Guild Wars 2

OK, so from what Josh said, he’s “pretty sure they’re going to retire the current set after April” and that he doesn’t think they will have the same set of Super Skins at our next release. Does that mean that we’ll never see the current skins available again? Hard to say. It could mean that next time the Super Skins will be back with skins for the Pistol/Dagger/Hammer/Rifle included. It could mean that the next set is ONLY the Pistol/Dagger/Hammer/Rifle skins. Or it might mean that each time the available skins are totally random, or that new variants of Super skins for all weapons are available at the next release.

In short, the speculation field is WIDE OPEN. Do with it what thou wilt, free market!

Personally, I already have the Super Backpack on my Asura, which is all I really wanted from the set, so I’m content with just watching what unfolds next.

Understood. I’d be rather sad if the Super weapon skins were a one-time only occurrence, but I can see where you guys are coming from. At least I already got my Super Backpack!

I also really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us (while you’re on holiday, no less!) and for being so forthright in your responses. You might be giving Gaile a run for her money as the best ANet rep in terms of maintaining good customer dialogue.

But unlike the asura, humans have never had a dental plate consisting primarily of canines or fangs. Even going back to early hominid ancestors, their teeth are primarily incisors and molars, which are better suited for cutting and grinding plant matter. That suggests that the primary diet of humans and their ancestors has always been primarily plant-based. We only started to eat meat relatively late in our evolutionary history.

That said, I watched a documentary recently about the marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands. Despite living on a diet consisting purely of seaweed, the iguanas have a mouth full of serrated, razor-sharp teeth. This might seem illogical at first glance, but it actually makes sense because seaweed is extremely slippery. The iguana’s sharp teeth is needed to grab on to the seaweed and cut it free from the rocks.

So with that in mind, I amend my original theory to admit that the asura could possibly also have lived on a primarily herbivorous diet, although I still think that is unlikely given their high energy requirements and the general lack of plant life below ground.

@akamon: OK, so to crafted a Corrupted Greatbow, you would need an Etched Bow of Rage? Did you test whether or not putting a Sigil of Rage into the Etched Bow (therefore soulbinding it) would still allow the Corrupted Greatbow to be crafted?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Nothing is certain, but I’m pretty sure these ones will only be around for this month.

Josh, could you clarify this a bit more? When you’re talking about the old rewards being gone, are you referring to the weapon skins? Or the extra rewards like Obsidian Shards, Crystals etc. being redeemable for Bauble Bubbles? If people only have the month of April in which to obtain the current Super weapon skins, I think you need to get the word out so that people don’t cry foul afterwards that they can no longer earn their own Super weapon skins via Bubbles.

Got this bug too. It’s pretty annoying, but I’m dealing with it for now by pretending it’s the distinguishing mark of Blood Legion centurions. :P

Note to self: Do not smash the furniture in Miya’s room when you rescue her.

Same. I live in Australia, play on Tarnished Coast (US) and lag for the most part is very manageable.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

OliverT.9021:

An effectively efficient run on p1 typically logs me around 6 mins. The speed run of 15 mins is more than double my timing. This may seem very little but when used in the context of farming for a legendary or some exotic weapon (which requires some crazy 350 charged lodestones or 500 powerful blood) where 400 hours needed are concerned, doubling that would mean 800 hours.

Had to quote this.
See, others in this thread can be so quick to call players things like small brained or idiots… without thinking why people do these runs in the first place. If anet didn’t put such ridiculous RNG on precursors, the droprate of lodestones and some other mats then there would be no need to go to these lengths in order to farm for the required gold. These same posters probably think the farmers find doing this more fun than hanging out with guildies doing some random thing for kittens and giggles.

I see your point, but I think that by speed-farming CoF P1, you’re playing exactly into ANet’s hands. Now they think, “See? Our requirements for Legendaries/Ascended/etc. are perfectly fine since so many players are still achieving it!” They don’t see that a lot of these players are gritting their teeth and forcing their way through what sounds like incredibly tedious repetition (assumption here. I’ve yet to even play a single dungeon) to get what they want.

We should have just put our foot down and insisted on easier or more diverse ways to obtain Precursors and other high end components rather than give in to the old cycle of grinding/farming for hundreds of hours. (To be fair to ANet here, they did ameliorate this somewhat by the introduction of Orrian Jewelry Boxes and Laurels.)

I had a look at the Leaderboards out of a mild curiosity to see where I was, but when I saw that the lowest person on the board was somewhere around the 6000 achievement point mark I didn’t bother looking any further. XD

projectcedric.6951

Even if it’s true/ideal, CC is still very situational. How many times will you be facing a dredge mining suit, in which that CC is incredibly essential for your survival against 4-5 more enemies? Even in that case, a higher damage output can take care of that situation just as well -just kill them faster. Or how many times will you find yourself fighting an opponent by the cliff, in which you are just in the right position to push him off it to kill him? Compare to the number of time you can just kill people with direct damage.

But I mean, it’s not completely ugly to that point that there is any one profession forced to rely on CC alone. Every profession has direct damage skills and CC skills. I’m just saying that builds that tends to focus on CC rather than damage are just not effective generally.

I do feel that there is a bit too much emphasis on direct damage in GW2. I would prefer it if there were more enemies with mechanics that made direct damage a less efficient way of dealing with them; perhaps an enemy with a skill that made them immune to all direct damage unless a CC skill is used on them, and then they can be attacked normally. Or an enemy that was highly resistant to direct damage (they take only 25% damage from attacks), but vulnerable to conditions (they take 50% more damage).

However, you do make a good point that CC skills tend to be highly situational. I’ll point out that you don’t HAVE to bring CC skills if they’re not needed though. You can freely swap utility skills and weapons outside of combat, so nothing’s stopping you from bringing, say, “Fear Me!” on your Warrior to deal with that particular Veteran, and then swapping it back out for a banner once you’re done.

Orc Slayer.2780:

Fyrebrand.4859:

Roman Legionary.6715:

Ectos are far too easy to get. That’s the point. The market is going to get even more flooded with them. The devs have stated they like ecto as a currency. It’s not going to be a currency of value, if it keeps getting inflated.

I still don’t see what the concern is. You can’t just say “ectos are far too easy to get,” and not qualify that statement. By what metric are you assessing their ideal price and availability? What sort of horrible economic disaster do you think is going to happen if ectos continue to enter the market at this rate?

Without any kind of context, or demonstrable consequences, your concerns about ectos are almost a non sequitur. What is it affecting? Why do you think people should just arbitrarily be paying more, or working harder, for this one specific material? Why is it bad, if their price on the trading post goes down? Are you worried that people will cease to require them, and stop playing the game?

Ectos are essential now for:
Legendary
Ascended back pack
Earrings(optional)
Exotics

If prices drop, getting these items will be very easy and essential drive people out of the game faster. Also, as I already stated(for those of you that cannot read very well) ectos are suppose to be a currency, according to the devs. Guaranteed rares = price of ecto drop. If I do this event I know I’ll get a rare. 10x = about 8-9 ecto easy + w/e rares you get from the chest too. Times this by how many players? almost 900 k that log in every day during 6-9pm. The market is getting flooded. Flooding the market is NEVER good.

Hang on… As “you” already stated? The original quote was by someone named “Roman Legionary”. This is the first time you’ve posted in the thread. Unless “Roman Legionary” is a secondary account of yours?

In any case, I don’t really see a problem with the prices of Ectos falling either. As you pointed out, while Ectos may be cheaper now, the number of things one can do with them has also increased. Infusing Ascended items sucks massive amounts of Ecto out of the game. As such, the final cost for what a player needs to spend on Ecto is likely more or less the same. This is a positive thing, because it helps keep the wealth divide low and not alienate new players in thinking that they won’t ever be able to catch up.

As for the people who quit when they get all the “best items”, well, these players would have quit at some point in the future sooner or later. This subset of players is driven by the urge to get the best items, but ANet can’t keep on introducing better and better items. To do so would mean introducing a full-on gear grind, and I think the backlash from the player community would be much, MUCH higher if they decided to go down that route.

I’m sure that additional skills, including elite skills, will be added with new expansions. That was the way it worked back in GW1. (As a bit of trivia, Well of Power actually used to be an elite skill back in GW1!)

Dingle.2743:

@Zebulous: There’s a spot in the arena that his lick doesn’t reach. Find it. It’s a little higher than everything else you can stand on.

Apparently you can also stand right underneath his chin, although I haven’t tested this.

Weird. I never have any problems with deer. I hunt them down for their tasty, tasty Slabs of Red Meat. Sure, they get ornery when I just wander up to them and start whacking on their hindquarters with a sword, but then I slam my shield into their faces when they start poking me with their horns and finish up the butchering.

I find it more disturbing that another deer just a few metres away is calmly watching his friend getting hacked to pieces and isn’t batting an eyelid.

Resistlich.2084:

Playing since game started, about 30g across all my chars, highest lvl 80 with blue gear. No ectos, precursors, epic stacks of mats, legendaries. Casuality over 9000.

No ectos at all? Really? Even I’ve got a couple of ectos in the Bank from just salvaging some Rares I picked up during the course of my adventuring, and my characters have yet to go to any zone higher than Gendarran Fields.

Who needs cloning technology when you have deer/cows/pigs that magically reappear out of nowhere 3 minutes later?

Leo Paul.1659

They should’ve specified what they expect everyone to do, especially since you are the only mesmer. You pulling the slave driver or putting up a feedback isn’t even necessary for a fast run if them warriors weren’t so reliant on you. It was an odd preference by them and it is understandable that you are upset about it.

Anyone remember the Monk Strike from GW1? We should do a Mesmer Strike for CoF 1 speed runs.

CC is generally only used to interrupt key enemy skills. Two good examples are the Dredge Mining Suits and the Krait Hypnoss. Both mobs have a skill that, if you let them use it, will summon 3 – 4 additional mobs, which can easily end up overwhelming you. Using Daze/Stun/Push/Pull/Launch/Fear at those times will stop them from doing so. Note that the recharge time of interrupted skills is much shorter than their cooldown, so you typically need to have two CC skills that you can alternate between to keep them from getting the skill off).

It’s a different story in WvW or PvP, of course, where those skills can be used to knock enemy players off cliffs and other high places to get an instant kill.

Obsidian.1328

Ehh…I never got the impression that a human assassinated the Khan Ur, mostly because at the time they supposedly had the gods, directly or indirectly it never really says, helping them establish Ascalon. Why would the Charr present any threat to them with the gods at their back? If anything I got the impression it was just another power-hungry Charr wanting the throne for himself, but that is just my opinion.

Also, there is an 800 year difference between the human arrival in Ascalon and the building of the Northern Wall. The Wall wasn’t even started until 898AE, very soon after the Charr were said to start worshiping the Titans(870AE). It was in response to this new Charr activity that led to its construction, not the chaos following the death of the Khan-Ur.

We don’t really know in what form the Gods’ aid in helping the humans conquer Ascalon took form. Originally the Gods did walk Tyria in physical form, but I think if Balthazar and Co. had actually physically helped the humans drive the Charr out of Ascalon, we’d have seen more mention of it from in-game sources (from both sides).

I also won’t rule out the possibility that it was another Charr that killed the Khan-Ur, but if so, they handled it very poorly. It would have been much better if they had engineered the Khan-Ur’s death so it looked like it was done by humans (either by planting weapons or evidence, or by a more subtle method such as feeding information to the humans about where the Khan-Ur would be on a journey and then ensuring that the Khan-Ur’s escort would be “undermanned”). It’s also possible that whoever killed the Khan-Ur wasn’t human, but someone who wanted to see the humans claim Ascalon for their own reasons. (There’s other instances of this in the game too. We never did learn who ordered the killer golems from Zinn and then attempted to assassinate Princess Salma, Emperor Kisu and Prince Bokka.)

You’re right about the Great Northern Wall not being built until long after the humans had settled in Ascalon though! For some reason I was under the impression that the humans began construction of the Great Wall not long after arriving in Ascalon. Maybe I’m confusing it with another game…

Then again, it does say that “The Great Northern Wall is erected.” in 898 A.E. That could mean that was the date the Great Northern Wall was completed, and construction could have started much earlier.

And this is why I don’t like to PUG dungeons. :/

I usually only call out if I’m looking for Group Events, since you typically need a decent amount of players to complete those. Putting out the word that one is up and that there are people willing to do it goes a long way towards getting sufficient players together to complete it.

It sounds like your character is lacking in AoE damage. As a general rule, you need to plan your character so they are capable of doing two things:

1. They can survive more than a few hits from normal enemies, or at least one hit from a big enemy.

2. They are capable of taking on up to 3 or 4 normal foes at once and coming out victorious.

The first point can be handled by either beefing up on toughness/vitality or healing, or focusing on dodging and evasion. (In any case, you want to avoid a situation where any enemy can down you in a single hit.) The second point requires you to either have summonable allies that you can use to divert aggro onto, or you are capable of killing multiple enemies quickly enough before they can seriously hurt you.

As an example, the way I’ve built my Mesmer is that she excels at 1vs1 combat (to the point where she can sometimes solo Champions), but she’s a lot weaker when it comes to handling multiple mobs. To counter this, I use the staff as her second weapon, and use a combination of Chaos Storm + rapid Shatters + Confusion to spike down enemies quickly with burst damage. For tougher mobs, I bring along the Mistfire Wolf and use him for the added AoE damage spike when dealing with groups.

For my Warrior, a combination of Healing Signet and Adrenal Health is enough to keep him healthy against even multiple foes, meaning he can easily handle point 2, but against big hitting enemies his healing can’t keep up with the damage. So his secondary weapon is a Rifle, and against such foes I play a game of “keep away” with Crippling Shot and Rifle Butt/Stomp to prevent the enemy from getting close enough to really hurt him while peppering him with bullets.

Honestly? I’d continue to play the game exactly as I did before, except that when a situation arises when I need a particularly expensive ingredient or item, I no longer have to wait and save up to purchase it anymore.

I give myself ludicrous amounts of money in single player games all the time. It doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the game in the slightest.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I beg to speculate slightly differently: I’m thinking that the current super skins will go away with the next installment of levels in favor of the new skins. Afterall, there were quite a few different weapons that didn’t get skins. With each update, those skins will also go away in favor of new skins.

To that end, I’m also willing to bet when the SAB has finally finished all levels, all skins will then be re-released.

I suppose that’s a possibility, but like Lane above me, I imagine that the existing skins will still be available the next time SAB is released. We will just see skins for the Pistol, Rifle and Dagger get added to the list. Their vendor prices might be adjusted though; Josh has stated that they are looking at modifying the SAB chest loot so that it encourages players to do more exploring and not just speed run zones for the Bubbles. “This may involve re-evaluation of the prices.”

There are also other SAB weapon skins which Josh hinted would be only available in the SAB itself, such as the flaming sword-chucks Lord Vanquish uses. I’m uncertain whether he meant that we can buy the skins outside, but they are only usable in the SAB, or whether they are additional weapon upgrades that we collect in the SAB similar to the Slingshot, Bomb etc. (I know that the next weapon upgrade for the Pointy Stick is the Monkey Nail Bat. Yes, the same weapon that the blue monkeys – curse their fleabitten hides! – wield.)

I’m always surprised by the fact that Asura can eat vegetation. Their teeth seems to suggest they are carnivores or insectivores, and being a subterranean race, there wouldn’t really be a lot of plant matter for them to consume down there. I would have imagined the Asura lived primarily on a diet of vermin and maybe farmed fungus or molds while they dwelt completely underground.

This is further supported by the fact that meat is a much more calorie-rich food than vegetables, and growing large brains (coupled with high rates of thinking) burns up a lot of calories. The Asura would have needed quite a lot of energy to fuel their metabolism and brains, which again suggests they aren’t really herbivores.

So yeah, I imagine the Asura don’t keep their food in special storage because they go through it really quickly, but I wouldn’t put it past them to have developed refrigeration magi-tech to store large amounts of food for extended periods of time.

Unfortunately I have no idea either, but the easiest way to check would be to buy the recipe (you need it anyway), then go to a Huntsman station and see whether or not the Etched Spear shows up as a valid ingredient when trying to craft the Corrupted Spear.

Totally agreed. I would love to be able to replay sections of my personal story, and perhaps also to view alternative paths that I didn’t take.

Whoever’s stocking up on the skins now is in for a losing proposition. Josh has already confirmed that the SAB will be returning at some point in the future (and not a “next year” basis), so there will be more chances to earn the skin again.

@Noviere: I imagine it’s for people who just HATE jumping puzzles, but want the skin.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You know what this means right? It means Josh has to add a special kind of monkeys in the next world that steals baubles! Muhahahaha!

Great… As if I needed any more reasons to virulently hate monkeys more than I do now… -_-

DarkDemon.7645:

OK sure fire test is enter some fake info for email and password, if it goes through its fake, which is what this one did with me

I strongly advise against doing this, as simply visiting the website in question may be enough to get your PC infected with a keylogger.

The text of the scam e-mail going around is almost word for word to that of other scam e-mails going around for World of Warcraft, Runescape and Diablo 3. It can therefore be dismissed as a phishing attempt. To check whether a link is genuine, hover your mouse over the link, right-click and select “Copy URL location” or “Copy shortcut”. Paste that text into a text editor like Notepad or Word and see whether the location it’s sending you to matches the link’s text. Usually you’ll find that it sends you to a fake site, but some can be cleverly disguised like “account.arenanet.tfoh.com”

Aww… So Lord Vanquish is just trying to woo Princess Miya in his own evil little way? I half-expect to reach his castle only to find that Princess Miya has totally taken it over and redecorated it into a rainbows-and-unicorns theme, sitting down with Lord Vanquish for a tea party. XD

Woah… O.o I never knew the skin did that! I kinda regret selling that Shield skin drop I got now… XD

Ooshi.8607:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

There’s a term I’ve heard before. It’s called Armchair Quarterback. It means that someone thinks they are an expert because they watch football (real football, not soccer) every Sunday from their chair.

No, what you mean is american football. What you call soccer is what the rest of the world calls football.

I prefer to classify them all as types of football. There’s soccer football, rugby football, and American football.

I’m Australian, for the record.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Farming SAB for skins isn’t even worth it. I can buy 3 skins a day easily by farming CoF.

I would advise people not to get too comfortable with this method of gold acquisition. You can be certain that ANet is aware that CoF Path 1 is too easily farmed and they will be taking steps to nerf/block it in the future.

According to someone on this forum, it just resets back to 100% health again.

Which is a shame. I think it would be awesome if you got a special reward or achievement for doing so.

I don’t really have an issue with it. While delete farming is obviously circumventing the ideal way the SAB was meant to be run (if there wasn’t there wouldn’t be a daily limit on the zone chests), all of the rewards purchasable with Bubbles are Account Bound, so it doesn’t really affect the market. Fundamentally, delete farming is no different from someone with multiple alts farming the SAB on all of his characters, and I think stopping someone from gaining rewards to gear up his alts with Super skins would be in very poor taste. Us altoholics get the short end of the stick more often than not as it is. :P

Alright, so it looks like the report of Laurels being capped at 100 is false then.

^ That has nothing to do with the Wizard’s Tower. Those Asura devices belong to a secret outpost of the Arcane Eye (the Asuran Special Forces that report directly to the Arcane Council) that’s hidden beneath Garrenhoff.

You visit this outpost if you’re an Asura player and choose to follow the Order of Whisper’s plan to rescue an NPC. Otherwise, you’d never know it was even there.

The Living Story is a permanent fixture of the game (it’s a blanket term for ongoing new content released by ANet). Flame & Frost is not. Once the threat from the Molten Alliance is dealt with, I imagine the portals/dredge carriers will stop appearing, buried objects will no longer be available, sonic periscopes no longer spawn etc. The instanced areas of Rox’s/Braham’s missions may still be available, but on the whole I imagine the general world will return to the state it was before, albeit with any permanent changes remaining like the new homesteads or the refugee settlement in Southsun Cove.

Obsidian.1328:

Humans are the only sentient species on Earth, I didn’t say race. Humans never treated other sentient species as animals because there are none.

I think you’re confusing the terms “sentience” and “sapience”. Sentience refers to the ability to feel, perceive and be conscious. By that definition, all animals on Earth are sentient, because they feel pain and pleasure, can react to stimuli, and can act independently of their environment. Even plants can perhaps be considered sentient, as plants have been proven to react to stimuli and possibly even communicate with other plants. (In one experiment, a tree in one enclosure was attacked by a pest beetle, and it released an alarm/distress pheromone into the air. Nearby trees that detected the pheromone started preparing defenses against that specific species of beetle, even if no beetles had been introduced into their enclosure.)

Sapience is the ability to think, to reason, to act with judgment and forethought with regards to future consequences for their actions. Humans demonstrate this ability in all members of our species, although some people (including myself) argue that some species of animals are also sapient considering they have the ability to solve problems and base their decisions on past experience and learning. (Sapience is different from intelligence; within a sapient species like humans, you will get individuals with varying levels of intelligence. Thus, people in my group believe that animals are also sapient; it’s just that most animal species lack the intelligence to think very far into the future or solve complex problems.)

You would need to not leave the instance. You could try inviting a guild member or a friend to your party, who then joins you in the instance. The achievement must be completed without you leaving the instance, so if you exit out to Rata Sum, then yes, you would need to collect all the baubles again if you were going for the Master of Baubles achievement.

Sucks, I know. It took me over 2 hours in that zone to get everything + Moto’s Breath at the same time. Fortunately I’d stocked up on 9 Continue Coins before making the attempt; used 2 of them before I finished.

PopeUrban.2578:

Gnome kicking was hands down the single most memorable thing about golden axe.

I can still remember that little tune that plays during the bonus rounds.

“Heeheehee! YOWK!”

Unfortunately not. That route is the only way to get up to a point where you can jump down to the shop with Moto’s Breath. The only thing I can suggest is to get someone who’s done the jump before to go into the zone with you and show you how they do it.

@ReMortis: Did you get that 103 Laurels from having 93 Laurels and then completing the Monthly? We have several confirmed statements from people that managed to exceed the so-called “cap” by this method. What we are trying to determine now is what happens if somebody with more than 100 Laurels completes a Daily. Does the count still go up? Or does it stall?

The others here have provided lots of good suggestions that I would echo. Without knowing what exactly you are spending your money on, it’s hard to pinpoint where your problems are arising from, but it sounds a little like you’re spending needlessly on things that don’t really need to be spent on. If you’re someone who HAS to buy every single minipet or dye, or MUST have a Legendary, that’s your prerogative as a player. Just be aware that it will cost you a lot of gold to finance your goals.

While I’m not rich by any definition, I also don’t have much money problems because I really watch my expenses. I NEVER waypoint anywhere if I can help it, and I use the PvP portal to Lion’s Arch to save on travel costs if I must travel back to a city. I don’t bother repairing armor until the first piece becomes broken, and then I use a Repair Canister (obtained from Dailies or Map Completion) or just replace my armor set entirely if it’s time to upgrade to a better set. I don’t bother with minipets, harvest all of my own materials for crafting, and use only the dyes that drop for me. The only thing that I buy from the TP are skins that I decide I absolutely want for my characters. This cuts down my expenses to a bare minimum, which is how I get by even though I don’t do dungeons, Fractals, or play the TP.

Doesn’t really affect me. I have never bothered with Leaderboards in any game I play and it doesn’t affect my opinion of other players. Hope the people who like Leaderboards enjoy it though!

mercury: “Youtube has a partner program that if you hit a certaintreshhold of viewers (wich he hits) you can get a percentage of the advert-incomes on your vid’s. It is fairly easy to become a partner and make some money out of youtube.”

… Is THAT why people are always asking viewers to subscribe to their channel on Youtube?

Although I don’t like the look of any of the Fused weapons and am not going for any myself, given the fact that the Fused weapon skins are account bound and can’t be sold, I hope that the Fused weapon skins continue to drop from the BLC’s permanently since that would mean players who want them have a very limited timetable in which to get them.

The jump from the second to the third branch is one of those jumps where you need to jump right as you’re about to fall off. You can also improve your chances by moving up as high as possible on the second branch and aiming for the lowest portion of the third branch.