Guild Wars 2 Game Release Notes

Game Update Notes – January 26, 2016

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT

Enhanced Squad UI

  • Squads will now have access to squad markers.
    • Squad markers can be placed on a location in the world as well as on targetable items, players, and NPCs.
    • There are eight marker types, each of which has a unique color and symbol.
    • See the Squad section of the Control Options menu [F11] for key bindings related to placing and removing markers.
  • A new Groups category has been added to the General Options menu [F11]. This contains the following options:
    • Select whether to show all commander tags.
    • Use the Simple Party UI (moved from User Interface options).
    • Clear all squad markers regardless of key binding as opposed to having to clear location and target markers separately.
  • Squad Commanders can now appoint lieutenants to take care of administrative tasks. Lieutenants will have the authority to perform the following tasks:
    • Invite and dismiss players.
    • Arrange subgroups (except for moving the commander or other lieutenants).
    • Broadcast messages.
    • Place and remove squad markers.
    • See the chart attached to the bottom of this post for a comparison of the actions available to commanders, lieutenants, and squad members.
  • In the chat channel filter list, a new check box for Squad messages has been added to the Game Messages Options. Checking this box will allow informational messages relating to the squad, such when a lieutenant is promoted or a marker is placed, to show up in your chat panel.
    • See attached table for details
126releasenotes-EN-TABLE

Gliding in Central Tyria

  • Gliding is now enabled in Central Tyria. Gliding masteries earned in Heart of Thorns will function in allowed Central Tyrian maps:
    • Gaining the Basic Gliding Mastery now allows for the glider to be used in Central Tyria as well as Heart of Maguuma maps.
    • All cities and open-world maps have gliding enabled. Specific areas will still prevent glider use in order to limit exploits.
    • Gliding remains disabled in dungeons and story instances in Central Tyria.
    • Gliding remains disabled in all PvP and WvW maps, except for the Heart of the Mists.

Lunar New Year

  • Come celebrate the Year of the Monkey in Divinity’s Reach!
    • Lunar New Year festivities have returned with the wily and curious monkey.
    • Collect and open lucky envelopes to earn essences of luck, delicious foods, fireworks, valuable items, and a chance to find the new Monkey Lantern backpacks.
    • Speak to Phaedra in the Crown Pavilion to purchase very valuable Divine Lucky Envelopes.
    • Trade extra essences of luck in to Fion in your guild hall to purchase Red Lantern decorations.
      • Red Lanterns can be used by scribes to craft six additional festive decorations.
  • Bash and kick your way to victory in the Dragon Ball Arena!
    • Speak to Finolla in the Crown Pavillion to enter the arena and prove your mettle.
    • Win rounds to earn Tokens of the Dragon Ball Champion that can be used to purchase extra Divine Lucky Envelopes.
  • Festivities are scheduled to end February 9.

Eldvin Monastery Brew of the Month Club

  • A new item collection has been created for Tyrian beer lovers to enjoy! Speak with Master Brewer Desch Metz at the Eldvin Monastery in Queensdale to join the Eldvin Monastery Brew of the Month Club. Once a month, when visiting a major city, club members will receive a package in the mail containing that month’s finely crafted brew. After collecting all twelve brews, club members will receive a title, a backpack skin, and a guild decoration in recognition of their devotion to the craft.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH

World Polish

  • Tangled Depths:
    • Fixed a bug that allowed veteran chak to spawn under level 80 in the event “Clear the chak out of the beetle larvae feeding grounds.”
    • Fixed a bug that prevented the bat matriarch from turning hostile in “Kill the champion bat so Nokta can return his pets to camp,” which blocked the event.

General

  • Supporting your allies will now contribute toward earning rewards for killing enemies and damaging event bosses. The actions listed below now cause a percentage of the target ally’s damage dealt for the next several seconds to also count toward your participation. In addition to that, damaging an enemy’s defiance bar will also grant you some participation toward receiving rewards from that enemy. In order to discourage AFKing with boon-applying auras, you must still be actively attacking targets to receive rewards from them.
    • Applying boons to an ally (small percentage).
    • Removing conditions from an ally (small percentage).
    • Reviving an ally (large percentage).
    • Healing an ally (percentage scales based on how much healing is given).
  • Added a Show All Usable Objects check box to the General Options tab of the options panel.
  • Added new optional key bindings under Control Options—Targeting:
    • Toggle Autotargeting: Turn skill autotargeting on or off.
    • Disable Autotargeting: Turn skill autotargeting off while the key is held down.
    • Toggle Snap Ground Target: Turn snap ground targeting for ground-targeted skills on or off.
  • Added a new optional key binding under Control Options—Camera:
    • Disable Action Camera: Turn action camera off while the key is held down.
  • Fixed incorrect art used by the Arena category button in the guild storage panel.
  • Changed some map bonus rewards to provide a more straightforward method of acquiring many types of cloth and leather crafting materials.
  • Fixed an issue with skill retargeting that allowed players to retarget a finisher skill to another enemy and cause the skill to fail.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented player minions from damaging treasure mushrooms.
  • Adjusted the score threshold for the Haywire Punch-o-matic Battle adventure in Tangled Depths from 230 to 200. The timer for completion has also been increased from 2:00 to 2:30.
  • Pact Supply Network merchants now clearly state which Mastery is needed to access their wares.

Fractals

  • The fractal scale can now be set inside Mistlock Observatory by interacting with the control panel near the entrance.
  • The daily fractal achievements will be displayed instead of daily achievements when in the Fractals of the Mists.
  • The next tier of fractal difficulty scales can be selected 5 levels earlier in Looking for Group (Y).
  • Increased the deactivation timer on the Reflecting Crystals in the Solid Ocean fractal from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Grawl Shaman in the Volcanic fractal to be immune to control effects.
  • Fixed a bug that caused a “world is full” message to be incorrectly displayed.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Jellyfish Beast in the Aquatic Ruins fractal to remove agony resistance from players when eating them.
  • Fixed an issue that allowed players to duplicate Reflecting Crystals in the Solid Ocean fractal.
  • Fixed an issue that allowed players to duplicate Infused Stones in the Volcanic fractal.
  • Fixed an issue that allowed players to skip the Molten Effigy boss in the Molten Boss fractal.
  • Fixed an issue in which players could stand on the roof of the Mossman’s hut to avoid damage in the Swampland fractal.

Boss Resets

  • The Jellyfish Beast’s health now resets when it goes out of combat in the Aquatic Ruins fractal.
  • Old Tom’s health now resets when he goes out of combat in the Uncategorized fractal.
  • The Thaumanova Anomaly’s health now resets when it goes out of combat in the Thaumnova Reactor fractal.
  • Mossman’s and Bloomhunger’s health now resets when they go out of combat in the Swampland fractal.

Raids

  • Increased the quantity of magnetite shards awarded for failed boss attempts and successful boss kills in Spirit Vale.

Items

  • Auric sharpening stones no longer use name confirmation to delete.
  • Predator IV—Assassinate Captain Wiley: Defeating Captain Wiley will now give credit even when not part of the event.
  • Fixed various text on legendary collection collectibles.
  • The Oni Blade can now be obtained from the Mystic Forge.
  • Ydalir: The icy dragon scale sold by Rojan now sells for the correct amount of karma.
  • The Preserved Queen Bee no longer shows icy effects.
  • Hope IV—Enraged Spider Queen’s Venom: Fixed a bug that could cause the spider queen to not always appear.
  • Using the Gift of Magnanimity will now properly deliver the Gift Tree to the user’s home instance. Players who didn’t have the tree delivered when they used it will have the tree there now.
  • Achievements related to Grawnk are once again able to be completed outside of Wintersday if they were started during Wintersday.

Profession Skills
General:

  • Vigor and other endurance-regeneration effects (such as traits) now stack up to a maximum of 100% bonus regeneration rate.
  • Attuned and Infused Attuned trinkets are now salvageable.
  • “Finish Them” Finishers: The stomping effect will no longer be time-scaled through effects like quickness and slow.
  • Reviving: Reviving characters will no longer be affected by time-scaled effects like quickness and slow.
  • Quickness and slow will no longer affect most defensive abilities. Abilities that are offensive and defensive simultaneously (such as Blurred Frenzy or Pistol Whip) will still be affected by time scaling for the time being.
  • Each profession has had their default ground-target decal interchanged with a new profession-specific decal.

Elementalist

  • Diamond Skin: This trait now removes conditions when you are struck while above the health threshold. The health threshold has been reduced from 90% to 75%. This effect has a 1-second internal cooldown.
  • Churning Earth: Reduced the casting time of this skill from 3.25 seconds to 2 seconds.
  • Auras: The durations of all skill-activated auras have been reduced to 4 seconds.
  • Powerful Aura: The durations of auras this trait applies have been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Elemental Bastion: The duration of the frost aura this trait applies has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Unstable Conduit: The durations of each aura applied by this trait have been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Fire Shield: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 25 seconds.
  • Rock Barrier: Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.6 seconds.
  • Rock Barrier—Hurl: The damage of the rocks thrown has been increased by 10%.
  • Shatterstone: Reduced the time for this skill to explode from 2 seconds to 1 second. Increased the recharge from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
  • Gale: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 40 seconds. This attack is now unblockable. The skill facts have been updated to correctly display the knockdown duration difference between PvP (1 second) and PvE (2 seconds).
  • Fresh Air: In addition to its current attunement recharge, this trait will now grant a ferocity bonus of up to 250 points (based on level) for 5 seconds when attuning to Air.
  • Lightning Rod: The attack that this trait produces will now trigger after a target has become disabled rather than simultaneously.

Tempest

  • Overload Earth: Fixed a bug that caused this overload to deliver extra protection per pulse rather than the intended 1 second per pulse. Fixed a bug that caused the lingering damage to follow the elementalist around after the overload had completed.
  • Lightning Orb: Updated the skill fact to indicate the correct damage per strike. Increased the launch radius for missiles from 300 to 360.

Engineer

  • Health Insurance: The outgoing healing of this trait has been increased from 15% to 33%.
  • Automated Medical Response: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 90 seconds to 120 seconds.
  • Autodefense Bomb Dispenser: The recharge of this trait has been reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
  • Over Shield: The radius of this trait has been increased from 240 to 360.
  • Soothing Detonation: The healing contribution of this trait has been increased by 100%.
  • Medical Dispersion Field: The radius of this trait has been increased from 240 to 360.
  • Power Wrench: The recharge reduction of this trait has been increased from 20% to 33%.
  • Takedown Round: The damage of this trait has been increased by 33%.

Scrapper

  • Rocket Charge: The recharge of this skill has been increased from 10 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • Sneak Gyro: This skill’s recharge has been increased from 20 seconds to 40 seconds.
  • Expert Examination: Fixed an issue that prevented this trait from functioning with gyro explosions.
  • Stabilization Core: This trait has been merged into Final Salvo.
  • Perfectly Weighted: This trait is now on the adept tier. Decreased the stability granted by this trait from 2 stacks to 1 stack.
  • New Trait—Applied Force: Gain quickness when you gain might above the threshold.

Guardian

  • Zealous Scepter: Increased the might gain from this trait from 1 stack for 10 seconds to 2 stacks for 10 seconds when justice is triggered.
  • Wrathful Spirit: Increased the retaliation gain from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Stalwart Defender: Increased toughness gained when wielding a shield from 180 toughness to 240 toughness.
  • Invigorated Bulwark: Increased the duration of this effect from 10 seconds to 30 seconds.
  • Protective Reviver: This trait now also increases the revive speed of the guardian by 10%.
  • Smite Condition: Increased the number of conditions removed from one to two.
  • Contemplation of Purity: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.
  • Bane Signet: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
  • Signet of Judgement: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
  • Sanctuary: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.

Dragonhunter

  • Wings of Resolve: This skill is no longer affected by movement-altering effects, such as cripple and swiftness. It also no longer queues and will activate immediately when possible.
  • Test of Faith: The initial damage of this skill has been reduced from 66% of the trap’s full damage to 50%, for a damage reduction of 25%. Updated the effects of this trap to cull less frequently.
  • Dragon’s Maw: Increased the barrier radius from 90 to 120. Reduced barrier duration from 6 seconds to 4 seconds. Updated the effects of this trap to cull less frequently.
  • Procession of Blades: Updated the effects of this trap to cull less frequently.
  • Piercing Light: The daze duration of this trait has been reduced from 1 second to 0.5 seconds. The daze from this trait is no longer unblockable when used with Test of Faith.

Mesmer

  • Feedback: This skill is now ground targeted and no longer requires a target.
  • Mental Defense: The cooldown on this trait is no longer affected by Signet of the Ether.
  • Ether Clone: This skill no longer generates a clone if the player has the max number of illusions. It instead applies 2 stacks of torment for 5 seconds.
  • Chaos Armor: This skill no longer blinds enemies. It will instead apply weakness to them for 3 seconds. The applied duration for swiftness and confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
  • Chaotic Dampening: The duration of protection has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Duelist’s Discipline: The chance to bleed has been increased from 33% to 50%. Bleed duration has been increased from 5 seconds to 6 seconds.
  • Restorative Mantras: The healing attribute scaling of this trait has been increased by 400%. The healing from this trait will now be listed in the combat log.
  • Furious Interruption: The cooldown of this trait has been reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
  • Evasive Mirror: The duration of this trait has been increased from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
  • Mistrust: The number of confusion stacks this trait applies has been increased from 2 to 4.
  • Malicious Sorcery: The attack speed increase from this trait has been increased from 15% to 20%.
  • Bountiful Disillusionment: The duration of resistance applied in a radius has been reduced from 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
  • Temporal Enchanter: The duration of resistance granted by this trait has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.

Chronomancer

  • Well of Precognition: This well no longer grants invulnerability. It instead grants 3 seconds of aegis with every pulse.
  • Alacrity: The effects of this buff have been reduced from 66% recharge reduction to 33% recharge reduction.

Necromancer

  • Dark Pact: This skill now also converts up to 2 boons into conditions along with its innate effects.
  • Putrid Curse: This skill now also converts up to 1 boon into conditions along with its innate effects.
  • Corrupt Boon: This skill now converts up to 3 boons into conditions. The recharge of this ability has been reduced from 40 seconds to 15 seconds.
  • Enfeebling Blood: This skill now converts up to 1 boon into a condition.
  • Weakening Shroud: The effect triggered off of this trait now converts up to 1 boon into a condition.
  • Leeching Bolts: Projectiles created from comboing with Dark fields will now heal through your shroud.
  • Spiteful Spirit: This trait’s recharge has been removed. The attack from this trait is now referred to as “Spiteful Spirit” in the combat log instead of “Unholy Feast,” and its particle effects have been updated.
  • Chilling Darkness: The internal cooldown on this trait has been reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
  • Unyielding Blast: This trait no longer adds piercing.
  • Life Blast / Plague Blast: These skills now pierce by default.
  • Chilling Nova: Fixed an issue that prevented this trait from firing when jumping or underwater.
  • Soul Spiral: Fixed an issue that prevented this skill from triggering whirl finishers while underwater.

Reaper

  • Chilling Nova: Reduced the recharge from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. Fixed a bug that caused the nova to have a smaller than intended radius.

Ranger

  • Healing Spring: Fixed an issue that allowed this skill to double-activate the healing spring.
  • Nature’s Vengeance: The boons granted by this trait now use the ranger’s boon duration.
  • Hidden Barbs: This trait’s increase to bleeding damage has been increased from 20% to 33%.
  • “Search and Rescue”: This skill has been reworked. It now commands your pet to teleport a nearby fallen ally to your location and then begin reviving them while granting regeneration to allies.
  • “Guard!”: This skill has been reworked. It now commands your pet to guard nearby allies, taking a portion of the damage directed at them and granting you might.
  • “Protect Me!”: This skill has been reworked. It now breaks stuns on allies, grants you protection, and causes the next foe to attack you to be taunted by your pet.
  • Resounding Timbre: Increased the radius affected by this trait from 360 to 600.
  • Instinctive Reaction: Increased the attribute contribution from healing power to power from 7% to 13%.
  • Primal Reflexes: Increased the duration of vigor applied by this trait from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
  • Expertise Training: Increased the condition duration aspect of this trait from 20% to 33%.
  • Vigorous Training: Increased the duration of vigor applied by this trait from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
  • Strider’s Defense: This trait’s chance to destroy projectiles while executing a melee attack has been increased from 25% to 50%.
  • Honed Axes: The ferocity bonus this trait grants has been increased from 150 to 250.
  • Predator’s Onslaught: Increased this trait’s damage bonus toward inhibited targets from 10% to 15%.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the pet selected during character creation to be replaced by a river drake upon log-in if the original selected pet was nonamphibious and the character had not unlocked any other underwater pets.

Revenant

  • Preparation Thrust: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 11%.
  • Brutal Blade: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 20%.
  • Rift Slash: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 10%.
  • Unrelenting Assault: The number of attacks this skill makes has been reduced from 7 to 5. The damage of each strike has been increased by 10%. The strikes from this skill are no longer affected by animation time-scale, as quickness provided no benefit and slow would cause the attack to never hit.
  • Precision Strike: This skill has been reworked and will now always fire three projectiles at up to three targets. If fewer than three targets are available, the remainder of the projectiles will be launched at the available targets. The chill duration has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
  • Coalescence of Ruin: The recharge of this skill has been increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds. Enemies are now able to be struck by this ability only once every 0.5 seconds.
  • Unwavering Avoidance: This trait now has a 5-second internal cooldown.

Herald

  • Crystal Hibernation: The base healing per level from this skill has been reduced by 36%. This affects Soothing Bastion as well.
  • Facet of Light: Activating this facet is no longer instant and now has a casting time of 0.25 seconds.

Thief

  • Withdraw: The healing values of this skill have been increased by 10%.
  • Double Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 42%.
  • Lotus Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 29%. The attack point has been increased by 0.06 seconds and the aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.35 seconds.
  • Shadow Shot: This skill will now trigger Assassin’s Reward correctly, even if it misses.
  • Shadow Strike: This skill will now trigger Assassin’s Reward correctly, even if it misses.
  • Slice: The attack point of this skill has been increased by 0.16 seconds.
  • Slash: Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.1 seconds.
  • Crippling Strike: Increased the attack point of this skill by 0.08 seconds. Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.48 seconds.
  • Basilisk Venom: While under the effects of this venom, your attacks are unblockable.
  • Hidden Thief: This trait now grants 50% bonus movement speed while in stealth.
  • Fleet Shadow: This trait has been renamed to Instant Reflexes. This trait no longer grants bonus movement speed while in stealth and will instead grant the thief evasion for 2 seconds when struck while under 50% health, with an internal cooldown of 40 seconds.
  • Feline Grace: This trait’s vigor duration has been increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
  • Pain Response: This trait now also removes torment in addition to its current removals.
  • Guarded Initiation: This trait now removes confusion in addition to its current removals. The health threshold has been reduced from 90% to 75%.
  • Swindler’s Equilibrium: This trait now also grants 5% bonus damage to sword and spear attacks.
  • Assassin’s Reward: This trait’s base healing per level has been increased by about 50% and its healing power contribution has been increased by 70%.
  • Upper Hand: This trait now grants regeneration for 6 seconds when the initiative regain occurs.

Daredevil

  • Driven Fortitude: The healing from this trait will now appear in the combat log.
  • Staff Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 36%.
  • Staff Bash: This skill’s damage has been increased by 16%.
  • Punishing Strikes: This skill’s damage has been increased by 44%.
  • Debilitating Arc: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from functioning with Assassin’s Reward.
  • Bandit’s Defense: This skill no longer delivers a kick when you first block an attack. After blocking an attack, you will now gain access to a second ability, Reflexive Strike, for 6 seconds.
  • Reflexive Strike: Deliver a massive kick that knocks enemies down.

Warrior

  • Added a 2-second grace period between exiting combat and the start of adrenaline decay.
  • Mending: This skill’s healing value per level has been increased by 25%. Healing power contribution has been increased by 20%. Fixed a bug that indicated that this ability removed 2 conditions when it actually heals 3.
  • Healing Signet: The passive healing based on level from this signet has been increased by 5%.
  • “To the Limit!”: This skill’s healing value per level has been increased by 40%.
  • Throw Axe: The aftercast delay of this skill has been reduced by 0.5 seconds. The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
  • Cyclone Axe: This skill’s damage has been increased by 57%.
  • Dual Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 33%.
  • Whirling Axe: The PvP and PvE versions of this skill have been remerged, resulting in a 52% damage increase in PvE areas.
  • Pommel Bash: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • Crushing Blow: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds and its damage has been increased by 20%.
  • Final Thrust: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • Fierce Blow: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. Its weakness duration has been reduced from 8 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Hammer Shock: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.
  • Staggering Blow: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 20 seconds to 18 seconds.
  • Backbreaker: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
  • Crack Shot: This trait no longer grants piercing to rifles or harpoon guns. This trait now grants bonus adrenaline when striking enemies with the base skills of these weapons.
  • Aimed Shot: This skill now applies 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds to struck enemies. The damage of this skill has been increased by 28%.
  • Volley: This skill now pierces by default.
  • Brutal Shot: This ability will now roll the warrior backward (about 400 distance) when the shot is fired. This ability now immobilizes struck enemies for 1.5 seconds.
  • Kill Shot: This skill now pierces by default.
  • Repeating Shot: This skill now pierces by default.
  • Forceful Shot: This skill now pierces by default.
  • Split Shot: Fixed a skill fact bug that indicated this ability only pierced with Crack Shot.
  • Berserker Stance: This skill now grants resistance for 3 seconds every 3 seconds instead of preventing conditions from being applied to you. Its duration has been increased to 9 seconds.
  • Adrenal Health: The passive healing based on level from this trait has been increased by 15%.

Berserker

  • Scorched Earth: Enemies are now able to be struck by this skill only once every 0.5 seconds.
  • Outrage: This skill now grants 5 adrenaline when activated and 2 bonus adrenaline for each nearby foe.
  • Shattering Blow: This skill now blocks all attacks for its duration and grants 2 stacks of stability for 2 seconds. Its adrenaline gain has been increased to 10.
  • Wild Blow: Increased adrenaline gain to 10 and moved adrenaline gain to occur on activation rather than on hit. Removes blind and weakness before the attack hits. Increased secondary knockback radius from 180 to 240.
  • Sundering Leap: This skill now grants 10 adrenaline when activated and an additional 20 adrenaline if it hits any target.
  • Blood Reckoning: This skill’s functionality has changed. When activated, this skill heals for a small amount (3,230 at level 80 with 0 healing power), grants 10 adrenaline, and recharges all burst skills. For 5 seconds afterward, 10% of all outgoing damage is converted to healing. Reduced recharge from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.
  • Headbutt: Increased range to 300.
  • King of Fires: This trait’s functionalty has changed. It now gives fire shield on a critical hit (15-second internal cooldown). Using berserker skills detonates any fire shield currently applied, inflicting 3 stacks of burning for 3 seconds to nearby foes. Increases outgoing burning duration by 33%.
  • Savage Instinct: The conditions removed by this trait have been increased from 1 to 2.

Structured Player vs. Player

  • Changed matchmaking to use games played per arena instead of rank. For example, matchmaking in Unranked Arena will consider total Unranked games played.
  • Changed matchmaking to not consider rating deviation. Deviation is still used when updating ratings as part of the Glicko algorithm.
  • Changed matchmaking to have a smaller fixed starting rating search range instead of using rating deviation.
  • Changed matchmaking to use inflated party ratings when scoring potential rosters against each other. Inflated party rating is still used when collecting the initial roster list.
  • Changed matchmaking to favor queue time less. This prevents other scoring factors from being obscured.
  • Changed matchmaking to not favor rosters with unique professions and instead disfavor rosters with duplicate professions. This prevents other scoring factors from being obscured.
  • Changed default rating to a lower value to account for the removal of deviation adjustments in matchmaking.
  • Fixed a bug in matchmaking in which rosters could be skipped when forming teams.
  • Fixed a bug in matchmaking in which guild teams were not properly favored to play against each other.
  • Fixed a bug in Ranked Arena matches in which players who never connected show as amber division on the scoreboard.
  • Fixed a bug in which players would unintentionally get dishonor.
  • Forfeits are reenabled. Losing a game in which a teammate received dishonor will result in a forfeit. Players partied with the dishonorable player receive a desertion on loss, but they will not get dishonor.

PvP Equipment
Sigils

  • Removed the Sigil of Demon Summoning.
  • Changed the Sigil of Energy (for PvP only) to grant 5 seconds of vigor on weapon swap (on the same 9-second cooldown) instead of giving 50 endurance.

Runes

  • Removed the Rune of Mercy.
  • Removed the Rune of Durability.

Amulets

  • Removed the Celestial Amulet.
  • Removed the Sentinel Amulet.
  • Removed the Settler Amulet.
  • Removed the Soldier Amulet.
  • Added four new PvP amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

New Mist Champion: Tybalt Leftpaw

  • Tybalt joins the other Mist Champions as a new defensive hero who protects his allies with resistance and damages his enemies with poison.
  • War Cry
    • Apple Drop—Drops apples around allies on the map that, when picked up, remove a condition and apply the resistance boon for a short duration
  • Passive
    • An Apple a Day—Tybalt will apply resistance to all allies around himself for a short duration and also drop apples around allies that will remove a condition and apply the resistance boon for a short duration.
  • Elite
    • Rotten Apple—Tybalt drops a poisonous apple on all enemies’ heads in the lord room, stunning and poisoning them for a short duration. The skill guarantees 20% damage to the lord when used.

World vs. World

  • Automatic Upgrade Update
    • The Secured, Reinforced, and Fortified objective upgrade levels now occur after having delivered or received a certain number of dolyak caravans rather than being timer driven.
      • This change was made to increase the importance of both maintaining allied supply lines and denying enemy supply lines.
      • The dolyaks required are 20/40/80 dolyaks for secured/reinforced/fortified respectively at all objective types.
    • Camps upgrade when caravans are delivered to another objective. Towers, Keeps and Castles upgrade when caravans arrive at their objective.
  • Points per Kill
    • Each enemy player killed in WvW now grants 1 point of War Score to your team.
      • This change was made in order to allow players who focus primarily on killing enemy players to contribute more to the team’s overall success.
    • Points are awarded for kills and stomps equally.
    • Any team who has tagged the kill will get a point. For example, if the red and blue teams have both tagged a green player, and the green player dies, both the red team and the blue team will get 1 point.
  • Reduced Rally Cap
    • The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from 5 to 1.
      • This change was made to give smaller groups more of a fighting chance against larger groups and to make WvW combat have less sudden power swings in general.
    • Rally priority will be proximity based. The nearest valid rally target will be rallied.
  • Combat Revive Change
    • Players will no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. They will still be able to revive downed players.
      • This change was made to lower the staying power of large groups. If a player is eliminated from the fight, they stay eliminated until either the fight concludes or the player uses a waypoint and runs back.
  • General
    • Catapults, Superior Catapults, and Guild Catapults have had their supply costs reduced by 10.
    • Fixed a bug that caused the Packed Dolyaks upgrade to sometimes deliver 3 supply shipments instead of 2.
    • Items sold by the Heroics Notary no longer cost Badges of Honor.
    • Many superior siege weapon blueprints sold by the Heroics Notary have had their Proof of Heroics costs increased.
    • The Sabotage Supply guild improvement effect is now visible to the friendly team after it has been activated.
    • Added in-game (on-ground) animated capture progress visual effects for capture locations.
    • Fixed a few bugs that prevented proper repel event credit being given for repairing reinforced gates.
    • The announcement that displays when a guild claims an objective is now only displayed for players near the objective rather than map-wide.
    • Updated capture point boss and quartermaster placement to address the odd instances where the characters could get out of position over time.
    • Fixed an issue that could cause Keep and Tower walls in the Eternal Battlegrounds to enter a state in which they could not be damaged.
    • The “Leave the Mists” button no longer functions when dead or in combat.
  • Desert Borderlands
    • Fixed a bug with flickering and phantom walls.
    • Northwest Tower: Repositioned a floating mortar.
    • Northeast Tower: Reinforced Walls are now properly labeled.
    • North Keep: Fixed an issue that caused one of the East Keep guards to appear in and contest this keep.
    • North Keep: Fixed a bug that was causing the earth turrets to stay on even if a team lost control of the shrines.
    • West Keep: Updated guard patrol paths to stay near the middle of the keep.
    • West Keep: Champion Terza Bowsahr is now immune to lava.
    • West Keep: Repair and Banker NPCs now appear when the keep upgrades.
    • Camp Northwest: Fixed the Recruit Patrol upgrade guards so they will now appear and patrol properly.
    • Citadel: Fixed a bug with supplies that could cause supplies to not be subtracted from storage when players picked them up.
    • Citadel: The supply drop airship art in desert borderlands will now properly sync with team color for the green and blue teams.
    • Citadel: Fixed a bug preventing many of the Master Crafter NPCs from appearing.
    • Oasis Event: Reduced the number of Power Cores required to turn in from 20 to 12.
    • Oasis Event: Removed the map-wide ping when a new Power Core appears or is picked up.
      Fixed bugs preventing Repair, Banker and Merchant NPCs from showing up at the correct upgrade tiers at towers and keeps.
  • Eternal Battlegrounds
    • Veloka Slope Tower: Fixed a bug preventing the Tower Lord’s health from scaling properly.
    • Stonemist Castle: Removed a vulture raptor that was floating above the castle.
  • Guild Claiming
    • Guild Banners: Defiance bar regeneration has been slowed, and the cooldown has been greatly reduced, allowing the bar to be broken much more often.
    • Guild Banners: Profession skills like the mesmer’s Continuum Shift skill can no longer be used while carrying a banner.
    • Guild Banners: The player’s model is now scaled up by 20% while carrying a banner.
    • Airship Defense: This tactic’s damage has been reduced by 33%.
    • Chilling Fog: Fixed a bug where the effect tooltip was missing the effect name.
  • Turtle Banner
    • Shell Shock: This skill’s tooltip now displays its radius. The radius has been reduced from 360 to 300.
    • Shell-ter: This skill’s duration has been reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. The maximum number of targets has been reduced from 20 to 10.
    • Saved by the Shell: This skill’s duration has been reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.
    • Shell Wall: This skill’s duration has been reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
    • Bomb Shell: The protection and stability durations on this skill have been reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds. Its radius has been reduced from 600 to 450.
  • Dragon Banner
    • Dragon’s Might: This skill’s tooltip now shows the correct damage per strike. Enemies standing between two attack regions will no longer be struck twice.
    • Dragon’s Blast: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 40%.
    • Dragon’s Wings: This skill no longer deals damage.
    • Dragon’s Breath: This skill’s duration has been reduced from 15 seconds to 8 seconds. Its damage has been reduced by 40%. Its distance has been reduced from 2,000 to 1,800. Enemies standing between two attack regions will no longer be struck twice.
  • Centaur Banner
    • Stampede of Arrows: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 20%. Enemies standing between two attack regions will no longer be struck twice.
    • Spiked Barricade: This skill’s duration has been reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. Its immobilized duration has been reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. This skill is now usable while moving and should trigger more accurately when an enemy touches the spike ring.

Guilds

  • Trophy decorations for Mordremoth, the Shatterer, Tequatl the Sunless, the Chak Gerent, Triple Trouble, and the raid bosses have been added to the guild decoration vendor and scribe.
  • Essence of Light now is dropping correctly.
  • The Thorny Jack-o’-Lantern decoration can now be removed.
  • The Simple Shelf decoration is now using a different model than basic shelf.

World Bosses

  • The Shatterer
    • Fixed a bug that allowed the Shatterer to be permanently blinded, blocking progress for a Legendary Journey and an achievement.
    • The Shatterer now has its own achievement category.
      • Added a new “Branded Backpiece” as a meta-achievement reward.
    • The Shatterer’s daily chest now has two guaranteed rare items instead of one.
    • Collectibles for new guild-hall trophy decorations have been added to the chest
    • Claw Strike “Impale” waves go 360 degrees around the Shatterer’s claw impact, instead of only in a forward angle to mitigate safe zones on the sides of the dragon.
    • Healing Pulsating Crystals are now indestructible until the defiance bar is broken.
    • Healing Pulsating Crystals now heal the Shatterer for for more health per pulse.
      • There is now a longer delay between when the Shatterer enters this phase and when it starts regenerating.
    • Shard Storm phase is now preventable by breaking the Shatterer’s defiance bar.
      • If successfully broken, the Shatterer will fall to the ground and become vulnerable for a short time.
    • Shard Storm summons more Branded, strikes more points, and extends to the siege weapon areas.
    • Increased the number of projectiles, widened the firing angle and extended the range of the Shatterer’s Crystal Fire attack.
    • Expanded the Exploding Crystal patterns to remove safe zones near the Shatterer’s feet.
    • Crystal Imprisonment will no longer hit stealthed players.
    • The Shatterer’s Shattering Roar attack now seconds as a call for reinforcements.
      • A Branded lieutenant will show up with some allies on the right and left sides of the Shatterer. These Branded will attack toward the siege weapons.
    • The Shatterer’s Shattering Roar now taunts players.
    • The Shatterer’s Imprisonment Crystals now cause area damage to players if not destroyed before the Shatterer roars.
    • Reduced the freeze duration of Imprisonment Crystals from 20 seconds to 5 seconds, allowing entrapped players to break themselves out of their own prisons.
    • Reduced the health and defense of Imprisonment Crystals, making it easier to break them prior to the Shatterer roaring and the area damage.
    • Improved Mortars and Turrets.
      • Mortars now use ground targeting.
      • Improved Mortar Healing Rounds.
        • Leaves behind med kits in addition to the initial splash heal.
        • Applies 4 seconds of protection to allies within the initial splash-heal radius.
      • Mortars now turn 400% faster.
      • Attempting to fire at an invalid target no longer activates the recharge on the turrets.
      • Increased the firing angle of turrets from 45 degrees to 90 degrees.
      • Increased the attack rate of turrets by 33%.
      • Added control effects to artillery and to turrets so they can contribute to breaking defiance bars.
      • Turret 1 Attack:
        • Increased stun duration from knockback from 1 second to 2 seconds.
        • Increased damage.
      • Turret 2 Attack:
        • Shrapnel Blast now creates a bleeding and crippling field.
      • Mortar Attack:
        • Now causes knockdown.
    • Enabled gliding in the map and added launch pads that launch you into the air and give you a “bomber” bundle item
      • Drop Bombs:
        • Damage and knock down foes.
      • Drop Med Kits:
        • Grant healing and protection.
        • Leaves behind med kits for players to pick up.
      • Consume Med Kit:
        • Self-heal that grants regeneration.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE

New Items and Promotions

  • Every Black Lion Chest includes a bonus Personalized Homemade Lucky Envelope.
    • Added rare drop stronghold champion skins: Elite Glorious Tybalt, Steampunk Tybalt, and Orrian Armor Tybalt.
  • Returned Lunar New Year seasonal items to the Gem Store:
    • Red Lantern Kite in the Toys category for 250 gems.
    • Crimson Lion Dye in the Special category for 125 gems.
    • Confetti Mail Carrier in the Account Upgrades category for 300 gems.
  • To celebrate gliding in Central Tyria, we’ve returned the following glider combo packs:
    • Black Wings Glider Combo in the Style category for 700 gems.
    • White Wings Glider Combo in the Style category for 700 gems.
    • Bat Wings Glider Combo in the Style category for 700 gems.