castlemanic.3198

This meta really needs to be nerfed. please listen to us arenanet.

yeah just did it and failed again. this meta wasn't designed with casual players in mind and it's utterly baffling that arenanet thought this would be the perfect way to end EoD. on top of that the turtle is locked behind a successful compeltion of this meta event and that wasn't a good idea. Arenanet please nerf this hard. this is extremely badly designed and wasn't well thought through.

Whelp, that's one more mastery track to prioritize over fishing for me. ETA: also adjusted my ratings accordingly. thanks for letting me know!

overall i like our little jade buddy. the masteries are also improving the use of the jade bot too, making it easier to use and more fun to use as well as giving use unique abilities (like an instant get up from being downed mechanic). hate the battery part though. wild that they limited the scope of the game like that.

i'm going with recycler to jade slivers and rescue protocol. I don't even have rescue protocol yet but it's gonna be a lifesaver when i get that mastery

here are my recommendations Core Tyria: Pact commander all tiers (final tier gives you autoloot), this is the only core tyria track that casual players should max out imo Fractal attunement track is only useful for fractals. If you do fractals, definitely take all tiers legendary crafting track is only useful for crafting legendaries. if that's one of your goals, you should level this up. heart of thorns: gliding up to tier 5. Gives you infinite gliding capabilities by that point. there's i think only one map outside of hot/season 3 that uses leylines. itzel lore isn't useful outside of HoT. The bouncing mushroom occasionally makes an appearance in a select few maps but it's required for story progression so you'll get it anyway. Exalted lore isn't very useful outside of HoT Nuhoc lore isn't very useful outside of HoT raids are only useful for, well, raiding. it doesn't even show up as an option until you beat your first raidboss from the first 4 raid wings. raiding is a requirement for pve legendary armor acquisition though, so if you're legendary hunting this will be useful. season 3: ancient magics only has one mastery that's actually useful, which is the tier 4 one. gives you a bonus ability to use when you're downed. other than that, you're only gonna find uses in season 3 maps. path of fire: raptor mastiers are useful, get all of them springer masteries are useful, get all of them skimmer masteries are useful, get all of them. once you beat path of fire there's an extra mastery that lets you use the skimmer underwater, which isn't that useful unless you're playing core content on a new character. however i still recommend getting it because who knows when anet will add more underwater content in the future. jackal masteries are helpful, the tier 4 mastery gives evade frames to all mount specific movement abilities (leaping for raptor, high jump for springer, floating for skimmer, wing flaps for griffon, speed boost for roller beetle and barrel roll for skyscale. the warclaws leap naturally has evade frames so it's essentially useless on a warclaw) griffon is fun, but not very useful. Not sure i'd recommend getting the griffon for most players. the mastery track doesn't even appear until you get the griffon (which is a 250 gold sink to get). works as an all terrain mount until you get skyscale, then it becomes obsolete. very useful for speeding around a map if you have a high jumping off point, but otherwise not as useful now that we have skyscales. season 4: crystal champion honestly these are all useful since you get abilities to use for your mounts roller beetle is not one i actually recommend getting. it's useful for zooming throug a map but the roller beetle gets caught on small bumps that slow it down. i don't remember if the mastery track is hidden or not until you get the roller beetle. skyscale is a must get. however the skyscale is the mount that requires the most work and requires you to have all of season 4 to get. very worth it though imo, works better as the all terrain mount. icebrood saga/season 5: raven attunement isn't useful outside of IBS resilience essence, valor essence and vigilance essence are not useful outside some IBS maps. united legions waystation synchronization has a few useful masteries. I often see people using waysations in metas with breakbars to use the EMP for breakbar damage. however for me personally there's a far more useful mastery, which is the mount stealth mastery. tier 4 gives you mount stealth, but tier 5 upgrades mount stealth and the other materies in this track too. mount stealth has saved my hide a decent number of times, so i'd actually recommend getting this one. dragon slayer isn't useful outside of the final episode of icebrood saga. end of dragons: fishing is only useful if you really like fishing. skiff piloting has a few useful masteries, but it's main purpose is to assist in fishing so if you like fishing definitely upgrade your skiff jade bots has actually a number of useful abilities that seem to also be useful outside of end of dragons, especially that jade bot revival one at the max tier. don't do my mistake by completing skiff first, you definitely want to prioritize jade bots over the skiff. arborstone revitalization apparently this gives you a LOT of useful stuff, including the ability to craft gen 3 legendary weapons. prioritize this over jade bots once you unlock it in the story. siege turtle is locked behind the final meta in EoD, waiting for the nerf before investing time in doing this meta. i would argue mostly useful if you play with at least one other player, but even then i don't see siege turtles being very useful outside of certain metas or world bosses. final notes: in short, the core masteries are essentially pact commander, gliding to tier 5, ancient magics to tier 4, raptor, springer, skimmer, crystal champion, skyscale, united legions waystations, jade bots and arborstone revitalization. those will give you the most out of core pve experiences if you're not focused on raids, fractals, or strike missions since it doesn't have a pve mastery track, the warclaw is available in wvw and is only useful in wvw. You CAN use it in pve but in pve it's just a novelty mount. if you wvw a lot, definitely recommend getting the warclaw but if you're pve focused like me, there's generally no need to get the warclaw. regarding strike missions, i actually have a question for any readers. do you know if the raid masteries affect strike missions? if they do please respond, would be useful to know if another thread like this comes up in the future.

just an FYI on the siege turtle, you need to successfully beat the meta in the final map in order to get the siege turtle egg.

The bosses health should be reduced and the green circles mechanic should also be removed. The fight itself mechanics wise is alright for me, especially with the airship circling nearby for recovery purposes, but at this rate no one is going to get the siege turtle unless they are really lucky. It honestly makes me not want to try the meta again but i have to if i want the siege turtle. assigning the ability to get the siege turtle, one of the biggest things this expac had going for it, behind an open world meta event with a high failure rate was one of the weirdest moves arenanet has made. either the fight needs to be tweaked or acquiring the turtle needs to acquirable in another way. things cannot stay the way they are right now.

So something that bothered me about ankka is that she's using zhaitan's magic without getting corrupted by it. Is that because Zhaitan is dead and is no longer in control of it as a domain of magic? is there a lore reason she isn't corrupted by it that has to do with what the harbinger mentor talked about? Is this a plot hole? I'm genuinely not sure what's going on here.

i figured it would be interesting to see what lore allows that we as players dont have access to, and hence why i put it in the lore forum as i thought it would be the most appropriate place. kasmeers lie detection ability isnt magical (as far as i'm aware), she talks about facial movement when dawn lies to the commander about how she doesnt know what's going on with the master of peace. i initially forgot about it but seeing that it's likely not magical i agree with you that temporary lich form isn't the same thing as turning yourself into a lich permanently. also agree that queen jennah has been taught things that most mesmers won't have access to. i wonder if she has any association with the mesmer collective. i was wondering whether i should include livias fragility ability or not. seeing as it's a legacy ability it's probably out of fashion but still viable, giving her an edge most modern mesmers wouldn't have. i wouldn't really consider rytlock as dual classed, but more having swapped classes instead. lorewise revenant commanders swapped classes too, but i don't think there's a canonical class commanders switched from. true, neither the commander nor rytlock lorewise would simply forget the skills of their former classes, but game design wise it's just simpler to let the player have access to only revenant skills. so maybe it is a form of multiclassing. it's a point i hadn't really considered. i didn't think about including the siege bubble, though in all likelihood the siege bubble was a combination of mesmer magic and guardian magic (i was more active here when that discussion was had), worth including so up it goes.

I haven't really seen any sort of discussion about what various npcs can do that players don't have access to that we see throughout the game as the main topic (i've seen it discussed here and there when relevant to a topic but not as a topic in and of itself). figured i'd start the topic. i'm going off of memory though so please add if there's anything that i'm missing. Mesmer Kasmeer is able to light up the dark in season two in that mordrem cave the season 2 episode where you traverse up the cliffs to discover what happened to the zephyrites, kasmeer is able to 'catch' you if you fall off. Probably more game design rather than an actual lore ability but i'm gonna count it here. white mantle mesmers have an illusory 'armor' that needs to be destroyed before the mesmer becomes vulnerable. during season 3, valette is able to teleport both herself and caudecus away from the commander using a portal in a way mesmers in game can't do (for obvious balance reasons) throughout gw2 many mesmers are able to disguise themselves and other individuals using illusion magic kasmeer dispelled the invisible barrier and illusion hiding the tower of nightmares in season 1 mesmers are able to control watchknights (though that may be more of an engineering feat than anything else) implied telekinesis because of greatsword 1 skill animation that one guild bounty skritt looks like a moa, not sure if illusion or transformation. several mesmers have disguised themselves or others using illusions season 3 during the trial to become a member of the shining blade, livia (as kerida) and anise are able to create illusionary terrain, allies and enemies. similarly kasmeer in the prologue of icebrood saga creates a bunch of enemies for the charr cubs to fight. anise in one of the human personal stories likewise is able to summon several phantasms. and one sylvari from the personal story (forgot the name) is able to summon a ton of clones of herself at once. that one event where the nightmare court affect the minds of skritt, implying that mesmers can directly mess with some people's minds. not sure if mind control, the mesmer collective probably keeps that in check 🤐 queen jennah creates and uses a phantasmal weapon in season 3 Valette wi creates a magical area on the stairs that damages and pushes back the commander in the first caudecus fight in season 3 in season 3 queen jennah activates several defenses that seem to be a combination of mesmer magic and guardian magic the signet in jokos keep was most likely created by a mesmer, which allowed him to disguise all the bodies as the commander. in one of the novels, queen jennah tricked the branded into leaving a battle using a clone of kralkatorrik queen jennah creates a maelstrom type effect to suck up the flame vortexes that was created by minister estelle honorary mention to the keep construct that was created by xera. i dont know if that counts as mesmer magic or bloodstone magic however. Necromancer the white mantle necromancer in caudecus' manor in season 4 summons skeletons from the bodies of his allies. similarly one of the norn shaman in the norn personal story was able to summon undead krait. marjory is able to sense the lifeforce of the party in the mordrem cave in season 2 marjory creates a bone bridge in season 2 as well in the human personal story, the priest of grenth was able to create a portal to the underworld to summon a specific spirit palawa joko is able to raise the dead to create the awakened, including awakened sylvari palawa joko also made an illusion of himself in season 4, can't remember which episode but it was a battle by the harbor. the illusion was yellow which makes it seem different than mesmer magic palawa joko was able to control the scarab plague. palawa joko is a lich, as well as others liches existing within guild wars history, implying that necromancers are able to transform themselves permanently into such a state. trahearn summoned six golems at the same time at one point in the personal story. Palwa joko froze braham and the commander in some sort of magical trap in season 4 episode 3. Elementalist flame legion/molten alliance use flame portals. similarly seiran creates a portal if you take to long with the jumping puzzle seiran is able to make herself fly using air magic smoke shamans are able to not only blind players but are also capable of stealthing themselves and their allies crecia creates a flame barrier protecting smodur from ryland in the icebrood saga. there's also several places in core tyria where flame barriers are erected by the flame legion the wizard in garenhoff summons permanent elemental protectors and several of them too. Ranger the toxic alliance are able to use something akin to poison magic. i'm assuming this falls under ranger because we don't really have another nature magic class this is probably more sylvari magic than ranger magic, but sylvari have been able to create buildings and furniture from plantlife rox is able to manipulate the vines in the mordrem cave to open up new passageways Engineer everything the asura created, under the broad category of magitech engineers probably serve as architects, as the holosmith mentor mentions taking care of the water pipes use bombs to blow up doors scarlet created mobile holograms that could attack during season 1. molten alliance tech involving the mixture of flame legion magic and the sonic based dredge technology aetherblades created electronic technology using lightning magic. iron legion technology such as the ghost containment unit taimi has created a lot of technology too, such as the communication devices, that may not fall exactly under the umbrella of asuran magitech the watchknights were a feat of human engineering steam creatures were most likely made by scarlet as well Thief Lockpicking (i know the player does it at one point but demmi does it too and it's generally not an advertised ability) permanent out of combat stealth caithe has some powerful versions of thief abilities when you play as her during season 2, including a specific ability to attack while stealthed without removing stealth Revenant rytlock uses the image of glint to knock that one moredrem off of its mount at the beginning of heart of thorns elite and veteran haunted aetherblades are able to summon mist-lost comrades, and elites can summon multiple at a time. probably means revenants are able to commune not only with spirits that aren't legends, but also summon them too. may be indicated by renegades being able to summon kalla's allies, but the mist-lost comrades seem to have been more personal. not an ability exactly, but mai trin loses control over her echo of scarlet briar and was able to summon not only several echoes of scarlet briar, but a gigantic scarlet briar echo too. vindicators can summon achemorus but it seems that this can be done with any legend. Guardian Able to create barriers that protect from falling debris in season 3 queen jennah activates several defenses during the white mantle attack that seem to be a combination of guardian magic and mesmer magic. minister estelle created flame vortexes during the fight against her before the fight with minister estelle, she immobilizes and disables the abilites of the commander, however queen jennah was able to break this effect almorra created a giant flame wall in the fight against bangar and ryland. during that fight she also has abilities similar to those of a willbender, creating lines of fire on the ground, entering a defiance stance where she launches blue orbs against ryland. Warrior I honestly can't think of anything that warriors do that isn't just fighting, which the player is able to do. Please help me update this, i feel like i'm missing a lot of things.

misread main post, my bad. my mesmer has 404 points so you've tallied the number of leftover points correctly, i can't possibly fathom what you might have missed especially if the heroic notary scrolls don't work.

Fishing isn't very exciting for me, and i dearly hope that i don't need to go fishing to finish the story, but i'll buckle up and do it if necessary, just won't be very happy about it. i do see how they're trying to make fishing more engaging with the minigame but it just doesn't appeal to me at all. at least the people who asked for fishing are getting their wish fulfilled. with that said, i kinda like the skiff. the masteries aren't all that inspired but i did hope we'd get boats eventually, even if the skiff is primarily for fishing purposes. maybe one day we'll get combat boats but for now i like how the technology works, it'll be a fun addition to the mount collection for me, even if i won't get the most out of skiffs. overall, not terribly impressed, they're going to be fun additions for some but not others. we'll see what happens in the future once EoD releases. but honestly, i don't think EoD needs to push the envelope all that much as long as it's a solid expansion with a well told story. while skiffs and fishing aren't all that exciting to many, hopefully the siege turtle and the last two mastery tracks can be.

just so that i can understand, what is it exactly that you want done? Do you want someone to help you with the instance? Do you need help with your buildcraft? Or something else?

they should also really consider removing stat combinations that are subpar for general use, less variety in stat types means less variance in damage numbers, sacrifice freedom to guarantee effectiveness.

A lot of you 'git gud' people need to chill and stop with the hyperbole of what casual players want. No we don't want faceroll content, no we don't want participation rewards for just having characters on the same server as a meta event. Nerfing HoT initially WAS the right move for the game, and it seems like the devs have learned from that mistake. PoF was better balanced for the general player base and I hope they continue with that trend for EoD. Leave hard content for raids, strike missions, challenge mode fractals etc.

I'll admit, I am a bit concerned about how my friends are gonna face this fight, considering that I had trouble with it pre-nerf (though I may have actually faced either a lag issue or a bug that significantly decreased the time the break bar was up, considering video evidence of the fight at the time was not what I experienced). If people are still facing difficulties with it, it may be worth taking another look at its balance. Really the most difficult part of the fight is the fact that the eater of souls regains massive amounts of health if that break bar ability goes off from what i remember. I'll take another look at it and see if it's still difficult. @BnooMaGoo.5690 what kind of build are you using? can you link it so that we understand what your build is like? also have you tried the same battle on other classes?

This. The game made warclaws (fairly) easy to get, with achievements meant to acquaint players with some of the basics of WvW and even changed one of the abilities to allow other players near you to gain the same speedboost without needing the mount (the 10 second limit is weird though). Giving it pve abilities might encourage even more people to play WvW to get the mount. Nothing that would topple the current selection of mounts, but having the ability to break down gates like in drizzlewood coast would be an AWESOME addition that would make it so much more fun for pve players.

Considering that Anet had to let go of 100 members of their team for focusing on things other than GW2, i really don't think the risk involved in this type of production would be worth it.

Welcome to the game and welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy both!

Didn't we fight death branded shatterer in season 4?

I remember speeding through the skyscale collection to make sure I was caught up with everyone doing all the world bosses and such (I'm really glad they reduced the daily reset thing on most achievements). same with the roller beetle, I knew it was gonna get harder to accomplish if I didn't speed through it on the day of release. The griffon caught me by surprise because i heard about the griffon before i even finished PoF's main story, the people who run the monthlies on these collections are absolute saints. And hopefully as more people join the game, these somewhat tedious collections will become easier for people to finish without much hassle. Really though, the worst part of getting the mounts is trying to find groups for all the champions you need to beat. I don't think that's 'grind' per se, but it is something of a gate, especially for people who can't play at any time of day and are restricted because of their work hours etc. (that's why the skyscale food thing is a godsend) All in all, i don't think they're difficult or grindy, but it can be a lengthy process. Oh except for the goldsink for griffon and the 250 mats for the skyscale, THOSE are grinds and not fun.

PoF open-world quality (it's the best they've ever done in this game) new movement-based masteries couple new mounts, maybe one multiplayer mount easy mode for raids and strike missions boats? maybe? playable tengu information on malyck generally speaking though I'm most likely going to buy EoD no matter what happens, I'm super invested in GW2

Thank you all for the tips, thats really been informative, especially @Shikaru.7618, thats quite some detail for the run. I think im gonna stick with my build and try to get better at it, taking all your advice about precasting mantras and stuff. Thank you all again, I really appreciate it.

the skyscale is my go to mount, it's an all terrain mount (except water, that goes to skimmer now), can help you climb pretty much any height, especially with the use of bond of vigor and the wall jumps. Plus, dragons are my favourite, so i am biased towards this mount, but it is the coolest mount they've released so far, my poor springer doesn't get much use these days.