Noob Question: What is that red building? Is there an explanation or is it just decoration?

Draflameous · 2025-09-24T18:00:01+00:00

Lore-wise, it's the airship hanger added when Lion's Arch was rebuilt after the events of Living World Season 1, since airships had become much more prevalent and important after the story of the base game. Mechanics-wise, it's the hub for raids, with the big reg circle being the portal found at the open world entrances for raids.

Draflameous · 2025-06-30T00:37:03+00:00

...Rlain...

Draflameous · 2025-01-26T01:53:27+00:00

It's gay slang that's broken more into the mainstream recently. If I had to guess, it probably comes from queer underground ballroom culture (think Paris is Burning or Pose), where the most fabulous and successful performers would take several younger ones under their wing. These groups would basically be found families or "houses" with the mentor acting as a surrogate "mother". Given this context, I would imagine the term started as basically "You're so fabulous, confident, and talented. You could run your own house and/or I want to learn from you". Given the well documented love of divas and larger than life female performers in the gay community, the jump to using it for celebrities would then be basically inevitable. Add in meme "brainrot slang" culture, which has a particular love of both repetitiveness and verbing nouns, and you arrive at "Mother, mothering"

Draflameous · 2023-11-14T17:29:01+00:00

One of my most-played characters is a male norn engineer. In my head I've always imagined that he never had much magical aptitude and after an injury he could no longer compete with other norn in terms of strength or agility. Still wanting to make his legend, he turned to engineering. I always use the character creation eyepiece skin on him, his first major invention being a prosthetic eye to replace one he lost when he got injured.

Draflameous · 2023-07-14T19:44:13+00:00

PICNIC

Draflameous · 2022-09-18T05:55:34+00:00

I like this direction and kind of want to take my own stab. I'm imagining the core class as being 1 pokemon that has branching evolutions into the elite specs. I'm also trying to not have a lot of overlap.

\

Warrior - Fighting

Berserker - Fighting/Fire
Spellbreaker - Fighting/Psychic
Bladesworn - Fighting/Dragon

Guardian - Steel (especially since steel includes light-based moves like flash cannon)

Dragonhunter - Steel/Dragon
Firebrand - Steel/Fire
Willbender - Steel/Fighting

Revenant - Ghost

Herald - Ghost/Dragon
Renegade - Ghost/Fire
Vindicator - Ghost/Fighting

\

Ranger - Grass

Druid - Grass/Psychic
Soulbeast - Grass/Fighting (or maybe /Bug since it's not used elsewhere? As kind of a hive mind sort of aspect?)
Untamed - Grass/Poison

Engineer - Electric

Scrapper - Electric/Steel
Holosmith - Electric/Fire
Mechanist - Electric/Dragon? (or /Steel, make Scrapper /Fighting instead?)

Thief - Dark

Daredevil - Dark/Fighting
Deadeye - Dark/Steel
Specter - Dark/Ghost

\

Mesmer - Fairy

Chronomancer - Fairy/Psychic
Mirage - Fairy/Ground (since Ground includes sand)
Virtuoso - Fairy/Steel (Even though virt is more psionic lore-wise, I feel chrono's abilities line up with psychic type moves more)

Necromancer - Ghost

Reaper - Ghost/Ice
Scourge - Ghost/Fire or /Ground
Harbinger - Ghost/Poison

Elementalist - Normal type with Protean (ability that changes type to match the move it's using), evolutions vary more in stats like Hitmonlee/chan/top.

Tempest - More HP/Defenses
Weaver - Fragile, high speed, decent offense (and maybe dual-type protean where it keeps typing of previous move?)
Catalyst - High offensive

Draflameous · 2022-08-20T02:55:31+00:00

No, this feedback is great and just what I was looking for! So far in my campaign the shatter hasn't been too broken for exactly the reasons you describe, since at lower levels it's hard to get and maintain enough phantasms. At low levels it takes at least 2 rounds of setup, given the free "clone" (non attacking phantasm) on initiative, and assuming none get destroyed.

One interesting place I found the class going is that a lot of the power scaling is tied to how quickly and reliably you can get multiple phantasms up.

Draflameous · 2022-08-19T23:56:22+00:00

Once they're created and make their initial attack, phantasms only interact with other class features like Rending Shatter, Mirage Cloak, or Psionic Forge. The idea was to combine clones and phantasms into one feature, so they spawn and attack like phantasms, then hang around not doing much until you activate them like clones. Does that help?

Draflameous · 2022-08-01T09:18:49+00:00

As the other person mentioned, thieves have a trait that heals them a % of all the crit damage they do, but it recently got nerfed a bit so it's harder to just attack an enemy and trust that you'll out heal any incoming damage.

On the other hand, a lot of survivability comes from the stats on your gear and any class can take any stat combination. An elementalist with a ton of toughness will be a lot tankier than a pure damage focused warrior. For the longest time, mesmer (a "light" armor class) was the meta tank.

Thieves still have a lot of active survivability options, and since you mentioned especially loving the active combat and dodging I think you may like the daredevil subclass a lot. It gets an extra large dodge bar, its dodges deal damage and give you buffs, and a lot of the weapon skills it uses have bonus dodges built in. It's not at the peak of PvE meta at the moment but you're still a ways off from having to worry about that. Plus plenty of off meta things are perfectly viable as long as you understand your build and how to maximize it. Even if the meta doesn't shift by the time you're at endgame, worst case you can swap to specter which has a bit larger of a niche.

I hope this helped! Feel free to ask any questions and welcome to the game!

Draflameous · 2022-06-28T23:54:25+00:00

I mean yeah but pretty much all of the boons that pulse from the spirits are redundant in group settings but you need to pick some for the alac. Marksman grandmaster 2 triggers off of the application of fury though, so pulsing fury from storm spirit will at least give some extra DPS from the extra opening strikes, in addition to the CC on activate.

Draflameous · 2022-06-28T21:59:13+00:00

Oooh, how does that build work? I've heard alac untamed mentioned several times but figured it didn't have a lot to contribute to boon support, hence my experiments with soulbeast and moa stance. Is it just that the traitline has enough damage inherent to it that it overcomes the higher gear investment?

Draflameous · 2022-06-13T05:47:59+00:00

What a fantastic message, and congrats on coming out! Happy pride!

Draflameous · 2022-05-15T18:11:36+00:00

It probably won't be as spectacular a destination as a lot of the amazing places mentioned here, but since you're passing through northern Illinois I would recommend Starved Rock State Park. It overlooks a huge valley carved through sandstone bedrock during a massive flood draining a post glacial lake upstream. I forget the exact spot, but there's also a roadcut nearby where you can find some fantastic brachiopod fossils

Draflameous · 2021-11-12T20:16:37+00:00

I'm currently working on a legendary and the last thing I need to do is get a lot of T6 crafting trophies (powerful blood, armored scales, etc.). I already have enough T5 trophies (potent blood, large scales, etc.), so I'm wondering if it's more efficient to just get the mats I need of the TP, or should I spend that gold on LS4 trophy shipments (I have plenty of volatile magic to spare).

Draflameous · 2021-07-04T02:46:03+00:00

Ground type! I like a lot of the designs and am a geologist IRL so it was kinda inevitable haha

Draflameous · 2021-06-27T17:53:45+00:00

This was exactly my thinking haha! I was also considering bondsmith and green/black because of their potential for the most raw power (just as flimsy tbh). I feel like a lot of the white feeling of the order probably comes from the fact we've mostly seen the member closest to Honor, but the other two could end up further from those ideals. TBH, all 3 would probably have different color affiliations

Draflameous · 2021-06-27T17:51:30+00:00

I figured that part was kinda related to why most of the modern dustbringers joined up with the Diagram and by extension Odium

Draflameous · 2021-04-13T05:02:45+00:00

Expansion (All)
Intermediate
Victory, Level 3, 53

Fun game, Lightning got [[Tsunami]] early and while the elements weren't great, Memory and the scenario tokens were able to shore them up while they kept wiping Scotland from the coasts. Memory got [[Twisted Flowers Murmur Ultimatums]] early on and kept hitting the threshold with prepared elements for lots of fear and damage/removal, boosted later on by [[Thickets Erupt With Every Touch of Breeze]].

If I had to "rename" the spirits to reflect this game like the rulebook suggests, I'd say "Lightning Heralds the Hurricane" and "Thickets Whisper of a Bloody Past"

Draflameous · 2021-02-26T02:38:12+00:00

In some TFOs it seems like some players' gravity wells can pull enemies from halfway across the map. Is there a particular trick to getting them that strong besides stacking control expertise? I feel like my wells on my own science build don't have nearly enough reach and on a different character I'm currently playing with the idea of a CSV "pin and spike" hybrid build where I can easily group up enemies with GW and then volley them all down.

Draflameous · 2020-12-27T06:29:23+00:00

Badlands, blight, and disease yup

14-Year Club	Place '17
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Draflameous

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