Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone. I’m kinda new to GW2 and this will be my first post here. I’m going to hit my first 80lvl soon (Thief ofc and I wonder how to gear him in the fast and efficient way.

I will have around 200k Karma and 10g at the start. Looking forward to play mainly sPvP and WvW with DP + SB / SD + SB. Should I have some certain priority at acquiring items? Weapons first, etc? Should I follow some cookie cutter build or run something more “newbie friendly” at the beginning. I’m not new to mmorpg at all, I played a few of them a lot (even achieved a little), so my skill level overall is medium / medium+. On the other hand, I sometimes still feel kinda lost in GW2

TL;DR - I am new to the game and to the class. How should I spend my first money (10g) and Karma (200k) when I hit 80? Spend it, and don’tregret it I would be also grateful fot some tips for smooth gold making and profession lvling. Is it profitable to maximize Leatherworking / Jewelcrafting / Weaponsmithing?

Thanks for the replies.

PS. Where should I better learn my class? sPvP or WvW?

Welcome!
10g at 80 will buy you around 2-3 items of clothing (exotic) off the trading post. I suggest you do the new events, farm some money and buy them
Also, another trick is buying items for level 78. It sounds funny but there is not s substantial difference (2-3 power), but the price is much much lower.
Unless you actually find and farm the crafting supplies, it can be extremely expensive to buy them.
That’s actually a hard question. I’d say PvP. In WvW there are just too many mindless zergs running around stampeding people whilst in PvP your teams are going to be pretty much the same amount of people. I vote with PvP

Thanks a lot

What about Karma gear? Worth spending? Any other ideas ppl? Would love to get more feedback.

Cheers.

I would suggest you farming the Citadel of Flame, all 3 paths, to get the Berserker gear ( the first set as sorting position you get at the vendor in LA ), then you can start farming Fractals to get your ascended. Just have a close follow-up for forums to see what builld will suit you better. Definetly, learn the Thief in sPvP!

Also make sure you are doing your dailies (for ascended amulet) and joining a guild so you can get commendations. Should take 4-5 weeks of weekly missions to get 2 ascended
trinkets.

I do my dalies (and monthlies) whenever I can Two more questions:

1. Should I expect a lot of flame in sPvP? I am not total no-skill, but I’m sure i will need some time to get used to the game. What is more – thief looks like more skill intensive pick than Warriors, Necros and Rangers. On the other hand, Thief looks balanced, isnt’t it?

2. I’ve read that going full Berserker is kinda risky at start. Is that true?

Thanks a lot guys! Take care.

In terms of acquiring gear for PvE or WvW

• Since you are new I am assuming you don’t have a lot of achievement points yet, so the easiest way would be to farm CoF, within a week you will have all 6 pieces if you do all 3 paths.
• If you do have a lot of achievement points chances are you got a ton of badges of honor as well. You can use those badges of honor to purchase every gear available in the game from the WvW vendors, this is technically the easiest way of all.
• Karma gear is very iffy, first of all it doesnt have all the stat combinations (no zerker armor) but it has soldier’s and cavalier’s. Secondly you need to finish temples in arah to access the vendors, (or you can guest in servers that has the temples open. Check www.gw2state.com to see which temples are open on what servers)

WvW Thief builds
See Arganthiums collection of “Guide to thief’s guides” on the top of the thief forums it has a collection of a bunch of different wvw builds. Running full zerker for any class in WvW is generally frowned upon because you will most likely die often even if you are quite skilled. Instead people often take cavalier’s, knights, or valkyrie, sometimes mix soldier’s with zerkers, it really depends.

I would suggest going to wvw with whatever gear and build you have right now and see how it feels. Just don’t be discouraged if you die a few times, your main objective is for you to do what you do and see if it works, and if it doesn’t check out some other wvw builds (there are tons) and get gear accordingly.

Offhand, the 2 most popular builds for thieves in wvw is the burst d/p or d/d build, which can range from your standard 10/30/30/0/0 to 0/30/30/0/10 to 15/30/0/10/15 to many others. Also, the attrition P/D build which is generally something like 0/0/30/20/20 or come combination of the last 3 traits.

PvP stuff
In terms of PvP all the gear is free unless you want specific looks (for that you will get skins for doing your PvP dailies and such, or you can purchase them using glory points – you get those by winning in PvP). PvP is a “balanced” environment so you don’t even need a level 80 all characters are level 80 in the mist by default. None of your armors or weapons will have stats, all your stats will come from the amulet you choose (which is the only trinket you will have) and the runes and sigils you put in your gear. PvP is a totally different beast from PvE and even WvW with different objectives, so I recommend looking up guides for that (there is a lot of stuff going on besides the obvious “kill everyone!”)

Again, check Arganthium’s guide in the top that is the “Guide to the thieve’s guides” you will find all sorts of builds.

There is only 3 basic set of gear that you need to be able and enjoy everything.
With these you can play dps, tank and condition dps. All other armors are optional and personal preference.

Berserker – Power/precision/crit damage

Soldiers/invader – Power/thougness/vitality

Carrion – Power/vitality/ condition

If you want to play SPvP then you can dive right in even now, before level 80, and you will be given gear on a par with other players. You can customize it however you like and experiment with builds and play styles.

Get exotic weapons before exotic armor. Dungeons, WvW, Trading Post, Karma vendors, and crafting can all give exotics so use whatever you have at your disposal. Make sure that whatever you buy is consistent to your build though. You might want to use orbs in your first set of armor rather than superior runes. It’s cheap and you can put a couple of new ones in to rebalance your build later as needed.

Stooperdale.3560:

You might want to use orbs in your first set of armor rather than superior runes. It’s cheap and you can put a couple of new ones in to rebalance your build later as needed.

Absolutely agree. A lot of the builds you will see have superior runes of divinity which last I checked will cost you about 65g to have 6 pieces. Another popular rune is scholar runes, 6 of those will cost you around 17g, whereas if you run ruby orbs you will get almost as much DPS as scholar runes (and more dps if you do not manage to keep your health over 90% most of the time).

In terms of trinkets, I do not recommend buying them from the TP either craft them yourself or use the cavalier ones from the balthazar temple (if you’re running a burst dps build) or carrion ones if you’re running a condi based build (I think that’s from Lyssa’s temple but I could be wrong) until you can get your ascended trinkets. Get the ascended pendant with laurels, the 2 ascended accessories using 12 guild commendations + 5 gold each, and the rings will drop randomly on fractals lvl 10+.

Here is the link I generally follow with gear.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

I’m not a dungeon/fractals player, so I usually start with Karma armor when a character hits 80, and generally mix and match the PVT (Soldier) option. Can only do 5 of 6 pieces, and I fill in the last with Invader. Karma trinkets are also an option from the temples as mentioned.

After that, as I have the gold, I move to TP or WvW armor vendor for the other sets. Runes/Sigils are areas I have the most trouble deciding on. Too bad you cannot just recover these so you can play around with various setups without new sets of armor/weapons.

As to crafting, if you’re already 80, use the experience gain/leveling benefit on an Alt. However, I personally don’t find the cost/benefit time wise to choose crafting versus the TP, even with having characters presently maxed in each craft.