Guild Wars 2

I’m honestly surprised they didn’t bring him on earlier. I’d have thought his previous experience with an airborne hallucinogen would have made him a great SME with Scarlet’s miasma, when combined with Marjory’s knowledge of poisons.

So the damage boost from Death Nova stacks with the base damage from Putrid Explosion?

I don’t mind the snake eyes. I can think of plenty of lore reasons why an Asura might have them (Krait eye implants, you are the progeny whose parents experimented with genetic mutations, a magical ritual gone awry etc. etc.)

Maybe they should look at increasing the rewards for personal bests? Instead of a measly 5 for being the Top Defender, Top Reviver etc. what if it granted 100/300/500 (for Hotjoins/SoloQ/TeamQ)? That could mean that, even if your team is losing, putting in the effort to excel in your role could mean you still wind up with a decent reward despite a team loss.

I still need my Blitz completions too, so I’ll be there for a while. I also plan on throwing myself against Liadri a lot over the weekend, so I’ll help out with Blitzes when I need a break before I smash something in frustration.

tolunart.2095:

Which is why the situation is not going to change – Anet intended Legendaries to be hard to get, the fact that they remain hard to get is not a problem. If you want one, be prepared to work for it. If you don’t want to work for it, be prepared to never have one.

This is very true.

That said, I think there is some merit to the complaints from players who are steadily working towards a Legendary, only to see the price of Precursors keep going up. Having a long-term goal to work towards is great! What’s less great is if those goal posts keep moving due to factors outside your control.

Craftable or Scavenger Hunt Precursors should solve those complaints, although we don’t have any idea when that will come about.

Personally speaking, what I consider to be a good reward system is what we had back when SAB first came out. A token system that allowed us to work towards what we wanted, but also a rare drop system that existed alongside it. This meant that there were three ways we could get the skin/item we wanted:

1. You could play the content and hope to get lucky from the end chest. Because these Rare versions of the skin can be sold, it preserves the “Jackpot!” feeling from getting a rare drop. This rewards Luck as a loot system.

2. You could play the content, accumulate tokens, and trade them for an account bound version of the skin you want. This eliminates RNG frustration, because you know you WILL eventually get what you want, and you can calculate exactly how long it’s going to take you to get there. This rewards Hard work/Skill as a loot system.

3. You could buy the skin you wanted from players who got lucky in #1, but who don’t want the skin. This means that someone who was awful at the game mode, but who still wants the look, isn’t left out of the party. You can gain gold in whichever method works best for you, and buy what you want. (The Players from #1, meanwhile, get extra money for their luck/skill.) This rewards Skill in other Game Areas as a loot system, as well as Real Money Purchasers, the latter of which is extremely beneficial to ANet.

It is, quite simply, the method that makes the most people happy.

Getting back on topic, has anybody heard any official word (via FB or Twitter maybe?) about how long the Festival will be around for?

Hmm… I guess I could try swapping out the boon strip trait for Death Nova. (I run Death Nova all the time in PvE.) My worry was just that since PvP enemies are much more mobile and positionally aware than AI mobs, enemy players would just run out of the poison fields and I wouldn’t get much mileage out of the trait.

I do think it’s a tad overpowered against MM’s (and I’m speaking here both as someone who runs a MM AND who’s also used Moa against an MM), but Moa does have a pretty obvious tell that can be dodged. You’re also not completely useless as a Moa; one time I got Moa’d and I continued attacking the Mesmer and downed him as a result. XD I think he was expecting me to flee and my continued assault surprised him.

After seeing the tremendous number of casualties during the Zephyrites’ last visit to Labyrinthine Cliffs, they decided to put up some safety nets for the benefit of us poor landbound folks.

Yeah, I have to agree with the above. If there were absolutely no rewards for losing, then participation would drop off sharply. As soon as it becomes obvious that one team is going to win, the losing team either ragequits or starts afking because it’s “pointless”.

It would also mean that new blood would have no incentive to become better if they’re going to get zip all until they actually become good enough to start winning. Why bother sinking dozens of hours losing over and over and getting nothing, when you could run dungeons or farm or play the TP and get much better rewards? PvP matches would become very stagnant when you’re facing the same small crowd over and over.

Unless, of course, ANet tweaks the drop rate or adds them to the vendors.

^ Hehe, I know what you mean. The only things I can purchase that I don’t have already are the Zephyrite Helms (which I still don’t quite like the look of, so I’ll probably skip them again) and the 3 super-expensive consumable recipes (which I skipped last time because I wasn’t going to spend 5g each on them for ridiculously expensive consumables, but I may get now just for completion’s sake since I have nothing else to spend the Festival Tokens on).

That’s true as far as GW2 is concerned. Although you do have games like EVE Online, where a player’s actions could result in the loss of thousands of real world dollars.

Given that the final backpiece is account bound, perhaps ANet could see about putting in a new trader that lets you trade a Favor of the Pavilion or 250 Gauntlet tickets for a recipe.

Yeah, there’s a Priory encampment on the beach now near where Cobiah’s statue used to be. My guess is that they’re there analyzing the Breachmaker’s remains.

But even before that, there used to be a Priory dig site digging up some of the old ruins of Lion’s Arch. That could be considered as their base of operations, I guess.

Thanks for those screenshots, Konig! Whereabouts is this Lionguard patrol? I’d love to see their dialogue for myself.

Most Kodan are polite, if somewhat aloof. There was one Kodan in Snowden Drifts I ran into on my Charr who basically told me to get away from her, saying that the Charr as a race conquer and despoil all that we touch. That was an interesting NPC dialogue. XD

I’ve noticed this too. I was thinking of placing a buy order for a Phoenix Rifle yesterday, but the initial listing showed a sell order for 70g and no buy orders, and when I went into the details, it was selling for 98g and had a 78g buy order.

Danger.3208:

Zaxares.5419:

The Lovestruck skins were kind of doomed from the start since the “hearts” motif usually doesn’t sit well with most guys, which is half the player base.

Dude, the whole reason I bought as many of the lovestruck as possible were because I thought the hearts motif is hilarious! Assumptions about the player base suck.

On topic though, I like the skins well enough, but definately not worth spending tickets on imo. I would rather save up for tormented or any future releases.

I did say “usually”. But if you compare the number of characters you see in town with dark, menacing characters as opposed to silly, outlandish styles, the former outnumber the latter by a huge margin. That’s what I’m referring to.

The other part of the equation was also touched on above. A lot of players have realised that buying up skins for investment was a fairly safe way of earning money, so a lot of players jumped on that bandwagon. With so many sellers, and fewer buyers (now that the Wardrobe is here, you only need one copy of a weapon to use forever), prices won’t see the same level as they used to, unless ANet removes them like they did with the Sclerite and Wintersday weapons.

People do occasionally waste huge amounts of in-game money just to screw with markets or “for the lulz” though.

Thanks for the inside look, Wanze. Quite fascinating to see how a market works.

I think that’s basically what’s happening. People are more interested in farming the 30 kills necessary for their achievement rather than winning. (All it takes is one person running crystals while the rest of the team and the enemy team duke it out in the center.)

The only thing that really bugs me in PUG runs are the players who get mad and rude and yell at everybody else for mistakes or for being anything less than “perfect”. If you wanted a perfect speedrun, why did you join my casual “All welcome!” group? :P

Just to clarify, Canach’s billet hasn’t been bought yet. All Sheriff Siriam says is that the “noble-like” woman was one of his (few) interested buyers.

Rarity is fair enough, but should it be THIS rare? That’s probably the question we should be asking. This is a recipe that creates an Account Bound item; it’s not something that can be resold for profit. There are likely to be a lot of players who want this specific look, but are prohibited from getting it. Wouldn’t it be better to make the recipe more widely available so more gold and materials are soaked up in its construction, rather than having just a few recipes worth thousands of gold that are likely to not move for a long time due to its price?

Eh, I can’t say I agree. Those of us who got the skins early had up to a year of having our exclusive stuff. That’s more than enough time to show off. Restricting specific looks from newer players just because they weren’t around at the time feels selfish to me.

Besides, the more variety there is in the game, the less chance you’ll have of someone having the exact same look as you.

^ All good tips.

The ones that make the most difference are points 1 and 3. If you are lucky enough to get 3 Aspect Masters right off the bat, the lead you take at the start can put you so far ahead of the pack that they’ll never catch up. Dropping all those fake power-ups also ensures that the 2nd and 3rd place guys will never catch you either.

Of course, now that the achievement progresses regardless of place, if you’re just after the AP, it doesn’t matter now.

I’m of the opinion that we should be able to trade something like 100 Gauntlet Tickets for the recipe. It’s a RECIPE, and the resulting product is ACCOUNT BOUND. Having it be so rare is downright ridiculous.

For Blobs, I suggest going with a single target weapon and push/pull skills. Attack Subject 7 as oozes spawn, then push him away from the rest of the oozes and continue attacking. Once he gets low enough in health, switch to a high DPS weapon and burst him down. For example, on a Warrior, try bringing a Rifle and Kick. Use Rifle Butt and Kick to move him around.

I also did High Stakes Gambler on Subject 7. I used a MM necro build and some Mango Pies for extra health regen. It basically boils down to an attrition contest between you and him; use your minions and Death Shroud to soak up damage as much as possible while wearing him down.

Still working on Light Up the Darkness myself, so no advice for you there.

Thank you very much for your research, Mystic. I’m a bit disappointed to see that the various Catcher skins aren’t available from the Zephyr Boxes though.

I can confirm that it does give you credit towards the achievement if you come in first. From anecdotes, 2nd and 3rd also count. However, I’m not sure if this is a case of the achievement being bugged (any completion should count), or whether the tooltip for the achievement is incorrect.

Ehh, I can’t say I’m keen on the idea of repeating Hearts. I do think that bumping up the coin reward from Hearts seems decent though, given that they’re a once-only per character affair.

Hard to say. Opinion seems split on whether the Phoenix skins are cool or not. Some weapons like the Staff and Shield are extremely detailed and seem very popular, while others like the Pistol or Warhorn seem lackluster. Personally I’m considering picking up a Phoenix Rifle, but I’m still not sure if it’ll suit the colour scheme I have for my Charr Warrior.

The Lovestruck skins were kind of doomed from the start since the “hearts” motif usually doesn’t sit well with most guys, which is half the player base.

Yeah, I did always look forward to more skins I could throw in my PvP wardrobe. :/ As a collector, I enjoyed that. However, since PvP skins no longer exist, if they’d kept the old system they’d basically be handing out an average of 2 Exotics every time we got an achievement chest. (I’d LOVE that, but all those Exotics flooding into the economy could be a problem.)

The best rewards from the AP chests now are the flat gold bonus and the Zenith weapon/armor skins.

Most of the Phoenix weapons are gigantic compared to other sets. I agree that the Phoenix Hammer is probably the biggest hammer in the game right now. The Phoenix Greatsword possibly too.

No rifle comes close to dethroning the Charrzooka so far, however.

I had 4 last scraps left over too, after buying up as much as I could at the end of the last Bazaar. I dumped them after it became obvious they had no more use this year.

Fortunately, my 208 Gauntlet tickets are still valuable.

Well, right after earthquakes/flood/wildfires, people can and often do move right back in and start rebuilding.

I use a similar build on my Necro for Hotjoins, except that I used the Grandmaster Death trait that allows minions to strip boons on hit. With all 6 minions out, that’s a LOT of chances to strip boons, and it’s amazing how much more squishy enemies are without their boons. Mighted-up Warrior? Poof, no more Might. Guardian with Stability trying to stomp? Minions remove the Stability and you Fear them away. Coupled with the minions’ baseline damage and condition spam from myself, enemies usually can’t last very long.

On the downside, there is one hard counter to this build. Moa Morph. :P

Can’t really help you as I don’t have an Engi, but last year I got this achievement with Subject 7 using a MM + a few consumables. With life-stealing minions, some innate health gain thanks to Mango Pies, and Death Shroud to increase your health pool, it became all about making sure S7 died first.

They are apparently very rare drops from the Zephyr Sanctum Supply Boxes, although I don’t have confirmation if this is true or not.

They almost certainly will. The finished product is account bound, and the player base would howl in outrage at an incredibly rare recipe for a special skin that can’t even be sold. At least with the various runes/sigils, the finished product could be sold for a profit to crafters.

My guess is that ANet will boost the drop rates for this from Gold completions of the Blitz to encourage more people to do it.

400-something gold profit is still nothing to sneeze at, ya know.

Apparently the high price of Dusk is due to somebody buying up the 3 lowest priced Dusks and then re-listing them all for close to 2000g. It’s probably an attempt by a newcomer to the TP to try and corner the market or inflate the price. It’ll fail miserably, like everyone else who’s tried this in the past.

Slavery’s illegal in KRYTA, but Lion’s Arch is an independent city-state founded by pirates.

Anyway, did this mystery noblewoman actually buy Canach’s billet? Because the impression I got (I may be misremembering) was that Canach’s gotten some interested buyers, but no one’s actually bought his billet yet.

The NPC “Fang” standing on the Cliff’s docks pretty much confirms that they went to Cantha (there is a new Jade statue of carps sitting at the top of the Cliffs, which almost certainly came from Cantha) after departing LA last year, although they also tease the player by saying that “they probably won’t return there for a while.” The player can even say that they “hope to visit there someday”, to which the NPC replies, “I certainly hope you will!”

Curse you and your teasing, ANet! :P

Taimi also has some teaser dialogue about what the Zephyrites are taking on in their cargo, saying she’s getting some “strange readings” from the crates. That suggests it’s not anything to do with Scarlet or Scarlet’s various technologies; Taimi should be extremely familiar with them by now. It seems that the Zephyrites are picking up something at the Cliffs and delivering them to another non-Canthan destination. Perhaps they’re headed to Elona next?

If GW2 is about cosmetic progression and working towards a “look” that you want, then wouldn’t it make sense to allow newer players to obtain specific items from past events too? After all, it’s what their “goal” is, same as someone who plays to get Dungeon Master or Dragon rank in sPvP.

The way I see it, it would be bad business to tell newer players “no, there’s no way you can’t ever access the stuff you want”. New players are the lifeblood of any game; creating an unwelcoming atmosphere just discourages them from joining and ultimately chokes off ANet’s income. Older players WILL eventually leave as new games come out, RL intervenes or they just get bored, and eventually the community becomes so insular and closed-off that it dies.

I’m certainly taking advantage of the lower Quartz prices to pad up my bank collection a little. Being a hoarder and all that.

My Charr Warrior is considering picking up some ambulatory bacon. You know, as an emergency food supply.