Guild Wars 2

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Isn’t the Mad King’s shout AOE as well? So with a large Costume fight, that scores multiple hits… right?

It is. Plus you can move while activating it, while the Executioner’s skill roots you to the ground. You’re basically vulnerable immediately after using the axe spin, which smart CB players will use by dodging back out of range when they know your cooldown is open (or just using block skills), then charging back in to pummel you before you can escape.

The Mad King can just spam his Joke, then AoE Fear everybody away afterwards while Joke cools down (dodge a few times if you have to), then repeat. It’s still the king of Costume Brawl.

Ixl Super Ixl.7258:

I am not a mini collector but I am just wondering why do people even collect these minipets, getting a legendary is a bigger achievement than minipets? So why not go for legendary over minipets

Given how many Legendaries I see in Lion’s Arch everyday, I think somebody who’s collected all the minipets is a bigger achiever than someone with a Legendary.

I’ve also noticed that music levels seem to be a lot softer than it was before, although bumping it up to maximum setting has alleviated the problem.

One other issue that’s come up is that when zoning or even waypointing within the same map, the music will often cut out completely, then start replaying once I regain control. It’s extremely jarring.

I’m convinced that Scarlet is involved with the new LS. There’s Nightmare Court construction in the new obelisk AND the Krait are using the new Twilight Aetherblade weapons. Since the Nightmare Court do not have a presence in Kessex Hills, somebody must have given the technology to them, and Scarlet seems to be the only uber-villain capable of getting formerly xenophobic evil races to work together.

SeNoZinD.9874:

…Vial of quick platinum? People who’ve been saving up gold by gold with silver doubloons might feel a little kitten ed when it starts requiring platinum instead. Not that I’m complaining of course.

Quicksilver is an archaic term for mercury, which has absolutely nothing to do with silver either. I just think Platinum Doubloons would suit better for a Legendary recipe as it has more chances to drop from high level content, which is what the vast majority of people will be doing as time goes on.

As to the second part, I acknowledge that it will probably make a lot of people (both flippers and savers) upset, so perhaps ANet should give advance warning that this change is going to take place.

On the other hand, ANet have come in before and made sweeping changes that ruined certain markets without any warning (e.g. destroying the Southsun skin market). It’s part of the risk of speculation; sudden changes to the market can devastate your investments, and it’s something you always have to be aware of. The percentage of people who make Legendaries is tiny compared to the global player base, and of those, only a fraction of them will be making the Juggernaut. They might very well decide that the market is big enough to absorb such a change without too much impact. (It’s not like the karma change where EVERYBODY uses karma.)

I’m looking forward to getting the Obelisk Shard. 1 more skill point for all my characters never hurts, and the convenience of being able to charge my Quartz without even leaving the Home Instance is pure Quality of Life improvement.

The amount ordered can be misleading though, because gw2spidy also counts lowball orders like Candy Corn for, say, 3 copper that will never, ever be filled under current circumstances. It’s possible that the orders are there from people who are speculating that there will be a massive dump of Candy Corn after Halloween is over and are hoping to snap up cheap supplies when that happens.

Upon reflection, I have to agree with some of the suggestions here for balancing the two sides more evenly. Tilting the balance in the Lunatics’ favour just encourages people to suicide so they can be on the “winning team”.

I’d make the following 3 changes:

1. Standing on the Portals no longer reveals villager locations to the Lunatics. This makes hiding a much more viable survival tactic, although experienced Lunatics can still check popular hiding spots. To compensate for this in early parts of the game where there are only one or two Lunatics (and thus can’t cover as many areas), there are more Mad King walls throughout the maze that broadcast villager locations like an alarm when they run past.

2. If a Lunatic is killed by a villager, they respawn back at the Mad King. This gives villagers who band together and fight a fighting chance rather than the ghosts just res-zerging at the same location.

3. If a Lunatic uses Mad King Says on a villager, and the villager correctly performs the action, the Lunatic is killed (and respawns back at the Mad King). Consider it the Mad King’s “prize” to the villager for winning the game. This makes using MKS a calculated gamble, to be used when the Lunatic thinks the villager is close enough that he can kill him before he can finish performing the action.

^ Yeah, I’m not buying any costumes either unless it’s an unlock. I REALLY want a PvE armor wardrobe.

After having fought the Lich a few times, mostly successfully, this is what I’ve learned:

1. STRIP HIS BOONS. It may not seem like much, but getting rid of his Protection and Regeneration really makes a world of difference in knocking his health down. Mesmers and Necromancers have the most boon strips available to them, so bring a skill that can remove boons before starting this fight.

2. The Lich has a life steal attack, but I’m honestly not sure whether it’s that skill that is doing the massive healing he can sometimes fall into. Some players speculate that he also consumes the skeletons he summons for massive health gain, and I have noticed that when the zerg stacks up on him (and thus AoE’s the skeletons down quickly), he doesn’t gain much healing, if at all. One other possibility is that the skeletons heal the Lich every time they deal damage, but since the Lich tends to gain health in big chunks, I don’t think this is the source. (He’d be gaining health in smaller packets whenever the skeletons attack otherwise.)

3. The smaller skeletons gain retaliation, so be aware that if you’re using multiple AoE attacks, the massive retal damage from all those skeletons can down you quickly. This is usually what melts the zerg if they’re not prepared. (Aside from the Labyrinthine Horror showing up to join the fun.)

Well, we can hope that one day the devs will code in the ability to display our costumes on top of our armor, just like they did for GW1.

Walhalla.5473

Scarlet is off the table this time, good, I don’t hate her but this would make no sense to be the allies of the Krait. Also the theme is different. No magitek, much darker and look at the Krait at 0:20. They look different, like they are corrupted or these are the Krait Prophets. I mean they are building an obelisk, it has to be tied with their prophets.

Actually, I think Scarlet is almost certainly involved. There’s Nightmare Court construction in the new obelisk AND the Krait are using the new Twilight Aetherblade weapons. Since the Nightmare Court do not have a presence in Kessex Hills, somebody must have given the technology to them, and Scarlet seems to be the only uber-villain capable of getting formerly xenophobic evil races to work together.

Actually, those weapons the Krait are wielding look like the new Twilight Aetherblade weapon skins.

That preview tells us Scarlet is almost certainly involved. There’s Nightmare Court construction in the new obelisk AND the Krait are using the new Twilight Aetherblade weapons. Since the Nightmare Court do not have a presence in Kessex Hills, somebody must have given the technology to them, and Scarlet seems to be the only uber-villain capable of getting formerly xenophobic evil races to work together.

Am I happy about it? Not really. :P I’d really like to see different evil factions advancing their own agendas without necessarily all being controlled by some BBEG behind the scenes.

I’m loving the fact that the Obelisk Shard means that I won’t have to leave my Home Instance anymore to charge Quartz.

However, I am a bit worried that down the track, this might mean that a veteran player has a Home Instance full of sweet loot and other goodies, while a new player has a completely bare Home Instance and they can never, ever get their hands on what the older players have. I’ve always supported newer players being able to catch up to older players with time and dedication, and if all these latest rewards are only available if you were “there at the time”, it really runs the risk of creating a gulf between the haves and have-nots, something that I think most of us play games to get AWAY from.

They really need to balance Antitoxin Spray well. If it heals for a decent amount AND cures conditions on all nearby allies, it will blow just about any other healing skill away if it’s used by all 5 party members in coordination (unless the cooldown is excessive).

Oh, I actually agree with you. I’m of the opinion that the high prices have basically turned off many players from even attempting to get them, whereas making them cheaper in price would have made up in volume what the high prices would have achieved. 20 slot bags is something people always want more of (for alts and mules), but I guess they were being overly cautious because they didn’t want to devalue 20 slot bag crafting if in the future it turns out that CC is back to 3 copper each, making a 5k Pail just 1.5 gold.

(Although, considering most players just buy 20 slots bags from Fractals anyway, I’m honestly not sure it would affect 20 slot bag prices much, if at all.)

Most imba Costume Brawl skill suit is back!

Hmm… Thanks for pointing that out, Zelu. As a “Vanquisher”-type player who typically likes to slaughter every single red name I see when I go out into a map, I probably get more mileage out of MF than the average player. However, in the past I used to merch all blues/greens I got too, and I’ve been sorely missing that guaranteed income.

Sounds like I can stop salvaging when I get to 150 MF, as that seems to be the sweet spot where guild buffs/boosters/food can get you to 200 for farming.

I suppose I should add a caveat that anything is possible with enough Inquest/Scarlet experimentation. Try not to think of what Scarlet might have been referring to when she talks about Slick and Sparki being a mismatched pair.

In Dredgehaunt Cliffs, there’s a Bear shrine with an event where you can summon the Bear spirit in order to test your strength against it. That’s the only other one I’ve found so far.

Bazompora.2635:

Why apparently is purging the ghostly population of Ascalon the evident course of action for everyone? Do the ghosts not have feelings or memories?

With the exception of certain powerful ghosts like Adelbern and his champions, it seems that most ghosts are simply echoes of past lives, trapped forever in a moment in time thinking that they are at war when in fact the world has moved on. Most ghosts seem to see all other creatures as Charr and attack accordingly, suggesting that they are either unable or incapable of processing new information and forming new memories and feelings.

Putting the ghosts to rest is, in fact, the kindest thing we can do for them. (It doesn’t need to be through violence either. If there was some magical ritual that could undo the Foefire and free all the ghosts to move on to the Mists and their afterlife, I’d do it in a heartbeat.)

That’s my line of thinking, panzer. I think the main factor holding players back is because prices are SO high that they mark it off as unachievable and just dump their CC stocks onto the TP, which few people then buy because they see it as too expensive and not worth while.

I think they could lower the prices for the Bloody Prince to 10k, the Pails to 5k, and the craftable Halloween weapons to 5 rare items each. That makes them expensive, but more achievable, and make up the difference by encouraging more players to try to go for them. Of course, it probably can’t be done now since players have likely already crafted these items; we’ll have to wait for next Halloween.

Just ignore them and draw out the game as long as possible. They can’t report you because you’re playing the activity exactly as was intended, and if they get too abusive you can report THEM.

I don’t collect minis, but if I did, now would be the time for me to go out and get any minis missing from my collection.

Currently I’m just converting my Candy Corn to Cobs and storing it in my bank, while maintaining a stack or two for any cooking recipes I might want to make.

Krait could “jump” by coiling their tail up underneath themselves and leaping upwards in the manner of a spring. Yes, it’s not terribly realistic, but you already have player characters jumping up gaps about their own height from a standing position, which is simply not possible for humans in real life.

I do agree, however, that Krait are unlikely to become a playable race given how much they’ve been painted as the villains in GW2. While I WOULD like to see a serpentoid race be playable, it’s more likely to be the Naga or Forgotten rather than the Krait. Having to reskin armor for them would be a lot of work, but perhaps not as much as you might think. Their upper torsos are already humanoid, and their leggings/boots would likely just become kilts/skirts or wrappings, which are fairly easily to do. (It’s mainly just wrapping a texture around a cylindrical object.)

My money’s on the Tengu becoming the next playable race. They were actually slated to be the 6th playable race from the very beginning, but got cut due to lack of time. The Kodan are also a good possibility, but I think they share too much game tropes with the Norn (big, strong, cold-dwelling race) to really stand out on their own.

Aetherblade tech seems to be a combination of Charr steam technology combined with Asuran magi-tech, although there’s also copious amounts of electricity involved (Caithe describes it as “shielding” in the last fight, so it’s up in the air as to whether it’s real electricity as we would describe it or simply Air magic) that’s probably the result of Scarlet’s own improvements to the technology.

Konig’s second point about some of the Mad King’s more brutal actions being possibly attributable to Edrick rather than his father is actually quite plausible. Edrick himself did mention he did a lot of his acts to stir up the populace against Oswald, so my guess is that he had guards announce that the slaughter was being done by order of the Mad King etc. Since Oswald eventually had all the records of Edrick purged, there would be nobody to dispel the notion that he actually DIDN’T order those massacres.

Don’t get me wrong; Mad King Thorn is still a demented, psychotic villain (Chaotic Evil, without a doubt), but there’s a certain method to his madness. A bit like how most of the Joker’s actions (another Chaotic Evil villain) are geared towards proving how he had no choice but to “go mad” when confronted with unbearable and tragic circumstances, essentially trying to justify his actions.

Currently these are only available via the TP. That said, I’d be very surprised if they didn’t become available again sometime in the future.

I’ve made this suggestion elsewhere before. I’d suggest implementing the following changes:

1. Add a Copper → Silver Doubloon transmogrify recipe.

2. Gift of Quicksilver now requires Platinum Doubloons instead of Silver Doubloons.

^ Beats me. I’m levelling cooking by discovering every single possible recipe. It’s extremely easy and because it doesn’t require any particular large amount of mats, also fairly cheap since I just use whatever I gather in my adventures.

Ahh, so THAT’S how you see the dots on the minimap! I was wondering how to trigger that.

The Inquisition is designed to be a Last Man Standing style, so the odds are supposed to be weighted in the Lunatics’ favour. I do agree that the Mad King Says spamming is too unfair though; I made a suggestion in another thread that I think they should change it so that if the villager successfully performs the action, it kills the Lunatic who initiated it. (Mad King says, “For every winner, there’s a loser, and it can’t be me, so it must be you, my courtier!”) This makes using the MKS a calculated gamble, best used when the Lunatic thinks he’s close enough to close the distance and kill the villager before they can finish the action.

As far as the villager tactics is concerned, you can either try to run off alone and hide somewhere, or group up for survival. This is especially handy if you can keep the ghosts to only a few members, when you can just gang up on the ghosts and use CC skills to keep them from acting while you kill them (and afterwards you run off again).

I’ve seen the Ripper once, but never found it myself. Where does it spawn?

Perhaps make it so that if the villager successfully performs the action, the ghost who initiated it is killed? That makes it a real risk to use unless the ghost is sure they can close the distance and kill the villager before they finish performing the action.

It’s probably a catch-22 situation. Greatswords are the most popular weapon by far, so they get the most attention devoted to their skins, which in turn continues making them the most popular weapons.

Never gotten one myself, but I’ve heard they’re a rare drop from ToT bags. I’m inclined to believe it. Otherwise, there’s no reason their prices would have fallen so much on the TP.

I suspect there are three factors behind the crazy-high requirements for the Halloween items:

1. ANet wants to use them to soak up oversupply of festive mats. For whatever reason, it seems they do not want a repeat of what happened after the last Halloween/Dragon Bash where there were millions of Candy Corn/Zhaitaffy sitting on the TP for 1c above vendor price. Having these super expensive high-end mats means there will probably be players throughout the year buying the lower-tier maps to upgrade them.

2. They want to “spread the wealth”. The fact that these upgraded mats drop rarely from mobs confirms it in my eyes; otherwise, it would just be a case of the super-wealthy hoarding up lots of the lower mats. Since they drop randomly from mobs, the TP barons can’t control the supply and it helps keep the price for them relatively low (an average of about 5g, it seems). This makes the final Halloween crafted weapons cost about 100g – 200g; pricey, but still within an acceptable price range for luxury goods.

3. They want to control inflation. As with just about everything else in the game, anything that goes through the TP gets 15% of the transaction’s gold sucked out. A LOT of money is coming into the game via things like the Gauntlet farm, Frostgorge Champ train farm, and now the Labyrinth farm, and ANet needs to increase the transactions going through the TP to ensure that wealth generation doesn’t overpower the economy.

Yeah, it can be a bit… unpredictable if you use auto-targeting. It has a tendency to target some unaggro’ed enemy standing farther away, drawing him into the battle and making things worse.

Even being in a high-pop server isn’t a guarantee of a Teq kill anymore. Tarnished Coast is one of the most populated PvE servers, and while there’s usually still a crowd of people who show up after reset to kill him, the rest of the day he barely gathers any attention.

Joining a specific Teq killing guild is the best solution, but I do miss the kind of spontaneity that occurs with other World Bosses where if one pops, you can be sure that sufficient people will show up to give you a decent chance of beating it. I really do think that Teq needs some tweaking so that he can be beaten by smaller groups of, say, 10 – 20 people.

The Clocktower end chest resets daily. The extra ToT bags are automatically added to your inventory when you jump through the clock face.

I’m more puzzled as to WHY the Boss Week dailies came back. Seriously, did I miss a memo or something?

Fully agree with webtoehobbit’s stance.

While I agree that the prices for the new stuff is rather exorbitant (especially the Halloween Pail… I think the mini should be 10k and the Pail 5k), I think we need to take a longer term view. Players now have permanent Candy Corn nodes in their home instances. Therefore, there’s going to be a continuous supply of CC coming in all year round, and if there isn’t a big enough sink for them, over time it’s just going to build up to crazy numbers and we’ll be back to having millions of CC on the Trading Post selling at 1c above vendor price.

Apparently Sonders the Seller is going to continue selling both Halloween and Dragon Bash stuff permanently going forward, so the high prices of the Bloody Prince mini and the Pail is there to ensure there is always something to ensure that Candy Corn will have a decent price and non-excessive volume.

While I wholeheartedly agree that a longer development cycle with permanent additions to game content (that DON’T remove existing content, as best exemplified by the F/U path removal in Twilight Arbor) is the best path going forward, I will give ANet credit and acknowledge that they’ve taken steps to rectify this, with both Tequatl Rising and the Twilight Aetherblade path being permanent additions to the game that anyone can complete whenever they wish.

They’ve still some way to go as far as getting the balance right and communicating deadlines better to players, but they are taking our feedback on board, and that is something people should be aware of.

15 Candy Corn Cobs. Or 15,000 Candy Corn.

Yeah, I’m not getting it anymore either. XD

1. Living Story and Temporary Content (my stance is that all achievement/reward-granting content should be permanently, outside of recurring content, but I’m eager for discussion that can lead to compromise)

2. Greater support for Alts (more per character rewards. Scaling rewards to a character’s true level will probably be needed to combat abuse)

3. Greater reward inter-exchangeability (mainly linked to account-bound rewards for things like Bloodstone Dust and Ascended items. If a player does not like, or is not interested, in such content, they should have a way to exchange it for another reward like karma or gold)

Other areas of interest I’d like to look at include a PvE Armor Wardrobe, more roleplaying support options, and other quality of life improvements like the ability to save/load build templates.

Knote.2904:

Lack of rewards and difficulty aside.

It’s the fact that it requires 80+ people to even do.

That’s a mistake I called out INSTANTLY when it was announced.

It’s a viscious cycle, the harder it is to get the people necessary to do it, the less people will bother, which makes it even harder to get people necessary to do it.

They should’ve made it a 30 man event that scales up.

Agreed. I think that the rewards for Tequatl are fine (1 gold, 3 guaranteed Rares plus a number of Champ chests and assorted blue/green loot); we can’t make the rewards TOO good without potential impacts on the economy. Personally I’d love it if Teq gave a guaranteed Exotic for beating him, but I imagine that would throw the high-end side of the economy out of whack very quickly.

So the only other solution to avoid Tequatl becoming “abandoned” is to make it so that Tequatl can be completed more easily if there are less people around. We don’t want him to be soloable (or even 5-mannable), but he should be doable by a group of, say, 10 – 20 people as long as they know what to do. Alternatively, remove the timer (or increase it to 20 – 30 mins), so people feel more confident about joining in later and still having a decent chance of success.

Romo.3709: “I want to tell you how much I want to pay for the thing I want”. Welcome to the real world kid. Things don’t work that way.

Actually… If you, the client, are big enough and powerful enough, you CAN get the seller to bend over backwards to clinch your deal. You’d be surprised how much haggling and negotiation goes into high-level contracts between big companies. Some of the things they stipulate in their contracts are downright amazing/mind-boggling/petty.

If Sonders continues to sell the Halloween (and Dragon Bash) stuff all year, then prices will certainly continue to fall. With the personal Candy Corn node, we now have a guaranteed source of the stuff year round. It’s the other Halloween crafting mats that will cause the bottleneck, but given that it’s now obvious that the Gibbering Skulls etc. can be dropped directly from mobs, I’m not sure how much prices for those will rise, as the people who want the final skins are probably realising it’s cheaper to just buy the skins off the TP than go for the mats.