Zaxares.5419

Yes please! I would love to see more nodes added for the Home Instance/Homestead. ESPECIALLY the Homestead, now that we have so much more space to play with. 😄 I would also highly support the idea that we can add Jade Bot Protocol stations to our Homestead (along with being able to carry the buff inside them) so we can more easily dip into and out of our Homesteads without needing to worry about reloading the buff later. For the nodes, here's what I think should be done: Jadeite Vein node: Costs X (250?) Writs of Dragon's End + 50g, adds a Jadeite Vein node to your HI/HO. Returns 3 Chunks of Pure Jade/day. Petrified Echovald Sapling node: Costs X (250?) Writs of Echovald + 50g, adds a Petrified Echovald Sapling node to your HI/HO. Returns 3 Chunks of Amber/day. Shrine Guardian chest: To be eligible for this chest, you must have first completed the "New Friends, New Adventures" achieve (play with every Shrine Guardian in all EoD maps). Afterwards, head to Guardian's Perch and speak to the Shrine Guardian there and you can purchase the chest for 250 of each EoD Writ + 50g. The chest (which MUST play that adorable fox kit animation when opened) contains an assortment of minor loot, Ancient Coins, Canach Coins (if the appropriate Arborstone Mastery level is reached) and a rare chance for a Jade Runestone or Memory of Aurene. Arcane chest: To be eligible for this chest, you must have completed the Heart of the Obscure mastery in SotO. Once that is done, you can speak to Grand Archivist Vivienne in the Wizard's Vault to purchase the chest (which costs 5 map tokens of each SotO map + 50g). The chest basically gives the same amount of contents as a Greater Arcane Chest (minor loot, Ancient Coins), plus a random assortment of all 3 SotO map currency and a small amount (like 1-3, of a single random tier each day) of random rift essences. Honey Flower node: Costs 250 Curious Lowland Honeycombs + 50g, adds a Honey Flower node to your HI/HO. Returns 1-2 Honey Flowers/day. Lowland Pine Sapling node: Costs 250 Curious Lowland Honeycombs + 50g, adds a Lowland Pine Sapling node to your HI/HO. Returns 3-9 Lowland Pine Logs/day. Rotted Titan Amber node: Costs 250 Curious Mursaat Currencies + 50g, adds a Rotted Titan Amber node to your HI/HO. Returns 3 Rotted Titan Amber/day. Charged Titan Ore node: Costs 250 Curious Mursaat Currencies + 50g, adds a Charged Titan Ore node to your HI/HO. Returns 3 Charged Titan Ore/day.

After about 2 weeks of playing, my assessment of Push is that, yeah, it still requires a lot of work. Some of my main impressions: 1. It is far, FAR too difficult to stage a comeback once one team manages to get any kind of lead. Typically what happens is that one team wins the initial mid fight, the circle gets pushed to about 50-75% of the way, and then it gets stalemated due to the staggered respawn timings for reinforcements to get to the fight. So the match drags on for the full 10 minutes, and the initial team wins anyway because they technically got further. To address this, I propose that the "Tranquility" buff in the middle of the arena, if channeled, instantly teleports the circle back to the middle if it is inside the "territory" of the team that does the channeling. (e.g. Blue has pushed the circle to Red's midway point. Red channels the buff, the circle gets teleported because it is in their "territory". If Blue channels it, nothing happens because the circle is outside their "territory".) This makes the Tranquility a highly crucial buff that needs to be addressed, and it also gives importance to speedy builds whose role in the match can be to quickly move around and capture bonus objectives or deny them to the enemy team. 2. Push STRONGLY favours Support and High Burst builds. If one team has a Support or two, and the enemy team has none, the latter team is almost certainly headed for a loss unless they are exceptionally on the ball about knowing how to pick out critical enemy targets AND focusing them (which are far from guaranteed in a largely random match). Likewise, there is not very much use for builds that traditionally favour speed, stealth or hit and run tactics, so some professions (like Thief) have a considerable disadvantage in Push. To help address that, and to also make it so that the mode basically doesn't just favour "stack and burst" as an unstoppable meta, I propose that more buffs be added Push, similar to the special actions granted in some maps like Djinn's Dominion. As mentioned above, activating the Tranquility buff can potentially send the circle right back to the middle, giving the person who channeled it a good opportunity to get the point immediately moving towards the enemy side. The damage buff is largely solid, but perhaps the duration can be lowered to 1 min, but is stackable. (So again, this gives a mobile player who can quickly channel both damage buffs potentially 2 minutes of the damage buff for his team, a considerable boost even though they themselves are not present for much of the fight.) Special action boosts like the damaging Meteor (which can also insta-finish downed enemies) or the debilitating field (which strips/corrupts boons, making it much harder for a Support standing on the circle to hold it) or possibly a defensive bubble that heals/cleanses allies within it (giving a team who didn't get assigned a Support a potential way to help tank/endure fights) can also help add more variety to the fights. 3. Related to the above, I imagine it's not something that would be easy to do, but I would love it if the matchmaker could somehow detect what sorts of builds players are running and sort the teams appropriately. Also of note is that sometimes I've seen match-ups include two duos on one team, and none on the other. Couldn't the matchmaker pick up on that and assign 1 duo to each team? While there's no accounting for individual skill, the fact remains that two duos likely means some increased level of coordination and class synergy you're not likely to get in a completely random team of 5.

I agree that the Jade Bot modules need more slots. I don't know if we should allow ALL of them at once because that would really widen the gulf in player capability between veterans and newbies, but we definitely need more than just 2. I like the proposal above of having more slots related to the module's function. I think my system would be: 1. 1 slot for Scavenger modules. (Might or Magic) 2. 1 slot for Recycler modules (You can also put Treasure Hunter in this slot if you don't wish to give up your junk drops for Jade slivers. Furthermore, I think there should be Minor/Major/Superior Recyclers that let you fine-tune exactly which junk items get recycled. Minor recycles anything below 1s. Major recycles anything up to 10s (so it recycles Spoons, for WvW/fractal players who get these often), and Superior recycles up to 25s, same as the current Recycler.) 3. 1 Siege Turtle upgrade slot. (Only unlocked at the higher tiers of Jade Bot Power Core. Might also be nice if there was a way we can combine the two siege turtle upgrades into one. I don't think this would really affect overall balance too much because the places in which one actually NEEDS Siege Turtles is quite limited.) 3. 2-4 more utility slots for the player to fill out with whatever they desire. Lower level power cores have fewer slots. In addition, we could possibly look at increasing the total number of tiers for the Power Core, each utilizing some of the more unusual metallic ingots (like Eitrite, Kralkatite and Prismaticite) found in the game. There is also the potential for creating a Legendary Jade Bot Power Core.

I have to shake my head at the latest WvW changes too. It feels like ANet's constantly buffing offensive/attacker stuff in WvW and nerfing defensive/boonstrips. Walls are only repaired now at 50%? I can guarantee you that this means that NOBODY will bother repairing walls anymore. Not only did ANet not bring back the participation/defense credit for wall repairs, but it's now downright impossible to solo patch a wall by yourself within a reasonable time. You would need to make like 8-10 trips (for a T3 wall) to a supply hut to repair it that high, and you'll likely get run over by enemy reinforcements pouring in all the time while most of the defenders are busy trying to fight off the attackers. The increased time you would now need to patch the wall would be far better spent killing enemy players. They say they don't want to tilt the balance totally towards attackers, but honestly at this rate it's WAY more profitable (in the sense of building WXP and reward track progress)/time cost-effective to just run ktrains and backcap stuff.

Well, it's started and still no achieves. What's weirder is that the mini-season only lasts for 1 week (as opposed to the usual 2 or sometimes 3.) I wonder if something got lost in the shuffle or perhaps ANet's decided to stop the achieves for the mini-seasons.

So in the last patch, we got a 32-slot version of the Pillager's Pack (the WvW-exclusive bag). Curiously, however, no equivalent 32-slot version of the other WvW-exclusive bag, the Siegemaster's Satchel (which auto-sorts consumable items into it) was added. Would it be possible to get a 32-slot version of the latter as well? (And 32-slot versions for the Fractal bags too, while we're at it.) I love the added functionality of these special bags, and would love to get 32-slot versions of them too. P.S. Would also love a way to get additional copies of the 32-slot Trusty Hero's Backpack that we can acquire from the Return achieves too! Maybe put it in the Laurel Vendor for Laurels + Supreme Runes?

I think the issue is a bit more complicated than that. On the one hand, I believe that map-specific currency like Writs are important for keeping players coming back to older maps. That was what went wrong with PoF; because all of the four maps used the same currency, players naturally just gravitated to whichever meta was the quickest and easiest (aka Pinata) and completely ignored the others. At the same, ANet is also making a big mistake by not giving more valuable and varied sinks for these map-specific currencies. In a lot of cases, most map currencies can only be traded for account bound items (if at all. Some currencies like Airship Oil only have ONE purpose and are completely useless otherwise) and are thus utterly worthless once you've finished whatever skins or collections require them. In order to prevent this, map currencies need to have a minimum of 3 types of sinks: 1. Cosmetics - Assorted skins/minis/tonics/collections. This should include both short/cheap and long-term/expensive collections to cater to players of varying wealth levels and playstyles. For example, I think it's worth putting in the ability to buy account-bound versions of ultra-rare items like infusions and items like the Invisible Boots, along with special skins like the Sunless/Scion/Broken Voice skins, using a combination of map currency/tokens and gold. For a more recent example, I think that Skyscale Weapon Boxes ought to be purchasable for 1 Amalgamated Kryptis Essence + 15/30g (depending on whether it's 1H or 2H). This puts it on par with the price players pay for Ascended weapons from strikes/raids, and it also helps give more sinks for Kryptis Essence (since, if you're not going for Obsidian armor, there's really very little use for Essences at all.) 2. General use mats - Map currency should be tradable for general use items that players of all stripes would either find useful, or that are easily tradable. This is usually Fine/Rare mats, but there is the option of putting in weekly vendors for rarer items appropriate to their zone like Amalgamated Gemstones, Mystic Coins, or Jade Runestones. 3. Vendor trash - As a last resort, all of these map currencies and tokens should have a vendor value so that players can just merch them if there's absolutely nothing else to do with them. Compare the state of worthless items like Eyes of Kormir or Congealed Putrescence with stuff like Resonating Slivers. Although both mats are in the same position, nobody ever complains about Resonating Slivers because players just merch a stack of it to the vendor if their mat storage overflows and think no more of it.

Yup, can confirm that there is a new bug where the event spawns with only 15s on the timer, as opposed to the usual 10 mins.

Yep, I'm 100% sure this is the reason why they're doing it. Unfortunately, I doubt it will work. 😕 Much of the player base already seems to have solidified their opinion on whether content is fun/not fun (in a similar vein, I know a lot of PvE players, includer endgame raiders and such, who say they will absolutely not touch PvP even during this bonus event), and barring some sort of drastic re-pivot (like enabling Emboldened for raids/strikes at all times, and allowing it to work in both normal and CM), I think it's too little, too late for raids and strikes.

Can confirm it's happening for me too.

At this point I'm all for ANet just changing it and going "If you beat 100 CM at least once, as tracked by your achieve, you can now purchase Last Rites." Honestly, it's not even really a prestige item considering it's also a possible drop from CM mode, so in theory you could have someone who just got carried through 1 kill and they were lucky enough to get the drop. Most other CM-locked skins are available as soon as you beat the mode, so I honestly don't see why this one has to be any different.

Yep, same here. I'm uncertain if this change was unintended or not, but if it was intended, please revert it. This is just a QoL downgrade for no real good reason at all. 😛

You can still get the fox chest on the northern side, but yeah, sometimes there is a Lesser Arcane chest spawn right on top of the dome and this one is impossible to get to; it's too far inside the "repulsion field".

Same here for me and my group as well. For data's sake, I had NOT yet completed the original 4 special tasks (A New Friend and Treachery were still unfinished.)

Same bug here.