Greetings, Mist warriors. As John Corpening said in his previous blog post, “Guilds are the lifeblood of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, and it’s our desire that they become a greater part of World vs. World. We want to give guild members more strategic choices and encourage them to work together both within their guilds and also with other guilds and players. To this end, we’ve overhauled the guild claiming system so that guilds have more tools at their disposal in WvW.” In that previous blog, we went over many of the high-level concepts of the guild claiming update. However, in today’s post, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of each of the upgrades your guilds will be able to unlock, craft, and apply to any objectives you claim.
First, I’ll quickly go over how upgrading a claimed objective works. We’ve added a new piece of UI to WvW called the Objective Upgrades panel. This UI can be accessed either by clicking on an objective’s map marker (on the compass or the world map) or by speaking with a quartermaster at the objective. This panel has two tabs. The first tab displays information relating to the general upgrade level of the objective—a list of which upgrades are currently active—and timers indicating when the next upgrade tier is unlocked.
The second tab manages the guild upgrade system. On the left side of the Guild tab is the guild’s war chest. This is a list of all the objective upgrades that your guild owns. These are unlocked over time and crafted in your guild hall. To the right of the war chest is where we display the guild upgrade tiers. There are two to three tiers per objective (supply camps have two), and each tier offers two upgrade slots.
The left column of upgrades is for tactics. These upgrades offer powerful temporary effects and are triggered by pulling a special lever inside the objective. After activation, a tactic will then go into cooldown period. These cooldowns currently range from 15 to 20 minutes. A tactic can only be activated by guild members who have been granted permission unless the “Public Tactic Activation” flag has been checked by an authorized guild member. The right column of upgrades is for improvements; these upgrades offer powerful passive effects. Once built, they will apply their benefit to the objective until an enemy team captures the objective or the improvement is replaced by a different slotted upgrade.
The longer your guild controls an objective, the more tiers will unlock.
- Tier I unlocks after a guild has held the objective for 10 minutes.
- Tier II unlocks after a guild has held the objective for 30 minutes.
- Tier III unlocks after a guild has held the objective for 60 minutes.
Once a tier is unlocked, you can add one upgrade from your war chest to each slot. Each upgrade has a specific tier and slot type it fits into. Each slot has at least two potential options for upgrades. After slotting the upgrade, the upgrade will begin building for three minutes. Once the upgrade finishes building, it will either immediately activate (in the case of improvements) or become available for player activation (in the case of tactics).
That should cover most of how upgrading and the new UI works. To finish this off, you’ll find a list and description of all WvW guild upgrades below:
Tactics
- Tier 1
- Supply Drop
- Availability: All Objectives
- Instantly deposits 100 supply at the objective
- Chilling Fog
- Availability: All Objectives
- Temporarily summon chill inducers that will chill all invaders at the objective.
- Invulnerable Dolyaks
- Availability: Camps
- Makes the next set of dolyaks invincible, guaranteeing that they will reach their destination.
- Centaur Banner
- Availability: All Objectives
- Summons a Centaur Banner. The banner provides the wielder access to powerful offensive skills, as well as a defiance bar.
- Skill 1—Summon a centaur at your position that charges forward, crippling enemies and giving you stability.
- Skill 2—Calls down a cascade of arrows in a wide line in front of you, inflicting bleeding on enemies.
- Skill 3—Charge forward, kicking up dirt that blinds your enemies and makes them vulnerable.
- Skill 4—Create a circular, spiked barricade that bleeds enemies inside of it. If players try to leave the barricade, they are immobilized.
- Skill 5—You transform into a centaur spirit and continually knock enemies out of your way, applying bleeding, blinding, or cripple.
- Turtle Banner
- Availability: All Objectives
- Summons a Turtle Banner. The banner provides the wielder access to powerful defensive skills, as well as a defiance bar.
- Skill 1—Lob a magical turtle shell at a location. On impact, grants nearby allies protection and applies weakness to enemies.
- Skill 2—Create a bubble that destroys projectiles and heals allies.
- Skill 3—Up to 10 nearby allies become immune to physical damage for 5 seconds.
- Skill 4—Place a wall that grants resistance to allies and slows enemies that pass through it.
- Skill 5—A giant spirit turtle splashes into the ground with such force that it launches nearby enemies and grants stability and protection to allies.
- Dune Roller
- Availability: Camps
- Summons a Dune Roller. This will transform one player into a charr car for 15 minutes, granting them increased mobility and siege damage.
- Skill 1—Fires a rocket projectile that deals siege damage.
- Skill 2—Rush forward, leaving behind a trail of fire and evading attacks.
- Skill 3—Lay down a smoke screen behind you, blocking enemy projectiles.
- Skill 4—Leap at your foes, stunning them.
- Skill 5—Fire three incendiary rockets. On impact, these rockets will leave behind patches of fire.
- Dragon Banner
- Availability: Walled Objectives
- Summons a Dragon Banner. The banner provides the wielder access to powerful offensive skills, as well as a defiance bar.
- Skill 1—Send forth a cascade of fire that damages enemies and applies might to nearby allies.
- Skill 2—Drop an explosive dragon talon, damaging and stunning foes and giving surrounding allies fury.
- Skill 3—Launch a fiery dragon-spirit projectile that does siege damage and knocks back enemies.
- Skill 4—The powerful flap of a dragon’s wings launches enemies backward and gives nearby allies super speed.
- Skill 5—Call forth dragon’s breath in a massive line that damages and burns enemies. Allies standing in the fire gain quickness.
- Invulnerable Fortifications
- Availability: Walled Objectives
- Temporarily makes all walls and gates at the objective invulnerable.
- Emergency Waypoint
- Availability: Walled Objectives
- Temporarily creates an incontestable waypoint at the objective.
- Sabotage Depot
- Availability: All Objectives
- Deploy bombs at the supply depot that will explode if the objective is captured by an enemy team. The explosion will destroy all remaining supply at the objective.
- Hardened Gates
- Availability: All Objectives
- Gates can only be damaged by siege weapons.
- Armored Dolyaks
- Availability: Camps
- Dolyaks gain increased health and toughness.
- Iron Guards
- Availability: All Objectives
- Guards gain the Iron Hide effect, reducing incoming damage by 50%.
- Hardened Siege
- Availability: Walled Objectives
- Cannons, mortars, and oil pots can only be damaged by siege weapons.
- Packed Dolyaks
- Availability: Camps
- Dolyaks now carry twice as much supply.
- Speedy Dolyaks
- Availability: Camps
- Dolyaks gain super speed.
- Auto Turrets
- Availability: Walled Objectives
- Automatic turrets are deployed above the objective’s gates.
- Watchtower
- Availability: Towers
- A spy balloon is deployed above the tower, which will mark nearby enemies on the map.
- Emergency Waypoint
- Availability: Walled Objectives
- Temporarily creates an incontestable waypoint at the objective.
- Presence of the Keep
- Availability: Keeps
- Allied players gain double effectiveness of the keep’s objective aura while within the perimeter of the keep.
- Cloaking Waters
- Availability: Castle
- The fountains in the castle’s courtyard grant stealth to allies.
- Tier 2
- Tier 3
Improvements
- Tier 1
- Tier 2
- Tier 3
