Guild Wars 2

“We’re going to update the elite specialization unlock to find a better middle ground by reducing the cost of unlocking every possible ability for an elite specialization from 400 hero points to 250 hero points total. This means you will be able to access them much earlier in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns PvE or World vs. World and fully unlock them much earlier as well. This also means you’ll be able to experience more of the expansion story as your elite specialization earlier on while still maintaining some of our core goal. This should also help players with lots of alts try out more of the elite specializations. If you’ve already put more than 250 points into your elite specialization, surplus hero points will be refunded to your character for future use.”

Thank you so much. 250 is a much more fair number. However I wish the 400 total remained for an awesome new title at 400, the weapon at 300, and the armor at 350.

This is such a lovely change. Right choice, anet.

Do we know yet if already invested HP #’s will be recalculated? Or is this just a cost decrease on stuff you have not bought yet.. moving forward?

Too little. cmon)

This is a good start, not just get rid of the masteries gating the story, and we can all be happy.

Yes yes yes yes yes, thank you thank you thank you.

I cant believe they gave in, it wasn’t even hard. The amount of whining is atrocious.

Thank you Colin & Anet, you guys made the right choice. Big props.

Also other changes coming as well: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/heads-up-iteration-incoming/

Thank you ArenaNet. This makes sense.

When is it happening? I’ve already spent 225, so should, in theory, be almost there.

Brimstar.9036:

I cant believe they gave in, it wasn’t even hard. The amount of whining is atrocious.

SIGH* here starts the nerf train, time to trivialize

Maybe not the best solution, but it is very welcome compromise overall. Shouldn’t be too difficult to do this for a few alts as well. When can we expect this to go live is the real question?

I like the change for the trait lines and skills, but honestly think the final skin and rune unlock should remain at 400.

This is all I wanted, thank you.

Now to just twiddle my thumbs till the patch goes live!

Thank you Anet. This was definitely the right choice, and a big win with consumers since this means you listened to our feedback! This literally made my day!

BrotherBelial.3094:

This is a good start, not just get rid of the masteries gating the story, and we can all be happy.

In the end, I think some level of mastery story-gating is necessary so that they can have us use masteries during story missions (especially gliding). They’re removing the worst one, at least.

It’s still going to be pretty painful for alts, but I appreciate that they’re making a compromise in a timely manner.

Source? /15 characters

Heart of Thorns is getting nerfed already? It was so nice having long term goals in the game, please don’t give in with absolutely everything. The elite specs were fine the way they were…

Loki.4139:

Source? /15 characters

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/heads-up-iteration-incoming/

captaincrash.6528:

Heart of Thorns is getting nerfed already? It was so nice having long term goals in the game, please don’t give in with absolutely everything. The elite specs were fine the way they were…

if you hate people who have alts, sure it was.

good call. people want to play their favourite elite spec through the new content, not after it.

Nope, all these people saying it was the right choice are here because they complained enough and now are getting their way. Most people who were happy with it probably didn’t bother defending Anet on the forums against this “I WANT IT NOW” attack. Anet should have stood their ground. I think they should actually go the other way because I and many others were able to max it in 2 days which isn’t long enough.

captaincrash.6528:

Heart of Thorns is getting nerfed already? It was so nice having long term goals in the game, please don’t give in with absolutely everything. The elite specs were fine the way they were…

The problem with elite specs was this:

1. If you hadn’t done core Tyria world completion on a character, you may well have needed all (or the vast majority) of the hero points in Maguuma to unlock that character’s elite spec. That would mean that you were not going to get to truly use your elite spec (especially poor Daredevils) until you had already basically explored all of Heart of Thorns. That’s not fun. People wanted to explore Heart of Thorns using their elite spec, not explore Heart of Thorns to get their elite spec.

2. The only way to avoid that was to go do WvW to get hero points, which works for some, but feels grindy and unappealing to others.

This is the best possible solution. Elite specs still require a pretty high number of hero points, but now you can mostly unlock it if you’ve done core Tyria completion, and if you haven’t, you’ll unlock it fully about halfway through Heart of Thorns, not the whole way through. It’s a much better balance.

Brimstar.9036:

I cant believe they gave in, it wasn’t even hard. The amount of whining is atrocious.

Says the guy here who’s whining without a real argument.

Labjax.2465:

It’s still going to be pretty painful for alts, but I appreciate that they’re making a compromise in a timely manner.

The thing is that there are enough hero points in Tyria to get you most of the way there, and doing a few solo-able HP’s in the jungle is not that hard. I am quite happy now as even if the maps die out I can still get my max specialization.

Dante.1763:

captaincrash.6528:

Heart of Thorns is getting nerfed already? It was so nice having long term goals in the game, please don’t give in with absolutely everything. The elite specs were fine the way they were…

if you hate people who have alts, sure it was.

No, I think it’s fine for people with alts, it means they put significant time and effort into a particular character, and were rewarded for it. Even then, getting all the Hero Points a second time was made easier, since the Masteries are account bound, not character bound.

tokyoshoe.6308:

Do we know yet if already invested HP #’s will be recalculated? Or is this just a cost decrease on stuff you have not bought yet.. moving forward?

The post says any spent above the 250 will be refunded for future use.

Kittens Rejoice!

Lol white knights getting kittened cause the “vocal minority” got their way. Smh

As someone with 4 accounts and 22 alts, 250hp per alt still gated behind masteries is barely a compromise. I’ll reserve my “thank you” for when it goes account-bound like access to PvP, WvW and dailies.

It’s not like the people who thought they had been misled are getting everything they wanted. It’s still 250 points which means getting new herald will still be a drag. Or for you grinders- heaven. At least it’s the start of a compromise on the part of Anet. That takes some of the sting away.

captaincrash.6528:

Dante.1763:

captaincrash.6528:

Heart of Thorns is getting nerfed already? It was so nice having long term goals in the game, please don’t give in with absolutely everything. The elite specs were fine the way they were…

if you hate people who have alts, sure it was.

No, I think it’s fine for people with alts, it means they put significant time and effort into a particular character, and were rewarded for it. Even then, getting all the Hero Points a second time was made easier, since the Masteries are account bound, not character bound.

Ive put in the time thank you <3 fully mapping 14 characters was enough. I sure as hell wasnt going to do HOT 14 more times just to get a bunch of alternate skills(read, alternate) skills. They arent even “Elite” its just an alternate play style. Now though i have an interest in doing HOT on several other characters.

Thank you anet you made my day.

wolfram.8291:

Nope, all these people saying it was the right choice are here because they complained enough and now are getting their way. Most people who were happy with it probably didn’t bother defending Anet on the forums against this “I WANT IT NOW” attack. Anet should have stood their ground. I think the should reverse it and make it take more hero points cause I was able to max it out in 2 days which isn’t long enough for me. Go back to 400 points required and make the hero challenges give less points.

The reason they are changing it is obvious:
1) As Colin rightly pointed out: It was too much of a shock to their customers that originally expected to be able to play as their new specialization to actually have to grind out 200-400HP.
2) Look at the history of this game. Anet originally makes things gated behind character progression (just look at the original fractal personal level, Ascended gear, and personal WvW Rank points) but soon they realized that these mechanics actually REDUCE instead of increase the longevity of the game because they are barriers to a more diverse play style through alts. They have changed all those systems to be account based precisely so people can enjoy this content on a variety of different characters and builds.

This new change to the HP grind is exactly in line with the direction they have been trying to go that increases gameplay longevity by not gating your alts too much.

Dante.1763:

captaincrash.6528:

Dante.1763:

captaincrash.6528:

Heart of Thorns is getting nerfed already? It was so nice having long term goals in the game, please don’t give in with absolutely everything. The elite specs were fine the way they were…

if you hate people who have alts, sure it was.

No, I think it’s fine for people with alts, it means they put significant time and effort into a particular character, and were rewarded for it. Even then, getting all the Hero Points a second time was made easier, since the Masteries are account bound, not character bound.

Ive put in the time thank you <3 fully mapping 14 characters was enough. I sure as hell wasnt going to do HOT 14 more times just to get a bunch of alternate skills(read, alternate) skills. They arent even “Elite” its just an alternate play style. Now though i have an interest in doing HOT on several other characters.

So you beat the base game and think you deserve all rewards in the expansion?

I’m 10 points away from maxing a Tempest… now I feel like my effort has been trivialized.

Wow, got my Herald 3 days ago and by not even playing 5hrs+/day, but by playing smart.

Keikami.6247:

I’m 10 points away from maxing a Tempest… now I feel like my effort has been trivialized.

If it helps, you’ll get those points back and have a 150-point head start on maxing the next elite spec that comes out (like players who did core Tyria completion had a 200-point head start with this crop).

captaincrash.6528:

So you beat the base game and think you deserve all rewards in the expansion?

They arent rewards, sorry but they arent. Rewards are the new armor skins(which i despise the fact that they gated the bladed armor behind the meta event, but ill live with that because i know that as players figure it out they will finish it more often.), rewards are the new weapons skins, rewards are finishing the story.

Playing with new skills arent a reward.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

As someone with 4 accounts and 22 alts, 250hp per alt still gated behind masteries is barely a compromise. I’ll reserve my “thank you” for when it goes account-bound like access to PvP, WvW and dailies.

It’s a perfect compromise IMO. It still requires significant investment in a character (which is the point) but better rewards preparatory action. The major problem with 400 wasn’t that it didn’t let you instantly unlock an elite for characters who hadn’t spent any time collecting hero points. It was that it really made the effort of collecting hero points over the previous cap (playing that character and completing content) unrewarding.

This change still requires/rewards hero point progression, but it does a better job of rewarding players that had significant amounts of hero points “in the bank” from doing otherwise unrewarding content in core tyria, and sets a precedent for further elite specs. You still have a compelling reason to get the rest of those HoT hero points now as you know you’ll have done so preparing to very quickly unlock the next elite, so it feels less like a gate and more like a choice.

You chose to roll 22 alts and not actually progress them along the metric that you’ve known for months was tied to unlocking them. Requiring people to put in effort to progress a character is not a broken system. Allowing people to subvert “endgame” progression completely would be. 22 Alts is the very definition of repetitive content, which you opted in to of your own accord. Complaining that your repetitive play pattern remains repetitive is silly.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

As someone with 4 accounts and 22 alts, 250hp per alt still gated behind masteries is barely a compromise. I’ll reserve my “thank you” for when it goes account-bound like access to PvP, WvW and dailies.

Masteries are account wide, so at least you don’t have to redo the masteries for each alt. You still need to do them for each account I would think though. Of course, though, you can’t expect elite specs to unlock for all alts just for doing it once. Perhaps a better solution would be to have elite specs profession bound, so if you unlock them for a guardian, it’s unlocked for all your guardians.

Keikami.6247:

I’m 10 points away from maxing a Tempest… now I feel like my effort has been trivialized.

On the other side of the coin you have me, sitting at home watching a movie because most of my guildies are strangely absent this week.

At least with this change I can finish my specialization on all my characters even if there is nobody around to help me.

I am sorry if it annoys some players, but at least it should bring back many of the forum warriors to the game.

#waitingonpatch

Agent Noun.7350:

Keikami.6247:

I’m 10 points away from maxing a Tempest… now I feel like my effort has been trivialized.

If it helps, you’ll get those points back and have a 150-point head start on maxing the next elite spec that comes out (like players who did core Tyria completion had a 200-point head start with this crop).

YAY? I get to wait 3 more years for this magical head start that everyone’s going to complain about then too? Just feel like my effort is unrewarded…

Tbh I think 300 woulda been fine.
But oh well. I think this is a nice middleground as well.

captaincrash.6528:

So you beat the base game and think you deserve all rewards in the expansion?

I think the problem people had is that they didn’t think of the elite spec as a “reward”—they thought of it as something their character was incomplete without. It felt like having to level up again, even though the level cap wasn’t increased. That’s why it chafed people so badly.

this is good news. I at least was able to get my reaper to only needing 145 more HP to finish her off.(100% map completion) But for my Eni/scrapper you still need to get every other utility skill in order to open your Scrapper trait, I was able to unlock just the hammer. 340 more points to go. i was pretty much just going to ignore opening any specializations because of that and go full reaper.

I wanted to play revenant with hot, but without hearld it just sucks, so i “farmed” those hero points about 24h to finally play the class like i want and in a way i think its competitve for group content.
400 Points for a class, that “don’t work” without them is rly tough, so i understand the step to make it easy to access.

But you should at least reward those, who did it the hard way. (title/mini/…)

Keikami.6247:

Agent Noun.7350:

Keikami.6247:

I’m 10 points away from maxing a Tempest… now I feel like my effort has been trivialized.

If it helps, you’ll get those points back and have a 150-point head start on maxing the next elite spec that comes out (like players who did core Tyria completion had a 200-point head start with this crop).

YAY? I get to wait 3 more years for this magical head start that everyone’s going to complain about then too? Just feel like my effort is unrewarded…

Sorry, I’m just trying to be positive.

I don’t know what to tell you. I can say that I thought 400 hero points was too much and 250 is a decent balance, so I think this is a good change overall. If you were only getting the HoT hero points to unlock Tempest, then yes, I’m sorry that your efforts weren’t needed. I suspect many players are going to get all of them anyway, much like we kept grabbing hero/skill points in core Tyria to do world completion even after hitting level 80 and unlocking all of our skills.

It might also help to know that they’ve suggested that Maguuma completion will be necessary for the new HoT legendary weapons, so you also have a head start on that—you’ll probably need to do all of the Maguuma hero point challenges to craft a HoT legendary.