Guild Wars 2

Most of the people on my block list are gold sellers (which I block right after reporting to avoid being spammed by them in the few hours it takes ANet to get around to kicking them). I clear them out periodically, which, thanks to the available block list, is easy.

There are however a few non-goldsellers on the list, too. These are people who I’ve blocked after ranked pvp matches for repeatedly flaming their team instead of playing with them. Since I have no intention to ever end up on a team with these people again, I do check my block list occasionally to make sure they’re not around whenever I feel like pvping. The game, unfortunately, does team you up with people on your blocklist if it’s desperate to fill a match .

I’ve also had a case once of a former friend who (for personal, out-of-game reasons) I couldn’t stand seeing chatting on guild chat, so I had that person blocked for a couple of months until I could deal with them again. That’s another case where the availability of the block list was helpful to me, because it was easy to un-block them again once I was ready to, without having to type in complicated character names or the like.

FireCrescent.6512:

ahem sorry for the rant … carry on, everyone.

That sure was a rant, and a pretty long one .

I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to ask you a few questions to get a better idea of why you’re actually ranting. How many Tyrian mastery points do you really have? How many are missing? Are you playing fractals, or could you skip on the fractal mastery line (and the fractal-related mastery points)? Do you have all the personal story related points (played personal story to the end)? The season 2 story points (played all 8 episodes)? Have you tried any of the season 2 achievements? How about the silverwastes legendary bosses? What achievements in particular do you have open that look somewhat possible to you in the right settings?

You certainly don’t have to do all of them. Personally, I’ve skipped on the worst of the jumping-related ones (like the silverwastes badges or the dive master thanks to the aetherblade jp), the more farm-intensive collections (e.g. ambrite), well as the more complicated boss achievements (triple trouble, tequatl) and still have Tyria mastery points to spare. Maybe if you give us a few more facts we can in turn give you tips that will help you out?

Soon.5240:

To you, GW2 is a 24/7 endeavor. Your entire existential identity is tied to playing this game.

Because of this, it’s impossible for you to place yourself into the shoes of people who play the game for 1 or 2 hours a day, after work, when the kids have been put to bed.

I’m not Vayne, I’m just some mid-40s person with family, kids, fulltime job, and not a lot of play time. I get to play most days, but just for an hour or two.

I don’t have 10 spare tyrian mastery points, but I do have 3 or 4 spare ones with all pact tyria masteries maxed. I didn’t grind any of this, experience came by itself between playing fractals and map-exploring, and mastery points kind of came by themselves, too. I love playing story and fractals, so the majority of my points come from those areas, while I haven’t gotten a lot of the world boss ones yet, since I don’t enjoy world boss fights most of the time.

I have to say, despite my limited play time I agree with Vayne. Core Tyria mastery points are easy to max out, even for those of us who don’t have a lot of play time, especially if we’re veterans who have played many different facets of this game over the years.

Go to your hero panel . From there, open the story journal . Once in the story journal, choose Heart of Thorns from the menu, then “play/continue this story” (or something similar).

If you haven’t started the HoT story at all, it’ll probably direct you to “Rally to Maguuma”, which will lead you directly into the mission “Torn from the Sky”. You have to play through the prologue to access that mission.

Actually they have announced a while back (before HoT release) that they won’t be offerring new armor skin sets on the tp anymore, only outfits.

That said, the expansion came with three sets each for light and medium (bladed, leystone, guild) and four for heavy (the former plus the mist-something armor for the revenant), as well as individual pieces for each elite specialization. Seeing how living story season two also brought two new armor sets (carapace and luminescent), I’m hoping to see more new armor with season 3 later this year.

Tangleknot.8605:

Wow… I just got back to GW2 and although I have the base game and I’ve considered getting HOT. But I just haven’t read or seen a lot of good things about it… Maybe I’ll wait until it goes on sale.

It really depends on what type of player you are. There’s a lot of people who love HoT precisely for the reasons others hate it for.

Mastery points are a great example of this. They are, in my opinion, pretty evenly spaced out between different kinds of activities, and usually you’ll find that you’ve got a few more to choose from than you actually need. For example, the fractal mastery line needs 11 core Tyria mastery points, and there’s a total of 14 points to achieve while playing fractals, allowing you to earn all of the points needed for the content-specific mastery line in that content and have a margin of error if there’s one point or the other you just can’t (or don’t want to) do. Other areas and mastery lines are similarly configured.

Many people enjoy the mastery system precisely because it makes you “earn” the points you need to unlock the masteries, while still allowing you to skip the ones that to you are the “worst”. For example, I haven’t done the Silverwastes badge collecting, nor the dive master (where I’m missing the one diving spot in the Aetherblade jp), nor many of the world boss related points (Triple Trouble, Tequatl), but still have Tyria mastery points to spare (currently at 53 I think, while you can only spend 49 at most).

Since you already have the base game, just jump into the game and see if you enjoy it, there’s nothing keeping you from checking out the base areas again, and if you like what you see, go ahead, buy the expansion, and branch out into the jungle. There’s a lot of good stuff about the expansion, and lots of people enjoying their time there (although it helps a ton to not focus on min-maxing and optimizing point gains … the points tend to mostly come by themselves from just playing, and focussing too much on points rather than the content at hand seems to lead people to lose the fun of playing some really awesome content).

Calloveri.8547:

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

What do you mean by weak skill system?

“Basically you get a weapon and all the skills are handed to you right from the get-go”

Your weapon skills are available pretty early, but depending on class, you can have a lot of different weapons and weapon combinations with different strengths and weaknesses. One thing you want to learn is what situation to use which weapons in, as that does make a big difference.

Then there are utility skills and traits, which you have to first unlock (via spending hero points) and then equip. Again, there are different utilities, and to make most of your toolset, you will find yourself switching them out depending on the situation (enemies, encounter mechanics, allied players arround you).

Traits even go so far as to changing/enhancing some of your weapon and/or utility skills drastically. Then there are weapon sigils and armor runes that again expand your combat powers in ways that sometimes are subtle but at other times are pretty much game-changing.

If you’ve only gone as far as checking out the plain weapon skills your class has with one kind of weapon, you’ve not even scratched the surface of this game’s skill and trait system. It’s all about combinations and synergies, and believe me, it takes a lot of practice, experimenting, and/or plain reading up to get a good grasp of the tools available to a single class, much less all nine of them.

If you (like me) can’t stand playing the same meta events again and again, map exploration (preferably with boosters, even if it’s just the xp boosters from the wvw dailies) gives a good bit of experience, too, and you can do ith with several characters.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Thanks for the FYI’s. I didn’t realize that I’d have to go to Tangled Depths to unlock a mastery that would help with a boss in VB. Oh, well.

HoT progression isn’t strictly linear, just like the rest of the game. Earlier maps hold a few surprises that you can find once you come back from later parts. This is one of them.

Personally, I very much enjoy that the map-design isn’t linear, and that there’ll always be bits and pieces to discover in all maps all through the progression path. There’s enough games out there where you go to one map, finish it up, and then it’s no longer relevant to your gaming. I like that GW2 does this differently.

That said, I’ve been in a successful kill of this boss before I had stealth detection. I downed a few times until I noticed the debuff on my buff bar and found the right timing to evade the attack (mesmer mainhand sword skill 2 did the trick for me). Yes, the game does encourage you not to spend all your time looking at bars, but never did they say you’re not supposed to check them every once in a while. Due to the timing, this fight is one of the more difficult ones to figure out, especially without stealth detection, but all the hints are still there.

Khyan.7039:

[poison mastery]
It’s strange since I still need it for the story.

I noticed that the display is a bit buggy during recent story playthroughs. While inside the story instance (after completion) before where the poison mastery used to be needed, it actually tells you that you need the mastery to advance, but once you leave that instance (or sometimes on the next area/character change after that), the story guide switches to the actual next story step even without that mastery.

Check your character(s) again, you should be able to advance your story just fine even without poison mastery.

Tipps for new players from the Players helping Players forum

usnedward.9023:

6. There are things I just do not do in game because I don’t have the time, cannot use the likes of teamspeak and such due to personal constraints and learn to live with it. I am never bored when I play but I can’t say I have played another MMO where it is MANDATORY to get achievements to advance content. Achievements seem to always be bragging rights, titles, mounts or some reward players can live without. HoT mastery system seems to put a halt to advancing the game play.

Replace “achievement” with “questline” and you’ve got your comparison. Every MMO I played had some kind of content that was mandatory to advance, mostly “main quest” type of stuff. In GW2, the personal story looks like it is that kind of content, but in reality it isn’t. The achievements are, although there’s enough of them around to allow you to pick and choose rather than being forced into doing a specific set of them.

I’m probably what you’d call “casual”, too. Married with kids, fulltime job, and long past the age where I could devote most of my attention to MMOs. I can’t schedule my gaming time around ingame timetables, but rather have to take what I can get. That’s probably one of the main reasons why I usually avoid world bosses, I don’t like how they make me drop everything I do and go to a specific place at a specific time just for one event (or a short chain), then try to take up what I was doing again.

Despite liking instanced group content a lot (I’ve been a regular high-end raider in other games and very much enjoy dungeons and fractals in this game), I’ve only been in our new raid once so far, and have yet to get close to even downing the first boss. But there’s so much to do in HoT, I actually don’t mind.

I find that I don’t need to schedule my playtime around HoT meta events. I just take whatever I can get, and if a map can’t give me what I’m after just now, I’ll switch to a different map, or a different character, or both. There’s always something do to somewhere.

I log into a character I want to explore VB with but find that it’s just at the start of the night boss phase, making it very difficult to explore the map? I quickly switch to another character that’s actually only missing some of the points up in the canopy for map completion, and before I know it, he’s got his 100% VB. The other character can explore another day, VB won’t go anywhere anytime soon .

I’m messing around AB, looking for some fallen masks, when I realize it’s Tarir defense time, and the map actually looks promising, so I jump right in. I’ve got 12 successful Tarir defenses by now, either by friends calling out promising maps in guild chat or (mostly) just by stumbling on them by chance. It’s slow compared to those who schedule their game time around it, but I’ll be getting there eventually.

Just like I eventually got all the Silverwastes stuff done I had wanted to do, including getting coat boxes from Vinewrath (that one took me 30+ tries across several months). Again, it took (a lot) longer than some other people, but in the end I got where I wanted to go. Just like I got my first character to lvl 80 in the beginning of this game, weeks after seemingly everyone got theirs to 80, but it was inevitable to get there one day.

I was lucky with Tyria mastery points, seeing how I had all of the fractal points for my fractal masteries as well as all of the story points (except for some of the season 2 achievements) for my pact masteries (I don’t care much about legendary crafting) right at the start of HoT, but even if I hadn’t, those would’ve come eventually. You don’t even need teamspeak for the low-level fractals, which is all you have to do for those mastery points.

The point of my ramblings? Yes, HoT is full of long meta event chains and timetables, but you don’t have to schedule your playtime around it. Just look around the maps and play whatever appeals to you that day, and you’ll get your chance eventually, just like I will. There’ll be lots of people faster than us, but we’ll get there in good time, and enjoy our way there, too .

Helen.3746:

a good number of them are locked behind things I don’t enjoy at all eg FotM

This is one of the arguments I really don’t get: There’s exactly enough mastery points tied to fractal achievements to level your full fractal masteries plus having 3 extra in case there’s one or the other achievemnt you just can’t (or won’t) do.

This to me looks pretty much like the perfect way to place mastery points: have enough points in the content the masteries are relevant for with a small margin of variations. If you play fractals, you’ll get to those points pretty organically. If you don’t play fractals, you won’t miss out on anything since the fractal masteries give you no benefit at all, so there’s no need for you to level them.

There’s 50 core Tyria mastery points tied to non-fractal content. You can only spend a total of 38 on the two mastery lines (pact commander and legendary crafting), so there’s a decent chance to gain them even if you leave out several of the most uncomfortable ones.

Now if for some weird reason you insist on leveling the fractal masteries that only ever benefit you in playing fractals (and much more so in high-level fractals than low-level ones, while you can earn all points but one in fractals level 1-20) without setting a foot into fractals, that’s not an easy feat, but in this case you brought in onto yourself.

Fractal masteries and mastery points are the perfect example of content providing the points to unlock benefits for advancing in (and gaining from) said content. None of the other masterie lines and their point aquisition are balanced this well (except maybe raids).

Kal Spiro.9745:

Malediktus.9250:

I like mastery points.

There are 17 more tyria mastery points than required to max them all. So there are plenty of options
For HoT there are 22 more mastery points than required. Good luck.

I did not know that, this actually really disappoints me. There is no good reason to have extras since they’re not good for anything else.

Actually the extra points are good for the very thing they’re meant to be for: giving people variety when maxing their masteries. People like me who don’t much like worldboss events can gain their points while avoiding things like tequatl or tripple trouble, those that don’t like the story achievements in HoT can do jumping puzzles instead, and so on.

To me, allowing people to pick and choose (to an extend), whether it’s hero points, mastery points, or whatever, is a very important part of this game. Forcing me to get every single point available or else having to choose which benefit (mastery) to get for my account would really put a damper on the fun I’m having in game. So I’d say the “extra” points are very valuable indeed.

alwinp.2791:

Why Didn’t they add mastery’s related to fractals?

You mean besides those 14 points (out of 64) that are already tied to fractal achievements? There’s already two more points available through fractal achievements than you actually need to fully train the fractal masteries. That’s way more than enough points tied to one small part of the game.

As for the silverwastes legendaries, they only spawn around forts that are upgraded to a certain level (3 I think), so you’ll need to actually play the event phase of that map and help hold and upgrade the fort in question rather than hopping from breach to breach.

Soleil.1304:

This mount battle system would be so much better than… wait for it… UNDERWATER BATTLE! Yes, I said it. It had to be said.

I’ve played a game that introduced mounted combat. Believe me, it was a mess, and I never ever want to go there again.

leunamsil.6742:

My problem is in fact with getting the xp not the points themselves

Explore the maps, preferably with more than one character if you have them. Exploration exp is very generous. Make sure to add boosters if you have them. If you don’t, wvw dailies are a good way to get some short-term xp boosters.

On top of map exploration, try to participate in all events you pass, harvest every node you find, and rez any downed/dead player or npc you come across. Kill xp also adds up, so you might not want to automatically run past all mobs you come across.

And last but not least, if you haven’t done the story yet, do so. The first time through gives a good chunck of mastery exp.

Kerin.9125:

Actually, many people simply want to be able to use the Elite skill the HOT ads made a prominent feature of but failed to mention the huge time it takes to actually be able to fully use it.

Huge time? What huge time are we talking about? Even if you have no Core Tyria hero points, getting the 25 needed for full Elite from the HoT maps really doesn’t take long.

Vivien.6149:

You can’t NOT GRIND if you want to progress in the maps.

I must be playing another game them … I refuse to grind, and I haven’t perceived any need to do so in HoT so far. I’ve casually completed a couple of maps, played all kinds of events (but by far not everything yet), and enjoyed the new maps with several characters. I could’ve sworn I’ve progressed my account and characters a good bit since the release of the expansion.

If I hit a road block, I go do something else, and eventually I’ll find I’ve progressed to the point where the former road block is gone by itself. No grind required. It’s really not much different from me trying to run a level 20 elementalist to the Gates of Arah a while back. I tried to get as far as I could, then after banging my head against the wall (aka mobs beyond Fort Trinity in the Straits fo Devastation) a couple of times I turned to do something more fun. I’ll get back on the road to Arah with her eventually, just like I’ll get to pick up the mastery point in Tangled Depth that requires Leyline gliding one of these days … I’m sure it won’t go anywhere while I progress in other parts of the maps without grinding.

Beldin.5498:

The stupid thing is .. if you have done it for all races nefore HoT you have got 5 points but if you have never done it before you only get 1 point.

Personally i did it on 3 races before and got points for every of those 3 races, however
now doing it for Charr don’t gave me any more points.

Interesting … I had done all story achievements of all races and orders before the expansion launched, and I only got one point per story chapter, no duplicates. Are you sure those extra points were from race stories and not from some other achievements you’ve overlooked?

Ziantra.8502:

I don’t want or be forced into fractals, which only give a few points anyways.

Actually there’s just about enough points in fractals to finish the fractal masteries, which you can easily skip if you don’t intend to play fractals anyway, so those shouldn’t be an issue.

Should you however insist on filling out the fractal masteries anyway, many of the fractal achievements that give mastery points are pretty easy to do. Check the wiki on which fractal level has which fractal island, and go for the lowest level that island is available at. All of the achievements can be done in fractals up to lvl 20 except for one.

And just to clear up all confusion: What you need for unbound is Globs of Dark Energy (from ascended salvaging … although you only need two, as outlined above), not Globs of Dark Matter (from exotic salvaging, that’s the stuff you need to craft ascended insignia and inscriptions for crafting).

Looks like some adventurous souls in my guild have decided to put together a guild raid group after all . I’m supposed to bring a ranged condi class … what would you suggest? I don’t have the scrapper or reaper unlocked yet, although I could probably do that (necro’s full sinister already, engi would need a new outfit since I’ve only got zerker and celestial on her for now).

Is there any viable ranged condi mesmer/chrono build (melee group already has another person assigned as zerker/assassin chrono)? How about ele/tempest or druid? I don’t have a condi set on either of them yet, but should be able to send enough characters through HoT story over the weekend to get viper’s armor boxes for one character.

Ashlen Lusca.7501:

I completed all of Orr and the Silverwastes and didn’t get a single mastery point :/

Have you checked your achievement log? There’s one point each for slaying each of the legendaries in the Silverwastes (the ones that randomly spawn near forts with a high upgrade level), as well as a 5th for getting all four.

I’ve been playing ESO since headstart, but haven’t really gotten into the game. I’m mostly playing it on the side, because my husband and a group of close friends (we all used to raid together in LotRO) are very into that game.

From seeing both endgame raids/trials/dungeons/whatever-pve and endgame pvp in ESO through my husband and friends, endgame certainly isn’t what I’d call casual friendly. Champion points do give a significant advantage to people that have a lot of time to spend, both in pve and pvp, more so when leveling alts on an account with a lot of champion points.

Gear grind, while not being as obvious as “we’ve added 10 levels so your gear is outdated” does exist by the simple fact that each update introduces new crafted and/or dropped sets with superior set boni as well as better materials. They’ve actually had 3 level cap increases since launch, too (v10→v12→v14→v16), which also made all your endgame gear obsolete.

Then there’s perks in crafting skills that have a heavy impact on gameplay, especially the +potion duration in alchemy and +food duration in provisioning, making it pretty much mandatory to level those crafting disciplines on each character you seriously want to play engame with. Then you’ll want to level the three armor and weapon crafting disciplines to gain the skills that reduce the cost of improving the quality of your soulbound gear to attainable levels …

I could go on that way for a good while. Don’t get me wrong, ESO is an awesome game early on, with a very interesting skill system and well thought-out quests, but if you seriously want to jump into endgame in that game, it’s a grind that makes attaining ascended viper’s gear for a few of my toons look laughably trivial in comparison.

It’s a good side-mmo to jump in for a bit of change now and then, but for a fulltime investment, GW2 wins for me hands down. Once you’ve checked out what you are forced to do to maximize just one character in ESO (and there’s a lot less account-bound than in GW2, meaning a lot more repeat action if you’d rather play more than one character) you’ll come to understand again how much more “play the way you like” there is in GW2 after all.

Raizen.7981:

Reading comments and thinking about running the 52 fractal- however, curious, how much magic find do you guys have? Is it relevant anyway?

Since magic find does improve the quality of the items you drop, it should make the difference between dropping yet another fine t6 material or a t7 (mist essence) I think. I do know that it sure feels like I’m getting more drops with extra mf stacked (birthday booster and on low levels food&utilitiy consumables).

I think I currently have around 200 mf out of the gate, 300+ with boosts. Btw, I did get my 2nd glob since expansion launch last night, out of one of the harpies in the daily lvl 36 uncategorized.

Roguefire.8174:

CJ said we would be able to spend them like at a vendor… where is the vendor?

The vendor part of his post refered to spirit shards. Excess hero points can be spent on elite specializations. If you’ve done all hero points available in game, you’ll still have an excess of hero points (214 from core Tyria plus 150 from HoT = 364). Expect to be able to spend those on future elite spezialisations, allowing you to unlock them without having to collect new hero points first.

If you keep gaining all hero points as they become available, you’ll always have an excess of points since ANet doesn’t want to force anyone into grabbing all available points to maximize their build options.

Cyninja.2954:

Still it might be worthwhile to do the 1-20 and 21-50 fractal achievements just for practice and the reward chests. Not sure how many vials, globs and shards would come around that way, but I’m sure it would be enough for 1-2 ring infusions.

Just doing the achievements once actually won’t bring all that many. No shards below 50 as far as I know (I got my one and only post-HoT shard from a 51-53 run, not sure which one of those), and globs only in the 30s and 40s.

Personally, I’ve done the 1-20 and 21-50 achievements, as well as a good many other runs below lvl 50 since HoT launched, and have gotten a single glob, but a good amount of vials (no idea how many, but it felt like one about every two or three “high-population” fractals).

I finally managed to get a group together to advance my fractal level again, this time even a guild group. Since nobody was further into leveling fractals than me, we more or less had to do 57-59.

It went surprisingly smooth … except for the arm seals on cliffside, where we spent way more than an hour trying all kinds of different things, only to end up with a plain “run as fast as possible from one seal to the other” in the end.

I don’t think I’d want to redo that fractal very often in the future . What’s the next “worst case” fractal coming up?

If you’re playing fractals for mist essences rather than purely for fractal relics, simply doing your fractal dailies in mob-rich fractals (dredge, grawl, ascalon, underwater, …) instead of the boss-only ones will bring you a long way without the need for boring farms. I’ve actually gotten a ton of mist essences since the update (mostly vials though, since my guildies can rarely be enticed into fractals beyond lvl 30 sigh), and I try to go for the more involved ones (actually I can’t stand swamp) whenever possible.

Notsoperky.2348:

Manasa Devi.7958:

I haven’t rushed it. I just did what I was going to do anyway, world completion on a new character.

Good job. That takes quite a while (done it 4 or so times, it’s actually not bad for mats etc), not sure I could face it again. Need it for legendarys..

On a positive note, got Queen last night by randomly logging in to a Tier 4 map, having parked my toon at the spot and ‘only’ had to wait 15 minutes or so to get the mob required. 10.30pm at night, logged in to get dailies done and noticed the tier..

That’s what I was going to suggest: just park a character on Dry Top and check in at :45 of the hour whenever you feel like it. I have a couple of characters parked at the quarz nodes (I have way too many characters ), and I find t4 that I log into t4 Dry Top pretty much whenever I log in during sandstorm. From my experience, it looks like most casual maps get to t4 these days.

Samnang.1879:

Getting the Tyria mastery points was torture for me. I tried to do the Dive Master and Going for Gold too. And had to give up mid way because the jumping puzzles became incredibly STUPID.

I don’t have either of those, nor the 3-headed wurm ones or the weapon collections, and I still have more points than I could possibly spend. I do have all the story points, most of s2 story achievements, and all the fractal points though.

Miss Lana Too.5794:

It is not difficult to run through and grab them with a character that doesn’t have world completion. The best solution is to stop being lazy.

This. I’ve actually tried this before HoT was released, and it took a little less than 10 hours (and a total of 43 level potions) to run a (mostly underleveled) character to unlock all 486 waypoints in core Tyria. She ended up at level 73 or 74 btw, so gained around 30 levels from exploration experience alone .

If you just want to unlock specific areas (world bosses, dungeons, guild mission locations) it’s pretty quick to open the main waypoints on a lvl 80 character. No need to tie them to the account in my opinion.

CIndeR.3479:

What I am looking for is what YOU think is the most optimal class for solo’ing HoT content in terms of survivability without sacrificing too much DPS, also including the build type and type of gear you would use for that class would be very helpful as well.

Despite what you went on to post in a later post, I still think the most optimal class is the one you’re most comfortable with . I’ve seen people unable to play the new maps on ranger while being perfectly fine with other classes, and vice-versa.

Personally, I’ve been into the new maps with several classes. To me, the ranger is a very easy option (I’ve finished story on him), although at times a bit boring (send pet on hero point champ, then just stand off to the side and pew pew with longbow for 5 minutes). My ranger’s still in his old full-zerker dungeon build, so there’s definitely room for optimization with him, but since he’s my “don’t feel like thinking today” class I don’t really mind.

I’ve enjoyed HoT very much on both mesmer and ele, with different builds (mesmer in full zerker, rabid, or sinister, ele in zerker, cele, rabid, and even soldier), and while zerker ele sure isn’t up there on the list of durable builds (although fun nontheless ), everything else felt pretty doable. I’d be hard-pressed to decide which one of them is the most optimal, since they all have their pros and cons.

Depends on your playstyle and what kind of things you enjoy.

If you love exploring areas, finding new things around every corner, and looking for the veritable needle in the haystack (or forgotten mask in the trees ), HoT is for you.

If you love doing event chains that tell stories and require a bunch of people to cooperate at times, HoT is for you.

If you love huge map-wide meta events and world boss encounters that require more than just “press 1 and win”, HoT is for you.

If you enjoy scavenger hunts and collections, HoT is for you.

If you are fine with mobs that come in different sized packs and bring different abilities, making you adjust to fights out in the countryside and accept that you can’t just stroll past them all the time, then HoT is for you.

If you like to play just wherever the game sends you and jump into whatever event crosses your path, HoT is for you.

On the other hand:

If you like to have a clear way to a specific goal you want to reach right now, HoT can be frustrating, since there’s so much to do that not every path to every meta event, collection item, or resource, is open all the time.

If you prefer to farm for specific resource, HoT can be frustrating since most stuff is spread out and not easily farm-able (although that’s not so much different to the rest of the game).

If you feel like an experience bar has to filled optimally at all cost, HoT may not be for you, since concentrating on filling the mastery bars instead of taking in all of the stuff the expansion offers may quickly lead to a very grindy feeling.

If you are uncomfortable with a surrounding changing in difficulty (and even availability) based on the actions of all players on the map, HoT might not be for you, since all the new maps revolve about map-wide meta events that you don’t always can influence to the point where you’d like it to go.

If you don’t like the fact that certain parts (group events, champion hero points, etc.) might require a couple of other players to stroll by and participate, so won’t be available to you just the moment you stumble upon them, then HoT could hold some frustrating moments for you.

My personal opinion:

I love HoT. I’m the type of casual player that just jumps into the game whenever time allows (not that much with family and fulltime job) and do whatever fun things seem available at the time. There are a few collections and achievements I’d like to finish, but the base game has taught me that going for one thing specifically is (for me) a recipe for quick burn-out, while just playing what seems fun at the moment and going with the flow of the maps makes me end up with anything I’d want eventually, while having fun all the way.

On the other hand, I do like to learn my classes and come up against challenging content, and the HoT open world definitely is a good bit more challenging than anything core Tyria has ever thrown at me. Sometimes it does get frustrating, but then I’ll just go do something else and come back another day.

HoT is a full win in my book, but I can see how many people with different playstyles and priorities just don’t enjoy it as much as I do.

oXe.5960:

Any news? I need those mastery points ;/

A dev posted in another thread a couple of days ago on the situation. The way I understand their message, you do in fact only get one mastery point per level of story finished, regardless what race/order you finish that story arch with. So a level 10 human storyline and a level 10 norn storyline only reward one point total (on whichever story you finish first).

Joshua Diaz.6402:

Just as a heads up, the Mastery Points for Personal Story are awarded on a per-chapter basis. So once you complete Chapter 1 and earn the Achievement for it, you’ve earned the Mastery Point for Chapter 1. This includes each different starting storyline: I believe the right names are: Graduation Day, For The Legion!, Crime and Punishment, Rising to the Challenge, and Waking from the Nightmare. Similarly, whichever Order you join, there’s just one Mastery Point there.
Hopefully this helps clarify the total number of Mastery Points you should be expecting from your previous accomplishments in Tyria. That said, the different stories really are fantastic, and should definitely be experienced, but for your own pleasure, and not for Mastery Points.
If any of you still think you are missing MPs from Achievements you’ve completed, let us know via the in-game Bug Report tool and we’ll try to identify if there’s a bigger issue happening.

Like somebody above already said, you never got spirit shard for leveling. Gaining experience on a lvl 80 did nothing between the time they split skill points into hero points and spirit shards and the release of HoT.

Currently, some people (not many judging by the numbers I see in-game) have maxed their masteries at 163 points, effectively making experience “useless” to them again. The problem I see with masteries when compared to the old lvl 80 skill point gain is that masteries take a lot longer to complete, months and possibly years for a large part of the playerbase.

Right now there already is a “division” between players that have farmed their masteries (or simply played a lot after the expansion released) and those that don’t play that much or have playstyles that don’t allow them to gain much mastery experience (and points). There is, however, a definite end in sight, so you know that a more casual, less time-consuming, less-optimized playstyle will not permanently put you on a disadvantage to other people.

Compare this to a more expansive (and for many seemingly open-ended) endgame progression system like the ESO champion points. You know from the start that you will never reach the points to rival the people that spend a ton of time and energy on farming those points. While it does make the people able to farm those points feel great, it also discourages a lot of the more casual playerbase.

Now if you want to put in an un-ending “experience reward” in this game (again) you’ll have to be very careful about how to do it, so that it does in fact feel like a reward to those people gaining it while not making the people for whom max-mastery is out of reach feel permanently crippled.

Personally, I could see an additional, repeatable, mastery track in each region. Make it one tier only, require as much experience as the most expensive track/tier (that would be 4,318,000 for HoT and 5,080,000 for Core Tyria according to the wiki), cost 0 mastery points to unlock, and reward a new token currency that you can trade at a special mastery token vendor for things like area currencies (leyline crystals anyone? ), karma, keys (vials of acid, bandit skeleton keys, …), and similar, as well as a few fun goodies like special minis (similar to the ones the laurel vendor sells), tonics, and more.

Why new currencies when we already have a bunch clogging up our wallet? Because a new currency tied to gaining (account) experience in a specific region would allow them to tie special cosmetic rewards like new minis to it, as well as give people a chance to trade it in for whatever they feel is worth it. If you just give out generic spirit shards, karma, or similar, there will always be people that feel like they’re not getting anything worthwhile because it’s just the kind of stuff they don’t need.

Lastly, being a mastery track to choose for each region, people that value the token rewards from the new vendors more than what masteries give their account are free to just choose this track early on. For example, if I don’t care for fractals or legendaries I can just choose the repeatable track instead of pumping my experience and mastery points into tracks I don’t care about. My account mastery level (that I don’t care about anyway) will stay below maximum that way, but instead I may get that sweet mini I absolutely adore, a win-win in my book . And if I find I just can’t gain those last few HoT mastery points to fill out the final tracks, then I can still have fun with the repeatable track instead.

Niyu.1350:

That’s what I was wondering, so was making a post in hopes that a dev might notice it and either respond, or put it on the fix list.

Have you made a bug-report in-game? While you may not get a direct reply to that, it’s the most sure-fire way to get the bug into their bug-tracking database and thus on the way to getting fixed.

djsarcher.9263:

And yet for those who say they find HoT fun, I have yet to see good explanation of what exactly they are enjoying about it either.

To me, the fun about HoT is that there is always something to do, always something to discover, always something to improve or progress.

I’m married with kids and a moderately demanding fulltime job (software development and consulting), so my game time is a lot more limited and fragmented than I’d like, but no matter when I long on or how much/how little time I have, there’s always something to do.

I really enjoy fractals since the update (liked fractals and dungeons before, too, but high-level fractals were often off-limits due to time constraints), and it’s easy to just jump in and do a fractal or two with friends, guildies, or even pugs if I feel like it, whenever I have half an hour of playtime. I can even choose what fractals I’d like to do and won’t be stuck with doing swamp all the time (I hate that map with a passion ).

I love the new maps. They’re stunningly beautiful and at the same time like the rpgs of old, the ones we played back in the 80s and 90s, where you had to draw your own map and learn the map by yourself rather than just look at an auto-map and decide where to go. I’ve always been a fan of solving mazes and discovering unknown territory (in real life as well as in games ), and the way these maps are laid out appeals to me a lot more than I expected.

Due to the fact that I have a lot of alt characters (18 lvl 80s currently) I have a variety of chars all over the place to just choose whatever I feel like playing atm. If I want to do some resource farming and map exploration, I jump on my ranger in the middle of TD and see where I can go on that map today. A guildie is new to VB and lost? One of my eles is near there and ready for some exploration and a few events. Another guildie’s looking for company to track down a treasure mushroom in AD? One of my mesmers is near there, switch to that one. Octovine event just starting? Let’s look for a taxi on lfg and join that one.

Aside from a great variety in gamestyles and things to do, the many characters also have another advantage: Map exploration gives a huge amount of experience, and with my characters all stumbling over the new (and old) zones all the time, I’ve yet to start thinking about gaining mastery experience. It all comes naturally (I’m currently at mastery level 78, evenly split between 34 pact tyria and 34 HoT levels) from just goofing around and doing what appeals to me.

Another thing that comes naturally is progression in many of the new achievements, collections and the like. I don’t really want to commit to one goal right now, because I don’t have the time to spend farming away for a very narrow, specific range of stuff, so I’m just taking whatever I come across during normal play. Surprisingly, I’ve come a good way towards the fractal backpiece precursor (currently on tier 3) without going out of my way, and the non-buyable parts of the specialization collections are well-filled, too.

Playing around the new maps, joining in on events I come across, looting chests and gaining the occasional meta event participation has also put a nice number of map currencies into my wallet already, enough to fill out the first of my (first tier) order backpiece collections that I’ve been looking forward to, as well as some other stuff for collections that look interesting. If I keep playing the new maps on my alts the way I have so far, I should be able to easily get enough airship parts, aurilium, and leyline crystals to fill out the buyable pieces of all collections I’ll end up wanting to finish eventually.

Is that a good enough explanation for your taste? I’m afraid it’s a bit all over the place, but that’s pretty much my playstyle in this game, and HoT fits right in there. I know I used to worry about gaming to system for “optimized” resource gain in other games (when I was younger and had more time on my hands to spend on farming and stuff), but I no longer have the time, nor fun in gaming the system. After playing rpgs for so long, I found I enjoy my games a lot more if I just see where they take me and don’t go after specific, narrow goals unless I am already pretty close to completion. HoT offers so many things to collect, progress, explore, win, that there’s something rewarding to do pretty much everywhere and I suspect that it’ll be a long while before I run out of things to enjoy.

Let’s face it, no matter how many different, seemingly equal fractals there are, people will always gravitate towards some that are considered easiest/quickest by the masses. Just look at how many people used to be farming CoF p1 despite the fact that there were similarly easy/quick and more fun (but probably less well-known) dungeon paths around. Look at other games and their dungeons, there’s always some considered the “best to farm” (even if they aren’t, they’re just the most well-known to cheese a lot of times).

There’s really no way to “force” people to play everything. Some people do, simply because they enjoy changing things up. Others don’t because they feel the need to do a kind of optimized farm. Taking the (for me personally) much more flexible system that lets you choose your own fractal instances away from everyone just to push those that optimize to the point of ruining their own fun won’t help anyone.

But there’s really not that much difference to what we had before. I was at rewards level 50 before the update, but I’ve played next to none of the instabilities, because the only groups I could reasonably get (considering the to me huge time-investment high-level fractals meant back then) would play nothing but 40+50. The only other instabilities I ever saw were an occasional 38 or 49, but even those were rare.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Senario.2038:

No One.3716:

1 gold and 1 laurel or 2 fractal relics per inventory/bank slot.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_Salvage_Tool

I think he means salvaging at an affordable cost rather than 1 gold per try.

I don’t mind 1g/try, except that rings never seem to drop anything other than agony resistance, which is currently worth less than 1.5 silver.

Are you sure you’re salvaging rings, not amulets or accessories? I always seem to get at least two stabilizing matrices out of salvaged rings, most of the time three (and on a very rare occasion 20 out of one ring). If you really hurt for gold, sell two matrices per ring salvaged at the trading post to cover your costs.

I don’t mind the league icons in general, but the way they’re tied to the name plate right now feels out of place. I could see them being attached to the same point the world completion star and the mastery point number are placed, so that they fade out if you’re not directly focussing the other person, and only show up when the start and mastery level show up, too.

Right now, if you enter the Heart of the Mists, where pretty much everybody around has tried the pvp league play, it feels a bit like stumbling into minecraft, with little colored cubes all over the place .

The rewards in Tarir are in the (great and grand) chests you get to open under Tarir once the meta succeeds, more than the event reward itself. Stock up on exalted keys (according to the wiki there’s 5 grand chests and 14 great chests) and go open those chests.

Of the VB night bosses, I actually like the matriarch wyvern the least. Try the patriarch wyvern boss in the canopy over the pale reaver’s outpost, that fight is a lot more fun. There’s also a mastery point attached to the achievement of killing each of the nighttime bosses (there’s a different one for each outpost, so 5 in all), so it might be worth it to branch out and fight the remaining bosses, too. Rewards for all of them should be the usual bouncy chest with a guaranteed yellow and a chance at something better.

fireflyry.7023:

Nah he’s right. In GW1 you got max level and gear in a week or two, then forgot about it and enjoyed the game for the next few years.

Oh, I got max-level pretty quickly allright (just like I unlocked my elite specs pretty quickly in HoT), but all the skills I was missing and the henchmen I played with due to unskilled heros took ages to get, and made me feel much more gated than masteries or optimized stats ever did in GW2.

fireflyry.7023:

PS:Give me a yell if you’d like some help in GW1.Would love to dust my Sin and my Sabway off

Thanks, I will, although it’ll probably be a while before I log in again … I’m having too much fun with HoT right now .

Khristophoros.7194:

One of the biggest advantages that GW and GW2 had over other MMOs is that you could get your character’s build maxed out easily and then go do all the content.

Excuse me, are we talking about the same GW here? Guild Wars? The prequel to the game we’re currently playing? The game where you literally have to play hundreds of hours to unlock all your skills, grind PvE rep to get your PvE skills to work decently, play/grind more to get skills to put decent builds on your heros? And more yet to afford all the equipment upgrades for yourself and your heros?

Maybe I was just late to the party, but I started playing GW about a year ago, and compared to this game, even just looking at the expansion, I didn’t get anywhere near as quickly nor as non-repeptitively towards a maxed-out build (skills and upgrades, for my pc first and heros afterwards) as I do here. I really don’t have much playtime, but I have fully unlocked elite specs on several characters, got all the HoT masteries to 3-4 each, map-completed a few maps on the side, and am close to maxing out my final Pact Tyria mastery line.

Comparing that to my GW ritualist who still hasn’t all the skills I’d like her to have (not to mention all the stuff I’d like to experiment with later, nor skills and stuff for my heros), I’d say calling HoT a grind in comparison to GW does not need just one pair of rose-colored glasses, but a whole crate full.

nacario.9417:

I was just looking over the collection achis for the legendary pvp backitem, and I was wondering, must one focus on the same 2 classes in each tier? Or once u finish 2 classes in tier one and advance to the next, can u pick up 2 new classes and advance in tier 2 to 3?

I doubt anyone (except the devs) can tell you for sure right now, since nobody’s played those 15 days to finish the first tier achievement and start the second one.

From the way it’s worded, I’d suspect any two classes per tier, but that’s pure speculation.

I’d not call it a timegate so much as an effort gate … if you don’t advance into higher leagues, you’ll need to put in more effort to gain the tickets needed to buy the stuff at the league merchant.

Klangy.8293:

You need to complete 11 adchivments out of 18? Or maybe there is more.

Actually from what I’ve seen it’s specific achievements you have to do, pretty much every non-class-specific one plus your choice of two class-specifics.

I may be the odd one out, but I actually prefer fractals like grawl or dredge with lots of enemies . More enemies means more loot chances for stuff like grawl skulls (I’m still collecting them to progress my grawl weapon collection), mist essences (I’ve never dropped a lot of those yet), or (most important at the moment ) those thingies you need to upgrade the cat golem minis in the forge . Besides, I just don’t like the swamp map, never have, never will.

I still appreciate the fact that if I really don’t have a lot of time (happens if you have to squeeze your game time in between kids, husband, and fulltime job ), I can still opt to playing something shorter (although I vastly prefer molten duo to swamp ). Aside from that, I’ll choose fractals I enjoy (e.g. aquatic ruins ) whenever I can.

If all you want to play is sPvP, and you already have a copy of the base game, all you need to do is jump on your account and start playing.

Expect the UI to be much different from 2013. Skins are now stored in an account wardrobe that is available in all game modes, and you need transmutation charges to switch skins on your equipment, which you can win in PvP or through PvE map exploration.

Rewards are now handled via pvp reward tracks , which offer a variety of stuff to win that is useful in pvp, pve, or both.

You can set your character’s pvp build via a new interface in the heart of the mists, including the new trait system, where you can now select three full traitlines with one minor, one major, and one grandmaster trait each, instead of the old system where you spread your points across up to five partial traitlines. You will have all five core traitlines (aka specializations) of your class(es) available, but the 6th, know as elite spezialization, is HoT only, as are the five new ranger pets that came with the expansion.

Just jump in and see if you’re having fun.

Rewards in this game mostly are not so much in gear tier or stats, but rather in the skin you unlock. As such, you’ll find most “rewards” in your wardrobe, weapon and armor skins as well as miniatures, dyes, and more.

Have you tried browsing the wardrobe (you can do so from the 3rd tab of any bank window) to see if there’s any skins reachable that interest you?

If you have access to Season 2 of the living story for example, the Mawdrey backpack and luminescent armor skins that come with those episodes and their achievements proved very satisfying for me to achieve.

Check your achievement log and especially the collections category for achievements/collections that award equipment, skins, miniatures, or even items that give you continuous presents for left-over materials, like the princess karka you get from the LA karka hunt achievement, that awards you with surprise boxes every day in return for some dragonite ore (which you probably have a lot of if you like doing world bosses).

Actually, some of those collections have given me a similar feeling to going for set items back in D2 (yes, I enjoyed that in my time, too ), and some of the rewards are fun (who doesn’t want to gain a big bag of junk ? ) or even helpful (e.g. ascended trinkets from dungeon collections and season two achievements ).

And if you happen to have access to the expansion, then there’s a whole new level of involved world bosses to fight and cool skins and ascended equipment to win. Order backpacks , specialization weapons , and more … maybe think about buying the expansion, if world bosses and ascended rewards are your thing, you sure find those in the new content.

Asura of course, same as every other class . Why do you even have to ask?

They do drop from salvaging fine and masterwork reclaimed weapons, although the drop rate is rather low. Make sure to salvage each and every reclaimed weapon you get playing through the new areas.

Sicarius.4639:

eldrin.6471:

Starting from scratch you got 4.8 mill xp to get to lvl 80 then you will be needing 86,000,000 xp to max out your mastery tracks.

Jesus! I knew the curve was high, but never thought to calculate it all. Thought it was bad enough the jump from 80 to T1 Mastery was 1m.

It’s not. At the rate a lvl 80 character aquires experience, 4.8mil is just short of 20 level-ups. 1-80 just takes considerably longer to gain those 4.8mil because for a large part of that journey you’ll get a lot less experience.

Check the wiki page on experience for the detailed breakdown.

Btw, if you check the mastery track pages on the wiki, gaining any of the t1 masteries requires exactly as much experience as two “level-ups” at level 80.

Khisanth.2948:

Danikat.8537:

Qugi.2653:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvs5pqf-DMA

;)

Problem is this one is literally just a rabbit which happens to be hostile. Compared to their previous reference (which I covered in my first post) it’s not much of a connection.

Probably left over from a grawl summon.

This. That place is normally swarming with grawl, and whenever you’re fighting grawl there is usually a surplus of friendly rabbits summoned throughout the fight.