Guild Wars 2

Hey all. My husband bought me this game for my birthday, and I really want to enjoy the things he does. He seems to spend most of his time in WvW. It’s scary for me in there! I’ve never played an MMO before, and I get lost really easily, and before I know it, I’m being punched in the face by a whole group of other people. I currently have a warrior as my main character because he said it would be the easiest for me to learn, but this nice Ranger I met yesterday told me that if I really wanted to get better I needed to play a ranged style. Okay!

So I picked up my rifle, and I picked up my longbow and out I went. Boy, these weapon skills just are the way to play a warrior to me. I’m just not having very much fun with the skills. They seem quite bland.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help a poor girl out? I’ve contemplated playing something else, but they all seem so daunting to relearn! I really want to play with my husband, but I also don’t want him to get mad at me for wasting his time.

Thanks!

With WvW, the most important thing is to stay with and get lost in a group of your allies, sticking out alone or in melee range is certain death. This means you’re stuck with either the rifle for single target damage or the longbow for multiple target damage.

Unfortunately, warriors aren’t really meant to be played exclusively as a ranged class so their ranged skills aren’t as extensive as other classes. What you can do to really help your allies is use utility skills like banners and shouts to give boons to those around you.

If you still find the ranged warrior boring, I suggest trying out a ranger. They are also pretty easy to play and they have a few more options for medium and long range weaponry.

First off, welcome to Guild Wars 2!

If you’re just getting started, and especially if this is your first MMO, I would not recommend jumping straight into WvW. Get your bearings with the cooperative PvE content first. Start playing through your character’s personal storyline, explore the world a bit, and do some dynamic events to learn the various weapons and fighting styles for your profession.

For a warrior, ranged combat is best when going against a group in WvW. If your with a big group who’s all fighting at range, and you’re the one person running out in front, who do you think the enemy team is going to target? Soften them up with your bow or rifle, then switch to melee to take down specific targets, or when someone tries to close in on you. If you don’t like how a warrior feels in ranged combat, you might prefer a thief or ranger.

Running around on your own, as you’ve seen, can be quite dangerous. If you can find a group to run around with, you’ll have strength in numbers.

For some general information around WvW and how things operate there, check out the wiki article: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World.

Good luck and safe journeys!

Remember that, as a warrior, your rifle is best used for single targets while your longbow is good for AoE damage.

I’d recommend keeping just one of those ranged weapons, probably longbow in WvW, in one slot and a mace/shield combo in the other. With a mace/shield combo you have a lot of stuns and defense for getting away from anyone who tries to jump in and focus you and spend the rest of the time shooting fire arrows at everyone.

As other people have said, it’s VERY bad to force someone to learn how to play a MMO using the WvW combat system. I would never take any of my characters into WvW until I had a firm grasp on what each character does and what kind of playstyle I felt most comfortable with while using that character.

Warriors are a generally straight forward class, as opposed to some of the more finesse oriented classes. For a learning curve, it’s not a bad class to experience MMOs on since it has a very high health pool and mostly obvious game mechanics. However for a new person who doesn’t have a MMO background, Warrior will still feel complicated and I wouldn’t just rush into the WvW / PvP scene.

With GW2 some professions are definitely harder to get the hang of than others, and warrior and ranger are both some of the more straightforward ones (warrior more so I’d say). The best way to learn, I think, is to stick with one character and learn how they work – it’ll take time but the more you play, the more you’ll get a feel for it.

WvW moves very fast and requires a reasonably high level of skill (because you’re going up against other players who probably have a lot more experience than you). I would recommend, with those above me, that you just play through some of the PvE world first. It’ll give you a much more forgiving learning curve and even if you’re not playing with your husband, you can still chat about what you’ve done in the game. I play GW2 with my boyfriend, and we talk about it a LOT despite not always playing in the same area!

Welcome to the game, hope you enjoy it, we can always use more ladies and more new MMO players :P

I wish I had your guts!

I doubt I’ll dare to try WvW until I have reached lvl 80 in the normal game. Even then I expect not to make it very far. Truthfully, I doubt I’ll ever enjoy facing of players, but I do have fun with the storylines and just exploring the wide world.

My situation is a bit different. The person I play with is my daughter. She dashes off to do stuff that interests her, often at the other end of Tyria. While I had hoped we’d group to do stuff together more, it is still fine. We talk to each other about what is going on, so we’re still doing it together even when we’re not seeing the same screens.

There is a lot to see and do in this game. Find what is most fun for you.

My advice would be to stick with the warrior, try to stay by your hubby’s side at all times. If he is in melee a lot, target him and press control & T to place a bug target over his head so you know where he is.

If you find the ranged weapons bland, I highly suggest taking note of the descriptions or tooltips that display “combo” effects. You can see these by hovering your cursor over the weapon skills, they will be labelled combo finisher or combo field followed by what type of effect it will have. For example a combo field: fire will enable a combo finisher: blast to grant might to surrounding friends. The great thing about the warrior is they can place combo fields (longbow F1 places a fire field), gain projectile bonuses or blast effects when used in conjunction with combo fields. These effects give more flavor to the standard attacks, they give you something else to be aware of and take advantage of and can greatly improve the outcome in battle.

Hint: My favorite combo is to use a blast finisher or projectile finisher on a water field (seen visually as a bubbling fountain or a blue tree). The blast finisher will do
a burst of healing to everyone in its area of effect, while the projectile finisher has a chance to grant regeneration to nearby friends.

I disagree with others that say you should avoid WvW if you are a beginner, this is up to each and every individual. Some people pick things up quicker than others especially when learning from scratch. The other positive is that you get to play with your hubby.

A couple things for general WvW that isn’t so class based that it would probably help to know, and get less people yelling at you.
---
1. Avoid taking supply from keeps or towers. Take from a camp when possible

Why?: Keeps and towers can be upgraded. However in order to be upgraded they need supply to be in their depots. And they either use it instantly (most upgrades that involve personnel) or slowly (upgraded walls, defenses). If there is no supply, those upgrades grind to a halt. Camps have similar upgrades, but they tend to cost less supply, and supply camps get their supply faster.

Exceptions are fully upgraded keeps or towers (even then try to keep half the max there for an emergency) and during an active attack on the location when there is either no upgrade queued, or the upgrade has no chance to finish in time.
---
2 Call out an incoming or inc if you spot a large group of enemies. With their location and likely target or direction of travel, and if possible an estimate to their numbers.

Why?: Defenders want to know they are about to be attacked so they can stop what they are doing to man siege engines. It can also help redirect nearby players to help with the defense, or book it out of there to take it back after the group has left as appropriate.
---
3. Always carry supply.

Why?: You need a siege engine to take anything bigger than a camp, and they all need supply. And if defending 10 supply is 1/3rd of an arrow cart, or a couple more hits on a door with a battering ram. Carrying some siege blueprints for a ram or arrow cart is also helpful, but can get a tad expensive if you use them all the time.
---
4. Try to avoid attacking stonemist unless told to.

Why?: Stonemist takes a lot of time to break into, and even well organized large groups can be repelled without too much trouble. A good attack on stonemist usually involves depriving it of supply while hitting walls with long range treb artillery. More often than not a group assaulting a stonemist gate could be put to better effect elsewhere.

Exceptions are when there is a organized assault. Even with a wall down you still need to overcome the inner wall, and then the deathtrap of the lord’s room. An organized attack can do that. Also right after a reset stonemist can be practically undefended, allowing for the quick to get in and capture it for their team, but know that the other sides will be trying to do that too.

A lot of the mechanics in WvW are designed so that the overall game reflects the principles of warfare and battle strategy, both on the strategic level and on personal levels.

Experience trumps advice. Do what you’d do in a real war: stand at the back (and watch your back), don’t volunteer, don’t listen to a commander that orders you to do something suicidal, and most important of all watch and let other people make mistakes for you.

Learn which voices in team chat give good advice and which are buffoons. After you feel more confident, trust your own advice.