draxynnic.3719

> @"Yasai.3549" said: > > @"draxynnic.3719" said: > > > The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for _all_ professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant. > > Guardian and DH, yes. > FB is definitely overloaded though. > > I mean in exchange for losing 3 actives they get 15 actives instead. > In fact, PoF in general, just overloads Especs. > > I feel like all HoT specs are fairly balanced. > > Not really. What you give up when you pop a tome is that for the period you have the tome up, you don't have access to your weapon skills any more. Courage and Resolve are pretty heavily specialised - while you've got either of them up, you're not getting any damage to speak of out of the left side of your bar at all, just defensive buffs and haling respectively. You can drop the tome before using it up, of course, but then the tome is going on full recharge without having gained the full benefit from it. And, of course, that recharge starts when the tome is finished, so the effective recharge of tomes is longer than it is on paper. Justice is a bit less specialised because damage is always useful, but if you're running a healbrand, you might need to be careful when you switch into it, because doing so at the wrong time might deprive your group of healing and buffs coming from your weaponset. Another consideration is that while it might look like 15 skills on paper, in practice it's rare that you'll actually be able to make good use out of all three. Firebrands have pretty much been ejected from sPvP at the moment (seriously, there's not one firebrand build recommended on Metabattle last time I checked). Courage largely rewards concentration, resolve healing power and concentration, and justice rewards damage stats, particularly _condition_ damage - in practice, you need to choose between them. Usually between damage or support. Courage probably loses the least from having the 'wrong' gearset, but it's also probably the most specialised: in competitive being able to spam stability for a few seconds is great, but in high end PvE, it's basically an emergency button that you'd prefer to never have to press because the benefits don't offset the DPS loss (when my group runs Matthias, for instance, even if there are firebrands in the group, they're usually instructed to let Mesmers put up the projectile reflect bubbles and the Firebrands should only do so in an emergency if the mesmers can't, because for the firebrands, switching to Tome of Courage to put up a reflect bubble is generally a DPS loss). In practice, it's not practical to have one build that really makes use of both Justice and Resolve. For a DPS build, puling a Tome of Resolve is basically a last-ditch Hail Mary that probably won't actually save whoever it is that's in trouble from dying because the healing is too low, and in the meantime you're not DPSing. For a healing build, pulling out ToJ when it's safe to do so usually does give a slight uptick in damage, but you're going from "not much" to "a little more but still not much". Saying that you're giving up 3 skills for 15 is an overly simplistic analysis because it doesn't take into account how much more of an action economy investment the tomes represent. Sure, there's more options, but there's limits on how well you can USE those options. Dragonhunter virtues are pretty fire-and-forget: you use them like you would a normal skill and then go back to your regular rotation. Core guardian virtues can be activated _while_ performing other actions, which can lead to sneaky tricks like activating F1 as you deliver the killing blow on a mob to get effectively free boons, using F1 or F3 to cover a stomp mid-animation (with appropriate traits), or being able to simply faceroll the virtues before activating Renewed Focus in a pinch. A firebrand using their virtues, on the other hand, is more of a mode shift. They give you more options, to be sure, but they represent a significant interruption of what you'd be doing otherwise. > @"Jski.6180" said: > > @"draxynnic.3719" said: > > > @"Jski.6180" said: > > > They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made. > > > > That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released. > > > > Largely because it hasn't needed them. > > > > The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for _all_ professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant. > > That a lot bigger then most classes. Pretty sure most other classes have had reworks that are at _least_ as big as reworking four utility skills (and three weapon skills, I guess, since sword and scepter were changed to have symbols and Ray of Judgement was changed). Revenant had Devastation and Corruption reworked, recently, and Mallyx skills have been reworked a couple of times. Offhand sword has been completely redesigned, for better or worse. Oh, and they've also had Salvation reworked, for better or worse. Come to think on it, I'm not sure that _any_ core revenant traitline has avoided a rework. Let's not forget the introduction of legend-specific Facet of Nature skills, or the core F2. Warrior had the tactics rework, and the warhorn rework. I think there's been more, but Warrior is one of my least played professions, and I'm doing this purely off memory. Scrapper had basically everything except the hammer reworked. Core engineer had the Inventions rework (which is a large part of the reason why heal scrapper exists) and the big Explosions rework, which is largely why engineers have been dominating sPvP lately. Thief had traps turned into preparations, which generally resulted in stronger effects at the cost of being a bit fiddlier to use, as well as the Shadow Arts rework. Oh, and the Deadeye redesign. Necromancer had the big rework on the Death Magic traitline not too long ago. I'm pretty sure I remember them also having big reworks to Spite and Curses back before PoF. Focus was redesigned, and I think scepter had some significant work done on it as well. Mesmer got pretty much rebuilt from the ground up around Season 4 Episode 2. I don't think any profession has been reworked as much as mesmer (and this isn't really a good thing for the profession). Elementalist had the Fire Magic traitline overhauled, and the summoning glyphs changed (it's possible to have multiple lesser elementals out at once now). Ranger had sword redesigned. I have a feeling that they've had redesigns to their utility traitlines as well, but again, I'm going off memory here, and ranger is one of my less played professions. This is also, incidentally, only considering reworks that were intended to buff underused parts of the profession, rather than cases where functionality has been stripped back or changed for the purpose of nerfing (something that has happened to guardian as well). I'm also going off memory here, so there may be a lot I'm forgetting. Guardian traitlines, by contrast, haven't had any big reworks since pre-HoT: a few individual traits have been tweaked, but no complete tree redesigns. A few skills that weren't being used were replaced and that's just about it. There are some professions there that you could argue have had about the same in the way of reworks, but revenant, engineer, thief, necromancer, and mesmer have all clearly had more. And of the three that are not in that list, it might just be because they're professions I generally play less and thus don't remember their reworks as well.

> @"Dawdler.8521" said: > > @"draxynnic.3719" said: > > We can see that the 'meteor showers' called down by a single person just aren't that powerful, though. > > > > What you COULD do, however, is mount a Searing Cauldron on a tank so it has more mobility. That said, I do get the impression that Searing Cauldrons are a bit of a fantasy nuke - they require a lot of magical power to make (it's strongly implied that they involved drawing on Kralkatorrik's power, and even then it took a couple of centuries between the Flame Legion meeting the titans and the Searing happening), so it might not be feasible to just mass-produce Searing Cauldrons. > Well you where talking about the real world and WW2 - I added a real world flare on what a meteor shower actually is. It's not throwing rocks at someone. > > Either way that's only talking about the *offensive* skills. People seem to forget the defensive ones and it's not just for magic classes. > > We got skills that completely nullify *any* ballistic weapon. An army on foot would just use projectile destruction/absorption and be completely immune to tanks. Not to mention reflection, haha. > > But then again why even go as far as conventional warfare... I am pretty sure permanently invisible people that just pop up and instantly kill someone then go back to being permanently invisible renders secret manufacturing and leadership moot. True enough. Personally, I consider it pretty clear that the spell called 'meteor shower' isn't calling actual meteors, but is a branch of fire magic, maybe with a bit of earth magic mixed in, that is similar enough to be given the name. Heck, the GW2 'Meteor Shower' is probably closer to the GW1 'Rain of Fire' in how it's actually used, but if you look at the early pre-release skill videos Meteor Shower used to have the knockdown, hence the name. Either way, you seem to need something like the Searing Cauldron to _actually_ generate the level of destruction that a bombardment of meteorites would generate. And yeah, the defensive skills have been a large part of my discussion with Psientist. The presence of anti-projectile magic is going to make projectile weapons a lot less likely to take over altogether. On the other hand, such fields might not actually be as impenetrable as they're depicted in-game: it's possible that while they're fairly effective against small arms, heavier projectiles will go right through them. Similar comments apply to permanent invisibility: in most cases, I don't think it's actually supposed to represent perfect invisibility that can only be broken by specific means, but what we see is a combination of ArenaNet wanting stealth to be relevant in combat and the Guild Wars 2 engine not being designed to handle a realistic approach to stealth, so what we get is brief periods of invisibility (unless multiple skills and effects get stacked together so that you can maintain stealth long enough for those skills to recharge) that can allow setting up an attack. Even if it is genuine invisibility, though, we know there are magics and technologies that can break it, so they'd be used to protect important figures.

> @"Jski.6180" said: > They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made. That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released. Largely because it hasn't needed them. The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for _all_ professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

> @"ArktoCZ.5837" said: > > @"Kondor.2904" said: > > Guardian. :) > > Is it really easy class? Some people I met during leveling were unsatisfied by its low hp pool/squishiness, while being heavy armor class on top > Depends on what you mean by 'really easy'. Warrior, necromancer, and ranger are easier right off the bat (and necromancer stays that way), but core warrior and ranger mechanics can risk lulling you into a false sense of security: they have a high base level of survivability, so in a lot of fights you'll feel like you're just not being threatened at all, but when the chips go down, they often don't have anything left in the tank to survive. Guardian requires playing a bit more actively because of that low health pool, but if you bring defensive utilities and/or weapons while you're learning rather than going all-in on offensive skills, when things to turn south you have a better chance of being able to recover than a warrior or ranger in that situation. In my experience, anyway. To put things in context, back around release, my girlfriend at the time started out with thief, didn't like it because she was finding it too hard to survive, and switched to guardian and found that perfectly fine. You could probably get away with warrior or ranger. The main concern I'd have with warrior is its reliance on banners - on the other hand, though, if she really just wants to faceroll, bannerslaves don't have complex rotations. For rangers, the main concern is acceptance in zergs (but then, worst case scenario they can't stop you if you just want to follow along and pewpew) and that playing support on ranger largely means Druid and that can be a PITA to learn. That said, if she's a faceroll-type player you probably wouldn't be looking to slot her into a support role anyway, so that aspect might not be a big deal.

I think it is valid to consider all of the minor specs when assessing an elite, but you _also_ need to do what a lot of people forget and _remember that one of the things you give up is a core traitline._ That's hard to directly analyze because you can't predict _which_ core traitline would have otherwise been taken in its place, but for some professions it is quite significant. If one is trying to be objective, I'd make the following adjustments: > @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said: > List of Currently Existing Tradeoffs: > -------------------------------------------- > **Tempest:** | **Gain:** Overloads **Loss:** Increased CD on attunement swaps for Overloads This isn't a tradeoff - or rather, it's not a tradeoff of taking Tempest. Nothing stops you from playing a Tempest exactly how you'd play a regular Elementalist. Overloads give you an additional option, and the increased CD is a tradeoff _for using that option_, but is not a tradeoff for taking Tempest. You can always choose not to overload and therefore not to suffer the increased CD. > **Firebrand:** | **Gain:** Tomes with lots of additional skills **Loss:** Tomes have increased CD's compared to core virtues. Also lose instant activation of virtues. How important that is is subjective, but it IS something you give up. > **Scrapper:** | **Gain:** Barrier on damage **Loss:** -180 Vitality Also lose having an F5 based on your elite skill in exchange for the function gyro. > > Elite Specs without Tradeoffs or Unbalanced Tradeoffs: > **Dragonhunter:** | **Gain:** F1 and F2 do more than core does at the same CD. **Loss:** F3 has a longer CD than core. (2-1) As commented above, they lose instant activation of virtues. The value of that is subjective, but while DH virtues are flashy, losing the ability to activate virtues while doing something else does hurt occasionally. > **Holosmith:** | ~~You can overheat~~ Just kidding, no tradeoff. (1-0) Like Scrapper, you lose having an F5 based on your elite skill. > **Harold:** | **Gain:** 10% Max health for being Harold. F2 skill for 5 Legends. **Loss:** Core rev's F2 skill for 4 legends.(2-0) Even using a simplistic points-based model, I'd call this 2-1 rather than 2-0. Any given build still only has two F2 skills available, and giving up a 25 energy boost skill is significant... although Ancient Echo is probably still a little weaker overall. > **Renegod:** | No tradeoff. (1-0) More that you give up one skill in order to gain three. In practice, you're giving up a skill that grants you energy that you could use for other skills, in exchange for three skills that cost energy.

Yeah, guardian is probably the best bet there: Mesmer, thief, and to an extent revenant are all fairly 'unstable' classes balance-wise, in my experience. What works one year might be nerfed or reworked out of existence the next. Ranger, thief, and mesmer are all not really all that accepted in wvw zergs. Engineer, elementalist, thief, and to a degree mesmer are all fairly 'advanced' professions that require good reflexes, keeping track of a lot of skills and weapon skill swaps, or otherwise playing at a highly proficient level to get the most out of them... or in some cases, even to survive. Necromancers aren't really liked much in raids/fractals at the moment. Thieves, engineers, and elementalists are in a somewhat unstable position - they're generally DPS classes in PvE, so in raids their presence in raidbuilds can be highly dependent on the state of DPS balance at the time, and for fractals people often prefer builds that bring more than pure DPS due to the tighter party limit. For those three, however, even when they're not _optimal,_ they're usually still _good enough,_ so if they didn't show up in the above categories, this category alone wouldn't be enough to exclude them. Warrior is currently regarded as close to a must-have in high-end PvE, but primarily for the sake of banners. If banners ever got nerfed hard, warriors might be in trouble there. So that pretty much leaves guardians. They're fairly stable balance-wise: there have been a few nerfs, but from a broad PvE and WvW perspective, a build that worked five years ago will probably work now with relatively minor adjustments. Access to Stability keeps them in high demand in wvw zergs. For open world, they're not THE most survivable out there (that title probably goes to necromancers), but they'll hold their own in most cases with good use of their defensive skills. And they have multiple builds that are currently relevant in instanced PvE, so one of them being nerfed is unlikely to knock them out of the meta altogether.

> @"Infusion.7149" said: > P.S. the highlight of the whole franchise was you can put it down to attend to life matters and pick it up again any time. So much this. Had so many arguments back on the day with people who wanted Guild Wars or GW2 to have a traditional gear treadmill. To which my response was generally "if that's what you want, play a game that has it, and let the people who don't enjoy that have their game too." Because personally, I get bored of gear treadmill games REALLY quickly once you get to the stage where you're just grinding to bump up your numbers so you can grind the content that requires those higher numbers.

The primary argument isn't money, it's that in a saturated market, you need to do something different to your competition to stand out, or it's just going to be a question of having one that comes out on top and gobbles up the rest, especially since MMOs have a strong 'having a high existing player base helps get new players' factor. That's what's happened - any MMO that didn't have some distinguishing factor to WoW, eventually lost to WoW. I did a bit of a spot of research into FF14, although it's not really one I've heard about much, and one thing that stuck out to me in that research was that it was stated that characters could swap roles pretty much freely - while its equivalent of classes were limited to specific roles, the _character_ could swap freely between them, and is never limited to just being able to fulfill a similar role. In my mind, this is not all that different to the GW2 principle of professions being able to fulfill multiple roles, but needing to switch builds within the profession to fulfill different roles. The Final Fantasy system avoids the situation where you're blocked out of doing a particular piece of content with a particular character because you have the wrong class by allowing you to switch class. EVE, from memory, also allows for relatively simple role-switching by changing your ship. GW2, while it's not perfect at this, aims to achieve this by giving each profession a high degree of versatility between different builds. It falls short of the 'every profession can fulfill any role' goal, but that's what it's aiming towards. One thing it does succeed at is that all professions can do reasonably well in open world. One of the problems with traditional 'strict trinity, characters are locked to their class and therefore their position in the trinity' systems is that the Designated Support Class is usually in high demand in group play, but a right PITA to level solo. The OP's proposal would pretty much put GW2 in this situation, and given how much of GW2's content is open world or otherwise intended to be played without needing an organised group, I think it would be more likely to kill GW2 than to 'fix' it. Roles exist, but you're _supposed_ to be able to switch roles by switching builds. Roles are determined by build, not by profession. The problem is that this is a principle that hasn't been fully realised yet - there are some professions (guardian, mesmer, ranger, and revenant in particular) where this is true, and others that struggle to achieve anything other than DPS.

> @"Psientist.6437" said: > The Canthan Assassin had two first principles for its design; sequential applications of stabbing and efficient damage mitigation. A thief shield specialty would build on what made the GW1 assassin unique. Perhaps sequential shield skills that build effects? Could any class dual wield shields without looking like a Captain America caricature? Shields could make stealth impossible. That may make it easier to build for powerful and unique shield skills. As much as this may cause eye-rolling from The Greyhawk, given the magical nature of the GW1 assassin's defenses, a focus offhand would probably work better here than a shield, while also being more concealable. It's worth noting, too, that there are a fair few focus designs that look a bit like buckler-sized shields, so someone who wants an authentic swashbuckler look could use one of those.

So, I wanted to do a bit of revision and calculate the effect of doubling the pressure that the chamber can withstand (while also taking a break from the discussion, as it was getting a bit heated): It's probably closest to the work done by adiabatic expansion problem - the process of firing a bullet is probably fast enough that heat loss can be approximated as zero. Increasing the initial pressure in the chamber by a factor X, with all else being equal, would increase the adiabatic constant K by the same factor. For the purpose of this calculation, the energy lost after the projectile leaves the barrel is unimportant - it's going to happen, but the energy imparted is going to be dependent on the volume change (determined by the length of the barrel), not the time the projectile spends within the barrel. I'll spare the exact details of the equation, but suffice it to say that if you increase K by a factor of X, you're also going to increase the work done by the same factor. Not all of the work done is going to be imparted to the projectile as kinetic energy. Some of it is going to go towards imparting energy to the air outside the barrel, and some of it is going to go towards producing a kick. The first is probably fairly negligible. The second will depend on how the conservation of momentum equations work out, which is dependent on the weight of the gun and, if the gun is well braced, the weight of the object that it's braced against, but it's likely that this will also be negligible. So, to an approximation, increasing the chamber pressure by a factor of X will increase the kinetic energy by a factor of X. However, increasing the kinetic energy by a factor of X does not necessarily mean increasing the armour penetration capability by the same factor. Momentum would only be increased by the square root of X. Now, I've never done the physics of armour penetration, so while I know that momentum helps determine whether the kinetic energy is likely to be directed into the target rather than going somewhere else (like creating noise, heat, deforming the projectile, or even just bouncing off), I'm not confident in claiming that armour penetration capability is _precisely_ proportional to momentum. So it's going to be increased by a factor between sqrt(X) and X. Increasing the ability of the armour to resist pressure by X, on the other hand, is going to increase the armour's ability to resist penetration by X, again with all else remaining equal. (I _think,_ from what you've been saying, you've recognised the influence of momentum - keeping in mind that increasing kinetic energy will also necessarily involve increasing momentum as long as the projectile mass is kept the same, just not by the same factor. Note that against soft targets, kinetic energy _is_ going to be more or less proportional to damage potential: once the skin has been penetrated, it doesn't matter if any further kinetic energy transfer is directed straight ahead or in other directions. Sometimes, in fact, against soft targets, it's good for the bullet to have a low momentum/kinetic energy ratio, so that more of the kinetic energy is transferred to the target rather than having the projectile come out the other side of the target.) That said, I think there's still a lot that's being approximated out by using these ideal equations. Over the distances we're likely talking about, air resistance is probably negligible. Friction of the gun barrel I'm not sure about - a spot of quick research, however, indicates that it is a factor. One thing I did notice in a spot of research was that firing a lighter bullet from the same gun usually has lower muzzle energy, which the above analysis certainly would not predict - I don't know if this is because lighter bullets are often used with a smaller charge or whether there is some inefficiency in the system that means that lighter bullets don't receive as much energy that isn't accounted for above. Doing a bit more research on internal ballistics, however, another flaw in the above analysis is that it assumes that ignition of the propellant is instantaneous, when that's not a good assumption. Generally, the bullet starts moving before the maximum pressure is reached. A lighter bullet is going to start moving faster, increasing the amount of work that is done before peak pressure is reached, and therefore decreasing the total energy imparted onto the projectile. I don't have the equations to calculate this effect - it'd probably be complicated enough to require a simulation, or at least more time spent with paper and pen than I'd be willing to dedicate to a forum discussion, to work it out. From the material I've found, slow burning propellant is actually a good thing - the ideal scenario is for the propellant to continue burning until just before the projectile emerges from the barrel. Which kind of kills a lot of the above discussion, if Tyrians have access to modern propellants. Black powder, however, burns relatively rapidly, and I think it's implied that this is still what Tyrians are mostly using. So I _think_ the analysis above isn't too bad if we're still dealing with black powder, but using black powder does mean that we're not going to be seeing the performance of modern firearms. The big assumption, though, is that chamber strength _is_ an important limiting factor in gun design. From the research I've done, though, that doesn't seem to be the case. Before modern internal ballistics, guns were tested to be able to handle a certain amount of overcharge, so they're not using the full pressure resistance of the chamber, although a higher pressure resistance might still have encouraged them to use more propellant while maintaining the same tolerances. One limitation that I have come across, which might be the reason why lighter projectiles would be given smaller propellant charges, is friction heating the projectile and causing it to melt within the barrel, thereby damaging the barrel by depositing residue inside the barrel. This seems to be a large part of the reason why modern projectiles are often jacketed in copper alloy: copper is a relatively soft metal with a high melting point, which minimises the possibility of damaging the barrel. All else being equal, the faster the projectile is within the barrel, the hotter it will get, so this sets a limit on how fast the projectile could be moving. The big breakthrough, therefore, would be a jacket material which has a higher melting point but which is still soft enough not to damage the barrel. As far as I know, there are no Tyrian metals that have these properties, although I do note that if darksteel, mithril, and so on are harder than steel, this could allow for the use of jacket materials that are harder than copper. Not sure off the top of my head which if any real-world materials might slot in here. So, the full analysis is that increasing the pressure resistance of the chamber and barrel _probably_ doesn't result in a proportional increase in armour penetration, while increasing the pressure resistance of armour _does._ On the concept of mithril weapons: I don't think there's anything to contradict the idea that mithril in GW2 follows the assumptions of other fantasy settings of being a lighter material. The reason for this is that there are a lot of weapons in GW2 that are _ridiculously_ large if compared to historical examples - particularly greatswords, hammers, axes, and maces. For comparison, the Krytan and Gallant sets are some of the most realistic, but even then, the hammer and axe are quite a bit bigger than historical examples. Now, if you imagine that they're being made of a material lighter than steel, than suddenly all those ridiculously oversized weapons start to make sense: not only can they afford to be bigger, they HAVE to be in order to maintain the same striking power. When it comes to the effect of magic: The idea that throwing up a projectile blocking field hurts both sides equally depends on exactly how the fields operate. If it's just a simple barrier, that would be true... but they don't seem to be. With a few exceptions, for instance, people seem to be able to pass through them freely. One possible interpretation is that the field provides magic that pushes projectiles in a particular direction, making them directional. A Wall of Reflection, therefore, might be able to be cast so that it reflects bullets coming from one side (presumably the direction of the enemy), while _accelerating_ bullets coming from the other side (presumably the direction of the caster and their allies). Even if we assume that the fields are completely indiscriminate, however, I think their presence is going to encourage the use of melee weapons. For instance, if we imagine a hypothetical trench warfare situation, if you want to attack the other guy's trenches, laying down a whole lot of projectile countermeasures so you can cross no-man's-land safely is a pretty good move. Once you get into the other guy's trenches, melee weapons are actually a pretty decent option - one thing that isn't really represented in game is that it's hard to use a rifle effectively when someone's in your face with a bayonet, sword, or improvised mace (fairly common for trench fighting in WW1). Ranged weapons are still going to be nice to have, to be sure - you'd rather have them than not have them - but you wouldn't be able to rule out melee weapons entirely. It's also worth noting that we have some pretty strong indications that high-grade armour is enchanted, and if spells available seem to indicate that magic is better at protecting against ranged combat than melee combat, this might also be applicable to magic armour. Work some anti-projectile magic into the armour, and the result might well be armour that keeps up against projectiles, while still being somewhat vulnerable to melee weapons. (On the side discussion regarding naval combat - I think the thing you're missing is that bigger ships can have bigger engines. In practice, it actually often worked out that a bigger ship was _faster_ than a smaller ship made with the same technology, if it wasn't also weighed down with extra armour or other equipment. So you absolutely could (and did) have torpedo boat destroyers that could be faster, bigger, tougher, and better armed (but more expensive) than the torpedo boats they hunt. For instance, if you look at post-WW2 destroyers and frigates, destroyers of the same generation are usually faster than the frigates, and the last generation of battleships were in about the same ballpark as modern ships at around 30 knots. Range is certainly important in naval combat, and that's why aircraft carriers replaced battleships - but if aircraft carriers didn't exist, we'd probably have missile-armed battleships instead, like the refitted Iowa class. Economically, though, there's no value in building and maintaining a battleship as a gun and missile platform when the same resources could go into an aircraft carrier. The Iowas remained in service for a while for extremely specialist roles, but only because they already existed.) > @"Dawdler.8521" said: > > @"draxynnic.3719" said: > > What I suspect would _actually_ revolutionise Tyrian warfare is basically similar to what happened in the real world: mechanised warfare. At the moment, war vehicles are at a roughly WW1 level of use: they're present, but infantry still does most of the work. Even now, though, vehicles make weapons and pieces of magitech that are too big to be practical to be used by an infantry soldier actually useful in mobile warfare. With a bit of refinement and reconsideration of tactics, though, this could lead to a paradigm shift similar to that which occurred with WW2. > > Tank General: *"We are bringing 1000 tanks into battle to drive a wedge through the enemy lines and take the enemy city!"* > Elementalist: *"The city is gone, I just meteor showered it"* > Tank General: *"... well we still got lots of infantry to deal with!"* > Elementalist: *"Died from the same meteor shower."* > Tank General: *"... enemy tanks?* > Elementalist: *"Who the kitten even brings tanks to a battle where a single person can literally pull meteors from the sky?"* > Tank General: *":("* We can see that the 'meteor showers' called down by a single person just aren't that powerful, though. What you COULD do, however, is mount a Searing Cauldron on a tank so it has more mobility. That said, I do get the impression that Searing Cauldrons are a bit of a fantasy nuke - they require a lot of magical power to make (it's strongly implied that they involved drawing on Kralkatorrik's power, and even then it took a couple of centuries between the Flame Legion meeting the titans and the Searing happening), so it might not be feasible to just mass-produce Searing Cauldrons.

> @"The Greyhawk.9107" said: > How about a lead bullet with a mithril jacket? Hrrrmn. The approach would probably be to have a lead bullet with a mithril tip, so you've got the momentum of the lead behind a hardened penetrator. I wouldn't expect it to outperform darksteel, however, since what we know of darksteel seems to indicate that it's pretty much the Tyrian equivalent of tungsten carbide: high density (since it's refined from platinum ore - which could mean other platinum-group metals, but the lightest of those is still denser than steel) but hard enough to serve for military purposes. In fact, per unit volume, it's possible that darksteel is tougher than mithril - platinum and platinum-group metals are between 50% and over 200% heavier than steel, so to be an upgrade over steel for the purposes of armour design, it'd need to remain tougher than steel while being in thinner plates in order to keep the weight comparable. Mithril, on the other hand, you can afford to make thicker than equivalent steel armour, because it's lighter. Which means that a darksteel projectile of a certain caliber is probably not just significantly heavier than a mithril projectile of the same caliber, it might also be more resistant to shattering or deformation. So if there is a weakness in the argument, it might well be that while darksteel is a step down from mithril for the purpose of making armour and weapons, it could be pretty much exactly what you want for armour-piercing projectiles.

> @"Infusion.7149" said: > > @"draxynnic.3719" said: > > > @"Infusion.7149" said: > > > Old chrono distortion needed much more timing and it isn't balanced overall in that sense. > > > > I think the problem ArenaNet had with party distortion is that it protected against skills that were unblockable and undodgeable, allowing the group to flat-out ignore some mechanics. I think ArenaNet is happy with the mesmer themselves avoiding this mechanic, but not the whole party. > > > > Aegis only allows blocking attacks that ArenaNet intended to be blockable, so it's more controllable from their perspective. > That hasn't been relevant ever since distortion was changed to be on the mesmer only. > https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Inspiring_Distortion > December 12, **2017**: _Updated this trait to now grant Aegis to allies instead of distortion_ _That's my point._ ArenaNet didn't want people bypassing unblockable mechanics for entire subsquads through Distortion, so they changed it to Aegis instead, which doesn't help against unblockables. Guardians still have more aegis (since that's kinda their thing) but at least it isn't stopping unblockables.

[This]( ) might be a useful resource for the build, especially if you're looking to solo HoT hero points and other intended-for-groups challenges. I think what you're asking for is what a lot of people are asking for. Herald and power renegade can both do fairly well in open world, but for power DPS in raids they need something that's more selfish and less self-sufficient.

> @"Noh.5092" said: > > FF14, WOW, DOFUS, even EVE in a weird fleet logi way all are doing well. Experimental games like GW2, Wakfu aren't. Wakfu is in fact joked as a single player mmo now, that's how low pop it is, I know that it's rough to hear the opinion that GW2 isn't doing well but hear me out, it's not thriving; So you can name a few that survived. If I went through my memory, though, I could name a few that didn't, some with significant resources and IP behind them, and there are probably even more that I've forgotten. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 maintain a fairly strong core that don't drift to those other MMOs _because_ of the things that the franchise does differently. As for Guild Wars 2 not doing so well at the moment... I don't have the figures to hand, but I'm pretty sure a large part of that has to do with the lack of real updates, not due to the lack of a trinity structure. There was a pretty strong feeling going around that Guild Wars 2 was going to be abandoned at the end of Season 4, and as it turns out, that feeling was _justified_ - Season 4 had the strong ending it did largely because ArenaNet wanted to end on a high note if that was going to be the end, and the decision to continue didn't come until afterwards. Nothing kills an MMO faster than the perception that the developers have or soon will abandon it. With respect to WoW - you can say Blizzard earned it, because their war chest was built by the successes of Diablo and the RTS games, but the truth of the matter is that Blizzard went into WoW with more resources to throw at the project than any other MMO developer. Part of the way they use that is that if another MMO comes up with something that can be incorporated into WoW, that's what Blizzard does, often iterated to a better state than the developer who came up with the idea could achieve. The only way to survive is to offer something that WoW doesn't. EVE, for instance, has a very different setting based around spaceships, and while it may have a trinity-like mechanic, it has a very different gameplay to WoW.

> @"Psientist.6437" said: > > The bit about "bullets" vs "shells" is pendantics. The statement to get a bigger bullet is wrong because bigger bullets are called shells?!?!? Aircraft carriers contributed to the doom for battleships because they could use range. Airplanes are a type of projectile weapon platform. Because, as it turns out, some things are bulletproof. Some things have also been shellproof, although there's a point at which putting more armour on something becomes impractical. On the other hand, there's a point to which "build a bigger gun" also becomes impractical, _especially_ when talking about small arms fire. Which is, essentially, where I think the line between a machinegun and an automatic cannon is drawn: a machinegun can be realistically carried around and used by a single person, even if it starts to get pretty awkward with heavy machine guns. Cannons can't. So the line between bullets and shells is more or less the line between small arms and heavier weapons. Your statement to get a bigger bullet is essentially pushing something from being an infantry weapon to being a weapon for vehicles and fixed emplacements. As for the aircraft carrier vs missile boat distinction - yeah, the advantage of aircraft carriers is range, but the point there was that if it wasn't for aircraft carriers, the powerful navies of the worlds would still have capital ships. They'd just be big floating missile batteries that could carry bigger and longer-range missiles, and more of them, than their smaller counterparts. As it happens, though, once a ship gets big enough to be an aircraft carrier, it's more valuable as an aircraft carrier than as a battleship, missile-armed or not. > > > > > > > > > > An extreme example, but it shows the folly of absolute statements. "Bullet proofed" historical armour wouldn't necessarily hold up to every bullet. And even if it did, non-penetrating hits could certainly be enough to knock you around. But no armour was expected to be perfect - just good enough that you're better off with it than without it. And having materials that are as far above steel as steel is above bronze is going to _substantially_ delay the point at which guns outmatch armour to the point where armour stops being worth wearing. Perhaps indefinitely - the "firepower always outmatches armour in the end" mantra is a popular one, and it's true if you're thinking about armour rendering you invulnerable instead of simply _less_ vulnerable than you'd be without it, but historically the period during which personal body armour beyond helmets was abandoned was pretty short, it's just exaggerated in people's minds because it was most of last century. It wasn't until WW1 that the cuirass was completely abandoned, and body armour has been undergoing a renaissance in recent decades - in part because you don't need as much armour to protect against shrapnel, but in part because, guess what? Advanced materials! And when you get down to it, kevlar isn't actually THAT big of a step up from steel in terms of the ratio of its protective qualities versus weight - it's just that steel had been the best we had until then. I don't think Tyrians will be abandoning their mithril, orichalcum, or deldrimor steel armour any time soon. Maybe people who can only afford steel armour would also ditch it like in real life, but mithril in Tyria seems to be pretty common for an exotic fantastical metal. > > > > > > > So, historically, as projectiles, guns and explosives evolved, armor offered less or niche protection. The change takes time. > > > > Because armour hit a hard block to its evolution around the 15th century. They'd pretty much hit the limit of what could be achieved with the materials they had at the time, within the weight that a soldier could bear and still be an effective fighter, while guns continued to evolve. With the advent of modern materials, personal body armour is starting to work its way back into a modern soldier's equipment, so the period where personal body armour was virtually nonexistent seems to be over, at least when it comes to armies of advanced nations. If medieval armoursmiths had a material that was as far in advance of steel as steel is from bronze, I'm pretty sure that armour would never have been dropped altogether. > > > > > > > Melee weapons, meanwhile, benefit from advanced materials just as armour does. Lighter materials aren't as much as an advantage for weapons since with weapons it's important to have a certain degree of weight to the blow, but that can be compensated for by simply making the weapon _bigger._ Firearms, on the other hand, are more complicated - stronger breeches would certainly _help,_ but it's not such a direct conversion of better materials = better weapons. > > > > > > > Better materials directly translate to better gun weapon platforms just as easily as armor and melee weapons. We wouldn't have the historical evidence of firepower gradually and persistently out classing armor and melee if what you say is true. > > > > Not really, because the period where that transition happened was a period where materials technology was pretty much stalled. There _were_ metallurgical improvements during the period, particularly once the Industrial Revolution started (one of the key parts of the Industrial Revolution was finding a way to mass-produce high-quality steel). Broadly speaking, the same metals were being used in the Napoleonic Wars as were being used in the Hundred Years War. For armour and melee weapons, quality is very dependent on materials: there's not much you could realistically do to improve on high-grade 15th-century full plate without making it out of a better material. For guns, there's a lot more that goes into it - quality of the propellant, design of the breech chamber, ammunition type, presence or absence of rifling on the barrel, and so on. Sure, making the breech out of a stronger material means they can get a more powerful shot out of the simple expedient of using more propellant... but even that only helps so far if you haven't figured out how to get the propellant to ignite in a manner that ensures you actually get full usage of the energy released. Now, let's look at gun technology in Tyria. It's a bit anachronistically all over the place, but we see a mix of flintlocks, revolver mechanisms, a couple of simple gatlings, and a few more exotic pieces. That puts the level available to most people at around the early to mid 1800s. There's still a long way to go to get to modern firearms, and a mithril breech just isn't going to fully close that gap. > > > > Now, to be clear on this, because there seems to be some misunderstanding here: _This could certainly change._ For the purpose of this discussion I'm considering the situation as it stands at the 'present day' of Tyria, circa Thirteen Thirty-Mumble AE. Could it change in another century ago? Certainly. Probably will, in fact. Which way, however, is hard to predict, since advances in gun design might also be matched by improvement in magic, further improvement in armour and melee weapon materials, and so on. We could see a future Tyria go anywhere from something similar to real-world battlefields to a Dune-like situation where melee weapons are back to being what's important because everyone has personal shield bubbles. > > If we to drill down into this, the rapid emergence of many gun types partially defeats your argument. Thyrian technology obviously evolves very quickly. Thyrians have had access to Mithril and such materials for a while. There are also many natural projectile users. Thyrian armor tech should already be near maturity. Maybe it is nearing maturity. Maybe there'll be some other breakthrough that we can't predict. Maybe it's _already strong enough_ - how does mithril, let alone even more advanced Tyrian metals, compare to kevlar? > > > > > > > To address a couple of specific points: > > > > > > > > > @"Psientist.6437" said: > > > > > > > > > > With projectiles, speed and mass are more important than hardness. Get a marshmallow going fast enough and it could destroy the Moon. Tyrian explosive technology may be in its infancy but we shouldn't expect that to last. Your assumptions about what bullets are made of are just assumptions and your focus on material is inaccurate. Why wouldn't there be mithril bullets? > > > > > > > > I've answered why there wouldn't be mithril bullets. In fact, you clearly haven't thought it through, but _you've_ answered it. Speed and mass are what's important with projectiles (well... not directly, but I'll get to that in a moment), and while we don't have details on the properties of Tyria's fantastical metals, mithril in pretty much every other setting where it appears, going back to Tolkein, is described as being stronger _and lighter_ than steel (let alone heavier metals that are often preferred for projectiles). It's basically fancy super-titanium. > > > > > > > > Now, you might say that this means it goes faster with the same propellant, and that's true, but now it's that moment I referred to. Whatever charge you have firing the bullet is going to impart a certain amount of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. Momentum, on the other hand, is what broadly determines how hard a projectile is to stop, and that's just straight mass times velocity. **If you fire a lighter bullet with the same kinetic energy, more of that kinetic energy equation is being taken up by velocity, which means that the momentum of the projectile is less.** Density is also important both for resisting air resistance and for punching through armour, since if the bullet has a wider cross-section, it needs to displace that much more armour to punch through (and getting extra mass by making the bullet longer only goes so far before it starts creating other problems). So for armour, you want a material that's light but strong. For bullets, you want a material with a high density, since you want the frontal cross-section of the bullet to be as small as reasonably practical but to squeeze as much mass (and therefore momentum) into that cross-section as possible. > > > > > > Your argument here gets away from itself. If a massive projectile and a light projectile have the same momentum, the light one will have a lot more kinetic energy. If a light projectile and a heavy one have the same velocity, the heavy one has more kinetic energy. The bolded is a mess. You don't come anywhere close to making an argument against mithril bullets. > > > > Just asking out of curiosity, how many physics degrees do you have? > > In general, flashing the potential of a physics degree for a discussion of something as simple as momentum and kinetic energy is a good indicator that the degree doesn't exist. Hahahah. See, the physics of guns isn't my specialty (wasn't a course that was offered, that's something you're really only likely to go into if you specialise in gun manufacture - there might have been some in fluid flows but what I recall of that course focused more on the dynamics of jet engines), so I was worried that you might actually know something on the subject rather than bullcatting. Then you claimed that firing a lighter bullet with the same momentum was a simply matter of, well, firing it out with the same momentum. So, even if I'm lying, basic physics seems to be more than you know. Yeah, the maths is pretty basic physics. But it's apparently basic physics that you don't know. The maths for calculating the effect of a collision are a little more advanced, but to summarise - broadly speaking, in a direct collision, the more momentum, the more of that energy is likely to transfer into the target. In simple particle-particle collisions, lighter particles with high kinetic energy usually just ricochet with relatively little influence on the heavy particle (unless it's a photon striking with just the right energy to be absorbed). On the macroscopic scale, it's more complicated, but high kinetic energy and low momentum usually results in the kinetic energy going into heat, sound, possibly ricocheting or the projectile fragmenting, rather than into punching into the target. > > > Mine's a little rusty, but I remember enough of projectile dynamics that if you fire projectiles of different masses out of the same gun with the same propellant, than assuming no changes in efficiency, they'll all be shot out with the same kinetic energy, as the chemical energy of the propellant is transferred into the kinetic energy of the projectile. Now, the "no changes in efficiency" is a pretty rough assumption, but broadly speaking, you can't just say "fire the lighter bullet with the same momentum". > > > > So let's do some maths. Let's start with the assumption of a 10g projectile being fired with 1kJ of energy. Solve for energy: > > > > 1000J=(0.01kg*v^2)/2 > > 2000J/0.01kg = v^2 = 200000 > > v = sqrt(200000) = 447m/s > > P = 0.01*447 = 4.47kgm/s > > > > Now, if we half the mass of the bullet (and skip a few steps): > > > > 2000J/0.005kg = 400000 > > v = 632m/2 > > P = 0.005*632 = 3.16kgm/s > > > > Notable drop in momentum there. (Note that momentum is still conserved either way - the first case would have a higher recoil.) In order for the lighter bullet to be fired out with greater momentum, it would need to be fired out with _greater_ kinetic energy. While, from the research I've done, the opposite tends to be true: for a given gun, heavier projectiles leave the muzzle with higher kinetic energy, probably due to limits on just how hard the projectile can be pushed before it leaves the barrel. > > > > Of course, APDS and APCR does work on the principle of getting a higher velocity with a lighter projectile - but this is because APDS also has a narrower, high-density penetrator, so the momentum _per unit area_ is higher. Higher velocity projectiles also have the issue that they lose velocity more rapidly due to air resistance, so they lose penetrative power more rapidly over long range. > > > > Which is why, broadly speaking, the penetrating portion of a bullet or shell has generally been made of denser materials as technology advanced, working up to depleted uranium (and generally tungsten alloys for nations that prefer not to work with hazardous material). Mithril, if its properties are similar to other fantasy universes, would not be suitable for the penetrating portion of a projectile. Advanced projectile designs _might_ use mithril for some components, but there's no evidence that Tyrians have developed AP ammunition more advanced than "a slug of the heaviest hard metal you can find". Maybe in a century or two. But not now. > > Why would it take a century or two? The evidence that Thyrians are limited to simple slugs doesn't exist. We see truly amazing projectile effects from all classes that couldn't be produced by simple slugs. Your evidence for lore is evidence of game mechanics designed to create balance. Simple slugs _for armour piercing purposes._ Yeah, explosive, poison-bearing, incendiary, and similar types of rounds existed. These are all relatively primitive - they were around during World War 1 at the latest. There's also weird stuff like lightning shot, but that can be attributed to having access to materials with magical properties Advanced AP rounds like APCR, ABDS, and HEAT didn't really start showing up until World War 2. There's no evidence Tyrians have developed anything like that. Yet. > > Your math is right but what does it have to with stronger Mithril breeches and the potential to use more propellant? Why wouldn't metallurgists who can already work mithril into armor and weapons not be able to shape mithril into guns immediately at the invention of guns? Same applies to projectiles. You can do simple math but your overall logic doesn't work. The math was to show a simple demonstration that using a lighter projectile with the same propellant means losing momentum. I've always acknowledged that stronger breeches could improve performance, but I think you're exaggerating by how much. Increasing the ability of the breech to resist pressure does not directly translate into a proportional increase in the momentum applied to the target - there are various inefficiencies that increase as the amount of propellant is scaled up that prevent this. The most visible - literally - is that a lot of the energy is lost when the bullet leaves the barrel - this is largely why longer-barrel guns have better performance. If the bullet is leaving the gun faster (and this applies to lighter bullets as well as to using more propellant, incidentally, so while my mats above assumed that the lighter bullet goes out with the same kinetic energy of the heavier bullet, the truth is that the lighter bullet likely actually leaves the barrel with _less_ energy), the gas from the propellant escapes faster and less of the total energy from the propellant has gone into driving the bullet. There are also some physical limits as well - the bullet is never going to be accelerated faster than the gas pushing it along (and as it approaches that velocity, the amount of additional work done on the bullet by the expanding gas is going to start dropping off) and there's substantial resistance to accelerating anything beyond the speed of sound and once you do, a lot of kinetic energy starts being bled off in the form of shockwaves and the projectile will quickly decelerate back to below the sound barrier if it doesn't have some means of replacing that lost kinetic energy. I'm not sure how much these limits apply to firearms (although I do note that the calculations above suggest muzzle velocities above Mach 1), but they do provide additional sources of inefficiencies. The end result is that if you make the breech and barrel out of a more advanced material that resists pressure better, say 50% better, and take advantage of that by using 50% more propellant, you're not going to get 50% better performance. I don't know how much of a drop-off there'll be, but there'll be _some._ Conversely, however, if you make armour out of a material that resists pressure 50% better, than it IS going to perform 50% better, because the effectiveness of armour is pretty much _defined_ by its ability to resist pressure. > > > > > > > > > Again, we don't know the properties of Tyrian metals, but for darksteel and mithril, we can make educated guesses. Mithril is pretty consistently presented in fantasy where it appears as being lighter than steel, so it probably makes for an inferior projectile to steel (let alone copper, lead, and the like). Darksteel appears to be an alloy of platinum or some other metal found in platinum ores such as iridium, which would give a density similar to tungsten and lead. Orichalcum and Deldrimor steel we don't really have much to go on in terms of density - being even better for armour means it's probably at least not significantly _heavier_ than mithril, though, and even if it was, both seem to be materials that are rare and expensive enough that you wouldn't want to be making every bullet out of it. Maybe you'd see the odd specialist armour-piercing round made out of it, similar to how APCR/HVAP was used in WW2 (namely, generally being issued in small amounts with orders to only use them when regular AP wouldn't cut it). > > > > > > > > Regarding the marshmallow example: Technically true, but we're clearly not looking at cee-fractional projectiles in Tyria. Broadly speaking, they seem to be similar velocities to real-world projectiles of about a century ago, maybe even a little bit slower. > > > > > > > > Do you mean c-fractional? I don't see why we couldn't see projectiles accelerated to relativistic speeds with magic. True we don't see it, but the reasons are arbitrary. If magic force fields can redirect or absorb kinetic energy then they should be able to add it as well. > > > > I've seen it spelled both ways. c-fractional is more technically correct, but I thought cee-fractional might be more recognisable to some sci-fi readers. > > > > Projectiles accelerated to relativistic speeds by magic might be possible, but like you say, _we don't see it._ I'm discussing from the perspective of what's in Tyria _now_, not what might hypothetically show up in the future. > > > > > > > > We've been focusing on combat between institutions and heroes. Perhaps guns would have a bigger impact on the lives of the magic poor. > > > > > > > > Perhaps, but where's the magic poor? Human armies have generally been presented as having magic-users as a significant minority _at the very least._ The White Mantle I'd consider an outlier (they essentially have a two-tier system, with spellcasters being channeled into the White Mantle proper leaving bandit forces relatively magic-poor), but you can look at Ascalonian ghost armies or several human factions in GW1 to get a broad idea of how common spellcasters are among human armies. **Technology is generally presented as being an equalising factor when a relatively magic-poor group (such as the legions after the overthrow of the Flame Legion) are having to go up against someone stronger in magic... and they still use melee troops because their _enemies_ aren't magic-poor.** > > > > > > > We see the bodies of the magic poor pile up everyday. Guns would eventually replace bows and melee weapons among the magic poor. To the bolded; your logic has magic poor melee attacking magic enriched melee and ranged?!?!? Because officer logic I guess. > > > > > > > There is a degree to which engineers and guns in general appear to be more common among magic-poor factions, such as the non-Flame charr and outlaw groups such as bandits and Separatists (and the latter are probably motivated by stealing charr munitions). But if we're talking large-scale warfare... thus far, most known cases of large-scale warfare have had at least one magic-rich side, whether it's humans versus charr or the Pact versus dragon minions. Talking about magic-poor battles is like talking about real-world modern warfare without air power: sure, it _can_ happen between really poor countries or between factions in a civil war, but if you're talking about major power conflict, _it's going to be there._ > > > > > > Most of the magic poor aren't soldiers but still need weapons to defend themselves. Guns would change their lives. I imagine there would be two levels of combat for any battlefield, the magic poor and magic enriched tiers. The magic poor would use the most powerful ranged weapons they could. Why would they want to engage magic enriched melee in close combat? In general, I think you are confusing combat mechanics designed to limit the natural advantages of ranged weapon platforms and narrative designed to create and reinforce class distinctiveness for realistic Tyrian combat lore. Which isn't a big deal. > > > > > > > > I'm thinking of battlefield scenarios here, where it's reasonable to consider that projectile countermeasures may be used. If you've got a soldier who doesn't use magic, then yeah, giving them a gun is a good idea. We actually see this with most 'magic poor' professions - warriors, engineers, even thieves (which have magic, but generally don't use it as attack spells) all use guns, while among spellcaster professions all we have so far is mesmers using offhand pistols. Problem is that if a few projectile-blocking or, worse, projectile-_reflecting_ fields go up, those guns could become useless at best and dangerous to their users at worst. So you give your troops the best ranged weapons you can afford... but you ALSO give them the best melee weapons you can afford so that your troops aren't completely helpless when some cat-hole of a mesmer blinks into the middle of them while invisible, pops a Feedback bubble, and portals in that squad of Guardians. > > > In the context of lore, guns make shields for melee essential. In the context of large scale combat, that is huge. Guns would displace all unsupported magic poor and support would have to include shields. All shields below a threshold would also be displaced. The broad strokes of Thyrian combat is portrayed accurately but the role of guns isn't. The portrayal of guns in combat is shaped more by the demand for class balance and distinction. We already see projectile weapon systems that would change the landscape of war more than they are shown. Which, again, is good and necessary. So you'd have soldiers that mostly use guns when their opponents are magic poor, and switch to melee weapons if their opponents have countermeasures (or, as was largely the case pre-guns, their opponents have armour that can resist their projectiles). Your point being? Most significant opponents will have countermeasures. Heck, engineers can make shield generators now (probably by using magical materials as a power source), so the enemy doesn't even have to be spellcaster-heavy. A squad of scrappers with bulwark gyros could mess up projectile-based tactics just as badly, especially if they're also packing rocket boots. Either way, as things stand _at the moment,_ how Tyrian warfare is portrayed makes sense. Armour technology and the existence of projectile countermeasures keeps melee combat relevant, for both the magic-rich and the magic-poor. > @"Psientist.6437" said: > Powerful, natural explosives that the magic poor could create and use, not "guns", would transform Thyrian warfare. In some ways this is an easier story to tell. Magic would suppress the demand for natural explosive technology. The magic enriched would monopolize the supply of explosive technology. As well, material technology and magic enrichment would set a very high threshold for the power of the explosive. Projectiles that don't need natural explosives have already pushed the evolution of defense. Thyrians could build exotic rounds and guns, but guns would be toys or inconsequential at scale until explosive technology evolved past a threshold that magic set very high and long ago. Hrrrmn. I'm sceptical about this too - there's probably a practical limit on the size of explosives that would be practical for infantry to use. What I suspect would _actually_ revolutionise Tyrian warfare is basically similar to what happened in the real world: mechanised warfare. At the moment, war vehicles are at a roughly WW1 level of use: they're present, but infantry still does most of the work. Even now, though, vehicles make weapons and pieces of magitech that are too big to be practical to be used by an infantry soldier actually useful in mobile warfare. With a bit of refinement and reconsideration of tactics, though, this could lead to a paradigm shift similar to that which occurred with WW2. I suspect infantry would still want to carry melee weapons, though. I don't think Tyrian warfare is ever likely to evolve into something quite like ours, because Tyrians have capabilities that we just don't have. Body armour will continue to be used, because material exists that makes it protective enough to be worthwhile while practical enough to be used. Swords will never be phased out entirely, because you have anti-projectile countermeasures and people who can teleport directly into your face from a starting point that's barely in range of most ranged small arms.

> @"Infusion.7149" said: > Old chrono distortion needed much more timing and it isn't balanced overall in that sense. I think the problem ArenaNet had with party distortion is that it protected against skills that were unblockable and undodgeable, allowing the group to flat-out ignore some mechanics. I think ArenaNet is happy with the mesmer themselves avoiding this mechanic, but not the whole party. Aegis only allows blocking attacks that ArenaNet intended to be blockable, so it's more controllable from their perspective.

I presume that 6-7%% is 6-7% across the group? I wouldn't count it out so easily. 6% is 6% more than you had before. Problem with pointing at the firebrand and revenant as 'better' is... do you need healbrand or healgade _specifically_ to get those benefits? Alacren can still drop a strong Soulcleave Summit. Quickness being present in some form is assumed, but can come from a quickbrand or a mesmer rather than a healbrand. Other boons can generally be slotted in if you need them. Better healing and unique toughness boosts... do you really need them? Raids are often something of an 'enough is enough' environment when it comes to healing and durability. How does 400 toughness help meet DPS checks again? Now, for 5-man, spirits are harder to justify, but in 10-man? They're worth it. And they go on druid, because druids provide _enough_ healing, and heal druids give up less for bringing spirits than DPS builds do.

> @"Shroud.2307" said: > I get half way through writing out ideas for _one_ spec and I have to save it for later because I can't keep coming up with reasonable skill Recharges, Radii, Range, effects, etc. Personally, I've always thought that it was better to come up with a basic concept and some ideas of what sort of skills it might have rather than go down to that sort of detail. Even if ArenaNet is inspired by an idea on a forum, they're likely to put their own spin on it rather than just picking up a design from the forum and plugging it into the game as-is. So thinking about precise numbers for things like recharges and the like is getting more into the nitty gritty than it's worth.

@"Infusion.7149" It amuses me that for the rest you've used the profession title, but you've used 'Tempest' for Elementalist. In part because it's not wrong - Tempest _can_ do all of those things, although Weaver can sometimes edge it out in DPS roles and in bunkering.

> @"Psientist.6437" said: > You seem intent on arguing . I agree that magic enriched melee wouldn't become completely obsolete. However your arguments against projectiles are inaccurate and arbitrary. Funny that you say that, since I'm just pointing out that the situation as it currently stands in-game makes sense. Could it change in Tyria's future? Possibly. In fact, if we consider the ANNIHILATOR quests to be canon, it WILL. But as things currently stand, the balance between melee weapons and projectiles is such that melee weapons are still a significant part of warfare. > > > @"draxynnic.3719" said: > > Nothing is bulletproof? Really? Tried firing a .50-caliber (about the largest that I'd say you were talking about 'bullets' rather than shells) at the belt armour of a battleship? > > So get a bigger bullet. Your logic relies on asymmetrical straw-men match ups. Heavily armored battleships were chased from the seas by lighter, faster missile boats that could maintain range. Actually, my logic was pointing out the folly of speaking in absolutes. In discussion of real-world ammunition types, however, the cutoff is about the point at which projectiles start being called "shells" rather than "bullets". The Germans had a 13mm heavy machine gun in WW2, which was slightly bigger than a half-inch. They also had a 15mm automatic cannon, although 20mm cannons were much more common. Certainly, if you get to 20mm, you're definitely in shell territory by modern ordnance terminology. Also, with regard to battleships being chased from the seas by missile boats? No. No no no. Battleships were rendered obsolete by aircraft carriers. For the price of a WW2-era battleship, you could build a WW2-era carrier, and the carrier just offered more bang for longer range. If it was just a matter of missile boats, navies would have responded to them the same way they did to torpedo boats before them - have a slightly heavier class of ship that could chase them off (that's where the term 'destroyer' came from - it used to be short for "torpedo boat destroyer"), and an increasing series of bigger ships until you got to the ships of the line. If it was just about missiles, there'd still be room for big, heavily armoured floating missile batteries that would be the modern equivalent of battleships. We have aircraft carriers because, for the same resource investment, an aircraft carrier is far more capable. > > > > An extreme example, but it shows the folly of absolute statements. "Bullet proofed" historical armour wouldn't necessarily hold up to every bullet. And even if it did, non-penetrating hits could certainly be enough to knock you around. But no armour was expected to be perfect - just good enough that you're better off with it than without it. And having materials that are as far above steel as steel is above bronze is going to _substantially_ delay the point at which guns outmatch armour to the point where armour stops being worth wearing. Perhaps indefinitely - the "firepower always outmatches armour in the end" mantra is a popular one, and it's true if you're thinking about armour rendering you invulnerable instead of simply _less_ vulnerable than you'd be without it, but historically the period during which personal body armour beyond helmets was abandoned was pretty short, it's just exaggerated in people's minds because it was most of last century. It wasn't until WW1 that the cuirass was completely abandoned, and body armour has been undergoing a renaissance in recent decades - in part because you don't need as much armour to protect against shrapnel, but in part because, guess what? Advanced materials! And when you get down to it, kevlar isn't actually THAT big of a step up from steel in terms of the ratio of its protective qualities versus weight - it's just that steel had been the best we had until then. I don't think Tyrians will be abandoning their mithril, orichalcum, or deldrimor steel armour any time soon. Maybe people who can only afford steel armour would also ditch it like in real life, but mithril in Tyria seems to be pretty common for an exotic fantastical metal. > > > So, historically, as projectiles, guns and explosives evolved, armor offered less or niche protection. The change takes time. Because armour hit a hard block to its evolution around the 15th century. They'd pretty much hit the limit of what could be achieved with the materials they had at the time, within the weight that a soldier could bear and still be an effective fighter, while guns continued to evolve. With the advent of modern materials, personal body armour is starting to work its way back into a modern soldier's equipment, so the period where personal body armour was virtually nonexistent seems to be over, at least when it comes to armies of advanced nations. If medieval armoursmiths had a material that was as far in advance of steel as steel is from bronze, I'm pretty sure that armour would never have been dropped altogether. > > > Melee weapons, meanwhile, benefit from advanced materials just as armour does. Lighter materials aren't as much as an advantage for weapons since with weapons it's important to have a certain degree of weight to the blow, but that can be compensated for by simply making the weapon _bigger._ Firearms, on the other hand, are more complicated - stronger breeches would certainly _help,_ but it's not such a direct conversion of better materials = better weapons. > > > Better materials directly translate to better gun weapon platforms just as easily as armor and melee weapons. We wouldn't have the historical evidence of firepower gradually and persistently out classing armor and melee if what you say is true. Not really, because the period where that transition happened was a period where materials technology was pretty much stalled. There _were_ metallurgical improvements during the period, particularly once the Industrial Revolution started (one of the key parts of the Industrial Revolution was finding a way to mass-produce high-quality steel). Broadly speaking, the same metals were being used in the Napoleonic Wars as were being used in the Hundred Years War. For armour and melee weapons, quality is very dependent on materials: there's not much you could realistically do to improve on high-grade 15th-century full plate without making it out of a better material. For guns, there's a lot more that goes into it - quality of the propellant, design of the breech chamber, ammunition type, presence or absence of rifling on the barrel, and so on. Sure, making the breech out of a stronger material means they can get a more powerful shot out of the simple expedient of using more propellant... but even that only helps so far if you haven't figured out how to get the propellant to ignite in a manner that ensures you actually get full usage of the energy released. Now, let's look at gun technology in Tyria. It's a bit anachronistically all over the place, but we see a mix of flintlocks, revolver mechanisms, a couple of simple gatlings, and a few more exotic pieces. That puts the level available to most people at around the early to mid 1800s. There's still a long way to go to get to modern firearms, and a mithril breech just isn't going to fully close that gap. Now, to be clear on this, because there seems to be some misunderstanding here: _This could certainly change._ For the purpose of this discussion I'm considering the situation as it stands at the 'present day' of Tyria, circa Thirteen Thirty-Mumble AE. Could it change in another century ago? Certainly. Probably will, in fact. Which way, however, is hard to predict, since advances in gun design might also be matched by improvement in magic, further improvement in armour and melee weapon materials, and so on. We could see a future Tyria go anywhere from something similar to real-world battlefields to a Dune-like situation where melee weapons are back to being what's important because everyone has personal shield bubbles. > > > To address a couple of specific points: > > > > > @"Psientist.6437" said: > > > > > > With projectiles, speed and mass are more important than hardness. Get a marshmallow going fast enough and it could destroy the Moon. Tyrian explosive technology may be in its infancy but we shouldn't expect that to last. Your assumptions about what bullets are made of are just assumptions and your focus on material is inaccurate. Why wouldn't there be mithril bullets? > > > > I've answered why there wouldn't be mithril bullets. In fact, you clearly haven't thought it through, but _you've_ answered it. Speed and mass are what's important with projectiles (well... not directly, but I'll get to that in a moment), and while we don't have details on the properties of Tyria's fantastical metals, mithril in pretty much every other setting where it appears, going back to Tolkein, is described as being stronger _and lighter_ than steel (let alone heavier metals that are often preferred for projectiles). It's basically fancy super-titanium. > > > > Now, you might say that this means it goes faster with the same propellant, and that's true, but now it's that moment I referred to. Whatever charge you have firing the bullet is going to impart a certain amount of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. Momentum, on the other hand, is what broadly determines how hard a projectile is to stop, and that's just straight mass times velocity. **If you fire a lighter bullet with the same kinetic energy, more of that kinetic energy equation is being taken up by velocity, which means that the momentum of the projectile is less.** Density is also important both for resisting air resistance and for punching through armour, since if the bullet has a wider cross-section, it needs to displace that much more armour to punch through (and getting extra mass by making the bullet longer only goes so far before it starts creating other problems). So for armour, you want a material that's light but strong. For bullets, you want a material with a high density, since you want the frontal cross-section of the bullet to be as small as reasonably practical but to squeeze as much mass (and therefore momentum) into that cross-section as possible. > > Your argument here gets away from itself. If a massive projectile and a light projectile have the same momentum, the light one will have a lot more kinetic energy. If a light projectile and a heavy one have the same velocity, the heavy one has more kinetic energy. The bolded is a mess. You don't come anywhere close to making an argument against mithril bullets. Just asking out of curiosity, how many physics degrees do you have? Mine's a little rusty, but I remember enough of projectile dynamics that if you fire projectiles of different masses out of the same gun with the same propellant, than assuming no changes in efficiency, they'll all be shot out with the same kinetic energy, as the chemical energy of the propellant is transferred into the kinetic energy of the projectile. Now, the "no changes in efficiency" is a pretty rough assumption, but broadly speaking, you can't just say "fire the lighter bullet with the same momentum". So let's do some maths. Let's start with the assumption of a 10g projectile being fired with 1kJ of energy. Solve for energy: 1000J=(0.01kg*v^2)/2 2000J/0.01kg = v^2 = 200000 v = sqrt(200000) = 447m/s P = 0.01*447 = 4.47kgm/s Now, if we half the mass of the bullet (and skip a few steps): 2000J/0.005kg = 400000 v = 632m/2 P = 0.005*632 = 3.16kgm/s Notable drop in momentum there. (Note that momentum is still conserved either way - the first case would have a higher recoil.) In order for the lighter bullet to be fired out with greater momentum, it would need to be fired out with _greater_ kinetic energy. While, from the research I've done, the opposite tends to be true: for a given gun, heavier projectiles leave the muzzle with higher kinetic energy, probably due to limits on just how hard the projectile can be pushed before it leaves the barrel. Of course, APDS and APCR does work on the principle of getting a higher velocity with a lighter projectile - but this is because APDS also has a narrower, high-density penetrator, so the momentum _per unit area_ is higher. Higher velocity projectiles also have the issue that they lose velocity more rapidly due to air resistance, so they lose penetrative power more rapidly over long range. Which is why, broadly speaking, the penetrating portion of a bullet or shell has generally been made of denser materials as technology advanced, working up to depleted uranium (and generally tungsten alloys for nations that prefer not to work with hazardous material). Mithril, if its properties are similar to other fantasy universes, would not be suitable for the penetrating portion of a projectile. Advanced projectile designs _might_ use mithril for some components, but there's no evidence that Tyrians have developed AP ammunition more advanced than "a slug of the heaviest hard metal you can find". Maybe in a century or two. But not now. > > > Again, we don't know the properties of Tyrian metals, but for darksteel and mithril, we can make educated guesses. Mithril is pretty consistently presented in fantasy where it appears as being lighter than steel, so it probably makes for an inferior projectile to steel (let alone copper, lead, and the like). Darksteel appears to be an alloy of platinum or some other metal found in platinum ores such as iridium, which would give a density similar to tungsten and lead. Orichalcum and Deldrimor steel we don't really have much to go on in terms of density - being even better for armour means it's probably at least not significantly _heavier_ than mithril, though, and even if it was, both seem to be materials that are rare and expensive enough that you wouldn't want to be making every bullet out of it. Maybe you'd see the odd specialist armour-piercing round made out of it, similar to how APCR/HVAP was used in WW2 (namely, generally being issued in small amounts with orders to only use them when regular AP wouldn't cut it). > > > > Regarding the marshmallow example: Technically true, but we're clearly not looking at cee-fractional projectiles in Tyria. Broadly speaking, they seem to be similar velocities to real-world projectiles of about a century ago, maybe even a little bit slower. > > > > Do you mean c-fractional? I don't see why we couldn't see projectiles accelerated to relativistic speeds with magic. True we don't see it, but the reasons are arbitrary. If magic force fields can redirect or absorb kinetic energy then they should be able to add it as well. I've seen it spelled both ways. c-fractional is more technically correct, but I thought cee-fractional might be more recognisable to some sci-fi readers. Projectiles accelerated to relativistic speeds by magic might be possible, but like you say, _we don't see it._ I'm discussing from the perspective of what's in Tyria _now_, not what might hypothetically show up in the future. > > > > We've been focusing on combat between institutions and heroes. Perhaps guns would have a bigger impact on the lives of the magic poor. > > > > Perhaps, but where's the magic poor? Human armies have generally been presented as having magic-users as a significant minority _at the very least._ The White Mantle I'd consider an outlier (they essentially have a two-tier system, with spellcasters being channeled into the White Mantle proper leaving bandit forces relatively magic-poor), but you can look at Ascalonian ghost armies or several human factions in GW1 to get a broad idea of how common spellcasters are among human armies. **Technology is generally presented as being an equalising factor when a relatively magic-poor group (such as the legions after the overthrow of the Flame Legion) are having to go up against someone stronger in magic... and they still use melee troops because their _enemies_ aren't magic-poor.** > > > We see the bodies of the magic poor pile up everyday. Guns would eventually replace bows and melee weapons among the magic poor. To the bolded; your logic has magic poor melee attacking magic enriched melee and ranged?!?!? Because officer logic I guess. > > > There is a degree to which engineers and guns in general appear to be more common among magic-poor factions, such as the non-Flame charr and outlaw groups such as bandits and Separatists (and the latter are probably motivated by stealing charr munitions). But if we're talking large-scale warfare... thus far, most known cases of large-scale warfare have had at least one magic-rich side, whether it's humans versus charr or the Pact versus dragon minions. Talking about magic-poor battles is like talking about real-world modern warfare without air power: sure, it _can_ happen between really poor countries or between factions in a civil war, but if you're talking about major power conflict, _it's going to be there._ > > Most of the magic poor aren't soldiers but still need weapons to defend themselves. Guns would change their lives. I imagine there would be two levels of combat for any battlefield, the magic poor and magic enriched tiers. The magic poor would use the most powerful ranged weapons they could. Why would they want to engage magic enriched melee in close combat? In general, I think you are confusing combat mechanics designed to limit the natural advantages of ranged weapon platforms and narrative designed to create and reinforce class distinctiveness for realistic Tyrian combat lore. Which isn't a big deal. > > I'm thinking of battlefield scenarios here, where it's reasonable to consider that projectile countermeasures may be used. If you've got a soldier who doesn't use magic, then yeah, giving them a gun is a good idea. We actually see this with most 'magic poor' professions - warriors, engineers, even thieves (which have magic, but generally don't use it as attack spells) all use guns, while among spellcaster professions all we have so far is mesmers using offhand pistols. Problem is that if a few projectile-blocking or, worse, projectile-_reflecting_ fields go up, those guns could become useless at best and dangerous to their users at worst. So you give your troops the best ranged weapons you can afford... but you ALSO give them the best melee weapons you can afford so that your troops aren't completely helpless when some cat-hole of a mesmer blinks into the middle of them while invisible, pops a Feedback bubble, and portals in that squad of Guardians.

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said: > > @"phokus.8934" said: > > Man, I thought people had thicker skin... > > > > Regardless, the wells would have to be completely redesigned which at t his current rate, isn't happening. > > https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elemental_Blast vs https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Calamity > this is whats wrong with wells, on the left side, more damage 1/3 cast time and half the cooldown ( its also half the skill since rev has 2 utility bars ) > on the right side, long cast time, low damage, only way to have impact is to land 3rd tick, gl with that! Not sure that the direct skill-to-skill comparison is all that useful, since revenants by design are intended to have more of their power budget coming from their utility skills than most. I think the damage listed for Elemental Blast is for hitting with all three ticks, too (would be nice if the wiki could standardise these things), so Well of Calamity does more damage until the final tick and, if you've invested into power and not into condition damage, Calamity's final tick will get scaled up, while the burning on the final tick of Elemental Blast won't be. Which is not to say that a buff to Well of Calamity wouldn't be justified, just that the side-by-side comparison doesn't necessarily prove anything.

Basically, you need to have the Mystic Claymore skin unlocked in your wardrobe, which requires account-binding one.

Not really pushing anything in this thread so much as making an observation. GW1 assassins did have some, albeit limited, ability to attack at a distance via magical means that thief has largely lost, so it would make logical sense that the GW2 Canthan assassin's answer to needing a ranged attack could be 'use magic'.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said: > I feel like everyone's getting obsessed over this "champion" thing just because Jormag began doing it, when it's supposed to be a bond that the old Elder Dragons simply do not do because "_evilness_". Besides, in all cases (but the Pact Commander because _Fashion Wars_), "bonded champion" rather than "corrupted champion" _still_ results in physical alteration - Caithe is crystallized, Ryland and Bangar are icy. So I don't think that this woman is the DSD's (or Kuunavang's) "bonded champion" because no watery tentacles on her. > > And the thing about Jormag doing it, is that they're an exceptional manipulator who has always acted different from the other Elder Dragons, particularly in how they always coerced before corrupting. One could flip that around and point out that Cantha has always had a special relationship with dragons (especially if the Celestial Dragon that is invoked during the Dragon Festival is _not_ simply Tahmu), and Aurene formed her bond with Caithe and the Commander before she became an Elder Dragon. So it's possible that the non-Elder Dragons of Cantha, particularly powerful named examples like Kuunavang and Albax, could have their own champions... and whether it's done for the sake of fashion wars or not, the Commander is an example of a link that doesn't result in a visual change. Heck, it's entirely likely that the celestial skills granted by Kuunavang towards the end of the Factions storyline _was_ essentially a low-key creation of bonded champions in all but name, albeit one that Kuunavang broke once it was no longer needed.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said: > Do Canthans have guns? It's a good question, and one I don't think we can definitively say 'yes' or 'no' to. The Luxons, at least, had cannons on their Siege Turtles, so they definitely understand the basic principle, but historically China had cannons before Europe but lagged behind when it came to handguns. In Tyria's history, the charr seem to have made the same leap - they didn't have gunpowder in GW1, but are credited with inventing handguns. They were known in Kryta while there was still trade before the rising of Orr, so it's likely that the Canthans at least know of them. Whether they'd regard them as more than a foreign curiosity, though, is another question. As discussed in another thread, it might put a bit of a dampener on your enthusiasm to adopt handguns if a significant portion of your army are spellcasters (and GW1 assassins had ranged spells, so the favoured ranged weapon for a Canthan assassin might actually be 'scepter'). You might see less magically-inclined professions pick them up as an equaliser, or the Canthans might regard them as a foreign foible that they just don't need.