Guild Wars 2

So I’ve done a few explorables with my group of friends as level 80’s and while we may not be speed runners, we do okay and generally keep on our feet. Last night we tried doing AC explorable with come characters in the 50-60 range with a mix of blues and greens as armor and weapons and we found we could not do enough damage on the burrows fast enough to keep ahead and finally quit (path 1). The explorable dungeon is labeled for lvl 35, but it seems to me it’s really balanced around lvl 80’s in exotics. So despite what the dungeons are labeled is it safe to say that all explorables should just be done with 80’s? Or are we just really incompetent?

So many naked Sylvari, mine is in there somewhere.
Then, ready to meet friends in Lion’s Arch for the first time.
Finally, level 80 in my fav armor combo.

From what I understand having done a bit of research, it looks like you can get the pants from another story quest, but not until a bit later, I haven’t found anyone with any of the other pieces.

Sadly it seems the personal story is the only way to get any of the pieces right now, which means it soulbound on acquire, so no tp, and if you happen to pick something different or get rid of it afterwards, there is no way to go back and pick it up again. I’m not even sure if the whole thing is there. I remember getting the top, I’m not sure if the bottom was ever offered to me. I don’t see the point of making a random skin like this so incredibly limited in availability. Good luck, I hope you find more pieces. I’d pay really close attention to the rest of the personal story rewards, and hopefully it shows up there eventually.

Ethics is correct on where to preview. There are PVP lockers, called “Glory Lockers” on the map, if you hang a right as soon as you enter the mists and hang another right before going up the stairs to the usual glory vendors. Once there you can right click any of the armor or weapons and click preview, even if you don’t have them.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55030-pvp-mystic-forge-recipes/ gives various pvp mystic forge recipes. Other than what you get out of the glory chests, this is how you can get the skins you want in pvp. You essentially craft them in pvp. According to this guide, the fire staff requires you put a dolyak token, an arcane crystal and a staff into the pvp mystic forge, and you only get it on a “crit” so as far as I can see, no guaranteed way to get it.

It really depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve actually always really liked the standard antique gold for any metal I wanted to look like gold.

http://carsen.dreamhosters.com/game/gw2/dye.htm this site has the codes you can put into chat and then right click to preview. So if you’re not sure if you’d rather use Butter or Illumination, it’s a good way to try before you buy, so you can see what you like on your armor.

I like 3 best, both for the hair and the tattoos.

I’d say Ele is the best if your goal is just to super speed your way through maps. They have so many different ways of granting swiftness that it’s easy to keep it up 100%. They also have a teleport and ride the lightning to add on top of that. You can really zoom around on an Ele, plus they have lots of aoe that thiefs don’t have, so they can get rid of a group of mobs quickly if you need it.

There are a few different ways to get sets of armor.

1. Craft it yourself, or buy from crafters off the black lion trading post. New complete look every 15 levels.

2. Random drops, or buying the set of said drops off the trading post. I think there’s about 4 different looks from said drops.

3. Karma vendors. Each map has a set of armor you can buy different pieces from the different heart vendors to get a complete set. (There are karma vendors in Orr associated with the temples that sell lvl 80 exotics for armor but are not hearts).

4. Basic white armor for your level from several armor vendors scattered about different maps and cities (definitely the worst option and all have the basic starter armor skin).

5. Dungeon armor, bought with tokens from doing explorable mode. Sold in Lion’s arch.

6. Cultural, in your race’s home city you can buy 3 unique sets for your race. Icons are indicated by blue helmets on the map.

7. Order armors, you can buy a set of armor from the order you joined.

8. WvW invadors armor that can be bought for karma for armor below lvl 80 and badges of honor (a ton) for lvl 80 exotics.

I think that about covers it. The quickest and easiest to pick up a set of armor for your level range is probably just to buy on the trading post.

Hope that helps.

Ele and Warrior are both good choices.

I’d say the biggest draw back for the Ele is their squishiness, especially as you’re levelling. However, by the time you get to 80, there are some builds that actually allow you to be pretty tanky. An Ele can switch back and forth between damage and support fairly easily through attunement swapping, your build will determine what you are better at. I think it’s pretty hard to be pigeonholed as an ele though, other than people worried about your squishiness.

It’s certainly easiest to survive as a warrior, as they have the highest health and armor, whereas Elementalists have the lowest health and armor.

I don’t know if that helps any. Good luck

I really miss the pollen effect. It was so pretty in the bwe.

9/10 I think it’s very clever. I like how it looks like Midnight at first glance, but it isn’t, it’s better.

My mesmer is Lynea Ash. Lynea is a varient spelling of a small mountain flower, Ash of course the tree, which I had to add since just Lynea was taken.

zeithgeist.8561:

Heh, just loose an exotic trying to do that transmutation. I crafted berseker longbow for my ranger, went with my engi to buy Ebon Vanguard Longbow and when i transmuted it, it became soulbound to my engineer, so i lost the darn bow and teh karma used to buy the skin. NICE….

You’re supposed to transmute the skin to a white bow first to make it account bound, then transmute it to the exotic with your ranger. You could still do that if you haven’t done anything with the bow yet. Though you will still be out the exotic.

For the helm:http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legionnaire_Neverburn
For Legs http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legionnaire_Kress_Rustmaw
For gloves http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tarstar_Chief
For the chest piece http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enduring_Protector
For the shoulders (only one called tactical in pve) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tactician_Lyan
For the feet http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Brencis_Quickblood

For each of these NPC’s complete their heart, then go and talk to them and you can purchase the armor for karma. Hope that helps.

It’s armor you can get from heart vendors in Fireheart Rise. You can also get it from a few karma merchants in Malchor’s Leap. I love using that chest piece with the tier 2 sylvari cultural skirt. It’s a nice set.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Tactical_armor

well that’s depressing as I’ve always deleted every heart mail the moment I collect the silver out of it.

Doubt that it’s retroactive. I’m sure it means that when you complete hearts you also get karma, which I swear was how it used to be in the bwe. I never understood why they changed that when the heart vendors are all karma vendors, it made sense to get karma from doing hearts. Anyway, just another way to get more karma.

I really hate that about karma armor. The only way to deal with it really is to use a Fine transmutation stone. Either you transmute it onto the new armor, keeping your new armor stats and looks and just choosing the upgrade, or if you say need to get a rune off of gloves to use on boots, you can transmute it onto a white gloves, use the look and stat of the white armor and choose the rune as the upgrade, then you can salvage it off. Since it requires the use of a Fine transmutation stone, it’s only worth it if your upgrade is one of those that’s worth quite a few gold, otherwise it’s probably just better to buy a new one.
I hate it though! It seems like such a waste.

The good news is that you can obtain the top level of exotic gear through several means, including crafting, buying off the tp, and from karma vendors in Cursed Shores, so you won’t have to group up or do dungeons to get that gear.

The only thing you can’t currently get in the open world are the ascended rings and backpieces, those are only available in the Fractals dungeon. Fortunately that’s going to change next week with the January update where you can work toward those just by doing dailies and monthlies.

Have fun!

I know I’d be tempted to just save it for later in case I decided I wanted to try a build with that armor. But if you just want to try and recoup some loss, then salvaging is definitely the best option.

LithePanther.5027:

White + Blue = Salvage
Green = Vendor
Yellow = Check TP. If it sells for more then 1 ecto, sell it. If not, salvage with a master kit
Orange = Check TP. If it sells for more then the rune and 1 ecto, sell it. If not, salvage with a black lion kit

This is pretty much what I do. If I weren’t interested in crafting though, I’d probably just vendor the blues. I do sometimes check the tp for greens and see if they’re selling for more than the vendor price, most of the time I just vendor them though.

As others have said, it’s pretty much whatever works well for you. I like what I have.
1-5 weapon skills F1-F4 profession abilities, space jump (default)
WS forward and back, AD strafing, mouse to turn
C,V,B for utilities
E for Eliet and Q for heal
X for weapon swap, shift for dodge

This pretty much lets me keep my left hand in place and reach all the important movement and combat keys.

Personally I think mesmer would fit you pretty well. They are excellent at kiting and are more durable than the ele. They can do quite a bit of cc and you can still get some good aoe with shattering clones. I personally find the mesmer more fun to play than the ele just because I love the tricky nature of the mesmer where as eles feel a little more straight up, though they also have some excellent cc.

I love this thread. I’m now determined to get some fun valentine screens with my hubby. In the meantime, one of us chilling at the end of a fractal. Obviously we didn’t go the same race

Well if it were me I’d probably use the boots that go with those pants (The CM dungeon boots) but if you aren’t liking those I do think draconic would look good, also the heavy plate( http://gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-heavy-karma-heavyplate-female.jpg) which I believe are the same type as the gloves you are wearing. Reinforced scale might also work well and tie into the layers on your chest and pants. I actually like the boots you are currently wearing, though I do see why the spikes might detract a little for the over all look.

I love what you’ve done though, I completely agree and the majority of the the heavy sets looking beyond weird with the super wide hips and tapered chest/waste. It’s so ugly.

If you’d like me to do all the math for you, I need to know if you’re looking for heavy, medium or light of the clerics. I’m also assuming you have your crafting profession up to 400 already. It will probably be faster and easier to just buy your new gear, but on exotics it can sometimes be a bit cheaper to craft rather than buy straight up, but not by a huge margin.

Also I’m pretty sure the wiki has the crafting recipes, so you can check those out there.

So I just went and tested this on my starter thief’s head piece and it worked fine. Let’s double check a few things.

1. Did you transmute it to a white piece of cloth head armor with the new necro who originally got the piece of armor? and does it now say “account bound” instead of soulbound?

2. Are you trying to transmute the glowy eyes onto something other than light armor? It won’t work on medium or heavy armor.

I don’t have any other ideas why it might not be working as I was just able to do it without a problem.

Blue ice is my favorite white replacement. I find fog and and icing to be a bit to grey or offwhite for me.
For black I haven’t found a really good replacement for cloth, but the midnight colors look really good from a distance, I like midnight fushia and midnight rust the best. Charcoal works pretty well too, especially if you’d rather have a grey undertone rather than a specific color, but in all cases you can see the underlying color and it doesn’t look truly black. I like that better myself anyway, and when I got an abyss dye I sold it.

For ZombieNugget:
For a few other colors, Scarlet and Oxblood make excellent deep solid reds. Summer sky is a great bright blue and royal purple makes a great solid dark blue, and Nightsong is a really good soft blue. Spruce is a great dark blue/green, and moss is a really nice soft green. The various olive shades are nice if you want a good mix of greens that aren’t too bright. Kelly is a good solid true green (looks very Christmasy). My favorite straight up purple that doesn’t look pastel is Iris, and for the lighter pastel look, violet.

I won’t be much help on the orange and yellows as I don’t use those as much. But I do like Amber quite a bit. Most of the time I’m using yellow I want to gold metallic look and have been satisfied just with antique gold or yellow ice.

I haven’t found the perfect brown as of yet, they seem to all look so different on different armors.

Well hope that helps. I can’t guarantee that all the dyes I mentioned are cheap as I didn’t check their prices, but they are for the most part common dyes, so they shouldn’t be too bad.

So if I were in your situation, I would probably sell all the rares in order to buy ectos with the proceeds. Saving up the rares don’t seem to be helping. I got lucky with the few keys I’ve gotten to get bl kits from the chests I’ve opened. The rares do generally go for about the price of one ecto, so it’s not an unreasonable trade, and probably a lot better than salvaging with the lesser kits and getting no ectos from them. Best of luck to you.

I do believe you can technically gain 80 levels by completing all the crafting professions. However, to completely level a character that way, you’d have to have another character out farming gold/mats for the crafting character to even have the ability to craft, and you would have to do ALL the crafting professions. In the meantime, your farming character will hit 80 first as you’ll need a ton of mats to level all the crafting professions.

I’ve had issues with that one as well. One time the event was repeating very quickly and there was never a time when I could use the thing, another time I would get the “content disabled” error. Recently I was able to do it immediately following the event where you protect the cattle while he does the experiments. I was not able to interact with it before or during the event. It’s definitely a touchy one and very irritatingly so.

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/human-light.htm Is very helpful, it’s very well organized.

Anyway, you might be interested in the feathered set, it shows off the abs: http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-craft-feathered-male.jpg
The human tier 3 shows off the arms really well and it looks like if you hid the shoulder pieces you’d get the arms all the way up to the shoulders, though it’s hard to say for sure: http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-cult-3-male.jpg

Vigil is another good one for arms: http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-order-vigil-male.jpg

That seems to be about the best there is. It looks like the tactical armor set is the only one that shows the male leg. Oh well. I hope you find something you like.

Well what helped me in this regard was crafting my own armor. Every 15 levels starting at level 10 you get a new look. (So from lvl 10-24 you have one look and once you hit 25 you can craft a new look.) Plus the crafting helps you level up and get to those higher levels faster. It is tricky though to keep your crafting the same as your character level, I had to spend a little gold on the tp to pull it off, but I was able to get most of my materials just from playing areas at my current level.

I hope that helps some. If you don’t feel like crafting, there are usually all the crafted sets on the tp, so you could just sell your mats and buy the armor that way.

At level 14 the best ways to get xp are doing hearts, events and personal story. Good luck.

Hi, I’m going to try and answer some of your questions well in depth. First I do want to agree with others that the elementalist is extremely squishy and complex and engineer is pretty tricky. I love playing Guardian and Ranger, and they are much more survivable. It is important to know what your skills do as some are about doing damage and some are about controlling your target. Running away can be tricky because it can be easy to just agro more mobs when doing so. If I were you, while in the learning process, I’d carefully approach each mob and try to agro just one at a time, which shouldn’t be too difficult in the lower part of the starter areas. That should give you a chance to figure out what each of your skills do with out being overwhelmed and killed.

To answer your question about your salvaged materials. When you deposit your collectibles they go to a bank tab in your bank. The bank shows up as a yellow money bag symbol on your map and they are in each starter city and Lion’s Arch. Each crafting station will also give you bank access, even if you are not a crafting profession.

To fix your items you go to an NPC with red cracked shield over his head, it also had the symbol on the map.

As for what you should be doing, the only linear quest is your personal story, but that will go up in levels much faster than you will level up, so you only want to pursue your personal story when you are the same level as the next part. It shows up in green on the top right hand corner of your screen and will be a green star on your map. In the top right corner it will also tell you in parenthesis what the recommended level for that story is, and if it’s above your level, it will take you to areas that are likely to get you killed.

To level up to be able to continue your personal story, you should complete hearts and events. On your map if you mouse over a heart, it will give you the recommended level. Just do the hearts that are your level or lower, and it will give you the xp and more importantly money to help you progress. When you are near a heart, it will show up on your upper right corner of the screen under your personal story and tell you what you should do to complete it. It generally involves collecting things or killing things in the near by vicinity.

When an event pops up, it will show you a large orange circle on your map and it will show up in the upper right hand corner of your screen, below hearts and personal story. It will tell you the level range, the goals, and sometimes it will say “group event” which generally means you want to have at least 3 people to complete it.

Also from the merchants you can buy harvesting equipment, a sickle for plants, a logging ax for trees, and a pickax for ore. Having these equipped at all times allows you to harvest from the various nodes and also gives you decent experience.

I don’t know what server you are on, but I’m on Yak’s Bend, and would be happy to help you out if you want to transfer here. I also highly recommend Operation Union that others have mentioned, I know you’ll get lots of help there.

Good luck!

So interesting, I was in the middle of doing the metrica province jumping puzzle when the patch hit and when I came back, I was having the worst time, I just gave up. My friend was joking that the patch broke jumping, I was a skeptic, but it seems it wasn’t just me having bad coordination.

I have unfortunately not seen it available anywhere for players, and I love both those sets, so it’s a real shame. I was convinced that the first one would be light armor available to players since the mesmer was wearing it in the skill video, but I have not seen a player anywhere wearing it and only one npc wearing part of it. The second I’ve seen on NPC’s everywhere, but again, never on a player. Which is such a shame, I LOVED that second one the first time I saw it and I’m so sad I can’t wear it.

As I haven’t played all professions to 80, I can’t say for sure about how balanced they all end up being at 80. I can say this, traits and how you spec your armor make a difference in how easy game play is, your build basically. I can tell you that at level 80 when doing group events such as 3 or 4 people on a champion, I have often had to raise a guardian. As a level 80 mesmer, I can kite like there is no tomorrow and I blow up my clones all the time for aoe damage. I can also say that when doing dungeon runs with my group of friends, I usually die half as often as my guardian (granted he likes to spec for magic find and while I make sure I have a decent amount of vitality and toughness as I like to dual wield swords).

So anyway, I have played guardian and warrior up to level 20, and I find mesmer way more interesting to play, though I realize at level 20 you’ve barely touched your traits, and traits tend to make gameplay a lot more interesting. Honestly I think you get a lot of the balance between professions at level 80 when you have your full set of traits to work with. I’m sure that there is still some difference in ease of survive-ability even at level 80 between the professions, but I don’t think it’s quite as big of a difference as at the early levels, I think traits really make all the difference.

And as for mesmers being harder in PvE, maybe sometimes, but I honestly think it’s such a fun class to play, I have a blast and I have no problem soloing in Orr as long as I don’t try and do a group event by myself. But I have no problem killing things fast enough and can handle 3 or so risen at a time without too much trouble. If I get too many on me, like five or six, I just pop up some clones for distraction and book it out of there. Anyway, I think you’ll have fun and find the mesmer is quite capable and useful at level 80. Enjoy!

I just wanted to point out, that if you aren’t doing anything with that character but crafting, you can use your crafting booster while crafting and log into other characters to play/farm with out having the booster time tic down. I did that just this week, I used a crafting booster while refining my tier 3 mats and crafting weapons, then switched to my main and farmed an area for tier 4 mats, then went back and did all my refining etc on my alt and still had the crafting booster active. Since I was only crafting on that character and nothing else, it turned out pretty well, that crafting booster lasted me all week and got me to 383 in weaponsmithing

I finally beat it. Took me about an hour and a half, but finally got it.
Sylvari Mesmer, no speed boosts.

P.S. Do passive speed boosts actually work? I noticed all weapons and utilities are locked while doing the puzzle.

Well I haven’t played necro much, but between Ele and Mesmer, I definitely find Mesmer to be more survivable, though they both have their strengths and weaknesses. necro and ele have more aoe’s for dynamic events, but mesmer does have a few bouncing skills that help make up for that. necro has the largest health pool and ele the smallest. Mesmer I find great for soloing just because of the clones, it makes it easier to keep the damage off of you. Though necros have minions that can fill that role as well. The mesmer does have a weakness in having speed whereas and ele can keep up swiftness pretty much constantly and the necro has a signet that gives a speed boost as a passive. Mesmer is my personal favorite and I have a great time playing it. I think it comes down to style and how you like to do things. Best of luck on deciding.

I have noticed this as well. There seems to be a lot of missing voice acting randomly through different parts of personal story, different races and different levels, which makes me think it’s a general issue rather than a specific instance being bugged.

My Sylvari Mesmer.
One with the hood and a couple with out.

BrunoBRS.5178:

it also happens with mobs. that bridge event in kessex hills is the worst offender. every time i pass by it, i see an entire squad of centaurs materialize in front of me, scream and die.

This is the worst spot for me as well. Every time I can’t see any centaurs until they suddenly appear and fall to their deaths. Makes it hard to actually get credit for the evetn.

This is something I noticed as well. In particular the personal story and my sister wasn’t getting Karma for hearts. I thought the whole point of doing hearts was for Karma and that was why they turned into Karma vendors.