Game Update Notes: March 29, 2022

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

03/29/2022—March 29 Release Notes

Super Adventure Festival

Moto's world-renowned Super Adventure Box returns again when the Super Adventure Festival kicks off on March 29! Explore two worlds of excitement, peril, and educational entertainment to earn holographic weapons and a variety of loot. Travelers can visit the Adventure Box in Rata Sum—temporary portals have been placed in each major city to facilitate easy travel to the scenic hub of asuran culture!

• Festivities begin on March 29 and continue until April 19 at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7).
• Complete the festival's meta-achievement, (Annual) Super Adventure Box Nostalgia, to earn the new Reality Rig Mk1 chest armor! Last year's reward, the Mini Super Ooze, is now available from the Super Adventure Box Traders.
  • Once you have your Mk1 in hand, talk to the Super Adventure Box Traders to upgrade it with Bauble Bubbles into the Reality Rig Mk2 and Reality Rig Mk3.
• A new holographic Hardlight weapon set is now available! You'll receive your choice of a weapon by progressing the Super Adventure Box Nostalgia meta-achievement, and you have a rare chance of finding additional tradeable weapons in Super Loot Bags, available from a new daily achievement.
• A new partial weapon series, the Retro-Forged weapons, has been crafted by a visitor to Rata Sum. You can purchase these weapons directly from a festival vendor or find them as rare drops in Super Loot Bags.
• A new daily achievement, Extracurricular Adventures, has been added. This achievement can be completed by beating levels in the Box or defeating champions anywhere in Tyria. The achievement rewards Super Loot Bags containing helpful items for your adventures in and out of the Box.
• The rotation of daily achievements for Super Adventure Box has been reorganized to increase the variety of achievements appearing in different combinations.
• New Super Adventure Box-themed guild decorations have been added! Give your hall a sky-high treatment with new cloud platforms.
• Crimson Assassin Tokens can now be traded for Bauble Bubbles.
• Super Adventure Box has been updated to no longer remove food, utility, and other positive effects on entry. The remaining time on these effects will be suspended for the duration of your Super Adventure and resume when you return to Tyria.
• Super Adventure Box vendors will now leave Rata Sum when the Box closes—they will be available year-round in the skritt cave in Lion's Arch.
• Updated the properties of moving objects, such as rapids logs, to reduce rapids-related catastrophes.
• A number of Super Adventure-related bugs have been fixed to ensure a safe education for all heroes.

World Polish

• Players can now obtain up to five stacks of the Dragon's End Contributor effect by participating in the Battle for the Jade Sea meta-event. All players can obtain a stack of the effect when each of the three lanes' escort events succeeds, and a stack when the "Quell the Branded void corruption" event succeeds. Players can then obtain a fifth stack by participating in the "Use crystallized dragon magic to charge matching prismatic crystals" event if it succeeds, for a total of five possible stacks.
• The number of events needed to increase the readiness levels in the central area of Dragon's End during the "Preparations: Central" event has been reduced.
• Fixed a bug that could cause some of the Purist agitators to travel outside of the event radius in the "Thwart the Purist agitators!" event in New Kaineng City.
• The "Defeat the Purist champion" event in Old Kaineng will now trigger after every successful completion of the "Thwart the Purist agitators!" event in New Kaineng City, rather than every 5 completions. To compensate, the "Thwart the Purist agitators!" event will trigger less often.
• Adjusted the spawn conditions and locations in Dragon's End for the Looking Back collection achievement. Marjory will now appear as long as the meta-event is not actively running. The hint text for this achievement will be updated in a future release.

General

Exposed

The Exposed effect is applied when a creature's defiance bar is broken and causes the creature to take additional power and condition damage for a short duration. Previously, there was no consistent duration for Exposed. We are standardizing its applied duration to 10 seconds, which is longer than the previous durations.

With increased duration, we are also adjusting the effect to compensate. Previously, Exposed caused the target to take 30% increased damage from strikes and 100% from conditions. This short window of Exposed overrewarded certain builds with high burst capability in content such as fractals. Moving forward, Exposed causes 10% increased damage from strikes and 20% from conditions over its longer duration of 10 seconds. This allows more time to take advantage of this window of opportunity while more consistently rewarding a variety of builds. We will be keeping a very close eye on the effects of this change.

This change does not affect the Exposed effect on Soo-Won in the final encounter of the Dragon's End map meta-event.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed incorrect progress text in the Cryptseeker achievement.
• The Simpleminded achievement has been reworked to require throwing treasures at naga looters instead of requiring throwing treasures at multiple naga looters simultaneously.
• A hungry hatchling in Dragon's End now correctly consumes the right fish.
• Fixed an issue with the Tsunami Dodger achievement that prevented progress from being awarded. Updated the description to clarify the requirements.
• Fixed a bug that prevented certain repeatable hero challenges from updating to be fully complete and caused the content guide system to erroneously point to them.
• Added a pair of diving goggles and a diving achievement in Arborstone.
• Fixed elite specialization collection text to more accurately refer to a specific enemy group instead of a specific enemy type within a map.
• The Thruster Control Unit has been moved to the Kaineng Overlook Strike Mission reward chest.
• Several PvP reward boxes have new icons.
• Bian will no longer mistake asura for sylvari at the end of her world tour.
• Updated the hint involving the tengu-made bow in the Character Growth achievement.
• Minions will no longer be permanently knocked down if they are caught in a shock wave in the chapter "The Only One."
• Several easily excitable shrine guardian fox kits in Seitung Province and Echovald Wilds are no longer in time-out for being overly playful with groups of adventurers.
• Jade lanterns now have a new interact animation.
• A new-but-possibly-familiar friend has appeared in Arborstone for those players with the Arborstone Revitalization Globalization Mastery.
• Resting is now effective in all of Arborstone, not just the inn. Players staying in or logging out from anywhere in Arborstone for at least 4 hours will get an experience bonus effect based on their Arborstone Revitalization Mastery progress.
• The type of objects made for assisting the tengu crafters for the Mori Village renown heart will now properly cycle through all of the daily options.
• Collecting all 3 ingredients for making the crafters' objects for the Mori Village renown heart now helpfully displays the location to take your full basket to make the finished product.
• The duration of the damage-bonus effect granted when a player successfully returns to their body at the top of the platform during the final boss fight in The Battle for the Jade Sea meta-event is now refilled once the boss returns to the platform after that phase completes.
• Updated the inventory icon for the Speaker Supplies gathered for an objective during the "Bring Speaker supplies to Stas" event in Echovald Wilds to appear more distinct from the nonobjective rewards dropped by defeated Speakers.
• Fixed a bug in which Kestrel Ariana would teleport during the "Prevent both of the gangs from seizing control of the junkyard" event. She now stays and fights.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the asura gate to Lion's Arch inside of Arborstone from being usable upon training the Base of Operations tier of the Arborstone Revitalization Mastery track.
• Fixed a bug in which Tateo and Trainer Saya were not reappearing after the "Track down the missing tengu, Tateo" event. Tateo and Saya now reappear consistently.
• Fixed a bug in which the corrupted moa in Echovald Wilds could get an incorrect amount of added boss abilities.
• Fixed an issue that made a small number of kirin in Echovald Wilds unintentionally hostile toward players by default.
• Made scaling adjustments to enemies in the "Stop Void Corrupters from tainting the jade shipment" event in Dragon's End.

Fractals

• Thaumanova Reactor: The cooling chamber no longer burns player pets, and it no longer causes mechs to be stuck in an infinite damage loop.
• Sunqua Peak: The Sorrowful Spellcaster's overlapping area-of-effect attacks will no longer kill player pets.

Raids

• The catalyst's jade sphere energy is now set to maximum when engaging a raid or strike boss.

Personal Story

• Updated the interior of the apartment complex in Brume Alley in New Kaineng City to prevent it from automatically kicking players out in the chapter "The Future in Jade" in End of Dragons.
• Added an optional quest marker for Joon's office inside Yong Reactor to increase visibility on the location in the chapter "Deepest Secrets" in End of Dragons.
• Fixed an issue in which players would get automatically dismounted when trying to mount if they were wielding Sohothin in the chapter "Beast of War" in Path of Fire.

Items

• The elite specialization collection item earned from completing the End of Dragons story can now be earned from completing the Dragon's End meta-event or purchased from vendors in Dragon's End if you have finished the story with another character. The text will be adjusted to reflect this change in a separate update.
• Recipes for lower-level potions of slaying have been adjusted. Weak recipes produce 1 potion, minor recipes produce 2, powerful recipes still produce 10, and all other recipes produce 3.
• Fixed a bug with jade bot scavenger protocols. Scavenger protocols will no longer work when killing players.
• Testimonies of Jade Heroics may be exchanged for Testimonies of Desert Heroics at heroics notaries.

Profession Skills

Elementalist

Catalyst

In our previous update, we addressed the fact that the catalyst's pure DPS builds were simultaneously providing 100% quickness uptime for a party while doing among the highest damage output of any specialization in the game. As other boon support builds that provide excellent uptime on critical boons (such as quickness or alacrity) have less damage output than builds focused purely on damage, the catalyst was at risk of supplanting all other quickness providers in group content.

We addressed this by making trait and damage output changes quickly to prevent it from distorting the cooperative play meta-game. However, it left the catalyst's damage builds not meeting our goals for the profession; it's difficult to play well and is only dealing competitive damage on large targets or targets where you can stand inside their hitbox. That's not great! We want every profession and specialization to feel awesome, regardless of the size of your enemy.

We've prepared a list of changes to specific skills and effects to help reach these goals for PvE play. None of the following changes apply to PvP or WvW.

Key Issues

Issue 1

Hammer 3's orbiting elemental missiles each give a beneficial passive effect while active, but the skill usage pattern required to upkeep each one is very unforgiving. To address this, the duration of the elemental missiles and their effects in PvE are being increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds. As before, activating a new one refreshes the timer on all of them. It's not only going to be easier to keep them up all of the time—we're also significantly increasing the passive benefits for having each active so that keeping them all up is a rewarding goal!

Rocky Loop and Icy Coil now reduce incoming damage by three times more than they did previously (from 5% up to 15%), while Crescent Wind now gives an increased critical hit chance (formerly 7%, now 10%), and Flame Wheel now increases all of the damage you do (formerly by 5%, now 10%).

Issue 2

Too much of the catalyst's damage is reliant on hitting as often as possible with Hammer 3's orbiting elemental missiles. This can make it hard to play consistently against small targets or in situations where you can't walk inside of your target's hitbox. To address this, the damage from Hammer 3's missiles is being dramatically reduced so that the catalyst is not reliant on keeping them inside an enemy's hitbox for effective play. Instead, we've packed all of that removed damage and a lot more into the other things that you're doing while they're up.

The hammer is a weighty weapon, and it should feel like it when you're crushing your enemies. All of your Hammer 1 and Hammer 2 skills will now deal more damage per hit. Grand Finale deals a lot more damage per missile now, too, so once you have all your missiles from Hammer 3 out, you're ready to launch an attack worthy of that preparation!

Issue 3

The Shattering Ice utility skill is a powerful source of damage, but fully taking advantage of it requires that you hit a target every 0.25 seconds—otherwise you miss out on damage you could have gotten from this skill. To address this, we're increasing the interval on this effect from 0.25 seconds to 1 second, with significantly increased damage. This makes it easier to reliably get the full damage possible out of this utility skill.

Catalyst PvE Updates

Hammer

• Singeing Strike: Damage coefficient increased from 0.67 to 0.9 in PvE only.
• Surging Flames: Damage coefficient increased from 1.5 to 1.8 in PvE only.
• Stream Strike: Damage coefficient increased from 0.7 to 0.8 in PvE only.
• Water Rush: Damage coefficient increased from 0.9 to 1.1 in PvE only.
• Chilling Crack: Damage coefficient increased from 1.2 to 1.4 in PvE only.
• Rain of Blows: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.42 to 0.45 (4 strikes).
• Wind Slam: Damage coefficient increased from 0.72 to 0.9 in PvE only.
• Hurricane of Pain: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.513 to 0.6 (9 strikes).
• Stonestrike: Damage coefficient increased from 0.93 to 1.1 in PvE only.
• Whirling Stones: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.51 to 0.65 (5 strikes).
• Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, Rocky Loop: Damage coefficient reduced from 0.1 to 0.001 in PvE only.
• Rocky Loop: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Damage reduction while active increased from 5% to 15% in PvE only.
• Crescent Wind: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Critical Chance bonus while active increased from 7% to 10% in PvE only.
• Icy Coil: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Condition damage reduction while active increased from 5% to 15% in PvE only.
• Flame Wheel: Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE only. Damage and condition damage bonus while active increased from 5% to 10%.
• Grand Finale: Damage coefficient per missile increased from 0.7 to 1.0 in PvE only.

Utilities

• Shattering Ice: Damage coefficient per strike increased from 0.1 to 0.6 in PvE only. Chill duration increased from 0.5 seconds to 1 second in PvE only. Interval between strikes on the same target increased from 0.25 seconds to 1 second in PvE only.

Traits

• Empowered Empowerment: PvP split removed; effectiveness increase in PvE changed from 50% back to 100%, matching PvP and WvW.

Guardian

Willbender

• Searing Pact: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to reduce the duration of boons applied to allies by 50%.

Ranger

• Juvenile Siege Turtle: Fixed an issue in which Hunker Down would block unblockable projectiles.

Revenant

• Urn of Saint Viktor: Updated underwater visual effects to be set a little further away from the character.
• Tenacious Ruin: Removed an unnecessary skill fact.

Thief

• Siphon: Fixed a bug that caused the incorrect cooldown to occur when targeting a fully defeated ally.
• Thieves Guild: This skill will now summon a specter if the player has that elite specialization equipped.

Warrior

• Blooming Fire: Ammo recharge has been reduced from 25 seconds to 10 seconds in PvE.
• Artillery Slash: Ammo recharge has been reduced from 35 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE.
• Cyclone Trigger: Ammo recharge has been reduced from 40 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE.
• Break Step: Ammo recharge has been reduced from 40 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE.

Competitive Balance

Warrior

Winds of Disenchanment has been a force in WvW since it was first introduced. We've gone through various iterations since then, trying to find the right balance point with full boon denial, but it has continued to be a problematic effect. We've decided to finally split it to be a percentage of incoming boon duration rather than a full denial. This is a major change to the skill's effectiveness, and we'll be keeping a close eye on its impact to see if any additional changes are needed to either Winds of Disenchantment or the spellbreaker as a whole.

• Winds of Disenchantment: Reduced incoming boon duration reduction from 100% to 33% in WvW only.

With the big nerf to Winds of Disenchantment, we also wanted to include some effects to support the spellbreaker build. Vigorous Shouts and Call of Valor are also being enhanced in PvP as we look to make support warrior more competitive with guardian and tempest support builds. Hammer also gets a slight tune-up, with increases to some of its damage and reductions to its crowd control cooldowns.

• Vigorous Shouts: Increased heal attribute scaling from 0.5 to 0.75 in PvP only. Increased heal attribute scaling from 1.0 to 1.2 in WvW only.
• Call of Valor: Increased barrier attribute scaling from 0.82 to 1.2 in PvP only. Increased barrier attribute scaling from 1.0 to 1.2 in WvW only. Increased the number of conditions removed from 2 to 3 in PvP and WvW.
• Fierce Blow: Increased power coefficient against noncontrolled targets from 0.77 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW.
• Hammer Shock: Increased power coefficient from 0.7 to 1.13 in PvP and WvW.
• Staggering Blow: Reduced cooldown from 18 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Backbreaker: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Finally, we have a slight adjustment to Unyielding Dragon in PvP. The primary effects of this trait are already incredibly powerful, and the significant amount of might has pushed it a bit over the top.

• Unyielding Dragon: Reduced the number of might stacks granted when converting flow into charges from 2 to 1 in PvP only.

Engineer

Scrapper is one of the premier support builds in WvW, and it's one that's potent at too many things. Scrapper brings strong healing and condition cleanse in addition to granting powerful effects like superspeed and quickness and generating boons with Purity of Purpose, among other things. We see healing and cleanse as the main pieces of scrapper's support identity, and while it will still grant superspeed and quickness (and other boons), we see its current output of these effects as too high. We do want scrapper to be a capable healer, but it's currently a bit stronger than we'd like so we're bringing down the healing of Medical Dispersion Field.

• Gyroscopic Acceleration: Reduced superspeed duration from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds in WvW only.
• Speed of Synergy: Reduced superspeed area-of-effect duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds in WvW only.
• Kinetic Accelerators: Reduced quickness duration from 2.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds in WvW only.
• Medical Dispersion Field: Reduced heal share percentage from 25% to 15% in WvW only.
• Purity of Purpose: Increased internal cooldown from 2 seconds to 3 seconds in WvW only.

Mechanist has continued to overperform in PvP even after the nerfs it received in the last update, and we're making additional adjustments to the mech's stat inheritance.

• Mechanist: Reduced jade mech stat inheritance by 20% for all stats in PvP only.

Guardian

Firebrand is another support build that's good at a few too many things. The main aspect that we want to bring down is its ability to heal allies, and for this update we've targeted its passive healing capability via Battle Presence. This will reduce the firebrand's overall healing output while still leaving Tome of Resolve as a higher-impact healing option.

• Battle Presence: The following changes affect the firebrand elite specialization only.

o    Reduced pulse base heal from 84 to 42 in WvW only.

o    Reduced pulse heal attribute scaling from 0.06 to 0.03 in WvW only.

In this update, we're shaving down the damage output from both power guardian and revenant in WvW. Staff damage is something that we've brought down previously, but it's still higher than we'd like to see on a weapon primarily designed for support builds.

• Test of Faith: Reduced passthrough strike power coefficient from 2.52 to 2.22 in WvW only.
• Procession of Blades: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 25 seconds in WvW only.
• Holy Strike: Reduced power coefficient from 0.91 to 0.73 in WvW only.
• Symbol of Swiftness: Reduced power coefficient from 0.3 to 0.25 in WvW only.

Righteous Instincts has been a key piece of power guardian builds for as long as it's been in the game. Core power guardian currently sees average success in lower ranked play, but it hasn't been a major player in higher ranks or serious tournament games for quite a while. While we were looking at updates for willbender, we floated the idea of enhancing Righteous Instincts and saw it as an interesting option. This is another change that we'll be keeping a very close eye on to measure the impact and see if it's something that we need to reevaluate.

• Righteous Instincts: Increased bonus critical chance from 25% to 40% in PvP only.

While the Righteous Instincts effect is potentially a big one for willbender, we felt that there were a few other pieces that were worth adjusting. A longer immobilization on Advancing Strike gives willbender slightly more potential to set up its own damage, and lower virtue cooldowns solidify the specialization as a high-mobility roamer.

• Advancing Strike: Increased immobile duration from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Lethal Tempo: Increased damage bonus per stack from 2% to 3% in PvP and WvW.
• Flowing Resolve: Reduced ammo recharge from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased initial base heal from 783 to 1,331 in PvP and WvW.
• Crashing Courage: Reduced cooldown from 50 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Roiling Light: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Heaven's Palm: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Mighty Blow: Reduced cooldown from 8 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Zealot's Embrace: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.2 in PvP and WvW.
• Ring of Warding: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Revenant

Inspiring Reinforcement is one of the main outliers in revenant damage in WvW due to multiple attack regions allowing it to hit a large number of targets. We're looking into normalizing some of the target cap behavior for Inspiring Reinforcement and other similar skills, but for now we've just brought down the damage a bit more.

• Inspiring Reinforcement: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.75 in WvW only.

Elementalist

Catalyst is another one of the End of Dragons elite specs that has struggled to find its footing in competitive modes. Hammer's circling projectiles were difficult to chain together in more realistic combat situations, and even when able to do so, the bonuses lacked impact. Increasing the durations should give more flexibility to maintain the projectiles, which now also grant more rewarding bonuses. We've also enhanced a few other hammer skills, giving more damage potential to fire attunement and a bit more defense to earth. In addition to the hammer adjustments, we've strengthened a few of the key skills and traits as a broader power-up to the specialization as a whole.

• Flame Wheel: Increased projectile duration from 5 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased damage bonus from 5% to 10%.
• Icy Coil: Increased projectile duration from 5 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased condition damage reduction from 5% to 10% in PvP and WvW.
• Crescent Wind: Increased projectile duration from 5 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased critical chance bonus from 7% to 12% in PvP and WvW.
• Rocky Loop: Increased projectile duration from 5 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased damage reduction from 5% to 10% in PvP and WvW.
• Immutable Stone: Increased base barrier from 1,460 to 2,919 in PvP and WvW.
• Ground Pound: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Surging Flames: Increased power coefficient from 1.13 to 1.36 in PvP and WvW.
• Triple Sear: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Molten End: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Soothing Water: Increased pulse healing from 1,340 to 1,541 in PvP and WvW.
• Invigorating Air: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Fortified Earth: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Elemental Celerity: Reduced cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Deploy Jade Sphere: Reduced cooldown from 15 seconds to 10 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Energized Elements: Increased energy gain from 2 to 3 in PvP and WvW.
• Transmute Fire, Transmute Frost, Transmute Lightning, Transmute Earth: Reduced cooldown from 10 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Focus has long been the preferred off-hand weapon of the elementalist as dagger has generally failed to keep up with the power level of the game over the years. In this update, we've tuned up a lot of the dagger skills with the goal of making it a more viable option.

• Ring of Fire: Increased power coefficient from 0.6 to 1.2 in PvP and WvW.
• Fire Grab: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Frost Aura: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Transmute Frost: Increased base heal from 480 to 1,078 in PvP and WvW. Increased heal attribute scaling from 0.5 to 0.8 in PvP and WvW.
• Cleansing Wave: Increased base heal from 1,302 to 1,822 in PvP and WvW. Increased heal attribute scaling from 0.6 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW. Increased conditions removed from 2 to 3 in PvP and WvW.
• Earthquake: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Ride the Lightning: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Updraft: Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Mesmer

Virtuoso's dagger only brings damage to the table, but the numbers weren't very threatening, and they're getting increases across the board. Rounding out the virtuoso changes for this update is a set of cooldown reductions on some of its key defensive skills.

• Flying Cutter: Increased power coefficient from 0.285 to 0.35 in PvP and WvW.
• Bladecall: Increased power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.5 in PvP and WvW.
• Unstable Bladestorm: Increased large projectile power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.5. Increased small projectile power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.43 in PvP and WvW.
• Bladesong Dissonance: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Bladeturn Requiem: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Blade Renewal: Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Psychic Force: Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Twin Blade Restoration: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased the number of conditions removed from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW.

Greatsword is another weapon that we took a look at as we were reviewing possible enhancements for virtuoso, and we saw this as a good chance to bring up some of its damage potential.

• Mirror Blade: Increased power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.75 in PvP and WvW.
• Mind Stab: Increased power coefficient from 0.7 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW.
• Phantasmal Berserker: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Last up for mesmer, we have a big cooldown reduction to Signet of Humility. This is another change we'll be keeping a close eye on to see if the cooldown is a bit too low or if the effect duration needs to be adjusted, but we do want to see players getting transformed into moas on a more regular basis.

• Signet of Humility: Reduced cooldown from 180 seconds to 90 seconds in PvP and WvW.

Necromancer

The following three skills were all dealing a bit too much damage when triggering their blight threshold bonuses, and for this update we decided to keep the big blight payoff and reduce the base damage to bring these skills more in line.

• Elixir of Ambition: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 0.9 in PvP and WvW.
• Devouring Cut: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.85 in PvP and WvW.
• Voracious Arc: Reduced power coefficient from 1.4 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW.

And of course it wouldn't quite feel like a balance update without enhancements to the necromancer's axe. Axe is a place to give harbinger back some of the damage it lost while also giving a slight bump to reaper, which has fallen off a bit following the changes from the End of Dragons launch update.

• Ghastly Claws: Reduced cooldown from 10 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW.
• Unholy Feast: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.3 in PvP and WvW.

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Crescent Canoe Skiff Skin in which the Fishing Party effect was sometimes lost depending on the player's position within the skiff.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

03/29/2022—Late Notes

General

• End of Dragons event rewards have been improved.
• Improved timing and flow for the bite attack sequence for the final boss in the Battle for the Jade Sea meta-event, which will allow for slightly more uptime on attacking the boss.
• Fixed a bug in which the plants and special action skill in the "Help Sang-Cheol tend the garden" event in Seitung Harbor would function incorrectly and remain after the event finished.
• Fixed a bug in which Toxicologist Yon would sometimes get stuck in an emote loop, preventing her event chain from working properly in Seitung Province.
• Fixed a bug in which the map and NPC markers were sometimes not showing up at the right times for the A Guardian Once More collection achievement.
• Fixed a bug in which the spirit tethers were not attaching to the right areas within the "Defeat Tae-Yung, and stop him from harming the spirits" event in Seitung Province.
• Fixed a bug in which Lieutenant Francis used the wrong character model in Seitung Province.
• End of Dragons food consumables are now classified as Meals within the crafting menu.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Set Hook skill from appearing when fishing if there was an obstacle between the player and their casting target.
• Fixed the fire eel's hint description in the Ring of Fire Fisher collection to indicate that it can now be caught at any time of day.
• Fixed an issue in which the fishing alert reminder to set your hook was showing up on the compass map for other players.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the Fishing Party Catches effect counter to disappear after 99 stacks.
• Increased the drop rate of fish from the Saltwater Fisher collection when fishing from nodes.

Items

• Tier 3 upgrades for jade bot modules can now be purchased from Myung-Hee in Seitung Province and Zazzl in Arborstone.
• Cup of Light-Roasted Coffee no longer yields research notes.
• Research note output of some items has been adjusted.
• Third-generation legendary weapon gifts now appropriately use the legendary name instead of the precursor name in their item text. For example, Gift of Aurene's Argument now displays instead of Gift of Dragon's Argument.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug in which using the skyscale's dismount skill from a great height could kill the player with fall damage.
• Function Gyro: Fixed a bug in which this skill would grant more superspeed than intended with Gyroscopic Acceleration in WvW.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the "Thwart the Purist agitators!" event in New Kaineng City from restarting properly if it failed due to the meta starting.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the "Help the siege turtle defend Arborstone" event to fail inappropriately.
• Fixed an issue that caused unnatural stretching when charr characters wore the Reality Rig armor.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Shine Lantern bundle skill from functioning correctly during the "Defeat the Speakers currently disturbing the cemetery" event in Echovald Wilds.
• Specter (PvP Only):
  • Hungering Darkness: Increased pulse interval from 1 second to 3 seconds. Increased base barrier and healing from 517 to 773. Increased barrier and healing attribute scaling from 0.2 to 0.3.
  • Twilight Combo: Increased initiative cost from 4 to 5. Reduced first projectile power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.3. Reduced chill duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds. Reduced poison and torment duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
  • Siphon: Reduced shadow force gained from 25% to 15%. Reduced slow duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Mechanist (PvP Only):
  • Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits: Increased internal cooldown from 1 second to 3 seconds.
• Necromancer (PvP Only):
  • Death Shroud: Increased life force lost per second from 4% to 5%.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue that occasionally caused the "Repel the Aetherblade ambushers" event in Seitung Province to appear during the "Defeat the Aetherblade leader" event in the same area.
• Fixed an issue that caused Special Agent Teng to occasionally become unresponsive during the "Unmask the Purist sympathizers" event in Seitung Province, preventing the event from restarting.
• Fixed a server crash.
• Fixed a bug that prevented reflected projectiles from hitting the Storm Wizard boss in Super Adventure Box when players played World 2, Zones 1 through 3 consecutively.
• Fixed an issue that caused Nicabar's Copter to not take as much damage from rockets as intended during the Battle Cry meta-event in Drizzlewood Coast.

 

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Changes to the final encounter in the Battle for the Jade Sea meta-event:

• Decreased the frequency of the boss's tail phase so that its presence is less likely to overlap with an active defiance bar.
• The Exposed effect will now apply to both the tail and the head if the boss's defiance bar is broken while the tail phase is active.
• If the tail is defeated while the boss has the Exposed effect on its head, the Exposed effect's duration will be extended to compensate for the need to respond to its tail and head simultaneously.

Note: These changes are now active. A new game build is not required for them to take effect.