Guild Wars 2

If you haven’t done the first part of the HoT storyline and unlocked masteries then the XP is lost.

What Wethospu is referring to is what happens after you’ve unlocked masteries and maxed one of the tracks. Once you’ve got enough XP you have to manually spend the mastery points to activate the track and move on to the next one. If you don’t remember to do that (or if you get more than enough XP when you finish it) any XP you earn will go into another track.

Fortunately because most of the content in this game is repeatable and almost everything gives you XP it’s not a big deal if you do lose some. The HoT launch seemed very relaxed to me after watching people reacting to a new use for XP in my other MMO (where most XP comes from non-repeatable quests) there were huge discussions and debates about the best ways to ‘save up’ XP, and people stopping playing completely so they didn’t accidentally waste XP because it would be so hard to make up the difference if they did.

Depends on how much survivability you want. IMO keep Soul Reaping and switch your GM trait to Foot in the Grave for Stability (without it you will get tossed around like a rag doll in HoT). As a minion master you could almost switch spite to blood magic for more survivability. As you are going with full zerker gear, you may have a rough time getting up close and personal to bosses without some sort of life steal. I guess I havn’t tried out a minion master build in HoT yet, but that’s just my opinion. Hope this helps!

I think people are too hung up on GM vs Master labels, tbh. We get all trait levels when we choose a line now, so whether something’s a Master or Grandmaster makes no difference.

The issue is what the trait competes with, not the label. Presumably, ANet made the axe and hammer traitlines as GMs because they had to put them somewhere and they didn’t want them to compete with each other. For example, so Axe Mastery didn’t compete with Forceful Greatsword allowing someone to take both. For MH, they likely moved it to Discipline because they knew every hammer warrior would take it and Defense has been too crowded for a long time anyway. We have SO many weapons for warrior that the traits have to go somewhere.

Both the axe and hammer traits need work, but “moving it to master because it isn’t fair” isn’t a smart approach. The question is whether or not viable builds can be made that use the traits as and where they are. With the hammer trait, the answer is yes even though it’d be nice to be able to take Heightened Focus or Burst Mastery as well. With the axe trait, the answer is a clear no because there’s no scenario in which it’s better than taking Berserker’s Power..

The options for dealing with unusable traits are to either reshuffle the lines or buffing the traits (and leaving them where they are). The goal is to have to choose between traits of equal value.

Just chipping in and saying that I’m really disappointed by this. I’ve gladly spent a lot of money on gems for cosmetics over the years I’ve played since launch; money isn’t the problem for me. But I fail to see the value I’m getting here as an existing player since launch. €44.99 for an expansion that, for all we know, has extremely little content. And not just that, you ask us to pre-order while getting nothing in return for it (sans a title and getting to beta test your game for you) nor any tentative release date.

Was your marketing department asleep on the job? It should be obvious your fans would react severely negatively to this.

ladybutter.5280:

I’ve been discussing HoT’s content with someone before, and I told him that I get the feeling that it isn’t close to what an xpac should be. Then our discussion ended with “well it will depend on the price”. And now look, I was right all along.

So far, here’s what I know we’re getting for sure:
1. New 1 zone, the vertical one. The way they emphasized a lot of times the verticality of this new zone makes me think that this is all we gonna get. A single zone with a lot of floors.
2. New Guild Halls – okay new one! excited about this.
3. New PVP Stronghold
4. New masteries
5. New/Sort of elite spec for each profession (good for you if the new elite works out for your class, if not sorry)
6. New/Sort of 1 weapon choice for each profession (some only get offhand, and tough luck if that new weapon is actually useful on your class)
7. New profession!!! Woot!
8. Replaced borderlands – I repeat, replaced. The new bl maps are supposed to replace the old one, so it means, technically, it’s not part of HoT. Don’t tell me old players who won’t buy the xpac won’t have access to wvw bls?
9. Reworked Normal Specialization – in short, re-worked trait system. Not included in HoT.

And now I believe that is all? How is that even on par with the content available in the base game? There were no mentions of new dungeons and fractal maps even.

It’s like they’ve thrown in the bonus base game to justify the $50 price tag.

If you compare this to what you got for paying $60 for the original game, your list falls quite short of kitten value.

The HoT expansion costs $50, available only bundled with a “free” copy of the core game.

When the core game goes on sale, it costs $10. We can thus pretty fairly feel that the “freebie” in the bundle is a $10 bonus value.

But the practical upshot for those of us who own the game already is this: by including the core game for “free” ANet has tipped their hand that they’ve effectively padded out the price of the expansion by 10$ (the cost of the core game at its lowest price) over what it might otherwise need to be.

You know what else costs $10? Extra character slots. Which is exactly what current players of the game do want and need with the expansion.

If ANet can afford to “give away” one “free” $10 value item with the $50 purchase of HoT, why can’t they do it with another? The value, monetarily, is the same.

This, I think, is why so many of us feel so slighted. Getting the $10 value of the core game is nice for new players, but it’s a thumbing of the nose at existing players who ANet must know would not want to spend $10 in that way. It leaves current (and often very loyal and long-term) players feeling like they pretty much have to subsidize the bonus value being offered to new players, while they themselves are left out in the cold, not given the one thing they really want which, mathematically, is a simple even swap out: an additional character slot.

The idea, certainly, is to generate more income by getting players to spend out on character slots separately. However from the consumer side of things, we can all see that if ANet can afford to give one $10 value freebie that they could just as well give another. It doesn’t make us feel like we are getting a fair value for our money. It makes us feel snubbed, taken advantage of, and resistant to buying anything.