Guild Wars 2

August 6 Content Release Notes

LIVING WORLD
Queen’s Jubilee
A celebration to commemorate ten years of Queen Jennah’s rule is about to kick off in Divinity’s Reach! The queen has commissioned a new gladiatorial arena for the occasion—the Crown Pavilion—as a shining symbol of her people’s endurance. Take a hot air balloon ride with dignitaries from across Tyria to the capital of the Krytan nation, and be there for the opening ceremony. Join in the festivities and compete in ceremonial combat in Her Majesty’s honor!
Hot Air Balloons

• The queen’s court has sent out hot air balloons to transport celebrants! Look for balloon towers all over Tyria.
• Ascend to the top of a balloon tower to claim a royal gift before embarking on the journey to Divinity’s Reach.
• Watch for all-new dynamic events as the balloon pilots may need help keeping everything running smoothly.
• A special hot air balloon souvenir will be given to players who are festive enough to visit 30 towers.

The Crown Pavilion

• The arts district in Divinity’s Reach that was destroyed by the Great Collapse has been rebuilt into the Crown Pavilion, a grand arena that will host Kryta’s biggest events.
• Enter the Queen’s Gauntlet to battle mighty representations of humanity’s most vicious enemies.
• Visit the emissaries from six major nations of Tyria. A unique set of boons to improve magic find and combat stats will be available to those who wish to represent the emissaries.
• Earn Watchwork Sprockets, a new trophy from the Watchknights, to purchase rewards from the emissaries. Purchasable rewards include:
  • New Sovereign weapon sets
  • New crafting recipes for runes and sigils
  • Cultural weapon sets

The Queen’s Gauntlet

• Face increasingly difficult challenges in single combat against a variety of unique bosses.
• Take a risk with special gambit conditions to earn even more prestigious rewards.
• Each entry and gambit costs one Queen’s Gauntlet ticket. Tickets drop regularly from creatures in the Crown Pavilion and around the world. Players may also purchase tickets from the emissaries in the Crown Pavilion.

Opening Ceremony

• Witness the unveiling of the Crown Pavilion in a brand new Living World story instance featuring familiar faces such as Queen Jennah, Logan Thackeray, Countess Anise, Lord Faren, Rox, and Braham.
• Rumors are running high that the queen will be taking volunteers for the inaugural contest with the Watchknights. There’s no telling who might show up!
• Enter the instanced area simply by visiting the Crown Pavilion for the first time.

Beacons of Kryta

• Find torchbearers around Divinity’s Reach to activate a special time-limited race to light several beacons around the city.
• Successfully complete all four torch runs to earn the Flames of Kryta, a permanent item that can be used to illuminate the player’s path through darkness.

Achievements

• A rotation of Living World achievements has been added to the Daily Achievement category.
• Completing the Queen’s Jubilee meta-achievement awards the player a Mini Watchknight. Completing this meta-achievement requires players to complete 18 achievements from either the Queen’s Jubilee category or the jubilee-related dailies.

Exotic Drop

• Play Queen’s Jubilee content for a chance at the exotic Watchwork Portal Device recipe.
• The recipe requires a level 400 artificer. It requires 5 Orichalcum Ingots, 1 Master Tuning Crystal, 1 Charged Lodestone, and 75 Watchwork Sprockets.
• The Watchwork Portal Device is a one-time use consumable that allows players to create a portal between two points. It cannot be used in conjunction with the mesmer’s portal.

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT
World vs. World

• Supply Mastery has been added to the Ranks and Abilities tab.
  • Picking up supply is now instant.
  • Gains swiftness when the entire supply is spent.
  • Gains courier speed and increases movement speed by 50% after picking up supply.
  • Gains a chance to recover some supply after it’s spent.
  • Deployed siege sites gain 3 seconds of invulnerability.

Currency Wallet

• All players now have a new currency wallet that can be found in the Hero panel. All currencies on a character are transferred to the player’s currency wallet when they log in with that character. Players will need to log in with all of their characters to get all of their currency transferred.
• All currencies are now account bound.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
General
Champion Loot

• All champions now drop containers based on their family. These containers have coin, skill points, crafting materials, weapons and armor, and rare chances at unique weapon skins based on family.
• “Defeat the Claw of Jormag”: The champions in this event no longer drop loot.
• Citadel of Flame—Ferrah: Blaclan Firetooth is now a veteran instead of a champion.

Improved Effects Culling

• In the open world, dungeons, PvP, and WvW, the new effects-culling system will slowly start reducing the detail of each effect in order to increase combat visibility when many effect types are overlapping.

World Polish

• Risen nobles: Decreased the damage on the symbol created by their shadowstep skill.* *

Dungeons
Dungeon Reward Changes

• All bosses no longer directly drop gold.
• All explorable dungeon paths now give out 1 to 3 gold based on the path. This is an account-based daily reward.
• All story dungeons now give out 50 silver upon completion. This is an account-based daily reward.
• Ascalonian Catacombs—Hodgins’s Plan: Kendrick’s Sarcophagus will not be interactable until “Search the secret room for the scepter” is active.
• Ascalonian Catacombs—Hodgins’s Plan: “Defend Hodgins by destroying graveling burrows” will not activate until “Slay the spider queen” has been completed.
• Ascalonian Catacombs—Hodgins’s Plan: “Find the scepter pieces” will not be active until “Join Hodgins in finding the first scepter” has been completed.
• Ascalonian Catacombs—Detha’s Plan: “Defend Detha from gravelings” will not activate until “Slay the spider queen” has been completed.
• Ascalonian Catacombs—Tzark’s Plan: “Defend the essence collectors” will not activate until “Slay the spider queen” has been completed.
• Caudecus’s Manor—I’ll look for the Seraph: Mad Martha will not become hostile until “Overwhelm the bandit defenses” is activated.
• Caudecus’s Manor—I’ll look for the Seraph: “Search for the captured sergeant” will not activate until “Place powder kegs near the blocked gate” has been completed.
• Caudecus’s Manor—I’ll help you find the missing butler: “Search for the missing servants” will not activate until “Destroy the bandit turrets” has been completed.
• Citadel of Flame—Ferrah: “Breach the Sanguine Vault” will not activate until “Find a way into the Enkindling Chamber” has been completed.
• Citadel of Flame—Magg: “Find a way into the ritual chamber” will not activate until “Travel to the ritual chamber” has been completed.
• Honor of the Waves—The butcher: “Defeat the Ice Dragon minion to continue” will not activate until the doorway leading to its location has been opened.
• Honor of the Waves—The plunderer: “Defeat the corrupted Son of Svanir” will not activate until “Stop the Svanir vandals” has been completed.
• Honor of the Waves—The zealot: Icebrood Goliath and guards will not be attackable until the doorway leading to their location has been opened.
• Honor of the Waves—The zealot: “Defeat Sorge’s disciple, Svánigandr” will not activate until the door leading to its location has been opened.
• Crucible of Eternity—All paths: Mark T-B34RC3 will not be attackable until “Shut down the advanced golem” is activated.
• Crucible of Eternity—Teleporter: “Defeat the Evolved Husk” will only activate after “Kill Subject Alpha” has been completed and the “Teleporter” path has been selected.
• Crucible of Eternity—Front door: “Defeat the laboratory specimen” will only activate after “Kill Subject Alpha” has been completed and the “Front Door” path has been selected.

Profession Skills
General

• Reaper of Grenth: This skill can now be cast on the move. Added an unblockable skill fact to indicate its functionality.
• Prayer to Lyssa: Fixed a bug that allowed Lyssa to grant more than one boon or condition.
• All signet skills now play their overhead bang effect at the start of the skill to help telegraph these skills.

Elementalist:

• Tornado: Added a duration skill fact. This skill can now be used while moving.
• Glyph of Renewal: Improved the readability of this skill so enemies can see it more clearly when players are casting it.
• Magnetic Wave: This skill is now blockable.
• Signet Mastery: This trait will now properly reduce the recharge of Signet of Restoration in PvP.
• Arcane Power: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Arcane Retribution: Increased the duration to 30 seconds to be consistent with Arcane Power. The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Arcane Shield: Added the buff to the skill fact. The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Final Shielding: The buff provided when this trait is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.

Engineer:

• Packaged Stimulants: This trait now properly increases the duration of the boons provided by the Med Kit skill Throw Stimulant instead of lowering the recharge.
• Elixir X: This skill will now display the proper skill facts when underwater.
• Mortar—Mortar Shot: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to have increased recharge time when Elite Supplies was traited.

Guardian:

• Healer’s Retribution: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to provide more retaliation than intended with Healing Breeze.
• Sword of Justice—Command: Added a range skill fact.
• Sword of Justice—Removed the range skill fact on the summon.
• Bow of Truth: Removed the range skill fact on the summon.
• Hammer of Wisdom: Removed the range skill fact on the summon.
• Hammer of Wisdom—Command: Updated the range skill fact to better represent the range of this skill.
• Shield of the Avenger: Removed the range skill fact on the summon.
• Purifying Ribbon: Fixed a bug that caused the projectile to hit targets further than its intended maximum range.
• Virtue of Justice: Added a radius skill fact.
• Virtue of Resolve: Added a radius skill fact.
• Virtue of Courage: Added a radius skill fact.
• Shield of Wrath: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.

Mesmer:

• Counter Blade: The projectile velocity has been doubled and is now wider with an increased effect size.
• Phantasmal Duelist: This skill now has its range increased with Duelist’s Discipline. Fixed a bug that enabled the duelist from being cast at 1200 range at all times.
• Illusion of Life: Updated the animation and effects on this skill to make it easier to read when it is being cast in combat. The timing and effectiveness remains unchanged.
• Polymorph Moa: This skill should now animate when used with a greatsword.
• Veil: This utility skill now acts as a light field as its description indicates.

Necromancer:

• Fetid Ground: Added a radius skill fact.
• Well of Blood: Added a radius skill fact.
• Wail of Doom: Increased the spell effect to better represent the actual spell area.
• Tainted Shackles: This skill’s damage tooltip now displays the appropriate damage.
• Doom: Added an effect that plays on the necromancer when this skill is used.
• Reaper’s Mark: This skill now uses a distinct animation compared to the other mark skills on staff to help improve readability when this skill is cast. The timing and effectiveness of this skill remains unchanged.
• Summon Bone Fiend/Rigor Mortis: Added a range fact to these skills.
• Reaper’s Touch: Updated the skill fact to display the proper regeneration amount.
• Crimson Tide: Fixed a bug that allowed this skill to ignore line of sight.

Ranger:

• Entangle: Updated the damage and immobilize skill facts to reflect the actual amount of pulses.
• Sharpening Stone: Counters will no longer decrement on every attack going, but only on attacks hit, evaded, missed (from blind), or blocked. The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Keen Edge: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Precise Strikes: This trait now functions correctly with Remorseless.

Thief:

• Shadow Assault: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to have a longer than intended range. It will now properly match the range skill fact.
• Assassin’s Signet: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Nine-Tailed Strike: Updated this skill’s skill facts.
• Concealed Defeat: Fixed a bug that caused this trait’s effect to have a longer than intended recharge.
• Basilisk Venom: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Devourer Venom: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Ice Drake Venom: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Skale Venom: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Spider Venom: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.

Warrior:

• Signet of Might: The buff provided when this skill is activated will now properly display the remaining number of charges.
• Counter Blow: This skill will now properly set its recharge with the Sundering Mace trait when players strike an enemy after blocking.

Structured Player vs. Player

• Removed the Tournament panel.
• Added an Arenas tab to the PvP panel.
  • Replaced “Rated Matches” with “Team Arena.” The rankings and leaderboard are the same.
  • Added a Solo Arena. Only individual players may queue for the Solo Arena; players will also have a separate ranking and leaderboard from the existing Team Arena.
• Moved the Custom Arena browser to the PvP panel.
• Added a Leave button to PvP games.
• PvP games can now be joined from any location in the game, including outside of the Mists.
• Leaving PvP will send players back to their last non-instance location.
• Spectators can now see the currently selected target of the player being followed instead of their autoattack target.
• Leaving rated arena games will punish players with a Dishonorable debuff. Each stack of dishonor lasts for 72 hours. If a player has the maximum amount of dishonor (5 stacks), they will be prevented from joining rated games.
• Players in an arena game cannot switch characters after the game has started.
• Added a Finisher tab to the Hero panel. Use the Finisher tab to choose and activate a finisher.
• Finishers may now be unlocked either permanently or on a limited, per-use basis.
  • Using a finisher item now adds five uses of that finisher. Each finisher use is consumed when players successfully use the finisher on a downed enemy.
  • Using a permanently unlocked finisher will never consume it. Players may switch between any unlocked finishers at any time outside of combat.
  • Rank finishers are now unlocked permanently and automatically when players achieve a new rank in PvP. Rank reward chests will no longer contain Rank Finisher items.
• Updated the capture point progress animation for all maps.
• Heart of the Mists: Replaced two of the training golems with indestructible training golems.
• Skyhammer: The cannon can no longer be reconfigured while the player is in stealth or invulnerable.
• Skyhammer: Updated a couple of spectator camera positions.
• Temple of the Silent Storm: Increased the cooldown of Mediation on Ferocity from 2 minutes to 4 minutes and increased the buff duration from 45 seconds to 2 minutes.

World vs. World

• Keep and castle assault events are now group events and will count towards monthly achievements.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

• The Royal Pass* *gives you admittance to the Royal Terrace, the queen’s own shopping area in Divinity’s Reach, with easy access to crafting, merchants, banks, entertainment, and more. Each pass is good for two weeks and available in the Consumables category for 300 gems each.
• There are three new helmet skins available for purchase to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee: Mask of the Crown, Mask of the Jubilee, and Mask of the Queen. These are combat armor skins usable by any weight class and available in the Style category for 400 gems each.
• Players can now purchase permanent finishing moves usable in PvP, WvW, and select content throughout the game. Change the finisher at any time after purchasing Cow, Whump the Giant, Thornroot, and/or Spectre finishers in the Upgrades category.
• Aetherblade weapon skins are no longer in season and will now cost 5 Black Lion Weapon Tickets at a Black Lion Weapon Specialist.

Hey folks,

I wanted to take a moment and address this, it’s a totally fair question and something as a player (removing my GD hat) I’d wonder the same thing as well. As I covered in my blog post last month, a major focus of our living world releases in the second half of the year will be on focusing our living world releases on content that has a larger sense of persistence, and more permanent effect on the world.

You’ll start seeing this strategy come into effect with the release 2 weeks from now, and grow as the year continues. The story of these living releases will occur long enough for it to play out reasonably and then update as the story moves forward, while the content and playable experiences (except specific story beats) will persist forever as a result of that story occurring.

We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time.

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

Soon, you won’t need to ask “is this permanent or temporary?”, you’ll simply be able to look at story specific parts and know the story goes away when it’s done, and the playable core content remains and changes based on the outcomes of the story. As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.

As a reminder, this is where we’re headed and the goals we’ve given to our teams to accomplish, it just takes a few months until we fully get our projects on this track: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/