Guild Wars 2

I think it is the skin from the dragon in the sylvari starting instance.

It could be argued that it is possibly a champion of mordremoth, but nothing is sure.

I wish we could repeat that freeing ritual done on a chicken in one of the Arah paths on a nightmare being, maybe even a sylvari from the nightmare court… I am sure we can convince some Asura, for science!

Oh, they are actually partially digested Husks, I stand corrected.

I say they work for the wurm because they don’t attack it. But maybe I’m stretching it here…

And my mesmer is a sylvari, checkmate! ;-)

I don’t think “then how do you explain…” is a good counter in general :S
I have no idea how Kudu kept his individuality, maybe he didn’t (I should replay CoE story at some point again). Yes studying sylvari could be the way, but we see also husks, volatile blossoms and flower-turrets there. But also asura ingenuity would be a likely explanation. Maybe the best argument against sylvari as dragon minions is that there were no sylvari in CoE… but that could also be because it would otherwise be too clear and we wouldn’t have this discussion

Concidering the 3 headed wurm, your suggestion would require the constrain that the wurm (only) ate husks while being underground and nothing else, and why they are working for the wurm and were not digested….
I think the “wurm as champion”-argument leaves very little open ends, and doesn’t introduce a lot of new ‘unknowns’.

Also from a more meta-standpoint, the only other boss that got the “megaboss”-status was tequattl, a dragon minion… Wouldn’t a megaboss also require “mega-lore-importance”?

Well, we learned recently that, according to scarlet (who knows everything), chaos magic == dragon magic.

I’d like to pull out Occam’s razor, at least for the first suggestion. If every other room houses dragon minions, then so do the jungle rooms.

Same with the jungle wurm, I think making the jungle wurm the champion would be the least convolved(??) explanation

Konig Des Todes.2086:

We actually have a good amount of information.

And the fact of the matter is that:

• Sylvari do not feed on magic.
• Sylvari die at the touch of corruption; dragon minions do not to other dragons’ corruption.
• Not all sylvari are tied to the Dream, yet those who disconnect or are never tied to it act little different than those who do (though more ruthless, typically).

That’s enough to discredit the speculation. But what does the speculation have in support?

It was literally formed out of the mistranslation of binary in Zone Green at the Infinite Coil Reactor, where the mistranslation was “Pale Tree” while the actual translation was “End Transmission Sequence.” There is NOTHING out there to connect the sylvari or Pale Tree to the Elder Dragon. But there is evidence against such a notion.

I’d like to point out that this mistranslation is not the main reason to connect the sylvari with the elder dragon. The non-inquest/alpha enemies in the themed rooms in CoE are all dragon minions. In the jungle themed rooms these are for example (most noteworthy) nightmare hounds and husks of various kind. These enemies are also found in only sylvari themed area’s, and mainly the nightmare ones. Same with the flower-turrets and volatile blossoms found in the jungle-dragon-themed rooms in CoE. Some of these are even found in TA only, a place where the influence from the nightmare is maybe the strongest.
I think this makes, at least for me, a very strong suggestion that the sylvari are tied to the jungle dragon in one way or another.

Now, since last patch we have a 3rd place where husks show up! The great jungle wurm spits them out! IF husks are minions of the jungle dragon, would that make the great jungle wurm a chamion of Moredemoth? (rather than a loreless megaboss)

Also, as far as I know, you base your conclusion that dragon minions do not die from each other’s corruption on several monsters in the CoE dungeon (Kudo’s monster and subject Alpha) (please correct me if I’m wrong). From my point of view science can make a lot of things happen that would normally be not possible, so I don’t feel it is a very strong argument.

http://www.twitch.tv/shinryuku_ku
Imho best, most popular and most active gw2 streamer out there. Please add him to your list.

Plays all parts of the game, pve, spvp, wvw (roaming)

Considering the " Toxic Krait Historian" achievement.
We had to find 24 Krait obelisks throughout Tyria. I would’ve expected them to be all near Krait enclaves, but they weren’t. If they were all near Krait enclaves I think it would be a good quest, since it would test my knowledge of the Tyrian world.

Instead the obelisks were spread out rather randomly. There were 4 in Gendarren fields, there are not even Krait living in that map! How would one be able to find those obelisks without help from Dulfy, or just randomly run through maps hoping you see the obelisks symbol?
I think this was a missed opportunity for an interesting quest.

Maybe making these dragon events similar to the current invasion events would be a nice touch.
Having a lot of mobs (including champs) that spawn and have to be defeated within time to make the dragon appear. The rewards should of course be comparable to the current invasion events. One rare and a handful of blue greens is very bland with the ~7 gold/hour we get from the clockwork invasions.

You don’t need to do 13 invasions on each map.
For the living story alone you need to do the story instances, 5 invasions (and as far as I know they don’t need to be in different maps) and a dungeon.
This will add up to no more than 10 hours total.

All the other achievements are extra, and are for those that do have the time to play. And I don’t think it is fair to cut down the nr of achievements just because some people don’t have enough time to play.

I wonder, did Scarlet ever had the dream? Did she even awake from the pale tree, or is she more like Malyck? I don’t think we ever got an answer on why the court was so interested in him in the first place. The “Harbinger”, the Harbinger of what? of Scarlet maybe?

Does the Pale tree know about Scarlet, aren’t all memories of the sylvari accessible by her, at least in some form? I guess next time ingame I’ll pay a visit to mother ;-)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Plunder: Thing is, the Pale Tree isn’t in the sphere of influence of the druids – druids didn’t go that far south, as far as we have seen, even though it’s still within the Maguuma. Malyck doesn’t have much of anything the Pale Tree does – though his tree is supposedly closer to the druids than the Pale Tree, he held no Dream, no Ventari tablet, and so forth.

One thing I forgot about your mention earlier: Druids were once humans – Krytans, to be exact. How exactly would the influence of human spirits that became closer to nature prevent corruption from the Elder Dragons?

The tree is not inside the sphere of influence? That’s a good argument against my hunch.
I don’t think that the dream and the “uncorruption” are necessary connected, the Malyck lacking the dream is not really relevant here.
I would guess that the druids’ magic and this nature-elder dragon are very similar and can affect each other in some ways.

How would you explain the sylvari elite skill that summons a druid-spirit?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Plunder.8195:

Maybe the sylvari are the minions of Mordemoth, but are “uncorrupted” by the druids.

Explain Malyck then.

He was still ‘born’ in the maguuma, the sphere of influence of the druids, so I don’t see why they couldn’t influence him.
What this silly idea of me can’t explain is the dream. Something that might be disconnected from their “uncorruption” completely.

If you are new to the game, I can advise you not to worry too much about getting to max level asap. There is nearly nothing at lvl 80 that is not already doable at lower levels.
Just enjoy and learn the game, lvl 80 will come to you soon enough.

Levelling is very easy in this game in general since almost everything you do gives XP.

You can always go back to places that are lower level and still find a reasonable challenge. The XP you get there is probably a bit lower than in maps of your own level, but not too much.

Something I’ve been thinking about a bit is that maybe the druids have some role in this.
Maybe the sylvari are the minions of Mordemoth, but are “uncorrupted” by the druids.

The druids were active in the region, and apparently the some sylvari structures are resembling druid-structures. Another reason to think that the druids are involved is the elite skill of the sylvari. Why would they be able to summon a druid?

Anyway, just a thought to play around with ^.^

Bonefield.9813:

Plunder.8195:

If it’s worth anything, doing a reverse image search on the white mantle logo doesn’t give any good match. The logo does exist, but not in a resolution this high.
So it’s a troll, then it’s a good question how he could get this logo, at this resolution

It’s a wallpaper from the official page for the Guild Wars 1 War in Kryta content.

Ah, I guess it only proves that the reverse image search of Google and tinyeye are not perfect then =(

If it’s worth anything, doing a reverse image search on the white mantle logo doesn’t give any good match. The logo does exist, but not in a resolution this high.
So it’s a troll, then it’s a good question how he could get this logo, at this resolution

Algreg.3629:

I support your sentiment, though you are fighting a quixotian battle there. Decent people don´t behave like that, you won´t reach the rest.

It’s at least advisable to make sure that the message is clear and that this behaviour is not accepted. If nobody speaks up, event decent people will think this behaviour is acceptable. Even a guildy from me used these words regularly until I spoke up, he didn’t mean anything bad with it, it was somehow just “normal” for him.

Or in the words of an Australian Chief of army: “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”

Fully support your message OP.
Especially in a world where homophobia and discrimination vs LGBT people is still rampant, using these words as a curse word is not a trivial matter, and contributes to this hostile atmosphere.

If it crashes with an out-of-memory-bug, I would suggest turning down your graphics as much as possible. That worked against a lot of crashes in my case at least.

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

Plunder.8195:

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

Plunder.8195:

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

Plunder.8195:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

TottWriter.8591:

That they look “sexy” would also be less irritating were it not a phenomenon I encountered near enough at every turn. A break would be nice. I wonder how many men would be comfortable surrounded by scantily clad or nude men bearing large pelvic bulges, all with smouldering, thoughtful expressions; like they really care about you.

I would be perfectly comfortable. Why? Because I am able to separate a video game design from reality.

I don’t think such a reductionist approach is very helpful in this conversation. Computer games are a reflection of real life (culture).
Think, and pay attention, on how often the female body is simply used as a decoration. Think of for example booth babes, the girls that kiss the winner of some race, the girl on the cover of your tv-magazine etc.
Then having these watchknights with a female body is a reflection of what we do in real life. Again the female body is simply used as a decorative tool.

You might call it art, but that doesn’t make it not-sexist.

But the Watchknights aren’t for decoration. They’re for defense. How can you even compare them to booth babes and winners circle girls? They’re cold and metallic sword wielding, shape shifting abominations that just happen to look like women when in their normal forms because they were DESIGNED by a woman.

You misunderstand my argument. First and foremost, they are female shaped for us, as a player, to “enjoy”. The lore is pretty much irrelevant since it can be shaped by the designers in any shape to “justify” their female shape.
For example The scarlet blade game might have lore to justify why all toon are scantly clad big breasted women, but I am sure we can agree that that lore came after the character design.

So yes, I compare them to booth babes and winner circle girls, because their female shape only matter for ‘decoration’.

Or they have a female shape because Queen Jennah designed them, and I highly doubt they only created Jennah for the sole excuse of having female robots.
Also yes, they are relatively pleasing to the eye while looking intimidating at the same time. The art team did a really good job designing them and it’s downright insulting for the only thing you see in it is Eye Candy.

As I said, I don’t think the lore is a ‘justification’.

You seem to imply that I don’t think that these robots are cool looking. I do think they look awesome, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the problematic side of again using the female body for this design.

But how is it problematic? Would it be problematic if they were based on men rather than women? There’s really nothing sexual about them at all to be considered a problem at all to begin with.

Why is the fact that they’re based on the female form such a grievous issue?

It would not be problematic it was a male body, since the male body is only very rarely used as a ‘decoration’.

I never said it was a grievous issue, don’t put words in my mouth. But it’s surely good to be aware of sexual objectification when it happens. And that happens now with the choice of making these watchknight in a (idealized) female shape for no good reason, other than probably pleasing the male gaze.

It wouldn’t be an issue if it wouldn’t happen almost everywhere, all the time, in the real world.

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

Plunder.8195:

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

Plunder.8195:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

TottWriter.8591:

That they look “sexy” would also be less irritating were it not a phenomenon I encountered near enough at every turn. A break would be nice. I wonder how many men would be comfortable surrounded by scantily clad or nude men bearing large pelvic bulges, all with smouldering, thoughtful expressions; like they really care about you.

I would be perfectly comfortable. Why? Because I am able to separate a video game design from reality.

I don’t think such a reductionist approach is very helpful in this conversation. Computer games are a reflection of real life (culture).
Think, and pay attention, on how often the female body is simply used as a decoration. Think of for example booth babes, the girls that kiss the winner of some race, the girl on the cover of your tv-magazine etc.
Then having these watchknights with a female body is a reflection of what we do in real life. Again the female body is simply used as a decorative tool.

You might call it art, but that doesn’t make it not-sexist.

But the Watchknights aren’t for decoration. They’re for defense. How can you even compare them to booth babes and winners circle girls? They’re cold and metallic sword wielding, shape shifting abominations that just happen to look like women when in their normal forms because they were DESIGNED by a woman.

You misunderstand my argument. First and foremost, they are female shaped for us, as a player, to “enjoy”. The lore is pretty much irrelevant since it can be shaped by the designers in any shape to “justify” their female shape.
For example The scarlet blade game might have lore to justify why all toon are scantly clad big breasted women, but I am sure we can agree that that lore came after the character design.

So yes, I compare them to booth babes and winner circle girls, because their female shape only matter for ‘decoration’.

Or they have a female shape because Queen Jennah designed them, and I highly doubt they only created Jennah for the sole excuse of having female robots.
Also yes, they are relatively pleasing to the eye while looking intimidating at the same time. The art team did a really good job designing them and it’s downright insulting for the only thing you see in it is Eye Candy.

As I said, I don’t think the lore is a ‘justification’.

You seem to imply that I don’t think that these robots are cool looking. I do think they look awesome, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the problematic side of again using the female body for this design.

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

Plunder.8195:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

TottWriter.8591:

That they look “sexy” would also be less irritating were it not a phenomenon I encountered near enough at every turn. A break would be nice. I wonder how many men would be comfortable surrounded by scantily clad or nude men bearing large pelvic bulges, all with smouldering, thoughtful expressions; like they really care about you.

I would be perfectly comfortable. Why? Because I am able to separate a video game design from reality.

I don’t think such a reductionist approach is very helpful in this conversation. Computer games are a reflection of real life (culture).
Think, and pay attention, on how often the female body is simply used as a decoration. Think of for example booth babes, the girls that kiss the winner of some race, the girl on the cover of your tv-magazine etc.
Then having these watchknights with a female body is a reflection of what we do in real life. Again the female body is simply used as a decorative tool.

You might call it art, but that doesn’t make it not-sexist.

But the Watchknights aren’t for decoration. They’re for defense. How can you even compare them to booth babes and winners circle girls? They’re cold and metallic sword wielding, shape shifting abominations that just happen to look like women when in their normal forms because they were DESIGNED by a woman.

You misunderstand my argument. First and foremost, they are female shaped for us, as a player, to “enjoy”. The lore is pretty much irrelevant since it can be shaped by the designers in any shape to “justify” their female shape.
For example The scarlet blade game might have lore to justify why all toon are scantly clad big breasted women, but I am sure we can agree that that lore came after the character design.

So yes, I compare them to booth babes and winner circle girls, because their female shape only matter for ‘decoration’.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

TottWriter.8591:

That they look “sexy” would also be less irritating were it not a phenomenon I encountered near enough at every turn. A break would be nice. I wonder how many men would be comfortable surrounded by scantily clad or nude men bearing large pelvic bulges, all with smouldering, thoughtful expressions; like they really care about you.

I would be perfectly comfortable. Why? Because I am able to separate a video game design from reality.

I don’t think such a reductionist approach is very helpful in this conversation. Computer games are a reflection of real life (culture).
Think, and pay attention, on how often the female body is simply used as a decoration. Think of for example booth babes, the girls that kiss the winner of some race, the girl on the cover of your tv-magazine etc.
Then having these watchknights with a female body is a reflection of what we do in real life. Again the female body is simply used as a decorative tool.

You might call it art, but that doesn’t make it not-sexist.

It would be nice if there was some backlog somewhere, maybe even written and compiled by the user-base itself.

Lore wise, there is no reason for 30+ skins. As mentioned in the blog post, the weapon is new to Tyria, so the only ones around now are the Aetherblade-rapiers. That would add up to one skin.

I have no idea how much work it is to add a new weapon to the game. Judging from the bundle-mechanic the system is pretty flexible. We see from Mai that the animations, at least for the humans, already exist, as well as several attacks. From what you say what costs a lot of time, it is already in the game for a large part, it exists already for the NPCs.
I don’t believe that designing a new weapon is so much more work as designing a new dungeon, with new mechanics. The latter we have seen twice already. But I do expect it will be limited for PvE only at the start for balance issues.

Of course, I am not 100% convinced that there will be a new weapon, but that the blog post specifically mentioned “a new kind weapon” that has a unique attack is definitely noteworthy.

I think they’ll add rapier a as a new weapon in some future update. In the latests blog post ( https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/aetherblade-pirates-look-up/ ) they specifically said:

“The Aetherblades are multi-racial and use magic. They also carry a weapon heretofore unseen in Tyria: a long and narrow blade that they call a rapier. It has proven quite effective as a weapon, according to those who survived the Aetherblade raids.”

Which I take as a strong hint to some future new weapon.

I seriously hope that not each paid expansion is another elder dragon. They don’t really make, story-telling-wise, a very interesting enemy. I think it shows clearly in the Personal Story that even anet is struggling with it :P

For the next dragon I would expect first a primordius champion, since that’s the only active ED that doesn’t have its own champion in GW2.

For the next expansion, Kraka would make a nice choice to tie an Crystal-desert expansion to, and at the same time allow those that did not buy the expansion to also join in on some fronts. Something that wouldn’t be possible for a Cantha expansion. Also, Destiny’s edge had some ideas to defeat Kraka, I guess they should be able to make something up from that.

If dragon bash is going to tell us what the next dragon is, I don’t think it will come in the form of candy ;-)

Whenever you die, ask yourself what went wrong.
Try to give a reason why you use a certain skill in a certain situation.

for example, using mesmer GS skill 2 prior to the phantasm (skill 4) is better than the other way around, ask yourself why this is the case.

I guess I play the same as you do too =)
Just take it slow and enjoy. Working on my 7th toon now, and I don’t use crafting to level quickly. Going for the minstrel as legendary, because I can’t be bothered getting one of those expensive precursors. My main doesn’t even have map completion yet, because I like to talk to most of the NPC. etc.
I probably passed the 1000 hours of GW2 yesterday and I’m still not bored. And it might come as a surprise for many people, but at no point I felt the game grindy, and at least 4 of my alts are almost fully exotic.

let me add this link too then for completion
http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2013/05/30/lfg-tool-spvp-map-and-costumes-datamined/

I wonder what the heart and skill symbols are doing in a spvp map O.o

You mean, the only way to get those skins now is to grind gold (and thus not doing the special event stuff) or use RL cash. This only caters to the people who have the luxury to be able to spend RL cash, and those that prefer mindlessly grinding gold.
Which makes it impossible for people who just play the game to obtain these skins. RNG has the advantage that those grinding the themed events have a high(er) chance of getting one, and those that just like to play the game also (but at a lower rate).

I do agree on your point that including the skin in the cash-shop would be an improvement, but only as an additional way of obtaining those skins.

TooBz.3065:

Plunder.8195:

This is all based on the unfounded assumption that for some reason you need to have your alts fully equipped with ascended items.

The only assumption required is that you want to gear out your alts which is different than needing to.

Also, when you look at encouraging / discouraging incentives, I think its helpful to think about the boundary conditions. Can the action affect the behavior of someone who is otherwise on the cusp. In this case, would someone who would otherwise create an alt not do so because of ascended gear (whether or not we think it’s an intelligent decision). In this case, I think yes. I can see how someone would be reluctant to create an alt because of the ascended gear slog….

You could use the same argument that you want a legendary on each of your alts. The math of the OP shows clearly that what you want, is not reasonable.
So yes, if you set your boundary conditions unreasonable, you’ll get unreasonable outcomes.

What I want to say, is that it is not alt-unfriendy since you don’t need them. It is alt-unfriendly for people who set the unrealistic and unnecessary goal of getting a fully ascended outfit.

This is all based on the unfounded assumption that for some reason you need to have your alts fully equipped with ascended items.

Inside is the target for the guild bounty hunt. =)

To slightly overstretch the conclusion from one of the last extra credits: players that do not blame failure on others.

Could it be it’s a German server, so short for Deutsch?

First of all, I would wait with getting new sword until you are level 80, and get a level 80 sword. Since level 80 is the highest level, lvl 80 sword is also the best sword you can get. So spening your money on a lvl 78 sword is a bit of a waste =(

You want to have a golden sword (not yellow), beside the TP you can get it from dungeon tokens. You get a bunch of them (dungeon specific) after completing an explorable path of a dungeon. Or you can craft one yourself. For that you need to be lvl 400 in weaponsmithing, and you can buy the relevant receipts(sic?) from a merchant nearby for karma.

When you craft, is does not have a sigil in it. The ones you can buy from dungeon tokens do have a sigil, but that one is not too useful, so feel free to replace it.

Considering the stats, that all depends on your build. As a rule of the thumb I would suggest to go with the stats that you also invested in with your traits.

I hope this somewhat answers your questions/concerns

you are completely right, see you in the mists

It was open on Gunnar’s Hold yesterday evening.

AtlasSi.9130:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

2. In terms of localization of patch note text into different languages, editing, and writing the patch note up, it costs money and time for multiple people. Dedicating resources to explain we closed a particular exploit just isn’t worth the time/resources for every single one, so we’re okay with cutting it from the notes, especially if we have a lot of patch notes that are much more valuable to disseminate out, like Engineer changes and other such things.

So your saying you don’t have it in you or your staff to go do something as simple as google translate into another language? Which takes all of 60 seconds max per language? Interesting stuff there mate.

I do not think google translate a proper and professional manner to the notes of the patch to translate. There is often crazy to translations and grammatically incorrect sentence constructions.

What I don’t like about the new Kohler fight is that it now turned into a camera-management fight. At every time you have to keep a view on Kohler (or hope a team mate on voice chat shouts to dodge), while fighting off the adds.
I would be nice to have some additional audio cue.

kokiman.2364:

Phoenixfudge.5290:

Chessrook.8643:

Phoenixfudge.5290:

ANET supports JP campers.

Is that why one of the earliest patches had them block siege weapon placement in jumping puzzles?

Hm good question. I don’t think ANET wanted Siege in the JP because there were already traps you could use instead and they want to keep it that way.

Either way, the blatant nerf to Mad King’s Book as a torch in the dark room says a lot.

Unless they fixed the AoE Placement Symbols nothing changed. You can still see every platform if you have a placeable AoE Skill in your bar.

As far as I know those are turned off when you use the fountain invisibility.

I still want to take revenge on Doc Howler ><
After 6 tries or so I had to call in help from a friend and even then we killed her from downed state.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

A while back a statement was made, by a developer re this.

“Josh Foreman.8250:

. But after I handed the map off to someone else, I know we changed our policy so that no JPs are required for events, map complete, etc. "

So what is the “policy”? I know of 3, Scaffolds, Breached Wall, and Viziers Tower that require you to finish a Jumping Puzzle to reach vistas and skill points.

I thought that JPs were to be optional activities. They are not, unless you wish to be gated from zone completions, world completion, and legendary crafting. I suppose all those are “optional” too.

I have a severe motor skills handicap, Rhuematoid Arthritus and nodules in my hands, so please spare me any lecture regarding how “easy” they are, please. I had trepidations before buying this game, knowing my motor skills would not be up to platforming. I foolishly took the “optional activities” statements as fact, without researching the actual need to do them.

I think that (probably even in the same interview) he agreed that they goofed up with the placement of some vistas (e.g. the one in drege haunt cliffs) and that they will change this in the future.

I still think that disabling the possibility to mesmer-portal up to the end would solve a lot of problems. Less people will do the JP, since they actually have to do it, and not cheese past it. (which again makes the other WvWvW’ers happy since the maps are filled with less JP’ers).
Camping will probably still happen, but whenever you kill one camper, that person actually has to redo the whole JP, rather than just respawn and portal back up within a minute.
It doesn’t stop the pvp in the JP of course, but it makes it a whole lot more enjoyable.

People that complain about the JP is being camped do NOT complain about the PvP or being killed, but about the unbalance of the situation (in the arena).

Levistis.8356:

(…)
Isn’t Primordus in the Maguuma Jungle? Well, underneath it?

Nobody knows, if Colin really meant Primordus it would even be a bigger spoiler! ;-)
I think he’s somewhere below the Shiverpeaks.

Levistis.8356:

Just watched it and …eeeeeermmm…I think he means Primordius. I’m sorry to ruin it ;

Why would you think that?

The dragons should become more 3D, now it just feels like a 2D wall with the appearance of depth. Everybody is just standing in front of the dragon and shooting or chopping at its legs.
Why doesn’t the dragon move around, trample the players, and smack them around with his tail? And allow the players to attack the dragon from all sides.

Personally I think that the battle with Zhaitan is simply doomed to be disappointing. It’s simply not an enemy that we ‘want’ to fight. Something that we love to hate, Zhaitan just is.
I mean, throughout the story we hear al the stories of him being all powerful, but we actually never see him, or what he’s actually capable of. Actually the only time that we see him is when he’s already weakened significantly. At no point in the story we are feeling really overpowered by this supposedly immense power of the Elder dragon

It’s simply an anticlimactic battle since there is actually no real build up to the battle itself. And I don’t think any fancy graphics or mechanics will really change the feeling of disappointment.