Guild Wars Update - Nov 10 and Nov 11

Group farming is really just a waste of time IMO. The more people that you have the less you get. The less people you have the more you get. With ONE (solo) being the lowest number you get the most out of it. Why not just reverse the way that works. Make it where it is more rewarding to farm as a group. I don't mean make it where everyone comes out to be as rich as Ivincibuilds, but make it where it is more rewarding to be in a group. Just look at what has been done in the past to try and stop solo farmers. First, they played around with the drop rate (making it suck). This not only makes it not worth the farming but also increases the cost of ingame items. The less there is of a wanted item the higher the price. Then they nerf just a couple of spells to make it a little more difficult to solo farm. This seemed to have destroyed the UW Ivincimonk for just a little while, but as we have all seen it just made it where you had to tinker with the build a little more to get it to work right. Now, they have done something that not only affects the solo farmers, but anyone who has enjoyed the way of playing thus far. Seems a little backwards to me.

To ANET...(Like someone else has already stated) If you wanted PvE and PvP to be pretty much the same, then you should have started the game in this fashion.

There are plenty of people that play this game in the form of a normal RPG and don't even attempt to PvP. Is that wrong? If it was there would not have been a Sorrow's Furnace addition. Now sure, part of the reason for bringing the addition into the game was to bring in the "Green weapons" which gave Role-Playing chars the chance to be competitive in PvP with equalivent weapon power. But, along with the new weapons was a pretty nice size addition to the PvE part of the game, which got a lot of PvP'ers dusting off their old PvE chars. (Including myself)

As it has been said before, this patch was a bad idea. I can kinda see where you were going in trying to stop the solo farmers. I do not think that this patch had the full intentions of just increasing the intelligence of the mob. I think that instead of using a smoke screen to hide your true intentions on what you are doing, be straight forth in saying that you don't want solo farmers. Sure, there will be some pissed off people that may quit the game, but at least we will know what's really going on. Also, don't mess with spells that mess with the way of playing for everyone (mainly in PvE). Do something else like what I mentioned above about more group members...more /better drops. You could even call it the "More the Merrier Update."

Sorry to be so lengthy!!

I think one of the worst effects of this patch is it pretty much KILLED trapper teams for UW...

taking a 6man trapper team into UW was risky, less people meant more chance of dieing and not trapping the smites.

the really PITA of it is a 6 man trapper team cant get spiders anymore.. everything runs out of traps.

rangers are a class already excluded from a large portion of pve play. ( no one thinks a ranger does a lot of damage with a bow and 16 marksmanship.. )

the ONE thing rangers could do en mass was cap spiders and farm UW... guess eles wherent the only ones hit..

I think if there was some sort of multiplier for the rare-rate by group size. I haven't really started to think about specific numbers, but


right now when something drops there's a 2% chance it'll be rare (making up a number to demonstrate)

maybe work out an equation so that with a party of 8 people, there's a 10% or 15% chance it'll be rare when something drops. Don't change the drop rate in terms of: 60% gold, 30% collector item/salvage item, 10% weapon/offhand. Leave the weapon drops alone, but of those 10% weapon/offhand drops, increase the chance of rares dropping in that 10% from the creature.

By doing that, and keeping the current chance of drops being assigned to party members, shouldn't that be some kind of improvement? Obviously a griffon will only have a 10% chance of dropping an axe, and if you solo there's a 2% chance that axe will be rare. Gauge it up so with an 8 person party, a griffon has a 10% chance to drop an axe, and there's a 10, 15, or 20% chance it'll be rare.

I don't know, like I said, I haven't tried testing it out with numbers and running tests, and I'm too drained from writing a paper for Art History to do it at the moment, but it's a thought.

Ideas?

This could not be more wrong. They run from one hit aoe's test it. And don't tell me I didn't since I just did. A few skills that cause them to run. Throw dirt, Whirling defense, ignite arrows. They will run from one hit aoe's. You're wrong

They run from 1-hit AoE's, yet stand in a Firestorm for a second or two? Hmm..

To be honest with you guys, I feel a little better about the update after the 11th tweak.

This is mainly because the added delay puts one-shot AOEs back in the picture for the most part (thank God).
The monster AI got a little better too; they finally do some actual avoiding instead of simply fleeing all the time. That said, the AI could definitely be further refined. It's still a little to erratic and chaotic whenever an AOE is cast.

I think I can adjust my elementalist to survive this.

My tank, however, will be the hardest hit. As soon as some idiot starts breaking out the duration AOEs (like firestorm), it gets ridiculously hard to tank as effectively as before. Like another user said, it turns into a game of pinball, chasing monsters around trying like crazy to get their aggro back on you.
One-shot AOEs I can deal with after the update, but people need to stop casting those damn duration AOEs now. All they do now is break monster aggro off the tanks and onto the casters.

Well I guess aoe's in general that last 5 seconds have all been nerfed. In PvP they are useful in specialized situations suhc as balling up. Other than that I guess its the end. And this was after the 11th update btw.

"This could not be more wrong. They run from one hit aoe's test it. And don't tell me I didn't since I just did. A few skills that cause them to run. Throw dirt, Whirling defense, ignite arrows. They will run from one hit aoe's. You're wrong"


Not so much after the 11th tweak. After the 10th update, they preemtively ran from one-shot AOE like a plague was coming. After the 11th tweak it's not nearly as bad (from what I can tell anyway).

Periphery targets might still run away if the cast time is longer than the implemented delay (anywhere from 1-3 second from what I've observed), but they don't 'run for the hills!' while you're charging it up like before.
It's much more manageable now.

Only thing i have to say is that items/weps etc in Pve are waayyy over priced in comparison to wut gold u get or items u get to see in a *FULL* group! not solo! therefore i will admit i was forced to farm! my only point is that how is farming bad? it is a means to futher urself in the game and it makes plenty of sense that someone would wana do that and thats all i have to say! i dont really like the new patch but not much i can do bout it!

EXACTLY my thoughts. The second that fix happened I thought oh hey they won't cast through backfire anymore darn.. BUT WAIT! Now it'll just give me a 10 second buffer in which THEY WON'T CAST PERIOD. Enemy monks just got easier.

You can get great weapons and offhands from the collectors. They may not look the way you want them to but that's the price of vanity.

You make an excellent observation regarding invicimonk. However, if during playtesting this problem never came up, then the problem lies w/ the playtesters, imo. AN should get new blood.

That said, invicimonk is part of GW now. And I'm sure many players will have a problem if AN continues to make drastic changes in gameplay, skills, what have you in order to kill invicimonks.

not so fast my friend we can still ...

read this link

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...832#post672832

Excellent observation. I tried a bit of solo farming in lower level areas w/ my fire ele. Since I am the only target in the instanced area, it doesn't matter if mobs will scatter like chicken under aoes. As long as the healing rate for the mobs aren't obscenely high (like the axes in uw), I would still be able to kill them off. Also, having that scatter effect would buy my soloer time to recover a bit as well. The net effect of the Aoe-AI tweak on solofarming isn't bad enough to discourage solofarming. However, going w/ a group is hell for the reasons you stated here.

This hasent made anything harder, battles just take longer and are more annoying. The fact that they dont attack whenever you cast an AOE spell means your not taking dmg while they flee. So dmg delt and damage received drops and you end up chasing each other around for a few minutes (even if you have wards and deep freeze going). Wow that sounds like fun. Smiting as pretty much been destroyed completely. They should raise the attack power of AOE spells since they hardly make contact anymore.

Excellent point. If I'm a low level ele in pve who is relying on firestorm and meteorshower to get through mobs w/ henchies, then this game change has obviously made life a lot more difficult for my character. I wouldn't be surprised to see players dropping GW in frustration.

since no one is reading my link , ill make another try copy pasting here

Echo Nuker Build in Sorrow Still Works

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Same old build

1 Stance Warrior

1 Prot Monk

1 Heal Monk

2 Echo Nukers

Its no so easy as before but still works

The " Box them now ! " tecnic

tank goes in , gets full agrro as before , then everyone box the mobs
make a circle arround them , block them so they cant move , and then
happy quadruple meteor shower ...

i tried this my selfe , it works ... sure you have to be carefull , but works.

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from the link on my last post ....

I think it's amusing to see all these people cheering the death of the invincimonk.

The invincimonk is not dead. I'm still soloing UW as well as pre-patch. Granted, it might be slower. But the higher ecto prices more than offset the speed. *rofls*

Ok I've seen the affect of the update now and its not as bad as I thought at first.

1. OPPS I reacted too fast I think actually the fire echo nuker isn't dead.

2. My bad I haven't tested water ele so I won't call it but I'm hoping we get snarers (water eles) so I can sell my stupid flint wand.

3. Anet isn't going to like this but solo-Farming ISN'T dead you just need exploit new skills I have a feeling ppl are going find a nw griffon farming build and use the crap out of it just like the old farming build, just like when they nerfed IWAY.


Ok now that I've calmed down and I see everything straint I'm going to find this new farming build and use it for myself . No nerfing this time.

If the 11/11th tweak stays as-is, I would argue that Warriors aren't as useful teammates to group with. Because once scattering has occurred, they'll have to chase after mobs in order to do some damage to them via melee. Maybe Rangers will be the new tanks.

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3. Anet isn't going to like this but solo-Farming ISN'T dead you just need exploit new skills
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well anet didnt post in the update

Solo farming nurfed !!

they just post , Improved AI so that henchmen and monsters can now detect and flee from area-effect damage spells.

im sure Anet is happy to see that people can find solutions

i honestly do think ANet is on the way to making this game better then it was, soon they will have the monsters not acting quite so idiotically. if they do fix all the bugs with the monster AI i will be more likely to buy chapter 2

Feh. They don't run from one hit AoE's. It was Entropy who said that - he's stated he's not played for two days, and that he posts to get flames. He's a troll.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and you guys who claim "solo farming is dead": please go to Augury Rock, Intl district, and watch the WATERFALL of farming monks, hundreds of them, out the west exit. Guess what they're doing?

Hint: They're not whining about that solo farming is dead.

I have lost interest in the game.

you better go play wow ...

( yeah , im at work with nothing to do , so ill be here for today ... )

True, but if you look at the past with the reaction to certain patches that have come out. ANET makes it clear that solo farming is something that shouldn't happened. I mean, if I am not mistaken, Gaile even said that the Ivinci-monk was something that should have never happen. Once again I will say, please do not think for one second that this patch had FULL intentions of just increasing the AI of the monsters. Sure, the AI in this game was kinda ridiculous, but look at it now. I don't think ridiculous is the word for it. The AI is not something that has been on the to do list I am sure. It has been nerfs plain and simple. But, this time, the nerfing may have gone too far. What people need to realize is that there is really no way to completely cut out solo farming. ANET just needs to find a way around it. Read my post before this if you don't know what I am talking about.

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What people need to realize is that there is really no way to completely cut out solo farming. ANET just needs to find a way around it
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well , if you know this ... do you think Anet doesnt ????

do you think you are a genius and anet are just stupid ?

i have to lol at this , people are so naive ...

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Gaile even said that the Ivinci-monk was something that should have never happen
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Gaile says what people have to lissen , she is RP !!!

Use something like Bull's Strike and punish them for running. EZ!

Come on Enshal Hardwood and Arknel Havenwood were even easier to kill before the patch...

Anet should do more intelligent things to stop solo farming in uw/fow/augury. One of the best things they could do is fix protective spirit. Right now protective spirit limits damage to 10% of current health. It should be changed to 10% of true health without death penalty.

Many invisimonks allow themselves to accumulate dealth penalty to reduce their life so their healing breeze becomes uber. If they fixed protective spirit, it should help to curb the monks soloing/duoing high level areas.

Ya monsters are actually smarter than stupid henchies. The most stupid henchies are Devona and Little Thom. They don't know how to run away even when you run, either that or they got stuck and don't know how to do a sidestep to move. If monsters now know how to run when they're taking a beating, why should stupid Devona and Little Thom continue to take the beating and die.

Eh, to make it more realistic, Devona and Thom should shout "omg u noob monk, u suk!" everytime they die.

glad to see that things are cooled down now....

Urph, I'm sure people have tried to explain this earlier in this elongated turd of a thread, but here goes again.

Initially, you're quite right. Certain items are going to skyrocket. This is because there is so much gold floating around in the economy due to the mass farming that's been happening. HOWEVER, over time people will burn through their gold stocks getting their prestiege in-game items, dumping the gold into a void and removing it from in-game circulation.

It is at this point that prices for the rare items will HAVE to come back down, because there won't be enough people out there able to pay the outrageous prices they'll be at. Supply will outstrip demand. It seems that most posters here are confusing desire with demand. Just because an object is desirable, doesn't mean it's in demand. It's only in demand if the people it's desirable to can obtain it (which if it's too expensive, they cannot, and thus it's NOT in demand).

Economics 101

the point about the henches runing after the scattering mobs is exactly what is wrong with the AI .There is actually two things happening making our lives miserable ( and precluding any strategic planning ) :
- when in team with henches they pursue any mobs scattering after which you are confronted with sometimes HUGE mobs of enemies - seen this in both sorrow's furnace and Ring Of Fire .

- the enemies scatter- disengage from the fight - and then come back , bringing a "couple of friends " along ,i.e. : pull in more enemies thatn initially attacked . This also results in the effect of having to confront a huge mob comprising of two or three groups instead of the ONE group you attacked .

by the way , I think I speak for all players using henches on ocasion : the most useless - and even dangerous - henches now are Orion and Cynn . Make them either earth/fire/water elementalists or delete them.

It doesn't necessarily end like this. Btw, since we're talking about economics, let's start with the basis. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, so it's right to say that more gold into an economy generates inflation.

The equation looks like this one: P= M+V, P being the increase in prices during a given period of time, M as the increase in monetary stock (in a given period), V as the increase in the speed at which gold circulates (in a given period). Farmers generally mean higher values of M and V, which isn't positive for price stability. So far, this update could be positive for the average player.

Here comes a possible, negative outcome of the current situation

Ectos are 17k now. Let's say people won't sell them to the trader because A)it will be increasingly difficult to get them after this update B) if the AI stays like this, ectos will be even more valuable--> people who have big bulks know too well how economy works and will wait to see what happens.

By not selling them to the trader, the price won't drop.

And there's more. People in desperate need of ectos to finish their fissure armor will A) suspect the price will go even higher in the future, since ectos are not easily farmable now-->demand won't change B) not find a way to get them by farming anymore, thus they'll be forced to buy them-->demand won't change.

In the future, less ectos will get into the economy, therefore supply will be very low no matter what, while demand will drop a bit but not enough (still outstripping supply). Eventually the economy will stabilise at a certain point, with ectos more expensive than they used to be (maybe not 17k, but around that, yes, it's likely).

Fissure armor will be much more difficult to get, and people will have to live with that.

After spending a couple more hours traveling through Perdition Rock, vainly hunting for Harn Coldstone (who hasn't been seen by me in 4 days), I have to say that
1)Henchies are dumber than before

a)I hate the delay before they attack

b)Mhenlo is very reluctant to res anyone except for Lina

c)I'm terrified to take Cynn out

2)Enemy aggro must be fixed

a)A little chaos in a battle is acceptable, but this level of chaos is not

b)Sometimes even casting Deep Freeze or Blurred Vision sends them into a complete free-for-all

c)Those Drakes are out of control. There were times tonight that I didn't enter their aggro bubble, but they freaked out and hunted me down anyway.

3)I'm not sure Obsidian Flesh is worth 4, going on 5 days of looking.
4)I'm still pissed about the update. Some of these "fixes" have broken the way the skills were intended to work. Traps were not intended to scatter mobs, or they would have been worded differently:Spike Trap-scares the hell out of Mahgo Hydras and makes them run like little girls.

.... that they aggro'ed me and lured me into an ambush!
goddam Ice Golems......

I felt so pwn'd.....

Or you could say you got stupid...

You could have ran the other way or not followed them

Just joking.

1 more thing i want to say, then i may as well leave this one.

My main complaint is about the buggyness of this patch, it really should have been undone then bought back complete. (i will drop the farm grind one as we wont all agree on this, but you cant deney the bugs)

I feel like an unpaid beta tester.

Spells like dustrap or throw dirt should not make them run (and yes they STILL DO, regardless of some people saying they dont).

enemies should not keep running in and out of aoe's, also they should not get confused and sometimes stand their.

They should also not constantly attempt to get away if they are trapped or snared, they should attack not be a fish in a barrel.

Im not a beta tester and i dont want to be treated like one, Anets attitude is "yea its gone wrong, but put up with it till we get round to fixing it".

The kind of bugs that im seeing, i really cant belive this will be fixed in a few days.

Please Anet, i am not your friggen tester i am your customer.