The latest Guild Wars 2 update features a major profession skills overhaul that has frustrated the community since some notes were released on Friday without context or reasoning. The rest of the update includes a change to End of Dragons Strike Missions, rotates Call of the Mists, opens up Emboldened raids, and an adjustment to Heart of Thorns.
This is a big update, and the profession skills overhaul is the center of it. Yesterday, Game Director Josh Davis responded to the flood of feedback and frustration that accompanied the release of the initial notes without any context or reasoning as to why these changes in particular were happening, as well as some of the actual changes happening. Davis promises that explanatory notes will be coming soon. The profession skills changes are extensive, and it’s more than likely that you’ll have to get used to at least a few new options or functions.
As for the other changes in the update, in addition to a series of bug fixes, there are some UI accessibility improvements like adding cursor contrast options and bind options for the Mastery skill menu. End of Dragons Strike Missions all have increased gold rewards, and new drops in challenge modes.
Raids get some updates, including new raid options in the group finder tab and the Emboldened mode option. Call of the Mists isn’t permanently active anymore and will join the weekly rotation pool. One of the seven raid wings will get Emboldened mode each week (but groups can vote to disable it). When you enter a raid, you’ll get a stack of Emboldened, which gives you boosts to damage, improved healing, and health to help you out in the challenge. If you fail a boss encounter, you’ll get another stack. If you defeat a boss, it resets.
Heart of Thorns gets a change to the final story instance, Hearts and Minds, where the holding area players were sent to initially upon dying being removed and a series of checkpoints that will help give more chances to recover and complete the rest replacing it.
For the full notes, head over to Guild Wars 2.
