Guild Wars 2

anduriell.6280:

That you understood that is interesting. you don’t have many friends in real life i guess.

I should need to explain you that your friends are not people you get advantage from in a selfish and vile way. You are supposed to help in the same way, it’s called retribution.

Oh my jesus. Look, even if druid is actually, factually, the absolute worst at healing in the entire game (Which frankly, a lot of your builds don’t establish as well as you think), your friends should be sufficiently decent people to not force you to play a class you don’t want to in PvE. Not a single class, in a single bit of existing content, is so bad that if you have it with you, you will lose. It’s unlikely raids will (I actually have concerns that raids won’t actually require defensive support, but that’s a different matter). It isn’t some horrible drag on your friends to play your favorite class.

None of this means that druid is strong enough, or isn’t strong enough (which I’m actually agnostic on because I don’t really care right now). It means that you either have a warped view on friends and video games, or you are putting forth a warped view because you want bigger numbers for druids.

For the love of christ, stop kittening spamming threads. Make one: “Other classes are better healers”. This is kittening noise.

I mean, this doesn’t look like a better healer, unlike some of the other builds you’ve posted, but for kitten’s sake, increase your signal to noise ratio.

anduriell.6280:

I like the support thing. SUPPORT not only mild heal.

CLERIC/MAGI still 80 heal in staff AA. The druid does not give any support and does not have the wow that’s amazing healing.

WvW the healing is not enough to change anything. If i get into CAF i should be able at least once to heal everybody really fast like Irenio pointed out in the preview.
In PvE there is no point to have that, because the druid need an enemy target to be able to heal.

Ventari heal just moving the tablet around.
IF heal is mandatory in raids, the revenant will the be the one, not druid

Revenants appear to be complaining about their lower numbers. Healing IS ultimately support, but yes, it’s well within the bounds of possibility that druids simply don’t do enough to justify a slot. I don’t know (Or honestly, really care much, as such. IT’d sure be unfortunate, though)! But I won’t pre-emptively declare the entire concept to be null and void because ‘we have iFrames here’

Paranoia.8276:

Offensive support? OFFENSIVE SUPPORT? You must be referring to the stacking in the corner and cleaving everything to death with 25 stacks of might. Yeah, we don’t want that braindead gameplay anymore, thank you.

Admittedly I am inclined to agree with you. It almost boggles the mind that people here put on airs about how much harder their game is when this is such a common strategy in fights. But I’m taking the basic idea at its best – I am ignoring the ‘stack in a corner’ nonsense, since I don’t genuinely think most GW2 players think this is the height of video gaming either, merely a nuisance brought on by subpar encounter design.

Nobody rolled Ranger to play some half designed healer role because up untill recently we didn’t know they were scrweing up the pve so bad.

I played Ranger to play with pets. Playing with pets while I heal is as acceptable as playing with pets while dpsing.

Levetty.1279:

I told you in the post you quoted.

This doesn’t address what I actually said at all – you merely stamp your feet and insist iFrame dodging is a completely different skill than manual dodging in every way, and behave as though it’s inherently superior. I suppose if I already agreed with you, I might be inclined to think you’re right, but you don’t provide me a rationale to agree with you.

Levetty.1279:

This is what WoW kids think pass as constructive forums posts, no wonder blizzard are driving that game into the ground.

I haven’t played WoW since Wottlekay. If you think ‘go back to WoW’ is constructive criticism, yer not the sharpest tool in the shed yourself though.

Levetty.1279:

Except offensive support doesn’t negate the basics that the combat system is based on, evading and mitagating damage. Throwing unavoidable damage about in raids to make Healer a role thats needed (and probably won’t be filled by druid anyway) is just throwing away everything they have done with the game.

Why? It just flags another form of support (I doubt Guardian won’t be servicable, given that it has more defensive support, if less outright healing) as relevant. It’s not like offensive support will vanish. If the whole reason you play the game is ‘active defenses’, well, news flash – every MMO made in the last decade makes you dodge in PvE group content. Frankly, GW2 gives you so many iFrames that it’s almost kittening laughable when I hear people act like it’s unique in making you ‘dodge’ (by which you mean, dodge roll). It isn’t inherently better for this. Now, it is a different style, but nobody says you won’t still be as reliant on timing your iFrames to survive (which, to be clear, is absolutely still a skill, just not a fundamentally different one from dodging without iFrames) – All we know right now is that the intention is that you NEED some form of defensive support (and potentially, put some value on defensive stats). isn’t some UNSPEAKABLE EVIL – it just makes the Meta less amazingly reliant on offensive builds.

Levetty.1279:

and you go back to WoW. We are playing GW2 here where active defense and support is more important. Negating damage > heals.

In other words, you’re allergic to green numbers. Gotcha.

style.6173:

You need to understand WHY people don’t like it. Is healing bad? No. Will it be bad if a druid is MANDATORY in raids? Then yes, since it defeats the whole purpose of this game.

The super pro meta in PvE already has mandatory support – y’all just pretend offensive support isn’t support because reasons.

I mean, this is putting aside that healing isn’t some inherent evil that GW2 is so much better for avoiding. Realistically speaking, it’s not a particularly different exercise, except in that the stupidity of your targets works AGAINST you rather than WITH you. I’m not a fangirl of it, I’m just an old hag who’s done every role and every dps type across MMOs. After finally maining a healer, I don’t see why I was so opposed to it as a kid.

People talking about the trinity on this forum are completely forgetting what the concept MEANS. I mean for gods’ sakes, it has “trinity” in the name. PvE doesn’t understand the word ‘tank’. Maybe PvP does (It did in WAR, so it’s not categorically impossible), but just having healers is insufficient to talk about the ‘trinity’. It’s Tanks, Healers, DPS. You have HEalers and DPS. What part of that is ‘trinity’ for you?

I mean, after hours of play on the Druid it is abundantly clear Druid won’t be in PVE meta until healing is a forced role.

It still amuses me how people complain about this. Offensive support can be a forced role all day every day (and it is – the whole point of the PvE meta is they put out high self dps while improving group dps), but the second any form of defensive support is potentially required, you macho man-wannabe kids cry.

This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve heard of on a conceptual level. Part of the point of going with pets in video games is to be less vulnerable to single target crowd control, because part of your action economy is outsourced to other entities. It’d be ridiculous for Moa to turn all the other minions into moa, actually murdering them is dumb on a level I can’t understand. If it’s a technology issue, that’s one thing, but if it’s intentional ‘balance’…

Seirously, your complaint is “I WANT BUILDS TO BE MORE DIVERSE”? Maybe make some utilities benefit pets, or pets be better without going all-in. A hard counter just punishes people who like pets and comes off as sour grapes that people doa thing you perceive as not requiring skill.

You mean your dps might be lower if you bring some support? SURPRISE AND TERROR.

mtpelion.4562:

Healing is not necessary.

Healing is not necessary.

Healing is not necessary.

Repeat that to yourself until it sinks in.

Got it? Ok, now think about what Druid can and cannot do.

Do you see now?

No? Ok, repeat after me again:

Healing is not necessary.

Are you a time traveler who has experienced HoT raids? This notwithstanding that NOTHING is actually necessary – if this is your argument, it’s asinine! Are you really going to tell me you’re bad enough at video games you NEED Icebow? Are you bad enough at video games that ONLY with the most broken skills you can advance?

I want to be clear here – I may not mind healing, but I am skeptical of the skills being like 80% heals by volume. But I’m also not going to pretend I’m prescient – I don’t know how much healing and defensive support will be necessary. It’s possible that all that healing (and little other offensive or defensive support) is there because without the defensive support, the raw healing is necessary. I don’t know. You don’t either.

And dragons would collapse under their own weight. What’s your point?

People whining about ‘the trinity’ forget that it requires, yanno. Tanks. Nothing’s changing to make warriors suddenly capable of ‘holding aggro’ (or living through it). What it most likely means is less reliance on ‘dodge or die’ effects as the sole meaningful source of damage.

There are plenty of games already out there that offer those things. We bought this game because it didn’t.

I did? I didn’t realize that, please tell me why I bought the game.

I got it because my wife owns it, nd I wanted to play something with her. I do like this game on its own merits, probably more than she does! But while it’s true that the lack of ‘roles’ is kind of nice, at the same time it often makes dungeons feel more chaotic and, critically, often contributes to them just feeling like 5 people playing a single player game near each other (Or worse, waiting for cleaves to kill everything you’re not skipping)

And no, I don’t hate the prospect of being a healer. I might have years ago, but I’m an old hag by now and I don’t really see a big difference between watching allied HP bars and watching your dps cooldowns.

We’re not mad or crazy. That’s only some members of the Inquest.

“I get the feeling someone’s been sneaking through my lab.”
“Has anything turned up missing?”
“No. But every morning, my lab notes are one micrometer left of center.”
“That is pretty suspicious…”

I made an Asura because I adore mad scientists. Especially the ones who think they’re sane and serious, and especially if you can, you know, use part of an orphan in an experiment and not necessarily notice the problem. Which is definitely more the Inquest, but is not JUST the Inquest.

norn are just cheaply made vikings,

My wife would object to that as a Scandinavian historian – they’re surprisingly well done vikings. But they are also still vikings.

I understand the utility of a better chance of recovering Runes/Orbs/etc, but what is the line about “Better chance to recover rare materials”? Is it just for globs of ectoplasm/dark matter? Does it refer to pulling say, Orichalcum out of a t5 item? If someone could explain that to me, that’d be great, thank you.

Um, no, these classes have nothing to do with DnD magic. kitten , Necromancers actually create and control minions, effects ultimately outside of DnD wizard necromancy. God, DnD fans are the most irritating tabletop fans, always trying to fit the square peg of ANYTHING ELSE into its round holes.

I have no comment on the OP, having not played Elementalist outside PvE.

I can’t say for Quaggan, but my plush tybalt does sometimes feel a mite small.

Primary source on the Celts being archaeological findings.

And people who directly dealt with them who made accounts of it.

But for GW2 the Legions have been there since after the death of the Khan-Ur. Doesn’t change that they played no part in GW1, and it feels like they are a tool to make the Charr a playable species, to put the blame solely on some part of their society which is now outcast. It is also a way for the other 3 Legions to put the blame for atrocities away from their own ancestors.

Yes, they are a tool to make the Charr a playable species. Welcome to writing. Similarly, their being more savage prior is an out to feel alright about killing them, and to not have to put more effort into explaining why they do what they do. These kinds of things happen in writing, even good writing.

Good grief, I’m sorry if using an anecdotal nod to academia to highlight my point irked you.

Your point is poorly illustrated – this isn’t academia, and if you were trying to act as though it were, you sorely lack in references. Wiki is perfectly acceptable for day to day life.

I was implying it was false because not only is it commonly known throughout the player community that a lot of GW lore was written into the wiki post-Nightfall, but it has even been said so by ANet plenty of times. It’s how they connected the two games for crying out loud. I had no idea this was an issue.

They connected the games through… the wiki? Not EotN, the actual expansion?

This Tyria is literally drenched in cotton-candied, kiddy-fun-time fluff.

I don’t usually associate Great Old One-esque dragons, complete with warped followers, with cotton candy kiddy fun time. Then again, there’s cthulhu plushies, and they’re adorb. I wish I’d been taking screenies in Orr now though, because really: for kids!

You’re confusing the presence of humor with the absence of seriousness. Lord of the Rings has its fair share of humor, even before Peter Jackson got a hold of it. Few would dispute that it is a serious setting. If you’d like to say that there’s mood whiplash in going from Lord Faren’s amazitude to, well, almost anything else in the plot, I won’t argue with you (Or, for a more stark example, Skrittsburgh. You fend off apocalyptic demons, slavers, and deranged scientists to find… skrittsburgh). But to say that it isn’t serious because there’s comic relief? No.

Also, Tyria is not literally drenched in cotton candied fluff. Although if it were, nobody would ever go hungry again, because there would be cotton candy everywhere. Literally: Does not mean what you apparently think it means

There are notable exceptions of course, but the vast majority of the game is rated Disney.

If by ‘notable exception’ you mean ‘the bulk of the personal stories, most renown hearts, and numerous events and meta-events, as well as the Living Story, the dungeon plots, and the like’ then yes. Even Metrica Province has friggin’ Chernobyl in it. The only thing I can recall with a particularly childish plot offhand was the Super Adventure Box – and fake retro isn’t generally for kids.

Could you magically just go back to the topic? :P

If you insist… no. There is about a zero percent chance of backing a queen going off the rails and acting in a clearly destructive manner by every plausible metric. Even if Kryta can win, which seems doubtful, what with it being an offensive war against a very well entrenched force, it will simply be too exhausted to help fight off the Dragons, screwing everyone when <insert dragon here> shows up on its doorstep and can easily corrupt huge swaths of the populace.

Ex-squeeze me? I’m guessing you retrieved the “information” about Mark I and II golems being Inquest only from the wiki, which is only partially correct

No, I played the game as an Asura, and never saw any indication that Asura use standardized models themselves in any of the renown hearts I did or in my personal story… except for the Inquest.

All standardized models are eventually upgraded or otherwise modified, mass produced or not. Just think about it, the T-Ford was mass produced, and yet today’s Ford cars do not look or handle like those. This is because the original standard was modified for future models.

This is a horrible example. IT’s not that there’s a modification at all, it’s that the modifications come from individuals reproducing the original themselves, rather than organized efforts at improving a model for a new, better mass production model. We have very little evidence of mass production outside of the Arcane Council’s tools (The Peacekeepers and the Arcane Eye), who’s overall presence is very small because of the decentralized nature of the Asura.

Asura gates number plenty more than 40, and that’s only counting the ones players have access to. Just consider this, asura gates are mass produced to such an extent that many, if not most, asuran inventors have private asura gates leading to their labs.

There’s the ones to/from Lion’s Arch, Ebonhawke/Divinity’s Reach, and a few scattered ones for JPs, in addition to Rata Sum’s, as far as I’ve seen. 40 is actually being incredibly generous because I didn’t feel like counting. I’m not sure every genius’ lab has an Asuran gate to it, but yours does, and that’s reasonable evidence for the proposition (Zojja’s too speshul). If so, then yes, and that supports that they can plausibly engage in mass production. Again, the issue is almost more the lack of organization to DO anything with that technological potential.

There is a difference between “the most advanced army” and “the most technologically advanced army

Yeah, one’s marginally faster to say.

What I am disputing is, if we were to go by your example, that 500 longbowmen can be considered more technologically advanced than 500 of the earliest musketmen.

Considering the longbow was no more a static weapon than the musket, you would be wrong to start with, but without the innovation of volley fire, the longbow is more technologically advanced – ‘technology’ doesn’t just refer to some raw and abstract thing of how metallic it is, but also how well we understand how to use what we have effectively.

The muskets are clearly more technologically advanced than the longbows.

By what grounds is an inferior weapon in practice more ‘technologically advanced’? The only thing muskets had going for them was military applications to start with; they were less accurate, their range was shorter, and only approximately as effective in puncturing armor. What made initial guns eventually surpass the bow was that they were more practical militarily, because you could much more easily train peasants in how to engage in volley fire (or simple fire while covered, prior to that) than you could train them to use a bow. That’s why more advanced armies used guns – not because guns were better weapons (initially, and for a reasonable period after), but because they could be put to use on the scale a military demanded more efficiently. You’re only supporting my point.

There is definitely such a thing as being ‘too tanky’; especially when you’re outranging most AoE to start with. I don’t worry about it since two of my three stats are damage and I’m usually close, but I’d start to worry if it were just one used for damage, and the other two self-defense.

So the consensus would mostly be to “use the shield blast and mostly a different kit”? Well, alright then, I’ll try that out. I can definitely see the utility, at least!

Asura even have a schematic archive with standardized specs for inventions.

…which they then immediately tinker with in reproduction. They don’t seem to typically mass produce, but they probably could if they decided to organize properly for it. Mark I and II golems are mass produced, but they’re also Inquest.

The waypoints and Asura Gates are better examples! But they may not be good ones – at the end of the day, there’s only what, 40 Asura gates, and a few hundred waypoints? I mean, I wouldn’t even count that as mass production without direct evidence of production lines, for Asura Gates, and they’re titanically expensive to use on scales larger than “individual adventurers”. Both Asura and humans confirm that much.

Waypoints are a better example, and DO point to a capability to produce things en masse should the Asura choose to – the remaining problem then, would be the clearly disorganized nature in which they operate.

Again, you’ve not put down any foundation for your assumption that “advanced” is a synonym to “widely available”; not to mention not a single example of this supposed multitude of applications in which charr improv-tech provides more benefit than asura equivalents.

Er, the foundation for this is “The most advanced army is not the one that can produce the highest tech doodad possible, but the one that can most easily put practical advancements in the hands of the most soldiers.” That’s straight up how it works in real life; take guns. They were developed earlier than most people realize, but their utility was pretty limited until people worked out formations that they could be usefully used in during battle – you couldn’t just drop someone in with a musket and expect them to perform as well as someone with a longbow even before discounting that the longbow was a better weapon for the well-trained. It wasn’t until Maurice of Nassau that musketmen could be left more or less unattended with no halberdiers or the like as protection.

That’s hands down going to be the Charr. Their organization in military matters is clearly superior to that of the Asura. The Asura are most certainly more advanced in general, and with a more centralized structure could easily turn that into a more advanced army… but they don’t have that centralized structure or that organization.

If all ‘warfare technology’ means to you is the best doodads? Then yes, the Asura are better, no doubt, with the exception of flight (Which they flatly never worked out themselves). But that’s a pretty useless view of what technology in warfare means.

Comentarii de Bello Gallico

Primary source on the Gauls, actually, if a biased one. It’s kind of written by a guy who was directly dealing with the Gauls.

I never said you shouldn’t listen to wiki, only that you should take it with a grain of salt. Just because I used its weaknesses as a point in my argument doesn’t mean I think it’s dirt, sheesh. And I never said “It’s a wiki, therefore invalid” even though you put it in quotes to refer to me. Come to think of it, you’re putting a lot of words in my mouth lol. A poser? How so?

Even if your claim had been limited to that, it’d still be INCREDIBLY dishonest to not immediately concede that what I said was true, given that you knew for a fact it was accurate. But there’s no reason to believe that your claim was limited to that. You were using the stance for academia to dismiss wikis. I’ll grant you didn’t directly state ’it’s a wiki, and therefore invalid’, but you were leaning on that heavily to make your point. You were, after all, heavily implying it was false.

And again, why should wikipedia be given special concern? The empirical evidence indicates it’s as accurate as Britannica. This is certainly acceptable for day to day discussions. And as to being a poser, it’s trying to ape an academic stance with no apparent understanding for the utility or origin of that stance. To be fair, there /are/ professors who just knee jerk at nominally public editting.

Fleshing out a cartoonishly evil group will almost always make for a better heir for something serious.

Within GW1, prior to EotN, the Charr appear to just be a kitty version of standard orcs – unjustified, evil, and only accepted because it’s genre standard. Fair enough, and nobody has to put a higher level of effort into showing everyone as a valid foe. Adding more depth to that, in a work trying to be ‘serious’ instead of aiming to the typically low standard of ‘for kids’, is pretty much always going to be an improvement.

The ability to manufacture one-off superweapons is not useless either, even without leaving fiction. Mad science has its place, especially in an alliance where someone else is handling the, for lack of a better term, normal science. Asura technology DID contribute heavily to the production of airships, after all, and especially to the flagship you use to down Zhaitan. Just make sure someone else is in charge of mass production (Unless I’m underestimating the College of Statics, which isn’t impossible).

Regarding roman roads, you’re kinda ignoring that they’re built to handle tonnages that are orders of magnitude lower than a highway, and given the speed at which those tonnages moved, suffered considerably less wear and tear. They’re very, very well designed, but they’re not practical for the purposes of moving large amounts of goods at high speeds.

Regarding Charr and Asura tech in war, I did forget one other thing the Charr are clearly going to reign supreme in – organization. This is insanely important if you want to talk real-life logic, because both battles and wars are only very rarely fought to the death. Unit cohesion and morale break well before the army dies off, and both are easier to maintain with clear communication, organized chains of command, regimented armies and the like.

Well, level 40 isn’t high, but it’s not nothing. Putting aside that I’m permanently with someone else (which means overworld map mobs tend to melt), the number 2 seems to have a weird habit of popping bolts off into the middle of nowhere, and confusion kinda sucks in PvE. I have tried it myself, and I’ve hated it; I’m wondering what I’ve overlooked that could make it great.

Looking at your build, it seems to understandably lean on the 2, and given that it just seems to go off into lala land sometimes when I use it, I don’t think I like it, although I’m sure it’s been working out excellently for you. My guild leader was highlighting HGH for me earlier, so it’s interesting to see that’s liked.

I think I’m just more optimistic. Not that people won’t do it, but that the community is SO large that for every 1 guy who is trying to turn his party into speedruns, there’s going to be 4 other people who just want to do a dungeon with some people and bond over a dungeon.

If it helps, despite all the horror stories, I’ve never taken flak for my being a ranger, and I tend to use Sword/Torch in dungeons right now (I’m building up a Power set after another Object-heavy dungeon irritated me, although I’m still thinking I won’t use Berserkers, because I kind of need that HP since I suck). And going off the forum posts, this should definitely get me kicked off a dungeon party, possibly with spitting.

It’s pretty simplistic to say “The Asura produced singular examples of amazing technology”. I have no doubt that, even within warfare, one can find an individual Asuran, say, rifle design that puts to shame the most advanced Charr design.

The difference is, the Charr are regimented and industrialized. The standard issue rifle, for instance, is almost certainly a perfectly good weapon, and the Charr can and will produce as many as they want (Up to their limit in resources and charrpower, anyway). The best Asuran rifle is almost certainly better, but is almost certainly made with very esoteric materials, and the Val-A golem storyline demonstrates a marked unwillingness to simply replicate another Asura’s design – Asura are driven to tinker. And that same storyline (Alternately, spending 5 minutes in Rata Sum) shows that in their tinkering, Asura frequently downgrade, sidegrade, or otherwise fiddle too much in the process and either cause an improvement, or more likely, make it explode. So to get back to that point, sure the best Asuran rifle is probably amazing, with technobabble supreme – but there’s only one, or maybe a krewe’s worth. The Charr will have a rifle in the hands of every marksman, and probably a more bells n’ whistles-y one in the hands of the really good ones. Remember, it’s the Charr who provide the Pact Choppers that are used en masse, not the Asura – and Air Superiority is insanely important. And the Asura explicitly did not figure out flight going off of the NPCs (There’s a Whispers agent who says they’d have figured it out eventually, but Asura are insanely arrogant, so… XD), and even if they did figure out flight, one jet pack (It would have to be a teeny tiny jet pack. Or maybe bat wings, to settle my internal dispute of ‘bat or rabbit’), or even a krewe’s worth, is simply insufficient.

So who’s technology would be better in warfare? If we were following logic, probably the Charr’s. Wide scale organization and adaptation in military matters is always, more important than abstractly being capable of more advanced things, and there are countless examples of this in real life; even things like the Megalasers don’t change it. The real answer is “Whoever ANet decides, which is probably nobody because it wouldn’t happen”.

None of this means Asuran tech isn’t amazing, incidentally. Rata Sum is incredibly impressive, and were the Asura to adapt a more centralized structure (It wouldn’t have to be as regimented as the Charr’s, just… moreso than the whole krewe deal), they would probably be capable of surpassing Charr tech. But as they’re portrayed now? No, not for practical uses. They do get to look a lot cooler though. …which is a practical use as far as PCs are concerned

Edit: Hm, now that I think of it, there IS a College of Statics which might actually be good at working out the logistics of wide scale adaptation – certainly, Peacemakers all use the same gear, but then, they’re also faceless mooks. Hm…

I’m new to engie (And to a lesser extent, the game in general), and always play Engie with my lovely wife, and she’s on her warrior. For the first… well, noticeable while, I used dual pistols, but always felt I wasn’t contributing to open world content. A level range of somewhere or other gave me no condition damage, so I switched to Rifles and Power, temporarily, to find that, holy jesus, I could actually hurt things in the time span before they died. I was perfectly okay with my conditions in AC Story, but that’s not an object-heavy dungeon, so there’s that.

So I mean, I dunno, I did like the hell out of the Elixir Gun, but the pistols themselves felt pretty meaningless. And I could just use the Elixir Gun anyway (though I’m currently considering two turrets and the tool kit). How did other folks feel about pistols in PvE?

Now if it wasn’t viewable directly by others and you need to ping it then it isn’t as bad as people would be able to find the chat codes for it and then they could ping whatever the ‘elitists’ want them to while not sacrificing their own build on the whims of another.

The amount of effort it would take to look that up would appear to dwarf the effort to research an ‘acceptable’ build, no?

Also, wouldn’t the overall structure of the gear matter just as much as the trait lines, if not more? This isn’t at you, just in general.

No, I have no idea why the writers left. Why does that matter again?

Because you were trying to pin the shift in lore on the changing writers? The Charr were definitely going to get changed if they were made playable – whether the old writing staff had been there from the start or not. There’s pretty clearly not enough to work with what was there.

There’s people you can blame here that you have logical cause to, even; stick tot he decision makers.

Not inviolate canon, inviolate spirit. Preserving the facts of a thing is different than preserving the essence of a thing.

The only questionable-looking thing is the Iron Legion’s MO. You’re actually doing a really bad job at establishing the cornerstone of your claim, and it’s only something I can even provisionally accept because many others appear to agree in general (then again, fans can be high-strung over even the littlest changes, so even that’s shaky).

Also, wiki’s are most aptly public secondary sources. A secondary source alone, while not the best choice, isn’t invalid. It’s just not a strong source.

A secondary source is generally invalid for academic purposes. A competent professor would no more let you cite Encyclopedia Britannica prior to the advent of wikipedia than they will wikipedia now. An utterly incompetent professor will ignore the empirical evidence that, on average, wikipedia is just as accurate as Britannica, though, and try to say “It being public is teh supar bad”.

Come to think of it, it’d take a pretty incompetent student to try to say wikipedia isn’t sufficient for discussing things outside academia, and an utterly incompetent poser to use wiki status to impugn canon statements about a nerd thing that are on its fandom wiki. Wookiepedia is reasonably authoritative on Star Wars, and you’ve certainly given no reason to doubt GW Wikis in particular. Especially since your one attempt to say “It’s a wiki, therefore invalid” was to dismiss a thing you knew for a fact is true – that’s not just being a poser, that’s being intellectually dishonest.

I can’t have a debate about this if you can’t understand this premise.

I’d say you’re having more trouble with pretense and dishonesty.

But she sounds nothing like what most women trying to sound like a man manage. I’ve met numerous women with voices just as deep in the real world, just walking around. You can fault her delivery all you want, but that’s not an attempt at a manly voice.

Heck, looking on youtube for 10 seconds, I see this is only a tiny bit deeper than Ivanova was, which isn’t that surprising given that Zojja is mostly just “Felicia Day.”

At least with a build ping system, players would be able to make a group with whatever intent they have, and hardcore players would have the option of picking and choosing party members in a simpler and more friendly way than having to tell players how bad they and their builds are in the nicest way possible before asking them to change it and/or kicking them altogether.

How is “I need to check to see if your build is good, and I think you won’t honestly tell me the answer” ‘nicer’ or ‘more friendly’ than “I need to check to see if your build is good”? Not having played GW1, I imagine it might be faster to ask for a ping, but nicer?

Regarding the OP, I will eat my hat if it’s just rangers. I guess it’s not impossible, but IME, the real Divas are healers… which don’t exist all that much here.

Honestly, the only race that really has ‘lore friendly’ classes, and this is still iffy, are Sylvari. Everyone else is sentient and free-willed, and has plenty of time, even iwthin the biography, to pursue the profession of their choice. Sylvari are still sentient and free-willed, so there’s that, but they also pop out of the Pale Tree with knowledge of their profession, so that’s why it gets a teeny bit iffy maybe (With Engineer, I would think).

Incidentally, I’m also not entirely positive about the ‘plenty of time’ bit for Charr, but a Charr could be forced into a profession because of its military utility – even if it’s nonstandard for the NPCs we see. Plus, you can always roleplay a Gladium, even if you don’t get the Personal Story option for it.

Odd then, that a simple Google search “guild wars charr legions” comes up with literally nothing between 2003 and 2007, and a whole lot after that. There’s a reason professor’s don’t let you quote wiki ya know, they are rife with editing.

No, the reason a competent professor doesn’t let you quote wikipedia is that it’s a secondary source, and therefore unseemly for academic purposes. Everything remotely authoritative is editted. And one fan is not more authoritative than another.

And what you’re actually telling me is that the changes were done in EotN, so your criticism is actually aimed there.

Eh, a single dude wrote all of Proph. Him and a handful of others wrote Factions. None of which are still there. The big staff turnovers came with Nightfall and EotN, at which point GW2 was a foregone conclusion.

So you have no evidence that they left in disgust over changes to lore, and acknowledge that if it did happen, it would have been over 1?

You’re late to the party

None of which changes your point requires an inviolate canon.

Every addition to an established work of art should be critically judged, no matter what it is

It seems pretty safe to say that these additions pass muster though. What you actually mean is to highlight how it changes canon as an absolute negative, and again, that’s not a premise I accept.

My angle is simple: the further one strays from the spirit of its predecessor, the less credibility it’s due as an acceptable heir.

Fleshing out a cartoonishly evil group will almost always make for a better heir for something serious.

Well I care, lol. When building on someone else’s work, there should always be a degree of respect paid to said work. Wouldn’t you agree?

No, apparently, I don’t. Not if ‘respect’ is defined as “All work done to create a thing is sacrosanct and can never be expanded on, nor redone if a new goal for the story is sought.”

Is this actually even a retcon? The GW1 wiki lists the formation of the Legions as spoilers for GW1.

But why does that matter?

Because you have very little evidence to think the original writers (Who apparently remain in force) wouldn’t have retconned it had they remained, and if you have any evidence whatsoever that they left in disgust over changes, you haven’t presented it.

My point is happens to be very artistic, btw.

That’s not actually true unless you conflate artistic integrity with maintaining an entirely inviolate canon.

As for the legions, my point was they were retroactively written in, and not part of the original gameplay. Ofc, now they have existed for a long time. But then they didn’t exist at all. Get it? XD

Them not existing when you played GW1 is irrelevant in the context of the lore. The lore now says there were legions then. I don’t know, or care, whether this is a retcon or filling in unknown information. But they had the Legions during the fight for Ascalon.

“It’s their story to write.” Legally yes, realistically not exactly. The writer’s that wrote Proph(and I say only Proph because it’s the only one that concerns the Charr until GW2 development started) are no longer employed by ANet. While that don’t mean jack squat in video game circles, it means something very subtle nonetheless. Since the current authors chose not to continue along quite the same trajectory as those first writers, there’s a degree of inauthenticity present. Granted it’s small and pretty lifeless now. But it’s there.

…If you want to talk ‘realistically’, it’s irrelevant on that level. The writing staff didn’t choose to make Charr playable (and therefore, need to justify the Charr). You can try this on a higher level (Perhaps the game director or lead designer – someone in charge, in short), but if it’s just writers? Unimportant. You could certainly have a point artistically – if, for instance, the writers left because they couldn’t countenance the change.

There is a hard cap on how many conditions that can be on an enemy, causing lower powered stacks to be ‘overwritten’ and thus losing the damage from them.

Sure, but that only happens to me on world bosses when there’s like 50 people. I’ve consistently been the one doing the overwriting, in PvE. Or at least, I have been since hitting 80 and getting exotics. Well, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t happen – if I’m seeing ticking DoT numbers it means my damage is what’s applying, yes? I’m aware it doesn’t hurt objects, which does make me sad when it comes up.

As for running berserker being dangerous? Yes. It is. Our survivability is then entirely based on our ability to position, heal, regen, dodge, and evade. But we cannot reach near as much direct damage running more defensive-statted armors due to our poor power scaling.

To elaborate a little more on this: there are many places were having more defensive-stats don’t really do you much good (e.g. bosses that will one- or two-shot you). Better that your party can kill the boss more quickly so he doesn’t have as much of an opportunity to hit you. Having defensive stats often just prolongs battles without offering you much improvement in survivability.

Once you get good enough at surviving based on position, dodges, and evade, your defensive stats become mostly redundant.

Hm, I see. I have clearly not become that good yet though…. grumble >.<

We also can do good conditions, but conditions are much more limited in the PvE meta and neither as reliable nor as effective against what we face.

I… don’t think I follow? Was I missing bosses cleansing me?

I also don’t follow the full-on berserkers thing. wouldn’t that get like, really dangerous?

If the Activation effects weren’t intended to work wiith stow, entering the surface of water probably shouldn’t have killed Beastmaster’s Bond when I was using it. Weird way to learn that ‘swapped’ and ‘activated’ aren’t technically synonymous, but there you go.

Also, Troll’s End, at least, has the pets be kinda obnoxious, since you’re in a teeny tiny tunnel and are mostly fighting the camera, rather than the platforms.

It’d be cool to get griffons or bats. I rather like those. Rock Dogs too I guess. Ogres already get the doggies and griffons.

I’ve been playing a few weeks now, and I’ve been enjoying it. Hit 80 whenever it was. I’ve done most of the dungeons, no Fractals, etc. I spent most of my time playing Sword/Dagger and Axe/Warhorn, tried out Shortbow over Axe/Warhorn lately. Not sure I’ve liked it. Right now I’m 0/0/10/30/30, with SHared Anguish, the Spirit Traits, and odd combinations of BM Traits that usually cap in Health Regen. Pets are mostly Drake + Devourer/Spider. My gear is pretty much 100% Carrion, the armor and weapons are Exotic. Utilities are Sun/Frost Spirit (Varies solo/team), Earth Spirit, and Signet of the Wild, with Spirit of Nature in the last slot.

I’m trying to experiment, and figured I’d ask around: What do y’all tend to do in dungeons? So far I’ve found most of them reasonable. My pets are alive and fighting probably 80%, with some notable fights where it’s more like 20% (three-golem fight, and when I experimented in Honor of the Waves with Bird/Moa, come to mind). I wouldn’t mind more options to experiment with.