Guild Wars 2

I’ve been around on and off since the beginning of Guild Wars 2, but I haven’t felt like getting Heart of Thorns yet. The recent sales have made me consider it, but then something occurred to me.

For the longest time, I had only played my Sylvari Mesmer. She’s the only character I’ve done anything significant with the story on (caught up to what I can do without the expansion) and she has World Completion (with no other character coming close).

I was originally planning on continuing that trend, especially since there are such heavy Sylvari themes in the story (none of my other characters are Sylvari). However, after finally getting my Guardian to 80, I’ve started to have some serious doubts.

My Guardian showed me that I made the wrong choice with my first character. All these years of Guild Wars 2, and I’ve been having way less fun that I could have due to how absolutely tedious and powerless that Mesmer feels to me (relative to other professions with my skill at least).

This is a problem for me for two reasons:

1) I still like the overall theme for my Sylvari character the best out of all of my characters. That matters a lot to me. There are other MMOs I could never even get past character creation because of how bland and uninteresting the race or other customization choices were for me.

While I have made my other characters within the realm of interest for me for alts, they don’t capture the imagination enough to focus on.

2) I don’t want to redo all of that stuff again. World Completion was one of the most tedious things I’ve ever done. I appreciate the world and exploration in this game, it was one of the things that I was looking forward to before it came out. However, I don’t quite naturally explore. I don’t know exactly how to put it, just that I was missing whole zones I didn’t even realize existed when I first set out to do World Completion.

I feel it’s important, though, to at least getting all of the waypoints. I did what I could for Bloodstone Harvest recently, and I almost missed one of the targets on my Thief, because he didn’t have half of the zone that it popped in and barely made it in time. I ended up switching to my Mesmer to finish off what I could do since she has all of the waypoints, and it was miserable.

In other words, despite how much of this game unlocks cross-account (and I very much appreciate that), what still isn’t cross-account makes me feel like I’m starting over on an alt, even one that’s max level.

Even though this new character might be able to explore all of the Heart of Thorns zones as they go along without repeating anything, I would have to redo everything in the old Tyria on that character.

Also, while I wouldn’t have to replay any of the story, having different parts of the story completed on different characters would just be plain confusing for me, especially if there was ever anything I wanted to redo for achievements or whatever.

This might feel like a small issue, and it is, but it’s enough to hold me back from the expansion. Right now I feel done enough on each character that I’m more or less content. While I’d like to have more content, I don’t know how I’d tackle that new content. Tackling that content is going to take a lot of playtime, and I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted it, like I feel like I might have already wasted years invested in my Mesmer.

Right now I’m just wondering if anyone has any advice about how I should tackle this problem. Continue with my Mesmer who already has everything invested in them, but I can’t seem to find a fun build on, or my Guardian who seemed a lot more fun to play, but doesn’t really capture my imagination and barely has anything unlocked? Is there something else I’m missing that would make it easier to catch alts up on the content that my main has spent years finishing?

If being a Sylvari is important to you, you can always make a new character who’s a Sylvari, picking a class that you don’t have yet (or redoing a class you enjoy but already have as a different race, like the Guardian you mention).

Redoing world completion sounds daunting, but if all you want is the waypoints to be able to get around, then all you need to do is get the waypoints. Most of the time spent in world completion is finishing hearts or getting to tricky to access vistas or points of interest. Waypoints are almost always convenient to access, so you could get the relevant ones pretty quickly, or even get all of them over the course of a day or two of play.

One more thing to note, of course, is that Heart of Thorns adds elite specializations, which can change how many classes feel to play. Chronomancer adds a lot of support for the Mesmer, but also a suite of AoE skills in the Wells, which might help address your feelings of weakness on the class if AoE damage was one of the things you thought it was lacking.

If I understand you dilemma correctly, I’d approach it this way: do the initial story on your guardian, since you enjoy that playstyle more than your mesmer, to completion so that you can do the story. I wouldn’t necessarily focus on map completion for this character, but do track down the various mastery points since they are account-bound, and complete the masteries needed like gliding. Then, after you’ve gone through it once, try tackling it on your sylvari. I can tell you that the story is very different playing on a sylvari than as another race. If you really don’t like the mesmer playstyle, perhaps try leveling another sylvari in a class you do like.

Map completion is definitely not a must, unless you want more Gifts of Exploration. Outside of the waypoints, it isn’t that important, as you’ve already unlocked the title for exploring the world and, as I said, it’s mostly just the Gifts you’d do it for. If you really want to do that, though, it can be done after you’ve completed all the story stuff and are looking for more things to do. And if you just need to get someone to do the world quest stuff, you have your mesmer all ready to do that.

Expansion Possibilities:

• Stick with your sylvari and try chronomancer. I think you’ll really like it.
• Play the guardian in the new maps and either don’t worry about Core Tyria or you could just pick up some waypts. as needed.
• Create a sylvari guardian and jump into new material with both feet. (You’ll get a L80 booster with HoT purchase). You can always pick up some waypts. later.

FWIW, you don’t need to do world completion a second time. gw2timer.com even has a route for getting the “critical” waypoints quickly, so you can be able to get around to world bosses, etc … and then you can literally ignore completion that doesn’t happen naturally.

regardless of whether you buy the expac or not you will end up doing some world completion with you guardian if you choose to continue with him/her. But the new expansion also bring the rev witch as idea and execution is also quite unique and flashy so you could make a silvari rev and start fresh regardkess what ever you pick you will have to do at least the base exploration on who ever chatacter u decide to main so yeah. I’d say go for it the new maps for many ppl are a pain to navigate it will put you patience for exploration to the test but id say its worth as the maps are beautiful unique and they are a step up in terms of dificulty which i personally very much enjoyed. Also the lvl 80 boost will remove some of the time to lvl up the rev even tho i would not suggest that since learning the class is crucial before going in there.

You could always just wait a little bit longer, and HoT will be bundled in with the next expansion. I mean, its gotta be out in the next year or so surely.

I believe you should have one class who hs everything, and one class you actually play. In the optimal case these two are the same character, but it is not needed in my opinion. Sure, it feels kinda off to have a personal story quest for lvl 10 at the side, but you will get over it (atleast i do^^).
I would suggest that you start with trying out every class, finding the one that is most fun to play for you, and than create a character that suite all your needs with style, theme etc.(fashion wars here we come) of the class that was the most fun.
As was often said, you only need crucial waypoints, whole map completion is tedious and unneded if you do not plan on building “old” legendaries.

You will be required to get your character through to at least picking which of the 3 orders you join before you fight mordy in the last HOT mission or it can glitch on you during the fight.