Jimbru.6014

TINY runs strikes every night. Last night we were short-handed with only seven people, but we decided to try Cold War anyway. We had our usual two healers: the heal tempest who filmed this, and my Charr heal scourge. I think the Firebrand was chipping in some side support as well. Everyone else was DPS. Everyone in the group had at least some experience in strikes and/or raids. It wasn't pretty and we barely beat the timer, but the point is simply that we were able to beat the mission short-handed with a "less than meta" group. So I think that if you're considering strikes as "intro to raids" as Anet suggests, then the difficulty on this is right where it needs to be. YMMV.

http://gw2crafts.net will help you develop your crafting skills efficiently, and expanding your bank is a good long term investment for your account.

The ability to add new races and allow character race changes was already common in other MMOs when GW2 came out. As such, GW2 should have included those things from the start. Instead, for whatever reason, Anet built character and story architectures which are so closed and awkwardly intertwined, that adding those things now is somewhere between impractical and impossible. As has been explained many times by both devs and posters here alike, so give it a rest already.

GW2's engine is basically GW1's engine with a giant bowl of spaghetti code on top. Which means the engine was already seven years old and borderline obsolete at GW2's release, and is certainly obsolete now. It's not just behind the curve; it's down a lap and losing ground. Updates MUST happen.

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I would be genuinely surprised if there was anybody beside a handful of Mordrem roleplayers who wanted a Mordrem mount, yet here we are. Now, if Anet would make a Fern Hound jackal skin, like Sylvari players have been asking for ever since mount skins were implemented, that would sell like crazy.

Speaking of the gem store, I would be genuinely surprised if there was anybody beside a handful of Mordrem roleplayers who wanted a Mordrem mount, yet here we are. Now, if Anet would make a Fern Hound jackal skin, like Sylvari players have been asking for ever since mount skins were implemented, that would sell like crazy.

That's actually pretty common. Two species can evolve in two entirely different parts of the world and end up looking almost alike, simply because they evolved in similar circumstances. similar circumstances = similar "filters" for natural selection to kick in.A good example for this to grasp are probably sharks and dolphins. Sharks are fish, dolphins are mammals. Yet judging from the outside a dolphin has a lot more in common with a shark than with a human, right?We dealt with a lot more examples for that during advanced biology in school, but that was like 10 years ago so i dont remember them :smiley: Bushbabies, lemurs, sugar gliders, and other similar looking critters around the world. They all look somewhat alike and fill the same general niche, but they're all from different places.

Game and wiki lore basically says that the similarities between humans and Norn are a matter of coincidence and/or convergent evolution. Biologically, Norn may look mostly human on the outside, but their physiology is different. Their size and their almost grotesque sexual dimorphism are only the obvious hints. It's stated on the wiki that Norns have higher body temps than humans (probably with a correspondingly high metabolism, explaining their big appetites) and that humans and Norn are not genetically compatible. Culturally, the observable fact is that Norn are not as advanced as humans. Their architecture is all logs and dugouts, and their native technology is basically somewhere between Iron Age and Early Medieval.

I got a response to my support ticket about the missing mastery point. Anet is aware of the issue and working on a fix. Just thinking in coding terms, the mastery point itself is probably an easy fix. The MAJOR obstacle is figuring out how to award the missing mastery point without screwing it up even worse. Like awarding an extra point to everyone who already got it, or even worse, rolling back everyone's achievement progress.

Most weapon collections at least since HoT haven't included aquatic weapons. Only way we're getting more aquatics is if the next expac has more aquatic focus.

The economy of Tyria is not destroyed. People are still buying and selling like always. Money and goods are flowing through the trading post and the hands of the general population. What has changed is that due to greater supply of goods, the trading post robber barons aren't making as much profit now, so threads like this get made to complain about the rich not getting richer as fast as usual. Wah kitten wah for them. A DESTROYED game economy would be what happened to WoW over a decade ago when its first iteration of PVP was implemented. Blizzard made the mistake of implementing the PVP reward system IN THE OPEN WORLD before putting in the battlegrounds. The result was that pretty much the entire WoW world outside the cities became an open PVP free for all. Virtually all normal PVE activity ground to a halt thanks to the thundering herds of gankers killing everyone in sight. The auction house was practically empty of goods and what it did have was super expensive, because nobody could play the game normally to get anything to sell. As you can imagine, it was hardest on newer players because they didn't have money and couldn't buy gear. That situation lasted for WEEKS before Blizzard finally fixed things and the economy slowly returned to normal. Returning the topic to GW2, I do have to note that for whatever reason, the exchange rate of gems for gold has been relatively high for at least the last several weeks since I started paying attention. Seems people are buying significantly more gold these days. Not sure why, but I'd bet that is having some effect as well.

Either way, fantasy or sci-fi, it should have been made with a much tighter focus in regards to the tactics and strategy to go with the technology and the hazards we face. I realize GW2 is a game and we have to suspend disbelief to some degree just to be able to log in, but the rationality meter really is pegged low when it comes to the magi-technical status of the GW2 universe. In reality, melee weapons were obsolete as primary tools of war in the 18th century, and tight formations ended the hard way in WW1. Tyria is a world filled with ranged magic, AOE attacks of every description, bows, guns, artillery, siege engines, tanks, helicopters, airships, Vigil Megalasers, golems, Engineers, mountain-sized Elder Dragons, and even worse, pocket raptors. What are the primary tactics in at least 80% of the game? Melee weapons and stacking in groups. Yeah, right...

Bangar is a throwback to the old GW1 Charr who wanted to take over all of Tyria. "Dominion" ...one over all. The battle cry of "One Charr!" The confused lackeys think it means all Charr together as one, but make no mistake, it literally means just one Charr: Bangar.

Smodur murdering Cinder, and then Crecia's utterly STUPID saving of Smodur from Ryland (which IMHO is one of the worst plots moves ANet has ever conceived in GW2) together have burned whatever bridges we still had left with Ryland. I would be genuinely surprised if the story goes any other way than Ryland killing Bangar for leading him astray, and then Ryland ends up taking Bangar's place as Jormag's champion to seek the rest of his revenge against us. Supporting that, go back to the first Icebrood Saga trailer video, the one where Jormag is talking to us and then appears behind the horde of advancing Icebrood. There's an Icebrood Charr leading that horde, and it's almost certainly not Bangar because Bangar has a unique appearance. To my eyes, it looks like Ryland. Make of that what you will. Anyway, I'm actually more curious now about how Smodur's part will play out. Is Jormag manipulating him? Is he playing double agent for Bangar? Or is he just another self-serving wannabe Khan-Ur willing to sabotage anything that he thinks might keep him from that? Whatever the case, his days are almost certainly numbered. Between Rytlock, Malice, Efram, Crecia, the Commander, and Ryland, he has terminally angered just about everyone on his level, and one or more of us very likely will end up killing him, possibly as soon as next episode, and I'm looking more forward to seeing that than I am anything to do with Ryland.

Unfortunately there is no way to change character races, due to the shortsighted lack of inclusion of a feature which many other MMOs have, and GW2 now apparently cannot add because of how individual characters are embedded in their personal stories.

I dunno. Maybe some people just need to find something besides DPS numbers (or truck size) to measure their self-worth. I play heal scourge for my guild's strike team; my measure of success is simply keeping my team alive to win the fight. YMMV.

The NPC's location is randomized, I believe, between the two spots. I hope they fix it soon. (They could change their spawn location to just one spot, the one on ground level). The NPC up on the hill is not despawning when the event ends, so I'm not sure it's random.

Yep. What makes this doubly annoying is that this event is required to trigger the communications tower event, which is the daily event for today. This particular chain of missions was working on Friday 5/29 or so, which was the last time I did it. At that time, the NPC was down by the gate, not up on the hill. Apparently moving the NPC broke the event.

If that's the case, then the spoken Charr language is entirely absent from GW2 so far as I know.

It's like ideal vs. real systems in physics. "Meta" DPS benchmarks are based on the ideal: a player with full boons beating uninterruptedly on an immobile test dummy that doesn't hit back. In a real fight, things aren't perfect. The player and target are in motion, boons come and go, AOE has to be dodged, CC interrupts and phases bust your rotation, and so forth. The result is real DPS being lower than "meta" DPS across the board, and some classes lose more than others. Sometimes a lot more. Don't get me wrong: "meta" benchmarks are good information for understanding the maximum possibilities of a class build. But even so, they should never be used for determining game balance, because they simply do not reflect the reality of how the game actually plays.

Animals can be tricked and turned just as much as people. That's how real ancient humans domesticated animals in the first place.

I always figured that the "common" language evolved -- or an existing "Tyrian" language was adopted as y'all have discussed -- as a lingua franca to facilitate communications, trade and other relations between the various races. Lingua franca usage (and the replacement of native languages by lingua franca) is common in real world history, so the existence of a common language in the game doesn't bother me. What DOES bother me is the near-total absence of the racial languages, except for a few words here and there. The absence is so striking that it really demands some kind of explanation beyond simple language replacement. "Bookah" and "Poobah" are the only Asuran words I can recall hearing in game. Like their history, the Asura apparently left most of their language underground as well. The written form of Asuran is definitely still in existence, but the spoken form is seemingly almost gone. Perhaps like Japanese, which uses Chinese written characters but with its own spoken form, the Asurans are still using their old written alphabet but with the newer common language. Flint in Elon Riverlands calls the scammers at First Camp "human nara-dools " -- apparently an insult in Charr language. The usage as an object and appending of "human" implies nara-dool being a noun and not racially specific. So far as I know, this is the ONLY instance of a uniquely Charr word used in game. Doubly interesting is the casual usage by a cub -- implying that some degree of Charr language not only survives in everyday use, but may even still be actively taught. The Norn language, whatever it is/was, is apparent only in the names of places and people. I haven't heard a single specifically "Nornish" word in game that I can recall. Side thought: if the Norn are supposed to be Nordic inspired, shouldn't they all sound like they're from Minnesota? ;) The Sylvari apparently have never had their own language, which isn't surprising given the recency and character of their origins.

Spoiler: they're all golems with Asura pilots inside them. The Inquest is everywhere!

Based on my experience with the "No Quarter" story and the Drizzlewood map thus far... Most of the story achieves in this episode are easy and you can get them all in one run of the story. So check the achievement panel and google a guide first to save yourself the time of repeat runs. Before you start grinding through the achieves on the Drizzlewood battlefield, do the Special Forces achieve by buying Special Mission Documents from the TP, or get them from a guildie who has extras. This will immediately give you a mastery point, and the special missions will give a big boost to rewards for the legion reward tracks. The Charr mobs in Drizzlewood are not individually tough compared to Mordrem or LS3 White Mantle. But they are numerous, they have lots of condi and CC, and they love to gang up on you, so keep your head on a swivel. The most annoying mobs are Charr snipers, which are perched all over the map. They are not as one shotting powerful as Mordrem Snipers and are total glass to kill, but they have super long range. They love to dismount you, gang up while you're fighting other mobs, and catch you in crossfires (I've had up to three aiming at me at once). You can see their laser sights as they aim at you; dodging breaks their aim, as does taking cover to break line of sight. This also goes for fighting Vishen Steelshot in the boss fights. Use the parachute waypoints and your glider or flying mounts to get around the map quickly. This is especially important during the end event of the meta, when you're racing against the reset timer to kill as many champions as possible.