Game Update Notes: April 16, 2024

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Game Update Notes: April 16, 2024

04/16/2024—April 16 Release Notes

Note to users of third-party programs: Due to possible incompatibilities, the game may not launch or work properly after we release a new build if you use a third-party program. ArenaNet cannot offer support if a third-party modification breaks, interferes with, or prevents you from playing Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2. Our policy regarding third-party programs can be found here.

Super Adventure Festival

Moto's world-renowned Super Adventure Box returns again! Explore two worlds (and one test zone) of excitement, peril, and educational entertainment to earn holographic weapons and a variety of loot. Travelers can visit the Super 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!

• Complete the festival's meta-achievement, (Annual) Super Adventure Box Nostalgia, to earn the new Powered Shoulders armor! Last year's reward, the Powered Gloves, are now available from the Super Adventure Box traders.
• The new Golem Buster weapon set is now available! You'll receive your choice of a weapon by progressing the Super Adventure Box Nostalgia meta-achievement, and you can earn additional choices through weekly festival achievements.
• New weapons have been added to the Retro-Forged set! You can purchase these weapons directly from a festival vendor or find them as rare drops in Super Loot Bags.
• The (Annual) Super Adventure Box Nostalgia meta-achievement has been updated with additional goals, including the box's prototype level, the World 3 Test Zone!
• The weekly Super Adventure Festival achievements have been combined into a single achievement, (Weekly) Super Replay.
• New updates have been added to the Test Zone:
  • Shops!
  • Blue oozes!
  • Secret caves!
  • A coin-collecting adventure!
  • And new achievements to go along with them. Delve into the caves of the Test Zone, aid the miner choya, and gain never-before-seen tools for your super adventure!
• The Mega Bomb has been updated to use ammunition charges rather than consuming baubles on use.
• New Super Adventure Box-themed guild decorations have been added! Turn your hall into the cavernous level of your dreams.
  • Super Grand Gate
  • Super Owl Statue
  • Super Red Crystal
  • Jackal Rental Post
• Special objectives are available in the Wizard's Vault to earn extra astral acclaim as you enjoy the festival.
• A number of super adventure-related bugs have been fixed to ensure a safe education for all heroes.
• Festivities begin on April 16 and continue until May 7 at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7). 

Cosmetic Inspection

• The new cosmetic inspection feature has been added. You can use it to view a targeted player's equipped outfit, armor skins, weapon skins, and dyes.
  • You can bring up the inspection option by right-clicking on a player's portrait or by typing "/inspect" with a player targeted. If no player is targeted, you'll see your own character's information.
  • Weapon information is hidden in competitive maps.
• Many skins will now include information about the primary source for obtaining them when viewed in the Wardrobe or Inspect panels.
  • Due to the number of weapon and armor skins in the vast world of Tyria, the source descriptions are a work in progress that will be completed over time.

World Polish

• Jade Tech Offensive Protocol and Jade Tech Defensive Protocol have received the following updates:
  • Increased the duration of jade tech offensive and defensive overcharge effects per activation from 15 minutes to 45 minutes.
  • Increased the maximum stack duration for jade tech offensive and defensive overcharge effects from 2.25 hours to 3 hours.
  • Removed the time-out period for applying additional jade tech offensive and defensive overcharge effects and shortened the duration of interactions.
  • Increased the internal cooldown for jade tech offensive and defensive overcharge application when entering combat from 30 seconds to 90 seconds.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Defeat the Claw of Jormag World Boss or Complete Events in Frostgorge Sound weekly objective in the Wizard's Vault to only progress by one point when the Claw of Jormag itself was defeated, rather than instantly completing.
• Fixed a client crash in Convergences.

Items

• Hero's choice chests will now appear in a clickable pop-up UI chest instead of being manually obtained from a chest object in the world.

World vs. World

The following changes are part of an ongoing effort to make fighting for—and in—objectives feel better for attacking groups, as the defenders' advantage inside their own structures was previously too strong. While we don't want to swing that advantage completely in favor of attacking groups, we also want to encourage player interaction so that large portions of attacks against structures don't feel like a slog with little payoff. We feel that these changes will help to incentivize more player vs. player interactions while still allowing for defensive tactical gameplay. We will continue to monitor how these changes affect sieges and structure attacks.

• Across all objective tiers, walls and gates will now be rebuilt when 50% of their health has been restored.
• Several objectives' capture boundaries have been resized in all four maps:
  • Resource camp capture boundaries are now the same size in all four maps, with two outliers: Rogue's Quarry (the green world's northern camp in Eternal Battlegrounds) and Hamm's Lab (the northern camp in Desert Borderlands) remain unchanged. Generally, this is a reduction in capture boundary size for Alpine Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds camps and an increase for Desert Borderlands camps.
  • Capture boundaries in O'del Academy, Crankshaft Depot, and Parched Outpost (northwest, southwest, and southeast Desert Borderlands towers) have been reduced.
  • Stonemist Castle's capture boundary has been reduced and centered.
  • Capture boundaries for Green World Keep, Red World Keep, and Blue World Keep in Eternal Battlegrounds have all been reduced.
  • Capture boundaries for garrisons in Alpine Borderlands have been reduced and centered.
  • Capture boundaries for Dreadfall Bay and Ascension Bay in Alpine Borderlands have been reduced and now match those of Shadaran Hills and Askalion Hills.
  • Synthesizer and tactivator locations have been moved in most camps to ensure that they are still inside the capture boundaries.
• Presence of the Keep and Guild Objective Aura bonus effects now provide +25 power, precision, toughness, and vitality instead of +100.
• The Empower healing skill that was added to keep lords in Alpine Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds will now grant stability to allies it affects.
• Siege golems no longer cause capture objectives to be contested in WvW.
• Flame rams' Iron Will skill now shares a cooldown between players.
• The Siege Disabled effect marker has been removed from siege weapons affected by siege disruptors.

The next few changes continue from a recent update that added new bag options with grandmaster mark shards included in the price. Our goal for this, and for updates from last year, is to give WvW players more options for spending their WvW currencies and improve quality of life for currency exchange in WvW. We felt that a surplus of memories of battle, specifically, brought the price down too far and that there were not enough opportunities to spend them. We will continue keeping an eye on this vendor and other new purchase options to determine whether we need to make further updates.

• Proofs of heroics and testimonies of desert heroics can now be traded to heroics notaries in exchange for testimonies of jade heroics. All items offered by heroics notaries have been updated to require testimonies of jade heroics.
• Memories of battle are no longer available for purchase from Dugan, and some of the merchant's purchasing options have been updated.
• An option to exchange boxes of grandmaster marks for grandmaster mark shards has been added to the skirmish supervisor.

Profession Skills

Engineer

• Gleam Saber: Fixed an issue that caused this skill to reduce the recharge time of Radiant Arc by 3 seconds when the holosmith elite specialization was not equipped.
• Photonic Blasting Module: Reduced the damage coefficient from 3.5 to 2.5 in WvW only.
• Prime Light Beam: Fixed an issue that caused this skill to strike 10 targets instead of the intended 5.
• Essence of Animated Sand: Reduced the barrier healing power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.5 in WvW only. Reduced the initial might from 5 stacks to 2 stacks in WvW and PvP.
• Essence of Living Shadows: Reduced the initial conditions cleansed from 2 to 1 in WvW only.
• Essence of Liquid Wrath: Fixed an issue that caused the tooltip to display longer durations than intended in WvW only.
• Bulwark Gyro: Increased the cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in WvW only. Reduced the base initial barrier from 1,620 to 1,140 and the base pulsing barrier from 810 to 560 in WvW only. Reduced the initial barrier healing power coefficient from 0.8 to 0.5 and the pulse barrier healing power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.25 in WvW only.

Guardian

• Symbol of Protection: Reduced the symbol damage coefficient from 0.4 to 0.25 in WvW only.

Mesmer

• Fixed an issue that prevented the shimmering visual effect from appearing on the skill bar for characters using the mirage elite specialization.
• Chaotic Transference: This trait no longer shares chaos aura with nearby allies. It now grants regeneration to nearby allies when you apply chaos aura to yourself.
• Mender's Purity: Lesser Power Cleanse no longer triggers Restorative Mantras.
• Journey: Reduced the base healing from 911 to 719 and reduced the healing power coefficient from 0.67 to 0.4 in PvP only.
• Abstraction: Reduced the base healing from 1,930 to 1,610 and reduced the healing power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.8 in PvP only.

Ranger

• Live Vicariously: This trait is no longer activated by pulsing healing effects, such as regeneration.
• Flourish: Reduced the base healing from 970 to 509 in PvE only. Reduced the healing power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.25 and reduced the regeneration duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only.
• Invigorating Bond: Reduced the base healing from 1,020 to 820. Reduced the healing power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.5 and reduced the protection duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only.

Revenant

• True Nature: Fixed an issue that could cause this skill to be accidentally cast immediately after activating Facet of Nature.

Warrior

• Path to Victory: Reduced the damage coefficient from 1.25 to 0.91 in PvP only. Reduced the base healing from 975/1,950/2,925 to 559/1,742/2,925 based on adrenaline level in PvP only. Increased the healing power coefficient from 1.0/1.25/1.5 to 1.33/1.67/2.0 in PvP only.
• Line Breaker: Reduced the base healing from 2,203 to 1,320 and increased the healing power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.75 in PvP only.
• Snap Pull: Increased the casting time by 0.15 seconds.
• Bullet Catcher: Increased the cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Scorched Earth: Reduced the number of targets from 5 to 3 in WvW only.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

04/16/2024—Late Notes

General:

• Updated the days remaining in the Wizard's Vault Special Objectives tab.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an issue that occurred when interacting with the Searing Cauldron in the Iron Marches.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a server crash.

[Spectral Spiral.6109]

 Bug Fixes:

• Essences of Animosity and Certificates of Heroics can now be purchased from Legendary Commander War Razor and Legendary Retired Commander Burn Razor in exchange for Testimonies of Jade Heroics.
• Using cosmetic inspection in competitive modes will no longer display players' equipped weapons in the character model view window.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from being eligible for some Super Adventure Box Test Zone achievements if they completed the requirements before unlocking the Test Zone. The Test Zone achievements are no longer locked before the zone is available to a player. Players who are missing an achievement they earned will receive it upon entering the Super Adventure Box hub zone. 

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Bug Fix:

• Collecting Wizard's Vault daily objective rewards while inside the Super Adventure Box will now properly award PvP and WvW reward track progress.