The Tyrian Chronicle: Changes Coming to Guild Wars 2 .

Changes are coming to Guild Wars 2. Yesterday we heard about the Lion’s Arch grand opening and Core Specializations, and following that ArenaNet released a couple of blogs talking about combat changes coming with the new specializations and how they will be streamlining the Wallet. This is not the first time ArenaNet have changed features of the game in such a way, yet these feel somehow different. Perhaps it’s the onset of Heavensward, or maybe it’s because a major city is seeing a pretty huge facelift and changes to combat and specializations in such a huge way will very much change how the game plays. Either way, let’s take a little look at what is on the way.

Combat Changes

Let’s start with the combat changes. First off, conditions – Guild Wars 2’s DoTs. Conditions are all well and good but with intensity stacking conditions sitting at a limit of 25, it can be frustrating while fighting with others to get any decent damage in. ArenaNet will be increasing intensity stacking conditions limits to a much larger number in order to relieve some of the frustration. This should allow for all players to get their conditions up regardless of whether they’re playing solo or on a world boss with dozens of other players. Moreover, burning and poison effects will also be added as intensity stacking conditions.

Confusion, on the other hand, will work a little differently. At present, an enemy afflicted with confusion will take damage whenever they attack which can be too effective, or not effective enough. So to balance this, enemies affected with confusion will still receive damage when they attack but to a lesser extent than before. Instead, the damage lost will return as a damage-over-time effect which will hopefully increase the usefulness of confusion effects.

Damaging conditions will be seeing somewhat of a nerf as will see their base damage lowered significantly, with an increase to how high they scale with the condition stat found on gear. At present, damaging conditions are simply too effective so the hope is that this re-balance will fix this.

The vulnerability condition, on the other hand, is getting another look-in as ArenaNet will be increasing the direct damage and the condition taken by an enemy inflicted with vulnerability. This condition will be maintaining its 25-stack limit. We’re just going to say 700 stacks of vulnerability? Not the best idea.

Additionally, players will see movement abilities such as Savage Leap now unaffected by movement speed increases or decreases so these abilities will no longer be affected by cripples and chills, and you will no longer leap further than intended.

Now personally, I don’t enjoy conditions. They don’t feel all that powerful to me and this frustrates me. So as a player who has been leveling a Mesmer these changes give me a little hope. While maybe I’d still be suited better to another class, the idea that my conditions will feel more effective overall as well as being a little more balanced is interesting and I can’t wait for these changes to go live so I can see how they feel.

Core Specializations

There will be no stats available through traits with the new specializations, the hope being that players can base their builds on trait choice rather than stat choice. There will be nine major traits to choose from, up from seven, including three grandmaster traits. Each of these will hold more impact than they did before and with the new streamlined unlock system, traits should be much friendlier to new players. These changes aim to allow players to build their characters beyond their base skills allowing for more customization.

You will select three of the five available core specializations for your class to begin with. Each one of these will unlock as you level up to 80 so at first, you will only have access to one, but by the time you’re at 80 you will have all three available to you. There will be three minor traits attached to each core specialization which help to define the playstyle of each line and additionally to this, there will be nine major traits for each which come in three tiers: adept, master, and grandmaster. With traits locked to tiers and less traits overall, the hope is that each choice will be more meaningful to players.

Don’t you worry about the stats removed from the trait lines as they are not completely gone. A player’s base stats will see an increase from 926 to 1000 and base attribute points on gear will also be seeing an increase which means that all equipment will have more stats than before. On top of this, every profession’s attributes will have half of their functionality as part of a specialization, and half as a baseline for that profession. The hope here is to keep the stat numbers roughly the same as they are now, just available from different places.

ArenaNet’s aim with specializations isn’t to break them down completely, but rather to reallocate. As such, they are attempting to preserve current builds by changing certain skills to include certain aspects of the removed traits.

So currently, it feels to me that there are “good” and “bad” builds, yet as a casual player I don’t know what these are so I tend to work out which stats affect my playstyle the best and work towards those. With the new specializations, while I’m not convinced they will eliminate cookie cutter builds, I’m hopeful that they will remove the need to poor over traits for too long as the choices will be fairly simple. In theory, at least. I like builds that let me choose my playstyle. I don’t like builds that feel “wrong” if I choose the wrong thing.

Wallet

Guild Wars 2’s wallet holds all of a player’s currencies in a nice big grid. But to get to it, you have to go to the Hero panel and click on the tab, or you can get to it via the + button in your inventory. So instead, the wallet will be moved to the Inventory panel with a special button similar to the toggles available in your bank at present.

The big bulky grid is leaving us. In its place will be a much more compact list with available filtering options which allow you to select which currencies you want to see at any given time. There will be currency icons that you can click for more information. For example, clicking on gold and gems will take you to the Gem Store and dungeon currencies will show you where the respective dungeon entrances are. And in the inventory view itself, next to your gold display will be a currency depending on where you are. In World vs. World you’ll see badges of honor, in Fractals of the Mists you’ll see fractal relics, and so on.

But that’s not all. The update adds more currencies to the wallet which will be converted and stored there. These are:

• Pristine Fractal Relics
• WvW Tournament Claim Tickets
• Geodes
• Bandit Crests

For people with endless supplies of skill points? Sorry. These are becoming spirit shards and these will also be in the new wallet. Any skill point challenges and level-ups you do that award skill points will grant spirit shards.

As for changes to other skill sources:

• Tomes of knowledge will level you up if you are under level 80 and give one spirit shard if you’ve reached level 80.
• Writs of experience can only be used if you’re under level 80, and they can be traded in to Miyani for a tome of knowledge at a rate of 20 writs per tome.
• Leveling up after level 80 no longer grants skill points, but level 80 characters will be able to loot spirit shards off of monsters.
• Any scrolls of knowledge that you have in your possession will automatically be converted to spirit shards, and any source that used to award scrolls of knowledge will now grant spirit shards.

This conversion will be automatic and happen on a per-character basis so make sure you log in to each of your characters to receive all of your earned spirit shards.

The wallet changes are nothing new. This is very similar to currency lists we see in other MMORPGs and I love a more compact list that can be filtered in this way. The skill changes are good for me, personally, though I know quite a lot of people had been saving Writs and Tomes for Revenants, though I’m not entirely sure if these will automatically change from your banks or just your bags. I presume that once you open your bank, they will automatically become spirit shards or experience for your characters under level 80, though I’m not sure what this means if you don’t access your bank until you roll a Revenant. I guess we’ll see soon enough. Mostly I just wanted to explore the new Lion’s Arch.

What are you most looking forward to with Guild Wars 2’s next update?