23 replies to this topic

[LiveSpartan235]

https://forum-en.gui...ovember-26-2013

Quote

LIVING WORLD
Fractured!
Five New Fractals

• Three standard fractals:
  
  • Thaumanova Reactor: Embark on a brand-new historical adventure, and travel to the ill-fated power facility moments before it explodes. As the fractal scale increases, more potential outcomes will unlock.
    
  • Molten Weapons Testing: Accompany Braham and Rox through this epic retelling of the Molten Facility dungeon.
    
  • Aetherblade Retreat: Join Ellen Kiel as she fights off Aetherblade pirates in a fragment of the Aetherblade Retreat dungeon.
• Two boss-tier fractals:
  
  • Molten Retribution: Battle the legendary bosses from the Molten Facility dungeon in this boss-tier fractal.
    
  • Sky Pirates: Relive the challenge of Captain Mai Trin and First Mate Horrik.

Story

• As promised during her campaign run for the Captain’s Council seat, Ellen Kiel has begun her investigation of the Thaumanova Reactor disaster in the Mistlock Observatory.
  
• Players can complete the special story-mode version of this fractal when they enter the Fractals of the Mists for the first time during this release.

Mistlock Instabilities

• Tampering with the Mistlock Observatory to target specific moments in time has destabilized the Mistlock process. Consequently, unique Mistlock Instabilities will begin occurring on fractal level 31.
  
• Mistlock Instabilities are special modifiers that have various effects on players and their party’s journey through the fractals. These can be anything from simple conditions to insidious extra creature attacks.

Improvements to Agony Resistance/Infused Gear

• All infused ascended equipment now has a special infusion slot for Agony Resistance infusions.
  
• Agony Resistance infusions can be found in fractal reward chests.
  
• All existing, infused ascended equipment has a +5 Agony Resistance infusion in the Agony Resistance slot by default, in place of the natural +5 Agony Resistance.
  
  • Agony Resistance infusions provide +1 or more Agony Resistance.
    
  • Artificers can combine two identical Agony Resistance infusions with a Thermocatalytic Reagent to create a single, more powerful Agony Resistance infusion.
• Newly created or dropped infused ascended equipment will have empty Agony Resistance slots.

General Fractal Improvements

• Fractal selection is now based on the number of fractals the party has completed on the current run. Longer, more difficult fractals are less likely to be selected as the first fractal of the level.
  
• Every fractal level now ends with a boss-tier fractal. The Solid Ocean, Molten Retribution, and Sky Pirates fractals are all in this category.
  
• Unshakable creatures will no longer receive more than 5 stacks of the defiance boon in the fractals.
  
• The difficulty scaling for fractals has been adjusted. Enemy health, damage, and count now scale more gradually.
  
• Agony damage has also been reduced at several levels.
  
• Fractal level 50 is now possible, even with excessive agony damage. However, the fractals are temporarily capped at level 50. Additional levels will become available in the future.
  
• Fractal progress is now account-wide.
  
• Numerous bug fixes and balance changes have been made to previously available fractals.

Fractal Leaderboards

• With this release, players will be able to track their progress on a new leaderboard that displays their fractal rank.
  
• In the case of a tie, the first player to achieve that rank will be listed higher.
  
• The leaderboard will be posted on GuildWars2.com once they have been populated with enough data.

Rewards

• Daily coin rewards for fractal completion are now more consistent with other dungeons. There are now separate daily rewards per every ten levels of the fractals (1 – 10, 11 – 20, and so on).
  
• The Fractal weapons have been converted to weapon skins.
  
• Recipes for a new rune and a new sigil will now drop exclusively in the fractals:
  
  • Superior Rune of Resistance grants bonus toughness, a reduction in condition duration, and aegis upon using a signet.
    
  • Superior Sigil of Momentum grants a stacking toughness bonus on kills.
• Completing the Fractured! meta-achievement awards the player a bag of ascended crafting materials.

Achievements

• Completing a fractal will fulfill a daily achievement each day of the Fractured! release.
  
• Each unique fractal completed during the Fractured! release will fulfill a corresponding Living World achievement.
  
• The Fractured! meta-achievement requires players to complete a combination of 11 daily fractals and/or unique fractal achievements.

Exotic Drop

• The Endless Fractal Tonic is an endless transformation tonic that allows players to temporarily appear to be various creatures from the Fractals of the Mists dungeons. The tonic is more likely to drop at higher fractal levels.

The Nightmares Within
Rewards

• The Tri-key Chest has been updated to include more loot bags, more Dragonite Ore, and a chance at Scrolls of Knowledge and Tomes of Knowledge.
  
• The Toxic Hybrid will now drop a piece of the Tricolor Key every time he is defeated.
  
• Sergeant Walters, located in the base of the Tower of Nightmares, will now accept players’ Pristine Toxic Spore Samples for the Toxic Spore Sampler achievement. She will accept extra Pristine Toxic Spore Samples as trade for various new crafting recipes, Tricolor Key pieces, and the Antitoxin Spray healing skill.

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT
World vs. World

• A new area has been added to the Obsidian Sanctum jumping puzzle!
  
  • The Borderlands Bloodlust effect has been disabled in Obsidian Sanctum.
    
  • Players can now enter Obsidian Sanctum directly from the drop-down menu of the WvW panel.

Items

• Additional recipes for ascended back-item pieces have been added to the Mystic Forge for players who don’t play the fractals.
  
  • All of the ascended back-item pieces that required 1 vial of Condensed Mists Essence can now be forged with Bloodstone Dust instead.
    
  • A total of eight recipes have been added.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
General

• Sylvari cultural armor updates—light tier 1 (female only), light tier 3, medium tier 2, and medium tier 3: textures, specularity, and dye channels have been predominantly restored to the state before the last update, while balancing them to work with the glow material.
  
  • For the medium tier 2 leggings, the dye-to-skin area was largely combined to a supporting channel to give full texture and glow-color control. The armor-glow shader has been tweaked to allow full saturation range of the glow color, as will be dictated by the saturation of the texture. This shader affects all plantlike sylvari armors that have glow: sylvari cultural, Nightmare Court, and sylvari town clothes.

Items

• Gathering tools can no longer be unequipped while gathering.

Profession Skills
Elementalist

• Fire Shield: The aura of this skill now applies to 5 targets when traited with Powerful Aura, up from 4.
  
• Shocking Aura: The aura of this skill now applies to 5 targets when traited with Powerful Aura, down from 6.
  
• Zephyr’s Speed: This trait now always grants movement speed while attuned to air and also functions with Lingering Elements.
  
• Stone Flesh: This trait now always grants toughness while attuned to earth and also functions with Lingering Elements.
  
• Signet of Air: The tooltip now displays the proper movement-speed increase of the boon when this skill has been activated while traited with Written in Stone.
  
• Stop, Drop, and Roll: This trait will now only go on cooldown when burning or chilled is removed.
  
• Soothing Mist: Updated the skill fact to indicate the correct rate at which Soothing Mist is applied.
  
• Healing Ripple: This trait now indicates the correct healing amount when in a PvP map.
  
• Ether Renewal: Adjusted the skill fact to better describe the functionality of this skill.

Engineer

• Tool Kit
  
  • Throw Wrench: Removed the healing functionality from this skill. It now applies 2 stacks of vulnerability each time it hits an enemy.
    
  • Smack: Added a turret-healing fact.
    
  • Whack: Added a turret-healing fact.
    
  • Thwack: Added a turret-healing fact.
• Power Wrench: Updated the description and skill fact to indicate the actual functionality of this skill.
  
• Poison Grenade: These grenades now display a red ring for enemies and a combo ring for allies.
  
• Grenade Barrage: This skill now launches 7 grenades when traited with Grenadier, instead of having a 50% chance to launch 6 or 8 grenades. These grenades now display a red ring for enemies and a white ring for allies.
  
• Autotool Installation: Updated the trait fact to indicate the correct amount of health restored to turrets.
  
• Automated Medical Response: This trait now recharges Antitoxin Spray, the human racial skill Prayer to Dwayna, and the sylvari racial skill Healing Seed.
  
• Rifled Turret Barrels: The range bonus has been increased to 50%. Several turret abilities have been modified to reflect this change.
  
• Rifle Turret: The range has been increased from 1400 to 1500 when traited with Rifled Turret Barrels.
  
  • Automatic Fire: This skill is now affected by Rifled Turret Barrels.
• Harpoon Turret: The range has been increased from 1400 to 1500 when traited with Rifled Turret Barrels.
  
  • Automatic Fire: This skill is now affected by Rifled Turret Barrels.
• Flame Turret: The base range has been increased from 450 to 500. The range has been increased from 600 to 750 when traited with Rifled Turret Barrels.
  
  • Smoke Screen: This skill now functions with Rifled Turret Barrels, increasing its radius from 240 to 360.
• Net Turret—Electrified Net: This skill now functions with Rifled Turret Barrels, launching at foes up to a 900 range (previously 600) when traited.
  
• Rocket Turret: The base range has been lowered from 1200 to 1000. The range when traited with Rifled Turret Barrels remains at 1500.
  
  • Explosive Rockets: This skill now functions with Rifled Turret Barrels, increasing its range from 1000 to 1500.
• Thumper Turret—Thump: This skill now functions with Rifled Turret Barrels, increasing its radius from 240 to 360.

Guardian

• Symbol of Protection: This symbol now has the appropriate duration increase when traited with Writ of Persistence.
  
• Purging Flames: Updated the skill fact to show the correct condition duration reduction (33%).
  
• “Stand Your Ground!”: Added a skill fact for number of targets.
  
• Binding Jeopardy: Facts from this trait will now show up on skills that immobilize.
  
• Ring of Warding: Added a skill fact for the light field generated by this skill.

Mesmer

• Phantasmal Warden: This phantasm will now properly try to enter the attack range of its target before using its skill.
  
• Imbued Diversion: Added a radius trait fact.
  
• Empowered Illusions: This trait now indicates a damage increase for phantasms.
  
• Illusionary Duelist: This skill no longer indicates a loss of damage when traited with Empowered Illusions.
  
• Vortex: Updated the range indicator to use the proper range. Added a radius skill fact. Added a skill fact for initial pull radius.

Necromancer

• Putrid Mark: Changed the description to match the actual functionality of this skill.
  
• Marks: Fixed an issue that caused staff marks to go on full cooldown when aborted/interrupted.
  
• Shadow Fiend—Haunt: Updated the blind skill fact to display the proper duration.

Ranger

• Kick: Adjusted the range fact on this skill to match the proper attack range.
  
• Frost Spirit: Decreased the hit-point value of the underwater version of this spirit to be consistent with the land version. Summoning the spirit will now put its activated skill on a 1-second cooldown; this will fix an issue that caused the skill to begin recharging without firing when activated immediately.
  
• Stone Spirit: Decreased the hit-point value of the underwater version of this spirit to be consistent with the land version. Summoning the spirit will now put its activated skill on a 1-second cooldown; this will fix an issue that caused the skill to begin recharging without firing when activated immediately.
  
• Storm Spirit: Decreased the hit-point value of the underwater version of this spirit to be consistent with the land version. Summoning the spirit will now put its activated skill on a 1-second cooldown; this will fix an issue that caused the skill to begin recharging without firing when activated immediately.
  
• Sun Spirit: Decreased the hit-point value of the underwater version of this spirit to be consistent with the land version. Summoning the spirit will now put its activated skill on a 1-second cooldown; this will fix an issue that caused the skill to begin recharging without firing when activated immediately.
  
• Spirit of Nature: Added radius and time-interval skill facts. Decreased the hit-point value of the underwater version of this spirit to be consistent with the land version. Summoning the spirit will now put its activated skill on a 1-second cooldown; this will fix an issue that caused the skill to begin recharging without firing when activated immediately.
  
• Signet of the Wild: Rangers will now be able to interact with objects when they use the active portion of the signet and have Signet of the Beastmaster traited.
  
• Mercy Shot: Fixed an issue with the trait fact that caused multiple damage facts of the same type to appear.
  
• Eagle Eye: This trait now indicates the damage increase in its facts.
  
• Sharpened Edges: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to display an incorrect chance on critical hit.
  
• Intimidation Training: Updated this trait to display on the activated abilities for the Jungle Spider and Black Widow pets.
  
• Hide in Plain Sight: Added a camouflage trait fact.

Thief

• Basilisk Venom: This stun will now apply after a strike, instead of on a strike, to prevent crowd-control attacks (like Headshot) from overriding the stun.
  
• Cluster Bomb: The bleeding skill fact now displays the proper bleed stack and duration. Added a radius skill fact.
  
• Fire Cluster Bomb: Added skill facts to describe the functionality of this skill.
  
• Smoke Bomb: Removed the old shadowstep fact.
  
• Fleet of Foot: The conditions will now be removed at the beginning of the dodge roll instead of at the end. This trait will now only go on cooldown when crippled or weakness is removed.
  
• Potent Poison: Updated the thief skills that caused poison to reflect the extended duration that this trait applies.

Warrior

• “Fear Me!”: Replaced the range fact with a radius fact.
  
• “For Great Justice!”: Replaced the range fact with a radius fact.
  
• “Shake It Off!”: Replaced the range fact with a radius fact. Added a skill fact for removed conditions.
  
• “On My Mark!”: This skill will now properly use a 1200 range.
  
• Vigorous Focus: Fixed a bug that was granting 8 seconds of vigor on stance use instead of the intended 6 seconds. Skills affected: Balanced Stance, Endure Pain, and Berserker’s Stance.
  
• Fast Hands: This trait will no longer trigger a 5-second recharge when swapping to or from bundles.
  
• Earthshaker: Fixed a bug where this skill would occasionally fail to consume adrenaline.

World vs. World

• Borderlands Bloodlust no longer applies to NPCs.
  
• Town clothes and toys have been disabled in WvW.
  
• Fixed a bug preventing some players from unlocking the WvW Dawn of the Season achievement.

Structured Player vs. Player

• The ratings for matchmaking and leaderboard standings in PvP have been reset.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

• Flamekissed light-armor skins, Flamewalker medium-armor skins, and Flamewrath heavy-armor skins are now available in the Style category of the Gem Store. These fiery armor skins can be purchased for 800 gems each.
  
• WXP Boosters continue to be 10% off until the end of WvW season 1. WXP Boosters can be purchased from the Gem Store in the Boosts category for 135 gems each or 495 gems for a pack of 5.

[LiveSpartan235]

Something not mentioned in the notes is that in the inventory there is now an option to turn on rarity frames on items so you can now see what rarity an item is without hover the mouse over the item.

[CriticKitten]

Let's review:

1) People's Fractal levels were reduced to 30 because "it didn't seem fair" to let them keep the ranks they earned (as quoted from the dev livestream), all so that they could have a stupid leaderboard that is utterly meaningless.

2) They actually nerfed the difficulty level of the Fractals (again, to quote the devs), making higher levels less of an actual accomplishment.

3) People abandoned "The Nightmare Within" Living Story content so fast that they actually had to significantly buff the rewards inside the Tri-key Chest to try and lure people back into the zone.

4) Sylvari cultural armor was mostly reverted to its original state because of massive complaints about the changes having screwed up the entire color system on the armor.

Most of the rest is inconsequential, but I find those particular elements very telling.


EDIT: Also, the new meta is stupid.  It's literally just "complete one of each fractal".  That's it.  That's the laziest, most piss poor excuse for a meta they've thrown together yet!  I really don't understand why it was so complicated for them to come up with some meaningful achievements here, maybe even throw a curve-ball or two.  But no, it's just "do one of each".  How disgustingly lazy.

[gar]

"Town clothes and toys have been disabled in WvW."

And the only "bug" that allowed you to match a warriors mobility has been fixed lol. ANd wow would you look at that they waited until after the Halloween sale and everyone bought one/ Who would have guess

[Aron]

CriticKitten, on 26 November 2013 - 04:25 PM, said:

How disgustingly lazy.

You wanna see even more disgusting laziness? The new gemstore armour is $10 for shitty reskins of karma armour, WvW armour, and human T3 cultural.

I thought $10/$13 for a digital pickaxe was ridiculous. ANet has reached a new low.

Also, I'm really surprised at who was behind the Thaumanova Reactor /s Great story writing ANet!

[CriticKitten]

Aron, on 26 November 2013 - 08:55 PM, said:

Also, I'm really surprised at who was behind the Thaumanova Reactor /s Great story writing ANet!

Oh gods, screw that story mode.  My guild mate was laughing at me as I raged into my mic about how much the story dungeon pissed me off, and how it annoyed me to see Scarlet involved in yet another nonsensical villain scheme.

This may be the first release that I couldn't visibly point to anything that made me say "this is a positive thing to come out of this release that benefits me directly".  I don't Fractal enough to make any of the positive Fractal changes "worth it" to me, and the massive botch on the story and meta infuriates me to such a degree that it actually makes me wish they'd go back to monthly releases just so they'd put some time and effort and pride into their content again.  Because this?  This release is pathetic.  And honestly if it's gonna keep getting worse from here, I don't know if I'm going to keep playing.  I love this game, but it doesn't feel like the devs do.  Not any more.

[Rassy]

Dessa had some cool dialogue in the new story dungeon(...err, outside of it? I d'unno). However, Dessa is a side character. Scarlet is the main villain. Scarlet's bit was the usual shit show.

I think I've reached a new stage in my disappointment of Scarlet. She made Kiel look good.


Looked good today.

Yeah.

After the dungeon ended, I was like "Okay, whatever, that was all within my expectations of how bad this was going to be. Whatever, ANet has a long track record of bad storylines and characters (despite all that great lore they've got in the background, I might add)."

So whatever, but then Dessa had to go and be all interesting for a minute there, and now I'm back to wondering why they can't do shit right with the "important" characters.


* I liked the mechanics of the dungeon itself. A bit too simple, and it's unlikely we'll have much trouble replaying it on higher difficulties, but it wasn't awful.

[Heylo]

Haven't played it yet, but it was scarlet messing in the fractal? Awesome. Great. Awesome. So. Excited. Thanks anet.
The new armor is ugly ugly ugly and t3 human looking awesome but, really? T3 human in the gem store? Wtf. That annoys me so much. At least Braham's armor was different from the t3 norn.

In other news, I'm excited to get to the fractals with the added stuff (31 I think?) saw them on reddit and they look fun.

[Grav]

LiveSpartan235, on 26 November 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

Additional recipes for ascended back-item pieces have been added to the Mystic Forge for players who don’t play the fractals.
All of the ascended back-item pieces that required 1 vial of Condensed Mists Essence can now be forged with Bloodstone Dust instead.

[Gatita]

I honestly thought the toxic armor was bad (pay 800 gems for 1/3 of an armor set?), but this "new" armor probably takes the cake. Really, I can't call adding flames to old armor new, but the sad thing is people are going to buy it.

However, I'd say the worst thing that came out of this patch was knowing Scarlet did it. I can't tell you how interested I was in the original concept of the reactor fractal, so many possible outcomes and pieces of lore we could have learned. I started having this horrible feeling earlier in the month with all the information we had on Scarlet after the election was done. "Wouldn't it be awful if Scarlet was behind the Thaumanova Reactor explosion? I mean she worked with the Inquest one time..." and sure enough when I read the forums, it turns out to be true. I just lost all motivation to log in and give the new patch a try.

And the funny thing is, when people started going to the forums to voice their dislike, Bobby comes in and he's like, "Yeah, well, we had the story already written up months ago when the election happened." I'm wondering if Scarlet would've magically used some time travel and caused problems in the Abbadon fractal. Pretty sure she would, I mean, out of all the infinite possibilities you could write up, Scarlet is an easy way to make a story. We obviously needed her in this LS about fractals, even if the fractals added in are something she did as well.

[Heylo]

oh anet


side note. just did molten boss fractal. pretty fun actually.

[Noctis]

Ok. Welcome to the quintessence of Anet lazy and idiotic design decisions post launch. Took a bit of time for them be become this blatant about everything, but here we are.


The T3 gemstore debacle is hilarious to watch. I have counted about 4 deleted threads on the official forums about that. Two things make it especially funny:
1) There's no way to justify this decision or defend. Anet is squarely in the wrong and there's no way around it.

2) I'm eagerly awaiting a response. If they don't do anything or keep trying to sweep it under the rug - Anet admits they are just a cash grabbing lazy ass developer that deserves no respect. If they do acknowledge that allowing T3 to be re-skinned was a mistake I'd like to see them trying fixing that. Remember how they used to send people mails with stuff when the were forced to admit that the fucked up? *cough* first karka patch, bugged black lion salvage kits *cough* What can the send people now? T3 cultural? lol


Then there's the absence of story we were promised. The story mode fractal is a joke and a slap in the face of anyone who was exited about the election thing back when. The Reactor mystery had so much potential and the screwed it up and made it trivial like anything in LS now days.

"Oh, wait the Executioners outfit is imbalanced in WvW? Well... It's supposed to be imbalanced, you know, but since you have been bugging us about it we decided to just flip the switch on all town clothes. Happy now? Now go away, we need to make more shitty gem store items!"

Fractal levels are account bound? Yay! Everybody's lower level now though. It's like allowing the whole family to use the car, but disassembling it beforehand.

Also adding a bunch of new instability effects and not testing everything properly would newer happen right?



Apparently some of the fractals can not be completed. Why? Nobody knows, because Guild Wars 2 is a bug free game.

[Gatita]

Well it looks like they're going back on their new gemstore addition:

http://www.reddit.co...et_responds_to/

The Flamekissed stuff is off the gem store while they make something new, maybe.

EDIT: Just the light armor I guess. So if you enjoy flaming reskins of ugly armor, then you'll be pleased to know the medium and heavy is going to be untouched?

[Heylo]

The new flame kissed will probably be cabalist with some fire.

[ChapDev]

I thought I would add to this that Runes of Perplexity have been nerfed for anyone not yet aware of the post on the WvW forums.

"The 6/6 bonus on Runes of Perplexity now have a 8 second cooldown. This was excluded from the patch notes, but we’re in the process of getting them added.
Thought you guys would like to know."

[Reina Takayama]

I hated the update too and am not going to bother lol

only few interesting things as mentioned before:

Dessa seems to be trapped in a fractal or fragment of time herself and doesn't recall us having arrived. she may be dead

Scarlet mentioned magic ley lines running across the globe similar idea to what's in the Order of Whispers. and now we have these giant do not touch thumpers which ppl believe are in significant intersecting spots on the magical lines. If anet doesn't screw it up something big could happen with disturbing the magical lines

i think we should be at the point where Scarlet doesn't matter anymore, were tired of her but she doesn't even have any place in my mind I'll just glaze over and completely ignore her existence and just try to fish for content lol

[CriticKitten]

I'm hoping that perhaps these pillars, regardless of their purpose, indicate the prophesied "end" of the Scarlet story arc, and that we'll finally get to kill her.

Because, really, it's time to move on.

[Noctis]

I just want to point out again that the Thaumanova fractal is a joke. I was honestly hoping it would be something like either Ascalon or Cliffside fractals - more or less straight forward, but grand and impressive at the same time.  I thought they would take Crucible as the basis and stream line it into a fractal. What we got instead is probably the smallest in size and probably content fractal that is pretty confusing in the beginning and pretty boring later on.


Imagine what they would have done to Abaddon fight?

[CriticKitten]

They wouldn't have let us fight Abaddon.

They would've had Scarlet seal away Abaddon in front of us.

[Gatita]

There was a GW2 reddit post with a Scarlet voice clip today. Not sure if it was released as a tease for something upcoming or if it was something left out once again.

Spoiler

https://soundcloud.c...etbriar/dragons
"Be afraid of dragons, be very afraid."