Guild Wars 2

imsoenthused.1634:

Harper.4173:

Also on the topic of “he” vs “she” – I understand that these individuals feel a certain way about themselves and do not necessarily identify with their biological identity. That’s fine.

But for me – who perceives them as that biological entity which they are ( regardless of their own inner perceptions) – why is it wrong to call them with the normal pronoun associated with that biological entity? My perception of them is mine. It is subjective.

Is it wrong that I choose to perceive them in my own way instead of the way they themselves want to be perceived?

These are serious questions – and it would be interesting to see how people feel about them and what their answers would be.

Because it has an emotional connotation for them that you are completely ignoring? You are choosing, by ignoring both their wishes and presentation to actively cause them emotional harm for the sake of a word. Basic human decency and politeness would dictate that you, being aware that it hurts them, wouldn’t do it. But some people just aren’t polite or decent I guess.

“You are choosing, by ignoring their preconceived notions of gender identity to actively cause them emotional harm for the sake of your own feeling of self-worth. Basic human decency and politeness would dictate that you, being aware that it hurts them, wouldn’t do it. But some people just aren’t polite or decent I guess.”

I’m not saying the two are equivalent; at the end of the day, a person’s desire to be comfortable in their own body outweighs the feelings of discomfort that an observer might have. I’m just saying that the argument from the other side holds some water as well.

If this NPC was male and became female, wouldn’t that make him/her a transsexual rather than merely transgender? I suppose the former is just an extension of the latter, but I want to be sure we’re all speaking with the same terms here.

First impression after having been in LA for about half an hour: it’s definitely pretty and I like how everything is more open and accessible, but it seems like it’s missing a lot of the “character” of the old design… I’m going to explore it some more tonight and see if my opinion changes at all.

If you’re excited about playing necro then don’t come to the necromancer forums too often… there’s so much doom & gloom around here, people will tell you necro is the WORST CLASS EVER and there’s no reason to ever play one…

I typically only play open world PvE so I can’t comment much on the other game modes. I run a hybrid power/conditions build with dagger/focus for power and easy LF generation, and scepter/dagger for conditions. Staff is also good for both LF and conditions, but I wouldn’t run a pure condition build because death shroud doesn’t benefit too much from it, and you’ll need to use DS a lot. Speaking of which, necromancer doesn’t have much in the way of damage mitigation, so get used to tanking hits while in DS.

I agree that getting chain knocked down by a group of catapults is annoying. But let’s be real here: if you’re just talking about solo PvE, hard CC is the most threatening thing they have most of the time. You can usually see them coming from a mile away; if you see a Risen Brute charge up a hammer swing and you don’t dodge or block, you deserve to be put on your kitten for a few seconds. There’s no need to remove the remaining challenge from what is already an easy encounter. And if you’re talking about group PvE, then you’ll actually be paying attention to your utility skills, in which case you should have stun breaks ready for this sort of thing.

True story: I used to have two human female characters, but the fact that they both had the exact same voice bothered me too much, so I rerolled one as sylvari. In fact I’ve determined that I CAN’T have two characters of the same race/gender combo, just for that reason.

Paul.4081:

The new dailies pretty much killed doing dailies for me and I know I’m not the only one unless in game chat can be swept under the rug as minority too?

I’m right there with you. I used to care about dailies; they gave some structure to my random, haphazard playstyle. Ever since they changed the system I’ve stopped paying attention to dailies altogether. I play this game for the PvE; I don’t care one bit about WvW or PvP.

LastShot.4762:

GW2 is a not really a good representation for the MMO genre, it’s more of an outliner, ANet definitely go way overboard in term of carebear-ness.

Not saying that’s a bad thing, but if you play this game for a little too long(like me), you will have hard time surviving in most MMOs out there.

Yes, it seems like the OP is used to much more hardcore MMOs than GW2. Personally I like it this way since I’m not really an MMO player; I can play this game as if it were a single player RPG.

So to answer the original question: no, I don’t mind that the leveling is so fast.

OP should have a chat with this guy:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/how-do-you-deal-with-the-grind/

Different strokes for different folks, I guess?

This is all good to know, thanks! It’s a little disappointing that we won’t be able to use the gilding in existing zones but hopefully that will be added before too long. I was also kind of hoping the gliding would be infinite until you hit the ground, but I guess that could cause balance issues.

I require all available information on the subject. Flying mounts were my favorite part of WoW during my brief tenure with that game, and I know that gliders are not exactly the same thing. But I love the idea behind it and honestly it’s one of the things I’m most looking forward to in HoT.

Personally I’m focusing on world completion and leveling up my crafting skills. Once I get 100% map completion on my 80s, I’ll either level up my alts, or just put the game down for a while…

Wolfe.3097:

CureForLiving.5360:

Well if you’ve really got your heart set on getting to 80 asap then try the Edge of the Mists. It’s basically a karma train but you get a lot of XP as well.
Although I do kinda feel like you’re missing out on the fact that the open world PvE experience really isn’t that bad.

id be fine with doing it AFTER hitting 80

IMO this is exactly the wrong attitude to have. Just play the game, run around and have fun, and you’ll be 80 before you know it. If you insist on getting to max level ASAP then you can always craft your way there; a friend of mine leveled his ranger from 1 to 80 literally doing nothing but crafting, and it didn’t take him very long. Although he did have all his materials saved up from an earlier character.

I get the feeling that I play this game very different from most players. I focus almost exclusively on open world PvE content; I don’t care much about dungeons or fractals or WvW or PvP.

Asura Necromancer – My main character, the first one I got to 80. My main goal with him is map completion, with a secondary focus on obtaining materials to max out my Artificing.

Human Guardian – My other main character, she’s also at 80. I play her when I’m in the mood for a more defensive playstyle, and I also collect materials to level up Weaponsmith and Armorsmith.

Sylvari Elementalist – I determined a long time ago that I wanted to play an elementalist, but I still haven’t really figured out how to play him. So he’s sitting pretty at level 20-something for now.

Sylvari Mesmer – This is the character I’m currently trying to level to 80, but it’s progressing slowly since I tend to jump around between characters, and I don’t play for exceptionally long periods of time anymore.

I also have a Charr Warrior, but I kind of hate him and I’m probably going to delete him soon, to be replaced with a Thief or Ranger (for now) or Revenant (when HoT drops).

Rin.1046:

Some of you do not want this option, and that is fine, but I see no reason why you would want to stop others having it when it doesn’t do anything to you. It’s like saying you cannot use tomes of knowledge because I want to level normally. It’s selfish and pointless.

I can understand where you’re coming from. Just recently I bought some gems to buy some gold to buy good gear for my level 80 characters. I could have accomplished the same thing by spending a bajillion hours farming up the necessary gold and whatnot, but I had decided that my time was more valuable than the small amount of IRL cash I spent on it. So I can’t condemn the convenience argument completely.

However, I do feel that the line needs to be drawn somewhere. I am of the belief that every game needs to have challenge on some level, and being able to bypass every challenge just in the name of convenience defeats the whole point of the game. Maybe that’s because I’m currently working toward 100% map completion on my 80s; to me, the journey IS the game, and I’d rather not take shortcuts.

Also, it’s kind of silly to ask our opinion on the matter and then say “Why is your opinion different from mine!?”

I’m going to jump in here since I’m also a new mesmer. Although I have scrolls I can use to jump right to level 20, I was thinking of leveling manually so I can gradually adjust to my new skills as I obtain them. But I haven’t leveled a character since they re-did the whole leveling reward system. Is it worth it to start from scratch, or should I use an exp scroll to start from 20?

Also, which weapons should I use for power builds and condition builds respectively? My necro is running a hybrid build at the moment and I’m not sure which way my mesmer will go just yet.

Nope, I play asura and human and sylvari (see the sig). I have a charr as well but I don’t play him very much, and I’ll most likely replace him with a male human Revenant. Really I’ll play anything except norn, because they just look stupid (let’s take a human and increase all the dimensions by 1.5 times, new race! bleh…)

I had two female humans at one point, but once I realized they would always have the same voice, I had to delete one since in my mind they had two very different personalities (and voices), and it bothered me too much that my mesmer sounded just like my guardian.

Moonlit.6421:

Lol dang. Read the first post here and thought “Hey look at that, a positive post on the necro forums lol.” In the next few minutes looking through the comments it was almost laughable to see how many negative posts there were on a thread trying to get people into a better attitude lol. X3

^This.

I want to thank all of you or proving the OP’s point (or most of you, you know who you are). S/he just wants everyone to be a little more positive and try to have fun with this class, but you guys responded with “No, we are completely justified in our negativity, now I’m going to explain to you all the reasons why you’re stupid and my opinion is more valid than yours and you should hate necro just as much as I do.” Whether or not any of your points are true I’m not doing to debate (I’m simply not that kind of player), but the fact that everyone here is SO NEGATIVE about the necromancer (or anyone who dares to question how bad the necro is) is on full display here.

I’m returning to this game after a several months long hiatus, continuing my mission of map completion on my necro. I currently run a power build focused on DS, because it seems to be the only one with trait choices that make sense, and it kills things far faster than conditions or minions. But it’s starting to get a bit repetitive, and so I’m willing to try out other builds that people find fun to do.

Keep in mind that I’m talking only about open world PvE / map completion. I don’t care at all about dungeons or anything like that. And I’m well aware that the open world PvE content is easy enough that I can kitten through it with any build, I’m just looking for something new and exciting to try out.

Oh boy, a screenshot thread! On my old laptop where I first played GW2 I have 800+ pics or so; its integrated graphics card is kitten but I still got a lot of pretty pictures. And I think I’m the only person who actually left the HUD on in the screenshots…

I just started playing GW2 on my new computer recently so I don’t have any higher-quality pics yet. But this computer actually has a real graphics card so I’m looking forward to the screenshots I’ll be taking in the near future, as I run around the world on my necro! (and occasionally guardian)

In PvE I’m currently running 4/0/4/0/6 with Knight’s equipment and it’s working pretty well. I take all the traits that benefit DS and I use dagger/focus + staff, so I have all the LF generation I need and can spam DS as necessary. Can’t comment on PvP or WvWvW though; I don’t really play those modes.

sorudo.9054:

then again, one thing i find off-putting is the voice of the female human, it will always sound way to adult so making a young girl of 19 years old ruins it all.

This bothers me too; I wish we had some options in terms of voices. I have two human female characters: a guardian and a mesmer. The voice fits pretty well on my guardian, whom I imagine to be a bit more dignified and mature individual. But my mesmer is supposed to be a tricky, silver-tongued illusionist who charms and deceives her way through life. I would like her to sound more playful/upbeat or sultry/seductive, and the human female voice doesn’t lend itself well to that.

Does the world completion have to all be done on one character, or can it be divided among characters? E.g. if I explore all of Metrica Province as one character and all of Caledon Forest as a different character, will my % in the character select screen reflect both zones being completed? Or does it just show the highest % that an individual character has done?

StinVec.3621:

Harathi Hinterlands is fantastic for solo play. I solo the event chain from the start up until Ulgoth spawns and sometimes a few people show up at that point to help out. But generally the entire chain is more fun alone so it is good nobody goes there on my server. End up with full bags and 6 champ loots. If some help on Ulgoth then you have your boss and bonus chest as well. Sometimes only one other person shows so we 2-man Ulgoth. Usually deaths are involved, but it’s so much fun! Generally can run the whole chain from start to Ulgoth in 30-45 minutes solo.
If you let Ulgoth’s timer expire then the centaurs regroup and push in on the last camp. Defend this camp and you get another run at all of the pre-Ulgoth events of 4 champs and a ton of centaur waves, which means tons of loot. Let Ulgoth’s timer expire again and use that time to empty bags. Then defend the camp again and do the run to Ulgoth again to get 4 more champ bags and full bags of loot. Can start from the defend the last camp stage about ever 30 minutes or so. Each defend to Ulgoth gets between 3 and 6 gold worth of loot (mats, junk loot) and usually 1-4 rares with 124% MF, as well as 80-120 supply bags. Usually enough time to clean bags before the next assault starts…usually.

This sounds great! I like Harathi Hinterlands too, so I’ll start doing this whenever I’m in the area.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

a few questions if you could answer I could try to recommend depending on your answers.

1)How often do you play?
2)How many characters do you have? (and how man are at level 80?)
3)Do you enjoy grinding?
4)If you only have one or a few lvl 80s what profession are they?
5)How much money do you have currently? ( is it enough to start reinvesting didn’t sound like it but thought I’d ask)

1) A couple of hours a day at most, a little more on weekends
2) Four characters (see my sig). Only the necro is 80.
3) I am not averse to grinding if I feel like there’s real progression while doing it, and if there’s an end in sight.
4) Necromancer is 80, guardian is 48, ele is 20 something and mesmer is in the teens.
5) About 3.5 gold at the moment

I just got back into this game about a week ago, after having not played since the second Super Adventure Box event. Right now I’m just focusing on map completion and trying to get some nice gear for my necro. But… I’m dirt poor. I can’t buy anything worth buying, and even waypoint costs are nontrivial to me because of how often I use them. I will admit that this is mostly because I have a super casual, VERY disorganized playstyle where I just run around doing whatever I feel like at any given moment. I also spent a lot of money on crafting materials, which is apparently extremely inefficient.

Anyway, I want to correct my gold shortage now and I’m seeking the best ways to do it. I’ve heard that dungeons give you a lot of gold, but I play this game solo 99% of the time, so I’d rather not have to rely on those if I can avoid it. Plus people who run dungeons generally are not noob-friendly, and most dungeons I have little experience with so I’d get kicked out of most groups. This is not to say that I’ll never run a dungeon or anything, I would just prefer a solo solution.

I’ve already figured out that killing things and selling their stuff on the TP (as opposed to in-game vendors) is a good start, and completing events and hearts are things I’m prone to doing anyway. But surely there are some tips & tricks that solo players utilize to maximize their gold gain…

I approve of this idea. It’s already possible to unequip all your armor and run around naked if you really want to do that anyway, you just have to pay the cost of being weaker than normal. And when your armor breaks it’s removed from the character model, so it can also already happen as part of normal gameplay.

I guess the deciding factor would be how many players really want to run around naked all the time. I suspect that some gamers (straight male teens mostly) would be giddy at the prospect of having their human female mesmer run around barely clothed with no penalty to their stats, but if the GW2 demographic overall is older than that, then it probably wouldn’t be too big of an issue.

I hate to kitten on the moa parade here, but I agree with Gibson. Having moas follow you around purely for cosmetic value might be OK (although even that could potentially cause problems), but having permanent pets with actual in-game functionality is strictly the realm of the Ranger. Giving moas to everyone means that the Ranger has no reason to exist. Not to mention that most classes are designed around the fact that they DON’T always have a pet to help them, so giving permanent pets to everyone would (definitely) cause huge balance issues.

This only happened to me once. I forget the details but there was some living story event going on where these dolls would appear out of boxes, and they were really tough. I happened across one that was right next to a waypoint, and so every time I died on that enemy (it was many times because my ele was very weak and I didn’t know how to play him) I would just immediately respawn and attack it again before it could regenerate. I beat it eventually, and I didn’t feel like spending any more money than I already had, so I had to run naked back to the nearest merchant.

I have less than 2 gold to my name between all four of my characters (levels 77, 48, 20, 15). Besides the obvious things like waypoints and repairs, I think I spent the majority of it on crafting materials, whenever I was impatient and wanted to reach the next crafting tier without having to go mine 100 more platinum ore or whatever.

Anyway, I’m just about 80 on my main and I’m looking for ways to easily make gold. Open world PvE solutions are preferred since that’s what I mostly play. I’m not averse to running dungeons but I don’t know how I feel about spamming CoF path 1 over and over again. I don’t have any exotic gear so I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be accepted into most parties anyway.

tl;dr how do i made golds?

Not too far away now is the day when I’ll have my first level 80 character. This means I need to start concerning myself with the ‘endgame’, aka what I should be doing after hitting 80. I only have a few goals in mind right now:
-100% map completion
-crafting/finding/buying a full set of exotic gear
-completing every path of every dungeon at least once

What else is there in PvE? What do you guys do with your 80s?

Related question: what’s the easiest way to farm gold for a level 80 character? I’m going to need a lot of it very soon…

For almost my entire necro’s life, I was a pure conditionmancer. Between scepter/dagger + staff + wells I had all the AoE I ever wanted. I could never settle on traits for it though (besides 30 in Curses obviously)

But recently I gave up on conditionmancer and decided to go powermancer with a focus on DS. I use dagger/focus + staff, 30/10/0/0/30 traits.

30 Spite: Spiteful Talisman, Reaper’s Might, Close to Death
10 Curses: Weakening Shroud
30 Soul Reaping: Path of Midnight, Soul Marks, Deathly Perception.

Between dagger 1, focus 4 and staff 1-5, I have no problem generating LF quickly. That ensures I can use DS more often, which triggers Weakening Shroud and lets me spam Life Blast to stack might, which makes my dagger autos hurt more when I switch back. I also throw in Spectral Armor, Well of Darkness, Well of Suffering and Flesh Golem as the elite.

For solo PvE purposes this gets me by just fine. It kills things faster than conditionmancer and it’s more fun to play too. I sort of agree in that there’s a few “right” ways to play a class; for me that means utilizing your class’s unique mechanic properly. I struggled for a way to get DS to work together with conditions, but unfortunately the design of DS just doesn’t allow for that. So I went power and I’m having a much better time as a result.

No nerfs, they’ll just do bug fixes:

Fixed a bug where Spectral Armor was lasting for 6 seconds instead of 1.
Fixed a bug where Last Gasp was triggering at 50% health instead of 15%
Fixed a bug where Blood is Power only inflicted 2 stacks of bleeding on self instead of 10.
Fixed a bug where minions had infinite duration.
Fixed a bug where Necrotic Grasp could damage more than one target.
Fixed a bug where Spectral Wall applied protection to allies crossing it instead of fear.
etc.

Softspoken.2410:

Regarding #2 – I think it actually worked like this at one point, though I could be wrong. Either way, this would prevent non-optimal condition builds from contributing to a fight in any meaningful way during large PvE events, or mass 1vX events, since their conditions would never make it into the stack as long as there was 2 or 3 well-made condition builds present. Possibly to the extent of preventing them from getting kill credit.

Wouldn’t they still get full credit just for attacking and using skills on the enemy anyway? I was never entirely sure on how that works.

Tolmos.8395:

If that still isn’t enough, prioritize stacks by who is doing more damage . If my stack would do more damage than bob the warrior, give my stack priority. Why? Because it likely means I am condition build and he isn’t, and his stack is just being dropped as an afterthought by skull cracking skill he just used on his hammer.

I like this idea a lot. I would even take it a step further:
1. If the cap is reached and your condition is stronger than at least the weakest condition on the stack, the weakest one gets replaced.
2. If the cap is reached and your condition is weaker than every other condition on the stack, it doesn’t get applied at all.

Also, I don’t believe for one second that this is a bandwidth issue. It sounds to me too much like Anet looking for a scapegoat for an oversight in their game design.

You know why I like this game? Because it’s an MMO that doesn’t feel like an MMO. I’m never forced into a group to do any content, I never feel obligated to grind for gear, and I never have to bow to a guild leader who demands that I play the game in a particular way.

I play solo for the most part, and almost 100% of my time has been spent in open world PvE, doing the occasional dungeon here or there. I treat this game like an Elder Scrolls game, in that I just want to explore and see what’s over that next hill. I often run around and take screenshots of areas that I find aesthetically pleasing (so far my favorite zone is Timberline Falls) or interesting or fun things that I haven’t seen before. I also enjoy the dynamic and active feel of combat, as opposed to something like WoW where it’s a lot of standing in one place and watching animations play out. I don’t even care about the endgame; my only goal right now is to get a character to 80 (highest is 67 at the moment), and THEN I’ll worry about what I feel like doing.

As you may have guessed I’m an uber-casual at this game, and overall I love that Anet has created an MMO that’s accessible enough for me to play the game the way I do.

Anet has already proven to us that they don’t want us to survive big bursts of damage, given the change to DS in the 7/23 patch. This is in addition to our lack of blocks, vigor, etc. that would also help with avoiding single-shot damage spikes.

So since we can no longer mitigate damage in that way, how about reconsidering allowing us to heal our actual health pools while in Death Shroud? I can’t be the only one annoyed by the fact that we have an entire trait line dedicated to healing/vampirism, and yet it can’t be used in conjunction with our class mechanic. It still wouldn’t address the burst damage issue, but it would make us a lot more sustainable in longer fights. Aren’t we supposed to be the masters of attrition? LF generation is still unreliable enough that we can’t always count on DS to save us, even with the recent set of buffs to it.

If the devs are so worried about this being unbalanced they can just tweak the healing numbers a bit. Make it so by default healing is only 50% effective while in DS, and then add a trait that increases this percentage. Maybe that’s not the most elegant solution but I’m sure the devs can think of something.

A little background first: I play this game super casually, only for an hour or two a day at most. I also don’t have any prior MMO experience (aside from a brief foray into WoW which didn’t pan out). Here’s how I enjoy GW2:

I essentially just roam around the world without any particular plan, running from renown heart to tree to PoI to skill point to ore, and killing anything I come across.
If I see other players nearby I’ll tag along with them for a bit and help them kill stuff.
If I come across something cool or a view that I like, I take a screenshot of it.
I am in a small guild with my immediate friends who still play the game, but since they’re not online a lot of the time I spend most of my GW2 experience playing solo.
I don’t care about PvP or WvW, and I only rarely do dungeons (though I’m not averse to them necessarily).
My highest level character is 56 (I took a break from the game for a while), so I’m working on getting him to 80 mostly via map completion.
The only thing that ever feels like a grind for me are the dailies, and even then it’s just a matter of “start in the zone with <area> Killer or <area> Events and get the rest along the way”.
Since the vast majority of the grindy stuff is for level 80 characters anyway, I figure I’ll get to 80 first and then decide whether or not I want to spend time on those things.

I try not to lurk these forums too much just because there’s so much doom and gloom around here. It’s easy to forget that many of the complainers sped through the game as fast as possible (have multiple 80s, etc.) and now are struggling to find something worthwhile to do. For me, the worth comes from the leveling experience itself, which is why I’m in no rush to finish it.

Killing Joke.4371:

Heat dissipation is the most important consideration.

This, this, this. I currently play GW2 on a laptop and I have to take breaks every now and then just to avoid overheating, and that’s with a fan in a moderately air-conditioned room. Although I’m getting a new desktop soon anyway, since my current laptop is 5 years old and has a garbage graphics card.

How would you rank each profession in terms of how easy they are to level? Of the four classes I’ve played so far: Necro is somewhat easy, Guardian is super easy, Ele and Mesmer are both fairly difficult. So for me it goes Guardian > Necro > Ele >= Mesmer.

I’m very bad at thinking up names, and when the game first came out I wanted something that would sound like an actual name. So instead I thought, what is the character’s theme going to be? Since he’s a necromancer, he deals with the unending circle of life and death, so his theme is “infinite”. So I go to google and type “names meaning ‘infinite’”, do some searching for something that sounds exotic enough for a fantasy game, and I stumble across “Azman”.

And that’s how my very first GW2 character came to be. I also gave him the Eternal Alchemy background, which I thought was very fitting.

OP reminds me of that “I only play mature games for mature gamers such as myself” image you see sometimes.

Xenon.4537:

Reaper.1695:

I play with my teenage daughter, she’s setup with a PC and her own account. I think it’s perfect for her and she really likes it. I’m glad it’s not all blood and gore. My problems are the low lifes who find out she’s actually a female player playing a female character.

My advice is teach her to pretend shes a dude at all times on the internet.

Is that really worth it though, lying to everyone at all times just to evade those few people who might try a feeble attempt at hitting on you? If she were my daughter I’d tell her to not go out of her way to mention she’s female (that tends to be viewed as attention-whoring, aka negatively) but also not to deny it if someone asks. Then again I am male and I have no kids of my own, so…

In defense of minions I’ll say that Flesh Golem is actually pretty good, but that’s an elite skill so you’d have to weigh it against your other options. If you’re committed to not using minions at all then you’ll probably take Lich anyway…

Which trait are you talking about? Aside from Gluttony (Soul Reaping 5) I don’t have any traits that pertain to stealing life or life force generation.

This is something I stumbled across recently, not sure if it’s a bug or intended behavior.

If you use DS4 when DS is just about to expire, you’ll continue doing the attack in normal form, and you’ll gain life force without the constant drain from the shroud itself. I like to use it this way because it actually helps set up your next shroud, as opposed to using it during DS where you won’t net much life force most of the time.

On the other hand, if you use DS4 and then hit F1 to switch out of shroud, specifically to take advantage of this, the DS4 gets cancelled too. This leads me to believe that the behavior is a bug, one that I hope they don’t fix anytime soon

You can use pretty much anything if you’re just killing random mobs to level. I’m doing a hybrid build that leans toward conditions, so I use scepter/dagger most of the time, and I switch to axe/focus if I need direct damage instead. If you’re going pure power then you’ll want to beef up your DS as well; it’s the best direct damage tool we have.

I just rolled a mesmer the other day, so I’m still trying out weapons. Yesterday was sword/pistol day and I was enjoying it, although sword 3 seems kind of buggy/unreliable. I am a bit hesitant about using a melee weapon on so squishy a class, but I figure mesmers should have enough ways to avoid damage to make it doable.

I usually play solo. I am part of two guilds but neither of them are particularly active, so most of the time I just roam around doing random stuff by myself, helping out other players if I happen to cross paths with them. Rarely I will do a dungeon with my friends, but aside from that I stick to open world PvE to explore the world that Anet has created.

IDooMx.1289:

Does GW2 offer, in terms of PvE, many features that can keep you solely playing for PvE alone? If so I would be grateful for examples that hold true to the PvE experience.

I just roam around the world doing random stuff and I’ve been having tons of fun with that alone. There is other more structured content as well, but I’ll let more experienced players fill you in on those.

Does crafting add any flavor to the game that would make it a good thing to do while leveling a character?

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘flavor’ in this context, but crafting is pretty important. The gear you can craft is comparable if not better than gear you find while adventuring, and it’s also an easy way to gain character EXP. Of course you also gain EXP for gathering the materials needed for crafting, and for exploring new areas to find more materials… yeah this game pretty much throws EXP at you for anything you do.

Is this game a Casual-Gamer friendly game in terms of progression? I am often busy with family or other things that require my attention but would love to get anywhere from 1-3 hours of game-play when possible.

Very much so. I am similar to you in that I can only play for a couple of hours a day at most. The game is designed in such a way that you can play basically the whole game solo, so you don’t need to wait around for a group to get things done. And because of the aforementioned “they give you EXP for everything”, it’s not difficult to level your character with the short time you have each day.

I’m still leveling and I mostly play solo PvE, so I’ve found that it’s good to be versatile. I am specced for conditions and I run scepter/dagger most of the time, switching to axe/focus and liberal use of DS when I want or need to do direct damage. Once I hit 80 I plan to have my traits something like 10/30/0/0/30, but I haven’t fully committed to that yet.

As a necro who’s still leveling, I have found the Flesh Golem to be very useful. Not only does he draw aggro and keep my foes in one place so I can AoE them easier, but the cripple and the knockdown are great for keeping enemies off me since I build fairly glassy. The after-battle regeneration is just icing on the cake.

Outside of the Flesh Golem though, I’ve found the rest of the minions to be generally ineffective. Some of them are disposable but have underwhelming effects upon being sacrificed, while others are meant to be sustainable but don’t last long enough to contribute much to the fight. Anet needs to make up their mind as to which direction minions should go, because the traits dealing with minions go both ways and they are often anti-synergistic.