GW2 Has Balance Patch Today, New Story Chapter, Festivals, And Fractal Later This Summer

Let's talk the present and future of Guild Wars 2. This morning, ArenaNet pushed out a balance patch that addresses how every profession functions. Complete patch notes can be found on the forums, detailing all the changes. There are also a few changes to World vs. World, especially with the Warclaw, and a pair of changes to runes in structured PvP.

This is the point where I'd normally highlight one or two lines of voluminous patch notes and make a joke about them, but it's hard to be funny about "Lunar Impact: Increased healing coefficient from 0.72 to 1.0 in PvP and WvW." They all tend to be minor tweaks on par with that, so unless you're a raider who needs to eke out every bit of efficiency from your skills, you'll probably be fine. Still, it wouldn't hurt to give them a look and make sure your favorite profession wasn't nerfed too badly.

That's the present, but what about the future? ArenaNet's got that covered, too, at least in broad strokes, in today's blog post. The next chapter in the Icebrood Saga is on track to be released at the end of the month, and like the previous one it won't have voice acting until it's safe to do so.

The Festival of the Four Winds will return in early August, followed by anniversary celebrations near the end of the month. For that, ArenaNet is teasing a new mount ability, saying that "one of your mounts is harboring an undiscovered talent ..." Finally, a new mountain fractal is on tap for September, the first in over a year.