Guild Wars 2

It’d be better if players could just be encouraged to farm their profession dailies in Hotjoin. (I honestly don’t understand why they don’t. It’s WAY easier to get wins in Hotjoin thanks to Autobalance.)

I run a condi-minion hybridmancer in PvP, and it actually works very well. The combination of minion attacks plus conditions is usually more than a lot of builds can deal with. Especially if I have a full DS bar to help soak up enemy attacks too.

However, I still would not rank it as a good build due to two major bugs afflicting MM builds right now:

1. If you engage in combat while the minions are still moving, melee minions will bug out and not attack, resulting in a huge loss to DPS and healing (if you use Vampiric Master). This means that most MM’s are restricted to playing point defense and are not very mobile.

2. If you use the Flesh of the Master trait, there is still a lingering bug where if you are downed, all of your minions will die as well. This is extremely unfair considering that other pet builds (illusions, turrets etc.) do not die when their owners go down.

Heh, that was my complaint back in GW1 too. For end-game content, Assassins basically only had “Shadow Form/Sliver Armor tank” as their sole meta-role. That meant that I couldn’t get into any groups with my dagger-stabber Sin. I made an Assassin to stab things, not be a tank!

Zhaitan is assuredly dead. However, the magic he commanded and embodied still exists, and all recent lore tidbits suggest that Tequatl or another of Zhaitan’s dragon champions is basically “evolving” to take his place.

My personal stance is that I can accept that Sylvari were always planned to be dragon minions, although I still believe that they are minions only in the sense that they are like a “domesticated race” used by Mordremoth as livestock/corruption candidates to form his Mordrem. The Pale Tree might belong to an ancient species present on Tyria from the time of the Giganticus Lupicus, that was conquered by Mordremoth long ago and assimilated into his armies. They are still their own distinct living species, but their long history of association with Mordremoth, along with their plant nature, makes them especially susceptible to his corruption.

In short, the Sylvari are dragon minions in the same way that the Sons of Svanir are dragon minions. They are not corrupted minions in and of themselves, but they frequently end up becoming them due to their affinity for the Elder Dragon.

@Koviko: My pet theory is that Caithe took the egg to protect it from US. Why? Remember that whole Omadd’s machine thing? The same device that drove Scarlet crazy? And that we also went into (if inadvertently)?

What if Caithe knows that we’ve actually been secretly corrupted by Mordremoth already, and she’s keeping the egg from us because as soon as it falls into our hands, Mordremoth mentally dominates us and forces us to bring the egg to him?

To get around this, our characters will need to be “purified” by undergoing a magical rite that protects us from Mordremoth’s control (i.e. we are going to undergo Ascension, with all the recent hints that divine magic counters Dragon corruption). Once that happens, Caithe can then give the egg safely back to us.

Astral might have the solution. Maybe it’s a bug where the Giver’s inscriptions don’t create the actual Ogre skin for the weapon. Try using another Imbued Darksteel inscription, perhaps?

But couldn’t you just sell the Dusk and buy Spark with the proceeds instead? If all Precursors were account bound, you’d have the reverse problem; players who get a lucky drop, but to whom the drop is worthless. And now they can’t sell it, so it’s like a blind man getting a call and hearing, “Congratulations! You have won a state of the art Ferrari! Oh, you can’t drive? Too bad. You can’t sell the car.”

The problem doesn’t lie with the Precursors being tradable. It lies with the inability of players to work towards a fixed goal without relying overmuch on RNG (either through the Mystic Forge, or from drops). While you can just buy the Precursors outright, the increase in money supply has meant that prices for Precursors has risen, resulting in players feeling like the goalpost is constantly moving away from them.

That’s a terrible idea. It would end up making supply even rarer (unless you also pair it with cranking supply way up, or introducing token systems for everything), and it would also annoy people on the other side of the fence; players who get a very rare drop, but have no interest at all in the item and now can only destroy it or, under your proposal, merched for gold that they can’t spend on anything because all the desirable stuff is account bound.

Are you looking in the right window? Are you trying to discover them? Or maybe they’re already discovered and that’s why they’re not showing up?

I’d say the latter. We had that back in GW1 where, if you did the early missions, you got a warning saying, “You are about to view events that took place in the past.”

Besides, wouldn’t it already be confusing with people doing the Living Story before the Personal Story and wondering why everybody was calling them “Commander”? Or saying, “There’s Zhaitan’s killer!”

Well, technically they can. Canonically the Personal Story takes place a full year (or thereabouts) prior to the Living Story. (Zhaitan is dead by the start of the Living Story, for example.) It’s a bit flexible, but generally anything the player does in the open world, PS or dungeons should be considered as taking place in the past.

Long story short, no. Sylvari experiences and emotions are sent back into the Dream via their connection, which humans simply lack. Without that connection, a human’s memories or “soul” couldn’t be reborn in a Sylvari.

The Sylvari would be free to bury the human in the Grove (I can’t see the Pale Tree objecting to it), but it certainly wouldn’t have the effects you’re theorising.

Good points, although with regards to Points 7 and 8…

7. Maybe it’s just me, but I LIKE hanging out with the Biconics much more than, say, the Order mentors or Destiny’s Edge. Maybe it’s because I actually got more time to see the Biconics grow and interact with each other, but I never really connected with any of the Personal Story NPCs. Usually you’d get to know them for the duration of the level arc, and then they’d disappear and you’d never see them again outside of brief cameos.

I do agree that there are a lot of instances where the NPCs take center stage in scenes that don’t really advance the main story (key case in point, Belinda’s spirit katana), but I’d much rather have the Biconics with me rather than the other NPCs. The Biconics feel like MY adventuring party. The others are just professional acquaintances.

8. I caution against discarding the single player instance approach. In my opinion, single player instances are much, MUCH better for immersion and storytelling than open world or even dungeon stuff. As soon as you start introducing other players into the mix, things start pulling you out of the story. You get players bellowing instructions at you to “gather ammo, protect carrier, STOP BEING NOOB!!!11!”, followed by vitriol and toxicity if things go south. You can’t really take the time to stop and see the sights because the other players in your party won’t let you; they’ve run off ahead or are impatiently waiting for you to finish watching cutscenes. For example, when I first played Hidden Arcana, I spent almost an hour in there just reading all the books. Do you think a random group of 4 other players would have been tolerant of me doing that?

The attempt to integrate open world stuff into the Living Story ended disastrously as shown by the events in Iron Marches and Frostgorge Sound. It was an experiment that didn’t work, and I think it says a lot about trying to merge storytelling with content designed for mass amounts of players.

I personally would love to get playable Tengu. If ANet were to introduce a new race, it almost certainly would be them. They were originally slated to be a 6th playable race at launch, but got cut due to lack of time. They have a unique place in a lore, a distinct cultural feel separate from the other races, and have a ready-made location for their capital city in the Dominion of Winds. They also use the same skeleton as Charr, which means a lot of armor and weapon assets can be cribbed from them instead of being designed from scratch. Finally, Tengu also offer a lot of customisation options in terms of beaks, plumage, feather colours etc. They also have distinct differences between the sexes (female Tengu are bigger than males, but have drab plumage compared to the males).

A new profession is less likely, I feel. It’s hard to find a niche role that isn’t already filled by one of the existing professions. Samurai, for example, doesn’t really offer anything that a Warrior couldn’t already do. Just give your Warrior samurai-looking armor and Belinda’s Greatsword and there you go, you have a Samurai. Likewise, the missing GW1 professions like Monk, Ritualist and Dervish have all largely been merged into the GW2 professions (Monk+Paragon → Guardian, Dervish skills into the Human racial skills) or were completely replaced (The Ritualist, with its stationary spirits and bundle weapons, is basically replaced by the Engineer with their turrets and kits/bombs).

I think it’s also important to remember that those of us calling for Tengu (or other races) to become playable AREN’T saying that we don’t want new dungeons/zones etc. We’d like BOTH.

We do know that the bugs with Ogre Wars (as well as similarly frequently bugged events such as In Pursuit of Knowledge, the Scholar Dobbs event in Timberline Falls, and Scholar Breandan in Straits of Devastation) are known to ANet, and they are working to fix it. However, it’s been a very long time, and updates on progress are nearly non-existent, which has resulted in the cynicism felt a lot of players (including myself on occasion).

Ehh, I suppose I can grant that. I just think it’s quite unlikely given the Master’s duties and their public persona would make it difficult to go skulking around and quasi-groping sexy DR detectives.

One curious thing I noticed about all of these gold spammer accounts. They ALL have precisely 10 AP (or thereabouts). Why is that?

As a general rule, Magic Find does not affect drops from bags. The exception are bags that are meant to replace the loot you would normally get from enemies, such as from PvP or in the Personal/Living Story. So, no, Magic Find does not affect loot from Champ Bags.

Having a high MF doesn’t hurt though.

I’ve seen this happen only in Foefire. Not sure why it happens. I usually make an attempt to kill the enemy Lord if it happens. XD

Are we talking about the “Queue Popped” button or the “I’m ready!” button inside the match once it actually starts?

If the former, we definitely need to keep it. If the latter, I agree we can just dump the “I’m ready!” button because there’s always somebody who never readies up, making us all wait another 1.5 mins needlessly. :P

Oh, THIS guy. Yeah, I’ve seen him before too. He was definitely speed hacking. :P

Daroon.1736:

Sorry to have to disagree – I assume that this is how it is supposed to work but this hasn’t been the case since the patch in December.

On numerous occasions recently, I have been autobalanced out to the losing team (after forgetting to press the volunteer button) and it does not count towards the daily ‘class win’. If you volunteer however, regardless of what team you are on – you get the class win.

At the moment you can be on the team with 2 players V 4 when autobalance occurs and if you volunteer to join your own losing team you get the win credit regardless of the end result. Please do go try and you will see I am correct.

I have no idea whether this is intentional or not.

Hmm… I’ll have to test this sometime then. The version I described is the way it used to work. It’s possible that with the change to Dailies something got broken with the way Autobalance worked. (I wouldn’t have noticed any change since I ALWAYS volunteer for Autobalance, then stick on the losing team till its over.)

Although if players can volunteer to join their own losing team, I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing if it encourages those players to stay, rather than quitting and generating more autobalance chaos.

It’s not the Master of Whispers. If you play through the Personal Story and choose the Order of Whispers as your order, you find out who the Master is.

It is a corrupted texture. Do a -repair build of your GW2.dat file.

Power.2957:

How Obsidian Sanctum can be Fixed:

I’ll respond to a few of your ideas here.

Power.2957:

• Re-evaluate and re-allow the use of a selected list of consumables in WvW or just in Obsidian Sanctum.
  Disabling things like Spiky Fruits and Gears may make fights more even and healthy, but I refuse to believe that simple consumables like Planks and Torches are harmful. Consumables are incredibly useful, fun to use, and the vast majority require strategic use. It may be difficult to turn on consumables in JUST Obsi, because it’s a part of WvW and I imagine it’d have to be separated out of that, which is why I said, re-evaluate the use of consumables in WvW in general. This however is not a top priority, right now we simply need larger numbers in the map.

This idea has some merit, and I agree that re-evaluating the use of Consumables as a whole in WvW could use another look at by ANet. At the same time, balance is a tough call. Getting perma-stunlocked by Spiky Fruit with no real way to retaliate should never be allowed, anymore than you not liking players who use pet-summoning consumables to have an entire army at their beck and call, again tilting the balance highly in their favour.

Power.2957:

• Allow the end chest in Obsidian Sanctum to be opened once a day, per character, per account.
  This is how it used to be. This will incentivize coming to the map for a lot players.

I would support this change, but unless the loot from the chest itself is improved, I guarantee you would not see any increase in the number of players doing the JP. Currently all the chest gives is Badges, siege and some blues and greens. No smart player is going to spend 10 mins (and that’s if you’re completely unopposed) to 30 mins (if you’re trying to fight your way through) for that kind of measly reward.

Power.2957:

• Make completion of Obsidian Sanctum a daily achievement option.
  I’m not a fan of the new dailies but I know how effective they’ve been in revitalizing the various activities- Keg Brawl sure isn’t dead anymore when it happens to coincide with a daily. Perhaps Obsi would benefit from people looking to complete their dailies as well.

I would love to see a “Daily Puzzle Jumper” option, but drawing attention to Obsidian Sanctum in this way could actually backfire. The core issue is that there are very few players who enjoy doing both JP’s AND PvP at the same time. The people who love doing JP’s generally don’t want to be bothered while doing it, and the PvP’ers usually hate “having to play Mario” while killing other players. Attempt to draw both these crowds into Obsidian Sanctum, and you might end up with more calls for nerfs to the place.

I disagree with your “Flawed/Irrelevant Arguments” section.

Power.2957:

• “I just want to do the jump puzzle. I shouldn’t have to fight people. I don’t want to deal with griefing.”
  Obsi has always been a part of WvW. In WvW you fight people. It’s that simple. Additionally, ArenaNet forsaw that griefing might have been an issue which is why they made 3 stealth fountains that players can use, each placed at a different location in the puzzle, that gives players a 5 minute stealth. This allows players to do the puzzle completely while being invisible to other players.

Others have pointed out above that the stealth fountains are not a cure-all solution. For starters, what’s to stop players from simply camping the stealth fountains themselves? Taking damage from traps/marks etc. also deactivates your stealth, and given the number of choke points in the map, this is incredibly easy to pull off. A Necromancer, for example, could just drop marks in the dark room, which last a long time and are easily recast. You could even use some of them as early warning systems for when a stealthed enemy is approaching.

Also on the dark room, you more or less have to deactivate your stealth for that portion, because otherwise you can’t pick up the torch and you won’t be able to find your way through the section.

Power.2957:

• “Camping is stupid and makes completing the puzzle frustrating.”
  Obsi was designed to be camped and was designed to be challenging to complete. This is plainly obvious considering the player-activated traps that were built into the map, to allow enemies who were futher ahead of you, to slow you down and/or kill you. If this frustrates you, consider playing Tetris.

Yes, the design of Obsidian Sanctum does lend itself to be camped, and it obviously was expected to some point, as evidenced by the traps. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it fun to be on the receiving side of it. Unless you have a marked superiority in numbers, you’re not going to be able to dislodge a player camping the traps and backed up by marks/traps to hinder you from getting up there to stop him.

It’s just like how most match-ups tend to end up with the two stronger servers ganging up on the weakest one. It’s the easiest, most logical route in war, but it sure as hell isn’t fun for the server being beat up, usually resulting in players from that server just quitting WvW en masse until the next reset.

Power.2957:

• “I’m just trying to make my legendary, I shouldn’t have to fight people.”
  It’s called a Gift of “Battle” for a reason.

Need I point out that players can now get all the Badges they need for their Gift just from AP chests and EotM? Not very “battle-like”. Anyway, I will grant that this is a non-issue now thanks to the multiple ways of acquiring Badges.

Power.2957:

• “Having Obsidian Sanctum inside the Eternal Battlegrounds makes it difficult for my server to compete in WvW because we’re out-numbered when a lot of our players are busy completing the jumping puzzle.”

The other servers are also able to go into the jumping puzzle and chances are they do. This means that each server should have a proportional amount of players missing from typical Eternal Battlegrounds activities and you should not be out-numbered.

Not necessarily true. If one server has all 100 players out in EBG dominating the battlefield, why would they waste their time and advantage going after the guys in Obsidian Sanctum? If anything, they’re probably thinking, “HAH! Look at those cowards in Obsidian Sanctum. They’re hiding in there because they can’t fight us in open field. gogo our PPT!”

The Asura as a race value intellect far more than physical characteristics (aside from ears) when it comes to selecting a mate. The Charr, likewise, value strength and ferocity (and possibly fur/horns) as indicators of desirability. It therefore is logical that neither race really embraces the “feminine” versions of armors, since they tend to be more revealing and less utilitarian.

That said, I have no objections to the female version of armors being made available for Charr and Asura players if that is what their players want to look like. More cosmetic options is never a bad thing when it comes to games, and female Charr/Asura could always have been influenced by other racial/cultural fashion standards after having lived among them for a time.

I’ve got a mule character also created to reserve my Tengu name (Sakai Whisperwing) in case they get released. XD Haven’t fully decided on his backstory yet. That I’ll leave to what sort of personal story and lore the Tengu have so I can ground him better in the world.

Definitely depends a lot on your build. My Warrior had to carefully kite and use his Rifle in that fight, while my cond-minion hybrid Necro just wasted everything in 30 seconds and her health didn’t even dip below 90%. Retaliation is laughable when the bulk of your damage comes from overloading the enemy with conditions and then just dancing away while they bleed/poison/torment themselves to death trying to chase you.

But if you’re heavily built for in-your-face direct damage like my Warrior was? Yeah, it’ll hurt.

Well, the problem seems to have mysteriously resolved itself today. No problems posting at all.

Actually, you’re mistaken about the Autobalance thing. If you are the player to get autobalanced, you will automatically get a win credit + the winning team’s bonus, regardless of whether or not you volunteered. (I think a lot of players do not realise this, hence why they quit or go into Spectate after getting Autobalanced. They shouldn’t. It’s a pure win-win situation for you if you get autobalanced, unless you absolutely hate being on the “losing” team regardless.)

In contrast, volunteering for Autobalance will give you the 25 bonus rank points at the end of the match, but unless you were actually the person who got transferred over, you are not automatically entitled to the winner’s bonus at the end.

For example, say that Blue team is leading 100 – 50. There are 4 people on Blue team, 3 people on Red. One player ragequits from Red, leaving it 4-2.

Both Player A and Player B on Blue volunteer for Autobalance. Player A volunteered first and gets transferred over. Both Player A and Player B will get the 25 Autobalance bonus rank points at the end of the match.

Now, if Blue continues to lead and ends up winning, Player A will get the full winner’s payout because he got autobalanced. (Player B also gets the full payout because he was still on Blue, which won.)

BUT… If Red made a comeback and ended up winning (I’ve seen this happen many times, especially if the person who got autobalanced was actually the skilled player that was carrying the winning team), Player A would get the full payout because he’s on the winning team (AND was autobalanced), but Player B, still on Blue, only gets the loser’s payout because he wasn’t actually autobalanced over, despite getting the 25 rank point bonus.

Not all attributes are created equal. The combination of some stats with certain builds means that certain amulets can be far more potent for burst builds vs bunkers etc. Outside of certain meta builds, Celestial stats actually handicap players more than they benefit them due to a lack of raw damage output that players that focus on pure offense have. (Case in point, why do you think the zerker meta is the most powerful one in PvE?)

No, but I’m saying that the natural evolution of that would be players that join Unranked/Ranked matches and then just half-kitten it until they finally get into a match where their team is good enough to carry them. Players have always gravitated to whatever route gets them to their goal with the least amount of effort.

That’s why my suggestion was to change it so that in Hotjoin, if you choose to join Random, it doesn’t matter which team you join; you always end up “winning”. That would take away any incentive to swap teams or wait in Spectate.

^ Exactly this. A new race would be much less work going forward than a new profession.

Again, all that would do is push the Daily hunters/reward track grinders into Unranked/Ranked. What then? It’s not like you can kick them out; players have a right to play PvP, no matter how bad they are. You’re then stuck with bitter, angry PvP’ers who say these people shouldn’t be in Unranked/Ranked and dragging their matches down, and bitter, angry PvE’ers who say it’s ANet’s fault for taking away the place they could farm this stuff without bothering the PvP’ers and/or locking stuff behind RNG in PvE to the point where doing PvP is the only way to overcome it. Toxicity levels go up, verbal abuse reports probably also go up, and nobody’s happy.

Let me rephrase my original statement then.

“Guild Wars 2 should not become more of a stock brokering simulation than it already is.”

Players are free to play the game how they want to play it, of course, but when someone can make far more money trading without playing any of the game’s core content, I think something has gone astray.

To be honest, I feel that Hotjoin/Practice should be used for practice insofar only as to get familiar with the build’s skills, cooldowns and rotations. Finding a “proper” match in Hotjoin is all but impossible. Not only do you have Spectator Wars, as you mentioned, but even veteran players tend to play in ways they would not normally do in Unranked/Ranked, such as double capping, zerging etc. You’re better off playing Unranked for true practice in Conquest PvP.

Now, if we want to help fix the problem of Spectator Wars, here’s my suggestion:

If you pick “Random Team” when you join a match, you get a special buff that DOUBLES the rewards at the end of the match (capped at the winner’s normal reward). This means that if you picked a random team, and your team ended up losing, you’d still get the same rewards as if you’d lucked out onto the winning team anyway. This has the following benefits:

1. There is no incentive to hop teams. You’d get the same reward staying on your random original team as you would switching to the winning team. This discourages “Autobalance Wars”, where the person who gets autobalanced instantly quits or goes back into Spectate.

2. Because rewards are calculated based on the length of time someone is in the match, it encourages people to join the match at once instead of watching until it becomes clear which team is superior. This discourages waiting in Spectate and should thus help solve the issue of 4v5.

These changes means it’s most profitable to instantly hit “Random Team” the moment a match starts, and then see it out to the end, win or lose.

The important bit is to incentivise people to join random/losing teams. Simply forcing players to join the losing team will not work, for the following reasons:

1. If players cannot choose their team in Hotjoin, then these players would either immediately quit when they see they are on a losing team (resulting in the losing team still being understrength), or just AFK/do juuuust enough to avoid getting kicked. (Which I think would be an even worse feeling than being outnumbered. I’d rather be fighting valiantly in a 3v4, rather than having a 5v5 and knowing that 2 of my team mates are just sitting in base or running into the wall.)

2. If you then prevent these players from quitting on demand, making Hotjoin basically like Unranked, then all they will do is pile into Unranked (or even Ranked). After all, why play Hotjoin when you can do the exact same thing in Unranked for even more rewards, even if you lose? And then you’ll have hordes of “baddies”, AFKers and Daily hunters clogging up Unranked/Ranked and just making things miserable for the dedicated PvP’ers there.

Nah. This is GW2, not a stock brokering simulation.

Sigh for being from Australia. Have fun to whoever is the lucky people who end up going.

NO NO NO
NO NO NO
NO NO NO to a gear treadmill. I’ve (grudgingly) accepted the place of Ascended in GW2 both as a long-term goal for players AND as a sink for low tier mats, but I want it to be the LAST tier.

However, I would be open to the idea of Legendary armor as long as the stats weren’t better than Ascended.

I echo the advice of farming low level events that spawn lots of mobs. In particular, I recommend looking for events with Nightmare Court or Flame Legion, as these mobs not only drop bags that can drop cloth, but also cloth salvage items, increasing your final cloth tally.

Gaile, just a quick clarification. When we report these “Account Will Be Shut Down Inform” in-game mails, do you want us to report them as:

- Scamming
- Botting
- Gold Selling

Which would garner action the quickest?

Toxic Spore availability can be easily solved by having a few clusters spawn in every single map. The logic behind this is that the destruction of the Tower of Nightmares spread the spores far and wide on the winds, and they’re only now starting to germinate.

I have a strong suspicion that the White Mantle/Mursaat will play a bigger (maybe even a central) role in HoT. Firstly, there are all the little hints scattered through the Silverwastes forts about how the White Mantle had a sizeable presence there before Mordremoth drove them out. And then we have the “golden city” and the Mursaat-looking figure in the teaser cinematic.

Oooh, I never knew about this. Thanks for the heads-up! It’s nice to be able to spawn specific rank banners on command.

All of the little knickknacks scattered through the Forts indicate that they were used by the White Mantle before Mordremoth invaded. There are even older ruins scattered throughout the map that were most likely constructed by the Forgotten, based on the hidden cave story chapters.

The Sinister/Verata Insignia and Inscriptions must be purchased from the SW merchants for Bandit Crests + gold.

On top of that, you will need to find/purchase the specific armor/weapon recipes to craft the final item. (e.g. Sinister Wand)

None of the Sinister or Verata recipes can be discovered.

The Silverwastes reward track in PvP is NOT repeatable. So you can only get one Carapace Glove Box that way. This does, however, mean that you can get one from the Story, one from PvP, and buy the last one for 1000 Bandit Crests.

Thank you for the information, Angel. That does clear up a lot of confusion. While I would still prefer for all the Firstborn to have “sensed it” when Riannoc died, the current system is fine. I’ll incorporate all of this into my knowledge of Sylvari.

I imagine that first meeting between Caithe and the Pale Tree after Wynne’s death would have felt very much like a mother coming to see her child after he’s been arrested for committing a crime. “What have you done? WHAT have you DONE?!” And Caithe just breaks down and begs forgiveness, and the truth slowly comes out. Based on what the Pale Tree knows about Faolain and Caithe’s relationship with her, she “forgives” Caithe for the act, but true forgiveness takes a while longer.

Also, based on your not-too-subtle hints, Trahearne is obviously a Dusk bloom.