10th december '13 patch notes

(layout being corrected soon)

Structured Player vs. Player

Players will now have a chance at receiving Essence of Luck when salvaging PvP items.
Players can now earn gold while participating in PvP.
There is a 5-gold-per-day cap in Custom Arenas and a 15-gold-per-day cap in Solo Arenas and Team Arenas.
Rewards are higher in Solo Arenas and higher still in Team Arenas.
Added a temporary vendor to the Heart of the Mists that has items that can be purchased with both glory and gold. The vendor contains the following items:
Tomes of Knowledge
PvP dungeon armor sets
PvP cultural armor
20-slot bags
Custom Arena starter kits

Profession Skills

We are introducing a new healing skill for each profession. These skills are locked in both PvE and PvP. They can be unlocked by purchasing them with 25 skill points. When a skill is unlocked on a character, it becomes unlocked in both PvE and PvP.
General

Immobilize can now only stack 3 times.

Charr

Shrapnel Mine: Updated the skill facts to indicate its proximity radius and explosion radius.

New Healing Skills:
Elementalist

Arcane Brilliance—Arcane: Blast the area, hit foes with critical damage, and heal yourself. Healing effectiveness is increased for each target hit.

Engineer

A.E.D—Gadget: Activate your A.E.D., enabling the system to heal you after a brief period of time. If you take lethal damage while A.E.D. is active, it disables and heals you for a large amount.
Static Shock (Toolbelt): Use your A.E.D. to stun an enemy.

Guardian

Litany of Wrath—Meditation: Heal yourself. For a brief time, heal yourself based on a percentage of damage dealt to enemies.

Mesmer

Signet of the Ether
Signet Passive: Regenerate health based on the number of active illusions you control.
Signet Active: Heal yourself and recharge all phantasm skills.

Necromancer

Signet of Vampirism
Signet Passive: Heal when struck by a foe.
Signet Active: Heal yourself and mark a foe. Friendly players will siphon life from that enemy.

Ranger

Water Spirit—Spirit:Summon a water spirit that grants nearby allies a chance to heal when attacking.
Aqua Surge: Heal yourself and cause your water spirit to heal nearby allies.

Thief

Skelk Venom—Venom: Heal yourself. Your next few attacks heal you.

Warrior

Defiant Stance—Stance:Heal yourself. Absorb all incoming damage for a period of time.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
Elementalist

The goal of this release for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth Magic, Air Magic, and Fire Magic trait lines, while taking away some of the need to go into the Arcana line. This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements so that elementalists aren’t forced to go as deep into Arcana in order to get the old attunement-cooldown percentages. In doing so, we decided to move some of the most powerful Adept-tier traits in Water Magic and Arcana to the Master tier. This was done to avoid power creep that would have occurred by letting players gain powerful effects in the Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire Magic, Air Magic, and Earth Magic and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water Magic and Arcana by only investing 10 points.

Fire Magic II—Conjurer: Moved this trait to the Adept tier.
Fire Magic III—Ember’s Might: The effect of this trait has been changed. Burns applied now last 25% longer.
Fire Magic VIII—Burning Fire: This trait has a new effect and now automatically uses Cleansing Fire when the elementalist has 3 conditions. There is also a 40-second cooldown. Moved to the Master tier.
Fire Magic 25—Burning Rage: Increased the damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
Air Magic V—Soothing Winds: Increased the conversion from 5% to 7%.
Air Magic XI—Tempest Defense: Decreased the cooldown from 60 seconds to 25 seconds.
Earth Magic 5—Stone Flesh: Increased the toughness while attuned to Earth magic to 1.5 per level (120 at level 80).
Earth Magic VII—Strength of Stone: Added a 10% gain to condition damage based on toughness.
Earth Magic XI—Diamond Skin: This trait has been redesigned. Conditions now cannot be applied to players when their health is above the 90% threshold.
Water Magic I—Arcane Abatement: Moved to the Adept tier.
Water Magic III—Cantrip Mastery: Moved to the Adept tier.
Water Magic V—Soothing Wave: Moved to the Adept tier. This trait is now redesigned to gain regeneration on incoming critical hits.
Water Magic VIII—Aquamancer’s Alacrity: Moved to the Master tier.
Water Magic IX—Soothing Disruption: Moved to the Master tier.
Water Magic X—Cleansing Wave: Moved to the Master tier.
Arcana III—Final Shielding: Decreased the cooldown from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.
Arcana IV—Vigorous Scepter: Moved to the Adept tier.
Arcana V—Blasting Staff: Moved to the Adept tier.
Arcane VI—Windborne Dagger: Moved to the Adept tier. This trait now functions outside of combat.
Arcana VII—Arcane Retribution: Moved to the Master tier. Decreased the cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
Arcana VIII—Elemental Attunement: Moved to the Master tier.
Arcana IX—Arcane Resurrection: Moved to the Master tier.
The following changes were done to reduce the burden of putting points into the Arcana trait line:
The base cooldown of attunements has been reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. The attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcana, down from 2%. The end result is that attunements now go from 13 seconds to 10 seconds instead of the old range of 16 seconds to 10 seconds.
The base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. The global attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcana, down from 2%. The end result is that global attunement cooldown now goes from 1.625 seconds to 1.25 seconds instead of the previous range of 2.0 seconds to 1.25 seconds.

Bug Fixes

Cleansing Wave: Fixed a bug that caused the trait fact to display an incorrect number of targets.
Static Field: The strike from this skill will no longer be limited by range or line of sight, making it consistent with the stun portion of the skill.
Ring of Earth: Added a range indicator.
Conjure Frost Bow, Conjure Flame Axe, and Conjure Lightning Hammer: These abilities will no longer go on full cooldown when interrupted.
Signet of Restoration: Fixed an issue that caused the skill to heal for incorrect amounts when traited with Written in Stone.
Magnetic Wave: Added a range indicator. Updated the radius fact to display the proper distance.
Soothing Mist: Updated the trait fact to indicate its proper radius.
Conjure Fiery Greatsword: This skill can now be cast while moving.
Zephyr’s Speed: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to behave incorrectly with Lingering Elements.
Stone Flesh: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to behave incorrectly with Lingering Elements.

Engineer

We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity. We also wanted to take out some of the random effects for some of the class’s traits. The biggest change here is allowing Modified Ammunition to work with any skills so that an engineer, regardless of build, can look at putting 30 points into Firearms. By increasing the swiftness duration on Speedy Kits, we hope to allow swiftness to be maintained more reasonably without having to constantly swap kits. This change will also bring down the total uptime for vigor due to its interaction with Invigorating Speed. We don’t like classes having permanent vigor, and this is one of the areas where we needed to tone down the uptime of the engineer’s vigor.

Explosives V—Accelerant-Packed Turrets: Moved to the Adept tier.
Explosives VI—Exploit Weakness: Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%.
Explosives IX—Incendiary Powder: Moved to the Master tier.
Firearms XI—Modified Ammunition: This trait now works regardless of the equipped weapon.
Inventions V—Energized Armor: Increased the conversion from 5% to 7%.
Inventions VIII—Power Shoes: This trait now works outside of combat.
Inventions X—Autotool Installation: Increased the healing percentage from 1% to 5%. Decreased the interval from 10 seconds to 3 seconds.
Inventions XI—Elixir-Infused Bombs: Scaling with healing power has been increased by 50%.
Alchemy V—Blood Injection: Increased the conversion from 5% to 7%.
Alchemy 15—Transmute: Increased the percentage chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
Tools VI—Speedy Kits: Increased the swiftness duration to 10 seconds. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
Tools XI—Armor Mods: Changed this to now trigger when struck instead of on incoming critical hits. Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds.
Blunderbuss: Increased the range of this skill from 400 to 500 (700 when traited with Rifled Barrels).

Bug Fixes

Elixir U: Updated the skill facts to display the proper information associated with this skill.
Med Kit: Added duration facts to the skills on this kit.
Rifled Turret Barrels: Updated Rifle Turret and Rocket Turret to display a damage increase when this is traited.
Slick Shoes: Added a duration fact.
Grenade Barrage: Updated the skill facts to indicate the number of grenades thrown when Grenadier is traited.
Glue Shot: Added a skill fact for pulses.
Jump Shot: Increased the radius of the initial damage from 120 to 240 to match the land radius. Updated the radius fact.
Mortar: The global cooldown has been increased to 2 seconds, which is the actual rate of fire that it’s able to have.
Net Turret: Fixed an issue that occasionally caused the turret to lose its attack when overcharged.
Flamethrower—Napalm: Burning duration now shows the proper burning duration when traited with Napalm Specialist.

Guardian

Tank and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many game types. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities), we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

Zeal V—Shattered Aegis: This trait now applies damage instead of burning.
Zeal VII—Zealous Blade: This trait now scales with healing power by 2%.
Zeal XII—Kindled Zeal: Increased the conversion from 10% to 13%.
Radiance V—Searing Flames: Reduced the cooldown from 20 seconds to 10 seconds.
Radiance X—Powerful Blades: Increased the damage from 5% to 10%.
Valor VI—Retributive Armor: Increased the conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
Honor VI—Pure of Heart: Increased scaling with healing power from 25% to 40%.
Virtues VIII—Supreme Justice: Decreased the number of attacks from 4 to 3.
Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds to players without swiftness and 1 second to players with swiftness.

Bug Fixes

Virtue of Justice: Updated the skill facts to indicate the number of attacks required to trigger this skill. Added a fact that indicates radius when Permeating Wrath is traited. Updated the skill to indicate the increased burn duration when Supreme Justice is traited.
Virtue of Resolve: Updated the skill facts to display the correct healing when Absolute Resolution is traited.
Tome of Wrath—Zealot’s Fervor: Fixed the range indicator so that it will now update properly.
Signet of Wrath: Updated the skill facts to indicate vulnerability when Binding Jeopardy is traited.

Mesmer

The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things: 1) Increasing some of the mesmer support traits and condition-removal traits. 2) Reducing the dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered Conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours to the Adept tier are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s Celerity accomplish the second goal. Before this change, mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points to get the illusion cooldown reduction, which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the mantra-centric traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra Mastery to the Adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.

Domination XII—Confounding Suggestions: This trait now also increases daze duration by 25%.
Dueling VI—Mantra Mastery: Moved to the Adept tier.
Dueling VII—Protected Mantras: Moved to the Master tier. Increased the toughness from 400 to 600.
Chaos I—Chaotic Revival: Reduced the cooldown from 35 seconds to 10 seconds.
Chaos VII—Mirror of Anguish: Reduced the cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
Chaos 25—Chaotic Transference: Increased the conversion from 5% to 10%.
Inspiration IV—Mender’s Purity: This trait now removes 2 conditions.
Inspiration XI—Shattered Conditions: Increased the radius from 240 to 600.
Illusions VI—Dazzling Glamours: Moved to the Adept tier.
Illusions VIII—Illusionary Invigoration: Reduced the recharge from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Moved to the Master tier.
Illusions 15—Illusionist’s Celerity: Moved to the Master tier.
Illusions 25—Shattered Strength: Moved to the Grandmaster tier.

Bug Fixes

Ether Feast: Fixed a bug that was preventing the heal amount per illusion to properly scale with healing power.
Temporal Enchanter: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to display multiple durations on glamour skills.

Necromancer

For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw damage conditions that the necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the necromancers to focus on sustaining themselves through the use of death shroud, health siphoning, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

Mark of Blood: Removed 1 stack of bleed when used in PvP.
Spite X—Chill of Death: Increased the trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
Spite 15—Death into Life: Increased the conversion from 5% to 7%.
Curses IV—Enfeeble: Decreased the weakness duration to 2 seconds. Decreased the bleeding to 1 stack and 6 seconds. Removed the cooldown.
Curses VIII—Banshee’s Wail: Increased the cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
Death Magic 5—Reanimator: Decreased the cooldown from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
Death Magic VIII—Reaper’s Protection: Decreased the cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
Death Magic 25—Deadly Strength: Increased the conversion from 5% to 10%.
Blood Magic 25—Blood to Power: Decreased the health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increased the power from 90 to 120.
Soul Reaping II—Vital Persistence: Increased the reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Bug Fixes

Dark Path: Added a radius skill fact.
Plague: Fixed a bug that prevented both of the spectral buffs from the Spectral Walk skill to be removed when activating this skill.
Well of Power: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly converting fear into stability.

Ranger

For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits in order to have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow players in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere. We also enhanced some Marksmanship traits and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive effect of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

Long Range Shot: Increased the damage at the less-than-500 range by 20%. Increased the damage at the 500 to 1000 range by 15%.
Marksmanship V—Predator’s Instinct: Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the cripple duration from 2 seconds to 10 seconds. Increased the cooldown from 15 seconds to 30 seconds.
Marksmanship VI—Beastmaster’s Bond: Decreased the cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
Skirmishing XII—Moment of Clarity: Stun duration increased from 50% to 100%.
Wilderness Survival 5—Natural Vigor: Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
Wilderness Survival VIII—Oakheart Salve: Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
Wilderness Survival XII—Bark Skin: Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
Nature Magic I—Circle of Life: Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.
Nature Magic V—Strength of Spirit: Increased the conversion from 5% to 7%.
Nature Magic VII—Spirits Unbound: Moved to the Master tier.
Nature Magic IX—Two-Handed Training: Greatsword and spear attacks now have a 50% chance to grant fury on hit. Each attack will have 3 seconds of fury. There is also a 10-second cooldown.
Nature Magic X—Enlargement: This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allows it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
Nature Magic XI—Nature’s Vengeance: Moved to the Grandmaster tier.
Beastmastery VI—Mighty Swap: The might from this trait now applies to players and their pet.
Sun Spirit: Reduced the passive burning from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.
Storm Spirit: Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

Bug Fixes

Trap Potency: Updated this trait to indicate the correct condition duration increase (100%).
Path of Scars: Fixed a bug that enabled the skill to be fired at enemies behind the ranger.
Whirling Defense: Updated the skill facts to be more precise, adding a separate radius for attack and reflection.
Winter’s Bite: Added a weakness skill fact.
Hunter’s Call: Updated the damage fact to reflect the proper amount of hits.
Call of the Wild: Removed the unnecessary range fact.

Ranger Pets

Global
The ranger pet health bar now displays the current health of the player’s pet as a raw number. A tooltip has been added to display the current and maximum health.
Fern Hound
Regenerate: Removed the extra radius fact.
Red Moa
Furious Screech: Added skill facts for radius and number of targets.
Arctodus
Rending Maul: Updated the facts to properly represent the two hits from this attack.

Thief

One of the issues we are working on for thieves in this release is the dependence on traits that boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also reduced the effectiveness of high-evasion thieves by reducing vigor uptime and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents thieves from evading and easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also, we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. The change to Infusion of Shadow is meant to stop players from gaining initiative by applying stealth while already in stealth. This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth. We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is okay, but reusing the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game, especially when gaining large amounts of initiative.

Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75 per second to 1 per second.
Sword—Shadow Return: Renamed to Infiltrator’s Return. Added a .25-second cast time.
Pistol—Pistol Whip: Reduced the aftercast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
Deadly Arts VI—Sundering Strikes: Increased the trigger chance from 33% to 50%. Removed the internal cooldown. Decreased the vulnerability duration from 14 seconds to 6 seconds.
Critical Strikes VI—Practiced Tolerance: Increased the conversion from 5% to 7%.
Critical Strikes VIII—Signet Use: Reduced the initiative gain from 2 to 1.
Critical Strike X—Critical Haste: Increased the trigger chance to 25%.
Critical Strikes 15—Opportunist: Increased the trigger chance to 50%. Increased the cooldown from 1 second to 5 seconds.
Shadow Arts V—Infusion of Shadow: Increased the amount of initiative gained to 2, but only when entering stealth.
Acrobatics III—Vigorous Recovery: Reduced the vigor duration from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.
Acrobatics IV—Assassin’s Retreat: Increased the swiftness duration to 20 seconds.
Acrobatics IX—Quick Recovery: Reduced the initiative gain from 2 to 1.
Acrobatics X—Hard to Catch: Moved to the Master tier.
Acrobatics XI—Assassin’s Reward: Increased the scaling with healing power by 35%. Moved to the Grandmaster tier.
Trickery 5—–Kleptomaniac: Reduced the initiative gain from 3 to 2.
Trickery VII—Bountiful Theft: Reduced the vigor duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

Bug Fixes

Ink Shot: Updated the damage fact to function with Power Shots.
Ink Shot—Smoke Trail: This skill will now return to Ink Shot if the projectile is destroyed.
Dancing Dagger: Updated the cripple skill fact to display the proper duration.

Warrior

The overall goal here is to reduce the damage for very high-control warriors. This means reducing some dependency on spending 30 points for the Burst Mastery trait and making warriors spend 20 points in Arms to get the benefit of Unsuspecting Foe. We also reduced the damage on the Earthshaker skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area-of-effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both. We also increased the readability of Skull Crack, which will allow opposing players to more easily react to it. Combustive Shot on the longbow also saw some rework. It will scale better with adrenaline levels and still provide strong burning per adrenaline level, but the raw damage was toned down slightly.

Strength III—Great Fortitude: Increased the conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
Strength 5—Reckless Dodge: Increased the damage by 25%.
Arms IV—Crack Shot: Moved to the Adept tier.
Arms VII—Unsuspecting Foe: Moved to the Master tier.
Arms XII—Last Chance: Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
Defense XII—Spiked Armor: Reduced the recharge from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
Defense 25—Armored Attack: Increased the conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
Tactics 5—Determined Revival: This trait now correctly displays the amount of toughness.
Tactics 25—Reviver’s Might: This trait now applies 3 stacks of might instead of 1.
Discipline II—Thrill of the Kill: Increased the adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
Discipline XI—Burst Mastery: Reduced the damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed the erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
Earthshaker: Reduced the damage by 20%.
Staggering Blow: Reduced the damage by 23%.
Skull Crack: Increased the cast time from .25 seconds to .5 seconds. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.
Combustive Shot: Increased the pulse duration to 3 seconds. Increased the burn duration per pulse to 3 seconds. Normalized the damage per pulse. Updated the pulses per adrenaline tier to 2, 3, and 4 respectively for adrenaline levels 1, 2, and 3.

Bug Fixes

Crack Shot: Added a piercing fact to the trait and to the affected skills when it is traited.
Healing Signet: Added an interval fact.
Eviscerate: Fixed a bug that caused the damage facts to display the damage levels with Burst Mastery at all times.
Uppercut: Fixed the damage facts in regards to Burst Mastery.
Earthshaker: Fixed the skill facts to indicate the damage increase when Burst Mastery is traited.
Forceful Shot: Fixed the skill facts to indicate the damage increase when Burst Mastery is traited.
Combustive Shot: Fixed an issue that caused the field to be created at incorrect locations when the warrior moved out of range of their initial target. Fixed the skill facts to indicate the damage increase when Burst Mastery is traited.
Skull Crack: Fixed the skill facts to indicate the damage increase when Burst Mastery is traited.
Kill Shot: Fixed the skill facts to indicate the damage increase when Burst Mastery is traited.
Berserker Stance: Rewrote the description to more clearly reflect the function of the skill.
Battle Standard—Whirlwind Banner: Edited the description and fixed some spelling errors.
Determined Revival: Updated this minor trait to indicate the toughness gained.
Call to Arms: Added an unblockable fact and range indicator to this skill.
Rifle Butt: Fixed a bug that prevented the knockback fact from displaying the correct distance.
Signet of Stamina: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from properly removing all conditions.
Shrug It Off: Fixed a bug so that prevented the “Shake It Off!” skill triggered from this trait to properly break fear. Decreased the radius of Shrug It Off to 600 to match the radius of “Shake it Off!” Updated the facts to reflect the trait’s functionality.
“Shake It Off!”: Updated the skill fact for conditions removed to display the actual number of conditions removed.
Desperate Power: Fixed a bug in which this trait would work while above the intended health threshold.

Structured Player vs. Player

Increased the visibility of player nameplates and health bars while spectating.
To reduce the frequency of players leaving tournament matches, the maximum amount of dishonor has been reduced to 3.
To make Slayer and Conqueror achievements more attainable, we have added additional tiers to the achievements.