Illconceived Was Na.9781

His name is Colin Some want to blame him for ruining their loot run and dying too often.Others love breaking his defiance and forcing him to stand still for 2 seconds.He swings a sword; he swings it again.Big grin.

@"Astral Projections.7320"Thanks you very much for continuing to keep this thread up to date, and especially highlighting "sale ending soon" offers. This thread makes it easy to keep up-to-date.

Apparently they can be found on the coast northwest of the crystal desert as well. Having PoF would make it much. This is correct I can now confirm now there are some "Awakened' in Mount Maelstrom, around Sunken Droknah area. Scan the shores since that's where they spawn. Be patient (and ideally share kills): once the word spreads that there are some awakened in Maelstrom & Sparkfly, lots of non-PoF owners (and PoF-owners with non-PoF alts) are going to try to farm their chieves. As we know from hearts, that can lead to extinction levels of mobs, which can lead to frustration and salt (very salty salt indeed). So... do what you need to for your chieves. Just be prepared for others trying to do the same. If you are willing to take your time and to slow your kill rate, it will probably be a lot less painless for everyone. (And if you aren't, well, it's your choice.)

Or they could create a couple of "borrow mount" sites, perhaps one per zone. You can grab a raptor in HoT, a skimmer in Maguuma, a springer for talk shows Shiverpeaks. You wouldn't be able to use the special action keys and you'd lose the mount upon interact/combat. It would give F2P, Core-only, and HoT-only a chance to try them out, without offering all the convenience that purchasing PoF would unlock. That’s a thought. However my suggestion also doesn’t have all the conveniences of purchasing PoF as the mount would only have 33% speed, not super speed, and wouldn’t have any of the other abilities. In addition, other than getting and riding around once in a zone, losing it on combat would be annoyance and make not worth using once you’ve tried it. It would be on ignore for those who are going more than a few feet and stopping to kill things, do Hearts, etc. Right, my idea is to offer a taste for free, not the convenience. Your idea is complementary: it offers some of the convenience, at a cost. It's entirely possible for ANet to do both. I don't have a strong feeling about either idea, really. I'm not sure that it's important that F2P get mounts, seeing as they've played successfully for 2 years without gliders. On the other hand, I can see how a lack of mounts might discourage some people from staying long enough to consider converting to a paid account.

Or they could create a couple of "borrow mount" sites, perhaps one per zone. You can grab a raptor in HoT, a skimmer in Maguuma, a springer for talk shows Shiverpeaks. You wouldn't be able to use the special action keys and you'd lose the mount upon interact/combat. It would give F2P, Core-only, and HoT-only a chance to try them out, without offering all the convenience that purchasing PoF would unlock.

See also: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/5827/theoretically-what-new-playable-race-do-you-wanthttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/5820/new-playable-raceSearch for threads with 'race' in the title

But besides that, a lot of folks are still focused on (a) completing the story, (b) completing collections (that don't include most of the bounties), or © just exploring. It's early days. Plus, the expac hasn't even been out two weeks. It takes a while for people to understand new mechanics, new events (and where to find them, why they should do them), and generally figure out what stuff is worth their time. There are other rewards; we just haven't figured them out yet. (It might turn out that's still not enough to work on the trickier bounties, but again, it's early days.)

It's not an easy mastery point for everyone. (See above and various other threads.)

@Meneh.2954 There's no question that getting to Raptor/T3 is the most difficult 'hill' to climb. However, it's only, um, insurmountable to people who want to follow the story without taking any detours. I can agree that's a valid preference, I'm just not sure that's enough for ANet to spend all that much effort to change the way things are.

https://redd.it/71ytepAs it turns out, T3 Raptor & T3 Jackal are only 10% faster than on-foot Revenant using the gem shop's Executioner Axe (from the Halloween-themed outfit) and pulsing SuperSpeed (about 700 units per second). A thief going all out (E-Axe plus skills/traits and a raptor) can reach a consistent ground speed of 1000 units/sec. In contrast, a T1 Griffon can hit 1132 u/s and T2 will be nearly double a thief's best at over 1900 u/s. That compares with a base ground speed of 400 u/s under sustained swiftness and 300 u/s without. In other words, Vladish is absolutely correct that the pre-PoF game included several ways to run twice as quickly as a base mesmer. To be fair, the critics are also correct that an optimized Griffon can go a lot faster then the best a thief can do. The question is whether that extra speed is going to break anything or not. In Classic Tyria, almost certainly not, since (as @Vladish.3940 pointed out above) we can already go faster than Griffons by using Waypoints.

A refreshing sentiment (and well phrased to boot). :+1:(Besides that, the CatBird is already in the game; even if ANet agreed with the OP, it's going to be months and months before they could do anything.)

Or, you know, because it's just super fun. I don't even have it yet and I swap to it whenever possible (via griffon eggs or whatever). For me, it's a combination of my favorite bits of mounts and gliding and exploring. I'm sure you're right that some people are demonstrating braggadocio. But I'm willing to bet they're a minority.

Update on available versus required masteries, according to the wiki: The Desert offers 85 mastery point unlocks, including Insights, Achievements, and Story unlocks.PoF offers 4+1 mounts, requiring 52 + 12 points, i.e. 64 maxIn other words, PoF has a surplus of 21 mastery points. Comparing to HoTThere are 198 mastery unlocks in HoT: HoT @launch = 102Adventures = 30LS3 = 48Raids = 18144 are required to fully max HoT Basic HoT = 112Raids = 8LS3 (ancient magics) = 24At launch, maxing meant doing some adventures (at least 5 at gold or 10 at silver). With LS3, there's enough to max all of HoT without any adventures, including Raid & LS3 masteries. In other words, PoF is much, much more forgiving than HoT is even today, plus it requires less effort to max.

I don't agree with the premise that using a mount "skips content" — using a mount is part of the content for me. I walk when I want to see the sights; I waypoint or raptor rush when I don't. Maybe it's not fun for the OP to see just how they can get via Griffon; it's a lot of fun for me.

There's a kind of disconnect that happens in threads like this that take place just after major new content is released. It's entirely a result of people having drastically different playstyles, People who focus on the story over everything else have trouble thinking "outside the box" & considering Mastery Points that are outside of the story path.Exploration fans have trouble thinking "inside the box" and remembering just which mastery points are easy/hard, some because they don't mind skipping and returning and others because they find workarounds.And there are lots of ways to obtain all sorts of XP faster than unlocking Mastery Points and vice versa.tl;dr have some patience with others who don't think about GW2 the same as you do. Their approach isn't wrong (or bad), just different. PS There are lots of good tips hidden in this thread regarding getting extra XP or easy Mastery Points. If you're short one or the other, it's worth scouring for them.

When crafting Viper's gear, I made 5 times the amount of patches I needed. ANet refunded me the mats, so I could start again (I, of course, had to delete the original patches). How it came about: Exotic inscriptions require 5 dowels & insignia 5 patches.The recipe for weapons produces a single Oric-plated dowel; that for armor produces 5 patches.As you can imagine, I'm not the first to make that mistake :(

You missed something.I don't happen to have a list of the easiest mastery points yet, so I can't help directly, but I didn't use exploits and I don't remember having to use gliding to reach the m-points (although a couple were easier with gliding). If you have to, explore the entire map or go south. In a worst case scenario, you can use Teleport-to-Friend. Getting Raptor-3 is the most difficult hill to climb; once you unlock it and especially after getting the KangaBunny, you have access to a lot more m-points, more than you'll need right away.

Fair enough, I don't have access to those details yet. The point remains: You can progress the story without most of those m-points.There are still more available m-points than are needed.

There are at least 80 mastery points already available, far greater than the 52 to fully max the four masteries. There are 38 PoF Mastery Insights, i.e. available directly on the map. (Some easy-to-reach communing, a few like the one to which the OP objects.)30+ from map-specific achieves = 6 from Crystal Oasis, at least 2 from Desert Highlands, 5 from Elon, at least 4 from Desolation, 9 from Vabbi, 4 from Crystal Desert12+ from story journal = 3 from Act 1, at least 5 from Act 2, at least 4 from Act 3How many of these should be "easily accessible" before these aren't "masteries" but grindy versions of a freebie? I haven't identified exactly how many are 'easy' even by my estimation, but so far, I've found it far, far easier to find, reach, & obtain the first 17 points compared to obtaining my first 10 in HoT. Admittedly, some like the Dictator of Soup, are annoying, but there are so many more than we need, I'm not prepared to feel any umbrage about the 'ugly' ones. At least, not yet. tl;dr I think it's too soon to say that there are or aren't "enough" easily-obtained mastery points. We should maybe start by agreeing to some sort of criteria for "easily obtained" and then actually count.

Awesome, thanks for the patch note addendum (and, I guess, for the fix, too ;) )

As far as I know, it should, along with necro minions, mesmer clones, etc. I don't usually do story achievements with a ranger, so I can't confirm. The main thing is to go slow & steady. You might save a minute by killing things ASAP, but if the achievement doesn't trigger, then it costs you much more time just waiting for dialogue to repeat the second try. So I think it's ultimately more efficient to go boringly & mind-numblingly slow to make sure that you can get credit for as many chak kills as possible. (I really do wish ANet would at least show the kill counter for this; it would make it so much easier for people to know their progress.)

The goal is to kill a fixed number of chak. Just like beginner and expert, you can kill extras. The reason the master achievement is so wonky is that you get barely enough chak to succeed, so if you miss some for various reasons (see below), you won't complete the achievement. And there are many reasons why you might not get 'credit' for any particular chak. You need to get the "killing blow", which means that if someone else helps by killing chak, you're out of luck. Chak that die due to secondary conditions also don't always count -- the condition gets the kill, but you don't. NPCs can also foul things up (fortunately, Braham is nearly useless here these days, so that might no longer be an issue). And of course, it's possible that one or more chak might spawn inside a wall, making it hard for you to find/target them. There's probably a couple of other reasons, too. Despite this, plenty of people have completed the achievement. The good news: you only have to succeed once, no matter how often you fail. So my advice is: don't hold your breath waiting for ANet to simplify this (even though there are so many ways they could). Practical AdviceTo deal with "hidden" chak, bring a character with access to spammable AoE damage that doesn't require "line of sight" — the ideal choice is guardian staff. Use that when you run out of visible chak. (Tempest overloads and reaper shroud and such should also work, but it might take longer to tag the chak.)To deal with other people getting credit: — let your friends buff or heal you; don't let them fight. To deal with accidental death via conditions: stick to power builds, even if they have lower DPS.To deal with chak dying too quickly: same, stick to lower DPS power builds.It's been a while since I walked anyone through this, but when I did (about half dozen folks), this always worked (once it took two tries). tl;dr slow & steady, use staff guardian (if you can) to find hidden foes

Thanks for posting more about this (even though it's a little vague). I find it a little disconcerting that the best option you guys had for forum software has such a flaw. (I'm still not inclined to follow links or upload images, at least not until I understand what the risks are and how to avoid them at a third party site that might not be as security conscious as I'd like.)

GW2BLTC has a dye matcher. Here's the link to the list of dyes that are closest to #FFFFFF (the 'hex' code for Permafrost's color):https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/tool/dye/search?cloth=ffffff&ipg=25&page=1&sort=cloth You can compare the color and the current cost. Caveats GW2 identifies colors in 3 dimensions, while the Matcher only compares in a single, combined dimension (see below for why that can be misleading)The impact of color (especially in this game) varies depending on material, lighting, and what other colors are in use. In the extreme, in a dark room, all colors look alike.Some of the game's biggest fans of dye believe that some dyes also offer additional features; this isn't capture in the API/wiki.More on measuring "close matches"Computer dye measurmenets can be thought of as similar to using GPS coordinates: there's a number measuring position for east/west, north/south, and height. You can simplify the distance between two points by using one measurement, e.g. LA to New York is just under 4000 km (2451 miles), but that ignores height and the fact that cars can't drive directly (it's about 10% farther as the crow drives compared to as it flies). The Dye Matcher similarly simplifies finding a match to looking at the total 'distance' from one color to another, rather than comparing all three. Thus you'll see something with an intense green hue be a closer match than something that looks more white, because the non-green elements are a closer match than the off-white's. tl;dr the Matcher is a great tool, but it makes some approximations; be sure to actually compare in game.

The reappearance of the eye patch, cap'n outfit, peg-leg, and hook are no accident: today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, the mostly commonly-overlooked celebration in GW history.