Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys,

I’m Flux…

and I’m totally newbtastic… only downloaded GW2 last night!

Looking for a spot of friendly advice, at the moment I pretty much know diddly, just bits and bobs from searching the community sites.

I’d like to know some of the standard whiz, like:

What EU servers would you recommend?

- I’d like it to be busy, i’m playing an MMO after all.
– I’d like English to be widely used.
– I’d like a server where I don’t have to queue to log-in, or if so a very short wait time.
– I’d like a good economy.
– I’d like some helpful, understanding folk to be wandering around.
– Most of all i’d like it to be filled with loads of chilled out friendly folk

What Professions are good for new players like me?

- I’d like to go with Elementalist, think I can handle that?
- Is there a generic new player profession, like Hunters in WoW?

Are there any choices I should or should not make while creating my character?

- Are there any Profession/Race combinations that are a no-go?
- If you’re picking certain professions such as Elementalist are there any specialisations to avoid because they are very weak etc?

Not asking for much right? ;D

If anyone fancies tackling any of the questions above i’d really appreciate it, even if your answer is just a link to another topic or an outside site.

Peace.

I’m American so I don’t know any good EU servers, but if this will be your first time playing do not go elementalist. They take time to master as they have ver low hp pools and the weakest defense. I would go something more durable like a guardian. If you insist on the scholar profession, go Necromancer or Mesmer. All races can
Play as any profession, so pick whatever your heart desires! (Feel free to pick a combination that may seem weird, too many people follow professions with the race stereotypes).

Thanks xCrusadentx

Would Ranger be a good alternative to Elementalist? I’d prefer a scholar class if i’m honest but at the moment only Elementalist appeals to me.

Wanting to make a decent choice from the start because it will probably take me a while to reach level cap. So, I want to choose a character that will be pretty useful in groups for end game content

HI Flux! Welcome to the game

A very good EU server is Gunnar’s Hold we have a fantastic community and it is very open world focused so you will always find people to play with.
The economy is world wide not server based so that doesn’t matter.
We are not very focused on WvWvW.

As for characters almost all classes are viable so just pick one that takes your fancy- or make 5 take them into the heart of the mists where you can see how they will play at max level- try Ele they are fun maybe you’ll enjoy it
You can create anything you like- it is more important that you like and enjoy your character

Thanks Morrigan,

You say your server doesn’t do much WvWvW, Is World Vs World a large part of the end-game content within GW2?

Just looked up Heart of The Mists… that’s a fantastic addition to an MMO! I’ll take your advice once i’ve chosen a server and create 5 chars so I can try before I buy ;D

Some people really enjoy WvWvW- I have never gotten around to checking it out yet since I love playing in the open world I’ve been 80 for ages but I still find so many thing to do and see- endgame is doing what you enjoy I guess
Have fun!

Noooo, you’re not a noob, don’t degrade yourself like that.
You’re a newb.
Noobs are bad people who don’t listen to advice, and here you are asking for it!

To the question: elementalist could be a bit daunting for a new player because there are a LOT of abilities available at any given time. If you haven’t played an MMO before it’s probably not a good idea to start as an ele. If you have, then go for it.
The generic easy mode class is warrior though. Lots of health and armor, and the greatsword tears pve a new one because enemies are too stupid to get out of hundred blades.

And another recommendation: Don’t take 2 crafting professions that use the same ingredients. Specifically, Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing, and Jewelcrafting. All 3 of them use copper early on, then weapon and armor use the same metals as each other the entire game, while jewelcrafting shares some of them after copper.
Copper is quite expensive and you probably won’t get enough of it on your own to reach iron or silver if you only have ONE of them, let alone both, if you’re playing normally.
Jewelcrafting is the most useful crafting profession though, because jewels aren’t very hard to find, but accessory drops are quite rare, unlike weapon and armor where half the time you’ll end up randomly finding something to replace your old stuff with.
Cooking is expensive and a pain in the kitten so your first character probably shouldn’t take that either. So I’d go with Jewelcrafting and then either the weapon or armor crafting that your character can use. Unless it’s warrior, in which case the only thing that doesn’t conflict with JC that you can use is Huntsman, which won’t get you much as a warrior. As guardian you could take Artificing though.

And the last tip for crafting: Don’t craft anything you already know the recipe for unless you actually want it or you have no other options. Use Discovery mode to get your crafting experience, it gives huge bonuses.

Ha ha, changed the topic title to use Newb instead of Noob…

Thanks gimmethegepgun,

I do play other MMOs, mainly WoW, but i’ll have a think about my Profession a bit more. Although Elementalist is probably where my heart is at I don’t want to choose a Profession thats going to noodle my brain with Micro-Management, especially when i’m already trying to get to grips with a new game.

Sounds like some nice advice there for the old crafting professions

Thanks

If you really love the idea of Elementalist, go for it. I have no clue how to play mine, yet somehow she’s lvl 45 and dies very seldom. Experiment and learn as you go.

If you do find Elementalist too challenging to start with, leave the character to sit and make another of another profession. Remember that the main goal is to have fun!

As for servers other than already mentioned, I’ve had a lot of fun on Gandara, Piken Square and Ruins of Surmia. At this time you can change servers every 7 days for free, so it is not the end of the world if you are not happy with your first server.

As you have five character slots and leveling is fast, give a go at any profession you want and get it to level 10 or so before settling. I know that before beta I had zero interest in Guardian and it turns out to be one of the most fun for me. Necro is also proving fun now that I have one (made her just so I could have a human female in froofy clothes, but RP has made her an interesting person and the profession’s a lot sturdier than I anticipated).

My take on the professions – entirely subjective, so you really do want to try for yourself:

Elementalist – very squishy, takes a lot of skill to make effective. Uses “stance dancing” rather than weapon swap. At higher levels (both character and skill wise) very handy for aoe and cc.

Engineer – complicated, using kits and turrets rather than straight up skills. I think. I thought it would be my second favorite class but I gave up before level 10 due to boredom and frustration. Otoh my guild leader is Engineer and loves it and completely outdoes my Thief in dungeons.

Guardian – Unkillable. She’s my second 80 and her journey there was so easy. I have her traited for defense and boons. I’d call this the easiest profession assuming the player has MMO skills learned such as how to use hotkeys and how to read tooltips to understand what a spell will do. Recently I did a fractal on her; we got the Dredge one, and when I had to stand in place on a pressure plate so someone could unlock the control panel, and most everyone was dead, I was able to fend off endless waves of dredge without a single dodge.

Mesmer – I’m still just level 14 on mine. This is one of the more complicated ones, taking situational awareness and good judgment on when to use what resources, but a good mesmer can survive a very long time. We have some in our guild that can get through Project Alpha fights without even getting downed.

Necromancer — All the conditions! I’ve found foes just melting away even without a lot of skill on my part. I expected squishy and I got the sturdiest cloth character I’ve ever played, albeit still in the low 20’s. There are many options as to how to play a necro and all of them seem strong (though I’ve read some opinions that using minions is silly).

Ranger – by all reports this class survives very well. Pets are easy to come by if you just go where the juvenile versions are and click on one. Pet AI is still in need of work. I played a Ranger in beta for a bit. I have never been fond of pet classes, though, so that was enough to convince me GW2’s version wasn’t different enough to entice me. Still, they can do interesting things with weapons that don’t fit many preconceptions of a bow-using beastmaster.

Thief – My main. As I’m not much of a PvPer this may have been an error; in PvE I don’t feel nearly as effective or useful as with my Guardian. But RP demanded Thief and in that regard he’s awesome. Thieves are very mobile, very good at ducking damage or getting away from it. They don’t offer a wide variety of conditions and have to trait to help with boons at all. Properly played (ie not by me!) they can dish out a large amount of damage so long as they keep moving and don’t let anything hit them. You’ll want good circle-strafing and kiting skills to make the most of the mobility.

Warrior – very sturdy. I have one at 70. Not as tough to down as the Guardian but a warrior can dish out a ton of damage; my Warrior at 40 was doing twice the damage of my 80 Thief in the same dungeon. Perhaps the simplest profession for a new player to get the hang of. The skills all fit into a solid grunt in armor with physical weapons, though I do have some issues when weapon swapping and having the same key number do opposite things in terms of where my character moves.

I had an ele as my first character, and it wasn’t a big deal. I just assumed everyone died that often. Then I hit lvl 40 and realized some people probably didn’t die quite as much as I thought.

I love playing my ele, it’s simply a more active and engaging playstyle. They are fairly squishy but you can go for vitality / toughness builds to offset that a bit.

Be warned that toughness is at least rumored to be one of the ways to get mob aggro. Certainly in dungeons we’ve found mobs beelining for the player with the highest toughness, which has been enough for me to prefer Vitality by far.

I have to give a shout for Mesmers- they are really fun- so much I have two
my main is a condition, hybrid/ staff traited /GS mesmer
She is untouchable

My second mesmer is traited for GS dps and crit and she is a monste

So don’t knock the other caster classes

edit: mesmer is not squishy at all

Hey Flux!
Welcome and good to see that you are willing to learn and listen to other people!

As for your server: i would suggest Gunnar’s Hold, the one i’m currently on myself. We have an active server and most people seem friendly enough to give you a hand when you ask for it (had someone running all across the map just to come rescue me and revive me, great time)

Race and professions are all possible, it is not like in most MMO’s where certain professions are not possible for certain races. Total freedom here! And as far as i have seen, there is not a specific bonus for any race for any profession. So see what race you like and what profession you would like to try. If it’s not working out, you have 5 slots so create something new.

For your profession, that is a whole different story.
You say you played other MMO’s but i must warn you, this is NOT your typical MMO.
If you have played a lot off WoW (as i did before GW2) you have to make a brutal adjustment

There are not Healers, Tanks and DPS as you know them. The fighting is much much more mobile and depends on you understanding each and every skill your char has. The weapons all give different skills, so you need to learn how to combine them to a style that you like the most.
Dodging is also important to learn, although a lot off people will agree that this only is really needed in the top levels. But learning it will be needed

So a whole new type off playstyle is needed for this game. And for that Elem is not the best class. I’m sure there are a lot off people out there that will disagree with me, and tell you to try Elem if that is what you want to play.
You can try it, but don’t throw the profession out of the window if you feel like you suck in the beginning. Stick with it, or try a more durable prof to learn the game mechanics with. I would suggest a Guardian, Warrior for close combat and Ranger for range combat.
I have a Ranger and Guardian myself and they both can hold there own in battle. My next one will be a Necro or Elem.

Also, a good point made by Gimme, don’t try to do a lot off crafting on your first char untill you have a nice stack off resources gathered and have some money on the side.
I made that mistake and for that, my first char was a poor poor guy that had to beg for money to buy a trait book at lvl 40.

PS. If you look for a good bunch of helpfull people, check the thread on my sig. We also have a guild, called The Legion of Honor XIII. We have members all over the world and on all servers, but there is a nice bunch off us on Gunnar’s Hold. Just read the first 2-3 pages from my sig link and see if you like it.

Noppy.1348:

my first char was a poor poor guy that had to beg for money to buy a trait book at lvl 40.

Heh I didn’t even bother buying the Master book on my D/D ele. I just took all the Adept points and waited for 60 to get the Grandmaster book.

You don’t have to queue to log in to any of the servers. If the map you want to get in to is full you’ll go into an overflow – a second copy shared between several servers – and at the same time you’ll be automatically added to a queue for your server so you can join it when there’s a space.

Sometimes you might not want to switch back to your server straight away – for example if you’re in the middle of a Dynamic Event you should finish it first (you always have the option to re-join the queue) because the servers aren’t in sync so it might not be happening on the one you go to.

There isn’t a generic new player profession but I think Warrior and Guardian are the most straight-forward so they’re probably the easiest to learn.

Personally though I’d say unless you’re completely new to RPGs you may as well pick the one you like because they all play differently and I don’t think you can really treat it as a linear scale – learning one doesn’t necessarily mean learning another will be easier. So learn the one you want to play, and then you won’t have to spend more time re-learning it later. (Or you can create several characters to play around with.)

From a gameplay perspective I don’t think you need to worry about the choices you make during character creation. Most of them just determine your personal story or cosmetic aspects of your character. But if you’re in to role-playing at all you might want to check the wiki (link at the top of the screen) to find out which storylines are tied to each choice so you can make sure they suit your character. (In particular each race has a “comedy” choice which leads to a much sillier storyline.)

Garambola, Donari, Gilosean, Morrigan, Noppy, gimmethegepgun and Danikat, thanks for all your replies guys. Really appreciate you taking the time out to drop your thoughts and opinions on here.

It certainly sounds like Gunnar’s Hold could be a great server choice, I notice you can move servers every 7 days, this was certainly one of the draws of the game…

However, i’m sure I read somewhere this may be changing sometime in the near future!? Is this true? Is there a set date for a paid service being rolled out? and/or any news on possible costs?

Also, I did consider choosing a Very High population EU server as my home… Such as Aurora Glade, Blacktide, Desolation, Gandara and Underworld.

From your experiences what are the positive and negative aspects of choosing one of these Very High population servers in GW2?

The server jumping will maybe some day a paying service, but no ETA on that. What did happend is that in the beginning there was no restriction on changing servers, then they made it 1 jump per day, and now its 1 per 7 days. So it could last for months or they could change it today. No telling when.

I haven’t played on any off the servers your mentioning, but the only drawback that i can see is that it can be difficult to initially join one off those (if a server is stated FULL, you can’t join that one) but once you are on a server, if it does get crowded, you just get into the overflow servers when you want to join. No time wasted on waiting in a line. It is a bit difficult to catch up on your guildies at that point, but you will join the real server soon enough and then can play on.
Oh, and this is just me guessing, but on a very full server, i would guess that the end content area’s are a bit overcrowded, where everybody is running Orr all the time. But again, that is just a guess from me, not sure if that really is the case.

Well, I will play on Gandara again in 6 days. I had to move to a green world to get the very last bits of map completions. Because my daughter plays on Gandara, I will be there for her when she wants to play with me. Otherwise I’d stay on Piken Square. Gandara is a fine server and there are quite a few people around. I’ll just miss all my old friends from PS.

It isn’t really about having high or medium population, more important is where those people are in relation to what interests you. Any and every server has good people and more are welcome!

Flux, I am in England and I highly recommend you NOT to join an EU server. Go US for sure.

Dragonbrand is amazing, friendly folks who don’t mind helping you with advice and resurrections. I tried 3 guilds on 3 EU servers, left them all within days. Met a group in DB and don’t ever wanna leave.

TBH I think Ele is a bad choice for a newb. I had 2x Lvl 80s (Thief and Warrior) and I couldnt hack Eles. They are complex to play (I’d recommend a mouse with a LOT of buttons!) and very weak on defence.

Eh, my first toon was an ele and still remains my most favourite class. Don’t be daunted by “it’s too hard to play” .. it isn’t.

Bottom line, pick what you want to play and enjoy. That’s all that really matters.

I found beating an lvl17 SP with an lvl21 with all lvl21 gear impossible. 7 attempts later, I rolled a mesmer. (Then got bored of it!).

It sounds like you are starting to get some really useful info here Flux, so I cannot detract from any of what has been already said. I will say as someone who has an elementalist… you have to think outside the box a bit. It can be a bit daunting knowing you have 4 attunements to pick from, and a fair amount of weapons to use them with. As you play you will learn though. It is like anything else. My ele is still my squishiest character, but I have learned how to be more survivable over the months (investing in toughness stated gear helps). If you plan on going solo a lot, you may want to look at upping your healing stat as well. One little tip… Ride The Lightning… often times better than sprinting, even if you have to wait a few seconds to reuse it lol!

This having been said, my first and main character is an engineer! Loooooove it. While touted as one of the most difficult classes to master, it has been pure joy since day one for me. To me, there was more of a learning curve with ele than engi!

Either way you slice it, you will enjoy it. Welcome to Tyria friend!

Noppy, Garambola, GuzziHero, Jayne and Bel Geode thanks for your replies.

I really am getting some good advice here.

To be honest i’m going to start by rolling a handful of characters, probably go with Engineer, Elemental, Guardian, Mesmer and Ranger to get a good feel for which one i’ll enjoy the most.

After all, I can always delete the ones I don’t enjoy and try rolling a different Profession.

I’ll probably also give Gunnar’s Hold a go server wise and then try others out as I create more characters to get a feel. That way if I settle for one server I can just move the other character over there.

Am I right in thinking that guilds in GW2 are cross server?

Sorry, Flux, but all of your characters have to be on the same server.
And changing server will move all of your characters.

Contrary to some of what has been posted above, I think starting with your Elementalist is a great idea. It is no doubt a difficult class to play well, but there are lots of reasons to start with an Ele.

Eles are arguably the squishiest profession in the game, and the player is forced to play skillfully to survive and be effective. By the time you get beyond the steep learning curve on an Elementalist, I believe you’ll have a much easier time learning other professions that are more forgiving.

So, I suppose the ‘answer’ depends on whether you prefer working up the difficulty scale slowly, or taking the challenge from the start. Because it is the profession that caught your eye originally, I would encourage you to give it a go.

Welcome to GW2!