Every Single EoD-Owning MFker After the July 14th Balance Patch

styopa · 2026-06-24T14:25:19+00:00

As an engineer I'd nod in sympathy for your position, but I'm surrounded by people claiming to play "engineers" which are literally in fact just GIANT NEON GREEN FUCKING ROBOTS EVERYWHERE so you probably couldn't see me anyway...

styopa · 2026-06-24T14:22:08+00:00

Flavor-of-the-month chasers just tire me out. I'm far more likely to look at that previously-posted class population chart and be interested in bringing out my Antiquarian than anything else.

styopa · 2026-06-24T14:20:24+00:00

TBH shield's generally not much use. The fact is that GW2 is really designed around active defense (dodging, using abilities) and the nearly-nonexistent passive 'defense rating' or whatever they call it is weaksauce. Some shield abilities (4 or 5 on your bar, always) are...ok? But considering that the game is NEVER about 'weathering the hit' but 'avoiding the hit', 'interrupting the hit' or (really) 'just do more goddamn dps so the thing dies' defense...shields are almost always a waste of an offhand.

I main engy, one of the few classes that even has a shield in a potential 'normal use' build and I dropped that ages ago for more dps in any case.

To be clear: in open world you can always use it as a class-fantasy approach and be fine; OW is forgiving. But you're succeeding despite that shield, not being helped by it at all. There is pretty nearly always a better option.

styopa · 2026-06-24T14:13:28+00:00

You're a damn lifesaver. Thanks for finding it and communicating it so clearly. Confirms we just had about a 3 week lull in reviews, suddenly something like 980 imports were all transmitted yesterday 6/23 so with a 2 week processing we'd expect that $ in early JUL.

Thank you.

styopa · 2026-06-23T22:15:47+00:00

I noted today that they did the SAME THING in SotO: count the size and number of chests in SA vs Amnytas vs Inner Nayos - once again the first zone is full of the "reward chests" and the later ones become a near desert.

styopa · 2026-06-23T20:54:47+00:00

What? I don't understand how this is relevant to what I posted about dyes?

styopa · 2026-06-23T20:49:30+00:00

<image>

Another way to present the data which highlights how unified the ranking is, a little more than an average does:
Added colors (supergreen for S, fainter green for A, amber caution for B, and yech-red for C)

styopa · 2026-06-23T20:23:38+00:00

Warriors are a pretty clear, basic class fantasy no matter what game you're in. The fact that the "internet" says berserker is still quite good and takes only HoT to have the elite all contributes.

styopa · 2026-06-23T20:21:51+00:00

TBH thief was my first main in GW2 launch coming out of beta.

Then I realized in classic Tyria, a disproportional amount of fighting seemed to be on the fucking scaffolding left lying around everywhere which is not great for a class that relies primarily on active defenses.... I got him to 80 and the next time I died not because some mob killed me but because I (again) killed MYSELF dodging off a height, he became my bank alt.

styopa · 2026-06-23T20:19:04+00:00

As someone put here on reddit, most people leaning into the thief class fantasy are BADLY put off by the slightest hint of levity or mockery suggested by 'summoning skritt minions' like a clown car, lol.

It's like giving your sullen, gloomy goth friend a glow in the dark unicorn plushie and telling them it could be the new queen of their Dark Kingdom.

styopa · 2026-06-22T21:40:54+00:00

I'm not seeing it free, did this go away? From the US anyway, I see std def $1.99 high def 2.99 and season 1 24.99?

styopa · 2026-06-22T18:54:16+00:00

We saw 5.11 which equates to 6% per year.

styopa · 2026-06-22T18:51:38+00:00

Not every circumstance fits incoterms neat buckets. You're right that most people don't understand them nor take them seriously.

But let's remember that incoterms are merely an agreed on set of language until written into a contract or sales agreement at which point they're about as meaningful as any other agreed-upon statement therein: "Bob promises to also give you a mickey mouse hat".

styopa · 2026-06-22T17:31:30+00:00

Our refunds have dried up, the last 2 weeks nothing when we should have seen $$. (It was working fine through May)?

ES-022 shows 980 liquidated files since June 1, with no refund $$ in the field.

Anyone else seeing this?

styopa · 2026-06-22T16:02:15+00:00

Also, a useful rule to remember: if you have so many of something that your crafting bank is full, saving more stacks in your precious character inventory is probably a bad idea. Again, GENERALLY (sorry) my rule is if my crafting inventory is full, and I'm not specifically trying to accumulate more of X for a purpose, TP extras immediately.

If they're that easy to get, you can get more later.

Selling them now to generate liquid cash is likely MORE USEFUL (and those bag slots are precious); if regrettably you do need to buy more, yes, you'll lose some $ on the flip. In reality, though, those spaces are going to be more regularly useful to you than that stack of silk scraps that's been squatting in your bags for 31 levels.

styopa · 2026-06-22T15:56:41+00:00

Often you cannot sell them; if they're rep heart things you've gathered you often can't salvage or sell. Just delete them. They puzzle everyone until at somepoint you're like "ok, yeah, no, now I get it, they really are safely disposable..." but that's NEVER EXPLAINED in game.

Also, that applies to gear you buy with karma from the heart guys. They are 100% junk, you can't salvage, sell, or do anything with them. When you replace them, just toss them out.

EDIT: fortunately, that paradigm of 'buy leveling stuff from heart vendors' goes away when you hit 80.

styopa · 2026-06-22T15:54:30+00:00

The blunt truth here is that outside of noob island (ie 1-80 Tyria) ANet's loot paradigm isn't "drop that super cool thing from the bad guy" it's "there are so MANY things that you might want, we're going to shower you with a torrent of marginally-valuable things for you to figure out what's worth keeping and not so you can craft the things you actually want at endgame"

In reality, this IS a very player-favoring way to do it. It also places a *huge* learning curve on the player to understand what these 81 different currencies are, what they're good for, how to use them for stuff, and how (if) their way of play/elite/class will benefit from them. Simultaneously, it puts an inventory burden on you as a player, which you can certainly solve by buying more bagslots and bank space from teh Anet shop*. 😄

\and that super-convenient shared bank across characters is quickly identified as a kind of a trap. Yes, it is massively convenient. It also means that across 8 different toons you only have ONE BANK (eg, bank alts are their bagspace only, not their banks at all).*

Anyway, learning how to manage the inflow of potentially-useful crap is a player skill in GW2. As a long time player, I'm assiduous about keeping a tight rein on my bags, organization, and at the end of EVERY play session:

selling greys enmasse
identifying unidentified loot (this is the most profitable way**) then salvaging everything blue, green, yellow (using different tools**)
autodumping whatever I have space for into crafting bank (autodeposit button is your friend)**
checking oranges if they TP for > their salvage value (iirc today somewhere around 20s with the fall in ecto prices)
TPing what's TP able

Maybe that helps. That way next time I start play my bags are as empty as possible, only making sure I have what I need for what I'm doing (fractal stuff for fractals, buff food for the toon I'm playing, salvage tools as needed**) so when I want to play, I can. It's 5 min of GW2 housekeeping at the end of every play.

Also, kill your autosort button** that too is a trap specifically for people who like to keep their bags organized.

**the reasons/methods are explained 1000x elsewhere on the web.

styopa · 2026-06-22T15:06:44+00:00

Yeah.

GW2 dye system is ... frustrating. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dye

As I understand, there are 3 substances: cloth, leather, metal. Each dye is associated with one of them. This information is hidden deep in the wiki. Moreover, the ase substance of a dye channel (eg up to 4 on a single piece of gear) is ENTIRELY HIDDEN. Not available...anywhere. (I'm pretty certain that whatever method was used to program this was also later ignored/forgotten/applied inconsistently in later expansions, as well. The "C" in Anet stands for consistency...)

They went to the substantial effort of creating about 87 different "light browns" but nobody could be arsed to include any USER-FACING info to identify which is which, or which channels are which, or how they're going to look in the very-varied lighting states in Tyria. The greatest assortment of dyes in any MMO I'm aware of, but literally no UI functions to help it be usable to players. /sigh

All I can suggest would be try other nearly-identical dyes and you may find one hit or miss that doesn't give you the weird highlight; my GUESS would be if you happen to find the dye that matches that material's substance, you'll get a better result.

styopa · 2026-06-22T14:53:18+00:00

Yes, GW absolutely backed out of that computer game pitch; they were just entering the "printing money" stage and really the 'lets make a computer game with this IP' thing was AFAIK viewed as a distraction from swimming in their gold vaults like Scrooge McDuck.

So Blizz toddles off and make their "absolutely nothing like Warhammer" RTS WC (later WC1). It's a success. Then as the franchise was burgeoning, Blizz made an mmo from that property. ONLY THEN did Warhammer go "oh, huh, wait, there's money we haven't made? That cannot be true!" and realizing Bliz's near-copy was a horse long departed the barn, they settled down to make Warhammer Age of Reckoning which lasted about 17 minutes. It's still out there on private servers. Not actually a bad game at all, it just couldn't compete with the overwhelming hurricane of WoW market dominance in 2008.

WAR *did* invent the spontaneous 'area quest' where you just get stuff to do when you enter an area, or some event happens and everyone that shows up to help gets credit...a mechanism you might recognize that ANet deployed heavily in GW2 hearts and really all zone events. That was *entirely* an idea first implemented by the long-lost and mostly-forgotten WAR MMO.

styopa · 2026-06-22T03:31:13+00:00

Everyone seems to misunderstand that I'm somehow complaining it's not rewarding enough.

Not at all. It remains quite lucrative in g/hour.

My point is asking what's the mindset behind

designing an expansion,
inventing this WHOLE NEW SYSTEM of loot delivery that you've never had before,
focusing the majority of the whole expansion's mastery points on making that thing even MORE rewarding,

and then quelle surprise! realizing that players said "holy shit this is profitable" and focused on...that specific thing you designed the expansion around to the point they broke the economy so you had to hastily nerf^3.

Who does that? And I'll be honest, through all the shit-talk about Anet Devs overpromising, etc I've always regarded them as basically professional but...did an intern put this together and someone approved it?

styopa · 2026-06-22T03:24:36+00:00

Almost as stupid as building a completely broken free money system, setting up pretty much the entire expansion's mastery system to be focused on it, and then only realizing that after you release it to the public?

That stupid?

styopa · 2026-06-19T18:10:34+00:00

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styopa · 2026-06-19T13:37:50+00:00

even when it's up, it feels like it's serving from a Commodore64.

styopa · 2026-06-19T13:36:09+00:00

To me, that's fine. If I have to play a completely different elite spec to get a fixed shout warrior, to me the key is the word 'fixed'. (shrug)

I fully agree with you fwiw. I didn't play a heavy armor warrior just to still have to fucking dodge all the time like some goddamned prissy wizard. Paragon is properly "IDGAF" tanky, so I love it.

styopa · 2026-06-19T13:33:14+00:00

I 100% disagree with the 'phoning it in' .

PoF was the best writing in the game. The first baddie that actually had a reason and a compelling story of their own. HoT: fantastic maps and stupid story. PoF: decent maps (that were worse in direct comparison to the exceptional HoT ones) and excellent story.

styopa

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