Guild Wars 2

I do want to help people on this forum as best I can, but it’s not always easy. Why? Because the forum is flooded with “help me, please!”, “need advice”, “returning player, need help” and so on. Which might sound fine when you make the thread, but for the rest of us, it can get very annoying to have to click a thread to find out what the heck you are asking for help about.

This is especially as there are plenty of things I can help with, and plenty of things I can’t help with. Simply because I don’t know. So if I have to click all those generic titles on a dozen threads, it’s just a big waste of time. If people could rather say right in the title what you need help with, we can all go straight to the posts we think we can help with, and avoid the ones we know we can’t. It would save us all a lot of trouble. Not just for us who want to help, but even for you, as you, as you make it easier for us to go straight for the places where we can be of use. The less time we spend opening generic threads, the more time we can spend doing something useful.

Thanks.

Speaking of outfits, here’s a tip I’ve noticed: If you equip an outfit, go to your Equipment and deselect your helmet, it will deselect the helmet on the outfit as well. I like a lot of outfits, but the headwear doesn’t always work for me. Strange you can’t do the same with other parts, like shoulders, though (looking at you, Crystal Nomad Outfit and your ginormouz ugly shoulders…)

Cathbadb.6079:

I don’t think it’s a bug. It’s been this way for a while. It’s to indicate they are alert I suspect. After the battle is over the ears will go back down. Happens to all my Asura as well (male and female alike).

I think you misunderstand me a bit. While I don’t know when the ear-moving was introduced (or has it been that way all along?), I am perfectly fine with it. In fact, I love the ear-moving now that I’ve started paying attention to it.

However, the problem I am having is that the ears are much bigger than they are supposed to be. And by that, I mean I first made sure the ears are as small as possible during character creation, and they stayed small a long time. But I started noticing that my asura has “horns” when she’s in combat, and felt that looked strange. So when I gave her a new haircut, I made sure to check the ears too. And yes, they were set to much bigger than they were supposed to be. I changed them back to small ears, but as you can see from the picture, they are back to really big ears. Again, this has nothing to do about being in combat or not. They are too big either way.

McWolfy.5924:

This game is not about soloing open world things. Btw you can solo almost everything with any profession. Open pve is easy and just something what fill the place between boss events and dungeons

Um… what? That’s a rather… weird… thing to say. I mean, isn’t the entire point of the game to have fun? And if you enjoy solo PvE, then that’s what you should do. Why recommend PvP to someone who sated he had very little interest in it?

OP: My advice? Try every class to level 20ish, to see how you like them. All classes are quite doable in solo PvE. Some are a bit more difficult than others, but nothing you need to worry about. Just learn how to play (by having fun and testing new weapons and skills), and you’ll be fine. Plus, McWolfy did have a good point. While you can solo PvE all the way up, you will find plenty of reasons to join other players. Not necessarily in groups, but if two players beat up the same enemy, you both get XP for it. If ten players, none in a group, do a dynamic event together, you all get XP and loot for it. Grouping isn’t all that useful in this game, but sticking around other players just might be.

As for the crafting bit, I suggest a crafting profession that matchers your combat profession. For instance, my warrior is an armor- and weaponsmith. That way, I can make my own armor and weapons. My mesmer is a tailor and artificer, so she can make her own armor and some weaponry.

Also, keep in mind you can donate crafting materials directly to the bank from your inventory, and you can use them directly FROM the bank when crafting. You can even place things in your bank through the crafting stations. This way, it can be useful to have an alt standing near a crafting station. My weapon smith can make new daggers for my elementalist, simply by making the daggers and placing them in the bank through the crafting station. My elementalist will then simply pick them up through her own crafting station, or through the very useful bank-express golem you get when you start the game the first time. (too bad it’s only for a limited time, though. But by the time it expires, you’ll have plenty of waypoints to and from crafting stations anyway.)

I’m playing an Asura female, and just did part of the story at level 20. Now here’s the thing: Right from the start, I wanted the ears to be short and as femine as possible. No sweat, just set them to as small and thin as possible, and pick the small ears. After testing her (Elemental, btw) up to ca level 15, I decided she was a keeper, but she would need a new haircut (bought from the Black Lion trading company.)

Though for the last few levels prior to this, I’ve started noticing how her ears pops out like horns when she’s in combat. This was because her ears were huge, and bends forward when she’s in combat. I thought this was weird, but when I changed her hair, I noticed she had entirely different ears than what I picked. They were even set to the biggest possible.

Now, at level 20, her ears are ginormous again (see picture). True, they aren’t bigger than what’s possible, so it’s not that. It’s just that I made an effort to make her ears extra small – twice, including when I gave her the haircut. And yet, here were are. It’s either a bug, or she’s REALLY looking forward to the live-action Dumbo movie. Hehehe.

My advice? Give yourself a set of rules and restrictions based on a type of character (before you even create one), then try your best to stick to that. Don’t worry about builds and all that. Rather focus on creating a specific character. For instance,

1. In Baldur’s Gate, I decided to create a girl who had gone lost in the woods and was forced to learn to survive on her own. Naturally, a barbarian was a nice choice for her. But one day she stumbled into a cave and found a spellbook, so she tried to teach herself how to cast spells. In the game, that translated to multiclassing to a Sorceress. Wizards study magic. Sorcerors are born with it. The problem is a barbarian uses medium armor, and that doesn’t go well with magic. In the end, I ended up with a character who sucked at both close combat and spellcasting, but those two combied made her pretty decent – when she didn’t fail completely, at least. I mean, if she managed to cast a spell or two, the rest of the fight was usually easy. If she failed to cast the spell (happened a lot), she was just terrible. A lot of fun to play, if very challenging at times.

2. Sacred 2. I wanted to make a ninja, so I decided on a Dryad (quite stealthy already), using short swords in each hand, a short bow and light armor. That’s about it. I often foudn weapons and armor that would make me a lot better, but that would break the character. As a result, the first couple of levels were a major pain, and I died over and over even on weak enemies (due to lack of armor.) However, after a while, I started getting better, and to this day that’s one of my favorite characters in any game ever. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

The point is, it can be a lot of fun to create artificial restrictions and rules for yourself before you make a character, just to see how it ends up. Besides, in a game like this, what’s there to loose? In worst case, just get better gear and change up your skills a bit. You can’t really break a character so badly it has to be deleted.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Mesmers are great, but in my opinion a little harder to level. For Mesmers, its all about traiting your shatters and clones, and traits don’t become available till later levels.

That depends a LOT on your playstyle. There is no right or wrong way to play a profession. If you want a necro with a ton of minions, you can do that quite well. If you want a necro with no minions at all, that’s not a problem either. If you want a mesmer who doesn’t focus on clones and phantasms, that should be quite possible too. Not that I have tried, but I don’t really see why it shouldn’t work.

And as for how hard they are to level, I’ve made it to 36 with no problems at all. The occasional boss has bugged me a bit, but I’ve never had to try one more than three times at most, and even that is rare. Of course it could be different at max level, but since you say they are hard to level, I kinda disagree.

OP: My suggestion is either warrior or guardian, leaning towards guardian. I think they are a rather boring class to play, but that’s mostly because they are so easy to play. You’re a walking tank. Army-tank, not MMO trinity tank. You can walk into a group of enemies and leave them dead without breaking a sweat. If yoyu want a nice profession to play to get into the game, this might be for you. :-)

Strange. I thought a picture of a monster attacking my clone would be enough ‘evidence’ that they do indeed attack clones, but here’s another one just in case. This time there are two clones, and the enemy is clearly attacking them.

From what I’ve noticed so far on my own:

1. Bosses (obviously) don’t care about clones. Not that I expected them to.
2. Enemies below my level usually go after the clones.
3. Enemies my own level usually, but not always, go after the clones.
4. Enemies above my level usually, but not always, ignore the clones.

I guess the whole problem I had, and why I made this thread in the first place, was because the first enemies I found in Gendarran Fields were higher level than me, and thus ignored the clones most of the time. Now that I’ve leveled up to 34, they enemies are once again back in the clone wars era, right where I want them. Like it or not, but at least 90% of the enemies are attacking the clones again. (This rose to nearly 100% after adding a few traits to increase illusion damage etc.)

(and yes, I mean clones, not phantasms. I have yet to see an enemy attack them. Even my phantasm defender is left alone, strangely.)

BTW the tactic I said in the first post still goes. I get that clones can draw aggro if I throw them near a monster and don’t attack my own, but I can clones during fights, and they still draw more aggro than me most of the time. A monster could be half-dead when I summon my Mirror Image clones, and the monster will still (most of the time) go after them. Especially if I use the Ollusionary Wave to know the monster towards the clones.

I’m not too into hardware anymore, but what can I say right here and now is that you usually get what you pay for. If you buy something cheap, don’t expect high quality. Most of the time, I strongly suggest putting a bit of money in whatever you are looking for. and don’t waste your money on cheap stuff. The reason is simply that it might seem cheap now, but it will be outdated quickly, and then you’re stuck with yet another upgrade. If you rather spend a bit of money on a more expensive upgrade (and preferably several components at once), it will cost you more right now, but it will pay off in the long run.

Take cars, for instance. I don’t know how old you are, but when I need a new car, I always go for a used car that’s less than 10 years old. If I buy one brand new from a store, it’ll drop a lot in price the second I leave th store. It’s already ‘used’, so if I sell it to someone else, there’s no way they’ll buy it for full price. That also means if I want to buy a new car, it’ll be a lot cheaper than a brand new one, even if it’s only a couple of years old, yet it’s still new enough to have the ‘new car smell’.

However, if I do the stupid thing and buy a cheap car that’s 10+ years old, it will be cheap right away, but it’ll need constant repairs and maintenance, and that quickly adds up. In other words, it’s better to spend a bit of extra now, than a whole lot of extra over time. :-)

And sure, the upgrade might be for just this time… right now. But what about in six months? In a year? Two years? How quickly do you want to upgrade again? And at what cost?

Thanks, guys. As for clones, the tooltip says I can summon two clones that will attack my enemies, so I figured they would, you know, attack my enemies. ;-) And they do. They even do some decent damage. I’ve noticed this quite well last night, as I was tasked to destroy some centaur barricades or somethingin Gendarran Fields) When I summon the two clones, the damage on those barricades went up quite a bit. It does make sense that the clones don’t draw aggro, though.

However, to explain the problem better, I’m using a Greatsword and the skill Mirror Image. I first use Mirror Blade to throw the blade and let it bounce a bit, and it also creates a clone. Clone, not a phantasm. I then put up the Mirror Image to create two more clones. If I now use Illusionary Wave (think Force Push) and throw the enemies towards the clones, the enemies usually stay there and attack the clones. Whether this was a bug or not, it happened so often, I started relying on it as part of my strategy. It’s only the last two or three levels this isn’t working anymore.

That’s the real problem here. Or not “problem”, as I don’t depend on it, but I just wonder why it did work before, and why it won’t work anymore. Also keep in mind the clones were (usually) left alone all along, except when I use Illusionary Blade to throw the enemies towards them. It could be that the MB reduces my aggro or something, but the tooltip doesn’t say anything about it.

Zenith.7301:

Get good and stop passively relying on AI to take the damage for you.

Well, I never said I’m having a problem surviving or doing damage. Far from it. I entered Gendarran Fields last night at lvl 27, started fighting enemies lvl 30 without a problem. That might not seem too impressive for a guardian or warrior, but for a mesmer with light armor with low defenses and only ranged weapons, I impressed myself. :-)

EDIT: Enemies don’t attack clones? Tell that to this centaur. ;-) This clone was from Mirror Image, btw. It didn’t last long on its own, but three clones combied with one or two phantasms does last a while.

I just reached lvl 29, so I know I’m not too experienced yet as a mesmer. So much more to learn. But for now, the thing I wonder about is why the enemies are ignoring my clones. The problem is that I’ve been usingthat skill that gives us two clones that attack the target quite a lot, as well as a greatsword. Greatswords can be thrown and bounced between enemies, and it’ll leave behind a clone that attacks the enemies.

Up until lvl 26ish, this worked quite well. Most enemies would go for the clones first, then after me. Though for whatever reason, if they don’t go after the clones immediately, a “force push” (GS skill 5) towards the clones usually does the trick. But lately, the enemies have started ignoring the clones more and more. Why do they do this, and how cam I make the clones more attractive for the enemies? It’s not a huge problem, just a bit annoying. Considering the class is build entirely around clones and phantasms, it would be nice if they were more reliable. ;-) They do some decent damage, though, so there’s that.

This isn’t technically just about Guild Wars 2, but more a small rant/discussion about non-human races in fantasy and sci-fi. The topic of the day is simply: Why do they all think like humans?

To start somewhere, I’m a big fan of superheroes, and one of my all-time favorite heroines is Squirrel Girl. If you haven’t read the comic The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl, you need to read it. Trust me, it’s brilliant. Squirrel Girl is very much a human (or mutant, I guess), but she has a big squirrel-tail. Then problem is… how does she put her pants on? Where does the tail go? In the first issue, she rolls up the tail and stuff it in her pants to pass for a normal human, which gives us another problem: Why is there not kitten for the tail in the pants? See what I’m takling about? If she has kitten in the pants for the tail, why are there no hole when the tail ins tucked in her pants? And if she doesn’t have kitten to the tail, how does she put her pants on in the first place?

This is quite standard in fantasy, sadly. I get that games like this takes some shortcuts for budget reasons, and making an entirely new wardrobe just for one race isn’t exactly convenient. Still, would it hurt to upgrade the clothes just a tiny bit? Take the asura, for instance. One of the outfits (forgot the name, sorry) for the females is a nice dress with a mask. The thing is… if this is an asura dress, why are there room for boobs? Asura don’t have them, as far as I know. And definitely not so big the dress needs room for them. In fact, the Lich-outfit makes the female asura run around nearly topless, yet it doesn’t reveal anything inappropriate. Most armor I’ve seen for female asura? No boobs. So why does the dress have it?

Of course, there is the fact not much of the asura clothing has boobs (other than dresses). But the problem with that is that most of the clothing feels male. Why are there no very feminine, boobless asura clothes? My main is a female asura, but most of the time, she might as well be male until she starts talking. If it wasn’t for the hair, anyway. Look at Zoija. I somehow don’t see a male asura in clothes like that, and she doesn’t have boobs on her clothes. So why are most of the clothes I’ve found for male asura? Or at least, it doesn’t have a gender preference? Big races like humans, norn and sylvari have female clothes, naturally. Not sure about charr, but I don’t like that race, so…

The same goes for architecture, lifestyle, speech, the way they think, the way they act, and so on. Asura, Charr and Sylph are definitely not human, so how come they all act like it? Sure, the Sylvari live in a tree, but so does some humans. The Charr are big cats, living in a rather human city. Even humans in the real world have different houses based on culture, so how come the Black Citadel feels like a human citadel, not a Charr one? How come Rata Sum feels very human? I mean, if this is a place made by the small asura, why are most things big enough for the bigger races? Why aren’t everything… asura sized?

Anyway, rant off. I’m just wondering a bit why races with tails in fantasy are wearing tail-less pants, or why species that can fly rarely live above ground. With so much room for creativity in fantasy, it’s strange how identical so much of it is.

Donari.5237:

This guy took first prize, but the thread is full of people making ninja looks.

A lot of people make ninja looks in a thread called Ninja Fashion Contest? Gee, what are the odds… hehehe.

Nah, just kidding, man. Glad you found your look. :-)

Welcome back.

First of all, if it’s been a long time since you’ve played (and it seems like it has), starting a new character would be a nice way to freshen up a bit and get used to the game again. Jumping right in with a max level character can work, but it can also be quite overwhelming. I did this in Lord of the Rings Online, jumping right back in with a character level 50ish (of 60 max) after a few months, and I had forgotten just about everything about the dozens of skills I had avaliable. True, I did get back into the game, but I ended up starting a new character to get the feeling for the game again. When I returned to GW2 after the expansion was anncounced, I just as well started from scratch with a new account. (the game was on sale anyway.)

Two, my highest level char’s are only 27. They are engineeer and mesmer, and of those, I strongly prefer mesmer. It might seem weak at first with only light armor, mostly ranged skills and focusing on clones, illusions and stuff like that, but trust me, once you get the hang of it, it’s brilliant fun. (and yes, that was a whole lot of commas. Sorry! Hehehe.) The mesmer is pretty good in PvE and casual grouping. My advice, though, is to stick to two weapon sets. This is crucial for my playstyle. Not just so I can swap around when I feel like a change, but because swapping weapons mid-combat can make some skills much better. For instance, I use a staff to cast an AoE that hurts enemies, then swap to a sword and rush in for close combat, while the AoE hurts the enemies. Works pretty darn well.

The servers aren’t important anymore, other than for WvW. It’s all mega-server now.

Been having fun with my lovely asura, and got her some new duds and a new hairstyle. Not too happy about the colors on the shirt, but it’s a work in progress. I mean,. I lost one of the sleeves, so I need a new shirt soon anyway. Hehehe.

jackaljag.8637:

You can be in five guilds at once, yes, though you may only be representing (which lets you see guild chat & get guild bonuses) one at a time.

Interesting. Then this whole thread is kinda pointless, in way. :-) I mean, I was wondering if I should start my own guild or join another one, but if I can do both, there’s no point in -not- starting my own. I’ll just join another one later, if I feel like it. :-)

If you don’t mind using outfits, I think the Asura Shadow Assassin looks pretty cool for a thief. The other races look nice too, but the Asura has a long headband flowing down his or her back. The others don’t have that, but have a rope tied around their waist on the back instead in a silly knot I think that looks pretty stupid, to be honest. No idea how the Charr SA is, though. I don’t like that race much.

Front:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/b/b9/Shadow_Assassin_Outfit_asura_female_front.jpg/158px-Shadow_Assassin_Outfit_asura_female_front.jpg

Back:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/6/67/Shadow_Assassin_Outfit_asura_female_back.jpg/162px-Shadow_Assassin_Outfit_asura_female_back.jpg

Wait, you can have several guilds? As in be a member of several guilds at once, like in Elder Scrolls Online?

So anyway, I been having fun as an artificier for a while now, and have piled together quite a bit of Luck lately. However, I noticed something strange: If I want to craft an essense of Luck that gives me 50 luck, I will need five that gives me 10 luck each. If I want one that gives me 200 luck, I need two that gives me 100 luck, and so on. Or in other words, it seems rather pointless to craft luck, as the luck I get is equal to the luck I need to craft it. What am I missing? Can Luck be used to craft other things? So far I’ve been crafting essense of 200 luck, then used them to increase my magic find. It just seems pointless to craft a big essense with 200 luck, when I get the same amount of luck by using smaller essenses.

Thanks, guys. I’ll try to make my own guild, and if I can get my own guild hall, then yay me. If not… well, no worries.

I love GW2, but after a lot of horrible experiences in several games, I’ve given up guilds entirely. However, I am interested in the guild halls in the expansion. Also, I’m rather tired of getting a guild invite every time I log in. So is it possible to make a one-man guild? It might seem like an obvious question, but it IS possible over in Marvel Heroes.

Thanks, guys. It makes sense to sell them as seasonal outfits. Guess I’ll just have to see if I can find warm-looking armor, then. Can’t run around in the snow in a t-shirt. :p

I love some of the outfits, but sadly, three of them can’t be bought yet. Anyone know when I can buy them? The outfits are:

- Arctic Explorer
- Fancy Winter Outfit
- Witch Outfit

I’m mostly interested in the first two, as I want to explore the norn starting area, but it’s so cold there…

I’m a Mesmer, and see myself as a bit of an all-rounder. Meaning I can go close combat with swords, ranged with scepters and staves, support people, use crowd control and so on. Quite handy.

As for other classes, I have mixed feelings for some of them:

1. Warrior/Guardian: Usually annoying as heck, always running all over the place and being all tough and stuff. I’m too lazy for that, hehe. Can be fun to have a living shield, but sometimes, I do feel a bit weak compared to them. I don’t like feeling weak, so I go solo. Hehe.

2. Elementalist and Necros: Wants to be Mesmers, but don’t have the mesmer-izing good looks. (yeah, I said that… hehe.) Elementalists and Necros are discount Mesmers. So pointless.

3. Rangers: Pokemon champions in denial. Gotta catch all the animals, and all that. Or thieves that don’t dare go anywhere without their pet bodyguard.

4. Thieves: Stole my wallet. ’nough said.

5. Engineers: Don’t they have a lab to blow up, or something?

PlayerX.5307:

So 98% of all mesmers in game are human female? lol

Perhaps, but here’s my Asura female mesmer.

My take on a mesmer so far. I’m still only level 27, so don’t expect too much yet. I do have plans for when I reach level 80, though.

Derrick Malorum.8159:

Hello GW community I am a returning player I have played the original GW and at launch of GW2. I was wondering if you guys and gals could give me some tips for getting back into GW2.

The personal story starts at level 10, so just do whatever you think is fun until then. i usually follow the arrow on the compass on the top right, but that’s just me. I do tend to find vistas, points of interests and so on if they are close, even if I haven’t “unlocked” them yet on the map, of ithe compass tells me to go somewhere else.

If you aren’t sure what class to play, play all of them up to level 15 – 20ish. It should give you a feeling how they feel to play.

Map weapon swap to an easy to reach button combination. I’m a leftie, so I use Ctrl + V. Depending on your class, weapon swapping in combat is VERY useful. I’m a mesmer, so I use a staff to set up an AoE thing, then switch to a sword for some close combat.

Do Not Rush To Max Level. Seriously, this is very important. If you don’t enjoy the game, don’t play it. If you do enjoy it, make the most out of it. Once you reach max level, the game isn’t going to magically be a billion times more fun to play. It will still be more or less the same as it was from start. So take your time and enjoy the journey.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/shrug.

You’ll almost never see it. It’s not very visible to you when underwater and no one else will ever swim over to you to look.

Actually, some of us enjoy spending a lot of time underwater, and some of us really love to take awesome screenshots. So yes, the masks are very much visible for some of us. I do see your point, though. Making them dyable might simply be too much work, and most players won’t care about the result. I guess that’s why you can breathe underwater before you even get a breathing mask. Adding an air-meter would simply be too much work.

Of course, what they could do is make masks of different default colors and shapes. There are already variations, so why are all gray? (all I’ve found, anyway.)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The recommendations people are giving you are based on current professions. When the expansion comes out, it can easily be completely different so take all recommendations with the knowledge they might not be true for much longer.

True, but it will be quite a while before the expnansion is out, and even then, it’ll need some rebalancing over the first few weeks/months. An expansion tomorrow is no excuse to not have fun today.

My suggestion? Listen to people here, and stick to either Ele or Necro. If the expansion changes things around… well, so what? Just because one class gets better, it doesn’t necessarily means another gets worse. It just means the weaker class gets better, and sometimes a powerful class gets a bit weaker to match the weak ones. In the end, they should be just as good. (still going to be a couple of dozen pages of “they nerfed it!” complaints, though. That never failes, hehe.)

Also, I’m not going into the “just try one”, but if you already have tried one and like it, stick to that.

jackaljag.8637:

On that topic, it sounds like you’re still using elixir H? I’d recommend giving healing turret a shot, it’s honestly one of the best heals in-game imo.

I’m using an elixir, yes. No idea what it’s called, as I don’t really pay attention to the healing stuff. I just stick to the default one. Is the healing turret one of those skills? If so, I’ll give it a shot. I don’t have access to it if it’s one of the “normal” skills, though. Meaning I have access to the rocket turret, net turret and those (if I get the skill points), but I don’t recall seeing a healing turret there

On a side note, I just got a new computer today, so I won’t be able to play GW2 until tomorrow to check out the healing turret. It needs to download over night.

Daywolf.2630:

Some classes, such as thieves, change a lot as you progress through the traits, but engi is fairly consistent in it’s game play all the way though to 80. Weapon skills and utilities are all useful, if you have use for them. Flame thrower is nice, but often a more situational weapon imo. The only real downside is it’s hard to chase mobs around with it as it’s mostly a cone shaped short range aoe (net turret is a good choice to use with it). But you can use other kits along with it, such as grenades which is my fav kit when not blowing holes through mobs with a shotgun. There is a little trait cross-over between flame thrower and grenades. Downside with grenades though, lots of key mashing 1111234511112114114315111111111111112131111411115…. but if you play wvw it’s wonderful tower defense weapon.

But, big but, big changes coming for engi with HoT. So just experiment with it, but plan for it all to change in a few months for the engi, including new kits and weapons. I’d maybe pick up leather working, make some celestial armor (account bound) and just switch around traits/skills as needed. imo celestial works well for the engi.

Here’s a fun thing: I’m a leftie, so pressing the right keys aren’t really an issue for me. I mean, I use the WASD-keys to move around with my right hand, and that makes the thumb rest nicely on the Ctrl-key. This again means I can easily reach the 1 – 5 keys both with and without pressing Ctrl and/or Shift. How you right-handed people do that is beyond me. Seriously, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. The only thing that might work is using the pinky on the Ctrl-button, but that’s just awkward.

Anyway, I have a low-level asura thief, as I absolutely love the Shadow Assassin outfit. I hate it on every other race, but it’s really cool on asura. And thief is one of the classes I’ve played the least, so I’m thinking about making that one of the top three mains (along with mesmer and engineer.) But it’s only level 6 so far, so it’s too early too tell. Though I’m tempted to use a few tomes of insta-level to skip the boring low levels. We’ll see. Tomorrow, once the game is downloaded. Sigh…

For others reading this, the portals to the starting cities are all in the same area. Look near the center of Lion’s Arc, just north and to the right of the river. There should be several Asura Gates there, all leading to various starting areas. Look for the Gatehub Plaza Waypoint on the map:

Interactive map over Lion’s Den:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lion%27s_Arch

Gate hub plaza:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gate_Hub_Plaza

Thanks, guys! I know I keep talking about my engineer, but that’s because it is/was my main. I do have plenty of other characters, so this thread is more of a general skill thing. I’m still trying to decide what class to focus on. I’ve managed to put Warrior and Guardian down to the last places on the list, but mostly because they are so… normal. I’ve never played anything quite like an engineer before, and I’m currently having a ton of fun with my clone-army Mesmer. (“Yeah? You and what aremy?” poff “That one.” Lol.)

Anyway, this thread has helped me a lot. I love the fact skills don’t really gets outdated. It allows a lot of customization, which is good. And combined with all the fun classes, there’s tons of fun gameplay to be found here. Makes me wonder why I ever left the game, but this time I’m here to stay.

Danikat.8537:

Early on (I can’t remember if it was changed during the betas or shortly after launch) there were no skill tiers.

Must have been in the beta, I think. I was around at launch, but don’t remember skills not having tiers. Though the healing skills don’t have tiers. The first cost one skill point, but the rest cost 25 or so. Speaking of which, are those 25 SP skilsl worth it? I usually don’t bother switch out my initial healing skill. It gets the job done, and at level 27, it gets the job done quite nicely. It’s not… good, but it lets me survive more fights than not.

If you’re desperate, I’m pretty sure you can buy gems for real money, then sell them for in-game gold.

How about engineer? I find that class a lot of fun to play, though I’m only level 26. I solo a lot, though. It’s mobile, versatile and quite strong. And you can get a flamethrower. ’nough said. Hehe.

The town I was takling about is Desider Atum in Metrica Province. The crafting stations are close, and there’s a repair guy close-ish to the entrance. Plus, there’s a waypoint right across the river. On top of that, it’s in the center of MP, so it’s a nice hub when exploring.

Thanks. That was sort of what I hoped (skills scale) and also a surprise (turrets don’t?). I’m only level 26, and right now, the turrets do their job. Still, you made me think about changing my skills. I do have a flamethrower I like, so maybe that’ll be my main weapon. Guess I’ll have to extensively test skills and builds all night. Fortunately that’s awesome.

For instance, my engineer are currently using three turrets: flame, rifle and rocket. To get the rocket, I had to unlock five skills from one tier (including the flame- and rifle-turrets.) Naturally, if this had been a “normal” game, that means the next tier is always better. And yes, I do think the rocket turret is better than the other two. Which doesn’t matter, as I have all three.

But this isn’t a “normal” game. This is GW2. This is a game with the main focus being having fun. So are the later skills always better than the first ones? Or to put it better, will the old skills keep up through the game, or will they get outdated? So when I’m level 80, will the rifle-turret still be useable? I’m PvE only, btw, and haven’t considered dungeons yet. Too many bad experiences with those from other games.

Maybe I’m weird, but when I need to do stuff like crafting, banking etc, I usually go to the small crafting-town-thingy in Metrica Province. I forgot the name, but it’s the one with a waypoint right across the river, in a low-level area. I can access the bank from the crafting stations, and I rarely buy anything from the TP. Even that can be done outside main cities, though you can’t pick anything up directly- But even that can be taken care off with a courier, I think. So why go to a crowded city, when a small, peaceful settlement will do the trick?

Thanks. I have 8 charges right now, so it’s not a big deal so far. I just strongly prefer the solution in LotRO, where you have two costumetic outfits you can change at any time. That way we can mix and match as much as we possibly want for free, and even keep a spare cosmetic outfit we are fond of. So much easier than transmuting individual costume pieces all the time, even at level 80.-

No matter how great your costume looks at level 80, you are going to get bored of it sooner or later, or just want to change. What then? Change the gear’s look and hope you don’t regret it in a few days? Or get a second (insert uberdifficult to get gear here) chest piece, just so you can swap them around if you want a new look?

Note: You automatically unlock the skin of the gear you equip. Even if you can’t equip it (wrong class etc), you can still unlock it by right-clicking the gear and clicking Unlock Skin. This will bind the gear to your account, but the skin is now unlocked forever.

This can be useful if you find gear for the wrong class you really like (by clicking Preview), and if you don’t intend to keep it for another char or sell it on the TP. Even low-level gear can look good.

Put it this way: I played quite a few Asura back when the game released, when i returned a short while ago, i made a new Asura. It was still fun, but I feel I’ve done it all before (I, uh, already have cleard Metrica Province several times in the past.) So when I made a new asura, I dashed off into Rata Sum and entered the portal to the Black Citadel (the Charr home city.) Then it was off to the Ashen Plains to explore and have fun.

The point is, you can do whatever you please. You will get the first part of your personal story at level 10, and it wll naturally take place in your home territory. But other than that, do whatever you please. Hell, you can even skip the personal story if you don’t want to do it right now.

For that matter, you can even get Tomes of… instante leveling (forgot the name, sorry) through log-in rewards. Get 30 of these, and you can start a new character, instantly level to 30 and start immediately with dungeons. If you have the gear, anyway. Which you can get by crafting, if you want. And considering crafting gives you XP, you can level up a character to 80 without even leaving your home city. Simply craft, craft and craft some more. You don’t even need to worry about crafting mats for that character, as you can simply deposit materials to the bank (right-click on them in your inventory) with any character. The bank is account wide, so if your explorer-character cuts down a lot of trees and deposit them to the bank, the crafter can use them immediately. On top of that, the crafter can then deposit the gear to the bank thorugh the crafting stations, and the explorer can then pick it up through the bank (crafting station, actual bank, or even the bank golem you get in the mail). Couldn’t be simpler.

The point of all this rambling is you can do whatever you want, for better or worse. There are times I’ve wanted a bit more focus on the story, so I don’t run around asking myself what the heck I am doing, and why I am doing it. That’s what ruined Vanguard: Saga of Heroes for me. I asked myself what motivated my character and why it matter that I saved those people in that side-quest, and that was the end of the game for me. But so far, the question in GW2 is simply answered with: “I’m having a heck of a lot of fun.”

Quick version: My human mesmer looked gorgeous in the beginning of the game, like someone taken right out of 1001 Nights. But naturally, I upgraded my gear quickly, and now she looks like Santa’s little helper. So is there a way to create a costume outfit based on the good costume? I know I can change the skin of my gear to the good one, but that cost transmutation charges, or something. Personally, I think that’s a horrible system, and won’t be using it until I’m max level and don’t intend to upgrade my gear anymore for a long time. Besides, I have 7 TCs by logging in, so they aren’t making money on it anyway. Not from me, anyway.

Good costume:
http://i58.tinypic.com/sfih04.jpg

Bad costume:
http://i58.tinypic.com/maigzr.jpg

bennyx.8276:

Help!

I’m just trying to get into GW2 again, but am having some frustrating issues with hitting buttons when strafing. I use ESDF, but when strafing right, I have no idea how to hit keys TGYH. I use my ring and index fingers to strafe, and my middle to dodge and go forward, which seems to be pretty popular.

How do you guys do it? Do I just change direction everytime I want to use a key on a different side? Wouldn’t it give away what I’m going to do? I’ve watched videos and ppl seem to change direction independent of what skills they are using.

A few things occured to me:

1. Do you use your pinky? If not, you really should. As you use ESDF to move, you shouldn’t have a problem using Q, A and Z with your pinky. Also, what are you using the W and R keys for? You shouldn’t have a problem to run forward (E) and/or strafing right (F) while pressing the W button. Or forward/left-straft and press R. Sure it takes practice, but you’ll get the hang of it.

Also, do you use the Spacebar? I’m left-handed, so this doesn’t apply to me. But if I hold the ESDF-keys with my right hand, the thumb rests on the Spacebar. Seems a waste to not use it.

Behellagh.1468:

Honestly people, blank out the phishing web address from your screenshots. So many people are doing this it almost seems that the phishers are starting threads like this so it’s seen by more people than just those they send it to.

Accidentally clicking a link in a mail is one thing. Not realizing it’s phising until it’s too late can also be excused. But if you go into a thread warning you about phising, then type in the address to see what it does, you deserver what’s coming. We’re talking Darwin Awards here. Hehehe.

I got another character slot, and decided to just give the Charr a fair chance. So I made a Guardian, and the initial armor was ugly as heck, as usual. But I tried a couple of outfits, and most of them were rather boring or just plain ugly. Buuuuut… the Pirate Captain outfit looks really, really good on a Charr, especially after being dyed a bit. (note: really wish the hat could be dyed seperately, instead of being the same color as the pants.)

The running is annoying, but I mapped Sheat/Unsheat weapon to Ctrl + S, so it’s easy to draw the weapon whenever I want. This makes me run on two feet rather than four, and I don’t seem to run slower because of it. That’s both the looks and running taken care off. Of course, always using the Pirate Captain outfit can get old quickly, so I do need to spice things up with proper armor eventually. Still, this was much better than I expected it to be. No idea how long the Charr will remain fun, and I doubt it’ll be my main. But for now, it’s much better than I expected, so I will keep givinig it a fair chance. As long as I’m having fun with it, it’ll stay my main. Fingers crossed it can stay fun for a long time.

Hehe, alright, I won’t skip it. I’m still struggling to decide what race and class to play, though I think I’m falling for Asura Engineer as my main. She’s level 26 already, and I do enjoy her a lot. But the rest of the classes are so much fun too… Plus, I bought the Shadow Assassin outfit for my human thief, and while it looks great, I hate the big ropes on her back. The asura doesn’t have those ropes, so I might as well start an asura thief just for that outfit. Which means starting a new human. Decision, decisions… hehehe.

Aaaah… thanks! That sounds pretty cool. Just one question, though. You say season 1 is unavaliable. What happens if I buy season 2 now, but don’t hit level 80 until season 3 is well under way? Can I still play season 2 first? Or should I just skip it and try to reach level 80 before season 3 starts? I’m a very casual PvE player, so the best gear doesn’t interest me. Neither does achivements.

Probably a stupid question, but… what is the living world? I tried reading on the wiki, but it only tells me the story, not what it actually means for me as a player. My highest level char is 24, and I’ve barely started the personal story. I don’t have LS season two yet, either.

So let’s say I bought season two. How would that impact my game? Would I get new quests, and if so, where? Are there new dynamic events? New areas? I know I’m on season one, but other than that, I know absolutely nothing what it means. I don’t even know if the LS season 1 and personal story are the same. :-(

Where is the line? I mean, we have one of the best MMORPGs on the market today, and they don’t even charge us a monthly subscription. Plus, unlike F2P games, they don’t ask us to pay for everything with real money, either. Pay once for the game, and that’s it. You don’t even get a pop-up telling you how much you can buy with real money when you log in. What you DO get is free stuff when you log in.

We’re also getting an expansion in a while that’ll cost real money – once. Buy it once, and that’s it. It’s yours. No subscriptions, nothing hidden beyind a paywall and so on. And that’s great, of course.

So the question is… why does it matter that season two is locked behind a small paywall now? It doesn’t cost all that much, and I’m sure the content we get is more than worth it. I haven’t tried it yet, but if it’s half as good as season one, its’ definitely worth the asking price. Sure you would have gotten it for free if you logged in once those two weeks it was active, but then again, you could have gotten the entire game nearly for free if you bought it during a sale. If you missed that, does it mean you should get it for the sale-price now?

Sorry, but to mee, it just seems like people are allergic to paying. No matter how cheap you get stuff, someone always thinks it’s too expensive.

I decided to ditch the Charr, and went for a Norn instead. A Guardian, though I’ll be using a Greatsword. I like this race a lot more than the Charr, so I’ll stick to that as my alt. That means a Norn Guardian and Asura Necromancer (without pets) as alts, and the Human Thief, Sylph Warrior and Asura Engineer as my mains. Until I buy more character slots, anyway. We all know I’ll do that soon enough. I need a dictionary to learn the meaning of dicipline, lol.