Shiren

There has been a consistent thread of clues since the first or second part of Flame and Frost which said that the refugees were moving to Southsun Cove. You can see the camps they built for themselves on Southsun Cove already. Even more clues hint that someone from Lion's Arch (probably a member of the Consortium) was behind the formation of the Molten Alliance. So yeah, you missed several things.

You seem to rely heavily on other party members for boons. Warriors pump out their own with auto-attacks and crits. Another thing warriors are bringing to the table are vulnerability stacks which will be important for maximising DPS.

My main issue with this build (and any ranger build) is how well does it do outside of CoF path one? That dungeon is very easy and doesn't have many mechanics which will challenge any glass build, but what about dungeons with more boss AoEs which will kill both the pet and your frost spirit very easily, not to mention give the sword a bit more of a challenge with the difficulties of positioning to avoid damage?

My experience with the ranger is that the sword is a bad dungeon weapon because dodge can be difficult to pull off with the root effect of the auto-attack. Even positioning with the sword is incredibly difficult with the root effect of the auto-attack (I can run circles around mobs with the great sword or any other melee weapon in the game, with the ranger sword it's constantly interupted by the leap). Another issue is that pets will frequently die to boss AoEs in multiple dungeons, this will happen more in a build which doesn't boost the pet's stats via beast mastery or trait for reduced cooldowns on pet swap (so you can only refresh or save your pet every 20 seconds instead of 15 and when you get unlucky with a pet death, it's 60 seconds before you can call in the other one instead of 45 seconds). This same issue is for spirits, so I doubt the practicality of frost spirit in a lot of dungeons.

Have you had much success in higher level fractals or more challenging dungeons than CoF path one?

I'd just like to see videos of this build. Things I'm particularly interested in are how much damage the ranger himself actually does (I know this myself because I've played a glass sword ranger before but I'd still like to see your claims backed up by a video), but more importantly, so much of the build wants the pet to live but does very little to make this a reality. You seem to have a massive focus on boon duration but only two boons which don't really seem worth the investment (fury has fairly high uptime with the red moa and warhorn without boon duration and with one other person bringing it - like a warrior - you have 100% up time) and might which only comes from crits (with an internal cooldown) and a weapon that isn't even your primary weapon so you won't benefit from it most of the time. I also doubt how often you and your party will be in range of a living spirit. Maintaining flanking with the sword root will also be a problem. Pets will also lose all boons when swapped out, so considering how frequent that will be if you want your pet to be alive (I'd love to be proven wrong) you lose even more benefits from fortifying bond.

I don't see this being a very viable dungeon build, but I'd love to be proven wrong with video evidence.

Lordkrall, on 07 May 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

Yeah, GW1 totally didn't have a subscription fee model without a gem store cash grab every month just to stay afloat. Wait... it did? Crazy!!!

Not only did it not need to make most of the new cosmetic rewards cash shop items (fused weapons, Rox and Braham weapons, mini pets, town clothes, dances and whatever other junk that Cristen Cox got her hands on such as convenience and cosmetic mining picks - bad game design which is solved by gems) but they released entire campaigns months apart.

For the price of all of the Braham and Rox weapons you could buy Guild Wars Factions at it's launch price. So four weapon cost as much as an entire game. And the entire game came with many new weapon skins, two new classes, new skills for all your characters, a whole campaign of missions (all of which were more compelling than anything the Living Story has done), three new PvP formats which were very popular and more active than sPvP, two elite dungeons, many new armour skins and a whole new land to explore. Tell me again how the gem store model is not just the only way to run a profitable game, but also offers superior content to the consumer, because from where I'm standing, the GW1 model was far better to the consumer.

ArenaNet argued that the cash shop would incentivise them as developers to produce quality content to keep you playing and spending money on things you want. They said this was better than the subscription model where developers were encouraged to create grinds, gating and barriers to keep players playing as long as possible to get them to constantly renew their monthly subscriptions and that they didn't need to earn that monthyly fee, it was assumed. The reality of GW2 is that their business model encourages them to create grinds (incredibly low RNG drop rates to repeat the same content over and over to acquire items) and gate content (via ascended calendar gates, preventing you from acquiring items outside of a real world time limit or the daily design discouraging play after doing something once but punishing you for not logging in every day) to keep you in the game for as long as possible, even after you've experienced the gameplay content that is offered. Their gem store doesn't reward them for creating more and more quality content - people aren't paying for the content. It rewards them for creating terrible mechanics (consumable minin picks) and creating content to sell for real money which side steps these mechanics, or from stripping content updates of cosmetic rewards and throwing them in the store instead (in WoW or GW1 all of the weapon skins and mini pets would be earned through game content such as quests or dungeons, instead they sell it all and achievements - GW2 versions of quests - and dungeons have shit rewards and fall back to the RNG grind to be in any way rewarding).

The reality of the GW2 model is that it doesn't do anything to get them to offer a better quality experience and it strongly encourages them to strip as many rewards as possible from content and throw them in the store. The end result is a less rewarding experience for everyone who doesn't participate in the cash store (gem prices are inflating out of reach of the average player) and a more costly experience for people who do.

Specialz, on 29 April 2013 - 03:54 PM, said:

You mean like Fractal Dailies for RNG rings or 10 of them for Pristine Relics? You mean Daily/Monthly laurels limiting your progression towards amulets and infusions? You mean Guild Missions with large grinds built into them to slow down progress and hard caps on the number of commendations available a week liminting your progress towards trinkets? They further slow down this progress by putting a cap on guild progression to unlock this content in the first place. Face the truth, ArenaNet have done the exact same thing people claim subscription MMOs do to keep you playing. They put in real time gating to slow down progression and increase grind so they have players around more often to dip into the cash shop, the difference is when WoW does it they release new dungeons and content updates larger and more expansive than the ones GW2 has done. ArenaNet has all the grind and all the gating but they have a pittance of the content to support it.

Specialz, on 29 April 2013 - 03:54 PM, said:

It's an MMO. For many MMO players item acquisition is the game. It's why people are willing to grind hundreds of hours for legendaries or chase exotics (like Infinite Light). Much of the new content rewards aren't being released via the game content, they are accessed via the store. When the content itself isn't rewarding, a lot of people don't feel like playing it.

Mordakai, on 29 April 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

How many comprimises did you or the game make in that time to reward people for spending gems which you opted out of? One of them is the inability to make characters on multiple servers. Another is the inability to use a reasonably priced transmography system (at max level in WoW, transmographication is significantly cheaper than transmutation stones). What about all the content that a subscription MMO would have given to you via content rewards but GW2 chose to sell them? Instead of having engaging and rewarding festival content, increasing the depth of the world and extending your interest in playing they gave you very little and sold everything else. You may not be giving them money each month but they are giving you a lower quality experience than what a subscription MMO would have done, or even the GW1 system of expansions. Thinks of the number of weapon skins and how much it would have cost you to buy them all with money for gems. Consider the amount of content an expansion offers you - the number of weapon and armour skins etc that are all offered for the box price. The GW2 business model is a massive compromise and is far from the Holy Grail of MMO design people think it is. There are some massive flaws to it and a lot of people would be better off with a subcription MMO instead of a watered down one that is beholden to the gem store. No matter which model you choose, there is one currency which you will always be spending - your time. If you are being offered a lesser quality experience for a flat fee or a superior expeirence for a monthly fee, people who can afford it would be rightfully inclined to pay, because as much as my money is important to me, my time is more important.

Most of the new content only rewards you with an achievement, if you want something cosmetic you need gems.