New Questions From the New Guy

Howdy all. I just joined this site AND Guild Wars. I enjoyed the trial so much I bought the whole set and cancelled all 12 of my SWG accounts (which was basically the whole server).

So risking getting beat up too badly, I will say I have researched several sites for my answers (including this one) and there are so many options it boggles the mind. I rolled a Monk, a Fire Elementalist, a Ranger, and a Warrior. Does anyone have good secondary advice for them? I solo mostly, dont PvP, and really enjoy storyline and side quests. Eventually I hope to get to a point I can farm and help new players. My main is basically my Warrior.

Any decent advice is very welcomed and appreciated. Maybe we will see one another in game. Thanks.

hey and welcome to the community!
i can really only help you with one of the professions(i dont use the other ones tbh ) and that one would be ele!
Personally for me, i use /paragon so i can bring "Fallback!" on my bar when i have a minion master to keep the minions alive. But really for elementalist you dont need a secondary profession.
and i hope you arent doing the things by yourself. In this game you call going with a team of non-humans "H/H"(henchmen and hero). you may not that great of stuff but you deffinatley need them later on in w/e campign you are in.

well hope this helps and welcome to the GW community!

the game is based around a party, so unless you are farming with a specific build in a specific area, there is no advantage to going solo. Use the henchmen available to you in each area, until you unlock enough skills to run good builds on your heroes (gained in Night fall, and eye of the north.) Heroes are like henchmen that you can costomize the armor weapons and skills on(max 3 per person in a party). You will want a front line(war derv assassin, or yourself if you are on your war) and at least 1 monk in the beginning area's, once you get the full party of 8 available you will want to have 2 healers and a front liner. The rest are up to you, but never go out by yourself unless you are running a farming build meant to go solo. As for secondary on a waar, it whouldn't really matter that much, most warrior builds do not require secondary skill, and after you accend( part of the story line in each campaign) you will be able to change your secondary prof at any time at The Great Temple of Balthazar (which you can get to by map traveling from one of the port towns, Lions Arch Kamadan or kaineing center) from the profession changing npc for 500g. also after the initial time that you map travel to GToB you will be able to map travel there at any time by going onto your map and clicking the boat icon and selecting it from the list there. After you initially unlock a secondary on a character you can change between them freely from you skill selection and attribute menu.

Welcome aboard.

Firstly, don't stress too much over secondaries. Treat them literally as the name suggests (secondary!); there's no obligation for you to ever have to use any secondary class skills in your build, the purpose of a secondary class is merely to provide additional skill options that the existing skill set offered by your primary class can't already do for you. Or to put it another way, if you find yourself relying on secondary class skills a lot, perhaps you should create a primary character of that class.

So with that said, choosing a secondary for any character isn't as much of a big deal as you might think. Common choices include /Mo for a resurrection skill, /E for Glyph Of Lesser Energy, /R if you want a pet etc, or whatever secondary class offers a decent speed boost skill that your primary might lack (example: /A for Dash). But the game is supposed to be designed in such a way that there are no "wrong" choices as such, only uninformed ones at worst.

Finally, it is also possible for you to change your secondary class later in the game, so don't stress if you feel you want to change your mind on this, as you will get the chance to change again later on, as often as you like.

Hope that helps.

Thanks folks, for the warm welcome. I had been watching this site and the community and knew it was a gem.

I did choose Elemental for my Monk's secondary. I literally laughed out loud watching groups of enemies drop like dominoes with the Glyph of Lesser Energy/Firestorm/Symbol of Wrath combo. The wife just looked at me like I had lost it (though she and the kids often look at me that way anyways).

Its good to know about secondary only being an administrative type requirement. I am thoroughly enjoying the game and cant believe I overlooked it all this time. I look forward to contributing as time marches on.

Try typing these in game:

/wiki guide to playing as a monk
/wiki guide to playing as an elementalist
/wiki guide to playing as a ranger
/wiki guide to playing as a warrior
/wiki guide to playing as ...

I always found these pages useful as they give you a good grasp of various play styles of each class and possible choices for secondaries and don't bog you down with too much information.

Continue to believe this! One can too easily get involved in high level, hyper-optimized play and start thinking there's only a handful of valid ways to play GW. While it's good to seek out ideas, unless you're actively not enjoying what you're doing, you may be poisoning the well.

Hi and welcome to Guildwars,

I would not worry to much on secondaries at the moment as you will have an option to change it later if you so wish.

I would recomend you have a look at our Campfire section for the profession you are playing, this will give you an insight into each class its pros and cons ect.

Secondaries come into its own for certain build skills for e.g R/RT for Barrage
so really have fun at the moment enjoy the storyline and remember if you have all 3 Campaigns plus eye of the north you can take your char accross to these areas at a certain point in the game.

Each campaign has its begining section to learn yourself the ropes so to speak

Have fun thats the most important thing and Farming comes later when you have a grasp of the area in hand and your abilities

I don't mean to kill the fun or anything but you're looking at it all wrong. You get to pick a primary and a secondary. Not two professions. 'Secondary' means supporting the primary and not being the main focus. You are a Monk, and your secondary is there to support that. A good example of Mo/E would be using Glyph of Lesser Energy to lower the energy costs of big heals/prots (keeping people alive is your job). Not to pretend you're an Ele and run around nuking stuff. By all means do it to have fun, but keep in mind you'll be nowhere near optimal and no one will want you in their groups.

You haven't said which campaign you are playing at this time, but the advice about secondaries is universal. Until you reach level 20 and start hitting harder areas, your secondary is hardly used. By that time you can change it to suit the occasion.

As Marty said, if you find yourself using your secondary skills more than your primary, then drop the character and create a new one based on the old secondary. You obviously prefer ele over monk, so don't waste your time on a monk character. For your first character you should always find the one you like to play the most. It will probably be with you a long time.

Hi Marty and Darcy. My Monk is mainly for healer support, and the reason I selected Elemental was for the Glyph of lesser energy. It came with the firestorm so I thought to myself, "well lets see what happens if I chain these three."

I am about as new they come to the game and part of learning it is learning not just the mechanics but also the classes and complements. I'll get there and am in no way in a major rush. I'm one of those "it's not the destination but the journey that counts" types.

I definitely appreciate the insightful input though. I am always open to ideas. Hope everyones day goes well.

P.S. I am starting from campaign 1 (Prophesies) and taking the whole journey, one campaign at a time.

Indeed. You won't have enough attribute points to max 3 attributes, the max level is 20 and then you'll only have enough to max 2 attributes and put a few points in a third. GolE, however, is good at attribute 0. Spending less energy = casting more heals. I'm not saying that nuking is never good for a healer - if you have a spare skill slot, you can pack a single nuke to chase monsters away from a friend who got himself surrounded - but don't waste too many attribute points and skill slots on it.

Prophecies huh? Hoo boy that's going to be slightly tough, but i suppose its better than having to dredge through hard mode missions with a Paragon because apparently trying to convince the pugtarded that there's more builds to my profession than just 'lolimbagon plz PvX sez so'.

That's a LONG ways away however, dont let that thought get you down, once you've made some friends they'll be far more willing to do stuff with you, well...as long as you dont end up giving them so much Death Penalty that they'd probably be better off with a Whammo. (Those being a W/Mo who thinks he's a Paladin and usually has Mending on their skillbar.)

I dont suppose you can spare your IGN here could you?

My IGN is Sir Gelotri Derien (Warrior), Melfor Tresomme (Ranger), Master Beltronis (Elementalist), Brother Michaels (Monk)

Noticed that you are only doing Proph first.

I wish to say that as the best storyline it has the disadvantage of not earning a lot of Gold on your travels through it.

So once at Desert area seek out the collectors and gather items from the desert to supplement your income as you will obtain the max rating armour parts with no cost from these collectors.

It is a great campaign to have fun with that way you can hold onto some gold for later for an armour you may like to wear.

Uh....which one's the more active of the lot?

My error, Gelotri, although the play a profession you enjoy still stands. I like Prophecies and was very glad that it was my first campaign (the others didn't exist of course). It's gradual learning curve is very kind to the new player and the story is the basis for the whole lore, including that of GW2.

You are right not to rush. I took forever to finish Prophecies and I did every available quest. And don't forget to look around at the scenery. There are some amazing vistas in the game.

NOTE: After you are able to change your profession, go back and start in Ascalon, picking up skill reward quests for which you had the wrong profession combo.

That sir, is an excellent tip. Thank you very much for offering that up. As I adventure with my different characters, I pool all their gold in the Shared Bank (love that concept). I now have 2 characters oufitted in new armor and saving to outfit the others as I garner my virtual riches. I was puzzled as to why you can craft armor and not weapons, but since the actual weapons dont matter as much, I suppose I can understand their reasoning.

Thanks again.

Each character has a different playing style, so I suppose they all are equally active. I play one until I get a belly full of him for the day, then change to another. I am a warrior at heart so I suppose if I had to choose just one, it would be the Gelotri character.

I am a bit strange when I level my toons. I try to prevent burnout and the "3-meter stare" by leveling one to a specific point and then play catchup with the others. It offers me a more diverse experience (even though the quests are the same) as well as variety.

This is something that I wish I'd thought about before putting a lot of time into my monk. Spending all your time making sure the red bars stay up is a good way to miss a lot of the art and interesting spell effects.

I have to agree with you. I like to research a bit before jumping to a decision. I chose Prophesies first as the vast majority of advice I have read on the net suggested the same. Story is important to me personally. I write fantasy novels as a RL profession and can honestly say the folks that wrote some of the stories have some talent for creating engaging stories (quests).

I did take note of the screenshot quality vistas in-game. I have to admit, for an older game there is quality built into GW. I'm hooked, LOL.

So when I am able to change secondaries, I can actually go back and repeat quests I have already done? The reason I ask is that I am hitting every quest I come across, and go back to scrub the quest-givers in the event they offer up new ones before moving on to the next zone.

Monk-Ele
Elementalist-Mes
Ranger-Monk
Warrior-Assassin

You can craft weapons. It's expensive though.

Expensive to the point where it isn't worth it. It's easy enough to buy a cheap green/unique (it means the same thing) for a few k that has a full set of max mods. Compare that to crafting, which requires 5k to craft, a lot of materials (probably another 5k), and mods (which vary in price but could potentially be quite expensive also).