draxynnic.3719

Like I've said, the build shakes off conditions. Big burn spikes can sometimes take it down quickly, but generally I'm not too afraid of condition damage. _Experience!_

> @"babazhook.6805" said:

> When arguing heal power against Toughness healing power can not be looked at in a vacuum. Yes some of the healing coefficients low but enough sources of healing and your return for that investment into that stat grows substantially. Obviously a hit taken to damage out but in a Condition build just as example with high toughness and low vitality SOM+ Assassins reward+ escapists fortitude all working in conjunction, gives you heals on an ongoing basis. This added healing is not tied to use any other skills but your attack wherein you heal as you lay out the damage.

>

> This in fact where investing in heal power shines. It not in the singular withdraw heal. It in the fact you can heal AS you do damage. (This about the only type of build skelk venom really can be made to work). My warrior uses a high toughness low vitality combo while invested in healing so as to ensure the shouts and stun breaks apply fat heals on an ongoing basis. My DB Condi thief uses SOM, assassins reward and escapists along with the heal added off shammans/settlers to keep health topping up on every attack.

>

> I would not invest in healing power UNLESS there multiple sources of incoming heals.

>

>

>

The same factors apply towards Toughness, though. Without heals, Vitality is outright better. It gives you more effective health overall, and that effective health is maintained against condition damage as well.

However, Vitality does nothing to improve the effective value of your heals. Toughness does - taking reduced damage means that each healing packet will last longer. Healing Power, of course, increases your healing directly, but doesn't increase incoming healing from allies.

Which is better depends on the HP coefficients of your skills (one of the flaws in the argument @"Sir Vincent III.1286" makes is that Assassin's Reward is the most sensitive to healing power, and the relative importance of healing power to Withdraw and Escapist's Fortitude is much less, such that 900 healing power gives you lower effective heals off those than 560 Toughness gives) and whether you're expecting to get heals from allies or to dish out your heals to others. With a relatively "selfish" build, Toughness often works out better, since it increases the effective value of not just the heals you apply to yourself, but of any that come from your team. Toughness AND Healing Power combined is even better, but in sPvP that's only available on Celestial.

If you want ultimate survivability with the build, Celestial is probably the way to go in an sPvP environment, but you're probably never going to be able to kill anything. I run Demolisher's as a compromise - my goal isn't to live forever but to have decent durability while also having decent potential to reinforce my team as well (which is why I also run shortbow rather than staff/staff or the like). Which seems to be something else @"Sir Vincent III.1286" seems to be failing to recognise - I'm not saying that Demolisher is a 6-minute survivability build. Just that a) the ultra-survival build is probably something similar, albeit with a tankier amulet, and b) due to how the build relies on multiple heals to top it up, Demolisher works better than Maurauder (something which I have, incidentally, tested in action) despite his claim that having low health obviously makes it squishy. If all you want to do is sit on a point winning or holding indefinitely against 1v1s, there are probably other builds that can do it better.

I think I'm inclined to more or less agree with @"Ototo.3214"

Mordremoth's strategy with the Sylvari was generally a matter of bombarding them with thoughts and ideas and commands so that the sylvari in question found it hard to distinguish between what the dragon wanted and what they wanted. Essentially, it's a kind of brainwashing, or instilling a kind of multiple personality disorder. It's essentially a brute force attack - he's trying to overwhelm the sylvari's original personality and replace it with a Mordrem Guard.

Jormag doesn't seem to have this brute force approach. Instead of, effectively, driving his target insane and then giving them a direction, Jormag seems to be trying to make prospective new followers join him of their own free will, purely through the temptation of what he offers. He doesn't try to drown your thoughts out, he wants you to genuinely think that accepting his power is the best way to get what you want.

> @"Narcemus.1348" said:

> I was going to say something similar, you had overpopulation which allowed the affliction to run rampant turning people into afflicted which then turned around and started slaughtering survivors. After years of waiting, the afflicted were finally wiped out and then the gangs became a target, using the freedom of having the afflicted gone to war with each other. Their war was short, but bloody and many of them were also wiped out in the process. And then there was a bit of a civil war against the Ministry of Purity to kill Reiko. I feel like if all of that didn't bring down the Canthan population then any war waged against the tengu and the Kurzick and Luxons would have. Cantha may look very different today.

Ehhh... apart from the Afflicted, I'm not sure that would have had an appreciable effect on the overall population. The gang wars were between the gangs, and while innocent people were caught up in it, we're probably not talking about a significant percentage. Similarly, from memory, the strike against Reiko was fairly surgical - there probably wasn't a lot of collateral damage in that particular battle.

Plus, given that Kaineng was presented as essentially being a region of overpopulated high-rise slums comparable in size to modern Kryta, it's entirely possible that the population could have been halved and _still_ be dense enough that they're eager for more living space.

Fury is an... interesting choice of moniker. Based on the characterisation we'd seen of Kralkatorrik before, I'd probably categorise that as "the fury of the storm", covering air magic, possibly chaos magic, and maybe some forms of magic that instill fury in others.

Aurene becoming the "Elder Dragon of Light" rather than simply co-opting Kralkatorrik's domains is unexpected, but perhaps this GW2's equivalent of Secrets versus Truth: it might essentially be the same domain, but Aurene embodies a more serene and benign form of the domain. Where Kralkatorrik embodied a storm's fury and the sharp edges of shattered crystal, Aurene instead focuses on the gentle refraction of light inside a crystal and the nourishing glow of a clear sky. Same underlying power, but taken in an entirely different direction.

Nevertheless, one thing I do find interesting is that "Light" encompasses a field of mortal magic that until now has seemed to be unrepresented among the dragons. Necromancy is obviously similar to Zhaitan's power, while various mesmeric and elemental magics seems to be spread among the dragons, Preservation seemed to be pretty much unrepresented outside of Glint's Facet of Light. Aurene's new moniker, therefore, could imply that this is a branch of magic that falls within her domain... and might always have been in Kralkatorrik's, but his insanity prevented it from manifesting.

From experience playing holo (albeit a couple of seasons ago)

What generally made me feel like I was getting countered was basically anything that could put out sustained heavy ranged damage while keeping out of reach. While holosmith does have some projectile hate, the duration is relatively short: holoforge itself doesn't offer any, and most holosmiths are likely to be running rifle, which doesn't offer much defence against ranged attacks. If they're running rifle, just focus on avoidance (or flanking shots) while the photon wall is up and unless once it's down again. If they're running sword/shield they'll have a bit more defence, but they won't be able to apply ranged counterpressure in return.

Also, if you really want to punish them, you can try forcing them into an overheat.

It has been observed a few times that Jormag has been the only Elder Dragon who seems to be willing to accept and empower followers who still retain their free will.

There is an outside possibility that the events around Jormag's rise were largely a misunderstanding. Keep in mind that the norn are one of the most belligerent of the races, possibly even more so on an individual basis than the charr in GW1's time: most norn back then wouldn't even talk until you beat them in combat. Jormag might well have beat the norn back primarily in what he considered to be self-defence, and then he accepted the Sons of Svanir because they seemed to be the only norn who'd accept _him_ - thereby linking him in the minds of other norn to an organisation of misogynists with a tendency to cause trouble for other norn.

I don't think that's _likely,_ but it is _possible._

A possibly more likely scenario is that events since the start of GW2 have shown Jormag that what he might previously have regarded as inconsequential is now proving to be more powerful than the Elder Dragons, at least taken individually. We've seen three Elder Dragons killed, two _nearly_ killed, and one raised up... all primarily through the actions of mortals (Balthazar played a part in some of that, but it was mortals that made the Machine, and it was mortals that ultimately took down Kralkatorrik). With Aurene as an example that Elder Dragons and mortals could work together, it's _possible_ that Jormag sees value in an alliance, or at least a truce.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> Last we saw it. But it's been ~100 years since contact with Cantha. They could have crumbled in that time, though implications from Festival of the Four Winds 2014 dialogue implies that, as of 1327 AE, Cantha is still prosperous. Whether they're stronger than Kryta remains unclear, but they'd be bigger if they retained Kurzick and Luxon territories.

I could see it as being a case of Kurzick and Luxon culture not being _formally_ suppressed (apart from the faction wars part), but with how overpopulated Kaineng was, I could see the Echovald and Jade Sea being flooded with Canthan such that the Kurzicks and Luxons are made minorities in their own homelands. If NCSoft and ArenaNet is still caring about the Chinese reaction they might avoid this since it hits pretty close to home as to what China is doing in the western territories under its control, but you don't need that specific historical analogy to see that being a logical end result.

Not salty so much as annoyed when someone tries to levy theorycraft against experience. I've tried running Marauder's instead of Demolisher's - the long-term sustain drops, while the increased resistance against spikes is negligible. The main weakness in my experience is getting stunlocked and power spiked, and at best Marauder gives you another second for a stunbreak to come up.

When it comes to the healing power vs toughness argument... I was curious, so I looked at the numbers:

An increase in Toughness of 560 gives you an effective increase in health of 25%. This doesn't apply to conditions, and when added to the smaller starting health pool of the thief it's less than the 5600 you'd get from Vitality, but this also means that the effective increase in any healing you receive is increased by 25% against power damage.

Conversely, the healing power coefficient of Withdraw and Escapist's Fortitude is pretty low - 560 HP only gets you about 10% increase in healing received. Assassin's Reward is more sensitive to healing power, getting you about a 50% boost over the low base value, but if we're assuming that Assassin's Reward is less than half of the total, which seems reasonable (Initiative naturally replenishes at one per second, and if you include other sources of Initiative, you can probably double that at most, putting the return from Assassin's Reward at around 200-300 per second sustained) you actually get _more_ value from your healing by investing into toughness than healing power (since the build is already fairly strong against conditions and isn't concerned about healing others).

Not necessarily. There are already a few warrior offhands that can work with a mainhand pistol, especially if it has skills that make it suitable for a more 'skirmishing' playstyle rather than just sitting at maximum range. I'd be inclined to think that the archetype of such an elite specialisation should be using pistol/warhorn rather than pistol/pistol.

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> It's weird that after 7 years, Anet still hasn't figured out that no changes they can make to classes will fix what is wrong with WvW; someone is always the best, someone is always the worst .. everyone else is somewhere in between. If they are trying to make classes more balanced to each other to appeal to players that lobby them, it will be disastrous and a failure. It's a fools errand.

And some are always going to be more suited for large-scale combat, while others are going to be more suited for small-scale.

"Balance" in WvW is always about who has the better numbers anyway, both in terms of player numbers and in those players having access to ascended gear with the right stats.

We can't really say. It's likely that people with Kurzick and Luxon ancestry still exist, but whether they retain their cultural distinctiveness, or even if they've managed to regain their semi-independent status since the last time we saw Cantha, is impossible to say.

> @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > > @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> > > I do. It would work well for thief if anyone has played bard in dnd.

> > >

> > > Especially with thiefs initiative system. The steal ability can be replaced with perform, thats based on your attack combo. Similar to hunting horn in monster hunter. Trade off stealth, to gain a strong bonus for the same duration, but keep sneak attacks. Itd make a high skill support. But knowing Anet, not a very powerful one.

> > >

> > > And this would really only work well if anet fixes thiefs initiative problem

> >

> > Depends on the version of D&D you're looking at.

> >

> > 2nd edition D&D could do some of the out-of-combat thief stuff like picking locks, but in combat it behaved more like a fighter-mage than a thief: putting it more in mesmer's camp.

> >

> > 3rd edition D&D pushed them more into a buffing fighter-mage role. They have some hiding ability but, well, so does mesmer.

> >

> > 4th edition explicitly make bard arcane support ("leader" in 4E nomenclature, but it means support), while rogue was a martial DPS class.

> >

> > 5th edition I'm less familiar with, but on a casual observation, it seems to fit the trend. Bards and rogues have similar proficiencies, and from what I can see, rogues and bards still seem to behave very differently in combat. An Arcane Trickster rogue dabbles in illusion and enchantment, but that would be represented more by a thief moving more into mesmer territory than bard.

> >

> > Furthermore, as referenced previously, the precedent in Guild Wars is for performers to be mesmers (when they're given a profession at all). The bard archetype - moderate fighting ability, spell loadout mostly focused on illusion, enchantment, and support effects, and a bit of sneakiness - would be far more suited to a support mesmer than to anything thief.

>

> Depends on your play style. Bard is incredibly versatile.

>

>

> Also let a man dream. Mesmers get to stomp all over our territory! Why not give us this one!

>

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Portal

Seriously, though, broadly speaking I'd be happy to see an elite spec that branches thief more into mesmer - I just don't think a bard-esque theme is the way to do it.

> @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > > @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> > > > @"RedShark.9548" said:

> > > > Give me scepter, let me throw it like a spear, put a horn or shield in my offhand, give me an eliteshout, give me some new exciting burst mechanic, give me more shouts to choose from (preferably some that enhance dmg or directly impact my enemies, a boon that only i can provide and call me paragon.

> > >

> > > Spell Breakers lore wise are Paragons with Daggers as their Spears broke. So dont want double of that.

> >

> > They're really not. The Order of Sunspears had a lot of Paragons and was one of the main centers of Paragon training, but Paragons weren't all or even most of the order. Joko banning spears was a symbolic gesture that wouldn't actually have directly affected most of the Sunspears, and Spellbreakers using daggers styled like Sunspear spearpoints is equally symbolic. Nothing in the Spellbreaker skills or traits points to Paragon.

> >

> > Justiciar, on the other hand, was a title of rank among the White Mantle, usually held by Warriors (Justiciar Agatha in Lake Doric being one exception). There's nothing to indicate that they're support-oriented in this fashion, and I don't think the Pact Commander would want to be associated with that legacy.

>

> ^ This. We can get Paragon. Warrior has shouts that could use augmenting through bringing back echos, arias, and finales from GW1. Think something like when you use a shot an echo affects the recipients where after a few seconds another effect happens, like buffs or healing. Finales would shout like effects that cause the next attack by the recipients do XYZ effects like inflicting burning. Aria's would be a new utility that count as a shout but would have a longer cast time with effects throughout the channel time. Weapon would have to be a staff that gets thrown like a javelin.

>

> A Defense Tactics Paragon would be IMBA... mmmmm IMBAGon…

Could be interesting if, instead of a straight Paragon, it was something that combined the Elonian paragon with something else.

For instance, we're now moving into the Blood Legion homelands. Could be interesting if, with some of the interaction between the Pact and the Sunspears, there are charr who return to charr territory with leadership and motivational techniques learned from Sunspear Paragons, which is applied with a more modern charr flavour into the training for Legionnaires and other officers. The concept of a one-handed ranged weapon, allowing the wielder to support from a distance while still using a warhorn or shield in the other hand, could then be fulfilled by a pistol.

Frankly, to me it feels like what's happened is that booking the hall was something they had to do months in advance, and they'd intended to announce one of more of the cancelled projects there. When the project(s) got cancelled, though, they had to make lemonade with what they did have.

> @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> I expected them to do the code multiple times in the stream, but nope, they only did it once and it was during the preshow when I wasn't fully paying attention so I missed my chance. All the other giveaways were not in-game things.

There was a second during the announcement itself, but yeah, I'm pretty sure only 10 codes were given out.

Lesson learned - don't try to see ArenaNet events live for the chance to win something. The chance of doing so is N0BSI, and honestly, the outfit probably wasn't worth staying up late for anyway.

Again, you're trying to beat my experience with theorycraft.

There IS no amulet currently available in sPvP that has both Toughness and Healing Power except Celestial, and that's just not going to hit hard enough to do anything _but_ pure survival.

The build works because it's not just relying on Toughness. It's relying on rarely getting hit in the first place, and Toughness (along with Weakness spam) reduces the damage of the hits you DO take so that the healing you get can keep pace, even at base healing. Going Vitality instead provides protection against spikes, but reduces the value of your healing over time since the gain in "effective health" of each heal is less.

I fully agree that being able to combine Toughness and Healing Power would synergise well - but the decision of the ArenaNet balance team is clearly that it synergises _too_ well to be available outside of Celestial, and Celestial sacrifices a lot of your damage stats. The way I usually play the build, Demolisher is really the lowest damage I can afford to have and still be able to achieve anything _other_ than not dying.

Clearly, though, this argument is going around in circles. You're obviously sticking your heels in, and I can tell you that you're not going to persuade me that the build doesn't work when my own experience is that, within the limitations of my latency and skill level, it _does._ So I think this discussion is well past the point where it could be considered productive to continue.

> @"Aisling.5901" said:

> > @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> > * Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.

> >

>

> **As one of the apparent few Scrapper mains left in PvP this change is so ignorant it legitimately angers me. Because this isn't a WvW specific change it's a general change. You're exclusively making this class less interesting while simultaneously contradicting its own design all to give it an asinine reveal it used to have.**

>

> As a bunker and support class Chemical Field actually allows Scrappers to help reduce enemy healing and hinder enemy downs which benefits the entire team indirectly which is the point of support. It also is a combo field which is the mechanic Scrapper is supposed to be built around is using combo fields. The developers are saying they want to take away one of the few synergies the Scrapper's gimmick actually has with combo fields, also taking away their team support via lessening enemy heals; and replace it with an extremely situational reveal that has no combo field synergy and used to be something the Scrapper had anyways before they arbitrarily took it away and replaced it with the currently near useless gutted version of the Function Gyro which barely functions in actual practice if you bothered testing it even at all.

>

> Also detection pulse is basically worthless in PVE where at least poison and weakness combo fields were actually useful for something.

Thinking on this...

What if the Detection Pulse was on function gyro instead of replacing one of the other skills?

It was something that concerned me that it was replacing a poison field that was useful in all game modes with a detect that's probably only useful against other players. Detection Pulse was historically a scrapper F5 - putting it on the new scrapper F5 would be a more elegant means of reinstating it without removing an existing option.

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> > **Revenant**

> >

> > * Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.

>

> I think this is a fine change for WvW, but even with the higher damage numbers in PvP and PvE it will certainly have a negative effect on the weapon in those modes. Which btw its presence in those modes is pretty much non-existent entirely; it has VERY low dps in PvE and also, with the huge amount of Might nerfs in PvP for Revenant, does low damage as well. I want to play Hammer Revenant more as I’ve loved it since HoT Beta, but with all the changes Rev has received over the past several years (nerfs) this weapon keeps being left behind entirely and just vastly underperforming outside of WvW zergs. With these changes I will probably not play Hammer Rev again, unless in a Zerg scenario, which is too bad because I did play it in PVP since HoT release. Please take this into consideration and help balance this weapon better in other modes as well.

>

It might actually be a buff in sPvP, and maybe even PvE as well. The odds of getting a maximum-range hit in the often fairly cramped sPvP maps is pretty darn low, so increasing the close-range damage of CoR would probably be a buff in sPvP.

Not that rev hammer gets used in sPvP more than once in a blue moon anyway, but if anything this change might actually help it.

With regard to the questions asked:

My biggest concern is that removing all of the aegis from Tome of Courage pretty much kills all synergy between the Firebrand and aegis traits (which core guardian has a lot of). This is where a bit of information regarding the motivation for the changes would come in handy - if this is the intended result, than I'd mourn the loss of build potential and work with what's left. If it's not intended, though, it might result in an unintended over-nerf, and it might be better to come up with an alternate method of paring it down.

Looks like there's not much point watching the stream hoping for a code - the chat's moving so fast you'd have to be lucky to even SEE the giveaway announcement.

My experience says otherwise.

With zero healing power, Escapist's Fortitude heals for over 400 with a 1s ICD, which is a respectable amount. Assassin's Reward is ~400-500 per skill for as long as you keep initiative up, and the build has a decent initiative engine Traited Withdraw is close to 5000 on a cooldown of less than fifteen seconds, giving you a total of around 700 health/second plus whatever you get out of Assassin's Reward. This is actually pretty good when the enemy is having trouble hitting you at all and they're dealing reduced damage because you have Toughness.

Vitality is better for defending against being spiked down (and being spiked in a vulnerable frame IS a weakness of the build), but it isn't as good for sustaining long-term in fights where you do manage to avoid those spikes. Even without healing power, the damage reduction from Toughness increases the effective value of your heals (and your condition removal will deal with most condition pressure). if you went for Vitality instead, you'd be more resistant to spikes, but you'd be more prone to being worn down over time as your heals count for less.

Obviously, if you ran Paladin or something that combines toughness and healing power (which means Celestial, since everything else that combined those two stats got removed for being too tanky - funny that!) you'd probably be even tougher, but you'd also hit like a wet noodle. Even in something like Marauder or Demolisher, a weakness of the build is that it pays for its sustain through not having a lot of kill potential, so going to a more defence-oriented amulet starts entering wet noodle territory.

> @"narcx.3570" said:

> > @"DonArkanio.6419" said:

> > > @"narcx.3570" said:

> > > > @"DonArkanio.6419" said:

> > > > As for Jalis? Yeah, it might be okay, but that doesn't change the fact it could be so much more.

> > >

> > > It would probably be a lot better if this game had any consistent areas where defensive stats/builds weren't just a waste of time. In the few instances where incoming damage is huge, Jalis is actually a meta choice: see organized WvW/GvG play and certain fractal situations (like Urban Battleground with Outflanked+Boon Overload instabilities) to name a few.

> >

> > I totally agree. Sad thing is, these environments you mentioned are mostly player-built.

> >

> > There is nearly no situation in which you would want to be tanky.

> >

> > It would be cool if we had some bosses that depended on surviving the fight rather than killing the guy. Same with PvP, defense is just unrewarding.

> >

> > That's why Barrier is so cancer, because it actually goes along DPS.

>

> I think the problem with having a boss fight that revolved around the need for damage reduction/healing in this game is that there's not really any finite resources to check it. Healers can just spam heals forever, which would make a fight like that pointless beyond "Hey, just bring two or three healers instead of six dps!" It's not like in other MMO's, where running out of mana or energy or whatever is a real problem for healers if the fight goes on too long or the raid's taking too much extra damage. Most full support specs can just pump out max heals 24/7, all fight long.

>

> I guess it'd be cool on some level to have a fight that your group's healer could flex on... But it would quickly end up being a yawn fest like the run-ahead-river-of-souls-healer-stack... Or even better, the community would probably just devolve it into a scourge-stack fight, since like you said, barrier is so op in those situations.

Honestly... Not having enrages and DPS checks in the high-end content would probably do it.

It would then be practical to do things like raids in something other than glass cannon (or glass medic) gear. It'd take longer, to be sure, but you'd have more margin for error when it came to effects that weren't instant kills. People could then practice in tankier builds, and the reward for getting better at the mechanics and being able to do them with glassier builds would be "you do the content faster" not "you need to do this to complete the content at all".

There _are_ situations in which tankier builds help, but they're usually cases of trying to solo something, and usually it's either an instance (where you can just resume from checkpoint after dying) or in open world where it's usually more efficient to get a friend or two than to have special gear for slowly soloing something.

> @"Aeolus.3615" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > > @"Aeolus.3615" said:

> > > > @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> > > > Scepter and Focus is where it is at.

> > >

> > > If it’s a core weapon it’s a offhand cause we only have 2 on core.

> > >

> > > That’s why I think next trait should be a core one.

> >

> > There's also only two mainhand weapons - sword and mace.

>

> Yah but I find more urgent a core offhand, because if we end on having just 2 offhands we won’t have much choice on offhands when getting elite main hand weapons.

>

> But if it’s a elite GS close range gameplay would be nice, we only have sword at melee, with bushido mantras :)

>

> We could have 2 more legends from factions, Vizu(nika mother) for dual daggers and some avicara has legend for Gs.

One could easily reverse the logic when it comes to elite specs with offhand weapons.

Herald shield, for instance, has nothing on it that really says it should be used in melee, except possibly that Envoy of Exuberance has a faster effect if it doesn't have to fly out and back as far. If there was a ranged mainhand weapon, a healing-oriented herald could run RangedMainhand/Shield and Staff, giving them a ranged option without sacrificing support potential (apart from the support you can get from blasting firefields on mace, I guess).

Personally, given a choice between more mainhand weapons and more offhand weapons, I'd prefer the former. Mainhand weapons offer a more significant change of your capabilities and playstyle, and I'd rather not see another case like chronomancer having five potential offhands and only two mainhands to go with them.

Either way, ArenaNet has shown a willingness to create an elite spec with both a mainhand and an offhand (spellbreaker), so if any future elite specialisation really does have a weapon that doesn't work well with the existing pairups, it can get two (even if they have to be dualwielding the same weapon to do that). I'm more concerned about fixing the problems revenant already has than imagining problems for future elite specs.

I was actually thinking in terms of Claw and Voice of Koda... one does the fighting, the other (supposedly) acts as the mouthpiece.

The Commander is an interesting case. As you say, there's been no outward physical changes. However, the Commander has clearly been enhanced in a few ways by Aurene: Bond of Faith is probably the clearest indication, since it's a similar "spectral crystalline wings" graphic to when we were carrying the egg back in Heart of Thorns. There's also clearly a mental link - for instance, we can hear Aurene's voice in Episode 5 while the NPCs only heard Caithe's voice relaying the message (similar to how only sylvari heard Mordremoth in Heart of Thorns).

So I think it's quite likely that Aurene has formed a bond with the Commander which is _similar_ to the bond that the other Elder Dragons have with their minions. The distinction is that Aurene's connection to her "minions" is a much lighter touch: she doesn't forcefully rewrite anyone's loyalties to her, but only forges links with those who are willing and doesn't use the link to force anything on the recipient. Like Caithe said: Not corruption, connection.

There are plenty of 'lesser organizations' that are usually friendly, they just have a lower profile because we're usually not fighting them.