Double Green Drops: worth it?

I noticed the weekend event is double green drops.
Is this something worth taking advantage of, either for gold opportunities or as a way to try and obtain something you might want? (are there any really desirable greens out there?)[center]

The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Look HERE for a list of all the greens in all the campaigns. You can see galleries of how they look, and look them up by profession as well.

Some greens are worth a decent amount. Law and Order, Firebrand, some other WiK greens I don't remember off the top of my head. Oh, Scott and I would pay you some decent platinum if you got the paragon command shield green from the WiK stuff (the ones that drop, not the ones you get after The Battle for Lion's Arch). We will buy two if you get any of those.

Rago's Flame Staff, and some others from across the campaigns can also be worth 10-100K. It really depends on the green.

Looks like I should be grinding WiK.. By the way I farmed Rio The Stonereaper. I also got a ruby while trying =)

Grats on the ruby!

Vanessa, if you mean the Fanatical Devotion shield, I want one myself.

Of course I have barely started WiK... so much to do, so little time.

I hear Ssyn's Staff usually runs for 20k, especially since it hardly ever drops.

Yes, Fanatical Devotion, my precious....

did over 20 runs for Ssyn in HM (solo), nothing but a few golds to show for it
May try again after UW if I'm not too tired

It's a tough farm. I got it to drop my first time fighting the stupid Naga spirit caller lol

... not worth it!

I tried for Ssyn's staff for 4 hours today and I go nothing. 1 Rit tome and a few lockpics are the best I got.

Keep in mind, if you have heroes in your aggro circle when you kill the boss, they steal drops. Scott and I usually use heroes to kill all the fodder around the boss. Then, we move them out of range until they're are dark in the party menu. Finally, we kill the boss so that anything he is going to drop goes only to us.

Good trick to know, but I've been soloing, so it's not it. probably low drop rate + bad luck.

Wooohoooo finally got my drop 4th run tonight

Actually, Ssyn's Staff is one of the easiest greens to farm in my opinion. I know because I've farmed it for quick cash plenty of times before. I can usually get one every 30 minutes on average, and that's without a green drop weekend event.

Here's the easiest way to farm him quickly:

PREPARATION:
- Be a Ritualist, and load the Channeling build from HERE (template code: OAOjQyic4QXTDgVT+gXMOTdilT).
- Replace Flesh of my Flesh with Healing Breeze or Protective Spirit, and divert the Restoration Magic attribute points into Healing Prayers or Protection Prayers instead.
- Take the discord team of necromancer heros (or whatever other strong hero team you want that can kill things quickly).

FARMING:
1. Start from Jade Quarry (Luxon). Be sure you're set to Normal Mode, not Hard Mode (green drops have no drop difference in NM/HM, so make it easy on yourself).
2. Go outside (into Archipelagos) and up the stairs, killing the enemies along the way to the bridge just to the east.
3. When you get to the bridge, flag the heros back to the starting area and leave them there.
4. Go across the bridge and you'll see Ssyn and some other enemies down the slope on the other side. Create all your spirits, making or pulling them close to the enemies without aggroing them.
5. Pull the closest enemy by hitting 'C' to target the closest one, then use Painful Bond.
6. Run back past your spirits, using them as a wall to stop the enemies. Stay behind the spirits and try to recreate spirits as they die.
7. If any enemies start attacking you too much, run back across the bridge. They will never cross the bridge no matter what, so consider it your "safe zone". Try to avoid dying at all costs by runing back to the safe zone of the west side of the bridge whenever necessary.
8. Repeat steps 4-7 as necessary until Ssyn is dead. Then repeat the whole thing as necessary until he drops enough Ssyn's Staffs that you want.

Be sure you're set to Normal Mode, not Hard Mode (green drops have no drop difference in NM/HM, so make it easy on yourself).

Grrr, I specifically asked the question in guild chat before starting and people there told me id *did* make a difference.
2nd time I get bad advice in guild chat this week (the other one was that insignias apply to your entire armor and don't stack,so putting 5x insignia is a waste)


Except for being HM and not using Heroes for fear they'd steal my loot (didn't know flagging them back worked, that's a great trick), I did exactly what you describe.

After the first few runs to get my bearings, etc... I was running about 8 runs per hour (including time to sell between runs). It would have been a lot easier in NM because in HM the spirits did tend to get decimated by Naga warriors, even with Armor of Unfeeling and Spiritleech aura on the spirits. I usually had to rebuild and pull again a few times. Once the warriors were out of the way, it was usually smooth sailing, Ssyn himself is a pushover.

I stopped counting at 20+ runs but played another hour or so before I gave up. I played again in the evening and got the staff within a half hour or so.


So it must have been really bad luck

Insignia's do stack, it's generally a lot of the runes that don't. Such as ones that buff your Attributes or the Vigor runes (However the demerit like -75 health does stack). As a Ritualist Spirit Spammer I would suggest using Shaman's Insignia's

Actually look out for the words "Non-Stacking" Then you know if you can use more than one or not.

About the bad advice, I would take it with a grain of salt from most people in Guild Wars unless it is someone who consistently gives good information. Some people just assume things without really checking into it. I can vouch that Scott doesn't give any information or advice he personally doesn't know about or hasn't checked to see if Arena net confirms.

I think I may have been unknowing in whether or not HM had better rates then NM. IF it was me, I apologize. The insignia thing though, was deffinitely not me lol

Fink Dixel wrote:Actually look out for the words "Non-Stacking" Then you know if you can use more than one or not.

I think a lot of the confusion about armor tends to come from the strange (and, to me, inconsistent) way the game uses the term "stacking". I'll maybe write a post about armor sometime soon though to go over it in detail...

Chris wrote:Grrr, I specifically asked the question in guild chat before starting and people there told me id *did* make a difference. 2nd time I get bad advice in guild chat this week (the other one was that insignias apply to your entire armor and don't stack,so putting 5x insignia is a waste)

Sorry to hear you got some bad advice. It can be confusing to people though, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and say they probably weren't lying to you, they probably just heard it wrong themselves (it's hard to get misinformation out of circulation once it's been going around a bit).

The only thing HM affects in terms of drop rates are:
1. The average number of uncommon (purple) and rare (gold) item drops is increased in Hard mode. Unique (green) drops aren't affected.
2. Certain items will only drop in HM and not NM at all. Skill tomes, Passages Scroll to the Fissure of Woe, and Passage Scrolls to the Underworld can only drop from foes in hard mode. Lockpicks can only drop from foes in hard mode except in Eye of the North (where they can also drop in normal mode).

I stopped counting at 20+ runs but played another hour or so before I gave up. I played again in the evening and got the staff within a half hour or so.
So it must have been really bad luck

There's actually other things that can affect the drop rate for your character personally. I've noticed and tested the following things that seem to increase the chance of getting better drops, especially from bosses:
1. Kill the boss quickly once you've engaged them.
2. Take damage from the boss (but don't die).
3. Stand close to the boss when they die.

Fink Dixel wrote:Actually look out for the words "Non-Stacking" Then you know if you can use more than one or not.

Yeah, I understand the stacking part but that wasn't the original question.
My current understanding is that the insignia only raises the armor level of that piece of armor. so if an insignia offers+5 armor under a certain condition, if you apply it to your AR 60 armor chest piece, when that condition is met your chest piece AR is 65, but your leg arm piece is still AR60. it takes an insignia on every piece to get AR65 on all body parts, whereas I was being told one insignia provides AR65 on all body parts.
It's not stacking, but it's not "one is all that counts" either, like a Survivor insignia for example.


Next time I'll make sure I know the person that answers or even better post in the forums.

Scott, a post on armor would be wonderful too.

Having a full set of Shaman's insignias is a good idea. That as far as my understanding is all you needed to know from your question. You could have stated what you wanted a little clearer. The armor on the pieces would also add up per spirit. As far as my understanding is. But yes that is what we meant to say was that it had to be each piece. In it's own way it is stacking.

nope, I agree I wasn't clear above because I wasn't asking in this thread jsut mentioning the other misinformation.
The discussion in guild chat was very clear

Chris wrote:Yeah, I understand the stacking part but that wasn't the original question.
My current understanding is that the insignia only raises the armor level of that piece of armor. so if an insignia offers+5 armor under a certain condition, if you apply it to your AR 60 armor chest piece, when that condition is met your chest piece AR is 65, but your leg arm piece is still AR60. it takes an insignia on every piece to get AR65 on all body parts, whereas I was being told one insignia provides AR65 on all body parts.
It's not stacking, but it's not "one is all that counts" either, like a Survivor insignia for example.

This is a perfect example of what I mean by it being confusing in how they use the term "stacking". To me, it also doesn't really seem like armor insignias are "stacking", because like you say, each piece of armor actually has its own individual armor rating. So it would seem more intuitive to me to actually label something like Shaman's Insignia as "non-stacking"... but on the other hand I can see why they don't, because what they really mean by "non-stacking" is that "there's no point to putting more than one of it on your whole armor set", which obviously isn't the case for armor rating insignias like Shaman's.