Guild Wars 2

Hello all!

I’ve just picked up GW2HOT and I haven’t played in a few years.

I have a level 80 Necromancer, and was in the process of getting full ascended berserker gear when I left and currently have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing / working towards lol

Previously, I would complete dailies, run a few fractals, run tenq when available and speed most of my evenings doing WvW.

I currently don’t have a gaming rig and I’ll be playing on a low – mid end laptop (i5, 8gb ram, integrated GPU) and WvW doesn’t seem to be treating my FPS good so I’m going to avoid that until I can get a new rig built.

What are things I should be doing or focusing on until I can get back into my WvW grind? Stuff I can do solo or in a small group that won’t tax my system too bad.

Any direction is much appreciated as I’ve just been running around lions arch jumping in circles for the past hour

Go and get mastery-levels! To do so: activate the HoT Story in the story menu and play the first mission. Once you’ve done that i’m sure you’ll find yourself something to do (guess you want to unlock your elite-specialization and mastery lines… so go and explore some HoT maps)

Work on unlocking elite specs for any of the classes you play. Do this by gaining hero points (skill points) all around tyria and train the spec. HoT map skill points grant +10.

So what exactly do mastery levels do?

Aeniklast.9283:

So what exactly do mastery levels do?

Once u figure out how to get mastery points for lvls.. u begin to farm for them. Once u learn how to farm for them, u begin to realise why u need them. Once u realise why u need them (e.g. mastery exp/pts.) u begin to farm for them with greater enthusiasm and interest. Once u start to farm for them with greater interest, u begin to realise how hopeless it all is and how u want to stop grinding and just unlock ur masteries alrdy so u can stop sucking and falling face flat on content that comes natural to everyone else. Once u realise how hopeless it all is, u get better at farming for said masteries. Once u get better at farming for ur masteries, u feel good about yourself since life is alot easier for u. Once u feel good about yourself, u start to feel bored and unmotivated as u realise how most of the masteries are largely useless, like how no I don’t wanna run faster in cities since it doesn’t stack with swiftness anyway. Once u realise how masteries are largely useless, u will either choose to max them out because u are basically being forced to or focus on something more worth ur time and effort (e.g. specialization unlocks and other content).

Aeniklast.9283:

So what exactly do mastery levels do?

Gliding and Auto Autoloot are among the more popular features.

Nice to see you decided to take the plunge, after all.

Good luck.

nagr.1593:

Aeniklast.9283:

So what exactly do mastery levels do?

Once u figure out how to get mastery points for lvls.. u begin to farm for them. Once u learn how to farm for them, u begin to realise why u need them. Once u realise why u need them (e.g. mastery exp/pts.) u begin to farm for them with greater enthusiasm and interest. Once u start to farm for them with greater interest, u begin to realise how hopeless it all is and how u want to stop grinding and just unlock ur masteries alrdy so u can stop sucking and falling face flat on content that comes natural to everyone else. Once u realise how hopeless it all is, u get better at farming for said masteries. Once u get better at farming for ur masteries, u feel good about yourself since life is alot easier for u. Once u feel good about yourself, u start to feel bored and unmotivated as u realise how most of the masteries are largely useless, like how no I don’t wanna run faster in cities since it doesn’t stack with swiftness anyway. Once u realise how masteries are largely useless, u will either choose to max them out because u are basically being forced to or focus on something more worth ur time and effort (e.g. specialization unlocks and other content).

This post makes me not want to even log in.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Aeniklast.9283:

So what exactly do mastery levels do?

Gliding and Auto Autoloot are among the more popular features.

Nice to see you decided to take the plunge, after all.

Good luck.

Thanks for being constructive and positive!!!

Masteries
There are 6 HoT mastery-lines you can unlock if you do the following:

• Gliding: Completing Torn from the Sky (first HoT Story)
• Itzel Lore: Completing Torn from the Sky
• Exalted Lore: Entering Auric Basin
• Nuhoch Lore: Entering Tangled Depths
• Forsaken Thicket: Killing a boss in the Forsaken Thicket raid
• Ancient Magics: Entering Bloodstone Fen

and 3 Central Tyria mastery-lines:

• Pact Commander: Completing Torn from the Sky
• Legendary Crafting: Completing Torn from the Sky
• Fractal Attunement: Completing Torn from the Sky

Once unlocked you can chose an activ line and can switch at any moment.
Evey line consists of different helpful skills you have to unlock step-by-step.

To unlock a mastery you have to:

• chose it as your desired mastery to level
• fill the EXP bar – only then you can ‘buy’ it
• spend the required mastery-points to unlock it

Each masterypoint you spend will increase your masterylevel by 1.
So let’s say if you are masterylevel 113 and spend 8 masterypoints to unlock ‘Advanced Gliding’ (5th mastery – Gliding masteryline), you will be level 121.
The masterylevel is mostly an cosmetic display of your experience, though.

Elite Specialization

The other big thing are elite specs. Once you hit level 80, you can spend hero points to unlock a completely new traitline for your class. This will also unlock a new weapon for your char (Necros can wield greatswords for example).

To do this you ‘only’ have to spend the required amount of hero points. To get these you have to complete hero challenges or play WvW. The rule is: HoT challenges award 10 Hero points, where Tyria challenges only reward 1 (they are easier, though).

So the things you can do:

1. Do events for Exp (to level masteries)
2. Complete the map for:
   * Hero Points (to unlock elite spec)
   * Mastery Points (to spend for your masteries)
   * Map Completion (if you want to build a HoT legendary)
3. Achievements (many give mastery points)
4. Play the story (to unlock specific map-parts you can’t reach otherwise and ofc mastery points)
5. Gear up and prepare yourself for fractals/raids

Edit: I also wanna hint to the elite spec weapon-collections, wich reward you with an ascended version of your elite spec weapon (you have to unlock them first, though).

I didn’t mean it to sound so I depressing but I’m sorry if it came across that way and made you similarly feel down lol. But yeah I wasn’t rly answering ur question seriously and I know, it’s just like if someone asked me how would I describe how important MP’s are, I would say it’s just aesthetics and a feeling of relative comfort for the most part, not something you think about and bc of that — most of the masteries u can train are largely useless and the only reason u would get them would be to progress to the next higher one in the same track or bc u just have a lot of master points (MP’s) to use up and don’t have anything particular in mind. Ill list a couple examples I feel are largely useless and explain why I feel that way:

• Pact leader (idk exact name) – movement speed increased in cities. First off there’s an npc u can talk to increase ur speed, plus u can stack perma swiftness easy with some classes so it’s not needed

• Exalted gathering – seriously have no clue what exactly this does, I swear the wiki is deliberately unclear as well. I gather absolutely no nodes in Maguuma region (except for those bloodstone ones) so can’t imagine how this would help me except for some collections

• Fight the champion daily (Exalted/nunoch) – the loot is rubbish, not worth serious time wasted trying to solo duel champ or do with small group. The potoni guy is a dumb unfair fight anyway (can’t dodge his body smash attack and I guess only stability works so it’s broken mechanics and huge waste of time overall).

• speed mushrooms – only 20s of swiftness, really? I’m just lucky I can stack perma swiftness on my classes so easily, this is just kitten useless imo

• adrenal mushrooms – I dunno why u would ever use this except warrior. And they don’t exactly pop up enough that u can use them in the heat of the moment like in the mid of a fight

There may be others I forgotten to mention too, but yeah most of them don’t rly do much. They are like an AP system u can look at others and feel good about urself that u managed to max everything out.. big deal in the end eh. It’s only the gliding masteries and the mushrooms one that are useful for like map completion and stuff – rest are borderline useless I feel. I’m at mastery 164 now, I bumped up a couple cos I maxed out my maguuma masteries. Yeah, I’m working towards legendary too otherwise there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have even bothered.

Sorry if this viewpoint seems jaded to you, it’s just that masteries are a bit lacking compared to the amount of time and effort u need to unlock them. They’ve been a real let down to me and when it gets to the point when ur so used to them that u use them without thinking, it feels like jeez I’m not even using the greater part of masteries like wth am I doing wrong.. or maybe I’m doing it right and it just feels pointless.