Guild Wars 2

Avatara.1042:

SpeedFiend.4521:

They’re removing magic find as a stat from gear. It didn’t add anything to your offensive capabilities in celestial gear, so there’s no reason to compensate you for it not being there anymore.

I guess they better remove all non-offensive stats then, and add nothing back…

Seriously, did you even read what you posted?

I did read what I posted. But apparently you did not. Magic find does not in any way, shape or form affect the combat performance of your character. Magic find gear sacrifices other attributes to give you magic find. Celestial doesn’t sacrifice squat. It’s balanced around the stats you see in it now. Magic find on celestial gear doesn’t “detract” from it like it does on Explorer gear. It’s just an amusing curiosity of celestial gear, put there so it’s got ALL stats. The total stat gain from celestial gear already surpasses that of any and all other armor sets, and does so at the cost of not being specialised in any particular thing. Whether it has or does not have magic find on it, these are the combat-affecting stats it has been intended to have from the get go, so no, they’re not going to rebalance it beyond removing the magic find from it altogether.

Or the Inquest – they sure don’t have any qualms about experimenting on live subjects. Though I find white mantle/rogue wizard a bit more plausible than another Inquest presence, the notion of subtlety is rather lost on them.

If I recall correctly there was some mention of an obscure maliciousness about the elementals. Sure, they serve the villagers, but somewhat begrudgingly it seems.

As others have pointed out villagers are sometimes invited into the tower, never to return. Elementals in general tend to be quite kitten ed off at everyone and everything, so it’s likely the key to what makes the Garrenhoff elementals so docile may be in the villagers that never return.

Spinning the speculation wheel a little further, it’s likely the elementals that protect and serve the people of Garrenhoff only do so because it’s a convenient “proving ground” for Isgarren’s creations, located right under his doorstep where he can observe his experiments’ behaviour.

This would also explain the Arcane Eye having a secret base in the village (though I’ve never seen it myself, will go take a look after this post) – binding elementals long-term and on a large scale (elementalists can summon elementals already, but those only last so long) seems to be some real cutting-edge stuff the Asura would be interested in. That and using villagers for these presumed experiments is a very white mantle-y thing to do.

They’re removing magic find as a stat from gear. It didn’t add anything to your offensive capabilities in celestial gear, so there’s no reason to compensate you for it not being there anymore.

Ayrilana.1396:

Anyone who buys/gets MF gear from their announcement and onwards does so at their own risk.

That’s all fine and dandy, but you’re missing the point. OP already has MF gear, and I’m sure he’s not the only person who had it long before they announced it’d be removed. The point of this thread is to find out exactly what will happen to existing MF gear. I have a full set (quiver too) and I’m going to be royally kitten ed off if I wake up on patch day with a bunch of “lol double click to apply this skin to another item” crap.

Nothing quite tops “boo-boo-matic wheeze calculator” though.

Failed invasions count of everything so far as I know, so yeah. The only thing you lose from failing is part of the map-wide reward at the end.

Tortonka.9105:

However, since I can only advance the Emissary Vorpp’s Field Assistant achievements if I complete invasions on new maps, I’ve been stuck at 4/5 for a couple days because I’ve seen the same maps when I was able to sign on.

Respond to five of Scarlet’s portal invasion and be there when each one ends.
I don’t know where you’re getting different. You don’t need the event to succeed. You don’t need it to be on a different map each time. You don’t need to even do squat, just tag one event (even this might be unnecessary) and go do something else for 45 minutes. Maybe come back in about 20 to move your toon 5 feet so you don’t get logged out. Simple as that.

Narcemus.1348:

Yeah, as a main character Sylvari I can tell you that she does not recognize the race. If you want I can post a screen shot next time I go inside.

That’d be nice, I’m not much for tree people and this dialogue doesn’t seem to be documented on the wiki (or even mentioned) so it’s rather shiny and new to me. In light of this, I’d assume Dessa entered the lab at most a couple of years before the Sylvari started falling off the tree. This explains how she could still know about the Consortium yet be completely ignorant of the Sylvari’s existence. For a time period like that it seems rather hard to discern if she’s just been in isolation that long, or if she’s actually “from” earlier.

As for her ‘tude towards LA – Dessa seems to be one of those kind of people like Lydia from that one show on TV. To her LA is just a bunch of uncouth savages/cutthtroat pirates and certainly not up to her sheltered/snobby/however you wanna word it personality’s “standards”.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Besides that, I’m pretty sure a race of scrientists would be up to date with scientific discoveries. Even if the Sylvari are not in Dessa’s field of research, I’m pretty sure she would have heard about them. It’s not like an everyday occurance that an entire race of sapient plant people appiers right in front of your home territory. I don’t think any asura could have ignored that.
And who knows how old the consortium is? As players we only came into contact with it recently, that does not mean it wasn’t around for far longer.

My point is, from the dialogue I’ve experienced as a not-sylvari-playing player, there’s absolutely zero indication to me that she’s from the past, let alone having it be heavily implied. She’s been locked in that lab since forever and doesn’t know the way into her lab is now in LA thanks to a malfunctioning gate and that seems to be all there is to it from my end.

I did the 3 minute rescue on my thief. Zerk armor+cavalier everything else. Key thing was to burst the adds down asap so I could have enough time to use the godawful fire extinguisher. I died at the last Scarlet encounter due to low hp/crappy condition removal. So I came back. With my full bunker guardian, and let me tell you, I couldn’t even kill the veteran @ Faren. So I just ignored it, killed off the marked stuff (took about forever, dat guardian dps) and facerolled the rest of it no problem. What advice I can offer:

• Bring damage out the woodwork for Faren
• Kill only the marked stuff, kite the rest
• For the second Scarlet encounter it helps if you can tank up a lil so you can just sit inside the cannonball aoe and facestomp her. Zerker gear works just as good, you’ll just need to actually stay on the move.
• 3rd encounter is laughable, don’t dodge, don’t do stupid stuff, calmly walk behind her when she’s winding up her club smash and beat her silly
• For the final fight stay as far away as possible, juke her slow-flying rockets. When he does her shadow shot rocket thing you can just drop aoe at the center of the circle right before she hits ensuring maximum facepunch
• Condition removal isn’t really required but makes the last fight easier.
• Don’t die.

Burnfall.9573:

As you alreayd know, Troll- (childish behaviors) only responds with 1 or 2 sentences..

Now do you see who is the Troll?

I can’t be the only one seeing the irony in this being a two sentence response. Seriously though, stealth stomping is completely fine. So is Elixir S(take) and stability and whatever. If you have such a problem with being stealth stomped, don’t get downed in the first place.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

2. Dessa is from the past, we know that. She never heard of Sylvari and Lion’s Arch wasn’t as respected back then (spoiler for SoS: probably because Marriner stole Rata Sum’s money).

Dessa is very much from the present. She knows about the consortium. She likely talks LA down because it is, in fact, full of pirates and Sylvari are fairly uninteresting to someone in her line of work. She’s been in that lab for god knows how long, with no intention of ever leaving, so the emergence of some tree-people passing her by is no biggie. Hell, I don’t even remember where she mentions not knowing about the Sylvari.

Scarlet had a real kitten for me in a Gendarran Fields invasion. After getting drive-by’d no less than 8 times, I was pretty sure she’d spawn on me for the last fight. And she did. Right into a pistol whip, which was promptly followed by me making my escape while directing two rather obscene hand gestures her way. Funny as hell when you’re ready for it.

You can buy rare (and probably exotic) backpieces on the TP as well. Thye can’t be salvaged for ecto or used in the forge so there’s really no other use for them besides TP/vendoring, hence there’s a lot for sale and they’re cheap.

There’s no reason not to have that stat set available. It’s existed on ascended equipment long before exotic armor with the same stats was offered.

Celestial gear IS obsolete. Magic find isn’t the reason why. Why bother crafting exotic celestial armor now when the ascended equivalent is going to roll out in a couple of months?

Dessa: ‘The…fractals. I can’t believe I made explorable chunks of reality from the Mists. I’ve dreamed of doing it for so long. Now, it’s real.’
‘Is that important?’
Dessa: ‘Obviously! We can now lock down and enter any point in the Mists. The legacy code of Tyria is ours to explore, assuming it doesn’t collapse.’

While the wording doesn’t seem to indicate exactly how much control Dessa and her team have over what point in the Mists exactly gets chosen to be a fractal, it’s certainly not completely random. That, coupled with the fact that Kiel Creditstealingpants is going to finance locking on to a specific point in history (Thaumanova explosion) suggests she can lock onto specific events accurately.

There must be some reason as to why the fractals we have available were chosen.

• Aquatic Ruins – we see the Krait keeping a rather large Jellyfish pet imprisoned, dolphin path had some dialogue concerning Krait technology (or some Krait tidbit or other, I forget). That and we’ve seen a jellyfish about that huge in a chunk of jade in Cantha, possibly the ruins fractal takes place in the Jade Sea pre-Shiro death wail.
• Cliffside – this one is easy, some dark part of human prehistory when the Collosus and his kind still existed.
• Snowblind – some extra icy part of the Shiverpeaks, perhaps close to Jormag’s lair. Intended to observe the SoS activity where we couldn’t otherwise see it (why fight your way to some god-forsaken frozen hellhole when you can just recreate the good bits in the Mists without trudging through a sea of icebrood?)
• Solid ocean – it’s part of the Jade Sea, which is otherwise inaccessible, but ever so interesting to explore. Naturally we’re lucky (the fractal seems fairly stable at first, but then suddenly it isn’t) and picked the time/place where the Jade Maw also happened to be.
• Swampland – crazy Norn hermit binds nature to his will. Might be worth looking into. Oakhearts/<tree>hearts in general are peaceful, except for the corrupted ones and the ones we deliberately kitten off. Bloomhunger seems pretty intent on killing us dead on sight, odds are Moss Man had something to do with that.
• Underground facility – a dredge facility, one of any number of facilities that would arguably be easier to recreate in the mists for study than actually breach, secure and hold in real-world Tyria.
• Urban Battleground – intended to find out what happened to the Khan-Ur most likely. We just never get to that part because some unstable event or other asura technobabble indicates we’re about to get vapourized if we don’t move on quickly.
• Volcanic – Grawl worshipping Primordus? Groovy. That and the one and only single time we’ve seen Primordus corrupt/destroyerify something that wasn’t a chunk of rock to begin with.

Which brings us to the topic of this thread. The uncategorized fractal’s name stands out. That is exactly what it is – uncategorized. If my whacko theory proves correct, than this particular moment in time was likely intended to stay off the books. A (perhaps morbidly curious) glimpse into the fate of Dessa’s former colleagues at the Proxemics lab. Locking onto the lower levels of the lab would be pointless- Dessa already knows the Skritt would have spared no one. The only potential survivors would be at the control room portion of the facility (the part we see in the actual fractal).

Essentially, Dessa is using the fractals to observe/study not just curious tidbits of the past, but also moments of Tyria’s more recent history. Moments (or should I say places?) that are otherwise simply not feasible to research in Tyria proper. Highly fortified Dredge facility? Just teleport right inside, kill off the (ultimately finite) amount of Dredge personnel, grab/study whatever you can before new ones appear. No threat of retaliation (you can just go back to mistlock if things get too hairy), no need to expend manpower/resources to secure and hold the facility, nowhere for enemy reinforcements to come from. You want to see what Jormag’s head mortal honchos are doing? Go right ahead. No need to do all the messy invasion of Orr stuff the Pact deals in. Just pick a time and place. No need for an army, supplies, logistics – just a small strike team that basically gets to cheat. Didn’t manage to clear out the enemy the first time? You can try again. And again. At (basically) no risk or cost. It’s not like they’re going to be doing something else the next time you hit them at the exact same time and place in freakin history.

Nike.2631:

I’m just suggesting she can’t leave because she is herself a product of the fractals.

When you postulate infinity, there HAS TO BE someone trying to get out .

Never thought of it that way. That wouldn’t stop her from leaving though. The mists spat our Razah (and he had nothing to be copied out of, he just came to be out of thin nothing) and he went on to have many jolly adventures with the PC in gw1 all across Tyria.

Things actually escape from the mists all the time. Just take a stroll through Godslost swamp, where the barrier between the Underworld (part of the mists) and Tyria is wearing pretty thin, you have all sorts of stuff that’s not from these parts roaming around. Mad King Thorn recently almost broke out from the Mad Realm (itself a part of the Underworld). Varesh attempted to free Abaddon from the Realm of Torment (also part of the Underworld, there’s quite a few parts it seems) and out from the Vortex came his sword and gauntlet.

The Human storyline is forced? I guess wintersday was a forced asuran storyline, SAB too. F&F was a forced norn/charr storyline that went on for 4 months and then another month dealing with the aftermath. I suppose Sky pirates/dragon bash was a forced pirate storyline? I hope you now see how one (or more) races being more prominent in a storyline doesn’t make it forced.

Hope dies last. Right after killing its host.

People listing out RNG chest pistol skins here need to notice that I’m complaining about the complete and utter lack of new pistol skins in the patch where everything else got at least one new skin.

Rammie.2843:

use your time farming tokens rather than bashing the opposition and being a little brat.

You mean like you’re doing now?

If he was bleeding on his way down south then that implies he had a wound before hibernating that didn’t heal for 11 thousand years. We know for sure he was wounded after facing Destiny’s Edge (bajillion exploding arrows to the face). As for the Branded moving south, they’re doing so at the Steeleye Span, which is still north of Ebonhawke. What I’m suggesting is that Kralkatorrik flew north away from Glint’s lair after killing her before taking a detour in some unknown direction (most likely east) to recuperate from his wounds and get some dragon takeout or something. After all, revenge was the only reason he flew south in the first place, it’s possible if Glint wasn’t there at the time he would have gone in a completely different direction without that bit of business to take care of.

iirc Caithe was wandering the Dragonbrand post-battle, collecting the crystalline drops of green blood left by a wounded Kralkatorrik. This seems to suggest he flew back north, most likely making a detour somewhere before Ebonhawke or he would have been spotted.

No, and it’s likely we never will unless something very major happens. Perhaps that interaction of chaos magic/the mists that has been all but promised for the Thaumanova fractal.

Lisa.6102:

oh good grief you can’t even post staff with an s at the end

Because the plural of staff is staves. That aside, every weapon should get a new legendary. Except greatswords which will have 5 new ones, if we’re gonna stick to the pattern.

Sign me up. I’ll bring friends.

Staves? Daggers? I wish you had to walk a mile in… shoes made entirely of pistols. Have you seen all the cool new pistol skins? Yeah, neither has anyobody else for some reason.

Dessa isn’t even aware that the portal to her lab leads to Lion’s Arch.

‘How did you get connected to that gate in Lion’s Arch?’
Dessa: ’Lion’s Arch? No, there must be a misunderstanding. We’d never launch this lab from that pirate haven.’

She also mentions losing her boyfriend to the Consortium and that they should not be trusted. He could be one of the asura we see working for the consortium. I also don’t put it beyond them to be behind the Proxemics lab project: The asura have an interest in knowing their enemy, the consortium may see the Skritt as potential abundant cheap labor that can be kept exactly smart enough to get the job done but stupid enough to now know they’re getting the short end of the stick. When the incident happened the Consortium could easily have easily refused to attempt a rescue based on the cost of doing so.

‘Why don’t you get some Consortium help? Aren’t you with them?’
Dessa: ‘Those money-grubbing connivers? It’s bad enough I lost my boyfriend to those shady “businessmen.” Take my advice: reject their advances. Nothing good will come of their machinations.’

That or her boyfriend is one of the asura we see working with the Consortium.

I’d chalk that up to programming inconsistency. Dessa won’t leave Mistlock Observatory for fear of never being able to return, it’s extremely unlikely she’d do so to enter a dangerous fractal that hasn’t been stabilized yet.

I have some vague recollection that Dessa won’t leave the observatory for fear that she may never be able to go back. That and her reaction to the fractal may be linked. Perhaps she was part of the research crew at the proxemics lab and managed to escape when the Skritt broke loose. If this is the case, it’s possible that her method of escape condemned the remaining staff at the facility to death. The facility seems to be dangerously low on power, perhaps this is a result of Dessa’s escape. At that point the raving asura knew that containing the skritt wasn’t an option so he opted to sever the link with the rest of the lab and live out the remainder of his days trapped there rather than be torn apart by the skritt.

Another possible reason why Dessa fears that leaving her experiment even for a moment may lead to her not being able to return: It is also possible that, rather than escaping and dooming everyone else, she simply wasn’t there on the day of the breakout. Her reaction may be survivor’s guilt if she was part of the researchers at the lab and just happened to not be there that day. She left, the skritt overran the facility and killed everyone but the raving asura. Rescue/reclaiming the facility has clearly been deemed not feasible (it would have happened by now if it was), hence she left (just for a little bit) and was never able to return.

TehPwnerer.7215:

SpeedFiend.4521:

There’s four 1-15 zones to choose from, if you don’t like the champion circruit farmers go to Wayfarer or Metrica Province. Why does a (completely intended) part of the game need to be nerfed just because of what you want?

Ok once again it’s more of a problem than that. Do you not feel that it’s a problem that every player flocks to ONE zone and the other maps in the game are just barren? Not only that, I want to play through the human zones… being a human and all. I shouldn’t have to make way for level 80s to get their farming in the starter zones.

What other zone, at ANY level, has this amount of champions that spawn this quickly and do even faster? This is a problem.

There’s several zones that offer a bunch of champions, if people haven’t caught on yet and like getting t1 mats from half their champion bags then they are free to be as inefficient as they want. This whole thing will blow over as people wise up, right up until the next set of nerfs roll around

There’s four 1-15 zones to choose from, if you don’t like the champion circruit farmers go to Wayfarer or Metrica Province. Why does a (completely intended) part of the game need to be nerfed just because of what you want?

I thought I was in trouble when I did this fight and he wasn’t budging, but then I started hitting 11k autoattacks and that was the end of it.

May I point out that one of the “new” daggers is a reskin, so that boot blade thing doesn’t even count. More importantly, the grand total of new pistols is a whopping fat zero.

I guess it’s just that iterative process you keep hearin bout. Dungeons are now a complete waste of time when you could get comparable rewards(jk, they’re actually better) doing the champion circuit in QD. I guess dungeons have something in common with Claw of Jormag now – they’re not really worth doing.

After some additional research and re-reading this thread I’ve got some more things to add.

As to the notion that the Raving Asura was some sort of teacher and that the golems guarding him are designed for progeny – this is false. There are plenty of progeny in Metrica province, yet they all interact with normal golems/golemites.

The cat golem is only seen in the Proxemics lab, and the situation we see it in speaks a lot as to its purpose. The Golem is the “predator” for the Skritt inside the labyrinth portion of the laboratory. The intent being to test if the Skritt subjects can successfully complete the task at hand (bringing the batteries to the door leading to freedom) while avoiding traps and under pressure from a (fairly natural) predator lurking throughout the maze.

It is therefore possible that the cat golems we see in the fractal were used for the exact same purpose, either in conjunction with Tom-9 or separately. The Proxemics lab is, after all, intended to test intelligence, and, given that each golem has a unique skillset, it makes sense that the test subjects were pitted against them to measure their capacity to deal with a variety of situations. Also, keeping in mind that the Asura have an interest in exterminating the Skritt, it’s possible that each of these golems was also a weapons test intended to find the most efficient way to combat Skritt.

I’ve yet to see a single pistol (sovereign “pistol” aside), so don’t you complain about getting too few skins.

I have the exact same issue, took approximately 15 attempts at the sniper fight because kill shot wouldn’t even get animated until after he’d already fired it and killed me. Next time something like this is release, please put it in a separate instance and save everyone the trouble of having to go through this incredibly frustrating crap.

If anything deserves to stay after all the fanfare and minstrels have gone, it’s this little guy. Whoever came up with this owes me a new pair of sides.

As you vote (supposedly) against RNG (which won’t go anywhere, so good job), you’re voting for more recycled content that’s already in the game. You had the chance to point the game in a new, more Crystal Desert-y direction, but I’m sure the 5 silver you’ll save on waypoints this month was worth it. I’m done.

Navzar.2938:

SpeedFiend.4521:

Evon is going to turn out to be Flame legion. They’ve been trying to make a new god, and when that didn’t work they’re left high and dry. It’s not like there’s some deposed god of secrets who everyone thinks for dead that they could attempt to free by using knowledge gleamed from observing his imprisonment.

Someone already tried to release him 250 years ago, that’s when he was killed, not during the fall. So that method wouldn’t work.

You should pay more attention to the dialogue.

<player name>: “Kormir?”
Kormir: “No. Yes. Kormir. And much more.”
<player name>: “Abaddon?”
Kormir: “No. His power. His knowledge. But not him. His will is broken. There is a new god of secrets. There is a new day.”
Kormir: “Nightfall has come and gone. I have much to do…Much must be repaired.”
Kormir: “This will take you home, or to wherever you desire.”

Usually, if something is dead, I don’t go talking about how broken its will is, because that would be kind of redundant.

Sinbold.8723:

The screenie shows a toon dual weilding the new Fellblade skins. Getefix.9150, the HoM Fellblade is a two-habded weapon whereas the new Fellblade is a one-handed skin. BIG difference.

Fellblades were a 1h sword in Guild Wars, yet they got implemented as a greatsword in gw2. Not that big a difference, it seems.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Lucky.9421:

This is not an event that happened in GW1…

You will only learn SMALL details that lead up to the GW dungeon. Nothing will be relevant to the current lore.

Excuse me but what? Have you looked at a map recently? Seen anyone or anything in Tyria that uses magic? Your definition of not relevant seems to be very exact, but only on opposite day.

What happened to Fellblades being a unique reward?

Voting for Kiel is both shortsighted and foolish, but do go ahead.

Evon is going to turn out to be Flame legion. They’ve been trying to make a new god, and when that didn’t work they’re left high and dry. It’s not like there’s some deposed god of secrets who everyone thinks for dead that they could attempt to free by using knowledge gleamed from observing his imprisonment.

MauricioCezar.2673:

@SpeedFiend : Sorry, but you know how to read and interpret? Because I really hate to explain a couple of times with shiny stars what I mean to say, when its too obivous.

Abaddon = Precursor of Gw1 Lore = Gods lore.

I’m quite proficient at reading comprehension, thank you. What I don’t understand is how you think that he has no place in the lore of gw2, or how the (very little and now retconned/shown to be unreliable lore we have in gw1 is in any way a complete account of what happened. This is the single most lynchpin-ish event in the lore of Tyria. Perhaps Abaddon will just shout an offhanded insult at one of the gods parents in the fractal. Perhaps he’ll elaborate on his motives. I’m not taking the chance to miss out on that for some asura slip-up.

And even if the fractal gives us absolutely NOTHING lore-wise, it’ll show us what the gods looked like (not a mural, not a statue, nor what my grandma thinks they should look like), so far as their gw2 engine rendition is concerned. This would make the developers go and make models for all these things, as opposed to using generic inquest operative #91203 in the Thaumanova fractal. I’ve seen what inquest look like, I’ve seen what the reactor looks like, I’ve seen things blow up. I haven’t seen the gods in gw2, and dammit, that’s what I want, and I know I’m far from alone in this.

I was also puzzled as why this isn’t the meta achievement for finishing the category. This needs to be a thing.