Guild Wars 2

So I have some alts just at or nearing 80. One of them I had already popped a bunch of skill scrolls for. Then this news came out. I’ve been trying to keep up with everything, but have a couple questions I can’t seem to find answers for. Can anyone point me towards where they’ve explained the following, or if they even have?

Grandfathering

Have we received any official word on if characters with certain skills/traits already unlocked will continue to have them? The general impression I’ve been getting is no, but has it be flat out stated or just implied?

Skill Points from Skill Scrolls

Anet has said the following:

Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge.

We’ve gotten clarification that this new ‘material’ will in fact be a currency. I have no real problem with this.

What I’d like to know is does “in excess” include points that have been spent on skills already? Or is it only currently unspent ones?

In theory it should be possible to determine how many extra we spent, since they’ll be awarding us hero points based on our level and already done skill/hero challenges. So they should be able to go in, see how many skill points we should have from leveling and challenges, then subtract that from the total number unspent+spent on skills. That would give you the total number of “excess” skill points. Though I’m not sure if the game keeps track of “levels” post-80. Alternatively the Skillful achievement might help determine this if everything is totaled acountwide, but that depends on if the game continues to count these points somewhere even after the achievement is completed. It all depends on exactly what they keep track of, but if they have the data available I would hope they would use it.

If this is the case, then I’ll go ahead and spend my skill points so I can play the character until the change comes out, knowing I’ll still get something for them later.

However, if they’ll only be rewarding the new currency for skill points that are currently unspent (and characters will not be grandfathered in) then any scroll skill points spent on skills will be wasted. If that’s the case I’ll just set the alts aside and continue on my main until this change occurs.

Armor

Has there been any word on what will be done about armor? With stats being divorced from traits, people may have to swap out some pieces to compensate for certain stats being lost. If this is going to be solely on us to sort out, I’ll just wait to gear my alts until after the change. If anet is going to give us some way to swap out stats once after the change if we need to, then I can get started gearing now.

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Hopefully someone has had better luck sorting through all the info they’ve had everywhere, and can help me track down some answers to these questions. If not, it would be awesome if anet would consider giving us answers to them. They’re sort of crucial to knowing if I should continue playing with these alts or just wait until the changes are made.

All evidence based on the last time they re-wrote the entire trait unlocking system is that you should absolutely try to get alts to 80 now rather than later.

Hopefully it is better than trying to complete the meta achievement for Luminescent armor which has been broken for over a month now and anet has yet to fix or create a workaround for it.

I don’t know if I would use the skill scrolls myself. I suspect that all skills and traits will be locked after the update and all chars will get a supply of hero points according to what level they are and how much content they have done.

If it were me though, I would concentrate on getting as many skill points as I could so I get credit for all of them before they are removed and changed to hero challenges. That way I can get as many hero points for those at login as possible.

The skill scrolls won’t count as content and you won’t get hero points is you use them. They will be changed to some item that can be used with the mystic forge, possibly a currency that buy items that used to be bought with skill points.

So, if the skills and traits will be locked again after the update, then using skill point scrolls to unlock them now is wasting them as it won’t give you hero points to unlock them later.