(edited by Chrispy.5641)
The traits are only active in combat. Try getting into combat and look at the pet panel again, you’ll see the stats change to be in line with the trait.
Have more than one variation for each skill..
Example….
Shortbow 3A Quick Shot
(old)Fire a quick shot in an evasive retreat. Gain swiftness if the shot hits.
Shortbow 3B Seeking Shot
Fire an arrow that will seek out the nearest stealthed target. Removes stealth from target if shot hits.
Shortbow 3C Vine Shot
Fire an arrow that creates Entangling Vines along its path of travel (3s duration). Foes that get caught in these vines are immobilized (1s).
Shortbow 3D Swarm Shot
If Shot hits, target is attacked by an angry swarm of bees (9s duration). Bees will deal damage every second and apply torment every 3 seconds.
Shortbow 3E Sapping Shot
If Shot hits, steal health and a boon.
Two other things to note is related to Pet Vitality and Toughness.
Pet vitality scales differently than player characters. They only get 8 hp per point of vitality instead of 10. (don’t trust the wiki. Its wrong)
Pets only have toughness when calculating damage, and don’t benefit from the added armor defense like players do, which is why some of them can die instantly from one or two attacks.
Pet stats are not based off the Ranger Stats, at all. When they are zero, they are exactly that. (Ranger agony resistance is transferred to the pet though)
If anything, get ascended Weapons instead of armor anyways. Those increase your skill damage by roughly 5% because weapon strength multiplies with your power stat.
Ascended defense is added to your toughness stat to make total armor. While it appears to be 5% more defense, it only increases your total armor by 2% or so. Total damage reduction might be even less than that, and the effect from just armor is lower the more toughness you add.
One other thing that should be said is that rune sets work optimally, only with certain stat combinations, so even if armor was introduced so that you could change stats…your going to be spending an awful lot of money changing runes around.
I am using the Valkyrie Emblazoned set for my Ranger it is good doing PvE I haven’t done any PvP or WvW.. But it was not hard to make.. I don’t think I really need any better for now…. My Leather working is at 436 I haven’t done much since I made my set.. But I don’t really need any thing right now….
I’ve been recently using the Magi stat in PvE. which many people consider to be useless. Works just fine in pet builds.
[…]it might be easier/faster to read because your brain is now only processing the minute differences between 26 letters instead of 52.
http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0462/paper0462.pdf
Capitalization does not affect reading speed, it influences certain reading behaviors, but is related to the processing of words and not the processing of individual letters.
Didn’t know that all nouns are capitalized in German (yes, I did read it!). However, I don’t think I was technically wrong. According to the study, mean reading speeds is one word faster per minute if all the words are lowercase in comparison to if capitalization rules were followed, (which does mean there is probably no measurable difference at all in English)((also, in a stunning development not surprising to anyone in the world, the reason for the lack of a difference in reading speeds compared to studies from decades ago where proper capitalization can supposedly be reliably read faster, was because of technology.))
Honestly, I can make any armor set work for the Ranger, so its not much problem for me. Then again, I haven’t got the in game financial ability to even make a full ascended set of armor, and its not really worth it to me if I spend 300+ gold on a set of armor and can’t change stats when I can buy 12 exotic sets of armor for the same price and minimal difference in stat values….so, there’s that. Would be nice though to have an option to change stats on super expensive ascended armor.
@Azhure, lowercase only is a legitimate case style of writing in the English language in non-formal circumstances. Many people use it for the speed and ease of typing without having to press the shift key, as it can considerably slow down typing speed.
it is not any harder to read, and actually, it might be easier/faster to read because your brain is now only processing the minute differences between 26 letters instead of 52.
So, what am I getting at here? Humans and the Human Gods are the same. Its just like Greek Mythology. They go to war against themselves and fight among themselves. Feelings of anger, sadness, etc. seem just as powerful in humans as it is in the human gods.
While I agree that the Greek gods were far more like humans than (for instance) an Abrahamic God, there was still a gulf. Not every Greek hero became immortal.
Not every Greek hero needed to become immortal in the literal sense, because their stories are what made them immortal (not so literally), more so than the supposedly more important gods who play small supporting roles in almost all of the stories from the time period, which is also not too much different than the entire story from GW1, where the Gods did exactly one noticeable thing during the story of all three games.
the only time i wow’d
The only time I found a precursor wasn’t really a wow moment, it was more of a….
“HOLY [insert every curse word ever]! WHAT THE [insert even more curse words here, you know they exist!]!” kind of moment.
I’m sure if they start coding now it’ll be out by the time the PS6 and XBox Three hits market.
First it’s not a trivial port.
Second each of those eight cores are extremely low performing and a current top end i7 has problems at stock clocks. Imagine one with 20-30% the CPU power.
Imagine if you will, that 90% of the playerbase is running Guild Wars 2 on older technology, on systems that would make last gen consoles seem powerful by comparison. Also imagine if you will, that GW2 runs on a graphics engine that is based on an even older graphics engine (that is 10 years old, at least)
Bringing GW2 to Console wouldn’t be a huge problem, though it would require optimization for system hardware that no one in Anet has any experience working on, and because of the difference between console and pc hardware, Anet would be effectively making 2 versions of the game, possibly doubling development costs. Its not worth it.
Wow moment #1) Seeing Zhaitan for the first time. (Ruined by fighting Zhaitan for the first time.)
Wow moment #2) Seeing 100 people all converge on the Claw of Jormag Fight and seeing effects and spells fly everywhere. Seeing 100 people converge on any location on max. graphics settings really. (Ruined/gradually made worse by every update, de-optimizing the game, dropping frame rates, and making load times longer.)
Wow moment #3) Making it through Orr without dying while wearing my sub level 80 blue and green gear. You couldn’t press 1 to win or you’d get destroyed. (Ruined by an update a month later making Orr easier to get through)
The chest and leg pieces though would clip with pretty much everything. It would be cool to get the helmet, glove, shoulder, and boot pieces since those tend to not conflict or clip with your armor.
This is probably not going to happen either since outfits seem to be made as one model now except for the head and sometimes gloves.
The domains attributed to the gods by humans are not necessarily the domains that they are actually defined by. For instance, Kormir is ‘order, spirit, and truth’ – however, fundamentally, she is a god of knowledge. Many of the others there may be multiple aspects of the same domain, and there may be other domains that human theology typically downplays (Dwayna, for instance, has been described as a goddess of light and warmth as well, primarily through GW1 Wintersday sources). It’s plausible that, once we get the full list of the dragon domains, we’ll be able to largely map the gods domains to them, even if the assignments are mixed up a bit.
Well, then that would mean that the Norn’s concept of the gods, being spirits of action, is probably closer to what we need if we’re going to compare them to anything else on Tyria.
Greek mythology is a bad example, because nearly everyone of the myths shows the Gods and Humans being the same. They get angry, sad, lonely. They steal from each other, and go to war against themselves. Gods were bound by their fate (God of thunder was always a god of thunder, and will always be a god of thunder. Even Zeus, who claims omnipotence, could not change that), but humans could change their fate as they lived and were only limited by the limits of a man. Even with the limits of a man, humans have managed to best the gods in many of these myths. Gods have been stripped of their power, and humans have ascended to godhood in these myths as well (not too different from Tyrian gods actually)
Actually, from what I recall of the Greek myths, there was a certain amount of choice over which domain each god has. One of the myths relates to how dominion over the sky, sea, and air was divided after the Olympians gained control of the world. Zeus basically called dibs on the sky, since he was the most powerful and it was viewed as the most prestigious. Poseidon then claimed the sea, and Hades was a bit miffed to be left with the earth and underworld that had been rejected by the other two.
Particularly given that the dreary reputation of the location meant that he needed to resort to kidnapping to acquire a consort…
Greek Mythology has things in it that contradicts itself all the time. This is because there are many different authors and philosophers that thought up different conflicting cosmologies.
The Concept of fate in Greek was called Moira. Its a kind of power that runs parallel to the gods and cannot be changed once determined. Even Zeus cannot change fate. His mortal son was going to die. Zeus foresaw that it was going to happen, but even he, and his arrogant ‘omnipotent’ self couldn’t do a thing about it. (Actually, in the Illiad…. it says that he could, but doing so would set a precedent that would allow the other gods to do the same with their sons who were also predetermined to die in that battle. Looks like being king of everything doesn’t actually mean you get special privileges. And greek mythology being what it is, other accounts of this event say a dozen different things)
There are myths saying that Zeus actually commanded the Moirai and all of fate, which conflicts with this and many other stories. Other stories still say that the Fates are from a time much older than Zeus and out of his control, and it was already predetermined that Zeus would become king of sky and thunder after he defeated the Titans and there was no changing that. Some writings said that even gods feared the fates. Other ancient writings said that even Zeus must respect their power. Greek Mythology conflicts with itself, because some writers say that Zeus is the ultimate power in the universe, while other writers say that Zeus is an arrogant [insert any expletive here] that isn’t actually as powerful as he says.
Humans however…..Some stories say that humans are bound by fate, same as the gods (except or including the king of everything), but there are a few stories conflict this and show example of humans going against their predetermined fate and doing things that even the gods couldn’t do. And if anything, their fates are always more complex than the gods. (greek mythology was kind of a bad example all around. It conflicts itself with literally every myth/story you read)
one last interesting to note about Greek Mythology is that the concept of a god, the quality that distinguishes them from men, is their power, otherwise they were pretty much human in every other respect.
So, from what we know about some of the human gods….what actually distinguishes Kormir from any other human?…..Power. that’s about it. (everything else in my last post was pretty much speculation on my part, so write a post disagreeing with that if you want)
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
Not to be a downer, but it’s wishful thinking to expect implementations on posted ideas. Granted, wishful is still hopeful, it’s not a hopeless endeavor but don’t expect your ideas to be implemented or even additions in the near future.
But people have stopped posting stuff like this enough, instead focusing on complaining about various parts of the game (not an inherently bad thing) or just complaining about the community. Threads like these are cool especially if more people get into it with various ideas and feedback that can be seen as more constructive, particularly for the vibe of the community.
shoot, don’t expect any of the ideas you slave over to ever be implemented as is. Anet probably reads these threads, but they have their own slaves…er highly paid employees, to think of ideas like these.
Still doesn’t stop me from thinking of ideas like these though.
And craftable tacos.
ANet, please get on this stat!
Next update : Chef is now 500. You can also craft tacos! Taco shells are time gated and you can only craft one per day, and it takes 10 taco shells to make one crunchy taco supreme, which is also time gated. You need two crunchy taco supremes and two time gates craftable hot sauces to craft a spicy crunchy taco supreme.
Why does it take so much? Why does it take 5 Ascalonian salads and 10 Nopales a Cactus salad that’s probably the same size? Conservation of Mass is apparently not allowed to exist in fantasy worlds! That’s why!!!
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
What we know for certain….
Dragons :::
Mordremoth – Mind and Plant
Zhaitan – Shadow and Death
Primordus – Fire? Destruction? Earth?
Jormage – Ice?
DSD – Water?
Kralkatorrik – Crystal? Earth? Chaos?
Gods ::: (gw2 wiki says this is what they are gods of)
Dwayna – healing, air, and life
Balthazar – war, fire, and challenge
Grenth – darkness, ice, and death
Kormir – order, spirit, and truth
Lyssa – beauty, water, and illusion
Melandru – nature, earth, and growth
(We used to have Abaddon – water and secrets. If Menzies (or Dhuum even [last I checked, he’s not destroyed yet]) still have any domain over anything at all we don’t know what it is)
(still wondering why that split between ice and water has to exist, but other than that…) 18+ to 12 aspects/spheres of influence. There doesn’t seem to be any relation between the human gods and elder dragons based on their spheres of influence, and we don’t even need to know what the other four dragons’ sphere’s of influence are.
my (simplified) opinion….
I think its referencing the fact that the universe is a complex machine, a computer (eternal alchemy) :::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanismA marvellous mechanism, but limited by over-simplification and lacking in finesse.
An interesting metaphor.
One interesting about the Mechanism was that it showed every Known object in the universe at the time of its creation, and their positions relative to earth.
Could the Antikytheria be showing the same?
Yeah, and risk their creation being wiped out completely, just like nearly every race before us? I’m sorry, but that argument doesn’t fly. Not even when its Jeff saying it. It makes no sense. It sounds like a weak excuse.
“I don’t care if the writer of the story has said something that proves me wrong, I’ll just handwave the writer’s words away.”
Welcome to fan-fiction land Malafide. Because by cutting away canon lore – which that is, until something in-game says otherwise (and nothing has) – you create fanon lore. Or fan-fiction.
A retcon is still a retcon, and a hole in the lore is still a hole in the lore though, is it? The way Anet answered that questions seems just a little incomplete, even you have to admit that (and no, It does not create fanon by saying the answer isn’t good enough) The reason they left has to be more complex than just “We meddled too much, so lets let humanity wipe themselves out….or save themselves…or get eaten by the Charr…whatever.”
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
Here’s a question…
If the ‘human’ gods aren’t humans, why do they take human form?
The Greek gods took human form too, but they were descended from Titans.
And if I recall, many of the Titans took human form too. Prometheus for example. You know….he created humans, sculpted them from clay, gave then fire, chained to a mountain and had his liver pecked out every day for an eternity? That Prometheus!
An interesting thing to note here is that Prometheus created men in his image (or Zeus’s image, his omnipotent arrogance was starting to show in some of the myths by now). Assuming that Men were created in the Titan’s image, not only are Men descended from the Titans, but so are the Olympian gods.
Greek mythology is a bad example, because nearly everyone of the myths shows the Gods and Humans being the same. They get angry, sad, lonely. They steal from each other, and go to war against themselves. Gods were bound by their fate (God of thunder was always a god of thunder, and will always be a god of thunder. Even Zeus, who claims omnipotence, could not change that), but humans could change their fate as they lived and were only limited by the limits of a man. Even with the limits of a man, humans have managed to best the gods in many of these myths. Gods have been stripped of their power, and humans have ascended to godhood in these myths as well (not too different from Tyrian gods actually)
Tolkien used this idea as he was creating Middle Earth, that Elves and Men were almost similar, but not really. Elves were immortal, and their fate was always to go across the sea and live among the Valar. Men lived short lives, but could change their fate, bound only by the physical limits of their bodies. (This same concept also exists in the dynamic between Angels and men in Semitic religions)
…….
So, what am I getting at here? Humans and the Human Gods are the same. Its just like Greek Mythology. They go to war against themselves and fight among themselves. Feelings of anger, sadness, etc. seem just as powerful in humans as it is in the human gods.
The Human gods though seem to be bound by their own power. Its not like Lyssa and Grenth can say “Lets trade”, and suddenly we have a goddess of death, and a god of illusions. When that book in the Library said that Kormir died in order to become a goddess….well, she did. Her potential as a human was stripped away, replaced with an eternity of being the goddess of truth. She probably no longer human, though she once was.
Humans however…you saw it in GW1, They can change professions, use different weapons, explore and go wherever the hell they dam well please, as long as its within the physical limits of their own bodies. (Norn, Charr, Asura, Tengu, etc. also seem to follow these rules while corrupted Dragon minions don’t. I guess we’ll find out before GW3 comes out just how human Anet wants them to be.)
Does this mean that humans are gods and gods are humans, and that Charr are humans and Humans are Norn? no. I’m probably grasping at straws here, possibly swimming in an ocean of hay, but when someone says that the humans and human gods are just really powerful humans, it doesn’t have to literally mean that the gods are really powerful humans, and continuing to argue that point is going to get us nowhere. I will keep arguing that the human gods were once human or human like though (since we know that at least some of them were).
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
…
Since subtlety wasn’t working the “confusing” thing was a joke about the NPE. Basically I’m saying that most rangers I see in the world aren’t very bright.That’s not very nice to say to the people on the Ranger forum. If you think most Rangers aren’t very bright, what do you hope to accomplish by posting in this forum?
Knockback skills add an interesting aspect to the game and should not be diminished or removed. PvE and Dungeons are designed for new players to become familiar with skills and gameplay so it’s safe to expect players to make mistakes.
He’s not wrong though. There’s so many Rangers compared to other classes, that you tend to see inexperienced calls made by them more than you see from other classes. In WvW I see noobish tendencies from all professions, But way more so from Rangers. The Ratio of experienced player to bad player is about the same no matter which profession, but because more people play Rangers, you see more bad Rangers.
…Just a little bothered. Its not like Mordremoth’s going to take the sidelines while we fight the White Mantle and their unseen gods that are supposed to be extinct….right?
To be fair it is rather unlikely that the Mursaat would turn up with Mordy still alive, seeing as they ran away during the last Rise.
Yeah….the White Mantle (and their gods) are probably hiding in an underground bunker somewhere in the wasteland, Brotherhood of Steel style….
I was just screwing around with that Mursaat “being the progenitors of all human-like races” theory. Its so ridiculous, it could actually be…..nope, definitely not true!
But, the fact that some of the Margonites grew wings when Abaddon gave them power (they obviously didn’t have wings as humans!)…I think its more evidence than not that the Gods are/were humans at one point, and when they got power, some of them grew wings in the same way as the Margonites did.
Presumably, because there’s something inherent about their natural form’s appearance that causes the blindness, and they’re not capable of assuming a disguise that is exactly identical to their natural form that doesn’t have the blindness? Kind of like how nymphs in earlier editions of D&D could not turn off their ‘so beautiful that anything that looks at me risks getting blinded’ trait.
Really, this whole side of the argument rests on whether you think all of the gods (not just the darker ones like Abaddon and Balthazar, but also the gentler ones like Dwayna and Melandru) are heartless enough to deliberately blind somebody as ‘proof of their divinity’ – and that’s something I don’t think can be proven either way.
To be honest, though, it’s also kinda irrelevant: I could easily come up with explanations for the blinding property based on them being exactly what Gadd claims, having to do with high concentrations of magic in a smaller volume than the Elder Dragons. That half of them apparently have wings is, I think, a stronger piece of evidence against them all being humans.
But, Some of the Margonites, who were originally humans, grew wings when Abaddon gave them power. And it wasn’t just one type of wing, it was several variations. Isn’t it possible then, that if the Gods were originally humans, and when they obtained power and ascended to godhood, that they also grew several variations of wings, based on their nature, and the nature of the magic they absorbed? Even if you argue that Abaddon’s magic corrupted the Margonites and it was this corruption than gave way to those wings, it could also be assumed that Earth and Nature magic ‘corrupted’ Melandru when she absorbed that power, and grew wings as a result appropriate to the magic she absorbed?
I think the wing evidence falls apart when you expand the lore we’re looking at a little and consider this. With or without the wings, the possibility that (all) the gods could have once been humans is still in play. Their blinding divinity doesn’t really matter at this point, since we know that a human can absorb a god’s power and become a god, alleged divinity and all.
Its a distinction without a difference. If the Gods could hide their divinity, then why didn’t they? Why did they shut themselves away from the world after Malchor made the statues if they could hide their blindness inducing divinity? Why does it seem like the Gods treated their divinity like a curse that kept them from the humans they loved (well, some of them)? When we see a Blinded Rytlock later (if that’s who that is in that tumblr picture)…was he actually unconsciously blinded because he looked at the gods in their full divine glory, or was he blinded by more conscious means?
You guys are trying to make sense of a lore that will never work simply because it made sense in the framework of GW1 where we could play only humans and – unless we throw away 90% of that lore – cannot be applied to GW2’s attempts at creating a framework.
Five races, five different belief systems and since arenanet never presented us with a framework in which all of these belief systems would fit, we are left with speculations.
Eternal alchemy? Gods? Spirits? These can all be dismissed as racial beliefs but we would need something that explains how the world of Tyria works, preferably without totally disemboweling GW1 lore and with tons of retcons.Technically speaking the Eternal Alchemy is how everything fits together. It’s not so much a religion of worship as a scientific theory that there is an overarching structure to reality and that the deities of other race’s religions do fit into that.
Its like the Theory of Everything, only with lots of different Gods and types of Magic that go alongside the laws of physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything
Edit : Some of the Margonite also have wings (and were once humans before Abaddon transformed them)…what’s up with that?
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
…Just a little bothered. Its not like Mordremoth’s going to take the sidelines while we fight the White Mantle and their unseen gods that are supposed to be extinct….right?
On the part where you would go blind for looking on them…Its only a magic spell. It might be possible that you wouldn’t actually go blind for looking on the gods, but they casted that spell because they want to prove their own divinity.
If this was so, then why would they bother with the statues? The entire point behind the statues was because they could not stand before mortals without blinding them. If it were mere spell, they would have stood before mortals without blinding them. Or at the very least, they wouldn’t blind Malchor who made the statues.
Why indeed. If Lyssa could live hidden/veiled in the village of Wren, and not force the whole village to go blind, then obviously the Gods could stand before mortals without blinding them. If Lyssa could hide her blinding ‘divinity’ why can’t all the gods?
As Konig says, we have a range of other races that appear human-like, but are not – norn, dwarfs, and largos just off the top of my head (not including sylvari and margonites because they do have an evolutionary connection to humans – margonites are ex-humans, sylvari were modeled on humans). Three of the gods possess, or have been depicted with, wings – Dwayna, Melandru, and Abaddon. Wings are not a human trait, so either they added wings to themselves afterwards, or these three gods were not human in the first place, although clearly it is possible for humans to ascend to godhood.
And…in most fantasy setting, there are a lot of races that look like humans. So? In many of those fantasy settings, its explained why there are so many humanoid races (all have a common ancestor, god said so, the writer/devs said so, etc.)
So, which is it in Tyria? I’m not talking about just intelligent design, but evolution, magic, and science, as well. Why are there so many humanoid races? Here’s my crazy theory :::
Mursaat also look human, and they have wings. They were also a bit apprehensive towards other races, and disappeared at the time of the last rise of the elder dragons.
Because of the lack of evidence, Its just as likely that the Mursaat, instead of just hiding in the mists like cowards, did some experiments to find a way to kill the Elder dragons when they next arose, so it was actually them who created Dwarves, created Norn as an offshoot of the Jotun, created the Largos, and created the human race off of Tyria then brought them back. Based on this theory, the human gods are actually powerful Mursaat (which explains why many of them have wings), and Humans are actually an offshoot race of the Mursaat too.
Maybe its possible that so many of the gods also wore masks and helmets (Abaddon, Grenth, Balthazar, etc.) and changed their physical form (some removed the wings, other changed the form of their wings) so they would not look like traitorous Mursaat to Tyria’s other races and instigate a new war when they arrived. Maybe that’s why Balthazar was carrying his father’s head when he arrived on Tyria. There probably was a big disagreement between the allegedly larger pantheon of human gods off of Tyria before they arrive, and a war broke out, and the remaining victorious gods (Balthazar, Melandru, Dwayna, Abaddon, etc.) came to Tyria.
The human gods don’t necessarily have to be 100% human, but, they would have to have human qualities if they created humans, and the Mursaat and Dwarves are the only old races with those qualities.
Due to the lack of evidence, lets save that for another day or year, since, there is no evidence anywhere anyways to say why there are so many human-like races on Tyria.
sigh
It frustrates me whenever I see someone defining a god as something that can just wave their hand and cause anything that opposes them to simply disappear, if they could be bothered to do so. That may be the modern concept of a god in a monotheistic religion, but such gods work poorly in fantasy settings, unless they are portrayed as being as effectively completely non-interventionist.
Actually……..This is not a modern concept at all. Its been around for as long as monotheistic religions have, which have been around as long as polytheism has.
Gods in pantheist systems – and the religion of the Six is a pantheist system, even before we consider the possibility of other gods like Koda – are much more constrained. One of the characteristics of this constraint is that the gods often end up fighting primordial monsters that, while not considered to be gods, do represent a substantial threat to the gods. To give just one example, for instance, nobody thought less of Thor that he was destined to die fighting Jormungandr at Ragnarok. And all these gods looked human and could often breed with humans to beget demi-gods and other legendary figures, and yet were still regarded as something seperate to (and older than) humanity. In fact, while it’s not clear if it’s referencing their arrival on Tyria or their age in the wider universe, it has been stated in an old interview that ‘the gods are older than humanity, but not by much’.
I need to type my own sigh here.
Wikipedia says :::
Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god.
Polytheism refers to the worship of or belief in multiple deities usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals
Pantheism is actually what the Asura believe in. The Eternal Alchemy is the totality of the entire universe, and that, is what is divine. While they don’t say it. That is what is god to them, the totality of the universe.
Polytheism is what Humans and Norn believe in. There are many nature spirits and many gods, and they all have their own temples and rituals associated with them. It does not necessarily separate religions and cults (like Greek and Romans had), but it doesn’t need to.
Also, in all earthly examples, humanity was created in god’s (or the gods’) image. Which means the gods had to have human qualities to create man. They were literally almost human, if not for the almighty powers they had. It is required in every single creation myth on earth, and it might not be much different than Tyria. this leads to the next post.
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
Ranger main-hand torch idea I thought of and posted on August 2nd, 2013 ::::
Skill #1 : Chain Attack : Autoattack (Mainhand Torch Skill)
- Throw (1)
Throw your torch at foe. Cripples if target is moving.
-> Swing (2)
Swing your torch at foe.
-> Stab (3)
Stab foe with your torch. Applies Burning.
-> Smother (3)
Stab foe with your torch, Blinding them.
Skill #2 : (Mainhand Torch Skill)
- Salamander’s Ring
Evade in a circle around your foe, applying vulnerability. Also applies Burning to foes that enter this area. (combo field : Fire)
Salamander’s Breath
Evade in a circle around your foe, applying vulnerability. Also applies Blindness to foes that enter this area. (combo field : Smoke)
Skill #3 : (Mainhand Torch Skill)
- Extinguish
Douse your Torch’s flames, gaining stealth. no damage. All Torch attacks that cause burning cause Blindness instead. (Note: New skills are in Italic text that are changed)
-> Ignite (2)
Re-Ignite your Torches early, surprising surrounding foes and applying Vulnerability. no damage. Your Pet’s next attack also applies Vulnerability.
Skill #4 : (Offhand Torch Skill)
- Throw Torch
Throw your Torch and Burn your foe.
Throw Torch
Throw your Torch and Blind your foe.
Skill #5 : (Offhand Torch Skill)
- Bonfire
Set a fire around you, Burning foes. (combo field : Fire)
Ashcloud
Kick up a cloud of ash and dust, Blinding foes. (combo field : Smoke)
Philosophically, if a being has all the properties of a God then what stops it actually being a God? I don’t think there is much point in discussing whether the human gods were actually gods or not since they acted like gods and will remain gods to the humans who worship them. There are no other gods to compare them to, not yet anyway.
…Elder Dragons? Their minions, as mindless as they are, regard their respective elder dragon as the supreme power….a God….and we killed one of those. And just like what happened when we killed a human god, that power went somewhere.
Seems like a good point to start comparisons to me.
So, does anyone have any evidence that the human gods aren’t humans?
You can argue that they are divine beings, but that theory falls apart when you consider how ‘divinity’ has been abused in our history. Kings throughout history have claimed divine right to rule countries, and even farther back in history, Egyptian Pharaohs claimed to be literal gods, and the punishment for saying otherwise was death.
Its very possible that the gods are only claiming to be divine, because they have enough power to make such claims.
On the part where you would go blind for looking on them…Its only a magic spell. It might be possible that you wouldn’t actually go blind for looking on the gods, but they casted that spell because they want to prove their own divinity. We didn’t go blind when we were fighting Abaddon…..and even Dhuum who wasn’t really much of a god at that point, the point still stands. They were both still gods, and if they were actually gods…and divine, then their divinity would have caused us to go blind, and thus end the fight before it even starts. If one ‘god’ can make you go blind, then all the gods should make you go blind, but that is not the case.
On their immortality…magic. This game takes place in a world that is filled with magic. Its far more than possible that these gods, discovered the secrets to immortality through magic. Were they humans when they came to Tyria…probably not. They were already more than powerful enough to call themselves gods at that point, but, so were the Mursaat later on, and probably what was left of the forgotten and seers if they demanded that lesser beings call them gods too.
There’s more evidence to point out that the gods weren’t ‘gods’, just really powerful beings (and possibly humans), than there is to say that aren’t.
Just as a regular musing on the phylosophy of elements, not entirely related to the GW2 universe, just some thinking i have:
The original 4 elements of Plato mostly explain the 3 stages of matter, (earth-solid, water-liquid, air-gas) and the fourth “element” fire, being the concept of change, or basicly Temperature, the key between the three stages of matter.
Another thought concerning the element of Life or Preservation. This element is usually associated to be the polar opposite of Death and Destruction, rightly so. However when it comes to undead creatures, we usually immedietly jump to the conclusion that undeath is connected to Death. I cant imagine why, though. Its un-death. If anything, undeath is the unnatural preservation of something that should be dead. Death is as much about change as Fire, the transition between stages, while Preservation and Necromancy are about keeping the status quo permanently if possible.
By this viewpoint, the difference between a healer and a necromancer is mostly who, what and why they practice their arts on. While a healer uses aspects of preservation and restoration on the living to keep them alive, their own souls in their own body, healthy and all, a necromancer would use other alien (or the original subjects) souls/spirits/raw life-force to animate magically preserved dead matter, be it a fresh corpse, or a construct made of flesh (GW minions) or something else (golems).
The attached picture is the classical Greek interpretation of the four elements by Aristotle. While it explains the Elementalist rather well….doesn’t help with Elder Dragons when you have elements like Plant and Shadow being thrown into the mix.
(although it is interesting to note that we have a hot, wet, cold, and possibly dry dragon (Primordus, DSD, Jormag, Kralkatorrik))…..Wherever Anet got their inspiration for the Elder dragons, they either made up the hierarchy on the spot, or they got their ideas from a much more complex model.
Here’s a question…
If the ‘human’ gods aren’t humans, why do they take human form?
Good luck finding an answer that makes sense. While they’re at it, maybe someone can explain why ascended trinkets still don’t exist for stat combinations like Magi and Cavalier.
I’m just going to say straw hat, even though there are many different kinds and variations and names of these hats, even inside of countries and cultures, there are different types.
Don’t forget different time periods and purposes.
The most basic purpose of a hat is to protect the head/neck/face from the elements, especially if its a simple straw hat. Time period doesn’t matter, the purpose is always the same, whether its a Cone Hat, or a Sombrero.
I’m just going to say straw hat, even though there are many different kinds and variations and names of these hats, even inside of countries and cultures, there are different types. Its a hat made of dried plant, and its purpose is to protect your face/head/neck from the sun. It doesn’t really matter which part of the world it came from.
((Seriously, anytime you guys want to argue on the finer points between a Fedora and a Homburg, or argue about the differences between a Capitano hat and a Cavalier hat, let me know.))
Making the baseless assumption that the Deap Sea Dragon looks like an Asian type of dragon and that Kuunavang is related to him somehow……
Seiryu – Azure Dragon?
Shiryu – Dragon King?
This is if it starts with an S…if not, its going to be like a 1 in 100,000 guess unless we get more information
I run through all living story missions using Magi gear, in a Beastmaster build (….sometimes I switch to a rabid trap build, but never zerker/assassin gear). No problems here…
(also, the last few bosses of that area don’t even require you do deal that much damage. Its the mechanics of the fight that count rather than bursting the enemy down in 15 seconds with loads of damage.)
Logic =/= fantasy mmorpg.
Good luck spreading the word to the hundreds of mmo’s who use rangers with bows and not rifles.
But…GW2 is not those hundreds of other MMOs.
So when the dragons return to the dream the gods wake up or return and vice versa? It’s a very yin and yang thing to me.
I really think the Abaddon Statue and Antikytheria on the ceiling are foreshadowing of bad things to happen at the Priory. Nothing good will come of having that statue there.
Collecting parts of ED should be at least dangerous too. Especially in one place. Maybe Priory will be destroyed in future. They gather knownledge and dangerous things.
Btw this norn master chef that wanna make his own bloodstone-food cart < I think he is under Mordemoth influence. Mordemoth wanna eat bloodstone and asking how to prepare it.
And on that note, you can talk to someone in the library that tells you about the magical protections keeping the place safe. They also say that as the magic of the world is drained, those magical protections get weaker. An elder dragon will make a move when that happens.
Also, Bloodstone dust….I think Anet is telling us why there is no 500 chef….yet
There is a book in the library where the author says there are no known connections between dragons and the gods. Not sure if this is AN way of saying yo good theories and all but its not it or just saying there is no connection found in-game yet?
It also gets more complicated when you consider the Bloodstone, and that there are only four schools of magic contained in them (what are there two schools that aren’t or something?). It seems like there are lots of things at play, but they don’t necessarily have to be joined at the hip in order to work.
Take Greek Mythology for example. There was a pantheon of Gods with Uranos in charge, a pantheon with Kronos in charge, and a pantheon with Zeus in charge. But, the Primordial forces/elements that made up the universe never changed.
It seems like in GW2, the Dragons are the Primordial forces/elements required for the world to work, and the human gods were just the Flavor of the month(/year/century/millennium) pantheon that so happened to be in charge at the time. Then there is the four schools of magic in the bloodstones to contend with as well that don’t currently equate themselves with any god or dragon.
If this is the case, then you cannot equate the Gods with Elder Dragons.
…..
You can, however, relate the Elder Dragons with the six orbs, and equate those six orbs with the *Anti*kyTheria.
Anti-Tyria…..It seems appropriate, considering that when the Dragons wake up, they absorb all the magic on Tyria, literally killing the planet before they go to sleep (or at least all life on the planet)
((Also, I still think that when “…The Author calls it the Antikytheria, describing it as a cosmic mechanism made of many parts…” Anet is directly referencing the real world Antikythera mechanism, and is telling us that the Eternal Alchemy/universe/etc. is quite literally a very complex machine made up of many different moving parts.))
Everything is related (obviously), but I don’t think its always a one to one comparison.
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
my (simplified) opinion….
I think its referencing the fact that the universe is a complex machine, a computer (eternal alchemy) :::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
(edited by Chrispy.5641)
When I did it as Ranger, my pet got the protection when I got it, but switching to a new pet removed the buff for it. Any creature/minion/etc. you summon after you receive the buff doesn’t seem to get it applied to them either.
(Also, yeah, Invulnerabilities really help a lot in that place)
A Dragon Age style Codex would be cool. There is no better way to collect information and have it all presented in a centralized interface than that….Other than maybe giving us a bunch of collectible books that we can buy/sell like in Elder Scrolls. Or, combine ideas from a bunch of different games into one, and use the recent changes to Mini’s as inspiration::
When you find a Book/scroll/picture/artifact/etc., You can use it to read/look at its contents (Bring up a model of the Artifact/Picture that we can rotate and zoom in on to examine more closely [tomb raider and uncharted have this feature]. Books and Scrolls could be a model [like elder scrolls], or just text works too [like dragon age]). Then, you have the option to right click the book/artifact, and add it to your library, which you can access at anytime through the hero panel, but you lose the item in your inventory. Complete your collection for achievement points and special rewards.
Expanding our access to lore this way is much more preferable than having to read wiki’s and watch youtube videos, or even having to revisit very specific areas to read this stuff.
Ranger has always been based on several different Archetypes rolled into one. They have a little bit of Archer, little bit of Hunter, little bit of Druid, little bit of Beastmaster, etc.. This doesn’t mean that Ranger has to be more for one than the other.
With how this game works (and how any class can fill any role), there should be nothing wrong with a Ranger holding a Rifle, standing right next to a Ranger holding a Staff.
The only problem I see with rifles is that it would be too much like our bows. It would either be condition based like the shortbow, or it would be damage based like the longbow. Sure, Warriors have rifles and longbows, but there’s probably a good reason why they also aren’t running around with shortbows and pistols. If Anet introduces rifles for Rangers, then I hope to hell that its unique enough to have been worth the effort.
A new Maize balm thread has been here for more than an hour without being closed. I think its a new record!!!
@Tiger, unless Anet codes it in, it should behave like any other holiday item in the game, and work outside of the holiday timeframe.
Rune of Balance (My Version)
1) +25 Healing Power
2) Lose a condition if enemy has less conditions than you (30s cooldown)
3) +50 Healing Power
4) Gain a boon if enemy has more boons than you (30s cooldown)
5) +100 Healing Power
6) When using a Healing skill, receive more healing if any enemy in combat has more health than you.(10s cooldown)(1000 +100% of healing power)*
[at maximum healing power levels, this is equal to 3000 extra health]
*Rune of the Water heals you and 4 allies for 690(+50% of healing power) and 15% boon duration as a 6th bonus (which makes it much stronger than Rune of the Flock which only has the heal as a 6th rune bonus and its 2nd and 4th rune bonuses don’t really justify the 6th bonus being weaker….and people wonder why we complain about unbalanced runes?….not that my suggestions are balanced either, they probably aren’t)
Nope, stating a opinion when i say. over time, they added updates that ruined the original games experience.
Fixed that for you.
I actually did mean FACT, gg.
Of course you meant it. Meaning or believing an opinion doesn’t make it a fact. If it did…my signed copy of book five of the Wheel of Time is worth a million dollars. I’m willing to sell.
They may have ruined the game for you but others like the changes.
If you look at the majority of the posts for the NPE they are negative, the same could be said for the changes to the Gem exchange. these are not the only instances Anet has gotten feedback from the COMMUNITY and elected to ignore it. for example, how many people kitten on the megaservers. i still have a go at the devs from time to time on the matter, because it removed the communities we worked so hard to build. one in specific was Tarnished Coast, a server community that is now but a memory for those who worked so hard to build it. only to be torn down by anet’s lack of caring.
A majority of people sharing an opinion does not make it a fact. It makes it a popular opinion.
What a scary thought though. Did the earth stop being flat when that belief became unpopular or was it round all along? Was the earth the center of the solar system originally only to be moved to the third orbit around the sun when beliefs changed ?
Typicaly speaking, when the post gets so many nasty responses. you would figure anet would realize they did mess up and fix it.
Never said otherwise.
Nasty responses do not make for facts, just nasty opinions. The real question is how representative of the player base as a whole are those individuals who make those nasty posts you mention ?
If a few dozen angry individuals posting over and over again generate a thread with hundreds, or even thousands, of responses…but thousands of individuals continue to happily play the game, who should Anet listen to?
Personally I do not like the NPE. Don’t care for the trait changes (but they don’t affect me much so my dislike is largely irrelevant) either. I have mixed feelings about the Megaserver (like some aspects dislike others) but the aspects I dislike about it don’t seem to be being fixed or worked on so I am liking it less as time goes by.
But my negative opinion about those aspects of the game do not mean that it is a fact that they ruined the game.
But…would it ruin the experience for someone who enjoys leveling alts, but hates the NPE, and no longer plays guildwars 2 anymore because his biggest joy was just destroyed? This makes it a “Fact” that Anet ruined the game for them.
Welcome to capitalism and the gaming market!
95% of all MMO games are just clones of pen and paper D&D. Though I suppose if you’re young and have no concept of RPG history, it might seem pretty cool. If you don’t want people to complain, perhaps you should consider encouraging game makers to stop repeating 40 year old gaming tropes.
you must be kidding? D&D? If that (original) game would have to be pitched today, the presenter would be tossed out after 10 minutes. “Too complicated, people will not understand the system”, and they would probably be right. Even WotC themselves dumb down the game since 3.5 and in the process have turned it into a travesty of itself. I sure WISH game designers would be inspired by original D&D. As for tropes – the whole fantasy genre heavily draws on myth and fairy tales and usually adds some very mediocre writing and imagination to it (yeah, please don´t cite Tolkien, compare his works to real great writers, glorified anglo-saxon myth fan fiction at best). Don´t blame D&D for that either.
I can tell you’re not part of the original D&D crowd. All of the core concepts of RPG and MMO games like, Hit points, damage types, damage resistance, hit percentages, armor, weapon types, character classes, ALL OF IT, comes from original D&D. If it were too complicated and would be chucked out, then this game wouldn’t exist (srsly, how could you say that, in light of the game you’re playing?).
Bring on the day when game designers have a truly original idea.
Actually, it didn’t come from D & D. All those mechanics came from Chainmail. Someone that was actually part of the original D&D crowd would have known that.
I love laying in wait for you guys: D&D was a Chainmail expansion. Chainmail was a wargame, not an RPG, and it didn’t include any of the rules for the core mechanics that we recognize today as the foundation of RPGs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_%28game%29
What about Armor Class? Armor/Defense/Toughness is in 99.999% of all RPGs today, and even non-RPGs. That foundation is something we can definitely blame (or give credit to) Chainmail for.