Guild Wars 2

I just came back to the game after not playing for a couple of years. I’ve done enough of the jungle hero points to finish my elite spec and currently have ~100 extra points sitting around. I seem to remember that in the old system you could trade excess hero points you earned for some sort of item (philosophers stones I think). Is there anything like that with the new points?

Currently no.
But more specializations is supposed to be available in the future.

Hero points are the new Skill Points.

Nowadays Hero points are used exclusively to purchase Skills and Traits; Spirit Shards replaced the secondary use of Skill points for buying premium items that are utilized in Mystic for recipes. So any excess Hero points that you have are left on reserve for some future use.

i wonder if specialization releases will be reserved for big expansions every 3 years

Hold on to them for the most part, they’re a limited resource these days.
You just don’t want to waste them.

Lumpy.8760:

i wonder if specialization releases will be reserved for big expansions every 3 years

They have hinted at the possibility of adding more with LS releases but even more definitive stuff have slipped through so who knows.

Nothing. Until at least 2018, the next ‘expansion’…