Guild Wars 2

Dear Alexander Fluffernutter… or whatever

I think the main thing you seem to not be realizing is this is a “Living” Story, and Anet is constantly updating the story. No, they did not provide access to Season 1. But Season 1 changed lots of things not directly involved with the story as time progressed- such as Lion’s Arch going Kablooie. Anet came to a decision that maybe that wasn’t the best way to allow all players to enjoy the Story of this game- which is a pretty central piece to the allure of playing GW over other MMOs. So, they decided, instead of changing the existing content, add to it. As incentive for players to enjoy the new content, they allowed everyone who logged in to play the content for free. But to allow people who may be coming to the game late to be able to pick up past content IF they so desire through the in game market. The world is not a perfect place, no matter what tinkerbell may have told you when you wished upon a star all those nights ago, and in order for someone to give, they must first receive. You cannot reap what is never sown. By making this content free, Anet is giving away their time and resources as well as the resulting product – of which all are fueled by money. So, in a way, they are giving people who support them by regularly logging in and playing free money in the form of content. Are you aware of how expensive servers are? Or did you think people who are employed by arena net are just charitable people who spend more time making content than they do with their children and spouse? So yes, you have to pay for things that are old and gone but they are going to give you more going forward. If you are blind to this incredibly simple concept of “give to get” then daddy should have beat the scales from your eyes growing up because you would have to be abysmally selfish to believe you get without giving because it’s your right as a human being.
This is free, but it has a condition in the form of a time period. It’s not any different than a sale at a department store except they literally give this product away. Stop sniveling.

Sincerely, A friend who cares.

I just really want to say that I had called this well over 4 months ago, the clues have been there for a very long time, but the events of Dragon’s Reach pt 2 gave the last piece to be able to connect the dots and have plenty enough evidence to say this was true. I merely labeled this as a theory due to lack of confirmation. Now we have it… I play Sylvari, and love it. Unfortunately, I’ve been on hiatus from internet games since this post was made, but it’s good to smell the “I was right” in the air. I could be wrong on some points, but the conclusion was accurate…https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/sylvari/THEORY-Origins-of-the-Sylvari-race/first#post4353428

Krag.6210:

2000 range
more responsive
more damage
auto-fires like the deployable mortar kit consumable when no one is controlling it

Definitely this. Far far too situational and underpowered to be viable in many situations. Mortar PvP is suicide.

Hello, I’m Swift but I go by the moniker of Shepard. With the megaservers merging guilds all together soon, I was looking for a Role Playing oriented guild to take in a fellow from Crystal Desert. I have RPed before in the past – I used to play Illarion if anyone is familiar with it. I’d highly suggest a google search if you aren’t.

I’ve named this build Shepard’s Bleedburst build, because it’s focused around bleed stacks and burst damage, with beautiful crowd control abilities and 100% unbuffed crit chance when the target drops to 50% hp. Also burns with every shot for added damage, and uses blind as an extra layer of defense. I’m still gathering the pieces, so this is not what my character currently has, but it is what he is currently being built into, so I should note that this is purely a test build at this point.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdUQFAUlUUpuqdzxkLseNCbBNq4A6KMi3+5IGgWD-TRCBABQtgAlKBj4BAgp6PGqjohDIAAXIAa2PgLlfBAOAGe4AhHOrv+6rv+6N8wDP8wDHA-e

Unbuffed crit chance sits at 90% until the target gets dropped to 50%, then it jumps up to 100%. Every crit has both a 60% chance to apply bleed and an additional 33% chance to apply a second stack of bleed, it also applies burning with every crit and an additional 33% chance to apply 6 seconds of blindness for defense. Each condition applied boosts damage output by 2%, which I’m not sure if it’s counted as base damage but it could be up to an additional 3.7% for every condition if it is due to 100% crit.

For defense I don’t have a whole lot in terms of stats, but I have a wonderful system of crowd control, which will allow you to keep a distance from the target at all times. I have 4 separate immobilize skills on the hotbar – one being a turret. 5 if you count the supply drop net turret. Each time someone is hit with an immobilize condition, they also have cripple and 5 stacks of vulnerability applied. In a matter of seconds I can apply 25 stacks of vulnerability by deploying the net turret, then rotating between the other 3 skills while the net turret shoots out a second net at the end, bringing out the last 5 stacks. Once the target’s HP goes down below 50%, each attack applies cripple again. If the target is being annoying and kiting your “lockdown” area where your net turret is, you can switch to the toolkit and use the magnet to pull him to it, and proceed to stack vulnerability to further whittle him down. The usefulness of the immobilize is not so much the immobilization itself, but the slowed movement rate with the stacks of vulnerability that it causes – so in theory you can attack another player with this and they would have difficulty chasing you as you attack with large amounts of bleed stacks and constant burning.

However, if you find yourself in a situation where you simply cannot get away from the enemy or you need more AoE damage, you can use the elite skill to bring down a supply crate. But if you are not in a player-vs-player environment, switching out the tool kit for a rocket turret is a lot more beneficial since NPCs don’t really kite turrets.

The beauty of this build is that it builds an incredible amount of momentum the longer the fight goes on, if not immediately taken out of the fight and it starts to drag out, I can apply a lot of conditions in a relatively short time and keep them coming, increasing damage as I go along. Say I have a target with 25 stacks of bleed because it’s been a longer fight, and can deploy my net turret and cycle through my immobilize skills to apply the 25 stacks of vulnerability, on top of the burning from every hit and cripple if under 50% hp – the increased damage output is 5% from bleed damage boost + 2% damage for every condition (52 conditions just from my own attacks applied at once) + the 25% increased damage from the vulnerability and you have an increase of 134% base damage – then multiply that by 172% crit damage because of the 100% chance. That’s the equivalent of ~230% crit damage, plus 25 stacks of bleed, plus a stack of burning for a single tick.
I hope I did the math for that correctly, it sounds about right.

From this setup, I really hope to see more engineers building precision builds instead of bombs and grenades.

Fingers crossed hoping next week’s update doesn’t break this.

Athrenn.9468:

Wanderer.3248:

Instead of typing all that you could have read half a dozen threads that pretty much say the same thing.

shrug I think the OP made the theory more accessible at least, this is the first I’ve heard about it.

Also, seems pretty solid to me. Jungle dragon? Plant minions? Yep.

Mostly the idea. Gather everything in one spot rather than scattered about the forums. Also to allow it to be more easily reviewed and updated as the story progresses.

Part 2: Observances in the Game World
Okay, so there are a few things that I have personally noticed as a bit odd in the game world in recent updates:
Okay, so all sylvari have a glow – you can customize this when you make your character. Have you noticed that giant vine directly under the cliff where the entrance to Dry Top is? It glows in the same manner.
When you make your Sylvari character you start off in The Dream. Where Humans have to fight the Earth Elemental, and the Asura have to fight the giant robot, the Sylvari also have a boss fight right off the bat… With the exact same boss that attacks the Pale Tree at the end of Dragon’s Reach 2. They said it was poisoning the dream, but I just saw it sleeping until you disturbed it enough by slaughtering sylvari dogs around it – oddly enough it does not use any poison spewing moves in The Dream like it did during the LS fight. I just found that a little odd.
Why do the sylvari in the Pale Tree have access to the Dream but Malcyk does not – being from another tree from around Magus Falls? This is never explained and adds to the mystery.
Sylvari are the only exception to the corruption of the other dragons – however they seem to be 100% exclusive to Mordremoth’s corruption… why?
The sylvari believe that they have been awakened right as soon as the Elder Dragons started to awaken due to their destiny being to stop them… is this true?

Part 3: The Cracked-pot Theory
Okay, so I’m getting tired of typing at this point so I’m going to summarize this as quickly as I can.
The Pale Tree’s seed was taken from Mordremoth – since it was guarded by the Mordrem in the cave it was in, and was planted over a ley line hub. The resulting prolonged exposure to the direct magic coursing through these ley lines infused the Pale Tree with enough magic to give it sentience. This sentience decided that it’s children needed to be protected from Mordremoth’s corruption. The infusion of the magic is what give Sylvari their glow, much like the vine below the dry top entrance glows after engorging itself on magic to the point it practically overflows out of the vine. This infusion of magic manifests itself as The Dream, a type of subconsciousness of the pale tree. Those who cut themselves off from the dream (soundless) are no longer protected by the pale tree by essentially cutting ties to her subconscious, in turn being able to be reached by Mordremoth – like Scarlet Briar and Aerin. The question that remains is why are soundless sylvari still not corruptable by other dragons besides Mordremoth? Prepare your tin-foil hats… We are the children of mordremoth, meant to be an intelligent extension of him in the world – our purpose is to further help devour the magic in the land that Mordremoth himself cannot reach when he awakens, helping to keep things in check by destroying his enemies while he sleeps (such as the other races). But when the seed was taken from Mordremoth and planted where it was, it unexpectedly gave birth to a sentient tree that decided to rebel and shield its offspring from such a destiny, giving them each their own instead. It’s normal for a Sylvari to be in a soundless state – so when Mordremoth awakens, his corruption is unhindered and he can use the Sylvari to further extend his reach. This is why other dragons cannot corrupt even the soundless – because they are minions of another dragon already.

I’m sure this is glaringly obvious by now, but I’ve yet to hear anyone say anything about this, and those who I speak to about this seem to have no opinions on the matter (clearly don’t have an interest in the world they play in for countless hours a week), so I thought I’d voice this here, maybe get someone to point out flaws, discrepancies, or maybe expand on it beyond what I have here.
It’s large, so I’m going to have to split it into 2 posts.

Part 1: Foundation of the theory
According to the lore, the sylvari race first came into existence a mere 27 (counting the 2 years since the game started) years ago. They have all the knowledge they need to know before they are born, in the Dream. They can even communicate directly to those outside of this pre-life Dream while in it. The exception to this is the tree Malyck said he believed lied to the west of Brisban Wildlands, in the direction of Dry Top. Malcyk does not have access to the Dream, like those of the Pale Tree do. The Pale Tree has stated that she is the one who shields the Sylvari from being corrupted by Mordremoth. When Scarlet Briar was growing up, she said she had nightmares consistently, that there was a “sea of darkness” and an evil entity calling to her from it. If you played Dragons Reach Pt 2 as a Sylvari, the Pale Tree mentions that Mordremoth was that darkness, and is worried about your mind ending up like Scarlet’s because you entered the same machine.

The Pale Tree was also once a seed that was discovered in a cave by a human named Ronan, guarded by what can only be described as Mordrem.

The thaumanova reactor incident unintentionally revealed some of the first bits of information about the ley lines. It was set up to study chaotic energies, but happened to be built directly upon an intersection of larger ley lines.
Let’s look at this a bit more: If ley lines connect all of the waypoints around the world, one can only assume that places with more waypoints would have a larger amount of ley lines below them – a hub, if you will. This would place each city as being on top of a hub. Looking at the official map of Tyria, you can draw a line from Rata Sum to Divinities reach, and it goes directly through the Thaumanova Reactor’s location. If you take the Grove and connect it upwards towards Mordremoth near the Dry Top region, you have another ley line that intersects the DR/RS line directly at the reactor’s location.

Wait, why connect to Mordremoth? This brings us to another key point to all of this theory. The Elder Dragons are not some evil that plague the land of Tyria simply to be a villian. They have a clearly defined purpose – to consume the magic within the ley lines to keep the world in balance. So, it makes sense that each of the dragons would make base in a place that they had access to the ley lines.

Zardul.3952:

you may say we are a minority, but how many people moan on a daily basis? both ingame and in forums about what this game has to offer for the time and effort most of us put it?

A vocal minority can be louder than the majority but it is still a minority. I don’t really hear any moaning in-game, then I hop on the forums where everything is all in one place and people can crowd together. This seems to be where the poop goes, and just sits in the open on display and the stink starts to spread as poop goes on top of the existing poop.
Personally, I’m happy with the updates to leveling, honestly. Sure, it’s not delivering new content for 80’s. This is a feature pack, not content pack. What this will do is add more veterans in the long run instead of satisfying whiny veterans now who will only whine again when they are done playing with their new toys and get bored with them. Anet is a business on top of a game developer, they need to bring in new customers as well as have old ones coming back day after day. If their statistics (that we don’t have access to) say it would be beneficial to focus on drawing more new players into reaching endgame, where I’m guessing their statistics are saying most veterans play at every time they log in, then I’m going to have to say that from business standpoint, they are doing a brilliant job in the efforts to increase those numbers. Do I think the leveling system needed all these adjustments? Not at all, but I do know that newer players often times will stop playing because they can’t figure certain things out, get frustrated, and give up. Which is why my opinion doesn’t really matter in the scope of the big picture. Obviously the numbers are saying newer players give up and that some changes needed to be made to boost those numbers. (Analogy time!) It’s not much different than an employee saying their boss is stupid and doesn’t know how to do his job because he makes a decision that doesn’t make sense to them; he has access to a lot more information than you do, and he can make a much more educated decision for what is best for everyone, not satisfying a whiny employee who thinks they deserve a raise because they don’t set the store on fire and show up with pants on everyday.

Lastly: poop; because maturity.

I think this idea has some viability, but not so much as a complete reset to the hearts. What if once the initial heart is done, it’s done, however adding new tiers of karma vendor loot that does get reset once a month – kind of like the tiers of the vendors in Dry Top when the sandstorm dissipates. Make the hearts repeatable but taking more effort to complete it than the tier before – say instead of requiring 10 actions of a particular type to complete, it takes 20, or 30, etc. Each day you can only go up one tier that would unlock better karma loot, this would help promote exploration rather than sitting at one heart and grinding along. It would also promote socializing between veterans and newer players because 80 characters would be in starting zones more often (now that champs are almost non-existent in starting zones, map completion is pretty much the only pull that 80s have to stick around in starting zones) – give the newer players something to aspire to and awe at the second they come into the game by having level capped players fighting along side them using a wide array of skills, giving them more incentive to pursue higher levels.

(Copy pasted and modified from another post I made)

Honestly I think the Grove might be the primary Ley Line hub, and that’s why such the focus on the Pale Tree. This would also explain how the Pale Tree has access to the ‘veil’ to prevent the corruption of the Sylvari. The glow of the plants and Sylvari would probably just be the infusion of the magic from the Ley Lines that went through the tree, and the Sylvari are simply by-products of plants having direct contact with the magic that pulses through Tyria in this hub. We see this effect in the vine right below the entrance to Dry Top – Mordrimoth’s vine is absolutely filled with a violet glowing light. It would also explain a pre-life Dream and the Wyld Hunt – memories and echoes of the past and unfulfilled desires of the once living that were mixed in with the magic from the use of the waypoints and passed through the ley lines to this hub. As far as we’ve seen, Dry Top is too desolate for it’s ley line hub to have this much of an effect on anything that inhabits it, and it could simply be a smaller secondary hub to the Grove’s and thereby have much less magic in it (or Earth Elementals originated here).

EDIT: This also falls in line with the screenshots in the OP on https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Ley-Line-Connection-With-Southsun

If Southsun has a possible visible Ley Line hub, then this theory is entirely valid…

Thoughts? Opinions? I actually never played S1 so I could be very wrong.

Honestly I think the Grove might be a second Ley Line hub, and that’s why such the focus on it. Would also explain how the Pale Tree has access to the veil to prevent the corruption of the Sylvari. The glow would probably just be the infusion of the magic from the ley lines that went through the Pale tree, and the Sylvari are simply by-products of plants having direct contact with the magic that pulses through tyria in this hub. It would also explain a pre-life Dream and the Wyld Hunt – echoes of the past that were mixed in with the magic and passed through the ley lines to this hub. As far as we’ve seen so far, Dry Top is too desolate for it’s ley line hub to have this much of an effect on anything that inhabits it… Unless Earth Elementals?

EDIT: Long story short – Entirely possible if I am correct. Probable, in fact.