Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I just came back to the game and saw many new things! To give you an idea, I stopped played before HoT came out.
Many skills have changed, specializations, new classes weapons (what are these called?), the Revenant, etc.

To keep it somewhat short and organized, I’ll put numbers on the main things I would love to learn more from your (the players) point of view.

1. With all these changes, I was wonder if the roles of some classes might have changed or “improved”. Specifically on the support (buffer), heals and crowd control areas.

2. I read that the Druid seems to be a very good healer now (and provably a lot of people play it?), which comes out of ranger with a staff in HoT. What else can you tell me about the other classes? (I personally like playing the “odd” classes, the different ones.)

3. Also, is leveling by crafting still a thing? I have 2 lv80 characters I mostly leveled to 80 with crafting before even finishing the many story quests.

4. The whole equipment/wardrobe seems interesting, but are there things I should know before hand?

5. Living Worlds? Seasons? What?

6. Any other relevant information you might think is important/interesting for a returning player from before the expansion came out that you want to share with me?

Thank you all in advance!

First off, welcome back.

1 & 2) Traditional WoW style raids were implemented, which has been a driving factor of the new meta builds for classes. The most simplest way I can break down the class roles in a pve environment are:
a) Warrior: primary role is party buffing with phalanx strength trait, empower allies, and banners. Contributes a decent amount of dps. Either power or condi is viable. Warrior has access to some of the most powerful crowdcontrol skills in the game. Berserker spec is mandatory for all iterations of warrior meta builds.
b) Guardian: power dps. Recently received some buffs and contributes a very good level of dps. Dragon hunter spec is mandatory.
c) Ranger: can be played as magi healer druid which also contributes significant party buffs such as grace of the land, spotter, and spirits. For healer druid, obviously druid spec is mandatory. Also can be specced to be a terrific condi dps with viper’s gear. For dps spec you don’t take druid spec. Nobody runs power ranger dps because it is so subpar compared to condi ranger.
d) Engineer: primarily played as condi dps. Power engineers are a thing but condi engis do better dps. Minor party support with healing turret, and pinpoint distribution trait. Nobody takes scrapper spec because vanilla condi engi can contribute terrific dps.
e) Necromancer: Primarily played as condi with viper with reaper spec being mandatory. BUT, as of late not many people are playing necros because their dps is subpar and they don’t really contribute a whole lot to a group.
f) Mesmer: primarily played as a support class (sometimes as tank in certain raids). Mesmer does really low dps, but makes up for it by buffing the party with alacrity and quickness which really cranks up the entire group’s dps. Chronomancer spec is mandatory.
g) Elementalist: primarily played a power dps class. Undeniable top dog in terms of dps rankings but also has one of the highest learning curves. Can also be specced to be a healer, but healer eles are rather uncommon. Tempest spec is mandatory for both dps and healer.
h) Revenant: nobody plays this class in pve because it is terrible in its current iteration.
i) Thief: primarily played as power dps. Doesn’t hit as hard as guardian, elementalist, condi engi, condi ranger, but has the advantage of being very easy to play. Daredevil spec is more or less mandatory.

3) Leveling by crafting is still a thing, but it’ll be hard for someone like you who is just returning back. The game economy has experienced serious inflation and crafting just costs so much more gold now. This is obviously negated by invoking the power of a Mastercard/Visa.

4) There’s not a whole lot to it. Once you obtain a item, the moment you soul/account bind it the skin becomes available for your entire account. Obviously, armor class restrictions still exist, meaning that you can’t try and use a heavy armor skin on a light armor class. You can change skins whenever you want by using transmutation charges which can be purchased from the gemstore.

5) Living world is sort of a continuation of the game’s lore/story. The vanilla game story/lore ends with the demise of the elder dragon Zhaitan. Living world is basically a continuation of what happens to the world of Tyria after that. Each season of living world comes with multiple episodes. Living world also introduces new enemies, new allies, and new areas. In trying to keep the spoilers to a minimum, all I can say is that the first two living world seasons eventually culminate into the invasion of Maguuma (Heart of Thorns expansion).

6) All I can say is since you’re just returning back, take things slowly. A whole lot has changed and there is a lot of new content. And also, brace yourself for Heart of thorns because everything in maguuma hurts a lot. The difficulty of Heart of Thorns content is on a whooooole new level in comparison to base content. I would also like to suggest maining an easy class such as power PS warrior, guardian, or thief. Simply because they don’t have complex rotations or high learning curves. Also, power oriented gear such as berserker is easier/cheaper to obtain than condition or support oriented gear such as commander, minstrel, or viper, which are absolutely mandatory for condition and support classes.

I could not have asked for a better reply!

Thank you so much kind Daedraz!!

I was in the same boat siks. Thank you daedraz that really helped me as well.

The day thief became easy and mesmer became subpar in term of damage… someone would have told me this before HoT and I’d have laughed long and hard

I chuckle because I see revs everywhere. Guess a lot of players don’t realize they’re dead.

3) gw2crafts.net still the best source for “speed” crafting.

4) If you have the older transmutation stones you can convert them to transmutation charges. Also you can “farm” for them by doing map complete in the cities. You also get 3 charges per 28 day login reward cycle (day 26).

There are also outfits which are total replacement of your armor. Think of it as an illusion over your current armor. You can swap them or turn them on and off for free but you can’t mix or match parts.

The wardrobe also contains minis, finishers, gliders, dyes, mail carriers that use to be character bound but are now account bound. I think you might have to add them either by cycling through your characters or in the case of minis, right click and add them to the wardrobe from player inventory or your bank.

5) Remember Scarlet and her eventual blowing up of Lion’s Arch? That was Season 1 (January 2013 – March 2014) story. Season 2 (July 2014 – January 2015) story was when the Zephyrite’s ship crashed in Dry Top which was the prequel to the expansion. Season 3, which requires HoT, continues the human story of someone trying to overthrow the queen, that had been hinted at since launch. Season 3 is going on currently. In Season 3 each episode also contains a new map.

6 ) HoT, besides adding “elite specializtions” also added the Mastery System for account progression. You first have to unlock the system by doing the first chapter of the HoT story (I think, it’s been a while) and then you can start putting XP toward Masteries that will unlock account wide abilities such as gliding. Read about it here.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery

Thanks for the follow up Behellagh!
Very informative ^^

1. Quick rundown of class’s elite specs:
a) Druid: A healer build with the staff. Can transform into celestial form, a healing avatar with a timer similar to guardian tomes. Adds glyph skills that change if in celestial form or not
b) Dragonhunter: Guardians gain a longbow and trap skills. Their virtues change slightly in functionality.
c) Berserker: Warriors pick up a torch and get super angry. Gain new rage skills, and can supercharge adrenaline.
d) Scrapper: Engineers swing a hammer. Gains mobile friends called gyros.
e) Daredevil: Thief uses a (quarter)staff. Focuses on physical skills and dodging.
f) Tempest: Elementalists shout into a warhorn. They can also supercharge their attunements.
g) Chronomancer: Mesmers pick up a shield to manipulate time. Can summon wells, grants alacrity (inverse of chill for skill cooldowns), Can also time anchor similar to thief’s Shadowstep.
h) Reaper: Necromancer becomes a monster with a greatsword. Also gains shouts. Shroud skills become more melee-related.
i) Revenant – the new profession. Summons famous names from GW history. Elite is Herald, adding a shield and Glint as a spirit.

3) Leveling through crafting is still possible, but 0-400 is only 7 levels, I hear, while going to 500 grants 10 levels.

4) Wardrobe unlocks the first time you log in since its implementation. If you had any account-bound skin from before but deleted, they aren’t unlocked. Fine equipment can be unlocked without account-binding it. You can unlock weapons or armor for equipment you can’t wear by account-binding it, then trading to another character. Salvaging an item also unlocks the skin.

Oh, and if you had the old transmutation stones, they can be traded for 3:1 for the lesser versions, or 1:1 for the silver version. Transformation charges are stored in the wallet. (see 6)

5. Living World is GW2’s attempt to make the game constantly grow and feel alive. Sadly, Season 1 was designed to be temporary yet open-world content, so this has all been lost to the sands of time. Season 2 introduced the Maguuma Wastes (Dry Top and Silverwastes), deals partially with the end of Season 1 and leads into Heart of Thorns. Season 3 is ongoing, with a map roughly every 2 months. If you log in during the free release date, it unlocks; otherwise, it needs to be bought in the gem store. Season 2 can be played with someone who has unlocked it, but that only shows the story and doesn’t unlock achievements.

Also, any achievements in Season 2 can only be unlocked after the story was completed. Achievements in HoT or Season 3 instances can potentially be completed in the first run.

6. Since you didn’t know about Living World, I assume you haven’t played since 2012. There’s now a wallet, which contains all the major currencies in the world (gold, karma, gems, dungeon tokens, map currencies). If it can be salvaged or used in recipes, it doesn’t go into the wallet.

Defiance has been replaced with a break bar. Using CCs on them breaks the break bar. They usually only appear on champion or better monsters. Stability also gives a break bar in PvP.