Guild Wars 2

Try test driving different characters in Silverwastes with the level 80 boosts, while also spending some time leveling them manually. You may find a class you enjoy at 80 that is sort of tedious at 34 (eg Mesmer).

The boost gives you armor, some buffs, 4 15 slot bags, and…doesn’t it also give a scroll to level someone up to 20? I seem to recall it must reside in the shared inventory slot until use, but could be mistaken. There are advantages to using it sooner.

I thought they had a balance patch about two weeks after the end of the sPvP season?

I still think they have only about 10% programmers, ie people who look at source code. The rest are various kinds of artists (levels, landscape, equipment, animations) and game designers (damage, boons, condi, powers design, LS and main story). Plus about half are customer service, HR, etc.

Ditto on guardian, especially with scepter/focus and sword/shield.

You might as well ask about a refund. All they can do is say no.

Got my ninth slot, so going to make an asuran thief. Edit: Norn thief. Asurans were too fugly.

A-net is very frugal with character slot sales. Think they had one in August of last year, and again for three days at the New Year.

Difficulty settings, so I can play through the dungeons at my own pace (ie solo) and enjoy the story. If somebody else wants a super hard experience, they can pick the opposite setting.

More currencies in the wallet and not in my storage.

Fix the ‘disconnect during personal story missions’ bug. Or at least put checkpoints into Zhaitan and Mordremoth so you don’t have redo the whole mission if you disconnect.

pound sign 500000 looks more like maroon to me.

Enameled Crimson, Blood, Rosewood, Ruby or Brick all look pretty close.

This is Aggie Maroon (Texas A&M), btw.

+1 to the posts above me. A few more tips.

Gear check – you probably have a mixture of 70s exotics and rares. Double check to make sure you aren’t still carrying along a blue 60 or some such. Don’t spend too much at the TP because you get bags and boxes and bags inside boxes of blue and green with the occasional rare from playing in the HoT zones. But replace anything that sticks out as being low quality and low level.

Ascended amulets (usually +Power, +Precision and +Ferocity works for every toon, but check to be sure) can be bought for Laurels in every major city.

Most superior runes are cheap also – a full set can help a lot, especially if replacing Major Runes. Same for Sigils. Which ones? Not too sure. Usually I go with Lyssa or Balthazar until I know the character better.

Check the build you’re following. You may want to swap in some defensive traits.

80 level rings are inexpensive on the TP.

Also, use your +50% xp boosts to gain the gliding mastery more quickly.

One of the problems is a lack of hard core programmers. I used to think game companies had bunches of such programmers, but now I speculate they are only about 5-10% of the staff. Most of the staff are either customer support or artistic types.

Customer support are of course the folks working through all the tickets and banning spammers and such. Artistic types include the artists who paint up all the items, characters, buildings, landscape. Also included are the game devs who use fancy 3-D programs to lay out new zones, design new NPCs and bosses, or modify the animations of the current powers.

I don’t know what they use their programmers (people who stare at source code all day) for, but I don’t think they have very many of them. They certainly don’t use them to fix the “disconnect during personal story with out credit for completion” issue. That’s been around for years now. Geez, they can’t even add checkpoints for the longer stories as a work around.

So, yeah lack of programmers is the problem behind these QoL and no bug fix issues.

elrin.4750:

I’m a new player, don’t have an 80 yet. Reading the forums and reddit it seems HoT is ‘L2P or GTFO’.

Still enjoying the core game, but not looking forward to HoT.

More the issue is that core open world is mostly fairly easy. There are a few spots you can over pull, but until you get to Orr, it just isn’t that hard. When the recommendation on gear is “within ten levels, maybe five for your weapon”, the game play isn’t really challenging.

HoT is a step up in difficulty level. Maybe if they revised core so people were keen on keeping gear up to date, and carefully pulling, more willing to use LFG, the difference wouldn’t be so noticeable.

You have to have logged in when the episode was freshly released to get that episode for free. Episode 4 is the currently released episode so your friend got it for free. You have owned the basic game and HoT since release, and logged in often enough to get the LW episodes for free.

Your friend should play the game as long as he enjoys it. To avoid spending more dollars on the game, get gold to convert to gems. Avoiding crafting and selling the mats will help with building up a gold reserve.

Crafting is needed for legendary and ascended weapons, but they aren’t much better than exotic weapons, which can be purchased with karma.

I’m thinking there is no gaming company in the world that can release updates fast enough to please all the players. It will always take months to produce, test and release something players consume in a fraction of that time.

Totally agree this fight is a PITA, and that the sudden jump in difficulty is irritating and offputting. Some sort of progression in difficulty of boss fights throughout the Maguuma story would have prepared me a lot better for this fight.

However it is what it is, and won’t get nerfed soon. In fact now I know how to do it, kind of looking forward to trying again, see if I can do it better.

So, check your equipment, get all level 80 exotics. Check your build, what skills would help better? Finally, (what I did), get some assistance. Two people make it much easier, especially on the Eir fight. Can’t imagine soloing Mordremoth, actually.

Pifil.5193:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

Is the main source for good builds (good choices of traits, gear and equipment) some of them have very good guides on how to use the build. I would use fractal builds in dungeons.

People keep recommending metabattle.com to new 80s, but none of those builds are labelled for open world HoT. Is there some general rule that certain builds are good enough? Is the rule the same across all professions?

Please don’t say “It’s open world, use whatever you like.” The HoT zones are more challenging and players post numerous threads saying “I die a lot in the HoT zones.” Obviously some builds are better than others for HoT content. Some explicit direction would be more helpful.

Second the notion to check your Trading Post log. A couple of times I’ve thought I was changing the quantity to buy and realized I was clicking on the price arrow. Usually it was the gold coin arrow, so a few stray clicks and instead of buying three items for 50 cp, you bought one item for 2 g and 50 cp.

Most of core Tyria is set a “grandma difficulty” of a solo shooter. A few times it goes up to “normal” difficulty, and the champion events aren’t meant to be solo’ed at all. But those situations are avoidable.

HoT raises the difficulty to XCOM level, normal difficulty. If you aren’t careful you’ll get waxed in the encounters. You do have to pay attention, use all your tools including CC, and tinker with your builds. HoT is more of a place where you may have to do encounters multiple times, possibly trying different strategies.

Additionally, there are some character upgrades to think about. Get all exotics, either from the Trading Post or the Karma vendors in Orr. Get Superior Runes (at least five of set) and Sigils that fit your build. Many are available for a few silver on the Trading Post. The laurel vendors have ascended trinkets and the proper amulet is usually a good purchase, ie will be useful for quite some time.

PS I couldn’t defend the frog camp either. Pick the other option to attack the mordrem.

There’s a lot to do at 80, and it seems like it all has to be done now.

Go to a karma vendor in a major city and get the ascended amulet appropriate for your class. If you have done WvW, you may have enough currency to get the amulet from the WvW vendor, which will save you some laurels.

If you have HoT, unlock the Masteries- do the Personal Story “Torn from the Sky.” Start on glider basics. Do events in Verdant Brink and the Personal Story until you have gliding basics. Use boosts and food to increase xp to help your progress.

Next, go to Orr to the karma vendors in the temple to get exotic equipment. The 80 level personal story takes you through Orr, so you can work on that. For Core Tyria, level Pact commander. If you want to do fractals, get at least level 2 in the Fractal masteries. If you aren’t working on legendary weapons, hold off on the legendary masteries.

Orr has a lot of hero points so unlock as many as you can to gain your elite spec. Once you have exotic equipment, you can go back to Heart of Thorns and work on hero points there. Dulfy has a guide to help you.

These are suggestions. Do what seems fun at all times.

I had heard that WoW GMs could log in as any of the bunnies, frogs, deer or other critters. They could follow players around to confirm exploiting and other bad behavior.

Hadn’t heard that invisible bunnies were actually casting spells to imitate world effects. Cool.

It seems like MMOs are going the way of less UI customization, not more. It’s initially cheaper, you can get the game launched a few months earlier- always important to your financiers.

More UI customization means do you design the game for people using the mods or people not using the mods? For example, consider WoW. Most people use a mod called Deadly Boss Mod (DBM). It can see which Boss the group is fighting and starts timers based on the skills it seems useful. It flashes a huge warning across the screen when the Boss is about to use a one shot spell. The players see and run for cover – hide behind a pillar or rush to the safe area, whatever the encounter requires. WoW would be a lot more difficult without DBM, and I suspect the designers assume everyone uses DBM (or something like it).

If devs block customization of the UI, that relieves them of guessing what UI mods the players might be using. It’s all vanilla.

Concur, it sounds like you’re wanting a ranger.

Elementalist fits some of what you want. They get a signet with +25% movement early on. Switching attunements and setting up combo fields certainly isn’t boring. It is fun when it works and boy is the DPS high. However it isn’t forgiving and you need to know a fair number of skills.

So yeah, ranger fits better.

Thanks for the summary. You confirmed my impression CT Mastery Points are very grindy.

You can’t advance the HoT masteries (notably gliding) except on the HoT maps. With good equipment (exotics from orr, ascended from laurel merchant) you can do that solo (events, exploring, story etc). Use all the xp boosts you can to make it go faster. You can still get into trouble and die, but that just makes it interesting.

Ranger for speed and pet to help tank. Elementalist also gets a speed boost early on. Mesmer speed is deep into chronomancer.

Greener.6204:

But the charr already reclaimed it. It took a thousand years, but it finally happened.

I with Greener, the charr already reclaimed it. If humans want more land, they can settle the empty parts of Kryta or spread south from Lions Arch. Most of those lands are wilderness.

The Discipline specialization has a trait that will increase movement speed by 25% when wielding a melee weapon (Warrior’s Sprint).

Is there any content that is challenging but doable for two players? I assume dungeons and fractals require 4 or more. So far some of the hero points in HoT zones need at least two, but I can’t think of any others.

Green sylvari ele.

I can complete the event in the festival area. For the reasons many others have cited, I would get only 2-3 hits per dolyak defender run. The activity isn’t fun and I now no longer attempt it.

I just went through this with a naturally leveled guardian. My recommendations:

1. Get Gliding basics. This means explore the beginner Heart zone Verdant Brinks, do the story quest and events there. Pop some ‘+xp in all modes’ boosts if you have them. Tinker with your build as you go, HoT is harder than core Tyria. Laurel vendors have ascended trinkets that come in handy, but use caution. Laurels are rare, so make sure that’s the trinket you want.

2. Finish your elite spec. You can do some of the easy Mastery points and hero points in Verdant Brinks (Dulfy’s has a guide that mostly requires just gliding basics). You can also work on the hero points in core tyria. The core personal story leads you into new zones and you can scoop up many HP there as you explore. You eventually reach a place with karma vendors that offer different exotic gear than what your boost gave you. Not sure if Necros need it, but its good to have the option.

Of course, the advice ‘whatever you want’ still applies. The twin goals of ‘Gliding basics’ and ‘finish elite spec’ do provide a framework at least.

The first one with the pants is better.

My ranger is Charr. My guardian is Charr. I may make my engineer Charr.

(Or human, haven’t decided yet.)

Randulf.7614:

Kinya.4095:

Thank guys, I have just skipped the scarlet war video. I will proceed with HoT quest first

Just to confirm, have you done Season 2? HoT will make no sense without S2 being completed since it sets everything up. If you have, then no problem.

Does season 2 explain who all these NPCs are calling me boss and why the fleet went into Maguuma? And the story with Caithe and the egg?

Kinya.4095:

So after a 1 year hiatus, I have just purchased HoT, and I have some questions in mind right now.

1)I realized that my hero points has reset, should I save my remaining skill points(400 of them) first? and spend all for now? By the way, why is elite specialization still locked?

2)Should I jump to hero journal for now? Currently I see the new ones are ’Scarlet’s war’, ‘HoT story’ and ‘living world season 3’. Any particular sequence should i do? I am a 100% PVE person so I don’t really care about PVP stuffs.

3)Any important stuffs I should do for now?

Thanks for the help in advance!

1. You need to buy all your core skills and traits before you can spend any hero points on your elite specialization. So you should spend your hero points on those first. Unlocking the elite specialization requires 30 hero points. After that its 10 for traits and 15 for skills. The elite skill requires 25.

2. You should do the prologue HoT story to unlock the HoT zones and masteries. Scarlet’s war is a short video that you watch, summarizing the events of Season 1. Haven’t tried Season 3.

3. Shoot, that’s the big question. Do events in Verdant Brink to unlock basic glidng mastery. You can also do continue the HoT story line to explore the zone. The xp will help unlock the mastery. Once you have gliding, you can follow the various guides eg Dulfy, to unlock hero points. Some people say to use LFG to join a hero train – large group of people progressing through the hero points- but I haven’t done that.

Dawdler.8521:

Keltan.1827:

You can change the appearance of armor, but it costs. Go to Hero Panel, and this time pick Wardrobe just below equipment. You can then pick an armor location from the drop down box and the available appearances (skins) will show up. Pick the one you want. WARNING: The transformation will require a transmutation charge.

I’ve been saving my charges in case there is high level gear that I want to wear but don’t like the look of, so you may want to do the same.

Dont really know what your “high level gear” is but do not at any point transmute anything below level 80 exotic gear. Its completely useless. At low levels (ie 79 or below) you will be swapping armor and weapons every 10th level or even quicker. Hell, I have had moments where I didnt even have the same weapon for one level, lol. Everything will be tossed away once you are 80.

Well except maybe that blue level 30 underwater weapon you forgot you even had because you will never use it again.

Yes, meant end-game eg exotic gear. Don’t transmute anything lower for exactly the reason you describe.

Dawdler.8521:

Keltan.1827:

You can change the appearance of armor, but it costs. Go to Hero Panel, and this time pick Wardrobe just below equipment. You can then pick an armor location from the drop down box and the available appearances (skins) will show up. Pick the one you want. WARNING: The transformation will require a transmutation charge.

I’ve been saving my charges in case there is high level gear that I want to wear but don’t like the look of, so you may want to do the same.

Dont really know what your “high level gear” is but do not at any point transmute anything below level 80 exotic gear. Its completely useless. At low levels (ie 79 or below) you will be swapping armor and weapons every 10th level or even quicker. Hell, I have had moments where I didnt even have the same weapon for one level, lol. Everything will be tossed away once you are 80.

Well except maybe that blue level 30 underwater weapon you forgot you even had because you will never use it again.

Yes, meant end-game eg exotic gear. Don’t transmute anything lower for exactly the reason you describe.

For the waypoints: Type M to open the world map. Left click on any waypoint you have unlocked (light blue in color). You will get a confirmation box to complete the teleport.

For changing appearance: Type H to open your Hero Panel. Select Dyes (should be in the list two below Equipment). You can use the eyedropper to select a color and recolor any armor you like.

You can change the appearance of armor, but it costs. Go to Hero Panel, and this time pick Wardrobe just below equipment. You can then pick an armor location from the drop down box and the available appearances (skins) will show up. Pick the one you want. WARNING: The transformation will require a transmutation charge.

I’ve been saving my charges in case there is high level gear that I want to wear but don’t like the look of, so you may want to do the same.

Some of the female armors are a bit Frazetta, and thereby kind of stupid. You can choose your toons armor type as a crafting skill and level it with your toon. You can usually find a crafted armor that’s as good as drops, and usually more practical in looks. Or you can use a transmutation charge (not recommended) or you can just ignore it till something else drops.

I vote no on more underwater stuff. Fighting underwater is not enjoyable. The reasons I can think of include the following.

1. The 3-D nature of the environment makes it difficult to see what is attacking me.
2. The weapon skills are suddenly different from what I use in 90% of the game, so I dislike the learning curve.
3. The utility skills change, as the ones I use on land are not available underwater.

Please, no more underwater content.

Yes, it’s confusing at first. I just completed Gliding basics, so this is what I recommend.

Go to a vendor that sells gathering equipment and get some orichaculm level stuff. You can get xp from gathering in the HoT zones, but mithril sickles/axes/picks tends to ruin resources.

Most PvE builds are all offense, so switch your build to something with a bit of defense and heals, whatever that means for your toon. Do small changes, like using a different weapon or refreshing your memory on the defensive class mechanics. For Guardian I started using Mace/Focus instead of my leveling Sword/torch. But each class is different, so you may need to do a bit of research.

Go to Verdant Brink. Wander south to the Pact Rally points. Join in their defense. Die a lot until you get the hang of how dangerous the region is. Escort NPCs carrying supplies for the rally points. In general follow other players around as much as possible and help with the events.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info! There certainly is a lot to figure out at 80. In fact it seems like there is too much to do, rather than too little.

Opened my exotic boxes and got a sword, mace and two staffs. Joined in at the first HoT zone protecting rally points and figured out how not to die. I switched to GS and Mace/Focus, and that seems more useful. Got my glider basics finished and working on Bouncing Mushroom. May go back to SW to get some more Hero points. All the builds I find use dragon hunter, so I should probably get it maxed.

Figured out that using the 80 boost on another toon allows them to gather xp for the Tyria masteries. Mesmer is fun but really enjoying the elementalist. Not sure how she lives so long, probably just lucky. Still, might prefer to level the ele and use Mesmer in HoT. I’m probably not playing the Mesmer to full potential. 80% done with Pact Commander and then I’ll switch to Fractal Mastery.

BTW, what equipment level do I need for starting fractals?

I have some laurels and bunches of karma. Any good buys available with them? Stuff that will last a long time and is a good investment?

And of course I need to raise up Armorsmithing, farm gold, do more map completion….

My Guardian just dinged 80 using personal story, tomes, hearts, hero points and exploration. He’s my first 80. I did Torn from the Sky and unlocked the masteries. The question is what next?

I have some plans. My personal story needs finishing. Should I open all those Exotic boxes boxes I have? Same for the Loyalty boxes?

My Armorsmithing is around 200. Is there a reason to raise it up? Old posts on crafting seem contradictory about the priority and I can’t tell what is current. (Crafting isn’t that fun for me.)

Question: When I’m in Tyria my xp goes to Tyria masteries, and when in Maguuna, it goes to the HoT Masteries?

DH is unlocked but no where near complete. Somewhere in there I should get HP in HoT zones?

Seems like there are a bunch of things to do (equipment, masteries, hero points), and sorting priority is what I’m asking.

I still haven’t used the free 80 level up. My choices are Mesmer (53), Ele (22), Ranger (15) and Revenant (35). Leaning towards the Mesmer as I’ve played him a fair amount. But he needs a group to run around HoT zones because his damage is bad? OTOH, isn’t there something about bags I get in Silverwastes and I’m supposed to open them on a level 50-56 toon? If the boost is used on the Mesmer, I’d need to level up another bag opener?

Theoretically I should play them all at level 80, see which one I like, but it takes time to learn all a toon’s capabilities at level 80.

Gold farming is a goal so I can buy some gems to unlock another character slot. Season 2 needs gems to unlock also. Which class is good for that? Or is it more a question of doing stuff in a group?

Yeah, sales resistance at an all time low, and A-net offers nothing. Disappointing.

Awesome Charr twist on Father Frost. Have fun and Merry Wintersday!

Thanks for the info!

Hi all,

I had these two Grawl paws in my inventory. The wiki said they are used to activate a grawl collection, so I double clicked one. The collection activated just fine. When i double click the second, it says I already have the collection. Is the second paw useless and I should just vendor it?

Next, I’m getting a few items of yellow quality. After I out level them, when I try to salvage them, a warning appears asking if I really want to salvage them. Is that just a courtesy warning for higher quality gear? I don’t need them again do I?

I gave it one last try and will stick with revenant. Buying a sword, axe, and hammer from the AH helped a lot. Playing once a week does not help, but that’s what I can fit into my schedule.

I’m leveling a revenant in PVE with some friends of mine. One plays an elementalist, the other a thief. The rev doesn’t seem to work with me. I don’t seem to do much damage, and am very slow to engage the enemy. So far I’m level 13 and have no ranged attacks, and only one leap on a long cooldown. I seem to finish the hearts last, mostly because the mobs die before I can tag them.

Should I change to another class or does it get better soon? We only play once a week and get about two-three levels per session. I have a ranger that I like playing better, or should I try another class, eg warrior or elementalist?

Greatsword is a good ranged weapon. I tried staff this morning and it was noticeably worse than sword in terms of killing stuff in pve. Lyssa’s guide has good info about leveling. It does recommend a combination of ranged/melee play though.

As always you should try different weapon combos to see which ones work for you. Myself, I could not make GS/staff work better than GS/ (Sword/focus), but I did only try it for about 30 minutes.

I think power is better for leveling because most open world foes die too quickly for condi damage to add up.

Thanks for the replies!

I think for now I’ll plan on duellist and keep practicing the GS → Sword/focus combos.

I found I got a fair amount of xp exploring Divinity’s Reach, so I’ll add exploring zones to my activities.

I can get more tomes of knowledge? I thought that was some super rare, lucky drop and was saving it for Level 79.

Hi,

Just started playing GW2 and have an 18th level mesmer. The guide on these forums strongly recommends duelist for the first specialization. One on reddit recommends Domination. It says a ranged Domination build is a bit easier for new players than the high risk melee style of Duelist.

Which is better? Is it entirely my choice on play style?

I’ve tried to test out ranged vs melee in the PVP zone using the Chieftain and the big ogre thing, but usually die so quickly it doesn’t seem to matter.

As an aside, how do I level quickly? I was doing the heart nodes, but at higher levels they don’t give much xp. Not good at finding crafting nodes, so would prefer not to craft.