5861

Yeah, it’s too bad they don’t have any time for gameplay or feature improvements.

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT

World vs. World
Trebuchet Mastery has been added to the Ranks and Abilities tab.
Increased the damage of trebuchet skills.
Disease Cloud from cow ammo now drains supply from enemy players.
Increased the radius of trebuchet skills.
New skill: Healing Oasis—Fires a shot that heals allies and creates a water combo field.
Basic shots that hit enemy supply depots will now destroy some of the objective’s supply.
WvW Ability Points are now equal to the earned WvW rank of each character. All rank 1 characters will have 1 World Ability Point.
Liquid World Experience is now available as a drop in WvW rank-up chests. When consumed, characters receive a set amount of WXP.

Culling
Server-side culling has been removed from all PvE maps.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH

Achievements
The character-select screen now displays information about several achievement categories in addition to unlocked account medals.
The watch list in the Achievements panel now supports drag-and-drop functionality to organize achievements.
Additional visual and audio polish has been added to the achievements system.

General
The amount of karma granted from consumable karma items has been increased. Karma boosts no longer affect the amount of karma gained from consumable items.
The minimap and objective list no longer disappear when a character is downed or defeated.

Story
“Last of the Giant-Kings” – Korag is now flagged as a veteran to match his difficulty.

Profession Skills

Elementalist:
Signet of Restoration: The signet effect will now play at the start of the cast for this skill.
Glyph of Elementals: Removed an unnecessary range fact.

Engineer:
Flame Turret—Overcharge: The skill fact now displays the correct radius.
Elixir Gun—Elixir F: Added a bouncing skill fact to the base skill when it is traited with Rifled Barrels.
Thump: Updated the damage skill fact to more accurately reflect the damage done.
Jump Shot: Fixed a bug that caused the vulnerability applied by this skill to be unblockable.

Guardian:
Purifying Ribbon: Added a skill fact for the number of bounces.
Signet of Wrath: Added a damage skill fact.
Faithful Strike: Updated the healing fact to display the correct value. Added a radius skill fact.
Bane Signet: Added a passive skill fact and changed the knockdown fact to display the correct duration when this skill is traited with Perfect Inscriptions.
Signet of Judgment: Added a passive skill fact that is also updated when traited with Perfect Inscriptions.
Signet of Mercy: Added a passive skill fact that is also updated when traited with Perfect Inscriptions.
Signet of Wrath: Added a passive skill fact that is also updated when traited with Perfect Inscriptions.
Virtue of Resolve: Updated the buff skill fact to accurately display the healing per tick.
Hammer of Wisdom: Updated the damage facts for this skill as well as its Command skill.
Sword of Justice—Command: Fixed an issue that caused the Command skill to go on full recharge without activating properly when used without a target.

Mesmer:
Power Cleanse: Removed the range fact as it was unnecessary.
Mind Spike: Fixed a bug where this skill was checking for a boon on the mesmer instead of on the target. The extra damage will now be correctly applied when the player’s target has no active boons.
Moa Morph/Tuna Morph: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to appear unselectable while underwater.
All Phantasms: The ghostly effect on phantasms should no longer fail to show up in low graphics settings.
The Prestige: Fixed an issue that caused the blast finisher to occur at the point where the skill is cast, rather than on the mesmer.

Necromancer:
Putrid Explosion: Added an unblockable skill fact to indicate the skill’s functionality.
Bone Fiend: Updated the range skill fact to indicate the creature’s actual range.
Lich Form: Updated the skill fact description so that it doesn’t indicate it removes spectral forms.
Plague Form: Updated the skill fact description so that it doesn’t indicate it removes spectral forms.
Chill of Death: Changed the radius skill fact to a range skill fact.

Ranger:
Swoop: The charge portion of this skill no longer spams “miss” while running toward an enemy.
Juvenile Lynx—Rending Pounce: Updated the bleed skill fact to display the proper amount of bleeds.
Frost Spirit: Added a radius skill fact.
Cold Snap: Added a radius skill fact.
Sun Spirit: Added a radius skill fact.
Solar Flare: Added a radius skill fact.
Stone Spirit: Added a radius skill fact.
Quicksand: Added a radius skill fact.
Storm Spirit: Added a radius skill fact.
Call Lightning: Added a damage skill fact and a radius skill fact.
Crippling Talon: The projectile thrown will now travel the full distance when traited with Off-Hand Training.

Thief:
Infiltrator’s Signet: Updated the signet’s effect to properly follow the thief when activated.
Flanking Strike: Removed a redundant damage fact.

Warrior:
Seismic Leap: Fixed a bug so that this skill will now properly be a blast combo finisher.
Rampage—Dash: Fixed a bug that allowed the character to move further than intended.
Whirling Axe: Updated the skill fact to include a radius.
Banner of Discipline, Banner of Strength, Banner of Defense, and Battle Standard: Updated these skills to properly display their duration. Battle Standard now displays the casting range of the skill.
Banner—Sprint: This skill will now properly strike a target when it reaches the target while underwater.
Kill Shot: Fixed a bug so that this skill will no longer drain the energy of a target that reflects it.

Racial:
Asura
Pain Inverter: Replaced the range skill fact with a radius one to more accurately reflect the skill’s function.

Structured Player vs. Player
Minimap is now always centered and cannot be panned or zoomed.
Secondary objective icons for tournament maps have been repainted for clarity.
Map art for tournament maps have been repainted for clarity.
Downed icons no longer overlap profession icons.
Spectate camera icons no longer steal mouse focus from capture point icons when not visible.
Profession icons are now a fixed size regardless of map zoom level.
Player icons now show names in their tooltip.
Removed the capture point text from the map.
All capture point icons now properly show their name in the tooltip.

World vs. World
The Outnumbered buff now provides a 25% boost to all WXP gained.
WXP rates have been increased across the board. All activities that award WXP should now reward much more.
The Siege Decay buff is no longer visible to hostile players.

5862

I hate to say it, but that’s kind of how life is. I don’t have enough time to read all the books I want to read, see all the movies I want to watch, or play all the games I want to play. There aren’t even enough hours in the day to listen to all the podcasts that I’m interested in. Either you sit back afraid that there’s too much to do, or you embrace the overabundance of content and just have fun doing what you can.

5863

I can understand it being anxiety-inducing for completionists. But Anet have said (paraphrasing from what I’ve picked up from dev comments on the forums) that this has been more or less a phase they’ve had to go through while they practice their “live” content creation tools, and set up things like recurring celebration events; things will settle down a bit in the coming year, in the sense that changes won’t be of the “festival every two weeks that you’ve got to get all the achievements for” form, but more of a continual “living” feel for the virtual world, with more bits of permanent change sticking around.

5864

Hit level 30 last night and am one more skill point away from being able to buy my first epic skill. I also dropped some of my entertainment budget for the month on some gems and picked up the three permanent harvesting tools and another bag slot. The consumable harvest items were already becoming annoying and I harvest everything I come across so it felt worth it for me. Plus I have some extra gems sitting there if anything cool comes up. I usually balk at buying the extras, I refused to spend any money when I was playing Neverwinter for example. But GW2 has won me over pretty quickly so I don’t mind tossing ArenaNet some extra money for some more convenience. I guess part of it was that Neverwinter beats you over the head with the store while GW2 doesn’t.

Best moment of last nights playtime. Another random player and I took down a Svanir champion together. It was a long fight and we both went down several times, but kept reviving each other and the npc’s(which were great distractions). He was a warrior and switched up from melee to a bow and started kiting the camp and I’d leap in and set the beast on fire and beat on him until he’d whack me and I’d roll out. Once we got the rhythm down it went a lot smoother but it was a good 10 min fight. Very satisfying.

5865

Neat blog post about the first year with some fun stats.

5866

I picked this up after playing the free weekend. Really enjoying it so far. I’m playing a Ranger. I’ve come across a few threads saying Rangers are not useful and kicked out in group dungeon runs. And their use in WvW is a specialized one. Is this the case? I’m only level 3 or 4, so it would be a good time to switch.

Also, can dungeons be played solo or with one or two other friends as in Diablo or is a full group required?

5867

Full group.

5868

I still say Gnashblade was robbed out of winning the election.

5869

By the time Rangers aren’t “useful”, what that means is they aren’t as useful as some other classes in speedruns. But long before you join the ranks of grim, silent speedrunners working at their second jobs, you’ll be learning the dungeons with others. There are always “relaxed” groups on the go for dungeons.

5870

Just to reiterate what gurugeorge said…well…what he said. Also, don’t worry about what people are saying about classes. They all work. Rangers are generally just fine, they even excel at burning through world pve and engaging in the flavor of the week, Champion farming. And who knows what further patches will bring. If you like the class, you will do well.

5871

Thanks guys for the Ranger advice. I’m glad I don’t have to swjtch as I like playing him so far.

5872

Well I agree with you and if you look on the forums plenty of other do as well. The quick turnaround results in shallow, buggy content.

5873

Melee rangers speced certain ways (aka tanky) are one of the more powerful solo roaming classes in WvW, and do well in small group skirmishes and sPvP as well. Ranged rangers…not so much. Though its certainly easier to play ranged ranger in all PvE content.

5874

I think there’s a reason so many gold farmers were rangers.

BTW, do you guys see gold farmers any more? As near as I can tell, it’s a non-issue these days. Whatever ArenaNet did seems to have worked wonders.

-Tom
5875

Thanks. I will try melee in WvW.

5876

No, I haven’t seen one in quite some time. For a while, they were almost as populous as actual players - all running around in their underwear in big groups with their bears in tow.

5877

Yep, I remember. It was pretty godawful. I was convinced at the time they were going to ruin the game and ArenaNet wasn’t doing anything about it.

-Tom

5878

On some level, though, it was pretty fun to try and get them killed sometimes. Still hated them and glad they are gone, of course.

Lol, I updated the game 3 times over the last month planning to get back to it but it never happened. Maybe when I finish Bioshock Infinite. Oh wait, Total War Rome 2 comes out next week, nevermind. :) This is probably the only game that I love so much but haven’t played for so long. :)

5879

Well I’ve completed three zones now and haven’t seen anyone that I would suspect was a gold farmer. So whatever ArenaNet did, it was effective. My wife did comment that over the free weekend she saw a number of new characters with nonsense names running around in the charr starter area. So I’m sure they’re still trying!

I love how the game keeps track of what you’ve done. I was trying to kill a champion in Snowden Drifts to open up the skill point in the room behind her, but just couldn’t take her down. So I moved on and about 20 mins later the event complete medal popped up (I even made silver!) so I went to the closest waypoint and ran back. Sure enough someone else had killed her and I was able to run in and grab the skill point.

I’m closing in on the monthly achievement too, just need to break down another 60 or so items.

5880

fdsaion knows a lot more than I do but I do want to add a caveat (or stress something not explicitly mentioned by him): melee won’t work so well if you hang with the zerg in WvW. It’s better not to be in the middle of things.

This discussion reminded me about soloing a couple of world champions with a freshly-minted level 80 Ranger some months back. I had just respecced him as a tank and was using sword and dagger to devastating effect. It wasn’t every champ I could do this with, mind you, but a couple in Orr. I see most Rangers using the greatsword nowadays or zerging with the long bow. I heard some rumors about it being harder nowadays to keep vigor and quickness up constantly, so I switched to a shout build that keeps my pet and I in perpetual health regen. I haven’t been playing my Ranger much lately, and I’m certainly no expert anyway so I can’t advise you on the best spec but hit me up in game, if you would like to hear the details of my current build. I’ll most likely be on my necro, Fermat’s Theorem.