So I guess I’ve been busy. Being on vacation and a bit sick and not leaving the house apparently doesn’t help.
A ton of stuff happened:

• Warrior is equipped as good as it gets now, without further Ascended pieces (2 green Berserker Accessories that could be Exotic Soldiers, and Rares in the off-gear, but that’s good enough for me
• Thief is also basically done, full Berserker, but with a few greens and Rares
• Guardian is missing 2 pieces of Exotic gear
• Ranger is nearly full Berserker Rares or better and in Act 3 of Living World Season 3
• Mesmer is lacking quite some gear, but in Act 3 of HoT
• Tequatl gave me an Ascended Weapon Box, but it’s Carrion – have to research…
• 18 Chests of Exotic Equipment left me a bit “meh” with the results
• Sitting at 3215 Achievement Points
• Finished the last Tequatl Achievement
• Finished “For the Children!” and got a tree!

 

So right now I’m researching specs and trying to make some of them a bit beefier in solo play.
So the TODO list hasn’t changed much. Except now it also includes getting the Necro to 80, crafting some more bags, and earning a ton of Hero Points on some characters, also some respecs.

I wrote a post back when I preordered Heart of Thorns in June 2015. So on September 15th I did it again and preordered the Ultimate edition of Path of Fire, Guild Wars 2’s second expansion. I’ve been playing again for a few weeks now, the cash shop was not in my face, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself and this is my “Thanks developers, have some money, because I don’t have to pay a monthly fee”. That’s less than 200 EUR for more than 2 years of GW2, if I had chosen to play that much. WoW would’ve been at least 300 EUR for exactly 2 years.
This time I’m not forgetting to take a screenshot of the page:

So yes, I like this package – I’ve bought HoT with gems that lasted me until now and now I have 4000 more gems to spend and in between there’s a few bonus things.
“Pre-purchase before launch and receive one Sunspear Weapon Skin of your choice, a Miniature Balthazar, and the title of Elonian Envoy.”
Also not bad for just buying it a few days earlier than launch.

Big surprise, I’ve been playing GW2. Did some more levelling/using Tomes and now the roster looks like this:

• Warrior – 80
• Thief – 80
• Guardian – 80
• Mesmer – 80
• Ranger – 80
• Necromancer – 64
• Engineer – 32

Just finished the story quests at 30 on the Engineer, nearly finished Act 1 of Heart of Thorns on the Mesmer, did the 3 daily quests for most days in the last 2 weeks and worked on some achievements:

• 75% map completion (actually 78 already)
• 13/18 Heart of Thorns Act 1 (needed a second playthrough, working on the rest)
• Got to 520/1000 skins
• Got my first set of Cultural Armor (Norn, Heavy, Tier 1)
• a few Jumping Puzzles (most are really fun)
• Got all Tyria Mastery Insights
• Progressed a bit along “Anomalous Occurrences”
• Alpha Crafter
• 2745 (2205 + 540) Achievement Points (boo)

 
So the current plans are:

• 100% map completion on the Warrior
• finish the Personal Story (instance quest) on the Warrior
• progress in HoT with the Mesmer
• collect a little more equip for Mesmer and Ranger
• maybe craft a 3rd Ascended piece (currently: Helm, Legs, Amulet, 2 Rings)
• wrap up some achievements
• Level Chef and Scribe to 400 (hopefully)
• decide if any of the PoF elite specs are worth preparing some spare Hero Points

Yeah, I’ve played a lot of GW2 in the last 2 weeks. First I brought my Mesmer to 80 (boosting with Tomes between the Story missions) and grabbed enough Hero points to get the Chronomancer weapon, then I levelled my Ranger normally to 63, still doing all the Story missions (maybe  a bad idea to do them twice in a two week window).
Then I noticed that I had never finished the Personal Story on my first 80, the Norn Warrior, so I did all of them and am stuck now at the very last once – the instance one. I’ve never done an instance in GW2 so that might be a fun experience, which I postponed for now.
Apparently crafting doesn’t give as much XP as I thought, so it’s probably not really wasted when you do it at max-level. I do need to level Tailoring and Chef, but I’ve not yet decided on which toon.
This is how I’ve set it up currently:
 

• Warrior – 500 Armorsmith
• Thief – 200 Huntsman / 500 Leatherworking
• Guardian – 400 Jeweler / 400 Weaponsmithing
• Necromancer – 380ish Artificer

 

So maybe Chef for the Warrior and Tailoring either for Necromancer or Mesmer.
I’m also not big on Achievements in this game, but I think I should really at least get to 75% map completion and finally continue with Heart of Thorns. This isn’t even in anticipation of the new Expansion, apparently measuring levels is a really good idea for my playstyle – as soon as I hit max-level my interest plateaus pretty quickly. More so in WoW, but in GW2 it’s also more like.. “get a decent set of gear, continue to next character”
I did read up on how to get Ascended gear and the Warrior actually has a Helm, Amulet (and as of last week, also 2 Rings) – but I really should check if and how to continue there.
Oh, and I’m still sitting on 200 Tomes and a few Level 20 boosts and a Level 80 boost. So if I use the 80 boost and get another character slot for fully boosting an Elementalist (60) and the Ranger (17) and the Necro (16) I still have too many even if I boost the Engineer (56). Wow.

Oh wow, I haven’t written about Guild Wars 2 in a while, but I didn’t play much I guess. In December ’15 I wrote “80 Warrior, 80 Thief, 46 Necromancer, 30 Guardian, 13 Engineer and 6 Ranger”.
Trying to retell the order of events: Guardian hit 80, went to be a Dragonhunter. Necro is got to 60, Engineer got to 20. That was in 2016, I guess.
When I started to play again last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?) I did some crafting first. The Necro is now 62 thanks to levelling Artificer to 265. Then I wasted the tasty XP because the Dragonhunter is now at 400 Weaponsmithing. Then I levelled the Engineer to 25 and stopped playing after researching builds and not liking what I saw at all. So I switched to the Ranger, played until Level 13 and used one of the “Get to Level 20” boosts. Then I levelled without any boosts to 40. Didn’t continue the story yet.
 

Also I finally spent most of the Gems I still had from buying Heart of Thorns on 2 character slots and a crafting mats expension because they were on sale. So I started a (Female Human) Mesmer and boosted her from 2 to 20, then did my story mode quests, finally used a few of my >200 Tomes of Knowledge and am now sitting at Level 30, waiting for the story quests to continue (but I logged out for lunch and writing a post.) So that’s >200 Tomes of Knowledge left, and also one full Level 80 boost. Maybe I got that when I bought Heart of Thorns as well? I think I’m saving this one for a Revenant as I’m not particularly interested in an Elementalist.
So that’s it now. Enough Tomes to boost whatever I like, but playing the Ranger is fun. Mesmer as well, but I think I’ll continue boosting her for now. And I still haven’t levelled Chef, Scribe, or Tailoring at all.