Guild Wars 2

Yes it’s a phishing email, I’ve received a dozen and my account’s just fine. Last I checked GW2 doesn’t issue warnings like this, they’ll just suspend/ban and leave the contacting to contest the decision to you. (Plus the grammar in the title is iffy, I’d hope Anet knows better.)

For reference if this happens again, here’s a list of known scam mails: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Common-Phishing-E-mails

Fire bomb burns for 2s x 4 pulses, with a cooldown of 10s. If that’s not enough you have the flamethrower and its tool belt skill to increase the burn uptime.

Ranger runes will also count minis as pets, so if you have a couple lying around that can be good.

I’ve leveled one of each profession to 80 and I keep coming back to my engineer. I find the playstyle fun and challenging enough to not get boring even after almost 1k hours, and the versatility I’m able to have with a good kit setup is amazing. I like that despite being technically a ranged class, as an engineer you’ll most of the time do your max damage at close/melee range, and that I have really high damage once I get my rotations down. Also – works really well in party content, which is nice when I run dungeons/fracts with my friends.

Class choice is obviously very dependent on personal taste, and sometimes one that doesn’t click at first might at some later date, on using a different build. I hope you find something you enjoy.

(As a note: I found mesmer really annoying to level, and the damage really wasn’t stellar unless all cooldowns were ready and reflects could be used, which sounds easy but isn’t always in PvE. Also the mobility is mediocre, so keep that in mind. They’re really handy to have in your party in a lot of content, but it’ll take a while to get to full potential, is what I mean, so if you think that might be a good class for you do perservere.)

Haven’t tested so not 100% sure of how good they are but I’ve seen Flame Legion runes recommended for guards and engies as a low-cost alternative, if you can keep up the burning.

If they ever do implement samurai class I sure hope they somehow prevent it from being given to white characters.

Hey and welcome!

There are eight different classes (or professions, as they can also be called), subdivided in three categories depending on armor type (heavy, medium and light).

None of them is ‘best’; they each have their pros and cons, with their specific mechanics, weapons and skills. Depending on your preferred playstyle some may be more suited to you than others. New players tend to like playing warrior or ranger as those are very easy classes to play, but it’s really up to you, as some others prefer having more of a challenge right away.

I’d recommend testing them out yourself and see what works for you; maybe check out the profession-specific forums to get a better idea how each works and decide from that.

I believe the confusion comes from the fact the way the tickets are awarded differently between the first season and the current one – last time there was only one reward chest at the very end, whereas this time rewards are given out at the end of each week/match-up given you have completed the weekly achievement, which are indeed the Round 1/2/etc achievs.

The places are determined by how your server does in the week’s match-up, not the overall rankings, and it goes 200 > 150 > 100 ticket at minimum/week, again assuming you’ve done the weekly achievement.

Hey and welcome to GW2!

1. Of the two heavy armor classes guardian has the least HP, but it remains still very capable of doing what you’re asking for – it will just possibly require some more use of active defenses (ie blinding enemies, buffing yourself) compared to warrior, which can passively facetank more due to having a bigger health pool.

2.1. For your first character personal story is definitely fun, if only to do it once, and the rewards are decent to gear up progressively while you learn the ropes. The way it works is that the story bits are sectioned and given to you every 10 levels, at which point you can do them all in a go, then do whatever (eg explore, do events, etc) until you reach the next bit. It goes fairly fast IMO, given every single thing you do while running around will give you EXP, whether it be gathering, discovering new areas or completing quests/events. It will indeed follow you all the way to level 80, and nudge you toward certain zones if you haven’t ventured there on your own.

2.2. WvW is also a viable leveling option, however keep in mind that while your character will be ‘upleveled’ to 80 automatically your stats and gear will still be as they were, meaning you’ll have a disadvantage versus other level 80 players. Edge of the Mists is a training/farming map however, where you’ll likely just be running around with the mob capping stuff (and thus completing events > earning XP) and the lack of big fights can circumvent that difficulty. Not everyone finds that fun, so that’s up for you to see.

3. Gathering is accessible early, and does not require training or whatever – only level-appropriate gathering tools, which can be purchased from every other vendor. Do it if you can – it’ll give you XP as I mentioned earlier, and it’s also a good source of income if you sell – or a way of saving on expenses if you want to craft. Crafting is not necessary unless you want to get the last tier of equipment possible (Ascended) but that’s a long way. It will give XP however, so some people like to use it to speed up the leveling process. Again, up to you.

4. Yes, server is pretty much a WvW thing only these days.

Hope this helps

It is very possible, but there will be a time investment yes.

It’s nothing unreasonable however, I’m in the same case as you, played GW2 first and then wanted the HoM stuff/see how GW1 was, and I got to 20/50 in about a month or so playing solo. I could get to 30/50 (which is all you need to get all the skins) in a week or so right now, I’ve just been slacking.

Player trading is going to be necessary for the minis achievements definitely, possibly for the weapon ones if you don’t want to do the work yourself, but there’s still enough people around that it shouldn’t be a problem. (Also ask if you have guildies that played GW1, one of mine just gave me all his undedicated minis!)

I’d say keep it – you should be able to make more than enough gold through story and leveling to gear up when you hit max level, so that shouldn’t be much of a worry, and at least you’ll be set if for some reason the price spikes later on.

Pretty sure the Teq spoon isn’t a guaranteed drop, it seems to drop fairly frequently but not 100%.

Feeling this bug too, doesn’t affect every character; my human warrior has been suffering from it since the patch while my sylvari ranger, charr engie, necro and guard and human thief seem fine.

Confirming, had this issue last night.

Michaeas Magister.1589:

Also, with the New Player Experience now gating and explaining everything in the game to you from how to dodge to how to fight in the downed state, why is there not any indication in the game that you have reached these diminishing returns in a zone? Or that you have to do more than log out and back in again in order to clear them? I really think this information needs to be released in the game in some form rather than being a very quiet “undocumented feature”.
Thanks.

The very existence of this measure is to prevent or at least discourage botting. Any clear information on how it works would mean botters would be able to work around them, therefore we’re never ever going to get details about it.

It’s at the very south-west corner of the map, due south from the “Help Kyra Sharptracker” heart. Try to find a little path going south past her, should be a bunch of ghosts including a vet or two. You need to run all the way down it, into a cave to find the WP.

It is absolutely possible to PvP/WvW without a guild, though I think it’s easier to have one especially for WvW.

To start out PvP I’d say do a couple hotjoin games to get a feel for the maps and your profession as it works in a PvP context as opposed to PvE, then move on to solo queue. Some people will say to stay in hotjoin until you get fairly good but I find the atmosphere in hotjoin servers isn’t great for people who really want to get into PvP proper rather than just grab the dailies or quick achievement points. Solo arena is likely gonna get you curbstomped early on but it’s a lot better to learn IMO.

For WvW I have less experience, I’d say try to get on during the evenings or whenever your server’s active, and get on the TS – listening to the commanders is really important for WvW coordination, and it’ll let you understand what’s going on better.

I dunno man, I’m on my seventh full map completion right now and it’s already plenty rewarding to me. Plus your solution would be pretty annoying, like, would it stack? I’d be so overpowered I’d be bored to tears. And if it doesn’t, then what would be the point of using any character but the ones you’ve already done it on? Nah.

Hey everyone,

My last guild kind of self-imploded so I’m back on the market, so to say :P

As stated in the title, I’m looking more for a casual, friendly guild, preferably small – I get antsy in guilds that have more than 40/50 members, though I guess if there’s at least a strong ‘core’ that’s negotiable.

Things I can bring to the guild: I’m helpful, like doing stuff from showing newbies the ropes to helping locate that one annoying point of interest you’re missing for your 100% map completion, experienced – got 9 level 80s, with at least one of each profession; 6 full map completions and two in progress; experience at dungeons & fractals as well as sPvP, etc. -, I like chatting and getting to know people and am on regularly & usually for at least a few hours.

I’m fine with joining a new guild that doesn’t have all upgrades, or has no voice-chat or whatever – I’m really in this more for the social than the benefits it can give me, though obviously I wouldn’t say no to guild missions and perma boosts :P

However, and this is important: I want a guild that’s respectful of one another, and while I’m more than fine with good-natured ribbing and friendly insults I’ll be out at the first whiff of sexism/homophobia/racism/etc. Have enough of that everywhere else.

Got barbs from Sons of Svanir in Dredgehaunt myself, then took the opportunity to update the wiki :P (nudge nudge hint hint)

You’d have to unlock them again.

The first thing I’d suggest you do is to make your own group & LFG, making it clear in the description that you are new at it (something like “story run, first timer”, simple & to the point). That’ll weed out the people who only want to clear it quick and clean, and likely attract either other newbies (with whom you can then take your time experimenting & learning the dungeon without pressure) or experience players who’ll be ok with it and can teach you how it works.

Second thing that can help is to join a guild and then run with guildies, as they tend to be more forgiving/patient/nice than randoms.

If you’re on an EU server I can help show you around a couple dungeons as well.

If it’s projectile reflects, you can also switch weapon set from ranged to melee and then just keep away.

ETA: also CTRL + right click on the skill will toggle AA on/off.

Given that everything now works on a megaserver system, home server only really matters for WvW – so if you pick Piken, do it only if you want to WvW there. For RP, you’ll find that anywhere no matter which home server you choose, since you’ll get mixed up with people from every server in PvE. I find the community in this game in general is really nice though, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

I can’t really speak for how good the servers are myself given I’m not big on WvW, but I’m guessing you’ve already taken a look at the WvW rankings. Hopping around until you find one that fits you is likely the best option. And yes transfer is still free on deletion, though there’s a limit on how much you can do that (once per week I think).

Guidelines say “If a character name is reported to us and is in violation of the guidelines above, for the first offense, you will be required to rename your character upon your next login and your account may be marked and suspended” so given the “may” it’s not a sure thing – possibly if you contact Support on your own before someone reports you they’ll be more indulgent and let you change without the suspension. But it’s not a sure thing, so up to you – either delete and reroll, or risk asking Support and getting suspended for a couple days.

Doubtful, but you can try. Alternatively, buy a name change contract off the gem store.

The naming policy specifically forbids “Reference religious or historical figures”. Not sure it’s a bannable offense, but if you get reported or whatever you’ll at least be forced to change it. So if it’s a new character, I’d suggest just deleting and rerolling with a better name.

(For reference: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-naming-policy/ )

Out of leveling all three, for open world I’d say necro is better. It has the highest health pool out of the three on top of death shroud in case of emergency and good damage that doesn’t require a lot of effort to dish out and is more than enough against most things that PvE will throw at you.

Obviously that’s going to depend some on your gear and traiting. My necro’s set up for power (dagger/warhorn + staff for being lazy, wells as utilities for easy AoE) and is doing just great as I work on map completion with him right now, especially since the last patch added some cleave to dagger auto-attack so that it’s now a lot easier to deal with multiple enemies at once than it used to be.

Staff ele is an ok alternate, but I find it’s still fairly easy to die and requires more reflexes than necro. Also: way more boring in my opinion, at least for open world (dungeons is a different matter).

Mesmer kind of had crap damage and mediocre survivability when I leveled mine up a few months back, haven’t kept track of the changes but I suspect it hasn’t improved much. Also bad mobility unless you use runes for it, which isn’t ideal when it’s a character you want to have wander around the world.

Someone’s clearly never been around a staff ele camping fire that damage is beautiful AND you can be super lazy on top.

Anyway, @ OP: I’m biased because I main my engineer, but having tried all three of your potential picks I’d say go engie. The versatility is great, the ability to stack loads of vulnerability is extremely nice for dungeons right now with the FGS nerf, and last I checked it’s good for every game mode – they’re great bunkers/decappers in sPvP and also can viably play as roamers, though it’s much more rare to see, and. Like the others said there’s a learning curve, but that’s what makes it interesting and also keeps you playing.

Warrior is also good at all three game modes, but it’s, well, pretty easy. And by that I mean “press 2 to win” is basically true. High armor and very good party buffs (strength and discipline banners especially) on top of damage means there’s a demand for warriors in dungeons, and their durability and their battle standard resurrect is also nice for WvW. For PvP, well, just look at all the hambows running around.

Thieves are less wanted in dungeons – they have high single-target DPS but they’re squish and are mainly going to be used to give stealth for skips (ie in CM or Arah). For sPvP the squish still applies but a good thief is nice to have as a roamer or far decapper, and WvW thieves will always be the bane of lost map completioners or stray people trying to join up with the zerg.

Grasping Dead armor is the Arah explorable dungeon armor set so depending on how you feel about dungeons it may or not be accessible to you. A possible alternative to running the dungeon itself is to play sPvP with the Arah reward track active – that’ll net you tokens as well as a free armor piece at the end. It’d take a while that way, but it’s not inaccessible even if you’re bad at PvP, as you’ll get progress toward it even on losing matches.

If you had something previously equipped, you have to talk to a Black Lion Trader (Armorsmith) that you should be able to find in any major city and they’ll convert it to a form that’s compatible with the current wardrobe.

Just posting to show some support for the patch and prove the ragers who pretend like everyone ever hates it wrong.

I’ve got 18 characters, 6 or so are under level 15 and from wandering around with them a bit I suspect I’ll enjoy the new system a lot. I like the way it’s made and while there’s a couple things I’m not 100% happy with (because nothing’s perfect :P) I think overall it’s darn nice, moving in a good direction and I can’t wait till all the early post-patch bugs are fixed to go find that friend of mine I tried to get into the game months ago who quit after the intro mission because she got overwhelmed and too confused about how things worked to continue.

Thanks for the good work.

They’re a lot easier/cheaper to acquire than the other high-level backpieces we have right now so I’m thinking it might be to keep the incentive to get one of those (level 80) ones? While still having a decent alternative/placeholder for people who haven’t yet gotten to them.

I don’t use FT a lot so I’ll refrain from saying too much stuff I’m not sure about. But at a guess Condi+Power main would be very decent for PvE open world, especially if you focus on toughness as a third stat – engies are pretty darn tanky when they want to be and it is fun if you don’t mind taking a tad longer to kill stuff.

Consider using bomb kit as a secondary kit to use when your FT skills are on cooldown – the high auto-attack damage on bombkit plus the various combo fields and conditions should work well in combination & will help you keep burning on the mob to make use of that condi damage. The blinds from smoke bomb are also very nice if you drop the toughness for precision. Plus, y’know, bombing the heck out of annoying people inbetween flamethrower bursts sounds right up your alley.

Aye, if it’s unlocked it’s cool to get rid of. If you want to double-check before committing to the delete for skins, just open your wardrobe tab and verify that you can indeed see them in the list of selectable skins for whatever slot they’re in.

Zaxares.5419:

Well, hopefully it’ll get fixed along with introducing some Champions back to the 1-15 zones. Finding Basic level Champ bags is going to be extremely difficult otherwise; Champs in 15-25 zones all drop Fine level Champ bags, and there are no Champs to be found in the earlier zones.

Currently the only way to acquire these bags that I know of is to use a low-levelled character and do the PvP reward tracks that drop these bags (the bag quality scales to your real level).

Just a note on this in particular but it’s still possible to get them in open world, looted a white champ bag just yesterday night on my level 80 doing Ulgoth – sometimes when there’s a lot of people on one champ I find they’ll drop bags from varying ranges. It feels pretty randomized so it’s not ideal, but at least it’s still obtainable outside PvP.

Can’t help with the first bit, I haven’t kept track of my earnings during DT runs (though at a guess the figure might include opening buried chests and getting lucky with champion drops).

For the second:
1. Your sPvP level does not actually matter with regard to the tracks you have available. To activate/start a track, just go in your PvP window and select one of the available tracks that you have, progress will then be made whenever you play a match – wins make you progress faster than losses, but even losses will net you progress so it’s not all-or-nothing. Solo queue gets you more progress than hotjoin, and team queue gives more than solo queue.

2. Dungeon tracks are individually unlocked by running story mode for that particular dungeon. Once it’s been unlocked, it’ll stay that way and you can repeat it as many times as you want. Each week there’ll be a dungeon track accessible to everyone no matter if it’s unlocked or not; this will rotate. If you want to get your pick of the dungeon track, run story. If not, just do the weekly.

3. Region tracks are unlocked by completing the previous region track. You start out with the Krytan region track unlocked – finish it, and you’ll unlock the Shiverpeaks track. Finishing the Shiverpeaks track will unlock the Ascalonian track, and so on. Note that you can re-run previously completed tracks for loot/skins/whatever, but this won’t unlock anything new.

I think you would likely have gotten similar problems with other professions. Starting out dungeon content is tricky when a lot of people have been going at it for a while and expect you to be the same. Guards are favored for pulls but it’s not rare for others to do it too (for example as engie I do it a lot, given grenades have very high range, but staff eles can also do it, or warriors, etc, so don’t be afraid of waiting a bit to let one of your party members do the pull if you’re unsure where/how to do it, I find people will do it on their own if they don’t see anyone else going for it a lot of the time). And at least you have control over stuff like reflects & aegis so you don’t have to learn while in pugs that can’t projectile block to save their lives and die even more, as some of us non-guards did :P

And as JCROY said, warn at the beginning of the run you’re still learning – you don’t have to say you’re a huge newbie or whatever (though please, please warn if you run something for the first time, a lot of people will be tolerant and know to keep an eye on you so they can explain if it looks like you’re confused about what’s going on) but something along the lines of “hey I’m fairly new at this but I’m willing to listen and learn” will go a long way.

A while back I looted Leaf of Kudzu off of Risen Grenth Priest, when I didn’t have any plans for legendaries. Figured “well ok why not”, grinded out 80% of the mats over the course of the next one-two months before I got lazy and bought the rest off the TP.

Then I bought the Minstrel precursor back when it was like 80g, did about half own grinding half TP buying and sold it off for major profit, some of which I used to buy the Hunter. It’s currently sitting in my bank while I again take my time casually gathering the stuff I need.

If you want to go the gold route: it’s pretty easy to get 30 to 50ish gold/day if you do full dungeon rotations (so AC all paths, CM 1+3 or all, TA up and forward, SE 1+3, CoE all, CoF 1+2, HotW 1) and sell the drops – if you get a good group it takes 2-3 hours tops, which isn’t enormous. You also get a bunch of skillpoints to use for either material promotion (T5 builds up pretty fast, and promoting them to T6 is that much saved from grinding/buying) or to use in various money-making schemes like crafting Mystic Forge weapons, siege blueprints upgrades or core -> lodestone promotion.

Then you can throw in some exploration and gathering to either use or sell the mats, or a nice little Orr run, or jump on the world boss rotation for sweet, delicious ectos.

Personally I enjoy putting in time and grinding stuff out on my own, so it takes me ages to get anything done, but I’ve friends who’ve crafted 3 legendaries since the beginning of the year just doing a hell of a lot dungeon running and some WvW for the karma.

Generally I’ve found that time passing ingame is taken more loosely in MMOs than you would in a survival-modded single player game – it’s a more social kind of roleplaying, built around interactions and stories with other characters. And doing that requires a lot of typing :P which takes time – so you’re more likely to go by real-life time than IG time, which IIRC has 2-hour cycles? barely enough to RP an outing, let alone an entire day of activity.

And as Redenaz said, a lot of things depend on who you RP with. Some people aren’t fond of waypointing, or want to have an actual in-game excuse/reason to use them before they will – others will decide that since they exist ingame they’re okay to use.

Since you can’t really mod the game for survival or stuff like that, it’s really up to the players to decide what is or isn’t possible or reasonable. So up to you to make the effort to change your outfit to something that looks like it can keep warm if you’re running around the Shiverpeaks as a squishy human for example, or to try and ditch the heavy armor and weapons as much as possible for formal events or hanging around in a tavern. Or not. Same for injuries – you’re technically immortal as a game character, but some people will set rules like “if I get downed my character will have an important injury” or stuff like that, or may decide to get injured for plot/story reasons. Same for death.

I don’t think I’ve ever known people to go through the whole eat/sleep/drink in MMOs, as it’d get very tedious (you don’t get time skips when you sleep, unlike you would in Skyrim for example) but they probably exist. I have seen people use “I need to go to bed/eat dinner” or something like that as in-character reasons to leave when they had to logout however, so as not to just disappear into thin air in the middle of a discussion.

For stuff like dungeons, depends too. I’ve run dungeons in-character, as a guild group going adventuring, where people ran whatever builds and tend to favor whatever is good for the character itself, but it can also be OK to separate in-character activities and stuff you do for money/dailies/whatever, and therefore switch gear/build between those two modes.

Good point on the vigor, it’s a trait line I barely use so I forgot about the nerf. Still, 5 seconds every 10 secs is still relatively decent for situations where you need it a lot (I’m thinking Mai Trin fractal for example, where that combined with the turret heals & blasts can keep you sustained through the barrage phase even if you mess up a dodge).

Re condi cleansing, I definitely agree it’s one of the profession’s weak point, but for PvE at least turret honestly is enough 90% of the time (and EG will help out the remaining 10, either from the skill itself or the light field it creates combo’d with projectiles) in my experience, whether for mapping, world boss, dungeons or fractals. More of a problem for PvP or WvW, I’ll give you that, I’ve swore enough at annoying condimancers murdering me on home point to do anything but.

And yeah I see what you mean for elixir/gadgets. Sadly I think that’s one of the balancing problems from the fact the profession has been made with kits in mind and so the other stuff is pretty mediocre on their own despite having some cool stuff going on. Handy situationally (rocket boots is super fun and that delishus throw elixir U when the party guardian is slacking or afk and you don’t want to eat boss projectiles <3), but iffy when built entirely around them.

I still feel that despite those problems engie’s the more fun and versatile of classes to play, after getting one of each to 80, but that’s obviously subjective. Hope you find something that works for you!

A lot of key bindings sadly are down to personal preference, but for what it’s worth here’s what helped me:
-invert strafing and camera turn defaults to get a more ‘normal’ WASD movement type
-disable double-tap dodge and keep it to a key (can’t remember if it’s the default, but I use V), so as to avoid dumb mistakes like accidentally double-tapping in the middle of a jumping puzzle and dodging down to your death
-there’s an option to make targeting more fluid by no longer requiring it to be confirmed with a click but to either instantly drop the skill wherever your mouse pointer currently is or to show the target circle only while you’re pressing down the key and to drop the skill when you release, which I find helps a lot with the whole using skills while moving thing

From what you’re saying I do think engie might be a good choice for you. Healing turret is one of the best healing utilities ingame IMO and it as well as elixir gun both give access to condi cleansing.

And while I’m getting the impression that kits aren’t your thing (they weren’t mine for a long time too so no judging here) having at least one will let you access perma-swiftness and potentially perma-vigor, which are so so nice for mobility and/or survival.

Plus depending on how you want to play or your current mode you have a lot of options and versatility, which also sounds like something you’d like?

Third party programs are never going to be officially seen in a good light by Anet just because of potential for abuse, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen dev replies to people who did stuff like use certain overlays or use programs to remap controls to controller, stuff like that that basically went along the lines of “while we can’t give our approval you’re likely not going to get banned” because it’s not the sort of stuff to give you an advantage and no one’s going to report you for weird behaviour or whatever since what you want would be strictly a graphical issue.

It’s still very possible to scam in that system (eh by using replacing an item with one that looks/sounds similar and one party not noticing, “mistyping” gold amount, etc) , and would still likely cause trade spam in chat – the system you’re suggesting is the one they had in GW1 and given it’s no longer there, that should pretty much tell you all about their stance on it.

Don’t think it’s a rework thing, or if it is it happened in the first six months when I wasn’t playing yet – I’ve gotten 6 full map completions spread out over the past year and a half (plus a few alts between 30-60%) and keys have always ‘dropped’ on map clear, albeit more rarely than trans stones/charges.

NYG.2568:

Crius.5487:

There is no such thing as a “Finished” MMO.

That goes without saying, but usually it comes in the form of expansion and improving what you already have! This is more like reworking!

I’m pretty sure improving what they already have is the entire point of this feature patch so please reword to “the improvements they are making are not helpful to me personally therefore they are bad” for better clarity.

You’re naked because your sylvari character was effectively just ‘born’.

It’s also possible to launch in windowed mode I believe, you just have to set it in your options in-game and it’ll remember (if I’m not mistaken; but I’ve been set-up to be full-screen windowed for ages and it’s remembering that so I don’t see why it should be different for you).

And yes, there’s a night/day cycle in every zone as well as certain areas (ie dungeons) set to be either/or, so you’ll definitely be able to enjoy being glowy.

Events are usually an easy/fast way to get exp, the only problem is to find them – one reason people recommend map completion is that it’ll send you around hearts, which tend to have events pop around them on top of the XP you get from doing whatever it is the heart required you to do and the mapping XP.

I’d also recommend gathering every node you come across, since you’ll get exp from that too.

Most classes are good at solo, although some are trickier than others to master (mainly ele and mesmer in my experience). Ranger is fine, though personally I found it a little boring to play. If you want to make things faster, consider using sword or greatsword as your main weapon: melee is nearly always more powerful than range, and it’s a good habit to get into. You may also consider using longbow over shortbow, as the latter is a condition damage-dealing weapon, which while very acceptable would require different stats than sword to work optimally, whereas longbow and sword/gs are both raw power weapons, synergizing better together.

Finally, test out different pets – they don’t all have the same stats and their F2 attack also changes depending on the species.

It’s hard to tell what kind of info you’d need that you don’t know yet, but to answer the couple things you adressed in this thread:

“Special gear”: not entirely sure what you mean by that, but you can get race-specific skins in their respective cities (rather expensive but some of the skins are pretty darn nice); you can also buy gear for karma in various places, like sometimes after events or by talking to hearts NPCs once you’ve cleared said heart – some skins are karma-exclusive, or they’re just decent to upgrade your equipment while leveling.

Re: selling vs salvaging: a consequence of people spending a lot of time on their max level characters in high level zones is that lower level materials can sell for quite a bit. It can be a good idea to check vendor/TP prices of stuff you pick up and then see if you wouldn’t get more by salvaging and selling the raw materials, or keeping them for yourself so you won’t have to spend anything when leveling crafting for yourself.

(Also: the TP prices cannot be lower than vendor values, so it’s usually interesting to check if you can sell on there first.)

The usual full rotation would be something like AC 1/2/3, CM 1+3, TA forward/up, SE 1+3, CoF 1+2, HotW 1, CoE 1/2/3.