Guild Wars 2

I like “Eternity’s Guard” most of the three. Naming yourself “The Unbroken” is practically begging fate to sucker punch you. And “Dragon’s Watch” sounds like the group works for one of the dragons rather than standing against them.

So, there are 9 different invisible mushroom spores but they all have the same exact name, description, and icon? And if you get one at all, it may not be the particular one of the 9 identical items that you need for your particular elite specialization? That seems…poorly designed. I can understand not wanting to update all 9 collections with just 1 spore, but handling it this way just feels like it’ll frustrate players. It would be more sensible to make the spore a usable item, and when the player uses it they then get to choose which specialization collection it applies to.

Tim.6450:

Honestly the trait punishes you twice for giving only one benefit.

That depends on your perspective. Me, I look at Master of Corruption and I see two benefits with no downside. Benefit 1, it reduces the cooldown of my corruption abilities. Benefit 2, it causes my corruption abilities to give me more conditions, so I get ammo more quickly. Plague Signet, Deathly Swarm, Putrid Mark, Spiteful Renewal, we’ve got all sortsa unseemly uses for contagion.

Yeah, it’s weird, you’d think we’d be allowed to cheat death since that’s kind of in the job description for a necromancer. But it’s not terribly surprising: they nerfed Death Shroud way back when to keep us from surviving every fall, so of course they took care of this method too.

Rakatan.4561:

Also can’t understand Master of corruption trait.
So i take it and i’m master of corruption spells. Which means if I use one i hurt myself even more then before without any benefit except i can hurt myself more often………

Hurting ourselves more often isn’t the only benefit Master of Corruption provides, the other benefit is that we hurt ourselves even more than before. Depending on your build:
The extra conditions fuel healing from Spiteful Renewal.
They make it even easier to trigger Plague Sending.
They’re more ammo to throw at your foes with Deathly Swarm (which you can do more often if you take Quickened Thirst).
They’re more ammo to throw at your foes with Plague Signet (which you can do more often if you take Signets of Suffering).

And if the extra conditions are really a problem, there’s also Shrouded Removal and Necromantic Corruption to strip them off. Obviously you can’t use all of these traits at the same time, but there are options. Master of Corruption in its current state has some lovely benefits, including knocking Consume Conditions’ cooldown to 20 seconds. I agree, though, that the 10 stacks of vulnerability from Consume Conditions are really stupid. A healing skill that immediately puts the user in a potentially lethal situation is ridiculous. If CC gave you some condition other than vulnerability, though, I could get behind that. Imagine coming out of your heal with a couple stacks of Torment to fling at the nearest foe.

...well. I play a condition necro, I only play PvE, Flesh Golem’s Charge was pretty much the only way I could interact with anything that doesn’t bleed. Turrets/walls/tequatl’s fingers/dragon crystals/etc, the repeated hits from Flesh Golem’s Charge were an absolute necessity. And now they’re gone. *sigh* I guess Anet wants me to play a boring power necro (so much for build diversity). On the plus side, all the more incentive to get working on my Steam backlog.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Nike.2631:

bravoart.5308:

Can’t remove runes from gear without destroying the gear or using a cash shop extractor.
Can’t guarantee getting a rune back salvaging unless you use the cash shop salvage kits.
Can’t move runes to new gear because of the transmutation stone changes.
Can’t salvage certain gear at all, have to buy extractors.
Or go buy new runes from the flipper’s paradise. I’m sure they’ll love your business.

Why would anyone want to play a game that puts you in this situation?

This is not news. This has been true for almost 2 years. Why the sudden rancor?

Because we used to be able to use transmutation stones to transfer the runes to new equipment. We can’t do that anymore, so runes worth a descent amount are stuck in them. Also, god forbid we put any decent new rune in a new piece of karma or WvW gear in fear we’ll never be able to recover it.

Also part of the problem, as I see it, is that Transmutation Crystals were significantly cheaper than Upgrade Extractors are. If we want to move runes off of karma/WvW gear now we have to spend 250 gems per rune instead of 40 gems per rune. Sure, using an Extractor doesn’t sacrifice a piece of gear like Crystals used to, but I’d say preserving a piece of old karma/WvW gear isn’t worth the extra 210 gem price tag.

hydeaut.1758:

veldrenor.1469:

PvE condition necro here, I’m a little curious about the changes to the Superior Rune of Perplexity. I see that the cooldowns have been made drastically longer and the #4 confusion ability has been somewhat nerfed (25% when struck instead of 20% chance when you hit), but have the Confusion Duration boosts at least been fixed to compensate?

I´ve read in the patch-notes that fear now counts as an interrupt – did you try if fear triggers the confusion on interrupt (or was this already the case before?)?

I haven’t yet tried to see if fear triggers confusion because, prior to the feature patch, I didn’t run all 6 Perplexity runes (since I didn’t have a reliable method of interrupting enemies before unless I was underwater). What I’m asking about is the #2 10% Confusion Duration increase and the #6 20% Confusion Duration increase. When the Rune of Perplexity was first introduced both Confusion Duration increases were bugged and didn’t actually do anything. That was still the case prior to the feature patch, so I was wondering if Anet finally got around to fixing the bug or if Runes of Perplexity are just flat out worse than before.

PvE condition necro here, I’m a little curious about the changes to the Superior Rune of Perplexity. I see that the cooldowns have been made drastically longer and the #4 confusion ability has been somewhat nerfed (25% when struck instead of 20% chance when you hit), but have the Confusion Duration boosts at least been fixed to compensate?

Behellagh.1468:

They went up by the same percentage. The Gem to Gold rate is roughly 72% of the Gold to Gem rate.

Fine, let me grab some data off of GW2Spidy. Can’t quite get 2 months so lets try six.

May 31st: Gd->Gm = 3g17s70c Gm->Gd = 2g29s52c
Nov 30th: Gd->Gm = 8g28s Gm->Gd = 5g98s

So 2.60x with Gd->Gm and 2.60x with Gm->Gd.

Looks right to me.

Oh, and the ratio between the two rates is 0.7225 or 0.85 × 0.85.

Based on gw2spidy it does look like the numbers are working out. Thank you for the more concrete data.

Except, if the gap is a constant then the value of our gems should be increasing at the same rate as the Anet gems. Example: let’s say the gap is 30%, and Anet has a starting value of 5 gold. That means ours should be 3.5 gold to start. We then have a couple months of growth: Anet’s 5 gold value becomes 8 gold. So, ours should be worth 5.6 gold (70% of 8 gold). Now, Anet’s growth: 5*X=8, X=1.6, so 60% increase in value. Our growth: 3.5*X=5.6, X=1.6, so again 60% increase in value. As long as the fee is a constant percentage, our gem value should be increasing at the same rate as Anet’s. But over the past two months that’s not what has happened, Anet’s gems have increased in value at a greater rate than ours have. Two months ago it was roughly us: 4, them: 5. Now, it’s roughly us: 6, them: 8. Us: 4*X=6, X=1.5, 50% increase in value. Them: 5*X=8, X=1.6, 60% increase in value. So, again, why are the Anet gems getting more valuable more quickly than ours are? Aren’t they all the same commodity, except Anet has more of them?

Over the past two months or so the cost to buy gems with gold has gone up roughly 3 gold per 100 gems. However, the price when selling gems for gold has only gone up about 2 gold per 100 gems. So, this is my question: why are the gems in my pocket increasing in value at a drastically slower rate than the gems in Anet’s pocket? Less valuable overall I can understand, maybe there’s a conversion fee of some percentage, but that doesn’t explain the two different rates of growth. I’m probably missing something, but this doesn’t make sense to me.

EDIT: I’m moving this up into my initial post since the explanations so far seem to be misunderstanding what I meant by the rate of growth.

If the gap is a constant then the value of our gems should be increasing at the same rate as the Anet gems. Example: let’s say the gap is 30%, and Anet has a starting value of 5 gold. That means ours should be 3.5 gold to start. We then have a couple months of growth: Anet’s 5 gold value becomes 8 gold. So, ours should be worth 5.6 gold (70% of 8 gold). Now, Anet’s growth: 5*X=8, X=1.6, so 60% increase in value. Our growth: 3.5*X=5.6, X=1.6, so again 60% increase in value. As long as the fee is a constant percentage, our gem value should be increasing at the same rate as Anet’s. But over the past two months that’s not what has happened, Anet’s gems have increased in value at a greater rate than ours have. Two months ago it was roughly us: 4, them: 5. Now, it’s roughly us: 6, them: 8. Us: 4*X=6, X=1.5, 50% increase in value. Them: 5*X=8, X=1.6, 60% increase in value. So, again, why are the Anet gems getting more valuable more quickly than ours are? Aren’t they all the same commodity, except Anet has more of them?

I’m really liking the new Fire Elemental and Golem the way they are. They’re more punishing, but perfectly doable if you’re paying enough attention to move and dodge. The new Jormag is decent too, if only because the golems are no longer made of tissue paper and the pact weapons are worth using in the second phase.

Shatterer, Frozen Maw, and Jungle Wurm though, I feel like they still need work. They all play exactly the same as before, except they’re more tedious because they have more health and a time limit. Shadow Behemoth could use a little love too: the champion spawns are nice, but from what I’ve seen big parties cut through them like they’re not even there and finish off Shadow Behemoth just as quickly and mindlessly as ever.

Kagamiku.9731:

veldrenor.1469

The only guaranteed way to advance the achievement AND still fail the main event, is to complete the final wave but run out of time before you finish killing Scarlet. If you never make it past the final wave because most of the people on the map have zerged to a single aetherblade spawn point, then you generally won’t get the achievement progress.

Where did you get this info from? Because from experience, that is quite frankly, untrue. The achievement is gained by helping to close one of Scarlets portals during an invasion. There is no other prerequisite. Get a medal for closing one of her portals, and you can afk the rest of the time and still get the achievement.

I got my info from the same place you got yours: experience. I’ve gotten plenty of medals from closing portals, I’ve closed portals on every map including both Frostgorge Sound and Fireheart Rise, but I still don’t have the “Friend of Fire and Frost” or “Invasion Canceler” achievements. The only times my achievements have progressed have been when the event ends after Scarlet spawns after the final wave. I’ve heard of the same thing happening to guildies and others in map chat. We may just be the victims of a bug that you had the good fortune to avoid (as I said in my initial post, getting the achievements seems to be buggy as all get-out), but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Psycho Robot.7835:

Why do you consider the event ruined if it fails? Do you believe that if it fails you don’t get your achievement progress? Because that’s untrue. Even if the event fails, you still get progress. As long as you kill Scarlet once, you can get every single achievement.

That’s not exactly true either. You can still get achievement progress if the event over all fails, but whether or not the achievement progresses on such an occasion is glitchy as all get-out. The only guaranteed way to advance the achievement AND still fail the main event, is to complete the final wave but run out of time before you finish killing Scarlet. If you never make it past the final wave because most of the people on the map have zerged to a single aetherblade spawn point, then you generally won’t get the achievement progress.

Now personally, while I agree that farming is making it difficult to complete the event as intended, I don’t feel that nerfing the drop rate would be the solution. As farmers have pointed out, if there are no drops then they won’t do the event, and then it’ll be a lot harder to find enough people to even get close to finishing it. I’ve noticed that if the aetherblades spawn in the final wave while there’s heavy farming, then the event tends to fail. But if the aetherblades spawn in the second wave and molten alliance spawn in the final wave, then the odds of making it to Scarlet go up a lot. So if the molten alliance always spawned during the final wave instead of just sometimes, then the farmers could farm and the completionists could get their achievements without getting in each others’ way.

Another possibility to make things go smoother, is fix the minions’ rebuild ability. We have to go through the whole long take-down animation to destroy a downed minion, but all a minion has to do to revive its fellows is touch the debris. No charge-up, no animation that can be interrupted, even if you’re delivering the final blow at that very moment, just one quick tag and the minion’s back in the game. And that tends to slow down closing minion portals.

Here’s mine. Some may say “but he doesn’t look very necromancer-y.” And you’re right, but that’s the point. He’s of noble birth, the ninth of his name, descended from one of Tyria’s heroes of old. He’s proud of and wants to live up to that heroic legacy, and dressing yourself in skulls and bones screams “villain.” Plus, why dress like he’s a grave robber when he can go in all the class and style afforded by his high station? As to the blue and orange-y yellow/gold, those are the colors of his family crest.

Do you have to smash the big landmarks, like the grove tree and the rata sum cube? Or are those unsmashable like the castle?

Gotta say, loved this jumping puzzle. My only complaint is that it could’ve been a little bit harder. Not Clocktower hard, though, I spent 16 hours on that sucker and still couldn’t beat it (although roughly half my attempts ended due to point #1 below so that’s a big part of it). This puzzle fixed the three major problems I had with the Clocktower:

1) The influence of lag on the timed element. With the Clocktower you lost when the ooze/smoke stuff reached you, and when that happened was dependent not just on how fast you were, but on how good your connection was. If you lagged any you could see yourself ridiculously far ahead of the smoke but still randomly lose. With the Wintersday puzzle you only lose when you actually fall or when you run out of health, which seemed much less susceptible to connection issues.

2) The wait time. With the Clocktower you had to stand around doing absolutely nothing between tries which just added to the annoyance and tedium of the puzzle. With the Wintersday puzzle, however, we had snowballs to throw at each other which was a lot of fun. The wait time seemed to move much faster thanks to having something to do.

3) Camera issues. With the Clocktower there was so much random floating crap in the way that the camera would frequently bump into something and zoom in until all I could see was the back of my character’s head. The Wintersday puzzle had none of that, the whole time I felt like the camera was working with me instead of trying to troll me.

So overall Anet, the Wintersday puzzle was a HUGE step in the right direction and I hope to see more special event jumping puzzles like this.

*Sees notice about Act 4* WOOO this party’s gonna be awesome! *sees party ends November 1st* Oh...oh...now I feel bad. How many players are gonna miss that itty-bitty window because of damages and power outages from Hurricane Sandy?

I’ve had the same “random teleport” bug happen to me. The first few times I thought “well, maybe I missed a jump,” but then it happened while I was with 10 other people when you stand on that big cog and wait for the wall of the clocktower to explode. There was no acid, I wasn’t moving, I was standing in a crowd, and I was the only one who got teleported back to the beginning.