Guild Wars 2

With four mantras and three clones you are at +25% damage which is very good. Although that’s not what the OP was talking about. Also it would be nice if you could actually back up your “lowest coefficients” statement — although not really relevant to the discussion about traits and +wep damage.

My point is +damage is not typically combined with CDR in a single trait and that’s what the GS trait is providing (although I clearly stated “shabby” on the damage from the meager power boost). We are lacking in general +dmg traits for specific weapons, but as I said our traits include CDR with another beneficial bonus (usually).

Godmoney.2048:

With a spec of 30-20-0-20-0 my GS AA often hits for 3500. Way better than any other ranged AA of any other class I’ve played yet. That’s my personal GS spec.

Personally though I hate GS except for PVE in which case it’s great.

Yeah it’s great in PvE and WvW Zergs (with sigil of fire) — it’s the best ranged option we have for mob tagging.

I typically don’t use it in PvP only because the damage drops off significantly at close range (but that’s what a second weapon set is for). It depends what you’re facing and your role. The GS will chew up some classes like shortbow ranger, but is obviously weak at close range combat.

Godmoney.2048:

Ansau.7326:

Lool a rune that puts you confusion hahahahaha

What I said about confusion not being worth it was not because is does no damage, the problem with it is that sucks a little bit when you want to be it as your main source of damage. With the non-sense confusion nerf, they killed a whole way to go for mesmers. In the other hand, it’s a very good second damage option, as people tent to forget about it.

The main problem with this rune is that there’re other options to reach +100% full condition duration, so you’ll have the same effect as this one, plus having double torment, bleeds from sharper images and fire from staff and torch.

The only thing that saves this rune is the interrupt fact. But in a game where skills have very low/non cast time, interrupt scene is very little.

If you’re getting 100% condi duration you’re doing it wrong.

You’re giving up tons and i mean tons of condi to get 100% duration. Unless you’re fighting the biggest idiots ever you’re better off having more condi power.

No idea why you would try to get 100% duration except for PVE in which case why are you running condi at all for PVE?

I’m just sitting here laughing at people giving up 179 condi for 10% duration. Not to mention the almost 200 condi you get from a 5/6 rune set.

^^ Exactly ^^

And condition removal ruins all the benefits of condition duration.

Dub.1273:

Just compare Warrior’s Rifle/LB rotation to Mesmer’s GS damage. Even in the very unlikely case of having three Berserkers up your DPS is still going to be lower.
Oh by the way: where did you take those damage coefficients and cast times from? Wiki? Lol. Also, melee dps is higher and no skilled player uses ranged weapons in PvE. Compare Mesmers Traits abd Coefficients to Warriors. The result will show that mesmers damage is crap. And warriors dps isn’t even high. Compare mesmer dps to ele dps, Eles have up to a 1.761 amplifier before 33% and 2.0 amplifier below 33%. Lightning Hammer has the highest dps in the game and the initial 200k bust of FGS ain’t bad either. An Ele is able to dish out more damage in the first 3 seconds of a fight than a mesmer in 30 seconds.

Look I said GS is one of the best RANGED weapons in the game — if you want to argue melee vs ranged go somewhere else. If you are using Ele dagger skills those are psuedo-melee. Summoned weapons are “skills” so not a valid comparison to GS auto-attack.

I calculalted the coefficient for GS myself using the tool tip and power off my own toon (which is how you do it). For the long bow the coefficient was grabbed from the wiki. Feel free to calculate your own coefficient and post some data.

Nevhie.6079:

Mesmer lack of “% Damage Trait” compared other class.

Example from Warrior’s Trait=
- GreatSword damage +10%
- Increases damage to bleeding foes by 10%.
- Hammer damage is increased by 25% when a foe is disabled. Reduces cooldown of hammer skills by 20%
- Deal 3% bonus damage per boon on your target.
- Increased damage based on how much adrenaline you have built.

And many more.

While on Mesmer? Not many option like that.

Our GS trait is -20% c/d and +50 power. The power is equivalent to +5% damage (at 1000 power).

While that power bonus is pretty shabby it’s coupled with a 20% c/d on the skills. Most weapon traits for other professions do not combine c/d with damage boost. They are typically two separate traits.

Maybe it’s by design so you can use Arcane Thievery

Comparison to the ranger long bow (at 1000m):

900 * power / armor

Since the auto attack is 0.75 seconds that results in a DPS of:

1200 * power / armor

So the Mesmer GS auto attack does 65% more DPS than the Ranger Long Bow auto attack. It does it at closer range (900m vs 1000m), it will pierce up to two additional targets, and it cannot be reflected.

Pretty much epic.

EDIT: Oh I forgot the additional advantage that there’s no travel time for the attack as it’s a bad-kitten lazer!

Yes the risen have higher than 2600 armor — that 2600 is a reference for “light” armor wearing professions. It’s also an easy metric to determine your direct damage reduction (2600 / your armor == direct damage multiplier).

The math I posted is useful because you can use it for absolute comparisons between weapons (regardless of opponent).

The damage coefficient for the GS autoattack on mesmer is 0.948 which is pretty high. The total damage for a single tick of the auto-attack on an exotic GS is:

991.32 * Power / Armor

Where the Armor is your opponents armor. The tool-tip uses 2600 as an assumed armor value.

The DPS from the autoattack will be twice the damage value because there are three ticks over 1.5 seconds. So GS autoattack DPS is:

1982.6 * Power / Armor

Factor in crit rate and crit damage and you have:

1982.6 * Power / Armor * (1 + ((0.5 + crit damage) * crit chance))

So if you have 2000 power (a typical GS build power value) and 45% crit chance and 50% crit damage, your DPS will be 2211.

That’s a great number for a ranged attack that is instant hit (no projectile), cannot be reflected, and will damage up to two additional mobs that are in the way of the beam.

Toss in clones and sharper images and now you are a bleed machine, further increasing the DPS.

Feel free to provide your own math for another 1200m weapon auto-attack using the same power of 2000.

John Smith.4610:

There are a myriad of reasons why this wouldn’t work properly in our game, but on top of it all it would seriously discourage long term investments which is not something we want to do. Long run investments are lots of fun!

PS You are correct, controlled inflation is not a bad thing.

Thanks for the response John!

Can you elaborate on the long term investment aspect? I would imagine those would sit in the bank and not in the TP (unless you view the long term investment as the posting of the item as some future “higher” prices for some anticipated sale).

Dub.1273:

When you have time to set up 3 phantasms your team is terribly bad.

And GS at range is possibly one of the worst ranged DPS in the game.

Mesmer DPS is lowest in the whole game, burst and sustained in common circumstances. That is a fact.

Lol — you play mesmer right?

In general three phantasms is typically a bad approach as the first clone will destroy one of the three phantasms. Two phantasms and a single clone works very well. Two phantasms are up almost instantly as every weapon set has a phantasm (cast one, swap weps, cast a second).

I can’t even respond to your GS comment because it’s asinine. I’m going to write you off as a troll because your response is that uneducated.

I run a 20/20/30/0/0 with I use scepter/torch. Gear is rabid (armor), knights (jewelry), and carrion (weps). I use Undead for runes (which gives 10% toughness to condi dmg).

It’s a similar play style to what’s described here. I like the high toughness (2000) and this build does not lack in power since the scepter benefits from it well. The condition damage on this is nearly 900 which is almost 2x the condition damage (over no +condi at all).

EDIT: Your phantasms will really punch hard in this build as well including the bleeds. The offhand can be staff which benefits from the dodge clones.

Dub.1273:

Mesmers have the lowest dps output in the game. Probably not with 3 Phantasms up that all have fury and 25 stacks might, but no fight in this game is long enough to get 3 phantasms up. Also buffing phantasms is hard due to the 5 player limit. And in most fights phantasms die like paper when meeting a pair of scissors.

We’re not talking about short fights — DPS is not relevant in those, agree?

DPS does include burst (contrary to what was stated earlier in this topic). Sustained and burst are both DPS with each having an advantage in combat.

In WvW I see plenty of good damage from my mesmer (both sustained and burst). This includes zergs and solo. Couple that with the difficulty of fighting against clones and we have a serious advantage in player combat.

Your build will effect the damage (obviously). My pure condition built staff mesmer doesn’t hit hard at all. I find that build least effective in player combat (effective being success rate and time to success). Yes the conditions can cause considerable damage but it’s not hard for a player to shed conditions and we don’t stack them incredibly fast (except maybe bleed).

The GS at range is possibly the best ranged DPS in the game.

John Smith.4610:

I currently have no plans to limit players interaction with the world of Tyria in anyway. I believe it would be damaging to the economy, to the game experience and to the players overall..

We are already limited in the other interactions you mentioned. Some simple examples:

• one jumping puzzle reward per day per character
• one world boss chest reward per day per account
• diminishing returns on dungeon tokens after the first run on each path per day
• diminishing returns on farming mobs (mystery algorithm used here for security)

I’m not disagreeing with you on your response — just highlighting that we are already subject to restriction in the game to limit wealth that enters the economy.

The TP really doesn’t inject wealth, rather it removes it. So lack of restriction makes complete sense.

mtpelion.4562:

The big problem juno is that automatic expiration is going to inconvenience casual players more than flippers. To a flipper, having to relist is just the price of doing business. To the casual, it is something that is going to wind up getting vendored to save time. Since the VAST majority of inventory comes from casuals, inconveniencing them will result in a significant decline in inventory on the market.

Or rather than “vendored” they could simple fill the highest “buy order” that exists. If there are no “buy orders” then the demand for those goods are ZERO anyway and they should be vendored/salvaged/etc.

I don’t know if we can say most inventory on TP comes from casuals. If inventory declines, prices would go up correct? Which would result in a reactionary response of more supply entering the TP (instead of being vendored)?

Honestly I think most of the resistance to this idea is from flippers that don’t want to work harder to make money on the TP — it’s easy to tell who the flippers are simply by reading their posts in other topics.

More gold available to Players leads to inflation because now they can buy things that were previously “unaffordable”. Similarly gold sinks remove gold from the economy which helps prevent inflation because the gold leaves the “system”.

I mentioned previously that even with returning the listing fee (if the items don’t sell) it would be a good idea. If the hang up is listing fee then there are many options available including variable fees based upon listing times, a partially returned fee upon failure to sell, or a fully returned fee. Lots of parameters that can be used to tune the system.

EDIT: I don’t think we can say “relists” will go down if players leave the TP, and some Players probably will stop using “sell orders”. However there will be more “relists” due to time limited sell orders. I think the increase in relists from expiring sell orders will outweigh the loss of relists from players who stop using “sell orders”. Remember the system can be “tuned” as I mentioned above to ensure desired performance.

If there’s money to be made in the TP, it still will be made by those determined to do so. This idea would benefit casual players by the reduction of inflation and the increased competitiveness of sell orders. Many of us think the casual players are the ones who simply sell using “highest buy order” instead of trying to list a competitive “sell order”.

Hell Avenger.7021:

YOU have to UNDERSTAND, money supply is the determining factor of INFLATION and not sellers/price setters.

So gold sink has ZERO effect on inflation?

You think this idea will NOT increase the gold sink?

You think the TP generates wealth?

If gold sink reduces inflation, and this idea increased gold sink, then this idea satisfies one of the goals I’ve stated.

If the TP generates wealth and you think this idea reduces TP activity, then this idea reduces money supply, and therefore satisfies the goal.

I’m very interested in feedback on this idea (even yours) — however simply saying “I’m a financial god an you are not therefore your idea is stupid” is not constructive at all.

mtpelion.4562:

The problem with your premise is similar to how when you raise capital gains taxes you actually make less tax revenue because it causes people (especially low margin people) to leave the market entirely. Each transaction makes you more money, but there are significantly less transaction now because you made it inconvenient or unprofitable to engage in the transactions.

The end result is that there will be less people utilizing the TP which will cause inflation to spike and ultimately the opposite of your goal will occur.

I don’t think this would occur, however for the sake of argument this effect would be mitigated because TP has the “buy order” feature. The buy orders provide a clue as to the demand for items. If you don’t see any buy orders then clearly nobody is interested in the item you are trying to sell.

If you get a drop worth 10g, you’re not going to merch it for 2sp — period. That’s the argument some Players are using to counter this idea. In this example you could simply fill the highest buy order for zero risk, undercut the lowest sell order (which is what happens in a real market), or try to maximize your profit but with greater risk (and therefore greater reward) with a higher sell order.

One problem now is there is no increased risk associated with higher profits in the market (other than the virtual “lost profits” if you are flipping high volumes and your flip doesn’t occur right away because you put in too high a sell order). A post time limit introduces the increased risk for the higher rewards.

The risk will drive some sellers to make more competitive sell orders.

Hell Avenger.7021:

I will just say one thing, this suggestion is ridiculous. all your “value added” had been refuted in my second post. Stop feeding the troll.

You didn’t really refute anything. You argument about trapping money didn’t make any sense. There already is a gold sink in the TP, this doesn’t change the gold sink.

The sink is a good thing because it’s designed to prevent a number of bad economic things — including inflation. This idea provides more sink and therefore more inflation prevention (see goal #1).

You didn’t refute anything about goal #2 which was a more competitive market place.

Vol.5241:

I’ve only recently started getting into the sigil gambling business about 2 weeks.

I started off on an alt with 30g. Right now I’ve gambled my way up to 140g. My losses have been no more than 10g (and that was in one session) while my highest profit was 40g. most of the time I make 10-15g profit.

Ii’ve also got my guild into it and if you see the huge rise in price of rare sigils like Major Sigil of Air, you know why :P

You think this would drive the price of superior sigils down…

The goal of this idea is not to limit profits. The goals are:

1. Increased gold sink for the economy (inflation prevention)
2. More competitive trading post (resulting in lower prices)

@mtpelion: A “significant negative impact” on economy is a bit over the top I think. You’ve played other MMOs with this feature, have you not?

Look, if there’s profit to be made on the TP, there will be skilled players to make it. This idea is not some thinly veiled attempt to stick it in TP traders who flip for profit. It’s a way to meet the goals I mentioned above.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

How many have you faced in WvW or T/SPvP?`at the VERY best you wont die early but you WILL die. Just because they are a condition build that doesnt mean that they cant do damage in other ways. Building just to counter Conditions mean that you wont have the power to actually kill them, taking all the possible utilities for condition removal means less for anything else.

What about in group fights? what about when you have more then one condition player unloading conditions everywhere – you think that you will be able to remove all of them, keep the party alive and kill the other team?

If so, then you either have faced against rubbish people or havent faced any of them.

So you’re saying a team of all condition builds will win 100% of the time? That’s how I read your post.

Preparing to face condition heavy opponents does not impact power unless it requires trait adjustments, and even then the most it will effect power is by 300 points (and that’s an extreme example). Maybe 126 points from runes if you sacrifice power runes for condition duration runes. But these are reasonable number that can be made up in other places and only a small part of the total equation that is your effectiveness in PvP.

If you are 1v2 against anything, should your reasonably expect to win? In a balanced game with equal player skill the answer should be you’ll “expect to lose”.

In 1v1 however it’s more of a rock-paper-scissors (all other things being equal like player skill and game balance). If you are 1v1 against a condition build and you have zero condition removal, expect to die.

Nike.2631:

Ug. Do not want.

If I have to micro-manage my stock that closely, I’m gonna vendor it, not post it. Prices will go down, right up to the moment where supply abruptly ceases to exist.

You will definitely post it on the TP if the profit is there to be had — don’t kid yourself. You’ll vendor items that were vendor trash to begin with.

You can expand this idea to buy orders as well. If you put a duration on buy orders it will keep the buy orders more competitive, although to a lesser degree because there is no penalty on an unsuccessful buy order.

This also solves another problem that exists on the TP currently and that has to do with the TP not being FIFO. If you put a sell order in on an item which is the 100th order at that price, you are not necessary the 100th in line. There’s an algorithm ANet uses on the TP to determine which item in the stack of 100 is the one next sold.

This idea would allow the TP sales to be FIFO because all sell orders would now have an internal time-stamp.

As for server load to constantly check time stamps for all existing sell orders (to determine when orders expire), that’s merely an exercise in smart coding. For example, the server can construct a flat chronological list of sell orders as they are created. This list is in parallel to the existing database of all orders. The server merely has to evaluate the current time with the oldest order in the chronological list — boom almost zero server load (at the expense of a storage space for the chronological list which is arguably cheap).

@Obtena: If you have to repost your goods every 2 or 3 days because of a duration limit, then you are posting more often than in the current model.

@Ryan: It’s only “fine” to you because you don’t like this idea. The thought of actually posting to ensure a sale (becuase of a duration limit) will tighten the profit margin of flippers.

Obtena.7952:

Um, posting time limits would actually reduce competition on the TP. I don’t get the logic presented (well, there wasn’t any!)

Nor did you provide any logic of your own… however there is a lot of discussion above which you probably skipped.

If you have a time limit and you want to sell your goods, then you price them to sell. If they don’t sell then you will repost them, this time trying a little harder to sell.

The logic is more posts == more competition by players that are actually trying to sell.

Right now you can post your items once and walk away — those items never enter the market place again until they actually sell. With a time limit they will continue to re-enter the market as long as the owner truly wants to sell.

If you don’t truly want to sell your goods, then what are you doing in the TP?

It sounds like people feel entitled to “easy money” without having to work at it. If you want to earn money on the TP then you should have to work at it and face suitable risk for your reward.

For the high end stuff like precursors you would see “buy orders” dominate over “sell orders”. The buy orders will set the market price unless there are sellers who think they know the market well enough to stomach the fee risk of posting a 600gp precursor. Those sellers would be encourage to truly “sell” their precursors rather than just push them out indefinitely at some unreasonable price.

This idea actually encourages “selling” on the TP which is what it’s their for.

Esplen.3940:

I posted 500 -InsertRedactedFoodNameHere-. Within 2 days, 250 had sold. The next month had none of them sell. The past 4 days had the rest of them sell.

If you add a removal like what you’re saying, it will only hinder players with foresight.

Sorry but you had no foresight. You were playing the fluctuation which you had only a small clue on how it would behave. Otherwise you would have turned your profits a lot faster than in one month. Arguably you could have made more money if you reposted your goods for a quicker sell, allowing you to then go and buy/sell another round within that same one month time.

This is an important point. You lose money as a flipper the longer your goods sit around. The loss is in “lost profits” that you could have made if you were better about your pricing. A time limit forces player to be a bit better if they really want to sell their goods.

Being able to park your goods in the TP indefinitely encourages certain behaviors that are not truly conducive to actual “trading”.

@aeneq: If you are making “knife blade” profits then chances are you did not acquire your goods from the game, but instead from the TP. So you are essentially saying a time limit will impact you as a “flipper” on the TP. Regardless you also state in different words that it makes the market place more competitive — and that was my goal with this idea.

@Yann: Think of it this way… you are paying to list your item for a certain duration. If there is no time limit, then what’s your motivation to price your good competitively? Only the urgency of your immediate gold needs. I’m sure you’ve played other MMOs that use this mechanic (pretty much every MMO). However I could still see an advantage to this idea even if your posting fee was refunded. It would require you to be a little more active in your posting if you are choosing to highball rather than truly sell.

Ursan.7846:

The thing with limited item though is that it isn’t just wealthy players who do it. Plenty of players who isn’t “wealthy” by any stretch of the imagination can purchase and hoard these limited items.

Regardless though, in the real world, wealth disparity is an issue due to the poor lacking access to the most fundamental resources such as food/water/education, and thus have low chances of success in life, which leads to higher rates of crime, etc.

You don’t have that in GW2. The best analogy of limited-time dyes is artifacts such as the Mona Lisa. No more of it is being produced, and the actions of a few wealthy and dedicated collectors make it impossible for normal people to purchase it. But then how big of a problem is that, really? Does the lack of access to Pyre dye prevent player A from doing lvl 40 fractals?

Nothing prevents you from doing lvl 40 fractals, but guild wars has always been a game of cosmetics (not progression). That’s what players spend time on, that’s what makes money in the gem store.

There is a small gear treadmill with ascended. Treadmill is too strong a word here, but something like it applies as the final tier of gear is non-trivial to obtain. This is what powers other games like WoW which has a real gear treadmill that players run on (in addition to, but to a lesser degree, cosmetics).

Legendary weapons sort of blow up the system of costmetics. This is because they can be bought and sold, including all the materials required to construct them (minus badges). Instead of being some sort of game achievement, it’s a financial exercise. That gums up the works a because it impacts non-cosmetic items. This is purely opinion.

I thought ANet mentioned there would be “additional ways” to obtain rare items like charged lodestones. Other lodestones are currently available for 1gp ea from various NPCs.

My gut feel is to unload the lodestones because I think the market on those specifically will drop.

T6 mats on the otherhand…

Fungalfoot.7213:

Ensign.2189:

Are there actual problems from people having thousands, tens of thousands of gold at their disposal? There could be, but they aren’t immediately obvious to me.

Hoarding limited items seems like the most apparent issue to me.

While common goods do stabilize given enough time these items never do and all it takes is one market manipulator with enough bank.

^^ Exactly

With enough funds you can buy out available inventories on rare items with low supply (which have a correspondingly higher demand). I don’t want to use the word “manipulation” because then John will get on here and ask for proof (rather than providing his own empirical data).

I think that most items on the TP are not candidates for hoarding, but some clearly are. ANet never shares any data from the TP — probably for good reason, but it’s frustrating because you get the feeling it’s not “policed” very well.

mtpelion.4562:

In what way are the “poor” players competing with the “wealthy” players?

There are infinite numbers of everything available to every player. No one can prevent you from obtaining anything in this game.

It’s not so much a competition between wealthy and poor — it’s a competition between all players. The wealthy player have more resource available to make purchases — to the point where they can consume large quantities of items compared to the less wealthy players.

There are not infinite resources on the TP, nor anywhere. There are hard caps (even if some of those caps are large). For example there is a hard limit on how much orichalcum ore you can farm on a single toon. It’s baked into the spawn rates, node count, and locations. There’s also a finite number of players.

If there are shortages which drives prices up, then expect more people to post and therefore gain greater reward from the sale — that’s a win for the seller. Shortages also lead to more “buy orders” of increasing price which also benefits the seller.

The system works in other MMOs (actually every MMO I’ve played that had some form of a global marketplace like an auction hall or trading post).

A time limit encourages more active competition.

The thing with flipping is that profit is greatly effected by player wealth. Equally skilled players can achieve the same ROI by flipping, however the wealthier player will come out with more absolute profit in gold simply from the capability of having a larger investment.

In that regard the playing field doesn’t feel level (it’s a great example of rich getting richer).

Other aspects of the game are intentionally gated by the developers (example: laurels, charged quartz crystals, daily reward chests, etc).

I’m not sure this is truly an issue as flipping does not “create” wealth, it simply moves it around between players while removing 15% in fees.

It would only be a problem imho if the incredibly wealthy were monopolizing available supply to jack up prices (example: super wealthy player buys up all the available Dusk greatswords on the TP and reposts them at 1000gp each).

One potential issue with flipping is it favors the wealthy — you make money on volume. In order to push large volume you must have enough gold on hand to make the purchase as well as front the 5% posting fee.

Two players with equal skill will make equal ROI. However since ROI is a percentage, the wealthier player will come out with more absolute profit in total gold.

From that standpoint the playing field is not quite equal — unlike other aspects of the game which are (i.e. every player is limited to 1 laurel per day from dailies — period).

I think this is why you see resentment towards players who make significant sums of money flipping items on the trading post.

I think your example is a great one supporting the time limit tolunart. In short there was no market for the items you were posting (even at the barely profitable listing cost). In that case they should not be on the TP to begin with.

Look at some of the items on our TP right now…. 1000+ quantities at a sale price 1 copper above what you could merch it for. All those postings would magically clean themselves up with a time limit. You’d see “buy orders” start to dominate the TP for those goods (assuming there’s a demand for them at all).

Good Idea because if you post something you have to ensure it’s “competitive” otherwise your post is returned to you (forcibly). Yes you can get undercut, but hey that happens (in real and virtual economies).

Systems are in place in similar markets and I believe with beneficial results.

Add a time limit to posts for the TP (example: 2 days, but the actual duration is not the point of this idea). If your post doesn’t sell in within the time limit you receive your item back but not the 5% posting fee.

Goals:

1. Increased gold sink for the economy (inflation prevention)
2. More competitive trading post (resulting in lower prices)

All of which sound good to me.

Iavra.8510:

Conditions builds are not as strong as raw power builds because they kill so slow. All you need is some moderate condition removal ability and it’s game over for them.

You have no idea…

Necro Condi-Bursts do 3k+ damage per second while also fearing you. That’s comparable to the damage a warrior does without having the need to stay close.

Take time to build those conditions stacks, and as mentioned before conditions can be shed easily if you are prepared for it. Some professions can even throw the conditions back at the source.

Honestly I don’t really fear condi builds (pun?) unless they are also bunker — at that point they can outlive your burst or the extent of your condition removal.

Solution is simple:

Limit postings to specific duration. You pay 5% to post, if it hasn’t sold in 2 days your post is removed, the item returned to you, and you lose the 5% fee. The duration in this example is arbitrary (could be 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, whatever).

There’s a good reason this is in effect in other games.

You’ll see TP prices drop for items — especially high end items like legendaries and precursors which can cost 20 to 60 gold just to post.

These have been going up. Bloodlust is over 7 gp now, whereas a month ago it was 5.72 gp.

I see the prices rising across the board. In addition the Major runes/sigils are going up in price as well (presumably from MF conversion to superior).

Anyone else notice this? Any reasonable guesses as to the cause?

Lots of great discussion in this thread. What I heard was increasing the drop rate (supply) would increase demand — and this totally makes sense.

However what eluded me was that prices would go up. Hypothetically if prices are at 500gp and supply goes up, why would prices go up?

Bare with me a moment.

The supply goes up, how would demand increase unless there was an according change in price?

In short, if a player is not buying a precursor on the TP now for 500gp, supply increases, why would the player magically buy one now unless the prices changes and that change is a lower price? I don’t think players would unless there was a feeling that precursors were becoming more rare and there’s a preemptive rush to gobble before prices start to rise.

Ok so prices drop with increased supply, resulting in increased demand.

So the logic here is the increase demand (due to the lower price) will actually drive the prices back up to above their original values? So prices would go above 500gp in this example due to demand increasing at the increased supply, but increases greater than supply?

I can probably buy that line of thought as a ‘transient’ response (you see something similar in auctions where bidders continue to bid at a price they wouldn’t open a bid on). However I have a hard time swallowing it as a steady state, long term response to increased supply.

I would see prices remain stable (at 500gp in this example) with rising supply until supply grows enough to exceed the eventual demand.

Conditions builds are not as strong as raw power builds because they kill so slow. All you need is some moderate condition removal ability and it’s game over for them.

Skill points for the skill is irrelevant — they accumulate like rain after level 80.

I think the better discussion is whether MI is sufficient “as is” to be considered an elite. Even if it were a 10-point skill, it’s still occupying the elite-slot on my skill bar. I would like to see it improved a bit from its current state.

@ Serendipity: Nice vid — I notice the spawns were not the same as what I saw last night (sunday post patch) which is 3 on the left followed immediately by one on the right. Not sure if that’s a random thing or not.

Zerk gear?

You have to pick your fights — why are you picking this one over other unfixed problems?

imho, this doesn’t impact anyone as you can’t make more clones to shatter faster than 0.25s — unless you are concerned that the self-shatter trait is kitten with a 0.25s delay on jamming your F-keys. Even if that’s the case, it’s hardly impacting anyone. I’m being generous here as “hardly” is an overstatement at best.

A skill that sorta behaves like a new F-key. Maybe make this a sweet F5 skill (stealth with duration based upon clone count). Then simply buff MI with zero cast time, or 2x stealth time, or both.

mrmadhaze.8706:

Why my thief’s summons don’t explode on enemies killing them? it’s an elite!!

Maybe you need to trait for it?

TheAmpca.1753:

The moment that thieves have the same utility as mesmers do, aoe quickness, a portal, viel that stealths 50+ people (EXTREMELY important for open field WvW fights), an f2 skill that makes them unhittable, clones, and a reviving skill you can come back and complain about us having one mechanic better off than you do. (elongated stealth)

If thieves had portal we could argue which portal is better — so yeah the discussion is relevant. You don’t have portal so there’s no point is arguing about specific portal skills.

You have stealth, we have stealth. Nobody here is saying “we should get all the same stealth skills as a thief…”. The discussion in this topic uses SR to illustrate how the elite MI skill is not really elite.

Yeah that is true — essentially T5 mats go up in price as T6 rises. The inflation just spreads… but I think you’re right that the rate of inflation will be tempered with T5 promotion.

I did the math on this the other day trying to determine if I should sell my T5 to buy T6 or convert the T5 into T6. It’s actually a tiny kitteneaper to convert but that’s only due to the 15% TP fees (this assumes you’re going to keep the T6 and not sell them, otherwise the math is a wash).