Some info :)

Hi all,

I dropped World of Warcraft for Guild Wars. Did this because I got bored of WoW and people there only care about epix and such.

Anyway, I was hoping to get some info here.

Where should I go first to get to know the game better..? And which #1 proffesion and #2 proffesion would you suggest for a "noob" ?

Things I like to do are DPSing a lot and healing a bit.

Also, is it true that the game is a bit "dead' PVE wise ?

GW is alive and well. The doomsayers are long time players who are running out of things to do.

You can find info on the wiki at http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

They cover the game basics.

For professions, read the stickied basic threads in each of the Campfire section subforums. That will give you a good sense of what each profession does and how they are played.

Welcome to a great game.

1. No uber weapons - each type has a max damage, after that it's just what you like

2. No uber armor - once you reach a place to buy max armor, after that it's all vanity

3. No uber profession - each profession has its pros and cons which you try to make up for with the secondary profession.

4. No loot stealing, no boss camping, no subscription fee, no buying stuff to make you better than other players

5. Max level 20 - then school is out and you need to learn to use your skills

Come back when you have specific questions and you will find the forum is full of helpful members.

Hey,

Yea I already did some reading there.. but its hard at this point to understand anything of those builds haha.

Also I just really dont know what to pick as a proffesion to start with.. cause its all new!

Btw, any advice for a 2 man "party" ? Since my bro will be joining me too. Would be cool to have 2 characters that match each other !

GW is alive and well despite what some might say , I still use PUGS(pick up groups) because to me it's all about meeting people and learning...some you learn to avoid I wouls suggest starting in Prophecies , it's the longest of the 3 games with a good learning curve and as in most games like GW Monks tend to find groups easier to join than other professions , so you can do your healing thing and observe how others use their skills . If you need any help in game feel free to whisper me . IGN<<<<<<<<<<

It depends on your personal playing style and in which campaign you will be starting.

Do you like melee fighting? - then warrior or if you start in Nightfall, a dervish.
Do you like ranged fighting? - then a ranger or a caster.
Do you like the idea of using elements to damage foes? - then an elementalist.
Do you want an army of undead minions? - then a necromancer minion master build.

You get 4 character slots with just one campaign; if you buy all three you have a max of 8 character slots. There is no penalty for deleting and re-rolling a character.

There are NPC henchmen and (in Nightfall) heroes to fill out your party and lend a hand when finding other players doing the same quest becomes difficult.

Thanks for the replies so far,

I totally agree with you there Ghengis. Meeting new people and new stuff is the reason why I like to play MMORPGs.

Atm Im reading about Paragon, but it seems that Paragon is more of a "leader" position and thats currently not the position that im looking for haha.

Im getting all 4 of the games tomorrow. So its still kinda blurry which way to go :P

Well back to reading for now, Ill poke you guys again if I got some more questions !

Thanks again,

Kevin

Paragon can play front line as well as back line with good attack and heals from shouts .

Ah oke cool

Since we are with 2 now, (my bro and me) what would be a nice start "setup" to play with ? I mean whats a nice combo ?

And is it possible to change a secondary proffesion later on in the game? Or are you stuck with the first one you pick?

Please don't call yourself a noob. Use newb instead.

Anyways, here is a quick overview of professions (yeah I know it's not SUPER complete lol, just read each profession's main paragraph at the wiki(s)):

Warrior - knocking down/bleeding/crippled, good for damage and armor
Ranger - pretty versatile (spirits, traps, preparations, conditions), good armor, loner profession really IMO
Monk - you should know this
Elemenatlist - good caster for damage, big variety of what they can do
Necro - powerful spells with corpses (death magic), some conditions, lots of hexes, curses are anti-melee
Mesmer - Not really good for damage or healing, made to annoy basically. If Necro Curses were anti-melee then Domination Magic is anti-caster. Good at energy denial, interruptions, disabling skills, targeting monks (not really recommended for a new player though, but I went for it)
Assassin - made to spike other players, nothing more than that.
Ritualist - Ranger/Necro hybrid. Like both they can conjure extra help through spirits, like Ranger they are pretty versatile in general, but like Necro they have lots of spells and more energy.
Dervish - Warrior/Caster hybrid. Relies a lot on enchantments for protection and energy (if primary Dervish), can AoE with Scythe.
Paragon - good for partywide buffing since many of their chants and similar skills are earshot. The spear is also an okay weapon with it's own set of spear skills.

^^Best part.........

If you want to get the basics and learn the game (along with lore) then you guys need to start in Prophicies, then you can follow the story line to Factions, then to Nightfall, the to EoTN. You probably won't understand the builds and skills all that much until you are in game and see how it all works.

I would recommend you guys start off as one monk and one necro, but I also recommend you make other professions to play around with. My primary is an ele and I love her, but I also really like my monk and assassin. Good luck and hope you enjoy the game.

Haha, the no subscription fee is a great part yea But then again, I dont mind paying for a game that I enjoy

Anyway for PVE I decided to take a Paragon/Monk or a Paragon/Ranger first. My bro will take a Ele (dont know which #2 prof). What do you guys think its best to start with as a #2 prof? Monk or Ranger?

And will a Paragorn and Ele match each other well or ?

They will be fine together. Any profession can sync well with any other. It's all a matter of setting up your build depending on the foes and what the other guy is using. You will probably eventually go P/Warrior because of ["Save Yourselves!"]. That's an insane party buff. The ele will be a little more versatile especially when if comes to the caster profession due to the high energy they have. The ele will also be much better at farming if you guys ever get into that.

Your secondary doesn't matter early in the game. I can't really comment on the paragon because I have never played one. For the ele I would have them go secondary monk or mesmer. Would recommend mesmer slightly over monk.

Or the ele could go secondary necro, that can be a nasty combo as well.

Hmm, but P/Warrior is more a DMG going way right? and P/Monk is more of a support(healing?) way.

Cause thats why im wondering if i would be able to change second prof. Cause then i could switch to whats needed the most for a day or a week.

yes u can change ur secondary profession once u are ascended

Yeah, you can change your secondary profession at any point, and heroes are amazing, especially some of the 'gimmick' builds.

You can find most listed here;
http://pvx.wikia.com/

Thnx for the link.

Btw, if I take a paragorn will I be able to start at the first guild wars game start town?

A big realization that you're going to have to come to is that this isn't a game that you "solo" very much. You can play alone, certainly, but when you do you still are probably going to want to take along henchman (and heroes, if you have Nightfall and/or EotN). There are a significant number of solo farming builds, but for general PvE and all PvP, this is a team game. The minimum party size (outside of presearing, the tutorial area in Prophecies) is 4, and the content is designed around playing with a max party.

Furthermore, there's no combination of classes that would be "bad" to have together in a party. Sometimes it would be better to not have both of you in the same role in case that particular class is at a disadvantage in a particular mission (ie, two melee attackers in a mission where you need range or the ability to hit through obstacles), but you should both play what you feel comfortable playing, and know that no matter what you choose you'll be able to flesh out your party comfortably with henchman (or heroes, again).

As for what amounts to good "newbie" classes: warriors, rangers, elementalists, and necromancers are good choices, IMO. Warriors are melee DPS with the best armor in the game, rangers are ranged attackers, interrupters, condition spreaders, and all-around nuisances, elementalists are your standard fireball-throwing mage class, and necros are cursers, raise undead minions, and have lifestealing spells.

No you can't. Only the 6 core professions can start on any campaign. (warrior,monk,elementalist, necro, mesmer, ranger). Assassins, and ritualist are Factions only while Paragon and Dervishes are Nightfall only. If you have all the games eventually during the story you can take any character to any of the 3 campaigns which is a pretty cool thing. Paragons are my favorite profession but for a new player I would recommend playing ALL of them and finding out which YOU like best. The Paragon gets MUCH better as the game goes on and the party size gets bigger. The "popular" paragon build relies on [Save Yourselves] which is a factions skill and gets better as you donate faction. Faction is generated through many forms such as alliance battles and competitve missions. So in a nutshell the higher your Kurzick/Luxon rank the more efficient your paragon will be. For beginner I would honestly start with a warrior to get the "feel" of the game and maybe your friend can either go monk or necro. Good Luck and welcome to a AWESOME game!!!!

Right I'll give you a sum of things as well.

Warrior - pure offense, there's no tanking like in wow. Heavy on knockdowns and condition spamming, and it possibly has the best dps in the game. Can use 3 native weapons each with it's own aproach slightly different than the others, and more importantly with somewhat different playstyles. Hammers for knockdown, axe for single target damage, sword for pressure as well as damage.
Assassin - melee-caster hybrid, relys on hitting hard and fast but somewhat fragile and not much versatile imo.
Dervish - another melee-caster hybrid, scythe is a powerful thing in pve, rely's on enchantments for the most, but can be somewhat outshined by a scythe-warrior using [[warrior's endurance] for enegy gain, allowing it to spam attack skills on recharge.

Ranger - ranged class, has some nice offense and self-defense and a neafty all-arounder.
Paragon - the other ranged class, pretty much a ranged warrior. Mostly a support class both defensive and offensive, can pull some damage numbers but you won't be the badass of the team. Somewhat overlooked in pugs.

Elementalist - not hard to understand. Uses elemental magic for AoE damage, 4 actually (fire, water, earth, air) each with it's own niche. Fire for heavy damage, water for hexing and snaring, earth for some damage and defense both personal and party wide, air for spiking. Keep in mind, you'll be doing damage through them all, but they all work somewhat differently with different purposes.
Necromancer - Offensive support, can be the biggest damage dealer in the right hands, on the right time and very versatile.
Mesmer - hard to explain, passive hexes mostly :/ a complicated and overlooked class, but very powerfull for experience players. Newbies usually stay away from it though, hard to master.

Monks - Healing and party support. Can do some damage on it's own using the Smiting Prayers line but it's less inclined for offense than anything else.
Ritualist - Another one hard to explain. Basicly support, a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Don't really know it that well myself.

And welcome to Guild Wars, where brain matters. You'll always be working with a team so synergy between the members is important. Take your time to understand how the bars and skills, and game in essence work, it's not hard really but completely different than WoW for sure. The best thing is to try them all and see wich one fits you better.

And to play a assassin/ritualist you need to start in factions, and paragon/dervish in nightfall. But you can move around freely between the continents. However for a new player, Prophecies is the way to go. Slow learning curve, and free skills as quest rewards. On the other campaigns you need to buy them wich can get expensive.

As a P/Mo you will have a hard time using monk heals, as a paragons energy is limited when using spells, For healing you should stick to the paragon Heals.
Warrior is an obvious choice, more buffs for your party, a few buffs for yourself to dish out more damage. But really anything goes, most of the time you will only find yourself using 1 or 2 skills from your secondary profession.

You said you liked to deal damage while offering support/healing, so out of the core professions i would recommend Elementalist or Necromancer. But what i would really recommend is trying each profession out for a bit, untill you find one you like, there are no penalties for deleting & re-creating characters, and you have 8 slots availible for characters if you own all campaigns.

Thanks for all the answers to my questions,

I think I might go Necro then. Just finished some reading about them and I like the way to have a 'army' of undead minions beside me haha.

One thing that I really love already of guildwars is that this is a party game.. no endless SOLO grinding. Also saw some gameplay movies from different proffs but its still a bit hard and strange to see it all.

So I guess its time for me to install guildwars now and start trying out the proffs.

Thank you all again for the replies

Also the benifit of starting in the first chapter is that many of the quests give skils as a reward. And if you do it right you can get many skills from differnt classes for free. Once you get to the desert and ascend you can come back after changing your secondary profession and get other free skills for that profession and the others as you change the secondary professions.

Well,

After 5 hours of playing I decided to stay with a ranger first. Get to know the game a bit better and do some main questing. Just dont know which second proffesion would be the best to take as a start.

One thing that I really like about the game is the social part. People are v ery friendly and such Really awesome!

Hey that mission went on a bit longer than I thought and your name disappeared off my speech box lol , whisper me again , also PM'ed you as well

Just saw this thread - just to say if you ever find yourself short of a monk or if you have questions just ask me! IGN under my avatar, I'm always happy to help the new blood.

Just play around with different classes and find one you enjoy playing. There is no best, and most of the ideas that you have of what the classes are right now are probably pretty off.

There really is no "leader" class, even though Paragon has "Leadership" skills. Generally, in a PvP situation, it'll be the Warrior that calls spikes/targets. In PvE, nobody really cares. You just kinda use your skills and try not to suck too bad, but even if you do.. nobody will usually notice. Just try not to agro a lot of mobs onto your team like Leeroy or anything like that and you should be fine.

I think Warrior is actually a pretty easy class to PvE with. They have higher armor, so mob AI targets them less, and all they really have to do is c+space to look like they're doing something. Yeah, sometimes you may have to tank.. But that just means you run out into mobs, get them into a ball and stand still -- and this is only for the hardest high-end areas, not normal play. There's not really anything you have to really be good at... And Warriors are fairly good at farming.

Paragon is another high armor class, it just kinda stands at midline and spears stuff to death. Its support skills are nerfed hard, so those are pretty much useless.

My first class was Necro, ages ago... You'd probably find it pretty fun. You'd want to spec into death if you want to be a minion master - and those are actually wanted in PvE. The only thing about a MM (minion master) is that you'll have to do a lot of work keeping your minions up and raising new ones.

Elementalist was my second class, ages ago... It's really easy. You just nuke stuff, that's pretty much it. Hard to be bad at an Ele, and they can farm too. Very good starting class to learn the game.

I think you'd need a deeper understanding of the game to use a Ranger or Mesmer properly, because they're largely about skill disruption and shutdown of enemies. Both can do mindless stuff, but doing that on those classes would just give you a really bad idea of how they're supposed to be played.

Super easy classes are: Elementalist (fire) and Necromancer (curses). Following that are the melee classes and Paragon: Warrior, Paragon, Assassin, Dervish. Harder classes would be: Ranger followed by Mesmer, and the most important role that you really don't want to suck at: Monk.

Your secondary is not that important until you reach higher levels. While your Attribute points total is low, you won't want to spread them around beyond your primary. Again, you can check on the wiki for an explanation, but as an example:

Warrior has Strength, Tactics and three weapon attributes, Sword, Axe & Hammer. You would want to put as much into Strength and your weapon attribute as you can. Tactics is used for self-healing (warrior Healing Signet skill) and possibly your shield requirement (warrior shields come with either Strength or Tactics requirements).

To be an effective low-level warrior, you won't have any to spare to stick into the attributes for your secondary. The warrior/monk (wammo) build is popular but not overly useful because a warrior, not being a caster, has a very low energy pool and needs it for his weapon skills.

Ranger is an excellent profession to begin with. This will let you get down all of the basics plus learn a few things that others miss. Rangers tend to be on the outer edges of battles so you get a better view of the entire, where as warriors are in the centre and miss most of what is going on around them.

Despite the fact that you can solo just about everything in GW this is very much a team based game. Learn to work as a team, not just in a battle but also when setting up your build. Your skills should compliment your teams.

As a ranger you have lots of options when it comes to effective builds. You should always have at least 2 bows, one of which is a long bow. This is for pulling, that is one thing that rangers do very well. Rangers are often the last man standing if things go bad so taking a resurection skill is a good idea as well.

Have fun! That is why we all play.