n00b alert - have a few questions before starting...

Good morning all!

I recently tried the trial out, got absorbed, and this weekend am picking up the full game. For what it's worth, i really enjoyed the gameplay, it more fits my style.

Now I am not going to do the whole "What game should I buy?" thing. I read the stickie. I am going for Prophecies/the original one based on what i read, and planning eventually on pvp'ng (So i am planning on getting the other eventually).

The few big questions I have...

1 - How hard is a necro to use, really? I have read they are a very fickle class... but in the trial i tended to like that class (and Elementalist) the most. (for reference, it is more of a "character idea" choice, in Warcraft I played a Warlock because I liked cursing and raising demon).

2 - Can someone effectively PvP (say, with a guild, but also solo/etc) with just prophecies? Or should I expect to have to buy at least nightfall before getting too much into pvp?

3 - From reading the little faq on chapters, it looked like i could pretty easily skip Factions... is that true? Can someone be decent/have fun without Factions (assuming they get the other expansions, and yes, this is a "i am cheap don't want to buy them all if i can avoid it" question).

4 - How hard is healing in GW? Is there/can you set up hotkeys to target your team mates? I like healing in games as a second-main character, but I tend to get frustrated with my mouse, i am mainly a keyboard user :/

Thank you for your opinions and answers!

Necro isn't very hard to be honest. Soul Reaping = Swimming in an energy

You're best getting NF for PvP, since NF has so many powerful skills - but Proph is smart to get aswell as it allows you to run Spiteful Spirit (PvE-wise) and have access to farming.

Yup

Healing should be left to the monks - if your running something (like Elementalist/Ritualist for instance) you can take Aegis or some party support.
Necromancer can also go hybrid too, with epic energy management.

2) I think you can play most of the aspects of PvP with only Prophecies, but I if you're planning to go on the serious PvP path, people will expect from you to be able to use all skills.

4) You can set up hotkeys to target party members, but you can't set up hotkeys to use a specific skill on a specific party member.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Target

1 - Dont have a necro, so cant help ya there
2 - Sure u can, You've got the Random Arena's, Team Arena's Guild vs Guild and Heroes Ascent.
3 - You can have fun just having one seeing as they are all standalone chapters you should be able to play GW without any of the other chapters.
4 - You can't by default, though if you go to the options screen (F11) and then to a map called controlls (i think, not sure) you can add hotkeys yourself

(don't play necro, don't heal others)

2- You can PvP all you want with just one game, might need to spend a few rl dollars to unlock all PvP skill sets to jump in quicker, I even think you can just by the PvP part of the game. If you get just Propecies, look for the Game of the Year version, around 20 dollars.

3- you can skip it, you can skip nightfall as well. I have all of it and enjoy all chapters.

Hope that helps

1) I think that a necro or ele is a good character to start with since you like casting classes. They have a pretty good learning curve compared to a Mesmer, imho.

2) I'm not a big PVPer so I'll leave this to someone else who knows more about it.

3) All of the campaigns (not including Eye of the North, which is the only true expansion) are stand alone so you can buy all of them or just one and get the satifaction of a complete game. Personally, I don't have Factions. Factions seems to be geared more towards the PVP instead of the PVE so I decided against buying it. Nightfall is a good balance between PVP and PVE while Prophecies is mostly PVE.

4) Secondaries aren't usually healing classes. Healing is usually up to the monk in a group but you can set up hotkeys.

Okies first up, welcome to the game!

Necro's are used to a MASSIVE extent these days..so i think you would enjoy it based on what you've told us.

Prophecies is cool, yet Nightfall and EotN both offer Heroes...which are essential for solo PvE.

Factions uses by far the most amount of skills used in PvP...so you may want to get that eventually.

As for healing, it's a monk's job or sometimes a paragon (but they are only from Nightfall) unless you play a Necro / Ritualist (you need factions for the latter choice!) as they can heal too.

If I'm honest i think you'd play necro rather well from what i can see, they are HUGE damage dealers...and can both punish enemies for using skills and raise undead armies (though usually not recommended together) every party you will see will ask for a necro for most things.

If you have any questions, feel free to pm me either on here or in game (IGN is <---Thataway).

Hope i helped!

I wouldn't say they're hard, they're pretty forgiving as they've got good energy management, good self-heal, and good damage-dealing.

I will leave that to the PvP'ers.

Yes, the chapters are entirely self-contained, and you can skip right to Nightfall. You will, of course, miss out on the factions-specific professions (Ritualist and Assassin) and the factions-specific skills, but I shouldn't think that should be too much of a problem.

Depends, of course. It's often a question of anticipating the enemy and of fast reflexes, and yes, you can map hotkeys for healing.
It is, I would say, one of the more demanding professions to play well, but on the other hand absolutely everyone loves a good monk...

If you have experience in WoW then you shouldn't have that much of a problem running a Necro in GW. A suggestion is to read up on this forum and borrow a build temporarily from PvXwiki. That will get you going on how some builds are structured and what works and doesn't work, so you don't waste a ton of your time.

Your effectiveness in PvP is entirely continguent nowadays on owning all three campaigns. Some diehard fans will argue this, but I would argue back about flexibility and being able to adapt to different situations. Prophecies, although a great campaign, is really limited in skill choice. Also, the Factions introduces Alliance Battles (among other things). My suggestion is to buy all the campaigns if you become good at the game. You can also just buy the PvP pack from the online store if you want to go cheap.

Factions is a great campaign and introduces a lot of different aspects to guild wars. I am Kurzick (a factions thing) and really get into the whole Kurzick/Luxon fued. I also like much of atmosphere about the game. It is by far the easiest campaign... and shortest... but still a favorite of mine.

[QUOTE]

My primary is a monk, so I do a lot of healing! lol... and I find it easy. Having said that, there are a lot of extremely bad monks in the game. You skill set and rune setup are what matters with monks. In guild wars, you are allowed to choose eight skills. Later in the game, you get access to Elite Skills that can be captured from bosses. This is the make or break for any class, and with monks, this will make you a good or bad monk quickly. In short, your Elite will dictate how effective you are at healing a party and what role you play in the party.

Lastly, if you have any other question you can pm me either in the forum or ig.

ign... Awakened Lotus

Take care man!

I'll try to answer the questions from my pvp perspective

Necro aint really hard to use at all . Once you get 'into' playing PvP you'll notice that if you know how to handle such a caster, you can easily adept to other caster/midline roles as well (like elementalist, ritualist, and the harder to master mesmer).

Hmm, yes and no. You can start with prophecies alone and see whats it like. Do a bit of RA (Random Arena's, get teamed up with 3 other randoms to fight 4v4). Get a bit of experience there. But if you want to play in a team (4v4 team arena's or 8v8 Hall of Heroes or Guild vs Guild) you really want those extra chapters , even if it was only to be flexible. However, there are PvP unlocks for example. Read more about them here

Sure you can have fun without Factions . You can easily start with Prophecies and perhaps Nightfall (great addition), and see from there. Once you get some experience and go play in teams etc. you might want to consider it, but see the answer above .

Yes, you can bind your party members (1 - 10 I think) to your keyboard and 'nearest ally' for example. Personally I enjoy playing healer, but also think it's one of the more skillful classes to play (and frustrating sometimes).

Oh, and these are some nice pvp related articles for beginners on GW website: http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...er/default.php

enjoy

Wow, thank you for all the quick and helpful answers! What a great community this is!

and to clarify, i wasn't going to heal with a /monk secondary, i know better then that I would most likely have a monk/? (based on build research) for an alt. (i know myself too well, i don't think i could stand not being a healer every now and then lol).

Yay for Necro not being too unforgiving. Time to research proph builds and strats.

And as for pvp... I am going to do it mainly for fun, and definitely not "hardcore" about it. there is just something satisfying about walking into an arena and knowing that the guy on the other side is real, and that when you whoop him he is swearing at his screen. (says the confident-yet-untested noob).

Thank you guys again, you have been extremely helpful, and the community here makes me more resolved that GW is the correct choice for my new online home

Another point, the fun in the game picks up at lvl 20 (max lvl), prophecies takes the longest to reach lvl 20. You get bigger quest rewards in NF and factions. That is just another thing to consider.

If ya want builds i'd recommend http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
Lots of builds, though most of them require multi-campaign

the 2 main builds for a necro is being a minion master (MM) or a spiteful spirit curser (SS)

running a SS build is sorta similar to an affliction warlock in Warcraft...you are focused on cursing/hexing your opponent, and causing him to ultimately kill himself...

being a MM is very different than a demonology warlock in WoW...
i'm starting to realize just how brainless being a MM is...since the past few nights i've been able to successfully accomplish my quests while falling asleep at my keyboard and keeping 5-10 minions alive the entire time (just grouping with henchmen..i wouldnt play in a real group if i was sleepy..lol)

that being said...controlling an army of 10 minions and obliterating the battlefield is quite awesome..even if it's on the easier side

as far as taking a direct damage route with a necro, i haven't really done that too much yet...but may look into it more once i finish prophecies ...

Heroes (available only if you have NF and/or EotN linked to your account) can be great, yeah. If you get into GW and enjoy playing PvE, you'll probably want to get NF and/or EotN eventually for the heroes. But I don't think you need them to start out.

To be great, your heroes need great AI-builds. As a new player just starting out, you probably won't have all the skill unlocks for all the professions that the veteran players use to make their hero builds. (Heroes can use any skills unlocked on your account, so when a veteran makes a new character, their heroes get to use elites and late-game skills right off the bat.)

Even without heroes, I think you still have a party flag. You can use this to make henchies on your team stay in a certain spot. The flag alone cleared up a lot of the headaches with henchies for me. Flag them here; go forward and pull some bad critters. It stopped a lot of the problems with henchies charging in and getting you too much aggro at once. Calling your target (hold down left Cntl while attacking something) also does a pretty good job of locking the AI on something specific and letting you attack something else.

Try just Prophecies at first. Play through the storyline with henchies or PuGs. They say it's always been possible to do all of Prophecies with only henchies, but there are at least a few missions where that proves to be difficult for the majority of players. If you find a quest or mission that you can't or don't want to manage with just henchies, ask for help. Usually, those quests and missions will have a lot of other people looking for teams, too. If you can't find a team in game, come here and ask for help.


I wholeheartedly agree that Prophecies is the best place to start. It's still my favorite, and I've played all of them.

As for picking which primary profession you want to try, well, you do get a minimum of four character slots to test with. Prophecies is the longest campaign, by far, and it makes you wait the longest before your PvE character gets access to all their skills and attribute points. If you're trying to decide what profession you like best, may I suggest you read up on their skills at wiki? Wiki is like the player-created encyclopedia of GW. There are spoilers in there for sure, but they're very clearly marked if you want to avoid them.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Index_of_skill_lists the original wiki
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Skill the newer, ANet-sponsored wiki

Or if you want a purely in-game reference, visit an Arena outpost (iirc, the first one you'll find is next to Ascalon in post-searing) and talk to the Priest of Balthazar npc in there. He has lists of all the skills, and you can sort them by campaign. Any skill listed as core or Prophecies will eventually be available to you.

Cheers! Have fun!
Luny

@ OP: as far as I know hot keys for party members come assigned 1-8 on the number pad right out of the box (unless of course i changed that so long ago that I forgot.) Then they come assigned 1-8 on the numbers atop you keyboard for skills. as with others ign is over on the side there message me if you have any questions.

Also keep in mind in prophecies the elite skills that many of the common builds are based around arent available until fairly late in the game. Unless you get a runner, of course but get into that later, but for your first character I'd recommend against a runner and just play it through. The elite skills cannot be bought from skill merchants like regular skills, but must be captured from boss creatures.

Elite skills are a more powerful skill that has faster recharge, longer lasting, hits harder, or acts as 2 skills in one. The elite skills have a gold box around the icon as in [skill]Spiteful Spirit[/skill], as opposed to a regular skill [skill]Animate Vampiric Horror[/skill].

So when people are talking about checking wiki on builds, you might not be able to run those builds until later in the game, but use those builds as a guide on making your own build until you are able to get those skills.

Oh and by the way, a "build" is the set of 8 skills that you bring into fights.

Hey have fun, its a fun game.

edit: dang cant remember how to post skill icons, sorry guys.
Edit by Commander Ryker: Fixed it for you.

tyty for the continuing information

So I am assuming that finding people to do "late game" stuff with is still fairly easy in Prophecies, even though it is the oldest chapter? (in the event that ai henchman just won't cut it.)

Build = 8 skills... got it. And then I assume they help you with the point slotting as well? (again, very little knowledge of how it works, i usually try a "recommended" build first then when i get comfortable explore options at my own risk

I just did the last 4 or 5 mission of Prophecies over the weekend and I had no problems getting into a PUG. It may be a little more difficult during the week but I don't think you'll have too much trouble.

Wow, your the first person who ever admitted to reading the stickies! Wish I had an award to give you.


Necro's are fun and can do mad damage. I see you like the minion master build. So you know, one of the best minion skills (Flesh Golem) is in factions. That's just my opinion so no flames from the rest of you.

Ele's are fun. It was my first toon and I loved the damage I could do.

I mainly use the keyboard too. You can use the number pad to target allies, but you have to change it in options. Healing isn't hard if you have a good party.

Welcome to GW and Guru. Keep reading those stickies!!

Thank you Commander, and everyone else!

Now, final question of my Noobiness!

I am picking up the game tonight, after supper. My wife has informed me that I am allowed to pick up 2 chapters (I get an extra 500 in overtime last check, and she graces me with $40 more in game spending... lol).

As I said before, I am getting Prophecies / the Original for sure.

But which one should I follow that up with? Eye of the North, even though I need a 20 or two? Or should I go for Nightfall?

Factions... I know i will need it. Especially for the flesh golem... hehe. But I would rather not buy that one right away unless it is "necessary". I would prefer nightfall or the "true" expansion as they tout it.

as kind of a side question too... Anyone know yet if "regular" guild wars characters (any chapter) will be playable in GW2?

Thank you again, I will post my in-game names later as I will most assuredly be looking for a decent guild to run with

If you check around they're selling bundles that have both Prophecies and EOTN together for cheaper than buying them separately. So, technically, that only counts as one chapter because EOTN is an expansion.....so you could get another one, too lol.

BTW, your characters now only have to be level 10 to gain access to EOTN. The game will automaitcally buff your level 10 character to level 20 attributes.

Personally, I would get Prophecies and Nightfall but I'm not big into the PVP.

I would get nightfall as your second one. more heroes=more options. there are some pretty good skills and classes to.

by the way, flesh golem sucks. If you get factions dont expect anything out of it...

Well in the question regarding which is best, you know everyone had a differnt opinion. It kinda depends on what you want.

You can probably get Prophecies (GW1) and Eye of the North (Newest Expansion) in a box set. These 2 take place on the same continent, however since Eye of the North is a true expansion there are no extra character slots nor expanded storage and only elite skills from GW1 are available for your characters. Heros are also available from Eye of the North once you get to about 1/3 through GW1.

Prophecies and Factions would be good also since both are stand-alone campaigns, you get +2 character slots due to a second campaign as well as expanded storage. Factions allows access to Alliance Battles (less structured pvp 12v12) and a whole new set of elite skills that are unavailable in GW1 as well as 2 new professions (Assassin and Ritualist). Fast learning curve.

Prophecies and Nightfall are also good for the same reasons as Factions due to a whole new stand-alone campaign, but without Alliance Battles. Nightfall is longer in the pve storyline, get a whole different set of elites and have access to 2 new professions (Dervish and Paragon). Nightfall also has its own set of Heros and has inscribable weapons (get into later, but its a good thing). Medium learning curve.

However if you want to get technical with your wife, get the Prophecies + Eye of the North expansion if it comes in a box set, then get Nightfall or Factions. That way you are technically only getting 2 boxes, haha.

haha got it

Getting the box set (GW!/EotN) and factions, with nightfall to either be snuck in via the plaync store in a week or so when she isn't watching the checkbook

ty again!

1 - I have enjoyed playing my necro immensely. She is, I believe, my oldest character and the most versatile (i.e., can be switched from build-to-build quickly and easily based on my whim that day or specific need of Q).

Necros have better than average energy management, as others have noted. They also have a variety of useful skills to fit just about anyone's playing style. Oh, and don't forget the goth look ^^

2 - PvP was around as early as Prophecies. If, however, you wish to AB (Alliance Battle) for Kurzick/Luxon faction, you would need Factions.

3 - I'm not the biggest fan of Factions, to be honest, BUT there are a few reasons for it.... 1) Flesh Golem (Minion Master elite) is there - yes, you can be an MM without it (Jagged Bones or even the Icy Veins variant) but Golem is truly the best for one beginning as an MM; 2) Alliance Battle; and 3) In looking back, Factions above all the other campaigns, taught me the most about paying my characters and staying alive in tough scrapes ^^

4 - I also have a monk and ritualist, both of whom have healing or protection builds, depending on whim ^^ (Can you tell I'm whimsical? hahaha) Anywho, healing is not that hard, although there are many bad monks, just as there are bad any other chara... Just depends on your particular playing style. For me, personally, since I prefer casters over melee, I can rock the monk. Piece of advise, especially since you're starting out with Prophecies, cap Word of Healing ^^

Feel free to pm in game if you have any questions. These days I'm on most as Rit (IGN Isis Denile) or Monk (IGN Nyssa Salus).

Thank you isis

Well jumping in now (since i finally have a chance to sit down and relax... sheesh).

If anyone is looking for a nooblet Necro, and is will ing to accept that I am a nooblet lol, look for Aether Necrosis in game.