Returning player - HoT

Hi everyone,

Long story short, 5 years ago, I rushed to lvl 80 at release with the idea to have fun in WvW. Unfortunately, my guild and I left after a few weeks (personally, the switch from Gw1 was difficult for me. I never understood why they changed the design of the classes and a PvP/GvG system that I loved).

I've been back for a few days now, and overall I am feeling great about it. I am super poor (I had 10 gold), I do not have any masteries, I do not have a lot of heroes points, etc...I purchased HoT and PoF to support Anet. I feel there are a lot of amazing things in the game that we need to be grateful about like the character lvl that automatically is adapted to the area. It is super fun. All area are fun to discover, you can play with any friends at any levels and have a blast. You can exp to lvl 80 by running hearts with friends in a level 30 area. I have been having so much fun running World boss the last few days, learning about the fights and getting the rewards. I am planning to start Fractals soon.

I tried to start HoT quest line and it was a disaster. It was a very frustrating, annoying and overwhelming experience. Everybody has mount and gliding masteries, and I was the only one, running around, and dying in a very complicated map. I am hoping to find players in the same situation soon so I can run HoT with them.

In the meantime, I started PoF, it sucks that all the stories are mixed up now but HoT was just too much a chose compare to my experience playing regular Gw2. It looks like there are more players in PoF and that the quests/maps are design differently.

If you have any advice about HoT, please let me know. I will really appreciate it.

HoT was designed to be annoying and extremely grindy with complex maps for groups of players. It gets better once you manage you unlock most of the HoT masteries (gliding first, then mushrooms etc) but not many players bother with it at all. It is also now even more difficult since there are very few people around to help you with events and HPs. Just skip it, it was failed experiment and there is no reason for you to suffer through it (get the gliding obviously as it is fun).

I would recommend getting full exotic gear first or better in core tyria (dungeons). Assassin's / Berserker's should be okay, even though it means you'll be squishy and will have to learn to dodge. You can opt for a tankier build, but then you'll be killing slower and it'll all drag for a long time, unless you find a group. Look around in LFG for HP trains or metas. For hero challenges, Auric Basin is much better than other maps, but still, you'll probably be spending a lot of time at each map, regardless of story. Just a bit of heads up, Verdant Brink seems kinda unfriendly, but the really unfriendly map is Tangled Depths. And don't aggro the Mushroom Emperor alone.

Thank you guys for your input! I appreciated it!

When going for a hero challenge always ask in map-chat if someone else also wants to do it. Usually you'll find 3 or 4 other players and the challenge becomes easy.For the normal open-world: Every mob has a pattern or weak-point that can be used. Once you know how to counter most mobs HoT becomes easy. In my opinion easier than PoF. The most important ones:

• Pocket Raptors: Use aoe skills. These beasts are super tiny, so keep your eyes open or you'll find them gnawing at your ankles.
• Smokescales: Draw them out of their smoke-field to deal damage.
• Rolling Devils: Use crowd-control. Their break-bar is super low.
• Bristlebacks: Use projectile reflect or destruction. If you have neither you can also hide behind something and wait out their attack.
• Mushrooms: Always be ready to dodge their headbutt attack.

Thank you! I was able to enjoy HoT more when I updated my gear. My 5 years old gear was so weak compare to regular gear people wear nowadays with optimal rune, jewels, backpack and all those things. HoT maps are actually amazing designed, exactly what jungle maps should look like. I am glad they took risk and made it hard.

Like other people have mentioned, once you get current exotic gear, things will be easier (check out some builds if you are looking for advice). As a long time player, I only just completed the HoT mastery lines because I found navigating the HoT maps too frustrating. The big change that made it much easier was getting the mounts in PoF. With the mounts, moving is so much more fluid that the maps actually feel playable to me. My suggestion would be to get a mount or two in PoF before trying to progress through HoT. However, if you would rather follow the storyline, do the bare minimum in HoT before trying to max masteries. It will make life so much more enjoyable to have access to mounts for all those times that you either die from a bad engage (happens to me all the time) or you fall off a ledge and have to run back.

Also, I found it super frustrating to get HoT xp (even when the maps were crowded). Try to find the metas, as many people still participate in them on certain maps, and they offer decent experience. Living World Season 3 also makes it easier to get experience for HoT, so take advantage of it if you plan to invest more in the game.

Good luck!!

For your masteries make sure to prioritise bouncing shrooms and gliding updrafts, that will really let you start to enjoy the maps properly. If you have access to any LS3 maps that you can nip into without spoiling the sorry, then you could quickly grab a few quick mastery points from those to give you a jump start, as some of those have some easy to access ones. In verdant brink the Salvage Pit challenge is quite easy to do and that will give you quite a big exp boost towards the track.

Other than that check the LFG for fuller maps, HP trains etc as others have mentioned.

@Undershorts.2671 said:Like other people have mentioned, once you get current exotic gear, things will be easier (check out some builds if you are looking for advice). As a long time player, I only just completed the HoT mastery lines because I found navigating the HoT maps too frustrating. The big change that made it much easier was getting the mounts in PoF. With the mounts, moving is so much more fluid that the maps actually feel playable to me. My suggestion would be to get a mount or two in PoF before trying to progress through HoT. However, if you would rather follow the storyline, do the bare minimum in HoT before trying to max masteries. It will make life so much more enjoyable to have access to mounts for all those times that you either die from a bad engage (happens to me all the time) or you fall off a ledge and have to run back.

Also, I found it super frustrating to get HoT xp (even when the maps were crowded). Try to find the metas, as many people still participate in them on certain maps, and they offer decent experience. Living World Season 3 also makes it easier to get experience for HoT, so take advantage of it if you plan to invest more in the game.

Good luck!!

That is exactly what I had to do. I could not follow group that run events without a mount. And I was dying too much. Thanks to my mount and improved gear with sigil and runes, I can start to enjoy HoT maps. It is still much better to run those maps with a group of friends and a HoT expert that can lead :)