Adamixos.6785

I do not think I have a word or phrase to express just how wrong it is to compare people of color to thieves.

1% of the playerbase does 99% of the DPS, and of that 1%, apparently DH and Reaper players do 99%.

I think what people are trying to say is that what you are saying isn't just "not infallible", but in fact, very, very fallible. Also, the commander's "like a grown child to a parent" remark strikes more as a narrative setup for Livia's follow-up line: "Livia: The Shining Blade is my family. I hope this secret is safe with you—for their sake." It's just a little wordplay to tell us how the Shining Blade is a found family (which, by the way, is one of the most popular tropes in entertainment literature, especially recently). Blood relation, even if there was any, would be completely irrelevant, hence why it is quite unlikely that there is.

Engineer has a permanent orange spark effect on its right arm if Explosives are traited, Revenant has a constant glow arounds its arms based on the active legend, and if the elite signets of Warrior and Guardian are slotted, they both have constant visual effects. Doubt Anet will make an effort to get rid of these (at least out of combat), constant Aegis included.

It'd be perfectly fine if the jade wasn't so obnoxiously super green. In GW1 it had a softer shade and I'd prefer that, or something inbetween.

Can you provide a screenshot with the skills available to you on your utility skill bar? Just click one of the slots and show what is there to select from.

It seems to me you already have Signet of Midnight unlocked. Did you consider clicking one of the slots on your utility skill bar to check if you can equip the skill? Signet of Midnight also only costs 4 skill points. The reason you can't learn Signet of Humility, however, is that you aren't level 30 yet.

Willbender is straight-up worse than core guard. You forgot to add that. What you describe as mobility gain is actually clunky animations and more animation locks.

The dual wield / dual attack mechanic is an idea I have been suggesting (and it has sort of become my mantra across 3 discord servers and these forums lmao), and I like how you came up with more concrete stuff for them. I endorse this. 🙂

Ok.

Yeah, the flaws of being... toxic and manipulative. And I am not ignoring anything conveniently. The Parables of the Gods also paints Balthazar as a vengeful god, where the wording implies that he uses the concepts of honor and courage as a mere excuse for brutality and cruelty. What he does to that soul is effectively eat and destroy it, and we know for fact that the gods can consume souls for magical power (Dhuum?). Flaws of a god are telling, and Blathazar was already a manipulative figure long before the events of PoF. The Kaolai story then speaks of a long-forgotten breach of etiquette. Now, given how GW: Factions had been inspired by very tropey oriental stories, the wording here actually implies that whatever was the "long-forgotten breach of etiquette" is either completely irrelevant, or completely irrelevant because it was something extremely minor, or perhaps a misunderstanding. Again, the text and style of writing totally implies this. You read into my initial post the implication that the Mongolian Empire was without redeeming qualities, surely you can see this too then, as it is much more obvious. I also haven't said the Wall was built over a year, but we also have no figure for when exactly construction began, and "deep into Charr homelands" is highly subjective because the humans of Ascalon never expanded beyond the Blazeridge Mountains, where 2/3-3/4 of the original Charr empire is situated. The land gains after the construction of the Wall could have as well been minor, and it is highly unlikely that Drascir was built after the Wall. Were it built after the Wall had been, it wouldn't have been named capital, so the majority of lands north of the Northern wall were probably part of the kingdom before the wall was built. The land gains of Ascalon after the Wall's construction could have been part of simple border gore as well. I will refer to my previous post why the Wall is where it is - that's not unimaginable. Construcing such a massive structure on contested/easily raidable/exposed lands is simply not possible without breaking your economy. It is actually a fair interpretation to say that the Wall's construction began in 898 AE, too, and by that point the humans of Ascalon very likely had territories North of it, including their capital Drascir, which had likely been their capital long before that. The construction of the wall could have been a reaction to renewed Charr aggression, so it wasn't an absolute defense but more of an additional line of defense to protect the kingdom should the northern strongholds fall. It was possibly not a smart move... in the end it is a fantasy trope. The official wiki establishes a chain of events that agrees with you but it is all assumptions without sources, so we are ultimately left to argue what is a more logical chain of events. Ascalon expanding north and building Drascir after the Wall's erection is certainly logical, but the ~1000 years between that and the initial conquest of Ascalon disputes it. Now I don't deny Ascalon expanded further North after the wall's construction, but the fact that Drascir was their capital and they had larger cities and educational facilities north of the Wall point toward a more convoluted story. What I am saying is not that there was no expansion at all after the Wall's construction, but that a lot of expansion had already happened before the Wall's construction, and that there was a lot of border gore further north. If we get - or you can provide - factual confirmation that Drascir was built and named capital after the Wall had already been constructed, I will fully concede.

I mean if you are excusing the Charr going into Orr and Kryta on Abaddon commanding them, there is nothing that says you can't excuse the early humans engaging in wars because Balthazar commanded them - which indeed seems to be true. Saying they are blindly devoted to the gods who had relatively recently brought them to Tyria as far as we know and still engaged in their daily lives, is not a stretch. This doesn't put them on par with the margonites who were exclusively blindly following Abaddon. The other humans were likely extremely devote too, especially if they followed Balthazar to war. Also whether Singe tried his best to negotiate peace or not, his race still carried on the war for another century. That suggests the Iron Legion very much wanted to keep fighting the war whether there was one leader in 2 hundred years that had a momentary idea to stop. His successors made no effort whatsoever until Smodur, and the peace talks on that side were initiated by Jennah. Ebonhawke is an extremely strong fortress, and the Charr did put their war machines against it; it just didn't work. We know its siege lasted literal centuries, so at the very least the Iron Legion was hell-bent on taking it, so idk why you are saying it is false. And really? How did the Kaolai story go? It paints a very clear picture of Balthazar being not only manipulative and toxic but also emotionally unstable. How do you justify this if not as "he was murderous of people he disliked for w/e reason (if momentary or passing said dislike was)": "When the gods walked Tyria a thousand years ago, the Ritualist Kaolai, an old man even then, challenged Balthazar to a game of Nui in exchange for sparing a village that had offended the god through some long-forgotten breach of etiquette. Balthazar laughingly accepted and the game began. Seven days later it ended with Kaolai the winner; the villagers were spared. But in a fit of anger, Balthazar slew Kaolai. Afterward, in a rare gesture of sportsmanship, the god ordered Kaolai inducted into Tahnnakai Temple." He had to be challenged in the first place because he was going to murder an entire village for a certain offense, but breach of etiquette points to something wholly subjective. And this does paint Balthazar as a vengeful and sadistic god no matter how you spin it. He was going to murder an entire village simply because he disliked them for some stupid reason. If a god of this character ordered his followers to fight this and that race (and we know for fact he did), it isn't so simple to just disobey him. It's also a stretch to assume Ascalon had any relevant military power that could actually win them the war over the Charr. That fact pretty much renders every Ascalonian aggression a last ditch effort to slow down the inevitable. Heck, the haily mary of a Foefire which wiped humans and Charr alike in a pretty huge radius didn't stop it, or cripple the Charr in any relevant way in the long run. Even despite the ghosts they still managed to build an industrial empire on top of Ascalon's ruins. The Charr are extremely tenacious - they are predators that not only survive, but thrive. Meanwhile after a point everything Tyrian humans did only ensured their survival as a race. The lore says as much. They persist but still face so many threats [that they haven't really thrived or developed much]. And that's telling because despite having a structured society they remained on nearly the same level technologically for centuries, like the Norn who run on anarchic individualism. As for the wall, it wasn't built to protect the entirety of Ascalon, obviously it took long to finish, but in the end it only protected the heartlands. Now whether Surmia was built over freshly or recently gained territories - or when was it built - is actually irrelevant in this argument. Drascir was situated further north from it, which suggests those territories were already in Ascalonian hands long before Surmia's construction, and potentially long before the wall had been finished. There is no mention of any other Ascalonian capitals beyond Drascir and Rin, and to be fair we are having 1000 years of a gap at least to fill with a chain events. The Charr being gradually pushed out could have taken place in the few years after the first war, or years after the Wall was finished. There is no definite here at all. Drascir, however, is our best evidence for a timeline here, so the lands north of the wall had likely already been Ascalonian-controlled for several centuries. If anything, reason suggests the wall's construction began after the Charr had already become a threat once more, which renders it a pretty defensive maneuver. A wall like that would also be stupid to attempt to erect at a threatened border. Constant attrition and raids would have made it a far greater money sink than it likely already was. It is actually perfectly sensible and strategic to construct it in a place where a sizable portion of the kingdom could still be well-shielded should northern areas begin to fall. Relatively reasonable. A chain of well-placed strongholds with proper scouting and outrider forces would have achieved more than a silly wall, and would have costed about the same or less too. Moreover the wording of the ecology is not exactly consistent with what we see in GW1's lore. "Deep into Charr territory" as far as we can tell is from a Charr perspective and simply means the Ascalonian lands further north of the wall. There is, however, a huge mountain chain between Ascalon and the Charr homelands (which are twice the size of Ascalon at the very least), and it hardly would've made any sense for the humans to conquer north or east of those mountains. What the ecology's wording suggests is that the humans gradually conquered the lands we have known as Ascalon for centuries, instead of in a single push. That's reasonable, but like I said before, it could have as well happened over the span of decades as opposed to 9 centuries. GW's timeline has too long gaps unfortunately to completely verify.

1) I was speaking of Ascalonian humans, and there is a difference between casualty throughout wars and an actual active genocide effort. The Charr did try to erase the humans during the Searing and after, entirely, otherwise they wouldn't have moved on to conquer Kryta and Orr afterwards. Plus in modern times, at least 10 years ago, they were convinced the Skritt should be exterminated despite knowing they were a sapient race. 2) My wording didn't imply anything about the Mongolian Empire, though to dismiss them as "just another empire while every empire is genocidal to a degree" is likewise false. If anything, people overfetishize them in popular culture while conveniently ignoring facts such as genociding entire villages for sport was a rite of passage in their warrior nobility. And let's not leave out the fact that they also contributed to the destruction of cultures in equal amount. 3) My use of "cannibalism" was very liberal, but at the moment I wrote the reply in a hurry I had no word for "eats the specimen of other perfectly sapient race". Apologies for that. Unlike the former, this was actually implied though. 4) I haven't said the Ascalonians didn't produce offenses, that's what I referred to with "last ditch" and "guerilla-like" tactics. Small-scale aggressions for the sake of strategy prior to the Searing, and for the sake of vengeance post-Searing. The former can be written off as war, the latter is desperation (and by no means rationale) after a war already practically lost. Although the actions of the Ebon Vanguard and Duke Barradin might have been guided by deluded ambitions of reconquering lands on King Adelbern's behalf, they ultimately served to slow down the total conquest and genocide of Ascalon, so for all intents and purposes, they were part of a largely defensive warfare. 5) I think you have the order of events wrong wrt. the Gaban Estate. Ascalon was never only the lands south of the Great Northern Wall. The Wall was only finished in the late 800s AE and because the Charr kept pushing back; there is nothing that suggests the areas north of the wall were part of a northern expansion post-erection. The fact that you had entire cities North of wall including the city of Surmia and former capital city of Drascir strongly implies that those lands were part of the initial conquest effort long before the wall's erection. 6) There were 129 years between the Foefire and the earliest known year of Singe's reign and 103 years between it and Kalla's rebellion. What I said is objectively not false, the Charr carried on a three-way war and while we are there, Singe was the Imperator responsible for mechanizing Charr warfare and thus bringing it to a new level of destruction and he also intended to expand the Iron Legion's reign to the Sea of Sorrows and conquer Lion's Arch from Kryta, thus initiating a four-way war (Foefire ghosts, Flame Legion, Ascalon, and Kryta at sea). The only reason he wanted peace with humans was because of the Rise of Zhaitan; i.e.: his ambitions to expand navally had been thwarted. He most certainly wasn't a progressive good guy, more like a pragmatist like Smodur with situational progressivism. 7) A million times more was a purposeful rhetorical exaggeration. Let's go with "hundred thousand times more" instead, which should be more numerically accurate considering the total death toll. Edit: 8 ) As for humans conquering Ascalon in the first place? Balthazar led the effort; they were, in fact, guided by a war-obsessed literal god whom they blindly worshipped at the time, and who was also notorious for straight-up murdering humans he disliked. Not a stretch to assume that disobeying him as a race was simply not an option. But post-that one aggression, Ascalonians only really warred with other humans (Guild Wars) and didn't really show any signs of wanting to further expand into Charr territory. Again, what the Ebon Vanguard did was reactive warfare - disrupt the enemy behind the lines to slow down their conquest. Meanwhile, the Charr chose their gods twice, for the sake of furthering the imperial agenda that they had already had culturally without any divine influence.

Has nothing to do with "2021 perspective." You can objectively verify that the Charr have a much larger kill count than Ascalonians, and that elements of their culture incur physiological and psychological (and often fatal) damage on their enemies and their own people at a much, much, higher frequency than Ascalonians'. You can argue about the morality of being destructive to the self and to the environment, so let us take a look at how their actions impacted the world without passing any moral judgment: Every time they dabbled with forces beyond their understanding out of sheer ambition and a want for conquest, it were humans that had to clean up after them. And that is to say, every single time the Charr brought closer an apocalypse, the humans delayed it. 1) Their utilization of the Cauldron of the Searing, along with their Destroyer worship a few years later, contributed to the rise of the Elder Dragons, and thus helped bring forth the magic apocalypse Tyria is still experiencing. The Charr acquired the CotS from the Titans, who served Abaddon, and everything they did furthered the fallen god's plans to bring about Nightfall. Unfortunately, the defeat of Abaddon released so much magic that the Destroyers appeared on the surface again. When the Charr began worshipping the latter, of course, the Humans came and stopped them. 2) The Charr's collective identity crisis which they suffered from the lack of an enemy to fight resulted in a civil war that dragged every other sentient race into it and culminated in yet another dragon apocalypse. And guess what, an ambitious Charr leader thought he could tame an Elder Dragon. Guess you could call what the Charr are doing "accelerationism," but in the end they have been contributing to the rapid decay of the world more than any other race.

Kryta got completely white-washed in GW2, if you haven't noticed. 😛 The vast majority of Krytans are white, so somehow, between GW1 and GW2, the white genes of the very tiny Ascalonian refugee population managed to override the brown/black genes of Krytans. Quite odd, and I'd say insulting. The funny part is that Queen Jennah is still described as looking Krytan, yet somehow the majority of the NPCs we see are white.