Guild Wars 2

There was a leaked picture somewhere on another site.

From what I speculated with the trailer, it seemed like the drones would not be AI based off of 2 assumptions:

1) The movement and positioning were unnatural for our current AI, but it could have been just cinematic magic.

2) We already have turrets

However, it seems its not the case.

1) In the leaked picture, drones weren’t around like you’d see in DotA2 Invoker or like in the trailer or how others have described. Some of the positioning is off and their facing direction is mostly toward where the engineer is facing, like a lot of AI do. This could indicate that they are in fact “AI”. We’ll see.

2) I think the spirit weapon theory is the best bet right now.

From someone that went full turrets for a long time it doesn’t bug me that much but to all of you here… oh dear.

Who knows though? We’ll see in a couple of days!

Maybe they will be AI, but I really hope they won’t be targetable. It seems like they are tied to some kind of energy management (“fuel”) and if they are destroyable too, that would just be too much downsides for those skills. Or, if they are able to get destroyed, their effects have to be MASSIVELY op to compensate that.

But I don’t get why everyone thinks from all minion types in the game, the spirit weapons are the thing for forge/scrapper? They don’t have anything attached which seems like they are able to attack. I still think they will be more like ranger spirits.

Well as someone who has previously pushed MM necro to the limit, I know that AI based drones won’t be viable unless we have a reliable way of waking them. Necromancer can use two blood magic traits, or a well even to heal his minions and keep them up except against extremely heavy cleave.

Engineer has group healing with heal turret and inventions. But cleansing synergy isn’t a very good heal, and medical dispersion field is terrible. Magi Bunker down also won’t work due to AI’s movement patterns (unless they specifically program it, which they won’t due to all around lazy coding in this game for the past several years).

If forge traits allow drone healing, it could work, probably with cleric or settler as an amulet, but we will have to see the details.

i think it will be something not so different from ranger spirit or pet. The reason is simple … they are working at the thing at the same time so probably they share a lot of code

maybe they are “mobile banners” with upkeep mechanic? Wouldnt be that far out

I ummmm…….kinda want drone pets? Hehe………dont hate me……

I still think they stick to you like a magnet. Like that one revenant skill with those floating green daggers. The drones – so do I hope – will only be additional models to your char that show the enemy “oh he has drone X up” and will be the source of skills. Maybe you can even send them somewhere like the revenant healing stance stone plate, while being untargetable.

Basaltface.2786:

maybe they are “mobile banners” with upkeep mechanic? Wouldnt be that far out

I don’t think they will be like this, but if they are banners, I think it could be cool if they were DEBUFF banners that harm enemies rather than add to ally stats. like banners and spirits already do. Some potential options with that route:

Detection drone: Reveals all stealthed enemies within 600 units while active

Corrosive drone: -200 toughness to all enemies within range, enemies have incoming condition duration increased by 10%

Distraction Drone: Reduces precision of nearby enemies, enemies that activate their skills within it’s range have their skill cooldowns increased 20%

Medical Drone: Reduces the effectiveness of enemy heals by 20% (stacks with poison)
Whatever the active or secondary effects on these would be would be the actual main self heal. Maybe the toolbelt skill.

In about 12 hours we’ll have a pretty good idea (I believe mmorpg.com has the Wednesday article that will likely go up ~9am PST).

I see a lot of comparisons to Necro minions, but hardly any reference to how much improved their minion AI has been since the recent patch. Every Necro I’ve talked to (and I also agree) says minions are actually good now and pretty fun to use. If that AI is used on drones I am open minded.

Still, I would rather not see AI. We’ll have to see how it plays out though, it’s not like the elite specs so far have had predictable mechanics to them at all. It could be something completely unexpected. No need to speculate anymore though I’m going to bed and waking up to the truth

Adamantium.3682:

In about 12 hours we’ll have a pretty good idea (I believe mmorpg.com has the Wednesday article that will likely go up ~9am PST).

I see a lot of comparisons to Necro minions, but hardly any reference to how much improved their minion AI has been since the recent patch. Every Necro I’ve talked to (and I also agree) says minions are actually good now and pretty fun to use. If that AI is used on drones I am open minded.

Still, I would rather not see AI. We’ll have to see how it plays out though, it’s not like the elite specs so far have had predictable mechanics to them at all. It could be something completely unexpected. No need to speculate anymore though I’m going to bed and waking up to the truth

Except that AI should be kept to PvE. It get unbalanced too quickly in PvP

Please no more AI Skills if so we are the only class who has two AI trees Turrets and Drones i dont want that let the Druid be the with pets walking stranger

style.6173:

Adamantium.3682:

In about 12 hours we’ll have a pretty good idea (I believe mmorpg.com has the Wednesday article that will likely go up ~9am PST).

I see a lot of comparisons to Necro minions, but hardly any reference to how much improved their minion AI has been since the recent patch. Every Necro I’ve talked to (and I also agree) says minions are actually good now and pretty fun to use. If that AI is used on drones I am open minded.

Still, I would rather not see AI. We’ll have to see how it plays out though, it’s not like the elite specs so far have had predictable mechanics to them at all. It could be something completely unexpected. No need to speculate anymore though I’m going to bed and waking up to the truth

Except that AI should be kept to PvE. It get unbalanced too quickly in PvP

and in pve it aggros mobs or doesnt do what it should do and isnt liked very much either.

For anything mentioned here, keep in mind:

1) We have never seen a moving environmental object. Ever. Examples are turrets, arrow carts, banners, etc.

2) Anything that could move on its own was an NPC (meaning it had an HP bar).

WEXXES.2378:

For anything mentioned here, keep in mind:

1) We have never seen a moving environmental object. Ever. Examples are turrets, arrow carts, banners, etc.

2) Anything that could move on its own was an NPC (meaning it had an HP bar).

That doesn’t mean anything. Just because drones will have HP bars, doesn’t mean they are destroyable. We have an invuln effect in the game. And just look at the (soon fixed) continuum rift of chronomancers. It has a HP bar too, but wasn’t attackable and so not destroyable. So there is still a chance that drones will not be destroyable.

I believe the elite spec will transform our turrets into invulnerable, overchargeable drones, bound to the addressed fuel ressource system. I hope not, because i wanna see lots of new kits instead of turret crap, but thats what i actually expect.

Looks like I was right

Not only that but they have limited time