Guild Wars 2 - Leaked patch notes

Account

• Optimization to reduce visible “Portal lag”
• Improve Portal watching
• Attempting to fix a Portal party issue (not related to the above change)

Art/Animation

• Legendary weapon replacement skill effects
• Gadget on gadget flux
• Point lights are now enabled on equipped items
• Added support for replacement material effects
• Support material replacement file effect fading
• Added the “Sylvari glow”
• There is a new indefinite progress bar that uses the wipe shader
• Added Mystic Forge sparklies
• Mystic Forge fire spirals in one direction
• Rewards now “fly” into the Mystic Forge

Chat

• Local chat (Say) is now very short range. /Shout (/Map) at map range has been added.

Crash

• Gadget crash fix
• Chat-related crash fixed
• Using items from your bank no longer crashes the server
• Loading into different maps is ok now
• Players can now leave their party without crashing
• Fix for guild bank crash (related to permissions)
• Fix for the cursor being out of bounds in a text box
• Playing with players from other shards should no longer crash WvW
• Fix in for a missile crash
• Fixed buff crashes
• Dialog manager crash fix
• Crash fix for character creation
• Fix for a marker-related crash
• Entering/leaving the water context no longer crashes
• Disabled a forced server crash
• Fixed a Mystic Forge rash
• Opening the hint dialog no longer crashes
• Agent selection crash (loot crash)

Gameplay

• Iconics have 1% of the normal hate
• F11 should now open the options menu
• If a player goes from alive to dead, we now give them a waypoint to port to so they can resurrect
• Input binding:
• There are now distinct left and right shift keys

• Rewards:
• Map complete rewards are now available

• If a transformation isn’t allowed to interact with bundles, drop any bundles the character may be
holding when transformed (No more flamethrower ooze H)
• Map complete doesn’t trigger every time you zone into a map now
• Gadgets/turrets now have a concept of an “authority”
• The player that creates the gadget is assigned as that gadget’s authority
• This basically means that players that place down the Siege blueprints can kick out other
players who are in their siege weapons if they want to use them
• “Move to Target” split into underwater and terrestrial
• “Move to Target” no longer applicable when downed
• Only 5 unique combatants can combo with a given combo field
• Characters that aren’t alive don’t return legendary weapon ItemDefs
• Mystic Forge only takes one of each kind of item [F 234559]
• Trait tiers are in
• Added account bound items
• Players can no longer redirect to a map if they are already redirecting
• Added a skill point currency type
• A shard selection bug has been fixed
• Input bindings have been implemented
• Improved how “Fear” works
• Recharge slows should be slowing for the proper amount now
• Spawn scaling for low-level events has been adjusted
• Level 70+ rare items have the potential to salvage out more materials as deemed by special reward
tables
• Auto-attacks no longer continue to attack an unselected target
• Missiles now fire in the direction of the camera when the player has no target and is holding down
the right mouse button (Side note: This is awesome)
• Players can now queue for multiple maps concurrently
• The default mouse scroll rate has been changed to 2x
• Mouse-looking no longer drives a characters movement unless they’re executing an upper body skill
• Characters can no longer jump if the jump state doesn’t exist
• The Fear mechanic has been improved
• Action Char Fear Char
• Action Skill Fear

• LFG:
• More backend implementation
• Blocked players no longer show up in LFG

• PvP:
• Added rank rewards to PvP Ranks
• Changed from a level to a level range per recent PvP Rank discussions
• PvpRank has been split from Glory
• Ranks now define a range of PvP ranks
• Placeholder awards are going through the reward manager
• Added support for Glory Boosts
• Start Auto Tournaments as soon as there are enough rosters ready (and send out a countdown
when the match is about to start)
• Tournament server improvements
• PvP Lobby waypoint travel is free
• Added a new reward type for PvP rank up
• Players with an “Offline” status can now be invited to tournaments
• Players are unable to send tournament invites to themselves

• WvW:
• Cannons now display red targeting circles to the enemy
• Game ending has been smoothed out
• Players receive a warning message and are redirected (configurable in content)
• The score dialog now displays a message telling the player their team’s final position
• Gadgets now report their WvW team
• Gadgets can now insert their shard names into their name if they know their WvW team
• WvW travel is free
• Clicking “Go to WvW” will close the score dialog now (by design)
• Squad members may now speak into the squad channel
• Removed /.sq dev command
• Added /squadjoin and /squadleave client commands
• Commanders are now named “Commander ”
• Players are no longer able to log back in to WvW maps
• Implemented /squadinfo and /supplyinfo

• Mystic Forge:

• Polish
• Added click and drag of slotted materials
• Added flames!
• Added a quantity check for ingredients that require a certain item count before we
request to forge a new item
• The Mystic Forge can take consumable subtypes
• Sparkly polish
• Now compares are weight class
• Now uses upgrade component types
• Added support for a “none” trinket type
• We hide the ingredient slots while animating then fade them back in when we display the
reward dialog
• Fixed being able to match item subtypes correctly if set to “any”

• Ranger:
• Pets can no longer be swapped out to instantly come back to life

Guild

• Fixed the guild vault to not crash other players who are viewing the Vault

Input Bindings

• The world map now closes while you’re in a cinematic
• The world map now shows up properly
• Ranger profession skill 2 now works
• Hooked up the WvW score screen to the new keybind action
• Extended mouse buttons work now
• Actions are now set to inactive when the Ul gains focus
• Added the option to reset all actions to their defaults
• Fixed some bugs with underwater interaction

Logging

• ItemDef logs the coin paid and the item now

Optimization

• Some backend stuff for the camera has been optimized
• If a controlled character is more than a certain distance away from a specific other
character, don’t update their terrain type (this prevents an extra raycast)
• WvW:
• Commander markers should no longer cause severe server lag

UI

• The hint dialog is disabled on non-dev builds
• The installer has been disabled on live
• Beginnings of the reward Ul have gone in
• The reward manager persists through different types of rewards (IE daily/monthly
achievement completion, map completion, tournament loot)
• VOcan now play for hints
• NPC interaction icons have been corrected
• Sorting arrows are no longer displayed if you cannot sort
• Shard selection dialog boxes resize themselves dynamically to fit the strings they contain
• Level up unlock alerts are now level up unlock hints
• Max level experience bar polish/issue fixup
• Character select doesn’t kick you back to character creation
• The commerce panel uses the commerce background again
• Inventory defaults to 5 units wide
• Achievement alert polish
• The party Ul shows team members again
• “Move to Target” option moved up in the options dialog
• Added a reset button to the Mystic Forge
• The experience bar can now show Glory
• Skill damage floaters are no longer deferred to later attacks
• Mystic item tooltips
• Fixed an image scaling bug
• Client gadgets were substituting Blue/Green shard names into the wrong areas
• Mystic Forge now pops up a dialog box when you discover a recipe
• Added a (possibly temporary) overflow label to the compass when in an overflow map
• Guaranteed and selectable rewards have been swapped
• Fixed a reward dialog sizing bug
• Added the option to disable AoE rings
• The experience bar displays properly at level 80
• Persistent reward select alerts show up under the map layer
• Hero dialog PvP polish
• Skill challenge markers should no longer be broken
• The window buttons have backgrounds
• Window visibility checks have been improved
• We now display the name of the item that’s in an invalid slot
• Added new URLs that direct to GW2 support
• Added character context menu options for travelling to a party member’s shard
• Select reward alerts have been moved away from the side of the screen
• Professions that did not have a hue value now have one
• Reward polish
• Only show the keybinds tab when logged in
• Compass:
• Reducing object count for better performance (for now)

• World select:
• Re-added world filtering that checks for content per world

• WvW:
• Enemy pets and players are named with their shard name instead of team color
• Sectors can be marked up to have their shard name displayed
• Added “Go to WvW” button to the WvW score screen
• Commander markers no longer disappear after exiting a siege weapon
• Join WvW buttons use the correct world name for maps and actually take players
to WvW on Alpha
• Left-clicking on a commander icon opens a context menu (with only one option
at the moment)
• The chat user context menu has an option to join that player’s squad

• Chat:

• Team chatting is prevented in all non-WvW and non-PvP maps
• Team chat is now game-server based
• Player scene and chatter lines are not shown as bubbles
• Support for map-wide chat (/shout, /yell, /y) has been hooked up
• /say and /local are now radius and reporting based instead of event based
(current radius is 2000)

• Hints:

• Dialog now updates as hints are completed
• Category heights are now consistent
• Downed penalty hint
• Conditions
• Boons
• Equipment broken
• Waypoints
• Achievements
• Damaged equipment
• Upgrade components
• Crafting stations
• Resource nodes
• Stealing
• Fixed the attunement hint
• Change the Adrenaline and Life Force hints to require two uses to complete
each hint
• Salvage kits
• Ranger pet bar
• Ranger pet controls
• Guardian virtues
• Mesmer shatters
• Engineer tool belt
• Meta events
• Renown rewards
• Ranger pet charm
• Pet panel
• Escape now cancels out of hints
• Added a “New” category to the hint dialog
• Added “NEW” indicators for recently completed hints
• Party invites
• Text now displays properly
• PvP:

• Fixed an error response from Play Now noticed during BWE1
• Added the tournament Ul (and polish)
• PvP now sends grand totals of glory and rank points earned during
the match for display on the client
• Match countdown UI
• Fixed the experience bar hiding in PvP
• Tournament roster fixes
• The match countdown isn’t displayed if you’re already in a match
• Tournament invite button bling
• Added a tooltip to the PvP scoreboard join team button
• The tournament roster now handles scrolling
• The roster size is limited to the max team size
• Added a roster button to the tournament details
• Cumulative Glory is no longer shown in the hero dialog
• Added more error strings for tournament errors
• The tournament roster now sorts

• Guild:

• Emblem – Update the paper doll when the guild changes
• The vault log shows the amounts that are deposited or withdrawn

• Mystic Forge:

• The “Forge” button will only be enabled when 4 items with a match are slotted
• Inventory items fade in/out over time
• General polish
• Enable/disable the craft and reset buttons based on the slotted item count

• Items:

• Transmuted items are no longer colored purple; they now take on the rarity
color of their attribute item
• Legendary items are now purple

• Launcher:

• Localized text and text box have been resized for the stress test
• The launcher now shows the amount downloaded
• Large numbers are no longer bugged
• Auto-play has been fixed

 

• Inventory:

• We log the deletion of items on import if the item type changes so we can
attempt to move items that can’t be imported to the equipment to inventory
or overflow

Guardian Warrior Duel

The Borderlands - a Guide

Some handy tips

Great tips here Highlights:

I'm sure you've heard the complaint... "We can use skills even if we aren't in range and there's no way of knowing if we're out of range!" But I learned that's wrong. I actually thought this too, and thought they should make the skills turn red or have a red bar over them when out of range, that is... until I discovered that they already do. It's the number. If you're in range, the skill number is white, if you're out of range it's red. Here's a visual example, watch skill #4 and F1, F2, F3:

Next... "The towns are too freakin' huge! I get completely lost, and having to run all over the place is a major pain in the butt!" Indeed it was, until I discovered I could use waypoints in town at no charge. Hit M to pull up your map. There are 3 levels. Above ground, ground level, and under ground. You can click each of the levels to show a different map. Wherever you need to go, just find a waypoint near there and use that to fast travel to that location rather than getting lost or running all over the place trying to find it. This proves very very useful...

"Having to hit F and click each item individually to loot them is so annoying! They need some kind of auto loot." There is an auto-loot system actually - it's in Options. You still have to hit F, but it'll automatically pick up everything for you so you don't have to click each individual thing. It can still be somewhat annoying if there's an NPC near you since there is no dedicated loot button and you'll tend to "interact" with the NPC a lot by mistake, but it's worlds easier than clicking each item individually.

Guild Cast - stress test

Guardian Asura armour?

DPS - Guardian

In my play testing of the Guardian I have neglected testing a dps build.

This guy hasnt. Have a watch of this.








His build.

Sigils:
Sigil of Superior Strength (30% chance to apply might for 10s on critical.) on Sword and Scepter.
Sigil of Superior Battle (You gain 3 stacks of might for 20s when you swap to this weapon while in combat.) on Torch and Focus.

Armor Runes:
2x Rune of the Fire (+25 power, +20% might duration).
2x Rune of Hoelbrak (+25 power, +20% might duration).
2x Rune of Strength (+25 power, +20% might duration).

Jewelry:
Amulet with +813Power, +580Toughness, +580Vitality.
6x Perfect Opal Jewel (+25Power, +15Toughness, +15Vitality)

PvP- My hero

A few questions I cant find the answer to.

I would be grateful if there is anyone who can answer the following questions about Guardian Traits.

Zeal:

Does Shattered Aegis apply to any and all aegis you apply including that from Retreat?

Radiance:

Does Healers Retribtion only apply to the skill in the 6 slot?

Valor:

Does Might of the Protector only work of aegis or is it triggered by some mace, shield or Focus attacks?

Does Defender Flame only trigger on Aegis on yourself or is it on any Aegis you cast?

Honour:

What is the use of Protective Spirit?

Does pure of Heart only apply to Aegis on the Guardian Himself?

Virtues:

Does Purity of Resolve only remove conditions from the Guardian.

Thanks for any information you may have.

http://forum.guildmag.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=1055

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/forum/general-guild-wars-2-discussion/guardian-traits-a-few-questions/

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/36985-guardian-traits-a-few-questions/

Thoughts after the stress test.

So last night I spent the entire stress test seeing how my Gaurdian theorycrafting stood up to play. It was a very useful exercise. I gained a few insights.

Heal Skill: 

Our three heal skills are useful and certianly have a role. My play style is support and that meant I spent most of my time using healing Breeze as it heals my allies. Healing breeze also has the advantage of being on the quickest cooldown, it is usable every 30 seconds. However if I was concerned with taking condition damage I could have used Signet of Resolve which synergises well with the trait Purity, Combined they would remove two Conditions every 10 seconds. Perhaps if I was interested I could have added in the trait Purity of Resolve which removes 3 Condtions when The Virtue of resolve is activated. Our third heal is somewhat overlooked but I can see a role for it in a dps build especially if it is used in Conjunction with Defenders Flame.

Utility Skill:

I tried a few of these and I have some favorites Picking the best ones will be difficult.

Signet of Mercy -Passive: Improves healing. Active: Revive a nearby ally. While this is a powerful revive returning a lot of health the coolddown is over long. I need to get a figure for the increase on healing it gives but it synergises with a lot of other aspects of the support Guardian. In addtion the trait Perfect Inscriptions can be taken to improve the passive of the Signet. It would probably be a better use of this trait if we were using more than one Signet.

Signet of Judgement - Passive: Reduces incoming damage.Active: Grant retaliation to nearby allies. I enjoyed this skill it buffs the guardian and upto 5 nearby allies. A single player hiting a group buffed with this will find his health whittled down.

Wall of Reflection - Protect target area with a wall of mystic power that reflects projectiles. Duration: 5 s with a 30 sec cooldown. I loved this, ranged classes nuked themselves down against this. It can be dropped in the middle of a fight and it sometimes not noticed. If you use the staff use Line of Warding to draw a line in front of you that foes cannot cross. This way both melee and casting enemies are hampered. One short coming is that it’s a wall rather than a shell so it is less useful when taking a keep.

Hold the Line - Grant protection and regeneration to allies. Is this essential for a support Guardian I suspect that it is. If I were to take only one shout I would not trait it.

Retreat – A 2^nd shout that grants aegis and swiftness to up to five nearby allies. If I were to take two shouts then I would also look into traiting them. A 20% reduction in cooldown might be useful.

Merciful Intervention. Teleport to the nearby ally with the lowest health and create a healing area around them. 45 second cooldown. Another direct heal. Teleports can end deliver you to strange places, be warned.

Purging Flames - Create a ring of fire that burns enemies and remove conditions from allies.I ewnjoyed this as I was focused a lot and it allowed me to retaliate.

Sanctuary - Form a protective shelter that prevents foes and projectiles from entering, and heals allies.  Duration: 10 s  Cool down of 120 seconds is a bit long. If we were to pick up Wall of Reflection as well. It might be worth traiting these skills. It is possible to make these Concecrations ground targeted, recharge faster and last longer.

Bow of Truth: Summon an arcane bow to remove conditions from you and your allies. I need to test the heal on this.

Some rules of thumb:

My Top three utility skills after the stress test are:

Hold the line. Direct heal and short cooldown.

Retreat. A good defensive buff and speed.

Merciful Teleportation. Another decent heal and also selects the player most in need. So should be moron friendly. Also useful to get out of jail.

Don’t trait for a type of skill(Coecration, Symbol, Meditation) Unless you have two of that type. Remember your downed bar has a symbol!

Some Trait seem too good to pass on. Justice is Blind, Altruistic Healing, Battle Presence and  Resolute. I also like the heal from selfless daring.

Altuistic Healing works well with the shouts as does Might of the Virtuous.

This would be a good base for traits with 35 points still to allocate.

So this is a possible revised build for Warband support. It offers a lot of synergy with shouts. I am unsure of Pure of Heart applies to every Aegis or just the one on the guardian.

Guild Wars 2 first impressions a post I liked.

Here.

The money quote.

Friends are part of the system requirements.

If you want to have the best experience, you need to be playing with someone, preferably a friend or two. Yes, people join ad-hoc into miniature groups formed around the dynamic events, which I found to be one of the best parts of the game. But often I found myself by myself, wandering around without a care in the world. It was still very fun, but some things are very tough if you don’t know what you’re doing, and it does get lonely. This becomes startling clear in WvW to the point where I feel I need to issue a warning: If you’re planning to take WvW seriously, you will need a clan. You alone will not survive unless you are surrounded by others, and the only way servers will win these battles is through massive clan co-operation and tactics that normal groups of players just don’t have. Small groups of your friends will probably be able to tackle the small fry as an ambush group, but don’t expect to remain standing when you walk down a hill and find yourself face to face with fifty people marching towards the point you just came from.

A differing opion here.

Guardian - a break down for the pure support role

This build is designed, both to passively buff those around the Guardian and to utilse Virtues to actively buff and debuff.

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3ac6g09amgmf9omk100aauk7a7e7n7pibirj1

The weapon selection gives 3 combo field light and combo finisher whirl.

The Build – Traits

Radiance: 100 precision, 10% increased condition duration.

5 points – Justice is Blind. Blind is a powerful debuff giving the guardians dps virtue a role in mitigation. This virtue is on the shortest cooldown making this a powerful use of points.

10 Points – Perfect Inscriptions - Buffs the passive on Signet of Mercy.

Valor: 100 Toughness, 10 increase to critical damage

5 points – Valorius defence – we gain aegis at 50% health.

10 points – Altruistic healing – Every time you apply a boon to allies you are healed.

Honour: 300 Vitality, Increases healing by 300.

5 points – Vigouros Precision

10 points – Pure of Heart – a buff to aegis that adds aheal when its expended.

15 points – Selfless Daring – your dodge roll heals allies.

20 points – Battle Presense – allies gain the Guardians passive regen (potentially very powerful skill)

25 points – Might of the Virtuous – a buff to Aegis When it is removed a might buff is cast

30 points – Resolute Healer – Gain a Shiled of Absorbtion on reviving an ally

Virtues: Increase condition damage by 200, increase Virtue recharge by 20%

5 points - Inspired Virtues – adds valuable buffs to The Guardians Virtues on Activation.

10 points – Courgaeous – Aegis is triggered every 30 seconds. Should work with altruistic healing.

15 points -Virtue of Retribution you gain Retaliation when you use a Virtue

20 Points – Resolute – this makes the passive regen stronger, works well with Battle Precence in the Honour tree.

passive ~220/tick x5 => 1100/sec overall (Battle Presence and Resolute)
active ~2000 + 240/tick(5sec) x5 = 266/sec + 3 conditions removed every 60 seconds (Purity of Resolve and Inspired Virtue)
only time you would ever want to activate Virtue of Resolve is when you or a good portion of your allies would otherwise certainly be dying in the next few seconds

Healing Skill:

Healing breezes- This heals both the Guardian and those in front of him and stacks with regen. Our most powerful group Heal

Utility Skills:

Signet of Mercy - Passive: Improves healing. Active: Revive a nearby ally. 240 second recharge time.

Merciful Intervention – Teleport to the nearby ally with the lowest health and create a healing area around them. This is an obvious heal but less obviously it can get us out of trouble as a ghetto teleport. 45 second cooldown.

Sanctuary – Form a protective shelter that prevents foes and projectiles from entering, and heals allies. A useful shield and a decent healon a 120 second cooldown.

Elite Skill:

Tome of Curage - Tome of Courage locks the user in place while granting Stability, a major increase in health, and five skills that replace the standard weapon skills:

Skills:

Heal Area - Heal allies in the target area.

Purifying Ribbon - Release a ribbon of light that bounces to nearby allies, removing one conditionfrom each ally hit, blinding each enemy hit.

Protective Spirit - Grant protection and regeneration to allies in a cone.

Pacifism - Pacify foes in the area, dazing them for three seconds.

Light of Deliverance - Fully heal up to five allies.

The choice of wepaons reflects that role for this guardian build.

Mace:

Faithful Strike – The last attack on the chain heals the guardian.

Symbol of Faith - Smash a mystic symbol onto the ground that damages foes and regenerates allies.

 Regeneration: 1 s, Duration: 4 s , Refresh 6 s

Protector’s Strike - Surround yourself and nearby allies with a shield. Knock back enemies that strike protected allies. Grant protection to yourself and nearby allies if you are not struck.

 Protection: 5 s, Push: 240 Range: 130 

Shield :

Shield of Judgement - Create a shielding wave in front of you that damages foes and gives protection to yourself and up to 5 allies.

Protection: 5 s

Shield of Absorbtion - Create a dome around you that knocks back foes and then absorbs projectiles.

 Duration: 4 s, Push: 100 

Staff:

Wave of Wrath - Send out a powerful shockwave, hitting up to five foes.

  Range: 600

Orb of Light - Fire a slow moving orb of light that can be detonated to heal allies.

   Range: 1200

Symbol of Swiftness - Sear a mystic symbol into the target area, damaging foes and granting swiftness to allies.

 Swiftness: 2 s,  Radius: 15,   Duration: 4 s,  Range: 1200

Line of Warding - Draw a line in front of you that foes cannot cross.

 Duration: 5 s

Martyr - Draw conditions from nearby allies to yourself. Gain multiple boons for a short duration.

 Might: 5 s, Fury: 5 s , Protection: 5 s , Regeneration: 5 s ,Swiftness: 5 s , Vigor: 5 s , Range: 1200 

This build should have sufficient survivability to keep the Guardain up and provide massive protection, blockingand regen is very very good. To augment this I would use the following Runes.

Rune of Dwayna 6/6 - +25healing/+20%Regeneration Duration/+50Healing/5% to gain Regeneration when hit/+90Healing/All nearby allies gain regeneration for 10 seconds after using a Heal

Sigil of Water - 30% chance to heal nearby allies.

Guild Wars 2 - Trading

A great read.

Guardian pvp youtube

Swordsman75 coverage.

Blogs: Boons and Conditions

I like to highligthed other blogs so have a listen at Boons and Conditions.

I have also started contributing to Guild Wars 2 News.

Speccing in the mists -Warrior

Revival – the essential Skill.

Revival is the process of bringing a player or NPC back from a downed or defeated state. All characters are able to do this by simply using a context sensitive interaction with a downed or defeated character. Some NPCs will revive other NPCs and ocasionally players as well. The time needed to complete the revival process is influenced by the number of players attempting to revive a target and the Death Penalty. There are specific skills with more impressive revival effects. All revived characters come back with 25% of their max health and are invulnerable for 1 second.

Reviving a player from downed state is done through raw healing until the 25% quota is reached, whereas reviving a player from defeated state instantly fills their health back up to 25% of the maximum once the process is complete. Characters which need revival are shown on the compass as skull and crossbones icon and on the screen by a blue ankh symbol floating above the character.

 Each time a character gets downed, that character accumulates one point of death penalty. For each point, 25% will be removed from the starting consciousness bar the next time that character gets downed. Each death penalty point expires one minute after being added. If a character goes down with 4 points of death penalty (ie. five times within one minute), they will go straight to the defeated state Downed is the mode a character enters when their health reaches zero. In this state, a character is unable to move but has access to four downed skills for a chance to rally by killing an enemy and continue fighting. The skills in downed state are less powerful than other skills, are determined by player's profession and include a skill to call out for assistance. While downed, a character's health is replaced by a consciousness meter which indicates the time remaining in the downed state. If the player is not rallied or revived before this meter runs out, or if they continue to be attacked, they will enter a defeated state. If a player has been downed several times, they will accumulate death penalty, and it will take longer to revive them. In PvP a powerful melee only finishing move which takes a few seconds to activate sends a downed player straight to defeated. If the player is downed while underwater, they enter drowning mode instead.

 A defeated character is no longer able to participate in a battle in any way. A downed character enters a defeated state once their consciousness meter reaches zero, which happens over time and may be hastened by attacks to the character. In this mode they must either wait for an ally to revive them or resurrect at a waypoint for a small amount of coin, equivalent to the price for using waypoints when alive Such fee is in place in order to avoid allowing characters to use death as a way of teleporting for free and is waived if the player has no money either in inventory or storage. Every time a character is defeated one piece of armor gets damaged. Once all armor pieces are damaged, each subsequent death will break a piece of armor at random. When a piece of armor breaks, you no longer benefit from any statistical bonuses it provides until it is repaired. When not fully reviving a player from their downed state, note that the health gained through this process can still make a difference to the player's rally.

To rally is to recover to the normal playing state after being downed. A player can rally from a downed state if they or their pet are able to kill someone or get experience for a kill before they are defeated. It is an alternative to being revived by another player. Currently when a player rallies they get 25% health and one second of invulnerability

GUARDIAN  
Skills that instantly revive allies :
Signet of Mercy: Passive: Improves healing Active: Revive a nearby ally.

 Major Traits:

Protective Reviver: You and your ally gain aegis when you revive them. Aegis is a boon which blocks the next attack. A blocked attack deals no damage, and other effects on the target are also ignored.

Resolute Healer: You generate a Shield of Absorption when you start reviving an ally. This creates a dome around you that knocks back foes and then absorbs projectiles.

Other classes can be found here.

The Art of War

Von Clausewitz

Machiavelli

Very good coordinated WvWvW group

good elementalist solo play here

The Shield

First it has passive AC along with stats (as I recall). If that’s the case it offers a small amount of mitigation that the other weapons do not. Even if overall a 5-10% increase that’s something. It might even be more at “end game” as I didn’t get to play with it in Structured PVP with proper stats.

Traited you get +90 toughness just by having a shield so again, not bad. Second are the abilities (all taken from the wiki at: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield):

 Shield of Judgement: “Create a shielding wave in front of you that damages foes and gives protection to yourself and up to 5 allies” Protection is a boon that gives a 33% reduction to incoming damage. 5 seconds of it is a big deal and the recast is decent at 30 seconds. If you break it down per second it’s not too impressive if spammed coming it at a bonus of less than 1% (.55) increase of overall mitigation. As this game seems to be done in bursts though so 5 seconds can be an eternity on a tough mob encounter. If traited the recast drops to 24 seconds which isn’t shabby considering it’s a cone AoE you can blast almost every fight for a nice opening shot. With 5 friends it’s a huge advantage in neck-saving.

 Shield of Absorption: “Create a dome around you that knocks back foes and then absorbs projectiles.” (Push 100, 4 second duration) Pretty straight-forward. A dome that knocks back and prevents mobs from entering for 4 seconds. Also blocks direct projectile attacks minus mortars from what I hear. The recast is 40 seconds (traited to 32) so if you break this down per second of active us it’s not very brag worthy. The main problem with this is it’s very situational and the timing is paramount. That or you have to be facing a hailing of arrows akin to medieval battlefield where the Guardian can pick a spot and shield a couple friends while they blast back. I like the ability and don’t think it needs more duration because skilled players could exploit it heavily in WvWvW. If the push was changed to a proper knockback it would be lovely or even if it had a small damage component added for touching it physically. Maybe even make it a non-channeled ability like Sanctuary but less duration and faster cast…that way you could pop it while you were running away.

Aegis - New name

From on Aegis will be known as the Blue Peter Badge.

The new trinity

Guardian PvP footage - Support Build

 Rune of Dwayna 6/6 - +25healing/+20%Regeneration Duration/+50Healing/5% to gain Regeneration when hit/+90Healing/All nearby allies gain regeneration for 10 seconds after using a Heal

Sigil of Water - 30% chance to heal nearby allies.

 The Guardians summoned weapons: The Hammer knocks people around, the Sword is good if you don't want people to be knocked around, the shield is pretty good for removing ranged damage if you're getting group ganked and the bow is good condition removal.Their AI for movement & their movement speed could be better though. On the Guardian I had 3 immobilizes. When an enemy is stuck in one place getting slapped with constant crits of 2k, the spirit weapon proves to be quite useful.