noob questions :p

So I created my first GW char last week, in anticipation for GW2. I am sick of WoW and have never played GW before, but I figured it would be cool to play the first game for a bit before GW2 comes out. I'm trying to get some Hall of Monuments rewards.

So I have a few questions:

1) I made a warrior/ranger (I love playing warriors) for my main character, as I am trying to get LDoA, and farming high level char with my pet and fire imp is super easy. I am level 13 and hope to be 20 by the end of the month. But after I leave pre, which is the best secondary prof for a warrior, that wants to solo all the main stories? I think I want to play a War/Ele as that sounds cool, but I also want to max the Survivor titles which sounds VERY hard. Which secondary will make me hardest to kill? Monk?

2) Also, does anyone know how much xp I will get from completing all the missions? (I'm assuming I will get no xp from enemies as I will be starting out at lvl 20) I don't know the scope of the game, but I'm assuming it should be close to 500k? I need something like 1.3 million xp to max the survivor title...

3) What is the best armor I can get immediately after leaving pre? Money is not an issue as I have 1000k from my bro's old account Can I just run to shiverpeaks and buy some sick armor? Or do I need to do quests or something? I plan on just leaving pre, gearing up, and shredding through all the proph missions.

4) I would like to have a hero or hench healer with me at all times, just in case. Especially now that I am trying to max the survivor title! Do I NEED a level 20 char on my account to use as a hero? Can I just make a factions Monk/Ele and power level him in a day? Is that a good idea?

I appreciate any and all advice on these matters. Like I said, I am a noob to GW, and need all the help I can get.

Most survivors do something like */R with a beastmaster build or */Mo and instead of playing their primary class, they heal, albeit not very well.

Just the prophecies missions will net you ~50k exp if you do the mission and bonus for all the missions. A 50k bonus will apply if Augury Rock is your first "Ascension" experience. Factions will give you ~54k for all missions completed with Master's. Nightfall, completing all 20 missions, will net you ~90k for Master's.

You can get a run from Ascalon to Droknar's to get max level armor. Alternatively, you could go from Lion's Arch to Cantha and get it there. And in Nightfall, you would get it at the Consulate Docks. AL80 is max for a warrior.

You can only use mercenary henchmen if you have purchased the option in the in-game store. You can use a PvP character to register as a mercenary. You can get regular heroes in Nightfall.

1) You're gonna be tempted going W/Mo as every beginner is but its a bad idea for a survivor. Basically, you shouldn't need secondary class skills as a Warrior because W is the most balanced class in the game. I'd stick to W/R and use stuff like Troll Unguent and Dryder's Defense for additional regen and armor. Then again, if you're rolling out of Pre as lvl 20 - you shouldn't have any problems reaching LA from where you can go to Nightfall and EotN to get heroes.

2) Do quests and cap skills. At lvl 20, each capped skill gives 5k xp and "double xp for skill captures" weekends help a lot too.

4) If you don't want to buy Mercenary Hero Slots from the store (waste of money, imho) you can go to Nightfall to get some lvl 10 heroes (two of which are monks) and EotN to get a lvl 20 monk and ele. With a little more walking, a lvl 20 mesmer too. Get all of them and those lvl 10 will level up pretty fast just playing through Prophecies.

More immediate than this, if you have Eye of the North, is to take the quest in Lion's Arch to get to Boreal Station and get max armor there. You're limited to only Tyrian, but it's max. Does that count as "sick"?

Forgot all about the armorer there! Yeah, that armor is pretty sick(ly).

If I was doing the Survivor title by playing through the missions, I would recommend taking two healers, but two healers and a protter is probably even better.

Thanks everyone for all of the replies!

So I think I am going to go with Warr/Ele and just bring 3 heros with me. I did not know that you could just make a level 20 pvp character and use him as a hero. I thought I had to power level. XD

I don't mind spending a little dough to unlock the slots, its not too expensive and it is probably the easiest way to ensure I don't die! :0 I will def take 2 healers, but idk what a "protter" is lol is that a dps class?

And I will probably just run to Droknar's at first to get some nice armor.

I did not know there is double xp on the weekends?? 0_o

A "protter" is a monk or an ele that uses Protection Prayers attribute. There's some great stuff there: Protective Spirit, Reversal of Fortune, Aegis, Guardian and all-time wamo favourite: Rebirth.

Yes, there are various weekend events that give additional bonuses like double xp and gold for vanquishing, double xp for capturing elite skills, double faction in alliance battles, triple chance to get a lockpick drop (although three times zero is still a zero) and so on.

Btw, spending $ or € in the online store will not exactly ensure "zero deaths". You can get killed even with 7 fully equipped heroes due to lag, over-aggro, unfortunate spawns or your ex bitching on your phone. Damn her.



P.S. Please resist temptation and do not put Flare and/or Firestorm on your skillbar.

lol no need to worry about ex *forever alone* and my internet connection is solid. If I bring 2 dedicated healers at all times shouldn't that be enough?

And why can't I put flare or firestorm on my skillbar? I wanna be a flame warrioooorrrrr! lol but srlsly are they just not efficient or something?

To clarify this, you only get XP from capping Elite skills. These do not show up in Prophecies until much later in the game if playing normally, though since you're getting run to Drok's you'll have access to a good number of them in the Southern Shiverpeaks. They are also widely available on the main lands of Cantha and Elona.

No. Even more healers don't guarantee survival as well. The correct skill set of your whole team and the correct tactics is the key to success instead. And at the start of the game you don't even have many good healing skills, so your healers aren't very powerful.

Beginning with 2/3 of the Prophecies story line, you will encounter enemies with higher level than you, and since you don't know tactics (yet), you will probably die a few times if you try to get the survivor title by playing through the story lines. In Factions and Nightfall, the level 20+ enemies start even right after the tutorial area. In EOTN they are all higher than level 20.
You can use skills from your primary and secondary profession. If you chose elementalist as secondary, you would be able to use them, but it's not efficient. You don't have the energy for most of the elementalist skills as warrior, and you would not be able to boost these attributes by runes. Both skills are quite good in the Prophecies tutorial, but later in the game they are weak compared to other elementalist skills.

2 dedicated healers is not sometimes enough. When you get to hard mode and in certain areas, you will find running 1 healer and a 1 protter is far more efficient, as 2 healers cannot possibly overcome the massive damage outputted by enemies in hard mode (protting basically reduces damage to minimal amounts to allow healers to keep up with it). However, in most cases, 2 healers work fine. Just make sure they can keep up with energy costs.

You do not want to run Flare/firestorm on your warrior for these reasons:
Warriors cannot spam either spell due to lack of energy management, whereas the Elementalist primary has skills dedicated to energy management as well as 4 pips of energy regeneration.
However, consider running these skills once you obtain the skill "Warrior's Endurance". This skill basically allots you to run any other build and ignore energy costs.
Oh- the most important part of being a warrior, is that almost all of their more-decent skills rely more on Adrenaline; you want to be spending energy where it will also increase your adrenaline gains.

I don't mean to cast you down, but...
If you REALLY want to be a flame warrior, consider using Conjure Flame instead, and putting Mark of Rodgort on one of your heroes.

You are not going to be able to solo prophecies as a Warrior, especially if you're new. There simply is no combination of skills for the Warrior that will net you that much damage output and survivability against anything without dying many, many times. Even with a lot of experience and consumables, soloing prophecies on W/anything is difficult.

However, you will be able to do it with Henchmen and heroes, although getting survivor is going to be difficult at best. Even more experienced PvE players have issues with it.

I really appreciate all this feedback.

I don't want to underestimate the difficulty of the missions. I will be extra conservative in my playing style as I am learning. Also, what should be my hero combo? Healer, protter, and a dps (elementalist?)

My two cents are that if you are in a hurry (and it reads like you are) I would recommend finding a PvE guild that is willing to help out.
While they won't want to hold your hand and run you through the whole campaign, they can help with some of the more difficult missions and quests.
You'll definitely want their help for missions like Thunderhead Keep, and missions where you need people to carry things (makes no sense to have melee types carry the Scepter of Orr around).
You seem eager to accomplish LDoA and survivor quickly. I would argue that while getting LDoA is a good goal to start, that you may want to save Survivor until you have gotten advanced skills like elites and PvE only skills. You can start Survivor at anytime and it is really easy to make a simple mistake or even a lag spike during the campaign to ruin your chances.
If you are in a hurry to stack your HoM, I would concentrate on beating the campaigns first, while making sure you fill out mission books for title points.

Lastly, don't be in too much of a hurry and enjoy the game a little. Once you have beaten the campaigns, then you can worry about how much E-Peen your HoM will give you in GW2

The difficulty of the missions changes abruptly. The first missions are trivial. The next missions are easy and the missions after that are still somewhat easy. But suddenly, your team has wiped a few times and you ask yourself how on earth is it possible that people are able to beat that mission. This mission is impossible!

But it's not.

If you read through the forums, you might come to the conclusion everything is trivial and easy. Yes, for the somewhat experienced player. He failed quite often and learnt from that. You might have the best team build copied from gwpvx, but it is still possible to fail from time to time and wipe. The more you are in a hurry, the more often this will be the case.

Like the idea of a flame warrior lol but the game puts problems in the way as was explained lack of energy and low energy recovery rate hinder a warrior spell caster.

There are ways you could play around with the idea of course they will probably not be that great but you never know you could find something that works well enough and you have fun with.

A fighter type that casts spells could be created, your choices would seem to be run a caster/fighter that has plenty of spell power and relies on protective spells instead of armour.
eg Earth elementalist, skills such as kinetic armour and armour of earth will boost your low character armour for short times.
You could still if you wished fight with sword and shield hammer axe etc.

Run a fighter and rely on spells that cost no energy at all ie monk smiting signets there are others http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet

Third choice might be to run an inbetween character one with more energy than a warrior and better energy pool and or recovery,
Rangers Assassins etc

Just some ideas for you to maybe play around with.
There are more efficient ways of playing a character but if you have fun with it who cares.

What nobody has pointed out yet is that you will NOT be able to change secondary professions as soon as you leave Pre. You may be level 20, but you are not Ascended and are still missing some attribute points. You will be around halfway through Prophecies before you get Ascended and get the quests to earn those points. You will have to stick with W/Ra for a while.

Most of the XP in GW comes from quest rewards as you go through the story, not from killing foes. Prophecies quest rewards tend to be on the low side, though many of the quests offer skills. Factions and Nightfall quests can be very rewarding. For example, there is a whole series of quests -- most of them quite easy -- in Kaineng City that reward 3000 XP each. Doing side quests is a great way to build XP. EotN is also very rewarding, with many quests offering 10K XP or more. So just burning through the primary quests and missions is not a very good strategy for a Survivor, since you miss many excellent opportunities to get XP.

One problem you will face, though, is that you won't know which activities (quests, missions, bonuses, and skill caps) are particularly dangerous for a Survivor to try, as you haven't played the game yet. Even just traveling to a new outpost can be deadly, since you don't know what foes are out there, their usual patrol patterns, etc. This is why few try for Survivor on their very first character.

Yeah this is the only thing I am a bit worried about...
Though I am new to GW, I am not new to MMOs at all, and am a good player. Hopefully with a little luck, and extra caution I won't get myself over my head. I mean I have nothing to lose by trying for the title.

Also, is there any good "tank" builds? Like if I am an ele, can I use some earth spells to buff my armor and stuff? I plan on running with at least 2 heals and a protter at all times, but I want to be as tough as I can be.

Another question, if I get the first 2 titles in the track, but then die. Do I have to start ALL OVER AGAIN to get the 1.3 million xp title? That would really suck >.< lol

Yes, yes you do. The experience counter resets when you die, so a normal death will screw up your survivor title track run. The wiki has some great information on the title as well as some relatively safe and easy ways to obtain the title if you want to pursue it at a later date. Courier Falken's new quest could also possibly be used for this, if you tire of Kilroy.

Edit: It should be noted that the survivor title was changed so that if you die, you can still get the title, you just have to earn all the experience all over. A death with set you back, but you still can work on the title at a later point in time if you want.

Tanking is bad in general PvE because there's no point to it. You're much better off burninating stuff and making sure they don't get the chance to deal deadly amounts of damage. As an ele, you can use earth magic with wards against melee and elements to help your team on the defense and still use offensive spells to dish out damage.

Btw, two healers and a prot are an overkill. You'd be better off with two hybrid builds that incorporate heals, prots, condition and hex removals. Forgot to mention that you can get a necro hero fairly easy from NF - Olias comes as a lvl 15 minion master and minions are a great way to absorb and deal damage.

At the end of the day - be sure to find an active PvE guild in order to get immediate advice, help with missions and learn from more experienced players.

As a Warrior I wouldn't be too worried bout the survivortitle. Warriors can solo-farm raptors outside of a town called Rata Sum. It's a very quick and easy farm when you've played through the campaigns and got the right build and gives load of experience and points for the asuran title (wich you also put in your HoM). I've heard bout people getting survivor title that way in several hours!.

Further your asking bout hero-team setup. In 4 players team party's the setup should be: 1: healer, 1: melee (you), 2 nukers (casters). 6 player teams is the same but with 4 casters. for 8 player teams 2 healers are recommended (indeed 1 heal,1prot). But! a lot of good hero teams mixes different roles. And healers aren't always monks. The most commonly used hero-build is called discordway, wich traditionally exists of 3 necro's who heal/prot/nuke.

Lastly I want to warn you that in the early start of the game you might wanna consider using henchman instead of hero's. First off all cause hero's, at acuisition are very weak. you have to make them better. Second cause you won't have the resources yet to make them better (it cost money and you need skills who are further on in campaigns).

Example, for the mentioned 3 necro team, you need 3 necro hero's. You can get 1 in prophecy's (though quest is given in Kamadan), 1 in Nightfall and 1 in Eye of the North. All three are unlocked reasonable early in the campaigns. But their elite skill is called Discord (hence the name discordway). To get that skill you have to kill a boss almost at the end of factions.

Discord isn't the only thing you can run, even a single Necro with minions can help greatly - and his skills can be all core.

Successful small hero teams don't have to specialize into healer/nuker/melee, Sab- and Discordway combined multiple roles onto single skill-bars.

You also get a couple of (level 20) heroes there, including a monk.

Take your time and enjoy the game, don't worry about the title at this point. Keep in mind that later in the game it is much easier to gain exp then at the start. Keep on playing, enjoy the story, once your are at the end of the main story the fun really begins.

There are quests and dungeons that will give you vast amounts of exp and some really nice rewards. Don't forget there are scrolls that can increase your exp gain as well!

Awesome! Thanks for all the help guys!
I'm almost level 15 now, hopefully will be 20 by the weekend, then the real fun begins!