Guild Wars 2

(Sorry I have so much to say!)

Encouraging mismatched Legends and weapons: Currently it feels very punishing and ineffective to use a weapon that doesn’t match a legend. I believe using matching weapons and legends should feel the most effective, but please make mismatched use friendlier!

Ways to improve: I think the best way to address this would be through major traits — aesthetically, it’s the character’s choice on how far they want to mingle with the legends, and how much they want the legends to mingle together. Two examples I could think of (but, of course, not the best) would be altering existing traits to become less weapon-specific.
-The Mallyx line has a minor trait to cause torment on critical hit, which mace/axe already has a decent amount of (though it could use more). If this chance to proc increases from 33% to, say, 66% or 100%, I could really consider using the Mallyx traitline with staff and feel like I’m still staying true to the legend.
-The second example is in Ventari’s traitline — you can trait to have an additional healing shard appear with the exploded tablet. I’d like to see this healing shard, or a weaker version, appear with any completed weapon auto-chain. This would improve the staff’s purpose, and could be very strong with hammer’s singular projectile autoattack. Keep in mind hammer is a ranged weapon, so the revenant wouldn’t be able to benefit so much from it as their melee friend, who could truly appreciate it.

Ventari’s Tablet Overall: Many, many players have brought up how clunky this mechanic is. It’s a lot of management and, in my opinion, surprisingly energy-costly. I appreciate the importance of active play, but I feel that the tablet ought to do some things on its own.

Ways to improve: There’s two things I’d like to see in particular, and the first one is allowing the tablet to pulse a small area-healing effect on its own, akin to Soothing Mist and Battle Presence. There is an area-regeneration trait for it, but I don’t think that’s the same. This relieves some of the stress a Ventari revenant feels on needing to zip it around to and fro. The second thing I’d like to see is allowing the tablet to persist while channeling another legend. I know it was intended that the tablet cease when outside of Ventari, but with the way it exists right now, I’m severely disinclined to ever swap back to Ventari because it means I have to channel the tablet back into existence. Keeping the tablet persistent would allow me to react much faster to situations where I have to, say, explode it for healing, or summon the projectile bubble.

Mallyx in PvE: A fun concept with pulling conditions onto yourself to strengthen your utilities, but falls apart in large-scale groups or simply playing with casual friends — there’s too much area condition cleanse to keep conditions on yourself for any duration. Amusingly, this means the more Mallyx-focused revenants there are in one area, the less effective they all become.

Way to improve: Only solution I can come up with is via traits. Have conditions the revenant gains add a short-duration stacking ‘buff’ (really just a little token-counter) that increases with each unique condition, so Mallyx revenants have at least a small window to trigger skills 6-9’s bonus effects. This still does nothing for the elite skill, but I have no solution for that.

Mace/Axe streamlining: This set is so directionally-focused! All skills trigger in a linear fashion and that makes it important to keep your target in front of you. In melee, when a target circles around it’s much easier and faster for them to exit your effective attacking angles than it is for you to keep up. Additionally, torment doesn’t have its full potential in PvE where monsters will stick right up on you and cease moving as long as mace auto stays melee (whereas skills 2-5 are all somewhat ranged).

Way to improve: Make the mace auto slightly more ranged, so that it matches skills 2-5 at the least. Cleave would be nice to keep, though — perhaps through bouncing? . This will allow the revenant to keep a little more distance and force targets to make more of an effort to escape the revenant’s attacking angles, as well as trigger torment’s full potential as a movement-punishing condition.
On the side, Axe 4 feels like it should be a combo finisher, either projectile or leap. Up to you!

Unyielding Anguish: A decent skill at heart, but the displacement is a headache and works through many things that it shouldn’t. It also doesn’t seem to interrupt anything except the flow of a fight (into mass chaos) and therefore does nothing that it feels like it should.

Ways to improve: I like the area denial effect, I really do. The torment is a fitting condition to put on it, as well. However, its lack of control on where you displace enemies to makes it hard to consider using. Perhaps change the AoE into a wall instead of a well? I am unsure if this was intended to be an interruption skill or a forced-repositioning skill, and this may not be the best way to address it.

(Cutting here, general/Ventari discussion next)

Conceptually, the revenant’s role as being a vessel for the legends they call from the Mists. There’s a neat split between the character’s abilities (weapon skills) and the legend’s abilities (utility skills) and I definitely feel like it’s Ventari who moves the tablet around, not me. He’s the one who grunts when it moves, you’re just the one telling him where to put it. The same goes for Jalis and Mallyx’s utility skills. Like, say, the player’s perfectly fine with using mace/axe to cause conditions, but using Mallyx’s skills specifically places conditions on you and your target.

For me, having fun playing the revenant came from feeling like I needed to have two tracks of mind rolling at the same time between my character and the legend I was using. Multitasking isn’t for everyone, but that’s who the revenant is, conceptually, as several minds in the same vessel.

I think encouraging using weapons not associated with their legend (but matching legend and weapon should be the most effective) via, say, traits and overall boosts to the weapon skills themselves could make this easier to see and much more fun!

(On a tangent, I think it’s also very neat that having both resistance and blindness won’t remove the blindness from you while attacking — as resistance becomes more available to all classes I don’t think that would work so well, but it’s great for a Mallyx-revenant)

Already have Kudzu, I think my guardian can rock it!

Well, I caught Rytlock losing his temper…

Someone say planty backpiece??? YEAH
I didn’t try to dye myself to fit Mawdrey, since I’ve got so much other plant “noise” going on.

Found a couple more in my screenshots! First we’ve got poor Logan Thackeray, the Vigil doesn’t want to be anywhere near those finely-armored legs. Look, they’re all desperately huddling away from him!

Next up is a deer who… seems perfectly content with grazing water. More power to him.

A crafting crier has mastered the art of flight so she can reach more new players to tell them all about making pretty jewelry!

I wear male heavy T1! Though, I’ve noticed that the larger body types don’t play well with it, especially the shoulders, which tend to bulge out past where they were likely meant to end. But I chose a slim and small body for my guardian, and he looks positively Boy Scouty.

It would be absolutely wonderful to have more cultural gear or culturally-themed gear! We’ve only four options for planty armor, and non-sylvari only get one.

I am so sorry that not as many people wear sylvari male heavy T1 as you expected, Diba. Attached below is my guardian and I hope this gives you faith in humanity once again.
(Even he has some issues with the armor – the leggings actually extend past his waist and if you angle the camera down you can see the ground through his pants in the front)

Good news! I’ve been promoted to Beastmaster rank so I can start sending invites! Everybody raise yo hands and rejoice!

[Wind]‘s leaders are currently occupied with outside things, I’m afraid. Sevans unfortunately injured one of his hands at work (it’s not broken, but it is unusable at the moment) and Textilian is out traveling last I heard. No, I’m not a stalker, but I am related to them outside (and sometimes inside) of [Wind]. I would update the guild message to say as such but lack the privileges so here I am. :’) Best regards to [TACR] in the meantime!

There’s too much I love!

• Dye system – The dye system makes it so much easier to coordinate different sets, rather than hunting down for that one particular reskin of an armor piece already in-game with the specific colors you wanted. Thus you can see really varied silhouettes on players since they’re no longer restricted to wearing full sets!
• Very small death penalty – There’s no “You died, lose 20% of your exp and have lowered stats for 10 minutes,” debuff going on, the game just goes “Well, you messed up. Have another go!” All you have to do is fork over a pittance of silver and even that’s going away on April 15.
• TRAIT SYSTEEEEEM – Dear Jesus what a godsend. Not only is it easy to refund traits if I don’t like my current setup, it’s also more reactionary and flexible than searching for that one specific skill that would help me at that very specific moment. There’s so many neat traits that can be chained together, like Warrior’s cripple causes immob and immobing grants fury, which then leads to increased crit/bleed chance. The system really makes me feel that the devs aren’t afraid to give me power.
• Jumping Puzzles – I guess these aren’t for everyone, but I love how hidden-away these tend to be. I already thought the explorable world was huge, but wandering into one of these makes the world feel even bigger.
• The soundtrack – It’s pretty unforgettable! My favorite track is “Knight of Embers,” which plays in Ascalon. It always makes me laugh when I hear the overture theme in one of the other tracks, too.
• Dodging – After playing other games where taking damage is outright unavoidable, this is great. It changes combat from the Awkward Pokemon Battle, where you can tell from the first hit whether you’ll win or lose, to a situation where you stand a chance.
• Dynamic Events – These feel so much more fluid than the usual questline. The humor in GW2 shines through here, too, when accidents happen or the aftermath of the event makes the NPCs say a funny.
• Almost everything is voiced – Sometimes I’ll pass by a conversation starting between two NPCs, and I’ll stop and listen. It’s much more lively than just seeing speech bubbles pop up under an emoting NPC. The asura especially tend to have great acting!
• Short and concise text – Instead of dumping five paragraphs on me about everything ever, the info and lore about places is spread throughout the map on different NPCs who all have just a bit to say about whatever situation they’re in. Makes it a lot more interesting! On a related note, race-specific text or having an “X the un-X-able” Order of Whispers options also makes me happy.
• Asura and charr female models sharing male armor models – I guess this is a mixed opinion? I like to think it emphasizes how these races prioritize and think far differently from the humanoid races. Don’t get me wrong, I’m ok with people wearing what they want! But it definitely puts asura and charr way out of the “short human with big ears” or “human with fur that runs on all fours” category.
• The race choices in general – All the races are original with their own lore, government, history, society, etc. Even the humans are different! Everyone’s so much more than “big human, tree elf, smart gremlin, warriorcats character, default option that everyone else is compared to” and even the non-playable races get the same treatment.

I think I need a breather, this game is too much. Someone hold me.

I don’t think it’s so much of a bug as it is that Sylvari eyes actually take in environment lighting very easily! You were probably facing lava (there is a lot of lava in CoF) or some object that emits red light in the game to cause your eyes to turn red.

Sylvari eyes do glow with the rest of their body at night and will respond as such, but in the day they tend to mix with environment light very easily. I noticed this at Gauntlet Waypoint in Mt. Maelstrom, where the campfire causes my mesmer’s eyes to go from darkish-blue (they’re lilac at night) to a very clear orange.

I have no clue what’s up with your eyes though, Haggy. Hope you find out soon!

You can stack multiple stacks of bleed with the shortbow/sharpening stone/crit/earth sigil, yeah. That’ll get you up to 4 stacks of bleed in one go! I’m not sure what you’re asking about burning since I’m not familiar with the sun spirit passive, but I’d take a guess that it’d add both the bonfire burning and the sun spirit’s burning.

Generally it’s a good idea to use skills and sigils that work together!

I was unlocking CoF with my buddies and got downed on the bridge. The champion effigy knocked me off and all my friends saw me fall to my death.
…Except I didn’t!

Here’s my mesmer Rosadh! I think I’ve beaten the game of dress-up with him, though there’s always the chance I’ll find even cooler clothes.
The backpiece is… a long-term goal. I’ll get there someday!

Man, while I’m at it here’s my guardian too. Ain’t he a cutie?

I’m going with Dustfinger here, the Sylvari can at least shed their planty clothing without difficulty.

“Their bodies create petal-like coverings, vines, and leaves that they shape into pleasing garments. When they wish to remove the garments, they simply shed their petal clothing as a human might cut their hair.”
While the official article no longer exists, it’s preserved on the wiki. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dream_and_Nightmare

So I guess getting clothing caught wouldn’t be a big deal, but some hairstyles have pretty thick veins on the leaves which I can’t imagine would be easy to just pluck off.
In general though getting like an arm leaf caught on something seems like it’d just feel uncomfortable or like a paper cut/scrape? Some Sylvari have bark skin too, it really just depends!

If it’s not too late, you could try the Modniir Quarterstaff? It’s got earthen tones and organic shapes, and a cute pink fire at the tip. I rock it on my ele!
You can find it as a heart karma item from one of the Harathi Hinterlands NPCs, I don’t remember which one. Alternatively, you could be like me and accidentally buy it as the Pillar of Ulgoth for 6 gold before finding out the skin itself is much…. much cheaper…

Race: Human
Sex: Male
Class: Thief
Issue: Armor – Vigil Mask

The medium-armor Vigil Mask clips into my thief’s forehead, which I attempted to remedy with a Total Makeover Kit. It worked, but in order to do so I had to set his brow thickness and eyebrow placement quite low on the scales, which made him look like a bit of a thug if I hid the mask. Now I’m puzzling with another makeover kit to try making him look a bit more affable, but the Vigil Mask doesn’t offer much wiggle room.

Here’s a shot of my eyebrows eating the Mask!

EDIT: This seems to largely be a problem with my thief’s current face, which is the topmost left at creation. Checking other faces, they seem to be fine with any brow changes!

Oh my god, we need the Belcher’s Bluff boasting quotes!
I only remember three of the male lines, those being…
“Did you know that warden gunslingers prefer… dual pistils?”
“Do you ever wonder what happens when we die? We compost.”
“I’d like to get my hands on some Charr weaponry. Put the… petal to the metal, so to speak.”

If you guys know any more, post ’em!

I’m pretty sure I heard my male Mesmer go, “Me? Lose?” when I got defeated, I couldn’t feel bad about dying after that.
Sometimes I get feared too and he’ll say, “Flee, and take shelter!” which is probably one of the most roundabout ways of saying run and hide.

Actually, the Heavy Male T2 armor does glow! Well, only in the chest and legs as far as I know, I’ve never worn the boots/shoulders/helmet and I know the heavy T2 gloves don’t glow.
I can’t tell if it’s a white glow or if the glow is based on your Sylvari’s skin color.
Also, I’m wearing the T1 boots which covers up a lot of the T2 pants glow, but the glow extends all the way down to your feet and you can still kind of see it in the picture. So here’s a front and back!

Heads up, without the shoulderguard the T2 Heavy chest bares his shoulders

EDIT: Oh, lemme put in a non-glow shot for comparison ~~

Some players have mentioned that the Zephyr Sanctum will last for 4 weeks, though I’m not really sure considering the 2-week schedule for the Living Story events. Then again, the next update could be a sequel to this one concerning the Zephyrites, so it’d have to stay for that.

Here’s my Guardian! I’m surprised at how well the Fervid Censer stacks onto the Warden Greatsword’s hilt.
He’s fun-sized and I love his face, I wish I had better shots of it.