Guild Wars 2

My wife and I played GW2 when it first launched and quit maybe 3-4 months in due to having our children. Now that they go to bed at reasonable times…I’m trying to get back into gaming.

GW2 was one of my first choices. I remember being mesmerized by the world. I still listen to the GW2 soundtrack every day at work.

I’m trying to get my wife to come back so that we can enjoy the game together. I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m overwhelmed by the number of builds. I’m hoping someone could help me out here.

My wife and I will only be doing open world pve along with our campaign quests. I know pretty much everyone says, “Anything works.” and I’m sure that’s true. The problem is that my wife is not great with dodging/combos and all that.

She already has a ranger at level 80, but she wants to start over with something else since she’s coming back from a 4 year break. I recommended a Necro MM since it seems popular these days. She was bored to tears by level 15 and wants something a bit more fun and flashy. My first thought was Elementalist or Mesmer…but they seem too complicated for her. I’m hoping there’s a build for either of those that isn’t too difficult.

As for myself, I boosted a Necro MM to provide meat shields for ourselves. I think the problem with this is that we both feel like I’m just playing by myself and she is just along for the ride. When she does get focused on, I also can’t seem to do much to help her, other than just killing the mobs as quickly as I can.

So, I’m looking for a profession/build that can keep our duo buffed or keep the enemies debuffed so that she is more durable and sees more impact with her own attacks. I’ve seen various support builds for dungeons, but I can’t tell how good those builds are with DPS.

Any help would be appreciated.

Maybe you could play a Druid, and keep her safe with whatever she wants to play. Maybe a Guardian or a Warrior?

Good luck.

Ele or mesmer? Tough call. They’re both relatively complex classes. Getting the most out of them could be an issue if she’s not too quick on this active combat stuff. On the other hand, mesmer has easy access to plenty of distracting illusions that make PvE a lot easier and ele, while having a reputation for being squishy, can actually be among the tankiest classes in the game.

Just an example: A full glass ele can be killed in a single hit if they fail to dodge the champion arrowhead’s frontal wave attack. But a full celestial water/earth/tempest ele can eat that hit and take as little as 20% of their health (provided they have protection up, which is a safe bet with a tempest build and a few auras on your bar), which they don’t even need to bother healing because between the healing signet, renew uptime, soothing mist, and aura heals they’re already at 90%+ health a moment later.

So she could probably go ele and use a PvP-style build – auramancer healing/support. Her damage wouldn’t be great, but if you’re comfortable with it you could go with a more aggressive build yourself and count on her heals to carry you through and your damage would get enemies out of the way quickly. It could be a perfect matchup!

But you’re just going to have to try things out and see what works, I expect.

Recommend she goes necro, but not minions if that makes it feel too passive. Necro has strong survivability with a high base health and the Shroud, and there are a lot of other neat choices than minions for your utility skills.

Ajji.6031:

As for myself, I boosted a Necro MM to provide meat shields for ourselves. I think the problem with this is that we both feel like I’m just playing by myself and she is just along for the ride. When she does get focused on, I also can’t seem to do much to help her, other than just killing the mobs as quickly as I can.

In that sort of situation a Dragonhunter would be a lot more useful than a minion necro. A DH would be able to heal, block and have plenty of options for CC to deal with the enemy. Chronomancer would also be good but might be more difficult to play.

AliamRationem.5172:

So she could probably go ele and use a PvP-style build – auramancer healing/support.

I played an Auramancer in PvE (Earth/Air/Tempest) with full exotic gear and really enjoyed the higher survivabilty. 100% uptime of swiftness, fury, vigor, regen, might and 40% protection is really awesome. The uptime on mates is less than 100% but also really high. With celestial gear this build should be even better.
I used Air for Fresh Air -> Air Overload, but when you play as a duo you can easily drop Air for Water.
IMO Ele has the best support potential. She can help engage or escape from battle by speed boost or chill/immobility and swiftness, heal with “Wash your pain away!” and do high damage with Fire aoe and Air Overload. I recommend playing dagger/wahrhorn.

How about Revenant/Herald for her and an aura-share ele for you?

With roiling mists and sigil of accuracy you can get her to 50% crit chance to run valkyrie gear for more vit. No complicated rotations to learn and the utilities can be used as “set and forget” as she learns Shield 5 plus the glint heal are her “oh crap” buttons.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAseinXN2gSqJvQR/kbosgyPU4Q5IKYr8ElFNFyugJshtDIANgtMppNA-TxBBQBjU53lU/hCPBAAcKA2j+gGpEcJ7PAA-e

You could try tempest to make sure fury is kept up, provide frost aura to reduce dmg, have an ally stunbreak, weaken enemies, and provide rebound.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJ0fJWhJYgJwhJWaAMijwMIG4eZzsjWhCQAYCA-TBBXgAh6BAU+1r+zjSQA-e

Edit: Yeah, guy below has a good point re: elite specs. Would be good to know if they are in play or now.
Does she like the sound of a gun and a flamethrower? Juggernaut with backpack regenerator?

It sounds like you guys are miles away from elite specs, so I’m thinking things like Dragon Hunters and Tempests are a long way off.

Has she tried a ranged Thief? Dual pistols and shortbow. If you’re up front drawing most of the agro, she could camp at range and only need to dodge when needed. I run it solo at times and find it a lot of fun.

Core Ele is still good for duo play. Supporting with Staff via fire and water fields, condi cleanse and CC

My wife doesn’t have HoT yet. It depends on her interest in the elite specs. The Revenant/Herald build does sound interesting. I played around with the profession a bit and the skills looked fun.

I got HoT the day after I came back and have a level 80 guardian, 80 ranger, 80 elementalist, 80 thief, and the level 80 necro I just boosted. I’ve almost finished getting all of the Reaper skills. The guardian and ranger are about halfway through their elite specs. I haven’t really played with the DH or Druid yet though.

She hasn’t tried a ranged Thief yet, I didn’t even know that was a thing lol. She only tried dagger builds and found the thief was too squishy for her. She also hasn’t tried engineer. She was scared off by all of the weapon kits…but I guess it’s no more complex than the Elementalist.

I think I’ll try playing around with my elementalist tonight and see how it goes. I talked my wife into rolling an engineer tonight.

My wife ended up with an Elementalist. I also tried the Tempest build posted here and it worked pretty well.

I want to try the Druid and Dragon Hunter out as well. I normally buy a full set of Exotic gear whenever I try different builds out but it would be too expensive trying out multiple builds. The Ranger and Guardian currently have Berserker gear and I’m thinking about getting Rare gear for support builds. Does it make a big difference? Does it even matter for my purposes?

Ajji.6031:

My wife ended up with an Elementalist. I also tried the Tempest build posted here and it worked pretty well.

I want to try the Druid and Dragon Hunter out as well. I normally buy a full set of Exotic gear whenever I try different builds out but it would be too expensive trying out multiple builds. The Ranger and Guardian currently have Berserker gear and I’m thinking about getting Rare gear for support builds. Does it make a big difference? Does it even matter for my purposes?

Elementalist duos can be pretty awesome as you can take turns migrating in and out of water when under pressure. I ran tempest paired with my gf’s (at the time) base glass cannon ele for claiming a guild hall back when HoT was new and it worked quite well.

As to the gear question. In the core game open world, exotics are not necessary, rare will be fine for the most part. However, you should keep in mind that some combinations that work well with exotics+ might not make the cut in rares due to the lower stats, so for experimenting I prefer to grab an exotic set. That said, it probably won’t matter that much, although you can get materials to craft ascended one day by salvaging the exotics if you find a set you don’t like.

Furthermore, completing 3 dailies (usually 10 min work only, especially if you branch out to wvw or pvp to do the easier ones with just the two of you (eg monuments, camps or sentries in wvw, or get into an empty custom map in pvp and do the dailies with just the two of you) will get you 2g. Thats one full set in seven days, or 3-4 pieces of most other exotic stats in one day . Indeed the 20-30s for a rare non-zerker stat makes the 60s for an exotic non-zerker stat piece almost a no brainer.

As a side note, the new HoT stats are a different matter entirely, and if you want those you should do some research (eg the exotics are usually not worth getting over stat changing ascended gear unless you like farming the story)

Snow.2048:

Furthermore, completing 3 dailies (usually 10 min work only, especially if you branch out to wvw or pvp to do the easier ones with just the two of you (eg monuments, camps or sentries in wvw, or get into an empty custom map in pvp and do the dailies with just the two of you) will get you 2g. Thats one full set in seven days, or 3-4 pieces of most other exotic stats in one day . Indeed the 20-30s for a rare non-zerker stat makes the 60s for an exotic non-zerker stat piece almost a no brainer.

One full exotic set with 2g per day for 7 days? When I buy Berserkers exotic sets from the TP it costs me over 100g!!! What am I doing wrong?

Ajji.6031:

Snow.2048:

Furthermore, completing 3 dailies (usually 10 min work only, especially if you branch out to wvw or pvp to do the easier ones with just the two of you (eg monuments, camps or sentries in wvw, or get into an empty custom map in pvp and do the dailies with just the two of you) will get you 2g. Thats one full set in seven days, or 3-4 pieces of most other exotic stats in one day . Indeed the 20-30s for a rare non-zerker stat makes the 60s for an exotic non-zerker stat piece almost a no brainer.

One full exotic set with 2g per day for 7 days? When I buy Berserkers exotic sets from the TP it costs me over 100g!!! What am I doing wrong?

If you have the karma you can buy exotic beserker armor from Grenth’s temple. It’s not salvageable, but it’s a lot cheaper than 100 gold.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Keeper_Jonez_Deadrun

Devona is 2g-3g a piece, zerkers stat with strength runes which will do until you get the rune set of your choice.

Also if you feel like doing dungeons, full exotic is 14 daily runs (5 days) Citadel of Flame, Crucible of Eternity has zerkers. If you do wvw/pvp dailies, I believe 80 pots is a track, that’ll get you 3 weapons, 1 armor piece and 240 tokens. (14 runs OR 1 track 8 runs OR 2 track and 3 runs is a full set)

Ajji.6031:

When I buy Berserkers exotic sets from the TP it costs me over 100g!!! What am I doing wrong?

Buying the wrong sets.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats#Loot

Search for Zhed for light, Nika for medium and Devona for heavy armor. The heavy one even includes a nice rune already which saves you a bit more.

Oh and the price sounds like you are buying exotic trinkets maybe? If so, the trinkets are probably also costing you a lot. In this cause go to the laurel vendor, get ascended trinkets (if you have Badges of honor from wvw they cost less laurels). Or if you have season three of the LS, you can farm winterberries in winterfrost frontier and get rings, backitem and accessories of any stat(unique so its not a full set but gives all stat choices pretty fast, other LS3 chapters give other things). They remain account bound so you can swap them around for testing different characters.

Yes I was including trinket prices as well. Thank you for the tips about the named exotic sets and ascended trinkets. I do remember figuring this out before and completely forgot while I was away.

Thank you for all of these replies. They’ve been extremely helpful. When I told my wife about these builds she actually started playing every night. She is motivated to hit level 80 now.