Guild Wars 2

Cyanstar.5819:

I should probably clarify a bit since some of you seem confused or believe you know what I would like better than I do. I am a concept artist who just wants to see how this game’s concept art translates into the game, so I am coming at it from the angle of someone wanting to see the game beyond screenshots and videoes, while minimizing the gameplay aspect. I really just want to look around and take screenshots.

I really do appreciate the attempt to help, and understand that it may usually be good advice to tell someone to find a fun and enjoyable class, or that it’s all about preference, but in this case it is unhelpful, and perhaps even a bit disrespectful (“I see you are asking for something specific, now let me explain how your preference is irrelevant and that you should go for this other thing instead”).

As for the relevant advice, most of you mention thieves because they are quick, but I know that MMO thieves tend to demand lots of input, and I would like to play something that can almost “play itself”. Is this the case here? If this was World of Warcraft for example, the right class would be Hunter, since they have a passive speed boost to get around, long range, and very easy, low-input fighting if you want it to be.

If you want specific advice, then give specific information. The answer you are looking for is special and require special thinking, so giving us word like unhelpful and disrespectful back when we are really trying to give you good advice after the info you first gave us, feels very off to me and i kind of wonder why so defensive.

As for asking specific questions well maybe because it is needed. I asked about weapons because in this game, your weapon type changes your skills. So a class in it self can be a lot of things depending on what weapon type and build you pick for your class.

Anyway, thief would be what i would try, with the info you gave in your last response. How ever to make it work properly you would have to make a stealth build , or a if you have HoT you can also make a daredevil. Both of this requires special weapons and builds to have the longest stealth or the most dodges.

GW2 do not have classes that plays it self, but if you want a class that is mobile and can stealth through parts you don’t want to be involved in, then yes, thief is your choice.

Fluffball.8307:

Runes aren’t always better than stones in GW2. You need to look at what you’re trying to get out of something rather than following a hard rule.

For example it’s common to use 5 superior runes of the nightmare and 1 black diamond for condi armor because the 6th rune bonus isn’t useful.

Runes and sigils are ALWAYS better then stones with stats. There are ofc bad runes and sigils, but i do not ofc talk about those, you would want the best runes and sigils and there is no upgrades that are better then runes and sigils. Sorry you can say it in any way you want, but it wont be true.

This do ofc not stop you from using those upgrades if that is what you want, but don’t tell new players that do not know anything about the game that there is better options that are not runes and sigils, because that is incorrect.

All classes are easy to play if you understand how you play them. GW2 is not built around who have the most stats and there for kill everything easy. You kill if you know how to kill.

All players in HoT have gliding and can also glide in tyria now. All classes have either permanen speedbuffs through sigils, or speedbuffs in the weapons or sills they use. Some classes have blink, some have a very dodgy playstyle, but there is no 1 macro class here, there is no macros

So what you should ask your self is more what do you like to play. Are you a ranged person, do you enjoy close up fights. Do you like magic or just raw damage, you want stealth, or a high hp pool, do you want a support class, or what exactly do you enjoy playing.

Also remember that most of us have more then one character. In gw2 there are no switching roles, you switch class if you want to bring something different.

The problem is that they are never open on your homeborder at all, EVER: But if we take any keep in the other borderlands they are instantly open when the keeps goes uncontested. It makes no sense what so ever.

First i thought it was the thing about emergency waypoints, but now when i see how those works, they are not even related to the always contested waypoints, since when you add the emergency, and new waypoint open for 30 sec.

Up until now we have got absolutely no explanations to why they are like they are. There are no sense to have it like that. Why should enemies have instant working waypoints on enemieborders but never any working waypoint on their own homeborder except for the rampart, which you can keep contested forever, due to a glitch that some players are abusing.

You can also keep rampart contested forever at one spot, had a thief there the other day exploiting the glitch.

It was where they were first placed

To many? I have yet not found any wings that i want, and the only one i use right now are the white feather wings, but that is because they are best out of worst, so i would like to see more and better made wings.

Michael.9403:

RoseofGilead.8907:

As far as I know, the only “upgrade” with Viper stats is a black diamond. I don’t know of any upgrade with Sinister stats. However, I wouldn’t use those as an upgrade for viper or sinister armor or weapons; I’d get runes and sigils that go with my build. But if you for some reason had a surplus of black diamonds, that could work ok, I suppose.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I understand about Runes and Sigils and have a full set of Berserker runes for this character. I forgot the black diamond was the item for Viper, as I started to ask about sinister and added viper as a quick afterthought. The character in question has Ascended Rampager jewelry, from the days of only the basic stat groups, and I thought to switch the upgrade to sinister rather than get a whole set of ascended jewelry and I’d likely use sinister for that, as condition duration is capped.

You should not use stones with stats on, but runes on armor and sigils for weapons. It is a totaly waste to not use runes and sigils. I know it is very different in other games were every little stats counts and you will get better, but the point is that runes and sigils in this game are always better then the upgrade stones. Only place those are use is on your jewelry and your backpack.

More to the point what weapon sets are you using? And you should not really have to build a defense warrior for pve, it really is no trouble for warriors to move in the open world, and especially not the old world. It might be slightly harder in HoT, and you might need more defense there if you find it hard to play.

Also the thing that a lot of players are missing is that you weapon skills on your bar, really are meant to be used as they are described. They are not only numbers but some stun, some fear, some do raw damage, other blocks, and you also activly have to dodge damage. If you for example fighting something and you know this mob will cast a big damage on you, then make sure to interrupt him by using a skill that is doing so, or to dodge when the enemie cast that skill. And if he cast something on the ground, avoid it, never stand in red circles. And i know that is really silly to say, but i still run across so many every day who never avoid damage and then die and they get frustrated about it.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki This page have builds for warriors for all game modes. If you are uncertain what to use then this is a good webside to start on. Later on when you feel comfortable enough you can make changes to skills that works better for you

Imo there is a ton of other more important things that need to be addressed and fixed first before gliding comes to mind. I would really get kittened off if A-Net decide to add gliding in the middle of this. First fix what they broke, in a way that the wvw community want it to be fixed, then when this is up and working, we can move ot other things.

Khisanth.2948:

Leaa.2943:

All classes are damagedealers, we have no holy trinity of tank/heal/dps. With that said the two you pick from are totally different from eachother. Necros are a ranged light class, and guardians are melee heavy class. Both of them can of course play with melee and ranged weapons.

Actually Reaper is melee and Dragonhunter is ranged.
The first set of elite specicalizations were intended provide playstyles that were a bit too weak on the base classes.

Which is why i wrote NECRO and GUARDIAN and not Reaper and Dragonhunter. And unless you do not visit the pvp-lobby and try it there, you can not run the elite spekittenil you reach level 80. Until then the player are a caster and melee regardless.

You can check the gem prize in game. In the right bottom there is a button where you can convert to your own choice and you can check how much gold you would need for that. If you at some point will do the actually converting, then make sure you do it at the right time of the day and you will save a lot of gold. The convert ration changes all the time.

All classes are damagedealers, we have no holy trinity of tank/heal/dps. With that said the two you pick from are totally different from eachother. Necros are a ranged light class, and guardians are melee heavy class. Both of them can of course play with melee and ranged weapons.

If you want to play fractals i guess guards would be a better choice since they have a lot to share with, but that does not mean that necros are not useful, they are, they just don’t have that much to share with the group, but have good damage and great aoe.

How ever you should know that most players do play more then one class. In other games you switch roles, here you kind of switch class instead and go with what the group need or what you feel like playing that day. Alts are a thing in this game and it is not hard to gear up at all. Mostly you will have enough karma to get the gear instantly.

So my advice would be pick the classes you feel for and if you want to try other classes just level a new.

This game is about exploring. It is not like other mmo’s were you have to move from questnode to questnode to follow the red line. The story behind the game you get in your pesonal story. You should be doing that. It gives you xp and loot and also keys. All stuff in all areas are just building on what you find in your personal story.

This means that there are no wrong way of leveling, or exploring. And yes you can practically level your character up in lvl 1-15 area if you wanted that, because you get downscaled to the level of the region and get the xp for it.

If you open up your map you will find waypoints outside of all the races maintowns. This give you access to their regions and you can go and level there as well.
You should level through events, and more events, and again personal story. Do dungeons, visit world verses world and try that out. You get xp for each cap and each kill as well. jumpingpuzzles, gathering (all that you gather give you xp) crafting (all that you craft give you xp). Join world bosses that are placed all over the world. In Metrica and Caledon there are two more worldbosses. Ulgoth in harati and all the preevents should give you a level more or less each time you go there. Try out the sanctum sprint or the crabtoss or any other activity.

There simply are no rules for what you can and can not do to level. You only miss what you don’t explore.

Or you can buy another character slot

I would actaully level one of your character to level 80 just to learn the game. After that you have probably been able to watch the other classes and can try them out.

Straegen.2938:

Leaa.2943:

So you were obviously not there then and there for don’t understand how this worked. Before the mega servers, you could look at the server list and see the server as full depending on what time during the day it was.

You are mis-remembering how this worked. In the first year, yes it worked this way. Players could xfer during off hours. Anet fixed this in the second year so that it was a rolling average. Servers again sort of figured this out and would take entire weeks off to get xfers the following week but T1 servers remained Full most of the time.

In 2014 Anet decided to lock some servers before the last tournament and kept them that way for quite a while. In mid 2015 Anet did change how population was counted to be based on WvW populations but seemingly kept the locks in place for some servers. So basically servers have been locked in one form or another until post HoT. At the release of HoT, the population in WvW dropped like a rock and has basically remained that way. People thought it might jump back when players got bored of the PvE content but it simply didn’t happen.

As for implying I have not been around very long, I was in the Beta, Pre-Release and have been playing WvW almost exclusively since launch. I have roughly 4k hours in WvW alone. Heck my Anet play dates back to GW and a few thousand hours there as well.

I am not here to convince you, just wanted to tell you that what you said is missleading an d that you can not use full or no full servers as a meassurement over how good or bad wvw is doing. You obviously feel i am wrong, which i am actually not, and i do not remembering it wrong either, so this kind of leads nowere and i will leave because it lost it’s value.

Kaiser.9873:

Leaa.2943:

I don’t want to defend a-net because i do agree that it takes to long and wvw is no longer bleeding players we are flat out pooring out players from wvw, but to be fair here, it is not the same devs that works on wvw that works on pve bosses. And if one area get their stuff done before wvw devs, they will ofc release it.

What you can ask your self though is why wvw is not done yet whilst shatterer is, maybe a-net need to put more people on the wvw team and preferably before also the top servers going empty in wvw.

I dunno, but we had que to 3 maps on my server on todays reset, and i know the others had que as well. Maybe it is just your server?

Again not saying wvw are in trouble, i have said so for a year now, but it is not as bad as it is said here

The top servers are already shells of their old selves. 4 maps queued heavily to one map queued lightly. tin foil hat time Perhaps they are intentionally bleeding it like this so when all WvW is EotM-style they can say that it will be an improvement. By that time the only “WvW” players will be EotM regulars anyway.

I actually noticed this when i was on my NA account a week back (i am a eu player) that i had extremely high ping and very low fps for no reason and to a point were i just left, because it was unplayable.

How ever here is the thing, i have guildies who experience this issue from EU as well even though they play from EU . And the day before yesterday when i log in to my EU account it felt like i logged in to glue. I had 400 ping and 8 fps by standing still in the Timberlaine map. I could barely move and it did not go away. So i relog the game and now it is perfectly fine again. Right so i log in to wvw, and BAM same issue i stand in spawn with noone arround me and the maps was not full this was early daytime.

So i ask in guildchat if they have same thing and they say yes and relog and it will go away, so i did, and it went away. How ever i can’t really do this during primetime since then i have a 20 man que to relog to. Many of my guildies are dealing with this issue and it just changed from one day to another. We all play from different countries in EU so does not seem to be that we play from the same area. And it seem to affect both wvw and pve.

No you don’t have to go ranked, but you need to join as a guild team and not just join.

Also buy inscriptions from the vendor, the rare recepies will move you up fast and you can also make some gold with them, so check what is most worth buying by checking the trading company.

Artificier is very easy to level since you also can make a lot of potions, so open up the tab were you can add stuff and then make potions your level and that will also get you higher. Runes and sigils are also easy to make, and level with. How ever at high levels you will need those materials for other things, so when you cross the 400 don’t level through sigils unless you are swimming in those materials.

Straegen.2938:

Doing a quick google search we find players complaining about full servers through all last year:

02-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/JQ-Full

03-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Joining-Full-Servers/first#post5079440

4-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/How-to-get-into-a-FULL-server

5-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Server-Full

8-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/servers-full-causing-problem-for-new-players

9-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Full-Servers-is-their-an-end-in-sight

10-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Servers-that-are-full/first

11-2015: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-full-Please-why/first#post5740265

I can find more and older ones too. Full servers have been around a LONG time. This is actually the first time I can remember in a very long time that all servers were open.

So you were obviously not there then and there for don’t understand how this worked. Before the mega servers, you could look at the server list and see the server as full depending on what time during the day it was.
They were pending depending on how many that was logged in, and also due to how many accounts the server had on them. The problem was that ALL accounts was counting, including abandoned and old trial accounts. Which is why servers in the very bottom could be listed as very high even though there was not a single person doing wvw or pve. I was at such server at that point, and you can find posts about it if you look back.

Further more, even though some servers was showing as full during the primetime due to those that logged in, you could easy wait until after and then it would not be full anymore and you could join the server at 3 in the morning with a new account or move your old.

So again, you can not measure if wvw is bad due to server population status, because wvw was at it’s best up to roughly a year back when servers was not full.

Also mostly easy to bypass by adding a second name after. Which could be a name or just simply Xowen the second or X O W E N or anything the like. Can also be with different letter combination like Xoween or the like.

It is not a bug, as f2p account you can not buy the quagan backpack in the gemstore.

Also don’t throw them away. If you can’t salvage them, then use the mystic forge. This will give you a item back, sometimes a very good item, but never the less better then nothing. For example at lvl 70 something you get 4 kittenty exotics with stats that noone uses, save those and go to the mystic forge and if lucky you might get something good out of that. Sometimes you don’t get a good item, but there might be a rune on the item that you can salvage and sell for many gold.

I did not follow your link but by the answer above you seem to be looking for a messmer. They have stealth, they have a nice amount of burst damage, lot’s of magic through clones and illusions and they can be played from ranged and melee (depending on what weapon sets and build you use)

Had a fast look on youtube to see if i could find a video, and this is from world verses world, which is a pvp game mode in gw2 have, but it shows you what messmers can do. He do not use a stealth build, but you can use if you want, even though at this point stealth is not the thing, but if that is what you like, then go for it.

This is only a problem in NA, in EU we have different mu every week and there are no set top tier, like in NA were top 3 meet eachother every week, 4,5 and 6 every week and so on. I have an account in NA and i do find this extremely boring that the server order never switches except for the YB that broke through to tier 1.
My main acokitten in EU is more fun to play at since yeah we meet new servers each week, so the mu are not as stale as in NA.

How ever to be fair and coming from a person who don’t particularly care much about my account in NA more then that i play on it and ofc play for the server i am on, but what i wanted to say is that i feel the tier 1 are causing this issue by them self, since the handholding the last weeks are just flat out amazing.
I never seen such thing in EU and i played against all top server, and i seen some handholding every now and then, but what i see in NA tier 1 at this point it just makes me go “Wow did that really happen”. It is sad to watch it, but i don’t particularly care about it since it is not may mainaccount, BUT by doing this the tiers will never change so this is not that much of a a-net problem but more of a server issue that one of the top servers need to be handhold to stay on top, and even more so that the other server actually holding their hand even though they don’t have too, since they can stand on their own. So if you guys in NA wants changes then make it the EU way and let the servers carry them self and then you will see changes in each tier.

I don’t want to defend a-net because i do agree that it takes to long and wvw is no longer bleeding players we are flat out pooring out players from wvw, but to be fair here, it is not the same devs that works on wvw that works on pve bosses. And if one area get their stuff done before wvw devs, they will ofc release it.

What you can ask your self though is why wvw is not done yet whilst shatterer is, maybe a-net need to put more people on the wvw team and preferably before also the top servers going empty in wvw.

Only time the Lord are at the right spot is at reset. Rest of the week you find him pretty much everywhere. Very often he is outside on the keep/tower and we can farm champ bags all day long due to that. Other times he is at the gate were he can be killed whilst taking the gate down. The worst spot i seen was last week when we found him on top of the supply depot inside of a tower, i mean how the hell did he even get there?

Straegen.2938:

Leaa.2943:

There was never full servers before HoT either so that is not a measurement.

Prior to HoT all of T1 and part of T2 was locked in the US for a fairly long time. The populations were much higher as well.

HoT drained a lot of players out of WvW and many never returned. Those that did stay seem to be dropping off lately. T1 is now a hodge-podge of guilds I barely recognize. Only JQ seems to have kept a couple larger guilds in tact.

Unfortunately T1 this week is sending a lot of players out of the game. I know at least 5 that have quit this week due to general staleness of WvW. They probably would have played to at least the balance patch but BG/JQ have double teamed YB killing the last of the decent roaming there. I couldn’t get anyone I know to even log on.

I have accounts in both EU and NA and have been for many years. You are slightly right but still wrong. When the game went f2p we got full servers in both EU and NA, the game went f2p in august last year which was only 6 months back.
Before that there was no full servers, neither in EU nor NA.
WvW was at its best during the years before f2p and HoT, so no server population have nothing to do with what we are talking about here.
And i do not blame the f2p at all for it, just that we got more accounts in and that is why the servers became full just before HoT, but that is not when wvw were the best, this happens years before.

Deniara Devious.3948:

EU hasn’t had full server for a long while. We have just 2 servers, which are very high: Baruch Bay (BB) and Seafarer’s Rest (SFR). All the other gold servers are “high” population and others are medium.

“high” is also becoming a joke. Yesterday evening just 2 h after reset, we had just 5-10 players on EB and the borderlands even more dead. Desolation used to be tier #1 server.

Arenanet should quickly remove banners and give us the original Alpine borderland back. The more they wait, the more players leave the game.

There was never full servers before HoT either so that is not a measurement.

And i don’t want to flame here, but yeah Deso used to be, does not mean it will stay like that forever. You guys flamed your own server to death and people left it because of this. Top servers have shifted to be a lot about german, spannish and french servers all with huge zergs (not meaning they are good, but still huge).
We still have a few international servers fighting to stay in the top tiers, and some manage others don’t, some move down others up, it is a ever ongoing rollercoster.

EU is very different from NA we have mixed matches every week were na meet the same 3 servers over and over and over and have for years. EU is better that way imo.

With that said i would not say that wvw is dead, we are bleeding players and we could end up dead if nothing happens soon, i am not so positive at this point, but i guess hope dies last.

I agree that there is a lot of things that wvw is bleeding players and there is a lot that wrong with wvw, and a-net need to step up and work with their community and stop giving us what we don’t want and change the new maps to have working waypoints and make them smaller, but saying that wvw is dead is not really right.
Unless you are on the bottom servers then yes they are dead and have been for a long while, even before HoT came out, and should be merged with other servers, but the top 14 servers in EU and maybe top 8 in na do still have 24/7 ongoing matchups.
Ofc there is downtime, there always was but overall you can find nice fights in at least EB, and top servers mostly have some fights on the new maps as well.

Again don’t get me wrong wvw are in a terrible state, but it is not dead, yet.

As for the topic, i am working on my elitespec weapons which pretty much takes all my gametime outside of wvw. Wvw is the reason why i still play this game though.

Same issue and it annoys the hell out of me. The reason i payed all those gems even though it was expensive as hell, was to make my game convenient which i favor a lot. Instead i get grumpy each time i open the bag because i have to open all my bags over and over and over again.
And no it is not the minimizing that triggers it. I never minimize mine because i hate having it that way, it stresses me and i still have the bug

There actually seem to be a issue with DS lately. I been to two weird rounds lately were on the first he did two burn phases and then it took ages before the last one came up, he just flew around doing nothing really. We got to a point were we were about to give up, were he suddenly do the cut scene even though we actually did not do the last burnphase and he actually was not about to die but he did. We got reward but that one was weird.

Second one was yesterday, were he flew around spawning legendaries all over the place, we had two up at the same time, spawning at the same time. Obvisouly he can only surround one platform at the time, and the whole timer thingy bugged out for those legendaries. We managed to kill them and then he flew around again doing nothing and i thought great another one of those lost burn phases. Then suddenly he make the phase and we burn him and then cutscene being off sync, as in npc talking were they should not, but oh well he dies and we do get reward.

So overall he seem to be a bit out of sync. I also noticed some lag every now and then which also never happen to me before, don’t know if that have matter but thought i should mention it

curtegg.5216:

I don’t mind the end-zones being hard combat or event wise, but once you have it mapped out it should be easier to traverse (waypoints should never be contested).

And why there is gliding

Also to make sure you understand how pvp works in gw2 and that you don’t wait to pvp after lvl 80 because you misunderstood it, which is what many do and why i will mention this first.
When you enter the pvp lobby all your normal gear, stats, and what not is not counting at all what so ever. If you enter Heart of the Mist as a lvl 2 thief, you will be at the exact same spot as the lvl 80 thief that played for 3.5 years and have everything there is to have in game. The only thing that will be different is that the guy that been here for 3.5 years knows his skills and how to play his character. So pvp in this game is not about require gear that makes you strong and can gank people, you have to learn your class, the other classes and how to counter them. And this is why you should not wait to start, you should jump right in and learn by doing, because that is the only way you will get better.

Also fluffball pretty much nailed it regarding rotation and the like. There are no rotation or macros or crazy stats that you can grind for to win a game. There is only actions and reactions and why i urge you to start as soon as possible to learn.

As for classes, all of them are viable. Messmers are not boring at all, not if you know how to play them. But you should more pick a class that suits you. My advice if you don’t know at all what you want is to try them. If you have the expansion you have 5 character slots so make use of them and try each class you are thinking about. If you don’t like a class just erase and go with next, or save them for later. Most players in this game have one main, but many alts so they can play the class they like for the day. Main one and learn it, but make sure you play more classes. It will also make you better in counter other players since you know what it is they are throwing at you.

Remember that if you try a class and move to Heart of the Mist (the pvp lobby) you will get all your skills and what not unlocked instantly. Only for pvp though, but this means that you can try them out fully in pvp.

When i started the game i gathered everything and i still do, and i also save most things i salvage or get as loot. With this i craft ascended to my characters. I have never bought anything to craft it, i just wait until i have it all and then craft.The last year i simply can’t craft enough to get rid of all materials but now we need a lot of stuff to guildhall instead.
Point is, just gather and salvage and you don’t have to put in that much gold.

MPyu.3078:

Tornupto.2304:

There ARE Tanks and Healers in GW2 since HoT :S

Haha ^^ and there goes my knowlege.

Well he is not really that accurate and are leaving out a lot of info. There are still no healers or tanks in gw2 and will never be simply because the game is not built around it.
How ever what have changed is that some raid bosses in the new raid instance for example target players with the most toughness. This way you gear one player with the most toughness and mostly have the aggro. But you do not have anything that will keep aggro, like in any other mmo were a tank taunt the mob and then build up aggro to keep it on him or pull him off a player if the mob change target. This is not a thing in gw2 at all.

Same thing goes for healers, there are no healers in game at this point, there are support though, were two classes (druid and ele) have a good amount of heal options to put up that will take the group through the raid instance during heavy damage. Noone of those two classes have single target heals and they can not constantly keep one player up with “Ohkitten buttons” whilst healing the group, so in terms of a healer, GW2 still do not have such thing, but we do have good support classes.

There are also other classes having a lot of buffs and heals to share, but ele and druid have more focused heal skills.

Also to make sure you don’t missread this. As a ele you should really never stay on wateratunament. Learn the boss you fight and see were he do the damage spikes or need to clean players spikes and switch at that moment. Also earth give a lot of protection and you can stack that if you play with your auras.
There are many good eles out there with guides on youtube. First one comes to mind would be Wooden potato. This is a video about auro sharing, but he have many ele videos to watch and learn from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3heA0G9TeR4

Make sure to get your crafting professions to 500 so you can craft ascended gear.
Do your personal story
Join the new HoT maps and add heropoints to unlock your elite spec. Needs to be done on each character you make.
Do the HoT-story
Fractals and dungeons. Fractals should be first choice though since the more of them you do the harder they get and the better loot you get.
Do S-pvp. Join Heart of the Mist and start doing pvp matches.
Join World verses world and the 4 maps. Join Eternal Battleground first time since most people are there. Depending on server you joined you will be in battles for 24/7 during a whole week, reset on friday. You join and leave when ever you want.
Achivementhunting, jumping puzzle, worldboss events, world map events in the new maps and much much more depending on what mood you are in.

How long does it take to get to max level?
First character takes longer since you need to learn the way of the game and it also depends how much you play. I would say anything from a week to maybe a month or two if you play normal.
It is how ever not hard at all to level in GW2 and you have loads of options such as heartquests, world exploration, events, more events, personal story, world bosses, world verses world (big scale pvp), dungeons, pvp (were you get level scrolls as reward), crafting, gathering well pretty much everything you do in game give you xp.

What is PvP like?
Coming from Wow (as i understood you did due to your comment below) i would say pvp is amazing. It is not about grinding gear for 2 years so that you then can gank the players that just started. You have to rely on your build and your skills.
You can start doing pvp at lvl 2 and still have the exact same stats as a person that done it for years. You will have access to all skills/traits/runes/sigils/amulet that the other players have, even if you just started the game. Everybody get this when they enter the pvp-lobby.
BUT, with this said, pvp do have issues, and a lot of them, and the players that played pvp for a while are a bit unhappy at this point. This will not change your omg this is amazing feeling when you try it out. I had it my self coming from RIFT 3 years ago, simply because it is so different, but a good different. Today I do how ever also feel pvp have some issues that need to be worked on.
We also have world verses world, which is pvp i huge battle in several big maps going on 24/7 and resets one time each week.

Is there new introduction to Raiding any good?
Raiding came out about 2 months ago. You will not be able to rush in to raiding as soon as you hit lvl 80. You will need at least exotic gear and weapons for the first bosses. Exotic gear is not hard to get and can be crafted or obtained by numerous sort of marks or gold.
In the end you will want to level your crafting proffesions so you can craft your ascended gear. You also need to learn your skills and build and it is also good to know more then one class. Joining a guild that raids is probably a good start.
Again if you come from WoW then you need to understand that GW2 is different. There are no holy trinity with dedicated healers/tanks/dps in this game, but this does not mean you can not do hard content, believe me, you can, you just need to understand that you manage your health and share what boons and heal you can share. You will learn the way when you play the game

How good is the community? P.S Can’t be any worse than WoW
GW2 is well known to have a good community. Like any other games we have trolls too, but the amount of them is very few compared to how many nice people there are.
But we also don’t have issues like stealing a kill, or quest objects, and all players get their own loot so those issues never create drama.

Is the game difficult to comprehend?
Like most mmo’s GW2 have very easy starting areas, and the game gets more difficult the higher you get. How ever when you learned how to use your skills it will probably feel very easy in the open world as long as you move around heart quests, but as soon as you try to solo a champion or make your first dungeons you will probably run in to a shock. You will have to work with other players, but this is normal in this game, you group up and make what ever open world content there is.

In world verses world you will run in to difficulty that you need to learn to deal with. PvP is also hard until you learn and can be very challenging as well especially in the beginning when you don’t have a clue and your enemies do.
When you reach level 80 you will have the old lvl 80 zones which is probably more annoying then hard. I can still get a rage fit over mobs in Orr because they are just annoying. How ever join Silverwaste and then move over to the new maps in HoT and you have a open world that is not super hard, but not super easy either. Some people find it hard to deal with the new maps, but don’t worry you will learn.

So overall, GW2 have a lot to offer you and many hours to spend. You can play it casual or you can do the hard core way. Allthough what i have noticed from players coming from other mmo’s is that they need to relearn and understand that gw2 is different in so many ways were you have to be the person that drives you forward to explore and go and do what ever you want or feel like for the day. There are no special way of playing gw2, it is what you want it to be.

There are no questlogs in this game simply because there are not quests

What there are is heart quests which you make in the area were you are. When you have filled the quest bar in your top right corner you are done and automatically get a reward for it.

On your top right screen you also have your personal story showing. This you can disable in your options. This wont remove your story but it is not showing on the screen. You should make the personal story anyway, it is a huge part of leveling.

you get to loot the chest one time each 24 hours on each worldboss. This is accountwide, so do not work to switch character.

Um they just did yesterday. Buy a shared bag slot for 700 gems for each slot and then you share it with all your character.

Kite.2510:

…and instead consider giving some different form of traversing the environment.

The world of Core Tyria is much more flat than the HoT areas, and there is truly not many cases where we’ll actually need it. All gliding will do is give players immunity to fall damage, and mess up the mechanics of many jumping puzzles.

I think what upsets the players, isn’t the fact that they cann’t glide in Core Tyria, as much as it’s “not having any traveling mechanic”.
…that, and them falling to their deaths from Divinity’s highroads because they forgot they can’t glide!…

Instead, if you want to give some cool traversing mastery to the old world that badly, consider giving some sort of mount. Sure, it isn’t that useful for actual traveling with the huge amount of waypoints, but you can think of some clever uses for them besides an increase in speed. Then have one mastery for each of the five locations of the Vanila game (Maguma, Hoelbrack, Kryta, Ascalon and Orr), that gives a different mount that fits the theme of that area, and progressing each mastery would unlock more abilities for that mount.

If you want to allow gliding somewhere, consider just the big cities. It’s a cool place for all traveling methods to be available simultaneously regardless of location and expansion.

We don’t want mounts, nor do we need mounts in this game. This game have waypoints, and a lot of waypoints. It is by far the fastest way to travel. And gliding is more about exploring then using for travel since again, waypoints are faster if you just want to move from point a to point b.

Except for that the airstrike seem to cause lag on the map. Was watching it on another server the other day and the map got insanely laggy, and ended as soon as the strike was over.

Sinbold.8723:

Watched the video again, focusing on specific players, as well as the player who recorded it. Not sure if all the blinking around is from hacks or lag, but the blinking of a few toons (not going to put their names here cuz I don’t want to be infracted, but you can read their names) over much longer distances sure does look suspect. And the recorder had BIG skill lag. Any chance it could have been caused by recording? I have no idea- just asking if those in the know might know. I know a player that doesn’t use Teamspeak because it causes him to lag.

Ok you really don’t get this. First of all no it is not hacks, it is rubberbanding players who lags. The lags have nothing to do with the players pc or connection but the performance on the server. For example in eb there are fights with 60+ players on each zerg clashing in together. That means roughly 200 players were ALL have this issue. How we know? Well we see them dc, we see them not casting what they should only autoattacking, all those things we struggle with our self we see the enemies having same issue.

In homeborder this happens frequently even though there are actually not that many as 200 players there. The event in the middle is one issue. I also noticed the airstrike at SM on EB cause the same sort of lag. Yesterday i watched one and the mapchat filled with people asking if the lag is real for all. As soon as it stopped the lag ended.

Knighthonor.4061:

When Anet gave WvW vets, a chance to test out HoT’s new WvW maps, why didnt you all bring attention to the problems when it was in testing period?

We did on every beta that was made, i was on all but one, and we told this will happen and it did happen. So we have fullfilled our part by leaving feedback, writing posts and what not, A-Net choose to not listen to it. And gave us everything we did not want. Dead homeborders are the results. Comunites and guilds breaking up are the results. New players coming in have no clue how to fight so they get run over and leave because they dont understand how great this game mode is, because they never got to see it when it was at it’s best. And it did not go down because lack of players, players were complaining for a long time, and we also said people will leave, and now they are.

So what most of the people in this thread fails to see, which i think is hilarious because it is so visible, is the fact that they are all lagging so badly they can not cast anything, and if they cant it takes 10 sec before it goes off. Players in both team are rubberbanding like crazy all over the place.

And no, before you guys suggest this, no it is not the person with a bad pc or connection, this is what happens every day in fights with bigger groups, for EVERYBODY in that fight. We just either rubberband, cast something and i call it out and either it takes like 10 sec or more for it to go off or nothing happens at all, my bar just don’t react to my interaction. We mostly also loose a few players to dc every one of those fights.

It is unplayable and have been for a long while now. The dc’s showed up again a little while back, Mostly we loose 4-5 people on each fight due to dc.

So who is whining now?

Yes ofc i am. I have over 7000 hours played were most are inside of wvw so i am aware of the way you fight and how to use your skills, and this is not a issue that happen because i do not face enemies.
I also first thought that maybe it was due to lag, because i play on a higher tier wvw server with a lot of heavy zerg fights around, but i can’t really say that this is the case, unless this particular skill is easy affected by lag, but everything else is working as intended. The people that i talk to that say the same thing (also them very competent wvw players) and can’t releate it to lag.

Ok so lately i noticed something strange with the number 5 skill on the Great Sword, Grasping Darkness. I play wvw a lot and not really super sure when this first started but would guess 2 weeks ago maybe. So what happen is i target a victim i want to pull. I check until buffs run off from the victim and i hit the number 5 skill. What should happen here is that i pull the person towards me and a few others as well if they don’t have stab up. BUT here is what actually do happen which is absolutely nothing. As if i never pressed the button. It does not even goes on cooldown.
Ok so now i think well maybe it just glitched and i press again, all whilst the victim now noticed me and trying to kill me whilst i am standing there like an idiot trying to figure out what the hell is wrong and i am sure he must wonder what the hell is wrong with me as well Of course this only happens over a milisecond but smashing a key in a rotation that don’t goes kind of messes stuff up for me, and ther are no reason what so ever for it to not go off.
The issue do not happen every time i use the skill, most of the times it is going great, but every other time this just comes up. I also have the issue in pvp matches. Not sure about pve, as rotation in open world pve is not really that much of an issue if something don’t go off, but wvw and pvp for sure.

Anyway when it happen today again whilst fighting a thief in wvw i asked in guild chat if anyone else had the same issue and it turn out that they do. But they have no explanation to why it happen either.

So is this a known issue, is there a reason for it to happen, and is there something i can do to make sure it do not happen when i really need the skill to go off?

third patch out and the walls are still an issue. They spawn with zero hp and it happens more often then not on towers.

And green keep on EB is forever contested because of a trigger happy npc shooting at drakes in the water (not even hiting them and how hard can it be to remove those drakes until problems is solved). The npc been this way since HoT came out, but the last 2 weeks the keep is more or less perma contested.