10mo ago

How to ease up the return to GW2

I thought I'd try GW2 after years of not playing (last I played was PoE era, bounced off fully before Icebrood saga) and finally managed to get into it!

I used to live and breath this game and while I was not what you'd call "hardcore" player, I knew about everything going on. Now I'm totally in the black which is weird. I try not to get it to me, I just play through the Icebrood saga story now and try my best not to open inventory and achievement tabs etc to not get discouraged. GW2 was always a bit convoluted, but with so much added in the meantime, it's much.

How do you deal with this? What would be your recommendations for me to "ease into it"? What should I engage after getting my groove back in the story? How to dip my toes slowly into buildcrafting? What new systems should I check out?

Bonus question: would you expect the xpacs to go on sale anytime soon? Next one should be around the corner by now, no?

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I, for one, would start with getting the hang of some builds. snowcrows.com has builds for high end gameplay (which I recommend) and open world. Many HoT and PoF elite specs are still meta. If you buy the Icebrood Saga story steps, you get access to the IBS strikes, which are a good mid-point between open-world triviality and higher-end content.
gw2efficiency.com is a handy website that allows you to gain an overview over your account, as well as offering crafting support, allowing you see what materials you ate missing to craft an item.
I took a years-long hiatus after HoT, briefly returning for PoF and I only really go back into the game after the Icebrood Saga already concluded. I wanted to complete legendaries, since after the introduction of the legendary wardrobe, you can equip any legendary on all your characters now. I also got into instanced content. First fractals, the raids, then strikes. I now am fully kitted out with legendaries and run all raids and strikes with CMs (- ToF CM) weekly.
- since after the introduction of the legendary wardrobe, you can equip any legendary on all your characters now
  Ooooh, this is nice indeed! Along with the selectable stats (do I remember it right?) this sounds like a really good incentive to get Legendaries. I might want to finally look inyo those.

I was always super interested in legendary equipment, so when I came back to the game after years away I just picked one weapon from the list, put it into gw2efficiency, expanded it's required materials list and looked through it until I saw something that requires me to do content which I felt comfortable doing, like map completion or open world events. From there I naturally re-familiarized myself with the game as I kept working towards the legendary.

if you don't have all the mounts go for those first (of what you can get access to that is). they take a while to get and you are basically focused on one task.

What's great about this game, imho, is that you can be gone for a while, but still get right into the action again, because your characters value doesn't depreciate, like in other MMO's.
I am sometimes gone from GW2 for a long time, but I usually just continue from where I left off, because the content is still relevant.
- That is indeed great, first time I can really apreciate that. The issue is with how tough it is to get into with achievements/collections being used as quest stand-ins (no way to get a quick recap on what I did), metric fuckton of currencies (I did not dare to check the wallet yet to see them all) etc.

I was gone for 10+ years (I started with beta) and I just picked it up again a year or so ago by continuing the storyline and rolling a few new characters for their race-/class-specific stories, and it's been great.
Having a few people to play with on a regular basis makes all the difference. We do PvE for events/specific things (e.g. mounts) and now mostly play WvW because it's dynamic and fun - and it's an easy way to grind for legendary gear.
In that time, one mate's completed his legendary armour and two legendary weapons, another's not far off completing his armour set, and I've nearly completed my second armour piece because I'm the slacker. :)
The DLCs go on sale fairly regularly - usually the "seasons". Occasionally you'll see an "all seasons and latest expansion" go on sale, and should probably grab that if you haven't got them. After that, just buy the missing ones as and when you're ready to pay for them.
- I have all the LS luckily, been logging in to get them. I think the new ones are just tied to the expacs, no?
  Friends would be nice but all seem to have left GW2 behind, need to look for an active guild at one point I guess. Though my schedule will be far from regulr in near future for any scheduled group play.
  
  Some still have the WoW heyday raid guild mentality, but there are plenty of large, casual guilds without the expectation of specific days, hours, taxes, "must login at least twice a week", and such stuff.
  Happy to recommend one to you. They have opt in sections in their Discord for PvE, WvW, PvP, etc, etc. And have an "all members welcome" Guild Missions session every Saturday, which is an effective way to meet and catch up with everyone.
  And having access to a guild's hall is great for cheap travel, extra resources, permanent boosts, crafting, etc.

To add from what everyone is saying, the only real new system that you missed is strikes. Basically a 10 people single boss battle, like raids but without the filler and pre-events. Very puggable, especially what people call the easy 3 (shiverpeaks pass, voice/claw of the fallen, fraenir of jormag)
If you want to avoid story spoilers, be sure to follow the story until the end of the norn map of IBS before joining them.
EoD added a new mount, skiffs (boat), plus some new systems that you won't find outside of those maps anyway, so don't worry too much about it. But of course you need it to use the elite specs
The last expansion instead gave us new weapons without the traitline and unlocked elite specs' weapons to be used regardless of the spec. To unlock all of that you need to play the expansion until a certain point tho. If you don't have the skyscale in the expansion there is also a new way to get it that should be a bit faster
In general, there wasn't any big shake to things, it's mostly more of the same and some new side things. The only real difference is a bit of powecreep and that now every class can cover any role.
So take your time, play everything in order and all the new things will appear step by step

I would kill for controller support on this game. I have my steam deck set up with some pretty ok mappings that make the game playable, but compared to like FF14 the experience is just annoying enough to keep me from really digging in. It’s mostly the menu system.

Unfortunately you just missed a sale on the expansions about a month ago, but it sounds like they usually do one around the Steam summer sale as well.
- Bummer. But oh well, I'm thinking of replaying story anyway, I realize I don't really remember what's happening thaf much. Should keep me busy. Though the new weapons look fun, I assume those are tied to the new expansion even though they are not elite spec specific as far as I can tell?

A bucket list of things that you probably want to do asap:
Check a few builds for your main on snowcrows, just so you can have something effective to start from when experimenting
Start working on the wizards vault, lots of good stuff there and you have a few weeks before it rolls over
Get back into content you used to do: if you were a fractal enjoyer for example, you should probably get back into it so you can atart making gold again
Other than that do what you enjoy, if you are on icebrrod saga you could finish the story then do the return to achievements for the legendary amulet if it's something you might like.

Check Zoalerah's streams on twitch she does a bunch of "how to character class" stuff and general learning stuff for people.

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