Returning Player - Bit Lost

Hi I've just returned to the game after not having played since near release and I'm a bit lost with all the new stuff.I have a necro, guardian, ranger all at 80 from before, and an Elementalist and Revanant which I have boosted with the level 80 boosts from the expansion.So far I have been mucking around trying to pick a classs to play in the new expansion areas but I have found it pretty tough going.I'm mainly just into PVE play, mostly solo with a little WvW.Hoping someone can help me with a few questions I have or any other good advice for fresh level 80's.

1. Is the new open world content supposed to be this hard or am I just undergeared?
2. Which classes/specs are the easiest for the open world to gather up Masteries e.t.c.
3. Where do I start with gearing up? I know I should aim for ascended gear but where do I start with that?
4. I've never done fractals, do I need to gear up more or is there some other preperation i should be doing before jumping into tier 1's? How long do fractals usually take? I don't have a whole lot of time to play and setting aside large amounts of time ca be difficult for me.
5. Is there any easy ways to make gold? i remember it being very difficult to make gold when I played before.

1. Is the new open world content supposed to be this hard or am I just undergeared? - I'm going to go ahead and say that it might be a combination of both. Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire were both designed with level 80 characters in mind.
2. Which classes/specs are the easiest for the open world to gather up Masteries e.t.c. - I'd say this is subjective. For me, I pretty much did everything with my power reaper and she did ok gaining experience. You might like another class.
3. Where do I start with gearing up? I know I should aim for ascended gear but where do I start with that? - I'll leave that for someone else with better experience than me to answer.
4. I've never done fractals, do I need to gear up more or is there some other preperation i should be doing before jumping into tier 1's? How long do fractals usually take? I don't have a whole lot of time to play and setting aside large amounts of time ca be difficult for me. - I'll leave that for someone else with better experience than me to answer.
5. Is there any easy ways to make gold? i remember it being very difficult to make gold when I played before. - I'd say getting gold is easy, all you have to do is play the game. However there are many ways to get gold faster. The method is different for everyone.

Not a complete answer, but I home some of it helps. We're glad you came back. :)

1 - New areas were designed for groups, and since most players only do the very newest content most group oriented maps are now empty (depends somewhat when you play, on prime time you could find other people too). They have very little to do with your gear but of course better gear helps somewhat. You pretty much have to use new elite class to survive anywhere and going around solo is going to be really tough.

Try to find at least few people in every new map to help each other out. Doing Hero Points or events will be much easier. Shout out in map chat, use LFG or join PvE guild. If there is someone tagged, follow the tag.

When you gain enough xp in new zones you can level up masteries that make the content less hard. More you level these, easier it gets. Mounts and gliding are things that help you move around and avoid some enemy groups. But... even with everything maxed the horrible design of HoT maps will always remain same, you will remain lost forever and you will never be able to move from point A to point B just by looking at the map and running in that direction.

You are suppose to grind lots of time on same map to gather all the map-specific currency and be able to buy some gear. Repeat and repeat same thing every day.

2 - I always found minion master Reaper unkillable in open world so used that class to push through. Guardian is also fine. If you don't mind spending time in the battle, full healer Druid is also able to survive most fights without a problem (very little damage so best with company).

3 - Exotics is fine really.

You can get Ascended weapons by crafting them, but be prepared to grind for that. First you need to max your crafting discipline, which takes time (or gold, that you have to grind for). Then you need tons of materials (gather yourself or buy for gold, grind either way). And some time-gated high level stuff.

You can get Ascended Armor from WvW:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triumphant_Armor_Reward_TrackJust repeat it 6 times and you have full ascended set. You are able to select the stats on these pieces once after opening the box.

You can easily get full set of Ascended trinkets and backpiece from Living Story Season 3 maps. Just need enough Unbound magic and specific tokens from each map, so do the map completion, do LS3 story and do dailies in each map.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_trinket#Trinkets_with_selectable_prefixes

4 - Never done fractals.

5 - No, there is no easy way to make gold beside buying gems with real money and converting these to game gold.There are basically 2 ways to play the game:

• just play it, do what you like and enjoy it. You will gather up little gold from everything - events, gathering, loot. It all adds up in the end
• play only to grind for most gold. You repeat same event or gather specific items over and over and over and over for days and weeks.

In the end, the gold income in the game is player-driven. If there is some easily available resource that brings in more gold then usual, players will abuse it until the market is flooded with it and price drops down. If new patch adds some new recipe or item that suddenly requires tons of resource so far considered useless, the price will go up.

Then again, you do not actually need any gold to play the game or to gear up. You can do everything with enough time instead.

@"FogLeg.9354" said:You can get Ascended Armor from WvW:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triumphant_Armor_Reward_TrackJust repeat it 6 times and you have full ascended set. You are able to select the stats on these pieces once after opening the box.

The reward tracks do not have Ascended armor as the final reward.The Triumphant Armor Reward Track has Exotics as the final reward. Obtaining them unlocks the ability to purchase Ascended Armor (per piece, so if you picked Triumphant Light chest Armor from the box at the end of the reward track, you can then work towards the Ascended light chest Armor) from the Skirmish Vendor for a combination of Grandmaster Marks (500 crafting required), gold and Skirmish Tickets.

@Aerizan.2065 said:Hi I've just returned to the game after not having played since near release and I'm a bit lost with all the new stuff.I have a necro, guardian, ranger all at 80 from before, and an Elementalist and Revanant which I have boosted with the level 80 boosts from the expansion.So far I have been mucking around trying to pick a classs to play in the new expansion areas but I have found it pretty tough going.I'm mainly just into PVE play, mostly solo with a little WvW.Hoping someone can help me with a few questions I have or any other good advice for fresh level 80's.

1. Is the new open world content supposed to be this hard or am I just undergeared?

It depends a bit on the expansion. HoT is designed for groupcontent and challenging fights. PoF is much more gated towards exploration and you have to fight less and the fights are somewhat easier.

@Aerizan.2065 said:

2. Which classes/specs are the easiest for the open world to gather up Masteries e.t.c.

There is no real answer to this as it is personal. All classes are considered good nowadays. But it is the playstyle that is different and it has to fit you. Keep in mind that elite specialisations chance the class mechanics and the playstyle. I personally disliked the vanilla engineer, but I love the holosmith specialisation.

@Aerizan.2065 said:

3. Where do I start with gearing up? I know I should aim for ascended gear but where do I start with that?

To be honest, do not start on this unless you have settled on a class AND investigated what end game content you like. Ascended gear only give a very minor bonus to your stats, but it is very hard to and time consuming to do so. On top of that, it is only really needed for high tier fractals and raids. These formats desire specialised builds and dito ascended gear. So at this point it would be a waste of your time.

@Aerizan.2065 said:

4. I've never done fractals, do I need to gear up more or is there some other preperation i should be doing before jumping into tier 1's? How long do fractals usually take? I don't have a whole lot of time to play and setting aside large amounts of time ca be difficult for me.

For t1 fractals, just bringing exotic gear is good enough. A single fractal costs about 10-15 minutes (depending on the quality of the group). they are relative short

@Aerizan.2065 said:

5. Is there any easy ways to make gold? i remember it being very difficult to make gold when I played before.

No....There are some ways to make a nice amount of gold and they are pretty boring. Well known methods are to farm volitile magic and hand it in for leather shipments. You can do this in the two living world season 4 maps. Another way is to do silverwaste farming.

@Haleydawn.3764 said:

@"FogLeg.9354" said:You can get Ascended Armor from WvW:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triumphant_Armor_Reward_Track

Just repeat it 6 times and you have full ascended set. You are able to select the stats on these pieces once after opening the box.

Yes, my bad, sorry about that. The box gives exotics and unlocks further possible purchase of ascended armor.

First thing first: Better gear will not fix all your problems. It might help (depending on what you're using now) but this isn't one of those games where you can simply upgrade to the point where everything is easy. If you're not currently using level 80 exotic equipment on at least 1 of your level 80's (pick the one you think you're most likely to play) I recommend getting that because it will be good enough for everything except high level Fractals and raids and it's relatively cheap and easy to get. You can buy exotic equipment with karma from the Temples in Orr, from World vs. World vendors with badges of honour, from the dungeon merchant in LA with dungeon tokens, from the Trading Post with gold or craft it or (rarely) get it as drops.

After that you might want to think about ascended gear, but you should be aware it's either a very rare drop in just a few places (raids and fractals are the main ones) or very expensive and time consuming to craft, and also that it's not much better than exotics. Which is not to say you shouldn't get it, just don't feel like you need it before you can do anything else, because that would unnecessarily restrict you and likely make the game very boring and frustrating to play.

Also you should know that what's more important than what gear you're using is having skills, traits and stats that work well together and knowing how to use them as well as universal things like timing dodges well. You may want to look up builds online, or if you prefer to work things out for yourself I recommend spending some time in the low level maps re-learning the game and your characters before you attempt things like the expansion maps which are designed for players who have completed everything else.

Here's the real issue with difficulty. People who start at launch and jump into HOT are jumping from 7th great to 10th grade, have skipped everything between. The Living World Seasons 1 and 2 slowly ramped up the difficulty and if you played it all along, likely you won't find HoT that hard.

In this game technique and knowledge are more important than stats. I could probably run Heart of Thorns in greens. Maybe not every hero point solo, but the rest if it, I doubt I'd have a problem.

Part of it is that there are very few mechanics you need to be mindful of in core Tyria. In Heart of Thorns you have to know your enemy. You have to use terrain.. You have to pull. You have to target the right enemies first. There's knowledge you need to have. It's not that you can't solo it, because there's no profession I can't solo it on, including all the stories and the zones. Again some hero points can't be soloed and some events can't (just like in Orr), but yes it's doable solo. It's not doable if you want to run in and just start beating on stuff. You need to watch and see what's going on. You need to learn your way around the jungle.

I take a lot of people through HoT that are returning to the game and if you're on a US server, I'd be happy to show you how to deal with HoT.

Most of your other questions have been answered elsewhere.