Guild Wars 2

Gotejjeken.1267:

Used to be very useful prior to the pet aggro patch. If you were running through somewhere, you needed to stow them or they would instantly aggro everything nearby. Now, they stay by you and the stow feature has less use, although still useful in places like Southsun as your pet runs to the side of you and has a good chance of aggroing a random karka.

Pets can’t aggro mobs you haven’t aggroed already. They shouldn’t aggro the karka themselves any more although there is a chance they will shield you from the karka’s attack aimed at you and keep you out of combat.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That’s like if you’d been playing this game for over a year and you never once saw a single axe or GS warrior using banners and Empower Allies. You’d think warriors were crap too.

I’ve played since launch and I have every class at 80 and frequently run dungeons on my guardian, elementalist, ranger and warrior. I can tell you now, sword ranger is one of the worst experiences GW2 has to offer. The control issues that weapon has are simply not worth the DPS. Sword main hand is awful. I can do the same DPS or better on a warrior without any of the frustration of the sword auto attack. Warrior great sword hits big numbers and it has a build in evade which also repositions you and has you play the angle game against a wall for maximum DPS (rangers play the dodge cycle game to be aware of when they can and can’t dodge and the attack cancel game to brute force the game to let them dodge). Frost spirit is useful because it provides a unique buff but when you consider that it’s another thing you need to micro (proper positioning so it doesn’t get killed but still close enough that you get the benefit and if the boss does a target all allies attack you can kiss it goodbye) compared to the drop when necessary nature of banners (which also have blast finishers and active skills people occasionally use) the spirit skills just feel bad. I can half agree with Spotter simply because Empower Allies was nerfed (it’s no longer 10 points – it’s still flat out always useful, precision often won’t help as much as power, especially in a pug) but Spotter still has issues in that it forces you to choose between a signet build and piercing arrows. If you don’t care about your bow’s ability to hit more than one target at a time or you don’t run signets then it’s fine, but spotter is in a somewhat dense area when it comes to build defining traits. Warrior axe, greatsword and banner builds play very well. The weapon skills were well designed and work fantastically in PvE. They are responsive to control and have few issues specific to their design which creates constant frustration in dungeons. They have a low skill cap to play well at a basic level and they have added complexity to push their performance to higher levels (look at any of Wethospu’s videos where he solos a lot of content with a greatsword). The greatsword, axe and banners are all designed far better than the ranger’s main hand sword and spirits. Players don’t run sword rangers with spirits not because they are bad players but because those mechanics are poorly designed for PvE.

All of that is after you’ve accepted what is probably the worst designed class mechanic in the game. Pet issues in dungeons aren’t as bad as they were 12 months ago (they aren’t a lot better either) and rangers have been trained by the game to accept dead pets, DPS loss from standby pets or to bring ranged pets. When you play any other class, you don’t have the frustration of micro managing your class mechanic so that it will be alive five seconds from now, you don’t have the frustration of knowing that a good chunk of fights it’s simply going to die unless you make drastic compromises and even then it’s not always possible (unless you choose minion build). A lot of times it will even make content harder. When boss mobs use AoEs that target all allies and punish players which are near others by hitting them with both AoEs, pets add an additional AoE for the pet. Not only will the pet not dodge the AoE, if the ranger fails to dodge (admittedly they are playing imperfectly) they are hit by both their own AoE and their pet’s (assuming they are in the same spot at the same time) which essentially doubles the price of failure that rangers pay.

A lot of ranger issues in PvE come down to class design, not player skill.

Yeah I’m sure the person who came up with potions and their recipes put in a tonne of effort into that system. It’s so creative.

Potions are just a cheap way to get a second buff. There’s nothing fun or creative about them. Just remove them from the game.

I dunno, each update has good and bad parts.

Best gameplay:
Fractals. Substantial, scaling, variety, challenging, it was a strong update. It’s a shame the gameplay afterwards was so lacklustre.

Best lore:
Bazaar of the Four Winds (the Glint connection makes this a clear winner, this is one of the most interesting threads in the entire game – best of all it hasn’t been corrupted by Scarlet).

Best characters:
Braham and then Rox (in that order). They started fine in Flame and Frost but they secured the title during the Queen’s Jubilee. Too bad they haven’t been relevant to the story lately despite being involved. Faren runs a close second (third? I feel like Braham and Rox share the mantle, although I’d love to see Braham’s dynamic with someone else).

Best Quality of Life update:
LFG tool. Bar none. A launch feature that didn’t make it. Nothing comes close.

Best reward model:
SAB. Tokens earned from the relevant content that can be used to acquire the content themed weapon set. No RNG skins from the story or open world chests. Actual content which feels rewarding (Flame and Frost and Aetherblade Retreat had crappy rewards considering their respective weapon skins were monopolised by the gem store). Bazaar of the Four Winds gets an honourable mention for moving in the right direction by allowing the back skin items to be tradable and repeatedly obtainable. Acquiring a catcher, desert rose or rucksack isn’t a pipe dream and having two on the same account is actually possible. Meta achievement back skins are better than gem store RNG ones that can’t be traded and are temporary, but content reward skins are the way to go imo.

Best Open World tie-in:
I’m tempted to give this to either Scarlets invasions or the Settlers vs Consortium events but I really feel like the Balloons were the best designed story tie-in. The smallest amount of story the dynamic events held was a huge improvement from Holograms and other “press f” content.

Worst gameplay:

• Sign posts
• Pumpkin carving achievement (stand alone they are fine, achievement points to do dozens if not hundred is not fine).
• Snowmen achievement
• Piñata achievement
• Hologram achievement
• Scavenger hunts with no story, clues or lore (Mad King one was perfect, the drop box one was kinda boring, Dragon Week one was by far the worst)

Worst lore:
Anything to do with Scarlet or Ellen Kiel. Logan’s lack of character growth from past events (repeating the same themes with the Queen that were already covered with great consequence in the novel and the dungeon story modes – he doesn’t show any change).

Worst characters:
Scarlet and Ellen Kiel. Scarlet would be fine if she was not the central figure. Her shoulders aren’t broad enough to hold up the weight of the plot that she has been given. I keep having to deal with her, but I never care about her (or what she’s doing). Ellen Kiel is the most boring character I’ve ever met in an MMO. I’m very happy she’s gone.

Worst Quality of Life update:
Ascended tier. People have written encyclopaedias on why this is bad. Anything else that moves towards “daily design” and time gates.

Worst reward model:
Any of the RNG chests. I also don’t like that certain achievements seem to be exclusively intended to force you to play during a certain 2-4 week period to get them when it’s completely unnecessary. Every achievement associated with a mini game during their initial introduction is guilty of this. If coming first in Sanctum Sprint was worth an achievement during Bazaar of the Four Winds, why would it not be now?

Favourite release overall:
Bazaar of the Four Winds. The map was beautiful, the lore was some of the best stuff we’ve seen, the Zephyrites have a lot of depth and they were only around for one month – the Aetherblades have been poping in and out for months and we know nothing about them. Crystal collecting was fun(ish) and the soundtrack was awesome. The mini games were seriously overkill, but the abundance of back items (I’m counting the rewards from Southsun Survival and Aspect Arena as well) that were obtainable with added variety was welcome. The actual combat gameplay was a bit off, but the story, lore and themes of the new map and its people were all fantastic.

Wost release:
It’s hard to pick one because I usually think of something I liked in most of them. I’ll go with SAB because I didn’t buy GW2 to play an imitation platformer and the recent lore addition further roots it in the story. I wish I could give this to something Scarlet related but the gameplay in recent updates has been an improvement despite the story getting worse.

haviz.1340:

CHIPS.6018:

Another thing I love about this dungeon: Zerker gears have a disadvantage. Finally, tanks have a place.

Hmm?

Yeah, he’s wrong. Tanks will still slow you down and make it harder. It’s still easier and faster to zerk things down. Take the final boss for example. In a tanky party you will have to remove his shield far more times than an optimised zerker party. I suspect zerkers could kill him after a single hologram.

The oozes at the beginning are harder with lower DPS groups because you are forced to use pulls otherwise you won’t kill them fast enough. Zerkers will probably just kill the oozes quickly removing any need to kite, block or pull them.

Personally I think the dungeon used far too much kiting. It’s my least favourite mechanic in GW2 (well the poison darts from SAB now take that crown). Jelly fish fractal, Dredge Fractal boss, AC path 2 (by far the least popular AC path) and now almost every encounter in the new TA path is basically all about kiting mobs. It’s one of those mechanics which makes pugging incredibly painful because a single bad player screws it up for everyone and all the other players are scrambling to use pull skills, of which some classes get a better deal. Kite the oozes to the door, kite the oozes onto the oil spills, kite the holograms onto the generators, kite the holograms to the door, kite the holograms to the boss. It’s the same mechanic used over and over and over.

I personally don’t play dungeon content (or MMOs in general) so I can kite mobs around. If this is the continuing trend in dungeon design I’ll need to find a new game. I personally really dislike this kind of mechanic and it seems to be the favoured one in all the new content. I guess the removal of the trinity and the uselessness of stuns pushed the devs into a corner when it comes to combat depth. This is their solution to it.

The dungeon has a massive audience right now and most people don’t know how to do it. Once people learn the mechanics it will become easier.

Personally I don’t like a lot of the mechanics used (kite mob here, kite mob here, kite mob here) but they are much easier once your group learns them. The problem is most groups being formed now are full of people who would die during a CoF P1 run. People who never do dungeons are doing this. People who farm easy dungeons with familiar mechanics are doing it.

Bad groups make easy content incredibly hard. Don’t pug it or wait a while for the critical mass to either learn it or stop running it. To pug this dungeon today is to gamble with your time.

He stays there. If you manage to heal him (I’ve done this a few times because he makes a good tank) she attacks him the entire fight and he just stands there once the fight ends. The story is the same.

WvW and PvP also benefit from the leap mechanic. It lowers the skill bar for players to stick on their targets. Other classes have to work hard to stick to a target, the sword’s auto attack does it for you. It does come at a price though. Unfortunately PvE pays the same price and gets none of the benefits.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Shiren.9532:

I think Kristen said she wanted to give males and females the chance to choose similair kinds of hair styles. If someone played a male character, it sucked that they didn’t have beautiful long hair, at the same time, it might suck if the dreads type hair was only given to males if a female sylvari wanted them. I guess the same thing goes for rugged hair styles. Females should have access to that option as well. Sylvari seem to bend the rules a bit more with the difference between males and females. It seems like the focus with the sylvari was to open up new options with greater variety that didn’t exist (males with long hair, new plant types etc).

So why not make 6 new hairstyles and have them available to both males and female sylvari?

I think there are differences between the two. I don’t think they are exactly the same. The simple answer would be that would be twice as much work (if not more). It’s possible there will be hairstyles that weren’t previewed.

Honestly I think it’s a shame they didn’t just go nuts on the lesser races (anything but human) because they start with less options. I can see why humans would have just as many new options despite having more core options to begin with, they are by far the most popular race and thus more profitable to cater to.

Tequatl was temporary content. You guys were fooled!

Raziel.4216:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Raziel.4216:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Raziel.4216:

I doubt they’d commit to 2 living story updates per month if they noticed people log in to do achievements only.
We can only speculate, the only one with real # is Anet, no company would make this kind of decision out of the blue.

You’re assuming Anet behaves rationally, logically, and in their own best interests.

Instead, Anet has shown that they don’t listen to their customers and are very stubborn about admitting and fixing mistakes. They seem very shortsighted, often doing things that perhaps give them good metrics now, but probably will negatively affect the longevity of the game.

I would not be surprised at all if a large percentage of people are logging in only for the achievements.

Back to the thread: I feel the Living Story is a great idea in theory, but a total failure in implementation. There is practically no “Living” in the Living Story (Scarlet’s invasions have zero effect on the world) and the “Story” is amateurish at best.

I think Anet should have been more bold and had the Living Story affect zones permanently (something like the evolution of Southsun from a desolate island to a growing world of colonists). The world would feel more alive.

Plus, when players that missed the storyline return to the game, they at least get a “new” zone to explore.

You’re assuming Anet doesnt behave rationally (proof?) and doesnt follow the same steps that any company would before commiting to something.
No company will throw resources at something before checking the data, such as how many people log on before and after LS, how much time they spend online, what % of that time is doing LS-related stuff, etc.

Anet has many flaws, as expected, but they certainly listen to customers (shown in GW1 many times) and made this decision based on real data, like any company does they are not new to this.

We can continue speculating and talking about the friend of my friend that doesnt log on anymore because of LS! but that’s anecdotal (worthless) evidence.

They may look at data but interpret it incorrectly. For example, they may see data of tons of people doing LS and think it’s because people enjoy LS when in reality it could be that people only care about the rewards/Achievements.

As for listening to customers in GW1. That was a very different Anet to the Anet we have now.

Anyway, your post seemed to indicate that Anet has data and therefore are taking the right actions. All I’m saying is that having data doesn’t mean you’re using it in the right way. And from their recent behavior, I personally believe (IMO!) that they are not.

We agree to disagree then, I personally believe that they’re going in the right direction.

I’d love’em if they let everyone look at their data, it would calm (or justify) the complaints.

What data?

A quick example of a made up scenario:

In May this year the following dungeons were run a certain number of times each day:

CoF path 1: 3000
CoF path 2: 200
CoF path 3: 5

Arah Path1: 15

AC Path 1: 200
AC Path 2: 10
AC Path 3: 150

TA F/U: 0

According to this data CoF P1 is the best dungeon path in the game. Should every dungeon path in the game be made the same as CoF P1 as a result? Should TA F/U be removed (the answer was yes apparently)?

At some point data has to have context – and at some point even popular content can be bad content.

Queen’s Gauntlet:
Subject 7: killed 4000 times
Deadeye Dunwell: killed 20,000 times
All other bosses combined: killed 1000 times

Does that mean that Deadeye Dunwell was the best designed content? What is the goal with content? To have players repeat it as much as possible? To have players tell their friends “hey this is cool, come play this game to try it out” (original SAB)? To give players an engaging story for a few hours every two weeks with satisfactory rewards? To keep players logging in as much as possible as consistently as possible?

You know what’s nearly impossible to define with data? Is it fun? Players will do something that they don’t enjoy because it’s profitable, or because it’s a daily, or because it’s gone forever in two weeks.

If ArenaNet is focusing on data to decide how to design content, they have truly lost site of the question “Is it fun?”.

What time is it in Seattle? They might be in bed.

They might bring it back with a different colour variation like they did with the Desert Rose.

I think Kristen said she wanted to give males and females the chance to choose similair kinds of hair styles. If someone played a male character, it sucked that they didn’t have beautiful long hair, at the same time, it might suck if the dreads type hair was only given to males if a female sylvari wanted them. I guess the same thing goes for rugged hair styles. Females should have access to that option as well. Sylvari seem to bend the rules a bit more with the difference between males and females. It seems like the focus with the sylvari was to open up new options with greater variety that didn’t exist (males with long hair, new plant types etc).

I liked that players took the initiative to form guilds that organise on overflows to take him down. It was bad enough that you had to get into an overflow up to an hour in advance of his spawning to play with those guilds, unreliable spawn windows is only going to result in more waiting around.

I hope this is a bug. This content was already difficult to complete because of the organisation required. Unreliable spawn windows aren’t helping.

LeifChappelle.4069:

From a lore perspective, the story of Twilight Arbor repeatable is a lot like a “what if?” situation. Who gets to the Nightmare Tree first? Scarlet is now present in the arbor, and that presence has a very tangible effect on how the Nightmare Court can pull off their race to the tree. Because of that presence, the possibilities are narrowed, and Fyonna will not be able to make it to the tree in time.

I don’t understand this point fully and I won’t be able until I play the full dungeon path, but in one sense this seems like a recton. A year ago Scarlet had nothing to do with TA. All three paths occur at the same time (the ‘what if’ scenario you point out) but suddenly Scarlet is taking place during the events of all three paths. Given that both Up and F/F use the same part of the map at the same time (and all paths end at the same point) it seems strange that it would be necessary for any path to be removed. The separate paths always had continuity errors, adding a new continuity error seems like a non issue.

LeifChappelle.4069:

From a design standpoint, we want the Living World updates to change and have an impact on the world. Earlier in the year, Colin gave the example of blowing up a dungeon and replacing it. This is very much that example in action. Because the explorable paths of Twilight Arbor were very similar from a content perspective, we made the decision to create a new path to revitalize one of the existing ones.

This doesn’t feel like a change, it feels like a retcon. You didn’t change something, you replaced something. Nuking a dungeon as a result of a story event isn’t a straight up replacement, it’s an evolution and a consequence of an event that happens. That makes the world feel alive. This update makes it so that F/U path never took place. It’s also not a result of player actions – we didn’t have any action in this content, we didn’t create it or cause it to happen. It just happened. There doesn’t even feel like a world event that caused this to happen, it’s locked away in an area we haven’t been to so it doesn’t seem like the world is changing.

I’m not expressing this well, but it doesn’t seem like this is what I had in mind when Colin said the story would have an impact on the world. I guess my personal stance is that instanced content (for the most part) is not where permanent changes should take place. Instanced content has no reason to change unless it’s something huge (like the cleansing of Orr or the destruction of a landmass).

LeifChappelle.4069:

Forward Up was one of the least played dungeon paths in the game, and was the best candidate for doing something like this.

I dislike this kind of logic (and I’m confident the decision was more complex than that – not a criticism, I am giving the benefit of the doubt that the decision was more complex than what you reasonably would write in a forum post). The most run dungeon three months ago was CoF p1. Does that mean it’s the best dungeon?

Reasons players repeatedly run dungeons:

• For the cosmetic armour. You might really want that armour skin.
• For the armour stats. CoF awards one of the most desired stats in the game (berserker) so it was always going to be popular. Dungeons which don’t offer desired stat combinations will be run less (rabid comes from TA and is very popular though, not as popular as zerker imo).
• For the gold/time ratio.
• For the fun of it.

I suspect the primary reason why F/U path was one of the least run paths in the game is because of the final boss. It wasn’t an issue 12 months ago but it was tweaked and became much more difficult than most content. Fix the final encounter and I suspect a lot of people would start running the content again.

LeifChappelle.4069:

I know my explanation won’t make everyone happy, but I hope it at least gives you some insight into the decision we made. Everyone on the team is really proud of how the new path has come together, so I’m hoping you give it a try on Tuesday and let us know what you think.

As a person who did TA as their very first dungeon (I really wanted the armour) and I love the dungeon aesthetic (part of that is preserved in at least the first half of the dungeon you previewed) I look forward to the path. I enjoyed the Aetherblade Retreat and Molten Facility so I have high hopes for this content. I just wish it didn’t come at the expense of existing content.

Wethospu.6437:

I’m fine with replacing dungeon paths. Assuming replacement is actually much better. I don’t think we need multiple generic average paths.

It wasn’t a generic path. The sap/water spout challenge was unique to that path. The Vevina fight was also one of the most unique fights in the game (the fact that she used dangerous conditions meant that she was generally very different from most other bosses). The husk boss was pretty boring but the bees are actually a unique mechanic.

The problem with “replacing” is that it’s not necessary. They could just leave the three existing paths and have for options. When the “replacement” could simply be an “addition” it’s hard to see why they are outright removing a path that did have unique gameplay and value.

The final boss was a total mess (and all three paths have a terrible final boss fight) after the “tweak” they made to it. It needed to be balanced, not removed.

DarcShriek.5829:

Just as WoW has novels written about the settings, GW2 has short stories. The existence of these short stories are not indicators of bad story telling.

The WoW novels add background to events the game is about to deal with (and they aren’t required or even central parts of the game’s plot) or they explore events and lore that is otherwise not going to be in the game. The only outside source of lore in WoW that crossed the line was the comic which is where most of Varian Wrynn’s history is established. Despite that he is still a very strong and well established character in the game itself and his involvement of the story always makes sense and is fairly fleshed out. Players who didn’t read the comics don’t usually miss out on important information – it’s given when it’s necessary.

The Living Story in the game is like the skeleton of a story. There really isn’t much going on in inside the game itself. The bulk of the story is either not being told at all (Scarlet’s involvement in Flame and Frost and the formation of the Molten Alliance) or it’s being told outside of the story (through the short stories or lore interviews). The story inside the game is fairly shallow.

If the point of the OP’s post was simply to trash on the lore pieces on the website I’d agree with you. I think the OP is saying that so much more of the story needs to be told in the game.

Hugh and Jessica did the recent WvW one right? I watched that yesterday and the actual gameplay was… not awesome. I don’t blame them – she’s busy talking and not focused on WvW, but she kept getting ganked and generally didn’t accomplish much. Then again, I don’t think any of the ArenaNet WvW vids are much more than a novelty. The tag attracts too many attention kittens and the the stream prevents them from doing anything competitive because the enemy can see their every action.

Rubi was there, she just wasn’t on camera. Watch any of the Live Streams, they all have this issue. Talking while playing isn’t easy. It’s like giving an oral presentation while playing a challenging new dungeon at the same time.

Astralporing.1957:

lordkrall.7241:

Well, people have been whining about the path more or less since release. And this is probably one of the best ways to fix it.

One of the worst, you mean. It is the “we couldn’t be bothered to fix it, or event to acknowledge the problem, so we’d rather remove it whole than do something constructive” approach. You should never want the devs of any game adopt this way of thinking.

People haven’t been whining about the path since release. Originally Up and F/U were the two paths players ran. People actually considered F/F to be the hardest. There was a tweak made to the dungeon a while back that changed the final encounter in F/U making it more difficult than most encounters in the game. The Nighmare Tree is consistently (across all three paths) one of the worst designed bosses in the game. Originally it was auto attack with a ranged weapon while going AFK on all three paths – it was that easy. In fixing that problem, they made it much harder by introducing a whole bunch of new problems which were clearly not tested properly.

Or they can stomp all over the Nightmare Court to further bash home the point that Scarlet is the scary of all scaries. The Nightmare Court are formidable threats. Living Story trend dictates that Scarlet outwits them and outevils them to make her look “even better”.

-Rox[Charr trying for Stone Warband] – This plot device is shallow and it’s running thin now. It was fine for Flame and Frost but they went too far with Tequatl Rising. She shouldn’t have been there. Someone who has more insight or involvement (who can add more depth to the story) is a better fit and results in a stronger story. She is fun as a character.
-Braham[Upstart Norn Hero] I like him. He’s heroic but he’s not qualified. He doesn’t hold a high position and he doesn’t have the respect of a lot of people but he does the right thing. He has an interesting backstory and his personality is fun.
-Ellen Kiel[Lionsguard Captain//Lion’s Arch Council Member] Worst thing to happen to GW2. Burn it with fire.
-Moto[Inventor of SAB] I think SAB is best left as an April Fools joke. Trying to squeeze a story out of it is like fitting a square peg into a round hole. They will get something but at the end of the day it’s time wasted on something that’s less interesting than most of the other stories they could have told. This kind of thing would be a minor quest in a traditional MMO but in GW2 it’s taking up a month’s (and likely several months when SAB returns) of story telling time.
-Canach[Lone Guerrilla Terrorist] He’s great. They could have handled him better (and his black and white vision is hard to understand but you can put it down to sylvari naivety). He has a lot of potential for character growth and he could become one of the stronger Living Story characters. I’d like to see him get a redemption arch, if it’s handled right.
-Mai Trin[Aetherblade Captain] Seemed unimportant. I am sick of human females though.
-Evon Gnashblade[Owner of Black Lion Company] He was far too cliche in his portrayal but it’s sad to see Kiel win over him. I wish they had written him with some sophistication or subtley instead of “this guy is bad, Kiel is good hurr durr”. I think he could be an interesting element in future stories given his flexible morality.
-Marjory Delaqua[Old-School Necromancer Detective] I liked her. There wasn’t a lot to her tbh but she seemed fine. She had a unique feel to her which was nice, the atmosphere of the pub was very immersive. Her motivations etc aren’t particularly interesting though.
-Lady Kasmeer[Partner of Marjory and Noble] She’s fun enough. She hasn’t done enough to be annoying and she hasn’t done enough to be particularly interesting. The worst thign you can do is hog the spotlight and not do anything with it (looking at you Kiel and Scarlet) so Kasmeer has avoided this so far. The story is spreading really thin at this point so it’s hard to see if Kasmeer will matter at all in the future.
-Mr. E[Mystery] Who? But seriously, this is an issue I have with the story. This plot shouldn’t have gone untouched for this long.
-Faren[Faren] He’s hilarious. Technically not a Living Story character (he was from the human personal story) but he is one of the more entertaining characters in the story so far.
-Scarlet Briar[Crazy Omnipotent-ish Mastermind] The sooner we are done with her the better.

I really wish there was a Zephyrite character. Their story has been by far the most interesting story this year. The Zephyrite connection to glint and all the mystery surrounding their culture was the most compelling thing we’ve come across – best of all it’s completely unrelated to Scarlet (so far – the idea that it might be in the future depresses me). I can get excited about a connection to Glint or her offspring, nothing Scarlet is doing interests me. She seems to exist outside of the world and only appears when she wants to attack it. Everything she does is inconsequential once the new chapter starts.

Given how underutilised Kasmeer and Marjory have been, in addition to how localised and inconsequential Moto is, I think there are too many characters at this point.

The Mad King is Halloween. He’s only around for October and it should (and will) stay that way.

No that’s trying to play a game and be engaged in a conversation at the same time. People will drive a car every day and at times they won’t be able to hold a conversation while doing so because their attention needs to be on the road.

Playing challenging content and holding a conversation at the same time isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

Turma seems pretty cool. A big improvement from Kiel. Hopefully she remains a background character and doesn’t end up stealing the spotlight all the time.

Thank god the Living Story has a female lead after so long. The women are just so unrepresented in the Living Story. We really needed a tough chick to show the men how it’s done.

It’s a case of cutting off the arm when the finger is broken. Rather than fix the one fight in the path that was total garbage, they instead chose to nuke the whole thing. A lot of good content is being removes simply because it finished with some bad content.

KOPPER.1458:

No you don’t lose out. It replaces it.

If all you care about is the achievement. If you care about experiencing all the content in the game, sucks to be anyone who doesn’t get it done by tomorrow.

If the new path is substantially longer than the existing 2 (which it appears to be) and it doesn’t allow skipping (which was stated to be the case – something I strongly support) it will not be run if it offers the same rewards as the other two paths. If the aetherised weapons only drop in the new path, it’s another testament to ArenaNet’s design philosophy where the carrot dictates content.

I think Molten Facility was a little too long compared to an enjoyable explorable path. If you take out all the skipping in short explorable paths they are actually fairly enjoyable experiences.

I strongly support fighting trash mobs. In many cases (TA being one of them) they are more interesting than a lot of the bosses. They dumbed down boss combat so that control skills like snares and stuns are almost worthless, but with trash mobs those skills shine. An AoE snare on the knights or wolves saves a lot of people, as does Glyph of Storms in earth attunement. A knock back or stun on the knights also greatly helps. That level of combat depth doesn’t really exist with boss mobs, but against trash it’s really rewarding for players who want to do something other than stack melee and DPS.

lordkrall.7241:

Haven’t people also been complaining about the lack of world changing events?
Is this world changing event bad just because it touches a specific area you guys like?

You think this is ‘world’ changing? You think this is what players want when they want to impact the world? TA is in a really bizarre place in that all three paths are mutually exclusive from a story perspective. Vevina is killed by Fyonna in Up path but in F/U path the party kills Fyonna themselves. Only one of the existing three paths can be canon (after tomorrow it will only be two paths) but the experience itself is different each path.

When players want to change the world, they want their actions to have a permanent impact. The removal of a path has nothing to do with player actions, it’s a developer decision that had nothing to do with the players. If player actions (or plot developments) result in a dungeon being altered, that’s more understandable (although it’s unnecessary to remove instanced content to evolve the world – instanced content can exist on any time line without impacting the rest of Tyria or the story’s ability to move forward) but removing existing content because you are adding more, that’s really hard to make sense of.

The new level 80 path is going to replace the current F/U path in TA (arguably the least popular because of the final encounter). Apparently more permanent content means sometimes existing content will be replaced.

The F/U path had it’s issues but there were some good things about it:

• Water spouts break up the monotony.
• The husks had a unique mechanic (bees) that was slightly different (admittedly not very challenging but it was something new to deal with).
• Vevina was actually decently challenging.
• Unlike the new path it gave lower level characters an additional option. Now you have to be level 80 to do all three paths.
• Unlike the new path the old ones focused and expanded on the characterisation of the Nightmare Court and their conflict with the sylvari (the story itself wasn’t that interesting or unique).

I’m sure there are a lot of great things about the new path but I don’t understand why they have to come at the expense of the old one.

If you want to do TA F/U do it today. It’s gone tomorrow.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Caduceus:
- He’s a most definitely a high ranking member for the White Mantle. Probably a Confessor or Demagogue.
- Bandits are paid by the White Mantle, but only the highest rank bandits know that.
- Centaurs are also stirred by the White Mantle.
- Some day we’ll finally meet the White Mantle again, far to the northwest of the map.

White Mantle -> Caduceus wins.

It’s the Ancient Karka, not the Karka Queen.
It’s Lord Faren , not Ferran. You can’t leave the “Lord” out.

Maybe he just wants Kryta to have a democracy instead of being ruled by a queen born into luxury and unearned leadership? Sure his methods are inexcusable (supplying the enemy) but dethroning the queen in favour of a democracy (even if his plan is to install himself as leader) is a good thing. The charr in leadership positions earned those positions. The same with the asura and the norn (although norn don’t have traditional leaders). The humans have a bizarre system where the kingdom could be ruled by a complete imbecile simply because they are born into. In a time where humans are so pushed back, you want the best person for the job in the leadership seat. It’s statistically unlikely that the single person with royal blood is the best decision maker and optimum candidate to navigate the kingdom through the current conflicts and challenges.

Don’t hold your breath on White Mantle. The story is trying very hard to stay away from human centric plots and thus GW1 lore. There is room in the story to tell explore racial specific conflicts, but the White Mantle would either be a shallow enemy or too involved to justify having all the other races dealing with it for any lengthy period of time.

We’ve been clearing up after Scarlet since Flame and Frost. So far she just seems to cause chaos. In an interview the writers said her motive to appearing at the Jubilee was to challenge the Queen’s new watchwork knights. She wasn’t there to cause political upheaval or make a name for herself, she wasn’t trying to destabilise the government or pit the humans against the other races. Her motive is simply as shallow as “I feel like they are challenging me so I will attack”. It’s believable enough, but it’s truly disappointing because it’s not very meaty. You could replace that motive with “I just wanted to attack for no reason” and the story repercussions would be the same, and that’s a disappointing story imo. It’s hard to care about a character or an event when the reasons were that shallow. When you look at all the events she was behind this year (Flame and Frost, Sky Pirates and Queen’s Jubilee) it’s really sad to think there was no master strategy. There was no higher plan. It was just a game. Suddenly all the complexity of the story, the intelligent plots that could have been, they are replaced with "none of these layers matter, Scarlet did these things on a whim (getting on the Captain’s Council is the outlier, that’s rather specific).

The story on the website talked about how she resented a predetermined path for a sylvari from the moment she woke. She rejected the guidance (note that it is guidance and no-one actually forces the recently awoken sylvari to follow a path – they are free to turn away from the aid just as Scarlet did) of those trying to help her and she shows open contempt for the Pale Tree. We know from the lore that sylvari enjoy a great deal of freedom, they don’t have to follow their Wyld Hunt or their dream, they don’t have to follow Nightmare and some sylvari have even managed to disconnect themselves completely from the Pale Tree so much so that they don’t even hear her any more. Freedom for the sylvari already exists. Scarlet seems to have this unexplainable desire to free herself and other sylvari from an imaginary destiny that isn’t supported by the existing lore. Had the writers heard of the Soundless when they wrote Scarlet’s character? It simply doesn’t make sense that Scarlet so strongly resented this idea of destiny or a predetermined life when it doesn’t exist for the sylvari in the first place.

Scarlet motives usually make her dangerous, but they aren’t particularly interesting. There is a big difference between the two.

Lopez.7369:

This always happens in games with difficult content. Some servers and guilds just aren’t good enough. That’s totally fine. If everyone could do Tequatl, it wouldn’t be difficult content by definition.

With that said, they should do something about overflow servers and guesting. But for now, it can be easily addressed by joining a Tequatl-killing guild.

The smaller your population, the fewer interested players you will have attempting the content. Once players see their server fail for whatever reason and those players have an alternative (guesting, overflows with a Tequatl guild) the people who would otherwise build the core of your server’s Tequatl take downs will go different routes. One of the leaders of one of the Tequatl killing guilds is from a server that didn’t beat Tequatl until last Saturday – and that server still doesn’t even get a daily kill in, let alone several a day across multiple times. Several members are from servers that haven’t killed Tequatl or don’t do it reliably. The content requirements are too extreme for most servers atm.

Maybe the solution is to have the event scale better for lower population servers. It’s a problem for server morale and community health when people learn that the server isn’t going to beat him (or stand a chance) and most people give up on the server. Once the content loses player interest it’s an incredibly steep battle to win it back.

Time Glitch.2460:

Entitlement.

That is the only word I can use to describe the complainers right now.

Keep trying. Help your group rather than scream at them because of what “they did wrong”. I was in one of those groups today and we didn’t even get him to 75%.

I then joined another overflow where there were 3 commanders telling everyone what to do an hour before the fight. We went over it a few times, everybody got organized, and we ALMOST killed him! It was honestly so close we pretty much did beat him.

So rather than feel like you’re entitled to something, how about you actually try to participate and be positive in a group rather than complaining about how you can’t solo a dragon.

The new Tequatl fight is awesome and I sincerely hope ANet does more content like this in the future rather than listening to the whiners. And if they do end up listening, I hope we see this kind of content in 20 man raids or something, because we definitely need more like it.

I’ve beaten him about 12 times now and aside from the first one or two times I’ve done the same thing every single time. I’ve played exactly the same and I only get better with consumables, optimised armour, optimised builds, optimised use of the fiery great sword etc. I failed him twice on the weekend and the times I failed it I was doing everything the same as 10 of the times I beat him.

It sucks to lose a fight when you do nothing wrong. It’s certainly a map effort and the honest truth is your best bet to win this isn’t to play as best as you can, it’s to pick your map. The map with the smallest number of randoms is the one you want to be on. If you can get your large guild on a map, that’s the one you want to be on.

I honestly don’t think Tequatl is hard. Getting random players who need to be carried to do basic things like stack on commander at his foot, run PTV or similair gear, jump waves, have few people defending turrets and the ones that do kite the champions away and have competent turret users. Most of these things are fairly easy. Nothing in this encounter comes close to being as difficult as Lupicus let alone Liadri. Pre-nerf Kholer is harder than this encounter.

Honestly I think Tequatl is most similair to the graveling burrows in AC. It’s fairly easy when the participants know what they are doing and are somewhat optimised for it, but it’s incredibly difficult when you have little to no control over the other people you rely on and aren’t able to mimic the winning strategy for whatever reason.

I honestly think if you had a full zerg of soldier gear characters, running the proper buffs, with embers etc, optimised builds and everyone using a solid strategy (melee at the foot, few people defending turrets so champions don’t spawn etc), you would see Tequatl drop with almost no chance to fight back. The players themselves would need to use minimal skill. I frequently see Tequatl only get a single stomp in – if that – between laser phases because the burn phase does that much DPS.

ArenaNet needs to stop designing DPS races. It dumbs down the game and pushes out lots of skillful viable builds.

The hardest part about Tequatl is getting a map with people who know what they are doing and a sliver of discipline. The actual fight itself is fairly easy once you have that.

Le Rooster.8715:

katniss.6735:

SoS played horribly against Maguuma when we fount them the other week.

We are try-harding now, so bring your a-game.

#magswag

And we still beat you by 76k ponts, we also got 2 new NA guilds from then aswell.

This is a competition you want to lose. The winner gets to be stomped for 7 weeks straight in what will be the least competitive matches in season 1. Why would anybody want that when they will get their closest chance to a balanced match in silver league?

SBI needs to get a high ranked match up to eat their rating and go higher. Easy match ups don’t raise your rank as much as blow outs against top ranked servers. The RNG will decide who takes sixth place, but whichever server it is, the prize is uncompetitive matches for seven weeks.

The current SoS/FA/JQ match is an example of what the average match will look like for seven weeks if SoS places in the gold league. Let the egos play it out, the rest of us just want to enjoy WvW without the stacked zerg meta and the massive population imbalances.

ArenaNet’s new design philosophy is to use carrots to reinforce grind. Instead of giving players compelling gameplay to play, they change the rewards of old tired gameplay and require mindless repetition to get a stat upgrade that the game simply didn’t need.

Did you do world bosses at launch? Do them again when they were given a guaranteed rare? Did you do them again when you could get champion bags? Are you doing them again now that you need Bloodstone Dust and Dragonite Orr? Ok, that’s a lie. No-one needs Bloodstone Dust.

I’ve run every dungeon in the game for the last 12 months, I’ve done the world events, I’ve done the jumping puzzles. The carrot keeps changing but for the most part the content is the same. At some point the devs need to stop thinking they can implement a new grind, a new carrot, a new skinner box tool that they can use to recycle content. It’s so manipulative the way they go about it and very little of this last year’s worth of ascended content is actually content driven. It’s all the same content you’re grinding, just with a different carrot. Worst part is you have to craft this one.

So I would generally love more pets across the board, but when I look at my aquatic pet options they are so few. I love the model of the sea turtle and every time I see it I wish I could tame them.

What aquatic pets would you like to see?

Andrew Clear.1750:

Johje Holan.4607:

selan.8354:

really just put the t1 in 1 league. i was on fa since the start and dont wanna move because we are forced to fight t1.

Honestly, this would probably be best.

League 1: BG, SoR, JQ
League 2: #4-#9
League 3: #10-#15
League 4: #16-#24

Dumbest idea. This would just benefit TC. Suck it up and be in the 1-6 league.

Man, you all complain too kitten much. Either participate or don’t. I don’t care if I get stomped during the season, I am still gonna play and have fun. And I do believe that getting stomped is more fun than doing the stomping.

TC is a lot closer to the strength of the other tier 2 servers than any of the tier 1 servers.

This is actually one the least imbalanced match ups the gold league will be guaranteed to see: http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/map/1019

Everyone league is going to have an alpha server, but the gold league is going to have 2-3 servers that will be dominated every match. When there are only 6 servers in the league, it’s going to be 7 weeks of blow outs (unless there is a proper T1 match).

I don’t think you can get players to transfer off of T1 servers, at least not completely. The best we can do is isolate them in their own league so that the server stacking problem doesn’t become anyone else’s. If someone stacks the silver league, they will move up to gold. The difference between the top 3 ranked servers and 4th, 5th and sixth is too big to justify them being in the same league.

If the game can only have three or four stacked servers, let them play it out between each other. Players are only stacking on 3-4 servers. Those servers shouldn’t be in the same pool as anyone else.

Johje Holan.4607:

I don’t understand why someone would want to be on the dominating servers team. I mean its boring as kitten.

If SoS makes it into the Gold League I’m seriously considering transferring there. I play NA timezone and SoS could use some more people at that time. And it sure won’t be boring.

Because it’s a completely different game in T1. The dominating servers have 20 man zergs to capture supply camps while the 60 man zerg smashes down garrison. Your five man guild team will be crushed everywhere they go and there will be very few allies with you. Lopsided matches usually result in no-one pressuring on any side. A T1 server is structured to have a zerg on all four maps capable of fending off similair numbers from other T1 zergs. Imagine what happens when not only does your server not have similair numbers themselves, but neither does the third server. Suddenly a force designed to take on two zergs has no zerg to contend with.

Outside T1 there is a lot of small group gameplay. With a group of 5 to 15 people you can get a lot of stuff done. In T1 everything is giant zerg gameplay. Your only chance at capping stuff is to ninja it.

A blow out isn’t fun on either side. Dominating servers have little to do and dominated servers struggle to move beyond spawn because the dominating zerg isn’t busy elsewhere.

I agree that TC would win silver if T1 was its own league. I still think every match in silver league would be far better than most of the matches in the currently proposed gold league.

Relentliss.2170:

Add in the addition of Dire gear and you have a very bad pvp mix heacily favouring condition builds.

One of the things they could do to balance the condition meta is remove the + condition duration food.

The creation of Dire gear was just stupid.

And what do condition users do when they come up against condition reduction builds? If you have trouble with condition builds with this food, run the food that completely negates it.

Sharpoon.8197:

I just hope that all the guilds transferring to T1 servers will consider T2 servers instead

The T2 servers are the worst place to be of the 24 servers. You will never fight anything but T2 and T1 servers and you are guaranteed to fight all three T1 servers (currently TC has close to T1 numbers so every week for 7 weeks you will more thank likely be crushed). There is no incentive to transfer to a T2 server unless you like getting your kitten kicked. T1 should be it’s own tier, never has any server below T1 come close to not being a blow out since the new matchmaking system was implemented.

If players want to fight T1 servers, let them transfer to T1 servers. No-one else has the numbers to reasonably compete.

The new league system is better for most servers but it’s a disaster for T2 servers. Population imbalances are a monster of a problem in WvW and nothing has been done to address it. The new league system is going to guarantee is a significant problem beating down on a handful of unlucky servers.

Match variation doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as some semblance of match balance. I know that WvW by design is imbalanced and I know that Devon wants match variety but T2 servers don’t want T1 variety. To make an extreme example, putting the 24th ranked server against the 1st ranked server is technically variety. It’s not a good match.

T1 needs to be locked off in it’s own league.

This might be enough to kill SoS a second time. At least two leagues of 12 would give SoS another server to beat, but 7 weeks of tier 1 and 2 matches is unplayable.

They could add a token system. Each Tequatl kill gives hylek tokens and you can purchase the Tequatl ascended weapons (or other rewards like the breathers, the mini pet, the wings) with the hylek tokens. I know new currencies are not what everyone wants, but at some point it’s better than more RNG.

This gives player a clear path to the rewards they want without relying on the overused RNG system that corrupts so much of the game. Guild Wars 2 has a real problem with item rewards. In WoW you would do a dungeon and you almost guaranteed that an item you wanted would drop. Sure you had to roll for it, but more often than not I would do a dungeon and leave with an upgrade. In GW2 you have to do the dungeon at least three times to buy a single item. Then you have to do it a bunch more times to get another. Even worse is that lots of items are RNG (like Tequatl weapons) and you can do the Tequatl fight every day for a week and never get anything you want.

I’m happiest when encounters drop loot (instant gratification, you get rewarded directly for content) but ArenaNet is very intent on not giving items good drop rates. They are heavily committed to really low RNG because it recycles content and promotes grind (in ArenaNet’s eyes this is “more gameplay” because on average you log more hours to reach the same goal regardless of how repetitive it is). I think players deserve something better than RNG.

Colour isn’t all that matters. A SAB sword isn’t going to be used by the same person who uses the aetherised nightmare weapons. One is a holographic asuran… toy, the other is a briar themed blade. It’s not accurate to reduce all these weapons to just their colour.

Denial Of Service.5732:

OP never played

Tales of the Abyss

Dragon Quest

Chrono Trigger

Final Fantasy

im a “steampunk” lover and i would LOVE to get more steampunk in the game, (also a cyberpunk lover)

Tho i somewhat agree they made a nature related dungeon more steampunk when theyve could do something with COE and SE.

As someone who dislikes steampunk I tolerate its existence in Tyria (it’s only a part of Tyria, outside of the Living Story there is a great deal of sword and sorcery type elements). I am concerned by its increased prominence. If it exists, it should be balanced with the more traditional (remember than Tyria was around 250 years ago in GW1 where technology was far less advanced) parts of the world and it certainly shouldn’t be overshadowing the classical fantasy elements of the world. The idea that Scarlet (or any engineer) can do everything anyone else can do through engineering was one of the worst lore developments I had heard. If they want to add technology as another element to Tyria, that’s fine, but going so far as to say engineers can do everything anyone else can do with devices… that’s going too far. From steampunk pirates to watchwork knights to watchwork horrors to turning the only dungeon in the game that had absolutely no technology elements to it and turning into into an engineers creation… at some point I think they need to know that there is a difference between a giant machine that shoots fire and a person or creature that shoots fire. I don’t care that the technology in GW2 utilises magic to do what it does, the mystery and the fantasy is gone when I see robots and guns doing all the things that creatures and artifacts used to do. I’d rather a quest to acquire a magical Orrian artifact (like Magdaer) that can be used in a magical ritual to combat Zhatian as opposed to a quest to help build a giant laser on a flying air ship. I don’t care that gadgets and gizmoes are an extension of magical artifacts, there is a balance that is crossed there. They can both co-exist, but technology feels like it’s taking the magic out of the world.

It matters to me that there is a balance in Tyria and that while it can co-exist with magic, technology shouldn’t overshadow the traditional fantasy elements of the world.

Except for the people who dedicate resources to creating weapon skins. Suddenly they have to work on dye channels and all that stuff to make weapons dyeable. It’s more work to have weapons that can be dyed and that’s why they didn’t repeat that feature from GW1 (even in GW1 you couldn’t dye particle effects anyway).

Xae Isareth.1364:

There’s Dragon’s Deep and Corrupted weapons as well as Jormag’s Breath which are blue.

Both weapon sets are thematically different (even the particle effect) from the aetherised nightmare weapons. The colour might be the same but it’s not really fair to clump them all together as “the same thing” or even close to the same thing. Corrupted weapons have frost-like particles and the Deep ones are like an aqua variation of the AC glow.

If you’re counting Jormag’s Breath you have to count the Fiery Dragon sword.

I also left out:

• Mystic weapons (blue lightning)
• Inquest weapons (red lightning)
• Peacekeeper weapons (purple particle effects)
• Sclerite weapons (black sludge)

There is a great deal of variation on particle effects on the weapon sets in GW2. Yes there is an abundance of blue ones but that’s if you reduce the weapons to colour alone, contextually they are all quite different from each other. Thematically I think the aetherised nightmare weapons make sense given the context of their creation don’t they?

Ragnar.4257:

DevonCarver.5370:

Yaro.3251:

The idea of outmanned buff ikitteno give enough incentive for more people to join the war on the losing side. Not to make those who are already on the map kittenronger – that would be unfair.

Whether these incentives work as well akittenhey thought to be by developers – I don’t know. Only thing I know is buffing any side of the fence combat-wise, be it losing or winning one, is unfair. Orbs kinda blow in this regard.

Even more specifically, the original intent wakitteno make it so that players had some little bookitten to playing even though you might be getting beaten. The main reason to not make it overly beneficial ikittenhat it creates a disincentive to have a full map of players at that point, which is where the balance comes in.

Bloodlust creates a disincentive to play when you don’t have a full map of players. Trying to fight a losing battle against a full server who gets points-for-stomps is actually more harmful to your team than not playing at all.

It’s amazing that you can’t see how bloodlust is just a mirror-image of outmanned. How you can even talk about outmanned creating “balance issues” and “disincentives” after implementing bloodlust…. I just….. can’t even….

That’s a matter of perspective. Bloolust buffs everyone across all four maps. It gives you an incentive to play on an enemy borderlands (even if you are outmanned) and capture the buff. If you don’t play on an enemy borderland, you essentially forfeit the buff to any server that does.

The buff is an incentive to stop stacking on EB and home borderlands.

I agree that outmanned isn’t the greatest incentive to WvW and the things you can usually accomplish while outmanned (while slightly more rewarding as a result of the buff) tend to be less entertaining (I don’t care too much about gaining extra wxp or more exp or mf if all I’m doing is flipping supply camps, sentries and ninjaing towers). The removal of equipment damage is really good. Death doesn’t feel like a penalty so you have a bit more freedom do be aggressive (or at least not avoid every encounter you aren’t confident you will win) as a result of it. It may not be a lot of money, but it is a psychological difference at the very least. A lot of times I feel like equipment repairs how well I have been playing. Repairing all your armour (even if it’s not that expensive) feels bad.

I’ve also been in situations where I see large numbers of people at spawn just gathering and I know they were the reason I lost outmanned. I do wish they’d leave the map. I can understand the argument that making outmanned too good can cause resentment towards people who cause you to lose it. I think it’d have to be pretty good (or your allies would have to be pretty bad or simply not working with you) for you to want it over more numbers.

I do think more needs to be done to make the situation for outmanned players better.

Have you seend the warden weapons? The warden warhorn looks almost identical to some of those pictures. It’s true there is a blue crystal attached to a lot of them, but the general aesthetic is along the lines of those other plants. The original Nightmare Weapons are thorny and purple. The new weapons make sense as they are not Couriter weapons, they are Courtier weapons that have be imbued with aetherised energy (or something along those lines).

Edit: Did the filter go kitten crazy or something?

Tom Gore.4035:

ilr.9675:

Shiren.9532:

I really hope this doesn’t mean ranger pets will be insta downed by all the dodge or die mechanics that were in Aetherblade Retreat…

Yeah this is another big one they seem to keep ignoring.

Giving the pet more HP’s doesn’t change the fact that it’s still an unavoidable death inflicted on a poor A.I.

They should make the pet dodge roll with the owner. That should at least solve some of those deaths.

But it raises the skill cap for a single class to function at base level. It also doesn’t make sense to require the owner to dodge when the pet is the only one in danger (a ranged weapon user with a melee pet will have to dodge less than the pet, blowing a dodge for a pet would be a convoluted mechanic).

The pet is an AI companion. The player controls the ranger character, it shouldn’t have to control the pet. The game’s AI,pet and content design should take care of basic pet survivability functions. The ranger’s decisions shouldn’t be “how can I be a pseudo healer for my pet and micro it’s positioning at all times in addition to my own simply to keep my class mechanic functional” they should be “how can I best utilise my pet to aid my party and myself, to push my performance and contribution to the next level, to make my party glad to have me”. A ranger that is very good at using the pet and managing it through micro can keep it alive, a guardian or mesmer that is very good at using their reflections can keep the entire party alive by nullifying dangerous enemy attacks and doing OP damage (reflection against boss mobs) with a single well timed skill.

Yeah ArenaNet has a bad habbit of having something be canon but only from the perspective of the people saying it. If it suits their story telling goals a year down the track to say that the human gods giving the creatures of Tyria the gift of magic was simply what the humans believed and not objectively true then they will do so to “retcon” at their convenience.

Freeing someone from Nightmare is fair game according to the rules ArenaNet lore writers play by.

I assume you are talking about the Aetherised Nightmare weapons.

What would you prefer:

• A purple glow like the mesmer phantasm weapons?
• A black aura like the Tequatl weapons?
• A yellow glow like the Soveriegn and Zenith weapons?
• A fire particle effect like the fused weapons, the Flame Legion weapons, the CoF weapons, the CoF armour or the Hellfire skins?

The only other blue glow I can think of (and it appears to be dramatically different from the Aetherised Nightmare weapons) is the one on the AC weapons and Cobolt.