Guild Wars 2

I have to say that the above post is quite similar to my own experiences thus far. With me, I seem to be trapped in mid-Silver (not that I really mind, since I always expected to be a Silver player, maaaaaybe Gold, at best). Like you, I’ll get on a winstreak that carries me all the way up to high Silver, once tantalizingly close to Gold, and then I’ll get a losing streak that drags me all the way back down to mid-Silver, sometimes teetering on the edge of low-Silver. It’s happened twice now, and from speaking to another guildie who’s in high-Silver, low-Gold, this is his exact same experience too.

Speaking for myself, I think the move to give pips even on a loss was a FANTASTIC move. One of the big problems with the old seasons was that, once you’d reached as high as you could go, there wasn’t any more point to playing Ranked PvP, because you weren’t getting any rewards for your time aside from the stock standard reward tracks (and then you might as well just go play Unranked or Hotjoin). This meant that as the Season went on, more and more players left until numbers were so thin by the end of the Season that you could wind up facing the exact same people match after match. (If you thought Player X was a terrible player, hoo boy, are you gonna HATE getting put on his team for 5 games in a row!)

Sure, maybe this means that you attract a bunch of players who aren’t exactly inspired to give it their all each match, but logically, as time goes on, these players should fall down the ranks and cluster in Bronze or low Silver, where they can play against other players who similarly aren’t really bothered about losing. Meanwhile, the players who genuinely care about winning should (in theory) wind up on the higher divisions because they care enough to practice and refine their builds. As the people who are blase about PvP fall lower, you should wind up getting matched with people who are more like you in terms of skill and dedication.

That’s not to say I don’t believe there are genuine problems with matchmaking (I hate blowout matches as much as the next guy, and I really do wonder what’s going on behind the code that results in some simply astounding blowouts like 500-50), but I still believe that ditching the “pips on loss” system would only do more harm than good.

Why dodge them? With HoT builds and Ascended gear, it’s often just as fast to melt them down than run past them. Gets you more loot too.

I still think a lot of this angst would be better if there were Solo Queues and Team Queues, and never the two shall meet. If you’re interested in climbing the ladder, play Team Queues (which you can also enter solo). If you’re more interested in just playing for fun/rewards like me, then stick to Solo Queue.

I generally don’t mind the little blubberballs. I just wish they’d take less baths. :P And stop griping at me for not killing the Icebrood fast enough! Maybe get off your rumps and actually HELP me fight them off instead of sitting there complaining?

Yeah, it’s extremely frustrating, but it can be done. Aurene’s breath attack takes off about 2/3 of the boss’s health, so as long as you can keep the boss from regaining health past 50 or 60%, Aurene can kill it in two passes. The thing to note is that all of the boss’s attacks steal health; you can’t do much about the unavoidable spin attack, but try and stay away from your pets so that the boss’s normal attacks don’t steal life from them as well.

I agree that the encounter failed to take into account pet-builds though. Not ANet’s best design moment.

Isn’t the whole point of the new divisions to filter out people into their “proper” place based on their skill? I seem to have basically stabilized around mid Silver (which is where I was expecting to be), and while I still get blowout matches from time to time, on the whole I find myself facing players roughly around my same skill level.

The one time I dropped down to Bronze early in the season though… Man, that was an eye-opener. There were teams who never bothered capping home, a lot of off-point fighting, some truly bizarre builds (like a vanilla Warrior who basically just camped Longbow), and there was even one guy who I’m certain wasn’t even wearing an amulet, based on how fast he died against me (and I’m not running the burstiest of builds). How such a player even made it to Dolyak rank is beyond me!

As an AP hunter myself (but one who fully realizes that he will never place in the top 250), I’ve made my peace with not being able to unlock these achievements. (I already missed a bunch of AP from previous PvP seasons as I never managed to make it to Legendary.) It would be nice if these achievements just awarded titles with no AP, but at the end of the day it’s not a big deal to me.

The only reason I’m even farming AP is because I like collecting skins, and I want to have the full Radiant/Hellfire sets one day, including the backpacks.

That IS a sign of bad matchmaking. If the entire red team was so terrible, they should not be matched up against clearly superior opponents. It would be like throwing a team of all Ambers against a team of all Legendaries in Ranked. At the very least, the MM should randomize the teams so that each team has a balance of “good” players and “bad” players.

Guess I’ll be using my Mesmer for this achievement then. Temporal Curtain + Gravity Well.

GoldenTruth.2853:

If you didn’t know already you can jump over the orbs without taking damage.

Can you really?? Huh. That would definitely make the fight a lot easier. I must try that out the next time I’m in Nightmare.

Cheers for the answers.

Unfortunately I must concur with this. MM in Unranked is a real crapshoot. Sometimes you’ll get decently balanced teams, but just as often you’ll get complete blowouts where one team clearly never had a chance.

It’s the Potions vendor.

I don’t know yet either, but I would love to know the answer to this too. I’ve gotten 2/4 of the base skins so far, and I’d like to know if I need to hang on to them or if I can just trash them.

Yep, all of the above! If you already have all 3 Infinite potions, and have the relics to spare (hint: convert a bunch of your otherwise useless Pristine Relics), it’s definitely worth the upgrade.

It would be really cool if the Marionette got brought back as a World Boss, and as part of the fight, you got to fight the Watchwork minions again.

Wait, there’s a Challenge Mote for 100? O.o What does it do?

A “Gold-Fed Salvage-o-Matic” perhaps? Costs 1g per use, and functions similarly to a permanent Black Lion Salvage Kit, EXCEPT that removing the upgrade from an Ascended/Legendary item will NOT destroy the original item. Using it on Exotics and below still destroys the item (and returns Ecto/Dark Matter as normal).

To avoid making the Infusion Extractor irrelevant, the Gold-Fed does not remove infusions; only upgrades.

It originally wasn’t showing up for me either, but the hotfix patch that was released shortly after today’s reset fixed it for me. I purchased the Petrified Wood node and it showed up properly in my instance.

I think that something about the drop rate of the Salvaged Excellence seems to be off. Why is it almost 10 times more expensive than the next closest one (the backpack)? I can understand why the ones dropped from the weapons/armor/rings/accessories would be far cheaper, since those items drop directly from Fractals and dozens, if not hundreds, are salvaged every day. But the backpacks also do not drop, and yet they are so much cheaper than the amulet!

I personally have salvaged probably close to 100 Ascended amulets by now (mostly bought from the WvW vendor), and nothing. In contrast, I’ve gotten at least 3-4 of the ones from the armor/weapons and accessories. It makes me wonder if perhaps something about the drop rate is broken; does it only drop from SPECIFIC types of amulets? (e.g. the ones from WvW have ZERO chance to drop it?) Maybe someone at ANet should look into this just to double-check.

As an aside, I’ve also salvaged over 100 Ascended rings so far and have never gotten the ring drop at all. Remember that, at the time this collection was introduced, Ascended rings dropped like rain from Fractals. So logically the salvage rate for rings would be far less. I have a feeling that maybe the amulet was accidentally given the same salvage rate as the rings, when it should be matching the other items.

I already have all the achievements, but I wanted to chime in and say that this is a GREAT change! I really, REALLY hate time-gated achievements; it creates a lot of unnecessary stress and it also tends to foster strife and toxic behaviour between players; one group just wants to work on their achievements and gets fed up when they get another map (essentially meaning that the next 10-15 mins of their time is a total waste) and the other group is sick and tired of playing the same map over and over, or of players that are obviously tailoring their PvP behaviour to maximise their chances of getting achievements (best example: players who just sit on a point to defend it and NEVER leave it), at the price of screwing over their team because they’re not playing at their best.

So thank you for this decision, Gaile, and I hope that any future PvP achievements will be here to stay permanently.

My first reaction to a 100 Nightmare: “And I thought the new Swamp was tough! O.o”

Still, I would give this new Fractal a thumbs-up as well. The lead-up encounters are fun, diverse, and they’re well explained enough that even a group of first-timers was able to figure out what they needed to do fairly quickly.

I think that Ensolyss’ health might need some toning down, although I’ll reserve my judgment on that until after people are more familiar with his fight. I think that two areas could also do with a bit of tweaking:

1. His shockwave attack can be a bit difficult to dodge since there’s not a lot of lead time, which makes it especially hard for people with higher latency. Perhaps give Ensolyss about another 1/4 second charge-up time before he does this attack.

2. The 33% orb phase is incredibly punishing. Reflects don’t work against the orb projectiles, and again, players with higher latency are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to trying to avoid the projectiles since they often aren’t where your screen shows them to be. I’m still brainstorming tactics and skills that might make this phase more manageable, but so far, the combination of high damage + Agony + greatly reduced movement space (due to the tighter circle) + shockwaves is a lot to endure.

And now for my fellow players, what are tips/tactics you can share for the orb phases? I know for a fact that reflects do not work against the projectiles, but apparently blocks do (which means that skills like Shield Stance, Counterattack, and Shield of Courage should all help in giving you breathing space). Invulnerability skills should obviously also be a big help. I was also considering that maybe it might be better for the party to stick together and cap one circle at a time, since you can share heals and blocks. (However, I’m unsure if the floor AoE’s would clump up, which would render this strategy useless.)

My list:

1. Doubloons! This has been sorely lacking since launch.
2. Blade Shards
3. Shimmering/Tenebrous Crystals
4. Reclaimed Metal Plates and Chak Eggs (to go with Auric Ingots)
5. Bloodstone Rubies and Petrified Wood
6. Amalgamated Gemstones
7. Lesser Vision Crystals/Vision Crystals
8. Milling Basins/Crystalline Bottles
9. Philosopher’s Stones/Mystic Crystals/Mystic Forge Stones (maybe? Not as urgent priority since these are usually bought when they’re needed)
10. Golden Fractal Relics
11. Legendary Insights (I don’t raid, but these sound like they should be added. They could also be added to the Currency Wallet, similar to Pristine Fractal Relics)

I doubt we’d see Paper get put in there since they’re kind of like intermediate crafting items. Wouldn’t object to them being included though.

As much as I’d like to see slots added for stuff like Indigo Mushrooms, Purple Potatoes etc. I understand that these only show up for people doing specific Legendary collections and thus won’t be an issue for many players, so I’m willing to leave those out.

Someone also mentioned getting a “tonic wardrobe”, which I definitely support! Any endless tonic you use can be added in there, and double-clicking it just fires off the same script that normally gets called when you activate the tonic. One-use tonics get added to a usable pool similar to the Scarecrow/Mad King finishers.

Finally, I don’t know if this is your department, Lindsey, but could we possibly get more uses for things like Ley-Line Sparks, Piles of Auric Dust and (ESPECIALLY) Bottles of Airship Oil? We get tons and tons and TONS of these, but there are barely any sinks for them. I think this could be done by giving us 3 new essences we can purchase from the HoT map vendors for 250 of the appropriate trophies, which then unlocks a new tab in our Ley-Energy Matter Converter that lets us purchase trade trophies for another map, or potentially allows us to buy things like Freshwater Pearls, Maguuma Lilies, Reclaimed Metal Plates/Auric Ingots/Chak Eggs (rare showing in the tab) and so forth.

I’ve heard some guildies claim he only shows up at certain times of the day (day/night cycle perhaps?) Unsure if this is true though. He was there when I went to LA about 30 mins after reset.

Blame ANet making the achievements in Unranked only. Every AP hunter and their dog is in there right now grinding the achieves. In fact, I’ve got the opposite problem! 7 or 8 people will vote for Coliseum, including me, and then the stupid RNG circle picks Foefire, Skyhammer or another map. It’s absolutely infuriating. It’s just wasting my time and a bunch of other people’s time. Imagine if you were doing Fractals, dungeons or raids, and then the game would randomly pick which Fractal, dungeon or raid boss you were doing. At best, you get annoyed players. At worst, you get leavers.

ANet, learn your lesson this time. If you must make another bunch of time-gated PvP achieves, let them be achievable in Hotjoin as well. That way, all the AP hunters can do their business in peace, the serious PvP’ers don’t have to deal with us, and nobody’s time is wasted.

The best way to farm karma quickly is to do Fractals with karma boosts on. I’ve eased back on my Fractal dailies, but before I used to hit all 3 T4 dailies along with the 2 numbered and it will give you at least 20k+ karma all-up.

But if you’re specifically after Obsidian Shards, then yes, chest farming in SW is probably a much more rewarding (monetarily speaking) process for obtaining them. I also do PvP/WvW and get some Obsidian from that, along with the Karmic Converter that I use whenever I see Large Bags of Obsidian for sale.

It’s possible that the TM in BSF also has a daily chance to drop the Invisible shoes, although that thing is so rare that I can’t be sure anyone’s actually gotten it from the TM in BSF yet.

Shared slots went on sale today, so I’m just waiting for Bank slots now.

You are guaranteed a machined component from the final chest at the end of the DS meta (the one that looks like the Mouth of Mordremoth). If you have multiple collections going, only one component will drop per completion of the meta.

Otherwise, you have a small chance to get a machined component from hacking open Noxious Pods with machetes.

If they do introduce a new race (and I hope they will), I’m 90% certain that it will be the Tengu. They were originally slated to be the 6th playable race at launch, but got cut due to lack of time. They already have a capital city of their own, have a distinct and unique model and culture (one reason why I don’t think Kodan would be a good idea is that they’re too similar thematically to the Norn, both of them being big, physically powerful arctic-dwelling beings), and unlike some of the other races, they presumably have the numbers and the resources to contribute to a global fight against the Elder Dragons and other world-spanning threats.

As for the Personal Story, I suspect a 6th race would have its own Personal Story, tied to a big trip to Cantha or Elona that all the races can play through. Think of it as something similar to Factions or Nightfall, where new characters (in this case the new race) gets to play some early missions before starting the level 80 content, which is also where all existing characters join in.

Freshwater Pearls also drop rarely from keyless chests in the HoT maps. Maguuma Lilies do not.

I agree though that the VB and TD metas should give 1 Pearl and Lily for successful completion, as they are needed for the respective insignias/inscriptions sold in that map. Why this wasn’t done is a mystery to me.

There isn’t one? Nice! Means I don’t have to bother trying to grind my way up the divisions this season.

Technically, yes, all of those farming/daily servers fall under “Match Manipulation” and shouldn’t be allowed. However, at the same time ANet’s not going to shut them down because they’re private arenas and whatever the owner wants to do in them is their business. If they do take action, then all those duel servers and guild training servers also need to go, because those aren’t “proper matches” either (which is defined as 5v5 Conquest or Stronghold).

So long story short, ANet’s not going to shut down the daily farm arenas, but they also won’t take action against the trolls. Best thing to do is to contact the private arena’s owner and tell them to block the troll player from entering that arena.

I’m resisting the urge to say “Get more Toughness and stunbreaks, yo”. XD My builds are always more of a hybrid between DPS (whether Power or Condi) and survivability, and while Bloomhunger hits really hard now, I can usually still survive it long enough to get away and heal.

I will agree that it’s extremely difficult to run melee against him though. The bonus Champ Oakheart that spawns at T4 with its additional CC attacks doesn’t help. On my Warrior I usually just swap to Rifle and stay on that throughout the entire fight.

I want a full Toxic Armor set. I don’t care if it’s gemstore only, my Sylvari needs one!

Another QOL suggestion. Can we return to the old method of guild boosts where all the guild boosts your guild has unlocked are permanently applied to your character? It’s really annoying to have to revisit your guild hall and swap boosts whenever you go to a different game mode. I’m constantly forgetting to do so until I end up deep into a PvP or WvW session and then realizing that I still have my “Map Bonus” boost on.

I gambled just enough to complete the achievement and get the Delivery Portal. I ended up coming out slightly ahead, so I called that a win. I’ve never given that greedy Skritt any more ectos since. :P

As someone who grinded his way to Salty Sea Dog in Unranked, I would still support this. It would DEFINITELY result in “farm maps” for the achieves, but I don’t really see that as a bad thing, for the following reasons:

1. It keeps the achievements hunters and the “serious PvP’ers” separate. I’ve seen many complaints from the latter about having people on their team who are obviously trying to farm Maritime Defender by just bunkering on a point and refusing to ever leave it. Or who just engage in a slugfest at the Bell that’s going nowhere when the enemy Thief has decapped all of their points.

2. It stops “trolls” who pick other maps when the majority have voted for Capricorn. Granted, these players may have picked other maps because they’re just sick and tired of playing Capricorn, but now you have 6+ angry players who are “wasting their time” in a match they don’t want to play because they want to work on Capricorn achievements. At best, you have disgruntled players. At worst, you get leavers.

3. Because the majority of players in Capricorn are there for achieves, you’re not really getting a good representation of player behaviour in the map, because it’s skewed towards activity that will help progress achievements (see: bunkering on a point). This means that if ANet is studying map results for how people operate in Capricorn, you’re not really getting good data about it.

Hesacon.8735:

People do dungeons? It took me days to grind out the 5 runs I needed for currency to make my legendary because the LFG was deserted and my parties took forever to fill. Even then the loot was terrible for the time investment vs. HoT maps.

I’m not saying dungeons are deserted, but they’re pretty close.

Yeah, they’re largely deserted because as you pointed out, the time>reward ratio they offer is woefully small compared to what the AB multimap or SW runs can get you. But if you try doing a particular dungeon on the day when it’s the daily, you’ll usually get lots of groups, and the vast majority of those groups don’t bother with any requirements, yet they still complete it in a reasonable amount of time.

Agreed! I remember back during launch when I could pretty much take my time ambling across the maps, taking in the sights, talking to every single NPC with a name, and only occasionally having to fight for my life when I wandered into obviously dangerous locations like an animal den or a bandit cave.

With the new maps, it’s like the whole place is PACKED with enemies who want me dead (and in the case of the Knights, aggro from YUGE distances away). There’s usually a meta or event chain going on so it’s RUNRUNRUN from event to event, no time to stop, once an event is down get to the next one or you’ll miss out on LOOOOOOT!

It’s exhausting, frankly. I can only handle it in small doses before I need to go do something else.

I definitely like the idea of r500 Cooking, although I think it could be made much more useful than that. Here’s my idea:

1. Quadruple Stat Food – Dishes that are crafted at 450 onwards give two major bonuses and 2 minor ones. There’s no need to create entirely new recipes for this tier either; there are a lot of r400 foods that would make for good candidates to be elevated to r450+. For example, the recipes from the Molten dungeon (most of which require large amounts of ingredients as well as subsidiary dishes), recipes from Southsun, Dry Top and the Silverwastes and the new HoT recipes. It would help give more sinks to the otherwise unwanted tons of Passionfruit, Nopal, Sawgill Mushrooms and Cassava Roots that are available on the TP.

2. Perma Stat-Boosting Elixirs – At r500 Chef you gain the ability to craft Elixirs, which give a small permanent stat boost to the character that drinks them (say, maybe 20 points). Each character can only benefit from each type of Elixir once, and each Elixir requires an enormous amount of base ingredients to craft. For example, there could be an “Essence of Berries”, which requires 250 Blueberries, 250 Strawberries, 250 Blackberries and 250 Raspberries. This is then further combined with 250 Omnomberries and a few other ingredients to create the Elixir.

Elixirs themselves can be sold on the TP, which gives Chefs a nice new potential revenue stream.

I agree that the Knights are pretty ridiculous with their long-range homing rocks. Please tone them down, ANet.

Raids are having the same problem now as dungeons did when the game originally launched. People have found a method that works, that method has become the meta, and absolutely nobody is willing to experiment otherwise because people would rather not waste time on something that will likely fail.

That said, you’ll notice now that dungeons have basically become a “All welcome” game feature. What changed? Power creep and HoT builds, basically. The average level of DPS+survivability has gone up quite a lot with the arrival of Ascended gear and elite specializations. It means that just one or two good players can easily carry the rest of the party, and so the need for meta team builds is now almost non-existent.

Now, I’d argue that this is actually a GOOD change for dungeons, because it opens up more game content to players who previously weren’t able to experience it for themselves, prolonging game longevity. I’d like to see raids receive the same sort of treatment, probably by introducing an “Easy mode” for raids where things like the Enrage timer are disabled (the standard “Hard mode” can be buffed to give additional rewards so that players who can do the higher difficulty setting can earn more in a shorter period of time. See Fractals for how this worked INCREDIBLY well.)

I’m from Brisbane, and yeah, my average ping hovers around 220. (My ISP is Telstra Cable.) It makes some adventures an absolute nightmare to run, thanks to things like rubberbanding after movement skills, landing on bouncing mushrooms and the mushrooms failing to fire, or just teensy bits of skill lag that, while individually minor, add up to be almost 5 – 10 seconds of lost time across the entire adventure.

After many, many hours of grueling frustration, I did eventually get Gold on all the adventures (so it CAN be done, but unless you’re a completionist nut like me I wouldn’t say it was worth the stress), but I would still urge ANet to add in some more time leeway to make it fairer for those players who are operating under severe latency.

It’s essentially just an ultra-rare vanity item. It seems that all such items (including the Queen Bee) have the same super-low drop rate. It’s just that Silverwastes is hyper-farmed and has been around for a lot longer and so there’s more supply floating around.

Not sure if this idea has been raised already, but I would like a Tonic Wardrobe, similar to what we have for the finishers. How I foresee it working:

1. Every single transformation tonic in the game gets its own entry, from Town Clothes to Nuhoch Stompers to the Fractal tonic. Double-clicking on the tonic’s entry essentially just calls the same script that normally fires when you double-click on a tonic.

2. When you acquire an unlimited tonic, the matching tonic entry in the wardrobe is unlocked, and you can thereafter use the tonic as many times as you’d like just by opening the Tonic Wardrobe and double-clicking the transformation you want. If the tonic is instead a once-off tonic (like the old Wintersday tonics), you can right-click on the tonic (stack) and add it to your wardrobe, after which the entry decrements by one every time you use it. This works similarly to the Wintersday and Halloween limited use finishers.

3. All transformations are subject to the same restrictions as they are now. As such, certain transformations may be not available in WvW or PvP.

Just an idea here. What if we made it impossible for someone to PM another player unless that recipient player already has you on their Friend list? (Or, for a less harsh version, sending such messages will cost you a small amount of coin, like 1 silver.) In either approach, it would stop cold spamming in its tracks because the vast majority of gold spammer bots these days are clearly throwaway accounts that were created for that purpose, meaning that nobody would have them on their FL. And in the second approach, given that the bots must spam a ridiculous number of people each day, spending 1 silver each time would rapidly add up and eat into the gold they have to sell. They’re not going to continue doing something that’s basically destroying their profits every time they do it.

I don’t think such changes would impact real players too much. In my experience, people who take things directly to PMs tend to be players with an axe to grind in PvP. And personally, them not being able to PM me is only a positive. If you need to make contact with someone new, there’s always /say or /map chat.

All it needs is one simple change: If a player clicks “No”, they exit the match immediately.

Note that a lot of “night time” events actually spawn BEFORE the sky actually turns dark completely. Check the Day/Night timer on the Wiki and make sure you’re at the event’s start location at that time. It’s possible that when you arrived at night, someone had already completed the event before you. (Quite common with the Lady in White event, since it’s short and quick.)