Guild Wars 2

Mirta.5029:

and yet on stats it is lower than a highest exotic with an upgrade…

Only if you fail at maths. It’s called an addition and isn’t hard.

Ascended Crystaline thing ring :
104 power
69 precision
8% crit damage

Ruby Orichalcum ring with exotic Ruby jewel :
92 power
63 precision
6% crit damage

Which part of 104, 69 and 8 is smaller than 92, 63 and 6?

Another reason for ecto price increase : the much bigger supply of precursors.

Dye price increase was due to that reason too, along with a sudden reduction in drop rate after it was incorrectly increased.

It’s 1 :

The fact you need 50 for an ascended back piece and 250 to infuse it on top of it isn’t a stranger to that.

Teamwork in swamp fractals :
- portals
- swiftness and vigor buffs
- condition removal
- stability
- distracting mobs
- running ahead to trigger traps (you don’t even need skills for that!)

Zombie.2310:

There is Karma gear. Max Stat.
There are Dungeon Armors. Max Stat.
There are drops. Max Stat if you’re lucky.
There are Max Stat armor Sets on the TP.

Where are the karma trinkets and those dungeon token jewelry?

Galen Grey.4709:

I honestly don’t understand this I really see Gw1 in Gw2 much more then I see WoW much much More !

Let me run a list and you decide which of these applies more to gw1 then it does to MMORPG like WoW:

Not really

PvP where everyone is on the same playing field
Except in WvW

Easy to get to Max LeveL
It’s easy in WoW too

A combat/skill system that allows you to play your character the way you want
As long as you don’t go melee in the higher difficulty content

NPCs that actually join in their story rather then send you to do their dirty work while they just chilax
What? NPCs that give a hand in story quests is hardly new. But their help in GW2 often amounts to taking a nap on the ground while you do all the work, or getting stuck on a pebble on the other side of the world while you do all the work …

Gear gates no content (sure gw2 might be different here in which its not as easy as gw1 to get max level gear but you can essentially play the whole game using common gear, ALL of it from start to finish! thats more close to gw1 then it is to wow imho)
Except the new weapon skins that drop in high level fractals I guess.

Every single NPC is important and has story / lore to contribute
Let’s not go that far XD There are a lot more NPCs in the world than you think and a lot of them are completely meaningless short of standing there. Most weapon and armor merchants. The class trainers etc…

World that actually changes while you’re playing it (in gw1 this was accomplished through instancing, while you stayed in that instance the world kept the state you gave it, in gw2 through dynamic events and yeah WoW has a littl bit of this too through phasing but other MMOs generally dont have any of it)
Maybe yeah. It’s hardly unique but it’s definitively not common either

Crafting thats actually meaningful
A lot of MMOs have meaningful crafts too. Some even put crafting above dungeon running (or rather, make them go hand in hand by looting not gear but special materials in dungeons you’d hand to a crafter to make your dungeon item). In GW2, currently with the material prices, crafting is becoming less and less relevant. With the new BiS rings, jewelry crafting already lost 1/3 of it’s uses. The back pieces are 100% non crafting too.

Heck, I’m 400 in crafts and I bought my sets from the trading post because I’d get more money selling the mats and buying the already crafted items instead!

Get to your objective playing any content rather then specific content
My objective is the get multiple of the best stat sets in the game. Currently I am very much forced into a specific content

having the whole game world thats vaiable to play in
It’s not viable. Any place that doesn’t include mostly level 77+ monsters is really suboptimal in the loot quality.

Mirta.5029:

you see statement that one gear step changed it all is the same as yelling “the sky is falling”
Compare Ascended with Exotic. What does exotic have that ascended has not? Upgrade slots. If you use best jewelry to upgrade your exotics then they outgear ascendeds (that’s why ascended has better starting stats – it can not be upgraded)

The ascended trinkets comes with stats equivalent to an ascended item with and ascended jewelry upgrade in them, AND a slot for infusion which can get stats.

Humposaurus.5764:

I never said it was the optimal way. I’m just saying there are other ways beside crafting.

That’s a ridiculous argument. Do we have to specify we want a way to get trinkets that doesn’t involve pure RNG and grinding for a year for a chance of having the right one we want?

Heck, playing the whole game itself is optional! After all, you might get the gear you need by mail, all it takes is someone sending gear to someone else and mistyping the name and sending it to you instead. It’s more likely to happen than getting a full exotic set of trinkets through drops.

Humposaurus.5764:

Trinkets drop from mobs or get them in Fractals. No crafting required.

Good luck getting a full set of exotic trinkets of the stats you want that way XD Even getting ONE exotic trinket that way would be a miracle.

Humposaurus.5764:

You do not need ecto’s to be “up-to-par” with other players.

You can also get armor/weapons from:
Dungeons- WvWvW – Random drop

Are you playing without trinkets? You know they are half your equipment stats at least?

For Jade Maw, I love the D/P setup. It destroys the tentacles. Just use skill 3 to get close, then 1/1/1/1/1 (amount may vary) then reuse 3 when the blind comes off and repeat until victory. It’s a lot more sustainable than using 5 for blinds for those. You use 5 on the crystal golem things though. You won’t be blinded yourself by their reflect if you make sure to use the skill in melee range.

Use shortbow with Signet of Agility utility. You just slowly kill everything from range and keep initiative for shortbow 3 evades and use signet for condition removal and endurance restoration.

Use smoke screen in many places, it helps. Also, thieves are probably the best wisp runners with passive 25% speed and controled shadow step skills. If you can get the trait that removes cripple on dodge, even better.

Outside of shortbow, try pistol offhand for support with stuns and smoke fields, and sword main hand for AoE meleeing when needed. And switch pistol offhand for dagger when stuns and blinds aren’t useful (most champions) but you need more evades and boon removals.

Lastly, offer stealthing support to your group. Shadow Refuge got many uses through the various fractals. And with smoke screen + blast combo fields you can try some trickery in the dredge fractal to make stuff easier but it takes more coordination.

ATMAvatar.5749:

Out of curiosity, what do you guys propose as an alternative?

I’m sure the immediate reaction is to have agony do a static amount of damage, but the problem with that is it disproportionately harms those with low HP. If you set the damage too high, anyone with a low health pool is virtually guaranteed to die. If you set the damage too low, anyone with a high health pool can mostly ignore the mechanic. This would be less of an issue if there wasn’t such a huge disparity in base health pools, but we have what we have.

They should make it first that the level 80 player health pool in exotics doesn’t range from 10k to 30k depending on class and gear.

The GW1 way with everyone at the exact same max HP except for armor runes which didn’t add that much in total was the best.

So, that explains all the times I used the trap and it didn’t seem to work. I attributed that to people dodging through them but it was just them walking through the sides XD

Conncept.7638:

16 Green Wood Logs -> Soft Wood Log
14 Soft Wood Logs -> Seasoned Wood Log
12 Seasoned Wood Logs -> Hard Wood Log
8 Hard Wood Logs -> Elder Log
4 Elder Logs -> Ancient Wood Log

Only 86016 Green Wood Logs for one Ancient Wood Log. Seems doable.

Bushido.2184:

^ this pretty much. And DirectX became the de-facto API not because it was better, but because of a vicious cycle of a popularty bandwagon.

No, it was because it WAS better. OpenGL at the time DirectX became dominant was horribly mismanaged and borderline stagnant.

SpeedFiend.4521:

You haven’t seen how bad the OH pistol skills are.

The two OH pistol skills for thieves are the only good pistol skills they got XD

I don’t think adding utility skills meant only to counter Thieves and Mesmers is a good idea.

There is a counter to stealth already : it only lasts 3s except some odd cases.

I looks more like the PvP version has a bugged skin. It wouldn’t be the first such PvP item.

I think the issue is a mix of local side simuation and waiting for server authoritative issue.

Here’s probably how “Roll for Initiative” works :
- Player presses button
- Game sends a message to the server
- Player stays rooted because the game client doesn’t really know that RfI removes roots
- Game starts playing the RfI animation without waiting for server confirmation
- Around half the RfI animation displays
- Server confirmation arrives along with the info that he isn’t rooted anymore
- RfI evade back animation continues at the point it was going and so only moves back for half the distance

“Stun break” skills are probably handled client side directly because they are so common. So the game client knows perfectly well what does “Remove Stun” means and doesn’t wait for the server confirmation to put the player back on his/her feet because testers must have complained the skills weren’t reactive.

ZLE.8293:

Not triggering revealed is maybe hard to do.I mean everything else trigger it,and all of a sudden one trait doesn’t.I am not a programmer,but i imagine it difficult one thing to brake the laws of nature that everything else obey(sort of speak).

They could make the trait apply a 2s buff that makes us immune to the Revealed debuff the same way Revealed makes us immune to stealth :p

proxy.7963:

It is in the grand scheme of things.

Comparing the now pretty well-known Yakkington’s Ring vs Some Other Exotic Ring

This ring is a bad example. The major stat is kind of meaningless and the power is a minor stat. This choice softens the visible stat increase. Can we say ANet choose this in particular for that or is that an honest “mistake” ?

If you do some more meaningful comparison, you have http://www.gw2db.com/items/71366-red-ring-of-death vs Ruby Orichalcum ring.

The first got 104 total Power, the second got 92. That’s more than 12% increase in power for a ring. A more careful analysis of each stat weight per item type should be able to predict exactly how much power will increase in full ascended but it’s a lot more than what you say.

ZLE.8293:

Or they could leave it that way and rename it to “Last Mistake”

Better : “Famous last words”

You can’t catch me, I got a smoke bomb!

Swamp:
While carrying a wisp, if you use a thief stolen item, your bundle automatically disappears in a way the fractal doesn’t understand. You end up with the “carrying a wisp” buff still on you but no item in your hands. But fear not, you are still eligible to activate a pillar anyway as long as the buff didn’t expire (it lasts around 2 minutes in total).

And that’s the fun part. If you fail the timer, the game removes all carried wisps but will leave you with the buff. This allows you to activate a pillar even before you restart the timerh. This action won’t start the timer either and so you got extra wisps as fail-safes to open the way.

With 3 thieves it becomes impossible to fail this one I guess.

Are you REALLY suggesting that throwing fine T1 mats into the mystic forge is a good way to get T6 mats? Seriously?

Your way obviously doesn’t work to make as much of the existing content as useful for level cap players yet you suggest it anyway. Why? Do you have some objection with giving players more incentives to go to lower level zones?

The price of Ori goes down because it’s useless now, not because there’s too much. All monetary effort from players is put into T6 mats for the ascended back slots instead

Iehova.9518:

Yeah I just can’t wait spending all the t6 and stuff I’m saving for my legendary on an ascended weapon.

See, you aren’t thinking like ANet. There was a gap between exotics and legendary before. Some people already had their legendaries so obviously the gap was too small!

And the genius in all that is that since the ascended items cost THAT much T6 and ectos, now the price for exotics themselves is going up too! Such a masterful move.

STRanger.5120:

Another thread of a GC character player complaining about getting killed in WvW by a class that´s practically designed for GC-char-killing? Just give us a break…

One just needs to look at the price of the T6 bloods to see that GC is the most popular build anyway. As long as this fact remains, the complaints will remain.

Abigor.4952:

what if you don`t need T6 materials?

Well, the mobs that drop T6 do it already as a rare drop among many T5 mats. And if you don’t need T5 either and somehow the stock of T1-T4 mats in broker dried up and if you don’t have a lower level alt available to farm them.

Then, add in mystic forge recipe to split a T6 mat into many T5, T5 into T4 etc… There’s already a recipe that goes the other way around after all.

Thieves have close to 0 access to Swiftness though. Swiftness which is 33% movement speed. Elementalists can spend nearly all their lives under that boon if they want.

Elementalists got a IV trait that give them 25% move speed when attuned to air long enough.

Galen Grey.4709:

stof.9341:

Galen Grey.4709:

And since these people already proved nothing short of better reward will ever attract them away from Orr what do you expect Arenanet to do to keep the game alive?

You know what would attract people away from Orr in a heartbeat? The exact same map down to the exact same mobs and events, except that those Risen drop bloods instead of bones as fine mats.

Why do people farm Orr first and other mats later? Because it’s more profitable. More karma, more high level loots and it actually can drop T6 mats.

Why would you farm any place other than Orr or Frostgorge? It’s not significantly easier due to downscaling, the DE rewards are lower, the loot is lower level so you get fewer ectos, the T6 mats cannot drop at all and let’s not talk about getting lodestones.

Don’t take me wrong. I’d love to vary my experience but this game is making a big mistake that GW1 solved already by first making nearly all the world level cap in the first place, and then adding hard mode to change the rest of the world to level cap in the process.

Thats the thing really, doing what you suggest wouldnt solve anything I believe! there will always be the best reward! in your example for a while everyone will farm blood until price falls due to supply and its back to the bones!

The problem is people feeling that nothing short of profit is world playing!

The same problem probably exacted in Gw1 but it was masked underneat instancing

Yet it’s better to have 20 maps alternating giving the best rewards depending on market situation that just one. You cannot make it perfect but that shouldn’t be a reason to refuse improvements on the pretext that they aren’t the ultimate solution.

Make it so that a level 80 player that plays in any map gets T6 mats and Lodestones and material bags as if he was killing stuff in the level 80 maps.

Ditton.3149:

There are no ascended weapons out right now. Im dealing with facts not fiction or speculation.
(…)
how do you know it will have 5% more damage?

Here’s a fact for ya : http://i.imgur.com/lZz53.png

Explanation? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Legendary-Weapons-Boosted-to-Ascended-Stats/first#post746701

Hmm, they were updated by accident, funny :p So far, all the indicators point to the new attack power of ascended greatswords to be 5% more than exotic.

Frye.4608:

Interesting how the thief is probably GC, yet the mesmer is called a nub for

a) also being GC,
b) not speccing to counter GC
c) is alone vs a GC

So yeah ! That mesmer was really asking for that 17k and it’s totally not game-breaking that the rogue can do that sort of damage. From stealth.

ArenaNet can hardly do much to balance GC vs GC matchup. The backstab thieves thrive on GC classes. As long as nearly everyone plays that kind of build, you’ll see backstab thieves around because it’s their natural food :p

It’s kind of a rock/paper/scissors game where nearly everyone plays scissors because it’s cool. Any player that plays rock then seems OP to then and many complaints will happen.

Of course, the fact that exotic gear is so expensive to get makes it rather hard to try different builds which if they don’t work well will end up feeling like a huge waste of gold :o

Galen Grey.4709:

And since these people already proved nothing short of better reward will ever attract them away from Orr what do you expect Arenanet to do to keep the game alive?

You know what would attract people away from Orr in a heartbeat? The exact same map down to the exact same mobs and events, except that those Risen drop bloods instead of bones as fine mats.

Why do people farm Orr first and other mats later? Because it’s more profitable. More karma, more high level loots and it actually can drop T6 mats.

Why would you farm any place other than Orr or Frostgorge? It’s not significantly easier due to downscaling, the DE rewards are lower, the loot is lower level so you get fewer ectos, the T6 mats cannot drop at all and let’s not talk about getting lodestones.

Don’t take me wrong. I’d love to vary my experience but this game is making a big mistake that GW1 solved already by first making nearly all the world level cap in the first place, and then adding hard mode to change the rest of the world to level cap in the process.

I want character progression. But that progression needs to be in what I have achieved. Not in how big the numbers on my gear are.

Well, the unicorn build IS a bunker type build. You aren’t 100% defensive because IMHO, if you don’t put a little pressure on the people that attack you, you aren’t exactly doing a good job of bunkering.

How it works :
- healing, toughness, condition damage
- signet of malice
- D/D main weapon, D/D again or SB swap
- endurance on swap sigil
- rune of the undead is a nice touch
- put caltrops right on top of the point you want to defend
- roll all other the place droping dodge caltrops, death blossoming
- roll all other the place evading everything they throw at you
- initiative regain on weapon swap if you go D/D
- don’t stealth cause it gives them free node capture which is against your role

Weakness :
- people correctly understanding that they just need to not stand in the caltrops and purge bleeds now and them to beat you
- putting conditions on you
- stuning you

mulch.2586:

Rather, they have a view that GM’s are rule-keepers, not customer helpers. It’s the same view players of other NCSoft games have encountered

Funny, I guess all the people I know in Aion that salvaged “by mistake” some expensive items and got the action reverted by the support to have another try at salvaging for free must have been in contact with hackers instead.

Pokerjoker.7246:

230 Fractals Complete.
Level 20 on my main had to craft the backpice for 1.850 + 225. (dailys since day 4 after release)

Why craft the backpiece with offensive slot instead of the defensive slot?

Because if they could, you’d have people getting their ring 0.2s after the patch was released and then they’d be moaning on the forums again for even more vertical progression 0.4s later.

Kings X.5082:

I was told that people would be leveling alts? Nope.

I was told after the initial zerg people would revist maps to “explore”. Not happening.

I was leveling alts. Until ArenaNet told me I’d need to spend 10 times more on my main to gear it with that ascended crap.

I revisited the old maps for 100% completion. Once. I don’t revisit them anymore because none of them drop T6 mats, they don’t drop often enough ecto valid stuff and don’t drop lodestone quality mats.

Such problems wouldn’t have happened in GW1 somehow, and you want me to believe vertical progression is better?

But the solutions are rather simple. Like making the T6 mats drop anywhere with the same rate as Orr as long as you are level 80 instead of linking the mat tier to the mob level only.

So, you won’t be able to get T1-T4 mats anymore? Who cares! And just add a mystic forge recipe to break one TX mat into 10 TX-1 if you want.

Yawg.1294:

- From release untill the most recent updates the back piece gear slot upgrade to the best possible (rare) costed 5g – the equivalent of 2 exotic items in other slots, and it offered a few stat points advantage that was completely negligible. Most players never got it, ignored it and I’ve never heard complaints about it. Why so much QQ now when the gains are just as little?

Why pay 5g + a new jewel (the storyline back slot comes with an exotic jewel) to get a rare item for very few stat bonuses when it was expected that exotic back slots would be added one day or another?

VexHelElEldZodEth.4271:

Good advice, stof. Yes, this is what I have been doing for now. I am pretty good at dodge rolling and anticipating the incoming agony attacks from bosses, but I am only human, I WILL get hit one or two times. At higher levels I am guessing nobody will want to group with me.

Well the point is that, while you advance some more levels (which you can do) and improve yourself in the process, who know? Maybe you’ll get the ring you need.

I’d say level 13 is a little too early to have a brick wall effect. It’s not very far though. And RNG is a problem with the system yes, it’s stupid but what can we do?

L2P

No seriously, learn to avoid the agony attacks. It WILL make you a better player in the end, infusion or not. Level 13 shouldn’t be such a problem yet without resists.

Tulisin.6945:

What I don’t agree on is making the solution to venom’s weakness even more reliant on venom-share builds than it already is. The problem with venoms is that with the exception of specializing heavily into them, they’re terrible. Making that specialized set of venom builds more powerful is not the solution venoms need to become a viable utility for all thieves.

Instead of nerfing venoms, they should have nerfed venom share. Like, shared venoms only get half the charges and double the number of charges at the same time.

Ditton.3149:

yeah its a .65% difference in total statistic ratio with all 3 pieces. At lvl 80 you have (4×916) 3664 points of base stats. Traits add another 1400, so that’s 5064. Full exotic gear gives around 1800 stat points, so total of 6864. Getting +10% (you actually only get 8.5% increase, but you only get a yellow back so its commensurate) stats from your gear equals 180 stat points. Difference between 6864 and 7044 is (180/7044×100)= 2,55%. There are the facts, where are yours? The total effect to damage depends on where the stats are..but 18 pts in 3 stats isnt going to save you, its not even a 1% increase in crit rate. It would be about 3-6% extra crit damage.

Ascended weapons will have 5% more base damage. Total damage you do per attacks is your power * weapon damage. So even someone with 0 power, crit or crit damage in his gear will do 5% more damage per hits with ascended gear than someone without. Add in the extra power and crit damage and we are well into 10-15% more damage for DPS oriented ascended gear.

Ditton.3149:

no, i care enough to respond to the sentiment, not your attempt to garner attention through quitting. I have 4 80’s, a few rings, plenty of ascended junk to make a backpack out of and fractals. I play fractals because I enjoy it, when I dont, I stop.

You wouldn’t say the same if the fractal level system was like that : each time you get back to the hub, you got 50% chance to unlock the next level. If not you need to repeat it. And just to be perverse, the chance is per player, not for the whole group.

The way ascended rings are given is kind of like that.

Working as intended. When you don’t know when you’ll get the reward, you tend to play more as a result.

STRanger.5120:

I´m traited for longer stealth, so an early activation of the downed stealth is not an issue to me…
An idea has come to my mind, doesn´t the smoke bomb (downed stealth) actually blind ppl in some radius around you? You know, like blinding powder for example…

No but maybe with the trait in shadow arts it does. Anyway, blind doesn’t prevent finish from working in the first place.

Also even with longer stealth, I think if you use it early it’ll still end before the finish animation connects. Finish lasts about 3s, maybe a little more.