Guild Wars 2

You can argue that one goal with the introduction of ascended weps is to put value back into crafting — although it’s “self value” since you cannot sell the weapons.

It has been a long standing complaint that crafting is essentially worthless in GW2 for gearing your character for end-game. Some of the most popular stat combinations are not craftable (Soldiers, Rabid). If it weren’t for zerker, it’d be nearly a total waste.

Adding other sources will start to belittle crafting again.

On a final note, be careful what you ask for. If you see ascended available through another source, expect the prices to be exceptionally high (1000’s of WvW badges for example). It would have to be to reflect the high crafting costs for the items currently.

Post this in “things I want to see in the gem store” thread in the BL forum!

We all had a chuckle when a single mesmer wiped our party at the gate of a tower. However he continued to use this tactic over and over and over. Rendering flame rams useless. We had to adapt our siege to cata’s and then veil in to avoid the drop-bomb when the doors went down.

It’s funny the first time — but after the 10+ time it essentially boils down to cheating.

EDIT: It should be obvious that it was a game bug and using it continually was abuse. I think players that continued to use the bug for hours should receive a small, non-permanent ban. It was like a bunch of children ruining the game for all so they could feel god-mode rush. I don’t have any sympathy for players that abused the bug. My main is a mesmer and you didn’t see me rushing to the nearest tower to play this stupid joke over and over.

They are all over in JQ — jumping off their keep walls.

No way to report them in the proper category tho… what do u pick? Scamming?

Absolutely I’d buy a Cantha expansion.

Let me clarify my position further: I will buy any expansion

The LS content is too small — even if it’s free. I’d rather have great big platters of high quality content delivered twice a year.

You get what you pay for and currently I’m not paying anything…

squallaus.8321:

Pyroatheist.9031:

squallaus.8321:

Channeled skills are a skill type that activate over a period of time. These skills can be spotted by a yellow activation bar that fills when the skill is activated.

Wrong. Channeled attacks are attacks that deal multiple hits of damage over a period of time, while continually channeling them.

Hmm, appologies for the incorrect statement there. Looks like I misunderstood what it’s suppose to be despite “consulting” the ‘wiki’ before hand, because that is what it said word for word.

Either way, I think pistol trait now falls way behind in benefits gained compared to the focus when traited. I was testing it after the patch just then, its effectively 40-50% nerf for me interms of confusion burst damage.

Actually I liked your definition better squallaus. I don’t think Pyro’s is accurate with regards to “multiple hits of damage over time”. That’s typically not a requirement for channeled skills. Take Mantra charging for example or some of the Elementalist staff skills.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Materials required should be examined for a change (I have already stated that), but your other points is a generic weapon mechanic “issue” (1-2H vs 2-1H) that has existed since the game came out. It is NOT an Ascended weapon crafting issue at all.

The overall time-gating issue is another discussion also.

This whole topic is on time gating, which is only applicable to ascended and celestial exotic weapons. I think I’m in the right place for this discussion .

sendmark.4731:

juno.1840:

Only 240m on the mantra AoE effects?

That’s pretty ineffective imho.

It’s for tpvp play on the points.

Sucks for everything else after that.

Only 240m on the mantra AoE effects?

That’s pretty ineffective imho.

Agreed — I think they should have sold inscription recipes only (just like the level 80 rare/exotic inscriptions). Then discover the weapon using the parts + inscription.

The specific weapon recipe seems out of place with the original crafting mechanic. However this has been their trend lately with the celestial and other items.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Avatara.1042:

One handers should be easier to get, then. I thought that point was pretty kitten obvious…

They do require less overall materials, but not much (so that could be changed, to make them a bit easier to obtain).

BTW, I was being slightly sarcastic with my previous remark and I see that was not clear….

They actually require more overall materials. It takes 9 Deldrimor Steel Ingots for both an ascended GS and an ascended Sword. It takes 3 Spiritwood Planks for both as well (the inscription is the same).

So making two 1H swords is twice the materials as a single 2H greatsword.

EDIT: And as described by the OP, twice as long due to the time gating (assuming you don’t buy the ingots/planks off the TP).

Ayrilana.1396:

Or, if not patched by then, take advantage of the glitch that let’s you get XP by discovering greens and yellows. At 497, you still get 5k discovering rares.

ANet fixed the glitch where you get experience in the non-ascended crafting professions a few weeks ago.

Also while the discovery of Rares does grant crafting XP, it’s very small. You’ll have to make 100’s of Rares as opposed to roughly 20 Exotics to level to 500. The same for the ascended materials. It’s fairly quick to go from 450 to 460, but after that the progress is very slow. Easier just to push out a few exotics to finish your way to 500.

It probably doesn’t matter which stat you pick. I went with vitality since the percent gain on my character was higher (i.e. higher % health increase over % damage reduction). Again it’s nearly trivial.

However I do recommend WvW infusions because they are higher (+5 instead of +4) and they come with a bonus of +/- 1% NPC damage.

You should slot something — slotting nothing is a bigger waste. Why go ascended if you aren’t going to take full advantage of the stat increase?

Avatara.1042:

dukefx.9730:

A very small price to pay for 1 more sigil, more stats and versatile skill setup

It is not more stats. And it is less weapon damage.

And I’d argue less versatile skill setup as it requires two weapon traits on most professions, instead of one weapon trait. Unless you’re lucky, the two traits will probably be in different trait lines further constraining your build variety.

I recall the developers stating that the holiday event content will be “repeated”. This was something that was slowing down their development of other content. If memory serves me correctly, it was mentioned right before (or at the same time as) the announcement regarding 2-week LS development.

This thread is a little funny because there was an “opposite” one just the other day about how speculators are driving up the cost of candy corn!!!

Malediktus.9250:

Its an exploit about WvW so it has low priority for anet. If it would be an ectoplasm dupe it would be fixed within hours for sure…

It’s also an economic exploit since the item can be sold on the TP. That should be of great concern to ANet. Yes this is not on the same volumes as duplicating something like Ectos — but it still is providing unearned wealth to a segment of the player base.

I recall them saying Agony was a mechanic only for Fractals. The play on Infusions and Ascended are just nostalgia from GW1 and are not tying back to the Lore in any way.

If Agony became a regular game mechanic there would be a horrible uproar. Also consider that ascended trinkets obtained via laurels and guild commendations cannot be upgraded in the MF to receive +5 agony resistance. Only Fractal trinkets can do that.

Things can always change, and ANet can design other ways to obtain agony resistance, but it’s suppose to be a gating mechanic. Do we really want a gear-based gating mechanic on our content?

I posted a similar topic on improving the Minstrel a little while back (too bad the search feature doesn’t work anymore in these forums):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/The-Minstrel-1/first#post2819199

Funny part was I also listed the ability to “play the minstrel” as a great feature. I think that alone would trump footprints or any other legendary effect.

I bought The Bard on the TP for 60gp (no joke) — this was only one month ago. Think of the value increase if The Minstrel was also a playable instrument. Totally cool.

Pyroatheist.9031:

juno.1840:

The block response shouldn’t be dodge-able. The block is a defense response to a foe actually providing some sort of attack. If the opponent wanted to avoid the block/torment response then the proper “counter action” is to not attack in the first place when the scepter-2 animation is up. If the block happens, it’s my opinion that the rest of the chain should happen (regardless if the foe dodges or not). Removing the abort on self dodge would be a nice quality of life feature.

ANet is a bit over reaching in trying to give everything a suitable dodge window. It’s like Dodge-Wars.

The issue with this view is you don’t need to actually counter a skill with the block. You can just put up the block and walk through an aoe field or something, and that would be 100% guaranteed torment without a response time.

Is the torment actually applied on AoEs? Has anyone verified. I thought it only worked on directly targeted attacks. The reason I say this is I don’t get a clone for spurious blocks using scepter-2 (which is this use-case we’re discussing).

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Time Glitch.2460:

The amount of people who are against this is disgusting.

You’re telling me you do not ever want to see

- A new region.
- New races.
- New classes.
- New set of dungeons all at once.
- New huge storyline.
- Huge drop of new cosmetic gear.

You don’t want any of that? You’d really rather have this drip-fed nonsense that barely feels like content at all? You’d rather spend money on the gem store than have in-game attainable cosmetic items? You’d rather have un-fufilling, rushed, every-two-weeks kinda-updates rather than a well-polished expansion with tons and tons of new content to complete?

If that’s truly what this playerbase wants, then it makes me sick. I can’t believe we live in a day and age where people would rather have re-hashed mini-updates and gem store purchases than lay down 60 dollars for a proper paid expansion in all its glory.

Expansions were one of the ONLY good things about MMOs of the past and the fact that ANet and apparently the GW2 fanbase don’t want that is astounding, worrying, and wrong in every way.

1. Except for the huge drop of cosmetic gear ArenaNet has said that all of those things can come through the living story.

2. Perhaps you don’t like the living story, but I love it. To me it is a massive amount of content and I, as well as a lot of other people, am overwhelmed by the amount, and quality, of content they produce so fast.

3. Why do you have so much against the gem store? There is pretty much only cosmetic items in there, except for boosts and more space, either for character slots, bank or bags.

Totally disagree that the Living Story content is “massive” — not in any stretch of the imagination. It’s essentially the bare minimum you can crank out and call it “new” content. On top of that, most content goes away so we’re left with very little other than the current iteration of living story.

If you log in today for the first time in a few months, the only content you have that’s “new” are some of the puzzle games, occasional scarlet zone events, karka queen, and the replaced TA dungeon path. Maybe I’m forgetting a few, but you get the point.

This content pales in comparison to a true expansion. Look at what you got in GW1 for nightfall, factions, and Eye of the North. Yes you can argue that two of those were “stand alone games” and not expansions, but what was provided is what you’d expect in an expansion for GW2.

If you add up 100% of all Living Story content you’ve ever received — EVER — in GW2, it doesn’t not compare to a single expansion like what you’d get with Factions or Nightfall.

Players will pay for good content.

The block response shouldn’t be dodge-able. The block is a defense response to a foe actually providing some sort of attack. If the opponent wanted to avoid the block/torment response then the proper “counter action” is to not attack in the first place when the scepter-2 animation is up. If the block happens, it’s my opinion that the rest of the chain should happen (regardless if the foe dodges or not). Removing the abort on self dodge would be a nice quality of life feature.

ANet is a bit over reaching in trying to give everything a suitable dodge window. It’s like Dodge-Wars.

keenlam.4753:

juno.1840:

I swear they were dodging almost continuously out of stealth. Someone said they can build for three dodges, but not having a thief I don’t know.

I’m leveling a thief at the moment and gotta say thieves have plenty of ways to get perma-evade

- Lots of skills with evade built-in
- Lots of traits to get vigor and regain endurance
- Dagger auto attack gains endurance

Feline grace is a trait that alone by itself effectively enables u to have 3 dodges and its a minor trait.
>.<

I find it very hard to combat a thief who repeats the same sequence again and again:

1. Pop from stealth with an attack
2. Dodge
3. Dodge
4. Dodge
5. Stealth
6. Repeat

With the change to phantasms six months ago, trying to land any phantasm through the dodges is very difficult — especially with the long cast times. Landing any attack is hard at this point.

Granted the thief is not doing any sort of burst damage, but it gradually wears you down. That’s why the fights just go on and on. If you do get the upper hand, they flee.

Love to see a dev post on this one… would be curious as to what they would say. Maybe “working as intended”.

EDIT:

Without raw numbers, we can’t tell what your percent success is.

Also interesting to see your current gold levels in some of the pics. It honestly looks like you spent every gold piece at your disposal to get your exotics since most of your inventory pics show little gold. However you could have hidden it with obscene “buy orders” on the TP. The highest value I saw in any pic was roughly 800gp.

Why exclude fractals? It shouldn’t have had gear gating to begin with…

Onshidesigns.1069:

Paid expansions are gate content. That goes against the idea of a open evolving world.

New areas must be available to players.

They are available — if you buy them. Same concept for everything that’s in the gem store right now. Keep in mind you also bought the content you are currently playing, all of Tyria.

I’d rather pay for content than get the “free” LS fare we have now. Our money is feedback — if you have to buy content, the resulting revenue is feedback on the content (bad content == fewer buyers).

The current content is meager and is always accompanied by gem-shop items (because that’s the only revenue stream after you buy the box).

Bottom Line: If you have to buy your content, you’ll get better quality content.

In short I think what Kimyrielle is asking for is the entire legendary construction chain to be deterministic. A few aspects of it are not (clovers and precursor). The result is disparity in efforts to obtain a legendary.

Kimyrielle is also saying that the disparity favors the rich because they can easily buy their way through the non-deterministic aspects of the process.

The precursor crafting should hopefully eliminate the biggest culprit with regards to non-determinism. Of course this only assumes the crafting of the precursor itself is deterministic (i.e. no “shove this into the forge with X% chance at getting crafting material Y”).

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

I think its difficult sometimes to be a player of this game. Its so close to everything you ever wanted, but that connection skips a beat sometimes and its a little tough to accept. Some people definitely handle it better than others though.

+1

It’s sooooo close to everything I’ve ever wanted in an MMO. The manifesto succinctly iterated what I want in an MMO — to the point where I get giddy just listening to it.

Honestly as soon as another MMO comes along that more closely follows the manifesto, that’s probably where I’ll be.

iWarden is the one phantasm where this makes sense. Untraited he eats projectiles — traited he reflects them.

I’m having issues with phantasms in general when fighting heavy blind / heavy dodge opponents in WvW. A ground targeted phantasm would be nice as ground targeting is not cancelled by blind nor dodge.

The phantasms requiring a target however does complicate the matter — to the point were it’s not likely to ever be implemented.

EDIT: can anyone guess what a heavy blind/dodge profession would be? ;p

Xcom.1926:

juno.1840:

Ahlen.7591:

I call BS. Because again, Teq IS NOT HARD. The difficulty comes in the DPS check, and the AFK check.

The difficulty is not based on any kind of mechanics, jump spamming when waves come and not standing in kitten is not exactly rocket brain surgery.

I found it pretty funny when you said “not based on any kind of mechanics” and then followed it with “jump spamming when waves come”.

The fight has lots of mechanics… maybe you meant to use a different word?

It seems pretty easy to understand actually. He didn’t say the fight doesn’t have mechanics, he said the difficulty is not based on the mechanics. They are simple mechanics. The fight and the mechanics are not hard.

Yep and this is clearly shown by the incredible participation the event is experiencing…
< end sarcasm >

Regardless it’s a little wrong to call the event “easy” (and yes that’s the opposite of “difficult”) given the current community feedback. If you’ve found yourself a nice guild to participate in your overflow “instance” — great. Please don’t belittle other players who haven’t had the experience and still find the encounter challenging and difficult to complete.

Everything is “easy” after you’ve mastered it 10 times over. A lot of players forget what they went through to reach that point.

Ahlen.7591:

I call BS. Because again, Teq IS NOT HARD. The difficulty comes in the DPS check, and the AFK check.

The difficulty is not based on any kind of mechanics, jump spamming when waves come and not standing in kitten is not exactly rocket brain surgery.

I found it pretty funny when you said “not based on any kind of mechanics” and then followed it with “jump spamming when waves come”.

The fight has lots of mechanics… maybe you meant to use a different word?

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

juno.1840:

Or players will skip all the revamped bosses like most are skipping tequatl now.

Ahlen.7591:

Or, and stay with me here, nobody will do any of them. Just like Teq on a lot of servers.

That’s completely possible. I did use the the word “should” not “will.” Anything could happen, none of us have a crystal ball to know for a fact one way or another.

However, should players opt to simply skip all the world bosses, that is not on Anet’s head. That is all on the players. You see, we are the ones that shouted that world boss fights are too easy. That the fights are not ‘epic.’ So they fix it… they made the bosses harder. They incorporated the need to coordinate, the need to use the environmental things like the turrets. They forced us to use splitting, rather than zerging. They punished us for only running zerker gear. Yet still, the players whine and cry. Now it’s too hard. Now it requires too much effort. Etc, Etc.

Not all players shouted that the bosses should be harder.

Also data speaks pretty loud — hopefully ANet can observe metrics on what the player base is doing. Where they spend their time is an indication of what they enjoy doing (mostly — I guess farming to grind out treadmill gear may skew the “fun” accuracy).

The 400-500 range is clearly “end-game” crafting. I would have preferred to see the 0-400 ranks grant 10 levels and the 400-500 ranks grant zero levels.

Most players will be at level 80 anyway for those ranks so the experience is mostly moot (except for SPs). In addition it doesn’t break the current system nor reward/punish those players who have or have not done any crafting yet.

Add “non-blockable” trait for mesmer phantasms (similar to necro marks unblockable). Tired of seeing a phantasm that’s critical to my DPS go on 30s c/d because of dodge/blind/etc.

I notice my ascended GS has two infusion slots. Why don’t 2H weps also have two sigils slots?

Seems odd I can get Force + “on swap” effects when toting around two 1H weps, but not for my 2H.

Maybe damage is compensated already on the 2H wep?

Brando.1374:

a legendary should cost more to get. Why?
Because a legendary weapon can pick and choose which stats to have at any given time.
so essentially you have multiple ascended weapons in one.

That was a recent add… I wouldn’t start tossing it around as some sort of profound fact on legendaries.

They should cost more because they are rare and BiS.

I want more Thoughness on my toons…

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Teq is the hardest world boss to do at this point, simply due to his rework. It requires a minimum number of players, and some intense coordination to make it work.

On the other hand, the other world bosses are still stand and spam fests which require no effort for their shinies. Right now, the people are going to flock to those for precisely that reason.

Eventually, when each gets its own ‘upgrade’ similar to Teq, people should start doing him again, so long as everything is on about the same level for time, difficulty, and shinies.

Or players will skip all the revamped bosses like most are skipping tequatl now. Instead they will find something else to do which provides similar reward for less time investment.

Brother Grimm.5176:

This is how I imagine the Dev convo over this issue went at the “meeting”:

Dev#1: ….so this expansion of crafting to 500….do we give more XP for those levels?
Dev#2: Is it easier to add the levels with more experience or spread the curren XP across the full range.
Dev#3: Pretty sure it’s easier to spread the XP.
Dev#2: Do it that way.
Dev#4: That’s gonna PO some players that use crafting to speed level characters…
Dev#2: You mean the leveling where they don’t actually PLAY the game we slaved to make?
<Dev’s chuckle a bit>
Dev#1: Next item…..

Forgot this:

Dev#3: But wait, didn’t they buy the game? They are our customer…

Anthony.7219:

Okay, found the spreadsheet. I took a steady level of damage (power, weapon damage) and increased toughness by 1, and took the percentage decrease in damage. I then increased vitality until I got the same percentage decrease in damage. Vitality was better for my character because he had low health, he was a Guardian, this fits perfectly with what was said above by others. The key thing to remember is that it is Armor + Toughness that needs to be equal to Vitality for maximum effectiveness vs direct damage.

However regeneration and healing should be considered. A guardian has constant health regeneration which is more effective with a smaller health pool and higher toughness. There’s a great build post about this in the guardian forums. However this approach makes you more susceptible to dying from conditions.

I find that both should be sacrificed for damage on my toons since no amount of survivability will allow me to win if I can’t kill my opponent.

Balance is a good approach, but I find burst the most valuable asset in wvw for my characters.

Ahlen.7591:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Nightarch.2943:

If they announce an expansion, if anything, they would make more currency and it would bring back a lot of players. Introduce new playstyles for existing weapons as well as expanding on existing ones, introduce the Tengu/Largos. Introduce Northern Tyria, Cantha, and Elona. New professions… The possibilities are endless.

They would make less off a traditional expansion. Not everyone will buy it and leave the game.

I already paid for a expansion in gems!

No you didn’t, you paid for the services that the gems were used in.

Seriously, why do people hate on Anet for trying to make money and stay afloat? This isn’t a single player game, THEY HAVE OVERHEAD COSTS.

Godkitten kids, go back to school.

Nobody hates ANet for trying to make money — nobody. What people hate is how they are currently going about it.

I want to pay for content — not get content for free and pay for “convenience”. It’s easy to see how this system can introduce designed inconvenience in order to promote sales.

New content is ultimately more satisfying when you have to buy it. Obviously because the Developers have to ensure it’s worth buying. Your current content is “free” — the only thing the Developers need to ensure is that they make enough convenience items that people are willing to buy. You can argue the free content has to be “good” to keep Players returning to the game, but time-gating is doing a good job of that right now.

My friend and I (both power mesmers) had a 2v2 with two thieves. The battle when on for minutes — sorry I don’t have an exact time but it was long…

We eventually lost to the thieves unfortunately.

My biggest problem was trying to land my skills. If I wasn’t blind then I was evaded. I swear they were dodging almost continuously out of stealth. Someone said they can build for three dodges, but not having a thief I don’t know. Very frustrating to lose a phantasm to c/d because of a dodge/blind. More frustrating to lose one more often than not.

Regardless it was an “acceptable” loss as they seemed quite skilled at playing thief. I’ll never be happy with the stealth mechanic in this game however.

In retrospect we needed to coordinate focus-pulls and I think we could have pulled out a victory.

I wanted to follow up and say there have been some great alt-friendly mechanics added recently:

1. Sharing karma across all toons
2. Magic Find changes using Luck

Those have both been alt-friendly boons — big ones really.

The gear treadmill and time gating sort of squash out those awesome updates though, making my alt-experience negative.

No — not alt friendly.

I’ve shelved my five level 80 alts. It’s not worth the time investment to gear them into ascended, rank WvW, level fractals, obtain world exploration, etc. I will play them when I want a “flavor” change from time to time in WvW, but it’s apparent as soon as I start when I look at my low WvW rank on the alts that I’m not on my main.

The time gating is one of the single biggest issues with alt-unfriendliness. Yes I can use laurels and karma on any toon (until recently that was only laurels) — but one laurel per day divided among all your alts is sparse. Now consider everything else that’s time gated — even charged quartz crystals.

I’ve stopped leveling my last two alts because I know I won’t do much with them at level 80.

wasted.6817:

Guys, what’s the problem here? There are 21(!) other meta events in this game, most of them are not “frustrating” for anyone, even for bots, do them and enjoy. Does Teq really have to be among those events as well?! Is this the only fish in the sea for you, that you’re so frustrated about being unable to do it (for whatever reason)?

The problem is Anet:

1. Added new content by removing old content
2. The new content is not completed by all players
3. The old content was completed by all but the most brain-dead players

There’s not doubt that part of the community likes the new tequatl, and part hates the new tequatl.

If ANet would have added the new tequatl as an instance, or through some other mechanic that preserved the original open-world content you’d have higher favorability marks on the whole package.

There will still be some unhappy players (i.e. “I can’t get into a Tequatl Raid Group!!!”), but at least old content wasn’t sacrificed for new content that’s less accessible to the general player base.

Rennoko.5731:

juno.1840:

I think candy corn would be a horrible investment — remember the price after the first Halloween event? You couldn’t get rid of the stuff. An hour of farming was more than enough to get a full stack of the stuff.

Let people gobble it up and raise the price — just remember to dump your candy corn as fast as you can when the event starts .

You seem to think Anet learned nothing from the first time around. I would bet the corn is harder to get this year from the open world, and they have already announced new, and nice, items you can buy with corn, which will likely cost a ton of corn. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see the corn stay valuable through the entire event and go up once it is complete.

I don’t seem to think that… I outright do.

If candy corn becomes a rare commodity, expect huge complaints in the forums. Look at the recent “Miya” items like “Miya’s Wig”. You couldn’t destroy those things faster than they filled your inventory. How about the candy and dragonfest chests… I finally purged those the other week, tired of waiting to make a massive “killing” in the market.

But by all means, please buy up the candy corn so I can sell mine when the event starts for major profit.

I think candy corn would be a horrible investment — remember the price after the first Halloween event? You couldn’t get rid of the stuff. An hour of farming was more than enough to get a full stack of the stuff.

Let people gobble it up and raise the price — just remember to dump your candy corn as fast as you can when the event starts .

Agree with the OP.

Why spend an hour in Tequatl for something I can get in less time by doing something else. The answer is “because it’s new and exciting”. However that doesn’t keep players repeating it over the long term. Long term it’s going to be for the rewards.

However based upon ANet’s current trend, expect all the bosses to turn into tequatl — that’s their ‘raid’ system.

Galtrix.7369:

Direksone.3867:

“1. Anet has enough money from RNG box sales to feed the world 90 times.”

WROOOOONNNGGGG

As has been shown ANET does not get money from the Gemstore directly. Money goes to NCsoft and they then get a % or whatever. Money goes to NCsoft and THEY decide howmuch ANET gets. Money earned by GW2 will also be put into other games NCsoft develops and vice versa.

Just because they make money with the gemstore it does not mean it all goes directly to them, let’s get that clear.

Now. Proceed with the flaming!

Recognize a hyperbole when you see it. Even so, Anet should be able to come up with better content with the money they’re given. As it stands, the content they come up with now is complete and utter garbage that I would not wipe my butt with.

That was the whole point about expansions vs. LS content. The base assumption is that an expansion would provide better quality content.

I think “why” is obvious, but here’s my opinion: It has to be good enough to encourage players to buy it. Players are actually trading money for content. If the content sux, nobody buys it.

In the current LS model, nobody is trading money for content. There is no feedback to the team if the content is good or not (other than these cruddy forums). The only thing the revenue is providing feedback on is how good the gem-shop fare is.

if you have wvw badges (which flow like water from the achievement chest faucet), then make sure you get the WvW infusions instead of the PvE Laurel Vendor infusions.

The WvW versions have 25% higher stats (yeah +5 instead of +4 lol). In addition you get a 1% adjustment for NPC damage (either given or taken) which is just frosting.

I think GS is great in WvW for power builds. It’s one of the few tools we have to consistently chase down a foe. There are other options, yes, but it’s very easy to throw down a iZerker at 1200m for cripple, or force the foe into combat with a GS auto-attack (which can hit at more than 1200m).

Once you close the gap you can switch to sword/focus for a sword-3 immobilize or a focus pull.

In zergs the GS is excellent for getting tags on things like dolyaks, sentries, squirrels, etc. Best weapon for long-range, single target tags.

Finally you have GS-5 for knock-back (thief from sanctuary, anyone trying to stomp your teammate without stability, etc).

Just remember to swap to your other weapon set once you’re engaged in melee — the DPS of the GS auto-attack drops by 42% from full range to melee range.