Maguuma – We give drama a bad name!
Returning after 2 years, kinda lost
Maguuma – We give drama a bad name!
You can spend all your Hero Points on your traits/skills if they are not already filled. If they are extra Hero Points, you can save them for Elite Specializations, should you decide to purchase Heart of Thorns.
You can peruse the ‘Releases’ page via the link above. Or look over the Game Release Notes found on the front page of the forums.
And, of course, Wintersday is in full swing. You can work on the Wintersday Meta, such as it is.
Welcome return, and good luck.
Dry Top and Silverwastes zones are possibly new to you. If so make your way there via your story journal. These will give you a sense of the HoT zones – although you will still get a shock. Frankly giving your experience you need to consider purchasing HoT or you’ll just get bored with the game, imo.
Otherwise I suggest you aim for map completion.
Pvp is mid way thru its season atm so there may not be many peeps around core PvE.
WvW has changed a wee bit – note you can get Hero Points via a method there.
Hero points replaced the old skill point system, and spirit shards were added to fill the role of currency. This all leads into the Specialization update. Both Traits and Utility skills are now rolled into a track, which you use Hero Points to unlock.
Core Specializations can be unlocked by reaching lvl 80 (they give you enough points to do so). The extra points gained from map completion can speed up the process, but aren’t technically needed. If you get Heart of Thorns, this opens an Elite specialization for each class, which you use excess Hero Points to get started. In both Scenarios, you have a fairly large amount of leeway in hero points, and do not need to do world complete in either to fully unlock an E-Spec track.
You want to have access to E-Specs, because they are almost universally a form of power creep (Druid is a special case) over a pure Core Spec build. The HOT specs in particular are designed to fill in a weakness inherent in each class, and substantially improves their capability to deal with the higher power curve of enemies found in the expansion. Even if you rarely ever go into HOT maps, the E-Specs make each class feel a lot more complete.
You’re also going to want to get HOT now for 2 reasons.
1. Gliding has endless utility throughout the current game (both Core and HOT); and you want to work on it now while the HOT maps (which you need to do for mastery points) are still somewhat popular.
2. You will not get new Living Story chapters for free if you’re on a core account. Considering you can get Ascended gear for cheap on the LS3 maps and Raid tokens (which you can’t access without HOT), this can catch you up quickly and cheaply to the new Ascended Base line.
Actually, you will get new Living World Episodes unlocked for free on your Core account.
The issue is you can not access them without purchasing Heart of Thorns. But, as long as you log into your account (whether Core or Play4Free) when an Episode is live, it will be unlocked and waiting for you.
Good luck.