Guild Wars 2

Really interesting mechanic. I’m wondering if its an instant cast – and if you can order it to move while disabled?

So it turns out that revenants talk to the echos of the legends the channel. So obviously this will be an ongoing thing – with hosts of pompous dead people acting as your revenant’s backseat driver…

But I assume at some point you get to greet them first, in whatever way you want, before they get to respond. This could definitely be symbolically potent for a Sylvari, having just found out they are the “evil” spawn of an elder dragon and with most of their race having run off to be “evil” for the dragon as well. So for a Sylvari to get a word in with the ghost of their culture’s spiritual leader while said culture crumbles apart would probably mean a lot for the poor oak.

So I was thinking, first words mind:

WHO’S YO DADDY!?

Some hearts were pretty fun, especially the more unique ones – which bordered on mini-games.

Does every map need twenty hearts? Not necessarily but it would be nice if every map had 1 or 2 “borderline mini-games” in it – which would be best represented on the map as a heart.

The char heart where you have to stealthily sneak through an ash legion camp is really fun. Can it be frustrating? Hell yes! If you bad at it you could have to repeat the game twenty times. But after 20 times you would still get the heart for showing up – you’d just get the heart in one round if you good at it.

Seeing as the upcoming maps are multi-leveled, mushroom springing, hand-gliding labyrinths, I’m really hoping for a “borderline mini-game” where you have to deliver battlefield communicants from one spot on the map to very distant locations in a short time frame – this should be represented on map and for completion sake as a heart.

As for whether there should be twenty hearts, what exactly are meant to replace them to represent map completion. Hearts provide a way of making people perform varied activities in exchange for a large reward and eventually gifts of exploration – and those are the only reasons one would actually bother with hearts. People seem to be suggesting that you shouldn’t need to put in so much effort and be forced to partake in distance locked (slightly varied) activities for these rewards. find these views to be silly.

There will be few or no hearts going forward. If anyone can suggest a way which maintains the effort associated with the rewards on the old maps, which can be implemented without much work on Anet’s side, then by all means do away with hearts.

If you feel you should be able to to grind closely packed mobs in the corner of a map until some mega-heart fills up, then kindly join a shovel train in the silverwastes, and stay there until you can buy your legendary straight off the market.

First off this isn’t a complaint, just the borderline constructive rants which bounce around inside my noggin.

I leveled a female human Guardian in the hopes of having a viable healer. Heavy zodiac torso and legs, glowing carapace gloves, shoulders and boots, devil horns and light of dwayna on back – white hair, gold theme and the glowing carapace parts can be made to match the galaxy blue of the zodiac pieces exactly with specific colors (not the ones you would think. End result, she looks pretty kitten celestial – with out equipping the celestial stats of course.

I’m wondering if I should delete her to re-level a healing human female revenant. It all comes down to which one heals better. The floating tablet of ventari’ness sounds promising, requiring people to actively move to get healing I’m not sure of. While “active” healing will likely heal more for then passive healing, its unlikely people will go to the effort to get it.

Need to balance that off against the novelty of having a Sylvari who can troll Ventari.

Well, seeing as her warning have not only been confirmed but also turned out to be an early prototype of Scarlet’s twisted watchwork minions, perhaps her heeding should be changed to non-stop gloating – telling passers by how they should have listened to her when they had the chance. Of course she should say this ALL THE TIME!!!

I was idly browsing the web for any hints on how to make my PvP bomber engineer slightly more viable.

What I was not expecting to find was that engineers have a combo which provides a long duration “Invisible” buff to the engineer and nearby allies.

Apparently dropping the large explosive utility belt thing (which you get from the bomb kit), dropping a smoke bomb and then activating your shield skill 4 in the smoke area gives you two doses of “invisible”.

This happens because you land up activating two blast finishers inside a smoke field. Or at least, I assume that is what happens.

Which left me wondering. Do you know about the different elemental fields and how they work? Should some sort of tutorial be added to explain them in game or is there already sufficient explanation which I have missed?

I want them, but thats all the more reason they shouldn’t be made easier to get.

While I agree that one eventually gets bored of games, there are games I toss out the window and games I come back to every seven months.

Guess why I uninstalled Diablo 2 in the end? Because thy released Diablo 3. Nothing else would have gotten me to do it. Heck, I’d still be playing WoW right now because of its awesome narrative (and regular updates -.-) if I didn’t feel personally slighted when Blizzard didn’t offer the WoW/Diablo opening special in my country.

Plants vs Zombies I will always play. Elder Scrolls games I will always play. Warframe I had to consciously ban myself from playing (as I was spending more hours on it per day then I spent each day farming in Guild Wars -.-).

The GW2 promise was that our hard work would never be devalued. While a bit harsh on the developers, if the fruits of your hard work cease to have relevance, then the value of your hard work devalues itself. I got the entire glowing carapace armor? Great! But as that was the last reward of Silverwastes, without further zones to show it off in, the only action I took on my carapace wearing toon once equiping the stuff was logging off. Haven’t touched her since.

MMOs/repetitive tasks/grinding are addictive. Most of the people who have the entire glowing carapace armor have it because we tend to fall for these “meaningful” time sinks. And I do. Repetitively.

So when I’m sitting around late at night, wondering if I’m wasting my time with a computer game I feel that something has gone iffy. I mean I get bored and shelf games regularly but I haven’t contemplated gaming as a waste of life since I got snared into a round of cookie clicker the evening before an important master’s proposal meeting – which ended with me clearing my cache, internet history, google history and face palming myself at 03:00 that morrning.

I’m actually starting to agree with this. The most sane thing to do would be to walk away from the game at the moment. Maybe come back when the expansion is out – if you still feel like it.

I don’t like the comment being tossed around that “they’ve more or less said there would be no new content until expansion”. If they had clearly said that, I’d play some other mmo, if they said there would be more content sooner, I wouldn’t renew any subscriptions.

I’ve done most of the stuff in game at this point. Farmed teq till I ad enough karma to buy out 3 sets of T3 cultural weapons, farmed silverwastes until I had every unlock in the area. Risen to a respectable point in PvP. Spammed auto-attack in several WvW zergs…

Besides unlocking the more obscure fashion pieces (which I’ll never use) there be zip to do. And in another forum someone claimed there had been no new content in over 100 days?

The living world thing is dead. New content will cost money. The production cycle has become painfully slow because of the reduced income of the model (i assume). Exact details were replaced with vague details were then replaced with no details.

The only thing that seems to have been clearly communicated is that Anet is not interested in creating dungeons and as a general practice they don’t like making armors because you have to make 1 for each armor type.

Have they broken any promises? Not really, unless you want to hold them to exact wording and several of the ideals they proudly proclaimed to stand for – and then quietly hoped everyone had forgotten about.

There comes a point where your time is worth more then the average subscription. If you still having fun in this game, great for you! If you’ve run out of stuff to do, perhaps its time to pay for content elsewhere – where that continual paying is put into the rapid development of content.

Dubious.

I feel…

Dubious.

I hate outfits and I reckon I’m in the majority on that one. I like armor. The idea that I can earn all future armor without gems sounds great. Except that I can only recall 2 complete sets of armor being released (which didn’t cost gems) between release and present time. Also, the gem armors feature some of the most detailed armor sets in game. Whether or not you like the zodiac,aetherblade or flamewalker sets, they are of a higher design quality then most of the non-gem sets. Can we expect high quality or low quality sets if Anet will no longer be making a direct profit off of them – and most importantly, if armor sets are non-gem, will we ever actually get any?

Flame me if I’m wrong here but haven’t the durations of the stabs been increased as part of the change?

I think they have and that is the part which annoys me (so hopefully it actually exists ^^). In 5v5 PvP when people used stab I’d just wait for it to wear off then cc them. Now it seems to last forever – with too many stack to clear anyway -.-

T3 medium Asuran cultural armor. The only medium armor in game which is not an oversized jacket.

All yon cowboys can gaze and weep. Yon ninjas can run and hide.

I really like the concepts presented in this idea. Except that there should be vendor (or map activatable food stalls which give the same protection with slightly more debuffs. A humourus take on what the player made version of the blooddust food (ascended, of course) would read would be (Tastes off. But you not going to die!)

The fact that the bloodstone dust may have freed madrey from Mordremoth is an interesting catch as well. They from the original bloodstones – so perhaps sufficient magic washes dragon magic out of dragon minions?

And seeing as we talking ascended foodstuffs, obligatory:
Bottomless rum cask
-caption (Norn stalk you at night)

Ah, Clickbait. The joy of precise words. There was a nice discussion titled “Tybalt!” which after receiving a fair amount of posts got its title changed to " Tybalt! (spoilers). Clickbait then…

But on with the intended topic.

I’ve played a minion Necro since launch. I found that sometimes activating their abilities fixes them. Sometimes not. Fine in PvE, sub-par in PvP.

What really annoyed me we with necro minions is when they nerfed an aspect of Flesh golem (because logic) and added a stronger version of the flaw onto Mordrem Terragriffs a few weeks later (because logic).

Flesh golems used to do a large amount of (un-buffalbe) damage if they charged someone against a wall – as the charge would hit the target repetitively until the flesh golem’s charge ended. The damage of the flesh golem was changed to only do heavy damage on the first hit and then near no damage on consecutive hits to the same target. Then the golem was changed to only proc a hit against enemies hit once.

Enter the Terragriff. The terragriff recieved a supped up version of this removed behaviour. Every time it’s charge hit a player, the player would be knocked and take heavy damage – but if the terragriff hit the player against a wall, the player would take so many heavy hits from the same charge that it would instagib a ascended gear Zerker warrior (and receive movement impairing knockdown on the spot in a continuous manner). Even better, given the size of terragriffs, they can become stuck on small rocks sticking out of the dirt while charging – and if you near this when it happens, instagibbed you are.

So yeah. Fixing enemy A.I shortfalls. Sort of. Minions, not so much.

I’m not saying they won’t become more useful, I’m just saying I cannot foresee any future in which I don’t generate all three of them passively at an incredible rate. Ascended gear seems to be the upper limit on the amount of dusts required – which means ill auto-generate any such sum over 3 days of play.

I just looked around and failed to find any references to playable bird races in MMOs. Go figure.

I will say though that the idea that the current Tengus are place holders is silly. If Tengus are released, expect the exact same body and a 20% variation of the jaw shape of their beak – with about 12 beak options available outside of black lion style kits.

If Tengus get released, they will come out with Primordius – who’s minions are overrunning their cities.

Oh yes, and I forgot to mention the last notable aspect of the Tengu. Primitive and unimaginative weaponry. Traders mainly have bows, a few skill challenges have swords and when molten alliance mooks attacked one of their gates during the Lions arch invasion, they were held off by a rain of tengu arrows -.-

Even the Tengu blacksmith, the only non-generic (not a trader or caravan guard) Tengu to appear thus far, had nothing interesting to say besides “I look forward to working together. With other blacksmiths”.

Its a fair system. It annoys me greatly but I can’t really complain much about it. I prefer the extremes. Either a system where things bought off the trade post cannot be reposted or a system like Eve online, where there is no central market and the effort of moving and fetching items from decentralized markets gives some counter play to people ravaging the available supply of certain things.

I guess as long as people are manually clicking on the items they want to buy and resell. I’d be annoyed if people had constructed software to automatically interact with the Trade post in game to buy and sell items which deviated from a set worth -.-

Why would you want to be a bird person? It just seems unbelievably bland. Their crowning features seem to be high walls, rigorous adherence to trade agreements and possessing a beak. The bipedal polar-bears are more interesting them them – for wielding two handed hammers if nothing else.

The Largos are one of the more original races I’ve seen in a while. Aquatic butterfly race – and there is some sort of RL aquatic butterfly type fish as well. Who doesn’t want Mesmer butterfly assassin exploding into a cloud of butterflys?

I always thought that they had the risk-vs-reward of healing signet backwards. The risk of having a moderate heal over time (which is more effective if you mitigate half the incoming damage through active dodging) should be the complete absence of an instant burst heal.

Instead of nerfing passive regen and buffing burst heal, they should completely remove the burst heal and in its place give 1 secs of invuln followed by 5 secs of condition immunity. And for the next 25 seconds – nothing.

You want continual heal over time which provides above average healing over 60 seconds? Fine, but know that the 40 seconds worth of instant healing every one else relies on in emergencies is not available to you.

Agreed. Fully translucent armor all the way…

Any and all armor additions are good but I don’t know why people bother suggesting more of them when we’ve only had about 3 sets of free armor added to the game since release. (glory, carapace and surely one other?)

I believe in choices over complexity. While the current system may have more traits to choose from, many trait combinations don’t work as a lack of synergy between them renders them sub par to meta builds.

There will always be meta builds. That said, by encapsulating all of the bonuses associated with a certain play theme into one trait (and limiting direct synergy across different traits), designers should be able to mitigate the differences in power between the different play styles.

You like dagger? This trait makes faster run and pokier dagger. You like staff? This trait makes your staff… err… staffier. The fact that you may only be able to choose one of these two traits prevents potential OP synergies between the boons meant for daggers and boons meant staves – meaning that buffs or nerfs can be directly applied to a single play theme (encapsulated in a single trait) without worrying about knock-on effects to other builds (which use different traits).

Not as simple as I portray it, but these are my feelings on the subject. How well Anet manages to pull it off is another topic entirely though.

I want Largos. So yes, underwater combat all the way. GW2 underwater combat is the best MMO underwater combat I’ve seen – unfortunately its still clunky.

You’d think that being able to move in 3D would make things more strategic, alas underwater encounters seem to be more linear then the land based battles -.-

I’m guessing that if we get an under water zone to battle bubbles, it will not be underwater combat as is. Rather it will be more of a “heavy vehicle” type approach where people can team tag-team with a range of aquatic creatures to engage with truly colossal deep sea monstrosities. ie. Bottom crawling Elder karkas (tank equivalent), free swimming dolphins (fighter jet equivalent) or massive manta rays (bomber equivalent) or anything between. 2 skills and 2 utilities being set by the character class while the other 6 skills would be set by the aquatic creature you sit on.

And yes. Ride the Karka I shell.

I had a hilarious incident with an old guild mate of mine. He quit the game when his brother did and eventually I parted directions with that guild’s leader.

Forward 8 months (and four guilds), the guildmate whispers me to ask how he can get hold of that guild leader. Even though he’s whispering me, I’m told he is off line and i can’t respond. The guy keeps messaging me and starts getting pretty irate. Eventually I think to mail him that i cant respond to him – which gets through. It turned out he had invisibled himself somehow (or blocked me?).

So yea. Only negative whisper I’ve gotten. I sent a negative whisper once. I was part of a pug-with-exact-class-joins-specified- speed party, a redundant warrior joined the group and some fool kicked my warrior instead of the new one. I was not complimentary.

Mostly I just get people asking me where pieces of my attire come from. Over and over again…

Personally I think that in the process of crafting 250 ori barrels, you accidentally craft one of them into the Lys pistol by accident. When you hand Zomoros the 250 barrels, he just gives back the one you scored a sleep deprived crit on.

I think it’s the wizard. The one in the castle floating over the ocean in the corner of Kessix hills.

He sends out letters when he’s not enslaving elementals. Mostly to collapsed ascalonian ruins, sometimes to the Asuran peacekeeper’s customer relations office and recurringing to a noodle hut in Divinity’s reach – where he repetitively asks for a refund for a bowl of soup he never ordered.

He try’d to send a letter to an elder dragon once but it just stepped on the messenger – then ate the letter.

The messages sent to your character were actually meant to go to an ascalonian ruin. E’s request to Majory was just a side visit on the wizard’s trip to troll the noodle hut.

He gets kind of bored. No one ever seems to visit. He’s been thinking of landing the castle. On land.

On a side note, personally think its the countess. Cause, ya know, you can just send yourself a letter ocassionally – wizard doesn’t mail everyone.

The only part that annoys me about the set is that a Char’s neck when wearing the entire set isn’t molten. I mean seriously, wtf?

I found (when trying to play a main attribute heal Guardian) that healing was fully effective. Most boss fights (including some with “1-hit-KOs”) I could completely heal through, having people stand on me and autoattack to their heart’s content.

The problem was that if people were moving around and applying their own damage reduction techniques or CC, having a 5th damage dealer negated more damage then healing over time – as i could only help 2 of my 4 marks at any given moment.

Main: Minion Necro. Decent for pugging unranked pvp (bruisers used to be useful in season 1 living world events)
Alt 1: Bezerker Warrior. Excels at solo dolyak escorts in the silverwaste (may I never see another one ever again) and speed clearing dungeons.
Alt 2: Engineer. Useful when the pvp daily reads “Engineer” and not “Necro”
Alt 3: Full heal Guardian. Utterly useless. But looks. FABULOUS.

@Dietzero: Which is to say the karka attack can’t happen before they put in a new lion – as destroying the lion will be the conclusion condition.

@BrooksP: Thanks for the support. Just a small point I liked about Forgal was his regret of never gathering a family of his own. When you escort the human messanger his comment (after browbeating her) is that he would have wanted a daughter just like her, just more stubborn.

Eir and Braham are focused on on their legends being sung across Tyria. Forgal always came across as being more concerned about the results of his legacy (and his simple decisions) then the amount of glory or praise which would be heaped on him as a result. I suggested speaking of his legacy to a child not because he wanted to be remembered, but because the off chance that a child would decide to follow in his footsteps would be to achieve the sole thing he regretted never having been able to do.

Maybe Anets is trying to be more transparent with things again?

Forgal is awesome. The other two mentors got endless witty one-lines. The fact that Forgal only chose to say something epic as he was about to die doesn’t diminish his awesomeness. In enhances it.

Oddly enough, the biggest issue I had with Sieran (shared by a friend of mine who favoured her) was that she chose to die at Claw Island. The sudden turn in dialogue was completely out of character for her. And deciding to die because she finally had someone worth dying for? Seriously, our character isn’t that bad -.-

I see nothing conceptually wrong with trusting the consortium. When Nasa sent previous rockets into space, they’d auction off the production of the spaceship parts – meaning that astronauts would literally be sitting on the cheapest construct that Nasa could requisition.

But as has been stated above.

Karka ^^

Epic Karka catch. you just made this pitiful release into an awesome release for me ^^

I like the Karka, they are so annoying that they become memorable. They remind me of a montypython song actually – although I can’t do it justice in writing:

Heeeeeeeerrrrreeeeeeeeee comes ANOTHER ONE!!!
Heeeeeeeerrrrreeeeeeeeee it comes AGAIN!!!
Heeeeeeeerrrrreeeeeeeeee comes ANOTHER ONE!!!
WHEN WILL IT EEEEEVVVEEEEER END

The mentors were three of my five favorite characters in GW2 – the other two were a ghost and a giant.

While I agree that letting our characters honor their mentors would make for an awesome inclusion, I feel that more subtle tributes would be more suited to their legacy.

Tybalt was an Order of Whispers agent. Having a statue to honor a secret agent seems counter intuitive. I’d be in favor of planting an apple tree in the fort on claw island (with your character using it’s political clout to make sure the tree wasn’t removed – despite protest from those stationed there). End the scene of your character walking away turn into a picture book portrait of your leaving hero and the sapling – with an unknown narrator stating that while no one would remember how the sapling got there, the trail of events which would center around the tree would stagger belief.

For Forgal I’d expect a short scene with your hero standing in a Norn shrine with statues depicting all the spirits of the wild. A Norn child recognizes you as a pact commander and mentions several of the spirits you remind her of. In response you recount the final moments of the last priest of Dolyak and how your hero and many others were only alive today because of his actions. Girl gets excited and proclaims she too will be a priest of Dolyak when she grows up (while running off).

Seiran reference would be the easiest. Just include a cutscene in HoT where Mordremoth is personally belittling you and if your character played through the priory story, have it retort with a mention of Seiran, followed by one of Seiran’s quotes before stabbing Mordremoth in the foot (everyone else just gets to stab foot without witty comeback).

As a side point, I believe it completely feasible that the mentors from all three orders died in the attack on Claw Island – as all had leads which led them to investigate just as the attack came.

As a side side point, seeing as my necromancer is getting a greatsword and Majory got to imbue her greatsword with the spirit of her sister, I dont want to honour the memory of my mentor. I want to go back to claw island, shove his spirit in a greatsword and proceed to clobber dragon minions to death with it -.-

This week’s special surprise: wooden planks! Some horizontal, others vertical – all in Lion’s arch!

Plus some epic reuse of an established consortium practice: the act of of visibly not disclosing anything. No one but the consortium bothers to do it but when you walk past a consortium guard they’ll say they shouldn’t be talking to you and when you talk to a consortium contractor they’ll say you’d buy in if you knew.

Wouldn’t call it living story though. Nothing to interact with, no world development and nothing significant to find. Would have been nice if we could have been given the option too “donate” a sizable order of crafting materials to a desperate consortium overseer in exchange for some information about his project – throw in 5 achievement points, an even vaguer non-disclosure recital and a cinematic zoom-through of Lion’s Arch and we’d call it a release -.-

Interesting topic. One of the funniest limitations of modern warfare (in my opinion) is that we as a species have no way to wage war against things that burrow. We can shoot things out the sky, out near space, out the ocean, but let a squadron of moles tunnel 1 km under ground in random directions (moles probably dont go so far down) and you cant touch them.

We can apply unimaginable explosive force to any target a nuclear warhead can reach – the question thus becomes, is mordremoth’s core above or below ground?

Mordern military techniques could not deal with mordremoth’s vine system – which runs underground. Heck, there is an uber termite system which runs beneath half of Europe which got so large because there was no way to stop it! The hope would thus be that cutting off the head would kill the body.

Mordremoth is probably within bombing distance of the surface – so modern military probably could kill it. I say that Mordremoth is probably close to the surface because otherwise it would be impeding in Primordius’s territory. I’m not saying that Mordremoth fighting a subterranean war with Primodius wouldn’t be possible (or even unlikely), I just believe such a twist is above the caliber of Anet’s story – and thus wont happen.

My guess is that Mordremoth will be taken down in game by a modified version of the toxin Scarlet used to clear out Lion’s arch. If you listened to O-tron, it was stated that the toxin was laced with mist energies – the only other piece of technology to utilize mist energies was the giant cannon which Zojja shot Zhaitan with. A toxin of that potency is not something that exists in “RL”.

I believe the title “Core Game Abandoned” is misleading, but I agree with the point.

GW2 has long been built on transparency and fair intent. While I understand that development time is being put towards the expansion (and I’m fine with that), I do not like how they continually claimed they were churning out bi-weekly releases and championing the “living story”. They were not bi-weekly released. They averaged at about 1 release per 3.5 weeks over the year.

The content when it did show up was great, and I’m not complaining about the intervals at which it came (i seem to have more life stuff to do now then I used to, so the slower release is actually relaxing to me). I just find their advertising over the whole thing to be intentionally misleading.

The living-world section of the forums should be renamed to the dead-world. As it is. If content can not be delivered while expansions are being produced, I’m okay with that, but I find the inaccurate hyping while content is arriving and the awkward silence when content isn’t arriving to taint the overarching intent of Anet – and thats my favorite part about this game and company :/

PS: Apologies if I did not agree with the intent of this topic in any way whatsoever ^^

Yup. Necromancer is the only class I can play with any success in arena. On the upside, minions are really great when they do decide to move ^^

I have a full heal guardian which I never use (yet to find somewhere which would benefit from her presence) and I’m not sure how to trait her with the new stuff yet.

My main is a tanky Necro with a minion zerg. I think he’s being burned slightly? There are now additional interesting options with grandmaster traits for minions – alas as I can only use one, the minions haven’t really gotten stronger. Below grandmaster my minions lose nothing (as some skills are grouped) but the additional traits in that line seem pretty pointless to me. The rest of the blocks seem to lock me out of the low level trait combinations I was using as well.

I dont think my necro will land up much worse, I just get the feeling that other classes may get slightly better – leaving my poor necro behind.

Thanks for the special mention that the “toughness while channeling” trait is being removed because no one was using it. Apparently I’m no one, and they find my usage of that trait offensive.

On the upside, it appears that I had good taste in traits – as they made most of my favorite low tier traits into grandmaster choices. Yay me -.-

Could make for very interesting event map encounters if we had sub-bosses who had to be stomped while the normal enemies refused to let you. Just add sub-boss things which hinder large areas with random area AoEs when downed (which wont die until stomped) and give supporting weak creatures interrupt abilities which they tend to save for people trying to perform stomps.

We could create an entire industry of players dedicated to stopping mooks from interupting stomping noobs ^^

Thanks Vague Memory, for giving that vague account on what the Devs vaguely mentioned ^^

I’d assume the cleanest solution would be to only allow specific armor pieces to have boon duration – so that fully speccing into armor which gave +boon would result in about 40% boon duration. For instance only rings (or chest and helm) would have +boon combos, allowing people to more easily figure out how to achieve their old builds.

We’ve just had a blog stating that the stats which are currently associated with traits will be moved onto equipment. One has to wonder what will happen to the 30% boon duration bonus which can only be gained by fully speccing into one of our current trait lines?

I’d assume (based on that) that we will see armor stat combinations which include “boon duration”?

I just want my dolyak priest back. And quite frankly it looks like an attainable option at this point.

Rylock looks pretty cool with his blindfold and flaming sword and whatnot. As a long time necromancer player though, it was just one collosal face palm after the next as I found out further details about the Revenants. Why? Everything that necromancers do seems to be done better and in a more lore cohesive manner by revenants.

Necromancers channel the power of undeath. What this means is never explained very vividly in game. What we do know is that the mists are the reality’s underworld and so Necromancers must pull some hocus pocus from the mists.

First point about the revenants: They channel the power of the mists -.-

Necromancers also summon undead minions. Or at least I think they are. Trahearne comments at some point that undead minions were never alive (and so cannot be corrupted by Zhaitan). This seems to suggest that flesh golems are merely that – golems. Not alive, not undead, just dubious constructs held together by unspecified “mist” energy. And quite frankly, I get the impression that asuran progeny are taught to make golems out of bone before being allowed to move onto the more reliable metal, steam and finally holo constructs.

And what do revenants do while necromancers are busy tinkering around with fleshy constructs. It seems that Revenants are busy channeling the power of ancient heroes in the mist. In other words, THEY ARE USING THE POWERS OF ACTUAL DEAD PEOPLE.

Plus revenants get to use heavy armor, cause no one actually knows why a necromancer confine themselves to cloth – and because heavy ascended equipment is just oh so much cheaper to craft -.-

They look cool but to me revenants just seem to be more epic necromancers, there to loom over any existing necromancers and skitten at their backwards cultural tendencies.

And just like every other prominent NPC necromancer in the story, it appears that we too will be getting a greatsword. Yay us.

That had me wondering about one story point immediately. Marjory got her greatsword possessed by the spirit of her dead sister. Now I’m pretty sure that my necromancer doesn’t have any dead sisters (at least that he’s mentioned). He did have this mentor he was really close to that died during the battle of Claw Island…

I don’t supposed that as a greatsword wielding necromancer, we’d get to ask the spirits of our dead mentors to fuse with our blades?

Some of the mordrem require counters which people usually neglect outside of PvP. When two mordrem Teragriff get close enough to snuggle the emmit a shriek which gives nearby enemies 16 stacks of might – which hurts. If you have any skill that can remove a buff, teragriff snuggling hurts no more. A whole lot of simple things like this make them easier to deal with.

If you going for a full on zerker build though, you will actually be required to make zero mistakes or get your squishy face eaten when you mess up.

@dsslive: Can’t really argue with anything you’ve said. Most of my stuff is pure conjecture.

It is interesting that there were very few dragon minions in the world after the Elder dragons went to sleep the last time (possibly none besides the dragon champions). The corruption of the Elder dragons definitely seems to dry up or disappear when the Elder Dragons are absent.

What I’m left wondering though is the exact nature of Elder Dragon “hibernation”. For example, we know the Elder Dragons eventually go to sleep of their own accord BUT that Elder Dragons which are “killed” do seem to revive to give grief to species a few thousand years later – just like the sleeping Elder Dragons.

So the question is then, does a sleeping elder dragon release magic in the same manner as a “dead” Elder dragon or are we to believe that every single time the Elder dragons have rose, all of them have been killed by the civilizations present at the time?

That and I’ll have to redo the Priory quest, I missed the book on mordremoth you talking about -.-

Indeed true that Mordremoth doesn’t GIVE intelligence/mind – though his corrupted Sylvari have turned to rather sophisticated and elaborate plans…

Some disagreements after this point though. It’s been stated that dragon minions fight each other, so dragons probably don’t like each other either – may be scared of direct encounters.

Also, while dragons do drain most of the magic from the world, dragon minions are examples of free roaming dragon magic (mixed with normal stuff). So while dragons eat normal magic, they also excrete a certain amount of that magic out in the form of corruption. If a single dragon was left standing, it’s magic would probably corrupt all magic in Tyria given enough time – turning the world to it’s image. So if Mordremoth won, you wouldn’t have a wasteland or a barren land – you’d have a planet wide jungle thick with his vines and minions.

On the subject of GIVING though, I but ask this: If you had to open up an orphanage on the carcass of an elder dragon, do you think the magic seeping out of the dead elder dragon would effect the small kids in ways related to the specific dead dragon? Mordremoth minions have displayed more intellegence then previous dragon minions, executing co-ordinated attacks on forts (of their own accord) and defending the purple plant thing when they saw a flare in the last episode. Would an orphanage on Mordremoth’s carcass result in more intelligent children – or more relatably, would an orphanage on Zaitain’s carcass result in sickly, emo children.

We do have to kill Mordremoth first because of it’s aggressiveness. That doesn’t mean that killing Mordremoth first won’t have dire consequences.

Proposal Overview
Always include non-standard roles for a small number of people to perform which isn’t DPS related and requires sneaky utility of skills.

Goal of Proposal
GW2 doesn’t run on the divine trinity. Instead it gives all players a murky mix of dps, healing and tanking for all. That aside though, each class is given a unique set of utility effects – and the creative use of these utilities should be emphasised along side the fight.

Proposal Functionality
My proposal is that there should be roles, or phases, in which the utility effects of a limited number of self-marked players should have their full intended effects against the normally immune raid-bosses. In this, there should be phases where individual players would be expected to distract a raid boss while the rest of the group retreated to safe grounds.

As an example, say there is a massive malfunctioning Inquest golem with a massive laser cannon and a massive hatred for all things blue. Now, provide 3 equipable baby quaggan hats which glow a bright blue and make meowing noises when worn. When ever someone is wearing the quaggan hat, the golem will focus that person solely with it’s laser cannon. The laser cannon deals 100% health damage on hit but the buffs and conditions of people wearing quaggan hats have 100% effect on the golem. This means that projectile blocking will block a laser shot, protection will leave a player with 33% health, aegis will block the laser, fear will fear, interrupt will interrupt, blind will cause the next laser shot to miss, deathshroud will absorb a shot ect…

Now give the golem a 120 second immunity to any effect which caused it’s laser to miss any glowing quaggan hat – meaning that if a laser beam has been dodged in the last 40 seconds, anyone with a quaggan hat trying to dodge in the next 40 seconds will be nuked.

This means that the raid will have to organise 3 completely different builds, probably on 3 completely different classes to try use quaggan hats to distract the golem for as long as possible. This means that at least 3 raid members will need to spec into rather bizarre skill sets to carry out a task specific to the given situation.

It doesn’t have to be quaggan hats and lasers. Any unique aspect of Gw2 skills which can be grouped under a common theme suggests a unique activity that a small set of players should be forced to spec for and practice with regards to a given raid boss encounter.

Associated Risks
You are setting role gates on raid bosses if you do this. I don’t feel its a problem if you require 3 out of 10 people to spec or gear in a specific (and bizzare) way. The turrets in the Teq encounter don’t have these role gates (even if their boons work better with boon traited users).