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?

I wouldn’t say you’d be too far behind. Some people have grinded mastery points (which is another leveling system once you’ve hit 80), so it might feel that you’re pretty far behind but you aren’t. The mastery system gives you the ability to access certain “things” in the new maps as well as legendary crafting, perks in fractals, and more “things” in the Tyria maps.

You get elite specs through gaining hero points; either through the new maps or in EoTM. It only takes a day or two to get the elite spec since they’ve reduced the amount of hero points you need to 250. You can’t get the elite specs until you’ve leveled your character to 80 then you can begin training your elite spec.

You probably won’t be behind by much if any. There seems to be quite a few players doing HoT map content to grind XP for masteries. Players also seem to be doing the harder hero points where you need help pretty regularly – I usually see players arriving within seconds or minutes of when I reach one that isn’t yet active. Some players appear to be repeating the hero point challenages for their alts since they all need more hero points to max out specializations. Ideally, the megaserver helps ensure there are players on the same map too.