Please send help! No idea what I'm doing.

Hey everyone! Since GW2 came out I've played a Guardian and kept it up to level. The expansion came out, did the Dragonhunter thing, I liked it but was lost in what to do with the game apart from world map completion. I have no idea how to properly gear it, or what to even do past that point. I'm into PvE more so than PvP, I do mythic raiding in World of Warcraft (healer main) but am looking for something different. Does GW2 have a big PvE scene with raiding and dungeons? or am I too lost?

Well you have the fractal/raid for this. Otherwise, GW2 is best done doing everything - pve, wvw and spvp. You can look at metabattle.com for basic builds and aim for gearing like that.

@Dawdler.8521 said:Well you have the fractal/raid for this. Otherwise, GW2 is best done doing everything - pve, wvw and spvp. You can look at metabattle.com for basic builds and aim for gearing like that.

So is it best to try and get into a guild that are willing to help? Or is it possible to gear like that on your own?

Ascended is the highest quality gear you can get. It's usually crafted yourself (account bound on craft) or obtained as drops if you do a lot of fractals and raids. But crafting your first set is probably a goodl path to take so you at least have the strength of your gear to rely on as you fumble into harder stuff, not that gear will save you if your skill/knowledge isn't up to scratch, but its a good starting point. Crafting ascended is just a matter of levelling the relevant crafting skill and saving up/farming/buying required mats/gold. I assume most people achieve the crafting on their own but you can always ask guildies to help out if they're willing. Easiest way to get ascended accessories(not craftable)/backpack is through livingworld season 3 maps, with the exception of some new PoF stat combos I believe.

Ascended weapon wil give you the biggest dps increase for power builds so get that first by whichever means for power builds.Since you did mythic raiding in wow you should be no stranger to meta builds in GW2 so go look those up first and fimilarise yourself with the raid comps if that's the content you want to play. Raiding guilds should have no problem accepting you and training you if you're willing to learn and have prior raid experience in other mmos.

First thing: forget everything you know about gear and end-game progression from WoW. GW2 does not work like that.

In terms of equipment the first thing you should aim for (if you don't have it already) is a full set of level 80 exotic equipment (orange text). In this game all equipment with the same level requirement and rarity is equally good, no matter where it comes from, and exotics are widely available so you have lots of options. You can craft it, buy it with gold from the Trading Post, with karma from merchants at the Temples in Orr, with badges of honour from merchants in World vs. World, from the dungeon merchant in LA with dungeon tokens or get it from some achievements and as drops (although that's pretty rare, you'll be waiting a long time for a full set). One thing you need to think about first though is what stat combination you want. There's a lot to choose from and depending on the weapons and skills you want to use some will be better than others. If you're not sure what to pick you could try looking up builds or ask in the Guardian section of the forum for ideas.

You'll notice dungeons are on my list of places to get exotics - most of the dungeons are designed to be playable below level 80, so they can be done without exotic equipment. Joining a guild is a good way to find people to do dungeons with, but you can also use the LFG tool (it's in with the friends menu). It's best to put up your own LFG listing rather than waiting for someone else to list one you can join, and don't be put off if you don't see any listings in that section - that doesn't mean there aren't people looking. Also it's a good idea to say if it's your first time doing a dungeon path so people aren't expecting you to know what will happen and what to do.

If you want further gear progression there's 1 more tier - ascended. But it's designed to be an expensive, difficult long-term goal. Trinkets can be bought with laurels and weapons and armour are most easily available by crafting but you need to level the relevant craft up to 450 to even start (500 is the max) and ascended gear is expensive and time-gated, so it's not something to go for right away. You can also get ascended drops, but they're rare and mainly come from raids and Fractals. On the plus side ascended is almost entirely optional, unless you want to do raids or the higher level Fractals, everything else is balanced for exotics.

Raids aren't gated at all in this game (last time I checked you could even enter on a low level character) and the only requirement to start Fractals is that you're level 80, but it's a good idea to be familiar with your profession and common game mechanics first and have at least exotics and be working towards ascended equipment before you start either, especially Fractals since there's a mechanic on the higher level ones called Agony where unless you have ascended equipment with agony resistance infusions you will constantly take damage, which makes it impossible to progress. Neither of them gives better gear than the ascended stuff you can get elsewhere, but there are lots of unique skins, titles and other rewards available.

There are other forms of 'end game' PvE available too though. The Living Story and expansion storylines are probably the main one. If you want to play the whole thing in order it goes Personal Story > Season 1 recap > Season 2 > Heart of Thorns > Season 3 > Path of Fire > Season 4. You may need to buy Living World episodes from the gem store if you've missed any, and of course you need to buy the expansions to play their storylines. But you don't have to play it in order so if you don't mind missing some stuff you can just focus on what you've got and think about what else to buy later.

But there's also world bosses, achievements and collections, map completion and the Current Events stuff which is like side-stories to the main story and probably some stuff I've forgotten. Unlike a lot of games GW2 is designed so you're never really done with a map or zone. Even if you're above the recommend level you'll still keep going back every so often and the level scaling system means everything there will still be relevant for you when you do.