Genesis.8572

A lot of the content this season feels like grindy, busy work (or at least more than the usual fair of past content).

This entire season has killed a LOT of my enthusiasm for this game. The map mechanics are not particularly fun, a lot of repetitive grind, and neither has the lore direction been particularly great.

> @"Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324" said:

> "The cycle is reborn" at the end of the trailer is a powerful sentence.

>

> I, too, believe Kuunavang is talking with an Elder Dragon, the one known as **S(omething).**

"Sarah"

Tips. Marauder gear. It's acceptable, if not preferred, for a lot of low to mid health professions in PVE. No shame in using it.

Rune sets that provide 10 percent bonus health (e.g., Vampirism, Durability, Dwayna, Flock, Balthazar, etc.). Vampirism, in particular, is great for Open World because you are constantly being topped back to health after killing mobs.

It's worth pointing out that both Elexus and Yahuk were both Blood legion before being recruited by the Blood and Ash PCs, respectively. Do they have more reason to believe the PC over Bangar? Potentially. But there may also be some strong deeply-embedded loyalties and ideologies surrounding Blood Legion, the Treat of Ebonhawke, and other issues as well.

I would like to hold up one tiny detail that is quite nicely done on the part of ArenaNet. Most of the prior existing Cache guards were Blood Legion (at one point or another), with the exception of Lucia Wildeye. Yahuk Fellstrike is recruited into the Ash player's warband, but when encountered in the Flame Legion cell, his captors reveal that he was previously Blood Legion.

> @"vier.1327" said:

> I want more sylvari Lore, we do not even have an expansion or a whole LS season yet...

Are we playing the same game? Living World Season 2 and Heart of Thorns were fairly Sylvari-focused. Sylvari PCs got special dialogue in the expansion. I even recall forum posters criticizing how the Orr storyline was too focused on Sylvari and not enough on humans who were setting foot in their "Holy Lands."

> @"ThatOddOne.4387" said:

> I would have had Balthazar be Menzies.

Yep. The story would have worked just as well, if not better. Rytlock frees an in-chained Menzies and PoF results.

> @"Kalavier.1097" said:

> I'm not talking at the flame citadel/dungeon area. I'm talking all around. There are several events about it. You act as if the Charr simply plunder, I point at Ascalon's current state compared to what it was after the searing with no recovery in sight.

How much of that was simply nature running its course over two hundred years though?

> @"Kalavier.1097" said:

> See, the problem is that will never happen because Blizzard will not end the war between horde/alliance and actually advance the world forward. It's an OOC detail that sadly makes the IC story worse. In 35 years we saw Pyre start the seeds of rebellion against the shamans. At 46 years the rebellion happened, removing the shamans from power, restoring females, and setting the stage for where Charr are now. Basically, Anet allows the change to evolve and change. Blizzard won't/can't let the orcs change because that would require them to actually end the conflict and finally advance the war past constant brutal conflicts that wipe out armies that magically reappear a year or so later.

Yes, but your presentation of history here falls in line with the charr's lopsided version of events that casts all the blame on the Flame Legion. The charr rebelled against the Flame Legion largely due to the false gods thing, not because they felt regret for attempting genocide against humans or the Searing. In 35 years, we could point to similar developments with the orcs as well. ANet flash-forwarded the timeline to handwave a lot of the details of cultural transformation that we have been experiencing with orcs in Warcraft. We can say, for example, that Thrall moved the orcs into a different direction, whether they have stayed consistently on that road or not. We are seeing the seeds of orc culture change. It's also about their move from a loose tribes to a tribal confederation to an Orcish Horde to the establishment of their first actual nation state. We even saw the Horde make treaties, truces, ceasefires, etc. with humans as well. We saw the rejection of the Burning Legion as their "false gods." We saw them return to a shamanistic religion. We saw them modernize their warfare. Again, it's not like the charr stopped fighting the Ascalonians/Ebonhawke or issued apologies to humanity just because they overthrew the Flame Legion. I think that you are perhaps either blind or ignorant to just how huge the change of orcish society has been, because you are just focused your narrative on orcs as unchanging warmongers. (Which again conveniently overlooks how charr have been for a large chunk of their own history.) Is Bangar's Frost Legion really all that new and different of a development from things like the Garrosh Hellscream-led Horde? Honestly, the orcs have shown more moves of progress in their 35 years than the charr did in their 46 years.

Kinda surprised no one has said "Logan stayed to fight Kraalkatorik" as one of the big "what if" moments. Would Queen Jennah have survived? Would Glint? What then of Aurene and Vlast? How would that have affected the current balance of power with the dragons?

> @"Kalavier.1097" said:

> TLDR: The Charr can, and have been shown to change and continue to change. The Orcs? They don't change. A few individuals do but the society doesn't at all. We have a chance to come out of this with a new, great Charr society. The Orcs will forever be stuck as they are unless the horde-alliance war permanently ends.

Advance the charr only 35 years out from when we first see them in Guild Wars 1 and then let's compare them with the orcs as they are now in Warcraft and then we would have a more apt comparison than asserting the orcs "never change."

The orcs have been in Azeroth for less than 35 years. How many hundreds of years did the charr have for their "change" versus the orcs?

Ryland will eventually replace Rytlock in our forced group of "friends" in Dragon's Watch becoming Braham 2.0.

Probably because Jormag wants an organized Legion that knows how to fight a prolonged war as opposed to simple icebrood minions.

I will say that one of the most disappointing things about the story in this episode is that (if you are a charr) you find out that one of your own warband has betrayed you to join Bangar. In the same episode that stresses the importance of loyalty to one's warband, a charr character will inevitably find out that one of their own has betrayed their warband.

Kinda surprised that they didn't ask Logan for military advice. One of the repeated stated problems in the episode is that Ryland has been out-thinking other charr leaders because he knows how charr think and work militarily. So why not ask a human, particularly one with some experience in fighting charr in Ebonhawke about how to fight charr who out-thinks other charr at being charr?

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> So while humanity was introduced as a "dying race" - more accurate to call them declining than dying - they're more or less stabilized as of Season 4 (not yet [re]growing though - maybe Ebonhawke is? Been a long time since we heard from them).

Not sure if I would even call humans "declining" since so much seems to be about humans rebounding from their decline.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> Besides all that, if we talk merely _geographic territory_, then Iron = Kryta for sure, since Ascalon is Iron territory alone, and Ascalon and Kryta are on par.

But also chunks of what is considered Ascalon in-game was also part of Flame Legion territory, such as Fireheart Rise and bordering portions of Disseau Plateau and Iron Marches.

Spirit Ranger or Spirit Druid seem like a nice way to play a "shaman." You summon water, burning, frost, earth, electricity, and life/plant spirits. This is probably one of the closest things we have to the old Ritualist apart from the Renegade and Turret Engineer.

> @"ThatOddOne.4387" said:

> So about Charr being the strongest militarily...

Yeah, so given how people like to talk of humans as "a dying race" and the unrivaled charr might, can we start talking about the charr as a "dying race" with the same flimsy excuses that people speak of humans as a "dying race"?

I bet that Ebonhawke is also feeling pretty good at this point. Treaty with charr achieved. Aurene cleaning the Brand. And now the charr are fracturing further and going on a crusade in the far north, turning themselves into both Jormag and Player Character fodder.

I'm not a fan of how Smodur is acting either, since it feels like a reversal to how he was depicted before: the progressive modernizer and the reasonable face for the playable charr, which focuses on Ascalonian charr. But I like the theory that Smodur is hearing whispers from Jormag as well. Jormag may be manipulating things to ensure that Ryland and as many charr as possible that he brings would be converted into Frost Legion.

A charr supremacist has a victimization complex about a foreign culture? Okay.

> @"kasoki.5180" said:

> Wouldn't that be a reason to relocate capital rather than keep it underdeveloped?

> I mean, Iron Legion was at war with humans and ghosts and they still menaged to build an impressive capital city.

Sure, but Iron Legion are the engineers, inventors, and builders of the charr legions. That's kinda their specialty. Blood Legion's specialty is dying on the battlefields. :tongue:

> @"Aurelian Omenkind.2470" said:

> Why no love for the manatee?

Because we are not worthy enough to ride one.

Sea Turtle because Sea Turtle.

> @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > @"Antycypator.9874" said:

> > Hammer could be a nice and fun weapon, but it's too slow. I would remove protection symbol from hammer (or move it to 5th skill) and just make it faster on aa chain.

>

> That'd kill what makes hammer unique, and would need additional modifications to boot. Having the symbol on autoattack makes it useful in a lot of situations.>

The problem with having the symbol on AA is that it encourages a lot of AA camping instead of utilizing more dynamic skill synergies, which makes skills 2-5 of the hammer fairly underutilized and an overall boring playstyle.