Guild Wars 2

flow.6043:

thaooo.5320:

PvE doesn’t need to be discussed in a class sub-forum.

what??

Andele.1306:

Actually no… flashing ds is terrible…

You’re assuming that DS flashing means double tapping to gain boons. That’s just not true.
3/5 skills have a shorter casting time than 1 sec. If I wanted to use one of these skills, and just that one, before I switch back to my regular weapon/utility bar then a 1 sec cd for exiting DS would be a horrible nerf, especially in PvP.
Another example would be preventing the utility skill lock out. If you go into Shroud to mitigate some damage, but you realize that you’re about to take more damage than you have lf left, then it’s probably better to manually exit. If there was a 1sec cd you could be locking yourself out of your utility bar for up to 2 seconds.

a) Look up stance flashing and stance dancing, if you use a non instant in any kind of form swap it kinda no longer fits into it.
b) I never said that putting global cd on transform swap is a good thing, im just saying that popping ds for nothing but boofs n proc is bad (even on a condi build you kinda spend 2 seconds min in it, 4 if you got earth sigil on your weapon).

Star.8401:

All I hear is a bunch of whining and complaining. That’s all I ever hear on any of the profession forums. Necro’s have their own strengths and weaknesses just like every other profession. If you can’t deal with their weaknesses by playing to their strengths then go roll something easier.
Another thing;
Who ever said that a Necro is only a “vampire” like being?? Tired of people complaining about what a necro should be, instead of enjoying what it is in GW2. You can be a Necromancer who enjoys summoning the dead, or one that enjoys plagues and DoTs in the form of conditions, and even for you vampire fans you can play a build that siphons health. Stop complaining and ranting about what your view of a necromancer should be in GW2. There are multiple ways to play a Necro, with their own strengths and weaknesses; some playstyles have a higher skillcap to master, and if you can’t figure it out look for help, ask around, or roll a different character. So tired of seeing multiple threads on all the profession forums that only rant and complain; want your experience to get better? Better it yourself by learning and investing time, not everything is going to be given to you easily.

What necro was in GW1: Punishing enemy movement, a massive true damage vampire and aoe master that beefs his allies and the kinda always dominant in corpse filled areas either a armada of death or a crazy suicide bomber factory
WITH the following weaknesses: their own skills hurt them 9/10 times, their mana costs were stupidly high/rely on killing kitten/doing massive damage to survive and had kinds stupid cast times with obvious animations.

Necro GW2 presentation/what it was advertised: A mighty glacier that
wears down enemies with damage over time or cc and manipulates conditions all while thriving in the midst of combat WITH the mighty weakness of low mobility and having to survive via resource management, NOT as a condi burst kitten with by now nerfed or bugged transfers that is like a fly vs newspaper in any cc situation.

Actually no… flashing ds is terrible… you lose power, the only gap closer we have and 2 forms of cc for 10 (7) seconds for boons that are a basic thing on other professions.

ManCaptain.3154:

TheDevice.2751:

1. No stability: Other classes enjoy the freedom and option of having stability.

This one is not entirely true. Engineers have even worse access to stability.
Toolbelt skill for a bad turret utility that stunbreaks and gives 1 sec stability (like the necro well) with the added penalty that this toolbelt skills is not available while the turret is in use. Then theres throw elixir B, which gives AoE 4 sec stability which would be OK if it weren’t for the fact that the skill has a cast time and its not stunbreaker, therefore it’s useless for reacting to stunlocks.

Mesmers have marginally better one, but far from stellar (mantra with 2 uses of 2 sec stability), which is much better than necro but still not that good.

Warriors on the other hand have 6 stunbreakers in utility skills, mostly on very viable skills. Dolyak signet and balanced stance, 2 stunbreakers with 8 sec stability. Balanced stance can be extended to 10 sec with a trait and another trait triggers balanced stance on CC. So with just those traits and 1 utility slot, warrior can have 2 stunbreakers and 20 sec of stability (before any boon duration bonus), every 40 sec.
Warriors are crazy OP.

Wait… did you just say that the profession with 2 blocks, a aoe reflect a reflect wall, 7 seconds of stability (count the invul from elixir too) and 12s of stealth (that is min basic setup, more blasts being more stealth) CAN BE EVEN COMPARED to 3s of stability… aaaaaand nothing else?

Carighan.6758:

As for the Necro thing above, I feel like Necros are useful in PvE, just that PvE itself never challenges the part where Necros are good at (Boon/Condition control).

I think that someone doesnt know the sheer amount of bugs that plague that part of a necros kit… 2 builds that are viable are power chill fractal setups and scav carrion vampire for husks (yay for true damage).
As for pvp god noone wanted dhuumfire, believe me, look the forums for the date, the frontpage was going from “omg we got a nubstomper trait why?” to “kitten it im quitting necro a-net have no idea how to balance this profession”.

Carighan.6758:

Though my Necro is only 72 for now, this really annoys me. Partially because of the new heals, this was the most interesting one. Especially due to the “cushion a little bit of each blow”-passive.

But the ICDs completely ruin it.
What I’d change:

• Remove ICD from the passive. If someone attacks you fast&weak, yes, the signet will be good. Skills should be specialized, this would excel against fast attackers.
• Remove ICD from the active. The active is difficult enough to discharge as it is, don’t need the ICD to make it even more problematic.
• Change the active to not be siphon but just a heal. As in, remove the damage component. Then re-enable it on structures again.

1 would be just meh, 2 would be ok but still meh since in a teamfight its down oretty much instantly also icd is player based (finally they learn a bit), 3 would make it utterly worthless.
Vamp just needs its passive to be siphoning on hit without icd (aka permaretal) and active scale in terms of stacks and damage with allies around you (it could thus have use in zergs trough tons of stacks and little siphons, in small fights current version and solo 5 stacks that are about 30% stronger).

TLDR Warriors getting invuls and high mobility kittened up the line of low passive defense vs high active power. BUT, in actual active value the less effective hp a profession has, the more powerful utilities and combos get… All that this tells me is that both warriors and necros got kittened in the kitten by a-net in one way (pleasure for warrior) or another (why did you stick that spiked kitten in there for necro).
Covering the one weakness a profession was supposed to have (sustain for warrior, the all in bursty beef dude) or giving them something noone wanted (burst to necro the condition manipulation i wear you down till you beg me to stop spaking you and just cut your head off) and is stupid to add are the problems, not stats since that difference is more than made up by sheer power of utilities.

Guys… maybe a bug, they said way way ago i think that they are toning down the impact of aoe condis… im pretty sure that this has been in for quite a while.

TheDevice.2751:

I don’t really disagree with most of you. I do like playing the underdog class myself. I actually don’t play my warrior like I used to. I still, and probably always will, play my necro as my main.

The thing that truly bothers my is the lack of skill cap. If a necro is so tough to play, if we do indeed have so many barriers and mistakes cost us more, then there should be a higher skill cap. A really good necro who makes very little mistakes and knows their class up and down should have the margin of being able to out-play any class who’s skill cap is mediocre.

It just seems that half the time you’re good just to be on par with players who’s class does half if not most the work for them.

Actually we do have a ridiculous skillcap, but its not in twitch reflexes like on a ele or combo rotation like engi, its sadly defensive resource management (to which every SC brood war fan will scream yay like i did when necro DS was revamped from downed to teleport to current version) which doesnt give much flashy oh you dead now son plays. We are the Frost DK in comparison to the cc immune en mass plague Unholy or the omg he just healed for 99% of his hp Blood spec, our cheer goes, oh he got a free Howling Blast and oh he managed to avoid that 1/40 cc going at him, yay.

spoj.9672:

No thanks. I dont want to be forced out of my playstyle because you cant control your twitchy fingers.

Not to go against the ds dancing playstyle, but thats really a bad way of using DS…

Also for topic nahh, sometimes when you only got like 10% lf you need that fear or tshackle and dont want to get locked out of your utilities you just do F1(or whichever button your kebound it like your mouse 4), 4 (or again whichever button you got it keybound like 5 for shackles and 3 for doom) and F1 again rapidly.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Andele.1306:

Because youd need to nerf engie, mesmer, ele, thief utilities and traits… not just warriors.

well, if they get put into the right tier…

Stuff like protection times cut to 33%, no stats on conjure weapons, confusion duration cut by 25%, stealth dropping on skill click not on damage delt and kits getting cooldowns. Guard aegis uptime would probably also need to be set up more like a selective blind… Necros losing hp would also nerf DS even more, but increased armor would also make minions even more annoying.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Why not Make it so that everyone starts with the same health and same armor, same power and everything else.

Then everyone gets a certain amount of stat points to spend based on the Tier they are in.

This way they could put them into Vitality, Toughness, Power, Precision, Healing Power, Condition Damage.

Because youd need to nerf engie, mesmer, ele, thief utilities and traits… not just warriors.

Brighteluden.2974:

Don’t get me wrong I want changes as much as the next necro but people seem to complain a tad to much at times. I mean let’s be real here in 1v1’s and even group scenario’s a necro running a dhuumfire condi terror build with epidemic is no joke. I mean heck if we were so bad off we’d be losing every 1v1 encounter which is not the case. I feel we are rather lackluster in PvE content though that’s for sure and could some better way of surviving focus fire than having to rely on DS for all our mitigation purposes.

Noone wanted dhuumfire, its the evil stepchild that has a doomcannon while you just wanna be major of a little safe town that some giant monster might attack once a year.

1: #returnshade
2: Life force building is ok, promotes skillful play, cooldowns tied to stuff in deathshroud on the other hand aint, a-net chose one: cooldown based power with infinite usage option or no cooldown on resource based usage options.
3: Fine, again promotes skillful play and should be core of necro mindset like in GW1, you fight to win or die, no cover, no sissies.
4: Kinda, if you want it easy play guard or warrior.

Yerffejy.6538:

If you have BM specced you will hit things that should never have been hit, ever.

Arah story. The first airship you get on has a spot that will take damage from locusts.

Dredge fractal, the grating at the 2 buttons will put you in combat.

I could go on and on. And I frankly think it is more of a problem with the BM traits, but that could possibly explain how you get put in combat when you supposedly didn’t hit anything….

Also you can destroy bombs on Marionette, hurt the invul jade maw, hit invul wurm and do real damage to husks… thats kinda what life leech is supposed to do if you look at GW1, nothing except true invul was actually immune to it (same for shadow damage, something that necro was also very adapt at).

Dalanor.5387:

Andele.1306:

Dalanor.5387:

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

You mean like Fierce Blow, Tranq Dart and Stoning.

We have way more skills to apply Weakness while throwing other conditions on our enemy. Warriors have limited access to it (which is more than enough to slam your enemy with a hammer), ele and engi camping earth / E-gun well .. ehm .. maybe not the best idea to do.

Warriors need only 50% cond dur to have easy 100% uptime via blow and hammer is kinda a thing you use against necro, Both ele and Engie if they sit in said “weapon set” for more than 3 shots are wasting their time since by the time projectile 2 hits not even half of the first projectiles weakness passed without any cond dur… so on full coni builds they all have built in weapon permaweakness, no need for GM trait for it (no need on necro too just saying that we got it more split up and the GM makes no sense).

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Also, last time I checked, if you are in Death Shroud and fall down at the Harpy or Cliffside fractal, you are instantly killed. Not downed, killed.

Death Shroud has a tendency to do the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.

I see that thou did not use fractals a lot previous to the DS change, its kinda a coding side effect, since previously ds counted as life first then as a buff, thus if you took lethal fall damage and then got the buff removed, it returned you to the original hp (as in to 50% hp since thats what downed start at) upon falling off a teleport pit, now it counts as a buff first and hp second thus any unmitigable damage that takes 100% of it instakills you. I honestly dont know if they did this to spite us for being able to void jump without having to buy revive orbs or plain stupidity and lazy coding (since you never assume plain malice if sufficiently advanced stupidity can be just as valid), but its been hell of annoying to have to slot in Swalk each time i jump in the frost/svanir fractal and just dying in harpy and blue man because of muscle memory to press F1.

Dalanor.5387:

As someone else brought it up, it meant to be help to maintain weakness, not to do the job alone, which makes sense.

You mean like Fierce Blow, Tranq Dart and Stoning.

Edit: scratch what i said, its still 1270+25 base half model hitbox, with life blast being 1200 from middle model.
Also something very nice i didnt bother checking, Ngrasp actually shoots a bit above the base axis, adding free elevation range if you aint on even ground (you get to not lose range by shooting from a lower elevation).

TLDR 75~ more range on grasp than blast, 25 more on unyielding blast than normal, didnt look up plague blast (UW LB).
I really need to check this kitten more than once every 3 months.

Mindx.9610:

Hey,

I was trying to recreate something I saw myself do in pvp with life blast where I shot dark path queued up a life blast ->teleported then did another life blast, the queued up LB flew over my head and hit my target at the same time as my next life blast.

During the testing I noticed something strange with staff auto range, it seems to have more than 1200yd range or life blast has less than 1200yd I’m not to sure whats going on here but here’s a video.

I do the lifeblast thing at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-rb19RuEZo

Actually they fixed staff sadly and it went from 1470 to 1200 range, while life blast has a 1150 or 1250 if traited with unyielding (since the kitten actually starts inside your hitbox instead at the edge like most projectiles and unlike underwater one), very small difference.

Nutshel.7264:

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Except the fact that eles have 16k burst rotations with 5/8 skills/traits used being auto targeted that can be done in less time than a full triple chop to evisce combo… not that warrior damage and invuls (or cc and regen) doesnt need to be nerfed (it does, or be given to the necro), its just you really got the tools to make up for the effective hp deficit.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Very easy to see?

Do feel free to elaborate, because all google has ever given me is a wall of Arah walkthroughs.

Norse, Aztec, Goth (the old germaic ones not the scantily clad ones) and Gaul mythology, please, look em up for dragons, snakes and undead. You might also learn how pretty much 99% of skyrims dragons and enemies got created.

Guys… all of the dragons are named after founding civilization and old american myths, very easy to see via google.
Orrians like Khilbron, Zoran and his son (Reza i think) are all low balkan to arabian names…

For a valentines day card: You might balance for everyone, but this one reapers marked my heart~

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Dalanor.5387:

@Mad Queen
Now im running around, using this well build thingy (not exactly the same as yours) and the amount of sustain it has is really impressive, BUT the damage is so low that it scares me. I’ve seen you in the latest Mari fight and the build proved itself but .. i don’t know .. Maybe i will give it a shot next time.

It’s a work in progress. Perhaps some of the defensive sides of it can be toned down a little, and some of the damage upped. But that’s a case of fine tuning. My initial goal was simply to make a perfect tanking build, that would be able to face tank some of the toughest opponents in PVE, while keeping the rest of the team up. So far it seems to be making quite a big difference. It seems to keep my guildies up during dungeon runs, and during the Marionette event I can take quite a punch.

Maybe something like: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjQaV6haeaM8JgpHdPu4QKyF3IFFPMA-jQCBofCiEIRkKAI1sIaslgCRVRasKbYqXCpaYRWKAYWWB-e – btw 24~ crit chance because: Spotter is 6%, Banner is 8%, Fury is 20%, Lich is 43% to a total of 101% crit chance. kinda nice to double your damage in such a way.
Runes, food and sigils obviously optional (i run the 3/3 lyssa mad king split on my default/fractal setup), energy is obviously a prime candidate, but after some time on most encounters (aka everything but liadri and her bugs) they werent really needed, so hydromancy (yay more chill and some damage) were a good cheap efficient alternative. For weapons you swap for whatever needed (D/WH being more of a DS build one, Axe/Dagger for team setup, and focus + anything for speedclears and dredge fractal). Difference between vamp on crit and transfuse aint high if you get used to how to use life transfer (as in near the end of DS), but sure does help more if you are gonna be in a sticky situation and team is fine with just WoB.
Also little note, the non focused rituals WoP works a bit better as a team cleanse for big bosses for some reason since it lingers 1 tick longer and some on heal traits doing tick off correctly with focused WoB.

Sartori.6758:

Andele.1306:

Sartori.6758:

Effective Power = (Power + (10 * Bloodlust) + (35 * Might)) * (Dmg Multipliers) * ((1 * .Non-Crit Chance) + ((1.5 + .Crit Damage) * .Crit Chance))

I must add, thats not actually how crits work with skills, but a good numerical representation of your damage potential.

That’s what it’s supposed to be, a number you can use to compare damage on gear/stats assuming you’re using the same weapon. I guess to further clarify, if OP wants to find out crit/non-crit damage for a particular skill then use these formulas:

Non-Crit Damage = (Weapon Dmg) * (Power) * (Dmg Multipliers) * Skill Coefficient/ Target Armor

Critical Damage = (Weapon Dmg) * (Power) * (Dmg Multipliers) * Skill Coefficient * (1.5 + Crit Damage) / Target Armor

Skill coefficients can be found on the gw2 wiki.

We are right now talking about this: I say saying pi is 3 isnt correct for practical use, you say pi as 3 can still be used, result, the zerker flies into jupiter instead of landing on the moon.

Easy fix: Make toughness actually matter as a stat more than the base armor does and remove defensive options the higher you go with base hp, thus warriors wouldnt have en mass blocks/invuls, i dont think that necros would get changed because there is nothing to remove… , guards, eles and thieves stay the same with their blocks, invuls and evades, and engie, ranger and mesmer maybe get a tad touched in their passive defense.

BTW ele and thief, are the top pve burst and dps respectively, while guards have the highest survivablity… so on that point it is kinda balanced

Konig Des Todes.2086:

perilisk.1874:

True. But they do go insane. And it changes them, not just mentally, but physically. They’re very mind over matter.

Uh… no. They die from corruption. They don’t go insane. You’re thinking of the one sylvari who was tortured by an Eye of Zhaitan – one who recovers, something impossible from corruption.

Right, because its not like we had 2 champions freed of corruption, one kinda sadly on his deathbed and other being a giant kittening crystal dragon.

Chesire.9043:

Thanks Andele.

Only thing is, I’m not using the traditional well bombing build(s) with power so no VR; it’s more like I’m using one of those “viable but likely less efficient for WvW” builds. It still has AE but is more single target focused. So on paper Signet of Spite seems like the 180 passive power would help with “bursting” or overall damage, but I’ve also tried BiP which I didn’t see any noticeable difference either.

After thinking about it like this, WoP just for some condi cleansing seems more useful and versatile. I just hate giving up free damage. You know? Guess I’m just a sucker for big numbers.

I’ll post a build link once I get a little more time to play with it so the concept is clearer. Just trying to avoid the trolls until I get a feel for everything.

Bip is actually more the bursty skill for power while spite is for condi (350 bonus power and cond damage for 12 seconds that works in DS and applies fodder for consume condition vs 180 that doesnt and is there all the time as long as you dont wanna make a enemy waste their cleanse on kinda meh condis if on a power build).
But truly its falls down to playstyle, pick what you are more comfy with and will play better, no necro skill (except kinda sorta lich) has much of a notable dps impact, unlike stuff like time warp and fiery greatsword.

Bhawb.7408:

RashanDale.3609:

51% think that Full of life is Alright or Great
51% think that Mark of Evasion is Alright or Great
36% think Blood to Power is Alright or Great

O_o

Full of Life gives you 5s of regen (base) for 650 healing (base), in a tree that supports healing. That’s alright, in my build it easily heals for over 1.7k, which is decent for 5 points, and it’ll proc multiple times because of the other healing.

MoE is the exact same thing, 1.7k healing, only this time its now AoE (minions as well), and it will put down some helpful cover conditions with bleeds (which deal 850 damage with no CD investment).

Not great, but those are alright traits.

Luke.4562:

What I’m surprised to see it’s the result on Fetid Consumption.
Nobody made a research to discover the tooltip is uncorrect, that the Minion draws condition from nearby allies.. It’s not a bad trait but it’s NOT THAT good.

Any trait that can remove 6 conditions per 10 seconds is amazing. This is one of the very few times where Necromancers have a trait that is very similar to others (Empathic Bond), but is strictly better.

Actually its one of those, its amazing in the 3 situations in pve/wvwvw where you can even use it or overall in pvp, but bloody worthless everywhere else for other reasons that cripple its potential… Kinda like dhuumfire but thank god that its too passive and not on the enemy death screen or pvp would have caused something like putrid mark or plague signet nerfs, oh wait…

Visteri.3821:

Serval.6458:

Visteri.3821:

Fronis and his mate

Fronis is female, and so was her mate (before she was killed by flame legion.)

Good to know. I used the wiki for this and they didn’t have a picture of her.

Okay, I’ve added Mad King Thorn’s remaining 6 wives and also 3 more same-sex relationships I found out about through Google. That still leaves us at 6% of non-sylvari relationships, still nowhere near a disproportionate amount, none of which you have to hear about in game. If it offends you to your very soul, you can always run away when Marjory and Kasmeer talk about dating and it won’t affect the plot at all. It’s harder to run away from a cutscene, which I why I labeled those relationships “1.”

Meanwhile, the people who enjoy feeling like they’re finally no longer being treated as completely nonexistent in their entertainment media will continue doing that.

You know, this just points out that tyria is actually more homophobic than the real world (where across almost all animal species around 15% are openly bisexual to homosexual), which is really weird since no gods or laws seem to exist about that… except maybe in the eternal alchemy because of kinda obvious reproductive limits, would turn it taboo. Ofc without counting sylvari since … well plants.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Sidenote: I’ve seen it now on multiple threads, and I’m not really sure if people are trolling or just dense, but Rox is female. It isn’t a “bromance”.

And when I say, “I love you, Rox,”,
It’s not what it implies.
It’s bro love
Between…
Two…
Guildies.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Yamedo.2561:

Also it’s funny but it feels like every kitten party I’m in requires a freakin wellomancer to survive, if I don’t throw out my wells, everyone seems to drop fast, regardless of class or level of skill. AND.. If I EVER die.. people start dropping on boss fights, like I’m their shelter or something idefk..

Oddly enough, this is my experience as well. We might be running similar builds. Due to the mix of high toughness and constant up time of protection, my necromancer lasts very long when face tanking bosses, or overwhelming mobs of enemies. And the damage is decent as well, due to high power. And it seems to improve the survivability of groups as well. It really does feel that whenever I join a group with my well-o-mancer, survivability of the group simply doubles. And I’m often the last person standing, as was recently the case during the Marionette event.

Funny, same things happen in TTS when mari has more than half pugs and on wurm setups~

Chesire.9043:

Thanks for the inputs. I suppose the old “go to the Mist and wail on some golems” method is the best option. Probably should have just done that instead of wasting forum space xD

Anyway, thanks guys. Odds are, I’ll just play it safe and sac the damage and go with WoP; Condi removal and a third stun break (although redundant) seems more versatile than the power gain while out of DS.

If you really wanna go into the math, no SoS is not worth it in a DS/Power build, over a 5 minute fight you get 18-22% of vampiric rituals value from it (since they still do damage and try to heal you), so not having it at all compared to a relatively bad/medicore trait in said build would probably be better (13000 vs 2600~).
That ofc is if you drop said wells on zerg (which should be the default status of wells in wvwvw), not solo.

Sartori.6758:

Effective Power = (Power + (10 * Bloodlust) + (35 * Might)) * (Dmg Multipliers) * ((1 * .Non-Crit Chance) + ((1.5 + .Crit Damage) * .Crit Chance))

I must add, thats not actually how crits work with skills, but a good numerical representation of your damage potential.

Wanderer.3248:

Andele.1306:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Intelligence != Free Will.

That actually happens to be the definition of it and the reason why we can create AI that learns and adapts… not to humanoid levels but kinda housecat like at least.

Programs can be made to appear to be very intelligent, even to hold what appear to be meaningful conversations, without exhibiting any actual understanding of what they are saying, let alone having any choice in what they say, or even any actual awareness that they are saying it.

Computer programs can, and do, insult people, but they are just following their programming. I would imagine that dragon minions are probably similar. They can be highly intelligent, and still be constrained to their programming.

The nightmare court, if anything, seem to be the opposite. They are all about free will, so much so that they embrace insanity as a form of freedom.

Any set of ai (not just a executable on a pc) can be set to do a lot of stuff.
But they can also be programmed to learn and decide for themselves, like forced trough the first step of evolution from fish to amphibians (youtube robot learns to walk), they can even be forced into decision making and depending on surrounding input give different results you can even program basic instincts (aka crippled unrefined social emotional responses) based on the insect nervous “system” and if equipped with proper sensors and a pattern recognition script you get stuff like “chirps” of “joy” when the robot is powered up and illogical aggression (aka fear) when parts of it are powered off. Kinda google all that stuff if you want videos or interviews.

Also these imitations of human intellect, programmed switch trigger responses and such are actually still leagues above most animals on earth in terms of “brain” capacity.
And whats even more important, who says where imitation of free will isnt free will. There is this little thing in philosophy (and nowdays in media) called becoming the mask.

Druss.6917:

And if you spend skill points on signet of vampirism I’m going to reach through your screen and choke you out
…. Seriously though…Don’t do it O_O

Already did since it used to be useful for tequatl and wurm…

Luke.4562:

@RashanDale:

Just consider the sum between positive and negative attributes.
The fact that 36% of people who answered the poll thought it was Alright or Great testify that they didn’t think and know enough before answering.

What I’m surprised to see it’s the result on Fetid Consumption.
Nobody made a research to discover the tooltip is uncorrect, that the Minion draws condition from nearby allies.. It’s not a bad trait but it’s NOT THAT good.

The real problem is anyway nobody seems to care that much about discussing and updating their knowledge about the general tree… So we see those results regarding Full of Life & Co… Anyway… I don’t blame them, this should be ANET’s work..

Its actually very nice since the update of it working with Jhorrors since they are at least of some use then (unless you got DN in which case they are truly designed to eat a condi and die).

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This said, however, it is possible for Primordus to corrupt a living being. He, for some unknown reason doesn’t “prefer” (for lack of a better word) to, and we haven’t seen such a creature except possibly the Volcanic Fractal with the grawl shaman, but he can. How this looks when he does this would be the said living corrupted victim being encased in stone and the body slowly liquifying.

This is one of the things that still confuses me. Is the transformation of the grawl shaman a corruption by Primordus? He literally becomes a being of pure fire. This could be just the result of his magical ritual as well of course.

We got charr that did the same with titan magic, probably not primo but just reused model like 60% of fractals was. And important unlike all destroyers it counts as a elemental (since it take 10% more if you got the consumable).

Ceridwen.6703:

I’m going on out on a (tree!) limb here, and whilst I agree with sylvari not being minions, my conclusion isn’t reached through lore (although Konig says absolutely everything that needs to be said lore-wise to debunk the minion theory).

I come to the conclusion whilst thinking of how RL players would react to a player race becoming even more “special”. A lot of us are playing sylvari, but a lot more (random internet calculation) aren’t. Is it worth putting an entire group up in this way? I think it would actually end up causing more trouble and friction than necessary.

Inside the game itself, there’d be an awful lot of work needed to adjust in-game reactions to sylvari everywhere. I’m not convinced the other races would be quite so comfortable with working with sylvari if it turned out they were dragon minions, even if a lot of good work has previously been put in. I’d like to put more words to this than this ( ), but I’ve not had enough sleep or cups of tea to be fully functional yet.

Actually no because they can still be a plant equivalent of risen with PT being taco/shatterer/TGD like. But a very important thing noted, how are the sylvari actually special, Asura are a race of underground dwellers with persona intellect in fields of math, physics and natural sciences far greater than anyone but maybe forgotten and mursaat, 2 races by now probably as rare that you could count the living individuals with your fingers; norn, the native tyrian (as in planets) apex predator which can adapt their body to insane circumstances and call upon animals, both in spirit and body; charr being the planets biggest and thus far most successful military force with pure tech (not magitech) engineering and without any special outside force influencing their primary growths and last but sure as hell not least, humans the aliens which have cosmos shaping forces on their side that they can partially invoke upon and which created most of the existing professions and magic manipulation (in the actual guild wars) and are the basis of 5 (8 if you count canthan ones) massive organizations which guided the current shaping of tyria… also the race whos ancient hero delayed a elder dragon, stopped a armada of undead, plague undead things, titans, charr, demons and half demon monster things and delayed the spread of jorlags (and no thats a joke on the beta claw of jormag event, same as taco for tequatl) influence by killing his first new gen champion and oh right, saved tyria from being turned into a pile of death and ecto by releasing the reapers and re-sealing Dhuum.

Actually no it doesnt.

Thats corruption yes, they aint risen, but they are corrupt by zhaitan, something which sylvari dont get to be, they still get to go insane from him and die if they get wounded.

Corrupting existing construct beings =/= corrupting beings that are a complex mix of elements.

Again you missunderstand the concept of free will, its able to make choices which influence you, it doesnt mean being able to stop breathing but still survive. But ill let glint, eyes of zhaitan, icebrood and every other dragon champ explain that. And no the article just says that they serve him because… well undead would be dead again icebrood would die from frostbite/malnutrition or put into cryosleep and destroyers n branded turn back to their mineral form/into nice statues.

Corrupt living creatures… yes and fossiles, mineralized remains of beings which he uses to make and brood more destroyers are somehow living now and are creatures… right. Also in game action n text speaks more than a thousand words by devs. Or is it that marjory and kas just lied when they said that the frost and flame was under a year time ago, while your nice non-canon says its more than a year ago.
Yes, with English being my third language and unlike for Germany where its a mandatory second language in education and this being the net im supposed to care about grammar why? Its the context and substance of something you say that matters not if you got your , and ’ correct.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Thorn_Wolf
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Storm_Jacaranda
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Uprooted_Malice
And no, you yourself know that doing stuff like helping the pale tree aint in canon for the human story same as helping asura prodigies aint canon for norn.

Kravick.4906:

Andele.1306:

Yes but with the other traits/runes not vigor… same way engie on heals shouldnt work on kit swap but the F1…

Another example. On elite usage runes, the Flesh Golem summon and charge both trigger the effect.

Also, I’m not actually sure what you’re trying to say.

Consistency between skill and trait/rune/proc interaction, they should work on it.

Kravick.4906:

Andele.1306:

Druss.6917:

Andele.1306:

Summoning BF aint a heal so it doesnt proc it, as for targeted wells its a bug.

It procs on a healing skill activation, so yes it should proc on summon blood fiend. Equip any rune set with “on healing” effects, summon blood fiend, and see what happens. Then sacrifice it and see what happens.

Thats the point, summoning blood fiend isnt a healing skill, its a minion summon… healing skills are all under blue filter while others are on 100% rgb.

You’re missing the point. All the other on heal effects work on the summon. But Spiteful Vigor does not. Its an inconsistency that needs to be addressed.

Yes but with the other traits/runes not vigor… same way engie on heals shouldnt work on kit swap but the F1…

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Tanith.5264:

I finally sat down last night and did the two “Dead End” instances and I have to say I was very, very impressed with the presentation. Makes me excited for the next chapter in the story!

I concur. This feels like the first time in GW2 that I actually feel like I’m the main character. And I liked being able to choose my conclusions from the available evidence. It’s a clever way to get all the players up to speed on all the clues, while allowing the player to do some puzzling herself.

It also gave xp and money, which you should get (in a better and nicer way like here) for doing the story and not champ chains in queensdale!

Rampager and rabid dont help sturctures nor on uncrittable bosses, also you lose vitality from scavs, corruption skills got low enough cooldowns for rotations and the bonus scepter duration helps a lot more than hemo, not only for fractals (where you kinda get kittened by mistlocks) but also because you already get to 25 over the time in a boss encounter and you dont need more duration because of team setups in wurm.
Also terror helps a lot where its useful. So no it was actually theorycrafter as the optimal setup.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMat7pbeaM8JEoHuHuAiRPKmgJZoKUOA-jwBB4MCik0AUIRMFqIas1gFRjVJjIqWpETKAYWWB-e – fractal and world boss condi meta setup, it does decent damage to structures and previously with signet mastery, vampirism and spite over BiP/CC combo it did very high direct damage, still good but not as strong.

In tldr version:
Ok.
No its just you shouldnt use parts of dead (or alive) insert x once magical being as weapons cough for example the effects of saladbolg and the jorlag dragon blood sword in wrong hands.
Potato, Potato.
Ok phrasing specifications, animal cells aint the same as plant cells, you may call both parts having a corpse, but they dont work the same (dead plant =/= non functional brain but functional heart/cell core vs membrane and vice versa). Freezing a plant destroys its structure, freezing flesh makes it hard to slice up (for short planty jormag minions would explode in 3 seconds, so no you cant freeze a plant that way), same works with heat, bacteria adapted to stuff like living in vulcanic vents, plants plain turned to coal. Also they are fossiles so no flesh needed.
Also what part of zhaitans influence, the dude who needs a CORPSE, to rise someone as his minions dont you understand… ofc primo can turn embers and jorlag ice and probably kralky the earth elementals because they already use the same type of magic, it all kinda retuns to the point of you not understanding how dragons get their servants.
Tablet aint magic, plant is, plant learns tablet instead of dragon orders, kapish?
No it just says that they are created from rock and lava (or rock and heated rock), now if you look up rock you see minerals, if you look up further you see permineralization (which, while technically different but not fully unrelated to carbon fossilization, is one of the main ways how dead flesh is “conserved” into the future), aka the stuff you get when you put a fossil under the microscope (and yes a nice big chunk of elements that make rock are in em). And dont start on the plant debate you know how carbon works, right?

You arent smart enough, you dont get to have free will, you are you do, also you are a prime example of how words are used in a wrong fashion.

Oakhearts did exist yes so? So did the druids, thorn wolves, husks, by you mentioned snake plants and risen, destroyers icebrood, branded, etc How does existance of something that is now popping up again disprove anything? Also said druid sprit racial, the ability of 2 heart events of syvlari turning into ferns and oakhearts (and no the intro zones are gameplay and story segregation).

Look up grapewine.

No… at least not by any real world standards.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

1) Destroyers are not fossils. They are mimicries made from stone and lava, spawned slowly in pools of lava.
2) The Pale Tree does not make treants (the species of plant that oakhearts are). They predate the Pale Tree, and are completely unrelated by all indications.
3) The Pale Tree also does not create husks. They belong to the Nightmare Court (and an unknown non-NC force behind Wychmire Swamp). There is even an event in Sparkfly Fen that shows the creation of a husk – seemingly out of sylvari. Though what they are exactly is unknown – but still, not made by the Pale Tree.

Destroyers major part fossils and spawns of/from/based on the brood given by lava mixed fossils, confirmation trough skritt plot and tengu possible.

Both parts are solved early on in sylvari zones, the pale tree can and does create both the oakheart like beings (dont care for specific name its the same model they use for all even the clockheart which was cyborged by scarlet, call em all oakhearts because its the staple champ in queensdale) and husks are shown to be directly related to sylvari growth (as even stated by you) so saying they aint related to the pale tree is same as saying that grapevines arent grapes because of how they are created.

All of this is like basic education, please stop before it shows up that you didnt finish kindergarten.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Uh…
1) No, normal races – sylvari included – do not eat magic. They utilize it, they do not sustain themselves on it. Elder Dragons do sustain themselves on magic. And it is stated fact that ALL Elder Dragons consume magic.
2) Yes, they do die from corruption. This was stated in an interview a while back. When they are touched by draconic corruption, they drop dead rather than becoming a dragon minion – this is their “immunity”. It’s not stated in game as such, but it was stated in an interview with Ree Soesbee before release. As for the going mad bit – you’re probably thinking of a single sylvari who was tortured and kept alive for unknown reasons by an Eye of Zhaitan in the personal story – she was not corrupted.
3) Uh… The Pale Tree is a tree, not a sylvari – she was born of a seed. And Ronan/Ventari’s teachings and nurturing was NOT magical – AT ALL. And Glint was freed by the Forgotten’s ancient ritual. No sylvari nor the Pale Tree has been influenced by great magic, let alone the Forgotten’s ancient long-lost-until-after-Zhaitan’s-death ritual to give free will to dragon minions.

No. The definition of free will is the ability to make an independent choice. Intelligence is not “ability to make choice.” Intelligence is “ability to think.”

AI is not capable of free will, because it is forced to follow its core programming. At best, it is given the illusion of free will.

You dont have to consume magic like the mouth of zhaitan to be based on some of its domains/it being part of you… you know how humans can use the blessings of their gods and how icebrood can remove temperature from parts of space to freeze stuff.
Also yes elder dragons eat magic and that doesnt disrupt anything already mentioned… its kinda the entire reason why we managed to prevent primo from waking up because we fed him the magic back that the great destroyer was costing him (since we do know that dragon champions hold part of a elder dragons magic, which like every form of energy cannot be destroyed and returns to its original status).

No, personal story, actually bother to listen to it, sylvari influenced by zhaitan go mad from it/lose their sentience (tortured one was because zhai eye wanted to know the research in the camp at the heart location in the open world), they die by plain mortal wounds. And yes they like for example elementals are immune to zhaitans influence, since they dont leave corpses… and cannot be turned to ice or lava because they are plants… biology 101.
The pale tree is a giant plant yes… as are all sylvari.. you know how a fruit works right? Also nature vs nurture. It takes a computer (a construct of human engineering) a mere second to recognize patters if you correctly imput data, but with a adaptive script and continuous feedback you can create the same pattern recognition over time… so yes the tablet aint magical on a magic of the mists level but on a gene meme level… social patterns and gene memes 101.

And no free will is the amount if intellect required to know how much you depend on others, to know that you exist and what choices you can/cant make, freedom is a different thing, by all accounts risen are slaves of the respective local champion of zhaitan, but the same thing applies to sylvari and the pale tree, difference is that disobeying zhaitan/his champs is impossible because they are physically unable to (you know being dead and kept alive by him) and disobeying the pale tree means that your connection to it is lost (and no the nightmare court are just as obedient to PT as other syvlari are since the nightmare is part of the dream which is the way the tree is connected to sylvari) which seems to have no damaging effect on the sylvari except that they act less naive.
Saying that any minion of a ED doesnt have relatively free will is like saying that a human doesnt have free will because you cant just stop breathing and live on.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Andele.1306:

What if he is plain a sylvari plant demon krait thing body which got fused with a actual krait prophet mind… you know the body fusion thing which happens like 5 times in GW2 and 15+ times in GW1.

Their “prophets” were confirmed to be made up in the blog-post about the krait. Anet wanted to disperse any fears and assumptions about people thinking krait-religion is based on any real-life religions with prophets. (kinda lame that it’s confirmed for outside the game reasons, but yanno the deal with controversial topics)

So it can’t be an ‘actual krait prophet’ because ‘krait prophets’ don’t exist in canon. The krait are worshipping hot air. Their priesthood made them up at some point to control the krait people and over time the priesthood started to believe they were real themselves. Which leads us to the current mess.

Besides if it was a Krait with Sylvari parts, that’d be a modification on an adult.
But we pretty much witness its birth, so it’s not cyborg-ish like the Molten-Alliance bosses. :P

You know that all races can achieve connection to the mists… and krait are kinda the race which perfected natural illusion control/chaos energy manipulation (outside mesmer training)… you know the whole evolution/adaptation part of their biology…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Andele: Body fusion thing? Two creatures have never combined into one in all of the GW franchise. So I’m not sure what you refer to as ‘body fusion’ would imply taking two beings and combining them into one.

Ok wording might be off but still, lets look at the asura personal story… oh look asura got their mind fused into golems! Lets look back a bit, tell me how again did Snaff learn about elder dragons, it couldnt be by placing his mind into that of one of them, or even 250 years before that how did the margonites/lil ossa girl get to their full demon forms, its not like abbadon could have used his influence to transform and bend them to his will, nooo…

What if he is plain a sylvari plant demon krait thing body which got fused with a actual krait prophet mind… you know the body fusion thing which happens like 5 times in GW2 and 15+ times in GW1.