Guild Wars 2

Pinko.2076:

Xavi.6591:

I tried to find the Fight Club last night but it wasn’t there.

It changes basically on where the fun IoJ guys are found. Today they were near the ruins of Yak’s BL.

And these guys aren’t helping out? Pity…

I enjoyed the post. As I do the other “heres our story posts”. Its encouraging to see servers that have gone through some hardship, rise thruogh the tiers again, even though I could care less about bragging rights.

To EB: Do you have a strong WvW presence in your tier? Able to field enough on most maps to take some points? Or do you feel that youre spread pretty thin at times? These are questions that are burning through my mind. I dont care about dropping tiers, I dont care about not being in the top 2 or 3 tiers anymore. I just care about healthy competition, balanced matchup…where I still see many people from all three servers traversing all maps, or at least more than just one.

Iruwen.3164:

cesmode.4257:

@iruwen: Are you saying this game has no grind?

No, I’m saying as opposed to WoW, you don’t have to grind in GW2. But you can, if you want.

And in WoW you dont have to grind..i dont see the point? If you want the BiS gear, you go after it.

In WoW: Raids(boss drops), crafting(mats are a lot easier to come by), heroics, dallies grind(reliant only on yourself).

In GW2: Dungeon grind(reliant on a group), fractal grind(reliant on a group), crafting grind(reliant on yourself, but those T6 mats dont drop very nicely!…ectos too). Karma grind..

Grind is in GW2 as much as WoW.

There has been no queue, any time for me at all this week. I just got to the server less than 2 weeks ago, didnt know of the exodus…so I dont have much invested in it. Trying to stick it out. Its fun, but demoralizing yes. I hope with a better matchup the maps are better divided.

I guess no queues is a selling point, however. Great opportunity for some guilds that just want to wuvwuv without queue.

@iruwen: Are you saying this game has no grind?

katniss.6735:

How do we get a matchup this high in the tier, and neither of our opponents log in?
I’m telling our team to let opponents have the towers so we can have fights. This is so boring. I can’t imagine playing this game without having WvW available to play. What are all these Tier 4 people doing now? Just transferring? I don’t even know what to do when I log in anymore. We have 99-100% of the map every single day without trying. We have 1-30 people playing on our own team because a lot of our pubbies are only playing WvW for the karma/ badges. The 1-30 are our die-hard WvW mumblers.

I’d rather be IoJ right now and have no towers so we are guaranteed to find people on the map to fight. Right now we’re just building trebs at the gates of un-upgraded towers because it brings some level of amusement. We’re wasting siege left, right, and center that we’ll definitely need next week vs teams with actual WvW populations on them.

Just start the siege event, break the gate, and don’t cap the tower. That way you have an elite that can 1 shot us if we go near it. No one cares about the pve stuff at this point. We’re not upgrading anything anymore.

Apparently you missed the memo…the one about all of the wvw guilds on IoJ leaving. Its not about people not logging in..I see the same names from IoJ each night. Its the fact that our population was decimated, the score is lopsided and those that are on the fence each night..sure they dont hop into wuvwuv because why bother? They dont want repair bills.

Me..Ive been in there. Thiefing myself around ;p

Of course. Well organized groups can inflict a lot of chaos and damage and it is something I prefer, and something that my server (ioj) is learning to do(especially this week IMO). We are learning to do more with less.

But you cant deny the sheer power of a 50 man zerg steamrolling through an organized group of 10 or 15. And then onto towers. At times this week, I had thought that only 30 or 40 people from IoJ were on our borderlands…and it seemed that maguuma numbered in the 100s at times. Always just saw seas of red. Really really difficult to combat that. We take a camp, you take it back. We spend time and resource taking a tower. You take it back. With easier effort. We take two camps at once, you still have the numbers to take both back quickly.

don’t get me wrong, I’m all for smaller group play and I wish/hope that is the direction of IoJ since we cannot field these enormous zergs most of the time.

Leo Paul.1659:

IoJ has the biggest Filipino community in GW2.. I’ve been trying to find an exclusively filipino wvw guild in SOS ever since I started playing and there’s none. If any of them transferred to SOS it would help a lot for us pinoys there who are currently ‘leaderless’ and scattered.

Then come to IoJ? :p

Quinn Hawkeye.5130:

I actually just transferred to IoJ. I was on Stormbluff Isle, but it was a little too zergy for me. I really enjoyed playing WvW today, so I’m going to stay for awhile at least. I like that it’s a smaller server, even if we couldn’t capture much.

Im in the same boat, brother. I transferred from SBI 1-2 weeks ago. Even though our presence is small, its fun. Very fun. I see the same names pop up each night which is fantastic for community building. And our commanders are pretty legit too.

Once the ranking junk is settled, and we are in a tier we belong(due to mass exits of guilds), Im hoping for more healthy matchups.

And its not that its a SMALLER server. PVE wise, I think this server is stud. Just need to get more bodies into wuvwuv.

Silentstorm.7531:

@Ethics easy there cowboy I’m a TGN/IGN sponsored partner it’s what we do. No one said anything about being special it’s just not the best way to go about it. And it’s been said time and time again which is why the special forums got made in the first place. So take a chill pill or drink some tea and say woosha or something.

They should just make a forum for this. Rather then have a cluttured mess of responses that don’t belong together. That is a proven bad community practice because things get lost in the chaos/translation.

Welcome to GW2 forums I agree, however. I agree. For other big topics, Ive made posts that didnt really belong in the mass of junk that was a thread, but it got there. Saw your video, however, and its…kind of relevant here. So I cannot blame them on this one. You were discussing the upcoming patch, which is what is in this thread.

A forum for each major patch would be nice, however.

I actually have a question about..future WvW for servers like IoJ and even Yaks. So maguuma obviously doesnt belong with us. I think Yaks vs IoJ vs someone else would be decent. However, curious if the wvw experience would be..better or not. Maguuma is fielding what seems to be 200 on a map or something. I rarely see any yaks on our BL, and it doesnt look like they do a lot on others. I dont know exact numbers for IoJ, but it cant be more than 100 or so. With populations hurting on some of these servers, would we be able to spread out enough to cover at least two BL effectively….would we be spread too thin? Zergs of 5 taking a keep? lol.

Curious to see how it all shakes up once the balancing and ranking is all set.
Curious to see if we will still see 40 man zergs.

Free transfers should have ended within the first month. A two week grace period after that at a discounted rate. And then poof, off we go.

Early on, in the first month you knew who the top dogs were. SBI, I think JQ, IoJ was up there…terrace was, henge was. The only time things got shook was when some large guild or two left a server and threw the balancing into chaos.

Hi,
Most of the servers that are able to roflstomp servers have pure numbers. Zergs.

IoJ obviously does not have that at the moment. We are learning to do more with less, and this is a trend I hope to continue. Come join us for a tight knight community.

@fatezero

Hi,
I agree with everything you stated except about the first bit about “did arenanet say exotics are perma BiS gear”. Listen to their manifesto, which is on the website here somewhere, listen to interviews, read blogs, watch webcasts…You can literally quote Arenanet a half dozen times saying “no gear grind”, “grind is not fun and will not be in our game”, “play the game you want and how you want”, “legendaries are only cosmetic”.

“No gear grind” – this is one of the grindiest games Ive ever played. Way moreso than the juggernaut WoW.

“Grind is not fun and will not be in our game”- While I enjoy a fractal every now and again, it became “unfun” to log in and run the fractal to simply get BiS gear…grinding out the pristine relics was annoying because for the longest time I had no luck with the RnG chest. So this was a grind, and was not fun. But I am not complaining about not having agony on laurel ascended gear. I agree with you there.

“Play the game how you want to”- I want to run around all zones of Tyria, get rewarded for my time PROPERLY and not feel compelled to participate in any one part of the game. First, the reward you get as a lvl 80 in a lvl 30 zone is atrocious…a little copper, 2k experience, 100 karma? Something like that. Theres no incentive. Second, I wanted to get BiS gear and then juts ENJOY the game. Ascended gear changed that, gotta get that now so I know I have the top knotch stuff…then I can just relax and do whatever I want. Sure you can say, noone is forcing you to grind fractals. But I wanted BiS gear so that I do not have to worry about it ever again…so I can log in worry free and play. So I can take a month or two off, come back and my character hasnt lost any power, or isnt behind. If I took a month or two off in November, Id have to do a massive fractal grind to catch up. Obviously, this patch is addressing a lot of this, so this is a great start!

“Legendaries are cosmetic”- What a load. I think they stated that when ascended gear is released, legendaries will be bumped up to match the stats. Yet, in a webcast or whatever between Colin and..I think his name was Mike, the Mike guy was talking about legendaries and even said “Theres no stat difference between exotic and legendary, its just cosmetic”.

Theres no denying that arenanet walked the grey line, downplays the notion of gear grind or treadmill..yet both are in this game.

With that said, my respect for arenanet has been restored in the last month or two. I think they are great developers still. I have high respect for Colin for taking good time to respond to posts in these forums, big props to him as well as others who do so like John Sharp. I think this patch is defiantely a fantastic step in the right direction and might be worth another gem store purchase from me, pending on some finer detail confirmations.

With THAT said, agian, I agree with the rest of what you said. I just disagree that this game was always supposed to have verticle progression once you hit level cap and got the, currently, best in slot gear. Arenanet said this was always intended(ascended gear), yet I as well as the rest of the community never heard about it for three months while we obtained exotic sets and gear.

lothefallen.7081:

Oh look, more grind, hair-brained story injections, and cash shop flaunting. What a great update. Nothing that really matters like class balance, new skills, or weapons or anything like that…awesome! Now i can grind dailies for Ascended items as if FoTM wasn’t awful and pointless enough. I really don’t believe they’ve been seeing more and more players log on. They’re not giving us anything of value. Another lie…these updates aren’t the size of an expansion, get real. You guys need better communication not this hype-inducing PR and shady marketing.

I agree there are some major class balance problems. But I really like the fact that they arent adding much PVE content to the world..maybe a story arc but thats it. They are trying to prop up whats already there. How come for a patch to be “popular” in the eyes of players(mostly pvp), it NEEDS class balance every single time.

Yes Necromancers could use a buff.
Yes bunker d/d eles are rediculous.
Yes thieves(I play a thief) take advantage of culling <— but not for long.
Yes warriors hit like trucks <— if they manage to knock you down and land all 100b. I do not think this ability should be nerfed in PVE, however…no sir. Please seperate it out.
Yes mesmers are filthy slippery folk (I also play a mesmer).

But again, most of these complains will come from PVP players. And when developers balance for PVP and impacts PVE, things go haywire. I hope they seperate it out in this game because I think most classes are fine in PVE.

wauwi.9162:

GW2 is probably the most populated mmorpg atm.
so if GW2 is “dead”, how would you describe other fairly populated mmorpg’s?

I wouldnt say that. Id say its probably one of the most hottest, if not hottest MMO in terms of hype, popularity, and “freshness”. But populated, no. That crown goes to WoW and until Blizzard closes shop, things will stay like that.

IMO, I would say a mount is anything that a player can ride that increases movement speed. Now, I know that in some games there are some mounts that are pure cosmetic and do not increase movement speed at all. I think that this might be an interesting thing for players to go after. Purely cosmetic mounts. Nothing more, nothing less. Just so your player rides instead of runs. No movement speed increase.

Also, I am not in favor of movement speed increasing mounts in the game. Adding these mounts decrease the size of the world(not literally) and that is something I do not want.

FateZero.8536:

Shadow Blade.1324:

@ FateZero.8536 you seem to be missing the point, BIS gear allows you to do ALL content, if you dont have it you need to get it, then your completion of that content is only dependant on personal skill/ teamwork and you can play whatever you want. Looking at it another way would you like it if after getting your fractals gear, you couldn’t use it in any other areas of the game and had to go grind each of those areas to get JP / WvW /other dungeons/ DE etc specific gear with no other way to get it? sound fun? so if you were interested in that content you’d have no problem farming lower levels of that content for the +% light gear to combat the % heavy debuff in JP or so on? cause that’s your argument

You’re missing my point here. Players who does not want to do fractals, hate to do fractals or refuses to do fractals to get ascended items when it was first introduce shouldn’t be insisting/demanding for agony resistance infusion to be available outside fractals. Why? Simple, because it’s redundant.

What I understand from your earlier post (not the one which I quoted in this post) is that you want ANet to implement some new recipe for Agony Resistance via the Mystic Forge/slotting. Why did I say new recipe? because currently to infuse any kind of agony resistance into ascended accessories, you’ll need vial of condensed mists essence/glob of coagulated mists essence/shard of crystallized mists essence/fractal relics. All of which aren’t available outside of Fractals.

Therefore, why do you want Agony Resistance when in the first place you do not enter Fractals? ANet has announced that they will make Ascended gears available outside Fractals and the stats will be the same except the absence of Agony Resistance which non-fractals players do not need.

Even if by some change of mind that you intend to do fractals, you’ll have to start from FotM level 1 which Agony Resistance is not needed till level 10 onwards. You’ll have more than enough time to save up for the Versatile Simple Infusion.

Kind of my point earlier about the whole..“Why do you need agony resistance if you arent running fractals. And if you want to run fractals, why are you complaining about running fractals to get the agony infused ascended gear?” My whole stance was that some folks want to almost sidestep grinding in fractals for agony infused ascended gear, AND then run high level fractals. Have their cake and eat it too.

Now, one person mentioned about stat combos, to which I agree with him. Stat combos from laurels need to be the same as whats available in FoTM and they need to synergize well with EVERY build in the game for all classes. Otherwise, once we get more ascended gear, I can see builds breaking.

I left sbi about 2 weeks ago because i couldnt find a small-medium guild that does pve and wvw…casual, laid back…one that i could grow with. Might come back to try to find a guild…especially since i am more into wvw. I like my currwnt guild and server even tho we are going through a hard time though. We will see.

Laurels only being rewarded for daily and monthly achievements was news to me. Having other achievements being rewarded down the road with a different system was news.

Either way, its fine.

I guess I can begin map completions now.

juno.1840:

cesmode.4257:

So what you’re saying is, you want to be able to purchase already infused ascended gear via a nice, easy, calm, no pressure way via daily and monthlys. You want to be able to sleepwalk through these dailys, which they most likely will be if current dailys and monthlys are any indication, in order to SIDESTEP a fractal grind for infusions that are only relevant to fractals.

I dont see your logic.

All I see is:
I want to be able to get BiS gear without grinding fractals so that I can join high level fractal groups.
I dont want to fractal grind. This means, I dont want to spend 1.5 hr per day to grind out fractals against RNG. This is too hard because fractals CAN be difficult at times, and RNG does suck.
I want to walk through the green fields of Kessex hills, kill some centaurs, and complete the monthly achievement. Then I can get the infused ascended, to go do those high end fractals.

Sounds like you want the easy way out. Not trying to be rude or insulting, but that is pretty much how I see this.

And I know arenanet said ascended gear has always been planned. Just making a point that the vocal minority/majority that wanted gear progression got their way, and these are now probably the same people whining that its too grindy and too RNG based.

Typically multiple avenues exist for BiG gear. They trade off between “excessive time to complete” on one end of the spectrum to “excessive difficulty to complete” on the other end of the spectrum. The avenues support the diversity of the player base.

ANet has stated many times that multiple avenues will exist to obtain ascended gear. Sounds like you may be upset if it doesn’t include fractals — maybe you feel entitled to grind fractals?

Honestly I’m not tied to any particular avenue of obtaining ascended gear. However I felt compelled to respond to your post because it was really off the mark. Also, stating “Not trying to be rude or insulting” doesn’t make it true.

Trying to grasp what youre trying to point out here. I was responding to one or two individuals who wanted the obtain infused ascended gear via laurels. Obtaining the gear that way is probably a lot easier than a fractal grind. The time it takes is variable. I was simply stating that why would people want to grind endlessly and possibly wipe in fractals, when they could just do dailys and monthlys to get infused gear. I understand arenanets longterm goal, to make everything available in multiple ways. But specifically, and I think this is the part you missed, the infusion piece. Infusions have no bearing at all in the game except in fractals. Yet, what I am hearing is that people want to side step around running fractals to get this infusion gear, so they can run..more fractals. Makes no sense.

If they end up putting infusion gear into laurels, Im fine with that too. But I am also OK with it not being available. They are already making the baseline gear available, which is enough for me and most.

Not too completely off the mark, as you stated. But I guess that is in the eye of the beholder…opinions opinions.

You mean, theres Ioj’ers playing during the day for NA?

Thank you Martin. Not sure Id like mounts in the game. Kind of like running around world that feels large. Mounts make it smaller.

Svenn.5209:

cesmode.4257:

Actually, re-reading his quote again makes me think: laurel obtained ascended items may or may not be included in future releases. Thats concerning. Keep it in laurels, and fractals, and add it to WvW too.

This is what concerns me. They love splitting up stat combos and tossing them all over the place. With exotics some combos only come from crafting, some only come from dungeons, some come from Karma and some are from WvW. You can’t get all the combos from the same place. That’s not normally a problem, though.

Now, take that and make it so that the stat combos are all over the place, but now only SOME combos have agony resist and others don’t. It just becomes a huge mess, people who are doing fractals are stuck with a subset of combos that they can use for fractals… I just don’t want to see that happen.

True
I am seeing youre point a little more concerning the stat combo thing. Still, fractals are the “pve endgame”. Grind it out like any other game where you raid the same raid week in and out for 3 months. Its the endgame given, and most of the time you can’t get that level of raid gear elsewhere either.

Still, are you really gimping yourself/build if you took an item with toughness instead of vit? Dont think iat matters TOO much, not right now at least. For me, I took the first two ascended rings I got, just for the AR slot. AR is what matters in the instance, not necessarily the correct stat combo. Thats my view anyways. However, further down the line where we can potentially completely kit out our entire characters gear with ascended, yes then the stat combo becomes an issue. It will make or break your build then, sure. I would like to think that arenanet is not this shortsided to let this one slip through the cracks. … however, fractal levels in the first place was a huge glaring mistake, and I saw this as a problem from hour 1…to which they admitted their goof a week later in the AMA and said they quickly realized this as well. Doesn’t take much to look a few steps down the line, which Im sure they do. Hope this one isnt overlooked.

but for now, its not game breaking, imo.

@joey, your wolves tried to bite me last night. I was running away screaming, “Im IoJ, Im IoJ!!”. Keep them on a tight leash!

I’ll probably be in wvw at some point tonight too…once I get a fractal done :p

ColinJohanson.2394:
PhilipRed.9473:Just ascended amulets? what about the rest of the gear?

Good question!

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

We will also introduce an additional reward system (or systems) in the future to make these items more accessible to WvW players on top of the laurel system.

The remaining ascended item types will be introduced in future releases, and may or may not tie into the laurel system, TBD.

(Edited to add note about agony)

@svenn, wordplay all you want with this…I guess there is a grey area. “Statistically the same” could mean that its the same level of stats(for instance, 67 power or 67 precision). Or it means they are the same items which makes more sense imo.

Actually, re-reading his quote again makes me think: laurel obtained ascended items may or may not be included in future releases. Thats concerning. Keep it in laurels, and fractals, and add it to WvW too.

Im going to find the nearest Maguuma stronghold, which..won’t be hard to find, and jab my dagger into the concrete wall as hard as I can. I’ll gitcha! I will! I’ll slowly chip away at the concrete. And once I’m in…woah nelly!

Feet don’t fail me now!

Again, this is the debate I was having with the other guy.

If you are a player that loves to run fractals, and oure at fractal level..40. High end fractals. Yet, you dont want to grind out against the RNG monster for the infused pieces. Thats a classic case of “I want to have my cake and eat it too”. You want to run high lvl fractals, but not suffer the work to get there. This also defeats the purpose of what arenanet intended with ascended gear in the first place. Bridging the TIME gap between exotic and legendary.

Having ascended gear available via laurels is simply a way for non-fractal running folk, and even some fractal folks who arent insanely serious about fractals, to get BiS gear. BiS meaning, the traditional stats of power,precision,crit, etc.

Consider this: The current ascended gear, you can get a grand total of…30 AR? With 30 AR, and the fractals being “endless” in level…did you really think you could endlessly grind up to fractal level 50, 60, or70? If anyone has done that, they probably wiped a billion times, or died so much. The current amount of AR in the game only allows you to get to maybe…40,45 or so, until it becomes extremely difficult, borderline impassable. So there is a “soft cap” on the fractal levels after all, imo.

Oh
My
Gosh

Please dont tell me youre seriously thinking we will have mounts in the patch? Its art. Its probably an NPC we havent met yet that rides on a horse. I dont think they will be giving the player-base mounts, ever. Mounts lead to reduction in travel expenses. Which means to less money being spent. Which, for a lot of people, means less of a reason to buy gems, which is less profit for Arenanet.

They put waypoints in, because there are no mounts. If they added mounts, why use waypoints.

eye floater.7140:

GuardianOMS.8067:

eye floater.7140:

GuardianOMS.8067:

Yak’s have numbers, but no clue how to use it. It’s the same as ever, except it’s equal numbers now. IoJ is a unicorn, they simply just don’t exist. It feels like no one is trying, I honestly don’t blame you. But when Maguuma fought outnumbered, we bared our teeth, and played it smart. These guys… meh

Would people please stop acting like there’s actually that much strategy in WVW?
“We bared our teeth and played it smart”. Really? Wtf does that even mean? How exactly did you “bare your teeth”, because there is no exhaustion in virtual worlds, so that phrase really doesn’t mean anything. The most it could mean is you didn’t retreat.

Wow, did you really just make the mistake of taking those cheesy lines seriously? And more importantly, you didn’t even understand them? Woah.

But you’re right, there is no strategy to WvW. Just bang your faces against a gate and see how far that gets you. It worked for many servers, I’m sure it’ll work for you too (it wont). But seriously, as long as you’re having fun, that’s all that matters. I honestly just wish you guys played smarter, not harder. In the long run, it’ll work to your advantage.

I wasn’t supposed to take that paragraph seriously… Have you ever noticed how hard it is to detect sarcasm through text sometimes? And what I meant by attacking that idiom, is that you can’t DO anything differently in WVW if you hunker down and get angry. Do your skills do more damage when you’re kitten off? No. Do your arrows shoot farther? No. Are your shouts louder? No. “Baring your teeth” in a game means nothing else besides hostility, and that cannot translate into any enhanced state of physical aggression, because it’s a virtual world.
When you said “we bared our teeth, and played it smart”, it just sounds a little pretentious. What exactly did you do after you got more aggressive? Run at the Yaks zerg more? Press your 1 button harder?
As for the lack of strategy, I said there isn’t MUCH strategy. People always exaggerate when trying to make a point, so I did, and others did when they quoted me as saying there is none. Yes, there is some, but not a lot. Spreading out catas isn’t that hard to figure out. There could be a lot of strategy if everyone communicated perfectly, and if anything other than a zerg could counter a zerg, but there’s not.
And you know, saying things like “I honestly just wish you guys played smarter” make you sound like a kitten. Even if it were true, and say we did have a mindless zerg going everywhere, it makes you sound extremely pretentious to tell us to play smarter. Sometimes playing smart is incredibly kittening boring- i.e. running yaks or babying towers- so people don’t do it.

I counted two uses of the word pretentious, kind sir. One more, and I deduct 5 internets for using big words.
:p

Svenn.5209:

cesmode.4257:

Shadow Blade.1324:

cesmode.4257:

Again,
If you want ascended gear with built in infusion, then youre sights are aimed at high fractal levels. So go run fractals.

They are making ascended gear, without built in infusions, available via laurels so people are STATTED on equal footing, even if they dont run fractals. The infusion part of ascended gear is specific to fractals ONLY. So if you want ascended with built in infusion, then that tells me you are someone who wants to run fractals because that “upgrade” is specific to fractals.

If you do not run fractals, you do not need ascended with built in infusion.

I see no problem here.

Can people please calm down about this?

you don’t seem to understand the point, this was supposed to allow players to get BIS outside of farming fractals, if it doesn’t have the inherent AR then its not BIS its that simple and creates a sub teir if it cant be upgraded, as you will still have to grind lower level fractals and fight rng to get the stats you want if you want to dip into later fractals for a challenge or because guildies need +1

it does nothing to mend the fracturing of the player base people will still have trouble finding geared players to attempt the dungeon with since there is no AR on the gear, (infusions will help to some extent) youll still only have 50% of the infusion at most as someone who farms fractals, less when higher rarity infusions are released. then you have to grind lower level fractals (if you can find anyone to play them) to get a new set of gear with 100% AR.

I still dont see the problem, but not because I am shortsighted. I just dont see it as a problem.

From your two posts I gather that you, or this hypothetical person, wants to run high end fractals where ascended with built in infusions is almost required. Yet, you dont want to run fractals to get this gear. Gear that…is only BIS for fractals/high end fractals. You do not need +10 AR and some offensive stat for anything but fractals.

So what you’re saying is, you want to be able to purchase already infused ascended gear via a nice, easy, calm, no pressure way via daily and monthlys. You want to be able to sleepwalk through these dailys, which they most likely will be if current dailys and monthlys are any indication, in order to SIDESTEP a fractal grind for infusions that are only relevant to fractals.

I dont see your logic.

All I see is:
I want to be able to get BiS gear without grinding fractals so that I can join high level fractal groups.
I dont want to fractal grind. This means, I dont want to spend 1.5 hr per day to grind out fractals against RNG. This is too hard because fractals CAN be difficult at times, and RNG does suck.
I want to walk through the green fields of Kessex hills, kill some centaurs, and complete the monthly achievement. Then I can get the infused ascended, to go do those high end fractals.

Sounds like you want the easy way out. Not trying to be rude or insulting, but that is pretty much how I see this.

This will only be a problem if the rings you get from Laurels are not the same stat combos as the ones from Fractals. Why? Here are a couple reasons:

1) If you want a certain stat combo and it’s only available via Laurels then you can’t use it in Fractals.

Svenn, why couldn’t you use the laurel ascended item in a fractal? The items are going to be the same, and I think Colin confirmed that in this post. Read up a page or so. You’ll be able to wear the laurel ascended items in fractals. Why wouldnt you?

I see new story arcs. No mounts for the players, folks. Id imagine thats just art, or a preview of some character we dont know yet who might be mounted. Dont get too excited for player mounts, or else you’ll be disappointed.

Shadow Blade.1324:

cesmode.4257:

Again,
If you want ascended gear with built in infusion, then youre sights are aimed at high fractal levels. So go run fractals.

They are making ascended gear, without built in infusions, available via laurels so people are STATTED on equal footing, even if they dont run fractals. The infusion part of ascended gear is specific to fractals ONLY. So if you want ascended with built in infusion, then that tells me you are someone who wants to run fractals because that “upgrade” is specific to fractals.

If you do not run fractals, you do not need ascended with built in infusion.

I see no problem here.

Can people please calm down about this?

you don’t seem to understand the point, this was supposed to allow players to get BIS outside of farming fractals, if it doesn’t have the inherent AR then its not BIS its that simple and creates a sub teir if it cant be upgraded, as you will still have to grind lower level fractals and fight rng to get the stats you want if you want to dip into later fractals for a challenge or because guildies need +1

it does nothing to mend the fracturing of the player base people will still have trouble finding geared players to attempt the dungeon with since there is no AR on the gear, (infusions will help to some extent) youll still only have 50% of the infusion at most as someone who farms fractals, less when higher rarity infusions are released. then you have to grind lower level fractals (if you can find anyone to play them) to get a new set of gear with 100% AR.

I still dont see the problem, but not because I am shortsighted. I just dont see it as a problem.

From your two posts I gather that you, or this hypothetical person, wants to run high end fractals where ascended with built in infusions is almost required. Yet, you dont want to run fractals to get this gear. Gear that…is only BIS for fractals/high end fractals. You do not need +10 AR and some offensive stat for anything but fractals.

So what you’re saying is, you want to be able to purchase already infused ascended gear via a nice, easy, calm, no pressure way via daily and monthlys. You want to be able to sleepwalk through these dailys, which they most likely will be if current dailys and monthlys are any indication, in order to SIDESTEP a fractal grind for infusions that are only relevant to fractals.

I dont see your logic.

All I see is:
I want to be able to get BiS gear without grinding fractals so that I can join high level fractal groups.
I dont want to fractal grind. This means, I dont want to spend 1.5 hr per day to grind out fractals against RNG. This is too hard because fractals CAN be difficult at times, and RNG does suck.
I want to walk through the green fields of Kessex hills, kill some centaurs, and complete the monthly achievement. Then I can get the infused ascended, to go do those high end fractals.

Sounds like you want the easy way out. Not trying to be rude or insulting, but that is pretty much how I see this.

Edit: added— Not to mention, the stats(power,precision,crit,vit,tough,mf) on the laurel-obtained ascended will be the same as the gear you get from inside the dungeon. Again, the only difference is the infused slot, which is only pertinent to the dungeon. Also, they are removing the fractal level barrier. So if you must grind out lower levels, it will be a little easier to find a group.

Whether or not ascended gear is a result of the treadmill-wowmachine that whines on the forums for geared progression, the gear grind has been placed into the game. So, if you or anyone else is upset about needing to grind out fractals for that just-right piece of gear, you can thank those who whined and eventually got their way. And RNG is present in all games, evenWoW. How many times have I seen other items drop from a boss, but not the one I wanted! ugh! LoL.

And I know arenanet said ascended gear has always been planned. Just making a point that the vocal minority/majority that wanted gear progression got their way, and these are now probably the same people whining that its too grindy and too RNG based.

In the words of Admiral Akbar from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi:

“Itsatrap!”

And you can be sure I will single handedly capture every single sentry point north of the border.

Vizier.3164:

Even Crit is leaving :o thats another 500 players gone

When did they say this

Altie.4571:

styx.7294:

My favourite is when a Gates of Madness commander transferred off and then posted on the forums that Gates of Madness has too few commanders.

Lulz!

Did he transfer off because he was one of very few commanders, and got tired of leading it himself? If so, thats some what understandable.

Nozdrum.2894:

Will I be able to buy this new ascended gear with pristine fractals, because I don’t know what to do with these except storing them in the bank with my other 12 useless ascended-rings.

Id imagine that pristine fractals will be able to purchase amulets via the ascended gear vendor in fotm. However, this has yet to be confirmed.

Shadow Blade.1324:

ColinJohanson.2394:

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

are the amulets available outside the laurel tokens? if not doesn’t this just add more gating to get them, ie you must do X days of dailies before you will have one, increasing the gap between players who do dailies every day and those with other comment’s, but who might be able to play lots at the weekend, even if they play the exact same amount of hours the latter will never catch the former as this is linked directly to daily achievements.

additionally people will still have to farm fractals for BIS as this laurel ascended gear will never have the + agony resist inherent in higher lvl fractals drops (not including slotted infusions)… so how does this make ascended gear more available for players wanting to experience all of the content including that which requires agony resist?

also when can we expect legendary gear for every slot so those of us who don’t want to keep running on the treadmill can play the game where we don’t have to keep farming the new bis? also legendaries will still be upgraded to BIS when lvl 81 comes out right?

Again,
If you want ascended gear with built in infusion, then youre sights are aimed at high fractal levels. So go run fractals.

They are making ascended gear, without built in infusions, available via laurels so people are STATTED on equal footing, even if they dont run fractals. The infusion part of ascended gear is specific to fractals ONLY. So if you want ascended with built in infusion, then that tells me you are someone who wants to run fractals because that “upgrade” is specific to fractals.

If you do not run fractals, you do not need ascended with built in infusion.

I see no problem here.

Can people please calm down about this?

Svenn.5209:

azurrei.5691:

Svenn.5209:

ColinJohanson.2394:

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

So what you are saying is that in order to progress high into Fractals where you need lots of Agony resist you’ll have to be wearing gear FROM Fractals to ensure that you have good enough resists. Which means that if I don’t like those stats I’ll have to carry around a set of regular gear and a set of gear specifically for doing Fractals?

I hope not, because that is terrible and one of the big concerns a lot of people had back when agony was first mentioned. It’s bad enough that the customization of gear+socket was removed from these items, but now we’ll have gear that is specifically suited for Fractals versus gear from other places on top of it.

he already replied that laurel purchased gear CAN be infused with agony resist

Right, but if it only has the slot and can’t be upgraded to have the slot AND the built-in agony resist, that means we’ll be sitting with half the agony resist of Fractals gear.

If it can be upgraded via some Mystic Forge recipe like the regular rings and stuff that’s fine then.

Heres the general rule when it comes to AR: Fractal level – 5, and thats what you should have in terms of Agony. That is at least for the first 30 levels or so. The extra few stats you get from infusions will be specific to fractals only, Id imagine. the +5 agony and +(offensive infusion stat) will have no bearing on the rest of the game. Or so that is what I was lead to believe.

So even if you are decked with simple infusions, I tihnk youre fine as long as you keep up with it, and don’t go crazy in fractal levels. No need to jump into fractal level 40 when you are 20 and only have 15 , or even 20 AR.

critickitten.1498:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

ColinJohanson.2394:

This is not a live storyline that requires you to purchase an expansion to discover the ending, no. This month is a small pre-cursor / lead-in to kick off a storyline that will play out over the coming months.

Thank you so much for responding to these concerns! I was really worried, but those posts have put my mind much more at ease, and I can really look forward to these releases wholeheartedly now.

And I’m also glad to hear that WvW players won’t be left out, either, though curious about the notion that it may involve another reward system entirely. Hopefully not less rewarding than Badges of Honor are right now, please? They drop so sparingly that I fear for anyone trying to obtain even rarer drops in WvW.

As far as AR goes, any possibility that we’ll be able to upgrade laurel-based gear to include Agony Resistance? That way we’re not stuck running Fractals just to get gear so we can run Fractals some more (creating a rather undesirable treadmill effect)?

I see your point, you want to be able to purchase infusions via laurels, yes? I think thats been stated in the recent information as well, either via blogs or interviews. I think we’re good there too. If not, its like..one or two lvl 10+ fractal runs to get enough for a +5 agony resist infusion. Fear not, it still isnt bad. I have so many relics saved up, I need to spend them on something. Taking up bank space.

Eh, tiers..bragging rights, who really cares? You get nothing for being a top tier server. Just bigger zergs, longer fights. As long as I see an even distribution of red, blue, and green on the WvW maps, isnt that enough? The experience, the fun, the strategy? The community? With that said, I want to be as competitive and strong as I can, and for the server. If I really get into WvW, which I am beginning to as noted with my activity on the forum today, and in WvW in recent days, I might decide to forgoe legendary and go for commander, helping rebuild WvW on IoJ just as another one or two are considering. If I do that, however, I don’t want to lose sight on everything else I enjoy about the game. Don’t want WvW and being a commander to suck up my entire GW2 existance.

They are adding in WvW progression, but thats likely to be individual progression and still, will probably have no bearing on Tier 1 or 6.

Vol.5241:

ColinJohanson.2394:

critickitten.1498:

And that concern is this: I’m worried that this entire multi-month event is just setting the stage for the first expansion, and that we’ll have to buy the expansion to get the full story. GW1 managed to introduce entire post-campaign storylines of a fairly significant size and did it entirely for free, so I sure hope GW2 isn’t drumming up this multi-month event for additional drama when they announce the first expansion. That’d be awfully disappointing.

Colin, mind putting my fears to rest, please?

This is not a live storyline that requires you to purchase an expansion to discover the ending, no. This month is a small pre-cursor / lead-in to kick off a storyline that will play out over the coming months.

Might not want to use the word precursor, people are gonna freak out! :P

Pre-cursor should be filtered via Kitten as cuss words are. haha.

ColinJohanson.2394:

critickitten.1498:

And that concern is this: I’m worried that this entire multi-month event is just setting the stage for the first expansion, and that we’ll have to buy the expansion to get the full story. GW1 managed to introduce entire post-campaign storylines of a fairly significant size and did it entirely for free, so I sure hope GW2 isn’t drumming up this multi-month event for additional drama when they announce the first expansion. That’d be awfully disappointing.

Colin, mind putting my fears to rest, please?

This is not a live storyline that requires you to purchase an expansion to discover the ending, no. This month is a small pre-cursor / lead-in to kick off a storyline that will play out over the coming months.

And by pre-cursor, he doesn’t mean legendary pre-cursor, correct? I hope everyone, didnt jump off their seats at the word pre cursor haha.

ColinJohanson.2394:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

PhilipRed.9473:

Just ascended amulets? what about the rest of the gear?

Good question!

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

We will also introduce an additional reward system (or systems) in the future to make these items more accessible to WvW players on top of the laurel system.

The remaining ascended item types will be introduced in future releases, and may or may not tie into the laurel system, TBD.

(Edited to add note about agony)

Thanks for the post and clarification! The ascended items obtainable via laurel, will they at least have the infusion slot? Or just the stats?

You will also be able to put infusions in the ascended gear from laurels, yes!

I award you sir, 10 internets today! Thanks for the clarifications and the continued activity in these threads! I now check the General Discussions forum for a chance of seeing a Colin post!

I think the laurels is a great start, I am definately excited to see other systems for other achievement points. I am also excited to see what other plans, besides laurels, arenanet has to put my level 80 characters back into zones like Iron Marches, or other low-mid level zones.

With that said, I don’t want GW2 to be saturated with so many currencies, however. SWTOR did that, and I hated it.

Keep up the good work!

I wonder if there are any plans to add Weekly achievements.

ColinJohanson.2394:

PhilipRed.9473:

Just ascended amulets? what about the rest of the gear?

Good question!

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

We will also introduce an additional reward system (or systems) in the future to make these items more accessible to WvW players on top of the laurel system.

The remaining ascended item types will be introduced in future releases, and may or may not tie into the laurel system, TBD.

(Edited to add note about agony)

Thanks for the post and clarification! The ascended items obtainable via laurel, will they at least have the infusion slot? Or just the stats?

JarXLite.6720:

cesmode.4257:

Jax dude, I was right with you last night man(not sure what your in game name was). But I was there last night, we pushed mag out of the northern part of our borderland! We started dabbling in the south a bit. Right as I logged off a magg zerg was taking Sunny I believe…I log in this morning at 6:25am EST, magg had every single capture point in all maps.

Its just very disappointing to see all the hardwork we did as a dedicated-spirited and devoted server, just crushed by sheer numbers (and I have only been on the server a little over a week).

I was going to write up a very similar post as you, thank you for sparing my fingers pain. We do need some guilds, large or small, or even individual players looking to work as a group, to join the fight. I don’t care if the server sits in the bottom rung of tiers. As long as we have healthy competition, without complete teeth stomping, Im fine!

Also, what did you mean, “due to the PVE nature of IoJ”? I am a heavy PVE player as well…is there a problem on the server with PVE?

Regardless…fight on IoJ. I just hope that guilds and people still find the courage, and money, to transfer over even after paid transfers begin.

Edit: Ahh, Tainir! I remember you now.

Hey! Thanks for replying, I’m sure I would remember you if I knew your name!

When I said that, I meant that most people in IoJ are content with running dungeons all day and never stepping foot in WvW except for map completion. I myself was one of those players, but lately I’ve tried to dedicate myself to helping rebuild in WvW. Hopefully, we can get more of these players into WvW but lately’ I’ve noticed a drop in population in LA and other areas, as well as WvW. It’s very concerning that this would seemingly take away so much of our total server population.

Pretty much everything you said holds true for me too. PVE player, dabbled in WvW…liked it, got hooked. Now Im debating the transfer vs stay and rebuild, risk and reward. Probably staying. I like the guild I transferred here for, and the WvW community, the ones staying, are pretty cool. As far as LA is concerned, yeah Ive seen that. I hope the open world isnt suffering.

As far as my name goes…I’ll give you a hint: I came from SBI, I have a good sense of humor(or I like to think so…sometimes..maybe) while in WvW. First three letters are ’ Sel ’.

I will neither confirm nor deny any public guesses.

I agree about ascended, but they arent going anywhere. Ive made my peace with it. As long as Im not cornered into fractals to get the latest and greatest, I’ll deal.

I agree with laurels being only stepping stone for making Tyria a living breathing world.

What I would love is to have NORMAL sized dynamic events for levels 75-80, in zones such as kessex hills or sparkfly fen or some other zones where there arent a lot of people. Make the rewards worth participating. The lowbies questing would steer clear, and it would give us some incentive to traverse these once traveled lands. Or, as Ive said before, beef up the rewards for participating in DEs in lower level zones. Getting 160 kharma and 80 copper as a level 80 for participating in a level 40 event is a joke. (numbers are just guestimates.)

Vasham.2408:

I’ll admit as jaded as I am it’s starting to look like they’re getting some good ideas. Hopefully adding new content to existing zones rather than making new ones (read: Southsun Cove) will allow them to fix existing issues with broken events since they don’t have to divert resources to new zones. Making the next piece of Ascended gear not attainable from Fractals is also a step in the right direction. Here’s hoping they actually fix the events in this game so we want to go back and run them for the rewards. Can’t get rewarded if the source of them doesn’t function.

I just hope that whatever is obtainable via fractal daily chests/fractal vendors, is available via laurel vendors. I would be FURIOUS, with a full stack of MIGHT, and a long standing STABILITY if it turns out like this: We are adding ascended gear to be obtainable from laurels. You will be able to obtain ascended rings via laurels, and the new amulets will be obtainable via fractals.

I will be PO’d to no end if it ever turned out like this, where if you didnt want to run fractals you would need to wait for the next round of acsended to get the previous round. This is speculation of course. But I’ve already posted questions/concerns: If ascended item SLOTS A and B are available from fractals, are ascended item SLOTS A and B available via laurels?

Personally, I dont care why guilds left, who left, for what reasons. No ill will, whatever. I dont care.

I do care about healthy competition. Thats all I care about. As long as there is a healthy game of WvW going on, and my(and everyones) server is getting some decent PVE and open world buffs from our efforts in WvW, I don’t care.