Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I am in the process of downloading the game after about a year break from any game and about 6 years of Warcraft. I have a few questions I would really appreciate if anyone can help…

I spent so much time in wow and gathered so many resources and characters I am worried it will take me years to get anywhere near as much, will it take me years to get a decent amount of currency / gear / max level characters in GW2?

One thing I hated in wow was the gear imbalances in PVP, I’ve read a lot about how it works in GW2 but can I expect to do ok without been facerolled by players with better gear, will I be able to get decent gear and be competitive in a reasonable amount of time if I have the skill?

If I want to spent 90%+ of my time in WvW, which server should I be going on, if servers are an option?

Is there anything I should do from the start that I wont regret later on or save anything that will take a lot of time to get back if I waste it?

My main aim for this game is to reach max level, PVP whenever I can and do well / have fun at it, is that something I am going to be able to achieve relatively easy?

To give an example of what I want to avoid, in wow you had to do arena to get the best gear but I only enjoyed larger scale battlegrounds so I was always the underdog because I didn’t like arena and couldn’t get the relevant currency to get the best gear.

Any other tips or place to send me to as I start the game would be great, I love PVP battles but I’m more than happy to help anyone out that needs it.

Thanks for any help!

I don’t think you need to worry.

My first character, who I was levelling extremely slowly, took 7 months to get to level 80 (which is the maximum) and as soon as I got there I had enough karma (currency) to buy a full set of exotic gear (basically top-tier). The fastest I’ve done it is about 2 weeks and some people would probably say that was slow.

One thing to be aware of: The actual top tier in this game is ascended (pink text) which was added gradually after release to give those who wanted long-term goals something to work towards. The difference between that and the tier below (exotics, orange text) is very small, not nearly enough to be the deciding factor in any fight.

Which means there is no reason to get ascended if you don’t want to. Exotics are very cheap and easy to get once you’re at level 80, and available from a variety of places for different currencies so you have a lot of options for how you get them.

Well, it’s important to note first the difference between PvP and WvW.

From reading your post, it sounds like World vs. World is what you want to mostly do, which is fine. In World vs. World, your gear earned in PvE does matter, so you’ll definitely want to get to level 80, earn/buy your traits and outfit yourself in exotic gear to make yourself the most effective. Fortunately, levelling and gearing yourself up is much easier in this game than in others. The challenge in equipping yourself at level 80 isn’t getting competitive-statted armour, it’s in getting the cool looking armour. There’s many routes you can take to earn money on your way to 80 and once you get there, and assuming you have any kind of proficiency with them, gearing yourself in exotics will be simple. Much, much simpler than you’re used to from your other games. No raiding necessary!

PvP, though, is a different story. You don’t need to gear yourself or level up at all to participate in PvP. You can bring your character there right after the starting tutorial at level 2 and be on an even playing field with everyone else. There will be a handful of oddball stat sets that you need to pay gold to unlock if you actually wanted to use them, and a few (much more useful) traits where you’d need to do likewise, but after playing some PvP games you’d earn the coins to pick up whatever you need. So if the small-scale 5 vs. 5 PvP arenas is something that’s more up your alley, you can jump into that right away and, learning curve aside, be competitive from the get-go.

Keeping in mind there’s two modes that are technically PvP – sPvP (aka Structured PvP, usually referred to as just PvP) and WvW (World vs World, referred to as such), the first being a 5v5 conquest mode (until the upcoming expansion hits, at least, at which point there will be a new mode) and the latter being large scale, server vs server battles:

-Stats and equipment are standardized in sPvP and all skills/traits are unlocked(except a rare few that have to be unlocked with gold, but they’re not that expensive and can be bought pretty quickly), so a level 2 and a level 80 will be on the same level. The only difference will come from build, weapon set and personal skill/experience.

-In WvW, stats DO matter, as while a low level character will be ‘upleveled’ to max they will have less traits and worse equipment. That said, WvW equipment is the same as PvE so you don’t need to specifically grind out PvP equipment.

Leveling – you can get to max level within 12 Hours if you want too, and earn some good cash and karma because this form of leveling is just joining a champion farming train. However if you want to take your time and explore a bit, I’d say 40 hours is a good goal to set to reach max level.

Gear – by the time you get to 80 you’ll have enough cash/karma to get a full set of exotic gear and if you don’t you can just do dungeons for a week which will definitely get you max geared. Although this is only for exotic gear, if you are a completion is and want the best gear which is ascended gear it’ll take a month of dedicated play or 2 – 3 months of casual play while you wvw. This however is not necessary, the difference between exotic and ascended is only 5% and because this is a very skill oriented game the 5% makes no difference. You can get ascended accessories easily and in a month of casual play you can get a weapon as well reducing that 5% even further. The armor is the hard part and not worth it imo (after 2 years I still have no desire to get it).

PvP – is very different from wvw and pve. Whatever stats you have on weapons armor goes away when you enter pvp zone and it becomes just a skin with the same stats as everyone else…You’ll discover more inside the game but all you need to know is EVERYONE and everything is 100% equal in pvp and the ONLY thing that matters are you skills and the skills if your team.