Two unrelated shorts that I felt like commenting about:
“Salvaging exotics make me feel ill. I only ever did it once and it was so depressing I never even considered doing it again. Having it as an actual mechanic is incredibly off-putting. Those things should be loved and cherished and desired, not melted down for spare parts.”
Bhagpuss, from a very interesting comments thread in his Sitting It Out Post
I have to agree, though I do have 12 Globs of Dark Matter sitting in the bank from biting the bullet and salvaging the exotics my artificer produced on his way to 450+ crafting. It was either that or sell them on the TP for prices I was sure were lowered in value since everyone and their mother was also doing the same thing.
This is perhaps irrational sentimentality, but I have this hoarded collection in my bank, and am so far unwilling to get rid of them via TP or salvage or what have you:
From top left to bottom right, they are Ebonblade, Pillar of Ulgoth, Mecha Anchor, Siren’s Call, Master Blaster, Arc and Settler’s Amulet of the Apothecary.
Perhaps you can tell my weakness is generally for named exotics. Some of them have stories attached to them.
Iirc, I got Ebonblade out of the end chest of the Lost Shores Karka Chest, along with Magmaton (presently sitting happy with my warrior.)
Pillar of Ulgoth of course dropped during one of the rare times I chased the whole centaur chain in Harathi Hinterlands to completion.
Mecha Anchor and Siren’s Call were random drops, but one looks cool and I think the other was one of the first ever exotics that dropped in WvW for me.
Master Blaster, how can you not love a name like that?
Arc came from chasing champions, the only exotic that dropped from those chests for me (which shows you my rotten RNG luck.)
The Settler’s Amulet from one of my peaceful farming interludes cleaning out karka, which came as a total surprise, since I had no idea these things could drop.
It’s sad that a good part of this named stuff isn’t of much value besides the chance they might have a good skin or sigil to make use of. Certainly nothing along the lines of being excited to see a precursor name or legendary name.
I understand rationally the need to start salvaging, since these things random drop and will accumulate over time, causing supply to keep building up with insufficient demand, If we don’t want a price crash on these things over time, then it’s good to make their salvage product special and valued.
But it still feels kinda sad that that’s all they’re being relegated to.
(Maybe if more new legendaries came out, these would eventually have their day in the sun when they turn into precursors.)
—
Massively just recently put up a Daily Grind post on the dungeons you hate in a game you love.
I confess I’m stunned to see the amount of massive GW2 dungeon hate.
I know rationally that this is self-selecting. People avidly playing games of their choice do not really frequent a conglomerate news site talking about the latest, greatest MMO to check out. (Personally I stopped haunting the place daily once I committed to GW2.)
But given the amount of incomprehension on how players can contribute to their group while in a team, I suddenly understand why it is that in most of my PUGs, bleeding or poison conditions only fly off people when -I- press a skill.
It sounds elitist, maybe, which is odd, because I consider myself a rank amateur at dungeons.
I suppose this is again self-selecting. People who have terrible trouble and bad experiences in dungeons generally do not repeat the same activity over and over. They stay far away, having been burned, and rarely get any further learning done.
Maybe what is needed is a general principles guide on how to contribute to a team in GW2. The value of buffing might and stacking vulnerability debuffs, the value of condition removals, how to recognize and make use of combo fields and blast finishers, and so on.
I don’t know how much it will help if people simply don’t read or choose to learn how to improve though.
I just did a guild mission the other day in one of my big guilds, which contain a vast spectrum of players. It was the Southsun Crab Scuttle, which as everyone knows, is one of the most challenging guild rushes currently available. Skilled players had finished first, way sooner than me even, since I oh so cleverly bolted headlong into traps twice trying to follow another player and avoid the karka chasing me, though I should have known better. As we finished, we turned back to clearing the path and escorting others, making it easier for the rest to get through…
… yet despite all my chasing after a few people, trying to communicate to them that they should DODGE to remove the baby karka debuff that is on them so that they can heal up, they never did.
You can imagine how much luck they had blundering straight into traps, their hp withering away, unable to stop and heal up because of an explosive karka debuff hanging around on them, despite all our efforts to fling heals, protection, aegis and regeneration onto them.
They gave up. It was “too hard.”
Folks, no one can help you if you don’t first help yourselves.
Why I Game 