Guild Wars 2

Is there any value now in boosting experience gain for L80 characters?

Prior to the update that added specializations and djinngots (aka spirit shards), there was some advantage in granting experience boosts to L80 characters, because you could convert extra skill points into gold via Mystic Forge promotion recipes. Also, since skill points had use in ascended & legendary crafting and you needed a lot of SPs on particular toons.

Things have changed since the update:

• Djinngots (spirit shards) are obtained as drops, not from experience.
• There’s still an experience accumulation bar for L80s, which doesn’t seem to be tied to anything else at the moment.
• That only thing that I can remember related to experience is that ANet mentioned that the future Masteries system will be tied to experience gain while in the appropriate zone.

Is there any reason — prior to the release of HoT — in which any L80 character would care about boosting their experience?

Thanks.

At the moment I don’t think there is. But as you noted after HoT is released level 80’s will use XP to level masteries.

Come to think of it this might be why they changed it so spirit shards come from drops instead of XP, so you don’t have to choose which you’ll get.

They are a little vague when explaining it, but what I’ve gotten out of it is that when the expansion arrives, below level 80 exp will still be there and will be used to level your char. After reaching level 80 the exp bar will be switched to the mastery bar and another method, similar to exp and as yet unnamed, will be used to progress Masteries.

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=35818&storypage=2
The masteries seen in the demo are just the tip of what masteries will be available at launch, and the team will have more surprises for players. We wanted to know if all those consumables, like Tomes of Knowledge and Writs of Experience, would help players unlock all of these masteries faster. The short answer is that they won’t. The experience bar is going away and is being replaced by the mastery training bar. This training bar is in no way tied to experience, but fills up by going out and doing stuff in the world. So any item that gives you experience won’t help you train masteries.

Thanks for the answers, Dani & JaFW. I was mostly asking about whether to use consumables to accelerate experience gain, e.g. Guild XP Banner and especially utility potions. I’ve been in the habit of spamming 2 copper potions. 10% or 15% adds up and paid for a good portion of some of the spirit shards I have now.

Now and post-HoT in the futre, it seems that the XP buff won’t be useful after 80, which means there’s no value my holding onto the utilities.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some use for L80 experience points.

Thanks again.

While I agree there seems no use for them now, that does not mean there never will be again. ANet has changed core systems before…

…then again, if you need/want the space, the boosts will likely still be around if/when.