perilisk.1874

> @"Kalavier.1097" said:

> This prologue showed us loud and clear that the Charr are diverse, and in this area, the groups that hate humans are the loud ones. In Ascalon, it's more of the Charr who don't mind humanity/peace. Hell, in some cases in Grothmar are Charr who are neutral/okay with humans but are basically being bullied into agreement. Outside of the Ooze pit there are two charr who talk about finding a human inside and tossing him out. One talks about how he could've gotten seriously hurt. The other goes about how humans in general should be hurt/defeated/messed up. The first? "Um... yeah. Yes sir."

But there's also an Ash superior chewing out her subordinate for being bigoted, so the pressure cuts both ways.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> ArenaNet is not pushing the narrative that "humans = evil, charr = good guys", and Bound By Blood is proof of that. Because Bangar is evil, and the entire charr race is depicted as a race that _needs_ war to function.

Well, it's more a critique of their essentially fascist social organization. The Olmakhan don't seem to have that issue, so no reason to think the culture can't adapt. But in part, it will probably be made to adapt by the wanton slaughter of those that are on the wrong side, same way that Flame Legion was eventually reformed. If most of them get transformed into icebrood, it will tend to further eliminate the moral considerations of such slaughter.

> Ebonhawke was holding on by threads supported solely by Divinity's Reach. The only reason the stalemate was able to occur was because of Divinity's Reach, so if Jennah at any point pulled resources, Ebonhawke would be screwed.

Those resources were able to bypass Charr territorial control due to the Asura gate, which is probably one reason why they are particularly disliked. And the Sylvari were within the past few years outed as dragon minions (and Mordremoth managed to do some damage in Charr territory). The only playable race they don't have beef with is the Norn, pretty much.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> So I don't think it's going to far to say the only reason why we can confidently attribute that snowstorm to Jormag - which we're not even certain about in all honesty - is because we know Jormag is going to be a focus this season due to the Season's given name and the trailer.

While I can't speak as to what the Commander could discern about the construct, the game leaves no doubt -- it is an "icebrood" construct. There isn't really another reasonable explanation for the unexpected ice storms (unless we're going to be pedantic and ascribe it to Jormag's minion or follower instead of the actual dragon).

> @"SoulGuardian.6203" said:

> You have to accept the reality that gw2 wvw ain’t big no more.

> Other solutions must come to fruition.

It would make the most sense (to me) if they implemented some reasons for players to actually be on defense, which would naturally force them to spread out. Between adding a decent number of defenses for free after flipping, and making things unflippable for a while, basically there's no point. Who's going to even attack it while the timer is on (except maybe to soften up a camp toward the tail end of the countdown, or just for guard killing dailies or something)?

I had some extensive thoughts on the subject, but this isn't the thread, and I'm not really a WvWer anyway.

Speaking only as a non-raiding mostly-PvE player, I don't think new skills is a worthwhile use of their time. I don't even think rebalancing underused skills is a worthwhile use of their time.

You can fill a player's toolbelt with all sorts of new socket wrenches, drills, twenty different types of screwdriver heads, but at the end of the day, if you fill your game almost exclusively with nails, they're just going to stick with the hammer skill, except to mess around.

For the same reason, it doesn't really matter how much you buff up the screwdriver skill, they aren't going to use it until it's better at hammering nails than the hammer skill.

Well, a few less-played alts are wearing "whatever random exotic I found for this slot".

But deliberately? Marauder, Assassin, Harrier, and Wanderer.

> @"Brother.1504" said:

> Simple mentally here guys. Braham is in our party. He’s a guardian. He’s a support guardian. He stays.

>

> Rox is a ranger with a devourer pet and melee ranges with a short bow. So party kicked.

>

> Kasmeer is a mesmer so shes been nerfed like 5 times since last time she was in the story. She can stay we may need a portal to end of a JP.

>

> Marjory is still spec’d reaper instead of scourge for boon strips and barriers. She can stay as generic dps. Watch the ARCdps. Maybe kick later.

>

> Canach is a warrior. He stays.

>

> Rytlock is a herald. Sword dps and boon support. He stays.

>

> The answer is obvious.

I've never seen Canach drop a banner, though. Iffy.

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> What happens when Bangar realizes it wasn't Eir's bow that cracked the tooth but Braham himself?

> That would be a cool plot twist.

How would that work, exactly? Is he Balthazar's illegitimate kid or something?

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> The only reason why **we**, the players, suspect Jormag legitamately is because we know the storyline is called "The _Icebrood_ Saga" and that the trailer for the season features Jormag's voice.

That's going too far. Jormag isn't an unknown quantity like Mordremoth or Selbbub -- its corruption has been known since EOTN, and there are lots of people in the Shiverpeaks who have firsthand knowledge about its methods. The ability of dragons in general to wield influence through followers or artifacts, even while asleep, should be well documented by the Pact (and someone like Braham should know the story of Jora and the Nornbear). And it's not like it would be an out of left-field guess -- Bangar raised the issue himself by suggesting he was seeking out the dragon as a source of power for the Charr. Even in-game logic would raise the possibility that this is basically Jormag's MO at work. The ice storms would then be corroborating evidence.

> @"Kalavier.1097" said:

> I think Bangar will wake Jormag up. This may be the work of one of the champions however. We saw in GW1 that Drakkar corrupted Svanir, even though both Drakkar and Jormag were asleep.

Actually, that's kind of one thing I was thinking about today -- whether we might see more corrupted Norn like Svanir, where their transformations go crazed and turn them into something like icebrood werecreatures. If they really, really lose control of their transformations and start manifesting multiple spirits at once, you could get into some really horrible monstrosities.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> charr Commanders are _constantly_ told "you're one of us, but you've been gone so long people don't see you as one of us".

Considering Charr PC semi-officially joined the human intelligence service, that's probably not an unreasonable sentiment.

> @"MetalGirl.2370" said:

> That's what Anet wants you and people like you to think. It's obviously completely linked to it. Why else would they add that text if it wasn't ...

"My something went to something and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" is a fairly well-known shirt slogan. Also probably alludes to the (relative) worthlessness of the reward. Meaning, you need to get super-rare items worth thousands of gold to get a reward that you can buy outright for 5g and some peppers.

DH is decent at just shredding groups of enemies without much complex rotation, and has some good CC options. As long as you're good on active defense, you can pretty much stroll through basic PvE content.

FB has good support abilities, though it can also be built as DPS. It's a little more complicated to play, since your profession skills each give you access to 5 other skills, rather that just being a single skill.

Hero points aren't that hard to come by, though, seriously. Especially if you find an HP train (for HoT -- they are mostly soloable in PoF), you can easily get them both and just swap as need be. Also, remember that you can basically buy hero points in WvW using Testimony of Heroics (from rank up, skirmish chests, and reward tracks).

> @"Payne.1250" said:

> I agree with the OP

> And I would say, the Recovered charr "artefact" need a rework of his loot table, maybe add an "uncommon" rarity line with possibly mystic coins, T6 mat, amalgamated gemstones, idk ...

> Right now it's probably ;

> 99,8999% one yellow

> 0,1% one of the 5 weapons

> 0,00009 Visage of the Khan-Ur

> 0,00001% Infusion

> Horrible reward design for a daily box who needs 4 meta events

Good reward design for me -- I just sell the keys, and let other people play Fashion Wars lottery.

> @"MikeG.6389" said:

> > @"perilisk.1874" said:

> > It has as much content as any other episode, really. Quite a bit more than some (*cough*, Kourna, *cough*). There's also the question of quality -- with the exception of Doomlore and some throwaway champs, nearly every DE has special mechanics that are much more than just "kill endless waves of enemies and then a champ, yawn".

>

> Simple: just look at the stall that may happen at various stages of the Doomlore event as the mechanic. Using the LFG to move to a working instance is a special skill...

Doomlore is training for WvW, like Strike Missions are for raids. It teaches you to find the one pixel in eight square miles of red circles you can stand on.

> @"Grinz.4560" said:

> In Guild Wars i was doing The Fissure of Woe, Gate of Anguish and The Underworld in my Alliance or Guild, when we were not in any Dungeon. But in Guild Wars 2 most Player in my Guild do not even play together anymore, because there is no new Guild Content for us...

>

> Arena Net´s Roadmap for this Game is way to slow for Guild, Group and Singleplayer Content!

>

> P.s.: GW2 Storyline is bad…, like boring…, or lame!

Under the influence system, all content was guild content. Ditching it was a big mistake.

> @"Bander.5194" said:

> Jormag is the dragon of persuasion, so it makes sense to me that they would want to 'recruit' the Commander if possible before outright trying to destroy them.

>

> >! I don't think the Commander or anyone in Dragon's Watch has connected these strange happenings with Jormag, yet, though, aside from knowing that Bangar has now implicated the dragon in his own plan for power.

So Bangar is seeking Jormag, and strange ice storms are interfering with their ability to follow him. Is the Commander a total moron? Actually, don't answer that.

Well, the good news is that we could probably just find an alternate path to catch up with Bangar. Maybe there are some abandoned Dwarven ruins that could let us pass under the mountain and the storms. Probably minimal chance that they delved too deep and unearthed a giant destroyer or something.

I like GW2's action combat, free exploration, and OW aspects. But I feel like it's instanced group combat falls short of GW1 in some respects.

I feel like the perfect synthesis would have been to use the fixed primary and swappable secondary profession concept, but with the "primary" as a set of racial abilities balanced around OW play (and not usable in elite or PvP content), while the swappable secondary is the "profession" stuff that is more specialized and role-based, for instance. Every character would have access to every profession, so there would be less need to water them down or worry about whether they have a role in this or that content.

But either way, PvE encounters in GW1 were just much better designed to show off their mechanics and build system. If you can press 1 and dodge, you've basically mastered all but the most elite GW2 combat. It's telling that pretty much all of the most interesting events and challenges involve completely discarding their build system entirely for a transformation or mastery.

Fashion wars is P2W. Such is life.

Well -- obvious question: were there some specific real-world bands that were used as inspiration for ML?

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> And as a result the rewards that probably would have been available from them are locked behind RNG.

No, the pepper vendor has both the standard volatile magic stuff (node, shipments, legendary tributes, portal scrolls -- no karma/XP, since there isn't much combat) in addition to the heart stuff.

It's more like dragonfall, in that services are locked behind one-time achievements, rather than locking it behind completing a heart, every day, every character, which people complain about.

I liked the new approach, myself. If the only purpose of hearts is to let people know "hey, events pop here" -- well, the map design does a fairly decent job, but you could maybe throw a map icon down that says something along those lines. Maybe color code it "green: event is happening; yellow: event will eventually happen; red: event is blocked until some condition is met".

> @"Ulyssean.1709" said:

> It's been 4 months since Dragonfall was released.

> They said they can do a 2 month release schedule

> Bound By Blood has very little content.

> So hopefully it is done and will be releasing next week.

It has as much content as any other episode, really. Quite a bit more than some (*cough*, Kourna, *cough*). There's also the question of quality -- with the exception of Doomlore and some throwaway champs, nearly every DE has special mechanics that are much more than just "kill endless waves of enemies and then a champ, yawn".

It would be nice to fight bosses that doesn't so much use gimmicks as they use souped up versions of normal player mechanics.

Say, a necro boss

* Overpowered minion summoning skills

* A life-force mechanic powered when it hits with certain skills or when anything dies

* A death-shroud mini-phase when the bar charges, where the boss takes no health damage, and taking damage or using its skills ends the phase

* Lots of boon hate, condis, and health steal, especially via adds

* Powerful corruption abilities that also temporarily make it vulnerable in certain ways

* A core phase where it delivers loads of conditions and spreads them with epidemic

* A reaper phase where it does a lot of cleave and boons and uses shouts that chill the whole arena

* A scourge phase with loads of pulsing red rings of death, and where it grants barrier to the adds and itself

General concept is, what if a player had every trait, overpowered skills on short cooldowns, and a giant boss health bar, but it was 10 on 1?

Mostly, I'd just like some mechanical changes. A lot of things have been added parallel to the main gameplay, but the actual combat hasn't evolved much.

I'd like to see them do something with the combo system to make it a more meaningful part of group gameplay.

I'd like to see an overhaul to the attributes so that effects are scaled to only one attribute, and toughness is more useful.

I'd like to see a smart aggro management system (not the ridiculous raid one) and other tanking mechanics.

I'd like to see a return to the counter-based gameplay of GW1 (possibly by replacing RNG criticals with more conditional "criticals"), so that the best builds will at least vary by encounter and require reaction rather than rotation.

Might be pie in the sky, but I'd like to see (unlimited) profession swapping, so they can worry less about balancing 9 jack-of-all-trade professions and feel free to focus them more on certain roles.

> @"Wanze.8410" said:

> > @"Hawken.7932" said:

> > > @"Gop.8713" said:

> > > EDIT: I guess it may be worthwhile to stockpile a few stacks just to wait and see what new eps bring, but any way you look at it there is going to be a point where you're hoping not to get chilis . . .

> >

> > Could be that the chilis aren’t much of a currency in future. If you consider that the map is just a prologue, in their words, and there’s not much risk/danger involved in accumulating them on this map, maybe they’re just a currency for this local map’s collectibles.

>

> My theory is the complete opposite. I think they already mentioned that not every episode will have a new map but just expand the current map. So its likely that they may introduce more rewards for chilis in the future.

>

> If that will be the case, plenty of players would be miffed, if they started consuming their chilis for VM because they thought they already got all the rewards they want with them.

I think the Shiverpeaks map will be separate, but there is a blocked off gate near the Ooze pit that would make it pretty feasible to expand Grothmar southward.