[Sous Chef Mastery Point (SPOILER)]

Some advice for people seriously struggling with this.

The way I did it was to turn on object names in the options menu so you can see from across the room where each ingredient is. You can't see the ingredients before starting the mastery challenge, but after a few goes, you can learn which side of the kitchen each ingredient is.

It helps a ton to identify where to go and how best to reach it, and i wouldnt have been able to do it otherwise. Also remember you have a swiftness ability, something i ignored the first few times because i was just in a hurry to hand over the ingredients. And if anyone has an issue with their mouse/touchpad randomly not working (as I do, temporarily), having auto-target helps a lot. Also waiting until he stops to check on things helped reduce the stress because if he's not moving, it's a guaranteed hit.

I hope this helps, it's an infuriating mastery point, but thankfully there are other, easier mastery points to get out there and quite a surplus of mastery points too.

[(Spoilers inside) Suspicious issues with Lyssa]

@Invidia.9074 said:I specifically listened to his whole dialogue and let him almost kill myself to get confirmation. He mentions only 4 of the 5 in order: Dwayna, Melandru, Grenth, Kormir and then adds: May the fires take you all. If we fail to kill him we have to repeat the combo with Aurene and he repeats the whole dialogue. No mention of Lyssa altogether.

Sure that might have been intentional just to shorten the dialogue etc. but I'm not convinced.

THAT'S WHAT WAS MISSING FROM THAT DIALOGUE AND WHY IT FELT WEIRD.

I can confirm that this is true, I run a low damage/high survival build on my main so i managed to listen to most of the dialogue because i could only slowly kill balthazar.

Lyssa's mirror, Kormir's 'even Lyssa' on top of not mentioning her during those final moments. There's something there. I don't entirely believe it's something critical to the story, more than likely it's either her reluctance to strip balthazar or her mostly neutral stance on the matter. It might even have been Lyssa who granted Balthazar the mirror as some sort of apology like "my actions were necessary, but i'm sorry I had to go through with them, here's a gift" kind of thing. I doubt she planned for Balthazar to ever be released, nor I think could she have imagined Balthazar, the god of direct confrontation, to utilize deception as he did after being cast down. He ultimately did, citing that he no longer sees the honor in war which should be a major character shift, but 'being a donkey (censor)' seems to be his defining trait even before he was cast down in PoF (you'd think the god of war would see the catastrophic destruction of Tyria as a war that was lost, dishonorable and nonstrategic in every way).

[Bounty Feedback [merged]]

Bounties are a success because HoT metas consistently blocked off important areas for exploration and story progression. There's a middle ground, to be sure, for map wide meta events, such as the one to go near the mouth of torment in the desolation, and they've done those as well, but Heart of Thorns metas were a disaster for anyone who wasn't interested in them because you wereforced to either join in or wait a half hour until the entire event was done to get to important story places.

I think bounties are a success in that regard, not a failure. For anyone who wants a challenge, bounties exist with interesting mechanics. The scaling may be broken, but tweaking the numbers on scaling, rewards and timings should fix the majority of issues bounties, while leaving open spaces for those who don't like them to ignore them as they please or, if they become interested, join at their own will, while leaving the important and core aspects of exploration free from being locked behind a meta.

It's also great that there isn't much storytelling behind them because HoT style metas need to die. Not metas as a concept, not even metas that call upon large numbers of players, but specifically HoT metas that prevent people from going forward into the game with threadbare plots barely related to the story that block access to entire sections of the map or suddenly make those sections impassible to anyone who's not with an entire army. There is minimalistic story, in that we as the commander are dealing with the creatures who have been empowered by leyline energy from the magical instability of the world as a result of our actions since the beginning of the game (which btw is really interesting as a concept).

And don't even get me started on Dragon's stand.

[(Theoretically) What new playable race do you want?]

My first instinct was to vote largos. Then i remembered how cool it would be to play as a tengu, kodan would be nice and then I saw djinn and awakened.

This is difficult D=, I can't choose just one!

[GEMSTORE REQUESTS: New Items; Items offered again - [Merged]]

I would love to see the crystal nomad outfit return. never got the chance to get it before, but now i desperately want it cause we're in the desert. Either that or a desert explorer outfit would be great.

Also arctic explorer outfit, but i assume that's something that'l be released closer to wintersday

[i want this mini so bad...... but i have a problem :(]

@Dante.1763 said:ANET has stated that the GW1 HoM rewards will stay as rewards only obtainable in the HoM for playing GW1, as a sort of loyalty reward for players of GW1. If you really want the Racoon, i highly suggest going and playing GW1 to unlock it and the other rewards available there. Itll take you time of course.

It's totally worth it though, I may be distracted with GW2 and path of fire right now, but i definitely enjoy having dual professions (mesmer/monk for life!) and the storylines are also intriguing.

no jumping though, which is understandably a huge barrier, but i think the gameplay and story make it worthwhile.

[Mounts!!!! Your thoughts?]

I've argued against the inclusion of mounts (rudely and snobbishly at times retrospectively) because I saw that there was no need for mounts. The frequency of waypoints and how the game was designed without them were enough for me to make that claim.

I've done a complete 180 and am entirely sold on mounts, especially since the preview weekend. I do, however, understand and support every argument that states mounts should not have been core to the enjoyment of the expansion. Despite that, I absolutely adore them and cannot wait to own them all and any that may come in the future.