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Guild Wars 2 Nov. 29 Patch Notes

ISKMogul Gaming
Wintersday 2021

The hotly anticipated balance pass for Guild Wars 2 is here, and the meta-game is getting hit with quite the earthquake. Guild Wars 2 has been in a bit of a state when it comes to balancing for some time, and the general player reception is one of a mix of apathy and annoyance. A lot of players felt the meta had stagnated in terms of both PvE and PvP. Sure, the game had a ton of build variety that was possible, but not many builds could truly compete with the rotations used for DPS at the top level. Even mid-level builds had problems trying to keep up in certain modes. If you weren’t running a pretty well-optimized gear setup in WvW for example, things were going to go poorly for you.

Pretty much every profession in the game got specific nerfs and buffs to certain builds in this patch. We’ve included the full patch notes below. Some builds, like Catalyst, were irrevocably broken at the top level, and needed specific nerfs. ArenaNet has spent a ton of time and effort on  reworking the core mechanics of builds like this to make them less potent, but still very much viable.

There are more than just balance changes packed in as well. One notable addition is actually the return of Living World season 1. The old Living World Season 1 content was the first post-game bit of content brought to GW2 prior to the current roster of expansions, and told players of the war against Scarlet Briar and the fall of old Lion’s Arch. If you’re newer to the game, you likely didn’t even know this was a thing unless you watched the cutscenes in the Living World menu. Up until this week, those cutscenes and some in-game references were all that remained of Living World Season 1. With this patch, the content has been rolled into a new permanent meta-event which will be free for all players. If you’re new and just finished the personal story, why not give it a try.

Guild Wars 2  2022-11-29—November 29th Release Notes

Strike Missions

General

World Polish

Profession Skills

General

Sigil of Absorption is a longtime outlier in World vs. World, largely due to a bug with its cooldown (or lack thereof) when used against players. We’re still planning a larger pass on boon applications and boon removal in WvW for a future update, but Sigil of Absorption was something we wanted to address sooner rather than later.

Elementalist

Scepter is a weapon that sees some play in PvE, but it struggles to find a place in competitive modes as a lot of its skills are less reliable or simply lacking in power. We’ve tuned up a lot of the weaker skills in the kit with the goal of solidifying scepter as an effective damage-dealing weapon.

Catalyst was hit hard by the last update to PvE, and we’re making a few changes to bring it back up, removing the damage penalty from Spectacular Sphere and giving a bit more damage to Empowering Auras. We’ve also updated the behavior of the hammer’s third-slot weapon skills to make the strikes more consistent and remove the difference in effectiveness between hitbox sizes.
On the PvP side, Earth Shield gets some defensive shaves, primarily targeting two of the most potent builds in the meta: catalyst and tempest. We’ve also made some minor improvements to condition-based weaver, a build that has fallen out of the meta in recent months.

Last up is a slight improvement to tempest’s healing in WvW as we continue to work toward a more diverse set of support options.

Core

Tempest

Weaver

Catalyst

Engineer

For this update we focused on tuning up both power and condition damage builds for holosmith in PvE, neither of which were competitive picks. We’ve also made an adjustment to the mechanist to better reward players who are able to position well. We do like that mechanist is a viable option for a lower-intensity playstyle, but we see it as slightly overperforming relative to where we want those builds to be.

We’ve also tuned up a few skills for scrapper in PvP. We’re being a bit careful as we’ve seen the result when scrapper’s defenses are too potent, but we would like to reestablish scrapper as an effective bruiser.

Core

Scrapper

Holosmith

Mechanist

Guardian

Firebrand is a specialization that has access to a few too many tools with minimal investment. Tomes are a large component of this, as the utilities of Tome of Resolve and Tome of Courage are easily accessible even for damage-focused builds. Our goal for this update is to increase the opportunity cost of accessing these tools, and to that end, pages will now be a shared resource that builds over time. Firebrands will now need to more carefully decide how they spend their pages, whether they want to focus on damage, support, or a mix of both.

We’ve also made some improvements to dragonhunter and willbender as we tune up underperforming damage builds in PvE.

Core

Dragonhunter

Firebrand

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Willbender

Mesmer

One of our goals for mesmer is to address the performance of the staff/axe mirage build, which we feel doesn’t have to sacrifice quite enough for the boon uptime it provides. We’ve moved some of the boon application to the clones’ staff ambush, which will force the mirage to choose between higher boon uptime with staff clones or higher damage output with axe clones.

We’ve targeted some improvements to chronomancer’s power damage builds in PvE, bumping up the damage of some sword skills, wells, and Chronophantasma. We’ve also slightly reduced Continuum Split’s duration in PvP after seeing the performance of chronomancer following its restored access to distortion.

Core

Chronomancer

Mirage

Necromancer

Power reaper is another damage build that we’ve sought to improve in PvE, bringing up some of its less potent skills in Reaper Shroud and giving it a bit more consistent pressure while out of shroud.

On the competitive side, we’ve adjusted a few less used utility skills. Corrupt Boon is a skill that saw significant reductions after it gained a second ammunition and hasn’t seen a ton of play since then. We’ve removed the extra charge in PvP and bumped up the number of corrupts to make the skill a more potent threat.

Core

·         Death Perception: Additional critical chance increased from 10% to 15% in PvE and WvW.

Reaper

·         Shroud Knight: Reduced life force drain per second while in Reaper’s Shroud from 5% to 4% in PvE only.

·         “Chilled to the Bone!” (PvE Only): Reduced cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds and increased power coefficient from 2.0 to 3.0. This skill now grants fury and might in addition to its previous effects.

·         “Your Soul Is Mine!”: Increased life force gain on cast from 5% to 10% and increased life force gain per target from 3% to 5% in PvE only.

·         Death Spiral: Increased life force gain per hit from 2% to 3% in PvE only.

·         Grasping Darkness: Increased life force gain per hit from 4% to 10% in PvE only.

·         Fading Twilight: Increased life force gain from 1% to 2% in PvE only.

Scourge

Harbinger

Ranger

Untamed is one of the specializations that struggles the most against defiant enemies, as a lot of its kit is built around capitalizing against targets that are crowd controlled. As part of a larger pass, we’ve adjusted these skills to always inflict their bonuses against defiant enemies to make them more reliable in endgame PvE content. We’ve also made some improvements to the non-Unleashed side of the hammer kit to improve its defensive capabilities. Fervent Force is a trait that we’re likely to bring down in a future update, but we want to improve other options for untamed before doing so.

In PvP, we’ve brought down the drake family’s Chomp damage, primarily targeting the burst potential that it brings to untamed builds.

Rounding out the ranger updates are some improvements to druid’s healing in WvW. We’ve seen more druids being played since the October update, but we think it could still use a slight bump to solidify its place as a viable support pick.

Core

Druid

Untamed

Revenant

Vindicator has continued to be a powerful force in PvP after the most recent set of changes, and we’re making a few additional reductions in this update. We see vindicator as doing a bit too much damage when investing heavily in defensive traits, so we’ve shaved down a few skills to create more of a decision point between damage and defense. We’ve also reduced the stability from Reaver’s Rage and removed the ability to dodge while immobilized with the goal of making vindicator slightly easier to bring down.

The last set of changes didn’t have quite enough impact on condition-based revenant builds in PvP, and we’re following up with a few more adjustments to improve their damage output and free up a bit more energy while in Legendary Demon Stance.

We’ve focused on improving damage builds for both herald and vindicator in PvE, improving the potency of sword off hand, Legendary Assassin Stance and Legendary Dragon Stance, and the Luxon side of Legendary Alliance Stance.

Core

Herald

Vindicator

Thief

Our primary goal for thief in this update was to improve the usability of deadeye in PvE. Rifle has a lot of potential as a damage-dealing option, but the stationary nature of Kneel made it difficult to reach this potential in real gameplay situations. We’re updating Kneel to allow for some movement at a reduced speed to give a bit more flexibility during encounters.

We’ve also added a damage reduction to Shadow Shroud in PvE to compensate for the reduction in shroud health in the October update. We’ll be keeping an eye on how this plays out and will make further adjustments to Shadow Shroud as necessary.

Wrapping up the thief changes are a handful of power damage improvements for daredevil and dagger.

Core

Daredevil

Deadeye

Specter

Warrior

A handful of warrior’s skill and trait bonuses will be applied against defiant foes. We’ve also made some adjustments to improve berserker damage builds in PvE, fixing an issue with Bloody Roar’s bonus damage and making Outrage’s berserk extension more reliable now that Headbutt no longer removes stability.

Enchantment Collapse is another boon-removal outlier that we wanted to address in WvW for this update, and we’ve increased the cooldown ever so slightly to reduce its effectiveness with Winds of Disenchantment.

Core

Berserker

Spellbreaker

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