Guild Wars 2

About 30-40% of the time I don’t get either chest for doing the Teq event.

Today, with Shat/Claw I hit both before and after reset and got awards both times. With Teq I hit it only after the reset and got nothing (other than gold star for participation). Tried doing it a second time after being logged for a while to make sure it wasn’t DR, and still nothing.

Never had it happen with any other dragon or world boss, but frequently with Teq.

Probably already been reported but there’s a Molten Alliance event in Iron Marches where the mobs are level 56 (including a vet) in an area where players scale down to 51.

It’s an interesting challenge to try and solo it, until you go through long strings of your attacks doing 0 and suddenly multiple mobs spawn and you get roflstomped in 3 hits.

I’ve been doing the dailies on my Mez, and I actually do find the dodging achievement to be a pain. The main reason being that my normal playstyle is more or less built around illusions pulling aggro off me.

I do really have to make a conscious effort to get this achievement (e.g. picking a few mobs where I do nothing but auto-attack while trying to rack up dodges).

Also, you do have to time fairly careful. I roll out of harm’s way quite often but if you go too soon it doesn’t register as a dodge.

Chulo.8245:

I’m really disappointed in the new dailies. No kill 60 mobs, today I need to find 15 downed players and rez them all. As a guardian I better make sure not to use my skills that might cure other players. I need them dead. Way to go, Anet.

I’m not sure I like the change either, but NPCs count for rezzing. Pretty wide range of places you can find dead NPCs, and you only need 10 per day.

In terms of crafted items, you’re talking about a system where the fee on the finished product might be 2-4x the fees on moving the mats themselves.

That’s similar to a VAT in effect, I suppose, but the game crafting economy doesn’t exactly mirror RL when it comes to production.

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

Don’t you know? MMO players have to abbreviate every single thing in the game — presumably for the sake of convenience

In that vein, I just call the event ‘Jorm’ – though brevity doesn’t explain why we don’t all just say ‘Claw.’

The events clearly seem to scale off proximity (as you suspected), not off of participation. I was doing an event solo the other day, and solo my turn-ins were all worth 8%. Another player ran past without even stopping to fight and my turn-ins dropped to 4%. When s/he moved out of range, the rate returned to 8%.

It’s a significant issue for the Krait event in Sparkfly – you end up with dozens of people afk or nearby waiting for the dragon. So the event scales for large numbers to participate, but help is generally delayed in coming. If you’re one of the first 1-2 people jumping in to actually try to hold the Krait back it can be very lively until reinforcements arrive.

That said, I haven’t seen anybody afk griefing events in the manner you suggest.

Norn starting area is great for 1-15. I prefer the little town in NW Diessa for the 15-30 range. There are about 6-7 events spawning almost constantly without actually having to run as far as the centaur camps.

Harathi is also much rougher now than it used to be, since a number of those events can’t be soloed safely. Back in september it was always crowded with levelers, but now it’s hit and miss.

58-80 Sparkfly Fen has a few good spots, and the dragon doesn’t hurt. Fireheart Rise (60-70) also has 4-5 events that spawn almost constantly around the Quarry, though they’re easier to solo on some classes than others.

I’ve never noticed a DR, but then I rarely farm them for more than an hour or so without taking at least a little break.

MrMacAndCheese.3907:

Not trying to nitpick just to nitpick, but it is different. Having said that, can you tell me why I would or should WvW?

The idea of WvW appeals to me quite a bit and I enjoyed it when I played the first month or two, learning the different tactical points and strategies.

Pros:
It’s a part of the monthly achievement (each and every month) and the karma reward for that is quite nice.I also think it’s a well designed map (like much of the rest of the world) and I prefer running around it to say, Orr.

Cons:
Sadly, now it’s mostly a zergfest. Unless you have a guild group, you will either end up alone (hard to accomplish much, poor rewards, easy pickings for other sides) or in a zerg where you run around and kill whatever everybody else is also killing.

Coordination does help to a point, but large imbalances of bodies are quite common. I’ve made the point in other threads, but I think it would help if Anet made the WvW monthly achievement to do something strategic, not just rack up kills.

Still, it’s probably worth trying as a break from questing. And if you’re on a really good server, it can be a lot of fun rolling face even if you don’t really know what you’re doing. If you’re on a bad or outnumbered server…it can be rough.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

or just AOE the crap out of area’s were other people are doing the real killing… thats somthing even the worst PVEer can handle

True, but it incentivizes poor play. Your advice is sound, but it boils down to “enter wvw, join the zerg, and mash your face on the keyboard until you hit 50”

WvW already has too much zergfestiness to it. I don’t necessarily mind having a wvw element in the monthly, but it’s always PKs, which is almost completely non-strategic, and often counter to good strategy.

Pretty sure you get better rewards (xp, etc.) for farming events in higher level zones.

On my first 1-2 toons I farmed low level events, but I level much, much faster now that I’ve mostly stopped doing that.

There are quite a few zones that you could farm events more effectively in any case. If you’re playing so much that you’re not sleeping, a temporary ban might be good for your health anyway.

People cheat in single-player games all the time, for convenience, ‘glory’ or whatever justification or reason comes to mind. I might even have played with the cheat codes for Warcraft after beating it legitimately. Hell, people cheated solitaire back before we had computer games.

Though I do think you’re correct in surmising that a lot of the botting in this game is tied to profit-motive.

Lechtrixx.1053:

For crying out loud, I was at one of the Claw of Jormaq events for more than
24 HOURS.

That’s news to me (even ignoring that it appears to be pretty bold hyperbole). In my experience the event takes longer now than it used to, but it’s never taken longer than 40 min.

In any case, even if it were as bad as you state, nerfing the drops wasn’t the only viable option. They could have had killing vet/champ adds more directly impact event completion (improving NPC damage on wall, eliminating the randomness of stalagmites popping right in front of bomb-bots), or they could have simply put a timer on the event so that it can actually fail.

Mourningcry.9428:

The shield CAN be manually targeted by clicking near its base. Spread the word.

But getting the auto-targeting fixed would be appreciated.

Even with a ‘zooka and the shield targeted I’ve gone through entire phases where my shots were ‘obstructed.’ It doesn’t happen every time, but it’s definitely unreliable.

Not to mention that auto-target regularly assumes I want to attack some mob that’s farther away and out of my line of sight.

Hermod.1823:

Getting 1 or 2 lodestones every 20th event was just too rewarding, dont forget that you get awesome blue and sometimes green drops from the chest.

Funniest post of the week. Albeit last week.

The rewards wouldn’t even be so bad except the length of those phases is mind-numbingly long. At the least shield phase needs to be a separate event with its own rewards.

As it is, you can pretty much sit out that entire phase and get exactly the same rewards for 5 minutes on the last phase that someone else got for all 30+ minutes doing both phases.

Not that I would do that, but the rational thing would be to intentionally arrive 25 minutes after the event starts. The whole event needs re-evaluation.

Starscream.6498:

I’m really afraid of saying this, but… me and my guildmates have found out that conquering the Gates of Flame with Razen the Raider in Fireheart Rise yields a lot of nice loot. Especially if paired with 2 CoF runs after it.

Shhhh…dangit. No need to get that one nerfed too.

That one(gates) is soloable, though it’s certainly easier on professions with solid aoe dps and some toughness. Though I’d agree the waves don’t give a lot of respite.

Also, only some of the mobs beeline for the engineer, assuming other NPCs are still up. The devourers seem to go more for the guards.

xamax.8027:

it would be nice if there was a toggle on the world map to turn missing POI’s, waypoints, and quests a bright red color.

I cant tell you how difficult it is to find that one or 2 POI that you need to complete the map. flipping back and forth between the map and the Wiki and trying to count up POI’s is way too much of a PIA.

Agreed. Also wouldn’t be terrible to have a way to tell which zones are complete/incomplete from the world map.

Or if there is a way, short of traveling to each zone to check, it would be nice to tell me about it.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Can you provide specific examples of non-soloable events? At scale 1, they’re all soloable, or should be. Are other players in the area scaling up the event without helping?

I have another specific one to add – the ogres’ water gathering quest in Blazeridge. It would be fine but difficult if the 2-3 mobs attacked me since they’re kiteable, but they go straight for the NPCs.

Even if I pop all my CDs to burn the first wave, there’s no gap for NPC health to regen before the next wave. So NPCs die in about 15 seconds, and there’s not much I can do about it.

On the bright side, hey, bronze event fail rewards for 15 seconds of effort isn’t terrible.

That mass of mobs in Iron Marches is pretty funny. I tried to solo it on my thief a couple times just to see how many I could kite/kill before having to stealth/run out to get the reset. Being chased by 22 mobs in a big pack was pretty enjoyable.

Also, a few of the underwater events don’t seem to scale well just because of the number of adds around – the witch _in Kessex, generators in BC in particular.

I agree that the NPCs die far too easy in quests where cannon fodder is important or there’s a timer involved. More health or more defense or something – the guy gathering eggs in Diessa dies as soon as you leave him alone. Easy xp, and thankfully it’s not timed or difficult, but still kinda silly design.

It is also possible with all the bots floating around that they’re scaling events up.

Morrigan.2809:

@ Dradiin- you don’t have to use the pact weapons- after the first time I never did again and playing with your own skills are much more effective and fun.

It seems to depend on your profession and which weapons you equip. Trying to melee Claw in phase 3 doesn’t work so well. Some toons I fight with my own weapons, but on others I can’t even attack the wall without eating the dot.

I’ve been pretty frustrated with dragons this week – all the restarts screw up the timers, so you end up with some windows where people sit and wait for something that never comes, and other times the dragon will pop when there’s 2 people around.

For the OP, I disagree that killing adds is just farming, it’s a legitimate strat for the event. Indeed, the NPCs even call out for you to defend the cannons. Might there be some people JUST farming and ignoring the larger event? Possible, but in dozens of kills I really haven’t seen it.

I agree with the others who suggest that the event is starting to feel like it might not be worth it: not only does the event take a long time compared to the rewards (unless you can get 2-3 crystals in), but the window is so wide I think I’ve spent 6+ hours the past few weeks largely just hanging out waiting for it to start, and killing time. So it’s not just the event time, it’s all that pre-event time.

If I wanted my play time to be sitting around waiting for things to get going, I’d go back to WoW and raid again.

By comparison, the design of the other 2 dragons is much better. Smaller window, manageable fights, and a distinct pre-event to signal start rather than sitting around scratching one’s butt in a window of well over an hour.

It doesn’t help that they seem fond of dropping a patch with 3 minutes warning. We were mid-dragon after a long wait.

Got it down to 10% before restart, but of course close doesn’t count – no xp and no chest.

Is there anything that crucial it couldn’t get, say, 20-30 minutes warning?

Edit: the other night we got Jorm down and the entire zone d/ced. So this is twice in one week where I’ve completely wasted my time. As Sprong said, the cumulative annoyance is starting to build up.

Energy Surge.8620:

If you don’t have enough funds in your characters inventory, they will deduct the additional amount from your bank. If you also are broke at your bank, the missing amount is waived. I do not know if the system will deduct from money on other characters or money waiting to be picked up in trading post.

Interesting, thanks.

With the cost of teleporting on defeat, I’ve always been curious what happens if you’re defeated with insufficient silver to travel. You can’t even mail yourself funds from other toons.

Has anyone had this happen or know what the resolution would be if it did?

Each profession also depends on how you play. Thief with SB or p/p has pretty high survivability, particularly once you add caltrops for kiting and/or stealth for escape. You’ll still need to be at least decent at dodging, but you can go a long time without dying. Though certainly many don’t find it as fun/dynamic as d/p – d/d, etc.

Engy didn’t seem squishy to me, though I do find the turret timers annoying unless you’re doing something where you can stand in one spot at length. It’s balanced well for dungeons/DE, but for exploring its kitten, imo.

Warrior is, imo, the most solid soloing (though little/no escape if things do go south) across the world, though people complain they are too squishy in dungeons.

Mono.7630:

it would help but as is… knowone is able to download anything…. as the Connection Error(s) detected. Retrying… keeps showing up.

so even if they did it on a seperate day i dont think this would change much.

I think the OP’s point is that logins surge around the launch of major events.

So you end up with a larger population trying to login and slamming the download server – not to mention trying to download even larger patches.

I was a bit surprised the update on official botting was so glowing.

Relying on the number of reports is misleading, since the current methods of botting/hacking make it more difficult to report, even for those players who are attentive and making an effort to report before the bots port away.

This past week I’d estimate that I see about 10 bots an hour, though I can see that many in 5 minutes at times, and report about half of them.

Wandering around Metrica and a few other lowbie zones there seems to be a new wave of bot farmers (though I’ve seen a few in 70-80 zones as well).

Unlike the completely in-your-face packs of ranger/bears, the new bots in the wild seem to be a bit more sly, and they seem to be focused on node farming, esp. using thieves.

Hard to tell if they’re teleport hacking or just making liberal use of stealth going from node to node. Many of them seem to be using the same code though – they do a little forward roll away from the node right before disappearing. It was actually kind of amusing at first until I picked up on how many there are.

The first night it opened we had a good guild group run FOTM. Honestly, the dredge suit event was a great reminder of what I loved back when I used to raid 3-4 nights a week. Hard at first, but work with the group to learn, adapt, and improve in a fight with some finicky but smart mechanics and then ultimately conquer it to great satisfaction (ok, it was only the third try). Still, it was really fun to do that again. Once.

But I agree with the OP – the tiering structure makes me not want to go back with pugs. I can’t just look for any good group, it has to be someone willing to do levels 1-3 at a time when server demand is for level 8 and up. And if we complete two bosses but people leave on the 3rd, it was a waste of time. The point becomes progression for progression’s sake, not for actually enjoying and overcoming the content itself.

I liked this game precisely because I don’t need to play on a strict schedule and, other than fractals, it lets me group (or not group) as I see fit. Likewise, if a guild group wants me to join them for level 8, why should they have to pug it?

For better or worse, fractals is one aspect of this game moving into “progression” territory in a way that is antithetical to the main reason I chose this game over pandas. Just my opinion.

Mimizu.7340:

to paraphrase Herac-l-i-tus (forum filter hates ancient greeks):

He doesn’t mind if you call him Herakittenus.

My personal philosophy is that I will do the monthly achievement if it requires me to do 1-2 things outside of my normal play preference.

I’d have to say that this month all 4 were outside of what I would normally do, but while it’s not worth it to me to do the achievement (and get the rewards), I don’t see the point in getting mad about it.

That said, WvW has been in the monthly each month while everything else has rotated. It would be nice if that dropped out, or even if they mixed it up. Amassing PKs isn’t supposed to be the primary point of WvW as a strategic battle, and I think it would be nice if the achievements at least rotated to reflect that. Kill/escort caravans, capture/defend strategic points, etc.

I had the same tagging problem in both of phase 1 and phase 2.

It was compounded by the number of attacks I had that were evaded (it’s a giant bug barely moving – it certainly doesn’t appear to be evading).

In addition a significant number were registering as obstructed, even though there were no visible objects, and again with Veteran/Champion mobs the things are towering overhead. In both of those phases I’d estimate I got credit for about 20% of the mobs I spent significant time attacking.

The theory in my guild was that grouping into a party would help, but I didn’t group until after we’d split away from the zerg for other events, so I can’t say whether it would have worked in the zerg.

I thought that question odd as well, as well as a few others.

It impressed me that they took the time to do the survey, but I thought the questions didn’t really get at what I personally drew from the weekend.

In short, I thought their aims with the event were quite good, but the delivery came up a bit short. I participated in all 3 events but didn’t gain any reward for any of them, and even the enjoyment of play was hampered by technical issues (on the bright side, each one glitched in a different way!). Thus no intrinsic or extrinsic rewards for my time. That was kind of a bummer.

So on the question of whether I think Anet should do more big, one-time world events, I didn’t want to say no since I think it’s a great notion, but at the same time I probably won’t continue to participate if they design massive events that the game can’t actually handle.

I’m of mixed opinion.

I went to one of the phase 1 karka landings, but got 0 kills because I made the mistake of not going on a toon with aoe spam. Most of the mobs didn’t even appear on my screen overloaded with 100 different aoe effects going simultaneously, and the ones who did appear were dead before I could get more than one shot in.

I was on an overflow server where most of phase 2 didn’t happen, despite sitting around in LA for 45 minutes waiting for it. I did jump over to the new zone as soon as it opened and participated in a huge zerg (the most enjoyable of which was seeing 60 people wrecked instantly when one of the champion Karka emerged underfoot).

For phase 3, I participated but had to leave for RL issues right as we were heading down to the boss. When I came back, guildmates were still fighting it on different overflow servers, but my attempts to join were thwarted by those servers being full.

So in a way, I can appreciate that as someone who didn’t see the event through I don’t deserve the same rewards. On the other hand, I did spend many hours trying to participate in various phases, and mostly came away empty for reasons mostly out of my control.

So I don’t know that I deserve two exotics plus everything else, but I will say having gotten no reward, I feel like I didn’t get as much out of the events as I put into them, which leaves me somewhat disinclined to do future events.

Edit: I should add, I would have been satisfied by good game play rather than loot, but as it stands I didn’t really have a good experience trying to do the events either.

I’ve slowed down quite a bit, and am definitely treating it more like a casual pursuit than a race now.

Given the cost of porting around, I do wish there were a better way to track zone completion from the world map.

Or if there is a way to tell which zones are still incomplete from a high-level view, I’d love to know it.

@Hippo “That will only alienate the portion of the population that wants gems but doesn’t want to spend real money on it.”

True, but consider that in general people who didn’t buy the game at launch will probably be less inclined to throw an additional $20 (for 2 bank slots and one bag slot) into the game immediately after purchase.

Though this could be ameliorated if Anet re-calibrated the actual $$ cost of those items in the store.

-Bags/bank space don’t in and of themselves provide any additional gameplay
-they’re just shy of necessity especially if you want to do any crafting or play more than one toon
-they’re expensive (overpriced, ahem) in terms of gems/gold/$$.

I do think that design will discourage many new players.

“I agree about the continuing increase in Gem prices. What you’re missing is that mat prices will not stay the same. As inflation occurs, continuing players will have more money to spend on low level mats and those prices will go up.”

Of course mat prices won’t stay the same. The question is whether they will increase in proportion to (or in excess relative to) the rise in gem prices.

I tend to doubt that will be the case.

There are a couple structural reasons for my opinion: 1) more incentive in GW2 (versus other MMOs) for high level toons to hang out in lowbie zones; 2) relative abundance of common mats; 3) seeming perception that crafting skills have limited utility.

At least at this point there doesn’t seem to be much demand for power-leveling crafting. It’s not like people are taking Jewelcrafting for min/max for raiding. Plus copper nodes are all over, you don’t have to compete for them, and you can easily farm a few stacks casually between DEs.

You could certainly be right and there could be market demand from wealthy 80s who don’t want to farm and will spend big for common mats to powerlevel crafting, but to me that’s far from the most likely scenario. There’s a reason bots are farming rare mats and not common ones.

I think the rise in gem prices will outpace the price of basic mats. I also think bag/bank slots are over-priced in real dollar terms, but that’s another debate.

migu.3597:

- Monthly: even though you replaced the Survivor component this month, it was clearly bugged, when it stopped adding XP when you were knocked down/entered an instance/switch map/logout, etc…

It seems likely this achievement won’t make a re-appearance until January, since it’s probably to be replaced by holiday events for Oct-Dec.

And even with the bugs it’s readily doable in higher level zones. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to have it fixed, but it’s not that big a deal once you figure it out, and we probably won’t even see it again for a few months.

Xavori.3768:

More than that, on several occasions I’ve had to restart story missions because a mob would get itself stuck on the geometry (the best of which was the fight versus the undead you do with the Vigil where a mob got stuck at the top of a flagpole at the town gate while I was off fighting inside the town…no idea how the thing got itself up there)

Hoisted by its own petard?

Palleon.1657:

p.s Just airing my views to Anet, not looking for a discussion.

Interesting.

@OP:

As your response notes, you’re ultimately asking the wrong question.

The question isn’t why the ratio is where it is (obviously to encourage people to buy keys with real $$), the real question is why the loot in the chests is largely crap if they’re trying to incentivize paying $2/pop for whatever might be in there.

Rouven.7409:

Of course this is not a problem per se, but discouraging nevertheless.

A couple of weeks ago there was a sweetspot in my opinion. For 40 silver you could trade 100 gems. This is a price that everyone will be able to afford some after a playing session even with mid level characters. That encourages me to buy some with real money for the larger ticket items, and slowly I will be able to buy “fun” things on the side.

I suspect in a year or so we’ll all look fondly back on the days when 100 gems only cost 89 s (last night’s price).

It seems inevitable that the larger availability of gold in the market overall will continue to push the cost to buy gems higher and higher. And for continuing players this won’t be a tremendous burden.

But it does likely hit new players fairly hard. Buying a new bag slot currently would cost about 3.6g, a bank slot 5.4g (I wrote ‘sloth’ on the first go – who wouldn’t pay for a bank sloth?).

In some other MMOs new players could always make some quick cash by learning how to sell raw mats. But, barring some major change in the market, I don’t see how that happens here. At current prices you’d have to sell roughly 4,000 copper ore to earn that much (versus, say, some WoW servers where you can sell 20 copper ore for that price).

New players would either have to make do with the moderate storage available or pay with real $$. That could be a significant turn-off for people just wanting to try the game out. Anecdotally, I’ve stopped trying to talk two of my friends into coming back to the game for this reason. They leveled to 14 or so and stopped with only a few silver to their name.

While I am thinking about my own approach to the game, I’m curious how ANet can implement a system that acknowledges that continuing players have plenty of gold, but also that new players typically have just a few copper in hand.

This thread more or less started with two questions: 1) what factors run the market, and 2) why is the gem market spiking now?

We’ve addressed #1 but I’m not entirely sure we’ve really dug into the second. Yes, more people are 80, yes there are bots, yes the gem store is over-priced ($7.50 for a bank slot seems…nutty).

But none of these features are new. The increase in gem prices was slight for the first 5 weeks after launch (even though many people reached 80 within the first week or so), and then has climbed steeply in the past 7-10 days.

Gem store prices are unchanged, and while there are more 80s, I’m not sure it’s growing exponentially. Likewise, there are many people who reached 80 and stopped playing who are no longer infusing gold into the economy.

It seems to me 2 things:
1) bots getting more numerous and sophisticated
2) anticipation of a halloween event that may or may not involve gems

It leaves room to speculate as well whether ANet is manipulating the market, though as with the DR issue I agree that whatever the cause, it seems to be impacting regular players more than bots or people who buy from gold sellers.

I’m a bit concerned that this is creating a bit of a bubble in gem prices that may deflate if ANet gets control of the gold sellers and/or Halloween gem event either doesn’t happen or wraps up.

Not buying gems is somewhat changing the way I play (and arguably starting to impact my satisfaction with aspects of the game), but I’m sitting this market out for the time being. That said, if prices for the gem store itself were revisited, I would certainly consider spending RL $$ to buy gems for bag/bank/toon slots. But almost everything is significantly overpriced in RL terms.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that some people will drift off, whether back to WoW or any of the alternatives out there. A lot of people prefer specific features of other games, and some of the MMO crowd just seem to be chasing a fix they probably won’t ever find.

GW2 does some things better than other games, other things not as well, and others not at all (raiding).

Still, I think GW2 is better prepared to deal with moderate population loss than some other recent MMOs (e.g. SWTOR, but even small servers on WoW over the past many years). Two key advantages this game has to coping with declining log-ins:

1) Free and open server transfers, so as the overall population dwindles (which it was bound to) people can readily relocate away from ghost towns.
2) Economic model based primarily on box sales means that development and support are unlikely to take a big hit, unless it shrinks to the point that future expansion box sales become doomed.

Several of my friends have moved on (out of MMOs, or back to WoW) but imo that’s par for the course.

Tallenn.9218:

To the OP’s comments, I do agree that the dollar cost of most, if not all of the items in the cash shop is over-priced. By that, I mean that not only would it be a better deal for us as consumers if they were to lower the prices some, but I think it would cause Arena Net and NCSoft to make more money from it.

There’s no price point at which I would spend money on keys (since the chests have 0 value to me) but there’s no doubt $2 per key has to be a serious miscalculation on Anet’s part. The items that do interest me most personally are bank/bag slots and character slots.

The cost of buying a bag slot legitimately with $$ equates to $5 per slot, and the cost of a bank slot is $7.50. Thus the cost of 1 bank slot, plus 5 bag slots (one per 5 toons) would net you $32.50. Put another way, that’s more than half of what it cost at launch to buy the whole game just to expand your inventory by 20% or so.

Character slots seem just a tad high at $10, but at least I can see the argument for that pricing in terms of the broader game market, not to mention the play you would get for that investment.

Watching the market, it seems that the cost of buying gems with gold has increased 25% just over the last week or so after price increases had seemed fairly marginal in the weeks prior. Since I was just about to pull the trigger on a modest gem purchase (with my meager supply of earned gold) that’s been a bit discouraging.

As for buying gems with $$ (legitimately, I wouldn’t use a gold seller) I don’t mind spending some $$ at the exchange, but $5 for one bag slot or $7.50 for a bank expansion seems a bit steep to me. $10 for a character slot at least matches the DLC price for BL2 and other games, so seems in line with the larger game market.

The irony (using the term loosely) is that if bag slots were $2 each I’d easily spend $10 and buy 5, but priced as they are it leads me to buy 0.

“Skills, not so much. It is mostly about teamwork and concentration. If you are a couple of decent players that actually focus embers immediately, that makes a HUGE difference.”

That’s fair, though given that I play solo 99% of the time, I find I end up having to rely on my own skill and hope for a bit of luck on spawns/aggro as I’m dodging/kiting.

Imo it’s fairly rare to find other random players who can get on the same page on the fly in this event because there’s really no warm up or margin for error.

I agree that it feels like a bug on my thief in particular, precisely because it not infrequently hoses up the ability to use the escape skill effectively (compounded by the fact that smoke screen doesn’t seem to work reliably in PvE).

On other classes the zoom doesn’t bother me at all, probably because it has so little practical impact, but on my Thief, I hate it.

I’d also vote for a way in the guild panel to tell what level people are (unscaled).

I believe it’s possible, certainly, so I don’t think the people who claim success are lying. But my perception is that you’d need:

1) very low latency
2) excellent skills, roughly in the top 5%
3) a good profession build/gear designed for some survivability, but enough burst to get down 1-3 adds quickly if you get aggro while dodging aoes
4) a bit of luck that you don’t dodge one aoe straight into another

After a few attempts I did realize some things I needed to do to fix my build and strat (necro with a menagerie of pets was useless since they died instantly, low single target dps w/ dead pets, and no heal available), and now I can stay up for a few minutes at a time now that I have more talent points spent and some surv gear.

With the elemental there are more variables out of your control than other fights where being 1-shot is possible, which over the course of a long fight means the majority of people will get bit even if they don’t ‘screw up’ per se.

I don’t know that the fight needs a huge nerf, but imo it could use a minor tweak. Perhaps reduce the respawn rate on adds by 10% or something so there’s more benefit to getting them down.

A fun tweak would be to have “fire blankets” or something about the room so that there was a way to protect a downed player/rezzer against the initial burst of a follow-up aoe and defeated. As it is now, anywhere inside the bridge trying to rez even a downed player is tantamount to suicide.

I’m having more fun with it than I used to, but I agree that the cost of dying even a few times, combined with the long length of fights where everyone stays dead or stays on the bridge, means that I’m not inclined to do it very often.