Guild Wars 2

Mikuchan.7261:

I think other people have said pretty much what I agree on.
No level cap increase
Ascended is fine as a final tier, although make infusions go up to ascended tier as well

One thing that you could really make very nice both as vertical and horizontal progression is Cultural armor.
Just like the fractal backpiece, Cultural armor should be upgradeable.
Cultural armor is the gear that should be desired according to the game but it’s not of the highest tier, it’s not even of the second highest tier.
And given new skins that are put into the game cultural armor feels very outdated.
A simple solution that also gives players something to work with is the possibility to be able to make cultural armor ascended just like you can do with the fractal backpiece. This gives you a very fair and optional, vertical progression.
When cultural armor is on the ascended tier, you can make it able to switch skins just like legendary items can switch stats. That lets you include different ways to unlock new permanent skins for the cultural armor, of which one should be the flamekissed armor for the humans and armor of equal quality for the other races.
Then you can make different versions for the flamekissed with different color gems and flames and they could all be unlockable through some means. This gives you a horizontal progression that lets the player change skins on the fly, outside of combat.
You can introduce a new skin for it now and then that people can get for it.
There could even be a skin progression tree with different base skins that can have different upgraded versions of the skins.
Cultural armor will then be a sort of platform for progression in different ways and will regain it’s status as the most desireable armor to get, as it should be.
When legendary armor comes out, cultural armor could be used as a precursor for the legendary armor keeping all the things you already got for it and adding the legendary tier and legendary skin branch in the skin tree to it.
I would really really like this kind of progression and it won’t make anyone feel that they throw away what they have acomplished, since they will always keep it and be able to switch to it without losing anything.
Horizontal and vertical, completely optional, skin progression without any loss on the way.
And the perfect way to introduce a gold, gems and material sink.

This is one thing that I think progression should be about.

This can be combined with the idea to unlock upgrade components and stats described further down in the thread.

I really, really like this idea.

I guess those could work too. It’s just disappointing not being able to create the other endless tonics as well. :-/

Well that is a serious pain. I was hoping to complete my endless tonics (the Princess Doll in particular) and now I’m stuck not being able to do that because I didn’t have the foresight last year to buy one of each. Awesome.

I haven’t gone through every post in this thread (although I’ve read quite a few) so what I’m about to say may have already been covered.

I think one of the best ways to approach horizontal progression/cosmetics/etc. is to treat the various skins in the game as unlocks on a player’s account. Once you’ve unlocked a particular skin, that skin should always be usable on your account. You should be able to select the skin you want to use for each armor piece or weapon without having to transmute it. If there’s a small fee associated with applying the change to the armor that’s fine. It would give the choice some weight without being overly punishing.

I think the same should be true of stats with ascended gear. We should be able to select stats as we currently can with legendary weapons. Make it a reasonable Mystic Forge recipe if necessary to add that functionality to an item (by “reasonable” I mean make it so it takes a little work to do but doesn’t require stacks of hard to obtain or super expensive items). The armor and weapons take so much time and money to make that having to go through the same grind for every build you want to play is just ridiculous. I’m ok with some vertical progression (there needs to be a limit as far gear tiers go, though) but I think the current system punishes build diversity. That isn’t good for anyone and it certainly isn’t good for the long-term health of the game. It also seems to go against the design philosophy of the Guild Wars series, which has always put an emphasis on your build and your play style rather than raw numbers.

This core problem exists to some extent with every tier of gear. But it’s most apparent when dealing with ascended weapons and armor. I have more flexibility with exotic gear than I do with the super expensive high tier armor and weapons because they’re so easily obtained. Need new stats because of a major revamp in a trait/trait line/set of skills? Easy. Just craft or obtain some new exotic gear. This can be done in a matter of minutes to a matter of days depending on the methods used for obtaining it. If you apply this to ascended armor and weapons, any changes to traits or skills that render a particular build useless would require you to essentially start from scratch. You could be set back up to 25 days just because of skill/trait balances.

I think that’s a big problem. It’s needlessly punishing for players. Players shouldn’t be punished on that level for skill and trait balances. We should be forced to adapt of course but it shouldn’t be at the cost of potentially months worth of work crafting gear. That’s the kind of thing that can cause even the most devoted fans to abandon the game in frustration.

If I’ve invested that much time and money into a set of armor or a weapon, I shouldn’t be punished and lose flexibility for opting to go that route. It should feel like there’s some long-term benefit to crafting that armor/weapon beyond a marginal stat increase and the ability to put infusions on it. Being able to change its stats and its appearance at will would be a good way to accomplish that feeling without making it too easy to obtain or giving anyone too much of an unfair advantage. You would be rewarding time and effort with convenience rather than forcing people to grind just to try new things.

Yeah, it’s under the bag category. Not exactly the most intuitive place for it. I ended up finding it by searching for Light of Dwayna in the search box and was rather confused about it being considered a “bag.”

And as Anen said, it requires 500 in one of the armor crafting professions. You can’t craft it until then. You shouldn’t even be able to learn it until you have 500 since it has a requirement of 500.

I’ve been having this problem as well. Or a variant of it at least. It doesn’t seem to happen to me every single time I try to pick something up but it’s very frequent and can drastically impact a lot of things.

It’s mostly impacted me in Fractals of the Mists as multiple fractals require picking up and using items to progress. Most of those events require fairly precise timing or the group can fail. The shields and cooling rods in the Thaumanova Reactor fractal, the hammer in Cliffside, the infused rocks in the Volcanic fractal, the reflecting crystals when fighting the Jade Maw, etc.

In most cases, I simply can’t pick up items. I’ve rarely lost the use of my skills. It has happened on occasion, though, and that’s extra frustrating. Whenever this happens, I’m unable to dodge properly (endurance doesn’t go down, I don’t evade, or I simply don’t dodge at all). Usually repeatedly hitting the F key and changing my position slightly over the object let’s me pick up the item. Or, in the case of the infused rocks in the Volcanic fractal, it actually randomly duplicates the item I’m trying to pick up without actually letting me pick it up.

As a quick follow-up to the lack of stats question, apparently you can choose stats after you craft it. Like with other items that let you choose stats (other than legendaries of course), it’s a one time selection.

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/11/gw2-guide-to-making-ascended-dwayna-and-grenth-backpieckes/

(Thanks, Dulfy, and anyone that contributed to the above guide.)

Kolisch.4691:

Got my second Light of Dwayna recipe. But nobody knows yet how it should be priced, I’m keeping it till way after the event is over to get a better appraisal….

Is it possible to put it up on the Trading Post (not asking you to actually sell it)? Or is it still behaving like it’s account bound? The reason I ask is because the Light of Dwayna recipe still doesn’t show up as a possible item on the TP, which suggests it still can’t be sold.

Aveneo.2068:

The ones people received prior to the patch still seem to be account bound though. And I can’t find any entry of the recipe being available on the TP at all.

Unfortunately, that does seem to be the case. The one my character learned, which was account bound at the time, still creates an account bound version of the back item. Shadow of Grenth is still just “soulbound on use.” Light of Dwayna is both account bound and soulbound on use. If I get another recipe for Light of Dwayna I’ll see if it lets me sell it on the TP. I’d also be interested to see if the game lets me learn the non-account bound version…

Also, why are there no stats on it? Or are you able to select which stats you want after crafting one?

I think you’re able to select stats but I’m not certain of that. I haven’t crafted one yet. I’ve read conflicting information on whether this is possible or not. Given the cost I would certainly we would be able to choose its stats.

It seems to look like other ascended items that allow you select stats, though. The only thing missing is the text “double-click to select stats” (see third attached screenshot). So I have no idea if this text is just missing and works like other statless ascended items, if it actually doesn’t have stats, or if the ability to select stats is missing from the item itself.

From the latest patch notes:

“Fixed an issue that was causing the Recipe: Light of Dwayna to become account bound.”

Thanks, ANet, for addressing this!

Not only are they bugged but they don’t show up in the list of possible items to craft.

Wow. That’s just really bad luck. I’m sorry to hear that.

I can understand why this would be frustrating but at the same time I think it’s a nice short term change to help people out that want celestial gear. That said, after getting over 100 charged quartz from gifts and with nothing to do with it all, it’s a rather disappointing reward. Then again, so are all the ugly socks, hats, and sweaters. But at least those can be traded for other stuff.

Oh, new skins are always nice. I’m certainly not disputing that. At the same time, we did end up getting some new skins in this update (ascended armor plus several new back items). There aren’t new weapon skins but least there’s something new to work towards.

Getting a precursor as a drop is essentially winning the lottery in this game. It’s so rare that it’s hard to use that as an indicator of anything except extreme good luck. But I definitely understand how that added insult to injury after opening that many gifts. And that sucks. I’ve been there. :-/

Which gifts in particular have you been opening? The giant ones? I managed to get 3 recipes after opening about 400 of the giant gifts (2 Grenth and 1 Dwayna). I should also point out that at the moment, the Shadow of Grenth recipe is tradeable and can be bought on the TP. Whether this is intentional or not, I have no idea.*

If you want both of them this could potentially save you a bit of a headache. If you want Light of Dwayna, which is account bound, then you’re out of luck and will have to keep playing the RNG game, unfortunately.

* Note that this is simply the way the item behaves. There is NO exploit involved here and in no way am I endorsing cheating of any kind. It’s unclear if this is a bug or if it’s intended behavior.

It’s been known for a while that a lot of the Wintersday content would be recycled from year to year. This isn’t really new information. It’s how ArenaNet has been handling their holiday events for the past 8 years.

I think it’s great that people that missed the event last year are able to have another shot at it this year. I know some of my friends were unable to do parts of it due to other obligations and they’re overjoyed that they’re going to be able to participate in it this year.

There’s still plenty of new stuff that’s been added to make it worth playing through the content again.

Yeah, no problem.

Unfortunately, that stat combo still isn’t available on ascended weapons/armor or legendaries.

Additionally, apparently both back items are considered to be bags. Um, that’s kind of strange…

Some screenshots showing all of the issues mentioned.

I recently started working to try to get a Light of Dwayna ascended recipe and naturally I ended up with 2 Shadow of Grenth recipes instead (fun times). But upon obtaining these recipes, I noticed that they aren’t actually account bound but the Light of Dwayna one is. You can even buy and sell the Shadow of Grenth recipes and back items on the Trading Post.

Is this intentional or is this a bug? Given how all other ascended items are account bound, this seems like it might be a bug. But if it’s intentional, why isn’t this also the case with the Dwayna recipe?

MastaNeenja.1537:

1) Someone needs to be held accountable.

I don’t think anyone is saying they shouldn’t be. My only point is that as far as features go, is that this isn’t critical to the game working. It’s disappointing, nevertheless. However, fractals are still beatable and it’s still possible to get fractal skins. We haven’t actually lost anything since we never had the boxes to begin with.

On the other hand, acting like an angry mob won’t solve anything.

2) Simply saying it’s working as intended is not an apology, players were misled

Players made assumptions (valid ones, I admit) based on the information that was provided. Somewhere along the way it seems like someone lost track of that particular
detail and didn’t update us on whether it would be in the Fractured! update. That’s unfortunate as a simple “we’re sorry but it won’t be making it into this update” could have prevented a lot of disappointment.

That said, I don’t think ripping into ArenaNet or individual developers is the way to express that disappointment.

3) Focus needs to shift from quantity of game updates to quality of game updates

Edit
4) Quality control, quality control, quality control. This is supposed to be a high end game, yet it feels like a low budget title with all the bugs and poor communication the player base is subjected to.

Well…I can’t really dispute this. Either not enough testing is being done or not enough time is being provided for testing. I’m not going to point fingers because it’s difficult to say what is actually happening with this. But I do think that quality control has slipped a lot this year and that isn’t a good thing for anyone.

And of course when people leave (either intentionally or unintentionally) it always has to be at the worst possible moment. It always seemed to happen to me whenever I was almost done a run. Or in the case of Fractals of the Mists, on the last fractal right before the boss. Now I just create my own groups most of the time or only play with people I trust not to do that kind of thing.

cranked.3812:

Yeah people seem to find a way to farm things very quickly. Even if crystalline ore is needed, I wouldn’t doubt people still have armor on day one.

Farming is one thing. But if it’s limited to mining it (or however it’ll be obtained) once per day and you are unable to buy it on the TP due to it being account bound, then it’ll be impossible to get the armor on day 1 simply because there would be no way around the time lock. That’s all I’m really getting at. If it isn’t required and/or isn’t time gated in some way, then there will be many that have ascended armor on day 1. Chances are I’d be able to get it myself since I’ve also stockpiled crafting materials just for armor.

cranked.3812:

Those “time-gated” items were tradable (i.e. Spiritwood planks and deldrimor ingots), so I wouldn’t doubt someone has ascended armor in the first few hours. That is unless, of course they change the recipes slightly or keep all t7 stuff account bound.

I was referring to the new crystalline ore and crystalline ingots, both of which are account bound and will probably have some sort of time-gating associated with them. If they aren’t needed for armor, then sure. Getting the armor on the first day will probably be doable if you have enough money and resources.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m willing to bet that crystalline will not be used. I’m thinking that it’ll be used for some other purpose since there would be an outcry if heavy armor components could not be tradeable on the TP unlike leather and tailor.

That’s entirely possible. Maybe it’ll be used for crafting ascended jewelry at a later date?

I’ve sort of found a workaround for this. If you have 2 people in your party (counting yourself), never opt to kick the other person. Ever. The game seems to treat this action as disbanding the party, even though you’re still technically in the party and the instance still exists. If the person leaves on their own, it seems less likely that this will happen. While it makes sense that kicking someone could be seen as an active attempt to disband the party in certain situations, the lack of a warning about this makes the sudden disbanding unexpected. Also, the assumption that this is the player’s intent isn’t a good one. This problem still occurs even if the party member is offline.

I still ran into this issue despite having the other party member leave on their own on the night I posted this thread. But since then I’ve had mixed results when trying to reproduce the problem. It seems far more likely to occur in Fractals of the Mists than in other dungeons.

TL;DR: Kicking the last party member is treated as disbanding the party and destroys the instance. The last party member leaving keeps the party and instance intact. These two behaviors don’t seem consistent with each other. In both cases I think the party should remain intact if you’re inside an instance.

This definitely isn’t new. If the owner of an instance (i.e., the person that opens the dungeon) leaves the party or changes characters, it kicks the rest of the party from the dungeon. Going offline hasn’t typically been an issue for me.

I recommend doing what Anapxist suggested and only do dungeons with people you know and trust or open them yourself. That way you can reform your party if necessary and you aren’t kicked if someone has connection issues.

However, there is definitely an issue involving being kicked from your own instance that I’ve experienced.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Being-Kicked-From-My-Own-Instance/

Dempsey.8760:

Some people, like myself, will not have to grind at all to get ascended armor. I currently have 86 laurals with nothing to use them on, enough T7 ingots to make around 10 weapons, and enough gold to buy whatever else is needed. Yes even the end product of the “daily” mats can be bought so I have no doubt I can fit into full ascended day1.
It is almost sad, I would much rather class specific Legendary armor so that I will not only look 1/2 way special but could just chose the stats I want at any given time. Now I will just make ascended armor because it’s something I don’t have then will make legendary armor because it’s something I want.
Simply put give us things we want not things we don’t need.

It’ll be pretty dang expensive to buy the new ascended crafting materials on day 1. And there’s a new material being added (I assume for the armor) called crystalline ore that’s account bound. The resulting crystalline ingots are also account bound. Unless that gets changed for tomorrow’s release and they become tradeable , you won’t be getting ascended armor on day 1 simply because of the new time gated crafting material.

Fror.2163:

We have tried to be constructive, but as Bright said, there were zero response in the “Fractured” subforum since the release. As in “zero”!

I’m aware that the subforum hasn’t had much attention. I don’t generally judge whether developers are reading what’s being said by the number of posts they make. Their main job is to work on the game, not cater to every little grievance gamers may have (and let’s face it, MMO communities are incredibly picky). This doesn’t bother me much. I’d rather they be working on the game than spending their time debating things with people on here. The occasional comment is nice of course but I don’t feel I’m entitled to a response from them.

We were promised fractal sin boxes only to learn later that they don’t appear in the currently unlocked levels, so even if that was part of the release, no one actually witnessed it being part of the release.

Sometimes things get removed at the last minute due to unforeseen problems. Would you rather they temporarily remove something broken or leave it in and have everyone freak out about it being broken? It’s lose-lose from a development perspective.

Again, I’m also disappointed that the fractal skin boxes aren’t currently accessible to us. But I’ve accepted it as the way things are and I’ve moved on. I’m not going to lose sleep over it. It seems like it was intended to be part of this release but for some reason it didn’t quite make it in.

We got ripped off our fractal levels, where some people actually had challenge playing in levels 70+. Now that challenge is over.

That challenge will be returning with additional Mistlock Instabilities, and it’ll be harder than it was before given the new way agony scales and the inclusion of the Mistlock Instabilities (if you look at the ones that were data mined the difficulty looks to become downright brutal). They’ve stated this directly many times.

So no, we are not ripping into ArenaNet because we are unhappy. We are sad about all the promises, about all the hopes we had to have better fractals that weren’t fulfilled.

And there are many that are expressing that sadness without being rude or nasty to ArenaNet. My point is there are ways to express that unhappiness without resorting to thinly veiled attacks on the people providing you content free of charge.

If you try to look from the perspective of a game developper, would you listen to the most experienced people giving their advice? Would you care about fixing the pressing issues? Would you say things and do the opposite?

As a developer I would take everyone’s advice on board but I would still do what I feel is best for the overall experience of the game and the component I’m working on given the time and resources I have to work on it. That includes fixing things and upholding as many promises as I can as time and money allow.

There are budget, technical, resource, and time constraints that can get in the way. It isn’t simply a matter of the teams doing whatever they want when they want to do it. Development on a project like this is far more involved and there are more pieces at work than we publicly see. Unfortunately, sometimes planned features or fixes need to be placed on the back burner or shelved indefinitely. It’s how it works.

This is no small disappointment: we were promised decent stuff for this release, but what did we get? Barely anything. If they simply had spent their time fixing the current fractals and implementing the small quality of life improvements everybody has been wishing for one year now instead of making 1 new fractal, I’m quite sure you would hear so many complaints less.

Other than not having more uses for pristine and regular relics and the ability to salvage or use the ascended rings for more than collecting dust in my bank, I haven’t found this release all that disappointing. I’ve actually enjoyed the Mistlock Instabilities and the extra challenges they can provide during a run. Despite the addition of new bugs, a lot of bugs have been fixed and multiple exploits have been closed.

In short, we don’t think that they’ve ever listened to us, except for the skin part and as Bright said, it’s not working 100% correctly. So yes, we are disappointed.

Listening doesn’t require them to do exactly as we demand. There’s a really large sense of entitlement in this community that would only grow more out of control if ArenaNet always caved to player demands.

There’s plenty of evidence that ArenaNet listens to feedback and implements changes where they feel it’s necessary. Less so when it comes to fractals, I agree. But I don’t expect all of my requests for features or fixes to get fixed. It just isn’t how these things work.

Krypto.2069:

But here’s the problem… the only reason why this human “female” running style is still in the game at all is because the Anet Devs are incompetent. They failed to change “all areas” of the female running style. This is the same kind of incompetence that is present when they make half-kitten changes in other areas of the game. And getting them to fix it (by “fix it” I mean revert back to the old running style of the human female in all aspects/areas of the game), haha… good luck with that!

Yes, obviously that’s the reason…

This definitely seems to be caused by crabs. I’ve noticed it in mainly in Southsun Cove and Bloodtide Coast. At first I thought a friend was trying to mess with me by saying it was the crabs but sure enough, every time it happens there are crabs nearby.

Yikes. I’m glad we ended up with the Jade Maw last night when we ran level 38. We kept having someone using poison (not to mention confusion and chill…argh) during that run and we probably would have ended up with this bug.

The lack of checkpoints after the elemental source and before the last boss is certainly a little annoying. The run isn’t that long but it shouldn’t be necessary either. It never used to be. The enemies along the way to the last boss aren’t incredibly difficult to avoid if you want to avoid them. I do think there should be a checkpoint closer to the boss, though.

Bright.9160:

Don’t defend them. They don’t deserve it.

I’ll defend whoever I want, thank you very much. I criticize ArenaNet when I think they deserve the criticism. In case you didn’t notice, I’m not exactly happy with this particular news either. I’m quite disappointed by it and stated as much.

But ripping into ANet simply because people are unhappy isn’t remotely constructive and just breeds more negativity. It doesn’t help ANet improve and it doesn’t make the game or the community a more pleasant thing to be a part of. Personally, I try to look at things from the perspective of a software developer and from the perspective of a gamer.

There are a lot of moving parts in a game this big and not everything will end up being released when originally planned. It happens. If you expect anything else when playing an MMO or any other game, you’re always going to end up being disappointed.

Yamagawa.5941:

Zedd, another way for me to put the message I was trying to get across:
While seeking a sack of gold, life has instead handed you a sack of lemons.

Would you like some lemonade?
//Portable Corpse

I get your point but I don’t see how it applies to this situation. This is a game. I play it to have fun. Being kicked out of FotM after spending 3 hours in there and not doing anything to warrant it is NOT fun. It was unavoidable defeat. My group and I had progressed to the 4th fractal. We had earned that. It was a rather nasty instability too. The game rewarded that progress by kicking us out without warning despite every other instance in the game only kicking people when the owner leaves.

Surely you can understand why this is a problem in the context of playing a game, right? At the very least it’s important for the sake of consistency in how instances behave so we can avoid such problems in the future. But a seemingly random kick? You can’t avoid that because you have no idea what triggered it.

1) Fractal Skin Boxes weren’t promised by ArenaNet as being part of the Fractured! release. It wasn’t in the release notes. It wasn’t listed as a feature of the release.That’s an assumption many of us made based on a single comment.

2) I’m certain Anthony had no intention to mislead any of us with his comments. When rereading his comment, it seems clear that he was talking about the future of Fractals of the Mists and not its current state. Yeah, he probably could have clarified that a little better but people make mistakes and he probably thought we’d want to know about that particular plan. This isn’t some massive conspiracy to screw over those of us that like FotM.

3) We can still get Fractal skins from the daily chests. Nothing has been taken away from us. It’s random and it can be frustrating. I’ve been trying to obtain a Fractal Shield for 12 months now. I’d love to be able to earn Pristine Relics and buy a skin that I want. But it’s still in the game.

Yes, this is disappointing news for the immediate future but the fact that they have these planned is good news. If running fractals is that painful for some of you, I question why you’re doing them at such high levels. The rewards aren’t that much better at 49 than they are at 30 (I agree that this needs to scale better than it currently is). It seems like it would be far less painful to just do a level 30 run if 49 is that terrible.

raahk.2786:

So nothings’ changed, outside of the addition of making some fractals harder than they already were, without actually balancing anything that already existed in fractals prior to the update. Great.

As far as getting fractal skins, yeah. Nothing has currently changed there. But numerous fractals have had updates, the daily chests do have better rewards than they used to by including gold, and numerous glitches/bugs have been fixed throughout.

raahk.2786:

Oh good, so I can still at least -attempt- to get a weapon. That I’d want. Instead of having a chance at getting a box that’d let me pick the weapon that I’d want.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still disappointed that we can’t even get those boxes yet. But at least we can attempt to get a random weapon skin still. So that’s something.

raahk.2786:

HAHAHA
Are you serious?
The only reason people run fractals is to get these weapons. Doesn’t this mean that they aren’t even available now?
To think the one good thing about the “Fractured” update doesn’t even exist yet.

Reread what she said. She said the Fractal Skin Boxes aren’t available yet. You can still get a random fractal weapon skin when you get the daily chest.

The boxes in question let you choose the skin you want. Right now nothing has really changed. You still have a chance to get a random skin.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

This is not considered a bug.

The Fractal Skin Box is not dropping for the Fractal levels currently available (up to level 50).

It’s not accessible to anyone at this time.

Well this is really disappointing news.

Thanks for the response, Andrew! Glad this is being looked into.

@Yamagawa:

For me, I care about both the journey and the reward. And when things start taking a long time (e.g., up to 3 hours due to various reasons), I just want the journey to end and have it at least mean something. Being kicked out of the instance simply for having party members leave just added insult to injury in an already rather difficult and time consuming run.

We had worked for hours on the run, made it to the end, and then “lost” when the game kicked us from the instance. It’s horribly frustrating to spend that kind of time doing something and then failing due to something that isn’t even within our control. If you could save your progress in an instance and resume it at a later point this wouldn’t be an issue. But if you get kicked from an instance, that’s it. Your progress is gone and you’ve basically just wasted hours that could have been spent on more productive things (in game or out). If I had actually left the party (even if by mistake) then this wouldn’t have bothered me because it would have been my fault.

I play games to have fun. Losing hours of progress isn’t fun. It’s frustrating and turns me off from the game. That isn’t good for ArenaNet or their customers.

If ascended armor doesn’t have infusion slots or some other benefit that exotic armor doesn’t have, then it won’t be very useful for me. The main reason I’ve obtained ascended items in the first place is for the agony resistance.

I’m not sure how this is even a question at this point. Of course she’ll spoil it. :P

Dahkeus.8243:

If this was a goal I could work towards by playing the aspects of this game I enjoy, then this would be a slight bother.

However, since this requires me to 1 ) join the champ trains for any decent gold earning and 2 ) craft, this is again something that pushes me away from the game and leaves me disinterested in contributing with gem purchases.

The #1 reason I left WoW was the gear grind and this is something that ANet has continually pushed on players here…

1) I’ve created multiple ascended weapons without ever joining a champ train. Doing a variety of dungeon runs will give you more guaranteed gold than champ trains. Use the tokens you earn from dungeons to buy the cheapest exotic weapons you can (foci, torches, warhorns, and shields). Then salvage them for the ectos, crafting materials, dark matter, and inscriptions (in the case of magi’s, shaman’s, rabid, etc.). Sell what you don’t need.

2) The amount of time it takes to actually craft ascended weapons is quite minimal. The largest grind is getting your crafting profession to 500. But even that can be done through casual play. Salvage everything you find that you don’t need and you’ll eventually have plenty of materials to level up your crafting professions.

3) GW2 barely has any gear grind at all compared to WoW. You can buy almost every single piece of gear you could possibly need (stat-wise). Yes, ascended gear takes a bit longer to obtain. But it’s intended to be a long term goal, not something you can obtain in an afternoon.

I definitely understand your frustration with this. But if it helps, the stat boost from exotic to ascended armor won’t be so significant that your existing exotic armor will be useless. It’ll still be more than adequate for most areas of the game. The only place where ascended really makes much of a difference is in high level Fractals of the Mists runs, and that’s more for the agony resistance than for the stats.

If at some point down the road we can start crafting masterwork, rare, exotic, and ascended infusions that also increase stats in addition to agony resistance (i.e., upgraded versions of the current fine infusions), then ascended armor will ultimately start having a bit more of an edge. Even then, it shouldn’t turn people with all ascended gear into unstoppable power gamers. In other words, you’re going to be perfectly fine stat-wise for quite a while I think. And there will definitely be ascended armor with celestial stats.

My suggestion is to just keep working on what you’re working on and then start working on ascended armor when you’re able to. There’s no rush.

Fourth.1567:

I really doubt adding new healing skills will have the largest impact on build diversity. Healing skills tend to be the least build defining aspect on the bar as they don’t carry much synergy.

Now more healing skills will add a bit of reach to what situations can be dealt with so basically help classes build more around a certain meta. Could be quite useful for the mesmer who has a number of vulnerabilities. But ultimately the healing slot is very interchangeable. We might see classes that had difficulty in a certain meta showing up but hardly new builds within the classes.

I couldn’t disagree more. I mainly play as a guardian (in every area of the game) so I’ll use a guardian example. The 3 non-racial guardian healing skills are: Healing Breeze, Shelter, and Signet of Resolve. Your choice of healing skill has a tremendous impact on how you play the class. It can change how you position yourself, when you move out of combat, etc. Playing using Shelter has completely different ramifications than playing using Signet of Resolve or Healing Breeze.

Shelter is both a healing skill and a means to completely mitigate all incoming damage that can be blocked for 2 seconds. You can use this skill to survive tons of stuff you wouldn’t normally be able to withstand. Strategically use it to heal or get past certain control effects. Signet of Resolve has the highest burst heal of any guardian healing skill when activated. It has the bonus of removing conditions every 10 seconds when in passive mode. And Healing Breeze allows you to directly heal allies in addition to healing yourself.

Perhaps it’s a bit much to say that people would create builds around just these skills but there are traits that can have a large impact on them (e.g., Might of the Protector in the Valor trait line grants you might whenever you block — combine this with Shelter when under heavy fire and you can gain 25 stacks of might in 2 seconds simply by healing yourself) and those can be a game changer depending on what you choose.

I acknowledge that not all classes have quite the same play style options surrounding their choice of healing skills. In those cases, I think those classes need to see some changes to those skills to make them more viable in different situations.

That’s how they’re supposed to work as per the release notes for the Fractured! living story:

Improvements to Agony Resistance/Infused Gear

• All infused ascended equipment now has a special infusion slot for Agony Resistance infusions.
• Agony Resistance infusions can be found in fractal reward chests.
• All existing, infused ascended equipment has a +5 Agony Resistance infusion in the Agony Resistance slot by default, in place of the natural +5 Agony Resistance.
  * Agony Resistance infusions provide +1 or more Agony Resistance.
  * Artificers can combine two identical Agony Resistance infusions with a Thermocatalytic Reagent to create a single, more powerful Agony Resistance infusion.
• Newly created or dropped infused ascended equipment will have empty Agony Resistance slots.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-26-2013

Only existing infused rings come with the built-in agony resistance. Any additional rings you find won’t have that and you’ll need to upgrade them using the new agony resistance infusions.

Ok, that is weird. I generally run dungeons and fractals with a second guardian all the time and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this. Have you only noticed this in TA or does it happen elsewhere?

If that’s the case, it seems like they need to take a much closer look at how that code works. ‘Cause this current behavior is unacceptable. At the very least there should be a pop-up with a warning about what’s going to happen. Being dumped back into Lion’s Arch after party members leave that didn’t create the instance is not a fun experience. This was made far worse by the crazy amount of time we had just spent in FotM.

I was recently doing a Fractals of the Mists run and the group decided to disband after repeated failed attempts at the final bosses. I hosted the instance and the moment the last party member left the group, I was kicked from my own instance. My hope was to rebuild the group and keep attempting the bosses. Apparently, the game decided I no longer owned the instance I created.

This is the second time this has happened to me. It’s really, really frustrating as I keep losing progress and get kicked without warning.

If it helps, the boss fractal in question was the Molten Berserker and Dredge Firestorm fractal. (This particular fractal also seems to have serious issues with the final checkpoint. When reviving, the entire party often gets teleported directly into the fight. This makes it almost impossible to recover when this happens.)