Greetings, Tyrians!
Today marks the arrival of the highly anticipated spear beta event. Spears are finally making landfall, and now is your chance to test them out across all professions and provide valuable insight and feedback! The event runs from June 27 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) until June 30 at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7).
If you have a Guild Wars 2® account in good standing, you are invited to try out the spear beta—you don’t need to prepurchase Guild Wars 2®: Janthir Wilds™ to join the fun.
How Can I Participate?
Every Guild Wars 2 account in good standing, including Play-for-Free accounts, will automatically get character slots marked “Beta” when the beta event begins. Clicking on one of these slots will allow you to create a character using any of the nine Guild Wars 2 professions.
From there, explore the open world or try a game mode dedicated to group play. You’ll find options to join World vs. World and structured Player vs. Player in the bar located at the top-left corner of your UI. To tackle the Fractals of the Mists instanced group content, visit Fort Marriner in Lion’s Arch and enter the portal.
Beta characters will disappear at the end of the event, and any gameplay progress earned while playing on them—including rewards and currency—will not be saved.
After you’ve had a chance to play, we’d like to hear what you think—what you enjoyed, what you think could be improved, and why you liked or disliked certain build changes in the beta. Head on over to our forums and leave us some feedback!
Previous Beta Feedback
We have heard your feedback from the last beta events regarding our “under construction” icons for temp skills being a pain point. In an effort to improve the experience, we created these temporary icons. We hope these will help to address some pain points, confusion, readability issues and enhance the experience for those testing the new spear weapons.
To highlight these improvements, here is a showcase of the new temporary skill icons that players can anticipate, along with a simple breakdown of what each icon represents.
Ground-Targeted AoE: Launches an attack at a specified area on the ground.
Beneficial Effect: Applies boons or other helpful effects to you and your allies.
Projectile: Shoots one or more projectiles at a targeted enemy.
Player-Based AoE: Executes an area attack centered around the player.
Movement: Moves you a certain distance when activated.
Utility: Offers a variety of options, such as stealth and other versatile actions.
Melee: Delivers an attack directly in front of the player.
Line AoE: Unleashes an area attack in a straight line ahead of the player.
Healing: Restores health to you or an ally.
Defense: Provides defensive actions like blocking or evading attacks.
Cone: Executes an attack in a cone-shaped area in front of the player.
Crowd Control: Uses a skill to disable your enemy.
Spear Weapon Preview
As our fifth expansion, Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds, sets sail for release on August 20, players across all professions will have the opportunity to embark on a new combat journey. The long-awaited spear is finally making its debut on land! Join in on the conversation by catching up on our general spear Q&A and also learn how rangers, necromancers, and guardians wield spears. Additionally, check out our recent blogs detailing spear skills for warrior, thief, and engineer, as well as mesmer, elementalist, and revenant.
