Guild Wars 2

New Shrine Effects

The desert borderlands shrine effects got changed in the 2017-02-08 patch.

World vs. World
Desert Borderlands

• Shrine bonuses have been rearranged and changed in the Desert borderlands. The last shrine bonus for each shrine is now a themed jump pad that will allow players to travel from one shrine to the next. These jump pads will make it easier for players to traverse the area.
  • Shrine of Earth:
    • Activates lodestones that grant protection and stability to allies. This is used to cripple enemies.
    • A sandstorm that reveals all enemies.
    • Asura launch pads that launch players to all the shrines and inside the keep itself.
  • Shrine of Fire:
    • Inferno Hound
      • Increased the movement speed of the hound.
      • Added swiftness to skill 3.
    • The Flame’s Embrace effect allows players to walk on lava. It functions the same as it used to but is now the second bonus instead of the third.
    • Fire tornadoes that launch players to all of the shrines.
  • Shrine of Air:
    • Air jump pads that allow players to jump to high ledges at various places in the keep. No changes were made to this bonus.
    • The Windfall effect allows players to not take fall damage while near the keep. This functions the same as it used to but is now the second bonus instead of the third.
    • Eagle clouds that transform players into eagles so they can glide to each shrine.

I’m really happy all the old earth shrine effects are gone. I walked around the keep and found it lot more pleasant than what is used to be like: https://youtu.be/QD9Q3zJ8IoU?t=9m35s.

I haven’t had chance to try out the themed jump pads yet (The ones that teleport you between the shrines as opposed to air keep jump pads which launch you up a cliff. Not enough time to come up with a unique name?).

The only experience I had was an elementalist attacking me when I was capturing a shire. He used the themed jump pad to escape. Which seemed a bit unfair but then again most profs can escape from me jump pads or not.

The themed jump pads seem like PvE style bandage to fix problems in the map design. <notextile>cough Tangled Depths cough</notextile>

As for the jump pads actually helping to move around… well, I’m not convinced. I mean in order to move from one side of your keep to the other your team needs to hold all 3 shrines, you walk up to a shrine and then appear on the shrine nearest to your destination. I have hard time to imagine a scenario where these teleports would be useful. Maybe that escape gimmick.

The only suggestion I’d make about Jump Pads is that you shouldn’t be able to activate them while in combat. Otherwise, it just allows for too much cheese.

Frankly, I think this does absolutely nothing for the overarching problem of DBLs, which is that there’s a lack of strategic connection between the objectives, and it is too fustrating for the Attackers to travel around. The only way I see this to work is for attacking groups to have roamers running around ahead of them, otherwise this isn’t helpful.

That said, roamers now get a bigger job: cap the shrines and cripple enemy mobility. It’ll also be nice to see shrines being used for flanking purposes or for rapid response (i.e. you hear a callout from Air that West Garri is being Cata’ed. You can take the East earth shrine and get to the west shrine in seconds. In the end though, it just makes DBL even more defensive and even worse to attack, which isn’t going to help population on the map.

The walk on lava at 2 is going to be a nice changes. Your going to NEED to flip shrines now if you want to attk a keep vs a defing group. The tick going to be fliping the shrines all at once to not give away too soon that your attking the keep.

Namer.9750:

The only suggestion I’d make about Jump Pads is that you shouldn’t be able to activate them while in combat. Otherwise, it just allows for too much cheese.

Frankly, I think this does absolutely nothing for the overarching problem of DBLs, which is that there’s a lack of strategic connection between the objectives, and it is too fustrating for the Attackers to travel around. The only way I see this to work is for attacking groups to have roamers running around ahead of them, otherwise this isn’t helpful.

That said, roamers now get a bigger job: cap the shrines and cripple enemy mobility. It’ll also be nice to see shrines being used for flanking purposes or for rapid response (i.e. you hear a callout from Air that West Garri is being Cata’ed. You can take the East earth shrine and get to the west shrine in seconds. In the end though, it just makes DBL even more defensive and even worse to attack, which isn’t going to help population on the map.

Apparently the themed jump pads can be activated while in combat. That’s how the elementalist escaped me.

Also the themed jump pads work for the owner of the keep. If you plan to attack the keep, then you can only hope to reduce the defenders’ mobility by capturing one of he three shrines. Which is usually a trivial task for a solo roamer.

If the west earth keep is being catapulted, the west earth shrine is probably taken, too. You’d have to send a roamer to recapture it and then walk your team from air keep to the east earth shrine, use jump pad, then walk up to attack the enemies. The roamer may report back that the shrine still has RI buff on it. That’s a lot of coordination, waiting and walking.

Jski.6180:

The walk on lava at 2 is going to be a nice changes. Your going to NEED to flip shrines now if you want to attk a keep vs a defing group. The tick going to be fliping the shrines all at once to not give away too soon that your attking the keep.

Indeed. The fire keep lord room fight can easily go sour if the defenders have Flame’s Embrace. The back of the lord room still has enough lava to sit in and to pull the attackers into.

Only thing I can think about..
Fly like an eagle.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gF2UySGZAU

Those are some neat changes. I thought it odd that there was a jump pad next to whatever shrine i was capping last night. As for the map hate i thinks a pretty fun map to play around on.