Spring 2016 Quarterly Update

In the Spring 2016 Quarterly Update, you’ll find more to explore in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ maps, get one character boosted to max level, find the members you need for your raid group, earn new rewards in World vs. World, and more! — Official website

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In the Spring 2016 Quarterly Update, you’ll find more to explore in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ maps, get one character boosted to max level, find the members you need for your raid group, earn new rewards in World vs. World, and more!

— Official website

The Spring 2016 Quarterly Update is the second quarterly release of 2016. The release contains both content and feature updates, and was released on April 19, 2016.

Features

• Updates to Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Maps
  The rewards in the Heart of Thorns maps have had a significant rebalance focused on providing more frequent rewards while playing through all content on these maps.
  Adventures are now unlocked more often. They have more forgiving time limits and allow players to more easily reach bronze, silver, and gold completion.

• Max-Level Boost
  All Heart of Thorns owners will receive a Level-80 Boost consumable. In addition, this item will automatically be delivered in a one-time, free Shared Inventory Slot.

• Legendary Short Bow

• Legendary Fractal Back Item

• Dungeon Reward Increase
  Dungeon tokens given in the daily bonus chest awarded the first time each dungeon path is completed have been increased from 40 to 80 tokens.
  Added a new repeatable achievement for completing 8 unique dungeon paths. Completing this achievement will award players with 5 gold and 150 tokens from the dungeon of their choice.

• Fractals of the Mists Polish
  Each day there will be 3 recommended islands given to players, with each island having daily achievements for completing it at or above scale 1, at or above scale 26, at or above scale 51, and at or above scale 76. Players will be awarded the daily achievement for that recommended island when completing it at that scale or higher.
  Cliffside should be less tedious and include improvements on the things that make it unique.

• LFG Update
  The Looking for Group (LFG) tool has been updated to handle groups larger than five members.
  Added many new categories and subcategories in the Looking for Group tool.

• Updates to World vs. World
  In order to achieve more balanced team sizes in World vs. World, most worlds will be linked in WvW with one other world, creating a combined world with a boosted population.
  Reward tracks have been added to World vs. World. One of the tracks offers players a chance to earn the new WvW-exclusive Triumphant armor set.
  WvW-Provisions Master: This new ability line improves a player's ability to gather loot and grants access to the wares of the Permanent Portable Provisioner.
  The Desert borderlands map layout has been updated with a large number of adjustments to improve navigation and create better spaces for fighting, especially around the three keeps.

• Raid Lobby
  In order to streamline the raiding experience and help prevent overcrowding in Verdant Brink, we've added a raid lobby to the Lion's Arch Aerodrome in Fort Marriner.
  Added a portal to a newly developed Special Forces Training Arena instance for damage-per-second (DPS) training.

• Update to Daily Achievements and Rewards
  We overhauled daily achievements, adding new, specific Heart of Thorns dailies for those who own the expansion, plus new jumping puzzle, minidungeon, and dungeon path dailies to the regular rotation. These changes—plus the addition of a new flat gold reward for completing the Daily Completionist achievement—should encourage players to explore a wider variety of content.

• Skills and Balance Updates
  Elementalist: For this update, we'll be looking at weapon skills that promote both scepter and dagger.
  Engineer: Our goal for this quarter has been to reduce a bit of the scrapper's survivability while updating the base engineer with multiple weapon and utility quality-of-life changes.
  Guardian: A large portion of the changes occurring for the guardian are aimed toward reducing the dragonhunter's group controlling and killing capacity in WvW while toning down its ranged spike damage capability prevalent in other areas.
  Mesmer: This quarter, we'll be looking a bit at the scepter and pushing it toward more hybrid capabilities.
  Necromancer: There are a few areas that we feel need to be balanced, specifically chill application and survivability.
  Ranger: We've been going through and updating a few of the underused weapons available to the ranger.
  Revenant:This quarter's balance changes are focused on improving Ventari and the off-hand sword while slightly lowering the defensive capabilities of the Shiro legend.
  Thief: Survivability has been boosted a bit, with healing skills and traits working to provide more condition removal, vigor, and healing.
  Warrior: We're looking to boost defense in areas where the warrior specializes in it.

• PvP Map Changes
  Spirit Watch: We've made a change to the first orb spawn time so that it happens much later than the current Spirit Watch timings, and we've also changed how fast the orb respawns once it's successfully captured.
  Skyhammer: Created a barrier around the edge of the map to prevent players from falling or being knocked off. Reworked the Skyhammer secondary mechanic: The Skyhammer now becomes available at specific intervals—3 minutes into the match, 6 minutes in, 9 minutes in, and 12 minutes in.

• Scribing Changes
  Adjustments have been made to generally lower the cost of scribing and improve the process of leveling scribing.
  All basic decorations are available from Cullen as soon as the Guild Workshop is made.
  Many scribing recipes have been simplified to reduce the need to make multiple tiers of materials or to reduce the number of materials needed, and some rare items have had their drop rates adjusted to increase supply.
  Assembly times have been significantly reduced.
  Resonating Slivers now drop from all dailies and have a chance to drop from ore resource nodes in the guild hall and in WvW.

• Other Bug-fixing and Polish
  Players can now specify a quantity when purchasing items from a vendor.
  All combo fields in the game have been given a visual update to make them more distinct in combat.

• New Items and Promotions
  Spectral weapon skins in Black Lion Chests
  Sentinel Outfit
  5 additional Shared Inventory Slots may be purchased

External links

• Official release page

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Feature pack releases

April 2014 Feature Pack September 2014 Feature Pack Winter 2016 Quarterly Update Spring 2016 Quarterly Update June 2017 Competitive Feature Pack