Guild Wars 2

I am sorry if this topic has been beaten to death but I am quite new to this game and I’m still climbing the learning curve. I have made 4 characters so far and have gotten them all to level 10-11. They all have armor and weapons that were either found as drops or as rewards (I still have a few items that are from character generation). Is this why I am taking so many dirt naps? How much does level equivalent gear contribute to survivability? Or is it that I still suck at this game and just have to get higher up on the curve and learn which weapon/skill set to use in particular circumstances? If I’m dying this much at level 10 I hate to think what level 60, 70 or 80 will be like…
Thanks in advance.

Its a lot easier to get swarmed/die at lvl 10 then it is at lvl 80. At lvl 80 you have a lot more access to traits (which many classes are very kitten without) as well as more skils/utilities and better armor.

Learn to move, learn to dodge.
Don’t try to kill anything above your level until you have more knowledge/ability to use your skills.

Hmm… Are you dodging? Taking on mobs way above your level?

It may just be a matter of learning the game. I imagine I died a lot in the beginning, but rarely do on low-level characters any longer.

Welcome to Tyria, and good luck!

I try to upgrade my gear every 5-6 levels, for reference. If you’re more than 6 levels behind on gear, consider buying something on the TP.

Okay thanks for those replies!

Be aware of the immediate area so you don’t aggro any additional critters. Some critters will attack en masse if you attack one of them, so maybe pull the camera back and up to get the lay of the land. Go after stragglers if you are just hunting.

And it can’t be said enough, this isn’t the kind of MMO where you can plant yourself and face tank. Armor doesn’t reduce damage enough and we don’t have enough hit points to easily pull it off time after time. So move, dodge, and take a moment between encounters to heal back up full. Save your heal for in combat.

After thought: Just remember, players who are much higher level that are playing on your map are tiny Gods compared to your new leveling character. Don’t follow their example of running into a mob of critters and quickly taking them out. They can, you can’t. Nothing snaps an old player back to “reality” as leveling a new character. You find out you can’t two shot things any more and every battle against a single critter is drawn out. Even though higher level characters get their stats reduced, they still have all their skills, traits, weapon swap as well as starting with higher quality weapons and armor with sigils and runes that boost their stats even more before the reduction. A down leveled level 80 character that is fully equiped with exotics that now reads as level 11, still has considerably higher stats than a native level 11.

Try to stay one on one. Pull monsters to you using Range weapons. If a warrior class whittle down groups don’t rush in. If a ranger use tank pets and long bow. Attack from distance. Don’t be afraid to break off attack to heal. Getting swarmed is never fun at low levels. Ask higher level guild mates or friends to give you a hand leveling. They can do mob control while you level. Teamwork is great for that reason. If you need help message me in game. I will assist when I can. Don’t rage you will get through it with help.

If you want more specific tips, letting us know what class(es) you’re playing can help us point out survivability options that exist within those classes, even at low levels.

Also, if you are playing Thief/Guardian/Elementalist you are very squishy, particularly early on. Kite more and don’t be afraid to run away if you need to

Thanks for all the tips! Someone in game also gave me some great suggestions and help. At the moment I’m trying Engineer, Necro, Mesmer, Elementalist and Ranger. Having my skill set change depending on my weapons equipped is something that I haven’t figured out how to deal with yet. I noticed that the Necro actually lost skills (5 down to 3) when I equipped an ax; is that normal?

warguppy.2351:

I noticed that the Necro actually lost skills (5 down to 3) when I equipped an ax; is that normal?

Axe is a single handed weapon so if you don’t have another weapon equipped in the offhand slot you will only have 3 skills. Also your last two skills related to your offhand weapon will only be available if you unlocked them.

More good info!

Some other advice, as you’re leveling up early and completing heart quests in the open world, go back to those heart NPCs you just helped and see what stuff they have to offer. Sometimes they offer some pretty cool/interesting goodies and all it costs is karma (it’s not hard to get a lot of karma). Sometimes they even have some decent equipment or armor/weapon skins that look nice.

Just a bit of warning, don’t go spending all your karma. Some of the stuff those heart NPCs offer is indeed junk. If you check every heart NPC you help, hopefully that’ll inherently train your eye to notice when their offerings are decent or junk.

PS: Also, don’t be afraid to try what they offer. One NPC sells growth potions. They temporarily make my Asura warrior just a head shy of a human’s height and he bought a stack for himself because it makes him happy :P

It gets easier.

A lot of people start the game not realizing how dynamic the combat is or how easily you can get swarmed by mobs. Practice moving a lot during a fight and positioning yourself so that you have the advantage. Considering adding gemstones to your gear to give yourself more offensive or defensive stats (those are the mats that you get sometimes as a bonus while mining ore). Also try out different weapons: you might try using ranged weapons until you get the hang of things.

Good luck.

I’m going to post this video which I think is very useful for new people. It’s old, but still relevant.

Enigmius one’s guide to combat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUKWeaXZeOY

warguppy.2351:

At the moment I’m trying Engineer, Necro, Mesmer, Elementalist and Ranger.

Of these Ranger should be the easiest one to stay alive for a beginner. But the problem is you may get used too much to your pet tanking.

I suggest you try a warrior. Opt for a great sword as your primary weapon, then later maybe axe/warhorn or longbow for your second set, so you have some variety.

Warriors are sturdy and can at the same time deal decend damage. It may make the learning curve less steep and at the same time teach you how to survive in close combat.

There’s some great advice in this thread.

It definitely gets easier, both as your character gets stronger and you learn the game, making you a stronger player. Remember to dodge, and watch enemy animations for clues on when to dodge. Some attacks, especially strong, heavy ones, become predictable when you know what to look for, so you can roll out of the way.

Try not to tackle too many enemies at once early in. Even late in the game, you can get into trouble if you have attacks coming at you from all sides, with stuns and other conditions tripping you up. With the right build and experience, you can run into a pack of foes and rain fiery death around you, but it’s not a good way to start out!

If you’re still finding yourself getting hammered, it might be good to try a tanky class, like Warrior or Guardian. My first character was an Elementalist, and when I created my second, a Ranger, I was surprised by how much sturdier I was. (That said, I powered on through with my Ele first, and it’s still my favorite.)

Don’t forget to click on each ‘category’ on the Level Up window. It will bring up a tool-tip that will explain parts of the game, such as Main-hand, Off-hand, Two-handed weapons, and other important need-to-know aspects of the game.

Good luck.

The NPE pretty much screwed up low level play completely.

The classes that struggle the most: Guardians and Mesmers most notably and other low health classes because low health classes rely on traits and utilities to make up for having the health pool of a diseased skritt.

Guardians are nice at max level with max gear, but beyond that they’re really the weakest class in the game. Lowest health, low damage and completely reliant on active mitigation.

Dodging is your best friend. Also observe the enemies attack cycles. Some have very obvious telegraphs, big red circles or bars that appear at their feet.

At lvl 10-11, with gear for that level, engaging more than 2 enemies at once can be pretty tough since you won’t have the right stats and traits. SO your best bet is to engage 1 on 1.

Knowing which weapon skill set to use comes with experience. Many players will continue to experiment with weapon combinations and stats even at level 80

More good thoughts and ideas! thanks gobs!

Engineer, Necro, Mesmer, Elementalist and Ranger, these class is not a easy to start with.

Elementalist Engineer, is the hardest class to play in the game.
and mesmer is the hardest to lvl

try warrior or guardian to start with, keep lvling to 80s this make it easier

As a new player who just started playing a Necro today, I find this thread chock full of useful information.

Although I haven’t died yet at Level 7, I’d like to keep it that way for at least a while longer.

its hard to lvl for todays new players. it had a way to lvl faster. just get to edge of the mist . join the zerg group you can get lvl 10 up in 1~1.5hrs. but not recommend to do it in whole times. you still need to explore the map.

As much as persistent world mobs have seen several nerfs, if you’re dying a lot, this old vid might help.

I’m in no rush. I’m the type of player that likes to take their time, and absorb everything the game has to offer. Exploration suits me just fine.

Go to the auction house and buy a bunch of sigil of bloodlust (the lowest level version), and put one in each weapon set youre using. Also buy armor runes with +10 power for the 1st bonus (you cant use 2 of the same type, but there should be at least 6 types with it for cheap). Gear could also help, you should have masterwork gear (not rare gear, you outlevel it too fast) in every slot thats within 4-5 levels of your actual level, though dont spend all your money on buying stuff every time you level up

Also find the cheapest food for your level with health regen per second on it, as well as the sharpening stone for your level (the gw wiki has all this stuff listed if you cant find it in game). All of that wont cost more than a few silver and will prob help.

warguppy.2351:

I am sorry if this topic has been beaten to death but I am quite new to this game and I’m still climbing the learning curve. I have made 4 characters so far and have gotten them all to level 10-11. They all have armor and weapons that were either found as drops or as rewards (I still have a few items that are from character generation). Is this why I am taking so many dirt naps? How much does level equivalent gear contribute to survivability? Or is it that I still suck at this game and just have to get higher up on the curve and learn which weapon/skill set to use in particular circumstances? If I’m dying this much at level 10 I hate to think what level 60, 70 or 80 will be like…
Thanks in advance.

The best way to increase your survival is to get experience with the content. Defensive gear/traits can help, but often they can just as easily lead to a false sense of security.

Ultimately, however, knowing when to dodge, where to stand, when to blind/block/evade/etc. all will be the key to keeping you on your feet.

First thing to remember, that others may not have mentioned, is that you cannot stand there and soak up the damage as you could in older MMOs or RPGs. The thrust of GW2 is dynamic combat so placement, movement and dodging are crucial to survival.

The upside of dying too much in the beginning, you can only get better
Really, by the time you are lvl 80 you will be a dodging and attack machine.

Somthing new players may be unaware of.
To increase survivability, get amulet, rings and earrings that increase Vitality and Tougness. They can make a serious impact for new/low level characters.
Buy them on the TP. I used to replace them every 5/10 levels.

New Players that have yet no Max Equipment and can die due to this easily cause of inexperience with the Game Mechanics in PvE should search best a Beginner Guild.

Sure, such thigns like “Dodge is your Fried” are clear as butter on the bread, its the first mechanic that anyone should get quickly used to to prevent getting damaged.
However, the most important thing is more to get quickly better Equipment first.
By doing the personal story and leveling up, the game should provide you accordingly always with level appropiate Armor, that is better than the junk, that NPC Vendors sell for you – so use these things and do also the Heart Quests, as they provide also good level appropiate Armor for cheap amounts of Karma, so you don’t waste Money.

If you are in a Beginner Guild and Max level People help you out, you shouldn’t die at all, because mostly the enemies will die all, before they could get a serious scratch on you, if you just keep yourself a bit back and act as a back liner with ranged attacks supporting just simply only, while your stronger supporters mow through the enemies at the front line and watch out, that nothing gets at you with the help of stuns, immobilizes, cripples, chills and knockdowns so that you can always stay at safe range.

Once you have reached a certain level, that you can farm with your buddies dungeons, like the Ascalon Dungeon, leveling up will become for you alot quicker, because with every successful Dungeon Run you will effectively level up by +1 each time, plus you make some good money on the way with that method too and start on collecting dungeon tokens for an easy exotic armor set by the way.

As long as you havent Cooking and other useful crafting jobs levelup up to make yourself good stuff, your buddies from the Beginner Guild can surely help you out also by giving you some useful Buff Items (Food, Potions) to help you gain also more Experinece from kills, plus theres a crapload of other ways guildies can help you to gain even more extra experience points from kills (Banners, Campfires, Guild Boni)
From your Laurels you can buy yourself also some cheap experience booster helps.
Then there are naturally with the login rewards also those helpful boosters now, that will help you level up quicker, as they boost you instantly up by +1 Level.

Doing with your buddies also alot of Dailies helps also, as they will give Exp Packs.
In regard of Class Choice: best beginner Options in my opinion are as followed:

1) Ranger playing with Longbow/ Dual Axe Combo = Low Risk/High Reward, super beginner friendly as all you do is spammign Rapid Fire from safe rang,e push enemies away that get too near to you, and if you need to slow down enemies, use barrage.
Your pet is a nice Extra Tank/Meat Shield, especially when you use a Bear or Wolves, but bear is tankier

2) Thief
very easy to play, you can stealth yourself when it gets dangerous to lose aggro instantly.
with the right build, you gain back health with all your attacks, by using simply your weapon skils, landign critical,s as passive effect from your healing signet.
This paired together with attacks that can deal multiple hits, bounce between targets or pulse, like choking gas and deal damage over time, you will pretty alot of health regen, plus you can use ur steath also to help your buddies alot, saving time, rezzign them safely with shadow refuge. So if you like to play the Ninja Nurse, thats your class then. Plus, as thief you can dodge alot more oftenly, than the other classes. especialy with shortbow.

3) Mesmer is also very beginner friendly and helpful, which you can play form safe range with Greatsword, while givign your buddies also nice support with clones/phantasms that will help keeping aggro from you away.
Then theres time warp with that you will kill enemies alot faster.
if needed they can stealth also to to lose aggro, while they can have permanently all kinds of helpful boons up due to a signet utility, that gives them every few seconds a random boon. with their healing skill they can have also a nice self regeneration as logn you have clones or phantasms up, plus you can provide your buddies a self regen, when you have phantasms up, what is also useful alot.

Otherwise, the best tip for Newbies is:

Don’t rush things. If you try to rush through things in this game, you will see yourself alot more oftenly dead. Play the game not haste, take your time, do what the game provides you in content by making the personal story with other people, doing any dynamic events that you come accross on your map you play on while doing heart quests and exploring the maps to 100% and killing by the way creatures, which most likely haven’t been killed for a real long time, as that gives alot of bonus exp, especially when you have buffs on that increase your exp gain from kills.

The best way to survive is to not get hit! Dodging while kiting backwards in a circle is the best thing to learn as soon as possible. If you are not a melee class then it should be your default attack mode IMO.

The old Daily Rewards system had a Daily Dodger and at first I hated it, after a while though it made me a dodging master! It is really cool to be mid-back flip on my Asura Necro as the red circle under me explodes with an AoE bomb. Or to dodge through a foe attack and also turn so I then attack from behind.

My advice is, dodge, dodge all the time and even when you don’t need to, just to practice. Also dodge in different directions to learn how to swap kiting direction. Before long you’ll be doing it almost automatically.

I haven’t seen the most important tip:

Watch out the mobs level!!

1-3 level higher mobs become hard
More than 5 level higher mobs are deadly.

There are in fact 5 start areas, 1 for each race, but you can reach them all by using the portal to lion arch in your start city.

If you run out of area with mobs of adequate level switch the area.

And do not worry that doing quests and fighting lvl 1 mobs as lvl 10 doesn’t level you. It does as well as fighting lvl 9 mobs in a level 9 area as most rewards (item level of drops, exp, karma, …) are mostly based on your level, not on mob/quest level.

(If you fight mobs at higher level than you you get a small bonus, but not really important.)

PvE is often about killing your target before it kills you. My guess is that you use garbage weapons (example mesmer scepter) and thus kill very slowly, which means mobs kill you first. Look up some meta PvE builds and notice what weapons they utilize. YOu can then visit the mists via the PvP tab and pick up a white quality weapon of the desired type, which will often make a huge difference in the very early levels.

If all else fails, reroll guardian, equip greatsword, spin-to-win, profit.

It definitely helps to keep up on your gear. You should try not to have any gear that’s more than, say, 5 levels below you, which you probably won’t get just from drops.

“Engineer, Necro, Mesmer, Elementalist and Ranger.”

You can make w/e build you want by lvling but to make it easier and faster for you here are some tips. It’s good to stack power early on as higher damage=faster kills and faster lvling in turn.
EZ mode lvling builds:
1. For necro you can use a minion master build, minions can do all the work for you and with all of them attacking its pretty difficult to actually die unless you are fighting mobs too strong. The build can be a little buggy at times and it sucks imo for dungeons but lvling it works really well.
2. Ele you will want to unlock lightning hammer asap for their faceroll lvling. It has blind on auto attack(so just do that) and most enemies attack so slow while lvling that it almost=perma blind(watchout for dredge though). Staff is a good weapon if you are fighting mutliple enemies. Also note that lightning hammer increases precision while in use. So ele is one class i found stacking precision with power during lvling actually worked out.
3. For ranger just go longbow and have pet attack for you.
4. Engi bomb kit is good for the blind field. With high enough power you can kill foes before the smoke field ends without getting touched.
5. Mesmer just keep your phantasm and clone generation up and keep enemies distracted attacking them while you deal damage. Use a stealth skill to drop aggroe.

You probably wont be able to use these strategies right away until you get more skills unlocked. But when you can everything becomes faceroll while lvling. While your lvlign still try out every weapon for your class so you can get an idea of what each one does for you. And for engi and ele lvling it is a good time to practice might stacking(once you have the skills). Learn your fields and blast finishers for later on :]

Wear your level equivalent zerker gear. Then all you need to do is press 1 and things will die before you do.

Behellagh.1468:

And it can’t be said enough, this isn’t the kind of MMO where you can plant yourself and face tank.

I don’t know. A sword/pistol thief running signet of malice and spamming blind and pistol whip can stand and facetank multiples of most anything in PvE except champions. And even some champions can be facetanked with timing on pistol whip. And maybe an occasional dodge. :-)

warguppy.2351:

I am sorry if this topic has been beaten to death but I am quite new to this game and I’m still climbing the learning curve. I have made 4 characters so far and have gotten them all to level 10-11. They all have armor and weapons that were either found as drops or as rewards (I still have a few items that are from character generation). Is this why I am taking so many dirt naps? How much does level equivalent gear contribute to survivability? Or is it that I still suck at this game and just have to get higher up on the curve and learn which weapon/skill set to use in particular circumstances? If I’m dying this much at level 10 I hate to think what level 60, 70 or 80 will be like…
Thanks in advance.

I had similar experiences with dying a lot when I first started GW2. I recommend taking the time to learn how many monsters you can kill, what utilities, heal, and weapons work best for you and how you want to play, and not to think too much of it. GW2 is a really different game compared to other mmo’s. Don’t fret

Lampshade.7569:

PvE is often about killing your target before it kills you. My guess is that you use garbage weapons (example mesmer scepter) and thus kill very slowly, which means mobs kill you first. Look up some meta PvE builds and notice what weapons they utilize. YOu can then visit the mists via the PvP tab and pick up a white quality weapon of the desired type, which will often make a huge difference in the very early levels.

If all else fails, reroll guardian, equip greatsword, spin-to-win, profit.

I would advise against this advice. Do not attempt using a meta build or even someone else’s build until you understand the basics and have a moderate understanding of how you yourself can perform by default. If toy try and use a meta build and all keep dying, you’ll have just wasted time and gold on frustrating yourself not to mention those builds often don’t take into account the leveling process or the learning process to begin with.

My advice to you is don’t be afraid of dying. Try to learn from your mistakes and observe other players and see how they survive/die in certain situations. Also try to help out others in need of help if you can.

One more thing…be sure to map complete all the low level starter areas before you go onto to 15-25 maps. The 15-25 maps are very, very, veeeery different from the lower level areas and it helps to be a little over leveled before you start on those. They start hitting you with conditions and some, like Kessex Hills or Brisbane Wildlands, you will find just aren’t nice being at level to map complete.

To get to the other starter zones, you go into the town you started at (in Queensdale that’s Divinity’s Reach, in Caledon Forest that’s The Grove, in Plains of Ashford that’s The Black Citadel, and in Wayfarer Foothills that’s Hoelbrak). You will find a portal that says it goes to Lion’s Arch…from there you will find yourself in a little area with other portals. Those will take you to the other towns and you get to the other starter areas from there.