Posts by jimbo32

  • Cheapest stuff for heroes

    40/40 sets for heroes are expensive, whether you craft them or buy greens. In my opinion, a 40/20 staff for ES/Panic/Inep heroes is almost as good. The collector just outside Durheim Archives in Morostav Trail has Domination and Illusion 20/20 staves for 5 warden horns each. Add an adept staff head and a defensive wrap and you're golden.

  • Triple (3) Mod Items and Their Research

    I would think that there are more of these kicking around than we realize. I remember doing Mausoleum with full player teams from ToA with a runner, and people taking turns with the locked chests. I *think* there was also a chance to get a drop from the coffins, right? I might be misremembering though.

    Anyway, I think that Tall shield was mine originally, and I'm semi-sure I also had a triple mod Motivation Plated, though I can't find a screenshot anywhere. Luny had a bunch of stuff from there, including a couple of 20/10 EotN-skin staves that I gave her. I *think* she also had a triple-mod Jeweled Chalice, but that may have been someone else. I'm sure I've seen one. Don't know if system.fan is still around much, but he may have one or two items.

  • Valuable Skins, Mods, and GW Drops Guide

    Focus (non-insc) - Paper Lantern and Jug. Pronged Fan doesn't drop non-insc. Is there demand for insc Pronged? Primary attributes and Inspiration, so maybe not? Not sure.

    Scythe: Dhuum's

    Spear: Demoncrest. Maybe Draconic? If so, likely q9 only. Serrated and Greater Guardian also used to sell easily in q9, not sure about now. Voltaics might be the only thing selling.

    Staff: (non-insc) Platinum, even with the rampant botting. Also, 20/20 Twin Dragon Jeweled Staves (prob just q9 and maybe 10). The insc version of these used to sell as well, not sure if there's still a market.

    Sword: (non-insc) Katana and Broadsword q9 15^50 or +5en. These also used to be a quick sale in q9 insc, not sure about the market now.

    Wand: (non-insc) Some of the other Canthan universal ones - Celestial, Jellyfish, Koi.

    Low-req shields - pretty sure there's still a market for Tactics 14/6 insc and maybe 13/5. Any PvP'ers confirm?

    Any non-insc stuff will obviously be sort of hard to detail, since 90% (or more, regardless of skin) is vendor material. Maybe it would be better to instead detail the desirable mods for each category for these? Or in the case of martial weapons, in addition to the skins (some skins are hard sales even in q9 15^50 or +5en).

    Nice project!

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    Jeez, this is exhausting.

    C'mon now, Pyro. You seem to be suggesting that nobody has any real idea what things may be worth. That's disingenuous at best. Are you trying to say that when a lot of the experienced collectors on Legacy get a nice drop, they don't instantly have a ballpark figure as to what it may sell for? Because frankly, that's horseshit. And not a small amount. A giant, steaming, smelly pile that you'd need a backhoe to manage.

    While I agree that it would be nice to have records of sales, that sort of thing may not be any more accurate as far as predicting future value than some people's educated guesses. Not to mention the tendency with a lot of people preferring to negotiate via PM so that the public isn't privy to the final trade.

    Obviously you (and some others) prefer not to use the PC forum. That's fine, don't. In my opinion, the PC forum as a service isn't here for most of the regulars. Most of the serious collectors are dialed-in to the market, know who collects what, and know who will be willing to pay the most depending on the item. As I said, the PC forum isn't for those people. It's for the returning players who haven't logged in since 2012, or new people who want to fill their Hall of Monuments for the GW2 bonus stuff, or even SC players who happened to get a nice drop in Tyria or Cantha but aren't familiar with OS gear.

    It sounds like you're looking for something that would suit your personal needs better than the current PC forum. That's fine, I'm with you 100%. But maybe we can manage both?

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    Pleikki has changed the format of his PC posts to this:

    Quote

    Highest i have seen this or similar item go for in the right circumstances: 30-40a

    What i think is fair on today's market: 10-20a

    I think selling below this would be getting ripped of spectacularly considering my experience of market on such items: 5a

    Does anyone take issue with this sort of reply? Seems reasonable to me. If you disagree with the PC assessment, you can always post, right?

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    Quote from Captain Krompdown

    ...

    Well it all comes down to this, doesn't it? The function of. PC is to provide the potential seller with a set of expectations. The least we can do is say what the basis is for the expectations we are providing. Recent sale? Failed thread on Legacy? Your general impression? Something you remember from a year ago? What you think a frantically motivated and infinitely rich collector might pay if he's in a giving mood?

    Or should we just listen to you because you give a lot of price checks? Listening to someone because they talk a lot is a bad policy in every universe I've ever lived in :)

    Right. And I think the whole thing stems from the small community. I was a "Price Check Guru" (kinda-mod) on GWG back in the day, and high-end OS PC's would usually attract a lot of comments. I'm sure a lot of you guys and girls here recall that there were a few people who routinely gave low-ball PC's that obviously had an agenda, but they were usually called out on their horseshit. Same with the preposterously high PC's. But that was when we might've had 10-20 or even more replies offering advice, as opposed to the current 1-3.

    So maybe we should be discussing how to make the system better. I don't think the answer is to burn it down like Pyro suggested. That would exclude potential buyers of specific items, just as an example.

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    I agree with you, Pyro. You're preaching to the choir. My point was that the "60a" PC can be helpful, and isn't necessarily a bad thing. I guess I should have been more clear in stating that players shouldn't be married to the PC they get as if it's passed down from the divine. Personally, if I got a PC like that but after a period of time the highest bid I got was 40a, I would evaluate my time investment in the sale and would probably go with the high bid.

    The issue is if someone thinks "jimbo on Legacy said I shouldn't sell for less than 60a, so pound sand with your lowball". That's what Max was talking about in the OP, and I think the fault lies just as much with the seller as it does with - possibly - a lack of clarity in the provided price check.

    So yeah, nothing wrong with shooting for being as transparent as possible when doing PC's. That should be the goal. But, as has been pointed out by Pyro and Kromp, every PC should be taken with a grain of salt. If some seller treats a PC as the set-in-stone "price", it isn't necessarily 100% the fault of the PC'er.

    There's another thing at work here as well. I've seen the odd comment on the GW reddit and in-game about some of the collectors on Legacy (paraphrasing) being low-ball rip-off artists who will steal the mods from your armour if you're not watching them carefully. I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but you get my point. So going back to the hypothetical 60a PC, if that person has heard this vile slander and then gets a bunch of PM's offering ~20a for his item, that would confirm what he's already heard and maybe make him dig in his heels. Even if the 20a offers are completely legit market-wise.

    In that instance, it's partially the fault of (maybe) excessive expectations created by the PC and party due to OS collectors having the rep of sharks who will sell their firstborn for a beautiful pre-nerf. ;)

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    I agree with a lot in your quote, Kromp. However, I would say that educated guesses based on personal experience and familiarity with the market can be very useful, especially when providing the PC to someone who has no idea regarding said market. Most of the regulars here know when they get a "Holy Shit!" drop, even if we may not know precisely what the market might support when selling. The same can't be said for every schmo in-game, and lots of people might really appreciate an educated guess. Is it the framing of the educated guesses that's the problem?

    Anyway, I'm wondering what we're really talking about here. Are we talking about overly-optimistic PC's creating unreasonable expectations, or are we again talking about PC'ing with a personal agenda?

  • The impact of minimum expected values in a price check

    Quote

    Basically do not give price checks that cant be given with any degree of accuracy.

    That sounds good in theory, but with the current state of the game economy, it isn't always possible. For example, Oofus' q9 20/10 Earth Effigy that was posted in the Canthan Focus thread. What's the realistic market for an item like that? Most of the SC people with tons of arms seem to be more interested in showing their e-peen with BDS's and E-blades, so presumably there wouldn't be a ton of interest there. The only other group with the required buying power would be high-end OS collectors, most of whom are here on Legacy. So probably fewer players than you can count on two hands? Added to the small audience would be the problem of lack of recent precedent - items like that aren't exactly bought and sold frequently.

    Now, let's assume that a player who isn't at all familiar with the market gets a drop like that. He posts on reddit asking for advice and is directed here. He puts up a PC request and is told the best thing to do is put it up for auction and see what happens - which isn't particularly helpful to a noob without also providing ballpark figures. So he puts it up for auction with a 7-day limit and receives a max bid for (say) 10a. For this poor schmuck, 10a is more than he's ever even seen, so he's happy. But what he doesn't know is that the two people who'd be most interested aren't around that week. So the following week the buyer flips it to one of them via a PM bid war for a massive profit.

    Now, just because the seller happens to be satisfied with his 10a take, does that make this hypothetical situation kosher? Or would the seller have been better off with a PC that said "Personally I wouldn't sell for less than 60a, but it might take a while to find the right buyer"? If it were me, I'd prefer a ballpark figure even if it was a tad optimistic.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • Canthan universal Focus Items

    Quote from Oofus

    There were... a few... “vocally dissatisfied” players that led to the inscription system yeah.


    The rarity discrepancy between martial and caster items appears to be intentional, the math alone doesn’t seem to justify the severity of the differences. I think the clearest example that, anecdotally, demonstrates this is the extreme differences in shields and focus items, perfect dual-mod shields are ‘a dime a dozen’ while perfect focus items are probably the rarest group of items overall.

    I wonder if the drop tables for caster mobs and chests favour staves by a healthy amount. Like, 55% Staff, 30% Wand, 15% Focus, or somesuch. I farm "A Chance Encounter" a fair bit, and I can say that staves drop far more than wands, and wands drop far more than focii. I should really be keeping track of my drops, but I'm far too lazy. ;)

  • Canthan universal Focus Items

    Great stuff, Kromp. But you really need a 20/19 Blood Effigy. :)

    So as someone who wasn't around pre-Nightfall, I don't really get ANet's design decisions regarding dual-mod items (shields, wands, focii). Was it their intention that these items be rare in an even borderline usable state? Am I correct in assuming that most players used either greens or collector/crafted blues if they wanted a dual mod item with nice stats? Were there player complaints regarding relative rarity that lead to the inscription system?

    It's a strange decision to make dual-mod stuff so rare with good stats when melee weapons and even staves are relatively easy to get. I'm not a game designer, but I would think the goal should be for everything to drop somewhat equally. I don't mean that a 20/20 wand or offhand should be just as common as a 15^50 sword, but there should definitely be more around than can be counted on one hand. Especially with the amount of botting that has gone on in Cantha.

  • Canthan universal Focus Items

    Hey folks. I was thinking about the relative rarity of Paper Fans, Straw Effigies, and Jugs (Plagueborns too I guess, though they seem a bit more common).

    Personally, I've had precisely three perfect (usable, not multi-profession) dual mod drops - all with mediocre mods. Two Jugs (q9 DF, +1/20 Smiting, +15/-1) (q9 SP, +5AL^50, 10HCT) and one Paper Fan (q12 SR, +5AL^50, +1/20 Death). I used to run the Deep like a madman with Lynette LeSange, and never saw a single perfect Effigy (usable I mean - I'm sure there were some mixed-profession perfect-mod drops that got vendored).

    So I'm wondering what's out there on active accounts, or what people have seen in the past. I can't recall seeing anything mindblowing in the first three skins, even in the Guru glory days.

    So show us what ya got!

  • Way to delete our own posts?

    Title.

    Is there some method I'm not seeing? Assuming it's not possible currently, maybe it could be added? In the Guru days, I always deleted my old bumps for Buy/Sell threads. It makes for much neater threads since there isn't a million bump posts.

  • Bill Freist leaves Arenanet.

    Link

    Looks like the graphics and QoL updates have come to an end, unless someone else decides to pick up the torch. And I was still holding out for the Paragon skill overhaul and the NF chapter of Beyond. :p

    (Assuming it's true, as there is no source given in the reddit post other than he supposedly mentioned it on twitch. Lots of people leaving or getting laid off from ANet though, so no reason to believe it's false.)

  • Q8 Observations Since My Return

    There are only three q8 colossal scimitars known to exist? I could swear that I remember those cropping up on Guru a fair bit back in 2009-11 ish. I guess I must be misremembering? I also seem to recall a fair number of q8 Ele Swords (Raptor farm?) kicking around. Those weren't my imagination, right? Jeez, I hope I'm not showing signs of early-onset dementia. :p

  • Which green weapons are rare/worthy anything and why?

    Quote from Rurik_shoepolisher

    firebrand should be the most expensive green but still-farmable afaik, reason maybe hard to farm and unique skin?

    I saw someone selling Firebrand a few weeks ago for 15a. I assumed he'd been hitting the crack pipe, but then I checked decltype. I don't know if anyone's buying, but that seems to be in the vicinity of the usual asking price (10-15a). Guess I should have bought a bunch @ ~100k when WiK was fresh content. :p