Bright Oblivion.2856

Not so much proud as relieved it's over, but I finally finished the "Champions" Mastery achievement over the weekend. If the DRMs had been spread out, it might not have been as rough, but all at once like that was a doozy. Other than that, I guess I've mostly been slowly progressing toward parts of purple armors since coming back from an extended (almost a year?) break from the game last month. I've been doing a fair bit of PvP to try to get ascended shards of glory (less than 150 pips from being able to craft my chest piece) and running around HoT maps to finish Gifts of Dedication and grab Provisioner Tokens once a day, because I decided that I'd use a different method for each of the three armor weights (WvW medium is already done) for the sake of variety/"the experience." I think what I'm most proud of recently, though, is coaxing myself back into/through my first raid wing since the break put me back on the wrong side of all of the anxiety I'd fought through to dive into them the first time. It was just Wing 1, and I was super rusty, but it's at least a first step back up that hill. (Fortunately I'd pretty much just done wings 1-3 before my break, so at least I don't have far to go before I'm back where I was, I guess.)

I managed to avoid it for a few matches this morning, but have now very much gotten stuck at "Match is about to begin." A tow out of this rut would be much appreciated.

I think they only added the achievement today, since they were already adding one for the post-LS3 conversation. It'll still be several weeks (until we've unlocked all the previous episodes in LS4) before we're actually able to unlock it.

As Rasimir said, it seems less a "We don't want to put in the effort to fix it" and more "The people who would fix it are currently working on other (possibly EoD-related) things and can't work on this right now." Which, depending on how complex such a system as you're suggesting actually is to implement, they might also not have the appropriate resources (read: engineering peoples) available to do that right now, either. I think we're kind of just in a waiting game right now. I also think it unlikely that after they expressly decided not to include Slumbering Conflux in the Armory (you have to trade it to Hobbs and get the regular version to add it), they'll agree to a solution that involves adding a slumbering version (at least of that ring) to it. I could be wrong, though.

So, here's what really frustrates me: When they wrote the patch notes, someone at least thought about the wells in WvW and PvP enough to make separate reductions for their cooldowns. A day later, these reductions, which they specifically made in WvW and PvP, are removed. Additionally, they remove the well trait in the name of it generally not being competitive enough to be chosen, and then they do this to Sand Savant a day later. Now it has double the normal shade cooldown of normal shade and hits a maximum of four targets (two at the shade and two around you), as opposed to the maximum of 8 (3 shades at 2 targets each, plus 2 around you) of normal shade. The trait is not just not-super-competitive - It's actively detrimental. I mean, I know "Arenanet not communicating with their players" is kind of a meme at this point. But this makes it seem almost like they don't even communicate with each other, and gives their players whiplash as a result. It's really not a pleasant feeling.

This 100%. The way the ticket cap, pip system, and ticket placement within the skirmish chests interact doesn't reduce burnout. It directly contributes to it. As mentioned above, even assuming you can reach the ticket cap each week, you're looking at 20+ weeks for a set of legendary armor or about 6 weeks for Slumbering Conflux. There's no way to catch up or to reduce that time. Bad matchup? Too bad. I guess you're spending more time in WvW this week. Great matchup? Too bad. You can still only get 365 tickets a week. But to get those 365 tickets, even with 5 pips per tick (which isn't incredibly difficult, provided you reach at least rank 150 and maintain your Commitment pip), you're still looking at 24 hours and 10 minutes of WvW every single week. That's 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, week after week, in order to get enough tickets for whatever it is you're going for. You're able to reduce this to an extent by being in a higher placed server (which has more to do with your server's coverage at a given time than anything else), by being a higher rank (your next pip comes at rank 620, and then at 1395, so you're looking at an exponentially increasing time investment there), or by finding an outnumbered map and taking camps, herding yaks, or defending/repairing structures that are under attack, but there's only so much you can do, and you're still restricted to 365 tickets. And then there's how the tickets are distributed into the skirmish chests themselves. Of the 365 total tickets for the week, 90 of them are tossed into the Diamond chests. If you stop short of Mithril, that's an additional 83 tickets every single week that you're missing out on. In other words, by skipping the last two sets of chests each week, you'd be cutting your weekly ticket gains almost in half. Those 20+ weeks to get a full set of legendary armor? They're now 40+. The kicker in all of this is that one of the major draws of being a higher rank or being on a server that does better in the skirmish is that you get more pips and finish the skirmish track faster. This means that those on the higher end are getting tickets faster than they can find something to do with them (and then not getting much else from repeating the diamond chests), and those on the lower end are basically working a part-time job trying to reach the cap each week. All in all, if the goal of the system is to reduce burnout, it's not doing a good job of it. In any event, I've got one more week until I finish the last piece of my medium legendary armor, and then another few weeks for Conflux. After that, I'm probably going to take some time to see what the game is like when I'm not spending 20 hours a week, every single week, chasing skirmish tickets. Edit: To be clear, it's not that I don't enjoy WvW. I generally do. Or did? It's just, with as much time as goes into trying to max the weekly skirmish track, it's truly beginning to feel like the rest of the game is passing me by, and it's getting to be especially draining. In any case, it's one of those things that should probably change somehow, but also probably won't.

i gave up the wvw legendary armor really early. there is no way i can get rank 2000 . i am not a hard core wvw player. but i am a veteran, for 5 years played time. i still havent get to rank 600. To be clear, you don't need to be rank 2000 to get the basic set of legendary armor. That's just for the fancier set with an animation when you enter combat. If you just go for the Triumphant Hero's armor (as opposed to the Mistforged version), rank doesn't matter. Mind you, it's still a massive amount of tickets and WvW to get the pieces, but it's not "Reach rank 2000 before you start." As others have said, your best bets for speeding it up are finding outnumbered maps and making sure to at least finish Wood IV for the +1 commitment pip. Otherwise, it's just a matter of spending more time there. Good luck!

To add to the above, if you complete the achievement line for Bright Shore (a Kodan located at the Ruined Hut PoI in the eastern half of Bjora), he will be able to sell you an ascended amulet for Eternal Ice shards. If you also add the trinket from Still Waters Speaking and the ring and trinket from Dragonfall, you just need a backpack (a bit more tricky to get, but the one in Bitterfrost might be easiest) and another ring (either Bitterfrost using berries or Sandswept Isles getting the Difluorite from Bjora exchange again) to be fully accessorized. I've just finished doing this process to help gear up two alts, and it's gone very well. I had a couple backpacks that didn't have stats selected and a ring from doing season 3 stuff a long time ago, so I just need to decide how I want to get a second diviner's ring for the other.

So, on the one hand, I'm already working on a few legendaries right now, with 2 pieces of WvW legendary armor finished, Aurora needing a Mystic Tribute/100 icy runestones to complete, the Visions of _____ achievement lines slowly getting completed, and my Emblems of the Conqueror and Avenger already earned, and the prospect of being able to use those legendaries on multiple toons at once without jumping through tons of hoops is exciting. That said, it also depends on how they implement it. If you have to spend a lot of gems to unlock each piece or to unlock the armory on each character, or they make it overly tedious to use and it massively restricts what styles I can use on the armor, then that's going to be a serious turn-off for me. If they implement it well, though, I may be encouraged to venture into PvP and raids, two areas I haven't even really dipped my toes into, to maybe try for those legendaries as well. We'll see when it comes out.

I can confirm that the late Tuesday fix has addressed this bug. I just did a 2 CM run through this with Horde and Final Boss, got the Imperator rank because the group was amazing and blew through every event, and the achievement popped. Checking with the other people in the group, it also popped for them. Thanks for the fix, Arenanet!

Agreed. It also seems particularly misleading that an achievement that only says "Reach X thing" doesn't pop when you reach X thing, instead requiring you to do Y which it gives absolutely zero indication of you having to do. If the achievement says to reach Imperator rank, you should get it for reaching Imperator rank. No additional strings or requirements attached.

I'm also thinking it's bugged. I was in a group yesterday (after yesterday's patch) where we knocked out the Horde and Final Boss CMs, did all the events (including the ones for Heavy Rival) and beat the champ at the start, then three-burned the boss, completing the Bonus Time Trial. When the Final Rank popup appeared, it said I'd reached Imperator. However, it failed to reward the achievement credit for reaching the Imperator rank. I was (and still am) decidedly confused. I've had an absolute blast with the vast majority of this update, enjoyed the story, liked the new strike mission, and loved the reward system changes for the old strike missions. But I'd be lying if I said the bugged achievements (like this one appears to be) and the ones which could honestly be worded better (like Heavy Rival which says nothing about killing 15 foes being required, just participation in the event) didn't put a damper on things.

In addition to this pet issue, grabbing the coins or the chest in Siren's Reef now unsummons the Soulbeast's pet even while merged. So it went from merged to treasure grabbed to no pet and I have to re-merge while fighting off all the ghosts. Every. Single. Time.

Prologue: Bound by Blood: Braham once again will be able to overcome the mental prison of his guilt and leave his cell in the "Bad Blood" chapter. From the patch notes for the patch that just came out. Logging in right now to check! EDIT: And he's fixed! Yayyyyy! Thanks @Connor Fallon.9408 !

Thinking it's pinned down doesn't mean the fix is done, tested, and ready to ship in the next few hours. When there's a patch (I'm hoping tomorrow, Friday at latest), it'll hopefully be fixed. Don't get me wrong. I'm just as frustrated to not be able to continue the story as the next person, and I've been checking the fora every couple hours to see if there was a response or a patch. But if tripping over themselves to rush this out leads to either them not getting it fixed right or them breaking something else, I'd rather they do their stuff. They acknowledged it, they think they have a solution, and it's being processed. Hopefully it's not being held up so they can drop more fixes at the same time.