Guild Wars 2

Hi guys/gals

As the topic suggests I’m very new to guild wars 2 (has clocked about 3 hour playtime so far). I’ve been playing WoW as a casual since vanilla, but my latest return to Azeroth convinced me to go look for something else to do with my time.
Having looked around a bit, I’ve chosen GW2, and being old school, bought the thing.

I’ve decided to go with the elementalist for a first crack at a “main” character, as it seems to have, at least, some similarities with the mage I played in WoW. I am a casual player, that plays an hour here and there, but thats about it. I’m not that much into PvP (havn’t tried it in GW2, so that might change) but has found my thrill in PvE and socializing.

The pointers I’ve been able to gather so far goes as far as:
*Grab a staff
*Choose coocking
*…… and that’s it actually!

What is missing on my list? Any good pointers?
I’m curious as to the value of crafting – is it worth spending time on from the get go, or should I just gather and sell?
Oh, and guilds… any good info oon the guild mechanics would be highly appreciated!

crafting is mostly good for two things: xp, and endgame gear

Getting a crafting profession to 400 gets you about 10 levels, but you’ll make more money selling the materials. (indeed, gathering resources in the level 15-25 zones is very profitable, and a lot of max level people do that for money) But either way is fine. I can’t really recommend one way over the other.

And I’m partial to dagger, myself. Though staff is also good, and I always keep one handy. The only thing I wouldn’t recommend is scepter. It’s kinda wonky. Also, if you want to have an easy time early on, use conjured weapons. Flame axe and lightning hammer are really strong at low levels especially.

The main pointer, though, is to keep moving. You can dodge most attacks just by strafing, and 95% of skills can be cast while moving. Get good at dodging, and you’ll be alright.

Hi, I did the same thing a couple of months back – here’s some of my (random) experiences so far:

- Make sure you try EVERYTHING! Different weapons give different abilities so keep changing it up (dagger/X is pretty fun); make sure you’re also trying each element all the time too.

- Stats: power, precision and ferocity for DPS, forget condition damage; if you feel a bit too squishy, then get some toughness and maybe vitality – avoid healing. You can also feel a lot less squishy with good use of earth (defensive abilities) / water (healing).

- It’s worth entering the PvP lobby, even if you don’t join any PvP – while in there you get scaled to 80 and ALL abilities are unlocked. It’s a great way of seeing what’s to come, etc. It’s also worth trying some PvP, I really enjoy it. There are also some target dummies there, some mobs to practice on, etc.

- http://metabattle.com/wiki/Category:All_Elementalist_Builds .. a good place to look for builds. It does all classes, I’ve just filtered it to Elementalist. Don’t worry about it much till 80 (or you’re doing PvP) though.

- Forget quests, there aren’t any. Instead explore EVERYWHERE! Just exploring one complete city and getting all the vistas, hero points, waypoints and points of interest netted me about 1.5 levels, and there’s 6 to explore!

- When you’re out and about, if you want to level quickly then drop everything when you see an Event (the orange circles on the map). Do the Event, then go back to what you were doing .. but note that completing an Event often spawns another one, so you can do several in a row.

- Crafting requires a TON of mats and a lot of time. If you don’t want to waste either, it’s worth looking up a guide on how to level it.

- Gear progression in GW2 is blue → green → yellow → orange → pink. You’ll be used to blue > green, it isn’t here.

- Salvage everything you can, the gear doesn’t sell for much but does give crafting mats. Be sensible on which salvaging items you use, since the different levels give different returns. There’s no point using a yellow salvager on a white/blue item; on the flip side you’ll miss out on a lot of mats if you use white salvagers on green/yellow items.

I’ll post more if I think of anything :-)

Oh, guilds – you can join up to 5, but you can only Represent (earn XP for) one at a time. When I was looking for a guild, a lot wanted you to Represent them most of the time, which is fair enough. It still means you can have a main guild for PvE / WvW, then a social guild with your mates, and maybe one for PvP, etc. You can access guild chat for all at the same time – they’re on /g1, /g2, etc, with /g also being the one you’re currently Representing.

As aliessil said,you need to try Evrything!!
I started like you as a elementalist,and i hated it hard becouse i always hated the staff gameplay.But at lvl 30/40 i discovered the dagger/dagger and transition into dagger/focus and it become my favourite and main profession!!

My advice is:
- start crafting before lvl 80(i didnt do it and i regret it )
-always do story mission and dungeon as soon you unlock them (that gives you nice chunck of esp and good item)
- just unlock maybe some skill with hero point(maybe go in pvp and choose the one you prefer) but Keep some point for later,becouse at lvl 21 you unlock specialization and its gonna take many hero point!
-just go berseker item first run(it means you prioritize power,precision and ferocity)

BUT the main advice is to understand the combo mechanic ingame : this is what made gw my favourite mmo (along other peculiar charateristic).

Look at your spell,and you can see someone has an heart <3 and the word "combo " in the descripiton; knowing how to do you rotation usually come from how ypu can concatenate this combo,and especially for Ele it dictates what utility to take

if you want further explanation,just pm me^^

Thank you all for your answers!
(for some iffing reason I can only chose one of the posts as “This Answers My Question”)
This gives me something to go by for the days to come.

Thanks a lot!

Oh right,one last important thing if you just started (doesent affect only ele,is for all classes) : learn how to manage your inventory;

-buy bag for extra space
-buy salvage kit and destroy evry salvagable item
-use the gear on the topright to auto deposit evrycrating item you got

If you lern this,you basically need shop only for buy savage kit and sell junk when full of it

Daniele Rebecchi.1746:

if you want further explanation,just pm me^^

Actually I might have to take you up on that .. been mostly doing PvP since hitting 80, which isn’t a good environment for getting your head around combos … ;-)

u should try and join the WvW (B on your keyboard) maps and follow a zerg around (look for a blue commander tag on the map, it means someone is leading a raid), im sure ull find it a new and thrilling experience, comming from Azeroth!