Collector's items

Lots of people apparently look down on collector items - why?

My staff gives me 20% chance of faster casting and 20% chance of faster skill recharge and +41 hp.

Whats wrong with it? is there much better items around?

[sarcasm]
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude it isn't a Shadow Staff, the Shadow Staff looks sooooooooo coool!! Its all about looks man!! Who cares what the staff does my staff looks better!!!
[/sarcasm]

The same reason people buy the 15k armor or spend days collecting the components for the 15k armor in the fissure or underworld. Its all about looks, personally my perfect collector staff looks a lot better in my hands while I stand over the dead body of somebody else with an almost perfect Shadow Staff they paid 50k for.

The problem I have noticed with collectors items is: They can not be salvaged.
If you put that awesome rune or component on a collectors item, then there is no way that you can remove the item by salvaging it so you can put it on something else that you acquire later. At least this is what I have noticed. I could be wrong or bugged.

they made the collector items a lil better during one of the last updates... i don't mind people looking down on them - it's fun to hunt for the items and get pretty nice items for it (mostly the value is higher than 5 of the items for it so even gold-diggers should like them). still: lots of people don't know about them or just don't ever get into the mood to pile 5 items and go back to get the reward.

what i dislike is people who are selling those for several plat - some even try to tell you they are mod/salvagable (what they DONT are, for anyone who wants to know). a fair price may okay but some people just go nuts ^^

there is nothing with higher chances than 20% and random items (dropped ones) mostly don't reach the 20... but if they do: booyaaah!

another fact: for a roleplayer like me the colour indicates how strong the magic on that item is - and golden beats purple which beats blue: i just love to use rare items... and i can't imagine who does not enjoy golden equiqment. ^^


edit: some collector items have a very nice look - i had a nice smiting rod once that looked like a strange firewand.

Well its hard to beat a +10 mana wand imho. Havn't seen any wand of the collectors that can beat that. Or any staff, if it one could it couldn't beat that plus of the +10 mana from my offhand item.

I have yet to try it though since I still use my few pieces of collector armor.

If the item has "perfect" (i.e. 20% casting bonuses [for staff/wand/focus] or 15% damage bonus [for weapon/bow]) why would you want to salvage the component back out? Its not like you're going to find a better item.

There are some items available that may be "better" than the collector stuff depending on what you're trying to do. As an example for a pure warrior weapons exist that have a +15% Damage (no condition) -5 energy set of buffs on them. Some may argue that buff is superior to +15% Damage (while health > 50%) but thats debatable to me.

that was fixed 2 weeks ago

from 06/01 patch
http://www.guildwars.com/news/gameupdates.html

I see nothing wrong with them
I have
Vampiric ascolon bow of fortitude
maxed stats on bow and components nothing better out there
got it cheap
now if i find that perfect short or halfmoon bow i can take someone for there money it's not shiny but man does it kill good

I never used to go for too many collector things except the hammer by the Kryta Ambassador in post searing Ascelon, Until seeing two collectors in Kryta selling 71 rated armor, which was tops until you got to Augury Rock.

In addition to appearance appeal to players, the general public also seems to like gold items and look down on blue items (even when they have perfect stats).

Give the players some time, they'll soon learn that colours can be decieving.

You probably should know that i don't think they were talking about collectors armor (Not much people use them anyway). I think collectors items are great, alot of people are just ignorant and don't bother actually looking for them so they don't know how it is. You can see people selling desert collector items for like 2k or something and that just shows the ignorance of some people.

Changed title and edited the entire original post.

We have english rules - follow them!

I haven't tested it personally, but i feel ascalon bow is 80 range with >3s firing rate, so I picked flat/short/halfmoon instead. The other two alts are using collector items though.

There are things I haven't found yet. Where is the collector giving 12 energy 20/20 offhand on smite? where is the single hand healing rod?

Aparently, ascalon bow is not a bow type, but a bow appearance. There's 2 identical ascalon bows in mineral springs, but one has the range and firing rate of a short bow, while the other has that of a longbow (I think).

i have had this problem before with armor, lost a rune and it really pissed me off.
its the same problem with quest revard items, dont know why but its stupid.
some low damage items have nice mods..

You can now salvage collector armor (FACT I have done it) you are also able to salvage collector items (have not tried).

I am about 90% sure you can salvage a quest weapon. I had one that I tried salvaging as it had nice mods, but it would not, so I customized it to use. I then later found a perfect Axe that had the same mod, so I was going to sell the quest axe, but tried to salvage it first. Guess what I got the haft off of it.
There was a few days in-between the time I got it and the time I customized / salvaged it, that is why I cannot say with 100% certainty that I was able to. I will be trying this though with the next quest item I get.

I think it all stems from the "If you didn't pay 75k for it, it ain't worth it" mentality. I have found some impressive idols from Collectors at +10 energy, while gold looted idols in the same area are at about +8 energy. I look at numbers, not names, looks, and whatnot.


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Collectors items are fine for specialists. Not everyone plays a fire elem. Some healing monks *gasp* have things other than healing prayers in their skillbars. In cases like that, slightly-lower but generic bonuses are better.

For instance: a fire elem who uses glyphs has to choose between a staff with 20/20 fire recharge/fire casting bonus -or- a staff with 10/20 generic recharge/fire casting on it. Which is more useful to him?

It comes down to playing style. If you only use one type of ability, then caster collectors' items are nice for you. If you don't, they're not so hot.

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I tried to do that the other night, and it wouldn't let me salvage one. This was before this latest update, though it doesn't mention adding that change.

Personally, I don't like the Collector's items because it takes so long to find the items and then the Collectors themselves that go with those items. In pre-sear it was ok because one could do most of the quests solo and get all the drops, but in post-sear it can take a really long time to find all of the items required.

The other issue is that many of these collectors are found along quests or missions... ever try to stop and talk with a collector while questing with a PuG? Yeah right, give me a break... I'm lucky to have enough time to just pick up dropped items, let alone do a trade with a collector that's off the beaten path. I've not once been in a PuG that actually stopped or diverted for a collector, even when asked.

After that last patch, with all the drop problems going on when running solo or with henchmen, I lost interest in running through zones trying to find collector's items and looking for the collectors themselves. Now that those problems have been supposedly fixed, maybe I'll give it another try at some point.