A returning player seeking for help

Hello there fellow players!

Ok so here is the situation:A long long time ago ascended gear came out and it made me furious since devs promised no stat grind and I quit the game.But here we are again today i have an itch for a mmorpg again so i bought both expansions and dling and looking forward to play again.Since I do not want to be lost starting again can you kind people summariza on all new stuff and where to continue the game. I had all claases lvl 80 and a legendary sword on paladin or whatever class that was.Are there more legendaries now, I heard there are raids now, are guilds necessary? How is the gear stats grind? And can u recommend a site with good builds?

Ty for all the help, I sincerely will appreciate every answer.

Br Krebgoth!

Depending on whether you left when the first ascended items were introduced, when it became possible to get a full set of ascended equipment or sometime between you've been gone between 5 and 8 years. During that time the game has had updates at least every few months, often every 2 weeks and there's been 2 expansions and numerous other releases. I'm not sure it would be possible to summarise all the changes. At this point it's probably easier to treat it like a new game.

The good news for you is that ascended is still the top tier, but still not necessary for anything except a few isolated areas of the game. (It's required for higher levels of the Fractals of the Mists dungeon/s, and recommended for raids, but not actually required.) For everything else you can keep using exotics. So there's no stat grind to worry about, but depending on what you've already got you might want to use a different stat combination on some of your characters. Exotic equipment is still quick and cheap to obtain so once you know what you want it shouldn't take much time to get it.

You will almost certainly want to re-do your builds, because there's been so many changes I doubt any of the skills or traits work the same way, but before that it's probably a good idea to take some time to get to grips with the game. If I was you I'd keep all your characters but make a new one if you have a spare character slot to play through the game from the start and rediscover how combat, skills and everything works before trying to decide what you want to do with your existing characters. If you don't have a spare slot you could pick an existing character to play in low level areas to re-learn the combat system but you won't get the hints from the level up rewards that way.

There are more legendaries, they have identical stats to the previous ones and to ascended weapons, but new skins and effects. You have to own at least one expansion to get the new ones because they require expansion items and aren't tradable, but other than that the process is similar to making the first generation legendaries.

Raids have been added, but are entirely optional. They have some unique rewards but like most things in GW2 it's almost entirely cosmetic. They are one of the best areas to get ascended equipment without crafting, but there's other options too if you want them. There's also mini raids called strikes which are designed to introduce players to raids. They seem popular but I've not done many myself so I can't tell you much about them.

Guilds aren't necessary, but they are a good way to have a group of like-minded people to play with and talk to, and a good source of advice on the game.

Really thorough answer, did not expect so much from a single person! I really appreciate it and ty for the time put into it :) I did start a new character to learn and lvl with the new class that wasnt in the game before.I did bought the 2 dlcs which I guess will be the most new experience for me.How is it with the time sink though? Can I still play this game casually and not feel like I get left behind?

And ty again Danikat!

@Krebgoth.4603 said:Hello there fellow players!

Ok so here is the situation:A long long time ago ascended gear came out and it made me furious since devs promised no stat grind and I quit the game.But here we are again today i have an itch for a mmorpg again so i bought both expansions and dling and looking forward to play again.Since I do not want to be lost starting again can you kind people summariza on all new stuff and where to continue the game. I had all claases lvl 80 and a legendary sword on paladin or whatever class that was.Are there more legendaries now, I heard there are raids now, are guilds necessary? How is the gear stats grind? And can u recommend a site with good builds?

Ty for all the help, I sincerely will appreciate every answer.

Br Krebgoth!

There is no gear grind - ascended gear is only a small increase over exotics. There are many things the developers have dropped the ball on lately, but gear thankfully is not one of them. I detest playing any Asian MMOs as a result of the treadmill system.

The paladin is Guardian.

There are a lot more legendaries now, basically one new legendary for each weapon type.

Again, there is no real grind, if you want ascended stats for content like fractals or for infusions, they can be attained pretty easily through crafting or as free drops from different environments. I'd recommend starting with exotics and when you find a set/style you love then go into ascended.

Metabattle.com is good for general builds for all environments. Snowcrows.com is good for meta, squeeze all the DPS out you can raid builds and gear.