Guild Wars 2

What are you playing? PvE? PvP/WvW? If the latter, Longbow is by far the most popular due to the various meta-builds.

If you’re playing PvE, use whichever suits your fancy. My Charr Warrior uses rifle purely because it suits him from a RP perspective. (Love the little roar he does when he uses Volley.)

That graveyard is for non-Norn who happen to have died in Hoelbrak though, I believe. I remember visiting there long ago after launch and all of the graves there belonged to humans and other races.

I got extra rewards for doing my usual WvW activities, so yes, I did enjoy it.

The tournament really showcased the problems with server imbalances during some match-ups though.

I like the overall idea (and I’d love to be able to complete my Mistforged Weapon collection faster), but I think it would run contrary to ANet’s idea of using the tickets as hooks to increase WvW participation during tournaments.

I also kinda like the idea of turning Badges into tickets, but perhaps it needs a gold fee along with it to stop people from acquiring other stuff like Obsidian, Dragonite or WXP too quickly.

This weekend had a special bonus where rewards were increased. Of course you’re going to get a flood of newbies who haven’t PvP’ed before. Take it in stride.

I want Tengu, Skritt and Krait/Naga as playable races.

I think that Krait/Naga are still doable. They can “jump” by coiling their tails underneath themselves and using it like a spring. The biggest difficulty would come with designing leggings/boots for them due to their lack of legs, but it could be changed to trunk/tail sections, and just wrap an armor texture around them (with some ridges or spurs or tassels for decoration).

More importantly, there is a huge variation of appearances between different krait, and you can easily tell male and female krait apart.

I think he’s asking how the various spirits/demons that make up the armies of the Gods get formed. To that, I think that it varies. In some cases, they are formed from the souls of the deceased (Balthazar’s Eternals are obviously drawn from the souls of valiant worshippers).

In some cases, they are living (or dead) creatures that happen to dwell in the Mists, such as Dhuum’s Terrorweb Dryders.

In some cases, they are transformed from living mortals, such as Abaddon’s Margonite followers.

I wouldn’t mind this change, although if it goes in, ANet has another big refund of gems coming to me.

I actually would not bother replacing my character’s gear with karma items as I level. Not only will you outlevel them quickly, as you discovered, but those karma gear are soulbound and non-salvageable, making them extremely poor investments. (Outside of a few armor items that are forged to produce salvageable items for cloth.)

Instead, I’d simply just upgrade your character’s gear with cheap greens/blues every 10 levels until you hit level 80, then go for level 80 Rares. (Or even Masterworks, if you’re tight on money.) Save your karma for other things, or buy the karma gear purely for their skins.

I’ve got 70 or so Charged Cores in my Bank. And no, you can’t have them.

I’m closing in on 450 or so Fractal runs. Gotten one Fractal Shortbow skin (from level 12, no less). It’s really just down to luck.

I agree that being able to trade Pristine Relics for skins would be an excellent way to introduce a more viable way of getting them. A one-time reward of a Fractal Weapon box for completing Fractal Frequenter would also be a good idea.

I’d vote for allowing Mawdrey (or another item) to convert luck into random items the player can then salvage or sell, similar to what Bloodstone Dust does now.

Legally, I don’t think it will hold up in court because when a player purchases gems, what they are getting are the GEMS themselves. What the player then chooses to spend those gems on is up to them. Black Lion Chests are only one option; they could spend them on bank slots, skins, and other items that don’t involve any RNG whatsoever. Furthermore, Black Lion Chests always give you SOMETHING. It’s not like standard gambling where there’s a chance you get zilch.

But do I think it’s morally grey? Yes, because these sorts of items tend to prey on players with addictive personalities or poor self-control. If you work in the gambling industry, you see people every day who come in and blow their life savings or their children’s college funds. I don’t think it’s much different with “whales” who spend thousands of dollars on microtransactions in games.

I think we won’t be getting any new story content this time around, but I’m OK with Halloween content from the previous two years returning:

- Return of Reaper’s Rumble/Lunatic Inquisition
- Return of the Clocktower
- Return of the Ascent to Madness mini-dungeon
- Return of the Labyrinth (with farming rewards reintroduced)
- Return of a way to get the original Mad Memoires backpiece skin
- And because I know some would love it, a way for people to obtain the Halloween skins from past years

It can actually be quite difficult to tell for females if the Norn is very short/slim and the Human is very tall/broad. For males it’s easier because their standing pose is quite distinct.

Once they start talking I can tell at once.

As said above, there’s no rule against it, but you will get absolutely slaughtered in Solo Queue if you’re just starting out.

What people refer to as “Hotjoin” is officially known as “Custom Arenas”. Try starting out there. (Note that you’ll probably still get slaughtered, but nobody should curse you out for it. If they do, they’re people taking Hotjoin way too seriously.)

If they didn’t strip your account’s karma (and it’d be hard to. Turning karma into gold is quite tedious and I think only the most OCD of hackers would bother), then go to LA and visit the Lionguard karma vendors. Buy the level 80 gear and use that as a starting platform.

If that’s not feasible, then create a new level 1 character, do the Tutorial, head back into the starter city and buy some Copper Tools. Go back outside and run around for an hour gathering. Sell all the mats and that should be enough money for you to buy level 80 Masterwork gear. That’s good enough to get your character back on his feet and able to do most in-game content. (You can even bring them into dungeons/Fractals with Masterworks, although it’ll be harder than usual.)

Some more information on how this bug occurs would be useful. I’ve done AC lots of times now (enough for me to complete the Ascalon Catacombs collection), but I’ve never encountered this particular bug.

It’s almost certain that the next WvW Tournament will again offer these tickets as prizes. As to when that will happen, nobody except ANet knows for sure, but if current trends continue, the next Tournament will happen in about 4 – 5 months.

Norn may use “sky burials”, a type of burial where the remains of the deceased are set out in the open, and left for scavengers/predators to devour as a way of “returning to nature”. A lot of Norn also tend to go on one “last big hunt” as they get old, with the intention of going out in a blaze of glory.

Sylvari most likely bury their dead directly in the soil to let them return to the earth. It’s likely that, due to the fact that their memories are sent back to the Pale Tree, they also place less emphasis on death and the afterlife, since they know that their life experiences will live on in the Dream even after death, giving them a kind of immortality.

It’s not known what kind of funerary rituals the Charr practice, but given that we have never seen any Charr graveyards, and their pragmatic nature, they probably just cremate the bodies and spread the ashes into the fields as fertiliser for animal feed.

You don’t need to have explicit sexualized bodies to have kinky fanservice for a beastfolk race.

It could have been a healthy mixture of both, I admit. Still, a sudden drop in supply is just about impossible to fake in a global market like the TP. A brief price spike may be possible if a well-heeled TP baron bought up a huge supply, but he wouldn’t be able to stop or slow down the new supply coming in, which ANet can monitor; that could only occur if something happened to reduce Ecto acquisition.

Ayrilana.1396:

Zaxares.5419:

Ensign made a really good point above too. If the drop rate for something really has been nerfed, you’d notice it via the market very quickly. (Especially if the item is one that has a high trade velocity, meaning that hundreds, or even thousands, are being traded every day.)

For example, people have often made claims that Ecto drop rates were nerfed, but this has usually proven to be false. The one time that Ecto drop rates DID get bugged, we had evidence of this very quickly; supply of Ecto on the TP collapsed dramatically within a day, and prices shot up to almost 4 times its usual value. That got John Smith’s and the devs’ attention that something was wrong, and the bug got located and fixed.

I thought it was everyone pooling their salvage drops together and finding the percentage was way off?

Yeah, that was additional proof the community provided. But the first indicator that something was off was the sudden spike in price and drop in supply of Ectos.

The only way I can think of to “fix” it would be to change it so that people posting buy orders also pay a non-refundable listing fee (this is on top of the listing fee that sellers pay). But that would potentially discourage use of the TP and affect velocity.

Would be nice if your own listings could get displayed in a different colour so you could easily pick them out, yeah. I don’t think this is a major issue though.

Yeah, the Watchwork Pick basically spoiled me for all other tools. Like the rest of you guys, I never buy the unlimited tools anymore unless it has a special bonus. I DO feel that the tools need to be standardised, but in the meantime, I’m reaping the rewards of my Watchwork Pick at least once a week.

As an aside, the Molten sickle is just as fast as the Consortium sickle.

Ensign made a really good point above too. If the drop rate for something really has been nerfed, you’d notice it via the market very quickly. (Especially if the item is one that has a high trade velocity, meaning that hundreds, or even thousands, are being traded every day.)

For example, people have often made claims that Ecto drop rates were nerfed, but this has usually proven to be false. The one time that Ecto drop rates DID get bugged, we had evidence of this very quickly; supply of Ecto on the TP collapsed dramatically within a day, and prices shot up to almost 4 times its usual value. That got John Smith’s and the devs’ attention that something was wrong, and the bug got located and fixed.

I use an Ice Drake and a Carrion Devourer on my Norn Ranger. Reasons as follows:

1. Ice Drake – Chosen primarily because I like reptiles and dragons. I like the Ice Drake’s appearance above all the other types, which is why I went for him above one with a more useful F2 ability like the Swamp or River Drake. Drakes are also quite tanky (second only to Bears), have a cleaving autoattack, and a blast finisher tail attack which comes in quite handy at times.

2. Carrion Devourer – I wanted a ranged pet for situations where it’s not ideal to send in a melee pet. I also love scorpions, so I wanted a Devourer over a Spider. As a bonus, Devourers are also quite tanky, and the Carrion Devourer has a nice poison spit attack that’s useful for inflicting poison.

Underwater I use an Armored Fish and Jellyfish. For PvP I use the Krytan Drakehound and a Wolf to help keep enemies still/running while I spike them down.

Ogre Wars, Dobbs and the Commissar event chain are all frequently bugged. (And it’s telling when the Exotics they drop are far, far more expensive than the ones that can be reliably farmed.) An Anet dev did post in the Bugs forum saying they’re aware of the bugs and are working on them, however.

Yeah, I do agree that they need to change the LS (and the PS now too, since they retroactively got changed to use the LS system) so that mobs killed while inside the instances give XP and loot. It really, really handicaps players who have builds and gear set up to take advantage of kills, such as Bloodlust stacks or “gain X on an enemy kill”.

If the concern is that people will start farming the LS instances, then rework the instances so that enemies are finite.

Hmm, that’s weird. I could have sworn that originally Quickness speeds up stomps as well. (It’s how I got the achievement for stomping Scarlet. Frenzystomp FTW.)

As far as I know, no they don’t.

There is apparently a large (maybe VERY large) group of people who are happy to gamble with keys by buying gems. This group of people would not be affected by a nerf to the keyfarm.

Besides, reduced supply is only part of the trading equation. If an item is not popular, even with low supply, sell prices will be low simply because nobody’s interested in buying. In MMOs, “dark” weapons are always more popular than “good” weapons, and these Tempest weapons definitely fall into the latter category.

Maybe they’ll move the Sonic Tool and the Broomstick to “Travel Items” in the future too.

Maybe try the Guild Recruitment forum? There might be an all-female guild looking for new recruits there. Good luck in your search.

Hmm, that’s weird. And you were the only player in the area? Once the orbs spawn, they will randomly attack whichever player is closest.

Mmm, you can try, but pretty sure it doesn’t work. SOMEBODY must have tried that by now, and we would have seen an increase in the supply of Azurite Orbs as a result. It hasn’t moved in months, which suggests there really isn’t a way to obtain them.

This seems to be a bug linked to characters who have completed that stage of the Living Story, but who have not yet completed the World Summit. The Spectral Flames continue to spawn and attack them, but only in Blazeridge Steppes (and only in Branded areas). I had the bug once, but it disappeared a while back and hasn’t come back. From memory, it stopped round the point when I completed the World Summit on all my characters.

I did notice this too. Nice subtle touch by ANet.

However, the most important thing is that the waypoint at Fort Mariner is still broken. Pls fix, Asuras!

Yep, that’s right. As someone who still does Fractals somewhat regularly, I can confirm that the Mithril nodes are still there (and can indeed drop Azurite Crystals), but the Ori node is missing, and thus fresh Azurite Orbs can’t be obtained.

Not to doubt you, but make sure you double check it. My girlfriend was in a similar situation just two weeks ago where she was missing 1 waypoint and she couldn’t find it. She swore that she had tripled checked every map, but eventually we found the missing waypoint (it was the new one added to Lornar’s Pass during the Marionette chapter).

I like the idea of breaking the weekly match into 4 separate matches. Might help prevent the score from steamrolling so badly that an understrength server basically “gives up” and doesn’t even bother showing up in WvW anymore (or just heads to EotM).

I also really like the idea of a side getting absolutely crushed getting some kind of special help to even the odds, like what Siegerazer does, but on steroids. Here’s my idea:

If a particular server is losing so badly (maybe if they tick less than 100 points), they get an ultra-powerful NPC to help them cap and hold objectives. Think something like the Legendary Sand Giant from Dry Top. It has massive amounts of HP, very high AoE damage, and annoying CC abilities. It would take nothing less than a 50+ man zerg to bring it down within a decent amount of time, meaning it could easily hold a Garrison or Keep for at least 10 mins all by itself against most assaults, buying the weak server time to arrive and help in the defense, or even just use it as a sentry while they try to cap other objectives.

Oh, and to hire the Giant, they need lots and lots of Badges of Honor.

TC here. We had:

Week 1 – Blackgate, Jade Quarry, Tarnished Coast
Week 2 – Tarnished Coast, Fort Aspenwood, Maguuma
Week 3 – Blackgate, Tarnished Coast, Sea of Sorrows
Week 4 – Blackgate, Jade Quarry, Tarnished Coast (???)

I’d rather have seen Jade Quarry, Tarnished Coast, Sea of Sorrows/Fort Aspenwood for Week 4. It’d have been a much closer fight. BG stomped all comers for each of their weeks anyway; it’s not as if another rollover for Week 4 would have made much difference.

I play during SEA hours, and BG definitely has the numbers advantage over us (TC) at that time. Still, I reckon we gave a good showing of ourselves. We have to do a lot of map hopping to reinforce key objectives that are in danger of falling. (Unfortunately, this also means we rarely have the manpower to capture new territory because we’re always stretched trying to defend what we have.)

I do wish that Week 4 had been a different match-up though. Us, JQ and SoS probably would have made for a really intense, close fight. I was quite impressed with how SoS held up last week.

I’m surprised that BG, JQ and TC got matched up with each other again in Week 4, when we already faced each other in Week 1. I thought this tournament was supposed to have different match-ups every week?

Unequal match-ups are a big part of the problem, I’ll agree. I basically only stick to Hotjoin, but even there I see lots of Autobalance Wars, 4v5’s and team stacking. Everybody wants to win (because there are actual rewards tied to it), so nobody is willing to join the losing team.

You can’t get rid of rewards entirely (or the population will just flat out leave), so the best way to level the playing field is to increase the incentive for being on the losing team (probably through equalising of rewards for wins and losses in Hotjoin, making victory played simply for pride and achievements).

The Magic Carpet is pretty darn cool, actually. I might pick it up if it ever goes on sale.

The Tireless Minion tools would be perfect thematically for my Necromancer (especially that logging axe. Love the munching!), buuuuut… No extra bonus means no purchase from me. Not to mention that the Tireless harvester is slower than the Consortium or the Molten sickle.

Probably just be RNG. I haven’t noticed any significant difference in the amount of Foxfires I’ve been getting.

From my extensive gathering experience, I feel quite confident in saying that there is only a 1/20 chance of getting a Foxfire per strike on a T5/6 wood node, so it’s indeed quite possible to get a long streak of bad luck.

T3 Cultural armor is basically for bragging rights. It’s the most expensive armor skin in the game (save for Light Ascended armor), and it functions both as a way for players to show off their wealth, as well as a major gold sink.