It's a lot of additional XP and it doesn't actually teach you much. But it's probably better than using a booster to level up a profession you have never played before. The game still needs to do more to teach players about combat and profession mechanics, telegraphs, (internal) cooldowns, activation time, after cast delays, interrupts, boons, condition, stat combinations and traits. Maybe add a level 80 map which is entirley dedicated to (daily/weekly) tutorials.

You can trade them for Provisioner Tokens at Rend Scorchmaul in the Wizard's Tower who does not have a daily limit. This would have been an unlimited supply of tokens for roughly 20 silver a pop (see below) and people already know that they will need 300 tokens per piece of legendary armor.

But the Price for Quartz Crystals does not appear to have exploded, since ArenaNet was quick enough to fix it.

I can craft a bit and sell it

Probably not, since ArenaNet crashed the market for (crafted) exotic gear with the addition of a new WvW vendor who sells stat selectable exotics for very little coin and honor. If I were mean, I could say they did this to make people buy PoF and HoT so they can also pick stat combinations from these expansions.

Isn't the Searing Cauldron Hero Point exactly the one that was bugged for weeks, i. e. didn't work at all? Which would mean their fix was bugged and introduced a possible exploit?

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/137516-broken-hero-challenge-searing-cauldron-iron-marches-merged/#comment-1990719

Broken Hero Challenge - Searing Cauldron (Iron Marches) [Merged]

Players cannot commune with the Searing Cauldron Hero Challenge located in the southern part of Iron Marches.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/138197-game-update-notes-september-26-2023/#comment-2001483

• Fixed an issue that prevented players from communing with the Searing Cauldron hero challenge in Iron Marches.

*� Spaghetti! �*

I don’t think you can just convert the dps to any actual encounter

Is it not even possible to estimate this for the Cosmic Observatory case? I'm surprised. My guess would have been around 5K.

you basically have to make auto attacks very strong.

Why would this require auto-attacks to be stronger? I don't think that the average player (apart from the very lazy. Yes, I know those exist.) is only (supposed to be) using auto-attacks. I think that most players like to use their (impactful) skills. What makes it hard or rather makes a huge difference in DPS is that timing matters a lot, e. g. Blight stacks and their consumption on Harbinger.

I'd also assume or rather hope that less experienced players are making slightly more defensive gear and trait choices which allows them to make a few (minor) mistakes during the course of a boss fight without getting downed or being a constant burden for the healer, i. e. trade some (max) DPS for more survivability.

Before last patch I tried to benchmark the power soulbeast standard build on the golem, with only doing sword auto atracks. I did get 17k dps out of it.

I assume you have been using the suggested raid buffs, i. e. Fury, 25 Might, Quickness, (Alacrity,) 25 Vulnerabilty, ... and were auto-attacking a stationary target golem while wearing a full set of Ascended Berserker gear, right?

What amount of average DPS (over the total fight duration) would this equal to in a "real world scenario", i. e. a PUGed Cosmic Observatory?

I think we can agree that the main balancing issue is the huge gap between "floor" and "ceiling".

I wasn't ignoring the ceiling by the way. My argument is that the ceiling equals a tiny fraction of the player base and is hence not as relevant as it appears to be on the forums, reddit, lemmy, youtube, ... where it is overly represented.

And even, if I count in the "floor" of players doing end game content, we are still talking about a minority of the player base total.

What needs to be done is narrow the gap which means

• help players to "git okay" (as you put it). But this shouldn't be mostly rely on external resources and the players investing time to prepare. The game can still do far better in this regard, Also, it takes way more than 10 or 15 minutes to get from "having no clue" to "know what you are doing". Copy/Pasting a build does not help very much. You need to learn why you make those choices and in this regard many external (build) resources are not very good either.
• limit the DPS increase you can achieve by reaching perfection. I don't mean a hard cap, but a flattening curve that throttles individual DPS the higher you go. Which means that the best of the best can still compete against each other but are not as easily capable of carrying an entire squad.

Meanwhile the "over-performers" could run less OP builds, equip white gear or play naked, if they find the content too easy. Yes, I'm kidding. But just a little. 😎

Or maybe I have to wait until GW2 goes into maintenance mode like GW1 where overperforming professions/builds, e. g. Mesmers, are no longer nerfed. So I can run a meta hero team with 5 Ineptitude/Energy Surge Mesmers, a Blood is Power Necromancer/Ritualist and a Soul Twisting Ritualist or have it less OP but with more flavor and include a traditional front line. a Minionmancer and Monk healers.

They could have just added a 3s internal cooldown to Dhuumfire instead of changing the duration from 3s to 1s on Harbinger and (now) Scourge. The PvE/PvP/WvW split of skills is bad enough (though probably needed), but look how messy a complete description of the Dhuumfire trait/skill now looks. Such a violation of my beloved KISS principle.

• I'm not saying that "the non cm game is too hard (for me)". It's just a fact that not many players are doing strikes and even less do raids.
• I doubt that gear (even cheaper now from WvW vendor) or the build (various sites to find them, see our sidebar) are the issue. The two things that are mostly holding back people are in my opinion:
  • The game itself does a terrible job at teaching you how to properly play your profession/spec. This is especially true for the importance of boons. It also does not help that the amount of CC you need to break a defiance bar is all over the place (in open world and story).
  • The end game community tends to commmunicate unrealistic (DPS) expectations, e. g. LFG "Strike Mission (Training)" is usually empty and "Strike Mission (Experienced)" is overly picky in what it expects and is full of abbreviatiosn which many casuals won't know.

To give this some perspective: I'm playing Open World builds with quite a bit of survivability and QoL on all 9 professions which means I'm doing about 10K DPS (average over the entire fight in a PUGed and hence not optimized strike mission squad) and I'm usually providing either Quickness or Alacrity to the group. This is far from 49K, but obviosuly still enough to beat the content. I'm not doing strikes very often, because I dislike playing circus horse simulator, but when I do, I'm ususally waiting for a Training PUG to pop or create my own. I actually like the team work experience and most of the time people are rather pleasant and patient.

Which brings me back to why I liked the OP Scourge. If people were (before this nerf) running a Condi DPS or Alcrity Condi DPS build in Celestial gear (maybe from booster), they would be easily doing more than 10K DPS. Even when rather poorly executed. Which allowed an unexperienced player to feel comfortable with their DPS and learn the encounters (jump through the hoop, when the game "tells" you). This was once true for Mechanists too, but DPS in easy mode/build has been significantly nerfed over time. Even MightyTeapot suggested to play Scourge (now) when you are thinking about getting into raids.

And Scourge players who don't do any end game content (the vast majority) are experiencing seemingly random variations of their DPS in Open World, depending on whether their profession/spec was just hit by a drastic nerf or buff. I really don't think, that this is good.

The root cause for this is that ArenaNet bases their "balancing" decision on top DPS. i. e. the performance of a teeny-tiny fraction of their player base.

Something has to be done for the sake of actual enjoyment, content longevity, ...

Whose?

• How many Scourge players are affected by this Sledgehammer Balancing? Right, all of them.
• How many Scourge players were able to pull 49K DPS and "trivialize" end game content? Right, a teeny-tiny fraction.
• How many Scourge players were able to (comfortably) beat said end game content and are now struggling again (to find a group)? I don't know.

While I wasn't playing Scourge myself since June (I'm wating until the Yo-Yo settles), I actually liked that an OP spec enabled players to access/beat content that was (or appeared to be) out of reach for them. Well, that's over now.

Also, PvE isn't equal to end game content. For the majority of players PvE means Open World and Story content where condition builds are notoriously slow compared to power builds. Those players probably had a lot of fun (and not a "power fantasy") until this nerf and are now wondering, why it suddenly takes so much longer (again) to kill stuff.

Drastic changes are never good. Neither drastic buffs nor drastic nerfs. Especially for the more casual majority of players who might not even read the patch notes.

They are actually nerfing skills/traits depending on the elite specialization in use. What a terrible "solution". They already did more or less the same for Harbinger instead of just adding a cooldown (of 3 seconds).

Dhuumfire: Reduced burning duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds when the scourge elite specialization is equipped in PvE only.

And Scourge gets nerfed hard again (Harbinger only slightly). After it was nerfed to the ground in June, then brought back again, then buffed even more (with the expansion), ... and this current nerf will most likely be followed up by a significant buff again. This is getting silly.

Those changes range from 30% to over 60%. WTF!

It's PvE. It's not competitive. Let people have some fun. And when you really feel the need to adjust something, don't use a Sledgehammer.

1. All Necromancer Specs: Reaper, Scourge, Harbinger
2. Most Guardian Sepcs: Dragonhunter, Firebrand
3. Soulbeast
4. Most Engineer Specs: Scrapper, Mechanist
5. Most Revenant Specs: Renegade, Vindicator
6. Most other Specs

But I'm not quite done, making up my mind, after the Weaponmaster Changes, since how a spec plays/feels often depends a lot on which weapons it uses and hence which stat sets are valid.

E. g. I like Greatsword and Longbow on Guardian which more or less determines the stat set (power damage) and a general play style (offesnsive, bursty, high risk+reward). I'm currently running this as Dragonhunter, but maybe it works even better or is even more fun as Willbender.

Other professions, e. g. Necromancer, are mostly defined via their class mechanic which changes dramatically with the chosen Elite, i. e. the weapons don't matter much when you spend most of your time in Shroud anyway.

I just wish ArenaNet would stop considering a Sledgehammer an appropriate tool for adjusting the game balance and that they would properly test/evaluate changes before releasing them or better even talking about them.

The latter is the main issue here. It is more than obvious by now that only a tiny fraction of ArenaNet employees are actually playing/knowing their game well enough to know/predict how changes will affect their game. And since there are no public test servers, the live servers are pretty much in beta all the time.

Just look at the Scourge Yo-Yo over the last 2 months.

Workshop Restoration 1 still needs the following materials to be completed:

• Vial of Linseed Oil: 40
• Elonian Leather Square: 4

How many Temple Cleanses do you need for the collection , if you have completed the JPs, but don't want to do the Arah Dungeon Forgotten Path?

I think ArenaNet still needs to get a lot better in the keeeping content relevant department. So much of their work just goes to waste, because it is either no longer maintained or no longer interesting/rewarding at max level. It's a shame.

I don't think that ArenaNet can do much about it, since according to their own rules someone "playing" a Necromamcer with Minions or an Engineer with Turrets while watching Netflix and pressing a key once in a while is not doing anything forbidden.

And how would you determine whether this someone, their trained cat or a macro is randomly producing key strokes?

While I personally think that massive amounts of AFK farmers are immersion breaking, there are far worse shenanigans going on, like botting in PvP. Also, if weekly updates require maps to be respawned freshly and players can actually prevent this by still playing (or farming) on some map instances, then the system is not well designed.

According to comments on the forums this issue may be triggered by maps not closing and hence not being updated (newly spawned). People seem to blame AFK farmers for this.

• Cursed Shore now worked for me.
• Southsun Cove, too. A squad was even doing a Tier 3 Rift hunt there.

Aetherium Capacity 1 completed. See OP for current progress.

🔥 You can even get Gold Participation by only shooting Fireballs from your Skyscale 🔥