Guild Wars 2

Sylvari are (presently, at least) immune to dragon corruption by virtue of it just straight up killing them rather than turning them into one of their minions, so it’s not really getting off scott-free as it’s just safer for them to go into the heart of the matter because they won’t come back and kill everyone else. Also I’m pretty sure Bercilak’s armor was not Occam’s first piece—that he’s already an accredited smith is why the Nightmare Court blackmailed him into making it in the first place.

I don’t see how it doesn’t make sense for a Sylvari to potentially be a good enough blacksmith that Trahearne would take him on for the job, though. Not every Sylvari is young and stupid and newly born—in fact, the more important/reoccurring Sylvari in the story are usually notably part of older groups. I don’t think Occam has a stated age, but there’s no reason to believe he can’t be maybe 10, 12 years old—which is plenty of time to master a craft you’re dedicated to.

It’s also possible for Sylvari to learn, intrinsically, the basics of a trade/combat/etc in the Dream and thus be born with rudimentary understanding of it—really not far from if you were to start learning something during your childhood, because their state in the Dream effectively is their childhood, even if they have a poorer explicit memory of it than we do.

(I also take “best smiths in all of Tyria” with a grain of salt since between him and Izu, Trahearne was pretty clearly just picking from the pool of people he already knew and trying to woo them into helping him.)

Technically it says we’re “defeated”, that command is the only place it quotes us as dead that I’ve seen (and I wouldn’t take a chat command as strict lore canon anyway). Like others have said, the lore is that we’re being knocked out/incapacitated, but not killed. It’s stated down in this link: http://www.arena.net/blog/jon-peters-answers-your-first-batch-of-healing-and-death-questions

“Q: Let me get this straight: you really can’t die in Guild Wars 2?

Jon: That is correct; you can only be defeated. When we made the decision to allow everyone to revive a fallen comrade, we didn’t want to explain why everyone suddenly had the magical ability to bring people back from the dead. Instead, we thought it would be cooler to say that people were defeated instead of dead, so that we could justify them being brought out of it by any ally who happened to be passing by. This also helps us lorewise in that we can now kill off NPCs and don’t need to deal with the question of why someone didn’t just rez them. From a game-mechanics standpoint, there is no real difference between dead and defeated. Either way, you’ve just lost and incurred whatever penalty is associated with losing."

Actually, Jon Peters stated back in a thread about kits and sigils that kits are going to inherit weapon stats, but we didn’t get any ETA so we don’t know how long of a wait we’re going to have for that (or if they’re going to nerf anything in response like they did with sigils).

Outside of champions and bosses you’re probably not going to have enough time in the fight in PvE to frequently get up three duelists/berzerkers (unless you just really drag it out), but since only compounding power and phantasmal healing benefit from having multiple phantasms up (since they can plant regeneration on each other) and the extra damage is lost anyway because your enemy dies so fast you probably don’t need to have so many phantasms up a lot anyway.

If you’re going to use them as mostly damage causers I’d also grab phantasmal haste (20 in Illusions) to speed up their attacks as iDuelist and Berkzerker both have really long recharge times. I’d take the last 10 out of dueling or the 5 from dueling/5 from chaos and move them over.

Also, for a build that relies on maintaining phantasms both toughness and you’re own ability to fight and carry enemy aggro can go a long way towards keeping your phantasms from getting one-shotted and immediately beat down, because they are a fragile mechanic. I wouldn’t suggest glass cannon gear like Berzerker’s.

I always wonder, when I see a thread about switching rifle skills, whether anybody actually thinks the gimmicky Engineer rifle at all belongs on a warrior.

It’s true, we don’t use it as a rifle at all—and whether that’s a problem seems to be a very YMMV thing. I like it for what it is, and find it very powerful for what it’s built for (single target/burst damage), but it’s not a versatile weapon.

I think you’ve been misled, though, if you think the rifle/pistols are meant to be our main source of combat—we were never designed to sit on a weapon set like that, especially since we can’t swap and have all of 3 different combinations. Rather, our main source of combat (or at least our half-source of combat) is supposed to be from kits and/or turrets. Not that they’re exactly what I’d call top performers either right now, but as far as intent goes.

(I do agree, though, the hybrid tax is a little insulting when we don’t even get to be the kings of versatility through it. What are we good for again?)

I think walking might be universal for each gender, but I’ve definitely noticed a hunch on my male Sylvari none of my female characters (human, Norn, Sylvari) have with drawn weapons, and it does make carrying a greatsword or staff look weirdly off-balance—although I’ve always thought it was weird to carry staffs around at our sides like that instead of using them as walking sticks when, you know, walking. :|a

It looks like it’s because you’re facing away from the light source during the day, so your eyes are getting shrouded in shadow and looking much darker (OP also has a much lighter color scheme than your eyes, which is making them contrast heavily). Other race’s eyes aren’t really brighter (well, purple seems to glow for whatever reason), but human and Norn have a white sclera, which contrasts against their skin/iris/hair and looks brighter because it’s surrounded by darker colors. Asura have very large eyes that can catch more light, and a much smaller brow that doesn’t cast as much shadow over their face. Sylvari’s eyes can be much more dramatically affected by light/color scheme, because they can have skin and hair lighter than the whole of their eyes, no white sclera (unless you pick the white one), and some of the faces can have really large pupils, too.

I think the Sylvari got a little more spotlight in the personal story because they’re the playable race that’s the most intertwined with Zhaitan (and I think the story does end up making the most sense from the Sylvari’s perspective) but I don’t expect them to keep being special because they’re really tied to Zhaitan specifically, much like the Norn are very tied to Jormag, or the Asura to Primordus. The open world is a good example, because you see Risen very on crawling up to the Grove’s doorstep, and areas with high Risen concentration tend to have Sylvari outposts around to contain them—but you don’t see that same presence around the brand, or in the Shiverpeaks because Zhaitan’s their big focus. And now that we’ve kicked his tail you’ll probably see less importance from the race as a whole and whoever is corresponded closest to the next dragon will get a day in the limelight.

I can’t actually tell if this is a lighting or texture issue, but aesthetics are aesthetics so I’ll try this here.

My male Sylvari’s mouth has this weird glow/lack of proper texture inside his mouth in cinematics. I don’t know if it’s an issue with the face (I can’t remember the order number, but it’s the face Renvari and Occam wear), skin color (Lily), or both, but it makes it look oddly distorted.

I compared it to actual gameplay by using the cheer emote, and his mouth outside of cinematics does seem to have proper coloration.

I would just like to be able to honor him by telling his story like he wanted, honestly. Maybe the chance is somewhere I haven’t looked yet, but it’s kind of emptying that his comfort in death was that his legend would persist and I don’t get to spread it.

Also I’d like that blasted note in Vigil HQ to get fixed.

There’s a Trick-or-Treating Sylvari?

Tell me you’ve got a screenshot, I haven’t seen that at all.

I didn’t experience a drop in that, either, but I’ve always bounced targets/switched with swords to make up for the lack of AoE skills.

I agree it’s nonsensical from a pve perspective (I can’t comment on pvp) and teetering on the edge of balance, but the explosion of worry over this patch is kind of disproportionate to how much of an impact it’s going to actually have for most people.

I actually went out to test this after the update in the latter half of Straits of Devastation, and the longer cooldowns don’t have enough of an effect that a phantasmal/staff build is less viable. This could be boiling down to technique, but while I notice the extra seconds it’s not long enough to actually impact my strategy any, and I can still get gold medals in DEs without any trouble. The longer CD on Chaos Storm is annoying, but it just means you have to be a little craftier about where and when you place it (and pray a warrior doesn’t go dragging the mob elsewhere).

I’m actually surprised this ended up as overlooked as it did, since it’s such a glaring continuity error. I hope the personal story team takes racial identity and our previous mission choices more into consideration for expanded content, because diluting everything to the same lines is jarring across the board when we’re allowed to make totally different choices and play characters from totally different cultures.