still holding out buying PoF after got burned by HOT ..

Enjoyed Core Guild wars 2 and hate hate hate HoT group focused content and endless meta events (silver waste is my least liked zone and HoT is like Silverwaste everyday everyzone)

Is PoF as bad as HoT or is it more solo player friendly ? Dont want to buy another jumping shark ala HoT again

Much more focused on exploration of zones. The metas are fewer and generally not involving the entire map. Personally, I loved it. The experience is very different.

you can enjoy lonesomeness pretty well in pof

@sigur.9453 said:you can enjoy lonesomeness pretty well in pof

How big zones in PoF compared to HoT ?

so it is more solo friendly , thanks guyz for confirming PoF... i wonder how hard to get mounts , is it as painful as HoT masteries ? would be great if mount is account wide and can be used for all my alts..

Mounts (like all other Mastery dependent things) are indeed account wide.Unlocking them is pretty fast (you'll get the first one right away), you do need to level the respective masteries a bit to able to get to the next one and pay a bit of gold, but at least to me that wasn't an issue when I started with PoF. Also the experience needed is generally not quite as high as it is for the HoT masteries.

@"milomilome.6837" said:so it is more solo friendly , thanks guyz for confirming PoF... i wonder how hard to get mounts , is it as painful as HoT masteries ? would be great if mount is account wide and can be used for all my alts..

• The Raptor comes as part of the story, almost immediately as you begin.
• The Springer comes a bit later in the story, and requires that you first gather six PoF mastery points.
• The Skimmer and Jackal come later still, with more mastery points required.
• PoF mastery points are numerous
• The Griffin is a post-story scavenger hunt for which you will need, among other things, 10 items that cost 25 gold each.
• The Roller Beetle is obtained by another scavenger hunt that is linked to (but not part of) the Living World Season 4 Episode 3 story (post PoF)
• All mounts are available account-wide. Level 1 characters can't use them because they are in "Core" instances, but as soon as you finish the instance, you gain level 2 and enter the open world, you can mount up and ride into the sunset.

@"milomilome.6837" said:Enjoyed Core Guild wars 2 and hate hate hate HoT group focused content and endless meta events (silver waste is my least liked zone and HoT is like Silverwaste everyday everyzone)

Is PoF as bad as HoT or is it more solo player friendly ? Dont want to buy another jumping shark ala HoT again

The event structure is more similar to the core game, consisting mainly of one-off events rather than chain events and map-wide metas. The Hero Point challenges spawn only veterans, not champions. Also, the maps are "flat" like the core game, albeit designed for mounts with lots of cliffs and other obstacles to navigate.

Having said that, the mob difficulty is more or less on par with HoT and mob density and aggro range are higher. Combined with the addition of mounts, many players find this extremely annoying as dismounting in PoF often requires you to clear every enemy within a square mile before you can mount again!

PoF is an apology for HoT to players like you and me

@AliamRationem.5172 said:Having said that, the mob difficulty is more or less on par with HoT and mob density and aggro range are higher. Combined with the addition of mounts, many players find this extremely annoying as dismounting in PoF often requires you to clear every enemy within a square mile before you can mount again!This. I'm very early into PoF (just got Skimmer) but the aggro is already so annoying, I'm not enjoying PoF. It's like I'm playing WoW all over again. Every time I dismount, I have to fight half a dozen enemies before I can explore again. Makes gathering a pain. I really wish Anet would reduce enemy aggro. I already fight enemies plenty when I'm doing combat oriented activities. When I'm trying to travel, gather, explore, and relax away from combat, I would like less forced fights.

And I gotta say, I don't like what I'm hearing about HoT from the video posted above. Maze like map design is another thing I absolutely despised about WoW. The reason I spent almost $200 since I started this game 3 weeks ago, is because this game didn't seem have the things I absolutely despised about WoW. The more I play GW2, the more I learn that things I quit WoW over are rearing their ugly heads in GW2... Ugh...

Oh, well. It's still leagues more enjoyable than WoW. And after I get all the PoF mastery points I need, I guess I don't need to play as much in PoF zones for my alts. No game can be perfect.

Btw, OP. Despite me not enjoying PoF so far, I highly recommend... no, beg you to get PoF. Mounts are totally worth it! Get it! GET IT NAO! To put it into perspective, I have a 2nd account with no PoF. I can't bring myself to play my 2nd account any more because I have no mounts on my 2nd account.

I'm another solo player that hated HoT, I only got 2 or 3 levels of gliding in the HoT mastery lines and I've never got to Dragon Stand, I hated the zones there. I bought PoF when it came out and much prefer it, I doubt i'll ever go back to HoT.

I now have all the main mounts, I'm still missing the Griffon and the Beetle, mainly because I have still to finish the storyline, but that's me, I never finished the personal story either. I did have to resort to Dulfy a few times to get the mastery points need to progress on the mounts, I dislike the minigame mastery points so I am more limited on what i can get, I reached a point where it seemed to continue the story I needed another mastery point, but to get that mastery point I needed to finish the story section. Turned out there was an easy mastery point right back near the start I had missed, after that it was plain sailing.

I'm maining a condi ranger at the moment equipped in rares and a few exotics and by being careful I don't have much problem with mobs, just be careful of the Hydra.

Mounts are very useful. Trust me. Even the griffon,I found getting desert masteries and HP a breeze in comparison to the grind I felt HoT was (well until I discovered WvW to unlock the masteries) . The ascended weapons collections are easier I thought.you also get the beauty that is Istan farm for all your gold needs.
Not so keen on kourna , got the beetle mount and ran.Aurene is cute.

hot is a lot less obnoxious with mounts. But i strongly recommend maxing out glider mastery.

@BlueJin.4127 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:Having said that, the mob difficulty is more or less on par with HoT and mob density and aggro range are higher. Combined with the addition of mounts, many players find this extremely annoying as dismounting in PoF often requires you to clear every enemy within a square mile before you can mount again!This. I'm very early into PoF (just got Skimmer) but the aggro is already so annoying, I'm not enjoying PoF. It's like I'm playing WoW all over again. Every time I dismount, I have to fight half a dozen enemies before I can explore again. Makes gathering a pain. I really wish Anet would reduce enemy aggro. I already fight enemies plenty when I'm doing combat oriented activities. When I'm trying to travel, gather, explore, and relax away from combat, I would like less forced fights.

If exploration is your thing, PoF have really interesting maps, is also solo friendly (but don't think bounty enemies will be easy).Only point i miss in that area are the jumping puzzles.

Point aside, the story is good and the mount implementation its not only very well done, but will help you a lot in navegating pre-existing maps.

@milomilome.6837 said:so it is more solo friendly , thanks guyz for confirming PoF... i wonder how hard to get mounts , is it as painful as HoT masteries ? would be great if mount is account wide and can be used for all my alts..

Just don't expect the fights to be easier. POF mobs don't swarm as often, but 1:1 they are a lot more dangerous then the ones in HOT. 2 Words...... F**** Hyrdas

@"phs.6089" said:PoF is an apology for HoT to players like you and me

This.

Desolation was the worst POF zone, but compared to HoT zones it was a day in the park.

Only real difficulty with mounts in POF is griffons, which cost $250 gold. But the griffon is a luxury, not a necessity.

That said, I do like Silverwastes & Dry Top when I feel the urge for nonstop events.

(I mostly play solo, when I group up it is often in random PuGs doing dynamic events.)

HoT was okay to me, PoF has been great. When starting solo in HoT, I quickly got floored by arrowheads while I got feet chewed off by pocket raptors. And I tended to get lost all the time in the vertical mazes. Well, things got a bit better over time when I got my masteries and got a bit used to the jungle gameplay (Follow. The. Commander. Tag) but the fact that I rarely return to the jungle except for some AP says quite a bit. The jungle was the worst area in GW1 and the jungle is the worst area in GW2.

PoF however is a totally different story. The maps are much more straightforward to navigate, the masteries are more accessible and the mounts only improve the solo playability. Overall I found PoF to be a lot more single as well as casual-friendly and I can totally recommend it. The only criticism I had was that you tend to be in combat a lot of the time, making it time consuming to spawn your mount as the game disallows you to do so in combat. Still I would say without hesitation: Go get PoF.

OP probably already knows this, but... HoT got a LOT more fun for me when I discovered the "Group Finder" tool. I would log in and just look at what groups are running a HoT map at any given time. Then I'd join-group and travel to the map and instance. Made it a lot easier to gradually get map completions and event achievements and lots of loot.

Thank you all

i bought PoF 3 days ago at full price $29.99 (cant wait for discount day)

and it truly an enjoyable experience so far , it is revitalizing my love of GW 2 that been destroyed by HoT annoying zones .. now im pumped to play GW2 just like the first time i discovered it..

If youre looking for good solo content you should play single player games

@Amaranthe.3578 said:If youre looking for good solo content you should play single player games

GW1 is their answer ;)

Heart of Thorns does not hold your hand. If you are we weak of spirit those vines will entangle and squeeze the life out of you very quickly. But if you put the effort in to learning it's ways, how the enemies fight, and it's paths (yes, this means learning the world not just looking at your mini-map/map and trying to get from A to B. ), the rewards are there and will be tenfold that which you can achieve in Path of Fire.

Of course like everything it's not for everyone, but it gets a lot of 'bad press' and 90% of it is unjustified. A prime example of this is the video linked above; in my view that is just complete an utter trash. The saying 'You get out what you put in' has arguably never been better realised in an MMO than what's seen in Heart of Thorns expansion.

Now that being said, Path of Fire is a wonderful expansion too, and it's great you're enjoying your time in Tyria again! I chuckled at your 'jumping shark' comment though, as the desert does indeed have jumping sharks, so beware...

Im less than a month returned. I bought the pof ultimate, added hot. boosted up some characters, finished my personal story from years ago, brushed up on lore, started HoT....got wrecked.

Went back to the drawing board and re-learned the game. It's still a lot, and im still lost but not as much. It took me a while to enjoy HoT. Familiarity being the biggest, i enjoyed the story, i've really enjoyed most of the guild wars 2 stories. I just started lw3 , and i gotta say , HoT is my least favorite experience. Moving out of that jungle and into the world was much more enjoyable. It's not that HoT was too hard, it's that it was too much. Mobs, paths, mazes, everything felt like a chore. Maybe some of you experts can drop in and solo 3 bullskull thingies easily but a new player like me, everywhere i turn a supermob there to pummel. I start taking on one, and stuff drops out of the trees, spawns up from the ground, and a meteor or something will hit me to top it off. HoT was exhausting and frustrating. I did feel a sense of accomplishment completing it though.

it sounds like i hate hated it, but i didn't. i just enjoyed it less than where i am at now and compared to other end game maps.

Here's my quick guide to succeeding at Heart of Thorns.

Step 1: Play through the personal story - it helps you unlock areas of the map and gets you to remote locations without the bother of having to fight your way there. You should be able to unlock most of the waypoints this way.

Step 2: Make sure you have basic gliding - should be required for parts of the story

Step 3: Finish the personal story. You may need help to down Mordremoth. I sure did on my Elementalist main.

Step 4: Whenever you have an hour to kill, log in to GW2 and check the group finder first thing. Go to "Open World" and then select Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, or Dragon's Stand. Search through the HoT maps until you find one that has a group up of at least a dozen people or so. Join that group, teleport to the map where the blue dots indicating your new squadmates are. Once in the map, right click on one of the squadmate icons in the upper left corner of your screen - take the "join in [map name] option. You'll be teleported to the instance of the map where your squad is. Link up with them and follow them. Be sure to follow the guy with the commander tag on the map closely.

You'll get tons of map completion done this way without having to worry about being swarmed by pocket-raptors or perma-stunned and melted by snipers and who knows what else.

"HP train" on the group description means they're running Hero Points. The HPs in HoT actually give good rewards, so groups run them in trains all the time. If you join one of these trains of people, you'll down the Hero Points much more easily - they're really tough to solo. All maps except Dragon's Stand will have active HP trains running if you log in at the right time to catch one.

Tangled Depths has a big meta event called the "Chakh Gerrent." It involves going to the central waypoint on the bottom level of Tangled Depths in the lower right corner of the map near Rata Novus. The event relies on three separate squads of players defending three separate lanes that a Chakh boss is advancing down. If any one of the three bosses reaches the center, the event fails. But if you have a dozen or so players in each lane, you can usually prevent that from happening. The lanes have different names - like "Ogre" and "Charr" and so forth. Pick a group defending one of those lanes. Stick around with everyone for the end where they blast open a big treasure chamber. The rewards are pretty good. Having a stack of Chakh Acid handy will let you open all the tasty treasure chests.

Verdant Brink will have groups running the meta events on a daily basis. If you join one, you'll be running all over the map defending and reinforcing Pact camps. Crowbars are handy for opening the Airship Cargo Crates - the treasure chests on this map. Once all the locations have been reinforced enough, helicopters will arrive at various camps to transport you to different locations high above in the "canopy." Your group will usually pick one and go up there to group-fight a powerful boss creature. Rewards are pretty good and you can grind currency to unlock the Bladed Armor set.

Auric Basin's big met event involves everyone trying to destroy vinewalls while fighting and dodging massive enemies in... not sure... I think it's four locations in the central city of Tarir. Just pick a group and do what they seem to be doing, you'll figure it out. Once successful, the basement of Tarir opens up and everyone jumps down a hole to an area filled with Exalted treasure chests. You'll want a lot of keys to open all these and it's a ton of loot.

Dragon's Stand map is divided into three lanes called "North", "Center" and "South." Simple. Join a squad on one of the lanes and follow them down the lane. You'll pick up viewpoints, and points of interest along the way. The central Pact camps you manage to establish are where most of the treasure chest pods are located. You'll need machetes to cut them open. You can grab some as you go, but if you miss them and have to follow the group, don't worry. Once the map event is cleared, you'll have a chance to visit all the central camps you want in peace and open chests. The Hero points on this map are actually mini bosses, and to do them, you'll want to join the "boss" sub-squad as soon as your squad leader announces it in chat. The bosses scale in difficulty for the number of players attempting them - so it's polite to join the boss squad so the leader knows how many are doing it. Follow the rush to the end where you'll get a really cool fight against a massive floating dragon gliding between floating platforms. Usually it's best to stick with a platform rather than chasing around to other platforms where the action will probably be done by the time you get there. Once this is done, grab the final boss chest, visit the vendor who appears, and go back to all those central camp waypoints to snag pod chests. When you come back to Dragon's Stand another day - join a different lane than before and pick up different HP and PoI for map completion.

You'll want full stacks of basic salvaging kits for blue and green loot and a single stack of good salvage kits for the gold loot. Bag clearing becomes a bit of a logistical thing on any of these map meta events.

I was annoyed at HoT at first. Getting through Verdant Brink was torture my first time. But follow these rules and it'll be a piece of cake. I actually like HoT maps a lot now - ever since I discovered that it's just easier to complete if you make regular use of the group finder.