• If you are looking at this game for the first time, you absolutely cannot go wrong. Not only is this absolutely is one of the best MMOs currently on the market, it's FREE to play!
  
• If you are looking at this again after a break, yes, a lot has changed you should come back and try it again! As there is no sub fee, you have literally nothing to lose but a bit of time. The reasons people left are subjective and many, so no one else other than you can tell you if you'd enjoy it again. Just fuckin' try it again! It's a fantastic time to return to GW2, and there will be an enormous amount of content and a very healthy goon population to play with.
  
• No more temporary content! I know this was a big complaint for a while, but Anet learned their lesson. Get the rewards you missed from laurel vendors, and if you missed episodes in Season 2, 3, 4, or 5/IBS, you can unlock episodes with gems. If you log in for each episode during the Living Story updates, you unlock it for free.
  
• I apologize in advance, but this OP is not going to list any specific builds. The maintenance required would be ridiculous, as not only are builds very subjective, they change regularly as the game is updated. Refer to the links section lower in this OP for sites about current builds and meta info!
  
• Guild Wars 2 is an non-traditional MMO for the most part. Fun and looking good tends to come before everything else here. Choose your build, gear, playstyle, everything, based on what you find the most fun or best looking.
  

• Finally get to explore that dang floating Wizard Tower!
  
• No new elite specs because jeez there's too many already, but instead...
  
• Removal of elite spec weapon restrictions - Hammer on Soulbeast? Hammer on Mechanist? Hammer on Tempest? Yes!
  
• More weapons for all classes (not at launch).
  
• Non-Raid PvE Legendary Armor!
  

• New specializations for each class!
  
• No new tier of gear!
  
• No increase in level cap!
  
• Four giant maps to explore in Cantha
  
• Boats!
  
• Fishing!
  
• A big honkin' siege turtle!
  

• New specializations for each class!
  
• No new tier of gear!
  
• No increase in level cap!
  
• Five new enormous zones in the Crystal Desert
  
• Mounts!
  

• New Profession: Revenant
  
• No new tier of gear
  
• No increase in level cap
  
• New progression system – Masteries (aka trait points v2.0)
  
• New profession specializations
  
• Guild Halls
  
• Heart of Maguuma – New area, consists of 3 distinct biomes – core, root, and canopy
  
• New WvW Borderlands map - Desert Borderlands
  
• New sPvP mode, Stronghold
  
• Raids
  

• Living Story: Anet's official term for changes to the game intended to bring the world of Guild Wars 2 to life. Each major game update includes NPCs, events, and sometimes new instances that tell the story of Tyria's ongoing evolution.
  
  Living World, aka Living Story, is how Anet is adding new content to the game. There is more on this later in the OP, so read on!
  
  
• Personal Story: You character follows a story which leads you throughout the world, replacing the campaign and mission system from the original Guild Wars. The storyline is personalized based on the character's race, profession and biography questions answered during character creation and branches based on decisions made by the player during game play.
  
  Much of the personal story takes place in solo instances for the character, but other players can be invited to take part in their story. The story instances scale in difficulty with the number of players participating.
  
  Each character also has a home instance which updates as the player advances through the personal story and the world. The player can invite other players to see their home instance.
  
  
• Renown Hearts: Renown Hearts are fixed areas within an explorable zone that give a set of tasks for a player to assist with and provide a reward upon completion. Rather than being given as a checklist of tasks a player needs to do in sequence, players simply follow a list of possible actions or activities that contribute to the progress of an area's renown heart. Renown hearts act as a way of guiding players towards dynamic events.
  
  
• Events: Dynamic events ensure something is always happening in the world. These events replace the traditional MMO quest system, and any player coming across the event can contribute and be rewarded. Events can influence or overlap with each other, chaining from one event to another. A large portion of PvE experience consists of players participating in events together, ranging in from helping farmer grow his crops to epic battles against champions of the Elder Dragons.
  
  Events are the bread and butter of GW2 content, and you should do them as much as you can everywhere you can!
  
  
• Dungeons: Dungeons have two modes: a story mode which tells the story of Destiny's Edge. Each of the 8 dungeons has one story mode version and three explorable mode versions (with Arah being the exception with 4). You have to run the story mode, which is lower level than the explorable mode, to unlock the explorable paths! Only one person in your dungeon group has to do this.
  
  
• Fractals: Fractals of the Mists is a special type of dungeon that consists of an array of mini-dungeons called fractals, where each fractal has its own story and environment. Characters are adjusted to level 80 within the dungeon. The dungeon is one of the primary sources of ascended equipment and provides materials for crafting infused equipment.
  
  
• Raids: Introduced with Heart of Thorns, raids are 10-player party-based PvE instances intended to challenge players more than any other PvE group mode. This image succinctly describes raids:
  
  
  
• Strikes: These are 10-player PvE instances that are designed to be not as intense as raids but still requires group effort to accomplish. Bite-sized raids.
  
  
• Crafting: A player can gather materials to craft items for themselves and their friends. A player character can possess two crafting disciplines at a time, but gathering of different resource types is not restricted. Crafting recipes can be discovered by purchasing them from trainer, by leveling up or as loot, but mostly by experimenting with different combinations of materials at a crafting station.
  
  Crafting is often used as an expensive way to powerlevel alts, with the experienced granted from it. Several crafting skills can also be advanced to level 500 now, and craft Ascended-tier items.
  

• Scarlet's War/Season 1: Fall in love with everyone's favorite villian all over again. This was released as live content, but is now being packaged as chapters and will be made available to everyone for free.
  
  
• Glint's Prophecy/Season 2: Explore the Maguuma Wastes to figure out what the heck the previous season was about, and respond to a new enemy threatening all of Tyria. Eight chapters.
  
  
• Glint's Legacy/Season 3: Following the aftermath of Heart of Thorns, the magic in the world is going a little crazy and you need to get things under control. Explore some magically unstable environments and make a new friend. Six chapters, six maps, and the most popular jumping puzzle.
  
  
• Rise of Kralkatorrik/Season 4: There's some unfinished business left after Path of Fire, and you're going to travel across the rest of the Crystal Desert to finish the fight. Six chapters, six maps, two really good mounts!
  
  
• Icebrood Saga/Season 5: Go North to where the Charr and Norn rule. Get drunk, eat meat, and try to not to start a war. Six + one chapters, three big maps.
  

• Skirmishes are 2-hour chunks that split up each 1 week match. Within each skirmish, you can get "pips" that count towards a reward chest that give you all sorts of fancy items.
  
• Reward Tracks have been added as a way of rewarding participation in WvW. There are tracks for a huge variety of zones that, once completed through participating in various WvW events, will give you rewards for PvE progression and unique skins from the zone in question. It's a great way of getting PvE items from playing WvW.
  
• WvW Ranks have been introduced along with WvW XP to give you bonuses to everything from flame rams to amount of supply you can carry. There are thousands of ranks to work through and this is completely separate from regular XP.
  
• Warclaw. The only mount available to use in WvW, a giant battle cat! Unlockable by putting a WvW Rank point into the Warclaw mastery, and then by completing a collection and reward track. Sniff out hidden foes to mark them on your minimap, throw spears to forcibly dismount your opponents, and jump on every enemy ever.
  
• Edge of the Mists. This is an "overflow" map that never has a queue and just spins up more instances of. It does not count towards your world's point total, but can give you other bonuses for winning like supply drops in the main four maps. EotM has 3 unique varied environments (desert, jungle, ice/snow), many objectives to capture, and is extremely fun being a smattering of rocks floating in the air. It contains many "special" objectives, from reactors (which have supply dumps) to airports and siege workshops. There are some fun transforms (like lights balls to scout with, and scorpions that siege things with butt missiles), as well as other unique and interesting mechanics.
  
  

Actuarial Fables fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jul 13, 2023

• https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki - General
  
• https://snowcrows.com/ - Raid/organized content
  

• https://blishhud.com/ - An overlay with a bunch of various informative features
  

• 6 armor, 1 backpack, 2 accessories, 6 rings - avoids having to commit to a particular weapon type, but requires a lot of fractal relics or lucky drops to fully upgrade your rings.
  
• 6 armor, 2 weapon, 1 backpack, 2 accessories, 4 rings - if you don't have the materials to Infuse your rings, this allows you to bypass that.
  

Actuarial Fables fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jul 17, 2023

chglcu fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Aug 24, 2022

LordAdakos fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Aug 24, 2022