04/01/2019—April Fools'
World Polish
Updated audio for sitting in chairs. Chair-based audio can be adjusted using the Unique Audio drop-downs in the Options menu.
Cloud movement in Shaemoor has been corrected to match Tyrian wind patterns.
Fixed a visual bug in which some dredge did not appear to be ghosts in Dredgehaunt Cliffs.
The commander's communicator has been upgraded to include a virtual assistant. Use voice command "Dessa!" to get started. For example, "Dessa! Play 'Fear Not This Night.'"
Players found to be in violation of the "No Mounts" zone within Amnoon will be fined.
To address immersion complaints, all charr character names have had the word "charr" replaced with "kitten."
Cats in the player's home instance that are not kept entertained will now begin destroying gathering nodes and scenery at a set rate per day.
Fractals
Mistlock instabilities have been renamed "fractal birds" for clarity.
To fix the problem of "bad days," fractal birds are now based on player profession rather than randomly generated each day. Corresponding birds will be applied to all party members based on their profession. Check the Profession Skills section of the release notes for the first season's birds!
Raids
Raised the water level in Hall of Chains to facilitate the use of underwater skills in the final encounter.
Personal Story
The Personal Story has been renamed Professional Story to reflect that this is your character's job.
Items
Fixed a typo that caused the Gift of Dedication to require chak eggs instead of chak egg sacs.
Stonemist Castle can now be crafted as a decoration for guild halls.
Profession Skills
General
Alacrity now speeds up the wait time for the daily reset.
Confusion now randomizes your key bindings when it is applied, in addition to its previous effects.
Movement speed now scales with boot rarity.
Elementalist
Entering water attunement now temporarily removes the dehydration condition.
Entering fire attunement now temporarily removes the frostbite condition.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: We Bleed Birds.
Engineer
Reduced scrap acquisition rate of scrappers to pre-Heart of Thorns™ levels.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Bird Vindicators.
Guardian
Increased depth of symbolism on all guardian symbols by 25%.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Bird Overload.
Mesmer
Changed Signet of Inspiration by 33%.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Bird Convergence.
Necromancer
Axe skill damage increased by 5.999% repeating.
Reduced the number of scourge shades scourged when a scourge shade scourges shades.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Toxic Birds.
Ranger
Pets commanded to fight members of their own species will instead turn hostile and attack the ranger.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Social Birds.
Revenant
Replacing the previous energy cost, revenant skills now consume spirit shards.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Outbirded.
Thief
Reduced the amount of gold gained when Steal is used on friendly NPCs.
Thief initiative is now reset when the thief enters combat, with the starting amount randomly determined from 1 to 20.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Last Birds.
Warrior
Increased the cost of entering Berserk mode from 30 adrenaline to 35 adrenaline.
Players can now prevent adrenaline loss between encounters by using attack skills, even if they don't hit anything.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Slippery Birds.
Structured Player vs. Player
Fractal birds have been introduced to PvP. The greater the lead a team has over the enemy team, the more birds they will have applied.
World vs. World
General
When the outnumbered effect is applied, autobalancing will immediately take effect.
Added new mount race events featuring the warclaw to all WvW maps. Please show good sportsmanship and don't attack players who are waiting for the race to start.
Eternal Battlegrounds
Added a new environmental hazard to the Eternal Battlegrounds. Roving bands of feral warclaws sweep through the map, dealing high damage to players caught outside of a gradually shrinking circle centered on Stonemist Keep.
Alpine Borderlands
Added a new environmental hazard to the Alpine Borderlands. Players in the cold, high-altitude, low-oxygen environment of the snowy north will have the new frostbite condition applied to them. This condition periodically inflicts chilled and confusion.
Desert Borderlands
Added a new environmental hazard to the Desert Borderlands. Players who spend longer than 10 minutes outdoors in the Desert Borderlands will have the new dehydration condition applied to them. This condition periodically inflicts crippled and torment and will be accompanied by hallucinations of enemy mirages.
Finally finished W1 Trib.. not sure my sanity will handle W2
Well.. 2-1 done, but apparently that's where the sanity ends according to folks who've done all of W2 trib... maybe the weekend when I have enough time to scream at things...
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
For WvW, we’ve talked about changing the matches so that scoring matters in 8-hour intervals. This allows us to address gameplay in off-peak hours in a way that doesn’t invalidate the work of the most active populations.
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* Allow 8 weeks after April 29th for this item to be distributed. To receive your item, make sure you’ve created and logged in with at least one character on your Guild Wars 2 account so we can send it to their mailbox."
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CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Announcing NICE's second Super Adventure Challenge!
Instead of missions the next few weeks (7th April and 13th April) we'll be running our SAB challenge! The goal is to complete normal-mode SAB as quickly as possible, in a team!
This year, we'll be doing World 1 and World 2 separately, so more folks can get on board!
Prizes will be awarded to:
The team who completes first
The top 3 "points" earners. Points are awarded for arriving at a checkpoint first or second (as long as you didn't kill yourself to get to the checkpoint). We'll have an officer* in each team keeping track!
Current plan (subject to change!)
Prizes
We've got some shineys languishing in the guild bank. Will you focus on the team award or the individual? Will you help your comrades or run off ahead making them wait for platform respawns?
Individual Prizes - TBC, likely including the Beastslayer Greatsword skin and a unique guild rank for the year!
Team Prize
The team who win will get their choice of 20 ecto or 20 hardened lather each
Participation Prize
All participants get 25 princess maya wigs!
Rules!
Each team will contain someone who has a torch and an officer to keep track of scores*
For W2 - Everyone will need push unlocked
"Complete" is defined as defeating the Cart/Robbers and completing every world back to back
Shortcut Worm/Eagle are allowed (and encouraged!)
Officers ARE eligible for the team/participation prize. We're a part of the team after all
Officers are NOT eligible for the individual prize. They'll be "skipped" if they're first or second.
Killing yourself to get to a checkpoint invalidates points for the individual prize
Please disable TACO - it gives an advantage not everyone will have.
* If we don't have enough officers, some veteran novices have volunteered to step in They will remain eligible for all prizes.
I am digging the heck out of Firebrand. I've dabbled in Guard a bit before but never really liked the greatsword/power builds that seem so prevalent. I've basically got this guy set up as a dummy-friendly burnbrand with rabid gear and axe/torch. I just plow through my axe burns, torch burns, utility burns, then swap into tome 1 and burn some more, swap back and repeat. Precision plus traits mean more crits proc'ing more fire and toughness let's me soak a little bit while I'm navel gazing my tome bar looking for spammable burns. I'm tempted to switch it to vit/tough/condition to see how much of a pain I am to kill.
It's not a meta build by any stretch of the imagination, but not a lot of open world content handles 20 stacks of 100% duration burning all that well, and I don't need robot and/or teenaged fingers to keep up with the rotation. As a bonus, I can help out in events by spamming tome 2 and 3 in between the bigger burn phases just for a little taste of healing/boon support.
If templates do materialize one day, I'll be able to have a proper diviner's power firebrand, this easy to play one, *and* a deep support spec all rolled into one guy, and that'll make me a happy dude.
I've been plinking through the expansions with my mesmer. Pretty sure PoF was designed for folks that already have gliding, falling from great heights on a mount, clipping a wall, then dropping to your death happens a lot.
Looks like it’s somewhere between the griffon and the springer. Griffon with less speed capability but a lot more vertical mobility, but not the vertical speed of the springer.
I don't want to be *that guy* but I'm not really sure we need another mount. I'm seriously mount fatigued after the griffon, beetle, and warclaw (the latter 2 being super niche-y to boot)
I'm guessing it's probably because their team wanted to make flying integral to the finale and someone ran a query against the actual number of people with griffons and it wasn't super promising so rather than rent-a-mount, they went full Oprah and now you we all get a brand, new mount!
[Not really complaining here - strictly tongue in cheeck]
I saw a link to the "what's next" post/roadmap and decided to log in. I see runes are salvageable now - I assume I should salv all the minor and major ones I have sitting around? I guess for superior it depends on their TP value?
I don't have either expansion, so I'm wondering how that limits things. Like is having a mount now a must for Wuv since it provides more mobility?
I saw a link to the "what's next" post/roadmap and decided to log in. I see runes are salvageable now - I assume I should salv all the minor and major ones I have sitting around? I guess for superior it depends on their TP value?
I don't have either expansion, so I'm wondering how that limits things. Like is having a mount now a must for Wuv since it provides more mobility?
I think you'll want one asap. I'm working towards one and it's a pain when you're in a group who all have them and get left behind.
It doesn't help that one of the requirements is to capture a fort, which will take some organised play.
The rest are all easy enough. I've played about 3 hours, and I'm only missing 2 steps. The fort one, and complete the new warbeast track.
2-3 was insane. Though I still reckon one of the hardest parts are the corner jumps at the beginning.. though the first ice room was defiantely the toughest part. (Till I started abusing the stun breaks and invuln frames on health potions...)
Not touching 2-3 trib again, might go back and do the W1 infusion though
Leveled up the jackal and popped into the deadhouse for the veilrender collection item. It was pretty touch and go until I realized you could run past everything. Just need the mordant sickle skin to complete it.
So, now SAB's over and after going back and finishing the HoT collections (cutesy of SAB tokens), I realised my "todo" list looked very different to last time! What's everyone else working on? Anyone else up for any of the below (a lot of it is group work)?
Some semi random achis
Speed rush (Crystal Circuit Racer) on the last LS instance. This doesn't give credit to the whole group (or didn't..) but is a lot easier in one, so would need to go multiple times.
Siren's reef - catch 8 times and murder lots of things with cannon
So, now SAB's over and after going back and finishing the HoT collections (cutesy of SAB tokens), I realised my "todo" list looked very different to last time! What's everyone else working on? Anyone else up for any of the below (a lot of it is group work)?
Some semi random achis
Speed rush (Crystal Circuit Racer) on the last LS instance. This doesn't give credit to the whole group (or didn't..) but is a lot easier in one, so would need to go multiple times.
Siren's reef - catch 8 times and murder lots of things with cannon
One more loop around round Master diver
Maybe the core PoF armour/weapon collections.
A couple of last bosses to down:
Arkk (Frac 100CM) ONE DAY....
Quadim
Dhumm
I'm happy to assist with Arkk on 100CM same with Qadim and Dhuum if you can find a group, I could also give you my spot for a Qadim or Dhuum group if you're so inclined though it would require you're awake between 7-9PM Pacific Time.
As to what I'm working on, atm just low key wrapping up Dry Top weapons and saving up for whatever they release in Episode 6.
All - still trying to do the maths, so figured I'd outsource....
Post the loot update, I've just been letting unid's gather in shared inv slots, is it better to id->salvage, TP or salvage direct nowerdays?
I'm curious too! I spend most of my time harvesting in LS3 and LS4 and participating in events in between, so my UNID stacks are piling up.
I'm no data cruncher, but I will say that I "opened" 500 of each green and blue and didn't really get a thrill out of it. At least with the rare stacks, there's always a chance to hit an exotic. I think I'm going to start selling green/blue stacks like I would overflow stacks of elder wood and mithril (after I've used that resource for daily ascy pieces). Given the amount of salvaging I'd need to do to raise my 185% base magic find any higher, I may just do that from now on unless I need basic crafting materials (mithril, silk, wood) and luck (which seems all the more worthless now).
Saving up the rares to open at once is a nice little christmas morning, though. Much better than salvaging a few after an event.
Thanks @naegwen - 3am isn't really viable for stealzing your raid slot, but I'll definitely bear your offer in mind though if I manage to sort a group out
I'm off for an Easter break for a few days, but will try to start organising something for 100cm when I get back
So.. I caved and got the War Eternal supply package... Arctic Icewing or Primeval Griffon (as my only none core griff skin).. decisions decisions.. HALPS!
Psyched for meta bonus events and PoF meta improvements! Tooling around the desert zones opening chests and doing events is my open world goto when not farming LS3 maps for currency. Can't wait!
Boss Rush is really cool if you like just bouncing between events and casually following the zerg. It seems like it'd be a real pain in the butt without the Boss Portal Device, but I guess it's doable if you're tracking a web timer and already have Central Tyria explored. I haven't seen anything of note out of the bonus boxes (mostly just minor trade goods), but it's still a good time just seeing massive crowds attending. Prepare your processor, though - there be jaggedy video lag ahead.
Kismet for me as I popped into Silverwastes and got back to back Lego spawns at Indigo and Amber, which just happened to be the last 2 I needed for Be All End All, which in turn gave me the last 3 points to complete my central Tyrian Mastery track. No more wasted XP in the heartland! I mean, I know shards aren't a big deal, but it always bugged me.
High hopes for the Meta event when it's completed. If I could just bounce between Metas with a guaranteed participation group, I'd probably kick back an do it all day like a good Silverwastes or WvW binge.
Posts
World Polish
Updated audio for sitting in chairs. Chair-based audio can be adjusted using the Unique Audio drop-downs in the Options menu.
Cloud movement in Shaemoor has been corrected to match Tyrian wind patterns.
Fixed a visual bug in which some dredge did not appear to be ghosts in Dredgehaunt Cliffs.
The commander's communicator has been upgraded to include a virtual assistant. Use voice command "Dessa!" to get started. For example, "Dessa! Play 'Fear Not This Night.'"
Players found to be in violation of the "No Mounts" zone within Amnoon will be fined.
To address immersion complaints, all charr character names have had the word "charr" replaced with "kitten."
Cats in the player's home instance that are not kept entertained will now begin destroying gathering nodes and scenery at a set rate per day.
Fractals
Mistlock instabilities have been renamed "fractal birds" for clarity.
To fix the problem of "bad days," fractal birds are now based on player profession rather than randomly generated each day. Corresponding birds will be applied to all party members based on their profession. Check the Profession Skills section of the release notes for the first season's birds!
Raids
Raised the water level in Hall of Chains to facilitate the use of underwater skills in the final encounter.
Personal Story
The Personal Story has been renamed Professional Story to reflect that this is your character's job.
Items
Fixed a typo that caused the Gift of Dedication to require chak eggs instead of chak egg sacs.
Stonemist Castle can now be crafted as a decoration for guild halls.
Profession Skills
General
Alacrity now speeds up the wait time for the daily reset.
Confusion now randomizes your key bindings when it is applied, in addition to its previous effects.
Movement speed now scales with boot rarity.
Elementalist
Entering water attunement now temporarily removes the dehydration condition.
Entering fire attunement now temporarily removes the frostbite condition.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: We Bleed Birds.
Engineer
Reduced scrap acquisition rate of scrappers to pre-Heart of Thorns™ levels.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Bird Vindicators.
Guardian
Increased depth of symbolism on all guardian symbols by 25%.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Bird Overload.
Mesmer
Changed Signet of Inspiration by 33%.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Bird Convergence.
Necromancer
Axe skill damage increased by 5.999% repeating.
Reduced the number of scourge shades scourged when a scourge shade scourges shades.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Toxic Birds.
Ranger
Pets commanded to fight members of their own species will instead turn hostile and attack the ranger.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Social Birds.
Revenant
Replacing the previous energy cost, revenant skills now consume spirit shards.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Outbirded.
Thief
Reduced the amount of gold gained when Steal is used on friendly NPCs.
Thief initiative is now reset when the thief enters combat, with the starting amount randomly determined from 1 to 20.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Last Birds.
Warrior
Increased the cost of entering Berserk mode from 30 adrenaline to 35 adrenaline.
Players can now prevent adrenaline loss between encounters by using attack skills, even if they don't hit anything.
Seasonal Fractal Bird: Slippery Birds.
Structured Player vs. Player
Fractal birds have been introduced to PvP. The greater the lead a team has over the enemy team, the more birds they will have applied.
World vs. World
General
When the outnumbered effect is applied, autobalancing will immediately take effect.
Added new mount race events featuring the warclaw to all WvW maps. Please show good sportsmanship and don't attack players who are waiting for the race to start.
Eternal Battlegrounds
Added a new environmental hazard to the Eternal Battlegrounds. Roving bands of feral warclaws sweep through the map, dealing high damage to players caught outside of a gradually shrinking circle centered on Stonemist Keep.
Alpine Borderlands
Added a new environmental hazard to the Alpine Borderlands. Players in the cold, high-altitude, low-oxygen environment of the snowy north will have the new frostbite condition applied to them. This condition periodically inflicts chilled and confusion.
Desert Borderlands
Added a new environmental hazard to the Desert Borderlands. Players who spend longer than 10 minutes outdoors in the Desert Borderlands will have the new dehydration condition applied to them. This condition periodically inflicts crippled and torment and will be accompanied by hallucinations of enemy mirages.
Well.. 2-1 done, but apparently that's where the sanity ends according to folks who've done all of W2 trib... maybe the weekend when I have enough time to scream at things...
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/whats-next-for-guild-wars-2/
Is it possible they're finally addressing this?!
/squints
Is that
is that actually some sort of road... map? From ArenaNet???
Is it still April 1?
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
This exclusive in-game cosmetic item is available only to subscribers, and will give your Guild Wars 2 character mysterious, glowing purple eyes when applied to a piece of head armor.
* Allow 8 weeks after April 29th for this item to be distributed. To receive your item, make sure you’ve created and logged in with at least one character on your Guild Wars 2 account so we can send it to their mailbox."
Subscribe to their newsletters and get a purple eye mask skin!
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
It's not a meta build by any stretch of the imagination, but not a lot of open world content handles 20 stacks of 100% duration burning all that well, and I don't need robot and/or teenaged fingers to keep up with the rotation. As a bonus, I can help out in events by spamming tome 2 and 3 in between the bigger burn phases just for a little taste of healing/boon support.
If templates do materialize one day, I'll be able to have a proper diviner's power firebrand, this easy to play one, *and* a deep support spec all rolled into one guy, and that'll make me a happy dude.
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/73321/game-update-notes-april-9-2019#latest
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
I'm guessing it's probably because their team wanted to make flying integral to the finale and someone ran a query against the actual number of people with griffons and it wasn't super promising so rather than rent-a-mount, they went full Oprah and now you we all get a brand, new mount!
[Not really complaining here - strictly tongue in cheeck]
I saw a link to the "what's next" post/roadmap and decided to log in. I see runes are salvageable now - I assume I should salv all the minor and major ones I have sitting around? I guess for superior it depends on their TP value?
I don't have either expansion, so I'm wondering how that limits things. Like is having a mount now a must for Wuv since it provides more mobility?
I think you'll want one asap. I'm working towards one and it's a pain when you're in a group who all have them and get left behind.
It doesn't help that one of the requirements is to capture a fort, which will take some organised play.
The rest are all easy enough. I've played about 3 hours, and I'm only missing 2 steps. The fort one, and complete the new warbeast track.
I should really just go do PoF and come back to LS3 after. I can’t get to events when the zergs all mount up and finish before I arrive.
2-3 was insane. Though I still reckon one of the hardest parts are the corner jumps at the beginning.. though the first ice room was defiantely the toughest part. (Till I started abusing the stun breaks and invuln frames on health potions...)
Not touching 2-3 trib again, might go back and do the W1 infusion though
That'd be a hefty chunk of change from those 10-12 stacks of wigs people were tossing around at each other a few years ago
Post the loot update, I've just been letting unid's gather in shared inv slots, is it better to id->salvage, TP or salvage direct nowerdays?
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Some semi random achis
A couple of last bosses to down:
I'm happy to assist with Arkk on 100CM
As to what I'm working on, atm just low key wrapping up Dry Top weapons and saving up for whatever they release in Episode 6.
I'm curious too! I spend most of my time harvesting in LS3 and LS4 and participating in events in between, so my UNID stacks are piling up.
I'm no data cruncher, but I will say that I "opened" 500 of each green and blue and didn't really get a thrill out of it. At least with the rare stacks, there's always a chance to hit an exotic. I think I'm going to start selling green/blue stacks like I would overflow stacks of elder wood and mithril (after I've used that resource for daily ascy pieces). Given the amount of salvaging I'd need to do to raise my 185% base magic find any higher, I may just do that from now on unless I need basic crafting materials (mithril, silk, wood) and luck (which seems all the more worthless now).
Saving up the rares to open at once is a nice little christmas morning, though. Much better than salvaging a few after an event.
I'm off for an Easter break for a few days, but will try to start organising something for 100cm when I get back
Aye
Kismet for me as I popped into Silverwastes and got back to back Lego spawns at Indigo and Amber, which just happened to be the last 2 I needed for Be All End All, which in turn gave me the last 3 points to complete my central Tyrian Mastery track. No more wasted XP in the heartland! I mean, I know shards aren't a big deal, but it always bugged me.
High hopes for the Meta event when it's completed. If I could just bounce between Metas with a guaranteed participation group, I'd probably kick back an do it all day like a good Silverwastes or WvW binge.