Perihen the Thawk.9527

I've been having a lot of fun with EoD and SotO, and I realized today that I haven't played Drizzlewood in a long time. It used to be my absolute favorite map. I loved the WvW-lite aspect of the meta, just a really great vibe overall. So I was kind of excited to dive back in and finish farming a few things. Well... I mean, Drizzlewood isn't the only map this has happened too, but its kind of sad. The Siege Turtle has just absolutely neutered the whole experience of this map for me. Gates just fall instantly because there are always 5 players to turtle them down. There is absolutely zero reason to engage with most of the core map mechanics anymore. Siege is useless, you don't even have time to deploy it. Power creep in DPS makes fights that used to feel cinematic feel like awkward checklists, events are over before you even have a change to get into the feel of it. Maybe I'm alone in this because I know everybody just wants these things to go faster so they can farm them, but I really miss the epic sprawl a lot of these old metas had. Drizzlewood isn't the only victim. So many metas just completely lack the immersion and sense of scale that they used to have because everything just dies so quick, people can fly everywhere, CC bars melt, boons keep everyone alive no matter where they stand, etc, etc. It makes everything but the newest maps feel hollow. I know it's hard to keep introducing new features without power creep, and I do like the overall vision of masteries being global. But I still really wish Anet would do something about it. I know we had a DPS nerf pass once, maybe it's time for another one? An event like the final battle in Dragon's Stand that was designed around gliders could easily be a no-mount zone. Turtles could have a breakbar damage split between pre/post-Eod maps? I don't know what the answer is, but I just feel kind of depressed playing through some of these older maps, it just feels like no one cares and is glad to just blow through them now.

"Gyala had random Orr landscapes/plants pasted in when it made no sense in that environment." We were at the bottom of the ocean....

The leviathan should be tweaked. Currently killing the uvula breaks the thick skin buff temporarily, but it's *very* temporary compared to breaking it with skiffs for some reason. Killing the uvula is much harder so it really should be the other way around. Then killing the uvula would become viable as a way for low population maps to kill the Leviathan when there aren't enough skiffs around, and it would make it a little less braindead for the big zergs if the debuff from the skiffs was shorter and had to be rebroken at least once during the fight. Like, I was just on a map where only three of us were fighting the Leviathan and only two of us had skiffs, so it seemed like a good time to test out how the uvula mechanics work exactly. I killed it and got the debuff for like 5 seconds. It just needs to be longer like when you get the stacks down to zero with the skiffs, because it's a much less trivial thing to do.

If expansions are going to be the new LW seasons, I have one suggestion regarding dailies: The expansion dailies should cycle through maps like LW dailies do, instead of being spread out like they are now. In the long run we'll have population issues and it really is a lot better experience when one map gets the attention for the day. Currently the EoD dailies are really lackluster "kill 25 X in Y map" and eventually it would be better if they are like the Icebrood dailies "Do X meta" or "Do Y mini-dungeon" and other interesting things. This would honestly help a lot with the Path of Fire maps too, I think. Also the EoD dailies aren't really rewarding enough to justify galavanting around the world for. If they're going to be that modest then they really would work better as just a bonus for contributing to the population of a certain map for the day, like the LW dailies.

Anyone else have an issue where Aurene doesn't show up in the Eye of the North? I didn't have any problems with my first playthrough of the Icebrood Saga, but now I'm trying to replay Champions and she just will not show up. All her voice lines are fine, she's just not visibly there. I've relogged, I've restarted the story chapter, I've switched DX11 on and off, I've changed graphics settings, I've left the map... It's really, really, frustrating because I'm trying to show someone parts of the story they missed and it's just pretty dumb when Aurene is completely invisible no matter what I do. If anyone has run into this and found a fix, please let me know. I've submitted a bug report but I doubt it's a very high priority for them if it only happens on replays, so I'm not optimistic and I'm really hoping I find some kind of janky solution. https://i.postimg.cc/brpQQHzL/gw002.jpg

Feedback from a casual open-world player: I find that survivability is actually really great with the new virtues and the insane mobility. I can stay in fights with large numbers if mobs basically indefinitely without even healing once I hit the shadowstep tempo. Problem is that I'm only in those fights for so long because it takes soooo long to kill anything. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but mobs are respawning before I've finished the group. Feels good to play, survivability through mobility is great, flow feels very *fun* to play, but I feel like I'm hitting mobs with a wet noodle, which is very disappointing given the theme of the class.

Urn of Saint Viktor--Become the Urn of Saint Viktor... Drop Urn of Saint Viktor--Slam your urn into the ground... Uh... slam myself into the ground? Because I'm... carrying myself? So now I will drop myself. Got it.

I'm not an elementalist main and I'm a more casual player, but here are my impressions: -Jade Sphere doesn't last long enough. The benefits it provides are neat, but not so overwhelming that it needs to disappear so fast. Energy takes a long time to charge up and then the well disappears in seconds. I hardly get a chance to really utilize it during hectic combat before it's gone. The spec would feel so much better if the Jade Sphere were a more permanent presence. Let us really bunker by setting up the well immediately and hanging out in it for the whole battle. We already get punished for being outside the well, so it seems really lame to also make the well hard to maintain. At this point the benefits are mild enough that it feels like you should just get rid of the energy buildup and make the Jade Sphere permanent once cast, and allow it to be moved on a cooldown. This would make the spec FEEL so much better and right now I don't even think it would be OP. It feels like you want us to anchor down and sacrifice mobility in exchange for power, so... just let us do that, I guess? I would love the dynamic of having to fleetingly leave the well with a leapback occasionally to avoid attacks, firing off a few projectiles into the well, then crashing back in with a leap/blast finisher. Enemies should be AFRAID to step into your well, or even be close enough to catch your projectiles coming out of it. Diving in and out of the well to constantly combo and deny the well area to enemies *seems* like what you're going for, but the well is so hard to maintain that this playstyle just never emerges. -It feels like we're supposed to take advantage of the jade sphere and pump out combo finishers, but the hammer surprisingly only has one blast skill per attunement on a long cooldown. Give us combos to use with our well! Hammer projectiles, hammer blasts, hammer leaps. If the entire spec is going to be oriented around a well, let us USE it! These are the main things. A couple of little things: -The hammer 3 skills don't last long enough to really set up more than one element during a battle, especially for us casual players that aren't blazing quick with rotations and are trying to use other skills in between to stay alive. Which feels disppointing, since it's just screaming for an Avatar-style combo. -I think the utilities are okay, except that the well is never around enough to take advantage of them. Maybe a little boring, but not a huge problem if the well became more permanent.

Yeah, that's why every country on Earth is still a monarchy under the original bloodline of rulers. Oh wait. Things change, she just led the Legion through a civil war, this isn't that weird. Some Charr are surely grumbling about it, others aren't. The traditionalists were disproportionately already marching under Bangar anyway, so they're going to get less of a say now.

Maybe the "future features" bit is going to release in between Chapters 1 and 2? They said the Chapters will become more fleshed out with new stuff in-between main releases.

Honestly ever since they teased that they're working on SAB World 3 I kind of assumed that the "festival team" or however it works would probably be focused on that, so I'm not surprised the other festivals haven't seen many updates this year.

I think cold resistance, slow and tanky are good but not enough to make the mount fun.If it could also be a multiperson mount... Maybe we could have one person controlling the dolyak, and then several other players can pile on, but they get some ranged attacks they can use (it would be fantastic if the players' own ranged skills still worked). And maybe we get a map meta through a bitter cold area where everyone needs to get on a dolyak to cross the frozen mountains, fighting off hordes of enemies while mounted, with some players navigating the dolyak through the rugged pass and the rest trying to dps/cc the mobs while mounted, trying to protect the dolyak. So for like fifty players there are like one to two dozen dolyaks trying to make it through the pass. It would be a pretty map-specific mount, but we have plenty of map-specific masteries and this at least sounds like a fun take on that to me.

If my math is correct getting a +60 swim speed infusion that will reach the same speed as the skimmer under water will cost you about 369,858,196,402,188 gold. — that_shaman (@that_shaman) August 26, 2020

They could flap their wings so fast it creates an air pocket around their whole body.

They said 2021 in the stream but no specific season. I would guess late 2021 since it seems we're about halfway through the Icebrood Saga, which started almost a year ago.

I would love this. Especially now that we have those trees as decorations, they just don't really fit with any of the current guild halls. I'm worried they'll move on to Cantha and we'll never get any Northern themed hall.

That was changed back in a patch shortly after release. For a brief period there were like 0-2 chests in each cache.

With Dry Top, The Silverwastes, Dragon's Stand, Dragonfall and Drizzlewood Coast, we already have five map-wide metas stretching over hours. I don't feel like any of those take 2+ hours like Drizzlewood Coast. Dry Top for sure only takes one, it's on a timer. And I just did Dragonfall the other day in about an hour, I think. Been awhile since I did The Silverwastes or Dragon's Stand, though, but I feel like they are both under two hours easy. I didn't mean there are no other long map metas, but Drizzlewood is, I think, uniquely long. My point was just that I doubt that's about to become the new normal anytime soon, so I don't mind one particularly long meta.

It's long, but it's just one map so I think it's totally fine to have one super long meta like this. Personally I love it, very epic feeling. I'm not the kind of person that farms any meta for extended periods, so I doubt I'll get too tired of it.

Guardian mains: "What are we talking about?" block "What snipers?"

Still nothing, definitely more than a week now. Has there been any word? Is it biweekly, since the next release isn't a LW episode?

Honestly, I love it, it feels the right length to me. It's been quite a while since we had a continuous push Dragon Stand style map. Most maps don't need much time commitment, so it's fine if a handful of them do. It's important for Anet to have variety in the maps. The super long push feels pretty epic and I'll crave it every once in awhile. I think people are just getting burnt out quick now because they feel sort of obligated to farm the new release, and it's not really a "farm over and over again" map. And just like any map meta, there's no particular reason you can't join in partway through, or drop out after getting the rewards for the first half.

I like the idea of the fight, but from what I've seen the zergs just stay right on the foot and then they don't even have to worry about the ice blast/rock mechanics. Anet seems to have this problem a lot where they design the encounter around some neat mechanics, but the players find a rather obvious spot to huddle and avoid them, and then the players all complain that the fight is boring.

Honestly I think Smodur's character makes perfect sense. He's a "visionary" as far as Charr go, but he's still one of the older Imperators, and has that more old-school way of actually operating in war. He may be level-headed when it comes to diplomacy, but when the shit hits the fan, he is the imperator of the "big-guns-go-boom" legion. I like the way they handled Smodur, both in this episode and the last. I am slightly disappointed in the direction Ryland has taken. It seems like he should be smarter than this. He's just been transformed into a cartoon-villain dragon minion. Bangar I could get, because Bangar is smart in some ways but dumb in others, and he would absolutely let his ego ruin him in pursuit of being Khan-Ur and, in his mind, "saving" the Charr and securing their future. But I don't... really see what Ryland gets out of this? He's never had much of an ideology, so becoming Jomag's champion doesn't seem to serve a higher purpose for him as far as I can tell.

Sadly they abandoned the branching paths of classic guild wars 2 I've got to say though, of all the fake-outs they've done on branching choices, that was the most effective one yet. They used it well.