perilisk.1874

No, Ryland will start getting corrupted, but then he will sacrifice himself to stop the evil Prince Braham from killing Jormag, breaking the icebrood curse, and teaching Jormag about the power of true love. Then Ryland and Rox will get married and live happily ever after... until they find out they are actually brother and sister. Dun dun dunnnnnn.

Are you kittening serious? Bangar's a Charr supremacist. Almorra thinks of the non-Charr in the Vigil as her people as much as the Charr, which is why she was in his office in the first place. Pretty sure most of the Pact Charr are going to be on her side as well -- they have, let's say, a much broader sense of "in-group" than Bangar's folks.

Are baby raids even the best place to try to teach mechanics? The chief issue with nonstandard mechanics (ie, not DPS and dodging and breakbars and circles and such that you pick up anywhere) is that learning takes a certain amount of failure, and most people not only don't want that failure to be public, but also don't want it to screw things up for other people. It seems like something that would work better if you gave raid areas an OW explorable mode and filled them with Adventures (instanced if need be) that trained specific mechanics, so players could rapidly iterate through failure cycles solo. Removing the group assembly part of "raiding" is probably the best feature of strike missions.

I think whatever the domain is includes a lot of interrelated things. Desert -> Sand -> Crystal [Crystal Balls -> Prophecy] -> Prisms -> Light -> Sunlight and Lightning -> Storms -> Wind. It's sort of an odd set in general, but the notion that her line's magic is tied to light is not really new, and I don't think in and of itself it suggests she has all domains.

Scarlet got a whole season. Balthazar got the better part of a season and an entire expansion. OTOH, Joko, not so much. Nor Caudecus, but he was only really important to humans, not to the larger story.

Did the spell take his sword, or did it just create an opportunity for a certain someone to summon his sword to the Mists, believing its owner would follow?

While they describe it as Lovecraftian, it's really more Tolkienesque -- a promise of power that corrupts the soul and eventually even the body. Call him Bangarmir. Presumably the season will end by carrying Jormag to a volcano and tossing him in. Maybe everyone just killed enough of them that the only ones that survived are those with less bloodlust and will to power. Evolution in action. Anyway, what's interesting to me is the implicit callback to the origins of the Flame Legion and the bad GW1 charr -- that is, the same way the Charr fell under the thrall of the Titans because they felt they needed gods to even the odds against humans, he is seeking power from the Frost Dragon. "You idjit! We'd look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, bragging on our own dragon, don't matter how crystalline."

I think their map design is going to be a lot easier if they can guarantee that players at least have the base PoF and HoT masteries; in fact, that was one justification they gave for giving HoT for free to PoF players.

I mean, some of the events are pretty fun, and in a repeatable way. I feel like having real life fun is more important than having imaginary wealth, reward-wise. YMMV.

No, just a well designed OW map with lots of fun events and good writing that show Arenanet still knows its strengths.

Good map, good events (especially the concert), and good storytelling.

Need a mastery to regain the ability to see through the stealth for Kas's illusory mordrem snipers too.

Her illusions drop loot. Ergo, Kas can create matter ex nihilo, in unlimited quantities. Do not cross Kas, she may be a demigod.

There's no reason they can't change the goals of the fight, though, or kinda-sorta do it through encounter design. For example, you could theoretically make a boss invulnerable to players, and players have to trigger phases where an NPC pounds the boss while increasing waves of adds try to kill the NPC -- the longer it holds out, and the more offensive boons on it, the more damage done to the boss. Or, as a non-boss encounter, just have a "hold out until the cavalry arrives" scenario. In either case, DPS helps relieve the pressure, but it doesn't actually win the day. Of course, those fights will still have a meta, but it might at least be a different one.

The fractal merchant is basically a guaranteed recipe, but it's pretty time-gated.

Make double damage baseline for crits, and make ferocity scale up hard CC duration and breakbar damage even more. Scale endurance regen to Toughness and reduce the armor impact as needed to balance it.

Paging Eric Hoffer....

The phrase "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" comes to mind.

This pretty much nails it. Their build system is sort of a waste for PvE. There's usually a good DPS option or two, and everything else goes in the garbage. The problem isn't the tools they give the players, it's that problems they give them that don't really show the strengths of most of those tools. One encounter tends to be like another, and generally when they try to do something special mechanically, it's entirely parallel to the whole build system so that they don't unduly punish any class. If the game was better at getting players into group content, then that would matter less, since one character's weakness could be mitigated by another one.

Infusions are already Ascended upgrades

Right now, hoping one day someone will come by and want to run the stupid Dominus Crystallum event so I can clear all these damn recordings out of my inventory.

Maybe the raid community but not the casuals and PVEers, which are a larger group. I think the casuals and PvErs were asking for easy mode or story mode versions of raids, which technically this is, just in reverse.

Personally, I'd suggest that they rework combos into a new horizontal progression system (with limited support in Core as well) and a new set of mechanics. One approach would converting fields so that they pulse "mana orbs" or something along those lines. Rather than stacking like boons/conditions, they could have a shared bar that contains up to 25 orbs, adding them to the right, and removing excess orbs from the left, possibly triggering certain traits or mechanics. Jeweler 500 could become a means to create signets of capture, to get skill modifiers from bosses (or skill points, or other things) that would alter skill properties as regards the orb system. Different mana types would have different signet recipes. The modifiers, once unlocked, would be selectable as a part of build (ie, a particular skill might have multiple options, of which one could be chosen. The base version of the skill would usually but not always have a default property of similar power to the other options, to avoid excess power creep). They could interact with the bar in different ways, e.g.: Finisher: Consumes a certain number of orbs from the right, as available, and produces an effect for each. E.g., projectile might consume one and apply a positive or negative effect; whirl might consume several and do the same, possibly with varying effects for each projectile, etc. Attuned: Consumes a specific type/number of orbs to apply an effect, from anywhere on the bar. Does nothing if charges are not there.Empowered: Consumes a specific type, but an unlimited number, of orbs from the right, with an effect that varies on the number consumedFueled: If excess orbs of a certain type are removed, reduce the cooldown of this skill. Or alternatively, reduce cooldown for each orb of a certain type consumed.There could also be skills and mechanics for applying, stripping, converting to boons/conditions, stealing, etc. mana orbs, or converting among types. Possibly a "wildcard" type of orb that counts as whatever is favorable (critical hit from orb application? special field type?). A lot of possibilities for expanding gameplay. Lorewise, they could tie it into the ongoing prismatic Aurene subplot, and her way of sharing magic with mortals.

The Icebrood Saga. There was an announcement and everything.

Last time I checked she was still collapsed in a heap on her chamber floor, so who knows? :) She gets better at the end of Knight of the Thorn. That said, I'm fairly sure she's been confirmed as a purified blighting tree, and the Tangled Depths meta confirms blighting trees as the gargantuan maguuma trees (most likely stonewood trees) being corrupted. It'd be nice to get some dev confirmation on that. It would pretty convenient to be able to replace Mordremoth with the Pale Tree and offer a new dimension to the sylvari in a new world. Avatars of a changing paradigm.Maybe it would be another Aurene instead -- that is, instead of the PT growing something based on humans, grow something based on Aurene as a template, to become a baby jungle dragon? Would give the Exalted something to do, anyway.