Bast.7253

At first I thought the map was a prerelease verdant brink. It looks so barren in the trailer. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Curious about the functionality. If it just permanently hovers and had to have a wall to stick to to gain altitude that feels like kind of a waste. If it loses height then it’s kind of lame. If it just gains height freely but goes really slow and hovers that’s a nice balance. It would feel kind of pointless making it another flying mount and then countering that functionality with a bunch of restrictions for the sake of giving it restrictions. I can understand not wanting to have it overshadow the springer with height gain, but if you’re going to make it another flying mount why not just go all in? I mean, I’m excited to have a dragon mount either way, but if they give it a bunch of restrictions why not just redesign the griffin with a new mastery or something in the form of a new mount? Idk. I guess we’ll have to wait and see it in game to really know. The video and article didn’t really give a whole lot of details.

> @"Daniel Handler.4816" said:

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

> > > @"Daniel Handler.4816" said:

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

> > > > Vlast likely destroyed his body to ward off Balthazar, not for the sake of leaving a message. Aurene had no one to ward off that her body exploding could do.

> > >

> > > Tell that to Kasmeer and Canach.

> >

> > Not sure what you mean by that. I mean, the dialogue outright states that Balthazar was knocked away by the blast:

>

> Canach: He left this message for Aurene.

> Lady Kasmeer Meade: Or for someone he knew he could trust to get it to her.

> >

> > > Isn't corruption generally outside in so her skin would be the first to change.

> >

> > Not really; corruption alters the entire body at once. If you look at branded humans and charr, their skin is intact but gray, while beneath is crystal. Concept art of branded show this better. Branded creatures lose their hair, and some/all of their skin turns to stone (what doesn't turns grayish and tears), while their blood and muscle turns to crystal. The "insides are crystal while the outsides aren't" is even more clear with ogres and rock dogs, though the standard models lack skin.

>

> Mordrem and Icebrood are shown to have a gradual inward replacement. And Glint still had skin. Do you mean untransformed flesh that was irradiated by draconic energy is still considered corrupted? In other words no part of the Pale Tree is edible.

>

> >

> > > They mentioned holding a portion of her in their hands bestowing movement abilities. Though perhaps those dropped due to decay.

> >

> > If I hold someone's hand, I'm holding a portion of them in my hand. Doesn't mean the hand's dismembered. Plus, it's very clear that the short story has been retconned given _"We will take her back with us"_ is not true anymore.

> >

>

> Holding a portion for **movement** abilities. You couldn't hold a stationary object and perform those skills without ripping one of your's off. And perhaps her wings turned crystalline and snapped off/broke apart. They had to have gotten crystals somehow.

>

> > > Vlasts post-mortem crystal was also recorded before his death.

> >

> > No, they were made with his death, and scattered by the explosion of his body. They even contained his final thoughts, of knowing about the Commander being Aurene's champion, which would be impossible except during the moments before his death.

> > Glint's memory crystals, however, talk about the upcoming battle with Kralkatorrik, while also talking about Destiny's Edge, indicating that the crystals were made while preparing to fight Kralkatorrik.

> >

> > Very different.

> >

>

> Fair play.

>

> > > Glint didn't die before a death domain Kralkatorrik. If she had I think she would do everything in her power to not come back a risen tormenting her former allies.

> >

> > By that argument, she would have done everything in her power to not come back as a risen made by Zhaitan.

>

> She had her lair. Had she died before him then yes.

Didn’t she die before him? And i don’t see why she would have accounted for Zhaitan anyway. Sure she may know what he’s capable of but it didn’t seem like he really interacted with the part of the world she was in, and she knew he didn’t really need to or knew he thought he didn’t need to.

The margonites were powered by Abaddon?

If it’s sohothin I could see it being a crystallized version with Aurenes blue and orange flame. I’m still going with it being Destiny’s Edge though. Seems too perfect not to. But I definitely don’t think it will be another combo sword. If it’s sohothin it could have a neat on crit effect, like igniting the player with the same flames as the sword.

> @"Zexanima.7851" said:

>

> > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > 14 [Dagger Storm](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dagger_Storm "Dagger Storm")

> > Overall I'm okay with Daggerstorm but there are two aspects I specifically hate; the fact that Improvisation recharges this and the random projectiles that shoot off of it. With Improvisation, you always end up in a fight against that one thief who is running the double steal trait alongside the recharge a skilltype trait and gets Daggerstorm recharged each steal equaling three Daggerstorms spammed back to back and you just can't handle that and die and he says "GG EZ." EVERY time. Also if the counter play is to get away from the thief as they're daggerstorming, I shouldn't have to deal with getting pelted by the random projectiles as well.

>

> I feel like this skill is perfectly in line with what an ultimate should be. Also, considering Improvisation isn't reliable it's hardly a problem. If you get caught by back-to-back dagger storms that's some bad luck on top of not managing your defensive cd's well. With all the blocks, invulns, blinks, and evades other professions have it shouldn't be hard to avoid two dagger storms.

It's still a bit strong though. Or maybe other profession's elite skills need a bit more as compensation. I mean, Mesmer has moa, which is pretty strong but a long cast time and a long cooldown. Warrior has rampage, but they still take quite a bit of damage during it. Ele's elites are kind of a joke outside of the tornado, which engi's also get.

I agree that it's what an elite should feel like, but I don't think the other professions have something quite that strong. Guardian invuln that recharges virtues is kind of cool I guess. Necro plague is pretty good but not great enough to run over some of the others. Lich form feels like an elite, but I personally find it kind of hard to use and the targeting system and abilities a little undertuned.

Daggerstorm is definitely one of the better elites out there, all that damage plus an evade? And you're not rooted in place? And it's cooldown can be reduced? Thankfully thief is hard enough to play generally that it kind of evens out.

I feel like ranger longbow 4 should only knockback if they're within a certain range. It's really annoying, especially in wvw, when you get knockbacked and immediately pelted with 2. And they don't have to sacrifice anything for it like taking a trait as dragon hunter which still requires range I think? Or an engi and have to have stab or get knocked down themselves.

I think it's less of a problem of decorations per area and more of a problem of not having varied enough decorations. They've done great with adding things like the beds - which before I had to use a guild buffet and a pillow to create. They added the race tracks, which provide nice flooring and ceiling instead of aligning the Mursaat Overseer tokens which are raid drops anyway, and a few here and there that take the place of one or more decorations. If they just kept adding things like that, it would be fine. More structural pieces are nice, i.e. walls, floors, ceilings. We have plenty of columns and small furnishings, but the Elegant Wall Panel is the only thing that goes well with many of the other pieces and it's so tedious and expensive to craft that I never bother making any. How do we turn 4 giant stone pillars into a small wooden wall?

So many of the scribe recipes are just bloated and non-sensical, and I guess they were designed that way originally because they were meant to be group effort passion projects from multiple guild members, but it feels like out of an entire guild, there's maybe only a few people that actually care about decorating or take the time to level scribing.

The whole system could use a rework, but I doubt it will ever happen. The best we can hope for moving forward, is that they keep thinking of more useful decorations to add and make them more cost efficient. Simply adding so many of these assets to vendors like they did with Lake Doric and Jahai Bluffs seems like a much easier way to incorporate pre-existing assets without taking the time to add scribe recipes for them, that are probably just as tedious to create as they are for us scribes to craft.

Still so many things already in game that I would love to have. Still holding out for an Abaddon statue since I already have some nice little shrines dedicated to the others.

It feels pretty clear that if we do get decorations implemented, it's a side project from a dev that's probably one of the few that are actually passionate about this aspect of the game. Without them, we probably wouldn't get anything outside of a few festival decorations.

There's so many elonian assets that I'm surprised we didn't get more decorations and recipes with Path of Fire. But Guild Halls in general seem to be an afterthought at this point and didn't even really seem to come to full fruition during their prime in Heart of Thorns. Even Windswept, as beautiful and detailed as it is, feels a lot less robust than Gilded Hollow and Lost Precipice. But perhaps smaller is what they were aiming for.

Still holding out hope for another guild hall, but as we're who knows how far away from another expansion, I doubt we'll get one in a living story update. I love my kitties in the market at Windswept, but if they add another hall I like better I might have to switch over. It's incredibly frustrating trying to decorate anything in Windswept as there are virtually no flat surfaces anywhere, and even if you think something is flat and go to lay a rug down, it still winds up floating in mid air.

> @"ThatOddOne.4387" said:

> I would kind of like to see, regardless of what happens with Kralkatorrik, the Commander being comparatively disgraced regardless due to their handling of Balthazar, Joko and then even Kralkatorrik himself. That would be an interesting way to take the story in my opinion.

>

> Because let's be honest, for people who don't have all the knowledge we have looking at what the Commander's done, it's not exactly been very well handled, now has it? From their perspective the Commander's been stumbling from crisis to crisis and only really solving it through sheer blind luck and fortune.

>

> I think that's going to be the ultimate "from hells heart I stab at thee" from Joko - Being proven right about the Commander to others in the universe, even if we the players know the Commander really had very little choice.

I don't think the people that have limited knowledge of what we've done or why would really be judging us or thinking we're being messy. They'll just be thinking, 'well I'm still alive so who am I to tell them what to do or how to do it?' Maybe the other members of destiny's edge or dragon's watch, or leadership within our alliances, but they have knowledge and understanding of what we've done don't they? Just ordinary civilians I don't think would really put that much thought into it to judge us in the way that Joko was implying.

Any changes to the damage of the siege pull? Right now it feels a little weak for the time it takes per pull. Obviously you don't want it to be the go-to instead of rams, but it feels like it has quite a bit of room left.

> @"zityz.6089" said:

> The Magic being released will need to go somewhere when we kill Kralk, As it has been with the other dragons/ massive forms of magic, its going to be absorbed by the other dragons. Which, with that kind of amount of magic being released will need to jolt something up. Best thing to deal with would be Jormag, as he is the only dragon currently still above ground.

>

> "If" Aurene is still alive, I would suspect they're the idea is to conform all the magic into one outlet to house it all. I can see her coming back near the end of the next season as it will have been enough time in between to rest her "death".

>

> Other option, would be for us to kill Kralk in the mists which triggers the magic effect to explode and cause some for of effect or transfer to a non dragon.

>

> Personally, I like both ideas of killing Jormag, and maybe having to deal with something else besides a dragon, Return of Dhuum, Menzies or other.

> There is also a possibility to work it in that since Jormag and Primordius are asleep, we can just deal with bubbles in order to open up the water and airways for people to travel to and from Cantha.

Maybe, but the story has pretty heavily implied that kralks position has to be taken by some elder dragon. Just replacing it with another god seems like it would diminish the original reason why the gods left Tyria. Idk. I’m sure it will be something out of left field though if they’re really keeping Aurene out of the picture. But hey, they had their shocking dramatic death scene amongst the many others. When all else fails, just make some character a martyr and keep on truckin.

> @"Fenom.9457" said:

> Yeah, the total silence is frightening. We’re gettjng a patch next week, for what? SAB? Episode 6 but no trailer? We just got balance so not that right? What the hell is going on?

No guarantee we’ll even get a patch next week. I would have thought we’d have something today about Sab at the very least but nothing. Lol

And everything in game feels so dead right now. I groups hardly in lfg for any of the new maps. Just a few here and there for heart of thorns metas and people still hanging around in wvw but they’re the same people that always hang out in wvw.

Feels like half of my guilds have gone into complete silence as well.

You could call it infusion instead of corruption. That seems like a fitting term.

Human so far. And sylvari. The tail is really stiff too. It might look a little more feline without the horns and armor though.

What’s the statue of at red keep in ebg? Nvm. Someone mentioned it

My biggest issue with it is that it’s so bulky. Sometimes when I’m riding it I feel like I’m riding a triceratops or something. Lol

It I think exploring new lands and story can be done easily enough through living story. May be slower and not as in depth as it would be with an expansion, but when were talking about expansions and what we want in them or why we want them for me it’s just a matter of features that are impossible to implement in the scope of s story episode. At least from what we have to go by so far. Elite specs, features like gliding and mounts, features like guild halls. Things that effect many different aspects of the game and require a lot more resources and time to develop. Theoretically they could still have another team dedicated to these kinds of features and integrate them in episodes without requiring the standard episode releases to be effected, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the plan.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> The only similarity is the "stained glass" look really. And we see such utilized throughout the Depths of Tyria in GW1, in Divinity's Reach, and elsewhere.

>

> The weapons seem to be an extension of the [shattered Cathedral Glider](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shattered_Cathedral_Glider) from a while back. People instantly went 'OMG KURZICKS OMG CANTHA INCOMING!!!" and look where we are, half a year later...

>

> People are trying to relate everything and anything to Cantha and go "OMG FORESHADOWING OF CANTHA!!!!!!!!!!11!1!1!" which is getting more and more silly.

>

> More than just Kurzicks worshiped the gods, and more than just Kurzicks had cathedrals with stain glass in them. Besides that:

>

> > @"Randulf.7614" said:

> > My suspicion is a link to the Gods being foreshadowed, one I would not normally link if it wasn’t for them seeding God lore on twitter recently and even that’s a stretch

>

> While a stretch, it's also the least stretchies of things.

>

> Since when has BLC and gemstore skins *foreshadowed* something? They've only ever be used to "postshadowed" story stuff (often by a week of the release). Or was released at the same time as the content they're used for.

I’ve never taken it as a sign of us going to Cantha immediately, but that these could potentially be assets being worked on behind the scenes and incorporated in parts as gemstone items. At the very least considering the potential to reuse some of these assets down the road.

I also stop to wonder, why the shattered glider? Why an Aztec mount skin? Why an Aztec themed legendary weapon? Why specifically those things? What made them think of those when coming up with new item themes? Given the context of the current game. Which leads me to the idea that they came up with them because to some degree, those assets or ideas are already floating around. That’s just my train of thought, and I’m sure someone is eager to counter in every possible way they can, but personally, some of these items just seem really random.

I immediately thought of Cantha and Shiro’ken when I saw the glider, OP. The weapons have more of a multi colored crystal theme but I can see the correlation to the glider now.

> @"Cynder.2509" said:

> Honestly I don't care for anything except that we'll get to see Cantha again and perhaps see this other continent that was never released before but planned before the development of gw2 which had a aztec theme.

From my understanding Utopia was set in the mists on another world.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > But learning or gaining new masteries under the premise that were bonding with Aurene wouldn’t make sense even if our current bond is considered corruption and persists after her death

>

> Sure it would. The only thing that changed for risen and mordrem when Zhaitan and Mordremoth died was that the mind controlling the magic was gone, and those smart enough could control the magic instead. The bond is a sharing of magic between Aurene and the Commander; the magic persists in the Commander, and the mind never controlled it.

>

> It won't make sense for a **new** bond mastery to be made, but it makes sense for the *old* ones to remain.

When did I disagree with that?

They might have considered the model just to be able to implement this as a gemstone skin and because it fits the griffon rig

But learning or gaining new masteries under the premise that were bonding with Aurene wouldn’t make sense even if our current bond is considered corruption and persists after her death

> @"dodgerrule.8739" said:

> I think it will unlock one area in blood legion homelands is likely but no. We have better chances of them first setting up a funeral for someone, then finding a way out of mists, and finally entering the spot where the big splatter of corruption happened after pof.

>

> If Kralk doesn’t die then we will be setup to receive a new race in season 5, as the dragons will have been doing to much activity for it to be deemed safe by the tengu for them to ignore it any longer.

>

> Taimi will be the closer of the season 4 as her death awaits. She will be leaving us with some news of an invention she’d been working on with Gorrik to stop all the dragons from doing further harm

Where would we have the funeral though? I can't see them doing it in Tarir or some Heart of Thorns area, because it's an area from another expansion which I don't think they've done before. I guess we could have it in the Grove, and if the pale tree ascends at some point and absorbs Mordremoth's magic and somehow absorbs enough of Zhaitan's magic we could see her resurrecting Aurene perhaps. I hadn't really thought of the idea of having a funeral as the start of the next episode, but I suppose it would give us reason to pick up in a different area instead of starting in the same instance which I think would be a little more unique and something they haven't done with any episodes thus far... also would fit the ending of the previous episode a lot better. But, again, not something they've done before so it seems unlikely to expect it to be any different now.

I'm not sure I would jump to the conclusion of Tengu and a new playable race with season 5. From what we know, the living world teams are the only ones working on new releases, and a playable race seems like it would be a really difficult thing to juggle along with the episode releases. Especially as it would entail tying it into the current personal story, or creating an entirely new personal story. (Unless they wound up skipping that all together and by releasing it with season 5, give it enough exclusivity that it doesn't have to adhere to the rules of the other races creation and personal stories.) Not saying it's impossible, just don't think it's likely. I might have before we found out the team had been shuffled to focus on these canceled projects, but now it seems like mounts are the extent of what we can expect as new features for season 5. Also, I don't really see Tengu getting involved just because Kralk has became a larger threat. Because, if word got around that he's consuming reality, they've probably also been alerted to the fact that there's not really anything they could do even if they did get involved. So why join a fight that doesn't affect them anymore than it affects everyone else? Maybe some other elder dragon that was in closer proximity and put them in immediate danger or encroached on their lands, but Kralk seems like a bit of a stretch.

And I would hate to think that Taimi would yet again save the day with Asura tech, but I'm not counting it out as a possibility.

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> > @"DoppelSlash.5201" said:

> > Glint was the Champion and Daughter of Kralkatorik but was herself not an Elder Dragon and only Elder Dragons absord each other powers after their death. So I doubt that Aurene has any of Mordremorth and Zaithans powers.

> >

> > I am wondering why no one brought up Joko until now. Remeber that Aurene has "eaten" Joko and while she was eating there was some weird magic going on. I bet that this scene will be the key for Aurene not really being dead. With everything that is going on I think the story will shift into a twist where something we became attached to is going to oppose us (not in LS4 tough more like in the later coming story).

>

> As Konig has said, the theory has done the rounds on every thread containing Aurene since the pisode dropped. She ate his decayed flesh, unbound his magic and showed no sign whatsoever she either absorbed his powers or is able to utilise them. Given the time lapse since she killed Joko, some use of that power would have been prevalent by now and logic would dictate that at least one of the in game NPC's or the Commander would have thought out loud "hmm I wonder if Aurene could utilise Joko's magic somehow" and tested that theory.

>

> That isn't to say the writers wont go down that path, since consistency and logic hasn't really been a hallmark of the narrative so far, but pretty much everything seems to suggest that Joko's death was just a throwaway comedy relief with no further relevance to the story beyond a suddenly important prophecy not previously mentioned, yet seemingly known about by some..

Why would the commander or someone in the team reach that conclusion though? They're focused on Kralk and their current predicament and are still learning about dragons. They don't have the same perspective as we do, so drawing such conclusions or "testing" theories wouldn't really apply. And how would they test it anyway?

Also, while I can agree that raising the dead or "awakening" could have been contributed to Joko, it could just as easily be attributed to Zhaitan's magic. We only this episode from what I remember, saw Aurene branding things and that was after her encounter with Glint in the mists and their secret talk about Ascension, in which she came back glowing. From what I recall, everything before that was just standard fire. So, some of these abilities she may have not even been able to access or fully utilize until we underwent those trials in Glint's Lair.

And while the current rules seem to imply that elder dragons can only utilize unique properties of magic that they directly consume from gods and other elder dragons, we don't technically know what Joko is or what his magic is. We have the journals to further his backstory in the Mad King's Labyrinth, and while I don't think this is the case, they could simply be propaganda from King Thorn to further discredit Joko. Likely, probably not. But I don't see anything stopping them from going that direction if they wanted to.

Also, even if Joko started off mortal and wasn't part of the pantheon, we don't know where his magic came from. We have gods like Abaddon who essentially took the place of older gods that weren't a part of the pantheon, so whose to say Joko didn't obtain his magic from one of them or replace one of them? I guess it seems unlikely as Abaddon seemed on par with the Pantheon, and Joko merely had immortality and typical necromancer abilities. But I do wonder what would happen if an elder dragon were to consume the magic of some older god like Arachnia - who I think is presumed to be who Abaddon replaced, right? Or things like the celestials or spirits of the wild. We don't really know if or how they connect to the All, and that seems to be the bigger reason as to why Elder Dragons can absorb the aspects of the magic of beings like Gods and other Elder Dragons.

Bias for Aurene aside, I don't think there's really enough to completely dismiss the idea. And, aside from the lich being a part of this prophecy as mentioned by Ogden, we also have the awakened Sylvari which seemed rather strange. We also have previous comments from writers about Joko's death eluding to there being more reasoning behind when and how he died beyond the fact that they wanted to propel the story towards Kralk.

Not saying this is a guarantee, just saying that there's a valid reason for this theory to keep popping up and I wouldn't be surprised if they went in this direction.

In all likelihood, they'll just go in a direction that makes Aurene's prophecy practically meaningless, and either force Kralk back into sleep with some Asura tech or have Caithe pop out of the shadows and send us to Timbucktu because she received information about an object that mind-controls elder dragons. Either way, I don't see Kralk's plot lasting much longer and I don't think any of us can ever really predict the direction the story is going to go, even if we spend hours citing, researching, or referencing every minute aspect of the entirety of Guild Wars 2 lore and formulating a set list of rules to discredit anything that doesn't comply with existing data.

And in light of recent events, it may be another 3 months before we find out, on top of which we may never get the rest of the requiem stories that could have further foreshadowed the events of the "upcoming" episode.

> @"DeanBB.4268" said:

> What exactly do "tengu lands" look like? Could be straw huts with dirt floors for all we know.

I think people are hoping for a lot of the same wall architecture surrounding the domain of winds. I.e. Ancient... Indian? Style architecture. It would be pretty cool.