Guild Wars 2

So I’m about to get my first character (Guardian) to 80. I’ve been wondering what to do after that. I’ve also never done dungeons but I do play WvW on a daily basis. I’ve come down with a few choices

1. Level an alt (Thief/Ranger) so I can enjoy WvW more (somehow I don’t fully enjoy it as a Guardian, probably because I don’t have a solid group to do WvW with).
2. Farm for Exotics / Equipment (whether via field or dungeons)
3. Run dungeons? I don’t know what rewards there is yet.
4. Attempt map completion (but waypoints are hell expensive for my money right now).

I’d appreciate it if anyone can give me some insight/advise on what to do. Thanks!

I’ve been at level 80 for probably about a month now and I’m doing bits of all those things you listed above. I suppose my priority when I got to 80 was trying to get some exoctic armour, then an exotic weapon and some accessories and I’d been keeping up with my crafting so it was really just a bit of farming which gathered the last few mats I needed to make my own.

Now I am starting to do dungeons, spending more time in WvW (partly because of world completion!), visiting unfinished maps, and levelling alts. My advice would be to do whatever takes your fancy. However, you may have a more focused goal like a legendary in which case it would be worth targetting activities that will help you with that.

I’ve been level 80 for less than a month, but this is what I’ve found

• Run through Straits of Devastation and Malchor’s Leap to get to Cursed Shore. The top portion of Cursed Shore has some sparse enough areas that the instant respawns won’t be at your feet
• Explore Frostgorge Sound. You’ll get a couple of level 70+ exotics (to keep, salvage for ectos, or sell on BLTC for some money) for full exploration
• Try dungeons, starting with AC. You will get some gold and drops, but the main thing is to get to get to EXP mode and farm those tokens. You can trade the tokens to specific vendors in Lion’s Arch for exotics, runes, sigils, …
• Start that alt! It will give you a different PvE experience. I have a high level thief and elementalist and am leveling a warrior now. All three play very differently.
• Also, a lot of classes can contribute at low levels in WvW by taking out errant dolyaks and capturing lonely sentry points even by themselves. If there’s 3 of you (all low level), you can probably take a supply camp!
• Scrap cheap drops using basic salvage kits, but focus on selling until you get a more comfortable amount of money. Then think about salvaging yellows for ectos, saving greens to throw into the MF for a chance at yellows, etc.
• If you like being social, join a guild, make some dungeon running friends, start posting in map chat, whatever. Having people to joke about how many times that dungeon boss just owned you makes things less tense.
• If the game feels boring, take a break. It’ll be there tomorrow.

Hope this helps, and look me up in game if you have any questions!

You could also consider finishing the personal story if you haven’t been doing it while leveling.

Wintermute.7529:

So I’m about to get my first character (Guardian) to 80. I’ve been wondering what to do after that. I’ve also never done dungeons but I do play WvW on a daily basis. I’ve come down with a few choices

1. Level an alt (Thief/Ranger) so I can enjoy WvW more (somehow I don’t fully enjoy it as a Guardian, probably because I don’t have a solid group to do WvW with).
2. Farm for Exotics / Equipment (whether via field or dungeons)
3. Run dungeons? I don’t know what rewards there is yet.
4. Attempt map completion (but waypoints are hell expensive for my money right now).

I’d appreciate it if anyone can give me some insight/advise on what to do. Thanks!

If you need people to WvW with, our guild could always use more WvW players. I always WvW myself as well.

Thanks for the input guys!

I think I’ll primarily try to farm exotics and try out dungeons. But I’ll do daily quests on my alt from now on so it gets a fair amount of level.

As for WvW, I’ve been with a guild in Yak’s Bend for about 2weeks now but I’ve transfered to Isle of Janthir recently to get a “feel” of the WvW there. I’m playing on oceanic timezone (GMT+8) and Yak’s Bend population during that time is just lonely. But the competition when there’s a lot of guild/people online is fun.

Honestly don’t even waste your time with crafting exotics, it’ll cost you far too much money when you can just do dungeon runs, which are actually fun, to get your exotic stuff. That and you’ve got a lot more choice in stats from the dungeon rewards, where as I find the craftable stuff to be rather limited, and ungodly difficult to do. I started with AC and just kept running it because it was fun, hoarding those tears without even knowing what they were for, when I finally bothered finding out I was halfway through my exotic armour set…

@Dolan
Sorry, but grinding the same dungeon over and over for 1400 tokens for a set of exotic armout is not fun for many players. Besides, you need good kit before even attempting to do such a thing. The only stat variation dungeon armour offers that you cannot get from crafting is power/toughness/vitality, and you can get this stat from the temple karma vendors in Orr or from WvW tokens.

I have 2 crafts at 400, and it is by far the easiest thing to do in the game! Last evening I crafted myself a full set of exotic armour (with 2 different insignias), 2 exotic and 3 rare weapons. The most difficult thing was placing buy bids on the TP for some of the mats I was short on. There are plenty of crafting guides out there, if you find it such a challenge…

@OP
My advice is keep on exploring to get all your explorer achievements. The game will reward you well for map completions, and all the mats, gold, and items that will drop along the way. Keep on with you personal story, and level your crafting skills. You will soon have more than enough to either buy the exotics you want off the TP, or craft them yourself.

By this time you will be set to tackle the Orr maps for exploration and/or farming.

Wintermute.7529:

Thanks for the input guys!

I think I’ll primarily try to farm exotics and try out dungeons. But I’ll do daily quests on my alt from now on so it gets a fair amount of level.

As for WvW, I’ve been with a guild in Yak’s Bend for about 2weeks now but I’ve transfered to Isle of Janthir recently to get a “feel” of the WvW there. I’m playing on oceanic timezone (GMT+8) and Yak’s Bend population during that time is just lonely. But the competition when there’s a lot of guild/people online is fun.

Yup, our (Isle of Janthir) Oceanic presence in WvW is pretty solid, so you won’t be disappointed.

I’m sorry that you don’t enjoy playing as a Guardian in WvW. We have a number of viable builds for various roles, but I fully understand the allure of face roll professions. But regardless, when you hit 80, whether with the Guardian or an alt, you’ll probably want to pick a build and find the perfect set of Exotic armour for him/her. This usually involves running Explorable Mode dungeons for the dungeon tokens and/or gold.

here’s an early congrats! : DDD it’s exciting finally reaching 80. i won’t say no to starting an alt, but i highly urge you to spend just a bit more time getting to know your fresh 80 even more. sure, you’ve spent a LOT of time on them already.. but i believe you DO approach certain things differently at level 80 and with what you can do.

for starters, you can wear level 80 gear! gear is not everything, not the end all, be all, but it will make a difference. especially in WvW if you enjoy it so. not saying it’s a must, but it’s somehting to work towards : ))

on the other hand, you have access to all your trait points! go experiment. finetune a build that you’ve been enjoying. if you don’t like what you’ve been running with, figure out a new build!

then from there.. settle on a few builds you think you’d like. maybe start with one. find stat combos on gear (armour, weapons, trinkets) that would compliment that build and if you don’t have all rares yet, you can go for that, and then eventually work your way up to exotics. i would suggest for weapons though, you can skip rares and go straight to exotics, at least for the one syou enjoy using or use the most.

exotics as mentioend above, can be obtained in various manners. many people consider dungeon tokens the “free” way to get armour. and it can be that way, but not necessarily true. find a good group to run some dungeons with and see if you like ‘em. or crafting, which i did for myself. and now i’m getting dungeon armour for the looks, mixing and matching with various crafted stats and/or dungeon stats. there are also the Orr Temple armours you can get with karma. and the WvW Invaders set you can get with badges of honor.

i’m huge on vanity lol so i spend a significant amount of time finding gear / weapons that i like match and try to get the stats i want on them. i’m even going through two different dungeons, one for the stats, one for the looks and plan to transmutate them. there are of ocurse, other ways of approaching this.

explore! explore! explore! map completion is fun and you get great rewards for the high level areas.

keep WvW-ing. IoJ is really strong. i’m on SoR and it’s been a few good matchups the past few weeks. ; ))) maybe you can even work towards getting a commander and build a following of loyal WvWers.

i love the Guardian as well. even in WvW. i like to believ ei’ve found my place. : ))

hope all these suggestions help. keep it up! and keep having fun. see you around on the battlefield perhaps.

Thanks for the addtl replies!

@bri
I didn’t know there are exotics that can be purchased with Karma as well, I have about 200k karma to spend. And the karma set power/toughness/vitality sounds like a solid set for tanking. I think I might go with that.

@Ojimaru & akamon
To be honest, the reason why I don’t enjoy a guardian much on WvW is because before (when I was on lower levels), I usually instantly die when I get to melee range. And melee itself is hard to handle especially with moving targets. Scepter/Focus + Staff on the other hand seems good support but the Scepter attacks really suck IMO.

And maybe another reason is I don’t roll with a group yet (atleast my friends right now are busy getting their first chars to 80). A solo thief doing small group pvp or intercepting supply lines sounds better than a solo guardian.

bri.2359:

@Dolan
Sorry, but grinding the same dungeon over and over for 1400 tokens for a set of exotic armout is not fun for many players. Besides, you need good kit before even attempting to do such a thing. The only stat variation dungeon armour offers that you cannot get from crafting is power/toughness/vitality, and you can get this stat from the temple karma vendors in Orr or from WvW tokens.

I have 2 crafts at 400, and it is by far the easiest thing to do in the game! Last evening I crafted myself a full set of exotic armour (with 2 different insignias), 2 exotic and 3 rare weapons. The most difficult thing was placing buy bids on the TP for some of the mats I was short on. There are plenty of crafting guides out there, if you find it such a challenge…

I suppose if you enjoy exploring, crafting wouldn’t be tooooo bad. Most of the higher level areas only have a bee line to the dungeon explored, it bores the absolute kitten out of me.

Crafting is and always will be a complete and utter chore. It is legitimately cheaper to buy armour as you’re going along, and just get the dungeon armour when you hit 80.

Wintermute.7529:

Thanks for the addtl replies!

@bri
I didn’t know there are exotics that can be purchased with Karma as well, I have about 200k karma to spend. And the karma set power/toughness/vitality sounds like a solid set for tanking. I think I might go with that.

The temple armour costs 42k karma per piece! So, 252k karma for the full set …

Also, not all the temple vendors sell all the pieces with the same stats. You will need to visit at least 2, perhaps more to get everything with the same stats.

Then there is the problems that the vendors only appear when the Pact control the temple. If the temple is contested, and many of them are most of the time, no vendors…

This guide will help you determine which temple vendor sells which bits you need:
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

Then is a matter of waiting until the specific temple is uncontested on your server so you can get what you need.

Dolan.3071:

I suppose if you enjoy exploring, crafting wouldn’t be tooooo bad. Most of the higher level areas only have a bee line to the dungeon explored, it bores the absolute kitten out of me.

Crafting is and always will be a complete and utter chore. It is legitimately cheaper to buy armour as you’re going along, and just get the dungeon armour when you hit 80.

Ah, well yes .. You need to explore and farm mats to craft, otherwise it gets expensive buying everything off the TP. I love map exploration, so this was not a problem for me.

To level a craft from 0 to around 300 or so, the mats are cheap to buy, so you can easily do this without leaving LA. Once you get into the T5 (rare) level, mats become more expensive to buy. Then the T6 (exotics) mats have sky-rocketed in price since the Nov game up-date.

Well Ori had dropped. Surprisingly. But other stuff, especially mob parts, have risen.

I wouldn’t bother leveling crafting. I would farm the materials (i.e. mining the ore, grinding for bags, farming rates for ectos) and have someone else make them for me, instead of wasting money going from 1-375. Or just buy them. The armor price is about the price of the mats so it’s not too much of a loss.