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Guild Wars 2 September 9th patch notes: the ‘F’ key is now less frustrating

GW2_8_4_0

Playing Guild Wars 2 right now is like finding a hair in one of the most delicious meals you’ve ever had the pleasure to eat; it’s not going to seriously impact your enjoyment, but it reminds you that the chef is only human. The F key is used for pretty much everything in Guild Wars 2, and that means that, in the middle of a frenetic fight, you’re hitting F to do all sorts of stuff.
And with yesterday’s patch to the game, ArenaNet have made it considerably better, along with a few other changes. You can read the patch notes here, or see the highlights and notes below.

The main frustration with the F key was that reviving people in combat is really bloody important, but reviving Ranger’s pets is really bloody unimportant. But they both use the same key, and if you’re in proximity to a downed player and a downed pet, you never know which it’s going to try and revive. So now Ranger’s pets can’t be revived using F. Instead Rangers can now use F4 to swap pets, or just wait until you’re out of combat, when the pet will automatically get up.

Even better, F prompts now have a heirarchy, which means that you’ll always know which task it’s going to do first, if possible. First is your current selection, such as an interactable bit of scenery, a downed player or a lootable corpse, then it’s loot, then it’s reviving, and then it’s anything else. Which should take a huge amount of annoyance and frustration out of the proceedings.
As for the rest, there are some changes to badly balanced or bugged story missions, and the Guardian has had a bunch of balance changes, mostly to make them less stable, apparently, with both Tome of Wrath and Tome of Courage giving a different buff instead.

I’m a little surprised they’re not doing anything to the Elementalist, because as much fun as I’m having with him, he does seem to be a little obscene. Throwing out four sets of cooldowns before running through the cycle again just doesn’t seem fair. All these other classes waiting for their best abilities to come off cooldown, and I’ve got four of them. Ridiculous.

Patch notes:


Mesmer

The Prestige – Fixed a bug so that Burning duration no longer amplifies when additional enemies are present.

Ranger

Beastmastery Trait: Instinctual Bond – Now grants 5 seconds of quickness to the player’s pet and can only occur once every 50 seconds.Pets can no longer be revived using the “F” prompt. This is because you can either use F4 to swap pets which will bring that pet back alive or you can wait until you are out of combat at which point you pet will revive automatically. We felt it was doing a disservice to Ranger players to incentivize them to spend a long time reviving their pet when it was a very inefficient thing to do and happened after combat anyway. This will also help clear up “F” to interact functionality.

Guardian

Tome of Wrath – Removed Stability, added Retaliation; increased the health of the transform* Zealot’s Fervor – Players can now move while casting this skill; increased cast time to 2 seconds; reduced maximum targets to 5* Judgment – Knockdown is now 3 secondsTome of Courage – Removed Stability, added Protection* Heal Area – Base heal increased by 33%* Pacifism – Reduced maximum targets to 5; increased cast time to 2 seconds; reduced daze duration to 2 secondsShield of Absorption. The second half of this skill will now unlock in PvE.

Story

“Bad Blood” – Exiting the conversation will no longer arbitrarily lock the player into a choice“Mirror, Mirror” – Adjusted difficulty.“The Hatchery” You can no longer do the final step before doing the intermediate steps.“Dredging up the Past” – Fixed blocking bug during the first step.

General

Fixes for various blocked events and skill challenges.PvP games played/won will not increment in activities.Fixes for various map bugs that allowed players to get out of the map.Interact “F” should use the following priority:1) Your current selection2) Loot3) Revive/Stomp4) Anything elseUpdated the recipe for Superior Rune of the Ranger to match the rarity of other Superior runes.