Guild Wars 2

psst! Some of them just leveled up. . I believe deer mostly level up by crafting grass into cud. It gives good xp to deer.

Some wild animals are more combat oriented and get xp by killing players and sometimes other races.

Again the misconception is apparent. In just about every MMO I’ve played and from a few real life friends, has come the “argument” that – you should try wvw/pvp . If you just try it you will see its Fun. because of x and y
The notion that something is fun is based on your personal ideas of what in fact – is fun -.
I have done some wvw and some pvp. I often do end up going to an mmo’s- things like that- just to see how it’s like on that game. Yet I never find it fun.
You might say – it’s just not the type of fun I enjoy or I have a different humor than you.
Baseline is that the majority of pve players – play pve because they like that, and pvp players play pvp – because they like that…. Mixing the two rarely works out.
On top of that you have situations like this and the whole “balance” thing that vexes PvE players like me, who for reasons out of their world, gets nerfed/changed prodded into situations we do not want—— all based on a game type that we have no part or interest in.
Said in another way:

I might many times tell you that slamming your hand with a hammer is FUN!! you should try it!. If only you have tried it you will also like smacking your hand every day" yet I’m fairly sure your common sense or past experience will tell you that such a notion would not be of your interest no matter the times I tell you to smack your hand with said hammer cause its !FUN!
And dev’s please don’t poke us PvE’ers in our eye, so that the *hand smacking players have a more balanced way of handling hammer smacking.

wow that was a lot of assumptions on why pve’ers do something or not.
Speaking as one of the PvE’ers (and naturally many other pve’ers will have different reasons.)
I play PvE because of the Environment… I enjoy being able to stop and read a book in the game. or look at a beautifully rendered landscape. I enjoy being able to walk away from my PC to take care of real world things.
Not that I’m that happy about a JP but I can do them and fairly often I will go to one and perhaps leave part of it while I go to the bathroom. I like to be able to enter a conversation with an NPC or a player.

All of those things can be had in a PVE world while in a pvp (and wvw counts as that) I can’t.
My JP would likely be stopped by a misguided youth who thinks they really are the king if they can bring grief to someone just doing a JP. If I stop to have a conversation I will likely be interrupted by some daggers in my back.

So no…… at least for me… notions of how long ques are to get in a wvw has never occurred to me. Didn’t even know there was one….
But I can immediately see that I likely can’t stand around and look at an interesting design schematics left by Scarlet in a table in peace. Hence No interest in such a part of the LS

So I can see that new patch is a force us PvE players into WvW…
Well I’ve skipped other LS points before. I guess it s a good time to take another break from the game.
I’m sure I can get any interesting lore from it as a quick recap somewhere after the LS is over.
Besides LS seem so far to have skipped past the majority of in lore that interest me.
No big deal. cya in a few weeks then.

From the stones and structures, use and neglect- we are still able to see 3 separate periods..
How old exactly I am hoping to get help to figure out.. and then we can start mapping Asura data much better.

The black smooth inquesty stones with silver writings seems newest based on Thaumanova and coil etc I’d say max 50 years.
How shortened to (BI)

The brownish very decorated seem older than that- perhaps from up to 200 years old or less.
(now shortened to BD)

The sandstone ruins seems at least older than that but that’s really – really what I want to get the community to help figure out.
(now shortened to SR)

Re: Thaumanova. It is indeed a new construction. as indicated by the black smooth stones mentioned above. There is no sign of previous structures. Unlike coil etc.
I haven’t played GW1 so any data fee from it is quite valuable. I try to glean some data from gw1 wiki. and I’m a bit confused about the Droknar’s forge- wiki states Shiverpeeks
Not even remotely close to Thaumanova. Could you elaborate?
The maps have changed quite a lot from gw1 to gw2 did you mean the coil structure and not Taumanova?

I’m also still uncertain about what everyone found in gw1. as there was several expansions. As far as I can tell only the last expansion had Asura?

Gates old versus new.-
Well; take Rata Pten (see picture) is that a new gate? or an abandoned old one.
Gate in the cave in Valence.. now the outside structure is new black stone. and separated from the cave entry. They state that they are making more room and calibrating. but nothing about why.. There are clearly rocks in front and above it.
If it was new would you not clear the site before setting the gate?

Cantha as shipping line makes great sense. Thank you- makes more sense. Also why ships in Orr are same design. .

LA and fishing is a bit of a different matter. there are 2 ship types in the Habour at Rata Sum- smaller sailing ships- likely for fishing, and those huge barges (with no means of propulsion) same ship design as the ones in Orr. but as you say. if this was used in Cantha leftover ships would make sense. and reuse for cargo as indicated by the golems seems viable, especially if, as you say- there is limits on gate use.

Re. the coil it self. – yes the IC is indeed very new. and build after the Thermanova by the inquest.
Hence the black inquesty stones in the center. but there is an outer layer that is smashed up and of older design. Cities are build on top of cities – (in this case lab) but you get the drift.
That is the point of the post; to figure out when each building or part is build.

Cubular has the sandstone ruin design all the way up indicating the oldest of the 3 designs. The large amount of squandered blocks below would seem superfluous to hide a treasure.. . But alright. I’ll give that its a long strike. we have really nothing to indicate purpose.

Re. Servitude.. They may not originally have had that big an ability.
If they started as nothing more then servants while the very powerful Mursaat was there.. once the Mursaat was gone that would leave the Asura with a power vacuum – loads of powerful artifacts to study. and they may well have been slowly gaining intelligence and abilities while in service. Just not being powerful enough to break out under the Mursaat-

Re: gates and power. Think I read something about that as you say. it was from Primodius, with Central transfer over it.. but that does not explain how gates far away are powered. or how they power them now.
But there is now talk about how talk about how the Ley-lines feed the dragons. how the lines swell and now its a global network. That means its an energy source Asura for sure would have the power to tab into. and the older gates would have been used by someone before the Asura- still leaving the Mursaat as prime suspects.
Why are they digging out old gates? and calibrating them.—- why on those sometimes rather remote and odd places.?

The Docks. gates are abundant. often several gates are build in such remote locations as Ulta Metamagical-Brissbane (again older gates are found).
Building gates to the other cities brings commerce and is in all the cities interest. and I’m sure they are new.
But all the main cities are landlocked with no harbour, except Rata Sum and LA. .
it might just be transport of goods between those two and may well have been used to setup the first gates in LA but after that —- the gates are huge— far bigger then the ships loading doorways. The boats are not open, and the unloading happens by smaller golems. Nothing there would be better used by boat than gate- unless you don’t have a gate at the other side yet-.

Problem is that most players never experience or even hear about it.-
If you do not happen to read a specific forum thread- or happen to find pps like wooden potatoes lore videos by chance… or in game select sylvari- and a very specific option in your character design—- well then you would never ever hear about it.
I have 2 sylvari and without WP’s lore videos I would never have even have guessed that there was ANYTHING remotely interesting in the personal story.
7 toons total and my very last an Asura actually finally has the interesting choice and had a “oooh” moment.
Else it has been – you are attacked by centaurs and bandits… for seemingly no real reason at all.
or … ehm kitten litter can’t even remember my other stories at all. wait there was something about inventing a ghost killing gun… that has no influence since.. yup that is it.

So: I would dare to say that like Rata Sum, there once was a floating structure above the coils location. in the same design as Rata Sum – more or less.- (about same size) with smaller hubs of structures around it both close and further away.. just Like Metrica.
Rata Pten is just a minor village like Desider Atum -
Both Rata Sum and Coil location match up in terms of water access and approx. size.
outer design match . -
I would dare that the Uncatagorized fractal structure is the missing square on top of coil. Gone missing at a major disaster as the Asura first tried to get the Mursat magi-tech to work. – it is now crashed landed in a fractal in.

I can yet grasp what part Dessa has in this, but is the ramifications of this past history would be something Asuras would try to keep secret for sure.

I also believe that the Cubular Fells is the leftovers of a construction site for the original building of the local area-

That there was a secret Mursaat location on Orr where Jinx Isles is.

And finally I would say that the Asura originaly where servants for the Mursaat – workforce.. hence knowledge of where the Mursat locations where- and they simply took over when the Mursaat fell…

Now lets have a look at some location and variation on textures and design.
gw003 is a corner of Coil. featuring 2 completely different stone types and structural designs.
The polished large black “inquesty” on the left – stones are orderly and flat often featuring silver writing
and the brighter sandstonelike more decorated with smaller stones.. in the wall that we can see some pillars are worn and crocked.
The decorated colourful small stoned walls, are the same as found in Rata Pten ruins
and are the same as found at Metrica province “old golem factory wp” and Ulta Metamigicals WP. Again bend and worn ruins we also find either priory historians excavating old ruins or Azura trying to salvage old knowledge.

Upper parts of Rata Sum has a 3rd style. bright coloured. but different patterned on the walls.

The dark inner coil stones are the same as used in Inquest complex north Metrica and the Fun house.

So we have established 3 separate stone and building styles..

Dark inquest . Brown Rata Sum . Sandstone Ruins

Pillars a bit odd and need more analysis as both round and square columns are present in the sandstone ruins. and partially in Brown Rata Sum. But never in the Dark Inquest (but sometimes as spires)

Now, already some of you will say; but I think I have seen x stones at y where there should be x.
And that is one of the mysteries.
The Base at Timberline Falls- Valance Tortury WP uses dark inquest – same with the base in Sparkfly Fen. but are managed by normal azura.

And it gets stranger.
the Gate that they are tweeking at Valance…. is being dug out. not build…. look at the roof and you see rocks in front of it. So the gate is older then the digsite.

Omnicron test + Bauxite Alchemicals are both in the brown Rata Sum style! . but look at the construction. Though not damaged by Zaitan. they look like the water level is not meant for the building.. Roof of BA odly sticks out of the sea..
Pillars support it mid water level. and manned by Inquest.

Ruined Pillar found at Old Glem Factory. gives a dates. “established 1294. status 1325” ref. to Oola,Vekk etc… this is the last 31 years we are talking about not “ancient ruins”. or did they just move into ancient ruins

Old overgrown gate at Ulta Metamagicals. along with working ones…. excavated from when?…. are they telling us that they are on expeditions excavating “ancient” 30 year old buildings ?

Thermanova – inquest stones.

Could it be explained by just local rocktypes.? no. the rocks are distinct and goes across huge distance. and type of land.

At Rata Sum- they have a shipping dock. Unloading crates from ship types that are sunken in Orr…. but they have gates to all known major cities.. only LA has a harbour.
Why would a magical gate making race use old ships to transport things and from where?… first time to get agate build sure… after?? wtf

Haven’t had time to look at Fractal Thermanova incident or uncatagorized.
But I’m fairly sure it will tell some stories once we figure all this out.

But based on the stones it seems at least to confirm the theory that the Azura didn’t build or design those early ruins or even Rata Sum, but reused it.

Can’t really search through all the post, so if there already is a topic for it. let me know and I’ll move it.

So all the mysteries of Azura and where they come up from the deeps – Where the uncatagorized Fractal location is- and when.
Weither or not if one structure is Azuran- Inquest- Mursaat- old or new, is all quite interesting. I would suggest we look at the material use – wear and plant overgrowth, mix of design and patterns to see if we can get somewhere..
There are many structures around. Ruins to investigate and odd things that might give clues.
First a few assumptions.
Locations:
Just like the real world we must assume that races of Tyria build cities along the same reasons as on earth. Near good rivers for fishing and transport, fresh water access, fertile soil from volcanoes nearby. or other likely natural reason for building exactly there.
In GW world that includes potentially Lay-lines.

Azura gates: I will assume that for a gate to work there must be an two gates. exit- entry.
They will need energy – and I will propose that they gain the power from the Lay-lines.
gw1 central transfer chamber stories and more seem to indicate that.

And lastly that developers have though of both design and texture skin when actually planning the building ^^

For the next few points Ill go over the locations and look at stones and textures.

Dev.s please consider smaller servers.
There is already so much content that simply does not happen on servers like Vabbi.
Or rather does only happen when huge groups and guilds visit to farm it on our server.
The clockwork Scarlett invasions are just ignored. We never managed to have numbers to do anything – and since achievement time is over 0 even try.
Teq. only done by other servers farming on our server- and when they do arrive it is enough in numbers that anyone from our server arriving goes into overflow.

Let the bosses be able to scale down and up by number of players or even better set into raid dungeon setting to balance numbers

Unless you start working on balancing the server population. We on small servers get 0 out of those deployments.

Then don’t play pvp and just play pve. Play what you have fun with.
I would be quite happy if all players stopped playing pvp or at least all Eles stopped playing pvp.
I don’t play pvp, but bad changes happen to my Elementalist because of … pvp…. in my pve game. It is super frustrating that something happens in a universe part that you have no part of gives causality to what you do.

yeah it is a force players to do everything- I guess
For me it’s the Empyrial fragments. I delete dust and ore by the thousands but simply can’t get enough fragments.
You get around 15 for a full set of fractals and 2-4 from a jp little chest around the world. – and finally
20ish from a Dungeon. and lots it seems from WvW.

My usual daily process goes into killing World bosses and temples and pve world content like that- giving me plenty of dusts and ore.
But! I do also usually do a fractal set some jp’s and loot chests — just not enough from that pr. day.-
I guess I need to do wvw… tobad I’m on a low pop server- hence wvw does not really happen! and if it does we would be loosing not gaining anything.

That leaves me with doing some 4 dungeons on explorable – every bloody day- finding a group- doing the same paths (cause only some paths are done) again and again ad infinitum.. —- sigh

What buggered me was the patch that made it 3 silk scraps pr. bolt instead of 2 and the fact that you need 100 and not 50 to make 1 ascended.
- I though – I had prepared— . and gathered over 3k scraps.- had sadly not made them bolts- then came the bolt kitten , reducing my supply and then the 100 vs 50 for weapons.
I managed so far to make boots and legs for 1 toon. – I have 7.
- Though I had sufficient – I mean, I’m only playing some 14 hours each day- you know casual. And I just don’t have enough.

Further imbalance in what ends with the cost for producing cloth armor versus metal… since all need cloth – OK none can make much. BUT- since metal and leather could be pre-made long ago (I have fair stacks of each)..
Cloth users are in serious disadvantage.
They need – FAR- more cloth (the hardest to farm)
Mats on all other armor types have spread out mats use. (though cloth is still hardest mats to get)

Everyone that crafted could see the slots in advance for crafting cloth- but who could tell that it would get THAT expensive.
Stockpile of metal and leather was possible, and what I though was enough cloth, but no.

No chance to farm enough, for a cloth armor toon, pr. day even at 14 hours play time.

Further- defensive infusion——- 250 karka shells….. a monster none wants to fight as they are-
Horrible droprate -(unless you count karka queen- witch gets farmed on my server BY a HUGE zerg from other servers so we enter overflow if we try to make it.) and no way to transmute them using the genie. That is some 1000+ young karka kills to get one socket.
AND we are somehow expected to have several gear sets depending on what we do??

Seriously! ?? for what 3-10 stat point increase? a skin that looks like a kitten harlequin joke on most races/gender?

Please A-net- first off – balance the cloth users cost to get ascended- and look into the rest as-well.

Thank you Mochann.5298 My thoughts exactly..
I have started to call staff Elementalist that do well. War-Dancers, cause its what we do.
It’s a beautiful dance. It’s all about aspect change and throwing one of your 25 readied spells at the right time…. that’s 10 more then most classes .
I have a use for all my aspected staff powers every day.
And yes.. kitten up or run out of moves and you are one-shot.
You play a War-dancer for the challange and the surprised look on your team when you pull your crazy stunts.
When the day is over you can have stood around on your guard pressing the same few buttons all day and leave and say — meh..I rally hit things there..
Or you can be all over the place. blinding, dodging, doing your own combo fields, healing your team and kicking kittens (or gerbils- whatever it becomes when censorship is done)

I have 7 characters.. just missing thief (will get when we get the birdmen)
yes there is something like a main- it’s the one you play more then others and tend to gear before the rest. – it’s the one you return to when you have played on the rest and now wants to get down and dirty.

hmm.. I actually find the mechanics of elementalists to be supreme.
BUT that said. only as high arcane speced. to change often between aspects.
I’m only talking pve. (I don’t do pvp). but love that with a staff and 30/0/0/20/20 I could do fair damage. and quickly change to healing the group . swap to control and so on… but absolutely a must with high arcane…
the new change… just meant that i still had to be high arcane. . kitten my survival a bit. (loss of mist form regain) (long story but it was great with runes of vamp.).

Survival… survival—— that is the main problem… if you do the aspect dance perfectly and blind and dodge and unsteady ground just right.. its great… one mistake and a champ still often one shots you….. and all that for ´damage that is only equal to most other professions…
My main issue after the nerf…. please give us something useful in water 10 talent….

Monsters do not crit. it’s intirely a pvp thing. and isn’t it lovely that we who play pvp gets kitten because of some pvp thing and now have to fight to get something usefull in pve. >.<
OK. so. like before the nerf.. I run 30/0/0/20/20 staff build. with heavy support and versitily through atunements…
A large part was mixing the defense of the old soothing wave with mist forms from (down power). mist form active power and – superior rune of vampirism.
giving me an excellent use of an otherwise unused rune. . last ditch difference..
being around 14´k health and limited dodge well you need all that in a pve world fractals etc.

So now I have still cleansing wave (a must)… my runes need to be dumped. likely for the expensive 10g a piece traveler (- I have 70g) so ^^ yey all my money-
and what the heck am I supposed to put in 10point talent??

vital strike? its quite rare I’m at 90 for long
arcane abat? seriously?
Reduced cantrips? currentluy I don’t use cantrips. but I guess after the 60g spend I could remove speed siget for a cantrip
piercing shards?? hahahahahahaha
or the new soothing…… I don’t pvp….

Please devs—— when doing compleate revamps—- please think of something else then pvp.. and give us something usefull here.