Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played since last summer and I want to come back now to play Living Story Season 2. What are the most significant changes to the game that I should know about?

I’m familiar with Living Story 1 events just having difficulties to find the most important changes to mechanics.
I’m playing Ranger and Mesmer, PvE only.
Thanks in advance.

Trait system on new characters overhauled.

Megaserver tech means underflow zones are created for normally lightly populated maps so multiple servers can share the same zone. This also means that boss events have a train like schedule.

Overhaul to skins. Now account bound and reusable with transmutation cost. Downside is you can no longer move upgrades. It’s buy again, salvage (if you are able) or the gem store extractor.

Most champs have been downgraded to vets in the 1-15 zones.

For the LS, once you activate a chapter during it’s initial two weeks, you can play it whenever. Even with characters you create after that chapter has passed.

That’s all I got.

In addition to what Behellagh has posted:

• Significant overhaul to the rune sets and sigils.
• New attributes for gear such as Dire and Nomad’s.
• Champ train is now in Frostgorge Sound and EotM.
• Dungeons now only yield the gold reward once per day (not sure if you were here for that change). No more CoF path 1 runs until your eyes bleed.

If you want to know more about class change mechanics, I would start reading through the patch notes since you last played. So many minor tweaks here and there I couldn’t give you an overall picture.

Some more:

- Fractals of the Mists have been overhauled, adding three more fractals.
- Dyes are now account-wide. Unidentified dyes no longer drop (but can still be bought with laurels).
- New WvWvW map: Edge of the Mists, which is like an overflow zone while you are queued to enter your actual world’s WvWvW.
- Glory was removed as a reward system for PvP. A new system was launched to replace it.
- Each profession has a new (profession-specific) healing skill. Additionally, the healing skill Antitoxin Spray is available to all professions.
- Each traitline for each profession got one additional new grandmaster trait. This needs to be unlocked, even for characters who are not newly created.
- Lion’s Arch is in the process of being rebuilt. Many NPCs died. The jumping puzzles are unchanged. Lion’s Arch now has an exit into Lornar’s Pass, and the second exit to Gendarran Fields was permanently closed.

This kind of high level overview is exactly what I needed. I ’ll learn the minor things on the go. Thanks everyone.