Game updates/May 2022

May 2022 updates
Thursday, 26 May 2022 Wednesday, 25 May 2022 Tuesday, 24 May 2022 Wednesday, 11 May 2022 Tuesday, 10 May 2022
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Update - May 26, 2022

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused the Aether Visor to not display properly on characters using light armor.

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

• Build: 129,518

Update - May 25, 2022

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented Aetherblade events in Bloodtide Coast from awarding more story progress than normal events during the "Sky Pirates" episode.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Aetherblade Assassin achievement from progressing.
• Fixed an issue in which certain achievements in Strike Mission: Kaineng Overlook were incorrectly awarded to players without challenge mode active.
• Fixed an issue in which completing Strike Mission: Kaineng Overlook with challenge mode active did not award players with the appropriate rewards.
• Fixed an issue in which the name of the MinSec Elite Sniper Rifle wasn't displaying correctly.

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

• Build: 129,473

Update - May 24, 2022

Living World Season 1—Sky Pirates

In the wake of the climactic events of the Personal Story, schemes begin to come to fruition behind a festival. As the city of Lion's Arch gathers to celebrate the defeat of a dragon, whispers reach the Pact commander of a looming threat to the recent peace. Team up with Marjory Delaqua and Kasmeer Meade for the first time, and work together to uncover the mysterious culprits! After years of being unavailable, the "Sky Pirates" episode of the Living World story line has been restored and restructured as a linear Story Journal episode. This episode is permanently available to all players without any unlock needed. Over the coming year, three more episodes of Season 1 will release to chronicle the commander's battle against a lurking evil between the end of the Personal Story and the beginning of Living World Season 2.

• The original Sky Pirates achievements, along with a set of new achievements, are now in a Sky Pirates category in the Story Journal achievements section.
  • Completing the new achievements will progress a new Sky Pirates Mastery meta-achievement to earn new rewards.
  • Existing achievements will retain their completion status if you earned them during the original Sky Pirates events.
  • Some existing achievements have been updated with additional goals or revised goals to ensure that they can still be completed.

Strike Mission: Kaineng Overlook Challenge Mode

• The challenge mode for Strike Mission: Kaineng Overlook is now available.
  • Players can activate challenge mode at any time by interacting with the challenge mote inside the instance.

New End of Dragons Legendary Weapon Variant

• Leivas has discovered something peculiar with the Aurene-themed legendary weapons! Speak with him at Seitung Harbor or the Exchange in Arborstone (once you have the appropriate Mastery unlocked) to find out more.

World Polish

• The Central Tyria mastery track will now unlock for accounts with expansion access when the player unlocks a Central Tyria mastery point at level 80, rather than requiring players to start an expansion story.
• Added a Weekly Jade Vault achievement to track the remaining statuettes that players still need to turn in to Myung-Hee.
• The achievement The Six now includes hints about where to find the statuettes.
• Fixed an issue that caused End of Dragons: Act Mastery achievements to require hidden achievements for completion, which erroneously removed achievement points from some players that had previously completed them.
• Fixed an issue during the "Help the Kahloipoi guards rescue Aaminah" event in Malchor's Leap in which the quaggan rescue squad would sometimes fail to continue after being revived, causing the event to stall.
• Fixed an issue at several points along the Northern Invasion of Orr meta-event in Straits of Devastation in which NPCs would sometimes become stuck, causing events to stall or not start.
• Fixed an issue in which Vasili Lutgardis would not appear for his dialogue at the end of the "Help Jan reconnect with their family's past by cleansing the site with Lutgardis music" event.
• Fixed an issue in which some of the sickly animals in the "Help Jan reconnect with their family's past by cleansing the site with Lutgardis music" event did not reset correctly after the event was over. Also fixed an issue that prevented these animals from properly granting event participation.

Items

• Equipment awarded from level-up rewards can now be salvaged or sold to vendors.
• Research Kits now have a Research Stack option in their right-click menu.

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

• Build: 129,355

Update - May 11, 2022

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an issue that prevented achievements for the Strike Mission: Xunlai Jade Junkyard challenge mode from being awarded to all eligible players in the squad.

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

• Build: 128,878

Update - May 10, 2022

World Polish

• Fixed an issue in which certain event NPCs would use mount-specific animations while emoting, causing them to clip through the floor in Seitung Province.
• Fixed an issue in which certain event NPCs were using the incorrect model in relation to their voice in Seitung Province.
• Fixed an issue in which mounting in certain parts of the Zen Daijun Temple in Seitung Province would cause the player to be teleported to the start of the Spirit Vestibule maze.
• Rebalanced the experience and loot distribution within the "Clear out the invasive species from the hatchery" event in Seitung Province to be more equally rewarding when it is successfully completed.
• Added a Puzzle Helper effect to the Seitung Province Spirit Vestibule maze that allows players who have already beaten all the bosses to help others with the events.
• Added an announcement for when the Aetherblade Assault meta-event fails in Seitung Province to better communicate the failure state.
• Added an announcement for when the Adolescent Leviathan boss first uses its Leviathan Swallow skill to help educate players on the event mechanic for all versions of the event.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent players from receiving full rewards from ley-line anomaly events.
• Rebalanced the event scaling and increased the health of the lab technicians in the "Defend the technicians while they redirect the power!" event during the Kaineng Blackout meta-event.
• Fixed an issue in which Yao's dialog wasn't displaying in chat and the lab technicians were calling the incorrect dialogue in the "Defend the technicians while they redirect the power!" event during the Kaineng Blackout meta-event.
• Fixed an issue that caused Special Agent Teng to occasionally become permanently invisible during the "Subdue the Purist operatives!" event in Seitung Province.
• Fixed an issue in which the Stow Bundle and Equip Bundle special action skills were not removed after turning in a completed crafted bundle item to the tengu merchants for the Mori Village renown heart.
• Fixed a DirectX 11 rendering bug that prevented Drakkar's shadow from showing on the walls of their lair.
• Fixed an issue in which one of the middle attack options in Soo-Won's bite attack sequence failed to occur, causing back-to-back biting.
• Fixed an issue with Soo-Won's hitbox indicator not appearing during the middle attack of her bite attack sequence, despite her being attackable during this time.

General

• Fixed an issue in which the Black Lion Trading Post icon would be visible during cutscenes.
• Fixed a bug that caused Zojja to send players affiliated with the Vigil extra letters during the "Flame and Frost" story instead of Almorra Soulkeeper.
• Fixed an issue in which a newborn siege turtle hatchling would not appear in the charr home instance.
• Fixed a bug in which certain mount-based achievement effects would fail to be removed when the player dismounted.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Alliance Breaker meta-achievement from updating for players who had completed one of its achievements during the original "Flame and Frost" release but had not finished Alliance Breaker at that time.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Red Iris Flower found in the Urban Battleground fractal to appear in merchants' Sell tabs.
• Removed evasion frames from the Risen Acolyte's Staff Strike attack.
• Completed the beta for the DirectX 11 renderer.

Fishing

• Skiffs now have a health bar that becomes visible to their owner and party members when the skiff is anchored and under 100% health.
• Fixed an issue in which player characters would sometimes perform their normal standing idle animation instead of their engaged fishing idle animation right after casting their line out.
• Fishing nodes have been discovered at the Subterranean Lake located beneath Teku Nuhoch in the Heart of Maguuma.
• Fixed an issue in Harathi Hinterlands in which fishing node locations intended to be lake fish were using coastal fish instead.
• Added Fish Eggs bait to the Lion's Arch fishing supplies vendor to help anglers trying to catch steelhead trout in nearby rivers.
• Corrected the golden mahseer's icon, which was incorrectly using the same icon as the normal mahseer fish.
• Fixed an issue in which players could see the red exclamation point marker over other players while fishing.
• Fixed an issue in which bobbers would sometimes persist in the world after their associated character had logged out.
• Updated an area where mounts are disabled on the north side of Ember Bay to allow players to fully traverse the waters by skiff or skimmer.
• Increased the drop rate of snow crabs and Krytan crawfish when players fish from open water to provide more reliable sources of crustacean meat.
• Increased the drop rate of regional fish of exotic, ascended, and legendary rarity that are only available during dusk and dawn.
• Increased the drop rate of regional fish of exotic rarity that are only available during day or night.
• Increased the drop rate of fish from the Saltwater Fisher collection when fishing from open water and from nodes named Saltwater Fish.

Strike Missions

• The challenge mode for Strike Mission: Xunlai Jade Junkyard is now available.
  • Players may activate challenge mode at any time by interacting with the challenge mote inside the instance.
• Increased rewards for completing the Aetherblade Hideout with challenge mode active.
• Increased the duration of the stun applied to the Echo of Scarlet Briar and Mai Trin when their defiance is broken from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Fixed an issue that caused portions of the telegraph for the Focused Destruction attack to scale incorrectly in Aetherblade Hideout.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Exposed effect used in Strike Missions to be removed if the target was downed.

Raids

The Key of Ahdashim

• Fixed an issue with the Cardinal Sabir encounter in which some mechanics could become unresponsive.

Items

• Fixed an incorrect material requirement to craft the Medium Monastery Coat.

Competitive Balance

Necromancer

"Rise!" is a skill that we've seen a lot of feedback around following the last set of balance changes. One of the primary issues with the skill is the number of minions that it's capable of summoning, as these minions can potentially soak up a lot of damage while also creating damage threats via Death Nova. To address this, we've reduced the target cap of the skill, which will both reduce the number of minions summoned and increase the cooldown of the skill by granting fewer hits of cooldown reduction from Augury of Death.

•  "Rise!": Reduced maximum number of targets struck from 5 to 2 in WvW only.
•  Death Nova: Reduced power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.6 in WvW only.

Another World vs. World goal for this update is to bring down some of the primary sources of ranged area-of-effect damage to create more opportunities for melee pushes. Ranged versus melee is always going to be a delicate balance as we do want both options to be viable, but we currently feel that ranged pressure is too high, and we're making some adjustments. For necromancer, this involves bringing down the damage of Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption. Unholy Feast is also being brought back down to its previous damage value, as the increase from the previous update pushed it a bit higher than it needed to be.

•  Well of Suffering: Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.9 to 0.65 in WvW only.
•  Well of Corruption: Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.35 to 0.28 in WvW only.
•  Unholy Feast: Reduced power coefficient from 1.3 to 1.0 in WvW only.

Revenant

The revenant's hammer is another source of ranged pressure that we looked at for this update, with both Coalescence of Ruin and Phase Smash receiving damage reductions.

•  Coalescence of Ruin: Reduced power coefficient from 1.15 to 0.91 in WvW only.
•  Phase Smash: Reduced power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.0 in WvW only.

Vindicator has continued to overperform in PvP, largely due to the defensive strength of the Kurzick side of Legendary Alliance Stance. We want to keep the energy costs on the lower side to maintain the flow when switching between the two sides, but the cooldowns of Tree Song and Battle Dance make them too easy to use repeatedly while staying on the Kurzick side. Saint's Shield is also getting an adjustment to its attribute scaling to bring down the sustainability of Avatar Amulet builds. We're continuing to keep an eye on the strength of Saint's Shield for nonhealing builds, but we want to gauge the impact of the adjustments to Tree Song and Battle Dance before making any further changes there.

•  Tree Song: Reduced the number of conditions removed from 5 to 3 in PvP only. Increased cooldown from 3 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP only.
•  Battle Dance: Increased cooldown from 3 seconds to 10 seconds in PvP only.
•  Saint's Shield: Reduced healing and barrier attribute scaling from 1.0 to 0.7 in PvP only.

While the defensive side of the vindicator has been strong, its offensive capability has been a bit less impressive since the adjustment to Eternity's Requiem. We've bumped up the damage on some of its weaker skills on the greatsword and the Luxon side of Legendary Alliance Stance to make damage-focused vindicators a bit more threatening.

•  Phantom's Onslaught: Increased power coefficient from 1.18 to 1.33 in PvP and WvW.
•  Scavenger Burst: Increased power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.55 in PvP only.
•  Nomad's Advance: Increased power coefficient from 2.0 to 2.3 in PvP and WvW.
•  Spear of Archemorus: Increased power coefficient from 2.33 to 2.67 in PvP and WvW. Reduced energy cost from 20 to 15 in PvP and WvW.

Elementalist

Elementalist is another profession getting a pair of adjustments to some of its more potent ranged damage skills, namely Meteor Shower and the Firestorm from Fiery Greatsword.

•  Meteor Shower: Reduced power coefficient from 1.1 to 0.88 in WvW only.
•  Firestorm (Conjure Fiery Greatsword): Reduced maximum number of targets struck from 10 to 5 in WvW only.
•  Fiery Eruption (Conjure Fiery Greatsword): Reduced maximum number of targets struck from 10 to 5 in WvW only.

Guardian

Finishing up the ranged damage adjustments for this update are a pair of changes for guardian, bringing down the damage of Symbol of Punishment and Sword of Justice.

•  Symbol of Punishment: Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.33 to 0.28 in WvW only.
•  Sword of Justice: Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.54 to 0.45 in WvW only. Reduced ammunition count from 3 to 2 in WvW only.

Engineer

Mechanist has continued to be a dominant force in PvP, and for this update we've taken a harder look at some of its defensive capabilities. Rectifier Signet in particular is an extremely potent source of healing, especially in combination with the grandmaster trait Mech Core: J-Drive, and it's something that needed to come down. We've also made another slight adjustment to Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits to further reduce the mechanist's alacrity uptime. Finally, we have an adjustment to the engineer's shield cooldowns. We've seen the strength of the shield previously with protection holosmith builds, and it's no surprise to see it again as a key piece for the mechanist. Shield skills are available a bit too often with the cooldown reduction of Over Shield, so we've bumped up the cooldowns of both Magnetic Shield and Static Shield.

•  Rectifier Signet: Reduced pulse heal from 230 to 142 in PvP only.
•  Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits: Increased internal cooldown from 3 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
•  Magnetic Shield: Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
•  Static Shield: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.

Ranger

We've enjoyed seeing the recent performance of the untamed specialization in PvP, but it's clear that the damage of the drake's Tail Swipe is a bit too high, and we're bringing it down a notch.

•  Tail Swipe (Drake Family): Reduced power coefficient from 0.9 to 0.72 in PvP only.

Thief

Specter is another specialization that has continued to perform well following the previous adjustments to its sustainability, and we're adjusting shadow force generation with the goal of making specters a bit more susceptible to enemy pressure.

•  Specter: Reduced shadow force gained per initiative from 1% to 0.75% in PvP only.

Structured Player vs. Player

•  Rune of the Trapper (PvP): Reduced stealth duration from 3 seconds to 1 second.

Black Lion Trading Company Gem Store

Thousand Seas Pavilion

• Added the ability to use the waypoint from the Thousand Seas Pavilion map to access other map layers.
• Updated many of the Mystic Forge transforms to allow them to be used in water.
• Updated the Mystic Forge to include male largos in its pool of possible player transformations.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Winged Reverie Skiff Skin's pilot animation.

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

• Build: 128,773
•  Forerunner of Death: Description updated to note that the trait increases strike damage.
•  Lesser Fiery Eruption: Maximum targets hit decreased from 10 to 5.
• The Defeat the Kirin hero challenge in Seitung Province can now be repeated properly.
• Fishing hole spawns were updated in Gendarran Fields, Southsun Cove, Siren's Landing, Ember Bay, Crystal Oasis, and New Kaineng City.