Guild Wars 2

(continued from above)

3. That’s a good question. The ‘bloodstone madness’ concept, which the PC might well be at risk of developing according to some Current Events storylines, suggests that there is a limit to how much magic a human (or charr, sylvari, etc) can absorb safely without special preparation. The same might be true for the Pale Tree – she may not be capable of absorbing enough to become a replacement for Mordy (or any other dragon.

One thing to keep in mind with such discussions is that Glint has at least one other offspring – Gleam, whom we defend against destroyers in EotN (seems to be something about Glint’s offspring and being attacked by destroyers). What Gleam’s current status is is unknown, although it’s possible that Gleam was the mysterious voice who spoke to the Master of Peace when he retrieved Aurene’s egg.

Working through your other candidates:

a) I don’t imagine that there’s enough of the dwarven race left to absorb an Elder Dragon as the new Great Dwarf. We don’t know enough to rule it out, but the information we have suggests that surviving dwarfs are few and far between.

b) Koda is an interesting case, in that if Tyria does have a creator, Koda might well be the best candidate we currently know of. The kodan certainly have a belief that the beliefs of other races are essentially lies-to-children, steps on the road to enlightenment through a process of reincarnating your way up to the final stage (which, naturally, they believe to be themselves). Note that, even if this is true, there is no guarantee that humans and their gods fit into this system at all, as they’re not native to Tyria.

Koda’s current status is a bit of a mystery, however. Koda is attributed to having done great things in the past, but hasn’t been doing much lately. If the kodan origin story is correct, Koda does seem to have been around in a period where magic was wild, prior to the last awakening of the dragons – this means Koda predates the Six on Tyria. Koda’s lack of further interventions, however, suggests that either Koda no longer has much power to speak of, or prefers a hands-off approach. Certainly, the Voices appear to be communing with something in the Mists – but questions can be raised as to what. Is it the original Koda, or has something brought Koda down (possibly having his power taken by one of the dragons) and what is left in the Mists is an imposter or a mere remnant of what Koda once was? Is Koda what the kodan claim Koda to be, or is their belief that they are the pinnacle of enlightenment mere hubris, and Koda is merely another face of another being, possibly one we already know such as the spirit of Bear?

Regardless, one interesting aspect here is that presently, Koda is more associated with fire than ice, in the form of Koda’s Flame. The story we’re given is that this is because Koda tamed the spirit of fire, rather than the fire being something connected to Koda directly, but this could point to Koda being more suited as a replacement for Primordus than to Jormag. Conversely, the Great Dwarf in Guild Wars 1 was more associated with cold then fire – if the dwarfs are in a state to absorb more magic, they may be a better candidate to absorb that of Jormag.

c) There certainly is precedent for an artifact solution – that’s pretty much exactly what the bloodstones were, albeit on a smaller scale. The knowledge and magic to create the bloodstones appears to have been lost, but it’s possible that it could be redeveloped, and active management of the bloodstones could be used to keep magic in a steady state. One thing to note is that the Forgotten believe that the Seers used divine magic to create the Bloodstones, and furthermore, a form of divine magic that the Forgotten do not have access to. Given that the Forgotten are servants of the Six, and all indications we have are that the Six were not involved in creating the original bloodstone, this could indicate that the Seers had a different source of divine power that the Six did not provide. Finding out what (or who) that source was and gaining the use of that power could make for an interesting storyline.

That’s pretty much the size of it, if my hypothesis is correct – the Six are the equivalent of the dragons, but not from Tyria. The nature of the domains are different – those of the Six seem to be more about abstract ideas while those of the dragons are tied more to physical forces – but there are lots of potential explanations for why magic might collect into different domains in different places.

Currently, the domains of Death and Plants are ungoverned. Aurene absorbed part of the latter, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to make her the new Elder Dragon of Plants. We also know that she inherited an affinity for Kralkatorrik’s power – whether it’s actually possible for her to absorb enough of Mordremoth’s power to replace him, or whether it’s more like Primordus in that she’s picked up some plant energy to go with the crystal energy she already has, we don’t know.

So, moving onto your other speculations:

1. is indisputably true. One caveat is that the power of the gods, when released in an ungoverned state, seems to be even more destructive than the dragons. The end of Nightfall, for instance, implies that if someone didn’t claim Abaddon’s power, it would have exploded, taking out the PCs at the very least, likely the whole Realm of Torment, and maybe Tyria with it. So if we were to take out a god (again), we’d want to be pretty sure we had a replacement ready.

Note, though, that it’s questionable whether Balthazar is truly a god at present. His talk about having been diminished possibly means that he’s lost the mantle of War in some fashion that didn’t result in him being destroyed utterly. (We have precedent for that, in that Grenth replaced Dhuum but Dhuum wasn’t destroyed entirely… mind you, there is the argument to be made that Dhuum is still the god of Death, and Grenth has simply imprisoned him and is drawing enough of Dhuum’s power in order to fake it.)

2. This seems to be the entire purpose of Glint’s legacy – replace the Elder Dragons with her children who will care for the people of Tyria rather than casually destroying their civilisations on a regular basis, and ideally regulate magic into more of a ‘steady-state’ mode than the ‘boom-bust’ cycle that the Elder Dragons have imposed. It’s up to us to ensure that she matures into a dragon that isn’t going to go crazy with power like the Elder Dragons – and that she has the chance to grow.

(to be continued)

To me, a pantheistic god certainly does not have to be involved in creation. I consider a ‘god’, in a pantheistic setting, as a being who embodies some concept or aspect of the world, and who genuinely has a degree of influence over that concept or aspect.

For instance, Aphrodites in Greek myth is the goddess of love, and she was believed to have the power to make people fall in love. She certainly wasn’t around for the creation, but was nevertheless a god in the religion she was part of.

This definition, incidentally, would include the animal spirits and Elder Dragons as well as the Six. It would not include a simple rock, however impressive, since the rock has no sentience or agency. If a mountain was the body of an elemental spirit which had the power and agency to allow people it favoured to pass while creating potentially deadly incidents for those it didn’t favour, however, that could be considered to be the god of the mountain – a relatively weak and small god, as gods go, but a god nonetheless.

Regarding the Six specifically – I think there is more to being one of them then simply being powerful. Every rise of a god that we know of has required the supplanting of an existing god, making godhood a mantle that is passed from one to another (or, more accurately, taken by force in every instance we know about). Furthermore, on supplanting a god, the new god must embody the same broad concept as the one they replaced – they can emphasise different parts, but the broad concept must be the same.

This suggests that the status of the beings that the civilised races of Tyria call ‘gods’ is not something that can be achieved simply by becoming powerful enough. There is something else, that can only be claimed from an existing god. What this divine mantle actually is and where it comes from is unclear, but it’s not something you can achieve simply by absorbing a large amount of magic.

When we come to what Tyrians call gods… we’re discussing the prototype. Tyrians use the term ‘god’ to be one of the Six or a being with similar characteristics. Even a grawl would probably claim that their rock actually has those characteristics. The grawl would be mistaken, for sure, but their belief that the rock truly does have that power is sincere.

On the origin – I think Tyria and other worlds were spontaneously created through the mindless creative energy of the Mists. Upon Tyria, six ‘domains’ were formed and, at some point in Tyria’s history, each was claimed by a dragon, creating the Elder Dragons. Somewhere else – perhaps on the human homeworld, perhaps on some other world, perhaps in the Mists themselves – another six such domains formed. Either these domains were claimed by the beings that would be the ultimate predecessors of the Six Gods, or they formed with their own sapience and form and did not need to be claimed to be the first gods, but these are the domains that have been passed down* to the Six Gods we speak of today.

*Or at least, some of them have been passed down. Dwayna, Melandru, and Lyssa have no known predecessors – they may well be the originals themselves.

Idle question…

Why do you feel that Monk’s Focus has to be out of reach of a guardian healing spec?

With the exception of Merciful Intervention, and Renewed Focus as a means of refreshing virtues, meditations are all pretty much on the selfish side. Condition removal meditations can synergise with Save Yourselves, of course, but otherwise a support guardian, let alone a healing guardian, is likely to have better things to put in their utility slots than meditations. While a meditation guardian can absorb a lot of punishment thanks to the Monk’s Focus heals, it strikes me as likely that any healing guardian build is going to want enough slots filled with non-meditation skills that the effectiveness of MF will be reduced.

Like I said, they weren’t supposed to be clear upgrades.

ArenaNet has been slowly shifting the balance of those other professions so that they are less clear upgrades. There are thief builds used in some content that don’t have Daredevil, and core mesmer has seen some use in sPvP and even in some raids. The progressive buffs to core guardian and nerfs to dragonhunter are, IMO, starting to put core guardian on the cusp of being viable again in situations that aren’t DPS-is-king, but in situations that are, it’s hard to beat traps as a DPS enhancer. Elementalists are in a similar situation – the extra damage available through overloads is too good to pass up.

Necromancer and ranger… well, you’ve noted yourself.

In a way, this actually suggests that scrapper was better designed, in that it actually more-or-less hit the intended balance point when the others went wide. Scrapper isn’t intended as a DPS-oriented spec, so it makes sense that if DPS is all you’re interested in, it won’t have much to offer you.

Crinn.7864:

Probably because resource increasing traits are so strong, that you’d have to be a fool not to take them.
There is a reason that almost every single thief has trickery, and almost every necro has Vital Persistence.

This is probably a large part of it. Thief used to have considerably more resource-increasing traits, and they got nixed because they essentially turned into traits that you were basically required to have. ArenaNet is probably kitteno introduce more traits of that nature for that reason.

As has been noted above, the ritualist as a whole is probably too big to include it all into one elite specialisation.

Broadly speaking, there are three things I could see the ritualists bringing to the table:

Attack spirits (behaving similarly to turrets)
Support spirits (behaving similarly to GW2 ranger spirits)
Urns (similar to kits or weapon conjures)

I really don’t see ArenaNet making a whole new line of kits/conjures as an elite specialisation for a profession with a conventional weaponswap. Turrets also feel as if they’d be redundant on a profession that already has offensive minions. So my prediction would be support spirits.

Shroud would probably be a ‘wield the power of the Mists’ thing.

Weapon… I don’t know. I would have gone torch, as a sort of ‘spirit light’ thing, but that appears to already be lined up. Maybe a mace that they wield as a scepter of authority.

Lily.1935:

Putting them to rest likely because they have to as Priests. This doesn’t excuse them from their actions. The player will use them and likely the priests would use other spirits to banish these spirits. The fact is the in game mechanics show us how they treat spirits.

Oh and Allies? Slaves can be allies. Just because they’re allies doesn’t mean they are not slaves. Look at pokemon for example.

Now you’re trying to back up your generalisation with more speculation. I would say that most people don’t become priests because they’re contemptuous towards the duties of a the role.

The game mechanics merely show that they call spirits to their aid. The passage you cited states the same. The best evidence you have, in fact, is the visual appearance of spirits (complete with chains) – however, I acknowledged that even the good ones bind dangerous spirits to prevent them from doing harm. It’s not much of a step from there to consider them a resource to use against one’s enemies for the greater good, but such usage does not necessarily indicate indifference or contempt towards the spirit world.

Konig would probably be able to find more of the references, since he’s done more research on the topic than I have, but there are strong indications in Guild Wars that in most circumstances, a spirit that is ‘killed’ on Tyria simply has their soul returned to the Mists without permanent harm.

The broader topic of summons is an interesting one. Most necromancer minions are essentially mindless, programmed automatons under the command of the necromancer, so while many people find them disturbing, in the Guild Wars context, there’s no moral dilemma to their use (the Shadow Fiend appears to be an exception, as it seems to be a spirit… possibly part of the necromancer having already absorbed some ritualist traits). The elementals summoned by elementalists are a bit more questionable – one could argue that the elementals you get from the glyphs might not be true elementals, but simply constructs that resemble true elementals but are, again, automatons that simply follow the directions of their creator. That said, though, elementals are generally said to be of animal intelligence (sapience is part of what seperates djinn from regular elementals), so using an elemental in combat is probably viewed as morally equivalent to a war beast.

RabbitUp.8294:

Pacifism better make a return, that was one of the most visually impresive skills in the game.

Another consideration is that ‘blue mace lady’, the first Guardian concept we saw, had a flock of blue doves in the background, similar to the mesmer’s pink butterflies. While mesmers get their butterflies on a regular basis, the guardian’s doves were only ever in Pacifism.

RabbitUp.8294:

Honestly, I didn’t like how formulaic the old tomes left, so I hope we don’t force the ribbons and cones skills in there. If they can make them work, sure, but I don’t see why the skills between tomes should share a mechanical pattern.

Then, the aoe knockback and aoe daze were overlapping a lot, not every tome needs cc, so I would prefer they give each tome a more clear identity.

I suspect part of the symmetry came about because ArenaNet realised that elite transformations were difficult to practice the skills for, so they gave them skills with similar areas so that practice on one could translate into being able to quickly adapt to the other. While Courage is more defensive and Wrath is more offensive, it probably does help in learning the tomes as a pair when you know that pressing 3 and putting the cone over your allies will be beneficial with either, and so on.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Nonsense, and you seem to have already acknowledged that is by taking note of the various long-ranged builds with high damage.

Those professions have something in common – their close-ranged weapons are defensively oriented. For professions which have a close-in weapon which is oriented towards all-out offense, that weapon is almost invariably higher DPS than the ranged options. (The exception is engineer, since grenades out-DPS bomb kit currently, but that’s partly because bombs are power and the balance between power and conditions is out of whack at the moment… and a grenade engineer will still include bombs in their rotation to maximise DPS.)

There is a general balance to be had between impact (which can include DPS and team support), range, and personal survivability. Given the same degree of personal survivability, a close-range weapon will have more impact than a long-range one. This is how the game is balanced.

You clearly have something personal against anything ranged, so yes, I suppose this discussion really is quite pointless.

No, I have “something personal” against taking a unique weapon (no other weapon in the game has the combination of a close-in flamethrower-style auto with a long-ranged attack with a low recharge that allows you to operate in a standoff role if needed) that many people enjoy in its current state and making it more mainstream because it doesn’t fit some people’s personal playstyle.

If you were suggesting a new weapon with this sort of capability, I would not object. However, I would observe that such a weapon will probably be in a similar situation to what you complain about for druid and elementalist staff – you CAN support from maximum range if you want to, but to maximise your impact you’ll need to adult up and get closer to the action.

Short of anything new enough that I feel it needs a response, I consider this to be my closing argument on the subject. We’ve both presented our positions sufficiently for a reader to make their own decision.

I would laugh so hard if it turned out that the ‘sylvari are dragon minions’ reveal was fake all along – but I don’t expect it. Double-twists like that aren’t ArenaNet’s style, and the analogue with the Blighting Trees is pretty unsubtle. The argument could be made that the Blighting Trees are corrupted Pale Trees rather than the Pale Tree being a Blighting Tree that somehow came to be free of Mordremoth’s control, but the evidence does seem to be pointing toward the latter.

Malyck is a mystery, but apparently one that ArenaNet had intended to resolve in HoT but didn’t have the time to do it. However, ‘is there another cleansed tree out there’ is a pretty minor mystery compared to ‘where did the sylvari come from and what is their purpose?’ – each of the other races now have greater mysteries.

There is a trait in Herald that gives you toughness for every ‘pip’ of upkeep…

Lily.1935:

draxynnic.3719:

Lily.1935:

They where known to subvert the cost of powerful spells by putting that burden on their spirits as opposed to suffering it themselves and their indifference towards spirits or outright antagonism of the spirits lead them to enslave them. To assume that the Ritualist was the “Good” side of the summoners of the undead in comparison to the necromancer was a gross misunderstanding of what they actually did.

This is actually quite incorrect… or at least, it depends on the ritualist in question. Some behave more like shepherds, communing with spirits rather than dominating them, and only forcefully binding spirits when leaving them unbound would cause more harm than good, and even then, ideally only as a temporary measure until they can be moved on to the Underworld. Others do behave as you describe, but like necromancers, ritualists can be good or even depending on how they use their powers. Simply being one does not define a ritualist’s relationship with the spirits except that there is one that allows the ritualist to call upon them.

It absolutely is correct. Just read the https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ritualist

I’m quite familiar with what’s in the wiki. I’ve been involved in lore discussions for a while.

As a couple of quick referrals: Ang the Ephemeral, one of the ritualist trainers in Factions, is a spirit himself. The quest he gives you involves putting some bound spirits to rest – the Envoys were supposed to come and shepherd them into the next world, but they didn’t, so you do so the old-fashioned way (note that “killing” a spirit on Tyria often actually simply means that they are sent to the Underworld). The spirits which are bound to ashes are often those of honoured ancestors.

That’s just what I found in a quick search on the wiki. I’m pretty sure there are more cases of ritualists acting more as shepherds if one looks deeper, but it’s been a while and I don’t recall where they all are. However, I think that’s enough to establish that “indifference towards spirits or outright antagonism” is, at least, not universal. Even one of the very section you bolded indicates this – the term used is ‘allies’, not ‘slaves’, ‘minions’, or some similar term.

Are they capable of binding spirits against their will? Certainly, and this distinguishes them from rangers, and I think that even the more good-natured ritualists do so – in a kind of ‘this spirit is so angry that they won’t achieve peace any time soon, but in the meantime their rage can be used for the greater good’ way. However, some regard it as a spiritual path of communicating with the spirits, and helping spirits to move on when necessary.

We actually don’t know that the gods are unable to create, just that they didn’t create Tyria.

Either way, it doesn’t matter what definition people in the real world might apply to the term ‘god’. What matters is what Tyrians call a god.

Lahmia.2193:

Also to those saying Anet doesn’t want to give any attention to underwater skills, last balance patch they made changes to underwater Mesmer phantasm skills.

This may come across as overly cynical, but that may simply be a matter of maintaining plausible deniability. Since they’d updated all of the other phantasm skills over time to have an effect on casting beyond simply summoning the phantasm, it would have been really obvious that they’d abandoned underwater skills altogether if they’d left the underwater phantasms as they were.

Vagrant.7206:

Thing is, the benefits you’re touting in PvE are designed to help bad and/or incompetent players. Rezzing people from a distance is only useful if the player goes down, and that’s generally because they screwed up or aren’t good players. What you’re suggesting then is that our elite spec is great for bad players.

The damage buffs provided by scrapper are relatively small compared to the boosts the other classes. The support is for bad players.

Phineas’s entire point is that not everybody plays exclusively with perfect players. When you’re playing with players who are less experienced with the content, either because you’re training them up, you have a couple of subs, or that’s just who you happen to have, being able to offer that extra safety net can be useful. And everyone has their first time in a raid or other difficult content.

He said himself that if you’re confident in your team, then the core engi is the better way to go. And there’s nothing wrong with that – the elite specs weren’t supposed to be clear upgrades that are better than core-only specs in every respect.

@coro: Not always. DPS rangers in PvE do sometimes dispense with druid. Generally speaking, the sacrifice is the opportunity to take a third core spec line. Currently, most elite specs are balanced such that taking the elite is clearly better than taking a third core spec most of the time - however, both the balance and meta are moving in a direction which is making core builds more viable again.

@Malhovic Adhamar: I’ve said that replacing the toolbelt is something they could do, but that’s not a prediction that they will do it for the Holosmith. I’ve mostly said it in response to Lonami, who advocates wiping the toolbelt altogether because he(?) views the toolbelt as not being compatible with future elite specialisations.

However, as much as I disagree with the conclusion, Lonami does have a point. The toolbelt does occupy all of the F1-F5 slots, so unless ArenaNet expands the profession mechanic bar to F6, they can’t simply add a new profession mechanic to the profession bar as they did with druid, chronomancer, berserker and revenant. This is probably why scrapper uses the F-key, as clunky as that is (it could probably have been made a lot easier to use if it was just a matter of pressing F6, say, and it would either finish your current downed target or, if you did not have a downed target, find a downed ally to res). There are other mechanics that can be worked with – for instance, maybe using the weaponswap key could do something, or there cold be something like the daredevil where certain actions have an additional effect. However, if ArenaNet does want an engineer elite specialisation mechanic to use the F1-F5 keys, this will require replacing the toolbelt.

One could probably assume that any such elite specialisation toolbelt replacement will have F1-F5 skills that are suitable replacements for the toolbelt. Naturally, this will have an effect on the balance between the skills. Skills which have good associated toolbelt skills will become less attractive, while skills that have weaker associated toolbelt skills will become comparatively better as that drawback is no longer relevant. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, though, since it can contribute to such an elite specialisation having a notably different feel to the others.

That actually raises an interesting question…

What if “Justiciar Bauer” was Balthazar’s previous disguise all along?

RabbitUp.8294:

draxynnic.3719:

Regardless, we’ve apparently been told there’ll be no new healing specs. We’ll see if that means that the druid monopoly will be retained, or whether it’s more of a case of other professions not needing so much of a boost to be able to compete.

This is the weird thing, druid doesn’t have a healing monopoly, in that there are classes that can heal just as much and even better in the case of Ventari Rev and Aurashare water temp.

What druid has is the unique buffs. And from a design perspective, drud was so focused on healing, that almost every ability had a healing component. So, maybe that’s what’s missing from the next xpac. I mean nobody would ever call tempest a healing spec, but it did add a great healing build to ele.

Yeah, it is more of a case of a monopoly on being able to perform the healing role while also providing unique buffs.

Aeolus.3615:

Thats all good but how ANet does stuff is arround exaggerations… NO class should have 100% uptime of anything… its a awfull concept sicne ANet does not know how to work arround that unless for some cheap mechanics/gimmicks spam stacks etc.

IF the new class has 100% uptime quickness i hope it isnt shared… WvW for zerg aoe spam with 100% quickness and allacry together will make the gameplay from stupid to the worst mmo ever… wich will make wvw worse and make more players abandon the game..
This is why GW2is the worst pvp game, classes design are pve based…

Anet needs to make a book called “how to wreck your own product for dummies”

Again, you’re complaining about the effect on PvP balance of something that simply isn’t done in PvP.

The chronomancer perma-quickness rotation requires stacking your team in a predictable fashion and dedicating basically your entire build and rotation to it, giving you little left to fight other players with. It works in PvE boss fights because the bosses, by and large, do not respond to what the players are doing, but anybody trying this in a PvP situation will get laughed at, outmaneuvered, bombarded with AoE, and slaughtered, not necessarily in that order. I don’t think anybody with any experience in GW2 PvP would even consider trying it.

In the PvE situations, having perma-quickness may actually be better for balance than having lesser quickness uptimes – with perma-quickness, you only need one or two quickness-providing characters to do the job. Without, you’d likely just have people taking additional quickness-providing characters to fill the gap, leaving less room for people to bring professions who don’t provide group quickness.

I’ve never heard of that, and I’ve seen evidence to the contrary:

The Wartower Towertalk ‘lore of the classes’ podcast from a few years ago (2013, I think?) had Jeff and Ree saying that the main issue was basically that most of the experts in Tyria were in Lion’s Arch when it flooded, and after the flood contact with Cantha was lost entirely, and with Elona was sufficiently reduced that new experts couldn’t come in. What members remained of the old professions within Tyria weren’t enough for them to remain as distinct professions – some elements were absorbed into other professions, while others were simply lost.

You picked “Act with wisdom”, didn’t you?

I think sylvari lost a lot of what made them interesting when their origins were revealed. This has essentially turned them from being the most mysterious playable race in the game to the least – about the only thing left that isn’t known about them is how the Pale Tree came to be independent of Mordremoth, and whether the Pale Tree is capable of growing seeds for new Pale Trees. Basically everything else is known.

Chronomancers typically only achieve 100% uptime of quickness in raid situations, with concentration gear, predictable rotations, runes and consumables that increase boon duration, the allies receiving the boon to be appropriately placed, and so on. It’s not something that you’ll ever see in PvP.

I’m pretty sure that any future ‘100% quickness uptime’ spec will be the same. You can do it with a specialised build when spanking a boss, but you won’t see it in PvP situations, where people are usually using a completely different build.

We’re not talking about anything relevant to PvP here, but to raid balance. And in that context, balance would be improved by breaking the monopolies.

Lily.1935:

They where known to subvert the cost of powerful spells by putting that burden on their spirits as opposed to suffering it themselves and their indifference towards spirits or outright antagonism of the spirits lead them to enslave them. To assume that the Ritualist was the “Good” side of the summoners of the undead in comparison to the necromancer was a gross misunderstanding of what they actually did.

This is actually quite incorrect… or at least, it depends on the ritualist in question. Some behave more like shepherds, communing with spirits rather than dominating them, and only forcefully binding spirits when leaving them unbound would cause more harm than good, and even then, ideally only as a temporary measure until they can be moved on to the Underworld. Others do behave as you describe, but like necromancers, ritualists can be good or even depending on how they use their powers. Simply being one does not define a ritualist’s relationship with the spirits except that there is one that allows the ritualist to call upon them.

Personally, I’d actually consider it to be a good thing if that happened. One of the things in the GW2 manifesto was that you shouldn’t have to wait for a specific profession to bring a specific capability before you can do content. Under that thinking, monopolies that are as impactful as 100% group quickness uptime should be broken, either by removing the capability or by granting it to other professions.

Again, I like the Tempest and Berserker mechanics. Overloading is a fun mechanic (even if I would be inclined to say it possibly shouldn’t have been the mechanic for the first elementalist elite specialisation), and Berserker makes using adrenaline a lot more interesting than core warrior. YMMV, though.

Onto the rest, though: Well said. One gets the feeling the way some people talk that everybody is walking around with IDDQD and can never die, and that taking a little longer to kill the enemy is the absolute worst that can ever happen. Now, if you only ever play in a team that works together like a well-oiled machine that may well be the case… but for most people that ISN’T the case. People play some content solo, have learning curves when they first go into group content, or are in groups with people who are still learning even if THEY have mastered a particular piece of group content, and things that help keep you (and your team, if applicable) alive without biting too deeply into your DPS can help in these situations.

It probably doesn’t help that raids have explicit timers, which add more pressure to DPS at all costs… but I do wonder how many groups going in with the ‘DPS at all costs’ mentality end up wiping over and over again when accepting a slightly lower DPS might actually allow them to, if not beat the encounter, at least have more of an opportunity to learn the mechanics so that they can beat it when they do switch to full DPS.

Ghotistyx.6942:

The only connection to mesmer are the supposed mantras as skills. Axe has no relation, kit-like virtues are engineer related, initiative pips are thief related, and the rest of the unknown aspects have undetermined relation. Just mantras don’t make for a particularly strong case.

The leaker also said that the new guardian spec was able to provide permanent quickness to a raid group (or at least a portion therof), which is essentially taking (part of) the role currently taken by chronomancer. I think that more than the mantras was what RabbitUp was referring to.

However, this is a chronomancer capability, not a core mesmer capability. So if the leaker’s testimony is accurate, then what you’ve essentially got is two elite specialisations arriving at a similar direction that is outside the capabilities of either core profession.

I’m also expecting that the new elite specialisation will have other things they can do, just as chronomancers can do more than being a source of quickness.

Orr was still the holy city of the human religion, so while there were certainly no live humans, human knowledge and their connection with the gods should have been much more relevant.

On the knowledge perspective… much of the knowledge of Orr’s history should have come from humans. It should have been a human scholar or priest who established what rites the Lyssan priesthood would have used for interring the dead, for instance, and Priestess Rhie really should have known the rite to invoke the Seventh Reaper without an asura butting in with a technomagical psychometry device to show her how to perform a ritual to her own god. Trahearne could still have been the expert on Orr as it is now, but the expert on Orr as it was should have been a human.

On the religion perspective… all those cathedral events? It should have been the role of humans to deal with those, performing rites at each of the cathedrals to reconsecrate them and deny them to Zhaitan… or even turn their powers against Zhaitan. Instead, we get some asura technomagical device that shuts down the energy flow between the cathedral and the shrines, and in most cases it isn’t even a human who plants it.

This is the sort of thing we’re talking about. What we got was essentially humans being marginalised in the ruins of their own history. It would be like the Rata Novus event chain having Agent Zildi’s reprogramming of the defences replaced by Havroun Weibe running around performing supplications to Raven to make the Pact’s soldiers look like Rata Novan citizens. You can come up with a reason why it would work, but it’s really not how it should have been done.

It’s probably harder to do this in a land that humans actually inhabit, but given the precedent, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. Cantha, for instance, could be presented as being so xenophobic that foreign humans are treated no different to nonhumans. (Also, as a note, I would be very surprised if we ever do go to Cantha in GW2. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless.)

Bearhugger.4326:

I didn’t think they would go as far as to make them the “hero” race of the game though. It felt like they were trying to “force” us to like the race by putting a Sylvari in the foreground at every corner, and they went as far as putting a Sylvary-exclusive achievement in HoT. I happen to not like the Sylvari very much, so it came out as more annoying than cool to me.

Yeah, making it required to have at least one character of a particular race to get the act mastery achievements was a bit rude. Simply having the achievements I think is fine, but they shouldn’t have been required for the act mastery.

More broadly… I think, at this point, the sylvari story has been pretty much told. There are a few loose threads hanging, but this is ArenaNet… there always are, and I wouldn’t hold my breath on any of them getting resolved any time soon. The current direction of the story seems to be pointing to humans being the sylvari of this arc, but… we’ll see. As Astralporing said, I would have expected humans to have had a much more important role in Orr.

Personally, I’d say they’re all doable.

For Glint, I think the only skill that’s problematic is the Facet of Elements active, but that could just be made into a column that centers on your target (or on yourself if you have no target selected).

Jalis is a little more difficult, but the ‘road’ could be made into a corridor in front of the player when underwater, or reworked to have a different area and appearance but holding the same function.

Ventari could be made to just have the tablet stick to the player by default. Or you could make skill 6 call the tablet to you and then send it out forward, with a second activation while it’s moving causing it to stop. Or if push comes to shove, just have the tablet always remain on the revenant and give skill 6 a new functionality underwater.

It’s pretty clear, though, that ArenaNet has pretty much abandoned underwater combat for the time being. They probably simply reached ‘minimum viable product’ for underwater revenant and stopped there.

Well, I’ve generally regarded guardians and mesmers as being somewhat two sides of the same coin… or at least adjacent sides on a polygon. They have a lot of similarities, and chronomancer moved mesmer even closer to guardian in many ways (high block uptime, more melee-oriented focus, fields that harm enemies while aiding allies). Alacrity is something completely new, of course, and being able to grant perma-quickness to a party is expanding on a capability which was shared between the mesmer (Time Warp) and guardian (Feel My Wrath) beforehand.

If the leak is accurate and one of the main features of the new elite spec is the capability to grant perma-quickness, then I’d regard that as more of a ‘meeting in the middle’ scenario.

Regardless, we’ve apparently been told there’ll be no new healing specs. We’ll see if that means that the druid monopoly will be retained, or whether it’s more of a case of other professions not needing so much of a boost to be able to compete.

Oh, it definitely could have been linked up better together. However, I think the various ideas that went into the plot helped generate some of the complexity – instead of having one clear villain who was the target from early on in the story (as has happened for most of the storylines since Prophecies) you have two major and one relatively minor villain group to deal with who are hostile to one another, to the point where the main thing that made one of the major villain groups villainous was the method they chose to ward off the other, and before you’ve finished you’ll have fought alongside each of the major villain groups against the other.

Compare this to, say, Nightfall, which while probably better executed overall, was pretty much a straightforward case of peeling your way through the layers of catspaws and commanders until you get to Abaddon himself. Would Prophecies have been as interesting if we were fighting puppets of Khilbron all along, or if we cast down the mursaat headquarters and there was no twist that we’d actually made things worse? Probably not.

Xaylin.1860:

Meanwhile, you suggestion is picking a Glyph plus the related trait to get perma Swiftness. Why would any Elementalist ever make such an investment? You said it yourself: There is a way less expensive Minor for movement speed. However, what about all the Elementalists not picking Air? Why is Air okay, but Honor isn’t? Why is it okay for other classes to switch traits or utilities, but it is too much of a bother on Guardian?

20% reduced cooldown on your selfish heal of choice is nothing to be sneezed at. That said, once you’re invested into Air you already have the 25% move speed boost when attuned to air anyway, so adding Swiftness is a smaller boost.

Generally if I want to run somewhere as an elementalist, I grab staff and alternate Windborne Speed and the glyph while in air attunement – that will do it. If, for whatever reason I don’t want to run staff, or I want the extra wiggle room, taking the glyph trait from Air will do it with the glyph alone. If for whatever reason I don’t want to run the air traitline, I can slot Signet of Air while running.

With all this said, though, some maths:

Using Retreat on recharge grants 33% additional move speed for 20/24 seconds with Pure of Voice. This works out to a net 27.5% increase – which is better than the passive 25% traits and signets. Without Pure of Voice, it becomes 33% additional move speed for 20/30 seconds, for a net 22% increase – a little less than the passive stuff, but not by much. When running through hostile terrain, as well, guardian gets the benefit of Aegis blocking stray hits and preventing them from putting you into combat mode, thereby slowing you down – this can make a big difference sometimes.

Coffietire.2783:

Sigmoid.7082:

Coffietire.2783:

Since you shared that image, I decided to look closer and something doesn’t quite make sense.

It appears as though you unlock your weapon, then your first minor trait, then a tier 1 major trait and then… another minor trait? To make things stranger, it appears as though you would unlock all 3 minor traits before you even get your first utility skill!

If this is how the final release will play out, it’s gonna suck for revenants.

It pretty much means you can play the spec more completely a little faster since you get all the minors pretty quick.

Depends on your definition of “more completely”
Frankly, when it comes to the early stages of leveling up an espec, I’d much rather get a few of the utility skills sooner than the later minor traits. That means I actually have stuff to play around with as I unlock it.

For example: If the reaper had unlocked in the same fashion, we’d be in the situation where, "I can’t test out that sweet heal skill that makes me shout, ‘Your soul is mine!’ but at least my chill lasts longer. That’s cool I guess :/ "

The problem is that if you’re using an elite spec without having the minors unlocked and at least one major at each tier, then you’re playing with unfilled slots in your build, which can work out in one of two ways:

1) The new elite specialisation is so overpowered that you can play it with traits missing and still be as good as or better than the old builds (generally not desirable from a balance perspective), or…

2) You’re objectively less powerful than you would be with an old build – a state of affairs that is generally not considered ideal when exploring an unknown area with a steeper learning curve than core Tyria.

Starting the unlock process with the minors and then one major of each tier (assuming that the majors don’t assume you already have the elite spec utilities) avoids this problem. You can run the elite specialisation, make use of the elite specialisation’s mechanics, and use the new weapon without having the new heal or utility skills. From there, you have a solid basis from which to build on by adding utility skills and alternative traits.

One could think of this as essentially the unlocking equivalent of a minimum viable product. The minimum viable product for an elite specialisation is having the minors and one major from each tier unlocked. Further unlocks add new options.

I wrote an article on this topic about a year ago.

Personally, I like the way skill 2 has a short enough cooldown that it works as a substitute long-range auto when needed. I’d probably make it ground-targeted, remove the cooldown increase on detonation, and reduce the healing on detonation if needed for balancing.

Mind you, if skill 2 was able to do current detonate healing with a 3s recharge, that would probably make staff a viable healing option right there. :P

Like I said, it’s part of the balancing of Guild Wars 2 that the closer you are, the more impact you can have. This generally applies to DPS as well – professions whose top DPS is ranged are exceptions to the rule, and generally pay for it with a lack of defensive skills on those weapons while their melee sets are more defence-oriented.

Druids and elementalists can support from long range range (don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve cherry-picked only skills which have or can have healing for the druid and elementalist, and ignored other forms of support) – however, if they’re willing to take the additional risk of getting closer, they can do more. This isn’t Guild Wars 1 where monks sit on the backline.

Listing a whole bunch of skills doesn’t prove anything. What matters is how and, since Guild Wars is based on limited skillbars, if they are used. In practice, the support skills that guardians have taken in practise tend to be shouts (600 range) and, when relevant, projectile hate (which calls for the group to congregate in the protected area). Largely because, while shouts may have less effect per activation, the recharges are low enough that they provide more support overall.

It amazes me that you’re trying to claim Merciful Intervention as a long-range skill when the whole point of the skill is to get you close to an ally that needs your support.

Regardless, we could keep going back and forth for months. We’ve both presented our arguments. You’re not going to persuade me on this, and it’s pretty clear you’re digging your feet in, so I’m not going to waste any more time on this.

I think tempest and berserker do have more identity than that. A lot of elementalist players, I think, would have preferred their first elite spec to be more “more elementalist” – tempest mechanics clash a bit with the vanilla elementalist playstyle and push it towards a different role. Berserker places a strong focus on being able to make more use of the adrenaline mechanic – for people who enjoy that, it will still have its draws to be used in the future.

That said, I could see each being overshadowed in the future as you say. Tempest is a support spec, and it may retain that position in sPvP and WvW, but in raids it’s basically being used because overloads are still more of a DPS buff than taking a third core specialisation – if elementalists ever get more DPS-oriented elite, that will probably take over. Berserker… yeah, in role, that pretty much is just ‘more warrior’. Which may be a good thing, if future warrior elite specs go in different directions, but it does make it easily overshadowed. Scrapper does bring some fairly unique functionality to the proverbial table… even if that functionality isn’t useful in raids.

If you go down the Priory path, you use an idol to channel an avatar of Balthazar, but that was set up by Steward Gixx who’s making snide comments through the entire thing, and if you didn’t pay close attention you might come out of it thinking that humans weren’t required to be involved in that at all (the only indication is that all of the scholars who perform the ritual are human). One of the options for one of the story steps near the end involves summoning one of the Reapers of Grenth, but the asura have their hands over that one as well – ArenaNet felt the need to insert a bunch of asura to show the priestess of Grenth how it’s done.

Both humans and norn get the occasional moment of importance in the post-LA personal story, but they’re so overshadowed by the other three that what is in there feels like a token effort. Similar observations can be made for the races that are out of the spotlight in the Living Story – they’re not completely forgotten, but they’re clearly not the ones driving the story either.

You could think of it this way: How much would the story have changed if a particular race had not been included?

For the personal story, removing the humans and norn would have changed a few instances, but would not have changed the overall direction of the plot. Orr was pretty much treated as a generic abandoned ruin – the fact that humans had history there was really not particularly used there. Orr could have been the ruins of the civilisation of some ancient race we’ve never heard of with their own gods, and the story would have worked out the same. Meanwhile, sylvari provided the drive, the asura provided the knowledge, and the charr provided the heavy equipment. (An argument could be made that the charr contribution could have been replaced by more asura tech, but what we see is the majority of the equipment being charr with asura tech performing specialist functions).

A similar analysis could be made for the various Living World seasons. For instance, the charr in Season 3 have had a few brief appearances, but the story would not have significantly changed if they weren’t there.

Ashantara.8731:

To have a Shaolin-like fighter/healer profession in style and skill is plain cool. That makes him (and Monks) the flagship in my eyes.

Monks may have had some Eastern flavour in their appearances, but they were never a Shaolin-like fighter/healer profession in playstyle. They pretty much played like a typical healing profession like you could find in most MMOs. There were no martial arts in the GW1 monk, it was all magic, and lore-wise the guardian is the result of monks wanting more martial capabilities. So when they did adopt martial training it was with heavy armour and weapons, not hands and feet.

The Diablo 3 monk is more like what you imagine.

It’s a cheap shot, but the fact that the monk isn’t even in Guild Wars 2, and let’s face it, will probably never be, pretty much eliminates it from ‘flagship’ status.

(And to be honest, the only thing that was really interesting about Mhenlo was his interactions with women – particularly, but not exclusively, Cynn. Apart from that he was pretty much the stereotypical priest-type.)

I’m not being triggered. I’m making the observation that I don’t think this argument is going to get anywhere and we should probably stop derailing the thread.

I will say elementalist staff and druid, actually. Yes, you get benefits for getting into closer range. That’s a balancing factor – generally speaking, across the game, the closer you are to someone, the more you can do. This is why melee weapons almost always do more damage than long-ranged weapons (the exceptions have greater defenses instead).

Elementalist and druid are more limited in their healing capabilities if they remain at a standoff distance. Even Ventari revenants have more ability to support their allies if they’re willing to get in close themselves. This is the price for staying at a distance from the enemy (or, at least, the ally under attack) where you are, in most cases, safer. Any hypothetical future guardian support build will almost certainly have the same balance consideration.

(To a lesser extent, mesmer and necromancer can both support at 1200 range, although neither are focused on healing.)

To bring things back to an area that’s even tangentially related to the topic:

Presently, basically all of the guardian’s support options have a 600 range limit, so the autoattack having a 600 range limit is just establishing how close a guardian should be for optimal support. You can theorise that the Firebrand will come with longer-range stuff all you like, but 1) that’s speculation, they may shorten the ranges even if they do base the ‘healing tome’ on the old Tome of Courage, 2) a core weapon should not be designed with the assumption that it’s being used with an elite specialisation, it’s the elite specialisation weapon that should be so designed, and 3) whatever may come with the Firebrand, they’re still going to have, in their toolbox, a set of support skills that are only useful within 600 units from core guardian, so unless the Firebrand stuff is ridiculously overpowered compared to the core guardian stuff, there’ll still be motivation to stay close to who you’re supporting. A weapon that encourages you to be within 600 units, while still having options with a longer range, seems entirely fitting for core guardian. And let’s not forget that Orb of Light has a 3s recharge – I think simply throwing that on recharge actually gives you higher damage than an elementalist using Water Blast, assuming the orbs hit (and the orbs pierce, so it multiplies against multiple targets). Believe me, I’ve used Orb of Light as a substitute long-ranged autoattack a few times. It works. It’s not optimal, sure, but you can’t have everything.

RabbitUp.8294:

I don’t see how guardian’s staff 1 is more brainless than any other auto in the game. Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty brainless, as you say you point at the general direction of the enemy and click 1, but that’s what all ranged autos are.

Let’s be blunt here, we’ve been arguing over whether something takes 1% of your brain capacity or 1.1%. Autoattacks really aren’t supposed to take a lot of thinking beyond fairly basic positioning – it’s the other skills that are intended to take thought. A long-range autoattack isn’t much different from a medium-range cone in this respect.

Personal story from Lion’s Arch onwards was essentially a group effort by the sylvari, asura, and charr, with humans and norn essentially being spear-carriers. (Something I consider to have been especially problematic given that, well, it was Orr we were talking about.)

LS1 was basically driven by asura and sylvari, noting that LS1 was essentially villain-driven with the ‘good guys’ basically never taking any proactive actions to speak of. So, essentially, it was driven by Scarlet and the Inquest.

LS2 and HoT… basically sylvari all the way with a little bit of human, with cameos from the others.

LS3 has thus far been balanced between protagonist asura and antagonist human (and Balthazar, who for story purposes counts as being part of human lore). Depending on what happens in the final episode, the norn might finally get a proper spotlight.

From the expansion leaks:
[spoiler]The expansion looks to be going human all the way, given the destination, although geography means the charr might play a significant role too. Given what happened to Orr, though, there’s no guarantees that the location will actually mean that humans will be dominant.[/quote]

A bouncing attack isn’t exactly brainy. If you’ve got autotarget on, you don’t need to choose a target and it will hit something within 1200 units – Wave of Wrath at least requires you to be positioned and oriented to use it appropriately. There’s little choice involved in a bounce when it’s the server that decides where the bounce goes, whatever criteria it might have for doing that.

Here’s the thing: I find the guardian staff, as it is, fun. Often underperforming in the current balance, granted, but fun nonetheless. I would find it a lot less fun if it was changed as you suggest. Obviously, you disagree. However, the playstyle of supporting from long range is already supported by several weapons and builds in the game – you’ve already cited a few yourself, and I could cite a few more. I really don’t see why a playstyle I enjoy playing should be deleted from the game in order to create Yet Another Max Range Support Weapon. Particularly since the staff already has an ability to strike at 1200 range through Orb of Light, and buffing that skill as I suggested could well serve to make it a perfectly serviceable long-range support weapon while still retaining the option to get in closer for greater impact.

Which, again, was the theme of the core guardian’s ranged weapons (for scepter, the downside of staying at long range is the risk of failing to hit due to the low projectile speed). Yes, dragonhunter longbow works differently. Part of the whole point of elite specialisations is an opportunity to mix existing professions with elements that don’t fit the core flavour.

At the bottom line – you asked why I would be sad to see Wave of Wrath go. I answered. You’re now trying to argue that my opinion is invalid. I don’t see this going anywhere productive, particularly since staff is not the topic of this thread.

And there aren’t many of those left either.

Interestingly, from what I’ve heard, Prophecies came about because the various writers disagreed on what the story should be, so they ended up compromising and doing a bit of each. Just goes to show that sometimes designing by committee CAN work.

Amaimon.7823:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Well ley lines do seem to have a source: the Elder Dragons while they sleep.

I’m gonna nitpick a little and say the leylines have no association with the elder dragons. Rather, the Leylines are just vessels for magic to flow through, they’re dry during the end-game of the dragons, but re-absorb the magic that leaks from the dragons when they go back to sleep. So in the sleep/wake cycle they’re inversily overflowing and drying up.

I’d say that they don’t directly associate with the elder dragons, but they possibly do indirectly. Elder dragons probably prefer to hibernate in places with ley lines, so that they can consume the ley energy when they awaken (we didn’t know about ley lines when we went into Orr, but with all the descriptions of how magical the place was, it probably was a bigger nexus than Lion’s Arch).

Meanwhile, if for whatever reason an elder dragon hibernated somewhere where there wasn’t a ley nexus, it’s possible that one would form there in order to allow the magic released by the sleeping dragon to escape. When the dragon awakens, the region turns from one of positive magical pressure to negative, and the magic starts flowing back in along the same channels it formed on the way out.

Alternatively, increase the Swiftness duration (or even the duration of both Swiftness and Aegis) to 24 seconds, for the same effect without buffing (or with a smaller buff to) the Aegis component.

Mesmers rarely use Well of Precog since it got changed to granting aegis. I wouldn’t call three activations of Aegis over three seconds with a 30s recharge (before Alacrity) to be doing Aegis better than the guardian. It may, arguably, be better than any single guardian skill*, but guardians can stack multiple ways of generating Aegis and set up various synergies through traits.

*I’m not convinced. It’s up to 15 Aegis procs in theory, but unless the area is under heavy attack, a lot of those are likely to be wasted, and if it IS under enough fire to proc all of the Aegises, it might still be a net disadvantage to stack there unless it’s part of a stacking tactic in general. Well of Precognition, to get full benefit, requires five people to remain in an area for three seconds, and the aegis from the well only lasts three seconds. The Courage active and Retreat, on the other hand, might only provide one Aegis, but they require less tight congregation and linger for quite a while, and so may be more likely to actually trigger. There are circumstances where the effect of Well of Precog is certainly desirable, sure, but it’s not objectively better than Retreat, let alone the full set of Aegis sources available to the guardian.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Another suggestion:
What if aegis stacked by intensity?

I like this idea. Has counterplay, but means that aegis can be something you can stack proactively to block multiple attacks.

It would also allow for skills that apply multiple stacks of Aegis in one go, which could in turn have interesting interactions with traits.

Belorn.2659:

Wonder how many will try to create 4 free accounts and in-game mail them gold to level-craft until lvl 60. At that point they got their own reward squad.

I must admit, I was wondering about the wisdom of giving extra rewards to commanders. Granted, commanders have extra responsibility, but the real benefit to being a good commander should be that your world does better and you get better rewards because of that. Linking rewards directly to commanding could lead to the ‘too many chiefs’ problem developing.

I’d say the reflect shield does have its advantages over Toss Elixir U – it’s guaranteed to be a reflect, for one, and while it has a shorter uptime, the shorter recharge and the fact that it’s centered on you makes it less likely that some of that uptime will be wasted. Of course, Toss Elixir U also has its advantages. The real choice between them is probably more based on whether you want Elixir U or the bulwark gyro more – and the bulwark gyro on its own isn’t worth taking scrapper for.

Realistically speaking, probably the main reason I’m running it even on a flamethrower camper build is that I like pulling out the hammer occasionally as a melee option. Without that element, taking a third core engineer trait probably is better even if you’re running flamethrower – you can use HGH to compensate for the lost Might stacks, and losing less from switching out of flamethrower can actually be an advantage.

Vagrant.7206:

• Most gyros have single-target functions, or their functions serve extremely limited roles. This cripples their usefulness in PvE (besides sneak gyro in limited situations)

Bulwark has its uses – keeping people alive is keeping people alive, and the reflect shield can also be useful. Blast gyro… eh, Air Blast will usually do the job. Purge Gyro… I’ve rarely felt the need to bring heavy condi removal in PvE. Shredder Gyro is just terribly designed full stop.

Sneak Gyro has the issue that… well, does Detection Pulse actually do anything at all in PvE? Maybe against skelk, I guess, but most HoT enemies with stealth work by the Nuhoch mastery mechanic instead.

If all you care about is DPS, then torch, with all its flaws, is the obvious offhand to take.

Shield, as would generally be expected, does not add a lot to your DPS. Shield of Judgement avoids being a DPS loss over autoattacking, but only barely (unless your leveraging aegis-related traits like Shattered Aegis). SoA is a DPS loss. In a condi-based spec, SoJ contributes to Justice passive procs.

For focus… Ray of Judgement often IS a DPS loss, depending on how it bounces, and it may actually benefit from a condition build (a hit is still a hit for the purpose of Justice passive procs, even if it’s a weak hit). Shield of Wrath adds to your DPS if the blast triggers, since it has instant activation it won’t cut into your autoattack DPS, but with a long recharge it doesn’t add a huge amount to sustained DPS – it’s not really what it’s taken for.

insanemaniac.2456:

Ivantreil.3092:

leviathan.2148:

I’ve yet to meet someone who even picks Scrapper traitline for the traits alone and not for the hammer.

My build would like a second opinion of this :P

all you gotta do is look for a flamethrower camper, theyre all over open world

I run that in the open world when I feel like flamethrowing. However, I run it with hammer as the weapon beneath the flamethrower (mostly for breakbars, but with the gear I’m running my power damage isn’t that bad either) and a gyro or two. If I wasn’t using hammer and gyros, I probably would use a third core trait – even if you camp flamethrower, Mass Momentum alone isn’t worth what you could have from Inventions or Alchemy.

Hrrrmn. Hard to unpick what you’re trying to say, but I think you’re indicating that Balthazar was essentially testing that we’d remain honourable against dishonourable opponents, because only honourable means of fighting the dragons will work?

I don’t think that’s the case. The risk of too much magic being released from killed Elder Dragons potentially destroying the world has been a developing theme since the start of Season 2. It’s not a matter of how we kill them, it’s the magic they release when they die.

Regarding Calamity… leak spoiler incoming.