Guild Wars 2

Just two questions:
-Is the continuus drift I receive while gliding intended?
-Is it meant to stay active on the whole map?

The jumping puzzle on Siren’s Landing is great(seriously one of the first jumping puzzles in a while that I really like), Dwayna’s Reliquary is the most annoying place on the whole map of Tyria. I find it even worse than the perma-chill from the mobs on Bitterfrost Frontier.

I saw regular disconnects in the material from WP and Bog Otter about their “pre-event”.
Thought it was related to some bugs in the demo they played, but apparently Arenanet managed to patch it into the public servers as well -_-

I saw regular disconnects in the material from WP and Bog Otter about their “pre-event”.
Thought it was related to some bugs in the demo they played, but apparently Arenanet managed to patch it into the public servers as well -_-

Really? Rytlock?!
Another god with a blindfold?!
Though I admit: He would still be the only current NPC that would be somewhat qualified.

All the other wimps are out of question in my judgement…which is exactly why I fear Anet might pick one of them.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Braham is missing from the whole expansion, just to jump from an airship into the energies right at the end and becomes the new douchy god of war…urgh.

Since even the announcement mentioned it: Once again we go forward to defeat a dangerous human god in Elona.

Here’s the GW1-Spoiler: For those who don’t know from the first game, back then that menacing god was Abbadon. In the end he was killed and someone had to take up the godly essence and power left behind.
So who jumped up? Kormir, a blinded sunspear-warrior at that time. Our PCs, who did defeat a god, stepped aside and ushered one of the sidekick in to become a human god.

And now we hunt Balthazar, the god of fire, war and (apparently) treachery.
The god who had a fresh serving of bloodstone magic and primordous power.
If the pattern continues, someone will have to absorb all that essence and power.

I just hope it won’t be such a letdown as with Kormir. Like Logan suddenly hopping out from the back and doing a flipflop into the energies.
Aurene would make some sense to absorb Balthazars residue, but I’m kinda conflicted to have that cute little dragon absorb the essence of the god of war.
Well, here’s hoping for some solid plot.

As for the Tengu, I’m not really sure they will be playable. However, I do think the painted “fog” over their city has somewhat changed since the last time I looked at it. I do think they will play a role at some point and that we get to visit their city.

I fear Cantha might not happen. As far as I know, it was originally planned that you didn’t pick street rat, commoner or noble in the human character creation, but your lineage from Cantha, Elona or Kryta. But the guys at NC Soft didn’t like that and so Arenanet had to scrap it, along with the Canthan district in Divinity’s Reach, which became the great collapse and later the queens pavillion.

We also have to consider all the points in the NPC dialogue that would conflict with the Tengu suddenly becoming a part of the fight against the dragons. For example in the Zhaitan-arc there is this Tengu blacksmith that mentions how his race wouldn’t join the fight against the dragon.
If the Tengu would join in as a playable race, all the story so far has to be sifted for eventual mentions of the Tengu, possibly the same VAs have to be hired to record new dialogue and everything has to be patched into the game.
Either that, or they would need completely new story arcs where they act from the shadows during the fight with zhaitan and mordremoth.
Another option would be: Tengu can’t play all the content so far the same way the other races do. They have to use some kind of asuran device to revisit/play “simulations” of the events as one of the other races.

Couldn’t resource nodes be removed from the RNG of the black lion chest and instead be directly purchasable? It’s pretty much the only kind of player housing we’ve got.

The black lion chest could then contain something like an “essence of enrichment” that converts home instance nodes into rich variants(for harvesting and lumber nodes you could just scale the models a bit up).

Also: Please refrain from “owner only” rng nodes like the hunters board. I know it rakes in money to limit those things to the buyer, but sharing ones instance is a part of the community as well.
Instead you could introduce things that benefit everyone if shared by the instance owner, but still reward people if more have them.
Something like this for example: A small buff dispenser that stacks. I could take one stack out of my instance per day, but I could add another stack per day if someone else with the same dispenser takes me into their home instance. Say the buff has a max of 5 stacks, I’d have to get the buff from my instance plus four other peoples instances to have a full stack for a day.

Can neither see/buy the node, nor the recipe for the new legendary weapon collections.

The overwork of the footwear for asuras on light and medium sets is much appreciated.
A honest thank you from my part.

I guess I can’t get my hopes up for some of the older footwear getting an asura-friendly rework?

I’m still no fan of the spike-design and the raid-requirement will keep me from the journey for a long time no matter what, but still: An honest thank you for the rework.

Story
*"Suddenly Balthazar" I don't see how this fits in the narrative so far
*Kasmeer ditching Marjory. Uncharacteristic in my opinion
*Balthazar hires the Inquest...wouldn't they try to study him?

Map/Mechanics
*The prison feels out of place/not integrated into the story
*The new mastery/map-skill is fun
*M.O.X.: Awesome
*M.O.X. in home instance: Massively awesome
*M.O.X. needs to be a trader(I let my guildies harvest my nodes, it would be convenient if they could stock up on harvesting tools without leaving the instance)
*First to third tier of the backpack-achievement is pretty much the same stuff(monotone karma-sinks)

Legendary armor
*I don’t like the design of the light and medium sets, as well as the heavy helmet(but that’s subjective)
*Charr-tails getting armor on heavy and light is great
*Light and medium legendary armors have the asuran toes clip through the shoes(that’s not subjective, but bad)
*No plans for future legendary armors
*Suggestion: Make a community-contest, players design the new legendary armors, the winner-sets get into the game

Yeah, just’ve been to Zinn’s crypt and my character started to let loose some ambient dialogue something to an invisible person. I couldn’t really enjoy that piece of lore because…

…someone at Anet plastered devourers all over that place!

Seriously! What’s the point of recording the lore, some people still wanna hear, if they overcrowd that place with veteran parasitic devourers which are exquisitely un-balanced regarding low health classes such as…let me think…elementalists?(BtW: Guess what I play…)
I really wanted to hear the talk, but there wasn’t even a devourer to rally at, because everything is elite, veteran and quite often such a necro-bs-mob.

I think the theory of the human gods being weakened by the rise of the dragons is as old as the reveal that they wouldn’t be around as much.

Kasmeer ran away after she saw him, mentioning that probably Lyssa herself has enchanted the mirror.
My guess for the next reveal: Queen Jennah and Countess Anise are Lyssa.
Kasmeer probably ran because she knew of that.

But yeah…I found this more irritating than it was surprising. I didn’t really settle in smoothly with the narration so far.

It’s old ascalonian:

Zinn
His genius knew no bovns

Whereas I think “bovns” is supposed to mean “bounds”, but the childish misspelling is probably a joke from the devs.

I just saw a legendary armor showcase on youtube.
For everyone playing an Asura:
Light armor: Nude toes clipping through the shoe
Medium armor: Nude toes clipping through the shoe, but at least the upper side of the toes is protected by a plate when you draw your weapon
Heavy armor: The only armor where I didn’t see clipping toes, due to asura-adapted boots. Give that designer a raise!

Feedback for Arenanet: Once again clipping toes for a whole race…on the legendary armor set…which took quite long…which is in the brightest spotlight to see each error…while your designers whine about how hard the clipping-issue was. I don’t even know which words to use for this. Among others “QA-failure” comes to mind.
Just scale the shoes a bit wider so they encompass the toes, or even better: Just add a small spike on each side to cover the toes, use the same material as the main-material of the shoe and map it to a fitting dye-channel.

Honestly, as much as I’d like it if by some miracle moving pictures and more screentime of those armors would make them somehow less ugly in my eyes, I’ve already seen everything I need to make up my mind.

My main interest before the reveal was the light armor, since my main character is an Elementalist. The robe looks like a sparkly leeching thresher tries to eat your legs. Since the precursor armor has the same cut on the robe on both male and female, I highly doubt that the male armor will be any different.

The rest of the armor is just plastered with sharp crystal shards. I can’t even say that I see much of a theme in the placement of the crystals, the design-motto might as well be “What if the Shatterer sneezed on you?”.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate some things about the armor. My elementalist is also an Asura. Not just light and medium, even almost every heavy armor has the nude toes clip through the footwear. Even the Gem-Store armors!
At least the retro-godzilla-costume-trenchcoat…the medium legendary armor has special shoes for Asura(armored ones at that). I’ve got to lay down my cynic nature for that: Finally paying some respect to non-human anatomy in your armors is much appreciated, Anet.
Well…back to the usual: The cowl of the same armor once again magically hides the asuran ears.

I’m interested in Raids, haven’t done one yet, but I’m not opposed to getting legendary insights that way. However, I sure understand how people are “upset”(to say it polite) that certain items are gated behind content they might not enjoy. Being someone who despises PvP with every fiber of my being and with the gift of battle now hidden behind a WvW reward track, I sure know that.
I mean, you certainly don’t lack the options for alternative routes:
PvE: Give us a Mastery for that. We unlock it once as usual. Once unlocked you can “train” it again and again. Once the training is complete, you get a Legendary Insight. Might cost a lot more experience than a spirit shard and thus more time.
PvP and WvW: A new NPC and new reward tracks. The reward track awards you with currencies you spend at the new NPC to “fund” expeditions to the raids to get some of those insights.

I had at least some hope that the Megatron spike suit…erm, legendary heavy armor would be the worst of the three.
Now I look at the light armor aaand…it looks like Aurene vomited on a mordrem thresher.

I wouldn’t be surprised if its Kasmeer’s father, complete with some kind of “Darth Vader” redemption story later.
Marjory says that “Lazarus” has touched death, there’s something about him and that he makes the hair on her neck stand on edge.

I don’t want mounts everywhere in Tyria. It’s something I don’t think this franchise needs to plaster its cities with.
HOWEVER:
I would like to see some vehicles added to one of the expansions, specifically tailored to work on the new maps and nowhere else.
For example if we go to Elona, Kralkatorrik may have corrupted the Junundu and we have to traverse the non-rock parts of the map with vehicles able to fight the corrupted worms. With a giant air-fortress as a new Guild Hall option.
If we ever get to fight the underwater dragon we could get submarines or powered diving suits.

Asura war-golem-suits, charr tanks, human clockwork-walker, norn spirit-effigy-constructs and sylvari giant oakhearts. You start out with your racial “vehicle” and unlock the others via masteries. Primary skills relate to your profession and the mounted weapons while utility-skills depend on mounted vehicle-equipment.

It would be nice if effect-based gliders like the magnetic glider or the bubble glider wouldn’t hide your backpack anymore. For example I think the magnetic glider would go quite well with the spinal blade backpack.

Additionally some racial backpack/glider combos would be nice.

For Asura something that looks kinda like the silver salvage-o-matic but when the glider deploys, the four corner parts detach on some kind of asuran energy-bridge and the whole thing unfolds into a quadcopter like the glider-tron. But no thing-o-tron anymore! Seriously, can we have some asuran device that isn’t talking?

For Charr something akin to an unfolding charr-copter(two pairs of blades or so). Maybe it could emit steam based on how full the stamina-bar for the glider is.

For humans something like the shining blade glider-combo would be nice, but it should be less “blade-ish” and instead emphasize on clockwork.

For Norn I’m a bit short on ideas. We already got the raven spirit glider. Maybe a memorial to owl. A totem-like backpack with some of owls remaining feathers attached to it, which form ghostly wings.

For sylvari the backpack could look like a bud. When the glider deploys the bud opens and with a big “floof” a huge cottonball spreads out. While you glide you leave a trail of slowly descending seeds and when you land the whole ball just disperses in a small seed-“explosion”, leaving a closed bud behind.

First off let me say that I greatly enjoy most of the recent content from the LW S3.
All the new mechanics, ways to acquire ascended equipment and the new life from old lore really blows some fresh wind into the game. Not to mention the current events, there is so much different content to enjoy.

There are some dark spots like Brahams sudden change of character(wolfborn norn, guardian and “big brother” of taimy suddenly turning into a egocentric know-it-all who prefers grieving over his mother rather than telling the tales of her legend) and the whimpy reaction of our characters(seriously, a Charr is insulted as a military leader and there isn’t even an option to get rough?).
And why is Taimy still talking to my asuran characters like they had no clue about asuran technology?

I was really happy to see some profession-specific options in recent LW content. Personally I’m disappointed how race and profession had no significant impact on the story after the personal story from the base game has finished.
Some more race- and profession-specific options would not only increase immersion but also add replayability to the game.

Only recently my friends and I have unlocked the guild hall for our small guild. We’ve come to enjoy exploring the frequent changes in the landscape once we upgrade our guild. However, it would be really great if there would be some balance in the upgrade-cost for smaller guilds.
Some example a system like this:
Each guild starts with a limit for recruitable members. To recruit more players you need to upgrade the guild. For example you start with ten players and once you want to invite more you need to purchase an upgrade to do so.
Each upgrade for the size of your guild increases the cost for other upgrades and likewise those other upgrades increase the prize for a size-upgrade.

Fix the Profane light armor chest piece. The sleeves are still clipping through pretty much EVERY light glove and it is a GEM STORE-set.

Anatomically correct shoes for Asura and Charr. Come on, take the tip of most footwear, add it once left and right to the shoe and you got a nice shoe for asura-characters.

More character-specific interactions like they appeared in the last instance of Head of the Snake. Continue to give my choice of profession and race some more meaning in the story.
If I play an Asura, that character should have a more scientific insight into some things and Taimi shouldn’t speak to my character as if it wouldn’t understand what she says.
A norn should be able to commune with the spirits at time, a human should have a prayer and so on.
If I play an Elementalist let me summon updrafts to traverse a cliff, if I play a warrior let me smash in a wall like Braham did in Bitterfrost Frontier.

Less grind for masteries. I actually stopped playing the game for a while because the masteries where such a grind back then. Now with Bloodstone Fen it wasn’t as bad anymore, but it should never go back to how it was.

Stop forcing game-modes on us! I personally despise anything PvP, be it structured or WvW, I hate it. I have no fun playing it, no matter if I’m winning or losing, it’s just a tedious task I have to do for a Legendary Gift. I like the Fractals and Dungeons, but I know of a lot of players who hate those.
Give us some kind of special places in each game-mode where we can exchange stuff from our preferred game-modes and convert them.

Orangensaft.7139:

had no problem with ele on pale tree

learn mechanics and try again
unless there is a bug for you it should be doable
Canach is bugged often atm with invulnerability
so choose Braham and Caithe

Use Staff CC to stop the firstborn (Icefield!, Static and also Shaking ground)
arcane wave can also kill them with 0 casttime aoe once they are close you can hit multiple at once
cast meteorshower on paletree before they enter radius for it so you damage paletree and kill firsborn at same time

i played with both offensive arcane skills for extra dmg on full zerk build
with fire/air/arcana
your dmg is high enough then to kill those firstborn very quickly so it makes it easier

your third utility can be stability to be able to cast meteorshower even when the pale tree interrupts so often

apart from that it is all about clever positioning i guess

and i prefer an actually challenging ENDFIGHT
so im happy they didnt make it easier

soon enough it will be too easy when people get used to the boss mechanics…

I tried the same strategy, which usually works in places like the lanes in the Silverwastes and so on.

However, I got an interrupt-beam from the pale tree every 1 or 2 seconds, rendering me unable to even cast the ice field. And that was before it even got stacks.

What intervall of interrupts did you get?

Who playtests that stuff?! I’m beginning to think that no one does.
The design of the Pale Tree endboss is a shame. Did no one had the idea that an elementalist would play that boss? An elementalist with something like, well… cast times?

I tried the event today…I’ve never been so bored and disappointed in such a short time.
I’ve had some hopes, since I had a bit of fun in the Silverwastes, but this is a new low.

It’s a Zerg-race where half of the participated events aren’t being counted because you can’t do enough damage before the Zerg has vaporized the hostiles.

No interesting mechanics, no requirement for strategy, just dumb, repetitive and unimaginative button-smashing.

If that should be the kind of content Arenanet delivers now, I’m relieved I didn’t pre-order HoT yet.

As for my suggestions regarding the event: Scrap the entire concept and never bring it up again.
Rather make an open Beta-Event. Everyone can get a taste of the new content(and may decide to buy HoT), you don’t have to invest time in making new content(just a system to make it aviable for everyone over a weekend). Win Win.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

It’s your bad luck tekfan. My recent farming of wood, had the same random streaks of just 3 logs, and sometimes more. I don’t feel a nerf.

OK. Guess I had just some incredible good luck over the last few months regarding soft wood logs.

Rauderi.8706:

To address what someone above mentioned, were you getting them as extra harvesting hits (4 ticks instead of 3) or as an occasional double gather (1 log, 1 log, 2 logs)?

A double gather. To be honest I don’t recall not getting a double-gather on the third hit the past few months.

I know about the change to the crafting-recipe of the soft wood logs. However, most times I got 4 soft logs out of a tree. That made me think they counteracted the recipe at some point and now, as I just get 3 logs per tree again, I thought they changed something again.

Am I mistaken or did Anet nerf the trees for soft wood logs some updates ago? As far as I recall one node gave 4 logs for one soft wood plank, now I only get three logs from one tree.

Cynz.9437:

After patch the hero panel says i have to relearn all traits/skills again even though i already did.
I was logged off in HotM if it matters.
Achieves are gone as well.

I’ve got the same problem on the character I logged in with right after the patch today. The training-tab in the heroes-section looks like I didn’t unlock anything, while I can still choose any skill at the skillbar.
Also the progress of the achievements in the Living Story-tab is gone.

The expansion becomes less and less interesting for me. The sword for eles was pretty much the main selling point I still clinged to. Good thing I didn’t pre-order yet.

Got the same problem as of today. Two times in a row my PC crashed when I started GW2. Once when I just clicked on the shortcut for the launcher.
Yesterday everything was fine though.

I’m really excited that we get the sword for the elementalist.
As for the skills, even if those are still in the work, I’m a bit disappointed. I had hoped for some new mechanics, buffs or debuffs finding their way into the new skills, but so far I only found one and that isn’t even known yet: 50% Fumble (unrestricted) on Lightning Touch.
Oh…and one of the fire-skills gives 10 endurance on hit.

Apart from that it’s the usual stuff like chill, vulnerability and cripple.
Not even a lot of combo-material in the mix. One field and one blast-finisher, that’s it. Not even a leap.

Somehow the Woah!!!-effect didn’t trigger for me yet.
With the new camera there could have been so impressive skills.
For example a version of Ride the Lightning where the elementalist could turn into lightning, charging with the sword forward in a line-aoe, piercing through enemies in the way, while the camera pins itself to the blade of the sword.

Valento.9852:

tekfan.3179:

Congratz to everyone who got an invite.

I’m not really surprised…I got no email.
Same ol…same ol…never got picked for a Beta I signed up for and probably never will.

Sigh…

Cheer up! There will be other betas before HoT release. ^^

Thanks. But I don’t really think it’s going to change anymore. I’m a gamer for almost twenty years now. I stopped counting the Betas I signed up for long ago.
The only Betas I got in so far were those I paid for, like GW2.

Congratz to everyone who got an invite.

I’m not really surprised…I got no email.
Same ol…same ol…never got picked for a Beta I signed up for and probably never will.

Sigh…

I like the idea to even out the price between the armors and keeping ascended armor a noteworthy achievement. So far we’re on the same trail, Wanze.
However, I can’t fully agree with your suggestion as it stands.

First off your intent to protect the precursor-market.
You posted a link to the thread about the silk-prices. In that thread we got a citation of the manifesto where Colin Johanson himself states that it should be possible to earn gear with best stats(namely ascended) during normal play, while he mentions Legendaries as an optional achievement.
Apart from that, Precursor-crafting is coming in Heart of Thorns and Anet clearly stated they won’t bring in higher stat-gear, so ascended gear is here to stay.
The precursor-market will be impacted by HoT, no matter what. Demand is likely to drop with people rather doing the collections than saving up all their money for precursors from the TP.
With that in mind I think we should prioritize on ideas regarding the price-balance of ascended gear, instead of catering to the price-stability of an item that is already going to change in the economy with the release of the coming expansion.

With the coming changes for precursors I’m not even sure the rng of the mystic forge will be a sufficient sink for mithril anymore. Not that I really agree it ever was. Everyone I know in the game has tons of mithril. Only the people who gamble for a Precursor(as I mentioned, those numbers will likely drop), or those who reached a point where they craft precursors just to sell them, sink it.
I’d say that the second group has no real numerical significance(in regards to sinking mithril and the sheer player-number) in comparision to people who go for ascended gear in order for the slight boost of stats in PvP or people who run high level fractals. After all, Legendaries are a cosmetical item with the convienience-feature of changing the stat-set.

My suggestion would be to change the Insignia-Recipe to require less damask in order to reduce the overall demand for it. This would reduce the price for damask and its lower tier components, which also benefits new players who are currently competing with a large lvl80 player-base(with an higher income) over the lower tier mats required for damask.
Also I’m still puzzled why a simple insignia requires more damask than some of the light armor pieces require for inner and outer layer.
If projections indicate that the price of a full ascended light armor set could drop too low, the damask-requirements for damask in the light inner and outer layer could be raised accordingly.

On the other hand we have the low prices of leather. First I’d say we boost the requirement for elonian leather cord up to 75-100 thick leather per item.
To further increase the value of leather, I think a set of medium armor should at least require as much elonian leather as a set of light armor requires damask.
This would even out the time-gate for light and medium armor, too.

Last but not least the amount of deldrmor steel ingots for heavy armor could be slightly raised to further close any disparities in armor prices.
I know that deldrimor is also used for ascended weapons, this has to be kept in mind.
Still: amongst the ascended armor-mats it is also the only material with gathering nodes for the base-mats.

Oh, that Colin-post is up again?

Funny. In these forums it always appears around the time people start spamming the hollow term “entitlement”. Pretty much the only thing that remained from the poop-tornado of that franchise after Mass Effect 3 killed of Space Jesus…erm, Commander Shepard.

So about that hollow term:

No user here is entitled to anything, apart from their own opinion(which usually is something you bring up in a forum) and the legal terms we agreed on to make accounts and play the game.

Neither the users who want a change, nor the users who want it to remain the way it is, have any entitlement to it.

Honestly, I’ve got no problem with the max-stats armor being a grind, or a “long term goal”(A rose by any other name…).
Balance however, is still something that needs to be considered. This is a game. People have a certain tollerance towards economy-based imbalance, but an imbalance that sprouts from uneven crafting-recipes per profession, impacts that tollerance. As we see by those threads popping up every now and then, people notice it and critizice it. Which is their right to do so, as advocating for a change is.

As we’re on that occasion of that Colin-Post flying around:
Upon the idea to raise the amount of Mithril and Hard Leather to create the respective mats for Deldrimor Steel Ingots and Elonian Leather, people who advocate for the current balance brought up that a rise in the demand for Mithril would bring up the prices for the mystic forging of Precursors.
As we’re in the citing-mood:

“This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)”

Mhhh…
Mithril is close to vendor-price. Apart from Precursor-Forging(“optional”) and Mithtrillium it has no real use once people hit 80. As for my experience: Everyone I know has stockpiles of that stuff, it drops like crazy, it’s salvaged from lvl80 heavy armor and pretty much every weapon of that tier and you can get it directly from nodes.
Leather has the same drop-sources as cloth, except that leather has one more salvage-item per tier that the RNG can pop out.
If you keep the requirement of Deldrimor Steel Ingots for weapons in mind, a balance to give every profession the same long term goal isn’t that farfetched.

I completely agree with you. I even mentioned it in these forums on many occasions.
From expensive looking, ornamented light shoes to heavy armor that should protect the wearer, many if not most of them have toes sticking out like someone just cut a cheap hole on each side.

I bought into the GW2-beta by pre-ordering. Had to buy the basic edition and the CE later, since the pre-order CE’s were sold out after 21 seconds.

Had a lot of fun with my friends in that beta. I still got a screen somewhere with our first beta-chars at the lake in Kessex Hills.

Would be nice to get picked for the beta and try out the new features.
For once in my life I’d like to get picked for a beta, not just because I bought it, but because I really got picked.
Sigh…I don’t think I got much hope regarding that.

It’s just a show-armor for the demo. Once in the game, Revenants most likely will get an unspectacular starter-armor just like all other professions.

But yeah, as Donari said, blindfolds will unlock. As far as I remember it from the vids at youtube, there are three different blindfolds you can choose from during revenant-creation.

eithinan.9841:

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

This as well as the price of leather on the TP tells me there is a problem with the leather markets, not the cloth ones.

Which of the above numbers? Heavy being 46 gold more expensive than medium, of which almost 14 gold originate from heavy armor needing one bolt of damask more?
Or light armor being 97 gold more expensive than heavy armor(heavy contains no leather, might I add) and 143 gold more expensive than medium armor.

To put it into perspective:
Without the base-price the difference between medium and heavy(no leather) armor is less than half the difference between heavy and light armor, therefore less than a third of the difference between medium and light.

Heavy armor requires no leather at all, its primary material is deldrimor steel which is used for all ascended weapons. A full set costs around 510 gold.
A set of light armor(which contains cheap leather) costs 608 gold, which is 19.22% more.

You still see no problem with cloth?

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

The base-price also includes the crystalline dust, the common amount of Spools of Gossamer Thread and the Thermocatalytic Reagents for Vision and Lesser Vision Crystals.

But yes, excluding the base-price, you pay the following:

Light: 260,724
Medium:118,524
Heavy: 163,634

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

A micromanagement for abolutely even prices would be ridiculous, I agree.
Yet, we’ve seen crafting-recipes change or new sinks for materials being created, so that some items won’t become trash-items and their worth doesn’t go down to vendor value.
Possible even changes in the looting-tables no one of us players could know of.

Absolute parity is an illusion, the market will always change, based on supply and demand.
However, at least from the crafting recipes we could get a bit of equality.

As I followed this topic, I made a simple calculation on the price of crafting ascended equipment.
I admit, I kept it simple by taking prices for Bolts of damask, Elonian Leather, Deldrimor Steel Ingots, inscriptions and insignias(both Zojja, as zerker is the meta) from the BLTC, instead of calculating their specific material-cost by crafting recipe.
Not included in the calculation are: Recipe-costs(has to be paid only once per item), laurels, karma, skill-points and accountbound items you have to farm(Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, etc).

With prices I took from the BLTC right now, weapons cost inbetween 63.336-74.736 gold.

For ascended armor, I calculated the price for a whole set each.
First off I calculated a base-cost, depending on the materials all recipes share.
With the prices for zojja-insignias I took from the BLTC right now, each profession has a base-cost of 347.292 gold.

Next I added the differing costs, which includes damask, elonian leather and deldrimor steel ingots for the inner and outer layer of the armors. Also the additional 360 Spools of Gossamer Thread for light and medium outer layers and the 150 Thermocatalytic reagents for the heavy outer layer(btw, that difference is around 8 silver).
The total numbers are:
Light: 608.016 gold
Medium: 465.816 gold
Heavy: 510.926 gold

I’ll take the lowest priced armor as my base for a comparision:
Heavy armor users pay 9.68% more in total than medium armor users. In my perspective that would still be OK.
Light armor users, however, pay 30.53% more than medium armor users.

Total parity? No, I don’t need that.
But I’d find it preferable to ensure that there isn’t such a disparity.

Edit: I forgot to add the price for crystalline dust into my excel sheet, the numbers are corrected now.

I bought them because I may integrate them into my human revenant and they look great on humans. Too bad they are so kitten low on asuran backs. Looks like their spine has sprouted wings, instead of their shoulderblades.

Every armor needs cloth. For insignias and the inner layer.
There is basically nothing else to do with it, except for crafting bags and some runes.

Still, I don’t really see why a mat-sink should be such a strong argument for the current system. If a sink is that important, can someone explain to me why the situation with leather is as it is? Look at the prices.
One example:
I leveled my leatherworker from 400 to 500 and crafted the elonian leathersquares for my first gift of blades.
Both in the same time and for less gold than it cost me to craft my first ascended light chestpiece on a tailor that had been on lvl 500 prior to that.

Sinking silk is the reason?

Somehow I can’t believe that the developers who design the recipes and the experts on economy like John Smith, would fully ignore the situation with leather, while implementing a massive sink for silk.
Leather has even less uses than cloth and is oversupplied to almost no end.
In that light I can’t see the argument of a silk-sink as something valid.

For me the whole situation gives off the impression that it was an attempt to highten the price/effort for ascended armor, by increasing the cost for the only material required for all three armors. The well-meant idea to make ascended armor something special that meant you achieved something.

A system “working as intended”, “flawless”? But working against all the other systems that made sure that neither your choice of race or profession would impact anything else than your playstyle or bring up any significant benefits or handicaps to your gameplay? Such as Fractals with their agony-resistance?

As for solutions…

Someone suggests that elonian leather becomes a more substantial part of the recipes for all ascended armors and people who are advocating for the current system interject: “Not everyone can craft it.”
Someone says that silk is harder to acquire, since it can’t be gathered from nodes like mithril and elder wood logs, but is gated behind an rng-number for light armor, salvage items and bags. People who are advocating for the current system interject: “You can still buy it on the BLTC.”

Huh?!
It’s an argument that a tradeable crafting material can’t be crafted, while it’s an argument that you can always buy the materials you can’t acquire in a specific way?

But wait, there’s more:

People suggest that nodes for cloth are implemented and people who are advocating for the current system interject that such nodes, together with the current drop-rates, would bring down the silk-prices to vendor-value.

People say that the current ascended recipes are imbalanced, people who are advocating for the current system bring up that in the exotic tier, the heavy armor is far more expensive.

Guess what: Because a material that can be gathered from nodes, salvaged from multiple items and drops from bags, is the most expensive crafting material in the exotic tier.

And the grand finale to it:
phys is being accused of having a “made up mind”.

I’d like to cite John Smith:
I want to live in the world you live in.

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

im starting to realize, that most of the people disagreeing with fixing silk/ascended, are basically just trying to protect their current racket.

No man, I’m against it because it will invalidate all the effort I have put into getting ascended gear for all my weight classes. I also don’t want the rest of the players who have put in that effort to feel burned either. Phys, you are not taking into account the silent/vocal backlash Anet would get for making silk changes from people who have already finished or are most of the way through the ascended grind.

edit:

Aberrant.6749:

Seems more like you’ve already made up your mind about what you want and won’t listen to anyone else and just toss aside what they have to say by trying to attack their character instead of the argument itself.

well said.

The same backlash we see from legendary-owners, now that precursor-crafting is anounced for HoT?
I’ve already crafted an ascended light armor.
I wouldn’t mind a change in the current system that equalizes the effort you put into ascended armors. Personally I really don’t care if it means that medium and heavy will require more effort, light armor require less or all armor-classes meet in the middle.

pdavis.8031:

Phys: you’ve made your point very well. Ascended light is more expensive and takes more time, and thus is unfair.

But the question I have is: Why are you so preoccupied with fairness?

Does having the current requirement for ascended light break the game? No.
Does the current requirement preclude anyone from obtaining it? No.
Does it mean certain classes have to work harder than others? Yes.
Do the economic aspects of silk and ascended cause the economy as a whole to not function? No.
Does it separate the player base? No

So why does it matter if the material requirements are higher for light armor then the others? Why does it have to be fair?

It may not be “fair” but as one who is in the process of crafting ascended light, I haven’t found it to be that much of a problem. I can farm more silk than I can the other mats fairly easily and without much effort.

In the same breath you could be asked why Norn don’t do more melee dmg than an asura, vice versa with magic.
Why is an asura as fast as a human or sylvari and why aren’t charr and norn faster than those?
Why does an minimum-sized asura with its tiny weapons and armor need the exact same amount of materials for crafting as a max-sized norn?

Answer: Fairness.

Some outfits are nice gimmicks and I’ve bought some of them.
It was ok, as long as there were some armor-sets inbetween to further improve your character-design. Now it’s just outfit here, outfit there and I’m so kitten sick of it.
Instead of creative mix-n-match, we can slap a uni-part over it and be done with it. Blegh!

Anet finally starts to put some effort into asuran feet though, that’s at least something good.

While I’d like to hug Anet for finally putting some concern in asuran feet, I’ve gotten sick of outfits long ago.

How long has it been since there have been some new armor-sets in the gem-store?

I guess everyone is hard at work for the armors in HoT and I really hope they put the same concern for all races into their new armors.

However, I want something to enrich my character-design with, rather than something new to slap over and cover it, so I don’t think I’ll put out any gems for upcoming outfits.

The outfit looks neat though, I’d probably buy it if it was an armor-skin instead.

It’s not nice to blame all the new players, but I guess I know where it comes from.
I stopped counting how often I typed into the chat what to do and what not to do at the bosses. Way too often people ignore it.
The problem is with those players who don’t even try to learn what to do, not with the newbies in general.

Different pulsing dyes would come to mind. One that is just “blinking” rather slowly in a pulse-fashion and one that pulses in a specific direction.

A sparkling dye, similar to the particle-effect of the rose-themed backpack skins.