What now for XP?
It all goes to waste, basically. You will still see the yellow numbers popping up after every XP-rewarding action, but the bar will remain empty and state XP 0/0.
As for your second question: at the moment there is no use for them. But new masteries will be added to the game in the future since this is a system they have introduced, not a one time thing, and will use as the foundation for future horizontal progression.
I do agree that they could do something with it. I’d say no to Hero Points since there’s already an excess of them as well. And for future specializations they will not want you to instantly unlock them, but draw you into the newly introduced areas to do that. Make it Spirit Shards and I would agree. It would prevent us from gaining too many Hero Points but give us a more reliable and expeditious way to gain Shards. The XP system for level 80 characters is now probably tied to the mastery system and when the latter is maxed out so is the first (just a layman’s idea of how these systems work, since I know next to nothing about game development).
I think no EXP should go to waste and should go into a pool where we’re free to spend it as we wish (it saves up over time) so if a new expansion comes out you’d just need the mastery points and be good to go and circumvent the grind problem. Rewards and fun should be the motivating factor behind doing an event and people still do Silverwaste even though our core Tyria masteries are full (well I still need some mastery points but the experience bar is full.)
Long before I even got Bo I felt totally burned out of HoT :(
There haven been other threads about this exact issue, of course, and one in particular had many great and creative ideas for what to do with the extra xp. Can’t find it right now, sorry but it’s really good. This topic always makes me wonder… why didn’t this problem occur to them in design? Maybe it did and there are good reasons why it exists and if only they would tell us the mystery could be solved.
I’d love to see some type of reward track like pvp. Just have it unlocked once you max out a mastery track. Then be able to switch which track you want to activate like in pvp. Rewards would be different depending on the track you choose.