returning player seek advice

[Chort]

Hi there. So i decided to give this awesome game 2nd try. Originally i lvled Ranger to 80 did personal story and around 70% of all map completed.

While clearing maps i understood that it would be better to have one armor type of each class: heavy, medium and light; And thus decided to lvl warrior and necromancer. Around lvl 14 on each i got bored, plus Real Life become more busy.

Now i want to get back and have few questions:

1) Is it beneficial to have one of each armor class? Or should i focus on one character?

2) If there something that i have to buy with gems that will make game very convenient? Such as bags or shared storage? Anything you would advise?

3) Seems like people have mixed feelings about HoT expansion. How limited will be my game experience without expansion? What can i do in original game without an expansion?

4) I want to get legendary weapon and begin farming it, perhaps as well as Ascended gear. Can i do those without HoT? Is there a point to it?

5) I also want to do all dungeons and join raiding guild. I love raiding in WoW but would really love to try it in GW2. Any tips? Should i get HoT?

6) I want to clear all dungeons in story mode and other mode. Any tips on this task? Any point in doing it? Should i get HoT?

7) Is crafting very important? Should i level it? Whats the most efficient way? Should i have HoT for it?

8) What are fractals? And what there is to do at max level comparing to people who dont have HoT?

Well these are basically all questions that i have. Any help would be much appreciated. Would not mind making new friends and joining active guilds.

[zito]

1) There is no distinct advantage, some classes are better at some things than others and vice versa. Armor has nothing to do with it. A guardian with heavy armor can be just as squishy as a cloth user, you should be looking at classes not armor.

2) You don't have to buy gems, you can trade for gold if you want. I think the only thing worth wild in the store though is bank and bag space.

3) You can do anything you could of done before in the original game. All content is there for you, though in HoT you will get several more maps and the new mastery system and among other things. There really isn't a downside to not getting it but why not get it if you have the money?

4) I believe Legendary quest line is HoT only but the previous legs are not (but they don't have a quest line to them)

5) Raiding is HoT only, you can do any dungeon without HoT.

6) The point in doing it besides wanting to have fun is that they give a nice reward now and you'll also get an achievement and title for doing everything.

7) It's important for legendaries and it isn't hard to level, just a bit pricey. Crafting will also give you levels

8) Fractals is another form of dungeons that give greater rewards than dungeons. You can adjust the difficulty level from 1-100 with different challenges the higher you go, you will also need a stat called agony which is used only for fractals.

All in all if you like GW2 get HoT if you don't then don't

One thing on the mastery system though is that it's a horizontal gating mechanic. It represents leveling without the power growth. So In HoT you'll find areas you won't be able to get to til you have a higher mastery level (much like traditional level).

[Chort]

WoW zito - So helpful. Truly thank you - i thought no one would reply. Spend like an hour on gw2 wiki. Will start to do what i can without HoT and if i would get hooked - i will get HoT. Thank you!

To mods and everyone else: I will delete this post in a few days if no one else replies.

[Edge-]

To mods and everyone else: I will delete this post in a few days if no one else replies.

No need, the thread can stay open in case it helps anyone else. Otherwise it will naturally fall off the front page : )

[zito]

Will start to do what i can without HoT and if i would get hooked - i will get HoT. Thank you!

That's actually the best thing - if you like the base game you'll like HoT so just try it out and if you get hooked then there ya go.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

1) Is it beneficial to have one of each armor class? Or should i focus on one character?

Besides having more playstyle options, no, there's no explicit benefit to having one of each armor class.

Focusing on a single character may be a good idea, since having multiple means you must weather the stress of having to do everything besides mastery and dailies twice; you have to gear up twice, you have to get your hero points twice, you have to do hearts twice, etc. I'd recommend just focusing on a single class until your ready to try another.

2) If there something that i have to buy with gems that will make game very convenient? Such as bags or shared storage? Anything you would advise?

You can get unbreakable mining tools for cheap from the gem store, would recommend if you want to get into crafting or gathering and selling mats. In game, mining tools are cheap but can get quickly annoying to replace. Optional but not strongly recommended.

All players have shared bank storage by default, but the bank stash is very small; I'd recommend you buy more bank slots.

The default bag space is large enough for the average player, would only recommend if your somehow getting enough loot to have to stop every twenty-thirty minutes to salvage (disenchant) everything before moving on.

3) Seems like people have mixed feelings about HoT expansion. What can i do in original game without an expansion?

First, I will explain what the expansion gets you.

The expansion adds only four new maps, and while yes they are multi-leveled, they are ultimately more or less the same size as regular maps (you have a multiple plane on maps but the vast majority of those planes are filled with empty air). The real biggie are how events are handled (read: quests that you can just walk in and participate in without having to accept, and are repeatable and lead into branching chains), and each map has it's own meta-event that leads to a spectacular map wide challenge at the end, which makes the HoT maps overall more fun than playing on vanilla GW2 maps. Unlike vanilla GW2, there are ALWAYS events happening, and usually within only a twenty seconds walk within each other (whereas in vanilla you could spend several minutes traversing multiple maps only to find a single events). They are also much more fun. Feels like WoW questing, without the hassle of having to read quest text or scrambling through WoWhead trying to find out where to go next.

The other biggie are raids, which so far are very difficult to complete as a PuG (somewhere between WoW's normal and heroic difficultly I'd put it from personal experience). They are linear, and so far there's only a single raid with 6 different bosses. The reward is a set of legendary armor... that has no better stats than what you can already earn in vanilla GW2 (in other words, just prestige).

TL;DR: Content wise, HoT ultimately boils down to 1. do you like fun quests that never end? If yes, you'll love the new maps (despite there only being four). 2, are you a dedicated raider? If yes, you'll like the new raid content. If yes to either question, then I would recommend you consider buying HoT for that (or those) reason(s) alone.

What can i do in original game without an expansion?

You can access all of GW2's vanilla world, participate in the story mode, do all the dungeons in the game (GW2 doesn't add any new dungeons), do all the fractals (read: dungeons but faster paced like a D3 rift, with far more variation than a regular dungeon), and participate in all PvP content. In other words, you only miss out the four new zones and six raid bosses.

4) I want to get legendary weapon and begin farming it, perhaps as well as Ascended gear. Can i do those without HoT? Is there a point to it?

Short answer: No, not without paying a ton of money.

Long answer: Legendary weapons are crafted from a precursor item, which can drop from ANYTHING in the game. Mobs, events, chests, etc. The catch is, that precursors have a microscopically minuscule droprate, to the point where a player having played for ten hours a week, every week since launch can have never seen one drop, while a player who just started yesterday can find a precursor on a low level mob. Additionally, with sixteen different precursors, the chances of getting exactly the one you want are even slimmer. Now, you can buy & sell precursors over the in game auction house for in game gold, but they usually start around the 1,000 gold mark, a figure a new player is highly unlikely to attain within even a year of play time. After you get the precursor, you have to hunt for the other items to make the legendary...

With HoT, you can just earn a mastery in about five-ten hours of play that just let's you craft the precursor and easily collect all the other items to make your legendary. However, because legendaries have no gameplay benefit other than being able to arbitrarily rearrange stat composition at will, there is no raw power disadvantage to ignoring legendary equipment (ascended has the same stats).

5) I also want to do all dungeons and join raiding guild. I love raiding in WoW but would really love to try it in GW2. Any tips? Should i get HoT?

Dungeons are easily PuGable, especially story mode. Raids are very difficult to pug, you really need a raid team to do them. Depends on whether or not you have a team or are willing to join a team.

The raid fights generally require more active focus than WoW's.

I would not recommend spending $50 just for a six boss raid (there's another wing to be added, but still... 3 bosses per wing...), at least WoD got you 30 bosses plus four different difficulties with new mechanics to run them on (three if you exclude easy mode).

7) Is crafting very important? Should i level it? Whats the most efficient way? Should i have HoT for it?

Crafting is not very important outside of predigest items or min/maxing.

You can level up your character via crafting, so I would recommend you wait until you start an alt to start leveling crafting, as you will have all the mats that you gathered from your main to carry you there. IMPORTANT: You have a dedicated reagent tab for your mats, which you can deposit into at any time by simply right-clicking the mat and clicking "deposit". Sell the left overs over the auction house.

HoT doesn't bring anything of importance to crafting outside of min/maxing and a few prestige items.

8) What are fractals? And what there is to do at max level comparing to people who dont have HoT?

As said before, fractcals are kinda like D3 rifts, except with a short story behind them and a little bit more structure than just run in and kill everything.

People who don't have HoT can run vanilla maps, do dungeons, do fractals, do story mode, and do PvP. HoT just gives you four more maps and a six boss raid. That's not much variety in the way of content, but GW2's vanilla game has a lot of repeatable content.

[Chort]

OMG THANK YOU A LOT!!!
So much useful information. Thank you for writing all of this down!!!
I am currently leveling warrior and what to complete vanilla game before getting Hot.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

OMG THANK YOU A LOT!!!
So much useful information. Thank you for writing all of this down!!!
I am currently leveling warrior and what to complete vanilla game before getting Hot.

Would recommend you do the Personal Story as you level up, and any story dungeons that unlock along the way (as you get to find out more about each member of Destiny's Edge and more about the world). You can form a group for story dungeons pretty easily in the group finder. HoT has it's own story that ties into the events of vanilla GW2's, but please note that there are two sets of post-launch story missions (called 'seasons') that were added to bridge the gap between the two. Season 1 is no longer available (as they were only one time events), while season 2 can be bought from the gem store (which are instanced missions just like the personal story).

If you don't want to buy the season 2 personal missions and would just like to know the gist of what went on before HoT: Scarlet, a crazy Sylvari used her airship the Beachmaker to destroy Lion's Arch and open up a Ley Line, magical energy from which erupted and awakened the elder dragon Mordremoth. As it turns out, the good dragon Glint (from GW1, and has been dead for a few years) left behind an egg that is apparently going to be very important, but due to circumstances Caithe steals the egg for unknown reasons and vanishes. Rytlock tries to free the ghosts of Ascalon, but his ritual fails and he is lost within the Mists. Meanwhile, Traehearne leads a fleet of Pact airships into the Maguuma Jungle to fight the Mordrem...

As for general gameplay, hero points are the most important map objectives.

[Kazgrel]

1. No benefit; you can either focus on one toon or play multiple.

2. Nothing from gem store is 100% must have P2W. I personally am fond of the unlimited use harvesting tools, though, but they aren't an absolute necessity.

3. I'm a bit mixed on it (stopped playing about 3 weeks after HoT launch). Anet is making efforts to get more stuff into the game to make HoT feel more like it's money's worth. I can safely say I got all of that and then some when I bought the base game when it launched.

4. Yes; only technical "advantage" to legendary weapon is you can swap the stats at will, but making 2 ascended weapons with different stats takes far less time/effort. It's all about the shiny when it comes to legendaries.

5. You will need HoT if you want to do the raids.

6. Don't need HoT for dungeons. They provide a decent amount of cool looking weapons/armor.

7. Crafting is useful, but not an absolute must have. I like it because it offers alternative means to leveling your character. My charr thief and guardian got to level 26ish just from leveling 2 crafts (on each toon) to 400. Since the xp from them scales based on level, you're looking at 20-25 character levels just from that. Probably 30 or more if you have crafts that go to 500.

8. Fractals are basically a different form of dungeons. You can do these without HoT.