Guild Wars 2

I would highly doubt ArenaNet will close free server transfers without at least a couple days of warning. Just check which servers are where you need to go so you can make the most effective hop possible.

If you’re really worried though, you could save up the gems for a server transfer first (maybe even ask your friends to help you with that), so you have a safety net if you ever get stuck.

No problem at all. Transmutation really needs to come with a tutorial.

May I ask why exactly you aren’t interested in WvW?

I would think there is no greater challenge than fighting other players, and challenge is what you seem to seek?

Are you clicking the panels with the looks and the stats to chose which ones you want from each one? That’s not clear from your image.

Huh. I play with Auto-Attack on and my characters have never engaged a mob on their own.
Maybe it’s because I have “Double-Click to interact” enabled?

Guilds are bugged. You’ll just have to keep trying… at some point, it’ll randomly work

Wow. That looks really, really bad.

The ears are an extremely important part of the Asuras’ distinctive silhouette. Cutting them off breaks all tenets of good character design. I can only imagine (and hope) that’s a bug.

There is a bug that sometimes prevents party members from joining your story missions. Same thing that also causes problems with party members in overflow, I hear. You can try leaving the zone, then coming back and trying again, or relogging and trying again.

You need Fine Transmutation Stones to transmute with level 80 gear.

If an armour says “- of soandso”, that refers to what rune it is using. When you transmute, you can chose to keep that rune as well. Or you can chose not to, and put your own rune of choice into the upgrade slot.

Is just dragging them on top of each other not working for you? Normally, that should work.

MSI Afterburner has far superiour performance to Fraps, and is 100% free. Fraps can slow your game down something fierce, and has barely any quality options.

In order to record with it, you go to Settings, and go to the Video Capture tab. There you set your recording button and whatever quality you want. (Just play around with it to see what works best for you.)
A a nice side effect, the fan controls for your GPU that MSIAfterburner offers are actually quite nice.

The problem is that DEs are a bit of a game of luck. Some people run into DEs all the time and get tons of EXP… some have bad timing and keep missing them.

What you can do is hang around a bit longer in each place… often, a DE has a follow up event, but it takes up to a couple minutes before it kicks in. Also, keep an eye out for running NPCs… often, that means they are going toward a DE.

You can also gather and/or craft a little for some nice chunks of EXP.

If you know their name, why don’t you just ask them?

Theoretically, yes, there are aggro priorities (proximity is supposed to be the biggest one).

In reality, people are reporting left and right that mobs do not follow those supposed priorities at all. Mobs running through other players to get to one player who barely does any damage, mobs avoiding pets to charge for the Ranger or Necromancer even though the Master has not done a single action, mobs beating one one player while ignoring the other four people beating on them, etc. etc.
So, either there are some hidden priorities we don’t know about, or aggro is buggy.

I see female Charr everywhere. Are you sure you aren’t just mistaking some for male Charr? They can be made to look very very much alike.

Because I like fighting other players in small groups?

Do you mean all Orr zones? A little thrown off by you calling it one map…
I’ll just assume you do

My short answer: the Orr zones are crap.

Long answer:
(None of this is touching on how incredibly, frustratingly bugged these zones are, because I have reasonable faith that the bugs are going to get fixed. Eventually.)
Atmosphere-wise, I actually love them… they look bleak, sickly and bizarre, exactly what I would expect from an ancient ruined nation rising from the bottom of the ocean. The sound design is amazing. Zhaitan’s ‘roar’ is one of my favourite sounds in the game ever. And those Rotmouths? Gross, disconcerting and absurd. Flawless.
Technically, the high mob density also supports this atmosphere. You’re in Zhaitan country here. Every corner of this place wants to kill you. You’re not safe. You’re in the lion’s den.

But most of this gets completely ruined by the game’s mechanics. Having hundreds upon hundreds of exactly the same mob type is supremely boring. It turns play into routine. Even the once hilarious Risen Chicken cannot break the sheer monotony, it becomes part of it.
Having not a single safe corner anywhere means playing in these zones is stressful. You are on constant alert. You never get a moment of a break. That would be okay for one zone…. but we’re talking 3 zones here. 3 zones you are required to do if you want to follow the story at all. You can’t even take a reasonable break going somewhere else because of the forbiddingly high travel cost (be it coin or time) to get back to the zones afterward.
The lack of hearts means the casual gamer cannot go “I have half an hour, I’ll finish this one task”. You are at the game’s mercy to schedule your PvE activities for you. If there’s no DE going on when you sign on? Tough luck. If a DE pops on you just as you were trying to do something else? Tough luck.
Not to mention the DEs have no variety either. Either Risen are trying to take over a location, or you escort NPCs. Every now and then, a Champion wanders around in a circle, waiting for you to kill it.
Traveling through the zones, doing the map completion that ArenaNet is so very very intent on wanting us to do, is nothing but an exercise in frustration. High mob density, big aggro radius and extremely fast respawn rate means just getting from one waypoint to the next becomes an exercise in patience, stubbornness and trying to interpret the map.
And lastly, for all the zones’ design is lovely… I never get to see most of it thanks to the horrible camera, the lack of ego-perspective and the lack of safe spots to look around for even just a moment. What a waste of design work. No, Vistas do not help with this. Only I, myself, get to decide which views I find interesting and which not.

And if I have to hear one more “Death! Good!” I’ll punt a Quaggan. I will. And I love Quaggan.

Seems my post got misread (something aggressively fierce in Hux’ case).

I’m not disabled and didn’t claim to be. I simply have small hands and weak fingers. I feel it would be disrespectful to people with actual disabilities to not clear this up.
I also don’t actually have any problems playing. Shockingly, I’m not remotely interested in being competitive. However, the fact that my layout makes me slower than some other people is relevant to the OP’s question.

The OP expressed their trouble with the controls and asked how we did it. I answered their question (how I do it) together with explaining why I do it that way.

BTW OP, if you want to try out new controls in a safe environment, there are training dummies, stationary, moving and even underwater, on the Isle of the Mists. Plus you have all your skills available there, so you can test out all your AOEs and arcs and whatever else targeting styles there are.

Male Norn Mesmer.

You’d really think you see a lot of those, considering the trolling potential of three huge clones, but nope… never seen one but in other people’s screenshots.

I’m not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate?

You’re not ‘supporting’ ArenaNet if you don’t give them real money, and there is nothing in the system you can buy with only real money. Are you referring to feeling pressured to use the gem store in general?

If it’s the latter, I can’t say I feel pressured, exactly, but there is definitely a difference to GW1, where the store feels like an extra bonus, not an integral part of the game, which made me feel more relaxed about my decision whether to buy something or not.
(Then again, if it were possible at all to buy things from the GW1 store with platinum instead of real money? I doubt I’d ever have dropped real money on it in the first place. I feel that after buying all their expansions and advertising the company and the game left and right to anyone who would listen (and some who never wanted to listen), I’ve done my fair share of support.)

I use a combination of keyboard strafing and mouse facing.

Since I have tiny hands and short fingers, even on my mini keyboard I can only reach about 4 keys without taking my fingers off the strafing keys. I cannot reach CTRL, ALT or SHIFT, so modifiers are out as well.
My options are to completely remap every single key so I can put everything closer to the modifier keys, or just live with being a bit slower than some other people. I went with the second option because even if I could reach modifier keys, I’d have to do it with my pinky, and my pinky is rather weak and would quickly start to hurt. But maybe remapping is an option for you? With the use of modifier keys, you have a higher number of possible keybinds you can put in your fingers’ reach.

Mastermind, unfortunately, we ALL noticed it before release. During all the Beta weekends, camera issues has been one of the most active threads on the forums each time.
It simply didn’t do a thing.

The first set you can craft with tailoring is an eyes-area mask. Very easy and quick to learn. However, this is only light armour.
I don’t remember ever having seen similar masks in Medium or Heavy.

In sPvP, the only advantage is that you would presumably know your profession well after leveling to 80. Skill coming from experience.
sPvP gear is standardized, stat-wise, so if you get new one from the boxes, it’s just for looks. Remember that if you get new gear, it has no runes/sigils on it yet… you have to get these from the vendors next to the lockers.
The sPvP rank is used to group you up with people, so that your group members’ skills are roughly at the same level.

In WvW, level 80 means you probably have better gear, better upgrades, have all your skills, and have more coin for Siege Weaponry.

What’s ‘worth’ to you?

For me, shelling out the gold for T1 Sylvari Medium was worth it because I really really loved the look, and Sylvari get pretty much shortshafted on their supposedly plant-like clothing (as in, only the Cultural Armours, the townsclothes and Twilight Arbour armour is actually plantlike). The stats? A couple parts were better than I what I had at the time, a couple weren’t. I ended up spending a lot of transmute stones on my way to 80 just to keep the looks.
On the other hand, T2 and T3 were not worth it to me because they look forgettable to my eyes and are extremely expensive. I got my Order Gear instead… it looks cool, was comparatively cheap for lvl 80 gear, and has nice stats.

Whoa, I totally read that as ‘goons’ when I came by her.

ArenaNet may want to change that…

Only if the dressing contains booze.

My Sylvari dreamed of another Sylvari’s rush of victory at defeating a challenging enemy.

That’s it. It now likes to seek that kind of feeling in its own life.

I always treat in-game storylines that involve no choice (like the tutorials) as non-canon for my characters, and I really wanted to go with a Sylvari who just dreamt some random aspect of their character and otherwise makes their own fate.

Sylvari Cultural armour is meant to have been grown by your Sylvari. Therefor, it’s ‘roots’ are coloured like your Sylvari is coloured.

Granted, the colouring is still a little off. My Sylvari is ‘tea’ coloured, but the armour roots are more of a ‘Viridian’. Probably because the shading is lacking in these parts.

There is honestly a bit of suspension of disbelief you have to work with here for the sake of game mechanics. Sylvari can get drunk and can digest every single kind of food because… otherwise, all the nourishment and booze items in game wouldn’t work on them, and that would be sad for the player.
Sylvari can bleed (which means they must have blood pressure) because… bleed is a condition in the game. So is poison, which needs either blood circulation, or oxygen circulation to get into a body.

In pure lore, where such game mechanics don’t matter, Sylvari wouldn’t need to breathe with lungs, wouldn’t need to digest in a stomach-intestines system, wouldn’t need blood pressure, wouldn’t need a heart… if you talk to the Sylvari caretakers in the starter area and the grove, they will indeed tell you that Sylvari need special ‘Healers’ because all the animal races wouldn’t know what to do with a sick or injured Sylvari, so they’re obviously meant to have a vastly different system in lore. You can reasonably assume from that they can’t get the same diseases as humans.

Niji.8034:

To be honest, I’m more bothered by the question if there are relationships between different races, than gay Sylvari couples. I’m not talking about Charr and Asura couples, this would be just too … strange. But what about Sylvari and Human? Since the Sylvari are shaped after the Humans, I imagine they could fall in love with each other, but never saw or heard in the game of it… at least I can’t remember.

Back to the original topic, I met the gay couple in the green knight storyline too, but it was so incidental, that it didn’t feel forced to me. It was just right.

(sry, about my english. the german forum is just so boring, I had to switch to the english one.)

In one interview concerning their affections, Ree (I think) did mention that Sylvari do not care about race either. Sadly, I haven’t seen any obvious examples of Sylvari interracial couples in the game.

On the Beta forums, someone once made a very funny comment about it, though:
“I want to see a Charr marry a Sylvari. A cat and his nip.”

If you continuously kill the same mobs in the same area, your drops will cut off drastically very quickly. It’s supposedly an anti-botting measure.

You’re better served doing map completions. Go get 100% on all maps you haven’t done or completed. You will get plenty of loot on the way and some nice rewards for each completion on top.

Moooo!

(Yes, this is a hint.)

Forget about whatever you learned from other MMOs.

You don’t need to party. All other players around you are considered ‘allies’ (you may have seen this expression on your skill descriptions). If you attack the same mob, you all get full EXP and loot. If you pop a heal, everyone in range gets healed etc.
In fact, being in a party may be inconvenient for some people… if you are in a party when you do your personal storyline missions (the quests in green), and your party members are in the same zone with you, they will get an invite pop up for them to join you in your mission, which they have to then decline or accept. Also, some people consider it rude if a stranger just tosses a party invite at them without asking.

If you’d like to play something with a pet class: necromancers summon their pets. They start with one of them, and can get more by unlocking them as skills. Rangers ‘charm’ pets (specifically, ‘Juvenile [something]’ ones. You may have seen these around.). They too start out with one at creation (you get a choice of three different ones). There is very little management to do… Necromancers can make their summoned pets use specific skills, that’s it. Ranger pets also have special skills, and you can call them to your side, and switch them between Passive and Defending you. That’s all there is to it.
Pets are currently a bit weak.. there’s not much AI to them, they die easily because all they pretty much do is charge in a straight line at the mobs. But they’re still fun, I find.
If you just want something cute run along beside you, you can get Miniatures… they’re little fluff creatures you can summon to just run along at your side. They take up a bagslot, though.

This is the GW2 Wiki. It’s a little bare, but explains most mechanics and expressions.

You’re at a disadvantage in so far that crafting gives good EXP, so if you don’t craft, you may level a little slower than people who do craft.

Whether your leveling speed or variety matters to you is of course only your own call to make, no one else’s.

I salvage white, vendor blue, and tradepost green and up.

Unless I’m short on materials, in which case I salvage blues and greens with unpopular stats as well, or I want coin quickly, in which case I vender everything below yellow.

I only use Basic Salvage Kits, since I’m not really aching for crafting materials, so why spend the extra coin. I do however lug Black Lion salvage kits around with me for when I really really want to keep an upgrade from something.

It’s not math, just personal experience on what works for me.

You must have never been to the Orr zones.
In many areas there, it is hard to nearly impossible to see if there are other players past the next pointy coral cliff. It is also nearly impossible to properly fight your way forward to whatever place you’re trying to reach, thanks to extremely fast respawns. Running like hell and praying you’ll live is the only thing you can do.
I never begrudge a player who trains Risen on me in these zones. They’re just trying to get to the next waypoint in under an hour, just like I do.

Likewise, many people you probably assume to be training are actually just running for their lives… more than once, I have seen people merrily killing some mobs, when suddenly Dynamic Event! 10 mobs spawn in front of you! (Been the victim of it too. Never managed to run. I’m a bit slow that way.)

In short: yes, this game’s system allows training, and newbies might be served well knowing this… but the game also forces running for your life sometimes, and as an unintended victim of angry mob trains, you’re well served to remember that. (Definitely served my own blood pressure well.)

I enjoy myself more with music muted. The music is okay, don’t get me wrong, but the sound design on this game is amazing and you never hear 90% of it when you have music running. (Music takes your focus and makes background sounds run together.)
Also, I have to agree with the poster above… the soundtrack is by no means up to FFXI.

The voice acting is mediocre. Some voice actors did really well, you can tell they put a lot of passion into it, even when it was just random chatter. Others… well, others read their lines, I guess.

OST = Original Soundtrack

Frankly, I will tell anyone who asks to not get the Deluxe Edition. It was worth it for me the Headstart, but now that the game is running, the extra money would be wasted. Unless you’re a really, really huge Rytlock fan I guess? I don’t know if you can get the mini any other way.

Frostgorge Sound is a great map, fun to do, atmospheric, great variety of enemies and has the Claw of Jormag event!
Sadly it’s only one map.

It is possible to get to 80 without ever setting foot into the Orr zones, easily. You just have to do every single map as you level up. I hit level 80 before I had touched a single 70 – 80 map, just from map completion and maybe 5 levels from WvW.
Unfortunately, your storyline mission will lead you into the Orr zones eventually, so if you want to finish that, you have to at least run through for some waypoints.

Apparently, the loot bags for that quest are bugged.

Sadly, I only know this because I coincidentally came across it on the forum.

Sylvari Ranger Level 80 (plus alts in the mid 40s and below)

After reading the thread, I’m not sure if you mean happiness with my profession, or happiness with the game.

Profession-wise: 8/10
Pet AI is abysmal, sword animation is a problem, the rest is perfectly awesome.

Game-wise: 6.5/10
The Orr zones are horribly designed (gameplay-wise), and horribly bugged, and there are 3 of them for the final stretch. In comparison, Frostgorge Sound is awesome… but it’s one map. Also, I just wasted an hour of my valuable playtime last night dying to an overtuned storyline event until it glitched out and broke, which happened way too often during my storyline, so I’m grumpy.

Timberline has Oouo! Hard to forget, seriously. Generally, all the Asura parts of the zone are hilarious.
It does seem to be a sort of ‘intersection’ zone where all kinds of things get combined… but personally, I find that far more striking than themed zones. It actually makes me feel like I’m part of a diverse, lively world.

Coo on Quaggan! Hoo on Quaggan!

Reviving in Orr zones is a pain, because Risen respawn fast, tend to flock into groups, and all the rocks and corals make it hard to judge whether you are in aggro range sometimes.
And of course, there is instant respawn, which can happen about anywhere.
These things can make it feel like you’re being punished for wanting to help sometimes. And it certainly can make you envious of the Guardians’ awesome revive bubble.

Fact is, if you are being attacked, your first priority is to kill the attacker. If people cuss at you for that, they’re being rude and selfish.

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but once a player is defeated, their bar does not go down on its own anymore. That means you can start reviving, break off to kill angry mobs, and then come back and continue… your revive progress has not been lost.

It depends on the material. Different materials make dyes look different, and sometimes, even on the same material, gradients can happen.
If you have the chance to preview, always preview a dye before buying it, preferably on whatever armour you plan to use it on.

Also, this site may be helpful to you, it has screenshots of the dyes on actual armour.

Why would I be sad? We are all different people, and different things give us fulfillment. Some people like to explore details, some people like to discover new things, some people like to progress in some way, some people like to be guided, some people like to pick a specific goal and focus on that, some people like competition…
None of these things are less valid or less valuable just because they’re not my thing. If the other individual has fun with what they’re doing, and they’re not hurting me with it, it’s not my place to judge them. And yes, pity is a judgement call as well.

The only thing that makes me sad is people rushing past my dead body when there is no danger around. Why not toss me a revive, it’s nice and gives EXP

Frankly? Whatever you want! Play what you feel like, what matters is how you spec your traits and what Utility skills you bring. One of you speccing for Vitality and Healing, the other for Damage, for example. Or one of you bringing all the stuns, the other all the immobilizers.
Or you simply both bring all your crowd control, and all your DPS and kill things before they even so much as breathe on you. Any professions can work, it’s all in how you play them.

Uh… there is only one kind of non-dungeon event that requires a group, and that’s the ones where it says [Group Event] (and even those can sometimes be solo’d).

The only place I have seen (and I have been to all but one zone) that has more than the very occasional [Group Event] are the Orr zones. Which you should not be in at lvl 40.

Don’t be intimidated by difficult looking Dynamic Events. Even if you fail them, you get rewarded.

Your best bet is to ask yourself what exactly it is you like about the healer role in other games.

Is it being a good ‘caretaker’ for your team? Then you may enjoy Guardian, with its many supportive skills that most people really appreciate. Also, Engineers have some great supportive Elixiers and turrets people love to see on the field.
Is it not being expected to be at the frontlines in the thick of battle? You may enjoy Ranger or Mesmer then, they are generally expected to be at range, doing their thing.
Is it the relative simplicity of having one task to focus on? Warriors are simple and straightforward in the damage department… no threat holding or crowd control expected. Also, nearly every class can be played and specced in such a way that they do one kind of thing really well (though that may make explorable dungeons harder on you, since dungeons demand a certain flexibility).

Also, people are normally grateful for revives when downed, and as far as I know, all classes have at least one AOE Heal skill that can be very helpful in a pinch.

A fair word of warning: Dynamic Event medals are mostly dependent on the damage you do. Playing pure support will sadly cheat you out of the gold medal most of the time.