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[Sorrows]

Hey all, this is a work in progress gathering of all the information we have for GW2: Heart of Thorns. This will be updated in phases most likely, starting simple and gather more and more as I go along.

BTW, Another person started doing something similar to what I have been doing, so you should go check out his summaries here. I've borrowed some of his summaries because they're ahead of mine and well written.

UPDATE: Added Summaries and new links/information from the last 3 weeks.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Announcement



Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Homepage

Personal Story

PoI #18, The Story of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Masteries

Blog Post

Hidden Arcana: Mastering The Maguuma

This will be the new account based endgame progression system going forth.  The Mastery system will be broken up into 2 main categories.  Heart of Maguuma (expansion area) and Pact Tyria(core world)..

Once your character hits level 80, the experience bar will change.  Through the Hero panel you can view your mastery tracks.  For example I will use Gliding from Heart of Maguuma Mastery track.  You select your Gliding.  Then you go out and do events, explore, which ever you choose to gain experience.  Once the experience bar is filled, you will receive a Mastery Point.  You can now use this mastery point to add it to the Glider Mastery Track.  Your first point will unlock the ability to glide through the maguuma jungle map(s).  You can change your track at anytime and your progress through the Track you picked will be saved, while you level up a new track.

Tyrian Masteries

Pact Commander (PoI Livestream)

• Pact Mentor – Unlocks a special mentoring badge (purple star shown in livestream is a placeholder, it will have its own unique icon, source), accessible from the party menu. You will also display a new chat title (shows mentor next to your name in chat) when this is active. In cities, you and your party gain 5% swiftness (does not stack with regular swiftness). Swiftness bonus applies regardless if you have the mentor mode on or not). You can turn the mentoring mode on/off in the party menu. Does not work in WvW and does not allow you to create squads.
  
• Productive Downtime – Gain bonus crafting XP, raising your crafting skills more quickly for each item crafted.
  
• Supply Line Management – Gain access to a network of regional merchants across Tyria with rare goods for trade (old or rare recipes for example, also new recipes such as the recipe for a new Melandru backpack. Recipes will be tradeable). The merchant will use Karma as its currency. Your city-wide swiftness boost raises to 15%.The contents of this vendor are not being revealed on purpose to prevent a shake up in the economy.
  
• Noblesse Oblige – Increased revive speed depending on the level difference of the player you are reviving. This also takes away a stack of downed penalty and armor damage.
  
• Advanced Logistics – You will automatically pick up nearby loot from fallen foes (this is different from auto-loot. You do not need to hit any buttons to loot with this active). This feature works even if you are dead as long you tag the enemy and does not work for chests/gadgets. Your City-wide swiftness boost raises to 33%.

​Fractals Masteries

Legendary Crafting

Maguuma Jungle Masteries

Lore, Movement, Gliding, Fighting Training, and More

Specializations

Specializations, Part One: A Primer

Specializations, Part Two: Reward Tracks and Elite Specializations

Light

Mesmer - Chronomancer



Meet The Chronomancer (PoI Livestream Link)

Hidden Arcana: Creating the Chronomancer

Weapon:  Shield
Utility skills:  Wells
Profession Mechanic:  Continuum Shift

One of the core themes of the Chronomancer is duality. Past versus future and fast versus slow are key themes you’ll see throughout the Chronomancer’s skill set. Many skills affect both enemies and allies, reflecting the Chronomancer’s ability to steal a chunk of time and use it for their own purposes.  Specializing in chronomancy grants mesmers access, through traits and skills, to a new effect called alacrity. Alacrity functions as the inverse of chill by speeding up skill recharges rather than slowing them down. Chronomancy is the only specialization allowed access to this powerful effect, and chronomancers can share alacrity with allies in limited situations, making them an incredibly powerful ally to have in any party.  When mesmers become chronomancers, they’ll unlock access to a suite of new time-themed well skills. These well skills place a giant clock face on the ground that ticks in time with a pulsing effect. The clock isn’t just for show, either—the wells tick exactly in time with the clock hands, three times overall. When time is up, the well releases a powerful burst effect.  The chronomancer’s unique mechanic is a new shatter skill that takes the F5 slot next to the other shatters. This skill, Continuum Split, and its follow-up skill, Continuum Shift, are the most powerful abilities in a chronomancer’s arsenal and affect just about every skill on your bar.
When the chronomancer activates Continuum Split, they sacrifice all of their illusions to split themselves off from the normal flow of time for a duration that scales with the number of illusions shattered. When this duration is over, or when the mesmer activates the follow-up skill Continuum Shift, they revert back to the location where the skill was first activated.

Necromancer - Reaper



Meet the Reaper (PoI Livestream Link)

Weapon:  Greatsword
Utility skills: Shouts
Profession Mechanic: Reaper Shroud

The Reaper is a devastating melee brawler is at home in battle when surrounded by as many enemies as possible, cleaving through hapless foes for life-force sustainment. Once the reaper has enough life force, they can transform into a devastating avatar of destruction that leaves enemies frozen in terror.  The reaper’s first minor trait is called Shroud Knight, and it gives the necromancer a completely new set of melee-focused skills while in Death Shroud. Additionally, when activating the new Reaper’s Shroud, they also equip a giant shadowy scythe and gain some additional particle effects to signify to opponents to watch out. The skills available while in Reaper’s Shroud share some similarities with their Death Shroud counterparts and—where applicable—inherit traits that are normally applied to them. Because Reaper’s Shroud is focused on melee combat, it centers much more on skills that allow reapers to get close, stay close, and cleave enemies.  To fit in with the area-of-effect theme of the greatsword, the reaper gets a full set of shout skills. All of these shout skills act as attacks that can hit up to five enemies and scale in effectiveness based on the number of targets struck (and yes, you read that right—reaper shouts deal damage!). In this way, the reaper is rewarded for diving into the thick of battle to engage as many foes as possible. Reaper shouts differ from warrior and guardian shouts in that they focus more on harming foes than they do on bolstering allies.

Elementalist - Tempest

Meet the Tempest (PoI Livestream Link)

Weapon: warhorn
Ultility skills: Shouts
Profession Mechanic:  Attunement Overloads

Elementalists, you are called upon to unleash the inferno, drive the uncontrollable torrents, rain hell and lightning upon your foes, and harness the earth and ride it into victory. The tempest cannot be stopped; your enemies cannot endure.

With the coming of fierce enemies and Elder Dragons, Tempest will reach deep into the elements in order to harness some of the most pure and dangerous aspects of natural magic and even infuse them into sound.  Remaining attuned to an element for a period of time will now allow you the option to overload that attunement for a short while. Once you’ve attained a singularity with the attunement, you can reactivate it to perform a special channeled ability. These abilities are so chaotic and draining that they exhaust your current attunement, locking you out of it for a period of time should you move to another element.  Specializing as a tempest will allow you to use eight new abilities as you wield their newest weapon—the warhorn. These abilities will assist in helping you both support your allies and create disruptive areas for enemies. While in water attunement, you’ll be able to unleash a moving water field that heals allies. Air attunement’s cyclone will pull enemies to a point, while its lightning orb will fire projectiles at all enemies within its path. Along with these and other skills, using a warhorn will also unlock the elementalist’s latent potential to share boons and extend their durations among allies.  The elite specialization’s traits will have multiple options to promote defense, support, and overloading your attunements.  With newfound abilities in audio mastery, you’ll gain the ability to use shout skills as utilities.

Medium

Ranger - Druid
Meet the Druid

The druid elite specialization grants a ranger the capacity to draw astral force to themselves. Once it’s fully charged, they can release that force and become a celestial avatar. While in this empowered form, the avatar gains access to a new set of weapon skills while retaining access to their heal skill, utilities, and elite skill. Avatar skills are on very short cooldowns and transform the ranger into a healing powerhouse, pushing the upper bounds of sustainability and recovery; in celestial avatar form, a druid becomes capable of bringing a party on the brink of death back to pristine condition.


Engineer - Scrapper
Meet the Scrapper (PoI Livestream)

The noble engineer has always been a jack-of-all-trades; however, this profession has tended to avoid the brawl. Scrappers are in their element in the thick of the fighting, surviving by anticipation and sheer fortitude. That survivability comes from several places, including traits, new toolbelt skills, utilities and their new weapon... hammer time.

Thief - Daredevil
Meet the Daredevil

The daredevil is an up-close fighter that can engage multiple enemies at a time with sustained area-of-effect damage while retaining high lethality toward single enemies. This high-flying damage dealer has an easier time maintaining fights in close range and has the tools to turn a fight the moment they find an advantage. With its high evasion potential, we’re excited to see the daredevil zipping around the battlefield, crushing vulnerable groups of enemies, and pressing the fight forward to the end.

Heavy

Guardian - Dragonhunter



Meet the Dragonhunter (Ready Up Livestream Link)

Weapon:  Longbow
Utility skills:  Traps
Profession Mechanic:  Virtue changes

The dragonhunter—a ferocious big-game hunter that specializes in ranged combat and back-line support.  Along with their newfound powers in light manipulation, Dragonhunters will have access to longbows. Instead of shooting arrows, the guardian will focus on firing massive, single projectiles at a ferocious velocity. This weapon set will focus less on engaging enemies at close range but will have lots of potential in assisting allies around the battlefield.  Favor in battle can often be determined by foresight and preparation, and Dragonhunters will be able to manifest light-based magical traps that will activate when an enemy runs over them. These big-game traps will have a variety of effects, but none will be pleasant for an enemy unfortunate enough to be caught within them.

Revenant - Herald

(MassivelyOP)

Weapon: Shield
Legend:  Glint
Profession:  Facets of Nature

The herald elite specialization will offer revenants the shield as an off-hand weapon, a Legendary Dragon Stance, a new specialization line, and an added profession mechanic. The focus of the herald is on support via boons, utility, and personal defense. This elite specialization will pair well with most of the other legends, providing group utility.
The legend for Legendary Dragon Stance is Glint. We chose the name herald for this elite specialization because we thought it was fitting given Glint’s actions in the past. In the original Guild Wars®, Glint compiled the Flameseeker Prophecies, foretelling events such as the defeat of Vizier Khilbron as well as the fall of the titans and the mursaat. Much of what she predicted came to pass. She was a protector of Tyria and a herald worth heeding.


Warrior - Berserker

Blog Post (ZAM Article)

Weapon: Torch
Utility Skills:  Rage Skills
Profession Mechanic:  Berserk mode, Primal Burst

After building enough adrenaline, the berserker can enter berserk mode. This mode dramatically changes the berserker’s adrenaline bar. The entire bar changes from a three-tiered bar consisting of 30 adrenaline into a single merged adrenaline bar consisting of only 10 adrenaline. With this new adrenaline bar, the berserker gains access to special “primal” burst skills. These special weapon burst skills have lower recharges than their nonberserk counterparts, allowing them to be used much more often in conjunction with the shortened adrenaline bar.

The Revenant

Blog Post

Mallyx the Unyielding

Shiro
Slashing, Devastation, and a Memorable Assassin (PoI Livestream Link)

Ventari
Compassion as a Way of Life (PoI Livestream Link)

Jalis Ironhammer

Legendary Dwarf Stance:  Jalis Ironhammer  (Tanky, Defensive)

I don’t know about you folks, but when I think of a dwarf, I think of a tanky, brawling play style. And that is exactly what you’ll get if you choose this legend. When you use the Legendary Dwarf Stance, it’s all about sustaining yourself while maintaining a frightening presence on the battlefield that your foes will not soon forget.

Legendary Demon Stance: Mallyx the Unyielding  (Condition Damage)

Demon stance focuses on conditions, with a twist. Let’s call it condition manipulation. Instead of dealing with conditions in the traditional sense—mostly by removing them—your approach to conditions as a revenant is all about accumulating them in order to empower your attacks. The more conditions you have, the stronger and more impactful your demon legend skills will become.

Legendary Centaur Stance:  Ventari  (Support, Healing)

Most healing in Guild Wars 2 takes the form of pulsing spells, the combo system, or area-of-effect heals, but we wanted to push healing a bit more than what you’ve previously seen by creating a legend focused almost entirely on support. However, we needed an interesting way for healing abilities to interact and create a more active playstyle, and that led to the creation of Ventari’s Tablet.

Ventari’s Tablet is at the core of every skill for the Ventari legend. All of the skills either do something around the tablet or modify it, so positioning of the tablet is the key to being effective. This requires the revenant to command the tablet, and to communicate and interact with allies so that they can receive the tablet’s benefits.

Legendary Assassin Stance: Shiro Tagachi  (Direct Damage, DPS)\

Shiro Tagachi is definitely an iconic character in Guild Wars® lore. As with our other legend choices, we wanted to offer a good variety of very notable characters and creatures. For the physical-damage legend, we wanted someone who would make sense for high mobility and have a darker theme. Shiro was the obvious choice. If you enjoy damage, quick attacks, and mobility, I have a feeling Shiro will be a good fit for you.

Challenging Content

Raids in Guild Wars 2

First Raid wing won't arrive till roughly 2-4 weeks after HoT is launched. This is to allow any early bug fixes to be addressed without affecting raids, also this allows for players to earn their first few masteries that will be needed for Raids.


Meet the Wyvern

I would like to note, it has been said that the Wyvern faced in betas/demos to this point has not been the full version of the Wyvern.

The Brand New Fractals of the Mists, Legendary Backpacks, Ascended Salvaging, and More!

Fractals are 5-man dungeon content that takes parties through different places and times in Tyrian lore. This experience also increases in difficulty with each fractal scale that you complete. Our goal with these upcoming changes is to raise the challenge of the fractals on the top end and to make them more accessible to a larger group of players. In other words, we want to create an experience that is easier to get into and easier to learn but more difficult to master.

One of the core changes is that each fractal run will only consist of one island from a static list instead of the current rotation of three random islands with a random boss fractal. This change to “1 fractal = 1 island” means that you’ll be able to run a fractal over your lunch break but still have the flexibility of running three or four fractals in the evening with your friends just like before. It also means that there will be a lot less pressure to find a group of people who can commit to 30–60 minutes in a single sitting or over 90 minutes on longer runs.

The maximum fractal scale from 50 to 100. In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness. The combination of these changes will increase the viability of different builds and give players more to think about when attempting to overcome a particular scale.

A member of Dessa’s krewe is concocting some new consumables to aid your adventures in the fractals. These items will provide benefits that will stack with your other consumables to give you the boost you’re looking for to defeat a troublesome encounters.


New Maps/Biomes

Meet the Jungle Hands-On

Gameplay Features: Making the Most of Maguuma

Hylek in the Heart of Thorns (PoI Livestream Link)

Exalted: Pure Dedication

The Modrem Guard

New Maps

Biomes

New Rewards

New Adventures And Rewards

Adventuring Forth

Similar to how Dry Top and Silverwaste works.  All maps will award currencies/bonuses for completing events, jumping puzzles, mini dungeons.

Example:  Cursed Shore could reward you with ancient bones, charged cores, charged lodestones, or giant eyes during one rotation, and powerful venom sacs, glacial cores, glacial lodestones, or globs of ectoplasm during another rotation.  The only maps that will not have this system are the level 1-15 maps.

New Legendaries & Precursor Crafting

A Legendary Journey

Heart of Thorns will introduce Legendary precursor crafting.  Each legendary revolves around 2 themes, through 3 tiers of collections.

The first tier will revolve around 1 of the 2 themes of the legendary weapon.  As you complete the first tier you will be rewarded with the recipe to craft the first iteration of the precursor.  A non tradeable exotic weapon.  

The second tier which will work on the crafting itself.  Proving your ability to craft.  Once you complete this tier, a recipe will be rewarded to refine the precursor a little further.  A non tradeable exotic weapon.

The third tier will return to the theme of the legendary weapon.  Once you complete this tier you will be able to craft the final version of the precursor.  Skins will be updated to resemble the legendary weapon(minus the effects).

Once you complete this, you can continue the journey to creating your legendary weapon.

Heart of Thorns will introduce new legendaries as well.

[Sorrows]

World vs. World



Essential Elements of the New WvW Borderlands (Ready Up Livestream Link)

Increased Verticality

The desert map is much more layered and vertical than the existing alpine Borderlands map. As an example, you may run across a span of rolling sand dunes, find a gap in the sands, follow a shadowy obsidian staircase plunging deep into a massive cavern, and lay siege to an entire fiery keep hidden within. The terrain is more complex, the cliffs are higher, and the paths are windier, resulting in an even deeper field of battle.

Thematic Objectives

Keeps and towers are more distinctive than before. They all have unique architecture, unique guards, and a unique lord protecting the capture point. The three keeps are elementally themed—air, earth, and fire. The air keep was inspired by the historical city of Petra. It is a keep cut directly into the rose-colored stone canyon walls, with tengu guarding its heights. In contrast, the fire keep is our first entirely underground objective. Lava flows outside the keep while fire imps and charred fleshreavers guard its gates. The earth keep is a corrupted asuran complex. Rocks jut strangely from the walls, and massive stones float in the sky just out of reach. Only golems remain to guard the ruins of this technologically advanced structure. The towers you’ll encounter include an ogre outpost, a charr military depot, an academy of magic, and a necromantic spire.
More Strategic Layout
We’ve made towers more strategically important. Rather than simply being isolated landmarks for invaders to easily sidestep, towers now wall off larger sections of the map and create real choke points. Controlling one of these towers not only allows your team to pass easily into another section of the map but also creates a noticeable impediment to the movement of enemy armies. The gates of towers and keeps are now more dangerous to attack head-on. Invaders must pass underneath a kill box of arched walls, putting them at risk for attacks from above on all sides. Even the terrain itself is more geared toward giving players the opportunity to make intelligent—or foolish—tactical plays in nuanced terrain.

Shrines

Along the outskirts of each of the three elemental keeps are three shrines of matching elements, making a total of nine shrines. Much like a sentry post, these can be captured by a single player. Controlling shrines gives you two important advantages. First, by interacting with a shrine that your team controls, you will gain a five-minute elemental blessing effect. This effect increases both your movement speed and either your attack damage, critical-strike chance, or defense, depending on which elemental blessing you received. More importantly, the other reason to control shrines is that they confer important strategic bonuses to the team that controls the keep of the same element. And for each shrine controlled, the team controlling the keep gains an additional benefit. For example, for each Shrine of Air controlled, the defending team gains access to things like jump pads, wind turrets that can blow invaders off the cliff face, and even immunity to falling damage while within the region. At the fire keep, controlling Shrines of Fire grants the defending team the ability to transform into fiery hounds, turns on fireball-spitting gargoyle turrets, and grants immunity to burning and lava damage. The earth keep gains automatic defenses like lodestones that impair enemy movement, pop-up rock walls that block off sections of the canyons when invaders approach, and a sandstorm that provides stealth for allies within.

Oasis

The center of the map is a giant jungle oasis. It’s filled with complex rocky terrain, winding streams, bamboo walkways through the trees, an enormous golden temple, and dinosaurs. This is an environment that caters to roamers, ambushers, and gankers. Once every three hours, an event begins within the oasis. An energy cannon of great power sits atop the golden temple, and naturally that means your team will want to be the first to charge it up and fire it! Players will scatter throughout the oasis, defeating dinosaurs that have swallowed the weapon’s power cores and returning those cores to any of three Durmand Priory research camps located on the outskirts of the oasis. It’s not as easy as it sounds; enemy players will try to attack your team’s carriers and steal the cores for themselves. Once a team has collected enough cores to power the weapon, the cannon will begin firing blasts of energy at the outer gates of all enemy-owned towers and keeps in the map, gradually obliterating them. Even if your team already controls all of these objectives, you’ll still want to control the weapon, if only to prevent the enemy teams from using it against you!

Dolyaks and Sentries

Dolyaks have gained a new defensive ability. As long as an allied player is near the dolyak, the dolyak gains an effect called Protected Caravan. While this effect is active, the dolyak is greatly resistant to both damage and conditions. Undefended dolyak caravans are just as vulnerable as ever, but if players are escorting a dolyak, enemies are now forced to either deal with the players or spend significantly more time attacking and wearing down the dolyak to ultimately kill it. Sentries have also had a few tweaks. They now guard tiny outposts and have a skill that cripples enemy dolyaks for several minutes, noticeably increasing the time it takes for the dolyaks to carry supply to their next objective. Friendly players can also pick up temporary med-kit bundles—which are very similar to the Med Kit engineer healing skill—at allied sentry posts. These can be used to cure a crippled dolyak, quickly gain some health, or grant swiftness on the fly.

Upgrades and Abilities

• We’ve removed the supply cost for upgrades.
  
• Supply holds and supply shipments will be smaller.
  
• We’ve removed the gold cost for upgrades.
  
• Individual upgrades are now grouped into upgrade tiers.
  
• Upgrading to the next tier now happens automatically over time.
  
• There are two tiers for camps and three tiers for all other objectives.
  
• Higher tiers take longer to upgrade than lower tiers.
  
• Each shipment from a dolyak caravan will reduce the remaining time by a set amount.
  
• The time it takes to fully upgrade an objective should still be roughly the same as it was before these changes.

Changes to the Ability System

• We reduced the total number of ability ranks of Guard Killer and Defense Against Guards from 10 to 5.
  
• The Applied Fortitude and Applied Strength effects have been removed.
  
• Ability lines that increased percentages from 1% to 5% now increase percentages from 2% to 10%.
  
• We reduced the total cost of specific siege weapon lines from 75 points to 60 points.
  
• We reduced the total cost of the Supply Capacity line from 300 points to 145 points.
  
• The Supply Master and Mercenary’s Bane lines remain at 15 points.
  
• We normalized all ability progression tracks of five ranks per line to 35 points.
  
• We normalized all ability progression tracks of four ranks per line to 15 points

Upgrading World vs. World Upgrades (Ready Up Livestream)

Guild Objective Claiming in World vs. World

Guild halls will introduce a building for WvW called the War Room. Guilds can upgrade their war room and unlock abilities such as claiming objectives and building upgrades that can be slotted into an objective.
When claiming objectives, the guild with the most members present when an objective is captured has first priority. If that guild passes, then the next guild down the priority chain has the opportunity to claim it. After three passes, any guild may claim the objective. A guild member with permission to claim objectives needs to be present to make the claim and slot the upgrades. In addition to banners on the objective that show off your guild emblem, many of the NPCs defending the claimed objective will now sport your guild tag.
Upgrades have three tiers based on the duration the objective is held. An objective will automatically reach the next tier if your team maintains control of it long enough, allowing your guild to build higher tier upgrades. Upgrades come in two types: Improvements, which are always active at the objective; and Tactics, which allow players to trigger an objective’s abilities.

Enhanced Squad UI

PvP Stronghold

Ready Up #31, Your guide to getting started in Stronghold (Ready Up Stream)

Introducing PvP Guild Teams

Guild Teams: An Overview

A PvP guild team is a named, five-player subset of your guild roster that fights together in structured PvP. It will have its own rating, and as such, its own place in a new guild-team leaderboard. Fighting as teams will help fuel your guild with the resources it needs to power its guild hall.

Creating and Managing a Guild Team

A guild member with the Teams Management permission—bestowed upon only the guild leader by default—can create a guild team at any time from the guild panel. Each team within a guild must have a unique name, which is chosen on creation. Once the guild team exists, guild members can be added to its roster. The ability to manage a team’s roster is given to any guild member with the Teams Management permission, as well as to the team captain. Each team may have only one captain.

Playing as a Team

When queueing for a PvP match in a party, and if queueing alongside at least two other members of that team, you’ll represent the guild team you’re a member of. That means you can have up to two substitutes and still play as a guild team. Playing as a team also offers a few perks that can be unlocked in your guild hall. For example, your guild anthem can play at the end of a match, should you be victorious.

Your guild team will have a rating specific to that team. While you’re playing as a guild team, matchmaking will use this rating over your personal rating. This provides a better indication of how you function as a group than a combination of individual ratings would.
The Teams Leaderboard

By fighting under your guild team’s banner, you’ll help advance your team through the new guild-team leaderboard. In it, you can compare the performance of your team within your region and race for the top!

The Map



Champions

Meet the Mist Champions! (PoI Livestream Link)

Reward Tracks

PvP Reward Tracks coming with HoT

Leagues

• Six divisions starting with Amber and ending at Legendary.
  
• Each division is divided into several tiers represented by pips. To cross into the next division, you must complete all the tiers in your current division.
  
• Division 1 the starter division will only reward forward progress but starting at division 2 and 3 winning matters as losing cause you to lose pips but you will not lose tiers.
  
• Once you hit division 4 and 5, you can lose both pips and tiers when you lose a match but you will never go back to a previous division.
  
• The 6th division the Legendary Division is a repeatable division that provides better rewards.
  
• Earn league tokens to spend on PvP exclusive items like the back item Wings of Glory. Once you hit the Legendary division you will be able to work towards the legendary version of the backpiece.
  
• Earn badge next to your name as your climb up the ranks each season. These badges will be reset each season.
  
• Can queue solo or with 4 other players but all progression is on the personal level.
  
• Players can queue up as Guild teams if they have 3 or more members from the same guild and their progress will be showcased on the leaderboards and ranked with an ELO system to aid with matchmaking. Leaderboards are reset seasonally and is used as a qualifier to invitational high end tournaments. Rewards for guild teams will be guild based and provided to the top teams. Possible rewards includes a guild trophy.

Guild Halls



Welcome to Guild Halls (PoI Livestream Link)

Guild Week Catch Up!

Guild Halls Info

Six Pillars

Over time, those goals have been refined into six pillars that lie at the heart of the system and inform our choices. They are:

• Emphasize Community and Fellowship: Guilds are about bringing players together to forge friendships and communities through shared experiences. Guild halls should help those communities develop and encourage members to play together to strengthen their relationships.
  
  
• A Place to Call Your Own: Your guild hall is a personal space for your guild. You control who can enter your guild’s map, and it’s a place you can retreat to with your close friends when you want to get away from the crowds of the open world.
  
  
• Build a Shared History: As your guild grows and changes, so too does your guild hall. Over time, your guild’s efforts to build up the area will make visible, lasting differences and become a testament to your guild’s growth.
  
  
• Bring Guilds into the World: While some guilds are already important to the lore and history of Tyria, with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we want to make your guilds important to Tyria. The guild halls of Guild Wars 2 exist alongside the public maps in the Heart of Maguuma region, and each has its own history to unearth.
  
  
• Activate Player Creativity: Beyond a fun place to gather and socialize, we want guild halls to be spaces where you can create content for each other. These maps are huge by design, giving you plenty of space to amuse and entertain. Over time, you’ll gain access to more tools to support that.
  
  
• New Ways to Play Together: Guild halls are a living system, and not just a place to unlock some vendors. To that end, we’re working to add new content for guilds to bridge the gap between the hall and the open world. From overhauls of WvW guild claiming and guild missions to a new multiplayer combat sandbox and guild-focused crafting discipline, there’s going to be a lot to do.

The new guild halls were once inhabited locations, hidden on the outskirts of the Maguuma Jungle—their original inhabitants long since gone. You’ll need to mount an expedition to find these locations and wrest control from the Mordrem currently infesting them. Once they are under your guild’s control, you can begin acquiring services for them and building them back up to their former glory.

Rethinking Guilds

In the current guild system, there’s tension between being expected to represent a guild 100% of the time so that it can gain the benefits of your representation and having the freedom to use all five of your available guild memberships to socialize with different groups of friends. When we looked for overall improvements we could make to guilds, resolving this conflict stood out as having the greatest potentially positive impact on the social experience for guild members.
As of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, this will no longer be a problem; we’ll be introducing cross-guild chat. From your main guild panel, you’ll be able to assign which guilds you can chat to with new channels, /g1 through /g5. You can then decide which channels will be visible in your chat tabs. The existing guild chat channel, /g, will continue to chat to your currently represented guild.
Upgrades

The introduction of guild halls and the switch from the disciplines to guild hall building progressions offered an opportunity for us to look critically at our existing upgrades. As a result, there are a number of upgrades that won’t be making the transition to the new system. Some, like guild mission upgrades and the various build queue improvements, didn’t make sense any more in light of the changes to systems that guild halls are bringing with them. You’ll learn more about the guild mission overhaul in the next post in this series.
Other upgrades ran counter to goals that we had in designing guild halls. One example is the remote crafting station consumables; we wanted to ensure that guild halls don’t make cities irrelevant, so we’re focusing on crafting for the eight existing disciplines in public maps. Another example is the guild emblem upgrade, which put an unnecessary barrier in the way of groups fully forming their in-game identity—and that’s something we very much want to encourage. Guild emblems will be freely available for all guilds to customize once the expansion launches.

Under The Influence
When we looked at influence, it became clear that it was trying to do too much. The currency is intended to reward you for playing together with your guild, but it can also be purchased for gold. Influence is used to build upgrades and consumables, but it can also be spent at a huge markup to immediately gain access to those things. Furthermore, influence gain is tied to guild representation, which is hard to keep track of outside of the guild panel. It is also earned passively just for being online, and this incentivizes guilds to require full-time representation from their members.
We’re breaking apart influence and assigning its functions to three new currencies: favor, aetherium, and resonance.

• Favor incentivizes guilds to gather and complete missions on a weekly basis. You’ll learn more about the changes coming to guild missions in our next post.
  
• Aetherium replaces the pacing elements of the current queue system and establishes a baseline rate at which our largest guilds can progress that cannot be circumvented by spending gold.
  
• Resonance serves the sole purpose of speeding up the assembling of guild items and removes the need to balance other currencies around that. Meanwhile, resonating shards reward small group play with fellow guild members. Keep an eye out for more info on resonance and resonating shards when we talk about our new guild-specific crafting profession, scribing, in a future post.

You’ll no longer be able to gain influence once the new system is live, but we respect that you’ve worked hard to accumulate your guild’s existing influence, so we’re going to offer you a few different ways to spend it. First, when we introduce the final version of the new Lion’s Arch to the game, we’ll raise the cap on all of the guild consumables that will be transferring to the new system to a maximum of 25. This new cap will persist into the new guild system, so feel free to stock up with excess influence right now.

Locations

Guild halls: Taken from the Enemy

Obtaining a guild hall isn’t as simple as buying one from a merchant; the process of acquiring it is one of the most concrete examples of how we’re making guilds a greater part of the world of Tyria.
With the Pact in tatters, Tyria’s governments have had to scramble to figure out new methods to address the continuing threat of the Elder Dragons. In light of the past successes of guilds like Destiny’s Edge against the dragons and their minions, Tyria’s authorities have decided to enlist and mobilize existing guilds against the dragons and other substantial threats.
The Guild Initiative is a new organization that will set up its headquarters in Lion’s Arch and begin registering guilds for the cause. They’ll provide registered guilds with access to their facilities and support staff, as well as assign missions for those guilds to complete to maintain their fitness and contribute to the general welfare of Tyria. Furthermore, the Initiative is conducting active research to find new technologies that will benefit guilds in their efforts, such as a new mobile portal and a powerful assembly device that can assemble tools from raw aether according to schematics. Finally, the Initiative is pursuing large-scale reconnaissance and exploration to identify activity and movement of the dragons’ minions.
Once your guild is registered with the Guild Initiative, you’ll gain access to their new headquarters in Lion’s Arch. We’ve used new technology to make the Guild Initiative Headquarters an instance that is shared by you and your guild members. While the Initiative Headquarters is not a full guild hall, it will provide access to existing features that we’re moving out of the guild panel for those guilds that do not upgrade to the expansion.
Inside the Guild Initiative Headquarters, you’ll find explorers who have scouted out particularly large infestations of Mordrem in remote ruins in and around the western jungle. Given the incongruous concentration of Mordrem in these locations, they’ve been determined to be of strategic importance to Mordremoth. The explorers are seeking guilds willing and able to mount expeditions to liberate these ruins, and Tyrian world governments have agreed to cede ownership of the ruins to successful guilds so long as they maintain a presence in those places and defend them from recapture by the dragons.
Mounting an expedition to take one of these ruins is an expensive proposition and requires a certain amount of trust from the Initiative. On top of the costs to supply a population of Initiative guards and support staff to help settle the location once it’s been taken, your guild will actually have to reach the ruins, which is an adventure in itself. Once there, you must go in and drive out the Mordrem.
At the heart of the ruins, you’ll discover a strange crystal embedded in the earth that was the focus of the Mordrem’s attentions. The crystal shines with magical energy, and it seems the creatures were drawing power from it to feed to Mordremoth. When one of your guild leaders touches the crystal, they can attune it to your guild and cut off the jungle dragon’s influence.

Missions

Guild Halls: Missions for All

Guild Missions Changes

This was the root of the decision to make guild missions your source for favor, one of the currencies needed to purchase upgrades in the new guild progression system. Additionally, missions will be fully available to all guilds from the very beginning.
Once we established that missions would be at the center of guild play, we looked at the method by which players can access them. We want guilds to be adventuring together and, ideally, getting together in a large group (or a gathering with a few extra friends) once a week or so to run guild missions. For large guilds with abundant resources, crafting guild mission tokens was no problem, but smaller guilds couldn’t hope to keep up. And there’s really no good reason to block guilds from playing together or from retrying a failed mission.
As a result, we decided that in the new system, guild missions will be free to run as much as you want. Each mission will give its bounty of favor only once per week, on the first successful run, but each member can get their personal commendation rewards by running the mission at any time during the week, even if the guild has already completed it.
Finally, the old system encouraged guilds to run each type of mission per week, but with guild missions becoming the center of guild progression, we needed to mix up the available missions to introduce variation. In the new system, your guild will start with access to a few missions each week. These are the same for all guilds across the game, and each mission has a favor bounty attached to it along with some objectives. As your guild levels up, you’ll open up more missions that you can run each week.
For most of the missions, aiming every guild in the game toward the same one won’t cause a problem, but Guild Challenges and Guild Puzzles will get backed up in a big way. To avoid that, those mission types will be moving into their own instances. You’ll access them from the same places in the world, but they’ll otherwise function a bit like a dungeon.
To access the new missions, all you’ll need to do is interact with the start point. These are staying the same for rushes, challenges, and puzzles, and we’ll be adding new start points in Lion’s Arch for Guild Treks and Guild Bounties. Your guild can only have one mission of a given type active at a time, but you’re otherwise free to start them whenever you like.


Upgrades and Crafting

Building Your Guild Hall

So you’ve joined the Guild Initiative, spearheaded an expedition into the jungle, and driven the Mordrem out of your guild hall. Congratulations! Now it’s time to start building up your guild hall and, by extension, your guild.
You’ll be able to build six major structures around your central hall. Each is run by a proprietor—an expert from the Guild Initiative who is on loan to your guild indefinitely to help you maintain your presence in the area. Proprietors will have a set of upgrades you can purchase that will add various functionalities and services to your guild hall.
Guild upgrades will be primarily grouped around the six main buildings, each of which is associated with elements of guild gameplay:

• First is the tavern, which is associated with socialization and effects. As a new proprietor, you’ll come here to rest until you’re ready to start constructing buildings. One of the upgrades you’ll be able to unlock through the tavern is the ability to choose an anthem for your guild. This will play for all to hear during moments of triumph, such as when you complete a guild mission or claim an objective in World vs. World.
  
• Second is the mine, which is the source of aetherium discussed above. All of the upgrades for this structure will relate to the generation and storage of aetherium.
  
• Third is the workshop, which is associated with crafting and gathering. Here, members of your guild can train in the new guild-specific crafting profession, scribing. We’ll discuss this more in a future post in this series.
  
• Fourth is the war room, which is associated with WvW. You’ll be able to unlock scribing recipes here for use in the updated guild claiming system.
  
• Fifth is the market, which is associated with finance and mercantilism. Through this building, you’ll be able to unlock a new tier of guild weapons and armor for your weaponsmith and armorer.
  
• Sixth is the arena, which is associated with personal combat and Player vs. Player. Once your arena is fully built, you’ll be able to use it as a combat sandbox and customize it with obstacles and traps.

Guild Halls: From Pen to Production to Placement

Scribes hold a uniquely selfless role within the guild community. Although there are items scribes can craft for themselves, they bend most of their talents to crafting items for their guilds. Much more than simple writers and notetakers, they are skilled in every aspect of composition, from mixing inks to bookbinding. They’re also able to inscribe complex magical diagrams and incantations that can harness raw aether to fabricate useful tools for your guild.
Inscribe
Scribes can use your guild’s assembly device to fabricate three main categories of items:

• Guild consumables—items such as guild banners, banquets, and world event tokens. All existing guild consumables will be crafted through scribing.
  
• Improvements and tactics for the revamped guild claiming in World vs. World. These will be discussed in more detail in another blog post in this series.
  
• Revamped decorations for your guild hall.

Assembly

Each usable guild item has an associated schematic. When a scribe crafts that schematic, it’s placed into the guild’s aetheric assembly device and enters a queue to be assembled. Assembly works similarly to the existing build queues: when the duration of the assembly completes, the item will appear in the Items tab on the guild panel, from which it can be used.
If you absolutely need a guild item right away, you can shortcut the assembly process. Each guild hall’s assembly device has a resource called resonance that can be spent to turbocharge the process and immediately finish the current item.
The main source of resonance is a new item called a resonating shard, which is discovered while grouping with other guild members. When you find one, bring it to the assembly device attendant at your guild workshop. They’ll reward you with some loot and harvest the resonance from the shard, adding it to your guild’s pool of resonance.

[Maksyn]

Is the major fractal update in there? I see it under masteries, but.

[Sorrows]

Maksyn, on 02 August 2015 - 02:32 PM, said:

Is the major fractal update in there? I see it under masteries, but.

Fractal Update will be listed under Challenging Content, but that isn't the main challenging content topic that Collin has been hinting at for months. There are Fractal Masteries coming also, which is the section under masteries. Like it Says - Work in progress atm.

[Aduah]

Kewl Sorrows. Thanks for posting this. Now I won't have to piece it all together.

[Aduah]

This is several months old now, AngryJoe interviews Collin, and we know a lot of this stuff an more. But Angry Joe asked some good questions, its an interview at least worth listening to, I think. Esspecially for those who haven't been following really closely everything.

[Sanji]

Yo Sorrows can you confirm that Warriors are getting Torch weapons?...a friend on IoJ told me thus but cant find info.

[Silvernis]

Sanji, on 18 August 2015 - 11:18 AM, said:

Yo Sorrows can you confirm that Warriors are getting Torch weapons?...a friend on IoJ told me thus but cant find info.

https://twitter.com/...307768800321536

[Sanji]

Silvernis, on 18 August 2015 - 11:24 AM, said:

https://twitter.com/...307768800321536

Ah probably why the torch pre got a fat jump-up as of yesterday.
Ty buddy evil asurian lazy mortar boyo impster

[Liric]

Sanji, on 18 August 2015 - 11:18 AM, said:

Yo Sorrows can you confirm that Warriors are getting Torch weapons?...a friend on IoJ told me thus but cant find info.

[&CCcHAAA=]

[Sanji]

Liric, on 18 August 2015 - 09:53 PM, said:

[&CCcHAAA]

Oh ho:) ...I still wish theyd come out with a race changing makeup kit since now I want to remake my 2nd war into an asurian aura burn berserk mode Troll. Norn animations...

[Liric]

http://www.zam.com/s...tml?story=36349

Quote

One of these skills is Wild Blow, a powerful attack that launches any foe it hits back a large distance with such force that your foe's own body becomes a projectile that can hit other enemies, knocking them back in turn.

Dynasty Warriors mode confirmed.

I think the best part is that it's also supposed to have a condition aspect, so it fits my WvW roamer perfectly. No smoke field, but I suppose the world wasn't ready for cloaking, unblockable Killshot warriors. :3

[Sanji]

[Liric]

Some relevant images:

http://www.mattsta.n...clusive-reveal/

[Sanji]

Looks a lot like Kingdoms of Amalur fighting skills...

[Liric]

YES

BURN BURN BURN

ALL SHALL BE LAID TO BURNINATION

[Sorrows]

Hey all, added summaries and newer information.

[Liric]

It's good that people are already crying so much over the Berserker line and calling for nerfs - I can use their tears to salt the earth after I've razed everything to the ground.

[Liric]

Thief dodge spam and 8s stun break/block cheese datamined.

[Silvernis]

Liric, on 26 August 2015 - 09:20 AM, said:

Thief dodge spam and 8s stun break/block cheese datamined.

I'll take that over the goddamned stealth spam that most thieves rely on.