No doubt, you can experience it as a grind-fest for masteries, that happens if you aren't interested in playing the game, but just want to have the masteries.On the other side, you can play all the event-series and meta-events the HoT maps offers you, and you will never have a problem with the XP, it just comes faster, than your able to acquire mastery points. It's all in your mind! If you experience whole GW2 as grind you likely have no interest in playing GW2. But why do you grind it, if you don't want to play it?