I think that the last fight in the underground facility could use a couple changes. The fights initial mechanics have been conflicting with breakbars since they were added: the heal is now often uninterruptible (while the breakbar is recovering) and soft cc are stunning the boss in random places making the fight longer than it needs to be. To fix this I would change a couple things.
First, the boss would only be able to heal when the breakbar is up, or gets a fresh breakbar when the boss begins to heal. Also, change the breakbar so that soft cc like cripple and chill can’t stun the boss, and only hard cc can.
On a side not it would be nice if the bug got fixed where the druids ancient seeds trait imobilizes the boss.
I will say that the best thing for your is experience, after you know the common tells and abilities of dangerous enemies you can play glass cannon without dying as much. Do make sure your are utilizing the quickdraw trait alot, that is a big source of dps.
In the meantime, i would suggest bringing some utility weapons instead of shortbow to give you some survivabilty. Sword/dagger is ok damage on a condi spec, and if you can use those active dodges alot you will get alot of survivability. Greatsword is the most defensive, and will help you dodge the most damage, but it will lower your dps alot. Staff is a middle ground, with the rapid recharging of CAF being a good bonus. These weapons also come with some good mobility, which is something that our pure condi builds are quite lacking.
Vipers still works for me, most fractal groups that succeed don’t require a dedicated healer either way.
So, i got the old numbers from the wiki, and derived the new numbers from what i see in the client. Based on some of the other posts i have seen, the old values on the wiki might not have been correct and i could have made a mistake with my math, so take this with a grain of salt.
Old Numbers:
Cosmic ray: 650 + 0.4HP
Seed of Life: 500 + 0.5HP
Lunar Impact: 2452 + 1.1HP
Rejuvenating Tides: 810 + 0.35HP
New Numbers:
Cosmic ray: 330 + 0.67HP
Seed of Life: 404 + 0.6HP
Lunar Impact: 1620 + 1.8HP
Rejuvenating Tides: 650 + 0.5HP
The breakpoints where the new skills heal more is:
Cosmic ray: 1186 HP
Seed of Life: 960HP
Lunar Impact: 1189HP
Rejuvenating Tides: 1167HP
We are going to have to wait for the exact balance numbers to be sure, but i think that we will still be able to use viper and beserker armor. In my experience people dont really check what builds their teammates are running anyway.
Personally i would be really excited if we used a mainhand dagger primarily as throwing daggers with a strong melee attack on the second or third slot. It would be an interesting contrast to the largely melee daggers that the other classes use. It is also one of the last places where throwing daggers could be used, with the ranger and warrior being the last classes that could really use daggers without just using them as a device to channel magic. It would be sad to see this playstyle not used, and i feel that throwing daggers fit better on a ranger than they do on a warrior, but i know I’m likely in the minority in wanting this.
i just managed to get in.
Stop doing this. it gets rehashed literally every week. logistically there is no way anet could work a new race in, bring back every voice actor to redo all the lines adding in new race options, create an entire new character model and make every combination of armor and weapon fit on all 3 weight classes and 2 genders, its just NOT POSSIBLE. stop it.
This is all very true, a new race is definitely alot of work, especially for one that would require their own body type like the Tengu. Despite this though, ANet will likely still go ahead with releasing a new race in the future. A focus point in releasing a new expansion is to rope in new players and bring back previous players, and to do that you need a hook. The only thing that really works for this is either a new race or a new class.
While specializations are a spectacular way for end-game progression, it wont bring in new players. The people who are going to play the game are going to be wanting to play the new thing, so end-game content wont bring them in.
It is possible that they will release more classes in the future, but that brings its own problems. It throws game balance into chaos, adds accumulating pressure onto future expansions as it will increase the amount of specializations that need to be made in the future, and adapting a new class to each of the existing races is alot of work as well. Also, ANet has a good class balance right now, and new classes would end up either overlapping with current classes or would be better off using the idea for a new class as a new specialization instead.
So while a new race is a logistical nightmare, it is also a necessary evil that Anet will have to tackle in the future.
For the next expansion I am hoping that underwater weapons are unified with land weapons. Tridents would become staves, and staves would be usable underwater. Harpoon guns would become rifles, but instead of using harpoon gun skins on ground the skin for a gun would change to the skin of a harpoon gun when it went underwater and vise-versa, just because there are certain harpoon skins that would not work at all as a gun, such as the tribal speargun. Spears would then become a new land weapon for use in new specializations. The only negative aspect to this is that it would throw the marketplace into chaos, but I still think this needs to happen. After this underwater combat
For new weapons, I am hoping for great-axes, tomes(2 handed), crossbows and maybe whips. The tome may seem a little strange, but I do think that we could use a few more magic-centered weapons. They would look and be held similar to how the guardian’s tomes used to.
Looking at things now i am really sad at how focuses have enveloped so many other possible weapon types; I wish they had a more directed theme, but as they are now, they envelop so many other cool ideas like fans, gadgets, and potions, and those ideas can’t be used anymore. As for scythes I am also in the camp that they should be made spear skins, as they just wouldn’t work as there own weapon type in gw2.
Personally I am against using new skill sets on a class’s existing weapons. Something about it just feels incredibly underwhelming. It would be effective in terms of gameplay, but not getting access to the vast amount of new skins and losing access to the vannilla skillset of a weapons will leave players angry. There would have to be some sort of extreme compensation for not getting a new weapon, and the only thing i could think of that would be big enough would be something like elementalists getting a 5th attunement for all their weapons.
In my experience, there is not usually much point in specing for healing in fractals, our base heals are enough, so feel free to spec for damage. Our condition damage is usually better, but its requirement on always being able to flank or requiring our target to be stationary often brings our damage down closer to beserker, so i wouldn’t swap the stats on any or your gear if i were you.
There are a couple problems with a specialization idea that remove pets. We have 29 traits that effect our pets, and there is not modification that could be done to make all of them work efficiently, which would mean 29 individual changes to fix all of our traits. That’s alot of busywork for one specialization.
In addition it breaks all of our shouts, makes our signets less effective, makes our downed state significantly weaker, and it is a slight nerf to all of our mainhand weapons that have a skill that effects our pet, specifically mainhand axe with its permanent weakness uptime.
Because of these reasons, i dont think a specialization that completely removes our pet will ever really work.
I would guess that ley-energy is surging around where ley-lines intersect, and we know that ley-lines intersect in Lion’s Arch because that is why scarlet attacked.
I think shortbow would be fine if they just removed the positional requirement on the bleed and put it back to 1200 range
Ya, this would probably make the shortbow viable. My idea was more of a design exercise to see if i could make a flanking weapon work.
Recently I’ve been thinking about the shortbow and how proper flanking combat should work. Currently, the shortbow’s effectiveness is tied to how well you are able to flank, and that varies greatly from gamemode to gamemode. The shortbow is expecting the player to be perpetually flanking for maximum effectiveness, and I think that’s the main drawback of the weapon.
I think that there are 3 things that need to be considered in order for a flanking playstyle to work better:
1. It is impossible to always be flanking across all gametypes, which means the weapon should have something to do when flanking is impossible.
2. While it is impossible to always be flanking, there are often windows where flanking should be taken advantage of.
3. A flanking weapon should enable flanking.
To apply these ideas to the shortbow, I would rework 3 of the shortbow’s skills. Please note that all numbers are placeholder, and would need a balance pass, also this is not meant to be a buff or a nerf, it is a fundamental change that if focused at enabling flanking combat across multiple gametypes.
1. Crossfire: Changed to a 2 part attack, swiftfire and crossfire. Crossfire no longer has a flanking requirement, so it will bleed on hit. Swiftfire deals damage and gives the ranger swiftness.
I would likely also nerf the bleeding duration to (2) seconds on crossfire as well. This is meant to be a nerf when the ranger would be flanking and a buff to when they wouldn’t be. This skill is not meant to be the main source of damage anymore, but the rapid attack rate gives it a purpose in filling the gaps in combat and still procs sharpened edges well.
2. Crippling Shot: Removed, replaced with a new skill, Blindside Shot. Blindside Shot deals medium damage. If the shot flanks a target, it is guaranteed to crit and applies (5) stacks of bleeding (5s), (3) second cooldown.
This is meant to be the main damage source of the new shortbow, you can use it off cooldown when you would be perpetually flanking with the old shortbow, but now it takes better advantage of the periodic flanking windows that happen naturally during combat against mobile targets. This is where I want most of the damage to be coming from. If I could I would also swap this on the skill bar with poison volley, as I think that is where a secondary attack should go.
3. Quickshot: Removed, replaced with Outmaneuver. Outmaneuver is a (400) range dash that causes your pets next attack to apply cripple. The dash is ground targeted, and causes your character to face your target at the end of the dash. (6) second cooldown.
This is the skill that enables you to get into a flanking position. It is a little different from other dashes, as you are supposed to use it to circle an enemy rather than approach or run away from them, so turning to face the target is important.
With just these changes I think that shortbow would work a lot better across the different game modes. Concussion Shot still works as intended and doesn’t need to change. Poison volley still works too; a flanking weapon should incentivize getting close to your opponent so you can circle them more easily.
If I could change one more thing after this it would be changing up the shortbow trait as well. I would keep the cooldown reduction and the piercing arrows of course. For the buff that it gives, I would keep it, but I would change the way that it is applied. Rather than applying the buff when you dodge, the buff would be applied when you flank a target.
This is obviously a buff to the trait as you can maintain the buff at all times without having to sacrifice your dodges. The thing that I like most about this change though is that it gives you feedback when you land a flanking attack. In situations where there is a lot of bleeding being applied or you can’t clearly see which direction your opponent is facing, this feedback can be quite helpful.
Those are most of the ideas i have for reworking the shortbow, thanks for reading.
I believe you can get it at the wyvern nest poi in dragon stand.
[&BEwIAAA=]
I could never get the hang of Reddit’s layout. If someone links me to a topic I can read most of it…I think. But I’d never consider going there voluntarily because it just looks a mess to me.
I’ll just take your word for it that it’s better for this sort of thing and hope someone posts a transcript here afterwards.
Me too, hopefully dulfy will make a summary like they have done in the past.
I’ve had this too. I wouldn’t say its a bug or that your doing anything wrong (though i haven’t looked into it a lot). Its just strange behavior that comes with having a leap attached to an auto-attack.
also making it scale hardest with the condition damage stat.
Nope, burning still scales the least with condition damage.
The amount of condition damage needed to double the base damage is…
353 for torment
367 for bleeding
558 for poison
848 for burning
and 286-792 for confusionPut another way, as compared to base damage, 1000 condition damage gives you a…
283% increase for torment
273% increase for bleeding
179% increase for poison
118% increase for burningIn other words, burning has high base damage and lower scaling.
Anyway, the main strength of burning isn’t in its scaling, but rather in its intensity. It does a lot of damage for a shorter time, as opposed to bleeds and poisons which tend to do damage over a longer duration, making them less deadly to players. Confusion is the same. Short duration, high intensity. You have to cleanse it fast or die, while bleeding and poison gives you more time. Similar issues exist in PvE, where a 20 second bleed isn’t going to matter if the target is dead in 8 seconds, while a 6 second burn will do its full damage.
This is what i gathered from the wiki:
Burning: (0.155 * Condition Damage) + 131.5 damage per stack per second at Level 80
Poison: (0.06 * Condition Damage) + 33.5 damage per stack per second at level 80
Bleeding: (0.06 * Condition Damage) + 22 damage per stack per second at level 80
torment (stationary): (0.045 * Condition Damage) + 15.9 damage per stack per second at level 80
In other words burning has the best base damage and the best scaling( not considering that confusion can overtake it with a lot of skill activations).
If burning didn’t have a high scaling, there would be a point where the other conditions overtake burning when the user has high condition damage, but there is no turning point as burning is always stronger.
In theory the other conditions can compare by having longer durations and/or being easy to apply more frequently for higher stacks, but these things are really hard to measure as you have to look at individual skills rather than conditions as a whole.
If you have the money to buy a Mac-pc and you want to play games then you should buy a Windows-pc also. Or else don’t cry about it. It’s really ridiculous that you want to play games and decide to do it on an Apple computer… -.-
lol, still do not get how anyone can have that kind of attitude. (I personally run windows)
First of all, A-Net is clearly lossing money by not supporting mac or Linux as mentioned above or shown in any other post.Asking people to not cry about it, when all they want is A-Net to include more players to the game……seems rather ignorant all around, beside the company actually lossing money if they had a childish attitude like that, the sentence alone is a hate complaint, as if to say, that the player base have bought mac, so therefor they should not be supported by any company, even though a suggestion like this would improve everything for everyone.
There are different reasons to have bought a computer of a certain kind, even if just becoming a gamer or interested in games a few months ago even tho you only got mac……
In conclusion, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU, if everyone wins by supporting mac, I truly do not get this message at all, A-Net wins, the playerbase gets bigger so we win, the mac users wins, since they can play, there is no downside, so therefor i truly can not see your complaining of forcing people to stay in their place based on the brand of their computer……..
Beside the obvious hateful fact of “its an apple so you should not be able to do anything that is game based”
Your right that being able to support a mac client would be beneficial for the ANet and the player base, but i don’t think that a mac client is the most beneficial thing. Everything that ANet does will be beneficial; if they make a great expansion alot of people will buy, the player base increases, and everybody is happy. Releasing alot of content on the current expansion like raids, living world, wvw, in game events, and legendary weapons (ya i know) will keep people playing, which gives us more content and maintains a higher player base, which helps everyone, and gives us more confidence in the next expansion, getting them future revenue. In comparison to these things, i dont think making a mac client is better than these 2 options.
Making a mac client when there are other options available is a substantial gamble. It depends on if a mac client can be made quickly, if it can be maintained, and if there is a player base that want to play this game on a mac. Maintaining the current player base and increasing it slowly is likely a better option than bleeding the player base to make a mac client.
Personally, if solarbeam needed a buff, i would just give it more damage, no need to be fancy.
can’t be reflected.
I can’t immediately think of a single PvE enemy that reflects.
Some earth elementals can activate a reflecting aura, and some variations of chak can activate a reflecting shield.
That being said the non-reflectable attacks are mainly useful for pvp and wvw.
If the next spec uses a rifle, i could see the ranger becoming a hunter, and they could get camouflage as a new mechanic. Camouflage would be the new f5 and would work by giving you a short duration of free stealth, and then giving the hunter a long duration of camouflage which gives the hunter stealth as long as they don’t move. Im not sure what traits or utilities it would have, but i could see it focused around ambushing and giving the hunter strong initiation, being more effective while the enemy is at high health.
As for the rifle skills themselves, i find we are in a bit of a bind. It is important for the hunter’s rifle to be mechanically distinct from the warriors rifle and the engineer’s rifle. The warrior uses the rifle as kind of an assult rifle, with some sniper like attacks. The engineer uses their rifle like a shotgun, with a few engineer-specific skills. With these 2 playstyles encompassing the main ways to use a gun, it is difficult to come up with something unique. Maybe we could use rifles like a bayonet, but with many rifle skins not normally having a knife on them it wouldn’t make alot of sense. Perhaps we could have rifle that worked strictly like a sniper rifle, but mechanically there really is only 1 skill that works like a sniper, namely a headshot, and warriors already have that. To make matters worse, i think that thief’s should also get access to a rifle, and that makes making something unique to both professions even more complicated.
Staff has a few places where it works well, but i cant think of a build that revolves around it.
In a power build, the damage is not spectacular, but the fact that the damage is not a projectile gives us a weapon that is consistent at long range, which is something that we didn’t have before. It doens’t work terribly well in condition builds, however solarbeam is really efficient at procing sharpened edges, which is worth noting. Other than that, the staff is the best way for keeping CAF topped off, has good mobility which doesn’t require any camera movement, and has the most convenient way for us to block projectiles.
All in all, i wouldn’t use a build based around the staff, but i do think that it makes a good second weapon in alot of builds where you don’t have to min-max your build.
I believe the general consensus is viper is better, but if you need the survivabilty the choice is yours.
Oops, i forgot about Zinn’s study guide, that will take you 13 days to complete. After that the main timegate is getting ascended materials( which you can only make one of a day), but you can buy those on the TP. I dont think there are any other hard timegates other than the mini Zinn, but because i went slowly i could have just forgotten about them.
If you wanted to finish it today, it will cost alot.
It depends alot on how many materials you already have, but it can easily cost over 2000 gold if you want to buy all of the materials straight from the TP. Here is the breakdown of the cost of Nevermore, which is comparable in price.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ut0fj/nevermore_total_crafting_cost_breakdown/
It will also take a while to grind some bandit crest and other non-buyable currency, but you could potentially craft the whole legendary today. Personally i took it slow so i could craft all of the ascended materials myself, but that is up to you.
I think this functionality could be easily rolled into Fortifying Bond. Maybe we could share other things like superspeed with our pet too.
Personally i think the trait is fine, we have alot of other traits that need to be changed before this one should even be looked at. If we need to get condition duration somewhere, we should get it from a rework of LoyF, but even then i don’t think that not having access to a condition duration is a problem. In my opinion the fact that we dont have access to duration increases for our condition is made up by the fact that we can buff the damage of our conditions through Hidden Barbs and Poison Master.
Other than seeing spears being able to be used on land, i am hoping for a great axe, a cross bow, and magic tomes(2 handed).
This is pretty much what i use, so i think it is pretty good. Personally i dont run expertise training because i just dont find that my pets do enough condition damage to justify it.
I also will toggle on druidic clarity and/or emphatic bond whenever i need the condi removal.
Give pets an experience bar. When it reaches max experience it becomes an adult. Upon becoming an adult it gains a slight increase to stats.
But what about those adult wyverns?
@InsaneQR
Lots of your ideas are ok, lots of the aren’t really needed, but i think that the main problem is that you are trying to change too much at once. With so many changes, i can’t give detailed feedback and none of the ideas really stand out. In addition, i also wouldn’t want to see so many buffs put into the game at once; All of these would just make us overpowered.
If i could give any feedback, i would say that you should focus first on only the weakest parts of the ranger and buff them before the other parts of the class. In my opinion, i think that a single patch should only contain around 15 changes; around 5 changes for weapon skills, 5 changes for utilities, and 5 changes for traits.
I would say that you have likely overbuffed the weapon.
All the skills on the weapon (or any weapon) dont need to have lots of damage, they just need to be useful. Shortbow skills 3 through 5 don’t need drastic changes, they all have good utility, and there are other things that should be fixed before they are changed. Poison volley isn’t so bad that it needs to be replaced. It is not great at long range, but poison volley is good at damaging enemies at close range, and having a close range attack on a long range weapon is not a bad thing.
The only thing that i think the shortbow needs is a buff to crossfire. The shortbow does lack consistent damage, and rather than spreading that damage over all of the skills, i would preffer that damage to be put into crossfire. Just giving the shortbow a guaranteed bleed on hit is all i would ask for on a first balance patch (and perhaps a range buff if i could be greedy).
You dont need to reinstall.
You should be able to find the executable in C:\gw2 (assuming you didn’t change the directory on installing). After that, you can right click the Gw2.exe and select create shortcut and you will be back to normal.
I do think that LoYF could use a buff, Quick Draw is a very tough trait to compete against, and i want LoYF to be buffed before Quick Draw is nerfed. Im not sure about increasing the condition duration of the the trait because i think that 10% is probably alot stronger than the player feels it is, but i think that the other ideas you suggest are within reason and would really help.
The thing i want most however is for crossfire to be a little more consistent in its ability to bleed. Having to always be flanking just feels like extra work for what should be baseline, even considering the rapid rate of attack that the shortbow has. It would also be nice to have a condition weapon that we dont have to be in melee range to get the best use out of.
If i could change a few things, i would do something like this:
Shortbow
- shortbow skills all get 300 more range
- shortbow autos are guraenteed to bleed, and the bleed duration increases while flanking
- poison volley has its spread narrowed to compensate for the added range
( Not drastic changes, i just want to cement the shortbow as our ranged condition weapon)
mh axe
- mh axe autos are now 100% projectile finishers
- mh axe autos now bleed on hit
- mh axe autos no longer grant might
- winter’s bite now bounces 3 times
( I am trying to push the mh axe more towards condition damage rather than being a hybrid weapon. The projectile finisher buff give the weapon alot of synergy with torch. I want to buff winter’s bite because i am changing the axe trait, and it feel lackluster if not buffed.)
Honed Axes Trait
- reworked
— cool down on axe skills reduce by 20%
— every time an axe skill hits an enemy, gain a stack of might
(I want the axe trait to feel good for buffing the mh axe and the offhand axe, even though it is not a good build to be using 2 axes in either hand in a build)
sword
- sword autos have their leaps removed
- sword autos now cleanse chilled and crippled while also granting short duration superspeed.
( This keeps the chasing/sticking functionality of the current sword autos while giving the ranger a bit more control.)
I do think that there are other improvements to be made, but in general i think this helps the base problem/complaints of these weapons in the simplest way possible.
They just patched healing spring.
Giving access to an up-gradable class mechanic will only cause anger between the classes. Either rangers are mad because they have to spend extra time an exploration to get their legendary pets just so they can match other professions, or other professions will be angry at rangers because they can grind to get more power that other classes can’t get.
If you wanted to implement a legendary pet system, you should do it through pet skins. In a sense we already have this, the black moa, black widow, and white raven are like legendaries, they have the same stats and skills as existing pets, but because they look different there is some prestige attached to them.
I do agree as the story is right now. If they made it clear more early on in the story that we needed something to channel Mordremoth’s energy into when he died, it would have made the steps with the egg worthwhile.
It would still be too many episodes when the first priority was the defeat Modremoth.
That actually might not be true. If we assume that Zhaitan’s power was equal to that of the other elder dragons, and that his power was spread out evenly between the other elder dragons, each elder dragon got about 15% stronger when he died. If we kill Mordremoth without directing his energy somewhere, its going to make the other elder dragons a further 20% stronger. That is a big problem, and one could argue that if you know this information the egg should take the top priority.
In my opinion the background for a great story was there, but they didn’t bring it all together in the right way. For me i found that there were 7 major things that could have been changed to make the story better.
Eir’s death was a little bit too meaningless. This was a good opportunity to teach us that mordremoth was taking the best warriors to duplicate them. If we had encountered a really strong version of a mordrem Eir or a mordrem Garm right when we reached this part, it would have given us some incentive to go and quickly save destiny’s edge before an army of them was made. They did do this a bit with Faolain’s death, but it could have been played into more.
The nightmare court and Faolain were too quickly introduced and then taken out of the story. They should have devoted more time to them, explaining why they are there and what they hoped to achieve in the jungle. They also could have played a part in the final fight. The nightmare court has specialized in attacking the dream for a while now, and it would have made sense that they would be able to apply that knowledge to attacking Mordremoth’s mind.
We had no good reason for wanting to go and save destiny’s edge. If early on in the story they had given us the fact that Mordremoth can copy a person and make minions of them it would have been more understandable. I believe that Eir and Logan are particularly powerful warriors in lore, and if Mordremoth managed to duplicate them it would have been a serious problem later. Also if Mordremoth could learn what its minions knew, then saving Zojja would also have been really important, and worth doing before going straight for the dragon.
Rata Novas should have taught us something useful about taking out elder dragons. All we learned is that they have a weakness, which is an abstract fact that really doesn’t help. We could have at least learned that each sphere of power that an elder dragon had its own weakness, which would have led us to the idea of attacking that second part of Mordremoth that wasn’t initially apparent. It also would have been a place where we could have learned about ley-line energy, manipulating the chak, or the fact that an elder dragon’s energy is spread out to other elder dragons upon their death.
The chak is an interesting species, and Zildi’s idea to use them against Mordremoth is really cool, but the story doesn’t dive into the idea. If we had found a way to mobilize the chak against mordremoth, perhaps by rerouting ley-line energy and forcing a confrontation between them, it would have created physical chaos that would have legitimately distracted mordremoth while the player-character took their team in to assault the mind.
The Exalted and the egg are difficult to fit into the story, it is necessary to have them there as it rounds off the Master of Peace’s story, but getting to them still feels too inconsequential. Now this might not be a problem. At the end of the story we do see the egg absorbing a bunch of magic energy that Mordremoth was no longer consuming. Unlike Zhaitan’s death, where his energy was likely spread out to all of the other elder dragons, we might have been able to give all of this magical potential to glints egg. If this is true, then getting the egg to Tarir was actually really important, and it fits into the larger story really well. Until we have this information though, this is a problem.
The last and most important thing that i think needed to change is the story step after we save Logan and Zojja. At this point, we have accomplished our goal and we should turn back to devise a plan. While Trahern is an important figure, he was dragged in too deep. He was right next to the core of Mordremoth, and it should have been impossible to reach him. We needed a plan to kill Mordremoth before killing him, and this is the point where we should tie everything together for a fulfilling conclusion to the story arc.
I don’t think that malyck and his tree not being in the story is a terrible thing. While i think that this story should be tied off, i really don’t see how this un-tended tree could have any impact in the story.
I think the egg took way too many episodes of the story, sure it might be useful in the future but it had no use AGAINST Modremoth.
I do agree as the story is right now. If they made it clear more early on in the story that we needed something to channel Mordremoth’s energy into when he died, it would have made the steps with the egg worthwhile.
In my opinion the background for a great story was there, but they didn’t bring it all together in the right way. For me i found that there were 7 major things that could have been changed to make the story better.
Eir’s death was a little bit too meaningless. This was a good opportunity to teach us that mordremoth was taking the best warriors to duplicate them. If we had encountered a really strong version of a mordrem Eir or a mordrem Garm right when we reached this part, it would have given us some incentive to go and quickly save destiny’s edge before an army of them was made. They did do this a bit with Faolain’s death, but it could have been played into more.
The nightmare court and Faolain were too quickly introduced and then taken out of the story. They should have devoted more time to them, explaining why they are there and what they hoped to achieve in the jungle. They also could have played a part in the final fight. The nightmare court has specialized in attacking the dream for a while now, and it would have made sense that they would be able to apply that knowledge to attacking Mordremoth’s mind.
We had no good reason for wanting to go and save destiny’s edge. If early on in the story they had given us the fact that Mordremoth can copy a person and make minions of them it would have been more understandable. I believe that Eir and Logan are particularly powerful warriors in lore, and if Mordremoth managed to duplicate them it would have been a serious problem later. Also if Mordremoth could learn what its minions knew, then saving Zojja would also have been really important, and worth doing before going straight for the dragon.
Rata Novas should have taught us something useful about taking out elder dragons. All we learned is that they have a weakness, which is an abstract fact that really doesn’t help. We could have at least learned that each sphere of power that an elder dragon had its own weakness, which would have led us to the idea of attacking that second part of Mordremoth that wasn’t initially apparent. It also would have been a place where we could have learned about ley-line energy, manipulating the chak, or the fact that an elder dragon’s energy is spread out to other elder dragons upon their death.
The chak is an interesting species, and Zildi’s idea to use them against Mordremoth is really cool, but the story doesn’t dive into the idea. If we had found a way to mobilize the chak against mordremoth, perhaps by rerouting ley-line energy and forcing a confrontation between them, it would have created physical chaos that would have legitimately distracted mordremoth while the player-character took their team in to assault the mind.
The Exalted and the egg are difficult to fit into the story, it is necessary to have them there as it rounds off the Master of Peace’s story, but getting to them still feels too inconsequential. Now this might not be a problem. At the end of the story we do see the egg absorbing a bunch of magic energy that Mordremoth was no longer consuming. Unlike Zhaitan’s death, where his energy was likely spread out to all of the other elder dragons, we might have been able to give all of this magical potential to glints egg. If this is true, then getting the egg to Tarir was actually really important, and it fits into the larger story really well. Until we have this information though, this is a problem.
The last and most important thing that i think needed to change is the story step after we save Logan and Zojja. At this point, we have accomplished our goal and we should turn back to devise a plan. While Trahern is an important figure, he was dragged in too deep. He was right next to the core of Mordremoth, and it should have been impossible to reach him. We needed a plan to kill Mordremoth before killing him, and this is the point where we should tie everything together for a fulfilling conclusion to the story arc.
I don’t think that malyck and his tree not being in the story is a terrible thing. While i think that this story should be tied off, i really don’t see how this un-tended tree could have any impact in the story.
Such a bond requires more explanation.
Not really, rangers can utilize the power of nature, and that includes space. Simple as that.
I disagree. If you’re going to be that loose with the powers of a ranger, why not have them command the elements? Water is nature? Wind is nature? Earth is nature? Fire is nature? Why aren’t we also elementalists if we can just use anything that fits under the vague title of nature that encompasses everything as far as celestial bodies? Isn’t that a lot less extreme than space? How does a beast master go from using swords and bows and taming animals of the wild to channeling the powers of the universe and firing cosmic laser beams?
I get it. Everything is nature. I get the completely worthless point that druids IRL do stuff that does not matter in Tyria. I don’t get how astral form is a natural progression for a ranger. Aesthetically it looks wrong, thematically it’s too far from the ranger.
What bugs me most is it has nothing to do with the ranger’s bond with pets – our core mechanic. Warriors had adrenaline evolving intoa berserker who more frequently release their adrenaline, elementalists are able to saturate their power the longer they stay in attunement, guardians are able to manifest their virtues into a more corporeal effect, necromancers hone their death shroud into a bringer of death, mesmers can use their shatters to gain a new powerful effect, thieves evolved their evasive physicality into a third dodge and continue to use inititiative.
Rangers do absolutely nothing with their pet and gain a celestial death shroud that has nothing to do with what a ranger is. It’s not a progression of the ranger, it’s not an evolution of the ranger, it’s not thematically a ranger – it’s something new and that’s not what all the other elite specializations are.
Not long ago there was a druid specialization datamined that included glyphs and something called aspects. It seemed to imply we would get a profession that would tap into aspects of different animals to enhance our glyphs and possibly even stats or weapons skills based on the different animals. This matches the flavour and theme of the ranger, it gives us spells and it matched the imagery of the shoulders and staff – bramble wood etched with iconic images of the wild beasts rangers are bonded with. Instead we ended up with something that has no connection with our pet at all and bypasses natural life on earth with some abstract references to the moon and stars. I’m sure moonkin druids from WoW are happy, but this is a bizarre evolution from what a ranger is at its core.
I personally am ok with the current class mechanic, but i totally agree with you about the celestial theme really not matching the druid, and you explained that part really well.
I don’t understand. all 5 glyphs are nature inspired if you look closely. With the glyphs ( except the elite) there are flowers popping out and vines shooting up from the floor. The staff gives us flower walls and more vines, a whisp! which is a forest dwelling spirit, even a bign beautiful ray of sunshine for the auto-attack skill.
Even celestial mode summons those blooms from the ground… with that one trait, every time you use a glyph, you get a flower bloom, you can have a whole flower bed of blooms if you wish.
as for celestial form, and believe it or not, this is a very druidic theme that most games ignore. the ultimate source of nature comes from the cosmos. not to mention, it has some of the most beautiful skill animations I’ve seen.
I am unsure why people are so “disappointed” ranger got very lucky with this elite spec in my opinion.
I think the problem is that the concept of a druid is really large, they almost could have released it as a fourth light armor profession. A druid covers nature, regrowth, shapeshifting, spirits, seasons, and the cosmos, it is a really diverse class. The problem that has come up now is that you cant get all of that into one specialization. We got a very celestial druid, but because of that we are likely never going to get the other types of druid. I personally really wanted to play a more plant-focused mage that made use of bleeding and poisoning large areas, but that overlaps too much with the druid now to warrant being its own specialization.
I am looking forward to playing the druid next weekend, but i have some questions about the lore.
I don’t see where this celestial influence came from. From lore i was expecting to see alot of nature or spirit based abilities, but we only got a couple of those on the staff. I feel like these were only kept to keep the druid consistent with what they showed us in the original trailer.
The closest thing that i can think of off the top of my head would be a relation to the ancient Jotun, who were said to have some sort of star-gazing abilities, but even then those abilities seemed to be more related to fortune-telling and not so much to healing.
I am really hoping that we will get some more information about what this new druid is and where it came from, but what i find disappointing is that we aren’t going to be getting a more traditional druid now. If i could make a second druid, i would love to make one more centered around vegetation: A specialization that would focus on leaving weak but long-lasting effects on the battle field, and made good use of poison and healing herbs, but I cant think of a name for such a class that wouldn’t overlap with the druid now.
I kind of wish that the current druid could be called something else so that a future specialization could be called the druid, perhaps something like a stargazer, a seer, or a diviner, but i know it is too much to ask. We have known for a long time that the specialization would be called the druid, and it would be bad for them to change the name of the specialization at this point.
If you have any information on where the druid got its lore from i would be interested to hear it. Thanks for reading.
Splitting the dialogue like this is down-right exciting. It is great to see that the race of a character is going to have some impact in the game. I hope we see the race and the order that we chose have a lot more importance in future content updates.
In addition to the thematic choices, the utilities that the asura gets have some good synergy with the ranger. Technobable works a little too well with moment of clairity, and you get access to a poison field that works with our poison mastery.
I am really hoping that we get tigers and a few other pets with HoT.
To my knowledge no information has been released on what they meant, but i think that your assumption is correct. I would say that it is too early to be concerned though. They also mentioned that the traps will have buffs to compensate, which could be really interesting.
They could make it so that all traps now have a moderate immobilize on them, which would make them definitely feel more like traps then just an aoe. They could cut the cooldown on the traps to 10 seconds to give us constantly available traps, or they could change traps so that we can have several of the same trap out at the same time(but the traps wouldn’t be able to overlap).
It is an interesting concept.
fire-air should be smoke imo.
Currently the elementalist has a total of 60 weapon skills, this specialization adds an additional 45 skills, so the idea probably goes (well) outside of the scope of what a specialization is supposed to be, but it is still interesting as a concept.
Do you have any ideas for the weapon, heal, utility, or ultimate that would come with this specialization?