Raffrey.5271

PoF and LWS4 era GW2 was great and worth it. Now, not so much. Yeah... believe it or not.

I don't see this balance nightmare ending very soon, but if this is unavoidable, at least lessen the pain? I own like 30 characters. Each was built with some random idea I've had at the time. Most if not all of their equipments and traits templates are fully utilised. Yeah, tons of weird builds. I also have DPS builds, mind you. Problem is, the balance patches invalidate my builds faster than I re-gear them. To this day, the characters I still actively review their builds, revamp and use are less than five. I mean, depending on what I do recently, it's more like two. One necromancer -- a reaper, to be more specific -- to do general open world stuffs like Kryptis grinding farming. Reaper isn't really my type, but I use it because I don't see it being invalidated very soon. And the other one is mesmer... I don't know what to say about mesmer. All I can do is facepalm. More like double facepalm, actually. I still use it only because it was my only character that have cleared all story chapters before SotO. And I'm using it now just to clear the SotO story chapters as well. I mean, if you're going to wreak some havoc every so often, can you at least make stat-selectable exotic gears more accessible? Like the bladed set in Verdant Brink. It was nice but lacked chest gear. Or make dungeon currency armors stat-selectable? I hate DRMs, but if you add these to the Tyrian Defense Seal merchant, I think I'd grind some occasionally. No need to make a new set of unique armor skins, crappy skins are fine, just make them cheap. Like the WvW Invader's armors, but in open world. Please?

I kinda disagree. If Haze is not Void, doesn't consist anything of Void, then the devs had all the reasons not to make them look so similar. Somewhere in the core story, a Son of Svanir used a sword made of Jormag's blood to turn his friends to icebroods. With so much Jormag's magic directly channeled into him, made him able to wield Jormag's power, I don't see why Ryland doesn't count as an icebrood. Taimi commented on Ryland's body size change in Dragonstorm. If his body size change is anything more than just being a legendary rank entity, his body must have been made up of at least 80% of Jormag's magic at that time. Seems very corrupted to me. And yes, I do think the Commander is corrupted. Especially in the story instance The Only One when empowered by Aurene.

Hi... Mr Ettin, I assume?

Wait, wasn't the Haze same as the Void? Wasn't it what the Wanderer use to cause all these trauma / burden / stress stuffs on our dear Commander? I thought the devs renamed that thing just to differentiate, now that dragons are gone and there are no "dragon" in that thing anymore, but ultimately still same thing? Ahh, just wiki'd it. So, the Void is the ordinary state of that thing, the Dragonvoid is a story instance boss or the Void with "dragon" in it, and the Haze is the Void infested with "something else"? Was the whole trauma havoc happened because of the Void, the unknown thing in the Haze, or Oni? Or a combination of these three? ... Actually, I think the devs should drop this Void / Haze thing already. If this keeps dragging on, the story is probably going to get worse. Or the lore, at the very least. But from the moment they decided to link the elder dragons with the beginning of Tyria, they're bounded to introduce something like the Void at some point. I mean, it's not so hard to understand. While of course, we probably shouldn't take things like the bible too literally, but many mythologies around the world describe the world before its creation as "just a big mess" or something like that, and "someone" brought natural laws and orders to the mess. Many scientists also believe that nothing comes from nothing, and for the big bang to happen, there has to be "some substances" there first, and then the big bang created natural laws and orders for the universe. And the Void is just something based off that mess / substances. Since they have to touch on the topic of creation of a world, the existence of such substance is only normal. But still, doesn't mean it would be a good idea to make its presence so prominent. I mean... look. We don't even understand our own universe fully. There's no problem with creating a world for a game, and set up some basic world view or common knowledge for said world. But if they are going to explain the creation of the world, or its inner workings beyond a certain extent, contradictions are almost guaranteed. Like how our science contradicts with our ancient legends / folklore / what "god" said or did etc. They need to somehow establish a working universe system. Not to mention that Tyria has some super complex mechanism: the Mists. And also, we somehow can't take in-game dialogues / written scripts in literal sense anymore. tl;dr: ultimately, focusing too much on something based off a "mess" would likely make things messier. And I agree. The devs should've killed Braham, or scaled back his corruption. Or they shouldn't make dragon magic disperse from the minions / champions when they killed the dragons, and make Braham, and Ryland perhaps, somehow capable to claim some part of dragon magic as their own.

I think Braham was certainly corrupted / bonded. To say he wasn't would contradict with Aurene's statements. At least some part of him should've been properly corrupted, or, it was required for him to channel Primordus' magic in such a scale. If this is not the case, he should be weaker than Ryland, since the bond can't be formed properly. We had evidences(?) that ley-lines magic can be used to cleanse dragon corruption, particularly in Siren's Landing, where we used ley-lines magic filled organ to reclaim risen corpses. Also, Braham had great spirits' help. Due to all that, he could be the historic first case of a living thing being corrupted and cured. And no, I don't think Ryland's corruption was being undone. He should still have at least some level of Jormag's magic lingered within when Jormag died. Though I'm not quite sure if he'd survive from it if he didn't get slain. He likely would, I guess. Although weakened, he was still quite "lively" when we confronted him. But this would make dragon corruption curability before this seem weird. Or was it Jormag's corruption didn't require minions to be dead first? Dragon corruption wasn't curable. Or rather, we didn't try to cure any before killing them first. There was many example of elder dragons directly corrupt living things and turn them branded / risen etc. But all are dead, except the Commander, Braham, Caithe, and maybe Navan / Kuunavang. And maybe Bangar? Is he still alive? Oh I just wiki'd it, yes he survived. (So Braham wasn't alone in the first cases of corruption survivor?) I think if an elder dragon corrupted a living thing, so long the corruption didn't damage their body beyond recovery when being cured, it would be curable. If we know how, that is. So if the ices don't thaw fast, we likely won't see any more corruption survivor. Kuda could make a great antagonist. I'd say she could even be the next forever immortal ultimate mega antagonist after Joko! Only a matter if the devs want it. I mean, GO KUDA! Make Your Father Proud!! (insert encouraging cheers here) For the Void, I think we need to first figure out which exists first: the Void, or the Mists. If it was the Void, Soo-Won basically created literally everything by herself. If it was the Mists, your theories could be true. And yeah, for the Void being something so new, there isn't much to discuss. Can only wait for the story to unveil more. edit to add: Another reason the Void could be of universe / something cosmic: remember how we beat the Ravenous Wanderer with positive thoughts? It makes the whole thing reeks of law of attraction sentiment... Just sayin'.

Since the devs really want to move on from the dragons, I think I'll try to mention pre-EoD stuffs less, except Aurene (since she's still around and kicking) and Soo-Won (things about her still fairly recent). Also, I really wish Jormag and Primordus still has some part of body intact. So that the inquest, especially Kuda, can scavenge, make use of it, and succeed in making some real horror. Anyway. On to the Void. The Void is very weird. Soo-Won mentioned it was around from the very beginning when / before the world was born. There was a time when the Commander and Braham was displaced to somewhere in the outer space (seemingly). Fantasy fiction elements like elder dragons or magic systems aside, if Tyria is not some giant slab of land and sea glued to the back of some turtle(?), I'm going to assume its universe works very similar to ours. I think one of the following could be true: The Void is something like dark matter. Or something cosmic. And Soo-Won created a "Big Bang". The space is very spacey, you know. What Soo-Won said could still be true if there was already a well established universe, and she was floating in the middle of nowhere. And she tumbled across a massive nebula, created a star system from it. The Void is that nebula and there was something malicious in it, which is what we are dealing with right now. ... I think I'm missing something. Konig and Sajuuk, I still appreciate your input. But please try not to response to each other?

A few other things I'd like to add (all below are according to my best knowledge; should be true, could be wrong): Elder dragons share their magic to minions, minions gather magic for their dragon, both is true. It's like a feedback loop. No matter how weak, or powerful an elder dragon intend their minions to be, it costs them dragon magic to corrupt stuffs. Of course, these costs may be nominal if they are only making some ordinary destroyer crab you can see everywhere. In return, these minions harvest magic for their dragon, much like how the risens gathered artifacts for Zhaitan's Mouth to consume. I highly doubt if a dragon minion need constant magic supply from their dragon to keep functioning. If they are, elder dragons wouldn't mass produce their minions in a heart beat. It's such an inefficient way to use dragon magic. But I don't have anything to back this up. Just my thoughts. But I don't believe the devs gave it much thoughts when they decided what branded to deploy around Grothmar so... we can move on from this. "Connection", or "bonded" is essentially corruption in a not so awful way. It's only a matter of how much control an elder dragon would like to exercise upon its minions. Bangar was considered bonded, but Jormag can take over if he wishes. Braham was considered bonded, but think about it, if it wasn't Braham, just someone we don't know about, we likely wouldn't call such individual in such status a "bonded champion". Much like a "dragon champion". That's it for now. Also, thank you all for pointing out the link between snake and dragon in ancient mythologies. I'm not very familiar with that. Aaand, yeah. Konig and Sajuuk, please don't interact with each other's posts / comments again. Ever.

Astralaria crafter here. It’s very cool to have my renegade F3 flung beautiful axes everywhere! I’m thinking about which mace to craft though. While Eureka is very cool, The Moot would make renegade F3 fling disco balls! Oww I couldn’t pick…

For vast majority of the time, their results are reliable. That’s why we’ve been robbing their research outcomes all the time. Not sure if Tyrian scholars discovered this, but the coverage of intelligence is much wider than most would believe. Like, a musician good at writing songs and a businessman being good at math are two example of intelligence, but different type. It is also true to say that an archer is smarter at using a bow to hit targets faraway than an average technician. And for that particular inquest study, depends on how they define “intelligence” at the time of research, chances are it was as accurate as any other. edit- okay that archer example wasn’t very appropriate. Let’s say two archers, the one better at using bow is smarter than the other.

imo, Elder Dragons can control all unit under the influence of their magic. Be it corruption, connection, or bond. All these are very similar, with connection just one thing away from being corruption: whether the dominant disregarded the consent of the influenced. Aurene respects consents, that we know of. Soo-Won as well. What I don't get is how Kuunavang retained herself when Soo-Won lose to the Void. Did her past experiences make her unique / resistant to mind attack in some way? Or was it Soo-Won, having predicted the possible outcome, cut off the connection beforehand?

Having dealt with real life world for many years (not that many compared to most of you tbh), I can say this with confidence: dumb people are everywhere, saying dumb things all the time, and there are times I can't exclude myself from that as well. Many dislike Braham, but I'm fine with him. Mostly because the real life is indeed filled with people mature by age, but only age. Such character's appearance is just too normal to complain. Even if it's a significant one. I mean, I have no problem with the game having all kind of characters, even if they are dumb. My problem's with the frequency of occurrences. Like, for example, according to an inquest study, human are dumber than asura, sylvari, and charr. So they can set a frequency of dumb human characters saying dumb things. But the same should happen less on charr, and on very rare occasion for sylvari. And near zero chance for asura. Like the above sentence. I have less problem when a norn said that, but if it came out of an asura's mouth I might, for a second, doubt the accuracy of said inquest study (maybe norn are subtly the smartest, after all?). I mean, yeah. Anet could definitely use better writers. I've seen enough seemingly wise characters making dumb remarks. To the point it breaks immersions.

Yeah, now that you mentioned it, water isn't a good representation of magic, since it's literally colourless and being something with the same name as an element, which can cause some confusion. But all over the world (real life world), blue is often a symbolical reference of water element. I think ley-lines aren't made of "all magic". I'm going through stories all over recently to refresh my memories on something so until I'm done with it, I can't say for sure. But I think what Taimi said could be outdated, because saying ley-lines are "all magic" equates them to the Void, which we all can tell they at least have some characteristic differences. My guess, but I think ley-lines are currents of flowing magic. Just magic. Pure magic. When Zhaitan died, its magic was released and flowing everywhere. Some of them found its way to Mordremoth. And later to Primordus, Jormag and the others, along with Mordremoth's magic when it died. But ley-lines' colours hadn't changed one bit. I think this is either because the element's ratio wasn't dense enough to cause a visual difference, or it's something that should've been properly indicated visually.

Even if the Void is not purely chaos, its characteristics made it unavoidably chaotic. Like, imagine if a drop of water is magic, and a cup of water is condensed magic (or ley-lines, though not flowing), fire element is some water with some red dye stirred in (red paint). As you paint, your brushes are occupied with different colours. You clean them by dipping them inside a cup of water, which eventually become more and more cloudy and muddy, mostly also greyish. Basically, it's just water tainted with many colours, but most people wouldn't use it in their drawings. Because if you don't know what you're doing, most of the time even when you do aware of what you're doing, it can ruin your artworks. That is the Void. A pool of water tainted with all the colours you can imagine. Aka, "Everything".

The point of interest Fang of the Serpent inside the Great Lodge, is a tooth/tusk/whatever broke off from Jormag. But why "serpent"? Serpents are limbless, or at least krait-like, with a humanoid upper body and a lower half that resembles a snake. Assuming the norn's impression is accurate (they named the PoI, after all), was Jormag actually a huge krait? But the Sons of Svanir's Jormag emblem indicates there were wings. Was one of them wrong, or was it a combination of both, which makes it a winged krait? Sounds very weird but also not really that weird, when you compare this to Mordremoth, which was basically a single strip of giant spaghetti. Or Primordus, a gigantic head or something. Speaking of Primordus (and Jormag)... In the Dragonstorm, both the antagonistic elder dragons concealed a huge part of their body behind... something. Like, were they "fully" there at all? Was Primordus on that battlefield "fully", with its whole body buried, and only the head extending out of the ground doing the fighting? Was Jormag "fully" there, just parts other than his head and arms hidden from sight, in the blizzard? Or did they open a big portal and stick their heads and arms through the portal, with a large part of their body left elsewhere, like in the Mists? After the explosion, did they just turn into magic flowing everywhere, or that, but with only their heads blown off? If Primordus was there with its whole body and turned into magic after the explosion, wouldn't its disappearance cause massive landscape changes? Was what we saw of Primordus, all it's got? i.e. just an enormous head? I prefer to believe it actually has a huge body, though. I mean, look at the concept art! Virtually a Godzilla much larger than an actual Godzilla. The Priory has a piece of Zhaitan's tail kept in their storage. Mordremoth didn't disappear when he died. Though not very sure about Kralkatorrik, which we left the place almost immediately after the fight with its Heart, these should mean when elder dragons die, although their magic would be released, that wouldn't necessarily make their body disappear completely. So Primordus and Jormag should still have part of their body intact and unaffected by the explosion, which happened at the point of collision, i.e. their heads. But Soo-Won evaporated into nothingness right before us! Intriguing... ... Just let my thoughts fly!

Lore-wise, a mesmer is a master in illusion, deception and chaos. It's in their blood that they love to trick others. It's their nature that they like to do pranks. I also find it annoying at first and then after some time I was like, nah, mesmers will be mesmers. But if there's anything that can be touched, I'd say the interaction priority. If you don't know what I say: let's say, there's a chest or some rock you can pick up on the ground, and someone was downed near that object, when you get near your interaction key would more likely to prompt you to revive them than to loot or pick up stuffs. That's because reviving someone has a higher priority. If you really want to pick up that rock so bad you'd have to click that rock with your pointer first. Maybe lower player portals' priority level a whee bit? I don't support this change, though. Like I said, mesmers will be mesmers.

Okay, so I just found this. You know, when you preview the mount skins, either from your character UI mounts panel or the gem store, sometimes the wings part of griffon and skyscale skins would seem diminished. This only happens to new skins released post-EoD, which use newer base models (?), namely the Tigris and the Noble. Might be due to some bug, idk. I was previewing all these skins, looking for something to buy for mount license sales. Then I found this Jungle Heart Tigris...! It's basically a kitten chubby winged big cat. Intimidating yet determined gaze, but also very adorable with that grumpy face and the thick fat hanging on its chest, bouncing almost constantly. Now, imagine this fella with its wings shrank...! When I see this I was like, oh my gosh! I mean, OH MY GOSH!! I was sooo overwhelmed by its cuteness I almost impulse-buy it, hindered by only 2 things: the mount license it belongs not currently available, and all this mini wing flying big fat cat fantasy being exactly just that - a fantasy. I mean, pardon me. I just need somewhere to express my regret. But yes please, dev! Your to-do list might already be very long, love you if you don't mind adding this as well. ...still love you if you don't.

This right here. Make them too smart and they will be able to react to everything perfectly. Imagine this, you alone fight three hyleks, one stomper and two shooters. At some point in the middle of the fight you dodged, the stomper sees this and react by timing it’s CC to flawlessly land the exact moment your dodge roll ends, and two shooters seamlessly coordinate their poison dart volleys, one before and the other after, a total 10 shots of poison darts in a span of like 3 seconds - not impossible but highly unlikely to avoid getting hit by all the shots. Or they can also execute it together for a burst, depending on their calculation if you even have that 1 dodge left. Yes, if you can somehow know what they’re gonna do you can act on it, but do you sense the headache? This is just an example. Real smart AI can do much better. Now you’re gonna tell me you expect everyone to be capable of dealing with this kind of… stuff, all the time? In open world?

Seems like intended to me as well. But I think they overdid it a bit. Like, many dye can make things look bright and glossy already. I don’t think making these dye channels glossy by default is necessary. Dye can do the job.

That’s what I do. So I don’t use the tattoo packs. I don’t regret this purchase, but I’m concerned if future stuffs are like this.

I didn’t give it too much thoughts when I see the new Canthan, Antique armour sets etc at EOD release. I was like, okay they look a bit hard to dye (I mean, to tune down the flashiness) so I’m probably not gonna use them. But I don’t understand why the tattoo packs are also… like this? I mean, I can’t make them look like normal tattoos, like the norn tattoos when you create a norn character. I can’t stop them from looking like some cheap tattoo stickers! Am I the only one feel this way?

I have this problem too, but I have a fix. Just not very sure if this also works for you. So, when you log in, if you encountered error code 11:1012:7:248 it might be part of the Chromium Embedded Framework issue. To find your error code, look at the lower left corner of the error prompt, left-hand side of the "OK" button. And to fix it, you right-click the launcher icon and click "Open file location". If you open via Windows Start Menu, chances are you'll have to do it one more time to get to the exact location. You should find a file named Gw2-64.exe Now, right-click this file, create a shortcut, then right-click your newly created shortcut and select Properties. At the end of the target line, insert a space, and then type "-usecoherent", and then save. Your target line should read like: This should disable the chromium thing. Now, open the game using this shortcut and try to log in again. And to the devs if you're reading this, problem's still there. Please fix it and thank you for all the nice work!

Whatever suggestions on the story you may have there, I think it's safe to assume that the story line for the next living world and 4th expansion are already set in stone, from the moment they announced the confirmation of it. Which, if true, sounds like good news. (bad news for you though)

I think the devs would most likely balance difficulties of future contents with the Jade Tech Protocols in mind, so I believe we will see these Jade Batteries and protocols in future open world maps as well. Season 6 and beyond. But, after season 6 (or Cantha), I don't think overabundance of jade related stuffs make much sense, so I think some battery charging stations and protocol units packed in a few limited "safe spaces" across the maps would be the ideal approach towards this issue. Edit- Also, the reasoning behind some of the changes could be as simple as "because it makes sense". Like, I remember back then, in raid settings, guardian scepter was more effective than main hand sword. They didn't think it makes sense for a ranged weapon to do better in melee than a melee weapon, so they buffed the main hand sword (or nerfed the scepter?). The same thing could apply here. Because look, it does make sense that you get rested if you sit on a chair for some time.

You caught me... for not using search function! 😝 Just looked it up, there's already a thread about this. But that's more like forum dwellers talking about it, nothing official?