PsionicFox
Future Man
For those of you that care, I'm going to use this to answer questions about the new stuff coming in the expansion, as I have beta access.
Some things:
Core GW2 is now free to play. No missing features, 100% GW2 without paying any money.
And from the expansion:
Four open world maps made up of three distinct biomes:
- The roots, which run deep beneath the jungle
- The floor of the jungle itself
- The canopy heights, where the Pact fleet is scattered across the top of the jungle
- Account-based PvE progression system available to level 80 characters
- Players can complete content and overcome challenges to gain Mastery Points
- Examples include completing elements of the story, finding hard-to-find and hard-to-reach locations, defeating bosses and group challenges, exploring entire maps, and completing challenging achievements
- Each Mastery Point tied to a particular objective can only be acquired once per account
- Mastery points can be earned prior to level 80, but points can only be spent at level 80
- One Mastery Track can be active at a time; while active, a Mastery Track is filled by earning experience
- After earning enough experience for a new tier, its mastery can be unlocked by spending Mastery Points
- Completing a Mastery Track can reward all your account's characters with new abilities, such as:
- Learning hang gliding to soar through the air instead of falling, or learning to use various mushrooms in the jungle to bounce to higher places, run faster or recharge your skills
- Learning the languages of the civilizations of the jungle, earning their trust, challenging their champions, unlocking secret locations and learning new combat techniques
- Unlocking collections for obtaining legendary weapon precursors, with one collection for each weapon
- Unlocking achievements in Fractals of the Mists, fractal challenge modes, more powerful infusions and instance-specific buff items
- Unlocking Mentoring Badge for your characters and gaining speed boost in cities and bonuses for crafting, reviving and picking up loot
- Masteries, Mastery Tracks and Mastery Points are divided into 2 separate categories: one for core Guild Wars 2 content and one for the Heart of Maguuma
- New heavy armor profession that channels and controls the power of the Mists.
- Channels the power of great legends from Guild Wars past, and uses those to power the skills it has available.
- When channeling a legend, the player's heal, utility, and elite skills change based on the legend, defining the role the revenant plays in combat.
- Four core legends are available:
- Legendary Dwarf Stance (King Jalis Ironhammer): changes the revenant to become harder and tankier, allowing them to hold down the front line, and gains the abilities of the dwarves
- Legendary Demon Stance (Mallyx the Unyielding): gives the revenant the power to control conditions, and can remove conditions from party members and put them on enemies
- Legendary Centaur Stance (Ventari): gives the revenant AoE healing skills and condition removers, allowing them to play as the support role
- Legendary Assassin Stance (Shiro Tagachi): gives the revenant a high mobility play, which allows them a more directed damage role.
- Choosing an elite specialization fundamentally changes the way each profession plays by unlocking access to a previously unavailable weapon as well as new traits, skills and unique profession mechanics
Guardian: Dragonhunter (longbow, traps)- Revenant: Herald (shield, Legendary Dragon Stance boons & boon sharing)
- Warrior: Berserker (torch, rages)
- Engineer: Unknown [the name 'Forge' has been datamined] (hammer) [teased, no information about skill types or Profession mechanics yet]
- Ranger: Druid (staff) [teased, no information about skill types or Profession mechanics yet]
- Thief: Daredevil (staff, physicals)
- Elementalist: Tempest (warhorn, shouts)
- Mesmer: Chronomancer (shield, wells)
- Necromancer: Reaper (greatsword, shouts)
- Elite specializations can be unlocked at level 80, but are not tied to the mastery system. Unlocking a specialization is a character-specific progression and is not account-wide.
- Each profession has one new elite specialization in Heart of Thorns, though the system easily allows adding new ones in the future
- Specializations are swappable out of combat just as easily as changing skills or traits
- New weapons are only new to the profession, no new weapon types are being added to the game.
