Level 80 Boosting Guide

[benjaminandjen]

I've searched everywhere and can't find a solid guide for people who decide to boost to 80. If you know of a guide, just ignore this post and link me haha!! I'm level 30 and I'm a little bored with just doing hearts and I want to jump to end-game content. I'm trying to make a chronological list for people who boost to 80 so they'll have a clear path of progression. So here are things I've learned that I should do, I'm just not sure which I should do first.

1) Research an open world build, for example at metabattle.com, go to the pvp lobby and practice your rotation on golems.
2) If said build requires weapons you don't have, grab some off the trading post in Lions arch, easily accessible from PVP lobby.
3) Play through HOT intro quest and earn the raptor mount. Mute the gameplay to avoid spoilers if you like, you can even change the subtitles to a different language to avoid reading the story.
4) With new raptor you can quickly unlock all the waypoints in the game, or you can buy a waypoint unlock for gems, probably bad idea, just mentioning it.
5) Go back and play through the personal story...I'm assuming that's still possible...to learn lore and experience the plot.
6) Continue map completion at your leisure. It will go faster at level 80 with a mount. Map completion is necessary if you plan to craft legendaries. Map completion also gets you mastery points, which unlock elite specializations? Is that correct? Map completion will also get you lots of mats for future crafting and karma.
7) Learn your professions and max them out.
8) Finish the HOT story line - this unlocks all other mounts?
9) Thorns story line gets you a glider?
10) Buy exotic gear (from trading post) because it's not that expensive and it's nearly as good as ascended gear.
11) From here I don't know when exactly, but begin experimenting with fractals, raids, WVW, dailies, general endgame content that I don't have any experience with yet.

I hope to edit this list after you guys make suggestions. As a noob it's frustrating talking to GW2 players and trying to nail down a clear progression path. GW2 is such an open game. Players keep telling me to do what I like. But I find it more stimulating to know what my goals are and then gradually achieving those goals.

[Rogalicus]

2) Some stats (like Viper's for condi builds) are expansion only, AFAIR you can't buy weapons with those, only craft
3) Mounts are Path of Fire content, not Heart of Thorns
4) Yes, but that's boring and you hardly need waypoints in core Tyria if you are not planning to ride World Boss train. I'd recommend to explore at your pace, you'll see much more that way.
5) Yes, it's possible
6) Legendary is mostly fancy skin and QoL with stat and sigil swapping, it's not worth it for new player considering the price, so take your time. You don't need mastery points for elite specializations, those are unlocked after you complete all your basic trait lines and utility and you can do that with hero points you passively gain through level up bonuses.
8) Again, you need Path of Fire, not HoT. Only raptor is unlocked in story, skimmer, springer and jackal are heart rewards in three PoF zones. Griffon is hidden collection after you get four previous and it costs 250g to finish. Roller Beetle is another collection in Kourna (LWS4E3). Warclaw is WvWvW mount and you can unlock it even before hitting 80 if you own PoF and can tolerate playing WvWvW for several hours), though it's very slow and doesn't have anything good outside of WvWvW.
9) Yes, but you'll need to level it with mastery, which means spending some time in Heart of Thorns and LWS3 maps.
10) If you use boost, you get set of exotic Soldier's gear, it's terrible in terms of damage, but good in terms of survivability. As for buying off TP, yet again, not all stats are available there.

[PACOX]

More or less what we tell new players with both xpacs to do, but not on a lvl 80. You just use the level 80 to unlock the glider (first HoT story mission) and mount (first PoF mission). Apparently you can get the mount and glider by joining someone else's story mission instead of burning your boost but I could never get it to work or the person I ran through was doing something wrong.

One way to view GW2s 'endgame' is mog/achieve runs in WoW but you cant outlevel the content.. Raid and T4 junkies do them for the challenge and mastering the content more than anything. The rewards are secondary. WvW can be see as the original 'raiding' and can be as casual or hardcore as you want it to be. You can be the foot soldier that joins the pug squad. The lone (or small group) havoc guy. Or you join guild runs and act as a specialist.

You need certain masteries to finish raids. Leyline for HoT. Mounts (or nice Mesmer) for Raid 5/6. Raid 4 can be done with basic gliding.

The LS3 maps are extremely advantageous for gearing. LS4 maps are good for farming and masteries for your mount. There's the beetle mount too if you want to go fast.

[Kopak]

After geting 80 lvl should I found a group for PvE content?