Twilight Oasis *Spoilers*

So in the new fractal, the final boss turns into a Sylvari instead of Menlandru's avatar. What gives?

Melandru having some connection to the sylvari is extremely old speculation; she turned a bunch of humans, the first druids, into creatures that are sylvari in appearance as a punishment for being borderline captain planet villains, and her representation has always been a very sylvari-like woman. Considering the devs stated already that HoT never actually showed Malyck's point of origin, it's possible, still, that Mordremoth didn't so much create as corrupt the tree seeds.

Basically Melandru's avatar being kind of a sylvari but not really is afaik an old thing.

Could you share a screenshot?

The boss is turning into the various avatars of the gods. All of the other gods look relatively human, and there are gem store costumes resembling their avatars, so they're fairly easy to implement. Melandru's form is far less human and she so far doesn't have a gem store costume, so I guess sylvari is the nearest thing. That's my guess, but it's a bit disappointing if true - ANet shouldn't imply a connection between Melandru and the sylvari unless they really mean it, imo.

@Tamias.7059 said:Could you share a screenshot?

The boss is turning into the various avatars of the gods. All of the other gods look relatively human, and there are gem store costumes resembling their avatars, so they're fairly easy to implement. Melandru's form is far less human and she so far doesn't have a gem store costume, so I guess sylvari is the nearest thing. That's my guess, but it's a bit disappointing if true - ANet shouldn't imply a connection between Melandru and the sylvari unless they really mean it, imo.

That's pretty much my bet too. The other four avatars are all using the gem store costumes. While I don't have the screenshot, the Melandru avatar was using a distinctly sylvari female face and hair style (odd that they went with the thorns and not the branches, though).

The connection has always been tenuous but there. It's just that as far as we know, as far as the lore states, it's mostly shared locations and myths. Melandru's druids had a huge thing in Maguuma (which in gw1 doesn't include the sylvari and asura homelands, those are the Tarnished Coast, just the HoT zones)

Unfortunately, with all the corsairs helping, it's hard to get a shot through the particle effects, but: here's my best tries.

Bonus points: she's even wearing sylvari racial armor.

The moment I saw the “Melandru”, I was VERY disappointed with how lazy they were and just used a Sylvari model. I don’t know what it is but ever since seeing Kormirs god-like model, I was hoping to see the rest of the gods and how they truly looked like - mainly Melandru, Lyssa and Dwayna but I guess it’s too late for that now...

I'm amused, but mostly due to the potential for fanning speculation about a Melandru-sylvari link again. I get why they didn't go all out, and I can't blame them for it. This was a massive release, and a single phase out of five that shows up in two fights doesn't warrant custom-made assets against all the dozens of other demands the graphics teams had to take on.

Would have been cooler if they made her a Centaur-like creature and stuck to the whole head being like its depicted. Kind of sad really they resorted to a Sylvari skin.