Guild Wars 2

Hello all!

I’ve decided to invest my 100% S/TPvP time elsewhere. I am interested in getting a guy to 80 and also to turn my character into a WvW machine, but there is 1 giant obstacle for me: questing.

I know this game changed the way quests are delivered, but in the limited time I’ve leveled, I can tell it’s the same leveling system with a different wrapping, ie. gather these, kill these, save these. I hate questing. As in, I’d rather go to work than do those again (been doing MMOs since SW:G and I’ve had my fill)

So, back to my question: can I, or maybe more appropriately, should I level in WvW only? Will it take me a ridiculous amount of time to do so and will I be pure fodder until I get to a certain level?

Again, I’ve heard people say “level halfway in PvE, then come in” but as stated above..no thanks.

Any suggestions for the best way to level quickly in WvW?

It’s best to get to around level 11 in PvE for your weapon swap and a couple of utility skills before going WvW full time. This doesn’t take long though.

After that, you can definitely level to 80 in WvW. That’s what I did. The only time I left was to farm a bit in Orr and buy my exotics for Karma at Orr Temple Vendors. (Depending on your class, it can be tough to get the badge drops needed for WvW exotic gear).

About the only thing you might be short of in WvW is skill points. You get them for leveling, and I think there are maybe 3 or 4 per WvW map. But that’s usually not enough, especially if you are experimenting with builds. So, you might have to make quick runs though PvE to pick up skill challenges.

Other than that, just play WvW and the karma and xp falls like rain. It’s also a blast.

Quickest way to level up in Wv3 :

- Follow the zerg (14k EXP at lvl 80, <1k at level 1?) for every event/attack/defence/action
- Farm Sentries / Doylaks?
- Farm Overgrown Grub and the likes

Possible, but completing Map (100%) should be faster.

Thrumdi.9216:

It’s best to get to around level 11 in PvE for your weapon swap and a couple of utility skills before going WvW full time. This doesn’t take long though.

11 I can do. In fact, my necro, which I’m going to play in WvW may already be 10 from when I first got the game and tried PvE.

In addition to what Thrumdi said, when you go into WvW numbers are more important than level, meaning if you go solo you will find it hard but as long as you stick to the raids in WvW you can easily outpace the pvm leveling.

Its definitely viable, as a low level however you will want to follow a group around. Your leveling quickness really depends on a number of factors.

If your map is being dominated you may find it hard to get people together to take objectives and get experience.

If however, your servers prime time has arrived and you have an adequate commander who is leading the zerg to retake a map, youll level up significantly quicker than doing anything in PvE.

Also look at joining supply camp flip teams, go deep behind enemy lines, run if confronted and look to flip camps (kill dolyaks). Good quick XP.

Ive levelled my warrior from 1 to 63 and its been much more fun than repeating the PvE path.

Spending a bit of time to get weapon skills up outside in PvE and use server queue times (if you have them) to complete personal story/farm skill points. Skill points is the one area you miss out on considerably in WvW

for my second character :

01-20 : PVE
21-74 : WvW
75-80 : Cursed Shore events (yes, i kamikaze rush to the way point near Plinx event, lol)

however with the new fractal dungeon, i’m not sure Cursed Shore events relevant anymore or not… only time will tell

Just a tip.

Arrowcarts and Ballistas are pretty cheap, do tons of damage, and don’t rely on your stats/traits/gear. If you get good placing/using them you will be far more dangerous in WvW than most 80 players. Just remember, loot bags drop at your feet so you can loot all your badges without leaving your precious siege engine death machines.

I would recommend getting some levels on your toon first. I and a roommate both tried the idea of 1-80 in wvw with a toon because we thought it would be fun. If you do decide you can’t stand to even see the pve environment then at least grind all your weapon skills out in the tutorial zone, takes maybe ten minutes depending on your character, nice and easy. I tried grinding them out in wvw, and those drakes take freaking forever to kill when you only have one or two skills.

Also run with groups as a lowbie, flip camps and towers. Another good xp gain is to defend towers that are being trebbed from SMC. The trebs that can’t be easily killed. The tower will have a 3 minute timer that is for the event of defending the tower, even if it isn’t being actively attacked besides by the treb. If once in those three minutes you use some supply (from a nearby camp) to repair the wall you’ll get a bronze award. Decent xp that way. Besides if you set up some siege then maybe you’ll get some mass kills when a small zerg tries to take the tower.

If you have gold, then I’d recommend replacing your armor roughly every five levels. You can either do this by crafting a new set every five levels or often you can find pretty decent gear being sold for one copper more than vendor price.

You can also get gear and siege equipment from the jumping puzzle. I’d recommend popping in there whenever a mesmer is doing ports. It takes like ten minutes and saves you a lot on siege.

Anyways, good luck with your toon. Hope I didn’t repeat too many suggestions as I didn’t read all the posts above, and have fun.

Trying not to repeat what everyone else says, but if you want to actually contribute in WvW as a lower lvl, you need to have some Skill points, enough to be able to choose what abilities you want and when.

the armor drops are specific to your level and you will get some decent ones.

in 1v1 battle, you will most likely lose to a player with a nice armor set as your stats wont scale up to be as equal.

but you can get kills/loot from defending.

I’ve prolly got 20 levels in WvW with my main.

All in all it’s pretty easy to level in GW2, there’s much less of a time demand compared to other MMO’s, to get to the level cap.

This might be echoed already in this thread, but I just wanted to throw my feedback in here because I’m a fan of it:

I leveled two characters to 80 with PvE. On the second 80, PvE started to get somewhat boring. Some of that leveling was with WvW, but not much.

My current character progression, I just really didn’t want to do PvE content all again but I want another 80. When the character hit level 30 (full utility slots and elite slot), I started leveling purely with WvW. That character is now level 62. I feel it has gone faster than PvE content, but it might be because I haven’t leveled like this before so it feels new.

There are pockets of time where you just aren’t progressing at all (such as, low WvW population with very little capping) and then there are times when you can progress 4 levels in 30-40 minutes.

If you like/love WvW, then it’s totally viable if you’re just done with PvE content for leveling. There are folks on the forums who claim non-80 (and non-80 gear) is ruining WvW, but this is not so if you know what you are doing.

Your mileage may vary, too. You could find you just can’t be effective, or you feel you can still own at level 1.

If I had to give pros and cons for WvW vs PvE:

Pros:
You will have plenty of Karma by level 80 (my level 60 has 102,000 Karma)
Feels new
Can progress your character by killing those you hate so dearly. Muahaha.

Cons:
Upleveling label is placed on you.
No WvW rewards from badges for you, except for blueprints.

My latest character I started with the intention of only doing WvW.

In reality, I have been in WvW since level 10. I decided to unlock all my weapon skills before going in, and since this char is an elementalist, I had all the weapon skills in 4 different attunements. I played through events in the Norn starting area and by the time everything was unlocked, I was level 10 LOL

Since then all but about 5 levels have been in WvW (got those 5 through crafting) and I hit 63 yesterday. I’ve been upgrading my armor/weapons about every 5 levels and if you only buy Mastercraft items, it’s really cheap. Rares would be better, but I’m leveling so fast I just can’t justify spending the gold on the Rare.

edit I should mention, I just created this character last week, so leveling is quite fast in WvW. I mainly run in a camp capping group or if there’s a zerg I join it. Experience rolls in

If you can find a server that’s night capping when your play time is , transfe,r come back when you hit 80 , follow the zerg gain a lv every 20 mins , never need to buy a wep or armor all the way to 80 just use the drops

It’s not too hard to level in WvW.

The only issue is skills, you’re going to be significantly lacking skill points until you’ve been level 80 for a while.

It’s not too hard to level in WvW.

The only issue is skills, you’re going to be significantly lacking skill points until you’ve been level 80 for a while.

While its best to get your primary weapon skills all learned like others have said don’t feel obligated to learn every skill for every weapon before joining in. There is actually a level scaling on weapon skill learn rates. Once you reach character lvl 20 or so any weapon you have not learned all skills on will unlock at 1 skill per kill instead of 10-20 for the last couple as normal. If your an elementalist that uses staff for the most part you can put off unlocking all the dagger and focus skills. you’ll have limited options on useing the utility of the other weapons but after 20 you can unlock all those skills in a minute or two of pve killing vs spending half an hour grinding them all out early on.

That said all I can do is reiterate what others have stated. If possible get weapon swap and at least 2 utility slots and try to cherry pick the best utility available to you. Stick with the larger groups, dont go solo. Man siege equipment when possible as your not at a significant disadvantage there like you would be faceing a maxed out 80. Once you hit 30 I highly sugest you bite the bullet and do a quick run through of the PVE zones and grab the skill point challanges so you have the points to get your eliet and any strong utilities you find yourself lacking due to insufficent points. shouldnt take long but eliets have long CD’s for a reason.

Do you get skill points for leveling pre-80? I know after 80 each “level” is a skill point, but I seem to be having skill points pop up more than the ones I run get in PvE zones

Yes every level up gives you a skill point.

I love low levels in WvW. Just tab target and burn them down.
Total leeches when they are on your team.

Wildman.9641:

I love low levels in WvW. Just tab target and burn them down.
Total leeches when they are on your team.

So, you’re saying that you would look down on me for joining your WvW? Am I going to be a pariah for joining?

I leveled almost exclusively from Wv3. I had 11% map completion when I hit 80 and that was with all Wv3 maps done.

Took 5 weeks, just stick with the pack you’ll be fine. An extra person is never a baf thing.

I basically only leave WvW to do the personl story. You can level very well there.

Ignore elitists who assume a low level isn’t helping. They’re wrong. In WvW every man can help, regardless of level.

It’s far more important that you understand what’s going on in WvW and do things that actually help the team than it is to be a high level and run around solo dueling people. The more time you spend in WvW the better you’ll be.

I do the same, just wvw and occasionally pop out for story quests to get a nice chunk of exp.

Low levels might not help as much as high levels, but they are better than nothing. Even if they just follow the group and carry 10 supply, that’s quite helpful by itself.

perfectly viable, and you can use the gold you gain to grain fast lvls through crafting aswell

Before the patch it was viable. Now you have hours and hours of dungeon grinding to be competitive in wvwvw. have fun.

i am still finding it viable even after the patch.

felivear.1536:

Wildman.9641:

I love low levels in WvW. Just tab target and burn them down.
Total leeches when they are on your team.

So, you’re saying that you would look down on me for joining your WvW? Am I going to be a pariah for joining?

Actually, yes you are. When your squishy sub-80 goes for a dirtnap you’re going to rally all the enemies that attacked you and are now down. I always try to tag uplevelled characters before focusing on 80s in large groups so that I always get free rallies. Next best thing to hitting a rabbit or mosquito for a freebie…