Mungo Zen.9364

Eh take a break like I am, like many Mesmers before us. The combination of the mess Mesmer is in and how Anet has treated the profession and in turn player base, alongside the terrible content releases since IBS, why bother logging in? We aren’t the target audience, we have already spent money on expansions and gemstore purchases. Fixing our problems won’t generate the revenue that enticing new players will. A new player who sees Mesmer would probably stay away from it unless they are a masochist. But they also have 8 other professions to enjoy and Anet is banking on that to keep making money.

You can also look at the Confetti Infusion page and see the list of where it does come from, the Hero's Choice Chest not being listed as a source, but the Pinata event itself is (alongside a variety of festival chests I didn't know about). I agree that it appears that the Confetti Infusion does not have a daily limit based upon the Wiki article. However, given the incredibly low drop rate, I think it would be hard to prove that you could get 2 to drop for the same player in 24 hours.

Last one was Nov 29th that had significant Profession updates. The previous 2 updates like this were about 6-8 weeks apart. Add 4 weeks for holiday time off, means I would anticipate the earliest we get the next patch is mid to late February. I anticipate they are going to put together a big reveal/roadmap type thing in the next few weeks to showcase what they want to do in the next 6-12 months. The question I am interested in is, will there be new content in the form of Living World or similar announced, or will they announce they are working on the expansion instead (or both?) If there is no new content to play I probably care less about them fixing up the professions. That said, this is all a guess, Anet could go radio silent for 3 more months and it would only impact gamers who aren't happy with the current state of the game and are waiting for change.

Choose the one you keep playing. If you enjoy leveling one profession more than others, you will probably also enjoy it at 80. If you don't, leveling to is really quite fast in this game, especially after your first character.

Housing, maybe. Buffs associated with housing, never.

Well, yeah, take the core design of the build and modify it to suit how you play. The suggestion I presented is based around using Ranged/Not Melee and Mirage. Greatsword fits the bill for ranged since the other options are not as strong. If you want to try out the other eSpecs, you could do a Power Greatsword Chronomancer build, or a Condi Dagger Virtuoso. Unfortunately, Staff Mirage is melee, and there aren't any builds using Staff or Scepter outside of that.

Based upon what you described in your OP, I think the description of this build says it best: If you want to optimize your time in Open World Meta Events and other group encounters, tagging as much as you can matters, and this build is one of the best in the game. It is fairly easy to use, and most players end up tweaking it to suit their playstyle.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mirage_-_Greatsword_Farmer Pretty much all you want/need right there.

I prefer Chaos Condi Virt in OW and it can be tweaked to fit regular Condi Virt in raids and fractals easily enough. Soul Beast is a bit smoother as it has lower actions per minute (aka button mashing) than Virtuoso. It can also be easily tweaked to fit into Raids and Fractals. However Soulbeast has a very strong place in WvW and maybe PvP while Virtuoso suffers immensely from projectile hate in those game modes. I generally suggest that most players won’t run the same character in WvW or PvP as they would in PvE since the differences can be quite drastic between the game modes. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

There is only one true level 80 zone in Core, that being Ruins of Orr. The other two Orr zones are 70-80 and 75-80. So yes, at least two of those zones could be easy if you over level them.

I’ll first recommend you don’t use the boost just yet. As a returning player there may be some mechanics and play styles that you are new to you (or new again). By leveling a new profession you will have the chance to learn these mechanics in a less punishing environment as the difficulty does ramp up at 80 in Open World. Also be aware that the booster character gets Celestial stat gear which may be preferential for some professions (Guardian, Elementalist) where others it doesn’t do much. This means some professions are easier to jump in and play with the boost while others will take some time to make them playable. I’d strongly suggest you make a few alts of different professions and try out the Core weapons and profession skills for a few levels on each. This would give you far more education in what is suited best for your playstyle. You will probably prefer boosting a profession you are already enjoying then boosting and finding out you wasted the boost on a profession you don’t like.

I’d suggest going to Metabattle and Snowcrows to see some of the builds and recommended rotations/skill priorities. Elementalist is possibly the squishiest of professions while also having some of the more complex rotations. However the payoff is pretty good if you enjoy that style play. Bear in mind that you will likely find yourself needing a different eSpec and build for different game modes. But this is the same for most professions/eSpecs anyway, although some Celestial builds can transition to different game modes easily.

It’s lackluster compared to other festivals but the value in grinding it can be quite good. If you care to grind envelopes and max magic find at the end that is. I actually appreciate how little engagement this festival has as it is quite efficient for my time. Wintersday, Halloween, SAB are all very dense festivals that can be quite time consuming if you want to engage with all the content. Neither is better, just different engagement levels.

I appreciate the Sylvari lore, story and where they came from, how that is told via the Nightmare Court and Mordremoth arcs. I also appreciate that they are the youngest race and as such, have a sense of discovery and newness when showing up around Tyria.

This game is pretty boring. Your suggestion wouldn’t make it any less so. However, if you are only playing for rewards, and are willing to grind the game for the rewards, then is the game really that boring? I mean, how many hours are you willing to sink into boring content for a reward you want? Maybe the game isn’t that boring… You suggest the game is lacking in objectives for your character but we have the Achievements Panel, which gives us a wide variety of things to try and get. That includes Legendary Armor and Weapons, Armor and Weapon skins, Titles and a variety of other in game items and currencies. Considering that there are hundreds if not thousands of hours of available playtime based around Achievements, it looks like there is a lot of guidance for player objectives in GW2.

I would recommend going to any World Boss Event (there is one in 4 of the starting areas) and see what group combat looks like. What you will find is regardless of size, there are the same difficulties with seeing your character as there are a lot of visual effects going on and layers of players standing in one area. However, might I draw your attention to this: Endless Embiggening Tonic My friend uses it with her shortest sized Asuran and she stands as tall as my full height Sylvari. It might help with making your smaller character easier to see. You still have to deal with the visual noise but, it does help a bit.

Isn’t naming and shaming against forum policy? 😛

Do the rewards matter more to you than the actual content you are proposing? As a reader of your posts, it appears that like many before you, you want an easy path to rewards from content you don't want to engage in. I am going to suggest you remove any consideration of rewards from your posts going forward. As you 'aren't exactly sure' on this topic, it means you are talking without knowledge. If you do not know or understand the value of these rewards, then asking for 'slightly less' could be anything. Since the rewards matter so little that you don't actually know what they are or propose a set value, I again suggest you stop adding this as part of the conversation. This should free you up to solidify what Solo instanced content would look like in your vision. As an aside, I actually would be interested in more Solo content, Instanced, Story or otherwise, regardless of the rewards. I do enjoy alternatives to Golem bashing and have solo'd most of the Bounties, DRM etc on several professions. I am looking for new challenges in game that push my skills within the profession. Maybe Dungeon solos are next? Either way, I suggest you tighten up your request into the key elements that you think would make for great solo content and skip the rewards as you will never get a satisfactory consensus from the forum users.

This doesn’t mean anything to a developer. People might leave if they don’t like the roadmap just as easily. While I would appreciate higher quality communication from Anet, I’ve played this game long enough to know how they work (slow) and I wouldn’t bother complaining until end of February if we really haven’t seen anything.

Much laughter at this response. You sound like you either do not know the value of running a Strike or you don’t care.

If you are proposing that a solo player get 10% of the value of the awards from a Strike, and no unique Strike currencies then I would feel that is appropriate rewards. That would still net you the same or better than the awards for a Legendary Bounty ( you get the same if you solo or group kill a bounty of course). You choose the language ‘slightly less’ which indicates perhaps 75-80% value of a Strike, which would be incredibly high compensation for a solo encounter based upon how other OW and instanced content gives rewards.

Eh, the rewards need to be appropriate for a single player, not equivalent to 10 man content. If I can bypass group content and get comparable rewards, then why would I ever bother with group content? It sounds like you want a faster and very rewarding experience without coordinating with other players. Yet being able to coordinate with other players is part of the skill requirement for completing strikes. The mechanics of strikes are built around a group environment, and being able to negotiate those mechanics as a group deserves a higher reward. Have you ever tried fighting Champ or Legendary bounties solo? This is likely comparable to the level of difficulty you are asking for. Why would a solo instance for these types of bosses be deserving of Strike level rewards?

EoD maps were atrocious. Yes, the Meta events exist, and without considering those meta events are ‘good or bad’ what is there other than them to do? The only reason to go to an EoD map is Story, Achievements, Metas. No farming Bounties or attempting Adventures. No need for HP trains. No interesting side events worth stopping to do. There isn’t even much in the way of farming opportunities outside of fishing even. This content is missing or could be improved upon to give players many more reasons to go to Cantha. What we are waiting for really is Anet to start adding more content that asks us to go to Cantha. Think about how Skyscale made you go through many different regions and zones. It might be years before there is enough ‘new’ reasons to go to Cantha to keep the regions interesting. Or it may never happen. Probably the latter. EoD is already dead content. Sure waste your time waiting to run a meta, but other than that why bother being in those zones? By comparison, you can find multiple TD and AB metas to join even after the events start. Something you would hope was possible with the newest content released.

Yes to what? If Anet can remove Distortion from Virtuoso with no other changes to the eSpec, then it isn’t required aka doesn’t matter in PvE. Eventually it might be required for PvE if encounters are balanced around Virtuoso having it but, I don’t think Anet balances instanced PvE encounters around individual skills, unless the skill is actually overpowered in the content. Now that said, I don’t see a reason for Virtuoso to have Distortion. It was unexpected to get it in the first place and while on paper it looks interesting, where has it actually made a difference? Not in PvE, and it appears that Virtuoso has not suddenly become viable if not powerful in WvW or PvP. The issue I see with Distortion on Virtuoso is several profession patches from now when design decisions are being made knowing Virt has Distortion available which may lead to nerfs to other survivability tools. Really though, Anet does what Anet wants and if they want to just add skills to professions for no reason, who are we to complain? With all the nerfs and mismanagement of various professions over the years (ahem Mesmer in general among others) it’s sometimes nice for them to ‘make a mistake’ in the players favor.

So no one really knows? I was under the impression that Anet wanted Research Notes to only work on crafted items. Since the festival food was the same item as the crafted food, it meant that players could farm the boxes and skip crafting items for Research Notes. Instead of decoupling the items and create a crafted and awarded version of these foods, they simply removed the awarded ones from the boxes, and called it a day. What you suggest also sounds reasonable, but not as coincidental as the above, given the timeframe when these changes were made,