The main benefits of the expansions are the skills you can take out of them.
For Heart of Thorns, it's gliding and mushroom skills, which do show up in other zones afterward and can be used in main game zones.
For path of fire, it's mounts. Mounts and mount skills are insanely useful and make a lot of other zones much easier. A lot of newer players will do path of fire BEFORE heart of thorns (that's not story order) because mounts make some of the HOT zones SO MUCH EASIER to get through, whereas without mounts they're...disorienting and scary.
I will say that storywise, Heart of Thorns is THE Sylvari expansion. LWS2 and HOT are ultimately very special for sylvari characters - you will hear and experience things as you play through them that human characters do not. And it's all about who and what the sylvari really are.
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For Heart of Thorns, it's gliding and mushroom skills, which do show up in other zones afterward and can be used in main game zones.
For path of fire, it's mounts. Mounts and mount skills are insanely useful and make a lot of other zones much easier. A lot of newer players will do path of fire BEFORE heart of thorns (that's not story order) because mounts make some of the HOT zones SO MUCH EASIER to get through, whereas without mounts they're...disorienting and scary.
I will say that storywise, Heart of Thorns is THE Sylvari expansion. LWS2 and HOT are ultimately very special for sylvari characters - you will hear and experience things as you play through them that human characters do not. And it's all about who and what the sylvari really are.