Guild Wars 2

Don’t know about WvW, but in the PvE build I’d take a point from Domination in favour of Dueling for vigor (personal preference).
Maybe also Domination III over VI?

I really like this theory of the Gods being the “Elder Dragons” of their world.
If we can define how they are related we could better understand magic itself.

Disclaimer: what follows it’s 100% speculation. I took ideas read all over.

Dominions of Magic:

The first similarity I can think of it’s their number (for now at least): six.
We now know that Gods and Elder Dragons both have two “dominions” (I’ll use this word from now on in absence of a better one) each.
So we should have a total of 12 dominions for the Gods and 12 for the Elder Dragons.

Ideally they would be the same 12 or else this theory loses its meaning, so I’m going ahead and taking that for granted.

Gods’ History:

Kormir ascension to godhood leaves us with the knowledge that the other 5 gods couldn’t absorb Abaddon power, they needed a new person to take his place.

We also know that Abaddon water dominion shifted to Lyssa after his defeat.

What I get from this is that dominions control can be “given” to other Gods or even to humans.
We can also speculate that no one can control more than two dominions at the same time, that’s why Kormir was needed.

Finally, we know (I don’t remember if this is confirmed or not) that Grenth had control over Ice before taking Dhuum’s place.
Dhuum and Grenth both had a singol element, respectively Death and Ice.

So, to recap:
- A God can “only” have power on one or two elements
- The control over these elements can be given to others
- All of these dominion has to be under control
- This dominions don’t have to be in specific pairs
- Then we must have between 6 and 12 Gods every time.

Elder Dragons:

If what we know about the Gods it’s also valid for the Elder Dragons we can now understand why the Elder Dragons don’t fight each other.
They can’t absorb more than two elements (the problem doesn’t lie in the quantity of power but in it’s “quality”) and they already have two each.
I’d go as far as saying that there could have been more than six dragons before, they clashed and the six remaning are the winners.

But we know that while the Gods mantain a total control over their dominions, the Elder Dragons go in a absorb-release cycle.
In an environment with a low or medium level of magic, the world can be left without anyone to control these elements.
It’s when the magic level get too high that these dominions get crazy and magic become dangerous for the world itself.
In that instant the Elder Dragons begin to awake and they start putting things under control once again.
Gods let magic run wild and then they bear with its full potential taking it inside theirselves.

So that means that if we’ll kill a fully charged Elder Dragon we’ll end up with the same situation that made Kormir become a God.
And this could also lead us to think that right now the control over the Death and Shadow dominion it’s actually vacant.
I think that Tequatl absorbed some of the magic Zhaitan released on its death and not the control over Death and Shadow.
So if we don’t find the right method to transfer their powers we could even end up needing 12 dragons…

Other marginal things:
If we could identify the 12 elements and how they relate to the bloodstones it would be ideal.
We could even get some new professions ideas from that actually.

The ones I can guess right now:
ED:
- Death
- Shadow
- Mind
- Plant

Gods:
– Life
- Wind
- Ice
- Death
- Fire
- Strenght
- Chaos
- Water
- Earth
- Secrets/Knowledge/Truth
- Spirit ?

I went mainly with sword AA and I was builded for shatter.
I also noticed that I could do a sword #3 + mirror images + IP fast shatter before clones died. They had a little delay before taking damage if spawned inside the AoE.
It still took a bit of time but it was pretty straightforward once I got the mechanics.

Kalavier.1097:

Also, about this “Dark Knight Pact”

Where would it get funding? Supplies? recruits?

If it basically marches wherever the kitten it wants and targets whoever it wants, I don’t see the orders, much less any governments or villages, willingly giving resources to it. Hell, recruits may shy away for the most part because instead of joining an order/army dedicated to saving the world from the dragons and DOING GOOD, it’s this murky realm of picking and choosing whether we go after a dragon today, or some backwater terrorist.

The difference between a garrison and an occupation is one is wanted. Marching into a city whether they want it or not will cause MAJOR political feedback.

I said in my post that the Pact won’t turn evil now.
People in it share way too many bonds with their own home for that.
And we also know as players that Trahearne is a good guy and all.
But no leader would be dumb enough to think that something similar won’t ever happen.
It could happen. They could even be decieved to think that someone is allied with a dragon or something.
A good leader won’t even trust 100% his own men, leave alone a stranger’s army.
And don’t forget that the Pact has the more advanced army of all the good guys.
You say that no one would give them supply and that’s true. But would they still need it if they conquer a land?
Would you as an hypotetical leader take a risk that big without thinking about it?
For example charrs don’t even trust asura gates, I don’t think they would be ok with the Pact marching on Ascalon.

But you found the major problem yourself.

Marching into a city whether they want it or not will cause MAJOR political feedback.

Who asked them to march on Lion’s Arch? No one.
Lion’s Arch itself didn’t even thought of Scarlet as a danger.
If the Pact showed up it wuold have caused some serious issues.

That’s because I said that I would have found waaaaay more strange the Pact showing up during the attack.
It would have been a very bad thought story if no one would had problems with that.

Am I the only one who thinks that it would have been stranger if the Pact actually showed up?

I don’t think that the Pact it’s so good for everyone.

Sure, they defeat dragons, so they can exist. But that’s it.
I, if I was a nation leader, wouldn’t take so well an entire army marching on my city, even if it’s for helping me.
They are a real political risk for every single nation.
They could even declare Orr their new empire and wage war to everyone (ok, that’s not going to happen because no one in the Pact would fight his on country but I wouldn’t take that as granted forever).

The point I’m trying to make it’s that the Pact it’s a big and indipendent army, they can do what they like and they won’t take orders from anyone.
An army like that it’s a political spark in a gas station.

No leader in their right mind would give them the permission to move that army freely out of Orr and within their own country.
If they just marched on Lion’s Arch to defend it I could even suspect them to be the ones who used Scarlet to destroy Lion’s Arch and obtain the city without a direct war.

We, as players, know that the Pact it’s not an enemy.
But every nation in the game can’t be so sure about it.
A friend today can become an enemy tomorrow. Would you really take that risk?
Just my 2 cents.

Yoh.8469:

Agreed. I was actually hoping one or two of these new grandmaster traits would have played to that effect, sadly not, it’s just more of the same.
Unfortunately there aren’t many traits that play into the whole deception aspect of Mesmers, esp not grandmasters. PU is the only that actively does by riding on the tailcoat of stealth.

That being said decoy and blink do a pretty solid job, and portal is underused when soloing. Portal is quite effective of getting you out of a jam if you know how to use it.

I totally agree with all of that.
Sadly the deception part would be of little use in PvE.

I undestand that trying to come up with some change, in a pratical way, it’s quite difficult.

It’s not like we’re too weak atm, we just work in a strange way and we are not effective enough in certain situations where illusion just can’t do anything as they are now (wvw zerg).

I think we have only two possible ways to go:
- illusions are always useful (like invulnerable while shattering or for x seconds after created or something like that)
- we can be useful without illusions

But this should be true in all game modes.

Yoh.8469:

[…]
I think it’s important for the Mesmer to think of how best to make use of their mechanics, rather then play as if it were just another caster.
If your not trying to actively deceive your opponent, I don’t think your in any position to cry foul when you don’t.

Yeah, I agree.
That’s why I think we should have more ways to interact in an active manner with our clones.
For example I was very surprised when I found out that we don’t have any defensive swap with clones (we only have the leap on sword #3, but I see it much more useful for attacking rather then defending).

Yeah, I heard about rangers problems with their pets but I don’t really know much about it (never played as a ranger).
Keeping it on mesmers, when don’t you want to have clones around?
Are you afraid of them aggroing or something like that?
Making them only in combat when you have a target wuold help?
I’m just curios.

About the confusion thing…
Well, it is a very complicated problem imo.
As it is now, it works well with player with little experience facing mesmer and works way less with good players.
While this is bad for the mesmer, isn’t it right for the enemy?
Wuoldn’t it be a little unfair to the others if even with experience againts mesmer you still didn’t have any hint at all?
Clones are good only for a split second distraction (if not we could get easly OP).
That’s why within my proposal I put changing the weapon skills.
If you don’t have to worry about their creation you can worry about using them better.
If an enemy spot the real you, you could have a swap skill that makes you take the place of one of your clones for example.
That wuold be very confusing for the enemy because he wuold waste time to spot you again (and if you use stealth…).

To say it in way less words, I think we could do better if we could “use” them and not simply create them (that could easly be passive somehow).

Hi fellow mesmers!
I’ll start saying that this is only my humble opinion, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.
All of this it’s about abstract concept, not numbers.

We all love the mesmer, we all love illusions and all.
But do they work in the right way?
What I’m concerned about is illusions, more about clones than phantasms actually.

All we can do depends mostly on illusions, our damage and our defence.
We’ve got great utility too, but you can’t kill nor survive with utility only.

In these days I’m also seeing great discussions about DE or not DE (mostly in favor of DE as essential).
This hints to me that we are not happy with clone generation/duration.
Sure, we can find many walkarounds and we are viable, but the issue stays there.

So that’s where my question comes from:
If we need them (and we do need them for anything), why can we be without them?
Back in beta they did damage on their own, they were somehow dangerous to keep around. So it was right to make their creation “active”. Is it still the case?
I’m not so sure anymore.

Wouldn’t sounds more right something along the lines of this:
- We keep our 3 illusions limit
- No more clone generation skills on weapon
- Some skill can change in something that use clones for active effects (swap, shatter, anything). Or those skills that could let us be more useful on our own maybe?
- Short cd passive that generate a clone automaticly when in combat (easier to balance and free space in trait lines)
- We can keep some clone generating utilities/traits for emergency situations or shatter burst

I know this is totally not perfect and probably it’s just pure bs.
And I also know that we could never hope to see a change this big.
But it’s the first solution that came to my mind in a boring day.

What do you think about it? Do you think that’s not the problem?
What would you suggest?

Thank you all anyway!

kubetz.3058:

I hope you will have a lot of opportunities in the future to join us. We need to make sunday events really a regular thing so guildies learn about them and start participating.

Yeah, that would be great.
It was fun for me and for my giant norn warden bubble :P

It’s a shame I had to leave after the first run both days.
Did you guys have an other run after that?

IGN: Lev Ravenborn
Server: Gandara (EU)
Playstyle: Mainly PvE
Role: Scholar
Playtime: Weekends and late aftenoon, GMT+1

Sorry if something like this was already posted, I couldn’t find it.

One of the things I think are missing in the game is some sort of sense of beloging to a specific race or profession.

Let’s start with the race.
We go through the level 1-30 story and it’s all about our race.
So far so good, but that’s it.
Do we become important for our people? Do someone recognize us?
Ok, Destiny’s Edge do, but almost no one else.
We get some kind of useless title that no one care about like “Hero of Shaemoor” or “Slayer of Issormir” and nothing else.

Wouldn’t it be nice to become really important for our people?
Something like this:
After Zhaitan defeat we go back in our lands and do something race specific.
A story arc to become an human Minister (or Seraph/Shining Blade?), a norn Shaman/Havroun (maybe with a lesser Spirit so we don’t have conflicts in the story), an Asura krewe leaders and so on.
Just something to make us feel part of our race society, to introduce some new npc, some friend that we get to know and actually care about in the future.
There are a lot of possibility to expand our role in each race, IMO.

And I’d like something similar for the professions too.
In GW1 Factions we went through the tutorial doing profession specific missions.
An elementalist would fight other elementalists, a Ritualist would clean a Necromancer mess, an Assassin would go on an assassination mission etc.
I think it would be really cool to have some profession specific missions like that.
Maybe gaining a skill, a weapon or an armor piece exclusive for the profession as a reward.
And this would also be another way to add some important npc.

I’m not proposing something that would radically change the game.
It’s something little, but it would help us to feel that our character belong to something.
Same thing could be done for the orders actually, but I think that profession and race are our first choices so we should use something for them before anything else.

That’s all.
Sorry for any grammar mistake and the like.

First of all I’d like something that give us a block/invul (distorsion don’t fit the necro imo).
I don’t know, maybe a torch spectral-like skill would be the best fit.
The other skill should have some kind of offensive condition, ideally vulnerability.

For the offensive something like an heavy, slow and powerful black hammer of death is good enough for me, with some way to sustain the melee damage (better life stealing?).
I already see a black explosion-like effect, similar to ds 5.

Armor it’s a bit of a mess atm, but anyway here’s my norn necro

I just don’t like the daily healer.
You’re supposed to help other people and NPCs, not waiting there like an idiot hoping they’ll die fast.
Sure, you can find good places to do it faster. But still…I don’t like it at all as a concept (mostly for casual gamers that don’t have all day to find dead people to ress).

Thalador.4218:

The Mists is the universe – or multiverse, as some sources claim. It is the source of everything – from the simplest bacterium to the largest star. Everything and everyone can trace its origins back to the Mists. It binds past, present, and future together, ergo; it is the Guild Wars universe. If someone comes from the Mists, it comes from the same universe as the one Tyria is in. And thus, the gods are indeed “space-traveling aliens,” even if it’s a huge oversimplification of the whole matter.

I don’t know if we can’t get at a common point or if you’re simply trying to be a pedant.
What I meant was that the gods didn’t came out of a shuttle from a planet behind the sun or something like that.
The fact that the Mist is the alpha and the omega and that it contains all it’s not something that actually matters.

Thalador.4218:

And even if you really want to believe your interpretation of the Mists – though chances are high that it’s wrong – it does not really hurt the theory of norn – human relation, as its foundation is that the norn are an “offshoot” of humans, thus the place of origin is completely irrelevant in this matter.

It’s not like I have a theory about the Mist, I agree with everyone else about it.
I wrote up here what I meant.
Anyway I never wanted to hurt the theory of norn – human relation with that.
I just said that norns being similar to humans it’s not that strage^^

Thalador.4218:

Also, I’d like to ask you the following question. Which one is more probable: starting as polar bears and becoming a very human-like species (changing every classification starting from order), throwing away the physiology of a polar bear and adopting that of a human – or one that is very close to it – in 3,000-4,000 years (I theorize that the last awakening of the dragons was around 2,000 BE, but even if it was 10,000 years ago, it doesn’t really change anything), or starting as humans and becoming a slightly taller and larger “offshoot” in about 2,000 years?

I’d like to turn the question back to you: Do you really think that 4,000-10,000 years is enough to produce an evolution that kitten kitten big?

Hmm, I guess I explained what I think in a bad way, or that you read it wrong.
To put it in a simplificated way, I said that it’s a more plausibile theory that kodans are norn blessed with eternal shapeshift in Koda form.
Or that all norn were, but at a certain point some of them lost the Koda blessing/got exiled and went south to live in the Far shiverpeaks were we meet them (thousands years later) in gw1.

This theory (I don’t say it’s the right one, Koda should be something similar to a Spirit of the Wild to be working) has no need of mllion years of evolution, that’s all.

Thalador.4218:

Polar bears are not only the largest bears on Earth but the largest land carnivores also. Siberian tigers are the largest living cats, ranking among the biggest felids to ever exist. And both species live in very cold climates.

You are mixing it with mammals living in hot climates. They are usually smaller than their brethren who live in cold areas. (Desert fox < Arctic fox; Bengali tiger < Siberian tiger). So it’s not at all impossible that norn might be an offshoot of humans who have evolved and became accustomed to cold.

I wasn’t thinking about furred animals, anyway I said something incorrect^^

Thalador.4218:

Wrong. Humans have never come from “another dimension.” Both the norn and the humans live in the same dimension, however, humanity originates from a different planet.

Here you are actually wrong.
The Six aren’t (for what we know) some kind of space-travelling aliens, they came from the Mist.
We can argue about what the Mist is, but surely isn’t the equivalent of our space.
If you don’t like the word “dimension” we can call it world, i don’t really care that much.

Thalador.4218:

Given the fact that the first known record of humanity on the world of Tyria is from 786 BE, it’s likely that their arrival on that southern continent happened even earlier, say, 1,000 BE, giving both parties circa 2,000 years to evolve into their current physiology. The average height of us real world humans increased a lot in the same time, and then there’s the Scandinavian people who tend to be also a lot taller. Add a little magic to improve and quicken acclimatization, and you get the norn.

I agree with Konig. I definitely see the possibility that norn were a tribe related to Luxons or proto-Luxons, but instead of going north the way humanity did (Cantha -> Elona -> Tyria), they went the other way on the globe, sailing through the arctic seas at the end of their journey and arriving in or near the Far Shiverpeaks.

Also, humanity might have been taller in average when they arrived on Tyria. And while the “southerners” who lived in moderate to hot climates became shorter, “northerners” who traveled and lived in cold climates grew even taller, explaining the slight difference in height between humans and norn.

I can’t say this is impossible, but the main problem in this theory it’s that 2’000 years are not nearly enough to produce an evolution that big.
An evolution like that takes million years (it’s not just getting taller, it’s becoming 2-3 times what you were as human, changing proportions of the body etc).
As a side note, if real world humans got much taller in the last 2’000 years it’s also because of the different life style (from “what is agricolture?” to industry, so we all have much more food and can grow taller).
Tyra didn’t have that kind of a change (and there would be no reason to see people get smaller anyway).
But Tyra has magic, so anything it’s possible.

This is why I think that the Kodan origin is, for me, more credible.
This in no way means that you are wrong and I’m right, just to be clear.

I think it’s easier that a colder clima makes people shorter to consverve the heat, not taller. There are exceptions though.

Anyway IMO norn coming from humans it’s unlikely.
Humans come from another dimension, they are not from this world.
Two similar races in two different dimensions (we can guess the other dimension it’s actually similar to ours if humans have this shape) it’s not something that strange.

In my mind Kodan being norns always shapeshifted in the “Spirit of the Wild” Koda form (then a group of them disagree/lose the Koda blessing and go back to their norn form) have more chances that norn coming from humans.

Just my opinion, obviously.

I’m positive that the Order of Whispers is simply passing trough the gate near Ebonhawke.
They also have a secret base in that city. I don’t remember their exact number inside there, but when I went there it gave me the impression of an important base.