Guild Wars 2

So I quit GW2 a few years back and decided to come back to it a few days ago. I just got my first 80 very recently. ( I quit while I was still somewhat new to the game ) I don’t have the expansion and it costs a meaningful sum of money. ( to me at least ) It costs twice the amount of the cost of the original game, ( the amount that I bought it at ) I’m unsure if it’s worth buying it, and I have no idea what benefits come with buying it. Help?

you’re missing alot of running back and forth, gliding back and forth, quests that try to come off as impactful but fail to from certain characters due to forced development.
secondary specs that are about as useful as vanilla builds.
beautiful scenery though.

Check this out instead,

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/?_ga=1.185204576.897879186.1479697957

4 New zones – They are very deep and as hard as old Orr. 3 levels of exploration in each zone. With a map meta for every zone that happens every 2-3hrs. Tangled Depths is the hardest zone to explore.

3 new LS zones, more LS3 zones will come out before the end of this season. They are the best zones A-net has put in the game so far. Each LS 3 map has ascended gear that you can farm for.

A new profession Revenent its plays similar to a thief/elemental
9 new elite specs – a slight power creep in your normal professions. Adds a new mechanic and weapon for each profession with a collection to make a ascended weapon for that elite spec.

The mastery system – this enables extra progression, give you the precursor crafting, and quality of life improvements to the HoT maps(jumping mushrooms/gliding so on).

HoT Raids – 10man difficult content for cosmetic gear (legendary armor comes from raiding not int he game yet but the precursor for it is).
HoT 2nd legendary set (only 6/18 legendaries are in game atm).

Guild Halls – Just a place to group up for guild mission, decorate, and their a farm their(+50 gathering items when maxed upgraded).

Notary system in wvw – enables you to get easily get HoT map rewards/masteries by gain wxp level and spending it on the vendor(unlocked with wxp).
New HoT Pvp Tracks – same as wvw enables you to get HoT reward in pvp. Spvp season 5 update soon with a lot more this week. Not sure if you can still get the legendary backslot in spvp after this year.

If money is tight there’s a couple of things you can do. One is wait for a sale, either by ANet or by one of the vendors authorized to sell the expansion. There was a 50% off sale not to long ago. Or you can wait till the next expansion. The time it is available is unknown but the HoT should be folded into it for free.

Give HoT a chance the next time it goes on sale! I found it more than worth the cost, and I paid full price for it.

Ulion pretty much covered most of the technical details. Depending on what your characters are, elite specs may be more or less exciting to you. I have a character of every single class, and only in rare situations do I ever feel like running something in place of the new HoT elite spec.

You will find that many people (there’s already one in this thread) deride HoT as grind-y or too hard. I admit it’s definitely a step up from core Tyria, with a very real threat of death if you are not prepared to respond to some dangerous mob groups. However, the mastery system isn’t a terrible grind at all, at least the green HoT mastery points. Many are just like commune hero points, you puzzle your way to them and channel – and you have another mastery point! I like doing a variety of maps and content, which makes it easy for me to fill my xp bar for mastery.

TLDR: If you like a bit more challenge and enjoy doing a variety of different activities within the game, HoT is a blast.

Also the story telling is a step up from vanilla. It’s not as good as it could be, but if your benchmark is the awful personal story, it’s a massive improvement.

Autoloot. !

Wait for a sale…

The main things you are missing out on is gliding, and auto-loot.

The HoT maps themselves are both hated and loved by players… you’ll have to make up your own mind on that.

You’re missing:

• Three maps where it is impossible to do anything on your own (even just explore the bloody things), two of which, on a good day, only have people enough for one go round of the meta immediately after reset. And doing one meta a day, you’ll be in these maps for years to come to get a reasonable amount of their achievements and gear. Getting anything is 10x grindier in HoT than it is in the vanilla game, especially anything involving crafting, which is pretty much all of the gear available and a sizable amount of the remaining “rewards”.

• Raids that are, in reality, only difficult because their mechanics are completely unclear, poorly scaled, and have rigid build requirements. In other words they’re not actually difficult at all, but poorly made content hearkening back to WoW and Everquest eras where difficulty was in unlocking gear, sticking to a rigid meta, and uncovering obfuscated mechanics by endless hours of mindbreaking trial and error.

• Class specializations, the majority of which were playstyles the base classes already had, but were removed in one horrible design and balance pass after another. Really, look at them closely, what are they? Auramentalist, confusion mesmer, power necro, control spam warrior, powerbunker engi, evasion spam thief. All viable at some point in the past and removed. The only ones that actually provided a playstyle not stolen from the base classes in the first place is the Druid and Dragonhunter.

• An admittedly pretty good personal story, with an ending that put forth a lot of effort, to justify cutting corners and a lower budget and time frame for working on it. You basically end the game fighting a weedy michelin man, and never actually get to see Mordremoth at all, let alone fight the "real" him. The closest you get is a fight against mordremoths "mouth" (like the Mouth of Zhaitan) instead of Mordremoth himself. It's a really disappointing ending.