Guild Wars 2

+1 on Traps. Massive potential there.

….we just can’t access that Potential in PvE until the Traits for Trapping are moved to some line that makes more sense for condition infliction, like WILDERNESS SURVIVAL where thy were were in GW1 for 7 godkittened years

(okay Vipers was in BM, and there was 2 Expertise skills that were super awesome for Trappers… but STILL, that crap was also basically Survival & Nature Magic themed … not Marksmanship and some kind of ba***rdization of Critical Strikes.)

^ 25 stacks on a heavily nerfed damage source, with flawed AI to boot.

2 bears

…

uggghhhh…..

…

</loop>

.

At the same time though…. I’d strongly caution against listening to some of these guys who will tell you damage is the only thing that matters. YOU ARE NOT A WARRIOR. ….it’s simply not in you. Your traits aren’t compressed enough. And Any time you see someone post some really big damage number with Ranger…. it’s b/c they stacked up damage buffs that any other Class can stack not only MUCH more often, but can typically share with the rest of their Party as well. (Fury & Regen is the only thing we can keep a constant duration running on and NEITHER OF THOSE STACK. )

I just worry what Kiel’s primary motive into the Reactor investigation is?….

…what if it’s to discover a Rift connection to it, and then use that AGAINST us Asura to either cut into on our Gate Travel monopoly, or worse: Sabotage the rest of our carefully calibrated Eternal Alchemy generators b/c we’re clearly the most dominant Race right now and the closest one to subjugating the other 5 dragons …. Who’s Granite Cannon technology hobbled and then Tased Zhaitan to death, huh?? It wasn’t Charr internal combustion steam engines or human water pipes, giant baloons & magic-infused platemail (Not to mention Norn…. What the hell did those guy do except get Drunk and have oversized Twilight/Furry parties ….in Ski lodges that are way bigger than they ever needed to be?).

Gnat.9405:

Only problem I see with Abaddon fractal is the fact that it is a fractal:

There is a lot of potential for it to be a rushed, underwhelming experience for such an epic event. I’d hate for something like this to be wasted with lackluster content.

Historically speaking… It wasn’t really anymore “Epic” than the War in Kryta was.
There was no Searing or Cataclysm tier W.M.D. Some really confused people think there was a Sea boiling away but it was really more of an Inlet b/c the south lands of Joko and Ossa were MUCH MUCH larger and mostly untouched by this whole chain of events. There was some serious potential for Mursaat involvement up in the Tarnished coast after the Bloodstones themselves were involved… but its extremely doubtful that Anet will play that card yet.

Little is known about the original Bloodstone except that it was just as powerful a source of magic as the sleeping Dragons were… and was gifted to Orrions by Abbadon making him a crowd favorite b/c it really DID make their lives so much easier than any contributions from the other 5 gods.. Hence it’s way too much “Plot” for Anet to go into in a single fractal mission without just DROWNING the player in Exposition

In this election, we basically get to Role Play your Koch brothers, your George Soros’, your Rupert Murdochs and Al Gores. Except instead of campaign dollars, we’re exchanging our time for Tokens.

…which actually IS, …statistically dead-on lately… the way 93% of elections for most seats in House & Senate are decided anyways. So it’s actually a lot closer to our own democracy than Anet is initially claiming it is. Also: Electoral College is just a fancy way of saying Gerrymandering.

.

…and I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t care what their moral compass says. All I care about is is if the dungeons we ultimately get will provide more lucrative kick-backs to us more-hardcore PvE’ers, like Rare mats / Lodestones, and V.P.P. or other slightly game breaking (non-account bound) Gearstats & armor Insignias. Therefore the market is most likely to decide this, not the casual player.

Jennah sucks and so does logan. LA > monkeyvinity
My Charr hungers for the flesh of mice again. Screw the treaty.
And my Asura wouldn’t care if you finally wiped eachother off the face of tyria for good.

WTB Forgotten as next playable Race.

Katran.9186:

Another asuran ka-boom.

From self harmonizing crystals mined directly beneath our first missions in Prophecies
They predated Humans entirely… There’s things beneath Ascalon that predate even the charr and ogres there … things the size of dragons. There’s also a portal to the Rift. The gods came from the Rift … and they returned to it.

Where are your gods now?

Piken Square was mainly a graveyard after the searing.
When talking about things that were underneath old Ascalon Towns:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Drascir
…was very notrworthy. It was left there by this guy:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lord_Odran

SynfulChaot.3169:

She attained godhood as the gods graced her with the gift to contain Abbadon’s power. Not us.

This is true. Although GW1 & its cutscenes did a horrible job of depicting it, there were several times when a Character Ascended or was “infused” with a greater capacity to house some Godlike power. Shiro also had this happen to him though he was tricked into it by the Fortune Teller who was actually a high level Demon/Titan thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcFEe2odAuo
About 1 minute in: That’s unmistakably some of Dwayna’s powers getting “highlandered” into him.

With Kormir, it happens in the Mission right before you kill Abbadon. (though it makes more sense if you’re also able to complete the Bonus objective but most people usually couldn’t b/c they didn’t know how to manage Shiro’s Aggro).

It’s also not fair to compare Kormir to Trahearne really. Kormir had a strong personality and really pure motives & valor atleast at the Start of the story. To a lot of people who’m Nightfall was their first introduction to guildwars, she was actually really the definition of a strong Mentor starting off. Any problems ppl had with her probably were more to do with the later missions that followed where I’m not really sure what went wrong TBH.

^ that makes no sense and wasn’t helpful at all in offering advice on rune uptiering

Cobalt is (probably) referring to these worthless things:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyr_Sanctum_Supply_Box

Which is basically a 1 in 20 chance of actually getting an armor recipe someone wants (and probably 19 inscription / insignia / exquis’d-quartz recipes on average). It’s a huge loss, check the recipe prices on TP before bothering…

Also… b/c of the stupid way they made this Celestial crafting work, forces even MORE CRAFTING because if you want any of it you have to have a level 80 with that Discipline @ 400 … IE: big spike in crafting materials use for all those people who weren’t “Master Craftsmen” already on their 80…

Did COE. …Nadda…
Did Dwayna / Lyssa 3 nights in a row now
… and haven’t seen one.

I guarantee the rate has accidentally been Fubar’d and they might not even realize it if it just fixes itself when they release a more stable patch soon.

Also, some temples aren’t resetting when they’re supposed to.
There’s definitely major bugs in this patch so don’t listen to the regular peanut gallery here… unless they can post multiple screenshots of chests they pop containing Charged Cores. (which they won’t b/c most of them don’t even have the right servers or skill to complete those Encounters)

I have more freaking extra skill points after only 5 months of consistent playtime on this than I had left over from 5 years of GW1. …and this is only on my Ranger and I don’t even like ranger right now. And I don’t know where they came from! I don’t grind dungeons all day… I’m only 2/3’s done with full Exploration. I do temples once a night and that’s it as far as killing things goes.

I agree that 50 SP’s isn’t worth the measely price that Mystic Weaps fetch.
I can make more money than that every night just picking HERBS
But yeah like Mun said… There’s obviously some methods to getting them faster.

I was randomly invited to COE last night… while on my Ranger.
I’m not internet famous and inviting any ranger is always a big gamble.
Especially since it was the Sub path where Ranged weaps are pointless.
So I’d have to assume it’s no where NEAR underused as far as dungeons go.

(I never get random invites to AC for example where Rangers actually can be generally more useful…. generally)

The fact you all chose P3 proves that they’ve done this Explorable before or you helped preplan it, and it wasn’t a spontaneous newbie Pub.

Guardian + Dual wells with high curse Dagger weap swap … they could have farmed SP’s as well to get Lich Form before 40… Any number of possibilities here that a real Pubby group of new players would never even try.

Either way… it didn’t tackle the OP’s main point: that this isn’t a proper dungeon to “Introduce” new players to Explorable mode. HotW & COF are much better for that.

Fror.2163:

I played with a group of level 35-50 not later than yesterday. Except for me (6k), the highest achievement number was around 800.

We did it efficiently and had a lot of fun!

Oh yeah, only one wipe, at the spider, and Kohler died, 2 tries at the burrows.

I guess all it takes is patience from the experienced people and ability to listen for the first-timers.

Achievement Points doesn’t tell you anything about the coordination required for AC.
I also notice you conveniently left out the run time… And class composition.

The burrows themselves… CAN be done by a group averaging ~50 in sub par gear but it requires them to stop halfway through to nuke the Breeders & Scavs building up around Hodgins. Thus why many groups fail… b/c they try to use the speed-clear method and ONLY that method to have one person hold adds near Hodg & the other 4 all rush burrows (which only brings even more adds to Hodgins when they IGNORE that extra Elite that comes out of every destroyed burrow).

IE: the safest method is actually for the Burrow team to also kill whatever spawned from the destroyed burrow before running to the next one.

You just haven’t found the Elonian Cork Screw yet… keep looking then you can drink it.

….the COLORS….

Sometimes you have to… like when a Group Event pops up around some base you’re trying to use for trade or whatever. I sometimes worry though when I complete those as a ranger b/c there’s a small chance Anet could be including such outliers in their data set for PvE metrics despite the fact I see other much better classes dying to a single Veteran mob sometimes…

But that’s sometimes a good thing too to be alone for those. It’s easier to control Aggro then and bunch everything up in to one spot instead of having some n00bs fighting the mobs right next to a crucial Objective that’s getting damaged just by fighting them near it. (like when some idiot standing right in front of it aggros an Abom who goes full charge & 1-shots the entire base, LOL)

Hell Avenger.7021:

that is an abusive behavior, report them.

Actually Gaile addressed this and said she didn’t know yet which side of the line it fell on.
Obviously all of us would assume it’s Abuse as well as an exploit for “Helping another player in Bypassing Content”. But full Bureaucracy required for an official ruling doesn’t appear to have happened yet…

Craptrain.7203:

Whenever I pug fractals or a dungeon with people I don’t entirely trust, I make sure I’m the instance creator. Kick me at your own peril.

Yep this is the best you can hope for right now … and avoiding certain Dungeons that are farmed by unscrupulous guilds the most, also helps a lot. (I’m extremely suspicious of anyone who invites me to a COE or FOTM)

if cuteness was properly considered a disease, then this would be a terminal strain

A big +1 to that…

It’s true… Most PvP’ers were never happy in the first game b/c they never quite made every class exactly the same. And when they eventually got close… a bunch of other PvP’ers who liked Asymmetry & actually had skill to adapt every week without the whining, …started protesting the Tournaments themselves by throwing Matches just to send a message to the Devs. They used different scapegoats too of course but it was obvious what the real culprit in it was.

You guys already get to Decide “by Playing” which classes get nerfed the most often in PvE.

That’s a lot more important and you should privileged

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

were not American elections.

2008 census figures: 206 million were Elligible to register.
146 million were registered at some point & could vote.
actual turnout: 131 million. (in a country of over 315 million residents)
2012 turnout: 121 million.

Basically this proves that their GW voting system for this event is superior and more relevant than American “democracy” currently is.

One Theory: He loses big time if Thaumonova gives more reliable Charged Stones as drops than most fights do… (one FotM shard gives a few already).

Most people farm gold & use the TP in much higher volumes BECAUSE the prices of these rarer materials are inflated so much … Rather than spend time farming rarer mats themselves (b/c there’s very little assurance they’ll get any or even succeed in the first place). The fight against Abbadon’s followers meanwhile is all but guaranteed to give horrible Materials no one wants just like Arah currently does. Margonites gave horrible mostly useless drops too in the original game. Evon likes a Lottery. He likes RNG & disparity ruling everything.

• The Searing Cauldron was originally a gift from the Titans to the Charr.
• The Titans came from the Foundry of Failed creations.
• The first Charr who ever rebelled against the Flame Legion to actually kill a Titan, was not Pyre.
• The Charr’s largest known invasion Army, did not die in the FoeFire, they died in the Cataclysm which was also a direct result of yet another of Abbadon’s Demons

I think a better question, is why is a top level Tradesman & Racketeer interested in it??

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**(not listed here, the Titan who imbued Shiro with the apparent ability to absorb Dwayna’s powers from the Emperor and cause the Jade Wind).

I’d prefer they just fix the Subject Alpha fight… then we’d have an Asuran “Crap Blowing up” dungeon with truly impressive crap blowing up instead of just 3 rounds of the ugly stick

Talon, did you even watch the stream yet? It’s not a “everybody gets 1 vote” thing. And statistically, Forum nerds tend to outgame casuals by leaps and bounds and will get a LOT more voting tokens.

Serephen.3420:

It would be in the crystal desert around the desolation which was a sea before hand. Not in Orr as far as I’m aware.

There’s a lot of Debate about this… yes the Staff of Mists is located there as were several Margonite Shrines. But in the ruins of Orr here we also see Abbadon’s main Shrine, underwater. Yes he was bound under the Desolation if the Vortex is any indicator. But the battles could have ranged from there all the way up to Tarnished Coast for all we know. <— B/c there’s also evidence that Mursaat were eventually involved? Remember… when Abbadon was banished, so too were the Bloodstones (Directly into the Volcano Island). So yeah there’s possibilities here for BIG Cinematics in several locations.

…Technically he is Destroyed in the end of Nightfall. In Orr he was Defeated and banished, like Dhuum and Menzies were …. though also a God Tier binding ritual was placed on him to keep him in the realm of torment and he would have mostly stayed there if not for Kahyet & Varesh.

zexion.5842:

So you better vote for Evon Gnashblade!

Yeah, but Colin also started admitting that some things could come back to Hhh….
….well….
see for yourself: starting exactly @ 23:20 – 23:35

A Haunting Exchange

Omen? Or did Anet just forget to buy sigils of ghost slaying?

Soulstar.7812:

Kiel supporters are the people whining about WP prices…

if they actually did events they could afford to port…

Not true… I’m halfway to Golden title but I still don’t WP everywhere I go.

I’m not making this up either: In a lot of cases I will run out the front door of LA to the Whisper’s Portal to Fort Trinity, then to Balthazar Shrine to buy 30 Obsids at a time just to use up the 100 extra Ectos I have laying around in the Mystic Forge…. which I used the Mists Shortcut to get back to… (and I don’t even own an SSD)

cranked.3812:

Store them on an alt and park him at the bank. Real easy to log out and back in to transfer what you need.

Plus One

This is how we stored MOST THINGS in the first game.
Some people had second accounts dedicated to nothing but Muling.

not sure if troll shielding…

.

…But I agree 100% with Byron, you can’t trust anything anyone says on these forums just b/c so few of the most vocal “Pros” ever volunteer or even RUN in pugs. They conveniently have their little private groups that maybe 1 or 2 of them ever puts out a video of which is always heavily edited as well….

Reminds me of the Soldier Demoman WAR.

Also… everyone look at Martin’s face in that stream when Colin all-too-innocently says that the “Pirate Politics” are nothing at all like current American Democracy… I wonder if that isn’t a similar reaction Most europeans have to that exchange?

Priceless moment … definitely worth the 23 minutes it took to get there.

I saw that thread, before I just now saw this one… so, I don’t even know if I’m playing along… or I trolled myself … or what happened… All I know is that if we try to talk about balance here, then no one @ Anet who has any power to make the changes will ever see it.

Is this more sad, or more lulzy? I can’t decide which.

After only 3 message, I just got some PM…. that I can’t even find what it’s pointing to…

All it stated was the following:

A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Trashcan’ with the reason:
Conspiracy thread
Follow the new thread here.

…which links to a 404 and doesn’t tell me anything about the message content or what was “done wrong” … no warning included. And like I said, I only posted 3 messages today before this point and all 3 of them were completely neutral non-offensive stuff, focused entirely on just Lore, & all of them are still intact as well … I’m not certain but I think this might have been an automated bug even.

In any event, the Web team really should make sure in the future that all Messages delivered like this, are always CLEAR on what the topic’s name was so that we atleast know which posting it could be referring to. Thanks!

It’s only offtopic if Anet’s Representatives here…. ACTUALLY USE OTHER THREADS AND OTHER SUB-FORUMS, to convey this information and answer questions on them.

Currently they are not. Thus to date, this is the only Thread that any of these devs on the Skill Changing team have posted their reasoning to, and …SHOCKER…, it’s only about a Tourney that’s more than a Month away. Therefore this is the only place where balance talk feedback to them had any chance of even being answered.

And before anyone says: “Go make a new thread”… umm no we can’t, b/c that’s demanding, IE: “calling out”, specific interaction on their behalfs. Meanwhile… their participation on the topic here was Purely Voluntary, as is the norm.

Why merely settle for the lesser of two Evils?

#bringback BAHLTEK

lordkrall.7241:

Colin just confirmed that it refers to the fight against the five gods.

That phraseology doesn’t even make sense unless you’re saying we’d be fighting him and his Margonites on the behalf of the other 5 gods. …meaning we’d be fighting alongside the original Orrions??? (Keeping in mind that back then, the Margonites had not yet become Demons and were only “powerful Mages” at that point) …. And that would be a really boring fight UNLESS most of the Margonite Squads operated like Gw1 Paramilitary “Holy Trinity” Squads (with the Gw1 twist that we sometimes had to Focus their Mesmers/Necros who were denying & ’rupting our Monk-Spikers)

^Okay thanks…. but you’re not giving us all the info we need to know about Rewards.

Rewards matter here because the Aether dungeon only gave us metal with a fraction of a chance to salvage into Charged “Stones”. Meanwhile you look at the prices of say… Azurites & especially Gossamar Senintel’s …. I mean… what are we supposed to base it on here? We still haven’t gotten that Blog from Colin yet on what the full scope of “Reward Changes” entail. And the main reason we repeat content like this we’ve already done, is for the Components we have the quickest Route towards getting.

Everyone is COF1’ing right now because every other “Farm” in the game that the average person is even capable of… gives less rewards than the Daily login for Laurel/Pristine errand. It’s not fair to expect us to make a decision here yet when the experienced among us know they won’t be INFORMED decisions. ….AND whichever dungeon might seem the most “fun” right now, will not matter one bit 2 months from now

Bryzy.2719:

I suppose that’s a little reassuring, thanks allie. I’ll go and continue my QQ in the ranger forum ‘cos I’m thinking this isn’t the right thread for that :p

Haha no…. I mean it’s nice to get a response but, that’s a game-wide issue you were right in bringing up, and instead of recognizing it as one… the focus goes immediately back to “sure we’ll tweak a few more things to make this Tournament smoother”.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Ever tried running Slaver’s Exile without a ranger running Frozen Soil? GL!

Actually I have, several times…as well as Vloxens that was infested with even more Summit. But I’d also point out you never needed a Ranger just to keep Frozen up anyway. Usually your SpiritSpammer or MOP Necro dropped it.

…in any case…
looks like this is as close as we’re getting to some kind of recognition from the Devs.
The phrase “missing the entire point” comes to mind here following that conversation

everything new… you knew exactly what I meant.

Ethics.4519:

I feel like a job requirement should be for them to play the game, that way they can actually make appropriate fixes.

Seems like they are though… I see a few a on NSP every other day … not in Tags, but it’s pretty obvious who they are. But I don’t think they could ever put through a requirement that they play it WELL. =P ….that’s the operative word here.

haviz.1340:

colesy.8490:

Cry more.

In the meantime, since 99% of rangers are absolute trash I’m not going to waste my time taking them on dungeon runs.

Most people in this thread probably don’t pug at all.

I pug err’y day.

Though I also don’t splatter these types of threads in absolutes like some ppl here.
I’d also conversely point out that a couple PUG’s I’ve joined were far superior to many of the Guild/Friend teams I’ve done the content with. So it’s a real “RNG Box” you’re opening up either way. And I feel people who NEVER pug are also missing out b/c they’ll never see those surprisingly great team either. (I’m waiting to randomly join one that Brazil is in…I hear they’re always epically entertaining)

bunnyandbear.5734:

32 warrior
38 thief
she is not able to clear AC explore

Working as intended. The in-game Email you recieve after completing Story mode should be considered a Bug that Anet never “fixed”.

Realistically… most players shouldn’t even be recieving that Email telling them to try any of the AC explorables until after they’ve atleast done most of the End-Game explorables like atleast 2 paths of CM explorables, all 3 COF paths, 2 of the Sorrow’s Paths, atleast 1 Eternity Path, and atleast one 1 T.A. path. This isn’t exaggerating either, AC explorables were so over-tuned in a recent patch that what you might think are “higher level” dungeons, are now much easier for PuGs to complete by comparison.

(AC is still easier for some groups, but those teams always operated very differently to begin with) …. and don’t listen to the ones telling you that level 35’s can do it. ….they ARE exaggerating, IoW: telling you their standard of what a level 35 (who’s new to the game & the Explorables) is capable of, but it’s nothing but Internet-Toughguy Talk and you’d still see them getting downed very frequently if they recorded “proof” it was possible. There is only a handful of teams with full TS support who can do that and they’re using 5-man Profession combos that you won’t have consistent access to.

Disclaimer **-yes I’m a a hypocrite on this b/c I pug it everyday without even getting downed… and used to lead level 50’s through it regularly. (but that was before Detha’s path got “padded out”.) …but that’s just me being the usual carebear hugger that I am. You guys need to take your time to learn all the proper “muscle-memory” for your classes first before you take on something this gimmicky and risk unnecessary souring on the game itself. Games should be for relaxation/escapism… not making you twitchy and frustrated

Anubarak.3012:

Homonavn.6348:

Dont nerf CoF until they have added another farming spot (Like the old CS farming…) I really enjoyed the CS farming, but is just… UGH NO THANKS

There are other farming spots, you just can’t farm them brain afk like CoF^^
Btw: why do you need farming spots? Just play the game and enjoy it… fun > reward

Or if you can’t accept ^ his Answer ^ on this, then atleast take a moment for a different perspective long enough to realize that Anet is starting to add an alarming amount of “daily Attendance” rewards now that are impossible to farm in any other manner besides just logging in once a day and doing some variety of almost mini-game like activities for 15-45 minutes roughly. Laurels, your daily FotM shard, these obnoxious Charged Crystals … who knows what’s next?

You can reject the rationality of the above response all you want. But even if you’re a “Dragon-Chaser”, it’s hard to argue with new trends and account-bound everything based around “A.P.” and revolving content. Open your eyes b/c it’s starting to bear down hard…

Yeah…. people need to start Advertising it in whole words, such as: “Eternity, Path X”. Sort of like a Calvin Kline ad ….which they should have no problem Spelling accurately to begin with compared to your average COF’er. This also would go a long ways towards differentiating the two cultures (atleast for now) and furthering the endeavors of the PC master race.

The rest of the Pacific-residing (or even Atlantic for that matter) world doesn’t work on your schedule. You’re aware of this right? There’s probably some EU server doing it RIGHT NOW, that you could have joined instead…