Messenger.7450

Confirming that this issue is fixed. Logged into my toon who didn't get credit and saw him get it. Thanks, ANet! 😄

Have experienced this bug myself as well. I play 4 toons: Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer, Thief. The Guardian, Warrior, and Thief all got their Adventure Guide: Completing Story Chapters IV done just fine. The Necromancer did not. All toons completed the basic story years ago. I understand that being a rather erratic glitch makes it difficult to debug, but please fix it. 😔

Found this thread because I too was beginning to accumulate too many Hatched Chilis. I found a use for them although it's NOT a good one. Use them to buy Voice of Metal, the microphone-skinned warhorn. This item can be sold to vendors for 90 Silver or salvaged. The catch is that besides spending 250 Hatched Chilis, you also need to spend 2,000 Volatile Magic per Voice of Metal. So there's a quite a bit of opportunity cost in that you could instead be using that Volatile Magic on something else with greater returns. But that's the only way you can convert your spare Hatched Chilis into gold. Hope that helps, at least with people who don't want to waste the chilis by just destroying them.

Top Dragon Responder: Snowden Drifts Complete 5 Snowden Drifts Dragon Response Missions with all challenges active. Champions Achievement I just completed this achievement this afternoon after so, so, so many attempts since the Snowden Drifts DRM was introduced in the game. I practically gave up by the time Champions: Judgment rolled in. But the changes announced for the May 11, 2021 Balance Patch gave me ideas. I noticed the following specific changes: “… a reversal to the bonus-damage state of the torment condition. Torment will now deal bonus damage to targets that are standing still instead of to moving targets.” “The Exposed effect that is placed on many boss enemies when their defiance bar is broken has been adjusted. It now increases power damage taken by 30% and condition damage taken by 100%.” I wondered if going condition damage DPS would give me enough of an edge to beat the DRM with all CMs on, particularly the timer challenge. I had a tanky support Scourge, and got to work re-building him for pure Condi DPS. This went from just replacing his traits, skills, and trinkets (didn’t work), to replacing even his armor (spent a lot on ascended mats to craft a new armor set), to fine tuning his runes (originally ran Runes of the Necromancer for the extra Condition Damage boost, ended up with Runes of Tormenting to max out Torment). My build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PShAs+lNwgYPMFmJW6X9PXA-zRZYLRDKmLMygcKjcSgOKAvPIiQKJEdAmFYewA-e The plan was to max out the condition damage on Ryland by breaking his CC bar for the exposed debuff while pouring it on as much as I could. - Scourge’s Trail of Anguish gave me a way to give the escort NPCs swiftness. - For CC, I enhanced my Scourge’s ability to fear and threw in Well of Darkness plus my Torch’s Oppressive Collapse. - Ryland stands still when his CC bar becomes active, and stands still when his CC bar is broken. - He still periodically gives himself the protection buff. It doesn’t protect him from condition damage, plus I could strip it off him so what strike damage I threw at him could contribute. This wasn’t enough to get me through 3CM solo, but I could complete timer challenge solo with over 1 minute to spare, and I was only around 2 minutes too long with 3CM up. I wondered if doing it with 1 more person (to keep the event scaling down) would give me enough DPS to succeed. It did. My 1st successful completion was done 2-man. I’d forgotten to turn off my LFG up and got a 3rd person in the group for my 2nd run, but my 2nd was successfully done 3-man. I tried again 2 days later, and my 3rd good run had 4 people after they joined too quickly for me to shut down the LFG. My last 2 runs were done 3-man. My 5th completion to finish the achievement beat the boss fight literally at ZERO seconds remaining. I am grateful to finally get it. I am just so glad. But despite the success in obtaining this achievement after so much time and effort, I write to ArenaNet: Please, please, PLEASE fix Snowden Drifts DRM. The long struggle to get it- even if ultimately successful- makes me realize how difficult this DRM is. All the hoops and refinement and effort and strategy required puts the difficulty of Snowden Drifts DRM 3CM miles above any and all the other Top Dragon Responder achievements. It is an outlier in its demands from the players. Yeah, it’s an achievement. It’s not supposed to be easy. But if you make things as hard as that, it just becomes an exercise in frustration for most players, rather than a challenge, especially when said players can get the other DRM CMs done. Living World content is supposed to be accessible to most or majority of Guild Wars 2’s players, even when you present particular challenges to them. --- Please, please, PLEASE fix: 1. EMP bug that causes Ryland’s CC bar to instantly break without stunning him while giving him all his boons remains. The point of breaking his CC bar is to prevent him from getting his massive number of boons while giving him the exposed debuff. Even if the intention is for players to use CC other than EMP, I had to use a trait-enhanced Fear, a repeatedly applying soft CC skill and/or another hard CC weapon skill to ensure his defiance bar breaks. 2. The Elite Frost Legion Shaman’s ability to banish players from the boss fight area with their charging launch skill remains. During the two times Ryland summons 3 Elite adds that you have to kill to go back to fighting him, one of them will always be a Frost Legion Shaman who always spawns in the back of the Owl Lodge. They occasionally do a sliding charge attack that upon hitting a player launches them up into the air. This oftentimes somehow causes the player to teleport to the entrance of the lodge. Because the player will still count as in combat, he will be unable to mount and will have to walk back to the Shaman to fight him. Chances are, by the time the player gets back to them, the Shaman will have been out of combat long enough to also begin getting back health. Long duration conditions can delay this, but it is still possible for the Shaman to get back their health and reset their fight, further slowing down progress in the CM. This is crucial in a fight with a timer. I am still unclear on what exactly causes this teleport glitch. I wonder if it has something to do with either hitting the lower ceiling at the back of the Owl Lodge, or if it’s related to activating your glider while still being launched into the air. 3. The Elite Frost Legion Bladestorms can move into Ryland’s dome where they can’t be attacked directly. During the same Elite adds phases, the Bladestorms spawn close to Ryland’s impenetrable dome. It is possible- in fact likely- that they move into said dome while you fight them. The only way to continue damaging them is via ground-targeted AoEs or via conditions they already have on them. While the wise thing to do would be to lure them away from Ryland, it’s just too easy for them to move into the dome. 4. The ice stalagmite attacks can keep a player knocked down for too long. During the fight, ice stalagmites can suddenly rise from the ground, knocking the player down. Furthermore, that’s not the end of their attack- they will do the same one more time, keeping you down for longer. Both times, they do a lot of damage and can put a player in a downed state. They have a telegraph, but in the chaos of frantically DPSing Ryland, it’s easy to get caught by them. You can try to equip a stun break to instantly get up, but what if it’s on cooldown? I had Trail of Anguish and that’s what happened to me, staying down and taking shots for several seconds. In addition, since the stalagmite attacks are multiple, they can overlap. 5. The ice-hurling portal above is merciless against the downed. There is a portal hovering above the center of the boss fight area that hurls multiple ice attacks every so often. It has a telegraph, but it specifically targets players. If you’ve been downed one way or the other- very likely with all CMs on- it will interrupt your attempts to Bandage and get back into the fight. I have neither experienced for myself nor seen others ever Bandage themselves back into action in this DRM. All I ask is to make this fight more fair and in line with other DRM 3CMs. Through and through, it’s just overtuned compared to other Living World content. Thank you. --- TIP: If you die during the boss fight and have to respawn at the Waypoint, the best mount to get back into the fight is the Roller Beetle. The Raptor can’t leap or jump high enough to reach the elevation the Owl Lodge is on, so you have to go around to get up. The Skyscale moves too slowly. But the Roller Beetle’s boost will allow you to roll directly up the elevation and take you directly back into the fight.

Kind of the opposite for me- I regret NOT getting my DPS Warrior into a Berserker spec sooner, and he's been around since launch.I pretty much see the new Elite specs as they enter the game and somehow just feel uninterested or say to myself "not my style". Did that since HoT without even bothering to try them out. Of my 4 toons, only 1 took an Elite spec as soon as it was available (Scourge, because my Necro was meant to be a tanky support anyway).But when I recently realized I needed to up my Warrior's DPS, I finally got around to checking out Berserker in detail- and what a difference in DPS it made.

Dawdler.8521, LuRkEr.9462, Khisanth.2948:Thank you for pointing out that the differences are actually pretty small. I've continued doing tests over and over and over, including switching my build back to the older version and going through a whole new slew of them. I see your points because doing a lot of tests showed quite a variation in results. I did a total of 40 tests to evaluate my build, and then to figure this inconsistency out. I organized it on a spreadsheet and took averages. Etc. It turns out my Old build was actually the stronger one. The reason it initially looked like New beat Old in Test 1 and 2 yet lost to Old in Test 3 was because when I did Old's Test 1 and Test 2 (only done once per test for Old), I actually got low results. This made New Build look better except in Test 3. The variation in results I found showed that it can go either pretty high and pretty low. So mystery solved. The big lesson I get here is that you can't just go 1 round with the golem if you want to accurately measure your build's DPS even if it gives you 5 data points per go. You can get extreme results that skews how you view the whole thing. Better to go at least 3, or maybe even more.

Original test that weirded me out.DPS/Damage/Time Old Build:Test 1 (no consumables): 5099/200300/39, 5001/400086/80, 5022/604439/120, 4935/800296/162, 5014/1000249/199; average DPS 5014.2Test 2 (w/ Spicy Moa Wings and Tin of Fruitcake): 6037/204285/34, 5595/406837/73, 5183/602526/116, 5205/800934/154, 5350/1008515/189; average DPS 5474Test 3 (consumables + all boons): 9870/203316/21, 9347/400799/43, 9292/600661/65, 8986/801203/89, 9290/1001843/108; average DPS 9357 New Build:Test 1 (no consumables): 5831/200827/34, 5454/408832/75, 5072/600071/118, 5033/801702/159, 5145/1003135/195; average DPS 5307Test 2 (w/ Spicy Moa Wings and Tin of Fruitcake): 6083/204143/34, 5595/400829/72, 5539/601134/109, 5512/801641/145, 5401/1000473/185; average DPS 5626Test 3 (consumables + all boons): 8953/204850/23, 8869/401236/45, 9336/601605/64, 9025/800239/89, 9400/1002394/107; average DPS 9116.6 I really don't get how New Build beats Old in Tests 1 and 2, but loses in 3 when it's got tons of boons for doing more damage. I started testing New build over and over since I got these results. These seems to be quite a variation in results, but when I took the average of all the DPS results, they match what you see above. I've got 10 Spirit Shards to change my Rifle back from Berserker's to Assassin's so I can do more tests using Old Build.

Old build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKVAQlRwcYUsKWJWUX/tKA-zxgYhgO2RB57HEeJUgTwkHkwoCUV2A-e New build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKVAQlRwcYUsKWJWUX/tKA-zxgYhoAdsD57HEeJUgTwkHkwoCUV2A-e The only change was the stats of the weapon. Clarifications: I only tested Rifle in all my tests.No infusions or Sigils applied yet to focus on the change of weapon stats.Opening sequence of skills are: Signet of Rage, Rifle 2, Rifle 3, Signet of Fury, Berserk, Gun Flame, Blood Reckoning, Wild Blow, Gun Flame, then I go nuts.

Just wondering if anyone has experienced this. I've recently (and currently) been doing some tweaking of my DPS build using the Special Forces Training Area. Standard Kitty Golem so it doesn't take too long. No additional effects; he just stands there doing nothing but taking hits because the test is purely about general DPS and not any special scenarios. So I've got Old Build and New Build. They're not that different. Just changed some stats and infusion on some gear. No changes to Traits nor Skills. It's just fine-tuning and nitpicking of Attributes. I do 3 tests per build I'm testing: One without any buffs except for the boons the build itself provides.As above but with food and utility buffs, since I always keep those up in PvE and WvW, and they're cheap and easy to do.Just for fun, as above but with all boons turned on via Arena Console to see how high I can go. All of them: Might (25 stacks), Fury, Retaliation, Protection, Resistance, Stability, Aegis, Alacrity, Quickness, Regeneration, Swiftness, Vigor.*My gear is ascended, not Legendary, so any stat switching I do is via Mystic Forge. For the tests, I did Old Build first, Tests 1 to 3, then switched stats, and New Build tested1-3. No going back to test Old Build unless I switch stats again. I at least made sure the sequence of skills I started each test with was the same. After that, it's a mad dash to do the most damage. That said, you're given 5 DPS results by the golem per run, so you've got multiple data points to avoid mistaking any extremes as actual results of your test. For Test 1, New Build has higher DPS than Old.For Test 2, New Build has higher DPS than Old.For Test 3, Old Build has higher DPS than New. I was shocked. I repeated Test 3 for my New build several times. ALL OF NEW BUILD'S RESULTS WERE WORSE THAN OLD'S WITH ALL THE BOONS ON. So I'm wondering how getting all those boons somehow made my DPS worse. Without them turned on from the Arena Console, New Build beat Old handily. This was consistent. After detecting this weirdness, I even turned off all boons and repeated Test 2 (only self-provided boons plus food and utility), and it matched previous results. Somehow, having all those boons gave me an anomaly. So... Either this is a bug, or there's really way for boons (combined with specific stats?) to reduce your DPS? Now that I think about it, I didn't need to turn on the defensive boons...