draxynnic.3719

> @"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:

> (which thinking about it... I remember that one Norn Necromancer who kidnapped children to kill them and used their energy to stay young)

I think you're thinking of Vilnia Shadowsong, who's actually a mesmer (which also fits with Raven, who is associated with trickery as well as death, although I think mesmers also fit as Snow Leopard shamans as well). I was thinking of Avarr the Fallen from Eye of the North, along with Gullik's reaction to Killeen animating a woman's body in Ghosts of Ascalon.

Norn are probably the race who's general attitudes to necromancy (or magic in general) we know the least about, but they do seem to view animating the bodies of people in a negative light.

But we have been explicitly told that asura and sylvari have no prejudices against necromancy, and we have reason to believe that charr are at least _less_ prejudiced against necromancy than against some other magic types.

> @"Jack Skywalker.5674" said:

> Sylvari necromancer, ranger or thief.

I wouldn't ignore warrior as an option - there are a fair few Mordrem Guard that behave like warriors. Restorers drop standards (and wield sword and shield), Punishers are basically empowered hammer warriors, Blockers may be best considered to be shield Warriors, and even Sharpshooters might be rifle Warriors, although a Deadeye with limited stealth capabilities might be a better representation for them.

> @ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:

> > @"Jack Skywalker.5674" said:

> > True,but elite specializations can help further specialize in certain roles. While you could play a healer,with just core Ranger trait, Druid elite spec helped expand the tools available to Ranger healer by 150%. Same for Necromancer healer types.

>

> ...and the problem with that is Druid is better than Ranger in EVERY single way. While its "meant" to be a support/heal spec. It still has everything needed to be an insanely good damage or condi spec while ALSO having that insane healing as well. This whole no trinity idea backfired MASSIVELY and i am betting that when Guild Wars 3 comes along. There WILL be a trinity.

But not necessarily tank/heal/DPS. Guild Wars 1 essentially already had the control/support/DPS trinity that they talked about in the development of GW2, although with the low levels of self-healing, you always needed SOME healing in the mix to cover what gets through the damage prevention and reduction. GW2's problem is that it essentially made the trinity TOO soft, making DPS king unless mechanics are put in that force non-DPS skills to be required.

I think at this point the scraps of XP could probably stand to be made available to be used by level 80 characters again as a source of Tyrian mastery XP. Tyrian masteries have been in the game for years now, so it's not like someone hoarding up on them to quickly unlock Tyrian masteries is a major issue at this stage.

At the moment, though, even if all you care about is getting three for your daily, there is a distinct difference between the level of effort required for most PvE dailies compared to most sPvP and WvW dailies. You can usually get 2 sPvP dailies just from playing a match, three if you actually win, and depending on the states of the maps, there's usually a couple in WvW that you can get within a similar timeframe. PvE dailies, on the other hand, tend to take quite a bit more time to complete, apart from the foraging/mining/logging dailies.

> @Tyson.5160 said:

> Konig, we have had discussions before on the Dragons and their powers, what are your thoughts on the new Branded Thralls which are rose coloured Risen human Thralls. It seemed that from the Small Victory cinematic, Kralkatorrik flew over the corpse of a devourer that it became a regular branded devourer with a bit of green smoke, yet we have these rose coloured Branded Thralls, shouldn’t they be regular branded humans?

A possible distinction is that the dead devourer was Branded directly, while the thralls were created by lieutenants. So it's possible that Kralkatorrik has used his absorption of death magic to grant his champions the power to raise Risen - possibly because being able to raise Risen on the spot is more efficient than Branding, which in the absence of Kralkatorrik or a large concentration of Kralkatorrik's energy seems to require that the victim be sealed within a crystal for an extended period of time, while basic Risen seem to be able to be animated fairly quickly and easily.

Branded humans and charr do seem to be noticeably more powerful than Thralls (game mechanics such as level scaling aside), so it's entirely possible that regular Branding is the _preferred_ means of claiming a minion, while raising Thralls is simply something that is kept in reserve for when a lieutenant needs reinforcements _now_.

Play holosmith? :p

It is an interesting omission, though. I'd guess that when they introduced F5 skills, they decided they didn't really think it was worth creating 16 new toolbelt skills for skills that were fairly rarely taken anyway.

The general guideline is probably 'as much plant magic as you can'. Sylvari ranger is probably closest: using a longbow makes you close to a Mordrem Sniper, while going druid can approximate healing Mordrem Guard types like Preservers, and you get access to even more plant-related skills than from sylvari racial skills alone - particularly if you take the plant animal companions from Path of Fire.

Broadly speaking, most Mordrem Guard seem to be closest to ranger or warrior, with Stalkers being obviously thieves. Conventional magic use seems to be fairly rare among the Mordrem, although Tormentors do appear to be Necromancers.

I don't think there's much chance of echoes returning in the current game. ArenaNet has been fairly sparing with long-term non-boon buffs, and the crib-notes description of an echo is basically a long-term unremovable buff that interacts in some manner with shouts. Chants are probably a lot more likely, since there are a lot of precedents for a short-term buff that grants an effect the next time the recipient lands an attack and then disappears.

Would be interesting if chants are made to behave as shouts for the purpose of interaction with runes and traits...

There's a certain irony here, actually, in that humans of Tyria are probably actually the race that is _most_ prejudiced against necromancers. Partly because necromancy just wigs people out, and partly because the human realms have been threatened so often by necromancy-related threats (the Lich Lord in Prophecies, Palawa Joko, Zhaitan, and on a smaller scale, the odd rogue necromancer who kidnaps civilians for use in necromantic experiments). Necromancers tend to only really be accepted by general human society when they're priests of Grenth or regulated by an umbrella body that acts to curb excesses by rogue individuals... and preferably, both.

Norn seem to have a similar attitude: they don't like the idea of somebody's legend ending as somebody else's undead puppet, and use of necromancy is rare outside of followers of Raven. We haven't seen much on the norn attitude towards necromancy, but what we have does seem to indicate that the typical norn is disturbed by it just like the typical human is.

Sylvari and asura both lack prejudice against necromancy, viewing it pragmatically as just another form of magic. Sylvari necromancers are apparently still somewhat rare because most sylvari prefer professions that are more in-tune with nature such as rangers and elementalists, but there's no prejudice against them. Among asura, necromancy does seem to be less popular than elementalism, mesmerism, and engineering, possibly because the asura are focused on magitech and those professions are seen as being those capable of creating the most impressive magitech. (Although Oola would disagree...)

Charr are actually probably the one race where necromancy is favoured over other magical disciplines. It isn't explicitly stated, but necromancy appears to be a branch of magic that was associated with the Ash Legion rather than the Flame, so as a result, there is probably less prejudice against necromancy than against other disciplines, particularly elementalists. This relationship continues to the present day: the most common profession for Ash Legion NPCs after thief, for instance, is necromancer. There may well be a viewpoint among the charr that necromancy might be part of the solution to the Foefire problem.

> @Hitman.5829 said:

> To be honest the mesmers need to be nerfed more than the necros. As a melee warrior I find it easier to fight these condition spamming scourges than the perma evade, perma stun break mesmers. As a melee warrior you can't stun them to land your damage and you can hit them because they perma dodge/evade. In my opinion, scourges are fine the way thy are, but in groups is when they are OP. One way to nerf them is to reduce the number of targets they can hit from 5 to 3 or 2.

>

Well-played mesmers have pretty much always been difficult opponents for warriors, just like well-played thieves have always been difficult matchups for mesmers. Every build is going to have matchups that it's going to struggle against. Mirages in the current meta are certainly no slouches, but neither are they meta-defining in the way scourges are.

The problem with scourges is that they hard-counter a wide range of otherwise viable builds, and they're able to perform their hard-counter against everyone in a teamfight rather than having to pick one target at a time. This has essentially been turning the meta into one where you're either a scourge, a build that can deal with scourges, or a burden to your team (unless you're lucky enough to get an opposing team without scourges). Spellbreaker builds are among those that can cope with scourges, so I can see why a warrior-only player would see them as not being a problem, but in the bigger picture scourges are having a much greater impact than mirages (or anything else I've seen since PoF launched).

> @Ghin.1653 said:

> > @Thornwolf.9721 said:

> > It could and needs to happen, these classes are Iconic to the franchise. They have more of a right to be here than guardian, engie or Rev; And they would fit nicely into the game as is. We even fight dervish's who dont invoke the power of the gods but instead invoke whatever power they deem worth doing so, we as well see a paragon in the sunspear marshal we rescue who is using a land spear AND shouts with their own unique aura/buff.

> >

> > I just dont believe it will ever happen because they just dont give a kitten, which is sad because I miss all three classes.

>

> This is true that there are currently Dervish in game, and are definitely not invoking the six while fighting for Loko Joko, so Charr could easily find a way to perform such acts without the addition of "channeling the Gods".

Guild Wars 1 had human dervishes using the avatars when they were engaged in actions that went against the gods - the commanders of the Kournan garrisons, the so-called Peacekeepers that worked for the White Mantle in War in Kryta. However, with the exception of MOX (where it's presented as simply having different modes rather than avatars _per se_) they were fairly consistent in only giving avatars to humans and entities that were associated with the gods (such as Grentches and snowmen) - we didn't see any avatar-using animals, Stone Summit, or charr.

Recall that the gods tell us that their blessings are within us (humans) near the end of Nightfall. Put together, this suggests that a human using an avatar (or other divine power) is using the latent divine power inside humanity, and they don't need the permission of the god to use it. This allows a human dervish to use an avatar despite fighting for someone who the gods would not approve of, or for a Risen priest to still access the prayers they could when alive, or for a human PC to summon the Hounds of Balthazar to fight against Balthazar himself. It's likely that an individual needs to have revered the god(s) in question _at some point_ in order to unlock the ability to channel avatar forms, but in Amala's case, it's entirely likely that she learned those abilities before becoming Awakened. However, these abilities still appear to be tied to humans, and weaker forms of the avatars have even been present since release in a couple of the human racial elites.

In the meantime, ArenaNet seems to be implementing the playstyle within existing professions. The enemy dervishes in Istan seem to behave a lot like greatsword Reapers. Paragons, from what I saw, mostly had similar abilities to guardians outside of throwing spears: Anthem of Flame was the main one I saw, but like I've commented previously, it largely behaves like the VoJ active.

You can probably answer a lot of these by chasing up the Prophecies Manuscripts, since that's an in-universe document that pretty much lays out what humans believed, but to answer your questions directly:

1) They knew that the Bloodstones having been hurled into the world, and the ambitions of some to claim them, was a contributing factor in the Guild Wars.

2) They most definitely knew about the Bloodstones. The Bloodstones were basically their explanation as to why magic behaved the way it did, including being split (in those days) into four primary divisions.

3) They did not know about Abaddon. The official human history, before Nightfall, was that the gods split the Bloodstones, and thereby split magic, at Doric's behest (true), but the battle between Abaddon and the other gods was completely erased from the official histories. Instead, the official histories claimed that the gods simply left because they had finished their work on Tyria and they were moving on to work on other worlds elsewhere.

4) They did not - it was believed to be a joint effort between the Five. (The truth seems to be that it genuinely was a joint effort, but that Abaddon was far too generous while the others were much more restrained, primarily giving magic to those they thought were worthy.)

It's worth noting that there wasn't constant fighting between Ascalon and Kryta from the eruption and the charr invasion - there were three "Guild Wars" with periods of peace between them. I don't recall the precise dates off the top of my head, but I think the first was right after the eruption, the third was ended by the charr invasion, and the second ended within a century of the third starting up.

> @Cobalt.7102 said:

> The sprititual successor to the ritualist is the engineer because rit was just engi through a fantasy lens.

Primarily, yes, but there are bits and pieces of the ritualist elsewhere: renegade, scourge, and ranger spirits just off the top of my head.

> @Yannir.4132 said:

> - Cooldown of this skill is now 6 seconds.

Alternatively, reduce the healing granted by Detonate to something that is actually balanced with a 3s cooldown, allowing staff to go back to a weapon that, while being best in close, has a decent long-range attack which, while not spammable per se, is still viable for long-range use.

Given the powercreep that's come from other healing sources, in fact, having the current Detonate effect on a 3s recharge might not actually be out of line, and would probably make staff a decent healing weapon without needing to add a heal to Wave of Wrath.

You're actually pretty close to the mark: It's magic booze. It's stated by a few NPCs that there's something about the recipe that gives it a kick that can even drop Awakened.

One of the ingredients is water from the Astralarium which is supposed to have _something_ special about it, so it might even be that there actually is the Tyrian equivalent of holy water in there.

I honestly don't think there's space for bringing those professions back as full professions.

What ArenaNet seems to be doing is bringing back their flavour through elite specialisations. Guardians have a lot of Paragon stuff. Ritualist stuff is spread around multiple professions and elite specialisations. Dervishes were the profession that was missing the most in the original professions, but we're seeing echoes of the dervish in things like revenants, reapers, and holosmiths. I expect that's going to continue.

Sealing would probably make for a good resolution. It's been established that nothing the Order of Whispers could do prior to GW1 could kill him permanently, and while it's possible that a solution to that problem is available _now,_ it's just as possible that it isn't. Defeating and sealing him away at some point would allow for Joko to be defeated but would allow for him to return to the franchise as a recurring villain at some point in the future.

> @Animi.4617 said:

> The problem with thos theory that The commander (us) knows Livia and how she looks. And The commander neither knew WHO was that figure in The vision. Also we actually got to see her at The end of The episode, The commander should have realise its Livia then.

I think the OP's point is that Livia's appearance at the end of LS3 could have been a disguise. We have precedent for a necromancer lich being able to appear as he did when alive (Khilbron), and Livia appears to use a mix of necromancer and mesmer magic in the relevant instances, so it certainly seems to be within her capabilities.

Alternatively, her Awakened appearance could be a disguise she used to infiltrate the Awakened.

I'd put the OP's theory in the 'unlikely, but possible' category, myself.

> @Harper.4173 said:

> > @Maybe.7180 said:

> > I can see why people hate Taimi. I used to love her, but this is getting a bit too much - especially that "poke the commander" thing, yes. I'm fine with Canach and others, tho. Their sence of humour is more sarcastic, ironic, and it fits the situation, I see that more like an attempt to bring down the tension in the squad.

> > I can't agree with you, tho. I cancelled my WoW sub because I couldn't stand this - everyone dying, everything is so serious, even "fun" events are filled with death, war and suffering. I've had enough of it irl. And since HoT went out I'm actually starting to get worried. it all goes the same direction - Eir, Trahearne, Vlast, commanders death... Those figthts with Balthazar, where they always make you feel you're all alone facing this whole madness.

> > Game should be... an adventure. It doesn't mean it should become all soft or filled to the top with silly things, nor it should be all drama and nothing else.

>

> I've seen a similar sentiment expressed by many posters above. Especially mentioning IRL issues. Where exactly do you guys live? What's your daily life like that you can't stand these things in video games?

> I mean - most of you I assume live in the western world - the best place to be this day and age. What's made you so traumatized that you can't stand virtual death, suffering and strife? Is the distinction between real and imaginary too blurred?

In this economy, living in the West is no guarantee that you haven't had problems... and there's a lot of tragedy in the news even for people who aren't experiencing it firsthand.

> @Shirlias.8104 said:

> I don't really care about the story.

> It's nothing special but hey, it's a mmo so whatever.

>

> I tried to afk in a safe place during the fight with Taimi, but oxygen lvl was stable for about 5 mins.

> Disappointed.

Strictly speaking, the oxygen level probably dropped too fast to begin with. Being in a sealed, confined space like that probably isn't healthy, but it would probably take quite some time for someone to start experiencing hypoxia, let alone suffocate. Particularly since there's still a fair amount of oxygen in what the typical person breathes out (this is how mouth-to-mouth works, after all...)

> @Sojourner.4621 said:

> As someone who uses humor to deflect serious situations and cover the fact that I actually have no idea what I am going to do and am actually probably panicking internally... I can actually relate to the quips... **especially** Taimi's at the end there. If I just nearly died, but somehow managed to make it out alive, expect a badly formulated and inappropriate joke at my own expense. It's how I'll keep from just breaking down on the spot and lets me move on to what needs to be done.

>

> That said, there is definitely something to be said about **too** much Bathos in writing.

And this is pretty much what I was thinking.

People who are in traumatic circumstances - particularly traumatic circumstances that are drawn out for a long period of time - often do develop something of a "if I don't laugh at this I'm going to break down" response. You commonly see this in things like the banter of soldiers in wartime and so on. There are, in fact, theories that this is one of the evolutionary origins of humour in the first place: as a form of stress relief.

So, to me, the odd one-liner actually fits with the overall dark tone of the story even as it appears to lighten it - because it's not just lightening it for _us,_ it's also lightening it for the characters themselves, who need to be able to laugh at the situation every so often or risk having an emotional breakdown. Braham, in fact, might well be a good example of what happens to someone who goes through all that and who isn't able to stop and laugh at it every so often.

> @Crossaber.8934 said:

> I wish it adjusted to a ground target skill while summon like the ele elite GS, deal the active skill damage as the initial hit, then it became the existing floating weapon that follow player for the duration. And of course keep its active as ground targeting like the initial hit.

That... could work better than the current situation. Be similar to mesmer phantasms having an effect when summoned.

> @Chaith.8256 said:

> > @Bullet.9271 said:

> > > @RedSPINE.7845 said:

> > > Hahaha, so Engineers have to sacrifice energy to damage people while evading when other classes can evade while doing damage by skills instead of endurance loss. I don't think it's OP at all x)

> >

> > I did not say that I have an issue with Minesweeper or attacks on dodge. I also didnt say anything was OP. I was trying to illustrate that the ability to still attack in some way shape or form while under the effects of Elixir S feels dirty because you are completely invulnerable.

> >

>

> His message was one telling you to not feel guilty as simultaneously attacking while avoiding is commonplace

Indeed. Elixir S has actually become something of a subrate skill in this respect, since normally all it allows you to do is move, res, and stomp. People have grown accustomed to shrunken engineers being toothless, and you're just exploiting that complacency. I'd say it's actually healthy for the game if people can't assume that a shrunken engineer can't hurt them at all... particularly since a) you're spending multiple traitlines to be able to do it at all, b) if they've been observant they likely could have recognised that you had those traitlines, and c) you're spending endurance to do so which isn't granting you the usual evade frames because you're already invulnerable.

Weird. I could have sworn I'd responded to this thread, but it's not here now...

To recap: It does seem a bit of a plothole that Sohothin is apparently so powerful in the hands of the Commander. It makes it so that, now, basically anything bad that happens that could have been prevented if the PC had had more firepower is now on Rytlock. Any citizens of Amnoon you didn't rescue in time? Rytlock's fault, you could have been using Sohothin to break those crystals in no time. If you hadn't completed the final battle of the final instance in time? On Rytlock's head.

They really needed to give some explanation that the sword had some kind of one-time power boost. If it was something that could be replicated at any time by putting the sword in the PC's hand... then it really should be being given to the PC to use any time that the PC isn't pulling a Thackeray and getting themselves captured.

> @Tseison.4659 said:

> But going into people saying possible new elites. I personally don’t think so since when PoF came out, we got what we were given sadly.

Not necessarily, actually. ArenaNet could have taken the attitude that in PoF we only had the opportunity to learn those elite specialisations that were found on the outskirts of Elona, where most of PoF is set. They could, then, use Season 4 to introduce us to NPCs with new fighting styles, which eventually become new elite specialisations that we will have the opportunity to master in the next expansion pack.

Now, I still think it's probably more likely that the paragons and dervishes are there for nostalgia purposes rather than hinting at things to come, but just because they weren't used for elite specs in PoF doesn't mean they won't be for the next expansion.

Possibly because magic on the whole was weaker at the time? While the gods themselves used a lot of magic, the whole reason for the war was that the gods had just reduced the levels of magic that was present in the rest of the world, and Abaddon disagreed with that. The magics wielded by the gods may not have been enough to stir the dragons when the background level was so low. One could even hypothesise that the dragons did stir, but before they awoke completely the war was over and magic levels reverted to a level that was too low and they went back into hibernation.

Or possibly because for all the destruction that was caused, the magics used were more self-contained. While the Crystal Sea was destroyed, this still represents a smaller area than Orr and Ascalon, and a fair distance away from any of the known sleeping places of the dragons. The Searing and the Cataclysm, on the other hand, happened in the vicinity of several of the Elder Dragons, the latter being right on top of Zhaitan.

> @Ronin.7381 said:

> > @nighthawke.3075 said:

> > > @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > > There's a moon in every map. At dawn/dusk it'll move up into the sky (as will the sun), and it's pretty large. Honestly, its size would not surprise me if it were a gas giant and Tyria its lunar body.

> > >

> > > In GW1, Halloween decorations turned the moon into the Mad Moon which the shield of the same name takes its appearance from (as well as the Bloody Prince's makeup).

> >

> > Here's some wild speculation, But the moon is a Gas giant and its where the Mist is. Humans came from earth after climate changes destroyed it. The God's are Aliens!!! :astonished:

>

> That's not entirely far fetched. The God were aliens for one. That also reminds me of the books of Pern where the people of Pern are descendants of humans from another world and eventually from Earth. Can't remember if there were a chain of worlds that linked them all together by ancestor. Never the less, it has been done in fantasy.

The people of Pern were colonists from an interstellar empire who basically wanted to get away from it all and return to a simpler life, choosing Pern because it was a habitable world which lacked the resources to interest said empire (the name comes from an acronym of "parallels Earth, resources negligible"), although the colonists weren't intending to go all the way back to medieval technology as ends up happening. If you play connect-the-dots, a lot of McCaffrey's book serieses are set in the same universe even if they don't directly interact - I'm not sure about ALL of them, but there are definitely indications that Dinosaur Planet is set in the same universe as the Pern series.