Guild Wars 2

Currently, I don’t have an engineer.

I’ve held off creating one for a long while because I personally dislike the NPE due to having to grind for traits (I don’t have the gold to buy them). And yes, I do want more than just the default meta traits because I like to experiment with builds.

So here’s the question:

• If I create a new engi right now, and level to 80 using tomes, will this leave me in the best position when the new trait system comes? (As I understand it, this will get me a bunch of “hero points,” so that I’ll have a big leg up.)
• Should I bother getting any traits now? Will that give me a step up for the new system?
• Note that I have no intention of actually playing this character until the new system comes in as I don’t want to go through the NPE… I’m just trying to position myself in the best way come the new trait system.

Simply being at level 80 when the patch that drops this new system hits will give you 400 points (at least based on what they’re planning right now) right off the bat. That’s going to be the baseline for a level 80 character no matter what else you’ve done.

That will be enough points to unlock maybe 85% of your traits and skills. Beyond that, sounds like the rest of the points are going to be acquired via skill challenges (later to be changed to hero challenges).

I believe they said you’d need around 65 skill challenges done (out of over 200 in the world) to get enough points to unlock every trait and skill, at least as far as the baseline ones.

So, yah. Get to level 80 and then do around 70 skill challenges and you’ll be in a good spot to get everything the instant the patch rolls out. Can do more challenges in order to stockpile for the Elite Specs with HoT as well if you want, though no word on just how costly those will be.

If you don’t really care to actually play the character yet, I don’t even think you need to worry about doing anything right now. It’d probably be the same difference creating the character now and using Tomes to 80 or doing it after the patch drops. I don’t believe there’s going to be anything grandfathered into the new system or anything like that which would give an advantage to creating now as opposed to then.

1. Yes. At level 80 you should have enough hero points to get all core traits plus some left over.
2. No. Don’t bother.

Will hoarding skillpoint scrolls now help out in any way with the new system? Or should I create the new toon now and eat a ton of scrolls with that character?

Skill points aren’t going to exist in their current form in the new system. They’re basically being split into 2 things.

~ Hero points, which are used to buy traits / skills. These are acquired ONLY by leveling up and hero challenges.

~ Some kind of currency item which will be used to buy all the current items that require skill points (stuff like Philosopher’s Stones). These will be given via “items from champ bags” which likely means scrolls.

How they’ll convert everything when the patch hits is somewhat of a mystery, but my guess is that they’ll just take everyone’s current skill points, convert them to the aforementioned currency, then award hero points to that character based on level and skill challenges completed (since the game keeps track of challenges separately).

You should run around and do skill point challenges on that character, as well. The blue chevrons on maps. Those are apparently going to net you additional hero points.

EDIT: I really don’t think it matters when you level up, to be honest. I don’t think leveling up before the patch will actually net you any sort of advantage.

It won’t matter when you level up. If you want to get all your skills on day one, have an L80 toon with 65+ skill challenges completed.

This seems pointless. Whether you level to 80 now, or you wait until the new system comes out it will amount to the same thing. A level 80 by virtue of being 80 should have enough points to do most things. And if you’re waiting until the new system lands to even start playing then you might as well just wait.