Guild Wars 2’s balance patch brings bugs, buffs, and boundaries on gambling

As promised, the next spring balance patch is upon Guild Wars 2 today, although it’s apparently been a bit of a technical trainwreck thus far, with players reporting bugged meta and boss events and login problems.

Once ArenaNet inevitably gets whatever went wrong there worked out [update: fixed now], the patch brings only a few new elements that weren’t already covered in the April 21st preview thread – namely, a buff for the Berserker’s Smash Brawler, Vindicator’s Death Drop and Nomad’s Advance, Ranger’s Stalker Strike and Crippling Talon, and Willbender’s Phoenix Protocol. In its roadmap yesterday, ArenaNet did caution players that this was meant to be a smaller patch; the larger balance patch is coming in June after the next episode.

The patch notes also include a brief entry limiting Sandstorm hands and Destabilized Ectoplasm purchases to 20 per day. That’s worth expounding upon because this is essentially a nerf to the Sandstorm minigame gambling trap we covered two months ago; one player outed a friend who’d become addicted to the dice-rolling minigame, eventually pouring $10,000 into the game to buy gold to keep ecto gambling. The incident prompted multiple calls from gamers for ArenaNet to shut down or limit the gambling minigame, and now it appears the studio has chosen the latter.

Looks like a lot of things are kinda broken in #GuildWars2 right now (most of it server side). So here's a comprehensive list of things that do work:

/dance

I'll keep this list up to date if I find anything else.

— tunnel_shaman (@that_shaman) May 2, 2023