Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: For XP amounts I did have numerous boosts on (birthday, xp, item, old exp, festival fireworks, halloween food, utility, utility necklace with utility XP infusion, etc).

So first thing I did when I got in was go on my Elementalist and unlock Masteries by doing the first story step. Second thing was get on my Revenant, get through starting area, then did the scroll + tome leveling. At this point I started running around once my gear was relatively sorted out with Traveler’s runes.

Second thing I did was old world content by getting it’s Hero Points. All I did was mostly go after Hero Points with a few events here and there. I had Pact Commander Training. This took around 12 hours total to complete. My route was:

LA -> Metrica -> Brisbain -> Dry Top -> Silverwastes (5/6 – no Vine Wraith) -> Caledon -> Kessex -> Queensdale -> Gendaran -> Hrathi -> Bloodtide -> Sparkfly -> Straight -> Malachor -> Cursed -> Mount Mael -> Timberline -> Dredgehaunt -> Lornar -> Snowden -> Wayfarer -> Diessa -> Plains of Ashford -> Field of Ruin -> Blazeridge -> Iron Marches -> Fireheart -> Frostgorge (not concerned about spelling, you get the idea)

After all that I was Pact Commander 4/5 and with only 30% of world completion done. To be fair however the WPs and HPs seem more valued XP wise than POIs so good chunk of the XP is gone regardless. I also went into EOTM and got a quick WvW rank which gave me the final point so I got 200 out of Tyria.

From there I went into Maguuma. In addition to Gliding needing to be unlocked base, I went Mushrooms next and then Improved Gliding. Most Hero Points are locked behind Improved Gliding or Mushrooms. After that I would unlock Exalted Lore 1 followed by Nuloch Wallows then back to Gliding till Ley Line Gliding.

Verdant Brink – Some low hanging fruit here (literally) but also a lot (around 3) above in Canopy only available during Helicopter (or easily available then). I ended up 9/11 with 1 in the Canopy missed and 1 requiring Nuloch missed.

Auric Basin – Few locked away behind things like Ley Line gliding and presumably more Exalted stuff, ended up 7/11 only.

Tangled Depths – Many are locked away and only ended up with 4/11. Heavy investment in many lines required it seemd for a lot of them but with 200 from Tyria and 200 from here that was Herald.

Dragon’s Stand – Most seemed locked behind the mapwide event.

That was that. Good times, Herald fully done, and back to finish off Pact Commander

gratz mate! now go do some testing XD! apparently there are some bugs with Revenant underwater, on land.

Sad that Dragon’s Stand is locked away. was hoping to finish up the Glint’s shield collection. Thanks for the tips! guess gonna try out the route now

Did you unlocked mist wep track?

I did not. It has the Mistward set and Glint’s Bastion. That’s it.

nobleroar.2078:

gratz mate! now go do some testing XD! apparently there are some bugs with Revenant underwater, on land.

Haven’t seen the underwater on land part.

I will say that underwater only two legends we get are Glint and Shiro. Herald don’t show up. However if you had a Facet active before you go into water, you can keep it active in water long as you don’t switch out of Glint’s Legend.

Very nice work! You are an inspiration to us all, belive me.

Just a question, I was looking at the unlocks for the traits and it looks very piecemeal out, and I’m worried that I will unlock the first trait and have no heal, no utility etc. How deep into Herald before it was actually viable to play?

Herald was usable right away depending on what you’re doing. Shield has a lot of usefulness and you’re basically trading Retribution out for it. For me I was running around doing HP grab in Tyria so nothing really intensive and the shield was nice when running around as Shiro/Jalis.

Shiro got really good with Hardening Presence as a bulk of my game play is basically flip on Impossible Odds and spam Auto attack and that’s 400 more Toughness when doing that.

Glint Legend wasn’t really useful until Facet of Elements. Strength and the Heal alone are not enough with only the first tier. Most cases you are in Shiro for the in combat on demand Super Speed when skipping around. It got amazing again around Facet of Darkness giving always on Fury when fighting and having Shared Empowerment.

What stats and weapons? Zerk, Sword+Shield and Hammer?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAscinvNWNS6JrJRZlBlsryfSYV5QJYscrkFNFhtc62qz2FsdRgGA-ThSBABWqSRg7P8whAgS1VMTJYXKVwSZFe6DW4MAAwDAIAwBAbHECwK-e

This is what I used. Basic game play was start in Shiro → use Impossible Odds while auto attacking → wait till 0 Energy → Use Enchanted Daggers (usually to recover) → Dwarf → Vengeful Hammers + Unrelenting Assault → wait till 0 Energy → Shiro (repeat). Alternatively use Mallyx and run Embrace the Darkness. Unyielding Assault is amazing for busting Break Bars.

If you get Herald unlocked and want, you can drop Retribution and slot in Herald (even just shield to start with zero traits) and go that route as well but you’d still run Jalis or Mallyx.

Working to finish my herald as well. I’m still missing elite skill, is there anyway to stop that constant, annoying “you are missing skill from slot” blinking?

Use it as a motivator to finish!

I’m at about 80%, but I’m not rushing it too much, since I focus more on story for now .

After reading this and some other posts where people expressed wanting to not play through all the new content before getting their elite unlocked, I decided I would spend some time grabbing skill points in Tyria today.

As soon as I get to 85, I am swapping in the Herald line and heading back to HoT. I am going to keep using Jalis/Shiro until I get Facet of Elements unlocked, then will switch to Glint/Jalis.

Misguided.5139:

After reading this and some other posts where people expressed wanting to not play through all the new content before getting their elite unlocked, I decided I would spend some time grabbing skill points in Tyria today.

As soon as I get to 85, I am swapping in the Herald line and heading back to HoT. I am going to keep using Jalis/Shiro until I get Facet of Elements unlocked, then will switch to Glint/Jalis.

Matter of time. Spend 15 minutes getting 5 points running around Tyria, or spend hours grinding a HOT Mastery up to rank 3/4/5/6 so you can get the required Mastery unlocked to get the hero point. Considering you also need Fractal Mastery 3/4 to make them reasonably profitable to do it’s not really time wasted. Getting 200 in Tyria and 200 in HOT seems the most reasonable route.

I’m not worried about it. Im sure I will get points from both. The point was more that I decided I’m going to start playing as a Herald as quickly as I can and will unlock more goodies as I go. In a sense I might be hamstringing myself a little, but the shield and F2 are both so good, that I don’t think it will be a big deal, and I will get to progress my Herald as I play.

I will be going to get some Tyria HPs as well.

Seems a bit counter intuitive though that the first thing you do when an expansion drops is go back to farm the old world -_-

I get what you’re saying.

However when you get down to it, it’s probably the best way to do things. There’s a lot of masteries available in Tyria. Pact Commander (Auto Loot). Fractal Mastery (makes Fractals worth doing). Of course the Precursor Crafting as well (for all your legendary needs). I am currently at around 50%ish world completion since Friday and with my boosts I’ve gotten Pact Commander 5/5, Fractal 4/4 and Legendary 1/4. That means by time I am done with base Central Tyria world completion on my Revenant I’ll be done with Central Tyria masteries. I can fully go into HOT without having anything left to do.

Where as if I was on my Elementalist, I had full world comp done. I would go into HOT but have to ultimately go back to Tyria and slowly grind at events like some people are doing currently which is taking them forever to get those base Masteries.

So I’m okay with doing Tyria first before HOT. Nice to get it out of the way and then just be able to grind HOT and only go back to Central Tyria for specific things.

Great stuff Kodiak, just an add here, Mallyx worked UW for me.

I started in the Jungle maps and from just exploring part of the two maps with basic gliding I did around 5 hero challenges which is 50 points. This gave me a good head start since you need 65 to even get your foot in the door to spec as a Herald. Once you get to 65 it seems smoother because the next steps are not as big as a gap, and you actually become a herald.

Once you get Facet of Nature which is early in the progression it makes things faster, literally. While unlocking points on the old maps I pop facet of nature and when its on cool down I run Impossible odds. The only thing that is frustrating is this linear progression. I am grinding hero points for a minor trait I do not plan to use which sucks. I try not to think about how many points I need to the next tier I just focus on knocking out each map.

It also helps to have a website open showing where the skill points are like some of the interactive maps. That way while you are uncovering the map you can find the general direction you need to go in order to move straight from one hero point to the next. some of these maps I have not done Hero points in a few years so you kinda forget where everything is.

Some good tips Linfang!

I used /wiki <zone name> a lot when looking to make an optimal route when the maps were undiscovered in Tyria.

Kodiak.3281:

Disclaimer: For XP amounts I did have numerous boosts on (birthday, xp, item, old exp, festival fireworks, halloween food, utility, utility necklace with utility XP infusion, etc).

So first thing I did when I got in was go on my Elementalist and unlock Masteries by doing the first story step. Second thing was get on my Revenant, get through starting area, then did the scroll + tome leveling. At this point I started running around once my gear was relatively sorted out with Traveler’s runes.

Second thing I did was old world content by getting it’s Hero Points. All I did was mostly go after Hero Points with a few events here and there. I had Pact Commander Training. This took around 12 hours total to complete. My route was:

LA -> Metrica -> Brisbain -> Dry Top -> Silverwastes (5/6 – no Vine Wraith) -> Caledon -> Kessex -> Queensdale -> Gendaran -> Hrathi -> Bloodtide -> Sparkfly -> Straight -> Malachor -> Cursed -> Mount Mael -> Timberline -> Dredgehaunt -> Lornar -> Snowden -> Wayfarer -> Diessa -> Plains of Ashford -> Field of Ruin -> Blazeridge -> Iron Marches -> Fireheart -> Frostgorge (not concerned about spelling, you get the idea)

After all that I was Pact Commander 4/5 and with only 30% of world completion done. To be fair however the WPs and HPs seem more valued XP wise than POIs so good chunk of the XP is gone regardless. I also went into EOTM and got a quick WvW rank which gave me the final point so I got 200 out of Tyria.

From there I went into Maguuma. In addition to Gliding needing to be unlocked base, I went Mushrooms next and then Improved Gliding. Most Hero Points are locked behind Improved Gliding or Mushrooms. After that I would unlock Exalted Lore 1 followed by Nuloch Wallows then back to Gliding till Ley Line Gliding.

Verdant Brink – Some low hanging fruit here (literally) but also a lot (around 3) above in Canopy only available during Helicopter (or easily available then). I ended up 9/11 with 1 in the Canopy missed and 1 requiring Nuloch missed.

Auric Basin – Few locked away behind things like Ley Line gliding and presumably more Exalted stuff, ended up 7/11 only.

Tangled Depths – Many are locked away and only ended up with 4/11. Heavy investment in many lines required it seemd for a lot of them but with 200 from Tyria and 200 from here that was Herald.

Dragon’s Stand – Most seemed locked behind the mapwide event.

That was that. Good times, Herald fully done, and back to finish off Pact Commander

precisely what i’m doing. I just focussed on maguuma first to see the first 2 maps and make first 2 story arcs

I got to spend about 4 hours in EOTM and got roughly 30% of Harold unlocked and god knows how many hours in HoT maps and got 25% of it unlocked. Looks like EOTM will be a good option to get the unlocks.

Yea HOT is slow going at first but once you figure it out it’s super fast. I ran an alt through 200 points in about an hour or two most of that waiting on day/night cycle for Canopy

What can really help in HoT is keeping up boosters. I actually spent a good few hours yesterday grinding mobs with them getting about 1.1k xp + a 3-5k bonus on many of them. Doing this I gained quite a few ranks. I did have a guildy with me, which helped keep the speed fast. We ran around killing mobs while hunting different aspects of map completion — skill points / mastery / etc.

I’ve been only in HoT on my rev so I’ll go ahead and throw in some advice for people looking to unlock herald solely through a first time play through of HoT on rev:

-Do the adventure/challenges and make sure to get lifetime gold. The first time achieving gold on it nets you over 200k mastery points. You can repeat daily for an easy about 60k xp for gold.
-As mentioned above, keep the boosters on. Mobs are everywhere and when you killstreak chain them the bonuses are ridiculous.
-Many skillpoints are gated behind masteries, expect to backtrack a lot. I leveled mine according to the story (this does reward mastery but you can definitely grind xp faster just skipping this), but if you ignore that, unlock bouncing mushrooms and then rush gliding — most of the map content are locked behind gliding mechanics and mushies.
-Lastly, TRY at all times to have a buddy or two in party with you. It makes clearing mobs way faster, and many of the skill points are tough for a solo player. It doesn’t matter if you pug or use a guildy/friend. Just have people. I was slowly clearing alone / with randoms nearby, but adding a guildy and focusing them down really made it a lot faster. Moar brains.

I’ve been very tempted to just finish herald in Tyria, but I want my glint shield and I just finished most of the mistwalker (all but the helmet ) so I felt grinding HoT outright is most efficient (I had to get a lot of masteries that haven’t net me many skillpoints in the process—nuloch does very little for you!). I’ve been mostly using Shiro/Jalis w/ traveler runes and zerker gear.

All in all, know what you want to obtain. I’ll have my glint shield by this weekend I’m sure woop.

@Kodiak.3281

Do I HAVE to do the HoT story part first to unlock masteries? Because Atm I’m just doing world completion in Central Tyria on my Rev(Lv 80 with tomes) Or does it not matter which I do first?

Eggshells.1748:

@Kodiak.3281

Do I HAVE to do the HoT story part first to unlock masteries? Because Atm I’m just doing world completion in Central Tyria on my Rev(Lv 80 with tomes) Or does it not matter which I do first?

No.
Is the other way, you need some masteries to progress HoT story but they are completely indipendent.

Gaaroth.2567:

Eggshells.1748:

@Kodiak.3281

Do I HAVE to do the HoT story part first to unlock masteries? Because Atm I’m just doing world completion in Central Tyria on my Rev(Lv 80 with tomes) Or does it not matter which I do first?

No.
Is the other way, you need some masteries to progress HoT story but they are completely indipendent.

Oh ok, I was wondering about it since he mentioned he unlocked the mastery thing with his Elementalist first before doing his Central Tyria completion.

Eggshells.1748:

Gaaroth.2567:

Eggshells.1748:

@Kodiak.3281

Do I HAVE to do the HoT story part first to unlock masteries? Because Atm I’m just doing world completion in Central Tyria on my Rev(Lv 80 with tomes) Or does it not matter which I do first?

No.
Is the other way, you need some masteries to progress HoT story but they are completely indipendent.

Oh ok, I was wondering about it since he mentioned he unlocked the mastery thing with his Elementalist first before doing his Central Tyria completion.

There is a very short story segment in the silverwastes that leads you into the jungle—I don’t know if this can be skipped for you to enter without a teleport capsule, but it only takes like 5 minutes. After that, none of the story is required to do other HoT content, but HoT masteries are required to finish the story.

Kodiak.3281:

Yea HOT is slow going at first but once you figure it out it’s super fast. I ran an alt through 200 points in about an hour or two most of that waiting on day/night cycle for Canopy

Please add me and help a brotha out!

(if you do HP run again on another char I’ve got almost all 4 maps opened up WP wise just having trouble figuring out the HPs…)

Eggshells.1748:

Gaaroth.2567:

Eggshells.1748:

@Kodiak.3281

Do I HAVE to do the HoT story part first to unlock masteries? Because Atm I’m just doing world completion in Central Tyria on my Rev(Lv 80 with tomes) Or does it not matter which I do first?

No.
Is the other way, you need some masteries to progress HoT story but they are completely indipendent.

Oh ok, I was wondering about it since he mentioned he unlocked the mastery thing with his Elementalist first before doing his Central Tyria completion.

because masteries are account bound ;-)

Thanks for all the replies!!

Mightybird.6034:

Kodiak.3281:

Yea HOT is slow going at first but once you figure it out it’s super fast. I ran an alt through 200 points in about an hour or two most of that waiting on day/night cycle for Canopy

Please add me and help a brotha out!

(if you do HP run again on another char I’ve got almost all 4 maps opened up WP wise just having trouble figuring out the HPs…)

Sounds good. The big things to have like I said are Gliding Master 2, Exalted 1, Itzel 1. If you got that we can go through whatever. I am going to be doing my Reaper when I am done with world completion either later today or tomorrow. Just at 85% world comp and wanna get my Shield

EggShells you look like you’re sorted!

@Kodiak.3281

I am! Thanks.