Anet has officially announced a game-changing update coming in April 2014 that will add several new features and gameplay mechanics to Guild Wars 2. "As a release that focuses primarily on game systems, the April 2014 Feature Pack will include a sweeping range of new features—everything from new systems that change and upgrade the way you experience Guild Wars 2 to quality of life and balance updates that improve existing gameplay systems." - Official Announcement The first of the features announced is a complete overhaul of the trait system. Key Features: 40 new Grandmaster traits! Traits will be free (no longer requires buying a manual). Free refunding of traits to re-spec via trait panel anytime while not in combat or competitive PvP. New characters will unlock the adept tier at level 30, the master tier at level 60, and the grandmaster tier at level 80. You’ll start acquiring points at level 30, when the adept trait tier is unlocked, then you’ll earn one trait point every six levels until level 66, when you’ll start earning two trait points at a time. Each point will be the equivalent of five of the old points. You’ll receive 50 of each associated stat and unlock the use of a minor or major trait slot. Major traits will now be unlocked via opening traits guides. You can find trait guides by completing specific content in the world, like story dungeons, minidungeons, WvW, personal story, specific bosses, and discovering certain areas on the world map. Read More
Upcoming blog posts of the new Feature Pack have been titled as follows. I will post here when they are released. The Art of Combat Critical! A New Way to Explore the Looks of Guild Wars 2 A Colorful Outlook Looking For Group? Removing Restrictions Account-Bound A Solid Foundation Facilitating Friendly Play Facilitating Friendly Play: Part Two Facilitating Friendly Play: Part Three
Runes, Sigils, and Balance Update Runes: One of our main considerations with this balance pass was encouraging players to use one whole rune set, rather than mixing and matching one or two from several different sets. All the runes’ set bonuses will be updated to shift the payoff towards the four, five, and six-piece bonuses. We are updating a lot of runes to have a specific focus, such as adding a particular boon or condition or catering to a supporting or offensive role. In fact, you’ll find that the way we’ve reimagined certain runes will take away some of the need to mix and match sets; we’ve updated rune sets to fill some of the niches that were currently unfilled. We’re drastically increasing the proc rates on all the bonuses; the six-rune bonus proc for superior rune sets will have a 50% likelihood, making the bonus much more reliable and interesting for use in all kinds of combat. Sigils: All sigil recharges will be separate. Sigils of the same type will still not work with one another. The functionality of each sigil has changed so that killing a player is worth five stacks of a sigil in any game mode, while killing a monster only grants one stack. This type of sigil will have more strict rules applied on them, so that a player will no longer be able to gain 25 stacks and then un-equip the sigil. Two-handed weapons will be gaining the ability to equip multiple sigils. The UI has been updated and you’ll be able to place sigils in each slot accordingly. "On-hit" sigils will grant their bonus when you hit an opponent, rather than only when you score a critical hit. Official Blog Post
Learn About Critical Damage One of the balance changes coming in the April 2014 Feature Pack is the introduction of ferocity, a brand new stat that will affect your critical damage. Ferocity is being introduced to make bonus critical damage easier to understand, more easily scaled across the whole game, and to help foster a healthy balance environment that encourages players to experiment with their builds. Ferocity starts at a base of 0 points and can be increased with gear, traits, or buffs that add to your total ferocity value. Your bonus critical damage goes up as you put more points into ferocity. (Ex. As critical chance goes up with more precision, attack goes up with more power, etc.). As a result, critical damage will be displayed in manner that is consistent with the main stats on gear and skills, rather than just as a flat percentage. As a bonus, you’ll notice that using ferocity as a stat is going to normalize critical damage across items so there isn’t a single item that’s clearly the best to equip for a critical damage boost. At level 80, it will take 15 points of ferocity to gain 1% bonus critical damage, which means that there will about a 10% decrease in overall damage for a full “berserker” build. Critical damage displays as a bonus now and will appear a lot higher than before. This is because all critical hits already have a base damage of 150% normal attack damage. So if you have 50% critical damage bonus, your critical hit damage is raised from 150% to 200%. Official Blog Post @PsychoAco I know right? That's why I always try to wield 2 two-handed weapon sets, just so I can get 4 sigil bonuses. This is genius!
Today's developer livestream notes: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/210opr/ready_up_ep8_developer_livestream_notes/
Introducing New Wardrobe System View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_5dTUdS1nsk New wardrobe UI and equipment tab Collection of all armors you find gets put into your "account wardrobe" for easy browsing and transmutation anytime. Hovering mouse over previews changes! Dyes will be account bound! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-wardrobe-system/ Dyes in the New Account Wardrobe Discovered dyes will be account bound (usable with any character on your account). If you already have the same dyes unlocked on multiple characters, when you log in on additional characters, you will receive one unidentified dye for each duplicate dye already unlocked on your account. Unidentified dyes will no longer drop as loot but will still be available from the Mystic Forge and select in-game rewards. New Dyes Tab https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/dyes-in-the-new-account-wardrobe/
More Changes: "We’ve added some additional support the Looking For Group (LFG) system. You’ll now be able to filter your searches through the WvW category if you’re looking for some fellow Mist warriors. To support this, we’ve added a separate channel for each of the three Borderlands, the Eternal Battlegrounds and the new Edge of the Mist map." ACCOUNT BOUND WvW XP!!! "To begin with, you will need to log into every character on your account that has earned WXP to have their WXP total added to your account total. From that moment on all WXP you earn on any of your characters will be applied to your account total!" "Ascended equipment will be account-bound and will not soulbind to a character when equipped. Legendary weapons will continue to be tradeable until equipped, at which point they will become account-bound (rather than soulbound). As part of this change, we will convert all the existing ascended and legendary equipment that is soulbound to be account-bound instead." No more cost to repair your armor. "We’ll be reducing the amount of raw gold that comes out of champion loot bags and events in an effort to keep the economy balanced and spread out player activity a bit." "With the coming feature build, you’ll be able to respec your traits anywhere in the world without returning to a profession trainer. To make the deal even sweeter, you won’t ever have to pay to reset your traits!" "In the feature pack, we will be unifying daily and monthly achievements. With new systems like the Wardrobe, Gear Unification, and Reward Tracks coming online to help create a consistent experience across different areas of the game, we felt that having separate daily and monthly achievement categories was unnecessary and potentially confusing." "As of April 15, there will no longer be PvP items in the game. The look you set for your weapons and armor in PvE and WvW will carry over into PvP. The stats of your gear in PvE will continue to have no effect in PvP. You are simply carrying over your looks between game types; every player will still enjoy total statistical equality in PvP. " New Reward Track System: "A Reward Track is a set of rewards that you earn by playing PvP. Each track has rewards at certain intervals: some that you can earn in a just couple of matches, bigger rewards that you can earn in a play session, and a really sweet end prize that you can earn in a few play sessions. Examples of rewards you can look forward to include various levels of loot boxes, crafting materials, Transmutation Charges, weapons, armor, skill points and more. At regular intervals, you will earn Tomes of Knowledge that will allow you to level up and earn skill points for any of your characters." "There is also a rotating schedule of dungeon Reward Tracks that will allow you to play PvP to earn rewards from specific dungeons. Every two weeks, a different dungeon Reward Track will become available to players. These award weapons, armor, and dungeon tokens among other things. If you want to complete a specific dungeon Reward Track at your leisure, simply complete the story mode of that dungeon to unlock the PvP Reward Track permanently" "In addition, as new Living World and holiday content is released, associated Rewards Tracks will be available for the duration of those events. Once you have experienced and participated in the Living World content, you will unlock an associated Reward Track so you have the option to continue to receive relevant rewards in PvP. This will ensure that PvP is always a part of the bigger story that is unfolding in Tyria." "As mentioned above, dungeon tracks will have dungeon tokens. Other earnable components include skill points, Obsidian Shards, high-end crafting materials, and Mystic Clovers. There are even chances to find precursors in chests you earn. In fact, with these items and the gold that you earn from PvP rewards, you’ll be able to play PvP to gather almost everything you need to craft a legendary! "
GW2 team announced they will be making a huge change to the PvE server system, called the "Megaserver System." Basically, upon logging in, it will move PvE players to more populated servers during non-peak hours to help with world boss and living story event completion so you won't ever be playing on an empty server. It also will auto-connect you to a server where you have the most friends playing, or what server your guild mates are on, so you will always have friends to play with (if you have friends on other servers). Read the official post here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/
