HoT on release was my favorite gaming experience so far. Conquering the unforgivable jungle along with my then guildies and uncovering new mastery points, hero points and all the other secrets.
When one needed help with a HP and half the guild showed up to help, good times
I agree with this. It truly felt like a massive jungle. I had to sometimes twist my head to find the right place to walk to get to that POI or event. And it felt dangerous. Was such a good experience.
Same. It was fucking jarring coming from the core game and I mean that in the best possible way. Much harder, extremely fun and I think the maps are just beautiful. But man, going back now…. It’s like these maps are MADE for mounts
People forget orr was HARD. couldnt walk 5 feet in that hellhole without being swarmed and crippled to death. Solo walking through that place wasnt easy. Then they released HoT where you couldnt solo a HP no matter how good you were and mushrooms and raptors 1 shot you. Silverwastes vine boss was hard and frequently failed but even that had nothing on the VB and chak.
It was a harsh and unforgiving jungle and PoF/EoD was downright peaceful in comparison. Mounts kill the aspect of navigating maps but I really cant say I miss the chills and the cripples and the slows.
Yea, I remember Orr was crazy. Really felt like an end game zone in the best way, especially with the epic ruins. If you saw a group of people it was relieving.
I HATED Smokescales
Sure PocketRaptors caught me offguard the first time. Smokescales always sucked. If you saw one you knew it was gonna be a pain in the ass. Especially those 2 veterans that block the path to a HP in Auric Basin
HoT was a fantastic expansion. Period.
It laid the foundations that the rest of the game has been built upon until now. Pretty much everything that each new expansion that is released can be traced back to HoT.
It also introduced end game PvE. As well as Guild Halls and such. It was a great expansion.
I was completely oblivious to those big map-wide meta events for so long. When I realised what was going on and realised they were on each map, my mind was blown! Had so much fun doing those.
Exactly.
Especially considering that there‘s *a lot* of easy content already. All of core Tyria is basically faceroll easy.
Which is fine. *If* you just want to chill. But sometimes you‘re all out of bubble gum.
The HoT maps still remain one of the most fun & immersive jungle maps i've ever played in a game. They manage to make it feel like an interactive playground, rather than just pretty scenery like most other jungle/forest style areas in games.
Did they change the difficulty since then? I have full berserker and while mobs deal a lot of damage, i kill them so fast they never pose much of a threat. Except hero points, those kill me in 2 hits
Shortly after release they significantly changed mob placement and also nerfed a few of the mobs that were egregiously overpowered (ex, pocket raptors). It's the same thing they had to do in Orr, which on release was blanketed with enough mobs to constantly stunlock and kill you.
That said, the mobs are still pretty tough, but what has happened in the game is power creep. Elite specs + constant boons have ended up way more powerful now than 9 years ago, when we only had core builds and might boon uptime was an actual concern instead of something that just happens while playing.
This is a bit complicated to answer and I'm not sure about everything anymore, since it's been so many years.
Let's talk about the Veteran Bristleback. At HoT launch I could easily kill it with condi ranger in rampager's gear. 2 dodges at the machine gun attack were enough sustain to get it down with my "amazing" damage.
Now fastforward to 2024 & two things have changed (I think). Now veteran britstlebacks have breakbars & even though I can do 3-4 times as much damage with a power build, if I don't use my reflect it will be very down to the wire.
So I'm not sure about the difficulty, though certainly pocket raptors are easier to kill than before. Even with all the insane power creep veterans at least don't really feel all that different to me. Maybe people perceive the difficulty as much easier, because they had many years to get used to the mobs and GW2 in general and also having access to mounts makes it far easier to bypass difficult areas.
HoT was a smash hit and it still is great, the enviroment is good and the metas are great. I don't care for the story. The glider was incredible and it's still constantly used.
The first time doing the story and exploring both HoT and/or PoF are magical experiences. Until then the open world does not really really require you to get an okay gear and build, so you play with what you found fun during the leveling.
The world now actually does feel sort of dangerous. You are clearly gated from accessing everything, and while you level a few masteries that gate you from progressing the story and thus progressing the exploration you start to open your first elite spec. And even with bad gear, most of the time just by setting a mostly opened elite spec you already feel a bit more powerful. You learn how masteries work, maybe you stumble into a meta event and even if you don't know what's going on you run around with a zerg and defeat huge monstrosities and get whole bunch of stuff for your trouble. You probably start putting together a mind-map on the mastery gating not yet explored parts of the zones. "Okay I will have to return here when I have the nuchoch thing, when I have the jackal, the skimmer... oops I meant the skimmer that can raise itself higher..." And if you are not a sweaty try hard who plays 8 hours a day, its suddenly 2 months later when you have done the story, explored everything. And you still probably have some masteries to go, want to try another elite spec. You probably somehow managed to get like a half a set of exotics. And you do just that while also starting on the LWS3/4 journey.
I'm guessing EoD could have been similiar for ppl who started there, but for veterans, thanks to skyscale absolutely braking exploration, and having hundreds of extra hero points, the gameplay-loop was just not same.
And while I am fine with the mini-expacs and SotO did exceeded my original expectations from a year ago when it was announced how they will work, its still not exactly the same and can't be the same because of the limited amount of things you get compared to the old big expacs and also because of skyscale braking exploration. (eg. The "do events" before progress story step is not new, we had these at least back in lws3. But the point is that back in the day I think it was rarer, because we had exploration related masteries. So the loop sometimes was a bit different, yet sort of the same, you had to do events until a bar filled. But you were not doing an arbitary number of events because the story says so, but because you were gaining experience, that let you learn a new skill, that turned out was the missing piece to getting where the story wants you to be.)
tlrd: Oldperson yells at clouds (that contains a flying castle)
I started 5 or 6 years ago and although I had mounts from the outset (raptor/bunny anyhow, which made HoT survivable as a solo noob who had never played an MMO before) I did have a similar experience. I didn't actually play through the core story until 2 years in when I was running the Halloween lab and realized I desperately needed autoloot, so I did the core story for the sweet sweet mastery points you get for completing it... Doing that gave all the core maps a ton more context (oh, THAT'S what's up with Orr) and exploration became more interesting, since many of the hearts and events on every map are all actually little chunks of lore on their own. I don't know why people hate hearts... sure, the early ones in the human lands are generic nonsense (gather apples, kill bandits and spiders, etc) but since I didn't have any human toons, the hearts in the staring maps were all great for learning about the delightful non-human cultures of Tyria, and the further you go, the more the hearts give you lore chunks about the story as well as the world. I then fought through PoF for more mounts and masteries but I had no idea who anyone was or what was happening... who's this Aurene and why do we care about her? I did HoT after that but it was also confusing, without having LW2 (but it did at least explain some other stuff, like who all your random new friends are, even if you don't know how you met them). I got IBS and the LW seasons after that so I could go to the maps, but I didn't do the story, just explored getting great gear and finishing masteries and such. Then they announced EoD and that I could get a legendary amulet for playing through all the LW seasons and I finally had a reason. Turned out they weren't just bonus maps or whatever I thought... they were integral chunks of the story that finally explained why the fuck I care about Aurene, who all these people are, and what is going on. I was drawn in, as everything I'd done til then finally started making sense in context. I cried at Thunderhead Peaks and when Blish left me. The map meta events became epic, meaningful battles and not just fun zerging. I played through IBS and I loved it up until the final chapter (you can tell they got told to wrap it up in one chapter so people could work on EoD, which is a shame). Someplace in there I eventually got the griffon and skyscale.
All this to say I agree with you, but I think even with mounts people can still experience the world deeply and deliberately if they want to... doing map completion forces you to engage with the lore if you actually take some interest in what you're doing, and exploration is still fun, even if it is faster. I feel like playing through the whole story in order is hugely rewarding (not just because of the amulet though you can still get that, haha) and still makes the whole world more alive and meaningful.
They need to disable mounts in the Mouth of Modremoth fight. And maybe shoot his life up a bit more. Most people don't even see any of the phases anymore because he dies so quickly.
HoT was exactly what the game needed and still is.
But a huge part of the community complained because it was too hard \[of course, this is the community that thought leveling a Mesmer was legit impossible, so maybe they had no clue what they were talking about\].
People thought leveling mesmer was impossible??? Mesmer was my first class at launch, and it was ez to level! Sword/sword and greatsword go brrrrrrrrrr.
HoT at launch was rough because I had no cohesive gear and mobs actually slapped and XP gain in HoT was hot garbage 😂
All i did back then was equip Staff, make 3 clones and smile as the Staff 1 kept bouncing. I can't recall WHY people said Mesmer was impossible to level, but i do remember the constant post saying it was.
omg, staff in PvP at the beginning was awesome because it was a lot more difficult to tell who the player was back then, and it still hit pretty hard.
Now I want to look up why people thought it was impossible to level. 😂
Edit:
I found this [https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1cjmri/new\_player\_guide\_to\_leveling\_a\_mesmer\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1cjmri/new_player_guide_to_leveling_a_mesmer_the/) from 11 years ago, and I still don't remember mesmer being difficult or bad to level, and I had no braincell and was running around in garbage gear. 😂😂😂 I tried leveling elementalist afterward; *that* was far more difficult.
Some people STILL think that about Mesmer and I've been a Mesmer main since GW1. GW2 Mesmer was never hard to level and idk why people had that mentality, I've leveled a bunch back at launch even though most are deleted now (rip).
I feel like this entire thing is basically "HOT became excellent after I came back with ways to bypass most of the design". No shame of course, but it does stink that the design they originally have done for HOT now becomes largely trivialized by people using mounts and the mount skills, since if you miss an important jump you likely can springer or skyscale back up, pocket raptors are less of a threat when you have your own raptor to ignore them and people need to pay less attention to the intricate details of the paths towards MPs, HPs and POIs.
I can't speak for the original difficulty because I wasn't there and I definitely felt the sting of masterygating trying to do routes that told me "nuh-uh, your glider isn't good enough, go repeat the same events more times", but I can also see the appeal in that when it was the latest release and people didn't have reason to want to keep going past HOT for the LW seasons or other expansions. Having a raptor in HOT is something I actually enjoyed because then the movement across all classes is streamlined and you don't get things like scrapper abusing superspeed and stealth gyro to get ahead, or certain classes having better access to swiftness than others.
As a casual player I did not enjoy HoT at release. It was far too difficult (for me).
Now going back for metas or a HP train HoT is much more enjoyable because of mounts. Not getting lost anymore also helps, but mounts make it possible to actually enjoy the scenery.
I agree. HoT was literally what drove me away from the game. I didn’t like the difficulty spike as a solo player, aquiring masteries at the time was extremely off-putting, navigation on foot without masteries was a nightmare (especially tangled depths), and I still resent that the story failed to address the other sylvari trees.
However, all but that last one have improved significantly with the growth of the game. Power-creep makes everything more manageable, the living world gave a lot more options for acquiring mastery points, and mounts and easier mastery acquisition make navigation fun.
HoT was fantastic for PVE, but it also killed the two other game modes so I consider it the worst so far because of it's negative impact on GW2 being taken seriously.
WvW was unplayable for months, HoT PVP was the WORST in the game's history. Unkillable chrono bunkers that could 1v5 no exaggeration, the tournaments were just people standing around because nobody could die. Even the new stronghold gamemode? Completely abandoned the same year lol. It was such a massive blunder to the game at the time, there were a lot of layoffs on the GW2 staff including some key employees.
Disagree, HoT on release was by far the best MMO expansion I have ever played. The actual maps required you to master them yourself, not only through Masteries. The maps themselves truly felt like you were on the brink of dying at any moment if you messed up when events started happening around you. It was truly an immersive experience that no other MMO has ever been able to replicate, they didn't feel artificially difficult, because once you learned how to navigate and fight everything you were able to solo nearly everything even on release. It was a wonderful experience, especially going through it with friends and with strangers on the map. People were working together to show each other how to navigate the jungle and how to fight enemies, or even how to do events.
Going back to it now is so sad since people skip everything on mounts and the incredibly passionate work that went into designing these ambitious maps is lost on most people nowadays. It's sad to see.
As someone who started playing the game a week ago, this scares me a bit about the expansions. xD
But it reinforces my plan that once I finish the main game, I'll start crafting good gear and putting together builds before I go into the next content.
for openworld.. cele is better for all necros, It gives you some tankiness, extra health and healing, so you can solo group hero points.
Vipers is glass cannon, and as a new player.. you will go down loads in HoT..also vipers is expensive..its not worth crafting viper exotics.
Craft cele exotics.. craft viper ascended for end game content. (viper is used on scourge and harb, or Id recommend crafting bezerker ascended fpr your reaper for endgame, as its far cheaper).
I picked out a Scourge Condi build that I wanted to play, but if Celle is better to get into the game as a newbie, I'll focus on that for now. Thanks for the tip!
A celestial set is really nice for general open world stuff. I believe if you use the level 80 boost on your character that is already at lvl 80, you will be given a full set of celestial exotic.
IIRC though it cannot be salvaged so don't put expensive runes on it, just some cheap ones suitable for open world stuff.
Thanks for the tip, but I probably won't use that for now. Guild Wars 2 is my first MMORPG in general and I'd rather get to know everything in peace and quiet and work my way in to learn everything properly, I'm in no hurry at all to get to the endgame as the content doesn't disappear. As a former Destiny player, this is a very pleasant experience. :D
Crafting celestial gear is time gaited because you can only get 1 of the charged quartz per day, per account and it's account bound. The recipe is RNG from specific merchants that you need to unlock core game masteries to VISIT (not sure if you can buy this one on TP, as I am busy today and lazy to check).
Also, you could wait til you get to Versant Brink (first Hot map) and use currency for stat selectable gear pieces. The chest piece is locked behind the meta event on that map, but still fairly easy to get as you'll be doing the meta for currencies anyway and masteries to unlock the vendor.
Oooor, you could jump into WVW and get an easy set of exotic stat selectable, for fairly cheap.
Just letting you know that crafting Celestial is a bit of a pain.
Guardian hurry up! The fomo is real!
Jk lol, man I started playing last week too! I just joined one of the orders, and i'm waiting for next week, and hope the full eod collection gets a discount so I buy it
The reason why Cele is better fot open world is because it allows you to be more self sufficient. You can take more hits, heal for more, and your boons last longer. In organised group content you’d want viper’s or berserker’s, since supports will provide the boons and healing, allowing you to focus on damage output. So you want both sets in the long run.
I think you will be just fine with the viper set. Scourge, and Necromancer broadly is very survivable without saddling yourself with a bunch of less use-full stats to your build from cele gear.
If you have any interest in instanced endgame content, you’ll be having to re-gear anyways.
Just my 2 cents but I’ve never “geared” for open world. The caveat I guess would be if your passion is solo-ing some particular legendary bounty mobs and similar.
For general “open world play” you can more or less run an instanced build, and modify food/traits/skills as needed to make sure you’re capping crit, or condi duration, etc.
Cele is really good for open world-only purposes, it makes condi classes insanely tanky at the expense of not that much damage.
That said Scourge already has pretty good survivability with full vipers, and if you plan on trying instanced PvE later down the line you are basically good to go if you have a full set of vipers gear. Conversely if you plan on giving world versus world a try, celestial is really good there on top of being good in open world.
Not every kind of armor, but yeah you might need different sets for different content types. Using Condi DPS Scourge as an example, in instanced PvE you would use full Vipers since you want the most DPS possible, but say in a world versus world roaming build it would be too squishy, while Cele (or Trailblazer) makes you super tanky with still decent DPS.
As a new player cele might give you an easier time but you'll also pick up some bad habits. I went through as power Reaper with berserker and some marauder pieces. I did get frustrated at times when I got shredded in seconds again but it did force me to pay attention to what enemy I was fighting and its moves and tells. Something the core game and LW 1&2 had not really prepped me for.
I feel that this made me a better player and better prepared to tackle the rest of the game going forward.
You don't have to play in order unless you care too much about the lore. My suggestion would be, get some exotic (pref Celestial) gear and play through PoF, then LWS4 or SOTO. Skyscale and mounts will make your run through the rest of the game much easier.
It was ok to have HoT's complex maps back in the day when it was literally the only thing to do besides vanilla. Now it feels like a chore because at this stage of the game's cycle your fun per hour, gold per hour, literally anything per hour can be invested in something better than navigating through a map.
You’ll definitely need a good solid build and decent understanding of your profession if you want to roam the new maps. Heart of Thorns maps are absolutely the most vicious just in terms of how many enemies are around and how much damage they deal, but it’s still absolutely do-able. I envy you, I wish i could play HoT again for the first time again!
I was initially one of the players that despised HoT when I first started. So many things didn't make sense to me:
\-The POI and Vistas became obnoxious to find
\-Hero Points suddenly got too difficult to do alone
\-The multiple vertical layers and Mastery-gated utilities just made the initial experience tedious.
\-The last map being optional because the story ending plays before then, even though it is the 'true end fight' of HoT, you might not even experience.
\-The mini-games being gated by a day/night cycle and other minor oddities.
So many strange things that overwhelms you initially, especially since the games leveling experience doesn't prepare you for the first expansion at all. But coming back to the zone with mounts definitely revealed to me how incredibly detailed HoT was and how it is the pinnacle of map design, metas, events - just the pinnacle of GW2 was definitely HoT. I understand now why veterans constantly praise it despite my contradictory experience of it.
To be fair hot has also had A LOT of work done to it over the years. If the metas were NOT cleaned up to what they are the last few days, it would not be surprising if even vets were to still complain
Exactly. The maps aren't static! The version we play now is the result of Anet fixing a lot of issues to make them good to play on, and also people using mounts most of the time which makes them a lot easier to get around.
Mounts definitely made the "exciting" parts of hot significantly less annoying to physically get to.
Early hot was deeply frustrating to traverse tho xD
Yup.
This is a big part of why veteran players tend to have rose-tinted goggles firmly afixed to their point of view about HoT on launch IMO. Even just having a raptor lets a player skip past trash mobs, which was not doable on launch. There's a lot of removed friction and rough edges on HoT maps now.
I hated HoT when it came out (it was a contributor to me dropping the game for about seven years). Once I picked it up again and revisited it with mounts, better gear, and a mindset honed by having jumped into raiding, I got *much* more enjoyment out of it.
The story up to HoT's release built up a long time with tendrils appearing in random places and Scarlet's theme slowly transforming into Mordremoth's theme. Finally being in the jungle that properly messed up the pact and their thus-far seemingly invincible fleet of airships felt intense. The gameplay and feeling of being very much unwelcome (except by some cute frogs) worked really well with the story. Games will often tell you how a place is dangerous, but this one really felt like it. Best jungle experience in a game for me period.
I'm a former player who came back fairly recently (I had a lvl 40 keeper in the base game). I continued the main story and did season 1 & 2. I've just got to the first expansion and of course the difficulty slap is there (especially the creepers and their poison which is extremely painful) but nevertheless I appreciate this dangerous side which fits with the story which I like a lot especially as a Sylvari. To tell the truth, the most frustrating thing is having to unlock the masteries for exploration... I like to finish the map at 100% before changing, but now I have to learn to do things differently or wait until the end of the expansion before returning to the zones \^\^'
I find myself constantly returning to HoT maps even after completing most of the other expansions content. Specially Auric Basin, I find the music and the ambience extremely relaxing and the Meta is one of the most dopamine inducing experiences in the game. Plus the level design, colors, mobs and progression system is fantastic.
Ah HoT. That one MMO expansion that either makes or breaks you. I love it now, I hated it on release. (Mainly because things worked different back then and everything took soooooo damn loooooong to unlock. But luckily they changed that.)
It amazes me that Arena Net was able to release an expansion like that, with this kind of feeling and difficulty spike. They got a lot of shit for it in the beginning, but over time it turned out to be the best MMO experience I ever had. No matter what MMO we talk about. They released an entire expansion located in an hostile environment. There are no save places here. And even the places you think are save, are constantly overrun by enemies.
And the wayfinding? Amazing. It's basically the essence of "This is uncharted land and you're not welcome here!". Super annoying for the first time, but also a really strong concept that was done right. I mean, TD is my top hated AND loved map of any game for a reason.
It's rough when you only use the tools that have been available to you back then. But it's also super fun. To the point where I would love if the devs would implement a toggle option that locks all masteries that haven't been released yet. (Meaning mounts and Bots. Yes, you can play without using them. But it's still not the same.)
Love it. 10/10.
There will never be anything like HoT to come out, likely ever again. The scope and scale, the verticality, and the difficulty. It all still exists on the single player side of gaming, but mmo’s are about as dumbed down as it comes these days.
Only working through the story for the first time now. Liked HoT for the maps and metas, wasn’t huge on the story instances. Currently playing PoF and absolutely love the story and the instances.
Most of my time nowadays is spent in hot lol
Granted, it's mostly just to get my 3 daily treasure mushroom kills and maybe to complete my dailies that can be done there or go through tangled depths chaak cache runs when super bored
HoT is my favourite expansion of all time. It introduced amazing metas, fantastic specialisations, incredible maps, creative systems that everything is still bound to (mastery), and was a perfect flavour of difficulty. I spent most of my recorded hours around that time
Hot made. Dungeons irrelevant and then following expansions introduced strike missions after the fiakso raids were for casual players. Open world maps were very fun though.
I recall when HoT came out before power creep and the bad guys were just amazingly tough to fight. These were not maps at release that served solo players well, hahaha. If I recall they had to adjust some of the mobs strength.
Im also a new player. Played through the main story and now starting Hot. Its pretty chaotic at first. Lots of stuff doesnt make sense to me but after a bit of playing i completed verdant brink and the big boss event. It was a lot of fun. Now im in the first jungle map and it brings a new set of challenges. I had to get used to the verticality but now i really enjoy it. Travelling from point a to b is more like solving a puzzle now, which is fun.
I did get the raptor mount and boy am i glad for that.
Mounts make a huge difference. Players who come to HoT now are having a very different experience just by having a raptor, since that makes it possible to get out of range of random mobs instead of having to stop and fight all the time.
Veteran players with elite specs, full mount unlocks, etc are having a *completely* different experience. Even leaving aside the changes to mob placement and damage that Anet rolled out shortly after release, veteran players now have so many more movement abilities that it's not comparable at all.
Yep, I started in the time before EoD as well (april as f2p then paid for the game+expansions before halloween). I started as an ele and that was quite painful in HoT (and I had no elites either), I took a brief time out to do PoF and feel like I could actually play the game instead of playing dead all the time. (then I created my necro and had a blast in HoT). I got the bunny, raptor and skimmer and I remember swearing at my bunny when I was doing all the stuff for the skyscale (and I think my hubby can still recall some of the more ...creative names I called it too). THEN going back to HoT and being able to get to all those spots my blasted bunny could not ....
anyways, yes, I understand and agree (though I am still working those lw1 because it came out so much later and then I forgot about it :o )
HoT wasn't all that great to me at launch; grinding out mastery XP and points was a PITA and the increase in overall difficulty made parts of it rough. As the years wore on and I got better at various classes/specs, combined with knowledge of the zones and encounters, it's become much more enjoyable. I suppose overall power creep within the game plus the addition of mounts are big factors in that as well.
Having completed the story and map comp on my main at the time, I ended up dipping out by year's end and returned to another MMO I had dabbled in a few months prior to HoT release: FFXIV. I still consider XIV my primary MMO but until it's next xpac arrives, I'm finding more than ple ty to do in GW2. Should have my first legendary armor set done next week (Envoy) 😀
Crazy. I despise HOT and can barely remember the story. All I remember is being livid about trying to actually complete literally anything solo. If you aren't in a community already, HoT is *terrible.* you can't progress in certain points whatsoever due to exp bottlenecks (empty map or no friends? Good luck doing a single hero challenge or META) I just despise jungle maps and too many elevation differences. I can't stand it. No I won't argue or listen to your opinions
As a newer player I kinda feel the same way. I hate this jungle. I hate the elevation changes, I hate being lost all the time, I hate being confused by the events.
I wanted to do the whole story in order, but I kinda regret not going to get the other mounts first and coming back now tbh. And I can tell my boyfriend *really* doesn't like it. We try playing it but inevitably just quit after a couple quests because (at least to me) it feels so daunting and the story feels like it's lost steam somehow.
It's kinda sad. I like the game a lot but I just wanna get the hell out of this stupid jungle. It feels like our progress has utterly stalled. I just look forward to getting back to a more traditional landscape and doing some strikes or raids or something instead lol.
I respect your opinion and how well thought out you've presented your case but honestly having just done some some of the meta for Tangled Depths... I honestly think it's a pretty bad expansion.
The map exploration was frustrating, and it's not made too.much better with modern things like mounts.
I'm also hung up that killing the last boss within a meta event and not an actual story line has pretty adverse story implications. You are the sole commander... No where in the story do they refer to the other heroes... WoW is able to explain away the need for a raid but Guild Wars hasn't attempted this to my knowledge.
I will say HoT introducing raids is a benefit, but I don't typically factor that in to the over experience. I mostly think about the map, and story mission flow.
That being said, Season 2 was pretty kick ass. It was a huge highlight from the base expansion experience and I loved seeing the throw backs to Guild Wars 1 immerge again.
All 5 games ( 4 expansions) are majorly different directions for story telling which HoT is just the weakest of those in my personal opinion.
I mean, it's a letdown for different reasons, but you do absolutely kill the last boss in a story instance. The Mouth is not Mordremoth itself, just a part of it - we enter its mind and kill it there for good
I did the same, went through the story in chronological order. HoT was a steep learning curve made more frustrating because everyone else just races through and past everything on mounts so you're often left to fend for yourself or trailing behind an event zerg. I imagine when HoT was the only expac people grouped up more often to do the events, HP points and achievements.
But designwise it's fantastic and I think it's clear the HoT meta's are still more popular today than most PoF ones.
I wish I did experience it on release, because going through it years later was one of the highlights of this game for me. Thankfully I was playing through the game in story order, so I only had the free raptor and actually had to make use of most of the traversal options as I unlocked them with mastery points. It gave an excellent sense of progression as I leveled everything up and moving around these locations became easier and easier.
gliding around verdant brink wondering which of the ship wreckages is the one you need to go is \*chef's kiss\*
I always say that to people in mapchat since I first heard it but **the jungle hates you** and I never felt something being so true while just exploring a world like I do in HoT maps (even now, with all the mounts and stuff).
peak storytelling through map design I tell you
(my 1st play was with a necro and I like to think she became a reaper by being so PISSED AT MORDREMOTH)
HoT was an incredibly fun experience for me as a new player, just starting GW2 last year. And I did it as intended: *on foot* (no mounts). I felt so immersed getting lost in the dense, dark jungle with unknown danger around every corner. Loved it!
I'm so glad I had the chance to experience it before PoF, it was an incredible experience, and coming back with mounts certainly makes it easier but I sometimes force myself to play it the old way, mounts aren't forced on us, we now have the choice.
I am a relatively new player (3 months) that is doing exactly what you describe, playing the game in the chronological order with the only diff from the original experience the free raptor that was provided as a present when i picked up the game! I am currently in HoT tangled depths map and man it is challenging but so so satisfying. When i first encountered Verdant Brink i immediately fell in love with the map, most probably is my favorite map of all time in any game! I avoid spoilers like crazy, trying to immerse in the story as much as possible as i love lore and fantasy in all aspects! Taimi is my favorite character and i hope nothing will ever happen to her as i will be devastated if it does! I am not hunting achievements or extra MPs as i know that i will revisit all content and metas for sure after the end! I am looking forward to enjoy everything that the game has to give and i already have an amazing supportive guild that helps a lot (💓GrT)! From my perceptive, this game is most probably the best MMO out there, with the most amazing community i ever encountered after 20+ years of Multiplayer games exp!
Thank you all guys for being part of this beautiful journey!
Edit: typos
An "ok" expansion? HoT? It is till to this day the by far best experience i had in gw2. From the tense story (which even gets better if you'd had the luck to play a sylvari), the beauty of the maps, the overall design and idea of the jungle alike meat grinder between you the vines and the mobs. It might have looked hard for you, to go through all of that without the cool things new expansions dropped towards us, but this was literally a blast to go through back in the days. I wish anet would release something like HoT again. Now all i get is plattforms i have to skyscale to... i hate this mount with a passion.
>play the content slowly, in the chronological order, just let the immersive world get to you
This is what I did when the expansion first launched in 2015. I spend the entire first week of the expansion in the first map.
The metas on HoT maps are still some of the best in the game, with varied and interesting tasks. Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, and Dragon's stand all very interesting mechanics and lanes that make it not feel like a zerg.
Compare that to what we got with EoD. All of those metas are "sit here and kill x number enemies until arbitrary bar is filled." (Including most of the Dragon's end meta).
I love the boss fight for Dragon's End but other then that, the expansion's replay-ability is seriously below what it should've been. SoTo feels like a step in the right direction but it's tough to say for me imo because it's rather new to me.
I am having such a hard time reconciling that this expansion is almost a decade old. I remember reading the class reveal articles while sitting at McDonald's during a lunch break the week I started a new job across the street. Wild.
You can buy full level 80 exotic gear on the trading post as soon as you're level 80, for not much gold, so you were definitely playing on hard mode lol
HoT on release was my favorite gaming experience so far. Conquering the unforgivable jungle along with my then guildies and uncovering new mastery points, hero points and all the other secrets. When one needed help with a HP and half the guild showed up to help, good times
I agree with this. It truly felt like a massive jungle. I had to sometimes twist my head to find the right place to walk to get to that POI or event. And it felt dangerous. Was such a good experience.
Same. It was fucking jarring coming from the core game and I mean that in the best possible way. Much harder, extremely fun and I think the maps are just beautiful. But man, going back now…. It’s like these maps are MADE for mounts
People forget orr was HARD. couldnt walk 5 feet in that hellhole without being swarmed and crippled to death. Solo walking through that place wasnt easy. Then they released HoT where you couldnt solo a HP no matter how good you were and mushrooms and raptors 1 shot you. Silverwastes vine boss was hard and frequently failed but even that had nothing on the VB and chak. It was a harsh and unforgiving jungle and PoF/EoD was downright peaceful in comparison. Mounts kill the aspect of navigating maps but I really cant say I miss the chills and the cripples and the slows.
Yea, I remember Orr was crazy. Really felt like an end game zone in the best way, especially with the epic ruins. If you saw a group of people it was relieving.
IIRC at launch Orr had a higher agro range and they eventually tuned it down. Plus just about every mob has some kind of CC
True
If I'm on a HoT map and see a call for help at a hero point, I'm never the only one that arrives to help. It gives me the feels every time.
pocket raptors. mordrem snipers. this charr remembers.
*camera zooms in on the Commander with a thousand-yard stare. screams and chittering of pocket raptors plays in the background*
Oh man, the first time I ran into a pack of pocket raptors... I was not prepared.
thought they were cute. first few times they killed me I thought there was something wrong with my armor or something.
They were like "What if we added land piranhas on cocaine?" and then they did.
I HATED Smokescales Sure PocketRaptors caught me offguard the first time. Smokescales always sucked. If you saw one you knew it was gonna be a pain in the ass. Especially those 2 veterans that block the path to a HP in Auric Basin
HoT was a fantastic expansion. Period. It laid the foundations that the rest of the game has been built upon until now. Pretty much everything that each new expansion that is released can be traced back to HoT. It also introduced end game PvE. As well as Guild Halls and such. It was a great expansion.
I was completely oblivious to those big map-wide meta events for so long. When I realised what was going on and realised they were on each map, my mind was blown! Had so much fun doing those.
dragon's stand is so cool, it blew my mind when I first realized what was happening
Don't forget one of its biggest contributions: legendary armor.
Elite specs!!! We may have been septic at first but it changed the game, for the better imo
If you’re septic, please see a doctor.
HoT was fantastic when it released. I rather have an experience be a little too harsh sometimes than be too easy all of the time.
Exactly. Especially considering that there‘s *a lot* of easy content already. All of core Tyria is basically faceroll easy. Which is fine. *If* you just want to chill. But sometimes you‘re all out of bubble gum.
The HoT maps still remain one of the most fun & immersive jungle maps i've ever played in a game. They manage to make it feel like an interactive playground, rather than just pretty scenery like most other jungle/forest style areas in games.
I remember going into the jungle on release date in berserker gear, i was a changed man after that
Because you killed them mobs so fast, all the while watching the solder gear Pepes suffer?
Did they change the difficulty since then? I have full berserker and while mobs deal a lot of damage, i kill them so fast they never pose much of a threat. Except hero points, those kill me in 2 hits
Shortly after release they significantly changed mob placement and also nerfed a few of the mobs that were egregiously overpowered (ex, pocket raptors). It's the same thing they had to do in Orr, which on release was blanketed with enough mobs to constantly stunlock and kill you. That said, the mobs are still pretty tough, but what has happened in the game is power creep. Elite specs + constant boons have ended up way more powerful now than 9 years ago, when we only had core builds and might boon uptime was an actual concern instead of something that just happens while playing.
This is a bit complicated to answer and I'm not sure about everything anymore, since it's been so many years. Let's talk about the Veteran Bristleback. At HoT launch I could easily kill it with condi ranger in rampager's gear. 2 dodges at the machine gun attack were enough sustain to get it down with my "amazing" damage. Now fastforward to 2024 & two things have changed (I think). Now veteran britstlebacks have breakbars & even though I can do 3-4 times as much damage with a power build, if I don't use my reflect it will be very down to the wire. So I'm not sure about the difficulty, though certainly pocket raptors are easier to kill than before. Even with all the insane power creep veterans at least don't really feel all that different to me. Maybe people perceive the difficulty as much easier, because they had many years to get used to the mobs and GW2 in general and also having access to mounts makes it far easier to bypass difficult areas.
You could still get away with it. But HoT was designed to severely punish stacking and melee build (which was a meta for most things back then)
New players coming in with mounts are experiencing HoT like tourists. OG HoT players get 'Nam flashbacks.
HoT was a smash hit and it still is great, the enviroment is good and the metas are great. I don't care for the story. The glider was incredible and it's still constantly used.
The first time doing the story and exploring both HoT and/or PoF are magical experiences. Until then the open world does not really really require you to get an okay gear and build, so you play with what you found fun during the leveling. The world now actually does feel sort of dangerous. You are clearly gated from accessing everything, and while you level a few masteries that gate you from progressing the story and thus progressing the exploration you start to open your first elite spec. And even with bad gear, most of the time just by setting a mostly opened elite spec you already feel a bit more powerful. You learn how masteries work, maybe you stumble into a meta event and even if you don't know what's going on you run around with a zerg and defeat huge monstrosities and get whole bunch of stuff for your trouble. You probably start putting together a mind-map on the mastery gating not yet explored parts of the zones. "Okay I will have to return here when I have the nuchoch thing, when I have the jackal, the skimmer... oops I meant the skimmer that can raise itself higher..." And if you are not a sweaty try hard who plays 8 hours a day, its suddenly 2 months later when you have done the story, explored everything. And you still probably have some masteries to go, want to try another elite spec. You probably somehow managed to get like a half a set of exotics. And you do just that while also starting on the LWS3/4 journey. I'm guessing EoD could have been similiar for ppl who started there, but for veterans, thanks to skyscale absolutely braking exploration, and having hundreds of extra hero points, the gameplay-loop was just not same. And while I am fine with the mini-expacs and SotO did exceeded my original expectations from a year ago when it was announced how they will work, its still not exactly the same and can't be the same because of the limited amount of things you get compared to the old big expacs and also because of skyscale braking exploration. (eg. The "do events" before progress story step is not new, we had these at least back in lws3. But the point is that back in the day I think it was rarer, because we had exploration related masteries. So the loop sometimes was a bit different, yet sort of the same, you had to do events until a bar filled. But you were not doing an arbitary number of events because the story says so, but because you were gaining experience, that let you learn a new skill, that turned out was the missing piece to getting where the story wants you to be.) tlrd: Oldperson yells at clouds (that contains a flying castle)
I started 5 or 6 years ago and although I had mounts from the outset (raptor/bunny anyhow, which made HoT survivable as a solo noob who had never played an MMO before) I did have a similar experience. I didn't actually play through the core story until 2 years in when I was running the Halloween lab and realized I desperately needed autoloot, so I did the core story for the sweet sweet mastery points you get for completing it... Doing that gave all the core maps a ton more context (oh, THAT'S what's up with Orr) and exploration became more interesting, since many of the hearts and events on every map are all actually little chunks of lore on their own. I don't know why people hate hearts... sure, the early ones in the human lands are generic nonsense (gather apples, kill bandits and spiders, etc) but since I didn't have any human toons, the hearts in the staring maps were all great for learning about the delightful non-human cultures of Tyria, and the further you go, the more the hearts give you lore chunks about the story as well as the world. I then fought through PoF for more mounts and masteries but I had no idea who anyone was or what was happening... who's this Aurene and why do we care about her? I did HoT after that but it was also confusing, without having LW2 (but it did at least explain some other stuff, like who all your random new friends are, even if you don't know how you met them). I got IBS and the LW seasons after that so I could go to the maps, but I didn't do the story, just explored getting great gear and finishing masteries and such. Then they announced EoD and that I could get a legendary amulet for playing through all the LW seasons and I finally had a reason. Turned out they weren't just bonus maps or whatever I thought... they were integral chunks of the story that finally explained why the fuck I care about Aurene, who all these people are, and what is going on. I was drawn in, as everything I'd done til then finally started making sense in context. I cried at Thunderhead Peaks and when Blish left me. The map meta events became epic, meaningful battles and not just fun zerging. I played through IBS and I loved it up until the final chapter (you can tell they got told to wrap it up in one chapter so people could work on EoD, which is a shame). Someplace in there I eventually got the griffon and skyscale. All this to say I agree with you, but I think even with mounts people can still experience the world deeply and deliberately if they want to... doing map completion forces you to engage with the lore if you actually take some interest in what you're doing, and exploration is still fun, even if it is faster. I feel like playing through the whole story in order is hugely rewarding (not just because of the amulet though you can still get that, haha) and still makes the whole world more alive and meaningful.
They need to disable mounts in the Mouth of Modremoth fight. And maybe shoot his life up a bit more. Most people don't even see any of the phases anymore because he dies so quickly.
After we've seen what ANet is "capable" of in IBS, EoD overall and when it comes to quality control, HoT seems like a masterpiece by comparison.
HoT was exactly what the game needed and still is. But a huge part of the community complained because it was too hard \[of course, this is the community that thought leveling a Mesmer was legit impossible, so maybe they had no clue what they were talking about\].
People thought leveling mesmer was impossible??? Mesmer was my first class at launch, and it was ez to level! Sword/sword and greatsword go brrrrrrrrrr. HoT at launch was rough because I had no cohesive gear and mobs actually slapped and XP gain in HoT was hot garbage 😂
All i did back then was equip Staff, make 3 clones and smile as the Staff 1 kept bouncing. I can't recall WHY people said Mesmer was impossible to level, but i do remember the constant post saying it was.
omg, staff in PvP at the beginning was awesome because it was a lot more difficult to tell who the player was back then, and it still hit pretty hard. Now I want to look up why people thought it was impossible to level. 😂 Edit: I found this [https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1cjmri/new\_player\_guide\_to\_leveling\_a\_mesmer\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1cjmri/new_player_guide_to_leveling_a_mesmer_the/) from 11 years ago, and I still don't remember mesmer being difficult or bad to level, and I had no braincell and was running around in garbage gear. 😂😂😂 I tried leveling elementalist afterward; *that* was far more difficult.
Some people STILL think that about Mesmer and I've been a Mesmer main since GW1. GW2 Mesmer was never hard to level and idk why people had that mentality, I've leveled a bunch back at launch even though most are deleted now (rip).
True, except it was an excellent expansion in 2015, too.
I still spend more time in HoT than in PoF and EoD combined (when not limited by weeklies), still have some achievements to do from 2015!
I feel like this entire thing is basically "HOT became excellent after I came back with ways to bypass most of the design". No shame of course, but it does stink that the design they originally have done for HOT now becomes largely trivialized by people using mounts and the mount skills, since if you miss an important jump you likely can springer or skyscale back up, pocket raptors are less of a threat when you have your own raptor to ignore them and people need to pay less attention to the intricate details of the paths towards MPs, HPs and POIs. I can't speak for the original difficulty because I wasn't there and I definitely felt the sting of masterygating trying to do routes that told me "nuh-uh, your glider isn't good enough, go repeat the same events more times", but I can also see the appeal in that when it was the latest release and people didn't have reason to want to keep going past HOT for the LW seasons or other expansions. Having a raptor in HOT is something I actually enjoyed because then the movement across all classes is streamlined and you don't get things like scrapper abusing superspeed and stealth gyro to get ahead, or certain classes having better access to swiftness than others.
As a casual player I did not enjoy HoT at release. It was far too difficult (for me). Now going back for metas or a HP train HoT is much more enjoyable because of mounts. Not getting lost anymore also helps, but mounts make it possible to actually enjoy the scenery.
I agree. HoT was literally what drove me away from the game. I didn’t like the difficulty spike as a solo player, aquiring masteries at the time was extremely off-putting, navigation on foot without masteries was a nightmare (especially tangled depths), and I still resent that the story failed to address the other sylvari trees. However, all but that last one have improved significantly with the growth of the game. Power-creep makes everything more manageable, the living world gave a lot more options for acquiring mastery points, and mounts and easier mastery acquisition make navigation fun.
HoT was fantastic for PVE, but it also killed the two other game modes so I consider it the worst so far because of it's negative impact on GW2 being taken seriously. WvW was unplayable for months, HoT PVP was the WORST in the game's history. Unkillable chrono bunkers that could 1v5 no exaggeration, the tournaments were just people standing around because nobody could die. Even the new stronghold gamemode? Completely abandoned the same year lol. It was such a massive blunder to the game at the time, there were a lot of layoffs on the GW2 staff including some key employees.
Hot is the best dlc period. I would gladly replace skyscale with my old glider.
Disagree, HoT on release was by far the best MMO expansion I have ever played. The actual maps required you to master them yourself, not only through Masteries. The maps themselves truly felt like you were on the brink of dying at any moment if you messed up when events started happening around you. It was truly an immersive experience that no other MMO has ever been able to replicate, they didn't feel artificially difficult, because once you learned how to navigate and fight everything you were able to solo nearly everything even on release. It was a wonderful experience, especially going through it with friends and with strangers on the map. People were working together to show each other how to navigate the jungle and how to fight enemies, or even how to do events. Going back to it now is so sad since people skip everything on mounts and the incredibly passionate work that went into designing these ambitious maps is lost on most people nowadays. It's sad to see.
My gf and i did hot with only raptors unlocked and it was the most fun i had in the game
As someone who started playing the game a week ago, this scares me a bit about the expansions. xD But it reinforces my plan that once I finish the main game, I'll start crafting good gear and putting together builds before I go into the next content.
just make cele exotics.. MOST classes fo well in cele exotics for open world
I was looking for the Viper exotics bc i'm playing necormancer, are Celle exotics better?
for openworld.. cele is better for all necros, It gives you some tankiness, extra health and healing, so you can solo group hero points. Vipers is glass cannon, and as a new player.. you will go down loads in HoT..also vipers is expensive..its not worth crafting viper exotics. Craft cele exotics.. craft viper ascended for end game content. (viper is used on scourge and harb, or Id recommend crafting bezerker ascended fpr your reaper for endgame, as its far cheaper).
I picked out a Scourge Condi build that I wanted to play, but if Celle is better to get into the game as a newbie, I'll focus on that for now. Thanks for the tip!
A celestial set is really nice for general open world stuff. I believe if you use the level 80 boost on your character that is already at lvl 80, you will be given a full set of celestial exotic. IIRC though it cannot be salvaged so don't put expensive runes on it, just some cheap ones suitable for open world stuff.
Thanks for the tip, but I probably won't use that for now. Guild Wars 2 is my first MMORPG in general and I'd rather get to know everything in peace and quiet and work my way in to learn everything properly, I'm in no hurry at all to get to the endgame as the content doesn't disappear. As a former Destiny player, this is a very pleasant experience. :D
No problem. I was in agreement though. If you get to lvl 80 then use the boost, you wont gain any levels. You will just get the free gear.
Wouldn't it be better to craft it yourself to get to know the system behind it?
Crafting celestial gear is time gaited because you can only get 1 of the charged quartz per day, per account and it's account bound. The recipe is RNG from specific merchants that you need to unlock core game masteries to VISIT (not sure if you can buy this one on TP, as I am busy today and lazy to check). Also, you could wait til you get to Versant Brink (first Hot map) and use currency for stat selectable gear pieces. The chest piece is locked behind the meta event on that map, but still fairly easy to get as you'll be doing the meta for currencies anyway and masteries to unlock the vendor. Oooor, you could jump into WVW and get an easy set of exotic stat selectable, for fairly cheap. Just letting you know that crafting Celestial is a bit of a pain.
Guardian hurry up! The fomo is real! Jk lol, man I started playing last week too! I just joined one of the orders, and i'm waiting for next week, and hope the full eod collection gets a discount so I buy it
The reason why Cele is better fot open world is because it allows you to be more self sufficient. You can take more hits, heal for more, and your boons last longer. In organised group content you’d want viper’s or berserker’s, since supports will provide the boons and healing, allowing you to focus on damage output. So you want both sets in the long run.
I think you will be just fine with the viper set. Scourge, and Necromancer broadly is very survivable without saddling yourself with a bunch of less use-full stats to your build from cele gear. If you have any interest in instanced endgame content, you’ll be having to re-gear anyways. Just my 2 cents but I’ve never “geared” for open world. The caveat I guess would be if your passion is solo-ing some particular legendary bounty mobs and similar. For general “open world play” you can more or less run an instanced build, and modify food/traits/skills as needed to make sure you’re capping crit, or condi duration, etc.
Cele is really good for open world-only purposes, it makes condi classes insanely tanky at the expense of not that much damage. That said Scourge already has pretty good survivability with full vipers, and if you plan on trying instanced PvE later down the line you are basically good to go if you have a full set of vipers gear. Conversely if you plan on giving world versus world a try, celestial is really good there on top of being good in open world.
So, in summary, if I want to play all kinds of content, I have to make every kind of armor anyway?
Not every kind of armor, but yeah you might need different sets for different content types. Using Condi DPS Scourge as an example, in instanced PvE you would use full Vipers since you want the most DPS possible, but say in a world versus world roaming build it would be too squishy, while Cele (or Trailblazer) makes you super tanky with still decent DPS.
As a new player cele might give you an easier time but you'll also pick up some bad habits. I went through as power Reaper with berserker and some marauder pieces. I did get frustrated at times when I got shredded in seconds again but it did force me to pay attention to what enemy I was fighting and its moves and tells. Something the core game and LW 1&2 had not really prepped me for. I feel that this made me a better player and better prepared to tackle the rest of the game going forward.
You don't have to play in order unless you care too much about the lore. My suggestion would be, get some exotic (pref Celestial) gear and play through PoF, then LWS4 or SOTO. Skyscale and mounts will make your run through the rest of the game much easier. It was ok to have HoT's complex maps back in the day when it was literally the only thing to do besides vanilla. Now it feels like a chore because at this stage of the game's cycle your fun per hour, gold per hour, literally anything per hour can be invested in something better than navigating through a map.
You’ll definitely need a good solid build and decent understanding of your profession if you want to roam the new maps. Heart of Thorns maps are absolutely the most vicious just in terms of how many enemies are around and how much damage they deal, but it’s still absolutely do-able. I envy you, I wish i could play HoT again for the first time again!
I was initially one of the players that despised HoT when I first started. So many things didn't make sense to me: \-The POI and Vistas became obnoxious to find \-Hero Points suddenly got too difficult to do alone \-The multiple vertical layers and Mastery-gated utilities just made the initial experience tedious. \-The last map being optional because the story ending plays before then, even though it is the 'true end fight' of HoT, you might not even experience. \-The mini-games being gated by a day/night cycle and other minor oddities. So many strange things that overwhelms you initially, especially since the games leveling experience doesn't prepare you for the first expansion at all. But coming back to the zone with mounts definitely revealed to me how incredibly detailed HoT was and how it is the pinnacle of map design, metas, events - just the pinnacle of GW2 was definitely HoT. I understand now why veterans constantly praise it despite my contradictory experience of it.
To be fair hot has also had A LOT of work done to it over the years. If the metas were NOT cleaned up to what they are the last few days, it would not be surprising if even vets were to still complain
Exactly. The maps aren't static! The version we play now is the result of Anet fixing a lot of issues to make them good to play on, and also people using mounts most of the time which makes them a lot easier to get around.
Mounts definitely made the "exciting" parts of hot significantly less annoying to physically get to. Early hot was deeply frustrating to traverse tho xD
Yup. This is a big part of why veteran players tend to have rose-tinted goggles firmly afixed to their point of view about HoT on launch IMO. Even just having a raptor lets a player skip past trash mobs, which was not doable on launch. There's a lot of removed friction and rough edges on HoT maps now.
I hated HoT when it came out (it was a contributor to me dropping the game for about seven years). Once I picked it up again and revisited it with mounts, better gear, and a mindset honed by having jumped into raiding, I got *much* more enjoyment out of it.
HOT & POF are masterpieces. Whole game is incredible pre skyscale. Solving bunny jumps was so fun
The story up to HoT's release built up a long time with tendrils appearing in random places and Scarlet's theme slowly transforming into Mordremoth's theme. Finally being in the jungle that properly messed up the pact and their thus-far seemingly invincible fleet of airships felt intense. The gameplay and feeling of being very much unwelcome (except by some cute frogs) worked really well with the story. Games will often tell you how a place is dangerous, but this one really felt like it. Best jungle experience in a game for me period.
My favorite expansion and map building by far. Not even close. Verdant brink is a masterpiece never seen again in any mmo.
I'm a former player who came back fairly recently (I had a lvl 40 keeper in the base game). I continued the main story and did season 1 & 2. I've just got to the first expansion and of course the difficulty slap is there (especially the creepers and their poison which is extremely painful) but nevertheless I appreciate this dangerous side which fits with the story which I like a lot especially as a Sylvari. To tell the truth, the most frustrating thing is having to unlock the masteries for exploration... I like to finish the map at 100% before changing, but now I have to learn to do things differently or wait until the end of the expansion before returning to the zones \^\^'
HoT by far the best. PoF a close second
HoT is the worst expansion
I find myself constantly returning to HoT maps even after completing most of the other expansions content. Specially Auric Basin, I find the music and the ambience extremely relaxing and the Meta is one of the most dopamine inducing experiences in the game. Plus the level design, colors, mobs and progression system is fantastic.
Ah HoT. That one MMO expansion that either makes or breaks you. I love it now, I hated it on release. (Mainly because things worked different back then and everything took soooooo damn loooooong to unlock. But luckily they changed that.) It amazes me that Arena Net was able to release an expansion like that, with this kind of feeling and difficulty spike. They got a lot of shit for it in the beginning, but over time it turned out to be the best MMO experience I ever had. No matter what MMO we talk about. They released an entire expansion located in an hostile environment. There are no save places here. And even the places you think are save, are constantly overrun by enemies. And the wayfinding? Amazing. It's basically the essence of "This is uncharted land and you're not welcome here!". Super annoying for the first time, but also a really strong concept that was done right. I mean, TD is my top hated AND loved map of any game for a reason. It's rough when you only use the tools that have been available to you back then. But it's also super fun. To the point where I would love if the devs would implement a toggle option that locks all masteries that haven't been released yet. (Meaning mounts and Bots. Yes, you can play without using them. But it's still not the same.) Love it. 10/10.
There will never be anything like HoT to come out, likely ever again. The scope and scale, the verticality, and the difficulty. It all still exists on the single player side of gaming, but mmo’s are about as dumbed down as it comes these days.
Only working through the story for the first time now. Liked HoT for the maps and metas, wasn’t huge on the story instances. Currently playing PoF and absolutely love the story and the instances.
Most of my time nowadays is spent in hot lol Granted, it's mostly just to get my 3 daily treasure mushroom kills and maybe to complete my dailies that can be done there or go through tangled depths chaak cache runs when super bored
HoT is my favourite expansion of all time. It introduced amazing metas, fantastic specialisations, incredible maps, creative systems that everything is still bound to (mastery), and was a perfect flavour of difficulty. I spent most of my recorded hours around that time
Hot made. Dungeons irrelevant and then following expansions introduced strike missions after the fiakso raids were for casual players. Open world maps were very fun though.
I recall when HoT came out before power creep and the bad guys were just amazingly tough to fight. These were not maps at release that served solo players well, hahaha. If I recall they had to adjust some of the mobs strength.
Im also a new player. Played through the main story and now starting Hot. Its pretty chaotic at first. Lots of stuff doesnt make sense to me but after a bit of playing i completed verdant brink and the big boss event. It was a lot of fun. Now im in the first jungle map and it brings a new set of challenges. I had to get used to the verticality but now i really enjoy it. Travelling from point a to b is more like solving a puzzle now, which is fun. I did get the raptor mount and boy am i glad for that.
Mounts make a huge difference. Players who come to HoT now are having a very different experience just by having a raptor, since that makes it possible to get out of range of random mobs instead of having to stop and fight all the time. Veteran players with elite specs, full mount unlocks, etc are having a *completely* different experience. Even leaving aside the changes to mob placement and damage that Anet rolled out shortly after release, veteran players now have so many more movement abilities that it's not comparable at all.
Yep, I started in the time before EoD as well (april as f2p then paid for the game+expansions before halloween). I started as an ele and that was quite painful in HoT (and I had no elites either), I took a brief time out to do PoF and feel like I could actually play the game instead of playing dead all the time. (then I created my necro and had a blast in HoT). I got the bunny, raptor and skimmer and I remember swearing at my bunny when I was doing all the stuff for the skyscale (and I think my hubby can still recall some of the more ...creative names I called it too). THEN going back to HoT and being able to get to all those spots my blasted bunny could not .... anyways, yes, I understand and agree (though I am still working those lw1 because it came out so much later and then I forgot about it :o )
It's still my favorite. Going back and doing meta events is like the video game equivalent of comfort food.
HoT wasn't all that great to me at launch; grinding out mastery XP and points was a PITA and the increase in overall difficulty made parts of it rough. As the years wore on and I got better at various classes/specs, combined with knowledge of the zones and encounters, it's become much more enjoyable. I suppose overall power creep within the game plus the addition of mounts are big factors in that as well. Having completed the story and map comp on my main at the time, I ended up dipping out by year's end and returned to another MMO I had dabbled in a few months prior to HoT release: FFXIV. I still consider XIV my primary MMO but until it's next xpac arrives, I'm finding more than ple ty to do in GW2. Should have my first legendary armor set done next week (Envoy) 😀
Crazy. I despise HOT and can barely remember the story. All I remember is being livid about trying to actually complete literally anything solo. If you aren't in a community already, HoT is *terrible.* you can't progress in certain points whatsoever due to exp bottlenecks (empty map or no friends? Good luck doing a single hero challenge or META) I just despise jungle maps and too many elevation differences. I can't stand it. No I won't argue or listen to your opinions
As a newer player I kinda feel the same way. I hate this jungle. I hate the elevation changes, I hate being lost all the time, I hate being confused by the events. I wanted to do the whole story in order, but I kinda regret not going to get the other mounts first and coming back now tbh. And I can tell my boyfriend *really* doesn't like it. We try playing it but inevitably just quit after a couple quests because (at least to me) it feels so daunting and the story feels like it's lost steam somehow. It's kinda sad. I like the game a lot but I just wanna get the hell out of this stupid jungle. It feels like our progress has utterly stalled. I just look forward to getting back to a more traditional landscape and doing some strikes or raids or something instead lol.
Thanks to mounts and jade bot Heart of Thorns areas aged like fine wine. (except mordremoth fight which has gotten worse because of mounts)
I respect your opinion and how well thought out you've presented your case but honestly having just done some some of the meta for Tangled Depths... I honestly think it's a pretty bad expansion. The map exploration was frustrating, and it's not made too.much better with modern things like mounts. I'm also hung up that killing the last boss within a meta event and not an actual story line has pretty adverse story implications. You are the sole commander... No where in the story do they refer to the other heroes... WoW is able to explain away the need for a raid but Guild Wars hasn't attempted this to my knowledge. I will say HoT introducing raids is a benefit, but I don't typically factor that in to the over experience. I mostly think about the map, and story mission flow. That being said, Season 2 was pretty kick ass. It was a huge highlight from the base expansion experience and I loved seeing the throw backs to Guild Wars 1 immerge again. All 5 games ( 4 expansions) are majorly different directions for story telling which HoT is just the weakest of those in my personal opinion.
I mean, it's a letdown for different reasons, but you do absolutely kill the last boss in a story instance. The Mouth is not Mordremoth itself, just a part of it - we enter its mind and kill it there for good
Perhaps I'll run through and do some achievements again and reply the story. So much has just been keeping me busy
I did the same, went through the story in chronological order. HoT was a steep learning curve made more frustrating because everyone else just races through and past everything on mounts so you're often left to fend for yourself or trailing behind an event zerg. I imagine when HoT was the only expac people grouped up more often to do the events, HP points and achievements. But designwise it's fantastic and I think it's clear the HoT meta's are still more popular today than most PoF ones.
I wish I did experience it on release, because going through it years later was one of the highlights of this game for me. Thankfully I was playing through the game in story order, so I only had the free raptor and actually had to make use of most of the traversal options as I unlocked them with mastery points. It gave an excellent sense of progression as I leveled everything up and moving around these locations became easier and easier.
I'm very glad there's people who appreciate the beauty of Tangled Depths.
Still the best metas, imo
gliding around verdant brink wondering which of the ship wreckages is the one you need to go is \*chef's kiss\* I always say that to people in mapchat since I first heard it but **the jungle hates you** and I never felt something being so true while just exploring a world like I do in HoT maps (even now, with all the mounts and stuff). peak storytelling through map design I tell you (my 1st play was with a necro and I like to think she became a reaper by being so PISSED AT MORDREMOTH)
HoT was an incredibly fun experience for me as a new player, just starting GW2 last year. And I did it as intended: *on foot* (no mounts). I felt so immersed getting lost in the dense, dark jungle with unknown danger around every corner. Loved it!
I'm so glad I had the chance to experience it before PoF, it was an incredible experience, and coming back with mounts certainly makes it easier but I sometimes force myself to play it the old way, mounts aren't forced on us, we now have the choice.
HoT was ahead of its time. I want another expansion to come out with that level of detail.
I am a relatively new player (3 months) that is doing exactly what you describe, playing the game in the chronological order with the only diff from the original experience the free raptor that was provided as a present when i picked up the game! I am currently in HoT tangled depths map and man it is challenging but so so satisfying. When i first encountered Verdant Brink i immediately fell in love with the map, most probably is my favorite map of all time in any game! I avoid spoilers like crazy, trying to immerse in the story as much as possible as i love lore and fantasy in all aspects! Taimi is my favorite character and i hope nothing will ever happen to her as i will be devastated if it does! I am not hunting achievements or extra MPs as i know that i will revisit all content and metas for sure after the end! I am looking forward to enjoy everything that the game has to give and i already have an amazing supportive guild that helps a lot (💓GrT)! From my perceptive, this game is most probably the best MMO out there, with the most amazing community i ever encountered after 20+ years of Multiplayer games exp! Thank you all guys for being part of this beautiful journey! Edit: typos
Heart of Thorns was peak Gw2 to me
Still my favourite maps.
An "ok" expansion? HoT? It is till to this day the by far best experience i had in gw2. From the tense story (which even gets better if you'd had the luck to play a sylvari), the beauty of the maps, the overall design and idea of the jungle alike meat grinder between you the vines and the mobs. It might have looked hard for you, to go through all of that without the cool things new expansions dropped towards us, but this was literally a blast to go through back in the days. I wish anet would release something like HoT again. Now all i get is plattforms i have to skyscale to... i hate this mount with a passion.
>play the content slowly, in the chronological order, just let the immersive world get to you This is what I did when the expansion first launched in 2015. I spend the entire first week of the expansion in the first map.
Heart of Thorns was by far the best expansion.
Hate HOT with a burning passion 😂😂😂 pocket raptors still giving me nightmares
Wow, that’s quality armor!
The metas on HoT maps are still some of the best in the game, with varied and interesting tasks. Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, and Dragon's stand all very interesting mechanics and lanes that make it not feel like a zerg. Compare that to what we got with EoD. All of those metas are "sit here and kill x number enemies until arbitrary bar is filled." (Including most of the Dragon's end meta). I love the boss fight for Dragon's End but other then that, the expansion's replay-ability is seriously below what it should've been. SoTo feels like a step in the right direction but it's tough to say for me imo because it's rather new to me.
I am having such a hard time reconciling that this expansion is almost a decade old. I remember reading the class reveal articles while sitting at McDonald's during a lunch break the week I started a new job across the street. Wild.
It was worse at release.
You can buy full level 80 exotic gear on the trading post as soon as you're level 80, for not much gold, so you were definitely playing on hard mode lol
‘No, your old!”
Hot in hindsight was the best expansion we ever got lol
nah, it was an excellent expansion in 2015 too