Guild Wars 2

Hi there, folks!

I just recently hit 80, by bumbling through my story and whatever hearts/events happened to cross my path as I explored the world. (One of the most enjoyable levelling experiences I’ve ever had in any game, I might also mention.) Now that I’m max level, though, I’d like to explore some of the dungeons in the game.

I’ve done a bit of research, and from what I’ve heard the dungeons are quite challenging (good for me), and the community has little patience for noobs (not so good for me). I’d like to prepare myself as much as possible, so I don’t look like quite such a schlep. In no particular order, my questions are:

- As a warrior, what are my responsibilities (if any) likely to be in a group? I looked into a good build, and it has a few group buffs that I expect to cycle through as needed. Anything specifically that people expect warriors to do by default?
- My gear stinks. I know there are no raids, but is there a gear progression I should do before I jump right into the dungeons? E.g, scour the AH for level 80 greens, then get some rare gear, then exotic gear? Or do I just go in with crap gear and work on obtaining the best stuff asap?
- I know I have to do any given dungeon on story mode before I can move on to explorer mode, but can I repeat story mode (to get more comfortable)?
- Is there anything I’m expected to bring to a dungeon? I’ve mostly ignored consumables in the game, thus far.
- If I’m upfront about my noobness, will people be accepting or simply kick me? Should I pretend I know what’s going on and fake it til I make it?
- Dungeons scale with my level, so I can’t brute force them. But is there a generally agreed upon ‘ranking’ for dungeon difficulty? I.e., start here, move here, &c. &c.?

That’s all I can think of for now. Any help, tips, or random advice will be much appreciated.

Welcome Warrior !!!
$$$$$$cash money zerk farm ping gear no grubs $$$$$$$

No hmm , seriously if you only do PvE you need one set : berserker with these stats : power, precision , critical dmg
Don’t buy the gear you can get for free with tokens in explorable mode dungeons. CoE , CoF , Arah . Just join a random group via LFG and be sure to listen if you never did before

Also in this game only damage matters so you need a pure damage setup .
The build 30\25\0\0\15 with greatsword and axe\mace but they will
nerf the OP hambow warrior in PvP so the traits may change

Banners are great for support, (Warbanners can prevent wipes), warriors generally are DPS heavy so berserkers is the usual choice of gear. What I did was buy a full set of cheap exotic gear off the AH when I capped, you can make do with greens and yellows initially but you’ll wanna get full exotics ASAP. You can repeat story mode as many times as you like, there is a daily sometimes for completing a story dungeon. There are potions for the dungeons which increase your damage against that dungeons’ enemy type, and also decrease the damage you take from them. (EX: Arah is Potion Of Undead Slaying). As long as you are in a regular group (not speed/experienced) most players wont mind because most likely there will be at least a couple newbies also. You don’t have to be upfront about it IMO, unless someone asks. There isn’t really a ranking for dungeons, they are each difficult in unique ways (at least until you get the hang of it) Arah is probably the most difficult simply because of the Giganticus Lupicus fight which is difficult for first-timers. For each dungeon there are multiple paths, generally there’s one or two which are considered much harder or longer. AC- p2 Arah – p4 TA – Aetherblades CoF – p3 etc. Just jump in, and have fun is my best advice. Try to find a regular group or guild to run with as PUGs (pick-up groups) can be great or disastrous.

Play CoF first if you’re L80 and are new to dungeons. It has a few events that require players coordinate, but they’re still easy, and this gets you into the feel of doing this to prepare you for tougher instances in other dungeons. This will also get you the gear you need, which is berserker’s gear (+Pow/+Prec/+Crit). As soon as you can afford it, get yourself Scholar Runes and train yourself to dodge so that you can stay above 90% as much as possible. CoF also will teach you simple tactics like LoS, stacking, skipping, and so forth. These apply everywhere else in varying degrees, so they’re good skills to know.

Once you’ve done all that, branch out and try new things. Let people know ahead of time that you’re new to a dungeon, and don’t join experienced groups. Please read the LFG listing before joining. From there, practice and practice and you’ll get better and eventually become experienced yourself.

Good luck!

If you run into problems:

Text based dungeon guides: http://gw2dungeons.net
Video based dungeon runs: can’t remember the usual link (hopefully someone will)
Warrior dungeon soloing: http://youtube.com/wethospu

I was in the same position as you a while back, new player just reached 80. You don’t really have to gear up to full exotics straight away unless you run high level dungeons such as Arah. Just run with what you find and slowly gear up to exotics.

You don’t have to complete story mode before you run explorable mode if someone else has explorable mode unlocked. But if you want to make your own groups then it is necessary.

Start off running the easier dungeons, AC, COF, SE and others. These will help you learn a few of the dungeon mechanics and just get better.

Find yourself a friendly guild that does a lot of dungeons, the environment you learn in can make or break your dungeon experience

If a group on LFG says “experienced only” or “exp only” or “speed run”, stay clear of them till you know the dungeon well. If there’s nothing specific mentioned, or “all welcome” in particular is posted, feel free to go and be open about being a noob— people are MUCH more willing to help an honest noob than carry a dishonest bad.

The above is by far the most important thing. Other than that, watch Strife’s videos (listed at the top of this forum) to get a feeling for the dungeons before you go into them, if you want. Learn the abilities of your class and what’s expected of you— this is something you will learn as you go along as well, of course, but reading up (and watching the videos) doesn’t hurt. So for example: prepare reflects if you’re a mesmer or a guardian, prepare might stacking if you’re a warrior or an ele, etc.

Good luck and have fun~

Hello and welcome. I was in a similar boat a while ago too. A few things I’ve picked up since then.
- I don’t know much about warrior but it seems that all classes in dungeons worry first about dps and second about some type of support. All I hear about wars is BANNERS.

- my recommendation for gear is to buy all greens off the auction house since they’re so cheap. Rares are better but are also 20 times more expensive. Then do CoF p1 and 2 for tokens to get your berserkers exotics.

- you have to do story mode to start an explorer run but not to join so don’t be too worried about getting your story modef done.

- For consumables I use the slayer potions that drop in the dungeons but I don’t buy them and if I don’t have them I don’t use them. Consumables is one area I’ve been meaning to get more diligent in. I’ve heard they can make a pretty decent difference.

- if people don’t specify it as a speed run or exp only you wouldn’t have to announce it but feel free to ask questions if you have them. Most ppl are pretty helpful.

-I’d say cof p1 and sorrows embrace p1 are the easiest. Cof p2 is pretty easy too. Ascalonian Catacombs p1 is not too bad but takes a little more finesse.

Good luck out there.

For the gearing aspect: before you accumulate those ~1300 tokens from a dungeon, get rare berserker armor and weapon gear (30*9=2,70g) from trading post and masterwork trinkets (10*5=0,5g). Slot the armor with ruby orbs (10*6=0,6g). Cheap sigils for weapons are a huge variety, but when in doubt go for major air+bloodlust.

That’s as cost effectove as you can go (3,8g).

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who replied. I did my first story mode dungeon, and I think it went fairly well. The group was more than happy to explain things to me, and understood when I screwed up.

I do have one more question though. I found that I was dying a lot. Now I know that’s normal for a first timer, but it wasn’t due to me standing in the fire. In a lot of instances, I’d hang back, we’d engage with trash, then I’d charge in and use hundred blades. My health would immediately drop to 0 because everything decided to hit me at once. Should I be hanging back with a longbow? Is melee a liability? Do I have defensives on my warrior I’m not aware of?

That will really have to come with expirience.

Just by watching the monsters you’ll eventually learn to tell the dangerous moves and ways to evade/sidestep/disengage/etc them.

Meanwhile, dodges and greatsword spin are your main survivability. Don’t be too afraid to move around more than experienced people do during non-boss parts.

If all else fails, swap an utility for endurance regen signet/use an offhand warhorn (weakness+vigor on a single skill are slightly underrated and it got a blast finisher but having dps skills is a priority).

As TKiller says, it’s all about learning the dungeon, and downs while you’re learning are to be expected. Melee is definitely something you should be practicing though, because it’s by far the best way to deal damage. Watch monsters, don’t be afraid to dodge back, etc.

Everyone here will always promote pure zerker gear as it is far and away the best option in dungeons. However, don’t feel bad for slotting soldiers gear into head, chest, and legs (you can get exotic soldiers gear for clearing AC exp mode). Just three slots like that with a PTV (power – toughness – vitality) gearset can go a ~long~ way to helping your survivability as you learn. As you get better, you can slot in more berserker’s. For more details on this strategy, check out for example this guide: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84978-guide-getting-geared-at-level-80/ I also find that this gearset helps when the rest of the party is not in berserker gear, as longer fights can be a bit tough to take with pure glass cannon gearing.

Hope this helps your survivability!

Get your armor to 2,500 to 3,000 range will help your survival during melee.

Battledoll.1803:

Get your armor to 2,500 to 3,000 range will help your survival during melee.

I didn’t read everything but NEVER lie about not having done a dungeon most times that is a sure fire way to get booted from a dungeon.

I don’t know how many people legitimately try to help when someone says they are new or just carry said person through, but when I join a group and no one knows what to do I will give little explanations before fights so everyone has a general idea of what to do. We might wipe we may not, but practice doing it is the only way you will get around to learning it no matter how many guides you watch/read just jump in and if you drown you have 4 other players there to help.

TKiller.6829:

Battledoll.1803:

Get your armor to 2,500 to 3,000 range will help your survival during melee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshkO8HqQ10

yeah, think we’re gonna have to go with “no” on this one

Welcome to level 80! You made a good choice picking warrior. They’re an incredibly solid class for dungeons. The dungeons can be challenging or they can be very easy, depending on your group comp, and the skill and gear of the players. Most people I’ve noticed in pugs have patience for noobs, AS LONG as you let them know you’re new in the beginning of a dungeon. Some people are kittens and will immediately kick you, but if that happens, just keep trying. Or, you can look up a dungeon guide before you actually join a group so you have an idea of what’s going to happen. Maybe even watch a few videos. I’d highly recommend finding a good guild you can run dungeons with without feeling pressured.

As a warrior, your responsibilities will be supplying your group with fury, might, and banners. The most common banners people bring to a dungeon group is strength and discipline. You will also bring “For Great Justice!” to supply your group with might and fury. If you’re the only warrior, bring both strength and discipline, and in the beginning of the dungeon, ask the group who’s going to carry your second banner. Make sure someone is carrying your second banner from fight to fight since you can’t carry both.

Depending on how much gold you have, I’d buy exotics right off the bat. I wouldn’t recommend buying rares. If you can’t afford that, just buy greens and do dungeons and different gold making methods like champ farming and open world events to make gold. You can also buy gear with dungeons tokens. Do dungeons where you can get berserker gear. I would recommend CoF paths 1 and 2 and CoE all paths since they’re pretty easy and pugs don’t usually fail at them.

You don’t have to do story mode to enter explorable mode. Someone who’s done story mode can open the explorable dungeon for everyone else, so I wouldn’t worry about story modes unless you want your dungeon master title or you’re interested in the lore of the dungeons. Some of them are pretty interesting. SE story is probably my favorite. I actually have a bit more fun in story mode than I do in most explorables.

Yes, there are a few consumables. I would recommend buying dragon’s breath buns candied dragon rolls, and slayer potions. Use them all the time. The foods are cheap enough that you can use them constantly. Use dragon’s breath if you’re going to be killing mobs constantly to take advantage of the proc, and use candied dragon rolls otherwise.

If you watch dungeon videos, you can probably get away with faking it. Unless someone asks if anyone hasn’t done it before, then I would absolutely not lie about it.

You can pretty much jump into any dungeon. I would say they’re all very comparable in terms of difficulty except Arah. Fractals of the Mists also begins to get challenging at around scale 20.

Good luck! And you can whisper me ingame if you need any extra tips. I have 1.8k hours played on warrior and I can help you through a few dungeons if you want.

I would never recommend buying exotics from TP they are overpriced when you could get the same from just farming CoF P1 & 2 for a week and you would be pretty solid. Only thing that you would really need to buy are trinkets and sigils/runes.

Once again, great advice, and I’m taking it all to heart.

Another question, though! A number of people have suggested buying a full set of exotics. Were I to do so, what then would be the benefit to running dungeons?

Recipes, tokens to buy armors/weapons to salvage for ectos/mats/inscriptions, loot, and playing the PUG lottery for fun.

I would buy a full set of rares and then grind dungeon tokens for the exotics if I were you.

I wouldn’t buy exotic armor but spend your money on exotic trinkets (rings, accessories, amulet). Armor can be gotten with tokens but as far as i know the only way to get exotic trinkets is through FotM and crafting (which are then posted on the Auction House).

I don’t know about you but when I first hit 80 I had about 2 gold. Not near enough to be wasting on exotic armor. Doing a dungeon will get you 1 gold plus maybe some stuff to sell and some dungeon tokens. Every 3-5 runs will get you a new piece of exotic armor if I recall which will replace whatever you’re wearing. IMO that buying rares is a little pricey to discard that quickly. On the other hand once you’re done with that rare you can decon it for ectos or throw it into the forge so it’s not actually a total loss.

i.e. do what my post suggested and then slowly buy out exotic armor+weapons with tokens and trinkets with gathered gold.

shaidyn.4016:

Once again, great advice, and I’m taking it all to heart.

Another question, though! A number of people have suggested buying a full set of exotics. Were I to do so, what then would be the benefit to running dungeons?

Fun + gold basically. It’s one of the more effective ways of gathering gold in the game (though there are more effective ones, they’re less interesting IMO).

But yeah, either stay in greens and slowly build up exotic, or buy rares and slowly build up exotic with tokens. I bought rares with my main, probably won’t with my alts. You can also craft rares as you gain crafting levels, for example.

Honestly, the best piece of advice I can give you is to find a guild that is willing to help you learn dungeons. Preferably one that is patient with newcomers and will help guide you without telling you directly how to play.