Guild Wars 2

I’ve been a hardcore advocate of the stance that mounts aren’t needed in this game and that it was better off without them because it was designed from the ground up without mounts in mind. I’ve been super anxious about mounts ever since the leak happened and felt truly disappointed since then, wondering what kind of a mess they would bring. I’ve been all round against the idea from the start and have continuously argued with many people on this forum about how adding mounts is a bad idea.

and you know what?

I was wrong.

Mounts FEEL different, just from the look of the trailers itself, and watching the post show with woodenpotatoes honestly got me a little excited for them, even while i was seething with disappointment at their addition. They are mounts, yes, absolutely, but they’re also so unique compared to most mmos because not only are these new maps designed around the mounts, but the mounts were also designed for the maps too in a cohesive relationship instead of a flat movement speed buff. They’re not SIMPLY mounts, which makes enough difference for me to go from seething hate to hesitantly curious.

I’m not going to say flat out that this is the best thing to happen to gw2, i’m still wary as all hell about it, but i’m no longer taking the stance that this is the absolute worst thing gw2 could do at this moment.

What definitely improves mounts for me is the masteries tied to the mounts, which is actually odd for me to say since the grind for masteries in heart of thorns left a bad taste in my mouth (season 3 was much much better). The masteries suddenly feel more cohesive and less restrictive because mounts are simply given to you through the story (apparently, we know the raptor is at least) and you can get to many places with the mounts without the masteries.

I dunno, i feel like i’d need to play with mounts first before giving a full opinion about them, but honestly, i’m willing to give them a try now. Something just feels different about this take on mounts, different enough to stave off my previous hate for it.

Sombrero.9204:

I’m sorry but you clearly didn’t read much of my “idea”. I adressed 99% of what you say is a problem.

-snip because post length-

You actually didn’t resolve “99%” of the issues I brought up. In fact you sidestepped most of those issues and didn’t resolve the balancing nightmare and in fact, made it worse.

You never resolved the issue with a revenant main (which was my point, revenants don’t have utility swap so how would you account for that, how would you account for revenants using energy for all their non autoattack skills for anything provided by a secondary profession, on TOP of the ability to use two elite skills from another profession, how would the revenant mechanic of swapping legends interact with secondary profession utility skills?), you actually never addressed what happens when you pair an elementalist with an engineer (which wasn’t a point that I brought up before, but i’m bringing up now), which have no weapons common with each other (not even underwater or elite spec), you ignored the issue of engineer f1-f5 skills when using secondary profession utility skills (i specifically used f1-f5 for a reason which you seemed to ignore) (note, my bad for not specifying engineer on that point before). You completely ignored the point of “how would you balance trait synergy” (lemme bring up an example, what about traits that affect shared abilities like shouts which guardians, warriors and rangers share, and that’s not including elite specs along with weapon trait synergies and other stuff i’m probably not thinking about)? How do you work around upkeep skills for revenants (you only said that they wouldn’t be upkeep anymore, so what happens? this is a new point as well)

Basically, the only ones you DID address were the mesmer illusions one (simply no shatters, which means those skills would need to be rebalanced), primary professions can swap weapon skills with secondary profession weapons and the elementalist skills one (which you said you just picked a single attunement). Also, in this post, you never addressed actual weapon swapping, do engineers and elementalists get weapon swaps if they pick a secondary profession with weapon swaps? i’m not talking about them using other weapon skills from other professions, i’m talking about weapon swap itself.

What you created is actually more of a nightmare to balance than anything GW1 had. Guild Wars 1 had the balance (at a glance) about specialisation lines only affecting their profession specific skills (if i’m wrong, please forgive me). In GW2 as it is, each profession (with the exception of revenant) is balanced around having specific weapon/utility setscombinations and rebalancing anything that seems too powerful. You’ve now created an impossible to balance situation for a single class, because that’s 5 (maybe more if you do decide to include elite specs) trait lines per secondary profession, each trait line has a combination of a choice of one out of 3 adept, master and grandmaster traits, you can have three trait lines at a time. Not including elite specs, that’s 40 more traitlines they have to balance for each class, which includes two traitlines for the core profession, each with their choice of one out of three adept, master and grandmaster traits, some of those traits affect the character and are not specific to profession mechanics/utility skills (90% health traits, dodge traits, fall damage traits, downed/defeated traits, CC/CC break traits, healing traits and a bunch more). You ALSO have to deal with the fact that by choosing a secondary profession, some of those traits are now useless and thus need to be dealt with (such as necromancer traits that deal with shrouds or guardian traits that deal with virtues). And this isn’t an issue that can be sidestepped either, because if you remove traits, you reduce versatility (which seems to be the entire point of your idea).

The idea as you presented it is simply not feasible for the amount of work they’d have to put in to get any benefit from it, especially since, as you said, it would be free and not tied to any expansion, meaning those resources could better be spent in other actually useful places. Just because you like an idea doesn’t mean it’s feasible or doable. In a perfect world, i’d doubt that this would be possible, in the real world, you’re better off building your own version of GW2 than hoping the devs would implement this.

Honestly I’m one of those people who’d like to see easy/soloable version for all instanced content (raids, dungeons and fractals) and this is a good step towards solving that issue. The ONLY problem I see is the AI, which this game has a really bad reputation for when it comes to friendly AI (ranger pets, necro minions, guardian spirit weapons, mesmer illusions, engineer turrets, elementalist elementals and thief allies along with any race specific summons and the mistfire wolf elite). I wouldn’t trust the current AI system unless there was a major overhaul. Frankly though, those developer resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Not sure it’s doable, but I’m all for it.

The devs opted to move away from the system for a reason and I’m with the devs on this one. Besides, unlike the original GW, each profession now has mechanics and skills that interact with those mechanics that’s basically impossible to solve for some combinations.

For some examples:

How would you resolve the issue of having a primary elementalist/engineer when every other class can weapon swap

If two professions share weapons, how do you pick which profession’s skills you get to use?

How would you resolve the issue of mesmer illusions and shatters if they’re a secondary profession

Would the devs need to create f1-f5 skills for every secondary profession utility skill that exists?

How would secondary elementalist weapon/glyph skills work when they depend on the elementalists attunement?

Ranger pets?

Basically everything revenant?

What about traitlines? how would you resolve traitline synergy/balance? How would you balance skills if you otherwise removed traitlines?

What about elite specs?

There’s a LOT going on and the rebalancing of a system built from the ground up to not have dual classes may as well be for an entirely new game for all the efforts it would take to scrap the current system and implement the new one (both programming/design wise and implementation wise). And remember, people are now playing with elite specs, so they can’t be removed without severe backlash and harm to their income, so you have to work with/around that instead of tossing it away or ignoring it.

Simply put, there’s too many problems that you would have to resolve to currently place secondary professions within the game. The only possible solution would be using the elite specialisation slot, giving a single traitline (so not every traitline), a single set of utility skills (which limits what utility sets can be given on a profession by profession basis) and a single weapon (which STILL leaves unresolved issues like elementalist/mesmer weapons that were designed with specific mechanics in mind). Considering all that, the revenant was designed in such a way that it makes a secondary profession elite spec impossible for them and revenants are already upset about the lack of customisation compared to other classes, adding more fuel to the fire won’t help. So I don’t see a single possible method of implementation of a dual profession system that would work.

The game is better without gear grind or level grind and was sold on the basis of it, further confirmed by the absence of gear and level grind in Heart of Thorns and replaced with the mastery system.

Whether the mastery system succeeded in it’s goal or not is a different discussion entirely. GW2 was made without gear grind and it needs to stick to it’s guns.

As someone who has defended Brahams writing (specifically considering the connotations of Braham being one of the few people who knows the true circumstances of Eirs death and how, if word got out, it would forever marr Eirs reputation and Brahams issues specificay surrounding the hero/legend surrounding Eir) I agree, Braham isn’t written to be sympathized with (not entirely at least) and I want to know what will turn him around into joining Dragons Watch.

Considering this episodes reveal though, I’ve lost a lot of faith with the writers. There’s only one episode left and if Braham just turns around and joins Dragons Watch only,because Jormag is dormant or,something similarly easy to write that’s completely unrealistic, then I’m not looking forward to GW2s future. I’ll be along for the ride but I won’t enjoy it.

Wait, but haven’t the devs themselves stated that Mellaggan is in fact an interpretation of Melandru? Or is it one of those dev comments of questionable authenticity (can’t think of an example right now, but I know for a fact that on at least one occasion I’ve been enlightened about an error in a dev comment)?

@Alga so basically you read my post and decided to ignore everything I said. That’s the only reason I can think of for you literally repeating your arguments despite my straight up saying “it’s easier to start from scratch than to rework a 3D model”. It IS harder to rework a century into a horse than just making a horse from scratch. It also looks like the clothes are part of the base model at a glance, not additions like the player race models and armour. Until I can physically see the models in a 3D program with it’s topology though, I can’t say. Until you learn about 3D models by actually creating them, you will never know how hard it is and how much work it is to rework an already made model as opposed to starting from scratch.

Except there’s the fact that the human gods existed on the face of tyria itself for a long period of time, and they had huge effects on the world at large (granting mortals magic and the Crystal sea turning into the crystal desert). So at one point in history, there were twelve beings with domains over Tyria. Then Abaddon was stuck in the realm of torment while his body recovered, and he partnered up with two more beings with divine touches, Dhuum and Menzies, each very powerful in their own right. Abaddon was going to bring about Nightfall, which would have affected all of Tyria directly until Kormir absorbed Abaddon.

So yeah, I don’t believe it’s anything more than a coincidence considering all the human gods lore. I don’t believe it takes 6 beings to control the magic of a world because there are clearly more than six at work (Dhuum and Menzies being powerful enough to be constant threats).

Doesn’t Balthazar have a portion of his power? From several discussions on the forums, it seems divine magic in general is immune to dragon corruption, and we have two instances of purifying dragon corruption (glint and the risen chicken). When Balthazar is absorbing dragon energy from,two opposing dragons, he may be purifying them due to his ties to divinity and divine magic in general (which would also explain why Balthazar doesn’t just explode from the clashing draconic energies). This all does rely on Balthazar retaining a portion of his divine power though, but when Lazarus used fire to wipe out the White Mantle back in episode one, so it seems he does retain something from his former status as a god.

Until we see more of him, we won’t know, and there’s a chance, however small, that he could end up corrupted by the dragon energies later on.

@Konig I think a solution to the conundrum that everyone is having with the Mordremoth taking on Zhaitan’s domain actually has something to do with a conversation you had in the ‘all magic is dragon magic’ topic.

Your points in the topic (if I recall correctly) surrounded the idea that dragon magic is only corruptive if it’s actively put in that state by an elder dragon, which is why Orr wasn’t corrupted until after Zhaitan’s rise. If dragon corruption needs to be an active effort, couldn’t the same be extended to the domains absorbed by the other elder dragons? Specifically with Mordremoth, if he could safely absorb Zhaitan’s domain because Zhaitan wasn’t actively using it, it could lead to the situation where Mordremoth can safely activate the domain, while not truly in synergy with it, at least remain protected from it due to his own active control over it. Which could also explain why the grubs we fight while dealing with the Unstable Abomination explode at the slightest touch, because their corruption is now in an active state and can, in turn, react explosively to each other. If we were to make a real life comparison, I’d imagine it akin to holding two reactive substances in each hand. While you actively control both substances at the same time, you can put those substances to use in different areas on the table in front of you. There’s a chance of messing things up, sure, and you could accidentally spill both substances onto the same surface and create a reaction, but you’re at least mostly in control of what you do with the substances themselves and can use them accordingly.

Can’t come up with an explanation of blighting pods unfortunately, that’s the obvious counter to this idea and I’m sure there are plenty of holes that can be shot in this theory too, especially since in Dragon Vigil the destroyers of both types don’t violently explode upon their deaths and destroy other… destroyers.

It’s a conundrum, certainly.

Tekey.7946:

castlemanic.3198:

We’ve only had one episode since then, so it’s not like it fell out of their radar completely and is now something that will never be finished.

According to Dulfy, the current events related to the rift line were added on October 4.
Episode 3 – A Crack in the Ice was released on November 21,
Episode 4 – The Head of the Snake was released on February 8.

Leaving the reddit posts aside, that’s 6 months, half a year without a patch referring to the rift story line. They created new plot lines or continued other ones instead. Plus, there are many examples for unfinished story parts, we still don’t know anything about Rytlock’s holiday in the mists. Later, cub.
I think that the rift events will be concluded with the current season but on the other hand it’s perfectly fine to ask what’s going on.

I never said it wasn’t fine to ask what’s going on, all I said was “there’s only been one episode since then” followed by “don’t lose hope just yet”. I do recognise the time difference. It is a drain on all of us waiting to hear about what’s going on, I never meant to downplay the worry, I was only trying to keep up hopes.

@Orpheal So you want to avoid talking about samurai because it would defeat your argument about warriors not using ranged weapons… It’s still a legitimate argument. And you haven’t countered warriors on top of ramparts/walls, which is a very legitimate time to start using a ranged weapon like a bow and arrow.

Get my facts straight. Okay. Here’s some facts. The warrior has 9 1200 ranged skills on longbow and rifle, guardian has 3 1200 ranged skills on. So okay, my bad on the guardian. Except now that I’ve done a little more looking, thieves don’t have any weapon skills that reach 1200 range. The longest range is 900 on both shortbow and pistols. Sure, steal is 1200, but we’re talking about weapons at the moment so steal doesn’t count. In fact, daredevil added another melee weapon to the thief’s kitten nal, so your argument is again disproven by facts. You also have the issue of the elementalist objectively not having melee ranged weapon skills that you conveniently ignored too, so is that another argument that you don’t want to talk about because it disproves your point?

Orpheal.8263:

And no, its laziness, because what you expect them to do with adding new weapon types is just pure greed and unfair towards the devs to expect from them, that they should implement instantly all skins from 4 years of development time the very moment they would add a new weapon type!!
That this is some kind of childish super unrealistic wishthinking do you realize, or??? Thats something that has time, its more important that they just improve the game with interestign new weapon types, the skin diversity ins by far not THAT important at first, it naturally will come over time after the new weapon type has ben implemented first and this may include also retroactive skins of already existing skin sets to make them complete again.

You’re the one who unrealistically wants ArenaNet to have added greataxes to warriors and called them lazy for it. I simply showed you how much work your request would take. In a game that’s dubbed “fashion wars 2”, skins are absolutely the bread and butter of this game, that’s exactly how arenanet makes their money on the gem store, not all their money because there are convenience items in the gem store too, but they still designed most of their gem store around cosmetic items. To ignore the facts that Anet would need to implement a greataxe skin for every weapon set is in and of itself wishful thinking. This is the true scope of what you’re asking Anet, anything less is Anet not doing their job properly.

The biggest flaw in your argument is your wording. “Melee focused” does not mean “melee exclusive”, and with that design, all three soldier classes fit. The devs made the best choices with regards to what warriors could wield at long range. Just because you don’t personally enjoy those choices doesn’t make those choices objectively wrong. Warriors are still warriors no matter what weapon they wield. And your argument about warriors not using magic? Well, there’s the berserker now that definitely uses magic, so it’s canon now, warriors can use magic. Just like guardians and revenants do. So again your argument falls flat.

It’s not as simple as slapping on a weapon to an elite spec, which was a point I was trying to make previously, you have to design the whole elite spec to work with the weapon and give it a theme, matching utility skills, the whole trait line and a new profession mechanic. Game design is absolutely more difficult than you could ever imagine it to be, so saying “Necromancer greataxe executioner done!” is, in fact, wishful thinking at best.

If there’s nothing I can do to convince you, then there’s no point in this argument. Objectively speaking, warriors have used ranged weapons historically, even European warriors. You ignoring that fact just shows that you have an idea in your head that clashes with reality and as such you wish not to see it. There’s been a precedence in Guild Wars 2 to break fantasy norms by providing weapons not normally useable by those professions, even warriors (especially berserkers). If you don’t like that, then I’m sorry but GW2 will continuously break your heart, especially if the spellbreaker leak is true. I for one love the warrior in it’s current implementation. It objectively makes sense, not just subjectively. Your denial of reality is telling, so I see no need to respond to you anymore.

Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true.

It doesn’t mean Arachnia will never make it in game, there is room for her, but it just means we don’t have any confirmation of her exiwting in the first place.

‘Warriors only have longbows and rifles because Anet decided that every class needs a long ranged weapon’. Warriors had access to both rifles and longbows, both at 1200 units range. Every profession, even before heart of thorns, had access to 1200 ranged weaponry. Except not really. Rangers had access to 1500 range on longbows, which, fine, that still means every profession had access to long ranged weapons. Well, feat your eyes on this wiki page. Meet the Guardian who didn’t have access to 1200 range in vanilla GW2, had access to a 900 range scepter and a 600 range staff. Arguably, those both count as ‘mid range weapons’ by the community at large. So why didn’t the guardian get a 1200 range weapon in vanilla GW2 if Anets design intention was to ‘give every profession a long ranged weapon’? Unless you’re talking about anything farther than melee, in which case the elementalist doesn’t have any melee options, the shortest range is 300 on a dagger, over double the range of melee distance which is 130. So objectively, you’re wrong about Anet wanting every class to have both melee and ranged options in either way you want to look at it.

‘Anet only gave warriors torch instead of greataxe because they’re lazy’. First, there’s a difference between ‘cost efficiency’ and ‘laziness’. This is a cost efficiency issue (look at how many greataxes they’d have to make, one for each weapon set and there’s maybe close to 50 of them at this moment in time, plus any standalone greataxes they may wish to create as well), not a laziness one and until you can grasp the reality of that, you won’t understand what it truly takes to be a game designer. Secondly, creating something like the berserker with a torch takes a lot of time. In fact, I’d argue that giving the berserker a greataxe would be lazier than giving them a torch, because there’d be much less to design around. It shows ArenaNets creativity that they came up with a berserker that explodes into a literal fiery rage, gave warriors the berserk mode that upgrades their adrenaline bursts into more fiery versions and all those creative rage utility skills too (I can’t even IMAGINE the coding nightmare it must have been to turn an enemy into a projectile that knocks back other enemies for Wild Blow). So kudos to the devs for actually coming up with a great design using the limits of what’s available to them. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t space for new weapons like greataxes in the future, but it’s objectively wrong calling ArenaNet lazy for coming up with a creative design using weapon choices already in the game, which undoubtedly took more work than simply slapping on a greataxe to the berserker because ‘it makes more sense’. ArenaNet have also taken the stance that if they introduce a new weapon, they’d only do it if at least two classes have access to that weapon, and I don’t see another elite spec that could use a greataxe at all. Retroactively adding new weapons to core professions is an option, but an unlikely one from a marketing point. Also, I can’t wait to see how ArenaNet gives warriors and every profession new weapons to use and the creativity going into them. Just because you disagree with design decisions doesn’t make them bad decisions (or lazy ones)

(part 2 of 2)

@Orpheal Samurai (and essentially every archer and ranged combatant in existence, modern day or historical) would disagree with you about what consists as a ‘warrior’. In fact, I specifically point out samurai because despite there being a titanic amount of pop culture depicting samurai as melee combatants, in truth, samurai of the past were hardcore archers, to the point that they would downplay their swordplay capabilities to not look bad in the eye of other samurai. The reason? You’re less likely to get killed if you’re farther away from an enemy. Anyone can swing a sword, not everyone can aim with a bow and arrow.

Another point, how useful is a melee only warrior when defending a keep in a siege? Most defenders would be atop ramparts and walls, looking down on their enemies, and the best way to take out an enemy that’s at the bottom of the wall when you’re at the top? Ranged weaponry like a rifle or a bow and arrow.

What about modern combatants? As anyone following some of the threads I post on know, comparisons between modern day situations and fantasy situations fall flat because the two situations are different, but this is probably the only case where the comparison is apt. Would you deny calling a modern day soldier a warrior? They train like hell to keep their bodies as muscle toned as possible and learn a variety of martial arts to defend themselves in case they ever get into a situation where they don’t have a gun. But they still use guns because it’s more tactically sound to use a ranged weapon than heading into melee combat where you can more easily be killed (whether by being closer to an enemy firing a ranged weapon at you or simply an enemy who can use physical force to kill you).

So, now that your point about ‘real warriors don’t use ranged weapons’ is ruined, we can move on to a couple of other points that you make.

‘Warriors use heavy armour for a reason’. Did you know that during the early stages of the development of gun powder weaponry, they would create breastplates on most infantry units that could take a hit from a bullet (in fact, quality assurance was firing a bullet into every breastplate made to make sure it could withstand the force), meaning that heavy armour was made to defend from ranged attacks as well as melee attacks. So yes, this argument doesn’t make sense either, and arguably in a world of friggin magic, heavy armour being used only for melee combat makes even less sense (especially when even warriors use magic now).

(part 1 of 2)

armaduras.8972:

She exists since the Landmarks for her exist. They do say she is ‘dead’ on the Arachnia Plateau part of the wiki… however, if no one absorbed her power and with the way that Guild Wars lore goes, she’s probably not dead.

Part of me wants it to be her, just because of the Chak. All hail Dhuum, Emperor of Oblivion; The Ender of All; the Omega Death.

But that’s the thing, if you look at her wiki you’ll notice she’s under the “not implemented content”, even though she has landmarks named after her, that’s only after data mining information from the game, so you can’t even witness it in game.

Therefore, Arachnia is not confirmed to even be a part of the Guild Wars universe. Her existence is objectively questionable. This was covered in the lore forums.

Her very canonicity is in question (from a recent topic posted in the lore forums), so we don’t even know if she exists within the GW universe.

We’ve only had one episode since then, so it’s not like it fell out of their radar completely and is now something that will never be finished. We still have episodes 5 and 6 to go through, so we’ll hopefully see a conclusion to this story with those two updates.

Don’t lose hope just yet.

Rytlock, and I’m so happy he’s a part of Dragon’s Watch now.

Djinn.9245:

I’m not saying she would definitely succeed, I’m saying she didn’t even try. There are RL war vets that were captured, starved, and tortured but still tried to fight when given the chance. Some even succeeded. That is a real warrior. Eir wasn’t just some nameless norn, she was a famous warrior. She should have been better than that.

You’re again drawing false comparisons between real life and GW2. In real life, there are no elder dragons. In real life, there are no vinetooths, no extremely large plantlike creatures that are capable of extremely long distance jumps with large spike ended tails that can kill a person with a single stab. In tyria there is definitely a size difference between a character and an enemy. It’s like asking a recently escaped war veteran to fight a tank. That’s just not a possibility for a POW that was imprisoned and essentially fell out of the sky, especially weaponless.

All these real life comparisons do is hurt your argument, not help it.

Ragnar Stormcaller.6253:

The main focus of the Elite specs was power creep, pure and simple. And we are now in the situation where core builds are severely lacking. Try getting a mesmer who isnt a chrono into a raid, or a ranger who isnt a druid. The power creep designed into the Elite specs made the core professions obsolete, forever changing their identity by saying that if you don’t go Elite you can’t compete.

I definitely do not believe that the entire point was power creep. It ended up power creep, no doubt, but I don’t believe for a second that the designers intentionally set out to create power creep. They were marketed as an alternative playstyle from what I remember, and future elite specs should be the same power level as current elite specs, making elite specs a choice once more (though between elite specs).

But I’m going off topic here. My point was and still is we could have an elite spec that also uses our existing weapons, leaving our core profession identity unchanged, by simply using the core weapons as Elites.

I’d rather have that than face the prospect of my ranger weilding a scepter, or my necromancer with a rifle or shield. etc

And my point was and still is the core identity remains solid no matter what weapon is added to their kitten nal, because the identity is the profession itself, not the weapons they wield.

I’d love a scepter on my ranger and a rifle or shield on my necromancer.

Restating your point doesn’t remove the previous conversation, nor does it improve your stance. And it’s okay for people to not agree with your idea. It happens with any opinion/idea.

lukejoe.1592:

As for elementalists, I’ll say again, if the next elite spec doesn’t give them a P/P gun-mage build, I’ll be 100% convinced that everyone who works for Anet is an idiot. Why would you do anything else? People are fixed on them getting swords, and I can’t even fathom why. Sounds like another boring set of scepter skills for focus off-hand.

Maybe someone committed to sword wielding mages can tell me what they have in mind that would actually add to the game.

Why are you so hostile against any idea that’s not a dual pistol elementalist?

And elementalists wielding a sword wouldn’t use it as another scepter, they’d use it as a sword. Fire/lightning slashes, frozen and piercing rock stabs, wind slashes, earthly defensive poses. It’s the ultimate spellsword archetype and the elementalist is the perfect profession to play off of that type of combat. Mesmers get the illusive fencer archetype, but it would definitely be awesome to slash at enemies with the elements. There’s also the original datamining where the tempest was going to originally receive a sword and that got a ton of people excited too. So yeah, not a ‘boring scepter’ type deal (which btw I find the scepter fun on elementalist), and it’s a perfectly logical step to take the elementalist class.

Just because you have a preference doesn’t mean everyone else is an idiot.

Ragnar Stormcaller.6253:

I can see how it looks like new identity.
Lets take the Guardian, they got Dragon Hunter, a trap dropping longbow specialist. But wait, we already have one of them, it’s called a Ranger.
I dont see it as new identity, I see it as an identity swap. A mix and match between professions that is in danger of continuing until every profession does exactly the same as every other profession, just with different names for it.
It would certainly sort out the balance problems though :P

But wait, rangers are also trap dropping shortbow specialists. Core Thieves have both traps and shortbows.

Is there an identity swap there too?

What about warhorns and shouts? Warriors, rangers, necromancers and elementalists.

sword and physical? thieves and warriors.

staff and glyphs? rangers and elementalists.

There’s no ‘identity swap’ happening here, because the themes are separate, despite similarly based weapons and skill types. The theme of a ranger is ‘naturalist combatant with a pet’, that doesn’t change with the ranger having a staff and using more nature magic than they already did, and that won’t change if they get access to rifles, scepters or hammers. Thieves are ‘stealthy combatants with some shadowy magic capability’ and they can absolutely find a way to use a greatsword or hammer. Guardians don’t stop being ‘light wielding strategic combatants’ just because they use longbows and traps and it actually fits them thematically, because you can better reach a flying combatant with a longbow than you can with a sword, and traps are an extremely useful strategic tool.

There’s no identity swap because the theme stands strong.

Ragnar Stormcaller.6253:

@ EdwinLi

I think it would work for any profession, regardless of how many weapons they already have.

Sure, I get that it’s possible to make up some junk about why any weapon could be used by any profession, afterall, they’ve already done it, my point is that maybe it’s not such a good idea to.
Do we really need to have every profession use every weapon? To me that just waters down the professions. The profession started with a pretty solid identity that was easy to understand. Long before people try out GW2 they know what most of the professions do. Anyone remotely familiar with a fanstasy concept knows what a warrior, a ranger or an elementalist is. The names themselves confirm an identity.
Each new Elite spec waters down that identity. More choice isn’t always better imo.

“Make up some junk”, you mean lore? Story?

And I think the class identities would be solid regardless of what weapons would be used, because not every profession would use the same weapon the same way. Thieves and Revenants use staves and melee weapons, Mesmers use greatswords as a power based staff instead of a condi based staff, Revenants use hammers as a ranged weapon instead of a melee weapon, necromancers use axes and warhorns as magical implements, engineers use shields as another modified tool, elementalists use daggers as magical implements also. The mold’s been broken already about what weapons define certain professions and elite specs are a chance to take classes further into directions that they couldn’t do before, and new weapons with elite specs are absolutely the best (and honestly, the only) method of providing new ways to play and show these new skills each profession acquires. Why should Guild Wars 2 conform to what other fantasy worlds do when this game has it’s own space to explore the full extent of these professions in ways no other game does? The mold was even broken back in the original Guild Wars, with the healing profession being called a Monk that was a pure spellcaster instead of the fantasy monk that exists in essentially every other fantasy world. So I absolutely support breaking the mold even further. The professions don’t dilute their fantasy by using new weapons that they normally wouldn’t have access to, they can actually further improve the current fantasy of those classes (elementalists with swords anyone?).

All in all though, opinion is subjective, and ArenaNet can’t satisfy everyone with what they do.

I’d much rather new weapons for new elite spec and I feel that it actually benefits all professions to have new playstyles with new weapons and new skills.

They’ve also made it so that future elite specialisations can double up on previous elite specialisation weapons, so like two mesmer elite specs can, in the future, use shields with different shield skills for each one, depending on the theme of the elite specs.

I don’t like the idea of doubling skills on core profession classes, because what if the new elite spec is awesome but it changes my favourite weapon and ends up with new skills that I absolutely hate?

Also, a warrior with a pistol sounds awesome to me!

The current path they’re on is fine in my opinion, no need to change it.

The idea isn’t bad in and of itself, in fact it’s something I feel I’d enjoy playing a lot, but it would absolutely destroy anything resembling balance in the slightest and would require such a high amount of work just to get the tuning right in order to make sure that everything works that it just wouldn’t be worth doing for GW2 specifically. That also would blow everything that’s not that elite specialisation out of the water entirely, making everyone who doesn’t have that elite spec unlocked or even selected at a disadvantage from everyone who does use it, so there’d have to be an insurmountable amount of work in order to make sure the current specialisations (elite and otherwise) can match up to the new ones. It simply isn’t feasible, no matter how much I enjoy the idea, and would be much better off being used in it’s own game, completely separate from Guild Wars 2. Maybe for Guild Wars 3 if it were to ever happen, but I don’t see GW2 ever using it in it’s lifetime because the amount of work going into it would either completely make non expansion content irrelevant and not fun, or require so much work to rebalance old content that it might as well be it’s own game.

mXz.4512:

Just a lil fyi, Guild Wars/2 by Anet is a subsidiary of NCSoft based in (south korea). Which would make this game and its predecessor GW, partially asian in origin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCsoft

Isn’t ArenaNet an American company though? NCSoft might be South Korean, but that doesn’t make ArenaNet South Korean by any means. In fact, ArenaNet was acquired by NCSoft, it didn’t start out as an NCSoft subsidiary according to wikipedia.

However, Guild Wars Factions was definitely Asian themed/inspired.

Alga.6498:

I agree, we haven’t heard from Zojja since we rescuse her from HoTs.
Same goes to the Pale Tree…….
sigh

The new Caladbolg questline (only accessible on characters that have defeated Mordremoth in the Heart of Thorns storyline) talks about the Pale Tree and I think you interact with her too.

Also, we only just learned about Logan in episode 4, so there’s a chance (however slim) that we might hear from Zojja in either this episode or the next. That does, however, depend on ArenaNet either getting Felicia day or someone else to voice act Zojja though. But hopefully we’ll at least hear about her status in the next episode.

I’m not following, unfortunately. Are you talking about some sort of connection between Abaddon and spiders?

Alga.6498:

As someone said above me, ANet wont bother creating all wildlife animals?
Ehhhhhh……. okay…

We still have cows… atleast that’s something..

I mean, how hard is it to create a horse?! We have Tamini but they wont bother to create a house? They literally have the horse body, all they need to do is re-create the upper half of the shape.
Jesus christ..

But guys, it’s ANet we’re talking about here….

As someone with knowledge in 3D modelling and animation, it’s not that simple no matter how much you wish it to be simple. If you want to know how hard it is to model a horse using 3D software, texture it, create the bones (not actual bones, the 3D software equivalent of bones), skin it (another 3D term that doesn’t involve the actual taking off the skin of an animal), animate it for every possible scenario (including idle, walking, running, attacking, dying, along with unique death animations for fire, choking, lightning etc.), you should learn it yourself before saying how ‘simple’ it is. Also, to my memory, every centaur has some type of clothing covering the body, so there have to be adjustments there too. It in fact would be much easier to create a horse from scratch rather than take a centaur model and just change the human like torso.

We don’t see every type of insect, amphibian, reptile or just animal in general for a reason. In real life there’s simply way too many animals to place within a video game that would be needed for ‘realism’ or whatever the player may want. ArenaNet prioritised certain animals over others and for one reason or another didn’t include horses. Calling ArenaNet ‘lazy’ or whatever term you want to use for them because they didn’t include a specific animal you want in the game is just silly, because having horses physically present in the game does not objectively improve the game in any way, shape or form. In fact, adding horses that players can’t ride would probably make matters worse because everyone would cry about being unable to ride horses. ArenaNet can’t fully populate the world, even with all the creatures present in the game currently, because putting that much effort to populate the game more than it currently is would be detrimental to the performance of the game. Cities the size of actual cities would take FAR too long to traverse in game, so everything is built and created to be at manageable levels. There’s a reason why we barely see children of all races and creatures out in tyria, because doing a true population count would be impossible to do with current technology, and doing true sizes for landscapes and cities would also be detrimental to the actual gameplay. So horses are just something that never make a physical appearance in game because there were other things prioritised over them, as there exists a multitude of other things that were prioritised over to provide the game experience we currently have (like sheep, goats, geese, ducks, turkey and a bunch of other animals that don’t appear). In fact, theres a certain feathered friend that begins with ‘pea’ that would be censored on the forums but has a scepter skin based off of their feathers that doesn’t actually appear in game, furthermore proving the point that the devs just physically or financially can’t create everything that, lorewise, exists in game. And this isn’t exclusive to ArenaNet, but it happens in every rpg and mmorpg. Want to blame something for the shortage of animal and npc appearances in games? Blame the current level of technology and the financially focused markets of the modern age, not the devs.

Djinn.9245:

If betrayal makes you simply give up and let yourself be killed, you aren’t much of a warrior. But maybe in bad writing that’s how it is.

This is a strawman, especially because I covered the point about Eir being unable to fight later on in my post which you conveniently didn’t quote and would have ruined your argument.

Not like Eir shouldn’t have had a clue that Faolain might betray her lol.

But that’s what heroes do. They help others, even in situations that may warrant otherwise. Also, again, as I pointed out before, Eir didn’t know about the vinetooth until after Faolain betrayed her, and it’s obvious from the cinematic that Faolain betrayed Eir because of the vinetooth’s appearance.

So was Faolain…

Except Faolain wasn’t trying to fight the vinetooth she knew she couldn’t stand up against, she was trying to survive by making Eir an easier, more appealing target than herself. You’re refusing to look at the full picture in order to fit the narrative that’s in your own head.

To get a glider you need to play banjo kazooe, watch the,ENTIRE Lord of the ring series and read all 14 books in the wheel of time series. Once you do that, you’ll get a letter from Hogwarts where you’ll learn how to be a ninja and train for ten years to become the,ultimate pokemon master. After that, you’ll travel back,in,time to meet Leonardo Da Vinci where he will teach you how to build your own glider. Once you do that, you’ll need to meld your brain with the GW2 servers in order to unlock the potential to glide and be given your first glider.

Alternatively, you can buy heart of thorns, do the introductory instances that leads into verdant brink and select ‘gliding’ in the mastery tree and once you gain all the experience needed and the mastery point you need to unlock it, you’ll be provided with the base glider, with almost every other glider purchaseable in the gem store. The two gliders that aren’t gemstone exclusive are unlocked when you complete the legendary backpacks, either for PvP or for doing fractals. The gliders are visually the same as the backpacks themselves so if you like the look of the legendary backpacks, you get to keep their looks as,an option for your glider skin. Once a glider skin is unlocked, it’s in it’s own tab, just like outfits and you don’t need to pay anything to change gliders, unlike backpacks.

Djinn.9245:

Anet wrote her death as though she wasn’t an experienced warrior.

You are entirely wrong and I’ll go with each and every sentence to prove you wrong.

Broken and bruised? I imagine that is the natural state of every Norn.

It’s not the natural state of every norn to have been imprisoned for a long period of time and to have suffered under such conditions, especially being the prisoner of an elder dragon.

Betrayed? How does that affect how she dies?

An otherwise glorious death can be tainted by the act of a betrayal, removing the value of that death due to the cowardly nature that is betrayal. A glorious death is a fair fight and betrayal absolutely, in every case, makes it no longer a fair fight.

Weaponless? So if you don’t have a weapon you just give up and die? Even Faolain was better and AFAIK she wasn’t a warrior. She grabbed a thorn to use as an improvised weapon! Anet wrote Eir just standing there and nodding.

No, because you see, Eir was fleeing for her life after having already been imprisoned by an elder dragon. Imprisonment isn’t some nice fluffy holiday, it’s torture, constant oppression and it absolutely ruins a person’s fighting ability, even those who have the strongest wills because a body made of flesh can only take so much torture until it wears it down. On TOP of that, we have Faolain use the thorn on Eir who, if you remembered, threw it back at Faolain because of her betrayal. SO, not only was Eir in a completely horrible state physically beforehand, but she was also pretty badly wounded after that too. She then got killed in one hit. It’s impossible for someone in Eir’s position to have fought the vinetooth in any capacity, especially since she used what little remained of her energy to take down Faolain. Remember, Eir didn’t know about the vinetooth, but Faolain did, that’s why she used the giant thorn on Eir, to leave her behind as bait and save her own skin. On top of all of that, Eir had no weapon with her to defend herself against the vinetooth. If she had a weapon, she’d have at least attempted to use it but, in her weakened state, it would have been just as useful as a batch of cotton candy. There was no way out for Eir, there was no possible way she could have fought. She couldn’t even summon the energy to become the Wolf, a trait inherent to almost every norn. She could only die an inglorious death, one not worthy of someone such as Eir.

I agree it was a horrible death, but not because of Eir’s situation – because of horrible writing.

The writing is actually good if you look into it, using all the lore that we know of the norn and their culture and place that outlook onto Eir’s death. The writing is good, but they just haven’t fleshed out the world like they really need to in order to make events such as Eir’s death impactful and meaningful to the player. In the perspective of the characters within the game however, the death is very impactful, all the more so because of how inglorious of an end it was.

Wait there are non-endless versions of the common clothing tonics? Cause I have three endless ones.

Do you know if they’re tradeable? Can’t check cause of current circumstances, but if they are, I’d happily send you one of mine as soon as I can.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Travel

They kind of already exist

Ashantara.8731:

if there was true equality then were are the (supposedly) sexy male armor counterparts?

Light armour:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Feathered_armor_human_male_front.jpg
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Tribal_armor_human_male_front.jpg

Heavy armour:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Pit_Fighter_armor_human_male_front.jpg
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Scallywag_armor_human_male_front.jpg

I mean these aren’t perfect answers, and there’s certainly a heavy reliance on showing skin for female armour as a whole as opposed to these four limited options for males. I do agree that the amount of skin/armour ratio for female characters is ridiculous and certainly needs to be improved on almost every armour set, but I felt it worth mentioning that there are some extremely limited examples.

I do want to point out something regarding both Taimi and Braham. I feel like people aren’t satisfied with the portrayal of those characters. To me, it makes perfect sense who they are and how they act in general. But I believe the portrayal of their actions in game is lacklusters, the game doesn’t present the nuance to these characters that they have, Braham comes off as whiny because he isn’t being written properly, but the direction that’s being taken in general makes sense with his character arc. Taimi comes off as being a genius and making discoveries left and right, but there’s no intellectual back and forth to confirm the genius and having Taimi prove her intelligence, everyone just takes her word for it because she’s presented as an authority, and as such her portrayal is lackluster. While there isn’t enough room to create as much character depth in a video game as there is in a book, there are better ways of portraying these character arcs in game to give them the nuance and… uh… character…. that they deserve, especially for such upfront figures in the story. ArenaNet can do better in telling the story that they want to, but I don’t think the story itself is the problem with these characters.

Ardid.7203:

Also, considering the Norn culture, Braham situation of being “left behind as a child” by one parent to become a legend must be quite common. Baing raised with an absent mother or father must be very normal for them. Why is Braham taking it so hard?

Very few parents have legends close to those surrounding Eir, I’m assuming, since basically the destruction of an Elder Dragon has only recently become a thing, something that surpasses Aesgir’s legend of breaking off Jormag’s tooth, and even before that we have the stuff surrounding Eir befriending a dragon (Glint), a feat that is extremely uncommon considering every known dragon is corrupted in one fashion or another. Then there’s the fact that Braham didn’t even know who his mother was right up until his father’s death. That’s a pretty big bombshell to drop on someone just as you’re dying, followed by the stance of how Eir must not know about Borje’s death because if she knows, she may stray from her path as a legend to take care of Braham. The whammy is considerably larger when you take into account what Eir had accomplished.

Also, consider Braham’s age at the time. I was wrong in my previous assumption of just how young Braham was. According to the wiki, Braham was born in 1309, but Borje died in 1316, so Braham was 7 years old when his father died. To lose your father and be forbidden to reach out to your mother at such a young age when you’d need her the most? Braham isn’t by any standards ‘of age’ when his father passed away, so he had years to dwell on the idea of not reaching out to his only living parent as she made a name for herself and accomplished unbelievable feats. Also consider the fact that Braham is closest to Wolf. Members of a pack take care of each other, but Eir wasn’t there, and Braham could be bitter about that. Enduring several years without either parent while knowing one still lives and could teach you what it means to be a norn? That’s bound to make issues arise.

What’s more, when Braham finally meets up with her, he may be thinking that, essentially, what Eir accomplished while she was not tending to him needed to be of such amazing worth that it justified leaving him parentless in his formative years. Especially with a parent so connected to the same Spirit of the Wild as you are, one that represents unbreakable bonds. So it’s not simply a matter of Braham not having his mother around, as might be common with norn.

Moonyeti.3296:

Yes. If he were anything other than a Norn then the whining wouldn’t feel as out of place.

Except he’s totally acting in character for a norn who was estranged from his mother due to his father not wanting to stop Eir from becoming the hero/legend she was becoming. To Braham, Eir isn’t just a legend, she’s a figure of importance to him, his mother, and what greater honor could there be than witnessing the legend of your parent.

But Braham never saw Eir the legendary figure. Braham saw Eir, the norn who stayed at Hoelbrak while prisoners were taken from outlying norn holds, eventually (somehow) getting close to his mother, slowly but surely beginning a relationship that, really, Braham needed for closure on the absence of his mother when he was younger.

Except Eir died before Braham could see her as the legend everyone sang songs about. Braham never witnessed the legendary aspect of Eir, which must be a downer. Not only that, he witnessed the death of his mother, he failed to save her, he failed as a protector, as someone strongly connected to Wolf. Eir just became a part of his pack, but then she died.

But she didn’t simply die. She died broken and bruised. She died betrayed. She died weaponless. She didn’t die a hero’s death. Her death was everything BUT honourable. She didn’t even fight. She couldn’t. She had no weapons and she was up against a creature who killed her with a single, powerful blow, after she had been taken as a prisoner. She had no last stand, she had no victory, no greater goal that she fought and died for. She died betrayed, weaponless, without any of the glory due for someone of her stature, someone who fought two elder dragons, killing one and lived to tell the tale, who then died as an escapee from a prison camp.

All anyone else will know is that Eir died fighting Mordremoth, a heroic end to such a legendary figure. But Braham knows the truth, he witnessed it first hand. If he told the truth about Eir’s death to anyone, her legend would be shattered. All her great accomplishments marred by an inglorious death, caused by imprisonment and betrayal. No norn would ever attempt to sully the name of someone such as Eir, who did so much and accomplished so much in her lifetime. And so, Braham can’t grieve, not in the traditional sense. He never witnessed the legend that his mother created for herself, which would have provided some form of closure as to why she could not be by his side when he was younger. He could not save her when she needed him the most. He saw her die in a fashion that no norn should ever perish. No songs will be sung of her death, not any that resemble the truth anyway. Songs and stories won’t fill the void in his heart that he now has, when he finally opened up to Eir, only to have it ripped away, and not from a human standpoint, but from a norn standpoint.

So I totally believe that Braham is acting in character from a norn perspective. He can’t form the words he needs to say in order to grieve, for fear of tarnishing Eir’s legend, the most sacred thing to a norn’s legacy. Having the struggle between the lack of closure and knowing the horrible truth, Braham can’t act the way any norn would act about another’s death because his situation is all too unique. I think these aspects could definitely, without a doubt be portrayed better in game, Braham isn’t written well enough in my opinion, but I feel that his reactions are at least justified from a norn perspective, considering their culture surrounding legends and legacies.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

I said it somewhere else recently, but … I’d love to see an MMO company that experimented with the policy: “this team needs to ship something new every two weeks”.

The goal being that, eg, new dynamic events, mini-boss events in the world, gradually grown quest chains, etc, ship on a routine basis, and the team become expert at getting things done fast. Bonus points if it included adding new creatures, textures, bones, etc, on a routine basis to just gradually expand further and further across the range of things that you run into in the world…

I don’t know if it would work out well, but it’d be an interesting experiment to be sure!

Living world season 1 did exactly that, tying it all up in a grand storyline that eventually culminated in the new designs used in season two and beyond.

Unless you’re talking about much smaller and less noteworthy (and less marketable) updates, in which case we don’t really live in a world where that type of thing is viable, since it’s the big stuff that draws in paying customers and is more likely to keep veterans as well. In a perfect world this would be fantastic, but in the real world, it isn’t viable.

Feanor.2358:

But not while maintaining a giant, city-sized glamour.

Consider the play for power from Jennah in “Meeting of Ministers”. You could take it at face value and count it as being a defensive move. But I’ve watched Star Wars far too many times and I simply cannot resist drawing parallel to Palpatine. So I’m kind of waiting for a reveal about Jennah as well. Now, could the two reveals coincide?

I certainly do not dismiss this possibility. Again, it’s probably my Star Wars view count. But if Jennah was to pull this stunt off and pretend to be Lazarus, she’d end up playing on both sides, at least in regards to Krytan politics.

The actual weak point of this theory isn’t that Jennah can’t be Lazarus, it’s why would she be interested in Aurene and go to Rata Novus. Well. Unless she’s Kralkatorrik’s minion, but that’s quite a stretch.

You still have the issue of them using entirely different forms of magic. So that is a very weak point to the argument, so much so that the Lazarus = Jennah theory has no substance. Jennah could not have led the White Mantle in any way, shape, or form considering the myriad of attempts on Jennah’s life by the White Mantle and their constant attempts on her life which, in no way, mimics Palpatine. The only time Palpatine was in danger was when Count Dooku had ‘captured’ Palpatine at the beginning of episode 3, when Anakin and Obi-wan were sent in to get him back. Count Dooku was an apprentice of Darth Sidious, aka Palpatine, so he was never in any real danger. Palpatine ALSO had the benefit of nobody knowing he had force capabilities, which Jennah does not have the luxury of, since everyone and their mother knows queen Jennah has mesmer training. Queen Jennah also had a problem that Palpatine never had, which was a significantly larger threat than she could ever make the White Mantle out to be. The White Mantle ARE dangerous, very much so, but the comparison between the White Mantle and the potentially world ending threat of the elder dragons is significantly different, by many, many factors. Queen Jennah mimicking Palpatine at THIS exact moment makes no sense in the slightest, even considering the fact that the elder dragons weren’t active and nobody knew the elder dragons would eat up each others domains, because they still existed and were still undefeated. The comparison fails on many fronts and doesn’t make any sense story wise except for an extremely poorly thought out “gotcha” moment.

There is no case for causing the start of an extremely resource and man-power intensive civil war (on both sides I might add) during the threat of the elder dragons, especially when two elder dragons become active at the same time, with a possible two more elder dragons who could become empowered beyond belief after the first two are dealt with or could become a threat NOW and probably crush the living races between them all, in order to more solidly secure yourself as the sole ruler of Kryta. It doesn’t fit.

That isn’t to say Queen Jennah isn’t hiding something from us. Jennah hiding something from the commander, especially a non-human commander, is quite obvious. However, I don’t see any secret Jennah (or any other ruling body) coming up as even mildly important, considering the Pale Tree’s secret about the origin of the sylvari being such a huge reveal and huge plot point this recently in the story, and rehashing a recently used storyline isn’t truly good storytelling, especially when there are plenty of other storylines that GW2 has already set up that we could be going with instead (Livia, Wizards tower, Magdaer and other important artifacts, the not as revered Spirits of the Wild, anything and everything about the elder races, the other continents, the true meaning of the anti-kytheria and several, several others).

I see it as a distinct impossibility that Jennah has anything to do with the White Mantle, bandits, separatists or the crazy members of the circus. (There’s also the absorbing an exploding bloodstone feat, which no member of the playable races has the capability of pulling off, especially since it took Kormir the blessing of five human gods to pull off the same with Abaddon’s power)

DarcShriek.5829:

So let me get this straight, you guys want ANet to make GW2 more like a single player game?

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of the requests. I think the requests are for more open world experiences within GW2.

I’m not sure any of the suggestions are feasible, but I don’t believe anyone (in this thread at least) is asking for GW2 to become more like a single player game.

Feldorn.9564:

Well, queen Jennah did something similar in the last episode. Not all at once, but she was playing at the time with some enemies.

I want to point out, that I really enjoy this discussion right now. I hope one of us turns out to be right at the end

Queen Jennah put a giant glamour to cover the city and killed three White Mantle members, one at a time. Lazarus wiped out at least a dozen enemies with a single wave of his hand, twice. Queen Jennah is ultimately a more defensive minded person than Lazarus has been at any point in his appearances in season 3. Also, different forms of magic. We don’t know what the purple aura surrounding Lazarus is at this moment in time, but for me I don’t see any proof that Jennah is Lazarus and I see all the proof why Lazarus absolutely cannot be Jennah (if that is indeed what you’re attempting to point out, if not I apologise).

Also yeah this has been a great discussion.

Jski.6180:

The start chose for your gear you skin you start with would work nice to make legendary or at lest ascended. They did it with elite spec armor and wepon why not the core classes.

They gave each elite spec ONE piece of armour and ONE weapon, relevant to the elite spec. They never made full sets of armour for each elite spec.

I would love armour unique to each race/profession combination (there’s especially a lack of any viable armour that fits the engineer), but even if we stick with just a single set of armour for each profession, that’s still an unfeasible goal, however much it may appeal to me. Pushing that up to legendary though, they might as well put all that developer effort into other more important things. And this is something I really want. I don’t think it will happen, ever, but I’d be very excited if it did.

(also it’s worth pointing out that the new outfits styled from the members of Dragon’s Watch could be considered profession ‘armour’)

I don’t know about aerial weapons specifically, but I would like to see profession specific gliding abilities introduced as long as it didn’t utilise class mechanics (so no mesmer clones/phantasms/shatters, no necromancer shroud etc.). That would be my dream. However they do already have gliding abilities in place, so they at least have a base to work with already.

I’m for the idea and I hope they implement it in some way, but I’m not sure exactly how feasible it is (cost efficiency, balance and all that).

Feldorn.9564:

Or maybe this is just a common ability that the PC also can use. (Shadowstep, Blink, Lightnings Flash…) Invisibility is also a utility the PC can easily use with well known skills. That Lazarus teleports inside one room doesn’t mean he can do the same thing from far away.

This character, whoever it turns out to be, is playing with us. It wouldn’t be that absurd if all we saw from his power thus far, was also a well planned “charade”.

I did some reading on the whole human god thingy. It’s true, you don’t get instantly blinded if you look at them. So this theory is back on the table, I guess.

While Konig also mentioned the first point about short ranged teleports, it was in response to someone asking “does Lazarus actually teleport?”, to which the answer is “absolutely”. Short ranged teleports DO exist, I fully acknowledge that, and it’s not surprising that someone of Lazarus’ power has access to them. But I entirely disagree with the “Lazarus used invisibility to access the egg chamber”, because the designers actively chose to use the same energy flash animation for every time Lazarus teleported in Dragon Vigil, including his very first appearance in the egg chamber. So by all indication provided by the developers, Lazarus teleported into the egg chamber from some unknown distance. I personally assume it was at least some distance outside of Tarir since his appearance essentially raises no alarms (though there is a significant amount of time difference between the egg chambers system shutting down and Lazarus appearing, and we know both Caithe and Marjory are busy fighting off destroyers, so it’s not off the table that the rest of the exalted were simply busy with destroyers and Lazarus snuck in somehow, there’s also the possibility of Lazarus using the mursaat’s technique of slipping between worlds to at least get closer to the egg chamber if he truly is a mursaat), however I can see arguments for him teleporting from within Tarir.

Also, it’s absolutely absurd to assume that Lazarus’ power is a charade, because he absorbed the power of an exploding bloodstone. We have definite proof of that all over Bloodstone Fen and in Lazarus’ introduction too (Lazarus was glowing red when he first appeared to the player character). Then there’s Lazarus’ ability to one hit kill a sizeable number of enemies (both in his introduction with all the White Mantle he slays AND in Dragon Vigil when he first appears, wiping out the entire wave of destroyers in a single spellcast) alongside Lazarus empowering the Commander with “Spectral Smite”. There’s simply too much indication of Lazarus being someone with an overwhelming amount of power for it to have been a charade.

Sephas.8793:

Think of it this way folks, the “teleporting” that Lazarus does could be nothing more than becoming invisible, and moving about and coming out in another location. Have we seen him actually blink from one point to another? He could simply going out of phase with Tyria (as Mursaat have done) and moving from one point to another.

Yes we have seen Lazarus teleport between locations instantly. He teleports more than once in Dragon Vigil within our line of sight, and more importantly it’s instantaneous teleportation between two different spots in the same room, so it’s literally impossible for,it to have just been Lazarus slipping between worlds and coming back, and each,time he teleports, there’s the same flash of light as when he first,shows up in that,mission. So yes, we have very definite proof that Lazarus can indeed teleport.

Feldorn.9564:

Further more, if Kasmeers reaction in the trailer is caused by the real identidy of Lazarus, there is no chance that he is one of the human gods in disguise. (Because she would go blind the moment she looks at Lazarus.)

Actually, we have very visual proof that humans don’t go blind the very moment their eyes are laid upon a human god.

The player character and their allies during Nightfall. We lay eyes on not one but TWO gods, Abaddon and Kormir (Abaddon was still regrowing a body, but Kormir was there in her entire glory). We also have the story of Malchor, who created lifelike statues of all the gods, eventually going blind. He fell in love with Dwayna and intentionally created her statue last in order for her to be the last thing he sees before he goes blind. So we have proof that this isn’t the case.

As for what Lazarus’ goal is and whether he’s a mursaat or not, we’ll just have to see, but specifically because Lazarus in his current form can both fly and teleport, so Lazarus in his current form doesn’t need a portal to go to Ember Bay. Current day Lazarus (whether he is a mursaat or not) seems different than basically any other mursaat, and that more than likely (though not definitively) is because of the absorption of an exploding bloodstone. By every indication that I can see, Lazarus’ current abilities isn’t representative of mursaat in general, due to the effect of absorbing that much magical ability, so it makes sense that Lazarus specifically would not need a portal, but the mursaat in general might.

There’s also another factor or two to consider with mursaat creating portals instead of simply teleporting if they had that magical capability. Convenience in both effort and literal energy expenditure. With the mursaat needing to keep an eye on both Kryta and the Door of Kormalie, a portal makes sense for the ease of travel (since if souls were immediately needed for any strange reason, getting there instantly is the best bet of fixing any issue) and for the ability to transport many individuals to a single place as opposed to multiple individuals expending energy to travel to a single place.

So at a glance it would make sense for Lazarus to want to use the portal in Rata Novus to get to Ember Bay for whatever machinations he has planned. Convenience of travel and saving energy for a bigger threat. But we have the issue of how he is perceived. If he was legitimate in his offer to rally the White Mantle and put all of his own personal energy and efforts into destroying the elder dragons, then simply asking to use the portal, with Marjory to vouch for him would be enough to accomplish his goal, and he can come up with some convenient explanation for why he can be trusted or why Caudecus’ journal is incorrect (because there IS confusion about whether Bauer actually swapped the artifact or not containing Lazarus’ final aspect, considering Bauer’s personal journal and Bauer’s letter to Caudecus concerning the matter). Instead, Lazarus is portrayed as actively antagonistic (instead of the ignorance concerning the value of ‘lesser’ lives according to some of his dialogue in my opinion), which would work against whatever end goal he is trying to achieve. If he wanted to go to Ember Bay uninterrupted, he could have flown/teleported there to avoid opposition. Instead, he’s in Rata Novus and he’s up to some shady dealings. So I remain unconvinced that Ember Bay is his goal at all.

Mad King was turned into an outfit from it’s previous armor pieces. I still remember carrying around 4 stacks of the Mad King’s outfit thing because each individual armor piece was turned into an outfit unlocker. Couldn’t trade them so I ended up deleting them. Since I don’t know what ArenaNet did under the hood, I can’t truly say what happened on their end, but that’s what happened with me.