Raolin Soulherder.3195

-The little bobbling jade orbs look derpy. gyro 2.0. -The name is mediocre, but at least better than the other EoD e-spec names. -agree on ppl's disappointment on the fact that it's not a ranged spec. maybe anet was afraid if they did that, staff-ele would go extinct. -despite my wish for range, melee hammer could have been ok, I'm just not sure I like their implementation with the "orbs". Seems too game-y and inorganic for magic, and after all, ele is a mage profession. Animations felt meh, but I'll reserve full condemnation until after today's stream. -overall, just not into the spec's aesthetics so far. -

Hmm. well, I would have liked the Envoy idea better, but I guess we'll see how it works. Always been kind of ambivalent on Archemorus and St. Viktor, even in gw1 (probably because of the clunky-ness of the picking up and dropping the spear & the urn).

yea, I guess Kalla does feel out of place and boring. No magic. And nothing evoking the concepts of death/immortality and the mists, except garden-variety warfare. Every other legend checks those other boxes. Jade-wind at Shiro’s death, tablet at Ventari’s death, Rite of the Great Dwarf which doomed dwarves to extinction, the ghostly facets of Glint, & the undead demon. I fear that Tengu would be too Kalla-esque in that regard, unless the writers put in some work.

If they go with a Cantha-themed legend, I am thinking they might go with one of the 4 Envoys, spirits from gw1 (https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Envoy). They played an important role in the Factions main story, having the job of shepherding souls in the mists (which seems like a good fit for revenant), and bring the rogue envoy, Shiro to justice. They feature in cutscenes and concept art showed them with the below weapons: Herald Demrikov- sword https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Herald_Demrikov Emissary Heleyne- staff https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Emissary_Heleyne Messenger Vetaura- scythe https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Messenger_Vetaura Courier Torivos- axes https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Courier_Torivos The e-spec could have a utility skill associated with each envoy, kind of like the Herald spec has different facets. The blue flame in the revenant silhouette makes me think spirits of some sort. Which also might fit with one of the hero-spirits that you liberate from the Shiro’ken in the Tahnnakai Temple mission, such as Vizu (https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Vizu), though she technically wields daggers instead of a sword. Jaizhanju (https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Jaizhanju) is said to have wielded a sword in the lore text, though she is a much more minor character than Vizu and only appears in that one mission. I used to think Talon Silverwing would be a good legend, giving players the option of sort of playing a tengu w/o making a new playable race. He also wields a sword. But someone brought up a good point that none of the current rev legends are mundane fighters. The utility skills all revolve around special magic (Jalis’ Rite of the Great Dwarf, Shiro’s jade wind, Ventauri’s tablet, etc). And even though Talon was a skilled hero, I don’t remember any magic.

yea, I've been seeing people trying that alot w/ the aegis spam/shatter builds. In my own testing, it didn't seem to proc Mystic Rebuke as much as I was thinking it might. Just from fooling around w/ the pvp npc's, I only got maybe 3-4 proc's in a one crashing-courage cycle. so 2k-2.7k dmg total, on a 50s cooldown. And that was vs a non-moving target. But maybe there were some proc's that didn't hit, so didn't show in the combat log. Now maybe in the thick of a big team fight, if you give out a bunch of Aegis to allies, it could proc alot more. I don't believe the F3 affects allies though. And that's the only Aegis that willbender contributes. everything else could be done by a core guardian.

If you think they are just pretending, you must not have been following Anet very long. 😒

Yea, I didn’t catch the stream, but after watching the trailer, it felt kinda meh, & OP’s list confirms it. Hardly a glimpse of anything, & it was a bunch of random. We waited 3 extra months for that??

I can’t think of anything more casual than copy/pasting meta-builds because people are too lazy to think up their own builds.

Seems right in-line with their typical mode of operation. It took them at least 5.5yr to make a build-template system after hinting that they were working on it in June 2014 and were soliciting opinions. & that was something they could at least monetize. I don’t see how they could monetize alliances. If they made owning the expac a requirement for alliances, would everyone who didn’t own it be suddenly blocked from WvW? Or just be forced to operate as solo-players that get forcefully relocating to whichever alliance needs extra bodies instead of traveling with their guild’s alliance?

Well, I can only speak about my own experience, but I have had the game since launch and have about 80+ people on my friends list. Nowadays, I generally only see 3-4 of them online when I login for the daily. So most are inactive now & moved on to other games and life. Granted, most on the list are from the days I was active in WvW, so maybe things are better if you’re a PvE player. And I’m sure new players replace a portion of those who leave, though Anet year-over-year revenue has often been declining since HoT. But you can still probably have a good time in the game. It’s a ton of content for the B2P cost, and I would bet many of the people who no longer play still feel they got good value out of their GW2 experience. Mega-servers makes it so that you can still run into people in the open world, even though the player base isn’t what it once was.

I never blamed only 1 thing. I disagree that the vast majority of disapproval was only due to cost, since many people love to throw all discontent together. Not all of it was based on cost, and yes, the system can and should be improved.That's the problem - most of its core problems are inherent to its original design and thus cannot be improved. You'd basically need to redesign the whole system from scratch. The current system is simply designed for other purposes than functionality, and there's no way around it. yup. and I'm sure if they changed anything now (ie. character-wide to account-wide) that would upset the people that already paid for things thinking that they are character-wide, so that's never going to happen. Best I would hope for is them packaging some free slots with the next expac. Could always refund the gems spent on duplicate template purcheses.right, but I'm not sure if that is realistic. It would displace gem sales, taking money out of Anet's pocket. they're probably not in great condition to do that due to the shrinking quarterly revenues. People would still complain, saying they had only spent money on the condition that they get the template slots, and not the gems, and would demand a refund. The vast majority of businesses are incredibly resistant to offering money refunds, and would much rather offer coupons or discounts on future products to address any customer dissatisfaction.

I never blamed only 1 thing. I disagree that the vast majority of disapproval was only due to cost, since many people love to throw all discontent together. Not all of it was based on cost, and yes, the system can and should be improved.That's the problem - most of its core problems are inherent to its original design and thus cannot be improved. You'd basically need to redesign the whole system from scratch. The current system is simply designed for other purposes than functionality, and there's no way around it.yup. and I'm sure if they changed anything now (ie. character-wide to account-wide) that would upset the people that already paid for things thinking that they are character-wide, so that's never going to happen. Best I would hope for is them packaging some free slots with the next expac.

yep, if there is a new race, it should be distinct. not just a different flavor of human. I'd vote tengu. And from what I understand, there was already work done towards tengu being playable, but it was cut relatively late in the game's development.

Lol, they’ve had 2yrs+ to get templates right, and possibly longer than that, since we know they were at least discussing it in 2014. If that wasn’t enough to get it done, I doubt another few months of troubleshooting will. I’ve come to the conclusion that the game, as initially designed, must have just been incompatible with templates, absent some arcdps-like workaround. And I doubt they’d switch to something like that because then they’d have more trouble justifying charging people gems for it. And they couldn’t offer it for free because that would piss off the people that have already bought gems to get more slots

this reeks of PVE

Thanks for the communication. Hope the Alliance system revitalizes WvW. I am primarily a WvW player (or was when I was more active) but I don't think it's fair for people to compare LW content to updating WvW. There is no design complexity to LW. It's just a case of repeating a proven construction formula of writing story and rendering artwork rather than inventing something new. It is understandable that they churn LW out alot faster than restructuring WvW. The WvW restructure is essentially an attempt re-invent and redesign a whole game mode while trying to balance a ton of different incentive structures of alot of different people. I mean, it's not like there is some other RvR game that has solved all the issues that you can just point Anet towards and say 'do it like them'. That being said, it is hard to maintain enthusiasm and positivity as a player, given the long time frames involved and lack of any concrete carrot to point to.

The main thing caused me to disengage from the game is lack of build templates, but maybe that will be addressed soon if the rumors are more than lip service. I wasn't even gonna buy HoT due to that, but a guildee arm-twisted me into it and I held out hope maybe they would add that as a post-HoT feature. When that didn't materialize, I stopped spending & reduced playing time. But if they eventually release one, it would definitely tempt me to return. Also another factor was the stagnation of wvw development. Maybe the delays in Camelot Unchained will give Anet an opening to make improvements to retain that community.

I’m well aware of this third-party program. That’s still no excuse for anet to still not have their own build template system. Evan Lesh hinted that they were looking into this way back in 2014, and they’re always paying lip-service, acknowledging and sympathizing with fan requests for it. To still have nothing 4 years later is ridiculous when 1 non-anet guy can make one (albeit a non-supported one) by himself. I don’t remember all the details on gw1 but I’m pretty sure we had templates by the time Nightfall came out, which was only 1.5 yr after gw1 was released. This feature positively boosts literally every game mode. Yea, maybe there are some complications with the way the game was coded (supposedly), but I don’t buy that this is more complex than trying to balance 27 professions/elite specs or building whole new maps.

I absolutely would love Cantha! Shing Jea Island & Monastery were probably my favorite location in GW1. It was so tranquil there and there was a sense of wonder, especially with all the new year festivities and the setting of these beautiful buildings covered in colorful lanterns nestled among the mountains and the starry sky. Kaineng seemed like this massive hub of intrigue and excitement that could provide endless exploration. Both the Jade Sea and Echovald Forest had such interesting lore and unique aesthetics. The story tying everything together was fantastic and the place is also home to many Tengu, a race I am fond of. What more could you ask for? Prophecies, Nightfall, and EOTN provided fun, but I think Factions was superior to them all. Games like Jade Quarry kept me engaged with the franchise during the long content drought between EOTN and GW2. I'd be very disappointed if Anet didn't allow a return to Cantha in an expac.

build templates. that's #1 for me.