Guild Wars 2

Ok. I’m not even sure how this works.

So let’s say I purchase HOT today, how behind am I? I’ve been told there are significant events you need to accomplish that can’t be solo’d, and these days I am a very casual player with odd playtimes, mostly off peak.

How do I even get the new elite specs? How long would it take me? Can you get them if you start a new character? Or is it a capped character only?

Elite specs are only for level 80 characters, to get them you need 250 Hero Points, which used to be Skill points.

You can solo getting elite specs but better in groups,

If you can find some friend with experience already to help you out, you can make significant progress very quickly since a lot of stuff has been figured out and now easily obtainable.

And they made alot of Hero Points easier to obtain without being gated behind certain Masteries

Would I have enough points if I leveled up from level 1? And can I just unlock the spec with the hero points? Or are there additional things I need to do?

To fully unlock an elite you have to first unlock all your core specializations (your 5 traitlines) which is a gimmee because you’ll have all the necessary points you need to accomplish that by the time you hit 80. After that, you have to collect another 250 Hero points to fully unlock an Elite Spec. You can do this in the Non-HoT maps, though I think you cap ~210 if you go to every map.

However, in HoT, each Hero point is worth 10 points. Some of them are easy in that you just walk up to them and just channel them to get the free points. Others require you to do a jump puzzle or discovery of sort to find the challenge. Lastly, some of the Hero Points require you to slay fairly difficult mobs/bosses to gain the points. It’s the last variety of Hero Point challenges that usually require help as you could very easily be up against Champions by yourself.

Honestly, your first toon will be the hardest since you have to learn the layouts of the maps and discover the locations of the Challenges (though there are guides online if you want to just look them up). Each sequential character is a little bit easier since the layout of the map becomes more familiar to you.

My Revenant, having 0 points and mapping (he was my new character) took about a full day’s worth of grinding to get the necessary Hero Points. granted at that point I had no guides nor any clue on where to go for the majority of the points.

For my two toons that had map completion (~210 points) I spent about 10 minutes each to get the last few points I needed (I went for the easy/quick Challenges).

On my lesser played toons (~100-120 points) I’m spending about 30-45 minutes each getting the rest of their points.

Two big tips I found to be very helping:

-On your first adventure try to pick a very mobile toon. Your first objective is to learn the maps so the faster your toon moves the faster you can figure out where everything is.

-Talk to your map. A lot of times there will be people waiting to do a challenge because it requires bodies. If you know you’re about to go up against a difficult challenge type it out in map chat, and you’ll usually have a few people pop up to help out.

Ultimately, you’re not that behind.

You have to have all other Specializations unlocked before you can unlock the elite spec. You will need to get Hero Points from Wvw or Pve content either open world or faster if you do Hot

I wouldn’t think of it as being behind but having a fresh game to explore! After several other MMOs I found GW2 lots of fun to level up in. On my first toon I was interested in exploring, so I map completed everything which set me up nicely for HOT.

For you, you can still do all the challenges in the old maps, which will give you the same effect. By the time you start HoT content you’d have almost all of your elite spec unlocked.

But whatever you choose, I agree with the others here: you’re not “behind” at all. Have fun!