Guild Wars 2

You’re assuming that everybody wouldn’t just do the same thing. My prediction is that we’ll end up with a glut of people having Eternity and trying to sell it, but no buyers. So you’re stuck with either using Eternity for the skin (and losing your gold “investment”), or possibly sitting on Eternity for months on end until someone finally decides to cough up the 5k gold to buy it from you. (In a worst case scenario, prices for Eternity could tumble until they’re at or even less than the prices for Sunrise or Twilight!)

And believe me, you’ll be getting undercut alllll the time by people desperate to try and sell their Eternity to recoup their losses, so if you keep relisting to try and stay competitive, you’ll be eating hundreds of gold in listing fees.

I’d have put it more politely, but I kind of agree with Kurrilino. I’m not really a fan of steampunk or sci-fi elements in my fantasy games, and would prefer not to see it completely take over GW2. (The sci-fi elements were getting more and more pervasive as the Living Story progressed, going from steam tech to magi-tech to finally holomancy, and it culminated in a giant flying spaceship/drill that even had computer consoles!)

That doesn’t really ring true to me, Illumine. In just about every Crab Toss match I’ve played, once the match is over everybody except me (I play to get 3 wins every time Crab Toss is available) quits out. Occasionally there’s one other player who stays, but they usually quit out after two or three matches too.

Saying that people quit to get different opponents is a bit unbelievable since it’s likely the vast majority of your matches will be with completely different players every time. (And sometimes you get those strange matches where not a single other player joins in throughout the entire match.)

Again, it’s only suspicious if the player is a Guardian AND they keep exiting and rejoining after every match.

Wow, that drum is actually pretty darn cool. The preset loops are really nice.

This is starting to veer into fanfiction territory.

I have to admit that happened in Obsidian Sanctum the day the Spring Tourney went live. XD

“Hey, an ANet tag! … Wait, they’re Blackgate… KILL THEM!”

A couple of months ago I decided to use up my spare AC tokens and bought a bunch of Exotic armors for salvage. Only realised afterwards that I’d bought the Rampager versions, after wondering why I wasn’t getting any insignia out of them. >.<

^ That.

15 Charrs approve of this post.

Every single day. I work on Dailies, then the Living Story (currently the Tournament), then if I have time left, I do more mapping/exploration on my characters to get them through the game. I’m currently up to the level 50-60 maps.

I’m only a casual WvW player, but I think the two biggest drawbacks of EotM are as follows:

1. There’s no real payoff for “winning” in EotM. Yes, your home Borderland gets a supply drop, but this supply drop usually makes barely any difference to the BL defenders, and it’s usually consumed within 30 seconds anyway.

Victory in EotM should provide more tangible benefits to the Home Servers, such as an unstrippable buff for the next hour (maybe it applies to NPCs too?), or the points earned in EotM gets added to your server’s score.

2. Just as in main WvW, there’s no real incentive for defending objectives other than “server pride”. As such, the biggest payoff comes from servers just doing circular karma trains through each other’s territory. You WANT the enemy to cap your objectives so you can get more rewards capping them back. There needs to be a bigger incentive for holding onto objectives, and this should be applied to both EotM and WvW at large.

Call me petty, but I just can’t get past the male Norn’s “HURRRRRRRRR!” cry when he uses certain skills. XD

Yeah, I also made the same misinterpretation that Dust did. All cool. The point I just wanted to make was that without the Wall, the Charr forces would have been more than sufficient to devastate the combined armies of Ascalon, Kryta and Orr. They did not succeed due to a number of external factors in humanity’s favour, but that’s kind of like how a lot of real life battles go. Sometimes wars are won purely due to serendipity and the environment.

Aye. Although I still think it was important enough for us to voice our concerns about it BEFORE it possibly became a trend.

New idea. I want a Skritt consumable like the Embers/Ogre Pet Whistle that summons 3 Skritt to assist me in combat.

^ Yep. There’s a reason people sometimes call it “TPvP”.

While I wouldn’t be against the Grenth Hood (or even the Gas Mask) coming back for sale, I think Wanze’s point was that ANet would want to keep the G.Hood seasonal so as to increase sales during the Wintersday period.

^ While I support your stance, I will also point out that the trend of the Watchwork Pick seems to have stopped with it. (Both the Thresher and the Frost Wasp tools do not offer any additional bonuses.) It seems safe to say that the Watchwork Pick was an experiment and the negative feedback has been taken on board.

I would pay sooo much gems for a Skritt mini/backpack that yelled “Quick! Kill it!” whenever I entered combat. XD

kitten, Wanze! Now I shall forever read your posts in the voice of Groundskeeper Willie. :P

I don’t know the exact figures either, but the lower level crafting bags DO give more of each. You will get more total T3 mats than the total T6 (3) mats from Heavy Crafting Bags, for example.

Economically it might even be worth it if the amounts are high enough (again, I don’t know exactly how many are given), but given the incredible prices for T6 mats, odds are that even if you need lower level mats, you’d be better off trading Laurels for Heavy Crafting Bags, selling the T6 mats, then buying the lower level mats.

One nice thing about being an Oceanic player on a NA server, I guess. Obsidian Sanctum is almost always dead empty during our night times.

I think the player should have the freedom to choose how they want to acquire the item. Yes, that feeling of accomplishment is true, and I do agree that “earning” the item yourself feels much more satisfying than simply plonking down the cash for it, but why should anyone dictate to anyone else how they can/cannot earn their item? More than that, why should anyone care how someone else earned their item? It’s none of your business whether they got it as a RNG drop, earned it with tokens, or bought it with gold. It’s not affecting your ownership of your own item in any way.

To that end, I fully support EVERYTHING being tradable, and/or players being able to bypass RNG with more token-based ways of earning skins. I keep pointing back to SAB World 1 as the perfect way of doing this:

1. You could play SAB yourself and hope to get lucky with a rare skin drop from the chests at the end of each world. (RNG, windfall feeling when you get lucky)

2. You could play SAB multiple times, collect tokens, and earn an account bound version of the skin for your own use. (Bypasses RNG, has feeling of “earned reward”.)

3. If you really dislike/are not good at SAB, but want the skin anyway, you can buy one of the skins dropped for people from category 1, but who don’t like the skin. (Bypasses time-gating, gives players from category 1 the “windfall” opportunity if they’d rather sell the skin.)

Lasica.5068:

1 more stonemist castle capture
9 more yak kills
7 more reactor captures

Nearly done.

Meta is done for me. But still need 8 more Reactors, 10 more Towers and 16 more WXP ranks to squeeze every last bit of AP from the Tournament.

@Illumine: It’s not quite as easy to remove as that. The Guardian’s Aegis will continue to pop until the first time the Guardian gets downed (by karka or hatchlings) in the current match. I don’t blame innocent Guardians who just happen to join, but I take a dim view of players who constantly leave matches to refresh the bug (see below).

@OP: The Guardian Aegis bug is a known issue, but unfortunately ANet probably regards it as low on the priority list of things to fix. I agree that it’s very annoying and players who deliberately exploit it are cheating and should face some sort of minor sanction.

You can tell who’s aware of the bug too because they will deliberately quit the match after it finishes only to rejoin the next one. They do this because this will “refresh” the bug; if they simply stay in the current match and let it roll over to a new match the Aegis will not get refreshed.

It’s still possible for a good player to win against such a cheater, but when both of them are equal in skill, the Guardian has a tremendous advantage, especially in the early part of the match where there are likely to be only 1 or 2 rivals and their Aegis prevents them getting interrupted or grabbed so they can get the Crab first.

As for the other instance of griefing where one player just keeps trolling you with Planks/Fishing Poles, I agree it’s extremely annoying, but very satisfying when you still win even with their trolling. (I feel fully justified in spamming /laugh at such players.)

@kohldl: What you’re after is more an “auction house” style trading system. JS spoke about this at one point, and he basically said that the “trading post” system was eventually decided on for reasons he would not specify. As it seems to be working very well, there’s little reason to switch to the auction house method too.

Fine Crafting Materials (as well as Rare Crafting Materials like Charged Cores and the like) are intended to be harder to obtain, yes. You can get a fair amount of them through farming, opening loot bags (e.g. Light Mining Bag), or trading in Laurels for the crafting bags of the appropriate tier.

Speaking as someone who used to have 0 MF (and who now has 147), I CAN say there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of Rares I’ve been getting as drops. In the early days I could go for a week without getting any Rares, but now I will usually get one or two from drops for 2 – 3 hours of play. Exotics are still few and far between, but I feel safe in saying it has had an impact.

Not that I know of, no. And given that the vast majority of the player base probably are nowhere near maxing MF, my guess is that ANet has no plans to introduce alternate uses for Luck Essences in the near future.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

You know whats funny? The Charr actually never won a major battle against humanity.

-Ascalon:
They only laid waste to ascalon because the Titans gave them a magic nuke. All the Charr had to do was clean up the survivors that were left. And they couldn’t even do that because of the foefire.

-Orr:
We blew it up before they could take it, and took their entire army with us.

-Ebonhawke:
Even with all their military might, they couldn’t take a small fortress for at least 200 years.

Partially true.

- I totally agree that the Charr would never have taken Ascalon without the help of the Titans’ magic (the Searing). The Great Wall was simply too much of a defensive obstacle to overcome, and the Charr didn’t have the siege artillery technology to take it down.

However, the reason why the Charr didn’t conquer the rest of Ascalon afterwards was because the bulk of their invasion army moved on after the Wall was broken. They headed south and split into two fronts, one heading for Kryta and the other, larger force, for Orr. (The reason for this, as we now know, was because Abaddon, through the Titans, was pushing the Charr towards Arah.)

The Charr who remained in Ascalon were probably just a few small divisions, deemed sufficient to mop up any survivors. Of course, they underestimated the resolve of the Ascalonians (and the effort of the GW1 PCs), and with the complete decimation of the Charr army at Orr and the defeat in Kryta, they didn’t really have time to recover and rebuild their numbers to really conquer Ascalon, giving the Ascalonians a fighting chance.

- If I recall correctly, Ebonhawke was founded not long before Adelbern used the Foefire. The Charr would therefore have been quite distracted by the new undying ghostly threat in their lands. By the time they reorganized and started devoting more attention to Ebonhawke, they were already well dug in and had an Asuran gate to keep providing them with supplies and reinforcements. It is that last part which is crucial; I have no doubts that Ebonhawke would have fallen without outside aid from Kryta and, more specifically, the Ascalon Settlement. (It is perhaps ironic that Rurik’s plan, despite leaving Ascalon behind, was the key to humanity retaining a foothold in Ascalon.)

Stramatus.5219:

Let’s not forget Kryta.

-Kryta: Saul D’alessio and the White Mantle defeated the Charr with the help of the Unseen Ones (Mursaat). (Source: GW1, bonus mission pack)

Stramatus also makes a good point here. The Krytans were on the verge of defeat before Saul D’Alessio and his White Mantle, secretly empowered by the Mursaat, drove them back. In the Bonus Mission Pack, we even see that Saul’s desperate assault on the Charr general Rox Ashreign only succeeded because the Mursaat intervened personally and helped them slay all of the Charr war leaders in a single precise attack.

LordByron.8369:

From what i remember, frodo didn t walk straight into mordor Killing all the orcs…

Frodo was also a severely underleveled farmer who was wearing single stat Toughness gear and a useless Ascended Ring that drove him crazy.

@Rhelik: That’s basically the same idea I’ve been proposing for months now. Obviously I’d love to see it get added in, of course.

A blueprint error in Tixx’s factory, perhaps?

If I really wanted to do something to make things more affordable for the average player, I’d just crank up drop rates to 11. Players would not pay 2 gold for Charged Lodestones if every Air Elemental Champ had a guaranteed drop of 1 and the market gets flooded with them. At the same time, make all rare/expensive skins obtainable by account bound tokens, so you’d be exempt from RNG for things like Precursors.

Of course, this would result in a game where nobody feels “special” because every casual player could eventually get a Legendary with, say, 3 – 6 months of play. I would have no problem playing a game like this, because I really don’t care what other players look like or what they’re using, but it would probably drive away a lot of players, and that’s something ANet cannot afford to do.

And speaking of which, I just listed an Exotic for 1 copper less than the lowest seller. XD

I’ve got 10 spare BLSK’s in my storage purely from Dailies. XD I only ever use them on Exotics, which are themselves such a rare drop that I go through my BLSK’s very, very slowly.

^ A noble appeal, but futile. Experience (most recently the gem price jump during the Black Lion Key sales during March) has shown that there’s a great many users who are more than happy to gamble on keys.

Ehh, sounds like too much cost for too little. For that kind of price the bag would have to do something AWESOME, like be shared across all your characters (for you to store account bound unlimited tools, for instance).

I actually foresee high-end infusions becoming something akin to Armbraces in GW1; as stores for vast amounts of wealth. I’m not sure we’d ever see them become a unit of currency in themselves (since few things in the game are anywhere near that expensive, and the TP works well for just about everything), but they may become the “showpiece luxury good” for extremely wealthy players.

Mai’s fight is very doable. There’s just a few things to keep in mind:

1. AR is crucial for this fight. During the cannon phases, if you happen to get hit by Mai’s cannon shots, you will get long-lasting AR in addition to the high damage already dealt by the cannon balls. If you have low or no AR, this basically means getting shot by Mai during the cannon phase is a death sentence.

2. Condition removal is king for this fight. The bulk of Mai’s damage comes from her massive bleed stacks. Guardians, Traited Water Eles, Rangers with Healing Spring and Traited Mesmers with Illusionary Disenchanter can greatly neuter Mai’s damage.

3. During the combat phases, stay close to Mai (but not TOO close unless you want to eat 15+ stacks of Bleed) so Horrik’s lightning fields land close to her. Whoever is Mai’s current target should always keep in mind the lightning field position so you can lure Mai into it.

4. During the cannon phases, everybody should split up and go to a different corner. This is because each of the cannoneers will fire their shots at a different player (one player is “safe” per barrage). If players are bunched up close together, they will get multiple barrages shot at their area, making it just about impossible to dodge. If everybody is split up, there is usually enough gaps between the shots for you to simply sidestep them. Dodge if you need to, but avoid going into another player’s corner.

Two other methods for surviving the cannon phase exist, but I don’t really recommend them:

a) The “race track run” method. This one has everybody bunch up and run around the area in the same direction like race cars. I don’t really recommend this because there is inevitably one player who lags behind due to no speed boosts (or conversely, one guy gets TOO far ahead because of his speed boosts), and then the cannon shots become staggered enough that you need to dodge wildly and people start going down.

b) The “stealth” method. 4 players bunch up in one corner, and then a Thief uses Shadow Refuge and other skills to keep the group stealthed while one guy runs around on the far side of the area drawing attention. This method CAN work very well, but it depends on your party having the skills/classes to pull it off AND the aggro magnet being good at surviving. (If they don’t have good toughness/sustain, if they screw up, it’s basically death for them.)

The entire party can’t all stealth because Mai will simply regen her health if she can’t see any enemies.

5. Don’t try to res dead/downed people during the cannon phases. That usually just results in more people going down. Instead, wait till the next battle phase starts and then bring the fight over to near the dead person so a couple can res them while the rest keep Mai occupied.

6. Mai ALWAYS shadowsteps to the player farthest away from her. Therefore, keeping your distance is a BAD idea. This is another reason why it’s important to stay close to Mai; trying to stay away from her just means she will keep attacking you over and over and over.

Mai’s shadowstep can’t be dodged, but it CAN be blocked/reflected. (This makes Scepter Mesmers ideal for ressing, since Illusionary Counter recharges fast enough that you can basically block her shadowstep 24/7, giving Mai 5 Torment stacks for her trouble.) Reflecting her shadowstep will teleport YOU to her, but it will also deal a nice stack of damage to Mai in the process.

6. Don’t bother killing Horrik unless you need the achievement. If he is killed, Mai simply auto-resses him with a massive shockwave attack that deals high damage+Agony.

I’d like to see Condi/Power/Precision, and Vitality/Power/Ferocity.

I personally prefer slaughtering everything in my path, but because the rewards for doing so is not really worth it for the time taken, most players simply skip mobs and just fight only the crucial encounters.

I’d like to see the game adjusted so that people can still skip if they want (time = more important), but if they fight their way through, they get much better loot (rewards = more important).

Lore-wise that’s not true, but that’s good to know. Thanks for testing, Wethospu. Good thing I have 2 stacks of Scarlet potions left for Fractals then!

As the others have said, lots of players are now wise to this investment strategy, meaning that there’s so much supply that you could be waiting in excess of 6 months to a year (maybe more) to see any decent return.

Hey guys! I consulted an Asuran fortune teller and he shared this gem from April 2015 Patch Notes!

- All Bear pets now have base 1 million health and scale for 1,000 health with each point of Vitality. Rangers have the Determined buff as long as their Bear pet is alive.

Just like I said.

I have to admit, I’d love to have my Rainbow Phoenix back. I miss that flamboyant rascal.

I’m not sure about the Dredge Fractal, but it DOES work for the Molten/Aetherblade Fractals as well as the Molten Boss/Mai fractals.

There also used to be a bug in the past where all krait seem to be counted as Toxic Alliance, but they may fixed that now.

Yes, I know. While that sort of belief isn’t rare (many other religions that believe in reincarnation, like Buddhism, also believe that humans are the pinnacle of reincarnation cycle before the final step of attaining nirvana and exiting the cycle altogether), that particular Icebrood Wolf made it all the more unsettling since it seemed to directly prove Watchful Moon wrong.

A very valid scenario (and in fact, I think the numbers of completionists in your example would probably be higher than the example numbers you provided), but at the same time, there is usually a very high amount of “hidden supply” in the game. (That is, players who do have the particular item in stock, but for whatever reason is simply keeping it in storage instead of putting it up for sale.) Wanze mentioned once that in his experience, this hidden supply is much, MUCH higher than you’d expect, even for niche items. When you combine that with items like the Black Lion Weapon skins that can be purchased at any time for 5 tickets, you’re not likely to see prices for skins rise beyond a certain threshold (100 – 150g seems to be about the limit that the market will pay for such skins).

Certain very rare skins like the Jetpack or the Ghastly Grinning Shield are the exception of course, but as I first mentioned, the people who couldn’t afford these skins before still can’t buy them, and the diehard collectors are more than likely going to have a copy already.

In any case, I think that the sheer cost of completing the Wardrobe will turn off many players once they do the calculations and realise just how expensive it’s going to be. Even just to complete the Cultural armors alone is going to set you back almost 2000 gold! And then you can expect to shell out hundreds more each time a new weapon set is released in the gem store. And let’s not even mention the cost of buying/making all 19 Legendaries. Or of doing SAB Trib Mode 16 times for each World (19 if they release underwater weapons with World 3). XD

Ohhh… Sorry, I misunderstood what the OP was asking. Carry on then.