Guild Wars 2

Keep in mind that the last time Tyria heard from Cantha was over a century ago. Cantha today could be very different and possibly not very fine either.

Elona is the former home of the Order of Whispers which started off as Turai Ossa’s spy network which basically means fighting Joko was pretty much their reason for existing in the first place.

Lutinz.6915:

As to their origin, I think its still far too much in the air for a clear theory. My personal one is that they were a race that either made themselves or were made into their current form. Perhaps the reason we dont see many other dragons that arent minions around is because they were the first victims of the EDs hunger. I guess we will have to wait and see if there are any dragons not tied to the EDs.

Well, we still don’t know that the dragons and dragonlike creatures of Cantha are tied to the EDs (or, like Glint, were formerly tied to the EDs and released). There are also the drakes, basilisks, and similar draconic-esque creatures in Tyria, some of which rangers can tame as companions. If one wanted to look for an ecosystem that the EDs could have evolved from, if anything it’s actually kind of surprising how many potential relatives they have – unless it’s a case of the EDs deliberately aiming to conserve their relatives. (Which might explain somewhat that line about the races being the corruption – from the ED point of view, compared to the hypothetical ancient ecosystem of the dragons, anything else is an invasive species.)

On the gods – I thought why Abaddon didn’t like the limits placed on magic was actually explained (he felt that magic was his special gift, and when the other gods went behind his back to weaken it, he felt they were also conspiring to undermine his importance to and influence with mortals).

With regards the the Dwayna-Melandru connection – part of that is simply because they’re the only current gods which so far we’ve had no indication of having a predecessor. We know how Kormir ascended, we know Abaddon and Grenth had predecessors (and we now know Grenth was born on Tyria), it was implied and now confirmed that Balthazar’s sibling relationship with Menzies meant he had parents, and the twin goddesses comprising Lyssa implies that they too may have parents, but so far we haven’t anything to indicate that Dwayna, Melandru, or for that matter Dhuum didn’t simply spontaneously form as primordial representations of the concepts they embody.

Legion.4198:

Zhaitan fleet is more a submersible fleet than a real submarine force with the exception of the undead sharks. In any case, given the state of disrepair of most Zhaitan fleets, it is likely that they are much slower than properly maintained ships.

Or it could be that magic allows them to just not care about the things that normally slow ships down.

What I was really thinking about regarding submarine forces is that Risen fight perfectly fine underwater, and with breathing masks so do we. About the only thing a conventional sail-age ship of the line can do against someone coming underneath the hull and staving in the side, though, is to send out divers against it. In Earth’s Age of Sail, this wasn’t really an issue because a person couldn’t stay underwater long enough to bust through a thick wooden hull. Risen can.

Now, I say ‘conventional’, because between the asura and charr one could probably make a battleship (and yes, I think it would be at the stage where ‘battleship’ is more accurate than ‘ship of the line’) that’s perfectly capable of fighting underwater foes. However, while that might be the navy of the future for Lion’s Arch and/or the Pact, it’s not what Lion’s Arch has now. (It is worth noting here that even historically the switch between wooden ships and more modern-age vessels happened shockingly fast – wooden ships were still dominant during the American Civil War in the 1860s, while navies had pretty much upgraded to steel hulls by the late 1880s if not before. So I could see that switch happening pretty quickly, it’s just that it hasn’t happened yet.)

Depends on just what it is you really like about mesmers and which things you’d like to keep and which you’d like to do differently.

It hasn’t come up here, but guardians are possibly the most mesmer-like profession apart from mesmers themselves – in a lot of ways they’re a bit like a mesmer that’s been optimised more for close combat and doesn’t have stealth or illusions. But they do have the mesmer punishment mechanic through Wall of Reflection and Retribution, a number of ‘hurt my enemies while helping my allies’ tricks, and their special mechanic has a similar ‘sacrifice an ongoing benefit for an instantaneous one’ thing going. You don’t have the mesmer’s ability to steal or strip boons, but there are a lot of similarities.

Engineers and necromancers also have their similarities, although I don’t have the experience with them I do with mesmers and guardians to make a proper comparison. Elementalist… is certainly complex, but it’s a very different kind of complexity, and it’s questionable how rewarding it is to master. If it’s complexity you want and otherwise you’re looking for something different rather than something similar, the ele may be a good choice.

I did… but I’m not sure you did as carefully as you might have. The events of Ghosts of Ascalon were basically fulfilling the last condition of negotiations for a ceasefire between Jennah and the imperators, secretly conducted with the Vigil as the go-between. Yes, there were four years of continued fighting in between, but ending a war that has literally continued for over a thousand years doesn’t happen overnight. Compared to our own history, that’s a war that outlasted the Roman Empire.

The events at Ebonhawke during the Dragonrise provided the spark. Jennah, Smodur, Malice and Almorra built on that. Ghosts of Ascalon was just the last stage in a long process, done at Jennah’s behest and on her behalf.

Almorra on her own could never have achieved peace. You need both sides to agree for that, and that means you need the leader on both sides to be amenable. You simply can’t disengage Jennah from the peace process as easily as you think, because whatever feats the Vigil might be able to pull to impress the Imperators, there’s still going to be war if the human leaders want to continue fighting.

Elves basically fall into two categories, that can overlap. One is the magical forest people, one is the ancient magical civilisation that once dominated the world but is now in decline (but still significant at the time the story is set). Sylvari are the first group of elves, GW2 humans carry the tropes of the second.

Almost certainly mesmer. (Mechanically, NPCs don’t have labelled professions, but what she does is certainly mesmeresque.)

A wooden ship of the line is pretty much helpless against an enemy which has an effective submarine force, which Zhaitan does. With the game mechanics we’re shown, the main purpose for a surface fleet would be somewhere for the diving troops to rest and recuperate.

We do see the Lion’s Arch fleet in action in Edge of Destiny, but it’s only effective due to unconventional equipment.

From everything I’ve seen and my own experience, well of blood seems to be the way to go if you want your minions to have any survivability. Minions don’t have any form of natural healing outside of combat, so while Mark of Blood can help keep them up IN combat, Well is pretty much required if you don’t want to find yourself going into combat with half-dead minions.

It’s not just one noble. It’s the soldiers of tkittenon Vanguard – who’ve been on the front line of the human-charr war since the Foefire – that learned they can fight side by side with the charr against a common enemy. It’s also the charr that Logan released learning the same. It’s that one noble recognising the need to capitalise on this rather than letting it be a one-off. It’s that noble’s opposite counterparts seeing that this can happen, and that humans might actually make better and more reliable allies than the Flame Legion.

If Logan hadn’t returned, you remove all of these pillars that supported the treaty, and all your left with is one charr’s revelation after being made gladium by the Dragonrise – and I dare say that without the above, any efforts she could make regarding bringing about a charr-human treaty would have gone for naught. Especially given that Jennah’s logical replacement would be Caudecus, who to all appearances is against the treaty (although that may be just drumming up anti-Jennah sentiment).

At the bottom line, though, forming (if not necessarily holding, but keep in mind the ceasefire is still in its early stages and things could still fall apart again) an alliance can be something that can collapse from something as fragile as removing one charismatic individual that has the ability to get the majority of his or her people behind an idea. From our own history we should know never to underestimate the ability of one charismatic individual to change history for better or worse, and in fantasy settings this goes double.

It sounds like it’s one of those cases where dynamic events are only imperfectly simulating a dynamic world, and the maps are actually frozen in Groundhog Day-esque sequences. Mechanically, you can never really win – the boss is going to respawn sooner or later – but in practise, the ground assumption for at least some maps is probably that once you’ve done with them, the problem is fixed and if you redo them, it’s a reenactment like the War in Kryta reenactments.

Alternatively, of course, there could be an unspoken “for now” after “the Modniir forces are broken” – but I really don’t think it’s lore-accurate that the dynamic events are following a cycle that repeats on a daily or hourly basis.

So can most ranged weapons, with the exception of some thrown weapons like ranger axes and grenades. It’s pretty much the norm in computer RPGs, especially MMOs, for these weapons to be restricted to what would be point-blank range for their real-life counterparts.

The real catalyst for the peace was Logan releasing the charr prisoners. Any random charr/human pairing can be brushed off as the exception that proves the rule… otherwise we’d have started off the process of making peace with the post-revolution charr when we helped with the first steps of the revolution in EOTN. A company of random charr fighting side-by-side with tkittenon Vanguard and being the reason that Ebonhawke didn’t fall to the Branded there and then? That’s a sign that can’t simply be brushed off by saying “but they’re special.” That’s what told the leaders of both sides – especially Jennah – that charr and humans can and should fight side by side against the greater foe.

As for the idea that Jennah saved the siege single-handedly… Logan never got to Jennah until after the fight was concluded because he was busy making sure the fight didn’t get to her – thus giving her the time to save the day. When Logan arrived, the Branded were literally beating at the doors of the keep Jennah was in – without his first rallying the Vanguard and then bringing the charr into the fray, Jennah would have been dead within minutes of the time Logan did arrive.

If Logan had stayed, tkittenonhawke arc would probably have ended with the Branded getting to Jennah and killing her just before she finished her spell just as Logan leaving meant the Branded got to Snaff just in time to prevent Rytlock from landing that spear blow, and we’d all be hating Logan for all the fallout from Jennah dying. He really was in a no-win situation.

The norn are probably the Pact’s main source of champions – the heroes that will deliberately seek out the nastiest things on the other side and take them out or die trying. While all races will have some of those (the PCs for a start…) for most races someone willing to do that will be exceptional, while for the norn it’s the norm.

On humans… one thing that is worth noting is that of the three organisations that made up the Pact, two were founded by humans (even if the Priory is now being led by an asura). I’d dare say that humans are possibly the most politically-savvy of the major races simply because their politics are more complicated than anyone else’s – a double edged sword because some of that is turned on themselves and weakening their own war efforts, but humans might well have an advantage on knowing how to keep working together despite having different (if compatible) goals, interests and methods… and in being able to pick when someone isn’t playing by the rules and having more subtle ways of dealing with them.

That’s not to say that other races are completely lacking in political-savvy, but it’s thing like the end of the CM story with Jennah saying that clearly Caudecus didn't have anything to do with the attack and therefor the manor was no longer safe for him and he should enter protective custody at the palace - in other words, effectively being arrested and placed somewhere where the Shining Blade can keep a careful eye on him, but where he can't refuse or find some legal loophole to worm through if he'd been arrested in the conventional sense.. Now, I’m not saying that other races wouldn’t be able to come up with something like that, but it does seem like it would be more likely to be second-nature to a human that’s grown up in that environment. However, that’s a subtle contribution by nature and not something that’s as in-your-face as the charr or asura.

Still, it is true (and a shame) that ArenaNet seems to have really done humans a disservice with the heritage thing. It was spoken up prerelease as one of the advantages of humanity, but what we see is that that heritage has been pretty much destroyed, and even when it comes to knowledge of that heritage, they’re outclassed by Trahearne (now the foremost expert on Orr) and Gixx (now head of the Durmand Priory*). It seems as if ArenaNet may have overcompensated somewhat with the withdrawal of the gods – they wanted to stop humans from appearing as the most important, but instead they’ve made them appear to be possibly the least important.

One thing that I hope we might see with that heritage is if and when older races like the Seers, Forgotten, or stone dwarves apart from Ogden come back into play – such races might know and relatively trust humans where they have less experience with the other races.

*Which, incidentally, lead to missing an opportunity in the follow-up to the first Battle of Claw Island on the Priory line. This basically involves invoking the power of a relic of Balthazar to transform into an avatar of Balthazar and basically single-handedly defend the beach from a Risen invasion, up to and including the wraith in charge. This could have been the opportunity to give human characters a Crowning Moment of Awesome and humans in general a moment of validation comparable to the asura seeing a megalaser in action or a charr looking at a tank or airship. Instead, you get Gixx denigrating both Balthazar and the human ritualists actually performing the ritual (two of which die) and generally treating the relic as just another magic item - if you don't happen to notice that the ritualists were human, you could come out of it thinking that humans weren't necessary at all. Now, this is all in character for Gixx, but if it had been a priest of Balthazar presiding and the ritual was expressly stated to have come out of human religious teachings, then it would be a lot harder to come out of that step thinking that humans aren't contributing.

I’d like to see the source, but even so, coming from the asura I’d regard it about as objective as the kodan claim that they represent the highest peak of enlightenment.

@Ebola: Same reason nearly half of the elementalist’s fire spells don’t burn* – game mechanics and balance. One could justify it in many cases as the pressure behind the flame blowing the flame out – so in the case of Flame Jet, it’s that last pulse that doesn’t have the wind from the next behind it that has a good chance to catch.

*Or, for that matter, many fire-related guardian skills unless Justice kicks in.

Fishbait: This seems one of those obvious “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” things. Simply choose your colours to be the same for each attunement.

The bigger issue is whether it’s worth the resources.

The norn, taken as a race, are possibly the least militarily powerful of the races – but the flipside is that individually they’re probably the most powerful. The great heroes (including the PCs) of each race are about the same (although I’m beginning to think that it’s possible that the most powerful spellcasters are human – asura have more theoretical knowledge of magic and have their magitech to fall back on, but human NPCs do impressive things with magic alone) – however, where a typical charr is a soldier, and the typical member of another race is basically a civilian, among norn being an adventurer is the norm. After all, lorewise being able to assume animal form is common among the norn, while a human or sylvari using a racial elite is something rare and unusual.

Another thing the norn have going for them is spirituality – unlike humans, they still have regular communion with the objects of their religion, and that religion being focused on animal spirits means they also have a communion with nature.

As for sylvari… well. Wait for the personal storyline to show you. :P

On the whole, there seems to be a bit of an inverse relationship between temporal power and attunement to the Mists. Charr and asura are very much bound to logic and the physical world, while the strengths of the norn and sylvari are more… intangible. Humans sit somewhere roughly in the middle… and if anyone, they seem to be ArenaNet’s redheaded stepchildren at the moment. There’s nothing where humans are clearly the best, and opportunities to give them a chance to shine have generally been missed while other races steal the limelight.

Searingarrow.4637:

My biggest quarrel with the flamethower is that it has no idea what it wants to be. The 1st ability is pure damage based (sub par damage at that), the 2nd ability is pretty useless and a kitten to aim, the 3rd ability is control, the 4th ability is support, and the 5th ability is defensive. It has NO clue what it wants to be.

In my opinion it should be fairly damage based… Thats what anyone would want and expect from a flamethrower not this random compilation of abilities…

How many weaponsets in the game can you name that are 100% damage on every skill?

Some elementalist fire attunements are, but that’s because they’re tied to other attunements that provide control and support. Warrior greatsword and dual axes. That’s about it. Most ‘damage’ sets actually contain at least one skill, often more, that isn’t about damage, but about maintaining the conditions that allow you to deal damage without dying in return. And that’s what those extra skills on flamethrower do.

What the flamethrower really seems to be intended to do is be combined with the appropriate traits to make full use of the on-crit condition procs in Firearms and Explosives. Against a single target there’s 10 hits per Flame Jet – at a 50% crit chance, you can expect to get 3 stacks total of bleeding and burning (~1.5 expected value of each) per jet, plus the automatic one. It can dish out the burns if you spend the trait points.

Where it needs to be improved is to gain the stat bonuses of the weapon equipped beneath it or at least something to compensate for the lack, like all kits, and making #2 controllable – double-tap to detonate, ground target, detonate on impact, it’s all better than what we have now.

That’s pretty much the way professions other than the elementalist are designed. Each weaponset is intended to be used on its own in circumstances that suit it (with the weaponswap being there for when circumstances change), with 2-3 skills that are intended to be used for damage and the rest intended to back those up.

I’ve seen a bit of criticism about other professions being ‘too easy’ because they can kill you using 2-3 skills, but the fact of the matter is that if you don’t do anything that requires them to use the more circumstantial skills on their bar, they’re playing as intended.

Early stuff from ArenaNet indicated that the elementalist was intended to play the same way – you give up the ability two choose which two circumstances you’re optimal for in exchange for being able to choose from a set of four. You can even see the residue of this on the Elementalist page on this site, which cites fire as the go-to element for area damage, air for targeting “specific foes with focused, high-damage attacks” and so on. Instead (as, incidentally, was called a long time back) we have the ‘grand piano’ – and instead of this being a technique that rewards advanced players, it’s something that’s pretty much required to be on par. YMMV on whether this is for better or worse, but it’s not what a new player coming into the game is going to expect.

Changes to the level 80 elementalist may or may not be required, but if possible I think some buffs to lower-level elementalists might be useful – the ele has a really steep learning curve, and survivability improvements early on will give players more of an opportunity to learn how to get into ‘grand piano’ mode (I wonder how many of the people who are saying the ele is fine now are people who started in BWE1 and got the hang of it before the nerfs hit – there’s going to be less and less people with that benefit, proportionally speaking, as time goes on). Second, the website should possibly be updated so as to accurately reflect the elementalist playstyle so new players know what they’re signing up for when they make one.

I think there’s an NPC that explains it in Kessex, possibly Kessex Haven itself, as something along the lines of “We don’t want the centaurs raiding our caravans, and the centaurs don’t want to have to fight both Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch.”

I think there’s a certain element of the LA council sticking their heads in the sand here, though. The centaurs do indeed raid LA-affiliated traffic, and there’s nothing to say that the centaurs will leave LA alone if Kryta was to fall. The impression I got from at least some of the Lionguard near the front lines is that they understand this, but they’re constrained by their orders.

Zoula.5139:

Remember, a Norn thief isn’t at all large compared to other Norns. You could be a thief all your life and never even encounter one of the other races. At which point your size is irrelevant. Plus I don’t recall seeing anything that said they walk louder than any other races.

The only issue they’d have in other locales is small doors really. With so many of them being hunters, moving stealthily probably comes fairly naturally.

That’s pretty much it. In Guild Wars 1, before you do Curse of the Nornbear, Jora shows up outside of various outposts and mocks the player(‘s party) for how much noise they’re making. Now, that could have been trash talk pure and simple, but it seems to me to be suggesting that the norn are quite capable of being stealthy when they need to be.

Considering that most norn live by hunting (and those that don’t probably get most of their food by trading with hunters, directly or via steps) and in reality you probably don’t actually see most animals just standing around ignoring a ten-foot predator, I’d say it’s perfectly reasonable to have norn that focus on being stealthy. The average norn may even be stealthier than the average human… or asura. (Because really, you can probably hear the boasting from a typical asura from a quarter-mile away if you’re listening for it.)

The difference is that in most settings, it’s implicit that elves just aren’t going to get back up. Ever. The time of the elves is gone, never to come again.

GW2 humans don’t have that. Word of Dev is that the gods haven’t abandoned humans, it’s that they think humans are ready to stand without divine supervision. Viewed this way, humans aren’t a dying race so much as going through a rough spot that they’re expected to emerge from more powerful than ever.

It would have been nice to see humans taking centre stage more often, though. The recapture of Orr was an opportunity to do so – it’s their holy city, so theoretically they should be able to make best use of whatever’s there. Even if that does require calling in the Forgotten to share their secrets of cleansing draconic corruption.

I don’t think a purely objective view is actually possible – even if you could look directly at ArenaNet’s statistics, that’s just an impersonal aggregate of thousands of subjective experiences.

From what I’ve seen people saying, it seems that elementalists are good to have when there’s someone else around to take the proverbial heat and to make use of the combo fields they have the ability to place, but perform poorly when they don’t – which makes them very hard to solo.

People kittenject them for dungeons are, IMO, making a mistake. Partly this is because this is the sort of situation where elementalists have more of an opportunity to shine, and partly because an elementalist who gets to AC, let alone further, really has to be doing something right. I’d rather have a good player playing a weak profession than an idiot facerolling a strong profession that gets everyone killed. it’s a pat line that keeps getting rolled out, but if you’re rejected from a group because of your profession, you probably didn’t want to be in that group in the first place.

Tower Guard.5263:

SPOILERs from the books.

The one who save Ebonhawke was queen Jennah not Logan, he was going to die due to overwhelming dragon forces. She saved him by creating a Mesmer illusion of the Dragon. That made the minions go away. If not for her everybody would be dead, humans and freed Charr.

I see this idea come up a lot, and it assumes that Jennah could have done so immediately.

Just because every spell we as players use has a casting time of seconds doesn’t mean that all magic works that way. Think of all the times in both Guild Wars games where a quest, mission, story step or event involves defending an NPC where they perform a ritual that causes some form of powerful magical effect – or where we interrupt someone else’s ritual. That’s what Logan and all his efforts did – kept the Branded away from Jennah long enough for her to perform the ritual that saved them all. If not for Logan and his actions, Jennah would have been dead halfway through, and Ebonhawke destroyed or, worse, turned into a Branded stronghold.

When it comes to the treaty, it was of course the various leaders that did most of the legwork – Jennah, Almorra, Malice, possibly Smodur as well – but keep in mind that before that event, Jennah was promising more Krytan support to Ebonhawke to escalate that war. The Dragonbrand opened eyes that humans and charr had bigger enemies, but Logan’s freeing of the prisoners ultimately showed that not only did they have bigger enemies, they could actually fight beside and respect one another when their backs were to the wall, without being exceptional individuals like Logan and Rytlock (especially keeping in mind that Rytlock was a bit of an outcast at the time). Others made the treaty actually happen, but that was the catalyst that got things started.

I think it’s pretty much as Grakor says. A ghost of a regular soldier appears with the equipment they had when they died – a ghost who died serving a siege engine may regard that engine as closely enough tied to their identity that they generate a ghostly copy of that engine when they manifest.

It’s kinda like the mythological concept of a ghost ship, actually (where the ship is also ghostly, rather than the alternate concept of a rotting ship crewed by ghosts). You can subscribe to the theory that often does come up among crews of both ships and siege weapons that the object itself does actually have a soul, or it could simply be that the combined willpower of the crew, and the crew’s identity as the crew of the machine, causes the machine to appear with them.

Lutinz: From the Scriptures of Dwayna in GW1:

’And when the world rang with the clanging of swords and did fire fall from the skies, Dwayna, goddess of life and air, heard the wailings and pleas of the weak.

And when the rumblings of war did not cease, came Her charge, Doric, who did prostrate himself at Her feet.

And cast She now a glance upon the war-torn lands and wasted flesh of the fallen, and with tears upon Her cheek did lay Her gentle hands upon the prostrate man. Then saith She unto to him and all Her charges, "Lay down thy weapons, and as I have done unto ye, so ye must do for your brethren. Offer protection to the weak. Give solace and shelter to those who need it. Be ye a salve to the wounded.

“For I am your goddess, and I will give blessings to all who follow these teachings.” ’

Sorry, my brainslip. Substitute for slot-6.

Taking the wiki as a source for lore information can be dangerous (except for transcriptions of official articles) – there’s stuff in there which is someone’s (possibly the majority of the player base’s, possibly just the person who happened to write it and no-one has got around to fixing it) interpretation or speculation presented as fact.

However, on the other side of the equation:

“The grawl are native to Tyria, and Ascalon in particular. The earliest mention of them is found in early charr military tributes that predate the arrival of humans in the area. In these annals, the charr are always portrayed as victors with the defeated grawl pulling the charr commanders in great chariots. The charr dominated the grawl, forcing them into the Shiverpeak and Blazeridge Mountains and beyond, where they lived at a subsistence level.” – http://www.arena.net/blog/planet-of-the-grawl

While the grawl aren’t exactly the most historically-minded race in the game, when the first mention of them is the charr gloating over kicking their behinds and forcing them into the mountains, it is pretty suggestive. While the charr might have had their reasons, the indignities that the charr of the past have heaped on their defeated foes are certainly not the behaviour of a peaceful race that only fights in self-defence.

The bottom line here is that, unlike many settings, there’s nothing inherently evil about necromancy. Binding the soul seems to be restricted to those of at least dubious morality, but when it’s just the carrion, necromancy may wig people out emotionally, but intellectually they understand it’s a tool, and like a sword what really matters is what it’s used for.

With regards to the lore of minions… another possible interpretation is that along with collecting loot off enemies, necromancers are also picking up bits and pieces of corpse so they can raise minions later. Lorewise, they still need the raw material, but the process of acquiring it is streamlined – instead of GW1 where they were treated as non-portable and decayed into uselessness in minutes, GW2 assumes that any competent necromancer who’s planning on using minions can make sure they have the material to do so.

True, but we also see that Dwayna, along with Melandru, proposed peace, and Doric was Dwayna’s chosen. We know that humans certainly were all “gung-ho-conquer-EVERYTHING!” elsewhere, but we don’t know for sure that was the case here.

(Those Balthazaric scrolls do make it more likely humans were the aggressors, but there’s certainly still reasonable doubt at the very least)

KryTiKaL: It can be inferred from the Ecology of the Charr that they conquered others under the Khan-Ur, but the wording is ambiguous. However, we DO know from the Planet of the Grawl blog post that the grawl are indigenous to Ascalon, and the charr conquered them, enslaving some and forcing others out into the Shiverpeaks and other places. Now, just like the human invasion, what caused that isn’t known – the grawl are a rambunctious lot, so it COULD be that the charr invaded in order to pacify them. Personally, though, I doubt it. You don’t develop a society along such militaristic lines as the charr without intent to be aggressive (although it certainly is possible for such a society to come to value peace afterwards).

@Zephire: The only evidence the Khan-Ur was assassinated by humans is circumstantial. It’s probably most logical that humans or others associated with humans did it, but the invasion could simply have been taking advantage of an offered opportunity.

The shortest answer is that the charr are a society run as a military, but that doesn’t mean everyone in their society is a soldier as we understand the term. They recognise that other roles are important for a functioning, forward-looking society, and can identify what a particular individual’s talents are – if a particular individual is best suited towards R&D, that’s where they go.

In some ways, it might actually be a better system for advancement than what we have even today. Modern society tries to give people a good education, but after that it can be a bit of a luck of the draw whether someone who has talents in a particular area actually gets to work in that area or whether that talent goes to waste. The charr… make sure talent doesn’t go to waste.

Gurt.9368:

But everything we know and have seen imply that’s wrong. In GW1 the war was brought to the humans by the charr. The humans had built a a few cities and a gigantic wall to protect the majority of the countryside from raids. The Great Northern Wall wouldn’t have been constructed had the humans been actively trying to wipe out all the charr, it would have been too large an investment both in cost and construction time. The Wall itself was not built until 898 AE, and it’s position is a good indicator of what the humans at that time felt was necessary to protect from the charr. We’ve seen in GW:EN how much land the charr occupy north of the wall, if the charr control everything from the wall north, the Kingdom of Ascalon seems insignificant (being only a quarter of the size). If everything touched by the searing was firmly human controlled (which cannot be the case due to the existence of the Wall) then the charr lands are about the same size as the human lands, if they don’t spread any further east than shown on the map (not likely).

Actually, human lands before the Searing and the invasion that preceded it actually stretched further north than the region touched by the Searing. That gladiatorial pit that Gwen is forced into during the BMP story? Used to be a human noble’s estate.

The Wall basically seemed to be strategically the place to fall back to if everything else goes to pot – basically, Ascalon’s equivalent of the Hindenberg Line – not actually the northern border. Over the centuries, humans basically kept pushing further and further north. (Which is one difference with the siege of Ebonhawke – the lines there were pretty much stable for generations, while the charr kept getting reminded by humans seizing more and more land.) However, the charr did also have land east of the Blazeridge Mountains as well as to the north.

I do note, however, that there’s a lot of talk about how we had the human side of the story in GW1… but we really haven’t. Their side of the story of the Searing, yes, but we’ve never seen anything about WHY humans invaded Ascalon. Was it simply a land-grab, coming to the aid of the Forgotten at the behest of the gods, or were they provoked in some manner?

Whatever the ancient history, though, from an objective viewpoint the charr were certainly in the wrong for committing genocide and ecocide on Ascalon over events that happened generations past. However, the current generation of charr living in Ascalon were not responsible for this, and dispossessing them of their homes would be just as much of a crime as the Searing. It’s time to build a better future rather than to keep looking into the past.

How do we know Khilbron was blocked off from underwater graves? He might not have needed to breathe after becoming a lich…

Still, there is another possibility – that the remains of the Orrian military are what Zhaitan used for his initial pushes outwards, and they’ve been destroyed over the centuries.

Having discussed that, though, there are four things that could have prevented the charr from taking over Tyria even if they were inclined:

Already mentioned is the fact that between ghosts and Flame Legion, they haven’t completely secured their own territory.

Second is the effect of magic. While not reflected in PC character choice, fluffwise the three allied charr legions seem to be weaker magically than the other races (the tech is essentially being used as an (extremely effective) alternative). There are a lot of ways I can imagine that an elementalist or mesmer, or even necromancer, guardian, or ranger, could destroy, disable, or neutralise a primitive tank. It’s probably also worth mentioning that even “nonmagical” professions may be benefiting from magic – elite warriors are encased in magical armour, seek out places of magical significance to give them power, and perform superhero-like feats. If your character has spent long enough in the vicinity of the Shiverpeaks you’ve probably destroyed a few dredge digging machines that are roughly the equivalent of light tanks in protection, so Tyrian infantry being able to break a tank open without needing the specialised antitank weaponry that would be required in the real world is quite plausible.

Third, think of the subtext of ‘by now’. The charr have gone from primitive (although we never saw a charr city in GW1) but ingenious to early 20th century in two and a half centuries – I doubt they made the jump in the first century and have been stagnating since. Instead, it’s quite likely that all the really impressive stuff has been developed in the last generation or so and is still very much in the experimental stage. Consider their tanks, for instance – people seem to be thinking of tanks as being a win card if your opponent lacks the modern technology to counter them, but while that may be the case in a few decades, charr design and doctrine seems to be more WW1… and while it’s true that it was the side that had tanks that one that won, it was a lot more complicated than ‘we have tanks, we win’. Tanks of that tech level are actually fairly easy to stop if you’re cunning about it (and if they don’t break down themselves) – yes, they provide an advantage, but so does being able to fight from a fortified position with your own artillery and magic in support.

With regards to the side discussion of whether the charr would come to Kryta’s aid… once the treaty got to a point where that would be actually feasible (remember that technically what we have now is a ceasefire – the treaty is still being negotiated), they would. Charr may not be good at making friends, but those they have they stand by – and I have a suspicion that Smodur might be basing the treaty on the unwritten agreement between the three allied legions. So the first good reason to do so is essentially so that Kryta can return the favour sometime later – yes, the charr might be able to work out a deal with the centaurs if they won, but better to keep the agreement you’ve already made. And the second reason is political – whether they’re actually responsible for it or not, the people against Jennah (and the treaty) are using the centaur war to discredit Jennah, while if a charr detachment was to play a role in a decisive victory against the centaurs, that would be proof of the wisdom of Jennah’s policy. If Smodur hasn’t seen the political significance of that, I’m sure Malice has.

There are good reasons why the charr haven’t taken over Tyria, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because the charr are somehow averse to conquest. If we go through the Ecology of the Charr, the Movement of the World, and Planet of the Grawl, we get the following rough chronology of charr wars:

Charr city-states fighting one another until united under the Khan-Ur
Charr conquer the grawl in Ascalon
Humans invade Ascalon
Charr attack norn in small numbers, are pushed back, choose not to escalate
The Searing

3 and 4 may be in reverse order.

In the case of 2 and 3, humans and grawl are both also prone to warlike behaviour, so without further information, it’s hard to say how those wars started. With the norn, the norn aren’t inclined to war, but they do like fighting and proving themselves, so it’s possible that the charr responded to some norn that entered charr lands looking to prove themselves as if it was an invasion and counterattacked, but it looks like the charr made the initial attack – the peace came about because the norn showed they wouldn’t be easy to conquer like the grawl, but also that they weren’t inclined to invade back and thus didn’t present a threat like humans did.

But when charr city-state goes to war with charr city-state, it had to be a charr who started it. Overall, their attitude towards war and conquest seems to be quite similar to human – they’ll invade someone else’s territory and take their lands if they think they’ll gain more from it than they’d lose. Naturally, more advanced societies are more likely to see benefits towards cooperation, so it’s not surprising that the charr now may be less aggressive than in the past. Still, the charr still appeared quite serious about capturing Ebonhawke if the could as late as Ghosts of Ascalon (if only to remove the threat of an Ascalonian counterattack) even if they would have stayed there rather than engaging in the likely logistical nightmare of launching an invasion across the Shiverpeaks.

(more coming)

Levetty: It’s situational. Take the guardian, for instance (I can make the comparison easily because I have a human guardian) – the guardian healing skills all have something else they can do, but on pure healing/recharge terms, Prayer to Dwayna comes out ahead. Signet of Resolve comes close, and if you apply the Signet Mastery trait it comes out ahead, but if you don’t have the trait and you’re doing what often happens in drawn-out fights and using your healing skill on recharge to keep your health up (and/or you’re fighting enemies that don’t make a lot of use of conditions, and other condition removal you have is easily keeping up) PtD comes out ahead. Now, when you consider the utility added by the guardian’s F6 skills, you can say that they’re more valuable overall… but sometimes raw healing/second is what you want, and PtD wins there. (Again, if you’re not taking the Signet Mastery trait.)

Mesmers, on the other hand, have no reason to unlock Prayer to Dwayna. Ether feast is more efficient even without having any illusions out, due to the shorter recharge.

I’m also wishing somewhat I’d made my elementalist human for similar thinking. Ether Renewal does win in healing/second, I think, but only if you don’t mind channeling for four seconds out of every fifteen (and don’t get interrupted in the process). Signet of Restoration is harder to analyse due to how its effectiveness is tied to casting rate – I think if you can manage to keep yourself casting a spell a second or so it’s competitive, but if you have to activate the signet (and don’t have Written in Stone, which is a grandmaster earth trait) the healing you get should you end up in a F6-on-recharge state is suboptimal.

(For anyone who wants to do the comparison yourself, Prayer to Dwayna heals for a little less than the self-heal from Healing Breeze, but more than 3/4 that from Signet of Resolve. Using the same assumptions as the numbers on the wiki, it probably sits at about 6250)

Incidentally, one other thing I’d been meaning to say and forgot…

It’s a little disconcerting to see how often elementalist discussions become one of how you need a particular set of skills to be effective when soloing. You need Lightning Flash so you can use the teleport-while-channeling trick. Which means of course you also need to be using a dagger offhand to have Churning Earth in the first place. You’ll then want a sceptre mainhand so you can do the 4-2-3-5 blast combo in fire. Oh, and Arcane Wave to throw in another blast finisher. The third utility varies somewhat, but when playing effectively or even optimally requires having a fixed mainhand, offhand, and two utilities, to me that’s a problem however good that build is.

jebidiah ubershiet.2580:

BrotherBelial.3094:

I wouldn’t mind seeing an over lay map of GW and Gw2 maps to see where the locations from GW. I loved finding ToA. Seeing Nebo terrace and the Ascalon settlement. The Grenth temple in lomers pass. Not forgetting Grendich courthouse. Not found anywhere else from GW yet. But would love a list of places I can revisit in GW2.

there is an overlay map with all the missions and towns from gw1 shown on the gw2 map. i’ve seen it pop up a few times here on the forums already.

sorry i dont have the link, but i’m sure if you googled “guild wars map” it would turn up somewhere near th top of the search

Here’s one. Things don’t line up perfectly in every case, but they’re close enough to give you an idea.

Those that were truly of the Shaman Caste joined the Flame Legion when the rebellion happened, though. It seems that there were just enough non-shaman spellcasters around to keep the traditions going in the other legions.

Elementalists I could really see in any legion. Elementalists may be flashy, but they’re probably easier to smuggle into a secure location than a bomb or artillery piece… and even if you have a bomb, someone who can snap their fingers and make fire is probably a more reliable means of detonating it from a safe distance than a fuse. Iron Legion would probably use them for industrial purposes – someone who can control fire, wind, electricity, water, cold, and magnetism from a distance probably has a LOT of industrial applications – although such a character might even be viewed as too valuable to risk on the field when Iron has plenty of artillery to use instead. When it comes to Blood – an elementalist basically means close fire support that, again, doesn’t require lugging an artillery piece along.

If you’ve already played as Ash, though, I’d probably suggest Blood as the storyline – it probably fits better with being an elementalist in charr culture than the Iron storyline. On the other hand, though, from what I’ve heard (haven’t played through Iron yet) the Iron Legion story is quite a bit more awesome than Blood, so if this is going to be your last charr character you might consider that for the awesome.

A few thoughts that flashed through my mind while reading through this thread:

First: ArenaNet has said that the Warrior is in “about the right place”.

Second, ArenaNet announced professions in what they initially thought was roughly the order of complexity. Elementalist was announced first. They judged them to be on a similar level of straightforwardness to the Warrior. (Mind you, every profession has been changed a lot in iterations since, so old information is old).

Third, the concept of there being 6 easy professions and 2 hard ones is one that’s been coming up a lot. What the second one is, however, seems to vary according to the speaker – some would say thief, some mesmer, some necromancer. But given a choice like that, it seems that the elementalist is always listed as one of them. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire (although fire in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Now, I know full well that I haven’t mastered the elementalist. Might never do so – I’m more of a methodical what’s-the-best-way-to-mess-up-the-opposition player than a master combo-chainer. It’s also probably too early to judge just how much of this is because people just haven’t got the hang of it yet, and how much is that the profession is actually weak, and overbuffing now could lead to needing to nerf later. But even so, I feel as if I’m far enough that I should be seeing that it’d be good if I did get that level, but at the moment that feel of potential just isn’t there.

What I’d probably suggest, at this point, is not bumping the damage – it’s obviously the combo profession, let’s keep it that way – but the survivability. Particularly at low levels, if that can be achieved, to give people a chance to learn the profession without getting too frustrated at how often they kiss dirt along the way. That way people can have a chance to get there, while the people who already have don’t get their playstyle changed – just a little more margin for error.

I think this one is a bigger problem than just humans – there really need to be more underwater-capable elites across the board. Even now elementalists have to wait until they can scrape together 30 skill points to get an elite that can be used underwater, unless they’re norn… and then they don’t get a racial healing spell to replace the lacklustre elementalist F6 options with.

As ArenaNet said, racial skills are intended to impart, along with flavour, the ability to fill in gaps in your profession. It stands to reason, then, that if your profession is already strong in an area, you’re probably not going to get much out of a racial skill that fits that.

In this case… the strengths of F6 skills actually varies wildly between professions. Rangers have among the strongest F6 skills in the game, if not THE strongest, so they really do gain nothing from Prayer to Dwayna. Other professions, though, have F6 skills that are more situational (due to having special effects rather than simply providing healing) or just plain weaker (probably being balanced by those professions having access to healing from other sources, at least in theory). For them, Prayer to Dwayna can be quite useful.

The Order of Whispers can get to Elona. If Joko is trading with Cantha, that means in principle the Order can get to Cantha as well, they’re just not saying anything about what’s going on there.

That said, there is another option you haven’t considered – another nation of humans somewhere that we as players don’t know about. Additionally, nothing in what you’ve said indicates anything more than that Cantha has (or had, although there’s no reason to think that’s changed) a strong trading fleet – it’s a big step to go from that to being a military naval superpower, especially in a time when historically a navy of ~100 ships was generally regarded as strong. Instead, in fact, the pirate activity around Cantha in GW1 suggests that at that time at least, Cantha wasn’t even able to keep pirates from its own shores, let alone ruling the waves.

Khyron.8735:

You’d think that after undead became a problem the first time, everyone would switch to cremation rather then burying and hoping for the best.

It’s been mentioned a few times – albeit not in-game that I’ve seen – that in Kryta and other parts of Tyria close-ish to Zhaitan, cremation has become the preferred option for exactly that reason.

To be honest, I’d have to agree that Eir’s tactical planning there lacked a certain degree of acumen. Collapsing an entrance or two would have helped, as would positioning people at the insides of the tunnels rather than at the tunnel entrances (which would have given a defender at one tunnel more opportunity to assist if another tunnel was getting overwhelmed – a defender leaving one tunnel would leave that tunnel exposed, of course, but could have bought enough time for Snaff’s sacrifice not to be in vain). Which is probably why Zojja seems to blame Eir rather than Logan.

Tinni.4351:

Does she have any true feeling for him? Who knows! Maybe they are an item behind the scene or maybe Jennah is like Queen Elizabeth the First who was famous for always flirting but never going beyond that and using the men who were in love with her to keep her throne secure and further the interests of her nation. I also think that Rythlock saw through Jennah and that’s part of the reason why he’s upset. I mean, “love” is not unheard of in Charr culture afterall. But I do believe Logan is, by now, genuinely in love with her.

Jennah doing the Elizabeth trick seems unlikely, because they’re in very different political situations. Elizabeth had to do that because by keeping all her potential political enemies at bay by dangling the hope that she’d marry them, she was able to keep them from trying a more direct route to power. Now, Jennah might also benefit from that trick, except Elizabeth had something Jennah doesn’t – An heir. Jennah needs to marry someone or there’ll be no monarch for the next generation.

There was an interview where Ree said their feelings for one another were genuine. Whether they could ever actually act on them… we don’t know what expectations there are for the marriages of royalty in Kryta. It may have been doomed to be a ‘courtly love’ scenario.

Lutinz.6915:

Cordayne.9012:

Sajuuk Khar.1509:

The Bloodstones separate magic into aggression, destruction, preservation, and denial.

What does denial magic do? Or.. whatever? What does it mean? :O

From memory I believe destruction and preservation were linked to Elementalists and Monks (Guardians in GW2). Denial I think was mesmers and Aggression was Necromancers though Im not sure. Most profession abilities play off these. For example Thief Shadowsteping is probably Denial.

This is pretty much correct – I think somewhere it’s been confirmed that Aggression was necromancers. Shadowstepping is a little unclear, as it could also be Aggression – all the teleports pre-Factions were on the necromancer, and assassins also had some life stealing.

There was another interview on the source of guardian magic that said it was based in faith – it didn’t matter what the person has faith in – it could be gods, animal spirits, the legions, or even themselves – but ultimately the power flowed through faith. Others are still a little up in the air, but if you look up Gwen’s Story in the GW1 wiki, there are a few descriptions of how some mesmer spells from back then work. As a general rule, though:

1) Spellcasters don’t seem to need to chant most spells, although there are rituals, mantras, and other magical effects that do.

2) Certain magic types do seem to attract certain personality types. This could be indicative of a link, or it could be simply that people with a given personality are more likely to choose a magic style that’s compatible.

Proximity.5186:

I think it basically boils down to what a totally stupid move Jennah made in the first place. Rather than retreating to the Asura gates, she goes to the keep. WHY? Why not put yourself hundreds of miles away instead of behind a few stones? If she’d just left, Logan could have stayed, and we’d be sans one Elder Dragon.

Thanks a lot, your Royal Butterfingers.

Because the same bolt that smashed the walls also knocked the recently-repaired gate back out of commission. It’s easy to miss because it’s given in one sentence and never referred to again, but it’s there.

Arguably, she could have gone through the gate the moment danger threatened (although I think lorewise they take a little bit of time to tune and open rather than being a push-button device) but at that point she probably thought it was better to stay for a) morale reasons and b) to see if there was anything she could do to help. (And, on that matter, it’s pretty clear that if she had left, there would be no Ebonhawke. We know now that dragon minions don’t simply shut down when the dragon dies, so DE killing Kralkatorrik in the Crystal Desert wouldn’t have saved anyone in Ebonhawke.)