Guild Wars 2

No idea as to when, but yes, you can be certain that they will make a return at some point. (It seems safe to say that the original 3 tools will be the “baseline”, with new unlimited tool skins like the Jack in a Box sickle, the Bone Pick, and the Dreamcleaver Axe being specialty ones.)

Wait and see. Celestial recipes will most likely return when the Zephyrite Bazaar does, and I’m willing to bet that the Zealot recipes will also get another means of acquisition once the Marionette goes away.

Been focusing all of my attention on the Mari to get the achievements. Taking a few days now to relax with general PvE stuff, but next week I’ll start hooking up with TTS again to see if we can’t get that blasted Wurm down.

Not much advice I can offer. :/ It’s really just down to luck if your lane manages to beat the chain. (This is why I’ve been advocating that the achievement be awarded if your platform manages to destroy its Regulator.)

I agree that good DPS is key though, as is pushing the mobs back against the wall so AoE and cleave can go to town on them. I got it as a MM Necro; Flesh Golem Charging all the Wardens against the Regulator while they were sitting in fire fields and a Warrior’s Hundred Blades was a sight to behold.

Red Queen.7915:

I think the problem is that both shields would have to be weakened, but that would enable players from the adjacent platform to get off it, too, even though they might not have “earned that right” by defeating the warden yet. There isn’t just one, but two shields to consider, plus how do you prevent the warden from leaving its designated platform without enabling the players to merrily snipe away at it from afar?

Mmm, good point. I hadn’t considered that. Perhaps moving from one platform to the next is one way only? That would prevent players on the weaker platform from just jumping to the new platform and doing what you suggested.

Josh Foreman.8250:

P.S. Because several people brought up the idea of buffing the other platforms when one succeeds, I thought I ought to let you all know that this has always been the case. When one platform’s power regulator is destroyed the players on the platforms adjacent get Electrify Aura which gives 60 seconds of protection, swiftness, regeneration, fury, might, vigor and retaliation.

Really? Huh. I can’t say I’ve ever seen that. Maybe things were just too hectic for me to notice. XD

With regards to “improving player skill”, I think that’s a good idea in theory. I’d actually go so far to say that the Mari fight is nicely balanced in such a way as to do that.

The problem here, however, is that since the Mari fight is temporary, there really isn’t much time for the players to learn. The looming spectre of “temporary content” hanging over everybody’s head means everybody wants to beat it all the time, as often as possible, before it’s gone. (In contrast, things are much more relaxed at the Wurm, where people know they can just try again at the next fight.)

So you were the one who designed the room, Josh? I should have known.

I’d prefer it if TA got restored to its original state, with the Aetherblade path being split off to form a special “Elite path”. To enter it, you just talk to the NPC outside and choose the option that says “We are here in response to Lionguard Turma’s call for help.” (Or alternatively, “I heard that Scarlet Briar once had an Aetherblade base here. Tell me more about it.”)

This then takes you into a special instance where you can play the Aetherblade path, complete with all rewards etc.

To be honest, I think the requirements of some mentors where “must be on voice comms” and/or “have meta/zerk gear” is scaring off potential students.

While I definitely support being able to earn past skins again, I’m not sure that putting them in the gem store would be the best idea. (It could lead to accusations of P2W.)

I think a better idea would be to make it so, after a decent period of time so the novelty has worn off, the LS skins become purchasable for a combination of Laurels+gold.

My girlfriend was happy she managed to get more opportunities to get the exclusive dyes. She bought some gems with cash, bought a couple of each, and ended up with the Flare and Deep Sky (I think?) dyes. She sold the Flare and kept the Deep Sky. ANet is happy because they got more real money.

So, no, the premise that re-releasing limited time items makes no one happy is clearly false.

As a wizened veteran of many games (MMO and otherwise), I can say with certainty that very few promotional things are truly “once only”. Times change, policies change. The only thing guaranteed is that if the demand is there, and if re-releasing something will make a company more money, they will do it.

Of course you can still make money from investing, but the key is knowing when to sell. Holding onto something for too long will usually come back to bite you.

Yes, they work just like the Celestial gear. You need both the Insignia/Inscription recipes AND the recipe for the specific piece you want to craft.

As others have mentioned, it’s a player problem, not a profession problem. Rangers with pets do perfectly fine on all of the platforms as long as they know how to control their pet.

Has your pet tanked Warden 1 against the wall so nobody can hit it from behind? Recall or swap your pet.

Has Warden 2 aggroed onto your pet and it’s just standing there? Recall or set your pet on passive and lure it around into the mines, then attack again once it’s stunned.

Rangers who don’t know how to control their pets aren’t any different from, say, the Guardian who does nothing but auto-attack with Staff 1 and Empower, or the Warrior who gets 10 stacks of Confusion on himself and continues to attack with Hundred Blades until he explodes. It’s all about awareness and knowing what is the right thing to do at the right time.

I do what mercury does. Extremely easy 1 AP.

Boss 4 is rather easy to me. (Melee him when the black radius is on the outer circle, ranged when it’s on the inner circle. Fight with your back to the regulator so you’re safe from the sword attacks.) Boss 3 is the one that always gets me. The problem is that I can’t see how wide the bomb radii are, and thus don’t know if I’m standing in a safe spot or not. I have to guess, and that’s not easy to do with the Mari spewing lightning everywhere and the Warden using its one-shot leaps.

As far as the successes getting rarer is concerned, I think this will actually be the case more and more as people get their achievements and move on to the Wurm or back to their usual GW2 playstyles. I still do the Mari fight once a day, but I no longer camp it out at every available opportunity (because it’s exhausting, and I want to do other stuff than just camp out in the main server for 1.5 hours beforehand!) Multiply that by however many experienced players are doing the same, and that’s depriving a large number of Mari fights of valuable experienced players who know what to do.

Josh Foreman.8250:

And as with any group activity, virtual or real life, there is luck inherent in that. Some people hate that dynamic and some love it. If someone has an idea about how to ameliorate the inherent luck factor in group events, please speak up!

Hi Josh!

Speaking only about the Marionette battle, I think it would have been a good idea if winning platforms could go assist struggling platforms once they have destroyed their own regulator. For instance, say that platform 1 finishes early. The barrier between 1 and 2 now weakens so that players from 1 can jump over to 2 and help out. Once platform 2 is complete, they can go help out platform 3 etc. etc. This would allow the entire lane’s group to all pull together, rather than knowing that “players XYZ caused the failure. It’s all their fault.”

P.S. When’s SAB World 3 coming?

Overall the atmosphere is more positive than not (at least on TC), although I agree there are always a few negative nancy’s that spoil the mood. Players yelling “noobs get out!” or “Champ X is so easy! Why can’t you dodge, you stupid $%^&s!” don’t help. There’s a myriad of factors that could cause chains to fail; don’t jump to conclusions.

One particular type that never fails to bug me are the players who insist that X player or build is not welcome at the Mari fight. This is blatantly untrue. Yes, there are certain bosses where certain builds are not ideal, but that does not mean they are completely useless.

As an example, recently I’ve seen lots of players telling Rangers to keep their pets on Passive at all times when on the platform. This is a BAD idea because it hurts DPS; the only Warden where pets could be a problem is the second one, and that’s ONLY if the boss aggros onto the pet in the first place. (Tip for Rangers on the 2nd Warden: don’t zone in too early. Let some players go up first and get the aggro from the boss, then join. Less chance of your pet grabbing initial aggro that way. And if it does get aggro, recall your pet (F3) or swap it out to kite the boss around.)

One other possibility is if you are a slow loader, you may actually have gotten hit on the platform by the Marionette’s attack before you even had a chance to respond. (This is why when I was still after the Dodge achievements, I would wait down below until I saw the Marionette use its attack first, then zone up.)

I do agree that the achievements should be adjusted so it’s awarded as soon as you kill YOUR Regulator platform though. Having to hope that all of the other platforms also succeed is a bit excessive.

Evon and Ellen have no new dialogue. I’ve not visited the Dead End bar again thus far.

It’s not sent via mail. It’s given to you in a bonus chest similar to the daily. Check that you didn’t get the chest on another of your characters and it’s sitting in their inventory somewhere.

Only Vets and higher will drop Code Fragments, I’ve noticed, but it’s not guaranteed. The Champions will always drop a Code Fragment matching its type.

I did get a Zealot recipe from the chest after beating the Marionette, but I was curious to know if it dropped from the Lair chests too. Seems the answer is yes!

I was wondering what Kessex Hills looked like now, actually. Been spending all my time in Lornar’s and Bloodtide so I haven’t been back there. Is it essentially unchanged then? Is Thunder Hill Camp still there? Helper Dee? Do the Offshoots and the Toxic Boss events still spawn?

But as far as the loading screen art is concerned, I wouldn’t hold your breath. Sparkfly Fen is still using the Tequatl art despite the Tequatl Rising event being over for months now.

Cool, thank you both for the info.

So the new Zealot recipes can drop from the lockboxes in the Lair?

Not to mention that “ancient” (and therefore dead, brittle) wood would be a TERRIBLE crafting material to make items from.

@Bombsaway: Unfortunately, the flipside of that system is that you’ll get players who do content over and over, but due to sheer bad luck, never get what they want. Or players who get something they know is in high demand, but they have absolutely no use for it themselves, and so just end up marching it or even destroying it.

That said, I do agree with Points 1 and 2 of your suggestions. There SHOULD be ways for players who only do WvW/PvP to get Ascended gear too. (Although maybe not PvP, since sPvP is finely balanced around level 80 + Exotics. Throwing Ascended gear into the mix could alter it in small but significant ways.)

I personally feel that the SAB loot system got it right. You can play the content and get lucky with a rare drop, or you can earn tokens and trade them in for an account bound version of the same skin. And for players who are just too lazy or dislike the content to do it themselves, they can buy skins from the players who were lucky enough to get a sellable skin version.

My Ranger is a Norn. One pleasant discovery I found was that many of the Ranger weapon skills summon animal “spirits”, which ties in very nicely to the whole Norn Spirits of the Wild theme.

I use damage mitigation skills like Glyph of Storms (in Earth) for mass blinds and Radiation Field for mass weakness. Couple it with Elemental Attunement with frequent swapping to Earth (for Protection) and Water (for condition cleanses) should keep you quite healthy.

Still, you’ll be squishier than most as an Ele, so knowing when you need to get out of a situation is important. Stacking is all well and good, but if you’re in a stack, your heals are on cooldown, and you know that staying put will get you killed, dodge out for a second, move around to the back of the boss so you’re still close, then rejoin the stack when you’re in a better state.

Asura Ele here, so of COURSE I had to go with the Peacemaker Staff.

Just wish it didn’t look so tiny…

Yeah, the community cheering each other on is a nice feeling. Sure, you get the poor sports who deride other players when they fail to break a chain, but for the most part, failure just results in the next lane going, “Alright, Lane X, it’s up to us! Let’s do this!”

One possibility. What are your loading times like? If you’re like me and you take up to 10 seconds to appear on the platforms, it may be that you’ve zoned in and got hit by the attack before you even had a chance to respond. One time I zoned in to find my character flat on their face. It was only later after I got hit by the sword attack again and landed in the exact same pose that I realised I must have gotten hit by the sword while zoning in.

There was a change a month or two ago where the unlimited gathering tools were all made account bound. Their price went up from 800 to 1000 gems as a result to reflect their increased convenience.

If you still have the old soulbound tools, take them to the Black Lion weapon merchants and you can trade them in for the new account bound versions.

I want a full Toxic armor set. Who’s with me?!

Oh, kitten . >.< Guess I still need to farm 240 Cores then.

Question: Do the various Zealot recipes also come from those chests in the Lair? Or do they only drop from the Marionette chest?

Yeah, that was an upload error on Maclaine’s part. XD It’s fixed now, although the two files are still named the same.

Maybe it should be a toggle in the graphical options?

Tree.3916:

Zaxares.5419:

I thought you can no longer use Mesmer portals to bring the Wisps to the trunks? (The Wisps disappear when you warp through.)

Incorrect. You can portal with the wisps.

Source: I did this yesterday after the patch.

Bah. So that Mesmer I had in my party the other day was either misinformed or didn’t want to portal people then. XD

@OP: It’s possible you joined a “Level 1 Fractal for Daily” group, where they will usually roll Swamp and disband as soon as they complete the Fractal. However, given that there’s no Fractal Daily today that seems unlikely. It seems more likely that the leader inconsiderately left as soon as they got their rewards, which I agree is extremely rude and blocks people from getting the end-chest. This is why I always try to start the Fractal myself, and instead of leaving at the end, I just ready up to go back to the lab so I know people have their rewards.

@Miszou: The scaling up is probably a leftover from when they were first introduced, where Fractals scaled everybody up to 80 so they could experience the new content. It IS possible for a lower level character to Fractals, but I agree that it will be painful. To save yourself and your teammates agony (heh), I recommend waiting to do Fractals until you’re level 80 and have Masterwork (green) gear at the minimum.

I like this new design too. Not sure if I’d like it EVERYWHERE, but it’s definitely much more clearer and helpful when indicating the attacks of big bosses. (It could actually serve as an indicator to players that “This is an attack that will one-shot you”, as opposed to “This is an attack that hurts, but if you’re tough/tanky enough, you can shrug it off.”

I agree that the Marionette fight is really well designed and fun to take part in. There’s only two things that keep it from being perfect, in my opinion.

1. The various Dodge achievements should be completable when you destroy your platform’s console. Holding your achievement hostage to factors outside of your control is not a pleasant experience. (It’s already tough enough getting past the RNG factor where you could zone in right as the Mari’s attack hits your platform.)

2. There should be a way that platforms who have completed their fight can assist those on the other platforms. It’s especially painful when you have like 6 players on one platform, but the one next to you only has 2. I propose that once each platform has been defeated, you can jump to the platform immediately next to you to help out.

I agree that the Marionette is a much more fun and memorable boss than the Wurm, although for story reasons, I can see why it can’t be permanent.

It will apparently be uploaded to Soundcloud within a few days.

You apparently get 10 for free for finding the Lair the first time too, so presumably you need 40 x however many characters you want to find the Lair on.

Can’t say much more other than “I agree”. Wonderful story instance, ANet.

Right, so it’s like some of the Guild Challenge missions then. All 3 heads must die within 60 seconds of each other.

It appears that there is only a very short window in which you can get that achievement. You need to /cheer right when you get the notification that the 5th chain has been severed. By the time you enter the cutscene, it’s too late.

So to be on the safe side, have /cheer typed into your chat window beforehand and say it as soon as you see the last chain being destroyed.

So what IS the kill condition for the GJW? All 3 heads must die within 60 seconds of each other?

I concur. I’ve only heard the new music twice now, but it’s awesomely fitting. Kudos to Maclaine for his awesome skills! (You haven’t quite managed to knock “Sunny Glade” off its perch yet though. )

To the OP, Champ bags have a small chance of dropping Lodestones too. Of course, farming the Champ train to get Destroyer Lodestones would be a very slow, unreliable way of acquiring them. If you’re the kind of player who prefers to “earn” the mats by yourself (as I kind of am), I suggest farming the Destroyers as you suggested yourself, then supplementing it by buying extras from the TP.

Wanze also makes a good suggestion by buying Heavy Miner’s Bags and opening those (selling items you don’t want back to recoup costs). It’s a slower method than just buying Destroyer Lodestones outright, but more cost effective.