Guild Wars 2

I know enough not to spend these until I know what I’m doing but is there a strategy to spending them? Should I wait until I hit higher levels? Wait until the xpac hits?

Thanks

It’s a pretty new system for everyone so there’s no accepted wisdom yet. As someone who plays for fun rather than to min-max (as in, I know min-maxing is very fun for some, but not for me), I’ll suggest:

Bring up the Build tab and mouse over the various traits on the left side (you have to click the Traits tab at the top). Think about which ones seem really cool to you. Drill to those first. Though keep in mind your points also unlock your utility skills and those might have more immediately visceral effects on your game play, so review those as well.

Unspent points aren’t doing you much good and having no traits or skills may actually be crippling you. Since you will have all you need when you are 80, or even sooner if you go do the Hero Challenges in the maps, don’t worry about making a mistake. Sure you can’t have everything at once. Yet you eventually can, so press on!

(I do understand the paralysis of choice. It affects me on a regular basis. But now it doesn’t seem to matter that much in the new system).

I generally look for the falling damage reduction trait and aim for that first. I like being able to jump off cliffs. You’ll also want to consider what utilities and traits will give you greater dps for leveling, though I don’t put that as the prime concern, just a key one. The paradigm may be shifting now but it does seem that the main thing you want to do during leveling is kill things faster than they kill you. And do it in the way you find most fun, of course.

As a rule, you get enough hero points from leveling to unlock all current traits and utilities. However, due to the massive power of traits when it comes to builds, you want to unlock the combat oriented on as a power boost to aid in leveling. Choice of utilities depends heavily on class, but you want to have at least one of those lines available just because of how useful they are. By the time you’re getting close to level 80, you should have a build concept in mind, and should be traiting in that direction. That leaves points from 2 trait lines, and probably 2 utility lines unused, and ready for HOT’s release. If you have world completion, you’ll have over 200 extra points over the ones you get from leveling.

What the NPE fails miserably at, the one thing it was supposed to do, was try to prepare you for level 80 builds. A coherent build is a practically required for lvl 60+ areas, and absolutely required for surviving Orr.

You can’t break your character, so don’t worry about that. When you hit max level, you’ll have enough Hero Points for all of your class features, so at worst if you wind up buying things ‘suboptimally’ you’re going to be inconveniencing yourself for a few levels until you get more points. But spending no points at all because you’re scared you’ll make mistakes is much more suboptimal than spending them.

The specializations are the most point-intensive investments, so looking them over and figuring out which one looks the best to you might be wisest. You’ll get access to utility skills a full ten levels before you get access to specializations, so your first points should likely be going into filling out some skills to slot between 6-9. From there, you can save up some points to be ready to buy at least partway into a specialization come level 21. You won’t have enough points to finish it, but you’ll be able to get some neat abilities regardless. You can then bolster that specialization line as you gain more levels, and prepare yourself for when the second one unlocks so you can use two at once.

Thanks for the replies. Food for thought. Sounds like I won’t be punished for spending them early on. I’ll give them a good preview before I begin spending.

Question: How many per leveling area can I count on? I’ve gotten 8 so far in the 1-15 area and have yet to complete the area.

It varies between maps. You can use this as a guide though.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hero_challenge

What class are you? We can offer some early build advise.

Engineer – I found an outdated guide on how to spend the points: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/88640-guide-to-learning-leveling-and-loving-the-engineer/

I’m guessing that thread still has some good advice – not sure what parts are outdated though.

Thanks for the link.

Don’t worry too much about when or how you spend them.

My elementalist just hit level 77 and has done just under 1/2 the hero point challenges and already has more than enough points to unlock everything. My ranger, who was already level 80 with full map completion, has 214 spare points (which presumably will be used after the expansion comes out).

Of course it’s a good idea to try and pick things you think will be useful as you’re levelling up, but you get points regularly and will be unable to unlock everything eventually so the worst you can do is delay getting a build you like.

The strategy I like for leveling is to experiment with different ideas. The simplest approach (among many ideas) is to pick a skill type, pick a weapon, and unlock all the relevant skills and traits. Stick with that for 5-10 levels and then switch to another type. In this way, by the time you reach L80, you get a chance to focus briefly on everything that the profession has to offer.

Thanks for all the advice.