Guild Wars 2

If you’ll kick out Evon Gnashblade and put me in charge of the BLTC, I’ll gladly vote for you.

Fastest = Silverwastes chest farms
Fast = EotM karma train/Dungeon speedclears
Slow = Fractals
Slowest = Open world chest hunting

That’s why you have one character of each race, and then just stick the Home Portal Stone in your bank. Enter HotM to grab it from your bank, go home, then teleport back with the HPS, stick it back in your bank.

Not really. All you need to do is start the JP, then fall down to your death in the canyon (while the JP buff is active, you get auto-ressed by Skritt if you fall and die). Then just run along the bottom of the canyon to the POI.

The JP itself is actually also pretty easy, with no particularly difficult jumps. It’s just very long and confusing (if you don’t know where to go).

Trait unlocking being account bound would be an awesome move in my books, but I have my doubts that would occur.

azizul.8469:

as long as no jumping puzzle involved, fine by me. lol.

Be prepared for disappointment. I’m 99% certain that some of the new Masteries will require JP completion.

EDIT: … OMG, just imagine it if one of the Masteries is a “Complete all Worlds in SAB on Tribulation Mode”.

Well, assuming that Eurogamer didn’t lose anything in translation, I am very, VERY pleased to hear that new gear tiers and higher levels are permanently off the table.

I do wonder if that means new stat spreads won’t ever be added though.

If it’s tied to achievements or the wardrobe, it will probably be retroactive.

Expect it to be somewhere on the same level as the Bioluminescence collection.

1 Laurel is actually worth about 1g. This is derived from the fact that you can trade 1 Laurel for a Heavy Crafting Bag, which turns into 3 random T6 mats. Depending on your luck, this means you could sell them for anywhere from 75 silver to almost 2g. Thus, trading 30 Laurels for the amulet/ring means you’re spending almost 30g instead of 10g + Crests.

Two days ago I had a match with 8/10 Thieves.

Me: “Not enough Thieves in this map. NEED MOAR TEEFS!”

You’d be surprised at how many Champions in the open world can be solo’ed. This includes some really tough Champions such as Kol Skullsmasher in Harathi Hinterlands.

The Krait Witches are some of the most difficult Champs to tackle. Even I wouldn’t dare take them on with just two players.

I’m basically with you, Titus. I agree that the Sylvari (and the Pale Tree species) are minions of Mordremoth, but more as an enslaved race and not as corrupted minions, similar to the Mordrem or other minions like Risen, Icebrood or Destroyers. The Sylvari are more akin to the Sons of Svanir in that they (are meant to) serve the dragon, but are not “dragon minions” in the most literal sense.

Tazza has never dropped anything as far as I can remember. However, I think that the Champ with her (Kaeyi) is the one who actually drops the item. She’s usually skipped in most P1 runs, which is why you almost never see it.

While I do sympathise with the OP’s situation (having been in it myself), I think that implementing a /rank criteria wouldn’t be the best solution. As others have pointed out, rank is no indicator of skill. I myself am rank 53, but I know from experience that I’m not quite good enough to play Unranked at a competitive level, although I do step in there now and again to test myself and see if my skills have improved.

It would depend a lot on what the specific Masteries are. I could see scope for some Masteries that tie in to older maps to be introduced at the same time. For example:

Risen Reaper: Obtained by completing the Risen Slayer achievement (kill 1000 Risen), completion of the Arah dungeon mastery, and unlock all the Orrian weapon skins. Grants a permanent +5% damage against Risen and -5% damage taken from Risen.

Nooooo!

If IWAY returns, I want it to be an Elite Warrior shout.

Ascended gear was definitely added as a way to keep the “BiS chasers” playing.

BUT… ANet also did it in a really clever way. Because Ascended gear requires lots of lower tier mats, it keeps demand for those lower tier mats high. In another conventional MMO, prices for non-max level stuff eventually fall to near zero because high level characters have no more need for low level stuff. But this way, low level mats are still in demand, and thus provide incentive for max level players to still visit lower level maps. It’s a really smart and ingenious way to ensure that playing anywhere in the game is still profitable, and newer players/lower level characters are also compensated appropriately in a way that doesn’t see them fall too far behind the veterans.

So yes, while I still would have preferred not having Ascended gear, I understand that it now serves a very important role in the GW2 economy, and is actually a good thing for the game at large.

Oh, no, the weapon changes are just from their utility skills. Their profession mechanic might be something altogether different. I’m thinking it’ll probably be similar to Adrenaline, Initiative or Death Shroud in that it powers how long/often the Revenant can channel their Legend.

The Blood Fiend, Flesh Wurm and Bone Minions are the only minions that do not auto-heal outside of combat. All 3 are types that you can destroy and remake, however I do agree it would be nice if they also autohealed like other minions. (Although since the Wurm is immobile you pretty much do have to destroy it every time.)

It’s possible that the Revenant is also a one-weapon only class like Elementalist or Engineer. Their Utility skills are a bunch of “Summon” skills, which alter the effects of their weapon (maybe skills 4-5 change depending on which Legend you’re channeling), and their Elite skill are Elite Summons, such as Mallyx.

Some Summons might also be transform skills, and they alter your entire bar.

To be honest, I don’t think ANet will go down that path. More than likely being a Druid will mean that you get access to a new weapon (Staff, as we know) with its 5 weapon skills, and then a bunch of new heal/utility/elite skills that are only available when you activate the Druid specialisation. You can mix and match existing heal/utility/elite skills, resulting in some new synergies, but I think that equipping a Longbow will mean you still have the standard Ranger Longbow skills.

I could be wrong, of course, especially if swapping to a Druid spec means that your entire trait tree changes.

If you do PvP, you do get a fair number of Charges from the reward tracks. (It’s where I got most of mine.) Otherwise, you get them from map completions. If neither of those sound appealing, then yes, you will need to purchase them from the gem store.

My guess is that HoT will be out in 4 – 6 months, leaning towards the latter. Colin has stated that we’ll get a first playable look at HoT at PAX East, in 6 weeks time. After that, it goes into beta testing, which will likely run for another 8 – 12 weeks. Add in some time to fix bugs and do polishing (another 4 – 8 weeks), and it all adds up to HoT probably coming out around August or September. I’m guessing they will try for that because once October hits we’re into the Halloween/Wintersday period, and they probably want to give us a few months of pure HoT exploration first.

I’m definitely disappointed that Tengu isn’t coming with HoT, but there’s always next time.

They DON’T want players to trade between themselves, because if enough players do so, it would neuter the BLTC which is the game’s primary gold sink via its trading fees. They NEED to keep players using the BLTC. Or, alternatively, even player to player trading gets taxed at the same rate as the BLTC.

I decided to pick it up for the Home Portal Stone, the 5 BLKeys and the 5 Scraps.

While I don’t really need any of them, the Home Portal Stone might be nice as a way of quickly getting the “X region harvesting” daily done. (I have one character of each race.) Simply plop it into my Bank, hop into HotM to get it, teleport back to my HI, gather, return to my original space. This lets me harvest whatever region I need without technically leaving whichever map I’m currently parked in.

I also tried my luck with the BLKeys (since I’m in the process of collecting the new HI gathering nodes). Got 3 more Scraps and a BLSK, but nothing else. Ah well.

Yes, that’s what he’s asking.

While I don’t know for certain, I’m pretty sure the answer is “no”. More than likely you’ll get an error saying, “You already have this content unlocked” when you try to apply a double node to your home instance.

The reason why Copper fails a lot nowadays is because:

1. Nobody’s in the arena with him, so he resets.

2. Nobody kills the bubbles. The BUBBLES are the ones that are giving him his big heal spikes (about 2% of his total health). Ironically, the bad advice about not using AoE is precisely why so many of the bubbles are surviving to reach Copper. If there’s enough AoE pounding down around Copper, the bubbles usually die way before reaching him.

The little husks only give Copper a few boons if they are killed near him. This includes Regeneration, but the health gain from Regen is inconsequential compared to Copper’s massive health pool, and you can simply have Mesmers/Necromancers strip his boons.

Here’s how the Silverwastes meta-event works:

1. The bar effectively represents a “progress to Breach”. The bar moves up each time a Fort is captured or defended (with defense progressing it a lot more).

2. Once the bar is full, the Breach event starts. Four holes appear beneath the 4 Forts, each one housing a powerful Champion of Mordremoth. The map now has 5 mins in which to slay all the Champions.

3. Once the Breach is over, regardless of whether or not it was successful (all 5 Champs slain), the Vinewrath event begins. You have 3 mins from the end of the Breach to get to the Vinewrath staging area and make preparations.

4. After the Vinewrath event is over, regardless of whether or not it was successful, the Labyrinth event begins. It lasts for 10 mins, I believe.

5. After the Labyrinth event is over, the entire meta-event restarts from Step 1.

So basically, if you’re looking to take part in the Vinewrath event, just join maps (via the LFG tool) that advertise as “SW XX%”. The higher the , the closer it is towards the Breach event. Usually once the % is 50 or higher, the map ends up being full, so it’s best to get in early and then help out.

No.

As others have pointed out, all that this will accomplish is pushing all these Daily hunters into Unranked/Ranked. It will utterly RUIN the PvP experience for the dedicated players. The Daily hunters won’t care; even a loss is still 500 points to them. They’ll just disable Map/Team chat and blissfully continue to fight off point and double cap regardless of what you’re screaming at them. (And if you whisper them, they’ll either ignore you or report you, depending on the language you use.) And they will just keep on re-queuing until they finally get a team that’s good enough to carry them. As long as they make a half-hearted attempt to play, there’s nothing ANet can do about it either; you can’t punish someone for “being bad at PvP”.

Trust me, making Dailies not apply in Hotjoin would be a DISASTROUS move. It’s far better that these players can stick to Hotjoin so they can get their Dailies done and not bother the dedicated PvP crowd.

Umm… Your friend was completely new to PvP and you brought him into UNRANKED for a first taste of it? Why didn’t you bring him to Hotjoin instead until he learned the ropes? Even if you guys didn’t get a full guild group, chances are you wouldn’t have been stomped so badly.

One thing I just thought of. How will the new Borderlands map factor into Map Completion?

I think that Scarlet went mad the moment she went into Omadd’s machine, and in her madness, she actually had several contradictory goals:

1. She wants to free herself, and by proxy all the Sylvari, from Mordremoth’s control. To that extent, she started gathering an army who could potentially fight the Elder Dragon and developed technology to do the same.

Of course, as her madness grew and she fell ever more under Mordremoth’s control, her army ended up serving Mordremoth rather than the other way around.

2. She has an innate superiority complex and wants to prove that she is smarter than anyone else around. This includes proving it to Mordremoth, but as her control slipped, she started doing the dragon’s bidding unconsciously, hence the bit from her holographic journal about, “This was all my ideas. Stop taking credit for them!”

3. A part of her probably knew that she was losing the battle of wills to Mordremoth. Scarlet then started subtly working against Mordremoth and trying to let people know her true circumstances (the Marionette was the most grandiose example). I suspect that a lot of Scarlet’s methods of attack might actually be subtly disguised ways of giving Tyria technology and exposure to Mordremoth’s attacks so as to help them build up defenses against them. For example, perhaps it turns out that the Tower of Nightmares was a way to alert Tyria that Mordremoth uses spores to mentally control his minions, and by finding a way to block/cure that, they can protect the Sylvari from his corruption.

With her death, Scarlet’s technology, such as holograms, Aether and now the Watchknights could possibly be reverse engineered to become weapons against Mordremoth. (Especially the latter, since it seems that Mordremoth can only corrupt organic beings. An army of mechanical Watchknights might be totally immune to his powers.)

I do! But it seems I’m in the minority.

It’s UNDER the Thaumanova Reactor.

Not planning on making one aside from a PvP one for dailies, but it will probably be a Norn. Seems up their alley with the Spirits and all.

Much to my surprise, Dhuumseal did not experience any significant price changes after it was announced Necromancers can now use greatswords.

Of COURSE you know they’re going to make it customisable. :P

So the Carapace chest box still isn’t buyable for Crests? That’s disappointing. I’ve gotten my Bioluminescence collection done already, but I was hoping that ANet would make it easier once the initial two week period had passed for those with terrible luck.

Yep, use the LFG tool and look for people taxiing into more populated Silverwastes maps. Now that the guaranteed extractors for all the body parts are available, it’s simply a matter of time visiting the various bosses instead of relying on RNG.

Value-wise I think it’s much cheaper to buy it with Crests rather than Laurels (Crests drop like rain if you’re doing the Breach + Vinewrath events), but if you’d rather skip the grind and you have the Laurels to spare, then why not, I guess.

My stance is that if you’re new, you should stick to Hotjoin. Yes, there’s lots of Spectator Wars and 4v5’s going on there, but Hotjoin is still the best place to:

1. Learn the layouts of the maps and what the specific mechanics are. If I see you in Unranked, my expectation is that you at least know what running the Orbs do, what sorts of attacks Svanir/the Chieftain have, and what Tranquility does. If you do not know any of these, you do not belong in Unranked.

2. Practice your build, get familiar with rotations and how to utilize your build on various maps. While I am comfortable bringing my Mesmer, Ranger, Ele, Warrior or Necro into Unranked, I would not do the same with my Guardian, Thief or Engineer, because I’m still learning how to use those professions.

Once the above two criteria are met, THEN players should move up to Unranked and practice how to play in a competitive environment. And once Unranked starts becoming too easy (if you can carry your team), then it’s time to move up to Ranked.

Yeah, in some cases, it’ll be obvious that the person is deliberately sabotaging your own team. Whether it’s because they announced it, or because you see the player just running into a wall back at your base. But in your latter example, is it a case of them just giving up or because they got a case of “combat tunnel vision” because they got jumped on the way to a point and their “must kill my opponent!” instinct kicked in. (Happened to me a few times.)

And even if they just gave up, sometimes you can’t really blame them if the match really IS completely one-sided. When the score is 30 – 300, the enemy team has bunkers and gank squads roaming around, and you know that there is absolutely no way you can pull a comeback, can you really blame them for wanting the pain to end sooner?

My two most noob stories have to come from my Thief.

Disclaimer: I do not have a Thief main. I created this guy purely to complete the “Daily Thief win” PvP achievements. As such, the first time I brought him into PvP I had NO idea how to play a Thief.

Needless to say, I spent most of the match downed or dead.

I did eventually start to get the hang of things, and now I can actually provide some decent support in a 2v1 instead of just flailing away and mashing buttons.

However, a few nights ago I did a hilarious rookie mistake where I used Withdraw on Skyhammer and promptly rolled myself off the edge.

Maugrim.6793:

But then again to respond to you Zaxares.5419: I get what you are saying but this is one of the subjects I just don’t see. If people who does the JP each day hates getting engaged in combat then they should stop instead of whining, a great number of players recently has gone angry when being attacked and I just don’t see why: You can strike back, can’t you? Then do it! Get some spirit and battle going in here, don’t get mad because PvP combat was started in a PvP labeled zone… And about your last segment – To say it again, for the first months or so, what kept OS going was not the “different” types of people who clashed there with different goals in mind, they all came back to kick some * and that’s what had people returning: I am trying to figure out where THESE people went and not at least that spirit of battle. Screw the rewards, the fighting brought most of us back.

That there in your opening statement is precisely what went wrong, Maugrim.

“If people who does the JP each day hates getting engaged in combat then they should stop instead of whining.”

And since the players who only want to fight are likely heading straight to the Arena for dueling, that leaves only the JP’ers actually doing the puzzle. So once they got their achievement, they stopped coming. Place is abandoned.

Any game mode or map needs a certain critical mass of players in order to keep interest in the area going. This is why the reward tracks in PvP were the best thing to ever happen to that game mode; only a tiny fraction of the people in there will go on to do Unranked/Ranked, but they at least fill the map, and provides a pool from which the people who DO want to step up to the next level can be drawn from.

The difference between OS and sPvP is that while newbie/terrible players can just stay in Hotjoin forever, the pure JP’ers in OS have no choice. If there are hostile players camping inside the JP, then their only option is either to grit their teeth and try to get through, or give up and go away. It’s a bit like being in a random team in Unranked and finding yourself matched up a full 5-man premade on voice comms. It happens on occasion, but it’s certainly not fun.

So again, if you want more people in OS, then you need some way that the JP’ers who don’t want to be attacked at all can get through the puzzle completely unscathed. (I’m talking like a full-on unstrippable Invulnerability buff here, not just a stealth thing which can be removed.) Hopefully then some of these players will be willing to do it the “normal” way. (To help incentivize it, maybe doing the JP with the invulnerability buff will give you the achievement, but you can’t open the chest at the end. That way, it’s purely to allow players who want the achievement to get it.)

Yes, this is my suspicion too. I suspect that the bug is that while Ogden’s Ankh + Aspect Amulet is unlocked when completing Gates of Maguuma, it didn’t retroactively unlock it for players who had already finished Gates of Maguuma Mastery. However, I need confirmation from Zen or another player who got it recently before I know for sure.

Well, I would classify those players as “speculators”, yeah. But as you mentioned, they’re more likely to be regular players that got a Precursor and, instead of selling or using it, just held onto it waiting for a “good time to sell” (as opposed to players who deliberately bought a Precursor as an investment). It’s just an issue of definition, I suppose.

Also, you disagree with most of my post? Or was that meant to be “agree”? (Because it seems to conflict with the second half of your first sentence.)

It’s the nature of the beast whenever there’s a flood of new players into the game. Just (politely) point these new players to Hotjoin and tell them to get their feet wet there first.

The titles (e.g. Champion Paragon) are only acquired from playing Unranked/Ranked, which can’t be “fixed”.

Then again, it could also mean that said Champion Paragon has simply played lots of games and was lucky enough to get into 200 Unranked matches where his team was good enough to carry him.

End of the day, just watch the player in question and see if they’re actually any good. Titles and ranks are meaningless.