Guild Wars 2

I got this game one or two years ago and I think it was my first mmo. I just jumped in and somehow noobed my way to lvl 80 on my Elemetalist with only one goal… map completion. After I got that I felt kinda lost and stopped playing.
I had a lot of fun with this game and I think I want to try the expansion, but after I started playing FFXIV and actually putting though into how to be a decent player I realized I have no idea how my classes here work, what gear level I should have(if that even exists here) and believe it or not I didn’t do a single dungeon until lvl80 when I first joined a guild…
A person talked to me about jumping puzzles to which I only had one response “What is that?”. I was somewere around lvl70 at that point.

I know there are no Tanks/Healer/DPS in this game and that is where my knowlege ends. The only reason I got to lvl80 like this is because I treated this game pretty much as an socially advanced single player game.

No idea how and were to start catching up. If you ever meet a really confused lvl80 guy in a low level dungeon, be gentle please.

MPyu.3078:

I know there are no Tanks/Healer/DPS in this game and that is where my knowlege ends. The only reason I got to lvl80 like this is because I treated this game pretty much as an socially advanced single player game.

There ARE Tanks and Healers in GW2 since HoT :S

Probably your best option is to join a guild that will help you learn, since it’s much easier to learn as you’re going along. But here’s a few things which might be useful to know however, based on your post:

Gear Levels

I have no idea what those are, but there are two factors which determine how good equipment is in this game: the level requirement (which is the level your character has to be to use it) and the rarity/tier (text colour).

There are 6 tiers which, in order, are:

• Common (White)
• Fine (Blue)
• Masterwork (Green)
• Rare (Yellow)
• Exotic (Orange)
• Ascended (Pink)

All equipment with the same rarity and level requirement is equally good, if you craft a level 80 exotic staff (for example) it will be just as good as any level 80 exotic staff you could get from enemies or as a story reward or from dungeons etc.

Useful equipment

A good choice when you first get to level 80 is to get a full set of exotic equipment, because those are widely available and ascended (the next and final tier) is intended to be a difficult, long-term goal.

Exotic equipment can come from a variety of places: you can trade dungeon tokens for it at a vendor in LA, buy it with karma from the temples in Orr, get it as drops and story rewards, craft it or buy it from the Trading Post for gold.

The tricky part is working out what stats you want on it, as although they’re all equally strong they’re not all equally useful for you. Although elementalists are more easily able to use all the stats than many professions, and several people choose to use Celestial gear (which spreads the points equally between all stats, whereas most level 80 gear has just 3 stats). It might be worth having a look at the elementalist section of the forum to get some ideas.

Dungeon & level scaling

One thing which is very different between this game and most of them is that your level scales to the area you’re in. Which means its quite common to see level 80 characters everywhere, even in starting areas. The same applies to dungeons. (In fact some people have complained that it’s hard to find a party before level 80.)

This is an important thing to bear in mind because whilst it has a lot of upsides in that it means you can do content in almost any order and get useful rewards and fun gameplay anywhere in the game it also has a downside because it means you can’t ever assume reaching the max level means you’re safe. You won’t be able to 1-shot everything in low level zones, or ignore them because they’ll never do enough damage to kill you.

Tornupto.2304:

There ARE Tanks and Healers in GW2 since HoT :S

Haha ^^ and there goes my knowlege.

Danikat.8537:

Probably your best option is to join a guild that will help you learn, since it’s much easier to learn as you’re going along. But here’s a few things which might be useful to know however, based on your post:

Gear Levels

I have no idea what those are, but there are two factors which determine how good equipment is in this game: the level requirement (which is the level your character has to be to use it) and the rarity/tier (text colour).

There are 6 tiers which, in order, are:

• Common (White)
• Fine (Blue)
• Masterwork (Green)
• Rare (Yellow)
• Exotic (Orange)
• Ascended (Pink)

All equipment with the same rarity and level requirement is equally good, if you craft a level 80 exotic staff (for example) it will be just as good as any level 80 exotic staff you could get from enemies or as a story reward or from dungeons etc.

Useful equipment

A good choice when you first get to level 80 is to get a full set of exotic equipment, because those are widely available and ascended (the next and final tier) is intended to be a difficult, long-term goal.

Exotic equipment can come from a variety of places: you can trade dungeon tokens for it at a vendor in LA, buy it with karma from the temples in Orr, get it as drops and story rewards, craft it or buy it from the Trading Post for gold.

The tricky part is working out what stats you want on it, as although they’re all equally strong they’re not all equally useful for you. Although elementalists are more easily able to use all the stats than many professions, and several people choose to use Celestial gear (which spreads the points equally between all stats, whereas most level 80 gear has just 3 stats). It might be worth having a look at the elementalist section of the forum to get some ideas.

Dungeon & level scaling

One thing which is very different between this game and most of them is that your level scales to the area you’re in. Which means its quite common to see level 80 characters everywhere, even in starting areas. The same applies to dungeons. (In fact some people have complained that it’s hard to find a party before level 80.)

This is an important thing to bear in mind because whilst it has a lot of upsides in that it means you can do content in almost any order and get useful rewards and fun gameplay anywhere in the game it also has a downside because it means you can’t ever assume reaching the max level means you’re safe. You won’t be able to 1-shot everything in low level zones, or ignore them because they’ll never do enough damage to kill you.

Oh wow, thank you your post is really helpful! I guess my best bet is really finding a nice guild who would be willing to help me a little.

MPyu.3078:

Danikat.8537:

Probably your best option is to join a guild that will help you learn, since it’s much easier to learn as you’re going along. But here’s a few things which might be useful to know however, based on your post:

Gear Levels

I have no idea what those are, but there are two factors which determine how good equipment is in this game: the level requirement (which is the level your character has to be to use it) and the rarity/tier (text colour).

There are 6 tiers which, in order, are:

• Common (White)
• Fine (Blue)
• Masterwork (Green)
• Rare (Yellow)
• Exotic (Orange)
• Ascended (Pink)

All equipment with the same rarity and level requirement is equally good, if you craft a level 80 exotic staff (for example) it will be just as good as any level 80 exotic staff you could get from enemies or as a story reward or from dungeons etc.

Useful equipment

A good choice when you first get to level 80 is to get a full set of exotic equipment, because those are widely available and ascended (the next and final tier) is intended to be a difficult, long-term goal.

Exotic equipment can come from a variety of places: you can trade dungeon tokens for it at a vendor in LA, buy it with karma from the temples in Orr, get it as drops and story rewards, craft it or buy it from the Trading Post for gold.

The tricky part is working out what stats you want on it, as although they’re all equally strong they’re not all equally useful for you. Although elementalists are more easily able to use all the stats than many professions, and several people choose to use Celestial gear (which spreads the points equally between all stats, whereas most level 80 gear has just 3 stats). It might be worth having a look at the elementalist section of the forum to get some ideas.

Dungeon & level scaling

One thing which is very different between this game and most of them is that your level scales to the area you’re in. Which means its quite common to see level 80 characters everywhere, even in starting areas. The same applies to dungeons. (In fact some people have complained that it’s hard to find a party before level 80.)

This is an important thing to bear in mind because whilst it has a lot of upsides in that it means you can do content in almost any order and get useful rewards and fun gameplay anywhere in the game it also has a downside because it means you can’t ever assume reaching the max level means you’re safe. You won’t be able to 1-shot everything in low level zones, or ignore them because they’ll never do enough damage to kill you.

Oh wow, thank you your post is really helpful! I guess my best bet is really finding a nice guild who would be willing to help me a little.

I dont have a guild to offer but I’d be happy to help you learn everything you need to know regarding making builds and improving in combat through skype?

My Skype is: DreamyAbaddon
feel free to add me and give me a call! ^-^ I’m available right now if you’re on.

Danikat.8537:

Probably your best option is to join a guild that will help you learn, since it’s much easier to learn as you’re going along. But here’s a few things which might be useful to know however, based on your post:

Gear Levels

I have no idea what those are, but there are two factors which determine how good equipment is in this game: the level requirement (which is the level your character has to be to use it) and the rarity/tier (text colour).

There are 6 tiers which, in order, are:

• Common (White)
• Fine (Blue)
• Masterwork (Green)
• Rare (Yellow)
• Exotic (Orange)
• Ascended (Pink)

All equipment with the same rarity and level requirement is equally good, if you craft a level 80 exotic staff (for example) it will be just as good as any level 80 exotic staff you could get from enemies or as a story reward or from dungeons etc.

Useful equipment

A good choice when you first get to level 80 is to get a full set of exotic equipment, because those are widely available and ascended (the next and final tier) is intended to be a difficult, long-term goal.

Exotic equipment can come from a variety of places: you can trade dungeon tokens for it at a vendor in LA, buy it with karma from the temples in Orr, get it as drops and story rewards, craft it or buy it from the Trading Post for gold.

The tricky part is working out what stats you want on it, as although they’re all equally strong they’re not all equally useful for you. Although elementalists are more easily able to use all the stats than many professions, and several people choose to use Celestial gear (which spreads the points equally between all stats, whereas most level 80 gear has just 3 stats). It might be worth having a look at the elementalist section of the forum to get some ideas.

Dungeon & level scaling

One thing which is very different between this game and most of them is that your level scales to the area you’re in. Which means its quite common to see level 80 characters everywhere, even in starting areas. The same applies to dungeons. (In fact some people have complained that it’s hard to find a party before level 80.)

This is an important thing to bear in mind because whilst it has a lot of upsides in that it means you can do content in almost any order and get useful rewards and fun gameplay anywhere in the game it also has a downside because it means you can’t ever assume reaching the max level means you’re safe. You won’t be able to 1-shot everything in low level zones, or ignore them because they’ll never do enough damage to kill you.

You forgot tier7: Legendary

MPyu.3078:

Tornupto.2304:

There ARE Tanks and Healers in GW2 since HoT :S

Haha ^^ and there goes my knowlege.

Well he is not really that accurate and are leaving out a lot of info. There are still no healers or tanks in gw2 and will never be simply because the game is not built around it.
How ever what have changed is that some raid bosses in the new raid instance for example target players with the most toughness. This way you gear one player with the most toughness and mostly have the aggro. But you do not have anything that will keep aggro, like in any other mmo were a tank taunt the mob and then build up aggro to keep it on him or pull him off a player if the mob change target. This is not a thing in gw2 at all.

Same thing goes for healers, there are no healers in game at this point, there are support though, were two classes (druid and ele) have a good amount of heal options to put up that will take the group through the raid instance during heavy damage. Noone of those two classes have single target heals and they can not constantly keep one player up with “Ohkitten buttons” whilst healing the group, so in terms of a healer, GW2 still do not have such thing, but we do have good support classes.

There are also other classes having a lot of buffs and heals to share, but ele and druid have more focused heal skills.

Also to make sure you don’t missread this. As a ele you should really never stay on wateratunament. Learn the boss you fight and see were he do the damage spikes or need to clean players spikes and switch at that moment. Also earth give a lot of protection and you can stack that if you play with your auras.
There are many good eles out there with guides on youtube. First one comes to mind would be Wooden potato. This is a video about auro sharing, but he have many ele videos to watch and learn from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3heA0G9TeR4

Socomhunter.2850:

Danikat.8537:

-Snip-

You forgot tier7: Legendary

I’ve written variants on this post a lot and I did used to include legendaries, but I found that it required a lot of extra information for something that’s not really relevant to the question. Especially for people who are more familiar with other games where legendary is the name of a normal tier (WoW for example).

When I’m already writing a small essay it’s easier to leave it out. People can always find out about legendaries later on, once they’ve gotten to grips with the basics.

Frankly how you describe how you play is very similar to how I play now (and pre expansion). It is not a big deal, the only difference is that I am part of a small guild that does Raid attempts every week. Gold is not a problem since I get a solid amount just from what I do play, PvP I am not interested in. Dungeons I did when I needed to finish the only 2 legendaries I thought where cool.
Play around and don’t worry about lack of knowledge you will develop it.