Guild Wars 2

My partner and I both made characters a few months ago that we got to level 80 together and have been doing dungeons/fractals/wvw/world bosses with since. I levelled an Ele, she levelled a Guardian.

We’re not ‘bored’ of our classes but we’d like a little bit more versatility to keep things fresh. I already have an 80 warrior as well but she doesn’t have anything else. We’re looking for new classes to make together and I was wondering what the best choice for her would be and thought Thief would be a good shout.

My reasoning being:

1) She doesn’t have a Medium armour class yet so it’ll be ‘exciting’ for her to have a new style of armour.

2) Stealth seems to be very helpful in Fractals/Dungeons and seeing as I don’t run with thieves often it’d be nice to have a more frequent player using one.

3) She can get up close and personal but can also deal pretty decent damage with ranged weapons if she’s struggling to survive (correct me if I’m wrong).

The only reasons I can think of why she wouldn’t be great at playing is because they’re apparently pretty squishy and I’m worried she won’t really pick up on how to play the class (I’ve only briefly played a thief and found it a tad confusing at first).

So my question is, how difficult is it to play a thief? Do you need to cycle through a lot of skills or is most of it basic attacking? Is survivability a real issue? She’s a good player but not amazing yet, she can definitely play but she still doesn’t properly grasp what different skills do most of the time (mainly utlity skills and traits) so I wanted something as simple as possible without going down the boring warrior route.

Thanks in advance.

I think you ladies need to get larger hands. If you’re having to “travel over the whole keyboard” to play an ele then you’re either physically challenged in finger length or you’re doing it wrong.

All personal preference really, how is somebody else meant to tell you how you can play the game?

Action 1: Map buttons
Action 2: Try the buttons and see if you can play comfortably

I just think they need to sort out mega-servers. Jormag used to be fun when 20-30 of you took it on. Now it’s just a lagfest with hundreds of low res pixels on my screen.

If you mean exploring for 100% map completion, then you may find it a bit tedious and dull. If you mean how much PvE time is in this game, then the answer is the same as “How long is a piece of string?”.

I started my latest character with a friend and we just 100%‘d all the maps we could on the way to level 80 (this was pretty much just the Kryta part). Then we found that spending 2-3 hours a night running through easy PvE maps was pretty dull so started branching out into dungeons and fractals. We joined a very friendly and active guild and since then we don’t get chance to do map completion at all as as soon as we log on we’re asked to come to some sort of PvE big boss or come on a dungeon run.

I very rarely play PvP or WvW so I definitely think there’s enough to keep you going casually going on PvE for well over a year. If it’s purely map completion you want though it won’t really show off the beauty of the game with dynamic events, etc.

I haven’t played a lot of WvW but my first impressions have been pretty good. I’ve played in a small group of 5 of us trying to take various towers, I’ve tried as a duo and pretty much just been pwned which I expected and I’ve also tagged onto a zerg and roamed around steamrolling everything.

That’s my problem though, my initial impressions are pretty much that it’s either zerg or die. If you roam in a small group then it just seems like the enemy zerg will get you at some point. Just like if you’re in a zerg then it’s just no challenge at all.

It also seems like I never have a decent fight with people no matter how I’m playing. There’s almost an instant decision of “Yes I can take this person/group” or “No, I don’t stand a chance so I need to run”. There has never been a moment where I’ve had a lengthy battle against a group where it’s been a fair fight. It seems like the only things that matters is how many players you have compared to them.

So my question really is how is WvW best played? I’m still fairly new to it so have actually only encountered a zerg vs ‘big group’ encounter once and to be honest I think we outnumbered them by quite a bit so they died quickly and there wasn’t much skill involved. Are equal zerg vs zerg encounters a bit more common the longer you play?

What I’d like to see is more bonus’s for defenders especially against zerg attackers. We were defending our big keep the other day with 10-15 defenders against a pretty big zerg. We didn’t stand a chance, they could just pound our walls with AoE’s so we couldn’t stop their siege rams and then they just flooded in and took the keep within minutes. Perhaps I’m being geeky but every fantasy film I’ve seen the defenders have been able to defend against 10x attackers and that just isn’t possible when you can barely stand on the walls without being pounded.

Perhaps defensive bonus’s for being inside a keep? Maybe the enemy can’t crit-hit you or can’t inflict conditions?

What do you think? And any advice on the best way to play wvw would be great. I do enjoy it but if a commander isn’t online it just feels like a bit of a slaughter-fest of an enemy zerg pwning small groups of randoms.

It sounds like you’ve invested a lot of time into the game and it’s only natural to feel like you’re running out of things to do – it would be the same on any game (heck most AAA titles have 10 hours of gameplay and that’s it).

At the end of the day I’m not sure what you were looking to achieve from playing an MMO? You say you look at all your progress and feel it’s been for nothing but what did you expect? It’s a video game on the internet, it can’t satisfy you for the rest of your life, nor can you ‘transfer’ achievements from GW2 into real life. It’s a game that you’ve had a lot of fun on, have probably made some friends and given you some goals in life (maybe because you don’t feel like you have many real life achievements?).

If you’re struggled to know what to do then go and take a break for a few weeks and try playing some other games or breaking yourself back into a proper hobby. You say you’re burnt out so you need to stop. If you were burnt out at work you’d take a holiday, just like you should take a break from Guild Wars.

I haven’t yet got to the stage where I’ve ran out of things to do as I’ve only been doing end-game content for a few months and haven’t even thought about legendaries (only just exploring the option of ascended gear) so I have no idea what I’ll think about this game in another 2-3 years time. However, I did play another MMO pretty solidly for 5 years before this and the only reason I kept playing for so long is because I kept taking breaks every few months and trying other things and then when I came back to the MMO it felt fresh again and I enjoyed doing things that in the past had turned into ‘grind-fests’.

I agree, it is annoying. As a British person, I see an American flag and assume it’s something to do with American servers which I would obviously avoid joining due to potential latency issues. It’s only when I actually made a group myself that I realised it was purely to do with the language.

I personally just leave it blank now.

I can’t play any other class other than my ele, they just don’t appeal to me at all. I mainly play PvE but have dabbed into PvP and WvW a couple of times.

I’d say it’s not really a class you can pick up and play, especially if you have your build wrong. In terms of high level PvE content I wouldn’t want to play anything else. Great at stacking Might for the party, awesome DPS with conjures, great AoE with staff + frost bow, etc etc. Very diverse and bring a lot to the table.

The difficulty is if I could level up in the human zone and do it all in a row then I’d never explore anywhere else. So on my first character I did 3 or 4 of the starter zones and wouldn’t venture past level 15 areas. Then I moved onto harder parts and felt good that I’d changed scenery a bit and built myself up. I also repeated a lot of events which I ran across by accident and gathered/crafted everything I could.

If I got up to level 80 before I’d even left the human area then I’d be pretty disappointed. I got to level 80 on about 30% total map completion so I don’t really think there’s a lack in content.

Commanders should be earned and not bought. I had one at Jormag the other day who just ranted about how everyone was a noob and he wouldn’t stop swearing and cussing at people who weren’t sure what to do.

I think there should be a ‘Reputation’ system that you earn from leading dungeons or fractals or something and once you hit a certain score you have the choice to be a commander.

I did Jormag the other day for the first time since feature pack. It was ridiculous, I had to turn my settings on best performance dispite having an i5-3570, 8gb ram and GTX670 which can run Battlefield 4 on max no problem. I couldn’t see a thing because of the amount of names, 3/4’s of the players weren’t even displaying because I had to turn the settings down and because Jormag scales up to the number of players, he was a lot harder than usual despite having 10x more people pounding him, I can only assume that half of them had never done it before.

Compared to the time when 10-15 of us took him down with 20 seconds to go it was a bit rubbish to be honest.

I’ve played MMO’s for a while whereas my girlfriend has never gamed in her life. I recently got her creating characters on GW2 which she enjoyed and she finally started playing so I built her a PC. We live 90 miles apart (let me re-iterate that we’d already been going out for 3 years in real life before GW2 came into the mix) and see each other every weekend but during the week we’re just left to texting/calling which I don’t always feel like holding much of a conversation after a full day at work.

Anyway we both play GW2 most nights now in the week and love it. It lets us chat together on skype for hours while doing something we both enjoy, we’re both level 80 and are part of a really friendly guild that is always doing fractals/dungeons, etc.

It would be nice to have a title or just marriage in general. I know in a game I used to play you had to pay for marriage and you basically got a ring for it which let you go into a party quest for married characters only (still completed in a group of 5 or 6 and didn’t necessarily have to be with your other half). It would also do some gimmicky animation whenever the two of you were close together like a heart or doves or something.

But at the end of the day I don’t think I NEED marriage in the game. It’d be a nice touch but at the end of the day you shouldn’t need to crave that much attention to say that you have a boyfriend/girlfriend even though you play MMO’s. All our guildies know that me and my other half are a couple and therefore we’re invited into a lot of activities as a couple. I don’t care if some random person thinks I have a ‘wife’.

I find skipping still needs an element of skill which is why I think there’s nothing wrong with it. You need to know when to roll, you need to have maybe stability skills or condition removers at the ready in-case you get crippled, immobilised, etc and it can actually take longer to do a dungeon if one or two people keep dying while skipping as then they have to keep re-spawning and then they keep dying again.

I tend to find fractals are much better for not skipping content but then fractals don’t necessarily give me as much gold as I receive from doing dungeons.

Plus it’s not like you skip through a whole dungeon, it’s only little sections and let’s face it, in a group of 5 people I want to be killing bosses, not trash mobs that I’d find in PVE.

Don’t help noobs then? No major loss really, they probably struggled through it after hours and you saved yourself a frustrating experience of people who don’t know how to talk or play.

I think it just comes down to lack of knowledge. Our ‘lead’ guild runner has an 80 mesmer and 80 warrior which he swaps between on dungeons/fractals. Last night we did all 3 AC paths and on the last one we ended up having 3 ele’s (including myself). 2 of us were S/D ele’s using a mix of LH/FGS/Frost Bow, the other one was a fire staff ele with 5k+ AP.

I was over the moon because I knew we had a brilliant combo in 3 ele’s, a warrior and a guard. He was like “meh, this is gonna be tough with 3 ele’s”.

Anyway I couldn’t believe my eyes, luckily we proved him wrong and flew through the run using a combination of our conjures and just pure pwnage. As much as people disagree, I think this is why some sort of combat log would help show that one class isn’t the best on the planet and that other classes are perfectly good. The only character he hadn’t really played is an ele and he automatically assumed they were rubbish even though I was doing 5-6k crits with my hammer scaled down to a level 35.

The problem doesn’t come from the Queensdale train, nobody should really die in that train if you know how to play.

The problem comes when you play dungeons and fractals. A lot of the bosses are really tough and will easily kill you in 1-2 hits (especially as an ele). Your healing isn’t effective enough to prevent this from happening and once you’ve used your skills once then the chances are he’ll attack again before yours have chance to cooldown. This is why zerker has become so popular, because the idea is to kill the boss before it kills you.

So that leaves you with a problem, do you stick with staff and play a more DPS build with occasional support instead or do you look for something different? Now I can’t speak for after the patch but Staff has always been a bit iffy to play DPS-wise. The damage is okay and it’s a pretty easy setup to play but other than the couple of healing skills and some decent AoE attacks you don’t really bring a lot to the party. You don’t stack much Might, your attacks are pretty slow and most events in dungeons are single target.

I personally play Scepter/Dagger or Scepter/Focus with Lightning Hammer as my key skill. I stack Might easily to 15+ which benefits the whole party, I provide Fury with Persisting flames meaning the party has a better crit chance = more damage = things die faster = we don’t die as much. Once I’ve stacked Might I conjure the hammer and bash the boss to death. It’s a fantastic build for dungeons and you can also use Fire Greatsword when stacking etc for good effect.

It’s not a typical ‘elementalist’ way to play but most people would agree that it’s one of the most effective builds in the game at the moment. Obviously with new traits being released, etc then this build might change slightly but I genuinely enjoy playing it so will probably stick with it.

So basically, sure you can be a ‘healing’ elementalist. But realistically you’ll be more of a burden than you think and really what people want in dungeons is damage > support. Most people have their own skills to stay alive anyway and at the end of the day the bosses you’ll be facing will kill you regardless of your healing skills. Plus as soon as you focus on healing more than attacking your party has lost at least 20% of its DPS (probably more as we’re one of the best DPS’ers at the moment).

Please don’t base your build on what happens to noobs in Queensdale.

P.s. Dagger/dagger is probably the least popular class to play so I’m not sure who you’ve been asking advice from? It’s fine for levelling but end-game you really need to be using something like D/F, S/F, S/D, Staff.

Cool story bro.

That’s why most speedruns always consist of 2-3 ele’s. But yea, underpowered.

If you need to use LFG to organise a speed-run then you’re doing it wrong. Pug groups should always be taken as slightly slower than doing it with a group you run regularly with.

No we filled the traps before we aggro’d it, it was when it came to attacking him that we struggled as we weren’t doing enough fire-power. I know that I personally didn’t understand the strategy to start with but when it came to attacking I knew how to get us 15-18 stacks of might and pound it up close with a hammer without dying.

We used all 3 traps and he still had about 20% health left so we had to negotiate it so he dropped his blobs within a trap so we could just ‘lift’ them to charge it.

I agree though, it was a great effort in the end and we all went a bit nuts as we had been on the verge of quitting 3 or 4 times before then. We started at 8:00pm GMT and we finished at about 10:40pm (that’s the whole dungeon) so it really was an awfully long run. As much as we were all glad we’d done it, we couldn’t help but feel a stronger party would have blitzed it pretty easily. We had the trap strategy spot on, we just couldn’t dish out the damage to get it done.

Thanks for the input guys, I played around a little bit more last night and I do enjoy the S/D + LH build but I think you’re right in maybe it’s the group around me that is making it less effective perhaps. I’ve never really been in a pure DPS dungeon group before and I do notice I run out of dodges and defence skills quite quickly when stacking, etc.

I’ll keep having a play around with some traits and skill slots especially after this patch and see what I’m most comfortable with. A lot of the time I dungeon run with Guildies but they’re not necessarily ‘optimised’ builds so we still sometimes struggle.

I’ll keep working on my rotations till they’re like second nature though One thought, is it beneficial for someone to pick up my other LH once I’ve stacked might and if we’re stacking? That way things might die before I need the second hammer and therefore ‘more’ survivability. Or does that just screw our rotations up completely?

Thanks for keeping the topic on discussion and contributing to the thread guys. I played last night and it has reinforced my point even more that there needs to be some sort of combat log, NOT because I want to kick people who aren’t ‘zerker’, but just because it might encourage people to attack more than just trying to survive (when ultimately that will result in death).

I did Ascalonion Catacombs P2 with some ‘less experienced’ guildies last night. One person I knew had just turned 80 and didn’t have optimal gear or a decent build yet (he’d been building a healing water ele build even though I’d told him he’d probably be more of a burden than a help), one was a Guardian who I know doesn’t do great DPS as it’s my other half and she is still a bit new to dodging, one was a Warrior who used Sigils for the whole run until he realised he’d be better off with banners and shouts and one was a ranger who I know is a good player but he’d never done the path before.

Anyway we struggled through some of the early stages as the group didn’t really know how to stack and we weren’t doing enough DPS to make it effective but we eventually got through to Ghost Eater. It took us a good 30mins to get the strategy right (only 1 of us had done it before and even then his group had been forced to quit) so filling the traps was tough. When we eventually nailed the strategy and it came to doing damage to the Ghost Eater once he’d triggered the trap I felt like I was the only one doing damage out of everyone. The ‘water’ ele was just there putting healing spells down, the warrior was nowhere to be seen (probably using a bow because he was too afraid to get up close), the Guardian was too afraid to use her GS so was stood there using her staff and the ranger kept going down.

I’m not even joking it took about 2 hours to finish the last bit of AC P2 and I honestly think it’s just because people weren’t attacking and most of it was left to me with my LH to try and take some serious health off him.

Now I’m not saying I’d have been there like “COME ON GUYS, IM THE ONLY ONE DOING DAMAGE, BUCK UP”. But I do feel like if there is a visual aid to show what people are actually contributing then it would encourage people to play better and maybe take some responsibility for themselves. For all I know I could have solo’d the bloomin thing last night.

The people opposed to this idea must be the ones who don’t feel they’re good enough to be in a party in the first place otherwise you wouldn’t have an issue with it. Perhaps it is because Anet don’t want to show their inbalanced classes off for the world to see. Or perhaps it’s just because the game is meant to be casual and not focused on DPS. But at the end of the day, if you’re only joining PUG runs then you’re always going to encounter idiots so a ‘combat log’ wouldn’t change anything. If you’re going with guild members or friends then you’re never going to get kicked for your damage, they might just ask you to look at improving your build afterwards or give you some tips of what you can do because at the moment people could be running whatever build they want and nobody would know any different which isn’t fair to the people who have worked kitten their build and their combos and are effectively carrying a party. I don’t mind people using what build they want to use, but how can we help people improve that build unless we can see how effective it is for ourselves?

I’m using one of my classes ‘optimal’ builds so I’m sure I’m about average – I’m not bothered about my class though, I’d like to see other peoples.

And I don’t see how asking every player I party with what damage they do is really a brilliant idea as this will change depending on boons, might, critical damage, etc etc. And then Gear is a large part of it and traits so really it would just be easier to have the option to see it…

It’s not on sale because it’s losing players, it’s probably just because it’s spring and they know a lot of people will be going outside instead of staying on the computer so they’re trying to attract more players. Do you really think that every company that has a sale is going bust?

I enjoy it, it’s quite a casual game but also requires a lot of skill once you start dungeons, etc. You can play as often or infrequent as you want, it promotes party play and there is no grinding to level up, just quests and exploration rather than killing the same mobs over and over in the same area.

It helps if you can make friends easily as a lot of content is best played with 2-3 players but it’s definitely possible to solo most the things you’ll encounter in open-world unless it specifically states it’s a group event.

I’d definitely recommend it but ultimately only you can say whether it will be a waste of time or not. You’ve already spent the money, might as well download it now. I could understand buying a game for £3 in the Steam sale and not downloading it but £17.50 is hardly cheap for a game unless you plan to play it.

When you get woken up too early in the morning and try to ‘log out of life’ inside your head so that you don’t have to face real life.

It doesn’t always have to be a contest of DPS though, I’m not asking for a DPS meter, I’m asking for visual aid to see how much damage people are doing as at the moment I don’t know if 1000 per auto-attack is good or whether I should be doing more like 3000.

At the end of the day MMO’s are meant to be about improving your gear and skills to increase damage. Fair enough, some classes may be more ‘supportive’ so a DPS meter wouldn’t fully show how helpful someone is towards the party but if I was going with guildies it wouldn’t matter how much damage people were doing, as long as we were doing it.

Not everyone joins pug groups and then does the dungeon in fear of being kicked. I just want to gauge my damage compared to other classes.

All other MMO’s I’ve played I’ve been able to see the damage that everybody else is doing as well as my own. This has always been pretty handy for seeing just how strong you rank compared to others and it looked especially good on a 2D MMO I used to play as the numbers would stack up and look awesome in boss fights.

So I was wondering why there’s no option to have it in GW2. I’m level 80 now and play an Ele which supposedly has one of the highest DPS’s in the game. I regularly watch my other half on her PC playing her Guardian which is quite a bit weaker than me so I know that I’m doing okay at the moment but then I always have the curiosity of what other classes around me are doing. Like I heard some guildies talking about doing 25k damage on their Warriors, etc and I’m wondering how on Earth they manage it (unless they just mean Hundred blades stacking.

Basically it would be nice to see the damage of other people so when I’m in a dungeon doing 5-6k crits with my Lightning Hammer, whether that’s doing a good job or whether I’m being outdamaged by somebody else because they have better gear or whatever. Even if they made the other digits for other players damage a different colour or size so that you can always see which is yours?

What do you think?

I’ve been level 80 for about a month now and feel I’ve come on a long way from where I was in that I’ve only really started to learn how to control my Ele since I’ve been level 80. I now have full Exotic Zerker gears with Superior Runes of the Scholar, I’ve got the Nightmare Court Scepter and the CoF Focus and I’m really enjoying my experience in GW2. I’m a member of a very active and friendly guild and I’ve been completely taken away from map exploration because everytime I log on now I’m asked to come to some sort of boss like Jormag, Fire Ele, etc or do Dungeons/Fractals instead. Basically, I feel like I’m really starting to learn what GW2 is all about.

My issue is my build is still a big question mark for me. I think I’ve tried a lot of different ones and still can’t work out the best for my needs. I used to enjoy the D/F Fresh air build in PVE but it doesn’t seem to be as recommended for Dungeon use and there’s obviously the issue with having to get close enough to sustain damage without being 1-hit.

I then used the Staff build a bit while I was doing a lot of Arbor as I found it handy to keep away from the dreaded red circles from the Wurms while still maintaining good AoE and DPS. It was quite weak the rest of the time though.

Now I’ve finally landed on Scepter/Focus+LH or Scepter/Dagger+LH depending on what I’m doing. I like this build as I’ve got used to the Might rotations so I feel like I’m contributing to the party more than I was before. It also offers great DPS when I’m using the Lightning Hammer and has good Burst with Dragons Tooth, etc. This is fine for bosses or ‘easier’ elite mobs but I find it really awkward to use if I’m not able to sustain my LH conjures. I’ve followed the stickied DPS build in this forum and watched the videos and the build is great for practising on an invulnerable PVP golem but in reality I have never been in a situation where I’ve been able to comfortably stack Might, drop the hammer, do 5 × 3 AA rotations, fire attune, 3 × 3 more AA rotations, drop hammer, re-stack might and still be able to pick up my other hammer. At this point I’ve normally either died from concentrating too much on my Might stacks or my hammer use, my hammers been stolen or I’ve been trying to dodge/evade too much that I haven’t been able to keep the perfect rotation as I’ve been having to remove conditions, heal, drop hammer to use defensive focus skills, etc so a lot of the time I’m left using whatever Scepter skills I can or if a boss is too hard to get up close to I’ll just be using my Air Scepter skills to keep some ok DPS on him while blinding.

So after my rant, what I’m basically trying to get at is what build offers decent sustained DPS without having to rely on perfect combos and rotations because let’s face it, it’s not always possible to get face-to-face with a champion and be able to auto-attack it with a hammer care-free.

Am I playing the class bad? Do I just need more practice? I do try to change weapons throughout a dungeon if I have to (protecting Mag on CoF P2 comes to mind as a staff seems to be pretty crucial for this for AoE and slowing the assassins while controlling the trash mobs). I’d like to play the Fresh Air Build more but it’s not always practical if I need some range and it’s not like I can just swap my traits at the drop of a hat.

Any help would be much appreciated. I’m happy to still use Scepter/Focus but I just feel a bit weak when I’m not in a perfect situation for stacking Might + using a hammer perfectly.

For info, I’m currently using the General DPS build for Scepter/Focus + LH in the following guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first

General DPS build
25 (II-V) / 10 (VI) / 10 (VI) / 25 (IV-VI) / 0

I have no problems with my ele. I run a D/F Fresh Air build and use Hammer/FGS in dungeons and do absolutely fine. Sure there’s sometimes when I’m tired that I don’t focus and my health with drop in the blink of an eye but most the time I’m usually the last one alive. I played my girlfriends level 80 guardian and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to survive, I could just stand there and tank damage.

It’s all about knowing good rotations though with an ele. You have to swap through all attunements if you want to be a good balanced player. I regularly get compliments from people saying that ele’s look cool to play right after we’ve ran a dungeon together.

I’ve even started playing PvP and can hold my own.

The thing is, this game is the easiest MMO I’ve ever played for levelling. Gathering gives tons of exp, kills give tons, events give loads, etc etc, I don’t need to go on.

I used to play an MMO where the max level was 200 and it would take people 2-3 years to get to 70 (which was still considered noobish). By level 120+ you’d be struggling to get anything over 10%/hour in experience (grinding on mobs on maps you’d have stayed on for 10-20 levels in most cases doing the same rotations and same skills constantly).

Compared to that this game is a breath of fresh air that actually awards ‘questing’ for once rather than killing the same thing over and over. Then I found some exp boosters in a chest and things got even quicker, most the time I was easily getting 1k+ exp per kill

My girlfriend who has never played games in her life started playing a few weeks ago and she’s already level 78 with little help from me. I think you’re doing something wrong.

Like others said, map completion is the easiest way. I got to 80 on my ele from completing all of the Kryta areas (up to like the level 65 zone). I haven’t even stepped foot in Ascalon or Shiverpeak.

Thanks for the input guys, glad to hear I’m not the only one to have felt this. I will give some videos a go as it seems like reading the guides is over-complicating things. I wouldn’t say I’m an amazing player but I can hold my own against champions even while up close on my ele so I think I’d eventually get the hang of dungeons.

I will probably give my guild a proper ask in the next few weeks once I’ve sorted some better gear out for myself. They do regularly ask if anyone is up for Fractals or CoF but they’re normally expecting someone a bit more experienced to reply. It would be a shame for me to miss out on them as it would be myself and my soon-to-be level 80 guardian friend tagging on and we play very regularly.

I guess most of it will just come down to trial and error though!

I’m going to start by saying I’ve never been in a dungeon. I have a level 80 ele (only recently 80) and a 54 warrior and I’ve never been near one; probably mainly due to me being busy with levelling but also because I find them quite daunting.

I’m played dungeon type party quests on other MMO’s and sure, they’re a bit scary to start with but they soon become simple once you know what you’re doing.

The problem I find with GW2 is there’s absolutely no way I feel I could enter a dungeon group and learn properly. I read guides and they rant about things I don’t understand, they list gear and runes I don’t have, they talk about things like stacking 25 Might which nobody has every informed me how to do, etc etc.

My question is am I overreacting? Do I just need to give them a go and stop worrying about the fine details? Are guides on the forums knit-picking at details that most users don’t worry about? I’m in a nice guild and people regularly run fractals and CoF but they’re always a bit reluctant about taking new people on because they can’t be bothered teaching.

Saying all this, I thought the exact same about PvP but jumped onto a game anyway and was actually having a lot of fun even if I was a bit pants.

What do you guys think? Did you feel the same before you started running them regularly? Does reading forums and guides make them sound more daunting than they are?

I don’t understand how you’re playing at 10fps on low settings? I have a high end rig but I borrow my brothers laptop occasionally which is a £300 bog standard one with intel hd3000 graphics and I get 30-60fps easily on low graphics :S Did you try turning the resolution down at all?

BlueZone.4236:

Grimezy.5679:

BlueZone.4236:

Grimezy.5679:

BlueZone.4236:

Grimezy.5679:

4) Don’t give up, this game WILL surprise you. My girlfriend and I were completing the Hirathi Hinterlands last night and came to the final skill point and point of interest we needed in the North East of the map. We’d done tons of events during the evening but not really seen many people other than ourselves. We get to the last bit and a massive gate is closed and won’t open so we figure it’s something to do with an event that was just starting. Before we know it we’re fighting a Champion Hirathi, then holding off hordes of Centaurs, then we go back into the main bit to see 3 Champion War Beasts and all of a sudden we’ve gone from 5 of us doing the event to 25+. Once we took the beasts down we had to destroy this massive Earth Elemental thing followed by another Champion Centaur.

It took about 30 mins to do all of it and it was really intense at times but I really have never experienced anything like it. It has completely relit my love for this game and I can’t wait to find more events like this.

Sorry to ruin the magic, but that centaur boss is tracked by every boss tracker website (eg. GW2 Stuff), and those people that appeared out of nowhere at the very end were just world boss farmers (since that’s the only part that gets flagged). They just wanted their daily chest…

Does it matter? If there’s people like that around then that means that these events will stay alive. I probably won’t return to Hirathi Hinterlands for a while now that I’ve 100%‘d it, but as long as the ’Event trackers’ keep going there then new people will continue to experience the event like I did rather than missing out on a brilliant part of the game. I don’t give a kitten if people want a chest or not, what does it matter to me if 25 different people are there for different reasons, so long as we kill a boss it makes no difference.

I don’t understand your point.

Yeah, it ain’t that special in the end. And wow, at that attitude.

I would like to know your definition of ‘special’ as you seem to be hard to impress. The OP raised concern that he never got to do group events so I shared with him one of the experiences I’ve had so that he would have some reassurance that PvE is not always empty. Whether they’re genuine players or event trackers it doesn’t matter, it would be very difficult to co-ordinate having 25+ people in one area at the same time without the help of event trackers.

First couple of months of game release was special. Lots of players everywhere.

Anyway, if you’re impressed by this, I guess you’ll have a blast farming with the Queensdale champ farmers. You’ll fit right in.

I’ve done Queensdale quite a bit and haven’t been impressed at all. First couple of times it was like “yay, people are here”. Then the realisation came that it was just button mashing without being able to see anything.

The Hirathi chain on the other hand I thought required a bit more co-ordination. I actually had to dodge attacks for once and controlling the 3 war beasts wasn’t ‘difficult’ but it was challenging at times (bearing in mind I’m a dagger ele).

BlueZone.4236:

Grimezy.5679:

BlueZone.4236:

Grimezy.5679:

4) Don’t give up, this game WILL surprise you. My girlfriend and I were completing the Hirathi Hinterlands last night and came to the final skill point and point of interest we needed in the North East of the map. We’d done tons of events during the evening but not really seen many people other than ourselves. We get to the last bit and a massive gate is closed and won’t open so we figure it’s something to do with an event that was just starting. Before we know it we’re fighting a Champion Hirathi, then holding off hordes of Centaurs, then we go back into the main bit to see 3 Champion War Beasts and all of a sudden we’ve gone from 5 of us doing the event to 25+. Once we took the beasts down we had to destroy this massive Earth Elemental thing followed by another Champion Centaur.

It took about 30 mins to do all of it and it was really intense at times but I really have never experienced anything like it. It has completely relit my love for this game and I can’t wait to find more events like this.

Sorry to ruin the magic, but that centaur boss is tracked by every boss tracker website (eg. GW2 Stuff), and those people that appeared out of nowhere at the very end were just world boss farmers (since that’s the only part that gets flagged). They just wanted their daily chest…

Does it matter? If there’s people like that around then that means that these events will stay alive. I probably won’t return to Hirathi Hinterlands for a while now that I’ve 100%‘d it, but as long as the ’Event trackers’ keep going there then new people will continue to experience the event like I did rather than missing out on a brilliant part of the game. I don’t give a kitten if people want a chest or not, what does it matter to me if 25 different people are there for different reasons, so long as we kill a boss it makes no difference.

I don’t understand your point.

Yeah, it ain’t that special in the end. And wow, at that attitude.

I would like to know your definition of ‘special’ as you seem to be hard to impress. The OP raised concern that he never got to do group events so I shared with him one of the experiences I’ve had so that he would have some reassurance that PvE is not always empty. Whether they’re genuine players or event trackers it doesn’t matter, it would be very difficult to co-ordinate having 25+ people in one area at the same time without the help of event trackers.

BlueZone.4236:

Grimezy.5679:

4) Don’t give up, this game WILL surprise you. My girlfriend and I were completing the Hirathi Hinterlands last night and came to the final skill point and point of interest we needed in the North East of the map. We’d done tons of events during the evening but not really seen many people other than ourselves. We get to the last bit and a massive gate is closed and won’t open so we figure it’s something to do with an event that was just starting. Before we know it we’re fighting a Champion Hirathi, then holding off hordes of Centaurs, then we go back into the main bit to see 3 Champion War Beasts and all of a sudden we’ve gone from 5 of us doing the event to 25+. Once we took the beasts down we had to destroy this massive Earth Elemental thing followed by another Champion Centaur.

It took about 30 mins to do all of it and it was really intense at times but I really have never experienced anything like it. It has completely relit my love for this game and I can’t wait to find more events like this.

Sorry to ruin the magic, but that centaur boss is tracked by every boss tracker website (eg. GW2 Stuff), and those people that appeared out of nowhere at the very end were just world boss farmers (since that’s the only part that gets flagged). They just wanted their daily chest…

Does it matter? If there’s people like that around then that means that these events will stay alive. I probably won’t return to Hirathi Hinterlands for a while now that I’ve 100%‘d it, but as long as the ’Event trackers’ keep going there then new people will continue to experience the event like I did rather than missing out on a brilliant part of the game. I don’t give a kitten if people want a chest or not, what does it matter to me if 25 different people are there for different reasons, so long as we kill a boss it makes no difference.

I don’t understand your point.

I used to think this but I’ve found as I’ve played the game longer that PVE is busier than I first thought.

1) Learn how to use the ‘Map’ chat function. Anything you see in red is someone on the same map as you, people will post waypoints that are close to group events, people will be asking for help on map completion, etc etc. Same thing goes for you, if you see a champion you want to take on then you can type into map chat for help. This is normally helped if you press Shift/Control (I forget which) + click on the waypoint which will add it to your chat line.

2) Try to join a guild. It doesn’t have to be a massive dungeon-doing guild, in fact you want the opposite. Find a small group of people that aren’t obsessed with doing speedruns, etc and try to get some help in world completion, etc.

3) Most importantly, try to get a friend to play. I know this isn’t always possible but you may be surprised how many people this game appeals to. I showed it to my girlfriend who has never played games in her life and now she has her own custom-built rig and is completely hooked on it with her own level 71 Guardian after only a couple of weeks. Pretty much all PvE content is do-able in a 2-man team so it really helps if you have a friend to go through it with you, preferably someone you’re comfortable skyping with so you don’t have to constantly type.

4) Don’t give up, this game WILL surprise you. My girlfriend and I were completing the Hirathi Hinterlands last night and came to the final skill point and point of interest we needed in the North East of the map. We’d done tons of events during the evening but not really seen many people other than ourselves. We get to the last bit and a massive gate is closed and won’t open so we figure it’s something to do with an event that was just starting. Before we know it we’re fighting a Champion Hirathi, then holding off hordes of Centaurs, then we go back into the main bit to see 3 Champion War Beasts and all of a sudden we’ve gone from 5 of us doing the event to 25+. Once we took the beasts down we had to destroy this massive Earth Elemental thing followed by another Champion Centaur.

It took about 30 mins to do all of it and it was really intense at times but I really have never experienced anything like it. It has completely relit my love for this game and I can’t wait to find more events like this.

You know I was just going to make a thread identical to this but figured I’d see if anybody else felt the same first.

GW2 is the first MMO I’ve been hooked on since I became an independent adult. I’ve given MMO’s a good break for 3-4 years and back when I used to play them I could never afford ‘in-game purchases’ even though I really wanted to be able to.

I constantly scour the Gem Store looking for things to buy and all I can think is “Really, is this it? Am I missing a tab somewhere that lets me view all products rather than a limited selection”.

I know it sounds mad wanting to spend money on a game I’ve already paid for but I genuinely get a lot of enjoyment from the game and rather than spend it on naff games I pick up for £3 every month, I’d rather just spend £20 or so on GW2 and focus on that.

Eventually I bought the Black Lion introductory pack for 1600 gems and realised I’d been massively ripped off (although the boosters I got are starting to pay for themselves). My only other thought was to maybe convert into Gold as I could have got like 96g for 1600 gems but realistically I have nothing I need to buy with Gold yet and most things seem to require me paying with Laurels or Karma anyway (although I’m not 80 yet so I may change my mind). Even then though, I’ve heard top gear can take like 100g worth of crafting materials per item. If that means I need to convert 1600gems for each item I’d end up spending £100+ on some silly pieces of armour in a game!

I’ve played GW2 on and off for the past year, I enjoy it but have never become truly addicted as I swore to myself I’d never let another MMO entice me again. My other half recently started making characters while she was at my house and now she’s pretty hooked too, enough so that she’s only gone and bought a nice tidy PC to play it on at her house.

My question is what the best characters would be for us to start again with? I know there is no ‘best’ class, and that every class should be fine for PVE, but I wanted opinions anyway.

We both have mainly played Warrior classes since starting, mine being level 54 and hers being level 20. She’s enjoying this character and sounds like she may want to continue with that trend as she finds it easy to play compared to her old Elementalist. I don’t mind what I play though, I was thinking a Guardian/Ranger duo but from having a quick play of a ranger there doesn’t seem to be a massive amount of AoE attacks.

What would you guys suggest? Should we be boring with a Guardian/Warrior duo or would we benefit more from something else?

Thanks in advance!

I’m only level 49 at the moment and I struggle on this subject as well as most guides seem to be aimed at level 80’s rather than the path to getting to 80.

So far I’ve tried dual axes, shield/axe, hammer and greatsword. I tend to just go with whichever is the best weapon I have at the time. I’ve been using GS for the last 5 levels or so, then I found a hammer that was loads better so I swapped to that to mix things up a bit.

My traits so far are 19/20/0/0/0 I think. I’ve been using the Signet build with the precision perk but I don’t know if this is most effective anymore. I still seem to kill things pretty quick but I was pretty useless at a champion battle last night when I figured I should be using skills the FJG and banners, etc rather than useless signets.

I tend to just buy power and precision for now Just do what you think is best? I don’t think there’s any ‘best’ build for pve as pretty much any options will work. Even without using a shield or pumping into defence you’re likely to have more survivability than most classes.

As for ranged combat, I like the longbow. Great for AoE damage and condition damage. I think the rifle may have better single target damage but I don’t think it outweighs the versatility of the bow which can be used in all situations IMO.

I’ve had GW2 for a while now, probably 7-8 months but I don’t really get chance to play due to other commitments, other games being released, not really having an existing community to play with, etc etc. I only have a level 49 warrior which I’ve been taking my time with to do PvE.

I’ve played the last couple of nights for the first time in months and I really do love this game. It’s fantastic for someone like myself who doesn’t have the time to play every night to ‘keep up’ with everybody or miss out on things because I can’t stay up till 3am to do dungeons and stuff. I played for about 2 hours last night and I got so much done (by my standards). I completed a section of the map, I did tons of mini-events within that map helping people who were struggling to solo them, then this big ice champion shows up and there’s like 30 of us pounding it, then it dies and I look in my inventory for the first time in like an hour to see I’ve accidentally collected a ton of decent equips that I needed, pretty much every weapon and piece of armour I needed to upgrade my warrior from the current equips.

And then I can just go to Lions Arch, stick all my things in the auction house and not have to worry about manually trading with people or paying to create an auction (played games like this before).

So yes, I’m not saying the game is perfect and I know it’s only early days for me, but I do really enjoy this game and it’s perfect for somebody with my time constraints. If you don’t think it’s serious enough or it’s too cluttered or there isn’t enough end-game content or whatever your petty little criticisms about the game are then go and play this other perfect MMO that you all seem to know about if GW2 is so bad. Nobody is forcing you to play, that’s the beauty of it, I can come and go when I please and I don’t lose a penny other than my initial purchase which to be honest, paid for itself a long time ago.

What you have to understand is that when a company releases a game at full price, it is only likely to attract the fans that have been highly anticipating it who either pre-order it or buy it near release day. Therefore, after a month or so, sales will drop off because all of the franchises fans will have the game and the general public that may not understand what it is just see an expensive game. By dropping the price they give the general public more reason to buy it.

Plus more importantly, MMO players are far too used to downloading a client for free and then playing their game for free perhaps with the option to buy things with real money actually in-game or paying a monthly subscription after a trial period. With Guild Wars you don’t get that, so people are having to fork out full price for something with no idea whether they’ll like it or not. If you’re a MMO fan you’re likely to say meh, I’d rather download something for free and pay for it later.

They have to do these promotions to keep players coming in. I highly doubt it means the game is ‘failing’. Purely expanding if anything.