Guild Wars 2

Esmee.1067:

You shouldn’t be discouraged just because certain players prefer running with favour of the month classes. No reason to discourage people just because not every single group has the anyone-welcome mentality.

I’m on US servers, and it may be different. Just peeking at the actual dungeon forums here though or any dungeon/fractal based thread in the profession forums is completely discouraging for anyone who hopes to possibly get into them.

In any case, to the OP…it’s going to come down to what you like playing more, sometimes it takes a bit to find “your” class. My first class in this game was an ele and even though I leveled it with someone else, I rarely play it since I still have bad memories about how awful it was to level for me. I felt like I could look at a mob and fall over dead. I was that bad at it. Then I rolled mesmer and loved it and had no problem surviving and killing whatever I wanted, even though I heard others complain that they died all the time as a mesmer or they couldn’t kill anything. You just need to find what you like and play the best.

Googling some leveling guides for the class you want to take can be helpful too, as what works best for solo play is often much different than the meta for party-based play.

I’ve got a mesmer and an ele and the best way to get used to swapping weapons is to do it while leveling. You’re meant to swap, so if you want to play ele you should get used to swapping attunements. Other classes are meant to swap weapons.

I leveled my mesmer with greatsword and I loved it, but if you hate it that much, sword/X is really way faster at killing mobs.

Most all classes are welcome anywhere else but PvE dungeons. I don’t even do them myself because if you read the forums, dungeon runners are generally completely rabid and elitist about their groups. If you’re not full berserker, best spec for your party, and one of the highest dps classes, they don’t want you there.

Eles and warriors are pretty much the highest dps for dungeons right now so if you’re wanting cloth, I’d recommend you go with the ele instead of the mesmer.

You would not be able to equip cultural armor of one race on that of another. However, since the skins for both the original item (the ascended armor in this case) and the transmuted item (the cultural armor in this case), both sets of skins will be put into the OP’s wardrobe after the patch.

He should then be able to use transmutation charges to change the look of the armor to whatever he wants (other than cultural armor) and give it to his other character.

Just a couple small tips…I don’t command myself, but I can tell you what makes it easier for the people following and helps separate a good commander from a bad one.

One of the EB commanders on my server that I follow probably 95% of the time is on very often and commands very well to the point that I actually prefer him to others that come in from time to time.

He knows the maps very, very well AND knows exactly which spots to go to next to each objective to drop siege without it getting destroyed by the enemy. That’s something that you can only learn through experience. I’ve seen some commanders drop some siege in some strange places only to get destroyed right away.

He also actually stops occasionally when running and waits for the tail to catch up. This is HUGE for people who get behind or people who are slow and fall behind the group and find themselves unable to catch up or get swiftness anymore (I have a mesmer, it’s painful). Last night I ran around an EotM following a commander who didn’t wait for anyone and it really was not fun. Instead of a blob, it was like the world’s longest snake.

Lankybrit.4598:

Thanks everyone. Yeah, I new a bit about Lion’s Arch attack, but I thought maybe they would have put everything back after it was over.

Vigil’s Keep sounds a bit tricky to get to, but I’ll give it a go.

Shame about the Karma vendors. The Temples are never open on my server.

They’re “rebuilding” Lion’s arch, if you go in you see workers working…however, the event ended pretty recently and it’s a Living World, they can’t just make it what it was before immediately.

Vigil’s Keep is not hard to get to. Click the crossed swords icon on your menu bar, it’s the PvP icon. Click “Go to the Heart of the Mists”. Once inside, take the asura portal that says Lion’s Arch. It will drop you right in Vigil Keep.

As far as the temple karma vendors go, bookmark this website:
http://www.gw2state.com/temples.html
OR
http://us.gw2stuff.com/en

They will tell you when a specific temple is open on a specific server and you can guest to that server when you see the temple open.

Kajin.5301:

You’re post is what irks me. I keep seeing “great good” “more players will be happy overall”, then please go ahead and make all the black lion skin weapons 1 ticket. More players will be happy. But remember why Anet didn’t do that? To preserve the rarity and do not offend players that had gotten em in the beginning. Preserving the value.

This is no different. I feel for you OP. The caustic sense of entitlement is not with OP, it’s with the ppl drooling about tottin legendaries everywhere on all characters.

No, don’t get me wrong. I understand the OP’s frustration, and I do feel for him. However, at the same time, there are multiple things he’s forgetting while he’s zero’d in on complaining about certain things.

First, his legendary is still legendary. The stats he has on it are better than whatever weapon he’d be using that just has the “skin”. And he can still change them whenever he wants, which he can’t do with an exotic.

Second, he’s focusing on what other players will be getting that he doesn’t want them to get. All the while, forgetting that he also gains these things as well. He’ll be able to use his legendaries on any character he wants on his account at any time, or just the skins if that’s what he wants to do. He’ll be able to access those expensive dyes on any character on the account, present or future, including those he might not have bought those dyes for before.

If there’s any part of this that I don’t agree with Anet doing, it’s the fact that instead of giving the actual dye color back to players who have multiples of expensive dyes, they’re just giving them an unID common dye.

You, also, seem to be forgetting the fact that these things were asked for by the majority of players for a long time, and it’s a business decision for them to be making these changes now. They obviously think it will make more players happy than it will upset, and they’re trying to make more money.

I don’t think so.

From what I read it sounded like repairs would still be needed and in game, you just wouldn’t have to pay gold for them.

I’m not sure if there is some sort of timer related to when that temple can be opened, but if you check that site later in the day you’re almost sure to see at least a few servers listed as “attacking” at the same time.

At least in the US, it’s still very early morning which means less people are on and definitely are much more unlikely to be opening temples.

Just have some patience and wait until later in the day and keep checking. :P

Aberrant.6749:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Still no tradable ascended gear…. -,-

Always one person that just can’t be happy when good things happen : /

There are always multiple people like that.

I was thrilled when I saw these changes. Said it was just announced in my guild chat, first thing someone says is “That’s stupid” and goes on about how ridiculous it is.

I honestly think it’s just people who feel entitled and think they’re elitists that dislike changes like this that are better for the game’s overall player base, because it means they won’t be a special snowflake anymore.

Before you delete anything, make a new character and play it a little bit.

See if you like the animations/armor/etc on the new character and then decide.

I had a couple of people PM me the site, thanks for the replies. I was wondering where all the HoD guild chatter was!

Anyways, I already moved two days ago, as I said. Actually moved DOWN from SBI because the friend I am bringing was moving up from ET and we wanted somewhere we could play together.

Don’t really care if it’s a “bandwagon” right now. My assumption would be that it’s not only due to having transfers but also because it’s the start of the new season and everyone wants to get in there. It WILL die down at some point and there won’t be queues anymore.

I check this forum every day but rarely, if ever, see anything from HoD.

I just moved here two days ago and am looking for a PvX type guild that does some PvE as well as a good amount of WvW. I’d like a “full” and friendly guild where there are often people online to do activities with or just chat.

The guilds I’ve tried joining so far might say they’re full but then I find they have a very small amount of members and there is never anyone on.

I’d also love a guild that isn’t entirely hardcore about it’s WvW and understands that you might have family/kids/other obligations and aren’t able to be on and in WvW and Teamspeak 24/7.

I would be bringing a friend along with me too. Please send me a forum message if you might be able to help me. Thanks!

I love my mesmer, and I’d never say it “sucks”.

You will be very slow as far as getting around if you don’t have a full set of Superior Rune of the Traveler and/or use Focus 4 for a minor speed boost.

Greatsword is actually pretty good for tagging in events due to the bounce effect, and the fact that your phantasms can do quite a bit of AOE damage. However, it’s not the best dps weapon and you’ll want to keep a sword/X on hand for when you’re not concerned with doing a lot of AOE.

From what I’ve read from others though, mesmer is more of a utility class (for dungeons/fractals/WvW) than a class that is brought for their dps.

I just moved to HoD…been planning on it all week.

Now I just need to find a WvW guild that’s recruiting!
(Yes, I’m on the bandwagon)

Have you tried any of the other professions yet?

I know back when I first started playing the game at launch I chose an elementalist, which would have been an awful choice for me, except I was leveling with someone else. It was probably the only reason I ever got it to max level because when I tried to kill mobs solo I died very, very easily.

Then I chose to level a guardian and it was absolutely amazing solo and very easy to get used to all the game mechanics on. I loved it. I’ve heard that warriors are similar in ease when just starting out as well.

I’m now playing a mesmer and I didn’t really have any problems leveling it, but I have heard some people talk about it being harder to level before 40. Very easy to get enough illusions out though so you don’t take too much damage from mobs…easy to fool them.

Ranger could also be an option because of the pet, but they do tend to die quickly.

Garambola.2461:

Also on the 18th some servers will be free to transfer to because of the upcoming WvW Season.

For real?

I quit a couple years ago and just recently came back and found I was on a completely different server than my husband’s account (we used to swap around before server transfers became paid). I was hoping to get him back into the game but he doesn’t want to since he wants to WvW together.

Deleting isn’t an option, I have three 80s and he has two. Wonder if we could both move to one of the open servers. :P Good to know that!

I definitely feel the OP here, it’s been difficult to even find a guild or people to talk to, you don’t see people recruiting all that often on the lower populated servers.

Fabsm, you’d want to be looking at the trading post for any hammer with “Norn” in the title, I do believe. I’ve seen that one before.

I switched to hammer from greatsword around level 70 and I haven’t looked back because it has provided me with nearly as much damage as I was doing with the greatsword at that point but twice the survivability. I also appreciated the boons I was giving to people around me with the hammer. I found myself able to “tank” mobs in dungeons and the like that I would have never been able to before.

I ran 0/5/30/30/5 for awhile before switching to 0/0/30/30/10 for the increased boon duration and the ability to ground target consecrations for WvW. I only lost 3% crit with the change. I love my shouts. The spec also works very well for staff swap for ranged and support as well as tagging mobs in DEs.

rickets.1386:

funny thing is i rerolled from my full exotic ele for a ranger….boy can i pick em!

I rerolled my ele pretty much as soon as she hit 80 to guardian, I’m a hammer guardian so I’m incredulous over the pure number of people putting forth a “The World is Ending” attitude on the guardian forums over the GS changes but since she hit 80 as well and I got her nearly exotic’d I’ve been bored and thought ranger would be fun to try.

What I’ve determined is that pretty much any profession forum I go to there is a large amount of crying on. It doesn’t matter what profession. Most professions uphold warrior and to a lesser degree thief to be the end all most OP, but then you have people who play those professions popping out and saying “Well no one wants warriors for tPvP” or “Thiefs are squishy”.

Everyone just wants to complain.

Melizande, it’s not that bad…I took the 5 points out of Radiance that I had there recently to put it into Virtues (I wanted to try consecration ground targeting for WvW) and it only ended up as a 3% loss of crit for those 5 points.

I’m in full exotic knight’s gear with an exotic knight’s hammer and exotic knight’s necklace/rings (my earrings are still green quality) and I’m still at 42%.

I know exactly where you’re coming from. I haven’t looked back since I rerolled guardian after I got my ele to 80, my guardian has now been 80 for a couple weeks and I love it more than anything.

I’m still sitting here waiting for them to finally buff eles enough for me to play her again but I have the feeling it might be a long wait.

I can’t even go out to Orr to try to do area completions because half the reason I rerolled was that it was just no fun to go out and desperately fight for my life while trying to kill a single mob out there. And I don’t agree with the poster who said it’s no fun for any class, because my guardian can go easily take on 3 Orr mobs at a time with no thought of even coming close to dying and move on.

If you still want some heals and support and damage and you want to be much tougher and you’re really rerolling try out the guardian. I still get the support/heals that I wanted when I initially rolled ele and I stay alive much longer.

Had the same thing happen to me several times…often it’s in large fights in WvWvW but I’ve had it happen during DEs with a lot of people as well.

I can restart the client which makes it stop but obviously if I’m in WvW this isn’t an option if I’ll get kicked from it and have a queue to get back in.

Last night I managed to get a quick EB queue when the sound issue started again but knowing if I logged off to fix it I’d never get back into EB without waiting 2 or more hours I changed the sound output device and it managed to make the sound stop coming from the game so that I could still play and hear my Teamspeak, although I could no longer hear the game sounds.

Pawtrisha, apparently the norn female and human female animation is the same. I love it.

And I’m kind of confused as to why someone thinks that’s…suggestive? Get your mind out of the gutter, dude.

I have a human female guardian and she gets lifted up in the air and radiates energy for this animation, it looks amazing and I love it.

My husband on the other hand has a male norn guardian and after watching his animation I’m guessing the OP is a male norn as well. I can see what you’re talking about although I don’t think it looks as bad as you’re making it out to be. :P

Finally ready for the public to see!

Draconic legs/gloves/boots, pit fighter chest, human T2 cultural shoulders, Vigil hammer. Royal purple and ebony dyes. I might change to TA shoulders at a later time.

I’d imagine tPvP with smarter players is a bigger issue but for WvWvW and sPvP I haven’t really had any issues running hammer and scepter/X.

The less intelligent players will allow themselves to get caught in the hammer’s immobilize and once you have them stopped for a second you can toss a ring of warding around them and knock them over, giving you plenty of time to get a couple huge hits on them. If they’re still running, I use my shouts for speed boosts and the scepter’s immobilize to stop them again.

I don’t usually see them trying to kite me so much as get the heck away from me and never return.

Server: Eredon Terrace
Location: Eredon Terrace Borderlands
Skill Challenge: Southernmost skill point in the middle of the map, in the spider area is missing.

This is getting extremely frustrating. I spent all day yesterday running around 95% of world map areas getting skill points that were bugged previous to the server restart before they broke again…now I get to this one and find that just ONE day after the patch it’s already bugged. Can’t finish my map/world completion.

Brutaly.6257:

@Grace
Thx, really nice of you even though when i read it i realize that my lack of knowledge in english shine thru. Hopefully its understandable.

I wouldn’t worry yourself a thing about that. I have no idea what your first language is but I ran for a long time with a Korean guild in my last game…I may be used to seeing some discrepancies but your English is superb compared to even some native English speakers and you’re obviously intelligent with a great knowledge of the Guardian profession and its mechanics.

I ran a greatsword pretty much from the time I started my character until late 60-early 70s so it was definitely hard to let go of but your posts/replies about the hammer have been so informative to other people that it has made people want to try out the hammer, for sure.

Yet another lovely, extremely well-written guide from the guardian forums.

Thank you Brutaly for this write up. I have hit 80 on my guardian since I last left a message for you asking if this build was viable while leveling but I also ditched my greatsword for the hammer mid-70s and haven’t looked back. I love the fact that I get nearly as much damage out of the hammer as I did out of the greatsword but I’m at least twice as tough, take half as much damage and heal it back up way more easily.

And I’m only sitting at 35% crit atm, it still works spendidly! Also I don’t know if this will help others if they are struggling with it at first as well but I took the trait to extend symbol duration because I found I was having issues timing my mighty blow before my symbol expired…the extended duration makes it possible for me to make sure I hit the blast finisher while I’m still practicing getting my timing down.

Ynna.8769:

Zingery, you’re talking strictly WvWvW, right?
And even then, calling them completely useless is overly pessimistic, to say the least.

He must be…I hope.

My guardian just hit 80 yesterday after fully rerolling from an 80 elementalist and while ele aoe is superb for wvwvw, anything else…it falls over dead at so much as a slight breeze.

I went into wvwvw on my guardian the other day pre-80 and undergeared, not even having my weapons set up properly (guild was threatening to boot anyone who didn’t come “help” immediately) and was amazed at how I could take at least 2-3 times more aoe damage from opponents and barely even be dented where my ele would have been dead under that sort of fire 10x over.

I’m not sure there’s really that much difference…I was a bit lost while leveling so after seeing which talents I WANTED I went the normal route of stacking points into power. I’m 74 now so it started like this…5 in virtues, 10 in honor (I agree with the above poster, I love shouts)…after I got to 20 in honor for the increase in two handed weapon speed I went into power and then after 20 went to radiance.

It’s not the way other people leveled and yet it was still entirely sufficient. I changed last night to Brutaly’s hammer build so that I can try out the hammer and even with limited time to experiment with it using both the hammer and the greatsword with the new spec (no points in power, and I’m not 80 yet so I had very few in radiance) I had little to no difference in kill speed but could tell I was taking significantly less damage.

I suggest seeing what you like best…if you like shouts, if you like spirit weapons, etc…and first picking the traits that enhance those.

“Stand Your Ground” is a great shout as well because of the retaliation and stability.

Realize this is in response to you asking someone to explain themselves a few days ago but didn’t see anyone answer yet…

DE=Dynamic Events

Brutaly, all of your posts about hammer recently have really made me interested in trying it out myself.

I’m still leveling though and I have to ask if it’s any good before 80…I’m particularly worried about not being able to go all the way into the trait point trees or having enough crit to support the build. My character is currently 61.

I can’t be the only one who would appreciate it greatly if people posted their sets/transmutes along with their photos.

There are tons of great looking sets here I’d love to get my hands on but have no idea what they are.

You’re welcome. It took me awhile to find that info myself when I originally went looking so I made sure I bookmarked it.

I haven’t done that many instances myself so I’m not sure but I don’t believe that the instance drops are anything other than chance world drops (someone correct me if I’m wrong).

There are marks that you can get for doing explorable modes of instances that you can use to buy sets from the merchants next to Fort Marriner Waypoint in Lion’s Arch. I don’t think that those stats are much different either, I think it’s more of a choice of how you want to get your gear…through karma (wvwvw/de), crafting, or pve.

On the wiki page:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Exotic_armor_sets

Clicking the info you find there you can find the stats on each different karma vendor set (there are six different ones, the stats are the same but the set runes vary).

There is also the option to craft/get crafted Draconic armor but I’m not entirely sure if you can get the stat distribution you’re looking for that way.

Completely agree…got ele to 80, got tired of dying trying to kill one single mob in Orr.

Made a guardian and a warrior, got them both to 5, decided to stick with the guardian, it’s now 56 and I LOVE IT.

Look at me, I can actually kill stuff now!

nerva.7940:

it’s all about playstyle. ele has a high skill cap. the grass is always greener, remember that. guardian is easier to learn, for sure.

Trust me, I understand the OP’s frustration. I have been there and it’s no fun struggling to survive just to kill one undead mob in Orr while you see other classes facerolling their way through them at twice your speed (if not more).

Oh hey!

I have an 80 ele and am rerolling too, fancy seeing another one on the guardian forums.

I can’t answer your questions yet, my guardian is still very low level but I know it’s the right choice for me, particularly after reading the very, VERY good stickied guide because when I rolled ele I was initially looking for a support/heal type class.

Like I said I’m still low level (22 atm) but leveling has already been way easier than it was on ele. I can take multiple mobs and not die, and kill faster than ele did.

I’d say if you are looking for support go guardian, if you want pure dps go thief.

I’m curious…you said you do WvW with this build which looks like it’s mostly set up for healing. How do you fare with contribution medals/karma as far as taking points? Are you still able to get golds and good karma?

So OP….you like ET being fourth so that we can continuously get IOJ as opponents? ‘Cause you sound mad that you have been fighting us all week. Just sayin’.

LOL…Risen mobs run faster than Speedy Gonzales. One big reason I hated the high level areas. :P

I don’t have any tips for you but I felt compelled to post to agree with what you said.

I came to these forums originally looking for some help or some sort of guide for my ele so that I could learn how to survive better as I was becoming increasingly frustrated. All I found here instead was 20+ pages of people complaining about how bad the ele sucks by 95% of the people and the other 5% saying “no you suck at ele”. How is that helpful to people who are looking for help with specs/gear choices/etc? It’s not.

Yesterday I created a guardian out of frustration and found an absolutely AMAZING guide that someone wrote up on guardians on their forums. Why can’t we have something like that?!

In the end my laments in guild chat drew the attention of one of my ele guildmates who theorycrafts and took the time to help me and I’m feeling much better about the ele atm but it just should NOT be that hard to find good help, ya know? I thought that was what forums were for…not solely for QQ.

ET is a medium population server, so there often aren’t enough people around to do PvE events such as instance runs and dynamic events such as the opening of temples. If you like to do those things that’s something to take into consideration. Temple of Balthazar I have NEVER seen open on ET and it requires several server transfers just to find a server that has it open if you want to buy the karma gear and then transfer back.

Also, it may be a medium population server, but it has a very active WvW population and at peak times there is generally a queue. Granted, it’s not a 4-8 hour queue like I’ve heard HoD has, but queue times are generally up to an hour on weekdays and longer on weekends.

The server could stand to benefit from oceanic/overnight players but aside from that, I really don’t want my queue times to be longer. :P If I wanted that I would have transferred to HoD myself long ago (haha jk – Being #1 is boring, the second and third teams in each bracket have the opportunity for far more karma and xp because if they have a big enough force it gives them many more nodes to take, even if they lose them again afterwards. Defending rarely gives that much especially when the other teams are so demoralized they’re only spawn camped).

I just spent awhile reading this and I have to comment.

Thank you so much for this immensely well written guide…the comedic injections just made it all the more fun to read.

I got my elementalist to 80 and after spending a ton of time being frustrated and attempting to visit elementalist forums only to come across 20+ pages of complaints about the poor state the class is in and virtually NO help at all, I’m considering fully rerolling until elementalists get fixed by Arenanet.

I love support so I believe guardian will suit me well and this sort of guide is usually just the sort of thing I look for when I want good information on a class. I’ve bookmarked and I know this will (and already has) helped me immensely with the baby guardian I’ve started.

I agree it’s a bit ridiculous…#1 always creams #2 and 3, #4 always creams #5 and 6, and so on…but I don’t what they can do to solve it except maybe adding some kind of debuff for the top ranked team in each bracket or buff for the two that will inevitably lose.

Or if the HoD queues really are 4-8 hours a piece because the server is full…heck..split the server in half and make a new one or something. O.O

Mahrroh.5183:

Hrm…
5.You can’t talk to other servers via /s /m or /t in wv3.

He’s talking about using the free server transfers to go to a server your’re competing against, enter their WvW and confuse them in map chat.

HxCFTW.8192:

You still haven’t explained where this kitten crap came from? WoW?

I could be wrong but since Aion forums used to auto-replace curse words and other offensive words that people typed with “nyerk”, and GW2 is also managed under NCSoft I’d say the forum is auto-replacing nasty words with “kitten”.

I saw it in a few other posts too and I don’t think people are just calling each other kittens. >.<

Agreed. Especially in instances where there’s been 50+ of each of all three teams fighting over say, SM, it can take ten frantic keypresses of the same key and 5-10 seconds after key press just to get an ability to cast because the lag is so bad.

Getting killed by invisible zergs is just as bad.