perilisk.1874

I never really had much of an issue with Trahearne as a scholar or as the one selected by the Pale Tree to use Caladbolg to purify the Artesian waters. That's a plotline that runs through the entire course of the personal story (if you're a sylvari) and he's written well for the part. It's an important part of the fight against Zhaitan, but not the be-all and end-all. It's just that shoehorning him into the role of Pact leader as well feels hard to justify -- why would you pick the charmless, uncertain loner who doesn't seem to know anything about commanding miliatry forces and who is going to just do whatever his one friend (who, in 2/3 of cases, is a member of a different Order) tells him? I think it was probably a way to avoid needing to a write a second character for that role, but it contributes a lot to the Mary Sue impression. He isn't just the Pale Tree's Chosen One, he's also leader of the world's largest paramilitary force. Being Treesus alone might be okay (and he's written well enough to support that role), being Stick Fury alone might be okay (if he was re-written for it), but both at the same time feels a little Mary Sue. The whole Pact concept itself bugs me. I don't mean the concept of the Orders working together, more the creation of a bland new supergroup that creates an excuse to sideline all the interesting lore and character of the Orders and eliminate the PC's connection to their chosen Order. Anyway, I think they could have split the role of Trahearne into five racial characters who aren't exactly iconics, but play a major role throughout the entire storyline, such that none would feel over-important or overused. A Sylvari whose Wyld Hunt is to reclaim Caladbolg and purify (corrupt for Mordremoth?) the Artesian waters. A human who is a scholar of Orr and the gods and a powerful necromancer (Priestess Rhie, with a bigger role). An Asura researching dragons and dragon-killing lasers (Gorr, with a bigger role). A Charr war-mechanic who dreams of flight and builds the Pact's first flying machines. And a fierce but savvy Norn Lionguard who survived and led the retreat from the original battle of Lion's Arch, worked with the Orders to coordinate the assault on Claw Island, and continues in that vein as a war commander for all three Orders to take down Zhaitan.

Poor execution is basically what distinguishes a Mary Sue from a character that is legitimately awesome.

It's not exactly an underwater mount, but here's my shot at it: Drakefrog Mount. Amphibious mount with a sticky tongue and sonic croak. Looks like a cross between a drake and a frog, has feet that are both webbed and sticky, slow hopping on land, has a tadpolish tail that looks made for water travel (they don't lose them, cuz reasons). Slow travel on land, fast travel underwater, has a decent jump (not a special ability, just ordinary movement jump). Has separate movement/dismount abilities on land and underwater, in keeping with the amphibious theme. On land or on the water's surface, it can pull itself places with its powerful tongue, similar to the mechanics of Oakheart’s essence. The tongue doesn’t have the reach of OE, but it can be used anywhere, and if possible, the frog sticks wherever it lands. It can use its tongue ability again while sticking as well. The frog has three charges of endurance, which don’t regenerate while it is sticking to a wall or using its tongue ability. The frog has a two-stage dismount ability on land. For the first stage, it uses its tongue to grab and swallow a single enemy (can be blocked/evaded, doesn’t work on anything with a defiance bar, structures, etc.). While an enemy is swallowed , the frog can’t use its movement ability or regain endurance. The ability requires/consumes a charge of endurance and can’t be used while sticking to a wall. However, the rider is not dismounted immediately on using the tongue attack. For the next ten (or whatever is balanced) seconds, the enemy takes damage, and so long as the enemy lives, the tongue attack is replaced with the ability to spit the enemy back out as a “projectile” (mechanically, more like a warrior's whirlwind attack aimed in the direction the frog is facing), damaging that enemy and every other enemy in its path, and dismounting the rider. If the frog doesn’t spit the enemy out within 10 seconds and it is still alive, the rider is dismounted anyway, and the enemy is disgorged without further incident. If the enemy dies while swallowed, the frog gets a temporary boost to endurance regen and the rider is not dismounted. Underwater, the Drakefrog uses its tail to propel itself forward rapidly, and endurance drains over time rather than in discrete charges. Its dismount ability is a sonic burst that pushes enemies away, reveals them, and very briefly dazes them, but isn’t massively damaging. When traveling on the Drakefrog underwater, it passively uses a sonar ability every few seconds that marks nearby enemies on the minimap at about the same radius as gathering nodes can be shown (their locations are fixed rather than tracked, but update with each new pulse).

I could see why Trahearne, surviving and learning in Orr, would have the respect of the Priory. But not so much the other two -- he didn't go around slaughtering enough Dragon minions to earn the respect of the Vigil, and he never seemed to have the cunning that might earn him the respect of the Order of Whispers. Now, maybe it would have worked better if your character saw the defeat at Claw Island and been the first to realize the Orders need to work together. You consult with your mentor in Destiny's Edge, who basically advises you to pull a My Fair Lady with Trahearne, who is known to the Orders but not affiliated, (under guidance from the other DE characters), and basically manufacture a reputation for him that will let him form the Pact. It would actually involve them more in the PS, and it would explain why people are willing to follow Trahearne. It might even let players see the emergence of leadership qualities (or, re-emergence, if they were lost due to self-doubt from some backstory screwup) rather than just pulling them out of thin air.

I could never really buy him as leader of the Pact. He didn't really have any charisma, or military experience. He wasn't somehow a mix of the strengths of the three Orders, he was basically just another Priory scholar that happened not to have a formal membership. He was a firstborn, true (they could have talked that up more), he had a Wyld Hunt regarding the dragon (which makes him a more verbal Aurene, ie a plot device, not a commander). I could see if he fell into it due to cynical machinations on the part of the Order leaders (trying to set up a figurehead to manipulate), and randomly happened to be good at it. I could see if he was written more as an intense charismatic not-quite-religious leader on a crusade against the dragon that pulled people along with him. Nothing against the guy, but both his relationship with the PC and with the Pact were just pulled out of the air without any real narrative backing. You know, how in a fan fiction a character might be added who becomes friends with all the important protagonist characters for some unexplained reason and everyone loves and doesn't just join one faction, but finds a way to rapidly become leader of all of them (i.e. a Mary Sue, or else an Elder Scrolls player character). Of course, the PC is also a bit of a Mary Sue, at least in the Personal Story, but there's at least an established progression that explains how you're building your reputation up. It's mostly the interest of your DE mentor that feels a little contrived (e.g., it's hard to take being the hero of Shaemoor seriously when it isn't even a solo instance, so there are multiple heroes. What makes you stand out?). Well, that, and becoming Pact Commander rather than just becoming an elite operative in your chosen Order.

I'm having horrible flashbacks to Claw Island and Deputy Mira now.

Getting some more closeups on the character speaking (along with the ability to skip lines) would be nice, depending on the situation. Obviously, it could also lead to silly results. I don't miss the two-character closeup dialogs, though.

Pretty sure Elli is still hanging out in my home instance, so not dead.

I'd suggest unlocking a recipe at 300 MF that lets you craft a consumable using luck and other trash mats like bloodstone that temporarily gives a good chunk of extra MF, without consuming a food or utility slot. Essentially, once you reach 300, you trade further increases in magnitude for increases to the duration of maximum MF from luck. Of course, it would need to be balanced so you consumed more luck to make the item than you could feasibly gain in the 30 minutes or whatever that it lasts.

Just play a medium armor character, they have capes. Of a sort.

I don't want Taimi to die, but she is a little overused. There are probably good reasons for it, but without a strong protagonist to put her into a clear supporting role (which is never going to happen, and probably shouldn't), or a diversity of supporting characters to share the spotlight, she sort of starts to become a defacto protagonist, and she isn't suited for it. I think the communicator was where things started to go off the rails, since it turned her from the technically adept member of DW into Felicity Smoak. Also, GW is fantasy, and that means that sometimes newfangled technology doesn't have all the answers, and old-school sorcery gets to save the day. When that situation arises, it's fine for Taimi to be stumped (good thing we travel with guardians, necromancers, mesmers, and revenants). I think the other thing that needs to be done is establish the boundaries of Taimi's expertise more clearly, and maybe more narrowly than has been hinted. She's a golemancer and a ley line expert, that's pretty set in stone. But there's a whole lot of magitech out there, and if we run across it and it's unique or cutting edge stuff, it's okay for her to say "not my field, find another Asura". And it's okay to say that if it can't be fixed with ley line energy manipulation or a golem, that she's not much more use than any other random member of DW.

Basically, the game needs a running special effects "budget", and once you get too many flashy effects in a scene, it should start cutting some back to simple, legible effects, starting with those of unaffiliated greens and trash mobs, then the environment, party members, bosses, and as a last resort, your own. Players should be able to increase or decrease that budget in the options screen (from nothing to unlimited) for taste or performance. The question of accessibility (which is OP's concern) is a little different, since any number of certain effects are bad, and other effects are no issue at all no matter how many there are. That's probably best handled with a separate checkbox that always tones down certain problematic effects, or implements reverse HDR or something, where the implementation is based on medical rather than gameplay considerations.

Expertise exists to extend condition duration. One aspect of conditions is damage, the other is support/control through debuffing enemies. With the exception of vuln, all conditions that aren't DOTs are considered soft CC, so you're basically just turning it into another damage stat. I'll concede the point on fear and taunt though, but mainly because they should just be considered outright CCs and not conditions.

Well, you're half right.

Well, if I was placing them in order: GuardianMesmerNecroElementalistRangerThiefEngineerWarriorRevenantBut as to why, mostly just a question of taste.

Well, on the plus side, creating armor would be easy since they're just reskinned humans. I guess they could also switch the aquabreather logic for them (so they use breathers out of the water, and normal helms inside it). Their "wings" could just be a back item that exists if no other back item is shown.

Why wouldn't they just put a hypothetical player house into the home instance?

I'd hope we could at least see the Luxon and Kurzick areas, if not Cantha proper.

I voted for both. I don't think Easy Mode needs to have much in the way of rewards; something on the order of what you would get for dungeon story mode or a world boss or a story instance. It shouldn't enable completing achievements or anything similar (other than unlocking the mastery track, maybe). The main point of such a mode would be: A less-punishing, PUG-friendly way of teaching mechanics for eventually doing normal mode raids, andA way for less elite players to experience and stay up to date on the story by playing it, rather than reading a summary or watching a video.

If there ever is a Tengu PC, I think they would need to be retconned as having participated in all the canonical story events, starting with joining the order. The low-level story would therefore need to be occurring at around the same time as the other low-level stories. However, it would be a good opportunity to show "historical" things from a fresh perspective. I don't think the isolation of the Tengu as a society would be altered during the course of Personal Story or anytime prior to the point where Tengu were added, the player would just be one of the few who left and got involved in the affairs of the larger world. Given the larger size of recent maps, they could probably do the entire pre-Orders story in the starter map, if they wanted.

I think I'd settle for them just doing a series of little instances you could jump into straight from the story journal (one for each LS1 "episode"), that would more fully introduce characters and plot points, and show cutscenes, along with the typical story journal writeup. The movie is just not quite enough to get everything across. That said, it would also be pretty sweet to have a Marionette guild mission or a Battle for LA/Breachmaker fractal.

Pistol, on and off-hand. The specialization will be named... Paragun. But, no, seriously, a mystic gunslinger with sanctified weapons and prayers or chants would be pretty cool, and there are some decent pop cultural touchstones to reference.

My theory:Kraalkatorik is the last proper dragon antagonist we deal with in GW2, in the next expansion. Having absorbed "war" energy, he craves conflict with the other dragons. He already has a lot of Primordus' power (that Balthazar drained). He kills Jormag at the end of LS4 and absorbs ice spectrum, and then heads to the ocean in hopes of taking out DSD (who is near Cantha) and completing the power set. He uses a combination of ice and crystal magic to brand the ocean itself, creating something like a branded version of the Jade Sea, more or less where the Jade Sea had existed before (what are the odds?). In that expansion, we realize that Glint's weapon is a more powerful Forgotten version of Omadd's machine, that Kraalkatorik has it, and that he is going to use it to become a Prismatic Dragon. Instead, by the end of the expansion, Aurene is the new Prismatic Dragon and Kraalkatorik and DSD are both dead. Primordus remains sleeping as something they can bring out in GW3 to evoke GW2 nostalgia. If we have further expansions, aside from wrapping up loose ends, we will up either cleaning up the mess left when the gods left, or else dealing with issues that spilled over from wherever they went.

Hammer. Next elite should be an offensive support spec that uses minions that pulse buffs to each other (and allies) when they take damage. Like upside-down ranger spirits. Shroud should be minion-focused (sort of inspired by the bit with the Awakened recruits in Vabbi), letting you paint targets for your minions (old and new) and enhance attacks against those targets, draw aggro to your minions, and sharing health between minions and the shroud's LF, both ways. Hammer itself would provide some hard CC, boon fields, and blasts, and could be thematically sort of a baton for directing minions.

Hmmm... so, maybe they could have the occasional, Final Fantasy X style, giant floating sphere of water?