Guild Wars 2

I would LOVE to see Polymock introduced as a new activity, with minipets (each having their own suite of skills) being used as pieces.

Since every player also gets a mini Queen Jennah as the First Birthday Present, every player in the game will eventually get a piece too.

Yeah, flippers actually benefit the game’s economy as a whole because by virtue of increasing the number of transactions being made through the TP, they remove gold from the economy via the TP taxes, thus playing a major role in keeping inflation under control.

Of course, as part of this process, good TP players can still amass considerable amounts of personal wealth (tens of thousands of gold is not out of the realms of impossibility for someone who’s been doing it for months now). Whether or not such concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is a good thing for the game is a whole other matter of debate.

However, I do have confidence that if these TP barons did try to seize control of some sector of the economy for their own ends, to the detriment of the wider player base, ANet would step in. This isn’t EVE Online, where such economic tactics are welcomed and even praised; I think if it became obvious to GW2 players that someone, or even a cartel of traders, was managing to control portions of the market, it would damage player trust in the TP, which is vital for it to work.

^ Hmm… Is there a specific time you ever go to Tarnished Coast? Sadly, Teq has been all but abandoned here, despite us being one of the bigger servers. On the days when I do feel like trying to take down Teq, I either have to guest to Blackgate on reset or hook up with TTS.

Well, as sad as it is, those mobs not dropping loot is kind of necessary. Otherwise you’d get into the same situation as what happened with the Scarlet invasions where people would ignore trying to complete the invasion in favour of just farming the Champions from the events.

Hmm, interesting find. So the Exquisite Watchwork Sprocket is a new Rare level jewel? How does one acquire these? (I’m assuming they can be crafted from normal Sprockets.)

Perhaps they could bundle Ori/Ancient (and Gossamer/Leather??) together for the 800 gems?

I’m more curious to know if this change will affect Tequatl completion rates. In each and every Tequatl kill I’ve been in, the OF relied heavily on spamming of Embers during the burn phases to deal massive amounts of damage to Tequatl, possibly pushing him right from one defense phase to the next. Players might now stagger their Ember usage to compensate, but that’s going to require a lot more coordination than before.

Yeah, I no longer have to keep my minis in my Invisible bags. XD

In related news, what’s disappeared with this patch? Are workers still busy tearing down the Tower’s remains in Kessex Hills? Is the Tri-Key chest gone? Is Helper Dee no longer there/selling her recipes? What about the Toxic Offshoot events and the Toxic Seedling nodes? (At work atm, so can’t check for myself.)

Where is this reddit thread? It seems there were lots more minor improvements in this patch that wasn’t mentioned in the patch notes.

^ As long as we can turn off the profanity filter (because it would make RP awfully hard to do), I’d totally support that.

That’s actually a really good point, Obsidian. She must either have been dead or rescued by the time the Foefire occurred, else we’d likely have seen her ghost around Ascalon by now.

Kumu above has the solution; have your friend delete all his characters (since he’s new, this shouldn’t be too big an issue) and then transfer to Blackgate when a spot opens up. If you have no characters, transferring servers is free.

Re: #4 and 5, I’m pretty sure that it affects your entire bar, just like a Sigil of Force on one weapon affects the damage output of your other weapon (if dual-wielding) as well.

Ah, I see the angle you’re getting from. Well, I still don’t think ANet will see it as a problem. To get the AP, you’d still need to login and mine the nodes, so it’s not exactly “free” AP, and it gets you to login every day, which is what ANet wants the dailies to encourage.

As others have pointed out, getting 20 node harvests isn’t particularly difficult, so whether a player logs in and mines 20 nodes in their Home Instance or Queensdale or WvW doesn’t matter to ANet.

We’re already almost there though. 9 mines from the nodes, plus 6 from the Quartz and Candy Corn node = 15. If we just had two more nodes, whether available through the Living Story or through gem purchases, we’d be at the point where players can complete Daily Gatherer without ever leaving the Home Instance.

I’m fully convinced that there will be a Basic Arborist Nodes and a Basic Gardener Nodes item released at some point.

That’s a fair enough view. Although the big question would probably be “duty and loyalty to WHO?” Devona and Co. left Ascalon with Rurik, meaning that they chose to follow Rurik’s vision rather than Adelbern’s. If Devona had truly been beholden to the idea of seeing it through to the bitter end, I think she would have remained in Ascalon with Adelbern. The fact that she didn’t suggests to me that she saw that Ascalon was lost, and it would be better to start a new life elsewhere than fighting over the blasted wasteland that remained.

That said, I DO think it’s strange that Devona wouldn’t have come back to Tyria. She and Aidan have much closer ties to Tyria than Cantha, and I’d have thought they would have returned to the Ascalon Settlement to help Captain Greywind build a new life for the Ascalonian settlers once they “retired”. Yet we don’t see gravestones for either of them in the Settlement, and I’d have thought they’d warrant as important personages on the same level as Greywind.

Or perhaps there was yet another war (this time in Elona, with the schemes of Palawa Joko starting to be put into motion. ANet did originally want to do a third GW:Beyond release for Elona, but that got scrapped in favour of GW2), and Devona and the others went there. Only this time, they never returned.

There are certain Personal Story missions that have never-ending streams of rats. Bring a Ranger or Guardian into these missions with a Torch and enjoy your mountains of roasted rat corpses.

Focus, Shield and Warhorn are pains in the rear for me. Focus and Warhorn are up to 1000+, while Shield is up to 3000+ (and this is despite me using Sword/Shield on my Warrior ever since launch).

Aside from the WvW achieves, I think the most painstakingly grindy one has to be Giant Slayer.

Canonically Devona and the other members of Ascalon’s Chosen were actually the heroes of the GW1 story (with players being the “hired help”). They were present in all 3 campaigns, went to the Eye of the North, and were present during the War in Kryta and fought against the Ministry of Purity.

I actually find it most plausible that they remained in Cantha afterwards, given that Mhenlo was appointed the new Headmaster of Shing Jea Monastery. Cynn would certainly have stayed by his side, and it’s likely his other friends did so too. Mhenlo likely would have tried to use his position to guide the new Emperor to a more tolerant paths, but as we all know, it didn’t work.

I’m hoping that if/when ANet ever releases a Canthan expansion, we’ll get to find out what happened to Devona and the gang.

No one really knows, but personally I’d guess that Toxic Seedlings will still appear rarely throughout the world. It’s unknown if Helper Dee will continue to sell the recipes; my gut instinct is “no”, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.

You DO get Pristine Fractal Relics at levels 1 – 9. You get 1 every time you complete the Boss Fractal. So you can just do 10 level 9’s (or even lower) and save up for an Ascended Ring.

- They ARE in the Norn home instance. It’s on the opposite platform of the Great Lodge. (I agree that it’s an awful placement location though.)

- Would support this.

- Ehhh, I dunno. I’d rather have an upgrade later where we get all the metal nodes. Along with the wood nodes. And maybe herb/root vegetable patches.

Oooh ooh! I have one!

Underground Facility: This fractal is now underwater. Dredge can still attack normally.

The scrooge that I am, I just give one copper on those days. XD The Sweaters are worth more.

Now that the event is nearly over though, I’m curious as to who’s in the lead now.

Yeah. I was a similar player in that I wanted to craft my gear as I levelled, but I gained levels TOO fast; my crafting just could not keep pace. >.> So I ended up just buying stop-gap blue/green gear until I could afford Rares and Exotics.

Still not regretting my purchase, although I do wish they were Rich Veins rather than normal nodes.

Nah, I’m pretty sure that event never had a chest. I think you’re misremembering it with the chest in Haivossen Kenning (with the potato node farm).

I once lured a bunch of Princess Dolls into fighting Scarlet’s minions during an invasion. It was quite hilarious to watch. XD (The minions won, for the record, but that was because reinforcements kept warping in.)

Pretty sure Danikat’s a “she”.

You can also visit http://argos-soft.net/GW2/ArmorGallery/. It has a very nice collection of all the different armor skins in the game (I think it’s missing the gem store skins though) that you can compare side-by-side.

Yeah, as the others have said, be patient. It’ll likely come back one day as part of a special promotion.

My personal picks:

1. Tengu. If a new race is ever released, it will almost certainly be Tengu. They were actually slated to be the 6th playable race at launch, but got cut due to lack of time. They already have a spot on the map to be their capital city, and they have a unique culture and distinct appearance that easily distinguishes them from the other races. Perhaps most importantly, male and female Tengu look different to each other, affording players plenty of customisation options. (Female Tengu are bigger than the males, but have drab plumage.)

2. Krait/Naga. To my knowledge, no MMO (or even a single player RPG) has ever allowed players to be a serpentoid race. Reptilian humanoids, yes, but no serpentoids. This would let ANet break truly new ground. Krait are almost certainly out of the question due to their established “villain” status, but the Naga (or Forgotten, but I think Forgotten is extremely unlikely due to how rare they are in the current day. I’m not even sure if the Forgotten still exist in modern-day Tyria) can be contenders. We’ve seen from the in-game Krait that there’s lots of different customisation players could use, plus there’s a distinct difference in appearance between the sexes. Krait can also swim and possibly jump by coiling their tails underneath themselves and using it like a spring. (For those players who are saying that Krait don’t have feet… tail armor. )

3. Skritt. Unfortunately I have to admit that Skritt is a remote possibility due to their status as an “allied race” and because of their peculiar intelligence. Writing for a Skritt PC would be a nightmare. Still, I can dream of a Skritt Engineer who runs around hurling junk/elixirs at people all day. XD (Also, “Finders Keepers” is the PERFECT title for a Skritt PC. )

Aside from these options, other potential races include the Kodan and Largos, although I think it’s unlikely. The Kodan are too similar to the Norn in terms of gaming clichés (large, physically powerful arctic-dwelling races who use cold-themed weaponry), and I think they’d have trouble standing out on their own. Plus, there’s very little to distinguish male and female Kodan, which is a big no-no for player customisation.

The Largos have some potential, but I think they’re too unknown to really make a good player race. (Plus, you just KNOW that every Largos and their mom is going to be a Thief. :P) Furthermore, they’re an aquatic race, and it wouldn’t really make sense for a Largos PC to leave their sea homes and go adventuring for months or even years at a time away from the water. (This differs from the Krait, who can live indefinitely out of the water.) Finally, those wings look cool, but they would be a clipping nightmare for the armor artists. The Charr and their tails were bad enough!

Australian here. I play on Tarnished Coast.

There IS a noticeable delay between your actions and those of US-based players (it’s about a 100ms difference), but most of the time it doesn’t impact meaningfully on gameplay unless you’re playing sPvP/WvW and you need precise reaction times for interrupts and the like. (And you can kind of lead opponents if you do.)

It almost certainly will, and there is a large segment of the player base (me included) that want it to return. (And stay permanently. )

No. All recipes are character bound. Learning a recipe on one character won’t unlock it on any other character. This was and has always been the case.

Here’s my tactics for dealing with the various toys:

1. All Skritt. The easiest group. Just chop them down as you see fit.

2. All Plush Griffons. A fairly simple group to deal with as they have no special mechanics. They can do a surprising amount of damage if you just face tank them though, so use a hit-and-move approach.

3. All Toy Soldiers. The toy soldiers come in three variants; a ranged type that attacks with a pop gun, a melee type that has stuns, and a leader type that buffs the other two. The leader should be taken down first, but his buffs aren’t that strong and can usually be ignored. Use the same hit-and-move strategy as with the griffons.

4. All Princess Dolls. A dangerous group due to massive Confusion stacks. However, their weakness is that they only use this attack when you’re close to them. If you keep your distance and use only ranged attacks, you can DPS them down without too much trouble.

5. All Ventari Dolls. Another dangerous group due to massive Retaliation stacks. Do NOT use AoE against these guys; you will kill yourself in seconds. As with the Princess Dolls, the best tactic is to stay at range and focus them down one at a time. This takes longer than the Princess Dolls due to the fact that the Ventari Dolls also like to stack Protection and Regen on each other.

6. All Toy Golems. An extremely annoying group. The Toy Golems come in two types; a ranged type that alternates between stun attacks and normal attacks, and a melee type that spams blinds (when it extends its arms and spins in a circle) and knockdowns. The melee types will chase you around constantly and between them and the long-range stuns, it’s next to impossible to kill them unless you have Stability. Usually if I get this group I just grab the Presents and run.

7. Mixed Group. This is actually one of the easier groups. The Skritt and the toys can be lured into attacking each other, and you can pick off the stragglers. I always kill the Toy Golem first, followed by the Princess Doll, while they duke it out.

The Molten Alliance does not encompass all of the Flame Legion (or the Moletariate) though. Just like the Toxic Alliance, the members of the Molten Alliance are “heretics” who broke away from the orthodox faction to join the new group.

I actually like the idea of staggering content and feature/balance patches. At the start of each month, out comes a chunky bit of content similar to what we got for Wintersday. We get to play this content for four weeks, with some stuff remaining and some stuff departing.

Two weeks later, in the middle of the month, we get our feature/balance patch.

Bug fixes can be bundled with either the content patch or the feature/balance patch as required (or pushed through immediately if it’s urgent).

Don’t have a Thief myself, but this is how my other characters survive:

Mesmer – Uses clones/phantasms to tank enemies. My Mesmer is traited for increased illusion health and phantasm damage (they also give me regeneration). She’s capable of soloing most Champions that don’t have massive AoE one-shot attacks.

Ranger – Uses a tanky pet (drake). Coupled with Troll Unguent and Signet of the Wild, it can outheal most damage, and last long enough against Champions to simply swap pets when it gets too low in health. Against particularly tough foes, I swap in “Guard!” to make my pet even more of a damage sponge.

Elementalist – Uses damage mitigation skills like Glyph of Storms (in Earth) for mass Blind and Radiation Field for mass Weakness. Water fields + several Blast finishers also provide burst heals for emergencies. Champions can be solo’ed with Elementals to help tank, but it’s far more risky on my Ele than my other characters.

Warrior – High toughness + Healing Signet + Adrenal Health + some block skills = god mode. Only thing I have to watch out for is massive condition stacking and one-shot attacks from bosses.

Necromancer – Uses minions to tank everything. Traited increased minion health means I can summon minions faster than Champions can kill them. Vampiric healing from minions also provides fantastic sustain in combat. Condition stacking can be a problem, but usually I just hop into Death Shroud when that happens and outlast the conditions while my minions kill the enemies.

Not my pet names, but these two got the biggest laughs out of me:

1. A pig named “Chauvinistic”.

2. A raven named “Rich Gold Vein”.

And Marcelo and Ho-Ho-Tron can gate crash their wedding.

This is a post I made on the Dungeons sub-forum:

I would like to see more “full clears” of dungeons, but in order for that to happen, we’d need to make it more worthwhile to players from a time and loot perspective. I’d personally look at the following:

1. Currently, most enemies in dungeons tend to be Elites, which take a fair amount of time to kill for not necessarily better loot. Perhaps ANet can look at scaling down most of these enemies to Veterans, and most of the Champions to Elites (except for named foes, which always remain Champion or higher). Legendary foes in a dungeon (like Kholer) also get bumped down to Champion status unless they are particularly noteworthy foes from a lore or gameplay perspective. The boss at the end of dungeons is always a Legendary foe.

As a side benefit, this also makes foes less dangerous so there isn’t as much focus on “killing the enemy before they kill us” strategy which is why the Zerker meta is so powerful.

2. To buff the loot from foes, Veterans now always drop a Loot Bag appropriate for their race/type, plus possible additional loot. Elites will always drop a non-Exotic Champ bag, plus possible additional loot. (These changes apply to the open world too.)

3. Players can still skip dungeon events (I’m talking about bonus events as well as main events like fighting Kholer) if they really want to, but if they complete all of the dungeon’s events, they get a bonus daily chest containing 1+ Rares (with a chance for it to be an Exotic), coin and tokens. This chest is given out once per path per account per day.

4. Introduce a “Dungeon Conqueror” title for killing every single enemy in a dungeon path in a single run (aka “vanquishing” for you GW1 vets. ). You have to vanquish all paths in each of the dungeons to get this title. (Since enemies in dungeons do not respawn, this should be feasible where it wouldn’t be in the open world.)

0 gold into the Mystic Forge.
2 Precursors from random mobs.

This is why I never like to skip mobs. I never have any luck from chests or the Forge, but it seems Grenth likes me when I send him fresh souls.

I would actually support the OP on this. I get really annoyed whenever I get a dungeon rune back from the Forge that’s soulbound. Why are Sigils tradable but Runes are not? It doesn’t make any sense.

Not quite sure what you’re asking there. Are you talking about Sup Runes/Sigils that require expensive mats to craft being sold for much cheaper prices? If so, that supply is coming from salvages/Forges; the people who are crafting them are likely doing it only for the discovery XP (just as I did when I needed a boost to get over certain crafting thresholds).

Well, like I said, the most immediate impact would be a normalization of prices between the most expensive runes (do Sup Divinity runes still cost 10g apiece?), and the ones that are languishing at 1c above vendor price. I would think that this would make the expensive Sup Runes/Sigils easier for players to acquire overall, particularly since it’s more than likely that the popular sets now are likely to continue to remain popular (unless ANet nerfs them considerably with tomorrow’s update). The Rune/Sigil market is currently in quite a lot of flux right now, so it would be an ideal time to institute these changes. More gold sinks running concurrently also can’t hurt; it actually ties in nicely since players might want to do a makeover of their equipment while crafting their Ascended gear.

I do see your point about it shaking up prices for particularly rare sigils/runes though; stuff like the Superior Sigil of Generosity would tank spectacularly if we could suddenly acquire them through the MF. Perhaps these “special” upgrades could be exempt from the drop table of the MF. (Personally speaking though, I don’t see prices for rare upgrades dropping as particularly concerning, since unlike aesthetic purchases, you may want a build that’s acquirable only by using specific runes or sigils.)

I always roll my eyes at those who have nothing better than do than sit in the JP and grief people trying to complete it.

But whatever. I just use the Mystic Fountains, or just go do something else for a few hours.

Charr do seem to like heavy spices with their meat, actually, if a lot of their recipes sold by NPCs is anything to go by.

I wonder if it’s because Charr tastebuds aren’t as discerning as other races (i.e. they can’t detect sweetness very well, and it’s implied that Charr whiskey is extremely strong, but without much flavor), and so need stronger spices to make it noticeable.

IMO this should be applied to all dungeon armor and runes. The auto-soulbound Sup runes I keep getting out of the Forge is so annoying… >.<

I’d say that the price for 5 ticket BL weapons is about 100 – 150g (possibly up to 180 for certain popular weapon skins). There’s one particular weapon I’ve been watching for a while and this seems to be the price range in which it sells. Sclerite weapons are depressed at the moment due to lots of people buying it up during the sale, so it’s not a good marker, but adjust the prices for other BL weapons accordingly.

As a market watcher/non-investor, I’m just watching the developments with interest. Personally though, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can once again throw 4 random Sup sigils/runes into the Forge and get a random one back. Would be nice to normalize prices between the extremely expensive and the extremely cheap ones.

I fully expect to see backpieces inspired by the other 4 Gods to come in future years.