Guild Wars 2

I’d support Option 1 as well, but it’s worth noting that the increase in power between Exotics to Ascended is fairly minor (about 10% for a full suite of Ascended gear). This is a marked difference from the jump from Rares to Exotics, and most of the end-game has been designed with players decked out in Exotics in mind. Ascended gear is obviously here as a goal for the players who like striving for the very best in equipment, but in reality, you’re not likely to notice much difference between a player using Exotics and a player using Ascended.

The real danger here is if the Infusion slots start being used in greater capacity. For instance, Fine infusions grant a marginal increase to stats in addition to Agony resistance, but what if future updates changed this? Then you’d have a gear grind in the form of Infusions. Or if Agony Resistance starts becoming required in different parts of the game like dungeons or the Living Story.

That would make Ascended gear more or less required for end-game content, and I think it would put casual players under immense pressure to “keep up”. That, I feel, is something that should be avoided. The current system, while grindy, is still acceptable as long as Ascended gear remains entirely optional for end-game content.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

CC Danicia.1394:

I hope Krait comes back. Krait is most entertaining.

Krait as playable race confirmed…. because Danicia likes them. :P

Zaxares also wants Krait as playable race. And Tengu. And Skritt.

“DO-NOT-RESIST. I-AM-TOXX-hic!”

Yep. Mai’s damage comes mainly from her massive Bleed stacks. If you keep moving, she tends to only get 2 – 4 stacks on you, which is very manageable. Her other attacks (electric bolts and her shadow step) can be dodged or blocked; the tricky part is keeping Mai’s attention on you and making sure you’re not too far away so she starts teleporting to the people rezzing.

Oh, and of course, the person kiting Mai should also try and get her Shielding down while they’re at it. No point in wasting time!

I’m waiting for the day ANet finally introduces Polymock, and miniatures are used as Polymock pieces.

Even if there’s nothing to spend 4000 gems on at the moment, what’s the harm in having them? There may very well be something you like that’s released down the line, and you can spend the gems then. Or, if there’s absolutely nothing you like, just convert the gems to gold.

Khisanth.2948:

Both Gendarran Fields and Harathi Hinterlands has some fast respawning centaurs. That should take care of the wool and cotton. Not really sure where to go for the linen.

I get a decent amount of Linen killing pirates and Risen in places like Bloodtide Coast and Sparkfly Fen. I don’t usually go out of my way to kill them either; I just slaughter any that get in my way when I’m heading somewhere (like Tequatl).

@Ayrilana: Waitwaitwait, 9-10 GOLD for Orichalcum Ore? O.o Are you serious? Or are you talking about for a stack of it?

So there’s a price cartel now on selling dungeon runs? I don’t really approve of selling runs in the first place, but that’s a new low. >.>

I use a combination of self-farming and buying up shortfalls. My post was more to spread the knowledge of end-game content people can do to help increase the supply of Cotton/Linen in the market. (Plus you get gold + tokens in the bargain!)

6 Dragons. 6 Eyes. Coincidence?

Don’t overflows take place on a particular unused server anyway? So some of those high Teq kill numbers are actually due to TTS guilds populating it and thus artificially inflating the scores?

Ayrilana.1396:

You’ll be crafting boxes, not the individual pieces. I’m making this assumption based on having seen someone link the code in chat of a box recently. You very well could have the option to do both as you can with exotics.

Ehhh, I wouldn’t be a fan of that. My armor sets tend to be mixed; if all Ascended armor comes in boxes, that means I’d have to craft multiple boxes, and some of each set would just go to waste.

My guess is that Ascended/Legendary food will involve combining many lower-tier ingredients to help soak up oversupply. For example:

Essence of Berries:
- 250 Blueberries
- 250 Strawberries
- 250 Blackberries
- 250 Raspberries

And then that itself becomes one of the four ingredients needed for an Ascended food item. Perhaps Ascended food buffs last for 1 hour (or even 24 hours?) to justify their cost.

Heh, “one man’s treasure” indeed… I have just 11 Dark Matter, and I calculated I’ll need 90 for all my Ascended weapons I plan to make one day. Now with Ascended armor, I’ll need even more.

Gossamer should be fine, in my opinion. It’s offset by the vast quantities of Silk pouring into the market everyday; people will just transmute Silk to Gossamer if prices start getting too excessive.

Wool, Cotton and Linen are more of an issue, I think, but Cotton and Linen at least are obtained fairly easily in Caduceus’s Manor. Just slaughter all the Bandits in there and collect your loot bags. Might even encourage people to stop skipping mobs.

Ah. Well, you haven’t “lost” the infusions then. Those extra AR points will continue to be valid, and may be needed when ANet ups the maximum Fractals level beyond 50. You’ve got a headstart on other players when that happens.

If I was more cynically-minded, I’d think that ANet did this on purpose to drain more gold from the game’s economy.

The question about using Transmutation Stones to move AR from one armor set to another is a good one though! Can infusions be transferred as part of transmutation? Would love an answer from someone who’s done it before.

Eh, I’m safe then. I’ve been recycling my Minor Runes/Sigils into the Mystic Forge. No good runes/sigils returned so far, so net profit is 0.

I hate you so much. :P

Signet of the Ether sounds quite appealing for my Clones/Phantasms-based Mesmer, but I think it could be problematic if I need healing outside of combat. Will have to test and see if it’s better than Ether Feast

Arcane Brilliance sounds promising, especially since my Ele is traited for reduced Arcane skill-recharge, but the multi-condition cleanse of Ether Renewal is soooo useful… We’ll see, I guess.

Defiant Stance – kitten, ANet, you missed your opportunity to call this Healing Hands!

Bell Choir and Winter Wonderland are the two Wintersday activities I’m most excited to see return. I have fond memories of friendly competitions in the Choir, /crying when one of us missed a note.

It’s on my “long-term goals” list. Eventually I’ll outfit each of my characters in one set of Ascended gear (I’m aiming for 3 or 4 different armor sets on each character, for aesthetics and to serve different build purposes), but I won’t bother replacing all of my armor sets with Ascended.

And yeah, as Ayrilana says, I’m fairly certain that Grandmaster Cooking and Jeweler will be next to arrive. I’m deliberately holding off on buying Ascended trinkets simply because I want to see what options are available when r500 Jeweler comes around.

I’m PLEASED that Wintersday is mostly the same as last year. It means that new players get to experience the event in all its glory, older players can revisit whatever content they most enjoyed in the past, and because it lasts for 6 weeks, that’s plenty of time for people to get festive at their own pace, while not feeling pressured to dump everything for the Living Story.

All we need now is confirmation that past achievements can still be completed by those who missed it the first time, and I’d call this a perfect update.

I’m still missing Toy Ventari and the Toy Golem, so personally I’m pleased to be able to get them again. I also wouldn’t mind if each of the festival minipets came back every year. I’ve never been a believer in exclusivity; if a new player who just joined sees a skin/pet they really want, they should be able to obtain them if they put in the same effort to get it as a previous player.

Cuckoo! Guess who just came up with another brilliant toy idea?!

Agreed! I was pleasantly surprised to see all the old content is returning. (I mainly wanted to see Bell Choir and Winter’s Wonderland back.) And it lasts for 6 weeks too! If the meta achievement is fairly easy to get, I think it’s struck the perfect balance of having fun festival stuff to do, but it’s not overbearing enough that you can still do your regular gameplay at the same time.

Did another run last night hoping to get the Molten Fractals.

Aquatic – Urban – Aetherblade – Jade

sigh

At least it wasn’t Mai again. :P

I got the Mini Toxic Hybrid from the chest and didn’t even realise it. I only noticed I had it when I was looking at my Special Minis tab a few days ago to see what the new minis were and went, “Hey, when did I get a Mini Toxic Hybrid? O.o”

I dunno. I actually would be happy with a system similar to what SAB used. You can get lucky with a Fractal Weapon skin drop that’s tradable on the TP, so if you get a weapon skin you hate (or can’t even use), you can at least sell it rather than just destroying it. (Maybe these Weapon skins only drop from level 20+?)

Or, you can farm Fractals repeatedly for Pristine Fractal Relics, and buy an account bound version of the skin you want. Maybe something like 250 Pristine Fractal Relics for one? (That’s approximately 250 hours of play! An account-bound Fractal Weapon skin sounds like a fair reward for that level of effort.)

Will do! Um, when you say “update your ticket”, do you mean reply to the e-mail the Support staff have sent me? Because I’m looking at the Support section of this website and I don’t see a place where we can view our existing tickets.

Thanks for the reply, Gaile. I understand your position completely, of course, but it does feel somewhat irritating considering a lot of people would have bought gems for the Black Friday sale, and those who did so for Friday/Saturday missed out (as I did), but those who bought on Sunday/Monday made it in.

Maybe the deadline could be extended to the start of the Black Friday sales period? (Or whenever the announcement was made that there would be a sale on.) Would that be an acceptable compromise? I did actually submit a ticket about this earlier; should I submit another ticket with this suggestion?

The Fractal groups seem to be as follows:

Fractal 1: Swamp, Aquatic, Urban, Uncategorized (rarely)
Fractal 2: Urban, Uncategorized, Snowblind, Molten, Cliffside (rarely)
Fractal 3: Cliffside, Volcanic, Underground, Aetherblade, Thaumanova
Boss: Mai Trin, Molten Bosses, Jade

It’s not too hard to get Swamp or Aquatic as you can just keep re-rolling until you get them, but trying to get the other Fractals to spawn is really just a stab in the dark. >.<

It’s a bug, and they are aware of it. No ETA on a fix though.

Ehh, I’m on the fence here. While I myself have been doing a lot more Daily activities of late with the lingering Living Story dailies (don’t really PvP or WvW, so I generally just ignore those achievements) and wouldn’t mind it being capped at 5 a day, I also hesitate because it would make it harder for newer players who DO want to climb the Leaderboards to catch up. If someone is willing to put in the extra work per day, why shouldn’t they be rewarded for their efforts?

At the end of the day though, I’d be happy with either outcome, so I’ll bow out of the discussion now.

The Gem Store is meant to sell items that provide only convenience or aesthetic benefits. So far this has been the case. The ability for players to buy gems with gold was actually a very generous move on ANet’s part, and their decision to tie the exchange rate to a floating rate was actually a very smart one, because it will keep pace with inflation.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, you probably remember gems going for an absurdly low rate of gold, but what’s important to remember is that as the player base matures, their ability to gain gold has also increased. The reason why the exchange rate for gems is so high right now is due to two reasons:

1. There are much more wealthy players in the game, able to afford the 10g for 100 gems. While a player might have struggled to earn 1 gold at the beginning of the game, these days they can complete a dungeon in about 30 mins to an hour and earn at least 1 gold, probably more once you factor in other loot. (In fact, I’m more of the opinion that gems were UNDERvalued during the early days of GW2. Their current price is more indicative of their true value.)

2. The pool of people buying gems with cash, and then trading them for gold, is fairly static. You yourself stated that you do not want to spend real money on gems; the fact that gem prices are only continuing to rise is because a lot of players think like you do. If you are adamant on not wanting to buy gems with cash, then your only hope lies in people like me who currently buy gems with cash, but don’t think the exchange rate is favourable enough to convert to gold. Personally, I’m waiting till it hits 100 gems for 10 gold; that’s when I consider it attractive enough to start selling gems.

Permanent Account Bound Repair Canister – 1000 gems. Would you buy?

McSlappy.1372:

I have not yet had a pug fail to either.

Me neither, but that’s because I was there to teach them.

@ tweeve: That method can work too, but I prefer the split up method because it doesn’t rely on the group having access to party-wide Swiftness, and because there’s usually one guy who either fails to keep up, has a lag spike, or just runs in the wrong direction and messes things up for the others. It just takes one badly placed barrage to scatter the party and ruin the method.

That’s actually a pretty neat idea… What if we had an 11th skill slot where could only put racial skills in it?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

What he means (I think) is that instead of things like breasts and butts; ears can be (but not necessarily are) a turn on for Asura.

Basically that, but more so in a general sense of physical attractiveness. It’s like how humans usually look to clean, unblemished skin and symmetrical facial features as indicators of attractiveness and good health; among Asura, ears are regarded as a good indicator of health and sexual fitness.

I do wonder what that means for players who picked the “ragged” ears for their Asura though. XD

NA, experienced, already gotten all the achievements for this dungeon, but just thinking of going back into that hell hole makes me want to curl up in a whimpering ball.

The Aetherblade Retreat was cut from the same cloth, I agree, but I think the Molten Facility was just right in terms of length, difficulty and rewards. If the Jetpack continued to drop from the dungeon, and it was the only source of Azurite/Sentinel gear, I’m sure there would continue to be lots of people doing it.

The main problem is that ANet has been making things harder+longer (see SAB World 2 for another example), but they can’t up the rewards too much for fear of unbalancing the economy. As a result, players only do the new content enough to get their achievements, then never go back. (You can see this issue in the Tower of Nightmares too. It was built for zerg content, but once the zerg moves on, it’s excessively difficult for smaller groups or solo players to do, and so the place is largely abandoned.) They need to make future content easier, not harder, and more accessible again for the wider player base.

IndigoSundown.5419:

No to more “defend mortars” until they figure out how to give credit for defending the mortars in the Shatterer event. Let’s not put similar mechanics into world bosses until those mechanics actually work in the events where they are already in use.

Do you not use the mortars/cannons and attack the Shatterer with those in between attack waves? That’s what I did and I got full credit.

The Shatterer generally takes at least 10 minutes to kill. Fighting off the mobs that attack the mortars usually takes less than 30 seconds, so just clear them out and then get back on a mortar/cannon.

Yeah, it’s been noticed for a few days now. I used to salvage my loot as I went to free up space, but now that tends to be counter-productive! On the bright side, at least it’s lots more fodder to chuck into the Mystic Forge.

Yeah, my Mesmer really helped with that fight too. She’s traited for Shattered Conditions, plus her Phantasms grant Regeneration. Throw in Phantasmal Disenchanter into the mix and Mai’s Bleeds get removed as quickly as they get thrown on.

I’d love to be able to:

a) Convert Pristine Fractal Relics to normal ones, especially since the Fractured update seems to have reduced the number of normal relics you get per run.

b) Exchange a large amount of Pristine Fractal Relics for a Fractal weapon of your choice. (My figure would be 250, but it could be higher. If you have done 250 Fractal runs and you STILL haven’t gotten the Fractal weapon you want, I think you’re entitled to get it. :P)

Seems it’s RNG. I still haven’t seen either of the Molten fractals at all. They’re the last two I need for the meta as well.

On the other hand, 5/6 Fractal runs have had Mai Trin as the boss. (The 6th time was the Maw.)

At least with the first round of Fractals, you can just keep re-rolling until you get the one you want. No such luck with the later fractals.

I’d prefer it if the WvW Mystic Forge looked like the dragon one from Dragon Bash.

I got a response back from Support this morning. Unfortunately the policy of gem purchases only between 1st Dec – 31st Dec stands; any purchases before that will not count towards the promotion. Worse still, because I’d already spent part of the 8000 gems purchase, they aren’t able to perform the refund, so I’m SOL.

Unless the amazing Gaile can help? If you read this, Gaile, is there anything you can do to help?

One thing that also isn’t clear. Where do people who bought gems before the 1st, but their bank transaction didn’t go through till 1st Dec or later, fit in? Are they eligible?

Isn’t PvP skin acquisition an entirely random process? If so, it might still be easier to get a skin set by doing the dungeon in PvE.

But yeah, I imagine that if it IS a PvE wardrobe that’s coming, it will involve Transmutation Stones in some way.

Handin.4032:

The only issue I see with being guaranteed Ascended mats, AND Ecto’s, is, as people said, some have entire bank tabs full of them. When running higher level fractals, ascended rings aren’t exactly very rare to come by (hence the problem of having too many!) So if they all gave 1-3 ecto guaranteed, plus guaranteed Ascended Mats, it would:
1) Make the people who already don’t play fractals feel even more worthless in getting ascended gear (not as big of a deal some would say).
2) People would start to complain about having too MANY ascended mats like bloodstone bricks and not being able to sell them
3) The ecto market would plummet so fast

Unless they make fractal rings sellable, or ALL of the ascended mats sellable, making them salvageable would just make fractals an even greater money farm (from ectos, or any sellable ascended mats), or make ascended mats being so cheap people start complaining about how easy they are to get.

All good points. Just my thoughts in regards to some of them:

1. Agreed that some players already have too much Ascended mats as they are. While I wouldn’t mind them being sellable, I think a better solution would be to:

a) Add new MF recipes that allow you to transmute excess stacks of Bloodstone Dust/Empyreal Shards/Dragonite Ore to 50 of a different Ascended material. It’s a steep loss, but would probably be very welcome for people whose playstyles mean they have shortfalls in one type of material.

b) Miyani takes excess stacks of Bloodstone/Empyreal/Dragonite in exchange for karma (with Bloodstone fetching less in karma than the others). Could be a way to help boost karma gain after the massive nerfs a few months back.

2. I’m not sure that making Ectos cheaper would necessarily be a bad thing. Having cheaper Ectos would make associated products cheaper, including Crystalline Dust. That, in turn, would increase demand for T5 mats for promotion into T6 mats, making them cheaper again. This, in turn, allows more of the player base to attain things like Legendaries, Fine Infusions etc.

3. Talk on the Fractured sub-forum suggests that a large amount of the player base already regards Fractals as “not worth it” compared to the rewards vs time investment, at least when compared to popular farmable dungeon paths. Increasing the rewards from a Fractals run could be a good thing, keeping players invested long enough until they learn the strategies and encouraging them to try higher level Fractals.

4. There is, indeed, the risk that players who don’t do Fractals could feel further excluded by this, but with Ascended armor crafting and (presumably) Ascended jewelry crafting coming in the future, I don’t think Fractals will be the sole source for obtaining Ascended gear going forward.