Guild Wars 2

Which is faster? Map completions or EotM?

Tome of Knowledge can gets you to lv80 within a minute.

(I got 2 stacks in my storage, waiting for revanent’s releases)

Depends on how you want to level. Do you want to get traits along the way and learn your profession? or do you want to ride the train and just get to 80 as quickly as possible?

With the first you have a chance to unlock traits and skill points which are needed to buy traits. Plus you also have a chance to gear up your character along the way.

In the latter, you follow the blob, with no traits, little chances of gear, and almost no skill points but you can level up fairly quickly.

Both ways offer a different method, but IMO it’s better to do map completion. Although EotM may be a bit faster, but in the end you’ll end up working harder to get your traits and gear.

Of the two options you listed, EotM is quicker. If you plan to go for a legendary though, you may as well do world completion instead.

Hmm…

The thing with Tomes of Knowledge is you need to factor in the time it took to aquire them. It’s still invested time playing to get them, even if it was time you were going to spend anyway.

WRT EoTM and map completion, as stated already, EoTM would be faster but map completion may be the better choice.

Having all the waypoints unlocked is convenient.

Some traits require you to complete some maps.

If you ever decide to go for a Legendary you’ll need to have it done.

It’s also not that much slower than EoTM.

Neither, PvP is the only way to go. You get so many Tomes of Knowledge that it makes all other modes useless for leveling.

Also, PvP is the best way to learn your profession mechanics and learn the gameplay.

Do both. EotM is fast and there’s benefits like fast leveling, fast karma. But doing maps has rewards too. You’ll eventually need WPs, traits, etc. And you’ll learn how to play the character. Unless you already have another of the same class, people that insta level or just followed a train are generally terrible for awhile cause they didn’t really play while leveling. Dont be that guy in your next dungeon group.

EoTM is fastest when compared to map completion.

Now, even faster than EoTM, is grinding yellow mobs with an XP booster, killstreak booster, and Celebration booster active. (And food for a tiny bit extra).

You have to migrate across maps because the bonus XP has diminishing returns based on how recently the mobs were killed. So you couldn’t just find a group of Moas and kill them over and over. You have to keep moving in order to maximize bonus XP.

I say to kill yellow mobs because most people ignore them since they are passive so there is a better chance they haven’t been killed recently, but red mobs have just as much a chance to give good bonus XP.

Draknar.5748:

EoTM is fastest when compared to map completion.

Now, even faster than EoTM, is grinding yellow mobs with an XP booster, killstreak booster, and Celebration booster active. (And food for a tiny bit extra).

You have to migrate across maps because the bonus XP has diminishing returns based on how recently the mobs were killed. So you couldn’t just find a group of Moas and kill them over and over. You have to keep moving in order to maximize bonus XP.

I say to kill yellow mobs because most people ignore them since they are passive so there is a better chance they haven’t been killed recently, but red mobs have just as much a chance to give good bonus XP.

This is true. With an exp booster I was able to farm yellow mobs in WvW to very great effect. Most of them are near the edges of the map, and most people ignor them. Each kill gave about 2k exp with the exploration bonus. Had a friend with me, and with his celebration buff, and an exp booster was getting around 3k per kill. Thats about as much as a lower level event.

The firecrackers also give a 10% boost to all exp and can be stacked to 2 hours.
The 50% for one hour exp on kill boosters can be mystic forged to 100% for 2 hours (takes 5 boosters).
Banner for 5% or 10%
Food 10-15%
Utility consumable 10%

pdavis.8031:

This is true. With an exp booster I was able to farm yellow mobs in WvW to very great effect. Most of them are near the edges of the map, and most people ignor them. Each kill gave about 2k exp with the exploration bonus. Had a friend with me, and with his celebration buff, and an exp booster was getting around 3k per kill. Thats about as much as a lower level event.

When leveling one of my alts, no joke I was leveling every 25 kills or so. It was stupid fast.

Seurot.6509:

Do both. EotM is fast and there’s benefits like fast leveling, fast karma. But doing maps has rewards too. You’ll eventually need WPs, traits, etc. And you’ll learn how to play the character. Unless you already have another of the same class, people that insta level or just followed a train are generally terrible for awhile cause they didn’t really play while leveling. Dont be that guy in your next dungeon group.

With new NPE, your character is basically useless and incomplete before you hit lv80.
There’s minimal customization (lock up trait and such) and minimal trait you can pick.
Basically with the new NPE, you understand very little about your class before you hit lv80. So I rather make it instant lv80 and start exploring the world with lv80 character and try out some trait combination.

Aomine.5012:

Seurot.6509:

Do both. EotM is fast and there’s benefits like fast leveling, fast karma. But doing maps has rewards too. You’ll eventually need WPs, traits, etc. And you’ll learn how to play the character. Unless you already have another of the same class, people that insta level or just followed a train are generally terrible for awhile cause they didn’t really play while leveling. Dont be that guy in your next dungeon group.

With new NPE, your character is basically useless and incomplete before you hit lv80.
There’s minimal customization (lock up trait and such) and minimal trait you can pick.
Basically with the new NPE, you understand very little about your class before you hit lv80. So I rather make it instant lv80 and start exploring the world with lv80 character and try out some trait combination.

Luckily they’ll be fixing the trait issue with the expansion. What they plan on doing and how well it will help players is all up in the air at the moment until they provide more details.

Aomine.5012:

Seurot.6509:

Do both. EotM is fast and there’s benefits like fast leveling, fast karma. But doing maps has rewards too. You’ll eventually need WPs, traits, etc. And you’ll learn how to play the character. Unless you already have another of the same class, people that insta level or just followed a train are generally terrible for awhile cause they didn’t really play while leveling. Dont be that guy in your next dungeon group.

With new NPE, your character is basically useless and incomplete before you hit lv80.
There’s minimal customization (lock up trait and such) and minimal trait you can pick.
Basically with the new NPE, you understand very little about your class before you hit lv80. So I rather make it instant lv80 and start exploring the world with lv80 character and try out some trait combination.

^

That’s what I’m going to do with my Revenant, she’ll be a Tome and skill scroll baby, instant leveled and instant all skills.

After 9 chars to level 80, I feel I can handle having all skills and elites available to me at start to try each one and see how they work and which works best together. I’m not feeling the need to autoattack to level or the need to wait till levels 13, 17, 19 for utility slots to open up or level 31 to get my first elite.

Now of course, anyone who wants to level the old, slow way can do so but for me, I don’t feel the need.

Slow way is only about 15 hours though when I did it on a new account from the 75% off sale, no boosters, no crafting a tiny bit of EOTM. Depends on what your rush is to get to 80 for.

Yargesh.4965:

Slow way is only about 15 hours though when I did it on a new account from the 75% off sale, no boosters, no crafting a tiny bit of EOTM. Depends on what your rush is to get to 80 for.

As others have stated, the rush is to get access to the character progression, since all of it is now gated behind ridiculously high levels and currently, behind absurd amounts of content grinding or currency.

Before the NPE, it was reasonable to suggest people level up to about 20, because they’d get a feel for the profession by that point, even after the trait debacle. At this point, with all the level-gating, I can’t even say that level 80 gives a good feel for the profession, anymore. The power creep is terrible.

I’ll just throw out what I found recently as I just leveled two toons. EotM is pretty quick, especially if you can get on some good maps with solid zergs and solid commanders. The issue with EotM is it’s so dependent on those factors. Now map completion on the other hand is something you can do on your own time and relatively quick. However it’s not as fast as EotM (if EotM conditions are perfect). So for this question i’d say EotM.

Now one way that I don’t think many people know about or consider (because it gets kinda boring)is kill streak boosters.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Killstreak_Experience_Booster

“Wait how is this going to help me level fast?” Well i’m glad you asked that. Here is what you do. You pop one of those boosters along with any other xp booster, food, utility, etc. Then you party up with some buds, and port into a mid level map. Preferably one that isn’t too busy. Start in one spot and work your way around the map. The KEY here is to target Yellow mobs. This method uses the bonus xp mechanic.

“An exploration bonus is earned based on how long a creature has been alive in the world”

You get the kill xp in addtion to a huge bonus xp. So you target yellow mobs because they aren’t killed as often as the red mobs. Sometimes these yellow mobs can be literal xp pinatas (with all the boosters). Basically you have to kill something within the 60 second timer to keep the 10 stacks of the killstreak booster. It’s not the most exciting way to level but you can get xp extremely fast using this method. My guildies and I used this method on a couple of our toons roaming around maps getting waypoints. Did the hearts and everything after we hit all the yellow mobs and the boost wore off.