Release Notes:
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Wintersday
Come join us in celebrating Wintersday - Toymaker Tixx has made his annual visit to Divinity's Reach to spread seasonal cheer and festivity! Bring the cheer of Wintersday to the distant north in the Secret Lair of the Snowmen, complete daily achievements to earn fanciful holiday weapons, save Wintersday for the orphans spread around Divinity’s Reach by giving them wrapped gifts, test your snow-throwing skills against other players in Snowball Mayhem, experience the joy of jumping in Winter Wonderland, defend against waves of toys in Toypocalypse, and help keep Tixx’s airship The Infinirarium in order! You will also see Wintersday gifts appearing all around Tyria.
- The Wintersday annual meta achievement 'Wintersday Traditions' has been updated with a new armor reward, the Winter Mittens - keep your sword hand warded from frosty shivers! Last year's meta reward, the Winter Fur Shoulders, can now be purchased at the festival rewards vendors.
- A new Plush weapon set is now available! You'll receive your choice of a weapon by progressing the annual Wintersday Traditions meta achievement, or the weekly Wintersday Festivities achievement.
- Wintersday Festivities, along with the corresponding weekly achievements in other festivals, now reward their weapon box before their festival material.
- The Sacred Solstice weapon set is now available on the Weekly Wintersday vendors.
- Four new weapons are now available as a rare drop from Wintersday gifts. They can also be purchased from Sparking Stone in Divinity's Reach.
- A new mini pet has been added to Wintersday vendors: the adorable Plush Fox.
- Deft Lahar is visiting Divinity's Reach for the festival, and has a variety of Homestead-tailored recipes for your favorite Wintersday decorations to offer.
- New winter themed guild decorations have been added:
- Jolly Bow
- Icicle
- Star Light String
- Sparkle Light String
- The offseason Wintersday Vendor in Hooligan's Route now stocks a much greater amount of Wintersday items for customers who find themselves with excess Snowflakes after Tixx has closed up his workshop for the year, including the recipes for Homestead decorations.
- A number of festival-related bugs have been fixed to ensure a happy holiday for all heroes.
- To ensure that festivalgoers have ample time to enjoy the holiday, Wintersday will be active until January 2nd at noon PST. See you in Divinity's Reach!
General
- Updated Guild Banners to improve quality of life and reduce buff icon clutter
- The Guild Heroes Banner's multiple buffs have been consolidated to a single buff for its reward boosts and a buff for the Swiftness effect
- Guild banners whose effect was less than the equivalent effect of the Guild Heroes Banner - for example, the basic Karma Banner's 5% Karma boost - are now increased to match the Heroes Banner.
- Interacting with a lesser banner while under the effect of a Guild Heroes Banner will now refresh its duration, if its duration was lower than the banner would provide.
- Removed the non-Heroes banners from the Guild Commendation vendors, since they were extremely inefficient compared to the price of the Guild Heroes Banner.
- Reduced the recharge time of Guild Banners and Feasts when deployed from the Guild Storage.
- Several books have been added to the story instances in Janthir Wilds chapters 11, 12, and 13.
- Players who have acquired the four gifts needed to make Klobjarne Geirr and have unlocked the legendary spear's skin can talk to Unending Tribute to fully complete the Legendary Weapon: Klobjarne Geirr Gifts achievement. This is to help players who have had some of the components prior to the introduction of this achievement and did not retroactively check progress.
- The "Mini Blue Cuckoo Hatchling" and the "Mini Orange Tigris Cub" have now been added to the Black Lion Chest Merchants for 5 Black Lion Statuettes.
- Janthir Syntri: Fixed a bug where small chests at Stricken Plains were not guaranteeing Charged Titan Ore when opened.
- Fixed an animation bug on the Ruinshard Shambler Rampage attack so it's not interrupted
- Purchasing the Standing Stones Timepiece and Bearkin War Helm remnants progress the respective item in the Legendary Spear: Klobjarne Geirr achievement. Players can also load into Lowland Shore to retroactively check if they have completed the Lowland Shore Mastery or Janthir Syntri Mastery achievements.
- Homesteads
- Updated the centering and alignment of many weapon skins on the Weapon Display Case decoration.
- A cuddly new Homestead decoration is available for players who've completed the Build-a-Quaggan collection.
Raids
Mount Balrior
- Decima: Focused Fluxlance now only requires three players in the beam instead of five. Because base damage is divided among players, the base damage was also reduced to keep final damage numbers consistent.
- Decima: Fixed a bug causing players to be miscounted by Focused Fluxlance. The mechanic will now fail consistently if too few players soak the beam.
- Decima: Defiance increased by 25%. However, the channel for Flux Nova is now shortened when Decima's Defiance is broken and she gains Fractured Armor.
- Decima: Peal of Harmony is now gained every 5% damage taken instead of every 3% damage taken. This will reduce the number of Dancing Sparks generated overall.
- Decima: Fixed a few issues causing the telegraphs for Decima's various Fluxlance attacks to be invisible to some players.
- Decima: When Decima is defeated any telegraphed Fluxlance attacks will be interrupted and clean up immediately.
- Decima: To provide a little extra time to position for Focused Fluxlance, all Fluxlance attacks in Phase 3 now have an extra half-second of warmup time before they fire.
- Decima: Characters squashed because they were standing directly under Decima during Earthrend and Seismic Crash are now instead downed and knocked away.
- Decima: Fixed a bug preventing Fluxlance in Phase 1 from targeting Downed characters.
- Greer: Greer no longer has permanent Resolution.
- Greer: Enfeebling Miasma attack region now matches its warning areas, and lingering gas clouds have area warning circles
- Greer: Greer's projectiles can no longer be reflected back at him. Those projectiles will instead be destroyed, keeping the protective utility of the affected skills
- Greer: Surviving Empowering Beasts are now cleaned up when Greer is slain
- Greer: Blob of Blight now correctly stays in place after it hits a targeted player, and smaller projectiles are now properly destroyed on impact
- Greer: Greer's first two stomp attacks in his Stomp the Mould skill are now blockable and Dodgeable
- Greer: Greer should now attack pets less often
- Ura: Fixed an issue which could cause the Sulfuric Acid debuff to persist after defeating the boss
- Ura: Added additional telegraphing for players targeted by Ura's Eruption Vent ability
- General: Players are now properly notified about the new raid through an alert.
- General: Dialogue does not repeat on re-entering the raid if they have progressed past that point
- General: Fixed a bug causing unintended scaling on the two Legendary Titanspawn events.
- General: Fixed a couple edge cases which could result in the Legendary Titanspawn events stalling.
- General: Fixed a bug that allowed characters to leave Greer and Decima's arenas mid fight
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General
- Fixed a bug causing some professions and elite specializations to miss out on having their resources refreshed and cooldowns reset when an encounter begins if the player was mounted at the time of the refresh.
Profession Skills
- Elementalist
- Volcano: Fixed an issue that prevented this skill from creating attacks on certain terrain.