Guild Wars 2

A simple question:

Is it possible to level strictly via WvWvW? Did anyone do it? What were the biggest drawbacks?

I suspect leveling via PvE would be faster, but unless leveling via WvWvW is like 5x slower, I don’t care much. :-)

Yes it is possible. It can be hard at first due to substandard equipment compared to level 80’s, but the higher you get the easier it becomes

i did it mostly for my first character. its really fast if you hit PvDoor hours on a dominate server, and is extremely slow if your on the losing end. also anet removed the experience gain from escorting yaks which as the above poster says makes it hard to level at first and easier once you get better gear.

Actually if you can find a good group or guild to run with, you can level pretty fast by taking things. I don’t know how well it compares to just doing chain quests and your story mode…but it can be pretty epic when you get 3 camps, 2 towers, a keep or Stonemist within an hour.

Leveling can seem almost too quick if you are capping really fast…but then again perhaps it should be since you are playing against real people and not AI.

I tried this and gave up. I would try to get to about lvl 20 before going in just for the sake of sanity. Under level 20 you are severly gimped in WvW. It is exhaustingly slow as well, at least 5x slower.

What I did was leveled to 20 > WvW to about 40> crafted to 60 > WvW/dungeons to 80.

You get a very small amount of exp for capping objectives so the best time is on reset night where you will probably be doing a lot of capping. If I was lucky I was able to get a level in a 2-4 hour run in WvW after level 60, before that it is even slower. I never brought a low level in on reset night because I wanted to use one of my 80’s for guild pushes.

If you do this make sure your gear is always up to date, this will ensure you are getting the most out of your upleveling.

To put it in perspective, I leveled my first 80 in a week doing nothing but hearts and DE’s. It took me near 2.5 weeks to level an alt the way i described above, and that is with cheating about 20 levels with crafting.

i think it’s easier to do in low tier servers, because their generally spottier coverage means you can hop on a karma train and take a bunch of camps and towers without meeting any resistance. while this is bad for the concept of wvw, it is amazing for your exp.

Yes it is posible i have lvl from around lvl 5 to 80, but now i wouldnt recomend to go to WvsW map before 30 at least so you have all skill slot open.

Imo it also depends on what class you are.
If you can hit/tag multiple enemies easy in big battles, then you can exp pretty well in large fights where your side is winning more often than not.

Also you must make sure that you are in a party, because sometimes you won’t get credit for dmg you have done if too many people have hit the target.

The biggest drawback of WvW leveling however is the lack of skill points. You will get 1 skill point per level and about 13 (I am not sure of the count in EB) from the battle grounds. Which will leave you with a smaller choice of skills to use.

Also make sure you use food and nourishments to get the extra exp bonuses from them.

So in conclusion it can be fast enough but it depends on your class/server/party.
And it also can be a bit frustrating when you end up against someone in a 1v1 situation and he completely owns you

Creo.8750:

A simple question:

Is it possible to level strictly via WvWvW? Did anyone do it? What were the biggest drawbacks?

I suspect leveling via PvE would be faster, but unless leveling via WvWvW is like 5x slower, I don’t care much. :-)

very fun with the right peeps. I did an ele from 2-80 in WvW. I just linked up with a group be it small man or zerg and just played support the whole why up.

The only downside I saw was that you will sometimes feel like a victim, you get killed so hard. It can also slow down if the match is highly slanted in or against your favor. A match with constant combat is going to land you lots of levels.

I leveled my elementalist almost strictly by pvp. When I hit 80 I had 28% map completion with all of the pvp zones completed. I would recommend pve until 20 just so that you can equip the steel harvesting items since you get more xp for harvesting in wvw zones than in normal zones and the harvesting everything combined with taking objectives will allow for quick leveling.

I went from level 12 to 80 on my mesmer in WvW. Pretty fast XP if you have a few friends willing to do the karma train loop and hit camps/dolyaks/centaurs/quaggans/veteran wurm/veteran harpy and maybe ninja a tower or two during the quieter hours.
I leeched XP by tagging along with my actual large WvW guild group too when we took towers/keeps/SMC (shh, don’t tell!).

I just reached level 30 on my alt who i level strictly through WvW. Have played around 50 hours on this char. Take in account that I also afk in LA and scout in WvW, if you would only karma train it would be alot faster.

Very possible. I did it on my Guardian.

About the only thing you might need to go to PvE is skills points. But only if you experiment with buying lots of different utilities.

I leveled my bunker mesmer from 1-80 in 14 days.

Pros: Fun / You get a kitten load of karma
Con: Not fastest way / Not as much gold as pve leveling

I do it all the time but mix in Class story when theres a Q. My mesmer took 3 days 2-80 but that was running behind 2 of the strongest guilds on the server in T2 when it wasn’t as close between the 3 servers. My warrior took a week, thief about a little over a week and with T2 a little tighter these days I’m 6 days into an ELE and sitting at level 53.

The first 25 levels are pretty tough, then it gets better and 50+ it really moves along fast

When I say days, I mean 4-8 hours a day, in T1 it probably would have taken 2-3 weeks because of all the defensive play

I levelled my Elementalist from 50 to 80 through WvW. You level very fast if you run with a zerg/guild group and take keeps. In fact, I levelled so fast, I had a hard time keeping my equipment up to date. I ended up just using blue/green gear and not bothering with anything better until I got around level 75.

It’s possible to be a mooch but you won’t bring much to the team. Once you are focused by a high level you will drop very quickly, lol.

Creo.8750:

A simple question:

Is it possible to level strictly via WvWvW? Did anyone do it? What were the biggest drawbacks?

I suspect leveling via PvE would be faster, but unless leveling via WvWvW is like 5x slower, I don’t care much. :-)

Yes it’s possible and WAY faster than with PvE. I leveled my Warrior this way from lvl 2 to 80 in around a week and a couple days. If your server zergs a lot you will be fine, just hide inside the zerg until level 30, or so and cap lots of towers/camps. After that keep doing the same, but now you can go to the front lines and survive for a bit longer.

The key to level up this way is zerging/capping.

PS: Use karma/experience boosters, when I reached lvl80 I had like 500karma.

A guildie did his warrior strictly in WvW and we’re in tier 7. Took him about 70 or 80 hours if I recall right.