Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, was hoping that some proper veterans would be able to give me some advice/guidance. Quick synopsis of my play, I preordered the game many moons ago and powered a Guardian to 80 in a month. I was in the Jesse Cox guild and had some good fun in WvW, but never tried dungeons or really anything else. Started leveling some alts then left for a while. I have come back to it a handful of times across the years, the most recent time was whenever the announcements for Heart of Thorns classes were dropping. So I’m back to get my MMO scratch once again.

As far as progression goes, my Guardian is 80 with a full set of Berserker exotics and I can remember spending quite a lot of time in the Silverwastes, though I’m only sitting on 90 gold. Otherwise, I have another toon at 66 and the rest are between 20 and 30. I’m not really sure what progression I’ve made on specialities like Ascended gear and other unique items, just that I have a char acting as extra bank storage who is stuffed with various boosts, dragonite ore and shards, and other random things. And that’s pretty much where I’m at, just trying to get back into the swing of things.

So a few questions that I had:

1. Is HoT worth the full purchase price? Ideally I can wait a bit to see if I’m going to stick to the game for a while, but since Living World Season 3 just dropped, and I don’t really want to have something to pay for later down the line when it’s free now, I’m thinking I need to make a choice a bit sooner. I already missed LW 1 & 2.

2. Is there anything in the cash shop that is really worth investing in? At this point all I’d really like are some character slots and maybe a few bank tabs.

3. Is the population still holding strong, particularly for WvW and doing events? A lot of my decision will be based on finding a good, semi-casual guild that I can fit into, since that tends to hold me to a game a lot more, but I also want to know if there’s enough pop to support it.

4. What are some good goals for me to start aiming for, aside from leveling alts and farming Silverwastes? This game has always been about setting goals, and I was never very good at that before, so I’d appreciate help on this one a lot.

And any other helpful tips and advice would also be appreciated. Really want GW2 to stick this time around, since no other MMO seems to exist that’s held my attention other than SWTOR, which has gone a bit to the dogs now. Plus, I beat a lot of the story and that’s about the only reason I was playing SWTOR.

Please and thanks for assistance!

That would be interesting as we could then play as an actual heavily armored class that doesn’t just roll around madly. Issue is that with dodging you can escape multiple attacks at a time while blocking may or may not depending on how it would be implemented. If it acts more like a channel that costs endurance over time then it would be effective.

My opinion for improving the shield without completely changing the abilities(A-Net is busy after all) would be to add a percentage chance to block on shields. Nothing huge just 10-15% chance would be reasonable on the higher level stuff. It would still take some work but it seems reasonable and appropriate for what a shield is meant to do in the first place, which is block.

You’re all wrong. Crossbow is obviously the way to go. ^_^

In all seriousness though, the Guardian is extremely robust and can be a threat in certain situations. Not all of them but still enough to get by. Range is important for WvW and dungeons but we can get by. I managed to beat a Veteran mini-boss almost by myself just by kiting it with a staff & sword/focus. It took ages and a number of heals before someone else popped in to help burst down the last 10-15%. This, of course, doesn’t really apply in PvP or WvW but still.

Some type of viable range would be greatly appreciated by all Guardians but implementation would be difficult due to class balancing and the resultant complaints of all the other class. So, I’m going to agree with Eveningstar on this and just hope for some tweaks for the moment.

Almost forgot,….POLEARMS!! ^_^

The scepter has been my bread and butter in PvE because I can kite almost anything while slowly whittling down the enemies health. That, however, doesn’t work in PvP or WvW. In those, the idea of ranged weapons for Guardian seems to be simply engaging a fight, harassing, or supporting your allies’ retreat. For these the scepter is almost useless thanks to the slow moving projectiles and abilities that don’t have the capability to do, well… anything. However, using one of the bows would be easy enough since it only needs to have control abilities like the scepter’s 3 and something to use condition damage with, such as an elemental shot charged with magical energy. Aside from that a simple AoE is the only other thing that seems necessary to me.

Of course, a crossbow would be great because…well it’s a crossbow. Plus the crossbow is portable and would easily be carried by a guardian. The slow rate of fire fits the “heavy” design of the Guardian and it doesn’t have a crazy range so the Guardian still fits as the close – mid range profession. Keep the scepter though because it is still hilarious to watch the silly little bolts meander towards the enemy.

Then all we need are polearms. ^_^