Guild Wars 2

Knighthonor.4061:

Awesome.6120:

3.5s at max is really not that much unless you are respeccing literally constantly.

edit: unless you are one of those noobs who thinks you need to buy the book every time you want to respec?

is there another way to respec other than buying the book each time?

Ouh. Yes. Talk to your trainer and ask him to reset your traits. He will charge you a little less than 4s for that. Respeccing is dirt cheap in this game.

You have to hand it to ANet… MF is hands down the best, most effective money sink I have ever seen in a game. Bar none!

For this reason alone I doubt they will be doing anything to lessen its role in the game.

I agree with everything except UI functionality that allows players to gauge and compare “performance”. We simply do not need that. GW2 is designed, for the most part, that players either do ok in scenarios or fail miserably and obviously. That is all the indication we need on someone’s performance.

And people arguing that the current UI is bad obviously have no idea about game design. Games are not the place where you want to obstruct the most appealing and striking part of the visual experience, the game world, with UI elements. Modern UI game design revolves around simplicity and minimalism. The only thing ANet failed at was to make the UI modular (so you can drag/drop elements, set their opacity, turn them on and off etc.)

And finally, the big reason ANet doesn’t want customized UIs is because they are hoping to turn the game into an e-sport down the road. This means no third-party tools.

Well, one awesome way to turn AoE into a very useful anti-zerg tool and make it much less useful against single targets would be to introduce a mechanic where secondary effects such as blast damage, conditions and so on, increase in intensity the closer the affected targets are. And removing target cap on the number of targets for certain AoE skills.

That way, an AoE would have a weak effect on its own, but when applied against a number of closely positioned targets it would increase in effectiveness drastically, to the point of being very damaging if you catch a zerg in it.

Updated your gear? I’ve often seen people try to fight with a trident a dozen levels or so below their own. Use rare trident, possibly exotic if you have the cash and you will melt stuff underwater.

For those with excess karma, these are really nice. Finally, us WvW players can actually get some extra income from all that karma we get.

They should modify the system so that it works in tiers. As in, any 1-10 level can group up, so it is easier for people to find groups to level their fractals, but someone who is below 11 cannot do fractals above that level. 11-20 again can, then 21 – 30 and so on.

I think this would remove a lot of frustration people have both with finding low-level fractal groups and with getting inexperienced people in high level fractals.

Hellkaiser.6025:

You see kids shedding tears, I see dissatisfied customers, which do you think makes more sense from a business point of view?? :/

This would be a pathetic world if everyone immediately caved in to crying kids as a business practice.

You know what makes sense from a business stanpoint? Metrics. You know, the actual tools devs use to see how features in their game are doing?
Not listening to incessant whining on the forums, because my friend, if they made the perfect game, there would be people complaining about that.

lunawisp.2378:

Must admit I didn’t like that combo-killer and it seems someone on ANet’s staff agrees with me since they’re looking at it again. As for the rest, they really are very easy and quick to do.

The one I’m a bit bemused by is the complaints about dodging. How can anyone even play the game without dodging? Unless they’re faceplanting every five minutes…

Well, they are used to standing still with their warriors and spamming 100B, habits are hard to break!

Make sure that the combos you do are damaging ones as you have to make a killing blow with a combo. So combos that only add non-damaging conditions won’t work.

It could be bugged, or maybe it is too dependent on latency, it’s too early to tell. People still haven’t figured out the basic ones like dodging and healer, give it a few days and bugs, if any, will definitely show.

Or hey, since the same daily can be completed by rezzing NPC’s, you go find one of those events with lots of downed NPC’s and do that! Or people can just jump like lemmings off a cliff, heh heh.

The problem is people don’t know how to play the game. I know from personal experience that combo fields and finishers are still terra incognita for many players, even experienced ones.
This could actually be a really good way to finally force people to learn how to effectively play their classes instead of just spamming abilities as they pop up from cooldown.

My advice is, just do a dungeon run with a staff elementalist who knows what to do. You’ll ding that daily in five minutes.

Then wait for the next month patch. This is a prelude one, just setting up the mood as far as story goes. They never did say that they will add new areas, actually they said the opposite for this patch and the entire story arc, that they want to add more content to existing areas.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Link.4039:

And daily healer? Come on people, that is a given. I easily revive at least 10 people a day already.

Huh. I don’t usually see near this many dead people in an evening of playing. Perhaps I should ask the people around me tonight to make sure they play sloppily so that I can get my daily done?

Or you know, you could rezz NPC’s.

Musta.9803:

Everything in the new update are things that I don’t even care about at all.

But, what I would care about is a new story/area, like in the Lost Shores.

Is this what they’re doing? Because to be honest, everything else they implement is barely worth mentioning.

To you. I find the update quite nice, they added variety and choice and plenty of new avenues to generate money in the game, especially when you combo different activities.

What the hell. Are you people serious? Dodge, you can complete in five minutes. Craft in ten seconds. Underwater kills, oh noes! Combo kills, you mean you can’t spam #1 and watch stuff die anymore for the daily?

And for those who haven’t figured out dodging, you have to evade attacks. If you dodge too early or dodge when nothing would have hit you anyway it doesn’t count. I racked up my dodge daily just by dodging random mobs while going through an area.

Healer works on NPC’s as well, not just players. Really easy to do.

Come on people, try playing the kitten game for more than five minutes before complaining.

This thread proves one thing – no matter what you do, there are people ready to cry about it.

Maybe you got to “evade” attacks… as in it is not enough to just dodge out of combat or dodge when nothing would hit you anyway?

Though juggling 40 skills would be fun. But we would then just flatten everyone.

Would be nice to have out-of-combat swap though. More convenient than having to open the hero panel and switch manually.

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Gaudrath.6725:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Gaudrath.6725:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Karizee.8076:

It is currently 7am PST on the 28th which means the patch will launch sometime in the next 17 hours.

I will post periodic updates for people that do not understand time zones

Listen, stop being conceited.

It’s not about people not understanding timezones, it’s about announcing to a global (please understand this includes places outside of the USA) audience than an update will happen on the 28th when it in fact won’t.

It seems to me that you are the one who doesn’t understand the concept of a global audience. Or would you like ANet in the future to set their release dates as “28th-ish”?

It is just a patch update. What, everyone has to know the exact minute the patch is going to go live? And then complains about that? Talk about first world problems…

What manner of kitten backward logic is this? I don’t understand the term “global audience” because I expect dates to be correct globally rather than one specific region?

Is it so hard to understand;

USA: 28th
rest of the world: 29th

???

OR, 28th PST, or whatever they use. You know, when they want to not have to type the exact time and date for the entire globe. Sort of the reason the whole thing was invented.

Yes, because typing three lines is so much extra work and planning as opposed to typing one vague, unclear line?

1. That is the standard way of announcing global dates.

2. Seems you’re pretty much the only one to whom this is unclear. Also, ANet is based in the US. When they say 28th, it means their time, not yours. This is a basic skill when living in a global society, master it and quit complaining about two extra lines of text like horrible things are going to happen if they get it “wrong” again.

Seems to me someone took a day off work on the wrong date and are kinda upset about it… :p

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Gaudrath.6725:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Karizee.8076:

It is currently 7am PST on the 28th which means the patch will launch sometime in the next 17 hours.

I will post periodic updates for people that do not understand time zones

Listen, stop being conceited.

It’s not about people not understanding timezones, it’s about announcing to a global (please understand this includes places outside of the USA) audience than an update will happen on the 28th when it in fact won’t.

It seems to me that you are the one who doesn’t understand the concept of a global audience. Or would you like ANet in the future to set their release dates as “28th-ish”?

It is just a patch update. What, everyone has to know the exact minute the patch is going to go live? And then complains about that? Talk about first world problems…

What manner of kitten backward logic is this? I don’t understand the term “global audience” because I expect dates to be correct globally rather than one specific region?

Is it so hard to understand;

USA: 28th
rest of the world: 29th

???

OR, 28th PST, or whatever they use. You know, when they want to not have to type the exact time and date for the entire globe. Sort of the reason the whole thing was invented.

ZaxanRazor.6235:

So would you be fine if on the US it said “update on the 28th” but it actually rolled out on the 29th because haha timezone and we couldn’t be arsed to communicate clearly with all of our customers, just those that live in the same zone as us!

Why yes, I would. Because haha I don’t care about the exact minute and second the patch goes live since my life doesn’t revolve around GW2.

Besides, don’t you like surprises? :p

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Karizee.8076:

It is currently 7am PST on the 28th which means the patch will launch sometime in the next 17 hours.

I will post periodic updates for people that do not understand time zones

Listen, stop being conceited.

It’s not about people not understanding timezones, it’s about announcing to a global (please understand this includes places outside of the USA) audience than an update will happen on the 28th when it in fact won’t.

It seems to me that you are the one who doesn’t understand the concept of a global audience. Or would you like ANet in the future to set their release dates as “28th-ish”?

It is just a patch update. What, everyone has to know the exact minute the patch is going to go live? And then complains about that? Talk about first world problems…

You guys do realize there is physically no way for ANet to release the update at the same local time for everyone? Instead what they’re doing is releasing it at the same global time for everyone, which means some of us get the patch “later” than others simply due to time difference and the fact that ANet is not based in Europe.

And if ANet launched the update during business hours in Europe, then the Americans would get the update at 4AM in the morning. SO it has nothing to do with customer’s convenience. Can’t please everyone, we live on a rotating globe.

I will see everyone’s lols on this and raise them one rofl.

So a “hardcore” 15-year old who has a ton of time and can afford to get so good at grinding encounters until they know them by heart is supposed to somehow have exclusive access to the best gear in the game so they can roflstomp everyone in WvW (you know, the part of the game which actually requires some skill)?

Sorry, but no. I don’t want to grind PvE content for months just to be competitive in a completely different part of the game.

If raiders get to have the best gear drops, I say we PvP-ers get to have those too, only how would that work? Can’t have a noob on his first day in WvW drop the same quality gear or tokens or whatever as a veteran who can turn you into a crater just by sneezing in your general direction.
And how would the game know which is which, who is the PvP equivalent of a “boss” and who isn’t?

No, I think gear with actual stat differences should be accessible to everyone on an equal basis. Titles, skins, have at them. But no gear grind and especially no gear grind which requires PvE raids.

And yet the Gate seems turned off for me. Can’t enter. Very annoying and I have no clue what am I missing.

Edit

Let the above be the eternal monument to my dumbness… just because the Fractals gate seems turned off doesn’t actually mean it IS off… just tried to enter and of course it works.

So lols are on me, you can get back on topic! :p

I second the need to have fishing. Not only fishing, but more mini-activities altogether.
And come on ANet, why can’t we sit in chairs!?

A bit offtopic, but how do you get into Fractals solo? I know I managed to do it once, but most of the time that stupid guard won’t let me! :p

plasmacutter.2709:

I was making examples, and there are ways to guard against exploitation.

Just because you could find holes in my completely off the cuff examples does not make your assertion that “only things involving massive gold sinks or time investment” will guarantee rarity.

What it has guaranteed so far is exploitation and people spending most of their time watching gw2spidy instead of playing the zones ANet’s dev team toiled for years to create.

I quoted your examples just to show how easily they can be exploited. Believe me, game design is a passion of mine and I have put a lot of thought in how certain systems work and why.

You MUST make all prestige gear available to everyone, but not easy to attain. You must not make certain prestige rewards available only to people with certain skills, or make it too easily obtained because that simply shatters the whole point of having prestige items and alienates a good portion of your playerbase.

Good game design would tackle this with multiple skill-specific ways to attain the same rewards, so that’s what ANet did not do well, they funneled the effort into one avenue only, which is not good; but the way they did it was the cheapest and simplest for them so that’s why they used it.

Maybe they will change things up with the scavenger hunt, but I totally believe them when they say it is not a simple problem with an easy solution.

Personally, I would go with player-specific procedural questing (read: randomized quests). That way you can generate a ton of non-repetitive, impossible to farm and unique content per player. No online guides, no bots, just people playing the game.

Of course the whole system would have to be very carefully designed or there would be a ton of complaints that some people got it easy and some didn’t. Everyone would have to be very challenged by the system, but on an equal level, something that is definitely not easy to accomplish using any kind of randomization and procedural generation of content, especially in the context of a multiplayer environment.

Oh and by the way, in case you are wondering why ANet has set the requirement so high – it is because they expected players to band together to get that gear fast for each other. A guild dedicated to decking out their members with legendary weapons is much more efficient at it than people going solo… basically it was never meant to be a solo undertaking.

Even with that they seem to have underestimated the players, since they were surprised how quickly some managed to get their hands on a legendary weapon.

I make about 20 gold a week doing nothing but casual play of few hours a day… let’s say about 20 hours per week.
So it would take me about 19 months of that to get that amount of gold, for the op with 8 hours per week that would be 8g/week = 47months or roughly 4 years.

So yeah, you can’t get that kind of money just by playing the game.
My suggestions for your available time would be to flip the TP, you can make ton more gold that way than through usual PvE.

I think many people don’t really consider the implications of game design. The end goal with desirable prestige items is:

1. To keep them rare
2. To make it so that everyone can get them.

Seemingly opposing goals. The only way to ensure that both goals are met is to create a system which is basic enough so that anyone, regardless of their gaming skills and preferences, can get the prestige items and yet difficult enough so that those items do not become common.

The ONLY way this can be achieved is to introduce some sort of long term requirements. Whether you create a quest that literally has about a 1000 game hours in it, or create a system which requires player to gather crafting materials for the same 1000 hours or more, is irrelevant.
Now consider how much content would be involved in a quest that has 1000 gameplay hours included. And then consider the cost of paying a team to write, produce, code and Q&A said quest.
And finally compare that cost to the cost of paying a single programmer to adjust some numbers in a database table.

And now on to some finer points:

Wheres the reward for 10-on-1 victory in wvw.

You mean when people set things up with their pals from another server to have “10 vs 1” victories where 10 people stand and wait to be killed, so that everyone in the group can have cool rewards?

Where’s the reward for jumping puzzle meta-completion (and it’s cooler reward for timed)

Let us say that I am way smarter than you. I like to amuse myself with quantum physics conundrums before breakfast just to warm myself up. So now let us say that ANet places a nice quantum physics related puzzle in the game with a cool reward (and a Nobel prize) at the end.
Would you like that? Would you think it is fair?

No. Well, some people find jumping puzzles extremely difficult. They might have disabilities, or might just be very, very bad at them. And now you just have content that is impossible to get by a portion of your playerbase.

Where’s the reward for soloing x group events.

Remember all the rage people spew in other games over “loot tagging”, “loot stealing” etc.?
Multiply that by ten and you begin to approach the amount of rage people would be spewing for “X ruined my group event solo attempt” and “Y is trolling people trying to solo group events”

Where’s the reward ONLY associated with reaching fractal 40, or 80.

So you think funelling everyone and their dog into fractals is a good idea? People are already complaining about the open world being empty because everyone is running fractals for the ascended jewelry. And you’d add even more exclusive gear to that?

So please, think things through in the context of players abusing the hell out of everything you do before you post suggestions on how things should be done in an MMO. Sad, but true.

And if they make it ground targeted, then the masses will cry when we are actually able to hit them on the move with it.

Torchurer would also work as a title. I want it. I want it now.

Any game, no matter how designed, can be turned into a grind. ANY game. You could grind Pacman if all you cared for is the high score.

But let’s look at the real state of the game. Right now, you can deck out a character in high end-game (exotics) gear in about five days. Five days. Of casual play, pick-it-up-when-you-feel-like-it, no stress involved gameplay.

That’s not a grind. That is anything BUT a grind. You can make your character the epitome of awesomeness, with cool armor, cool weapons, fully leveled and stat-capped in no time with minimum hassle pretty much just by playing the game. No month-long raids, no frustration on loot rolls, just play the game normally and rewards are guaranteed.

And then there are legendaries. A handful of weapon skins designed to be attainable by only a few. Whether by those who wish to get them legit, by playing the game, or by those with money (and they’d get that gold by other means if there was no ingame gem exchange, so don’t kid yourselves). Since the rich boys are irrelevant, let’s focus on players who actually want to get the legendaries via playing the game.

You can totally do that.

It will take you many months.

That’s by design.

Your only choice is:

a) accept that you will get your legendary sometime early next year if you start now and play at a normal pace
b) grind like a maniac until the game itself makes you physically sick, then quit

Option a) is for human beings who like to spend their leisure time playing a game that is fun for them.
Option b) is for human equivalents of a hamster with OCD.

So pick one and quit complaining.

I don’t like waypoints either, for pretty much the same reason. It makes the game world feel small. Which is a shame since it is in fact quite large as far as game worlds go.

WoW did that one right. No waypoints except hearthstone on 30min cooldown, and fast travel was more of a “joyride” type of thing which only made the game world look interesting and connected, instead of small.

If it was up to me, I would remove waypoints as they are now and add teleportation skills requiring ingredients or just plain money to make things simpler, with cooldowns and longish casting times. So if you really want to you can “zip” around, but not as conveniently as now. Sort of encourage people to actually travel through the world instead of what they do now, which is mostly just popping between various points of interest, even if the two are only a short distance away.

Charr gods were not real gods. And Charr seem to have trouble steamrolling anything. They had to use the Searing to get over a wall, and one of their Legions kinda managed to tie up the other three all by itself. I doubt smokelickers are just so kitten powerful.

And yes. Jormag nearly wiped out Norn. If you think the Legions are a match for an Elder Dragon, I think you’re wrong.
But the fact that the Norn knew they’re going to get wiped out and didn’t back down should tell you something.

Oh yeah, and to put things into perspective. A single Norn managed to do what it took the combined might of the Pact to replicate – hurt an Elder Dragon.

There are Norn, there are Norn heroes (players) and then there are walking Norn legends. You definitely don’t want to mess with the latter.

And to answer the original question, in a race vs race war Sylvari would probably win. Simply because they can have an endless supply of fully trained warriors who are curious about the concept of death instead of afraid of it. They would wear anything down over time, even Norn or Charr.

runeblade.7514:

Son of Elias.5420:

As far as Charr vs Norn goes, it depends. In this scenario, are all the races suddenly going, “Let’s have a WAR!”? If so, the Norn would actually be offensive for once, which they have never been against another nation. While historically, Norn fight individually, they’ve recently been learning how to fight as a group, as we see with the Wolfborn.

In other words, if we have a situation where the Norn race actually gets together and fights as an army, every other race is screwed. A single Norn is stronger than an entire Charr warband – we see this in ‘Movement of the World’; when the Charr first encountered the Norn, the charr assault was totally destroyed. The lore states that the charr would have only defeated the Norn (back then fighting as individuals) with an entire Legion devoted to it. So we’re talking a third of their forces.

As far as assassinating the heroes, that wouldn’t work – every Norn considers themselves a hero. Saying you’d send the Ash Legion to assassinate the heroes is like saying you’d just assassinate every Norn. And how would you even do it? The charr kinda stand out, and a follower of Snow Leopard would be just as stealthy as an Ash Legion charr.

That said, the norn would almost certainly lose an all-out war between them and the charr. The charr have better unit tactics and war material then the norn do. However, we’re talking about a four-way battle here – humans vs asura vs norn vs charr. If the races make the same assumption we are (specifically, that the charr are the greatest threat), they might simply all attack the charr first. In which case the charr would be utterly destroyed, and it would be humans vs asura vs norn left to duke it out.

And that is the problem. Every single Norn thinking themselves as a hero. If legendary heroes get assassinated, every single Norn will think their tactics is better or foolishly charge in front of the Blood Legion’s rifle.

It is like every single private soldier in the army promote themselves as a commander. Who is going to command who? Who’s tactics is right? Who is going to bother listen to the other? It is clearly a mess and nothing else.

The Chain of Command by the Charr is absolute. Every single soldier are disciplined and trained.

When the boastful Norn soldiers arrive in the frontlines, they will arrive to a disadvantageous battle only to get themselves bombarded with shells.

This is like a Roman army vs. Barbarians except the Romans assassinated all the Barbarian leaders.

No, it would be like Roman legions against Asterix and company. The Charr would get kicked so hard they would probably land in Elona.
Contrary to popular belief, Norn are neither stupid, nor incapable of organization. They just don’t tend to band up for any small warband of thugs coming in to cause trouble – why should they?

But pose a real threat and you will have a Norn horde on your doorstep. And there is no stopping a Norn horde, not with the kind of weapons and tactics the Charr use. Maybe the Inquest could stop them, by nuking them… but gods help the little guys if even a single Norn gets through. They’d get clobbered by a ripped-off arm of their own golem.

Advent.6193:

Yea, but how many ‘lab assistants’ are shooting said Norn with some eldritch death-beam at the same time … or exploding? :P

Don’t you know that if you shoot a Norn, you just make him mad?

What OP wants to point out is that it sort of defeats the purpose of wearing heavy armor if you can be easily decapitated by a single strike to the neck area (even though the totally impractical but huge shoulderpads help protect the general region from swing attacks). This is why plate armor usually had some sort of protection for the neck area, especially since a glancing blow could slip off a chestplate and into throat or neck if there was none, especially when it comes to the most common medieval weapon, the spear.

However, in this case I say that it was simply a matter of design > functionality. We don’t sink like a stone when swimming in heavy armor either, so basically just ignore funny details like that (or strip naked like a boss when going underwater, which is what I do).

BuddhaKeks.4857:

@Konig: Whoops, that’s my bad with the pride, in german it’s “Stolz von Tyria” (=Pride of Tyria) and I never actually bothered to look up if the name is different in english. xP

Yes, it’s his fault! Your fault BuddhaKeks, you hear me!? :p

Sorry man, but your post is all over the place, not sure if you’re agreeing with me, disagreeing, or have even read my whole post even though you quote parts of it.

The thing is, in PvE (dungeons) I believe many elementalists make a mistake of using D/D as their main weapon set.

Staff is infinitely better in a group PvE. Not because of raw damage, but because it buffs the damage output of the entire group, and that buff is allmost like having another player in there. That’s why staff is a force multiplier, you end up with the output greater than what five players focused on doing damage could do.

Secondary to that is the CC abilities. Kiting is made infinitely easier with mass chills, stuns and cripples. I frequently run rear when we skip content and just cripple/chill/stun trash mobs so they end up doing zero damage, especially if some team mates are a bit slower than the rest and would otherwise get focused down.

And then it is damage. While elementalists cannot provide the same amount of burst damage a 100B warrior can, burst damage is not important in PvE. Sustained damage is. Which is where all of our conditions and AoE effects come in.

And finaly, utility. We can provide an excellent extra tank in tight spots (Earth Elemental).
We can completely negate ranged damage of entire groups (Scepter Air #4) or both ranged and melee for 10 seconds (Glyph of Storms in Earth = Blind AoE field).
We have excellent staying power and can easily outlast even warriors. I frequently am the last man standing if I pay attention.
We can rez downed teammates under heavy fire while invulnerable.
We can provide excellent utility tools like Ice Bow and Fiery Greatsword for demolition (very useful in AC).

So no, burst damage is not the most important thing you can bring to the table in PvE. Or in PvP. There are so many ways to evade or negate burst damage in both scenarios (either through fat HP buffers PvE mobs and bosses have, or through direct evasion/negation in PvP as any warrior who tried to use 100B on an awake player can tell you). But utility, that is useful in any scenario.

Unless, of course, you focus on big numbers flying out of people. I think ANet made one mistake, and that is not including a system where proper support is fully recognized. They focused too much on presenting and rewarding the damage you do and not enough of doing the same for all the useful stuff you do for your team.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

To state a few obvious things: Tyrian Airships are clearly not like Zepplins. Even if the metal were enchanted to be as light as balsa wood and the balloons were filled with vacuum, they don’t displace nearly enough air mass to maintain buoyancy (by the same token, Charr choppers are clearly not like Earth helicopters, Tyrian trebuchets are clearly not like Earth trebuchets and don’t even get me started on some of those weapon and armor skins…). Either physics is different in Tyria and/or magic is involved.

We have no idea what Tyrian Airship range is. We don’t know if it can withstand turbulence or crosswinds. We don’t know if the pilots can survive extended periods on board. For that matter, maybe even the builders don’t know. “See how far you can fly out to sea before you crash.” – Not such a good idea.

Any technology made from unobtanium that the creators are smart enough to not specify otherwise has the range of plot, travels at the speed of plot, has the firepower of plot, is as expensive as plot and generally conveniently fits the needs of plot in every possible way.

All true. But the sturdiness of the Pride is clearly demonstrated in the fight with Zhaitan. It can stay in the air even when big chunks of it are missing. So yes, maybe it does use toddlers as fuel. But it sure is sturdy enough to weather a storm or a dozen, if it can survive a direct hit from a flying mountain.

Mystic Starfish.2586:

This fact just makes me question more the actual creature that is corrupted. Like you said earlier, finding more andmore dragons, which didn’t seem to be that abundant just 250 years ago, to corrupt and make a champion seems like a waste of time. Shatterer is easier to think of just a corruption of material, since there are branded sparks and earth elementals, but now that I think of it, Jormag doesn’t have any non-sentient minions.

That is why I think that both the Elder Dragons and their dragon champions are closer to elemental creatures than living ones, even corrupted. Zhaitan, in fact, is the only one we know of that even looks organic.
But even that doesn’t mean anything, it is possible to have organic constructs which are more akin to elementals of flesh than actual living or unliving creatures, such as the flesh golem or in GW2 lore, necromancer minions, which are basically magical constructs and not actual cadavers.

If the dragon champions are similar to elementals, then their creation is as easy as conjuring a regular elemental – elementals are not limited in number and in fact can appear out of thin air when conditions are met. Which is why the dragon champions come in unlimited supply.

Also I should add that the Claw is referred to as “an ice dragon” by the NPC. Note the “an”. If it was unique, they’d probably be going “THE ice dragon appeared”. So there’s definitely more than one.
For Shatterer this is stated explicitly by one of the NPCs in the Brand, I forgot which.

Oglaf.1074:

Gaudrath.6725:

I think dragon champions are not corrupted dragons – rather they are created specifically by Elder Dragons to be their most powerful lieutenants. The fact that there is an endless supply of those tells you something… would be inconvenient if every time we killed one, their elder dragon had to go and hunt down a member of a race which is not known for being numerous and corrupt it.

Elder dragons seem almost like elemental beings, and their champions probably follow suit. So basically they are like big elementals.

Let’s not get into that whole chronological mess again. Let’s just say that it may or may not be the same Claw you kill over and over.

:P

Also, look at how numerous Zhaitan’s Champions are in Arah Story Mode; they blot out the sky! I don’t think Jormag is in short supply of Dragon henchmen, really…

It is not a chronological mess. It is stated on more than one occasion in the game that the Shatterer is just one of many such creatures. The same goes for Claw. The only reason Tequatl is “named” is because those hylek don’t know any better.

Yea, Tequatl should not be coming up after Zhaitan is dead, but I think we can all agree to just ignore that little nugget.