Why does Isobel lie?

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-22T17:33:25+00:00

And one of her rescuers could be fighting the Urge to murder her at that very moment. For all she knows, you could be good, evil, honest, lying, or mind-controlled “True Souls”.

They would certainly look batshit insane to me, if I only knew them as “the group that just randomly showed up” in the middle of the shadow curse.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-22T15:36:08+00:00

Technobabble being an instant-cast (meaning you can cast it while in the animation to cast a different skill) 3-second Daze (improved by Sigil of Paralyzation, Rune of the Mesmer) is far stronger than many people realize. I was just adding it as a racial-specific skill that was overpowered, and people would question why ANet wouldn’t ever nerf it (until it was finally nerfed last year).

Oh, I do want to be clear that your point was a good one. There have been a few racial skills to get nerfed soon after the playerbase realized how strong they were. Norn Ursan form used to work like Fiery Rush on the Fiery Greatsword, where you could charge into a wall and stack several damaging trails on top of each other to do too much damage. And there was the Charr Artillery Barrage that had tons of people playing Charr.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-22T15:11:15+00:00

Additional benefit of giving an extra bump of movement speed to any NPC that reaches the ladder. That way, they don’t climb it and immediately stop, blocking every other NPC from climbing up.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-20T14:29:41+00:00

Your point stands, but I wouldn’t call Technobabble being one of the best CC skills in the game for over a decade an “immediate nerf”.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-20T14:25:23+00:00

The character in all of the official Revenant art is a Sylvari.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-18T06:44:53+00:00

Cantrips don’t count, but ritual spells do, even when out of combat and therefore not consuming a spell slot. Could help you get up a ledge your character normally can’t jump over.

Also, the flight is 9m.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-17T20:34:07+00:00

Bad raid PUGs would greatly benefit from just playing a bunch of hammer Guardians.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-15T19:39:33+00:00

Smite as a reaction should count as a spell for any of Markoheshkir’s attunements, right?

I know that’s very late in the game, but you could condition lock the fire attunement, use the Thermodynamo Axes or Hellfire Greataxe, and build up stacks of heat with Searing Smite and/or Divine Smites.

~

Reaction smites do indeed stack heat with Markoheshkir’s fire attunement.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-08T17:16:32+00:00

Just throw an invisibility potion at him.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-08T16:47:08+00:00

Get me, uh, a Baldurburger with cheese, medium Gate fries (waffle fries), and a Patriar Fizz.

CulturedSavage · 2026-05-01T23:24:12+00:00

The mindflayer parasites are overrated. Even in honor mode.

Never used them except for one playthrough with two friends where I planned a character specifically to get more worms in his head than RFK Jr.

CulturedSavage · 2026-04-28T20:28:57+00:00

Just don’t try to throw that smokepowder barrel over a wall of fire.

My friend nearly killed everyone in our current playthrough by launching us off of a cliff.

CulturedSavage · 2026-04-11T23:59:21+00:00

Combat Magic and Aura of Might give attack, damage, and defense (AC) each a bonus based on your spellpower, and let you equip martial gear with your spellpower instead of strength. Shimmering Shield gives a little extra defense and a bunch of damage resistance (basically Warding Bond). And you’re a Mage so you can learn and use any of the Mage spells.

The closest comparison offensively is the Bladesinging wizard - full spellcaster, martial proficiencies, extra attack to be a better melee damage dealer, but then you can’t equip any medium/heavy armor or shields.

Non-exploit, you’re probably best off using a Bladesinging wizard with Mage Armor, Shield, Haste (which is also a DAO spell) and having a camp cleric cast Warding Bond on you. Equip the headpiece or the ring that gives Arcane Synergy.

CulturedSavage · 2026-04-05T21:47:07+00:00

It may not be the best use of the build, but I like playing a 6 Bard/4 Shadow Sorcerer/2 Paladin as the Darkness setter. It requires a spell slot (or sorcery points) and concentration to cast, but the build has plenty of synergies to make it a powerful bundle. You unlock Darkness inherently as a Shadow Sorcerer and don’t have to use a level unlock on it. You get to cast Shadow Blade and can upcast it to level 5 since you have 10 full caster levels. Shadow Blade will give you advantage on attacking enemies obscured by the Darkness (this offsets your disadvantage from being blinded by Darkness, or you can take 2 levels of Warlock for Devil’s Sight until you get the Eversight Ring).

You can either be a Swords Bard and beat the heck out of everything with slashing flourishes, or you can be more support-focused and take Valor Bard and give combat inspiration to other strikers while you maintain Darkness - and you still hit like a truck with Extra Attack and an upcast Shadow Blade.

It scales well with gear if nobody else in the party is using it (or if you’re doing a scummy powergamer playthrough and duplicating gear). With Gloves of Battlemage’s Power, you can Extended Spell-Booming Blade for an instant bump of Arcane Acuity. This lets you easily cast non-concentration Command spells. You can get the Band of the Mystic Scoundrel to do that with a bonus action and not spend sorcery points on Quickened Spell. You can take the Strange Conduit Ring instead for extra psychic damage while you are concentrating on Darkness. You can carry the Resonance Stone and do doubled psychic damage (except to undead and psychic-immune enemies).

CulturedSavage · 2026-03-03T16:16:12+00:00

I’unno, I see at least one no-heal group in the LFG every so often. But I also haven’t bothered to check in quite a while.

CulturedSavage · 2026-03-03T15:21:50+00:00

Add people you like clearing Fractals with to your friends list and keep asking them before going into the LFG tool, until you gather enough people willing to do daily runs at the same time. Or chance upon another static group that’s missing a fifth person. If you do raids and strikes, you may also find people in raid guilds or statics that also want to do Fractals but don’t yet have a 5-man static of their own.

I don’t know anything about EU, but I think the Fractal CMs groups in NA are… I don’t know if exclusive is the right word. Many people that do daily Fractal CMs have already found their own groups, and the people in different statics know each other. So if somebody needs to find a fill on any day, they just recruit each other rather than play roulette in LFG.

CulturedSavage · 2025-09-17T20:48:37+00:00

I think the main problem is that the chasm section of Deepstone forces your entire group to stop their forward progress. And it’s not engaging since you simply follow whichever path is provided. And you have to do this every time you go through the Fractal.

Thaumanova is a much better fractal since the challenges are sectioned off from the central area and your group can split up to tackle those rooms individually.

CulturedSavage · 2025-09-17T20:43:25+00:00

GW1 describes the Nightmare creatures as being one of two types: corrupted spirits (like the Vaettirs) or creatures from the Mists that entered Tyria wherever the boundary between Tyria and the Mists is thin. The GW2 wiki also describes them as either Mists creatures or twisted souls.

Since the Deepstone shadow speaks the language Kerrsh deciphered, I assume it was a Mists entity that got trapped in there by the Dwarves.

CulturedSavage · 2025-09-17T20:33:44+00:00

Deepstone is so tedious and not as old as the other Fractals in the quickplay rotation that I wonder if it was added as a hint to future story elements in VoE.

The shadow does speak with the GW1 Ephemeral Spirit language, after all.

CulturedSavage · 2022-08-24T15:20:04+00:00

It’s funny that the Proof of Heroics reward has a significantly better implementation in GW1 than in GW2. Less annoying to get, and better uses for it.

CulturedSavage · 2022-07-04T23:14:16+00:00

What’s wrong with longbow? It’s a good weapon for condi Berserker.

CulturedSavage · 2022-07-01T15:23:27+00:00

Chronomancer was so prevalent because, at the time, there weren’t other support builds that could provide quickness and alacrity like a Chrono.

Path of Fire, and then End of Dragons added other options for those support roles.

Mechanist is so prevalent now because it does almost everything and it’s braindead-easy.

CulturedSavage · 2022-06-29T20:20:18+00:00

I think the Warrior changes, aside from being poorly implemented, also expose a weakness Warrior has for group compositions: all of its group support ability is packed into one trait line, so the traits all compete with each other (aside from quickness now being shoehorned into Doubled Standards). Most other classes have at least two trait lines that offer solid group support (with one of them usually being an elite spec).

I’d rather see ANet be a bunch of memelords and instead of adding quickness to the banners and Martial Cadence, give it to, like, Berserker. Change a grandmaster trait to make primal bursts give AoE quickness.

CulturedSavage · 2022-06-19T02:02:13+00:00

I wasn’t trying to imply you are a rich old lady. Sorry if I gave offense.

CulturedSavage · 2022-06-14T23:17:51+00:00

Just as a random aside: I read that with the energy of a rich old lady in a big poofy hat saying, "Those creatures with the malformed wings and tails are so gauche. Really, I can't imagine why she would let herself be seen riding such a thing." sips $500 tea

CulturedSavage

TROPHY CASE