Guild Wars 2

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a_skeleton_05

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Combat in GW2 is generally about trying not to die. Even the tankiest setups can go down easily. Learn when and how to dodge and what fights you can handle and which you can't. As a thief, if you're getting hit: You're doing it wrong.

Not sure how Deadeye is now but it was a bit of a meme PVP build last I played. Daredevil staff/SB with 3 dodges was loads of fun though and performed well if you were on the ball.
 

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I feel kind of lost in this game.

I recently made 80 and accumulated enough hero points to have bought all my core thief skills. Everything's great.

So then, I bought the deal which includes Path of Fire and Heart of Thorns .Started the PoF story in order to get my mount. Holy shit, got fucking annihilated during the initial intro "quest". I made it through it, got my raptor. However, just general questing in PoF is painful. It's like taking a character in Vanilla WoW equipped with greens and trying to solo elites.

But that's the weird thing about Guild Wars. It doesn't seem like gear itself makes a whole lot of difference. I mean, I bought the best pistols I can reasonably afford off the auction house but things didn't improve that much. So what am I missing? I feel like I'm better off sticking to the old world, get some more hero points in order to build up the Deadeye specialization that I chose. But that's gonna take a long time considering the skill costs.

The expansions do up your game a bit.

GW2 really isn't a gear game. Lvl 80 exotic gear from the auction house is very close to max stats. Ascended is better but not by much. You make trade offs with gear types. Soldier (toughness / vitality) is tanky, less dps. Berserker is dps and a bit paperish. There is also condition gear (dots) etc. Mix and match. Add toughness / vitality gear if you are having issues and then replace with dps as you get a feel for the content. You don't have to spend a lot on runes and sigils either. A lot of the very cheap ones are helpful. Easy to experiment with.

Go to the MetaBattle website if you haven't already.

Metabattle is very helpful to find skill / gear builds. They have easy to follow templates for pve, pvp, raids, etc. Pick one and modify to taste / gear / cost etc. Most classes have workable core builds that don't need the elites from the expansions. Some classes have powerful combo fields and finishers that require a bit of practice. Usually a video around that can explain it. The official wiki is very good also.

Live on your dodge button. And there are just some classes / builds have it a bit easier depending on recent nerfs etc. Tyical fotm stuff like other mmos.

If there is an event chain going on in PoF or HoT, follow the herd. Content is much easier then, people will rez you quickly, and a lot of those events have mats, etc. for different mounts, etc. You can farm some of the event chains for a decent amount of gold. The griffon quest becomes available at the end of the PoF storyline.
 
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Valderen

Space Pirate
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One thing to pay a lot of attention to is conditions and have skills to remove them. Some mobs in PoF have a lot of conditions and it will destroy you if you’re not careful.
 

Hekotat

FoH nuclear response team
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I feel kind of lost in this game.

I recently made 80 and accumulated enough hero points to have bought all my core thief skills. Everything's great.

So then, I bought the deal which includes Path of Fire and Heart of Thorns .Started the PoF story in order to get my mount. Holy shit, got fucking annihilated during the initial intro "quest". I made it through it, got my raptor. However, just general questing in PoF is painful. It's like taking a character in Vanilla WoW equipped with greens and trying to solo elites.

But that's the weird thing about Guild Wars. It doesn't seem like gear itself makes a whole lot of difference. I mean, I bought the best pistols I can reasonably afford off the auction house but things didn't improve that much. So what am I missing? I feel like I'm better off sticking to the old world, get some more hero points in order to build up the Deadeye specialization that I chose. But that's gonna take a long time considering the skill costs.

PoF is excellent but it's not a walk in the park, you will learn to play your class well or get destroyed. I highly recommend you stick with it. The story in PoF was one of my favorites in the entire series. There will be some items, PoIs, etc. that will be unobatainable without a group.

Heart of Thrones make PoF look like a cakewalk, I still get rocked in those zones.
 

ShakyJake

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GW2 really isn't a gear game. Lvl 80 exotic gear from the auction house is very close to max stats. Ascended is better but not by much.
So, riddle me this, what's the point of doing the high-end content if gear upgrades are minimal past exotic?

Anyway, I followed your advice and looked at the Metabattle site. My spec was already close to what they recommended for Deadeye P/P. However, I bit the bullet and bought all exotic gear with power+precision+ferocity. This made a huge difference. Things became a lot easier.
 

a_skeleton_05

<Banned>
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So, riddle me this, what's the point of doing the high-end content if gear upgrades are minimal past exotic?

For fun/challenge/cosmetic/achievment rewards. The game doesn't do the typical MMO treadmill. I don't know about the raiding, but the only real reason to do fractals is to build up to harder fractals which lets you earn gold a bit faster through it, though there are better and far easier ways of making gold in the game.
 

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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So, riddle me this, what's the point of doing the high-end content if gear upgrades are minimal past exotic?

Anyway, I followed your advice and looked at the Metabattle site. My spec was already close to what they recommended for Deadeye P/P. However, I bit the bullet and bought all exotic gear with power+precision+ferocity. This made a huge difference. Things became a lot easier.

What Dom said for the most part and for most players. If you play pvp or wvw that little edge in stats can sometimes help against good players. But it takes a long time to get to that kind of skill and for most of the game content it just isn't necessary. I haven't really raided or done high level fractals but there are min maxers in those areas too, and they milk stats for all they can get. Upper level fractals have resistance requirements that you can't buy from the AC. And some raiding guilds won't take you unless you have ascended gear. Ascended has other utility too.

Plus some gear types just can't be bought from the AC. They have different stat combinations that can be popular depending on the content and what ArenaNet does with balancing that month. Viper's gear was in demand for a while when conditions ruled. Then they nerfed conditions a bit and it wasn't such a favorite. Still useful if you like that play style and still hard to get.

The best gear is legendary, it has ascended stats but you can also switch between the different types (berzerker, soldier, viper, etc) on the fly and not lose your runes / sigils. Plus it looks really cool. It's a huge grind though.

Eventually if you play long enough you will end up trying to get ascended gear. But there is no need to rush it.
 
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Valderen

Space Pirate
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Well I got some free time thanks to coronavirus for 3 weeks, time to finish the Icebrood Saga.
 

Malkav

French Madman
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By the way, if anyone is looking for a good PvE build guide for a particular profession check out this series:

Best Guild Wars 2 Builds for PvE

I followed his P/P Deadeye build and I'm solo'ing stuff in PoF pretty easily now.

They are good but some may be out of date since they did a huge balance patch last february and nerfed some things.

Anyway, been suckered into playing this again recently (I stopped soon after release) and I have to admit they did a great job with the seasons and expansions.

The storytelling and voice acting is top notch.
 

ShakyJake

<Donor>
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Anyway, been suckered into playing this again recently (I stopped soon after release) and I have to admit they did a great job with the seasons and expansions.
Same here. I played a Guardian at release and stopped about a month in. I decided to try it again and switched to a thief. Having way, WAY more fun. Combat is entirely enjoyable. Absolutely love the pew-pew Deadeye thief.
 

Malkav

French Madman
2,686
1,583
Same here. I played a Guardian at release and stopped about a month in. I decided to try it again and switched to a thief. Having way, WAY more fun. Combat is entirely enjoyable. Absolutely love the pew-pew Deadeye thief.

I'm really enjoying Thief too, mainly as Daredevil though, but still have P/P as the second weapon set for those encounters where being a melee is a pain in the ass.
 

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
854
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If you missed unlocking the prologue of the Icebrood Saga, it's free for 7 days starting today:


Edit: All 3 episodes released so far in the new Saga will be free on specific dates. Just log in and claim it within the window to unlock for free forever.

April 28th - May 4th: Bound By Blood

May 5th - May 11th: Whisper in the Dark

May 12th - May 18th: Shadow in the Ice
 
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Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Next chapter, Jormag Rising, is available in GW2. Log in soon to get it free, not sure how much longer it will be there.
 
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Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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So I quit playing this soon after launch, I need to buy each xpac separately correct?

Base game is free.

Think you get Heart of Thorns free if you buy Path of Fire. Those are the two expansions.

There is a bunch of Seasonal content that you can get free by logging in when they release the next chapter / episode. If you miss that log in window the you have to buy it. Expansions have the elites, mounts etc that are semi-required. Seasonal content is good but optional.

Plenty to do in the base game though. Would play that a bit before forking out for the expansions.
 

Sevens

Log Wizard
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Base game is free.

Think you get Heart of Thorns free if you buy Path of Fire. Those are the two expansions.

There is a bunch of Seasonal content that you can get free by logging in when they release the next chapter / episode. If you miss that log in window the you have to buy it. Expansions have the elites, mounts etc that are semi-required. Seasonal content is good but optional.

Plenty to do in the base game though. Would play that a bit before forking out for the expansions.
Thanks for the info
As I said I have the base game, played a bit at launch till RL got hectic
Might log in to see what I can do.
I know that in GW1 with the buy to play format they use you had to buy each xpac separately so I assumed it was this way here.
 

ShakyJake

<Donor>
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I know that in GW1 with the buy to play format they use you had to buy each xpac separately so I assumed it was this way here.
Yeah, the two actual "expansion" packs are purchase only, but they are bundled together right now. I think I got them for $30 or so a few months back. But the episode releases are free as long as you log in around the time of their release. I think it's fair, and you don't HAVE to buy them. You just lose any sense of story progression, assuming you care about such a thing. Once I had hit 80 I immediately went to Path of Fire to get the Raptor mount and decided to finish the expansion. I still enjoyed it even though I didn't get the past character and event references. Whatever, I'll go back and do the other stuff later.

So, a few months ago I had started playing this game again. I played it briefly back at release in 2012 and just couldn't get into it. My main complaint being that the combat felt rather repetitive. I'm not sure if this is true for all "Core Tyria" professions, but things definitely changed with the elite specializations. All the elites I've played with have felt really engaging and fun. Combat feels like it's pretty damn deep once you start digging into the details.

I highly recommend this video series:



This is a little dated since they've had a balance patch since the video releases, but I think its probably still 95% accurate.

For me, all I'm interested in right now is world PvE. And I am having an absolute blast with the Flamethrower Scrapper (engineer). I may not do the most amazing damage, but my god I can take a beating. I'm not sure if there is any profession + build that's any more face-tanky than the Flamethrower Scrapper? I can literally take on 3 veteran fire hydra at once in PoF without breaking a sweat. Maybe that's not a big deal for some other professions but the others I've tried I couldn't handle that scenario. And that's part of the fun for me is challenging myself with the various tougher enemies out there.

Anyway, I've been really, really enjoying the game now. I absolutely adore it, actually. It has so much character. And I've come to really appreciate the "horizontal" gear progression. It's nice to just grab some exotic gear and have it be "good enough" for most content. And crafting ascended stuff isn't that big of a deal thanks to gw2efficiency.com

Also, holy shit, are the world dragon encounters in this game epic. The first time I did Tequatl the Sunless I was amazed.
 

Sevens

Log Wizard
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So I am unable to recover my old account, oh well
made a new one to check it out since its free. Made a turret engineer and its pretty fun, but im only around level 25
Lots to do, seems like even more than before
 

Hekotat

FoH nuclear response team
12,244
11,893
So I am unable to recover my old account, oh well
made a new one to check it out since its free. Made a turret engineer and its pretty fun, but im only around level 25
Lots to do, seems like even more than before


There is a shitload to do, however, teh last few times I tried to play the maps were very empty. It wasn't that way a few years ago but it seems like most people lost the desire to play.