Zaxares.5419

They don't work in fractals? So THAT'S why I always thought they seemed to be bugged; that's literally the only place I'd ever use them as consumables don't work in raids, and who needs them in open world PvE? If you die, just WP or wait for a friendly player to res you. > @"Katary.7096" said: > If you could use in endgame content, would the developers design the content expecting every player in the party to use shadow menders? Nope. Summons (as well as boosters and all other consumables, really) are just crutches to be used when players are having a hard time or need a little extra boost. It's a bit like playing other MMOs and being skilled enough to win a fight without using anything at all, and having to slug down an entire inventory's worth of potions because you keep messing up. I really don't understand why ANet won't allow consumables in raids; if players need them, use them. If they don't, well done, you no longer need your training wheels.

Well, there's still 5 available slots for new fractals, so we can hope that the Abaddon fractal will be one of them. Personally, I think it would be great to finish off the 25 Fractals with the Abaddon frac at 100. I'm imagining something where the 5 players each select an avatar of one of the other 5 Gods to transform into, and we wind up battling Abaddon as giant avatars while the tiny armies of Margonites and Forgotten (who are just Miniaturized forms of normal mobs while the players have the Giant form applied to them) run around at our feet.

Thanks for the research data! :) It seems that feeding your luck to Drooburt works out to about 3.5g per stack. Depending on your luck, you could wind up with far more or far less via the Lucky Red Bags. Of course, you also have to take into account the sheer amount of spam clicking you'd have to do with Drooburt. ;)

Oh, they DO have an effect. The effect is completely invisible when you preview them, so I was quite disappointed by them too.

I personally think it's fine (aside from the eyes, as some people have mentioned). I usually prefer infusions that don't affect one's hair or clothes, but that would kinda be missing the point for a "petrification" infusion.

The NPC allies are decently survivable (except against bosses) when you're playing solo, as enemy stats and health are also downscaled basically to an open world level and so the allies can hold their own against them. But go in as a group and basically the allies have zero chance vs the upscaled enemies (except for the Watchknights. The Watchknights are BEASTS.) I agree that that ally mechanic needs a couple of improvements for them to really feel worthwhile though: 1. NPC allies should res each other (and the player) if one of them goes down. This cuts down on the time players have to spend ressing them if they die in upscaled missions, and NPCs ressing players means that they remain useful even in CMs. 2. Allow us to summon MULTIPLE allied factions into a mission. Currently the ally mechanic only lets us choose which faction shows up, which is fairly pointless (and who would ever call for the Asuras as allies? They are the MOST squishy of all the allies, have useless combat skills, and their bonus ability is fairly worthless as T4/raid comp builds can output WAY more damage than what the Golem suits can provide). If, however, we can summon multiple factions to assist us (and again, from above the allies will res each other so players don't have to go around picking up multiple dead allies), that tilts the balance in our favour simply by providing more bodies and more ressing power. The tradeoff for this is that each additional allied faction costs increasingly more to summon, perhaps a doubling of the previous cost. (So from 5 seals to 10 to 20 to 40 etc.) 3. The Ebon Vanguard allies need a tweak too. The trouble is that if the EV soldier dies, there's no way to resummon him and so for missions where there isn't a banner at the end (most of them), this winds up being one of the most useless factions to ever call for assistance.

+1 to the idea for more Obsidian Shard sinks. As someone who does all 3 game modes, I get Obsidian way, WAY faster than I can use it, but I'm betting that any serious PvP/WvW player is in the same boat. The major sink for Obsidian is primarily Legendary crafting, but that's a fairly small sink that new'ish players are not likely to get into (because they can't afford it) and that veteran players infrequently use because they probably have already crafted the Legendaries they want/need. Yes, you technically CAN convert Obsidian into gold by making Fulgurite and either merching that directly or crafting Jeweled Damask Patches or Jeweled Deldrimor Dowels, but that's a pretty roundabout route that means you also need to a) acquire the various Ascended mats and b) farm the HoT metas for the currencies. Some players would rather not have to do that kind of extra time investment, especially if gaming time is a precious commodity. I would like to see either a new Obsidian Shard gobbler, or perhaps an upgrade to the existing Karma gobbler by means of a new tab (similar to the various tabs in the Ley-Energy gobbler). I propose that the gobbler offers a variety of rarer items (which vary daily) in exchange for varying amounts of Shards, such as: - Bag of Rare Gear (1 Shard) - Heavy Crafting Bag (2 Shards) - Rare Trophy Bag (2 Shards) - Box of WvW Supplies (3 Shards) - Lesser Vision Crystal (2 Shards) - Vision Crystal (3 Shards) - Magic-Warped Packet (2 Shards) - Magic-Warped Bundle (5 Shards) You can spend up to 10 Obsidian Shards per day on this. In addition, I think it would also be a good idea to expand the Ley-Energy Matter Converter to also take excess Airship Oil, Auric Dust, and Ley-Line Sparks. This could be done by adding additional tabs that are unlocked by purchasing services from the HoT vendors (requiring 100 of the appropriate previous items). Each tab would have three guaranteed items: - Purchase extra keys for the matching map in exchange for 5 of the map items (so 5 Airship Oil in exchange for another Pact Crowbar, for example) - Purchase one of the map's rare mats for 25 items (for VB, this would be 1 Freshwater Pearl for 25 Airship Oil. AB would be Black Diamonds, while TD would be Maguuma Lily, matching the gear stat specific to that map) - Purchase one of the map's special mats for 50 items (for VB again, this would be 1 Reclaimed Metal Plate for 50 Airship Oil) Each purchase can be made once daily only (except the keys, which can be done up to 5 times.) Other options could be added too, but these are the 3 items I'd most like to see. Finally, I think it would also be a good idea for a similar PoF gobbler to be added. Stuff like Eyes of Kormir, Congealed Putrescence, and Twitching Forgemetal are all languishing at vendor prices. Pulsing Brandsparks should also be used as a currency there, perhaps once in a while you can purchase Elegy Mosaics, or even Funerary Essences for it?

> @"LunarRXA.5062" said: > The thing about T1/T2 players is that they're generally very weak in analytical and pattern-recognition skills. They panic instead of calming themselves down and observing whether the attacks occur under certain conditions, in certain patterns or have various static vectors such as Sunqua's final boss. Generally speaking, rather than talking or discussing amongst themselves they tend to assume that the encounter is "broken," "too difficult" or "badly scaled." Whether it's 23/24/25 or 48/49/50 in T1/T2 these Fractals are meant to be benchmarks, litmus tests, for whether you're ready for more challenging fractals. It's okay not to be ready. > > When Fractal Instabilities start coming into play it really does help to have a better understanding of how to take advantage of swapping your traits. Whether your group needs a little more healing, a little more condition cleanse, crowd control (CC) or stability. Lots of players these days take to blaming a lack of dedicated support classes. It's more difficult for them to accept that they have the tools to solve their own problems and look towards dedicated support classes to be their problem-solving panacea. The problem is, when they rely on a dedicated support class like Healbrand or Alacragade, they don't learn how to contribute towards a group-wide solution. > > "The Lost Knowledge" of Fractals is understanding how to acquire more sustain or support-utility independent of support builds at a minimal damage loss. The thing is, you shouldn't really consider DPS the be-all/end-all paradigm for Fractal progression. What are your problems? What are your solutions? Where are they? How do you work together to make best use of your individual build, class and "identity" to eliminate specific problems? Dedicated Supports are a relatively new part of GW2. > > The game functioned without dedicated supports from 2012 to October 2015 w/ Heart of Thorns. It's all about intelligently using your traits and utility skills to provide momentary support; anticipating and preparing for problems ahead of time. The problem isn't Fractals are "too hard," - it's that players don't know their classes. When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun (Super Elixir, Blast Finishers & Fumingator). It's not that you "can't do X, Y or Z" it's that you're unwilling to look more deeply into your repertoire of class traits and utilities. This is one thing I wish more T4/CM players would do, honestly; modify their build/performance to suit the group's needs. I've been in groups that struggled or had a much harder time than if just one or two players had swapped in a different utility or trait to deal with an instab or mechanic that was seriously wrecking the group. For instance, I always see a lot of griping about Siren's, but projectile denial skills often turn the final fight into a cakewalk. All too often I see groups vainly trying to DPS through Crowe's health while everybody's getting wrecked by Sugar Rush/We Bleed Fire bulletstorms, then they get mad and blame the supports for not being able to keep them up. If, say, the Reaper would just slot Corrosive Poison Cloud, the Rev bring their Ventari bubble etc. it would take a LOT of pressure off the healer and allow the group to keep up damage and worry only about Crowe's slams and the wind gusts. But no, they refuse to touch their build at all and keep on insisting the problem is other people. To get back to the original topic though, I'm a regular T4/CM player, so T1/2 fractals are naturally a walk in the park for me. That said, I DO think that Sunqua needs some tweaking because right now it strongly favours certain build types over others. Namely, only classes with strong (preferably condi) ranged damage AND good CC work well against Ai. Melee power classes will find themselves at a significant disadvantage in this fight, and I think that's something that needs to be addressed. One possible way to fix this is perhaps lowering Ai's breakbar, and making them more frequent (along with extending the duration of her vulnerability). Currently, you only really want to break Ai's bar while she's in the middle (just talking about T4 here, CM is a different matter); if instead you can break her bar more frequently, this would give melee types more opportunities to unload their bursts (since Power leans more towards higher bursts in a shorter amount of time) and thus compensate for the periods when they're chasing Ai around.

I wouldn't object to more Shared Slots. Sure, it's one of those things where "give me more room, I'll find more junk to stick in it", but the convenience is hard to argue against. Right now, my existing slots are filled with Salvage Kits (Copper, Silver, BLSK and Ascended), various convenience items (Bank, TP, Merchant for access to services from anywhere), teleporters (Portal Tomes, Mistlock Sanctuary, Armistice Bastion, Lily of the Elon, Spearmarshal's Prayer, Home Instance Portal Stone etc.), and various other useful gizmos that come in handy now and again (like the Rewinder from Sandswept Isles, handy sometimes in JPs if you miss a tricky jump.) Given the chance, I'd also like to stick keys in there like Sunken Keys, Treasure Maps from PoF etc. so I don't need to have to dig them out of my bank if I happen to run across something.

> @"Infusion.7149" said: > Hatched Chilis are a problem but I don't feel Eternal Ice is. Eternal Ice can be traded for LS4 currencies and then either consumed for Volatile Magic or made into Ascended Trinkets. The trouble is that you need to spend karma in addition to Eternal Ice for the LS4 currencies, and I have better uses for my karma than to convert into LS4 mats for Volatile Magic (I already have a lot of these from occasional overflows from LS4 mats as well as using Volatile tools). Hence why Hatched Chilis, Eternal Ice and Prismaticite really need a base vendor value. (As do the other LS4 mats, really. Let the player decide if raw coin or VM is more worthwhile to them.) Back on topic, I think another idea to speed up the DRMs (since a frequent complaint I've seen is that they take a while to complete) is to allow players to call for additional allies using Tyrian Seals. As it currently stands, talking to the NPC and asking for a specific ally only guarantees that particular ally in your ally spot. I think this should be changed so you could spend Tyrian Seals to get multiple allies showing up (with the cost progressively increasing for each additional allied faction). This has the benefits of not only speeding up the mission, but it can also be fun to see a bunch of different allies all working together. (A feeling that I've missed since the original Orr invasions and the final parts of HoT, seeing the Pact alongside other allied factions all charging the enemy together.) What's more, the ability to do this means that players who join in late can likely complete even CMs solo with the additional help, a useful option for if/when the player zerg moves on and DRMs become near-abandoned.

> @"Manasa Devi.7958" said: > > @"HakuroDK.9385" said: > > Also, you want to -really- entice me? Do that, and make the final reward a converter for that map's currency/crafting materials. That'll light a fire under me to get going on those metas! Do you know how many Eitrite Ingots I have that I can't use!?! If I can convert 250 of them into a single Iron or even Silver Ore, I'll be content! > More converters would be nice but eitrite ingots are a bad example. You can just merch those, for well over 1g per stack. (Can't remember the exact figure.) > > I'd love one for hatched chilis. I agree that more converters are needed. Especially for PoF and Icebrood Saga materials. There's very little one can do with Hatched Chilis or Eternal Ice once you've finished the various collections, and stuff like Eyes of Kormir or Congealed Putrescence have been languishing at rock bottom prices for over a year now. And mark my words, Prismaticite will suffer the same fate in a year or two, even more so because outside of Dragon Slayer weapons, there's literally nothing else to do with them. An extremely simple solution would be simply to give all of these materials a base vendor value, so players can just sell them to merchants if there's nothing else to do with them. I have no idea why ANet gave the LS3 materials a base value (except for Winterberries), but neglected to do so going forward.

> @"Fleabite.7528" said: > On a Saturday afternoon just a few weeks after DRM launch, and almost noone is grouping for the new content. Reward-to-play incentives are surely putting people off. Too much hassle for too little benefit. Four changes could I think immediately be made to incentivise people to play DRMs more: > > * Significantly increase the droprate for the Volcanic Stormcaller weapons. Nobody I've run DRMs with has ever received one, reflected in the 300-400g TP price - valuing this collection (complete with Mastery point) at an insane 4,800-6,000 gold. So please double, or even triple, the present pitiful drop rate. > * Change the Prismatium Crystals home node drop to 3 a day like every other node, not the present 2. > * Having Prismatium Crystals account bound is probably fine - but forcing players into a glacier-slow daily grind is not. Each of the 16 Dragon Slayer weapons takes 30 crystals. That's 480 crystals in total needed for the collection. Just relying on the daily node (if you can afford the 50g upfront) would take eight months of grind. Even adding the (capped) crystals from daily DRM runs will still take you more than 30 days of tedious grind. Again, consider boosting the DRM drop rate - or give an extra bonus for running three a day (whether regular or CM) > * Allow craftable Prismatium Ingots to be sold on the TP. Players should be abler to grind for profit, if they choose. > > What else would incentivise you to run more DRMs? I more or less support all of these suggestions. While I don't know if the Dragon Slayer weapons and Volcanic weapons are basically intended to be THE long-term goal for Champions going forward (that is, there are actually no more weapon sets coming in subsequent chapters, and these two sets are basically intended for players to slowly acquire over the next 5-6 months), I think the speed of acquisition could be looked at and improved. Assuming you're just doing 3 DRMs a day, it would take you 5 days of farming to acquire 1 weapon. It's fair enough if you were just after one particular skin, but I think there should be other avenues for players to acquire Prismaticite if they wish. Perhaps the Ingots could be made tradable, as you suggested. If nothing else, it would at least give some inherent value to Prismaticite for a player who might otherwise be completely uninterested in the Dragon Slayer weapons, and for whom the Prismaticite is a literally worthless currency just piling up in his bank. This actually ties in to a bigger gripe I have with the Icebrood Saga currencies; all of them generally have no resale value whatsoever and once you've acquired whatever skins/recipes/collections you want, Hatched Chilis, Eternal Ice etc. are completely worthless. Yet you get so MUCH of it. As a player, I totally despite getting loot that I basically have little choice but to just trash because the effort or return to turn them into something valuable is just not worth the hassle. This was an issue with the LS4 currencies too, but at least those could be consumed for Volatile Magic. I would really, REALLY like for the LS4 and IBS currencies to be given some kind of merchant value so we can just sell them to vendors. Naturally, stuff like Hatched Chilis or Eternal Ice would not be worth much because the supply for them is crazy, but they should still be worth SOMETHING. Finally, I agree that Volcanic weapons in particular need to be looked at. I'm not sure what the drop rate for them is now, but I feel that they should be buffed to the same as what the SAB blue weapons are (which is a 1 in 50 chance from a Normal mode end zone chest.) Secondly, there should be other ways to acquire the Volcanic weapons. I propose the following system: 1. There is a 1 in 50 chance for a random Volcanic weapon to drop from the Event Completion bouncy chest when you complete a DRM. These weapons can be sold on the TP. 2. There is a 1 in 20 (open to debate, but it should be roughly about the same chance to get, say, the Otter chests from the Tribunes in Drizzlewood Coast) chance for a Volcanic weapon box to drop from the large ground chest. The weapon box lets you pick a Volcanic weapon of your choice, but the choice is account bound on acquire. (If you already have all the skins, the Volcanic weapons can be sold, salvaged or Forged, as you please.) 3. Players can also purchase a Volcanic weapon box from the Tyrian Seals trader in Eye of the North. I'm unsure what the cost should be, but I'm guessing it would require a bunch of Tyrian Seals (50?) plus gold plus maaaaaybe something else like a Destroyer Lodestone or 2 Prismaticite Crystals. Between the 3 methods above, it will give more incentive for players to do the DRM missions (either for direct loot to sell, or to farm Tyrian Seals to acquire boxes for your collection.)

It's because you're not thinking like a TP baron. (Not saying I am one. I have neither the gold nor the patience to engage in that kind of daily activity when I could be gaming. But over the years I've spoken to enough people who play the market to understand how and why they're doing it.) Leaf Fossils (and many other mats) are basically sitting at merch value prices on the TP at the moment. This means that ANYTHING that improves their value will result in an instant profit, whether it's a change in the meta, a new use that ANet introduces for them etc. So, what a TP baron will do is simply buy up vast quantities of these materials at rock bottom prices, then simply sit on them and wait. If some new balance patch happens that makes Crusader gear or HoT elite spec runes suddenly become meta, Leaf Fossils might go up to, I dunno, 60 copper? That's still inconsequential for most players, and unlikely to cause any pain for any individual player, but if you're a TP baron who's sitting on 2000 stacks of Leaf Fossils, you've just made bank for what you invested. You can bet that there's lots of people doing the same thing for things like Eyes of Kormir or Congealed Putrescence. The only limiting factor is space, and depending on your willingness to create mules, bank guilds or alt-accounts, you can have a LOT of space indeed.

On a somewhat related note, the Glyph of Scavenging (33% chance to return Fine mats) is also broken. I've tested it on open world nodes, synthesizers, and node farms, and despite harvesting probably in excess of 100 nodes, not a single one has returned a Fine mat. Other glyphs such as the Watchknight, Logger, Unbound or Leatherworker still work correctly.

The best solution is simply to put in the option to buy the Volcanic boxes for a combination of gold + currencies from the new vendors. It would also give more value to Tyrian Seals/faction tokens so there remains incentive for players to keep doing DRMs into the future; as they are now, the combination of the poor loot drops from missions + the grinding needed to earn Prismaticite Crystals means that it's going to become one of those things where players get burned out doing them for collections and then never touch them again once they're complete.