Guild Wars - Sneak Peek VI

Official News
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And FINALLY, we arrive at the Sentinels Tab!

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SENTINELS

There are 4 Sentinels in Guild Wars (one for each Skill: Attack, Life, Armor & Magic), and your guild can interact with them to gain some bonuses in Guild War battles (both on offense & defense)

Each Sentinel has 5 Levels, with each level giving:

  • A direct bonus to YOUR troops for Guild Wars battles
  • A teeny tiny bonus to all players in the Guild who are of higher rank than YOU! (which adds up to be significant)

Each of these levels has a cost associated with itā€¦ for example, ATTACK

  • Level 1: 100 Glory
  • Level 2: 500 Glory
  • Level 3: 10 Gems
  • Level 4: 25 Gems
  • Level 5: 50 Gems

Other Sentinels cost different types of currency (Gold for Armor & Life, and Souls for Magic). But the final 3 levels always cost a few Gems. For top end Guilds itā€™s a pretty good investment, as the top Guild Wars prizes each week contain a nice profit to be made in Gems, and up to 100x of the Guild Wars troop!

Pyramid of Bonuses

So how EXACTLY do these bonuses work?
Well the first part is easyā€¦ your own personal bonuses can be up to +5 for Attack & Magic, and +10 for Armor & Life.
But all those little extras from players on lower ranks can effectively add +25%/+50%/+75%/+100% to Vanguards/Heralds/Champions/Paragons if every member of the guild upgrades their Sentinels
In order to do that, the ā€œhigher rankā€ bonuses become larger for players who are in the top ranksā€¦ in the example above, you can see the ā€œhigher rankā€ bonuses for someone who is a Champion. They would be smaller if I were only a Vanguard. Donā€™t worry if thatā€™s a little confusing - you donā€™t need to worry about it too much - I mainly had there for anyone attempting to do math with the values, just to say ā€œyou wonā€™t quite get the correct answersā€.

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Here we see a summary of the bonusesā€¦ the first 5 columns show the general bonuses applying to each rank, and the last two columns show MY sentinel bonuses, both before AND after the ā€œhigher-upā€ bonuses apply, so as an example, my ATTACK bonus is 1 (I have the attack sentinel at level 1), while other players in my guild are contributing +4 to that (since Iā€™m at Champion rank), for a total of 5.

And finally (no screenshot of this), we have icons on the RESULTS tab showing the level each player has upgraded their Sentinels to, so Guildmasters will be able to spot any freeloaders if theyā€™ve set requirements.

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Looks good but two quick questions (not sure if your additional info will cover them):

  1. Will we be able to see who has donated (in our guild) to their Sentinels and to what level theyā€™ve donated? Not being able to see that would be a huge hassle for guild management.

  2. Do these increased stats (from the Sentinels) carry over into normal PvP/Challenges/Explore for the week or is it only for Guild Wars battles?

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For these bonuses do you spend these resources as a guild to unlock them?

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Yes and no. You spend them individually for your own GW bonuses but there is a small amount of bonus also applied to any member who is ranked higher than you (in the GWs rankings)

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So basically for us to get max bonuses, we will have to each individually pay 2400 glory and 340 gems weekly? I can see a lot of people having issues with thatā€¦

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I think thatā€™s part of the idea, though. This is one of the ways that the higher level guilds will filter to the top. Even if I donā€™t drop the gems and glory, Iā€™ll certainly pay the gold, but as a new player, I would not even do that.

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Iā€™ll defer to @Sirrian but assuming the last 3 tiers for all 4 Sentinels are the same as the Attack Sentinel so itā€™d be (85 x 4 =) 340 gems/week each. Yeah that seems very excessive. :frowning:

I know the Devs give out lots of gems but 340 is somewhere in the $20-$30 range each week or 2/3 of the gems a guild gets from doing the tasks each week. Higher level players who donā€™t really need VIP chests probably wonā€™t care but that definitely hurts the rest of us.

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No Attack is the only one using Glory. 2 others use Gold, and the 4th Souls. but your Gem calculation seems right on.

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Even on console with the daily tasks giving a little extra Gem boost (perhaps 15ish average per day if you do all 4 Tasks) those last 3 levels will have to be thought about before upgrading them. I suppose that was the idea.

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This sneak peek did it, iā€™m confused.

No thatā€™s not rare.

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It would seem that the devs have made the rewards greater than 340 gems if this statement is trueā€¦

Calculated Risk!? :thinking:

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HK for meā€¦

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Interestingā€¦ also puzzling, as I thought the Sentinels tab would be something to do with the defence teamsā€¦ may as well call this the Bonuses tabā€¦

Again, like others, the maths here concerns me: @sirrian does this mean it could cost 300 gems each player each week to max the bonuses? That feels very steep. In my guild thatā€™d wipe out much of our gems income from guild tasks, and half our members would be nowhere near affording it if they also wanted to get, er, troops. Interested in seeing what ā€˜profitā€™ we make from winning at GW. If it was say 500 gems for a good week: thatā€™s unappealing - pay 300 gems for a chance to get 500 gems that hugely depends on everyone elseā€™s performance?

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@Sirrian - IS this going to be a weekly cost? Thatā€™s sort of a big deal since the guild task nerfsā€¦

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Ah thank you guildmate, thatā€™s what I was looking for.

Iā€™m no longer confused! Well, thatā€™s not fair to sayā€¦about this though.

My thought was, we donā€™t get enough gems for this. Reward explains it.

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Weā€™re still working with the exact amounts to charge, but currently to fully upgrade your Sentinels will cost:

  • 340 Gems
  • 600 Glory
  • 1200 Souls
  • 60000 Gold

Weā€™re also tinkering with the rewards, but as an example, first place is well over 1000 Gems.
At the end of the day, every guild/guildmember can opt to upgrade their sentinels as much or as little as they like, and still do well in the war.

And just to clarify that statementā€¦ I could save 200 Gems by only taking my sentinels to level 4, missing only a single point of bonus on each skillā€¦ so the cap is there, but I donā€™t feel that everyone should be in any way obliged to meet it to do well.

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340 gems would be fairly cost prohibitive Iā€™d have to say. That is far from a ā€œsmall amount of gemsā€ for those guilds that donā€™t get into legendary tasks. You donā€™t really ā€œoutgrowā€ the need for gems. At least, not without legendary tasks.

The best (and usually only reliable) way to get mythics is to heavily spend on VIP chests during the exclusive period, often to the tune of nearly 5k gems in a month. I still miss mythics, despite my guild getting every single possible gem and me personally collecting tributes whenever it is available. Tossing in 340 gems weekly would be over a third of the gems I get from any source on any given week. This leaves little else to be thrown into guildwars in what is essentially a gamble to potentially make more gems, or at least break even and get a better amount of troops.

Reminds me of early gold PvP costs kinda - throw in (what used to be) a huge amount of gold and hope you can get a favorable outcome, but with like a dozen other factors to consider that are completely beyond your control. Thank god they did away with that. The costs arenā€™t required in this instance, but enough of a stat disparity will make it so they basically are if you want to win, especially with mono color team.

Waitā€¦ I just had another horrifying thought. If the sentinels tab only deals with purchasable skill bonuses, where do you set up your guild wars defense team? Please please please tell me this isnā€™t going to be the same as your PvP defense team. That right there has far worse implications than anything.

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Weā€™ve added that to the SCHEDULE TAB

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