Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played Guild Wars activelyt since around January of 2013. Obviously thats more than a year. I was wondering what big changes have happened in a year and if it’s going to be hard to get back into the game. I have an 80 guardian who has full Exotic gear but I’m sure better things have been put in the game now. Everyone probably knows dungeons and fractals like the back of their hand now so its going to be offputting trying to find a group that will accept a returning player like me without getting mad if i don’t know how a dungeon works now. Overall, how hard do you guys think it will be to get back into the game?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

You only missed 22-ish Releases.

Almost every dungeon now consists in people stacking one over another in a corner while spamming dps against foes which are kinda stuck and barely manage to hit you back.
You best get yourself a full berserker gear, even on your guardian if you want to have no problems with pugs. Otherwise, only join parties which don’t ask for zerkers only and such…
There are a few new Fractals that were copy-pasted by old temporary-dungeons that living story brought. I’d suggest you to run 1-5 a few times until you get to have an idea what these are like.
There is a new actually extremely cool WvW map if you are into it, you may want to give it a shot…
It won’t be hard for you, just don’t join teams which have high requirement, stuff like “LF ZERK GUARD/WAR/MES ONY 5K+ AP SPEEDRUN”, at least until you learn where to stack and what it is like…

Sigh. People were pleading for the molten facility to return and when that wish is granted it gets called ‘copy-pasted’. That’s just not fair.

So, what is new? A lot of water has flown in the canals of Lion’s Arch. The Living World has been happening nearly a year and the story arch is coming to a close in a few weeks. What is gone can only be told about (except for that above mentioned fractal), but that does not prevent from taking part in what is left of it. Anet made a video that summarizes the events so far https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9LrN-LD-ZI .

Gameplay has not changed so much that you could not just jump back in. The upcoming sigil and eune change may affect some things, so right now I would not invest in Ascended gear unless you are absolutely sure of what you want. I would stack up on materials though and get the crafts to 500. Of course, Ascended gear is not necessary, exotics do perfectly fine except perhaps the high level fractals. (Never been there and never will.)

Dungeons aren’t that bad, you probably won’t be able to get a group for Arah or the newly revamped TA path though. Groups for those dungeons only take experienced people, so if you haven’t mastered them by now you will most likely never get a group. I know i’ve been trying to get a group for an hour a day for the last month for the TA path but i’ve been kicked from every group for not having run it before.

Most of the other content in the game has been through living story, which unfortunately for you is removed after 2 weeks, so all of that is gone now.

You can jump into the current living story, which has a nice recap of the past year, and you are just in time to see the finale of the story, there are only 2 released left before the finale.

WvW just got a new map, so if that is your thing then check that out.

sPvP has gotten a number of updates, but there is still only one game mode.

Balance has gone from bad to worse in PvE, but is better in PvP. If you are doing PvE you’ll probably want either a guardian or a warrior, every other class is significantly underwhelming compared to them.

The full set of ascended armor and weapons are now available, which offer a 5-15% upgrade in damage depending on what gear you have. They need 500 in a certain crafting profession to make and require some time gated mats. expect at least a month to make the armor and weapons on top of the ~600 gold you’ll need to level and obtain mats. Also they require account bound ascended mats called Dragonite ore, Bloodstone dust, and Empyreal Fragments. You can read about the acquisition of those online somewhere.

There are two revamped boss fights as well, Teq and a new boss called the Great Jungle Wurm (in blood tide coast). Teq is done daily on the 4 biggest servers at server reset, if you aren’t on one of those servers than you will need to guest to them. The wurm can only be beaten by 1 server and 2 guilds. The guilds are not taking new members and the server has a 16 hour wait to get in, so you most likely won’t get to do the wurm. Most other servers just ignore it.

I think that pretty much summarizes the last year, have fun!