I am completely new, a few questions.

First off I want to say I am very excited for Guild Wars 2, it looks to be amazing and actually have the world around you matter!

So I tried a guild wars trial to see if I liked it, ended up loving it. Tried ranger, ele, and mesmer. I ended up liking the mesmer the most and purchased the trilogy last night. My question is, should I take all the talk about the professions with a grain of salt? I'm hoping to continue my mesmer in prophecies, but would also like to start a paragon or warrior in nightfall because my favorite aspect was the heroes/henchmen.

Do I need to unlock everything with one character?

Any tips? Continue prophecies with mesmer or go somewhere else?

I'm sorry if this is all a jumble, I'm not a very good wordsmith.

Once a skill, rune, or upgrade is "unlocked" it is unlocked for your entire account.

However, all the other PvE characters on your account will still have to go buy it.

Here's a good example:

1. Your monk finds an "Elite Monk Tome" which allows you to learn any Elite Monk skill that you have unlocked on your account.
2. Your monk wants to use it to learn "Healing Hands" because he hasn't gone far enough in the game to learn it the regular way.
3. However, none of your characters have ever learned that skill before, so it is locked on your account.
4. Your warrior, who is further in the game, finds and learns "Healing Hands". The act of him learning it unlocks the skill on your account.
5. Your monk still doesn't know Healing Hands, though. It's unlocked, sure, but that doesn't give it freely to all your characters. They still have to acquire it via trainer, capture or tome.
6. Because it's unlocked now, your monk can now use the Elite Monk Tome to learn Healing Hands.

This is just one example. It's not terribly common but I hope it helped explain how unlocking skills works on your account. Have fun with your new game!


*Note: You can make a PvP-only character that starts at lvl 20, and can't go to any PvE areas. These special PvP toons can use any skill which you have unlocked on your account. This is a good example of how people use their unlocks. They want to use a skill on one of their PvP toons, so they take a PvE toon to where the skill is, capture/learn it. That unlocks it and now all their PvP toons can use it.

Once you reach Lion's Arch in Prophecies you can take your Mesmer over to Nightfall and recruit some heroes.

Welcome! I started playing GW again in October in anticipation of GW2 as well.

Professions in GW2 are going to be mostly different than they were in the first game, and combat is completely different, so I wouldn't take GW1 as training for GW2.

You don't need to unlock everything with one character, as long as they all have access to EoTN. Playing one character through all the campaigns is what I'm doing. I'm doing it this way so I have all of my heroes/skills setup in one character to make going through the campaigns a little easier.

You can do whatever you want. Since you've started prophesies with a mesmer, I would just stick with it. Prophesies is the longest and probably the slowest campaign of the four (with 25 missions), so as long as you don't get bored with it before you move on I would stick with that. Nightfall, imho was the best paced campaign, but I've yet to try Factions.

The HoM for GW2 is a collective account system as well? Or is that done via one character?

I will stick to the mesmer, I enjoy it because it was far more interesting than ranger or ele in my eyes. I think tonight I will try a paragon before hopping on my mesmer though. Just in case I like paragon more. Paragon seemed like another interesting class.

Yes. Once you link your GW account to your GW2 account, all your dedicated achievements from your GW account will be available to all of your characters in GW2.

Word to the wary: mesmers are pretty difficult to play. You need a decent understanding of the game mechanics and the enemies you face in order to play one well, because a lot of their skills are based on timing and disruption, and you can't plan your skillbar to disrupt if you don't know what you're going to be facing. My advice is to play another class for a while; almost any other class is easier than mesmer. If you're really set on playing a mesmer, be extra careful reading skill descriptions so you know what they do; mesmers have some pretty complicated skills, relatively speaking.

Oh, and welcome.

I see where you coming from, but I think that is why I like it so far. It doesn't just say "Launches a fireball for 26 fire damage". Going to try paragon tonight for sure though first, just not sure which secondary to pair it with yet.

Are the campaigns completely doable with any class and a logical set up of heroes/henchmen? When does the game become challenging? So far it has been rather easy but at lvl 7 in prophecies I assume I am not far in at all.

All the campaigns are doable on any profession so long as you know what you're doing (or have enough sense to learn on the fly for the things you don't know). Hero/Henchmen teams are pretty basic, but they can get the job done in 99% of the content.

Also note that you can take the same one character through all campaigns. Once you reach the port city for the campaign you are in, there will be quests available to travel to the other campaigns.

Are the nightfall heroes available for use in other campaigns if you were to travel to prophecies or factions?

I would personally stick with your mesmer. I have a para, and I love it; but if I were just starting out it would not be my class of choice.

In order to prevent things from becoming a grind, join a PvE guild with helpful members. Once you past the searing, you will want to get to LA ASAP and hopefully your guildies can get you there in a hurry. Once there, travel to Cantha (Factions). There you can gain a team of 7 other lvl 20 henchmen and you can power level yourself (assuming your guildies don't have the time to powerlevel you themselves) with the many Kaineng City quests that have large XP rewards compared to those in Prophecies.
Once you are between lvl 15-20 you can do the quests to travel to Eye of the North and Elona (Nighfall). Getting to these areas will grant you advanced heros that you can outfit with runes, weapons of choice, and choose their skills.
At this point you will be close to or at max level, have access to all three campaigns, a "starter set" of heroes; and access to advanced mesmer skills and areas with elite skills to be captured.

At that point you can take your time and hot-knife through butter any of the campaigns at your leisure.

Keep an eye out for Zaishen quests, even Normal Mode rewards are better than nothing.
Also once you feel you have some confidence, you can try PvP.
My recommendation would be to create a PvP only mesmer (at first) so you can use the skills you have already learned and mesmers are VERY effective at it. Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry (Competitive Missions) are great places to learn, gain Balthazar faction (use to unlock skills, that can be used for your heroes) and Allegiance Faction that can grant access to Allegiance skills and title progression.

That's about it, most of all have fun!

Yes, they are available to other campaigns' characters.

If you do decide to run a paragon, definitely be a warrior secondary.

Paragons use adrenal skills like warriors, they have the same energy regen so the skills mesh nicely.
Additionally you will have relatively quick access to the "Imbagon" build which is the most popular build of paragon players.

I want to say thank you to everyone. I don't think I have ever come across a more helpful community or forum. Just looking around the forums it seems full of information and not a total cesspool like you might find on the wow/rift forums.

What chuckles79 said - stick with your mesmer if you like it.

However I'd recommend that you simply play the game through normally instead of following any convoluted directions for power leveling and hero acquisition... it makes more sense lore/story-wise and is simpler. The game is playable in its normal order (Prophecies > Factions > Nightfall > Eye of the North). Until you get to Nightfall for heroes, you can use the henchmen and group with other players.


Edit: Oh and I should say Welcome to Guild Wars =)

If you want help or questions you can whisper me in-game on Brawn Sage

Mesmer is an excellent choice though it plays slightly differently to other caster types.
They updated many of the mesmer skills and a class that was underused by many players is now right up there with the other classes.

Play through the game you are in and if you get to a point where you are having a really tough time or stop enjoying it the create a different character.

Don't delete the old one though just come back to it later on and you may find your extra playing experience makes resuming as a mesmer easier.

Mesmers are much easier to play these days than they used to be.

Used to be the "main thing" you do with mesmers was much more technical, like lockdown, interrupt, denial, and such.

These days, mesmers are nukers. They nuke so good. They can still do all that other stuff, but they also bring very potent nukes. Sweet, area of effect, armor-ignoring spammable nukes.

Play that mesmer, friend. You'll chew through red dots like a boss.

The skills unlocked only for heroes so if you unlocked an elite, your heroes across your accounts will get them. But to unlock them using one character may allow you to gain a point for skill hunter title. It all depends on whether you think going around in one character unlocking all the professions' elites is worth it or not.

You sound like someone who likes challenges so I'd say go for it. If you find it not as fun later, you can always change a profession. So I'd say go for it and have fun!

Keep in mind one of the big things in GW is to change your skill bar to suit your location/foes. Don't just find one set of 8 skills and always use them. This is most important when playing a class like the Mesmer.

Some areas will have lots of enchanted foes so enchantment removal/shattering will be best. Another map/quest/mission/dungeon might have foes that use healing or resurect or just high damage spells and then interupts would become key.

Be aware though that "fun" builds can often be problematic when it comes to finding live players to team with. Most people, having been in GW for many years now, will only want a player that is using the most optimal build for that specific mission/dungeon to team with them. This means that a good number of builds that might be fun to play but not as effective are frowned upon.

About to leave work and go out to dinner. Thank you for the responses, and if I don't respond any time soon I apologize. I'll let you know how it goes for me tonight after I play a bit.

In case you are asking yourself where to start: in the end, it doesn't matter in which campaign you started your character. Every character has the equal possibility to play all chapters, learn every skill in the game and aquire every hero, every armor and every weapon in the game.

Every character in the game with a given primary class who played through all campaigns is totally equal to all other characters of the same primary class in terms of power and equipment, regardless of where he started.