Guild Wars 2

Hi, I used to play GW2 very regularly, but got busy and sucked into pokemon XY during the school year and stopped playing in October of 2013. Now I am back at least for the summer and I have many questions about the current state of the game that will help me ease back into it.

First of all how have the previous balance update(s) affected the classes? Are any of the new GM traits viable? For mesmer and ele they don’t seem too necessary. I have a level 80 ele, mesmer, necro and thief and I’m wondering what are some of the current “meta” builds for tpvp and WvW for each of these classes and which of these classes seem to be the strongest overall right now? I’m leaning towards ele or mesmer after spending a few hours with them.

Next how has the game’s economy changed? Is it realistic to go for a legendary weapon or all ascended armor for one or more characters? Is the best way to make money still champ farming or trading post speculation? I only have about 50 gold left after decking out my character’s with T3/transmuted armor before I left, and now the wardrobe system at lest makes that aspect of the game less expensive.

And finally, I need direction. During my break, my old guild split into many different groups and I don’t feel like I can go with any of them. I am on Kaineng which was falling into obscurity in the months before I left. What server’s are worth transferring and what would be the best way to get into a good but casual guild on one of those servers that is large but united and participates in all areas of the game?

Any advice you can offer on any of these things would be helpful, thanks so much!

I’ll answer questions as best as I can…

1) I personally dont know much on those Specific classes, but I do know that there was a Nerf to Berserker build and Celestial. Mesmers and Necros are a PAIN to fight against in pvp imo. And in WvW as a mesmer you will keep very busy.

2) For the look? you only need one of each armor/weapon now. But trait wise I would recomend still going for ascended armor and putting whatever skin you want (oh and PvP armor and PvE/WvW armor and builds are all the same now. I would recommend Dungeons for gold as there has been a bit of a nerf on Champ loot. Also I personally suck at playing the TP.

3) Unless you are planning on taking WvW very seriously, server doesnt matter. The game went to a megaserver system so in PvE and sPvP all servers are one. And if you are looking for an Active friendly Guild, Whisper me in game. (I’m Usually on Jyenor Bearmane) but my account name is RealBGB.9132 (as said on the side lol)

1) Balance in sPvP and WvW. I only play my thief and guardian in these two mode, so i can’t talk about other professions. For the thief, i’m still using the D/D power build, but it harder now. You can’t burst down people as much so fight are longer. But i’ll still comfortable with it. A new trait for the thief give confusion on steal. This give a huge advantage for a cheesy Condition Damage Thief in sPvP. Its even worst in WvW if you had perplexity runes. Its a intelligent move to use this kind of build since condition wasn’t nerf compare to direct damage. But i feel it cheesy since you simply pact the guys on confusion and poison and let him kill himself. I couldn’t do kitten against my friend that was using this build the first times i played against him. But over time you are limited in this build since you mainly have dps from you steal, which have a long enough cooldown to leave you vulnerable if the guys can evade or clear the condition fast. Mesmer and Necro are still some of the best profession for PvP content.

2) Economy. Precursor prices rise of about 25-40% since the announcement of the wardrobe, making Legendary way more expensive that there were a couple months ago. Ascended prices stabilize a bit, so you can get the material you need at a lower price. But it still time gate as hell so you’ll need a couple weeks or month to get 1 full ascended gear, except if you don’t mind paying A LOT more gold to have your stuff fast. But if your patient and play a good amount of time, you can accumulate the stuff you need for your ascended at about the same rate you can craft with the time gate. Meaning that if you take your time, ascended gear is really not that high in price.
3) Making gold. Playing the TP is always the best way and more riskier way to make gold. Other than that, Dungeon is pretty good, champ train is ok (but i find it boring).
4) Transfer and guild. There is so much option for that. The server your in don’t change a thing when it come to sPvP. And with the new megaserver, this change almost nothing in PvE neither. Server is really about WvW right now. So if you are really into that you can change specifically for that. BG, JQ, TC and SoR are the top competitive server, but mainly because they have people all the time. If you can join them (sometime there are full), you probably gonna have to be in a queue most of the time you wanna play in WvW. MAG, DB, HoD, FA, YB and SBI have good numbers too. Except in prime time, you shouldn’t have difficulty with Queue and for some of them, even in prime time not all maps are full. For most of the other server, you usually won’t have enough people to queue a map except on some occasion like in reset night or things like that, and its usually only 1 or 2 map that are queue. You can try to find a good guild for you while still staying in your server. And when you feel that you found a good guild, then transfer.