Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone! I’ve had a GW2 account for well over a year now, but I haven’t been able to play much since last June. I’ve been looking into some of the new changes such as Lion’s Arch being destroyed and how ArenaNet has added a number of new features and overhauls to GW2 (example: the Hero interface is a bit different from how I remember it).

Trying to play my Engineer and Guardian right away has made me realize that I have forgotten quite a bit of the game, and the implementation of new systems only multiplied that effect. What I’d like to do is start a new profession, but to that end, I have a few questions:

1) Aside from Engineer and Guardian, what profession would you recommend I start anew with?

2) I noticed posts about traits being reworked – or something to that end – could I ask for a summary on this?

3) Has the game been noticeably optimized in the past year? My system could run the game quite well before, but I don’t think anyone can complain about a higher framerate.

That should be about it for now – if there’s anything else that was added and is relatively crucial, if anyone could bring me up to speed or just point it out so I could look into it myself, it’d be greatly appreciated!

1. Warriors are pretty easy to ‘easy mode’, so you can learn the basics while not worrying about being overwhelmed by enemies.
2. Traits before worked relatively simply: you gained a total of 70 points over the course of 70 levels, starting at 11 going to level 80. You had to unlock the next tier of traits by buying a book, which let you put more points into a higher tier and more specialized line (for example, putting points into the ‘power’ trait line). Now, you don’t start getting trait points until I believe level 30, and they’re irregularly gained from there. There are only 14 points now, with each point now fulfilling the role of 5 from the previous system: it’s more condensed. You don’t have to buy an item to unlock the next tier, however you have to unlock each individual trait. You can do this buy completing some specific requirement in the world, or by just buying it from a trait npc. This is a bit difficult to explain, but you’ll get used to it by playing.
3. Your performance should be overall better, however some changes have made it so more players are in the same area compared to previous updates, so you might have some culling issues: these are easily remedied through graphics options and usually won’t affect gameplay anyway.

Awesome! Thanks for the help, Mystic.