Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, as title says, i’m a newbie in GW, but played many years of WoW.
I’m having a lot of fun and enjoying everything so far, but i didn’t had the chance to try some stuff yet.
I want to know how dungeons/fractals/raids are and how they work here.
Like, how do i access them and how difficult they are compared to WoW? do i need to have a group of fully experienced players with TeamSpeak/Raid call to run a raid, or i can casually join a pug raid as long as i know what to do?
Any tips are welcome, i want to know everything about them.

And another newbie question about the endgame gear.
Can i get the level 80 good stuff by crafting/farming by myself, or do i have to drop them from raids and world bosses?

First Welcome to Guild Wars 2

This is my view for you

Dungeons – they are pretty easy as long as you know what to do, they offer you tokens as a reward each time you finished a dungeon run to buy exotic rarity gear but each dungeon has it own stats on gear you will get. For example Citadel of Flame will grant you access to Berserker stats gear Power/Precision/Ferocity, dungeons gears are purely cosmetic in end game and just do dun for fun.

Fractal – End game chain dungeons with a chance to drop Ascended gear for more detail just read https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

Raid – Much easier than WoW but doesnt mean you can beat it with pug grp, need organized group and TS but you can join raid training guild to learn, alot of guild willing to teach out there.

Gear rarity
Fine (Blue) > Masterwork (Green) > Rare (Yellow) > Exotic (Orange) > Ascended (Pink) > Legendary (Purple)

Between Exotic and Ascended – Asc give 10% stats boost ( not much )
Between Ascended and Legendary – Stats are the same but Legendary stuff has glowing, shinies vfx purely cosmetic

So you can consider Ascended is endgame gear, you can get them by doing fractals, raid and crafting, World Boss.

Ascended need 500 crafting lv to make and will take about 2 months+ to craft full armor set because some ingredients are time gated (daily), or you just buy everything and craft ( cost around 700g – 800g depends ), Fractal has a chance to drop asc box and you raid to get currency then buy box from vendors. Ascended Gear can not be traded but its Account Bound not Soulbound so you can use it on every character as long as they can wear it

Heavy Armor – Warrior/Guardian/Revenant
Medium Armor – Engineer/Thief/Ranger
Light Armor – Ele/Mesmer/Necro

Exotic you can get fairly easy, dungeons, crafting ( much cheaper but still costly for new comer ), doing WvW to get Badges of Honor and buy from WvW vendor with cheap prices, buy from trading post but exotic are Soulbound so be careful once you put it on you can’t use it on other character anymore.

Legendary – Ultimate goal, massive gold sink ( 2000g ~ 3000g depends ), purely cosmetic ( very nice looking stuff ), has same stats quality as Ascended, you don’t need it just stick with Exotic/Asc.

Also Legendary items allow you to change the stats on them for free outside of combat where Ascended you need to craft (relatively cheaply) and use the mystic forge to alter the stats.

Exotic weapons and armor are very cheap compared to the cost of ascended gear which you will need to craft yourself or get a drop. Legendary weapons costs even more but you can buy them from the Trading Post as well as craft them. Legendary Armor isn’t quite in the game yet.

Dungeons and Fractals are 5 man instances while raids are 10 man. Raids are VERY mechanics oriented and requires a lot of coordination. Dungeons and Fractals can be pugged rather easily.

Dungeons are found in the PvE maps. They consist of either a “story” mode or multiple “paths” you can choose to do in each one. First story dungeon unlocks at level 30 while the paths open at 35. Most dungeons are still run by level 80s as the game will scale you down automatically but a scaled down 80 is still better stat wise than a native minimum level player.

Fractals have a portal in Lion’s Arch to get to them. Note this patch just overhauled the interface, for the better, for fractals so the wiki article is a touch out of date for how you select the which fractal and degree of difficulty to run. Fractals have a mechanic called agony which is a constant tick of damage that you can slot against. Those special slots are found in Ascended and higher gear.

Raids have a portal in the first HoT map as well as Lion’s Arch to get to them and are level 80 content.

The Wiki is your friend when it comes to details about each of these modes.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Raid

Thank you guys, it was all very helpful and i really appreciate the effort.
I think that was the information that i needed.
But anything else are always welcome.

Surprised no one went over combat and the lack of the holy Trinity in the game.

So unlike WoW there is no Tank/healer/CC Role in this game. Every Class offers the same utility, and some are better at it then others. However every Class’s Role is to output Damage no matter the play style.

This is important to know for Dungeons and Fractals. Raids are a little bit different but I’ll get to that in a min.

There are 3 Main healing Types for classes, Ranger (Druid Elite Spec) Elementalist (Water Attuned), and Guardian (Passive healing to party on Crits when Traited), then you have a few minor classes such as the Mesmer (Mantra Passive Healing on Charge/banking)…ect. There are other ways to heal using Sigil’s and runes (Sigil of Water for AOE Healing on hit…ect).

Personally my Favorite healing setup is a Greatsword Guardian due to the damage output + Passive traited healing and is one of the easiest classes to run with. Think of WoW Paladin and that is a Guardian in a nutshell.

There are classes that offer CC abilities, but the Lock down only lasts for .5sec to 1.5seconds on average so its more of a ‘bar breaker’ move then a ‘stun this Mob for 30 seconds’ like you would see in WoW and the Thief’s Sap ability. One example would be a Stun traited Mesmer, with the right setup they can dish out 5-6 different stuns/CC effects that offer some nice burst damage relief when the target is susceptible to them.

Then you have Tanking. This is mixed as technically there is no ‘tank’ role in the non-raid setting. Aggro is tied to armor raiting and usually all players are running a healthy mix of Berserker’s gear or gear with max Condi/power on it and normalize on Toughness. So your target will bounce around from Player to Player until its dead. The Exception would be Ranged Players, Mobs are API’d to focus on melee range Players when they are doing comparable damage as to your Ranged Player.

The exception rule to this is Raids. There is a tank role in Raids due to needing to Position the bosses around. This is when a player will take a higher Toughness raiting (3000+) and sacrifice on the rest of the stats to make sure they have the focus on their target. Now this rule applies to the rest of the game mode, but everywhere else you want to be competitive in your DPS output mixed with your play Style so normally you would not take Toughness as a main stat elsewhere.

Combat, as I’m sure you are finding out, is a lot different then in WoW. For one, you have that nice Dodge. Get really familiar with Dodge and timing it. You can Dodge ranged Attacks, Ground AOE damage, Melee Hits that would normally kill you….ect. The combat in this game is pretty reactive IMHO, you cant just stand in the fire and spam your skills and hope to survive, you have to move around. And since the Update they have really cleaned up AOE ground rings so you can see more clearly the direction the AOE is going to hit and dodge behind it.

The first Dungeon you gain access to is Ascalonian Catacombs. The story mode opens at level 30 and the Exploration Paths (there are 3 separate ones) open at 35. I highly suggest doing Story at 30, but you can get away with Exploration at 32~ if you are running the highest gear for the level with all the Gems/Runs/Sigils you have access to. And don’t let those level 80 elitist ruin the experience for you, try and form your own level 40~ group to really experience the Dungeon as it was meant to be experienced.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Catacombs

But the rest you will have more fun finding out I think.

I’ll add in how to access the dungeons:

Each one has an entrance in a map, eg Ascalon Catacombs in the Plains of Ashford, marked with a rounded wood door icon. You can run to the entrance and go in via the portal (some of them require open world events to make the portal work), or you can just be in the map and have a party member enter the dungeon. You will then get a popup offering the option of going in with your party. I think that you can then turn around and physically walk out through the portal to unlock the waypoint at the entrance.

More detail on the Story and Exploration modes described above:

Story — whoever opens the dungeon will have their alt featured in the dialogue cut scenes, but everyone in the party gets credit. Each dungeon in order as you go up the levels advances the story of Destiny’s Edge (the group of iconic NPCs). After you clear the Story in any one dungeon, that alt will then have the power to open Explorable mode. You can also join someone else opening Explorable if you haven’t unlocked it. The Explorable mode is the “what happens after” version of the dungeon. EG in one dungeon you deal with treachery at a party in Story, and in Explorable have three different paths to follow to mop up the aftermath of what happened in Story.

There is just one Story dungeon made for you to solo; that’s the final dungeon, Arah, at level 80. They converted it to a one man instance (still can invite up to 4 friends) as it is the climax of the Personal Story and people wanting to solo the whole story got rather aggravated at having to do a dungeon with others to finish it.

Dungeons can be soloed by expert players, unless there is a section that requires five people standing in five spots simultaneously to proceed. You’ll likely get much further by starting your own LFG stating “first run, watching cinematics, all welcome” so as to attract helpful, relaxed people. Or find some friends willing to go in with you and coach (or stay silent so you can learn it yourself, sometimes the most fun is in figuring it out).

I was a vanilla WoW raider, and one thing I initially found strange was the lack of the gear thread mill. You don’t need to repeatedly do lesser raids in order to be adequately geared for the next raid up. In fact, you can obtain best-in-slot gear without even touching end game content via crafting.

Now I actually prefer this system, because if I fail where others succeed, I know it’s a matter of improving my skills and not because of gear imbalance. Success is all the more satisfying as a result.

onevstheworld.2419:

I was a vanilla WoW raider, and one thing I initially found strange was the lack of the gear thread mill. You don’t need to repeatedly do lesser raids in order to be adequately geared for the next raid up. In fact, you can obtain best-in-slot gear without even touching end game content via crafting.

Now I actually prefer this system, because if I fail where others succeed, I know it’s a matter of improving my skills and not because of gear imbalance. Success is all the more satisfying as a result.

Same here, I did the whole Gear treadmill since Everquest back in 1999, through to when I quit WoW A year before GW2 was released. The best thing about GW2 is its mainly skill based, and there is really no gearcheck needed. Just spec and stat weights.

I just wish Ascended had more tuning options similar to what you can do with Exotic (Those Gems, i really miss them)

So far so good here, i think i already learned most of the basic and intermediate stuff, like the classes, weapons, combat mechanics, crafting, world completion, builds and traits, trading post and stuff like that.
Now i just need to try some of the advanced stuff like the PvE instances as i mentioned, or some WvW and maybe some hardcore gold farming, but i’ll get there someday, there’s no need to rush, right?
Thanks for the extra help, you guys helped me a lot.

Hello, I’m also a new, former wow player. I was big on raids and instanced content, and I’m still not quite clear on when players should start doing dungeons and how to go about it. Been having a hard time wrapping my head around the differences between how instanced content works differently in gw2, though this thread has been helpful.

My main is 69 now (only been playing since June), and though I’ve been seeing that dungeons have become available to me along the way, some people have said that I shouldn’t do any of the dungeons until I reach level 80.

In this thread I believe someone said to ignore them, but is that the expectation now that the content has been out a while? To enter a group for a low level dungeon at level 80 with already good gear? If I create a LFG for my very first dungeon saying “New player, etc., etc.”, what do people expect, and what should I expect? Is it like in wow when you run heroics and people flip out if you don’t already know all the mechanics, or is it more of an explore and discover kind of thing?

Thanks for any advice.

Cheru.2341:

Hello, I’m also a new, former wow player. I was big on raids and instanced content, and I’m still not quite clear on when players should start doing dungeons and how to go about it. Been having a hard time wrapping my head around the differences between how instanced content works differently in gw2, though this thread has been helpful.

My main is 69 now (only been playing since June), and though I’ve been seeing that dungeons have become available to me along the way, some people have said that I shouldn’t do any of the dungeons until I reach level 80.

In this thread I believe someone said to ignore them, but is that the expectation now that the content has been out a while? To enter a group for a low level dungeon at level 80 with already good gear? If I create a LFG for my very first dungeon saying “New player, etc., etc.”, what do people expect, and what should I expect? Is it like in wow when you run heroics and people flip out if you don’t already know all the mechanics, or is it more of an explore and discover kind of thing?

Thanks for any advice.

I forget how WoW works for this, but in GW2 there are a couple ways to get a group. You can just group up with people you know (guildies, friends, whatever) or you can use the LFG system (one of the buttons in the top left of your HUD). People can advertise what dungeon they are trying to run, and will usually specify if they are looking to do a speedrun, for which certain gear/builds are expected.

As far as the dungeons themselves…

The dungeons have 4 parts to them, a story mode and 3 other paths. The dungeons are all part of the backstory of Destiny’s Edge, and can be run when you get the email alerting you to that dungeon being available to your character for play (along with the actual story behind what is going on there). Once you have completed the story mode, you can access the other 3 paths. These paths are bascially going in and doing cleanup from the story mode run; for instance, in Honor of the Waves, you are going back in and taking care of one of 3 powerful icebrood that are still rampaging around (thus the three different paths). You get the dungeon currency for the paths, but not for the original story mode (along with money and other stuff).

When you have a group and go to the entrance of a dungeon, it will ask if you want to do story mode or explorable (which is the other 3 paths). Once you pick and your party enters, you are in your own personal instance. There isn’t a waiting queue, what some other group does has no impact on you, you get the idea. There will be waypoints inside in case you die, and a repair station near the beginning to fix your gear. I think there are also dungeon achievements, you can look in the achievements section of the Hero pane to see those.

bearshaman.3421:

The dungeons have 4 parts to them, a story mode and 3 other paths. The dungeons are all part of the backstory of Destiny’s Edge, and can be run when you get the email alerting you to that dungeon being available to your character for play (along with the actual story behind what is going on there).

My question is whether or not the dungeons should be run before lvl 80 even if I gain access sooner, because I’ve seen conflicting answers and don’t want to join a LFG run without knowing what the expectations are. At this point, I don’t have a group of in-game friends who would humor me.

Also, I don’t understand the difference between story mode and the mode with the paths. Is story mode a private instance like the rest of the character story, ie. something to be done solo? Or is it also a version of the dungeon that requires a 5 person group?

You can run story mode as soon as it becomes available to you. It can be soloed, but I’m not sure if it can be done if you’re not level 80. Just get a group on LFG and it’s easy even if you’re not familiar with the mechanics.

Explorable mode is more difficult. Most run it at 80, but if you’ve got guildies or a willing PUG willing to teach, it’s doable at lower levels.

Well, there are some contradictory thoughts between WoW and GW2,
1. The exp curve; the first time it seems slow because your’re still figuring things out, but you’ll quickly realize how much exp you get from just traveling the world. And if you do dungeons, you’ll be 80 before you know it.
2. Crafting; this has MUCH less value in GW2 than it does in WoW. Crafting is mostly for ascended attroucements if that is your ambition, anything from exotic quality or lower can be obtained MUCH easier and MUCH cheaper.
3. Action based combat; the combat of GW2 is much more.. mobile? I think thats the right word, you’ll notice you get a lot better if you keep moving around, never stand still, stay on your toes. learn which skills have a mobility effect, use them to your favour.

Thanks for the replies. So the gist I’m getting is that it is better to run dungeons at 80, but I can run them at lower levels if I have a supporting group. Does that sound about right?

What about WvW? Do I have to wait until 80 to do WvW? I’ve seen people do it at lower levels, but again, I hear a lot of contradictory stuff about it.

Vonkriegor.6851:

Hey guys, as title says, i’m a newbie in GW, but played many years of WoW.
I’m having a lot of fun and enjoying everything so far, but i didn’t had the chance to try some stuff yet.
I want to know how dungeons/fractals/raids are and how they work here.
Like, how do i access them and how difficult they are compared to WoW? do i need to have a group of fully experienced players with TeamSpeak/Raid call to run a raid, or i can casually join a pug raid as long as i know what to do?
Any tips are welcome, i want to know everything about them.

And another newbie question about the endgame gear.
Can i get the level 80 good stuff by crafting/farming by myself, or do i have to drop them from raids and world bosses?

I’m in the opposite boat. I’m a Guild Wars veteran from when Guild Wars 1 was new. Recently, a friend got me involved in WoW—I’m still fairly new to that. It’s really interesting to compare it to what I know in GW2.

Dungeons are very similar. You unlock them as you reach higher levels and you can queue for them in the GW2 equivalent of “group finder.” The one difference (and they may have changed this in a recent update, IDK) is that you have to actually be on the map where the dungeon is at, to enter the dungeon. However, since you can instantly teleport anyplace you have been in GW2, this isn’t hard.
In terms of difficulty, I’d say dungeons in GW2 and WoW are about the same. If you have a party that knows what it’s doing, you can breeze through a dungeon really fast. If people don’t know what to do, there can be some hiccups.
In GW2, you are more responsible for keeping yourself alive though. since there isn’t a dedicated healer.

I can’t help you on fractals and raids—I haven’t participated in them.

You can get top tier level 80 gear by crafting or farming by yourself.
Level 80 exotic gear is easy to get—you can buy it all on the trading post or in WvW. Level 80 exotic used to be top tier, but then they added the Ascended tier, which you can only get through crafting, super rare world drops, or as certain achievement rewards.
I suggest buying sets of level 80 exotic gear to start. You do not need ascended gear to play the game content. Level 80 exotics will more than suffice on a max-level character, until you manage to get a full ascended set.

Some other differences I’ve noticed…
Guild Wars 2 has a “Personal Story” starting when you hit level 10, which resembles a story-line in a single player RPG—you are the main character.
The personal story gives you more focus in a single direction as you level your character, and it makes you feel like THE main character in GW2’s world. The downside to this is, since much of the storytelling in the game is directed towards the Personal Story, the individual stories and characters you see as you do quests around the world aren’t as in-depth and interesting as WoW’s.

GW2 travel is much faster and much more convenient, since you can travel instantly to any place you’ve been before.
The downside to this is, it makes the world of GW2 feel much smaller and more disjointed. Since WoW makes you travel more slowly, flying across terrain to go places, WoW feels bigger and more cohesive as a world.

GW2 combat is harder to master, but feels more real. You do not want to just stand in one place and spam your character’s attack skills—you need to move around and dodge as you fight.

Things cost less gold in GW2, but gold is harder to get.