draxynnic.3719

> @Kaizoku.1298 said:

> We want electricity not lightning. Hammer took the lightning route and staff can take the electric route. And yeah, as a lightning theme, it kinda sucked.

Eh... I'd say that basically everything on the hammer except Thunderclap was more electricity-themed than lightning-themed if you're going to split that hair. If you have an electrical discharge propagating through air more than about 3-4 hundred units in game terms, I'd call that lightning. If you actually have to hit the enemy with a conductor (such as with the hammer autoattacks), that's electricity but not lightning. In between is a grey area, but of course, it's all electricity!

> @RedSPINE.7845 said:

> I really dont understand how people made up their minds about this question. Mace is like the worse choice in term of diversity, it's just a mix between a hammer and a sword if you think.

> Tesla Coil ? Lightning elite spec ? Just look at the Scrapper, we can put lightning fields everywhere, our 5th hammer skill is called «thunderclap» and the rest of our theme is all about electromagnetism : reflecting projectiles, «positive strike» «negative bash» for our auto attack chain ...

> You already had what you're wishing for, and I guess if you're still wanting it, it's because Scrapper wasn't that attractive for you. Then don't make Anet disappoint you again if so 0_0

From my perspective:

Scrapper hammer is lightning-themed (and quite fun), but it's not what people are asking for here. It's essentially a 'lightning warrior' weapon, a Thor through the eyes of the engineer. It's a fun weapon, but not the ranged lightning spec that I have in mind. Other people can speak for themselves, but what I'm more looking for is something with more of the feel of the GW1 air elementalist - a Zeus through the eyes of the engineer instead of a Thor, to carry through the analogy, striking their foe with lightning from afar rather than bashing them over the head with a thunderous hammer.

At the moment, that doesn't really exist in GW2. Fresh air scepter can come close, but the design of elementalist is such that if you're not swapping between elements you're doing it wrong (unless the element is fire and your job is staff DPS, in which case it can be optimal or at least close to optimal). At the moment, mesmer is actually the profession that comes closest to that feel - but of course, that's mesmer, and mesmer lightning-like effects are more along the lines of magical energy that looks a bit like lightning, not actually lightning.

Engineer is, after elementalist (and even that can be argued...) the profession with the most association with lightning. Therefor, it's the profession that probably has the most potential to actually realise this theme. There is precedent in the open world - a number of hearts have technomagical guns and even staves (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghost_Collector) that project bolts of electricity. This is the sort of thing that people have in mind - carrying through the electrical theme, but as a ranged weapon rather than melee.

Now, you are of course free to think that something else should have higher priority, but hopefully this clarifies how what people are asking for is different to what already exists.

It's one of those 'power varies by circumstance' things.

Certain high-power opening moves can be negated entirely by the passive. The shorter the refresh, the less opportunity other professions have to use them against a guardian.

Certain PvE opponents employ high-power but infrequent attacks. For a veteran ettin that appears to attack once every 4s or so (I'm guesstimating here) then you could be passively blocking 20% of their damage with a 20s refresh, and possibly also triggering a bunch of traits that trigger off blocks or off aegis specifically, without the player doing anything at all. Combine with a few other basic abilities, and it might become trivial to just block or dodge everything in some encounters.

In other circumstances - when beset by large numbers of smaller hits, say, as usually happens in PvP - it might be doing very little, particularly without traits.

Mostly, when I said "no lower than 30s", that was a gut feel.

Hrrrmn. I think there is call for an elite specialisation that's more focused on ranged combat. Tempest's overloads focus on diving into combat (and ArenaNet mostly marketed tempest as a dagger/warhorn spec) and weaver has sword as its weapon, even if technically it works just as well with long-range weapons like staff and scepter.

Could be interesting to see a weapon built around long-range single-target damage. Scepter kinda is, but still has a significant AoE presence.

> @crosknight.3041 said:

> im just hoping E is a character we've encountered before. would be a shame if E ended up being some random dude we never met.

This is when we find out that Vael's employer is a lot more potent than we thought...

> @"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:

> 'Relatively unthreatened', though, can still mean tottering on the brink of crisis in Tyria. Getting them to send supplementary troops to back the Pact against Mordremoth was like pulling teeth, and that was against a foe that'd already inflicted severe casualities on both nations' forces. There's no sign that the situation at home has improved enough for them to consider now footing the main bill of a campaign against a _potential_ threat. (With Caudecus and the Mantle out of the picture, it's likely that things will slowly begin improving in Kryta, but a siege is a hell of a way to go out with a bang, and the bandits and centaurs won't melt away overnight. Unless they've reintroduced the watchknights on a much larger scale than we've yet seen, I'd expect that any spare manpower they have at this point would be tied up in rebuilding Lake Doric and carefully rolling back the enemy on other fronts.)

True enough, although I suspect that the fall of the White Mantle does mean that Kryta is better off. And Kralkatorrik having flown south may mean that the Brand is less active in Ascalon. Jormag going back into hibernation might have taken a lot of pressure off the norn.

The nations may also be considering the possibility that with the routes reopened, the last thing they want is an opportunistic Joko deciding to hit them at a time when they might be more vulnerable than they are now. We probably won't see any large-scale troop movements into Elona. However, I think it would be reasonable for the nations of Tyria to feel that they can handle an attack from Joko if it happens _now,_ without giving Joko the opportunity to figure out an equivalent of the Elon redirection gambit for a Tyrian nation, while being quite happy to see anything that might destabilise Joko's rule.

> @Athrenn.9468 said:

> The argument against recognizing the legitimacy of the Vabbian government seems rather hypocritical for the powers involved.

>

> "You're a Guild Wars 1 villain faction who forcibly conquered human territory using tactics of aggressive military expansion!"

>

> You mean... like the charr? They seized all of Ascalon and hunted their enemies down all the way to Ebonhawke where they tried to exterminate them like mice holed up in a barn. If we established a precedent where Joko's empire was invalidated then we might as well take back Ascalon as well. This is why it is against the Iron Legion's political agenda to discredit King Joko's legitimacy—they don't want to be next on the chopping block of ex-villain factions whose government is illegitimate.

Eh, I think there are two big differences here.

From a practical standpoint: Smodur is not the charr leader who invaded Ascalon. In fact, the current charr government system was established by the overthrow of the one that did invade Ascalon, and Smodur specifically is the one on the charr side who established a truce to _stop_ the conflict. It's reasonable for the nations of Tyria to feel that the days of charr invasions of other nations is in the past. Joko, however, is exactly the same despot who invaded Elona. Twice. Possibly in violation of a truce the second time around.

From a moral standpoint: Smodur does generally seem to rule for the benefit of his people, or at least tries to. Joko might have good propaganda, but when you look past his propaganda he's clearly a despot.

When you get into the situation with Ascalon specifically, it starts to become a case of "well, how long are you going to keep a grudge?" The Searing happened because the charr couldn't let go of a millenia-old grudge. Today, the region is mostly occupied by charr, and Smodur actually seems to be fairly generous with ceding land to Ebonhawke under the truce. Pushing the Iron Legion charr out of what has been their homes for two centuries because it used to be someone else's homes is one of those eye-for-an-eye-leaves-everyone-blind situations. The current generation is not to blame for what their forebears did. Palawa Joko is _definitely_ to blame for what Palawa Joko did.

What ArenaNet has said is that it's opening up a portal "from a time when the legions were united". Given the way fractals work, though, I suspect this does de facto mean "fractal".

> @Ardid.7203 said:

> I sincerely insist: we need another MH CORE weapon before a new elite spec weapon.

It is one of the problems with the elite specialisation route for introducing new weapons: a couple of professions really are hurting for the lack of core weapons, and to an extent the elite specialisation approach only compounds the problem.

I think it works for most, but for engineers and revenants, there really needs to be at least one more baseline for the system to work.

> @otto.5684 said:

> I dunno why everyone is getting derailed into “virtues should not get a major buff.” No one said that or expects that.

>

> What should happen is a reduction of VoJ and VoR should go back to being 14 sec instead of 17 and 21 sec instead of 25 sec, as they were before the 10/17 patch. In addition a reduction of VoC from 38.5 sec traited to 30 secs should put the skill in line with its effectiveness. These are around 15-20% reduction on core guardian CDs. Making VoJ effectiveness in PvE match PvP will be nice as well.

>

> We all agree hat both DH virtues and FB tomes are substantially stronger than core guardian virtues, yet 15-20% CD reduction is an over powering buff?!

Because I'm pretty certain that at least one person in this thread wants more than just a recharge buff.

Reverting VoJ and VoR to their pre-patch recharges probably wouldn't be a big deal.

VoC... is a bit more complicated, partly because of the interaction with the passive, which has a 40s recharge. It is therefore already possible to time VoC use so that it will recharge before the passive refreshes anyway and therefore you lost nothing.

That said, I don't think it would break much to reduce the passive recharge as well. Ideally, I think it would be best for the passive recharge to always be shorter than the active - I'd probably go no lower than 30s for the passive refresh, and the traited active recharge would still be something above that (40s untraited and 34s traited, perhaps).

On the other hand, ArenaNet might have good reasons for thinking the trait recharge times are good where they are now (which could include trying to avoid a situation where it is always better to just fire off the actives on recharge). I don't feel strongly enough either way to push either for or against a reduction. A more substantial buff, however, will probably come with a price - if not immediately, than in the long run.

> @CharterforGw.3149 said:

> Maybe the elder dragon's were smaller more normal and maybe even kind dragons, but with all the magical energy the absorbed got corrupted, it twisted their bodies and affected their minds.

Well, we see in Bloodstone Fen that too much magic makes people go crazy. Maybe the same is true for dragons, but their tolerance is higher...

Which could well explain the Forgotten attempt to "cleanse" Kralkatorrik - perhaps they found that their cleansing ritual also made the subject more able to tolerate magic without becoming an omnicidal maniac, so they hoped they could magically restore Kralkatorrik's sanity as a prelude to being able to negotiate with it.

(Bonus points if they **succeeded**, but Kralkatorrik was still feeling threatened and paranoid enough that he Branded them anyway.)

> @CharterforGw.3149 said:

> > @Frostwolve.2916 said:

> > > @ekarat.1085 said:

> > > It's Kralkatorrik -- how can there be a different successor if Kralkatorric ate all the energy?

> > >

> > Because it wasn't god energy it was mostly bloodstone energy.

> >

> > My question is why didn't kralky go back to sleep? Don't the dragons go back to sleep once they have absorbed a lot of magic? Was the magic he absorbed not enough? My theory is he flew north to find a new resting spot and we don't hear from him again.

> >

> >

>

> wasn't it stated that kralkatorrik had gotten more powerful by balthazars death

More broadly, dragons don't go to sleep because they have enough magic.

Generally, what causes them to go into hibernation is when they've eaten all the magic they can find. The draining of Primordus and Jormag by Taimi's device seems to have put them to sleep as well, although we don't know how long for, so direct draining also seems to have that effect. Kralkatorrik, though, is probably feeling like he has more food than ever - why would he sleep?

(Possibly because he feels threatened - he _has_ come close to being killed twice now. This might, however, explain why he's migrating away from Tyria - he's decided that Tyria is dangerous and he doesn't want any.)

It was implied to be the case in Elona and mainland Cantha as well - probably having learned their lessons from seeing what had happened in Tyria. The Kurzicks and Luxons seemed to encourage it, though.

As for the second point...

It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out that the nations of Tyria - particularly humans and charr, which are simultaneously the strongest militaries and probably the two most concerned about Joko - have decided that Joko's history makes him too dangerous to leave unopposed, and now is a good time to strike him down (Joko's empire is in disarray due to the events of PoF, while in the meantime Tyria is relatively unthreatened with the surviving Elder Dragons either back to sleep or a long way away).

> @"Sol VIII.6812" said:

> Maybe a mace, but using it like a Tesla Coil, wielding the power of lightning?

Hrrrmn. I'd probably go with a scepter for that approach - that leaves mace open to be used as a melee weapon for the future, and there are some fairly technological scepters (the Aetherized Scepter basically IS a hand-held tesla coil, although they're probably expensive as all heck nowadays... but if an engineer elite spec was to use scepter, they'd get an appropriate scepter model). I guess maces do have the advantage that they mostly have a bulbous end that could hide something technological, which isn't the case for all scepters, but I think scepter would work for what you have in mind.

Or staff, to get a wider range of skills. Depends on whether you want to pair it with shield/pistol or have a full set of new skills, I guess.

Eh...

I disagree on multiple counts there.

First, guardian was in the second half of professions to be revealed (fifth, I think?), and from what I understand, the professions were revealed in the order that ArenaNet considered them to be "ready" (although some of the early revealed professions did have substantial changes after reveal, albeit mostly to skills rather than the 'central mechanic'. There are indications, albeit highly circumstantial, that there was an initial order of reveals that was changed due to some professions being delayed. But guardian is hardly the 'oldest'.

Second, I don't think virtues define the guardian. That's kinda the point. No profession is entirely defined by their profession mechanic - they're also defined by the types of skills they have, their traits, and their overall 'feel'. Core guardian was set up in such a way where you could completely ignore your function keys and still be playing reasonably efficiently. You could play _more_ efficiently if you made good use of your active virtues, sure, but you could just ignore them and benefit from your passives if you wanted, particularly if you didn't take virtue-related traits. (So, zeal/honor/valor, I guess, although as a slightly more advanced usage, you could take Radiance and try to trigger it before scoring a kill.) Through your trait usage, you can adjust just how important your virtues are, with the elite specialisations obviously giving them a substantial boost.

There's a certain 'sliding scale' of how much professions are defined by their profession mechanics. For basic warriors, adrenaline skills are just another weapon skill with a special condition for use. Mesmers are defined by their illusions, with shatters simply being a method of using their illusion: mesmers can often work fine, and in some cases optimally, using shatters sparingly or not at all. For thieves who don't invest traits in steal, steal is just another shadowstep skill with relatively limited utility (it can only teleport to enemies). Finally (note that I haven't put these examples into a specific order), engineers are defined by their kits, not by anything in their toolbelt: if anything, their toolbelt is a partial compensation for some of the sacrifices they've had to make to get kits.

At the other end of the scale, you have elementalists, necromancers, rangers, and now revenants, which are defined to a significant degree by their special mechanics. Elementalists and revenants both give up a degree of customisability in exchange for having more skills on their bar. Rangers are defined by their pets, but the fact that they always have a pet means that their own effectiveness is reduced in order to prevent the combination from being overpowered. Necromancers, up until PoF, were defined by their shroud mechanic - but in order to avoid two deep health bars from being overpowered, necromancers have been barred from having strong healing or significant active defences, which has made them the focus target of choice in any form of PvP for years.

Given that professions are balanced as a package, I don't think having a low-impact profession mechanic is a weakness. Those professions that have high-impact profession mechanics are still making sacrifices for those mechanics even if they're not actually useful for what they're doing. Guardians, however, don't have that handicap. Having a low-impact profession mechanic means that the player can choose exactly how much to invest in the mechanic - if it won't be useful than they can invest little or nothing into it and not be held back by something they're not using, and if it would be useful, they can make that bigger investment.

And with traits, I've got to say... there have been times when being able to press F3 to get stunbreak, stability, aegis and protection for myself and my group has felt pretty darn useful, or being able to press F1 every time an enemy dies for an AoE blind, three stacks of might, and burning. More so than a ranger pet that I'm spending half my energy trying to keep from dying, or a second health bar that I paid for by having virtually no active defences, shatters I can't or shouldn't use, a shadowstep into a location which is just going to get me killed, an adrenaline bar that never fills, or having 20+ skills on my bar when more than half of them are useless for the situation I'm in. Sure, there are definitely times when the profession mechanics of other professions are more useful than what the guardian has, but there are times when they won't be useful at all.

Having your profession mechanic be fairly weak in its baseline operation means that in situations where it's not going to be useful, you can invest nothing in it and still be effective. The stronger the profession mechanic is, and the more you lean on it, the more of a handicap you'll have when, for whatever reason, it isn't useful.

Right now, between core traits and elite specialisations, it actually feels as if guardians have the widest range of customisability in how they use their profession mechanic, and are possibly competing with engineers for most customisable profession overall. Seriously, you've got a wide range of choices for how much you use your profession mechanic from "yeah, I just ignore it and benefit from the passives" to "I have five sets of weapon skills that I can use, two of which I chose freely from one of the widest ranges of weapon choices in the game, and my utility slots are still available to put whatever I like in."

This is a good thing. Now, I'm not saying I'd complain if the recharges got reduced or something like that... but if you really want a major "buff" to the core, untraited virtues, you'd better be asking yourself how much you'd be willing to give up in return. Because the balance hammer will fall in time, and believe me, some of the other professions would kill to have some of the choices we have and not to be held back by their own, more powerful innate mechanics. Mechanics which their professions are balanced according to having, but are sometimes unhelpful or even a handicap.

Well, the ban was also in Kryta, so it wasn't (just) Adelbern's directive.

Ultimately, what we're seeing is that the guild halls are still outside the jurisdiction of Ascalon or Kryta. The guild halls in the Heart of Maguuma apparently have the blessing of the Exalted of Tarir to be held by guilds, and said Exalted are probably the closest thing to a recognised government in the area. Kryta may or may not still be uncomfortable with the idea of guilds, but the general idea of the ban was to keep any inter-guild fighting from drawing in the nations as happened in the Guild Wars, and having those guilds in the remote Maguuman jungle probably serves that purpose as well as having them on a southern island somewhere. The point is to stop any inter-guild fighting from happening on Krytan soil.

Windswept Haven, on the other hand, is apparently being established explicitly _against_ the wishes of the government of the region: however, I expect the Guild Initiative doesn't recognise Palawa Joko or the Mordant Crescent as legitimate.

> @Brutaly.6257 said:

> The problem with our virtues isnt that they are bad, the issue is that you need to trait for them to be good.

And, to be honest, I don't think that's a bad thing.

It means that you don't _have_ to invest in your profession mechanic to be good. You can choose to focus elsewhere, rather than having your playstyle be defined by the mechanic.

If you look at the other professions, generally speaking the more impactful the profession mechanic is baseline, the more sacrifices they've made to get it. Guardian virtues require traits to have more than a token impact, but that leaves it up to the player to decide how important they will be.

Hrrrmn. On a more general perspective:

It is disappointing that the heir to monks is overshadowed as a healing profession. That said, I'm inclined to see how Firebrand develops further before I commit to saying that guardian absolutely needs to have more healing. It probably could use some in general terms, but that could be a matter of number tweaks to healing Firebrands over going in a new direction entirely.

> @EdwinLi.1284 said:

> I would choose dagger for tesla coil theme range weapon but I strongly prefer staff more as it would fit into a more electric Barrier theme Support/Utility Elite Spec as a Range Staff Weapon by having the Staff as a conduit for electric theme attacks with Skill 4 releasing Elctrical Energy to creat Electric Barrier around nearby allies and Skill 5 being about Unleashing a Energy Storm in a Target AoE location that damage enemies in side it and apply Electric Barrier to allies in it.

...I'm convinced.

Partly, I'd admit, because I'd like to see a lightning-themed build, and elementalist just doesn't deliver.

> @coglin.1496 said:

> > @insanemaniac.2456 said:

> > > @Ardid.7203 said:

> > > Holosmith ads 3 new CC: PF5, Prismatic Singularity and Prime Light Beam. All of them are beautiful, and the only reason I'm still using the spec.

> > > In fact, I've discovered that I can somewhat forgive the unreasonable DPS aspect of the e-spec if I focus mostly on the CC play. In the open world it has become very nice, as I'm able to blow huge breakbars all by myself. PF4 is still a huge dps addition, and pairing all with the old FT I get a build that is miles away from optimal, but extremely fun.

> >

> > how awkward is it that scrapper was supposed to be focused on control, holo is supposed to be focused on dps, and now you use holo for its control.

>

> This was my first thought too. They completely nerfed CC value of scrapper to the point that we head thread after thread about how invaluable it made some of the traits.

>

Oh, yes. I could understand that gyros dazing on detonation was maybe a bit much, but it does make the grandmaster minor trait pretty weak, as engineers have relatively few dazes and stuns outside of hammer and what got taken away from gyros.

Gotta say, that was more what I had in mind when I heard 'holomancer' - more force-field oriented than just having an engineer equivalent of reaper shroud. Granted, some of the utilities kinda count, but...

> @RabbitUp.8294 said:

> And if we play the game of traits, Mesmer can press 1 button to make 5 people invulnerable, reflect projectiles, apply stability, remove a condition and heal, inflict confusion and torment, grant quickness and alacrity. Show me another skill that can do that. And even then, distort is still a very good skill even when untraited.

_That_ would require running four traitlines, which is not allowed, and multiple major traits. Comparatively, VoC grants Aegis+Retaliation+Protection purely through the minors on a single traitline, and adds stability and a stunbreak with a single major trait, leaving a range of options to buff it further (and there are about as many traits that directly or indirectly buff VoC as there are that buff Distortion) or to open up other options. If I imagined a four-traitline guardian, even a core guardian, I could make the list of things VoC does even more impressive (damage through Shattered Aegis, healing through the healing aegis trait, even more aegis through the trait that applies aegis to allies when you block (noting that aegis itself counts as a block, so when the aegis on yourself triggers, that's a block) and Altruistic Healing so you heal from all those boons you're chucking out, and that's just off the top of my head)

Furthermore, most of the things you can buff VoC with through traits apply to allies within the radius. Most of the stuff you cite for mesmer using Distortion is selfish. Without following up with Signet of Inspiration, all they're granting to allies is the distort, stability, and regen.

Finally, VoC still does something, albeit relatively minor, even if you don't use it, while the opportunity cost to using it is that you lose the passive effect until it recharges.

Distortion does nothing for the mesmer unless they activate it. If they _do_ activate it, they've just blown all their illusions, unless they're running Illusionary Reversion (which only grants one on its own) and/or Chronophantasma. And Chronophantasma conflicts with the quickness-on-shatter trait.

Using Distortion without traits and without consuming illusions is a 1s invulnerability. Frankly, I'm not convinced that this is objectively better than Aegis, particularly Aegis to a group.

Since it seems to be my post there that you're objecting to:

There is nothing officially saying that 'guardians can never dual-wield, never, ever'.

However, dualwielding is generally presented as a configuration employed by specific kinds of fighters. They're either the highly dextrous type, who have the coordination to wield two weapons effectively and who prefer to rely on dodging and parrying with an offhand weapon over using clumsy armour and shields. Or they're the berserkery, all-out-damage-at-the-expense-of-defence types.

Guardians are neither of these. They've been described as methodical, tactical fighters by ArenaNet, relying on a mix of martial skill, heavy armour, and magic to overcome their enemies rather than employing the mobility of thieves and rangers or the overwhelming aggression of warriors (note: these examples are not intended to be exhaustive). Therefore, dual-wielding does not fit the overall feel of the guardian, whose fighting styles are more akin to a traditional knight (plus magic).

With that said, one of the possibilities for elite specs is to take a profession out of its usual comfort zone. For an elite specialisation that is based on the guardian going into a fighting style where dual-wielding makes sense, then it would, well, make sense to give them a suitable weapon as an offhand. However, it would have to be something that fits with the theme of the specialisation, not something that is thrown in just because.

> @Handi.1685 said:

> >

> > > @Handi.1685 said:

> > > Maybe in pvp or wvsw it is a thing but in pve it is useless (note to myself next time i have to write pve ) , as for Sword ambush all the same like the others to me : worthless.

> >

> > "Covering" skills isn't as important in PvE as it is in PvP, but I wouldn't say it's worthless. Some mobs do have fast-activating CCs that you might miss the tell on, or a CC might have a tell where normally you'd have a choice between dodging out of the skill (thus interrupting whatever you might have been trying to do) or just standing there and taking the CC anyway. Having a cover can be useful in those circumstances.

>

> Well there is a tiny little problem your phantasmas will do the damage so no matter if you dodge or not, thy will , as long as you you alive , which is hard with mirage and "dodge" system it has

And if it's a phantasm summon you're covering? Or a heal? A defensive skill with a casting time, like Phantasmal Defender (which is also a phantasm)?

Plus, while phantasms are a lot of your DPS, this doesn't mean that the hard-hitting skills you do have aren't worth covering sometimes.

And that's without getting into that dodge build that is able to solo-champions by maintaining a high uptime of Mirage Cloak.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @draxynnic.3719 said:

> > I assumed that Zenmai may have been talking about Kormir, there - we don't have any evidence of the Sunspear Hero having interacted with Zenmai (prior to Guild Wars Beyond), but Kormir canonically did do her travelling around, and may have met Zenmai while she was recruiting.

>

> Zenmai wasn't recruited by Kormir though (only the Zaishen were iirc, from Cantha). In both the original and the second version of her recruitment quest we were the ones to find and recruit her. She was recommended via Linro (originally directly to us, then in the remake quest by missive to the Sunspears). Further, as a hero would have been traveling with the PC not Kormir during Nightfall's campaign.

Ah, right. I was getting confused with a certain **other** assassin hero in Winds of Purity. Even so, I don't think that line necessarily means that Zenmai had never met the Winds of Purity PC before: it could be more of a private joke about that being something the Sunspears say.

"Crystal", scientifically, is a very broad term - Kralkatorrik seems to be limited to rock crystal. Ice seems to be outside his purview, and I expect that salt and anything else that's soluble in water at room temperature is also outside his domain.