Guild Wars 2?

[MythicalMino]

What about the scaling loot?

I have to go through the char starting area to get to my next story mission and figured I would 100% the maps on my way, but the loot has only been for the levels of the area

[Wolff]

Drops you get from enemies are often tied to your level - unless that has changed in the past few weeks.

[Timex]

It’s sometimes scaled to your level, but not always… that is, if you are in a low level area, most of the drops you get will be garbage to salvage, but you will periodically get something which is level appropriate.

It’s a nice feature. Overall, the scaling of the game such that you can pretty much always go into low level areas and get xp and loot at the same rate as a high level area is pretty great, especially when playing with someone else of a different level.

[Miramon]

It’s sometimes scaled to your level, but not always… that is, if you are in a low level area, most of the drops you get will be garbage to salvage, but you will periodically get something which is level appropriate.

It’s a nice feature. Overall, the scaling of the game such that you can pretty much always go into low level areas and get xp and loot at the same rate as a high level area is pretty great, especially when playing with someone else of a different level.

I think the XP rate is lower in lower level areas, but I admit I haven’t analyzed it.

[Stridergg]

I think the XP rate is lower in lower level areas, but I admit I haven’t analyzed it.

Maybe. But you are much stronger and kill mobs/complete stuff much faster with no deaths and related downtime, so in the end IMO leveling up is faster in lower level zones.

You do get screwed up with loot, particularly with the fine crafting mats (claws, etc.). So I guess it’s a trade off.

[Stridergg]

I have not. The chest rewards on average are actually quite shit, and it doesn’t change the fact that the karma payout for the events do not scale at all with the event. Claw of Jormag, for example, is probably only a really good deal for the time on average if you show up near the end.

The best strategy for Jormag is probably to knock down the crystals for the event karma as they pay as much karma each as the entire Jormag fight and take about a minute a piece, then go grind something else until the final event is nearly over, then come back and pick up a quick gold.

Heh, that’s some dedicated grinding approach. :) “The best strategy for Jormag”… :) But since we are on the topic of grinding, what do you mean by “go grind something else”?

There are no DEs nearby during the dragon event as far as I know and by going too far you are running the risk of missing the dragon event finale.

Grinding mobs solo nearby doesn’t make sense since the dragon event spawns tons of mobs and due to gazillion of people involved all you need to do is just tag as many mobs as you can with your AOEs and just walk around picking up your loot. You will not be soloing mobs faster than that crowd of players. I am always leaving with full bags of stuff after that Jormag event.

So what is that “something else” you are grinding instead of fighting Jormag in your best strategy? :)

[MrPerson]

Travel is instant, so nothing is far from anything. It’s just a question of if that travel is worth the cost in silver. But even nearby, there’s plenty to kill. Hell, just south there are always people farming trolls, if you’re concerned about getting group kill speed.

The wall phases spawn only a handful of ice elementals, and I can get a lot more loot elsewhere, in part because what you’re primarily spending time fighting during the wall phase are veterans with bonus HP (beyond “normal” veterans), and not the swarms of trash that produce real loot. I’ll usually end up with one to three corpses to loot per wall, even trying to AOE tag.

During the final phase, nobody bothers killing the trash, because why would you? It’s a handful of super-champs, and it’s more efficient to let them run around attacking the occasional person than to bother with them at all. People knock down the ice pillars, but those don’t drop loot.

And what do you think Jormag is after you’ve killed him once or twice, other than a loot/karma grind?

In practice, I’m not going to be bothered to do this. However, I’m also in no rush to get to Jormag once the crystals are down. You don’t have to be there all that long to get gold, and the fight is more of a grind than mechanically interesting if you’ve already beaten it.

[Stridergg]

Travel is instant, so nothing is far from anything. It’s just a question of if that travel is worth the cost in silver. But even nearby, there’s plenty to kill. Hell, just south there are always people farming trolls, if you’re concerned about getting group kill speed.

The wall phases spawn only a handful of ice elementals, and I can get a lot more loot elsewhere, in part because what you’re primarily spending time fighting during the wall phase are veterans with bonus HP (beyond “normal” veterans), and not the swarms of trash that produce real loot. I’ll usually end up with one to three corpses to loot per wall, even trying to AOE tag.

During the final phase, nobody bothers killing the trash, because why would you? It’s a handful of super-champs, and it’s more efficient to let them run around attacking the occasional person than to bother with them at all. People knock down the ice pillars, but those don’t drop loot.

And what do you think Jormag is after you’ve killed him once or twice, other than a loot/karma grind?

To port somewhere and back again will cost you 4-5 silver, I doubt there is anything out there that you could do in those 10 minutes that would be reliably worth it.

All nearby people will be fighting Jormag, you won’t find anyone fighting trolls when Jormag is in progress, at least that’s my experience when I am late for the event.

Anyway, it’s a nitpicking discussion at this point. If you think you can get 50 copper more somewhere else and it’s worth running (or porting) around back and forth, it’s your game. :)

[Stridergg]

In practice, I’m not going to be bothered to do this. However, I’m also in no rush to get to Jormag once the crystals are down. You don’t have to be there all that long to get gold, and the fight is more of a grind than mechanically interesting if you’ve already beaten it.

As for your edit, yes, you are right. Once you complete any linear event a few times, it’s not that interesting anymore. And in pretty much any event, you can hit some mobs a few times, then just stand nearby and still get the gold participation. You don’t even need to stick around, actually, unless there is a chest at the end of the event.

In the end though, at least so far, there is usually an understanding among players that the more players actually participate in the event, the faster it’s going to be done and the sooner everyone will be able to go on doing their stuff.

[Hechicera]

Have you guys cleared Caduceus Seraph wing? Any tips? It is full of anger and remorse.

IMHO the most annoying of the routes but not “hard” per se. Not sure where you have issues, so I’ll give the general things I think were helpful/unhelpful. Did it with groups of family filled in with puggers of varied quality.

1 - Communicate. Placing the barrels with good timing can be very annoying with puggers to get them all down. Expect to have to reset & redo it a few times w/pugs.
2 - route benefits a lot from strategic pulling
3 - route very unfriendly to “tank & spank”, many fights everyone should go ranged and make mobs play “man in the middle” (esp. hound) and some regular pulls should be kept snared and kited so they don’t break off and bring friends (area before barrels at gate iirc)
4 - condition removal is HUGE, esp. at end boss.

Had expected last fight to be worse the first time we did it. But we were warned to be ready for conditions and had a guard with all his light fields, a warrior spamming Shake it Off for close/mid range, and my necro with every condition well, sender, remover tools available to that class loaded to help ranged and it was pretty simple. But that’s the three of us family in our “heavy anti-condition support” bars layout for that fight. In case you wonder, how much is enough removal is “enough” for that fight.

[tryte]

Not sure where you have issues, so I’ll give the general things I think were helpful/unhelpful.

Thanks for the pointers! I’m better at including important details when I’m not irritated (or inebriated); we got stuck at placing the powder kegs. Despite a coordinated effort to place them, and a speed boost from my Elementalist, we still had problems with the NPC’s stealing them away. Obviously burning down the thieves doesn’t work, since they just keep spawning.

What do you mean by ‘timing’? Do you have a preferred method for this?

[Contrai]

Thanks for the pointers! I’m better at including important details when I’m not irritated (or inebriated); we got stuck at placing the powder kegs. Despite a coordinated effort to place them, and a speed boost from my Elementalist, we still had problems with the NPC’s stealing them away. Obviously burning down the thieves doesn’t work, since they just keep spawning.

What do you mean by ‘timing’? Do you have a preferred method for this?

My tactic for the barrel part:

Step 1: Have everyone grab a keg, then do some sort of countdown to throw them all at once, away from the gate. This buys you some time as the mobs will start racing towards those thrown kegs.

Step 2: Have everyone grab a second barrel and run to the gate, and place down the kegs. If you have a guardian with a staff or hammer, you can get them to lay down the line of warding or circle of warding to prevent enemies from coming back to get the kegs at gate. If no guardian, using snares or any other type of slowing/immobilizing effect should work as well.

You could also just use 4 people to run kegs to gate, while the fifth person just stands near the keg barrel and keeps chucking them away.

Step 3: To be on the safe side, have a couple people keep running to grab kegs to place them down as sometimes there’ll be one or two mobs who might make it through. Saving speed boosts for running kegs helps here.

[Hechicera]

What do you mean by ‘timing’? Do you have a preferred method for this?

With 3 of us on voice, so could drop on “NOW” easily and a 4th pugger who was incredibly on the ball (better than us really), we did like above but skipped a few steps until the 5th dropped with us:

1 - everyone pick a circle, so you know where you are going without confusion
2 - everyone run in and grab a keg
3 - fire speeds
4 - better damage soakers take point and get moving toward gate
5 - fire any blind/defense things to help as you all run in with kegs as you run
6 - everyone on their circle and stand there (no dieing! no dropping prematurely) until all 5 on circles
7 - drop on NOW!, timing must be very close. Success? if not and some barrels run off or someone downed …
8 - drop more defense, blind, get up/drop a rez, have a kiter aggro and everyone run back and let it reset
9 - curse, have another drink, communicate again
10 - go to 1

Its really fast, when it works. But without perfect timing on the stand and drop, may end up taking you more retries than decoy barrels and/or splitting group while some distract, and the remaining members try to get 5 barrels onto 5 circles faster than the non-distracted mobs can steal them. Either way groups have to be on same page, and do at least one or two actions together at the same time.

[Daagar]

Well my Elementalist is fast approaching level 80, so I decided to roll an alt. This may seem unremarkable to some of you, but it’s not something I normally do. After 150 hours the game is still pulling me in. I ummed and ahhed for ages trying to figure out what I was going to play next, not an easy decision. In the end I thought I’d try something totally different, an asura mesmer. No idea whether it’ll click with me, but let’s find out. Besides, an asura guardian just seemed a little too incongruous.

I’m the opposite, can’t stick with a character to save my life. I just went guardian the other night, and had a grand ol’ time for a little while (they can tag waaaay more mobs in a zerg/DE than mesmer) but after a couple of short nights playing it, I’m back on my mesmer. Depsite the annoyance of not having huge AoE/tagging ability, it is such a unique playstyle that I keep coming back. I’m also finding that range clicks for me way more than melee.

Haven’t seriously played ele myself, so I don’t know if you’ll find the style too similar on a mesmer, but I’d say it is a good choice. Just beware it might be rough going at low levels. As you get some traits going, you have more options.

[KevinC]

There’s a new blog entry that discusses ongoing support for GW2.

A couple tidbits:

…rather than have one small live team as is normally provided in traditional MMOs, we have formed multiple live teams focused on expanding Guild Wars 2 in the long term.

We will sometimes be creating additional teams not listed above. These teams will build specific cool features or events we decide we want to do outside of the scope of the other live teams. (Spoiler: We have some of these teams hard at work right now, and you’ll be seeing the first results of their efforts in November.)

[Sean_Tudor]

The kite fight in AC 3rd explore path is a hoot. Everyone was warned to have some sort of speed boost equipped and we really needed it. Kiting vast packs of mobs around gave me severe flashbacks of Razorgore in BWL. :)

[Sean_Tudor]

There’s a new blog entry that discusses ongoing support for GW2.

A couple tidbits:

I can’t wait. I hope player/guild housing is somewhere in that pipeline.

[krayzkrok]

Haven’t seriously played ele myself, so I don’t know if you’ll find the style too similar on a mesmer, but I’d say it is a good choice. Just beware it might be rough going at low levels. As you get some traits going, you have more options.

Way too early to tell yet, but at least I finally figured out what chain attacks are! Oh right, that’s where those clones are coming from. (duh!) Still in the “doing it wrong” stage right now, as I can see other mesmers bringing down mobs much faster than I can, but half the fun is figuring out how it all works. Took me about 60 levels with the ele to really understand the best way to play it in PvE and WvW. On the plus side, my mesmer dude looks completely badass with his mini grey trench coat and scowling mask.

[Miramon]

Just spent a somewhat entertaining half hour not killing the servant of balthazar or whatever he’s called. Combat went something like this:

Look: a boss!

Can’t… see… too… many… particles…*

Why am I dead? I didn’t even enter melee yet?

Someone revived me! <3

I shall revive some of these other 50 dead people.

Ty! Ty! Ty! Ty!

Oh, there’s the boss again. Stand back: I shall steal an attack from him and then shoot him!

Particles! Colors! Death! Death?

One-shotted again from 50’ away somehow.

“Goddamn it people! Kill the champ! The champ! The- aggh!”

Killed by a random veteran while fear sent me running into a banner; how ignominious!

Oh well, I shall certainly be able to revive myself. No one else is nearby.

Servant of Balthazar: OH NO YOU WON’T [comes running out of the melee to finish me from 100’ feet away, despite the fact I shouldn’t even have aggroed him yet]

Hm. Looks like there are a lot of corpses around me. And no one is reviving me. And the boss is just sort of standing there gloating.

[waypoint out]

[Kyle700]

Is that the one in the straits of devastation?