Guild Wars 2

The link is live now

https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/the-game/releases/december-2012/

Most common reason I was dying at those early levels is I was not Evading enough.

Same. This is the case for all the languages I tested. Probably just a promotion that went live before the microsite did

Ah. Well, the cool thing is you have nothing to worry about. You’re not locked into your choices forever.

• You can only train up the first tier of all five of your Traits until you buy a Training Manual. You need 1g at level 40 to do it. You’ll have a minimum of 30 skill points just by leveling up, plus however many skill challenges you complete from the zones you visit. I had all five Traits at 10 points by the time I hit 40, which means I didn’t even need to make a choice. Plus I had nowhere near 1g at 40 anyway.
• At that point you can then train up to Tier 2 in all your Traits. You can start making some choices then, but even at that point you start making some choices.
• By the time you can afford the Tier 3 training manual to unlock Tier 3 Traits, you’ll have a good sense of your preference.
• You can opt to retrain your Trait assignments at any time by visiting an Elementalist Trainer.

Further, where you spend your points just unlocks the slots. You have many options within those slots. For example, I can say I’m 30/ 10/ 0/ 0/ 30 build at 80, but the more important info is which Traits I slotted in those slots.

Finally, the kind of build you’ll want will be dependent on your preferred playstyle and then will inform your gear.

I found that all builds work pretty well because we have such a wide array of abilities. We’re not “best” in any one kind of thing as far as I can tell. Our strength is in our diversity.

What level are you? Your build isn’t that important until major later in the levels.

At their most basic, Raids are a large group of players repeatedly clearing out the same zone over and over for the chance of very good gear drops.

People don’t call it “raiding” much in GW2, but attacking Ascalons over and over is little different than attacking any raid zone in WoW or other MMOs. These can be fun for folks motivated to grind whatever special currency is attached to the place and having a small % chance of getting gear upgrades.

The biggest difference between GW2 and other MMOs is that you can Raid without needing to be in a dedicated group. For example, Orr temples, for gear and to unlike the Karma merchants. Sure you can join a Squad if there’s a Commander on scene. But it’s not required. You can just show up Rift and Secret World have similar concepts.

notebene.3190:

But because it impacts WvW, it would ‘seem’ like it might create a have/have-nots scenario and impact people in other areas because they chose not to participate in that sort of game play. That is what makes it game changing, in my eyes.

I haven’t been paying very close attention to Ascended, so had been assuming Infusions were only for Agony events and that other, Ascended gear was only 4-6% better stats than Exotics.

Is that what affects WvW (where 4-6% can add up to a lot when one side has more players in it than the other)? Or is there something else about Ascended I am missing?

The industry considers GW1 an MMO. That’s really as far as the discussion needs to go. Everything after that is the kind of nuance-y thing no marketing person cares about

I’ve gotten four in the last 8 play hours. Outside of that recent time when they were dropping like coppers, 1 every 2 hours seems about right.

But it isn’t really a timeframe thing as much as it’s a quantity-of-drops one. You are more likely to see them if you’re doing a zone wide event in one of the Orrs than you will by just hunting the occasional Champion

Welcome to GW2 and MMOs! A few thoughts from a perpetually casual veteran

• Critiques: Many of the complaints you’ll read here are from MMO veterans who got used to conventions established by prior titles in this style of MMO. EQ1 established a number of conventions WoW really polished well. These veterans have very valid points, but they’re through the lens of experience and built up preferences you don’t need to worry about.
• Parties: People don’t form parties often at early levels in the traditional sense. But players play together a lot to tackle Dynamic Events in every zone that has them. Unlike other MMOs, party/groups are not rigid exclusive constructs. A lot of the old school partying systems don’t really apply here, except for things you’ll only worry about near the end game (like dungeon raiding and Karma farming).
• Raiding: GW2 supports a lighter form of raiding than WoW (which itself was way lighter than EQ1), but the core concept is the same: continually redo a group-required dungeons for a chance at better loot. You just don’t need to dedicated 90-120 minutes of no-interruption time. And not all raid-level content requires a solid small group. Some are expanded Dynamic Events (called World Events).

Basically, the end game here is similar in concept to others: raiding, farming and PvP. There’s just some nuance to how GW2 does it.

I wish we could establish green text as the sarcasm color

I love the game. It’s been a long time since I’ve really gotten this into an MMO, and I’ve played the heck out of many and dabbled in most. The pace of achievements and the fluidity of the zone content have captured me.

There’s many things that could be better, like the seemingly-nightly broken DEs. I understood what they were trying to do with Lost Shores, but quality aside, I figured it wasn’t for me because it requires a play-style I haven’t had the time for in 10 years

GW2 for its diverse experiences offers still enough for a rabid casual player like me: someone who obsesses but doesn’t have the lifestyle to support it

This is some thread. Sorry if this link has been posted numerous times:

Someone sent this to me. It’s fledgling but a great idea:
http://gw2lfg.com/

What’s your preferred weapon set, and what level are you? What attunements to use and how are kinda specific.

What are your preferred weapons?

I mostly stick with the traditional 30/10/0/0/30 on Staff and S/D. It gets the job done whether I’m in a DE zerg or soloing. Staff is all range so just watch your run pattern so you don’t pull more than you intended. I’m also stance dance all the time. I’d rather throw variety than build my playstyle around doing one or two things “best”. Kinda tired of that from years of MMOs…

I never realized EA was a blast finisher so don’t miss the nerf

Anlyon.8375:

Get the Karma Sets.

Link

That. Farm Karma in Cursed but periodically look at the map to see if the Cathedrals in Malchor’s or Straights are contested. Once they open up, jump right over and buy what you can. Been waiting a week and managed to get lucky right before logging out and was able to spend 126k Karma in 2 minutes

Just know exactly what you want before jumping off because you don’t want to dally at some of the points. Arah, Dwayna, Melandru and Balthazar seem to be ok for awhile before the event resets. But Lyssa is a temple that constantly gets swarmed by Risen even after you take control of it. I don’t know about nor Grenth though, since I’ve never been on a successful run there.

In my personal experience, Balthazar requires the most zone-wide coordination to happen, and Grenth is the hardest once to get to if you die and aren’t rez’d during the run. This makes these both rare unlocks. I personally love the Balth event design and spent a lot of time in Straights. I like the Lyssa event too, but you can’t let Wren fall. For Karma farming I haven’t found better than Cursed, even after they dialed back Plinx’s respawn rate.

Welcome Oniujuo!

For PvE (which I only do as well), I enjoyed the Mesmer. From what I experienced, in the early levels they take longer to “set up” the fight than other classes. For example, a Warrior can just jump right in and tear through mobs. An Elementalist can too. An Engineer can if you don’t rely on Turrets (which I didn’t).

A Mesmer though at first needs to bring out the clones.

On the flip side though, as a Mesmer I was able to have one long running fight from one end of the zone to the other. As an Ele I do need to occasionally stop or risk getting overwhelmed.

None of the classes are bad per se. All of them are very viable in PvE. You might run into some ubers who only want to be seen with a certain class of a certain spec in a certain dungeon. But that is going to be the case no matter which class and spec you pick

I found Malchor’s harder as well. Cursed’s biggest problem is some areas are just too hard for the average group of farmers to bother with. People would much rather farm Meddler’s Summit and Plinx (even post patch) than fight all the way to Grenth, then lose and fight all the way back out. Even getting to Arah is easier.

I know that’s intended of course

I play as an Elementalist. Depending on the area of the zone, I’m either D/D or Staff. I’m by no means uber, only have a few Exotics, and my Traits are allocated for variety rather than singular focus on just DPS or just Support or just Survivability.

Cursed is very soloable. Just don’t avoid the DE zergs because that’s where the most fun is, and makes zone completion much easier.

I thought it was the first field place that gives the combo, not the second one. That’s how I’ve been playing for awhile. Have I been wrong all along?

Weapon X.5163:

Lucretius.8342:

First thing is, you need to start utilizing thumb buttons on your mouse. You really only need one. You can go out and buy one with 4 or you can buy a Naga with much more… unnecessary.

Thumb button = Program this to be Shift (this way the stretching on your left hand isn’t so hard)

Second, bring those Function keys down the numbers, using the modifier

Shift + 1 = Fire
Shift + 2 = etc…

With a flick of the thumb, your whole keyboard changes (if you set it up that way).

You sir are my hero…i have a g600 w/ 1 million buttons and i am still going to do this. since i have Autorun and push to talk bound to my mouse.

Whoa. Never thought of that. Thanks! I have a few side buttons I bound to some utilities, but binding to SHIFT… makes so much sense! Maybe the other one to ALT for those utilities…

Kana.6793:

Completing the maps is very worthwhile, as the poster above said.

The best thing really is to do a mixture of everything. Complete the maps, do every event you come across, gather every node, do some crafting with what you gather (cooking is good for easy xp) and if you feel like a change hop into WvW for a bit.

This. I leveled to 80 even without any PvP. And if you keep crafting leveled to the resources you’re gathering, it won’t even cost you much. For crafting, just make sure you focus on Discovery rather than grinding out crafting combinations. The big XP is from Discovery and you can get usable gear if you craft while you map out level-appropriate zones.

jUsoNeaZnkYd.3105:

how do the combo fields work? what is this?

Combos are fields and finishers.

Some spells cast a Field based. For example: Staff Water5 is the afforementioned Healing Rain. This is a Water field.

Other spells cast a Finisher effect. For example: Staff Earth1 is a projectile finisher.

If you cast a Finisher through a Field, you get a combo effect. In the cast of a Projectile Finisher like Staff Earth 1 being cast through a Field like Staff Water5, you apply a Regeneration boon to yourself and other players.

This is very useful in solo PvE. But the real beauty of this (to me) comes when there’s lots of players in an area. Every class can cast Finishers through your fields. Get into a large-ish DE run with other players around and the combos are crazy.

And when you add attunement swapping, you can basically have Conditions and Boons firing off all the time.

This site has a handy chart on fields and finishers:
http://www.tlcguild.com/content/combo-fields-finishers-elementalist

As with everything Elementalist, it’s all situational.

• For soloing I like Staff for combos and range.
• For DEs and groups though it kinda depends on whether there’s waves of large groups of mobs or few Veterans or a Champ.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-elementalist-11-6-12

:)

So far my experience has been:

• Straights of Devastation: not so bad unless you’re trying to link up with a Balth group after all the waypoints go contested.
• Malchor’s Leap: A few really painful areas to, notably Cathedral, but I thought Maestrom was more a pita around the volcano
• Cursed Shore: not so bad, though I’m only at 50% zone completion because I keep jumping on that escort quest

I do totally agree all three zones play very differently from all the lower level ones. But I just assumed this was the same bifurcation of content between “early game” and “end game” like other MMOs.

It’s just not messaged nearly as well. For example, even in launch-era WoW, you knew to get outta dodge if you accidently found your way into Molten Core. Here, all three zones look like any other until you get curbstomped by the three mobs that just respawned during your cooldown that just followed you killing them the first time

The key to those is condition and burst. You want your burns to outpace their regen and you want your burst to keep knocking them down.

Now’s a good time to be learning not only attunement dancing, but field/finisher combos. For Staff that would be Fire2 and then Arcane Wave if you unlocked it or switching to Earth for Earth5, Earth1 or Earth2 (or all three if you’re quick enough). Then pop over to Water for Water3 and/or Water5 for regen.

Server transfers are still free. They only limit it now to once every 7 days.

Cursed Shore is worse?!

Heh, I share Moose’s opinion about Malchor’s Leap. It’s mostly just that I was conditioned by all other zones to either be able to sneak or outright attack the zone completion solo if I wanted. Malchor’s though has some group-required areas though, notably anywhere near Cathedral.

Down to the last Skillpoint (need a group to barrel through a long ramp of mobs) and waypoint (need a group to bust into that area in the northwest).

Glad you all warned about Cursed Shore.

If you try during off peak hours there’s a chance. That’s how I got onto Jade Quarry, though now I might switch off anyway to be with friends elsewhere.

Elementalist: Nah. My utility lineup is pretty situational, and I never feel like I wish I could have a fourth utility. Our elites are kinda weak, but I’d rather they buff those than risk all the balance issues a fourth slotted utility could cause.

Question: why Earth 3 in your Large Groups? Air5 doesn’t last very long so I generally go Earth5, 2 or 1 for the projectile or blast finisher.

And yet I see the Earth3 icon blink as a recommended action when I have an active field and switch to Earth.

Does Earth3 reflect projectiles back to ranged mobs and therefore it’s treated as a projectile finisher?

I’ve seen this with a few AOEs. The actual effective radius does increase, but ground targeting reticle does not. I can’t remember which ones off hand (Meteor Shower notwithstanding).

Agree on damage avoidance. This is why I really like S/D or D/D for the formative levels of Eles. You don’t want to absorb because come the mid levels, you won’t survive it anymore

Plus this helps train up on attunement switching and field/finisher combos.

For S/D, I pretty much did for 50 levels what CurtMonash recommended:

Air Attuned
Air 4- get close
Air 2- do this while riding the lightning
Air 5- knock em all down

Switch to Fire (get the Attunement buff)
Fire 4- Ring of Fire (fire field)
Utility- Arcane Wave or Blast (finisher)
Fire 2- Dragon’s Tooth (finisher)
Fire 3- Phoenix

Switch to Earth (get the Attunement buff)
Earth 4- Earthquake (knock em down again)
Earth 5- Churning Earth

What isn’t dead is close enough that it’s your discretion whether to go to Water or back to Air if it’s ready. At later levels you can pull a bet (or both pets), you’ll be able to switch back to Fire or Air faster to rebegin the chain, and so on.

This all changes as you get higher traits and skill points for pets, shields, and so on.

You did ask about Staff, but I didn’t find that as effective for me until the 60s. That may be due to not looking into it though. So no idea how good it is at 15

Caliga Meshima.4768:

I’m at 50% right now, and IM PULLING MY HAIR OUT!!! ARGH GOD! The boredom, the frustration, the endless wandering for that one vista that seems out of reach. Makes me wanna slam my head through my monitor. How do you guys cope? What helps you get through the exploring grind? Share any tips on how to get it done faster? All are appreciated.

Really got to pace yourself My tactic has been to 100% every zone I need to in order to get to the next Story point, and then to 100% all the newbie zones because it’s just fun every so often to lord over a place with overpowerment.

But I don’t recommend trying to do it all at once. I also keep seeing world 100% complete bugs in the Bugs forum, so I figure: what’s the rush?

Erp! Answered my own question.

Change the shortcut by appending “-repair” to the file path, ala:

“<…>\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -repair

Is there any way to force the launcher to review all installed files, note any corrupted ones and redownload them as necessary? I think I might have a corrupt texture file but am not sure and really don’t want to download and reinstall the whole game

Thanks.

Welcome to GW2! To continue Myng’s meme: soon you’ll be running faster than a centaur

Sorta this games “took an arrow to the knee”

It’s an interesting idea and I do think it worth exploring. However, I’d recommend this as a level 80 thing. For a few reasons:

• Minimizes the enormous impact on balancing, dungeons, and story questing from 1-79.
• Allows players to feel like they can “evolve” their character even more after learning a first profession.
• Allows greater creative freedom on what the second class should be (i.e., doesn’t need to be one of the other existing classes) and therefore the variety of encounter types. Again without radically impacting the player onboarding experience of earlier levels and zones.
• Feels like an advanced feature anyway.

I kinda like the idea. Could be different leaderboards for things like:

• Fewest mistakes (e.g., you never fell off or back tracked)
• Speed runs (i.e., fastest completion)
• Repeats (i.e., most often completed)

You want to reduce taxes on the rich?

Kidding!

It’s not expensive unless you’re prone to waypoint jumping,. I personally am, but then when I don’t, I gather all the resources I can and auction them. And it seems like every 10 drops I get culminates in vendor trash that recoup the expense.

Intrigued: No self respecting driver is buying an automatic Ford Mustang

Doesn’t diminish your point of course.

I think the underlying issue has long been that people see Elementalist and think “damage caster”. That is not the case. There is no traditional Wizard in GW2. But it’s taking awhile for people to get over it.

I love the class. I’m with the minority on these boards, but can’t say about the game itself. Would be great to see a class breakdown chart someday.

Nice writeup. I recommend posting this on a site too, just in case it doesn’t get stickied.

I don’t know if this is guide-worthy, because it’s pretty situational, but one thing I do is have both Lesser Elemental and the elite Elemental pet up. I generally PvE and will always drop into a DE when available. Having both pets has been both a lifesaver as well making for interesting combos.

Have lots of meleer’s against a Champ? Air for stun and Water for heals
Have lots of ranged against a few Veterans? Fire and Fire.
Soloing and get in over your head? Earth and Fire or Air.

I can’t really say this is the best thing ever, since I rarely dungeon and have yet to PvP. But I’ve found it very fun and a natural additional to my attunement rotations.

Brazensage.1328:

For those of you that played WoW, SW:TOR, GW1, Age of Conan, EVE, RIFT, etc; how long did it take before the game was balanced/ had most MAJOR bugs worked out? How long before the complaints on the forums went from an exponential rise to a steady decay?

I think that’s the wrong question. Forums do not represent the general playerbase. MMO companies are constantly balancing what they hear from the highly vocal few against the internal statistics from the quantitatively much larger, but most silent, player masses.

For the most part, MMOs do not remarkably change over their lifetime (UO:Renaissance and SWG:NGE are extreme outliers). So it’s safe to determine whether the game is “for you” within the first month even, if there’s a monthly fee you want to avoid, or the first three, if you like it enough to see if the team is successful enough to fix the launch period issues.

Chances are if you love GW2 but the bugs are annoying, you’ll power through while playing other games. The beauty of no subs is not having to look at the monthly value.

However, if you kinda sorta barely like GW2, or got bored/didn’t like some core premise like WvW or DEs, then the bugs will really annoy you so much you’ll move on. Then, if you come back in a year, you’ll still kinda sorta barely like GW2. That won’t change.

What generally happens is people play like addicts in the beginning, burn out or get bored and take a break, come back some time later to try and reignite their memories of the launch day, realize they can’t, and play for a shorter period of time, then leave. Rinse and repeat, because, you can’t go home again

Why does every new MMORPG need to follow the “give me what I had but slightly tweaked” rule? The world does not need yet another near-slavish iteration of Tolkien’s world.

Red Falcon.8257:

<assassin pic>

Nice Ezio Auditore, are you going for a product placement thing there in time with AC3?

Reihert.1509:

Go to option, hit autoloot.
Now you can loot by hittig F without even stopping a fight.

This.

Plus, are people feeling like they’re not getting enough Karma rewards because they’re underdamaging/ underhealing? Or is it more about the gear?

What I don’t get is this “money sink” people keep talking about. Only once was I ever hard up for the meager cost of waypoint traveling, and that was when stupidly overbought stuff on the trading post.

If someone wants to bounce around the map all day long chasing any and everything, yea, sure, that can get expensive. But if they even want to do that, chances are they have other playstyle habits that probably provide a nice nest egg.

Heck, just sell one less yellow than you salvage, and you’ve got enough for the next waypoint.

As to the Op, as others have said: conflicting interests. You can’t reduce travel time by removing waypoints. The only way to reduce the cost is to, ya know, reduce the cost

Wanted to resurrect this thread because I’ve become a convert as well. I’ll keep my S/D weapons up, but I haven’t switched back in weeks. It’s all combos and finishers now.

Story mode has become a cakewalk. And no matter the level nor zone, I only get worried if a ranged mob shows up to my 1 on 3 fight, and then only if both my pet slots are on countdown.

Quite sure PvP and WvWvW is different. But I only just recently hit 80, so I’m a long way from even being properly geared much less practiced against other players…

I wish we could have one mega “toss the attunements” thread, so it could be rolled up into a “give us an 9th class that plays to archetype” thread.

Attunement switching is an extra button push. Some have gone with remapping them to ALT-1 to 4, which makes a lot of sense to (though I haven’t since I’ve gotten so used to F1-F4).

It’s ok not to like it and move on.

I didn’t enjoy Engineer, mostly because for the limited time I played it, it felt more like a grenades class than a Turrets class, and I already have something that tosses ranged damage

Does that mean I jump into the Engineer forum and tell them to rethink the class from the ground up?

Try this link:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhMmSbwR5gjDAkHvYCLDFh4RRxM6A

I’m not experienced enough in bunker builds to have a comment

Awesome thanks SecondtoNone. And yea I’ve been meaning to get that second magic book so I can get to the 30th point in Arcane. Evasive Arcana seems like it’d be great for S/D too.

kKagari.6804:

The thing is, without waypoints, we could all share an extra sense of camaraderie. Dying is going to suck way more because if no one saves you, you’ll have to restart at some camp far far away.

Honestly don’t want to see a return to punitive death mechanics. We are way better off without them

But on your point: waypoints are a tricky balancing act. I kinda like them here but also did like the gryphon travel from EQ2 and WoW.

The WPs here leave it up to the player.

• The faster and more frequent traveling allows players to define their social hubs themselves. The obvious ones emerge because they also include all the other services. But
• It makes PUGs much easier to start, particularly important for World Events and dungeons. A good LFG tool will enhance this. But unlike earlier games that didn’t have that nor fast travel, it’s much easier to group in GW2 just because of the map itself.
• It solves for inventory management problems, the time suck of having to re-run through content/mobs you’ve already memorized. Nobody likes inventory management…
• They considerably lowers the barrier on crafting for folks who maybe want to give it a shot but wouldn’t want to keep wasting time heading to a city or hub just to try it/
• You won’t over use them if you are farming resources for that crafting.

I liked the gryphons because it did always give you a sense of the world size. And gryphons would really only be intra-zone anyway because GW2 is zone-based game rather than seamless.

GW2 answers that a bit with View Points and some rather impressive vistas.

Anyway, as this thread shows: YMMV