Newbie 5-player team

Hi,

First off I am very sorry if I posted this on the wrong section. I have tried my best to find the proper section, and I have also searched the forum without understanding most of the things Ive read.

Ive just bought 5 copies of Guild Wars, the original game. We are five friends that want to try play this game somewhat casually. Now I have never played this game. I only have minor experiance of WoW. We were thinking of playing this game all 5 of us together. Im not sure that you even can do that.

Now to my question.

Since we are 5 guys we thought going around together and just play by ourselves. But our experiance from WoW says that you need some essensial type of heroes in a party of five. You need a "Tank", a "Healer" and some damage dealers. Now I am guessing the same thing applies here. What I am wondering is what proffessions do you need to have in a party of five.

My guess is that you need to have a Monk (healer), and a Warrior (tank). What more do I need?

Ill be very happy for answers!

GW is not like WoW. Forget any preconceptions you have.

Firstly, Warriors are not tanks. They can be used to tank, but they are much better off being used to produce massive amounts of damage.

Secondly, it doesn't really matter what your group is composed of, as long as it's balanced (i.e, you'll need some monks to keep people alive, some melee characters, etc). Just use your common sense here.

Thirdly, you will be able to all play together. There is one issue though; the start of the original campaign has a maximum party size of 2, which increases to 4 a little while afterwards, which increases to 6 and then 8 later on. This means you won't be able to all be in one group for a while (splitting into two groups works fine for the 4 man areas), but it shouldn't be too long if you figure out what you're doing.

Thank you for your quick answer.

Does that mean that we need several monks in our team? I would appriciate if you could give just some quick suggestions of some balanced team, Since I have no real Idea of what a balanced team means.

We were just thinking of randomly picking 5 diffrent charachters.

As far as Monks go, you'll generally want one for a 4 man team and two for an 8 man team. You can fit other forms of defense into midline characters too if you need to. You don't need to stress on the professions too much. As long as you don't all play the same profession you should be fine.

If you really want a profession structure, here's a basic one to stick to until you can figure it out.

4 man:
Melee
Monk
Midline caster (ele, necro, rit, mesmer)
Whatever

8 man:
Melee
Melee
Midline caster (ele, necro, rit, mesmer)
Midline caster (ele, necro, rit, mesmer)
Whatever
Whatever
Monk
Monk

I usually run a protter (ER ele or ST rit instead of a 2nd monk). Two healers leads to overheal usually.

In GW, it's frontline, midline, and backline.

Frontliners are warriors, assassins, and dervishes. Your big damage comes from here.

Midliners are mesmers, necromancers, paragons, rangers, elementalists, and Ritualists (usually Channeling/Communing).

Backliners are monks, ER eles (elementalists using protection prayers), ST ritualists (Soul twisting + Shelter + union+ displacement), Restoration Ritualists.

Midliners and backline are essential, frontline isn't so much if you have adequate prots (protection prayers, "Save Yourselves!", or spirits).

In particular, melee AI is terrible.

Thank you!

Since we are gonna be a 5 man team, when the original campain allows it, I guess this means I can form a team like this:

Malee
Monk
Midline caster
Whatever
Whatever

We want to play with 5 diffrent proffessions, so this is great! Thank you!

The frontline, midline, backline classification was very helpful

I guess a team consisting of

Warrior
Elementalist
Necromancer
Ritualist
Monk

is pretty balanced team. Or what do you guys think?

I reread your original post. In Prophecies (i.e. original game) you have 6 core professions (Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist, Necromancer, Mesmer, Monk), so you don't have any option for a 2nd backline (without an elite, elementalists cannot and should not heal, you can bring a necromancer at best but I don't recommend this).

In Presearing where you start out it is mostly solo, then you get a party of two. Once you get to Ascalon there will be parties of 4 and 6 when you get to Kryta or so (Yak's Bend). It's not until you hit the Southern Shiverpeaks that you get parties of 8, which is pretty close to the end of the game with the exception of Temple of the Ages in Kryta.

As far as team build goes, many people run 2 monks in their team even with 6 man. The reason is because their midline and frontline have little or no utility skills to mitigate incoming damage, whether it is interrupting, blocking, blind, weakness etc. I typically run only one henchman monk even in Hard mode, but that's with tons of utility on my midline.

Prophecies is a different animal from Factions and Nightfall, since the latter two allow for full 8 man teams fairly early on.

Official Wiki is down at the moment for whatever reason, so http://www.guildwiki.org/Getting_sta...8Prophecies%29

P.S. Realize that all armor-reduced damage from Rangers, Elementalists, Dervishes do rather little in hard mode so don't invest too much in those characters if you are shooting for Hall of Monuments and want to path of least resistance.

Thank you for the Wiki.

1 Question though.
I am getting a bit worried. Is it possible to have 5 man parties? It says, 4 or 6 party teams. We dont have a sixth member playing with us.

You can get a henchman to fill in any empty slots. If you play through Nightfall and Eye of the North there are customizable henchmen called "heroes".

http://www.guildwiki.org/Hero

When the official wiki gets back up again you can go on http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page or type /wiki (what you need to find) ingame or F10 (default key for "Help")

When we say 4 man or 6 man or 8 man we mean that's the maximum you'll be able to group together with. There is nothing stopping you from using less people than is possible. This is not recommended though. The areas do not scale according to your party size and you'll struggle with a less than full party (at least until you get lots of skills and get decent at the game). There are henchmen (AI companions) in the outposts that you can take with you anytime you need for free, so filling out your team with whatever you're missing won't be a problem.

Ok thank you very much for your help!
Much appreciated!

For pve you can pretty much do as you like for a lot of it at least you can when you have some experience with your own character.

Consider taking a monk hero or a healer protector type just for that extra bit of healing.
No reason why each of you doesn't take a self heal ability and a rez signet, its no bad thing to learn to take care of your self.

Later you can take rez scrolls and dump that skill as you are planning on dying as little as possible and mostly you will not die on the average mission.

Consider also taking a necro and or Ritualist hero, the necro can create a small army of minions to soak up damage and the ritualist can create spirits to harm enemies or protect and heal the party

now its true you can do perfectly well without either spirits or minions but when your new and making lots of mistakes they can help out a lot.

Remember fight on your own terms you can use bows to draw some of your enemies into a pre prepared killing zone.

There is a natural order to killing off mobs of enemies and their warriors are not usually the top priority.
Healers and mages are usually my top priority.

Deny them healing and stop them being resurrected first then prevent the area effect damage on your party the interrupts and of course their necros raising minions.
Some idiot with a sword can be dealt with in good time besides you minions and warriors will be blocking them.

Pick up and use/sell everything and don't waste money on flashy rubbish when collectors can provide everything you need for much of the game.

Most of all have fun hope to see you in the game some time

Quote: