Scarlet’s diary from season 1 talks about whispers from the forest. The entity most associated with forest is going to be the jungle dragon, of course. She then went to extreme lengths to wake up a dragon who is sleeping in Maguuma.
You’ve also got to consider that the elder dragons corrupt everything, whether it is minions, the land, or magic. It’s hard to see who or what else would want to see a dragon wake apart from the dragon’s servants. There is vaguely plausible argument that Scarlet could want the dragon woken so that it could be killed but that’s firstly optimistic and secondly rather rash, given that the dragon could have remained asleep for many more mortal lifetimes.
Ogden will probably have a bigger role if the story ever gets round to Primordius. You’d expect the Priory to have asked him all about dragons and their minions already, to be honest.
A feature of random sequences are streaks, droughts, long leads, etc. A sequence that had similar results every group sampled would probably not be random!
Rangers don’t just have boons as distance problems :
- Utilities like traps and spirits are too defensive and static. Most dungeon runs, for example, are based on forward progress through enemies. Traits partially solve a problem that should be there in the first place.
- The pet and the ranger can be in different places and this leads to difficulty in maintaining boons or spirit buffs. If the ranger has to fight beside the pet then this negates many of the advantages a mobile pet should bring.
- In my opinion the main/off hand weapon pairings are badly designed and have little synergy.
- The ranger has poor gap closing and mobility skills. This exposes the limitations of the poor weapon options.
If all those other problems were tackled then maybe rangers wouldn’t see boon sharing as an issue.
The classes need to do different things and have a different feel. Even if they use the same weapons they need different skills. Rifles are quite dull weapons and it’s hard to see what a ranger rifle would do that wouldn’t copy the warrior or engi skills. The thief dual pistol is the dullest of the thief weapon sets and it’s still hard to see what else it could do for a ranger.
There are a series of ledges to the north of the Prosperity waypoint. Today, from the middle ledge, I was able to see the ‘mysterious figure’ centaur on the top ledge.
Going back to the story .. we didn’t find any trace of Aerin in Prosperity so did he perhaps meet the centaurs instead? Could Aerin’s notes have been talking about killing the centaur chief bringing the rest under control?
The vines may be following Marjory’s sister, for whatever reason. If not then the most likely destination is along the ley line back to the pool of energy under the breachmaker in Lion’s Arch. The tower of nightmares is also in the path.
It’s also possible that the Inquest have noticed this and were wanting to track back to the source of the disturbance through Tangle Root. Kill first, do research later.
We haven’t seen any minions of the Deep Sea Dragon in game yet. However, there are clues in game at places like the Crucible of Eternity, where the Inquest experiment with draconic energy. The Inquest seem to assume there are 6 dragons, one of which is water based, which players have cheekily called Bubbles. There is a indeed conversation between Inquest workers who talk about getting a massive sea creature as a specimen, so big it might not fit into their tank.
Actually PUG groups tend to think they’re elite zerker superstars but they can’t defend themselves without a guardian. If you keep blind faith in dps regardless and eat the dirt with them then you’re just as bad as those PUGsters. There’s nothing wrong with a hammer at the right times.
People seem to be inventing lots of reasons now why Mai Trin is a bad boss. You have to stack. You can’t dodge. No trinity. No aggro control. Blah, blah, blah. Forget all that. Mai Trin has been a well designed boss ever since she first appeared in the aetherblade hideout. What seems to be wrong is straightforward -
1) The latest tweak have made the red circles misleading. That should never be the case. Even if they do not tell you everything they should never be misleading. Lupi should have been tidied up as well, long ago, as his circles are also misleading. Missile trajectory is all well and fine but most players cannot dodge based on the visuals of the missile trajectory, and if they could there would be no need for red circles at all.
2) The damage scaling was broken in the last patch, not fixed. I can’t see that anyone had any problems with the previous damage and Mai did kill people who used the wrong tactics.
So there are no problems with Mai that cannot be fixed by reverting the last patch on her. I don’t see why everyone needs to be bring their own personal causes, like trinity in GW2, into this thread whatsoever.
For those people who don’t understand, this isn’t about any bit of lore, it is about time. People don’t like investing time in something and then not getting personal fulfillment from that time investment. People invest time into MMOs in a lot of different ways and can often be disappointed. Some people have invested time into this MMO’s lore.
I think the OP has a valid point but could have given a better example. Let’s suppose I run to the Grenth event with two minutes left on the final stage event. I could revive people, I could put water field around Jonez for heals, I could manage some interrupts on the summoning acolytes, but in fact what I need to do for the event reward is kill stuff as quickly as I can. Nothing else matters for rewards except damage+kills.
With fortifying bond a ranger is having to use a trait to get boons applied to the pet. Perhaps it isn’t coincidental that the heavy armor classes, the favored dungeon classes, get the full benefit of all boons without using a trait to do so.
I’m of the opinion that waypoints are a mechanic more than part of the lore, or else the Zephyrites having a waypoint at their crashed ship makes no sense, and neither does the Zephyrites being stuck in a desert when they could just waypoint away, and so on. Then again, if the designers want new maps without traditional waypoints they could give the players a mobile waypoint that they could put down for their own use in safe spots. It would effectively be like saving/binding to home location, as seen in other games.
“Its just a game and if you think one ranger is going to pull your group down, maybe you should look at the rest of the group.”
Actually if you go into somewhere like fractals with two rangers you can be throwing hours of your life away. Rangers just do not have an appropriate set of skills for challenging PvE content. For example, the offhand axe is absolutely not fit for purpose when it comes to missile defense. I’m someone who does go into dungeons with rangers anyway and to be honest I frequently regret it.
One of the problems is probably the PUGs who melee Lupicus and kick others who don’t. Anyone wanting to learn on the spot is going to find melee really hard, with 3 stages, unless they watch a video first. Arah shouldn’t just be for those who learn from videos.
(I’ve not got a solution, but this could be a problem)
“Right now, I do not know the name of a single NPC at Dry Top, do you? "
I can’t name any NPCs in Brisban Wildlands either, can you? The NPCs are still all there doing the right sort of events though; the guy lost in the sandstorm, the Hylek on his hill, the Zephyrites in the wreckage. Events are important, not hearts.
Let’s change this topic around. If Kasmeer has some empathy or other supernatural skills, how could this happen? Could she have gained some connection to the dream or nightmare whilst she was in the Tower of Nightmares? Is it possible that Scarlet had similar abilities, given that she could forge strange alliances despite apparently being a recluse?
Mai Trin was already a well designed boss. Players already needed to use special tactics and skills or else they would die. This update has not improved her design. It has only made her more punishing. That isn’t necessarily a good thing. Making mobs hit harder isn’t better design.
On these forums a lot of posters seem to appreciate dungeons that they can complete at their own skill level, but players of lower skill cannot. The same is true for cosmetics that a poster can collect but players with lower time/money investment cannot. A wider perspective would help here.
Having looked at this again, Mai’s shot+shadowstep seems to be a mix of two thief skills: shadowshot from dagger/pistol and ink shot from the harpoon. The animation is shadowshot but the shadowstep component works more like ink shot. If ink shot misses (or has no target) the thief still shadowsteps to the target location (or max distance) and presumably deals aoe damage. I’m guessing that evading the projectile does not change the target location and so Mai will still shadowstep, but a block prevents the shadowstep by preventing the projectile reaching the target location.
Like most thieves, I’ve hardly ever used ink shot. If someone is an expert on its use they can probably correct me.
Hearts are there for the totally casual players. The hearts tell people what to do if they can’t find out for themselves. You can do a lot of little things, of your choice, at any time, with any number of players, to fill a heart and open up rewards. Hearts are only done once and offer no repeated content or extended interest in the area. Repeatable content comes from events that can be done with or without hearts.
The Zephyrite favor is a more complex heart system. You get favor by completing events and it gets wiped after an hour. This makes the game play more intensive and keeps repeatable interest in the events. Casuals can still get the zephyrite favor but they just have to put in a bit more effort. Nothing could ever be less challenging than the old heart system.
Her attack looks like the thief dagger/pistol dual skill shadowshot, however it might be more like the thief harpoon skill #5 ink shot. If an ink shot doesn’t hit a target the thief still shadowsteps to where the shot finished.
There will probably never be another universally appreciated MMO as the market has split too much. There’s a place for final fantasy, a place for Wildstar, and so on. Any new breakthrough could be quite unexpected, perhaps as much like facebook as like an MMO, or perhaps as much like a movie as like a game.
Season 2 might involve tracking Scarlet back through the Maguuma zones and filling in the gaps in her story. If we’d been told everything in season 1 there might be nothing to do. Even so, season 1 shouldn’t have left all the characters looking so stupid for not even seeing the plot holes.
Ok, I know traps are so bad that nobody cares about them. How about this idea though.
What if a trap automatically reset itself at the same location a while after it was triggered, without the player having to lay it again? Would this be a first step towards making traps useful or would it just be prone to exploits?
Warriors and Guardians are too strong in PvE. There are too many situations where you have to think through an encounter on a class like a thief and then use skills and dodges at the right time. With a heavy class the solutions are really simple and you can blithely play through most problems without doing much more than swap a utility. When the going gets tough there is plenty of extra oomph still there in the traits as well. A while back I think the designers said that warriors were in a good place and other classes need to be brought up to that level. We’re still waiting.
Yeah ditch pistol/pistol. You just run around using unload and you never learn to play a thief. Pistol/dagger is fine for kiting but you can generally stick to a shortbow as that has more mobility and is useful in big events. For open world you should generally get into melee and all the melee sets work so you might as well find the set that you personally like. If you’re using an offhand dagger you might want to try some points in shadow arts for blind on stealth and/or condition cures.
The timeline doesn’t look like a reliable deduction tool to me. If Scarlet was occupying the Priory lair after the Prosperity lair, why does her Priory diary predate her Prosperity diary?
Whilst I’m thinking about it, we still don’t know why Scarlet had a lair under the Priory. Is Ogden’s book a clue? Did she pick the Priory as another place where she could study ley lines?
It isn’t just bearbows. If a ranger tries to go into a bunch of trash with a sword and spotter in a bad group there will be no defense, not enough dps, and the ranger goes down. A thief can put out blinds, a warrior can swap to hammer, guardians have plenty of options, but a ranger has to take it all on evades. Compared to a warrior, a ranger has to give up far more to get any sort of resilience in a bad situation.
There are two books next to other suggesting that (1) by connecting magic (ley lines) to thought you can tap into the eternal alchemy and (2) Scarlet set the controls of Omadd’s machine and came out seeing the eternal alchemy. My guess would be that she somehow opened her mind up to the flow of magic through the ley lines using Omadd’s machine. We know an elder dragon lives at the end of the ley lines, so perhaps the line connected the dragon to Scarlet as well.
Underwater combat has a lot of problems and is only suited for skirmishes with a small number of enemies. I don’t expect there will be any new major content (underwater bosses or underwater capture points in PvP) until these problems are fixed with a radical overhaul of skills, traits, weapons, utilities, surface state, and camera. There’s no point adding extra skills/traits until the overhaul takes places.
Dancing Dagger is there for the multi-target cripple and the damage is small. You can kite a small group of mobs in PVE with pistol/dagger but a ranger can’t kite anything with axe/dagger.
Both Crippling Talon and Dancing help to control melee engagement/disengagement and CT is better for that. You don’t mind the 15s cooldown, the damage is better, and you’re usually interested in one target (esp PvP).
It’s actually the Player Character who presumes Aerin is a Soundless, this being due to the note left about him leaving the Pale Tree and his voice becoming sole in the cacophony.
Actually, the diary segment talks about him listening to one voice rather than the cacophony. You can interpret that one voice as either his own voice or the same voice he’s hearing when we finally meet him. Maybe someone can post up the exact text.
For all those who are saying L2P just remember that the original Mai Trin already required a higher skill level than other bosses. She was better designed than most. Players needed to understand the fight or they would die. The mechanics were not easy to learn from just playing, particularly the shadowstep. There was no need to force a higher skill threshhold on anyone below fractal level 40.
The solution for rebreathers is always the same. Make the rebreather a cosmetic and take all the stats from the helmet. It’s much better than asking every player to grinding out more ascended components and more runes. That’s just get to the same capability underwater as they have on land, which is all players actually want.
Mai Train already was a boss that needed a step up in tactics to survive. She killed the people who wanted to stand at range, couldn’t spot animations, didn’t work as a group, etc. You needed to have some understanding of the fight. You needed to use the right defenses and skills. In this situation stacking is a perfectly valid tactic and nobody should find any complaint with it (Mai starts immune to cripple etc so you have to use your positioning rather than activated skills to get her into the fields).
I haven’t seen the new fight but just putting extra damage onto the attacks is not making it more skilful. It is making it more punitive. Level 50 it can should be about both perfect tactics and perfect execution, perhaps, but at level 20-30 the players should still have leeway to louse it up and learn as they play.
Also the red circles are there as an indication to players. If they are misleading and showing the wrong target area then that is a bug. Circles that give information to players should not, by design, give the wrong information. There is no excuse for that.
you meen this painting? It looks more like the Realm of Torment
It really does, but I see no way they could connect the two.
I think there’s been a general assumption that the Jungle Dragon is somehow responsible for nightmare, but maybe it isn’t. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between Torment and Nightmare but perhaps this is the first clue to suggest there is.
It could be possible that the Zephyrites persuaded Aerin to drop the teachings of the ventari tablet and adopt their beliefs instead. As part of this, he became soundless.
As for leaving his personal belongings behind, that seems strange a thing for a merchant to do. What is he going to trade if he leaves his merchandize behind? That suggests to me that the Zephyrites have communal property, and even if they don’t then traveling on their ships is about joining their lifestyle and philosophy rather than traveling in the air.
Summoned creatures do not count as regular creatures for death effects. This starts with not getting loot bags, since you could let more and more creatures get summoned for more and more loot bags. You may have come across a number of summoned enemies in the new instances.
You’re missing one important fact. The player character is not voiced. This means you are always listening to the other adventurers even though it is your character that does the actions. Other MMOs do this too I think.
I’ll raise this again as I’m certain of this now. I was in the dredge fractal recently, last boss, running along the platforms tipping the molten buckets. Twice I had agony, saw my health falling, used a heal, and the skill went on cool down without healing. Once I could mistake this once but not twice. Nothing else attacking me. No interrupts. No poison. Agony damage was minimal. Heal goes on full cooldown with no effect.
This is a high priority bug for me. Failed heals = death. I am not imagining this. I am 100% certain now. Fix please.
I’d agree that the timeline makes very little sense. Otherwise the room was much more coherent than any other story telling we’ve seen in the LS so far. It explained a lot going backwards and gave a lot of clues for going forwards. Perhaps the video diary was an afterthought added to explain stuff and less care was given to the detail.
