Guild Wars 2

You walk into Cursed Shore after harvesting nodes in Straits of Devastation, pick up some more mithril/elder/ori/ancient/omnomberries along the way, and Plinx starts. You arrive, consume an omnomberry bar, blast away at mobs, and what do you hope for? At least a couple masterworks to sell off ( Insert “Oh heck yeah!” smiley here) but… find you only got a white and piece of trash for the entirety of phase 1, and managed to get a minute of poison stacked from the risen hyleks to boot (wishes there were a dejected smiley to put here). And to make matters worse, you see a silver medal, despite you being there the entire time (strongest possible crying smiley here). You’ll notice that I’ll give most examples from a thief centered viewpoint, this is because it’s the class I’m most familiar with.

Does this sound like you? Do not fear, for where there is a will, there is a way. We will cover topics ranging from weapon choices, builds, and classes.

1. Classes
This is by far and away the most basic element of farming, your class. Does your class have a reliable spammable high damage AoE (axe 5 for warriors and greatsword 2 for guardians for example)? If not, you may want to level a new class, and I hear Mesmer has it really difficult in this regard.
2. Builds

How do you tag mobs and get a better chance at loot? Why, damage of course! So logically you should put 30 into your precision and power trees and mix berserker gear stats with some magic find pieces. The extra 10 points should go into either vitality or toughness. You won’t be optimized to fight risen abomination or broodmother, so be careful of that. This is also why you shouldn’t do dungeons and farming chains interchangeably, as changing between your farming build and dungeon build would really add up to be quite expensive (adds “gasp!” smiley here). Dungeons go beyond the scope of this post, and you can get away with farming on your dungeon build (for DPS that would be 25-30 in the power tree, full vitality or toughness and between 10-15 of a secondary defensive stat, or for support 30 in both defense stat trees and 10 in the utility, so 30 earth, water, and arcane for support elementalists), it just wouldn’t be optimal.

3. Weapons

What weapons can your class use? As a thief, pistol/pistol is great for single target ranged burst damage… not exactly ideal farming material, sword/dagger on the other hand, has some promise, but the hits with the sword are too weak (medium crying smiley) . That leaves us with… the shortbow! Yes, it is a slow weapon with a charge time and takes too long to reach its target, but it does ricochet, but shortbow 2, clusterbomb, is the star of the show. You’ll need to manage your resources and stay close to your target (or else everything will die before the slow bomb hits =( ) You also have dagger storm, but you need to watch your environment to ascertain the right time to use this. See a bunch of guardians spinning around shooting white light and warriors whirling axes, and see fire in every direction (both magical and from flamethrowers)? Then it isn’t quite time, but I’ll get into elites in the next section. If you have a warrior use that instead, axe/axe 5 is your friend, it does high damage and has mobility.

4. Utilities
Now, how to optimize 7-10 for farming? On a thief, you have haste, assassin’s signet, and the other signet that grants a 15% movement speed buff that never leaves my utilities, and of course dagger storm. You have to not only know how to use utilities, but also when. What is the competition doing? If someone is whirling axes, and is taking damage while it’s being rendered then it’s already too late, you missed the boat. Basically, you want haste and passive damage increase, and elementalist has a glyph of storms that allows it to pump out extra damage too.

5. Strategy.
We now arrive at this part… estimating when the mobs arrive. If it has rendered then it’s already too late. Use the stopwatch feature on your phone or IPod to time between renderings, and afterwards countdown to when it was rendered, and subtract a second. For example, after the Plinx second stage ends, wait until you see the third stage quest text and count to 8 approximately, as they will spawn in 9 seconds. Because remember, and I can’t stress this enough: if they’re rendered they’re already dead. Penitent and the first part of Plinx have random spawns, you simply don’t know what you’re going to get. In that case stay a little far in the middle back, that way you could get to either side faster without overcommitting yourself.

Also, people will blow their attacks, don’t mindlessly blow CDs and resources, use them wisely! Don’t run towards a pack that’s almost dead and use dagger storm or even waste initiative (or for other classes CDs, for every second it’s on CD is a commitment to not using it for that period of time, even when it would be great to do so, you can’t).

There are parts where this isn’t reliable, like when the veteran risen drake and the circle of slimes sometimes spawn together, or the drake dies first and then the slimes, slimes never come first. But if both are up go for the slimes if you can.

If the champ broodmother is up, you have agro, and the second wave of tiny slimes is defeated, or stage 2 has begun, lure the broodmother towards Plinx, as he will happily tank it for you for the extra karma (insert “awesome!” smiley here)

A rule of thumb is: Don’t blow major CDs on the veteran; you will need them for the packs of trash that will come after it.

And never, ever, use an omnomberry bar unless you have a group! And don’t be shy! Don’t be afraid to type, “Need group!” in /say, you need a group! I cannot stress this enough! In fact it is so basic I almost forgot to include it!

Good luck, happy farming, and don’t forget your phone or IPod for your stopwatch needs!

The art of quitting a MMO once this is all there is to do, is more like it=) There are many unplayed games I have in my queue before I would ever think of resorting to something this mundane. Too many far better games actually.

@Josher, you nailed it on the head. The Op doesnt have a clue when it comes to gaming but it seems he/she has plenty of experience farming and selling gold. This is not a good thing, especially being called or associated with farming. Anet pulled a great magic act in keeping this type of mechanic downplayed until the game released, so we really only have ourselves to blame for letting these clowns fool us.

God they have so much to work on.

Events and tagging are such a kittening mess.

Josher, hey that’s cool, not every game was meant for everyone and I respect that. Some people need more hardcore (EvE, Vampire Masquerade MMO coming up with permadeath) or more casual (WoW, and farther down than that Farmville)

GW2 is a casual game, farming in GW2 is paying money in Farmville.

Graill.8596:

@Josher, you nailed it on the head. The Op doesnt have a clue when it comes to gaming but it seems he/she has plenty of experience farming and selling gold. This is not a good thing, especially being called or associated with farming. Anet pulled a great magic act in keeping this type of mechanic downplayed until the game released, so we really only have ourselves to blame for letting these clowns fool us.

I don’t sell gold and in fact have spent real money on gems. I’m actually going against my own interests by telling people this, as the more people at a disadvantage and not knowing what to do means more loot for whatever groups I tag. I understand “farming” has negative connotations, but what else do people call it? Some people don’t know how to or want to know how to play the trading post, and crafting for the most part is unprofitable. Us wage earners in the game bring more gold into the economy by selling off our trash and get very marginal gains from the DE itself.

People always want to make more gold, and there is no “fast” way of making gold, but everyone wants everything right now. Delayed gratification is part of what separates us from other animals, we can patiently wait for a greater reward down the line. We may as well have a fun journey along the way (party chat between rounds is entertaining and I typically group with many of the same people, you know, community) and maximize our gains. Again, you won’t have 100g farming overnight, it may take a few weeks (and selling orichalcum ore and other resources you mine, sit on resources that sell for very little and wait for them to rise or just craft with them if you can), but don’t be left in the cold like I have in the past. We gain experience playing this game, and what does experience bring? Wisdom and knowledge.

Knote.2904:

God they have so much to work on.

Events and tagging are such a kittening mess.

Yes, yes they are. Like I mentioned people sometimes blow long CD elites before they can reasonably expect to tag it. There are many who don’t like Orr, and with the annoying mob density who can blame them? But it does have farming nodes and efficient karma and gold. I think they should have a mode that converts all regions to level 80 (in this mode only t5 and t6 drop, but if you switch to regular you get the low level mats in case you want to help your lowbie alts craft and gear them). I also think party size needs to be expanded to 20, and current dungeons would be balanced around it but with the same rewards, but you could also be in a party of 20 for more cooperative karma runs.

Face it, right now, it’s too competitive, but it is, so we have to adapt until it’s changed.

Well, GW2 isn’t really casual when it comes to legendaries and mystic forge weapons in which are needed 250 pieces of one or two very rare material (and way more than that for legendaries).