User talk:Shai Halud/Archive 1

Re. Listen Respect is earned. That being said... *points up* What does that say? I don't recognize the language, which leads me to believe its one that isn't normally written in latin characters (like, say... English). And after that comment on my talk page, I will be looking up the Military Order of the Knights of Malta, because knowledge is power.

Anyway. Yes I do play some FPS games, and I happen to think Unreal Tournament is one of the best games ever. For the most part, I do admit my objection to projectile weaponry is mostly a real-world concern. Compared to having the courage to combat your enemy toe to toe with a martial weapon or hand to hand, guns really are cowardly... you can simply shoot your enemy from a distance and they'll never see it coming. The same argument could be said to some degree to a bow, but it takes a lot of training and expertise to consistently shoot a bow with any accuracy, whereas a gun will hit reasonably the same place every time. However, that's just my code of honor talking.

In a game like GW, since we have swords and bows and even magic I kind of see guns as sort of superfluous thing, and I stand by my argument that its equally likely siege turtles fire bolts of magical force as it is they fire actual cannon balls. As for primitive-ish firearms, they're a crapshoot anyway (no pun intended) so I could see how by GW2 they'd start to replace all but the most magical bows (like stormbows, etc) and honestly as long as both bow and gun have reasonable pros and cons I won't really mind. But verily I will be annoyed if female characters hold bows sideways like they doin the current iteration of GW. Also, I wouldn't call myself "emotional" any more than you can do the same, for who but gives lip service if they do not believe in what they fight for? But the DS thing... that's just dumb. I mean really. I grew up on Star Trek and touch screens are the shit.

So then, who am I to stand in the way of progress? Bring your gun, and I will learn to shoot it. I apologize. Darksong Knight 03:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Archive
Hi, please do not clear your talk page without archiving. See GWW:USER on how to archive talk pages. You need to move or copy-paste the contents of your talk page and save it in a sub-talk page that's linked from this talk page. If you are still not sure how, reply here and I'll elaborate. Thanks. -- ab.er.rant 06:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm.... I guess I wasn't clear enough. Please do not remove things from talk pages, even if they are pointless. GWW:USER#User talk page restrictions. It might seem troublesome but that's how we prefer talk pages to be handled. If you want to remove things from your talk page, you must archive them. You can create archives by either (1) moving this page to User talk:Shai Halud/Archive 1 or (2) cut and paste the contents of this talk page into that page and then adding a link from this talk page to the new archive page you've created. Look at other user's talk pages to see what I mean by linking from your talk page to your archive pages. Thanks. Let me know if you need help. -- ab.er.rant 14:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_talk:Shai_Halud"

Charr Ability: Powers of the Beast
I've been writing a number of articles suggesting what special abilities might go well with each race. Finally, the time has come for me to make my recommendations for the Charr.

The System Basics

I suggest that Charr characters be able to equip special skills, abilities, and attribute upgrades to their character at the cost of a certain number of ability points. This system, which I call the "Powers of the Beast", would be very similar to the badge-point system from Paper Mario or the ability-point system from Kingdom Hearts I&II. Each of the skills, abilities, and upgrades would be equipped and removed in exchange for these points. The player might have to see a special NPC, such a witch-doctor or something, to change out their abilities, perhaps for price, but you get the idea.

You would be able to gain more options as the game goes on, perhaps by purchasing them from the witch-doctor. You may start out with a certain set of abilities and skills to choose from and your list would increase from there. You would be able to view you equip-able options as well as which ones you currently have equipped through a special window (actually, all races would probably have a special window for checking up on their special abilities).

The number of ability points you have would probably best be determined by a race-specific attribute which might also determine some other factors included in the equip-able options. Naturally more useful options will cost more points than less useful ones.

The Powers of the Beast

Alright, here's some more specific information on what types of powers I'm talking about. There are really only two types of things you can equip.

The first type is the skill. These are just skills that you can add to your skill bar. There would be skills of every kind, wards, spells, buffs, melee attacks, spirit-summons, and possibly even signets. Their strength would be determined by the race-specific attribute. Melee attacks might change according to what weapon you're holding or they might utilize the Charr's peculiar physiology, as suggested in the article Playable races/Charr Advantages on NikiWiki.com.

The second type is the buff. These are like buffs which are constantly in effect on your character. The strength of these buffs will be determined by the race-specific attribute. The buffs could influence things such as attack rate, armor penetration, armor strength, running speed, the size of the aggro bubble, health and energy levels as well as their refill speed, accuracy, evasiveness, probability of a critical hit, strength against the elements, it could even cause your weapon to steal HP - the possibilities are near endless. But, of course, there is a difference between what is possible and what is practical and fair. Extensive testing will be required during the beta to determine how to best balance the Powers of the Beast.

That all said, let us take a step back and look at this system. This basically allows Charr players to choose what sort of advantages they want their character to have rather than having it determined by built in race-specialization. When combined with the profession system, it also allows players to combine different advantages and dispositions to create characters of particular strength and uniqueness (which, honestly, is what all special abilities should do). From another angle, though, it also makes Charr, rather than Humans into the "well-rounded" race of this game, or rather, it turns them into the "red mages" of the GW2 world. They are able to specially equip their character with unique skills and abilities so that it will specialize in whatever area they desire. Also, I predict that some of the skills and buffs will be more popular than others and some (such as the buff for running speed) will likely become nearly ubiquitous. Charr hunting parties may become known for their speed and attack rates as well as one or two attacks that they might tend to spam. It would more or less give the Charr sort of a reputation as expert hunter-killers.

Also, as a side-note, without any of their beast-powers equipped, as well as a good rating in their race-specific attribute, Charr would probably be just a bit weaker than every other race. So as not to make playing a Charr early in the game too difficult, some fairly useful powers should be accessible right from the beginning and it might be necessary to grant Charr some extra attribute points at the beginning for upgrading their race-specific attribute.--Shai Halud 21:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Race-Specific Skills revert war
This edit to ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Race-Specific Skills violates Guild Wars Wiki:One-revert rule. Similar edits may result in blocking or arbitration. -- Gordon Ecker 03:12, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Race-Specific Skills revert war
This edit to ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Race-Specific Skills violates Guild Wars Wiki:One-revert rule. Similar edits may result in blocking or arbitration. -- Gordon Ecker 03:12, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Items
Am merging these in as they saw next to no use. To many subpages makes it hard to find things. Backsword 19:07, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Talk pages
Pages with "talk" in their name is for dsicussion, and so belongs to the community at large. If you want to control the content, you could put it on your userpage, or on a subpage of your userpage. Backsword 19:08, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Asura: Crystal Matricies
This idea is part of my new system for race specialization in GW2. See main article for details on that. This idea allows Asura to customize their racial advantages and also opens up the option for them to plug some of those advantages into a golem sidekick if they want to.

System Basics

In this system, every Asura is given their own special personal crystal matrix at the beginning of the game. This matrix would appear in the window for race specialization management as a circular object with six slots arranged around the edge like markings on a clock and one large slot in the center.

Each of these slots would hold a single crystal. Each crystal would probably provide either a single skill and one passive or two skills. The power of these skills and passives would likely be controlled by the Asura race-specific attribute: Genius

Because of the nature of this system, the number of crystals would likely be close to 24 making the Asura system one of the most customizable in the game, but there are some other limitations due to personal shields and golems.

Personal Shields

The top slot (in the 12:00 position) must be occupied by a shield crystal. One of these crystals along with two ordinary ones would likely be given to you at the beginning of the game. These create a small force feild around the body of your Asura which you can see shimmer and fizzle when it acts to defend you from some particular threat.

These may act to protect you either from physical or elemental damage or dramatically reduce the duration of conditions inflicted on your character. This shield will function as long as you have even one energy left, but, if your energy reaches zero, it will deactivate until your energy returns to a certain percent of its maximum.

You would also get two skills with this crystal, the first of which might cause you to become invincible or nearly invincible to physical or elemental damage or conditions for a short period of time. The second would likely increase the size of your protective field so as to offer some protection to your allies. Either way, both of these skills would deactivate your shield for about a minute or so afterwards and cause some exhaustion.

Golem Functionality and Acquisition

You may remember there was a rather large slot at the center of your crystal matrix. This is where your Golem Core goes in. You would likely get one of these from a special mission around level 9 or 10. However, simply having a golem core does not afford you a golem. You must go to the Golem Foundry to have it configured and made.

Now, when you equip your golem core, it becomes linked to your bottom three slots (the ones in the 4:30, 6:00, and 7:30 positions) and your shield crystal. When your golem is out and helping you, you lose all benefits from the bottom three crystals. The golem, instead, receives these skills and passives to help it perform in battle. The shield crystal is shared and benefits you both. As to whether or not those benefits should be reduced or split, I’ll let the devs decide.

When the golem is made, its type and appearance will be determined by which crystals are equipped to your bottom three slots. There will likely be three basic types as listed below.

1)	Hunter (Humanoid, Tall) – You’ll get one of these if you equip two or more touch or area attack carrying crystals to your bottom three slots or if you try to balance them out with three completely different types of crystals. Despite the fact that they carry swords and other warrior-like weapons, these are more like dervishes in that they use few weapon-based skills and rely instead on touch-spells and enchantments. These are programmed to lock on to any creature that attacks their master and annihilate it. If you are not being attacked, the hunter attacks your target instead.

2)	Destroyer (Humanoid, Short) – These arise from equipping long-range attack-spells to your bottom three slots. They have large cannons for arms and fire beams or bolts of elemental power. They are very powerful and focus on helping you take out groups of enemies quickly. They try to maintain their distance from the enemy group and tend to attack your target, but not always.

3)	Reinforcer (Insect-Like) – These come from equipping two or more wards or enchantments to your bottom three slots. They move around the battlefield attempting to provide support and protection to the entire party, but they’ll keep their attention focused on you most of the time. The reinforcers have no natural ability to attack, but instead cast a weak healing spell repeatedly to provide support.

Naturally, the golemancers at the foundry will counsel you on golem production and tell you what type of golem will arise from the three crystals you have equipped. They might even allow you to try out using a few training golems first, but once you have them produce a golem for you, your bottom three crystals are locked in place, even when the golem is not in use. In order to change out those three, you must have your golem melted down at the foundry. You can still change you the top three, though, as they have no impact on your golem’s appearance.

That said, for each type of golem, there would likely be about two different looks or models determined by the exact nature of the crystals in your bottom three slots for a total of six models in all.

You would probably be able to call your golem to you from anywhere in the world by using your crystal matrix to generate a small portal specifically for that use. You would also be able to control your golem much the same way you controlled your heroes in GW1. There might also be some special skills which you perform in tandem with your golem for special effects.

Though your golem’s energy and health are determined by its type and level (which would likely always be equal to your level) and the power of its skills would be determined by your “Genius” attribute, you may be able to upgrade it by finding more powerful golem cores hidden in remote locations throughout the world and bringing it back to the foundry to be recast. You might also find special parts for the three different types which you could pay to have fitted to your golem.

You might also have a special skill made available by the golem core which would cause your golem to go into overdrive, doubling or even tripling its power. As long as it remains in overdrive, the golem drains away at your energy and inflicts greater and greater exhaustion on your character. If you don’t deactivate the overdrive before you run out of energy, your golem will drain all your power before shutting itself down, leaving you defenseless.

Regular Crystals

That all said and done with, let’s talk a bit about the crystals themselves. They consist of about five different types with about five different versions of each. There is one version for each element (water, wind, fire, earth,) and one version (chaos) to benefit spell casters in general. This means there could be over twenty-five common crystals in all. The real number, however, will probably be lower than that though as some attacks might not have versions in particular elements.

The different versions of a crystal type work like variations on a theme, similar to the way many spells of different attributes in the elementalist profession could be equated with one another.

Also, the passives that come with the crystals should benefit the skill that the crystal also affords as, if that crystal ends up being assigned to your golem, it should be self-sufficient and not require another to benefit it as the golem’s supply of crystals is more limited than yours. Crystals which provide fire spells should benefit fire magic. Enchantment crystals might benefit enchantments. That’s the basic idea.

1)	Beam Crystals – It’s a real pity we didn’t see any of these in GW1 (the engine probably wasn’t designed for it). The name pretty much speaks for itself. Your Asura uses its crystal matrix to fire a beam (or bolt in air-magic’s case) of elemental energy. If we jump unto the air, it might suspend us there while we do a 360, spraying the ground around us. Passives might increase the power of elemental and chaotic attacks.

2)	Touch Crystals – These also speak for them selves. You allow your body to become a conduit for the elemental power of your crystal to travel into your enemy. They should probably cause some special condition or hex as well as be fairly powerful. Passives might decrease recharge or casting time.

3)	Area Crystals – These were in GW1. Flame burst and fissure were two good examples. Your Asura charges the crystal with his or her own energy and cause it to release a damaging burst of elemental power in all directions. Passives with these might provide some elemental resistance.

4)	Enchantment and Hex Crystals – Each enchantment hex would be fitted to the particular element. There are numerous examples from GW1. Energy is simply run through one of these cystels and then focused onto some other object or skill and said skill or object is then augmented or hurt by this power. Passives would likely increase the power and/or duration of hexes or enchantments.

5)	Ward Crystals – There were very few wards in GW1, but I would really like to see a few more to add some variety to the mix. When charged with energy, one of these crystals generates a bubble of altered space, distorting actions carried out within. Could offer strength against wards as a passive or increase ward duration dime or power.

The 5/6, here, are maintained with the crystal types. The five regular types almost exclusively benefit spell casters and elementalists in particular. It probably actually needs some adjustment so that it will offer more benefits to mesmers and necromancers as well. The personal shield, on the other hand, can greatly benefit melee and ranged combatants as can the option of using a golem

Crystal acquisition will be, for the most part, a matter of money. There should, however, definitely be more powerful crystals hidden throughout Tyria. Here, power is limited by the requirement of certain crystals and a lack of over all variety in the types of available benefits. These are however, quite potent benefits, even for a player who chooses not to use his golem.

Humans: The Royal Academy
To put it simply, this system allows you to design for yourself an advanced training program which will equip your character with skills and passives designed to aid your character in combat.

Each type of training will basically grant your character two passives and two skills. The strength of these passives and skills will be determined by the human race-specific attribute: Academics. You will only be able to remember three type of training at a time, but this should still be more than enough.

All passives and skills will focus on circumventing your enemy’s strengths rather than trying to overpower them. Hexes and conditions are human specialties, as well as attack speed, casting speed, and stealth. Only their guardian summons (to be discussed later in this article) will have the ability to completely overpower a group of enemies.

Military Training

Your character will enter the academy as soon as they begin the game. The training grounds of the Royal Academy will be like a short pre-searing specially made for the human campaign. You will have the option of starting off with basic or advanced training (something similar to the basic training should probably appear in each campaign, actually).

If you skip basic training and enter the advanced option, you will be able to select what type of training you would like to start out with. There will be about nine forms of military training, and their benefits will be listed to you before you choose them. Once you select one form of training, you will enter a training course where you must follow the commands of an instructor to obtain the advantages of your training. It might be possible for you to skip this training sequence if too many players find it annoying, but there you have it.

Once you have completed your first round of advanced training, you will enter Divinity’s Reach (or wherever they decide to place the academy and start you off). You will commence normal play from here on you until you have gained enough training points (which will work much like a title track and be gained by using any skills: the more “advanced” the skill, the more points you get) and money to return to the academy and pay the tuition for another round of advanced training.

The above process will repeat itself once more until you have undergone three forms of military training. After that, you can come back at any time to replace one of your current sets of military knowledge with another for a sizable sum of money.

I suggest nine possible forms of advanced training and postulate a tenth which might be included. The descriptions below attempt to prescribe skills and passives for each form, but I am not a game designer, so none of this is definite. This is just what I think would work and it is put here just to help you better imagine how the system would work, so, please be merciful. Also, This list is pretty big, so, please, endure its size.

1)	Melee Combat Training – Canthan martial arts and White Mantel armed combat tactics have greatly influenced this area of the curriculum. It benefits all close-range weapons and is especially recommended for warriors, dervishes, and assassins. Skills might include an attack combo specific to humans and which changes depending on what weapon you are holding. Passives could offer increased melee attack speed and increased armor penetration

2)	Ranged Combat Training – This stems specially from Sunspear and White Mantel scout training. Canthan martial arts has only added to the fluidity of its movements and forms. It does not benefit magical ranged attacks, but is highly recommended for all rangers and paragons. Skills might include a sniping attack with particularly long range and high damage and/or a preparation which causes all of the party’s ranged weapons to interrupt spells with their next two attacks. Passives Could increase ranged attack speed and offer perfect accuracy, unaffected by evasive skills

3)	Fast-Casting Training – This is an Orrian specialty which has long drawn the attention of White Mantel and Canthan masters alike. Years of interrogation of Orrian prisoners have finally yielded this secret to the delight of the Royal Academy. It comes highly recommended for all magical professions. As for skills, the Glyph of Ventriloquism could allow you to begin casting your next two spells at the same time. There could also be an enchantment which lies dormant for 30 seconds then heals you depending on how much energy you managed to expend in that time. Passives would lower casting time for all spells (not hexes or enchantments)but slightly increase the energy cost for spells (lowers with greater academics).

4)	Evasive Maneuvers – Specially cooked up by the Canthan masters, this class opens the advantages of stealth and evasiveness to the whole human race. Though it is not a sure-fire substitute for high defense, it is recommended to all heroes who expect to have to deal with large amounts of physical damage. One skill could increase speed and decrease damage from ranged weapons. Another could offer temporary camouflage which affords near invisibility. Passives would increase evasiveness and offer a smaller aggro bubble.

5)	Wilderness Survival Training – Royal vanguard units need to be able to endure the most severe conditions and be self-sufficient if they are to penetrate deep into enemy territory. This is recommended to all combatants to compensate for the general human lack of defense against magic. A “Mystery Meat” skill could allow you to heal your party by utilizing the corpse of a recently slain monster. “Endure Conditions” would temporarily dramatically increase your resistance to a single element determined by your current environment. Passives would offer increased elemental resistance and render you unaffected by environmentally inflicted conditions.

6)	Command Training – This is an art which was perfected by the Sunspears of Elona. The greatest strength of humans is in groups, but only when those groups are trained to work together. This is recommended for more experienced players who are often in leader positions. As for skills, I'm afraid I never played a paragon and seldom used warrior “tactics” but most of you can probably imagine what sort of skills would belong here. Suggestions in the discussion box would be helpful. Passives could increase the range of shouts and/or the duration of shouts, stances, and echoes.

7)	Poisons and Antidotes – The strength of your enemies will not protect them from the terrible strength of your venoms. Only the Charr can even compete with the human knowledge of poisons and antidotes. Combine this training with the poisons available only to members of the human race and armor will mean nothing to your blades. Unfortunately, since I’m not totally sure how poisons will be applied in GW2 I don't know what to suggest for skills. Passives could prolong poison effects and shortened the effective period of poisons on you.

8)	Guerilla Tactics – These are the tactics the Shining Blade used to obtain supremacy over the White Mantel. By inflicting conditions (not poison, hexes, or disease) of every kind and learning to exploit those conditions, Krytan soldiers can bypass their enemy’s defense and defeat foes much more powerful than themselves. Skills could dramatically increase evasiveness when your enemy is dazed, drunk, or hallucinating or dramatically increase power of next attack by exploiting bleeding, deep wound, and/or cracked armor. Passives would prolong condition effects and decrease the duration of conditions on you.

9)	Hexes and Contagions – Orrian secrets have been helpful here as well, but this originally became an art among the Shining Blade as they attempted to overpower the militarily superior White Mantel. It is a class recommended to all as it has proven so effective in dealing with enemies of every kind. One skill may allow you to throw a vial containing an especially deadly disease at the enemy group. Passives could prolonged the duration of hexes and diseases on your enrmies and offer you immunity to disease and shorten the duration of hexes on you.

10)	 Cavalry Tactics (?) – In facing wave after wave of enemy invaders, the Krytan army has found it advantageous to exploit the mobility of cavalry forces to outmaneuver and encircle enemy armies in a fight. Often, enemies are not used to combat on open plains, and so a class for training recruits in the ways of mounted combat is being considered for inclusion in the academic curriculum. Special weapon attacks might exploit mounted conditions. Passives could increase mount speed and evasiveness.

That all said and done with, it might be interesting if those who took melee or ranged combat classes had different combat animation afterwards. Anyway, many of the passive benefits would need be slight in order to maintain balance.

Also, because of the flexibility of this system and the variety of benefits, it is possible to create a build from this that really isn’t good at anything, at least, compared to a well built character of another race. This is because the human theme, stealth and finesse, is not one which is normally considered in games, and thus it is hard to express in game terms. However, it should not take much thinking to come up with combinations that might benefit any and all professions which are currently in existence.

Another interesting possibility is that there might be a few special training areas located throughout Tyria where special courses could be taken to increase your character’s power.

The Temple of Ages

Assuming this area from GW1 is still around in the next game, it is, again, to have a special function. In order to balance the power of humans with the rest of the races, they need a summoning skill (or something like that), so they shall acquire it here.

Once you have completed your training at the academy, you will receive a mission to go visit the Temple of Ages so that you may dedicate yourself to one of the six gods. Once there, you will be allowed to complete one of six missions. Which mission you take might be up to you or be determined by your profession (unless you’re an elementalist). Once you complete one of them, you will be dedicated to the corresponding god or goddess.

Once you have been dedicated (a physical change such as a tattoo of some kind may accompany this process) you will have a skill made available to you which summons two or three avatars of your god to aid you in combat for a limited period of time. This skill would of course take a long time to recharge though.

1)	Avatar of Dwayna – These attack with air magic and use healing spells and enchantments to aid the party.

2)	Melandru’s Watcher – These are skilled users of ranged attacks and earth magic. Their wards should be especially helpful to your party.

3)	Champion of Balthazar – These are the most combative. They attack like warriors and fire elementalists combined. Very powerful.

4)	Voice of Grenth – Attacks with water magic, hexes and necromancy. Quite deadly if used properly.

5)	Lyssa’s Muse – These practically counteract all enemy spell-casters. Their mesmer and assassin skills make for good support.

6)	Avatar of Kormir – These are really just super powered paragons who cause holy damage.

Once you have undergone dedication, the process will likely be permanent, though. I expect that Balthazar will be the most popular, but the others should become popular as time goes on.

The 5/6 are maintained thusly. Three of the classes at the academy are for attack speed which is for finesse and offense. Three of them increase endurance and stealth through expertise. The rest are completely about finesse and undermining power with strategy. The balance is a little iffy, but it comes out to around 5/6 if you look at it from the right angle. The summons are from the six gods, and if you thought their powers weren’t balanced, then you should have said something in GW1.

This has been the hardest system so far. The Charr were pretty difficult and the Sylvari and Asura both came to me in a moment of profound thought. I tried to balance the Humans’ strengths against the sheer offensive power of the Charr as well as keep them fairly well defended against the other three races. I hope the Norn will be a little easier to develop as more info is available on them than on the others.

Charr: The High Legions
These are my ideas on Charr race specialization for GW2. It’s all part of my larger plan for all five of the races really but you’ve probably already read the main article, and If you haven’t, you should.

This idea allows the Charr to progress along different tracks of development which offer them more and more powerful skills and buffs. It’s based off of the Wikipedia article The Ecology of the Charr as well as experiences from GW:EN.

System Basics

The Charr have a strict hierarchical society which revolves around each individual Charr’s allegiance to one of the four High Legions. Each of these legions specializes in a particular area, and, therefore, the Charr can offer special training in almost all the professions.

However, since they rejected the titans as false gods, the Charr have despised and reviled sorcerers and their ways making their race weak in all fields concerning magic. The Charr interest in magic is entirely geared towards warfare, so healing magic and ritualism are almost completely outside their concern.

This system allows your Character to earn rank among the legions of the Charr by completing special missions and using the skills of certain professions. This is a perversion of the current system of Charr allegiance formation, but it was necessary for the system to have any flexibility. As you gain rank among each of the legions, more skills and passives become available to your character for use. The power of your skills and passives would in this system be controlled be the Charr race-specific attribute: “Legion”. Legion rivalries as well as the sheer distaste the Charr have for magic are the main limiters here, as you will see.

The Legions

Depending on your profession and what you want to specialize in, you’re going to want to build up allegiance and rank with one of the four High Legions. This is because, as you gain rank, so are skills and passives made available to you. However, as you gain rank in any one legion, your rank in each of the other legions begins to fall slowly. Gaining rank in the Gold Legion, which is famous for its sorcerers, dramatically lowers your standing with all of the other legions. If you lose a rank then you lose all of the passives and skills that came with it. This makes it nearly impossible to gain standing in more than two legions and balances the system of specialization.

As gaining high ranks takes a particularly long amount of time, you will have difficulty in changing out your advantages, but the sheer strength of specialization that the Charr advantages afford as well as the availability of siege beasts (to be discussed later in this article) are designed to make up for that.

There would probably be either six or seven ranks and, while nearly all of them would come with a skill, not all of them would afford a passive.

1) Ash Legion – The article on “The Ecology of the Charr” describes Ash Legion as being “…known for its stalkers and assassins”. Those who gain rank among the Ash Legion will have access to the best movement advantages the Charr have to offer. They also have skills and passives affecting critical hit rate, ranged damage, range, as well as the speed of the entire party. They can also equip their weapons with special poisons and contagions only available to members of the Ash Legion.

2) Iron Legion – Wikipedia says of the Iron Legion that they “…are notable for their mechanical prowess, preferring to overwhelm their opponents in battle with Siege Towers or mighty Siege Devourers, as opposed to brute force…” Special buffs and skills empowering their siege beasts and weapons of war are available to this legion. They also have access to better weapons and armor upgrades as well as superior armor and offensive upgrades for their siege beasts. They have only enough offensive power to keep enemies away from their beasts, but this is still more than enough to claim victory with an armored siege devourer by your side.

3) Blood Legion – The Blood Legion is described as possessing “…the single best face-to-face warriors among Charr”. This legion is privy to the special martial arts of the Charr. Their passives dramatically increase their sheer offensive power and attack speed, leaving all thoughts of self-preservation behind in the dust. A true Blood Legionnaire has no need of a shield: his enemies are dead long before their first blow falls. Their skills are geared towards melee combat. These include weapons skills that utilize their claws in the absence of a weapon as well as well as kicking and biting attack combos. A Blood member.s body, naturally, is a weapon as deadly as any sword.

4) Flame or “Gold” Legion – “The Ecology of the Charr” says simply that the Flame Legion attacks “…best through magic.” We should all know from our encounters with the Charr, that even their monks prefer to have a wealth of offensive attacks. The Flame Legion is not what it once was. Much has been lost in the centuries since their fall from power. They are easily the weakest of the Charr Legions, but their most powerful techniques have survived their downfall. These strange and ancient magics afford all Charr sorcerers great magical power through special passives. Flame Legion’s skills offer Charr mages access to ancient black magics that can augment any of the magical professions. These legionaries also have access to a wealth of ancient and powerful focus items, exclusive to the Charr.

Beasts of the Siege

The rigidity of Charr society will greatly limit the flexibility of this system, making it difficult for players not to specialize in one particular area, leaving them open to attack from multiple directions. To compensate for this, I intend for siege beasts to be available to all members of the Charr race.

These beasts will not have the sheer power which Asuran golems possess. They each are equipped with a special ability which is only really useful when it is incorporated into your offensive tactics and plans. Siege beasts generally lack defensive power altogether. Battles are best concluded quickly and, usually, at a distance from the siege beast.

Siege beasts also come with their own set of about four skills, one of which can only be used in “siege mode”. You will likely be able to control your beast much the same way you would control a hero, commanding them to switch to siege mode when needed. In siege mode, the beast is, naturally, rendered incapable of movement. Its effective range in this mode would be displayed as a circle on your radar. It will normally attack your target, but you can command it to focus its fire on a specific location using flags or indicators on your radar.

They receive death penalties and can be resurrected or healed the same way any character can be. Their power, health and energy would be determined by your Legion attribute.

I postulate three possible siege beasts below, but, as I am not sure exactly what the game devs hope to achieve by including siege towers in the game, I only speculate that this might be a form of siege beast and do not consider it, yet, to be in the same category as the others.

1) Siege Ettin – These are large humanoid monsters that the Charr have enslaved and equipped for use as siege beasts. They are armored and very useful in melee combat. While they are not completely immobile in siege mode, they do tend to move very slowly. In this mode, their normal fighting skills are useless, but they are now capable of using “giant’s stomp” which your party should find quite to their liking in a fierce fight. They are the most heavily armored of the bunch, but have the shortest range.

2) Siege Turtle – Honestly, I’m not sure this would be included, but a mid range support beast should definitely be considered. Still, if any Luxons managed to escape conquest in Cantha, I’m willing to bet they managed to bring with some turtle eggs with them, and if the Charr found out, they’d to everything they could to get a hold of some of them. These have less range than siege devourers and don’t do as much damage, but they have a faster rate of fire and a better defensive rating to suit.

3) Siege Devourer – These are almost definitely going to bet included somewhere in the next game. They have good attack, terrible defense, and one hell of a long range siege skill. Their rate of fire is slow, but the damage is extreme. Weaker enemy parties could be wiped out with just a single volley.

4) Siege Towers – I’m willing to be that these are either pulled along by some beast or ride on top of one of them. They would be commanded by a single Charr and carry several combatants, protecting them from attack and allowing them to approach fortified positions safely. The Charr who brings one of these along is terribly handicapped by the amount of health and energy needed to maintain control over it.

Now, I brought up something rather important with that last topic: handicaps. When you use a siege beast (you would probably equip them in town and when you exit the beast will be waiting for you) your energy and health will decrease by a certain amount depending on what beast you choose. Only the Iron Legion, which specializes in siege beasts, receives practically no handicap as part of it passives system. Also, using a siege beast to kill enemies and complete missions, earns you points with the Iron Legion, decreasing your points with the other legions. However, the occasional siege beast user need only complete a few special missions each month without his siege beast to maintain his rank with his primary legion.

Iron Legion also has several command skills which allow siege beasts to perform special attacks specific to what type of siege beast you have out.

Each character would likely only be allowed to own one siege beast at a time. It would be interesting if, instead of simply buying a siege beast, you had to perform a special mission where you go out and capture the beast and bring it in for training. It might also be possible for members of Iron Legion to be able to capture other special beasts (maybe even a titan) for use in combat.

The 5/6 are maintained with the Four Legions and the augmentation of siege beasts. Ash Legion focuses on speed. Iron Legion harnesses the sheer offensive power of their siege beasts. Blood Legion’s advantages are the very definition of offensive power. The Flame Legion uses magic, but provides almost no specifically offensive benefits. Siege beasts are geared directly towards offensive power and are open to all Charr.

The whole rank system is very simmilar to the reputations from GW:EN, though I doubt it would earn you titles. It would also be interesting if you could tell a Charr's legion and rank by markings on his armor or body.

Sylvari: Seeds of the Dream
My brilliant plan is finally coming to fruition. Alright, as you all know from the thing on “The Movement of the World”, the Sylvari share a dream which encompasses all their minds and links them back to the Tree of Ventari. In a way, this was inspired by that, but it is also a heavy refinement on my idea for armor grafting. Now just hear me out.

System Basics

Now, what this does is allow you to add both passive benefits and/or race-specific skills of various kinds to your Sylvari character, much the same way my idea “Power of the Beast” did for the Charr (I’ll be rethinking that idea for this new system, too) only with a distinct plant-like flavor.

This allows you to plant up to six seeds (each seed is for a specific part of the body) onto six different parts of your character. Each seed which is planted in or on your body both slightly changes your appearance and provides you with one or two new skills and one semi-permanent buff.

The power of these skills and buffs, of course, is influenced by the Sylvari race-specific attribute which I’ve christened (for obvious reasons) the “Dream of Dreams” stat. Rather than using points to regulate power, here, I intend for all of the seeds to be more or less equally useful, but in different ways.

The Seeds

Alright, now there are five types of seeds in this system. Listed below are five articles describing each of the seed types and some of their possible uses as well as some of the physical changes they might cause. Only one of each type of seed can be planted at any given time, except for arm seeds of which you can have two.

Please bear with me. The suggested skills and passives are only suggestions. It was difficult to come up with examples for every situation and some of these ideas are, admittedly, better than others. If this part confuses you, please tough it out. The later part on the Archetypes should clear some things up for you. I Feel that this is still the weakest part of the article and the one that needs the most work. If you have ideas, please post them in the discission box.

If the physical changes bother you, just know that most of them are just examples and they might not even be included at all because of the difficulty in programming them. The names are likewise superfluous and based on the Hindu chakra model, though I have taken some liberties with the details. Also, it would probably be nessissary to design Sylvari armors to acomadate possible changes in the player-characher's physiology.

1)	Sahasara Seeds (Head) – These seeds would likely be planted in the Sylvari’s hair and cause small changes here. Things such as flowers sprouting or vines growing or hardened scales like tree bark or a glyph appearing on your scalp might be appropriate depending on what seed you plant. These seeds might offer skills which would manipulate animals in the environment, cast various enchantments and protection spells, remove conditions from yourself or party members, and/or cast wards. Semi-permanent buffs might have to do with extending the effective period of enchantments and stances or offer energy restoration based on how much you heal others for.

2)	Bindu Seeds (Arms) – These are the most militant variety as they can influence how you interact with your weapons. You can plant two of these: one in each arm. These could cause melee weapons be absorbed into your character, becoming like extensions of your arm. One seed may cause one of your arms to grow longer than the other, giving you a greater draw distance when you hold a bow offering you greater power and range with each shot (as is known to have happened historically with asymmetrical archers). More often, though, it will simply cause different sorts of vines, ivy, tattoos, and/or moss to coil around your arms. These seeds would provide two or three offensive attacks, but the rest of their skills would be for healing, restoration, hexing, and buffing. Semi-permanents could increase melee and/or bow damage as well as offer more power and range to healing spells, hexes, and buffs.

3)	Manipura Seeds (Belly) – These seeds are swallowed and might cause different glyphs to appear on your belly (as seen in the Sylvari concept art). This would allow you one of three special seed skills which suspend the Manipura Seed's buff temporarily and allow your character to cough up a seed which, when planted on an ally, might allow you to give them an energy or health regenerative bonus for a few minutes or it provide some defensive benefit. Its possible you could instead cough up a spore pod and throw it at a group of enemies to inflict plague on them, but this might be too war-like. These would offer regenerative or defensive bonuses as passives, depending on the seed.

4)	Swadhisthana Seeds (Tailbone or Back) – These are particularly powerful and might cause bark, glyphs, or vines of some kind to grow on your back. These would offer one of three powerful summons which would bring an archetype out of the Dream of Dreams to aide you and your party. These summons would take on large ghostly forms which would be fixed around your character and mimic your movements. They would provide different types of support and disappear after about a minute or so, taking a while to recharge.Either way, these summons are extremely powerful and active while they are uin use, but act independent of your character. Passive advantages might offer defense against the elements, an increase in health/energy, or a physical defensive bonus.

5)	Maludhara Seeds (Legs) – These might cause bark to grow over your legs, or moss, fungus or ivy to sprout from them. Skills offered by these might increase your speed over land, allow you to summon protective spirits, or allow you to cast speed buffs, or wards. Passive abilities might increase speed in water or through swamp or prevent earth-shaking techniques from knocking you down or interrupting your spells.

The Archetypes

There will be at least three seeds available for each body part, one for each of the archetypes. These archetypes represent three facets of the Sylvari race and arise from the Dream of Dreams. They are also taken from Jung’s psychodynamic theory and are loosely fitted to the purposes described below.

1)	The Anima – The Anima is the female helper who aids men in their perception of and dealings with the opposite sex. Here, she represents the healing powers of the Sylvari race. Her seeds provide skills and passives geared directly toward healing. These include healing and regenerative spells as well as spirit summons. Her awakened form provides health regeneration to the whole party and casts powerful healing spells and restorative enchantments.

2)	The Child – This archetype is a small child who has wisdom and abilities far beyond his years. He represents the innate knowledge and wisdom that come only from within. The Child’s seeds provide enchantments, weapons spells and other buffs as well as energy restoration. His passives increase energy and buff times and decrease recharge times. In his awakened form, the Child bestows energy restoration on the whole party and casts weapons spells and several other enchantments while making your party immune to all hexes to increase the party’s combat effectiveness.

3)	The Shadow – The Shadow represents everything we hate and fear about ourselves. He is a dark figure who is the most combative of the Sylvari archetypes, but he also inspires their protective instincts. His seeds grant skills that turn beasts rabid as well as several protection spells and wards. What few offensive skills are included in the Sylvari list belong to the Shadow. His passives distort the Sylvari shape and offer defensive and offensive advantages and shorten the effective periods of curses on the Sylvari. In his awakened form, the Shadow is a demon who steals the heath and energy of the party’s enemies. Casting hexes, protection spells, wards, and plagues, the dark shepherd acts to defend his flock.

In the end, the 5/6 are maintained thusly: the Anima is entirely for healing; the Child only affords buffs and supporive abilities; the Shadow's abilities are split right down the middle between attacks skills and protective magic.

Ventari's Garden

Aquiring race advantages, for the Sylvari is an easy and simple process. They would enter an instanced area around the Tree of Ventari called Ventari's Garden, where new Sylvari are born and the Seeds of the Dream are harvested from small plants that have grown on and around the tree. The high priest or gardener then would act as sort of a seed merchant, selling the seeds to whoever has enough money. The prices should be fixed and low enough to allow people to change out their abilities fairly easily.

It would be interesting if, instead of just normally equipping the seeds in a special window, the gardener had to plant the seeds in you and each seed was accompanied by a short cut scene. Also, just to be clear, it would probably be nessissary for the gardener to offer new Sylvari two or three seeds free just to start them off.

Some special seeds might also be hidden in remote locations and dungeons just to spice things up and offer skilled players some new experiences.

Seeds could probably be removed in tact through some special process, but it might be more practical to just use a potion to kill off one of the current ones and then just plant a new one in its place.

It won’t be so different from the runes of GW1, really. You’re only limited by the umber of body parts you have and how much money you’ve got, as well as your attribute points since the Dream of Dreams attribute is what really controls the strength of these benefits. They are also like different armor styles in that none of them should really be any more useful than the others, only different in its use.

Customizaple Race Specialization Details
Asura: Crystal Matricies

Charr: The High Legions

Humans: The Royal Academy

Sylvari: Seeds of the Dream


 * For the sake of avoiding conflict, you should put these in your userspace, example: User:Shai Halud/Asura: Crystal Matricies. You can comment this out (place around it) or remove it if you don't want it to show up when you move these, but please move/place them there. -- Chaiyo Kaldor  חיו 21:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you explain?
I don't really understand why all this is on your talk page. The talk page is for discussion. This really seems to be more appropriate for user subpages, as it isn't discussion. -- Wyn 20:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)