[Update]: Wintersday has only just ended, and already Guild Wars 2 is looking to start the Lunar New Year 2023 festival!

Back in June the Guild Wars 2 team released a remarkably unpopular balance update that mostly buffed overperforming builds while doing very little to help those that were hopelessly behind. Following a massive community backlash ArenaNet promised that they would review their balancing process and work towards setting things right, and I'm delighted to say that they were not joking!

Ever since then the Guild Wars 2 team has been releasing a series of quality updates that have buffed, reworked or tweaked a whole bunch of abilities and traits with the intent to make each class equally as potent. Continuing with this trend, the latest update has now added a whole assortment of new changes to explore, most of them focused around end-game PvE and PvP content.

There are far too many changes to easily summarize, but I'd say the highlights are the various buffs to Elementalists and their Catalyst specialization that was hit by some rather massive nerfs, an interesting buff to the Mirage staff that has made the alacrity build a lot more viable, as well as a whole host of buffs to one of my favorite 'mess around' builds - power Reaper! You can check out the exact changes, as well as the full list of improvements, over at the Guild Wars 2 website.

Besides the various balance changes, the update has also brought with it the Challenge Mode version of the Old Lion's Court strike along with new rewards to purchase. Additionally, the Primordus legendary skin variants are now finally available, so if you're a fan of shiny weaponry, make sure to talk to Leivas in Arborstone to start the whole collection process.

Have fun with all of the new stuff, and I'll make sure to let you know once the next big update goes live. Odds are this will be the Christmas themed Wintersday event on December 13th, so I hope to see you then!