Guild Wars 2

For running it sounds like you’re using the ‘press both left and right click’ to move where the camera is pointing – have you tried using the autorun key? I believe it’s set to R by default, and it leaves you only having to turn/steer but not actually having to press down on anything constantly.

From your description you might be interested in playing engineer.

It’s the jack-of-all-trades profession with a huge variety of utilities/skills to choose from, involves a lot of juggling actions to optimize damage but is top tier DPS, with some great support abilites and the ability to fill in most gaps in party composition. The only thing that’s kind of lacking is the ‘melee combat’ part, but only kind of because while most of the engineer’s weapons and kits are technically ranged they actually do the most damage at medium-to-melee range (think shotgun instead of rifle, basically – technically a gun, but if you want maximum kaboom you gotta be up in the enemy’s face).

Also worth noting that the expansion is going to let engineers use hammer, which might fill in what aggressive in-your-face melee playstyle we’re currently lacking.

Foefire, 119-640 ish loss five minutes ago on this account.

I’d suggest trying to slot either Purging Flames or Smite Conditions instead of Save Yourselves! so you can have a short cooldown condition clear (with bonus damage). SY! isn’t worth it for solo play IMO, you’ll want it more in situations where you’re clearing high condi stacks on allies.

For not-too-expensive good food, try minotaur steaks or griffon egg omelets? They last for one hour each and are power-build oriented. You can also try any of the heal-on-crit foods while learning for increased survivability.

Thief is pretty darn squishy so if you have difficulty dodging it’s definitely going to be tough for you.

Engie is good, but to really take full advantage of the class you need to juggle a lot of skills at the same time which can be intensive (mentioning this in case whatever issues you have involve fine motor control/reaction speed – the main damage build for engineer are really hell on the hand/fingers as it involves a high number of actions/minute). That said, if you just want to run around and not worry about optimal builds, it’s pretty easy to build an engineer to be very tanky with excellent burst heal to tide you over tough parts.

I’ve heard the rate is sliiiiiightly higher if you 1 by 1 it, but I usually just throw them in bunches of 10 for convenience.

Clovers – getting them is random and there’s a chance the Forge will spit out lodestones at you in the process.

I think it might be one of the PS rewards from before the rework? I honestly can’t remember if the lowest had a level cap or not but it was acquired pretty early and worked up to iron or steel level IIRC.

ETA: you got a choice of pick/sickle/axe and they had 100 uses. Got repeated a couple times with increasing level requirements but a level 60? I think tool would let you get t6.

Feel free to add me on this account (jackaljag, main and EU) or ghostydog.1493 (secondary account, NA). I’ve done pretty much everything except WvW a lot and I love helping around!

From the sounds of it, warrior would probably be a better fit for you on the long term because getting better at it is something that you’ll be able to work on and feel progress for, which I think is a good part of making play rewarding.

That said, a couple words on engineer – yes, the class is technically ranged, but it also is most effective at mid-range-to-melee.

Taking the standard power build for example, you’ll be wanting to use rifle 3 and 5 while basically standing on top of the enemy for maximum damage & bleed/vulnerability, use EG acid bomb (which is basically equivalent in damage to a warrior’s 100B if landed on a target who stays in the spot) then cancel it the moment it’s been cast to abort the leap back so you can chain up with a bomb or grenades, that work best at close range to mitigate the fact that as projectiles they move very slowly. That’s when active defenses/dodging becomes a lot more critical, IME.

The versatility of engineer comes up a lot more in dungeons or PvP, where there’s more to adapt to than open world. You definitely have your must-haves (grenades are always nice to keep on your utility bar) but depending on party comp you’ll very likely have to switch something out for extra blasts/projectile blocks/CC/mobility.

Yes, the maps are accessible to everyone. The LS episodes are only locking you out of achievements/story instances.

Yeah as others have said it also really does depend on how you prefer playing.

I personally tend to default to full berserker as the favored (and only) set for max level characters because I mostly play PvE and do dungeons with friends who lean on the speedrunners side of the crowd, and am familiar enough with bosses that I don’t really need the extra toughness/vitality from soldier’s gear, even for stuff like Tequatl. With a good party in dungeons you barely go down, and being fully specced with offensive stats means you kill things before they get to kill you.

Even taking things solo for stuff like open world exploration/map completion, I found it really fun to just zip around on my zerk thief two-shotting everything that crossed my path and didn’t have any trouble that couldn’t be solved by a 35112 combo on dagger/pistol. Similarly some people solo dungeons as thieves, and here high damage means you can finish the fight faster and so allow the bosses less chances of killing you.

The practice, where you get used to reading the enemies’ tells and wind-ups is the hardest part in my experience. That’s when you might need defensive stats, so you have second chances. Once you have enough experience under your belt to know what you can/cannot afford to facetank vs spending endurance to dodge, it can be more fun and challenging to go glass and take risks for a chance of killing stuff real fast.

Also, thief is really the class that’s designed for really high single-target damage, it feels a bit counterproductive to not fully bask in that :P

But to each their own, and it’s valid to prefer playing tanky. One big reason I do suggest zerk is because you’re talking ascended, and since it’s a considerable investment I think it better to go with the stat set that is 1. valid for all medium armor classes (caveat that engineer may be better with assassin’s, but zerk is also fine) and so can be shared with any alt you make later and 2. in high demand for dungeon/fractal runs (which is where the ascended thing comes in handy).

Having it as well. Possibly from too many people trying at once? Or euro servers hiccuping again?

They’ll drop randomly from the rewards you get for completing events in the Silverwastes.

It’s not a typical champion train farm. You should be tagging as many events as possible, and opening buried chests that get dug up (by using silverwastes shovel, you’ll see you map ping whenever one has been found), and then doing the Breach events.

You’re assuming human military, it’s ridiculous to assume the standard would carry over to a different society made up by a species with a different anatomy.

IMO the current charr hunched-over stance looks good and is fitting to a species that runs around on all four. Especially given their proportions, with the shoulders and chest usually fairly broad compared to the hindquarters.

I love my engineer so much I rolled four more engies so I’d have every race covered.

Least favorite is probably mesmer, because I am awful at it.

Just a note on 100% rep guilds: the ones I’ve been in usually were fine with you having a bank guild, sometimes even accepted you swapping out for high-focus guilds for short amounts of time to do stuff like Tequatl/Triple Wurm, WvW or sPvP. It does usually involve you warning the officers beforehand so they don’t accidentally kick you out if they see you not-repping while you’re doing said things however. As with most things, communication is key.

You might want to keep in mind that nowadays the main impact of server is on how WvW goes for you. Everything else and you’ll be playing along people from other home servers than yours all mixed up on the megaservers.

This means that if you play on EU, even on an English-speaking server, there will be times when you will find people speaking German/Spanish/French/Russian/etc in mapchat, because of how the megaserver prioritized for this one map. It does also mean you no longer have to worry about being on a server that’s not big on PvE/world bosses/dungeons if it’s what you want to do, because you can be matched with people from other servers very easily and without having to do anything for it.

So basically if you do switch, check server rankings if WvW is of interest to you, else just pick one of the non-language specific ones, you should be fine.

Sorry, too used to talking with friends :P. Zerk is indeed the common shotcut for berserker. Full glass is glass canon yes, which is effectively what you get by going full offensive stats and is especially noticeable on squishy classes like eles or thieves as they don’t have much base health to help the way warriors or necros do. Sick deeps as in, sick DPS.

Zerk, zerk, zerk is the name of the game in PvE for 6/8 classses, including thief. Vitality or toughness gear is usually used as training wheels while you get used to playing and then phased out progressively until you’re able of running full glass. So if you’re going for ascended gear, which is likely something you’re not going to make too many versions of because of the cost, it’s more beneficial to go berserker right away. If you want vitality, have them on trinkets or a couple exotic armor pieces.

So for a thief in PvE, zerk. For your personal use, zerk also probably unless you WvW or something, and even then I believe thief roamers like their sick deeps. And ascended armor cannot be sold on the TP, so that point is moot.

PvE is zerk all the way, dagger/x and staff I think. Utilities adjustable, wells are nice for open world farm (good tagging) but need to be carefully used in dungeons so as not to override other, more useful fields, etc.

Generally speaking necros aren’t very well-liked in dungeons, so if you have some trouble getting in parties at first don’t take it too personally.

For running in zergs the current favored necro build is power-oriented and involves well bombing the heck out of the enemy.

If you’re more into roaming I believe conditions is the way to go. Unsure about build but I think you can find pointers for it on the site I linked above as well.

My friends and me used to run it with a party of guard/ele/engie/ranger/thief. Works fine, you just need some communication and people who know how to play their class/aren’t afraid of switching up their utilities for more CC/survivability when needed.

What kind of content are you wanting to do? PvE? PvP? WvW?

Several things:

-gather everything you come across while wandering around the world & salvage anything that’s level <65ish. Sell what you get.

-world bosses are a decent starting point to make some money. Here’s a timer, do them, salvage the rares you get and then sell the globs of ectoplasm on the TP.

-if you have a level 80 character, dungeons are a reliable way to make gold. Gear yourself in rares or exotics if possible, then run them. If it’s your first time running them, make your own group via LFG and say something like “p1 first timer” so you can 1. avoid speedrunners who would get annoyed at you, 2. be able to run with either other newbies so you can figure things out yourselves or have an experienced player drop in to help. For starting I’d recommend Citadel of Flame path 1, Sorrow’s Embrace part 1 and Ascalonian Catacombs paths 1 and 3, possible Crucible of Eternity path 1.

I do have an ele, though I barely use it as I prefer my engie. These days for dungeons s/d and staff are favored (staff I believe is highest DPS but s/d has better might stacking? something like that), though d/f utility is also used for fractals. Ice bow is loved by all.

Specific dungeon path rewards are now given out fully once per day and then suffer diminishing rewards so CoF isn’t farmed as it used to be (though a lot of people still run p1 and p2 daily). Stacking several warriors is also no longer as common – still happens frequently in PUG groups because a lot of people play it and it’s safe mode, but if you get into speedrunning or stuff like that then one warrior per party is usually considered enough.

Assuming everyone’s running power-based builds for dungeons/PvE:

Best for PVE leveling:
-Engineer (bomb aoe spam killing every mob ez pz, 100% swiftness uptime)
-Ranger (easy but boring)
-Warrior (easy but super extra boring)

Best for dungeons:
-Ele (mmhmh dat ice bow and DPS)
-Guardian (delishus WoR & aegis)
-Engie (sweet sweet vulnerability, top tier deeps, ability to cover any slacking guard/thief/ele)

Best for PvP:
-Ele
-Engie
-Warr

Best for WvW:
-zerg you got GWEN
-roaming: go engie you dummy

Conclusion: roll an engie.

I found the story to be improved over S1, but not everyone is of that opinion. Unlocking them for yourself would mostly have advantages in that you could get the rewards/achievements for them, else if you’re just curious but unwilling to pay just ask someone to open them for you or find them on Youtube. It might be worth catching up as the season finale is going to drop the coming tuesday (and you’ll have it unlocked for free, as happens when you log on during story time).

Re: what to do, there hasn’t been a huge lot of changes on what to do but stuff like the meta has changed – elementalist FGS nerf was a big change, there’s been some balance changes in classes, rangers are now good, etc. Level up and Personal Story rewards have also been improved, so that might be a cool thing for you to see too.

Hey and welcome back!

LA got destroyed as part of the Living Story’s first season, it won’t go back to normal from you doing something specific – it’s like this for everyone. People are now kind of spread out depending on their racial city preferences – Divinity’s Reach is pretty poplar, as well as Rata Sum.

If you want to catch up on the story, I believe there are recaps on Youtube. The wiki also has a summary of every LS episode, but it’s something of a read given a lot of stuff went on.

As for what to do – the new Living Story (aka season 2) was released in small chunks which you can access from your story journal in the hero panel. They unlocked for free if you logged on as they happened, but as you weren’t around you either will have to unlock them for 200 gems/chapter (which comes out ~28 gold) or you can ask a friend who has them to party with you and go through them with them. I believe summaries are also available.

No, it won’t break after use the way normal choir bells do.

I believe the text is working as intended – basically you just have to copy and paste the code into your in-game chat bar and it will create a link to the desired waypoint, essentially a way to spare you having to scroll around the map to locate it.

Mainstream PUG is so far from meta it wouldn’t reach it with traited grenades.

Confirming that there are never login queues – anytime you log on you’ll be able to jump straight in the game.

For WvW, I don’t know how it is in NA but I’m on SFR in Europe which is T1 and while there can be pretty big queues at prime time and during tournaments, it’s reasonable and off-season mostly it’s Eternal Battlegrounds that has a queue, the other maps have none or only a small one (right now for example, it’s 10pm and EB has a queue of 76 people and two borderlands have a 4-6 people queue). I’m guessing NA servers in high tiers might be a bit more intense due to population?

I tested using the same armor and both Midnight Ice and Fire don’t look like it. Abyss is sliiightly lighter than the screenshot, but I think that might be screen settings/differences.

From a quick test with the wardrobe, looks closest like Abyss to me.

There are no more monthlies – they’ve basically been redesigned to become the new log-in reward system.

There is no “normal path” as far as I’m aware – since everything you do pretty much can give you XP, people have different ways of leveling.

Completing a zone gives you rewards (two zone level appropriate pieces of gear, a transmutation charge OR a black lion chest key and some crafting mats), which is nice. It’s also fine if you get tired of the place and go wander around the other races’ starting zones instead, sometimes a change of scenery is fun.

For dungeons you can try running story mode – it’s easier than explorable (which is what most people run for gold/tokens) but a bump above open world so you’ll start getting an idea how it goes. Just be careful to either join a group that says “all welcome” or make your own and say you’re under level 80, as some people prefer running with 80s only to make it faster. That way you’ll weed out impatient people/jerks and be able to have a nice time.

Ah too bad then, can’t come on and help you through it in person :c

It really depends on how much damage you can deal. If you have high damage then ignoring the couriers is probably doable, if you have low/medium damage then it’s worth killing at least some of them.

It’s been a while since I’ve done this on my warrior, but maybe try using longbow + axe/mace? Longbow 5 and mace 5 has immobilize and knockdown respectively, which you can use to slow down the couriers while you kill them or to gain time to attack the boss. Longbow F1 when fully charged has a great fire field which might help you keep some pressure on the boss with the burning damage and can be renewed fairly often.

If you’re having trouble with damage and are not doing it already, consider bringing For Great Justice! or a banner (strength, maybe discipline) as utilities to boost your damage output and help get over that annoying regen.

I don’t recall having trouble with this story stage when running it solo. Having a ranged weapon might help if only to be able to maintain constant damage going on and have a margin of error to avoid attacks.

It’s sadly not possible to go back and pick a different story path. And yeah the story’s not making a lot of sense at this point, some changes Anet made a couple months back switched out the last two chunks of story basically. We’re still hoping for them to revert it, but in the meanwhile we’re stuck with this.

Are you playing on NA servers or EU? If it’s the latter I can get online and help you through with it, maybe give some pointers on what exactly’s causing a problem?

Pokecenter.3548:

You have to soulbind them, lets say that you have a Ranger Charr lv60. You get medium tier1 and medium tier2 sets. It counts towards the achievement. Now if you get tier1 heavy and tier 1 light sets (or tier 2 for that matter) it will not count towards the achievement since a Ranger can only use medium gear.

The only way to avoid the tier 3 gear for being expensive, is having more than 1character from the same Race who happens to use another weight of gear (in this case, for example a Warrior Charr and Necro Charr) and level them high enough so you could get tier1/2 heavy/light sets for them.

False.

You need 1 of head/shoulders/chest/legs/boots armor from each tier, does not matter which weight class. For example I got the Charr fashion achievement by buying:
T1: light head, shoulders & heavy everything else
T2: medium chest and boots, heavy gloves and helm, light legs and shoulders
T3: light head, heavy everything else
all on the same (medium armor) character, so the soulbinding-to-your-char argument is null.

Danikat.8537:

You can use laurels to buy unidentified dyes. You might get lucky and get some of the rarer ones but even if not it eliminates some of the ones you’d need to buy.

And if you get any duplicates you can sell them and use the money to buy another.

I’d recommend against this approach – one unidentified dye costs 5 laurels, when said 5 laurels could net you ~5 gold by using them on heavy crafting bags and selling the contents. If you use laurels it’d be better to get gold from them and then use the gold to buy the dyes you want, since common dyes are 1-5 silver and the rare, non-gemstore and non-celestial/abyss ones go from 80s-5g approx.

I’d say the most jack-of-all-trades class in GW2 is engineer, as it has access to a large amount of combo fields and combo finishers, which when combined allow for party-wide buffing, as well as very varied skills/utilities/weapon kits to adjust to situations.

An engineer who knows what they’re doing can stack offensive buffs (might is a big one), provide big burst heals through blasting their water field, give stealth to the party and cleanse conditions, but they also provide maximum attack range with their grenade kits (good for pulling enemies to your group without putting yourself at risk), top tier direct damage and access to a lot of conditions and debuffs. It also has access to a projectile reflect/block, which is very useful if the party is lacking guardians/mesmers whose job that usually is or to help them in projectile-heavy situations where they might run out of cooldowns.

It’s considered one of the difficult classes to master and I see people suggesting to keep it for an alt once you’ve gotten the basics of GW2 combat down, but in my experience it’s fine even as a newbie (my first character was an engie and I had tons of fun while leveling). I’d say if versatility is your thing then it might very well be a fun class for you.

1. For versatility I’d say either elementalist or engineers are good, with ele having higher damage vs engineer being able to fill certain niche roles (access to party-wide stealth, for example) that ele doesn’t have access to. Both of those classes require some juggling skills around, but they’re fun once you get the hang of it.

2. Crafting is really up to you. Some people like to level it as they progress, others just do it all in one go – I think the thing to keep in mind is that generally speaking you’re likely going to spend/lose money on it rather than gain, and these days the main reason people level their crafting is so they max it out and can do ascended stuff. That said, it gives experience and it can feel nice to gear yourself up instead of going to the TP.

3. Guilds are really down to what you as a player want. Some people like having big guilds where there’s always a lot of people around, others prefer smaller, close-knit groups where it’s easier to build a rapport. It works better if what the guild is oriented at is similar to what you want (ie joining a WvW-oriented guild when you prefer PvE is just silly) but other than, it’s really what you want that matters.

4. sPvP can be started whenever you want, pretty much – equipment is normalized so that everyone is on the same level no matter their gear and character level, and it comes down to build, skill and team play.

For WvW, level 80 is recommended – while you are upscaled if you go in earlier, gear IS important there and so coming in as a level sub-80 you’ll be missing stats compared to others and be easy prey for the enemy.

Dungeons: a lot of people want to run only with level 80 characters, for similar reasons to the WvW thing – 80s have all their traits and more or less final gear, so it makes things faster/easier since there is a big difficulty jump from open world to dungeons. HOWEVER it is very much possible to run dungeons before that.

I definitely recommend doing story mode dungeons as you unlock them (you’ll receive mail telling you when that happens), as they’re not too difficult even for newbies and are a decent way to get you used to working with your party without the pressure of explorable mode. Try to find lfg postings that say ‘all welcome’ or something along those lines. If you can’t find any, make your own. I’d also suggest you tell people at the beginning of the run if it’s your first time running something – you might get bad reactions but in my experience, a lot of people are very willing to help out and tell you how things work if you ask whereas they’ll be much less tolerant of kitten-ups if nothing was said. (and if you’re on EU servers feel free to hit me up ingame if you need someone to show you around the dungeons)

5. Most mobs will drop gear appropriate to your level, heart or not. There’s a chance it’ll be zone-appropriate instead, but that’s rarer and random afaik.

It’s really good value – one gathering item on its own goes for 1000 gems, and here you have three for less than 2000 (and one of them is the watchwork pick, which can drop sprockets from mining and thus has added value). They’re still very much convenience items, but if it’s something you’d like then yes, definitely, it’s a good deal.

Elementalist is one of the most wanted classes in PvE parties for dungeons/fractals because of their damage and buffing (specifically, , so that’s one class you might want to try out. I know staff eles are also really good in WvW zerging, but I’m not 100% sure about how they work roaming (I think d/d celestial is very good, but double-check?).

Engineer is about the same. Much less of a demand than ele because 1. you only really need one in a party and 2. it’s one of the least played classes so a lot of people don’t know what they’re capable of but when played well it’s top tier damage, amazing utility and great versatility, which means they can do a party a lot of good in dungeons/fractals and can cover gaps in party composition (is the ele not stacking might? pop a fire field and blast it up. no thief? boom smoke field. guardian slacking? throw elixir U. etc etc). They’re good roamers thanks to their mobility too, and while again this isn’t my area of expertise I think condition or hybrid builds are the favored approach for engies in WvW.

Re: what the others said – warriors are honestly only wanted because it’s hard to mess up as one. They have only medium-tier damage and you only really need one in your party comp (for banners, not for the damage) to maximize things. Food for thought.

Some people enjoy playing ranged, but if you find it boring (and lord knows I did when leveling my own ranger), consider trying the melee weapons you can use as ranger. Greatsword is good but also a bit boring, but sword is pretty intense zipping around hacking at stuff (animation wise at least, and then you have the fun of learning how to dodge properly in spite of said animations :P).

If that still isn’t fun for you, both warrior and guardian are good, though personally I find warrior pretty boring. It’s considered the “easy mode” class due to high health and ability to facetank most things so it’s not bad as a first class while you’re learning the ropes, but it’s not that much of a challenge.

Guardian is much squishier and may be a bit frustrating at first, but once you figure out how to mitigate damage (by blinding enemies or buffing yourself) then it gets much better, and it’s more fun IMO.

To trade between chars, access the bank either through a banker NPC or from any crafting station (found in the major cities and in a few explorable maps); things in your bank can be retrieved by any character on your account.

For the armor skins, most of them you can likely unlock through leveling/exploration (talk to the heart NPCs after you’ve completed said heart – they become karma vendors, and you can get a bunch of skins like that, including the conquest/gunner ones you mentioned.). Some require some grinding (ie dungeon-specific armor, sets like carapace or glorious armors) to varying degrees, but they’re in the minority.

A lot of good points have been brought up already, but I’d like to add inclusivity in representation in the game world in the list of what Anet’s been doing good.

First, there’s the fact that the game world, and perhaps more importantly the main NPCs you see throughout the story, are pretty well balanced re: gender and they’re all spread out in terms of competency. That may sound silly to some, but given how often in video games the population seems to be 90% hypercompetent dudes and 10% damsels in distress/armcandy it’s something I appreciate a lot.

Similarly, you have no idea how glad I was when I learned about Caithe and Faolain’s past relationship way back when I started in the game, or when Kasmeer/Marjory became Actual Real Canon (my friends and me had been whispering “they’re girlfriends” between ourselves since Tower of Nightmares, but we never believed we’d ever get anything but maybe some strong subtext to go along with it. There was loud irl disbelieving cheering when the kiss happened. Possibly I still get emotional over it sometimes) because it’s so darn rare to see in most games/media in general, two women who settle easily into a relationship (or are bitter broody exes, I’m looking at you Caithe) like that, with no fanfare or titillating the male gaze. That was good, that was so great and important I’m always gonna be grateful that it happened. even if it’s a shame that such a simple thing is so rare that it being included makes me this happy

Similarly, thanks a lot for Taimi. I’m glad Anet acknowledged that disabilities exist, and that some people live with them. I’m glad that she wasn’t turned into a sob story or, just as bad, some inspiration BS, the way that kind of thing is treated most of the time. And bonus points for lore-compliant mobility assistance devices :P

These are the main aspects that struck me, as a player who’s afab and queer and who hangs around disabled people. But I think I can generalize a bit in saying that GW2 does a really, really great job in building up NPCs as real characters, especially by MMO standards but even compared to some other single-player RPG games. I am horrendously fond of some of those virtual people, which isn’t what I was expecting at all when I got into the game.

now maybe add some mentally ill and/or trans characters and my love will be eternal winkwinknudgenudge

The problem is the wiki drop lists don’t discriminate between levels. It knows the mob drops it, but not at which level, so it will just list everywhere the mobs are and let you figure it out yourself.

It’s possible to make charr look good in medium armor, it just takes a lot of fiddling around. I’m very fond of my own charr engie's outfit, for example. And engineer are a great class, lots of versatility and top tier damage once you know what you’re doing.

Heavy armor does tend to be the ‘default’ charr classes, because their cultural tier 3 set looks really good, but it’s also possible to veer away from that as well.