Guild Wars 2

Hi, I had played a bit back in the day. I have an 80 Engineer, Necromancer and Mesmer. The engineer is my favorite although my necro is more developed since back then turrets were useless I ended up playing my necro more often.

I am back now and even though turrets are still bad, I am playing my engineer. I am level 80 with some OK gear. I do not have any epic or legendary stuff. I have pre-ordered the ultimate HoT pack and plan to play my engineer and to also make a revenant.

What I wanted to know was for my engineer, what should I be doing now to better prepare for HoT? I am a casual player as with 2 kids of my own, my hardcore days are lost to me as to the lack of time to play so often. I try to play for an hour or 2 everyday, and on sundays I can usually play longer.

I am currently finishing the original story and am up to the level 70 part. I will obviously finish that.

Thank you for any information.

Do the LS2 challenge achievements for some nice loot that’ll save you a lot of gems and bandit crests.

Check out the collection achievements, many of which grant unique items that do cool stuff like turn karma in to loot or eat overflowing mats for loot bags or grant free cash shop stuff.

Spend some time in silverwastes to bank up money and mats so you have a leg up for crafting the HoT stuff.

Check out fractals if you haven’t. Fractal runs fit within your play schedule and give some cool bags and equipment.

In terms of what you actually need to do to prepare? Not a lot really. If you haven’t already I recommend you get a set of exotics with stats which suit your build (see the profession specific sub forums for ideas if needed) and maybe, if you don’t mind the time and (virtual) money commitment even get some ascended equipment – trinkets are actually better and easier to get than weapons and armor so they can be a good compromise.

Other than that if you’re interested in the story I recommend finishing the original, watching the summary of Season 1 and playing Season 2, that will give you a pretty good understanding of what’s going on in the expansion.

considering that you have 2 kids and a job, these are my tips:

i’d strongly recommend against farming in the silver wastes unless you enjoy it. if you feel that you are limited in gold in the game just buy some gold. spending 10$ and buying gold for gems is equivalent to approximately 15h of pure farming.

So having that cleared out of the way. we can get to the actual recommendations:

If you enjoy PvP play PvP, If you enjoy WvW play WvW, if you enjoy exploring/storytelling/lore go explore some maps, if you enjoy dungeons/fractals go ahead and find a nice guild to run them with.

it’s really that simple. however, if you want to prepare for HoT then i would strongly recommend fractals since it is by far the most efficient way to get ascended gear while still training your mechanics so you are ready to play in the new raids or on even higher difficulties in fractals. ascended gear only provide a 6% stat increase however compared with exotic gear so it’s absolutely not necessery to have ascended, but if you feel you want to prepare, that’s the area to prepare in.

Pvp will be mostly the same in HoT and so will WvW. otherwise it isn’t much you can do now to prepare for HoT… maybe do living world season 2 if you want to know what’s up lore wise in the world atm.

I just farm my daily log in rewards. Waiting for HoT, Raids and legendary armor.

The only real “HoT-Prep” I can think of is learning and building around SW. Mainly since from the sounds of it, HoT PVE maps and mobs will be similar to those in SW. So having a build/stats that are built around doing SW will benefit you once HoT is released.

farm hero’s challange if you haven’t

I got all the items I needed for ascended armor and weapons ready for Rev so I can craft weaponsmith and armorsmith to 400 and make it all. Still trying to get to about 1500 gold total. Doubt I’ll make it past 1200 by release but still trying

Put together by some folks at reddit. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BmVqFcrjVp-9G7MTFNovrBCgwTtC9NUi5HMPCcNvg-g/edit

A good place to start would be a set of exotic gear.