Guild Wars 2

So I have decided to venture into the world of GW2, however I am feeling extremely overwhelmed. I am currently in the process of building my character, and want to go with a Thief, chosen race human to start. I am coming in from playing WoW, and could use any and all advice you guys may have. When it comes to character play, I tend to prefer to go stealth, and attack from behind.

I am currently attempting to read as much as I can, but with so much to sort through I as hoping maybe a point in the right direction to start.

Thieves are obviously the best choice for sneak attacks and deception via stealth ( well, they are thieves). Race has about no influence on your final char except some niche uses of some racial skills. Humans are just so generic (* shameless personal opinion* ). The usual beginner advices would be a) learn the mechanics and your foes’ skills ( both in pve and pvp) and learn to adapt and take right utilities ( pve) change your rotations ( pve and pvp) or even leave a fight ( pvp). For thieves specifics, you can precast any utilities like cloak and dagger of pistol whip and use any shadowstepping skill ( infiltrator signet, shadowstep, steal) to get a hit on less experienced players. As far as build goes, i’d recommend 2/6/0/0/6 for pvp and group www, and 6/6/0/0/2 for pve content. Can’t really answer to everything as the game is still quite complex ( yeah, it’s true, don’t laugh), so if you have any other questions, i’ll be glad to answer.

Firstly welcome to GW2.

Secondly if you expect to play the thief as you did a rogue in WoW you might be disappointed. There is far less use of stealth, I had a MoP max level rogue and still haven’t mastered the thief. It seems that you pop into stealth, make an attack and then pop out again, no remaining in stealth for long periods and sneaking around everything. The other thing is MOVE, don’t stand there thinking you are evading, you have to actually dodge attacks yourself, timing and reaction is far more important that knowing you skill rota.

If you find you aren’t too happy with the difference, try different classes, just because rogue was a WoW favorite, it doesn’t mean you won’t find you prefer a different class in GW2. There is far more variations in how you play each class, melee ranger, close in elementalist or heavy armor caster might prove to be more to your liking.

Since they have reworked to lower levels you are guided through it a little more than when it first came out, but you will still have to find events to take part in, the hearts, which are the closest to the questing you know from WoW are only part of the game.

The roles for dungeons and other events are far less defined, there is no set healer or tank, a thief that can dodge well can tank as well as a protection specced guardian.

Have fun and experiment.

Welcome to GW2!

What others have said before are excellent things to go by. Especially that if you don’t end up liking the Thief, don’t give up and try other things. There’s a great amount of variety with the different classes and within each class themselves. Ranger-types and Necromancer-types are my usual classes in any game and I made both here on start. I still have the Ranger I first created but it took 3 different re-makes of a Necromancer before I figured out the build and playstyle that I actually liked. I play classes that I thought I’d hate. So experiment, take your time, and you’ll get used to it all in no time

One of the best things about this game is the community. While there’s always going to be those mean people in every game, they seem to be less in here than I’ve seen in other games. Don’t be afraid to ask questions in map chat; there will be at least one person that will answer and help out.

Lastly, I recommend reading through the stickies on this forum (really, the Combat, Outreach, and OMG threads) to get some of a handle on things. Especially the OMG because I even still browse through that and learn some new things.

Feel free to add me to your friends list if you ever need a hand or questions answered!

I played a sub rogue in wow many ages ago. My advice is
1. be prepared to be really bad at the beginning – when I unlocked scorpion wire hilarity ensued… for days…
2. play the game for a while and ignore the guides – None of that stuff matters for low level pve anyway. Also some things look great on paper but might not really mesh with your play style. Get to know the weapons and play around with different tactics until you know what you like
3. Take your time.

Welcome to Tyria!

As others have mentioned, checking out some of the stuff in the forums and trying things out on your own is the best way to get a feel for each class and decide which one suits you best. The New Player Experience from the recent patches have made the starting areas relatively simple and easy to learn. That being said, finding a helpful guild can go a long way for new players as well. Don’t be shy in asking for a guild to join, finding a smaller sized guild can sometimes provide more help than the larger guilds that are more focused on higher level stuff, but it really does depend on the guild (some large guilds are still quite helpful to new players).

Good luck and hope you’ll come to enjoy your time in Tyria.

Welcome.

There are a few things that may help since they are different from WoW.

There is no trinity (tank, healer, DPS). Everyone can heal themselves (utility assigned to the “6” key by default). Each profession (class) can be played different ways depending on weapons used (skills are tied to weapons), what utility skills used, what traits chosen, what stats and sigils and runes chosen for weapons and armor and what foods and other boosters are consumed. By changing some of those things you can play your character to fit the situation so you are not locked into one role.

Also there is no aggro gaining skills. The first one to hit a mob gains aggro first but with more attackers the mob usually shifts aggro to the one closest and/or dealing the most damage. You do not need to be stationary to use most skills or cast spells. Keep on the move. Learn to dodge by double tapping w, s , a and d. The fastest dodge is dodging forward using W.

Get gathering tools, anyone can gather from any resource node if they have the right tool. There is no competing for those resource nodes, everyone has their own instance of them. Just as everyone gets their own loot if they contributed to the kill of a mob. It is not a competition in GW2 so go ahead and jump in and help someone fighting a mob. It’s not their mob but everyone’s.

Crafting used to be a fast way to level up since gaining crafting experience level added to you character’s overall level. Crafting XP has been nerfed though and usually you don’t get enough materials on your first character from gathering and salvaging (yes forgot to mention get a salvaging kit to use on drops you don’t want use on your character and that are not worth much on the Black Lion Trading Post). But if you decide to craft you gain more XP discovering new recipes rather then making the same thing over and over and definitely read up on it first.

One last thing. The way the game plays has been changed recently starting this past April so there may be some confusing info in the excellent guides previously written and mentioned. As a general rule things that used to be available earlier in the leveling process have now been pushed back until later. If the guide mentions something that you don’t have available to you at a certain point have patience.

God luck and have fun!

P.S. Also there is no “right” way to play so even if you don’t level efficiently according to some people it doesn’t matter as long as you are having fun.

A caveat to killing mobs and doing events with others, “kill credit” and “event credit”. “Kill credit” equates to doing a certain threshold of damage to a mob. If you don’t do enough damage you may not get loot, yet event credit is not equal to kill credit which amounts to just being there and not afking and actually doing anything you can to help.

I just wanted to also say… “Take it slowly.”

There is no rush to get to “endgame” in GW2 because endgame is just the regular game plus an extra dungeon and a bit more role versatility. The game is made so that you can play with friends in every zone at any level and be adequately challenged. Your level scales downward to adjust to low-end zones so that you can’t steam-roll everything.

This is obviously because ANET wants to show off the beauty of their zones and really hopes that players will enjoy them enough that they will go back to them even after hitting 80.

If you really want to enjoy GW2, my number one piece of advice is to get rid of an emphasis on “goal-oriented” mentality (aka extrinsic value). Focus on how much time went into building the world and do what you want to do for fun. There is very little NEED to grind out gold or experience here, and just about everything you do gives you one or the other or both.

Some people “farm” zones for exp and never leave because they feel like they can’t start playing until 80 because they have come from other games. Get rid of this mentality and you’ll have WAY more fun. Explore!

soakman.7539:

…The game is made so that you can play with friends in every zone at any level and be adequately challenged. Your level scales downward to adjust to low-end zones so that you can’t steam-roll everything.
…

This used to be true but since all mobs in the starter areas were scaled down in the April update and with the NPE this is no longer true for starter zones.

oxtred.7658:

2/6/0/0/6 and 6/6/0/0/2

I know you’re trying to be helpful which is great, but do you really think it is wise to be offering this kind of terminology to a player who is completely and admits openly to being overwhelmed?

It’s very unlikely that this has any meaning at all to somebody this new, heck, I’ve only been playing a month or two (although my account is a release account) and I personally have no idea what that string of numbers means at all, apart form it being something to do with traits.

No offence meant to you, you’re only trying to help, but it does grind my gears a bit when players of games offer help to new players in the form of game specific cyphers not thinking that it means almost nothing to them.

Belidos.3704:

oxtred.7658:

2/6/0/0/6 and 6/6/0/0/2

I know you’re trying to be helpful which is great, but do you really think it is wise to be offering this kind of terminology to a player who is completely and admits openly to being overwhelmed?

i think he is just trying to give an idea of what trait lines to focus on. assuming he is new, he will have all traits locked and unless he wants to waste time unlocking all of them, he should focus on the ones that really matter. the first thing I did when I was starting thief was look at a guide of what is meta for thief, that way I knew what traits I should try to unlock first. 6/6/0/0/2 is indeed meta for PVE and you can search for a guide with the traits you need for it.

Belidos.3704:

oxtred.7658:

2/6/0/0/6 and 6/6/0/0/2

I know you’re trying to be helpful which is great, but do you really think it is wise to be offering this kind of terminology to a player who is completely and admits openly to being overwhelmed?

It’s very unlikely that this has any meaning at all to somebody this new, heck, I’ve only been playing a month or two (although my account is a release account) and I personally have no idea what that string of numbers means at all, apart form it being something to do with traits.

No offence meant to you, you’re only trying to help, but it does grind my gears a bit when players of games offer help to new players in the form of game specific cyphers not thinking that it means almost nothing to them.

Relax there. He has no idea of what you (or OP) know or doesn’t know about the game. The terminology exists there for a reason, it is a standard used by most players to denote trait allocation. You can’t simply expect people to read your mind to see what you know and what you don’t. If you have problems understanding a specific advice offered to you, try asking nicely instead of going on full offense, I’m sure alot of people will try their best to explain it to you.

oxtred.7658:

Can’t really answer to everything as the game is still quite complex ( yeah, it’s true, don’t laugh), so if you have any other questions, i’ll be glad to answer.

^

“OMG Y U SO OFFENSIVE WITH YOUR TERMINOLOGY BE MORE HELPFUL”
He said, while having no ideas about what’s going on.

If you have any questions, ever, you can add me on your friendlist and ask me anything. I do this sort of thing pretty often, so it’s not a bother as I like helping people.
Also, welcome to the game, hope you will enjoy it.