Game updates/2015-11-17

November 17, 2015

Previous

November 6, 2015

Next

November 18, 2015

Update 2 - November 17, 2015

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the subgroup context menu to say "Lock All Subgroups" when all subgroups were already locked.
• All gates in the woods area of Spirit Vale now remain open or closed depending on the progress made when a new instance is created.
• Krepet will now hold a conversation with more than one person at a time.
• Fixed an issue with the Gorseval encounter.
• Fixed a server crash.
• Fixed a client crash.

Update - November 17, 2015

New Features and Content

Raids

Spirit Vale

A Pact squad has gone missing in the northern Maguuma jungle, and you and your allies are their only hope for recovery. But the deadly forest isn't the only risk to the rescue operation—the area holds dark secrets and strange magic. Form up as a ten-person raid squad and enter the Spirit Vale instance from the northeast corner of Verdant Brink. Take on epic encounters that are the ultimate test of your skill, and begin your journey toward acquiring legendary armor!

Enhanced Squad UI

• The enhanced squad UI feature provides functionality to manage large groups of players in all areas of the game.
• Players with commander tags will be able to create squads of up to 50 players, which can be split into as many as 15 subgroups.
• The squad commander can also create a "raid" squad type, which is limited to 10 players and required for entering into raid instances.
• The squad commander can broadcast to any subgroup individually or to the whole squad at once.
• Permissions can be set by the commander to allow potential squad members to join at will, to request permission to join, or to require an invitation to join.
• Commanders can also organize subgroups with a simple click-and-drag interface or allow the squad to organize itself, including sending invites to other players.
• Members of a squad will be able to see each squad member's name, profession icon, health bar, and downed or defeated status.
• Commanders can initiate a ready check for squad members to respond to, and the whole squad will see a visual indication of their response.
• It will no longer be possible to be in a squad and a party at the same time, but just as in a party, your entire squad will be shown on the map, with special icons for your subgroup.
• A Toggle Squad option allows squad members to show up to 10 members of their subgroup using the traditional party UI that displays boons and conditions.
• In World vs. World, squad members will see the supply carried by each subgroup as long as you're in the same map area as your supply-carrying squadmates.
• Players that have not bought a Commander's Compendium may create a commanderless squad that is invite only, limited to 10 players, and has reduced functionality.

Special Action Skill

• A new skill button has been added that can appear above the skill bar during certain context-specific phases of encounters (initially raids). When the button appears, the skill displayed for use will be driven by the encounter. Players can keybind this skill under Options > Control Options > Skills.

New Legendary Weapons

• Three new legendary weapons are now available to be crafted. Speak to Grandmaster Craftsman Hobbes[sic] in Lion's Arch to start your journey.
  • Legendary Axe: Astralaria
  • Legendary Pistol: HOPE
  • Legendary Staff: Nevermore
• Crafting these new weapons will require the Scholar of Secrets ability in the Legendary Crafting Mastery line.

Balance, Bug-Fixing, Polish

World Polish

Queensdale

• Fixed a bug in which the "Escort Moa Trainer Kappa and her pygmy moas to Beetletun" event would never restart if Trainer Kappa died.

Verdant Brink

• Reduced the difficulty of the "Salvage damaged armaments to build bombs" event.
• Disabled participation decay for the "Escort Laranthir and Skybreaker through the ruins" event.

Auric Basin

• Fixed a bug that caused Agent Axel Trueshot's voice lines to overlap.
• Fixed a bug in which Scholar Keenwit could be interrupted while moving to the first druid marking.
• Implemented checks to keep Sage Manssir progressing forward in his escort. Also fixed a situation that caused Sage Manssir to remain determined as he activated the Thornwatch Pylon.
• Adjusted the timing for Blademaster Cellona's voice lines to better match with map conditions.
• Fixed a bug for the A Fungus Among Us adventure in which the Cap Launch skill did not indicate when the target point was out of range or blocked by line of sight.
• Gold Guzzler's defiance bar now has a description.
• Fixed an issue in which a female Exalted Sage had a male voice.
• Fixed an event spawn in Westwatch Patch that wasn't despawning at the correct location.
• Fixed an event spawn that was carrying an incorrect item.
• Removed hostile creatures near the Nuhoch Wallows entrance and exits.
• Adjusted the locations of some gathering nodes.
• Fixed a bug in which the Exalted body in Gold Guzzler's nest would not go away after the event.
• Fixed a bug in which a skritt event chain would start too early.
• Fixed a jumping mushroom in Balthazar's Rest on which players could get stuck spinning forever.
• Fixed a bug in the Southwatch Creep challenge in which players were not teleported out if they died while the race was active.
• Fixed a bug in which the "Escort and defend Sage Gorra as she activates the Griffonfall pylon" event would not end when the battle of Tarir started.
• Fixed the timing of Dawkkurra's speech at the end of an event.

Tangled Depths

• Fixed a bug that caused the tropical birds in Dragon's Passage to be far more brave than they should be.
• Relocated some chak who were lost in Dragon's Passage to their proper home in the Chak Stronghold.
• Removed a nonfunctioning updraft from Dragon's Passage.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the amount of beetles from scaling in the "Transform into a Nuhoch, and herd young beetles into the pen" event.
• Fixed a bug that caused some beetles to behave oddly in the "Transform into a Nuhoch, and herd young beetles into the pen" event.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the bonus chest from despawning after an event cycle of "Collect chak eggs so the ogres can research them."
• Updated the icon for the stolen chak eggs effect in the "Collect chak eggs so the ogres can research them" event.
• Slightly reduced the difficulty for obtaining silver or gold in the "Kill nearby mushrooms to provide the Nuhoch's beetles with food" event.
• Fixed a bug that caused the spiders and bats in the Decayed Hive to stick around after the chak return.
• Due to AI issues, Mordrem Itzel have been replaced with Mordrem Guard in the "Protect the ogres as they carry chak eggs to the Mordrem nest" event.
• Reduced the number of Mordrem maggots that spawn during the "Protect the ogres as they carry chak eggs to the Mordrem nest" event.
• Removed several duplicate speed mushrooms from Dragon's Passage.
• Removed a line of Gertrude's VO that was causing problems during the "Help Vincere Shieldstep find the scattered members of his team" event.
• Fixed a bug that caused Grub Master Jephtl to talk to players while dead.
• Lowered the cooldown of the defiance bar on H.O.X., allowing him to be stunned more often.
• Fixed a bug that could cause Beetle Trainer Keploch's health bar to disappear from event UI.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the golem overcharge level indicator to be missing from event UI in Rata Novus.
• Fixed a shameful error in the Rata Novus study guide book "The Human Gods" that stated Kormir took Dhuum's place rather than Abaddon's.
• Fixed the poison haze in the Chak Stronghold so that the poison haze visual effect covers all areas that are poisonous.
• Improved the Chak Driver's tactical decision-making and gave him more friends in the Chak Stronghold.
• Fixed a scaling bug with the beetle-taming event, and improved how participation is recorded in the event.
• The Scrap Rifle Field Test adventure will now record scores for players who die or have their rifle overheat, as long as they exceed the copper score requirement of 30.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the boundary of the Beetle Feast adventure from removing the beetle transform.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent H.O.X. from resetting when the chak gerent event started.
• Added more poison to the underground lake beneath Teku Nuhoch.

Dragon's Stand

• Fixed a bug that caused the post-Mordremoth events to incorrectly display in the event UI.
• Fixed a bug that caused enemies to overscale in the "Bring meat from the dino nests to build a pile to attract wyverns" event.
• Fixed a bug that caused enemies to overscale in the "Destroy ley-line collectors to gather energy for the Rata Novus device" event.
• Fixed a bug that caused the camp waypoints in Dragon's Stand to be uncontested upon "Defeat the Mordrem Spitfire" event failure.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Mordremoth's commanders to retain Protection of Thorns without any ley-line collectors active.
• Updated the skills on the Pact flamethrower allies used in the center lane to use white rings on their skills and increased the recharge on the oil pools so there should be fewer ground effects during this phase of the push.
• Place of power hero challenges at the commander events in Dragon's Stand can no longer be used while the event is active.

General

• Renamed the Decrepit Nest Insight achievement to Chak Crusher and updated its description to properly reflect how the achievement is earned.
• Play for Free players will now be able to travel through map redirectors between Caledon Forest and Metrica Province before reaching level 10.
• Ground targeting will no longer sometimes show as green when started out of range.
• Sweet Bean Bun: The benefits of this food have been adjusted from +25% outgoing condition duration and -40% incoming condition duration to 15% outgoing condition duration and -20% incoming condition duration.
• Fixed a bug in which some gliders showed no shadows.
• Fixed a bug in which creatures that were not supposed to show the hit flash visual effect would still show it when hit by certain skills.
• Fixed a bug that caused some equipment upgrade bonuses to continue functioning while in adventures.
• The volunteer-reward pop-up dialog will no longer automatically disable action-camera mode.
• Leaning back while gliding will now drain endurance at the same rate as normal gliding and will not drain endurance if you have trained the Advanced Gliding Mastery.
• Players will now earn personal rewards on guild rushes as soon as they cross the finish line.
• Players will now earn personal rewards on guild treks as soon as they interact with the trek icons.
• In order to reduce visual clutter, height arrows and distance-display tooltips no longer show up on minimap markers outside of the local map.
• Lip sync animation has been added to select story and instanced content.
• Fixed a bug preventing players from receiving map-completion rewards after having achieved world completion. Players will receive missed map-completion rewards either when their character enters the world or the next time they enter the unrewarded map.
• Fixed a bug causing scroll bars to obscure text in the Achievements panel.
• Crafting material tooltips now show which disciplines use them even when those materials are not part of any recipes unlocked through the discovery system. In these cases, the tooltips will show the discipline name with no level-requirement hint.
• Fixed a bug in which the wrong error message was displayed when trying to buy an item when its tab purchase limit had been reached.
• Fixed a bug in which armor tooltips were not correctly stating that the armor was hidden when obscured by an outfit.
• Weapons associated with elite specializations will no longer be automatically unequipped when the specialization is unequipped. The corresponding weapon skills will be blanked out instead.

Personal Story

• "Time for a Promotion"—Fixed a stall during the gladiatorial fight.
• "Torn from the Sky"—The "Sylvari Solidarity" achievement can now be gained as long as the instance owner is a sylvari. (Previously, only sylvari could gain the achievement.)
• "Buried Insight"—Fixed some of the positions of the asura turrets that made them very difficult to find for the achievement "Cleaning House."

Story Journal

• Fixed a bug in certain languages in which story steps in the journal would appear truncated inside an instance.
• "Fallen Hopes"—Fixed the ordering of steps that displayed in the Story Journal.

Items

• Added Mini Holographic Zinn as a reward for the "Zinn's Prize Student" achievement. This miniature is also available via Zinn's Print-o-Matic for those who have completed the achievement.
• Several items have had their icons updated.
• Revenant gear boxes can now be selected from daily log-in rewards.
• Revenant gear boxes can now be purchased from laurel vendors.
• Mistward armor is now account bound when earned and will soulbind when equipped to a character.
• Fixed a bug that caused an incorrect amount of silky sand to be given in the Silverwastes.
• Fixed a bug that caused empty hint text to appear in the Machined weapon collections.
• Fixed a bug that caused Vigilant inscriptions and insignias to use different trophy items in their recipes.
• Fixed a bug that resulted in various tiers of the guild trader not sharing purchase limits.
• The Machined Weapon Core recipe was removed from the "Hearts and Minds" rewards.
• The unnamed rune created with the Machined Weapon Core recipe can no longer be crafted and is no longer tradable.
• Fixed a bug that caused the North Wind collection to not require the Tempest's Loop skin. Players who already have the skin unlocked will have their progress automatically updated.
• The "Against the Chak Gerent" event coordinator now rewards chak acid.
• Fixed the skills made available by the Mordrem Cleaver, Mordrem Warblade, and Seer's Warstaff.
• Shimmering blotting powder no longer requires resonating fragments to craft.
• Luminous blotting powder no longer requires resonating cores to craft.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Illuminated Fountain to not appear in a guild's decoration storage.
• Nuhoch Mastery vendors now correctly sell Trailblazer's inscription, insignia, and jewel recipes.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Ley-Energy Matter Converter's unlocked tabs to relock every day. They now unlock permanently, but the unlock will have to be purchased again.
• Nuhoch transform tonics no longer provide inappropriate costume-brawl skills.
• The Dredge Lesson on Metalcraft collectible for the Fix-r-Upper now specifies where it can be purchased.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Daredevil's Scarf to unlock the wrong rune recipe.
• Several exotic weapons that dealt 0 damage now have appropriate damage numbers.
• All tiers of scribe-crafted paper are no longer account bound.

Profession Skills

Elementalist

•   Flame Burst: This skill can no longer be activated without a target.
•   Fireball: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Overload Air: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Phoenix: Fixed a bug in which this skill would not execute a blast finisher when used on the fire field produced by Wildfire.

Engineer

•   Toss Elixir X: Fixed a bug with this skill that prevented it from transforming rangers who were in Celestial Avatar form.
•  Impact Savant: This trait should now be reflected in the skill facts of appropriate skills.
•   Fire Bomb: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Orbital Strike: Adjusted the warm-up on this skill to be slightly more prominent.

Guardian

•   Deflecting Shot: Added unblockable as a skill fact.
•  Hunter's Ward: Removed an erronious icon that appeared on opponents when using this ability. Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
• Fixed an issue that caused the damage to not be applied in certain skill queueing scenarios.
•   Dragon's Maw: Fixed an issue that caused the effects of this trap to fade early, leaving an invisible, impassable ring for a short time. Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Purification: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Fragments of Faith: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Light's Judgment: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Test of Faith: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Procession of Blades: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.

Mesmer

•  Seize the Moment: Fixed a bug that caused the quickness from this trait to not appear as a skill fact on the shatters it affected.
•   Well of Eternity: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Well of Action: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Well of Calamity: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Well of Precognition: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Well of Senility: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Gravity Well: Reduced the visual noise on the effects associated with this skill.
•   Signet of Humility: Fixed a bug with this skill that prevented it from transforming rangers who were in Celestial Avatar form.

Necromancer

•   Putrid Explosion: Fixed an issue that caused the blast finisher on this skill to fail to combo with the field generated by the trait Death Nova. This skill now properly displays the combo floater when a combo is achieved.

Ranger

•   Quick Shot: This skill will now always move you directly away from your target.
•   Rejuvenating Tides: This skill now has the speed of its healing pulses affected by quickness and slow. The skill's effects are now properly cancelled if the caster is interrupted.
•   Solar Beam: This skill can no longer be activated without a target.
• Druid: Fixed an issue where glyph skill icons in tooltips were not properly aligned.
• Fixed a bug in which stowing your pet would not remember which pet was previously active.
• Pets will now only be stowed when gliding once you leave combat.

Revenant

•   Legendary Dragon Stance: Fixed an issue causing upkeep skills to not end immediately when invoking another legend.
• Fixed a bug where underwater legend selections were not remembered.
•  Soothing Bastion: Added a displayed effect for this trait when it is off recharge and can be triggered.

Thief

•   Disabling Shot: This skill will now always move you directly away from your target.
•  Lotus Training—Impaling Lotus: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to fire the attack when the thief was out of combat.

Warrior

• Berserker— King of Fires: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from functioning while in the downed state.

Structured Player vs. Player

• Updated the minimap to show the camera's viewing angle for players and spectators.
• Fixed a bug in which free camera would not work for spectators.
• Updated spectator camera transitions to be smoother.
• Updated Mist Champion reward tracks to activate upon purchase.
• Increased the match-accept timer from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Added dishonor penalties for not accepting matches and disconnects.
• Players with dishonor cannot queue for Unranked or Ranked Arena.
• Once a game has started, there is a grace period of disconnect time before getting dishonor.

World vs. World

General

• Fixed a bug with the map marker for repair NPCs.
• Fixed a bug that caused some outfitter NPCs to sell siege blueprints instead of their standard wares.
• Fixed a bug that caused keep lords to really hate flame rams.
• Reduced the health and defense bonuses provided by reinforced and fortified walls and gates at towers.
• Updated the Mystic Forge vendor to also sell Siege Masters Guides in quantities of 10.

Eternal Battlegrounds

• Removed some unintended oil pots at the upper level of Stonemist Castle.
• Fixed a bug at Valley Keep that was causing three sets of patrols to stack and patrol at the same location.
• Fixed a bug that caused the bridges at some objectives to overlap multiple types when upgraded.
• Fixed a bug at Speldan Clearcut in which the supervisor was sometimes on the wrong team.

Desert Borderlands

• Fixed a bug that prevented the citadel supply depot from being interacted with.
• Moved the tower waypoints into the keeps.
• Fixed a bug that caused dolyaks entering the west keep to take lava damage.
• Added a veteran wurm, warg, and harpy event, allowing completion of the daily Veteran Slayer achievement.
• The daily Master of Ruins achievement has been changed to Master of Monuments and can also be completed by capturing shrines.
• Fixed a bug with missing resource nodes at the southwest tower.
• Increased the event rewards for participating in the Oasis event.
• Lowered the Skysplitter's damage by approximately 25%.
• Fixed a bug that let the Skysplitter's attack also destroy a wall at the southeast tower.

Guild Upgrades

• Lowered Cloaking Water's stealth duration from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.
• Fixed a bug with the Hardened Siege tooltip. This should read 75% damage reduction rather than 100%.
• Fixed a bug with the placement of Chilling Fog at the northwest camp in desert Borderlands.
• Fixed a bug with the Hardened Gates upgrade that was allowing some nonsiege damage through.
• Added an error message to Supply Drop when trying to activate it while the objective is full on supply.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Emergency Waypoint from activating if Dragon Banner was also selected.

Black Lion Trading Company Gem Store

New Items and Promotions

• For a limited time, a new set of Plasma weapon skins is available at Black Lion Weapons Specialists for 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket.
• A new Mini Angry Chest is now available in the Toys category of the Gem Store for 400 gems. Follow clues to open it and receive a bonus Mini Red Spark.
• A new Raider's Supply Package is available in the Special category of the Gem Store for 1260 gems.
• There are less than 3 days left to take advantage of the 20% off Style sale.

Guild Wars 2 Wiki Notes

• The Silverwastes and Dry Top achievements received new, custom icons.