Guild Wars 2

zealex.9410:

you are trying really hard to justiy this as p2w as he/she said i can get them in game already and unlike the watchsprout ones these i cant sell on the tp for gold ^^

Not quite, I’m afraid. Firstly, the unlimited tools, as I mentioned on page 1 of this thread, differ quite greatly from the “free” tools in terms of harvesting speed:

1. The Mining tool actually harvests 4 times, compared to the usual 3, all in one quick burst near the end of the animation.
2. The Logging tool likewise also harvests 4 times, compared to the usual 3, although the cast time is identical to normal logging tools.
3. The Harvesting tool actually harvests 3 strikes in a single go. You won’t see any difference on normal plant nodes in the wild, but if you’re, say, harvesting from your guild hall plant nodes, it will actually harvest all 3 strikes at once, saving you having to do it three times.

So someone who buys the unlimited tools is actually getting a faster version of the free tools, which work the same as standard tools.

Secondly, you can still turn the UBM into gold by buying Magic-Warped Packets/Bundles and then selling the contents. I’d recommend the Rare version, since they usually give 10 T6 mats, which is an average return of 1.5 – 2g for 500 Unbound Magic.

I would support this, under a system which I outlined on the other thread discussing the infinite UBM tools:

“Allow players to “trade in” old/unwanted gem store purchases at 50% of the original purchase price, but these refunded gems MUST be immediately put towards the purchase of a new gem store item. (This prevents the economy from getting swamped with sudden dumps of gold whenever new offerings get released, and the 50% deduction I feel is a fair tradeoff so that ANet doesn’t see a complete drop in gem sales.)”

There will always be elitists though. They’re already here, asking for things like “show LI/title, food/pots” etc. I honestly doubt that having elixirs in the game would change very much. What it might do, on the other hand, is result in something similar to what happened to dungeons. I don’t know if you were around for it, but back in the pre-HoT days, dungeons were in a similar state to what raids are now. It was basically “meta/80’s/exp only”, unless you happened to run it with friends or a guild.

And then HoT was released, and in an ironic twist, the power creep that resulted meant that dungeons could now be done by just having one or two players in the group with Ascended gear/HoT builds. This meant that PUGs were now far more willing to bring even total newbies along, because the experienced players could easily carry them if needed. Everybody still got their rewards, and the newbies gained valuable experience they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten because they weren’t using the meta. If dungeons didn’t have their rewards nerfed so badly, I think they wouldn’t be as abandoned as they are now.

So, with that in mind, I think that small amounts of power creep could actually be a good thing for GW2’s endgame, as far as making content like raids and Fractals Challenge Modes (since I’m certain that ANet is going to do more content similar to Nightmare fractal going forward) more accessible to the wider player base. We don’t want to go as far as making it a gear treadmill, but in small doses, it could have a very good net positive impact.

Yeah, I’m still waiting for 500 Jeweler and Chef myself. I just like parity among all the crafting disciplines (although I’m not sure what 500 Scribe would provide…)

For me, I’d like to see r500 Jeweler/Chef have the following:

Jeweler:
- Ability to craft Ascended trinkets, obviously
- Aura infusion crafting (and maybe finally a way to make that Koda’s Warmth infusion so it isn’t just on an amulet)

Chef:
- Triple stat food, starting at 450. The best thing is, you don’t even need to introduce new recipes. You can simply adjust some of the existing HoT/LS recipes to be 450. This would help boost demand for some otherwise worthless cooking ingredients like Passion Fruit, Nopal and Cassava.
- Elixirs, a sort of one-time character based stat boost. They offer stat upgrades similar to infusions (I’m thinking maybe +25 to a stat), but are permanent. Each character can only benefit from a particular elixir once. They’re also expensive to make. For instance, one of the ingredients might be “Essence of Berries”, which requires 250 Blueberries, 250 Strawberries, 250 Blackberries and 250 Raspberries. This is then combined with other ingredients to make the Elixir.

While I agree that the time it would take to “recoup your losses” through the Watchwork and Unbound Magic tools is an extremely long time, I nonetheless feel that putting players in a position where they have to make a choice between aesthetics and a tangible monetary reward, however tiny, is a bad decision on ANet’s part. I didn’t approve of it back when the Watchwork Pick came out, but it seemed like ANet had decided to leave it be after that as no more new tools came out, so I was willing to let it slide as a once-off experiment.

But now, here are three new tools that offer additional rewards, and what’s more, the Unbound Tools are actually considerably different to normal tools in terms of their harvesting speed:

1. The Mining tool actually harvests 4 times, compared to the usual 3, all in one quick burst near the end of the animation.

2. The Logging tool likewise also harvests 4 times, compared to the usual 3, although the cast time is identical to normal logging tools.

3. The Harvesting tool actually harvests 3 strikes in a single go. You won’t see any difference on normal plant nodes in the wild, but if you’re, say, harvesting from your guild hall plant nodes, it will actually harvest all 3 strikes at once, saving you having to do it three times.

With all this in mind, it DOES seem unfair that players who bought previous tools based purely on aesthetics, are now at a disadvantage on two fronts: speed, and additional rewards.

ANet doesn’t HAVE to do anything about this situation, but I do think it would be much appreciated by many players if they were to do either one of the following:

A) Allow players to “trade in” old/unwanted gem store purchases at 50% of the original purchase price, but these refunded gems MUST be immediately put towards the purchase of a new gem store item. (This prevents the economy from getting swamped with sudden dumps of gold whenever new offerings get released, and the 50% deduction I feel is a fair tradeoff so that ANet doesn’t see a complete drop in gem sales.)

B) A better (imo) but more complicated solution is to update the gathering tools so that every unlimited tool comes with an upgrade slot, into which you can put a crafted essence that determines what bonus reward you get when using the tool. (The Watchwork Pick and Unbound tools already come with essences pre-inserted.) Bonus rewards could include rare crafting materials (determined by the tier of the node you are harvesting), festive materials (snowflakes, Halloween mats), and map currencies. This method means that you can use whatever skin you’d like for your harvesting tools (indeed, there could even be a wardrobe specifically for tools) and still get the bonus reward of your choice.

zealex.9410:

It really wont because legendary armor doesnt give you the upper hand in any fight nor you perform better with it. Its just convenience. Meta has nothing to do with the armor btw and it will never be meta it self.

Technically, yes, but you’re forgetting that now that you can freely stat swap and upgrade/infusion swap with Legendary armor, this essentially future proofs you for any and all expansions ANet will ever release for GW2. Why waste your time and money (not to mention precious inventory/bank space storing it all) making several sets of Ascended gear for various activities in the game when you can just go straight for Legendary armor and get the same thing? And you’ll forever be protected should balance changes or new stat introductions suddenly make your favourite gear fall out of favour.

THAT’S why it’s beyond convenience, and why I’m now classifying Legendary gear as T7.

I support this, if only because I always favour having consistency among gear of the same tier. Overall though, I think that giving Legendary gear this sort of functionality (along with the ability to stat swap) clearly elevates it as a T7 above Ascended gear. This could be a very dangerous road to go down for ANet because it risks making the problems of elitism and “meta or GTFO” even worse.

Heavy: Appealing (to me). Nice “mecha” look. Helmet looks ridiculous on Charr, but I’m used to hiding helmets anyway.

Medium: Looks like a fancier reskin of Arah Medium. :/ Not too happy with yet another trenchcoat design, but could be worse.

Light: Looks awful, like a fancier version of the Crystal Arbiter outfit. But, will wait to see what it looks like on Asura first.

My suggestion:

1. Add in recipes where the Triumphant armor can be upgraded to Triumphant Hero’s armor via the Mystic Forge. The recipes require WvW Tournament Claim tickets, similar to how the Hero weapons can be upgraded to Mistforged Hero weapons.

2. WvW Tournament Claim tickets can now be earned via the following methods:

- At the end of each week of play, each bonus WvW chest gives you 50 tickets. (So 1st place gives you 150, 2nd place gives you 100, and 3rd place gives you 50.)
- Excess Proofs of Heroics can be exchanged for tickets at a rate of 1 Proof for 3 tickets.
- Excess World Ability Points can be exchanged for tickets at a rate of 1 point for 5 tickets.

This gives long-term cosmetic rewards for WvW players (as well as slight power increases, because the Battle Historian merchant also offers WvW infusions for tickets), as well as additional incentive for winning each weekly match-up. Because the upgrade recipes require both bottles of Elonian Wine as well as Crystalline Dust, this also acts as a new gold sink for the economy and increases demand for Ectos.

All instances are currently down due to what potentially is a DDoS attack on the instance server.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/All-Instances-are-down/first#post6553008

ANet is aware of the issue and working on it, but no ETA on a fix so far.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/652l7g/cant_enter_any_instances_right_now/dg71sbe/

Got the Beedogcat today. Two tips that I can share (courtesy of my Guild Leader who spent a good amount of time in there exploring):

1. You can actually feed the cat through the wall of the gong tower, negating the need to climb up inside it. To reach the outside of the gong tower, follow the same route as you would normally take to reach W2-2’s Raccoon Kingpin.

2. You can grab a piranha from the first octopus puzzle, then take Shortcut Eagle and backtrack to the gong tower. Two caveats:

- You must be VERY careful not to lose your piranha. If you drop the piranha while in the air, it disappears entirely and you can’t get it back. If this happens, you have no choice but to backtrack to the 2nd octopus puzzle and do it normally.

- Likewise, be very careful not to lose your piranha while riding Shortcut Eagle. If it’s dropped on Eagle’s back just before the shortcut finishes, you can’t get your piranha again.

@OP: You can try digging up a bunny with the shovel and letting it kill you.

That said, I think that /gg would be an excellent addition for SAB. I’ve been in an awful situation once where I somehow got stuck INSIDE one of the stone blocks you can push around with the glove. I couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, and trying to dig up a bunny results in the bunny spawning OUTSIDE the block so it couldn’t see/target me and I was still stuck. I eventually had to leave and wasted the 2 hours I had spent in Pain Cliffs trib mode so far.

According to Gnashblade’s own blurb, these fishes came from Lake Doric. It’s possible that they got mutated somehow by the Bloodstone magic to be capable of surviving outside of water. (Although being fish, they probably don’t like it based on memory alone.) Still, the fact that the fish can “follow” you so energetically around out of water suggests to me that it’s perfectly fine and not hurt by being outside of water.

I’m hoping for World 3, but also prepared for there to be nothing but just doing dailies for more Kaiser skins. Love SAB though, so still thrilled to see it back!

I’m still waiting for ANet to introduce a way of acquiring the Triumphant Hero armor skins, along with a way to upgrade our Hero weapons to Mistforged weapons. How long has it been since the last WvW Tournament? More than 3 years, I think.

We used to have this, in the old Dire amulet (before it got reworked). Apparently it was deemed too powerful and got removed.

My experience of matchmaking this season is pretty similar to the last. It alternates between “win 1, lose 1, repeat” to “get on a X winning streak, then immediately get on a X losing streak”. I’m just coming off a two day losing streak after a one day winning streak, so if the pattern holds, tomorrow should be another one day winning streak.

TECHNICALLY, this means that the MM system is working and I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, but those losing streak days sure aren’t fun. :P

That’s a neat find! And yeah, I concur that it’s probably a leftover SFX trigger that got mistakenly left in after Halloween got removed.

At some point, ANet will no doubt have to take another look at the Legendary crafting setup. As others have pointed out, Gen1 Precursor prices have fallen quite a bit from their high of a few years ago. As the Gen2 Legendaries continue to roll out, and with potentially Gen3 Legendaries coming with future expansions, the “prestige” of Gen1 Legendaries will only fall further. Because there exist abundant uses for T5 – T7 mats in the game, demand for the T5- T7 mats will remain constant, but the supply of Precursors just continues to grow. Eventually it will reach a point where it will be universally cheaper to just buy the Precursors rather than craft them. And at that point, nobody will craft Precursors anymore.

I imagine this is a situation for ANet where they’ve said “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

The various achievements for the different PvP maps are permanent and here to stay. You can work on them at your leisure.

I haven’t paid much attention to the achievement for crossing into Legendary division, but I think that one is unique per season. As far as I know, they don’t repeat; if you missed any in past seasons, it’s gone forever.

Why exactly would PvP players (and by this I’m assuming pure PvP players who NEVER step into PvE) even NEED Ascended gear? Your entire game mode is capped at Exotic stats anyway, which come entirely from your amulet. If you want the Ardent Glorious skins, you can buy the skins alone with just Ascended Shards. No crafting needed. So just buy junk white armor from the vendor and slap the fancy skins on top with those Transmutation Charges that drop like rain for your game mode.

As for the argument about reducing rewards/pips for losses, be careful what you wish for. Sure, it would mean all the “farmers” leave again, but then you’re back to the old problem of having a tiny PvP player base where you end up facing the same enemy team over and over, or waiting for 30+ mins for a match only to end up getting crushed by 5 guys from Legendary division.

The whole point of drawing all those farmers in is the hope that some of them will stick around, learn, and progress to the higher divisions to help bolster numbers. The players who are less skilled and/or don’t want to improve should eventually cluster around in the lower divisions where they belong. (And frankly, if they’re only here for rewards and shinies, they won’t care what division they’re in as long as they’re still getting rewards at a reasonable pace.)

I’m still getting through my placement matches, but I’ve seen some obviously PvE builds so far, and I actually find it refreshing. There’s maybe only 1 or 2 meta builds per profession, and it gets so DULL knowing that every Ele you see is either going to be running the D/F Auramancer build (or rarely, the Fresh Air DPS build), or the Warrior is either going to be running Macebow condi or Mace/GS power burst. Right now, you never know what the other guy is going to pull out, and you’ll be forced to adapt and counterplay on the spot. I find that much more exciting and engaging than just reacting to common meta-builds.

That isn’t possible, moonstarmac. You could only acquire a maximum of 1300 Ascended Shards from last season. A full set requires 1400 Ascended Shards. Unless you’re also including other Ascended armor pieces you acquired from elsewhere.

Anyway, while I do think that the drastic reduction in Ascended Shards was excessive (and I wouldn’t mind seeing them get adjusted a bit higher), I think that if ANet intends this to be a sort of long-term reward to keep people playing PvP for longer, it’s probably exactly where they intended it to be.

+1 for this suggestion! It bugs me how the Oddity and Aberration have exactly the same icon. XD

It seems that now I’ve been hit with the same issue that Benawi and Globsb reported earlier. I can enter the queue, but it never seems to pop. Been waiting for over 7 mins now.

Hi Ray. The new build seems to have kicked us out, although now I can’t enter any other Unranked/Ranked PvP match. It says that a match is in progress. I can still enter Custom arenas via the server selection list. Just some more info for you to help troubleshooting.

I and everybody on both teams are stuck in our current match.

Amusing side note: If you’re doing the Quip collection, one of the things you need to do is throw confetti at the Pale Tree. If you do this, she immediately gets up and /threatens you. So don’t worry, she’s perfectly fine!

Gaile Gray.6029:

I agree with others: Canach is great. (I miss [that other Sylvari who shall not be named to avoid spoilers], though.

Trahearne resurrection confirmed!

The other big flaw with this achievement is that it requires you to do both the White Mantle AND the Skritt events, the latter of which requires the Defend Saidra’s Haven event to fail. And as veterans of the game know, any event in which you have to ask/beg other players to NOT complete an event immediately brings trolls who will complete the event just to spite you.

This achievement (along with the hidden Execute the Executioner achieve) needs to be reworked so that simply completing either version of the event will complete the achievement.

EDIT: I’ve heard that the Moonlighting achievement is also fairly difficult to get as it may be linked to the failure of another event to get it to spawn. Can anyone else shed any light on that claim?

2ND EDIT: OK, I managed to get the Moonlighting achievement and I can confirm that it is NOT linked to the success or failure of another event. The event starts about 10 mins after night falls, and then repeats after 20 mins, meaning that it will occur twice during a single night cycle.

There is, however, an apparent bug where not every player involved in the event will get credit for Moonlighting. The first time I was present for the event, I was there from start to finish and yet I never got the achievement while another player did. The 2nd try I got the achievement, also there from start to finish, but other players reported not getting it.

Sure, she does. She’s wearing those crazy expensive Invisible Shoes. You didn’t think the Queen would settle for common-man Ascended shoes, did you?

It should be fixed now, I believe. Mine were displaying properly a few hours ago.

I would like to see Ascended amulets drop from Fractals, actually. It’s the one and only Ascended component that you can’t obtain from playing Fractals alone.

While I’m glad to hear that there’s new content coming, I have to say I’m a little surprised at ANet’s chosen solution to address it. A new (tough?) group-content farm? Why not simply adjust down the number of Thick Leather Sections needed to make squares from 4 to 3, and then give us the ability to directly salvage karma items? Need leather of any tier? Just go to the appropriate level map, find a vendor, and buy his stuff for salvage. You can already kind of do this by buying the items, mystic forging them, and then salvaging the result, but not many people do this because a) not everybody has access to a Mystic Forge Conduit and so buying the items and lugging them back to LA is too time-consuming for most players, and b) all that clicking gets annoying. Like, SUPER annoying.

I honestly can’t really see much drawback to this method. Sure, you would get a ton of Minor Runes/Sigils this way, but nearly all Minor upgrades are already languishing at vendor price anyway. A jump in the amount of Luck being produced could be addressed by giving us a Luck-eating gizmo for players who already have maxed out Luck. And with the change to dailies giving players 2g every day, I feel that newbie players wouldn’t really be hampered by a drop in lower-tier mat prices. At 2g a day, a newbie player could easily afford to outfit a character in Exotic gear in a week or so, and that gear would suffice to take them through 95% of the game’s content (excluding only high-level Fractals and raids).

Finally, make it so that salvaging Exotics always gives back T6 mats. There are lots of Exotic armor pieces on the TP that are close to Rares in price, simply because there’s no real use for them.

As a final note, I’m still waiting for that update that introduces new material storage slots. Any word on when that will arrive?

I think the high price of Mystic Coins is a problem inasmuch as it is causing the same issue last time that caused ANet to implement the salvageable Ectos update; the lack of it is proving a big enough obstacle that it is turning players away from end-game sinks. The difference here is that Mystic Coins aren’t used for as many uses as Crystalline Dust is, and the high price of Coins may be seen as beneficial on ANet’s part as they help to suck out gold from the economy during trades.

ANet’s basic stance on AFK farming is this: To be eligible for in-game rewards, they expect you to be present at the computer actively playing the game. If what you are doing is still giving you rewards, even though you are providing no input whatsoever, then it is not permitted and you can face punishment for it.

My main beef with afk farmers is that they tend to scale up the events, making it harder for genuine players trying to complete the event while getting little to no help from the afk players.

Yeah, the various munchers do a fairly good job of keeping the 3 Ascended common mats under control, although Empyreal will still strain your bank a bit if you do a lot of BFF chest farming.

I’m more surprised that they didn’t release a 3rd Sentient muncher that eats both Bloodstone Dust and Empyreal Fragments with Crack in the Ice.

YES, we NEED a “Repeat last combination” button. Forging a bunch of Lodestones for some of the more expensive weapons is a real killer on my finger and my mouse. >.<

Why would PvP players even NEED Ascended armor in the first place? :P Their entire game mode is capped at Exotic tier anyway.

Obviously ANet put the limit at 1200 Ascended Shards because they didn’t want players to get Ascended armor via PvP too quickly. As it is, it’s ALREADY the cheapest and fastest way to get Ascended armor, when you compare it to the random nature of Fractals, the slow grind from raids, or the extremely expensive and time-gated PvE crafting method. By spreading it over 2 seasons, it at least doesn’t outpace the other methods by too much.

Perhaps ANet should go in the other direction and make the dungeon mobs EASIER. Currently the perceived problem is that it’s not worth spending time to kill Elite mobs that hit fairly hard (although I’ve always thought this is largely a fault of the zerker meta) and give mediocre loot, if any. So why not make it more appealing to kill those mobs? Reduce all Elites to Veterans, all Champs to Elites and all Legendary foes to Champs unless they are of noteworthy nature. (For instance, Lupicus should always be a Legendary foe.) The final boss at the end of a path will always be a Legendary foe.

With the arrival of elite specs and HoT builds, coupled with more widely available Ascended gear, my experience has been that just one or two good players can easily carry a group of non-80 newbies. This change should mean that good teams can tear through the hordes of Vet mobs in seconds, while providing a decent challenge for PvE players who are just starting to try out the dungeon/Fractal scene.

I support this change, perhaps via a MF recipe similar to how you can change the stats of the other cosmetic infusions.

I see what you’re saying, but I think that players who are afking just to get pips should be punished by bans (and ANet needs to act faster on such reports) rather than removing the pips from losses. The issue of “bad players not learning” will solve itself once enough of them drop down into Bronze and stay there. (Alternatively, ANet should just bring back Solo Queues and Team Queues. Make the rewards the same for each, and all the players who want a genuine PvP experience should do Team Queues. Those just in it for rewards should stay in Solo Queues.)

I adhere very strongly to the design principle that players should always be able to make progress towards their goals, even on failures. This is doubly so when progress on your goals is hampered by factors outside of your control, like random teammates of unknown skill. I don’t know if you were around back when the Marionette was first introduced, but that was the first time that I really saw toxicity in GW2 start to rear its head. If the map succeeded, everything was great. If it failed, hoo boy, the insults and blame game that would follow… Having a system whereby players can still feel like they didn’t completely “waste their time” is crucial for helping to prevent this.

FrostDraco.8306:

However with how easy they are the farm now (HoT stats included), this isnt too much of an issue. It would water down drop rates tbh. We already have too many asc amulets tied to collections that are not salvagable.

If you’re talking about the ones from the HoT/Order collections that can’t be salvaged, I agree. Why aren’t they salvageable?? I don’t need 3 separate copies of Crusader/Marauder stat amulets; they’re just taking up space in my bank.

The main reason why I want Ascended amulets to drop from Fractals is so we can pull the price for Salvaged Excellence back into parity with the other Legendary salvaged essences. I actually get the feeling that something is bugged with the Ascended amulet salvage rate; I have acquired at least 3 or 4 of each of the others (except Ascended Rings), but despite salvaging well over 100 amulets by now, I still have not seen a single Salvaged Excellence. I have the suspicion that it uses the same drop rate as the Salvaged Brilliance item from rings, but where Rings was given the low drop rate due to the fact that they drop very frequently from Fractals, the same is not true of Amulets, resulting in an artificially inflated price. I really wish there was a way I could bring this to a dev’s attention and get them to look into it.

ANet, would it possible to have guild buffs revert to the original system where all of the guild buffs earned by your guild are constantly active? It’s annoying to have to return to your guild hall in between activities to switch your buff, and frustrating when you’re an hour into a PvP/WvW binge only to realize that you’ve forgotten to swap guild buffs before starting.

Alas, I’m on NA servers or I’d love to join up.

It would cut down a lot on demand, because players who like the aura no longer need to obtain one for each of their armor sets. In the short term, prices would be kept high due to collectors, but over time a “one and done” system eventually leads to fall in prices, as what happened with dyes (see what happened to the price of Celestial, Abyss and Shadow Abyss after easy ways to obtain them were introduced) and to (non-gold) miniatures. (In the case of dyes, the only thing keeping the price of Common and Uncommon dyes at a fair level is the fact that you can Forge them to get random other dyes, including Rares.)

Despite that, I wouldn’t be UPSET if infusions/auras got switched to a wardrobe system. (I think the Wardrobe was the best feature of GW2 ever introduced, even over autoloot.) I’m just thinking about how such a change might affect the high-end markets with respect to the economy.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Only one problem with your comparison between last four seasons and this season, the rewards aren’t tied behind Division like they were in the first four seasons, as long as you keep winning in ranked you get rewards regardless of your division you are in this seasons, you should never be rewarded for losing period.

Pips no longer determine Division so no pip loss is needed pips are there for rewards only nothing else.

But if that’s the case, then why would these players continue to play Ranked when they could simply do Unranked or Hotjoin instead? The simple (perhaps sad, depending on your point of view) truth is that players will ALWAYS gravitate to whatever gives them the best rewards for the least amount of time. If there are no shinies to motivate them, or if the effort to obtain them is deemed too high, they will simply abandon the area and never return. (For a good example, look at what happened to Dungeons after the reward nerf.)

The reason why ANet is even adding these rewards in the first place is to entice more players into PvP, which is probably the mode most starved for players, if matches during off-season are any indicator. (You tend to get the same players match after match.) Giving competitive players challenging, varied and fair matches is only possible if there’s a large PvP base to begin with. Without it, you end up with people in top divisions queueing for hours before a match, or highly skilled players getting matched against people far lower than them and stomping all over the competition. (Which is not satisfying for competitive players and not fun for the losing players who never had a chance.) This eventually breeds boredom and/or frustration, players quit to look for a better experience elsewhere, and it starts a domino-effect that can be nearly impossible to escape from, resulting in the death of the game mode.

You will get on average about 10g a day if you do T4 Fractals daily. This is taking into account the junk items from the Encryptions, selling any spare Encryptions, and selling the Stabilizing Matrices if you don’t use them yourself. You also get a fair amount of T5 mats, which you can promote to T6 and sell for more loot.

There’s also the odd chances for Ascended drops as well. Not often, but it does happen. In fact, my main beef with Fractals at the moment is that Ascended amulets don’t drop from Fractals. You can get just about every single piece of Ascended equipment simply by doing Fractals, EXCEPT amulets.

ANet needs to do another reward balance pass over the HoT maps. AB multi-loot is popular partly because it’s highly rewarding, but the other half of the issue is that the other maps are woefully UNrewarding for the time and energy you have to put into them.

1. Verdant Brink deserves a special mention for having a loot system setup that actually works against the meta. You need to have everybody spread out defending camps and doing events, but night time is ALSO the best time for you to go Cargo hunting, because all of the map’s cargoes will have spawned by then. As such, your choice is either to work towards the meta, or go get rewards, and since there’s no real special reward for scoring high in the VB meta (the Bladed Chest box is not an enticing enough reward), most players will opt to go Cargo hunting instead.

2. AB I feel has a nice balance between rewards and effort/time spent. I don’t multi-map myself, and I still feel nicely rewarded just from opening all the chests below Tarir. Once ANet fixes the multi-map, I think people will still do AB regularly, just maybe not as hardcore farmable as before.

3. TD is by far the hardest meta of the HoT maps, in my opinion. It’s the only one that I still see fail on a regular basis. To top it off, the reward you get for completing it successfully is rather dismal. You get one Chak Egg plus assorted loot from the Gerent chest, and then 8 Crystal Supply Caches that, frankly, you could get far more simply by wandering around the map opening caches you come across. The loot from the Gerent chest needs to be beefed up by a lot (it should give a minimum of 5 Chak Eggs each time, for instance. Those things are hard to farm now!), and perhaps something like “Grand Crystal Caches” need to be added for completing each of the camps, and for successfully completing the meta.

4. DS will probably continue to remain populated as the only source for Crystalline Ore in the game, but I think that the Noxious Pods do need a bit of love as far as loot is concerned. You can get WAAAAY more blues and greens doing chest runs in the Silverwastes or Bitterfrost Frontier, and once you’ve farmed all the Crystalline Ore you need, there’s really no reason to ever return to DS, not when you can get much better loot from the other HoT maps.

5. Finally, there needs to be new sinks for the various map special trophies, ESPECIALLY Airship Oil. Seriously, those things only have ONE sink, and that’s for making Fulgurite. Yet you get tons and tons of it from opening Cargoes. My proposal is to add 3 more tabs to the Ley-Energy Converter; you purchase them by spending 250 of each type of item (Airship Oil, Auric Dust, or Ley-Energy Sparks) at a vendor in the appropriate map.

Once unlocked, each day you can spend some of the matching trophies to purchase various rewards, ranging from other map trophies (probably something like 25 of one type for 5 of another), to Heavy Crafting Bags and Lodestone Bags, to (rarely) valuable trophies like Reclaimed Metal Plates and Chak Eggs.

The Auric weapons can at least be forged, but I agree. They SHOULD be salvageable. It’s not like they give any kind of special reward over existing Exotics (and Exotics themselves are almost starting to go the way of Rares; they’re not viewed as being particularly noteworthy drops any more, unless they’re Precursors).

One other item set that needs to get looked at is the various HoT Elite-Spec armors (like the Dragonhunter’s Gauntlet, Tempest’s Loop etc.) which not only can’t be salvaged, but they can’t be forged OR sold. So if you already have Ascended gear, your reward for completing that achievement is an item that you can only destroy, because it’s utterly useless. Doesn’t that sound absolutely insane to you??

Another similar item are the Ascended amulets you get for completing the various Order armor/weapon collections. For some bizarre reason, these Amulets can’t be salvaged, and I don’t need 3 separate Crusader/Marauder stat Ascended amulets. Why can’t I salvage them for more chances at the (ridiculously) expensive Salvaged Excellence?

Thumbs up for this suggestion! I’d also like the Koda’s Warmth enrichment to get converted to an infusion (probably a statted version, given the high cost of making it) too. I think the effect would look amazing on my Charr Warrior (especially with his black/red colour scheme), but I don’t need a 15% karmic boost when I’m already swimming in 10 million karma (yes, you read that right) and I would rather keep my Gilded enrichment.

That said, I agree that we definitely need some kind of option that allows us to toggle infusions and auras on/off. I’m not sure if I’d go as far as making it wardrobe-based, however, since that would essentially kill the market for things like the Winter’s Heart and other cosmetic infusions.