Game Update Notes: December 13, 2022

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

12/13/2022—December 13 Release Notes

Wintersday

Come join us in celebrating Wintersday—Toymaker Tixx has made his annual visit to Divinity's Reach to spread seasonal cheer and festivity! Bring the cheer of Wintersday to the distant north in the Secret Lair of the Snowmen, complete daily achievements to earn fanciful holiday weapons, save Wintersday for the orphans located around Divinity's Reach by giving them wrapped gifts, test your snow-throwing skills against other players in Snowball Mayhem, experience the joy of jumping in Winter Wonderland, defend against waves of toys in Toypocalypse, and help keep Tixx's airship, the Infinirarium, in order! You will also see Wintersday gifts appearing all around Tyria.

• The annual Wintersday Traditions meta-achievement has been updated with a new armor reward, the Wintersday Snow Boots. Keep your feet warm and stylish for the festivities! Last year's meta-achievement reward, the Embellished Wintersday Gift Bag, can now be purchased from a Charity Corps Seraph festival rewards vendor.
• A new Snowdrift weapon set is now available! Earn progress toward completing the annual Wintersday Traditions meta-achievement to receive a weapon of your choice. Additional tradeable weapons can rarely be found in Jolly Wintersday Gifts, which are rewards for completing a new daily achievement.
• Three new weapons are now available as rare drops from Wintersday Gifts. They can also be purchased from Sparking Stone in Divinity's Reach.
• Two new miniatures have been added to the items offered by a Charity Corps Seraph festival rewards vendor.
• New winter-themed guild decorations have been added.
• Logging out while inside the Secret Lair of the Snowmen instance will now return you to your previous map when you log in again.
• An exit portal for the Secret Lair of the Snowmen Strike Mission has been added to the compass.
• The Disorienting Blast skill in Toypocalypse now properly reduces enemies' defiance bars.
• A number of festival-related issues have been fixed to ensure a happy holiday for all heroes.

Wintersday will be active until January 3 at noon Pacific Time (UTC-8). See you in Divinity's Reach!

General

• The postprocessing options have been renamed to Low, Medium, and High.
• Color grading is now enabled on the lowest postprocessing setting.
• Moved a story entrance that couldn't be accessed in the Battle for Lion's Arch map.

Raids

• Fixed an issue that prevented the Achievement Eligibility: Voidwalker effect from being removed in Strike Mission: Harvest Temple when challenge mode was disabled via the challenge mote.
• Fixed an exploit in Bastion of the Penitent that allowed players to skip some fight mechanics.

Items

• Removed the name-confirmation requirement when discarding Wintersday tonics.
• The ascended Echovald Cathedral Backpiece now has selectable attributes, including Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons attribute combinations.
• Added a missing Mystic Forge recipe for infusing the Echovald Cathedral Backpiece.

World vs. World

• Dredge turrets in the Eternal Battlegrounds no longer inflict dazed on their target.

Desert Borderlands

• The Fire Keep lord has been updated to make it less punishing to fight against. The keep lord will apply significantly less crowd control as a result.
• The keep lord has been given a new primary ranged attack that functions similarly to revenant's Hammer Bolt.
• The keep lord's cone-shaped knockback attack has had its cooldown increased from 1 second to 6 seconds. This skill was previously the lord's primary attack.
• The cooldown of the lord's fear ability has been increased from 12 seconds to 24 seconds.
• The duration of fear applied by this attack is now 1.5 seconds regardless of the player's distance to the keep lord. Previously, this skill could apply up to 3 seconds of fear.
• The Air Keep lord has been given some slight adjustments to make it less punishing to fight against.
• The Whirling Prison crowd-control skill no longer removes all stacks of stability when a player attempts to cross the threshold of the ring. It will now remove a single stack of stability, in line with other crowd-control skills.
• The cooldown of the Whirling Prison skill has been increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.

Profession Skills

Elementalist

The November 29 balance update pushed catalyst damage a bit higher than we'd like to see in PvE. The damage increase on the hammer's third-slot skills ended up being unnecessary alongside the improvements to both Empowering Auras and Stormsoul, so we're reducing the damage to where it was previously. These skills will still have their updated functionality; we're simply adjusting the damage to bring catalyst more in line.

•  Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, and Rocky Loop: Reduced power coefficient from 0.1 to 0.001 in PvE only.

Guardian

For this update, we're tuning some Tome of Justice page costs to give slightly more flexibility to firebrand damage rotations. Unbroken Lines also stood out as a skill that was a bit too expensive to fit in alongside other support tools and is also receiving a cost reduction. 

• Chapter 4: Scorched Aftermath: Reduced page cost from 2 to 1.
• Epilogue: Ashes of the Just: Reduced page cost from 2 to 1.
• Epilogue: Unbroken Lines: Reduced page cost from 3 to 2. Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds in WvW only.
• Renewed Focus: This skill now recharges all pages for firebrands.
• Swift Scholar: Added some leniency to the stack removal timing when dismissing a tome during the cast of a skill that would trigger this trait.
• A tome's dormant status will now also be visible on the tome activation skill.

Warrior

• Fierce Blow: This skill now applies its bonus damage against creatures with a defiance bar.

 

Bug Fixes:

Engineer

• Mechanical Genius: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to provide more precision and ferocity to the mech than intended.

Guardian

• Fixed an issue that caused firebrand tomes' page-generation timer to stop while the player was mounted or downed.
• Mistlock Singularities and similar skill-refresh effects that are activated by interacting with objects or resetting encounters will now refill all firebrand tome pages.

Mesmer

• Mirrored Axes: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to prevent axe ambush attacks from activating.

Thief

• Hook Strike: Fixed an issue that caused the knockdown duration to be longer than intended.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a client crash related to shadows.
• Reverted changes to postprocessing settings.

[Double Tap.3940]

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an issue that prevented vindicators from dodging while immobilized and under the effects of resistance.

 

[Double Tap.3940]

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an issue that caused Bag Slot Expansions to fail to unlock under very specific circumstances.