Guild Wars 2

Hi I’m new to the game. I played WoW for quite a bit and end-game had a pretty specific formula.
1. Raid
2. Get loot
3. Do a harder raid
4. Get more loot
Repeat until you have best gear.

I have been seeing a lot about dungeons, but nothing about raiding in GW2. Do raids exist? Will they exist? Would it make SENSE for them to exist, in this weird no tank no healer world? I’m not 80 yet, but end-game is what I play for, so I hope I have something to look forward to.

If raiding is what your looking for you will not find it here. This game is not a gear based one. Its very easy to get top level gear without so much as touching anything you might view as “EndGame”.

I think what he possibly means by
‘get better gear’
is better skins?
Or more interesting ones. Or just more of them in general.

Afaik, the only dungeon set of armor atm with particle effects is CoF.

As for sets you can buy after profiting from your ‘raid loots’ same sort of deal, there’s limited skins to choose from at this point.

My Advise:
Wait for expansion if you have all the gear skins you want and only plan on PvE.

More dungeons will be a certainty, and by that time I’m sure there will be alot more in other areas as well, + improved loot from open world that will make doing those big ol’ dragons worth doing.

After getting all the skins I want in a skin= reward kinda game, at level 80 I’m faced with:

-Making alts (which isn’t really that exciting 4th alt down the track)
-Waiting around the open world to do the dragon events which (at least currently but soon to be fixed I have heard) are not rewarding enough for the time spent.
-sPvP
-WvW
- Doing the same dungeons over and over again not for tokens (which by this time I don’t need, I have enough now to gear out all my alts too!), but for the 26 silver at the end or for experience on one of the alts I’m leveling.
-Get Legendary weapon (possibility to drive me insane somewhere along the way)
-Farm cursed shore events for Karma/money (another possibility of insanity if you don’t like grind)

At level 80 my conclusion is:
-Get the tokens you need for the skins you want and set up your exotic gear. Use the money from dungeons to buy exotic accessories and runes/sigils to complete your gear set.
-Get your traits sorted
-Go to WvW or sPvP
-Make alts if you so desire, if you need money just pop into a few dungeons on your main for the 26 silver then transfer your tokens onto your alts to gear those up.
-A fast way to level alts is through crafting – another use for any spare money u got left over from dungeons.

try Arah explore mode path 2 . feels just like a raid but with only 5 people.

swiftpaw.6397:

I think what he possibly means by
‘get better gear’
is better skins?
Or more interesting ones. Or just more of them in general.

Afaik, the only dungeon set of armor atm with particle effects is CoF.

As for sets you can buy after profiting from your ‘raid loots’ same sort of deal, there’s limited skins to choose from at this point.

My Advise:
Wait for expansion if you have all the gear skins you want and only plan on PvE.

More dungeons will be a certainty, and by that time I’m sure there will be alot more in other areas as well, + improved loot from open world that will make doing those big ol’ dragons worth doing.

After getting all the skins I want in a skin= reward kinda game, at level 80 I’m faced with:

-Making alts (which isn’t really that exciting 4th alt down the track)
-Waiting around the open world to do the dragon events which (at least currently but soon to be fixed I have heard) are not rewarding enough for the time spent.
-sPvP
-WvW
- Doing the same dungeons over and over again not for tokens (which by this time I don’t need, I have enough now to gear out all my alts too!), but for the 26 silver at the end or for experience on one of the alts I’m leveling.
-Get Legendary weapon (possibility to drive me insane somewhere along the way)
-Farm cursed shore events for Karma/money (another possibility of insanity if you don’t like grind)

At level 80 my conclusion is:
-Get the tokens you need for the skins you want and set up your exotic gear. Use the money from dungeons to buy exotic accessories and runes/sigils to complete your gear set.
-Get your traits sorted
-Go to WvW or sPvP
-Make alts if you so desire, if you need money just pop into a few dungeons on your main for the 26 silver then transfer your tokens onto your alts to gear those up.
-A fast way to level alts is through crafting – another use for any spare money u got left over from dungeons.

Arah, AC weapons have particle effects too and even better ones than CoF. And sadly CoF is considered the least unique and prestigue gear cause there were so many buggs, exploits that it was just too easy to obtain full set in no time.

And sadly no, explorable dungeons are not like raids cause they are even easyer than heroics in WoW and dungeons in other mmorpgs ive played (I ve played every mmorpg released in past 8 years). I am doing arah daily, path 2,3,4 and its just too easy. I have to pay attention only at lupicus and even there, just a little bit.

Dogblaster.6713:

swiftpaw.6397:

I think what he possibly means by
‘get better gear’
is better skins?
Or more interesting ones. Or just more of them in general.

Afaik, the only dungeon set of armor atm with particle effects is CoF.

Arah, AC weapons have particle effects too and even better ones than CoF. And sadly CoF is considered the least unique and prestigue gear cause there were so many buggs, exploits that it was just too easy to obtain full set in no time.

I was referring only to 2 things in that sentence. Particle effects and on armor specifically. Nothing to do with how easy it is to get.. Might also add I have enough tokens for every set from Arah down to AC now. I agree, even Arah is a cakewalk now.

Oh might also add that there are some crafted weapon skins you can go after too, that require lodestones. For example the Corrupted Weapons, and the destroyer weapons.
For corrupted you can get a recipe from a merchant after/before killing Claws of Jormag in Frostgorge sound.
As an example I made a Corrupted Shortbow for around 30 gold.
Buy the lodestones off tradebroker, have 400 in the craft required (for bow it was huntsman) And have an etched weapon (bought this off broker too).
They have some nice skins.

The game is about having fun not about gear. The dungeons is what you’ll want to do if you’re a raider. The explorables are essentially the raid equivalent in this game.

You choose what you want to do at end game rather than being forced to grind for something. Any rewards you get like gear are mostly for aesthetic reasons.

You can for example easily craft a lvl 80 exotic piece of armour with the same stats as a lvl 80 armour you can get for dungeons. Yet the dungeons armour will be harder and take longer to collect so if you wear full Arah dungeon armour it shows you worked hard for it.

- As a pve player you can do all the dungeons
- If you are a pvper you can do sPvP or WvW
- If you like to craft, you can craft a legendary
- You can get world completion
- You can aim for achievements

And sadly no, explorable dungeons are not like raids cause they are even easyer than heroics in WoW and dungeons in other mmorpgs ive played (I ve played every mmorpg released in past 8 years). I am doing arah daily, path 2,3,4 and its just too easy. I have to pay attention only at lupicus and even there, just a little bit.

Objectively, they are actually harder than raids with very, very few exceptions (such as pre-bugged Cthun, Yogg Sarron with all priests up, maybe pre-nerf sunwell, that FF11 boss that took 11+ hours to kill, and the like). Raids only SEEM to be more difficult because you spend more time managing people.

But the actual things demanded of an individual player are a joke in most raids. And Heroics? The only heroic in WoW that was more hard than even medium explorables was pre-nerf Shadow Lab.

An individual player needs to do far more in these instances here, if you look at it objectively. Sorry

Since you are on the topic of comparing exploration mode to WoW bosses, I can tell you first hand that the gap of difficulty is quite significant.

This is a personal anecdote, so take this however you want. But Yogg with 0 light (4 light up is the easier version btw) took around 350-400 attempts at average of 10 minutes each. Hardest exploration mode in Guild Wars 2 took 2 hours to learn and finish.

I know you have to take into account that you need to coordinate this with 24 other people in comparison to just 4, but you have to understand the skill discrepancy isn’t that significant at high up level of raiding. Exploration mode difficulty are at best Cataclysm heroics level with leveling/crafting gear.

Everything I’ve gathered from your answers is making me not excited for level 80.
I basically just heard “GW2 is easier than WoW, there is nothing to gain except aesthetic gear, and if you want you can grind forever I guess.” Those are three bad things.

Is there anything good, fun, cool about hitting 80? ANYTHING I can be excited for? Did I just waste my money buying this game?

The process of getting there is often times more rewarding than hitting 80 itself. This isn’t WoW or other typical mmo, where the actual game starts after hitting the level cap.

Dungeons aren’t that bad, however don’t expect to be doing that for months to come if the PvE content stays the same as it is right now.

GW was never a gear progression. You sound like thats what you want. My advise is to move on and save yourself frustration.

Alright, i will explain it pretty simply for you: There is no endgame. Guild wars 2 was advertised as a game where there would be NOTHING different from 1-80. 80 wasn’t the magical level where suddenly there is a ton of stuff to do that you couldn’t pre-80.
There is no gear treadmill, meaning most level 80 exotics are almost identical in stats and really only differ in appearance.

So what can you do at 80? You can: Get map completion (explore all of the areas in the map. This is actually very fun, as if you carefully follow dynamic events rather than just doing one and then moving along and if you pay attention to the lore of each zone, then you can really get into it), Do spvp/tpvp or WvWvW, max crafting professions, try and craft legendaries, do all the dungeons in the game until you are bored of them, etc. There isn’t any hardcore end-game stuff. Doesn’t mean you can’t look like a super-kitten guy at the end of the game, it’s just that you won’t have to grind for months to do it.

This game is quite casual (compared to others). Like i said, guild wars 2 was never advertised to have a “big” endgame. I hit 80, still trying to get all exotics then i am going to work on map completion, etc. Still a ton of stuff to do and i actually had some fun doing 100% completion for a zone with a friend since i took my time to pay attention to the world around me. This game may not be your cup of tea, but you can come back anytime there is a content update.

Zefiris.8297:

Objectively, they are actually harder than raids with very, very few exceptions

More like the opposite, the mechanics in the dungeons are incredibly simplistic and the only “hard” part about GW2 dungeons are seeing attack animations that deliver a lot of damage amongst obstructive particle effects.

So they’re only hard in very cheap ways that don’t present any meaningful cognitive challenge to players.