Guild Wars 2

My mesmers wear them on their WvW equipment, since I’m mostly running in public zergs, and it’s the most comfortable way for me to keep up with everyone without someone that’s giving me swiftness reliably. I also sometimes use those sets when doing map exploration on said mesmers, but that’s about it.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Additional limitations:

• one entry per account

sigh decisions, decisions … I easily have ten characters that would qualify for this, and no idea which one to choose. This is harder than the last contest … I’ll have to seriously think about it.

Meanwhile, my little Asura warrior is still standing outside of CoE, begging me to have another chance at a contest, but somehow I feel that his cuddly blue quaggan backpack doesn’t quite fit the rest of his outfit . Maybe it’s time for him to get something more serious to carry around …

Either check the background of your team listing, or press “b” to bring up the scoreboard. Both should show you the colour of your team.

There also is an option to show team colours always, which will temporarily dye your outfit and that of other players around you in their respective team colours while you are in wvw/spvp/activities.

I’ve finally dared to pug a few different dungeons over the last couple of days (only ever dared TA and some story modes before), and I’ve actually met my very first pug bearbow that way. Longbow, bear, and always sending in the pet before everybody else is ready. Interesting to watch .

The rest of the runs were decent, some better, some worse, fortunately only one that was a complete fail (but the instance opener left early, so it wasn’t too painful). Still, I feel like I’m not really getting anywhere, I don’t seem to have the luck of finding pugs that I can learn some decent strategies from. TA up with two guardians and no reflects on Malrona? I was hoping to pick up a few tips on when to throw my feedback and how to mesh with the guardian(s) reflects instead of just duplicating them, but I was out of luck there.

On mesmer, I’ve had an easy time with sword/sword and sword/pistol and traited 6/6/0/0/2. The phantasms (I traited both sword and pistol in this case) do a lot of damage, and if you use the healing signet to reset phantasm cooldown, you can have three of them on her right at the start of the fight. Consider bringing your race minion(s) as elite, too, if you can’t make full use of timewarp, and cast that right at the start of the fight.

Ilium.3160:

why should a player be forced to join a large guild in order to complete an event that is open to all?

Nobody’s forced to join any guilds to do this. I’m currently in a guild all by myself, with nobody else as members, but I’ve already spent a couple of hourse two days in a row collecting gold rewards in the pavillion (and I am definitely not a farming kind of player).

Keep an eye on the lfg tool (open world → living story) for people offering taxi service to organized pavillion instances, or just put up a group yourself looking for a taxi, and you’ll find a decent instance to do this event fairly quickly. It actually requires a lot less on the part of the people around you than for example the marionette fight did, it’s a simple, straight-forward event. As long as people communicate on map chat and don’t just blindly hit anything that crosses their path, things go surprisingly smooth.

As for double punishment, it’s a question of reward vs. attendance price. If you do it wrong, the event fails … only this time, the fail is so obvious (by drawing out the fight for hours in some cases) that I’m surprised to see the number of people still trying to zerg this event. I’m all for making large events accessible for casual players, but this one already is so easy, putting a deadline on it would really amount to handing out loot for just showing up.

Keep an eye on the lfg tool. Organised Boss Blizz groups tend to advertise there if they’re not full. I got into one this morning that got me over 150 tickets in about 90 minutes.

You’re on NA, right? My accounts both are on EU unfortunately

Lilith Ajit.6173:

ASURA dies

Great job

Thanks . I do have a lot of non-Asura characters, and try to like them all equally, but it’s hard. The way my Asura move their limbs and ears when they move, the dodge-somersault and the phrases they use all the time just make them come out first every time. Have you ever seen (or rather heard) a male Asura in the cut-scene towards the end of Arah path 3 say “a chicken? an un-dead chicken?” with that totally unbelieving tone in his voice? That alone makes it worth it playing Asura .

I had a hard time deciding which of my characters I should use (I have way too many of them ). But since I don’t have the resources to compete with people spending tons of gold on new outfits anyway, I decided to instead follow Lilith’s suggestion and go with the characters that I most enjoy playing .

First of course is my favourite character, my little mesmer. She originally started out as an experiment when I unexpectedly found myself with a 2nd account (long story), after two failed tries at starting mesmers on my main account. For some reason, this time the class finally clicked with me, and she soon became my favourite. She has very little resources in skins and dyes, but I think she’s still presentable . And where else to show her, than her (and my) favourite dungeon, Twilight Arbor.

For medium, I really wanted to show my ranger, my first character in this game, first to 80, and long-time main character. I got a ton of skins just for him, but everything that looked even half-way fashionable turned out to have horrible clipping issues. I eventually concluded that there is just no such thing as a fashionable max-sized, male, medium-armoured Charr in this game, so I turned to my ingi instead who had just reached level 45 and thus was able to enter Caudecus’s manor. She did profit from the skins I got for the ranger (my main account at least has a better-filled wardrobe and dye store) and is quite happy with her new outfit (the dyes are all her own though, the ranger never would’ve shown himself wearing those colours ).

Heavy armour shows my warrior. 2nd class to 80 (after the ranger, and before ele, mesmer and guard), but by far the class I am worst at playing seriously. Still, even if I’m a total failure at playing warrior, he is an awesome character to goof around with and have all kinds of fun, like bashing enemies in WvW with his candy cane hammer. As his hobby is all things golem, he currently is on a quest for a full set of golemancer runes and as thus has imposed his non-existent skills on many a luckless CoE party (friends only, no PUGs were harmed in his adventures ).

Galen Grey.4709:

Not for everyone but a big plus if you’re into story.

Oh yes, there’s some nice story lines and character hidden in the different paths of the personal story, although it’ll probably take a while (and several characters) for most people to start to see the picture.

I very well remember how I one day wanted to pick up my elementalist’s personal story line and was thoroughly confused because it sent me to find someone named Tegwen in the Bloodtide Coast. For some reason, I remembered being supposed to look for her in the Caledon Forest … which I was, but not on the elementalist, but on the much lower level guardian. That was the first time I realized that a lot of the npcs do in fact appear in several different story missions and paths. Later that same day I switched to my (rarely played) warrior and found that he was on the way to meeting an npc someplace in Orr … the very same Tegwen that also appeared in the two story missions I had done just before.

I have since noticed a lot of story npcs appearing in different spots of the story line, and even though it’s not an activity that by itself would keep me busy for long, playing all the different story line options and seeing how the story as a whole unfolds is something I very much enjoy about this game.

First of all, go to the Order of Whispers headquarters in Boodtide Coast. There is a POI hidden deep in the Chantry of Secrets that isn’t associated with any of the world maps. You’ll see on the loading screen if you have that counted or not.

If it’s not the Chantry of Secrets, check the world map. Mouse over each of the map names, and the tooltip will tell you the number of available and found POIs on that map. Once you’ve found the map, travel to it to get the POI shown on the map.

Define “endgame” please. At what point do you think you have reached the end of the game?

• once one of your characters has reached level 80 (which actually happens pretty early in the game for most people)?
• once you have a lvl 80 of each class?
• once one of your characters has gotten to 100% map exploration?
• once one of your characters has finished their personal story?
• once you have finished all dungeon paths available?
• once you have succeeded in all jumping puzzles?
• once you have done all explorer achievements?
• once you have filled your wardrobe with all the weapon and armour skins you want?
• once you have done all the boss achievements for the world boss events?
• once you have reached maximum crafting levels in all crafting disciplines?
• once you have aquired all the weapon and armour stats you would like to use (possibly multiple sets for open world/dungeons/wvw)?

Check the achievements tab in your hero panel. You will find achievements associated with all of the points above, and more. Almost (?) none of them require you to reach level 80 before working on them though, so you could say endgame in this game starts the moment you create your first character. What you do with that character, which parts of the game interest you and how long it keeps you busy is totally up to you.

To make things even more flexible, you don’t have to stick with that one character. Pretty much everything in this game is account bound until you actually use it, so you can use dungeon tokens won by one character to buy equipment for another, or work on slayer achievements with several different classes, with all their kills adding up. You have the freedom to play with whatever character you like and still work towards your account goals rather than having to run specific content with a single character to make sure that that character gets the rewards out of it.

Personally, I’ve had my first character at lvl 80 about a year and a half ago, and still am busy trying to do too many parts of this game at once, because I’m having fun all over the place. I know people that have exhausted the parts of the game that were fun to them a long time ago, but until you try everything you won’t know how much of this game appeals to you. Just don’t expect it to become radically different just because you have reached a certain level, since that isn’t how this game works.

Phadde.7362:

I disagree that your joy of having a trophy that you find particularly awesome because it’s really hard to get is at the expense of those that cannot get it – It’s in a big respect as a result of that, but not at the expense;

It depends on the kind of trophy. You have previously expressed that you’d love unique skins as rewards for hard content, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. There are quite a few trophies like that in game already (green and yellow SAB weapons as well as the mini Liadri come to my mind as the ones I’d love to have but simply wasn’t good enough to win), and I’d really like to see more stuff like that, even if I won’t be able to get it myself.

On the other hand, others on this thread have asked for unique, stronger equipment as reward for harder content, quite similar to how you only get the best in slot equipment from the top-end raids in other games (or not, if you are unlucky … I’ve myself gone a whole season in a previous game never getting my best in slot item despite raiding twice a week for a year because the drop-chance was so low that we never even got enough of those items for each of the original raid members).

I strongly disagree with locking best (stat-wise) gear behind hardcore challenges because all it does is increase the gap between players, thus actually leading to “gain on other people’s expenses”. That’s not what GW2 was about until now, and I hope it’ll never go that route.

Slightly off-topic, so to get back onto the original topic: I’d love harder challenges with unique decorative rewards (skins, toys, minis, …), but prefer them to be avoidable for people not into that kind of thing (e.g. crown pavilion challenges are great, but Tequatl on the road out of Divinity’s Reach most certainly would not be ok). Game-wise I’ll most likely stick with this one for a while yet, since it allows me to switch between challenging content (well, challenging for me) when I feel like it and casual outings all over the place when real life holds enough stress already.

cranked.3812:

I know people (you) have busy lives but going afk from time to time for 3-10 minutes? Seriously? … Either allocate the time to finish a path or wait until you have the time.

I don’t know about the OP, but from my experience there are life situations where “allocate the time to finish” is simply not possible. If for example you have small children to look after, there’s no guarantee ever that you’ll have even 20 minutes uninterrupted. Put a baby down for a nap, look forward to a quite hour, and five minutes later the baby wakes up again …

OP, you may have a difficult time with pugs, but there are many people around that do understand the call of real life. Finding a guild that is fine with frequent afk-ing due to real life helps a lot, and there are many such guilds out there, you just have to look for them.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Man… I think I’ve kicked a dozen Charr from my groups in one run. They just couldn’t Charr. I did meet an amazingly fashionable kitty once… I kept him even though he was a bowbear.

You don’t happen to remember the secret of that fashion that Charr utilized, do you? I’ve spent hours this weekend trying to make my Charr ranger look anything other than a big sack full of fleas, but failed miserably . I’ve come to the conclusion that fashionable male Charr in medium armour just don’t happen sigh .

On topic: I’m one of the people that don’t post lfgs unless I’m already in group with two or three people I know, since I do in fact feel an obligation to know about the dungeon (and if worst case happens, know how to save the run) if I start the group myself. If we just need to pug one or two spots I feel comfortable in getting that done, but I’m not confident enough in “leading” four total strangers through places I don’t know very well myself.

Monod.3562:

It’s not just the reduction of choices for dailies that concerns me, it’s the reduction of variety too.

Having Condition Applier / Remover / Dodger / Reviver on a four-day loop seems strange to me. They are just not that interesting to be so frequent.

Is Mystic Forgesmith coming back? Is Ambient Killer? A whole bunch of different dailies from before are now rare or missing. It makes doing dailies now seem a bit repetitive and boring.

And I really miss the Daily Activity Participation. I did an activity every day before April 15th, and I enjoyed doing them, but I’ve hardly done any since then, and it seems weird to say this but without the 1 AP maybe they don’t really seem worthwhile to do anymore.

Actually there’s a big difference between the former (conditions/dodger/reviver) and later (forge/ambient/activity) groups of achievements: the first group is available in all game modes, the later is either only pve/wvw or strictly pve, leaving the pvp players out of the loop. That’s why dailies like condition applier or skill interruptor pop up every day now.

Personally, after taking some time to get used to the new dailies, I’m actually fine with them now. The dailies don’t always come as easily any more as they did before the patch (when I hardly ever had to look at the choices but often finished the daily before I even knew it), but that makes them feel more like an actual achievement than a log-in-bonus, which I am fine with.

But then I won’t loose any sleep over missing out on a laurel … there’s alway another day with another laurel waiting.

MauricioCezar.2673:

Now, for science I’m doing map completion once again (3rd time) , and completed so far Maguuma, Kryta and Northern shiverpeaks without a singel key from completiom. This is 65% of map completed so far.

Not sure, But I think that get keys without gems is kinda harder after patch, yes.

The first six maps I completed after the patch got me four keys … and I was really trying to farm transmutation charges at the time . It’s totally random, and the amount of maps either you or I completed is way too small to give any indication of whether the drop rate was changed or not.

As for keys in the open world, I don’t remember ever finding one myself, and only last week actually noticed one dropping from a mob (for a friend of mine) for the first time, so they really are super rare.

The kind of groups you are looking for belong into the “Living Story – Open World PvE” Category I would guess … or at least that’s where I would go looking for them. It isn’t technically living story, but definitely open world pve .

Bolthar.7192:

This is what I’m trying to say: A system SIMILAR to “traditional” questing could be used to introduce side story, history and lore and give small characters or NPCs identity and strengthen the identity of larger characters.

So basically you are looking for more personal story type storylines? Stories kind of revolving around/relying on you as a single hero rather than the event line stories that revolve around locations and npcs and the player heroes that help are interchangeable? Stories where you can set the pace rather than the world/game, where your input progresses the story instead of the event schedule?

Spiral.3724:

As a tailor, there is nothing unique about the clothes I make until level 400.

As somebody above already mentioned, there actually are 8 sets of skins per armour class that are exclusively crafted, six of them before you hit 400 in your craft (one skin set per crafting tier plus an extra one for rares).

You usually can get these cheap off the trading post, since there is usually more supply than demand, but adding even twice as many skin sets to crafting won’t change that, as the number of tailors (or leatherworkers or armorsmiths) trying to sell their wares will still quickly exceed the number of characters that need said armour while leveling.

I can’t remember Tazza ever focussing on my ele (no surprise there, since she’s mostly in WvW gear running with similarly geared guildies), but my mesmers both have had the honour since I’ve switched them to full berzerker gear (still in mixed-gear guild groups), so my guess would be that it’s related to damage output rather than class.

There are a few npcs around that like to focus on just one group member if you play without stacking, Lupicus is the other one that quickly comes to mind that can be really bad at focussing.

Thanks a lot for those links! I don’t often have the chance to watch videos, but they did lead me to some written build guides that look like what I’m looking for.

I’m really looking for anything but mesmer (I feel like I’ve got that one well-covered thanks to some people here answering my tons of questions ) and necromancer (the one class I have yet to play beyond level 20).

Bolthar.7192:

Dynamic events were supposed to be the new form of questing in GW2 and they have been a welcome addition to MMOs. However a weakness I see in them is that they don’t tell much of a story and don’t take you to new parts of the world the way traditional questing can.

Actually they do, but you have to be more observant to find the “quest lines” that other games shove right in your face.

A while ago, I came upon a dynamic event somewhere in the Iron Marches that I had done quite often before, but rarely ever saw through to the end (a choice which I very much appreciate, if I get tired of an event I can just leave it and still get a form of reward if it goes through). This time, I did not only stay until the end but hung around to check out the lengthy conversation the quest npc had with an npc at the destination. Eventually, that other npc started an event as a result of this conversation … which, again after some npc conversation led to yet another event that I had often done before, too, but never realized its origin. In the end, it turned out to be a chain of 8 or 9 events which told quite a complex story to whoever was willing to listen to the npcs and took you clear across the zone through a variety of locations.

That’s just one event chain out of many all over Tyria. Each zone has them, some shorter with just two or three events linkes, and some fairly long and complex. Even the stupid boar in Queensdale has a story attached to it, although few people bother to listen to the npcs (ok, this one is short, but it’s there). So this is where I disagree with your view of things: Events do tell stories just as well as other games, this game simply doesn’t force you to observe them but leaves it up to you to do so or ignore the story.

As for the “take you to new parts of the world”, I’m actually very much satisfied with finding my own way through the world. The personal story does take you places (and can offer quite a bit of “traditional story questing” feeling), but for the rest, you are free to explore where your fancy takes you, instead of having to follow where some quest designer wants you to go. To me, map exploration is all the incentive I need to go out in the world, to find what large and small stories are hidden away in the next map, and even on my fourth full world exploration I’m still finding events and stories I hadn’t seen before.

I’ve been googling for a few days trying to find a comprehensive list of the current meta builds for dungeon runs, but so far haven’t really gotten anywhere. Is there a list somewhere or would you be so kind to give me links to the builds that are currently considered meta? I’m having a hard time figuring out which builds are up-to-date or outdated in the professions forums.

I can’t decide which of my light armour class characters I should use … I’m sure that no matter how I decide, at least two or three of the other characters will be offended sigh

Oh well, I’ll just go and figure out some decent outfits for warrior and ranger for now … I’ve not paid enough attention to those two anyway, high time I fix that .

May I get a “mapping” tag for mapping Cursed Shores? Those nasty risen are always keeping me away from the few points I still need. Sounds silly, but why should Cursed Shores be in any way different where dangers of exploration are concerned than the WvW maps?

Starting early actually is a good tip. I’ve got the WvW maps completely explored on four (or is it five already?) characters, going a bit at a time whenever the maps looked helpful, and each of them got those maps explored fully long before they got to 100%. At least two of them got it done before I even started getting involved in WvW, just by running for whatever points I was missing when they were in my server’s favour. Off-peak hours like early Sunday mornings are great for this.

Plus I’ve got one character who got all of her WvW maps done on a server that was the absolute bottom of the barrel at the time, rarely ever blue and never ever green, but outnumbered on pretty much every map all the time (except maybe sometimes EB). I fondly remember the night I was 3-manning the green borderland’s keeps with two random strangers I had met while trying for some missing POIs, and thus finally completing the last of the WvW maps on her.

To make a long story short: Yes, mapping the WvW maps can be a nuisance, especially if you are not into WvW and/or are unlucky with server pairings, but it’s no more or less of a nuisance than some other (PvE) maps are to other players. Just keep checking back into WvW whenever you’ve got time to spare and see if you can’t get a few of the missing points. You’ll get there in the long run, we all have. Good luck!

Some buffs stack in intensity or duration, others don’t. Check tooltips and/or your experience in-game to figure out which do what.

As a general rule, 25% swiftness effects (traveler rune 6-set bonus as well as the class-specific signets that many classes have) don’t normally stack with 33% swiftness boons.

My mesmers still value their traveler runes, since it’s the only way for them to have a passive movement speed increase that they don’t have to actively maintain all the time.

Please, don’t post stuff like this in the morning, I’ve got the whole office looking at me questioningly for laughing out loud . It sounds like so much fun (at least reading it … I guess if my kids started vote-kicking me it would take some days before I could see the fun in that situation ).

May I ask how old your kids are? My girls are just starting to get into the game, both playing asura (elementalist for the older one and bearbow for the youngest ), but far from entering dungeons yet. Unfortunately their dad refuses to play the game (he’s more into “serious” MMOs he says), but reading your posts I’m actually looking forward to 3-manning some dungeons with the girls one day.

Taygus.4571:

It all comes down to repeating the same tasks over and over again, to get everything you want. People want to do different tasks for different items.

Then do different tasks? If it’s all about “grinding gold”, then there are a multitude of ways to gain gold in-game. Find the way(s) that you enjoy, and suddenly gaining gold isn’t even a grind any longer but just a by-product of spending your time with activities that are actually fun to you.

If the game can not offer you anything fun without you spending countless hours on un-fun activities first, then maybe it’s time for you to sit back and seriously reconsider how you are spending your free time.

Personally, I enjoy this game precisely because it does not force me to run a specific dungeon or kill a specific boss countless times just to get a chance at a specific reward. It allows me to choose freely whatever activity I’m in the mood for at any point, no matter if it’s leveling, map exploration, dungeons, WvW, sPvP or whatever, and while I spend my time doing things I enjoy, all kinds of skins, crafting materials and currencies pile up in my bank account, until I realize that I’ve actually got enough to craft or buy something nice I’ve been looking forward to.

I quit my last MMO because the equipment I “needed” to make my characters fit for the endgame raids I wanted to run were only found on specific bosses in specific instances. If I wanted to go for a competitive character build for endgame, I had to run that instance until my fingers bleed, and long past the point of actually enjoying the content. That is what I consider grind.

A game like GW2 that allows me to play whatever content I enjoy and still know that I’m making progress towards the equipment I’d like to aquire is a refreshing concept. After more than 20 years of playing MUDs and MMOs, this game has become one of my all-time favourites, exactly because I always find something fun to do and never feel forced to grind for anything.

But maybe I’m just to old to see the grind …

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I say “lfg Only pink dyes”. I kick anyone who will not comply. It’s so easy.

You should make an lfg like that on EU. My human mesmer is dying to get into a group that appreciates her pink outfits .

apheluhu.3169:

In guild wars 2, what criteria do you use to determine a good profession for yourself?

Good question … and one that I have yet to find an answer to, unless you consider all of them a viable option .

The one thing I love about this game is the versatility of the classes. Depending on what weapons you wield, what utility skills you equip and what traits you choose, you will have a radically different gameplay experience with a single class.

I have a few classes at 80 (ranger, warrior, elementalist and two mesmers, with a guardian at 70+ and everything else on the way up), and actually have two or even three different sets of armour and trinkets, and pretty much one or more of each usable weapon on every max-level character (the others level too quickly and get new equipment every 5-10 levels anyway).

Of course there are weapon, skill and trait sets that I prefer to others, sometimes because of the utility in a given situation (like ranged staff aoe on my elementalist for zerg-like content and melee dual daggers on the same character for solo adventures), sometimes simply because the combination of character and equipment make me smile (Asura warrior wielding a candycane hammer ).

For me, there’s really no way to know in advance if I enjoy playing a particular combination or not, or if the class/weapon I enjoy today won’t be eclipsed by another combination tomorrow.

From what you’ve written in this thread, ranger may actually be your best bet to get into the game. To get started, get your hands on a couple of bows (by level 7 you will open up the ability to swap between two weapon choices in combat, so making a ranger with a combination of shortbow and longbow is viable), find some kind of bear to tame (if I’m not mistaken, there’s one in the Norn starter city somewhere) so you’ll have a decent tanking pet, and check out the world. As a “bearbow” ranger you won’t have much need to kite, much less to dodge, so you can gradually get involved in the combat system.

Once you are comfortable, try out different weapon sets (I really enjoy the ranger as a melee character with greatsword, sword/warhorn or axe/warhorn) and different classes. Like someone above said, there’s nothing stoping you from using all five character slots to experiment with different classes and races. You may even want to play some of them to level 30, both to get a feel for the class and to experience the personal story, which up to level 30 is different for each race.

Most of all: have fun! If you find a particular character not fun, try to change things (weapons, utility skills, traits once you get them), or just try another character. This game may seem a bit counter-intuitive if your ‘mmo thinking’ is heavily influenced by other games, but as long as you go at it with an open mind, I’m sure you’ll find something fun to do!

Just run around the maps everywhere you haven’t been yet. Uncovering maps and unlocking waypoints/pois/vistas gives a ton of xp. Don’t bother with the more complicated hearts and skill challenges, only take those that come naturally while passing by. Do try to tag any event that crosses your path, they give good experience, too.

StinVec.3621:

Here is a list by Lexy.3912 of all waypoints/POIs/etc added by Living Story since launch until earlier this year. I’m not sure if others have been added since the Marionette’s Landing.

There’s two more in Lion’s Arch that only came with the Battle of LA if I recall correctly: one in the middle of the harbour, where the breachmaker used to be during the invasion, and another one east of the portal that leads to Lornar’s Pass.

By the way, you can always figure out what maps have missing POIs if you hover over the map name on the world map as the tooltip will show you the number of discovered and available POIs in that map. You will only see undiscovered POIs on the world map if you are in the same zone as the map. For example, to see the location of the missing POIs in Lion’s Arch, you have to be inside the city. Checking the map from Gendarran Fields or Bloodtide Coast won’t work, even if you are standing right next to the edge of the zone.

There’s no one best gear that suits all areas of play, so you’ll either have to make sacrifices or get several sets of gear.

Personally, I go with soldier stats and staff for WvW zerg and dual daggers and same armour/trinkets for solo-/smal group-WvW. Rampager’s would be a good alternative if you want to mix in some more offensive stats, since conditions can be fairly strong against other players.

For PvE I’m currently building a pure berserker stat equipment, mixing and matching some of my WvW equipment if I feel too squishy. Again, I go for staff in open world zerg, D/D in open world solo, and pretty much all weapons depending on encounter and group set-up in dungeons. I choose berserker over rampager since conditions are not quite as strong in PvE.

sPvP is really a matter of trying out different builds. Fortunately you don’t have to rely on any exotic equipment here but can switch amulet, runes and sigils in your pvp build tab in the heart of the mists to check out any build without getting new equipment sets. Just play around with the settings and find a build that suits you.

If you are just starting out, get the gear that most benefits you in your prefered game area, then spread out and get different pieces/sets once you have gained enough resources. You can get exotic gear from a variety of sources and for a variety of currencies (karma, dungeon tokens, badges of honour, PvP reward tracks, crafting from self-harvested resources, or simply spending gold on the trading post), take a look at all of them and decide on which seems most accessible to you.

rhael.6317:

At least crack it open so we can replay Worlds 1 & 2! I don’t know how much longer life will have meaning in a world without Super Adventure Box. Everything is already fading to grey dullness …

So much this! I have a little girl, 8 years old, who has been coming home from school every day for five weeks asking if that april-fools box is finally open again . She still remembers watching me play last year, and was severely disappointed that the SAB didn’t open up again this April 1st .

Azreell.1568:

All I am trying to explain is that unless you are going for a dungeon clear record – there is almost no reason nor requirement to desire an all zerker group.

There always is one reason: personal preference. If I prefer to spend my dungeon time with people in pink armour dyes, who are you to say that there is no reason for me to desire such and ask for it in my lfg post because it makes me enjoy the run more? If somebody else enjoys running with people with full berserker equipment, even just because it makes them feel better, then just let them.

There certainly is no reason to tell others what they enjoy/don’t enjoy.

First rule of leveling in gw2: Don’t think about leveling.

Go out and explore the world, and levels will come all by themselves. You get experience for everything you do: uncovering new areas on the map, discovering points of interest, viewing vistas, beating skill challenges, even gathering ore, wood and plants will give you experience. Then there is participation in dynamic events, doing daily achievements, and of course killing things, but the last one is really only a small part of your experience gain.

Do try to stay in areas that are not (much) above your level. Enemies 4-5 levels above you are hard even for experienced players, and quickly become impossible if you don’t know the combat system, your weapon skills, traits and utilities (or don’t even have access to them yet). You’ll get just as much experience if you stay in areas your level or even below (in which case you’ll automatically be down-leveled to keep things interesting).

Exploration experience (pois, vistas and the like) does not depend on the area level at all, and while kill experience will decrease slightly if you are down-leveled a lot, it is really not noticable in my experience. Try to participate in all events you come across, and explore areas as thoroughly as you can, and you will find yourself at level 80 before you have even seen a third of the world.

If you absolutely must speed up your leveling, get some consumable buffs. Cooked food and utility potions can give you +10% kill experience aside from other buffs, which will increase your experience a bit. You will also gain a one-time experience boost for one of the early personal story chapters I think.

Be aware though, that by quickly leveling to 80 you may miss out on some vital experiences with your class and utilities that might help you enjoying the game once you have reached max level. The combat system and game in general is considerably different from most other games out there, and you may as well take the leveling time to getting used to it.

I went with trinkets first, then weapons, then slowly changed more and more pieces until I found (to my own surprise ) that I feel just as comfortable playing in full berserker gear as I used to be playing in full wvw gear, and really don’t get downed more often (or at least it doesn’t feel like I am). Exchanging my mesmer’s greatsword for one-handed swords was a huge step, too.

If they’ve got guild commendations, laurels, and badges of honour to spare, getting ascended trinkets is fairly painless as a starting point, especially since they can always transfer them to other characters if they don’t enjoy whatever class they tried. Once dungeons go faster, they’ll also find that they’ve got more gold to spare to get weapons and armour pieces off the trading post, with runes going last (I just got mine this weekend ).

You can pretty much play the game, especially the dungeons, in any gear/traits/utilities you like, as long as the group as a whole is consistent and adapts strategies that work with their gear/builds. What you can’t do is mix and match without regards for the weak points of the individual builds.

Five berserker-geared players that know how to adapt their builds, how to use their dodges/blocks/blinds/whatever and understand the content can breeze through even the toughest dungeons and win. Replace a couple of those players with other builds that are used to other strategies, and things will fall apart rapidly because the one weakness of most berserker-geared builds is that they won’t survive drawn-out fights.

I’ve got two accounts with dungeon master titles, all dungeons done myself with friends/guildies without berserker gear, often with wvw gear and full support builds on the team. We took our time to get through each dungeon, found our strategies to deal with whatever came up, and had a lot of fun. Any of us would at the same time have easily crashed a “berserker” party simply because we couldn’t contribute to the “soft” defenses the full-zerker strategie employs, namely killing the mobs quickly enough to not run out of dodge/block/cc/whatever.

I’ve also got full berserker gear on my two mesmers by now, and am in the process of gearing up the rest of my characters, and it’s a lot of fun, learning different strategies and seeing them work with the right team composition, just like the first “round” of dungeon experiences was. Both is viable, both is different kinds of challenges and fun, it’s just that mixing without thinking simply doesn’t work. I’ve still got a ton to learn about different strategies to adapt with a damage-only group, but that’s what I enjoy in this kind of game, learning new ways of doing things with new (or rather different) tools.

If running in and praying I beat my enemy in the first shot isn’t your style, don’t to it. Play with like-minded people, but accept that not all gear and trait set-ups work with yours, and not all people want to play with a set-up that matches what you enjoy. This game, unlike others, actually allows you to play those dungeons and succeed in them with your prefered playstyle, or else I never would’ve gotten through all dungeons casually.

It’s really not much different than other games … I’ve played my share of MMO endgames, and when you really look at it, the hardest challenges in other games eventually came down to tank stack max survivability, healer stack max outgoing healing, rest stack max damage, too. Actually, if I compare it to the last game I played, it was much more restricitve, since stacking max whatever really was the only way to beat the hardest challenges there, where in gw2 you can succeed with a variety of set-ups, many of which work just fine without max damage.

Berserker certainly is not the way for everyone. I have a lot of (casual) friends in this game that would never feel comfortable with the kind of challenge the berserker gear and related playstyles pose. They enjoy the game, including all of the dungeons, in their prefered gear (and don’t care if it takes them twice as long to do it … some of them actually prefer to rp-walk through Twilight Arbor and enjoy the scenery to counting out their dungeon tokens in the end ).

Accept that not all people enjoy the game the way you do, look for groups that enjoy what you like (through friends-list, guild or properly labled lfgs), and don’t worry what others do. This game’s dungeons certainly are accessible to most, if not all, players, despite the fact that a large part of the vocal dungeon forum posters prefers one style of gear/play.

Since “do what you enjoy” is difficult as long as you don’t even know what options there are, try a bit of everything and see what appeals to you:

• personal story is always an option, since it will show you through a decent part of the world and is the closest to traditional quest lines known from other games. Be aware though that there is a 5-player instance at the end of the story line that you most likely won’t be able to do by yourself. Be prepared to use the lfg tool to get a group for it once you get that far
• map exploration is another popular option. You will see (almost) all of the world, find some awesome vistas, earn (a bit of) gold and karma, and unlock heart vendors that offer all kinds of unique rewards from uncommon skins to special crafting ingredients to fun consumables
• as a ranger, map exploration may also lead you to parts of the world where you can find pets you haven’t tamed yet. Check your pet list, outside of five or so that only gw1 veterans can aquire, you can find all pets out in the wild (and sometimes even in the starter towns )
• if you like quests and stories, try to pay attention to the events you are doing and hang around the npcs once an event is finished. Often there are whole storylines made of several events that you can easily miss if you don’t listen to npcs and run off as soon as you’ve secured your participation in an event
• with the skin wardrobe that was recently added, aquiring a new look has become a favourite activity for a lot of players, too (myself included ). If you care about your looks, check the wardrobe tab in the bank to figure out which armour or weapon skin you would like to see on your character, than go out into the world and find those skins (the wiki can be a great help here, as well as some other webpages like Dulfy’s). Combining this with map exploration will give you the transmutation charges you need to use those skins (each fully explored map awards either a blacklion key or a transmuataion charge).
• if you like to number crunch, play around with armour and weapon stats, traits, and pet choices to find the ranger build you are most comfortable with. Try different weapon types and utility skills to see what suits you most. Most rangers tend to go for bows, but playing the class in melee with axe, sword and greatsword is actually a lot of fun. If number crunching isn’t your thing but you’d still like to try different builds, check the class forum for a number of tried and tested builds to copy and play around with
• for people who enjoy instanced group content, there are several different dungeons scattered across Tyria, as well as the Fractals of the Mist (a collection of mini-dungeons, of which four will randomly be chosen for any given run of the instance, with adjustable difficulty). For a start, check the lfg-tool for groups that advertise “everyone welcome” or something similar, or just make your own groups, noting that you are new to the dungeons, and you’ll most likely find like-minded people that will help you getting started. Story-Dungeons are a great way to start, since they introduce each of the dungeons as well as tell a story in themselves, parallel to your personal story
• if you want to go up against other players, there is always sPvP and WvW to join. sPvP is the 5v5 pvp mode with small “capture the point” matches that typically last <15 minutes. Go to the heart of the mists, set your pvp build (button is towards the top of your screen when you are there), and join a random game from the game browser. Once you are comfortable, you might want to try yourself in tournament solo queue, or team queue if you find a team to play with
• WvW on the other hand is the large-scale pvp, where three servers play against each other and matches last a week. If you are new to WvW, you may want to stick to a zerg, either in one of the borderlands, the eternal battleground or the edge of the mists. Be prepared to be run over by larger groups (and do your own running when your group is larger), until you find a group/guild to play this mode more organized.
• of course, just creating another character and enjoying the early part of the game again is alway an option, too. I’ve currently got 5 characters at level cap, with the runner-ups that are actively leveling at the time at lvls 70, 54 and 43 (and a lot of lower-level characters I still want to play one day). The storyline of the personal story is unique to each race until level 30, with three choices for each of the lvl 1-10 and lvl 10-20 story lines, so there’s a lot of different stories to explore and enjoy. And you never know, you may even find a class/character you enjoy even more than your current one (I went from ranger to elementalist to mesmer so far, although it took three tries at mesmer before I even started to like the class ).

Lapiy.7160:

The idea takes away some of the game for newer players and the fact you can even solo a dungeon(something meant for a group) is a bit of a problem(I feel) with the game itself(even if it feels good to do/watch). Its also sad that anet can not give people any other way to make a good income in this game

I’m not somebody who would buy a path (I have too much fun running them myself to even consider that), nor do I see myself ever selling one, but still I don’t understand your reasoning in this.

First of all, most if not all of the new people that buy their way to dungeon master or dungeon equipment rather than playing the dungeon themselves are people that would simply not do the dungeon/title at all if it weren’t for the chance to buy it. You don’t take anything away from those people, because no amount of incentive would ever get them to actually run the dungeons instead.

The other point is anet can not give people any other way to make a good income . There obviously are other ways to make gold in this game, or people wouldn’t be buying the paths in the first place. It’s just one of many different avenues to gaining gold in this game. Some people enjoy soloing, so they’ve got a chance to earn some gold here. Many other people don’t, so they spend the time earning gold in other ways instead to be able to buy the path. If none of the other options of gold gain appeal to you, that’s your (personal) problem, but I really don’t see that selling dungeon paths is the only (or even the most time-efficient) way of making money in this game.

Lastly, preventing dungeon soloing by making content too hard for anyone to solo would only make the dungeons too hard for a large part of the player base even in 5-man groups. In a game like this, you always have a wide variety of player abilities, and to keep the instances accessible even for a limited part of the player base means that there will alway bee a select few good enough to do things on their own (except for the rare places where encounter mechanics require more players).

I’m not good enough (yet) to solo anything in this game, but I’ve played endgame instances in other games, that few players were able to beat even in organised groups, and I’ve carried my share of friends through instances. The playerbase, skill and interest is much more diverse these days than it was 10 or 20 years ago in similar games, and if games allow a large part of their player base to see content by being carried, either by friends or mercenaries, then that’s fine with me.

If you’ve got a ton of skillpoints to spare, you can use them to craft mystic weapons at the mystic forge.

I love both (have an ele and two mesmers at 80, with another ele leveling up). If you want to go for max damage, go for elementalist, although it doesn’t make a difference if you’re only around solo.

In WvW, I find my mesmers more versatile than the elementalist(s). If you don’t run with a guild group, the ele is mostly restricted to zerg support/aoe damage, while the mesmer is easier to play solo and in small pug groups there.

In solo PvE on the other hand, the elementalist has a much easier time getting loot and credit in large-scale events, since they have some high-damage aoe skills. Mesmer damage depends on clones and phantasms, which are sometimes difficult to use with large mob groups and high-damage aoe bosses.

Personally, I enjoy mesmers a bit more at the moment, but both classes have interesting playstyles and many options to explore, so you can’t really go wrong with either.

Player model collision would also open doors to people griefing others by blocking access to places and events. There are spots where it would only take a few people moving strategically to block others from even entering events/attacking bosses.

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

Anybody else secretly digging the megaserver? It’s actually pretty awesome in some ways.

Yes!

I’ve got a guild and a fairly extensive friends list, but I really enjoy meeting new people, and there are so many more people around now. I love how you are able to spontaneously team up with the people around to do events, including events I have actually not seen before even though I have explored the world on several characters.

Ever since the patch hit, I have pretty much retired my lvl 80/100% exploration characters in favour of a few leveling ones that had barely made it out of the 20s, and am having as much, if not more fun all over the place than I’ve had in a long time.

What makes an MMO a great kind of game to me is the community. But this community is made up of all people, not just those restricted to a certain guild or server. The landscape, the events, all this “belongs” to all players of this game.

You can rage that other players are trespassing on your “right” to do a certain event/whatever the way you want to have it, or you can empbrace the idea of a living world, where other players have an effect on the way the content can be played by you. I choose the second alternative, much prefering a non-optimal event with nice people that don’t play the way I expect them to, instead of streamlined, predictable farming of the same mega events day in, day out.

Since the megaserver, the maps, especially in the 30s/40s/50s, feel so much more alive again. You can actually meet new people (and every new person is a possible new friend, until they prove otherwise) all over the place, whether it’s in Rata Sum at the bank or in south-eastern fields of ruin saving some animals from the ogres.

I know that change and unpredictability is not everybody’s kind of thing, but I love how much more interesting playing this game has become thanks to the megaservers. If I want to play rpgs where the quests are scripted and only depend on my input, there is tons of that around both online and offline. I love the fact that megaserver has increased the impact other players have on my gameplay, providing enjoyable social interactions and unexpected turns of events in a way that hardly ever came up before.

We’ve also noticed that players with home servers other than the server that started the mission did not receive commendations. Unfortunately we didn’t think of guesting until the missions were done.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crafting_material

Check the links to the individual cloth, leather and wood types to see which level item salvages into which base material (e.g. jute scraps come from lvl 0-20 light armor).

Salvaged material does not depend on your character’s level, but rather on the item level. There is an overlap though, where for example an item at lvl 18 could give either jute or wool randomly.

From what I’ve seen, it takes around 80 hotjoin wins/40 solo-queue wins to finish a reward track.

Just explore the easy stuff. Go from map to map unlocking all waypoints, pois, vistas and easy skill challenges. Participate in all events you come across. Ignore the hearts unless they fill themselves from doing events. Experience adds up quickly and painlessly that way, and should bring you to level 80 at roughly 30% world exploration.