How do I unlock the elite specialisation?

[Bowdon.1948]

It's been a while since I've played gw2 and when I left years ago the elite specialisation part was new so I don't remember that much about it.

Can I unlock the specialisation before level 80?

Does the specialisations require me to also unlock all the regular skills?

Thanks for any help. I've looked around websites but none are very clear on the requirements.

[Danikat.8537]

You cannot unlock it before 80 and it does require you to unlock all the regular skills.

As you level up you'll get Hero Points which can be spent in the Training menu to unlock skills or traits. Just levelling from 1-80 will get you enough points to unlock all the core traits and skills. Then you can get additional points from Hero Challenges in PvE maps - 1 point per challenge in core Tyria maps and 10 per challenge in HoT and PoF maps. These can be spent to unlock your elite specs.

All Hero Points are the same though so if you're doing challenges while levelling up you can use the points from those to unlock core skills/traits and then you'll have some extra points at level 80 to put into your elite spec.

Fully unlocking an elite spec costs 250 points, but there's a total of 904 available from challenges, so there's more than enough to unlock both elite specs on a character and still have some left over. If you want to do it quickly I recommend focusing on PoF hero challenges, as they give 10 points each and they're generally easier than HoT ones. If you check the Looking For Group tool there's often groups going around doing them.