For more information on these changes, please see the Developer Updates page.

• The Bodyguard no longer uses Oath of Protection.
• The Guild Lord now uses Entourage: "For 15 seconds, the Guild Lord is shielded by his guards. He takes no more than 30 damage from each attack or skill and takes 30 less damage each second. This skill can only be used if there are more defending NPCs than attackers."
  • This skill cannot be interrupted, disabled, or removed.
• Aggressiveness calculations now account for Entourage and effects that cause missed attacks. As always, stacking defensive effects on a Guild Lord is viewed as a sign that your opponent is being aggressive. In Guild Battles where neither Guild Lord is killed, the team displaying more aggressiveness wins.

• Wastrel's Demise (PvP): split for PvP; increased recharge to 15 seconds.

• Armor of Sanctity: added to the restricted list for Codex Arena.
• Symbols of Inspiration: added to the restricted list for Codex Arena.
• Visions of Regret: added to the restricted list for Codex Arena.

• Fixed a text bug that caused failed Assassin chain attacks to display "miss" instead of "fail."

• Fixed a bug that prevented Queen Salma from rewarding completed quests intended for Princess Salma.

• Moved the location of the resurrection shrine in the Asuran Lab in postwar Kryta.
• Fixed a bug that left Franklin and Karriya speechless after the War in Kryta.
• Fixed a bug that caused some NPCs to unnecessarily use their skills in postwar Kryta.
• Fixed a bug that prevented some Oppressor Weapons from being dyed.
• Fixed a bug that improperly displayed Queen Salma's name as Princess Salma in postwar Kryta.
• Fixed a bug that improperly shielded characters from attacks when standing in certain locations within the Hall of Judgment.

Each war has a defining moment. The combined forces of the White Mantle, intent on finally quelling this rebellion and reclaiming the land for their gods, sweep toward Lion's Arch. The Lionguard, Shining Blade, and Ebon Falcons stand side-by-side with common Krytans, ready to give their final breath to ensure their way of life outlives subjugation and tyranny. The nation of Kryta holds its breath, waiting for waves of its oppressors to break upon the last stronghold of hope. The moment is now.

• Adjusted the location of the Guild Lord and some NPCs in the following guild halls:
• Corrupted Isle
• Isle of Wurms
• Updated the 2010 Automated Tournament Series Trophy in the Great Temple of Balthazar.
• Updated the Automated Tournament map rotation.

• Fixed a bug to ensure Imperial Supply Master Kagno properly distributes festival masks.

unmelting jade waves
the relentless solstice rays
can't kill the dragon

• Preparations have been made for this year's Dragon Festival.

• Fixed a bug that caused portions of the female Paragon's double-braid hairstyle to be translucent.

• Druid's Isle: corrected line-of-sight discrepancies that gave an unfair positional advantage, allowing the red Guild Lord and Bodyguard to be attacked from a close-by ledge.
• Isle of Meditation: corrected spacing discrepancies by moving the blue Bodyguard out of nearby range of the Guild Lord.

Success against Aily the Innocent lends much hope to the people of Kryta, but it comes with the realization of how much difficulty remains. With each battle, the Shining Blade and its allies face tougher foes and see the war edge ever closer to the seat of power. Princess Salma asks that everyone remain vigilant and resolute, as the worst is surely yet to come.

For more information on these changes, please see the Developer Updates page.

• Adjusted the location of the Guild Lord and some NPCs in the following guild halls:
• Druid's Isle
• Frozen Isle
• Imperial Isle
• Isle of Jade
• Isle of Meditation
• Defy Pain (PvP): split for PvP; changed skill type to stance; removed damage reduction.
• Oath of Protection: changed functionality to: "While the Bodyguard is alive, the Guild Lord takes no more than 30 damage from each attack or spell and takes 30 less damage each second."

• Fixed a bug that allowed some War in Kryta miniatures to receive buffs.
• Fixed a bug that allowed High Priest Alkar to drop Alkar's Concoction on the ground during the quest The Destroyer Challenge.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Disco Balls from triggering fireworks in some outposts.

Howdy! My name is Ben Miller, Game Designer on Guild Wars 2. While Eric and Colin have been busy writing blog posts and interviews, we’ve been working on a little system called traits. There has been some speculation and questions about traits on the forums. What are traits? How do you collect them? Does Colin Johanson secretly run a moa ranch in eastern Washington as a front for the Order of Whispers? I’m going to answer two of those three questions right now and leave the third open for future elaboration.

What are traits?

At a basic level, traits make you better at what you choose to do. You slot traits in order to modify skills and attributes. Once you have mastered a handful of traits they become a key component in creating your overall build.

Mastering Traits

So how do you get all those traits to make a build? Good question.

You acquire traits by completing profession challenges scattered throughout the world. For instance, you walk into an inn and persuade a shadowy stranger into telling you a rumor about a mysterious tome full of arcane knowledge. Or you challenge a legendary swordmaster to a duel while exploring Divinity’s Reach.

Each profession focuses on different activities to develop his or her traits. Warriors train physically, bash stuff, eat stuff, and drink stuff. Elementalists, on the other hand, seek ancient knowledge locked in tomes or particularly powerful elemental locations. The different trait challenges accentuate the unique feel of that profession and really bring the experience of playing that profession to life.

Your prowess will grow as you complete challenges that develop your character’s particular traits. The defeated swordmasters will teach you their age old techniques, allowing you to select the Swordmastery trait. Discovering the mysterious tome will allow you unlock the secrets of magical energy.
Building with traits

Builds are one of the things that make Guild Wars unique, and it is something we are carrying over into Guild Wars 2. For those not familiar with “builds,” they are a combination of traits, skills, and attributes that mechanically work well together. With roughly 100 traits for each profession, there are way more traits in the game than you could possibly equip on a single character, so you have to make decisions and choose certain traits over others.
Traits play a large role in letting you customize the way your character plays

Each profession has its own set of trait lines. These are similar in theme to the profession specific attribute lines in the original Guild Wars. Each trait line has a number of major and minor slots. Warriors, right now, have two general lines called Power and Tactics as well as lines for each of the weapons they can wield. As you master traits, you slot them into these lines, affecting your character.

Previously we talked about the Guild Wars 2 skill system and how you can make choices about your heal skill, elite skill, and utility skills. Now it’s time to introduce traits into the mix. Here’s a specific example of a high level warrior creating a build.

To give this some context, let’s pretend an event has started. A giant boar is marauding through the forest and your party decides to take it on. This build is meant to maximize the damage you and your teammates can deliver against a single target.

Step 1: Pick a weapon. The weapon you’re currently wielding is the major determining factor for how your character will play. Let’s pick a sword, a versatile weapon which comes standard with a chain of three skills (Sever Artery, Gash, and Final Thrust), a rapid-fire repeating attack that hits a small area (Flurry), and a chase skill to close the distance between you and the enemy (Savage Leap). For my offhand weapon I could take warhorn for damage buffs, but I’ll cover that with my utility skills. Instead, I’ll dual wield swords to maximize my own damage. In practice, you’d also decide on your alternate weapon for switching in combat – perhaps a longbow for range.

Step 2: Pick a heal skill. Let’s go with a basic heal like Healing Surge, which gives you both health and adrenaline when used. Adrenaline gives you damage bonuses and allows you to use your burst skill more often, so it’s perfect for our build.

Step 3: Pick your utility skills and elite skill. You choose On My Mark (which lowers an enemy’s armor and calls a target out), For Great Justice (which gives allies Fury Boon and Might Boon), and Frenzy (which increases my overall adrenaline gain). For my elite skill, I’m taking the always epic Battle Standard (which puts an array of powerful buffs on your allies).

Step 4: Assign your traits. Here you can start focusing your play style and being clever with what you slot in each trait line.

Power: Let’s choose to stack traits that increase your strength attribute so your individual melee attacks do more damage.

Tactics: While kiting the giant boar, switching weapons faster sure would be awesome, so you slot the Weapon Master trait that lowers the cool down on switching weapons. You also slot traits that increase the number of targets your shouts affect, and increase the duration of your banners.

Sword: You choose to slot Swordmastery to further increase the damage you do, as well as the trait that increases the chance you will score a critical strike with Final Thrust.

Longbow: Out of what is available let’s keep things simple, more damage.

We want experimentation with traits to be fun and engaging, so we’ve made the rules for changing traits extremely flexible. With no in-game cost, you can respec at will, outside of combat. This means you are open to experiment with what works and what doesn’t work on the fly, without having to go back to town or worry about if you have enough gold.

Whether it’s adventuring around Tyria trying to stop dragons or fighting other players in World PvP – the trait system is there to experiment with, to have fun with, and to allow you to feel like you are actively mastering the profession you have chosen. Like Guild Wars, there are countless unique and clever combinations to be found.

To all you would-be heroes out there: go forth and adventure, and use the power of traits not for good or evil, but for awesome.

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to complete steps of the quest A Little Help From Above out of order.