Guild Wars 2

Got 3 from completing an area the other day (or it was a daily, can’t remember). You can still definitely get them, they’re just rare.

The best thing to do is not actively go and look for specific quests to level up. I hated walking around, looking in particular areas for quests and whatnot. Let the games quest system do the work for you. See an interesting area? go explore it, chances are you’ll come across a poi, skill point, heart quest AND dynamic quest, giving you maybe 1/2 a level, then go somewhere else. IMO crafting is an incredibly boring way to level up.

After levelling up a warrior and elementalist to 80, there’s a huge difference between the two. I feel like I had to put in a lot more effort with my elementalist than my warrior. Can’t speak for any of the other professions, but imo one of the most relaxed professions is the warrior.

I’ll love to give this build a try. What sort of stats are you looking to use on weapons/armor?

Spawn.7014:

People were making Gold to fast. This reduced the amount of RL $$ Anet got from gemstore. THIS IS THE TRUE problem with speed runs.

dont let them lie to you and say it was too easy its always about the money. Its a F2P game they will do every thing they can to make sure you have to buy gems from them.

Just wait next patch way point teleporting will cost 5 gems or repairs will cost 10 gems. Its bound to happen my friends.

Does it hurt your brain when you think? No ones holding a gun to your head, forcing you to play this game. Don’t want to spend real money? Don’t spend real money. Claiming that ANet is lying to you and making sure you buy gems is preposterous. I’m glad this patch came out, so it can weed out players like you.

Stop being lazy, it takes no more than maybe half an hour to unlock all of your skills.

Server alliances lol…

Elementalists could perhaps pull off the glass cannon role if they could actually deal the damage necessary in order to compensate for their lack of health. However, being the class with the lowest starting health, and being far from dealing the most damage, I don’t think players should assign themselves the role of being a glass cannon. You’re only kittening yourself by putting yourself in situations where you can be one shotted while you deal so-so damage.

The sceptre/focus combo isn’t great at dealing damage, but with the utility you get from it, you can keep enemies at bay long enough to kill them (assuming you’re also dodging attacks and whatnot), as well as the staff. I’ve spent most of my time leveling in this game with a staff on my elementalist, and although it takes me a while to kill enemies, I can keep them at bay, have enough health to deal with them because instead of putting points into power and precision I put points into vit and toughness.

Just my opinion is all. I don’t think elementalists should get placed into glass cannon territory since they’re really not that good at damage in the first place.

I have them both. I like to use the Mistfire Wolf for single targets and the hounds for 3+ mobs to do damage and to keep them off me (I play an elementalist). Both skills are great IMO. Both do good damage too. Use whichever one you like better

Dungeons in this game are hard. They won’t be easy if you haven’t done them before, so make sure you go with a group of friends that you can communicate with, or go with a group of people that have at least gone through the dungeon before.

Secondly, your build might need some changing. I don’t know your exact stats, but as you’ve said before if you’re getting 1 shotted, then you should probably stack some more toughness and vitality (remember, there’s no specific class meant to just heal you as you pound away on your enemies, you have to keep yourself alive for the most part).

Third, learn enemies attack animations. It really helps to know when an enemy is shooting a bolt at you, or throwing a chain to pull you in. If you can avoid it, you avoid dying.

Keep trying. Dungeons can be really tough in this. They’re meant to be. Just experiment with your build, try to dodge more, and try to go with a better group or communicate a lot with the group that you’re going with in order to get the most out of everyone.

Good luck!

Vitality and toughness….have you tried them? Elementalists in this game aren’t meant to be glass cannons. Without a dedicated healer, each profession is responsible for it’s own survivability. If you find yourself dying a lot, put more points into toughness and vitality, and try to change some of your gear to have more of those stats as well. Also, use your utility skills which help you survive. Armor of earth, arcane shield, your teleport (forgot the name) all add great survivability and utility.

The damage is also not fantastic, but that’s because unlike other games, this “mage” class isn’t supposed to kill you before you reach them. They’re meant to stun, cripple, burn, chill, etc etc, to not only give you the tools to help deal with them, but to also provide bonuses to your teammates to deal with these enemies. The class is great.

I disagree. I find that having too much DPS is just hurting/slowing down the group. I’ve done a number of dungeons now, and although we don’t specifically go out to try and find DPS/HEALING/TANK, we do try to keep our group varied, because we know that every person brings something to the table. Once we tried an all DPS route (with 1 or 2 support spells thrown in there), and I found us running around in circles a lot more, dying a lot more, and just struggling with simpler things.

In groups with a varied arrangement of skills/abilities, you can tackle any obstacle that the dungeon throws at you. Sometimes the solution IS to just go full dps and burst down your enemy as fast as possible. Sometimes it’s to just survive long enough to clear through the dungeon event.

TL;DR – Having a full DPS crew can work sometimes, but having a varied group is almost always better. It all depends on the situation you come across.

Hope that helps!

I don’t think the tutorial bosses are meant to be hard. They are, after all, the TUTORIAL boss. They’re meant to be more of an introduction into the types of encounters you will come across in Tyria, however they aren’t meant to be hard incase it discourages newer players from feeling as if they can’t do it. Also, you start off with like…1 weapon and 2-3 skills. A hard fight would be kind of a pain.

In my experience so far, it’s best to just focus on one crafting path instead of trying to level two. It can get pretty pricey buying those mats, so try to ditch 1 for the other.

Also, discoveries really do give you the most experience. For artificing (what I leveled), you have to have at least 2 components of each weapon (so for a staff, you would need a staff head and a staff shaft), and then add 1 inscription to it (add a magical property to it). The higher level the materials, the more experience you’ll get from discovering them.

Just want to say that Armor of Earth definitely does not break stuns. Says it does in the description, but it’s not the case.

Is there any way other to efficiently level artificing? I find myself spending maybe 20s just to increase my crafting level by maybe 5-8 levels. I also try to gain experience by discovering but I still find that to be slow. Any tips? Thanks.

It’s not a big deal (at least not to me I guess). It’s true though, that the downed state for elementalists is pretty much an immediate death sentence in PvP, since they can finish you off before you can do anything (other than hold them with your second skill if they’re far away). I think shaving off a few seconds for mist form would help quite a bit.

You can finish off an elementalist before you can use mist form. It’s annoying

In divinitys reach, travel down the path from the main entrance (on the southside). Once you reach the end of the narrow pathway (that has merchants on both sides along it’s path), you’ll come across a giant ring/circle with shops inside them as you travel along. If you look in there, you’ll find the crafting trainers/stations.

Hope that helps

Different weapons have different playstyles. The staff for guardians is definitely more of a support style weapon, but that doesn’t mean that you HAVE to use that every time you play with others in dungeons. Think of it as something that you can help to do for your team, but you’re not shackled to it’s role.

For example, say you’re getting rocked in a dungeon and your team is taking too much damage, quickly switch to a staff, help other members heal up (along with heals from other players/roles), and then switch back to another weapon to fill in another role.

Hope that helps!

Aha sorry, yeah the engineer class.

Ummm no real designed sense other than for lore purposes imo. Different races have different racial abilities, but in PvP they’re removed. And no class is better designed for a certain profession than another class.

Kinto.9485:

Looked at this thread yesterday, and set out on a personal quest this morning: Let me try and prove that Ascalon Catacombs Explorable Mode is doable without wipes when people are working together. So, after consulting with some guild mates, we strategized and theory crafted ways to make an ultimate teamwork composition with guildies who volunteered to do Explorable Mode with me.

Lets break this down.
Me a Warrior
A Thief
A Mesmer
A Gaurdian
A Elementalist

We looked at our vastly different profession composition and looked for which weapons for each of us could either support the party, debuff the enemies or even both! We then realized, “Hey, why not throw combo fields into this!? Lets get all hardcore with combo fields!”. We even took it a step further. “Lets trait ourselves to be more supporty!” We all payed no more then 3 silver 50 copper to respect into more supporty traits.

At the end of all this character building, we ended up with:
A supporty Warrior
A supporty Thief
A supporty Mesmer
A supporty Gaurdian
A supporty Elementalist

Dear god. We flew through Catacombs. In fact, each successive run got even faster. So here is how we did it.

Warrior: Mace/Shield &Hammer for swap
Thief: Dagger/Pistol or Sword/Pistol
Mesmer: Staff
Guardian: Hammer
Elementalist: Staff

Warrior, Guardian AND Thief stay front lines. The Thief will constantly use the offhand pistol 5 skill to apply a smoke field in between him/her and the enemy. Now the trick is, to get your Warrior and Guardian into that smokefield and have the warrior spam 1 while the Guardian goes apepoop. Each hit that anyone does to any enemies WHILE in the smokefield will apply blind. Now think for a second: If 3 people are constantly hitting the same enemy with each hit applying blind, how does that enemy hit you? Now, for the off chance that the enemy IS able to hit you, that is what that Warrior applying weakness is there for. Regen Banners is a plus!

Elementalist in Water Attunement: COMBO FIELDS EVERYWHERE!!! No seriously, we were regenerating like crazy!

Mesmer was awesome at applying conditions to our foes while granting boons to our party! We were able to give ourselves 25 stacks of might + the other boons when he copies over his boons to us. His Wall of Reflection was amazing for deflecting the Lieutenants Daggerstorm ability.

Okay, I meant to only type a bit, but this is turning into a full on novel. So instead I’m going to post a recording of one of our runs so you guys can see =].
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
TL:DR: AC Explorable Mode is doable without wipes. Here is video proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_zRO2FfSL4
About a 45 min run through the whole thing over 3 parts.

How many tears we got today: http://i.imgur.com/gR9lT.jpg

Perfect. That’s exactly what people need to understand. This game isn’t meant for the classic group of tank/heal/dps. However, since that group build has always worked in every other mmo, I feel like it’s ingrained into players, and is their default way of dealing with dungeons. I’m constantly trying to remind my group of friends dps doesn’t really matter, and to drop certain individual skills they have (like signets giving them more power, etc) and to adopt skills that are geared towards providing CC and support for other players (although my advice is almost always blown off), and we end up wiping in dungeons over and over.

Over time I hope people understand that teamwork = success, and that roles aren’t as important as the person behind the character. But until then, the classic WoW mentality will be the default mind set.

….Alchemist? I’m unaware of what you mean by that. If by dps and stacking numbers you mean a class that adds constant “debuffs” (or conditions as they’re called in this game), then you probably want to play either a Necro or an Elementalist (although every class can apply conditions, these two classes are more geared towards them IMO).

Hope that helps?

Yeah don’t worry about it. Players who report everyone and their mother for the silliest of reasons will be punished for abusing the report system. It’s getting silly with the whole “Reported!” thing, but it’ll die down (I hope). It’s only because of the large influx of bans ANet gave out in the beginning so ignorant players will try to scare anyone of doing anything with phony reports.

I agree with the consensus that it was probably just a lack of skill and knowledge on your teams part. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no pro at this game, but every class has their weakness. Mesmer’s are great at confusing enemies and soaking up damage, however they can’t dish it very well, so figuring out which mesmer is the real one will win you the fight the quicker you do it.

If there’s three people attacking one mesmer, make sure to utilize the targeting mechanic of the game (ctrl-T). Everyone in the party will see it, and then you can focus down the real one. Also, as other people have mentioned, the illusions have their “tells”. They don’t dual wield, they also appear to have poor AI. Once you face more mesmers, you’ll figure out how to deal with them in no time.

Good luck!

I wasn’t aware of any nerf to farming areas? In anycase, I guess you can always use the trading post to buy your mats, although that can be potentially be a very expensive solution. Or check out some newer areas.