Guild Wars 2

While it’s probably a good idea to toggle off auto-attack if you’re going to go AFK while in the wilderness, I wouldn’t worry about getting banned for botting if it happens once in a while. Someone who’s parked in a corner and happens to be auto-attacking mobs as they pass by for a few minutes is very different than the real botters who park themselves right in the middle of an event spawn point for hours (even days) at a time.

I think its a “your mileage my vary” situation. I’ve done two humans. The first one took a rather leasurely and quiet stroll around the Shaemoor Fields, finishing all hearts in Shaemoor a hair below level 5 and only getting a couple events along the way. On my second human, all the stars seemed to come into alignment and I was getting one event after another the entire way (and sometimes even had multiple events going on either side of me) — and I left Shaemoor Fields at level 7, even though I went through the area faster than the first time.

Grinding mobs is a horribly slow and boring way to level. You’ve got to catch the dynamic events, and if you manage to time it just right that you can catch a wave of events and ride them through a zone you can level up outrageously fast. Unfortunately, sometimes the opposite seems to happen and you seem to hit this dry spell when all the events are still on cooldown.

You can also have a little fun with the botters in some areas. The other night when I passed by the knocked out bridge in Kessex Hills (between Thunder Ridge and Greyhoof Meadows), some people must have lured a champion mob with a knockback attack over to where the botters plant themselves. Because when I passed by, all the botters were flung across the river below… still standing around spamming their turrets and AoEs, but completely out of range of the centaur attack dynamic event. Wish I knew who coordinated that so I could send them a nice little thank you gift (and ask to be part of it next time)!

If you’re going to salvage all your guardian’s gear, you may as well just delete him — but that would be nuts considering how much time you put in. Just keep your guardian as is and either “retire” him from active play (who knows, you may decide to pull him out of retirement at some point), or use him exclusively for PvP going forward. If nothing else, he’s good to go for WvW.

Start your warrior as a different race, and then enjoy a new class, a new region and a new racial storyline.

I started a new Norn character two nights ago, and as others have said the first line that each character speaks is usually missing (I think its actually “always”… but need to do a little more testing before saying that). I’m going to create a new throw-away character tonight to see if that’s still the case, and if it’s just male now or still both male and female, and will start pumping out bug reports if it’s still occurring.

Today’s patch notes say that missing female VO lines were restored. I’m assuming the males are still on the way.

I’ve been getting a few off the Risen in the swamps in the south-west of Kessex Hills.

Shael.4703:

Don’t believe what those who said “it’s a pure gameplay mechanic and is not part of the lore” are saying, they didn’t read the dialogues, talked to NPCs, or did research :p No seriously.

Well, the first scout you talk to in the asura starting map says this about them:

“As you gad about, you’ll encounter our magical matter-transportive devices, more commonly known as waypoints. They’re mini-gates that – for a minimal fee – transport you across great distances. They’re the second most convenient way to travel, next to our gates.”

But the first scout you talk to in Shaemoor says this:

“This is a waypoint. Waypoints appear on your compass, which is in the lower-right corner of your screen. You can also see them on the world map, which you can access by pressing “M.” Press “M” again to close the world map. To teleport to a waypoint, open your world map and click on the waypoint to which you want to travel."

The asura offer an in-character description, but don’t mention anything about the actual mechanics of how to go about using said waypoints. The only places where any sort of mechanics on waypoint usage are mentioned are very out of character.

There are also a couple places where you encounter a waypoint in the open world, but a story instance takes place in the same area and you don’t see the waypoint in the instanced version of the area.

While waypoints probably exist in some form in the lore (probably some kind of relays or signal repeaters for the above-ground asura gate network), the way we as players use them (including how frequently and easily we can do so, and how many different waypoints are available to us) is most likely greatly exaggerated for the sake of both convenient gameplay and drama (i.e. NPC guards not being able to just blip away to the nearest waypoint in an ambush).

In my humble opinion, there are some things that are better left as mysteries without going into any further details than… “it’s magic”. Otherwise you’re going to have to come up with some seriously contrived story to try to shoehorn a game mechanic into an in-character explanation. And I don’t mean that flippantly. I think we can assume the asura understand how these things actually work just as easily as you or I understand how to ride a bicycle, and as such they simply have no reason to ever talk about it. But if a human were to ask how they work, the asura would just roll his eyes and say “Look, booka. If I tried to explain it to you, your head would explode. Literally. That’s how much knowledge you’d have to try to absorb into that puny little lump of grey matter you call a brain. While it would, admittedly, be mildly amusing to watch your contorted facial expressions for the first few seconds, the whole exploding head part would be decidedly less desirable, considering I just had my lab coat dry cleaned.”

While some NPCs briefly mention the waypoints, I don’t believe they’re ever talked about anywhere else in the lore (such as in the novels, etc). Personally, I just treat them as a gameplay convenience mechanic, similar to how we’re able to carry several full suits of armor, a dozen weapons, several hundred lumps of ore, wood, hides and various random monster parts, not to mention thousands of copper coins, in our backpacks.

As much as I love to roleplay, there are some things where you just have to nod and say “it’s magic”, then quickly move on. ;-)

FYI – the same thing happened to my wife’s account. We poked around for a good 20 minutes trying to figure out what happened, then while she was sending in a support ticket I tried to log in to her account on my PC just to rule out some odd PC problem. I connected just fine, then she tried again on hers and got in. I’m not sure what happened, but I’d recommend waiting 30 minutes to an hour and trying again, and then if it’s still whacked out send in a ticket to support.

If you’re up for building your own PC, NewEgg.com is fantastic. I build PCs for friends and family and have been using them for years — very competitive prices, and very good with returns if you happen to get a bad component.

If you want to buy a pre-built system, Falcon Northwest is top notch. They’re more expensive than a “commodity PC factory” like Dell and Gateway, but their systems are very high quality, they don’t cut corners, and they don’t outsource their tech support.

First, try a simple reboot to make sure it isn’t some fluke glitch. Then pop open your PC, take a can of compressed air and blow out any dust bunnies around your graphics card’s and CPU’s fans (overheating can cause graphics cards to flip out like that). If that still doesn’t work… it may be time to invest in a new graphics card.

Here is the warrior strategy guide for boss fights:

You can’t reset your skill points, but you will earn A LOT more than you need by the time you hit 80, so nothing will truly be wasted.

In general, I use a scepter and dagger when fighting on my own or in small groups, and a staff when doing events with lots of people. The scepter is faster casting and lets you be more mobile. The staff is great when you have the luxury of others holding aggro while you stand back and let loose with slow but powerful artillery strikes.

For utility skills, the first one I chose was Glyph of Elemental Power since it enhances all your skills. Arcane Wave/Blast/Power are great when you need to spike an opponent quickly. And as El Nazgir said, if you pick a utility skill that’s a blast finisher you can use it to create your own combos off your AoE fields (Lava Font, Static Field, Frozen Ground, etc).

For traits, remember that you have separate trait builds for PvE and PvP, and you can freely change your PvP build as often as you like. For PvP, I focus on Air, Earth and Arcane; in PvE I focus on Fire, Water and Arcane.

Soulbound items for a deleted character will remain in your bank, but can never be withdrawn, even if you create a new character with the same name. The only way to remove them from the bank is to destroy them.

Sell or salvage any soulbound items first before deleting your character, then stick the coins or materials in the bank.

For melee, I use a great sword or hammer. You give up a little defense, but get back a lot more damage potential. Great sword is good when you need to be mobile, hammer is good if you need to keep someone else from being mobile.

For ranged, I normally use a long bow when facing packs of multiple enemies or a rifle when facing a single, strong opponent. Long bow has better AoE skills, the rifle has better single target focused fire skills.

And remember that despite the heavy armor warriors aren’t indestructible juggernaughts. Champions can tear through you like a wet napkin, and even weaker enemies can take you down pretty quick if you get caught in the middle of a pack. Soften them up with ranged attacks first, then jump into melee for the kill. And dodge. A lot.

The miniature Rytlock, chalice of glory and tome of influence are one-time items. You’ll only get them on your first character.

For me, I focus more on the journey than the destination. That’s not to say I’m just wandering around aimlessly (though that can be surprisingly fun too). I do have goals, and I know where I’m going. But my rewards are all the experiences I have, and all the things I discover, along the way. When I finally put down the elder dragons, I’ll look back at all the things I’ve done and experienced on my journey. And that, to me, will be its own reward.

The Shaders and Post-processing options will reduce the visual effects of skills. Reducing Shadows will also help — if you set it to Low you’ll only get a generic blob shadow under characters instead of the full character shadows.