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Guild Wars 2 Feature Pack – Part 2- The Review

by Tim Morris

Copyright ArenaNet Source: guildwars2.com
Copyright ArenaNet
Source: guildwars2.com

You’re gonna like the way you look. I guarantee it.

Welcome to Part 2 of our coverage of the Guild Wars 2 feature patch! After last week’s reveals focused on game balance, traits, and gear upgrades, this new round of changes are mostly cosmetic. Not to the official site, of course, but revolving around dyes, the new wardrobe feature, new ways to earn gear, and general quality-of-life improvements. If you’re a guild leader, there are some improvements headed your way too!

We’re going to start things off this week with the new wardrobe feature, which was arguably the most demanded part of the feature patch. You can click here to watch a short video explaining some of the functions. Whenever you gain a weapon or piece of armor in-game, whether through drop, trading post, cash shop, or vendor – you permanently unlock the skin for that item as well. If you’d like to swap skins, you can do so from a new panel on your equipment screen. Doing so costs transmutation charges, which is a re-work of the current stone/crystal system already in place. Those items will be disappearing and players will receive one charge for every crystal in their inventory, and another charge for every three stones they possess. In a sense, it’s a similar system to the already-present Gear Locker in PvP, but it’ll now be game-wide. As a result, all of the PvP gear you’ve unlocked will also be a part of this system, so you may now apply those skins to your PvE/WvW gear as well. This feature will keep collectors busy for a long time to come!

Another heavily demanded change that ArenaNet is delivering is an overhaul of the dye system. Instead of being soulbound (per character), dyes will now be account bound, which means that all characters you’ve made can choose from the same pool of dyes that you’ve unlocked. In addition, if you have the same dye available on multiple characters, you’ll receive a free unidentified dye for each unique color you’ve consumed twice or more. To balance this, dyes will no longer be on the loot tables, and instead only available through the Mystic Forge, crafting (specifically the cooking profession), laurel merchants, and other special rewards. As a further bit of balance, the legendary staff known as The Bifrost, which currently requires 250 unidentified dyes as an ingredient, will now only need 100 unidentified dyes to craft the Gift of Color used to make it. Other changes to the system include making previewing colors easier and more streamlined confirmation of changes.

The next reveal involved the quality-of-life changes for guilds, and even though I’m currently a one-man guild I appreciate ArenaNet’s efforts here. Not being able to see the last time a guild member logged in was inexcusable, and that will be rectified when the feature patch hits on April 15th. The LFG (looking for group) system will also be getting some new bells and whistles, allowing players to group up for not only open world content, dungeons, and Fractals of the Mists, but after the feature patch hits, World vs. World will also become available. There will even be separate channels in the tool for each map, including all three borderlands, Eternal Battlegrounds, and Edge of the Mists! The LFG tool will also include specifications for language, as many of the European servers are multi-lingual. Throw in some backend support for guild members themselves, and Guild Wars 2‘s social abilities figure to be better than ever.

In what is sure to be welcome news for the battle-hardened folk who frequent WvW, world experience will now be account bound instead of soulbound. Points can still be spent differently on your various characters, so you won’t get stuck with the same bonuses across your entire account. This will allow players to change styles of play simply by switching characters, as you can be a supply master on one and a catapult master on another, for example. This reveal also came with news that any legendary or ascended gear possessed by one character will become account bound as well. So if you like, you can craft an ascended dagger and simply move it between characters using the bank as you see fit! You’re still restricted by the weapons and armor that potential recipients can equip, so don’t think you can make a spiffy piece of plate armor for your mesmer, for instance.

Speaking of armor, repairing your damaged or broken armor will now be free of charge! ArenaNet felt that the damage from dying is punishment enough and is removing repair fees from the game. The NPCs will still exist and I assume you can still sell items to them if you choose. While we’re on the subject of free things, players who like to experiment with builds will be glad to know that the new instant trait refund system I talked about last week will also be free! Simply click and tinker away, mad scientists!

The final reveal from this week is one that I’m sure will get many people interested in PvP. Reward Tracks are being introduced, and they’re a secondary achievement system of sorts, except that instead of rewarding points towards milestone chests, they reward items, armor, and weapons! Every major region of Tyria will be featured in these Reward Tracks, so players who like to stick to PvP can get drops that would normally come through PvE play by accomplishing given objectives. Dungeon-specific armor and weapons will also be made available through this feature on a rotating basis, or players can complete the story modes of the eight dungeons to allow them to complete the tracks at their leisure. In addition, future Living World and holiday events will be added as they are released. While I’d love for this system to be added on the PvE side too, PvPers have been getting the short end of the stick in this regard ever since release. They deserve the bone they’ve been thrown. To go along with this update, PvE/WvW gear will now carry over to the PvP side, as it previously did not.

In next week’s reveals, ArenaNet will be talking about “facilitating friendly play” in Guild Wars 2, as it currently says on the official site. Check back here for the latest news about the upcoming feature pack!

For Part 1 of our coverage, click here. For more information regarding the April 15th feature pack, click here.

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: april 15th, feature pack, guild wars 2, Mac, mmorpg, patch, PC, pvp, updates, video games, WvW

Guild Wars 2 Feature Pack – Part 1

by Tim Morris

Copyright ArenaNet Source: guildwars2.com
Copyright ArenaNet
Source: guildwars2.com

Time to change the game.

With the first season of Guild Wars 2‘s Living Story wrapping up, developer ArenaNet has begun wheeling out its “feature patch”, which will drop on April 15th. They are releasing information about the patch in bite-sized portions over three weeks. Thus far, three pieces of the patch have been revealed and I will be covering those in this article, which will be the first of three outlining the new content.

Traits are what define builds in Guild Wars 2. Fresh Air for elementalists, Altruistic Healing for guardians, Prismatic Understanding for mesmers, etc. You don’t invest fully into a trait line for the stat boosts, since you can easily make up those points in your armor and trinkets; you invest for the traits themselves. ArenaNet has decided to simplify this system, as well as offer alternatives to obtain traits that will surely please players who enjoy exploration and a bit more challenge. Instead of having 70 points to distribute when your character hits level 80, you’ll have 14. To balance this, each point will equate to +50 of the associated stat boost, instead of the previous +10. As an example of what this means for spreading points, I’ll use my elementalist build. Right now I run 30/30/x/10/x, and once the patch releases it will be 6/6/x/2/x. In addition to this, the progression is also changing. In the current system, players can earn their first major trait at level 20. After the patch, new players (existing ones will be grandfathered in all aspects of the trait updates) cannot earn that same slot until level 36.

Perhaps the biggest piece of the change to traits comes in the form of trait guides. As homage to the first Guild Wars, players can choose to go adventuring and earn their traits by completing in-game tasks, or they can buy them from the profession trainer NPCs. All characters, new and old, will have to use one of these methods to unlock their new Grandmaster-tier traits (five for each class, one for each trait line). The final piece of the trait revamp is related to quality of life aspects, such as the ability to instantly refund all trait points (now free of charge) as well as the ability to move points around by clicking a newly-added minus button. These changes are being touted as a way to make experimentation easier and more streamlined, but it definitely throws a wrench into the thinking of people who use a specific gearset. Celestial armor carries equal boosts to all attributes instead of one major and two minor upgrades like all the other armor sets. With trait points being reduced from 70 to 14, there is no longer a way to evenly split them across all 5 lines, and so it throws that balance off.

Balancing the game has often been a trial for ArenaNet, as the community is often divided (and quite frankly, uninformed or biased) regarding what classes need help and which ones should get hit with the nerf gun. Through tinkering with runes and sigils while also addressing class balance with the new traits and other small adjustments, they hope to achieve a better meta across all game modes. The first major change here is that two-handed weapons will now have two sigil slots, something that was sorely needed. You won’t be able to equip two identical sigils, two different “stack on-kill” sigils, or utilize the old trick of getting 25 stacks of a boost and then unequipping said weapon, but overall the change is for the better. ArenaNet is also removing some of the hidden rules regarding sigils, and now each of those that have triggering effects will have their own cooldowns.

Runes are also receiving a long look in this feature patch. ArenaNet wants players to invest in complete rune sets as opposed to mixing and matching, and so they are making it more worthwhile to equip five or six of the same rune as opposed to two or three. For example, the Superior Rune of the Eagle has the following bonuses, in increasing number of runes equipped: +25 precision, +3% critical damage, +50 precision, +5% critical damage, +90 precision, and finally +5% damage to targets with less than 50% health. Here’s the new spread:

Copyright ArenaNet Source: guildwars2.com
Copyright ArenaNet
Source: guildwars2.com

For those wondering, ferocity is the new stat that affects critical damage (more on that later). The extra 10 precision and 1% damage to weakened foes may seem like a small boost, but as someone who runs offensive gear on all of my characters, every little bit helps. Also receiving buffs are runes that have a sixth bonus where something triggers at a given rate when a condition is met. For instance, the Superior Rune of the Nightmare currently has a 5% chance to inflict fear on an enemy who hits you. For this and all other runes with this type of bonus, the rate at which the effect happens is being increased to a whopping 50%. I could see this becoming an issue in PvP, but looking at it from a PvE standpoint I think it’s a welcome change.

The final major reveal so far is the change being made to critical damage and it is the one that I have a problem with. Critical hits carry a base 50% damage increase, and then whatever the character’s critical damage bonus is gets added onto that figure. On my main toon, who wears the best gear in the game, I have a 109% critical damage bonus. Due to the existence of active defenses in-game as well as how apt bosses are to deliver attacks that down players with a single blow regardless of , going with a fully offensive setup has always been the most optimal for PvE gameplay. Oftentimes this has led to arguments both in-game and on the forums between players who run optimal setups and players who continuously say “I play how I want” as their excuse for using everything else. These players, whether they know it or not, only make it harder for the offensively-geared to survive because enemies don’t die as quickly when they’re around.

There are a number of ways to fix the problem of Guild Wars 2 being too reliant on DPS (damage per second) as opposed to a balance of damage, support, and control, as was originally intended. Making enemy AI smarter, as in having them behave more like a human player, would’ve been the best way. Having mobs attack more times for fewer damage per strike would certainly help to reward defensive and healing setups while also allowing the big damage dealers to feel like they can eat an attack or two and save their dodges for bigger threats. Another idea I’ve seen tossed around called for making both the amount of endurance used per dodge and its associated recharge rate different across the eight classes, which would be a decent stopgap change. I’ve also read proposals that would simply buff healing and toughness to make them more worthwhile.

What did ArenaNet decide to do? Nerf the best players in the game. The switch from the easily understood critical damage % stat to the new ferocity has been said to be about a 10% drop in overall damage for the most offensive specs, but theorycrafting on the official forums and on Reddit has determined that the figure will probably be higher, with some saying it could reach 30%. Given the fact that certain classes can produce completely silly amounts of damage given the right circumstances, I could see how addressing this would make the list of potential adjustments. However, it’s by far the laziest option that ArenaNet had and it’s ill-advised when there are more pressing issues with the current metagame.

According to the reveal schedule for the feature patch, it seems as though next week’s information will be of the “quality of life” variety. Check back with us in a week’s time and stay in the loop!

If you’d like more information about the individual features discussed here, click on this link.

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: exploration, feature patch, ferocity, guild wars 2, MMO, mmorpg, pve, pvp, rpg, rune, sigil, traits, updates

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