Pre-Nightfall update

[Havral]

Link

Again, an absolute gargantuan pre-new-chapter update. What's interesting about it?

• PvP characters can roll new equipment without having to roll a new character.
  
• PvP characters can make multiple items: Armor sets, weapons, whatever, and stash them all in inventory - for free.
  
• PvP and PvE characters can now switch their secondaries at will - for PvP characters, this allows them to switch to any profession, while PvE characters only get access to the professions that they "learned" in Pre-Searing/Shing Jea/Forgotthenameiskstan.
  
• Character and equipment templates, biatch.
  
• Salvaging your old equipment now allows you to select which modifier you want to salvage and gives you a 50% chance (increasing with certain titles) of not destroying the item.
  
• Offhands get upgrade items.
  
• The materials storage, originally a Factions-only perk, is now available to all.
  
• Some titles now do something: The Treasure Hunter and Seeker of Wisdom titles increase the chance of not desting a salvaged item by 3% per rank (from the 50% base), and the Hero, Gladiator, and Champion titles increase the Balthazar faction cap.
  
• There is no cow level.
  
• "While forming a party, you can now control+click on your Skill Bar to announce your skill setup to your party members." Ooh, yeah.
  
• AoE is no longer as useless as it was, but not as uber as it used to be: Monsters won't scatter from AoE if they're relatively healthy or believe they're capable of killing their target, yay. Melee monsters now spread out a tad to make them less suspectable to AoE gankage, boo.
  
• Double Balthazar faction for all!
  
• New dye system, and white and brown dyes are now item drops, grey dye replaces dye remover, and you get to preview dye effects before dunking your clothes in them.
  
• Overall whining from the fanbase reduced.
  
• Various skill changes.
  
• ...and a certain pumpkin-headed insane monarch is set for a return.
  

[WarBlade]

Oh there's more about it that's interesting than that puny list! 8)

[Havral]

Just plucked what I thought would be interesting. I naturally glazed over the skill changes as I usually do.

Hey, be grateful I didn't include:

• A new option “Hide UI” on the login screen allows you to use the login screen as a screensaver. The client continues to download game assets in the background while in screensaver mode.
  

(Incidentally, to use that feature, click the Hide UI button to select the checkbox, then hover over the button for ten seconds. Obvious, really)

[Lurker Wyrm]

The Treasure Hunter and Seeker of Wisdom titles increase the chance of not desting a salvaged item by 3% per rank (from the 50% base)

Thats funny... I could have sworn it was a 1% increase from the base 75%...

My favorite change thus far has been the templates, making altering skill setups soooooooooo much easier. Going from UW to PvP to a standard mission? No problem switching builds around.

PvP characters can make multiple items: Armor sets, weapons, whatever, and stash them all in inventory - for free.

In line with that, I was experimenting with the weapon creation earlier. I managed to make a staff that was +5e, +5e over 50%, +30% health, halves casting time on spells (20% attribute), as well as a halves casting time (20%) x2, attribute +1 (20%) staff. Staves are now a lot better than a wand/focus combination, although I haven't fully explored those either.

Runes of Vitae and Attunement are a nice plus as well. Before, when making a mesmer or ele, you'd have 1 or 2 pieces of equipment that didn't have runes because they weren't any others to use, now you've got something to put in those spots.

[WarBlade]

My favorite change thus far has been the templates, making altering skill setups soooooooooo much easier. Going from UW to PvP to a standard mission? No problem switching builds around.

This is a large part of the reason why when people tried dragging me into some GvG at one point over a month ago I flatly declined. You'll find that once you've set up a series of templates that pre battle set up goes so much faster. 8)

But what you've seen looking at the in-game interface is only half the pie. Navigate into your Guild Wars install directory > Templates > Skills and start weeping in sheer joy. This means you don't have to fluff around describing builds all over the forum so much. Build it, save it, upload or email it and the recipient can just load the build straight into their characters.

PS. This file system is subject to Windows file naming restrictions. There are a few things like "/,\,*" etc. that shouldn't be put into the file names.

[Hureg]

Chests are no longer set to "all gold" or "all purple" and so are now totally randomised.

Old commendations, requisitions, totems etc, don't stack with new ones....

Not much to add but important and annoying

[Havral]

Build it, save it, upload or email it and the recipient can just load the build straight into their characters.

It gets better: The format that character templates are stored in has been mostly cracked and I know of at least one online template viewer that's almost 100% perfect.