Guild Wars 2

I’m fairly certain that, given the increased difficulty of the JP and the fact that it is a permanent addition to the game, the exotic shoulders reward will stay. However, I’ve never seen a dev post stating this outright.

There is a bug where +karma boosting effects are not properly registering on your character. The workaround is to use all the karma boosting effects on your character, log out, then log back into the same character. It should then work properly.

Yeah, the “A Future in Politics” instance seems to be bugged for me too. Kiel and Magnus just stand there silently, not even looking at each other. :P

Khisanth.2948

If you are in Gendarran there is also the Ascalon settlement

True, but the Champions only spawn there if Nebo Terrace falls first, which doesn’t happen that often.

There is also a unique Champion Risen named Ketsurak in the Lawen Ponds in Gendarran Fields. This guy hits like a truck, however, so I don’t recommend taking him on without a large group for support.

Am I the only Ranger who picks pets based on their aesthetic appeal to me? O.o

Durzlla.6295:

Idk about you but i love my Axe/ Axe in PvE, i normally pull the entire mob to me, hit them all with split blade, and then rack up the vuln for my team with WD for complete devastation of the mobs.

I normally explain what i do to my team first so they don’t fire off all their stuff until AFTER i start using WD though, and since my friend almost always runs with a Guardian there’s tons of synergy, he pulls them all in so they don’t have a choice to get pulled to me, and then they all die.

That’s what I do too. Path of Scars to pull all mobs to me, Splitblade for 5 stacks of Bleeding on everyone, then Whirling Defense to stack Vulnerability. Add some traps in there beforehand, plus I use a Drake that has Tail Sweep for a Blast Finisher, and it all adds up to a very nice bit of burst damage.

Would have loved for Disease to have become our pet condition instead of Torment.

I’d prefer monthly/bi-monthly updates, with a mix of temporary and permanent content. Things like Holograms and Periscopes etc. obviously shouldn’t remain in the Open World after the event is over, but things like dungeons should remain, accessible via a “Relive the story” NPC, or via Fractals.

I’m in the same boat as you, fadeaway. I’ve basically put the normal story on hold just to make sure I keep up with the Living Story. This wouldn’t be an issue if it was all permanent content, as you said, but if I choose not to take part, it means missing out on things like Azurite, weapon skins, the Fervid Censer etc. So I HAVE to put everything else on hold.

It’s awesome what ANet is doing, and I love the fact that they’re giving us new content, but I’d prefer if it they dialed back the speed just a bit.

Fields of Ruin also has a Group Event at the Ebonhawke delegation that spawns two Champion Wasps at once. In the same map, the Ogre Wars meta-event at Foulbear Kraal spawns a total of four Champions during the event chain, plus you also get a guaranteed Rare once per day. There’s also a Giant Branded Devourer that sometimes roams around in the same map, as well as a Champion Separatist in Ebonhawke, but they’re tough to beat so I usually stay away from them unless someone else is calling for help.

Diessa Plateau also has the Champion Giant at Nageling, as well as a Champion Plains Wurm near Butcher’s Block. Both respawn fairly frequently.

Finally, in Gendarran Fields, there are a couple of Champion Centaurs in the camp north of the Bloodfields. There are also two Champion Pirate Captains in Brigantine Isle, both of which respawn fairly frequently and can be solo’ed if you have a build with good survivability.

There was a change a while back that increased the number of Soft Wood Logs needed to make planks to 4, and only Soft Wood Logs. Why this was done I have no idea…

I once had a game where the entire enemy team was all leechers. That was the easiest match ever. XD

I think people are also overestimating the amount of achievement points it would take to reach certain thresholds. I’m currently sitting on 5993 points, and I’m apparently in the 90th percentile bracket of all players in Guild Wars.

From looking at the leaderboards filtered by my Friends, someone as high as 7300 is STILL in the 90th percentile, and someone as low as 3500 is ALSO still in the 90th percentile. Someone on 2500 points is in the 80th percentile. The lowest is on 1200 points, and they’re STILL in the 60th percentile.

From that, we can conclude that the vast majority of GW2 players actually have very low achievement points, 1000 or less, and I seriously doubt that ANet wants to alienate these players by giving massive advantages to people above them. Therefore, I think it’s very likely that the AP threshold rewards will be quite generous, and most of the valuable rewards like account bonuses and exclusive skins/minipets will be frontloaded at 50% percentiles or lower. The higher percentiles, perhaps 75 – 80% onwards, will be mostly titles, similar to the way the HoM reward system worked.

Griffonrook Run is actually pretty easy if you’re not bothering with the bomb.

And this new JP is indeed one of the hardest ones in the game. It’s long, filled with mobs that are more difficult than normal enemies in the map, and has several points where if you die and don’t have anyone around to res you, you have to start all over again at the very beginning. It’s a fun challenge for someone like me who loves JPs, but I can see why it would be immensely frustrating for someone who doesn’t.

On the bright side, at least there’s still Mesmer portals!

Try this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/skypirates/Aetherblade-Retreat-PUG-Friendly-Finder/page/2#post2345786

Esplen has set up a guild with the sole purpose of putting people together to get the achievements with.

Well, if you’ll send me 1000 Coffers and a MF armor set, I’d gladly help test your theory!

1 month. Even 2 months would still be fine with me.

There are several other threads like this one, PeterThomas, all expressing similar views (and I’m one of them). I, too, would like to have some time to unwind and digest the events of a Living Story after each release. Your story about putting all the “normal” story on hold to do the Living Story rings true for me as well.

We love new content, ANet. We really do. But there’s no need to put them out at such a breakneck pace! Once a month, in the vein of Flame & Frost’s original pace, would be fine.

Zoldyck.6241:

morrolan.9608:

punished again for having alts.

Just because it doesn’t reward those having alts does not mean they are being “punished”. Of course, it depends on which side of the fence you are looking at.

As someone with 5 characters and plays them all more or less equally, I can understand their frustration. It costs me 5 times the amount of gold/karma to kit them all up as it would for a player who only has 1 main. Being told that a reward is account bound basically forces me to choose which of my characters has to get it, and it’s something I loathe. So, so much.

Of course, I’m not blind to ANet’s need to prevent people exploiting alt-mechanics for rapid farming too. For example, I understand that something had to be done to stop people using fresh alts to farm Canach’s dungeon. (I have no objection to the Aetherblade Shoulderpad nerf, because you’re still getting a free Exotic out of it.) But I just wish that they’d done it in a way that didn’t penalise people with multiple alts.

Yes, creating new characters and running them over to Southsun to do Canach’s dungeon for 1 gold was definitely broken. But instead of just making it once per account, why not scale the reward to your character’s TRUE level? So the person with 5 level 80’s can run it 5 times and get 5 gold, but the person who creates 20 level 2 alts and to run the dungeon only gets 2 silver each time? That would have been a much fairer method of nerfing it, in my opinion.

Esplen is right, in a manner of speaking. As a general rule, limited time items will only ever rise in price. However, it’s subject to three criteria:

1. The item truly never comes back. This is dependent solely on ANet, who might very well choose to re-release the Aetherblade dungeon down the line, perhaps as part of a Fractal, and the Monocle might become available again as a rare drop there. (There’s also the possibility that a Monocle skin might become available on the gem store, and it looks similar to, or even better than, the current one.) If that happens, prices on the item will plummet and you’ll end up losing most of your investment.

As an example, when the Lost Shores originally came out, some people stocked up on the Tiki skins because they thought they were one-time items. Then, during Secret of Southsun, ANet released the skins again, and the people who hoarded the skins when they first came out basically lost their investment.

I’m not saying the Monocle will DEFINITELY come back, but it’s always a possibility you need to keep in mind when investing or holding on to something to sell.

2. Is there true demand for the item? Back when the Super Adventure Box came out, prices for the Super weapon skins climbed up and up, only to collapse after the SAB went away, and it’s never really recovered since then. The reason behind this was because most people who wanted the Super skins had already farmed them using Baubles; the price of the skins was therefore fueled solely by speculators thinking the price would keep on rising. When SAB went away and it turned out that demand just wasn’t that high after all, the market crashed and now prices for Super skins are about the same as when they were cheapest.

3. The market doesn’t move on. MMO players as a general rule go crazy over new stuff, but when the next new content is released, they largely forget about the previous content. That’s why you often see players wearing/using whatever is the current “flavour of the month”; there’s a lot of people now wearing holographic wings, but I’m willing to bet that 2 or 3 months down the line, you’ll hardly see anybody wearing them.

This often means that demand for exclusive items drops sharply after only a few weeks to a couple of months. At that stage, only die-hard collectors or fashionistas are willing to pay super-high prices for your items, so you might be waiting a long time to get your money, especially if there are tons of other investors (and there will be) trying to sell their own Monocles.

And in that time, maybe YOU are now bored of GW2, or are all excited about another game, and move on, meaning that you will never get to sell your item and thus missed out on enjoying whatever that 42 – 49 gold would have brought you had you sold it while you were still into GW2.

So, for all those reasons, this is why my advice is still to sell an item when it reaches a price where you would be happy with the profit. You could make big money by holding onto the Monocle and selling it further on down the line, but that also exposes you to risk, and it could go either way.

Ultimately, it’s your decision; both selling or holding are perfectly valid choices to make here, depending on what your preferences are.

For humans, I think that you couldn’t really be a full-time member of a military organisation (e.g. Lionguard, Seraph or Shining Blade) and still be a part of an Order. As you mentioned, it creates conflicts of interest and multiple chains of command. What would you do if your superior in the Seraph ordered you to protect a human village and your Vigil superior ordered you to abandon it to reinforce a Vigil assault on an undead force downriver? No, in that situation I imagine you would resign your commission from one organisation before joining the other.

For Asura, once you graduate from a College you’re no more a part of them than you are a graduate from a real life university. You keep up with friends and colleagues from the College, but you don’t spend much time around them anymore unless you join the teaching staff. Krewes are also fairly temporary in that they gather for a specific research purpose, then disband once that purpose is achieved. As such, it might be totally possible for an Asura to leave a krewe to join an Order, then form a new krewe as an auxiliary unit to support himself while still being part of the Order.

The Charr’s story is basically explained as part of their Personal Story. Rytlock Brimstone grants you leave of absence from your Legion to join your Order as a liaison. You’re still a part of your Legion, and you still report to the Tribunes/Imperators at the end of the day, but in all other situations you’re a member of your Order and you follow their instructions unless it conflicts with what the Tribunes/Imperators have ordered you to do. (In such a situation, I imagine it would be up to the individual player to decide where their loyalty truly lies. Could make for some interesting roleplaying. )

In most cases, I imagine that most Charr who join an Order are gladium who have either left their warbands, or were the sole survivors of a warband and decided to join an Order instead of another warband.

As a dedicated MM that mainly sticks to PvE, I generally don’t even bother summoning the Flesh Wurm except for fights involving Vets, Champs or lots of normal mobs. I then summon it a little back from the main fight before entering combat. I use it both to boost my damage (from observation, it deals more damage than the Shadow Fiend per hit, but attacks much less frequently), and as a meatshield (hide behind it).

The Flesh Wurm has more base HP than any other minion except the Flesh Golem and the Blood Fiend, so if you also have those two minions with you, you can generally resummon one of them every time another dies, so you’re never without a meat shield (and that’s not counting your other two supporting minions). I’ve managed to solo some Champions this way simply because the Champion can’t kill all my minions before I can resummon them again.

This should probably be posted in the Black Lion Trading forum, but basically, sell whenever you are happy with whatever price it is now. You can never know for certain whether an item will continue to increase in price, or whether future changes to the game will crash the item prices. 42 gold is a VERY good price for a cosmetic item, and were I you, I’d definitely consider selling. Maybe I’d wait a few more days till just before the event ends (because that’s when an item’s price tends to be highest, before everybody then tries to collect profits after the event ends), but I’d definitely take my profits sooner rather than later.

Would definitely support Mist Essence being purchasable via Laurels as well.

^ So basically, Rollerbeetle Races, but in the sky? Would definitely try that.

Zoid.2568:

I want a blood and bone armour set + weapon. It would look really cool and different.

So like the Afflicted weapons from GW1: Factions? I think some of those weapon skins already exist in GW2 as rare products from the MF, but yes, I would like a weapon set that uses blood/bone that would fit very well with a Necromancer.

You guys are not alone. There’s been a few threads here and there started by people (including me) who feel that the rapid shuttling of players from new content to the next is wearing us out. It wouldn’t really be a problem if the content was added permanently the way new quests were put in during GW1, but since a lot of this stuff is a “see it once, then never again” experience, we have to stop what we’re doing and turn our attention to the Living Story, or risk never being able to get skins/do achievements/play mini-games/run special dungeons ever again.

They were up to 916k when I looked this morning. I think they’ll reach it.

Unlimited Salvage Kit.

Hammerguard.9834:

There are people who would do it. There are people who have done it. Same deal with extra bag spaces, which are insanely expensive I might add. =/

I’m one of those people. XD Bought 5 Molten Picks, 5 Consortium Sickles and 5 Chop-It-All Axes to equip each of my 5 characters. Note that I would have done it anyway even if the tools were all account bound, since I don’t want to bother having to go to a Bank and transfer the tools every time I switch characters.

Yeah, it’s annoying, but I just crafted some low-level Invisible bags and stuck my favourite minipet for each character in them. You’ll want to invest in an Invisible Bag at some point anyway for storing important items that you don’t want to merch by accident.

We don’t know how the AP reward system will be structured though. From their language, I’m inclined to think it will be similar to the HoM reward system where different rewards are unlocked at different tiers. If so, the physical rewards might be structured so all the “best” ones, such as permanent gold/karma account boosts, are unlocked at relatively low tiers (maybe 500 points), with higher tiers going mainly to cosmetic skins and/or titles.

The main thing that worries me about that update was their wholehearted embrace of the microtransaction model. I have nothing against microtransactions (indeed, I’ve spent enough on gems buying the unlimited tools and other stuff that I could have bought another Collector’s Edition!), but my fear is that this will mean a continuation of the “goodies locked behind RNG” trend we’ve seen so far. That system is something I loathe and I have not purchased any RNG boxes to this date.

Viking Jorun.5413:

…or the Quagganborn appears. “FooOOOOooos Ro Dah!”

…

That… is the GREATEST thing to ever be suggested on this forum. ANet, you SO need to make this happen!

There was an ANet dev porting people in the JP itself the day it was released. I think that’s probably a good indication as to their stance on it.

I personally don’t mind if others use Portals to complete a JP. Not everybody will be good at something, and I think it’s nice of players to help out those with lesser abilities, the same way that I would jump in and help if I saw another player getting torn apart by a Veteran or Champion.

I can see where the OP is coming from when she says that Portals “trivialise” the content (and I’m speaking here as someone who completes all the JP’s, on all of my characters, normally), although in the larger scheme of things I think it’s a minor issue. ANet’s taken steps to ensure that you can’t exploit the Aetherblade JP for financial gain, and if you still want to complete the JP normally for your own satisfaction, you can; you’re not forced to use the Portals yourself.

It’s kind of similar to Legendary Survivor back in GW1; it was an extremely difficult achievement to get, but when EotN was released, it was trivialised just by farming Kilroy’s dungeon for some hours. That didn’t negate the personal satisfaction I had as someone who earned Legendary Survivor legitimately. Nobody can take that away from me, and I honestly don’t care what somebody else thinks of my title. The same would apply if I had a Legendary weapon; I don’t care if somebody else thinks I bought my Legendary on the TP. I got it because I liked the way it looks on my character, not because I wanted to show off to others.

I’m not a serious TP player by any means. However, I am keeping a stack of Dragon Coffers which I got just through normal play for a few months with an eye to selling it if the price returns to the early days of Dragon Bash (around 5s+ each).

My prediction is that they will release it shortly after the new expansion (which NCSoft announced some time ago, but no concrete details yet) if it includes new races/professions. This is because lots of people will be creating new characters and will undoubtedly want to equip their characters with unlimited tools.

Of course, they may bring it back “by popular demand” before then.

^ What he said. You can’t have the entire team perma-stealthing, or Mai/Horrik will reset and start regenerating health. At least one team member needs to be visible and targeted by the cannoneers (probably the Guardian, in your setup).

Kajin.5301:

Dive Jump foolproof tactic: get down on the pipe where goggles lie (off the blue pad). Pan camera until you see the closest/nearest Y shaped pipe intersection, face it. Jump forward so you fall down through that Y pipe intersection. Then strafe midfall so you go between the 2 toothpick metal spikes that are above the water well. Compare this with Dulfy’s vid and you’ll see what I mean.

Except that if you don’t jump from the blue platform itself, you run the risk of it bugging so the dive didn’t count. If you just spent half an hour getting up there, you obviously don’t want to have to do it all over again. :P

Anyway, I’ve worked out the best spot to jump from to get that Dive spot. You want to jump off just to the right of the right-most blue light pillar. (The diving goggles will be on your right.) Take just a little hop forward, and that should roughly put you in the correct spot. You may still need to correct your “flight” on the way down to make sure you don’t hit any obstacles in the way.

The Aetherblade Second Hideout is basically Dark Reverie Mk II. >.< Unless you’re doing it with friends, you’d better make darn sure you don’t make a mistake or you have to start from the beginning all over again. It’s a fun JP, but VERY unforgiving. I definitely would agree that more “save points” where not so much backtracking is needed would be a welcome addition.

Gabby’s experience is why I’m still skeptical about the theory that MF applies to everything. We have hundreds of thousands of players in GW2 at any particular time, and usually only those who are extremely lucky, or extremely unlucky, will come to the forums to post about their experiences. We can’t really rely on the experiences of these outliers since it’s likely that the silent majority fits neatly into the “bell curve” of statistical outcomes.

In my opinion, two weeks is a bit too rushed for temporary content (unless they were really tiny like the initial months of Flame & Frost, where you could easily complete the achievements in a couple hours).

I’d prefer a monthly/bi-monthly release schedule that consists of 50% temporary content that can be completed in a single weekend, and 50% permanent content.

He used to be marked as a Champion, as a matter of fact. I always wondered if his event was supposed to be a Group Event too, but I always assumed it wasn’t due to the fact that you get Vanguard allies respawning to come and help you fight.

Jeffrey, if we spot other enemies throughout the world that are Veterans, but have stats similar to Champions in terms of health/damage, should we report those as bugs too? As an example, there’s another event in Gendarran Fields where you’re defending the Lupikids from a territorial Veteran Drake, but the Drake hits like a Champion, taking off 1/3 to half your health in a single bite.

Jeweler would be an obvious choice, although it may be used in just about all kinds of crafting except cooking. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy quartz in my food. :P)

Surprisingly the Chop-it-all Axe hasn’t made gem prices jump all that much. I expect it’s because people have gotten wise to previous spikes and stocked up on gems in anticipation of the Axe’s release.

In any case, gem prices have been quite stable for the last few months, hovering between the 2 and 3 gold range. It seems that the market may have found its equilibrium, unless another major shock comes along.

Basilenco.6375:

I’m assuming most people here watch TV and have a series they like to watch. I’m sure no one complains when there is a new episode every week.

Yes, but each episode lasts for, what, half an hour to an hour? And then you wait a whole week for the next episode. In terms of a ratio of time spent/time waiting, that’s about the same as waiting 1 – 2 months for new permanent content. Again, it’s about being able to savour the experience with plenty of time to spare, and then giving you enough time to build up anticipation for the next release.

But yes, ANet have said that they’re looking into making more permanent content with subsequent releases, so I’m willing to wait and see what their new approach is like.

Fiontar.4695:

I’m guessing you unlock tiers of rewards via AP. Like others, I’m hoping it works like the Hall of Monuments unlocks, where once you unlock a skin, you have access to as many account bound copies of that skin as you want from a special vendor.

For those that don’t know, Hall of Monuments allows GW1 players to unlock various tiers of cosmetic gear and titles for use in GW2. Legacy players with a GW1 account attached to their GW2 account get an object that allows them to teleport to the Hall of Monuments instance, where there is a vendor that offers skins you’ve unlocked at no cost.

If the new system works similar to that, I’ll be very happy.

I’m hoping the new system works like that too.

Because some maniac with an electrical axe comes running at you?

I actually agree with the OP. New content every 2 weeks is too rapid, especially if it’s only temporary. I’d rather have new permanent content added every 2 months.