Guild Wars 2

Hello Folks,

I am someone who drifted away from GW2 after the end of season two and have only recently returned to the game so I am quite a long way behind most of you folks I expect. Now I see a new expansion was released along with a new season story which needs me to purchase said expansion to be able to do.

As its been a good long while since I played it seems most of the folks I used to play with don’t seem to be on so I will be solo for sometime and I am concerned about buying the expansion and not being able to play the content due to difficulty.

So while I realise this is a bit of a subjective question in part I want to ask whether HoT is worth getting and will I be able to do the content without breaking my keyboard in frustration as a solo player.

Many thanks in advance for your input and taking the time to reply to my questions.

It depends on what you mean by solo. Can you solo every hero point in HoT? Nope, you can’t. But you can get them done with people without grouping. You will need other people around for some stuff. Think of the temples in Orr. You probably did some, but you didn’t solo them. But you didn’t group either.

HoT requires you to rethink how you do things. It’s not impossible to run around by yourself and get stuff done. By the same token you just can’t spam 1 and get through that content. You need to understand both your profession and your enemy.

Some creatures are easy to face if you’re not in front or behind them. So you have to keep moving. Other creatures require you to dodge their big attacks.

Some people solo their way through HoT without too much trouble. Some try to play the way they’ve always played, without thinking about changing up their build or using terrain, or learning the creatures, and they die more quickly and get frustrated.

Without knowing how you play it’s hard to know if you can solo HoT. But I can.

I am clueless about builds and such. And I can and did/do solo HoT, for the most part. I did ask my fearless Guild Leader to help with one Hero Challenge, though, so I could ‘map complete’ one of the maps.

On the other hand, some players find it too difficult; I’m not sure why. There are some great features that come with HoT, even if you barely visit the maps, such as Gliding and Core Tyria Masteries, not to mention LS Season 3.

Good luck.

This question comes up all the time. Not surprisingly, as players have vastly different opinions on HoT.

First, I would ask if you’re easily frustrated by exploration challenges. The HoT maps are very vertical to accommodate gliding, but for that reason walking in a straight line to objectives after viewing them on the map isn’t feasible in most cases. Players like myself really enjoy this aspect of HoT, but many players find it a confusing and frustrating experience.

As for the combat, the monsters are tougher in general and there tend to be more of them. The HP challenges are probably 50/50 solo content, but you’ll need to complete about half of the available challenges to unlock your elite spec. Events are a mixed bag as well. Many can be completed solo and many cannot.

So will you need some help in HoT? Definitely. Whether or not it qualifies as “solo” content is a matter of perspective. Certainly not from a strict interpretation, but then by that measure core Tyria doesn’t qualify as “solo” content either – and we know that’s not true!

Anyway, if you end up purchasing the expansion and would like some help getting around, I’m usually up for it. You can contact me in game. Or, if you prefer to go it alone, I recommend dulfy.net for easy-to-follow video guides to reach various objectives.

And one more piece of advice: When it comes to HoT masteries, unlock bounce mushrooms and updrafts first. There are other masteries you’ll want to unlock as well, but those two in addition to basic gliding are the big ones for general navigation in HoT. Nuhoch wallows and Exalted markings are also cheap skills recommended for navigation (wallows are especially useful in navigating the Tangled Depths map, which is considered the most difficult map for navigation by far).

Ask yourself this, do I consider my skills to be average or better than the average player. If you are better than the average player you will probably be fine in HoT and be able to piece together enough hero points to unlock your specialization even if you only solo. Some points require others and people will turn up to help you in many cases.

However if you are average or below, you will get wrecked in HoT. You’ll want to find a few HoT buddies to help you out. If I’m around, you can hit me up. And I’m sure you’ll find others willing to help.

Specializations are very fun though. Just make sure you check out anet’s authorized resellers for digital downloads because they have sales 24/7 for HoT.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/

Well, if you like the game so far and want to continue it buy HOT. Lots more to do after completing the base game.

Hmm thank you for all the replies some things to ponder there.

As to what I enjoy / dislike with regards to mmo gaming, I love story, hate dungeons / raids that lock story content behind them, love exploring and finding new things and I hate grinding if it means repeating the same content over and over again just to reach an arbitrary mark of progression.

I have a ranger at 80 so I will be going back into the game on her to play through the HoT stuff initially and I guess I would have to try the Revenant thing after, it would seem rude not to hehe.

I did enjoy the journey to 80 and story stuff that I played up to the end of LS season 2 and I am really looking for that to continue I guess with out too much repeating padding stuff.

Sadly you can’t progress in the HoT story without grinding meta events to get some, not all, of the mastery skills as without them you can’t start some story missions off. This story is short, good pacing in the first half of it but the last half is very rushed.

No dungeons but the Raid does have story that ties into LS 3 and the direction the story is going in for the foreseeable future.

Hope this helps you make a more informed decision xD

Drakz.7051:

Sadly you can’t progress in the HoT story without grinding meta events to get some, not all, of the mastery skills as without them you can’t start some story missions off. This story is short, good pacing in the first half of it but the last half is very rushed.

No dungeons but the Raid does have story that ties into LS 3 and the direction the story is going in for the foreseeable future.

Hope this helps you make a more informed decision xD

I disagree with this. To do the story you need very few masteries and mastery points, and they’re faster to get now than they were at launch. I’ve taken several new guildies into HoT and I don’t think we had to repeat a single event chain to level the masteries we needed. We certainly didn’t farm metas.

Well thank you to everyone for your input I decided to jump in with the basic edition.

So far its all very confusing at the moment with a lot of stuff being thrown at me with not much explanation within the game as to what it is or what should be done.

I am sure I will pick it all up with continued play its just I am in the wtf should I being doing stage right now.

That’s easy to answer. Pick a direction, and run! Find things explore, kill mobs, find events. Does that look cool to you? Go touch it!