Guild Wars 2

ensoriki.5789:

timmyf.1490:

As far as the OP, don’t 2-handed weapons also have higher base damage to help compensate for the single sigil? Just wondering if you think that would/should be adjusted down if 2-handed weapons get 2 sigils?

The base damage of the weapon doesn’t mean much given that each skill has its own damage co-efficient made with the weapon in mind. If the base damage of 2h weapons were lower they’d just raise skill co-efficients.

The base damage is higher to compensate for the lack of a second sigil, if a second sigil is added that base damage does not need to be higher as there’s nothing lacking that a 1h weapon does not have… The idea is that they WOULDN’T raise the skill co-efficients because that would take things further out of balance.

Today I learned, regular mode SAB is hard.

From,

- A guy who’s been running tribulation mode for the hell of it over and over.

Oh guys, that was intentional, don’t you know? Just like aetherized weapons not dropping from candidate trials after the patch to “fix” trials, all according to plan.

Or you’d think they’d release some of those new skills they were talking about, or new weapons… or, I don’t even know.

They’re adding a lot more of the stuff that everyone has been lashing out against them for and that just seems silly to me.

It just blows my mind that this is what they came up with for the one year anniversary of the game, like, you’d think after a year of learning their players and such they’d do something to enhance the mechanics of the game.

Do a big balance patch, polish up the way something non visual works, they did some fairly significant changes a few weeks ago that have made it so people rarely run dungeons anymore (because if its not their first run of the day, it’s not worth doing, even on an alt), haven’t done anything for the fractal runners their most “hardcore PVE” group, haven’t changed anything about WvW except hopefully giving some incentive for new blood to get involved…

It’s just frustrating how much QoL goes by the wayside for content that we can’t even participate in.

IN ADDITION, this whole patch was added the week before a free to play weekend, and this stupid zerging content is totally unplayable for new individuals! Way to time things…. Now I’m going to miss out on getting to play the new content this weekend because I’m going to have to handhold my friends/GF through the lowbie zone instead of getting to say “CHECK OUT THIS COOL LIVING STORY STUFF, WE GET SOMETHING DIFFERENT EVERY 2 WEEKS AND EVERYONE CAN PARTICIPATE.”

me im not.9357:

It feels pretty fail. I have never wondered “why am i playing this game now?” with gw2 before…. but that’s how I feel right now. Ive got all the skins I want for my character. Now what? I get to sit around and hope I can get into the new content that only spawns once an hour and hope I dont get stuck with a small overflow population. Not really enjoying this.

I just went to do one that popped on my server, got to the zone, wasn’t on an overflow, the event still wasn’t occurring.

That said, bang up job on the new character select screen I suppose.

Xista.7391:

There are 336 hours that this content will be live (presumably). The events only last 45 minutes max. Times that by 5 you’ll get just under 4 hours. I’m sure you’ll manage if you don’t get too see all of the content tonight.

Plus you can group with others who have it unlocked already.

Unless the events break.

I can still access the old content and don’t have to wait through five one hour events AND run a dungeon to do i~ oh wait.

uhh

I can enjoy all this new content by popping into zones when it comes up and there are all these cool mobs to fi~ oh wait…. I’m not even in an overflow and there are no mobs.

Wait does this mean that I can’t do the dungeon? And that means that I can’t do the original pavilion content…. So I’ve been time gated out of the old content (and some of the new content) but new content that I can’t access…

Well at least there aren’t any more RNG ski… kitten .

Well at least fractals are more rewarding to do now, nice to have some challenging PVE content that doesn’t revolve around a livi… really?

This anniversary patch is everything I wanted and mo….

Look Anet, I’ve found ways to enjoy every patch you’ve thrown at me, you gave me the candidate trials, I made it my mission to get as many people through them as possible, you gave me the gauntlet? It was an awesome single player challenge and I really enjoyed helping other people with their fight techniques.

You gave me this content, and I can’t even participate, and am gated out of the previous content, there is literally nothing I can enjoy about this patch beyond the new character select screen.

You can still use the tickets… you just need to do the funhouse first?

I’m having the same issue, according to Dulfy you need to do 5 seperate entire zone clears.

There is no more than 1 of each skin on the TP, which could easily have been obtained pre patch (as they are all the “less popular” skins) and not a single person I know who has run the event (collectively thousands of runs) has seen one drop since the patch.

How rare are we talking here?

another 15-20 people run, still no drop for anyone I’ve run with today, no drop in the ~400+ runs I’ve done at this point.

Another 15-20 people run today and still no aetherized weapons, I’m 99% convinced that these are broken, this can’t be DR because none of the individuals running it have seen one either (so no DR issues there) and I’ve run it >400 times now and nothing.

I found this easier to solo honestly, and I’ve run more than 30-40 people through the content. My primary concern is that aetherized weapons do not seem to be dropping since the patch and I can’t seem to get a dev to acknowledge that fact or comment on it.

Pre patch I had 2 drops in about 75 runs, post patch I have run more than 40 people through the event and soloed it approx 150-200 times, for a total of more than 350 runs, none of the individuals I’ve run through have seen a drop, I haven’t seen a drop, I have seen white/green/blue weapons dropping (which did not happen pre patch). I’ve discussed this with other individuals who have run it upwards of 150 times, and none of them have seen a drop since the patch, and I have been checking the TP and the numbers of actual item drops (not skins) have been dismally low since the patch (never more than one or two of each item, and several of them haven’t updated since the patch at all).

I’m concerned that something in the patch legitimately broke the ability for these to drop and was hoping to get the matter investigated, I think my sampling size is large enough that this is a realistic concern and I’m having a hard time getting a response from any officials anywhere else. (these are tier 4 events, previously they both dropped at the second loot bag on failed events, since the patch I have scored three loot bags more than 150 times to no avail.)

Northlander.4619:

Same message here as Evon support thread: If someone can help me complete Evon T4 on Piken Square I’ll turn my roughly 300 tokens in for Evon (and even promise to get a support bundle). Otherwise they go to Kiel. Look up Taun Whitemane.

Edit: Also if I get a single thief/warrior running this for me I’m paying 5 gold for this but only on a succesful run

I’ll run you through if you promise those to Kiel

I’ve run more than 30 people through this event, I have run this event a total of more than 300 times. I have seen two aetherized skins drop, both in the first 100. Since then I’ve seen a WHOLE LOT of white weapons drop, warhorns, pistols, torches, axes, rifles, some blues, some greens rarely enough, LOTS of aetherized scraps.

BUT NOT A SINGLE other weapon. Can I get some Anet confirmation that these skins do still drop after that patch? Are all these white items I’m getting supposed to be skins and I’m just getting shafted by a bugged patch??

Zaxares.5419:

Has anyone here actually gotten the Aetherized weapons from:

1. A tier lower than T4?
2. From the 1st or 2nd loot bag?

Yes, both times I got mine were from a 2nd loot bag

~300 2-3 bag runs at T4 now, still sitting at just 2 skins.

This is beyond rare anet.

Ran around 8-10 people through at least 1 (some 2 or 3) runs tonight, will do a lot more tomorrow/over the weekend.

I can’t feel my hand.

For those around and having difficulty with this, I just got off work and am willing to run a few people through it before I pass out.

Alternatively, let me mystic forge these two thousand or so broken lockpicks into black lion keys.

What I want: southsun survival/races/whatever gives you an extra loot bag for every 6 you do, with a guaranteed rare.

Dimme that, with a 50/50 chance at the skin or something every 10 runs.

pls.

(noone can say I haven’t gotten them for lack of trying/laziness)

Just finished another 30 or so runs tonight/got another 10 people or so through the event.

A. Some classes have a clear advantage.

B. 30+ runs tonight/yesterday, all 3 loot bags, 0 weapon skin drops, can we get an official drop rate here? I’m not sure if this is just bad RNG luck or if they’re really supposed to be THAT rare.

(in ~200 runs I’ve seen 2 skins drop)

edit: both of which were in the first 100 or so runs.

Barabbas.8715:

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Don`t QQ guys, its possible to do it solo, i did it two times – one for Evon and one for Kiel. It`s difficult, but not impossible.
Everyone is complaining about the game because its too easy, and every time ArenaNet comes up with something challenging, the people start to complain again.

I take it you didn’t jump into the fray and do it the way a horde mode is supposed to be done. The fact is that regardless of difficulty people were having to exploit game mechanics and/or solo to beat Candidate Trials. That is NOT how a horde mode is supposed to be played. If it can’t be done by a full group of 5 standing their ground and protecting the loot from the plunderers then it is a failed horde mode.

But someone posted a video earlier of a group of 5 running it as a hoard mode.

Havana.8625:

I’m now many many hours into the candidate trials. I work on it every single day, and pick a different class each time (I have all eight to 80). Still no T4. It’s very frustrating to spend this amount of time in something that took 10 minutes to do before the patch.

Hard content is much better if it’s hard for everyone. Please at the very least remove the achievement for those who completed it when it was easy (pre-patch).

Edit: Are there any post patch videos of people completing T4? I know there are a lot of T4 videos out there. The ones I’ve found are ALL before pre-patch. Let one side steal and things don’t spawn right and you can finish without any effort. This is the main problem with the Candidate trials. Hard content for everyone is fine, easy content for everyone is fine, but hard content only for those post patch is stupid.

here’s a video of me completing t4 solo on a thief.

It’s probably the easiest method by which to do it and includes recommended traits/equipment/nourishment. Several others have had success with this method and I’ve been able to help 5-6 other people from this forum (and countless guildies) through their achievements this way, including a non full exotic’d thief, who I made good friends with and is now joining my guild!

So, yes, it’s doable, yes, for anyone having trouble with this, yesterday I spent 6 hours running people through it, and I’d be willing to do it again at some point today if I find myself on with the time (should be around 2am EST because I’m usually busy during the day, might be able to get on around 11pm EST instead)

We won’t be losing southsun survival… they said both minigames would be on rotation.

aspirine.6852:

Yeah you make it look really simple Thief is one profession neither me nor my gaming buddy has. Some nice spiking in the vid.

I’ve found a couple people EU side that can do it on a thief and have been having good success running some other people through it, and if you’re NA I’d be happy to help you through it myself.

Just hit me up tomorrow, for now, it’s 6am and I spend the past 4-5 hours running people through this so, bed time

akamon.2769:

liefbread.9513:

I’m going around offering to help people with this if they want to 2 man it with me, I’ve soloed it well over a hundred times and if you’re willing to guest over to me I’m confident I can get any competent player through it.

very decent of you. and good luck!
just curious, i’m asuming you’re doing it for.. fun, as well as a chance at weapon skins? any drops so far? how many aetherblades do you kill on average?

I’ve been enjoying helping people out/making new friends etc, it’s a lot more fun than farming it alone, I’ve gotten a couple weapon skin drops in 150~ runs. Solo I usually end up with a count around 35, with a partner/running someone 15-25

aspirine.6852:

liefbread.9513:

I’m going around offering to help people with this if they want to 2 man it with me, I’ve soloed it well over a hundred times and if you’re willing to guest over to me I’m confident I can get any competent player through it.

You might want to consider making a vid, would also help lots of people I think.
Since you did it many times, what char do you reccomend?

I did make a vid actually! It’s floating around in a few other posts.

http://youtu.be/-cuVYN7TS9o

This is how I solo it, a few other people have had success using the same methods and builds, I would 100% recommend a thief or having a thief in group as scorpion wire is near essential.

DaKenster.5801:

I might take you up on that offer liefbread, seeing as I cannot seem to do t4 solo.

I’ve helped 4 people just tonight!

Let me know!~

Lemondish.3268:

liefbread.9513:

The cheapest way right now is buying gems, trading them in for gold and then buying them, farming 50g takes a Loooooong time (capital L), and these items are only dropping every 40-50 runs on 3 loot bags per run (tier 4). (that’s one every 5-6 hours for what it’s worth, and as someone who’s only gotten 2, I cannot guarantee that rate).

Sure, farming 50g takes a long time, but I can’t imagine most long time players don’t have that much available to spend at a whim. I don’t, since I’ve only just returned to the game after a really long hiatus. On the other hand, most of my guild mates bought them the first day, and they fully expect to recoup their losses before the next round of whatever content comes up that they can buy the rewards from. A couple of them haven’t even stepped into Candidate Trials. It seems odd to me that people would applaud the fact that you can only acquire these items from challenging content while being perfectly okay with people not having to do anything but clicking ‘buy’ to get them. At least if they were accessible in the easier tiers you’d have to do something to get it lol

I mean, I’ve been farming the trials to try and get weapons drops, so far I haven’t had that much success, and I’ve been farming Tier 4… :/

In the grand scheme of things my problem is, unless you’re doing it with a motive (mine is helping others through the content) this is a TERRIBLY unfun event to grind (and it is a grind), and you’re doing it for little to no reward. SOMEONE had to run the event (probably repeatedly) for those skins to be on the TP.

Also it’s randomized drop versus buying whatever skin you want with black lion chests, which is just frustratingly dumb to me.

Lemondish.3268:

Ayrilana.1396:

Lemondish.3268:

Ayrilana.1396:

taek.9386:

I don’t like how things are turning out with these living story events. Stop catering for the ‘hardcore’ dungeon raiders, fact is not everyone is competent, the skill level will all vary between the players so the group composition will never be the best (even worse when you don’t have a proper LFG tool ingame). By making such difficult content with your average group of players, you are asking for a lot of criticism.

So they have one thing for hardcore players in a game that is 99% for casual players and you’re saying it’s too much? Am I getting that right? The challenging content is option by the way. You don’t need to do it.

While I don’t agree with the poster you’re responding to, I just personally wish they told us up front that this was supposed to be challenging content for the hardcore group. I do applaud them in creating the content such that anybody can experience, but not everybody will complete all of it. I would have absolutely avoided it the past few days had I understood this when it came out.

I, like a lot of other players, would absolutely work toward completing this if given enough time. But to do it in a week? That’s absurd. If they could just come out and tell me that some of this content isn’t meant for me, then I wouldn’t sweat it. Instead it took a huge negative reaction to say anything about it.

Yes. Perhaps if they were more upfront about it at the beginning then maybe people would not have gotten so upset about it.

I think the fact thakittens so transient is also an issue. Content like this, even with all its flaws, could be accepted if it were permanent. That way players that aren’t the hardest of the hard core could work toward those goals and rewards at their own pace, learning from their mistakes and taking it on as often or as little as they wish.

Limiting the skins to the higher tiers feels like a big let down to me too. They’re not account bound or anything, so I can just buy them off the TP, which is actually a much more efficient and lazier method than doing it properly. At least if you could get the item in the lower tiers and it wasn’t account bound, you’d actually be doing something for it and thus feel that sense of accomplishment. Instead you can either achieve the item by buying it with gold, buying it with gems (through black lion chests), or actually doing the content.

The cheapest way right now is buying gems, trading them in for gold and then buying them, farming 50g takes a Loooooong time (capital L), and these items are only dropping every 40-50 runs on 3 loot bags per run (tier 4). (that’s one every 5-6 hours for what it’s worth, and as someone who’s only gotten 2, I cannot guarantee that rate).

Just saying, I’ve run 4 people through this event tonight, including a thief who was not in full exotics, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve made some good friends/ties to people through this event and I find I mind it less and less.

That said, I’m still sour on the aether skin drops (and that they’re randomized)

That said, I’m still willing to help yet more people, if you’re struggling and you see me on, shoot me a message.

I have yet to fail anyone.

I’m going around offering to help people with this if they want to 2 man it with me, I’ve soloed it well over a hundred times and if you’re willing to guest over to me I’m confident I can get any competent player through it.

I’m going to have some extra time this week if anyone is really having a hard time getting through t3/t4 solo I’d love to help them out.

I would also like to make note that trials are JUST as possible to do solo now as they were pre patch, if not easier.

I just wanted to make note, I made a post about this the other day, but I’ve done candidate trials ~100+ times (pre and post patch), go Kiel!

2 Aetherized weapon drops in those runs, all Tier 4, about 60 of those runs were post patch and almost all were 30+ kills, I don’t know how absurdly low the drop rate is on these item skins, but they’re randomized and it’s kind of crap that they’re so obnoxious to get.

(because I defy you to score the fourth loot bag solo)

my particular Tier 4 run method, sorry for the awkward sound/video, I’m just figuring out OBS for the first time.

I’m so glad I finished my achievements and have literal stacks of these buttons.

Just like a real election, this living story patch is awful (with the exclusion of Southshore survival, which is definitely a positive.)

I had a lot of discussion with individuals about it and isolated my primary concern, someone has to be running this event for the skins to be available and the event itself seems to have a lot of issues, not just the prize structure, beyond that the prize structure seems to be completely randomized, I recognize that Anet doesn’t have a history of transparency that a lot of MMO companies have with their back end, and I respect that.

But on a whole as someone who was running the event with the exciting prospect of working towards a prize/something cool/a goal…. I was sorely let down, almost to the point where I can’t believe that the construction of the reward pool for this event isn’t part of the other bugs associated with it.

Running a tier 4 and getting 10 lock picks as your only prize (consistently) is just sad.

Getting voting tickets as your prize when the voting tickets don’t actually benefit you in any capacity is equally sad, and frustrating.

I guess what I’m hoping as that an Anet dev will pop in a be like “Yeah! We know about a lot of the issues involved with this event and the prize pool is one of them!” but given that we’re 2 days past event launch and still have yet to see anything, I’m starting to doubt it, and I’m genuinely disappointed at the lack of polish that this living story release has in general, especially when the fortune scraps and dragon coffers seemed like such an improvement on previous issues.

I’ve noticed a rash of bugs with candidate survival, from mobs spawning in the non spawn region, to mobs sitting in the middle of the island instead of near the treasure piles, incorrect event scaling for group events AND solo events, “Veterans” in Tier 4, which are not properly labeled as grenadiers.

But what really gets to me is the prize payout, how many broken lockpicks do you really want me to have Anet?… If I could pick black lion chests with those lockpicks I might understand it, but no, I can’t, there’s no chance to get a black lion key, and this is the only alternatively method to get the Aetherized skins, short of paying upwards of $50 for keys to open boxes (or farming level 10’s every 20 minutes or so to get a single key). This is arguably a more difficult event than Southshore Survival, and most definitely than Aspect Arena, and yet the prize payout is SO much worse.

I began running Tier 4 today “on farm” in an attempt to get an Aetherized skin on my thief, specifically the pistol, in around 35 runs I got one skin (which you can’t choose, so I ended up with a torch, which may or may not sell on the TP in the next few day to help me fund buying a pistol), other notable loot was a charged lodestone from one of the 8 or so aetherized scraps I got, and a handful (10 or so) T6 matts. All in all I spent upwards of 4 hours on it, this payout isn’t anywhere near comparable to the either minigames with a SIGNIFICANTLY less fun/more challenging play environment.

It just seems ludicrous to pull 7 lockpicks and a support reminder from a 7 minute event where 10-20+ veterans are trying to kill you, and it seems generally terribly polished…. I feel like I’ve truly wasted my time, and it’s kind of burned me out on the new content, which is rough because I’d really like to try the rest that came out/grind the achievements out… but jeez… I feel almost taken advantage of for trying to get one of these skins.

Sorry to necro post, but I decided to test this for myself, these do stack.