Guild Wars 2

CureForLiving.5360:

Lasica.5068:

Thinking about this I wonder why people think the Pact should be involved?

With great power comes great responsibility?

It. wasn’t. their. power.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

“The Sigil of Sanctuary, which had extremely limited usability, has been renamed and re-worked, becoming the Sigil of Benevolence. This new sigil will grant bonus healing to other allies similar to how the elementalist’s new trait, Aquatic Benevolence, will function.”

So, not only do we get a terrible trait. EVERY other class will have the same access to it via a sigil…

Amazing work anet, truly clueless.

Why are you surprised?
They said both that “this trait contains a new mechanic” and that it “has the highest of all outgoing healing effects currently in the game”. It seems to be implying (and now confirmed) that this mechanic is not going to be limited to a single trait.

Umungus.8326:

Months ago Anet’s staff said “we will do something to put the elementalist’s builds outside of water and arcana traits” : so they upped (Oo) some of the traits in both lines putting them in the superior tiers, almost ruining functionnal builds (now they are clunky).

And now, to futher put us outside of water, here’s the new :

WATER grand master trait… \o/

There’s something i don’t understand in the choices made by the staff.

It must be me.

What is it with people and not understanding that every trait line is getting new traits and they only previewed one GM per profession?

Cmon ANet, make use of these personalities more. You know you can. Do it in the text dialogues. Cmon.

The dungeons are not dynamic to a time period. The paths are more like epilogues to the main dungeon story.

kimeekat.2548:

Lostwingman.5034:

However you feel about the conversation options we have. They are text now, the devs aren’t limited to voice acting. Why weren’t we able to utilize our “disposition options”? Like answer with Dignity or Compassion or Ferocity or something? I mean, why not?

I want my character to have options in conversation that reflect that.

Ah, yes! This is a sensible suggestion It’s a small change that would have packed a big punch in terms of roleplay and character realization. I want to utilize that character component more than we do, definitely.

There are 10, 10 different developed personalities. This would make playing the LS on different characters soo much more interesting if you could take different conversation paths and make playing through it much more unique and personalized. I really hope going forward they do more with it.

However you feel about the conversation options we have. They are text now, the devs aren’t limited to voice acting. Why weren’t we able to utilize our “disposition options”? Like answer with Dignity or Compassion or Ferocity or something? I mean, why not?

I want my character to have options in conversation that reflect that.

Now again seeing the “new mechanic” part, I think we really will have to wait till tomorrow to figure out what this means.

Guys guys, seriously, the post is in this thread one page back.
It is “Stone Heart”, not “Heart of Stone”.

Nowhere there does it say we “invaded Ascalon for sport”. It says “we hunted animals for sport”. That history really doesn’t say anything except that humans spread across the land with little to stop them. We also don’t know why humans moved where or how humans got to various places clearly. I also get the feeling that the “privilege and responsibility” statement has more to do with continuing to war amongst themselves rather than settling for peace and prospering. The Guild Wars are something repeatedly pointed at for draining the resources of humanity and ultimately causing their fall. It’s a cautionary warning against making that same mistake. It also makes it more clear that that is written from an in world perspective Post-Searing. On the Charr, with the “kill or be killed” society the Charr were its in every likelihood that the very existence of the Charr were akin to a pack of wolves lurking a farm. It’s not like the humans kept chasing the Charr as far they could, they simply took what they could get and defended that. The Charr were no different, worse really in their conflict mongering. I can see nothing that gives the Charr moral high ground anywhere here.

Karl McLain.5604:

This is just the first of many traits that we’ll be revealing. Tune into Ready Up tomorrow (http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2) for more information on what’s coming!
We’ll be talking about all of the new elementalist traits, one of them in particular being ‘Stone Heart’.
See you there,
-Karl

It’s the elementalist version of that Guardian trait that pops a bunch of vit but on the earth tree isn’t filterspace it?
Oh please let me be wrong.

Interceptor.2653:

That’s a weird place to put this trait, at GM Critical Strikes. I guess it’s to keep us from stacking too many healing effects on top of each other.

Might be good for a high-Precision build that uses on-crit Sigils and runs 10 DA and 30 CS.

Well, it does make sense to have an on-crit trait in the crit line. I think it is their effort to have DPS and Survivability available in each trait line. Maybe.

Drakent.9605:

So how is this ruined the game?

That’s not why Zerker is an issue, Zerker is a symptom not the affliction. The affliction is simplistic AI, boss mechanics that revolve around one-shots, and lack of control mechanics.

The problem with the Charr “perspective” of “oh, it’s like our ancestral land, that we actually took from someone else first, but it’s totally ours!”, is that they came back in full genocide mode. I mean, why send armies to Kryta and Orr? They weren’t defending Ascalon, so it was just to drive their genocidal hate. You can try to defend the Searing with the old “all is fair in love and war” thing but it fails hard with the wider actions they took.

rhodoc.2381:

I dont think the current traits will help you at all before lvl 30

Conjurer + LH blind spam.
Preddy gud comrade

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

Guess they got a new plastic surgeon just for us

Yea but did they get the professional Swiss surgeon or the back alley Tijuana surgeon?

Yes, the very first partial reveal on a three week schedule of information reveals contains ALL information on eles.

I really want to breech Fort Vandal now…

You know, from the sound of it, it doesn’t appear to be about you healing allies but rather you improving allies self heals and passive healing.
Depending on the range of the buff it COULD be useful in someway for group play.

SkeletalHorses.2108:

Luquatic.3825:

This might be very interesting for this theory.

http://imgur.com/pCPiOjE,3vkFKj2,EPgV20x

Look at what she says at the third picture. This conversation can be found in Brisband when talking to the Seraph Sentinel at the Seraph Observers Waypoint.

I was just here earlier, and I took a number of screenshots. Xeno will upload them later (I was playing on his laptop so he still has the screenshot). The dialogue with the NPCs changed once I completed Brisban Wildlands. And all of them mention being there to look for evidence of White Mantle activity at some point in the conversation.

So all of the White Mantle mentions are new? I didn’t pay horribly close attention when I went through Brisban on my thief but I took my ele there last night and I was hearing a lot about the White Mantle from NPCs.

Sarrs.4831:

The city full of dead bodies and nothing needs people protecting it.

If you talk to NPCs in LA you will find out that there are looters.

Kalarchis.8635:

But that’s the stated goal of all three Orders as well

It is?
I mean, the Vigil was formed because of the rise of the Elder Dragons, but the Order and Priory have made the Elder Dragons priority goals because they are existential threats. The Order is about maintaining power structures and the Priory is about protecting knowledge and history.

Also, the Pact is just the organizing structure of how the orders work together. It is not a power in and of itself. People keep treating it like it’s its own military but really it is more like NATO.

There is no way it takes place parellel, unless you are talking about parallel dimensions.

“Dye unlocks in the CN version are account unlock instead of character unlocks.”

BRING THAT HERE!

Dude, ele staff can put out ridiculous amounts of damage with lava font and you are supposed to be relatively close to the action to benefit from party boons and blast finishers.

This makes me wish we had a better handling of what the logistics of the pact are. Like, since we are commanders, can’t we go down to Fort Trinity and be like “how many cannons do I got?”, “how many airships do we have where?”, “status report?”.

Bazompora.2635:

Yet, character creation for humans offers only White facial structures

You know, a good half of those faces look like they were pulled right out of a JRPG.

Obsidian.1328:

I edited my line for ya.

If Krytans were supposed to be Mediterranean, then…yea? kinda?

Or do we really want to go down the “evil white being evil” road?

Oh well, show’s over apparently. The reason for everything is apparently just culture warfare. Was an interesting thread while it lasted.

Obsidian.1328:

Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, it doesn’t matter really. The point is that they were designing modern Kryta with a “real-world” standard in mind, as opposed to something that was thematically more representative to Guild Wars Tyrian Kryta. The evolution of Krytan culture over 250 years shouldn’t make things more “Earth-like”, it should just make it more advanced in a Krytan way.

Part of creating an immersive world is creating a believable world. That it is cheaper and easier to make buildings out of wood than stone when framing becomes known is a simple fact. Much like urbanization begets specialization or that stone makes good for defensive walls. The human kingdoms and societies have always been ordered and structured similar to societies here. If you want to see what truly different societies with completely different societal structures look like, look at the Charr, Sylvari, and Asura. For something as fundamental as architecture and construction you are going to need a little more difference from Earth societies than “a portion of the population are magic users”.

Obsidian.1328:

Look at Caudecus’s Manor, it looks like it’s some historic chalet right out of the French countryside for christ’s sake. What is that style doing there? What is it doing there?

Because it’s supposed to be the very image of posh opulence among some of the Krytan nobles? It’s also unique in design in the game looking different from any other locale in game. Given that Beetletun’s growth has been credited to Caudecus evidently, that would lend explanation to some of the other opulent peculiarities there.
Also it’s a chateau, this is a chalet.

Obsidian.1328:

The answer is sentimentality and identity. GW2 ANet uses real-world imagery and themes to make the game-world more readily acceptable to the player base. It’s a simple marketing device used to appeal to the broadest spectrum of our society.

The broadest spectrum want a French style 18th century chateau? Couldn’t have guessed that. Must be all those French Revolution RPGs that confused me.
And apparently this is still part of the “generic medieval” complaint still?
The guy has a giant floating sculpture of his head and an over the top and in world completely lashish and unique home. It’s over the top and out of place by design. That’s actually the very concept behind a chateau.
I can only assume then you are equally displeased by all the changes the Charr have undergone then? What with the suddenly being industrialists painted with both gearpunk and Roman terms create their new aesthetic?

Obsidian.1328:

They could care less about what it means for something to be intrinsically “Krytan” or whatever. They just want broad appeal, and having a generic, planet-Earth, renaissance(changed it for you) look with a white populace does that.

The problem is, it’s one thing to create from scratch a mish-mosh look for “ohhhhh, soo unique and clever” appeal but completely different on a scale of difficulty, forethought, and research to evolve that look in a practical and realistic manner. The fact is the building style you keep pointing at going “Krytan!” is just indicative of construction techniques they had. Stone/Earthen walls + thatch roofing != Unique and Innovative Cultural Style.

Obsidian.1328:

It’s the same thing with the hairstyles that I brought up in a different post. They aren’t particular to any specific Tyrian culture, they are specific to trendy hairstyles we have on Earth.

I can’t really comment much on that except to say that I think when they got to character design there is a lot lacking all over the place. Re: Charr clipping and clothing and hair disappears when you put on a helmet. Given issues like that, I lean on that as more of a “game resources” limitation as opposed to a “game lore” limitation.

Eh, you’ll never really have enough health to matter on ele. If you want survivability you want renewing vigor. Go into water for the healing traits like Cleansing Wave, but that’s a Master level skill.

It should evolve. But in its own Krytan way, and not some amalgamated puzzle of random fantasy images

But what is this “own Krytan way”? That’s the answer I’m not even getting close to hearing. In a world of increased urbanization with a technology level somewhere between the 16th and 18th centuries, what exactly are they supposed to look like? I also don’t get the “amalgamated puzzle of random fantasy images” when the big mish-mosh is really on the wall tops. Everywhere else seems to either be intentionally designed as a district (Ossan quarter and Rurikton), have a mix of buildings old and new by simple passage of time and wealth (Cornucopian fields), and have old buildings due to historic importance or continued functional relevance (Fort Salma and Eldvin Monastery).

I just do not understand why that simplistic, practical, and clearly widely used even outside of Europe building style is apparently inappropriate.

I think ANet just wanted a classic midieval fantasy look for DR and Kryta, you might be reading too much into it. What evidence do you have that they were going for something uniquely Krytan? I mean, all of the structures in WvW have the same look…it’s the generic fantasy look.

Why do people keep going back to “medieval”? Ascalon in the first game was medieval, this not so much. The setting overall really doesn’t look medieval, it’s far more Renaissance, turning phase between the two at best. I am constantly left wondering if people see anything that looks vaguely European from the 7th to 19th centuries and thinks “generic medieval Europe!”. Why wouldn’t commoners build their homes in the simplest and practical way with the materials available? Common architecture is often reflective of the materials and climate at hand. Stone or Earthen walls with a thatch roof isn’t a “cultural identity” or “culturally unique” design. Everyone that had access to stone and who built permanent dwellings used that. The obvious developmental outcrop from that would be to reduce the amount of stone you need to reach the same height due to wood frame building techniques. I’m really not following how “wooden frames” is “generic medieval European”. People all over the world used these techniques, especially where hardwood is plentiful and it just so happens that much of current Kryta is ripe with hard wood.
At the same time, if you look at Ebonhawke, you know the “generic European” civilization, their structures are virtually all stone instead of being dominated by wood frame structures. This is again because of what materials are available to them. From an architecture stand point, I’m not seeing any big issues here.

Meh, that’s assuming regular Ascalons would rather flee than fight, but that’s another argument. Also, north Kryta was just as balmy as south. If you run along Kryta’s Giant’s Basin coast in GW1, there is no difference in clime or culture.

Umm, wars ALWAYS create huge numbers of refugees because the regular citizen who can flee, do.
Also I already said earlier that the biggest change the devs seriously effected has to do with the normalization of climate to make more sense in a latitudinal perspective. ie making northern Kryta temperate.

Oy, I hate this forum software.
If I seem confrontational, I’m not intending to be. I’m replying while at work and trying to make sense of a lot of the internal consistencies and inconsistencies as I go along as well.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Of course we didn’t really kill Scarlet. Captain Evon Gnashblade rode one of his dolyaks into the scene and finish-stomped her so hard we forgot about his incredibly bad Black Lion Chests.

Requesting Lion’s Arch to be rebuilt with stacked unopened Black Lion Chests.

Obsidian.1328:

On a related note, why are there dark-skinned options for Norn? If we’re to buy in to the Norn culture at all, you kinda have to admit they should be a light-skinned people…as are any who live in snowy mountains. In Nightfall, it would have been equally odd to have had pasty-white commoners strolling about Elona. You didn’t see that there because it was important for ANet back then for you to buy into the culture they are portraying to you. That’s not the case with GW2 ANet. Immersion and believability are less important than offering players options. That means letting the players create characters that look however they want, regardless of it makes any sense to their representative cultures.

Think less immersive and more theme-park.

The Norn thing confused me as well but I think it is mostly for player choice and variety. I’ve read that part of the historical palette widening of human skin tones follows with diets as well. Like diets high in seafood would get enough vitamin D to retain darker skin tones in low UV environments, prime example being inuit. It’s all very difficult to get into because it involves filling in a lot of deep deep depth in the functioning and set up of the world.

Yea, that’s “classic” Krytan, but why shouldn’t the architecture have evolved at all?
Also I think I identified what the more modern common buildings are modeled after, Ottoman/Balkan houses. Most of the more recent individual and commoner buildings fit a very practical “stone base and lighter construction upper section” design. Additionally, I think Fort Salma is different because it is older than DR. I think where the people who feel off about DR get that feeling from is from the towers and parapets that visually stand out the most on the city walls. Although even then the very numerous styles can be pointed at all over the world. I get the feeling DR was built originally without those many parapets and sections and that they’ve mostly been added on over the years. Just my guessing on the matter though.

On demographics, the Charr invasion into Ascalon even after the Searing took many years, it was 20 years between the Searing and the Foefire. I wouldn’t think most people would choose to stay behind but honestly we’ll never know (until the devs decide to give us information). I still think pre-searing that Ascalon was likely far more densely populated than Kryta given its many cities and that it is plausible that many civilians simply fled South before eventually heading towards the nearest stable Human kingdom. Like I said, I think about the biggest strangeness is that I think DR should be more dense in general. At the same time, the majority of Krytans now live more temperate North of Salma as opposed to the balmy South. I wonder if that factored into anything at all.

Invictus.1503:

Maybe after she “died” she WayPointed elsewhere to revive. My own Sylvari does it all the time

Now requesting option to enable “dying laughter”. Laugh maniacally as you are killed before WPing back.

Taku.6352:

Hate to be the party pooper but norn and humans can’t have interracial offspring.

It can through the “magic of love”

Pretty sure they added an ICD on Cleansing Water when they messed with Diamond Skin.
You know, because that skill is worth it.

But that’s another confusing thing though, what ethnicity were the Krytans originally supposed to be?
People keep arguing that they are African because of Elona but Ascalon was an offshoot of Orr wasn’t (bad filter) it? What about the reminiscing for the mesoamerican look in places? Well, wasn’t that because of the Mursaat? If so, why would they continue on with that aesthetic? I’m just not seeing anything solid enough aside from maybe NPC demographics depending on if you consider Krytans “historically” Mediterranean or African/Indian.

Velijan.9061:

The argument made here isn’t that Kryra has zero diversity. It’s that it went from having a distinctive, highly eclectic identity to one derived almost wholly from Western Europe in the typical fashion of the “high fantasy” genre. There really isn’t enough diversity there to properly reflect a “melting pot” in any sense, or at least not one of the elements we’ve seen in GW1. And the fact that it more resembles Ascalon now is incidental. Going by what we see, there would have had to have been so much immigration from Ascalon that it resulted in the complete supplanting of Kryta’s cultural identity. And sure, that’s a possibility, but why would the designers do that if not for the sake of a more conventional look and feel for the human territories?

And the area that was actually developed, built up, and represented that architecturally in game was hit with a huge tsunami, abandoned, and taken over by a different group entirely.
Or are you talking about the stone building/thatch roof combos that still exist littered around?
Kryta is, relativistically, in a state similar to renaissance Europe technologically speaking. The biggest change seems to be the devs relative reorganizing of the global biomes (to what extent is up to debate). So with a technological level roughly that of renaissance Europe, in a temperate region that most of Queensdale and DR now occupy, what architecture are they supposed to have?
I’m not really seeing the generic in DR unless construction practices and technology decided to just stop for some reason.

For solo leveling, try 10 in fire for the conjurer trait and then running Lightning Hammers. The auto-attack has three parts, the third being an AoE Blind/Blast Finisher. Pretty good for taking care of trash mobs because you’ll have just about full blind on your targets.

Running through DR and taking a good look at the architecture, it really is a mix of things. The Ascalonian Rurikton is pretty stark in contrast to the rest of DR. I would class it as very Romanesque, though me being an architectural plebian I could be wrong. The parapets and towers on DR’s walls seem to be modeled after some of the bigger castles like Neuschwanstein and Hohenzollern which are Romanesque Revival. Would lend credence to my earlier conjecture that an Ascalonian diaspora would have a resounding influence on a rebuilding Kryta. Actually, the dominating housing architectural style in Kryta that you see in the East and Western Commons is totally different from those. It looks more 19th century to me almost. It’s probably indicative of popular and common construction techniques in this time period now. The other areas being either cultural relics or built during earlier periods.

I wish DR was a bit more…“crowded” though. We’d probably see better representation of the diversity then. It’s kinda hard to guage that when you got maybe two dozen or so NPCs in an area of DR. More thinking about how “brown” the citizens should be. If Krytans are supposed to be similar to Mediterranean, then their pigmentation is going to be all over the place. Just look at Berbers, Greeks, and Italians. Idk, it seems less to me like “white washing” and more like what is essentially an entire new nation due to all the diasporas and disasters from the first game.

Water #1 is really not very good healing…
If you are having a bit of problems staying alive I’d suggest going arcane in the first 10 for Renewing Stamina.
For team support, you’ll do better dropping appropriate fields and making sure your teammates know to drop finishers on them (or drop one yourself by putting arcane blast on your skill bar).

Firing at a narrow target with a big boomstick that is standing in front of the gate to your fort is NOT a smart idea.
I’m not even sure those guns depress enough to hit that close to themselves.

Kazuhiro.5809:

That last part is the problem. Why is white neutral? I’m not white. Clearly this makes me abnormal and not a “standard human.”

Again I sound like an SJW but Krytan-brown or mixed-race is what logically should be the usual color for humans. Making humanity largely white is a very clear decision and in my opinion a wrong one.

Well, it’s not like the population of Ascalon disappeared entirely in the searing or sat totally in Ebonhawke. From what I’ve seen of images comparing Ascalon and Kryta 250 years ago, Ascalon was the more developed and probably generally more populated. It’s probable that the influxes of refugees from Ascalon were large enough to greatly influence Kryta. It’s not like Kryta wasn’t getting hit hard as well with wars and disaster anyway. They also had to essentially rebuild a capital as a bulwark fortress and there is only so many ways to build “towers” and “walls”.
It’s also not like Krytan architecture isn’t diverse either. Just compare Fort Salma and the Township of Claypool which are geographically right near each other. Cornucopian Fields also has a mix of the thatch roof buildings and high medieval European structures.
More on ethnicity, it’s really a mess of confusion with humans originating from somewhere else and not totally being defined. Also Orr, Kryta, and Ascalon were originally part of the same empire until Kryta and Ascalon broke away. The way I imagine it is Ascalon was more of a Central/Northern European locale, Kryta was more of a broadly Mediterranean locale in a Greek/Pheonician sense, and Orr was more Persian/Babylonian/etc.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

cheese.4739:

Argh, stupid forum bug, logged me out again. Here’s the gist of what I’d typed:

1) Arcane Shield: don’t even think about it. It’s a great utility, bringing stunbreak, blocks, and not interrupting your channel.

So you would rather have 3 attacks blocked every 75 seconds over having access to fire Shield, Shocking Aura, Frost Aura and Magnetic Aura on a 45second cool down?

Add into that the traits for Arcane, like Lower cool down, Vul applications and such and it would be a GREAT skill that EVERY ele can use to gain access to the aura(s) they are missing out on.

Helpful in many ways as well, protects against melee (Shocking Aura) as well as range (Magnetic Aura) plus would account for Aura sharing trait as well.

In my opinion this would be a MUCH better skill than what Arcane Shield is. We have several other ways to gain Stun Break anyway, so the stun break part shouldn’t really count, hell what if the stun break was added to the Arcane Aura? I men it would make sense seeing that you use it as a defense and would make more sense than Elemental Power being a stun break thats for sure.

The blocks are really nice for pinch “oh kitten I’m about to die” situations.
Before making all kinds of wacky aura changes to it we’d be better off doing something about the cooldown.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The best of a bad bunch.

Yea so it’s pretty nice by ele standards.

Arcane shield is pretty nice as is, especially after all the changes to Mist Form.

They are useful for at least cheaply leveling some crafting in ascended.

If we are going to put new weapons on hold for balance fixes you are going to be waiting a long time.

>Ice Cleric
Huehue

Damage dealt x 70 sounds a bit OP, or am I just being plebian?

You won’t find many support builds because the meta-thinking currently is “support the team by killing things faster”. In PvE type stuff, that’s pretty much what you want to do.