I was always super interested in legendary equipment, so when I came back to the game after years away I just picked one weapon from the list, put it into gw2efficiency, expanded it's required materials list and looked through it until I saw something that requires me to do content which I felt comfortable doing, like map completion or open world events. From there I naturally re-familiarized myself with the game as I kept working towards the legendary.

I, for one, would start with getting the hang of some builds. snowcrows.com has builds for high end gameplay (which I recommend) and open world. Many HoT and PoF elite specs are still meta. If you buy the Icebrood Saga story steps, you get access to the IBS strikes, which are a good mid-point between open-world triviality and higher-end content.

gw2efficiency.com is a handy website that allows you to gain an overview over your account, as well as offering crafting support, allowing you see what materials you ate missing to craft an item.

I took a years-long hiatus after HoT, briefly returning for PoF and I only really go back into the game after the Icebrood Saga already concluded. I wanted to complete legendaries, since after the introduction of the legendary wardrobe, you can equip any legendary on all your characters now. I also got into instanced content. First fractals, the raids, then strikes. I now am fully kitted out with legendaries and run all raids and strikes with CMs (- ToF CM) weekly.

if you don't have all the mounts go for those first (of what you can get access to that is). they take a while to get and you are basically focused on one task.

What's great about this game, imho, is that you can be gone for a while, but still get right into the action again, because your characters value doesn't depreciate, like in other MMO's.

I am sometimes gone from GW2 for a long time, but I usually just continue from where I left off, because the content is still relevant.

To add from what everyone is saying, the only real new system that you missed is strikes. Basically a 10 people single boss battle, like raids but without the filler and pre-events. Very puggable, especially what people call the easy 3 (shiverpeaks pass, voice/claw of the fallen, fraenir of jormag)

If you want to avoid story spoilers, be sure to follow the story until the end of the norn map of IBS before joining them.

EoD added a new mount, skiffs (boat), plus some new systems that you won't find outside of those maps anyway, so don't worry too much about it. But of course you need it to use the elite specs

The last expansion instead gave us new weapons without the traitline and unlocked elite specs' weapons to be used regardless of the spec. To unlock all of that you need to play the expansion until a certain point tho. If you don't have the skyscale in the expansion there is also a new way to get it that should be a bit faster

In general, there wasn't any big shake to things, it's mostly more of the same and some new side things. The only real difference is a bit of powecreep and that now every class can cover any role.

So take your time, play everything in order and all the new things will appear step by step

I was gone for 10+ years (I started with beta) and I just picked it up again a year or so ago by continuing the storyline and rolling a few new characters for their race-/class-specific stories, and it's been great.

Having a few people to play with on a regular basis makes all the difference. We do PvE for events/specific things (e.g. mounts) and now mostly play WvW because it's dynamic and fun - and it's an easy way to grind for legendary gear.

In that time, one mate's completed his legendary armour and two legendary weapons, another's not far off completing his armour set, and I've nearly completed my second armour piece because I'm the slacker. :)

The DLCs go on sale fairly regularly - usually the "seasons". Occasionally you'll see an "all seasons and latest expansion" go on sale, and should probably grab that if you haven't got them. After that, just buy the missing ones as and when you're ready to pay for them.

I would kill for controller support on this game. I have my steam deck set up with some pretty ok mappings that make the game playable, but compared to like FF14 the experience is just annoying enough to keep me from really digging in. It’s mostly the menu system.

Unfortunately you just missed a sale on the expansions about a month ago, but it sounds like they usually do one around the Steam summer sale as well.

A bucket list of things that you probably want to do asap:

• Check a few builds for your main on snowcrows, just so you can have something effective to start from when experimenting
• Start working on the wizards vault, lots of good stuff there and you have a few weeks before it rolls over
• Get back into content you used to do: if you were a fractal enjoyer for example, you should probably get back into it so you can atart making gold again

Other than that do what you enjoy, if you are on icebrrod saga you could finish the story then do the return to achievements for the legendary amulet if it's something you might like.

Check Zoalerah's streams on twitch she does a bunch of "how to character class" stuff and general learning stuff for people.