mail system. Check to see if you have a new mail, or if you are maxed at 10/10 messages (just delete a couple and you should get the mail from the gem store with your boosters).
Other than a champ or dungeon run, I don’t usually have the opportunity to go for bosses. The only boss that seems to be up when I play is Teq, which may as well be “Let’s waste 15 minutes for no loot.” Occasionally I’ll get to do SB.
Well I don’t know how long you play for, but the longest timer is ~4 hours if I recall (for claw, 3 hour wait and a little over an hour window). Most of the boss timers are between 1-2 hours with <40min window. Also you should go for FE if you have limited play time. It is up usually every 30-40min max (unless he wants to be bugged). Now if you’re playing at off hours and have no one to help, that I understand (which is another reason I hate the 15min timer).
Edit: Also 20 lvl 80 greens is 20-40s, where most rares go for ~30s or there abouts (gs are in the low 40s if I recall). As someone above pointed out, it’s a more sure thing to sell them (either vendor or on the tp) and just buy a rare to salvage (or just buy an ecto outright).
Another option is to look at the range of the item that you have (if non-80), look what it can salvage into, and check the raw mat prices. You may be able to sell the ore/wood for more than the green was worth, but that takes more work.
(edited by Wallace MacBix.2089)
<snip>250 toughness is a lot if you consider that signet of the dolyak passive gives 180 toughness.
250 toughness = 27% of the pure zerker warrior toughness
250 toughness = 10% of the tankiest warrior toughness
Well with my current build with Knights/Rabid gear the extra 250 toughness makes me go from 49.68% to 52.91% DR, so only +3.23% (with an extra 12 power from Armored Attack), but you are right of it being about a 10% increase in toughness. An increase sure, but I don’t think it’ll make up for the exchange of 250 power/condi damage. It’ll be good for some people sure, but it isn’t be all, end all (which is a good thing).
And I don’t think you can really compare a sigil (or rune) with a utility skill. For example, FGJ gives 3 stacks of perm might. That’s +105 power & condi dam. So, FGJ provides less than half of a bloodlust sigil (and of course the 33% furry uptime and party wide).
there are tons of runes way better than Dolyak rune you can start replacing them right now no need to wait for the patch.
I’d argue you on that. Of the defensive (toughness and vit) runes, they were the only ones that stuck out to me, besides maybe Melandru, but those aren’t really useful in standard PvE (and I don’t use a shout healing build so Soldiers aren’t useful either).
Besides even though its only 30 hp/sec for the full sec, that’s a sizable amount of healing power equivalent. I can’t recall if the scaling has changed on either since launch, so it may have been worth more healing power back in the day (if I remember correctly, adrenal health didn’t even scale with healing power until a couple of months ago).
For healing sig it’s equal to 600 healing power.
For adrenal health it’s equal to 200 healing power (at max adrenaline)
If you have both (and max adrenaline) it’s equal to 150 healing power.
So to me that’s a useful effect, I’ve been using them since ~1 month or so since release (whenever I got to 80 and crafted my gear) and haven’t had to look back yet.
Unless the class adds something “new” and unique to the game, what reason is there to add a new class?
If you just want a new class because you’re bored/want something new, what’s going to happen after 1-4 weeks when you max it and gear it up? We don’t need a new class just to be a filler.
The “easy/cheap” way to level is (at least how I leveled up)
On a Friday night (~1 hour before server reset, for the WvW crafting bonus) pop a crafting booster (and a guild one if you’re lucky)
400-425: refine ore/wood
425-450: discover exotics (if I recall it takes somewhere between 8-10), though this may change now, I’ve heard that you can also use the new crafting runes/sigils to get crafting exp in this range as well. That could be cheaper than crafting exotics, but I’m not sure. Artificer can also discover potions for exp as well.
450-475: You can sit here as long as you want, doing the daily refinement. Depending how many ascended crafting mats you have (dragonite, fragments, and dust) you can also refine them now (given you have enough T2-T4 mats) otherwise you can just do the daily ecto refinement. I think I stayed there for about 3-4 weeks, and I ended up at ~473 from doing just the daily refinement.
For the last leg, wait till another Friday night and pop another crafting booster (if you have them to spare)
475-500: Discover more exotics, I think this was in the 10-12 range. Again, I’m not sure if the newest LS recipes give exp in this range or not.
Technically, it’s “easy” to get to 500, it’s just expensive. Do you have the spare ~100 ectos lying around? How long are you willing to milk the daily refinement at 450 (and those take 50 mithral ingots and 50 elder logs)? Do you have enough T2-T4 to refine all the dust/dragonite/fragments you have lying around? (Do you even have the 500 or so of each that you need for an ascended weapon?) Etc.
You can start gathering ascended mats as soon as you hit level 80 (and can’t refine them until you hit crafting level 450), so there isn’t a reason to rush crafting until you get to 80. Then most things that you do will give you ascended mats (just usually not in great amounts).
Dragonite comes from world bosses and temple events
Fragments comes from jps/world chests and dungeons/fractals
Dust comes from champ bags
(And you can get them all in WvW as well, depending on what you cap).
As for the difference between Exotic and Ascended weapons, it depends what stat combos you use. They get a +5% direct damage increase in their weapon strength. The stat boost isn’t that big though (though you can put in 2, +5 infusions).
If you are a condition heavy user, you can skip them safely. If you are a zerker, you should be able to notice a difference, but it still isn’t required.
The runes could be pretty interesting (depending on the cd for aegis), but I don’t think I’ll be replacing the Dolyak runes on my main set, but I may try them out if I get some lucky drops.
I’m just curious, as I’m still a WvW newbie (somewhere around rank 55-60), I don’t see how the Sigil will make that much of a difference. If you are already using Knights gear an extra 250 toughness will give you what….+1.5-2.5% DR (rough guesstimate, maybe in the 56% DR range), nothing that noteworthy (compared to getting extra power/precision/condi damage at least). I could see maybe it being useful in a less tanky build though, but I don’t see it insta-replacing the extra power or condi dam that most people are using now.
As others have said the less armored/less hp combos usually have options that make up for it. Boons (regen and protection), better access to some conditions (blind, immobilize, daze, stun), and different skills/mechanics (pet/clones/minions/summons to damage or absorb, stealth to avoid, lots of block or evade skills, an extra hp bar, etc).
You can also look at it that certain classes have different focuses. Sure, each class can do just about anything, but some classes are better at certain things. Warriors (to go with your example) only have 1 combo field and somewhat limited burst options (at least on weapons). And sure they have high hp and armor, but they lack many protective boons; very limited access to regen and no protection or retaliation.
Or just make a macro to infinitely click for you. I mean, unless you want to wear out your mouse that much faster.
I’m pretty sure that’s against the TOS. If I recall it only allows rebinding, so if you wanted to tap “x” instead of click, that’s okay, but to not have to press anything and just have the macro click for you is against the rules.
Thankfully I have mostly broken mouse (it can only click and not move very well), very glad I decided to keep it.
Oh one last bit I forgot, it would be nice if when designing new content (and looking at older content) that you (the devs) tried to balance the risk/reward/time factors to all try to be in line with each other.
As it stands champ farming is the best way to make money (outside of flipping on the tp) and then dungeon running and then world bosses.
I’d argue that the Teq patch that changed most world bosses, just made champ farming seem even more profitable by comparison. The increased mechanics are awesome! I enjoy that the golem can kill you if you look away for 5 seconds, but I don’t enjoy that it both takes longer to kill him (for marginally better rewards) and there is an arbitrary timer attached to him. I’ve seen kitten fail a bunch of times at off hours, which makes me a bit sad. If I can solo him to ~40% hp in 15min, why can I spend another 10-15 min to kill him myself. I don’t think playing at not peek hours should punish players.
Oh and another thing (more of a gripe/something I hope gets addressed). Was it intended for people to run through and skip most mobs in all dungeons? It’s honestly the main reason I just can’t enjoy running a dungeon.
I have enjoyed most of the LS updates (I just disagree with account magic find/luck and despise (almost) the entire Teq patch [the x2-x4 increase in hp for the other bosses is not compensated by 2 champ bags, but the new mechanics for the bosses are awesome]). And for the most part they have delivered what they said they would, it’s just a matter if the majority has agreed with how they did it. We’re just waiting on new skills/traits and precursor crafting/new legendaries and ascended armor (joy….) but I think they will be able to keep their words and still provide enjoyable content via the LS. So despite my focusing on the negative here, overall I still feel pretty positive about the past year, I’d upgrade their overall score to a B or so for now and maybe a B+ or A- depending how ascended armor and the new skills/traits are introduced.
I think another QoL improvement (thanks for the account bound infinite tools!) would be to add in the LS reward skins into the hero tab with the other weapon/armor skins. Another nice touch would be to be able to relive our PS and previous LS cut scenes, similar to replay a mission in gw1 or the pool at EotN. I’m also excited to see how else they decide to expand our home instance and any new mini games they think up. I would also love some things from gw1 (heroes and hard mode), but I realize that both of those don’t really fit into the type of game gw2 is.
I do agree that quality is important, and I realize that some people love the things that I hated, that is an opinion after all, but for the most part I enjoy the 2 week cycle because if I don’t like a patch I know another one is right around the corner for me to try. It is a bit annoying that most things leave after 2 weeks, as it doesn’t really give you time to “take a break,” but that is their business model; they can’t make money if we don’t play. Personally, I have enjoyed a lot more the “shorter” LS as of late because I can finish them somewhat quickly and then either move on to something else if I don’t enjoy the LS (and only did it for the meta reward) or continue to play it if I enjoy it.
For some PvP ideas (I never did any gw1 standard PvP) but I loved the asymmetric “defend/assault the fort” (the name escapes me) and the “turtle escort” thing in Jade Quarry was also enjoyable. I do play gw2 PvP, but only when I’m bored/want to mix things up a bit. I think adding new types besides capture/defend points would go a long way to help things feel fresh.
So I guess I would like to see better balance between the stat types. For the classes I’ve played so far I seem to enjoy all of the condi heavy weapons, but I feel sad when I realize that a zerker is going to be doing more damage than me and my contribution is lowered further because of the global condition stack. Or if I want to make a support character my usefulness doesn’t really seem like anything (outside of buffing the zerker). It would be nice if somehow it felt beneficial to not be a pure zerker.
And that was longer than I thought it would be.
To make some shorter comments on your thoughts/posts
I think the LW deserves more than a C-.
We have reoccurring LS’s that can somewhat be considered permanent (dragon bash, holiday festivals, SAB, Zypherite sanctum, and Queen’s Gauntlet). And while I disagree with some of the LS (and by that I mean the whole Teq patch) they still changed (I wouldn’t say improved) the world bosses and have made the past two LS effect the a map in a large way. The invasions also still attack various maps as well.
As for the new skills I say wait for Dec. They’ve stated they don’t want to affect the balance in WvW season 1. So I assume that after it ends we’ll get our new skills/traits. And technically they added the skill point scrolls (and random LS rewards to give skill points).
Personally, I hate the champ rewards (though they did deliver what they said they would). They started the champ trains where many plays can be volatile towards other players who “upset” the rotation. And it was the start of the fast inflation in the game.
I also hate account magic find (but again they did deliver). It’s been a couple of months and I’m still not where I was before the patch in my MF armor, and I still haven’t chosen a new stat combo for those items because I already had my “dungeon/fractal” armor. It was only introduced as a massive gold sink, which was only required because of the previous LS’ massive amount of farming (champ trains, QP, QG, invasions).
Crafting to 500 was another massive sink (any tp interaction is a sink because of the fees). This also made me realize how unbalanced the stat system is (full exotic vs. full ascended can get a +~20% dps increase for zerk stats. Good luck trying to get that improvement out of conditions). I do agree with the time gated mats though (besides, it’s another gold sink for the wealthy/impatient).
I don’t think new Legendaries will happen this year. They may, but devs have stated that if anything is going to be delayed it will be this. So this can most likely be expected early next year. I’m just scared at how much of a gold sink a precursor should be (they could make it very easy and crash the precursor market, because they never intended them to be that expensive or they can make it more of a grind/more expensive than just buying one on the tp).
For player roles, Teq is what drove that home for me. A horrible experience for me, making basically just one set of gear useful (thankfully it wasn’t the standard zerker, though they still did the same amount of damage as soldier’s). As for the WvW component hopefully they rework things for season 2 to make a train not the best way to get things.
No thanks, this along with other racial bonus suggestions I’ve seen (such as Norn/Charr have a speed bonus because they are bigger/have longer legs). This would make people who want to min/max pigeon-holed into certain race-class combos. Also how would you even “balance” this? How much +boon duration is equivalent to extra power or extra crit damage.
If you made the stat increases noticeable this would happen immediately (and also everyone would complain that the race-class combo they have is now bad and they have to relevel a new character). People are willing to spend a lot of money to just get infusions that give +5AR and +5 stat (or some get ascended gear also for the infusion stat bonuses), and exotic back pieces give more than +5 to a single stat. Do you really want to see, “LFM Charr War only”
The immersion comes from the skins/environment/RP, not from stat bonuses. If you want another example where it “fails” just look at DnD. A very balanced approach if I say, but how many half-orc bards do you see (and yes the ones I’ve seen are very funny/great)? But, you only see them if someone wants to play against the norm or make something for “fun” (without being useful).
If you have limited play time, a slower (but more sure) way to get dragonite, is just look to see what bosses are up at any given time. Most of the bosses only give 3-7 dragonite (the dragons and golem give the most) but depending how lucky you are at a given time you can hop from one to the next fairly quickly. As others have suggested guesting to a high pop/active server is a good bet to try to get temple events “quickly” but from my experience they normally take longer and have a higher chance to fail (compared to world bosses).
Another option in WvW is if there is a zerg train running to cap towers/keeps. I forget the number they drop off the top of my head though.
Hum. Sounds to me like they priced these about right. Low enough to have the min/makers readily chase them, but high enough that exotic wont go out of style overnight.
Tho… If one item yields a 5% increase… What would a full set do?
You can look at the links I posted above to see some calculations for zerker, soldiers, knights, and dire (looking at direct damage only). But I figure Astralporing did their own calcs, looked at mine, or is just taking what I said at face value.
If you’re stats matter more (a tank, healer, condi dam, etc.) user than you can for the most part, safely ignore ascended weapons (or work at a slow pace towards them). Most of the stat boosts (over exotic) are on the trinkets. If you are a direct damage/crit/precision user you may want to put some good focus on the ascended weapon.
In either case, ascended armor will not be adding much to your stat totals or defense (should add more for a zerker who can use the extra armor)
For exotic weapons
179 (180) for the main stat 2h (2, 1h)
+128 for the secondary stat (for both 2h and 2, 1h weapons)
For ascended weapons
+188 for the main stat (for both 2h and 2, 1h weapons)
+134 for the secondary stat (for both 2h and 2, 1h weapons)
So at best you are only gaining +9 condition damage if it is the main stat or +6 condition damage if its the secondary stat.
I don’t know your total stats, but you can look to see how much you have. When I say “gain” I mean a multiple of that number.
You need +20 to gain +1 dam/bleed.
You need +4 to gain +1 dam/burn.
You need +10 to gain +1 dam/posion.
You need +4 to gain +1 dam/fear.
You need +27 to gain +1 dam/torment. (not sure how the moving works with torment, if you just need +14 to get +1 dam, or if +27 gives you +2 dam)
Remember that any “extra” is lost, as the damage always rounds down to the nearest whole number. So for a bleed, 119 condition damage does as much damage per tic as 100 condition damage.
So really you are gaining not much (if anything). You will get the +5% weapon strength, so your direct damage will go up. And if you have power or precision as one of the other stats on your weapon you’ll gain a little more than +5% damage. But if you rely on conditions for most of your damage you really won’t notice a difference.
Edit: Woops, one major thing I forgot. Don’t forget you can get 2 +5 condition damage infusions, bringing the extra condition damage to +18 max. So you will most likely be able to get at least 1 extra damage out of bleeds, and 2-5 out of the other conditions.
(edited by Wallace MacBix.2089)
It depends what you want to do.
A legendary takes roughly 1 mil karma. (base Obsidian Shard x250 for 525,000 karma and then another estimated 231 Obsidian Shards for 485,100 karma for the 77 mystic clovers needed)
An ascended weapon takes far less (30 Obsidian Shards for the vision crystal for 63,000 karma and I think ~21k for the recipe)
You’ve said you don’t care about temple armor (though if you ever level up an alt, that’s a decent first set of exotic for them if you want).
The only other way to spend karma is Orrian boxes as Shpongle suggests. I’ve only done that once (before the karma nerf hit) and I think I spent roughly 9 million karma on Orrian boxes (I think it was 2,000-2,300 boxes) I don’t remember exactly how much of everything I got but there was a good chunk of gold (just guessing but maybe 10-20) from just selling the vendor trash, about 10-15 of each lodestone, 15-20 putrid essences, some of the infinite potions (which are worth <1s on the tp), and a couple copies of the mini. I suggest using an old mouse though…..
Honestly, while karma is harder to get. If I remember, they only changed the daily/monthly rewards (which got hit hard) and failed events. Personally I can still make ~0.5 mil karma in a couple months. I mean since the September 3rd patch I’ve still made 600k-700k (maybe 100k more) karma just doing the things I normally do.
Though you may want to keep some karma for when ascended armor comes up (should be by the end of the year) and also possibly for precursor crafting (some items related to it were just data mined but no one knows what/when it will be).
You can only stack one sigil at a time. The second one will never stack untill you max out the 1st one to 25.
If you look up sigils on the wiki, it list all of the sigils, it explains this. It also explains what other sigils do not work in direct conjunction to one another.
This is wrong. You can never (and have never been able to) gain +250 power and +250 precision by killing 50 foes.
If you have two different stat gains on your weapons then only the one on your main hand (or which ever was applied first in case of one being on different weapon sets) will apply. If you have two of the same stat gaining sigil (one on main, one of off hand) then you will gain two charges per kill.
On-kill sigils
On-kill stacking attribute bonuses remain even after you swap or unequip weapons; the stacks only end on being downed or defeated, or by traveling to another zone or instance.
If you have an “on-kill sigil” on both main-hand and off-hand weapons, only the sigil on the main-hand weapon will trigger, since that sigil takes priority and forces a cooldown on the other.
Two different on-kill stacking sigils will not provide bonuses to two different attributes. Whichever sigil triggered the first time will continue to add to its stack. (i.e. you can only have one “on kill” stacking effect active at a time). However, if you have the same on-kill stacking sigil on both main- and off-hand weapons, stacks will accumulate twice as quickly. The 25 stack limit still applies.
The same limitation applies to mixing on-kill stacking and delayed effect sigils. Only the first effect will be present.
I compared 12 different things. Full ascended, Ascended w/ exotic armor, Full Exotic, Full Rare stat/damage totals each with four different types of armor full zerker, full knights, full soldiers, full dire.
If you care to look, here’s the start of my novel (all numbers and calculations included):
If you don’t want to read that much here’s the “results” post:
Oh, and here’s the direct link for the DR calculations:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Stats-up-5-condition-damage/page/2#post3155929
I don’t know if anyone checked my math (and I don’t blame them) but direct damage can see the increase. If you look at just the stats (which you need to if you want to look a condi specs) going off the top of my head (I think the exact number is somewhere in one of my posts) the difference in the main stat between full exotic and full ascended is ~200-300. By bleeds that is only 10-15 damage/bleed tic. Noticeable yes, but I don’t think that measures up to the ~20% damage you can do via zerker gear.
I feel like a lot of people are missing OP’s point:
exotic -> ascended shows 5% increase in direct damage, but only 0.2% increase in condition damage.
this is before you take into account any max amount of condition stacks.Yep (don’t know if that number is right though), it’s closer to ~13-15% increase in direct damage. Technically all of the stats are getting the same increase, and then theres the extra 5% weapon strength.
The problem is with how well power/precision/crit damage all stack compared to how pretty much every other stat is stand alone (minus some “on crit” effects/sigils/runes).
A similar thing will happen when ascend armor hits, if I recall, the extra DR will not even be enough to counter the +5% weapon damage from ascended weapons. I’m still torn by this, I don’t want power creep and I don’t want to feel forced to get them, but for how expensive they are they don’t really give a good reward. Then again, if I had to choose I’d rather have the latter.
Please examine my math above. The 5% increased weapon damage doesn’t translate into an increase in the damage calculation much beyond 5%, as the power (the stat) increase is negligible in the final calculation. The extra 5% is never multiplied with itself, thus, it is simply a flat multiplier in damage output that is equivalent to a sigil of force.
Sure if you just factor in the +5% weapon damage you are just going to end up with a +5% total damage. You are forgetting two things, one the extra stats that the ascended weapon gives.
For example, comparing an exotic Zerker gs to an ascended Zerker gs: you gain 9 power, 5 precision, and 1% crit damage. When you factor this into the damage calculation:
(Just weapon damage)
[[((1000*2000*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.5)]]/[[((10502000*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.50)*(0.75+0.5)]] = 0.952
(Weapon damage and extra stats)
[[((1000*2000*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.5)]]/[[((10502009*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.5025)*(0.76+0.5)]] = 0.939
So, that alone gives you a ~+7% increase.
My ~13-15% estimate (and I think up to 20% in my calculations, and that would be higher if ascended armor has a higher +crit dam% than exotic) numbers were comparing Full Exotic vs. Full Ascended (including trinkets and armor) with almost all of the extra buffs (food, nourishment, infusions, etc.); sadly I forgot to factor the +250 from the “stacks on kill” sigils, and I didn’t bother with any rune effects. Those extra stats are how the direct damage spike gets higher. I calculated full zerker, full solder, full knight, and full rabid (for direct damage only) if I recall. I’ll look for the post to that math for you. So that’s how the direct damage can get higher.
I’ve never tried to do a condition dps calculation because they have extra stipulations (start up time on getting conditions, condition spike moves, the average number of conditions you can keep, which conditions can you keep up, etc.). So, despite the fact that I use tanks/rabid gear I don’t think it’s worth my time to do all that extra math.
Even though condi users do get the +5% damage from weapon damage, if they have a mix of gear (any power, precision, crit dam stuff) they will see a bigger increase percent-wise from going from exotic to ascended. But still going from ~400 damage per AA to ~420 damage per AA isn’t that great compared to a zerker going from ~2k dam per AA to 2.1k (5%) or 2.4k (20%) dam per AA. The extra +condi damage stat wise just doesn’t make up that (80-380 damage).
The ascended armor will benefit from an increase is its armor rating, as well as vitality and toughness, if you chose to craft those stats. And you can do the math for the increases in all your current stats pretty easy, it is easy to see the difference in a damage by simply plugging in the numbers.
I did that calculation as well. I think I only looked at full knights heavy gear going from exotic to ascended. I had to extrapolate (guess) the armor values, but even when I was being generous the increase to damage reduction was minimal (and the stat upgrades are minimal, roughly +~20 to the main stat if you have all 6 ascended vs. exotic). Something like ~54% DR to 55-56% DR. So that doesn’t really counter the extra damage.
Edit: Also it may help to use the “average damage” formula instead of just using the crit damage. Though in your case of +5% damage from just the weapon strength it doesn’t matter.
(edited by Wallace MacBix.2089)
Expect prices to at least double.
I have no talent for market speculation, but it could be less because everyone has been hoarding the mats either since ascended weapons came out or prior.
Sure there will be people who have too much gold that will happily pay 7-10g per time gated refined mat, but as a whole I think most people this time around either have their own or have their own and then-some. So there could be a spike but I don’t think it will stay up as long or go as high.
@EragamerLG.2390 I believe what you’re suggesting is called phasing. I’ve never played WoW but I’ve seen forum posts here about that, and usually it was talked about with mixed or negative connotations.
A living world is fine, but its bad enough that new players can’t experience any of the previous LS. If you remove the PS too, what drive do they have to go out and explore? The current PS can always be considered “historical” (or like gw1 did it, “relive the experiences that happened before you got here”), but it shouldn’t be removed.
Personally I liked the PS, and I wish I could actually replay certain parts of it. As for “cleaning up” Orr, I think it’s fine if it’s left “as is.” And just a new zone or two are added (and possibly only being able to be accessed after the dragon is defeated).
I’d love a return of hard mode as well (for whenever I was in the mood), but there’s some problems why I don’t think we’ll see it any time soon.
Gw1 was instance based with no enemy respawns. Once you left a town, no other player could see/interact with you. Since gw2 is an open world you’d need to have a “double” of every map for every server; one for normal, one for hard. That would divide the community a bit, and while Anet is trying to get us out into the world more, I don’t think they want to divide the player base into an normal/hard map selection.
I don’t mean hard mode in open world, but only in instances like dungeons.
Ah that could be doable, but I think I see worse problems here. If you want a dungeon to be harder (ie longer) you can just kill the mobs instead of skipping ~75%+ of them. As it stands, the majority of mobs in dungeons can just be skipped, and people skip them because they aren’t worth the effort. The time/reward system isn’t set up very well. If dungeons, from the beginning, were designed to force you to kill every enemy to proceed to the next area I think people would have complained so hard that they weren’t worth the time because there were no rewards.
Most things in this (and most other) games boil down to a time/reward ratio. Why did people exploit the Queen’s Gauntlet, because it gave them great rewards. The same goes to why most people champ farm, do speed dungeon runs, zerg whatever the LS is, flip on the tp? Because those are the best way to make money. I’m sure some do it for fun, but usually people only do what is either easy, gives a good reward (for the time invested), or what they find fun. If a “hard” mode for the dungeons existed I can only see it being more hp and damage, the same as fractals. And unless they give better rewards people won’t bother doing it, and if they give too good of a reward people will farm it. The balance is very hard to achieve (look how many people complained that the labyrinth was empty after a week or so, people farmed their achievements and went to do something that was more profitable).
Personally I hate dungeons (mostly the skipping/stacking), but would at least try a harder mode of them. But right now all I can say if you want something like that, you’ll have to be happy with high level fractals for the time being.
So, you’re comparing PvE with WvW and you still haven’t replied to my question:
Ugh… a dps race type of boss would be horrible for this game.
Why?
I think I did answer that question a couple of posts up (I may have just picked the wrong post to quote). You already have dps races in the PvE of this game, and for the majority they have been met with disdain.
Sure a guild/server or thereabouts still kill Teq somewhat frequently (if not constantly), but compare that to the rest of the player base.
I can’t see any reason how a(/another) dps race boss would benefit this game in any way, shape, or form. You may argue that it gives people something new to “grind” but we already have high level fractals, dungeons, most LS, and world bosses for grinding things (in varying levels of difficulty).
Edit: Also I wonder if MF has a factor on the drop rate. In about 2-3 hours or so of running around in there (and doing only 3-4 chambers where I got keys twice) I had enough for a full key (not counting the free one you get in the mail) and then about 2-3 of green, 1-2 blue, and 0 pink left over. Oh and then a key of your choice from finishing the “story” instance of the tower. I have about ~105% MF and was using some food for most of my time running around. I did notice getting a good amount of rares (about 6) and exotics (1 from drop, 1 from the ~10 or so champ bags I got) dropping inside the tower too.
I personally doubt that magic find has any effect on anything. Which is probably why they removed it from gear stats. If it ever was intended to actually increase drop rates, I think Anet’s lack of any discernable explanation on the subject is testament to the fact that, even they have NO IDEA if/how it actually works.
Umm, we know how magic find works actually.
To paraphrase the wiki, if something has an unmodified 10% drop rate and you have +100% MF, you have a 20% chance for it to drop.
I’m not exactly sure how it works with getting multiple drops from one enemy, but I’d assume there is either a roll to determine the number of items you get and then each one is chosen with additional rolls, or one roll is made to give you an item, then a second roll is made (at a reduced chance) to see if you get a 2nd item, and so on, until you fail. A similar argument can be made for the rarity of the gear (if you have a 40%/30%/24%/5%/1% to get a white/blue/green/rare/exotic what does +100% magic find do? It can increase all numbers and give you an “extra” item roll or more likely it can just make masterwork/rares/exotics more favorable and reduce the chance for whites and blues.)
My comment was aimed at a different point: does MF effect the festive items. Going by gw1, the festive items always had their own roll on the loot table, independent of normal loot. I believe this is the same for gw2 (you can get zhaitaffy, for example, without it “taking” one of the normal loot drops). I just have no idea if MF effects those items drop rates. That was my point.
Also I’d say they removed MF from gear because the speed dungeon runners kept complaining that it was a selfish stat and that those people were not contributing to overall dps (not gonna argue if that statement is valid or not, but I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason. Plus they decided to make it a money sink, so 2 birds with one patch).
I’d love a return of hard mode as well (for whenever I was in the mood), but there’s some problems why I don’t think we’ll see it any time soon.
Gw1 was instance based with no enemy respawns. Once you left a town, no other player could see/interact with you. Since gw2 is an open world you’d need to have a “double” of every map for every server; one for normal, one for hard. That would divide the community a bit, and while Anet is trying to get us out into the world more, I don’t think they want to divide the player base into an normal/hard map selection.
Well the spores on the ground, for me at least, usually only give 1-3 spores per 5 gathered. Otherwise you have to do a spore growth event. Inside the tower I think most of the event champs spawn a gathering node on death (and it gives the same as the spore growth events outside). Plus with the higher concentration of enemies your chances of getting a spore to drop go up too. I think it mostly depends on your preference.
Oh, I don’t know if you PvP at all or not. But if you do (and don’t care about glory) you can spend glory to get 5 chests/day (750 glory per chest) that usually just give you spores or finishers (with a rare chance at the recipes).
You know, you can kill everything in the tower with full zerker too. You just need to ‘’learn to dodge’‘. Would be fun when they would release a dungeon with boss timers so you actually need to run dps specced.
Until they do that, I don’t think I’ll enjoy PvE in this game a lot…Ugh… a dps race type of boss would be horrible for this game. It would only reinforce the fallacy that dps trumps all in GW2. I like that they’re working to break that bad habit that lesser MMOs have cursed upon so many.
Agreed, plus you already have this in the game (sadly). It’s called Teq. There is your dsp race boss. And to a lesser extent every other world boss (but mainly claw and kitten from what I’ve seen on my server) that now has a timer (I was sad the first time I tried solo’ing kitten and only got him to ~40% before he decided to fly away).
Timers/dps checks do nothing but force people into one type of build/stat combo.
Also I’m pretty happy with how the tower is, my knight/rabid war likes it there. But dang I’m not a fan of getting 7-12 stacks of torment in ~2sec.
Yeah, I don’t know about any of you but after running through to the top of the tower, I had a larger than usual number of yellows and greens in my inventory. I will probably farm trash mobs here until the zergs stop coming.
I got a single yellow after playing in the tower for 4 hours yesterday, so I think that’s more luck than anything.
Hmm, I also noticed some better drops (most likely because of the larger amount of vets and elites). I got 6 rares and an exotic drop (and another exotic from the 10 or so champ bags I gathered). Don’t forget MF plays a role here too (I wonder if it does with the key drops as well).
Also I found this pretty darn fun. My friend and I were able to pretty much 2 man everything except for the bigger group events (though we never had the chance to try). It was just more annoying when my client crashed and when I logged back in I wasn’t in the same instance anymore, which we had just cleared. So, by the time I can see my character I’m at 50% hp with about 10-15 enemies around me attacking. I think most of the group events can be done solo (given enough time), the spider may be the most annoying/maybe impossible.
Thankfully at most you only need 3-4 days (depending if you grabbed a key from the vendor before reset) to get the 5 total you need for the achievement. If you are going for the mini/skin, then some grinding may be required.
At least the price on the keys isn’t “outrageously” expensive, but is still a money skin ~45s and 30 spores for a guaranteed rare (or better). Sure it’s at a loss, but at least its a sure way to get a chance.
Edit: Also I wonder if MF has a factor on the drop rate. In about 2-3 hours or so of running around in there (and doing only 3-4 chambers where I got keys twice) I had enough for a full key (not counting the free one you get in the mail) and then about 2-3 of green, 1-2 blue, and 0 pink left over. Oh and then a key of your choice from finishing the “story” instance of the tower. I have about ~105% MF and was using some food for most of my time running around. I did notice getting a good amount of rares (about 6) and exotics (1 from drop, 1 from the ~10 or so champ bags I got) dropping inside the tower too.
(edited by Wallace MacBix.2089)
The only counter that other players may have is that “by having more of that skin in the world (even if its account bound) it makes it less unique.” To me that is a silly argument, especially since you can only play one character at a time, so who cares if you have a team of people using then same back item, but I’ve seen it used before.
Another possible (but very unlikely) reason is that it forces us to use inventory/bank slots to keep any skin that isn’t currently being used. Personally I have roughly a whole bank tab holding the various LS skins, but I won’t put on a tinfoil hat to say that Anet is trying to get us to buy more space.
A more reasonable explanation is that the way the Zenith skins work is different than the way the LS skins work in the code. Get X AP get an option, and that will check a box for rewards you can get from the hero tab, vs. finish a meta and then receive a reward chest. I know it sounds similar, but it can be implemented very differently in the code. It would be nice if someone went to the trouble of “fixing” it so they both function the same (remember LS rewards started before AP rewards were even announced), but I’d assume it would take some time and isn’t a high priority.
Also what counts and what doesn’t? Does Mad Memories and Mad Memories (Complete) get added into the list (if I recall they were quest based and not an achievement reward). What about the Mad King ‘physical’ items we’ve received, from the clocktower we’ve gotten legs and arms, but I think they are just a “generic” skin. There were also the dragon bash helms which you only got if you were at the fireworks show (but I think that was at least tied to an achievement).
I guess my point is where do you draw the line? Don’t get me wrong, anything is better than nothing, and as useful as the festive hat collector was in gw1 I wouldn’t want a 3rd way to get/store skins. It would be awesome if the achievement panel could also hold the HoM rewards (though you’d still need the instance for the ranger pets), but I think a “skin locker” will happen before an “account bound skin generator.” But hey I could be wrong, they did just make the gathering tools account bound, maybe that means they’ll start working on the skins next.
Well it could also have to do with how they implement the new patches. Technically, we’ve been able to finish up each LS until the new one hit, but we never know exactly when that is.
I think it’s the other way round: we know when the next LS update is due (= every other Tuesday), but we don’t know whether the current chapter will run for 2 weeks or 4 weeks (overlap with the next chapter).
I wouldn’t need or want to see the actual minutes and seconds until the next LS Update – the days left in the story chapter (either 14 or 28, then counting down the days) would suffice for the meta!
Special achievements that are only available on specific days (Mad King Says…) should be marked as such on their own mini page.
Ah agreed. A ball park wouldn’t be that bad (though I’m sure at least some people would complain that they assumed they would get a full day and not a partial or that there was no daily meta on the final day). They could just use the time of server reset of the day of the new patch, since a new daily usually isn’t issued, but that may confuse some when they still have ~16 hours more to finish any of the other meta achievements.
I don’t think specific day achievements need to be marked on a separate tab, but if they had the dates listed next to the flavor text of the achievement I would be happy. I know they are usually listed on any of the following patch notes/LS release page/the forum/the wiki/etc. But not everyone checks one of those. Personally for me I think I would forget about having to check a different tab every so often to see if a time sensitive achievement was coming up.
While I was doing some math to look at ascended % increases vs. exotics I looked at the standard 6% &4% and also +100. I’m going by memory here (don’t have those spreadsheets on me at the moment), but I think for
Pure Zerker: +100 stat is better (I think the s only gave them ~80-90)
Pure Knights: + is better (I think ~114 or so)
Pure Soldiers: +% is better (I think ~161 or so)
Then again the difference isn’t that much (sure you don’t get the +10% condi duration), but a pure zerker won’t have much use for condi duration and the extra ~10-20 power is minuscule at best.
Again I’m going from memory, and I only looked at those 3 pure sets, so just do some quick math for your build and see which adds more.
——————————-
Just remember a couple of things (if you are that concerned). Damaging conditions (at least bleed, but I assume it’s the same for poison and burn) only damage on a full second, so if +10% gives you +0.5sec bleed, you aren’t getting any extra damage out of that (unless you’re using other +condi duration effects).
Also, (again I know it’s so for bleed, and I assume it’s true for poison and burn) you only get more damage for whole number damage values. So for bleeds that means you need +20 condi damage to have +1 damage/bleed. With 19 or less condi damage you are getting 0 extra damage sadly.
Edit: As for the chili, if you care about maxing your dps, I can’t see it winning out very easily. I’ve never tried to figure out dps for condi builds despite using one myself (too many fudge factors for me to care about analytically), so this is off the cuff.
It may be “decent” for a hybrid build (but remember 50 condi dam is only going to add +2.5 dam/bleed, which gets rounded down to +2 dam/bleed if you already had a multiple of 20 for your condi damage), but Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup (100 power and 10% crit dam) is most likely a better deal for a power/crit build, and Bowl of Truffle Risotto for a condi build (5 dam on the bleeds, and +3.5% crit chance). But that’s off the top of my head and just looking at pure dps, not survivability at all.
(edited by Wallace MacBix.2089)
If it isn’t a timer:
What happens if the progress bar fills up before the next LS, and what happens if it doesn’t fill up before the next LS?
I assume that when the bar fills up the tower will be destroyed. After that will a new instance/cut scene open up, or will everything be done? Or do we fill the bar and then still need to wait for the next LS for anything to happen (almost like a dps check)? The idea of player involvement is great, but I do hope that it won’t hurt people coming late to the party (if the bar gets filled up in 5 days, will people who come by next week even be able to enter the tower).
My first reaction was, “oh, I wonder what ‘rapidly evolves’ means” then he “evolved” 2 swords and was more upright. My second reaction was, “I want to be able to evolve swords!”
I feel like a lot of people are missing OP’s point:
exotic -> ascended shows 5% increase in direct damage, but only 0.2% increase in condition damage.
this is before you take into account any max amount of condition stacks.
Yep (don’t know if that number is right though), it’s closer to ~13-15% increase in direct damage. Technically all of the stats are getting the same increase, and then theres the extra 5% weapon strength.
The problem is with how well power/precision/crit damage all stack compared to how pretty much every other stat is stand alone (minus some “on crit” effects/sigils/runes).
A similar thing will happen when ascend armor hits, if I recall, the extra DR will not even be enough to counter the +5% weapon damage from ascended weapons. I’m still torn by this, I don’t want power creep and I don’t want to feel forced to get them, but for how expensive they are they don’t really give a good reward. Then again, if I had to choose I’d rather have the latter.
The grandmaster Arms trait Furious is (possibly) bugged. It is either bugged, was stealth nerfed, or never buffed when it says it was.
On the June 25th patch it was updated to provide +2 strikes of adrenaline (or rather x3 adrenaline) on a crit hit, since then it has never been in the patch notes, but when they implemented the new tooltips it was changed to +1 strike of adrenaline on a crit hit. There was a bug post a couple weeks ago talking about this, but no clue if it’s a bug, stealth nerfed, or intended. I never calculated the gain before the tooltip patch, but it “feels” like less, but that could be my own perception.
Edit: I’ve never seen shield bash fail (maybe just a bit slow to execute at times). But to add to savage leap, if you use it on an inclined surface with something targeted you will stop mid air above the target (under the max range) and then fall down. I can’t recall if it actually hits the target or not though.
(edited by Wallace MacBix.2089)
They should have put the gems in the birthday presents; This way, leavers would get the gems, and we could actually get excited about our birthday presents. I’m just not excited to open my next one for ANOTHER Queen Jennah, a booster that will languish away in my bank, and a instant lvl20 scroll that is completely useless if (like me) all your characters are >20.
Making gems character based would be a problem (if it was a 1/year per account thing, that’s a different story. If I recall, data miners did find something before the 1 year anniversary that was "log on X day and get 200 gems).
Some people have 40+ character slots, but even those that just have the base 5 would get getting a “free” $25 worth of gems per year. Heck a character slot would pay for itself in 2 years. As it stands they’re trying to battle the inflation that they let happen, so I don’t think any thing like that will make it into the game.
Again, 200-400 gems per year per account would be a nice gesture though (but still a lot of potential money based on how many copies gw2 has sold).
It would also be nice to be able to rewatch cutscenes that we’ve seen before (both from the LS, PS, and dungeons). I can’t replay any of the PS, let alone watch any of the scenes again. Also some of the mini encounters can’t really fit into fractals; the solo southsun mini-dungeon comes to mind. I’m not saying that we should be able to replay that exactly, but it would be nice. The things that are going to repeat (like Halloween, Wintersday, dragon bash proper, SAB, etc.) don’t need to be included, but it would be nice if the history/story bits were included.
And none of these things technically need rewards. Hell, the most I can think of giving is just the standard “gold medal” from doing a dynamic event.
Nobody knows.
I’ve suggested more times than I remember to put the deadlines (or a countdown) into the achievements page, similar to dailies and monthlies.
Sounds completely reasonable. Probably why it hasn’t happened yet.
Well it could also have to do with how they implement the new patches. Technically, we’ve been able to finish up each LS until the new one hit, but we never know exactly when that is.
The only way I can see a timer working is if they have a set time for patch launch (very doubtful), or they cut the LS content the “night” before during server reset. And that would cut out ~16-18 hours from the patch. That’s probably the reason they haven’t put in a timer for the LS yet, but it still would be very nice if they put in a “this content ends on X date” into every patch.
The Blood and Madness content will be available from October 15 to November 11, including rewards and achievements. The only exception is the A Royal Tradition achievement, which can only be completed when Mad King Thorn visits Lion’s Arch.
Something like this is very nice and appreciated.
Well (while mostly useless) at least you do get the 5% increase in base damage.
Also you may want to skip ascended armor all together then. I think the difference in the main stat (for all 6 items being ascended vs. exotic) is ~20-25 or so. So, +1 bleed damage! (and only like a ~1-2%DR increase from the extra armor, but that will depend on your build)
Well you don’t have a bad idea, but at least when I’ve brought up the idea before, I’ve always though of keeping the AA the same (just picking 2-5 skills).
With two different approaches of either assigning the skills from a pool of skills, or the easier assign each number 2-3 skills.
Your idea would allow people to pick a better skin for their play style, but I think it’d be even harder because every weapons AA would need to be reworked multiple times. Even if the animations the same it would still require extra balancing with the damage/condition numbers.
I need to agree with Grim, the only lower than 80 rares I’ve noticed were on my lvl 70-75 alts as I was finishing them off. Besides,
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glob_of_Ectoplasm
Generally, salvaging rare or exotic equipment (armor, trinkets, and weapons) with a required level of 68 or higher yields between 0 and 3 Globs of Ectoplasm.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precursor
Mystic Forge: extremely low chance when combining four rare or exotic pieces of equipment with an average level of 75 or higher
So your drops below 77 don’t effect either.