Guild Wars 2

From Gwen’s Story in GW1, she learns how to become a mesmer simply from reading books describing mesmer skills.

I’d probably guess that when push comes to shove, learning magic is like any other skill – it’s easier if you have teachers and/or instruction manuals, but someone had to be the first to figure out what to put in those instruction manuals.

In which case the resumes of our PCs have to look abysmal.

Krytan culture is still pretty close to time periods where kings leading armies into battle was still the expected thing. In times of trouble, your leader responding to an assassination attempt by wiping the floor with the would-be assassins would be regarded as a good thing.

Even today, to an extent – if a national leader today was attacked by confirmed terrorists and played an active role in fighting them off, unless suspicions arise that the event was staged, do you really think that’s going to make their popularity go down?

Magic ammo seems to be given a little too much lore credibility to what is probably mechanical convenience – although some professions do seem to be able to load firearms supernaturally fast!

From my viewpoint, everyone who isn’t a warrior or an engineer wields (or at least has the potential to use) magic at some level. Warriors and engineers don’t use it directly, but there’s nothing stopping them from using tangible objects that contain magic within them – elixirs at least seem to have magic in them on the engineer line, for instance. A warrior’s equipment is just as magical as a guardian’s – however, where a guardian uses a weapon as a magical focus, for a warrior it is likely all going into making it easier for the warrior to use the weapon to full effect. A thief, engineer or warrior using a volley-like skill, for instance, may be making use of an enchanted firearm capable of self-loading… possibly made in a similar manner to an engineer’s self-loading-and-aiming turrets.

Of course, it is possible that warriors like other professions do have a connection to magic, but their use of that magic is instinctively turned entirely inwards, making them stronger, tougher and faster than they would otherwise be able to be. Such a scenario would provide a simple explanation as to why smaller PC warriors are a match for larger ones – magical affinity among the playable races seems to be roughly inversely proportional to size, so the asura warrior might be getting a large magical boost to strength to offset their lack of physical size, while a norn or charr has (and needs) less of such benefits.

BrunoBRS.5178:

first of all, bad rep. your leader is twisting the minds of everyone to suit her needs? that would take her off the throne faster than going on a murder spree. even using it in self defense would look bad. just imagine: “her majesty the queen murders separatist party revolutionaries”. it would essentially be giving political ammo to caudecus to attack her with.

second, who says we don’t see her powers? she creates an invincibility bubble that she apparently could keep on for hours, and nothing could get in or out of it until she wanted to.

I don’t know about that. A historical king who responded to a kidnapping attempt by slaughtering or otherwise turning the tables on their would-be kidnappers would be celebrated, not condemned, and since Tyria seems to have gender equality (at least among the playable factions) the same should apply to queens.

Given her display in EoD, though, it seems likely that she is holding back in Caudecus Manor. Considering how deftly she politically manipulated all concerned afterwards, it could well be a case that she was never really in danger, but she saw more to gain by allowing a rescue attempt to succeed. Alternatively, as suggested above, it could be that she was too disoriented by the method of her kidnapping to tap into her full powers.

Or it could be that the statue is magic because it is a channel for direct influence from Grenth. The Priory acknowledges that magic can come from divine sources, after all, and “leaking” magic isn’t far from how Vekk described the sleeping Primordus – if the gods are themselves beings of magic, it wouldn’t be too farfetched for their influence to be detectable as magic.

plasmon.5348:

The vista jumps are so mild. I doubt people even think about those when they are talking about jumping puzzles. Anet has been wise to not include the actual jumping puzzles for map completions.

So yeah if you don’t like them then don’t attempt them.

There are definitely exceptions – the one in Dredgehaunt Cliffs that involves climbing to the top of a crane and then you’re still not done (you have to jump across a gorge, not die in the process, work your way across the side of a cliff, and survive the surprise dynamic event at the end to boot) comes to mind. Most of them are fairly mild, but…

Thing is, the map completion rewards are significant enough that you kinda do have to finish them if you don’t want to fall significantly behind. It’d be better if they split off the map completion so you got a partial reward for everything else and an additional reward for getting all the vistas that add up to what you get for map completion now.

Mindvibe: You have to look at the profession as a whole. A guardian going into melee from a fresh state will have the first hit negated by Aegis. With 5 points in Radiance (if you don’t have at least that and you’re at least around the mid levels, why?) activating Justice will blind foes in your vicinity, protecting you from another wave of hits, and activating Courage will stop another hit (and possibly heal you if you’ve taken that trait). Depending on the nature of the enemy and the player’s timing, this has the potential to stop the damage that the warrior has extra health in order to be able to take. Meanwhile, Resolve is ticking away to undo whatever damage slips through.

And that’s without going into skills. A guardian with a bladed weapon is going to have at least one other area blind on a shortish cooldown besides Justice, and the sword provides a shield against projectiles as well. Blunt weapons will give you the opportunity to plant a defensive symbol on a regular basis – a symbol that can be traited for additional heals. If you really want to go defensive, mace/focus will give you a heal on a chain, a healing symbol, a block, a multitarget blind with healing to boot, and a shield that can be activated while stunned. And then you can add utility skills on top of that, such as Wall of Reflection’s “okay, I can now ignore any projectile user attacking me from over there” behaviour.

Warriors just don’t have this kind of damage mitigation. Yes, they have decent heals, and they have defensive skills on some of their weapons, but even a mace/shield warrior has less ability to prevent damage than a guardian (it might match the guardian mace/focus in terms of what’s on the skillbar, but the guardian gets to add virtues as well). What does the warrior get to compensate for this? The extra health to survive the hits that a guardian could have blocked, blinded, or otherwise prevented. This is how the two professions are balanced against one another – the guardian is based on active defenses provided through skills and the profession mechanic, while warriors are just plain tougher.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As did skelk, drakes, giants, and quite a few other creatures.

Though what makes me curious is the fiery look on them.

(waits patiently for the “they’re tied to Primordus” speculatory shouts)

EVERYTHING RELATED TO FIRE IS TIED TO PRIMORDUS. THE HOUNDS OF BALTHAZAR ARE ACTUALLY DESTROYER PUPPIES.

Given the number of times I’ve seen someone try to line up the gods with the dragons, and Balthazar-Primordus is the easy one…

Really, Kasei? I’ve seen more human male guardians than norn…

The two professions do have their similarities, enough that I would present guardian as a possibility to people who like the mesmer theme but don’t like the illusion mechanic, but here are the differences:

First, the illusions are big. As a mesmer, you can’t avoid having them on your bar and they’ll likely be a significant part of your playstyle. While spirit weapons have some mechanical similarities, there’s a big difference between a guardian that can call a friend for a damage boost, and the mesmer who cultivates a squad of illusions to inflict damage, conditions, and draw aggro.

Second, mesmers tend to play at long range, and guardians at short range. Out of six primary weapons, only two of those available to the guardian are ranged, and while each can reach out to 1200 range, they’re more effective in a close-range skirmish. While the mesmer has a close-range weapon which admittedly has similarities with the guardian’s sword, the other three are all intended for use at long range and, importantly, at least as effective at the edge of their range as at point blank.

Second and a half, guardians have a wide range of area-of-effect skills, while mesmers tend to focus more on picking out single targets.

Third, while both professions can have a punishment style, the focus is somewhat different. Guardians punish as part of protecting – their skills generally focus around protecting a person or area, and any punishment is applied to enemies attacking that area. Mesmers, on the other hand, are more inclined towards protecting as part of punishing – they’re looking to shut down an opponent rather than protect an area.

2 and 2.5 can be regarded as a part of 3. Guardians say ‘this is my patch – if you threaten it, I’m going to hurt you’. Mesmers, on the other hand, pick you out and proceed to insert large numbers of young felines into your day.

This was pretty much my thought as soon as it was revealed that warriors have high health and guardians have low health. Warriors take a lot of killing, yes, but they get worn down over time. Guardians can’t take as much punishment at once, but have a much larger range of ways to prevent and/or recover from damage.

Depending on how you interpret events, too, it also seems as if Harathi Hinterlands ends with the centaur war leader being slain and the centaurs being driven out of Kryta entirely. Certainly, that’s the sort of chatter you get from the Seraph NPCs in the short time before the events reset and Kingsgate Camp gets filled with centaurs again. From a lore perspective, however, we really have to assume that certain events don’t repeat, certainly not with the regularity they do in game.

It’s timed – in fact, you have to move pretty quickly to do it (best to have friends along who can keep the other ghosts under control so you don’t have to fight your way through).

The overall impression I get from Thruln the Lost is that he’s pandering to the audience, and he comes from a line of Thrulns that have learned to pander to the audience in order to survive.

Even if we take Thruln the Lost’s timescale as given, that’s over a thousand years in which the account could have changed. The testimony of the ancient (and safely dead) Thruln places the blame squarely on the jotun leaders – strictly speaking the two aren’t completely incompatible, but there’s a distinct shift of the focus of the blame. Given that we know the successors of said jotun leaders are prone to violence, which do you think a jotun leader to receive better – a Thruln that tells stories about how the fall of the jotun was the result of the same behaviour that the modern jotun continue to indulge in, or a Thruln who tells stories about how the fall of the jotun wasn’t their fault really, they were betrayed by fickle beings beyond their power that switched their favour and attention to the race that was dominant at the time (if we assume the corruption in the oral history happened before the Searing)? If you chose the first, your hypothetical past life as a jotun Thruln probably found itself subjected to Darwinian evolution through the medium of an angry jotun chieftain’s blade. The modern Thruln the Lost might not even know that the oral history has been corrupted – it’s just that every jotun that told the true story died generations ago. Adding that said new race only survived to be noticed because of the jotun is another salve to their ego – yes, the jotun might be in a bad place now, but the next dominant race only got there due to jotun intervention!

An additional consideration is that nothing we’ve seen elsewhere suggests that the norn were a powerful race contemporary to the jotun in the time of their ascendance. This also feels like something added in order to provoke a better response from the audience – Thruln the Lost probably knows that the story of the fall of the jotun probably won’t be of much interest to the typical norn, but if you say that the glory days of your own people were shared by that of your audience – then fluff their egos by telling them of how they survived the fall intact when your own people didn’t – then that’s a story the norn might care enough about to preserve. The irony is that he may be considering that to be a white lie to preserve the truth, without being aware that the only truth that remains in his own tale is that the jotun were once great and powerful.

@Harnel: There are a lot of signs that there are other things in the Mists – for instance, the description of Ravenheart Gloom in the Domain of Anguish suggest that its depths connect to… something else. And then there’s whatever it was humans are intimated to have been fleeing from when they were brought to Tyria. The possibilities for what could be distracting the gods are practically infinite.

That was my thought too. Imps would probably have been a better model to reskin for GW1-style gargoyles.

I’ll give Ash a go, then:

Warrior: How many adventuring parties lack the muscle who can beatdown the enemy when necessary? The Ash legion warrior is the guy who can wrestle down a strong opponent, break down a door, or when push comes to shove, hold off or distract the guards while the rest of the team does their thing. Additionally, the legions are independent entities – while Ash concentrates on special forces, it’s still going to need some guards and regular soldiers to hold the line or deliver a killing blow against a weakened opponent.

Guardian: Many of the comments regarding the Ash Warrior also applies to the guardian. While even less subtle than the warrior once they start breaking out the special effects, they can be a significant force multiplier for a small team, and their defensive abilities can be kept in reserve until the rest of the team is in place to do the job, at which point cunning use of wards and bubbles could be the difference between a successful operation and an escape versus failure and capture.

Ranger: This one I’m putting in for completion because it practically writes itself. Nearly as stealthy as thieves, can serve as a guide and survival expert for a team in the wilderness, and an expert in generating stampedes and producing other animal-related diversions.

Engineer: Every special forces unit needs its gadgets. Even on the field, the engineer is the guy who can use the stuff that’s a little too complex for the regular operatives, the demolitions expert (both from knowledge of explosives and knowledge of weak points in construction) and the cat who can MacGuyver up some improvised technology when needed.

Elementalist: The elementalist among the Ash Legion fills a similar role to the engineer – with less ability to produce gadgets to hand out to others, but having an elementalist along might mean you don’t need to carry along heavy and obtrusive explosives when a fireball, earthquake, or other elemental manipulation might carry out the desired act of sabotage. When dealing with real situations rather than game abstractions, an elementalist is also a useful contingency once the explosives the team brought along for the job have been expended, in order to collapse an escape route behind them or to destroy targets of opportunity.

Mesmer: Turn your team invisible or portal them an escape or entry route. Disguise yourself or another as a member of an opposing faction to cause havoc. This one really writes itself nearly as much as thieves and rangers.

Necromancer: Of all the professions, necromancy might actually be one of the most subtle in battle (while mesmers have illusionary tricks up their sleeve, the purple-pink colours of most mesmer offensive magics is quite distinctive). A necromancer could magically spread a plague through an opposing force or sap the strength of a sentry to make them easier to neutralise. Furthermore, with a necromancer along any body you find becomes a resource to produce expendable soldiers for a diversion or to cover an escape.

Might do Blood some other time if someone else doesn’t beat me to it, but really, it’s not hard to see how every profession can have a use on the front line.

@Haette: Grass is greener on the other side effect.

ArenaNet has provided a clear option to players of one profession that prefer the mechanic of the other – play the other profession. Apart from the mechanic and the fluff of magic versus technology, the two play quite similarly.

@Golgathoth: There’s actually a hint in that one – the meeting between him and his wife is before the assault, so if you succeed you’ll have cut the head off the assault before it begins. The reason Caithe doesn’t like it is because taking that option is basically walking directly into the middle of the army and giving the wife the opportunity to set up the perfect trap – fighting off the assault from a defensive position would be safer.

@Zaxares: I get the impression that the centaurs have been as much of a problem as they have been because of the corruption, actually. The Seraph have been having trouble holding the line because they’re underfunded while the Ministry Guard is overfunded and Caudecus and his allies have money to burn, there’s at least one storyline that ties Caudecus to deliberately sabotaging the Seraph to make Jennah look bad, and there are storylines tying the bandits to the Ministry… and there are events that show the bandits supplying the centaurs. It’s basically the same story as the Star Wars prequels – a corrupt politician manufacturing crises to undermine the regime he’s trying to replace.

Silor: Some professions do use the F4 slot.

PtD does have the most healing/time of the heals available to the guardian if you don’t have the reduced signet cooldown trait. If you do, then the signet becomes the best option, but you’ve spent a trait to do that.

GaseousMask.3018:

Also if I’m not mistaken, there’s an event in Harathi Highlands where Iron Legion is bombarding a Centaur camp while you charge in there and get rid of their supplies. Once the event ends, the Charr says “The Iron Legion sends their regards. Let’s get back to the base!” At least that shows that the Charr are willing to aid the Seraph in their war against the Centaurs.

That was a single charr engineer that was working with a mercenary company who had her own siege weapons, not an official Iron Legion operation. (Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t approved under-the-counter, but she could just be a gladium that threw her lot in with the unit but still retains her identification with the Iron Legion.)

@DarckKnight: While those are obvious choices, they actually disagree with what we see from the generic charr NPCs. Ash Legion seems to use necromancers quite extensively – given that generic charr necromancers in GW1 are all titled “Ash (title)”, it’s possible that charr necromancers were always primarily seen among Ash and were never really truly part of the Shaman Caste the way the charr monks and elementalists were.

Additionally, we do see generic Iron Legion charr that are guardians, suggesting that guardians may be relatively common among Iron despite their general preference for technology over magic.

Thruln the Lost isn’t exactly a credible source – his story doesn’t match up with one from a Thruln ghost who dates back from then.

Personally, I do think the gods themselves are beings of magic, albeit where the magic can be transferred from one personality to another (as seen between Abaddon and Kormir). However, they aren’t the only sources of magic out there – and the magic they granted just before the Exodus wasn’t their own. (Although they may have deliberately split the bloodstones in order to create schools that mirror their own powers, hence why we have three magical professions that line up fairly well to three gods).

Camp Althea’s name is fitting – Althea’s fate is a great rallying call for those who don’t want peace with the charr. (What it’s missing is that vengeance for Althea should strictly be aimed at the Flame Legion, since it was the shamans that caused her horrific death.)

Her not being a Foefire ghost, however, is probably because she was no longer around at the time of the Foefire. The impression I got was that her ghost hung around to inform her family of her fate and because her remains weren’t properly put to rest – she would have passed over to the Underworld well before the Foefire, putting her spirit beyond its reach. (By contrast, we do see Grazdan the Protector rising as a ghost apparently after being buried, but we do see in both GW1 and 2 that humans, especially military humans, do have a tendency to rise as ghosts spontaneously to fight again, for good or ill.)

To make matters worse, that looks like Ebonhawke. If she’s not worried about the possibility of being attacked by Seperatists, that’s because she is one. Either way, good idea to be armed.

If we’re going to metathink it, it’s because ANet wanted to make the charr playable, and they didn’t want to have to extend the map to the far north to give them a territory to play in.

There are a few things you’re missing in your analysis here:

First, the presentation of the city is essentially a representative sample, not necessarily a snapshot of the city at the time of that personal step. It’s possible that at the time, some of the guards have been depleted for use with crises elsewhere, it just can’t be shown in the persistant areas because usually the city is guarded to that level.

There’s quite a bit of evidence that whatever personal story you choose, the other storylines are still happening (just to other characters). The pack of bandits intending to poison the well isn’t the only one out there – at about that time, you’ve also got the bandit plots from the Commoner and Noble storylines, and centaurs still not so far from the gates of the city (the city may not be on the brink of starvation, but that’s because the farms to the west of Shaemoor are still fairly intact – if they got trashed by centaurs, the situation in Divinity’s Reach would likely worsen rapidly – if not immediately, then later when winter rolled around and preserved food stores began running low). Additionally, keep in mind that the reason Two-Blade Pete gives to his band for the poisoning is to take advantage of the resulting chaos to go on a looting spree – if too much of the regular city guard was diverted to defend the well, they (or some other opportunistic criminals) might just skip the poisoning and take advantage of the lack of guards to go straight to the looting, or failing that simply adapt at the last minute and switch to some other water source that isn’t so well guarded. Bottom line is that it’s not just “ONE bandit gang” – it’s that one bandit gang on top of all the other proverbial fires we’ve been told that the Seraph are stretched thin trying to put out. (Not to mention that it’s a pretty well organised and equipped gang.)

Regarding other orders pitching in to help… keep in mind that the human metaplot is that there are various factions working, independantly or in concert, to make the queen look bad with the ultimate aim of pulling her out of power. The Ministry Guard is largely if not entirely under Caudecus’ thumb and there are hints that Two-Blade Pete is actually being backed by the Ministry – it’s not in Caudecus’ interests to stop the poisoning, and the absence of the Ministry Guard can’t even be called a suspicious one – they can easily respond if asked that they simply didn’t regard it as their jurisdiction. The Shining Blade is the smallest of Kryta’s military orders, and essentially behaves as the Order of Whispers to the Seraph’s Vigil – they’d rather spend their efforts identifying and preventing future threats rather than expend their limited resources doing the Seraph’s job for them. When it comes to the multiracial orders… it’s probably simply beneath their notice. The poisoning of the well is bad but not crippling – at the level where they probably feel justified in feeling that Kryta can take care of itself.

Now Kellach… there are certainly holes there. I vaguely remember one of the storylines mentioning that he came in through the sewers, with the implication that he was allowed to do so to prevent the scenario you describe – the throne room could have been chosen as the point for the showdown because that was one place where they knew Kellach would stand and fight, while trying to confront him elsewhere might just lead him to take another route that would cause more damage. One thing to keep in mind is that Kellach is still loyal to Kryta, albeit with that loyalty twisted by draconic corruption – he thinks the supposed ability of royal blood to cleanse draconic corruption will save Kryta, and once he realised the undead were following him, he’d likely have taken a path that minimised the collateral damage. A bigger plot hole IMO is right at the start of that arc – we’re told kids are being sent into the mere to gather fuel, but the nearest human settlements require long treks through dangerous territory to reach the swamp.

@Strang: It seems to be a general thing that arctic predators have some special ability that chills the target. Polar bears, alpine wolves, snow leopards, white moas, and blue jellyfish all have F2 skills that chill the target, for instance (and the raptor screeches seem to generally be based off the moa screeches). It’s part of the reason why I’m not reading ice trolls having a cold-based ability as meaning they’re training in magic.

@Konig: Look two posts above the one where you say I clearly haven’t fought ice trolls – I explain things there.

I’ve been pretty sure, and even more sure now with post-guardian-release interviews saying the guardian was powered by faith but that it didn’t matter what that faith was in, that monk magic never involved directly calling on the gods. The ability to wield it comes with faith, for humans this generally means faith in the gods (or the Unseen), and as a result humans could easily interpret it as being prayers to the gods, but the power comes from the Bloodstones just like mesmers, necromancers and elementalists, and nonhumans using that form of magic is no less lore-accurate than nonhumans that are members of those other professions.

Regarding riders – the line for the title that comes with killing riders is along the lines of “Attacking you was the last stupid mistake these smart creatures ever made”. This may simply be a reference for the sake of being a reference, but it could be an indication that riders are in fact intelligent, but choose not to communicate with non-riders.

Lyssa did have a certain connection to generic magical energy in GW1 – it’s through shrines to Lyssa that Energy Storage for elementalists and Mysticism for dervishes – both attributes relating to energy – can be boosted.

Regarding the professions, there is absolutely no reason the magical professions should line up nicely to the dragons. Keep in mind that the progenitor to the Bloodstones held magic that was safeguarded from draconic influence, and at the time the dragons last went to sleep it was undifferentiated – it was only after the gods split it to make the Bloodstones that the professions fell out rather than ‘magic-user’ being the sole magic-using profession that could do everything. The dragons may well have their magic divided among different parts of the magical spectrum, but there is little reason for it to line up nicely (or at all!) with professions that only appeared after the last time the dragons went to sleep.

(I say ‘little’ because I suspect the divisions are something the gods did have something to do with, since the professions as they currently stand do allow mortals to imperfectly mirror the preferences of the gods… and if theories relating gods to dragons have any backing whatsoever, there might be a second-hand link to the dragons that way. Personally, though, I doubt it… or at least regard any such link as dating back to previous generations of gods. Given ANet’s stated lore policy of going wider rather than deeper, I expect the gods to have an origin unrelated to the dragons, rather than everything coming back to the dragons.)

Ranger, I suspect, shares a magic type with elementalist, possibly added to non-bloodstone related spirit summoning similar to the ancient ritualists. They had abilities in GW1 that could be interpreted as either elemental magic or craftiness, and some of their moves in GW2 are clearly elemental in nature. (Or at least, they certainly aren’t guardian magic, necromancy, or mesmerism.)

Most skale in GW1 behave the same… unless something gets them to form an army, or somebody starts worshiping them and they don’t eat them immediately. It’s possible that the reason they tend to spend so much time just hanging around is because of a mix between being cold-blooded and thus inclined to lethargy, and as a rule not caring to do more than hunting food for survival.

Like I said, they’re still pretty dim, but they have shown signs of sapience. They’re probably on the boundary – not quite animals, but not really fully sapient either.

Snow trolls I haven’t had a lot of experience with, so I can’t really comment on their attacks. It is a common trope for trolls of a particular element to have some attack based on that element, but it’s probably more akin to a drake’s breath – a natural (albeit possibly magical) ability, not a sign of even a primitive understanding of magic.

I like Naurgalen’s first suggestion – the current way things work does come pretty close as long as someone else doesn’t pick up your second weapon and you don’t move too far away from it. I’m not so sure about the second – there are advantages to being able to, say, pull a lightning hammer while remaining in a defensive attunement like Water or Earth, and I’m not sure removing an entire line of skills and replacing it with a single skill (which would probably be a glyph) would actually be a benefit.

It’s been said be a dev to be town clothes, so it’ll probably be added as such sometime, but as town clothes rather than armour.

From memory of when I did that, there ARE Seraph defending the well, but without your assistance they get overwhelmed. One person can and in this case does when they’re a hero and the typical Seraph soldier isn’t, and it’s part of the setting that the Seraph simply don’t have the resources they need to do everything they’re called on to do until level 50 or so (when you’ve outlevelled the dungeons and zones where you typically find the Seraph). At the level where you’re doing the well storyline, though, there are centaurs and bandits spread through most of Queensdale (in other words, the farmlands that the city relies on to survive) – the Seraph is stretched pretty close to breaking point, and a poisoned well may well be a fair tradeoff compared to having the farmlands Divinity’s Reach relies on destroyed entirely.

A few of the Istan quests in Nightfall suggest that the skale are in fact sapient (enough to have leaders, religion, and form armies, anyway), but still pretty stupid, possibly even more so than grawl.

I’m not sure the troll AoE attack is actually intended to be magic – it could instead be a representation that they know their caves and know what to do to cause a rockfall in a particular location. Dredge had something similar in EOTN regardless of whether they were spellcasters or not.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The steam creatures’ background is explained in the Infinity Ball asura storyline. They’re creates of the asura PC in one of the possible futures, and are sent to the current Tyria in order to take over it (as the asura PC has become the Grand Sovereign of Tyria in his world).

They seem more likely to be tools to fight Elder Dragons, given that, by appearances, the ED were weakened in their version of Tyria (in one of the portals opened between the worlds, tiny and weak destroyers come through). Either way, I don’t see any similarity between the steam creatures and the ED minions at all.

The first wave may be tiny and weak, but the second… :o

A possibly more likely explanation is that the dragons seem capable of corrupting magical artifacts, but at least have difficulty doing the same to technological devices. If the steam creatures are in fact purely technological, then, they may have been initially built as a replacement for golems to be the front line against the dragons. (Although why, if that’s the case, they’re made to resemble creatures such as minotaurs and riders is an interesting question.)

As to the above: the Pale Tree is huge because it’s a magical tree – doesn’t need any other explanation. And I’ve heard that the binary thing was a rumour that turned out to be false – someone independantly decoded it and it turned out to be something different – but I haven’t done that one so I can’t say either way. Konig might be able to, though. Even if it is, it could be that Section Green is for studying what makes the sylvari immune to the dragons, since one of the functions of the CoE seems to be studying draconic corruption. (Which, incidentally, debunks the argument that the sylvari are immune to draconic corruption because they’re already minions, since there’s a creature in the CoE that shows the effects of corruption from multiple dragons)

Certainly, given that we know the origin of the Pale Tree, we can rule out that she herself is the sixth ED. It could be that she’s a descendant of that ED’s method of making minions (though I personally doubt it) but given the chronology we can rule out that she’s the sixth dragon itself.

Cempa.3645:

Just changed to S/D and got used to Element swap, it works and works really well BUT is so hectic, no way I can do 80 levels with this intensity. Some guildies tell me they never swap, and if they do its into water for a heal and then back to fire!

It’s fun, but I do think there are problems with it, and I’m a bit of an altaholic so I generally don’t do it enough to get tiring before switching or taking a break anyway.

I’d say, for instance, that the slot-1 skills probably could do with some improvement. Not so much that you don’t get rewarded by doing the stance-dance, but they could probably be improved so you don’t need to cycle attunements all the time without significantly increasing the power of an elementalist that is cycling to their full potential (since they won’t be slot-1ing often anyway).

Actually, from memory promotion to Legionnaire comes through your own legion’s methods – Iron and Ash just recognise that you’re the best out of the survivors and promote you, as Blood your legionnaire survives and you have to fight for it.

I’m not sure about Rytlock becoming Khan-Ur, but there is a suggestion that while Malice and Smodur are behind the treaty, Bangar has been proving a bit of a loose cannon. I suspect that Rytlock happening to come from the legion who’s Imperator seems most likely to need replacing is no coincidence.

He might then be able to go for Khan-Ur, but Smodur and Malice both seem to have a pretty good handle on the big picture, and Smodur seems to be the leading candidate at the moment.

Thalador.4218:

The Seventh (?): I know the people who’d want there to be a seventh are few, but I like to believe that there’s a Seventh Elder Dragon in Cantha, who is benevolent and is connected to Air and Stars, with Kuunavang being its “champion.”

Or to continue with the theory of obsessions, it could be that the Canthan dragon’s obsession is to craft the perfect civilisation – and it’s adopted the Empire of Cantha as the best available starting point. This would naturally mean it’d be less destructive than the others, but it still might not really be benevolent – its idea of the perfect civilisation may be different to ours, or, like other dragons, it might want to cover the world with the civilisation it has adopted.

Another interesting direction it could take is if once the Canthan dragon learns of what’s happening in Tyria, it might decide that one of the Tyrian civilisations, or even all of Tyrian civilisation as a group, might be more worthy of its sponsorship than Cantha…

One area where I think ANet may have done the ele a disservice is that they’ve made the learning curve even steeper than it would be naturally due to the weird level scaling of their healing skills – GoEH, their best self-heal, seems to be viable at 80 but at 20 it feels like slapping a bandaid on a gaping stomach wound. End result is that the time at which you’re really getting to grips with how the elementalist works is the time at which the profession is the least forgiving of errors.

It does get better once you get over that hump. The trick – short of smacking things with lightning hammers – is never to sit in one attunement firing off slot-1 skills unless it’s a battle you can practically sleep through anyway. Come up with a rotation for each attunement, and cycle through the rotations and you can do… decently.

Rytlock was probably using the strategy of informing someone of a promotion by addressing them by their new rank as if nothing special has happened. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened (for a more sinister example, see Empire Strikes Back).

As for why – it probably basically comes down to Rytlock needing someone to do a job, deciding that you’re the best person to do it, and promoting you to the rank appropriate to perform that role. While your warband may still be small, the legions probably value results more than arbitrary numbers, and by then you’ve shown that while your warband is small, it (especially its leader) is still extremely capable.

From a cultural standpoint, Cantha could well stagnate just as China did when it went into its most recent isolationist stage (China was the most technologically and scientifically advanced culture in the world a thousand or so years ago). From a metagaming perspective, though, they’ll want to be able to justify firearms and engineering stuff in Cantha, so it’s likely that Cantha will at least be at the Krytan level of technology and probably a little higher (but probably not charr-level – that’s the charr’s schtick.)

And where is it said that the gods aren’t in the Mists? To my eye, it just seems as if they’re not communicating – the Mists are a big place, and it could be that they’re just not in a part of the Mists that’s accessible via the means we currently have of entering/viewing the Mists.

Actually, elementalists can be as sneaky as any other profession without stealth, and more than some (an elementalist might get into places you might not be able to get a backpack of explosives into). I can think of a lot of uses for elementalists in wetwork, despite the flashy nature of their skills.

That aside, elementalist probably is the most suitable of the scholars, due to the applications knowledge of and ability to manipulate elements could have to industry. Engineers and warriors are the obvious ones, and thieves also make a decent use of gadgets.

If you want to avoid those, though, guardian might actually be worth considering – it’s even subtly official, since there are at least some Iron Legion NPCs that are guardians (for an example, see the Meatoberfest fighting ground).

That theory’s been around for yonks, and debunked. You’ve probably noticed yourself that Dwayna is a bit of a stretch, and some of the other matchups you’ve made are also stretching a bit (for instance, why is Jormag apparently the strongest at mental corruption of Kralkatorrik is the equivalent of the goddess of mesmers?). You can make some matchups that work, but no-one has managed to get a one-to-one matchup.

It seems more likely that the matchups that are there are there because the dragons and gods are drawing from the same pool of concepts, and thus they appear similar – for instance, the god of fire and the dragon of fire appear similar, even if beyond fire and the things associated with fire they have little in common.

Ixal: They would could if ‘prototype’ became ‘production model deployed in significant numbers’. One prototype does not make a fleet.

Legion: We have been told that Rata Sum does have (golem-manned) farms, although we don’t see them ingame – presumably, they’re in more secure, unexplorable-to-PCs areas. I suspect that in normal economic conditions they do trade for food with Kryta, though – but with centaurs trampling all over the fields, Kryta’s ability to supply that requirement has probably been curtailed. (It’s one thing that makes the ‘defend Divinity’s Reach alone’ attitude of some ministers a little short-sighted – a city the size of DR, especially with refugees added, needs farmland or it will eventually starve.)

When it comes to riflemen – were there even riflemen in the Seraph in the books? I recall there being human riflemen, but in the Ebon Vanguard instead. So it could be that the Seraph are a little more hidebound in that respect – or, like the English except even more so, they consider good archers to be better than handgunners for the job they’re doing. The simplest answer, though, might be just that ArenaNet feels that a force that is normally allied to the players doesn’t need to have the range that an enemy group has (similar to how in GW1 many friendly armies are limited to about three professions while most organised enemy armies have the full range of professions).

Rosen: It’s because of the reason why the mursaat wanted control of Kryta – they wanted access to the Chosen in order to sacrifice them.

If you talk to the members of the Mantle in Rise of the White Mantle, there are two distinct sets of personalities that come out. Those that were spared were religious fanatics that believed wholeheartedly in the religion of the Unseen. Those that weren’t spared were those who talked more about a duty to defend Kryta than devotion to the Unseen. Essentially, if you consider the White Mantle to be the army of a theocracy, you have some people who are there as crusaders for their religion, and some that are simply there because joining that army is the best way to defend their country. The first group would quite happily slaughter innocents if their gods told them it was the right thing to do, while the second group would be more inclined to mutiny.

And that’s why the second group was slain – the mursaat wanted to ensure that control of the White Mantle afterwards fell to the fanatics.

In Saul’s case… despite his background, Saul was a good person, and he believed the mursaat to be entirely benevolent up until the moment where his followers were slain. That made him the right person to rally people to the cause of the White Mantle, but meant that when the mursaat revealed their true motives, he would likely baulk. Thus he got removed in exchange for someone more suitable for their future goals. Simply killing him would have shaken the faith of the others – taking him, on the other hand, gives at least the plausible deniability that he was taken to be rewarded rather than simply to get him out of the way.

Well, one thing that Joko, for instance, might have over Zhaitan is numbers. Zhaitan’s undead army was powerful, but was largely coming from Orr and what he could raid from neighbouring lands. Joko has been harvesting an entire continent since gaining power, and we know he has power over more than undead (the Mordant Crescent, the indentured Ossas, the junundu, and Joko knows what else). The Pact, meanwhile, is essentially a very powerful NGO – it’s proven able to take down a dragon in a rapid strike, yes, but without more support from the nations of Tyria, would it really be able to take on an empire that can wear it down in a battle of attrition? The defeat of Zhaitan, and certainly of other dragons, may actually erode some of its support – we don’t know how much the orders that make up the Pact are being propped up by the nations, but if the dragons are removed as an immediate threat, the nations might want to withdraw whatever support they supplied to that war effort in order to concentrate on lesser considerations.

So you could have a situation where, for instance, the Pact (or at least the Order of Whispers) wants to go after Joko, but the nations aren’t willing to sign away the resources to such an effort that they would for destroying an elder dragon, forcing them to act as a guerilla group rather than repeating the invasion of Orr.

There’s also the possibility that other dragons, especially Jormag, Primordus, and the DSD, will prove elusive to hunt down and destroy, but still enough of a threat through their minions that the Pact and its allies have to concentrate their resources on defending those fronts. Thus, while the PC might lead a war effort against Joko (for instance), it might be a war effort that can only draw on a fraction of the Pact’s resources, as opposed to Orr where the pact was throwing pretty much everything they had at the problem. (Which could be another way of presenting choices: “We can requisition X or Y, but one of those will be needed to fight a destroyer hive that’s appeared in location Z, so we can’t have both – which shall we request?”)

In fact, if it’s soon enough after Zhaitan’s fall, the Pact forces might even remain tied up consolidating their hold on Orr.

@Tuomir: The key word is “arrived”. The gods as a group are not native to Tyria, although some of them are. Apart from the native-born gods, we literally have no idea how old the gods were when they arrived on Tyria – it’s possible that they predate Tyria itself (although it doesn’t seem like they were responsible for its creation).

One of the tidbits of information we find about Balthazar is that when he arrives on Tyria, he does so carrying the head of his father. This tells us that Balthazar had a father, and suggests that his father died violently, although whether Balthazar was carrying the head in triumph or in mourning is unclear. Either way, this tells us that Balthazar certainly did have a parent, while we have no such information regarding Dwayna or Melandru – for all we know they are first-generation gods with no parents or other predecessors, possibly even born directly from the Mists.

Lyssa is an interesting one. It could be her way of representing duality as you say, but there’s new information there in that her two parts do have their own names – one Lyss, while the other’s name gets contradicted by different sources. While that could still be part of the dualistic two-sides-of-a-coin aspect, that does increase the strength of the theory that the twin goddesses making Lyssa are actually twins in the familial sense that share the mantle of deityhood, not one entity with two sides – and if so, that implies a parent. Again, this distinguishes them from Dwayna and Melandru, neither of which have shown any signs of having a predecessor.

If you’re talking about things like the Foefire, the Cataclysm, and so on, keep in mind that they were acts of a single lunatic and generally as acts of desperation, while the Searing was a deliberate offensive move with pretty much universal support among at least the male side of charr society (Pyre approves of it despite being the worst internal enemy of the shamans at the time, for instance).

If you’re talking about genocide in general, also true, but the good humans were generally opposed to or at least ashamed about it. However, there are modern charr who are also ashamed at some of the acts of their ancestors and show scepticism about the official charr history.

I can’t put my hands on it right now – it was possibly in the Charr Week blogs – but it’s been stated that, yes, the ‘bent’ posture is actually what’s natural for the charr. They can stand upright, but that’s an unnatural posture for them, equivalent to a human bending over backwards – the shamans have adopted the posture as a way of standing out from the muggles, but most charr are most comfortable (and can most efficiently deliver force) hunched over.