Guild Wars 2

I have searched forums I can’t find answer. I posted this on the HoT forum, but maybe better suited here.

I have come back after a 2 year absence. I have 3 lvl 80’s, all world completion. today I bought HoT exp.

I noticed it still shows exp for kills etc.. but no exp bar. After lvl 80 you used to get a Skill point for leveling. It is a full purple bar now.

I get you have to unlock all traits to reach mastery and unlock all mastery traits to use mastery traits. You can also use your skill points to buy stuff. So don’t you need to keep collecting skill points.

I have not been to the HoT area yet. finishing story first. I have approx. 400 Skill points on my lvl 80’s. I guess that’s a lot but since its currency you can always use them right. have I missed something?

Maybe its called hero points now, my bad

First things first, welcome back.

After level 80, you gain xp for masteries. You don’t get hero points any more for leveling after 80.

To unlock the masteries, you have to finish the first two story steps of HoT.

You have 400 points now, you should spend them for unlocking skills. 400 is enough to unlock all core skills except the specialisation. With 100% world completion, then you are missing 50 hero points, to fully unlock your specialisation. That means you need to do 5 hero challanges in HoT maps, since they are worth 10 hero points.

Hero points are only used for skills now, unlike before when skill points could also be used to buy things. Soul shards are used for that now.

Yeah, skill points changed into hero points and spirit shards. Hero Points function as the traits/utility skills currency now, and spirit shards are the currency for mystic forge stuff. You can get Hero Points by doing the open world hero challenges, like you used to for skill points in getting map completion. Spirit Shards are gained through completing 3 dailies (you get a bag of 3 spirit shards), sometimes as a random drop, and using a level up tome when you’re already level 80.

Here’s a quick summary of the situation now:

Skill point change

Skill Points were split into two separate ‘currencies’: Hero Points, which are used to unlock both skills and traits on the (new) training tab of the hero panel (where trait lines are now called specialisations) and Spirit Shards which are used to buy items that go in the Mystic Forge.

Collecting Hero Points

You get these from levelling up and from doing Hero Challenges in PvE (formerly Skill Challenges). You can also pay badges of honour in WvW to ‘complete’ a challenge, so you can level up entirely through WvW like you could before.

There is now a finite number of them available, but it’s more than enough to unlock absolutely everything, (including the new elite specialisations) so you still don’t have to worry about making ‘wrong’ choices. They also don’t have any other use, so feel free to use any you have available on any of your characters.

Collecting Spirit Shards

You will no longer get these for levelling up. Instead they’re a random drop for level 80 characters, awarded for doing 3 daily achievements in a day, and found in a whole variety of bags and other places. You also get them by using a Tome of Knowledge on a level 80 character.

Any Skill Points you had which came from ‘levelling up’ after level 80 will have been converted to spirit shards the first time you logged into that character. Like other currencies they’re now account wide too.

‘Levelling’ after 80

You will still get XP after level 80 no matter what, but as you’ve noticed it doesn’t do anything. For anyone who doesn’t have the expansion, or hasn’t started it, that’s the whole situation – after level 80 XP is useless. But once you’ve completed the first part of the Heart of Thorns (HoT) storyline (which you can do at any time after you get to level 80) you’ll unlock access to Masteries.

What you referred to as masteries in your first post are actually elite specialisations, which are basically new trait lines that also give you access to a new weapon. They’re pretty much identical to the existing traits/specialisations except that you have to reach level 80 and fully train all the others to use them.

Masteries are something different. They’re a lot more specialist – they only affect certain things in certain areas of the game. For example there’s one entirely devoted to gliding in HoT maps, and another entirely for Fractals. You can see a full list by opening the masteries tab at the bottom of the hero panel (even on a character who hasn’t started training them yet).

Masteries take a lot of XP to complete, but they are account wide – any level 80 can gain progress towards them and completed ones affect all your characters. They also need points which are awarded by specific achievements – you can see which ones by looking at the achievements tab.

If you don’t mind getting a big spoiler for the end of the Living Story Season 2 storyline it would be a good idea to play through the first part of the HoT story now so you can begin training masteries. (You can replay the story later to remind yourself what happened.) Alternatively you can wait until you’re ready for the story, it will mean completing the masteries takes longer but they’re not essential (a lot of them can’t even be used outside the HoT maps).

Back in June when they rolled out Specializations aka Traits 3.0, they abolished skill points and altered them into two “currencies”, Hero Points to unlock traits and skills and spirit shards that you use at the MF. As part of this in the basic game we no longer get anything leveling past 80. You get just enough Hero Points via leveling to unlock every skill and normal specializations traits at level 80.

However once you get HoT, XP charges up the mastery you picked and when full you can spend the number of mastery points to unlock that mastery. Mastery is account wide, all level 80s contribute and all characters benefit.

Also with HoT you can unlock your elite specialization once you are level 80 with every skill and specialization fully unlocked. Therefore without any of the Core Tyria (original game) Hero Challenges done, you start with 0 HP for your Elite Specialization. You need 250 aditional ones to fully unlock the Elite Specialization, there are roughly 210 in Core Tyria and each HP Challenge in HoT is now worth 10.

Thanks to everyone. It all makes sense now. You are all Wonderful. What a community!!!!!!!

Danikat.8537:

Masteries take a lot of XP to complete,

To clarify that, it takes 4,860,359xp to reach level 80.

HoT masteries cost 13,462,000 to complete a single track, except exalted lore which “only” costs 9,144,000.