For crying out loud people...

Learn economics!
Everywhere I go I hear "now that monks are nerfed ecto will go down in price".
WRONG! Now that there are LESS ecto being introduced into the society, people will turn to the VENDORS. The vendors will then raise their prices because the demand is higher.

LESS of something = MORE COST

STOP PRETENDING EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT NOW THAT PROT BOND IS NERFED! The economy is about to skyrocket, and your savings which you thought were so large for a while are going to become infinitesimal compared to the prices that are going to be charged for things.

Those fellblades you took for granted are going to no longer be 5k for a max dmg gold with a vampiric hilt.
Those ectos are going to cost you as much as your guild hall.
Those superior runes are going to cost you as much as all your armour sets you ever bought.
AND, we can't forget, that black dye is gonna cost you more than you bought the game for.





Unless Devs up the drop rates of items that are worth the effort of selling to a special vendor/person instead of just to the merchant (by at least 500%), nobody is going to be able to afford anything in PvE, and therefore they will not do PvE. And your precious PvP will dwindle with only the elite getting any money through selling sigils - which will go down drastically in selling price because nobody is buying them. All in all, unless you're resetting the vendor prices once every few days, you're going to have most of the game community quit.
Way to go, Devs. Your worst decision since letting warrior/monks ascend.

What? And what's wrong with letting warriors/monks ascend?

Check the price of ecto. Still 9k. Get over it. Im sick of people going around telling me the build is nerfed. YOU CAN STILL SOLO UW. Black dye - 8k Wow. It was 5k before the economy was "blown to pieces"(as some have said, not quoting from you)

just because your angry that you actually have to think while soloing UW instead of mindlessly doing nothing, doesnt mean that everyones going to start quitting GW...

Quit because ecto is 9k? Why? I'm a normal person who's just fine without the FoW armor on me. I don't need to carry around a suit of armor that costs 1,080,000 (A PIECE!) gold in ecto. I'd rather sell the ecto and buy all the 15k armors for my characters(all for sets, for all four characters...wooo) If you ask me, having 16 sets of 15k armor is much better than having 1 FoW piece...

The only way they could possibly nerf the monk build is to redo the skill entirely. Because it wasn't a glitch in the system that allowed monks to solo UW, it was just a build with the skills they gave you. but i can tell that you're not the kind of person to create your own soloing build and just steal other peoples builds...right?

You missed the point.
Not just ecto, not just soloing UW. Frankly I didn't do much of either.
Remember when minor runes cost 1k a piece? That's not far off again. And unless we get price resets every few days (or, to make it easier, RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing static prices) then we're going to have new people not being able to play the game at all unless they get lucky and find a guild that has a lot of money and is willing to help.

[but i can tell that you're not the kind of person to create your own soloing build and just steal other peoples builds...right?]

Lol just like the other 99.9% of the players do out there.

Actually, the level 17 cast prot bond was the only thing I stole from the 105 build.
The other things I used to farm before, and still use desperately farming the last good places left.
I do not steal builds, I am far too proud to do that. Ask any of my guild mates, our guild section of the forums are filled with strats I come up with and how they work with other strats I've come up with. I am always tweaking the build I'm using, determined to find a good in-between. I have unlocked almost every skill of all the professions I play (only a few that really don't peak my interest are left out), and I have stacks of papers all over my desk with build notes on them.
Frankly, your accusing me of being the general soloing n00b offends me and pisses me off. And if that's all you can think to do in this thread, then get lost.

Ummm... As a European player, i know that the rise in prices you predicted is rubbish.

people didn't all quit playing in Europe because Ectos were expensive. Before the economies of each continent were all merged, Europe only had the Ectos coming in while Europe had favour. And how often was that!? now there's ectos coming into the economy ALL the time. Ectos might have been 17K and black dye 20K before the economy was "blown to pieces" but people didn't leave just cos they couldnt all have FoW armour.

Well least where on a level playing field now. Not just one build making all the money nowe is it.

What was stopping you from making a monk to be able to supply your account (and friends, as I did mostly) with gold (and items, as I also did)? Laziness? Refusing to realize the potential?
Please...
You can still farm with Eles in places, are you going to say that they have an advantage now?

[]Frankly, your accusing me of being the general soloing n00b offends me and pisses me off. And if that's all you can think to do in this thread, then get lost.]

Fact is you can't "prove" any of your statements to be "true". It's easy to sit on a computer and type anything disproving another. I'll stick by that 99.9% copy others builds since that also can't be proven false or true.

Team play. Dont want to play solo on own is why I didnt but I was close to being pushed to do one because I couldnt compete with the Auction Prices. War/Monks Bidding 1.2 million for weapons because they could easily afford too. Most ive ever had in pot is about 40 plat. And you say prices were being lowered??

. . .

ok.. soo i just went to check the price of minro runes. still 100g. Rune drops, on the most part, were never effected by UW/FOW as far as i can tell (except for the superior absorption and vigor runes, MAYBE).

Your logic is far off. also im glad what ANet did, they didn't nerf the solo monk build, they just 'nerfed' it to the point where only people with skill can use it. This will hopefully prevent a bunch of bandwagon idiots from trying to make the build from an online web forum and then being one of hundreds of other 55/105 monks soloing.

Although you can solo certain area's of the game (not just talking about farming here), Guild wars is much more rewarding as a team game. I think this is what ANet is trying to support.


As far as the economy goes, as long as all the continents are connected, the prices will never fluctuate a lot ever again. I can see ecto going up to possibly 15k but that seems like it will be the only thing affected by this quasi-nerf.

The price of ectoplasm was never tied to the existance of the UW solo monk. Throughout this whole debacle the price of ecto has remained stable at about 10k (currently a little less). I see no reason why that is about to change.

As for runes, black dyes, and all the other items that people usully measure the state of the economy by, they've been relatively stable in price after the fix of August 11. Oh, and monk superior runes are now actually available at the trader.

Contrary to what way too many people are predicting, the sky is not falling.


ManaCraft

It's really not plausible to say that if the "soloing" builds are nerfed certain items will skyrocket without knowing Anet's economic model or their underlying intentions. Let me explain, perhaps Anet is trying to get more people to *gulp* actually play in groups through UW. I know it's a crazy idea but just maybe Anet figures if people actually go out and try to get the items themselves instead of buying from farming builds that the demand for ectos and such won't be so high on the vendors. Also if people actually did some of the leg work themselves they wouldn't need to buy those super rare 100K + ecto items because they by chance, might actually get it on their own.

Nonetheless, since the rampant amount of solo build farmers it has been very difficult for many to find a good group to test their luck in UW. Especially since it seems that every monk hangin around TOA is just a 105/55 and even those who were once healing monks converted. More than 1/2 the groups I joined the monk(s) goes off on their own leaving the rest for dead.. i want to play.. not watch some guy do his invinci-crap. Nor do I want to be forced to only buy from a monk or vendor.

If you haven't noticed the game was built where it really requires a balance of professions to conquer an area or beat an opponent. If you're able to farm an area solo because you figured out how to work the skill system I'm all for it... just don't whine when Anet decides to nerf things because they feel it will enhance the game for others. I'd rather they nerf a skill than nerf the drops.

And just like Gwahir said people won't quit just cuz they can't have FoW armor. I would see more people quitting if everywhere you went the drops were nerf'd badly, as that would leave very little motivation for people to keep playing. Imagine picking up 6-8dmg weapons or not getting any drops at all in UW... no one would even bother.

I take one day off of GW to enjoy D2 and people are already complaing about the econ.. don't tell me they are blaming Anet as well, people who point fingers at Anet and greedy childeren who are too childish to solve their own problems.. so FoW armor is actualy going to require effort again, big woop

anyone not planning on buying fow armor has no use for ectos
anyone with enough money to blow on fow armor in the first place has no room to bitch
period

You *ARE* a general soloing n00b because you made the silly insinuation that by nerfing the prot bond, they also stopped the 105/55 from soloing. WRONG. There are still plenty of monks soloing the underworld with a slightly tweaked build, such as the one posted at GWonline. I don't see why nerfing the prot bond would change anything on the scale as you have suggested.

i heard that they nerfed protective bond because it was unfair in pvp... i heard they were gonna switch it back

Its really silly to see people whine and whine on why they can't solo UW anymore because 17prot bond is nerfed. Live with it or find another way.

If you can't solo, then go in a group. So maybe all the ecto won't drop for you, but at least you won't be bored!

If you think people are gonna quit because ecto prices are gonna skyrocket, you're on crack. Fissure armor has the exact same stats. Looks a bit better, so what?! Quitting cause you can't look a bit better? I wouldn't mind you quitting guild wars to save you some face.

If I remember correctly this is like the 2nd or 3rd thread you've started about protective bond...the only people effected by the nerf of Protective Bond were the people that stole the build off the internet and never really understand what was going on. Everybody else has tweaked their builds and continues to farm UW, Hydras, Griffons, Flesh Golems....etc.

Honestly, has anyone observed the frequency of drops improving? How about the quality of the weapon? When I first played GW in its' last days of Beta (the Glory Days) prior to release, the drops were mad and the quality tantalizing.

Those were the days of Warrior/Monk solo farming Sanctum Cay Giants where every drop was a guaranteed Gold, Purple, Blue. I recall picking up my first Major Absorption there and a host of other runes from Superior to Minor. Those were also the days of guranteed Gold, Purple, and Blue drops in parties. I recall taking home 3-5 plat per run during missions and the game was easier to play.

Now, I take my ranger to accomplish the first attribute point quest, kill a LVL 20 Hydra in the Crystal Desert and get one Gold drop, an Earth Wand, not max dmg, that identifies as Energy +4 .. and that is considered a rare, thus valuable, drop. It is almost a slap in the face. Solo farming for these items brings much gold if sold unidentified and I have, over the course of the game, gotten many gold items I have in storage unidentified.

However, this is a travesty as there is no longer a reward system in GW, an environment where you have to participate to be randomly rewarded. The kick in the gut is once you expose your "treasure" to find it is nothing but driftwood. I couldn't even hope to sell that Earth Wand if I tried. Yet, had I left it unid it would easily go for about 10 plat. Now it is worthless, a mere 500 gold.

No drops in UW or finding driftwood weapons is still a reality for me and unless you spend time, and I mean time, in an area, the likely hood of a casual gamer (one with more than eat, deficate, sleep, and game to do) is more than likely to find at the end of the week an inventory full of freebies for the newbies in Ascalon. Oh and I do not mean drops in Riverside, I mean drops at the end of the game. And for the life of me how is it pre-searing ascalon Black and Silver Dyes are more prevalent then in post? I am so tempted to solo farm on a cash bot (not a real bot, just mindlesy running about) character through pre-searing. In a month I could prob net 100 plat off black dyes alone.

Yeah I am ranting cause I remember the days when drops were good, gold easy to get, and the game community thrived. Those hard core gamers got rich, the casuals were well off, and it was fun. Now this game has degenerated into an ecto war, shard fight, build RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO, solo fest leaving the proportion of players broke and without restitution.

I still enjoy GW, have had times of Gold drops in consecutive missions, have enjoyed the good times, have enjoyed the bad times, still plan to play GW, but hope Anet begins to seriously look at this for what it is .. a damn game and not some economic experiement echoing real life on Wall Street or run by some think tank. Hell yeah I want my gold drops back .. at least 5 per mission, and id-ing with at least 6 stats not some lousy Damge +10 (1% chance) crap. No I am not a greedy bastage or something like that, just long for the old days.

Rant Off, gg, back to work, kthxbye

if you get 5 gold drops per mission....and I get 5 gold drops per mission...and johny stinkballs gets 5 gold drops per mission....collectively we've put 15 "rare" drops into our inventory in about an hour....multiply that by 200,000. Are gold drops even "rare" anymore at this point?

Well, too many gold drops would seem unfair as well. 5 gold per person from one mission? For crying out loud, why not just make that damn item blue instead. Its called RARE for a reason!

Nailz ... stinkballs? Why not runnynose or badbreath? -- Hehe kidding. Well to be quite honest, that was the way it was when the game first came out. Oh and the term "rare" was not a Guild Wars, NCSoft, or Anet term. That was ascribed by players in classifying the color code on items. The way it is supposed to work, there is a chance to receive, through random assignment, an item whose quality value - denoted by color - is assigned. If Blue, then the quality and value is fair. If Purple, then the quality and vlaue is good. If Gold, then the quality and value is excellent.

All items have a base value, their attribute either dmg or energy, etc. Then an unknown quality. At the present time, none of this is consistent. One can receive a Purple item in name only, the name of the object is purple or gold, nothing more. Now what the hell is that? Or a Gold item identifying to some obscure parameter whose quality is on par with pre-searing. This did not happen months ago.

I am not proposing that every gold weapon identify Vampiric 5/1, hell no! What I am suggesting is that GW be realigned to practicality since buying a Gold un-id item is the most riskiest thing to do but if the seller ids it and it lists some off the wall value, that is even worse. I do not know about anyone else but when I see something in-game that is suppsoed to be (now with all the nerfs) rarer and it turns into a lemmon, that pisses me off.

I can agree with you that purple and gold items should have some innate magic or modifier....getting a gold or purple drop that identifies as nothing but a white drop with a purple/gold name can be aggrevating...but purple and gold(far more so than purple) are rare items and should remain rare.

I don't disagree with you but not receiving, in a party of 8 that has explored a very large area of the Crystal Desert and killed many a creature, not one item with a quality value makes me think even Blue items are rare?????? Hell for that matter items appropriate to the area one is in are rare.

That is why you can receive a Flachion 12-18 DMG in the southern Shiverpeaks. Now who the hell is using that or why does that creature have that weapon on them. Did some straggler happen by at level 10 and decide "I can kick me some Mountain Troll ass!"?

Nothing is consistent and I have noticed even runes drops trailing off as if everything is tending toward rarity. Don't even get me started on UW or FoW with their Dark Remains and Shadow items. Ohh an Obsidian Shard or Ectoplasm .. kewl if you are fortunate and spend "time" and happen not to be the recipent of greed and one monk that allows the whole party to be wiped out so they can farm all the drops left behind... you know who you are

Purple is more like uncommon item! And the gold a rare item. I too agree that all gold items should have decent modifiers and purple items should have SOME modifier, but hey, its like gambling! Luck of the draw.

even you do not need to ask that question.

I'd say maybe a rare per person with decent mods would be pretty balanced, and most of the stuff from droknar's onwards should be max dmg. I know how you feel when this rare item drops but its just off the max dmg. Its extremely frustrating, and its even worse when you find out its 15>50.

All drops have been nerfed hard, and Im feeling the pain too. I'd wish for better items, but not gold items dropping frequently. Farmers have pretty much made life for us normal people harder.....

That monk is pretty screwed up, he probably did it cause a rare chaos axe or something dropped and everyone but him died. There are lots of stupid people in this game....

If that were the case, why haven't the drop rewards increased in partying? If that were the case, it wouldn't be trying to get people to play in groups, it would be trying to force them to play in groups.

So when you pick it up, that "[Player Name] picked up the rare long sword." is ascribed by the players hmm?

Solo monk dictating the price of ecto?? See what happens when you build a 'invici' monk - you get delusions on grandeur.

STOP promulgating this MYTH. ANet can easily increase ecto drops to fight your mythical economy.

Second, if people stop stockpiling for no reason and scamming newbies the economy would be much more to everyones liking.

The only people that makes the economy unstable are the two extremes - rich farmers and newbs with ebay accounts.
Marry these two and you get a sword with req 8 suddenly worth 200k.

BTW - there is little difference *in use* between purple 12>50 and gold 15>50 sword.
A typical hit has about 1-3 damage difference.
You can easily negate that with a proper build and skill set.

In response to the original poster, there may be an overall reduction in quantities of solo monk farmers since the recent patch, however there are still a ton of monks with a revised build doing UW runs, so it's not exactly like the ecto supply has dried up.
Regardless, if a solo monk receives 3 globs on a run, or a group of 8 receives the same 3 globs amongst them, it's still 3 globs out there in the economy.

And other than the purple items that drop from quest chests in UW/FoW, there really isn't anything else of worth that drops in UW or Fissure except globs and shards. So how the global number of soloing monks affects the rarity of the max gold fellblade or black dye is a mystery to me. If a fellblade drops to a farmer, or to a team doing a mission, it drops, and enters the marketplace. Whether or not it dropped at all is not a factor of the group's composition, but rather random chance. The only advantage a solo farmer has is that all drops, good, poor, or middling, are assigned to you, and that in certain areas, you can produce a time efficient kill (read:drop) rate. However, those limited areas where the 55 monk excelled were not known for dropping high end items. High end, expensive items are much more likely to be found by groups doing late game missions, or by top-end pvp players in the HoH chest. The solo monks were certainly not responsible for keeping the global economy stocked up on fellblades, 10/10 sundering axes, or +30 fort items.

Couple that with the amount of other builds farming (ie: warriors running griffons, as an example), and I don't think there's been a overall decrease in the total number of drops over time, or at least, not enough to affect the economy in a serious way.

In any given day, x items/gold pieces drop in all instances in all regions, based on the number of total kills. The 55 monk had an advantage in the speed at which they could kill (at least in certain areas), so they may have had a minor effect on the total "x" on that day, granted, as small as it may have been. But with the revised monk farmer builds, who are still doing the exact same thing they were before, as well as all other builds and classes that are farming, as well as the "normal" group misson/questing/exploring drops, I suspect that "x" is very much the same now as it was pre-patch, or at least close enough that the differences are negligible. It seems to be borne out by the relative stability in price of ecto and shards pre and post patch.

So other than requiring the former 55 monks to revisit the build and adapt it to the new skill description (thereby causing the mindless types some consternation because the build they copied verbatium doesnt work like it did last week), the real effect of the skill changes, not just to protective bond but all of the adusted skills, lies primarily in pvp.

At least, in my opinion.

Anything dropping doesn't enter the marketplace until sold. If you find something and plop it in storage, it doesn't exist in the market.

On top of that, people collecting ecto for armour, that ecto will never enter the market and there'll be one less person shifting gold.

lol this is hilarious OP is in no offense
invigorated

Damn, people are still talking about this nerfed build, huh? That's soooo yesterday.

Ecto may rise, but it'll go back down, since there are/will be other builds to solo the Underworld with

So when you pick it up, that "[Player Name] picked up the rare long sword." is ascribed by the players hmm?[/QUOTE]

The server messages you read are not describing the the true quality of the item, only the chosen method to describe the action.

I certainly do not pay attention to those messages as the true nature of item is disclosed upon examination.

I don't see how Solo monks can do ANYTHING to the price of items when they were a "rare" chance to get..

I have a Necro/Monk (I switch the secondary time to time) and I can solor hydras, worms, and griffons like any monk build. And not the silly 17prot at all.

Yes it's a hell lot of a challenge rather than the copy and paste W/Mo or Mo/W whatever... -.-; It's more fun that way and actually...

I was in a group of 8 in UW as a support Necro/Monk and I got an Ecto one and only one but hell that was my first.. and I got two Shards in FoW (although the leader got four. -.o; ) and I made a happy 18k in a hour than three hours soloing Trolls and hydras, griffons and wurms oh my!

The whole finding max weapons I'm done with =P Seriously, the randomness of the weapons are pretty much crap and makes me wonder how people get these crazy items that are worth more than 20k alone..

But about the OP's post if you try to hard to prove you're not a "n00b" by saying you scribble on paper about every skill and what not as if life is so hard on a game =P then you're pretty much looking like one..

Stuff cost a lot because of demand.. not monks soloing.. Plus so what they get a small profit of it? They're selling less than a damn vendor so deal with it for those who want it a little cheaper? Just play your game and have a challenge not whine about soloing builds about ridiculous predictions on prices of items.. Everything is just fine.

It seems ozz and kaizume are the only people who understand what is going on in GW at this point. When I first started playing, items were glorious, and seemed beffitting of the area and one's level, not counting lazy players who get run everywhere (seen any level 2's at droknars before?!). Gold items started out as good items, not rare, but GOOD, quality items. Did anyone else notice, that long ago, a gold item was a gold item, but NOW when one drops, it says "rare".

It seems ANET noticed a wealth of players calling them rare. I've noticed a few things that ANET has changed, for the masses, not the elite. This is a hard thing to handle, in my mind. Do we tend to the idiot noobs (not all noobs are idiots), who out-number the few elites? Or do we make changes based on what the hardcore players want? Seems they listen to the masses. Personally, I would taylor a game to the elites, as this would force noobs to become, or at least learn from hardcore players, as I chose to do.

I am half-and-half with ANET's economic stabilization method. Example: Black dye will be no more than 9k at a trader. How is this stabilization? That's just capping. A fine line there, if you ask me.

Here's another proving point on the rarity of items- one simple item... the crystalline sword. How often do you find these? How much do these sell for? Long ago, they were somewhat common. Now, they are very rare. Go ahead, go to the most active district in Lion's Arch, and ask publically how much a max damage crystalline sword is worth.

My final gripe: I don't like buying from people anymore. I used to be able to buy a nice gold sword for no more than 20k, and that was for a damn nice one. Now I see masses of people saying: WTS Godly Fellblade, Max Damage, Dmg +13% While Enchanted, Health +24 - C/O 200k, B/O 600k. WTF? I always make it a point to shun these people, calling them noob traders. Man, it sure does piss them off . I started a guild, and am training my officers to trade fairly. How much would I sell that gold sword mentioned above? Pfbt... 15k Max, and would easily let it go for 10. Another point that the masses change things, not REALITY. Another point that less drops has shattered the economy. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. I don't want to play real life economics. I want fantasy economics, where there is utopian trades going on. Like the good ol' days as Ozz calls it.