Guild Wars 2 – Janthir Wilds Review

Guild Wars 2 Janthir Wilds Review

Guild Wars 2 is an PC MMORPG that recently announced their 5th expansion to the game; Janthir Wilds . The main changes was that moving forward since the previous expansion Secrets of the Obscure, Guild Wars 2 will be having more frequent updates (each expansion will be yearly) but smaller in size compared to the previous expansions, while still adopting the Buy to Play model with a smaller price tag.

While it may be a smaller sized expansion it still will provide the following

GW2-JW-Lowland-Shores-Bears
Lowland Shores
  • New Story Acts
  • New Maps
  • Homestead
  • Continuation of the Newly introduced Dailies System & Currency
  • Spear for Land Usage for all classes
  • New Masteries
  • Warclaw Unlocked for everyone with Janthir Wilds
    • New PVE skills for Warclaw
  • New Legendary Spear
  • Continuation of the Rifts Hunts in Janthir Wilds
  • 1 new PVP Mode (Push)

Guild Wars 2 is an game that is over 12 years old now and it is still striving with a decently high population that will allow you to do any content you want in game with ease. However, as with all new expansion or content, especially ones with a price tag, are they really worth it?

New Story Acts

Just like previously, I will not go into too much details about the storyline to avoid spoilers but, the story for Janthir Wilds is GREAT. Much better than Secrets of the Obscure. The bears, oh the bears, they are fantastic. I have already done the storyline multiple times on multiple characters and really enjoying this new expansion so far. Only downside for me is (incoming hot take), I hate it when the story makes me go do hearts/level up a mastery. I’ll do them on my own, when I want to. Don’t tie that into the story.

Still waiting for the closure on Ends of Dragons, what is Aurene doing nowadays, is she still resting? what does it mean with her magic returning to ley-lines? Did she pass away in her sleep… Why don’t we ever go just visit her, even if she doesn’t respond… Maybe there will be a Living World mini DLC on it, but at the path Anet is going, that seems to be highly unlikely.

New Maps

So far, we gotten two new maps and I am loving them. the previous SoTO maps felt too annoying to navigate without a skyscale; which make sense, the entire map was featured around the Skyscales. While this one is more featured around Warclaw. I guess I am just a landlubber.

Otherwise, the maps are big and enjoyable. The events & meta are fun, exciting, and to be honest, I probably done the meta dozens of times but only actually succeeded a handful of times… looks like nerf incoming?

Once again, the meta event uses the same “Kill Same Time” mechanics constantly which is a pain considering people derp and don’t pay attention to commanders or chat in general which potentially could just ruin the entire meta run.

Homestead

It’s big, it’s your own and it’s nearly all fully customizable.. It’s your own personal home and land. I personally have not going around decorating it at all, however, I have already max out the mastery for Homestead due to giving an awesome 8% buff for Magic Find & sPvP/WvW Track which is a must have for me.

The other benefit of homestead was having a 1 button harvest everything of the type (plants/wood/minerals) in your home instance with your chosen glyph. Making home instance harvesting alot faster than before.

I have personally seen some awesome homestead decorations on Reddit and it is just amazing what people can do with them. Here are a few examples of my favorites.

The Crypt (Custom Homestead Design) WIP : r/Guildwars2 (reddit.com) by OliOliOxenFree

Homestead Jumping Puzzle : r/Guildwars2 (reddit.com) by solidstatus5by5

GW2-JW-Default-Homestead
Default Homestead Look

Spear

This is going be very subjective and this is purely my own opinion.

I have used spear on most of the classes I play often, Necromancer , Ranger, Guard and Revenant and I do really enjoy it on the Guard and Revenant. At least in PvP, I don’t think it would replace any of the current weapon builds I am using but it is a fun change every now and then when I wanna just muck around with different weapons than my standard builds. I want to like them but also the fact that it is missing a ton of skins along with feeling a lot weaker with too much “mech” built into it (for pvp at least) makes it a turn off. For guard at the very least, you would want to near-always use Weapon 5 first so Weapon 2 to 4 has an additional buff; else if you use Weapon 2 then Weapon 3, only 3 will have the additional effects. This makes the combos a lot more predicting in PvP and isn’t as fluid free-form for maximum effects.

Legendary Spear

It has been rumored to be released in November 2024 along side a new raid, so it is still not in game yet.

Although the Ascended Meteor Spear one from Wizard Vault is pretty cool and already available, a plus is that there is a mini-storyline you have to do which is an additional fun touch (or annoying).

Guild Wars 2 Ascended Spear - Non-Combat
Meteor Spear Out of Combat
Guild Wars 2 Ascended Spear - Combat
Meteor Spear In Combat

Masteries & Warclaw

Just like the previous expansion, I already had my warclaw unlocked prior to this expansion so it wasn’t a huge benefit for me besides some of that compensation. Meanwhile the new masteries are more of a standard of something new expansions comes with.

The great thing about the new Warclaw revamp is that Warclaw was something I had never used outside WvW as it just wasn’t a great mount. If I could use any other mounts (non-flying) in WvW, I would definitely do that. Beetle to get to places faster, raptor for normal travel & pre-pvp initiation for the interruption/small black hole suck.

However, now, with Janthir Wilds maps, there are bosses and events that require you do use the Warclaw, else making it impossible to complete. Warclaw itself can briefly “fly” and jump off high places without dying. In fact, I actually killed myself in WvW from a suiciding off a cliff since I forget these mastery upgrades were strictly PVE only.

Mastery wise, there isn’t a whole lot and as of September, the max Mastery Level (including all expansions) is 600. Unlike HoT exp bars, it is usually a few million only to finish each track making it super easy to max out.

The masteries, I woul dsay, they are all quite essential to have in both Janthir Wilds maps and out of Janthir Wilds maps. Especially the Homestead buff upgrade. I actually leave a few alts in Homestead nowadays purely for the buff for PVP.

Rifts Hunts

Rifts are back and it is still not fun, it’s annoying, it’s boring and it’s just mind numbingly brain dead. Nothing has changed since SoTO implementation and it is still the same currently set up for players.

  1. Use Scan of Rift skill
  2. Teleport to the nearest Waypoint
  3. Open up or start killing and fill up kill bar if it already started
  4. Receive first step rewards
  5. Pull elite/champ from rift
  6. Kill elite/champ
  7. Close Rift
  8. Receive second step rewards
  9. Repeat

Now if you want to go ahead and do Tier 2 or Tier 3 rift, you will need to craft Motivation which cost a lot of previous tier materials (or gold from trading post) and do exactly the same as the Tier 1 Rifts.

Not going go much into it, but it’s something I rarely do and quite frankly don’t care for. I have a few pieces of the Open World Legendary Armor and will finish it whenever I get enough of the rift essences via Janthir Wilds Expedition Contract.

Player vs Player

A new sPvP mode in Guild Wars 2, called Push, is a 5v5 match where the main objective is to push an objective circle to the enemy base while preventing them from doing the same to yours, there is only 1 objective circle. It’s basically a tug-o-war more or less.

  • Objective: Capture a central point that then moves towards the enemy base.
  • Winning Condition: The team that pushes the objective the furthest wins. If the timer runs out and the objective is contested, the game goes into overtime until the contest ends.
  • Gameplay: It’s designed to be more accessible and enjoyable, focusing on action and teamwork around a single objective.

Each match usually last on average between 2-6 minutes long with 2 minutes if your team isn’t focused and gets instantly capped. You may laugh now but this happens a lot more than you think, your entire team just fights against 3-4 enemies in mid while that 1 sneaky thief just pushes the circle and finishes the game.

There are also times where games last the full length as times does eventually run out where neither team pushes towards the end, the winner would be who ever pushed the furthest.

Fun

Honestly, this ENTIRE expansion is super focused on homestead yet I am personally having tons of fun in Guild Wars 2 while basically avoiding homestead. It really shows that the game can do super well and stay fun without enjoying it’s main feature or attraction. I probably done endless hours of the new PvP mode Push during it’s beta between 10th September and 23rd September. I won quite a bit, however, probably lost even more. Which is fine, the mode is fun. I really don’t care much about losing. It still feels unpolished but it is a beta anyways. Even so, I would still totally recommend Guild Wars 2 players to purchase it and enjoy it. The price tag to entertainment value alone is more than it’s worth compared to any other MMORPG or even AAA games out there. After all, there are plenty to do on Guild Wars 2 but at the same time, you could also say, there is nothing mandatory to do as it is all horizontal progression. Whether you start today vs starting next year, you will never be behind. Unlike other expansions, Janthir Wilds isn’t a must-have expansion as it really does not offer any must-have elements besides on-land spear for all classes. As it is still possible to unlock Warclaw through the old tedious method via WvW & owning Path of Fire. Guild Wars base game is free so there is honestly no excuse to not download it and give it a try before buying any of the Expansions.

Fayie Enterprise

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