For veteran gw2 players, people struggling through tangled depths is like watching the new guy at work

The funny thing about flying mounts in dragon stand, they did have a no mount zone in the last boss area. It was like that for a couple years and people asked for the no mount zone to be removed, so they removed it.

I actually love the fact that the meta event is supposed to be happening at the same time as the comander's fight with Mordremoth's mind. Gives that feeling of the comander not being the sole and only savior of the world; the entire Pact army were there fighting Mordremoth's body at the same time the comander was fighting his mind. Imo, it makes all the story missions to help strengthen the pact worth it, 'coz at the end they did help and were a big part of the final fight.

I think Anet learned a lesson from the really rough end of HoT. In End of Dragons, the most recent expansion, in the final story step(s), the mission actually encourages the player to do the openworld meta before the final story instance. It's optional, but doing so grants an achievement and gives some context before the final fight. Players have the option to do it the 'lore accurate' way, or just zoom through to the end.

Preach's impression of this game is a fucking rollercoaster ride

An entire zone dedicated to beating a single boss is what I wanted out of Deathwing tbh

I think levelling up gliding is the big hurdle you've faced at the end. Levelling up gliding was one of the first things I did and the leyline gliding is hugely help for fast travel in that boss area, and in some cases quicker than mounts.

I didn't realize dragon stand meta was a thing until a month after beating HoT. I just looked at the map and wondered why it was not explored and the game never directed me to do more there.

Do the Trahearne / Caladbolg quest after the ending. You should get a mail about it. its pretty cool

Even after years of playing i still get lost in the Tangled Depths and i love it. The sense of danger never fades. Its not my favorite map but the feelings it evokes are exactly what i want from a dangerous jungle map

I usually go to Tangled Depths to test out my open world builds. If it survives clearing this zone without dying, it survives anything the game will ever throw at you.

I think most of the people who did HoT ending when it came out liked it, but power creep has pretty much made it a non fight, it used to be, that you did not even get to the end fight, unless you had good commanders who organized the lane fights, it used to be alot more epic. Story wise, the Meta map fight and the story fight in Mordremoths mind, are happening at the same time, i think, if i remember correctly, that theres even some voice "in the air" that are bleeding over from one fight to the other.

I personally hate Tangled Depths, however it is one of the best realized zone in the game, when it comes to the theme of the entire expansion. You start almost at the top of the forest in Verdant Brink. You have relatively easy access to the top of the forest via the helicopters, but you can also go quite deep in some places for hero points and find hidden sunken temples, etc. Then you go a bit deeper and you arrive at Auric basin, you get less light from above with every step you go deeper and deeper, including the giant city in the middle, then you get to the point in the story, where you have to go in to heart of the jungle, the deepest part. That's where Tangled Depths appears. It perfectly conveys the theme of a deep jungle, the roots everywhere, the convulated paths, it is a perfect representation of its theme and geatly presents to us, how our party of heroes in the story must feel like manouvering this mess, just trying to save our friends. I hate the zone, but I still think it is one of the best realized zone thematicaly in the game.

Just having ley line gliding is already a huge time safe on that encounter, flying mounts are neat but if you get ley line gliding as mastery it makes you so much quicker at moving from platform to platform.

100% map completion of tangled depths was an achievement itself. I would never do it again lol. I hate that zone but also appreciate the complexity to it. Whoever designed it deserves an award. So much detail and so intricate

Didn't mind the ending of HoT that much honeslty, as it was still miles better than Zhaitan. But the good thing is, to any to new players out there, that the story right after HoT picks up pace and in quality tremendously, and you will NOT be disappointed with the next expansion's ending, if you were with this one. IMO even the next 2 living worlds are miles better than the first 2 living worlds and HoT.

Very good points about Dragon Stand. We been saying for so many years that they need to buff the dragon so that we actually have to do the fight. It is way to easy and goes way to fast and even i after so long feel cheated for not getting the fight i had many years ago.

I think if they had played a cutscene before the players fight with the mind showing pact forces arriving at dragon's stand to fight the body as well as indicating as such are happening simultaneously it would have helped elevate the sense of scale.

I'm in the minority but I just love tangled depths, it's one of a kind zone in MMOs. It's meant to be hostic and confusing, but that also make it feel much bigger than the other zones. It's not for everyone but, together with verdant brink, it's how I want verticality to be done in mmos (and RPGs in general), just one big maps with tons of layers to truly get lost in and keep discover hidden stuff.

This is a problem with so many MMOs. If you were not there when content was current, it is inevitably going to be played in the current day in a nerfed, power creeped and unbalanced way. FFXIV really is an incredibly special MMO in letting you do raids synced or max ilvl capped to get an experience somewhat close to the original. GW2 atleast keeps content rewarding but all the encounters are massively powercrept over the years. Compare to WoW though where that game has hundreds of encounters all wasted because they don't scale to anything so they are literally impossible to experience as they were originally. Your best bet is grouping with like minded people to enforce old school rules.

Heart of Thorns had a lot of potential, but they made heavy cuts to content/story toward the end because they ran out of time(and it shows). It’s a shame. They never earnestly follow up on the story of the sylvari either, though there is a nice side story/collection called Knight of the Thorn that focuses on Trahearne post-mortem. Check it out! We still don’t really know what became of the nightmare court, and they were supposed to be a big part of the expansion originally. The pale tree is still recovering from her wounds in S2, and she’s never appeared on screen since then (and is barely mentioned again going forward).

I think more than flying mounts, its the amount of people who have unlocked leyline gliding. Those little glowy lines between the islands are leylines, and the final points in gliding allow you to zip alone them very quickly. The skyscale is kinda a hammer that lets you get wherever your trying to go, but leyline glidng is much faster.

Tangled Depths is my favorite map in GW2 because it feels like I'm in the depths of a deadly, confusing jungle and gives you the feeling of uneasiness. You never know where you are really going or what awaits you. That's all I have ever wanted from a jungle map, and arenanet has nailed it perfectly.

I've recently also got into GW2 and just finished the 2nd expansion. After watching this video I'm FLOORED! I had no idea the final boss was in a world event and now I'm pissed ArenaNet did such a poor job pointing that out. Thanks for letting me know, killer vid!!!

Now Entering: GW2 after ANet got their shit together (story and presentation wise)

Now that Preach has seen how useful commanders are I hope he can check out WvW some day also big agree on disabling flying mounts on mordremoth fight. I was blown away playing that fight back in the day

I think one of the interesting things about playing through the GW2 story is seeing how the devs adapted to what went right or wrong in previous content. HoT has some major weak spots, particularly the ending and the gating with the mastery unlocks being pain points for many, but these things were approached in drastically different ways in PoF and EoD. Even the Living World seasons show off a lot of the devs' learning about what works and how far they can push the things that land well. Ultimately, though, even the earliest maps from HoT are still alive and thriving today because they were designed to remain relevant. One of the best experiences I've had was going back through to replay everything recently and experiencing the evolution of the game. In the sense that they often (not always, but often) learned from mistakes and set out to make the next season or xpac better than anything that came before, they don't let you down.

Oh man, I cannot wait for your Path of Fire play-through. These videos you are making are so much fun to watch!

Man, I wish you got to experience HoT when it launched. The story was crazy challenging and the meta event was genuinely incredible. I’ve not done it in a couple years, as I spend a lot of my time elsewhere, but it felt like a truly challenging and huge army effort to destroy the Elder Dragon.

Tangled Depths is for sure my favourite zone in the game, I mean I still get lost on there but I fucking love exploring that shit. First time around I had no fucking idea what the fuck was going on, and I guess I just don't mind that, I enjoyed the absolute struggle that was navigating this place, and I still do. Sometimes I can get a bit annoyed if I'm trying to get somewhere fast and I just blank on how to get there, and I'm guessing the people who hate this zone is feeling that annoyance all the time. Smugness have nothing to do with the fact that I like this map or not, people just react different to different things. I think most people share your view on the map and thats fine. ArenaNet tried something new and it worked for me and many others, but maybe not for the majority, seeing as this was the last time we saw a map like this.

I love playing around that area with griffon and skyscale. I know that it makes things go faster than intended, but I really really love playing around that area and it'd be sad if it was lost for zoomies.

god I love tangled depths. It's such an infuriatingly well designed zone because it doesn't feel like a place you should be. it feels like a place the Chak should be.

I jumped on to GW2 during the steam launch (working my way through Path of Frost expac) but Love Tangled Depths and HOT in general. Is Heart of Thorns viewed as a bad expac?

Just watched the series so far, glad your overall enjoying my Favorite MMO. Is there a place to watch the VoDs? I'd like to skim them for the cool and important sections, especially Living World Season 4.

I'm not surprised that people dislike tangled depths, but I am actually surprised that YOU didn't! This whole time I was expecting you to get there and marvel at the scope of the zone and how intricate it is (albeit frustrating to navigate), but I would have never guessed you'd be one of the ones that hate it so much haha Fair enough! Totally agree with you about the Dragon's Stand event. The skyscale has trivialized it so much I can only imagine what a disappointing experience it must be for new players. Removing mounts from the meta events is something a lot of us have been asking for for a while, especially now that the turtle is around, because if you're commanding an event and you just have a bunch of people on their turtles it just makes things take so much longer or even potentially fail. For anyone who might be reading this and wondering why, the turtle literally does less than healer level damage. Things would die faster if you were just auto-attacking. I assume people do it because they would otherwise die as the turtle takes the blows instead, but literally you're just making the event harder.

I love Tangled Depths (TD)! You should grab on to an HP train or Map Completion train for starters. Once you learn the map a little bit it is brilliant design, you can get from any point on the map to any other point on the map so fast, so many routes and short cuts. I lead trains across HoT and TD is a joy to take a group through. First thing is don't even look at the mini-map until you know the zone, it will just confuse you. Instead memorize the lanes and markers. Fun tidbit: I started playing right before HoT was released. I'm probably good at finding my way around the maps because I first did it without out any masteries. First PC game, not just MMO actual game and had no idea how to get on the maps. Found a way through Guild Hollow into Auric Basin but still had no idea how to get a glider. Spent about 3 weeks of heavy play (like 6 hours a day and 14 on weekends) clueless until I found out I had to do the story mission to get a glider. I managed to get more Hero Points than I needed and all the WPs open on foot. Yah, I had my Daredevil spec well before I had a glider. Verdent Brink was actually the last map I opened. Still wonder doing Dragon Stand the first 20 times how many thought I was an NPC there just straight up Lvl 80 no masteries. I wish I could go back and do it again, not to change anything but it was the best time I've had in a game.

Preach you need ley line gliding, it will help you alot in defeating the boss. About the last boss experience, that's what happened to me, my suggestion would be to scale the boss by the number of players currently in the area

I hated tangled depths for a really long time. I still can't find my way around at all, but I love it now, its amazing to explore, always feels a bit dangerous, amazing visuals, incredible map.

Did you check the treasure box at the top of the mountain ?love watching your video , takes me back to the year i started and get excited and amazed everytime

I didn't even venture into Tangled Depths and Dragon Stand without leveling up key masteries. I think that's where his frustration is coming from. With advanced gliding, it becomes a bit easier. Doing it again with flying mounts made it more fun for me too.

Thank you for this video! I had a really bad day and your video made me forget some bad stuff for some time ☺️

Love, how mike explain this experience has a newer player without all the power creep. Epic encounter, wait, is it dead already, and I dead, what happened????

Y’all got any more of them GW2 videos😅 anxiously awaiting the next. You got me back into GW2 !

I have an awesome memory of defeating Mordremoth for the first time. Back then fight was a lot harder, my build and my skills ware much weaker - it was a challenge for me. I failed multiple times and each time i died i had to start over. But i did beat it and it felt great. I felt like i did something, like i achieved something. Watching you beat it with ease made me feel nothing. Same way you described in the video. I agree 100% on everything you said regarding this deflated feeling. In my (and not only my) opinion the best way to do this fight justice would be to remake the fight into a strike. They could this with a lot of story fights. Looking forward to the next video, glad you had fun with the game in general.

Commenting as I watch through the vid and what preach says at 1:38 was absolutely what went through my head the first time I got into that zone all those years ago lmao. Tangled Depths is definitely the best and the worst zone the game has to offer coz it's just one big giant clusterfuck. Edit 2: 16:50 yea it's Mordremoth got powercrept so hard over the years. It was ~okay-ish when PoF elites released but I think the latest elites from EoD just do obscene amounts of damage that trivializes a lot of older content, it's actually really hard to get a legit HoT-feeling experience with Dragon Stand coz it hardly ever fails now when organized Commander groups run it.

22:05 A simply idea they could do to fix Dragon's Stand Meta, have a CM toggle just before the end fight. passing the vote would add a debuff for the final fight, where no mount can be used. The debuff would be removed after the boss is defeated, making it work like some sort of "Dragons Aura" that keeps everyone on edge. But also, increase the dragons overall HP by 25% (because that boy goes down suuuuper fast these days even with only core classes.) :D

It should probably be redesign as a strike mission. Keep the nerfed open world event around for farm, but make a harder 10man version for a strike mission.

22:40 FFXIV actually does make this work a bit better. ...Sorta. It's not quite simultaneous, but I feel like it thematically fills the same fantasy. Absolute Virtue is the 3rd boss of Baldesean Arsenal, the end-raid of Eureka, is unkillable if you just walk up and pull him. About 15sec into the fight, he casts Absolute Benediction, which gives all his attacks a 100% crit rate, heals him to 100%, and makes him immune to all damage, infinite duration (It was even somewhat recently confirmed that you're not even allowed to kill him before that; he locks at 1HP). The solution to this is a puzzle in the side rooms along the hallway to his arena. Solve the puzzle, and a new, unique boss will spawn _outside_ BA in the main Eureka zone for people to kill. Killing _that_ boss not only disables AV's immunity spell, but also opens portals to allow a full extra party to enter BA and join in for the entire second half of the raid.

Once you've suffered through tangled depths for long enough you learn to love the pain.

Oh yes, so interested to hear what you have to say about this! I went through HoT last week and was completely thrown off at how suddenly it ended. It honestly made me question whether or not I wanted to continue. I haven't been able to watch these streams lately, so I am feeling so vindicated right now that it is not just me with this stuff.

TBH Flying mounts are not even that big of a problem there. If you have leyline gliding, you get often faster to closer nodes with glider than with mounts. The problem is DPS. The fight was nerfed hard because people complained, but then over the time there were balance changes, people also figured out how to play the game and the average DPS is way, way higher than back then. Also player scaling is a bit bad. With 30-40 people the fight is way harder than with 60+.

That dragon looked badass what a awesome idea ahaving a zone as a boss damn.

Love this series and the point of view! Awesome work

Hope Preach looks at WvW as well.

In FFXIV Eureka actually does have mechanics that happen inside a raid and outside the raid at the same time. It can be done it's just hard to execute.

Btw, the 'mastery cap' for the mordy fight is leyline gliding .. yes skyscale helps A LOT but without leyline gliding your best bet is to wait on an island and not try to move around too much, you'll never make it in time. To be fair, I walked away from many of the completion items in HoT and didn't come back until I got my skyscale. I didn't have anyone to express my disgust to, so I just left it as 'yeah, not going back there' lol. Even with my skyscale I won't always get to bosses in time to hit them. Also, Preach doesn't yet know how much effort is involved in getting a 'flying mount'. I worked my butt off to get it, so yeah let me use it. Seriously if you want to run and 'finish' before you have the masteries for HoT, well you have to expect you're not going to be able to get as much of it done. Now that I've worked on mastery completion and various end game collections I find HoT is fine, and the Tangled Depths meta is my favourite. I love how 4 comms can set up 5m before it starts and we all work together to beat it. 'The next expansion' (PoF) is the mounts expansion ... and its completely different, to appease all the people who cried and qq'd after HoT lol. Generally people fall into one of 2 camps - HoT lovers or PoF lovers, hardly anyone falls into both. After getting the mounts, I've been back to HoT for metas and achievements far more often than PoF .. its replayability leaves a bit to be desired .. although some of the metas there need to be done for mats you can't easily get other places. I would have said the latest expansion, EOD, takes the best of both of them. The story-end boss is difficult, epic, and fun and without a commander there is a high chance of failure ... but the latest meta in the post-story chapter hmm, i'll reserve judgement until Pt2 of that comes out.

Maybe I because I LOVED Meta events so much, I think I did Dragon's Stand before doing the end of the story. Probably that's why I didn't find the ending as jarring. I didn't like the lack of a direct epilogue. For that you ended up needing to get to LWS3 E1 and the Caladbolg achievement.

I can't wait to hear your opinion on the next living world chapter, for me as a Sylvari player it ended the fun I had but I hope you can enjoy it story wise. I must admit this and Auric were my favorite maps in HoTs. The events were the most fun I had in the game, maybe I get back into it, I finished path of fire back then, but dropped out shortly after because the character and story writing was just something that rubbed me the wrong way. But the class changes for End of Dragon look interesting and I have a hard time to stay away from GW 2 since I looked them up XD

there are two kind of GW2 players, those who hate TD and those who hate it to admit they hate TD, but in the end we all love watching noobs suffering on TD. :)

I really hope Mike does SAB (Super Adventure Box) it really is almost like another game that is in GW2, and its awesome.

People who have spent years in this zone know it like the back of their hand... oh Preach, if only you knew, we still struggle with it just like you do, to this day.

man i wish i could join these as a player, but got no clue how to get in contact with preach while his ingame

I think preach is right about flying mount in this specific encounter makes the new players experience complete garbage. I think disabling mounts in that region is a good idea.

Can't wait to see how disappointed he'll be with the finale of IBS

I completely agree about removing flying mounts from the Dragons Stand Mordremoth boss fight, yard to increase difficultly but also because the size and particle effects of flying mounts greatly obstruct and distract from the scale and visual details of the boss. I disagree that the meta events were tangential to the story, and the simultaneous nature of the end boss fights. All of the events in HoT tell the story of the soldiers regrouping and pushing into the jungle, with each meta leading to the opening of a path to the next zone, and telling the continuous stories of side characters within the pact. I understand that canonically the final meta is the only open world event that the commander couldn't have participated in due to being in an instance, but when you really think about it, your commander would also only canonically experience one of the outpost stories in verdant brink, one side of the battle for tarir, one lane of the chak garrant, etc. I have always though about it more in terms of the instances resprenting the commanders experiences while the open world events represent the pact soldiers. It is like watching a television series, in which you get to see the whole story by viewing one event through the eyes of multiple characters in different locations simultaneous. Players get to play the role of multiple characters, instead of only being able to play the commanders story. Furthermore you can roleplay your different characters to have gone through different events, a sylvari being with the pale reavers, a human noble being on the noble airship crash, etc, culminating in their meeting up for the final fight.

So HoT metas are the story of the Pact fighting in jungle. Verdant is the story of them getting a base of operations. Auric is the Pact trying to defend our new allies. Tangled is about making a big enough opening for the army to move through (the entrance you used in the story and map normally is too small of an area for the pact). Then as you said, the last map is where the pact is trying to defeat the body while the commander goes and defeats it's mind.

I'm glad I've watched this purely because I didn't know the meta event was there, I did the story and didn't have a mention of it.

Shame to hear you had a bad time here, Preach. I haven’t done that meta in a long time but I can assure you there was a time it was thoroughly epic. One of the coolest MMO fights. There was a friend I convinced to try the game who got absolutely hooked after doing the metas going down and fighting MoM back in the day. Sounds like it needs attention from the devs

Man I remember at launch, every time Mordremoth died in the meta my game crashed, and when I logged in again I didn't get the reward, or was booted into another version of the map that had failed. And it happened over and over again. It was the most frustrating and infuriating thing. It was fixed after a couple of days and i could finally finish it, but still

What ANet could do about the meta event is put a mention like they do in other missions "Optional: Complete the Dragon's Stand meta-event"

It is a known bug that people would sometimes not get credit for that meta, i did it 1-2 times before i got credit. I'm not sure if that's the reason but on my 3rd try I was gliding at the time the cinematic happened, when it ended I was teleported to the top and got the credit.

I like your suggestion of disabling mounts for that area. I think that would help.

Tangled depths is true pain. I remember trying to explore the zone twice, in order to farm hero points at two seperate times and on two different characters. PAIN JUST FREAKING PAIN. The mini map becomes your very worst enemy.

actually tengled deapths is my favorite zone in gw2 and has ever been. Its just so beautiful random i love it

The hair looks so good man!!

I did not know that there was a 2nd part to the end of HoT, ngl I went straight into the next season of LW after that because I was SO DONE with these zones I was doing them on my warrior and it was NOT fun AT ALL

Let's talk Tangled Depths. Yes, those of us who have played for years know the zone very well, and a lot of folks will have been excited for you to get there because it's a stand-out zone in GW2 for the frustration it can cause. Something that you may have missed here, however, is that Masteries come into play to make the zone much more traversable. When you get to the zone you are told you can now train Nuhoch masteries. Had you trained the Nuhoch wallows mastery you could have used the wallows as "portals" to move between important areas. In addition, the way the zone is set out, you can always drop to the lowest land level and you'll be on one of the meta lanes that leads to the centre, from there, you can use another lane to travel and use the wallows within the lanes to travel to other mini hubs. The first time through, it can be confusing getting to some of the Hero Points. As for the ending of Heart of Thorns, I think there's something you may need to learn from here on out. The dragon fights tend to be twofold. There is a story instance where you, the commander, interfere with the dragon in some way - in HoT this is you destroying the dragon's mind. There is also an overground achievement, where the Pact is attacking the dragon is a much more epic, large scale fight. Presume ArenaNet didn't want to lock this fight away in a story instance that gets played once only. In addition, everyone has Skyscales now and power creep is a thing so Mordremoth dies super fast, but in the original HoT experience, though you could use updrafts and be slow, you needed to have Ley Line Gliding to quickly traverse between the islands. Totally understand the first-time-through frustration here though. I don't ever remember the Mordremoth fight being 30-40 mins eben on HoT release so not sure where that's come from. Back when HoT came out there were more mastery gates in the story. Players raged about it, and ArenaNet removed some of them. As such, new players don't have masteries well progressed by the time they "naturally" (through the story) get to Dragon's Stand. I always thought ArenaNet should not have backed down in that respect. It's important to remember in GW2 expansions that even though you don't have a raised level cap, you do (and should) still progress Masteries in order to participate in all content, so there is still a "levelling" process of sorts. I know you found this out later as there was a day of levelling Ley Line Gliding for Wing 3. You could have done this faster had you stacked XP boosters, and in fact, whilst you traverse the story, perhaps it's worth going to your guild tavern in tbe guild hall and getting the Guild XP boost that will always be active.

I think it's time for you to explore more with PoF and unlock the other mounts. Mounts in GW2 is the best and I think you should test it and review it for us. I'm sure you will love it. Upgrading your mounts also makes it so much better. Making exploring and navigation much much easier.

The new player experience for meta events at end game is pretty bad in GW 2. Which is mostly due to the Skyscale and people assuming that every new player knows the way, and if they don't, they just leave them behind, even when there is plenty if time left. It reflects very badly on the game and community, which is otherwise excellent. / GW 2 player since 2012

I can't wait for Preach to get to the Kralkatorrik Fight.

1:52 I hate Tangled depths too man. I've been playing the game since it launched with a 2 year break around living world season 1. At this point I got 3 legendary weapons, 2 ascended sets of armor and a lot of elite specs unlocked. Still can't stand that place. It goes up it goes down, it loops back around and sends you where you don't want to go. Hell, I still get lost there sometimes and I have the skyscale (Flying mount)

They need to remove Skyscale from Verdant Brink and Dragon's Stand. The amount of giga zergs in Verdant Brink during Night Bosses with flying mounts while newer players have to slowly glide their way, or find the right waypoint, or just accept defeat if the specific waypoint is contested while "veterans" are blasting the bosses is atrocious and just overall an anti-fun experience. Keeping skyscales enabled in HoT map is very anti new player experience.

I have never heard of the body fight and I've been playing for a bit now. I didn't know to look for pointers on it and just wanted to move on to the next story.

I've never played GW2 (well, past like a week at launch), but I always really liked the idea of zones with multiple vertical levels. It sounds like his issue with getting lost would've been dealt with just by having a height indicator on the destination marker on the map, rather than a rework of the zone.

Preach, I've been asking you for years man. Where is that intro music from man???

That's why I love commanding ppl through Heart of Thorns maps via HP train I love seeing the new players enjoy the game ,I'm improving my commanding skills to lead the metas in all of the maps of HoT

I can’t wait to hear what you think about Path of Fire’s story. That’s when the game starts to really shine imo.

Tangeled Depths is absolutely A Hellpit of a zone especially since the Map is next to useless for navigating it's various layers at points of egress and ingress, even people who've been at this game for a long time should know how awful that part is.

Tangled depth was my favorite map when the expansion got out? I kneww the mpa so well that I ended up doing a guide about the map with the event & the path to help them. Didn't work, this map is a acquired taste. Occasiannaly got someone thanking me for it !

You should have tried Tangled Depths with just your feet and a glider as when it launched - no mounts at all. I've been there dozens of times, and am still lost most of the time. As for story questing, I felt things got a lot better with LW season 3 (Glint's Legacy). I remember being very immersed in the story from that point forward, and most if not all the boss encounters are real bosses. I'm OK with mounts in Dragon's Stand. Once it's older content, it's on farm mode. PS - just logged into GW2, and one of the daily quests is Tangled Depths Event Completer - back to TD!.

I'm just sitting here waiting for LWS3 and PoF videos, cuz I know those are going to make you happy. And I know for sure you're doing to love everything else after that, the content just gets better and better, you can really see where ANet learned their lessons. I think you're going to be very pleased

I mean I like the idea of them happening at the same time, similar to my favorite meta event ever coming later, though he’s passed it by the time I’ve typed this. It’s like you get to be both the commander, a warrior of light type figure who the world knows and follows and your famous and it’s your story. While at the same time with the meta your also playing as the random solider number 5893 who did a little bit of damage and rocked that glider, closer to an old wow thing.

While powercreep is a thing, you are playing the modremoth encounter where probably 75%+of the player base has done this encounter many times. Having played since launch, I see this as a side effect of horizontal progression. The player base get hyper efficient at most meta events(especially since commanders are a thing). This happened with the most recent expansion, where final zone meta event was called the hardest in the entire game. I can't remember the last time I failed that one.

The sad thing about doing the HoT story, is how much is different compared to the base game, the mastery gates and the size of zones and meta events, if an player try plaing though the story in an second character, the experience if far better (plus points if the character is an Sylvari).

15:50 lol at the clipping here, you just parachuted through the boss like it wasn't there.

If I remember right, on HoT launch you had to do the Dragon Stand meta before you could do the last story. Then people complained so much they let you do the story right away.

Tangled Depths is my favorite zone in the game. The place is an explorer's paradise. There are so many nooks and crannies, so many cool things to find. It also has a huge visual variety. For people who don't mind just wandering and can create a map in their head (because the mini-map is only marginally useful here) the place is a wonderland. I also really like the outposts and meta event here.

Really love following this GW2 journey.

I remember completing HoT's story and feeling the same way. I haven't done the meta event yet because I didn't know it existed. I have heard the post HoT story is good? (My FFXIV friend told me it was, so I trust that opinion considering how good ShB was.) But I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to initiate those stories. And when it comes to gearing for fractals, it's a confusing mess needing many QoL improvements, too. My biggest hesitation of playing GW2 again is the, "oh, what was I doing and what am I supposed to do?" aspect of it.

2:10 --- Yes, yes it is. I played it a lot, solo and with friends, did the meta event several times, the build-up events... Its a horrible zone. Its one of those places where you ask yourself, "why am I here? I wanna go somewhere, anywhere else". 11:19 --- "Ran out of steam", for all the good in this game, yes, thats GW2 in a nutshell. Its a sad truth: they start off strong, you feel they have all the best intentions and plans laid out... and short before the end... nothing. The thing even basegame had over HoT was that at the very least you had a celebration at the end and the credits rolled. HoT was like "wait, thats it?". And dont get me wrong, Dragonstand is one of my alltime favorite zones in the entire game, the meta evant is just so cool... And yes, the Caledbolg, or however you spell that name, I forgot... questline is a nice finisher as well. But please remember, this event and that quest, they are mandatory, they are not part of the "MSQ", or "PQL", primary questline, as it was/is called in GW1. The story is unfinished, and the fact that the devs didnt finish it properly (with credits and everything) was just disappointing. I like the story of HoT, and though it may be unpopular, I really liked Trahearne, and having to kill him... I didnt like that at all. 14:26 --- Not his body per se, but the last remaining leftovers, manifesting in that huge serpent. 16:49 --- Yes... I feel you. Without having your Gliding maxed out, that last part of the zone is nigh impossible to navigate: you cant use the leylines for gliding, the distances between platforms is very far and unless you have an updraft, you die... Most people do this with gryfins and skyscales, which makes pretty much all the HoT zones a walk in the park... I think, only the glide-over-the-boss-and-throw-bombs-part is done by gliding. 20:13 --- Okay, I admit, I havent been playing GW2 in a while now... proper last gameplay is at least 2 years ago... but this is sad :( That boss fight was an event in and of itself, it was an achievement, it required tons of coordination... I dont know if they already nerfed it when I was grinding that event for the ascended weapons, that was around the end of HoT and starting PoF using the mounts... but I do remember that the boss itself took at the very least 10 minutes... 10 to 15 lets say, depending on how many people you had and how coordinated they were.