Guild Wars 2

So I recently bought GW1… mostly because I want the ranger pets in GW2. I mean, I want all 50 points eventually, but I’ll start with the first uh, 30 or whatever to get all the skins and stuffs. Compared to GW2 eeeeeverything about the game feels massively different and I am completely lost. I still spam spacebar out of habit or try to dodge out of the way when I see enemies come at my poor Sunspear character. And then her corpse stares at me like “I hate you, why are you doing this to me?”. So anyway, I’ve been poking around at different internet guides for the Hall of Monuments/linked account achievements (and also how to not be a total scrub).

Does anyone have any suggestions for a guide they find to be exceptionally good? Are there any good guides that keep in mind the person might be totally new and have no back knowledge of the game?

Random aside: I’m actually super excited to be playing this. It’s really neat to live through some of the lore and I feel like the locations in GW2 are becoming more meaningful to me as a player as I poke around GW1 (and also get my butt handed to me).
Disclaimer: I wasn’t sure if this was the right subforum or not…. I’m sleepy <3

I think there was a Dulfy guide once, but i can´t find it anymore. Besides that, I suggest you try to learn your class, possibly unlock as many heroes as possible and check builds for them.
You can find many team builds here:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Category:All_working_PvE_builds

I strongly suggest to get your heroes as your main healing/support specced. Something like Discordway could work, but it requires you to have some heroes from NF and EotN unlocked.

But with a good team setting it´s pretty much soloable

Instead of a Sunspear, maybe another profession. At least till you get used to the game. A Spirit Lord Ritualist offers a lot of protection for a beginner. You can set up the spirits and move back, letting them do the work. After you are used to the game you can start using the other builds if you want.

Get all the heroes you can. You might consider getting mercenaries also, which are your level 20 characters that you can play with. The nice part about mercenaries is you can set up a group with exactly the profession combination you want. Both heroes and mercenaries can be set up with your choice of skills, armor and attributes.

The wiki can be quite helpful, starting here, perhaps: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_earning_Hall_of_Monuments_rewards

Good luck.

There is no Sunspear profession. Did you mean Paragon, perhaps? Or just that you are on the Sunspear Title track?

I highly recommend DoomBox. His videos helped me understand GW1 and how to accomplish a lot. Plus, he is pretty dang entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Dooombox

Also you will want to check out Massively. Rubi (who now works at ANet) wrote some great stuff. It helped a lot.

Guide to Your first Points:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/10/18/flameseeker-chronicles-stop-telling-me-how-to-get-50-points-whe/

Guide to 30 Points:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/10/11/flameseeker-chronicles-brother-can-you-spare-a-diamond/

Guide to 50:
http://massively.joystiq.com/tag/the-road-to-50

Oh, also if you aren’t using the Triple Necro build on your heros you should. It will pretty much let you roll over everything in your way.

(Warning, some of DoomBox’s videos feel pretty dated. Still really good info)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QfAziVA9vA&list=TLPRLBi3uTBSsvx5v7S6OHfkqPdW9RL9GC#t=101

Also for some money, identify/salvage blue rarity salvageable armor. This can give runes wich are worth up to 5platinum.

As far as Hall of Monuments points go, this link details it in a nutshell.

This site contains player submitted builds for all professions, as well as entire team compositions. Use this for inspiration, or if you don’t want to do much thinking in GW1 and just want to get in and out if the game ASAP (not recommended, enjoy the game, it’s fantastic).

The GW1 Wiki contains an absolute tonne of information on literally everything. Use it when you need to find out more about literally anything related to GW1.

Useful information:

Conditions and just about everything related to them.

Hex spells in general, and a big list of the skills.

Health degeneration and how it works (conditions and hexes).

Condition removal skills.

Hex removal skills.

Interrupting and everything related to it. These skills are necessary in level 20 content. Heroes are fantastic at using them if you give them the means to.

Energy and everything to do with it. From maintaining your own energy, to denying the enemy of their energy, as well as a big list of skills and links.

General Tips:

• Play through the campaigns first before aiming for HoM stuff, to learn the skills, the enemy compositions, the lay out of instances etc.

• As you are learning the game and its areas and encounters, sometimes YOU WILL have to restart the area or mission and bring a different build to combat the inhabitants. Don’t let it discourage you.

• You will need to build your party through the traditional Tank/DPS/Healer mentality. The best groups use healers that can still do damage, and DPS who can take hits or avoid them.

• Bring at least 1 healing skill, and maybe even a condition removal skill. Ranger primary and secondary has access to Antidote Signet which is the best self cleanse in the game.

• When using Heroes you should set a hotkey for “Flag All” and “Cancel Flags”. I used ‘R’ and ‘E’ respectively. Use this a lot. And I mean, A LOT. This allows you to move heroes out of AoE and away from a lost fight before they gain Death Penalty. A good strategy is to play yourself as a semi-tank, flag your heroes some distance from the enemies, you run in and take the initial agro, then unflag the heroes.

• Synergize your team build, don’t just think about your own personal character build.

• The AI will move out of AoE after a second or two, so time your knockdown skills to trap them in.

• You will come across casters that can be especially tough to kill (huge healing), or who will deal an insane amount of AoE damage. Depleting their energy or interrupting their skills will make the encounters easier.

• Not all conditions work on all targets like GW2. For example you can’t bleed or poison a rock golem.

Information you’ll need later.

• What to expect from Hard Mode

• Tips on Vanquishing. Contains extra information such as which zones contain hidden enemies and which active quests will make the zone harder.

• Everything you need to know about Elite Skills.

• Everything pet related.

• The Lightbringer title. Contains information on good farming locations.

• The Sunspear title. Contains information on good farming locations.

• The Kurzick and Luxon titles, and everything you need to know about maxing them.

The best way to acquire those points is doing the PvE titles.

I did them all (GWAMM, and the whole 50 points and much more) with my necromancer, with the Spirit Spam build and an hero team of 3 necromancer. Actually, there is 2 kind of builds that are very very very efficient for this set up, it’s the Discordway team and the Sabway. If you have a buddy with which you can play, one should use the Discordway and the other de Sabway. Those two combined are super efficient to get the vanquisher title, or any mission in PvE mode.

Unfortunately, i don’t have any link right now to give you, but they can easily be found on other forums (just type “discordway necro team” or “sabway necro team” should be good).

If you want further advice, do not hesitate to drop me a PM.

EDIT : didn’t saw it, but check Prophet video, that’s what i’m talking about.
EDIT 2 : it’s discordway and not SS, SS was the UW duo farm build ^^

((Editing as I go))

General skills to use and abuse:

• Blind is a hugely overpowered condition that will make almost every physical attacker completely useless. This link contains a list of all the ways to apply it.
• Daze is a condition that causes the targets spell to be interrupted when struck by a physical attack. Great against monks and other casters.

PvE only skills (you can use these, but not heroes):

• Pain Inverter will absolutely decimate any enemy that deals any AoE damage. Overpowered. Earned in Eye of the North.
• You Move Like A Dwarf. Instant knockdown. Overpowered. This is earned from Eye of the North.
• Save Yourselves! is a PvE skill that you can use as a warrior primary or secondary. Overpowered. Earned in the Factions campaign.
• If you are a caster, you can abuse Necrosis for huge spammable damage. Requires Necromancer as primary or secondary class. Earned in the Factions campaign.

Here is a list of some easily attainable skills for you and your heroes.

Mesmer skills to use and abuse (or be careful of):
Remember, the AI will not stop attacking or casting

• Empathy deals damage to the target when it attacks.
• Backfire deals damage to the target when it casts a spell.
• Wastrel’s Worry deals damage when the target activates any skill. Hex is removed after triggering once.
• Diversion will shut a skill down after it activates.
• Cry of Frustration deals damage and interrupts in an AoE. Heroes and enemies use this well.
• Shame is good for punishing defensive casters.
• Guilt is good for punishing offensive casters.
• Mistrust is good for punishing offensive casters.

Necromancer skills to use and abuse (or be careful of):

• Insidious Parasite. When the target attacks, the caster steals health from it.
• Spiteful Spirit. When the target does any action, Spiteful Spirit causes AoE damage at its location.
• Rotting Flesh causes disease in the target. Spreads quick.
• Putrid Explosion. Explodes a corpse for big damage.
• Well spells

Ranger skills to use and abuse:

• Lightning Reflexes is a stance that gives you 75% block, and 33% increased attack speed.
• Whirling Defence gives you 75% block. Damages ranged attackers.
  ^These two used in succession allows the ranger to tank most of the game
• Choking Gas is a Preparation that interrupts the target and adjacent targets when struck. Very powerful.
• Throw Dirt blinds the target and all adjacent targets, hampering their physical attacks immensely. Very good skill.

Guild Wars 1 has way more depth than GW2 ever will, there are many skills that synergize well together, even across classes.
Example of one good cross class skill combination:

• The ranger spirit Winter turns all elemental damage into cold damage against all allies and enemies.
• The Mesmer stance Mantra of Frost reduces cold damage, and provides energy management.

So if you equipped all of your heroes with Mantra of Frost in a heavy elemental damage area, and you or a hero drops the Winter spirit, you all benefit from damage reduction against any elemental attacks.

• You can even go one step further, and use the elite ranger spirit Greater Conflagration to turn all physical damage into fire damage. Affects all allies and enemies.

This physical damage will turn into fire damage, which will then turn into cold damage because of Winter, which will be reduced by Mantra of Frost.

This is all I can be bothered doing for now :p

@OP

If your main intent to play GW1 is to get HoM points for GW2, and play GW2 then.
The best advice i can give is; do not go for 50 points. Stop at 30.
Getting all 50 will be very time consuming and/or prolly also expensive (ingame gold).

I recommend getting Heroes quick AND improving/upgrading them.

Holy cow you are ALL BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! THANK YOU!

Clarification: My character is on the Sunspear title track and is a ranger. I have no clue how to change that or if it is changeable. Necros look like fun and I adore GW2 ranger spirits. Do mesmers work at all the way they do in GW2? Also… there’s a hard mode? That’s… kind of awesome. o.o

Oh, silly question, but is there a lock at 5 per party? Like, at the moment I have my character, a pet, + 3 others. Do I get more slots as I level up or do I need to buy more from a gemstore like thing?

Gotta go to work but I will reread everything when I get home and pop back into the game. Sorry for the rambling first post!

—edit—

I forgot to add, thank you for the reminder about the Trinity. I’ve been playing like I do in GW2 where I just kinda keep myself up. That might help me…. stop dying every 5 minutes. ^-^;;

The number of slots in party depends on the area. In the low level, it’s 4, the pets are never taken into account. It will go up to 8 when you’ll reach higher level areas. Some special instance allow you to go 12 slots, but that’s AvA or Urgoz. There is now way to get more slots.

Mesmer are different in both game, due to the fact the gameplay itself is very different, give it a try, and you’ll see by yourself

Also Realist posts are really good one, he pretty summed everything you’ll need to get started.

I have just one advice. If you rush 50 points and GWAMM like I did just before GW2 starts use Ritualist as your main it makes lots of challenges much easier.

Allaraina.8614:

Holy cow you are ALL BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! THANK YOU!

Clarification: My character is on the Sunspear title track and is a ranger.

I mained ranger in GW1, I personally found it to be the most fun and versatile class, I just wish the GW2 version could even compare to it.

As you progress in the game soon you will be able to swap your secondary profession at any time in an outpost. You will also unlock Assassin and Ritualist as a secondary class when you play through the Factions campaign.

The ranger attribute Expertise is what makes the ranger really enjoyable in my opinion, it allows you to create a ridiculously vast amount of builds with many different secondary classes.

“For each rank of Expertise, the Energy cost of all of your attacks, Rituals, touch skills and Ranger skills are decreased by 4%. Several skills, especially those related to Energy costs and skill recharge times, become more effective with higher Expertise.”

What this means is, you can use all of the below skills for a cheaper energy cost than what is listed.

A lot of Warrior and Paragon skills use adrenaline, 1 adrenaline is gained per hit. Expertise does not reduce this cost, only Energy cost.

• ALL Ranger skills
• ALL Touch skills from any profession. Sort the list by profession, as it lists some skills you can’t use, or very rarely get to use.
• ALL Ritual skills. Good for using Ritualist secondary to spirit spam.
• Assassin dagger attacks
• Dervish scythe attacks
• Warrior axe attacks
• Warrior sword attacks
• Warrior hammer attacks
• Paragon spear attacks

Use the link to the Expertise page to see how much energy the skills will cost at each level of Expertise.

No other class offers as much versatility and creativity than the ranger. I’d even go so far as to say that ranger is better at being an assassin and a warrior than those profession as a main.

These 2 skills you will almost always want on your skill bar:
- Lightning Reflexes. Block and attack speed.
- Throw Dirt. OP blind.

In a condition heavy zone, bring Antidote Signet.

Other than that, muck around with different skills and play styles and have fun!

My personal favourite for doing Hard Mode and Vanquishing is Ranger with Assassin Secondary.

These are a few famous builds to show how versatile a ranger can be:
Touch Ranger (Ranger/Necro)
Bunny Thumper (Ranger/Warrior (hammer))
Spirit Spammer (Ranger/Ritualist). The link is a general all profession build. As a ranger you would bring the first 4 skills shown, along with Summon Spirits and 3 other skills of your choosing.

Just in those 3 builds, there is an unblockable lifestealing caster, a pet/hammer build, and a minion build. And that’s not to mention a ranger can play with daggers and scythe’s and bows and interrupt builds, place traps, play as a tank, and use spirits etc!

My advice to people starting GW1 is really simple:

• Play through all of the campaigns first. Stick to one at a time but do unlock the main city in every campaign as soon as you can for the skills and heroes available there. Wiki the missions and plan/build according to what you’ll face.
• Try to get the bonus for every mission, even if it means trying more than once.
• Don’t worry about meta builds yet. You’ll learn more, and you don’t have access to the skills they need anyway.
• Don’t be afraid to control or at least watch your hero skill bars.
• Wiki every word you come across in game or in chat.
• Hexes, Conditions, Enchantments, Protection Prayers, Tanking, Zaishen Challenge Quests, Nicholas the Traveler, Skill Quests, Attribute Quests, Collectors.

I would start with a Prophecies character, the difficulty goes up more slowly and it works well as a tutorial campaign, including having the most quests that reward skills for free. Do everything you can in pre-searing.

By the time you finish all of the campaigns you will know much more about the game and be better prepared to chase those later achievements. Enjoy the journey!

P.S. All skills you unlock on any character will be available for all of your heroes on your account (and for characters in pvp, or pve by spending tomes.) For instance, you can make temporary characters in Factions and do their tutorial skill quests and then put those skills on your main’s heroes before you can switch secondary professions.

@Realist…hmm..since u recommend Ranger, i now have to say that imho that is the worst GW1 class to play.
Becos, if i remember the argument, anyting a Ranger can do another GW1 class can do it better.

@OP, dont worry about the Sunspear thing.
If u start playing the Nightfall campaign u automatically progress the Sunspear title track/rank. With a high enough Sunspear rank u can use Sunspear skills!

dagrdagaz.4913:

@Realist…hmm..since u recommend Ranger, i now have to say that imho that is the worst GW1 class to play.
Becos, if i remember the argument, anyting a Ranger can do another GW1 class can do it better.

@OP, dont worry about the Sunspear thing.
If u start playing the Nightfall campaign u automatically progress the Sunspear title track/rank. With a high enough Sunspear rank u can use Sunspear skills!

Well for starters I never said the words “the best”, I said versatile and fun. Versatile meaning you can do so many different roles with a ranger. And none of them being weak.

Also, you’re confusing that statement with GW2 rangers.

I got GWAMM on my ranger, and earned it unlike all the speed clear Assassins abusing Shadow Form. I had a tonne of fun playing Ranger.

Attempting to call rangers “the worst class” is quite funny though, any good player will rank them highly in every game mode.

Talking strictly about PvE here.

But if I’m being biased, Lightning Reflexes + Whirling defence + Throw Dirt automatically makes Ranger a better tank than any other profession for 95% of the game, without sacrificing DPS.

And while I’m continuing to be biased. Assassins are a burst DPS class, and somewhat squishy, and requires sacrifices to maintain energy if you want to sustain damage in fights. Ranger’s Expertise attribute combined with “Zealous” daggers allows them to continually chain low recharge dagger skills at no loss of energy, while double stance and throw dirt makes them basically immune to attacks. So the Ranger can easily sustain spammable high damage using daggers, while rarely taking damage, making them better than Assassins.

Rangers are pretty much equal to Mesmer’s at shutting down enemy AI with skills like Choking Gas, or combining Technobabble with a skill bar consisting of the 0.5 second bow attacks, while using Marksman’s Wager to sustain energy. It’s my PvE variation of the PvP Machinegunner build before it was nerfed (monks cried, all the build did was high pressure through fast hits and nothing more).

Ranger can also apply Burning, Bleeding and Poison in one single hit, and spread it to multiple enemies with Epidemic straight after that one hit. Kind of like a condition burst build.

Basically, ranger can fill just about any role necessary, and the only role it does poorly at is dedicated spell caster, for obvious reasons.

While I never really used Ranger heroes besides to muck around with Barrage/Pet builds for fun, a smart player using Ranger is irreplaceable.

Okay! I’m rereading everything and this is starting to make sense. I am also finding I am just more and more thankful for all the quality of life stuff I have in GW2.

Quick question: is there an armory or something for GW1? Cause I saw this amazing person in one of the cities and I want to know where they got those black wings. Also… I want those black wings in GW2. o_o

Allaraina.8614:

Okay! I’m rereading everything and this is starting to make sense. I am also finding I am just more and more thankful for all the quality of life stuff I have in GW2.

Quick question: is there an armory or something for GW1? Cause I saw this amazing person in one of the cities and I want to know where they got those black wings. Also… I want those black wings in GW2. o_o

That’s a costume from their cash shop, the Raiment of the Lich. Wearable in combat and dyeable. An NPC, the costume maker, will store it for you.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Costume

Allaraina.8614:

Quick question: is there an armory or something for GW1? Cause I saw this amazing person in one of the cities and I want to know where they got those black wings. Also… I want those black wings in GW2. o_o

It’s pretty awesome how a nearly 10 year old game can still make players go “OMG that’s awesome!” with its graphics.

Astral Projections.7320:

That’s a costume from their cash shop, the Raiment of the Lich. Wearable in combat and dyeable. An NPC, the costume maker, will store it for you.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Costume

….. /grabby hands at all the pretties

Thank you for the link! Oh man…. I wish we had Dwayna’s Regalia in GW2 O______________________O

Zaxares.5419:

Allaraina.8614:

Quick question: is there an armory or something for GW1? Cause I saw this amazing person in one of the cities and I want to know where they got those black wings. Also… I want those black wings in GW2. o_o

It’s pretty awesome how a nearly 10 year old game can still make players go “OMG that’s awesome!” with its graphics.

I KNOW RIGHT?!