Rubi just announced some changes that will go live when SotO is released. Apparently ArenaNet doubles down on disabling core mechanics (dodge or block damage) in this fractal.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/134453-updates-coming-to-silent-surf-august-22/#comment-1951064

Hi all, I want to let you know that we’ve been reading your feedback about Silent Surf and have some updates incoming.

As you can imagine we are all heads down on the final stretch before Secrets of the Obscure launches on August 22–only four more weeks! Our next full build is scheduled to ship then, so we’ll include these updates with that.

For now though, I have an early look at the update notes for Silent Surf so you can see what the team is working on:

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused Captain Thess to have an incorrect effect icon during the third encounter.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Aspects from applying Extreme Vulnerability on Challenge mode when striking with Dread Visage.
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to bypass World Cleaver.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the final boss to focus on attacking pets more than intended.
• Fixed an issue in which the Peace and Quiet achievement did not require Master tier, causing it to be inconsistent with the achievement description. -Fixed an inconsistency with other Challenge mode encounters in fractals so defeated players can now be revived during the final encounter.
• Fixed an issue that allowed Frightening Speed to be blocked.
• Fixed a timing issue in the Challenge mode version of Dread Visage’s large-eye warning effect that prevented it from detonating at the same time as the smaller eyes.
• Fixed an issue that could cause an Aspect to return to the main platform during World Cleaver without selecting a new target for Phantasmagoria.
• Fixed multiple issues with phase transitions and the synchronization of Dread Visage attacks:
  • The final boss and the Aspects no longer gain alacrity, regeneration, or quickness from boon-stealing attacks.
  • Sugar Rush has been removed from the list of Mistlock Instabilities for Silent Surf.

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Other Updates

• The final boss’s health has been reduced on Challenge mode.
• All checkpoints now require only two players regardless of fractal tier.
• In addition to Sugar Rush, the following instabilities have been removed from Silent Surf: Mists Convergence and Toxic Sickness.

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As always, thanks for your constructive feedback and keep it coming!

@meldrik@lemmy.wtf Duplicate. Already in SotO Megathread.

This is weird (the additional points from Annuals, I mean).

I finished (Annual) For Winds Customs for the first skin at around 100/200 of the weekly progress after about 4 days of doing little more than completing the festival dailies.

… which meant I needed to get 100 more points in the remaining 2 days of the first (shorter) week. And this was a surprise to me, since I was actually expecting to be on track for the weekly when doing a bit more than the dailies every day.

I thought Griffon Adventures do not count for the weekly?

Anyway, without Blitz you’ll need to complete 200 / 3 = 67 activities per week or rather 9.5 (11) Time Trials per day, if you actually do this every day (first festival week not even has 6 full days). Or to put it differently: 3 Time Trials (3 points each) + 1 Blitz (10 points) per day only gets you to 133 points in 7 days (154, if you also do the Skiff Trial).

The Dragonbash Time Trail (Roller Beetle) grants 5 points and the Dragon Arena (which you can do whenever you want) grants 5 points per boss = 25 points for a full clear. So I would argue that this weekly is a lot faster and less tedious, e. g. 1 Time Trial (5 points) + 1 Full Dragon Arena (25 points) per day gets you to 210 points in 7 days.

I think the fastest way to get to 200 points at the current festival is to find an empty Queen’s Gauntlet Ring and beat an easy opponent (10 seconds) over and over again for 3 points each. (And don’t do this on a Mechanist, since your Mech will despawn at the end of each fight.)

I’d love that, too. At least let us apply dyes. And I’m actually surprised that ANet hasn’t yet put Mech Skins in the gem store which have dye channels …

A bit more points per activity, a bit less waiting and maybe a bit more variety would be nice. It’s kinda odd that the fact that this year’s weapon skins look nice (at least I like them) increases the risk of me getting Festival Fatigue.

I still remember how exciting I found festivals in the early days, but this is sadly long over. Now I find myself hoping for boring skins so that I feel I’m done after completing Annual Customs. I know this sounds weird, but that’s actually how I feel.

MightyTeapot’s July 18th Balance Patch Analysis

Allow to persistently order or at least lock the slots of the character select screen.

These were all pretty obvious questions and Rubi (ArenaNet) already needed to pull the “special case” argument with +25% run speed being a stat increase. But this is only one topic with a weird “We’re making it up as we go" vibe. Legendary Relics being another of course.

In cases like this, we’ll be making sure that runes with duplicate 1-5 bonuses have unique 6 slot stats. In this example, 25% movement speed will count as a stat increase and will be seen on a handful of rune 6 pieces.

Consistently inconsistent. As we know it. And it’s obvious that the whole system is far from being thought through.

Unique 2 and 4 slot bonuses will become raw stats. (Boon and condition duration increases are not considered unique and will not be removed from runes.)

So my beloved Runes of the Traveler are unchanged and I get to equip a Relic on top of it. Deal!

GW1 had way fewer attributes to spend points on, but if you did, you would increase the damage and crit chance of certain weapons or the power (damage, healing, duration, …) of certain abilities. What I was mainly referring to (and what I would like in GW2, too) was the principle of freely spending a budget (with increasing cost) on attributes which improve certain offensive or defensive abilities. Anytime you want outside of combat.

GW1 also has/had Runes and Insignias which require(d) (perfect) salavage kits to move around and hence are/were less flexible. But this has/had less impact on your build than the distribution of attribute points.

Originally GW2’s trait system also had stat increases baked in, but this was later removed and more attributes (precision, ferocity, concentration, expertise) have been added.

So why not replace Stat Sets, Runes and Sigils as they are now with freely distributable attribute points and let Relics and whatever the successor of Sigils will be have unique (not stat-related) effects?

… or Guild Wars Reloaded, since GW1 already had that system.

Or imagine gear just had attribute points (item budget) which you could spend on stats as you like. Obviously this would invalidate stat sets (pseudo content) entirely and stat swapping on legendary gear, too. But why not let the majority of players enjoy the build craft meta game instead of just a tiny fraction which has full legendary gear, runes and sigils?

I mean with a large enough set of (Viper, Celestial, Marauder, Berrserker/Assassin) account bound armor, weapons and trinkets (maybe a few legendary ones) you can mix and match the optimal stat set for pretty much any open world build anyway. But it is very tedious and no fun.

Not sure how I feel about this. Another system coming to the game (did anybody ask for this?) and it does not seem like ArenaNet has fully thought it through one month before it goes live.

I was hoping for a change that makes gearing for different/multiple builds more accessible.

What do we see at 33% when Lord Hizen uses the Grappling Hook Hideout for the second time? Did Ellen KIel think he needed some movivational speech before coming back to the fight?

jul.19.2023: fixed missing guids for effects since previous.
jul.19.2023: fixed cbts language since previous.
jul.19.2023: changed cbts_effect2 orientation (again, sorry) to original*1000 clamped to int16.

Because I can. 😎

A Patch for a Patch of a Patch 😎

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/134006-game-update-notes-july-18-2023/?do=findComment&comment=1945970

• Written in Stone: This trait now has a 25-second internal cooldown when granting an aura in PvP only.
• Signet of Restoration: Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Signet of Water: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.
• Flamestrike: The first strike of this skill no longer inflicts burning in PvP only. Reduced the secondary burning duration from 1.5 seconds to 1 second in PvP only.
• Dragon’s Tooth: Reduced burning duration from 10 seconds to 5 seconds in PvP only.
• Desert Empowerment: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to grant more barrier than intended in PvP and WvW.
• Fixed an issue in the Silent Surf fractal that caused pets to be affected by the final encounter’s boon stealing mechanic.
• Removed a context menu “Invite” option that was erroneously enabled.

Today I learned they removed the barrier generation from Skill 1 on the Mace.

You mean Mace Blast formerly known as Barrier Blast, i. e. the 3rd skill of the Mace autoattack chain on Mechanist which apparently was stealth-nerfed in the June 27th update?

It’s changes like these that I find rather disturbing.

When Mechanist was released in EoD neither Barrier nor Alacrity have been new concepts. So I have to assume that ArenaNet wanted the autoattack chain to provide Barrier and via Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits also Alacrity.

I further have to assume that they later (June 27th update) wanted to completely remove (not just adjust) Barrier and Alacrity generation from Mace autoattacks and move it to Energizing Slam (Mace 2, Leap) which is also not mentioned in the official patch notes.

• So, which is/was wrong? The original version of the autoattack chain or the updated one?
• Why not tell your players that and for what reasons you changed your mind?
• Why not update the official patch notes, if you have forgotten to mention it?
• Or did you think nobody would notice or care?

I’m not even sure that these undocumented changes are a big nerf to Barrier/Alacrity generation but it changes what you need to do in order to maximize it, i. e. you no longer need to outwait the autoattack chain, but (only) have to use Mace 2 every 6 seconds which you probably did anyway.

The knowledge (and hence skill) gap between average and highly proficient GW2 players is already huge which is one of the main reasons that balancing is so hard. And that’s why I find not (properly) communicating changes to skills so disturbing.

@TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip

 jul.18.2023: updated for jul18 game build maybe.
 jul.18.2023: added kanaxai cm to default logging list.
 jul.18.2023: evtc: player added to table only if in combat.
 jul.18.2023: evtc: retired CBTS_EFFECT.
 jul.18.2023: evtc: added CBTS_EFFECT2 (changed orientation encoding).
 jul.18.2023: evtc/api: added CBTS_FRACTALSCALE (src agent is scale) on log start.