Guild Wars 2

Maethor.2810:

WOTC = Wizards of the Coast. American game publisher (Magic: The Gathering and D&D being their top two games).

And, specifically, the Warforged are a “race” of, essentially, sapient golems from the Eberron setting, created as footsoldiers and war machines in a continent-wide war and gaining their freedom in the aftermath.

Close enough to the Forged in concept that calling them “Warforged” could have created issues. Might not have done, but I could see ArenaNet playing it safe on the issue.

nopoet.2960:

Suggestion: Change the range back to 600 on the staff auto attack but invert the shape of the attack so that the wide part of the triangle is close to your character and the ‘point’ is at the far edge of the weapon’s range. See no more loot stick and I can AA at range with my range weapon.

Interesting suggestion.

The problem is that weeks after making this change, ArenaNet has left us guessing as to the reasoning for it.

For all certain people have been saying ‘bye bye lootstick’, lootsticking really didn’t hurt the game. Other professions also have ways of efficiently tagging multiple enemies, and as much as it might provoke jealousy on the part of players of some other professions that aren’t as good at tagging, the term ‘lootstick’ started as a derisive term from PvE guardian players who felt that was the only thing it was good for.

Plus, when PoF arrives, ‘lootsticking’ will be possible again using Tome of Justice with Radiance. This has lead to some conspiracy theories that the reason why ArenaNet hasn’t justified the nerf is that the real reason is to push people to get PoF and use Tome of Courage to get back what was taken away. In this case… they really might as well put a long-range auto on it and make it the standoff support weapon some people have asked for. I’ve resisted that myself because I liked the old staff, but if we can’t have that, we could at least have something useful in its place.

Another theory as to the reason was that it was a problem in WvW (which was the only place it was actually being used seriously before the nerf) due to the sustained pressure it could provide in a zerg versus zerg. Unlike lootsticking, this is somewhere where having people switch to using Firebrand for the same purpose actually might have a gameplay benefit (over just a financial one of getting people to buy the new content…) – Tome of Courage can only be used in bursts (unless its recharged by scoring a kill through Radiance, which a) requires taking a second traitline and b) getting kills is harder in WvW than it is in PvE loottrains) and it means that the capability can’t be combined with other elite specs such as dragonhunter or anything else that might come down the line. In that case… see my previous comment. Might as well turn it into the long-range support weapon some people have asked for.

A third theory is that it’s purely an issue of being able to attack through doors. In which case, the solution is programming in suitable collision detection so it no longer strikes through doors, after which we could have the old staff back.

nopoet.2960:

Last thing… what the hell is up with guardian scepter. It’s gotta be the worse weapon in the game. Does anyone use it?

It’s… possibly actually the most used guardian weapon, all things considered.

Even before Staff 1 was nerfed into the ground, it was regarded as the only viable ranged weapon for non-dragonhunters, and even dragonhunters often use it in preference to longbow due to its higher DPS – scepter is one of the highest DPS ranged power weapons in the game, particularly against large hitbox targets. The slow projectile velocity is a balancing factor for the fact that if all those orbs do hit, you’re doing damage that can outmatch some melee weapons.

Samug.6512:

Arantheal.7396:

play buttloads of wvw.
you get hero chests there that reward a currency for which you can unlock HoT hero challenges.
After PoF hits, these chests will be changed to reward another currency for PoF hero challenges, and already collected chests will drop the new currency rather than the old, locking HoT hero challenges to be only unlocked by actually playing them. And they are anti-fun :/

I’m fairly sure old chests won’t drop the new currency, otherwise they wouldn’t give us new chests.
Old chests = only proofs of heroic
New chests = proofs of heroic or new currency to choose.

I’m pretty sure of the same. The whole point seems to be to prevent people from being able to immediately unlock all the PoF hero points using proofs of heroics, so it’d be a bit counterproductive for people holding onto old chests to suddenly be able to get a tonne of new currency.

Nevertheless, getting a bunch of the HoT hero points one way or another while everyone is preparing for PoF is probably a good move. I’d suggest going through HoT to grab all of the easy points, though, if you can. You can then use proofs for the ones that are a PITA or that require masteries you don’t have the opportunity to get.

One build I’ve pondered for group combat is combining traits that proc of Aegis with the Aegis output that Firebrand can put out with Legendary Lore. Could potentially prevent a lot of damage while dishing some back out while you’ve got ToC out, with enough other sources of Aegis that you’re still getting the benefits of those traits in between.

Possibly less gimicky… take the various skills and traits that outside the tome that you would use to get lots of Aegis and combine with Stalwart Speed for Quickness.

For burning, there’s the potential to use Radiance for quick recharge of ToJ.

Yeah, sometimes losing a long fight like that can result in being doubly punished.

On the other hand, a long fight like that means a long period where neither side is getting the bell and there are at least some players on both sides that are not being contested. I’ve seen some teams which try to put a couple of tanky players to contest the bell against superior numbers while capping the rest of the map – therefore, if it’s a long fight for the bell, they win through cap points.

The bell is an interesting mechanic, but you’re generally not actually supposed to drop everything to 5v5 at the bell unless the bell would put one team over 500 (and sometimes not even then).

zealex.9410:

Yeah the ending waant bad the only thing that it suffered from was that neither shining blades nor the whole lazarus/ balth thing had time to bake. Rhh w/e we HAD to have a braham episode as it help the overall story so much.

Eh. Episode 3 was probably my least favourite episode of the six, but if we didn’t have any indication of what was happening with Braham until S4, people would be asking until we did. What they’ve basically done is put him on a bus until they decide to come back to him, but at least we know he’s on a bus.

Would have been nice if we could have checked in with Zojja as well…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Dragon.4782:

I have to say I view the finale of season 3 as non-canon.

I don’t think it’s up to players to decide what’s canon and what’s not. (If it were, as the commander, I wouldn’t have bothered creating a guild after LS2 and I certainly wouldn’t name it Dragons’ Dragon’s Watch.)

Considering the number of people kittenponded to that poll with “why not just keep it at Destiny’s Edge”… yeah.

The dungeons storyline made the PC a DE member, and by the end of HoT, the “biconics” had worked with three DE members to kill a dragon, rescued two others, and almost rescued the third. Furthermore, most of the biconics have some connection to one of the original Destiny’s Edge members. I don’t think any of the original DE members would have complained about inducting the biconics (and, in fact, they’d probably be happier with that than Braham claiming the name for a norn hunting party…)

Ojimaru.8970:

draxynnic.3719:

Losing most if not all of your offensive capability when carrying an organ makes it a PITA to get the kill and manage to reclaim it before the body disappears, and the story step requires you to reclaim bodies (where at most other reliquaries, I mostly complete the heart by channeling ley energy.

Using Skill #1 (Ley Line Blast) will temporarily unequip the Ley Organ bundle, thereby returning full weapon functionality. The bundle will be re-equipped shortly after leaving combat state.

Hope that helps!

That does make a big difference – I thought skill #1 expended the bundle like the other skills do.

Regarding skill 3…

One thing I’d note here is that thief sword/dagger 3 has a similar theme (roll around the target and attack from a new angle), but I’ve never had the problem landing that skill that I’ve had landing ranger sword 3. Which suggests to me that ranger sword 3 can be fixed by giving it the behaviour of thief sword/dagger 3. It might still be something that is more useful for the evade than for the strike, but at least there’s a good chance that strike will actually hit.

For skill 2… I do like the idea of the flipover being permanent until you use the new skill. Heck, with that mechanic, they could just make ML the initial skill and HS the flipover (it’d probably be how most people will use it anyway) – but because the flipover is permanent until the new skill is used, it would be easy to keep HS up for the disengage when you want it.

I found this curious myself, to say the least.

Until the announcement, I was expecting the second expansion to release in early November, between seasons. But no, they’re releasing late September.

Then, I expected that they’d delay season 8 until after release. Nope. If anything, Season 8 started earlier than I was expecting. It does somewhat put paid to the idea that ArenaNet avoids balance updates during the season because they’re avoiding messing up the balance mid-season.

I guess the argument might be that the actual reason is that they don’t want to mess people up midseason by nerfing their build and forcing them to switch in the middle of a season, and they won’t be making any adjustments to core or HoT specs until the season ends? Even this, though, rings hollow, since PoF is bringing a lot of boonhate, so unless these boonhate builds prove subpar, any current build that relies on boons is going to be indirectly nerfed.

It probably would be better, but I have a sneaking suspicion that WOTC might have trademarked/copyrighted Warforged. Calling them simply ‘Forged’ sidesteps that.

“Battleforged” might work as an alternative, depending on how securely WOTC has it tied down…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Rognik.2579:

Something called him to Vabbi after being at Glint’s former lair for so long,

Now this is an interesting thought. While it could just be him relocating for more desert lands to conquer, thus having no particular reason for going to Vabbi itself, if something called him there… He landed at the Mirror of Lyss.

What makes this an interesting line of thought is that we left a dragon near there, 250 years ago. And as we see with Gleam, and Aurene, the Elder Dragons tend to be drawn to good, non-betraying, dragons (oddly, Primordus is the one who went after Gleam and Aurene, not Kralkatorrik).

Shiny is a possibility. Going after the traitor champion Glint doesn’t necessarily set a precedent that he’d go after a Saltspray that, as far as we know, are not corrupted by Elder Dragons at all. On the other hand, we’ve seen that the Elder Dragons appear to consider lesser dragons in general as ideal subjects for making into champions: Glint was said to be corrupted, not created, by Kralkatorrik, and then there’s the blighted wyvern bosses in Heart of Thorns.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

However, drax may have a point too – Kralkatorrik could have gone to Vabbi because he decided he could try interacting with them, but thought he made too much damage in Ascalon. Over the 8 years he was in the Crystal Highlands, he might have come across Elonian refugees and decided to study this first-hand. But being an Elder Dragon he’s not exactly careful with his actions and movements. Would be an ironic twist if he went to Vabbi not to cause problems, but did so just by being “incomplete”.

Double irony if it turns out that the Branded are aggressive mostly because Kralkatorrik was feeling threatened enough by Joko and Balthazar that he’s gone back into full-on defensive mode.

One of the things that struck me is that Kralkatorrik appeared to land near the Garden of Seborhin, but avoided transforming it. Makes me wonder if that was deliberate or just luck. If he has decided to go on a quest for inner peace, that might give another reason why he’s gone to that particular location.

Trailblazer would be trading power damage for tankiness, which I don’t think is really good for firebrand. From what we see so far, most firebrand stuff still has a significant power contribution in addition to the condis, so losing power damage is a big sacrifice. If trailblazers was a cheaper set than maybe, but with the price of maguuma lilies…

If you’re going offensive, Viper’s (POWER, CONDI, prec, expertise) might well be worth considering if you don’t want to commit to burn duration runes – firebrand does give bleeding and a few nondamaging conditions, after all. Burning is probably where most of the condition damage comes from. And if push comes to shove, the classic Berserker’s will probably serve well enough: the power components of most firebrand skills still appear to be fairly decent, so you can probably still do fairly well with a pure power setup, particularly considering that Justice passive is weaker for firebrands and axe/torch is going to be the only real condi weaponset they get (and even that’s more of a hybrid): your standoff weaponset, if you want to have one, is still going to be the classic scepter/X.

For more healing-oriented setups, Marshal (POWER, HEALING, prec, condi) might be a good option if it was available as armour, as would Sage (POWER, CONDI, vitality, healing) if it becomes available in PvE (or you set it up yourself by mixing stats), although replacing vitality with concentration, expertise, precision, or ferocity would be even better.

Raid builds might focus on the permanent quickness, in which case you might want concentration (I haven’t done or seen the numbers, and whatever the numbers are now might change). I would probably be looking at aiming for some mix of power, condi, healing, and concentration for such a role, unless the firebrand in that situation is also the tank, in which case Commander, Vigilant, and/or Minstrel might all come into play.

PS: Personally, I’m waiting to see what’s in PoF before committing to gear. I’m fairly confident that the Berserker’s set I already have will at least do the job, and there’ll be plenty of time for other builds when Season 4 kicks off and we know what PoF brought. It’d be a pain to commit to something and then have something better (or as good but cheaper) become available.

Dragon.4782:

2) Livia was off fighting other battles in GW1 while Lazarus was conducting his own plans under the radar and pretty much out of sight and out of mind to the shining blade. The only chance they could’ve met was during a small side quest and that isn’t enough to develop that kind of rivalry between them.

ArenaNet may well have made the call that canonically, Livia was present during the Naveed/Lazarus quest arc.

Even if she wasn’t, though, Lazarus might have still been aware of events during the War in Kryta, which lead to the destruction of the rest of his race.

But really, all that scene requires from Lazarus’ side is that he recognises her. Livia herself had plenty of motivation to want to finish off the last mursaat once and for all.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

I can add to this.

While doing the Reclaim the undead thing, I’d take down some bodies, then go in search of a ley organ. Well, during that time, I’ll see another player just sweep in and Reclaim it. Pretty rude, honestly.

You can still reclaim them after someone else does if you’re referring to the melandru shrine heart.

This. In fact, it’s my typical way of getting through it. One person gets the kill, others reclaim, hopefully the person who did the killing gets the opportunity to reclaim the corpse as well before it disappears. Next up, someone else does the killing.

Frankly, I’m more worried about getting the story step at Melandru done once PoF hits and Siren’s is no longer the newest, shiniest map. Losing most if not all of your offensive capability when carrying an organ makes it a PITA to get the kill and manage to reclaim it before the body disappears, and the story step requires you to reclaim bodies (where at most other reliquaries, I mostly complete the heart by channeling ley energy.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Main reason being that Glint would not be the first dragon champion to create ‘eggs’ as a means of minion making without ever being pregnant – but more importantly, Glint said that once upon a time the world was ruled by dragons. On top of this, we see not one but two definite dragon species in the world, and one can argue for a few more (note about the second to last link: that miniature shares the same shape as Mordremoth, with the potential exception of short stubby legs but we see on the event icon for Mordremoth fight legs on the snake-like body – if the theory that all Elder Dragons were once normal dragons, then Mordremoth would have been a Mystical Dragon before gaining a lot more power).

On a side note, it’d be interesting if the DSD turned out to be a dragon turtle…

Regarding Kralkatorrik… I’m not necessarily sure he can’t be reasoned with. The impression I got from Edge of Destiny was that Kralkatorrik was essentially looking to complete himself, in a fashion, and was essentially trying to consume everything in an attempt to fill the hollowness inside. And part of what made Snaff’s interference in Kralky’s mind so effective was that Snaff basically made himself be everything that Kralkatorrik was missing.

At the time, Kralkatorrik regarded it as an irritation to be destroyed… particularly since he was already primed for a fight when he (it?) arrived. However, it could be an interesting twist for it to turn out that Kralkatorrik has thought on the matter since and decided that the ants might actually have what he’s looking for, something that gets destroyed when they’re turned into minions, and thus an alliance might serve his goals. Or that Snaff is still inside his mind working his influence from within…

I don’t think this scenario is highly probable… but it’s not impossible either.

There’s an older reference to guardians being a merging of monk and paragon, so the “Elonian protection magic” could be coming from the paragon side. Whether dervish is also included is… ambiguous.

While on the topic of skill names coming from the dervish, though… a lot of the spellbreaker skills do. In fact, for all they’re describing the spellbreaker as mesmer through a warrior’s lens, it’s probably actually closer to an enchantment-hate dervish in behaviour, particularly if you use a greatsword…

Leo G.4501:

But none of those can jump over houses, glide over water and one of those might be able to leap across a chasm…

The real question is, why haven’t the people built infrastructure so you wouldn’t need to leap over chasms, up cliffs or over large bodies of quicksand/water?

In addition to what other people have said, defence could also be a part of it. Build a bridge or a set of stairs, and anybody can get in. With an obstacle that you need a mount to cross, only those with the appropriate mount can get access.

Even if you do have the odd bridge over such obstacles, it’s likely advantageous if your own people don’t HAVE to use them.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

1. Nothing says humans cannot interbreed with any native species, technically speaking. We only got confirmation about the five playable races not having interbreeding capabilities. That said, it would make sense for humans to be unable to breed with other species, given the whole “not from Tyria” situation. Dwayna having a son with – supposedly – Malchor could be tied to the fact she’s the goddess of life. What life can be denied to to the goddess of life. For all we know, she could screw a Forgotten, charr, and centaur at once and give birth to a chimera.

Heck, for all we know, she doesn’t need to engage in carnal relations at all. For all we know, Dwayna has already borne Jennah’s child as a insurance policy to preserve the royal line, while Jennah has long forgotten the priestess of Dwayna who thanked her (entirely verbally, no euphemism here) for the royal funding for a hospital.

In fact, there is some implication that Lyssa deliberately made them forget their original home (and what happened there).

Aaron Ansari.1604:

draxynnic.3719:

Wasn’t this a retcon that had already been made, though? I haven’t been able to find the source on a quick check, but I’m pretty sure there was an in-game source putting the date at later than 1135AE, and ArenaNet acknowledged that they changed their mind on the exact date.

The tour guide in the Ossan Quarter implied that the date got moved back to 1275, but there’s more than enough wiggle room in her phrasing to argue whether she actually meant the point Joko took over.

Ah, yes, that might be what I was thinking of. Still, I do recall there being an acknowledgement somewhere by ArenaNet that the date of Joko’s conquest had been changed (ie, retconeed) since the Movement of the World was written.

Well, grenades used to be high-tier damage at 1500 range. It was a little silly that a thrown weapon could outrange anything but a ranger’s longbow…

I think the core issue is that core engineer weapons were designed to be jack-of-all-trades weapons. It was possible for an engineer to only have one weapon option – therefore, this weapon needed to be at least vaguely competitive at range without being totally helpless in melee. The solution was to give them a long-range autoattack, with other skills that are oriented towards closer combat which gives them the punch to be dangerous there as well. You see something similar with elementalists, particularly scepter and dagger elementalists (staff elementalists tend to be more focused on don’t-let-them-get-near-me). If you wanted to build towards long-range combat, you’d take utilities, including kits, to do so.

The elite specialisations getting sword and hammer are pretty much ArenaNet giving what was asked for. That might not be the specific motivation, but that was the end result.

Problem is that the longer-ranged options have generally been nerfed, and the obvious long-ranged options for engineers have already been used. I guess there could be room for a trick arrow-style Engineer using a bow, in the vein of Green Arrow and Hawkeye, although thief shortbow seems to already sit in that area.

Rognik.2579:

The dervishes went to the same place paragons did.

Into guardians? Possibly, but there isn’t really a lot dervish-related in the guardian except Whirling Wrath, and spinning attacks are commonplace nowadays.

I have a suspicion that they might rather have gone the way that ritualists (outside Cantha) seem to have gone – parts of their traditions remained to be absorbed into other professions while the core profession disappeared. Reapers behave a lot like Grenth dervishes, for example, and the weaver might be seen as a kind of expanded dervish using a more practical weapon (they’re said to be inspired by djinn, but djinn in Nightfall and EOTN were often dervishes).

Ultimately, though, this may be a question that gets answered – one way or another – in PoF.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

There are typos and retcons – Joko’s date for conquering Elona was previously 1135 (60 years after Nightfall) but is now 1175 (100 years after Nightfall)

Wasn’t this a retcon that had already been made, though? I haven’t been able to find the source on a quick check, but I’m pretty sure there was an in-game source putting the date at later than 1135AE, and ArenaNet acknowledged that they changed their mind on the exact date.

What I find more interesting is that they specified that Kralkatorrik killed Glint’s Forgotten attendants. Said attendants weren’t present in Edge of Destiny, and having Forgotten still around as late as 1320AE has implications for some of the ingame lore.

I suspect that any dervish-esque elements will prove to be in other elites. Weaver, Holosmith, and Spellbreaker all have clear dervish-esque aspects, and they may even retroactively reference the Reaper. Gotta say, holosmith, ironically enough, is probably the thing that feels most like a dervish to me this far in GW2. (Lorewise, not so much, but holosmith does seem to be more mystical in feel than previous engineers.)

The Greyhawk.9107:

^This, I can see this absolutely being the case. My contention is that I don’t think its feasible for Blood to be the next Mordrem or Forged.

Oh, they’d probably be more along the lines of the White Mantle – the focus for a couple of LS episodes, and maybe something brewing in the background for a few more. Mind you, the same is probably true for the Flame Legion or Braham. I don’t really see any of those being a focus for the next expansion without a serious villain upgrade.

I suspect we won’t get any inclination of who the next Forged is going to be until midway through Season 4 at the earliest. None of the major releases have had a clear indication of the next big threat at the finale.

There is a theory floating around that the mirror was in the reliquaries, and Balthazar picked it up during his visit.

I’m not sure I’m convinced by this, however. The evidence suggests that Balthazar only visited the reliquaries once and that was after he had adopted (and possibly after he had lost?) the Lazarus disguise.

One consideration here is that it may be no coincidence that the legion that has the most troublesome Imperator (apart from Flame, of course…) is also the legion that has the charr Destiny’s Edge representative.

Until S3E4, Logan’s narrative appeared to be heading towards marrying Jennah and becoming King of Kryta… and it may still be going that way through an unexpected route. Similarly, Rytlock’s long-term narrative may also be pushing him towards high office, and if Bangar did eventually loose cannon his way into needing to be removed, then that gives Rytlock an opening. It’s worth noting here that Blood Legion charr PCs are those who have been stationed in Ascalon and have seen the effect of the truce firsthand, as well as having a close relationship with Rytlock. It wouldn’t be stretching things for ArenaNet to have Blood Legion PCs, and non-renegede Blood Legion NPCs stationed in Ascalon in general, to choose to side with Rytlock (incidentally, the highest-ranking Blood Legion officer in Ascalon) over their Imperator. Heck, the Blood Legion personal story has the PC claim control over their warband through challenging their Legionnaire, so it would be fitting for them to support overthrowing a problematic Imperator in a similar way.

In fact, it may be less of a civil war, and more a case of a period of rising tensions culminating in getting Rytlock into a position where he can challenge the Imperator. They could possibly even find some excuse to have you play as Rytlock for the challenge.

One question that doesn’t seem to have been raised which perhaps should have been:

Does Balthazar even know where the other Bloodstones are?

The bloodstones were scattered by the eruption after the Exodus, after all, and the gods may not be omniscient (although, admittedly, Balthazar does seem to be getting pretty good information in S3). It’s possible that part of the reason Balthazar hasn’t gone for other bloodstones is because he doesn’t know where they are… or at least is uncertain enough that he thinks going after dragons is a better gamble.

Another possibility is he knew full well and has already absorbed them, but that wasn’t enough. The Bloodstone Fen bloodstone exploded because of White Mantle tampering – it’s possible that Balthazar could have drained the others without causing such destruction.

phokus.8934:

Why do people waste their time putting these together?

Some of the gen 2 elite specialisations look very similar to proposals that people have made. Might just be parallel thinking, but it might be an indication that they do pick up good ideas from the forum. They’ll never openly admit it, but there it is.

That said, I don’t think a martial arts monk is likely. Partly because of the heavy armour thing, partly because ‘monk’ already has an established meaning in the franchise. If ‘monk’ ever does appear as an elite spec, expect it to be guardian’s equivalent of druids.

Personally, I have a feeling the daredevil was intended to scratch the martial arts itch.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Instead, I think Season 4 will either deal around Elona, or if we do go back north (which I’m more hopeful for) it’ll be focused around the peace treaty – and the Renegades and Separatists. That plot has been around for a while, and would be a good way to transition from human plot to charr plot (just as the Maguuma depths was used to bring us to the White Mantle and human plots again).

My suspicion is that the end of the initial story of the expansion will see Palawa’s control over Elona weakened sufficiently that a rebellion could remove him from power, and then the start of LS4 will happen in the backdrop of that rebellion. Maybe we’ll be taking part, maybe it’ll be a backdrop of what we’re doing and we’ll only get involved sporadically when our actions and those of the rebellion overlap, or maybe the rebellion will even be a complication for us, but I think it will happen.

At some stage, though, I expect we’ll get pulled north again. Maybe into the lands north of Vabbi, maybe up into the EOTN regions. It does seem as if Braham and Rox have been put on a bus for PoF, but we’re going to have to clean up that mess eventually – question is whether we have to do so right away, before the rebellion fully gets underway, and then we return to Elona for a bit and go from there, or whether we wrap the rebellion up and then go north.

RabbitUp.8294:

ToR’s “healing bombs” are weaker than Celestial Avatar’s, and that’s before considering the immense difference between their cooldowns.

The numbers looked roughly comparable baseline, although Celestial Avatar does scale better with healing power.

Mikau.6920:

Just to add up. Even if there was a trait that would reduce the cooldown of the Tomes Virtues (F1, F2 and F3) it would be a really bad design because you would be forced to pick this trait so the tomes actually become viable to use.

Hopefully the spec becomes viable till PoF launch.

Not necessarily. It would give the player a choice between making a big investment on tomes or a firebrand build that uses the firebrand’s other stuff and the tomes are just something they bring out occasionally.

The suggestion made in this thread would pigeonhole tomes into something you MUST base your build around, and would be a PITA in general for many builds because guardian weapons weren’t designed to be used without a weaponswap. (Although you might think it the way guardian ranged capabilities keep getting nerfed…)

Brutaly.6257:

draxynnic.3719:

RabbitUp.8294:

Knighthonor.4061:

whats bad about the tombs? Was the best part of PoF that I was looking forward to.

Resolve has weak healing, Courage’s only defensive skill is some protection and +300 toughness, but more importantly, extremely long cooldowns (Tome of Resolve 45, Tome of Courage 90s).

Baseline, yes, but you need to look at how they interact with traits.

Loremaster cuts those recharges by a third – so it becomes 30 and 60, respectively, on the order of dragonhunter virtues.

Not gonna answer your whole post since the first few sentences make the rest irrelevant.

No the trait dont reduce the recharges on the tomes. It reduces the recharge on the skills in the tomes.

Hrmn. Must have misread, although I’m pretty sure I saw a recharge figure of less than 76 1/2 for Tome of Courage during the test weekend.

That doesn’t render the rest of my post irrelevant, though, since I moved on to other things. Just means that some of the numbers are off.

RabbitUp.8294:

Knighthonor.4061:

whats bad about the tombs? Was the best part of PoF that I was looking forward to.

Resolve has weak healing, Courage’s only defensive skill is some protection and +300 toughness, but more importantly, extremely long cooldowns (Tome of Resolve 45, Tome of Courage 90s).

Baseline, yes, but you need to look at how they interact with traits.

Loremaster cuts those recharges by a third – so it becomes 30 and 60, respectively, on the order of dragonhunter virtues. You can reduce that even further by adding the Virtues traitline. (While on the note of reduced recharges, there’s also Renewed Justice for ToJ.)

Legendary Lore makes all of your ToR skills apply 6s regeneration, which pretty much means that if you invoke a ToR healing bomb, people are pretty much going to have Regeneration until you’re ready to invoke ToR again. YMMV on how useful that is, but I think it would have its uses. Generally speaking, the ability to drop healing bombs doesn’t actually seem to be that much less than Celestial Avatar to my eye, but I will note that I haven’t done any thorough analysis there.

Possibly more interestingly, ToC with Legendary Lore grants Aegis to all of your affected allies as well as the listed effects. In and of itself, this basically makes it a longer-lasting, more flexible Well of Precognition. Unlike mesmers, though, guardians have traits that key of aegis blocks. Throw in Shattered Aegis, and while you may not be doing damage directly, the enemy will have to back out of melee range (good time to drop that projectile reflect!) or stop attacking or they’ll start getting hit by a lot of exploding Aegises. Add in Wrathful Spirit and Pure of Heart, and they’ll also be healing your allies when their attacks bounce off your aegis, and they’ll be copping retaliation for every attack that does get through. The skills might not cause damage directly, but I could see that making a big difference in a teamfight for something you can do once a minute, while also packing other sources of aegis to make use of those traits during the time in between.

And that’s just scraping the surface. I think one of the things I’m most looking forward to with firebrand is figuring out how all these various synergies can work out, both those that make heavy use of the tomes and those for which the tomes are something you pull out for special occasions.

But I have to say that if your suggestion to remove weaponswap was implemented, then that would probably kill my enthusiasm faster and more effectively than anything else I see as being reasonably plausible.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Minus the sash, that’s a fairly common zombie mini-boss in games dealing with undead/zombies.

Reminds me of that one corrupted angel foe in Darksiders II personally, though I’m fairly sure there was a popular zombie game I never played that heavily advertised something like that.

And anguish? Oh, ye doth not know me. I relish in such creepiness and horror. That’s rather tame, TBH.

Made me think of the Abomination in Warcraft 3.

Although I’m sure it’s been done before that…

Zoltreez.6435:

yeah the difference is that Hunter traps are invisible so you cant just move arround them

If you see a known trapper on a point, you pretty much know that the traps are going to be on the point. Some are sneaky and put them somewhere where you’re not expecting them (particularly common on maps like Temple where there are chokepoints on the routes to the point), but the main trick was making it incredibly painful for anyone who steps on the point.

The counter is triggering those traps without suffering the pain.

There’s a reason DHs have a reputation for being pubstompers but weren’t used by ESL players back when ESL was still a thing: top-end players know how to discharge traps harmlessly or otherwise beat a trapper.

A scourge putting three shades on a point with multiproccing and sitting on that point themselves is pretty much going to own that point, at least for the next 20 seconds or so until the shrouds start expiring, particularly with the defensive benefits that the shades can also provide (unless the individual procs are so weak that you need 3-4 hitting at once to be threatening). That’s pretty much enough time to flip a point, or if you’re bunkering, generally enough time for help to arrive. I don’t think – although I might be wrong – that it’s even possible to destroy the shades, which you could do to turret engineers.

It still seems that it would be pretty easy to get at least two procs on a PvP target, especially in a point fight where leaving the point is often effectively losing . Therefore, the PvP balancing would be done on the assumption of getting two procs off, meaning that the procs would likely be roughly half the strength they would have without multiproccing.

(I say ‘roughly’ because ArenaNet might consider that getting two procs is still a little harder than getting one, or they might alternatively consider the possibility of getting more than two procs.)

They also said in GuildChat (not in the same words) that they’d had multiproccing, and they decided they didn’t like the gameplay that promoted. So the experiment has already been done.

Maxzero.4032:

Your whole reasoning is based upon your assumption that multi proccing is automatically OP and therefore must be nerfed.

Wrong.

My reasoning is based on the following assumptions:

Assumption 1: If the effect of each proc is the same, a scourge with multiproccing will be more powerful than one without. (I don’t think there’s any disputing this assumption.)
Assumption 2: ArenaNet is going to aim for the Scourge to be at the same power level overall regardless of whether they have multiproccing or not.
Conclusion: Allowing multiproccing will need to be paid for by the effect of each proc being lower once the balancing reaches the point where ArenaNet is happy with it.

In this line of reasoning, it does not matter if the Scourge is currently god-tier and in need of a nerf, trash-tier and in need of a buff, or anywhere in between. If you’d actually read my previous post, rather than just repeat essentially the same argument (that I can’t prove that it’s overpowered), you would note this:

I included a scenario where the Scourge is currently underpowered and in need of a buff.

In this scenario, in addition to any other changes they might make, they can either buff the base damage or allow multiproccing. If they really need to buff it a lot, they could theoretically do both. However, in the end, all else being equal, once the balancing has reached the point where ArenaNet is happy with it, a Scourge with multiproccing will have weaker individual procs than one without.

Because otherwise, a Scourge with multiprocs would clearly be stronger than one without.

As a balance consideration, therefore, multiprocs do not really matter. ArenaNet will balance the profession towards a point where they’re happy with it regardless of whether there are multiprocs or not. Instead, it’s a question of playstyle. Do they want to promote a playstyle which emphasises attempting to get multiprocs? Or do they want to emphasise a playstyle that emphasises battlefield control by spreading your shades out to influence multiple strategic points?

Based on the Guild Chat, ArenaNet has chosen the latter. Which means multiproccing won’t be a thing, but the individual procs will be tuned such that the full intended effect is achieved on one proc, not two or three or however many ArenaNet thinks are reasonable to assume the player will be able to trigger on a single target at once.

Dhuumfire does not stack from multiple Shades because multi proccing the Manifest Sand Shade attack (which also happens around each shade on pressing the other function skills). If you allowed multiproccing, Dhuumfire would multiproc unless they changed how Dhuumfire worked.

Lifeforce, in my experience with testing, didn’t seem a major hindrance. Different builds and circumstances might change that, of course.

At the bottom line, they will balance it. If multiproccing is possible, then it’s going to be balanced according to the assumption that your primary target is going to be being hit by at least two procs (one from a shade and one from the Scourge), which means the individual procs will be weaker.

So essentially it’s a question of whether you want the playstyle to be around setting up multiprocs, or one of spreading around your area of influence to cover as much as possible without worrying about getting multiprocs because they’re not a thing. Personally, I prefer the latter, and from what they said on GuildChat, that seems to be what ArenaNet think as well.

Regardless, I can guarantee this: If multiproccing is a thing, than the individual procs will be less powerful than if multiproccing is not a thing. It doesn’t matter if the present balance is OP, UP, or just right. If the present balance is OP or just right, then the possibility of multiproccing will naturally make it stronger, pushing it into OP territory, requiring reduction in power to balance it. If the present balance is UP, then allowing multiprocs will be at the cost of not simply making the individual procs stronger. There will be a balance between the strengths of the individual procs and the ability to multiproc. If you can multiproc, the individual procs will be weaker than if you can’t. There’s no free lunch here.

(I would note here, since you seem to be forgetting it, that each proc doesn’t just give Torment. It does a decent amount of direct damage as well for an attack with zero activation and a low recharge. Stacking just two would be like an Unholy Feast you can release with each press of a function key, in addition to the additional benefit of the function key itself, if you have the Unending Corruption trait.)

Yeah, I am inclined to think that when you’re channeling Kalla, you’re not channeling Kalla so much as you’re channeling the Charr rebellion, for whom Kalla is the figurehead.

Similarly, when you’re channeling Ventari, you’re effectively channeling sylvari philosophy as represented by the Tablet, and when you’re channeling Jalis, you’re effectively channeling the spirit of the dwarves as a whole. Kalla, Jalis and Ventari are essentially figureheads.

Even Glint has aspects of essentially being the representative of the aims and ideals of the Forgotten – the facets may be more a reflection of how the Forgotten saw Glint than her actual self. Mallyx is essentially representative of the Realm of Torment. Shiro is the legend which you can most say actually behaves like the figure the legend is named for.

Solori.6025:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Medium takes fewer items because T7 leather is vastly more expensive than T7 cloth and metal.

except if you farm the materials it literally cost nothing, and still continues to be faster.

Why are people even trying to justify blatant imbalance?

Except that the opportunity cost is that if you didn’t use the mats yourself, you could have sold them for a profit.

Just because you farmed the mats yourself doesn’t mean that they’re ‘free’. The price you’re paying for using them is the money you could have got if you’d sold them. Granted, that’s generally less than it would have cost you to buy them (due to TP fees if nothing else), but nevertheless, you are paying a price for using materials you farmed yourself, even if that price is somewhat hidden.

It does flat damage too, Torment stacks intensity not duration, you also get stacking cripple, and that’s before you consider traits such as Dhuumfire and Unyielding Blast. From my experimentation on the weekend, the damage done with the non-stacking hits seemed to be pretty significant given that F2-F4 are instant activation skills with lowish cooldowns.

Not being able to stack hits means that they can balance the individual hits to be fairly strong. Personally, I prefer that to having to stack shades to be strong.

Playing devil’s advocate, I could see crystals as being a kind of ‘alternate take’ on Lyssa’s beauty and illusions. Crystals are, after all, often seen as beautiful, and can have some weird effects on light that can, in the right circumstances, lead to the creation of illusions.

It’s certainly a stretch, but it’s not a ridiculous one.

Jormag being ‘cold life’ as the corrupted form of Dwayna, on the other hand, feels like the kind of “how can I pair up the leftovers?” that typically happens when people try to make those pairings. You might be better off linking the compassion of Dwayna to the mercilessness espoused by Jormag, but that’s more of a complete opposite than a corrupted form.

Heck, you might be better off pairing Mordremoth with Dwayna, and Jormag with Melandru – Mordremoth representing life running rampant, and Jormag representing nature in its harshest aspects (freezing cold and predators red in tooth and claw). However, Episode 5 makes it pretty clear that ice and fire are the cores of the magic of Jormag and Primordus respectively.

At the bottom line, you still need to remember that the gods explicitly come from somewhere outside of Tyria. The most likely scenario is that the gods (or their progenitors) were the equivalents of the Elder Dragons from whichever location they came from.

The Greyhawk.9107:

I don’t know, even your own list shows other legends that seem to be tied to even stronger and arguably more relevant individuals. I just can’t see that this measuring stick that we’re using here actually disregards Turai, but instead supports him.

Only if you count gods and Elder Dragons, really. And if you did, gods and Elder Dragons are so powerful they’d overshadow everything else and all of the legends would be gods and Elder Dragons. (Which would also have implications for most races – charr or norn channeling Mallyx is probably fine, but Abaddon would be a whole different matter.)

So it appears that the distinction is “the most significant impact on the events they took part in, without being a god or an Elder Dragon.”

And in Turai’s case… the individual that had the most impact on the events he took part in was Palawa Joko in Elona, and Glint in the Crystal Desert. His own actions were all part of someone else’s legends.

As Aaron said, while Pyre might have started things off, it was Kalla who finished it off.

In Turai’s case… it’s generally a question of “who really defined the story?”

Going through the various legends:

Jalis, to me, feels like essentially a standin for the Great Dwarf and the events leading to the disappearance of the the dwarfs (an event that had a solid impact on an entire race). One could argue that the Great Destroyer could have been the legend instead, but the two seem to be roughly equal in importance, and since the Great Destroyer was simply Primordus’ general, Jalis is the one we get.

Ventari is probably the most important figure in the founding of the sylvari, with every faction basically being defined by their relationship to the Tablet in one fashion or another. If the Pale Tree had been just another tree, Ventari would be a footnote, but since she turned out to be the mother of the sylvari race, Ventari’s teachings ended up being a defining influence on that race, and that justifies his status as a legend. It’s probably no coincidence that Ventari’s defining feature as a legend is the tablet – one could argue, in fact, that it’s actually the Tablet that is the legend.

Shiro was the defining influence of Cantha of his time… twice. First the Jade Wind, then his second appearance, where all of the heroes that made their names in Cantha at that time did so in relation to their opposition to Shiro. Even after his second death, Shiro’s actions had ramifications that lead to the creation of the Ministry of Purity and which, therefore, appears to have lead to Cantha as it was last we heard of it.

Mallyx probably is the weakest. I generally tend to think of him as being a case of an outright god being too much for a legend, and therefore we get Mallyx essentially as the representative of Abaddon.

Glint… well, I could probably write a whole article on her, and that’s just what we know about. Survival of the elder races, Flameseeker Prophecies, the ongoing legacy… yeah, she’s earned it.

Kalla is essentially representative of the charr revolution, which has been one of the major influences on charr society to the present.

Turai, though…

I’d say the main influence of his time was Palawa Joko. If it wasn’t for Palawa Joko, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t even know Turai’s name. Now, if Turai had managed to defeat Palawa Joko and succeed in achieving Ascension for the people who followed him, then that might have got him past the line. But in the end… Turai’s defeat of Joko merely delayed Joko’s conquest of Elona, making Joko the more significant figure there: Turai brought a few centuries of reprieve, but ultimately Joko became the dominant influence on Elona. His actions in the desert, in the meantime, mostly had an impact through their influence on the Flameseeker Prophecies – which means that in that respect he’s overshadowed by Glint, who formulated and possibly puppetmastered the Flameseeker Prophecies. All of his actions are defined by their impact on what somebody else was doing – and hence it’s those someone elses that were the defining impacts of their time and, hence, qualify for revenant legend status.

Maxzero.4032:

The thing is you can’t keep 3 Shades up perma. You blow your three Shades then you have nothing for 15 seconds. Its all burst and no sustain.

Zoltreez.6435:

so what ??? kill the necro then cap the kitten point….

The same, mutatis mutandis, could be said about dragonhunter trap stacks, and we saw how popular having that in a point cap game was…

Regarding PvE…

If we’re talking about a raid situation, it’s probably pretty much guaranteed that Alacrity is in the picture, so maintaining 2 shades should be fairly achievable, which means three strikes (including the scourge themselves) per activation, along with good party support. ArenaNet have shown themselves to be pretty sensitive regarding raid balance, so they’re probably not going to allow that without it having some ramifications on the numbers.

As another consideration:

It’s possible that Turai just didn’t have enough of an impact to become a revenant legend.

Consider: Turai’s achievements were basically limited to dealing Palawa Joko a setback (which turned out to be temporary) and failing to achieve Ascension. He didn’t even reach the Hall of Heroes on his own bat – he needed the help of the Prophecies heroes for that.

He’s had enough of an impact to be present as a Mist Champion, but let’s face it, the other Mist Champions are all second-fiddles who became famous because they were part of someone else’s legend. Tybalt rides on the coatstrings of the Whispers Pact Commander. Nika helped the Factions heroes defeat Shiro, but both her and Vizu are part of Shiro’s legend. Grymm Svaard was Cobiah Marriner’s henchman.

In Turai’s case, the legend is probably Palawa Joko. Turai is part of Joko’s legend, and maybe Glint’s, rather than being a legend in his own right.

Maxzero.4032:

draxynnic.3719:

If they allowed multiple shades to pulse on a single target, they’d have to balance on the assumption that people would be trying to stack the shades so as to get multiple triggers on their primary target, so they’d have to make the individual triggers sufficiently weak that getting three or four triggers on a single target on one skill use does not become OP.

Which would essentially make them so weak that you have to stack them to be worthwhile. They have to forbid it or it will become mandatory.

Not allowing shades to stack their effect on a single target means that they can make each strike powerful on its own, rather than balancing on the assumption that important targets will be being hit two, three, or even four times.

Isn’t it a test of skill to see if you can catch a target in multiple small AoEs? One Shade = decent, Triple Shade = dead. Poor positioning should be punished against a area control class.

Why would you need to nerf the procs at all? Does 100 blades need to be nerfed because you can get a full channel on some targets?

Why shouldn’t someone get blown up if the Scourge blows all their CDs and the target stands there and does nothing?

Add to that its a great way to balance PvE and PvP. Only NPCs and bad players get caught in multiple Shades.

Most capture points, Foefire middle excepted, are small enough that you could put down three shades that overlap the majority of the point while leaving very little of the point, if any at all, outside the area of effect of at least one, and don’t forget that the Scourge themselves count as a shade. If it was possible to hit a single target with multiple shades, then all the Scourge needs to do is be on the point themselves and anyone who contests the point will be being hit by at least two, and quite likely four, blasts.

At anything even close to the power of this weekend, that’s not ‘skill’. That’s ‘I own this point now, anyone who tries to say otherwise will die as I faceroll F2-F4’. It’d make the old turret engineers and full trap dragonhunters look like easily countered amateurs at point control.

And that’s just considering PvP, where your opponents can be reasonably expected to try to avoid being hit by multiple shades if they can reasonably avoid it. There are raid bosses that are stationary, or close to it…

Anyway, to go back to the original topic of the thread, the big shade trait is balanced according to how the shades actually behave, rather than how you’d like them to behave. If ArenaNet was to change them to be able to stack damage, they’d probably have to adjust how the big shade works to compensate. But I’d be willing to bet that if they made them stack damage, than the effect of each individual strike would be nerfed by at least 50%.

Sonork.2916:

Maybe cause people were using them? So they fixed that.

Sword dmg is pathetic now, dunno if it’s worth it to even use anymore. So i guess Spirit weapons are back to exactly where they were before.

I had been thinking it seemed a bit weak today compared to last week. Ah, well, back to what I was using before.

Justine.6351:

jcbroe.4329:

Justine.6351:

Wondrouswall.7169:

Kind of surprised no one else caught the other tid-bit Irenio mentioned in the Guild Chat stream about why Anet won’t allow Ranger to have control over all of the pet skills by default: “Because it would be way too powerful.”

lolwhat? He said that?
Firebrand…

Firebrand is balanced by the fact that Guardian players can’t stop crying about their staff 1 long enough to learn how to push more buttons.

The irony is I made a post in the guardian forums about how to lootstick with Firebrand and they couldn’t understand what I was saying.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Chapter-1-Searing-Spell-lootstick/first#post6705157

You could even run it full dire/trailblazer and all they can think about is how staff 1 is now 300 range lol.

checks out linked thread

Wow.

I mean, I’m pretty ticked off at the staff 1 nerf myself, but it’s… really not relevant to what you were pointing out in that thread.

The build you’re talking about is one I experimented with myself. It works quite well, as long as your opponents grant experience. Overall, in fact, I think a firebrand with that build, a scepter ranged weapon, and a melee weapon of the player’s choice will be superior to most existing builds with a staff. If for no other reason than that you can get a good flamethrower-type weapon and good support options while still having a real long-range weapon and a melee weapon.

Still ticked off at the nerf, though. Even if 600 was too good, nerfing it to 300 was an overnerf.