Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In GW1, the lore of the gods definitely did “evoke feelings of awe, terror, and mystery”. GW2 has made them suffer by diminishing them a bit, as making all human history and their gods less significant was ArenaNet’s answer to making the story multi-racial rather than human centric, when what they should have done instead was adapt the other races to give them a different perspective without reducing importance.

Balthazar is one of the more awe and terror invoking gods from GW1 lore, just under Grenth, Dhuum, and Abaddon.

Pretty much this, and I guarantee that “reading up on it” is no substitute for actually playing here.

It’s worth reinforcing that ArenaNet deliberately downplayed the gods in GW2, in order to ensure the spotlight gets shared among all the races. In my opinion, they grossly overshot – it’s basically been the atheistic/agnostic races that have had the answers 90% of the time, while the gods and animal spirits got the occasional cameo at most. And if they have just thrown Balthazar in to be the monster of the season just for the sake of having a shocking twist, then that’s just twisting the proverbial knife.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

draxynnic.3719:

she’s not very good at actually dealing damage.

Except for the time she one-shots three Mantle in a row?

Valid point, although we don’t know how powerful those guys were. Could have been that she had a specialised Mantra of Pain charged – and that’s why she spared the fourth guy. We know mesmers can spike effectively, they just aren’t great at sustained damage on bosses (and golems).

Either way, she fights offensively during the rest of the instance, and her damage output isn’t anything to write home about.

Nevertheless, I think there are ample explanations for Jennah’s abilities:

1) Tyrian history is littered with spellcasters that pulled off exceptional feats – Tahnnakai Temple has several, but not the only examples, and most of the examples we do have come from a time when magic is weaker than it is today. We also see (and fight) some exceptionally powerful human, sylvari, and Flame Legion charr spellcasters ingame. Some NPCs simply are just that powerful.

2) As I noted above… do we really know that the things Jennah is credited with, she pulled off alone? The city dome could have been the work of several mesmers, and possibly guardians as well, working together. The Kralkatorrik illusion – she had at least Anise present, and the other Shining Blade might have included a coterie of additional mesmers.

3) As the queen of Kryta, she may have access to artifacts that boost her power. There’s no evidence that the throne-stone is related to the Bloodstones, but it has been hinted that it’s not just some random rock. Heck, we probably can’t rule out the possibility that Jennah has been benefiting from the Scepter of Orr.

Well, one possibility could be that this is the first hint of what could be the main issue for the next expansion. We seem to have had two dragons put on a bus, Kralkatorrik hasn’t done much since the Dragonrise, and the DSD is still not directly affecting Tyria – it’s an appropriate setup to put the dragons aside and focus on something else. Balthazar falling, in whatever sense, is probably a sign of some major upheaval – the focus of the next expansion could be the upheaval itself, possibly an interplanetary threat.

Dondarrion.2748:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Not inactive, and not a result of sleep- when the machine booted up, all of the destroyers around us up and died.

Didn’t the Destroyers live just fine without Primordus being awake back in Eye of the North? He was stirring, but iirc Primordus didn’t stir/awake until the final cinematic, after we had killed the Great Destroyer champion?

Killing the Great Destroyer did mess up their hive mind so the remainder were a lot easier to deal with, though. Once Primordus awakened completely, he may have made himself the nexus of the hive mind rather than relying on a champion – at least for those Destroyers that were physically closest to him (namely, those inside the volcano).

Harper.4173:

I also really dislike how things that were ambiguous and gray in GW1 are now being “dumbed down” and made palatable black and white situations.

While I never played WoW, this was part of what made me stop caring about Warcraft lore at all – when it seemed that basically any character who had any shade of grey whatsoever was turned into a villain so they could have a recognisable raid-boss.

This… feels similar. We’ll see how it develops, but if they’ve just turned Balthazar into Abaddon 2.0 just so they could have a shocking reveal, I may well have my Thalador moment.

Some people just have higher magical capabilities than others. The spellcaster PC is pretty far up there, but not the strongest – albeit possibly one of the best around at killing things. Jennah’s speciality is different – she’s best at illusions, counter-magic, and protection, she’s not very good at actually dealing damage.

Also, one thing to note is that “Jennah’s” barrier around Divinity’s Reach may not be entirely her own doing – she says she’s made preparations for defenses, and those preparations might well include having other mesmers standing by to reinforce her spell when she gives the signal. In fact, if you look at the bubble from lake Doric, there are actually swirls of blue in there as well as purple – it’s possible that after the initial establishment, there’s guardians as well as mesmers maintaining the bubble. (That said, mesmer magic does sometimes have blue in the ‘weaker’ parts of the spell, so the blue bits might just be weak spots.)

The impression I had was that Glint assumed that she was going to die regardless, but that her legacy would be up and running before it became a major issue (it does seem that she didn’t predict Scarlet or Mordremoth’s early awakening).

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I don’t think we’ve been getting any kind of ‘we shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us’ vibe. We’re just going to need to get smarter about how we stop them.

One of my biggest problems of the Pact was that it essentially took the Vigil method as ‘correct’ and reduced the other two orders to supplementing their strategy. I wouldn’t mind if the story took a break from hitting dragons with a stick to explore putting them back to sleep, like the Whispers wanted, or digging into the past cycle to find out if there’s a smarter way of handling things, like the Priory wanted. And yes, hitting them with a stick when appropriate, but there’s room for other options to be pursued in tandem.

I think part of that was that the Order of Whispers didn’t believe the dragons could be killed, while the Priory thought the answer might be found in researching the dragons… essentially what Taimi was doing. Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s deaths were both essentially a combination of the Vigil and Priory approaches, and when they proved to work, the Whispers assumption that killing them was impossible was overturned.

Now that we have evidence that killing too many of them – at once, anyway – might be bad, we may be looking at the Whispers approach again. In fact, depending on how you read the ending of E5, we might have just seen the Whispers approach taken with the two most threatening of the remaining dragons.

It is canon that Abaddon had a predecessor, and the locations that the datamine associates with Arachnia existed in-game. That said, the canonicity of the precise geographic features is in question – ArenaNet didn’t try very hard to make the geography in GW2 match GW1, after all.

I think Mem’s hypothesis is that Arachnia still exists and corrupted Abaddon, and will in turn corrupt Kormir.

In Logan’s case, I think he’s still readily classified among the PC’s allies – he’s just an allied general rather than being someone fighting at your side. In fact, Logan becoming the Pact Marshal is probably a good outcome for the PC – Logan trusts the PC, so if the PC shows up requesting the Pact participate in some operation or another, Logan will probably trust that the PC has a good read on the situation, where a different Marshal might be more inclined to question the PC’s judgement.

I do wonder, though, how well Logan will cope with being cooped up in an office in Lion’s Arch long-term.

Stitch.1794:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Lazarus giving Aurene as an egg to the master of peace, or defending Aurene from destroyers, is not only non-beneficial to Kralkatorrik, but harmful to Kralkatorrik.

Agreed, with one possible exception – Aurene could make a powerful lieutenant if allowed to mature before being corrupted (if she is even capable of being corrupted).

Even if you don’t want to corrupt it yet, why let it out of your control?

I could buy Lazarus being a dragon champion who looked at the Commander and Luminate and decided ‘not yet’, but I can’t see the voice being a servant of an Elder Dragon.

UnbentMars.9126:

Lazarus is actually Rytlock. Think about it! We’ve never seen them in the same place, Rytlock made a convenient exit just before we went to Bloodstone Fen and saw Lazarus, and we haven’t heard even a peep from Rytlock of the Black Citadel!

Heard it here first kids, I accept tithes in the form of precursors and black lion key gifts

I know you’re joking, but Rytlock is on the ship when the Bloodstone exploded (“We’re not flying into that scramble, are we?”) and is present for the Confessor’s Stronghold instance where Lazarus first showed, making comments about what a mursaat might consider to be noble.

It’s actually a little weird, in hindsight, that he’s not in the Shadow’s Deeds instance, since there’s actually no indication of him leaving the PC between Research in Rata Nous and his arrest in Ep2.

There’s also the fact that Ogden makes a much bigger deal about the Divine Fire in Arcana Obscura:

“Your race’s benefactors—the gods—enchanted their favorite followers with their magic. It allowed these humans to access hidden places. You will not be Ascended, however, so touching it could kill you.”

This suggests that the divine fire is actually more of a permanent thing than the temporary effect we see in-game and use to access Augury Rock (and, through it, Dragon’s Lair). In-game, we don’t see it come into play after that, so that might be all there is to it – but it’s also possible that the PCs and/or Devona & Co learned to use the divine fire to do other things sometime after Winds of Change. And that aspect is missing from the trial of Weh No Su unless you claim that the celestials are made of divine fire (which isn’t such a bad claim, but nevertheless…)

Either way, it does seem a bit curious that in one place you have a set of tests that entire civilisations have fallen trying to achieve, while in Cantha it’s so easy, relatively speaking, that it’s become assumed - a requirement, even – that every Emperor will pass the test. Either the gods were being really generous to the Canthans, or it seems that the Crystal Desert Ascension is likely to be a greater prize in exchange for the significantly greater difficulty of achieving it.

Unreliable narrator. At the time, nobody (at least, nobody who was recorded in history) had gone through the process of ascension through Augury Rock, so any distinction between Weh No Su and the Augury Rock ascension would not be known to historians. It would be very easy to say “Weh No Su grants the ability to see things that are hidden. Ascension grants the ability to see things that are hidden. Therefore they’re the same!” when this might be missing distinctions that are present, but are not known because nobody has undergone Augury Rock ascension.

Divine Fire might be one of those. It’s not even hinted at in Weh No Su. Granted, in Prophecies there isn’t exactly much attention drawn to it, so it could mean that Weh No Su does grant divine fire and it’s just never mentioned. Or it could be that the two are different – both grant the ability to see hidden things, but only the Augury Rock ascension granted the use of divine fire.

It’s also worth raising the question of why the Augury Rock ascension was made so hard, including Forgotten willing to lay down their lives to make it harder (whether they were actually dying permanently is an open question) while the Canthans were given something downright convenient in comparison, if the two were in fact exactly the same. Granted, the meta reason is probably that ArenaNet didn’t want to spend three missions and a solo instance on it again (cf Nightfall, where you get the in-game mechanical effect of Ascension just for exterminating a few bugs with nobody making any comment at all), but lorewise, I think the disparity in difficulty possibly reflects that one is actually a greater prize than the other.

I think we’ve had this discussion before – I largely wanted to let people know that there was some doubt that the question of whether the two were the same remains an open one.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Acnologia.6934:

first thing first i ty all of you for finding the time to reply here.
reading your posts my curiosity towards this desert raised again. one thing in particular catched my eyes: Hall of Ascension? what is it? the wiki said it’s a place where adventurers can ascend (what those it means?) but what is it? is it possible that is still around now in gw2? and if it is, can our gw2 characters ascend (whatever it means) or the gw1 story was kinda “only your character is the chosen one. after you ascend nobody after you will never do it again”?
wow this desert is so fascinating every thing i learn about it
again ty all for the answers!

edit: reading more about this ascension it sounds like those who ascended are become like our gw2 revenants?

Revenants and Ascension are very different.

Ascension – or Weh no Su as known in Cantha (translation being “Closer to the Stars”) – effectively means what I said before: it unlocks the “true potential” of an individual, and brings them closer to divine beings. In mechanics, this was represented by allowing additional attributes to be unlocked (in Prophecies only), changing the secondary profession, and being able to access the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. This also granted the “Gift of True Sight” which allowed people to see “for how things truly are” – for example, being able to see the mursaat even when they’re trying to be invisible, or being able to see ghosts when they are hiding from the eyes of the living (both dealing with going partway into the Mists, as we’ve found out).

The Hall of Ascension is where one went to Ascend in the Crystal Desert (but as shown by the trials of Weh no Su, not the only place), built by the Forgotten and/or Human Gods. It likely is still around now. In theory, anyone can Ascend – they just have to fulfill the proper trials and the like. Every method of Ascension, however, differs. So we cannot just retrace the footsteps of our GW1 characters (especially since a lot of that dealt with fighting the Forgotten who are no longer of the world).

Revenants are closer to ritualists, except where ritualists summon souls of the dead from The Mists, revenants are just channeling The Mists’ memories of legendary figures. Revenants have not Ascended. No one in modern times has, as far as we’re aware.

A few comments here:

Konig has always maintained that Ascension and Weh No Su are the same. I’m not convinced. They are certainly very similar - mechanically, one can substitute for another to gain access to the god realms in GW1, for instance – and there are indications of them being confused in the lore (Canthan emperors being called “Ascended” when it was the trials of Weh No Su that they actually performed, for instance) – however, there are distinctions that I think do point at them being different. A big one is the Divine Fire concept, which plays an important part at the end of Season 2, but which only appears in the Crystal Desert trials. There are distinct similarities, but I suspect that the Ascension process of the Crystal Desert trials may go a little deeper than being Weh No Su.

Secondly, it doesn’t seem like anyone can Ascend. Prophecies had the concept of a group of people called the Chosen, who had greater magical potential than most humans – when a particular character suggests that the PCs seek Ascension, that character follows it up by saying “That’s right. You are all Chosen” in a manner that indicates that it’s well known that only Chosen can Ascend. My suspicion is that only individuals with specific qualities can Ascend… and it may be that only humans can Ascend (and not all humans). It’s possible that full Ascension in the Prophecies sense is in fact no longer possible – it supposedly involved gaining the attention of the gods, and the gods don’t pay much attention to Tyria any more. Or it’s possible that the process is more about igniting the divinity within, and in truth the gods never played a direct part – in which case, it might be possible for any Chosen to complete the rituals and achieve Ascension.

Certainly, though, revenants are not Ascended. They have some form of communion with the Mists, but it doesn’t appear to match either form. If anything, necromancers might be closer: the Marjory short story has her using a sort of necromancer spirit-sight to see a spirit that others wouldn’t have seen.

Took me about two days after it launched, having taken leave so I could do so. So maybe… 14 hours or so? It wasn’t that late in the day when I finished, I took suitable breaks and made my own meals and such along the way, so that seems a suitable ballpark. This included:

Issues with the final instance (now improved, although it’s not perfect)
Needing to grind out masteries along the way (obviously).
Not having foreknowledge of what to do or where to go (was deliberately avoiding forums and such until I went through the first time around to avoid spoilers).
Spending a bit of time doing map events rather than just blitzing through the story – but not a HUGE amount of time.
Spending more time than I liked lost in Tangled Depths because I didn’t want to use a waypoint (if you don’t want to waypoint back to the start of the map in Tangled Depths, sometimes it’s more efficient to guildhall to Tarir and come in from Auric Basin).

So that seems in line with Moonyeti’s predictions.

After that, I started going back and playing through more of the events on the world map. Events on the world map are definitely more tied to the story than in core Tyria… broadly speaking, you could say that the maps are telling the story of the Pact, while the instances are specific to the PC & co. Playing through the events does give you a better idea of the bigger picture, particularly if you consider that a particular event in a particular map is quite possibly occurring simultaneously with a particular story instance.

I think that might be exactly WHY he went with Logan.

Plus, I don’t think it needs to be done as part of the story. You can get him to show you the cinematic any time it’s not overridden by story dialogue.

They didn’t make it required because people who’d played through the raids would have already seen the same cinematic. Which is one of the problems of having had the starting raid being essentially the prequel to S3.

Crinn.7864:

I’m going to start by pointing out that the whole discussion is teed off of King Des Tode’s claim that bloodstone weapons where superior without counting any magical phenomena. So any explanation involving magical explody arrows supports my original claim.

Pressure is still going to be proportional to kinetic energy in the case of a projectile. While bloodstone may yield a better point, it’s still not going to be armor piercing, because how weak bows in general are. The only case I could ever find of a confirmed piercing of armor with a bow, was a modern test with a 160lb bow firing a bodkin point at steel breastplate at point blank. However a 160lb bow is well beyond what even practiced archers can pull. (estimates for the famous English Longbows where generally 80-110lbs, and firing those required a lifetime of practice)

You are correct about WM not testing bows. Because the WM never uses archers, and instead favor firearms, which makes sense since firearms will easily pierce armor without needing to be made of any hyper-rare material, and can be picked up with minimal training.

To make things clear: I personally support magic explodey arrows, but from my physics training, I’m not going to let erroneous claims stand.

A crystalline edge, such as obsidian or diamond, can get down to a monomolecular edge, or close to it. Steel points, including bodkins, are fairly blunt by that standard. Crystalline arrowheads, however, are generally not used because they’re fragile: shoot them at a steel plate, and they’ll shatter under the pressure before the steel does.

In fact, your test is telling me that, if a suitable material existed, then it certainly would be possible to make an arrowhead that’s sharp enough to penetrate armour. The tests you cite show that it’s possible at about 50% more force than able to be provided by a human archer. Now let’s look at that pressure equation again. Force divided by area. Reduce the area by half – through building a pointier arrowhead – and that may well be the equivalent, in armour penetration terms, to doubling the kinetic energy. Find a material that can have such an edge and that can survive the impact, and you may well have yourself an armour-piercing arrow, at least at short range. (There are additional factors that I’m not taking into account with these back-of-the-envelope calculations, which is why I’m hedging with a ‘maybe’, but certainly, tests with steel points are not representative of what a sharper material might achieve. They are, at best, indicative of how much sharper it would have to be.)

And also, are you sure about the White Mantle not using bows? That said, “true” White Mantle using conventional ranged weapons are rare: most of their focus is on, as Rytlock put it, being creepy magickers, so most of their ranged is magikittenil you get to the level of Jade Bows and Jade Cannons.

(“True”, in this sense, refers to White Mantle in uniform, rather than bandits and so on which might well be White Mantle or might simply be stooges.)

We see even less firearms, in fact: those we see are mostly associated with bandits and the like that are being used by, but which aren’t necessarily part of, the White Mantle – and those that are knowingly White Mantle had probably already developed their firearm skills before being inducted, rather than being “New Krytans” born and raised in White Mantle territory. While the two most recent known Confessors both used pistols, this might be reflective that both were recruited from Kryta proper – and rose in rank thanks to their use of contacts in Kryta – rather than being lifelong members.

So it’s not unbelieveable that Valis et al didn’t immediately think of bloodstone arrowheads… they were focusing on other things. Likely including hoping to get more powerful magical foci (likely a dead end as Konig indicates – power goes in, power doesn’t come out until the bloodstone shatters). It stands to reason that the first response of a bunch of ‘creepy magickers’ to the idea of weaponising bloodstone might be to produce better magical focii and similar weapons and they might neglect something as simple as an arrowhead, while for the Shining Blade, which relied mostly on archery in the time of the original Guild Wars, it would be the first thing they think of.

I thought I’d already responded to this… probably got distracted and failed to actually post.

It’s a theory of a particular asura that zephyrite crystals were a specialised form of air magic, but that was a theory from before we knew that the crystals were ultimately seeded from Glint’s remains. We know that Glint’s magical capabilities go well outside air magic, so the Sun crystals may say nothing about what fits within the realm of air magic. The effects of the Sun skills in the Aspect Arena have a cosmic aspect that probably fits most with the Druid presently.

That said, generating bright flashes of light has generally been associated with Air Magic – presumably, if you can control electricity, you can also generate light. Elementalists traditionally haven’t been able to deal damage with light directly like monks and guardians can (although it’s questionable whether that is because monks and guardians can produce light that’s just that intense, or because they add something to it) but it’s plausible that may change in the future. Mind you, it’s also possible that ArenaNet would simply want to keep lightning as the damaging form of air magic and leave it at that.

(Incidentally, I have thought myself that a Zephyrite-inspired specialisation where each attunement maps to an Aspect could work well. Fire to Sun, Air to Lighting, Water to Wind, and Earth to Crystal. Taking the specialisation weapon would fully embrace this, but even with another weaponset you might be able to use traits to insert a bit of the aspect into regular elemental magic. For instance, such an elementalist using the specialisation weaponset might use Fire (Sun) the way most elementalists use Water – however, an elementalist with the specialisation but using more conventional weapons might have a trait that allows them to do a little bit of healing with fire skills.)

It’s not just about kinetic energy. In fact, it’s not about kinetic energy at all, but the pressure the projectile applies to the armour. It is possible to break armour with no kinetic energy at all if you apply enough pressure (think of a vice…) – although admittedly, the pressure applied by a projectile will be proportional to energy, as described below:

Pressure is force divided by area. The force, according to Newton’s law, would be the force requires to reduce the projectile’s momentum to zero before it deforms the armour enough to punch through. A sharper point, however, leads to a smaller area, which can massively multiply the pressure if you achieve a narrow enough point.

Regarding my supposed assumption: Getting an edge sharper than steel on glass or obsidian is easy. It’s part of why broken glass is so dangerous. The various South American civilisations made use of this, although of course obsidian is more fragile than steel, and when an obsidian arrow is used against armour, it’s more likely that the point would shatter.

So, tests done with steel points do not necessarily apply. A material which has crystal-like sharpness and metal-like tensile strength may well exhibit superior armour penetration performance.

Note, though, that the quote doesn’t actually say that the points were sharper: ‘strikes like thunderbolts’ does sound to me like something might be exploding. A shaped charge effect would make kinetic energy effectively irrelevant.

Regarding Valis… Valis may simply have neglected to try bloodstone arrowheads, and igiven how far and wide the pages were spread, it’s possible that there were more pages we haven’t found. From E4, it’s pretty clear that the bloodstone weapon research did play dividends, but we don’t see mentions of that.

Material absolutely does matter. Crystalline materials such as diamond, obsidian, and glass can hold and maintain a sharper edge than metals. The problem is that in the real world, materials that can hold sharper edges are usually more susceptible to shattering – metal usually has the strength to hold up to an impact, while obsidian shatters against armour.

So if bloodstone can hold a sharper edge than steel and is strong enough that it won’t shatter on impact, it might make for a superior point.

Of course, the shattering might be the point. We see in episodes 1 and 4 that unstable bloodstone tends to release its magic in an explosion – this may be what is being weaponised. They may even have been looking to get a shaped-charge effect.

Yeah, that was raised in an interview a long time ago, and the response was basically that yeah, human-norn crossbreeding can’t happen. Olaf wasn’t exactly an expert on interspecies reproductive biology.

Crinn.7864:

That doesn’t make any sense outside of magical phenomena. Normal arrows can’t pierce plate armor because they glace off without expending enough kinetic energy to punch through. Piercing armor requires having a projectile that has sufficient kinetic energy to punch the plate before glancing.
Kinetic energy is mass * velocity2. So you either break the plate by having a really heavy projectile or you pierce it by having a extremely high velocity projectile. (which is how modern armor piercing weapons work.

It can make sense, actually, since penetration it’s not just about kinetic energy – the contact area is also relevant, with a smaller contact area being advantageous (with is why pick-type weapons are better at penetrating armour). A significant difference in sharpness, then, translates into the same kinetic energy distributed over a smaller area, which makes for a greater chance of penetration.

castlemanic.3198:

The situation is confusing but it seems more than likely that it IS Lazarus himself, because why would Bauer lie in his own journal. The truth is we don’t know whether it is Lazarus or not, so we’ll have to see. But to me atleast, with the Bauer diaries, it’s more likely to be Lazarus truly reborn.

Playing devil’s advocate here, but it’s possible that Bauer was paranoid enough to plan for the possibility of someone reading his journal.

They have started doing skill splits, in a ‘change the numbers but not the functionality’ manner. Thus far, though, in a reverse to the GW1 situation, the tendency has been for the stronger version to be in PvP to keep raiding performance calibrated at the level they want it.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

For that to hold true for the Elder Dragons, there would have to be parts of magic that they derive no value from. As far as we know, that’s not true- our biological systems expel what we can’t convert into energy, but the Elder Dragons sidestep that process by feeding on energy directly. It’d be more analogous to a plant expelling sunlight during the night and reabsorbing it by day. There’s absolutely no reason a plant would evolve to do so, but if it did, and if that light remained in the local system until it resumed photosynthesis, there’s no reason it couldn’t reuse it.

A better analogy might be oxygen or carbon dioxide. A plant is always respiring in the same sense that animals do, taking in oxygen to burn sugars into water and carbon dioxide and expiring the latter. During the daytime, however, photosynthesis reverses this process, taking in carbon dioxide and water to produce sugars and other organic molecules useful to the plant and releasing oxygen, a process which occurs at a high enough rate that over the course of its life, a typical plant releases more oxygen than it consumes and consumes more carbon dioxide than it releases. Regardless of its source, CO2 is still CO2 and therefore useful to a plant.

A literal approach to this analogy would imply that the dragons have some other resource that they combine with magic for sustenance. Lesser dragons certainly do eat regular food (see Aurene’s interest in fish, for instance), so it’s possible that the dragons use magic as a catalyst for more efficient digestion or in some other biological process.

Turk.5460:

Zintrothen.1056:

Some thief stolen skills have always been OP. Try being a mesmer and going up against Consume Plasma.

Your concern isn’t about all the boons it applies, its about the 2.5 seconds of resistance. If consume plasma lost all boons except for Resistance – I bet you’d still complain. A mesmer can easily stealth and reposition, or cycle blocks/distortion if they really want to wait out those 10seconds of all boons. But I guarantee this complaint here is coming from a Condi roamer point of view, which doesn’t need any buff, nor indirect buff (nerf to counterplay) what-so-ever.

Consume Plasma was a problem for mesmers before resistance even existed, so that’s not the issue.

Mind you, the thing that really makes thief a bad matchup for mesmer is that a thief in stealth basically shuts down most of the mesmer’s mechanics – can’t summon an illusion on a stealthed target, after all. Consume Plasma just adds insult to injury.

For the sword, there doesn’t appear to be any such trend. Ranger sword chain 3 is longer than their other skills. For guardian, thief, and mesmer, the third strike is the same length as the others (1/2 second). For warrior, the third strike is the fastest.

I suspect part of the logic is that:
A) Increased power of the third strike is also taken into account by the increased length of the chain to get to it (I think revenant has the longest sword auto of any sword-using profession).
B) Thanks to the rift mechanic, a chunk of the damage is delayed anyway, and can be dodged by getting away from the rift – this might be seen as justifying making the attack relatively quick while balancing the chain as a whole by slowing it down on a different step.

The rift was always on chain skill 3. The change to chain skill 2 was that chain skill 2 used to generate a projectile, which gave sword revenants all sorts of problems when going up against projectile hate.

Yeah, I consider both of those claims to be a bit of a stretch myself. E having influence over Kasmeer does not mean he’s Mesmer Collective (in fact, if E was openly in the Mesmer Collective, I suspect Anise would know. From Party Politics, Anise is at least giving the impression that she doesn’t know who E is, although I note there’s the potential for her to be using Aes Sedai-style misdirection there).

Regarding his profession… there are a few places where he fights in-game, so it might be possible to get an idea of what profession he is by observing what he does.

Nor do I think there’s evidence that E is ex-White Mantle, just that E has an interest in the White Mantle.

E being Faren in general, though, I think is quite credible, and I’ve yet to see a better theory. (Doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, but I haven’t seen it.)

sephiroth.4217:

Nighthawk.4687:

sephiroth.4217:

Nighthawk.4687:

draxynnic.3719:

I think the issue is that the fact that people can’t maintain a good rating by doing well in the first ten-twenty games and then playing the minimum required to prevent decay is exposing the flaws in the system that make it virtually impossible to maintain a good rating if you play regularly.

It’s not impossible, i usually play 2 to 3 games a day and this entire season I’ve been hovering around the 100-130 mark on the leaderboards. If you maintain like kitten win rate you should be able to hold your spot.

I think that’s his point…. You play the minimum to stay on the boards which is a couple games a day as opposed to s1-4 where people played 30+ a day. The system encourages people to play less to look more skilled which is sort of an oxymoron in itself.

From that pic I can respect Rarnark and Tivez though, they are the true PvP players.

Yeah but even only playing that I still have like 200 games played this season, people can’t play 30+ games a day anymore because they have to make a living now without esports. People also don’t want to play a lot because our games for the most part aren’t even fun, 7 out of 10 of my games have players so far below my skill level that I can just sit far and farm them. When you’re playing druid and you drop an engi in about 5 seconds something is wrong.

I’ve got a full time job and on my work days I can play about 10 but on the weekends my partner gives me half the day to play so I can get a good 20-30 from that and just assumed others would have a lot more, but I certainly agree that this season has not been fun at all with the matchmaking, I’m a Gold getting smashed back into Silver by the top 50 players so once I got into Gold for the 4th time I started to play TF2. (god I hate spy, they’re god kitten thieves with ally disguises!)

Which demonstrates why this is a problem. If you’re a low gold/high silver getting matched against top fifty players, you’re not going to have a good experience – in fact, as far as match quality goes, you might as well play unranked at that point.

That’s twice you’ve accused me of strawmanning. I’m honestly not sure how.

Strawman (definition): “an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.”

My understanding of your position is this: “The Pale Tree only has access to information through the Dream that only came from sylvari.”

In this formulation, your hypothesis is verifiable. If we find information that the Pale Tree has access to that was not known to any sylvari, then your hypothesis is disproven. Hence the example of A Light in the Darkness. While Trahearne does a lot of historical narration of stuff that was commonly known, there is clearly stuff in there that no sylvari knew – such as the existence and importance of the Source, as discussed in my previous post in this thread. A previous example given is the Pale Tree appearing to have an idea of what would happen to Ceara if she pushed past the Pale Tree’s blocks while using Omadd’s machine. My counterclaim is that the Pale Tree does have access to information that didn’t come from sylvari, through means that are presently unknown to us (this does not mean that she has access to everything, since we don’t know what rules the Dream might have and there may be limitations there, but they appear to be broader than just receiving information from sylvari).

Earlier in this thread, you made the counterclaim that while the Pale Tree can only receive information from sylvari, it can receive information backwards in time from sylvari in the future. This claim, if true, would render null the evidence presented in A Light In The Darkness, as everything in A Light In The Darkness that wasn’t known at the time could be coming from the future of Trahearne, sylvari Pact soldiers, and the PC themselves if sylvari. As a basis for this claim, you cited lines in the sylvari introduction that you believe support this interpretation.

I have provided my arguments as to why I don’t think that is the correct interpretation (certainly not the only possible interpretation) of those lines, which included the argument that the lines you claim are literally receiving information from the future could equally apply to what you refer to as ‘forecasting’ – using information from the past and present to predict the future.

(It’s worth noting here that, in the foreseeable future, we are unlikely to be able to perform any test that can distinguish ‘The Pale Tree can receive information from non-sylvari sources’ from ‘The Pale Tree can receive information from sylvari in the future’. Since the PC can be a sylvari, anything that the PC will ever know – and, therefore, anything we are likely to know as players for as long as sylvari remain playable – is then in the Pale Tree’s available pool of knowledge.)

If there is any misrepresentation of your position, please point it out.

Regarding Light in the Darkness:

I could pick up a few points, but there is one key point in Light in the Darkness, possibly the most important in the instance: the mention of the Source of Orr.

Trahearne, the world’s premier expert on all things Orr, didn’t know about the Source. In fact, based on Against the Corruption, he’s either forgotten or completely misinterpreted the mention of the Source until reminded by the PC.

If Trahearne didn’t know about the Source, then where did that information come from? There’s no indication that Caithe or any other sylvari knows about the Source either. That information didn’t come from any sylvari, it came direct from the Dream, or at least it entered the Dream through a non-sylvari source.

Therefore, it’s quite apparent that the Pale Tree is not limited to sylvari experiences… and this is just one case.

@Malice: That’s an interesting point. It’s well established that dragons know everything that those they corrupt knew, and Mordrem clones seem to retain the knowledge (and in Zojja’s case, even some of the will) of the original. Malyck’s ‘starting knowledge’ could have been the knowledge of the human he was copied from. He does say he was taught to fight by the Wardens, suggesting he didn’t start with all of the knowledge that typically comes from the Dream.

That, and the issue is not one about whether you can maintain your position, it’s that the respective positions are at tiers quite a bit lower than you expect. Making it harder for everyone to maintain their MMR obviously isn’t going to prevent people from getting into the top 250, it’s just that the bottom end of the top 250 is going to come at a significantly lower tier than it did before.

I think the issue is that the fact that people can’t maintain a good rating by doing well in the first ten-twenty games and then playing the minimum required to prevent decay is exposing the flaws in the system that make it virtually impossible to maintain a good rating if you play regularly.

If we work on the assumption that Faren is inspired by the Scarlet Pimpernel, though, that actually fits. The Scarlet Pimpernel wasn’t afraid of putting himself in the line of danger. Like everyone in the Pact, too, E probably underestimated Mordremoth’s ability to take down a fleet – he probably felt that the risk inherent on being in an airship that was hanging back from the fighting was worthwhile.

In fact, in some ways that sequence is evidence for Faren being more competent than he appears. Everyone laughs at Faren becoming “one with the jungle” and running around in a loincloth, but while they’re laughing at that they’re forgetting that Faren survived alone in a hostile jungle for several hours – or, rather, they’re too busy thinking “how did that idiot survive?” to actually try to answer that question.

Probably a population issue. Matchmaking has been terribad since SAB returned.

castlemanic.3198:

Clearly there is a lack of evidence as to who E is to make ANY assertions at all. Faren is not more likely than any other character. In fact he is less likely because he’s in the spotlight, which someone of E’s caliber would definitely not be. E works so effectively because nobody sees him. Nobody could possibly think “oh, this person must be the leader of a shadow organisation” because people barely interact with him. Being in the spotlight means someone is going to investigate you. Scarlet knows about the players personal story stuff because we’ve been in the limelight, she knows things that basically nobody knows. Because we were in the spotlight, she could check on our background, look things up and discover things almost nobody else knew. That’s the danger of being up front and center. Faren is upfront and center. His past will surely haunt him. Especially because he’s portrayed as someone who doesn’t think straight sometimes. Your “evidence” is anecdotal at best and based on imaginary information at worst. The theory has zero basis in facts. Quite honestly a red herring character is more likely than Faren considering all the evidence.

The problem is, that’s pretty much exactly how the Scarlet Pimpernel worked. Everyone knew Sir Percy Blakeney. Everybody knew him as a fop who couldn’t possibly manage a secret organisation. Nobody bothered to investigate because everything “knew” he couldn’t hide his underwear, let alone anything significant.

Ngeluz.4860:

Woh, just how powerful is Palawa Joko to be in a STALEMATE with an Elder Dragon?!! :O

Well, Joko does have the resources of the entirety of Elona…

Mind you, we don’t know how much Zhaitan committed to the front with Palawa Joko. Zhaitan might never have considered that front enough of a priority to throw any significant fraction of his strength into breaking that stalemate.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Simply put, we don’t know where Kralkatorrik went, we only know that he went somewhere. Now, he did not fly north, west, or northwest. But he could have flown south, southeast, east, or even northeast. We simply do not know.

Well… it could be hiding out in Deldrimor Front. Most of the boundaries with the Deldrimor Front are occupied by enemy factions (the west, mostly by dredge; the east, by the Dragonbrand), so it’s plausible that Kralky could have flown northwest and established a territory in the Deldrimor Front region, we just haven’t heard about it because nothing’s gone far enough north to encounter the charr or norn yet – or anything that has has been assumed to have come from the Brand.

Broadly speaking, I think all of Jormag, Zhaitan and Mordremoth have/had god complexes. The differences are in their dogma. Zhaitan’s message is essentially one of eternal life through undeath. Mordremoth’s dogma is that it is the source of life. While Jormag’s dogma is that it is the ultimate predator, and that other hunters can become stronger and rise in the food chain by accepting Jormag as their alpha.

Certainly. When I said that gains were from opportunism rather than strategy, I meant the specific gains, not the overall process. The ‘pressure’ stage clearly is part of the dragon’s strategy (whether it thinks of it as strategy or not). However, the dragon doesn’t care about specific targets.

For instance, consider Kralkatorrik (which seems to be what this conversation has spawned from – I really should read the initial thread…). The Dragonbrand is, essentially, in ‘pressure’ mode: every so often Branded boil out of the Brand and attack whatever targets their champions see fit to attack. However, it’s unlikely that Kralkatorrik really cares about whether a given ogre village gets corrupted or a Sentinel outpost gets overrun – it just cares that the pressure is maintained in general terms. Meanwhile, when the Dragonbrand was formed it was clearly in ‘active’ mode – Kralkatorrik had a clear target in mind (Glint) and was going to take its target out.

Now, you’re right that there may be an observer bias in play – just because the dragons aren’t launching an all-out attack on us doesn’t mean that they’re not launching an all-out attack on someone else. However, I think it is reasonable to presume that the dragons do have ‘pressure’ and ‘blitzkrieg’ periods from the evidence we have. The alternative would be assuming that most of the dragons spend most of their efforts throwing their big attacks at everyone except us and only occasionally think to direct their attention towards Tyria… which may work for dragons that are a long way off like Jormag, but doesn’t make so much sense for Zhaitan. (Note that those attacks on Claw Island you mention are all attacks that Commander Talon is using as his basis for laughing off the warning of Trahearne and the PC – they weren’t genuine attacks aiming to take the city, they were simply probing attacks to test the defences.)

Regarding Primordus and Jormag presently, though… I’d be curious as to just what the basis for deeming them ‘active’ is. In Primordus’ case it’s presumably the simple fact of his movement, detected by Taimi’s use of the magic map… but if he just claims the Fire Islands and stays there, this might not be a big deal for the rest of Tyria (unless he finds and eats the Komalie bloodstone, of course). In Jormag’s case… we purely have Braham’s word for it, and who knows what that big oaf interprets as ‘active’? He might be interpreting some ambitious Svanir initiating a push as Jormag being ‘active’, when in truth it’s just a minor escalation of the ‘pressure’ phase that Jormag doesn’t really care about.

Zintrothen.1056:

I’m glad you recognized that Tempest is a fairly balanced elite spec in a way. It’s still poorly designed mechanically, but the idea of the attunements going on longer CDs after using powerful CDs is a nice tradeoff. It makes you choose.

This is something I actually disagree on, in the context…

From a balancing perspective of the overload skills on their own, the effect you’re talking about certainly applies. You can use the overload, but it has a significant drawback, and this presents a choice in-game: is the overload worth potentially being locked out of an attunement? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and that makes for interesting gameplay.

On the other hand, from a build perspective… let’s say that overloads were given for free. Having the ability to overload would then be a straight-up upgrade. It might be a skill that you never use in practice, but simply having it gives you an option that somebody else who doesn’t have it lacks.

Of course, the whole point of my previous posts in this thread is that you ARE giving up something – the core traitline you could have had instead. Most tempests you see, for instance, probably would have had the Arcane traitline if they weren’t running Tempest. However, if the other traitlines offered real competition, we’d still see core elementalists in play, especially given how many pre-HoT elementalist players absolutely hate the Tempest. That we don’t shows that core elementalist just isn’t viable in the current environment, which shows in turn that the option of taking a third core traitline just isn’t offering enough relative to taking Tempest.

OriOri.8724:

draxynnic.3719:

While I agree in principle, I think there is something you’re missing here:

The tradeoff for taking an elite spec is supposed to be that you’re giving up a core traitline. The special mechanics you’re talking about are part of the elite specialisation traitline, and the tradeoff is that you don’t have other traits instead.

That’s a rather strange argument, considering it could be applied to any traitline and not just elite specs. As a mesmer if I take dom/dueling and illusions then I lose out on inspirations and chaos. But none of the 3 traitlines I do take change my class mechanic.

I don’t see the contradiction. Every build is going to have tradeoffs and opportunity costs. Remove elite specialisations from the picture entirely, and the tradeoff for taking any trait (or trait line) is that you’re not taking some other traitline.

Take the mesmer, for instance. Even if we assumed chronomancer didn’t exist (although mesmer is one of the professions that comes closest to core specialisations offering real competition with the elite for the third slot in PvP), taking dom/duel/illus means you’re giving up some good stuff in inspiration and chaos. You’re missing out on healing and condition cleanses from shatters in inspiration, you’re missing out on stability practically on tap and generous boon application from chaos, and other good traits that are in both lines. If you’ve taken dom/duel/illus you’ve obviously decided that represents the best set of traitlines for what you’re planning to do. The opportunity cost for the nice stuff you have is that you’ve given up on other nice stuff you could have had instead.

You say that they don’t change your core mechanic, but if you take the appropriate traits, they do. Domination turns your core mechanic into a means of applying vulnerability and stripping boons. Duelling turns it into on-demand blind. Inspiration turns it into heals and condition cleanses. Chaos turns it into personal stability and party-wide buffs. Illusions allows you to use them more often and adds a range of additional effects. All of these change your core mechanic – they may not offer a new option like chronomancer does, but by offering additional effects when you use the options you do have, they can change the way you use them in practise.

The problem is that the elite specialisations simply offer better bang for your proverbial buck for that third traitline in nearly all builds.

The last episode ended with the cliffhanger of ‘what is really going on with Lazarus?’ So my guess is that the next episode will address (perhaps not answer, but certainly address) that question…

Where that ends up going depends on how ArenaNet wants to play it. If the story ends up with Lazarus instantly becoming hostile, we could see more of the White Mantle’s holdings west/north of Kryta. If Lazarus remains an ally, then in order to have something to fight, it’ll probably be whichever frontline in the fight against the dragons Lazarus has chosen to go to.

In the long term… I don’t think it’s necessarily guaranteed that ArenaNet would repeat the model they used with HoT being initially revealed at the conclusion of the Living Story. ArenaNet could announce the expansion and start revealing features (such as elite specs) before Season 3 concludes, they’ll just need to be careful about spoilers.

While I agree in principle, I think there is something you’re missing here:

The tradeoff for taking an elite spec is supposed to be that you’re giving up a core traitline. The special mechanics you’re talking about are part of the elite specialisation traitline, and the tradeoff is that you don’t have other traits instead.

The problem is that a lot of the core traitlines just aren’t good enough to compete. Most builds, PvP and PvE alike, typically have two core traitlines that they really need to function, and one that is… kinda optional. In those cases, typically a third core traitline just doesn’t bring enough to the table to compete with the elite specialisation. (Thief in particular had it bad, with Acrobatics being gutted so that Daredevil could steal its job.)

The trick, I think, is not to impose crippling tradeoffs for using an elite specialisation, but making it so that the opportunity cost actually presents a difficult decision. For professions which actually give something up when taking an elite specialisation, this could mean buffing the core options (core guardian virtues, Death Shroud), but the big thing would be taking some of the truly underutilised traitlines and buffing them so that, if a build does not absolutely require an elite spec to function, those alternative traitlines actually start looking tempting. This can, and probably should, be combined with trimming the elite specialisations back a little, but I don’t think big trade-offs like the ones you’re suggesting are necessary. The trade-off should be that the traits from core specialisation X look really tempting, are you sure that the elite specialisation is actually automatically better?

Aaron Ansari.1604:

To build a bit on what Konig said regarding activity- it’s also worth noting that those phases seem to be in regard to the view point of the playable races. During that century or more of “inactivity”, as Taimi would put it, Primordus was clearing out vast tracts of subterranean area and warring against the dwarves- it was only “inactive” because the races we play as didn’t see the damage. That goes for most of the dragons here. Jormag’s “inactive” phase after it drove the norn south included the part where it all but destroyed kodan civilization, leaving a scant handful of sanctuaries intact enough to limp south. That decade after Zhaitan woke, while not a trouble to the big Krytan ports, saw hylek villages wiped out, a process that by GW2 may have killed as much as 94% of the population of what had once been their most populous region.

Personally, I would consider these part of the ‘active’ phase.

What does seem to be the case is that the dragons essentially have an ‘active’ phase and a ‘consolidation/recovery’ phase. During the ‘active’ phase, they actively seek to seize new territory, including sending powerful minions to launch assaults on enemy strongholds. Such phases typically end when an assault force is defeated, although it’s possible that there have been cases where a dragon has simply decided it’s bitten off enough for the time being and it’s time to consolidate. When an active phase comes to an end, the dragon concentrates on claiming the magic within its territory and building up strength for its next active phase. Such dragons are still not exactly ‘passive’ – they still send minions they consider to be expendable to push against lightly defended borders and/or to claim resources in raids (such as Zhaitan’s forces sending bodies back to Orr). However, any such gains are largely through opportunism rather than being part of the dragon’s strategy.

One could consider the distinction between a ‘non-active’ dragon and an ‘active’ one to be similar to the ‘phony war’ in the early months of World War 2 versus the blitzkrieg. In one case, they’re definitely hostile and will take advantage of any weaknesses presented, but they’re still conserving their strength. In the other, it’s an all-out attack (or preparing for one).

One problem with this interpretation is that we’re told Jormag is active, but thus far we haven’t really seen any indication of this apart from the Sons of Svanir being stirred up yet again - and the Sons of Svanir don’t follow the usual pattern of dragon minions, so the Sons of Svanir being stirred up doesn’t necessarily mean they’re receiving instructions from Jormag to attack. In Primordus’ case, we could consider his seizure of the Fire Islands to be all but a done deal – there are various places remaining on the surface, but Primordus may not care about them, and with maps being stuck in time, who says they weren’t all evacuated shortly after the PC’s visit? In Jormag’s case, though, the claim that Jormag is active probably should be backed up by Jormag doing something big, sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, given the way ArenaNet seems to be currently operating, Hoelbrak doesn’t really have an adjacent empty map region that can be turned into a battlefield. Maybe they could have the norn meet Jormag’s invasion head-on in Anvil Rock.

On rifles: there’s also the element that firearms typically have more complex engineering than a sword or bow. Perhaps not for early firearms which were simple tubes against which you held a burning match to the powder to set them off, but as soon as you progress to a matchlock (let alone a wheel-lock or a flintlock) then you move to increasingly complicated triggering mechanisms. And some of the stuff in the game is getting pretty modern or even technomagically postmodern.

Combined with castlemanic’s point – that firearms rely on chemical propellant (or, in some cases, technomagic) rather then the user’s natural strength – and the fact that bows, swords, and so on are easier to keep using out in the wilds without having to return to civilisation and restock, and using a firearm can be seen as taking the first step towards becoming an industrialised society that seeks to control nature rather than being in harmony with it. We see that in Tyria with the charr – their use of firearms was the first step towards an industrial revolution.

In truth, there is a continuum from ‘naked hunter-gatherer with no artificially created tools’ to ‘paved paradise and put up a parking lot’. On the other hand, any reasonable nature spirit would probably acknowledge that the first option just isn’t viable for most sapient beings (charr might get away with it…), so they have to draw a line somewhere. Use of firearms is a reasonable place to draw it, for the reasons discussed above – reliance on an external power source, more reliance on intricate engineering, and less independence from towns and cities.

More directly, the mursaat had magic-draining towers in Guild Wars 1. It seems reasonable that they’d be able to develop a magic-draining straitjacket to neutralise the magic of a single prisoner.

They’re different kinds of work.

A new race is a lot of artistic work. You need to create a wide range of appearances for that race. You also need to make sure that every existing armour set at least looks passable on that race – while I suspect this is probably less work than some people think (I think, although I might be wrong, that the armour set naturally fits itself to the model), they’ll probably need to at least test each of the armour sets to ensure that it’s being fitted properly and correct any major issues that come up.

A new race would also be story work. The laziest they could possibly get away with would require a story explaining how the character happened to join the Orders before Zhaitan’s death while the rest of their race remained isolated, roughly equivalent to the current 10-30 storyline, along with a home city and zones to support them. In the case of the tengu, this could mean an extended newbie zone that results in the PC being tossed out of the Dominion of Winds when they’re high enough level to survive in the region of the tengu gate in Caledon Forest. The later the hypothesised new race gets introduced, the harder it will be to integrate the new race PC into the storyline. For instance, let’s say a that the new race PC joined the main storyline at around the present time (right after Caudecus’ death). Such a scenario would then need to explain how the new race PC is being treated exactly like the veteran dragonslaying Commander is… or would require parallel storylines for as long as the new race PC s not treated the same as the Pact Commander.

A new profession, on the other hand… you need to program in the skills, generate visual and sound effects for those skills, and balance them. Historically, balancing is probably the hardest of those steps. On the other hand, creating a new profession can sometimes be easier to balance than adding new capabilities to an existing profession.

I haven’t been involved in either task or their equivalent, so I can’t really say which is harder than the other for sure… but it does seem that, with the current means of storytelling used in GW2, implementing a new race seems like it would cause more problems.

Ramoth.9064:

Well since you know what arenanet are doing in the next 30 years you should also tell us if they are making new races and classes, you seem to have 30 years of their game plan in your books.

More to the point…

The announcement that ArenaNet was dropping GW1 and moving on to a sequel pretty much came out of the blue. One moment people were wondering why we hadn’t had an announcement for campaign 4 and then BAM! Sequel on the horizon (note that GW2 was originally slated to come out… 2009, I think? Suffice it to say they significantly underestimated the development time).

Talking about races and professions…

ArenaNet initially expressed that they were more likely to go with new races than new professions because new races were less likely to cause balance problems, but I think they’ve decided that new races are simply too much work for too little benefit. Particularly since they way they’ve implemented the story, it would be really hard to slot in, say, a Tengu PC.

Regarding professions… they have the same problem they had in GW1. As the existing professions get new options, any new profession is either going to have less options than the others (as happened in GW1) or they’re going to need to do that much more work out the gate than with the original professions (the revenant, for instance, being developed alongside its elite specialisation: a future new profession would likely need to be released with TWO elite specialisations to keep up). It also creates an increasing burden for future expansions: every new profession is another elite specialisation that they need to make in each future expansion. Finally, unless introduced as “no, really, these things were around all along” (which creates its own problems), it increases the degree of ‘time warping’ each character requires: we already have an issue in which revenants go through the Personal Story and season 2 of the Living Story when according to the lore revenants didn’t exist on Tyria until Rytlock’s return at the start of Heart of Thorns.

Frankly, I’d like to see another profession… if for no other reason than to have something to use my level 80 boost on. But I don’t expect it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Of course, beyond “old school teachings”, in GW2 the schools don’t matter. Especially now that the Bloodstones have absorbed magic from two Elder Dragons, so not even the four Bloodstones have magic divided solely into those schools anymore.

That said, those ‘old school teachings’ probably have an influence – the traditions we have in GW2 now grew out of the traditions that were set when the four schools were important. Which is why we still have four magic-using professions that correspond fairly well to the original four schools (however much they have broadened out) rather than a completely different set of four, or a single generic magic-using profession that makes equal use of the entire spectrum.