Guild Wars 2

No, your character level doesn’t have any impact on sPvP.

My usual method is use hotjoin just to get a feel for the profession/build and how they manage in a fight or on defense, then hit solo queue until I’m comfortable enough to join teamq. While it’s true soloQ has iffy matchmaking it also happens in hotjoin and teamQ and at least it’s much closer to team play than the mess that is hotjoin.

For what it’s worth my engineer was my first character, first to level 80 and my current main despite having gotten each profession maxed. It’s a fun class and it’s not nearly as hard as some people make it out to be, just takes some practice.

No, you’ll just get new events around Skrittsburg to unlock it, the skritt themselves remain friendly afaik.

Compared to some other classes (eg warrior, ranger, necro) engie’s on the complex side so that’s a no, although really it depends a lot of how good you are at juggling kits, combos and cooldowns. It has a bigger learning curve than most other classes.

From the lack of info on the wiki and the fact there doesn’t seem to be hostile skritt right now at those levels, I wonder if those wouldn’t drop only in cases of upscaled low-level events? In which case you might be out of luck.

I’m not sure how most people do it, but I personally changed the keybinds to have a more ‘tradional’ WASD movement (so A and D to strafe) and then set Q and E as the turns, so that in combat when kiting, say, right, I’ll be holding down D and either using mouse OR Q (mostly Q, I need my mouse to ground target my grenades on engie) to keep the circle, depending on range/enemy/speed/whatever. Found this setup more intuitive than the default keybinds, might be for you as well?

I’d second engineer, you get some great survivability with water fields+blasts, block skills, condi cleanses and blinds, with grenade kit (the current best for DPS if I’m not mistaken) being technically a ranged skill but working just about as well in melee range and dealing lots of damage if traited and built correctly. And then you can switch to bomb kit to fire/smoke field annoyances before switching back to nades

Just piping in to add that with a new WvW tournament coming up things are likely to get more active even if your server isn’t very WvW-oriented, so keep an eye out during that time if you’re still missing stuff by then, you might just get lucky and be able to grab some tower or camp you’d been missing by jumping in during a push.

Hey and welcome to GW2!

1. From your description of what you want I think Engineer be your thing. There is a learning curve but it’s nowhere as steep as people make it seem to be. There is some juggling of skills and cooldowns to be done to maximize DPS at high levels, but it’s something you can ease yourself into or not worry with altogether if you don’t feel you need it.

And it is the most versatile profession in my experience (I’ve gotten one of all eight to level 80): while your main weapons (rifle, pistol+pistol or pistol+shield) are all ranged and function fine as such the attacks are designed to become more powerful at melee range, and there are several kits that are for melee (eg Flamethrower, Bomb Kit or Tool Kit).

As an engineer, you’d also get access to one of the highest burst heals in game thanks to your Healing Turret and its water fields which you can drop combo effects (mainly blast finishers) on, and have several blocks and an invulnerability skill. You also get access to stealth (thanks again to combo fields, smoke this time instead of water), might (damage-boosting boon, which you get through blasting fire fields) and conditions cleansing.

Oh and did I mention extremely good damage overall? Engineers are just the bomb <3

2. As the above poster said, these days server doesn’t influence much unless you play World versus World which doesn’t sound like what you’re looking for, at least not for now.

3. For city, humans have the most active in terms of player population. However the human story is fairly standard so if you’re interested in that you might consider another.

From having played all five races as well and having gone through most of the possible story choices, I’d rank them Asura = Sylvari > Charr > Norn > Human in terms of how interesting they get. No matter your starting choices all storylines converge after level 30, so also pick depending on your own tastes – some people don’t like being tiny Asura, or big hulking Norn, I personally adore being a huge murderous cat despite not being a huge fan of the Charr storylines, etc.

4. Having a guild isn’t necessary at all, but nice if you like having people to chat with/ask for stuff/get help. I think I leveled a couple chars to level 80 before joining a guild and was fine.

5. For PvE, which is what you seem to more interested in, pure raw damage is effectively the most time-efficient method since if you kill something really fast you reduce the number of times it gets to punch you in the face and potentially kill you. Also less time spent per mob = more loot in a set amount of time, and people like their sweet, sweet loots.

So if you’re running pure damage builds, the condition you’d most be interested in is Vulnerability (+1% damage taken by foe per stack of vuln, up to a maximum of 25 stacks at once), with possibly Poison (damage taken over time and -33% healing efficiency on affected foe) and Chilled (slower movement speed and skill recharge, can’t remember the numbers off the top of my head but I think it’s 33 or 66%) as bonuses if you can drop them without affecting your damage output.

HOWEVER: running pure damage builds also means you can die very easily if you mess up a dodge or your damage rotation, so a lot of people opt for more tanky gear and/or conditions, which will do the job just fine when playing solo but will often lose efficiency when played in groups due to several reasons (for example conditions being capped to stacks of 25 for those that stack, meaning if there’s several people running condi builds at once they’ll just overwrite each other).

That’s endgame though. I leveled my first character (namely my engineer) to max level and did a bunch of stuff afterward running an uber-tanky condition+heal build that would make my dungeon-running friends disown me if they ever knew about it and was just fine. Sure I took forever to bring things down, but also I was basically unkillable, so I enjoyed myself and took my time to learn the ropes.

A side note: while conditions are frowned upon in higher level PvE, it can be extremely good in PvP. A thing to keep in mind if you ever dip your toe in there.

On to boons: one you’ll likely learn to love is Swiftness (+33% movement speed) as it’s just so convenient for open world exploring. For combat, Might and Fury (increased power and condition damage; increased chance of critical hits respectively) are going to be your bestest friends to get things dead quick. The others also have their uses but are less commonly seen/used, you’ll likely learn them as you go.

Generally speaking: you can go through everything in PvE (except dungeons) without paying attention to boons/condis, but they will make things a lot easier on you if you use them.

Think I covered everything. Feel free to ask if you have anything else, either in this thread or via PM or ingame whisper if you see me online c:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

[snip]
Yes, yes, exploring, the first time is super fun in this game. However, when you’ve been to the same places 200 times, it is not longer fun in and of itself. Many people are leveling for the first time, and I agree they should go see the world and have fun, though XP is not given out enough, IMO, as it takes way too long to level. Anyway, for those leveling their alts, exploring is boring. Period. You can’t explore the same area over and over and over. That’s a conundrum right there, as exploration, by definition, means finding new areas. After one toon with world completion, there is no such thing as exploring.

Speak for yourself! I’ve done five 100% map completions and am on 90% for the sixth and I still enjoy the heck out of it. Even after all this time I still sometimes stumble on an event I’ve never seen before, or wander in some little hidden cranny, enjoy the sights, laugh at some random ambient NPC dialog (my favorite atm is the quaggan in the underwater tunner in Snowden that judges you very hard). Counts as exploring to me

Trilogy + EotN is what I got, and like Neko Dudley said get only new packages as used ones will likely have already-redeemed codes. That said, you might still want to check around your local game stores or stuff like Amazon to see if you can find copies that will be cheaper than on the official site, just double-check that they mention the package is intact, etc.

I only started playing GW1 about two weeks ago and I’m enjoying it a lot personally, so I think it’s definitely worth it. I still see people around and there are still active guilds so if you need help with any story instance it’s not too hard to find help, and from what I’ve seen so far it’s still going okay, though obviously way smaller than it used to be.

The full name is Fractals of the Mists, and they’re basically higher tier dungeons set up in 1-50 levels of progressing difficulty. I’d suggest checking the wiki article on it at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists for more details.

Elementalist is fairly unique in the skill setup, so no, other classes don’t use the same system. They don’t have attunements, but do get a second set of equip-able weapons to switch between sort of as a replacement, each weapon having specific skills the same way eles do. The exception would be for engineers, who can be argued to be closest to the ele system but whose skill variety comes instead from kits which are slotted in the utility (7-9) slots instead of the F1-F4, and who are also limited to one equipped weapon set at once.

The Orr drops are not frequent but I know for a fact I’ve dropped some basic Shiverpeaks, Krytan, Verdant and Ascalonian weapon skins the kind you’d get from killing mobs from those area.

-Don’t buy karma armor right away, first check at the WvW vendors: they have a big variety of skins that you can buy at fairly low prices or for badges if you have them to spare.
-If you have dungeon tokens stashed, this might be a good occasion to spend them to unlock the weapon/armor skins you don’t have yet (for bonus: get the ones with uncraftable stats like Soldier’s/Magi’s/etc so you can salvage the inscriptions/insignias and sell for some gold)
-If you want to get some via drops instead of buying, running around Orr killing stuff can be a good idea: iirc mobs there can drop weapon skins from every other region on top of Orr-specific skins.

Kill everything that moves and sacrifice baby animals to the Random Number God.

I personally love my engineer, both for PvE and sPvP, because it’s a profession that’s really useful and versatile.

Depending on how you stat and gear you can be a really good damage dealer, or have excellent survivability, or inflict some pretty nice condition damage (not ideal for PvE but really cool for sPvP) on top of having cool stuff like access to stealth, projectile reflect/block, constant swiftness boon, and I’m probably forgetting a couple here.

Plus it does require some measure of skill to play properly, so while the learning curve can be a bit steep it’s really rewarding when you get decent at it and having to juggle stuff makes gameplay more interesting imo.

I’ve gotten Leaf of Kudzu and Spark as drops from mobs, get a little exo now and then to spice up the loot I get from regularly running dungeons and make a face every time I get a t6 or a core/lodestone because I prefer hoarding my mats over buying on the TP.

But honestly? I get happy just getting stuff with skins I haven’t unlocked yet, or stuff that goes fill up my collectibles tabs (it makes my little hoarding heart nice and fuzzy).

Re: “obsolete” dungeon equipement, you do realize you can use them to buy either level 70+ rares to salvage for ecto (40-50s/unit last I checked) or non-craftable stat set exotics for a chance at the insignias which sell for like 1-3g/unit on top of ecto too, right?

I’m happy with the rewards as they are. And yeah, you’ll say it’s because I’m one of the outrageously lucky ones who got pre drops, but tbh I only crafted Kudzu because it dropped in my lap and I could. Shrugs. To each their own, but personally I’m good.

Bloodstone dust can actually be used for stuff like http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toxic_Maintenance_Oil and the equivalent sharpening stone/focusing crystal.

Now a use for empyreal fragments, that would be nice…

Don’t think you’ll get much trouble. If you don’t see anyone at the event try shouting in mapchat, you’ll likely get other people who want the trait suddenly running in.

I wouldn’t say it’s a waste if you find the upgrades are making the game easier/better/more fun for you, but it’s pretty easy to get to max level using only looted gear so most people don’t bother buying anything before then as it’d keep getting irrelevant as you level.

That said, your plan does sound good for optimized, worry-free leveling. I’d say maybe don’t replace your entire set every 10 levels but only the pieces that are more than 5 levels lower than yours, as likely you’ll have upgraded one or two at least from looting them from mobs every now and then.

Rune sets I don’t really think are necessary, just slap whatever you have for a couple extra stats but don’t spend more than you need to on them, the effort you’re putting on everything else should be way enough.

For sigils: bloodlust is a good choice. For speed it’s up to you, I personally would bypass it by using the warhorn 5 skill and the signet that gives speed (although you might not have unlocked that one yet?). If you want more raw damage, consider sigil of force, but again it’s an expense you might not really need until you hit 80.

For weapon/armor stats, +Power is definitely good. If you want to go for full DPS as you go on, get the +Power +Precision sets once you reach the level where you get two stats/armor, then +Power +Precision +Ferocity. If not, fiddle around with the secondary stats until you find something you’re comfortable with. (For reference, Ferocity as a stat affects how much your critical hits damage for; the higher the ferocity, the higher the damage on crits, which is why it synergizes very well with power (normal damage) & precision (chance of critting).)

Karma is precious at higher levels because it’s required to get stuff like legendaries, so some people might advise you to hoard it until you go for that. However, if you don’t care for that right now you can also spend it at karma merchants (denoted by a little purple triangle on the icon, or hearts giver if you’ve finished the heart) for gear, trinkets, consumables, etc. It can be worth it to check what they have, if only for example to get a couple accessories to round up your stats. Up to you though.

Engineers are definitely on the squishy side unless you’ve gotten used to most enemies’ tells and figured out what to dodge and what you can afford to stand in. That said, there’s a couple ways to mitigate damage while you’re still learning the ropes. For example, Tool Kit 4 is a 3 second block with a pretty quick recharge, and you can use shield offhand for an extra 3 second block as well.

You might also consider using one or two turrets while leveling; they’ll help putting out damage and also take some aggro, so that there’s less pressure on you. (And a tip: if you drop a healing turret, overcharge it then instantly blast it using the F1 toolbelt skill, you’ll get healed more, which can be pretty handy.)

I can totally understand if you end up deciding engineer is not a good class for you, but if you do stick with it it’s one of the most versatile of all professions, very useful in dungeons and with very good damage to boot.

As far as I know there’s no way to properly farm for those outside of when they’re offered as rewards for things like Living Story like it happened a few times in S1.

That said yes they are fairly frequent on the PvP reward tracks. You get progress on those from rank points so the fastest way would be to get just wins in tPvP, but any PvP game whether a loss or win would still net you progress toward them.

I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking for here, but if it’s intervention from Anet your best bet would be to file a ticket or email support directly.

Hey guys, for what it’s worth I JUST had this issue (problem while linking, account name changing to look like a string of number/letters), I sent a ticket and it was solved just fine, just took a little while (3-5 days). They have to deal with a bunch of reports so it’s normal it takes time, but it definitely is a thing that they can and will fix.

Saving from page 2, bumpity bump.

The superior sigils you see that are forge-able are likely the ones required for legendary weapons. As far as I’m aware no other ones can be rolled, and runes can’t be at all.

Hotjoin is sadly a huge mess and I’m sorry it’s made the experience unpleasant. Have you tried joining solo arena? While it can be rough I find the atmosphere to be much better, in that you actually get people who try to play properly and support, and it’s not ideal for total beginners but I think it’s the better option. These days I mostly use hotjoin to just get used to the profession in PvP then hop into soloq until I’m comfortable enough to go teamq.

Aww there are a few helpful people around, but you’re welcome! Wish I could help you more with the other professions but I barely play thief and only have a boring DPS staff ele so I’m not sure my input would be that great, though if there’s anything you’re wondering about I can try to answer.

Oh yeah grenades are amazing and my primary weapon these days, but what I meant is that if/when you need a break from constant mashing buttons (I know I do every now and then), bombs are a very acceptable substitute with an auto-attack that is actually ‘auto’ =P

Rifle vs pistol is situational. In situations where you want DPS and control, rifle is best: jump shot will get 6 vulnerability stacks on top of good damage, overcharged shot is a knockback/interrupt, blunderbuss is damage, net shot will immobilize as well as give more vuln if traited, and the auto-attack is higher.

Pistol is for condition builds, and does that pretty well – double-pistols lets you bleed + poison + burn + confusion + immobilize just by shooting off every attack, it’s just that conditions aren’t ideal for PvE in the current meta. On top of that using pistol will let you use shield off-hand, which has a three-second block that will interrupt any melee attacker on the 5 key but also a projectile reflect and blast finisher on the 4, which is pretty darn useful in some situations.

I mostly go rifle when dungeoning and solo mapping, but I do like using pistol traited for range and piercing bullets when in big events where I want to tag. And I use pistol+shield when in sPvP. Up to you to see what works best for you.

I’m not an expert at either thief or ele but re: engineers, if you like the AoE but would like less targeting you might consider using bomb kit instead of grenades, which is what it sounds like you used? The damage is roughly the same, just less good for vulnerability stacking which you don’t strictly need in open world.

My usual open world skill setup is rifle with rocket boots, bomb kit and elixir gun, which gives great mobility between the rocket jump and the kit swiftness, good damage from rifle + bombs as well as a stun breaker and condition cleanse from EG, but it’s very easy to mix it up depending on the situation.

I think engineer is easily one of the, if not the most versatile profession, since you have so many different utilities and different combo fields + finishers. And not only does healing turret give you some of the best burst heals in game when blasted immediately after overcharging but you also have access to two different block abilities + an invulnerability if you use shield offhand, toolkit and elixir S, so you can be very durable.

And if you do decide to go dungeoning, engineer works very well in a party, as they provide tons of vulnerability to make bosses go down faster as well as a reflect/projectile block in case your guardian or thief is on cooldown, fire fields to blast might if your ele’s busy with summoned weapons, stealth fields if no one bothered logging a thief, etc… on top of having very good damage on its own.

I believe that as long as you have unlocked the living story episodes you may play them on any character at any time free of charge.

I know the feeling, to the point I uh, ‘somehow’ ended up with 15 character slots, mostly bought through gold to gem conversion. And even with that some classes I’ve rerolled several times just because the character itself didn’t click (i.e. it took me three attempts to keep a guardian, I almost swore off asura after I hated my first and then got one to level 80 two months later, etc etc).

My best advice would be to try to get really invested in a couple characters at first, like, make them pretty to look at for you, come up with a cool background for them, just – get attached. That’ll hopefully get you to stick with them a bit more.

Also – don’t be afraid of leveling several characters at once! Sure avoid having them all at around the same level, but sometimes taking a break of leveling your level 20 to push the level 60 up a bit can be a welcome change.

Have you tried going to PvP to test out the classes and get a feel for them? Given you say you’re trying to see what they’re about, the fact PvP gives you most skills and traits available right away might be a good way for you to do that. Plus with the reward tracks it’s now possible to make money from it as well as level up, since you’ll drop tomes of experience every now and then.

Hey and welcome to GW2!

1. Necros are pretty darn solid in both sPvP and WvW I believe. I can’t tell you a lot as I don’t play mine that much and you’ll probably get better feedback on the necromancer class forum, but in my experience at least fighting them in sPvP it’s extremely annoying to be against.

2. There are a lot of guilds for that, you could either look at the Guild Recruitment forums or simply ask around in map chat while in game (Lion’s Arch or Divinity’s Reach are usually good places to ask, as there’s a lot of people idling/crafting/banking/etc there at all times).

3. You don’t need a lot of money to be successful, no. Exotic gear is second best-in-slot at level 80 and can be bought on the trading post for a few gold or for various dungeon tokens or even karma depending on the stats you want on it. The next level (Ascended gear) IS expensive to get but it’s not really mandatory to have as it’s a pretty minor boost, and it can be something you work on bit by bit IF you decide you want to invest in it. Otherwise running exotics will be perfectly fine.

The biggest expenses in this game are pretty much cosmetic IMO – buying yourself nice skins, going for a legendary, etc. Also a note that if you’re interested in sPvP your gear level will have no influence on your stats there.

4. Every class can be good solo-wise, with each their strengths and problems. What exactly are you looking for in a solo class?

5. Death Shroud uses up life force, which is calculated from your health pool; so it’s indirectly affected by your vitality stat. I believe it can also be increased by investing in the Soul Reaping trait line.

6. There’s a thread stickied in this section that gives out some tips to newbies. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any crucial advice, other than to not rush to level cap but enjoy the leveling. Possibly also a tip to gather everything you see to sell or use for yourself while crafting, as that will earn/save you quite some gold.

If you have any questions while ingame feel free to /w me there and I can do my best to help.

Sadly that’s not how it works =/ Sorry if I sounded curt, it wasn’t intended, and a belated welcome to the game, hope you enjoy it despite this mishap!

Roll a character that has a medium armor profession and use the armor on them.

-Cute fluffy tail.
-Most adorable /sleep animation.
-Giant bipedal horned cats that like flamethrowers and tanks.
-why are you not a charr yet?

Elementalist is possibly the profession in highest demand in the game right now at higher levels (i.e. for running dungeons), as they have extremely high DPS (using either staff, dagger/focus or scepter/dagger) and the delicious fiery greatsword elite skill. That said, they can be tough to level as they’re pretty squishy and juggling attunements doesn’t always come easy.

Warriors are always a safe bet and easier to level, as you can pretty much faceroll everything with minimal effort while still having very decent damage. Some people love warriors, others find them too boring and straightforward. Your mileage may vary. Axe mainhand is still the highest auto-attack DPS, so at least that won’t have changed if you want to pick up where you left.

Rangers get a bad rep because of how easy they are to play in open world and how it gets people into ‘bad habits’ (read: camping everything from range with longbow while sending a pet bear to tank, which is crap when you get to dungeons), but a good melee ranger is a great addition to a party. A bit similar to warrior in that some people find them very boring to play, but again, that’s for you to decide.

I guess one thing to ask yourself is what kind of content are you going to be aiming for? Open-world, dungeons, sPvP, WvW? Depending on which game mode you prefer you may find different things work better for you.

Hey there and welcome to GW2!

Most thief weapon combos are pretty good, so remember that what feels most comfortable for you to play is likely best at least while you level and get more used to the game!

That said, first rule of thumb: melee is much better for damage than ranged, so try to favor that. I leveled my thief using dagger mainhand + pistol offhand a lot: the pistol 5 skill drops a blinding field that will help survive a lot by making enemies in melee range miss their attacks while 4 will stun/interrupt them, and the dagger skills have very high damage – 3 will let you close in quickly on an enemy and blind them, allowing for a good opening strike, and 2 is an excellent finisher. (I think I had a rotation along the lines of 3-5-1-2-2, it can go very fast.)

The main problem with dagger however is that it is single-target only, so in situations where you want to cleave you might prefer sword mainhand instead. The 3 skill will stun, attack a lot and let you dodge attacks for a little bit, which is extremely handy for survival on top of doing great damage.

For situations where you need to be ranged I personally like shortbow, as the 3 skill is extra evades and the 2 skill has blast finishers, which come in handy to use over combo fields (for example, dropping 2 several times on a smoke curtain will stack stealth on you; doing it on a fire field will stack might, etc). It’s not great damage, but it’s good to get away for a bit while you wait for your heal skill to come off cooldown.

No problem. If you’re playing on EU servers and still have trouble after trying feel free to PM me or ping me ingame and I can come and help.

Joining the people who say this is a cool idea and adding myself to The List wheee

Name: Jag
Main Character: Joran Blackgear
Current Region/Server: Piken Square (EU)
Interested Activities: socializing/chatting, world completion, sPvP, dungeons, cooing over cute NPCs
Active: Varies but I’m usually online every day for at least a couple of hours
Additional Comments: I’ve got one of each profession at lvl 80 and five 100% map completions so I think I can help with leveling/speccing as well as helping with weird vistas/skill points/etc. Additionally I run dungeons a lot and am very willing to walk people through explo paths or help through story modes, so if that’s a thing you’re looking for feel free to hit me!
Do you want to be a member of the guild Legion of Honour Y/N: Sadly my current guild likes us to rep 100%, but if you don’t mind me just popping by every other week to say hi feel free to add if it’ll make contacting easier
Are you happy for people to contact you directly (whisper/PM) Y/N: Y

Yep you gotta carry the weapons.

I ran the instance with my berserker-geared engineer and didn’t have trouble using a mix of bombs and grenades (via kits).

Basically what I did was run in, spam bombs/nades at the statue, then switch back to rifle when menders came to net shot + knockback them, then bombing the heck out of them while they couldn’t move.

If you have some measure of power it should be doable fairly quickly and leaving them no time to fix the statue, then once they’re taken care of turn around and nuke the statue again.

Rince, wash, repeat as many times as necessary.

EotM doesn’t count for points so it tends to be much more straightforward karma/exp farming than normal WvW that also does defense and stuff.

The LS this year works differently than before, the story really being moved in the instances, so since you have unlocked the episodes I don’t think you’ll be penalized in any way for doing it later – the story’ll be the same, the instances shouldn’t have moved, etc.

For fast leveling, Edge of the Mists is probably a safe bet if you get on an active map.

No.

P.S: welcome to GW2

You might enjoy engineer – lots of versatility with kits and a lot of different utilities for playing with a party like water/smoke/fire fields, reflects and blasts, which also add to survivability (area heaaaaals <3) while still having really good damage once you get the hang of them, and very viable in every game mode.