I agree with the OP on HoT. The expansion feels like it was designed for group play/guild play only. That makes a lot of players happy, I know, but not THIS player.
It’s unfortunate that I had to purchase the expansion to discover that Heart of Thorns is far more like the Living Story, Season 2 (i.e., difficult, grindy, gimmicky [jumping mushrooms, glider abilities that take forever to acquire, etc.], and tedious — and certainly nothing I’d want to through play through a second time on an alt) than it is like the base GW2 game, which I greatly enjoyed.
I’ll be interested to see if ArenaNet continues on this philosophical game design path, but as for me, I think I’m done with GW2 for a while.