Guild Wars 2

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Well when i was in HoT today it was a wall of pink offers. Maybe same bot but annoying as hell. I did report it, will remember to block it next time too.

Reaper/Ranger here. And i see a lot of both in my matches. Then again DH and Chrono spam is real. Revanants seem to less prelevant in my games but it’s often we get at least one in the opposing team.

Thieves i see the least, warriors and engis also aren’t too common (though the latter much more then the first two). We’ll just have to wait for some balancing.

Obviously i’m referring to banshee’s veil (which is for all means and purposes near 100% swiftness uptime for warhorn users) and quickening thirst.

This should not be, one of these and i obviously mean banshee’s veil should be moved elsewhere. It doesn’t even fit thematically with blood magic, it has nothing to do with life leeching or healing, au contraire warhorn (asides swiftness) is a tool for getting life force and cc.

It used to be in curses line and I see no reason why it’s shouldn’t stay that way. Especially wih everybody complaning about it not being as good as other lines.

Just merge path of corruption with weakening shroud’s active effect – now you got a full shroud service for condi necros. The passive effect (weakness on crit with 10s icd) should be moved to one of the other two curse grandmaster traits so it won’t eclipse the other two completely and give option for some good wekaness uptime for those necros who aren’t into shroud flashing.

Now just put banshee’s veil into that master tier hole and you’re almost done. The empty slot in blood magic can be filled with some healing trait for party, for example sharing your life leech when downed with nearby party members. So even as you’re nearly dead you still heal them some.

I don’t know about meta-sheep, but I play and tweak my own builds and the new amulets sure find their way into them. Notably the wanderer and crusader for my necro.

My trapper druid is very happy with his carrion. So yeah berserk/marauder is not the only way to play if you’re willing to look for your fighting style at:

http://www.yourownkitten brain.com/buildityourself/

Ok this is getting old real fast. Waiting for a match in HoM is near guaranteed to net you a pink wall of offers you never asked for from gold sellers.

So here’s the deal: Give us a menu option to block whispers from anyone who is not on our buddy list. Just one little line in option’s menu with a small checkbox to tick. That’ all i ask. Least in this post;)

yeah cause dragon hunters hate when something doesn’t die in 3 seconds flat…

Still point is quite valid. For squishies getting 1000 extra vitality = 2x the survivability, while getting 1k extra tougness just 50% more. And that’s only against direct damage.

On the high hp end of the scale (necro for one) getting 1k vit vs 1k tougness yiedls rougly same returns. No special advantages for tougness there, unless he goes heavily into blood magic and healing power.

Currently “Guard!” is more like “Sneak!” if anything, and doesn’t provide that much utility save for being a button to fire off resounding timbre trait.

To make Guard! a true guard it should allow for capture point contribution from the pet while it’s under the effect of it. I also think it should work a lot like thief’s shadow trap skill. Not with the shadowstepping part, but with there being follow ups for it – standard one, and premium one when certain conditions are met.

This is how it would work:

1. After selecting a permeter to guard, pet would not leave selected zone , even when attacked. It will fight as long as it’s within the boundary of protected zone. When forcibly moved outside of it, it’ll always try to return to it.

2. Pet in guard mode does contribute to capturing points.

3. When guarding a spot pet pulses 3s protection and regeneration on itself every 3s.

4. “To me!” – this is the default follow-up on the skill. You break stun.
Pet gains stability (3 stacks), stealth and swiftness for 10s and rushes to your side. After using this “Guard” goes on 80s cooldown.

5. “Companion’s call!” – if your pet is attacked while guarding the default follow up changes to this skill. You have 10s to use it after it replaces the default one.

You answer you pet’s call for help. Break stun, gain stability (3 stacks), protection and super speed for 5 seconds

If you manage to answer your pet’s call on time (it’s still alive, still in guard mode and you’ve moved within 600 units range from it) the Guard!’s cooldown is cut by 40s!\

6. Using both Guard! and it’s follow-up skills triggers resounding timbre when it’s traited.

Leave your feedback on the idea below:)

Well the RS#2 is something i did forget. Also the chillblains etc – back then it was pure power build, gs/d+d, so condi warfare was out of the question. When i go condi, yeah, thieves are no longer so big. In future matches (when i’m power) i’ll consider the advices here and main hand axe. Least the #2 will give them a run for their money..

Full flight would lack challenge. With glider jumping puzzles are still relevant, updrafts serve as mini air jumping puzzles, leyline gliding has a point etc.

sides take a look at what happened to pact fleet. You don’t wanna stay airborne for too long in heart of the maguuma…

I wouldn’t exaggerate the issue – i’m currently in top 1000 of leaderboards EU (705th atm) and i’ve had quite some capable warriors both on my team and on the other side of the fence. These things can get pretty scary, especially with some disturbing quickness uptime. And i’m saying that as a necro who has corruption to defend against that, unlike most classes.

And I’d like to stress the word warriors. Not berserkers.

Let’s not start discussions about disgusting, unless you want me to start going on about how pro chornomancers are with their gravity well + avoid well rinse and repeat “skill”. Or thieves and their eternal shadowstepping in with basilisk venom etc.

Point is if such playstyle exists it should not be barred cause it’s bad. If it’s bad then there’a a major issue with balance that should be fixed at it’s core and not given “indefinite quarantene”.

@ Ebolism – yes, settler is one. The only one. Carrion i don’t count as it’s 2 offesive stats one defensive. Though it is viable, it’s not real condi bunker amulet.

While Power bunkers have Soldier’s, Sentinel’s, Cleric’s, Crusader’s and Vigilant*.
Notice the slight difference in number – one vs five…

• If you wonder why vigilant is there – with high tougness paired with boon duration and condi duration, but no cond damage at all, it’s a clear choice for durable buffer and crippler of enemies. Power one, that is.

Ok so i gotta ask, where are the condi bunker amulets? I have no problem seeing power bunker ones – sentinel, soldier, even crusader’s is there. Even glass cannons are given a more defensive option with marauder’s set, not to mention the most useless stat set ingame – magi amulet.

But try looking around for condi bunker stat sets like dire, trailblazer’s or shaman’s…zip. zero. zilch. Care to explain yourself, a-net?

Reaper here. Don’t have ranged life blast.

Ok long story short thief vs my reaper = dead reaper unless the thief is really noob. Run into P/P one, ate 15k unload in a flash. Needless to say how it ended. My defenses since that time have gone up, but that still doesn’t solve the major issue – they can burst me from afar and i can’t.

So any suggestions how to handle those guys?

Whoa where that mordre…erm i mean nice charr mor…druid! Sick pauldrons btw!

I haven’t raided yet but a small addition to all of the above – we also have missile absorption now. Corrosive poison cloud is now our own putrid, smelly necro anti-projectile bubble. Traited with master of corruption it’s 8s of that awesomeness with 20s cd. Pretty kitten good if you ask me!

If anything HoT is delivering on the promises of difficulty curve. When it says “group event” it means group event. if you can solo it because you’re good – props to you, but it’s supposed to be hard for a single player by design and require more then one soul to pull it off without major hiccups. I’d say that good design.

I don’t understand complains of most ppl about it “abruptly ending”
[spoiler] We can all see in the ending cinematic mordy split from the scene and rushed off as 3 waves of energy probs to ensure his survival, going as far as to possess glint’s egg. He’s out of the throne, but not dead yet, and he’ll be back for more.
Here are but few proofs of above statements:

If he died then why didn’t it end with one big explosion, instead of 3 quite directed energy waves? Dead dragon can’t control his energy, right?

Why did one of these waves headed at full speed to glint’s egg? Doesn’t look like coincidence to me.

We didn’t kill Traeharne. Our character wavered just a second too long, as a result what we killed was resurrected mordremoth – no longer held in check by former pact leader. Who knows what he did in the crucial few seconds spent bellowing about his greatness. Some last ditch effort to save himself and setup and escape route for his mind would be most likely scenario.

And who says caladbolg would kill him? It’s sylvari “tech”. So basically dragon minion’s tech. So basically his own. Why would he allow developing of weapon that could kill him this easy?

So yeah, i don’t think we’ve seen last of mordry.
[/spoiler]

Ok so y-day i did last story instance of HoT and boy did that take hours. That however wasn’t thanks to the difficulty of the boss, but due to the infamous glider part of the fight. So here’s a short sweet survival guide so you don’t have to suffer like I did:

When it’s time to fly you’ll see updrafts around the arena. And updrafts they are, but the rules are different then what you’re used to from the jungle. They are generated by blue spherical lauch pads underneath them. Don’t try to jump on them like with bouncing mushrooms, that didn’t work out that well for me. Just walk/run over them and you’ll be auto-launched, then open up your glider and fly. It’s not true you get only one shot – if you missed it you can still try again.

Now if that’s not quite working out for you, then there’s the desperate measure – giving glider the middle finger and facetanking the incoming damage. I won’t say it’ll work for every profession, but two confirms i can give is my necro and buddy’s ranger.

With ranger it most likely was the signet of stone scenario + tanky pet that revived him when he got downed, keeping him alive just long enough to survive the whole stage.

With my necro it was tank maximum build – lotsa hp, Rise!, full life force bar and most imporant of all – plague form. The last one makes you uber tanky, giving you best short at surviving it all. Be certain to fire it off at full/ near full health bar. After all’s said and tanked, be sure to heal back up (blood magic traitline + dagger on 2nd weapon set for it’s #2 skill helps a lot). Oh and nearly forgot summon blood fiend! It was invaluable through the fights. Resilient as hell, doesn’t forget to heal me up (unlike myself!) and kept my hp high throughout most of the fights.

Going by the above rule i can imagine a warrior with rampage could do it too, mixing in some panic buttons (defy pain, maybe shield block – dunno if it’s attacks are blockable) before going hulk tank mode.

Rest of fight does not require any special guiding if you ask me so enjoy your last HoT story battle and hopefully you won’t have to “enjoy it” over and over and over again due to glider horrors thanks to this little guide;)

Jackums.3496:

Battlemage/armored robes look.

(page 32)

Run into it by accident, but amazing job with the shoulders looking metallic. The black gloves are a nice touch too.

While the profane pants are used by just about every human female mage who’s not wearing cultural 3 or that full dress outfit, the job on the top half of your mesmer is astounding.

I will be evil kitten and say: Neither.
Go with power necro but not zerk necro – valkyrie’s or cavaliers.

I personally run dire (so condi) and lived to regret it. The survival is good, no complaints there, but condi necro as amazing as he is in terms of condi manipulation is flat out annoyin in open world. Applying condies as a necro is a pain – we lack the burst in most cases, and if it’s bursty somehow it has horrid duration. In the end, you either:

a) have too little damage (me) and take ages to stack enough condies for decent damage (i’m still missing some gear).

b) have too great condi damage, overkilling stuff before you can land that juicy epidemic for some mass slaughter, again hating yourself in the morning.

Power damage has no such issues. If you hit harder – better for you, no penalties of missing epidemic for that. Also as mentioned above power damage doesn’t need much in terms of utilities – you can use those for survival, mobility or w/e floats your boat.

Ah and seems no one is mentioning the elephant in the room – necromancer’s healing. It’s amazing. He may not be druid in terms how often he can pump green numbers for othersk, but still can do decent job there. However in terms of cleansing condies off your team, and reviving downed ppl druid has nothing on necro. This is where necro is unrivaled #1 no competition;) So even if you’re not the top damage disher, remember you can be top tanker, top reviver and pretty amazing condi cleanser. Plus with some healing power a pretty darn good healing support (transfusion, aoe healing when you end shroud, well of blood).

Remember that time your first pet died? If you cried and bid it farewell, then this job is not for you. If instead you said “See you soon!” with evil grin on your face, then look no further – you’re a necromancer!

I don’t put a shout on my bar without augury of death (for PvE). I fail to see why ppl are so in love with chilling nova, given that thing’s internal cooldown. Augury used right on the other hand is up to 35% recharge reduction on a shout and that works for me!

@ Vigil. I would begin by equipping curses line and soul reaping for two massive crit chance boosters – “target the weak” and “deathly perception”. With that he won’t need half of that zerk gear and will be able to swap it for valkyries – same power, same ferocity, but vitality instead of precision. A much needed survival boost, because worst kind of dps is the dead one.

Also i wouldn’t shy away from ignoring the miliscule damage gains in favour of real cc gains – unless your team has that covered. In my experience soling maguuma content with randoms, my necro’s cc is very real and meaningful. When flesh golem charges break bars take a massive hit, warhorn’s #4 daze is also massive, and fear is poison to break bar – it slowly, but steadily whittles it down, or at least prevents from recharging fast, giving massive time window to finish the job for other ppl. Without fear holding break bar back it would be much more difficult to break it for not too well organized groups such as the ones i was in.

I’m bit tired and not at my finest atm, but the brainpower i can muster atm tells me that there’s little that can be done for his power output and much that can be done for his consistency of outputting it and being useful to his team. /

Also don’t forget necro is the best reviver with blood magic’s “transfusion” grandmaster trait. He can literally pull downed ppl away from red circles of death right to his feet for fast and safe ress. That’s some invaluable dps uptime from those downed ppl that otherwise could’ve been lost or even cause a full wipe.

“but 2% more dmg per condi is much better than 2% crit chance per condi…”

No it’s not. It’s like steroids being better then natural training. Yeah in the short run it is better, but in the long run the price is too high.

And here the price would be very severe. From loss of many unique not necessairly straightforward power builds that still boast high damage and additional utility, to core game players who don’t own HoT yet being given the middle finger, because without reaper spec and without target the weak being crit boost they can’t get 100% crit rate without inwesting into precision gear.

Also build flexibility for power necros would be further hindered with curses (condi) line being mandatory in their builds. Spite is great for a power necro, but notice it’s not mandatory. The might stacking can be done by someone else, you need not to go there for that if you have a good party. While it’s passive damage boost is around 10% damage in the end. not something you can’t manage without. But 25% passive damage boost based on conditions? There’s no excuse for not taking that and you’d be chained & balled to curses if you wanted any sort of real direct damage…
And that’s someting this game is aiming to avoid.

Target the weak – it must stay a crit buff. One of fun things about necro are the 0 precision, 100% crit chance builds. Right now we have 3 traits for that purpose out of which 2 are needed for a successful build. So that gives you 3 combinations of 2 lines to get the job done. It’s flexible that way opening up more builds. Take away one of them (target the weak) and you’re arm-twisted to use reaper and soul reaping lines. That many unique and fun builds down the toilet if you do that.

What can be done is replacing crit-chance per condi applied with precision per condi applied. That one will work with the very same trait’s 13% precision added as condi damage boost to push that number even further.

Necro is the answer, unlike other 8 professions necro was designed from day one to take damage, shrug it off like it wasn’t there and defeat his opponent by being the tankier kitten around.

For that reason (least now with the reaper) he has some serious sustained damage mitigation – be it incoming damage % reductions (plenty of those!), popping death shroud or his self heals from many different sources. Also a very strong part of his defense is condition gameplay. He’s got plenty of ways to get those off himself and pay enemies back with interest when it comes to conditions. Also having minions to take some heat off you helps too.

Ranger is also awesome – his defense is more focused on pet taking the pain for him, but even if that’s not the case, he can muster up incredible self healing (probs best in game now that the druid is here), and tons of evades and escapes, along with real good cc if needed, and few panic buttons if things go south.

Warrior – tough, but not as tough as above two. Warriors face a ceiling when it comes to self sustain – they can’t push their healing far above normal limits like the other two. Warrior is VERY reliant on his default #6 heal, little extras there.

Also while chugged with 0 damage, 0 condies etc panic buttons, they lack any serious damage mitigation once these are on cooldown. Heavy armor doesn’t mean much compared to good access to protection boon, which warriors have zero of.

And lastly warrior has no minions/pets/summons whatsoever. Both necro and ranger can count on their AI companions to take some heat off them, especially the ranger who can even be revived by his own pet! But warrior will always be the center of attention without other players around and no easy way to shake that off…

The problem is that in core gw2 there are these sweet “exp rest spots” away from doing events. Just when you’re about had it doing events, something new that gives decent exp and is not a grind pops up – like crafting, personal story instance, exploring new map etc.

In maguuma because of tiny amount of exp you’re given…for just about anything you do there, these things don’t serve their role too well, and 98% of exp is doing event chains and hoping for a good map (with lots of ppl that do them). That’s why it feel grindy.

[quote=5801364;SirDrygan.1823:

What you are suggesting will make leveling mastery too easy.

…snip;)
[/quote]

Objection! These things are not related!
Splitting a mastery into many more chunks that are much easier to master does not have to make reaching the end goal easier. It all depends on numbers used. 4 times the masteries per line, with each being 3x faster to level is still 33% more experience total to get compared to previous version.

Having a particular mastery be leveled by the choice of event and not player’s choice in mastery window also does not mean faster mastery leveling. That would be dependant on actual numbers a-net would implement.

The point of these changes is for player to feel his efforts and choices matter and are fruitful in their own unique ways. I just saved Itzel village from Hylek fanatics. Why on earth would that help me train my gliding mastery? Where’s the sense in that? I would think i don’t know…actual GLIDING would push that forward?

Similarly saving Tarir only to see Itzel lore exp go up (cause that’s what i selected), with exalted themselves not giving a flying …flamingo about it (their mastery line not budging one inch) also feels odd.

As a necro player with some experience under the belt i can say one thing – reaper is awesome. Dive right on in. If you hated the old necro shroud, you’re not the only one.

Reaper puts that and much more to rest. This specialization outright saved the necro. It’s not only awesome on it’s own, but creates great synergy with other lines and brings many underperforming traits back to the light, making them a viable choice. For example the infamous Dhuumfire, or Transfusion. With the reaper you have a ton of new synergies, good ones at that and new builds available.

Necro is now a certifiable kitten with reaper spec. Don’t be afraid to dive into it!

Them minions are a story. But i would not go to say they’re mandatory for melee reaper to be successful dps wise.

Reason ppl slot RIse! is that the summoned minions absorb 50% of damage you take while they’re alive and kicking (or some such). In short it’s a tanking skill.
Good old fleshy is picked for his powerful cc charge. It really puts the hurt on enemy break bars, and has a reasonable cooldown.
Poison nova is also sweet, since the minions can weaken the enemy on their way out, adding to tankyness.

That however does not mean that death magic makes the best damage melee necro. Spite line is made for melee reaper. It’s damage, some more damage and extra damage.
In terms of stacking might this line is all you need for the latter half of fight (when enemy is below 50%). And with some boon duration even without that you’ll stack a very respectable amount of stack from shroud’s aa alone. that pulsing vulni from being in shroud is also nothing to sneeze at – with decimate defenses traited it’s both extra damage and extra crit chance.

So it’s your call there but i would certainly not call melee power reaper not viable.

Add soul reaping’s grandmaster trait that grants 50% crit when in shroud and all your precision problems have been solved. meaning you can go full cavalier or full valkyrie for some extra suvivability on top of kitten good damage.

And here is my new necro, and fav character by far since HoT release – Krytan Butcher.
As you can see, I somewhat moved away from usual necro theme in favour of psychotic witch doctor. For those who are bored, his backstory below;)

Didn’t even know about that one. Well can’t argue about 0’s being pointless, but then again i wouldn’t say HoT is 10 off the bat either. Extremes somehow balanced eachother there.

HoT – 7.5 metacritic score. Good, but not great.

Mastery system – great idea, so-so implementation. The naysayers touch a lot about it being “Grind Wars 2” with it’s release and there is some truth to that.

The culprit here is the mastery system. Is suffers from quite large design flaws that should be addressed to make it what it really should be.

#1. Masteries are just few skills miles apart rather then a true mastery
Currently instead of having a lot of small steps to make, that over time, build a strong mastery in given discipline, we’re stuck with very few, often logically disjointed ones, that by their nature have huge gaping holes of nothing in between (long hard grinds for a level up).

How much fun would it be if we had 24 points in a given mastery instead of 6, each less meaningful then current ones, but 3 times easier to level up and as they pile up on top of each other something powerful would be happening?

For example the glider. Why do i get extra endurance with step #4? If it’s mastery then shouldn’t it be that i start with really small endurance pool but with every or at least most steps of the way i get a little more until at the end or near it it becomes unlimited? Why does it have to be a sudden leap and at that particular point?

And why are my mastery points only about flying with it? What about getting friendlier with pact engineers and getting some extra visual perks or additional boosts for the glider? There’s room to improve and speculate!

#2. Meaningless masteries We all know which masteries we need to get most of hero points. And 3 of these 4 are forced on us by personal story. Why the others mean so little and offer so little value, especially since they’re higher up in the mastery tree?

And why is it so easy to get a hp without proper mastery for it? I want a verdant brink hero point behind a poisoned bush. No problem. Grab your glider and just glider over the bush into the point. So why should i care about that itzel poison mastery again?

Now using another mastery to get past such obstacle can be good design, as long as priorities are respected. If it’s designed for itzel mastery users, then other masteries should require far higher level on them and much more working around to get it. If let’s say poison mastery was a level 2 itzel lore skill, and to grab it with glider i would need lvl 5 gliding mastery, that would be fair game. But it’s not.

3. Boring acquisition – getting mastery points is cool. Complete your story, glide, do mini-games, search for hidden areas. But leveling mastery levels is boooring. Why? because there’s no diversity!

I want to level Exalted mastery. What do i do? Grind map events. Which map? Any.
Itzel? Same! Glider? Same!

No wonder people complain it’s grindy! Why can’t we have specific masteries be affected more by specific events and activities and others less. And while we’re at it, why not have certain actions influence more then one mastery!

I go to auric basin and help defend it. Is it not obvious that my exalted mastery should shoot up from it, while others not budge one bit or only a little? If i get a mastery point reachable only with glider, should i not get some sweet glider points for it? And if i’m on verdant brink and doing mission for the Pact, like taking out lot of modrem, should i not receive major love from pact engies (who upgrade my glider in this scenario) and a bit of love from the Itzel (because while not directly helping them, less mordrem is always good news).

If we had a system like that i think players would feel their event and map choices are much more meanigful and while still being there and doing the same map events, they would feel their choices matter!

If you agree +1 this sucker, and post below to keep it afloat, if not feel free to correct me or let it die out;)

And will it feature more heart of maguuma maps? (gimme! gimme!)

what’s a deathshroud? [/sarcasm]

Seriously old ds isn’t a profession mechanic, it’s a torture device.

#1. Slow as molasses and useless unless heavily traited
#2. even slower dark path
#3. only redeeming feature of old ds and not by much since it’s only 1/2 s longer fear then reaper version without stab.
#4. yeah, you channel it, and pray you don’t get cc’d (unless foot in the grave is traited). But other then that it lacks any synergy. No boons, no positioning opportunities, no condies, no nothing. Just lf gain and some damage on a long cooldown.

and lastly #5.. three stacks of torment was it? well that’s a game changer….[/sarcasm again]

Reaper shroud is how it’s done. Normal shroud is why you hated necro. Power necro was boring to the point of suicide (life blast), condi necro was obsolete due to condi cap.

Recent game changes (condi cap lifted) + basic necro skill reworks brought some life back into the profession (around 25% of it). Remaning 75% is pure and simple reaper.

Absolutely not. And it’s not that HoT is bad in my opinion (4th day playing, too little to pass judgements), but there are strong objective reasons to not pre-order any expansion for that matter:

1. Pre-purchase price – 50$. Well early birds may catch the worm, but late bird catches the discout – i got my HoT key for roughly 32$ at 3rd party retailer. Nuff said.

2. Keeping a-net on their toes. Let’s see how they handle LS3, if we’ll get any more heart of maguuma maps (looking very forward to that) and how will they fix and tweak their game. NOT pre-purchasing the game means they can get customers by fixing the dealbreakers that made them stay away from HoT (like not enough content in their eyes, too linear progression, bugs etc). If everyone pre-ordered, what incentive would they have to work on that which they already released?

Yeah, thinking about it adding base specializations for core game would be do-once solve for all time justice.

After HoT no one who has it can complain that new set of specializations that comes with xpac is unfair, because they already have an elite specialization set from HoT. So it’s one elite vs the other, batttle of equals.

But currently it’s HoT specialization’s vs regular ones for those who did not buy and that’s not a fair contest.

So in the end I gave out and got HoT. Went into spvp tried elite specs a bit and morale of the story is short – they’re not named elite for nothing. Normal trait lin…erm…“specializations” can’t compare.

And with that comes the realization that something is seriously missing here.
That something is the base elite specialization.

The ones who did not buy x-pac have nothing that can be deemed comparable to elite specs, it’s the cold hard truth. What should’ve been is much like masteries that are divided between old Tyria and Heart of Maguuma, there also should be base elite specs for old Tyrians and new, alternative ones with HoT, that will give you alternative option to put into that elite specialization slot.

Yeah i realize that money, development time, business etc etc. But it’s still unbalanced and i will take a jab at that even if it’s never addressed.

No jungle themed weapons and armor? Whoa way to get me motivated a-net.

I don’t mean the story. Least not just the story. I mean the sizes of maps, the amount of masteries to unlock, new rewards (whatever they are to work towards to in xpansion etc).

Btw about maps i heard “4 big maps”. 4 maps with 3 biomes each, or is each biome considered a full map?

Ok, so i wanna ask those who beat it or at least done majority of it:

Is it packed with enough content to justify the “expansion” title, or am i looking at something far smaller then expected?

Say WHAT? The raid is not in the base HoT package but “to be released”? Can someone confirm this?!

Also are there any other “tidbits” like this that were supposed to be inside HoT but suddenly change of plans and they’re not there yet?

Well that’s true too. Time will tell. For now my main interest is that i’m seeing threads about fighting x-pacs final bokittend day from realease. Now if there’s a way to rush to it, that’s perfectly fine. But if it’s not possible to do it without prior through completion of the new zone then that’s a red flag for me.

Don’t know about any of that (did not buy HoT so far), but i think it’s fair to say that soon the complain threads about it being too grindy will make room to threads saying it’s too short. Which for me will be far bigger turn off. I’ll just wait and see (pulls out popcorn).

If you’re unsure, wait. There’s still the huge matter of “how much content is in there really?”. Give it a few days, let early birds bring in news about how big it actuallly is.

Then you may make your call. Or a-net might do a price drop if it turns out HoT is not half as big as we suspected.

Cold hard facts:

Base game at launch: 60$.
HoT at launch: 50$.

Now is HoT bringing new content that’s roughly 5/6 of base game’s size? And that’s not considering they already have a foundation to build on unlike with base game.
…yeah i rest my case.

Long story short – i was hoping for a nature mage specialization, with powerful aoe zone control, boon application and boon strip abilities.
What i hoped for were skills like vine walls blocking passage for enemies, plant turrets/traps, auto attacking near enemies with some nasty conditions, or ripping boons of them. Generally lot of control as expected from mage that is one with nature so basically the whole map is his weapon.

Instead we got ventari mkII…