Guild Wars 2

Hi, so I bought Guild Wars 2 last night. I have never played an MMORPG before, primarily because a monthly fee does not appeal to me. However, given its lack of a monthly fee (and other positive things); I have been following Guild Wars 2 since before it was released. Since I have a Mac though, I was unfortunately unable to get it. I just realized yesterday that there is now a Mac version AND the game was on sale, so I figured I would finally get GW2 after thinking about it for years.

I have played a lot of single-player RPGs, so there are plenty of things about GW2 that I am familiar with (i.e. things like having skills on cooldown). As I said, though, I am quite new to MMORPGs. Because of this, when I read about the game, many things seem very foreign to me, and I am wondering if people could help me out with some basic questions before I jump into the game. Some of this is specific to character builds. While you might say I should just try out a bunch of builds and see, I am quite busy and do not see myself doing more than getting one character to level 80, so I kind of want to understand the mechanics enough to get it right the first time.

1. What is a good class for me to play?

Engineer seemed appealing to me. But then I’ve read a ton that says that they’re super hard to use. While I understand the basic mechanics of GW2, my impression is that MMORPGs tend to be played at a much higher pace than single player ones with similar mechanics. So I don’t expect to be super fast with my button clicking like an experienced MMO player might be. As such, I kind of want a character that will not require super high actions per minute.

But I don’t want a class that is boring. I tend to have fun with characters in RPGs that are super versatile. So, ideally, I like characters where I can decide to play melee or ranged, heal, tank, do AOE damage, etc, all with the same character, depending on the situation and how I feel like playing. And ideally, I’d like to actually be pretty effective in those roles (you don’t feel that versatile if, technically, you COULD do something, but it wouldn’t work well).

Those are a bit contradictory, since versatility will often require lots of actions per minute to utilize. But I would be okay with having to switch out skills to do the different things; I just watch flexibility from one battle to the next rather than necessarily flexibility within a battle. I hope that makes sense. Is there a class that fulfills all of this? I have gathered that maybe Mesmer is my best bet, but I don’t know.

2. What is a good server for a new player to join?

I am new to this idea of joining a persistent server with its own personality. I gather that the servers are different. I want one that is alive and well, but fairly n00b friendly. Does that exist?

3. What race has the best personal story and capital city?

Since I do not necessarily intend to put in the time to go through the personal story of more than one race, I would kind of like to know upfront which race’s personal story is most enjoyable. I’m kind of looking for something that is either just very fun or quite mysterious such that you really want to keep playing to see what’s going on.

4. Do I have to join a guild to see a ton of the content?

As I have said, I am a pretty busy person, so I doubt that I have time to really be the member of a guild, nor do I think I will be good enough anytime soon to be asked to be in one. I also don’t think I know anyone from real life who plays the game, so I wouldn’t be able to run around with friends. So I am kind of wondering how much of the content requires being in a guild or having a group? My understanding is that “dungeons” do, but that that is a small part of the game. But can I just explore around and do most anything either by myself or with a group of random people that happens to be around?

5. How important are status effects in the game?

I see a ton of skills provide secondary effects like bleeding, crippling, dazing, etc. Many also provide positive effects such as might or swiftness. Most RPGs have similar effects. However, RPGs tend to differ on how much those effects matter. In some games, they are everything. In others, they aren’t. In my experience, the RPGs where they matter the most are ones where there are ways to do hard crowd control (i.e. an effect like stun that completely stops an enemy from doing anything). Such effects do not seem that prevalent in GW2, but nevertheless, I’ve read stuff and watched videos that seem to indicate that “conditions” and “boons” are really important. So I am not sure. Should I aim to make a character that creates lots of status effects, or are straight damage figures more important? If status effects on important, which ones are particularly good?

I probably have more questions if I thought a bit longer, but that is it for now. Thanks in advance for any responses!

First the forums can be a toxic place. It’s full of people who believe passionately about their position and “debate” can get quite heated. Don’t let them deter you.

1) This may be a slight problem for you because GW2 is more of an Action Combat game than other MMOs. Here the best defense is a well executed dodge, default V key. The classes, or professions as they are called here, aren’t as specialized to the extreme as other MMOs where one class can act as a meat shield while other is a healer while a third lays on the damage. Everyone is a little bit of everything and while some professions have better hit points or can do more damage it’s not as distinct. Same goes with range vs melee, everyone can do both but some better than others. All I can suggest is read the wiki on the professions and their various skills and then ask some specific questions as to which of two or three would be better. Everyone has favorites and not everyone have played all of them.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profession

2) Good question. Again no real easy answer. The most heavily populated servers tend to track with WvW rankings.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/

But since the introduction of the Megaserver tech in PvE which eliminated zones for each server favoring only enough instances of each zone to keep a zone’s population high, there isn’t a lot a difference between them other than which server has a guild’s bank, as guilds are cross server but you only get guild boons and bank access from your server’s guild outpost.

3) A lot of players role a human first and the human city has a rather nice density of player services (the trading post, bank, crafting stations, etc). Some races are more compact, some more spread out. Lion’s Arch’s destruction has resulted in it’s services spread out when it was once very compact but LA is not a race city but the game’s Capital.

There are a lot of variation on the early personal stories in terms of story. Again it will be tough to have a fair comparison because few if any players actually done all of them. I only have a norn and a human and both cases did not do them until I was a higher level. The personal story is entirely optional and is the closest thing this game has to a traditional quest chain.

4) No. There is no content that is guild specific, but there are special guild events that a guild can trigger just for guild members. Note by doing the Personal Story you will be asked to pick an order which is entirely separate from guilds.

5) There is a dominate player philosophy that they aren’t important, that direct damage rules the game. For soloing however while fighting powerful single or multiple average critters I find them very useful. Note that these affects tend to be very short lived, as little as a few seconds to rarely more than 15 seconds. There is very little content that can’t be soloed as long as you don’t Leroy into a crowd of critters shouting “Come at me”. One downside of conditionals is a stacking limit so large crowds can’t “nibble to death” some big boss.

Boons on the other hand in group situations are very desirable. Some result from direct use of a skill or combo of skills from yourself or you and a other player impacting both of you.

From what I see playing the two professions that are the most helpful in group combat with boons and conditionals are Elementalists, Guardians and Engineers. But they all can be rather complected as a first character. Warriors, Rangers and Thieves are a bit more straight forward stabby kill.

That’s my two coppers, enjoy the game.

Hey and welcome to GW2!

1. From your description of what you want I think Engineer be your thing. There is a learning curve but it’s nowhere as steep as people make it seem to be. There is some juggling of skills and cooldowns to be done to maximize DPS at high levels, but it’s something you can ease yourself into or not worry with altogether if you don’t feel you need it.

And it is the most versatile profession in my experience (I’ve gotten one of all eight to level 80): while your main weapons (rifle, pistol+pistol or pistol+shield) are all ranged and function fine as such the attacks are designed to become more powerful at melee range, and there are several kits that are for melee (eg Flamethrower, Bomb Kit or Tool Kit).

As an engineer, you’d also get access to one of the highest burst heals in game thanks to your Healing Turret and its water fields which you can drop combo effects (mainly blast finishers) on, and have several blocks and an invulnerability skill. You also get access to stealth (thanks again to combo fields, smoke this time instead of water), might (damage-boosting boon, which you get through blasting fire fields) and conditions cleansing.

Oh and did I mention extremely good damage overall? Engineers are just the bomb <3

2. As the above poster said, these days server doesn’t influence much unless you play World versus World which doesn’t sound like what you’re looking for, at least not for now.

3. For city, humans have the most active in terms of player population. However the human story is fairly standard so if you’re interested in that you might consider another.

From having played all five races as well and having gone through most of the possible story choices, I’d rank them Asura = Sylvari > Charr > Norn > Human in terms of how interesting they get. No matter your starting choices all storylines converge after level 30, so also pick depending on your own tastes – some people don’t like being tiny Asura, or big hulking Norn, I personally adore being a huge murderous cat despite not being a huge fan of the Charr storylines, etc.

4. Having a guild isn’t necessary at all, but nice if you like having people to chat with/ask for stuff/get help. I think I leveled a couple chars to level 80 before joining a guild and was fine.

5. For PvE, which is what you seem to more interested in, pure raw damage is effectively the most time-efficient method since if you kill something really fast you reduce the number of times it gets to punch you in the face and potentially kill you. Also less time spent per mob = more loot in a set amount of time, and people like their sweet, sweet loots.

So if you’re running pure damage builds, the condition you’d most be interested in is Vulnerability (+1% damage taken by foe per stack of vuln, up to a maximum of 25 stacks at once), with possibly Poison (damage taken over time and -33% healing efficiency on affected foe) and Chilled (slower movement speed and skill recharge, can’t remember the numbers off the top of my head but I think it’s 33 or 66%) as bonuses if you can drop them without affecting your damage output.

HOWEVER: running pure damage builds also means you can die very easily if you mess up a dodge or your damage rotation, so a lot of people opt for more tanky gear and/or conditions, which will do the job just fine when playing solo but will often lose efficiency when played in groups due to several reasons (for example conditions being capped to stacks of 25 for those that stack, meaning if there’s several people running condi builds at once they’ll just overwrite each other).

That’s endgame though. I leveled my first character (namely my engineer) to max level and did a bunch of stuff afterward running an uber-tanky condition+heal build that would make my dungeon-running friends disown me if they ever knew about it and was just fine. Sure I took forever to bring things down, but also I was basically unkillable, so I enjoyed myself and took my time to learn the ropes.

A side note: while conditions are frowned upon in higher level PvE, it can be extremely good in PvP. A thing to keep in mind if you ever dip your toe in there.

On to boons: one you’ll likely learn to love is Swiftness (+33% movement speed) as it’s just so convenient for open world exploring. For combat, Might and Fury (increased power and condition damage; increased chance of critical hits respectively) are going to be your bestest friends to get things dead quick. The others also have their uses but are less commonly seen/used, you’ll likely learn them as you go.

Generally speaking: you can go through everything in PvE (except dungeons) without paying attention to boons/condis, but they will make things a lot easier on you if you use them.

Think I covered everything. Feel free to ask if you have anything else, either in this thread or via PM or ingame whisper if you see me online c: