Guild Wars 2

maha.7902:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

not really. you can run a squishy AP support (sona, annie, something like that), adc, assassin mid lane and two bruisers as jungler and top lane and you could probably win the game if you split pushed well or got ahead enough in the laning phase that the weakness of your composition’s team fight was irrelevant since you had a gold lead.

In LoL it’s possible to win with everything. They have 100+ champions and make almost all of them viable. You see a fed Nasus, Leona and Amumu coming your way backed by a Vayne and Ziggs, you know the game is over – and there you have 3 tanks 2 nukers. Here in GW2, we have 25 gear sets and people manage to find ways of playing with 1 of them only. It’s a disgrace. Funny thing is, so many people I have seen in GW2 will easily discard LoL as a kittenty teenager game when it’s actually far better designed when it comes to diversity.

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

dlonie.6547:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Some people are saying that this game doesn’t have a hard trinity. It doesn’t, but there’s 25 gear sets in game. There clearly are mechanics in this game that allow condition builds, tank builds, healing builds, nuker builds, CC builds, etc etc.

They have uses in other game modes, and serve as training wheels for while you’re learning and need more survivability. Other builds besides direct damage are still viable, just not optimal.

Keep in mind that the “dungeons are stale” argument has two prongs:

1) We’ve memorized the encounter so that we can use active defenses to avoid damage.
2) We’ve run the godkitten things so many times that most players don’t want to spend time with just “viable” builds. They want to get through the content as quickly as possible, get their reward, and move on — because we’re bored.

A non-zerk party is fully capable of clearing any content in the game — just not as fast as zerks will. Since the dungeons just aren’t as interesting during the 500th time through, most PUGs ask for speedy groups — enter zerk meta.

- Condition damage isn’t significant enough. A condition build should be doing 0 damage with autoattacks, and tons of damage with conditions, in order to snowball and defeat anything that allows the battle to go on for too long.

I think you’re a bit extreme (0 damage with autoattacks…that’ll go over well…). But I agree on premise that conditions are horribly broken in the current state of PvE. Looks like HoT should address some of that, but we’ll see…..

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

Again, a bit extreme. I’m not sure how well the whole “unkillable” thing would work out in practice.

- Nukers have way too much survivability. People in Berzerker gear should be going down in 1 shot to champions unless buffed by guardians or other healers.
- Healers/buffers should provide tons more healing, along with party buffs that increase damage and armor. Having 1 support in a team should be more useful than having a damage dealer. If for example a support class is giving a 30% damage increase to everyone in the party, he’s actually creating more damage than a nuker alone would.

Lumped these together because they’re related. It really sounds like you want a trinity, which will not happen.

Healers aren’t needed — each player is his own healer, and has a strong burst heal, and usually a few heal-over-time traits hidden within their tree (and then there’s food…).

We have strong support. A banner-wielding warrior with Empower Allies or Phalanx Strength will increase party DPS by a very significant amount. A thief with offhand pistol will provide tons of support against trash autoattacks. A guardian with WoR or mesmer with feedback provide an amazing level of defensive support against projectiles. A mesmer with timewarp boosts party DPS quite a bit for a period of time.

The difference is that these support mechanisms are tied to traits, utility skills, and profession mechanics, not gear. Which as I mentioned earlier, is a good thing IMO. Much less hassle.

By “0 damage from autoattacks,” “unkillable tanks” “nukers going down in 1 shot”, I obviously meant these as hyperboles, exagerations.

The rest of what you said, well, you just made a list there of everything that is wrong with this game – healers not being needed due to each class having too much heal burst, full supportive classes not being useful due to warriors being able to both support and do damage, and so on and so forth.

In the end it just proves that the trinity concept really isn’t something you can escape from if you want a balanced game. It doesn’t have to be a trinity, with enough creativity you can probably get at least 5 or more essential roles. Ideally, there would be 25 “essential”, playable roles with each gear set (that’s never going to happen, but one can only dream of). There should be more than just one setup that allowed extremely fast dungeon clearing. Finishing a dungeon with 5 of the same builds should be impossible, especially with glasscannon builds.

Arcadio.6875:

The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast. Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

Vargamonth.2047:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Most of those MMOs which are older than GW2 do not feature action based combat and active defenses.

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Some people are saying that this game doesn’t have a hard trinity. It doesn’t, but there’s 25 gear sets in game. There clearly are mechanics in this game that allow condition builds, tank builds, healing builds, nuker builds, CC builds, etc etc. The problems are:

- Condition damage isn’t significant enough. A condition build should be doing 0 damage with autoattacks, and tons of damage with conditions, in order to snowball and defeat anything that allows the battle to go on for too long.

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

- Nukers have way too much survivability. People in Berzerker gear should be going down in 1 shot to champions unless buffed by guardians or other healers.

- Healers/buffers should provide tons more healing, along with party buffs that increase damage and armor. Having 1 support in a team should be more useful than having a damage dealer. If for example a support class is giving a 30% damage increase to everyone in the party, he’s actually creating more damage than a nuker alone would.

The armor sets have been added to GW2 for a good reason, but they were poorly designed. This game is kind of like good old Pokemon: you can build whatever you want and should be able to play the game in whatever style you want. 20+ year old Pokemon got it right and made toxic stack teams work, made tank/outlast teams work, made nuker teams work, there is no reason that 2012 GW2 can’t do the same.

cthaeh.2168:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Maybe you should post this on the WoW or LoL forums where it would actually be relevant.

You just didn’t understand. You are saying that the reason the glasscanon meta exists in GW2 is because people know the game too well. I’m saying that your statement is false. To prove that it’s false, I’m mentionning WoW and LoL as examples, where people know the dungeons/maps/gameplay by perfection and still use standard nuker/tank/healer setups.

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Gibson.4036:

MrRuin.9740:

Since you were keeping score, it sounds to me that with your apparant lack of imagination, you are the one losing.

Actually, the fact that we keep engaging his silliness, and the thread keeps going, is a kind of win for Dawnbreaker.

Still waiting for the answer on how DB goes about breaking dawn. Hope I didn’t miss it somewhere back in the last two pages.

Well it’s a very long story and I wish I had a board here to make a drawing for you, but I don’t, so I will have to use ascii instead. See, first you have to understand that I don’t break the dawn. I break way for the dawn. I make the dawn happen. That’s how my name is supposed to be understood.

Now, you see, you have to understand it this way. Think that this symbol is the sun’s rays: O, this symbol is me, a warrior with a sword: /, and this is the night wall: |

See, we are all on the surface of the planet, right? So the planet is rotating, and the sun rays are illuminating the part of the Earth which is turned to the Sun. But the problem is, there are night walls preventing the Earth from rotating, so I run around the earth breaking the walls for the dawn to arrive.

O —--> / —-—> |

There are 10 such night walls around the Earth, and each time one of them is aligned with the Sun, it locks the Earths rotation and I have to continue my journey around the Earth to break the next wall so as to unlock the Earth’s rotation and keep it spinning, allowing for the dawn to get to all the parts of the world. It is a very busy job.

I think this might have been confusing but you get the general idea I hope.

Dude… what the absolute kitten? You’re going to put out this as an explanation of your name, but Tequatle is a problem for you? Seriously?

My story is more coherent.

Gibson.4036:

MrRuin.9740:

Since you were keeping score, it sounds to me that with your apparant lack of imagination, you are the one losing.

Actually, the fact that we keep engaging his silliness, and the thread keeps going, is a kind of win for Dawnbreaker.

Still waiting for the answer on how DB goes about breaking dawn. Hope I didn’t miss it somewhere back in the last two pages.

Well it’s a very long story and I wish I had a board here to make a drawing for you, but I don’t, so I will have to use ascii instead. See, first you have to understand that I don’t break the dawn. I break way for the dawn. I make the dawn happen. That’s how my name is supposed to be understood.

Now, you see, you have to understand it this way. Think that this symbol is the sun’s rays: O, this symbol is me, a warrior with a sword: /, and this is the night wall: |

See, we are all on the surface of the planet, right? So the planet is rotating, and the sun rays are illuminating the part of the Earth which is turned to the Sun. But the problem is, there are night walls preventing the Earth from rotating, so I run around the earth breaking the walls for the dawn to arrive.

O —--> / —-—> |

There are 10 such night walls around the Earth, and each time one of them is aligned with the Sun, it locks the Earths rotation and I have to continue my journey around the Earth to break the next wall so as to unlock the Earth’s rotation and keep it spinning, allowing for the dawn to get to all the parts of the world. It is a very busy job.

I think this might have been confusing but you get the general idea I hope.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Actually Tequatle operates under real Tyrian physics. In Tyria earth is lighter than air while in the presence of a strong magical field and over water. As a result of their undeath the dragons are constantly in a strong magical field and also count as and contain a large quantity of earth. Since the undead dragons tend to operate almost exclusively around large concentrations of water their mass is negated by this physical property of Tyria.

Do you have a source to backup these claims? Or are you just inventing this as you go?

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Gibson.4036:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Tequatl is not normal everyday magic.

I’ve always hated normal, everyday magic. Kinda takes the wonder out if it.

I thought “normal, everyday magic” was with playing cards and pulling quarters out of ears.

No I meant floating rocks are normal everyday magic.

MrRuin.9740:

I can’t believe this topic exists.
The ‘unrealistic’ things in this game far outweigh the things that are ‘realistic’. How did the blocks float in Mario Bros? More importantly, who cares? Mario was never claiming to be based in reality and neither is GW2. Why would you come to a fantasy game, filled with dragons, magic, talking cats and where imagination is the only limit and look for ‘realism’? And even appear upset, not at the fact that its an undead dragon, in a fantasy world, being taken down by talking cats and munchkins, but that it can fly? That’s where the line is drawn? LOL
Since you were keeping score, it sounds to me that with your apparant lack of imagination, you are the one losing.

Well actually I am winning because I still don’t see Tequatl having a keel anywhere in his body.

HawkMeister.4758:

One word: CHARR!
There´s you´re “modern day” military right in game. And even much more advanced due to all the Asura and Sylvari augmented technologies blended with Charr-tech, resulting in the Pact´s war machines.

So the answer would be, not a chance.
As the Pact version of the Vietnam defeat shows.

Our modern military is far superior to the Charr military as seen in game. They have steampunk1910’s war machines and I haven’t seen them use planes. You can’t compare the in game engineer rifles to modern machine guns, and their artillery doesn’t have 1/10th the range or firepower our artillery does.

A pact airship would stand no chance against a fighter jet, it’s much, much slower and too big a target. Asura do have very advanced technology, but when it comes to weapons the best I see are the megalasers, which would make an efficient anti-air weapon but otherwise too slow to reload.

Could our own, real-life military wage war on Mordermoth and its minions and win? Based on our highest available technology (aka USA army much), with helicopters, fighter jets, artillery, infantry and tanks, but not nuclear weapons.

Thoughts?

I’m giving 10 gold to whoever makes the 200th post. No joke.

Also, Star Wars technology is still more believable than Tequatl.

Natto.5819:

It’s cute how we are debating the science of something that doesn’t exist in real life. But to say that it’s poor design to not put wings on rocks is… pretty stupid. I give this post a 9 out of 10 for trolling.

No, it’s poor design for arrows to be infinite and for Charr tanks to have no real physics (you can go through them in quests, they have no gravity, 100% scripted)

Floating rocks could use some wings, but they are fine like this.

Tequatl is not normal everyday magic.

Fringilla Vigo.8594:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Fringilla Vigo.8594:

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Why is my ranger shooting arrows with out ever reloading?
Where exactly are all the barrage arrows coming from?
How is my mesmer able to clone herself?
Why is it that Warriors can drop banners and make us stronger? Or revive us?
Why can I rub people’s toes to bring them back to life?
Why don’t the people of Nebo Terrace just move?
Why do the same bosses show up every day at the same time to fight us?
And more importantly, why are we all not dead from shooting/stabbing each other all the time at large boss encounters?

You, sir, just stole my arguments ;-)

To the OP: I really can’t believe you brought up that question.

In the world where:
- Guardian can teleport by swinging the sword and heal his comrades by swinging staff

- Warrior can revive dead teammates by placing banner in the grounds, which is produced out of nowhere

- Engineer can jump by shooting rifle to the ground and place heavy mechanical turrets (assumably heavier than the engineer himself) which are pulled out of nowhere

- Ranger can shoot never ending arrows

- Thief can fly on the arrows he shoots

- Necromancer can draw the circles in the distances. By stepping into this remotely drawn circles you will get poisoned and chilled and god knows what else

- Mesmer can shoot the laser beams from the greatsword that somehow spins in the air

- Elementalist can create firebolts raining from the sky by swinging his staff

Is Tequatl that technically couldn’t fly yet flying is really your biggest concern in terms of violating the laws of physics?

Edited for mispellings

Well yes, because here’s the thing. Those things are normal magic. But Tequatl actually has wings and actually flaps his wings to fly, so I assume that he’s using his wings to fly, not magic. I don’t see him summon a magic carpet to fly or a broomstick, he clearly uses his physical (in game) wings to fly. The wings would never work, you have to admit that.

Ok. Now I understand. there is “normal magic” and “abnormal magic”. And, of course, you are the only one that has power to objectively decide which category does Tequatl belong to and which category infinite arrows belong to.
And which one is acceptable, and which one is abominable.

I really understand where you are coming from and what are you trying to prove, but here you are breaking the basic laws of logic.

If there are some rules that apply to certain world/universe/setting/whatever else, they always apply to literally everything. And they have some logical implications.
So, lets say for the sake of argument, you create a world where literally everyone can bend wood to shape it the way they want it to be. Well, you can’t have carpenters in this world, since there will be simply no need for them.

And if you want to prove that tequatl ability to fly is not acceptable because the laws of physics – well, there’s thousands upon a thousands other things that violate that clearly violate these laws in the game. Go to Caledon forest and see the rocks flying. Is that the “normal magic”. Do they use the flying carpets or other gimmicks? No. What do you think makes tequatl speciapl in that regard.

By the way – carrying heavy turrets and having infinite arrows is “normal magic” but dragons – creatures that in most of the movies/books/whatever else are considered magical creatures by nature – you want to apply laws of physics to them?
Intriguing concept to say the least.

The infinite arrows problem is not a matter of magic. It’s a matter of poor gameplay design. Nowadays it’s very easy to design a game where arrows have a limited use, heck even back in the days of Runescape that game had limited arrows. Here in GW2, Anet are just too lazy to design a proper quiver and arrows, as they are also lazy to design proper collision mechanics/physics for pact airships, Charr tanks and many other things in game.

The rocks in Caledon forest are blatantly offered as “magical”. They don’t have wings or anything. They are obvious magic. With Tequatl they gave him wings and all the animations that go with them, but we are also supposed to believe that it’s actually magic making him fly. They are trying to get two worlds and failing at both.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That’s no big deal until people try to impose what they know from Earth on the game — that automatically creates tons of potential contradictions and doesn’t allow the writers to tell any sort of story. Players (and readers, film-goes, and TV-watchers) have to accept the initial premise, or there’s no story to tell.

I think that it’s very much possible to design a dragon in game that looks terrifying and would actually be capable of flight in real life. Bethesda tried to go there with the Skyrim dragons. They are not perfectly aerodynamic and still probably wouldn’t be able to fly in real life, especially not hover like they do, but it’s still a better shot at making a believable dragon than Tequatl.

Fringilla Vigo.8594:

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Why is my ranger shooting arrows with out ever reloading?
Where exactly are all the barrage arrows coming from?
How is my mesmer able to clone herself?
Why is it that Warriors can drop banners and make us stronger? Or revive us?
Why can I rub people’s toes to bring them back to life?
Why don’t the people of Nebo Terrace just move?
Why do the same bosses show up every day at the same time to fight us?
And more importantly, why are we all not dead from shooting/stabbing each other all the time at large boss encounters?

You, sir, just stole my arguments ;-)

To the OP: I really can’t believe you brought up that question.

In the world where:
- Guardian can teleport by swinging the sword and heal his comrades by swinging staff

- Warrior can revive dead teammates by placing banner in the grounds, which is produced out of nowhere

- Engineer can jump by shooting rifle to the ground and place heavy mechanical turrets (assumably heavier than the engineer himself) which are pulled out of nowhere

- Ranger can shoot never ending arrows

- Thief can fly on the arrows he shoots

- Necromancer can draw the circles in the distances. By stepping into this remotely drawn circles you will get poisoned and chilled and god knows what else

- Mesmer can shoot the laser beams from the greatsword that somehow spins in the air

- Elementalist can create firebolts raining from the sky by swinging his staff

Is Tequatl that technically couldn’t fly yet flying is really your biggest concern in terms of violating the laws of physics?

Edited for mispellings

Well yes, because here’s the thing. Those things are normal magic. But Tequatl actually has wings and actually flaps his wings to fly, so I assume that he’s using his wings to fly, not magic. I don’t see him summon a magic carpet to fly or a broomstick, he clearly uses his physical (in game) wings to fly. The wings would never work, you have to admit that.

DigitalForce.5602:

All, I’ll make this brief:

I dinged 80 while ago but never did much after that. I ran a few dungeons and then all my friends stopped playing. I dove back in today to try to find a beta portal farming events in Dry Top. I’ve noticed that my survivability and DPS really suck. My gear is pretty low end.

So, what to do for a good gear boost? Trading Post? Dungeon Runs? Please let me know as there are so many currencies and areas to go, I’m a bit lost.

Thanks in advance!

I play my Ele with valkyrie gear and exuberance runes. They are otherwise far too squishy. I highly recommend this set above zerker. Really good all-round setup for PvE. Exuberance runes are however the most expensive, better get a cheaper alternative. Most people will tell you that “only zerk is viable”, but I think there’s a little bit more a-priori to that than you might think.

phokus.8934:

OP seems like a blast to talk about movies as well.

“The DeLorean cannot time travel because it’s made of low grade aluminum and not high conductive unobtanium which is used to time travel.”

Suspend belief for a FANTASY game where people shoot fireballs out of staves, people teleporting, and growing magical wings.

Keyword, magical.

You must have never watched CinemaSins.

Well yeah let’s hear your explanation on how a fireball comes out of a staff?

serenke.4806:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

serenke.4806:

May i remind you that “there’s something in the water! help!”?

Tequatl originally comes from under water. Can a creature like that swim? Wouldn’t it sink? What is it made of anyway? Maybe it’s not 100 tons, maybe it’s made of ultralight composite materials with hollow bones.

For that matter, my mesmer makes a greatsword levitate and shoot a purple ray at things. I believe at the moment that is also impossible according to our understanding of physics.

Of course it can swim, blue whales are also gigantic like that and they swim around easily.

Also, dragons in Skyrim are dragons, not “wyverns”. Why? Because that’s what the devs decided. Neither of those creatures exist in real life, so what they are called boils down to what people want to call them, not to what some guy in the past decided to call them.

My point is, you don’t know what tequatl is made of. It does not look like a blue whale which would have a lot of fat. Do you know for certain how heavy undead material is?

It’s like living material but it has decayed.

serenke.4806:

May i remind you that “there’s something in the water! help!”?

Tequatl originally comes from under water. Can a creature like that swim? Wouldn’t it sink? What is it made of anyway? Maybe it’s not 100 tons, maybe it’s made of ultralight composite materials with hollow bones.

For that matter, my mesmer makes a greatsword levitate and shoot a purple ray at things. I believe at the moment that is also impossible according to our understanding of physics.

Of course it can swim, blue whales are also gigantic like that and they swim around easily.

Also, dragons in Skyrim are dragons, not “wyverns”. Why? Because that’s what the devs decided. Neither of those creatures exist in real life, so what they are called boils down to what people want to call them, not to what some guy in the past decided to call them.

But then if Tequatl can fly anytime then why does it land at all? Couldn’t it just grab something really big with its mouth and drop it on the megalazer? Or on the crowd of players?…

Dayra.7405:

The physics behind undead dragons or why Tequatl can fly

Living consist mostly of water and water is the main reason of weight of Living. On dead living dry out and dead creatures are also infected by bacteria that produce Methane. Methane is slightly lighter than normal air.

So Tequal is a kind of Methane-ballone where his cells are now filled with Methane instead of Water, making him in total only slightly heavier than air, a weight his wings can easily cary in air.

Methane is also burnable (-> dragon-fire), the smell of Tequatl breath that let us all run away when he cries does NOT come from Methane (it’s odorless) but from Hydrogen sulfide also produced as Tequal is rotting since ages.

Summary: If we would have undead dragons on earth they could fly on earth without any magic

Not a bad theory at all, especially the fact you go into chemistry. But I think the quantity of methane would not be enough. Look at how much helium it takes to pull anything heavy off the ground, manned helium balloons are gigantic, and helium is significantly lighter than oxygen.

But, now I have a question for the people who have been saying “it’s magic”. If it’s magic, then why does he need wings at all? The wings are completely obsolete, they are not helping at all.

Ariurotl.3718:

Saying “it’s magic” is not a cop-out, not in fantasy RPGs where pretty much everything works differently from real life.

Dragons aren’t supposed to fly? Well, giant crabs, spiders and scorp… err… devourers aren’t scientifically possible either, because the ratio of exoskeleton mass to muscle power renders any such creature over a certain size extremely fragile. Same goes for giant mosquitoes.

90% of skills characters have are impossible in real life, 90% of fantastic creatures inhabiting Tyria are impossible in real life… “it’s magic” is not a cop-out, it’s the foundation.

Did you know that giant insects have existed on Earth? The size they are in game is kind of possible.

Danikat.8537:

3. Isn’t really an issue since the game isn’t set on earth. The fact that most real-life terrestrial and amphibious vertebrates are tetrapods (have 4 limbs) is just one of those quirks of evolution, like the fact that most also have (or had at some point in their past) 5 digits at the end of those limbs.

The first vertebrates to move onto land (the ancestors of all modern amphibians, mammals, birds and reptiles) just happened to have 4 limbs, and so most of their descendants do too. (Except where they’ve lost them through evolution like snakes and cetaceans.)

They were equally likely to have 6 like most insects, or 8 or 10. (Because of earlier evolution most animals are also bilaterally symmetrical which makes odd numbers of limbs unlikely. Any more than 10 limbs tends to get impractical, particularly for vertebrates – the downsides of them getting in each others way and limiting movement outweighs the benefits of being able to use them, because there’s only so many things an animal can do at once anyway. 2 is also possible but it limits your options, which makes the type of diversity we see among modern tetrapods unlikely.)

Or there could have been multiple animals that made the shift onto land and we could today see 4 limbed mammals but 6 limbed reptiles, and both 4 and 6 limbed birds (although the two kinds of groups would actually be largely unrelated, a form of convergent evolution).

On Tyria it’s entirely possible some animals that look similar to earth tetrapods actually evolved to have 6 limbs.

As for 1 and 2 however, you’re probably right. It’s a common problem with most fantasy dragons. They’re usually too heavy and the wings are too small to actually lift them (particularly apparent in RPGs where dragon bone/scales are items you can acquire and items are given weight as both are often very heavy for their size).

4. On the other hand heads into the usual explanation. Tequatl is dead. And yet he’s moving around. Something else that is impossible to explain through science. How is this possible? Through magic. He most likely flies the same way – through magic.

Very interesting theory but I think that saying “it’s magic” is much more of a cop-out than an explanation…

Talonblaze.3175:

Applying real earth logic to an undead flying creature in a fantasy setting of a different universe.

Strong arguments there.

But there’s gravity in game just like in real life… and air and the Sun and all these things you know. So yeah why is gravity not working on Tequatl? Did he buy something from Trading Post that I didn’t?

There is no way in hell something as big as Tequatl can fly.

1. It’s way too heavy. Just by the looks of it it seems to be the size of a blue whale with an extra long tail. We’re looking at something that is weighting at least 100 tons. In comparison, the biggest animal to ever fly, the Quetzalcoatlus, is believed to have only weighted 100-200kg while having a 12m wingspan.

2. The wings are way too damaged. Nevermind that it lacks a keel, which is an essential bone for flight. His wings are completely ripped appart, they’re almost just bones. Even if he was flapping those wings as fast as a fly does, he would get nowhere. Which is silly because in game he is seen taking off in seconds and even managing to HOVER around the pact airships. There are so many laws of physics being broken here that I can’t even count them.

3. He has both front legs and wings. That makes no sense. The wings of bats, birds and their ancestor flying “dinosaurs” are actually their evolved arms/hands. Look at the dragons in Skyrim, that’s what a reptilian would evolve to if it became a dragon instead of a bird. Here they have front legs AND wings, I mean wtf?

4. His flesh is too undead. His muscles are all decayed, he barely has any skin left, some of the bones look like they fell off. Any animal as damaged as this would just be hobbling around, unable to use its legs and much less fly.

So yeah, in conclusion: Me: 1, Anet: 0

Hi, I currently already belong to a guild, but I’m looking for a group to try RPing on GW2. I’m on European servers and will create a brand new character for this. Any RP guilds around?

I love RP and I’m currently stuck in Ruins of Surmia. I heard Piken Square is the RP paradise. Is switching there worth those 1800 gems, now that we have the megaserver and all?

Considering that I also really hate WvW in Ruins of Surmia. It’s a very bad WvW server, people there only karma farm and are unfriendly, bad commanders surround themselves with guildies to fend off any criticism. On the other hand I see that Piken is one of the top WvW servers.

Is the server transfer worth it?

Dis.1092:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

How would you make use of all the precision? Are there any traits that trigger abilities on critical hits, or perhaps some sigils with interesting effects on criticals for this?

Bkeeding on crit from sigil and traits

Ah, that sounds very interesting. Gonna work on that with the sigils and traits then. Definitely going Necro for this.

@Pax the runes I’m looking for don’t necessarily need to be cheap, but undead seem to be a good choice indeed.

How would you make use of all the precision? Are there any traits that trigger abilities on critical hits, or perhaps some sigils with interesting effects on criticals for this?

So I just got Tequatl’s Hoard, and I see its weapon stats are Condition Damage, Toughness and Precision. At first I wasn’t too happy to see these stats but now I want to take the challenge of building something out of this, for the love of theorycrafting. I wanna make a build with these stats on gear.

Thing is, I have no idea which class could benefit the most from these stats. I know there’s a rune somewhere that increases Condition Damage based on Toughness, so that could maybe be a start for the gear. Perhaps a necromancer? Or a warrior? Maybe something that can trigger good conditions or boons with criticals? And what weapon would I use?

Any ideas on this? It doesn’t have to be the greatest, most efficient build of all time, it just has to be a build that can do its job in PvE and have enjoyable, fun mechanics.

What? Hold on a second. When I was suggesting this game could have nordicist ideals, most people told me Norns had nothing to do with Nordic people and that they were inspired of Native Americans. Now you’re saying they are supposed to be Nordic again?

1. Absolutely. See it this way: by buying Season 2, you are getting several more hours of enjoyable, non-grinding gameplay. The story is great, the characters are great, it’s just like buying any good solo adventure game on Steam, except it’s cheaper. You get to see more of how magic and dragons work in Tyria, what’s happening with the Sylvari and Mordermoth, the successors of Divinity’s Edge, and you even get to see what the Eternal Alchemy is.

2. Still 20% cheaper right now.

3. It’s not as custom as the main story. With the main story, you get a different beginning depending on the background of your character. Here, characters will refer to you based on what you have done previously (for example, for me as an Asura, Taimi will sometimes comment on me being the Snaff savant or other things). On top of that, you also have to chose between two courses of action like in the main story, but it all ultimately leads to the same thing.

I have created my build here:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Valex_Staff

6, 4, 0, 4, 0, using traited glyphs/summons heavily to stack might.

More importantly, what I am doing with this build is using Valkyrie gear with Exuberance runes. I have a lot of power with this build, and I still run around with 22,000HP. Tons of DPS while being kind of tanky, and maintaining an average of 12 might during fights (peaking at 17 might).

It has worked out incredibly well for me in dungeons. The dodge ability isn’t infinite and didn’t always keep me alive before. Now, I never die in map/dungeon wipeouts, unless I myself played poorly.

The damage isn’t at the highest possible, but it’s up there, and the trade off for all the HP is quite worth it.

Danikat.8537:

The vast majority of fantasy races are based on one culture or aspect of humanity. We can’t draw on anything else for sentient races and their cultures because (as far as we know) there aren’t any others in real-life.

Within this game it’s visible in all the playable races. The charr are based on ancient Roman (and to a lesser extent Greek) culture, particularly their military. The sylvari have a lot of Celtic and Arthurian influences and the asura are basically stereotypical scientists displaced into a fantasy setting.

The human cultures are all mixed together because that’s what modern day Kryta is. In GW1 there were several different human nations: Ascalon based on Medieval Western Europe, Kryta which was similar but with a stronger Mediterranean influence, Elona which had African and Middle Eastern themed cultures and Cantha with Asian and (oddly enough) Gothic cultures.

But Cantha was cut off from the rest of the world, Elona was taken over by Palawa Joko and then isolated from the Tyrian continent by Zhaitan and Ascalon was lost to the charr. Refugees from all of them came to Kryta and brought their culture with them. It’s like Tyria’s America.

And yes the norn are based on Nordic culture and mythology (even the name norn is from Nordic myths, although it referred to people more like the Greek Fates).

But having said that I really don’t understand your point. The norn are not portrayed as being superior or more privileged than any other race. It’s not uncommon for NPCs of other races to stereotype them as poorly educated, uncooperative, blood-minded, drunks who are only useful to have around if you want something smashed. Which in some cases is not entirely untrue. I certainly don’t see them as an idealised race.

Well if I may rephrase my idea. The thing is that, while Norns don’t necessarily get portrayed as superior to other races, the nordic theme still has its own, exclusive race. There isn’t a specific race for Mediterraneans, there isn’t a specific race for Africans, Japanese, Persian or other cultures, like you just said, those all count as “humans”, but in the case of the Nordic culture, it gets to have its own race, map and lore.

But I will give it to you that you do make a good point about the Roman theme having its own race as well, the Charr, although the Charr are less obvious (they don’t seem to have Roman names like the Imperials in TES have).

Cyrill Faust.9340:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyrill Faust.9340:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Vikkela.7261:

Norns are a mix of Native American and Nordic culture.

I am not sure I see the Native American referrence in Norns, can you please elaborate?

Their entire religious belief system is heavily taken from various Native American beliefs.

Before you get offended by perceived prejudice maybe you should educate yourself on the subject that offends you.

I think you should keep your desire to be confrontational to yourself.

Now is this Native American comparison a personal interpretation, or is this official? Because it seems to me that this race is a whole lot more Nordic than it is Native American.

Isn’t that your personal interpretation then, where does anything “official” say the norn are based on Nordic culture? Along that line what is “Nordic culture”? You seem like someone who is just looking to be offended by something.

They live in snowy lands. They have nordic names. They have nordic accents. They are given some of the stereotypes of vikings. Their appearence is a copy/paste of the Aryan race ideal. Their name is “Norns”. I’m pretty sure that 99.99% people on GW2 associate Norns with nordic culture. Maybe I’m crazy but it seems to me they are indeed inspired of scandinavian culture.

@Tacit Ronin. You make some valid points. Its true that you can chose to be offended by anything and everything. What I am trying to do in this thread isn’t to tell everyone they should be offended. I am asking if there is in fact a reason to be offended with this Norn race.
But I am curious, what’s the story about the Asura being a sign of racism? I can’t see where you are going with that and I’ve never heard anything about it.

Vikkela.7261:

Shamans, spirits, nature

While they are being painted as stubborn, stupid and alcoholic which are some negative stereotypes about Nordics but no Nordic person has been complaining about that if they would actually care

Perhaps they are not presented as better than the average human. But they are certainly being priviledged with their own race.

Cyrill Faust.9340:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Vikkela.7261:

Norns are a mix of Native American and Nordic culture.

I am not sure I see the Native American referrence in Norns, can you please elaborate?

Their entire religious belief system is heavily taken from various Native American beliefs.

Before you get offended by perceived prejudice maybe you should educate yourself on the subject that offends you.

I think you should keep your desire to be confrontational to yourself. Instead of trying to attack me on what I’m educated about or what I am not, explain your point of view.

Now is this Native American comparison a personal interpretation, or is this official? Because it seems to me that this race is a whole lot more Nordic than it is Native American.

Vikkela.7261:

Norns are a mix of Native American and Nordic culture.

I am not sure I see the Native American referrence in Norns, can you please elaborate?

Firstly off I’d like to clarify this is absolutely not a troll thread, in spite of the fact some of the things I am about to say may seem controversial to some people.

Ever since I started playing GW2, there is something about the game that just doesn’t sit well with me, and I have been wondering if it’s just me or if there are other people who have had the same thoughts as I do. This is about the fact that in this game, the nordic theme is priviledged with a race of its own, the Norns, while the rest of “humans” are all crammed into one single race. Not only do they have the priviledge of having their own race, but it’s also a race of heroic giants, twice as big as humans.

As a reminder, “Nordicism” is a real belief that has been an issue in the past century and still continues to exist, it’s absolutely not a mere conspirancy. It is the belief that people of nordic descent are superior to the rest of humanity. It’s the very infamous “Aryan race” ideal supported by 1930’s Germany and still continued to this day through mass murderers like Anders Breivik or certain extreme right wing parties of the West. Nordicism is obviously a very disgusting idea for anyone who isn’t nordic (and for any nordic person with enough honesty).

And I mean, when I see that in this game there is a race that is almost a copy/paste of the aryan ideal, I can’t help but ask myself what is the purpose of this race? Why is one specific culture from our world being highlighted in this game while every other culture is crammed into “humans”? While you can argue that they are not necessarily being presented as better than humans, they are certainly being priviledged. Would a non-human playable race like bears have been a more suitable choice for the nordic theme than to make these idealistic giants?

I hope there’s a real, honest reason for this race existing in game and that it’s not a matter of nordicist beliefs. Please let me know what you people think.