HoT Prep

September 23, 2015 at 10:33 pm | Posted in Guild Wars 2, mmorpg, PvE | Comments Off on HoT Prep
Tags: Guild Wars 2, MMO, mmorpg

I’ve been preparing for Heart of Thorns since before they even announced the expansion for Guild Wars 2, so if you’re just starting to prepare now, well, you’re late. That doesn’t mean you can’t get started, there’s still 1 month to go so let’s review some things you might want to do.

Specializations

HoT has elite specializations for every profession. One thing I think people are overlooking is that a specialization and the skills that come with it are going to require hero points, formerly skill points. A normal core specialization requires 60 hero points to unlock everything in the trait line, HoT specializations are ‘elite’ so they may end up costing more. Additionally each elite specialization unlocks a new skill type. Current skill types can require as many as 20 hero points.

You’ll have to take into consideration which characters you want to make the switch to the new specialization and how much time you have to devote to tracking down hero points. I didn’t see any hero points in the beta, but it seems likely that there would be some hero points available in the new HoT maps, so that should be taken into consideration as well.

I don’t recommend map completion until after HoT releases. Collecting the hero points is fine, but the xp from completion and new ‘map rewards’ should probably be saved for afterward to help progression in mastery lines. It’s a bit of a toss up between having day 1 hero points and whether you need instant mastery progress and the gift of exploration.

Guild Halls

The little we know about how to unlock various parts of Guild Halls suggests large amounts of materials will be required. The screen shot above is suggestive of mithril, silk, and 10 slot iron boxes, but nothing is set in stone yet and we don’t know precisely what those materials would be used for.

You might also consider, you know, being in a guild. One with the stated intention of claiming a Guild Hall and doing related guild activities, not to mention raids. If you’re in a smaller guild, it might mean joining a larger guild to familiarize yourself with how guild halls work so you can contribute to your smaller guild’s efforts.

If you’re in control of a guild, banners and upgrades will not go to waste (they’ll be grandfathered in) but I would consider building up as much stuff as possible with influence as there seems to be a daily limit of how much influence can be transferred over to the new Guild Hall system. Banners, upgrades, whatever.

Materials

There is going to be a big drain on materials which will likely cause massive price spikes so you might want to start gathering and buying them now. A variety of materials spanning the breadth of what Tyria has to offer is probably your best bet.

Gathering is time intensive so doing a little bit every play session makes sense. You’ll need materials to craft all the new gear for your revenant, crafting new skins, mystic forge recipes, Guild Halls as mentioned above, and the new crafting profession Scribe will also need materials.

I’ve saved up ectos, laurels to buy t6 materials, orichalcum, ancient wood, leather, all manner of trees and ore. I could probably be doing more to save up various cloth but it’s just about the only thing where I have to actively go out and farm.

If you’re going to buy materials, buy them now. Especially anything related to making legendaries. Precursor crafting is going to be all the rage so the materials necessary to craft those precursors into legendaries are going to skyrocket in price. Think lodestones, mystic coins, ectos, and any number of other possible items. You’ll know more if you have a particular legendary in mind and then go wiki what you need to make it. I personally expect the recipes for old legendaries to not change much at all aside from the precusor crafting.

Revenant

I’m not going to level my revenant naturally. So I’ll need 78 scrolls (leaving the tutorial levels you up) of knowledge or any combination of experience scrolls.

You’ll need gear and weapons. Saving up some Pristine Fractal Relics, Guild Commendations, and Laurels should have you set for Ascended jewelry, but I think it would be wise to hold off on ascended armour and weapons until solid builds are established for the revenant. Exotic weapons and armour will probably go up in price so consider buying now. Personally I might look into buying a WvW set since they seem to be changing those sets into salvageable gear.

The main thing you should look into is what runes and sigils you want for your revenant. Gear will probably never spike too high, but runes and sigils have a high chance of rising in price.

Foods, skins, and any number of other things are probably going to spike as well. I always keep some kind of high-level food and potion around so decide what you’re going to be doing with your revenant and outfit him appropriately before HoT launches.

Let’s not forget elite specializations which unlock new weapons for each profession. You’ve probably got a much better idea of what will look good on your current characters than on your non-existant revenant, so go buy what you need for skins.

WvW

Consider leveling up world xp a bit. There is going to be a nerf to a few of the world abilities and a refunding of points so I’m looking forward to maxing out some things I’ve never been able to before. With the release of the new borderlands map and the new features I’ll probably be playing WvW a bit more.

On a side note, the borderlands jumping puzzles are going away. The new borderlands maps won’t have them and there are achievement points tied to each one coordinated by colour. If you want those achievement points at all, it’s time to find a guide and head out.

PvP

I’m not much of a PvPer and in all honesty don’t give a fig about Stronghold. That said a smart move might be to save up your pvp potions and then use them on new reward tracks that are released with HoT. That should give you a head start on some of the cooler skins and loot.

Masteries

Right now xp essentially does nothing after level 80. After HoT releases you’ll need xp to progress each mastery line. Save up anything that boosts xp, in particular guild banners, boosters, guild buffs, and anything else you can get your hands on. Foods and potions also buff xp gain remember.

Karma could also come into play with masteries as well. The Pact mastery will allow you to buy things from certain merchants partially with karma. Veterans likely have lots of karma, but with the recent lack of karma boosters new players and returning players might have more trouble building up karma, so consider saving it up.

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So there you have it. 30 days until HoT. Lots of unknowns but hopefully this post covers what we do know and can prepare for. I’m personally hoping that my last post doesn’t bear fruit, and in fact some of the things I’ve commented on have been addressed. My hopes are still a bit mixed but I am excited to have other things to do in HoT and an absolute ass ton of quality of life fixes.