Guild Wars 2

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Also we were the ones who put Canach in jail (after he ruined crab island and tried to kill us, mind you). Everyone, even the writers, kind of forgot that part.

I don’t think it was outright forgotten, just that the characters have moved on. Canach recognises he did wrong, doesn’t hold a grudge against the PC, and served his time despite having numerous opportunities to do a runner, and the PC, in turn, recognises that. If you believe that rehabilitation and redemption is possible at all, Canach is the poster child for it.

Even with that, the PC was rubbing Canach’s nose in it through much of Season 2, but there’s a point where enough is enough.

That said, though, I could see Canach not wanting to spend his first days as a free sylvari with the one who put him away.

1. I presume you’re not including underwater weapons in that, since your very idea comes from an underwater weapon? Both mesmer and guardian trident do that too.

I don’t think it adds much uniqueness, and I don’t think a single-target heal from a bounce that you can’t control and often won’t hit the person who really needs it – particularly if that person is backing away – is really going to be as useful as you seem to think it will be. Particularly since skills that bounce to allies also have the potential of simply bouncing between enemies and not providing the support role you envision at all unless there’s only one enemy to hit.

I’d also note that guardian, by theme, is supposed to be a profession that fights or supports up close or at least in the midline, not hanging out at the back with the staff elementalist and the longbow ranger.

(Regarding ‘cherry picking by generalising’ – I recognise that every weapon has its own different perks and characteristics… and the same is true when you compare guardian staff to flamethrower and elementalist dagger. Nevertheless, all of those weapons I included, and others which I didn’t such as mesmer greatsword and revenant hammer, are quite similar in their general playstyle even if the skills themselves are different, while guardian staff is in a completely different family with little representation in the current game.)

2. I think RabbitUp and I have both explained why you don’t see staff often in PvP. It’s not the autoattack, it’s that the weapon as a whole is not suited for the current PvP environment.

3. Like I said, if all you want to do is get one hit in, sure. Getting all five (or one on each available enemy, if less than five) requires positioning. I’ve already mentioned line attacks, and I don’t consider ‘keep yourself at range’ to be a particularly taxing decision to make (generally, with a ranged weapon, you want to be close to the limit of your effective range anyway because that’s safer, unless you have a reason not to – which, granted, a greatsword mesmer might, because against a single target with no allies nearby, Mirror Blade is most effective up close… on the other hand, mesmers can summon allies). However, those examples are irrelevant, since you’re suggesting a bouncing projectile, where generally the limit of consideration is ‘target an enemy that will give the attack an opportunity to bounce into a desired secondary target’.

Open world has more than just hitting bosses with train of other people. I know some people play that way, but not everyone does.

Also, I thought we were comparing axe and dagger, not axe and greatsword? If you’re going power reaper, than greatsword is practically a given in PvE. Greatsword + dagger/X is making you pretty heavily committed to melee.

RabbitUp.8294:

The reason staff is not used in pvp is because it offers no survivability or mobility, and it doesn’t have burst to make up for it either. Technically, the heals are supposed to be that survivability, but they are way undertuned and on a big cooldown.

That was pretty much what I was thinking of in terms of “securing a kill/cap or preventing the enemy from doing so”, except that I was also thinking of control effects like immobilise and hard CC, which staff also lacks. Good use of control can be the difference between a kill and a close shave, but Line of Warding is the only thing staff has in that area. Granted, I’ve seen Line of Warding (and the elementalist equivalent in the earth attunement on staff) make the difference… but it usually only does so once because it catches people by surprise. Once people are ready for it it’s mitigated fairly easily.

Fashion Mage.3712:

draxynnic.3719:

Snip

1. Well you said it yourself, it’s essentially a poor man’s flamethrower. I wouldn’t call that unique, but more importantly, I definitely wouldn’t call it interesting either.

2. If it was good for AoE damage, you would see more use of it in PvP. It isn’t, and thus it doesn’t show up in PvP outside of support builds, and in that case, it certainly isn’t being used for the auto-attack.

3. A cone doesn’t even need you to be in line-of-sight, let alone even needing to be locked on to the target. It is the epitome of a brainless auto-attack.

4. Again, that’d be fine assuming it’s balanced properly.

1. How many flamethrower-type weapons are there? Three, including elementalist dagger. How many long-range, two-handed poking sticks with a few circular AoEs and control effects among the 2-5 skills are there? Every longbow in the game, every other core staff, and arguably thief shortbow counts (the ‘arguably’ is because it only has 900 range)… and that’s without considering one-handed weapons with similar behaviours.

2. Like I said, this is a matter of balancing the numbers, not throwing it out altogether. Mind you, I suspect a large part of the reason it’s not seen in PvP is not that the #1 isn’t useful, it’s that the 2-5, by and large, are not useful in PvP. While the staff can pressure and support, none of the skills on the line can help to secure a kill/cap/decap or prevent the enemy from doing so, with the possible exception of a well-placed and well-timed Line of Warding… and the pushback from the shield will do the job just as well most of the time.

3. If all you want to do is get a hit in, sure. If you want to achieve the full potential, you need to position yourself to hit as many targets at once as you can (doubly so if a heal is added).

Autoattacks, by and large, generally aren’t intended to require a lot of thought. Most melee attacks are cone attacks, just range 130 or so rather than range 600. Projectile attacks require line of sight, but it’s still pretty mindless to just let your auto fire away in between other attacks. In a PvE situation where the enemy isn’t actively taking cover, I certainly would not say that a projectile has anything over a cone in the ‘brainless’ factor, and there’ll be situations where maximising the effect of a cone will require more thought than just plinking away with a projectile.

Now, line projectiles can require a bit more thought, in that they require both LOS, positioning, and often, careful choice of target. However, staff already has one of those in Orb of Light.

Fashion Mage.3712:

draxynnic.3719:

Personally, I like the close-range area nature of guardian staff. I’d be quite sad to see its auto turned into a long-range poke like the other staves in the game (daredevil excepted, of course).

Why? It’s completely useless for anything except farming; using it in PvE or PvP literally isn’t even worth the casting time. It’s not exactly a high-skill auto-attack either. It’s the biggest factor holding the weapon back from being a true support weapon. As soon as you’re done using skills #2 to #5, there’s no reason to even think of staying on the staff.

Several reasons:

1: It’s different. Apart from the odd environmental weapon, the only other weapon with a similar feel is the engineer flamethrower – and, arguable, elementalist dagger.

2: The cone attack is one of the most reliable ways to hit multiple targets in the game. You say that it “isn’t even worth the casting time” – even if I agreed, this, to me, is an argument for buffing it, not replacing it altogether. However, as long as you’re hitting at least two targets, Wave of Wrath out-DPSes Orb of Wrath, so I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s just not oriented towards fighting single opponents.

3: I personally don’t consider bouncing attacks to be the epitome of skill either. In fact, I’d say a cone requires more skill than a long-range bouncing attack, since you need to position yourself for best effect.

4: If you’re a support guardian (in core, at least – the new elite spec might change things) you WANT to be within 600 range of those you’re supporting (virtue actives, Empower, shouts, you may even be using Receive the Light), which likely means within 600 range of the target. So a 600 range attack doesn’t seem to be too much of a handicap. In fact, people have suggested adding a heal to Wave of Wrath – doing so would provide a perfectly decent supportive element and would actually be easier to ensure that the healing goes where it’s needed than the uncontrollable nature of bouncing attacks.

Arden.7480:

I am sad that Canach didn’t join to our guild, because she started to be normal, not just cynical. But it’s not point of this topic.

I suspect he will, but keep in mind that since late 1325 he’s spent six months on the run, about a year in jail, and the rest of that time under Anise’s thumb – a position he appears not to have particularly enjoyed. The guy probably really needs a break. If he had any friends outside the Consortium, too, it’s likely that he’ll want to catch up with them.

OriOri.8724:

I agree with this, but disagree with your implied comment that gathering a basic crafting material should count as this long term goal. Long term goals in GW2 should be based around achievements, legendaries, and other collection-esque things (like collecting all the dyes, all the minis, all the finishers, all the skins etc…..). Gathering a basic crafting material, especially one needed in such high quantities in so many recipes relative to the other basic mats, should never, ever be one of the long term goals in the game. That’s not healthy.

In addition, the various basic crafting materials have a working interrelationship. The price of one affects the prices of the others.

Unless you manage to get the balance pretty much perfect, whenever you have such a relationship you’re always going to have one of those materials essentially acting as the bottleneck – the material whose scarcity limits how much of the others you can actually use. For all forms of armourcrafting, that material is currently leather. While there’s always going to be a bottleneck, however, how much of a bottleneck it represents will influence the prices of the other components. If it’s a relatively wide bottleneck, such that the bottleneck component is scarcer than the others but only by a little bit, then the prices will be about the same. The tighter the bottleneck, however, to more the prices of the other components are going to be suppressed, down to the point where if the bottleneck is tight enough, the other components can become effectively worthless because you simply don’t have enough of the bottleneck component to use them all (see, for example: Milling stones).

Requiring ten hardened leather sections for an exotic insignia was, I think, a critical error. The whole reason why cloth used to be the most expensive component was that the cloth required for the insignia was typically more than the materials to make the actual pieces of the armour (the panels, padding, straps, etc), particularly since cloth can’t be freely harvested like wood and metal. Adding the requirement for ten leather sections is taking that problem and increasing it two and a half times.

TL:DR (and in conclusion): The issue isn’t just about leather, it also devalues the other components.

Personally, I like the close-range area nature of guardian staff. I’d be quite sad to see its auto turned into a long-range poke like the other staves in the game (daredevil excepted, of course).

The areas I’d probably be focusing on would be:

Staff 2: Attempting to detonate is fiddly (can be quite hard to get it to detonate at the right location) and carries a significant cost (you can’t use the non-detonated Orb of Light for twelve seconds) for a pretty small reward even if you use it perfectly. I’d probably remove the increased recharge for detonation. This might require a bit of rebalancing of the detonate effect, but this might not actually be needed in an environment where healing of allies has been made substantially stronger than it was in vanilla GW2. I might even consider making detonation happen by default and make it a ground-targeted attack so it’s easier to place.

Staff 3: There is something paradoxical about a symbol that provides swiftness but requires you to remain in the symbol. I’d probably do one of two things:

1: Give it the Temporal Curtain treatment: a long-duration Swiftness boon if you don’t already have Swiftness, but if you already do, the application is shorter.
2: Give it some other effect. The shield icon suggests something defensive in nature (it used to be Symbol of Protection, and they didn’t think to change the icons…), so it could pulse 1s of Resistance, or a condition cleanse, or at least cleanse movement-impairing conditions.

@Arden: Yeah, there was no official announcement, but Ree left at the beginning of the year according to her LinkedIn profile. (Which means she possibly did have a hand in planning out the Season 3 story, but she’s certainly gone now, and her being completely unheard from for a while and then leaving might be indicative that her influence had been… abated.)

@Vayne: Well, one thing I’d meant to include in my previous post and forgotten (and I had just come back because I realised I had forgotten) was that I’m reserving final judgement until we do see the plot fully develop. However, I can see it just coming across as throwing Balthazar in as an antagonist just for the sake of having a powerful antagonist who isn’t an Elder Dragon if the further development isn’t handled well.

Mavis.1463:

I was just venting.

It’s just silly how Anet thought this plot twist was a good idea. Here’s hoping they hire new writers.

Gotta say, I know how you feel.

Lazarus eventually coming back is a plot thread that had been hanging for nine years before his appearance in Out of the Shadows. It’s pretty unsatisfying for the final payoff to that setup being no more than serving as the disguise for somebody else.

Meanwhile, making that someone be Balthazar feels like they’ve caught World of Warcraft’s disease. Need a new antagonist? Well, if you take a character that has any moral ambiguity whatsoever and Flanderise the darker sides of their character, you have your new antagonist with a tie to your old lore right there! Never mind that in the process you’re turning previously complex characters into two-dimensional villains.

Hiring new writers seems to be part of the problem – there aren’t very many of the original team left. Both of their lore oversight people are gone (Jeff and Ree), and it’s not clear who fills that role now… or even if it is.

Arden.7480:

I am aware. But the Commander itself should seek the agreements, not just making enemies. “Lazarus” did not lie that he wants to kill Dragons, so wait I am gonna change something in my 1st post that Balthazar wanted to destroy Tyria, I think he didn’t until the commander said that he is gonna destroy our planet.

I think Balthazar genuinely didn’t care. If Tyria is destroyed? Not important. If Tyria survives? Also not important.

Which does mean that an alliance, at least of convenience, probably was entirely possible. We want to neutralise the dragon threat without creating a cascade of magic that will destroy Tyria. Balthazar wanted to absorb magic. Seems to me that with a bit of planning and cooperation, these goals are not only non-contradictory, but complement one another. In fact, it’s entirely possible that we could have left Balthazar alone and everything would have been fine, because instead of the magic being released and destroying the world (as Taimi’s simulation probably didn’t model the magic being absorbed), the magic would possibly have all gone into Balthazar and been safely contained.

Like I said, however, my gut feeling was that Balthazar went in expecting a fight – albeit not to be revealed. What went down is at least as much his fault as the PC’s – most of the distrust aimed at him was because, well, mursaat. If he’d revealed who he truly was while defending Aurene, then he might well have achieved a genuine alliance – even if the PC isn’t favourably inclined towards him, the Luminate would probably be inclined to at least hear him out.

As it is… the dialogue that you’re referring to appears to be Balthazar acting out a role (instead of revealing himself as he probably should have). It’s possible that he genuinely did want a true alliance, but being Balthazar, he was too impatient to attempt diplomacy more than once when taking what he wants by force of arms is an option. It wouldn’t be the first time.

sorudo.9054:

a story i can’t complete because i need X mastery unlocked is exactly the reason why it’s flawed, i never heard of a single game or book that makes you do something completely unrelated to the story just to continue the story.

While I can certainly understand the desire not to have to grind through stuff, one of the features of Heart of Thorns is that the instances don’t tell the whole story. Part of the story is being told in the maps themselves. So having to get a bit of experience in the open world rather than just rushing through the instances is not actually making you do something unrelated to the story – it’s trying to push you to experience the parts of the story that aren’t in the instances.

Many of the event chains in Verdant Brink, for example, are essentially the epilogues to story instances. In fact, there is something of an order to them – you start with Torn from the Sky, then you have the Pale Reaver event chain, then the Pact Camp event chain, then Jungle Provides, then the Itzel chain after that, then Prisoners of the Dragon (possibly with a detour to the shipwrecked nobles chain beforehand) and finally the Ordnance Corps event chain. Now, one unfortunate side-effect of the way the system works is that you can end up doing things out of order, but every event chain is part of the bigger story.

Now, one consideration is that they may not all be part of the Pact Commander’s personal story. There are places, particularly in the later maps, where the Pact Commander is probably somewhere else when that event happened. For instance, the Pact Commander probably does not take part in the gerent event (the PC takes a different route into Dragon’s Stand), and the battle with the Mouth of Mordremoth is implied to be happening while the Pact Commander is in the final instance (or possibly the final two instances). However, these are still part of the story, and can be considered to be equivalent to when a novel, movie, or other medium switches scene away from the main protagonist to show what is happening elsewhere – in those events, it’s probably better to think of yourself as playing the role of a Pact soldier rather than the Dragonslayer.

At the bottom line, however, the events in the open world Heart of Thorns maps are part of the story, and if you don’t partake in at least some of them, you’re essentially skipping half of the story.

This is not to say that I fully agree with gating the story behind masteries. It was a bit jarring, for instance, being told to take Glint’s egg to Tarir ASAP, and then be told that you need to grind a mastery before you can do so. However, I don’t think the criticism that the open world events are “something completely unrelated to the story” is at all fair.

Agreed, it is one of the characteristics of the scrapper traits that if you’re not running hammer or gyros, the traitline doesn’t have much to offer you.

I’m not sure if this is really a bad thing, as long as it is worth it if you ARE using hammer, gyros, or both. But it is a distinction versus some elite specialisations which definitely are useful without using their weapon or skills.

When it comes to open world stuff… I’d disagree that you can do anything because it’s stupidly easy. Sure, most open world boss fights you can often sit back and spam 1 and get your contribution (having been carried by everyone else) but there are places that will stretch you if you’re in there alone. Defensive skills, particularly defensive skills that allow you to attack simultaneously, do help there.

I would be inclined to agree, however, that scrapper does seem to be designed as a ‘tank’. The problem is that if this was intended to be their role in raids… well, that’s not how the tanking role in raids actually works. For those raid bosses where a tank is useful, the tank is generally pretty much decided on the basis of who gives up the least damage by taking toughness gear.

In the defence of the PC, there were quite a few signs that the Commander could interpret as hostile beyond the deception itself. Blocking the gate. One of his bodyguards was obviously Inquest, and B-guy seems to have done enough research to realise that was likely a red flag. And it might just be me, but that whole line of ‘camaraderie and strategic alignment’ did sound like it was intended to be mocking to me.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t possible that a mutually beneficial agreement could have been made. If the PC had known who it was beforehand, in fact, I suspect there would have been more questions asked before the fighting started, but of course the whole problem was that this was an unknown. However, it’s also possible that tipping our hand would have put B-Guy on his guard – if he knew we knew that he was disguised, he might have been a little more cautious about entering the focal point of an array of mirrors.

Spend enough time in any of the profession forums, and you’ll get the impression that the professions sucks. As RabbitUp said, people do tend to come to the forum to complain, not to praise. Most of the time, however, this is because people do enjoy the profession enough to want it to be better (otherwise, they complain that the profession is OP to try to make it get nerfed so the profession they do prefer is better in comparison…).

Guardian did get hit hard in the last balance patch, and as cronos indicates, a large part of that in the high-end PvE context is because the recent changes shifted the meta to be very much in favour of conditions. Since guardian doesn’t really have a viable sustained condition build, this means it’s struggling. It’s still one of the better professions at power damage, but it’s not the best, and power damage is quite a bit behind condition damage at the moment.

It’s probably reasonable to expect that the balance will shift next patch, though.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

The entire point of locking weapon and skills to the trait line is so you can’t cross-pollinate between elite specs. So no issues with one elite spec’s abilities being nerfed because they’re too powerful in the hands of another, for example.

Basically, this.

If it helps, you can think of the elite specialisations as being equivalent to GW1’s secondary profession system (in some cases this is quite blatent – dragonhunter, for instance, is basically guardian/ranger). You have the core profession, and then you have a bit of something else mixed in, but your character can only go in so many directions at once.

Another consideration is that some of the elite specialisations do change the core mechanic, and two elite specialisations that both change the core mechanic could be totally incompatible with one another.

Leak spoiler following:

I’d say that scrapper is useful for PvE. Hammer is still a decent weapon, and some of the gyros certainly have their uses. They’re just not useful in raids where generally the most important thing for most squad members is eking out the most DPS.

Broadly speaking, elite specialisations were billed as being sidegrades, rather than straight-out upgrades. Statistically speaking, if this was true, roughly half of the optimised builds for any game mode should be core. The fact that this obviously isn’t true shows that the current elite specs are mostly still overtuned.

In the case of the engineer, scrapper is certainly a more defensive-oriented elite specialisation, and the engineer does have a decent set of damage-oriented traits, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem if the highest DPS is coming out of a core build, as long as that DPS is competitive with what other professions are bringing (with or without elite specialisations).

Kenshi Maru.5489:

draxynnic.3719:

leviathan.2148:

Core trait line doesn’t change elite spec mechanics (Besides Scrapper for pve ha ha…)

Technically speaking, function gyro does have a use in PvE. It’s just not a very useful one…

If they’d made downed state more common in PvE, it’d probably be a lot more popular.

Ugh, no. If you could res yourself with it, sure. But most of the times it’s easier to just kill something close to them so they Rally or res personally. Unless in this game we had more ENEMIES on the downed state, but then again you can DPS your way out of this anyhow.

Which is why I said “technically speaking” and “it’s just not a very useful one”. There are situations in PvE where I’ve used the function gyro – typically in boss fights where there isn’t a convenient easy kill for them to rally off, but throwing the gyro out means a) I can get back to DPSing faster, and b) I’m not putting myself at risk to help them.

Is it comparable to what the other elite specs have? Heck no. But completely, absolutely, you-will-never-use-this-even-if-you-look-for-opportunities-to-do-so? No.

Regarding your other comments:

I haven’t taken an engineer into a raid, but from what I’ve seen, heard, and read, the effect of those complicated rotations is generally a matter of eking out those last few percentage points of damage. Both the condition and power builds have a clear dominant kit (grenades and bombs respectively) – the other kits have a handful of skills that will increase your DPS by a bit if you include them in the rotation, but there’s one kit that’s doing the proverbial heavy lifting.

The fact that the difference provided by the additional kits is relatively small suggests that the two skills provided by non-kit utilities could be buffed to compete. We saw, in the recent patch, a move to make turrets more useful – this could make Flame Turret a competitive addition to condition builds in the foreseeable future (as Rifle Turret is for power) with some suitable buffs, while other turrets could work their way into power builds (again, with suitable buffs). A lot of the gadgets could also have potential for power builds, particularly if they’re split so they don’t become too strong in PvP.

Regarding your observation about each kit trying to do everything: I don’t think this was actually a design goal so much as the devs putting into each kit what they felt made sense without thinking about what overall purpose it would have. There was a lot of that in the weapons available on release, but most of them have since been rebalanced. The recent adjustments to the flamethrower, like them or not, do seem to have been intended to push it more fully into the condition role, which in the bigger picture is probably a step in the right direction. The problem is that it’s hard to see how they can implement the same sense of focus to grenade, bomb, and mortar, since in those cases most of the distinction between the 2-5 skills is simply which condition they apply.

I guess what they could do is:

1) Change Fire Bomb into a power fire field (similar to Lava Font), and give Concussion Bomb a higher damage and replace Confusion with debilitating conditions such as Weakness and Cripple.

2) Make Poison Gas Bomb more Power-oriented, like Poison Bomb from the Itzel/Coztic Shadowleapers.

3) Grenade kit can probably be left as a hybrid, but decreasing the power coefficient on the shrapnel and poison grenades might help to pull them out of the power build rotation and cement grenades as a condition set.

4) Elixir gun can go either way. Since flamethrower and grenades are already good for conditions, though, I’d probably push it towards power to make it a suitable ranged kit for power builds. Increase the power damage on Tranquiliser Dart and remove the bleeding. Fumigate could also have its power damage increased and the poison decreased (the poison duration is short enough that in gameplay it’s not much different to direct damage anyway – you could make it so that each tick only applies a minute duration of poison and the final tick applies two seconds similar to flamethrower applying Burning, and compensate for the reduced poison damage with increased power damage).

5) Toolkit… hrrrmn. Could also go either way thematically. If bombs go power, however, it might be most suitable to have the toolkit go condi. Can we find a way to justify applying a damaging condition by smacking someone with a wrench? If it’s already applying Cripple, we could probably justify Torment… (“After what I just did you your leg, I DARE you to try walking on it now!”)

There are a few other flaws with this often-repeated theory:

First, despite modern sources calling them the ‘human gods’, humans weren’t their only followers – the Forgotten also served the Old Gods, and were present in the previous dragonrise, before the gods arrived in person.

Second, Abaddon had a predecessor, and given that (unlike Dhuum) there is no mention of Abaddon’s predecessor in Orr, it seems that Abaddon’s rise came before the gods arrived on Tyria. So there were certainly gods before their arrival on Tyria, although not necessarily the present generation.

Third, Dwayna is said to have been the first to arrive on Tyria, while Melandru is the oldest of the (current generation of) gods – a state of affairs that’s difficult to reconcile if their apotheosis only happened once they reached Tyria.

There may be others I don’t recall off the top of my head.

‘Course, these are all details that are obscure enough that I wouldn’t put it past the current writers to forget or retcon if they got some story into their heads for which these facts are… inconvenient… but the lore as we currently know it suggests the gods achieved their power before they arrived on Tyria.

(My general hypothesis is that the gods were the equivalent of the dragons from somewhere outside of Tyria – either in the Mists, or a different world (possibly the human homeworld).)

@Ashantara: It amuses me when people assume I’m not familiar with the material and point me at the most basic sources thinking that will overcome my arguments when I’ve already looked deeper…

Nowhere on either wiki are there any colour associations for the gods listed, and if there were, I’d ask for primary sources. We can infer colours from various sources, as I did in my previous post, but we have nothing that serves as the equivalent of the All which definitively demonstrates that each dragon is associated with a colour.

I know that Grenth is associated with ice – however, ice is not the domain that makes him a god. If you look at Grenth’s history, it was not until he claimed the mantle of Death from Dhuum that he became a full god. Ice is part of Grenth’s portfolio, but Death is the most important part.

And I haven’t even gone into other flaws in your theory. Why is the Pale Tree representing Tyria, when she is only dragon champion power level at best (and was intended by Mordremoth to be one) and has only been around for two and a half centuries? If a free dragon champion gets representation, what about Glint? Gleam? Aurene? If a demigod like Menzies gets representation, then what happened when Grenth, previously a demigod, supplanted Dhuum, his predecessor as the God of Death? If Kormir is the center, wouldn’t that mean that Abaddon was the center before her, and how do you reconcile that with Abaddon having been imprisoned for over a thousand years with no apparent ill effects if he was that important?

Moonyeti.3296:

Also, the number 6 isn’t an absolute fixed number for the gods like it is with the dragons. Depending on what point in time you are referring to there were more or less that 6 gods. Abbadon’s fall left the number at 5 for awhile, Kormir replacing him brought the number back to 6. Similar things happened with Balthezar replacing his father and battling his half brother Menzies, or Grenth being a replacement god. The number of gods is fluid, whereas the dragons are fixed at 6 to maintain the balance of Tyria. There can’t be a strong relationship between the dragons and gods if the number is not fixed at a 1:1 ratio.

I’m not sure about this.

Abaddon was still a god while he was imprisoned, so during the period of his imprisonment, there were still six gods. Grenth was merely a demigod before he overthrew Dhuum, so he doesn’t count any more than Glint or the Pale Tree counted as an Elder Dragon. We don’t know much about what happened with Balthazar’s family beyond that one line, but everything we’ve seen indicates that there can be only one holder of the mantle of the God of War, with Balthazar being the one to hold it (at least, until recently) and Menzies fighting to supplant him.

We might see some disruption to that symmetry now – Balthazar did just absorb a lot of power, and if he was supplanted, that means there’s both Balthazar and his successor in play. However, in that scenario, Balthazar might still be technically just a demigod until he reclaims the mantle of War, however much power he’s absorbed from Primordus, Jormag, and the Maguuma bloodstone.

On the flipside, Ogden mentions that Glint might have become a new Elder Dragon if she lived long enough and absorbed enough magic. It’s possible that this might not have required the replacement of one of the existing Elder Dragons, and would instead have simply added a seventh orb to the All.

sephiroth.4217:

Eles were only unkillable to those newer players who didn’t possess the right knowledge on how to beat an Ele….. (CC + poison)

Reminds me of an encounter I had back when cleric tempest was a thing. A thief tried to solo me, died, and then complained about how I was OP because I was basically outhealing his damage (what damage got through protection, frost auras, shock auras, etc, anyway). Meanwhile I was thinking “Dude, you let me overload several times in that fight and didn’t interrupt a single one… playing thief.”

Either that thief had completely failed to use the tools at his disposal (I honestly can’t remember if he had an OH pistol or not), or he made a thief build without any CC and then complained about being beaten by a build whose main weakness was CC. Either way, without commenting on whether cleric tempest was OP or not, in that particular case, the problem wasn’t the build I was running.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Not really.

Though, I’m kind of surprised we didn’t get the chance to have a Juvenile Smogscale in the new map.

Even though it’s just a color palette swap of the Smokescale, at least its version of Smokescreen blinds foes instead of being evasive while inside of it.

Would have been a nice addition to have that pairing. Kind of like in the old days when slotting an Eagle/Hawk or Raven/White Raven was a thing.

I was thinking that myself – including the thought that while the smogscale is an easier beast to fight than the smokescale, the smogscale would probably have more utility for a player.

There are also a bunch of creatures that NPCs keep taunting us by having as pets when we can’t. I’ll accept that ogres might have training techniques that rangers of other races don’t have, but we know at least one member of a playable race has a raptor – how about it?

It’s an interesting idea, and one that could be a good way to insert additional lore into the game. (Mind you, a part of me is beginning to think that the current writers prefer not to flesh out the lore unless they absolutely have to, in the name of having more space to operate in the future.)

The “Current Events” arcs indicate that they are in a position to implement ‘side-stories’ outside of raids, so things like this could fit in as a Current Events arc.

leviathan.2148:

draxynnic.3719:

If they’d made downed state more common in PvE, it’d probably be a lot more popular.

I’d agree if teammate targeting wasn’t so wonky. Currently you can res them faster by yourself than send f-gyro to do it.

Depends on the circumstances, but I’ll admit that the wonkiness doesn’t help.

Ah, so you were previously referring just to scaling with increasing healing power? That’s probably reasonable, then. What I was suggesting was probably actually going further.

leviathan.2148:

Core trait line doesn’t change elite spec mechanics (Besides Scrapper for pve ha ha…)

Technically speaking, function gyro does have a use in PvE. It’s just not a very useful one…

If they’d made downed state more common in PvE, it’d probably be a lot more popular.

RabbitUp.8294:

They are pretty underwhelming for being a profession mechanic.

Virtue of Justice
reduce cd to 16 seconds
Unsplit the pve and pvp versions
When you use the active, the burn damage should scale with your own condi damage like Thief’s venoms, not the ally’s.

I think they should definitely be unsplit – I don’t see how PvE would be broken by giving them the PvP version.

Not sure about the cooldown reduction.

Virtue of Resolve
The scaling on the passive is rubbish, it’s half that of regeneration. It should be at least double. Make the scaling of the active equal to Wings of Resolve

Hrrrmn. I’m not sure about making the scaling of the active equal to Wings of Resolve. Wings of Resolve does have downsides.

I’m also not sure that comparing it to an actual boon is really an appropriate way of judging its strength. I would probably consider buffing it by about 50%, so that it’s still less than Wings of Resolve, but does have a bit more oomph. This would also involve buffing the passive, so that not using it is still the ‘selfish’ option.

Battle Presence (sharing VoR with allies) should be baseline.
-Battle Presence (new): You retain the passive effect of Virtue of Resolve when you activate it
EDIT: There’s the issue that if all guardians shared VoR, it could overwrite the application of those that build for healing power. I’m not sure if the game compares numbers, because for regen it only compares duration, not effectiveness. If that’s the case, then keep the sharing as part of Battle Presense, along with the new effect, because it’s too weak for a grandmaster trait currently.

Hrrrmn. I’d be inclined to leave the sharing as requiring a trait. Merging with Absolute Resolution would probably be appropriate, especially since Resolve removes conditions baseline now – this would essentially make the trait the team-friendly option.

Virtue of Courage
Passive aegis should recharge every 30 seconds baseline, 20 seconds with Indomitable Courage.

There’s an interesting interaction here:

If you have the Virtues specialisation, and you don’t have Indomitable Courage, you lose nothing (apart from having the active on cooldown) by using the active as soon as you lose the Aegis from the passive. This is because:

1) With Power of the Virtuous, Courage has a 38.25s recharge, shorter than the 40s recharge of the passive.
2) The aegis renews when Courage recharges.

Which means that if you hit Courage within a second of losing your aegis, the passive actually recharges faster. It’s probably worth speeding up the passive a bit so that isn’t the case.

Your proposal does seem like it might be a bit too much with Indomitable Courage – maybe 25s instead?

Ashantara.8731:

Stating there was no (current) proof doesn’t make it implausible/impossible.

It is pretty much the closest that ArenaNet is ever likely to get to saying “no, seriously, your theory is wrong, stop it.” though.

It also emphasises that it keeps coming up a lot - to the point where it’s practically a drinking game among the veterans.

But what if the Elder Dragons were like “the dark side of the Force”, so to speak?

That’s been tried. Doesn’t work.

One of the main areas where it falls down – and your theory does as well, incidentally – is that Grenth’s domain over cold predates his rise as one of the Six. Cold is not, and never was, one of the core domains of the gods – Grenth became one of the Six when he took over the mantle of Death. Meanwhile, the recent Living Story events have pretty much confirmed that cold is the core of Jormag’s domain.

Generally speaking, this appears to be one of the big distinctions between the gods and the dragons. The gods each represent an abstract concept – life, war, nature, death, knowledge, and… well, Lyssa is hard to pin down, but I’ll go with “inspiration”. Any elemental associations they have are incidental, and they’ve been known to swap them around between each other at least once. The dragons, however, are more physical – Zhaitan and Mordremoth blurred the line, but Primordus and Jormag are quite overtly the dragons of fire and ice respectively.

(It’s worth noting, in fact, that there is an argument to be made that Grenth is still not technically the god of death and that Dhuum still technically holds that mantle, but Grenth is able to function as the god of death due to Dhuum’s imprisonment and Grenth potentially drawing energy from the imprisoned Dhuum.)

They could still have functioned as an anchor, as I suggested as another possibility, created by the Gods for them to be able to enter our world.

Let me rephrase: The dragons were present a long, long time before the gods.

Both variants would be pretty un-epic and lame story-wise, though.

Depends on where the story goes. A lot of people are looking forward to storylines that are less dragon-centric, and having two of them put to sleep allows for that. Personally, I think there’s much more potential in the gods being their own thing that have a seperate role in the wider universe than shoehorning everything to the dragons.

Also, I heavily doubt the similarity in the colors that we see in the screenshots is a mere coincidence. And there is no denying that each of these colors can be associated with a God as well as an Elder Dragon.

First, there are only so many colours. Have six in one group and six in the other, and you’re going to have overlaps if you want the colours in each group to be easiliy distinguishable from one another.

Second, where exactly are you getting the colour associations of the gods from?

From the Guild Wars 2 character creation screen for deity choice for humans, and the murals at Gandara, we get the following associations:
Dwayna: Blue
Grenth: Dark green
Balthazar: Red
Melandru: Yellowish green
Lyssa: Purple
Kormir: Yellow (no mural at Gandara, but when she ascends she appears yellow)

Which is different to your assignment. This would place Dwayna with the DSD, Grenth with Zhaitan, Balthazar with Primordus, Melandru with Mordremoth, Lyssa with Kralkatorrik, and Kormir with… well, there is no yellow dragon, so yet again, they don’t line up. Well, five out of six is better than most of these theories manage.

Furthermore, the colour associations of the gods, like the elements, have changed. Abaddon was previously associated with purple, and now Kormir is associated with yellow (a possibly deliberate reversal). This seems to indicate that the colours of the domains of the gods are not fixed – and if they’re not fixed, then you can’t really draw any conclusions from them.

DarcShriek.5829:

Sublimatio.6981:

i wish we could communicate with glint in the mists and ask her

Let’s ask Rhytlock.

“Later, cub.”

Regarding Lonami’s idea:

First, to stop this from hijacking another thread, I disagree with the premise that the current toolbelt mechanic is problematic for future elite specialisations. If ArenaNet wants to use the F1-F5 skills for a future specialisation, all they need to do is replace some or all of the toolbelt slots with the new mechanics, making it part of the balance of that elite specialisation that you’re giving up regular toolbelt skills in exchange for something new. Wiping it out entirely for all engineers for the sake of future elite specialisations that may or may not use the function bar is, I think, throwing out more babies than the bathwater is worth.

There’s also the argument that engineers are ‘too reliant’ on kits. As Phineas Poe has said, though, I think this simply reflects game modes. In high-end PvE, DPS rotations are king – this tends to favour kits because that’s where the most damaging skills usually are, and often even briefly swapping to something to drop a high-damage, high-cooldown skill before swapping out again is worth it in that context. PvP, by contrast, relies more on being able to react to and counter what the enemy players are doing, and that’s where the other utilities begin to shine more… oh, and good luck pulling off a perfect rotation in the heat of combat against an opponent who actually reacts to what you’re doing.

Personally, I think it’s an essential part of the engineer’s character that you can choose how many kits you can have. Removing that would kill one-kit and no-kit builds as well as three- and four-kit builds. I would say that a lot of the non-kit skills probably could do with some improvements, but I wouldn’t like to see the fundamental character of the engineer changed so radically.

Regarding Phineas’ idea:

Trading out kits for a weaponswap in an elite specialisation is an interesting idea. It would probably have to go beyond what elite specialisations often do – it may need to provide more than one additional weapon so that the elite specialisation has a decent range of choice, for instance, at least one of those will have to be melee-oriented, and you’d probably want new utilities to replace the kits in addition to the six that elite specs usually get. (One way to do this, I guess, would be to allow such an elite specialisation to access skills and weapons from other engineer elite specialisations.) This could be an interesting way to portray an engineer that really is focused on having an array of gadgets more than an armory of weapons.

Regarding miriforst’s idea:

This one, I quite like, at least in principle. Thematically, I always wondered about how the turrets appeared to have sufficiently advanced AI that they could identify targets autonomously. I guess they could all have a cut-down golem AI installed, but full automation is certainly more advanced than most charr technology implies.

Mechanically, the problem with turrets in PvP was largely a matter of the combined effect of a couple of them and the defending engineer. If the turret is something that needs to be actively controlled, this a) means that the engineer isn’t getting an action economy advantage, b) means that turrets become something that you generally want to have just one or two of rather than filling your bar with them, and c) makes using turrets a much more active style of play. There are probably some complications and details to be worked out, but it is an interesting proposition.

A simpler concept on the same idea could be that each turret has a limited amount of ammunition. For instance, the rocket turret has six tubes, so let’s say it has six rockets loaded when placed. After being placed, the engineer gets six charges of a ‘fire rocket’ skill, which causes the rocket turret to fire a rocket at the target. Once the ammunition is exhausted, the turret can either be picked back up again or detonated. So instead of replacing your weapon skills when used, the turret acts a bit more like a stationary mantra.

To put my own 2c in…

If I had my druthers, I’d turn grenades back into throwing a single grenade, rather than the current state of chucking them out by the handful. This would require a bit of rebalancing of the explosives line, which may in turn require some adjustment of bombs, but I think it would be worth it in the long run. One approach that could require less rework, in fact, would be to make the grenade have a diminishing effect with distance from the point of detonation, modeled by the grenade generating three explosions of differing radii (a target directly hit takes all three, a target on the edge takes only the largest one). This is somewhat close to the current way in which grenades behave (a target on the center of the reticle is likely to be hit by all three, one nearer the edge might be hit by two, while one at or even beyond the edge could be hit by just one), but without the current randomness of the grenade spread.

The Streamlined Kits effect is a valid point – magnetic aura is a useful one against projectiles. If you have more than one kit it can get fiddly balancing the shared internal cooldown so that you can get the effect you want, though, so… I guess it comes back to my previous comment about being fiddly to use. :P

It’s generally considered that the purpose of Glint’s legacy, including Aurene, is to create a ‘substitute’ means of storing magical energy apart from the Elder Dragons. Whatever her long-term plan is, however, it doesn’t seem to be sufficiently developed to be able to fully soak up the effect of two Elder Dragons dying, let alone four.

(Although, that is one of the possible flaws in Taimi’s simulation – it might not have accounted for the effect of Glint’s legacy. Simulations can only use the information you put in, after all, and Taimi didn’t have the heart of Omadd’s machine when she ran that simulation.)

DRINK!

The theory that the dragons and gods line up has been proposed so often that Arenanet put an item in the game saying there was no evidence behind it. Sure, you can line some of them up – Balthazar with Primordus, Melandru with Mordremoth, Grenth with Jormag or Zhaitan – but after that you start getting mismatches however twisted your logic gets.

My viewpoint is that the All represents how magic is structured in Tyria. The spectrum is broken up into six domains, each dominated by an Elder Dragon (at least, until we started killing them off). The gods, however, are not native to Tyria, and their magic is structured differently. It may or may not be the same if you just consider magic in its undifferentiated ‘white’ state, but it’s certainly structured differently.

Certainly, the dragons were present on Tyria before the gods arrived, so the dragons were certainly not created by the gods as a means of depositing excess power or the like.

In the case of Balthazar targeting Primordus – it does seem quite likely that he did so because Primordus’ power is closer in nature to his own, and thus might be easier for him to assimilate. However, as Khailyn said, it might well have simply been a matter of access – Primordus was close by and, having recently moved, doesn’t seem to have established the degree of control over the area as the other Elder Dragons have in their surroundings (consider how heavily fortified Zhaitan had made Orr, or even Mordremoth and the Dragon’s Stand region only a couple of years after he awakened). Jormag is both a long way away and very well established in his territory – Balthazar’s camp in Draconis Mons is fairly undisturbed by Destroyers, but trying to establish a camp that close to Jormag would probably involve being constantly besieged by Icebrood (think of Orr and how often the camps there are attacked).

It’s also possible that it’s simply coincidence. According to Taimi, the device could be activated anywhere – it doesn’t have to be close to either dragon. Balthazar took it into a volcano because it was somewhere he didn’t think anybody could follow him, and it just so happened that Primordus was there. Or it’s possible that Primordus came to investigate the tasty magic concentration that had arrived in his domain, and Balthazar activated the device just before Primordus would have eaten him if he hadn’t.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Then why the whole “raised this haven at the edge of Mordremoth’s jungle”? They knew exactly where they were building Tarir. They knew that Mordremoth would wake eventually, and they had to have had an approximate timeline given that Tarir was built around Primordus’ and the DSD’s awakening, after Primordus had already tried to wake up once. So they knew Mordremoth would be waking within 200 to 250 years from that point in time.

Simple – they knew that the area would be within Mordremoth’s influence when he rose.

While we haven’t heard anything from the other locations you raise, they likely have their own dangers. It’s ambiguous whether the Battle Isles even exist any more (prerelease information indicates they were destroyed by Zhaitan’s tsunami), and they likely wanted it to be somewhere secret and away from civilisation to avoid someone being tempted to raid the place. Anywhere in or near Elona carries Joko-related risks, and who knows what risks there might be in the Woodland Cascades?

Tarir’s location may well have been chosen on the basis of being a ley nexus that was isolated from most potential threats… until Mordremoth rises.

What we’re told certainly seems to indicate that the Exalted were not expecting Mordremoth’s minions to be up and active before they were.

(Plus, it’s a low blow I know, but we know that the achievement has already had to be fixed for one mistake they made. There may be others in there that haven’t been picked up on because we don’t have the information to know they were mistakes.)

Dragonhunters were pretty much a killer of weaker players before the recent nerfs landed, and afterwards they were no longer regarded as being part of the meta by the metabattle guys. A DH can stomp a poor thief pretty easily, but most professions (including reapers) can stomp a bad thief. A good thief won’t get countered by a DH, and in higher-skill matches, the DH may also be a handicap elsewhere.

Vagrant.7206:

Lahmia.2193:

Clearly you missed out on the cancerous pvp turret tank meta a few months before traits were changed to specializations.

Yep. That was pretty awful. As a main engineer, I was pretty ashamed of that meta. It was disgracefully easy.

Buuuuuuut that’s no excuse for their woeful state now. As it stands, only healing turret is of any use, and that’s because it’s a healing bomb. Rifle turret is only taken for the DPS boost of surprise shot.

To be fair, now that deploying turrets no longer blocks your toolbelt skills, it’s become viable to leave the rifle turret out for the extra DPS it does provide. However, you’re still taking it for the toolbelt skill, actually deploying the turret is an added bonus.

Caeledh.5437:

draxynnic.3719:

We have read it. Here are the relevant quotes:

" That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class."

Wow. Selectively taking a single sentence and misinterpreting it out of context. We’ve never seen that before…

Here’s a few more choice quotes.

" Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is."

“Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions.”

etc. etc.

First, you’ve cut out the portion of my post where I quoted the very lines you claim I’ve missed, except that I quoted the entire paragraph and thus provided the context as well.

Neither of those lines, nor any other in the article, say ‘no healers’ – they’re simply saying that healing fits within the broader role of support. (And that there will be no dedicated healing profession like the GW1 monk.)

Also, note that something an employee says in an interview should not be taken too literally – answers given in an interview are rarely carefully considered for every possible interpretation. In fact, they’ve been a lot more coy about giving interviews in recent years in part because of the fallout that has come when the interviewee gave an off-the-cuff answer that was either not completely accurate or was misinterpreted, and things like “You said in interview X that you wouldn’t do Y and now you’re doing Y!” is exactly the sort of thing they’re worried about.

Jon P. might have been saying ‘no healers’, or he might have been saying ‘no dedicated healing profession’, or he might have simply been talking about the state of the game at the time not having strong healers, without intending to commit the company to that decision indefinitely.

Plus, there’s that whole afk Engineer farm that’s happening in Lake Doric. ArenaNet may not be too keen to make that stronger…

I would be inclined to think that turrets should possibly be made to repeat the overcharge if they stay out long enough now, but I wouldn’t be inclined to have the cooldown change over time.

Still, it would be nice for them to be more viable for general play.

Unfortunately, Scarlet Briar had already awakened Mordremoth, and the Jungle Dragon’s colonization of Maguuma was well underway. The Exalted discovered the jungle was even more dangerous than they remembered and that allies they had made among Maguuma’s residents were missing, perhaps gone forever. Worst of all, they found an implacable and voracious horde of dragon minions eager to seize as much magic as they could for their master. The Exalted watched with sadness and horror as Mordremoth destroyed the Pact fleet, and some even wondered if their august duty was doomed to fail just as it was truly getting started.

From here.

To me, this comes across as the Exalted not having planned for this state of affairs. The line you quote indicates that they have the shields to protect against attack, but they’re probably thinking more about smaller-scale attacks from the dragons that are already awake (particularly Primordus) rather than the sieges we see in Auric Basin.

Regarding the Zephyrites… I’m inclined to think that they were following a schedule triggered by Glint’s death rather than Mordremoth’s awakening. The Zephyrites didn’t exactly seem to be planning for a flight over hostile territory, but for a peaceful trip (never mind that Aerin brought them down on the edge of Mordremoth’s region of influence).

So my interpretation is that they weren’t expecting Mordremoth to rise until Aurene was ready to move.

If you spend 10 hrs playing PvP while they’re spending 10 hrs playing PvE, then of course they’re going to be ahead. Any form of progression vertical or horizontal, is going to require you to do things that provide that progress.

It also goes both ways. If they turned around and joined you in PvP instead of you joining them in PvE, they’d be behind you too. It may not be obvious in the mechanics the way it is in PvE, but you’d have ten hours of experience of how the new elite specialisations operate in a PvP environment and how to counter them that they don’t have.

It sounds like your main issue is with essentially being locked out of content because you don’t have the masteries yet… and that’s something I’d agree with. Itzel Poison Mastery is probably my least favourite mastery from a design perspective for exactly this reason – there’s no mechanic to interact with, it just means that regions that you couldn’t enter before because they’d kill you, now do absolutely nothing to you because you’re somehow immune to what used to be deadly poison (you’re carrying a set of Itzel antidotes or something? That only work against environmental poisons, not anything an enemy might inflict you with?).

For most of the rest… I would agree that masteries in general should just make it easier to do something, rather than be a total lockout.

That said, there is an argument to be made for having an equivalent to Proofs of Heroics in sPvP (or even just port them over directly, so you can earn Proofs of Heroics in sPvP). One could even consider the possibility of using Proofs of Heroics to earn mastery points in the same way as hero points (you ‘buy’ the point, and a random point in the world is counted as completed), although it would probably have to be limited to the channel points and maybe the strongboxes.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

They built it up for literally years. I think everyone hoped to be impressed, but kind of knew it would end up looking like it was designed by a committee.

It’s the sort of situation where they may have been better off spending the effort making a variety of other armour sets so players have a better chance of having a few they like, rather than one ultimate set that will be hit or miss with any given player.

So it could be something similar to weapon conjures, then?

Given how surprised both the Zephyrites and the Exalted were by the Mordrem rising, I suspect that Glint’s predictions got thrown off by Scarlet – Glint’s predictions seem to have involved Aurene being able to hatch and be raised in reasonable safety in Tarir for at least a period of time until Tarir needs to be abandoned (most likely, because of Mordremoth’s scheduled awakening time approaching). Which pretty much means that everything that’s happened since is off-script.

Which doesn’t mean her plan won’t work, but it does mean that if she left any additional prophecies behind, they’re about as useful as Hari Seldon’s after the Mule in the Foundation series.

While reserving the right to add more as I think of them, my initial thoughts are:

Glint
Odurra (mesmer NPCs in general got the best chatter)
Sieran

Djahlat.9610:

Lady Althea (just knowing that she is actually of Doric’s bloodline and happened to fall in love with a Prince that doesn’t have royal blood is a very good piece of Lore waiting to me, but they died anyways so whatever)

Adelbern, and therefore Rurik, is of Doric’s bloodline – he was just far enough away from the line of primogeniture that he wouldn’t normally have been considered for the throne (or even holding a significant noble title). This could be for a number of reasons – an illegitimate ancestor, an ancestor that was disgraced and stripped of their nobility at some point, or simply just having too many younger sons and daughters in his ancestry for anybody to remember his ancestry except his own family and whoever kept the ancestral records in Ascalon.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Drax: Just because the Elder Dragons didn’t always exist doesn’t necessarily mean there weren’t entities or objects which could have housed magic before them. I’m thinking of either entire races of dragons we have hinted as existing in mass in the past, or objects like krait obelisks and bloodstones – these hold magic, thus would act as a separate container for magic but while we do not know what they’re made of, the materials that make them had to come from somewhere.

There is also a the possibility that entities that arrived on the world after its creation came from elsewhere and introduced magic – not too dissimilar to the Six Gods (if not the Six Gods themselves) – and that prior to this moment “all Tyrian magic” could exist in the world without it metaphorically (possibly literally) exploding from overload. Beings such as Koda and the Spirits of the Wild, or Zintl and Ameyalli, or the Great Dwarf (had it actually been an actual god in the past), or Mellaggan (if she isn’t Melandru). As opposed to magic naturally entering the world from The Mists at a regular rate.

That’s pretty much the sort of thing I was thinking about when I said “either the system can’t be completely closed, or there was something else that existed before the Elder Dragons that sealed magic away.”

My gut feeling is that at this point, Tyria’s magic is mostly a closed system, but there is still something of a porosity to it. Magic enters the system when a being from the Mists uses non-Tyrian magic in order to influence Tyria in some manner. Magic leaves when a soul dies and their soul-energy moves into the Mists.

There may also be some ‘natural’ leakage both ways – said leakage, however, is almost insignificant compared to the magic already present in Tyria.

Come to think of it, actually… what if the Elder Dragons are actually responsible for Tyria being in a state where if they’re all killed at once, boom?

Imagine there’s a semipermeable membrane between Tyria and the Mists. When the ‘pressure’ of magic in Tyria is lower than that of the Mists, then magic slowly seeps in from the Mists. When the ‘pressure’ of magic in Tyria is higher, magic slowly seeps out. Not at a rate fast enough to compensate for rapid swings, but over thousands of years, magic would eventually reach an equilibrium.

Now, consider the effect of the dragons concentrating all of Tyria’s magic inside themselves. This means that our hypothetical membrane isn’t feeling any pressure from the magic that the dragons have contained. So if we imagine that the equilibrium pressure is somewhere close to the trigger point for the dragons to awaken again… this could mean that over the majority of Tyria’s history, magic has been slowly seeping in from the Mists and being consumed by the Elder Dragons, allowing more and more magic to be concentrated in the Elder Dragons until it becomes too great for the world to sustain.

Pistol rounds piercing did go away with the pre-HoT trait revamp, though, and I think they have the technology now to stop pistol piercing from generating arbitrarily high damage anyway. Nowadays, it’s pretty much just a weak fireball that bleeds the primary target.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I noticed that beneath the icon for each tome, there was a thin line of colour. Red for Justice, blue for Resolve, and white for Courage. Perhaps this correlates to how the bar is filled. For example, perhaps dealing condition damage gives red “initiative”, whereas healing allies gives blue “initiative”, and applying boons or blocking/reflecting attacks fills the gauge with white “initiative”.

I would be inclined to say that I hope the tome replacing Justice doesn’t require condition damage to be charged, since most core guardian weapons offer little or no condition damage outside of Justice procs. Would be better to base it off damage of any kind if it’s to have a druid-esque charging mechanic.

Caeledh.5437:

@ the no-healer deniers…

ANet said no healers. Explicitly. Also no tanks. This is fact.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110208051058/https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

They set out to ‘redefine’ the holy trinity into their trinity of damage / support / control. But they didn’t arrive there. They landed in Melee-Beserkerville.

We have read it. Here are the relevant quotes:

" That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class."

This does not mean ‘no healer’. This means ’there is no profession dedicated to healing like monk was in Guild Wars 1*, whom you have to wait for in order to do content."

They then say:

“Heal: Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations.”

This is not saying that there will be no healers. This is saying that healing is part of the support role, and supporters will be able to do things apart from healing. In fact, the reason why druid is preferred over tempest in raids is that druid also provides unique DPS support through GotL, frost, and sun spirits. Support tempests also provide more than just healing, but their non-healing support is mostly in the form of the same boons that other professions provide, so they’re less valuable because it’s likely that other players have already provided sufficient Might and Fury.

Nowhere in there do they say “no healers”. They do, however, make a big deal about not having to wait around for a specific profession to show up because only that profession can provide adequate healing.

If you think there is something we’ve missed, please point to where in that article it specifically says ‘no healers’. Not ‘there is no dedicated healing class’, when they go on to say that they intend for every profession to be able to carry out every role. Not a discussion about how they consider healing to be part of the broader role of support. The spot where they explicitly say there will be no healers in GW2. Just waving your hand vaguely at an article we’ve both read and appear to be coming out with entirely different interpretations is not going to cut it.

*Technically speaking, a well-played support Ritualist could replace a monk, as could some other professions using a ritualist secondary, but many players believed two monks were essential in eight-player content regardless.

Lonami.2987:

draxynnic.3719:

Lonami.2987:

draxynnic.3719:

Lonami.2987:

Well, unless they’re willing to remove the tool belt with elite specializations (which they shouldn’t, because it’s part of core) then we’ll never get new mechanic skills, and if we get them, we’ll be losing options in exchange.

There is precedent, however. Dragonhunter and necromancer both had their profession mechanic replaced by something that was similar but equivalent. Doing so with the engineer does have the additional wrinkle that replacing the toolbelt will influence skill balance (making skills with poor toolbelt skills more attractive while making skills with good toolbelt skills less attractive) – however, ArenaNet might consider this a good thing.

Personally, I’d prefer that the the alternative you propose. A lot of the toolbelt skills have interesting mechanics and simply wouldn’t work as the flipovers you suggest – to me, having an elite spec which replaces them would be better than removing them entirely.

Those are an upgrade, or a variation. You can’t really do that with all the skills of the tool belt. The only thing you get is new tool belt skills with the new slot skills.

If they ever want to use the mechanic bar for anything, they would need to nuke the tool belt, which would lead to many problems, since you would be losing so many vital tool belt skills.

Which toolbelt skills do you consider ‘vital’?

F1 usually supplements your healing. This can be substituted for by having the elite specialisation’s F1 provide a similar healing/survival effect. Medkit would be substantially disadvantaged, but it wouldn’t be hard to have a skill in there that’s roughly equivalent to the healing turret and Elixir H toolbelt skills.

The other toolbelt skills… none of them are vital. Really. Useful, sure, but a specific, fixed toolbelt for an elite specialisation could bring capabilities that compensate for the loss of the current toolbelt.

Personally? Maybe one or two skills, which could be easily adapted to the slot skill bar, or given to kits. So yeah, me, personally, I don’t consider the tool belt vital. That’s why I’m advocating for its removal, to be replaced with something better (probably won’t happen, but well, one can dream).

Other people could consider it very important, that’s why I added that note, to show that the tool belt can be removed without losing the tool belt skills forever.

Which means you can have elite specialisations that replace the toolbelt without destroying it forever for all engineer builds as you are advocating for. Sure, your proposal might allow for some of the skills to be salvaged, but how many could we realistically expect to be converted into slot skills? Six, to replace the kits? That’s a lot of content being thrown out with the bathwater that isn’t even as dirty as you claim.

What you propose is a total rebuild of the engineer from the ground up that will turn it into a new profession altogether. It also feels like you’re trying to pull your proposal which already has its own thread into what should be a completely separate thread. There is no justification for your claim that the toolbelt must be removed to allow for elite specialisations to have their own mechanic that uses the F1-F5 keys – all that is required is for the toolbelt to be replaced for that specialisation.