POF & mounts after core GW2 or HOT necessary?

I started GW2 in the beta, then lost time to play to RL things. I will be manually getting my first character to 80 soon with my story, map completion, & hero points. I am an older player with some vision problems & have heard that HOT is a little brutal if one is not cutting edge. I am having a lot of fun exploring & doing the story, but I am definitely not a great player. (I own both HOT & POF & 2 level 80 boosts. I prefer getting to 80 without the boost though to see the world & try to learn how to play my characters.)

If I go right from the original GW2 to POF will I be able to work towards the mounts right away? The mounts are amazing & I cannot wait to have some!!! Or will I be so far behind in points or hero points etc that I really should have played through HOT first?

I am playing & keeping a Ranger, Guardian, & Warrior as those are the easiest for my vision-affected playstyle. I hear people talk fondly of Mesmers & their ports/portals. I have 2 character slots open & just wanted input on how hard they are to play. I find that I need some level of rotation forgiveness & good survival skills. Also, I mostly play solo as I do not want to hold back a group. The only group content I have been doing is downing some of the world bosses if I happen to be in the area. I really do like the game & am totally enjoying it!

Thanks for any input :)

The first mount you get is the raptor, and you get it for all your toons on account as soon as you complete the first chapter of the PoF storyline. I'd suggest doing this first when you reach 80 unless it's very important to you to do the story in order.However, the rest of the mounts, and their mastery skills, require you to play quite a lot of PoF content, so I'd just stick with basic raptor if you want to experience HoT first.If it doesn't matter to you at all, I'd skip HoT for now, or do it only long enough for glider mastery, and go for those mounts. You can move back and forth pretty comfortably between HoT and PoF, so the order isn't crucial imo. But you DO want to get that glider ability and the raptor as minimums.You won't get very far in HoT without gliding, and mounts make it much easier, so if you do find it very challenging, try PoF for a while and then come back to it. Personally I still haven't finished the HoT storyline, but I have done PoF. For me it's no big deal.

Thank you so much! How much of HOT needs to be played to get the gliders unlocked? I have not played for several years, but I faithfully continued to buy glider skins & expansions so I would have them when I came back!

From what I hear, HOT may not be fun for me. I will unlock the glider ability, but I think I will just go on to POF after that. Thanks again :)

@"Crunchbone.7341" said:Thank you so much! How much of HOT needs to be played to get the gliders unlocked? I have not played for several years, but I faithfully continued to buy glider skins & expansions so I would have them when I came back!

From what I hear, HOT may not be fun for me. I will unlock the glider ability, but I think I will just go on to POF after that. Thanks again :)

It's same, first chapter of HoT will get you glider, upgrading it with mastery points will require time in HoT.HoT is bit tough but it has meta events that anyone can join and do, to get some exp.First thing you might wanna do is join HP train in Verdant Brink and go with them trough all HoT maps.

Thank you. Hopefully the HP Train may be made up of other newbies so we can all live & die & learn together.

The two expansions are completely independent of each other. Neither requires the other but having them can make some things easier.

The HoT HP trains generally don't require anything more than basic gliding.

Just to add, I find playing HoT and PoF is best with at least one friend, especially HoT. Going alone can be brutal, but with just a few mates, it's quite doable. PoF is not quite as difficult, but there are a few places that can be tough on a solo adventurer.

I would also add that the second mount, the Springer, is a definite target you'll want before HoT. And then you need to unlock its extra high jump. That will come in real handy in many, many HoT maps - which are absurdly vertical as opposed to a typical horizontal map.

As a fellow old guy, I recommend getting the raptor and springer mounts before tackling too much of HoT. I found the maps a PITA for navigating, and being able to leap canyons or bound up cliffs is very helpful. You'll need to get each mount up to level 3 mastery (I believe) for longer jumps for the raptor and higher jumps for the springer. In PoF, that is not too difficult. The story hands out mastery points, and there are others scattered about, so you'll get plenty. Are you EU or NA?

Glider is a serious grind in HoT maps. I don't object to this because the glider is a HUGE quality of life improvement in the whole game. I remember when we could only glide in HoT maps too. I can't imagine playing my character without gliding or mounts, and I started the game when it had neither. I ran those maps by foot doing map clear and story and grumbled all along wondering why there were no mounts in GW2 when all the other games I play have mounts.

The next thing is, character movement. There are games where the characters can move incredibly fast, cling to walls, leap into the air, bullet jump, and just get around. Not this game.

I am in NA. And I thank you all for the comments. My plan is to go right into POF & get the sweet mounts, THEN get the basic glider from HOT & see how bad it is. If I cannot take it, I will just not upgrade the glider.

Are the glider & mount abilities account-wide once unlocked? Say I unlock all the POF mounts & upgrades, will my low-level characters have access to the mounts AND the upgrades, or do I have to get all of it over again with each character? How about the basic glider? Account-wide? (I am hoping so...).

Thanks again for being so kind to anwer :)

@Crunchbone.7341 said:I am in NA. And I thank you all for the comments. My plan is to go right into POF & get the sweet mounts, THEN get the basic glider from HOT & see how bad it is. If I cannot take it, I will just not upgrade the glider.

Are the glider & mount abilities account-wide once unlocked? Say I unlock all the POF mounts & upgrades, will my low-level characters have access to the mounts AND the upgrades, or do I have to get all of it over again with each character? How about the basic glider? Account-wide? (I am hoping so...).

Thanks again for being so kind to anwer :)

All masteries are account wide.

Something to be aware of is that mounts are gated behind each other. You need to get raptor to lv3 before you get anything else. Once that is at lv3 you can get a springer or a skimmer and then once either of those are at 3 you can get the jackal.

You can stop at lv3 to unlock each mount's main abilities but lv4 springer is useful for the falling damage reduction and lv4 jackal is useful for the evade.

You get the glider pretty early in the HoT story. You could theoretically unlock basic gliding and then quit HoT and work on PoF for mounts and stuff.

But keep in mind basic gliding isn't as good as fully upgraded gliding. You have a stamina bar that slowly drains, and when it runs out, your glider turns off and you fall. If you grind out glider mastery - and it is a fair amount of grind - you can get unlimited gliding that never runs out.

Same with mounts. You get the mounts quickly, but to make them good, you have to dump extra mastery points into them to make them jump higher or further.

About the glider, you can play around your starting waypoint in Verdant Brink until you fill your exp bar (it only requires 1 mastery point). When I started to play in HoT for the first time, I still had a rare gear lv72, and I was quite unexperienced with my thief, so I died a lot (not that now I'm good, but I can kill the pocket raptors at least. I also feel that HoT has been nerfed in general, but perhaps I'm wrong.). So if you have problems, you can just do some event in group with other players. There are chained events that start from each waypoint during the daylight.

The raptor in PoF doesn't require particular skills, you should be fine. I think a mesmer could port you to the waypoint where you can buy the springer even if you don't have the raptor 3 yet (the long jump). But gaining exp in PoF is quite easy in the end. Just 1 tip: not all the mastery points that you see on the first map can be gained with a raptor. So if you don't know how to reach some spots, ask a mesmer or go ahead to the next map doing the story.

My first character was on foot from 1-80, but after I finished my personal story, I jumped into PoF to unlock the raptor and springer before starting HoT. Are they 'necessary' for HoT? Obviously not, since the expansion was designed to be played without mounts. But I find the springer's vertical jump to very useful in HoT, especially until you unlock certain masteries, and the raptor allows you to jump through wandering groups of enemies, who unlike in core maps, have a higher concentration of veteran type mobs.