Guild Wars 2

On the bright side. Most of this has already been downloaded if you have kept up to date with the recent patches.

They could just mean getting hero points out in the maguma

Yargesh.4965:

download has been happening for months now. They will flip it to live, prob no download or a minor one.

Correct! If you have been keeping up with all the latest patches then you have already downloaded most of Heart of Thorns. That said there will probably be a pretty decent chunk of patching to do when it goes live but probably not much more than the specialization patch. Also expect a million and one hotfixes after launch.

Morfedel.4165:

We have already seen a lot of elitism and toxicity in regards to whether or not you have the proper gear or playing the proper build even without DPS meters. if you think that it won’t get at least as bad if not worse with meters added in, you’re kidding yourself. So yes there are benefits, but there are also a lot of unpleasant consequences, & a lot of people, myself included, feel the consequences outweigh the benefits by a vast Margin.

Sure, there will always be a great deal of elitism and toxicity when it comes to raids. I just don’t think the game should enable that kind of behavior by giving them tools to quantify their actions.

Yes, HoT will be releasing on the 23rd of October (next Friday). Just for some reason they have also decided to release the Halloween stuff at the same time. Kinda strange timing but I suppose it will be nice for all the F2P players to have something new at launch as well.

DPS meters in GW2 are a horrible idea. Last thing this game needs is a bunch of irritating UI elements that are required by the raiding community just so we can judge each other’s performance. All it will do is make raids an ascetically unpleasing toxic mess.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUB1ahtoCeeBsehl7iiO1j9ZHsBjwAIcCDoMD-TJxHABseBAMuMAAPAAR2fAA

Quickly thrown together build for the BWE. Pretty much only used it in Stronghold and some test duels with some friends. I was impressed by how tanky it was though.

They never promised that you would never have a healer role, only all classes would be able to fill each role in their own way. And even if they had said something like you claim, MMOs change over time and what may have been the idea three years ago may not have worked out.

That said, it is worth being a little bit weary of how far down the holy trinity rabbit hole we go down. A little bit of it might just be what this game needs to shake off the zerker meta but too much certainly could break the game we know and love. So test Druid out in the beta weekend next week and share what opinions you form from it!

Not at all. Druid and the new pets clearly took a great deal of work to put together, likely far more than any of the other specializations. Thus it would make sense that it would be last. Also I really doubt they are worried about such a dedicated healer scaring people off. In fact if anything it would probably bring more people in from other MMOs than it scares off.

I believe that they said that they do plan on bringing tomes back eventually although I may be remembering what they said wrong. I suspect when they do bring them back it’ll be through an elite specialization which could mean a whole utility skill set of tomes!

4 maps, some containing 3 “biomes” – all containing many new events
New races of npcs and monsters
Repeatable adventures with leaderboards
Map bonus reward system
1 profession
9 specializations
New Personal Story
Living World releases including Living Story S3
2 new armor sets per weight (from the open world)
5 weapon sets
Legendary armor
New legendary weapon set
Legendary back pieces
60 new item skins, miniatures and more
7 mastery tracks with 39 tiers
1 raid with 3 wings
2 Guild Halls with 6 core buildings and over 175 decorations including a customizable PvP arena
New guild armor and weapon sets
New PvP gamemode with new map
Guild teams and leaderboards
PvP leagues
10 New PvP reward tracks
New WvW borderland
New fractal system, rewards and 50 more levels
Plenty of other smaller features and updates

List taken from https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3izcdj/a_condensed_list_of_hot_featuresreally_puts_into/

I’ll leave you to decide if that is worth spending $50 on. It sure was for me.

You most likely will. One of my friends bought her copy during the last Revenant test and was able to create her beta rev almost immediately.

Everyone who buys HoT regardless of which tier will have access to gliding. Although as RoseofGilead said, it will only be for the new maps. I should also note that it’s gliding and not flying, meaning you will not be able to gain altitude and will only be able to go for a certain distance before you fall.

Rampage is very strong for 20 seconds… Then you have to wait a very very long time to drop it again, I’d argue it’s quite well balanced at the moment.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-mist-champions/

After reading today’s article regarding the new mist champions I found myself with some serious concerns about this particular paragraph:

Turai Ossa will be the default Mist Champion available to all players once Stronghold is released. Grymm Svaard will also be available to all players, though he will need to be earned by completing his reward track in PvP. You will need to own Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ to be able to access the reward track that unlocks Nika. Additional Mist Champions will become available in future live content releases and will also require Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to unlock them for your account.

It seems to me that sPvP has become less and less of an even playing field for all players as time has progressed. Starting with the introduction of amulets/sigils/runes that cost gold to unlock. Now with HoT we will have an even greater divide with elite specializations and now Mist champions being placed behind various unlocks. As somebody who was drawn to sPvP by the equality of it I’m beginning to wonder, is Anet giving up on the idea of equality in sPvP?

Agreed! Troll’s Revenge is by far the most painful and difficult Jumping Puzzle I have run in this game and loved every second of it. Climbing across the rooftops of the new Lion’s Arch was an incredible experience and really helped highlight the craftsmanship that was put into the new city design. I was already expecting great things from HoT and this has me even more excited!

Yes, it should. Mortar is now considered a kit for all intents and purposes. If any “need a kit” effects don’t work with it then it is most likely a bug.

Cyninja.2954:

I disagree. There is no reason to keep rare weapon skins locked away behind huge paywalls on the trading post besides playing into the cards of some rich TP barons.

Should everything be available all the time? No.

But a system where old skins get reintroduced on a regular basis would keep TP manipulation in check and give players the ability to aquire skins they might have missed. Having prices in excess of 2k gold per skin on the trading post does no one good except for the 2-3 players who monopolized that market.

EDIT: just to clarify, I’m not against people making thousands of gold via the TP. On the contrary. I’m just not a fan of the rarity factor playing in that much because it requires exactly 0 thought or skill.

This ^

There is nothing fun about having skins become super exclusive. All it does is pad a few wallets and help couple of people’s egos grow because they have a pretty hat that nobody else can have. I say let everybody have their chance at their very own pretty hat!

Thank you anet for responding to the community’s concerns and even more sorry for all the vitrol and drama you guys have had to face over it. You guys keep up the amazing, awesome work!! Not that I wasn’t already planning on it but I will be sure to preorder soon!

CorrynnStarr.7942:

i think it was holding a good deal of people back tbh… glad to see the change, but keep in mind for the future… they likely wont give you a char slot again.

Thankfully this will likely be the last new class added to the game, so that shouldn’t be a problem! It will be a shame though if we go back to two parties buying the same thing and getting different things again though. Hopefully they learn from this and avoid a drama fest like this next time.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

I don’t even consider this a ‘full’ expansion.

Expansion to me is new class, another playable race, new skills for all classes, and another FULL continent to explore.

HoT is giving us what 35% of that. Three years later…

Lets take that down from the top..

New class: Revenant
New race: none (but as nice as one would be, hardly a vital addition)
New skills: Specializations
New continent: While it’s not separated by water it’s going to be a pretty huge new area.

And that is ignoring the new stuff for spvp and wvw to which we get a new borderland and an entirely new spvp game mode. Never mind the added story content, new legendaries, or the reworks of some vanilla skills/mechanics. Perhaps it has been too long since I have taken a math class.. But how exactly is that only 35%?

Pardon my annoyedness on this but I feel that we should at least wait until ALL the information is out on the table before we continue flooding the forums with these pointless conversations. Let us at least direct our criticism towards something more constructive, like the content we have had revealed to us.

Hero points (the system replacing skill points) will only be rewarded from leveling and skill challenges so champ bags won’t be dropping them. Scrolls of knowledge/extra skill points gained by scrolls/leveling post 80 will all be converted into “djingots” (unofficial name) the new mystic forge currency. So I’d say open away.

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

you are not force to use GS as a Reaper.

This. You can still use all the other weapons that Necromancer can already use. As for putting just one point in to get reaper shroud, that wont be possible in the new trait system. You have to max out every trait line you choose to use so you’ll have to go full on down the reaper trait line.

We have not actually had the elementalist specialization weapon confirmed yet. It does look pretty likely that it will be sword though. Not sure how it will differ from dagger yet, but I’m sure they’ll keep it interesting.

The concern people, myself included have with them is that they potentially make the base classes inferior. Not to mention we have no idea how long it will be before we see new specializations. I wouldn’t be suprised if we don’t see new ones for a good 6 months to a year after hot releases.

How is the dragon hunter ruining everything yet? We hardly know anything about them yet aside from some brief overviews of a couple of their skills. We know next to nothing about necro greatsword, not sure how that can be concluded to be ruining anything yet. Tempest.. well we know it’s called tempest. My point being stop the panic, take a deep breath and wait to see what we’re actually getting. The you can panic if you don’t like what you see.

Back to something more productive:
Im thinking that the drones around the engineer are not combat minions but are actually passive boon distributors with maybe shouts to command them to do stuff?

Mogget.2104:

If my theories on how the dragon hunter specialization is going to come about lore wise come to pass I suspect the name will be quite fitting… My friends and I are of the theory that Eir is going to die and that Bhram is going to take up her bow in order to extract vengance on Mordremoth and the other elder dragons. Making him a well, Dragon Hunter.

To quote myself from another of these threads..

I say we wait till we have a little more info on why they’re named what they are before we riot.

If my theories on how the dragon hunter specialization is going to come about lore wise come to pass I suspect the name will be quite fitting… My friends and I are of the theory that Eir is going to die and that Bhram is going to take up her bow in order to extract vengance on Mordremoth and the other elder dragons. Making him a well, Dragon Hunter.

I believe it was implied that juggernaut will still be giving us might as well as stability now although I could have misinterpreted them during the livestream.