Showing Posts For AsgarZigel.4530:
We do know that there will be masteries for fractals, so it is likely that there will be some new stuff in the fractals. They also said over and over again that they wanted to add challenging content, but we’ll have to wait and see on that front.
Trahearnne also explains it briefly when you speak with him in this patch. When all the known dragons first woke up, they all created some kind of cataclysmic event or went on the offensive. Zhaitan created tons of Risen and the tidal wave. Jormag rampaged through the far north and drove the Norn south. Kralk created the dragonbrand, although he is likely a special case since he was immediately attacked by DE. They all built up a power base of some sort and then became relatively docile, just slowly devouring magic if Zhaitans behavior during the Personal Story is any indication.
The Pact is going after Mordremoth first since he is in that first stage, likely to aggressively push, but at the same time he is probably at his most vulnerable, before he can truly establish his own territory. The Pact wants to get him down before he can create his own version of the tidal wave.
From the Escape from Lion’s Arch ambient dialogue:
Heal-o-tron: Negative. I—paid—my—debt—to—the—people—of—Divinity’s—Reach. I—raised—thousands—of—gold—for—them—during—Wintersday.
Heal-o-tron: I—overheard—Seraph—talking—about—using—this—unit—to—
Seraph Sergeant: Enough. Come along right now. You have nowhere to run.
Notice how the Seraph silences him. Seems to me like there is something shady going on with the Heal-o-tron situation. No idea why it’s a Ministry guard this time who is after him, but there is definitely someone in Divinity’s Reach who is really interested in getting their hands on the little golem. Heal-o-Tron knows why and is willing to risk his “life” (by joining the battle with scarlet) to get out of it.
It’s possible that someone else is pulling the strings and just sending corrupt elements of the Seraph/Ministry Guard after him, but that’s just speculation.
The concept art looks more like the normal Nightmare Court aesthetic to me. We already know that the NC is active in Brisban and it makes sense that Mordremoth’s awakening would spur them into action. (Whether or not they have something to do with Mordy)
Not that this is bad, necessarily, the NC is one of the few evil faction that actually had a bit of development and some characters that aren’t “MUAHAHAHR EVVVVIL”, despite that explicitly being the NCs agenda anyway. Funny how that works out.
(As far as I know, at least. I’m not familiar with all the personal story paths)
I’d agree that we don’t know everything and waking Mordremoth wasn’t her end-goal (although the “Tyria will bow before a new master” line seems to imply that, but maybe she meant herself in delusional megalomania?), obviously she doesn’t see herself as the villain, which they even explicitly mention as you said.
As far as the Entity goes, I doubt it is the Mursaat or Inquest. As far as I know, the Entity was with her right from the beginning. It was also stated that whatever she brought into the isolation chamber was already in her and all the chamber really did was removing psychological / neurological defenses in an attempt to see the Eternal Alchemy.
Remember that Scarlet spoke to the Pale Tree during the isolation chamber experience. It’s quite possible that what she saw wasn’t the Eternal Alchemy at all, but instead unmitigated, direct access to the Dream and she learned something about the Sylvari/the Dream that was never revealed to us. Likely Caithe’s secret?
Therefore I think the Entity either was within the Dream or has access to the Dream somehow. While it is possible that it’s Mordremoth/a champion, it does by no means confirm that. It could be something new we don’t even know about yet, or whatever is behind the Nightmare.
If the Dream originates in the location instead of the Pale Tree herself like you often theorized Konig, then it’s even possible that the Mursaat are behind it, since they probably operate nearby if they are still active. Still very unlikely though, I’m not that up on GW1 lore, but as far as I know the Mursaat aren’t really associated with mind magic or dreams or whatever.
Still, my point is I think the Entity has something to do with the Dream or the origin of the Sylvari, whether that connects to Mordy or not.
The big problem I have with the pact is that the main character is technically still the second in command. I can buy that they didn’t interfere because they are busy with the dragons (even though we never actually see any significant advancement, but that’s hard to implement I suppose), but the PC, their commander, the second-in-command of the entire organisation basically went AWOL for a year playing grabass with a loony sylvari and neither Trahearnne nor any of the Pact members seem to care about that. I guess it turned all out fine since there was a dragon involved after all…
Also, what popped into my head after meeting Laranthir in LA:
[Laranthir comes into Trahearnne’s office, salutes]
Laranthir: Marshal Trahearnne, we can’t ignore this anymore. It seems Scarlet was working for an Elder Dragon after all!
Trahearnne: Oh, uhm… the fighting is already over, right? Even if we send someone, we wouldn’t have to… you know… do anything?
Laranthir: … yes.
Trahearnne: Excellent! Off with you! Observe the situation in Lion’s Arch or something. Report back to me, but… not too frequently. You know the drill.
Laranthir: Yes, sir. [prepares to leave the office]
Trahearnne: Oh, and Laranthir... if you see the Commander, tell him he is the best at his job and should keep doing what he’s doing!
Laranthir: But sir... he didn’t report back to headquarters for over a year..
Trahearnne: [Devilish grin] Exactly!
I get that there are limitations in what can be shown in game and that you can justify it in lore, but the Pact still comes off as an organisation with a lot of resources that’s not really doing much of anything in over a year.
It really would have been a lot smoother if the Pact disbanded after the Personal Story or at least the PC would have left it for the time being.
It doubt she was supposed to die originally. These Living Story updates are made one to two months in advance, so they likely didn’t have any feedback on her when that decision would have been made.
Which means there is no reason to kill her off, since it doesn’t make any sense dramatically. We were just introduced to her, most of her story-hooks aren’t resolved in any way and she barely had any kind of story arc so far. (apart from warming up to Braham and changing from admiring Scarlet to wanting her dead / be a better person than her after seeing the destruction she brought)
It just would be a waste to kill her off. I haven’t watching Game of Thrones or read the books, but from what I know there the “anyone can die” kinda thing fits into the setting that seems to be rather dark and serious. Whereas GW2 is on average more of an optimistic classic fantasy adventure. While characters, possibly even somewhat important ones will die, it doesn’t happen all that often.
Also it would just be repeating a mistake that was heavily criticized in the Personal Story.
Yeah, Tequatl is the only one that seems to have to do absolutely nothing to do with it. I thought they’d use the tail Rox cut off somehow in the end. I mean you don’t mention a loaded dragon tail in the first act and then never smack Scarlet over the head with it, right? :P
That said, Scarlet overall is… kind of messy. It got a lot better towards the end, mainly because they mostly abandoned the wacky “Let’s cook Faren because why not!” thing she had going on when first introduced. That part just doesn’t fit with her backstory at all imo. She basically was the ambitious mad scientist archetype, who was driven to insanity by the voice in her head.
If you think about it, she does actually make a lot of sense as a villain for GW2 – if the game has a unifying theme, both story and design-wise, it was always different people/races coming together and fighting something they can’t individually. Scarlet is pretty much the antithesis of that – too arrogant to ever actually trust anybody, she tries to solve everything on her own, which ultimately leads to her downfall.
Even the seemingly random alliances make more sense in that light, they are basically a twisted mockery of the races of Tyria banding together. Not really reaching out to each other, but being manipulated by Scarlet to do her bidding.
So yeah, on a wide, thematic level, I think she actually works pretty well. The devil is in the detail, however, I agree that she could have been implemented way better. The whole Mystery angle just didn’t work for this kind of character imo. It would have been way better if she would have been introduced as Ceara, maybe even meet Braham and the gang before going crazy.
Why does she react so negatively to Kasmeer saying her real name in the final instance, anyway? How are Sylvari named? I suppose it would make some sense if it was the name the Pale Tree gave her.
Even if the relationship would make the story less “serious” – why is that a bad thing? If anything, the more humorous characters like Tybalt or Lord Faren have been the best and most likable in GW2.
I mean I guess I can somewhat see where you are coming from, the delivery is still a bit clumsy at times. Kasmeer’s backstory-dump made me cringe a little as well. But I’ll take characters that actually have a bit of development and hooks for future stories over Destiny’s Edge, who were pretty much solely defined by their relationship with each other and most of the buildup presumably happened in a book I haven’t read.
As far as Jory and Kasmeer go, I’d just appreciate it if they got to interact with the rest of the group a bit more individually. Maybe have them split up for a time? I don’t actually know about them as characters, honestly, but that might just be because I didn’t play too much during past updates that featured them.
She just says she cut off part of the tail and “took him down”, she doesn’t say that he’s dead.
The open world zones don’t really have a timeline, all the events are cyclical. Apart from the Living World stuff, that is.
The Centaur War never ended and the Risen are still out and about in Sparkfly Fen. It doesn’t make much sense that the Centaurs wouldn’t react to the tower, but I assume they just didn’t have the resources to rework the entire zone at once, so it was limited to the area around the lake.
@Konig: Yes, these were just some ideas anyway. Though I’d argue it could still be possible that they evolved from dragons. We do have precedent for mortals ascending to godlike beings in Kormir and possibly Baelfire, depending on how successful he would have been without us stopping him.
The Elder Dragons would have been mortal dragons once, but they absorbed so much magic that they are more magical presence than physical body now and the only thing that ties them back to the dragons of old is their draconic appearance whenever they do need a body.
It’s just a crackpot though and pretty much impossible to verify. I just find it more likely for the EDs to originate on Tyria since they fell into a natural cycle of devouring the world and sleeping without completely eradicating the world in the process.
If they were created by the Mists like you said, another possibility would be that they are some kind of cosmic antibody that keeps the magic on Tyria in check. Although I don’t remember if it was said somewhere in game how the cycle works, whether Tyria builds up new magic by itself while the dragons sleep or it seeps back into the world from the sleeping dragons.
The ancient dragon race is a pretty interesting idea, although there are still multiple possibilities for what the ED’s actually are.
Could be some alien invader that took the form of the dragons since they were the dominant species, or maybe the ED’s are just an evolution of the dragons or individual dragons that gained so much magical power that they became these living disasters. Maybe the ED’s were deliberately created as a weapon or something else by the dragons and something went horribly wrong.
I dunno, after the scene at the beach in Lion’s Arch I had the impression that Rytlock doesn’t even want her in the Warband and gives her pretty much impossible tasks to get rid of her. Only that it doesn’t work and she actually succeeds.
To be fair, it could also just be a dragon champion of Mordremoth (or another dragon). Remember Svanir and the thing in Drakkar Lake?
I like her quite a bit more than I thought I would as well.
Pairing him up with Braham also makes a lot more sense to me now. I quite like that he takes responsibility for her even though he got pretty much shafted by Logan. He’s pretty much the only character for which that makes sense, he can sympathize due to his own childhood. Even though Taimi herself doesn’t seem fazed by being an orphan too much so far.
Either way, it’s a nice touch and shows they put some thought into it.
The underwater weapons aren’t as bad as they look once you get used to them, but there still are numerous problems. There isn’t really much choice in terms of utility skills in PvE, I use wells heavily on land, but they don’t work underwater… corruption skills are a bit awkward without Death Swarm as well. The signets are ok, but you rarely want more than one and the spectral skills… dunno, not a fan of them. Grasp isn’t needed because you have many mobility / pull skills on the weapons already, specral walk doesn’t help much in combat and spectral armor is… okay. I haven’t played with it much since in open world gameplay offensive abilities are usually better.
Underwater Death Shroud is just bad however. Slow casting speed and extremely unresponsive for some reason. I also don’t see why it even needs extra underwater skills, all the normal DS skills would work just fine… or am I missing something?
Have done the first four dungeons in story mode. The dungeons aren’t too hard, there is just no real learning curve. The jump in difficulty from the event content (glass cannon AoE fest most of the time) is quite jarring. They also differ quite drastically in difficulty, both the dungeons themselves and the bosses inside each dungeons.
AC is pretty challenging, especially for the first dungeon. After you know what to look out for, just the lovers are challenging and that one point where you have to pull 3 rangers at once can be tricky, the rest is pretty easy.
CM is just the easiest dungeon, quite the difference there. Should be the first dungeon imo. Also plays boring, the story is pretty boring and… yeah. Kind of a waste, since I really like the scenario, it’s pretty unique.
TA is about the same level as AC, the normal mobs are probably a bit easier. The boss who summons spiders is annoying and the end boss is very chaotic.
SE was a disaster for my group, though the group wasn’t the best to be fair. The Kudu’s fire golem was by far the hardest, the biggest problem was the “heals with conditions” since this completely hosed my necromancer…
The one golem boss was the exact opposite, just stood there and let us kill him.
The end boss was very cool though. Kind of a “puzzle boss”, aka once you know the attack pattern and know how to beat him he’s easy.
Overall, as kind of a casual player, I like the dungeons because they actually are a challenge and force you to learn the combat system, in contrast to the event zerg, which just gets boring after a while. They still need to be looked at in terms of balancing and they should have a difficulty curve instead of just being all over the place in terms of difficulty.
Maybe give each dungeon or boss a mechanical “theme” ? Like one is all about dodging, the other about condition mechanics, the third about learning to interrupt and so on. They should be a basic skill test, but not too hard imo.
In PvE multiple builds are viable. Conditions with Scepter/Dagger + Weapon Set of choice (staff probably the easiest) is very good and does a lot of damage.
More of a supportive Necro with wells works quite well in dungeons.
There are traits for minions and they do reasonable damage, but the AI is still pretty bad. Really needs more control over them to be more viable. Bone minions are good for the blast (huge damage and double blast finisher on one skill)
Tried out a build that builds a lot of vulnerability with axe/focus and well of suffering to finish off with wells and dagger/warhorn, works pretty well so far.
Posted something about this on guru the other day, I will just repost it here for the people having problems with AC story mode.
Some tips for AC story mode especially:
- don’t rush, pull carefully. In AC story mode you never need to pull more than three mobs at once
- always keep moving, preferably in circles around your target (circle strafing), like this you kite melee and dogde AoEs at the same time
- pull mobs out of narrow corridors into more open areas whenever possible, or the camera issues will be your downfall (there is one nasty spot right at the beginning of AC story where this applies)
- focus fire priority targets, you should have a leader who pulls mobs, sets targets and makes sure everyone knows what’s going on, can be hard in PUGs though…
- boons and conditions can have a huge impact, if weakness is up on your enemy and protection on you, you take around half damage from hits, blind, aegis and interrupts negate strong single hits altogether, melee mobs never reach you if you keep CC up
- don’t all go pure damage and remember you can swap out your utility skills if you need a certain effect like condition removal, you can also change around your major traits to a more group friendly style
- if you didn’t do it already you should increase the mouse turning speed in the options to be able to react faster
on the individual mobs, from highest priority to kill to lowest:
- monks heal and are more durable than you’d think, but are easy to kill on their own. I never saw how much they heal, but you usually want to take out the healer first anyway
- elementalists are the most damaging on range, both their standard attack and fire rain deal much AoE damage. From my experiences, they seem to be weaker in melee, but I don’t if they just preferably attack targets at range or they can’t use their damaging attacks in melee range. Either way, a good opportunity for your melees, jump in and slaughter them, they also die a bit faster than the others
- rangers can be very nasty, especially the one pull right before the Ranger boss where you pretty much have to pull 3 at once. They shoot a special projectile that creates a spike trap, which does a lot of damage, cripples and poisons. If they hit you, you are pretty much a sitting duck because you are slow and your heal is less effective because of the poison. Here you want condition removal (preferably AoE, the Necros Well of Power works wonders here), you can also dodge the incoming projectile when you see it, but once the trap lands it is usually too late. I don’t know if reflecting the projectile works (it should I think), but may be a good way to deal with them as well. Technically another melee target, but can knock you back so be careful.
- Necromancers have a channeled lifesteal with a rather short range (just keep at range or move back a bit when they start it, it has very distinctive visuals and sound effects) and they do every condition at once (like the signet of spite of the necro), since I had Well of Power they were more of a nuisance than a threat. Condition removal hoses them.
- Mesmers are pretty easy as well. The only notable thing about them is the projectile shield, slaughter them in melee or use non projectile ranged skills. I never noticed them doing anything apart from the shield.
- Warriors are pretty straight forward, meat shields with a self heal. If everyone in your group moves around, they shouldn’t be a problem, just kite them and kill them last
I agree that AC is a quite extreme jump in difficulty compared to the event content.
You can go full support on your character if you enjoy that (I don’t know if every profession can do this, but most should be able to).
Note that I said “support”, not “healing”. There aren’t classical healers that keep the group alive just through heals in Guild Wars 2. But there still are different ways to support the group:
- healing, this usually works through an AoE effect or field, it is mainly used to help keep the HP up against smaller damage sources like auto attacks, conditions or stray AoEs, but don’t help much when a player was hit by a burst attack
- condition removal, very important in some dungeons
- reviving downed players asap, there are also skills that revive players at range and traits that give some bonus when you revive someone
- giving out boons, either to mitigate damage (protection, aegis, regeneration, indirectly through vigor or swiftness) or to boost their offensive power (might, fury, retaliation)
- doing controlling effects and conditions on enemies to protect players from damage, things like stuns, snares, immobilize, blind, weakness, interrupting bursty skills and so on
- setting up and using combos, light field + projectile or whirl finisher removes conditions, water field + burst finisher does an AoE heal
You are right, both the Elementalist and Guardian have good healing capabilities. The Necromancer can also be built for healing, though he probably doesn’t have as many options for it. The ranger has a healing spring for water combos. Not sure about the other professions.