The only reason they reached the heights they have is because of the Ascians. Hardly impressive. I didn't particularly care one way or another about them in ARR, thought they were neat in HW, at least for the Warring Triad segment, since in retrospect, the fact that they conveniently couldn't shoot down the mass-murdering heretic until after she disabled their flagship was just pathetic, and then SB came around and I find myself wondering why exactly SE goes on about how "oh, they're so much more militarily and technologically superior" when they're run by idiots whose tactics rarely, if ever, capitalise on their advantages. They barely ever even use their advantage in air superiority, though plainly it makes little difference seeing as how people riding birds are so much more better than the tin cans the Garleans field. And then the stinger of like 4.3 or 4.4, I think it was, came around and it just became "Oh, of course they were just uplifted by the Saturday morning cartoon villains, why did I ever expect that they were able to rise to their current position on their own merits?" They're a sorry and pathetic lot and I hope 5.x or, more realistically, 6.0 will wrap up their tripe in whole because being reminded of their existence just pisses me off.