Guild Wars 2

WebbUK.1576:

Many thanks to AR and JS for the good fights on Piken BL last night, a very welcome change after being stuck with Riverside all week.

Absolutely this, the fights last night were a lot of fun; I really felt that I had to keep on my toes and that every time I was defeated it was down to skill (or my lack of it) rather than (mis)using game mechanics. Looking forward to the rest of the week.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

the problem with all these suggestions is that it ceases to be a rare weapon. If everyone has 100% access to the skins then it’s not a rare weapon anymore, and it looses it’s value. I like the system they currently have. most people don’t have one, a very select few do. That select few stand out, which I like.

No matter how difficult it is to acquire, if there’s a 100% chance to get it… the game will be flooded with them. Look how many legendaries are around. Just walk around LA for 5 minutes and you’ll see them all over the place.

Really? Because I bought my Warrior a chainsword (1h) skin from the TP and hardly anyone else on my server uses it, even though it was easily obtainable. Honestly I’ve seen more people wielding Bolt than I have the chainsword.

The more choices people have, the rarer each item is likely to become. If it showed any particular achievement on behalf of the player (like, say, a legendary or even the dungeon weapons) I might have more sympathy with your point of view, but these skins signify nothing other than you were lucky in a raffle.

I can do every other puzzle in the game barring Steam Vents and the holiday ones. For me I think it’s age, slow reactions, and lack of skill conspiring to put most timed puzzles out of my reach. I don’t feel bad about it, since it’s just one part of one facet of the game.

There was every option to make the end of the puzzle portal-proof but the designers chose not to do that, that should tell you something.

Seriously, defeating someone using the legendary pistol should be classified as a war crime. I hear that honking, wheezing, squeak in my nightmares.

Yes Gunnar’s Hold, I’m looking at you.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The karka queen world boss, Meta event, and economists are permanent content.

So the attacks on the settlements will also continue? Just as I was starting to find Southsun tolerable, it seems it has become somewhere I never want to go to again … again.

Pryda.8257:

Light field is not a problem at all.

Mass Retaliation is the problem, which can be resolved by changing the effect of the Light/Burst combo. Just take mass retaliation out of the game or at least make it a lot less common and the problem is solved. I don’t want to see any nerfs to light or Guardians, just a change to the effect generated by one combination.

Agreed Vanash, if I see a 1v1 or 3v3 then I’ll pass by … any more and it gets a bit complicated (I only have so many fingers to count on) and will probably wade in.

Tim.9850:

I would bet the loot would be bad also.

You are honestly better off just going to regular zones, unless you’re one of those people who will grind their nose off for a one in a million chance at something decent. Mostly you get a couple of rares I think, which is good for one encounter but when the prep-time, inconvenience of reaching the fight and the time limit is taken into consideration it’s hard to say it’s worth it.

Generic boss is generic.

The time limit is stupid. A small number of us managed to get her to spawn late last night and were doing reasonably well in the fight but were defeated by the time limit.

There is nothing legendary here … I don’t even see where it fits in with the story (and I’ve been genuinely paying attention).

As for the rewards? I can get more reliable drops running around in Ascalon.

Glog.4275:

Lost my 17k health pool in 3 seconds after throwing my nades twice into a blop of zerg. It wasnt the actually impact of the nades that did it, it was my bleeds. 374 retal a tick from multi targets with my bleeds. And my bleeds do 108 per tick, a pretty nasty return i must say.

Lesson from this. Dont play with the zergs, just not worth it. Back to killing roamers.

This is nonsense. My FT Engineer (my main WvW toon at the moment) inflicts burns and bleeds on a regular basis and yet the only hits I get from Retaliation are from my direct damage attacks. I can tell this because the retaliation damage stops when I stop firing.

To be honest I think a simpler solution to the whole thing may be simply to change the effect of Light Field/Burst Finisher to something that isn’t Area Retaliation; since it seems to have little benefit in PvE and (apparently) a disproportionate effect in WvW.

PinCushion.7390:

Phantom.8130:

could it be 3 people in a party, on 3 seperate carts, using ctrl + T to mark you? i’ve done that on defense before, and it’s absurdly simple to pull off.

My wife and I group in WvW, and we do this often.

I can imagine how it might seem like botting from the other side, when in reality we’re just in the same room communicating and marking targets.

That may explain what’s happening some of the time but in order to explain every time this has happened I think you’d need a room with several people in it, keeping to a strict rotation. It’s not out of the question but it does seem a little unlikely.

Was amused to be approached by some RS folks the day before yesterday (in RS Borderlands) asking me to go destroy some ACs they’d built deep inside their territory. I decided to pop by just to take a look and sure enough, there were a bunch of folks from RS stood around their northernmost supply base, waiting patiently for me to destroy the siege engines they had built there.

To paraphrase the bard:

“If you’ve hit siege limit I feel bad for you son,
I got ninety-nine problems but your trebs ain’t one.”

I liked the story (talking to NPCs is a help in this regard, rather than clicking through all dialogue just to get the achievement), it wasn’t as strong as Flame and Frost but then you can’t have huge stuff all the time or you get cataclysm fatigue. I liked the slow release of the plot, faster than F&F but it felt about right for a low-key story. I liked the characters involved … one day I look forward to beating the snot out of Noll, but that day is not today.

I didn’t like the implementation though. Without Dulfy there was little to no chance of getting the Samples achievements. It doesn’t matter how well you hide things in-game, someone will always find them really quickly and post the solution to the internet; the key to countering this is not, in my opinion, to make them harder to find but to make them easier … to have the detector put an arrow on your mini-map pointing toward the nearest undiscovered item/node/thing/person so it becomes easier for individuals to figure out where things are, rather than stumbling across them or, as pretty much everyone does these days, going to Dulfy.

The “dungeons” were a joke. Ok, we may have been spoiled by the Molten Weapons Facility (I want that back in a permanent state, it was magnificent) but still, one encounter in the solo and group instances? That’s just lazy. I wasn’t a fan of the mechanics of the encounters either but that’s probably just a taste thing, I know some people enjoyed them.

In terms of rewards, I very much liked the back items (so full marks there) but the rest of the stuff was so hard to get and non-tradeable that it left a really bad taste in the mouth. RNG may earn big bucks in the short term but the more it’s used the more people will become resentful of it. Increase the rate of desirable items (you might want to look at the SWTOR implementation of the crate idea, which is rather less irritating) in the crates and make them tradeable.

So even taking into account that I really liked the story, I’d still give Secrets of Southsun a lacklustre 4/10.

chronometria.3708:

Somewhat yes, but they all his the same area with a bit of a wobble. Tracking discs that catch a running player are different. Its true that a good AC user will make guesses as to where his target is going and sometimes, due to good luck, these will seem to track a target wherever he goes, but I am presuming the original poster can recognise this.

Yes, there is entirely too much precision in tracking for this to be put down to wobble.

Reborn.2934:

when i use an ac :

i always target specific classes that i know they are not using heavy armor and i follow them until i kill them.

This is completely legitimate but as far as I know the firing rate of an AC is about 3 seconds, the fields I’m seeing are coming down very precisely at a much faster rate than that. I have no problem at all with players like you trying to pin me down, this isn’t about that … this really isn’t a QQ about ACs … I’ve used them myself on occasion.

As a flamethrower Engineer I hit the sharp end of Retaliation quite often. If I start seeing it coming in from my attacks, I suck it up for a bit and then back off and heal. If I get downed by Retaliation it really is because I’m not paying attention. There are plenty of options for me to damage/inconvenience people without kicking off Retaliation but honestly I hardly ever have to resort to them because, I hardly ever see truly long-term Retaliation … and I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to the servers I’ve faced as to suggest that they don’t have the skill to do it.

Incidentally I’m mostly in the Borderlands.

I’ve noticed in some situations that AC circles appear to “follow” me as I run out of them, with new circles appearing at fairly precise intervals at a much faster rate (like, one a second) than is possible from one AC operator. It seems inconceivable that 2 or 3 operators would be sufficiently co-ordinated to consistently achieve this effect but I am seeing it really quite a lot. It’s not just me either, others on my server have noticed this phenomenon and commented on it.

This isn’t a “nerf AC” post by any means but a genuine question, given this behaviour am I seeing a hack/exploit/bot or is there some legitimate way of using ACs that I’m not aware of?

Any chance we could agree a spot for duels with map shots for the hard of thinking (ie. me)? I’d hate to accidentally intrude on an agreed duel.

MRA.4758:

• and, of course, finding out how many of them are actually running away in panic (at least for a second) when they see a single engi charging in, flamethrower blazing. You will be surprised if you try out!

I was indeed surprised when I tried that last night, though I recommend giving it a go whilst standing amid the broken ruins of a keep’s gates … I swear I got a full 3 or 4 seconds before the attacking force charged through the flames and turned me into a decorative paving slab.

Fun times.

I’d like to thank the GH team taking a supply camp for not stamping on me as I chased a RS ranger straight through them … sadly she reached her arrowcarts before I could catch her, but the chase was fun.

“Noooo a fair fight, nooooo”

Cluster.4159:

Mh… rolling over one single player with 30+ and then start to laugh and dance… You must be really really maaaaaaaaad on Gunnar ^^

That’s really poor behaviour in my opinion. I mean if a straggler gets hit by a zerg it’s only going to end one way; to gloat over that like it’s some kind of achievement? No, that’s just juvenile.

I don’t even gloat over 1v1 kills, disrespecting your enemy lessens your own achievement in defeating them.

Kvitoq.9154:

As a mesmer I try to ensure I have chaos armor on me at all times. When an enemy hits me with chaos armor on they can get 1 stack of confusion. If they have retaliation and continue to hit me the retaliation from the confusion ticks hits me like a truck.

How does this force me to play better?

I like the idea of retaliation but the execution is just bad.

Really? Retaliation works on Confusion? Well if that’s the case why on earth doesn’t Confusion work on Retaliation? I’d love to see Mesmers and Guardians edging nervously away from each other, with the occasional pair of smoking boots when one or other had got careless. =)

In all seriousness if Retaliation does work on indirect attacks like Confusion then that is a broken mechanic.

Don’t like a boon that someone else has? Then strip it away from them! At the very least, if you are getting hit by Retaliation and it isn’t going away … change your attack strategy!

I speak as an Engineer who gets hit very hard by retaliation if I don’t keep my eye on it … maybe that’s the secret? Maybe Retaliation should hit harder so that people will be forced to adapt or die.

Vampirial.9056:

crossoverAtt.9680:

Vampirial.9056:

my level 30 engineer had no problem, even soloed a vet karka with her

With condition damage? Or did you rifle it out?

i used pistols until it lost its armor, then i switched to a rifle cause it did more dmg

and i had turrets the whole time to distract it

Interesting, I wonder why it didn’t go into fast health regen once you got out of combat.

Seems to me like ANet have implemented some code whereby the people who want the skins can’t get them and the people who don’t want them get them almost straight away … that’s some hardcore programming skills right there.

Hint: Make the kitten things tradeable at least!

Went in for the achievement, played one game, got the achievement, never went back.

I really don’t like the game but that’s personal taste, fortunately there is nothing compelling me to play it so I’m free to spend my time doing stuff that I do enjoy.

KyoHanakaze.8145:

This reminds me of my “first” meeting with Trahearne at Claw Island…even though I spent a full story arc hanging out with him.

Yeah and you still couldn’t stab him in the throat next time you saw him.

Ok let me try to explain why people are actually mad about this, or at least why I am mad about this.

One of the big things that draws me to any game is aesthetics. There are a whole bunch of weapon skins in the game that may well be super-rare but if the look of it doesn’t go with one of my characters I won’t bother with it. The sclerite skins would look fantastic on one of my characters, frankly I could care less if everybody else on the server is running around with identical skins … this is about me, not them. I was unbothered by the molten or SAB skins because the look didn’t go with any of my characters, it may well be that the next set of weapons will be irrelevant to me too. So when I find a set of skins that does work, I’m naturally going to be a little bit frustrated if there is no way at all that I can guarantee getting them. Want to charge me £10 a skin? Go right ahead. At least then I will have a choice to weigh up in my mind, as it is my assumption is that if I spend £10 on crates I will largely be flushing that money down the NCSoft toilet … which is probably using revenue from GW2 to finance the launch of Wildstar … with an 80% chance of getting some flowers and shells.

To be honest, even if I were certain that GW2’s revenue was ring-fenced, nd that all the money I put into the game would go to support GW2 … I still wouldn’t buy RNG crates.

Consortium = NCSoft

Obviously. =)

As long as you steer clear of (most) veterans outside of a group you should be fine. The key thing is that each mob in Southsun requires specific tactics to defeat it. once you’ve figured out the best tactics for your profession it gets much easier. Get a reflect for young karka and they become trivial, condition removal and range attacks for reef drakes, etc.

I was surprised not to see a question about weapon skins and drop rate in there.

Omg A Hotpocket.7683:

Still getting 1-5 crates an hour from farming skelks every day since release. As other people have said, just farm for an hour at a time then go do something else. Come back an hour later and repeat.

This begs the question for those of us with several alts … do you do “something else” with a different character or the same one? When I’ve farmed for about an hour, I switch to a different character and go somewhere else for a bit but leave my “farm-toon” in place. Perhaps I should move him somewhere else for an hour?

DR is a horrible mechanic though and I really wish they’d get rid of it.

I think it’s worth noting that we don’t know exactly where the story is going to go at this point. Sure the achievements appear to point to a certain outcome but we don’t know for sure that they are as obvious as they appear. There is a fairly recent dialogue between Noll and the Lionguard (whose name, I am ashamed to say, escapes me) regarding what the enraged wildlife appears to be attacking … specifically any caches of Consortium paperwork. Frankly I’d be all in favour of setting a flamethrower to all the contracts so the refugees can choose to stay or return home.

As for Canach, well I’m content to wait and see.

I noticed today (yeah I’m a bit slow) that blooming passiflora nodes appeared to me as I was doing my first daily sweep of SC; whereas when I logged onto an alt to do my second sweep, the blooming nodes were absent although all other nodes (orichalcum, mithril, regular passiflora) were in the same locations and gatherable.

Is this a deliberate move by ANet to limit the number of blossoms in the game? Or is it a bug that needs fixing?

Griffonrook Run only requires the bomb for the chest, so I didn’t bother … as a result it was fun rather than frustrating.

In terms of “hardest puzzle” I wasn’t counting the seasonal ones but they were pretty much impossible for me too. I think it’s the speed required, if I can take my time on a puzzle then I can finikitten (complete it), however long it takes … jumping to a timescale as in Steam Vents, Clocktower and Winter Wonderland I find simply impossible. People were saying how easy the Winter puzzle was … I never got further than three platforms in. Add a timed element to these things and they become almost impossible for me, the vanishing-force-fields-above-lava one (obvs I forget the name) pushed me to about the limit. Scavenger’s Chasm was pretty simple in terms of jumping, it just needed a lot of tenacity.

I have averaged zero crates a day since the vent started … and I have not been slacking. In all the rounds I’ve done (yes, including skelks) I have had a total of ONE crate drop for me.

As long as they don’t make expansions too frequent (one every 12-18 months feels about right) then I’d very happily buy whatever they put out, be it Cantha, Elona, the Charr Homelands, Far Shiverpeaks … pretty much anything.

spoj.9672:

Find it baffling that people are so uncoordinated they cant do such an easy jumping puzzle. The only difficult part is learning when and where to jump from and to. Once you do one part wrong once or twice you should be able to get it right every time.

Theres usually mesmers around ready to portal people up, so if you really cant do it or if you’re feeling lazy just use them.

Easy jumping puzzle? Really? As someone who has legitimately achieved all but the Steam Vents and Tribulation Rift (because I don’t do WvW and haven’t got round to giving it a concerted try yet) jumping achievements, I can assure you that Steam Vents is by far the hardest puzzle in the game.

Carighan.6758:

Legendaries have become way too common tbh, because they’re so quick and easy to get. We need less common weapon and armour skins, so if you got some of them, you do stand out from the crowd.

Really? Because I very rarely see any legendary items other than Twilight.

These days I hardly ever see anyone using Halloween or Wintersday skins, certainly there are fewer chainswords (great or regular) than there are Twilights. Frankly I’d like to see a construction route for RNG skins akin to the legendary path (but less complex … a bit more like upgrading the sclerite backpack) so that people can grind to make the skins they want.

The toolbelt skill of the Charr racial ability Hidden Pistol used to appear as whatever gun you had equipped in your main hand. Recently however it’s changed to a default pistol model.

Please could I request changing the graphic back to the mainhand weapon?

Hidden Pistols plus a Wintersday popgun skin was a work of comedy genius and I miss it terribly.

lorazcyk.8927:

Mostly the karkas toss me around the ground as if I were a mop to wash the floors with.

I think a lot of that has to do with server load, having noticed this myself and kept an eye on it I notice that there are situations where almost everyone in a group will successfully dodge a karka attack, or will all be dropped by it. It’s not you, it’s the machines.

That being said, the female (egg-laying) karka appear to have a double effect on their jump attack, so you need to double-dodge or dodge backwards to avoid the second wave.

Having equipped a Sigil of Nullification in my main-hand pistol, I find that encounters with veteran karka end with me killing myself with retribution much less frequently. Flamethrower auto-attack is an almost guaranteed proc of the sigil once it’s off cooldown, what with that and the ability to destroy a million eggs before they hatch and ruin everyone’s day I’m quite happy with my Engineer in Southsun. Oh and using the Shield #4 skill on Young Karka is really quite entertaining … I recommend doing it at least once, for the laugh.

I try to dodge the drakes, again, I’m always too late or too early. I try to understand what’s going on, look at the skill effecst, etc, but… meh.

Drakes are pretty simple for us, but do require some tactics. Always keep them as far away as you can; this used to be trivial but they’ve added a new mechanic that allows the drakes to pull you in. To counter the pull move either dodge it (I find this pretty difficult as I haven’t identified the tell for it yet) or dodge/hidden pistol/rocket boot/Elixir gun #4 out as soon as you’re pulled in. Elixir Gun has the added attraction of being able to clear your conditions (#5 and any projectile finisher).

Engineer is my profession of choice when running around SC or, indeed, anywhere in the world. Of all the professions it is the one most likely to be able to exploit a mob’s weakness … given a bit of research and preparation.

I remember using my rifle turret to tank for me in the Plains of Ascalon, sure the target selection could sometimes be a bit random but that turret was my best friend. Then gradually the turrets became (comparatively) less and less robust, until dropping a turret became at best a one shot-deal (even when traited) and at worst a liability … with utterly useless hovering in the middle firing at an empty space that used to house a weapons rack.

Nowadays the only reason I have a turret taking up a utility slot is so that I can use the associated toolbelt skill.

It would be nice to be able to tank with turrets again, to have that option available … maybe even to make it worth having a toolkit equipped just for the repair ability!

I’m not holding my breath, but it would be nice to have the option to play a proper grease-monkey.

Well thus far I’ve spent several hours in SC and got no crates at all. I’ll give skelk/mosquito farming a go and see if matters improve.

Agathorn.3582:

Honestly, this really does NOT work for low level players. I can freeload on events, but at my level upped to 80, i’m pretty much useless in there

You aren’t useless at all, you’re not as useful as a fully-traited level 80 but the thing about Southsun Cove is that it’s actually pretty tough content for everyone. Unless you have extraordinary skills for example, there is simply no way you could solo a Veteran Karka; those things are the equivalent of Champion level mobs elsewhere in the world. In terms of difficulty, I’d say that most mobs are actually the equivalent of a category higher elsewhere. If you want to find out how you’d fare against a “normal” level 80 mob, find a Reef Skelk and kill it; unlike everything else on the island, the skelks are pretty “normal” in terms of health and abilities.

In case you haven’t already figured this out on your own, against Young Karka use your dodge-roll to avoid the silver acid they send out towards the beginning of a fight, this stuff is horrible and you do not want to get hit by it. For Reef Drakes, keep at range, if you allow them to get you into melee range they will stack Confusion on you and you will die. For Wave Riders, get ready to steal back any boons they steal from you … they have a ton of health so expect a long fight. Avoid all veterans unless you have friends with you!

Not got a single crate drop here, my occasional farming buddy (with about half the time spent on it) has got 2. I’m not farming crates, I’m farming karka shells … if a crate happens then I’ll be pleased (probably only briefly) but that’s not why I’m there.

Lianesse Modief.2683:

I agree, stop. I bought a LOT of keys, because I really wanted 3 fused weapons in particular. I did not get a single claim ticket. So I am done. I am not gonna buy another thing from the gem shop. If you just had to put the claim ticket in the black lion chest the least you could have done was make the drop rate not so dam low.

That’s not what I’m saying at all.

Buy stuff from the Gem Store, just don’t buy anything that is RNG-based; so no crates/keys, etc. It is only if the non-RNG things (like Rox’s Quiver or the Quaggan Backpack) sell better than the RNG items that NCSoft/Nexon will stop pushing them so hard.

I want to support this game, and I do … but I don’t want to support a mechanism that makes me enjoy the game less.

Of course the sad truth is that there are still goons out there with more money than sense who will blow £100 on Southsun Chests and then complain that they didn’t get a weapon skin.

Tried the sigil yesterday and it worked very well indeed. Obviously the more people using them (or other boon removal skills) the better as the sigil appears to have an invisible cooldown and if there was more than one boon on the veteran it wouldn’t always strip the retaliation. On the whole, though, my experience yesterday was much less frustrating.

Raestloz.7134:

If people stop buying chests and buy straight stuff instead

They will simply put every single thing in chests: boosts, make up kits, etc etc etc

At which point, people will be forced to buy it anyway, and the top brass will be happy

If you think players make the MMO, you’re wrong, the money did.

You are mistaken. If people stop buying chests and stick with it then it won’t matter what they try to do, their profits from RNG will crash. We are not forced to buy anything, we choose to. How we choose to spend our money collectively can influence the game rather more than an individual member of the company.

The RNG crates are blatantly a money-making strategy, this strategy will only succeed if people fall for it. If it stops making money, they will stop doing it.

Hebee.8460:

I would think so. I planned on making weapons with nullification sigil just so all my grenades on engineer would defiantly be clearing all boons. My Mines already remove a boon on the main ability & 5 boons from toolbelt ability so I’m sure nullification works.

Oh that’s a top-tip … I shall look into this at once!

I would have bought (more) gems to acquire two or three of the new skins; what I will not do is spend RL money on an in-game lottery.

So from this customer, ANet has lost £10-15 on this one promotion alone … let alone all the other events that have featured RNG chests.

My bank manager thanks you.