Guild Wars 2

There’s a lot of arguing about whether the 400 HP cost to fully unlock an Elite spec is reasonable or not; it seems there’s two camps that are mostly talking past each other. Some complain about an intense grind, the other side shrugs and says it just playing the game. Who is right?

I believe the difference comes down mostly to whether the person is rerolling/swithing mains or not. Here’s the reason.

If you currently play your warrior (say), love your warrior, and want to continue to play your warrior, but would like to add more abilities to your warrior in the form of an Elite spec, then getting those extra HPs amounts to doing what you would have been doing in the game anyway: playing your favourite character through a new zone. People in this camp have no problem with the cost. They don’t see it as a grind. Because for them, it’s not.

On the other hand, suppose you never played Necromancer. You were never interested in playing a necromancer, or maybe you played one to level 20 and decided it is not for you. But you are really, really, excited about playing the Reaper. In this case, maybe you levelled up a Necro to 80, without spending much HPs, in order to dump them into Reaper the moment it comes out. Being told by Arenanet that you basically have to play a class you do not enjoy, for an indeterminate period of time, before you can “unlock” the class you’d rather be playing, can in fact be, as some have described, a “total buzzkill”.

Here’s the thing. Neither of these positions is wrong! They’re both valid ways to look at the game. You can see an Elite spec as a simple addition to class you already love, or as a completely new class that shares mechanics with an old one (Arenanet, in fact, has pushed this second view repeatedly). It is pointless to argue that one is wrong and one is right.

What Arenanet should do, however, is try to keep both camps as happy as they can. The people that love the class they intend to play through HoT want things to do with their class, and goals to aim for. Rerolls ( Herald rerolls in particular) want to play the class they want, and not have to “train rush” HPs through a new zone that they’d rather leisurely explore, in order to be able to do so.

I suggest a compromise: Take away the requirement that we need to max out all other trees in order to be able to put points into our Elite spec. Instead, make it so that you can unlock the Elite spec, and the first half or so points, immediately, but then have to fully unlock the rest of the class to continue down the Elite spec. Basically, so that you can put in enough points immediately upon the release of HoT to unlock the elite spec, weapon, traits, heal and utility abilities. But then, if you also want the runes, gear (and possibly elite ability), then, AND only then, do you have to go “grind” all those HPs in the jungle, to fill up the rest of your base class trees and so on.

I think this should make both camps happy.