#gw2 human meta

[i-mybrunettelady]

The Gloryhound, this Commander of yours

[lornteeleaf]

The amount of time i spent thinking about all of my chars but exspecially my Comms scars and the way they use their clothes to deal with them ...

Thats not very neurotypical/ mentally well behaviour tbh

i love the 'commander with jewelry and intricate armor and a sense of fashion' thing but the fact that its partly canon along with having lots of scars. i know its just me being super duper autistic about the comm's dialogue but

[lornteeleaf]

I decided making a side blog for my GW2 stuff would just lead to me not using it so here we are - sorry for my mutuals who don't know shit about GW2

◇

Starting out with my Comm

This is Iowey Lorn, the game doesn't allow me to make her unconventionally beautiful and monstrous so here is your basic human fem meta.

She's a half Norn half Human Mesmer, her whole backstory is basically teenage me hurting her whenever i felt any kind of negative emotion.

This outfit is her canonical SoTo outfit (exept for the spear ofc).

In Game she is a Commoner/Dead Sister/Lyssa Human and uses Dignity.

I play her as a Chronomancer and always have, usually with Sword/Focus and Greatsword, but i use Spear mostly since JW.

She's also my Main, so she got like almost 3k hours in her back.

Anyways, feel free to ask questions.

And also thank whoever made that one post about how to take better screenshots.

[myriad-lights]

Some QoL updates I would like to see added to GW2:

A non-exhaustive list inspired by nothing but my own boredom -

Applying different glider skins and dyes to different equipment templates

An option to highlight enemies that are NOT in stealth with a simple red border to assist with low contrast environments (i.e. the Soulless Horror raid boss and the Into the Spider’s Lair meta event)

An option to disable flashing effects (i.e. the flashing of the Mystic Forge in Arborstone and the flashing that certain elementalist skills apply to enemies in air attunement)

The ability to filter achievement rewards to specific categories such as items, magic find, etc. rather than only filtering by whether they have rewards or not

The functionality of ArcDPS as an in game feature rather than requiring a 3rd party add-on that breaks with every patch

Fix the Fucking Light Envoy Pants on Female Human, Norn, and Sylvari Models ANet PLEASE They Are So Horrible

Remove unobtainable achievements (i.e. participation in past PvP seasons) from the achievement panels of players who cannot get them

Give players the option to choose between the Commander and Wayfinder titles in the upcoming Janthir Wilds expansion and in future story content

Written 7 August 2024, feel free to reblog with your thoughts and additions!

[stiffyck]

What is gw2

It's a game, an mmorpg!

You can play as 5 different races - charr (big warrior kitties), humans (nothing to say here. Just humans.), norn (big warrior like humans), asura (little rat-looking people who are super smart) and sylvari (plant people)

You also have 9 different professions you can play and each of them has 3 specializations that changes the way you play the profession.

The core game is free to play and you can get through the story, learn how to play your profession and just explore. The core game isn't the best but the expansions and the later story adds a lot to the game.

There is also no subscription fee! So if you decide you like the game you can buy the expansions and that's it! You don't have to spend any more money on the game.

There's a lot of content to get through and a lot of things to do. Some people enjoy collecting different sets of armor, crafting legendary equipment, some people like doing strikes, fractals and raids, others like just running around in open world and doing the map wide meta events. Or maybe you'll like pvp or wvw where 3 different servers fight against each other! There's also a lot of achievements so if you like hunting for achievements there's plenty to keep you occupied.

There's a lot of stuff in the game to do.

The game also has the best mount system I've seen in any game!

I'm a pretty casual player, but I have spent a lot of time in the game (over 4k hours. Ehm.) and I still have stuff to do. I still have a lot of achievements I haven't done, I have a lot legendary gear I want to get, I have yet to set foot in raids tho as my anxiety will simply not let me, but I'll get there one day.

So basically. It's a fun game and I would definitely recommend giving it a try

[ot3]

so i see you tweet sometimes about gw2 and im just curious about your thoughts on it like, plot wise.

i think the story of early guild wars is pretty par for the course mmo storytelling where im paying mostly superficial attention to the plot and mainly enjoying how fun the game is. but around the time you get to heart of thorns they start introducing enough interesting concepts that you decide its worth paying slightly more attention to.

there was a huge problem in the way guild wars 2's narrative flowed because of the way they handled the living world stuff. i love the living world in concept when it was unreplayable because its just neat to me to be able to take such large story beats in an mmo. where you literally nuke your entire main city and change its appearance. but i appreciate the fact they decided to retroactively let you play that stuff in the end! however making it, in the case of living world season 2, optional to buy, but then not also doing lws1 in the same way? it just meant that you got the story non completely and non sequentially. if you just go straight to core from HoT you have to do soooo much Inferring Shit About This Plot from it. It's like your character blacked out and lost several years of their life. 'hello? commander? its us. the guys who are totally already your best friends'

anyway once i got through HoT then i found myself going back to lws2 specifically to unlock the luminescent armor and the respective ascended trinkets since back pre-lws3 the only stat selectable ascended trinkets were from raids, i believe. and then once again it was really interesting to get the map meta-events recontexualized to me from going through the story. and then after that i was invested enough in these characters to go watch the howeverlong supercut lws1 movie someone had on youtube for anyone who hadnt been there to play through it.

all this to say i think there was a lot of interesting story stuff here that would have helped hook more people earlier on if it had been freely available to play in its intended order. anyway

hot: i feel like it benefitted a TON from playing through this on a sylvari pc the first time because the custom dialogue they give that taints it like all of the npcs are suspicious you are going to fucking turn evil. like the sort of 'youre the coolest strongest character in the world!' stuff never really does it for me. i'm way more into 'youre a very powerful person in an extremely fraught and complex political situation' and HoT really felt a lot more like that, with i think it doing a good job of setting the mood for being In An Active Warzone. i like dragons stand meta a lot in terms of things where gameplay really makes the story hit in a certain way. the challenging, large-scale metas make a better multiplayer use of a high fantasy war shining than a lot of them do. getting events that genuinely do take several dozen real human beings coordinating in real time to accomplish makes there be a sense of difficulty and scale that would be rather punishing and frustrating as instanced single player combat.

i know i kind of talked more a bout the combat than the story. oops. but to me the sort of positive feedback loop between getting more invested in playing the actual game and then getting more invested in learning about the characters to continue to future expansions.

I wish I could speak more about lws3 and PoF but i will be real with you right now. those years of my life are kind of a blur and i do not remember a lot of the story beats right now. lws4 felt pretty weak to me in a lot of ways, pretty disparate from itself. PoF though i had a hell of a fun time with. joko was a fun villain he was serving necromantic cunt.

lws4 was ok. definitely more cohesive overall and had some cool stuff. lws5 i think on the other hand really suffered from a bit of covid slump in its content which i will absolutely not blame them for. I would much rather they put out slightly subpar content during a massive health crisis than they overwork people.

CANTHA, ON THE OTHER HAND. WAS EXCELLENT. DEFINITELY THEIR BEST STORY WRITING YET. i had a blast of a time with it and i was specifically fond of what they did with mai trin, a character i was well acquainted with via getting my ass kicked in her fractal back when she was scale 100. they gave her some INSANE dyke drama. it was catnip to me. she fucked that asura they had toxic yuri i knowww they did. kelly hu did her voice for EoD, who i immediately clocked as stacy from phineas and ferb and was as such predisposed to be endeared to her. also who doesnt love an ex supervillain pirate captain. mai trin you will always be famous.

anyway. that is my extnesive opinion on the plot of guild wars 2. great game everyone play it i have over 3000 hours in guild wars 2.

[manasurge]

GW2 30 Day Challenge

8. Favourite expansion?

Surprising to absolutely no one who knows me, it's Heart of Thorns!!! (HoT). As a Sylvari player this seems to be kind of a commonplace (bc of the extra Sylvari flavour that comes with it), but also I just really like the Mordrem and the HoT metas, and it's the beginning of the Aurene journey AND it was sort of "started" by Scarlet Briar (whomst I love and adore), so there's just lots of neat things! I also love the Mordy Meta fight bc it's cool to be able to see a lot of his details, even if his dialogue is a bit silly (tho it is unfortunate that Zhaitan didn't get the same treatment). I know the maps are a bit hard to navigate (TD especially), but after having a little bit of a routine doing metas and all that, I've gotten used to it lol. I wasn't crazy about PoF bc I just don't really care about Balthazar and even more Human lore (also I hate the Forged with a burning passion, and wild Djinn and JACARANDA are also my bane). EoD was still the nicest Human lore expansion imo. I think EoD and SoTo will be tied for second place for these reasons only: Soo-Won/Aurene/Elder Dragon content/pretty scenery and Peitha lol (also the QoL updates too). Story-wise I love HoT and it is my favourite, even despite all my grievances of all the things that weren't included or removed due to restricted time reasons and whatnot. I do feel that it's a really good idea for RP immersion reasons that there are a lot of things that are unique to different races like what they did with HoT, and I wish they did that more with the other expacs/LWs (except for humans now bc THEY HAVE ENOUGH!!! I am still salty for IBS not being Norn and Asura focussed. It should've been I was looking forward to that wtf!! makes no sense!!!! ljflsf). Below is just me being sad and salty about things not included in HoT that I'm forever mourning:

Although i"m going to be FOREVER salty about the vast amount of Sylvari lore that wasn't included/removed for time reasons and everything else (I'm still sad). Malyck never came to help us, Diarmid's portion was cut (leaving a confusing plot hole during the progression), NO NIGHTMARE COURT PORTION (I'm so salty about this!!!!!!!!! literally a super big thing that wasn't included, leaving another huge plothole with nothing extra with Duchess Chrysanthea, making it confusing to see her there. Literally they should've just replaced one of the other lanes as the Nightmare Court lane cuz HoT is kind of a big deal for Sylvari lore!!!), also another thing I am a bit salty about is like... there's no apologizing from ANYONE about the mistreatment and racist discriminatory treatments towards the Sylvari AFTER it all had been concluded??? like, instead we got the Sylvari still APOLOGIZING for it all, despite it being even harder for THEM, even if they themselves (as the individuals) didn't do anything, and like, I don't remember seeing any NPCs apologizing for acting that way towards them. Also outside of HoT, Sylvari have had little to no development or presence outside of this either. I know they're the youngest race with basically no history, but it's still sad. Human and Charr have lots of settlements and history everywhere, Asura get to at least have the presence of Asura tech everywhere as well as settlements like Rata Novus, but Norn don't really have much of anything ither, and I feel like they should. I think at this point in the expansion progress we're just sitting on the sidelines... again :/ Also there's like.. the absolute silence after the Pale Tree was badly injured. Like, we get little tidbits here and there WAY afterwards, but really no direct action taken to help her. Let us do something to help!! even if its' just Sylvari side!! Like, it feels like they just stopped using her as a character after this and it makes me so sad. All the other races have their active "Leaders" but we still don't. Just feels like we were thrown under the rug :( heck we don't even really get to TALK to her afterwards! I want mom to be okay!!!! Also like.. no more Nightmare court development or story afterwards either. We get little tidbits of a couple in Wizard land, but other than that it's just radio silence.

Sorry I went off on a bit of a tangent T_T

[plantwalkingamongstmeremortals]

Thinking about gw2 economic system and how it impacted my break from the game like. I know its all been said before but

Out of the blue there was just one day when i didnt want to play gw2 actually and i just didnt. Maybe i still logged in to flax farm a couple times but after that i just stopped playing for a few weeks (not sure it was a good thing in the end cus those were a shit few weeks but thats not the point)

And at the same time i stopped going to the cinema, and i have a subscription to my cinema where i get unlimited movies for like 17€ a month. And i have some guilt over seeing myself pay for it, even though i know its better than suspending it, bc having to reactivate my subscription if i ever wanna go to the cinema out of the blue sounds like too much steps for me. (and its stupid, i agree)

Gw2 though? Not that much guilt. (Some "what if i never want to play it again and its all been a waste" but 1. thats just me being extremely extreme about stuff 2. things can bring you happiness for a time and stop. thats allowed. it doesnt make all the time and energy and money you gave it a waste.) (also, i technically played the last story patch on release but it was a couple hours it didnt retain me and it was kinda crap so i dont count it) and a few days ago i was like "man, i wanna play again", then proceeded to not play before the following day bc im not a very well functioning human being but did end up just booting the game, downloading a couple patches and just. Resumed where i had left off. Just plopping on some yt video and going on doing some map completion or meta events. And you know what, its helping me get out of my current depression slump. Making me talk w my guildies a bit more because im back in the game - havent been to treasure hunt with them in a while cus not enough energy for late night gaming but i know theyre still there. And its been a stress free, one step process. I just had to click the lil icon on my desktop and my brain was like. Ah yes i know how to make happy juice with that.

And of course it was a short break so i didnt have the experience of the whole game changing while i was out of it, but i still can confirm from firsthand experience that yes, actually, the subscription model wouldve made it more stressful and/or more complicated to get back in. And im grateful.

[sunsrefuge]

have 6, 8, 10, and 12 from the gw2 asks—for qlikk this time, if you’d like! :) <3 @kerra-and-company

oohh, these are all really good questions for him!! thank you!! <3

6. They're now a heart NPC/part of a string of quests. What does that involve?

I love thinking about this one!! He'd first show up in the Crystal Desert, studying Augury Rock. Likely, he'd just be an add-on to the meta that already happens there. For smth far more personally, you'd run into him again in Cantha for certain!!

He'd be in Echovald, trying to track down the supposed final resting place of one of the Canthan heroes of old. There's no leads on which hero's grave it is, but he's very flustered about it and excited to find it! He'd be an escort mission, with a little bit of Druid flavor. I always think it'd be fun to have an escort mission where the NPC heals you periodically to help you out, and he's a Druid and trained medic, so that fits for him perfectly!

Per my personal AU - the grave would specifically be speculated to be Lin Ryuji's. Ryuji is someone very important from Qlikk's personal past, which is why he'd be so pressed about finding it and making sure it's taken care of!

Once the mission is complete, he'd be remarking about how it isn't a grave, but more of a memorial: an indication that whoever it's for became a Kurzick Juggernaut - a Warden, a guardian for the forest itself. The memorial is for setting their past to rest, so they can move forward into their new role. ((this is headcanon territory btw, idk if they actually do that but i Love the idea kjsdhus))

8. How willing are they to bend/break the rules for their cause (be it selfless or otherwise)?

Ohh, he's very unwilling, actually! He grew up with strict rules that would be followed by suitable punishment if broken, so he's very much a rule-follower! Sometimes he gets agitated enough with a rule to break it a little, but he never bends them. It's a dynamic that I enjoy! Qlikk either follows a rule 110%, or, he's quickly off the deep end about it and basically shatters the rule with his bare hands. <3 he's a funky lil guy :D He's far more likely to break a rule if he feels like someone else is in fatal danger, and that they could be saved!

10. Would/does knowing their backstory change how people (in general but also Tyria at large) view them?

In general, it would change a lot, but in my personal AU, it would change a lot. For general settings / character interactions, he used to be a big name in Cantha for a minute! He helped out the Hero of Cantha on a couple missions, and had a bit of a reputation because of it! He leaves Cantha to leave that reputation behind, because he doesn't like being on a pedestal at all. In my personal AU, he is the Hero of Cantha! So, everyone's treatment of him would change a lot if they knew that, which is why he decided to leave the Maguuma Jungle in the shape of an asura instead of being human again! I've been debating on when and how this gets revealed to the Commander's Team in my personal AU for a while now ^^

12. Have they "completed" the map? What does that look like in your canon?

In-game, not at all, but !! Canonly at least, he spent a year or two traveling with the Durmand Priory before finding himself joining the Commander's Team in between PoF and LWS4. He hasn't seen much of Ascalon by then, or the Shiverpeaks, but he's traveled a lot of lush and tropical areas, and is having fun exploring Elona! Cantha? 100% map completion. He's a lil fiend when he's back home ♥ Tropics and seaside areas are definitely some of his favorite places to be. Icebrood Saga made him not so fond of the snowy mountains though!

[lets-jam]

i gotta say goin from gw1 to gw2 and taking months off from touching gw2.... like what happened... waste of cool lore... the story kept going in like... so many directions (consequence of many writing teams and consequence of layoffs)...they made the dragons people when they were originally forces, every interesting character angle wasted... they listened to the fanbase too much... the major charr conflict got wasted... they flattened the asura being amoral scientists... white mantle plots wasted, all the more person level stories and conflicts of personality wasted. soo won being soo won instead of like anything else, anyone we work with doing anything bad all gone away. not that gw1 wasnt cheesy or bad at points it for sure was but that was all so assuaged by it just being text dialogue and not voiced (that much)... oh and also doing nothing to change the status quo much which i get the medium may not allow for but still... the balthazar bonkers nonsense when menzies was right there. ankka just dying like midway even tho she was one of the most interesting ppl to have as an antagonist. and like as much fun as all the huge marionette metas were upon release and what invigorating challenges scarlets stuff was... a character that shouldve had a much different path. like the game was at its strongest when it was focusing on the very human conflicts that come from the world being upended by monolithic forces. also aurene... not a huge fan of where that went either or aurene being so so focal... the gameplay is good tho so who can really tell

[kehideni]

Ahh right i owe a Guild Wars 2 What lies beneath post..

SO!! Good things first: the suggested topic of the following who-knows-how-many installments. I really didn’t expect Arenanet, and i’ll go further: ANY mmorpg to EVER even come close to smelling a single WIFF of the mental state their main character is in due to the things the writers and the players put them through. I think it’s a great idea, just like when they killed the commander in PoF. It was ballsy, dramatic, and payed off well. If they can repeat that i’m gonna kiss my monitor for granting me the privilege to see this with one character twice.

The jokes were funny, the animations (exspecially charr eating ramen x’‘‘D if you haven’t seen it yet, look it up. it’s so funny and adorable and real), the connections between the rag-tag team we got for ourselves now. A+

BUT!

Icebrood Saga started out great just like this, and due to poor planning and a sudden steer of the wheel we all know how that panned out. Eventhough the charr and the norn really deserved to have the sort of spotlight IBS promised. And i can’t help but be kinda salty that once again, we are human focused. (and by human spotlight... i mean...that kinda involves everything GW1... it’s nice to get stuff from the source material, but mine too deep and you end up like World of Warcraft, an incoherent mess that lacks direction and literally had to take back SIX(6) expansion’s worth of steps, to be back on square 1 again, and i find it hilarious that this is why DF is praised so much as an expansion)

Once again, nothing wrong with taking from the source material, just don’t let that be your go-to every single time. GW2 is known for reinventing ideas, i just don’t want them to stop that good habit of theirs.

Onto the regrettable stuff: this update was too short. I hope it was this short only because it’s a prologue but IBS burned me once, i’m not gonna hold out my hand twice.

Also wtf Marjory, why wasn’t i invited to the wedding? How are you on your honeymoon with Kas if i WASN’T.AT.THE.FKEN.WEDDING?! Yes i know, that’s not really a thing a player can... er... play but like a little sniplet from it would have been enough... maybe show the new character animations there? Surely the commander could have slurped ramen at their wedding... and throw confetti, and like just have a 1-2 liner with characters you wanna check up on. How is my man Rytlock doing???? You wouldn’t even need voiceacting for it, just regular ol’ chat bubbles, come AAAWWWWN

The sinfully bad:

The new lootchests are a fkin scam. Mate-y, if i do a meta event then i want my reward. When all i had to pay for keys are shitty scraps i could farm without any active farming, just doing the meta there was no problem. But to pay for keys with MATERIALS??!?! B** I’M COLLECTING THE MATERIALS FOR LEGENDARIES!!! WHY WOULD I TRADE THAT UP FOR SHITTY GREEN UNIDENTIFIED STUFF?! uuuuuuuuuuuuuugggh Anet, who thought of this?! Why didn’t you give them a cup of coffee to wake up?!

Also ambushes are fkin brutal man... i love the extra challenge but come on.. atleast give those fkers’ abilities a cooldown where i can fakkIIIN USE ANY OF MY ABILITIES!! Once again, everyone that is not a guardian is fked over.

To close it in a positive note: the male charr voiceactor was perfect, they sounded just as broken and traumatised as i wanted a big ass warrior cat to be after being put through 5 different hells and back, and dying, and then losing their dragon-jesus daughter, and PTSD, and you all know i could still go on. Can’t wait to hear Palawa Joko’s monologue echo back on us, i’m calling it now!

“The scars you have gouged into it spell out your name for ALL to see” rawest. fkin. line. in an MMO. ever!!!

[i-mybrunettelady]

Headcanon time: Blessings of the human gods

Okay okay I may have gotten myself hyped from the post @synchrosgw2 made about Lyssa (check here!!!) and though it’s god-related, it’s not about that theory, but yeah, inspo where inspo’s due.

But I did have thoughts about how being blessed by a certain god/dess manifests in real life. I hc there’s a social ritual of joining a church and declaring yourself blessed by that particular god at the age of 8; this is because most gifts manifest themselves by that age and if they haven’t, you kinda pick one (and changing churches if you’ve made a mistake is a bit of a pain in the ass honestly and involves tons of new ritualistic stuff.) There’s a grand celebration (if you can afford it) and there are families for whom this blessing is hereditary, or so it socially stands; this is most prevalent in priestly families and to give you an example, Nyra was named after her mother’s late cousin, Alysannyra Gwent, and lady Gwent was born in a family that mostly worships Lyssa -> her name being Alysannyra (which is translated as “to Lyssa (be) the glory.”) But this is social rules, not actual magical thing.

So how does it magically play out? Spoilers for PoF.

Simple. Enhanced abilities to do something that technically belongs in that god’s realm. Let’s see how this works on my two humans, Nyra and Ren.

1) Nyra was blessed by Lyssa, even if you’d not be too far off if you thought she was blessed by Dwayna due to her guardian magic (I hc there’s a link between Dwayna and light, hence her being a guardian deity.) Lyssa is usually associated with mesmers and water elementalists, illusion, water and beauty, but also chaos, and that’s where Nyra’s gift is. She thrives in chaos to a degree that’s not quite natural. She has a much easier time making sense in chaotic/high stress situations (even if she’s not immune to the effects of too much stress, as seen in Icebrood.)

Chaos also seems to be radiating off her; a combination of being a chaos-magnet and her personality brought about the disruption of the natural world order. As subtle as this gift is, it’s not without it’s impact.

2) Due to being an illusion-based mesmer, Ren thought for a long ass while her goddess was Lyssa too. But it took a trip to Abaddon’s temple in season 3 (a rewrite of the horrible Livia situation I’m working on that features gods sending visions, Nyra and Ren working together, maybe some Mirka in there too) for her to realise that no, her patron god was Abaddon all along; for all his death, he still affects some mortals by the residue power in the world that survived, what, 2 centuries after his death.

And it manifests in her ability to hide the truth aka lie. She is an exceptional liar. If we were to compare her and El, who are both great at lying, Ren beats him  because of this. You can’t really catch her tells and she seems to have an ability to track her own lies in a way that would fool 99% of the population. Again, it’s a combo of this + her personality that makes her so good at her job.

So, someone who was blessed by Balthazar might have an earned reputation of being unbeatable on the battlefield; someone blessed by Dwayna could be very very good at healing, Melandru could be very good at being a hunter to the point of being able to parallel norn, etc.

Does this mean that by Balty dying humanity was bereft of these gifts? No! Like with Abaddon, the number of people with Balty’s gifts will only be smaller, not non-existent, and other gods are still around and kicking, though priesthood of Balthazar would like to say otherwise. This is their main point for Nyra being a traitor of humankind but it’s like,, factually incorrect.

[lilacfulgur]

Week 2 ft. human mechanist Maya Lakestone

[bluebudgie]

I gave one of my older characters a little (big?) makeover and now I just want to stroll through divinity's reach and watch his little bitchy walk all day

[neverloseguy]

Saw this post about how someone greenscreened their characters and put them together, so naturally I gotta do it too.

I present to you: the most original group pose ever that is human female meta.

[gglitchshit]

me at myself: how many diavolo inspired characters do you wanna make

me: yes