Ok so I played GW2 a bit after release. Had some decent items, killed a few dragons. Didn't quite make it through any of what are now the Chapters in the living story though. Had about 75% map completion across a couple of different classes before I got bored and kinda dropped out. I would not by any stretch of the imagination call myself good - I would say I'm your average casual player.
So, now, a few years later. Someone here reminded me there had been a few expansions released, and I haven't been playing anything except Factorio, so figured it would be a good time to jump back in.
Bought both XPacs. Decided to jump right in.
Holy Crap. HoT is utterly kicking my butt. What am I missing here?
Do I need to go back and catch up on the chapters first? Should I do PoF first? Half the time I feel like it's not even a fair fight. A tentacle knocks me down, and I'm gangbanged by 3 dinosaurs before I can move. Or a frog assassin just two shots me before I can't even get a hit in.
Is this a matter of just getting good, and I just haven't figured it out yet? Is it a gear disparity? Are the masteries/elite specs pretty much required? Is this just not solo content and I should be looking for a party?
If i go back to original content and work on map completion, that's still as easy as I recall. HoT though, utterly different level and right now it's mostly just die, WP, run back, repeat. THe content is interesting and I'm enjoying the exploration with gliding, but the story and combat it really discouraging, to say the least.
Comments
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
PS: try to go with a hero points train if you want to get your elite fast in Hot.
DPS gear and then you get surrounded by tentacles can get as nasty as some high quality Hentai movie.
If you don't care so much about story then following the advice to do PoF first for mounts is decent.
It makes navigating the jungle a lot easier.
Alternatively try to get out of the first jungle map as quick as possible (it has the highest mastery demand) and do meta events in map 2 by using the group finder to join an organized instance.
I assure you you will like that a lot better than trying to solo the first map.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
easier content to follow
the maps are not as confusing
the mobs are not as tough
ive pretty much done all the story in PoF and Hot
And i found HoT a slogg I can imagine what a nightmare it was without a mount
but now ive a griffin mount flying over the mobs makes the job a lot easier
It's also easier to solo many things, HoT is exceptionally tough especially for new players.
If you're just coming back, you have a lot to catch up on, you have specializations to unlock for PvE.. that's a lotta work.
What class are you? Class builds are extremely important. Some take a little bit more .. not skill necessarily but lets say, time to learn than others, because there are a lot of ability synergies and little tricks, such as runes to add to your gear that can really turn a good build into a frickin' fantastic build.
You can always go to metabattle and pick up a build, but it's best you find something that you enjoy playing and play well, but I'll be happy to chat about it with you!
As far as specs, I used to play 2HS/Hammer on Glad, and Staff/2HS on Mesmer, but playing around with other options. I had enough Hero Points (not sure where those got added, I don't recall them exactly) to unlock first elite spec on both, and nearly have Firebrand capped on Gladiator.
I have a couple of the L80 tokens, and Necro, Engineer, Warrior, and Thief up to around L20.
Guardian, dragonhunter trap spec is really good for PvE, makes you tough to kill. Most of the time people would swap Long Bow for the Hammer. I personally like using scepter and focus and sword and shield as it gives me a little more survivability, but greatsword will do a ton of damage, and it's very good for mobility.
If you bought the game around launch, and you had all of those characters made around that same time, you'll likely have some XP scrolls to get them to around 40 or 50.
Warrior is always a solid choice, lots of opportunities for builds.
Engineer is probably the most diverse in terms of viable builds, especially in PvE, lots of kits to use, and even turrets work pretty well in many cases.
Necro is very strong now, and I am still personally a fan of the Reaper. Pet necro does very well in solo PvE.
Thief, if you get put in the work on the elite specializations you can be extremely strong, but probably the biggest learning curve.
The others... well.. I would say, don't toy with the revenant.. it's a class that has few build options, and that makes it feel stale after a while. Ranger is a solid choice, the one I'm most enamored with right now due to my super OP build. Elementalist is a bunch of fun, but will take some work to get the flow of combat if you're playing spellweaver.
If you want to really solo HoT, you can do it on Guardian and Mesmer, but it would be a bit harder on Guardian as you don't have the ability to break aggro as easily as you do on Mesmer, with stealth and clones.
I hope Guild Wars 3 is a true open world pvp mmo where Guilds actually form alliances through politics and fight for territory control.
They have at least one more expansion on the way so I don't think they're close to being done yet.
I could care less about it, I pretty much just enjoy PvE, and the story in GW2 is not too bad.
Still a ways from unlocking the Griffon, but this content feels much better. For the most part it's challenging without feeling overwhelming or hopeless. The story comes off a bit disjointed, but I guess that's what you get jumping around in content.