Guild Wars 2

To use WOW raiding terminology: With the timer this fight feels like a dps race. And it also feels like we’re fighting an enraged Tequatl from the beginning, so he does way more damage… through out the entire fight. (((o _ o)))

Anet made it very clear before and after launch that gear would not matter. That we could stop playing for months, come back, and our gear would still be relevant. But I’m wearing ascended gear and exotics with all superior runes, sigils and jewels and this fight is insane. It’s not that it’s difficult… it’s just chaotically random. Pretty much the raid equivalent of Liadri. Is this what Anet is shooting for for all their content?

Between this and ascended gear I’m starting to believe Anet is catering to elite players. It has been a growing trend since Queen’s Gauntlet.

In their own manifesto trailer Anet said that they would not build the same MMO as everyone else. But these changes show that they are indeed building the same MMO as everyone else.

I’m not playing GW2 for the OMGL33TG34R. I’m playing GW2 because I like the story. I am interested to see where the story goes. Tequatl doesn’t even feel like it has a story attached to it. All I got was mail that told me “Tequatl is uber. Here’s a stick. Go look into it!” How in the world is this in any way connected to the lore?! What is going on?

Anet tell us what’s going on with the story and lore? And please don’t hide behind “PR” speak. I want to know.

Tobbygnome.6793:

Sea of Sorrows killed him, here is the screenshot for proof.

You can clearly tell this was Photoshoped.

Was this lag happening before Anet removed culling?

It’s not just terrible. It’s terribad. Like OMG!

I haven’t played WVW in months. Thought I would give it a try. I’m on Jade Quarry. The lag inside Eternal Battlegrounds is so bad that skills aren’t happening when I press them. I’m playing a dedicated healer or a class specifically built for AOE zerg healing. I’m trying to keep people’s health up and I can’t do this because I’m rendered useless by this lag. Please fix this! :<

If you’re wondering my computer is pretty good. I have graphics set to Best Performance. The game looks like crap but at least at Best Performance is should play better. It does until you get into a large battle inside SMC. You ceases to be about what skills you bring and more about “will this skill that I’m constantly pressing actually work before I die?!”

I have a suggestion. Cap the total number of players to no more than 40 per server. The game cannot handle more than 40 in a given space.

I would really love to see more improvements for Staff Guardians towards greater healing. I know this game doesn’t have the holy trinity but at the same time having dedicated AOE healers really helps in situations like WvW. I’d love to be THAT guy that brings mass heals to the cluster. And by cluster I don’t mean five random players standing next to me or even the 5 players in my group… by cluster I mean 10 or more. Now that would be sweet!

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

…….

PO-TAH-TOES!

What’s potatoes precious?

Raven Paradox.1860:

Quarktastic.1027:

Detonating orb of light doesn’t heal all that much. Staff guards are only useful for empower and line of warding.

lol what?

Staff guardians can pack a bunch to massive groups when buffed, which they can give themselves. Also everyone loves symbol of swiftness (besides the guardian that casts it, thinking they’ll run faster, but really a stupid deer runs over it and you’re in combat).

Although for some reason this not listed anywhere on the official wiki Symbol of Swiftness also remove conditions for anyone standing in it! I’ve seen it so many times. I use on myself in fights where conditional damage happens a lot. I have a feeling there’s going to be some serious conditions with these new bosses. People will want classes with AOE condition removals.

Guardians of Tyria unite all staffs! .o/|

Plagueception. I think we need to go deeper Erukk o _ o

Hi Jim. Give me loots!

DelayTheDecay.2675:

Or, Tequatl, leaderless and with draining strength, sought out a new master: a master in the “depths.” Yes, Zhaitan was related closely to water, sleeping beneath a sunken nation, and surrounded by the Sea of Sorrows, but ArenaNet seem to be putting particular emphasis on the fact that Tequatl is “rising” from deep in the ocean. The Sea of Sorrows seems to be a relatively shallow body of water, dotted with islands and archipelagos aplenty, so it’s likely that Tequatl is actually emerging from the Unending Ocean, which is highly speculated to be the location of Bubbles.

Yay. Bubbles!

BlueStoat.9157:

Why is this in the tequila forum? Guardians are more fun with a mace if you want to heal.. also, can someone please explain why I keep making all my alts gardians? Is there a support group I can join? I think I make have a problem.

As a Staff Guardian you have a problem.

What’s up with them considering their inglorious leader is dead?
Are they open to joining the ranks of the Lion Guard?
What about the other elder dragons?
Could they merge the Risen minions into their army?
Tyria needs a big merger! I hear Jorgy needs some help.

Official Short Story. End of story!

Well ignoring for a moment they made Tequatl look like T-Rex from Jurassic Park I think it’s just concept art.

I’ve been playing a Staff Guardian for over a month now. Good mix of healing and damage. I was wondering with the changes to world bosses will Staff Guardians become even more viable? We can do some serious healing in groups.

During the initial days of champion farming Staff Guardians were in high demand especially if they farmed champ fire in Cursed Shore.

Quarktastic.1027:

But we just call him tequila sunrise.

Tequila works… well after players try him with the new difficultly I think more than a few are going to drown their tears in tequila.

TehPwnerer.7215:

ArenaNet. You guys have done well with this revamped encounter. Making the waypoint contested to prevent zerging, making it have more health, do more damage, have more mechanics and require more than just mindlessly shooting at his foot..

Dropping ascended weapons and materials, dropping a mini Tequatl, having its own achievement list! This is incredible. I hope the other dragon and meta events follow the same pattern shortly but I am genuinely impressed.

Please leave it challenging. Tweak if needed (extend the time alotted or something if anything at all) but PLEASE do not nerf it. It looks incredible and I can’t wait to give it a go!

The waves… OH MY GOD THE WAVES! This fight looks absolutely incredible!!!

Dare I say WOW raid boss?! o _ o

I’m posting this because I have a feeling more than few are not going to know how to pronounce this name. So this is how you say the name:

Tee-quat-tle

Teequatle.

Tequatl.

Yeah, I know. The Hylek in Tyria have weird names and give things weird sounding names.

You are not going to change the nature of people. People are greedy and selfish and only look out for their own interests.

A Massive Headache.1879:

If sylvari were dragon minions, that would mean Mordremoth was the first dragon to wake up, during gw1 even as we saw the sprout of the pale tree, so I very much doubt sylvari are dragon minions

I’m trying to remember where I saw this but I remember an interview with one of the leads that said something like the Elder Dragons wake up at different times. During Guild Wars, while the other ED slept, Primordus was able to awake but not fully. His full awaken was delayed when the Great Destroyer was defeated.

A Massive Headache.1879:

Also I don’t understand the hate with Trahearne, compared to the rest of the story, he’s really not bad at all

It’s not that people hate Trahearne it more that they hate that he usurped their story. It was your story and then all of sudden it became his story. The first time through my reaction was “who is this plant guy and why is my story about him?”

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The bad news is this is day one, when the patches and hotfixes usually do come. The good news is it should be smoother after

I really hope so! It just feel like if they had more people testing this content on a test server a lot of these problem could’ve been eliminated. I still don’t understand why Anet doesn’t have a test server like WOW. Do they want to protect the Living World story so much that they’re willing to release buggy content and fix it over the course of a week? Bug free Living World updates is MORE important than protecting the story. All it takes a few more months of these kinds of releases for people to become frustrated and leave. I feel like one of them…

For all of Blizzard’s problems there’s one thing they learned and never repeated. Funneled content. The Burning Crusade was WOW’s best expansion but it suffered from launch day woes as EVERYONE on the server was trying to get into Hellfire Peninsula. Every expansion after TBC had multiple starting locations for Horde and for Alliance and it worked REALLY well. This is good game design (even if I don’t like WOW any more).

GW2 is doing the exact same thing over and over and over again. They should’ve learned from the Beta branded event about putting everyone into one zone. People were crashing, lagging out, some couldn’t see the content, and some fell into the overflow where nothing was happening. So why close to a year later are the designers still doing the same Hellfire Peninsula move again and again? Don’t funnel all your players on a server into ONE ZONE! Especially for “Living World” updates.

The content needs to be spread out across multiple zones. Or the systems needs to use the scaling system and detect the number of players entering the overflow for a zone where a global Living World event is taking place and start it up in other zones until the overflows drop. They already have this mechanic on numerous champions and events. It needs to happen on Living World events.

I’m going to not even play GW2 until I see a patch that announces some fixes for this event. I simply don’t have ALL night to sit here waiting and hoping to do content that should be in my humble opinion something we should be able to do at our own pace. This is why Sky Pirates of Tyria and Four Winds of Bazaar were awesome. Sky Pirate had that awesome dungeon. Four Winds had lots of jumping puzzles and mini games. Both were fun and casually paced.

How hard it is to simply making cull a toggle? Turn it on… you know what you get. Turn it off… you know what you get. In either case people can opt to go…

Actually I don’t care anymore. Anet can keep doing their thing. I’m not even sure why I keep playing this game. I’ve disliked every update since Cutthroat Politics; with Clockwork Chaos being the worse.

Paulytnz.7619:

Perhaps if they started a second invasion on another map halfway through the first 1 it would help with this problem? Have them start every 30 mins and not hour on the hour?

Goodness! This. How hard is it to start a second or third invasion? All the game has to do is look at the overflow numbers in the zone!

Well in 4 hours I have 3/3 overflow fails plus one hotfix patch that actually kicked me out of the event. I even tried guesting on a lower populated server hoping I could do the content. So the gates we have are:

1. Get into zone without entering overflow.
2. Defeat a 45-minute event without failing, disconnecting or being forced a disconnect because of a hotfix patch.
3. Successfully complete this 45-minute event 13 times.

I’m beginning to think the only people who are going to get these achievements are people with more time than me.

P.S. Colin said this update was a preview of things to come.

To date Sky Pirates of Tyria and Four Winds of the Bazaar have been my favorite updates. I had very little problems with them and I was able to do the content at my pace. This new content makes me fell like I running to catch a train I keep missing.

fathamburger.8453:

Guild Wars 2 has turned into zerg wars. Every living story is not so much a story but mindless events having us zerg from zone to zone, champion to champion. At the very least if you’re gonna do zerg events make them a special occasion, not every update. Once every 3 months or maybe twice a year so it does feel epic and special. Right now it feels tedious and repetitive. Also.. if you’re going to gate repetitive timed content like this, 2-3 portal invasions or whatever you call them in the future is enough. 5 encourages idling which is exactly what I’m doing now as I type this.

On top of content and achievements we can barely keep up with, the living story has been removed from a “living world” or even a dynamic one that we played coming through 80 and the story and characters are pretty much throwaway, the “living story” is actually driving people away from the game and not engaging them etc etc but this has all been said before.

Here’s the trailer for the next Living World update:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbeoSPqRs4

Nageth.5648:

Anyone have a source for the this confirmation of there being a jungle dragon? I’ve never seen such a thing.

From the GW2 wiki:

“The jungle dragon, referred to as Mordremoth, is mentioned in ancient texts unearthed by the Durmand Priory. This dragon has not yet been observed to have any noticeable impact on the world. As such, its state is unknown and information about the Elder Dragon is highly limited, leaving most of which can only be speculated. Colin Johanson mentions the Maguuma Jungle in reference to this dragon.”
http://www.eurogamer.pt/videos/entrevista-game-designer-guild-wars-2

Pavees.7281:

every single piece of that is a lie if you even played a sylvari and picked the storyline “where life goes so should you.” clearly shows a sylvari from another pale tree and he’s actually a very nice guy. he still fights if he believes it’s just but he isnt like the nightmare court(who are hinted to be persuaded but not corrupted by something sinester"

If this guy talks bout sylvari don’t listen to him.

If “you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” – Sherlock Holmes

What is more likely? 25 years ago a tree becomes sentient, gives birth to free roaming beings, then all of sudden begins to fill Tyria with these beings at an alarming rate, or the Pale Tree is actually breeding minions to protect herself against her former owner.

Glint did the same exact thing only she used humans as her shield. Humans, who I might add, can be branded by Glint’s master Kralkatorrik.

Amadan.9451:

and the pale tree as a dragon minion theory has beed proved false several times

By whom? No one. It is a theory as solid and based on evidence as those who present their case against. I will tell you that Arenanet is known for weaving intricately complex stories. Stories within stories if you will.

They’ve established that Jormag has fully grown Icebrood created from organic beings and snow and ice. Primodus has fully grown Destroyers created from earth and fire. Zhaitain had fully grown Risen created from the corpses of living beings. Kralkatorrik has fully grown Branded created from organic beings and earth.

Colin has already confirmed the existence of an elder Jungle dragon. The writers are not going to deviate from the archetype they’ve established for the elder dragons. The Jungle Dragon would, like his contemporaries, have fully grown minions. These creatures would assume the characteristics of its host. In this case nature. And like all other minion they would be immune to the corruption of other elder dragons.

The Sylvari spawned from the Pale Tree fully grown within the last 25 years. The Pale Tree came from one of many seeds that was planted by Ronan, and guided and raised by Ventari. Had this tree lacked Ventari’s influence the Sylvari would be a MUCH difference race than they are today.

The Nightmare Court are in fact what the Sylvari suppose to be. Scarlet is likely either a member of the Nightmare Court or a member of the White Mantle; an organization who is rumored to be in hiding within the Maguuma Wastes; an area that is likely the seat of the elder Jungle Dragon’s power.

Reikou.7068:

Now we have cannon that says Sylvari are indeed smarter than Asura.

Sylvari are immune to Dragon Corruption.

Sylvari are able to glow…

I think its pretty much set that in Tyria, Sylvari are indeed the master race.

The Pale Tree was suppose to become the elder Jungle Dragon’s champion but rebelled… like Glint. Ventari’s Tablet changed everything. Your entire race was actually suppose to be the unwitting minions of the elder Jungle Dragon. The Nightmare Court is what the Sylvari true form is.

It’s not that Sylvari are immune to Dragon Corruption it’s that the Sylvari are already “owned” by an elder dragon; just not officially claimed thanks to the Pale Tree’s actions. Evidence? Risen cannot be Branded. Branded cannot be Icebrooded. If you look closely you will not see a Branded Sylvari or an Icebrood Sylvari. The law of ownership states that which is owned by one force cannot by nature become the property of another force.

More Evidence? Minions of elder dragons will fight minions of other elder dragons. That the Sylvari fought Zhaitan and his Risen means nothing heroic. It is their “nature” to attack their enemies.

Gabby.3205:

Ema.4953:

Hmm okay. Do we know why a Sylvari who is only at most 25 years old hates humans and the Queen so much or is that to be revealed? Sorry in advance of all these are dumb questions, I haven’t been able to play the game for some time and am hoping to get back to it soon but can’t just yet, so I’m relying on the forums for information.

Unless she is from another tree, she is most 19 years old, since she is not a Firstborn (we know all the Firstborns already). I don’t think she is a Secondborn either, but let’s go with it, since we don’t know all the Secondborns yet.
I’m betting that she is a Soundless that went nuts. I don’t think she is a Courtier.
And, really, I don’t think that she hates anybody. I think that she is just crazy and sadistic. A psychopath. She enjoys seeing other people suffering and shows no remorse.
Maybe she is doing it for the lols, I don’t know really. This is just speculation, we don’t know her motives yet.

Edit: Wait, no. There are still 3 Firstborns that we don’t know. I’m sorry about that, for a second I thought there were just 9 Firstborns.

She works for the White Mantle. They are believed to have strong presence in the Maguuma Wastes (formerly Maguuma Jungles). The Inquest, Aetherblades, Bandits and various other factions work for the White Mantle. The White Mantle in turn work for the Mursaat. The Mursaat are powerful magic users who are so addicted to magic that the rise of the elder dragons is an opportunity they cannot afford to miss. The last time around they, dwarves, jotun, forgotten, and seers banded together to fight the elder dragons.

This time instead of fighting the dragons they want to harvest their magical energies. They are using the Inquest to help research the technology to make this happen. Of course Thaumanova Reactor shows how unstable this research has been. So while the the elder dragons are by nature destructive beings they are what they are. In contrast the Mursaat are actively via proxy seeking research into areas that could destroy Tyria.

JayMack.8295:

It was never meant to happen in the first place.

If you go back to the release page, we find that the official title for it is: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-20-2013/

Clockwork Chaos and not Queen’s Speech.

I don’t know whether we’ll find out if the Queen had something big to announce or not.

It is still on the Clockwork Chaos page:

The Queen’s Speech – Begins August 20

Don’t miss history in the making as Queen Jennah wraps up her gala Jubilee with a momentous speech to her loyal subjects and visitors.

“with a momentous speech”. I’m still waiting for this momentous speech too.

With the number of problems and difficulties many of us are experiencing can we expect this update to last for at least a month?

Zeph.5927:

If Anet had any sort of reliable and competent form of testing these patches before just tossing them to the wind, we wouldn’t have to deal with this kitten every two weeks. They have some of the worst QA I’ve ever seen in a AAA MMO developer.

A lot of this could fix if they had test servers for players but they won’t because they don’t want people telling people the “secrets” of the upcoming Living World content. This is absolutely a stupid reason not to have a test server. I don’t care if I ruin the experience by beta testing the update. I just want to do everything I can to make these updates as smooth as possible. Releasing this on a community as big as GW2 without testing it with a community as least half the size is a horrible decision.

Darkbattlemage.9612:

KingClash.3186:

WP’s theory might just cause a few to be disappointed with what actually happens, I don’t mean to say what Anet does will suck or anything – I’m just saying that if it does we all know how much better it could have been.

Actually his hypothesis isn’t really better. If it were to happen it would simply open the flood gate for time travel abuse which will then ruin the story in a matter of a few updates. I’m surprise people are actually finding this theory appealing given how time travel has really crushed other game stories in the past.

But that’s the point! Who blew up the reactor? The Inquest. What did the explosion cause? “the world turn inside out”. Creatures, including the steam variety, are warping into the reactor’s ruins. By their ideology and actions the Inquest HAVE abused space travel… it would not be a surprise if time travel was part of the lore.

The Experimentation and aftermath of the facility bear some resemblance to the research facility Black Mesa from Half Life. Let’s compare. What happens after the explosion? A portal is opened between Earth and a dimension called Xen. Freeman is apparently teleported to an alien planet and catches glimpses of various alien lifeforms, including a circle of Vortigaunts, shortly before blacking out.

Shiren.9532:

Cirian.8917:

More than anything, speculating is hell of a lot of fun.

Plus the devs read the forums and might get inspired

They planned out a year of the Living Story. Whatever is happening now, they knew it was going to happen back when Flame and Frost took place. They might change things, but given they need voice actors, assets and the developers need time to create the content (I think they are on four week cycles) feedback isn’t going to influence the story for a long time after it’s given.

Theory Crafting and speculating isn’t for Arenanet, it’s for us… the fans!

By now I’m sure some of you have watched Wooden Potato’s awesome theory crafting on the current events in relation to the Thaumanova Reactor. If you haven’t, please watch. His video has me excited for the lore and what’s coming soon.

For fun I would like to add to Potatoes video.

1.

Whenever a mysterious stranger appeared it was usually a duplicate of a person native to Tyria. For example in the Super Adventure Box there were two variations of the mysterious stranger: a colorful version and a black and white version.

Besides Super Adventure Box, your duplicate (if you play the Asuran “Infinity Ball” story) and the mysterious stranger from Queen’s Jubilee it looks like there was another mysterious stranger.

In Guild Wars a mysterious stranger tricked Zinn, a renowned golemancer, into creating five Golems: R.O.X., N.O.X., P.O.X., G.O.X. and M.O.X.. Three of those golems — R.O.X., N.O.X., and P.O.X. — turn out to be machines of immense power animated by an unknown energy source. The mysterious stranger ordered these three golems to attack Krytan, Canthan, and Vabbian royalty. Fast forward 300 years later and we have the same events repeating itself. A “mysterious stranger” is attacking Divinity’s Reach and Kryta’s royalty and the Pavilion is crawling with potentially harmful “golems”.

2.

The fractal called “Uncategorized Fractal” has a Raving Asura with 5 golems. Four of these golems surround him with a 5th stationed near by. Could this Raving Asura be Zinn?

3.

We know the mysterious stranger from Queen’s Jubilee is a human female. So if this mysterious stranger is an alternate future duplicate of someone from Tyria Prime then it is possible that she is Kiel.

How? In the story Split Second when the duplicate Shodd reveals himself he has only reached the rank of Grand Vice Admiral. If military ranks are followed then there are two people with higher rank. An Admiral (2nd highest rank) and an Admiral of the fleet (highest rank / Leader).

If Kiel is involved in the Aetherblades then the mysterious stranger is most likely Kiel. This alternate Kiel could either be an Admiral or the leader. If she is the leader she has power over both the Aetherblades and the Steam creatures.

Mai Trin reveals the name of “Scarlet” after her capture. Scarlet could be the nickname of Kiel’s duplicate.

There are many people speculating that Ellen Kiel IS “Scarlet” but the more I look into it the more it looks like Kiel somehow learned of her duplicate’s existence and has been positioning herself into a position of power so that she can go on the offensive against the Inquest and Aetherblade. It means her life if her duplicate is trying to kill her.

This is sounding more and more like the Terminator plot line!

So basically, if this all turns out to be case, Anet is revealing another Shiro Tagachi before our very eyes!

Zylonite.5913:

As long as I don’t have to

• go through some jumping puzzles,
• get one shot with some boss NPC with crazy AoE,
• do some map grind work to ruin the fun of some poor pirates,
• and not to have to run a zerg of bots to farm tickets,
• and not have to use some special buff for certain achievement,
• and not to have to deal with some bug when my invitation email disappears from my inbox,

then I am all ears to hear her speech.

But then you won’t earn any achievements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6fTS8Uo4DU

Aiglos.2907:

I hope she gives Trahearne an award for his contributions to Tyria.

He’ll win the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Leading Role. :<

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Quoting Colin from another thread on this matter:

ColinJohanson.2394:

The setting adjustments you can make currently will expand beyond just WvW, and simply be a game wide setting you apply for culling rules. For most folks, this means you can adjust the settings to actually improve your performance over current performance if you wish, since fallback models and name-tags are cheaper than full model renders.

If you do want to turn everything up to insane, you also now have that option to see an extremely large number of people in all their graphics glory. The choice is entirely yours!

In other words, yes you will be able to adjust culling levels the same as WvW.

Instead of a binary toggle can we get a slider so that we can customize the threshold of culling that works best for our system? My machine is able to handle large scale events like Claw of Jormag and Tequatl well but it would be nice to have cull sliding so that I can decide how much or little pizzazz I want.

I’m not worried about the event feeling “small”. We still have the Mysterious Figure from Queen’s Jubilee to deal with. We also have “E” and “Scarlet” who remain anonymous. There’s also Rox and Braham who have suddenly reappeared. Finally we have the Watchknights themselves who are, for all intents and purposes, “controlled” robots. All that said I have a feeling something very big is being planned by Anet, but they are of course keeping everything hush-hush for now. It’ll be fun to find out what happens!

Regard the anniversary gift: “Characters that are one year old will receive a Mini Queen Jennah, a 24-hour Birthday Booster, and a Scroll of Experience.” I have a few questions:

1. Is this gift account bond or soul bound?
2. Is this gift for characters who were created one year ago, or is it for accounts that were created one year ago?
3. If the gift is account bond will every character receive one?
4. If this gift is not account or soul bound will we be able to sell it like the birthday gifts we received in GW1?

Thank you.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Keep watching the skies.

Confirmed: Zhaitan’s death has been greatly exaggerated.

I agree with everything yearsonehundred wrote! Every. single. word.

I just experienced my first bug. A big one too. I queued up. The person in the arena fell to their death. As the floor was closing in I go while they’re not fully closed. The result? I’m stuck half-way in the floor. I cannot move. I cannot target anything. I cannot WP out. Basically I just stood there until I was dropped to my death. This happening after I had previously died and was forced to WP, repair and run back.

For the love of goodness please remove all this nonsense.

Looking for a Guardian who aced this to offers tips and their build / traits.