Guild Wars 2

hensatri.9104:

So what is unclear? Except that which is deliberately still unclear.

It is nothing to do with clarity. It has to do with the fact that this character is a convenient excuse for filling plot holes. One that sadly missed out on the “villain package deal”. You know, the evil genius mixed with personality and style.
The kind of villain we love to beat, since it gives a sense of satisfaction, progressed the plot and woe is me, it actually is an enjoyable trip.

Right now she isn’t fun to deal with or to read about.
All she is, when summed up, is as follows:

• Unnecessarily powerful.
• Redundantly intelligent.
• Unrealistically persuasive, when it comes to other races and/or factions.
• Evil for the sake of being evil. (but only when it suits the plot)

The official team even had to retcon her power of speshul in regards to her time with the Asura, to try and convince the players that she’s not a Mary Sue. It didn’t convince me. And it didn’t convince a whole lot of other people, either.

Scarlet remains a poor excuse for all that’s happened, so we can only hope they manage to crank up the writing quality a bit the next few weeks, since it’s really getting repetitive and boring.

Don’t agree? Try this:
Sum up all the Living Story bits and paste, “-because Scarlet” behind it. No matter how unrelated, she’s almost always been pasted on top of it. Not because it made sense, not because she could realistically have done it. But because the plot demanded we have a universal villain, and sadly this is the one we got.

Erukk.1408:

A better question would be, if Scarlet wasn’t born with her superior intellect, how would you explain how she is able to do the things she’s able too?

Even born with her superior intellect she does far too much all on her own.
It is a tad unrealistic to say that one Sylvari – the newest race on Tyria – can barge in and, whilst looking as out of place as she does, can convince everyone – including arrogant Asura – of just about anything as the plot demands. I’d not take a whiny child like her serious, less so with the arrogant mannerisms she displayed in the first short story that was written about her.

I feel they left out far too many bits and pieces. A lot of it is left without a proper explanation. How does she sway all these leaders and beings into doing as she wants? So far, she just magically gets what she wants. Or does she? We’re not shown much of the interaction, not even as mere rumours spread by other characters.

As far as most of us can tell, Scarlet automatically sets plot in motion for the sake of needing the Living Story to move on so fast.
It feels unfinished.

Psynch.4087:

I’ve seen a number of theories that suggest that Scarlett is actually acting to prevent the elder dragons from gaining power. So in a strange, roundabout way, she would be redeemed at the end of the arc. I don’t personally subscribe to that…

I think we’re going to kill her. First, because I don’t think she can be stopped in any other way. Second, because most players (basically 99%) would consider it insulting if we went through a year’s worth of stories of destruction, murder, and poisoning only to let the villain go. To many, it would be completely unsatisfying.

I would love to see a mix of this.
In the end, she exclaims that all she did was for the greater good, after which she suffers a classic breakdown when everyone rejects her for the manner in which she went about with it. So many innocents ended up dead, much of the world scarred in her wake. The heroes would want to at least lock her away to overthink what she did. And ultimately, she’d suffer a mental breakdown and lash out at the heroes. Being left with no choice, as she is a very dangerous individual, they end up killing her.

The heroes being a mix of NPC’s we’ve seen involved so far, and the player characters who have supported them all through.

One can hope, right?

As Scrambles said.
Except, not that extremely. The tiny stat changes don’t make or break the game. If you think they do, then you may wish to try and reconsider the build(s) you play with.

What would break the game though is a ten to twenty dollar price tag on an item that otherwise takes days and lots of in-game gold to obtain. You can already turn your money into game gold. What’s keeping you from investing as it is?

As it says on the tin.
Why not take concepts from the original Guild Wars that worked out really well, and translate them into the appropriate format for Guild Wars 2?

The things that come to mind to me are the following:

• The Underworld – Grenth’s domain.
  We already have portals to the Underworld. Doors that lead straight into Tyria. Shades and Aatxes roam about some places. But a door opened can be stepped through both ways, no? We already visited Mad King Thorn’s lair before, so why not Grenth’s old domain? Or new domain? The horsemen and so on would still do just fine to make it an enjoyable trip once inside.
  A dungeon instance seems most sensible. A Priory member of sorts might have found a way to stabilise the portal left behind by the Behemoth in Queensdale. Similar to other “contested dungeons”, it is unavailable after a set amount of time until the Behemoth is defeated again.

• The Fissure of Woe – Balthazar’s domain.
  Similar to the Underworld, but unlocked through different means. Perhaps available as a follow-up to the Underworld. Or seperately located in Orr, part of the Living Story, after Trahearne and the Pact (if not players) have restored enough of the dead land to activate the statue once and for all.
  Inside it’s a completely renewed Shadow Army, or maybe Balthazar’s old followers are now tormenting him. The Six are said to be gone, after all. But maybe they’re just occupied…

• (Temporary) Guild halls.
  The promise of a type of player/guild housing has been out there since the latest betas. We haven’t seen anything of the sort yet though. Is there no way to implement a temporary guild hall system, much akin to the original Guild Wars’ guild halls? In fact, can these not be carried straight over in (simplified versions of) their original forms as a placeholder until the “real deal” can be implemented?

• Alliance Battles / Capture Points.
  WvWvW has proven that large scale battles can be done. Even with PvE gear and scaling characters to 80. Why not implement a smaller scale PvEvW arena, much like the old Alliance Battles? It could be implemented into Heart of the Mists PvP, but why not see if it holds in PvE just as well? A more casual capture points game that gives a few badges of honour, or maybe points in a unique funny title.

• More “funny” titles.
  Speaking of which, there were a fair amount of nice titles in the original Guild Wars.
  A number of Guild Wars 2 titles sound very bland and they are either too difficult or too easy to obtain. Why not add some “funny” titles to e.g. the Monster Slayer tracks, just for people’s amusement? I miss being the good old Not Too Shabby, Slayer of Wurms, Epic Delver, Agent sometimes. They meant little, had no serious bragging rights, but they were quite fun to obtain nonetheless.

That said, these are just a few of the things that I think could be carried over with some tweaking and thought. Nice for the veterans to see, and likely enjoyable for everyone! And if anyone has more suggestions, or thinks any of these could be better or just shouldn’t happen at all… just leave a comment!

I understand that they wished to take all the bits of Living Story and paste it together.
So they went for a villain. Something the players can work toward to to beat.
This much I understand easily. And indeed, it is a solid idea.

But why only one villain? Why a new villain?
Why not blame it on the existing “evil” factions? There’s the Inquest, there’s the Nightmare Court, the Flame Legion, the Seperatists and Renegades. The list goes on and on.

What it looks like to me is that the designers tasked the writer(s) with the task to create a universal villain. It just massively backfired, plainly because they wanted said villain to cover far too much ground. Scarlet had to be super powerful, intelligent, resourceful and far more to manage all this, but it makes her a mundanely dull thing that is hardly still a person. Often referred to as a Mary Sue – Far too perfect, which makes others arguably unnecessary to even still exist since she can do anything, anywhere, and automatically better than anyone else too.

Lots of people have already suggested it, but here goes again:
Drop this. Kill her off. Have her vanish.
Let her perform a heroic sacrifice as she’s talked out of all this, for all I care.

But please move back to the “real” lore.
There are still the Elder Dragons. We need not topple one instantly, or one every two weeks. Heck no. But knowing we are gaining the grounds to defeat one each year or so would be neat.

If you can build all this, why not build an Underworld or Fissure of Woe instance again? Let old meet new – the old content the veterans all love, with the new mechanics so everyone can enjoy it, with rewards to match.

A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 327.23 , NVIDIA Corporation).

It seems to be right in your own log. Appears to be an outdated (or corrupted) driver file. Might be that the old driver still works for most games, just not for Guild Wars 2.
Try and update it and see if it helps. I’ve got my fingers crossed for you!

As it says on the tin. The game lags out completely and freezes at random intervals.

It is connection related: some chat channels continue to work while the game itself stops. My friends reported that my character vanished from the area, while we continued to talk in our guild and party channels.

Could not find others reporting the same issue, hence the post. I also went ahead and checked: there have been no connection issues of any kind on my end. I presume it’s to do with the patch. Hope this can be resolved soon!

Tauril.8504

What we need to know is just the right information that will tell us why we may want to care about this character.

She can do everything – We don’t care.
She’s been everywhere – We don’t care.
She did everything better than us, all races, all other characters – Still don’t care.
She’s got a dreadful Mary Sue personality – Can we beat her up now?
She’s the villain – OH LOOK, IMPORTANT! We can beat her—- nope!
NOPE. NOPE. DENIED. Can’t beat her up, because plot. Plot that nobody likes.
Plot that’s written on a site, not in the game.
Plot that barely anyone registered was there at all.
Plot that’s freaking long, nonsensical and childish.

So yes, it opens new zones, a new sub-zone in a dungeon and so on.
But. Why this character?

If the Scarlet Invasions were led by a Dolyak named Potato, and the monsters were rabid Moose instead of Sky Pirates: no difference! Only visuals.

To me, that is the whole problem. Scarlet’s a mere visual representation of the need for a cheesy villain. That’s great, but what happened to the lore and characters that were already there, waiting for their turn to shine?

Best villain? I think not. Quantity does not equal quality. Scarlet remains a Mary Sue.

I really wish Arena Net would look at all the lore they have already established, and get back to expanding that. The air pirates, and all the other added stuff doesn’t build plot, doesn’t progress existing plot and really bores me and so many others.

How about the Dragon minions? The shadow army, returned from the Fissure of Woe? Creatures from the Underworld? Palawa Joko’s influence spreading past the Elonian borders?

So much great lore, ready to be put to use. And instead, we get this lousy shrub doing a cliché song and dance, one we’ve seen so often, and one we’ve seen executed better in many cases. I’d love to see her killed off in this upcoming expansion, so we can finally get on with the real lore and actually impressive villains, monsters and such again.

Simple curiosity before I blow money on a Transmutation Splitter!

The situation is as follows:
I bought a level 80 item with a gorgeous skin.
I put the level 80 skin onto a level 20 item – transmute crystal used.
I levelled, and kept moving the skin onto items as I levelled – transmute stones.

If I use a Transmutation Splitter, do I get the original level 80 item back, plus the current level 79 status item?

Or will it give me the current level 79 item and the level 75 item from before it back, permanently evoking the original level 80 item from the mix?

EDIT
Thanks Taku, for answering this one! Guess I’ll collect that instead then.

This might just be a silly suggestion, but did you put the right sigils into your new weapon? Not saying you’re as silly as I am, but I forgot and… well, that gave my DPS a kick in the numbers for a bit, so to speak.

Also, try and restart the game with the new weapon in, see if that fixes anything. Far shot, but who knows. I had it happen the game just hiccupped over the kit’s traited stats – only two grenades despite its traits. Kits are still pretty glitchy, so worth a shot!

Very nice build, and an incredibly smooth bit of gameplay in your video. Great quality and helpful to boot.
Going to try and see if I can adapt to this. Looks like one heck of a challenge, compared to the cookie cutter grenades/bombs, but fun. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Elixir Gun, but most people think it too gimmicky to make use of it. Don’t often see it in builds, and certainly not as nicely implemented as with this. Thumbs up!

Might even see if I can figure out a method to make a version of this viable in dungeon PvE. WvW is a given though, looks like great fun to try in there too.

Yep. Tried to buy some dye and ended up with three of the same kind by accident.
It’d be nice if these error messages started to reflect the actual issue, instead of causing new ones.

A blatant, “Trading Post is bugged, wait and try again in an hour!” message is a lot kinder than the false message it gives now.

I attempted to direct buy a few dyes on the Trading Post and was presented with an error message.
Sorry, it said, your current listings are not up to date, refresh and try again.
So I refreshed and tried again. And once more. Money gone – awkward! Deciding it was bugged, I left it be and moved on – my friend reported she was experiencing the same issue, getting a little frantic about our money being gone.

Several minutes later, my Trading Post icon has the little red ! on it.
As I check, I noticed it’s bought the same item thrice. Once for each time it said it hadn’t worked!

In short, it’s giving faulty messages about the buying/selling not functioning, causing these massive hiccups and big holes in my wallet. Just a heads up for fellow players, until the issue is resolved!

Going to have to do some work to get back the money I lost… meh.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I agree, this should be ingame.

Scarlet’s diary -> drops when Scarlet get’s defeated in the Meta Event

later: book collectible tab
later: other books from older living story chapters drop as rare drops in the corresponding zones

This. Tenfold.

And then the thing that annoys me the most.
How can an arrogant, little stick figure with that weirdo hairdo… convince all the races to cooperate to let her study whatever she desires? I’d like to be informed of a manner to look past her Mary Sue’ness, in terms of how she’s so perfect despite being an insufferable individual both before and after taking on a new name.

That step up to a Charr and start demanding to be taught, and I just imagine two green legs sticking out of a Charrzooka about to be fired. A frozen plant girl in a lake in the Wayfarer’s when a Norn got air of this squirt’s intentions. The Asura stun me the most; their interest has never gone past their own kind… why now?

Introducing a super villain: sure thing.
Introducing another Sylvari: egh, okay, fine.
Introducing another Mary Sue: …hire some new writers already!

Now don’t get me wrong, mind. Looking forward to seeing where this all may go.
At the least so I can punch Scarlet upside the head soon…
But for now, the childish concept of a picture perfect girl with a nutter button, really weirded me out. I expected much better from Arena Net these days!

Ah, thank you very much. Realised it may have gotten lost due to that thread having a different name. But very keen! Looking forward to seeing this adjusted, and have a great evening.

Just as the title suggests.
Ever since today’s patch, the range on the /e command has increased massively. Formerly, it was little further than /say range. It’s a lot more now, almost covering areas in between Waypoints entirely.
A friend and I tested, to be sure. He stood still at a set point, I tracked back and performed an “/emote Test!” every few seconds. Also, there were people at the Maiden’s Whisper POI, whose custom emotes could be read all the way over by the bank in Divinity’s Reach. Roughly, it’s at least twice its original value now.

It’s not so much a serious issue, but it incredibly invasive and spammy, especially on a server where roleplay is popular.

Needs to be looked into and reset to its original values! Much appreciated.

Any chance we’ll be given options for the following in the (near) future?

- Seperate PvE and WvW character quality settings.
- Turn culling on/off option.

The latter was suggested by a friend, who currently cannot play effectively due to the removal of culling. It’d be very kind if these things could be looked into.
At the least, an official statement (forum, wiki, social networks) for all the people lost on where to go to fix these issues would be very, very much appreciated!

You’re most welcome! And in return I must thank you for assisting others around the forums with this tidbit of information.

While at it, I found another glitch/bug of sorts, to add to the list:
Player written Emotes have ridiculous range since the patch.
Anyone using /e or /me can be seen across miles of range. (Tested in Divinity’s, Lion’s Arch, the Grove.)
Originally, max range was available only in parties. Now it’s anyone, anywhere, anytime. Very awkward for roleplayers, but equally annoying to anyone else since /emotes still bypass the ignore list.

I log in and find two issues with every character around me.

One, everyone loads in with their weapon in hand.
Two, everyone loads with the placeholder WvW look in soft pink.

Issue one: I don’t know how to fix this nonsense.
Issue two: I found after some fiddling that the WvW character settings adjust this.

WHY did you not clarify where to adjust graphical settings to undo the ugly? And why is there no seperate function? Why did you remove culling, after all the tweaks you did to make it a bearable and worthwhile function?

Arena Net. I beg of you. Make a seperate setting for the PvE area models, or just bring back the culling!
The latter seems the lesser of two evils, at this point, but at least it may help some people!

Had the same issue a number of times, but found it’s possible to bypass the worst of it by steering backwards very gently with your movement keys. Don’t overdo it, and certainly don’t hold your forward keybind or you’ll zoom straight into next Tuesday… but it’s something!

Adding to Yamagawa’s post:

- Necromancer – Life drains until rallied, fears to buy time.
- Guardian – Survives until rallied (tags enemies with AoE knockback & heals)
- Engineer – Interrupts and damages until rallied (has a pull & AoE knockback)

In addition to that, I have to say that I’ve found my Guardian’s knockback AoE seems less inclined these days to properly tag enemies. Sometimes it suffices, sometimes it does not. Been making do with attempting to hit low health mooks with the other skill to increase the odds.

Frankly, I don’t think they should remove the downed state. Perhaps give a little check, see if the latest patches tweaked anything by accident – these things happen a lot in their coding style, as seen plenty of times in the past.

The NPC sometimes links people to sPvP, and sometimes it redirects them properly.
Requires a fix.

Been about a week since I replied here, and as I thought… they had no intention of fixing anything about the wings.

If redoing the animation is too much hassle, just freezing them in place in a pretty position would probably make a lot of people still very happy.

I really want to enjoy this event. I really do.
A grind would be alright, if the reward lived up to the effort. I’m staring at the wings now, and I am 100% certain that if they aren’t adjusted in animation and clipping errors, I will not spend any minute trying to complete any of the dull achievements.

Most my friends share the sentiment. A lot of people on my server’s map chat do too.
Needs a fix and a good statement as to how this was even released in its current state.

Severe lag during dungeons makes them unplayable for some but not all members.
One person had no lag at all. One person constantly disconnected. Two had mild to heavy lag. And the fifth and final member sank right through the floor in Twilight Arbor, glitching out completely and getting a nice view of the bottom textures of our world.

Bottomline is as follows:
Each festival event, in the old Guild Wars, and now in Guild Wars 2, causes severe lag issues that cannot be resolved on players’ end. Been there to see it happen for years, but after so long, it’s hard to comprehend it’s still seemingly not been adjusted much at all.

When are you guys at Arena Net going to work out a serious new and better way to more easily manage the severe pressure on servers? Or any tips to make it work better on our end, until such a solution finally surfaces?
Already not a fan of Dragon Bash for all sorts of reasons, but it ruining my access to everything else is a bit too much. At any rate, have a nice day.

Toast.6459:

Luck is luck is luck is luck is luck. I am disappointed that we went from being the racers to just mindlessly picking one we thought might win though.
Dragon Ball disappoints me also, the one shot kills of Dragon Arena provided challenge, but the slow projectile time meant you could also take on large groups if you were situationally aware and had good reaction time. Dragon Ball is just about ganking and numbers.

This. A thousand times.
At first I thought I was just being a tad judgmental, because I used to love Dragon Festival in the good old Shing Jea Monastery. But after a while, having tried everything multiple times, I came to conclude it really is just bland and boring.
Dragon Ball involves nothing but luck, which takes the fun out of it entirely. Losing is a pain. Winning isn’t rewarding, as it was based mostly on luck. And the moas. What a joke. Couldn’t invest in having the graphics team model a few Rollerbeetles, eh?

Bottomline stands.
The gambling has to go. Or the prices lowered drastically.

I’ve crashed several times the past week due to trying to check the guild bank’s log tab.

The game freezes, pauses and after half a minute, it prompts the infamous gray error log. Naturally, I reported it each time, but it’s worth a mention for others. Just in case anyone’s as screwy as I am, and just browses tabs without considering there might be a crash lurking in one to ambush the unsuspecting lazy bum.

If it happens again, restarting the game is a little faster than an hour of waiting.
Still, I agree, it’s a ridiculous amount of time for anyone to be muted. Even bots or fulltime annoying spammers needn’t have this long a downtime, so long as each new slip up just mutes them for a few minutes right away again.

Fatfox.4915:

Then as if by magic the game catches up with you, all the skills fire at breakneck speed, and you have no idea if you died in that mush of 6 enemies going down or not.

only trend I’ve noted is it happened more with the greatsword skills (possibly linked to the jump)

Is anyone else having this issue? As said before, all other classes worked fine.

Guardian here, and I can confirm that it also occurs with the Hammer, as it did so during my past few Fractals runs. Due to the way it resembles a severe lagspike, I instantly checked my connection and modem, but had no issues anywhere. It comes from the game, and the game alone. Usually, my voice on our chat turns robotic during connection issues – my guildies were all curious and confused why I asked if I sounded like a Dalek. They said I still moved on on their screens, although it was merely auto-attacking.

On that note, it hasn’t affected me outside of the Fractals instances. In there, it generally only occurred when our group took on several opponents at once.

Have to say, I am uncertain if it’s tied to the jumping/leaping skill, but Hammer does have one. I’ll try and keep an eye out on what I bashed last, if I freeze again.

I would not only want to suggest for them to remove the invisible walls that now bar us out, but for Arena Net to kindly just open the front gates instead. Leave the instance trigger on its doorstep, as was done with each personal story step, and let people explore the gorgeous area behind it as they see fit.

The same goes for all home instances – most are already a part of the existing city, and their textures all load up whenever one enters such a city. There is, by my knowledge, no valid in-game reason for these areas to be sealed off, other than them being devoid of significant (merchant) NPC’s and their scripts.

Fingers crossed for the devs to notice this, either way!

Adding another potential bug.
Finishing the dungeon did not contribute to the Daily Dungeon Completer achievement.

Other than that, had fun. Boss health was a tad high, but eh, used to it by now.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

To quote an NPC in Beetletun: “With magic, anything is possible” (this being said in reference to capturing the persona given off by Caudecus – something I doubt actually is possible). I really wouldn’t limit abilities so long as it’s just not too powerful without drawback. There’s a limit to everything, but not necessarily in what can be done (just how much and without consequence).
[. . .]
It’s not divine fire. The guardian magic is powered by faith in beliefs – this includes in one’s warband or legion, for charr. Even faith in the Nightmare works, as seen by a certain Nightmare Court guardian.

My personal take on that quote is: With magic, a lot is possible.
And by a lot I do mean an awful lot.

Onto the second bit: I am aware it’s not actual “divine” fire. But the explanation that sheer belief conjures the effects is a little lacking to me. Humans have a history wherein the Monks and Paragons of old passed on their teachings, where the recent generations worked hard to establish the Guardian form of such spellweaving. Then the majority of other races get little past, “They believe, they have faith!” from the lore writers. I’m still eagerly awaiting the wicked story of how the first Guardians of other races stepped up. I suppose the multi-race efforts of what eventually became the Pact had quite some influence in the long run.
Alternatively, there was this lovely mental image that my friend conjured into my head, wherein an Asura ran off with a massive scroll containing all magic information one would ever need. Skritt not far behind, screaming about shinies.

And then there’s you, draxynnic.3719. Let’s face it, your explanations are a treat.
I had my suspicions of where each thing went, but this makes it a lot easier for me to set it in place inside that thick skull of mine. Very much appreciated.

And as you yourself already stated, there’s a number of professions and attributes that aren’t always too clear on where they belong.

draxynnic.3719

Fluffwise, many elementalist spells probably can’t distinguish friend from foe – a fireball would burn all in the area while a healing geyser would heal everyone – but mechanically anti-griefing measures prevent this in game.

In the Guild Wars Prophecies manuscript booklet it’s referenced that magic indeed has no friendly fire settings of any kind. Devona is at one point somewhat disgruntled that Cynn has a tendency to not care for aiming practice.

draxynnic.3719

The most basic rule of thumb is that if you do something that is clearly ripped from some other profession, you’re doing something wrong – unless you’re a mesmer and you just stole it.

Sadly, this happens more often in roleplay than I’d like to admit having witnessed.
Once upon a time, I met a person who could heal and damage and conjure and distract and also tapped into the mental affinities of the Mesmer profession despite not being one. This person went on to point at Guild Wars 1 and its cross-profession system, but we made very clear to them that in-lore, no such characters actually exist.

All the lore characters I can think of always belonged to only one profession. My friends did some brainstorming, too, and we found none that had the cross-professions going on. Granted you exclude Varesh Ossa, who swapped from Dervish to a heavily malfunct Paragon… and swapped her hair for extra eyes and the whole load you get for making pacts with exiled death gods. 8D

(Note: not going to count Trahearne as Necromancer/Guardian, as his guardian-style sword skills are supposedly the sword’s doing, and his entire character is wibbly-wobbly in terms of storytelling as it is now anyway.)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I would think there are more people who do not care about Trahearne one way or the other, or people who would make fun of him . . . than those who actually actively hate him.

There are also a few, myself included, who completely resent the writing done to Trahearne. I really despise how he turned out in some missions, whereas he actually seems likable in the next. The early Sylvari quests where he’s involved were decent enough, and I found he was actually well written into the questline in Orr wherein you deal with Orrian deathships. The thing is, he seems to have a variety of personalities and variable voice work, based on whatever mission you get into.

While in the questlines where you directly accompany him through Orr, Trahearne has the emotional range of a dead goldfish… he actually sounded regretful in another questline I did on my alt, wherein a great loss was suffered that he found out about after he regrouped with my character. He even made the very considerable comment that he wished he’d been there to make a difference, after which he quietly acknowledged in a remarkably sad tone that that’d have done the Pact no good either. For a moment, I wanted to pick him up and hug him, and then the next quest he was his same deadened self once more.

Ultimately – and I said it before – it’s not a bad character concept, it’s just very poorly executed and it’s made him rather dull to work with.

I’m aware the wiki page consists partially of rabble, which is why I opened this thread to begin with. It wasn’t clear enough, and the endless debates on the roleplaying community’s own site really got my panties in a knot, so to speak.

It’s incredibly hard to come by clear information on Tyria’s magic, and when caught in roleplay it can be quite grating to see players just go, “nobody says I can’t” when they cough up the most ridiculous spells and effects without consequence to their characters. Since there isn’t a cohesive guide or nice table with a simplistic explanation out there, there’s no way to tell this flavour of roleplayers to take it a notch down.
My character, as a guardian, can do a grand total of two “tricks” as he so refers to the spells he can cast, otherwise relying on his swordsmanship. Then in comes a person who pretends to be a Warcraft Paladin in the wrong setting.

So yeah, as much as I love the concept of the Bloodstones and their “types” and further influences, it would’ve been nice to see a more detailed explanation from Arena Net. Same for the Guardians. Their inspiration is taken from Paragons and Monks. For humans that’s almost a no-brainer. The monks and paragons of old took up arms and fought more intensively throughout the wars, reshaping their skills of old into new abilities better suit for the combat of all those years.
For the other races, especially the Charr, I wonder what they based their Guardian prowess upon. A sudden “oh look, I got mad and I conjured divine fire, lol oops” seems like a lacklustre explanation – thank my buddy for forever instilling that mental image in my brain.

But that’s me, I love to think there’s a good story behind everything in a grand fantasy world like this. It’d make it feel more alive if more stories were written about the founding of the in-lore valid professions. I’m a sucker for background stories of characters like Mhenlo, Gwen, Cynn, and even Trahearne has me mightily curious. The “I-can-do-it-all-no-problem” super scholar Sylvari ought to have his backstory explained more thoroughly; I’d love to get a better insight on what he can do as a Necromancer, without his super salad sword.

I guess I’ll just wait for future novels and in-game story development. Twiddling thumbs.

The few things I can think of that refer to music in the game.

There most definitely is flute music, of all sorts. And there’s a pipe organ in Ebonhawke. Then there is the giant noise machine in Divinity’s Reach Eastern Commons, although that thing doesn’t produce any actual sound worthy of “song”. Moreover, there is a harp focus… And some Norn say their legends are remembered through song.

So for sure, classical music is widely available!
But on the other hand, who knows what kind of beats the Asura or Charr have discovered through their machinery? That’s some pretty cool things to consider.
I bet Asura got some techno sorted out. Imagine that, a Golem band! Or a Charr rock or metal festival.

Giznat, that colour combination is awesome!

My crazy elementalist Mistook says hi. I’m still not sure what armour to get him.
Tier 1 and Tier 2 mixed are tempting – the T2 helm is amazing.
But Tier 3 is so worth saving up for, too.

I see. That’s interesting food for thought.
It just frustrates me endlessly that there aren’t very clear tables that point out which profession can do what, and which of their seperate attributes have that sort of “overlap” going for them. But this is a nice thing to keep in the back of my head, at least.

Very clearly explained. Thank you.
Curious what others might still add to all this. I do hope to see more of the lore developed in-depth as the game expands. The concepts are so nice!

After years of playing the original Guild Wars, and months of Guild Wars 2, I’d like to think that I know quite a bit of lore. But some topics remain ever unexplained or eternally vaguely referenced at best.

One such a topic: magic.
I found the entirety of the history of Tyria’s magic on the old and new Wiki pages.
But then I stumble across a lot of questions as I go along.
Reference: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic

It is presented as a supernatural power that can be controlled by certain individuals, and is split up into four “schools”: Preservation, Destruction, Aggression, and Denial.

So all the known magic falls under this.
Preservation sounds like Healing.
Destruction sounds like it refers to damaging spells.
Aggression sounds like… spells that affect others, without causing direct destruction?
Denial sounds like interrupt spells, and particularly Mesmer comes to mind.

It’s not really clear what profession’s attributes fit where. And no official, neat table has been composed yet.

And to add to the confusion, there is this one:

It is not clear which known types of magic fit into which school, except for elementalists who utilize Destruction magic.

Great, so Fire, Air, Earth, Water and Arcane magic, are all of Destructive nature.
But hang on. Water can heal – isn’t that Preservation? Earth can snare and shield a person – isn’t that Denial? Air can daze and stun and speed things up – Aggression? Denial?

Or is this not how it works? How does it work? What do these things even mean?
And if you set up a scheme where magic is supposedly governed by these four types of it, why

I want to find out what goes where.

Isn’t there any writer on Arena Net’s team who could just sort out the table, for all of us curious fellows? And for the roleplayers, too. Nothing is more annoying than roleplayers who claim they can master all, and then say, “but there’s no source saying i can’t”. Childish, indeed. But it happens. And often.

And anyone who has any idea, naturally… share!

What bugs me the most about Trahearne is that even his voice actor grew bored of him. He is an uninteresting character, who automatically wins at life. And somehow, the character himself seems to be aware of it to a degree that he is perpetually bored with his “adventure” in Tyria.

From his colourless design to his flat tone of voice. Even a magical sparkling sword could not save him from the descend into bland, boring Mary Sue-hood.

In fact, that sword easily lodged him in there even deeper.
This next bit is a bit spoiler heavy, so whoever reads and didn’t do Claw Island… stahp.

A necromancer by nature. As we are introduced, Trahearne is a somewhat distant, stoic young plant-bloke, burdened with the immense task to one day cleanse Orr. For moments, I felt for him, and felt that together with my character, we’d make it happen. That for the sake of his scholarly needs, the great orders of the world would fix the land and leave this bleak plant to his studies.

After so much as two quests, I realised this character could not and would not be fundamental to my story. Then suddenly, the gates on Claw Island shut. My companion stuck in there. And oh yes, the unimaginable happens. The dull scholar becomes my sidekick. And within a minute’s notice, I am his sidekick.
Forever.

Is he ever grateful? Does he ever truly mourn the loss?
No.
This stoic isn’t stoic because stoic is cool. He isn’t stoic because he learned to control himself perfectly. He isn’t stoic because he must be the one and only shoulder to lean on for all other characters. He isn’t even the Spock, who gets excited over the tiny amount of things he does like. No, Trahearne is stoic. Just stoic.

No reason other than him being a boring scholar who is so bored of his own adventure he forgot how to display emotion, in face and voice (and speech volume, at that. “To arms.” he almost mumbled carelessly when the entirety of the new-shapen Pact reared up to defeat the Risen).

Stuck with my new hero-in-the-making, I soon realised he would never be the stuff of legends. Heck, if this were a story about the One Trinket that had to be taken to Volcano Ominous, I don’t think he’d even be worthy of brushing my feet hair.

The story goes on and on and eventually Destiny’s Edge meets Trahearne. And meets me again. Without second thought, without my character doing a thing, Trahearne goes, “im here, im leader k?” and they just accept. Just like that. And then they never meet again, live seperate lives and so forth.

I still feel that Trahearne was never meant to be as he is now.
As if somewhere, he was a last-minute decision tossed into the fray, to replace the Destiny’s Edge members from being the player characters’ true guides, friends, sidekicks or even heroes.
I hope something will be done about it in the future. I don’t think anyone would mind if the entirety of the existing current story would be overhauled just to fix this flaw. His initial concept was fine. Return him to that, Arena Net. The character deserves better than to be perpetually bored.

Tl;dr: Replace him. Fix him. Help this poor bored, boring bugger!

One of the prime examples to me now is the Quickness update.
Certainly, it needed a fix in sPvP.
Certainly, the Mesmer’s elite skill could do with a little balancing. Thief, Ranger, Warrior; same difference.

But the way they now halved Quickness’ potential all throughout all of the game, rather than just tweaking it in the places where it actually had to be fixed… that seems a little unnecessary.

Speaking of splitting PvE and PvP skill editions: the original Guild Wars went through years and years of skills getting buffs and nerfs before someone chose to set the two types apart. By the time they did, it was somewhat too late, and a lot of skills were never restored to their former glory.

I hope that if they decide to perform the split and fix here, they go through all their old skill versions to restore whatever has been broken in PvE to aid PvP, and vice versa.

Just as it says on the tin.
A person who has blocked me, whom I have blocked in return, can still spam me remorselessly by making use of the “/e” or “/me” command. It bypasses the ignore list completely, and has an even larger range than the “/say” channel.

Oversight or an outright bug? I’d not seen it happen before, but I believe it deserves a fix.

This bug was addressed here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/12-6-superior-rune-bug minutes ago.

It is the same issue.
And as was answered there… it’s merely a visual hiccup.

Your Heart of the Mists PvP set runes show no matter where you go. When in PvE, you do not get to use its effect, it only displays the number by mistake.
So if you bought 3 and wear those 3 on your armour, and it says 9 as you mouse over, then only your PvE 3 are actually in effect at the time. Hope that helps some.

SirJack.4760:

As a result, Ranger pets are mostly dead and the inherent mechanic that they deal a substantial amount of our damage becomes our greatest handicap.

This is basically the entire “issue” in a nutshell.
Where in other MMO’s – GW1 included – the pet was a choice, here it’s a must. You have no alternative. You cannot stow them permanently. You cannot forever idle them either.
And not because the mechanics don’t allow for it. It’s solely because they carry part of your damage potential! If you leave them to idle, you’ll still do yourself short.

In most dungeons you can learn when to pull the pet back. It just takes patience and proper timing to do so. Sadly, each time you pull it back, you bashed F3. During that time, you’re unlikely to have done anything but auto-attacking.
More importantly, going melee in some situations is an utter pain. If you deal with a boss with nearby AoE, you can dodge backwards.
Hah, can’t touch this! Oh no, Mr Mittens! DO NOT KEEP STANDING IN THAT GIANT, FIERY CIRCLE OF DOO- Ooooh come on!
That giant pile of ash once labeled Mr Mittens the generic pet is now the rough 25% of total damage you lost. Isn’t it a joy(!)

What’d really “fix” these problems is either having them buff the ranger and then nerf the pet’s damage to have them serve as nothing but a few extra utility skills… or for them to introduce a way to make pets more movable. I’d use the ranged pets more often if I could handpick their location properly.

As it is now, Rangers are the literal example of the saying “Jack of all trades, Master of none”. Anything they can do, another profession can likely bring into the game with far less effort.

Fortunately, that doesn’t mean Rangers are completely worthless. Their damage output is still decent, they have access to plenty of conditions for added pressure, and if you practice on timing your pet’s withdrawals, you’ll be no less effective than the rest of your group. The main issue right now is that it’s nigh impossible to be better than average.

And then there’s the pet AI issues. They cannot dodge. Their usable F2 skill has delays. To have pets work in dungeons and later content requires a lot of managing, as WonderfulICT already said.

Anyway. What’s made the community most resentful of Rangers in the current meta, is that almost any other profession played with half the interest, in lesser gear can likely outclass a fully geared Ranger that the player invested quite some time in.
Some people “gave up”. Others are still hoping the upcoming patches will bring a few fixes. Time will tell.

As for Engineers; I personally couldn’t wrap my head around the multiple playstyles they offer, and the lack of a true melee weapon eventually had me put down the profession entirely. But I do know that they have easier access to high damage (bombs, grenades), and have a very interesting support style with their elixers and turrets.
If you’ll pardon the lack of many weapons to choose from, in exchange for all their toolkits, then Engineer really is worth looking into.

I think the main reason nobody has reacted yet is pretty close to point 1.
This build is one of the sturdiest out there, and as you stated, you already have the right armour, runes to match and the proper weapon of choice.

But allow me to nitpick! Or rather, just toss in my two cents.
I personally adjust my traits based on what group I am with. Constantly.
If they are heavier in the melee department, and glass cannons to boot, I’d drop either Two-Handed Mastery or Empowering Might in favour of Writ of the Merciful.

One thing I can actually recommend is the Mace/Shield combination, although that heavily depends on the layout of your group and what you face. If you haven’t got a large amount of healing aboard, then the Mace’s symbol and the healing Mace does on every third auto-attack strike, can really make a difference. I love bringing my Mace when I have Warriors or Thieves with me up front, especially to counter e.g. some hefty burning or bleeding that’s being done and reapplied over the course of a fight.

On the harder bosses, where you know you’ll grab the aggro, Signet of Judgment is a nice skill to swap in. You take 10% less damage while carrying it as a passive. That more than makes up for its boring active use – the one I doubt is worth pressing at all.

As for pretty armour… I do like how “legit” the Tier sets for Sylvari look, especially if you mix and match it with TA’s heavy set. I’m sure if you check the PvP locker for comparisons, you’ll quickly find what tickles your fancy.

If you haven’t already looked, scroll down on this page:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit
It has a very nice table on there that shows the difference between all the additional damage you deal based on crit chance and crit damage.

At any rate, it depends on your playstyle. If you feel the 2k health is going to save you more than the small chunks of potential bonus damage each hit, then it’s definitely worth going with Valkyrie. It is a more careful approach with only a tiny loss in damage, so if it helps you survive, it’s a good bonus. Dead players deal no damage, after all.

EDIT:
Discovered that disabling the Online Shield stopped AVG from blocking these files. No reason given. Can be locked and removed, or left for future fellow AVG users to prevent them from having nightmares also.

After days of struggling with lengthy loading screens, texture failures, FPS issues and so forth, I figured it was time to do a fresh reinstall, as the -repair command hadn’t visibly fixed anything.

Upon reaching about 70% in the downloader/installer, my AVG began to throw red alerts at me every few seconds, stating that the game client was attempting to access and download a virus.
The interesting thing is that – for the sake of the installation speed – I had disabled AVG almost entirely.

Attached an image to display what is going on.
I’d like to add that now, at 88%, I have triple the warnings in the threat detection window and more are still popping in every now and again.

Is this a faulty detection, is my AVG being finicky, or is there actually something horribly wrong with the latest available installer?

EDIT: removing the local.dat file has definitely helped with the loading screen issues.
It’s a start! So thanks a lot for this excellent suggestion.