Guild Wars 2

Hmm. Good point. That makes me a bit sad though.

Still, that does make me wonder why some of the Inquest in Mount Malestrom (one of them anyway) wanted to make sylvari soul generators. You’d think they’d have questioned if sylvari even have souls at all beforehand. Then again, they are just evil.

Still, this does beg another question: What of the dwarves, or the other non-playable races, (skritt, grawl, quaggan, dredge, jotun, krait, etc) does this imply that they don’t have souls either? While some of those races show up in fractals, they don’t seem to have ghosts either as far as I can tell, with the exception of the jotun (one ghost being in the worship stone in Osenfold Shear, and others lingering at two skill points around Dredgehaunt Cliffs, although this may be a remnant of their former magical knowledge.)

Sigh..all so confusing. Still, your point holds. Until we see a sylvari spirit or Seiran cherrying on through the Mists, it is possible that sylvari don’t have souls.

Answer to the thread title: Things like dungeons and world boss fights would take longer, which would not be a good thing at all. In order to break the berserker meta, the other armor stat types would have to be made more worthwhile somehow. Nerfing berserker will not solve the problem or improve anything.

Hmm..I prefer the similar hairstyle with the flowers over the spiky thorny hair Scarlet has. Still, I guess they could add—no, no no no. The one with the flowers is better. Forget Scarlet’s ugly hair. It can stay dead with her.

That would be a great idea, but I doubt they’ll do it. After all, they’d have no excuse for not letting us replay story missions and previous temporary content then.

Wait. They don’t? Also, no. Scarlet’s dead, she can stay dead.

(In all seriousness though, what evidence suggests Sylvari don’t have souls?)

Because we clearly needed to face that atrocity of cheap gimmicks. Sad thing is, it didn’t even work that well. There still a way to handle it relatively easy from range, as long as you kill those annoying wolves first.

Good job whoever thought that copy/paste of the AC troll was a great idea, you got us to fight the stupid wolves. Well done. /sarcasm

Had to just take the only somewhat quick path in HotW and make things just a little more annoying…

Dragonite ore wasn’t a grind?

This was meant to be a reply to the above post, but got messed up due to post size and a forum bug not showing all the text. Regardless…

No, it isn’t fun. To be fair, none of them are after a while (if the annoying elites don’t kill the fun for people first), so better to do the ones that can be done quickly.

So the ooze puzzle is pretty simplistic, if you can get around the fact that the elementals love to spawn near the oozes and chain immobilize them to death. Also, the oozes take your fire as well and also do ridiculous damage if they hit you. Not fun, not necessary, just annoying.

The big problem with the oil bit in the previously mentioned dual boss fight? Between trying to kill the boss and stay alive, it’s tougher to notice that blue buff on you than you’d think. And it loves to switch randomly or be on more than one player at once, messing things up. Simply put, it requires a level of coordination that most P.U.G.s simply can’t do. Bad design.

The electric tiles…I’ll admit I haven’t done this bit (partly because after losing constantly to the dual boss, I only came back to join groups that were at the end already…twice. Never again). But from what I’ve seen of it, it’s annoying.

Impossible to die to the Clockheart? Lies. Care to explain how one deals with the bit where the entire floor goes electric on you, then you jump on to the small raised platforms, only for the boss to drop gears on said platforms, which cover the entire platform, meaning your options are to stand there and die, or drop off to the floor, and die?

And don’t get me started on that stupid armor gimmick. If you get a ranged Aether-holo, it is such a pain to lure it to the boss and finally kill it to try and break that stupid invulnerability gimmick. Sometimes one won’t spawn at all and you’re forced to run and watch as the Super Attack stacks up. Oh, and 3 to 5 constant knockbacks/launches for a Super Attack is just annoyingly cheap.

Oh my…you actually liked that blight on the Sylvari? Sigh…I’m beginning to suspect a troll here. Bottom line is: The Aetherpath isn’t fun, it isn’t worth the time spent, and it was not worth removing a previous dungeon path (which was supposed to be permanent) for that atrocity. I’d rather have the old Forward/Up path back than that Aether-trash.

Dalanor.5387:

That was an exploit, so Anet silently removed it. They don’t like to inform people about these kind of stuff.

Naturally, things like Alpha’s buggy crystals or Ginva’s ridiculous hitbox go ignored by them, but being able to avoid all the elite trash that no one fights anyway for the latter half of a path is apparently too convenient. Sigh…

“It’s a faaaaaaake!”

Stacking ruined players’ skill levels? Perhaps. But it’s still the most efficient way most of the time, and that unlikely to change any time soon.

Why does no one like the Aetherpath?

-It’s not fun.
-Takes too long for the reward at the end.
-The ooze puzzle is annoying.
-The electric tile puzzle is annoying.
-The Sparki/Slick fight revolves around the stupid oozes again, so you don’t get killed by cheap pseudo-agony.
-The final boss is an amalgamation of all the annoying gimmicks in the dungeon.
-The Invasive Weed, a.k.a. Scarlet Briar, was involved in this. I’m so glad she’s dead. Even as a hologram, she’s annoying.
-The Aether-mare weapons, the only real reason to do this path, are Nightmare weapons with a blue glow hidden behind RNG.
-Did I mention it isn’t fun? To be fair, neither are the other dungeons/paths, but at least most of them can be finished quickly. Not this one.

It seems to have stopped for now. Still…

As of 8 to 10 minutes so far, my attempts to start the game have left me stuck at the download part, unable to continue. Is anyone else having this problem?

Get rid of the pets and give us a better nature mechanic to work with. Or at least let us stow them in battle when they will be nothing but a liability anyways. (I can solo the Plinx Champion Abomination with any profession except ranger. Wonder why?…)

CMstorm.8679:

Not really. just because it’s titled Survival of the Fittest doesn’t necessarily mean it should be in the WS line. I know what you mean, but then we’d have to choose between empathetic bond, bark skin, poison master OR SotF. I like it being in Nature Magic so we can have both Empathetic Bond AND SotF

Bark Skin seems pointless, at only 25% HP any hard hitting attacks/conditions will still down you easily. Poison Master seems interesting, but the damage increase doesn’t seem high enough to make it worthwhile. And I’d like to have good condition removal while keeping points in Marksmanship for the longbow to still be good, as well as the survival/off-hand skill recharge reduction traits in Wilderness Survival. I could spec fully into both Nature Magic and Wilderness Survival, but then forget longbow being useful…or me doing any real damage at that.

Besides…even if I had to choose between Empathic Bond or Survival of the Fittest, the latter would win easily. Active condition removal beats passive any time.

Remove conditions (2 at once) and gain fury whenever you use a survival skill. Seems great, right? I might finally be able to ditch Empathic Bond for a useful grandmaster trait…except Survival of the Fittest was placed in Nature Magic (trait line focusing on spirits, shouts, and boons), and not in Wilderness Survival, where it would fit perfectly, seeing as that trait line has one for reducing recharge on survival skills.

Am i the only one who thinks this? Perhaps other thoughts will help.

CptAurellian.9537:

Nilkemia.8507:

There is already downscaling.

And it doesn’t work at all after the stupid ferocity patch, since I’m dealing 5-10 times the damage of a character on that level. That’s just ridiculous and breaks the whole system.

Even so, the only place where you’ll be one-shotting anything is if you’re a downscaled 80 in a starter zone hitting lv2 hostiles, or ambient creatures. This really isn’t a big a problem as it’s being made out to be. And, like others have pointed out, you can just switch to weaker weapons if you want to kill things slower.

“This cliche. Kill.”

There is already downscaling.

Your armor is probably Exotic Karma armor (Orr temples), or WvW Badge armor, neither of which can be salvaged. Also, white items bought from a weaponsmith/armorsmith vendor cannot be salvaged either.

Thanks for the clarification. I knew about that, but neglected to mention it. That method is probably better at going for a specific dye anyway, although I’m not sure if some colors are exclusive to an Unidentified Dye. I’ve read on the wiki that it involves forging separate unidentified shades, but I’ve not gotten it to work, so I can’t know for sure.

Well…you can get enough gems for an extra character slot, create a character with the profession skin you want, enter the start quest, then go to character select and delete it right away, as you’ll get the skin immediately upon entering the starting quest (check the wardrobe every time for the skin, just to be sure), then rinse and repeat until you have them all.

Aside from that, you will have to delete one or not get the skins. Hope that helped.

Sadly, yes. Not only do they not drop from hostiles, you won’t get them from harvesting plants like before either. Either BL chests (not recommended), laurels (only if you have nothing else you want to use them on), or crafting them (I think it’s via the Forge, but I’m not sure).

As for PvP changes…

- The UI was simplified down. It’s now designed so you can make a build all from the PvP Build menu, without having to run back and forth between merchants and/or the PvP locker (all of which is now gone). On the upside, it’s much easier to make a build.

- However…they removed the ability to mix and match runes, meaning you can only choose a rune and that counts as the entire set on you regardless of your armor, which now consists of your equipped PvE gear. Also, amulets now longer have jewels to equip to customize the stats a little more, which is a bit of a downer. On the upside, they’ve added an amulet for nearly every stat combo out so far, except for Dire and Sentinel. And for some reason, the Cavalier and Magi Amulets are locked, even though those two types don’t seem that good.

- In place of the old PvP rewards system, they’ve added reward tracks, based on regions, dungeons, and the exclusive Balthazar track. Each is filled with rank points you acquire from PvP matches, with 8 tiers with varying rewards. This is a good idea…except they placed a limit on hotjoin contribution. After a certain amount of rank points from hotjoins, the game just decides not to count them anymore for a while, making you have to go into solo/team queue to get around this. I suspect they did this to keep those modes relevant (as with the old PvP reward system gone, there’s no reason to solo queue, and team queue only if you want to fight with/against certain people), but it’s still annoying.

- Also, 8v8 hotjoins no longer exist. They also removed Raid on the Capricorn because they don’t care for underwater combat in PvP, while adding the Courtyard as a straight up death-match arena. So there.

Too long, didn’t read?

PvP’s kind of a mixed bag still. The reward tracks range from okay to meh, but they at least tried to make it better for the most part. Still, the restrictions on runes and no jewels for amulets anymore renders build crafting less interesting, and PvP is still a rather somewhat toxic to begin with, so…meh.

The wardrobe? Awesome. Transmutation charges are much better than the old stone/crystal system. Now I can finally clear out all the skins crowding up the bank. Being able to use outfits in combat? Great! I actually got the Pirate Captain outfit because I can now use it wherever. And the methods of unlocking skins is nice and easy to do. Also, all the PvP locker skins being converted to the wardrobe was a nice perk for all the grinding I did to give my alts nice PvP gear as well. Transmutation charges are also easier to acquire as well. The only downside is now you can’t transfer upgrades from one weapon to another with stones/crystals, making the Upgrade Extractor more important if you want to keep runes/sigils. Aside from that however, the Wardrobe is a great improvement to the game, one of the greatest ones since the account wallet.

The April 15th one, to be exact. I meant to type it up sooner, but I was lazy.

This may take a few consecutive posts. T.l.d.r. version at the end of each post..hopefully.

Trait changes:

- Being able to reset traits without having to go to the trait trainer every time is a great improvement. It always seemed odd that we could do that just fine in PvP but not in PvE. And it was annoying to switch my weapon/armor set out in the field or in a dungeon, only to realize I needed to rearrange my traits too. So, good change.

- Condensing the trait points from 70 to 14 was a nice way to simplify things as well.

- The new trait level limitations however, feel unnecessary to me. Compared to the old system, where you could start using them at Lv15 (technically Lv11, but Lv15 is when you had enough to get a trait), the new system blocks them off completely until Lv30 for beginner traits, Lv60 for master traits (previously Lv40), and Lv80 for grandmaster traits (previously Lv60).

- Also, they made the levels at which trait points were gained…somewhat odd. (1 point at Lv30 then another point every 6 levels until Lv66, where you’d gain 2 points at a time) To me, it would’ve been simpler to give your first trait point at Lv15, then another point every five levels after that, as well as keeping the level requirements on the trait tiers as they were in the old system.

- The new traits are..interesting, but not enough to make me want to buy them or fulfill the unlocking requirements for them. The new ones can be bough for 3 gold (meaning 15 gold per character if you choose to unlock them that way….sigh), or unlocked through each of these requirements below:

1) Killing the Risen High Wizard at the end of the Gates of Arah meta-event.
2) Killing the Risen Priest of Grenth.
3) Kill the Karka Queen.
4) Find the Grand chest in the Ship of Sorrows.
5) Kill the Risen Priestess of Lyssa.

Notice a problem? All except the 4th requirement involve killing a world boss, meaning you’ll have to find a zerg running that event at whichever boss you need to kill. If the requirements were still challenging/hard but doable solo, I’d be fine with this. But now this just makes me wonder “what if they put a trait requirement behind Tequatl or—-alchemy forbid—the Triple Bloodtide Wurm?” No thanks.

In addition to that, from what I saw of the traits, only about 2 or 3 on them on each profession are actually useful, so…meh. That’s just me, though. (shrug)

Too long, didn’t read?

Resetting traits anywhere is great! New trait level restrictions sucks though. And the new traits are meh.

While the price is discouraging now, the convenience is a rather nice tradeoff. Plus, compared to some of the junk in the Gem Store, the unlimited gathering tools are among the better things to acquire.

Answer: Yes they have. Now the chests that appear in certain areas appear only appear once per path (or only once per looting it in the entire dungeon) Yet another stab at those of us that prefer gear and loot from certain dungeons (example: CoE gear and charged lodestones). Sigh, as if the token allotment alteration and waypoint combat lock weren’t annoying enough.

Probably never. I still wish we could get a prompt to:

-Punch them out.
-Knock them down, simultaneously summoning a Lionguard to perform a finisher on them while they’re knocked down.
-Summon a horde of rabid skritt to jump at their face.
-Or even set traps for them when they loot things.

“Dungeon armor choice boxes contain a specific dungeon armor set and a specific set of stat combos.”

From that, I got the impression that I’d be able to get an entire set of armor, albeit locked to one set of stats for all the pieces. Turns out it only gives one piece of armor. Considering that I got about 3 or 4 weapon boxes along the way (more expensive tokenwise), having a box with only one armor piece as the final reward on the dungeon track feels like a letdown, made worse by the misleading description.

I’ve been planning to delete/remake one of my characters. However, that one has the Superior Rune of Perplexity recipe learned…which I obviously cannot get again. Is there any way to transfer the recipe to another character?

PvE. /15 characters.

Warning: Text fence. T.l,d.r. version at the end.

After leveling one of every other profession to 80, I’ve started trying Elementalist again.

But it seems a lot of the time, I die or otherwise have trouble dealing with enemies that I’d be defeating easier with most of the other professions.

- Armor is focused on vitality, with some mixed trinkets. Despite this, still feeling squishy. Any more than 2 enemies at a time is troublesome, especially if any are ranged.

- On top of being squishy, I don’t seem to hit really hard either if I’m using anything but fire (and sometimes earth).

- Settled on scepter/dagger for now. Dagger/dagger I’d like more, but not great range wise. Staff has a lot of range, but either doesn’t hit hard or the hard hitting moves are just slow. Haven’t used focus at all. Scepter feels really limited to single target most of the time too, the AoEs it does have are slow most of the time.

- Using Signet of Fire for more crit chance, and Signet of Air to move faster. Third utility varies.

- The conjured weapons. I really wanted to like these, and thought I would, since they seemed like engineer kits (which were fun to use). But the conjured charge limit means you pretty much should never use the 1 skill and stick to the others (which gets annoying when they’re all on cooldown and you can’t just switch between the conjured weapon and your regular weapons at will like the engineer can), and the time limit means I feel like rushing to use all the charges (or grab the extra conjure early). In the end, they make me just want to use kits again. Meh. :/

Too long, didn’t read? : I’d like some advice. How does one play elementalist well and not die a lot, because right now I feel like elementalist sucks.

No. There is no good way to enjoy it by yourself, besides going to the Edge of the mists and sneaking over to reactors for the Mist chests (provided you don’t get intercepted by trolls or run into an enemy zerg).

Other than that, I just did the borderlands/battlegrounds for map completion and never looked back afterwards.

Map completion, WvW Badges for exotic/cheaper ascended gear. That’s it. Other than that, WvW isn’t worth being in.

chemiclord.3978:

Considering the last time they tried to share a racial look these forums exploded in an incendiary fury that makes the current flap about town clothes look like a campfire… they’d have to be suicidal to try that again.

Well…I think there was more to it than that. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if they removed the racial lock for all cultural armors. I’ve sometimes thought how neat it would be to get some of those pieces for other races and how they’d look.

Heirlooms and found belongings are useless as of now, with the merchants for them being gone. The blade shards and blueprint scraps still have use for making more of the Spinal Blade back items(provided you have enough shards).

Some of the refugees are already going back, even though the place is wrecked.

Also, Scarlet’s Lair is presumably still under the Durmand Priory, though whether or not it is still accessible isn’t known to me.

Neat find. /15 chars you silly limit.

Danikat.8537:

A lot of people have suggested for a long time that sylvari could actually be dragon minions, given that the Pale Tree first appeared around the same time as the destroyers.

It was only beginning to grow around that point. It took a long time later for the sylvari to emerge.

We know from Glint that even the dragons champions can choose to go against them given enough of an incentive, and it could be that Ventari’s tablets did that for the Pale Tree and she’s been using The Dream to lock her children away from their masters influence. We also know from one of the sylvari personal stories that there is at least 1 other tree out there, so it could be that there are other sylvari still loyal to Mordemoth.

Um, no. It is revealed in one of Arah’s explorable paths that the Forgotten used a spell to give Glint free will. Unless Ventari’s Tablet was imbued with similar magic, it would not have done anything to free the Pale Tree/sylvari if they were in fact dragon minions. It would make more sense for them to have come from the Forgotten as well, or possibly be related to the druids.

And the one sylvari we do meet from the other tree shows no sign of being influenced by a dragon, and is mostly a nice fellow, even with no Dream.

Alternatively the two start off unconnected but the sylvari’s ‘psychic’ abilities – their shared memories through the dream and empathic awareness of each other (the thing the Soundless try to shut off) make them more susceptible to dragon influences. Zhaitan wasn’t able to physically corrupt them because you can’t have an undead plant and I think Jormag may have the same problem (if you freeze a plant it shrivels to nothing). I’m not sure if there are any branded sylvari. But Mordremoth may be exactly right to corrupt them.

In Sparkfly Fen, there are quests that involve destroying corrupted trees and fungi. The Lowland Burns area in Blazeridge Steppes has Branded plants as well.

When Cera went into Omadd’s machine it might have worked as intended – opening her mind up to everything out there in the universe. And a dragon could have zeroed right in on that vulnerable target and created itself an unwitting new champion. Just like Jora’s brother in GW1.

This part seems to be correct, given what the Pale Tree has told us about Ceara herself.

Oh, and here’s a thread already mentioning this “Sylvari = Dragon minion” theory, as well as giving decent evidence that it probably isn’t the case. It’s an old one, but still a nice read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/On-the-Sixth-Elder-Dragon-and-its-corruption/first

Mind explaining how? Might as well kill them all off then, as I mentioned.

Feel free to revisit the Personal Story where every character with potential dies/disappears 3 to 5 story missions after being introduced….oh wait.

Because…um…I don’t have a good reason for you. With the events only giving you one spore sample per stalk, it’s far quicker/more efficient to just get them from the nodes in Kessex Hills. I guess the developers just didn’t feel like getting rid of them. Until they give 5 – 10 samples again like they did in the beginning, there’s little reason to bother with these things.

You can mention the Invasive Weed’s death to the Avatar of the Tree now, as well that you were the one to finish her.

Upon reading their upcoming changes to the trait system, I suspect that may be the joke.

I’m still hoping for the SAB’s next world though.

Me: “I must stop the looters!”

Trehearne: “No, Commander. You are the looters.”

Brutalistik.6473:

Nilkemia.8507:

Also, while it’s nice to know the dragon is/was meant to be Mordremoth, where did Braham get the name from?

I’ll assume it was us the players.

Good point…though, as the name was just from one attack name used by Subject Alpha, it’d be a bit odd to explain in-game where we (the players) would’ve found that info, although I guess we could’ve just said “We found a data terminal in the Crucible of Eternity referencing the name Mordremoth, connecting it to summoned husks and Nightmare hounds we fought in there.”

Well…interesting. The sound file anyway.

From the text, the Invasive Weed really didn’t explain anything, so meh.

Also, killing off Marjory wouldn’t have made a better ending to me.

It would’ve just given the message “Oh, we’ll just kill these characters off as they become interesting, just like in the Personal Story!”, thus making me not care about them at all anymore. If you’re going to do that, just kill them all, save me the trouble of guessing who’ll be next.

If anything, Rox choosing them over the warband was a nice bit, as well as Kasmeer going out of Divinity’s Reach more, but other than that, the alternate ending still seems worse.

Also, while it’s nice to know the dragon is/was meant to be Mordremoth, where did Braham get the name from?

Hopefully the Super Adventure Box.

Mad Pig.2890:

They are first and foremost dragon minions and it is in their nature to destroy and spread chaos. The ones born from the pale tree may be an exception, but there still might be another location where Sylvari are born without the protection of the tablet.

The race is inherently and created to be evil.

Where’s your evidence of this?

Lydell.8713:

Cush.4063:

How did you get to see Trehearne in LA? All I found was his salad friend at the Mystic Plaza saying that he had to beg Trehearne to take one ship back to see what happened and that Trehearne was definitely not on the ship (or it seemed that way).

If you pay a little attention to the pictures the OP linked, you’ll notice that Trahearne is actually a player who made his sylvari in the image of Trahearne, down to his name. He even has the halo on top of his head.

Also, the face isn’t the same, as Trehearne’s face isn’t available to players at all. Impressive Trehearne cosplay however.