Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

A question.. I tried various word plays but I can’t find similar topics so I’ll have to put it out here.

Should I spend skill points to unlock traits or should I go the long way of unlocking them and keep my skill points for later use?

The skill points are unlikely to be your main expense, as a skill point is, on average, worth only about 20-35 silver each post-conversion, depending on TP prices. You’ll get a lot of them from levelling past 80, and more scrolls drop all the time from champion chests as well.

The direct gold cost would be more.

Whether you should buy a trait directly or unlock it through the ‘gameplay’ method depends entirely on how much time you need to spend to unlock the trait outside how you would normally play the game. If unlocking a trait takes you 15 minutes, and your income is on average 5 gold per hour, gamplay unlocking would cost you 1.25 gold in lost profit – and so, for a grandmaster trait worth 1.5 gold + 10 SP (1.8 G equiv), it would be better to unlock it. If unlocking the trait takes you 60 minutes, on the other hand, it would be better to buy it.

The more efficient you are, the more buying it directly becomes a good idea.

Wow that’s some good info there.

Thanks!

Also, depending on how big of a hurry you are in, HoT is supposed to bring some sort of revision to the trait system. So if you’ve been wanting to level another character, or whatever, you could wait to see what the expansion may bring.

Or a combination of the two — unlock the ones you really want, then wait for the rest.

It really depends on you and your preferred playstyle, willingness to find/complete the necessary tasks, and/or willingness to spend the required amounts of currency.

To buy all trait unlocks costs 360 SP and 43 gold. Alternatively, you can do the various tasks, which I estimate to take a minimum of 21 hours, not including time spent waiting for certain events to become available. Therefore, it’s more economically efficient to do the challenges. On other hand, it would burn me out doing it on more than one character (since all the challenges are identical and some are imo tedious).

I therefore recommend reviewing the wiki’s article on trait unlocks first:

• If you haven’t done the specific challenge, go ahead and do it; some of them are fun the first time and some expose you to new content/game modes that might be appealing.
• Also try the challenge if you don’t have any specific memories about doing it before.
• For the challenges you do remember:
  • Is it easy/trivial and/or fun? Go ahead an do it.
  • Was it boring or tedious? Or you just can’t bear to re-do it for some reason? Then sure, spend the coin.

As an example, all of the newest Grandmaster traits are worth unlocking via content: you just park the toon near the required event and check occasionally; if the event is up, participate and if not, swap to another character and come back later.

Following this advice, I estimate I spend ~100 SP and 12.3 gold, instead of 360 SP & 43g. It also keeps me from burning out due to grind.

A few notes about skill points. SPs are used for other things besides unlocking skills and traits, notably crafting legendary and other mystic forge weapons and promoting materials (also in the forge).

As Hayashi says, SPs can be converted into coin, too. Anywhere from 20-120s per SP, depending on what you invest in and the turn around.

However, for most players, SP acquisition is either incredibly easy (from PvP or champ bags) or really difficult (since it mostly requires level up and login rewards for WvW and some styles of PvE play). If you have SP galore, it’s worth investing some of them to save you the aggravation of tracking down the unlocks. But if SP are scarce for you, I recommend saving them for later, just in case.